Chapter Text
Of course, ambassadorial duties took priority. As soon as their boat anchored in Paradis' harbour with its hull intact, few moments that followed were their own. A security detail escorted them wherever they went—Connie complained that he couldn't so much as piss in peace, which he couldn’t—and their schedule was managed to the minute. Preliminary meetings ran longer than the assemblies they were in preparation of, and there were hours of forums both private and public, and absurd processions in which all they did was sweat in their suits and shake clammy hands. Not to mention the photos taken for the papers. Jean was almost never not fixing his hair, or his tie, or the tuck of his shirt, though Armin suspected that owed more to nerves than it did vanity. Not that he was much better: often Armin had to wrestle his restless hands together in his lap to still them.
Being so busy was something of a relief. Armin had no seconds to spare on the fear that this brittle peace might come collapsing down around them at the slightest misstep. Only at night, alone in his room—a guard posted outside his door—would it catch up with him, pulse racing even as the dread flattened his thoughts to nothing. In the week they were carted around Sina in a fleet of rattling carriages, he slept maybe twelve hours total. The rest, even the violent-bright daylight hours, Armin spent in a daze, propelled mostly by inertia and the speeches he’d practised for so long, at first in the mirror and then to any audience who could bear his anxious manner.
There was one other motive that moved him. It had made the years endless, and this week yet longer, but it kept him going when little else had the power to do so. Lying in bed, Armin would feel it thrill his weary blood as if someone had whispered the words to him in the dark. A promise, a plea: that soon, he would be reunited with Mikasa.
Mikasa. Even though not a day had passed without them speaking it, nor an hour without Armin thinking it, her name felt surreal in his mouth, in his mind. But the rest of her, her face and her voice, the strength of Mikasa's gentle touch, they were as clear to Armin as if he had been with her only yesterday. Nothing in his memory could muddle her, and with a strange sort of certainty Armin knew that decades could have passed and still Mikasa would remain the same in his mind's eye. The last image he held of her was unshakeable. A fading silhouette in a drift of steam, seeing the tears on her face even with her back to him.
By now, Armin wanted it shaken. He wanted to see Mikasa for the first time in three years and to startle at the look of her, made new without the burden of war. Would her hair be the same? No; surely it would be longer? In his dreams, sometimes Armin imagined it looped back in a tidy bun, swept from her face; in others, Mikasa had a long silken braid that split the centre of her shoulder blades with perfect symmetry, and she made it up every morning and undid it again at night. Armin had spent an embarrassing amount of time wondering these things. Whether it fell loose over her back, or if it was cropped short in anticipation of the summer heat, or—or—
—well, he was sick of dreaming. One's imagination could only ever manage a pale imitation, no matter how detailed the living memory. What Armin wanted, plain and simple, was Mikasa in front of him. To learn again her weight in his arms, to breathe her in: the scent of her clothes and her skin and the sun hot in her hair. Since they were children, Mikasa had smelled the same. Even beneath sweat and blood, filth and fear.
Armin hadn’t come home. Home no longer existed, not here in Paradis nor out there in the rest of the world, and maybe it never would again—not how it was in Armin’s stale memory. But he was coming back to Mikasa, and that was infinitely better.
“It's lovely, Mikasa,” said Armin, shaking his head, “it really is.”
In the week he'd been there, Armin had said so maybe a hundred times. He couldn't help himself; every time he moved from outside to indoors, and indoors to outside, what he saw amazed him anew. It was true, anyway—it was lovely here. Like something out of a child's painting, too bright to be real: her cottage with its white walls and yellow thatch, and at this warm point in the spring it was even lovelier. The garden was in its first full flush of growth, and around the back Mikasa had a plot for vegetables. There was a trellis tangled up with sweet peas, and in the beds a frilled riot of carrot greens that brushed against Armin's calves like a tease.
This was, he could tell, a labour of love; of time; of effort. She had scored a home into the earth with her bare hands, alone, and how beautiful it was. How beautiful it made her too, with dirt beneath her fingernails, her arms strong and capable—Armin could imagine her laying the stone slabs that made the path up to her doorstep with such ease—and when the light was low, he glimpsed a smattering of freckles across Mikasa’s cheekbones.
After the sobbing, reeling excitement of seeing each other again for the first time, things had settled into a surreal rhythm. Mikasa had treated Armin and the others as if they were guests she was hosting. Which they were, Armin had supposed, no matter how strange it was to think it. Only he had stayed at her cottage; even if everyone had camped out on the floor, it was still too small to accommodate them all. And so, while Armin had slept on the short, slumping sofa by Mikasa's fireplace (his feet hanging off the edge as he stretched), the others had stayed at an inn in the district proper. Dressed in plainclothes, and so far from the capital, it was easy enough to blend in. Historia allowed them to go without an armed guard at Mikasa’s cottage, and only with the new freedom did Armin realise how much it had chafed.
Each morning, the others would travel up from Shiganshina's centre, their arrival timed to Mikasa laying out a late breakfast, Armin throwing open the windows. They would stay for hours, doing nothing, mostly, but eating and talking and drinking, and Jean would break from them to smoke, sometimes alone and sometimes with Pieck or Reiner—and that was how it had gone, for part of the week. Peaceful, almost dream-like.
Until, at last, Jean's need to see his mother outgrew his desire to stay. So it was for Connie, too, and after that they wished to see Sasha's family, and Sasha herself; as did Reiner and Annie, who owed a visit to Hitch besides. And Pieck, well... she'd made it plain that she had no desire to remain here, in the tall shadow of Eren's grave. The bitterness was never far from her face.
It went unspoken that Armin would stay. Leaving Mikasa so soon—after three hard and painful years—was unthinkable, for Armin as much as for her. The others didn't ask it of him. Instead they made plans to reconvene in a week, for though Historia had been able to guarantee them some selfish time, she couldn’t guarantee much of it. The Jaegerist junta expected them back in Sina, and then they would expect them gone. Back on the boat, across the water; between Paradis and the rest of the world, an unseen wall that was no less an obstacle.
Armin’s mind came back to that fact again and again, though he tried not to let it. Better by far to enjoy the time he had with Mikasa than to agonise over its ending. Of course, they’d be back; Armin swore to himself that he would return by summer, even if negotiations failed. He would row a skiff to shore in the dead of night and walk to Shiganshina if he had to. Being with her again—it was like taking a drink of water after so long that he’d forgotten how it felt to slake his thirst.
Their days were unextraordinary. Morning and evening, Mikasa tended to the garden. She hadn’t asked Armin to join her, but he did so one day without thinking, sick of sitting still, of watching her work from the window. He might have been a hindrance more than a help, but watering was a long and laborious process and Mikasa seemed grateful for the spare pair of hands. The weather had been too good for too long: her rain barrels had run dry, and so together they schlepped back and forth from the river with heavy buckets. Armin could manage two at a time, neither quite full, and he struggled even with that; but Mikasa had a yoke that she hefted across her shoulders, and this way she could carry four pails brimming with water, spilling hardly any as she went. The disparity in their strength did not sting Armin like it used to. Instead, it merely awed him. Mikasa had always been like that, but now Armin would catch himself staring as though seeing her, properly, for the first time.
He couldn’t understand how she managed it. Even as Armin stepped into her world, as he watched her do these things—even as he helped her do them. This life Mikasa had made, and it was entirely her own: the wood she chopped and stored to dry for winter; the fish glittering on the counter that she gutted clean and cooked for them; the flowers that stood on every surface in jars for vases, cut from a garden that Mikasa herself had grown.
Sweat made damp the collar of his shirt. Armin couldn’t remember the last time he had worked this hard, or for so long. Certainly he sparred sometimes with Annie, though she never pretended he was much of an opponent; Armin might have been taller, but on the training mats he found himself looking up at Annie’s face more often than not. Connie roped him into regular exercise, too, which Armin deemed equal parts exhausting, irritating, and endearing. Maybe behind a desk or a podium was where he belonged—where he preferred to be—but Armin was grateful to be pulled away from it. Mostly because it allowed him to forget about the diplomatic grenade they’d been trusted with handling.
Here, the exertion was almost restorative. Jobs needed doing, and when Mikasa asked, Armin did them. He boiled water for tea and for baths. He helped her knock back the thatch where it had come loose. He took in sheets dried by the sun, sweet with the smell of spring. It was hard to believe things could be so simple, and so effortless in that simplicity, even as they made his very bones ache.
Armin blotted his forehead and joined Mikasa in the kitchen. There was the clinking of glasses, and then a splash that made him keenly aware of his dry mouth. Mikasa, her back to him, pouring water from a pitcher. She’d changed out of the hardy clothes she wore for working out-of-doors; from behind, in a long dress of white linen, she almost seemed a different person. Miles away from the one who’d been wrist-deep in the soil that morning, prying roots, planting bulbs.
She turned as Armin met her and slid a glass along the counter.
“Thank you,” he said, and he drained it in three swallows. “It’s warm again today.”
Mikasa was looking out of the window rather than at him, but even in profile her smile was obvious. “You picked a good time to come,” she said, and she refilled his glass. “The weather’s been dry for a while now, but most days it’s been overcast. We’ve had the best of the sun this week.”
“I don’t miss Shiganshina summers.”
Mikasa hummed. In her hands she turned her own glass around and around on the counter’s surface. Armin watched the gesture with absent interest—it was rare that he saw her fidget. “They’re not so bad out here,” she demurred. “There’s always a breeze. But in town, yes. It’s so built up, much more now than when we were children.”
The conversation lulled. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence; it was one that tended to fall whenever they mentioned the past, as each navigated the inevitable rush of remembering and tried not to get lost in it. Armin anchored his focus on what Mikasa had said. Working out in the full heat of the sun, he hadn’t noticed a breeze, but with the window open he could feel it now. The sweat on his skin dried cool, and at Mikasa’s throat the loose collar of her dress stirred.
She must have felt the weight of his stare. When Armin lifted his gaze, he found Mikasa looking back at him. There was no reproach on her face, nor surprise; many times over the past few days they had caught each other in this silent, unreciprocated study, and it had never felt strange or shameful. Rather, to Armin, it seemed only natural. There was no way to make up for the three years he’d gone without Mikasa, but to have the simple luxury of looking at her whenever he pleased—that was its own kind of recompense.
“I forgot to say it before, but your hair,” Mikasa said, her gaze flicking up from his face. “It looks nice.”
Armin blushed, and self-consciously he touched the back of his head, feeling it lay funny from the straw hat he’d been wearing.
“Well,” he said, “it’s... I don't know.” His smile went small, wry. “I figured if I was going to play the part of ambassador I should try and look a little smarter. More professional. Though I don't know how much good it did me.”
Mikasa considered his words for a long few seconds, and then considered Armin himself. “You’re not playing a part,” she said simply, and though her stare was unfamiliar it was not unpleasant. “And you do—look different, I mean. You might not be able to see it, but you’ve changed so much.”
His blush burned a little fiercer. He didn't feel changed. Sometimes, Armin still felt like a fifteen-year-old scout with three months’ service under his belt, stood before an assembly of older, better men and dead-afraid to speak his mind. Hell, he hadn't grown much since then. Jean, who took great pleasure in treating Armin like a standing armrest, scarcely let him forget it.
It felt odd to have this conversation now, when they’d had several days to acclimatise to each other. Neither of them had dared brave a discussion of the past beyond the most basic reminiscing. But while it had daunted Armin before, his unease vanished with how easily Mikasa broached the subject.
“So have you. And yours,” Armin said, and before he could think better of it he was touching her hair. A tendril hung loose by her ear, escaped from its tie, a curl in it like the vine of a sweet pea. “It suits you, grown out. I don't remember it being this long since…”
“We were twelve. Over ten years ago.” Mikasa’s voice was wistful more than it was sad, but still Armin felt a pang of regret.
Talking like this, about these things… it closed his throat, made his eyes sting. Even when they did not mention him, Eren lingered in every breath of memory as if he had only ever existed there. Some shared and perfect thing between them born out of a dream, a shade of a boy untouched by time. In remembering, he was still theirs. In remembering, Armin saw Eren bent over a book that was almost too big for him to carry; he heard Eren’s voice trembling with tears as he clutched Armin close on Wall Maria. He did not know what Mikasa saw when she thought of Eren. Maybe, like Armin, she saw Eren not as he had become, but as he was before, when he was theirs.
It was better not to ask. Already the air felt fraught; Armin didn’t want to add any static to its charge. Whatever had been lurking between them these past few days was rising to the surface, showing its pale belly, eager to be torn open. It wasn’t that Armin was afraid. Not of what Mikasa might say about Eren, or the three years gone, or even Armin himself. It just seemed impossible that the aftermath of this conversation would be anything other than a huge and hurting mess.
Armin sighed, but before he could step back—before he could lower his hand from Mikasa’s hair—a touch stopped him. Not obvious, the barest graze of something warm and smooth against his knuckles. The skin of Mikasa’s temple. She’d turned her cheek against the back of his hand.
To touch each other was not unusual; they did so casually, thoughtlessly, and they did so often. But this felt nothing like his arm alongside Mikasa's as they sat together, or their elbows bumping as they ate, or her fingers finding his own as she passed him something small (a seedling; a coin; a paring knife, its blade cupped safe in the curve of her palm).
Maybe all that lent the touch any intimacy was the laboured way she closed her eyes. As though the physical contact was a relief, one so long in coming that to receive it only exhausted her.
“I miss back then so much, sometimes,” Mikasa whispered.
Armin wasn’t sure whether it was her movement or his own, but the back of his hand brushed the length of her face. The inches between them shrank even as they moved no closer. Armin could make out the individual dark hairs of her lashes, full and sootblack; the fine sheen of her eyelids, and the capillaries that coloured them. And then, that which made his stomach drop: a tear squeezed out from the corner of her eye and spilled free.
“Oh.” Armin sucked in a painful breath, his lungs compressing. He turned his open palm against her cheek and nudged the droplet with the pad of his thumb. “Mikasa, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“You didn’t do anything,” Mikasa said thickly. At last she opened her eyes, and they were dark and searching beneath the gloss of tears. “It’s been wonderful. Just having you here… it’s better, really.”
Armin believed her—for he felt better, too, some lighter part of himself unearthed in her presence—but this sorrow he could never reach. He knew, because he knew exactly the nature of it. A grief that sunk its teeth too deep, the way it lashed at you, vicious and hungry and hopeless even with the gentlest touch. He couldn’t hope to soothe it. Not as his own jaw seized against the urge to cry. Armin framed Mikasa’s face in his hands and swept the tears away anyway.
It seemed to undam something that had been swelling too long. Mikasa’s quiet calm unravelled all at once: she took a ragged gasp and shuddered with such force that it could have split her open.
“I still miss him, Armin. So much. It’s been so long, I know, but…” Mikasa cut herself off. More tears gathered in her lashes, and a cry caught in her throat, but she swallowed hard and trained her breathing slow. “I’ve missed everyone,” she went on. “But with you two… it’s not the same.”
It would be so much easier if it was. Armin thought of the cold carved stone on the top of the hill, and the soft patch of grass he watched Mikasa kneel in, and the way sunlight passed through the leaves overhead. Yellow in her hair, on her lap, in the cradle of her hands.
“I know.” He lowered his voice in the vain hope that it wouldn’t tremble so badly. “I’ve missed you, too. Both of you.”
Armin breathed a tearful sigh. He pulled Mikasa close, and with the chilling breeze the heat of her body was almost a shock. This was selfishness, Armin supposed—trusting Mikasa had the strength to shore him up, even as she wore her own pain so nakedly. Still, it was irresistible, and in the crook of her neck Mikasa’s scent was the same that it had always been.
If only he were a little taller, a little broader. Armin wished that he was: that he could enfold Mikasa properly in his arms and bear her exhaustion the way she bore his; and press his mouth warm and dry to the crown of her head. Like Eren would have been able to. But Armin was not and could not, and this meagre comfort was all he had to offer.
Mikasa took a steadying breath. She drew back first, though not far; she gripped Armin’s elbows as if she needed the support and trained her gaze on his face. A penetrating stare, one that fixed him in place as much as her hold did.
It hadn’t bothered Armin before, and he knew that it shouldn’t. It was no different to how Mikasa had looked at him a thousand times, now and years ago, as children, as trainees, as soldiers. But under her scrutiny, the new intensity of it only some inches away, Armin couldn’t keep his pulse from skipping its rhythm. Even in her upset, Mikasa had always been able to see right through him.
He wondered whether he should step away. Without the excuse of the embrace, there was no need to be this close. Close enough that Armin heard her swallow; that he could feel the heat of her mouth like a lick of flame. The urge to let go warred with the need to keep her there.
“Armin,” she said, and nothing more. But the way she said it, that his name was some holy thing—it mangled Armin’s answer before it could rise in his throat.
It startled him, how his blood stirred at her voice. At the sense of her body, more tangible now than it had felt in the past, his recollection of it. He wished desperately that this was the first time. It might not be so bad, if it were; he could credit the rush to a moment of high feeling, of breathless closeness. But already over these past few days, he’d felt his fondness towards Mikasa twist into something altogether sharper. Hungrier. When he watched her drink long and deep, face upturned; when she stretched out her stiffness in the mornings, so unselfconscious in her own space. These things filled Armin’s stomach with hot glass. Even the motion of Mikasa’s arms as she tied up her hair drew his attention now. The bare nape of her neck, appealing in a way that it had never been.
Dangerous, was what it was. Something better kept safe in the deep dark selfishness of himself, where it could change nothing; where he could turn it over in his mind’s eye and examine it, detached from its bleeding heat. He’d done so well keeping it there. Cold and quiet, as if under a layer of ice. But Mikasa’s mouth was so near to his own.
Armin did not move. Mikasa’s hair—the strands hanging loose, the same ones he’d touched—tickled his cheek as she bent towards him. Their noses bumped. It was a dry sort of kiss, little more than chapped skin on skin. Too tentative to be anything but a question.
“Mikasa.” Armin's lips moved gently against hers. And because he didn’t know what else to say, whether he meant it as protest or comfort or excuse, he said, “You’re upset.”
Mikasa closed her eyes. Armin felt the feathery brush of her eyelashes, the dampness on them.
“I’m always upset,” she murmured.
“Don’t say that. Please.” Armin’s voice was too raw, the words sticking. The idea of such endless sadness, and Mikasa bearing it alone: Armin’s heart broke to imagine it. “Not always.”
He withdrew to check her face, to fathom her silence, but Mikasa was closed to him. Her eyes shut, her mouth a flat line. Seconds passed, each one bruising. Each one, meaning too much.
“No,” she said at last. And when she looked at him now, her lowered gaze lifting high, something bright burned through the shadow of the grief. “No, not always.”
Mikasa kissed him again. Too hard, and for too long, and she took clutching fistfuls of his shirt like she might drown if she let go. The buttons pulled tight across his chest. Her heartbeat overlapped Armin’s own with how close they were pressed together, and he was awed by the force of it. The miracle of her—Mikasa, alive in spite of it all, a standing constant when so many others had fallen away.
The world did not tilt on its axis. It did not throw Armin off his feet; he didn’t even sway. Mikasa anchored him there, in the centre of this cramped kitchen in her cramped cottage, nothing moving around them for miles but the breeze, her mouth tasting of clean cool water and salt.