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Fool. There was no other name for him.
Coward might fit, given the right circumstances, but in this instance Bertholdt fit neatly into the framework of a fool. The tart taste in his mouth reminded him of that as his timid tongue ran along the fine ridging of his teeth. His knees ached from the cold and the growth spurt he feared would never end had him stooped low to avoid the wanting reach of bare branches.
An oil lamp swung from his left fist. The flame inside flickered and leapt for its glass confines, resistant to the prison that protected it from the howling wind. Like all things, it thought freedom would let it burn brighter. Like most fires, it wanted nothing more than to touch more things and devour them in its heat.
Bertholdt wished he could feel that heat. He yearned to be out of the cold and fantasized about the roaring blaze of a larger flame. One that would sink into his skin to soothe the ache in his bones.
Faint breaths curled against his ear with no warmth to them. They hit his skin like hot needles, a prickle to remind him he’d been outside for too long.
Dusk had come and gone. The sky had stayed grey and overcast since that morning, when their hike began at the base of the mountain. Now the wind swept through the night like a demon set loose upon them, herding in darker clouds and fat flakes of snow.
The uphill climb grew steeper until his pants were soaked up to the knees and his free hand was forced to scrape at the jagged rocks snow had yet to cover. Leather and rope chaffed against the thin cotton of his shirt. His coat had been forfeited to the body strapped against his back.
His passenger was impatient with the possibility of death. Twice, Bertholdt swore he heard mumbling beneath the low moan of the wind. The only sign of life beyond the lifeless air that puffed against his ear.
The climb became a crawl. His oil lamp was abandoned to roll back down into a wall of grey and white flurries. Hand over hand, Bertholdt made his way higher up the winter mountain. The meager weight on his back dragging him down all the while.
The snow came faster as the bare thicket fell away behind him. The presence of a clearing meant deeper snow to wade through. Mercifully, his height was no longer a hindrance. Bertholdt trudged on, sight obscured by his breath as it rose like steam into the frigid air. The harsh angle he had climbed flattened out. The clearing was little more than a ledge, cut into the side of the mountain’s stone face.
The peak would still be meters ahead. No doubt all of the other cadets had arrived at the checkpoint by now. His comrades would be wondering what was taking so long. To be hampered by the cold was unlike him.
Another gust of wind blew across his path. There were no trees to take the brunt as his cheeks burned from its icy bite. A shiver ran along his spine, not from his own body.
On a whim Bertholdt turned from the direction of the peak. His boots kicked through the loose snow until the mountain hung overhead. Stranded on the ledge, in the rock maw of the mountain, Bertholdt pressed closer to the uneven rock face. His numb hands outstretched to catch every crack and outcropped stone. Raw as they were from the cold, it didn’t take much to split the dry skin on his palms.
He dove into the pocket of his trousers. The familiar kiss of steel met his fingertips. At last, he could be rid of his somnolent passenger.
“We’re not getting any farther.” He cut the rope and dropped the boy from his back. “I’m sorry.”
Without much effort at all, Bertholdt dragged Armin Arlert as far out of the wind as he could. There wasn't much point to his actions, he could see that much. Armin's face peeked out of the oversized hood of Bertholdt’s coat. His lips were chapped from the cold, nearly blue on the edges. The usual redness of his complexion was gone, save for a bright blush across his nose from the wind. If they'd pushed on, if Bertholdt hadn't stopped on the ledge, he'd be long gone before they ever reached the top.
Well, there was still a chance for that anyway. Bertholdt didn't have unlimited power. He wasn't the Coordinate. He couldn’t save lives that were too far gone. He was only ever good for killing, and even then he had to be walked through the plan like a child. Reliant on his titan and the fire it blazed underneath his skin.
But maybe… maybe now he could use it differently. Maybe he could just set off a spark, just enough to bring him to the surface. To feel that blistering heat beneath his skin. Maybe that would be enough.
Snow soaked the bottom of his shirt as he knelt down. He grabbed the collar of the coat he'd given Armin, and breathed in deep.
His fingers met a bitter chill as they slipped inside the hood and pressed against the soft hollow of Armin's throat.
Fanning out his hands, he pushed his thumbs underneath the boy’s jaw as his middle and index fingers wrapped around to cradle the nape of Armin's neck. To Bertholdt, his hand felt entirely too large to move so carefully across something so fragile. The smallest amount of effort was all it would take. One small squeeze, and he could be finished with the whole miserable night. The instructors wouldn't have any reason to believe he'd ever run into Armin. The others would all just assume that he'd passed away alone from the cold. Bertholdt could just leave, another few hours and he could be sitting beside a fire at the mountain's peak.
No. This exercise didn't even count towards their grades. It made no difference now if Bertholdt continued to climb without Armin.
He shook off the morbid, selfish, thought and breathed in deeply. The dry split skin on his palms sparked with yellow electricity and heat bloomed up his arms and into his chest. His curse, the colossal monster inside him, sparked to life and sputtered against his inadequacy. He quelled his uncertainty and focused on maintaining the steady heat that simmered against his cracked and barely bleeding palms. Armin gave another ghost of a shiver as his icy throat thawed slowly between Bertholdt’s fingers.
Consciousness was beyond the smaller cadet as Bertholdt removed one hand to shovel out a burrow in the snow beside the rock wall. Feet of snow were displaced before Bertholdt was satisfied. Then, he moved to rummage through Armin’s pack, his own having been long abandoned before their lantern. He produced a thin swath of cloth, a spare shirt so moth eaten he began to wonder how the smaller boy hadn’t frozen simply from the incompetence of his clothing, and he laid it out in the hollow he had dug.
It wasn’t much, but the logic of the structure was rooted in nature. Hares survived in similar ways after all, and the might of his burden would be more than warm enough to mimic the heat of burrows deep underground.
Slowly, he dragged Armin by the collar of his borrowed coat and dropped him into the hollow of snow. He swore that he saw a weak flutter of the boy’s shut eyes, before a particularly strong wind blew up under and into their shelter. The dry wind made Bertholdt’s own eyes water, and he was forced to shut them tight. When the wind died back down to its steady aggression, he opened them and watched as steam fogged his vision.
“Too hot.” He mumbled, attempting to bring his climbing body temperature back down to a more human level.
His attempts to do so made no difference in the simmering behind his skin, and he hunched over in defeat. At the very least, Armin was not close enough to life to notice how the snow began to melt as Bertholdt settled down into the hollow over him.
He felt awkward in the small space, having forgotten to take his own lanky extremities into consideration when he dug out the hollow. His arms and legs ended up loosely tangled over the frigid body beside him as he stared up at the overhanging rock above them. Snow framed his peripherals as he counted the seconds between Armin's quickening heart rate. He would resume the trek up to the peak when it neared 60 per minute. Then, at least, there was a chance he wouldn’t arrive at the camp with a cold corpse in tow.
Idly, he counted each minute. 20 a minute, then 40, and finally 60. The chilled breath that puffed against his collar accelerated to a slow consistency as Armin shifted and pressed his windburnt nose against Bertholdt’s neck.
Heat flashed along his skin at the contact and soaked his back as the snow underneath them hissed into steam. He shoved his hands into the snow behind Armin's lank blond hair in an attempt to combat his rising body temperature and quiet his mind.
“‘M so cold.”
“What?” He barely caught the dry whisper as it brushed across his throat.
“Cold.” Armin muttered a little louder, attempting to shift closer inside his swath of coats and emergency blankets.
“R-right,” Bertholdt put an uneasy hand on the back of his head and moved closer, “I can fix that.”
He moved until Armin was wrapped tight in his arms against his chest. He noticed the slow rise of steam from his scrapped palm as his body began to autonomously heal itself. Grimacing, he dipped his head over Armin’s neck and bit down on his own thumb to create a new wound. Another wave of heat rolled through his body and sparked down his spine. Incredibly, he managed to sweat despite the frigid air and prayed that Armin assume it was the snow. If he was even aware enough to realize who held him.
“E…ren?” Armin croaked underneath him.
“He’s at the camp,” Bertholdt leaned up enough to see that the boy’s eyes were open a sliver, “So is Mikasa, and… and probably everyone else. We fell behind.”
That was a half truth. Bertholdt had dropped behind his team at Reiner’s behest to reconvene with Annie and make sure that she was alright. The Commandant had paired her up with Jackson, Daz, and Forster. An unsavory group, in his opinion, and in Reiner’s too it seemed. He’d never even made it to the path her group would have taken, however, before he’d spotted the light of a lantern before it sputtered out through the trees.
He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to deviate from his mission, but he’d knocked his way through the icy branches of the trees to find Armin slumped over on snow-burried rocks at the base of a slope. Somewhere above them, he’d heard the phantom shouts of Hanna, Connie, and Franz, but in the moment they were as incomprehensible as the howling wind. The cause of his unconsciousness seemed to be the fall, but it was more impressive to Bertholdt that Armin hadn’t been killed on impact.
He ought to have left him for dead. Annie’s safety should have been his first and only priority at that moment. And yet, his gut had dropped out from under him with the foreign sensation of vertigo at the sight of Armin’s limp form.
Fool.
Coward.
Idiot.
He cursed himself over a million times. How had he been so dense? So oblivious as to not realize the noxious attachment that had wormed its way into his brain?
“Idiot.” He mumbled despondently, his hands tangled in Armin’s ice-dusted hair.
“Mmm?” Armin hummed.
“Not you.” He sighed, “Just me.”
“M… My head hurts…” Armin opened his eyes a bit wider, before squeezing them shut weakly as snow flurries melted on his lashes.
“Oh,” Bertholdt blinked hard, having nearly forgotten the blistering cold around them, “Well you hit your head.”
“Ah.” Armin nuzzled up onto his shoulder, seemingly hell bent on making sure Bertholdt could feel his every breath.
“So don’t fall asleep. That’s bad.” He added lamely, rattling around in his mind for what few scraps of medical knowledge he could recall.
“Mhm.” Armin closed his eyes again, causing Bertholdt to sigh deeply.
“Come on, up you go.” Bertholdt unraveled his limbs from around Armin and pulled them both up into a sitting position.
He ignored his companion’s weak protests as he gathered up Armin’s wrists in his hands and wrapped his arms around his own neck. He stood, and with a heave, hoisted Armin back onto his back. With a stumble, he struggled out of the hollow he’d dug and followed the rock wall out from under the overhang.
The snow fell as a curtain of white before him as he hugged the mountain’s rocky maw and trudged back up to where he hoped the path to the peak would be. Soft golden hair tickled Bertholdt’s nape and fell behind the neck of his shirt as Armin ducked his face down behind his back to hide from the wind.
With pressed lips, Bertholdt leaned over to make the climb as the mountain beneath him grew steeper and steeper with each step. The teeth marks on his thumb faded, and with it his body began to slowly cool from its tentative pre-transformation state. Subtly, he began to feel the cold air whip across his face and nip at his finger tips. As though it were attempting to persuade him into relaxing his grip on Armin’s slender wrists.
He lost count of the time as his breathing became more labored and rose from his lips with the last of his unnatural heat. The mountain seemed to grow taller as he walked, the air thinner. His boots sank with each step, and the snow swallowed him up to his knees. For all he knew, it could already be a new day above the bleak clouds that cast everything in deep grey.
He tore his gaze away from the wintry sky and forced himself to move faster. He lifted one snow-clogged boot and banged his shin against a buried ledge. With a curse, he tumbled forward. The cold, wet, smell of snow filled his nostrils and put an ache in his teeth. He pushed himself up onto his knees, and felt Armin roll off of his back with a whimper.
“Crap,” He knocked the face full of snow away with a numb hand and turned to find Armin lying on his side, “Sorry…”
Gingerly, Bertholdt lifted him up by his head and small of his back. He felt the dried blood along Armin’s temple where it matted into his silky hair. The only visual clue of his initial injury. At his touch, Armin flinched and let out an intelligible groan.
“Come on, we’re almost there.” He attempted to pull Armin up, only to be weakly swatted away.
“No… ‘s too cold.” Armin mumbled and tucked his arms into the depths of Bertholdt’s oversized coat.
“I know that, that’s-” He whined in annoyance, before feeling his voice die on his lips.
Up ahead on the slope, for the briefest of seconds, there had been a flash of orange light. His heart soared at the sight. One of the instructors must have wandered around looking for them. The camp must be close by!
“That’s why we need to go,” Bertholdt felt a faintly deranged laugh bubble up from his lips, “We’re almost there! I swear! You can sleep by the fire!”
“Really?” Armin slurred, going limp as Bertholdt swung him up onto his shoulder.
“Yes, I promise.” He shivered as Armin’s cold hands found the back of his thin shirt.
With renewed effort, Bertholdt navigated over the hidden ledges and jutting stones beneath the snow. He tried to follow where he had seen the glow of the lantern, stubbornly refusing to turn his head even slightly. Armin, while bulky in Bertholdt’s coat, seemed lighter than ever as adrenaline coursed through his veins and carried him up what he hoped would be the final stretch.
The heavy flurries beat down across his face. His lips felt frozen together, and his eyelids heavy from the weight upon his lashes. He kept a firm grasp on Armin’s waist as he crested another disguised slope and began to see dark grey shapes highlighted with the glow of fire through the storm.
Speeding up, Bertholdt stumbled across a worn and warped fence with more gaps than pickets. The dark shapes revealed themselves to be the cabins he had hoped for. As he neared the closest one a door banged open, spilling golden light out onto the hard packed snow beneath the front steps.
A short figure stumbled out of the house. His brown hair blew wildly in the wind as he brought an arm up to shield his eyes from the snow. When the latest burst of wind died down, the boy lowered his arm in time to meet Bertholdt’s gaze as he stumbled into clarity through the flurries.
“Armin!” Eren shouted and made to run from the top step, before slipping and tumbling into the snow.
“Who is it?!” Jean’s voice was swallowed up by the hammering of footsteps as a swarm of cadets smushed themselves into the doorframe.
“Armin?!” Mikasa’s red scarf swung into view as she pushed through the crowd to stand beside Jean.
Bertholdt blindsided Eren completely as he scrambled back onto his feet. Mikasa met him on the top step, as though she expected him to drop Armin into her arms. He ignored her too, standing at his full height to break through the blockade of cadets. He could see a few of them frown in confusion, before their eyes lit up with dim recognition and they moved back to let him inside.
“Oh my god, is Armin okay?” Hannah covered her mouth with gloved hands, teary eyed as Franz moved to comfort her.
“He hit his head.” Bertholdt replied blankly, scanning around the room and over the heads of the other cadets until he located the fireplace.
“His head?” Mikasa seethed behind him, like a territorial lioness.
He just nodded in response, dropping Armin’s bundled form into a free chair by the fire. Mikasa set upon him in an instant, with Eren limping in behind her and rubbing his backside. Connie appeared out of the crowd and slapped Bertholdt on the back so hard he felt his teeth rattle.
“You’re the man!” Connie shouted, a little too loud for his liking, “Man, how did you even see in that storm! We all thought you were dead for sure!”
“We’re glad you’re not though.” Mina added hastily, giving Connie a stern look, “I’m going to go find the instructors and tell them Armin’s hurt. They’ll want to know everyone’s finally accounted for.”
“Sure.” Bertholdt nodded numbly as he leaned against the mantle and turned his hands over.
He watched them shake from the cold, deprived of the companionable heat he would have usually called upon. The surge of adrenaline he’d felt left as quickly as it had come, but a hollow sensation settled in its place. It was strange and foreign to him. He glanced over to where Mikasa and Eren fussed over a slowly coming-to Armin and frowned as the feeling worsened. Was this concern? Why did it feel so… nauseating?
“Dumbass, you’re not even wearing a coat!” Jean’s cocky voice broke into his thoughts as Sasha pounced upon him with a quilted blanket.
Bertholdt startled at her sneak attack. Sasha could only reach his upper back, and so he pulled it up the rest of the way onto his shoulders with a thankful nod.
“Where are-” He cut himself off abruptly with a fake cough, before rephrasing his question, “Where is Reiner?”
“Reiner?” Jean cocked his head to the side and turned to look around the room, “Now that you mention it, where is that big idiot?”
“He left with Annie a while ago,” Sasha piped up, a sly grin crawling across her face, “They might be, well, you know-”
“Looking for those idiots?” A voice filled in coldly.
“No, I meant-” Sasha turned, only to pale rapidly at the sight of Annie in the doorway, “Annie! There you are! We weren’t saying anything!”
“We were talking to the instructors about a search party.” Annie responded dully, slinking off into the corner of the room as Mina happily bounced in after her.
“I’ve never seen you so worried, Ann! You practically ran back here!” Mina teased.
“Don’t give me a nickname.”
Bertholdt opened his mouth to say something. An apology maybe, or just a careful hello. He wasn’t sure, but just as he went to speak, a handful of instructors stomped into the cabin with Reiner on their tail.
“BERT!!” Reiner’s bulked figure broke past the crowd and slammed into him like a bull.
“Rein-” He felt the air in his lungs puff out pathetically as his arms were pinned in a bear hug, “Reiner… you’re… crushing me.”
“I knew you could get here on your own!” Reiner had fully picked him up now, causing a blaze of red to flash over Bertholdt’s cheeks, “And you found Armin too! Good man!”
He dropped Bertholdt and clapped him on the back just as hard as Connie had, if not harder. Bertholdt felt his knees buckle at the impact, and snapped out a hand to catch himself on the fireplace. One of the instructors came over, a clipboard in her hand as she looked him up and down.
“Cadet Hoover, are you injured?”
“No. I’m fine.” He shook his head, standing up straight.
“Are you suffering from any frostbite? Cadet Carolina informed us that you stumbled into camp without your winter gear on.”
“No, I’m fine,” He said again, before hurriedly adding onto his story with a lie, “I only gave my coat to Arlert for the final stretch of the hike.”
“And you carried your injured comrade to camp regardless of the weather?”
“Yes ma’am.” He frowned, thinking that part was terribly obvious.
The instructor nodded with a thin smile and wrote on her clipboard, “This exercise was never intended to be graded, but you’ve shown exceptional merit as a soldier. Cadet Hoover, I’ll make sure this goes down on your permanent record.”
“Great,” That was exceptionally not great news for him, “Thank you, ma’am.”
She left him alone and swept over to join the other instructors as they questioned a now conscious Armin. His deep blue eyes seemed bleary and dazed as he answered their questions. Bertholdt watched one of the instructors move to examine the cut to Armin’s temple, his hands instinctively clenching at his sides.
He frowned at his own tense posture and turned away from the growing crowd around Armin. Most of the other cadets had gathered around the instructors, Eren, Mikasa, and Armin by the fire. Making their arrival seem more like a popularity contest than anything. That, however, was one contest Bertholdt was grateful to lose.
“Reiner,” He grabbed his comrades elbow, speaking lowly as he prepared to explain himself, “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to what you said to do, but I-”
“What are you talking about?” Reiner cut him off with a quizzical stare, before grinning widely, “Just don’t disappear on me randomly like that again. You even got Annie worked up, and I didn’t even think that was possible.”
“I didn’t disappear though, you told me to-”
“You know,” Reiner continued, jutting a thumb casually over to the corner where Annie and Mina sat, “I think she’s got a thing for you. Deep down under all that bitchiness.”
“That’s not-” Bertholdt started, before noticing something odd in his comrades eyes, “Forget it, I don’t know where I was going with that. I won’t disappear again.”
“Good man.” Reiner punched him lightly, before swaggering up towards the fireplace, “Yo, Armin!”
Bertholdt watched him go, sulking into the emptiest corner that he could find. He desperately wanted to sleep and forget about the whole miserable day. The wind howled outside, sounding farther away than it had all day, as it rattled the windows. He watched the snow pile up outside, before leaning his cheek against a cold glass pane and closing his eyes.
“Glad you're not dead.” Annie’s voice slid over him like silk, a whisper in his ear.
He opened his eyes, but she was nowhere in sight. The instructors had also left, leaving Mikasa to shoo away Armin’s most irritating chairside visitors as Eren and Reiner bickered good naturedly on the hearth.
Sasha whined loudly as Mikasa confiscated the spare rations in her pack, throwing herself down dramatically onto the floor as Connie patted her head solemnly. If he’d had any energy left, the whole scene may have been amusing. As he watched however, he felt nothing but the all-encompassing emptiness in his stomach.
His gaze found the floor, and soon he had slid down the wall to rest there himself. The camp’s cabins had no beds, instead cots and fur sleeping bags had been spread around the room for the cadets. Bertholdt counted about fifteen in total for their cabin, and he assumed that Annie must be sleeping in another one with Mina and some of the others. It was then that he noticed Sasha had also left the cabin, along with Hannah and the rest of the girls. So they were separated by gender then, he supposed that made sense.
“Bertholdt.”
Mikasa’s voice startled him more than it ought to have. He jolted and jerked his head up, a garbled apology halfway onto his lips before he noticed the bread in her hand.
“You should eat,” Her voice was as flat as her dark eyes, “You both missed dinner.”
“O-Oh, thank you.” He replied uncertainly as he accepted the bread and snapped his gaze away.
She walked away without another word and knelt back down beside Armin. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she said something to her friends and left their cabin. Once she was gone, he warily took a bite out of the bread she’d given him. Some horrible part of his mind convinced him it might contain razors.
Not that they would hurt him for very long, but that didn’t stop his irrational fear. Something about Mikasa set him on edge, like she was just waiting for an opportunity to leap out at an enemy. He was, after all, an enemy. No matter what happened or what moments they shared now, that was their destined fate in the end.
How could Reiner do it? How was he smiling, laughing, so easily? Bertholdt wanted to be like him. He wanted to be weightless and unbothered. He wanted to be solitary and unattached like Annie too. And yet, he was stranded somewhere in between all those things. Abruptly and horribly himself, until the very end.
“Yo, Bert!” Reiner’s brash voice crossed the small cabin with ease, “Come claim a spot by the fire, we don’t need you freezing again.”
“Right, sure.” Bertholdt responded almost soundlessly.
Heaving himself up by the knee, he crossed the room hunched over and evasive. Most of the other guys had settled down by now, each of them talking and joking in their own small circles. Reiner patted one of the sleeping bags nearest to the hearth, with Eren at his side while he spoke adamantly to Armin.
“Thanks.” He muttered again, settling down on the furs beside Reiner’s feet as he tuned into their conversation.
“You should have told the instructors,” Eren’s stern, almost mother hen-esque tone, surprised him, “Feeling warm when you’re out in the cold like that is really, really, bad!”
“It was probably just my mind playing tricks on me,” Armin responded, still wrapped in Bertholdt’s coat as he suppressed a shiver, “I only felt that way for a moment anyhow.”
“Still-” Eren pressed, before Reiner put a hand on his shoulder to cut him off.
“Relax man. Maybe he was just feeling Bert’s body heat.” His easy smile seemed to dampen Eren’s agitation, “Trust me, he runs crazy hot sometimes. Besides, weren’t you guys saying he carried Armin into camp? That’s probably what Armin felt.”
Bertholdt didn’t say anything as he forced himself to stare into the crackling fire. The bread was forgotten in his hands as his ears caught Armin’s subtly shaky voice.
“I can’t believe I made such a silly mistake, but I’m glad you were there,” Bertholdt glanced over after realizing Armin was talking directly to him, “Thank you for that, by the way. I promise to try harder next time so I don’t weigh anybody down.”
A powder pink blush was dusted across Armin’s cheeks, bridged together across his round nose. His expression was that of slight embarrassment, but the earnest look in his eyes drove through Bertholdt like an ice pick. He looked angelic and warm, nothing like the fragile and lifeless body he’d dragged up the mountain.
“It’s fine,” Bertholdt looked back into the fire, hoping that its rich glow would hide his warming face, “You were light.”
Reiner carried the conversation into new territories once it became apparent that Bertholdt would say no more. They’d all assumed he was tired, and he let them. Jean and Connie wandered over at some point to put in their opinions on the cutest cadet corps girls. A conversation that Reiner had, unfortunately, started with the intent of harassing them all. Jean’s answer was no surprise, and it sparked a snappish argument between him and Eren until their bickering became more yawns than words. At last, the others gave up on continuing any longer and moved away to curl up in their own claimed sleeping spots.
Reiner simply rolled to the far side of the hearth, passing out the minute his head hit the fur bundle under him. Jean and Connie went the farthest, ending up closer to Forster and Jackson than anyone else. Bertholdt, having already chosen his spot, just settled down and closed his eyes as Eren helped Armin out of his chair.
He gave them no second thought, until their muted voices quieted and Bertholdt felt someone lay down right beside him. He stubbornly ignored the sound of shifting furs, attempting to fall asleep at least half as fast as Reiner, until a heavy weight was draped over his chest.
His eyes snapped open to find that the sudden weight was his coat. Armin jumped slightly at his sudden movement, still kneeling over him and having clearly not expected him to still be awake.
“I thought you might’ve wanted that back.” Armin whispered as he settled down onto the sleeping bag beside Bertholdt’s.
“Right,” He blinked hard and gripped the soft inner-lining of the coat, “Thanks…”
“I should be saying that, you took care of me after all.”
“Of course I did,” The words tumbled out too quickly and too honestly, “I could never hurt you.”
Armin laughed, a strange reaction, before silencing himself with a hand over his mouth to not disturb everyone asleep. His round, rich, blue eyes sparkled in the fire despite Bertholdt’s shadow blocking most of the light.
“I would never assume that you would,” Armin admitted, with such honesty that it made Bertholdt’s heart ache, “We’re friends, after all.”
“Friends?” He echoed, too hopeful.
“Of course! You didn’t think I hung out with you just because Eren and Reiner got along, did you? Even Mikasa is warming up to you two, though she won’t want me to tell you that.”
“Oh,” His throat felt remarkably dry as the yawning pit in his stomach grew, “I see.”
“I’m so glad we’ve met each other,” Armin continued, shining like a second light in their small cabin, “I can’t imagine going through training without you. A-and Reiner.”
“Yeah… yeah, me too.”
“After we graduate, I want to thank you for helping me through our training. You’re a really good tutor, I honestly envy how much you know about history and marksmanship. I was thinking that once I’m in the Survey Corp, I want to send you something from outside the walls.”
“From outside?” Bertholdt echoed, his thoughts both far away and uncomfortably grounded in the moment.
“Yeah!” Armin whispered excitedly, propping up on his elbows enough to lean over the space between them, “When we’re out there, there’s so much we’ll be able to see. I want you to see some of it too, like new foods and plants! Or maybe new precious stones! I’ll send you as much as I can, and I’ll write letters too. I’ll tell you about everything we find, and you can tell me all about life in the interior.”
Silence lapsed in the wake of Armin’s words. Bertholdt let it sink into his ears and simmer with the white noise of the late hour. Foolishly, he wanted to warn Armin. To discourage him and beg him not to leave the walls. But what good would that do? There was no safety here either, tucked away inside to wait for the inevitable march of blood and broken bone. In the end, they were all doomed.
“I’m sorry.” He whispered back as the cadets around them snored softly.
“What?” Armin’s smile faltered, his brows upturned in slight confusion.
“I can’t-” His voice cracked as he rolled onto his side and clenched his eyes shut, “I won’t… I won’t be able to write to you, Armin.”
“Oh,” Enthusiasm drained out of his voice, making it apparent how exhausted he truly was, “Why not? I don’t understand.”
“I’ll…” He began, before being silenced by his own throat as it grew sore in the way that warned him of oncoming tears.
Coward.
He was nothing but a coward.
“I’ll hurt you. I’m sorry.” He admitted hoarsely, afraid to see the moment around him.
Eventually, Armin would turn away. He would give up on calling Bertholdt his friend. Soon, he’d see the real thing before him and realize what a monstrous coward he truly was. Bertholdt just had to wait. If he hid away and waited long enough, then maybe his stint in hell would end sooner.
Maybe he would be able to leave Armin for dead.
A new weight settled down onto his side to rest against his ribs. He shivered at the touch of something light as it ran along the bare skin of his arm. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the phantom touch was hair, soft and golden as it fanned out across his arm and down his ribcage. He looked down stiffly, nervous and confused, as Armin looked up at him from between long blond lashes.
There was a sharpness in his eyes, as deep and unfathomable as the sea. Bertholdt couldn’t pretend to know what that look meant, but it made the hollow in his gut even denser than before.
“You won’t hurt me, I know it.” Armin said it with such firmness, that Bertholdt nearly believed him.
“You don’t know that.”
“You never have before.”
“How can you be so sure?” The tremor in his voice crept along his body and put a shake in his fingers as they fidgeted beneath his outstretched coat.
“I don’t need to be sure,” Armin dropped his gaze towards the fur sleeping bag beneath them, “because you were. I’ve never heard you say anything that confidently.”
“Oh.”
Oh no.
He ought to throw him off. To stand and run from the cabin until the cold winter storm outside muffled him from the world and he could call forth the heat between his bones with torn skin and bloodied teeth.
And yet, foolishly, that was the furthest thing from what he wanted.
He sat up carefully, like an animal caught between the instinct to run or fight. Armin slid off of his side and onto his chest like water as he turned, before Bertholdt brought up an arm to catch him. He rolled over to face the fire, his back towards the rest of the cabin as he pressed Armin against his chest and curled around him.
“You’re going to kill me,” Bertholdt hissed through his teeth, his voice like steam on Armin’s hairline, “This feeling… it’s wrong. I’m not supposed to think of you… of anything, like this.”
“I- You don’t know that.” Armin stuttered against his collarbone, his lips still chapped from the cold outside, “You’re allowed to be here, there’s nothing stopping us- or me from caring about you. Bertholdt, you’re not some emotionless titan. It’s… this is okay.”
“For now,” He dipped his face down, his curving nose pressed against Armin’s hair, “It can be okay, for now… right?”
“Of course.” Armin murmured back, expelling a near-silent sigh, “I’ll never doubt you, not even if the walls themselves cave in.”
In the end, he knew that Armin would have to eat his words. Them, together, it couldn’t- wouldn’t be allowed for long. Eventually, winter would thaw and no inch of the hell around them would burn any hotter than the devil beneath Bertholdt’s own skin. Time would march on, to new heartaches and hollow hearts. To shattered promises and forgotten dreams. In the end, Bertholdt would be the fire that burned every funeral pyre from their lonely mountain top to the shallow sea.
He just prayed that when the heat boiled over, and the skies turned white with steam, that it too would burn out every inch of hollow longing from inside him and melt the hunger on his lips.