empty spaces ~ armin x reader

chapter four // the gamble

a/n: hello, armin simps! i have an interesting fact for you about this story. originally, this story was only supposed to consist of five chapters. the last chapter i wrote (chapter three) was supposed to carry some ~interesting content~. however, after reviewing it many times, i decided to keep that part out. now i didn't delete it completely, i'm just saving it for a later chapter. ;) earlier on i wrote that i would like to write a slow burn armin x reader. THIS ISNT GOING TO BE AN EXTRA LONG SLOW BURN, b u t i am keeping similar elements to add more angst to the relationship. i don't know how long i plan to continue the story, but i'll update you when i have a game plan for that.

playlist to listen to while you read: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPuz-isz7lpRZADQrxOfgr2A3iRvOd1fm

TW: lots of violence and gore in this chapter

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𝓲 𝓷𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱𝓽 𝓲 𝔀𝓸𝓾𝓵𝓭 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓽𝓸 𝓼𝓪𝔂 𝓲'𝓶 𝓼𝓸𝓻𝓻𝔂

𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓪𝓷𝔂𝓸𝓷𝓮 𝓫𝓾𝓽 𝓶𝓮

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My fingers cramped up from holding the thunder spears so tightly. My body was thrumming with adrenaline that I hadn't been able to shake since what happened in the engine room. My fingers danced anxiously on the explosive rods as I waited.

"Follow Hange and Armin's plan exactly. If we do that, we might be sleeping comfortably on our mattresses, as opposed to sleeping in a hole in the ground," Levi reinformed us as he split away from the group.

Floch took his stance next to me and I couldn't help but wrinkle my nose and shift away. I gripped my ODM gear handles, careful not to squeeze the trigger to the pistol, and leaned against the side of a quiet roof. We were at the edge of the Internment Zone, waiting for the signal from Eren to swoop in. I could barely pick up the obnoxiously long speech about the history of the titans that captivated nearly everyone's attention in Liberio.

"Good lord, could we hurry this up?" Jean complained, brushing his hair back with the hand holding the ODM gear handle. "I swear if Eren's gotten himself captured or he's already dead, I'm going to-"

A bolt of lightning sliced through the air in the distance. I lifted my elbow to shield my eyes as a rumbling of thunder trumpeted, signifying the beginning of our raid and our official declaration of war.

Nothing we could do could reverse what was about to happen.

My legs began moving forward of their own accord and I jumped off the roof, plummeting towards the street before activating my ODM gear. I was strung across the Internment Zone streets. I followed my mission orders and held onto the side of a rusty bell tower. I attached a glowing light to the top and preceded onto the next building as my comrades did the same.

I looked up briefly to see the disastrous atmosphere around Eren's titan form. The blast of his transformation caused rubble to rain down on the gathered civilians. My chest tightened as I recalled the stories Armin told me about Shiganshina District on the day the titan shifters showed up and destroyed everything. We were just children at the time.

This was Eren's revenge.

Eren's titan released a crackling shriek as he lifted the blond man giving the speech with his fist. He swallowed Lord Tybur without hesitation. The Tybur family was known for carrying a titan shifting ability that they passed down for generations.

I threw myself back into the peak of the action. The weight of our objective was pushing me forward as it had done back when I was a teenager and had much less on my mind. I slung myself forward along the path and planted another light at the very top of a roof.