Wings : Attack on Titan x Reader Scenarios / Imagines ▼

[The Moments After :: Armin]

Oh, how you knew that it was a blessing, but oh, you knew how so very much mannas loved to masquerade as malicious mechanisms. You had made it out, yes. But not your family; at least, not to your knowledge. Not the dozens of dead bodies you'd seen decaying in the domiciles, and certainly not the hundred more that you knew, without a flash of faith left in your body, had been eaten by the titans. You kept quiet.

"Hey." Armin appeared decisive to diversify the short spectre of emotions dispersed throughout your mind. He scooted a few millimeters closer to your body - something that would have easily gone unnoticed if not for that fact that, whether or not you'd liked to admit it, your eyes had a way of occasionally darting back to him, as though your buttoned-up benevolence could shield him from the horrors lurking in this world. It was only then that you spotted the strange, nearly square object held between his hands.

He turned to face outwards, just as you were doing, until your eyes were equally fixated on some certain point off in the indeterminate distance. "I - think I found something you might like," he continued, blonde hair blown, billowing, in and out of his profile. "I wanted to show it to you sooner, but then..." he trailed off, transferring his gentle glances from the water back to you, "...I've had it for awhile, even though I'm not really...well, not really supposed to."

Something about his sudden secrecy separated you from the shapeless blobs of what once were thoughts that floated onwards within your mind. Still somewhat withdrawn, you decided to address him nevertheless. You shifted your posture so as to face the object in question, only to be greeted with a sense of familiarity that you hadn't felt a drop of ever since the horrors had come knocking on your door, ever since you'd left your father on the docks.

It was a book.

Such a simple thing, and yet something so priceless. You shared a tentative look with him, one that begged the question, May I? Well-versed in the language of indirect communication, he gave a placid nod.

Your intrepid fingers interlaced with the old, yellowed pages of the novel, old but well-kept, withered but well-loved, and you opened its desaturated cover with provisional movements. The minute that the words were fully absorbed into your mind hit you with a sense of wonder that you'd never recalled ever feeling before. Silent script, letter after letter, sentence after sentence, describing something so beautiful your breath hitched in your chest and your heart yearned for even a glimpse of whatever fantastical universe was being described. The scanty amounts of sidelined illustrations leapt at your eyes, vying for attention from their viewer, painting pictures of phantasms so perplexing that you found yourself at a loss.

Armin had been watching your reserved nature blossom into something reminiscent of your usual keen self, and upon seeing the bewilderment blooming burgundy in your cheeks and all across your soft face, he couldn't help but smile weakly.

"This..." you weren't suffering from a shortcoming of statements, but rather none of the statements swelling up within your mind seemed truly strong enough to siphon the sheer amount of amazement that had been stirred. "...it's beautiful." Your conclusion was abrupt and simple, but sonorously sufficient for your counterpart to supply a response.

He leaned in until his head was right next to yours, hovering just inches from one another, suspended above the pages. With a lazersharp focus, he thumbed his way to a page that had been opened to so often that its binding to the rest of the pages had grown loose and torn with time. It remained intact as he flipped to it. "Read this," he murmured, cynosure ever-stable. His index finger fell upon the page, just a few lines above the heading of a new chapter, guiding your eyes to the words.

Curiosity piqued, you bent inwards even more, soaking up the words one after one and then shaking your head in disbelief, rereading them once for accuracy and twice for comprehension and thrice to let the complete and total weight of the ink to sink into your scarred mind.

Armin saw the change in your face; the morphing of your mouth into a small, shocked 'o.' "It's real," he breathed, tilting his head so as to make hesitant eye contact, "it's real, and it's somewhere out there."

Frozen oceans, lands of sand, seas of greens, endless canopies of crisp vegetation lacing into one another, blending at the edges to form something just shy of perfection - in our world. The line that he'd highlighted was now pulsating, engraved in your skull and beating like an organ of any other importance. In our world. "In our world."

His head was now once more angled down towards the pages, but he didn't seem to be looking anywhere in particular. "They're here somewhere, [y/n]. Beyond the walls."

You could hardly believe yourself. For many moons you'd shared a similar suspicion - that wasn't even the right word, more like speculation, or even a far guess - but a sensation was all that it had been; something deep within your illogical mind. But here, seeing the words on paper, hearing them said by the boy next to you.... "Can we find them?"

It was a rhetorical question, but you received a reply nonetheless. "We will," he nodded enthusiastically, a small smile, for once genuine, gracing his lips. "We have to."

And it was just like that. Once more there was beauty in the world; rather, beauty that you knew of, that others believed in, somewhere in the wide wild wallless world. "Yes," you whispered, the wonder in your wide eyes spreading all throughout your body, filling you with a newfound sense of determination, "we'll find them."

You would. Even if only for the purpose of reminding yourself that there was still a reason left to keep going, keep moving, keep your mind focused on the present instead of your heart lingering in the past, you would find them. And then, no longer would the mythical fairytales of childhood be such frivolities.

They'd be reality. A beautiful, wonderful reality.