THE OTHER SIDE. aa

fünf­und­dreißig.

     "during your time on the other side... have you interacted with any human?"

     almost immediately, armin answered. "no." he said, his lips turned to a frown. he was thankful that his voice didn't shake but as of now, he had to continue meeting the commander's stare so that they wouldn't know he was lying. if he was going to meet death soon, he'd die taking his secret relationship with him.

     erwin nodded slowly and closed his eyes, "i see..." 

     the young blond visibly relaxed but the commander continued, "you almost made me believe that lie." erwin mumbled that shocked the young mermaid, "however, one look at your posture spilled the truth."

     armin narrowed his eyes, tense, and bit his lip. the commander continued, "i'd understand why you'd keep it a secret. telling the truth would cause your due date to move soon and, if the royal government wanted to do so, they'd send a mermaid to kill that human to keep our kind a secret and make it look like an accident."

     that was not what he was expecting and it was clear from the way his eyes grew wide. armin guessed that it's possible his death would move sooner or later if the other soldiers knew, but he didn't expect that they'd go further in killing another kind to keep their secret. they wouldn't be different from the humans a hundred years ago. that fact alone made the blond grit his teeth, his concern mostly about the h/c-haired he loves.

     "however," the commander continued, "we have no plans of telling the truth to the other regiments. what we want is information, from the outside world and from the human you interacted with. we could care less of your case."

     the brunette beside him nodded, "mhm! if we tell the truth that you did meet one, we won't be able to question you anymore. this would be bad on both sides, after all." then her fingers moved weirdly as she laughed creepily, "i still need to know a lot about humans, and you're the only one who can help me!"

     armin was still unsure. he had no idea if erwin was telling the truth or if it was some sort of a trap for him to answer. he sat there, silent as he debated and weighed his choices. he loves y/n with all of his heart, just thinking that she'll die just because of his mistake made his brain swirl and hurt. if that happened... that would be his only regret.

     erwin noticed his contemplating eyes and a small smile was displayed on his lips, "will you help us, armin? your knowledge will surely contribute to what we could expect from humans."

     "don't worry about your human friend," hanji said, "they won't die unless you tell us the truth and what you learned from them. and if you don't help us with sharing your information, then we'd be telling the truth to the other regiments. lying would be no use. it would be our words against yours... so, what do you say?"

     her cheery aura was now gone, replaced with seriousness like the other two had. the blond gulped and looked away from her piercing hazel eyes, staring at his fists instead. the aforementioned male slowly let out a breath, his eyebrows furrowed together before nodding while locking eyes with the commander's gaze.

     "good choice." was all what levi said.

— ♦︎ —

     true to their words, the survey corps didn't dare to speak his secrets to the other regiments. his due date would still be ten days from now, it didn't change. the survey corps had asked him questions about his time on the other side, his meetings with the human named y/n, and what he learned during their time together. there were still many information they had to recover from armin and thankfully, they still had time.