Armin POV
The nights were cold and Armin wasn't sure that he would ever get used to it. The little noises of branches cracking and moving under the weight of birds and squirrels, the chattering of his friend's teeth when the wind reached their side of the small camp they had set up with burning muscles and fear in their bones...
"Am back.", he heard Eren's voice breaching through the trees as his friend made it's way through the bushes and plants, his hands full of chopped wood. "We can try to get the fire going now."
"Don't.", Ymir said with her hands crossed behind her head and rested against a tree. She didn't bother to brush away the small insects crawling over her lap and shoulders. "There is a storm coming. Hide that shit away so we can use it later on."
"How would you even know if a storm was coming?", Eren grumbled but put the wood down on the ground, his arms red because of the many scratches and the blood from the wounds he had gathered in that forest.
Armin swallowed as he thought back to their first nights when they had tried to get some meat to eat. The squirrels and birds were too fast as were the rabbits. But many predators...wolves...or even their prey...deer...
He bit back a nauseas groan.
It had to be done.
They wanted to survive. And the risk to get something poisonous from all the bushes around them...Ymir had been the one to tell them otherwise.
"Can feel it.", the girl said, her skin dirty and almost as scarred as Eren's. "Trust me on this or you'll have to go twice to get some new branches and sticks from out there."
"Are you too much of a royal to listen to us, Your Highness?", Jean teased him from where he stood watch between some trees, his eyes directed at the darkness that surrounded them, kept them where no one should be able to find them.
And if they did...
Armin turned his head in search of Mikasa.
He found her sitting next to the fireplace they had created. Sometimes the flames burned high enough to really warm them. Sometimes they couldn't get the fire started at all. The girl stared into the mix of ashes and all the dirt in between.
Her hands drew her knees against her chest. Even from his place Armin noticed her shivering. She clutched Eren's scarf with one hand and tightened it around her throat. The shivering still didn't cease.
"Shut up, horseface.", Eren growled and got rid of the clothing he wore.
After a month out here in the wild, their old clothes were torn and dirty and didn't protect them even a bit from the cold anymore. Eren and Ymir had been the one to go back to the village, to search the houses for something that had survived the fire rampaging through them.
They had taken new clothes – if a bit dirty – and a set of bandages and fruits with them. The food was old and soggy but they hadn't been used to the pain of slowly starving back then.
But when the cold nights came for them and they realized that food wouldn't come to them so easily – they ate everything. Everything they could find and believe to be harmless.
Armin shook his head, the old pictures of that first month still so real in his mind.
"Eren, should I give you my cardigan?", he offered his friend but Eren waved it off and shrugged off his own jacket. It didn't have any sleeves since they had been too old and full of holes so Eren had cut them off. But they would do the job and protect the wood as good as possible from rain and wind.
Ymir yawned loudly and closed her eyes with soft mumbling.
Neither Jean nor Mikasa looked her way. And Eren was still occupied with straightening his clothing above the branches on the freezing ground.
Armin's fingers brushed against the pile of leaves next to him. A shiver ran down his spine and a part of him wanted to just lie down on the unforgivingly hard ground and sleep.
But he knew what followed as soon as his lids closed. As soon as the night took him for maybe a few hours.
The nightmares.
They had started just a few days after everything in Shiganshina had happened.
And they got more intense the more Eren asked Jean and Ymir about the others. About the ones who didn't make it out of the village, out of the fire in time.
He asked about Hannah.
About Franz.
Marco.
Jean's little cousins.
Nifa.
Reiner and Berthold.
Armin was sure that Mikasa would have liked to ask about Annie as well. But the thin line of her mouth and the hard stare trained on everything but their companions gave him enough reason to think that she feared the answer more than the question.
"Armin, try to get some sleep. Jean and I will be on guard all the time.", Eren said with a low voice while he glanced over to Ymir who was as fast asleep as always. Somehow, she wasn't bothered at all by her surroundings or the fact that they could very well die out here.
"It's fine, Eren.", Armin whispered although his eyes were burning with exhaustion. The cold had frozen away every pain in his limbs after the first weeks. And the hunger he had been feeling...it was just that. A feeling.
Not important anymore.
Not when they had really understood that it could be that they wouldn't get any food for quite some time. Not if they didn't catch a single animal.
The berries could only do so much to cease the urge to vomit because of the burning in his stomach and those terrible thoughts that haunted his head ever since.
Eren knelt down next to him and put an arm around his shoulder.
Why, Armin didn't know. They couldn't offer any body warmth. They were cold. Cold as corpses. All of them.
Yet Armin still rested his head against the bony shoulder of his friend, his eyelids so heavy and his mind so fuzzy. He wanted to sleep.
So badly...
To sleep...
- - -
"Armin. It's time for your medicine."
His eyes fluttered open.
Light hit him and he shut them closed with an arm thrown over them. Sweat glistened on his hand. He felt the cold drops against his forehead.
"Mikasa..."
A warm hand touched his. A thumb stroked his skin.
"It's okay, Armin. You are safe. It was just a...nightmare."
"Mikasa...the forest...the guards will come...", he muttered. Those few words drained him from all the energy he had gathered and he fell back on his pillow, his hair sticking against his neck and shoulders. "...have to warn him...have to..."
"Armin. We are no longer there.", her voice said urgently. "Please. You have to take your medicine."
"He will come...", Armin mumbled again, his throat sore and dry as the deserts he loved to read about in the books of the giant library in the palace.
Library...palace...yes...
"He isn't here, Ar.", his friend's voice assured him. "You know what has to happen. You know it."
He felt the rim of a glass against his lips and he was about to fight back when the familiar hand caressed his cheek, giving him the chance to slap it away. Not that he would have had the energy to do so.
It was so hot.
And cold.
And so unbearable hot.
He drank down whatever had been in the glass, the action so exhausting for him that he felt the darkness of sleep tugging at the edge of his mind.
"Jean's cousins...they...and Reiner...", he cried softly with a hoarse voice. Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes and a pounding headache prompted him to start crying. He wanted the pain to go away. He wanted it to go away...
He swallowed but the burning in his throat didn't subside.
"I can still hear his voice.", he mumbled. Maybe Mikasa had already left the room. Maybe he was alone. "You...too. I know it...I see it...in the way...in the way..."
"Armin. Sleep. I will be here when you wake up."
Sleep...but...his voice...he will come...he will kill...Erwin...
(The sun is burning down on us so I decided to be smart for once and stay inside. Sooooo here is another chapter!
Armin's still got a high fever - I do hope it's realistic enough, I'm only taking my expierences in consideration here - and for the first time we get to hear about what happened in that forest. But who is this person Armin is talking about? And who else survived the fire? Are they all dead? What did Ymir and Jean tell them to prompt such nightmares?
And who is this he Armin is talking about?
Hope you liiikkeeedd it! Never hesitate to comment!)