Armin's head hurt. His body ached. He couldn't stop thinking about Annie.

He should be grateful he was alive at all, he supposed. That all his friends were alive and uninjured. And yet–

He remembered Annie turning her head when she couldn't stop herself from smiling, just so no one would see. Annie who stood back and let people make their own mistakes. Intelligent, seeing the world and the people in it as they were, instead of being dragged down by black-and-white morality. Strong and standoffish and still a little kind when she wanted to be.

His head hurt. Bruised, a hard knot scraped raw and bleeding, it made his eyesight blur and his thoughts painful. It made him want to sleep, or throw up.

Strong, quiet, clever Annie. Annie the traitor, not quite clever enough.

He wasn't surprised. Did that make him a bad friend? She should have killed him when she had the chance.

Armin didn't say much during the impromptu meeting. He'd already put forward his case and been believed. Now as they sat in the dark basement room talking about Annie, only not Annie the teammate but Annie the enemy, he felt nauseated and tired. Annie had never been his friend. Except – that wasn't right. She had, it just didn't matter any more.

That was probably something she would have said, he thought.

He was a terrible friend.

Erwin had started to talk about how they were to capture her, and Armin forced his eyes to focus and his back to straighten. He needed to listen. He wanted this. He wouldn't let her harm Eren again.

They outlined the plan and his involvement in it, and Armin didn't voice the apprehension crawling in his skin, overriding the small amount of warming pride. It was his own plan that their commander had chosen to follow, but could he even do his part? What if he'd overestimated himself? Damn her. Armin closed his eyes for a long second, trying to drive away the distraction of his pain and focus on what satisfaction he had left after seeing Eren's hurt eyes. He could do it. If Commander Erwin thought it would work, then it would work.

The meeting ended and chairs scraped across the floor as everyone got up to leave. Armin hung behind, watching Eren's stiff back and clenched hands as he walked away, shoulder to shoulder with Mikasa and following Captain Levi closely. Armin took a few steps towards them, then stopped and turned, waiting.

'Commander Erwin,' he said, and Erwin paused in looking at the notes in his hand to glance up. 'May I ask you something?'

'Go ahead,' Erwin replied mildly. They were the only two left in the room. The difference in the depths of their voices, and the angle of Armin's neck looking up to meet his commander's eye, made his throat tight and uncomfortable.

'Is there anyone,' Armin began, and had to swallow and look down at the rough surface of the table, keenly aware of the open door at his back and the metres of space between them. 'In the Military Police, that is. Is there anyone who supports Eren? They can't all think the same, surely.'

Erwin stayed silent for long enough that Armin risked a glance up at his face, then quickly down again when he saw Erwin's calculating eyes staring back at him. He could feel his hands start to jitter and he clenched them into fists, pressed them tight against his legs. Had it been an inappropriate question? It felt like Erwin towered above him, as if he were whole, vast meters taller. The width of his shoulders, the depth of his chest, the heavy lines of muscle on his broad thighs and arms – the thought of him reaching out and seizing Armin, his grip like steel, as inescapable as gravity, would not leave. Armin shifted on his feet, wishing desperately that he'd stood further away. He should meet Erwin's eye. He was being disrespectful.

'Why do you want to know?' came the eventual answer, measured to the point of blandness.

Armin hesitated. 'It's mostly curiosity,' he said, and licked his dry lips. 'I think I would feel a lot better if I knew we weren't totally opposed.'

Erwin hummed shortly, a noncommittal sound. 'Very few,' he said, starting to walk out of the door and up the stairs. Armin followed, a careful five steps behind. 'And even fewer who can make any amount of difference. Of those, only Lieutenant Colonel Franz Hasek is confirmed to support Eren. Is that what you wanted to know?'

Armin didn't pause in his step. He heard himself say, 'Oh,' as he carried on walking, feeling the hard stone under the soles of his boots and not much else. 'Yes,' he added hurriedly as they reached the top of the stairs, blinking in the sharp daytime light, painfully bright after the cellar torches. He couldn't quite focus on his own words, or anything but the sting in his eyes. 'Thank you, sir.'

Erwin nodded in recognition, a slight motion. He stared down at Armin and Armin looked away, trying to breathe out the tension in his chest.

'Very well,' Erwin said. 'I'm sure you have things to be doing.'

'Yes, sir,' Armin said again. He saluted, muscle memory. 'Thank you, sir.'

It was as clear a dismissal as any. Armin tried not to walk away too fast, aiming to grasp at what Erwin had said but missing, like failing to catch dust motes. Why had he even asked? He'd put it behind him. It didn't matter any more. The light still hurt his eyes.

And the answer – Hasek had kept his word after all. Had Erwin known why he'd been asking? How could he answer so specifically otherwise?

Shame made Armin's face flush. Then he clenched his hands tighter, digging his short fingernails into his palm, and jogged back to the mess where he hoped to find Eren. See how he felt about Annie. Whether he believed in her still, because Eren far too loyal. He never liked changing his mind.

Loyal. If it turned out that Annie was innocent after all, then would Eren lose his trust in Armin? Maybe. Probably.

Hasek hadn't lied. Erwin had taken Armin's word on the Female Titan's identity and agreed to follow his plan, even though he must know what Armin had done.

Armin found Eren in his room, which he'd been given to recover from his titan form in, a considerable upgrade from the underground cell. Armin wondered whether the Military Police knew Eren wasn't in chains back in the dungeon as a prisoner, now that it had been agreed they'd hand him over for execution. He wondered what had happened that Captain Levi trusted him so suddenly.

Then again, it wasn't sudden. Eren had trained with the captain and his squad for over a month now.

'It doesn't make sense,' was the first thing Eren said. He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees and back curved, hair hanging over his downturned face. 'Why'd she do it? She doesn't have any reason to. Annie wouldn't just kill people like that.'

Armin stood in the middle of the room, silent. Yes, he wanted to say. Yes she would. It does make sense, you just don't want to see it.

Sudden anger stewed in his gut, making his spine tense and brittle. His head throbbed, painful. He needed to sleep. God, he hated her.

'You don't know it's her, right?' Eren said. 'No one actually knows, since there's no proof. So really it could be anyone.'

Armin clenched his jaw. He wanted to grab Eren and shake him, shout at him until he understood. He itched for the whole ploy to be over just so he could point at Annie the traitor, show Eren the absolute proof and see it on his face. He ached to wipe away every place she'd ever touched Eren, destroy all evidence and memory of it. She didn't deserve him. Maybe she could have, but that didn't matter. Not any more.

He went over to Eren, pushing him down onto his back and rolling him over the covers. Ignoring how Eren went boneless, letting his body be manipulated when he could have so easily stopped it, Armin pulled off his boots and crawled onto the bed himself. Eren lay on his back so Armin tucked in beside him, half covering him, half lying on his side, one bent leg sprawled over Eren's thighs and their chests pressed together.

Eren accepted the contact without a fight. Armin resisted the urge to make him struggle.

'If she's innocent,' he said, their faces close enough he could see the pores and thin hairs on Eren's skin, 'then we'll find out, and she'll be fine.'

Eren didn't reply, though his lips twisted like he wanted to. Armin tucked his head down so he didn't have to look. So Eren didn't believe him. It shouldn't matter – they'd find out soon enough anyway.

It did matter – but even so, Eren's solid presence, bones and soft, slackened muscle, seemed to drain him. Armin relaxed unwillingly and didn't move as hands curled over his waist, inching up to encircle his lower back. It felt like the contact could suck away his anger, melt them together into something tired and still. Eren didn't trust him but that was okay. They'd find out the truth soon. Hasek hadn't lied, so maybe he'd help to save Eren after all.

He looked up at Eren's face, eyes closed as if sleeping, warmth radiating up from his body. He wondered whether they should kiss, because that's what he and Eren did now, wasn't it? It was what adults did in bed. Not like the three of them in the refugee camps cuddling up to conserve heat and ward away the nightmares, both real and imagined.

Moving, even to kiss, seemed like too much effort for too little reward. He didn't want anything other than Eren's arms around him, like they already were. With a sudden lump in his throat, he realised that he wanted Mikasa's arms around him, too.

.

When Annie proceeded to prove herself a traitor, when she stood at the mouth of the tunnel and refused to walk down the stairs, Armin felt numb and disjointed. He was right, and he'd known he would be right, but he still shouldn't be. She should be better than that. His teeth hurt, right down to the bones of his jaw. The knot on his head seemed to leak pain down the back of his neck, like wet hair. And Eren wouldn't be quiet, wouldn't shut up as he refused to see the truth staring down at them.

Then everything started to go wrong.

He'd hardly thought over the new plan until he was already standing by the pool of sunlight, dust forming a gritty layer on his teeth, and getting in his eyes. His old plan had failed. He'd failed. Armin looked back at Eren and paused for a second, as if waiting for the explosion of transformation that had to happen, because surely Eren must value Mikasa's life, if nothing else, over wilful ignorance, stubbornly clinging onto the past. Surely he couldn't hesitate to fight if not doing so meant putting Mikasa at risk. Surely she had to mean more than Annie's broken image did.

And if she – they – didn't, Armin thought wildly, as the smell of blood and thick stone dust made his lungs wheeze, and the memory of a giant hand slapping the air from his chest and the sense from his head, knocking him head over heels on the hard earth, returned like a physical blow, then what did it matter if he fought Annie and died? He'd be plucked from the air or slapped aside in an instant, struck onto the stone buildings like a conker on the end of its string. His body would shatter, break apart, collapse into itself in a mess of ruined organs and meat. And it wouldn't matter at all.

It didn't matter, he thought, but he still didn't want to die. Armin hesitated.

Eren transformed then, the power of his titan form forcing an eruption of air down the tunnel. Armin covered his face with his arms, splinters of rock striking his bare hands, burrowing under the skin in little flakes of pain. The ceiling shook, hard hammer strikes that poured new white dust into the air, and Armin almost laughed behind his coughs. Eren had done it.

The battle passed like a blur, and as he stood there and watched, Armin wondered whether it was terrible that he could be proud to look at the form of a titan, grotesquely muscled, disproportionate, the split rows of teeth monstrous. The titan – no – Eren moved with control. When he fought it was familiar, expert, far from the animal lumbering and pounces of non-human titans. When his strength failed and Annie started to climb out of reach he stopped fighting, hunkered down with his head close to where Armin stood, stooping to listen. He tossed Mikasa up with care. Armin stood on Eren's palm and didn't fear the gale wind of his humid breath, rushing out between his open jaws.

The hesitation came later, after he'd pulled Eren from the stringy, hot meat of his titan form. Armin stopped and stared into the thick crystal surrounding Annie, even as Eren asked after her. The absolute stillness looked unnatural, wrong and uncanny. He tried to think of how she did it and what it meant, whether she was dead or merely frozen. Did she sleep or was she only immobile, clawing at the insides of her mind in the frustration of paralysis?

Instead of answers to his questions all he got was a sharp tightness in his chest. With a mind like hers she could have risen quickly in the Military Police, shaping them as she thought appropriate. She could have had as easy a life as she'd wanted. She could have been brilliant. Then why'd she do it? Armin looked away and followed as Eren's unconscious body was taken to the carriage. Maybe he'd only ever imagined the understanding between them.

That evening, when they finally returned along the dusty, bumpy road to the Scouting Corps headquarters, Armin stood with Mikasa at the side of the bed, looking down together at Eren's unconscious form. The skin on his face was fading back to normal, raised cords of flesh sinking away.

'That was pretty close,' Armin said in the quiet. 'All the ways it could have gone wrong but didn't, that is.'

Mikasa leant forward to brush the back of a finger along Eren's cheek, down one of the ridges. Eren didn't respond.

'You did a good job,' Mikasa said as she straightened. Armin tilted his head to look at her, and she turned to him. 'Stopping it from going wrong.'

Cheap manipulation, Armin recognised, but effective all the same. He smiled as the small, satisfied bubble in his chest grew a little larger. In the end, did it even matter whether he and Annie thought the same? Annie had lost, and they'd won.

After the meeting with Commander Erwin, Armin returned to find Mikasa sitting by the bed, now in the night-time darkness. She glanced up at him as he entered, then stood to stretch her arms up above her head, deliberate and sleek. Armin blinked at her from the shadows, stepping aside automatically to let her through the door when she walked to it.

'You're leaving?' he asked quietly, taken aback.

'He's just sleeping,' Mikasa said as she stood in the doorway. 'And you're here, now.'

'Oh,' Armin said. 'Thank you.'

He thought he saw Mikasa smile faintly, but in the dark it was hard to tell. She shut the door and her footsteps in the corridor faded entirely before Armin moved.

Sitting down in the chair, still slightly warm, he pulled off his boots and unbuckled his gear. Not wanting to knock anything off the dresser he folded it with his trousers and left them on the floor, then padded to the bed. Eren made a shadowed lump, indistinguishable from the covers which Armin gingerly pulled up at the sides to slide under. Balancing on the edge of the thin mattress, wondering how much of the covers he could pull around himself before he'd be exposing Eren to the cool air, Armin froze tight as arms reached around his waist and pulled him into the middle of the bed. They withdrew as quickly as they came, and letting out the breath that had caught in his throat Armin rolled over.

'Sorry,' Eren said. Their bodies lay very close, the sound of the word mixing into vibration and air movement, but in the dark he was nearly invisible.

'Don't be,' Armin replied. He sighed and burrowed a little closer. Their knees touched and he reached out a hand to brush Eren's arm, running his fingertips over the curve of relaxed muscle. Eren's sleeve bunched up from the motion and Armin let his hand fall into the small space between them.

Heat soaked into his skin and he closed his eyes, letting his body fall loose and sleepy. Eren's knees shifted against his own. He let out a long breath.

'When I couldn't transform,' Eren started, and Armin's eyes opened reluctantly. 'I'm sorry. I... need to learn more. I don't want to put you and Mikasa in danger next time.'

He didn't have an answer to that, too tired to think of one, so Armin pushed Eren over onto his back and kissed him, lingering. Their lips fit better, he thought muzzily. Then he lay down again, tucking his hands under his own chin, one leg between Eren's. His head ached still, but distantly, and did little to slow his falling asleep. He thought that next time, he should ask Mikasa to stay.