'cause i'm just a teenage dirtbag, baby

[blondtactician]

WHO: Armin (blondtactician) & Annie (lyingheart)
WHERE: outside the library, like cool kids.
WHEN: 6/3, evening
WHAT: Annie heard a rumor about Armin beating a kid up in school and investigates.
WARNINGS: Dumb teenagers with dumb teenage feelings about dumb teenage things like high school and struggling with fitting in and plans for summer and war crimes. (Reference violence, AoT spoilers)

[Armin spies Annie waiting outside the city library as the hot day stretches into humid evening. At first he wonders if she's waiting for Reiner or something. Then he realizes that she could have plenty of legitimate, non-titan reasons to be waiting outside the library. She's in school. She could have a project, meeting classmates or even other fellow Registered heroes for some socializing. It's weird to think of Annie going about her day in similar ways to how he does, but she doesn't have a choice, after all? Even if it's all camouflage, she's proven before she can blend in even with her standoffish attitude.

But she's still there every time he glances out the glass doors in front, and she's alone. Armin completes his tasks thrumming with anxious, nervous energy, pulling Levi up on his phone to dial at the tap of the button if anything happens. He remains calm, but his heart vibrates with worry.

The library has strict rules about how many hours they can employ minors, so Armin's out the door the minute the library closes in the evening, pulling his bag over his shoulder and sighing about the heat. They don't even like him walking to the bus stop on his own, but he insists on this independence. Maybe the safer thing to do would be to ask for a ride home just for today, hiding behind civilians rather than face Annie. But Armin can't bring them into this when he doesn't know how it's going to end up. He has a duty to them, even if they don't know it.

He pauses, keeping his hand closed over his phone in his pocket, ready to tap and sending Levi an automated emergency message. It's hot, even as the street lights shudder to life.]

Annie. The library's closed now, you know.

Comments

[lyingheart]

[ Patience is never an easy trait to put to the test. Patience doesn't care about heat, or the trickle of sweat down along her spine as she waits. Patience isn't concerned with what else is going on, content to find answers when answers are ripe for finding. Patience demands in a relentless pull, asking for more, and more, and more, and after you've given patience all you have, it still wants more.

Patience is a game she's very familiar with from over the years.

Annie gave up reading her history book when twilight made her eyes strain to pick out the black text from the white pages. Her school backpack rests by her feet, while she leans against the railing, eyes raised to the darkening skies above them. She'd chosen to wait out where she knew Armin could find her, if he wanted, in one of the places she's avoided for the exact same reason before tonight. She's pulled herself and Reiner out of Heropa to gin room and perspective on the soldiers from home present on Earth. She's needed the space to clear her own head. She needs it to keep Reiner's from getting muddled, caught and pulled between two realities, two sets of directives part of him believes in equally.

She blinks when he speaks, turning her attention away from the remnants of sunset in the muggy Florida skies above. There's a different remnant she's pursued to this place today, and it starts with a careful scrutiny of Armin's face. ]

I didn't know you worked the closing shift.

[ Dispensing with any possibilities that she's there for anything other than Armin. From his perspective, she can see that being an uneasy acknowledgement, wondering what it is she's there for now, when she's kept her distance since their encounter in Nonah. It might have been easier to continue to stay away, or use the communicators to ask after what she's wanting to know tonight... but.

But Annie doesn't want to be on record for this. She also doesn't trust anything less than her own two eyes and the different edge to interactions gained in being face to face with someone else in person. It's why she holds herself still now, making herself appear as small and non-threatening as she could. She's not inviting a fight. Not right now. ]

School's been talking about you and some civilian all day. Depending on who you believe, you either hospitalized him, he hospitalized you, he's dead, you're psychotic, or it's a prank gone wrong after a hazing ritual for drama club.

[ She doesn't bother understanding where the hell the last one came from. Annie keeps her tone of voice neutral, almost detached, like she's reporting back on the rumor mill for no particular reason. It's her eyes that stay focused on him, questioning, not understanding. Some part of her needs to understand what happened. Eren attached to something like this... Annie has no difficulty imagining a scenario along those lines. But it isn't Eren.

This is Armin. Even trying to shut up the niggling voice of concern she hears in the back of her mind doesn't make it make sense. ]

What the hell happened, Armin?

[ What the hell happened after I crystalized? Only that's not the question she can ask right now. The suspension is easier to question, and easier to handle. She still doesn't move, though the relaxed lines of her body are tensing, that distance she holds herself at set aside in this moment. Annie is very intensely, personally present in this moment, and she's listening. To him.

One of the people she really, really shouldn't let get back inside her head. ]

[blondtactician]

[Armin works to try and keep the shock off his face after her inquiry, but doesn't quite succeed. His eyes widen slightly, his mouth opens and then shuts firmly. He never takes his thumb off the panic button on his phone, both hands shoved into his pockets like someone a lot less affected than he.

Could it be she's concerned about me? She did spare my life, at great risk to herself.

No, she knows what part I played in ruining her plans. I can't assume there's any compassion there at all, if it was that emotion in the first place.

So think. Why come here?

Is she assessing my threat level?]

As you can see, I'm fine.

[Armin thinks about his water bottle tucked safely in his bag. His mouth is dry.]

Do you really think I'd pick a fight with a kid twice my size? This is me we're talking about. I'm not good in a fight. The whole thing was just an accident, a misunderstanding.

[lyingheart]

[ She sees him reacting, just enough to give her reason to blink, making sure any eye contact they had isn't unbroken. She needs that break as a reminder. Annie's not here to intimidate, but she has to be careful. Why did I come here?

She knows. She just won't admit it. Just like she won't point out that injuries aren't always visible, if they're physical, or might never be when they're something else. She knows that. He knows that. There's no way he doesn't know that she knows he knows that. ]

You don't pick fights.

[ She says that like it's fact, agreeing with that much; it's not accepting the rest. It's her observation. Armin might choose battles, but he doesn't pick fights. There's a pettiness and desire for confrontation in that action he lacks. But he's still here, and here in a sense where he's not allowed back at school for a while. If it's just an accident, a misunderstanding, than she wants to understand. ]

You say it was an accident, a misunderstanding... but you're not answering my question. What happened?

[blondtactician]

Am I required to answer your questions now? [Armin asks this without much expression, and now he is completely calm, devoid of the anxiety that briefly peaked in his eyes. His mouth is still too dry. He can feel his palms sweat.

He'll give her what she wants, for now, because it's not information that needs to be hidden. If he presses her, demands to know why she asked, she'll surely retreat, and that's no good to him.

Of course Armin's assignment is Reiner, not Annie - Annie's emotions are harder to read or predict, and Armin doubts his ability to manipulate her again. But she's here now, regardless of promises and assignments, and Armin is determined to learn something, just like Annie.]

The guy tried to punch me, and on his second attempt, I threw him into a sink. He bit through his lip and needed stitches. That's all.

[It's not nearly the whole story, of course, but it's the simplest facts.]

[lyingheart]

[ Required is such an inappropriate word. She knows it's deliberate, too - neither one of them is required to answer the other. It won't stop them from asking, all things considered, but it isn't some system of give and take. There's no active alliance or goal they're working toward, where they can shelve for a while reasons for the gaping rift between their sides in a war that had more than two fronts back home. It's as faceted as the crystal she's encased in, timeless, in a place that doesn't feel this kind of heat.

She feels cold. A shiver starts somewhere in the pit of her stomach, and her jaw clenches, driving off the sensation. What has happened? What has happened back home? And why does this bother her like it does? She breaks eye contact, troubled, keeping it off her face. He doesn't - musn't - know. ]

You threw him into a sink.

[ They're such strange words to say. Armin, who has always fought with words, who has been one of the weaker among them when it came down to the purely physical side of things, but has kept up anyway. He isn't weak where it matters most. He doesn't give up, and he persists, and watches, and strives in spite of the things he can't do. Annie has admired that, as a person whose weakness turns her into the person she is now, and the person she was to have said yes to his admittedly thin pleadings for her help in keeping Eren away from the King. Admires what he and Eren both have, in their very different ways; that kind of special quality that gives them the strength to oppose the overwhelming pull of the world around them. Concessions away from the young man she remembers are unsettling, but the fault for that lies with her. It was nice to believe that somewhere, people like him, with his ideals, and his subtle strength, and that quick mind seeking solutions before it resorts to using the ones who excel at brute force for exactly that... somewhere, those people exist. They make a difference. They live, and they matter, even if in the end they may fail too. Even if they manipulate, because manipulation isn't inherently good or bad. It's simply a tool.

But she knows the world can change everything. It changed her father, from a man who believed so wholeheartedly in his idiotic idealism to the one who begged her for a forgiveness he wouldn't give himself. She knows better. It will never be about self defense to her, and it's only because of her own perceptions of him that she won't let it be. Armin had other weapons than his fists before; he'd fallen back on ones he should have felt an obligation not to use on an overblown idiot trying to prove a point that didn't need proving. Morons like that are everywhere, sometimes more obvious, other times more subtle and insidious. Violence didn't stop them. Violence couldn't make them think, or touch their hearts. She knows that more than most. Violence begets violence. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't end in happy places. It ends in pointless tears streaming down a ruined face, far off in a forest where no one has to see you cry over the cost of what you can't undo.

She brushes her damp bangs off her forehead. The answers to what has happened back home don't feel like they'll be anything she'll like hearing, if she even has the "right" to hear. ]

If that's true, then if I ever wake up back there, the one I should be most afraid of seeing sounds less like it's Levi, or your Commander.

[ She doesn't specify Erwin or Hange. Let him wonder if she pays that much attention to the network, or the confessions plastered across it. She brings her eyes back to his face, curiously tired, defeated in a way she hadn't expected to feel.

It's such a cruel world, to wear down and wear out even the best of them. There's already enough scum of her caliber, the ones with no righteousness, just a selfishness that drives them to keep clutching at survival like surviving is the same as living. It's funny how in a world of "heroes" she has to face that maybe the ones she'd hoped for, in spite of her own better interests, might not have the ability to keep themselves as close to the good people they were as she'd hoped they could.

She smiles, and there's nothing amused, or superior, or happy about it. Just tired, like her voice, when she says: ]

It sounds more like the one I should be afraid of seeing is you.

[blondtactician]

I have no reason to lie to you about that.

[Armin won't say I wouldn't lie. That's a ridiculous thing to say. Of course he'd lie. He'd build a bridge to the moon with his lies if he thought it would gain a single thing from her, and she must know that by now.]

It's not like I meant to throw him into the sink. He just happened to be very clumsy, his weight distributed badly.

[Armin won't tell her all of it. There's not percentage in being that honest. In fact, the only people's he's told the truth to are adults who didn't give a damn anyway. Levi, Hange and Erwin didn't give a damn in a different way than the school administration, but none of them asked what happened either. They were more concerned about whether or not he could fight and win.

Armin doesn't like using force, and he doubts he'll have an opportunity to win a conflict like that very often again in his life.

But he has hate in his heart just like anyone else, and to see the boy's lip split open after weeks of being bullied by him did produce a certain kind of grim satisfaction.

He cannot punish Reiner, nor dare take on Annie. He cannot force the Porter to send him back to where he belongs. He cannot slit the throat of the king so that the blood fertilizes the dead soil he was forced to toil till his hands were bleeding and blistered, and even if he could, it would not bring his family back. He is biding his time and deciding what to do about these issues. But one boy who launched a campaign of name-calling, shoving and tripping, one boy who blocked his way out of the bathroom, who grabbed him hard by the shoulder when Armin asked politely to be allowed to leave...

He could be taught a swift lesson.

Naturally, people who are hurt by others want to see the ones who hurt them suffer. Human nature is cruel.]

Are you afraid of me now, Annie? [The way Armin poses the question seems sheepish, almost self-conscious.]

[lyingheart]

[ She wonders if he hears himself speaking. It's not like I meant... he just happened... They're excuses coming from a fully trained soldier, and dangerous if he believes what he says. She won't say as much, and can't, because who is she to say that at all? She's dangerous, and she's not even sure what she believes anymore, let alone who she is. It's not something he'd be able to hear from her anyway. She doesn't have the right to speak.

Bullies could be endured. They're another corruption of the heart within a social structure, one she knows and recognizes from home. Powerless people looking for power over others, some who genuinely enjoy other's pain or discomfort, some who fill in their own insecurities by tearing into the differences of others. They're not new here.

She reaches down slowly for the loop of fabric acting like a handle on the top of her backpack. It's how one moves with a horse with a reputation for startling, wary and aware, but still dedicated to a course of action. This is enough. She doesn't want any more of this. She doesn't want the future he's hinting at. ]

No, Armin. [ As long as she's in this dream, she will not be afraid of him. She tells herself that: if she does it enough, she might even believe herself, though the uneasiness now isn't the one she speaks of in relation to home. She's all about neutrals again, neutral expression, neutral posture, distance creeping in to her tone of voice. She slides her backpack over one shoulder, shifting her weight in preparation to move down the stairs. ]

But for your sake, and the sake of that suicidal idiot - [ she knows Eren is here ] - I hope the next face from home we see through the Porter is Mikasa's.

[ They both need that single minded purpose of someone who cares about them for their own sake. Annie, who has no one, is still sensitive enough to see that.

But ah, doesn't she have Reiner now? Reiner to worry over. Reiner who will look back to Armin, to Jean, to Connie, to all of them, because he's never been able to handle the divide. He got too close; he's cut himself down the middle to be two different people for two different goals. Reiner, who needs Bertholdt, not Annie, but is stuck with her slight shoulders trying to keep him from getting confused over what's real, what's manipulation, and what it is his head and heart are telling him at any given time. Bertholdt is who she wants to see for her own selfish purposes... and even then, for Armin and Eren's sakes, she hopes they see Mikasa first. ]

[blondtactician]

[What is it about Armin that Annie might grow to fear? Armin wonders what she could possibly gain by telling him that. Does she think that will rattle him? Cause him to question himself? So she'll look out for him. He knew he couldn't behave as a friend to her to get close.

Could Armin really be so dangerous? Not him, who spent a good portion of his youth being beaten to a pulp when Eren and Mikasa weren't watching over him. Not him, who spent a good portion of his training out of breath, covered in bruises, eyes blurring from exhaustion and tears of frustration. Not him, who watched his entire squad die in a flash and then watched his best friend sacrifice himself as he wailed, helpless. He couldn't have won a fight simply by repeating movements so trained into him they were reflex. He has changed since his early years, but for the first time he wonders if he's changed since graduating training. If so, isn't that the appropriate action? He'll never get anywhere being soft-hearted. While they'd never admit it's the reason that fuels their anger toward the world, being sensitive to what happens to others are Eren and Jean's strengths, not his.

Armin simply saw an opportunity and took it. More than that, while he definitely injured the kid, he chose the route that didn't have him cracking his skull on the faucet valve of one of the urinals. He chose a middle path between running and avoid the conflict all together, and making sure the fight ended with blood on his hands.

Some of the rumors circulating about him mention he started the fight, or threatened to kill the kid. Those are closer to the truth than he's allowing his version of the story to admit. The bully tried to block his path, started in with his ridiculous array of insults that all tied in to how weak he was.

"It's obvious you feel threatened by me, and that's why you keep trying to tear me down. Have you considered listening to that instinct and leaving me alone?"

He deliberately provoked the kid. He's always had a problem with that, pointing out things that just get him in deeper trouble. Armin can smooth things over with people, but he also knows how to rattle their cage.

"Your hitting me just means I'm right, doesn't it?"

Except now he doesn't have to take it. Not from people like him, at least.

"I only did that so you'd stop bothering me. Please stay down."

What he won't admit to most people is that he also did what he had to do to keep anyone at that school from bullying him again. It was, at its heart, a tactical decision. That kid saw him as vulnerable, and his behavior was escalating.

Plans are good, but so are appropriate shows of strength, particularly in self-defense. Armin has been doubting himself less and less, lately.

Maybe that's worth fearing. But he can't get ahead of himself there.]

I had no idea you cared so much, Annie. I'm touched. Thank you.

[No matter how gently Armin speaks, that's going to come out sarcastic.]

[lyingheart]

[ Annie is a selfish person. She knows that much about herself, and it isn't new, and it's not changed from the years of her life before. She adapts, and she treads water, and she doesn't fight against what the pull of events suggests. If she's afraid of what Armin can do, it's what he can do to her. What he may be able to get from her, and when he loses the compunction against combining his mind with physical violence, it leaves a sick feeling in her stomach.

It doesn't matter what it is that made her stop before. It matters that she'd still stop, even if it benefited her to do otherwise. He's dangerous - to her. To himself, too, and the man he might have once been.

Annie goes still, looking back over her shoulder. ]

Don't thank me for wanting someone who matters to you to kick your ass for being the kind of bully I can't stand.

[ She half turns, expression edging toward irritated. ]

Does Eren even know?

[blondtactician]

[Heat rises to Armin's cheeks and he's glad he's already flushed from the heat out here, hopefully enough so that the emotion isn't noticeable on his face. Annie is needling him and he won't fall for it. All of those years she stood off at a distance, arms folded, looking unapproachable, she must have been watching all of them.

Did she envy their connections?

A bully. What a fine thing for Annie of all people to say. Obviously she's not worried about being a hypocrite, but she thinks Armin might be.

Armin believed for a brief time he could have faith in his fellow soldiers. They were all on the same team. In spite of the cruelty and mistreatment he'd seen his entire life, with the 104th, he felt at peace. People like Reiner stood up for him instead of bullied him. He thought he found his place in the world. Maybe it would never be safe for him, maybe he'd always be weak, but he at least believed.

He believed so hard he didn't report Annie the second he suspected something. Levi's entire squad is gone, and so many others, not to mention the harm Eren went through being stolen away by her.

He believed her distant demeanor was a way to keep from getting hurt, that she did care, perhaps too much. Maybe some part of her does, which almost makes everything that's passed more monstrous. Is it worse to believe Annie doesn't care or that she does and still pulled all of it off?

It doesn't matter.

Armin changed the day he arrived to Heropa. Not just because of all of the vomiting, although that made a distinct impression. When he received the news of being promoted to Levi's squad, and when Commander Smith asked him if he thought the titan threat had been eliminated from the 104th.

He'd been blind all along, believing Reiner and Bertholdt to be his friends. All of those lunches passing the time with Reiner and listening to his tips on how to use the gear and keep balanced, those quiet chess games... he held onto those memories just as fondly as all that time he spent with Marco, cleaning his gear.

And look how it's all turned out.

He'll never make that mistake again.]

I never thought you were the kind to concern yourself with gossip, Annie. Maybe we should get some bubble tea and start asking each other about who we think is cute in our class.

[He doesn't sound as confident in his words as he'd like to.]

[lyingheart]

[ Gossip carries threads of useful information, but she keeps her gaze steady and on his face. Is his face reddening, or is she imagining it? It must be her imagination. He's been shameless.

He's not okay. That's almost more laughable for her to think than the possibility itself - because Annie, oh Annie knows what it's like to not be okay. Only he doesn't get a moment of relief in being called out for it, because he doesn't seem to want to see why this is disturbing. Or it isn't anymore, because the world has changed that much, and she's slept right through it.

That's frightening, too. That's the world she has to wake back up to deal with, and she's not so strong as to think she'll be able to bear the strain and survive. She will, she must, but what's left of Annie in the end may be little to nothing worth seeing through to whatever end lies in store.

This is her second life, the shot she has that no one will know, or care, or remember after this place. Not even Annie. ]

You haven't told him.

[ It's what his deflection seems to point toward. His words are so ludicrous as to be almost funny, if she felt close to laughing right now. ]

[blondtactician]

Does that mean something to you?

[Armin hadn't meant to conceal it, really, he told himself he didn't want to worry and upset his friend. Eren gets so angry on his behalf that it's stressful sometimes. He feels guilty when Eren's angry on his behalf, because it's rare he feels he doesn't deserve whatever's happened, deep down.

Annie's probably never really had that, someone who fusses over her.

Does she think he feels guilt over bringing physical retribution? That Eren could not understand what he did? That Mikasa would judge him?

Oh.

There's so much she doesn't yet know about Eren and Mikasa.

A wave of calm washes over him, cooling him like a sea breeze.]

[lyingheart]

[ She could only hope that his friends would be able to steady him in a way he apparently can't. It's the lack of guilt that bothers her, the way he doesn't apologize, because that smacks too close to him feeling justified.

Like he thinks it isn't bullying, just because he's been a victim. Like it changes things here, getting himself thrown out of one of the ready means of accessing information, of understanding the social workings of this place, of exploring the connections that would give him more than this could. That he's not bothered by it at all - or more, that he doesn't show it - that bothers her. That there isn't some anger at a system that could have thrown him outside if he'd simply done nothing.

She'd hoped he'd done simply nothing. She'd been wrong.

She's getting so used to being wrong in ways she hadn't wanted to be. ]

It makes me wonder what else you'll hide, for your sake. Or for his... but it's the same in the end. Once you take those decisions away from him, it's all the same.

[ Lies build on themselves. They're constrictive, regardless of being told straight or allowed through omission. Eren hadn't known about Reiner; she'd seen the evidence with her own eyes. What a dangerous game for his own friends to play.

Poor Eren. Poor Armin. Poor all of them. ]

You must be proud, Armin.

[ She turns away, and this time, it's for the last time, walking down the stairs. ]

You're so strong.

[ She doesn't sound bitter, or biting. More hollow, if hollowness had an echo in words. She hopes that in the end, this kind of "strength" doesn't leave him regretting the decisions he's made along the way. Life's too short to bear those kinds of scars on the heart. This temporary respite will be harder for things like that, carried as unnecessary burdens. ]

[blondtactician]

[Armin doesn't like not telling the truth, but he's doing as ordered. Levi and Commander Smith want to keep Reiner and Bertholdt's identity from Eren to prevent a rampage, setting both the Rogue Titan and possibly the Armored Titan on the city. After all, they'd witnessed Annie's destruction but as they understood it, Bertholdt and Reiner are the reason Eren's mother is dead.

That's not the kind of thing even Levi could keep under wraps, even with Armin's help.

It is a disloyalty, perhaps, and one Eren might have a lot of trouble forgiving him for, since it's a secret they can only contain for a short time.

He's made his peace with it. This is the best way to protect Eren and all of their kind, and whether or not they want to admit it, this solution protects Annie and Reiner too. As long as they keep their conflict among themselves, the government will continue to let them live comfortably.]

You really are so very kind, Annie. Thank you.

[He calls quietly to her back, not pursuing. He pulls out his phone to send a text, a movement that's as natural as breathing to kids their age.]