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Leaves and branches and even the ground itself seemed to tear at their skin and arms, pulling them and pushing them in every direction. Even the air itself seemed to push them and deny them an advantage. It burned in their lungs and ran its thin frigid fingers through their hair. They felt their knees ache at the pressure being applied to them and then a cry ripped from their throat when they felt their knees crumble out from under them as they fell into a small clearing with a child river running through it. They wept and panted as they crawled over to the tree sitting at the river’s edge, leaning themselves against it they wept as they felt their head begin to grow heavy and their body begins to sag. Listening to the sounds of the forest and any other noises they begin to drift off clutching the one thing they had left tight to their chest. They sighed and stared at the starry night through the green canopy above them and began to hum to themselves as they let themselves fall asleep.
Armin had gone out into the woods surrounding HQ to look for a place to relax with the book he had found earlier while he had been cleaning the library. He took in the youthful foliage around him and brought the breeze, tinted with scents of earth and wood and sun, deep into his lungs as he closed his ocean eyes for a moment to let a small smile grace his face as he let the life of the forest surround him. He opened them once again and continued on his walk until he came across a stream which he chose to follow until he came to a stop by a large willow tree, whose branches dipped into the water and created an almost holy sight. It was so quiet that he felt like he was intruding on something personal, he quietly climbed beneath Willow’s cover and sat against its trunk watching the leaves and things go by on the river before sighing contentedly and opening his book to its last chapter, where he had left off.
He closed his book and swept his blonde hair behind his ear as he smiled into the sun the shone through the leaves. His head snapped to the side as he heard a sweet and simple voice call out to him.
“What’re you reading?”
He comes face to face with a young (h/c)-ette, possibly near his age, their (e/c) eyes running over him as they peered at him from behind the tree’s large trunk. They stare at him curiously and he fidgets, slightly unnerved by how easily they had snuck upon him. He studies them for a minute noting their strange attire and overall look, they slowly crept towards him and settled themselves down a respectable distance away extending their neck to look at the cover of the shut book Armin held in his hands. He watches them intently and then with awe as their face lights up and they smile widely, they bring they (e/c) orbs up to meet his blue ones and their expression is one of genuine joy as they say,
“I’ve read Beowulf! I didn’t really like Beowulf himself but the overall book itself was pretty okay. What’d you think?”
His blue hues search their eyes for any form of treachery and upon spotting none lets himself smile shyly as he looks back at the book and softly shares his opinion of the book.
“I rather liked the book, and I think Beowulf was a really good person.”
He looks back up to his new companion and catches the way they smirk excitedly and seem to be genuinely happy that he shared his perspective, making his chest expand and him to feel bolder as he more confidently said,
“Beowulf defeats the bad guys and protects innocent people. Why do you not like him?”
The stranger chuckles and smiles at Armin before saying,
“But who was the truly evil character?”
Armin cocks his head to the side in confusion and is about to say something when the (h/c)-ette flomps down onto their back on the grass and pats the space beside them, he carefully lays down beside them and waits for them to continue.
“Granted, Grendel didn’t go about it the right way but he was just trying to catch some sleep by making them stop partying and his mother was grieving and simply trying to avenge her son . The dragon only went on a rampage because someone stole something from him… So, who is really the “bad guy”?”
Armin stared up at the sun dappled canopy in a whole different light as he thought and thought and couldn’t come up with an appropriate defense for Beowulf. He turned to look at the person next to him and gaped as his breath stole from his lungs when he took in the beauty of their skin in the sun, framed by the greens and browns of the surrounding greenery. In that moment it seemed to Armin that his whole life was just for this one moment of watching as the sun settled on their skin seeming to blush it in shades of gold, contrasting with the faint shadows of the leaves making it look like they were glowing from the inside. Feeling his stare, they opened their eyes and met his eyes, smiling gently and asking him if he now thought differently of Beowulf and if he would still back him up. Armin stuttered and blushed, closing his eyes and shaking his head slowly he opened them again and said,
“I can’t think of a reason to defend him anymore. He was wrong to kill the monsters.”
The stranger suddenly rolls onto their side and props themselves up on an elbow as they excitedly look at him and say,
“Ah, but Grendel did kill all those people, even people Beowulf himself cared about. So did Grendel’s mother, and the dragon did scorch nearly a whole kingdom. So… Is Beowulf really in the wrong and are there really any monsters in Beowulf?”
Armin pauses again and stays silent for a long time as he mulls over the new thought-provoking information he had received. The stranger he was starting to think of as a friend waited with a gentle smile on their face as he finally looks back at them and determinedly says,
“I think that it depends on who’s perspective you are looking at it from, and no. There are no monsters in Beowulf.”
His companion smiles widely at him and rolls on to their stomach to lightly clap their hands together. He feels himself smile back at the as he too rolls on to his stomach and plays with the grass in front of him when they say,
“You’re right. It all, always, matters on perspective. Good and evil all depend on perspective, so is there really any right or wrong? Just how you look at it. But I think that yes, there are monsters in the world and sometimes we just can’t tell them apart from humans because monsters don’t have to look like monsters.”
Armin stares at the grass in his hands as the stranger next to him gets up and moves around lightly moving an old, tattered, and worn book into his view. He looks at them in surprise as they smile and tell him.
“It’s my most favorite book. It’s called Lord of the Flies; I think you’d like it and I’d love to read it together but I think it’s getting rather late.”
Armin looks up and notices that they’re right, the sun had begun to set without him even noticing. He had left around lunch and it had taken him a while to walk here, so he wasn’t surprised. He looks back over to his companion when they say,
“I’ll let you have it but take good care of it, okay?”
Armin smiles excitedly as the stranger stands up and smiles at him as he himself gets up, dusting his clothes off in the process. He looks back to them and asks if they life nearby to which they responded that they did. They bid him farewell and he continued back to HQ. It was already dark by the time he reached HQ and when he once again encountered his friends, he told them all about what had happened and how much fun he had. He chatted excitedly with everyone until he left to go start his new book. A few days passed and he was sitting on one of the outside benches with his friends and a few others when he reached the end of the book, he let the tears pour down his face as he wept for the realization the book had forced him to open his eyes to. His friends all worried and comforted him as he wept for the darkness that was the human heart, he wept as he realized that every “right” or “wrong” committed was dependent on people’s perspectives and decisions and that the monsters were sometimes humans themselves. In between sobs he explained the book and its ending, and the matter of human beings and perspectives, they all stood in silence until Petra breaks it asking where he got the book.
“From the friend I met in the woods, we talked about Beowulf and about heroes and villains, and then they recommended this book.”
Petra thought for a minute before rubbing soothing circles on his back and saying,
“The world can be cold sometimes, but then there are people like the Survey Corps. Standing strong and resilient in the face of that darkness, fighting for what we know is right but sometimes to do that some wrongs must be done and that’s just the way the world is. It isn’t fair but we learn to live and thrive in it.”
Armin pauses and wipes his face as he nods and gives a soft smile.
“I’m sure that’s what they wanted me to realize with this book.”
Petra smiles back at him as Eren raises his fist in the air and says,
“Yeah! I bet they just wanted another reason to talk to you!”
Armin chuckles and then moves to put the book back in his room so he could join his friends for lunch. By the time he gets back to the mess hall he’s a panicking mess as he somehow lost the book, he enlists the help of as many friends as he can get to help him search for the book. Once it’s determined that there’s no way that they can find the book they suggest that they go with Armin to notify his friend that he had managed to lose it. They go to Erwin with the proposal and he sends Hanji and Levi to look after him. They march through the woods following a nervous Armin, Levi grumbling the whole way.
“Why the hell did you even go this far in the first place?”
Armin squeaks and stutters before he spots the river and starts to hurry along it and bursts through the brush and into the clearing with the willow bending to graze its branches through the river. He stumbles and pauses as his friends marvel at the clearings beauty as he did the day he came across it. He wrings his hands and cries out,
“They’re not here!”
His friends try to comfort him until Krista pats his arm and points to the base of the willow where he had sat with the stranger before.
“Hey, Armin?”
They all look over at her and Ymir strides across the clearing to her as she says,
“There’s your book.”
They all turn to see that the book he had been holding just earlier that day was now resting there at the base of the tree as if it had been waiting for him. He rushes over to it and goes to pick it up but not before noticing the brown and slightly yellowed, cream bone jutting out from the ground on the other side of the tree. He slowly walked over to stand in front of the side of the tree where he had first seen the (h/c)-haired, (e/c) eyed companion, what he now saw was what seemed to be a natural coffin. The willows roots winding an intricate design around the skeleton that laid there seeming to have been resting when they passed, the tree seemed to almost hold them close to it as if it didn’t want to let the bones go. It was only until he noticed the odd garments that he sank to his knees with a wail, letting the book drop from his hands as he covered his eyes. There were a few gasps from his friends as they came around to see what made him start crying again, Hanji knelt down near Armin and examined the remains of what seemed to be a teenager who got stabbed between the ribs right where their left lung would have been. When Armin stops crying long enough to look back at the book, he notices that there was now writing on a once blank page. Gingerly, he lifts it and begins to read.
Dear friend,
I’m sorry for being selfish. I just didn’t want to be alone. My name was (Y/N) (L/N). I’ll miss you, take care of yourself.
-A stranger you once met
Armin wept and wept and no one else around him said a thing until he calmed and started to get to his feet. He sadly turns to Hanji and without even looking at them asks,
“Can we make a gravestone?”
“Of course.”
Armin thanks them and he turns to place the book softly into the dirt with the remains of someone he will miss dearly. He looks at his companions’ backs sticking his hand into his pocket and feeling the small slip of paper he had taken from the book before putting it back, he looks back at the willow and gasps as he sees (Y/N) smiling at him from the shade of the willow before falling apart into thousands of willow leaves that blew away with the wind. And the whole clearing seemed to sigh in release.