Chapter Text
Reiner wakes in a way he hasn’t been afforded for most of his life: slowly, with a gentle, relaxed hum. The sun is warm against his skin, prickling slightly along his cheekbones in a way that means he might have burnt from sleeping too long in the sunlight. It’s very quiet. Only the gentle slosh of water around him, the creaking of waterproofed wood, and another set of lungs, breathing air at his side.
“Which is it today, Bertholt?” Reiner mumbles with his eyes closed. He turns his face towards the warmth, so the back of his eyelids are a searing, almost unbearable orange. Lets himself drift a bit with the rocking of whatever he’s laying across. “Are we soldiers today, or are we warriors?”
Bertholt doesn’t answer right away, but that’s not out of the ordinary. Bertholt has always thought too much before speaking his mind.
Had always thought too much.
(Hadn't that been his downfall, in the end?)
“Do you really think that’s all there is?” a soft voice that does not belong to Bertholt asks, the timber light and trembling.
Reiner opens his eyes. Armin is looking at him, every piece of him reflecting light. It hurts more than looking directly into the sun, he thinks. Reiner takes a shuddering breath. He lets his memories slide in, both, all of them, watches without speaking as a single tear threatens to slide down Armin’s cheek.
“I don’t know,” Reiner says.
High above them, Reiner can spy a handful of whispy white clouds. Nothing to shield him from the unrelenting heat of the sun, nor the tremulous downward press of Armin’s mouth.
“It’s lunchtime,” Armin finally replies. Reiner hears the hitch in his breath when he inhales. “Come inside. You’re already burning.”
A hand settles on Reiner’s shoulder, almost cold to the touch. Reiner hardly has time to enjoy the feeling before it pulls away, disappearing into the single cabin.
For a long moment, Reiner doesn’t move. He stares up at the too-bright sky, tries not to think of anything at all.
But his stomach rumbles, and Armin’s watchful eyes never miss a thing. So he stands. His joints creak as he goes, not quite in time to the creaking of the ship around him. With the sun warm at his back, he follows the smell of cooking fish inside.
Historia proposes to Connie on the last days of the summit. Connie stares at Historia for almost a full five minutes, his mouth agape, shadows around his eyes like he hasn’t been sleeping well. Reiner knows he hasn’t been; his cabin on the ship shared a wall with Connie, and he’s heard the man tossing and turning through the four long nights at sea (he doubts any of them are sleeping much better on dry land).
Reiner feels just as dumb-struck about it, but once the ringing in his ears settles, he can understand it. It’s a good decision, politically speaking: Connie is a savior outside of Paradis, and he was a great soldier before the Jaegerist faction took over. He’s still a great friend to many.
And Reiner never had a chance with Historia either way.
“But you have a kid,” Connie says weakly, when he regains full use of his motor functions, well after Historia has turned back to her advisors, conversation easily moving back to pleasantries as they sit in the main hall of the capital building.
“Connie,” Jean grits out, the smile on his face more like a grimace than anything else. “Don’t badmouth the Queen during our peace summit, you idiot.”
“I’m not badmouthing anyone!” Connie jumps up, flushing scarlet. His eyes search the room frantically, as if he’s been accused of heresy. “I’m just saying! Wouldn’t you want to marry him instead?”
All heads in the room swivel back to Historia. Her hair is done up intricately, some fancy look that Reiner has no clue how it stays put. Her dress is blue, to match the brilliant summer sky, and it makes her look bright. Like the beacon of hope the Scouts had always needed, or the shining light that Paradis needs. When she smiles, it’s unbearably sad.
“He’s dead,” she says. That’s all she needs to say to them. Still, she goes on. “And he wouldn’t have married me, anyway.”
“Who thinks they can just knock up the Queen like that?” Jean snaps. Pieck rolls her eyes, already settling a warning hand on Jean’s elbow. “Fuck them. There’s no honor among men these days.”
Miraculously, Historia giggles. Her eyes light up even, like she’s heard a marvelously funny joke.
“Will you or won’t you, Connie?” she asks. “It’d be an honor. For both of us I think.”
Connie keeps staring at her. Everyone else stares at Connie. The tension in the room mounts, as Connie tries to work through whatever is going on in his head.
Finally, Reiner can’t take it anymore. He laughs. Standing, he settles a hand roughly on Connie’s closely-shaved scalp, and manages to feel joy. Just joy.
It’s an unfamiliar feeling, bubbling up his rib cage after so long.
“In the end, it’s Connie who gets the cushiest job of us all,” he says, half a tease. His eyes flicker to Jean, to Annie, back to Connie. “Prince Consort has got to beat even the MP life.”
The tension breaks, spilling into giggles as Connie sputters, too flustered to form words, much less sentences. They all laugh, and it hardly hurts at all.
.
.
Later that night, when Reiner has given up on sleep, he slips out into the darkness. The moon is waning, an oblong shape in the sky, and the stars form a river at cross-angles to the creek nearby. It takes long these days to leave the interior and find enough grassland to feel safe, but Reiner has time.
Scaling the iron-wrought gates surrounding what used to be the MP headquarters is easy. He’s almost surprised that no guards stop him. Wonders for a moment if it’s skill or trust that leaves him undiscovered.
He finds wooden fenceposts of farmland before the forests. Historia has brought farming deep into what used to be the interior, and it’s a testament to her rule that there’s hardly any blow back from it. The baying of cows is almost unfamiliar to Reiner these days, but it must be a stark change for most on Paradis, who could hardly afford a single milk cow, let alone a herd. Reiner at least grew up on a farm, and knew the sounds and smells of them by heart once upon a time.
A silhouette leans against one of the fence posts, a thin slip of black against indigo blue. The silhouette doesn’t move, but Reiner has the feeling they notice him anyway. It’s hard not to be on edge, even after the fighting has ended. It’s true for everyone, he supposes.
A breeze kicks up, strong enough to slide the person’s hood down to their shoulders. When Reiner is close enough, Armin tilts his head to the side, his fair hair sparkling in the light, catching his eyes as Reiner slows, then stops.
Silence settles over them. Reiner watches the dark wisps of clouds as they unfurl across the sky.
“Mikasa will be here tomorrow,” Armin says into the quiet. His voice shivers like leaves in a breeze. “She’s going to take us to visit Eren’s grave. I think—I think it’ll be nice.”
Even now, after all this time, it seems strange for Armin to be on his own. He half expects either Mikasa or Eren to call his name, to beckon him away. He wonders if Armin thinks the same. He must.
He must.
Reiner doesn’t think he understands it. He lost Marcel, and then Annie, and then Bertholt, but it feels like an insult to compare those losses to what Armin is missing.
“There’s a storm coming in,” Reiner finally says. “Two or three days out, I think. So at least there’ll still be sunlight when you go visit him. Eren always hated the rain.”
“He really did.”
Reiner stays with him until the sun rises. He watches the sky go from blue to grey to yellow, and pretends not to notice when Armin starts crying. Both of Armin’s hands clutch at the fence post for support, as if he doesn’t care about the tears that stream down his face. And maybe he doesnt; maybe he’s too used to crying to be bothered by it as the saltwater streams down his face. Reiner doesn't begrudge him that, although he wonders when Armin has found time to cry like that in the passing years without anyone noticing. The tears make only the smallest of sounds as they drip onto the wood. The sounds that Armin makes are even softer still.
Reiner slides closer. Just enough to settle his hand over one of Armin’s. Armin sniffles. His grip relaxes, ever so slightly against the grain of the wood.
The sunrise is very pretty. Especially so when Armin takes a deep, clear breath, and exhales without a shiver.
Reiner burns.
His cheeks feel too-tight as the sun starts to set; reminds him, a bit, of the over-exertion of one too many titan-shifts, where his skin would shrink, shriveling as it struggled to un-peel itself over bones and muscle.
Funny, how discomfort changes with time.
Reiner isn't smart enough to work out what it all means, but it makes his lungs squeeze thinking about it too much.
Armin laughs at him, which is the one good thing to come of it. When he smiles at Reiner, it's soft and teasing. He's never seen Armin tease anyone before.
“Pieck did warn us that the sun would be more unforgiving in the open ocean,” he says lightly.
“What a thing to have to watch out for,” Reiner mumbles. “A sunburn, of all things.”
Armin’s smile grows until it shows the points of his canines.
“How ordinary,” he agrees. He tosses Reiner a little jar, and Reiner fumbles catching it, too focused on watching the way Armin’s happiness wants to spill out of him. “A salve to keep it cool.”
“Who do you think you would have been,” Reiner blurts out. He doesn't know why, but it feels urgent suddenly. A ghost of a memory stretches over him, a sand-covered wasteland and sad, forgiving eyes. “If you had never met Eren?”
The smile on Armin’s face wavers, and Reiner could kick himself for being the one to displace it.
Stupid, he thinks, annoyed at himself for spoiling the mood. Ungrateful, even for saying something he wasn’t even thinking about, sure to upset Armin. Who cares what he'd dreamt of before waking? Stupid, ungrateful, and inconsiderate, when tears suddenly spill down the sides of his face, an onslaught Reiner hasn’t seen since the day under the oak tree.
“I’m sorry—”
But Armin surprises him by laughing, tilting his head back while tears still stream down his face.
“Don’t be,” he hiccups. His mouth tilts down, then back up again, like he can’t decide between the two emotions. “Who would any of us be if we'd never met Eren? No one I'd care to know, I think.”
Reiner concedes the point. What am I supposed to do now? he’d all but begged of Eren at the end, and Reiner puzzles over the man’s response now as he watches Armin finally wipe the wetness off his face.
I would have liked to know you, Reiner surprises himself by thinking it, then surprises himself again by how true it feels. He unscrews the cap of the glass jar scooping two fingers worth of the glistening salve. He slides his fingers down the length of his own nose, where he's already beginning to feel over warm.
“Thanks for the salve,” he says stupidly, unsure how to salvage the conversation.
Armin smiles at him though, Reiner's infraction already forgotten.
Good enough.
“Don’t be dense, Reiner, of course you’re coming.”
Reiner looks up from where he’s been pretending to read a book that afternoon, at Jean’s pissed-off face. The remnants of the Scouts stand behind him, all gussied up like they’re meeting up with some important dignitary.
Are they dressing up for the press that’s sure to follow them? Mikasa? To honor Eren?
(Hypocrite, he thinks. As if Reiner hasn’t carefully outfitted himself in his best Dress Blues already, half-hoping he’s actually been invited along.)
(Not that Reiner was hoping for anything. Not after everything he’s done.)
(But still, Eren had left him a message too, at the end of things, and that has to count for something.)
“It’s decided then,” Annie says, and he blinks, trying to clue in on the conversation again. “Jean, you knock him out, I’ll carry him the rest of the way.”
“I get it, all right,” Reiner snaps, frowning at her as he stands. He watches the way she flits around the edges of the room, avoiding the scouts as she sweeps out the door. Connie follows after her with a deep breath. Pieck raises an eyebrow at Reiner, as if she’d known all along. She’d settled into the seat by his side on the ship, and now she palms the book Reiner hadn’t actually been reading and flips to the middle, where she flattens a dog-eared page.
“I hear Levi-Taichou is already at the carriage,” she hums. “You’d better not keep him waiting.”
Jean curses under his breath, almost running after Connie. Reiner catches Armin’s eye from across the room and half-wishes he hadn’t seen the devastated way Armin had been staring at the empty door.
Still, Armin smiles at him, so Reiner does his best to smile back.
Levi is indeed waiting for them out on the road, along with Mikasa, who is still wrapped up in Jean and Connie’s bear hug. Reiner and Armin bow, eerily in sync, while Levi scoffs at the two of them.
“It’s good to see you, Taichou,” Armin says.
Levi sniffs, but just for a second, the dark look on his face melts a little. Just long enough for Reiner to catch, but not Armin, who is still looking down at his feet.
“It’s good to see you alive, Commander,” Levi replies, altogether too pleasant to be anything but a warning. “At least one of you hasn’t lost their minds.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Connie shouts as Mikasa pulls away from them.
She spots Armin, and time stands still for a bit. Armin looks at Mikasa and Mikasa looks at Armin and all the rest of them just stare. Neither moves for a long moment, then Armin whispers “Mikasa,” and Mikasa whispers “Armin,” and then Mikasa launches herself at him, her arms wrapping around Armin’s shoulders. Armin shakes in her grip, full body shivers as he starts to cry.
“I told Armin to at least try to hold it together,” Jean says under his breath.
“It was never gonna happen, Jean,” Connie whispers. “With Eren gone, someone has to be the team crybaby, no?”
Jean elbows him. Armin and Mikasa finally part, and with an annoyed click of his tongue, Levi all but shoves them into the back of a rickety, horse-drawn cart. The Queen, of course, gets a proper carriage of her own, and Reiner spies a flash of brown hair as her toddler son is ushered in after her.
Annie appears at Reiner’s elbow, the last two to climb aboard. She’s grown some in the past three years, but even still she looks like the kid he’d failed at the start of it all. Reiner tries not to notice the way she’s pointedly avoiding Armin.
Mikasa slips easily back into the fold. It’s more accurate to say, perhaps, that the Scouts accept her back into their unit as if no time has passed at all. After The Rumbling, they all went their separate ways, each determined to fix some small part of the world. Just over a year had gone by before Pieck and Gabi could strong-arm Reiner back into politics, only to find Armin, Jean, and Connie already elbow-deep in it.
It’s nice to hear them all laugh again. With Levi busy driving the cart, it almost feels like they could have gone back in time, all the way to their days in the Training Corps. Lighthearted banter that they could only every scrounge up before Trost, before most of their class really knew what they were up against. Annie is a brooding, silent shadow beside him, and he can almost imagine the steady rhythm of Bertohlt’s breath beside him, too.
Almost.
(And the space between Armin and Mikasa is wide enough still for a young man.)
A shove in his side pulls him out of the train of thought. Reiner blinks down at where Annie wraps her arms around her knees, watching the road behind them.
“Don’t look so depressed all the time,” she says, quiet enough not to interrupt the easy conversation on the other side of the cart. “They’ll start fussing over you in no time.”
“That’s rich, coming from you.”
Annie’s matching frown doesn’t waver, but her eyes flicker over to him once. She hums, noncommittal.
“I at least try to talk to everyone, once and a while.”
“You? I find it hard to believe.”
“You wouldn't, if you ever left your cabin outside of the meetings Pieck forced you to attend.”
Reiner rolls his eyes, but he doesn't have a retort to the truth of it, so he stays silent. They hit a dip in the road, and the jolt makes Connie and Jean laugh.
“The ship is heading back to the mainland in four days,” Annie mumbles when the laughter slows. She blinks again. Some of the fine hairs at her brow have come undone from the bun she’s got it pulled up into, falling into her eyes as she tilts her head. When Reiner doesn’t respond, she adds, “Pieck is heading back, Falco and Gabi, too. Onyakopon, I hear, is even going back home.”
She looks at him, as if expecting an answer to a question she hasn’t asked. Reiner tries to wait her out, but he’s never been particularly patient.
“Say what you mean, Annie.”
Finally, she stretches out, rolling her eyes.
“Are you going back?” she mumbles, looking at him like he’s an idiot. At least that hasn’t changed. “Are you going to go back to Marley when the ship sets sail next week?”
Back?
Reiner blinks at her again, thinking that her exasperated look is warranted this time.
“My mother is back on Marley.”
Annie rolls her eyes at him.
“You’re not an idiot, Reiner, as much as you like to pretend sometimes. Your mother could take a ship here just as easily. There's nothing keeping her on Marley, and you know it.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“We’re here,” Levi calls as the cart rolls to a stop.
Annie doesn’t reply. Her face is impassive as she hauls herself out of the cart and scurries over to the carriage following them, ready to help Historia and her son out. Reiner watches her go for a bit, bemused, but he quickly puts it out of his mind again.
The funeral isn’t a grand affair. Mikasa leads them up a hill to where a lone oak tree overlooks a meadow. So far from the capital, the rubble left behind by The Rumbling hasn’t all been cleared out, and piles of brick and wood litter the horizon in the distance, just about the size of his thumb. However, there are already the skeletons of several houses going up just beyond the meadow, a testament to Paradis’ tenacity.
It’s a nice place to rest.
Mikasa kneels at the foot of the tree, settling her palm over a stretch of clover-covered dirt.
“Hello Eren,” she says. “Armin and Jean are here. Everyone else, too.”
Armin steps forward. He’s always looked good in white, and today is no different. His suit is sharp, a study of light grey and tan. His hair is gold in contrast, and his eyes like twin jewels as they brim with unshed tears. The rest of the company close ranks on him, a stalwart wall of support.
They’ve all had years to process, is the thing. Reiner felt Eren’s death just as strongly as the rest of their friends, save Mikasa and Armin, of course. And the world didn’t stop turning just because a genocide very nearly succeeded and its mastermind had died. For Reiner, it’s a wonder what time, politicking, and cleaning up can do to dull the pang of grief.
Armin collapses beside Mikasa at the grave, one hand atop Mikasa’s. His shoulders tremble. Armin has worked the hardest of them all, save for Historia perhaps, to help bring about the Peace Treaty they’re on the brink of realizing. It strikes Reiner then, as the first drops of Armin’s tears drip into the dirt, if Armin has been burying himself, if he’s been hiding from everything else.
If he's been pushing grief deep into the dirt, as if expecting it to sprout.
Reiner doesn’t begrudge him that. Eren, Mikasa, and Armin always came as a matching set, since the first time Reiner saw them. Three years back, they all shared Eren’s last words, and Reiner wonders if Armin isn’t the type to move on. Certainly Mikasa hasn’t, even if her downcast expression hasn’t changed much in the last decade.
They don’t stay for very long. Only long enough to each have their moment under the oak tree with Eren. Reiner waits until the others have all had their fill. The sun is slowly sinking towards the horizon, slanting long shadows across the small, silent grave.
Finally, after endless minutes wondering what the hell he even has to say to a dead man, Reiner says: “Eren, I know you did the best you could.”
It’s all he knows to say. Still, after years of trying to deprogram, his first instincts are about the mission. It’s frustrating, sure, but with nothing but a ghost for company, Reiner hopes it’s acceptable.
“We’ll take care of them for you, okay?”
He settles his hand on the tree trunk. Closes his eyes and breathes in the sharp smell of late summer grass, the damp petrichor of a storm brewing.
It’s a lovely funeral.
Historia’s carriage takes her back to the castle, and the rest of them go out for drinks afterwards. Reiner only goes because Jean will not shut up about it. He hides in the periphery of their group for most of the evening.
Reiner doesn’t drink much these days, as a general rule. It’s easier to let the demons win when he’s had one too many shots of liquor, but he’ll suffer an ale or two with friends as the cost for a social engagement.
Late into the night, when Reiner has switched to nursing a glass of water, a hand lands on his shoulder roughly.
“Surprised you’ve stayed out with us for this long,” Connie’s voice says from behind him.
At the end of a long, roughly-hewn wooden table with nothing but a window to his back, Reiner startles. He always forgets how quiet Connie gets when he wants to.
“It’s a special occasion,” Reiner tells him, hoping the shock doesn’t show in his voice.
Connie smiles. He slides onto the bench beside him, the overfull cup in his hands sloshing. It’s quieter here—one of the reasons he’s chosen this secluded area—but even still, he can hear Jean’s indignant shout over a rumble of laughter. Connie’s smile grows softer, his eyes straying towards the commotion.
Jean and Mikasa, at the bar. Jean is shouting at two strangers, his face flushed pink from embarrassment, anger, or drink. Then, a miracle happens.
Mikasa laughs.
The commotion around her seems to stop, just for a handful of heartbeats, as if even these strangers know something rare and precious has just occurred. The look on Jean’s face is priceless. Connie nudges Reiner in the ribs and nods towards the two of them.
“Jean is staying on Paradis,” he says in an undertone. “Don’t tell anyone he said so, but it’s because he wants to keep an eye on her.”
“Mikasa has never needed anyone to watch over her.”
Connie shrugs. They watch the group for a while, until someone hands Jean a glass of wine and the two meander back to their table. Armin and Levi wave the two back, and Reiner doesn’t miss the careful, judgemental glare Levi sends Reiner and Connie’s way.
“Looks like Jean won, in the end,” Connie sighs. He takes a long drink. “He’s the only one who got what he really wanted.”
Reiner rolls his eyes.
“What was that for!” Connie squawks when Reiner cuffs him on the side of the head.
“You’re a drunk and a fool,” he snaps.
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
Connie lapses into sullen silence at the reprimand.
“Armin’s going back to Marley,” Connie says quietly. “Although, he doesn’t want Mikasa to be alone.”
That catches Reiner by surprise, although with more thought, he’s not sure that it should. Armin’s flourished when the crises became more about words and schemes than cannibalism. With the government here settling, with Historia’s reign set to go down as the Era of Peace, it makes sense he’d want to go somewhere his unique talents would still be useful.
“You’ll be here, too,” Reiner says. “I’m sure Jean would prefer to stay with his friends than rub elbows with elite government officials for the rest of his life.”
Connie shrugs.
“It’s easy for me to be jealous, I think. The only thing I really wanted has been gone for a long time.”
Reiner stays silent. He’s always wanted to be the big brother, the one everyone comes to for reassurance and advice, but the truth is that he’s never been good about these sorts of conversations.
“All I wanted,” Connie whispers into the grain of the table, “is to eat a big meal with Sasha and her family. That’s all.”
“I know.”
It’s one of the only comforts Reiner can give. His hand settles on Connie’s shoulder, and he hopes it’s grounding.
“I’m not fit to be the Queen’s Consort.”
“Hmmm.”
“Do you think it would be better if—”
“You’ve still time to think it over, Connie,” Reiner finally says. Connie looks at him, his honey-brown eyes swimming. “But in the end, it is your choice.”
“What kind of choice is it when the Queen asks you to marry her?” Connie all but shouts. “What else could I say, Reiner?”
It’s only then that Connie wipes at the frustrated tears leaking down his face. Half his drink has been splattered on the table around them, and Reiner thinks it’s probably for the best. Gently, he switches their drinks, forming Connie’s fingers around the cold metal of Reiner’s cup.
“What kind of choice does Jean have, I wonder.” He tries to keep his voice gentle, because Connie’s right. For all that Eren gave his life to ensure their freedom, it sometimes feels like all their choices are still written in some tome somewhere, far away. “The woman he loves only has eyes for a pile of dirt under a tree.”
It brings a quiet huff of laughter to Connie, who takes a tentative sip of water.
“I suppose we’re all just figuring out what our Second-Best is, huh?”
“I suppose,” Reiner replies.
He wonders, briefly, if he ever had a Second-Best option for the final chapter of his life. For that matter, what his first, best option might have been. What is left after the war took almost everything from him? What is left for his mother? For his country? For the world?
Did Reiner ever have an idea of what his life would be like, after the war?
“Connie,” Jean’s voice cuts through the crowd like a slice of a sword. “Get over here already! Carry Reiner over if you have to!”
Connie smiles. It’s only a small, quivering slant of his mouth, but it’s an improvement. He stands, pulling Reiner up by the arm as he goes.
“Come on,” Connie whispers. “Help me with this one last mission.”
Reiner can’t help but laugh. He slings an arm around Connie’s shoulder, pulling him into a headlock as they go back to rejoin the group.
That night, Reiner considers taking a horse and disappearing. Not for any particular reason, save for the way his lungs constrict when he locks himself in his rooms, the way the walls seem to shrink around him. There is no one hunting him tonight, he reminds himself, but it’s hard to convince his central nervous system of that fact.
Especially so because his perpetually paranoid brain can’t entirely discount the idea either; there are enough Jaegerists still in the royal capital to put him on edge, never mind that their Jaeger has been in the ground for years. There is enough animosity towards him still, and humans all have long memories for betrayals.
But why would Reiner be important enough to track down now? he thinks, and it’s enough to still his frantic pacing.
And yet.
Annie and Pieck and even Marcel and Gabi can be forgiven; they weren’t the ones who first assaulted Paradis. None of them rammed their shoulders into Wall Maria’s gates and caused the first wave of suffering to come pouring into the world.
Paranoia is one of Reiner’s oldest friends. It’s served him well, listening to it whisper in his ear, and it’s why he ends up sneaking into the stables three hours before sunrise, the hood of his scouts cloak hiding the shine of his hair.
The gate to the stables is unlocked, left slightly ajar by careless hands. He slips in easily enough, then stops in his tracks when he spots another shadowy figure already haunting the horses.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Armin’s voice says from the darkness. “People will start to think we’re colluding.”
“Only if we’ve been followed,” Reiner says, not quite a tease. He takes a few careful steps, just until the shadows materialize more fully into Armin. Paranoia is fickle; it slides away with the small, answering smile that Armin sends his way. “I suppose you weren’t hoping for a midnight stroll around the castle?”
“Not at first.” His eyes flicker from the horse back to Reiner. “Perhaps I might now, with some company.”
“It’s easier to collude on horseback,” Reiner agrees mildly.
He finds a sleeping mare and coaxes her to waking, listens with half an ear to whatever Armin is doing behind him.
The night air isn’t anymore refreshing than it was ten minutes ago, but something about grabbing hold of the reins makes everything lighter, somehow. He and Armin lock eyes, and Armin smiles, something foreign and almost wicked in the gleam of it. He takes off at a gallop, easily jumping the gate at the far end of the enclosure. Reiner doesn’t hesitate to follow after.
They race for a few minutes, until they crest a hill and the castle drops out of view. The rush of the wind blows back his hood, and Reiner leaves it for now. Armin is keeping pace with him at his side, his cornflower hair spilling behind him in a wave as they gallop.
When they slow, Reiner leads them off the cobblestone roads and into a sparse thicket. The buildings disappear from view after a while, and something lifts off of Reiner's shoulders.
They don’t speak for a long time.
It’s not a conscious choice, when they stop at what used to be Wall Sina. They crest another hill, and the view is so different that for a moment Reiner believes they’ve somehow left Paradis entirely. What was once abandoned altogether has been parceled out into farmland: a plot of land with twenty or so sheep idly grazing, two or three plots with barley or wheat only just beginning to ripen for the autumn harvest. Farther south, a few horses bury their noses in the grass, hardly more than smudges of shadow.
To their right, less than a kilometer off, a grove of saplings has been freshly planted, looking more like overgrown weeds than proper trees save for the meticulously straight lines they’ve been arranged in. Their little branches splay upwards, tiny fingers reaching up towards the sun. Reiner knows nothing about farming nor fatherhood, but the infantile reaching of the little trees stirs something aching in his gut.
“Will the trees survive the coming winter?” he can’t help but ask.
“Historia mentioned how resilient their cultivar was, I believe,” Armin replies. He too, is eyeing the frail, reaching limbs, his smile wistful. “They should be fine. A few of them even flowered last spring.”
Reiner swallows. He has no right to feel protective of a grove of trees he didn’t plant—that he’ll never see bloom—but still, the emotion rises up in him, inevitable as the coming dawn.
“Ume trees are hardy,” Armin continues into the wavering silence. “It’s part of why she chose them, I think.”
Tiny little things. Young and delicate. Reiner is no farmer; he hardly has any will to keep himself alive most days, let alone dozens of rows of neatly spaced trees.
Still, it doesn’t stop the delicate, protective feeling from wrapping itself around his lungs.
He doesn’t know how one can do it, but he can easily see why one would want to.
From somewhere behind, the morning wakes.
Weak grey light spills into the valley; for an awful moment, Reiner thinks of the seconds before Bertholt would change into Colossus, the horrible white light that would creep up on the world, and he has to breathe through how dizzy it makes him. How he wants to run. How he wants to cover those small trees, to save them from the impact zone. The skin of his shoulders itches, where the armour used to be thickest, as if urging him on.
“Reiner?”
He blinks; blinks again until it’s just this: a slow creeping sunrise on a hill. Armin watches him with a sharp look, worried and knowing, but nonjudgmental. It’s that, more than anything, that makes Reiner reply.
“It’ll be nice. To have something so close that has never known the Titan’s Terror.”
“Nice, yes,” Armin echoes. His eyes drift back over to the small copse of trees, lingering for a long moment. He sighs, and Reiner thinks he knows the feeling. “Let’s head back. They’ll be looking for us soon.”
They don’t bother pushing the horses even into a canter, instead meandering along the countryside as the sunlight warms from grey to pink to yellow.
“It’s strange,” Armin says into their unhurried silence. “It feels like everyone else is finally putting roots down.”
“Something to do with healing, I suppose,” Reiner replies.
It feels like a cop-out of an answer, but he really doesn’t know what to say, not when he himself has never had his roots planted firmly in any sort of soil. What would Reiner reach for? Would something ache the way he does for those little trees? Would someone answer, if he reached up grasping arms for them?
Armin laughs. The soft tinkle of sound pulls Reiner out of the swirling thoughts. Armin’s cheeks are flushed pink, whether from the wind or the exertion or from some unknown emotion. When he smiles at Reiner, it feels a bit like a curtain call for the sunrise.
Again, again, he thinks.
“I suppose so,” Armin says, in a way that seems like it should be teasing, even if Reiner doesn’t know what the joke is. “What do you think that’s like? Healing?”
Reiner stifles his own laugh, half-startled. Of the remaining scouts that survived their Various Ordeals, Reiner always knew he’d be the last to find peace, if he ever did. That Armin counts himself as another is surprising.
Would have been surprising, if he’d said so before setting sail to Paradis. But now? It feels a bit like a curtain has been pulled somewhere, and Reiner wonders how long he’s gone without noticing. How long it’s been for Armin, to put on the same mask Reiner wears and pretend at being whole.
“Whatever the hell Levi-Taichou’s doing, is my guess.”
Armin lets out another bark of laughter, and Reiner surprises himself with how satisfied it makes him, to know he caused it.
When at last the stables come into view, Reiner spots two smudges in the early morning light, waving towards them. From their silhouettes, Reiner guesses Gabi and Jean.
“Everyone else,” Reiner repeats after a moment, remembering the wording from Armin’s first question. He chances another glance towards Armin, who is waving down at their friends. “Not you?”
Steel-blue eyes flicker back to Reiner. Jean’s irritable voice drifts up to them, wordless, but Reiner ignores him for now, preferring to watch the subtle play of emotions that flit across Armin’s expressive face.
“If the walls hadn’t hemmed me in, I wonder what I would have been like,” Armin starts. “I’d always fantasized about things outside of the walls. The ocean, mountains, deserts. In the last seconds before his death, Eren—he showed me those things. It was wonderful.”
And not enough, Reiner doesn’t say. He can see the end of the thought plain as day on Armin’s face. For his part Reiner (always looking up at the topmost edge of a chain link fence) stopped dreaming of anything except his old curse years ago.
“It’s lucky we’re not trees, or potatoes,” Reiner quips, lighthearted enough to pull the wistful frown off of Armin’s face. At his confusion, Reiner adds, “We don’t need our roots buried in the dirt to thrive, after all.”
And then, because something about that feels too embarrassing, he kicks at his horse and canters down the hill.
The days melt into each other, as their rhythm aboard the ship slowly turns into a routine. Days into weeks into months. It’s hard for him to keep track, when the day-to-day minutiae no longer include crises, death, or destruction. He’s struggled even after Eren’s genocide, when all that remained was the political maneuvering.
Reiner has spent too many years in Marley worrying about the next generation of warriors to not want a hand in everything that came in the aftermath of The Rumbling, even if he hates it, in practice. His opinion still holds value no matter what he tries to say, but he’s made peace with that fact, if it means he can help his people in some way.
So he’s gotten used to looking at the big picture, has always been good at worrying over his comrades, but when it comes to everything else, like budgets or lists or tasks, Reiner’s always struggled.
Now though, it feels like there is no bigger picture. It leaves him un-moored, literally and figuratively.
Even years ago, Reiner always liked how methodical Armin could be. Reiner always felt like he was playing at being a leader himself, and trivial things like dates and times and supply information never stuck in his brain. Watching Armin pour over handwritten logs reminds him of his own inadequacy, if only in the stark difference between the two of them.
“We’ll need to resupply in a week or so,” Armin says into the silence.
He doesn’t look up yet, tapping the short stub of his charcoal pencil against the edge of the desk. The single kerosene lamp sputters, and Reiner wonders if oil is on their list as he considers the map pinned to the wall on the other side of the room. They’ve left the wooden door open to let in the last of the evening sunlight, but even still, the room feels musty and gloomy. Reiner thinks of Levi, then wonders when the last time either of them swept or mopped the decks, then wonders about their supply of soap.
“Reiner?”
Reiner blinks. Armin is watching him now, something in the tilt of his brow that feels like a clue to a question that hasn’t been asked yet.
“Sorry, ask me again.”
Instead, Armin puts his pencil down.
“Are you doing okay? You’ve been spacing out and distracted for days now.”
“Have I been?”
Armin rolls his eyes; a teasing smile on his face Reiner doesn’t expect. It’s a good look on him. Reiner feels an answering smile slip up his mouth, and even though it feels foreign, it’s easy to give back to Armin.
“Maybe we’ll add coffee to the shopping list, when we resupply next,” Armin says instead of a response.
It’s light, clearly teasing, and Reiner can’t help but laugh.
No one ever told him Armin was funny.
“You took a liking to coffee too, you know.”
Armin’s smile grows, from teasing to pleased.
“Who do you think drank up our supply?”
“Can you blame me, then, for being so distractible?” Reiner says. “Cleary, I’ve been going through withdrawals.”
Armin lets it go, after that. Silence grows between them, and though it’s not uncomfortable, something doesn’t quite settle in his stomach.
“I’d tell you,” he says suddenly, surprising even himself. Armin looks up at him again from where he’s gone back to pouring over inventory notes, and his eyes flash in the lamplight. “If I was doing…badly, I guess. I’d want you to know.”
“I’m glad.”
It sounds like he means it, too. Reiner doesn’t quite know what to do with that. Warmth pools at the back of his neck, where he burned earlier, but instead of the itchy, prickling sensation he's gotten used to, this is almost pleasant.
“It goes both ways, you know,” Reiner finds himself saying, swallowing down his fear in the only way he knows how: all at once, before he can talk himself out of it. “I'd want to know if you were doing badly.”
Armin flushes quite prettily, Reiner thinks. The way Historia used to back in training.
“Okay.”
Several octaves higher goes his voice, and it makes Reiner clench his jaw. Makes him feel all of fifteen again: the urge to poke, prod, hear it again.
He'd always been the type to pull pigtails, after all. Armin still smiles through the pink flush, small and pleased. He doesn't respond, just goes back to pouring over his notes. Reiner watches the flush slowly recede from the tips of his ears. The smile stays on his face for much longer.
“We're not too far from Madrea,” Reiner says, not quite ready to stop listening to Armin’s voice. “Two weeks out, I think. Have you ever had a Madrean Fig?” At the shake of Armin’s head, he continues, “They're bigger and sweeter than the ones back home. I think you'll like them.”
“All right,” is Armin’s reply. He's smiling again. Reiner doesn't know how he keeps making Armin smile, but he's glad for it either way. “Tomorrow, we can set a course for Madrea.”
It's not until later that night, when Reiner collapses onto his hammock to sleep the few hours before dawn away, that he notices his slip.
The ones back home. In Marley, one could only get sun-dried figs because of the war, and they'd only get the cast-off rations at that. Reiner could never quite stomach the texture. In Paradis, one could pluck a bright red fig off the trees in the fields inside Wall Rose, smaller than the length of his thumb and milder than what he’d been used to before that.
The ones back home.
Reiner isn't sure which ones he’d meant.
On the last day of their scheduled talks, Connie gives Historia his answer. An hour after lunchtime, when Armin goes over their week-long agenda and has confirmed that everything they’ve wanted to discuss has been addressed, Connie abruptly stands. His eyes are twin pinpricks of black, shrunken in fear, but still he bows.
“I can’t guarantee you more children,” he says, resolutely staring down at the floor. “I’ve never. That is. I can’t. With anyone. But, but if you’ll have me anyway—”
Historia blinks. A slow smile spreads over her face as she stands. A few confident steps draws her towards Connie, where she settles her hand on his sholuder. He looks up, startled.
“I have an heir already,” she tells him. “I don’t need another.”
Connie stands to his full height again. He’s flushed bright red.
“Right,” he chokes. “Then. All right then.”
One of the attendants that always follows the Queen appears at her elbow, and Historia whispers something to her that Reiner doesn’t catch.
“We’d like to announce the match at the Gala tonight.” Historia’s bright eyes flicker to each of them in attendance, just for a moment, before landing back on Connie. “Would that be alright?”
“Of course,” Onyakopon says, gently elbowing a floundering Connie in the ribs to encourage him to sit back down. “We’d be honored to end our visit to Paradis on such a joyous note.”
“Before the gossip can spread,” Pieck adds with a wink. “There have already been some rumors in the capital that the Queen will be taking on a Consort. We wouldn’t want anyone else to get their hopes up unnecessarily.”
Historia laughs. The group continues on, as if nothing remarkable has been mentioned. Finally, when Reiner realizes that the topic has been summarily dropped, he says, “What Gala?”
The Gala has been on their itinerary this entire time, Reiner learns in the ensuing chaos. They’ve spoken of it multiple times over the course of the week, although Reiner suspects that was while they’d broken up into small groups with Historia’s advisors, in the middle of the week when Reiner had given up trying to pay attention and a storm raged outside the windows.
Gabi and Falco laugh at him. Pieck, Annie, and Onyakopon roll their eyes. Jean shouts something that, for the sake of Reiner’s blood pressure, he pretends he didn’t catch. The only two allies of his, it seems, are Armin and Connie, who are both looking into the middle distance.
“We couldn’t let everyone leave without a proper sendoff,” Historia adds with an easy smile on her face.
Reiner wonders at how much of a send-off it would be, now that he thinks of it, when more of their group has decided to settle down than sail back to Marley.
Right. Well. Reiner supposes he can do a fancy party, if it’s the last thing he does here.
Can he, though?
That night, Reiner weighs the costs and benefits of disappearing into the night, or stealing a ship to take him back to Marley on his own, or even briefly, finding Armin’s rooms to chat with him—a new instinct born from only a few nights in each other’s company (isn’t that interesting?). Eventually, he has to grudgingly admit that it would be much more trouble that it’s worth to attempt to weasel his way out of it, especially since he’s given Connie in particular such a hard time about honor and duty.
Still, it makes his stomach churn, to put on his dress uniform, as if it were something to be proud of, as if he’s someone worth celebrating, as if—
A knock sounds at his door. Reiner pulls away from the little mirror in his bathroom with one lingering look at the row of medals on his lapel. Another knock more urgent this time, and a familiar voice on the other end that calls, “If you’re not in there, Reiner, then you won’t care if I break down your door to check! You can’t sneak out of this party if I can’t!”
Reiner swings open his door, and Gabi freezes with one heeled foot reared back into a kick. She stumbles, hands coming unconsciosly to the intricate topknot her hair has been fashioned into. It wobbles dangerously on the top of her head, but it stays elegant as she scowls at him.
His cousin is positively resplendent in a slate grey dress, the folds of its skirt spilling around her like a storybook princess. She’s bright pink when he tells her that, although the silly grin on her face betrays her when she huffs at him and tells him to shut his mouth.
Reiner laughs at her, then laughs some more when Falco rounds a corner in the hallway, stops dead, and drops his jaw almost down to the floor.
“You look beautiful, Gabi,” Falco breathes, and Gabi smacks him over the head for it.
“Not you too!” she squeaks.
“Save the bickering for after the party,” Reiner tells them, ushering them both away from his messy personal rooms. “Come on, we’re already running late.”
“Rich, coming from you,” Gabi teases. She slips her hand into Falco’s, her blush going from pink to scarlet. Falco looks austere in his dress blues, save for the dumbfounded, happy look on his face. “We thought we’d have to drag you into your formal wear tonight.”
“I’d never dream of it,” Reiner lies, and the two of them laugh along.
The Gala is held in a wing of the building Reiner has never wandered down. It’s beautiful, shining white marble and practically glittering from the crystal sculputres that line the walls. They’re late, which is Reiner’s saving grace, as he can easily slip away when Gabi and Falco are called over to a larger group.
Historia is sitting at the far end of the room, her young son at her side. Jean, Connie, and Mikasa have a small fanclub forming around them, which Reiner resolutely steers clear of. Armin he spots briefly at the buffet table, and he starts heading that way before Pieck wraps an arm around his neck.
“Dance with me, you fool,” she says, her breath already thick with alcohol.
“Do we have to?”
Pieck laughs at him, steering him onto the mostly empty space in the center of the room. A dozen couples are dancing, spinning in slow circles to the delicate crooning of a handful of string instruments in a tucked away corner somewhere. Pieck has chosen to wear the dress uniform as well, except the crisp blue lines of her outfit somehow manage to look rumpled.
She smiles at him, though, and Reiner forgets to tease her about it.
“Don’t look so depressed, Reiner,” Pieck tells him as the song winds down to a close. “It’s not like the world’s ending, and all of your friends are leaving you forever.”
Reiner chooses not to respond to her, even as she huffs a laugh. She presses a kiss to his cheek.
“Go talk to your friends,” she mumbles. “They’re already talking about how much they’re going to miss you.”
Reiner doubts it, but he lets Pieck slip out of his hold and disappear into the crowd. On the other side of the ballroom, his friends have finally broken away from the group, so Reiner heads over to them. Armin isn’t at the buffet table anymore, although Reiner isn’t sure where he’s wandered off to.
The night passes in a surprisingly pleasant blur. So long as he tunes out the strangers nearby, he can enjoy one last night with his friends before he leaves them for Marley in the morning.
Then, Historia asks him to dance. Connie laughs at the look on his face, and Jean pushes him out of his seat onto the dancefloor after her. The crowd parts for the Queen without question, and Reiner thinks that he’ll surely trip over his own feet with the way he can feel so many eyes on him.
The orchestra starts up a song, Reiner slides a hand over the small of Historia’s back, and together, they glide slowly around the dancefloor. They dance in silence for most of the song, before Historia finally looks up at him.
“You’ll be leaving in the morning, then?”
He nods.
“My mother is back on Marley,” he says, in a strange echo of Annie from a few days ago. The look on Historia’s face is just as difficult for Reiner to parse this time around. “And, there’s no place for me here, anymore.”
Historia hums. She opens her mouth as if to say something, then snaps it shut again.
“Promise me to look after Armin,” Historia finally whispers.
He watches the way the jewels sparkle in her hair as he spins her, distracted from her words for a moment by the way she shines. Then—
“Armin?”
“You two will be the only ones from the scouts leaving Paradis, it seems.”
“I was never a scout,” Reiner replies automatically, and Historia steps on his foot with her remarkably pointy heels. He changes tactics. “Armin is staying on Paradis.”
“He’s boarding the ship to Marley tomorrow,” she says, and for some reason, it makes her sad.
Her eyes go pink, as if tears might well up, and Reiner thinks that if anyone catches him making the Queen cry at her own party, he might be executed on the spot.
“I’d thought he would want to stay here, with Annie.”
Historia sighs.
“Annie is more like me than I’d thought,” she starts, cryptically. Around them, the music swells, and Reiner dutifully spins her again. The white of her skirt billows out around her like a sheet of fog on an icy day. When she’s back in his arms, she says, “Hitch has bought an acre of land out beyond the old border of Wall Rose. I believe she’s asked Annie and her father to stay with her.”
Reiner thinks of Annie, her sharp profile stark in the midafternoon sun, staring out over the back of a cart on their way to a funeral. He wonders if that’s what she’d been trying to tell him, if she’d lost her nerve.
“Oh.”
“I’m glad she feels well enough to admit to the things she wants,” Historia begins.
When Reiner blinks back down at her, he can see that her glossy eyes aren’t seeing him at all. Not him, nor the ballroom around them. Stuck, perhaps, in some make-believe world where Ymir wasn’t eaten for the curse running through her veins.
“I’ll do my best,” he says, although he wonders if she even hears him.
The music winds down, and a single haunting note of a violin ends the song. There’s a brief smattering of applause for the band, and Reiner steps back, holds her delicate hand at arm’s length.
She says, “I'm sorry it couldn't be you, Reiner.”
She's not looking at him this time, but over to where Connie and Jean are whispering in a corner of the ballroom. They're too wrapped up in their conversation to notice, and maybe that's why, when Historia smiles, it’s a little sad. A little indulgent.
“I'm used to it,” Reiner whispers.
“I thought it would be more of a kindness this way. For you.”
Reiner thinks of Ymir’s face, tear-streaked but content when she faced down Porco’s horrible, senseless titan form, the wistful look in her eyes as they crossed the sea to Marley that near forgotten night not nearly so long ago.
“A kindness,” he repeats in a whisper. He bows, low and respectful, pressing a kiss to the tips of her fingers. “Thank you, your Majesty, for such a gift.”
Lets go cleanly, with no hesitation.
His voice hardly wobbles.
“Reiner,” she starts, but when he straightens, something in his expression must make her hold her tongue.
He nods. His leather boots hardly make a sound on the brilliantly polished floor, and the strings begin a new song that swallows up anything else she might say as he retreats.
Even after all this time, it still stings to discover that not only were you not the first nor second choice, you were never really in the running to begin with.
As Reiner retreats, he doesn't notice the pair of crystalline blue eyes that follow him out.