victory_road | If it ever came down to exerting power by force, it would mean I'd already lost. [closed]

Entry tags:

If it ever came down to exerting power by force, it would mean I'd already lost. [closed]

Who: Armin Arlert & Annie Leonheart
Where: Ecruteak
When: Slightly backdated to the 20th
Summary: Trading kicks for information
Rating: PG
Log:

Dawn in Ecruteak, Armin realises, is cold.

Standing in the shadow of the poke-centre, he blows on his hands, wishing he had brought those gloves Mr Newt had given him for last Christmas. It's not a huge matter. Soon, when the sun will have risen properly, and Annie will be subjecting him to her training, he's certain he'll be quite warm enough. Still, he has come prepared - more or less. He might lack gloves, but his normal nerdy fashion has been left behind, instead exchanged for a warm jacket and pants, the sort people normally wear when going for a jog. He's even got a layered shirt underneath, should the jacket become to warm as they spar.

Stifling a soft cough --he's more or less recovered from the horrendous flu that had laid him flat and had pushed back this meeting, a slight lingering cough and weakness in his legs notwithstanding-- he peers around, trying to spot Annie. Admittedly, part of him still expects her to back out of this deal at the last minute. He knows there is little in it for her. Unless, perhaps, there is a part of Annie that wants to tell her story. He's heard it said confession is good for the soul.

Though, if that is the case, he hardly counts like a priest.

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Nor is he dressed like much of one, were Annie asked; pure bullshit on her part, since she has no concept of what is or isn't part of the trappings of a priest. Yet confessions, and her story, are not things she wants to tell so much as the landscape of what she can control. She needs to keep Bertolt and Reiner's truths far from Armin, the too perceptive young man that he is. She needs to keep a hand on the lead rope she hopes he understands is around his neck, to tug hard toward what she does and doesn't want him to see.

Make it an oversight, she tells herself. Give Armin no more than what she can damage control.

Give Armin her story, if she must, in the end. There's precious little about it that she sees as worthwhile. One fragile, cowardly girl facing against a world she'd always known was lying, and standing up to nothing. Eren never will understand, she doesn't think.

She leaves most of her team elsewhere when she does meet up with Armin, Lute at her side, but even Arlert missing. If he looks, he'd find Arlert perched in line of sight of where he stands, keeping her curious distance as Annie had asked.

She likes Arlert. She doesn't want to conflate the two, not in words or anything else. Armin is Armin, and he is dangerous to her, in ways he doesn't know. Arlert likes food and battles and keeping watch. She's fond of that bird. She would be a good person for her sake, and it wouldn't lead her down paths ending in darkness.

She's dressed in loose pants tucked into ankle-high boots she's been wearing in the last few weeks, now finally shaping themselves to her feet. Her hair is pulled back into its tight, messy bun as usual; she wears a hooded sweatshirt, not so different than the way she dressed during downtime as a trainee. Her comfort is something hard won for herself. She's always close to being able to shut the world out like this, and she likes it that way. The cold that brushes the shell of her ears, the length of her nose, her chin, her eyelashes, her lips, isn't unusual. She's used to it with camping as she travels, feeling it more in her bare hands as she pulls them out of her pockets than she will before long.

She angles across the street, coming to a stop outside of polite conversational space, Lute at her side.

"So you did show."

She has hoped he might not.

She really should've known Armin would show. Prying Armin away from a source of information is a harder task than prying Sasha away from a juicy roast. Even if the knowledge is painful and world-shattering, he'll show; to him, the sting of ignorance is worse than the pain truth might bring."

"So did you." A little awkward perhaps. It's a strange situation they are in now. Not friends, not quite enemies. A very thin truce without much trust on either side. "I apologise for having to reschedule before.."

Though, really, maybe Annie hadn't minded that much. Armin had minded though. Partially because he had so many questions, and partially because he had been really concerned that the more time Annie would have to think this whole deal over, the higher the chance of her rethinking it.

"... Why?"

It's a blunt question, for much the reasons they're both aware of. "It's not like you were standing me up for a date. If it were, my poor heart," she adds, lifting a hand to rest over her chest, where her inverted fist would be were she saluting, "Would simply break."

It wasn't breaking over having more time away from this. She sighs, her hand dropping away from her chest. Lute leans in to her leg, a subtle movement, and she turns her head away. "Come on. Let's get going."

She picks up to a jog with zero fanfare, heading away from the Pokemon Centre and along the streets, slowly winding out of town. She doesn't look back to find Armin. She also isn't going fast, which is a concession to him on several levels she won't be choosing to discuss.

If he can't keep up with a light jog, he's not going to be able to fight today. That's her metric, even as she's technically warming them both up.

Edited (phrasing is a brat) 2018-11-25 07:33 (UTC)

"I just didn't want you to think I wasn't taking this seriously. Or backing out."

Honestly, if it had been up to Armin, he would've made it to their first meeting, fever or no fever. This was simply too important to let something as minor and inconvenient as a bad flu get in the way of things. Of course, Shiro hadn't seen it that way. And seeing as Armin was intent on keeping the nature of these meetings secret, he had had little chance of arguing with him.

When Annie starts to jog away, Armin can't do anything but follow her. Thankfully, while he hasn't been undergoing daily training here, he does get enough exercise (mostly through swimming and diving) that he can keep up with her well enough.

"I assumed that's what I was contacted for," she said dryly, the last thing she ended up saying before their jog through the city.

Annie spends time both at the PokeCentres and camping outside the city proper at the start of the routes, but today, she has them winding toward Libera where she grazes near their combined gear. A litleo snoozes on top of Annie's pack, one paw dangling in the air and twitching as they dream.

She slows and walks in a circle to cool down, shaking out her arms and then stretching as she glances over to Armin, assessing his condition overall. Arlert is still nowhere to be found.

"Stretch however you want, and we'll get started." Which is like saying they'll get started on Annie making Armin intimately aware of what the ground in this area, somewhat springy with cold, dead grass, feels like. (He's welcome.)

(It'll be his pleasure. Or something.)

Armin managed to keep up with Annie without too much issue. Of course, it wasn't such a long jog. Certainly, nothing compared to their long stamina building, rain-soaked runs back home. Especially when the only thing he is wearing is a small pack on his back with his pokemon and a few odds and ends. He's breathing a bit heavier than Annie, true, but he is nowhere near collapsing or throwing up, both things he has done in the past after Shadis' terror runs, so he figures he's doing okay enough.

When they arrive at the place where Annie's gear and pokemon are, he allows his pack to slide onto the grass near to them, before he switches to doing the stretches he recalls from their time in the army. And while his stamina might still be fairly similar, there is no denying he's gotten a bit stiffer. Not that he was ever all that flexible, to begin with, but these days, the only time he gets flexible is when he curls up in an armchair with a book. He's certainly not doing daily stretches, trying to reach his toes.

(He might have to start those again.)

When he's ready-- or rather, as ready as he feels he can be, he falls into the standard position they had been taught back in the army for dealing with hand to hand combat. There is an odd mixture of stubbornness and resignation in his eyes - stubbornness because he's going to last through this for a chance at getting answers to his questions; resignation because he knows he'll be tasting grass very soon.

Annie watches him, arms up to protect her head, balanced forward on the balls of her feet which are shoulder width apart. Her form has always been good, a natural flow of muscle memory drilled into her since before she can remember.

It's the resignation that irritates her into moving. She's fast, and she knows she's fast, moving forward and reaching for his arm, pulling him forward if she gets her hand hold around his forearm. She's done this again and again with people much taller than he is, and people much heavier: pull them back and sideways, use the force of her momentum to direct theirs, sweeping with her leg to cut his out from under him. It's not gentle. It's not hard hitting, but it's fast and sudden and shocking, if she pulls it off. He'll be flipped and on his back, Annie running a hand over her hair and walking away without saying a word. She doesn't go far, maybe two meters or so, before she glances back, lips pressed into a thin line.

She still thinks he's a glutton for punishment. In her present mood, she might even make sure he's aware of it, but maybe not. There's no satisfaction out of any of this, because it doesn't effect the Armin who walked her into an ambush alongside Eren and Mikasa. It doesn't touch the Armin who was made into the holder of the very power that had destroyed his hometown. It doesn't let her wake up and find her father. It absolves nothing, not even her own guilt and fear.

"You know what it's like being trapped by the bullshit ideals of people who lie to protect their power, don't you."

There is really nothing Armin can do to defend himself from Annie's strikes and sweeps. He tries employing what they were taught, but he was never all that good at hand to hand combat, and he is well aware he's taking on one of the best here. Annie hadn't necessarily ranked the highest in their class, but Armin is well aware that that had more to do with her attitude than any lack of skill on her part.

The impact with the ground knocks the breath out of him, and for a moment he lies there, trying to suck air back into his lungs, before he rolls back onto his knees with a soft groan, rising back to his feet. He isn't sure how being flipped endlessly (which he expects to be the outcome of all of this) will help train him, but if that is what Annie wants him to do in return for his answers, he'll do it.

He raises his hands again, ready for another strike, though her words distract him for a moment. "I think everyone who lives within the walls knows what that is like, even if many might not be aware of it."

She watches him shift to his knees and then his feet, only raising her arms after his hands are up. This time, she makes no move toward him. She'd already proven her first point; at any time, she can see him on his back. The rest is up to him.

"If they aren't aware of it, do they really know they're trapped?"

Knowing they were lied to on some details, big or small, sure. People grow up to eventually realise there is very limited honesty in the world around them, particularly in the power structures. Or maybe she's just pessimistic about the tendency of those in power to lie.

Then again, the King ruled Paradis as a puppet, the real royals hidden somewhere she'd still been searching for,until Eren made himself their newer, easier to reach target.

"A truth doesn't change just because you aren't aware of it." After all, Annie had still been the Female Titan even when they hadn't known about it.

He shifts slightly on the balls of his feet, weighing his chances, waiting to see if she'll strike. He'd much rather talk, really. This isn't his forte. But he doubts Annie is going to give him that luxury. If he doesn't put proper effort in, it is just as likely she won't put effort into answering his questions.

Digging his heel into the dirt for a moment, he then pushes forward, the move painfully straightforward. It might be the sort of move you could overwhelm an untrained (geriatric) civilian with, but a skilled fighter like Annie? He knows he is headed for another thump into the ground.

"How you respond to that truth does," she says instead, still waiting. When he does push forward, making a move, and Annie waits until the last moment to redirect, twisting with Armin to pull him into a headlock. She puts no pressure on his throat, but hauls him back a step, held close, speaking low by his ear.

"How you respond to the lies does too. What would your determination have been like if you knew since before you could walk that everything you were was considered dirty, devilish, and barbaric? What would your dreams have been like if you knew from before you could talk that the world outside the Walls wanted you dead?"

Armin feels something twinge in his back when Annie pulls him back, but between her generous hold on his throat --he knows that if she wanted to, she could easily limit his oxygen, or even throw him, as he had seen her do so easily before-- and the scant few extra centimetres he has on her, the hold is not too uncomfortable.

"I think I would wonder what I had done to deserve such things. Why would it be right to blame me for something my ancestors have done? How could people that have never met me judge me? I'd like to think I'd try and meet with them. Talk to them. If they are going to hate me, I'd rather be hated for who I am than who they expect me to be." Annie's breath fanning over the curve of his ear makes him shiver. Just a physical reaction.

His voice drops a bit, growing soft, just slightly coaxing. "Is that what it was like for you? Where you grew up?"

If she makes anything of the shiver, it's slated automatically toward distaste and or fear. Not that she'd apologise for it. At least not in the ways she can.

She breathes out in a soft sigh by his ear, frustrated for reasons she cannot articulate. "Yes," she says, letting go of her hold on him as she near dances herself back, taking away any and all support she'd been providing. It's up to him to catch his balance. "Though I always knew it was bullshit." Just like she said during hand to hand combat training. Just like she's said to the warriors she can't let him know about.

"We were supposed to hate you the most out of anyone. Paradis was the worst of us. The most hedonistic. The most barbaric. A lawless land that killed for the sheer joy of it."

And she had always considered that the bullshit it was. Even as a child, she could see there was no logical reason for it to be true; that fear of what Paradis could do to the world kept them safe, kept those people safe, but also surrounded by what the cost of leaving people behind meant. One did not drop titans off on an island just to punish the criminals turned into mindless slaves to a hunger they could never sate. Paradis was a complicated fear, a complex problem. They'd been sent in to try and find information for a solution.

If there was that purpose, if there'd always been that purpose, then she'd always known there was a people to infiltrate, as human as they were. As human as she wanted to be considered, long after her humanity was called into question.

"You're the monsters lurking in the night for us. Almost funny, when you think about it."

Annie pulling back unbalances him, and he awkwardly has to take a step backwards, pinwheeling his arms before he manages to regain his balance by luck more than skill.

"I guess, monsters always turn out to be people in the end." Both in that terrifying, large than life monsters can turn out to have a very human core and motives, making them no different than anyone else on the street, but also that those same people on the street could be a worse enemy than any monster in a fireside tale could ever be.

"I never wanted to be anyone's monster. And I don't think you wanted to be that either." Armin's feelings towards Annie are complicated and tangled. There is still the hurt of betrayed trust and fear that she might, somehow, prove a threat to anyone else he holds dear. But at the same time, there are the years of, if not friendship, then at least familiarity. The knowledge that she can give him answers he won't be able to find anywhere else, and yes, sympathies. Awkward and complicated sympathies.

Perhaps they will keep her talking.

"Last time you told me, King Fritz took his people to our island, build the walls and then erased our memories. But what I don't understand is why. What prompted him to do such a thing? Is it related to why we are seen as such monsters?"

The consideration of what monsters are sits on the back of her tongue, and she swallows the words for now. Listens to his answer, waits ready, but keeps her arms at her sides. Sees if Armin initiates with an attack, or stays alone with his words, glad he's kept his balance. There's a degree of satisfaction she gets in sending people flying, leaving them flat on their backs, but it's not because of a need to see her own skills in action.

Respect is tied in there. Frustration. Irritation. Love. Not so much for the people in her life these days as the complicated mess of her relationship with her father; she loves him, and she knows he's never understood her, and likely never will.

"The stories are conflicting. I'm sure you can imagine why," she says, taking a step forward, studying his posture. "But it's most likely true that King Fritz withdrew because he was tired of the fighting. No more wars, no more infighting for the warriors, something like that. He sat on his island and commanded Titans to be Walls, and left a threat hanging over the world's head. If Paradis was disturbed, the Titans would be awoken and sent to trample the world to dust."

Her foot comes down, firm, the crunch of dried grasses underneath a small protest to the motion. "The royal bloodline has the ability to control all Titans. Only them, and they were in hiding in a place no one could reach. You're intelligent. You tell me if you think that's related."

There's no warning when she does move, fast and quick to not only take hold of his arm, but to aim to use her momentum to flip him over, letting go and making no move to break his fall. She doesn't want him speaking right in that moment, not when she stands over him with an unreadable expression on her face, the sun rising behind her head.

"Monsters are always people in the end. Shitty or special, complacent or rebellious. What's annoying is you can't even remember what made you mine." Her monster, she means, and she knows he can likely understand that in her phrasing, if not why. Her shoulders are tense, everything about her tight and dangerous and even sad, even resigned. Then Lute makes a small, soothing noise from across the area. Annie looks down at Armin, shoulders relaxing, eyes closing, and she turns away, walking toward Lute without a word.

Armin's posture is open, too open really to anticipate another attack. But where he is paying barely any attention to her movements, his brain is completely engaged with her words, trying to absorb every detail and commit it to memory. Later, when he gets home, he'll commit it all to paper too, using some of those codes Dipper has been teaching him, but for now, his memory will have to do.

Though really, even if Armin had been paying full attention to Annie's moves, he likely would never have been able to counter her attack. She is simply too skilled and quick for him. From one moment to the next, Annie's hand is on his arm and then he is on his back again, the air driven out of him, and Annie standing above him like a creature of vengeance and regret.

When she turns away to walk towards Lute, he pushes up into a seated position. "You could tell me."

It's not the same and he knows it. But it is the only thing he can offer.

"I could." Her agreement comes after a long pause, her hand brushing over the top of Lute's head. "I won't be able to tell you the whys of most of it. You know that."

She won't try to explain his behaviour, or anyone else's. She has her guesses, and it was an ambush, a trap, plain and simple. It was his choice to plead for her to come with him and Mikasa and Eren. Eren was the bait. Mikasa was the assurance, because she moved faster, did not hesitate, and had never been easy with Annie.

Though she knew on some level, both trusted each other's capacity for action, and skill with observation. At least when it came to Eren.

Annie turns back around, gesturing for him to stand. "You have good balance when you're not thinking about it. Fighting like this has never been about strength, Armin. Just interest, and yours remains abysmal."

It's insulting, but she doesn't know how to say that except to send him tumbling again and again. He doesn't really want to learn. He just wants information, and it misses all the artistry that can be found in what she didn't consider a basic violence. (It all became violence in the end, but so did his words.)

"I'm fairly sure the whole plan started as your idea. Says something for how the Survey Corps was feeling that Erwin and the rest decided to act on that. You're not that charismatic, really, but you've always been... good at piecing things together. I didn't expect it'd have you backing me into a corner. Not as quickly as it did." She pauses, one arm crossing her chest. She doesn't notice the defensive gesture, but she's shoring herself up, cutting herself off. "Eren was the bait. It was up to you to sell me on swallowing the lure."

Her eyes refocus on Armin, her arm dropping away from her chest.

If Annie means to land insult with her comment on his interest in fighting, she misses by a mile. It is, after all, the truth. Though he is well aware it cannot always be avoided, in general, Armin doesn't think too highly of getting physical. It stops people from thinking, from engaging and coming to a compromise and instead encourages the idea of might being right and that as long as you can beat someone else down, your opinion is the correct one.

While he listens to Annie, he can't help the momentary sense of relief at what she tells him. So, Commander Erwin will take his hunch serious. He had not yet been able to inform the Commander of what he had come to believe before being whisked away to this place, and admittedly, part of him had always been worried that he'd deliver his information and be ignored. After all, it is not like he'd be able to provide the commander with a lot of proof. Nothing physical, really. Only his observations.

"You already went after Eren once, so it'd make sense to use him as bait." Something she's probably just as aware of as he is. But really, the comment is less for her, and more for himself, to get the story straight as much as he can. "What happened next? Where did we confront you?"

It made sense, but it was also glaringly obvious. Her expression goes remote, her voice losing most inflection.

"What happened next was you asked me to help get Eren through the city. That you were afraid of what was going to happen to him." She continues looking off into the distance, remembering what had been so fresh for her when she arrived. "We've never been that close, though reasonably, if you had only one connection to rely on, you'd still look to use them if you needed them. What you asked and what you claimed to want to achieve didn't make sense. I told you no. Repeatedly."

"I see. And then?"

There is an odd, unreal feeling to this whole situation. To hear Annie describe actions he will take in the future, with Armin only able to guess at what he will be thinking at the time, what information he'll be acting on, and what plans having been put together in the background. And, of course, Annie's recollection will be tainted slightly too, her truths affecting what she says. Not that Armin believes her to be lying right now. There is no need for that. Rather, there might be assumptions in her words that don't reflect reality.

"You kept pleading." There's an impression of her shrugging, though she doesn't actually shrug. Still the same lack of particular inflection, and part of that is the mental distance. That series of events which started with Armin flagging her down had ended with her encasing herself in crystal, possibly forever. Forever didn't need to be long when you only had thirteen years to live in total, and had already spent a number of them getting to where you were.

It feels so pointless on so many days. The bloodshed, the wars, even trying.

Annie blinks, turning her head toward Armin, studying him for a moment. "I don't know what you were thinking, other than the obvious. Suspicions and the need to get me to follow along so you could spring the ambush. Either I'd be innocent, or I'd be guilty. Somewhere in the torture that'd follow people would decide one way or the other." She shudders, and it's not an affectation: Annie has no taste for pain, just a lifetime of its tolerance.

"In the end the pleading didn't change anything. I asked if I seemed like that kind of a good person to you when you just wouldn't stop asking." She pauses, breathing out in a sigh. Then she smiles, and it's such a tired expression on her face. "You said you didn't believe in the term good or bad person. That it was all based on someone's convenience, whether someone was good or bad in their eyes. That if I helped you out right then, I would be a good person--to you."

She spreads her hands, fingers wide, palms facing him, arms lifted a little off her sides. A gesture of nothing hidden, of empty hands. Attaching no other meaning. She has no idea what he was thinking. She barely understood her own mind.

"So you, Mikasa, and Eren led me down abandoned streets as if I wouldn't notice, and tried to convince me to walk into an underground passageway. I refused. Words were exchanged, and in the end, when the Survey Corps sprung their ambush, I killed the people who were restraining me. Full Titan transformations are deadly. Mikasa made sure you and Eren survived."

Her fingers curl into her palms. "When Eren transformed, he fought with the same reckless lack of self-awareness as he always does, but it was Mikasa who cut me down before I could escape. Your grand plan ended with a foreign spy trapping herself in unbreakable crystal, and I have no idea what you did or didn't learn after that."

About the only relief she'd known in all that mess was no longer pretending she was a good warrior, or a good soldier. There was a certain relief in having that veil torn away.

Ah, so that is what happens. They had tried to trap Annie and it had led to a fight, and in the end, they had captured her. In a way, that is. Perhaps not in the way they had hoped --if it is true what she says, she won't be a source of information that way-- but considering the odds they were up against, being able to disable one of their opponents was already its own victory.

And who knows. Annie says her crystal is unbreakable, but she also says she doesn't know what happens after. Perhaps they will find a way to break through the crystal.

"I see. I am... grateful that you told me what happens." Again, it is strange to hear about your future actions, but in a small way, it helps him understand what happens between the last thing he can remember from their world and the last thing Annie can remember. "I won't insult you by apologizing for it. I think we both know that would just be something devoid of actual meaning."

She won't tell him he's welcome, because he really isn't. That whole truth is one he'll never hear from her. There's too many people she's protecting still, for all the good it does her. That irritation, partly aimed at herself, mixes with her earlier irritation.

"Like you being here," she says, hands coming to rest on her hips. Her expression is back to being remote, but not as distant as it was not long before. She appreciates him not apologising. She wouldn't have accepted it, because his actions were the reasonable thing for him to do, considering what was at stake. She doesn't hold any of it against anyone.

But she does hold this, here, against him, personally. Eren, ironically, would understand. Eren is someone she taught of her own free will, who she enjoyed engaging with, who wanted to learn.

Armin is not, and does not want to learn the only thing she has to teach which isn't regurgitating facts from a different perspective.

"I've told you enough for you to know more about home than anyone else here except for me. There's not a great deal of home I care to keep talking about, and you half assing things because you're resigned to getting your ass kicked to learn about something I don't want to talk about is doubly irritating." Lute nudges against her side, hard, and she looks down at him, scowling. The scowl softens some as they hold gazes. She breathes out to a three count. Not a sigh, but a pacing.

"If," she says, "You want someone to motivate you into getting back in top shape, then yes. Fine. We can keep this up. Each hour of endurance training you last, I'll give you the opportunity to ask something about our world. I'll answer if I can. But no more sparring. I'm not insulting what my father taught me by wasting it on you."

It was her father's waste, and her yoke to carry, and she damn well cared too much about its pointlessness to ever use it as a vehicle for punishing someone who didn't give a damn. (In her eyes. As always, just in her eyes.) They weren't in the military, and he wasn't Reiner, challenging her to something he knew better than to say; he wasn't Eren, asking to learn her technique; he wasn't Mikasa, finally challenging Annie because she'd gotten under her skin. He was Armin, and his focus had nothing to do with her, particularly, outside of the threat he evaluated, and the world he was so desperate to know.

Armin can't lie and tell her that, no, he really cares. Because he doesn't. And he knows he is not a good enough liar to carry that off. Also, in an odd way, that feels disrespectful towards Annie. Not that he should probably care about respect, not after knowing what she had done, but it is still there.

He also doesn't necessarily care about getting back into shape, but he does care about the potential information. And to be honest, trading an hour of running, no matter how much he dislikes it, for the opportunity to ask a question is still preferable to Annie flooring him a dozen times. At least he knows he can run.

He hesitates before agreeing though. "Fifteen minutes." His hands are up before she even speaks as if to deflect an argument. "Hear me out. One hour of endurance training for fifteen minutes of questioning. One question is... isn't it easy to argue about what one question is? Does a follow-up question count as a new question or is that still part of the original question? How about a request for clarification? We could go round and round discussing where the limit lies. Fifteen minutes though is something you can objectively measure. You can ask Arlert to. Hoothoots are excellent at keeping track of time.

And, you should look at it from your perspective too. If you give me one question, couldn't I ask you something very broad? I could ask you for the whole history of Marley and be perfectly within my rights. Fifteen minutes though - that limits me too. It'll force me to think carefully about what I want to ask as well."

"You don't really have rights here," she said, lifting an eyebrow and breaking out of the impassive mien she'd been wearing. "Neither of us do. There's nothing legal or binding in any of this, just me not wanting life to be any more dramatic and difficult than it has to be, and you wanting to punish yourself with knowing what you can't change while protecting your friends."

She won't call it one way or the other on that count; she's doing this in part to protect Bertolt, after all, but Bertolt knows she's doing it, and none of Armin's friends know he's doing this. To her, that's shitty in a different way, but not one she'd want to see changed. Marco, Sasha, Jean, Bertolt by a technicality, none of them deserve less than the lives they've carved out for themselves here. Not even Armin, for all he's absolutely set on making it difficult for himself. But really, it's easier to have it all end up coming across like she's a self-serving asshole. (This is also not wrong.)

"Two hours, and at the end you can take five minutes to ask your question. Since any amount of time," she says, "Can be objectively measured." This is also turning into incorporating Armin into her training regimen with her pokemon team, but she doesn't feel inclined to mention that.

"Well, I'm a masochist, after all."

Annie was the one who called him that. If she sees him as such, she cannot also be surprised by him putting himself through the motions of being hurt by more and more truths. After all, isn't he just acting as his nature dictates?

Not that Armin sees it as such. To him, having questions, staying ignorant of the truth, is the worst punishment. Even if he cannot change things, he'd still like to understand why they happened as they did. Even if it is a painful truth is better than an unknown one.

"Ten minutes. Ten minutes for two hours of endurance training." He really cannot throw anything at her to make her go along with his requests. He has no leverage. He could threaten, but he had already promised to keep her identity a secret. To go back on his word now would feel dishonourable.

(Not that he can't imagine doing so under more dire circumstances, but these are not it.)

Really, all he can do in the end is look at her pleadingly, the naked need for answers and understanding more than plain on his face.

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If it ever came down to exerting power by force, it would mean I'd already lost. [closed]

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