Um, yeah? My foot. That's what I said. I don't know exactly what grabbed it, but if it crawled out of the TV like everything else creepy around here then I don't really want to know.
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
Seriously? I mean what was it like? You know, to like hang out with her all the time and just I don't know?? It's a normal question.
[How is that a normal question??? How is he supposed to answer that.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org she wasn't all that different
[Compared to how she is now. They'd all changed, grown stronger, carried heavier burdens and suffered greater losses and seen more monstrous things. But if there's one thing he can (does) count on her for, it's to be steady, steadfast. (Even on night they'd met, though it had taken her some encouragement. Even if they'd both been strangers then.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org what do you want to know
[Some topics he'll talk about easier than others. But maybe it'll net her a better answer.]
[You knew what you were getting into when you messaged him, Ino. (Does murdering kidnappers count as special...) He's gotten a lot of people asking him about Mikasa, lately, but he hasn't gotten any better at talking about her. Or himself, for that matter.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org I guess.
[Helpful. Shiganshina was very dull, until it was gone. He'd considered it a cage, when he was young. Railed against the walls and dreamed of getting out. That does not mean he does not mourn it. So, before she can be exasperated by that non-answer—]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org we'd hang around the fields or the canals. sometimes we'd get to see the Corps come through the gate on expeditions.
[Heading out straight-backed and purposeful. Coming home bloody and quiet, with hollow eyes and fewer numbers.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
usually it was just me and her. and Armin.
[Because none of them were really all that good at making friends, otherwise. (She woke him up and helped him finish his chores when he fucked off to nap in fields. Let him drag her off to watch the Corps come by. Bailed him out of a lot of fistfights. Watched quietly as Armin spun heretic stories about the world outside the walls.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org she only lived with us a year before the wall fell
[And that's about when they stopped being children and started being refugees. And then soldiers, two years after that.]
[Shingekis. After a year of dealing with them, you'd think she'd learn.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org armin's my best friend
[His only friend, for a long time. Mikasa is...Mikasa.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
there wasn't much else to do
[They weren't shining examples of social graces, even back then. And he'd been impatient with the masses, the neighborhood kids who called Armin heretic and knocked his books to the ground, the lazy soldiers who guarded the walls and drank on duty.]
[ How long has it been since Armin was transferred? She still remembers him fondly. How close the three of them were, even if they never said as much. How jealous she was that they were together when she was alone, without Shikamaru and Chouji.
But she doesn't want to think about those kind of things. She should've known better, messaging Eren.
[It's been months, since Armin was consistently on the crew. Weeks since the last time he pinged in and out of the Neheda with his memory gone, again. It's an absence that rings louder every day. Eren and Mikasa are stronger together, but it's still an unbalanced thing, without Armin there to temper them. (He sorely misses him. Especially lately.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org he came by a lot. my dad was a doctor.
[Only one reason you come by a doctor all the time. Either you get sick a lot, or—]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org there were a lot of assholes around who'd call him heretic for what he believed in.
[Or you get your face punched in one too many times for talking about the world outside the walls. And one outcast to another, they'd hit it off, and Armin had earned a guard dog in the process.]
[A doctor. Wouldn't much know he'd grown up following his father on housecalls, given Eren's shit bedside manner. He never really took after his dad. (His mother, on the other hand—
Except, maybe, in this.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org that we can't live within the walls forever. that there's a world out there that's worth seeing.
[It's a mantra people got used to hearing from Eren time and time again. But he'd gotten that from Armin, first.]
[He'd always been right. Eren had never doubted that for very long.
(The universe is bigger and stranger than he could have ever imagined, and they are swallowed up in it. But he refuses to let any of them disappear.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org we've got our own world to fight for. we're going back there.
[All of them. For all they can't seem to hold onto Armin for more than a few days at a time. For all they have yet to make any progress at all against the CDC. For all people are convinced their contracts are going to claim their lives, that destroying the titans is impossible. For all they'd probably be better off giving up on their shitty titan-infested world and finding another to call home. He can't do that. They'll make it through this, and they'll wipe out the titans and see their own world for themselves.]
[It's terrible, but that's how the world is. Cruel and beautiful in different measures. He cannot abandon it, or humanity, which he holds too close to his heart. He can't save them or finally see the world outside the walls by running away from it.
He could say a lot about offering his heart up to humanity, to fulfilling his dreams, to taking vengeance against the titans. But first.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org why wouldn't I want to go back
[He has no family waiting for him that the CDC did not snatch up with him or transfer away to some distant ship. No home left that was not taken and destroyed by the titans before the CDC had a chance to threaten it. An impossible enemy waiting and willing to wipe out everything he cares about.
(He isn't stupid. He knows why she might find it strange. And yet.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org I won't abandon humanity to the titans because it's easier to give up and run away
[ It sounds familiar, doesn't it? (What is it, exactly, with these stupid shounen idiots and their grand ideas about hope and determination that are both unbelievable—laughable, really—and incredible at the same time? Are they just so unbelievable that they become incredible?
Even Ino isn't immune—the answer is obvious in hindsight, of course. Anything else wouldn't suit him.) ]
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
You know, you sound a lot like somebody I know from back home.
[Wow. Should he be offended by that, he hasn't decided. ("Idiot," he's gotten before, plenty of times. It's familiar enough to only make him hackle a little, reflexively. Tone is hard to tell through text.)]
[Let him get beat up if they could help it. Though.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org he isn't weak. he didn't fight back because he called it stooping to their level
[But he'd never let them silence him, either, and that's a sort of conviction Eren could respect, even if Armin had refused to throw a well-deserved punch in his own defense.
Eren, on the other hand, had no problem stooping in Armin's defense. And Mikasa had followed to bail them out when he inevitably got in over his head in the process. (Naturally, they'd been twice as scared of her as they were of him, but don't expect him to admit that.)]
[More pride than you'd think. Armin never took help he didn't need, even from Eren or Mikasa.
That said, just what are you insinuating, Ino. There's a pause before he answers. (Not least because thinking too hard about his father still makes his temples pound and his gut clench and he doesn't know why.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org it was better than letting 'em get away with it
[That's a "yes." Far more frequently, before Mikasa came along. But he'll take a few bruises over an injustice any day. (In some ways, it's a bitter thing to talk about. It doesn't excuse the things they did, but he's aware that some of his neighborhood adversaries never made it out of Shiganshina. And that is also an injustice, a far greater one, and those responsible haven't paid for it.)]
[He won't abide bullies on any scale. Some are easier to bare his teeth at than others. Childhood adversaries, corrupt and lazy military. Maneating monsters and blackmailing cosmic demolition corporations.
He's a lot better at expressing that sort of thing than he is waxing nostalgic about growing up. It wasn't very exciting, really. Shingeki life is bleak and joyless, Ino, I'm sorry.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org we had chores. messed around. Armin had his grandpa's books.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
your foot?
[Thanks for the update, Ino. Well. Presumably she's ok if she's texting him for nosy smalltalk, so—]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
what do you mean, what was it like
no subject
Um, yeah? My foot. That's what I said.
I don't know exactly what grabbed it, but if it crawled out of the TV like everything else creepy around here then I don't really want to know.
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
Seriously?
I mean what was it like? You know, to like hang out with her all the time and just
I don't know??
It's a normal question.
no subject
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
she wasn't all that different
[Compared to how she is now. They'd all changed, grown stronger, carried heavier burdens and suffered greater losses and seen more monstrous things. But if there's one thing he can (does) count on her for, it's to be steady, steadfast. (Even on night they'd met, though it had taken her some encouragement. Even if they'd both been strangers then.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
what do you want to know
[Some topics he'll talk about easier than others. But maybe it'll net her a better answer.]
no subject
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
Has anybody ever told you that you're impossible to talk normally to?
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
Fine.
Did you guys ever do anything special together? Have fun??
no subject
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
I guess.
[Helpful. Shiganshina was very dull, until it was gone. He'd considered it a cage, when he was young. Railed against the walls and dreamed of getting out. That does not mean he does not mourn it. So, before she can be exasperated by that non-answer—]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
we'd hang around the fields or the canals. sometimes we'd get to see the Corps come through the gate on expeditions.
[Heading out straight-backed and purposeful. Coming home bloody and quiet, with hollow eyes and fewer numbers.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
usually it was just me and her. and Armin.
[Because none of them were really all that good at making friends, otherwise. (She woke him up and helped him finish his chores when he fucked off to nap in fields. Let him drag her off to watch the Corps come by. Bailed him out of a lot of fistfights. Watched quietly as Armin spun heretic stories about the world outside the walls.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
she only lived with us a year before the wall fell
[And that's about when they stopped being children and started being refugees. And then soldiers, two years after that.]
no subject
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
A year is still a pretty long time.
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
So the three of you spent a lot of time together?
no subject
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
armin's my best friend
[His only friend, for a long time. Mikasa is...Mikasa.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
there wasn't much else to do
[They weren't shining examples of social graces, even back then. And he'd been impatient with the masses, the neighborhood kids who called Armin heretic and knocked his books to the ground, the lazy soldiers who guarded the walls and drank on duty.]
no subject
Yeah, I remember.
[ How long has it been since Armin was transferred? She still remembers him fondly. How close the three of them were, even if they never said as much. How jealous she was that they were together when she was alone, without Shikamaru and Chouji.
But she doesn't want to think about those kind of things. She should've known better, messaging Eren.
Okay. Specific questions. ]
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
How did you meet Armin?
no subject
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
he came by a lot. my dad was a doctor.
[Only one reason you come by a doctor all the time. Either you get sick a lot, or—]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
there were a lot of assholes around who'd call him heretic for what he believed in.
[Or you get your face punched in one too many times for talking about the world outside the walls. And one outcast to another, they'd hit it off, and Armin had earned a guard dog in the process.]
no subject
A doctor, huh?
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
What was it?
That he believed in, I mean.
no subject
Except, maybe, in this.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
that we can't live within the walls forever. that there's a world out there that's worth seeing.
[It's a mantra people got used to hearing from Eren time and time again. But he'd gotten that from Armin, first.]
no subject
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
Well, looks like he was mostly right, wasn't he? There are a lot of worlds out there, apparently.
no subject
(The universe is bigger and stranger than he could have ever imagined, and they are swallowed up in it. But he refuses to let any of them disappear.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
we've got our own world to fight for. we're going back there.
[All of them. For all they can't seem to hold onto Armin for more than a few days at a time. For all they have yet to make any progress at all against the CDC. For all people are convinced their contracts are going to claim their lives, that destroying the titans is impossible. For all they'd probably be better off giving up on their shitty titan-infested world and finding another to call home. He can't do that. They'll make it through this, and they'll wipe out the titans and see their own world for themselves.]
no subject
You want to go home?
[ In spite of how terrible they all make it sound. (Jean especially.) It wouldn't surprise her, though, if Eren answered yes—he seems crazy enough. ]
no subject
He could say a lot about offering his heart up to humanity, to fulfilling his dreams, to taking vengeance against the titans. But first.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
don't you
no subject
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
Yes.
More than anything else in the world.
no subject
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
why wouldn't I want to go back
[He has no family waiting for him that the CDC did not snatch up with him or transfer away to some distant ship. No home left that was not taken and destroyed by the titans before the CDC had a chance to threaten it. An impossible enemy waiting and willing to wipe out everything he cares about.
(He isn't stupid. He knows why she might find it strange. And yet.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
I won't abandon humanity to the titans because it's easier to give up and run away
no subject
Even Ino isn't immune—the answer is obvious in hindsight, of course. Anything else wouldn't suit him.) ]
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
You know, you sound a lot like somebody I know from back home.
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
He's a pretty big idiot too.
no subject
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
what do you mean
no subject
What does it sound like?
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
Don't tell me you let him keep getting beat up by bullies.
Armin, I mean.
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
Between you and Mikasa, you must've had that covered.
no subject
of course we didn't
[Let him get beat up if they could help it. Though.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
he isn't weak. he didn't fight back because he called it stooping to their level
[But he'd never let them silence him, either, and that's a sort of conviction Eren could respect, even if Armin had refused to throw a well-deserved punch in his own defense.
Eren, on the other hand, had no problem stooping in Armin's defense. And Mikasa had followed to bail them out when he inevitably got in over his head in the process. (Naturally, they'd been twice as scared of her as they were of him, but don't expect him to admit that.)]
no subject
Stooping to their level, huh? [ Even Armin has some pride, apparently. ]
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
Did your dad ever have to patch all 3 of you up too?
no subject
That said, just what are you insinuating, Ino. There's a pause before he answers. (Not least because thinking too hard about his father still makes his temples pound and his gut clench and he doesn't know why.)]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
it was better than letting 'em get away with it
[That's a "yes." Far more frequently, before Mikasa came along. But he'll take a few bruises over an injustice any day. (In some ways, it's a bitter thing to talk about. It doesn't excuse the things they did, but he's aware that some of his neighborhood adversaries never made it out of Shiganshina. And that is also an injustice, a far greater one, and those responsible haven't paid for it.)]
no subject
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
Hey, I'm definitely not blaming you or anything.
FROM: yamanaka.ino@cdc.org
So that's it? You guys would just hang around the fields and beat up bullies?
no subject
He's a lot better at expressing that sort of thing than he is waxing nostalgic about growing up. It wasn't very exciting, really. Shingeki life is bleak and joyless, Ino, I'm sorry.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
we had chores. messed around. Armin had his grandpa's books.
kid stuff. there wasn't a lot more to do
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
why
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)