Coming for your soul

Chapter 35

Armin POV

The library had become his safe place. The warm sun fell through the closed windows and wrapped the old covers of the books in gentle hugs. Armin inhaled the calming scent of parchment and leaned back in the chair he had been sitting in for the last hours since the moon had disappeared from the sky.

In his hands he held one of his beloved tomes, its rough surface an anchor for Armin felt distant and light in the face of his restless memories. Sighing he closed the book and lifted his eyes from the words he had tried to fill his mind with – to no avail.

No amount of reading or drowning in the sentences of people who had long passed on would bring the storm in his head to an end. Behind his eyes his racing thoughts throbbed as if someone was pounding against his temples with a hammer of some sort and he closed them, touching his cold fingers to the fragile skin.

A low noise from beside him drew his attention on the small boy playing with some toys on the carpet beside him. Lio's unruly hair had been tamed by a small ribbon by Armin himself when the boy had complained about it getting in the way all the time. But when Armin had asked him if he should cut it off, the boy had miraculously become quiet. Armin kept from pressuring the boy into telling him what his sudden silence was all about but his worry for the child grew in size day by day.

During the day he caught sight of a tentative smile now and then. The guards joked around with the guards, who took good care of him whenever he got bored of his usual activities. Armin was thankful for that, no doubt. 

But nothing could compare to the warm feeling that spread in his heart when Lio came running to get Armin to play with him or to read him just another story.

Even though he had also started to ask for his Uncle Eren to tell him one when sleep hid from the boy in some nights. But when Armin let his gaze wander across the small face of the child, he only saw the dark shadows beneath his eyes, caused by nightmares when sleep had indeed found and left him with bone-deep fear.

Armin sometimes wondered about the pictures frightening the boy so much but Lio never talked about the past. Neither the life he had had before Kou nor the time during his stay with her in the cave.

Although Eren had advised him to outright ask the child...

"I want to see Erwin."

Armin flinched. Lio's big eyes were filled to the brink with the hope of being granted the only wish he had ever voiced out loud. His fingers lingered over the toy in his hand, an old carriage made of wood, and he nervously chewed on his lips as he regarded Armin with a look that showed how much courage it had taken him to ask again after Armin had turned him down gently so many times before.

"Lio, I..." He sighed, stood and walked over to one of the bookshelves to put away the tome he knew he wouldn't understand anytime in the near future. Meanwhile the sharp pain in his heart cut through the small pieces it had become the longer Armin thought about what had happened. "You know that he is busy."

The disappointment Lio radiated when his little head fell against his chest with a sad expression physically hurt Armin. Seeing the child like that...maybe this wasn't about them. Maybe it shouldn't be about them. This was about a lost kid in a world that had been taken everything all at once from it.

Whatever had gone down between Erwin and Armin...well, Armin wouldn't get any answers from brooding over books and failing to read the same words again and again. He watched Lio fiddling with his toys but the joy had disappeared from his face and been replaced by sadness.

Sighing, Armin put a hand on his hip and said: "Maybe you are right."

Lio frowned as if not daring to hope that Armin could really grant him his wish.