Wings : Attack on Titan x Reader Scenarios / Imagines ▼

Studies [ Armin x Reader (Modern AU) ]

[ for ;; ArminArlertIsMyWifu ]

Brilliant light blazed its way through the slight tree branches, still slim from their wintertime sustenance scarcities, but standing statuesque against the striking midday citrus-yellow sunshine, supporting themselves against the soft breezes that sibilated by, slowly but surely, rattling their fragile frames and finishing, frustrated, foiled by the seemingly indestructible structures in all their springtime recovery. Small green shoots had begun to shake their way through the cracks in the pavement of streets and sidewalks alike, tilting up towards a near-summer sun, drinking in the sweet shines. Grass grew green again. Flowers, though more miniscule than they usually were, sat in their blooming state once more, and the first few petals of multitudinous different floral species had just begun to poke their curious heads out. Birds chirped cheerfully to one another without a care in the world before spreading their wings and taking to the skies, free as they should be.

The same could not be said for you.

The sugarsweet honey coating of a seedtime season hadn't managed to obstruct your fortress of darkness. Only artificial light shone there, dim at its brightest, the air stagnant and stale, hanging low upon whatever scattered objects lay around the apartment. The heavy air settled upon your shoulders, feeling rather like boulders instead of comfort. You couldn't tell the difference regardless. Presently, the weight of the world sat atop your back, accompanying you at its own atrocious leisure down an agonizing avenue of anxious nights and anxiety attacks.

When was the last time you'd gotten a proper night's sleep? You didn't remember. You couldn't remember. Not when your mind was reserved solely for equation after equation, proportion after proportion, conjecture after conjecture, formula after formula, all once stacked into a carefully-organized pile but now teetering against one another, threatening to fall at any given moment, should you not keep reviewing, keep studying, keep keeping on. You had to. There wasn't an alternative.

Well - that wasn't entirely true. There was an alternative. There almost always was. However, having considered that, not all alternatives are even close to acceptable.

Two turning points lay down your direct future. Either you'd pass the exam and graduate, then be off to the university of your dreams, or you'd fail the exam and...you shuddered.

Don't think about it. Can't think about it, not now, keep going. The mantra repeated itself within your mind, a constant, unchanging reminder, lurking deep in the darkest crevices of your brain, never raising its nonexistent voice but never quieting, either. Problem after problem, you found your pencil moving quickly, devising a solution in as short a time as physically possible, before flipping the page and heading on to the next.

Question after question. Situation after situation. Issue after issue, until your hand cramped and your stomach grumbled and your brain burned with the pain of a thousand raging fires, each and every one ravaging your body with shooting trepidation and twinges of sadness, of fear, of anger, or disappointment.

Even if you'd completed the entire practice packet, three times over, with questions and answers rearranged to ensure no chances of you memorizing the solutions rather than the instructions on how to reach those solutions, some of the problems remained just that. Problems.

Problems without an answer.

Problems that you didn't have an answer for, because you couldn't figure them out; couldn't think them through, couldn't rationalize them, couldn't get enough breath in one gulp of air to supply the necessary amount through your circulation, elevated dangerously high with tension.