Just for Yeager

The Fallen

I swam in foreign waters, so dark and steep that I could feel myself drowning—literally; it sapped all the life out of me, reducing me to a mere shadow of my former self. I caught that looming feeling of certain malady approaching, but it could be just paranoia. After all, I've been getting bouts of migraines and nose bleeds, aside from the fact that I had passed out on two occasions with memory loss to boot. I've been distant to everyone, to Hange, including myself. I have lost perspective, the fire once inside me snuffed out. I was surprised I had enough strength to get up this morning.

The need for answers propelled me out of bed, and down the hall of the corrections facility downtown. They had agreed that I meet with Armin, and I watched him from the end of the hallway being escorted out of his holding cell. Two officers lead me to an interrogation room, even after I made it clear I wasn't here to catechize the kid—a casual chat would do, in which I requested full privacy. They were a bit hesitant, given I was seen at the crime scene, and could be a possible accomplice. But my rank barked louder than my biting threats.

I must say, it was difficult watching the boy enter the room cuffed, garbed in con attire. He seemed disheveled, pallid, weak—his soul sucked out of him. It was like looking at the bottom of an ashtray, his face so dull and cracked. An officer seated him across the table, I on the other side, putting out my cigarette.

The officers exited, left us isolated, a round of silence passing time by. He didn't move an inch; eyes half lit, half open—the drooping head over sagging body complex. It was obvious the system defeated him, but I felt hopeful that he would have the courage to speak to me at least.

"How are you holding up?" I finally asked; he replied with no answer.

"I heard your trial isn't for another couple days. They are planning to convict. And with the jury outlook, it doesn't seem too good on your end, Armin."

Again, no answer, no reaction.

"I say this because you haven't tried to defend yourself. I'm blunt because you have to hear it from somebody. You haven't taken on a lawyer, and denied a defender. Sure, they will consider your time in the force, but you're fighting against the sentencing for killing a man, Armin."

Nothing.

"I'm sure no one has visited you yet, not even Mikasa?" I paused, his brows flinched, and he went bug-eyed. "You had your suspicions of her, can you tell me why?" He finally looked up to me, an eerie stark expression on his face before he shot up like a bolt of lightning and screamed,

"NOT ME! NOT ME PLEASE, NOT ME!"

He thrashed around, dropping himself onto the floor. I turned to the right wall of the sound proof room, and through the window noticed two officers rushing to the door. I jumped up, then dragged my seat behind me before ramming the backrest beneath the knob, locking the chair in a tilt. I couldn't imagine that would hold them off for too long, so I ran to Armin, cradling his head up as he continued to spasm.

"Armin, it's just me. It's just us two."

"PLEASE, PLEASE, N-N-NOT ME!"

"Armin, who threatened you?" A wide assumption, but it was the only one I had. "Who are you seeing?"

He gazed at me with water soaked eyes, trembling. "M-Mimi-m—"

"—Was it Mikasa? Why would she threaten you, Armin? Why did she frame you?" The restless banging and yelling from outside inhibited me from hearing what he replied, and I soon found myself in the snatching custody of two husky officers tackling me down. But I too was persistent, calling out to Armin as they wrestled him into standing, "Armin, if that bitch visits you again before trial, you request an audience with me! You got that?! Don't let her scare you!"

An officer Coleman—I looked up to his badge in the split seconds before he cocked back his fist and rammed it right into my jaw. A bit harsh for asking for a few undisturbed moments with a prisoner, I thought.

I may have had passed out, the image of them batoning that poor kid etched in my head.