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To say things were going badly was an understatement. At least four variants had been spotted according to the smoke flares, and there were too many Titans to count. Eren's horse kept whinnying in protest every time he did a roundabout to face his comrades screaming for help only to see it was too late. Titans were everywhere, overwhelming the troops. The open fields limited their options on using their 3D maneuvering devices and too many deaths had already occurred.

My fault, Eren thought as he stared blankly at a bloody limb of a poor soldier- maybe a friend, maybe a stranger- lying in the grass beside him. It's my fault this happened.

The excursion into the lands outside of wall Maria had been an attempt to clear off a what had been thought to be a small band of Titans clinging to the outer edges. Levi had cleared the mission with the survey corp, saying that with Eren's Titan abilities and the small number to take out it should be cake.

And of course when things got bad he couldn't change.

Gaping at the Titan lumbering towards him, Eren once more bit deeply into his thumb, blood running down his chin as he cringed in pain. He'd bitten to the bone and still no change. He shakily dismounted, drawing his dual blades. Guess he'd have to do this the old fashioned way.

As the Titan swooped down at him, Eren clicked the releases in the handles and the wires dug into the shoulders of the giant beast. He was propelled towards its face, narrowly missing the gaping mouth and landing in the hair. He pulled back in the wires and fired towards the nape of the neck, missing when the Titan swiped at him. The wire's hook buried itself in the Titan's hand, and Eren went flying as it swatted through the air, trying to sling him into its mouth. As the monster held his head back and dangled him over his wide mouth, and Eren considered launching himself onto its face and stabbing at its eyes, an attacker from behind quickly sliced a chunk from the nape of its neck.

Eren fell to ground with the Titan, thanking the man who had saved him. His horse had deserted him, so on foot he began running towards the throng of Titans and men. A thought had just occurred to him; where was Armin? Mikasa he knew could take care of herself, and though Armin had been in the front with her he had been in a different group. He was smart, but what good did that do when he couldn't fight?

The ratio of man to Titan was a frightening one. How many soldiers' blood painted the grass? He didn't want to know. But what he did know was that there were far too many of them interspersed with the squad's numbers to order a retreat and too many to fight. What they needed was Eren's Titan form.

What he had to have was a strong, specific purpose. As he thought of Armin, who he had played with and fought with and dreamed with, dead by a Titan's hand, his teeth dug into flesh and bone broke.

He was enveloped in a flash of light as the transformation began. A few seconds later, in full Titan form, he bellowed, searching his friends out with an almost primal instinct.

When he found them, the still human part of him was at first relieved to see Mikasa alive and defending them both. But then he saw the way she favored one leg, and the limpness of Armin's body slung over her shoulder, and his panic was turned into a Titan's rage. Roaring, he charge the Titan nearest them and engaged in battle. It ended quickly, as it was a mere seven meter, but then two more taller ones attacked him, one gnawing on his arm as the other tore at his head. Eren swung at the first, kicking the second's legs out from under it. As much as he wanted to kill them both, swarms of Titans were being drawn to the spot because of him and his prime prerogative was still etched in his mind from before he transformed; protect his friends.

"RAAAAAAAH!" he shouted, scooping an indignant Mikasa and petrified Armin into his hands. He didn't really care how they felt at the moment as long as they were alive, and he continued forward away from the horde, curling his fingers around the two in his hand protectively as he held them up.

"Can you even hear me?" he heard after a moment and looked down to where Mikasa was shouting up at him, hands cupped around her mouth. "Lead them away from the others! They'll all be wiped out in a few more minutes if you don't get them away." She repeated it a few more times and the message finally sunk into Eren's Titan mind. He changed course without acknowledging her, silently carrying out the plan. Most of the Titan were following him now, but he was faster and outdistanced them easily. Unfortunately, as he grew further and further away, he saw even more Titans in the distance.

"GRAAAAAAAH!" The longer he was in the Titan's body the sharper his human mind became and dulled the Titan's was, but he could see there was no alternative to a fight. He was being boxed in from all sides. What to do with Misaka and Armin in the meantime?

He looked down at them, loosening his fingers enough to see them staring up at him. He needed somewhere to put them, somewhere they would be safe. Mikasa was injured and Armin of course was in no state to fight (even if he were any good). No, they would die on the ground. No trees tall enough. He was starting to feel panicky. He needed his hand to fight, and they would be crushed in it. If only...

He blinked. They were small. Tiny in comparison to him. He could just... In his mouth...

The human in him stopped as he started to lift them to his face. Maybe they'd be safe, but how to explain that to them? But as the other Titans drew nearer he decided he had no choice and opened his mouth. He heard a sharp cry of protest before a shocked scream as he tilted his head back just a little to slip them inside over his sharp teeth.

Armin gasped as Eren brought them closer to his face, his eyes far away in contemplation. His open mouth was frightening close, and he could feel the heavy warm breath washing over him and see strands of saliva clinging to the fangs.

"Eren... What are you..?" he started to say, but was cut off as Eren suddenly tilted back his head and dropped both him and Mikasa in his cavernous mouth.

"EREN!" he and Mikasa both shouted as they tumbled over each other on the slippery tongue coated with warm, sticky saliva. Armin felt himself slipping back toward the throat and shouted in panic before the mouth leveled out and he stopped sliding. He warily looked up towards the entrance of the mouth, and saw the teeth start to close slowly.

"No! Eren!" Mikasa shouted as she started to slam her fists against the teeth. "Let us out! Don't let the Titan take over! Please, it's us!" Armin could see her hands on the handles of her blades, and knew what she was really saying was "Please don't make me hurt you."

"Mikasa!" he shouted, "wait!" She turned towards him. "I think Eren's in control. He's not swallowing, see? Just holding us here."

There was silence for a moment before Mikasa nodded. "Maybe."

Armin tried to sit up on the tongue, but his head bumped the roof of the mouth. Saliva clung to him, soaking though his uniform, and he was uncomfortably aware of how very hot the breath coming from the throat was. He was thankful for the safety, but even though he knew Eren's intentions were pure he couldn't help feeling a thread of fear weaving though his calm exterior. The muscular tongue moved under him, curling slightly around them both, and Mikasa squirmed as saliva ran down her sleeves.

"Just let us out soon, okay Eren?" she asked, knowing he wouldn't hear.

Eren could feel every little move his friends made in his mouth. For a frightening moment the Titan in him found their taste delicious, and saliva flooded his mouth, running down his chin.

No. They are my friends. I'm not one of them. I'm not really a Titan.

Eren blinked and tried to focus on the problem at hand; the horde of Titans running towards him. It was difficult to prepare for a fight when he was constantly fighting the urge to swallow what was in his mouth. His tongue was instinctively massaging saliva onto them, tasting them, wrapping around them, but not swallowing.

Focus, Yeagar.

And then the Titans were on him.

His precious cargo in his mouth was jostled around as he slung his fists and kicked and clawed, decimating the first few Titans before becoming overwhelmed as they arrived in droves. A few minutes later they were shoving him back, his left hand regrowing. One of the smaller ones clamped onto his leg, biting away the tendons, and he stumbled before falling hard on his back. The force of the impact knocked something into his throat, and the muscles took over, gulping the obstruction down easily.

Armin and Mikasa tumbled through the mouth, the tongue wrapping even tighter around Mikasa but only securing Armin's leg. When everything turned sideways Armin went tumbling back, back, slipping into the throat. Before he could even scream the muscles were dragging him down as a deafening gulp sounded around him. His mind blanked in horror as he realized that yes, he was being swallowed. Yes, Eren had swallowed him. Eren or the Titan, it didn't really matter, but the fact was he was being eaten. The strong muscles crushed him down deeper, deeper, and he could feel it getting hotter and hotter as the thumping of the massive heart passed him by. All slicked up from the saliva and the relativity of his size, it was easy for him to be swallowed down by his enormous friend.

"Eren, no!" he cried helplessly as he was pulled down.

Eren felt his heart sink as the realization of what that gulp had meant dawned on him. He'd just... He just swallowed one his friends! He blanched as he couldn't fight the memory of the time he'd been swallowed in Armin's place. It'd been one of the worst experiences of his life, and he'd just inflicted that same torture on one of the people he held most dear. He felt the lump pass through his throat, down his chest and on into his stomach. No, it couldn't be. He couldn't have eaten his friend.

He started swinging at the Titans again just as he felt a small but painful feeling his mouth. Someone- Mikasa- was shouting at him and the pain intensified. Was she slicing up his tongue? She must think... He shuddered. She must think I swallowed him on purpose.

As the muscles in his leg grew back, he leaped up and began to run. It was easy to outdistance them, but where to run to he had no idea. They were in every direction. But he had more pressing matters on his mind right now. If Mikasa was in his mouth, that meant that Armin had been the one he'd swallowed. Was he alright? He had a faint hope that maybe the caustic liquid inside him wasn't there. After all, his sole purpose when he transformed was to protect them. When he became a Titan to protect them all from the cannon he had only formed what he need. He hadn't planned on eating, so maybe... Not maybe. He knew instinctively that Armin would be safe inside for now, the same way he'd known self mutilation caused the change into a Titan before.

As much relief as he felt in that moment, he still could feel Mikasa thrashing around in his mouth, stabbing at him with the swords. He couldn't very well tell her Armin wasn't being turned to soup in his stomach, but the pain in his mouth was very distracting when he had Titans to worry about.

Mikasa shreiked, stabbing her sword down into Eren's tongue. "You ate Armin!" Another swipe, this time at the roof of his mouth. "You ate your best friend! Spit him out!"

The tongue swept over her, trying to pin her down, but she squirmed away, still hacking. "Eren, please come back. Don't do this!" She thought it clear to her that Eren had lost control and fancied himself an easy meal already sealed away in his mouth.

An anguished moan sounded from the Titan's throat, and she paused for a moment only to continue attacking the insides of his mouth that she could reach. Suddenly the tongue pressed her to the roof of the mouth, her face buried into the hot flesh. It gathered the swords at the front of the mouth before the teeth opened partially and they were spat out with Mikasa still pinned against the tongue. She felt her eyes burning as she shouted, "We're your friends, Eren! Remember?" She started to thrash once again.

Eren contemplated the situation as he felt Mikasa thrashing inside, now weaponless. He could feel Armin moving around in his stomach as he ran, and for a moment he wondered if he should send Mikasa down to join him. She was distracting him in his mouth, and he was worried she might accidentally get caught between and gnashed in his teeth if she kept that up. And besides... he hated to admit it, even to himself, but it had felt oddly satisfying to feel Armin slipping and squirming down inside.

His tongue ran over her, moistening her up for the descent. She tasted like salt and metal, and something else he couldn't quite place. He could feel her shuddering underneath the slimy muscle, and he felt a twinge of guilt. She didn't know he wasn't going to kill her, and he couldn't image what it felt like to think you were going to be digested inside your own friend's stomach.

Pushing his guilt aside, he paused in his tracks long enough to tilt his head back and gulp thickly. He felt Mikasa's squirming body enter his throat and get tugged down by the muscles inside, and she continued to struggle all the way down until she slipped into his stomach. Then, hardly believing what he'd done, Eren continued to run, hoping to meet the others at rendezvous.

Armin had been in the stomach for a few minutes, pounding against the walls of muscle and shouting at his friend he knew couldn't hear him. Had he already forgotten him, a small snack tucked away inside not to be given a second thought? The thought terrified him somehow even more so than the fear of being digested.

The stomach was smaller than he expected from Eren's account of a Titan's belly, and there wasn't as much of the stomach liquid except from a little pooled around the bottom, soaking through his pants and boots. The top of the stomach rounded over his head, and though his could see with the dim light emanating from the walls and couldn't make out much detail except for the deep red color. It was hot, much hotter than the mouth, but otherwise there was no other discomfort yet other than the foreboding of knowing he was about to die.

He felt something- or more specifically, someone- fall onto him, and suddenly Mikasa was there, staring at him.

"Armin. You're alive!" she said incredulously.

"He swallowed you too?" Armin gasped. He'd still held onto hope that their Eren would regain control, but now that seemed a faint hope to hold on to.

"Armin," she repeated, ignoring him, "how are you still alive?"

He was growing annoyed with her question, but he tried to answer for the sake of having something else to focus on. "He only just- I only just got in here, so-"

"Armin, you've been in here minutes," she corrected.

Minutes- that was impossible. The acid surely would have begun to work on him by then. It had felt longer than he'd said, but he'd assumed it was from fear that time seemed to slow.

"Mikasa, are you sure-"

"Of course I'm sure."

A heavy feeling of relief lifted a weight off of him. If he'd been in there for that long without any burning at all, maybe that meant...

"He's not trying to eat us," Armin sighed a breath of relief.

"But he swallowed us-"

"There's no acid," he interjected. "Maybe-maybe he can take that away, like he did that day when they shot the cannons at us?"

They were both silent from a long moment, listening to the beating of the heart somewhere high above them and the whoosh of air in his lungs. They swayed slightly with the rhythm of Eren's running.

"So he's only trying to protect us? Like in his hand and his mouth?" Mikasa asked. Armin thought he heard an undertone of guilt in her voice, and he wondered what she'd done in the time before she was gulped down.

"I think so," he said quietly. He relaxed into the hot flesh underneath him, sinking into the squishy muscle. He began to slowly rub the flesh in circular strokes, in a sort of reassuring "yes, yes, I know you're not trying to kill me" way. He couldn't be certain, but he thought he heard the Titan rumble in response.

"Better get comfortable. We could be here a while."

Eren felt himself starting to panic when he felt both of his friends stop moving. Were they okay? Was he wrong, were they being burned up by his stomach juices? He starting to consider ripping open his own stomach when he felt a curious sensation inside. He could feel them moving around a little bit, no longer panicked and scared. Did they know they were safe? He laid a hand over his stomach as he caught sight of the troops up ahead, and he knew that the three were all going to be okay for once.

A few hours later, as what remained of the group approached the wall, Levi looked up at their allied Titan.

"It would be time to cut you out, Eren," Levi said, and the two stopped as the rest continued forward. The Titan bowed down low enough for the man to climb over his shoulders and position the dual blades over the nape of his neck. Then he began to slice, more slowly than if it were another Titan, and a moment later he was pulling out a cringing Eren. His left hand and leg just below the knee had been severed and would take a little while to return, but his right leg was intact and only the fingers of that hand had been cut off. Supporting him, Levi helped him down over the carcass of the Titan.

"Wait," Eren said, hand on the hilt of a sword. "There's... something I need to do first."

Limping over to the midsection of the body of the decomposing Titan, uncomfortably aware of the stare of his superior, he slowly began slicing into the skin as Levi watched in dull confusion. A moment later, when a hand appeared through the cut followed by a young girl and then another boy covered in slime, Levi's expression became unreadable.

"They were... I was... I didn't eat them," Eren said. "Well, I- I swallowed them, but that's an entirely different thing altogether than eating and-"

"What you do in your spare time doesn't concern me, Yeagar," Levi shrugged. "Just promise me that you will never eat me."

"But I- I promise, sir."

Levi sighed, looking forward to the corp moving steadily away.

"I suppose I'll have to help you back, but I'm not laying a finger on either of you until you're cleaned up." Without another word, he removed his cloak and tossed it at the two covered in saliva before walking away with a backwards glance. There was an awkard silence between the three as Eren studied his missing appendages already starting to regrow with the painful regeneration process and his friends slowly wiped away the slime.

"Sorry for... eating you," Eren said quietly, a sheepish expression creeping across his face. "I would have... I wanted to explain, but..."

"You knew we would be safe in there?" Armin asked, forcing Eren to look up at them.

"It was an accident, swallowing you, but yeah. I knew you'd be okay, or I would've carved you out myself." He quirked a brow at Mikasa. "You on the other hand... Were you fileting my tongue?"

A pink tinge touched Mikasa's cheeks, quickly replaced by an indignant pose as she strode forward, poking his chest and saying, "You ate Armin! What did you expect me to do? I thought you'd lost control and become ravenous!"

"You were safe, weren't you?" Eren retorted heatedly. "Not being chewed up by some random Titan, being sent down to a stomach not quite so nice as mine?"

"How could I know that?"

"If you had trusted me a bit more-" Eren stopped himself, forcing himself to breathe. "You should have known I wouldn't lose control again. I learned my lesson the last time I attacked you." The body of the Titan crumbled into dust as he sat down on the ground. "But I am sorry all the same. I know it must have been...awful, in there."

He was thinking of his own experiences, Armin thought as he studied Eren's expression. The day he'd been swallowed by the Titan in Armin's place. But that had been a different Titan under different circumstances, completely separate from his experience today. In fact- and he would never ever say it out loud- he had felt warm and safe and comfortable inside the Titan's belly. He knew Eren wouldn't hurt him, and it was actually cozy in there once he got used to it.

"It wasn't so bad as you might think," Armin reassured kindly.

What Eren wasn't admitting was that he had enjoyed the feeling of his friends inside. He'd felt their trust in him with their lives and had faith that he would protect them, but not in the overwhelming way he'd been feeling recently with the survey corp. This was different, and he couldn't help but crave that feeling again- as well as the feeling of a warm, wriggling little body slipping down his throat.

Eren shivered, thankful neither Mikasa nor Armin could read his thoughts.

Description
To say things were going badly was an understatement. At least four variants had been spotted according to the smoke flares, and there were too many Titans to count. Eren's horse kept whinnying in protest every time he did a roundabout to face his comrades screaming for help only to see it was too late. Titans were everywhere, overwhelming the troops. The open fields limited their options on using their 3D maneuvering devices and too many deaths had already occurred.

My fault, Eren thought as he stared blankly at a bloody limb of a poor soldier- maybe a friend, maybe a stranger- lying in the grass beside him. It's my fault this happened.

The excursion into the lands outside of wall Maria had been an attempt to clear off a what had been thought to be a small band of Titans clinging to the outer edges. Levi had cleared the mission with the survey corp, saying that with Eren's Titan abilities and the small number to take out it should be cake.

And of course when things got bad he couldn't change.

Gaping at the Titan lumbering towards him, Eren once more bit deeply into his thumb, blood running down his chin as he cringed in pain. He'd bitten to the bone and still no change. He shakily dismounted, drawing his dual blades. Guess he'd have to do this the old fashioned way.

As the Titan swooped down at him, Eren clicked the releases in the handles and the wires dug into the shoulders of the giant beast. He was propelled towards its face, narrowly missing the gaping mouth and landing in the hair. He pulled back in the wires and fired towards the nape of the neck, missing when the Titan swiped at him. The wire's hook buried itself in the Titan's hand, and Eren went flying as it swatted through the air, trying to sling him into its mouth. As the monster held his head back and dangled him over his wide mouth, and Eren considered launching himself onto its face and stabbing at its eyes, an attacker from behind quickly sliced a chunk from the nape of its neck.

Eren fell to ground with the Titan, thanking the man who had saved him. His horse had deserted him, so on foot he began running towards the throng of Titans and men. A thought had just occurred to him; where was Armin? Mikasa he knew could take care of herself, and though Armin had been in the front with her he had been in a different group. He was smart, but what good did that do when he couldn't fight?

The ratio of man to Titan was a frightening one. How many soldiers' blood painted the grass? He didn't want to know. But what he did know was that there were far too many of them interspersed with the squad's numbers to order a retreat and too many to fight. What they needed was Eren's Titan form.

What he had to have was a strong, specific purpose. As he thought of Armin, who he had played with and fought with and dreamed with, dead by a Titan's hand, his teeth dug into flesh and bone broke.

He was enveloped in a flash of light as the transformation began. A few seconds later, in full Titan form, he bellowed, searching his friends out with an almost primal instinct.

When he found them, the still human part of him was at first relieved to see Mikasa alive and defending them both. But then he saw the way she favored one leg, and the limpness of Armin's body slung over her shoulder, and his panic was turned into a Titan's rage. Roaring, he charge the Titan nearest them and engaged in battle. It ended quickly, as it was a mere seven meter, but then two more taller ones attacked him, one gnawing on his arm as the other tore at his head. Eren swung at the first, kicking the second's legs out from under it. As much as he wanted to kill them both, swarms of Titans were being drawn to the spot because of him and his prime prerogative was still etched in his mind from before he transformed; protect his friends.

"RAAAAAAAH!" he shouted, scooping an indignant Mikasa and petrified Armin into his hands. He didn't really care how they felt at the moment as long as they were alive, and he continued forward away from the horde, curling his fingers around the two in his hand protectively as he held them up.

"Can you even hear me?" he heard after a moment and looked down to where Mikasa was shouting up at him, hands cupped around her mouth. "Lead them away from the others! They'll all be wiped out in a few more minutes if you don't get them away." She repeated it a few more times and the message finally sunk into Eren's Titan mind. He changed course without acknowledging her, silently carrying out the plan. Most of the Titan were following him now, but he was faster and outdistanced them easily. Unfortunately, as he grew further and further away, he saw even more Titans in the distance.

"GRAAAAAAAH!" The longer he was in the Titan's body the sharper his human mind became and dulled the Titan's was, but he could see there was no alternative to a fight. He was being boxed in from all sides. What to do with Misaka and Armin in the meantime?

He looked down at them, loosening his fingers enough to see them staring up at him. He needed somewhere to put them, somewhere they would be safe. Mikasa was injured and Armin of course was in no state to fight (even if he were any good). No, they would die on the ground. No trees tall enough. He was starting to feel panicky. He needed his hand to fight, and they would be crushed in it. If only...

He blinked. They were small. Tiny in comparison to him. He could just... In his mouth...

The human in him stopped as he started to lift them to his face. Maybe they'd be safe, but how to explain that to them? But as the other Titans drew nearer he decided he had no choice and opened his mouth. He heard a sharp cry of protest before a shocked scream as he tilted his head back just a little to slip them inside over his sharp teeth.

Armin gasped as Eren brought them closer to his face, his eyes far away in contemplation. His open mouth was frightening close, and he could feel the heavy warm breath washing over him and see strands of saliva clinging to the fangs.

"Eren... What are you..?" he started to say, but was cut off as Eren suddenly tilted back his head and dropped both him and Mikasa in his cavernous mouth.

"EREN!" he and Mikasa both shouted as they tumbled over each other on the slippery tongue coated with warm, sticky saliva. Armin felt himself slipping back toward the throat and shouted in panic before the mouth leveled out and he stopped sliding. He warily looked up towards the entrance of the mouth, and saw the teeth start to close slowly.

"No! Eren!" Mikasa shouted as she started to slam her fists against the teeth. "Let us out! Don't let the Titan take over! Please, it's us!" Armin could see her hands on the handles of her blades, and knew what she was really saying was "Please don't make me hurt you."

"Mikasa!" he shouted, "wait!" She turned towards him. "I think Eren's in control. He's not swallowing, see? Just holding us here."

There was silence for a moment before Mikasa nodded. "Maybe."

Armin tried to sit up on the tongue, but his head bumped the roof of the mouth. Saliva clung to him, soaking though his uniform, and he was uncomfortably aware of how very hot the breath coming from the throat was. He was thankful for the safety, but even though he knew Eren's intentions were pure he couldn't help feeling a thread of fear weaving though his calm exterior. The muscular tongue moved under him, curling slightly around them both, and Mikasa squirmed as saliva ran down her sleeves.

"Just let us out soon, okay Eren?" she asked, knowing he wouldn't hear.

Eren could feel every little move his friends made in his mouth. For a frightening moment the Titan in him found their taste delicious, and saliva flooded his mouth, running down his chin.

No. They are my friends. I'm not one of them. I'm not really a Titan.

Eren blinked and tried to focus on the problem at hand; the horde of Titans running towards him. It was difficult to prepare for a fight when he was constantly fighting the urge to swallow what was in his mouth. His tongue was instinctively massaging saliva onto them, tasting them, wrapping around them, but not swallowing.

Focus, Yeagar.

And then the Titans were on him.

His precious cargo in his mouth was jostled around as he slung his fists and kicked and clawed, decimating the first few Titans before becoming overwhelmed as they arrived in droves. A few minutes later they were shoving him back, his left hand regrowing. One of the smaller ones clamped onto his leg, biting away the tendons, and he stumbled before falling hard on his back. The force of the impact knocked something into his throat, and the muscles took over, gulping the obstruction down easily.

Armin and Mikasa tumbled through the mouth, the tongue wrapping even tighter around Mikasa but only securing Armin's leg. When everything turned sideways Armin went tumbling back, back, slipping into the throat. Before he could even scream the muscles were dragging him down as a deafening gulp sounded around him. His mind blanked in horror as he realized that yes, he was being swallowed. Yes, Eren had swallowed him. Eren or the Titan, it didn't really matter, but the fact was he was being eaten. The strong muscles crushed him down deeper, deeper, and he could feel it getting hotter and hotter as the thumping of the massive heart passed him by. All slicked up from the saliva and the relativity of his size, it was easy for him to be swallowed down by his enormous friend.

"Eren, no!" he cried helplessly as he was pulled down.

Eren felt his heart sink as the realization of what that gulp had meant dawned on him. He'd just... He just swallowed one his friends! He blanched as he couldn't fight the memory of the time he'd been swallowed in Armin's place. It'd been one of the worst experiences of his life, and he'd just inflicted that same torture on one of the people he held most dear. He felt the lump pass through his throat, down his chest and on into his stomach. No, it couldn't be. He couldn't have eaten his friend.

He started swinging at the Titans again just as he felt a small but painful feeling his mouth. Someone- Mikasa- was shouting at him and the pain intensified. Was she slicing up his tongue? She must think... He shuddered. She must think I swallowed him on purpose.

As the muscles in his leg grew back, he leaped up and began to run. It was easy to outdistance them, but where to run to he had no idea. They were in every direction. But he had more pressing matters on his mind right now. If Mikasa was in his mouth, that meant that Armin had been the one he'd swallowed. Was he alright? He had a faint hope that maybe the caustic liquid inside him wasn't there. After all, his sole purpose when he transformed was to protect them. When he became a Titan to protect them all from the cannon he had only formed what he need. He hadn't planned on eating, so maybe... Not maybe. He knew instinctively that Armin would be safe inside for now, the same way he'd known self mutilation caused the change into a Titan before.

As much relief as he felt in that moment, he still could feel Mikasa thrashing around in his mouth, stabbing at him with the swords. He couldn't very well tell her Armin wasn't being turned to soup in his stomach, but the pain in his mouth was very distracting when he had Titans to worry about.

Mikasa shreiked, stabbing her sword down into Eren's tongue. "You ate Armin!" Another swipe, this time at the roof of his mouth. "You ate your best friend! Spit him out!"

The tongue swept over her, trying to pin her down, but she squirmed away, still hacking. "Eren, please come back. Don't do this!" She thought it clear to her that Eren had lost control and fancied himself an easy meal already sealed away in his mouth.

An anguished moan sounded from the Titan's throat, and she paused for a moment only to continue attacking the insides of his mouth that she could reach. Suddenly the tongue pressed her to the roof of the mouth, her face buried into the hot flesh. It gathered the swords at the front of the mouth before the teeth opened partially and they were spat out with Mikasa still pinned against the tongue. She felt her eyes burning as she shouted, "We're your friends, Eren! Remember?" She started to thrash once again.

Eren contemplated the situation as he felt Mikasa thrashing inside, now weaponless. He could feel Armin moving around in his stomach as he ran, and for a moment he wondered if he should send Mikasa down to join him. She was distracting him in his mouth, and he was worried she might accidentally get caught between and gnashed in his teeth if she kept that up. And besides... he hated to admit it, even to himself, but it had felt oddly satisfying to feel Armin slipping and squirming down inside.

His tongue ran over her, moistening her up for the descent. She tasted like salt and metal, and something else he couldn't quite place. He could feel her shuddering underneath the slimy muscle, and he felt a twinge of guilt. She didn't know he wasn't going to kill her, and he couldn't image what it felt like to think you were going to be digested inside your own friend's stomach.

Pushing his guilt aside, he paused in his tracks long enough to tilt his head back and gulp thickly. He felt Mikasa's squirming body enter his throat and get tugged down by the muscles inside, and she continued to struggle all the way down until she slipped into his stomach. Then, hardly believing what he'd done, Eren continued to run, hoping to meet the others at rendezvous.

Armin had been in the stomach for a few minutes, pounding against the walls of muscle and shouting at his friend he knew couldn't hear him. Had he already forgotten him, a small snack tucked away inside not to be given a second thought? The thought terrified him somehow even more so than the fear of being digested.

The stomach was smaller than he expected from Eren's account of a Titan's belly, and there wasn't as much of the stomach liquid except from a little pooled around the bottom, soaking through his pants and boots. The top of the stomach rounded over his head, and though his could see with the dim light emanating from the walls and couldn't make out much detail except for the deep red color. It was hot, much hotter than the mouth, but otherwise there was no other discomfort yet other than the foreboding of knowing he was about to die.

He felt something- or more specifically, someone- fall onto him, and suddenly Mikasa was there, staring at him.

"Armin. You're alive!" she said incredulously.

"He swallowed you too?" Armin gasped. He'd still held onto hope that their Eren would regain control, but now that seemed a faint hope to hold on to.

"Armin," she repeated, ignoring him, "how are you still alive?"

He was growing annoyed with her question, but he tried to answer for the sake of having something else to focus on. "He only just- I only just got in here, so-"

"Armin, you've been in here minutes," she corrected.

Minutes- that was impossible. The acid surely would have begun to work on him by then. It had felt longer than he'd said, but he'd assumed it was from fear that time seemed to slow.

"Mikasa, are you sure-"

"Of course I'm sure."

A heavy feeling of relief lifted a weight off of him. If he'd been in there for that long without any burning at all, maybe that meant...

"He's not trying to eat us," Armin sighed a breath of relief.

"But he swallowed us-"

"There's no acid," he interjected. "Maybe-maybe he can take that away, like he did that day when they shot the cannons at us?"

They were both silent from a long moment, listening to the beating of the heart somewhere high above them and the whoosh of air in his lungs. They swayed slightly with the rhythm of Eren's running.

"So he's only trying to protect us? Like in his hand and his mouth?" Mikasa asked. Armin thought he heard an undertone of guilt in her voice, and he wondered what she'd done in the time before she was gulped down.

"I think so," he said quietly. He relaxed into the hot flesh underneath him, sinking into the squishy muscle. He began to slowly rub the flesh in circular strokes, in a sort of reassuring "yes, yes, I know you're not trying to kill me" way. He couldn't be certain, but he thought he heard the Titan rumble in response.

"Better get comfortable. We could be here a while."

Eren felt himself starting to panic when he felt both of his friends stop moving. Were they okay? Was he wrong, were they being burned up by his stomach juices? He starting to consider ripping open his own stomach when he felt a curious sensation inside. He could feel them moving around a little bit, no longer panicked and scared. Did they know they were safe? He laid a hand over his stomach as he caught sight of the troops up ahead, and he knew that the three were all going to be okay for once.

A few hours later, as what remained of the group approached the wall, Levi looked up at their allied Titan.

"It would be time to cut you out, Eren," Levi said, and the two stopped as the rest continued forward. The Titan bowed down low enough for the man to climb over his shoulders and position the dual blades over the nape of his neck. Then he began to slice, more slowly than if it were another Titan, and a moment later he was pulling out a cringing Eren. His left hand and leg just below the knee had been severed and would take a little while to return, but his right leg was intact and only the fingers of that hand had been cut off. Supporting him, Levi helped him down over the carcass of the Titan.

"Wait," Eren said, hand on the hilt of a sword. "There's... something I need to do first."

Limping over to the midsection of the body of the decomposing Titan, uncomfortably aware of the stare of his superior, he slowly began slicing into the skin as Levi watched in dull confusion. A moment later, when a hand appeared through the cut followed by a young girl and then another boy covered in slime, Levi's expression became unreadable.

"They were... I was... I didn't eat them," Eren said. "Well, I- I swallowed them, but that's an entirely different thing altogether than eating and-"

"What you do in your spare time doesn't concern me, Yeagar," Levi shrugged. "Just promise me that you will never eat me."

"But I- I promise, sir."

Levi sighed, looking forward to the corp moving steadily away.

"I suppose I'll have to help you back, but I'm not laying a finger on either of you until you're cleaned up." Without another word, he removed his cloak and tossed it at the two covered in saliva before walking away with a backwards glance. There was an awkard silence between the three as Eren studied his missing appendages already starting to regrow with the painful regeneration process and his friends slowly wiped away the slime.

"Sorry for... eating you," Eren said quietly, a sheepish expression creeping across his face. "I would have... I wanted to explain, but..."

"You knew we would be safe in there?" Armin asked, forcing Eren to look up at them.

"It was an accident, swallowing you, but yeah. I knew you'd be okay, or I would've carved you out myself." He quirked a brow at Mikasa. "You on the other hand... Were you fileting my tongue?"

A pink tinge touched Mikasa's cheeks, quickly replaced by an indignant pose as she strode forward, poking his chest and saying, "You ate Armin! What did you expect me to do? I thought you'd lost control and become ravenous!"

"You were safe, weren't you?" Eren retorted heatedly. "Not being chewed up by some random Titan, being sent down to a stomach not quite so nice as mine?"

"How could I know that?"

"If you had trusted me a bit more-" Eren stopped himself, forcing himself to breathe. "You should have known I wouldn't lose control again. I learned my lesson the last time I attacked you." The body of the Titan crumbled into dust as he sat down on the ground. "But I am sorry all the same. I know it must have been...awful, in there."

He was thinking of his own experiences, Armin thought as he studied Eren's expression. The day he'd been swallowed by the Titan in Armin's place. But that had been a different Titan under different circumstances, completely separate from his experience today. In fact- and he would never ever say it out loud- he had felt warm and safe and comfortable inside the Titan's belly. He knew Eren wouldn't hurt him, and it was actually cozy in there once he got used to it.

"It wasn't so bad as you might think," Armin reassured kindly.

What Eren wasn't admitting was that he had enjoyed the feeling of his friends inside. He'd felt their trust in him with their lives and had faith that he would protect them, but not in the overwhelming way he'd been feeling recently with the survey corp. This was different, and he couldn't help but crave that feeling again- as well as the feeling of a warm, wriggling little body slipping down his throat.

Eren shivered, thankful neither Mikasa nor Armin could read his thoughts.