Chapter Text
October 18, 1967
There was an odd energy in the air that night; a tense vibrating through the rustling leaves under the full moon. Softly, the breeze whispered with the voices of restless spirits, and werewolves howled through the fog.
A perfect night for spellcasting.
-
October 18, 2017
“Oh thank you so much for taking Levi for the weekend!” Hanji shouts as she flitters around her apartment, unaware of her volume. Eren watches her as she hums along to the vinyl playing aloud, noisily searching through cabinets in her effort to pack for her trip.
She’s an odd old woman, though Eren is quite used to it by now, having been her neighbor for a few years. Excitedly, she pilfers through her messy living room on frail legs, her wild gray hair falling out of its lazy bun. Her vibrant tie-dyed skirt and blouse billow around her, showing off the faded tattoos painting her arms and neck. She looks like a goddamn hippie stereotype; if they were in the suburbs he figures she’d probably be growing weed in a backyard garden.
Or maybe she cooks up LSD in her study. He wouldn’t put it past her.
“I’m meeting up with Erwin!” she exclaims for the third time this afternoon, trying to shove large jars with mystery contents into a duffel bag. Eren has no idea who Erwin is, but he smiles anyways.
“Yes, you’ve mentioned that,” he says gently, absently stroking Levi’s fur where the black cat is curled in his lap. The couch beneath him is old and sagging, and he worries that the cushions might eat him.
“Me and Erwin practiced magic together!” she continues, as if she didn’t hear Eren. She’s mentioned this quite often as well, and he takes it as a sign that her mind is dwindling; obviously all those drugs she did back in the day were not good for her in the long run.
Levi blinks lazily as he watches Hanji, tail flicking back and forth in displeasure at all the noise. Meanwhile Eren mainly ignores her, observing the photographs on the coffee table beside him. They show her and her friend, also named Levi (whom Eren presumes is the cat’s namesake), she once explained.
“Oh I’m going to miss you, my little munchkin,” she coos, coming over and picking Levi up, kissing his head while Levi squirms in her arms, eyes wide and panicked and making screeched meows until she puts him down. Eren swears he must be imagining the glare Levi gives him for laughing.
Hanji cackles like a madwoman as she finally bids them goodbye for the weekend.
An odd old woman, indeed.
-
The bright, sunny day soon turns into a bleak and rainy night, simultaneously ominous and soothing as the rain pelts down rhythmically on the windowpanes.
Eren sighs contentedly, leaning against his kitchen counter with his eyes closed, enjoying the sound of rain. He has a gut feeling that something is off, but pushes that thought aside while he waits for the water to boil for tea.
Once his tea is made he gingerly carries it back to the living room, ready to quietly enjoy watching Jeopardy with Levi in his lap, but he stops abruptly in the doorway, the glass shattering against the wood floor.
The following moments he experiences in slow motion, his brain struggling to comprehend the sight before him; he can feel the hot tea tickling his bare feet as he watches the very naked man on his couch slowly blink his eyes open. The man tilts his head, looking confused, before glancing down at himself and promptly screaming.
Eren watches as the stranger frantically looks himself over, chanting swears as he tumbles off the couch, and Eren can do nothing but remain frozen in shock.
“Holy shit!” Eren shouts when he gains back mobility, and suddenly the man takes notice of him again. He flees to the front door and fumbles for his baseball bat and he can hear the man try to get up and fall in trying to pursue him.
“Eren wait!” he hears in a rough voice, and he freezes. “Please don’t call the police.”
Cautiously, Eren pads back into the living room with the bat in hand, seeing the man pitifully trying to stand and flopping back onto the floor with a curse.
Suddenly something clicks as he watches the man struggle.
He’s seen this man before.
With an audible gasp he tightens his grip on the baseball bat. The friend in the photograph, he realizes. The undercut, all the tattoos; this is Levi. For a moment he considers there could just be an uncanny resemblance, an odd coincidence, but that Jimi Hendrix tattoo is unmistakable. He looks exactly the same, same age and everything.
“What the hell is going on?” Eren demands, stepping closer and raising his bat, ready to strike if he doesn’t get answers. “Who are you and why do you look like Hanji’s dead friend?!” His eyes scan the room and he panics when he realizes he has no idea where the cat went.
The man looks up at him warily, sprawled pathetically on the floor. “Can you please call Hanji?”
Eren narrows his eyes, keeping the bat steady. “You-you’re the stranger that broke into my house naked, you can’t make demands!”
He takes a deep breath, lowering the bat and trying to calm his racing heart. “Are you his ghost?” he asks weakly, gently prodding the man’s arm with his foot. Feels pretty damn solid. “The friend in all the photographs, Levi...have you come back to haunt this building?”
“Do I look like a damn ghost?!” not-Levi snaps at him from where he lay gracelessly on the floor. “Just get out your fucking phone and call Hanji for me!” Sitting up with a sigh he gently asks, “please? I’ll explain everything.”
Eren stares at him blankly, limply holding the bat at his side. As the panic fades it hits him just how odd this situation is; Hanji’s fucking hot dead friend from the sixties is completely naked on the floor, and looking very much alive, which by all means should be absolutely impossible. And even if Hanji is really a witch like she’s been saying all this time, then how was she able to bring him back when she’s not even here?
Oh fuck , he thinks, what if Hanji’s really a witch and she’s not totally crazy?
Lost in his thoughts he doesn’t hear Not-Levi mutter a few words in a foreign tongue, and suddenly everything goes black.
-
Blinking his eyes open from sleep, Eren finds himself laying haphazardly on his couch with a splitting headache. He must have passed out, he realizes, and hit his head really fucking hard because he’s still seeing delusions of the strange man pacing around his living room, in all his nude glory.
“Hanji, you stupid bitch!” the man shouts into Eren’s cell phone, and faintly he can hear Hanji’s shrill voice coming through the receiver. “Yes, I do mean that! You’re a stupid, fucking idiot bitch!...Yeah, of course I’m pissed, I’ve got a right to be!...I don’t care if it happened in 1967, I was stuck living as your damn housecat for fifty years. Fifty fucking years, Hanji! Spellcasting while doing acid was your fucking idea you moron!”
Eren sits up carefully, watching the man continue to irritatedly pace the living room, not noticing that Eren is awake. His steps are careful and deliberate, as if unused to walking.
“Yeah, okay, so maybe being a cat wasn’t all that bad I guess. But you sold my vinyls! How could you?! It was my stuff, you had no right to get rid of it, those were important to me!...No, you have garbage taste you heathen, the ones you kept are garbage, so yes, this is a priority of mine. And don’t even get me started on my stratocaster, you know that guitar was my baby!”
Erem can’t make out Hanji’s response, but the man groans dramatically. “No, don’t change the subject, I’ve got fifty years of complaining to make up for. Leave Eren out of th-”
The man suddenly cuts himself off as he glances Eren’s way and finds him awake. “I’ll talk to you when you get back,” he says into Eren’s phone, before hanging up abruptly.
He tosses Eren’s phone back to him as he sits beside him on the couch, a little too close for comfort. A tense and uncomfortable minute passes in silence as he leans into Eren’s personal space, letting their knees brush while he stares intensely.
Eren shifts in discomfort, avoiding eye contact. “I’m dreaming,” he blurts out, mainly to convince himself. “This is all a wild, crazy dream, because there’s no way you can be here.”
“And yet here I am anyways,” is the drawled response he receives, and Eren wishes he would just pass out again. “You have questions.”
Eren nods weakly.
It’s going to be a long night.