Chapter Text
It was his mother, but at the same time, it wasn’t his mother.
Brown hair secured in a neat ponytail, falling gently over the curve of a shoulder. A slender face that was beautiful despite its wrinkles, soft yet determined. Slim nose, full lips. The woman lying on the bed was the spitting image of Carla Jaeger, from the defined arch of her eyebrows to the delicate, nimble fingers that rested against the pillow- yet something was missing. What made her well and truly her-
it was gone.
Her eyes, her beautiful eyes a stormy blend of glinting emerald and alluring blue, the eyes that could turn from tender to fiery in the mere space of a moment, the eyes that were expressive and captivating and portrayed emotion so intensely it was almost tangible, those eyes that had never changed in all the years he’d known her- those eyes were now dull and lifeless.
It was as if an oil painting rich with hues and shades had been stripped down to a bare canvas. An empty blank that could never be infused with colour no matter how many times the painter’s brush wove across the paper.
The eyes that had, just yesterday, been filled with so much love, now seemed as if they were made of glass.
And that was how Eren Jaeger knew, within a few seconds of stepping into the room, that his mother was dead.
-
“Eren, you can’t just change your university major to- what was it- criminology just because you feel like it! Pursuing a career as a detective seems fun at first, sure, but-“
“Mom, I’ve thought about this for a long time! It’s not because it’s…Fun,” Eren broke off, disgusted, “But I really think I have an aptitude for this. I didn’t tell you this, but I completed a course on criminal studies just a few weeks ago, and I’m planning to apply to a detective agency for training.”
His mother leant her cheek against her hand, lips parting in a sigh. “Since young you’ve always been this stubborn- if you wanted it, you’d fight for it tooth and nail- and I’m not going to stop you now. Eren, I’m not against it, you know? I just…it’s going to be a dangerous path to take, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Mom, I can’t promise you that I’m not going to be hurt, but I promise you that I’ll make you proud.”
“Oh, Eren-“ Reaching across the table, she stroked his head fondly. “I already am.”
Eren smashed the framed picture of his mother against the wall.
“I’m not always going to be around to take care of you, though, and now that you’re all grown up you’re going to have to learn how.”
“I already do!” Eren protested, arms crossed over his chest.
“I mean it. It’s a cruel world and you’re going to have to fend for yourself.”
“I know, I know.”
The glass bit into his fingers, droplets of blood clinging to the shards and smudging his hands red. He didn’t stop until his mother’s face was obscured with jagged cracks, her smile a glass fracture, and then he rammed himself into the wall instead. Again, and again, and again, and again.
I’m not always going to be around to take care of you…
A wail ripped itself from Eren’s throat, hoarse and primal and almost animalistic. He was out of his mind. The screams drowned out the repeated bangs of his head thumping heavily against the wall, covered up the physical damage he was doing to his own body. Trickles of blood curved down his temple, stained his lips, dribbled past his chin. Still he kept screaming, until it was all he could do, all it could hear. Until he wasn’t sure how he was still alive at all.
It’s a cruel world…
“Eren!’ The door burst open with a colossal slam. “Eren!” He couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything else but hurt himself and scream, scream, scream, scream through the blood and the numb pain and the tears. He felt arms around him, hugging him tight, someone sobbing against his back, “Eren…please…stop…Eren, please…” The voice was so sad. Why was it sad? Heard, faintly, as if through a glass wall, “Eren! Oh my god, we need to get him to a hospital.” Warmth from another hand on his arm, gently pulling him back, stopping himself from inflicting more harm on himself, the world spinning around him…
And then everything came crashing around him and the last thing he heard before he lost consciousness was his mother’s voice.
And you’re going to have to fend for yourself.
He woke up and all he could see was white. What an interesting colour, he mused, so plain and empty, yet pure and sanctified in its own way. Boring and yet potent. White.
He blacked out again.
The second time he woke up, he saw green. What’s that, he thought dazedly, masks? Why are they wearing masks? It’s not even a nice shade of green… Then a stabbing pain in his thigh and he felt the world blurring at the edges. Not…again?
The final time he woke up, everything was black. Or at least he though it was, until the black started to separated into thin slices and light started filtering through them and-
“Mi…kasa?”
The person in question whipped her head up from where it rested against Eren’s pillow, strands of black hair falling messily over her face. “Eren, you’re awake!”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Then the events of the past few days came crashing back into his mind and the waves of pain enveloped him once again. He’d come back to find his mother lying, dead, on her bed, just a few days after he’d broken it to her that he wanted to be a criminal investigator. And there was a large, gaping wound in her neck, corroded flesh peeling back, as if it were rotting…One look and anyone could tell that Carla Jaeger hadn’t died from natural causes. It was murder.
And Eren had reacted very, very badly.
He didn’t remember what happened after he started shouting at his mother to wake up- it was all a blur of people barging in, someone calling the police, then, as an afterthought, the ambulance, people grabbing at him, lifting his mother off of the bed, him unable to see through his own tears. It felt like something inside him was breaking. Then, a few hours later, Eren still in the stages of denial over his mother’s death, someone they’d all expected had called - the police. But what they told him, what they told Mikasa, was anything but expected.
His mother was the latest victim of The Titan, a serial killer whom Eren had only ever heard of in grim reports on TV, stony-faced newscasters and gory footage. He’d never thought- would never even think that his mother would be a target. The Titan, a psychopath on the loose who killed all of his victims in the same way. By injecting them, all of them, with a fatal poison. Eren had flat out refused to accept the truth that she’d been murdered by a criminal, but the autopsy said the same thing. So did the detective agency that had been on The Titan’s case ever since the first corpse was found. And that was it. Why? Questions ate at his mind like starving rats. How? Who?
It had been too much for Eren to bear. The last straw, the very last thing that caused him to snap, was a little voice inside him that taunted and jeered and mocked-
How ironic. You told your mother that you wanted to investigate crime, and now she’s dead. Was this the type of crime you wanted to investigate? Your own mother’s?
That was when Eren felt the true pain of his mother being gone, when it finally occurred to him that she was dead, and not only that, had died an undignified death at the hands of a criminal, had spent her last moments feeling it spread throughout her entire body, spent it with the very same person who killed her. It finally registered in his mind that she was gone and she’d never come back. He’d never again hold her hand, feel her palms caress his cheeks, be chided by her when he’d done something wrong, run squealing from her as she chased him with a spoon, be pushed, laughing, up into the clouds on a swing, be greeted cheerily at the doorway with a large meal when he returned from school.
He was never going to look into those eyes again.
And that was all it took for him to reach breaking point, to break every single thing in the room that contained a hint of his mother, everything in the room that caused him unbearable pain. He staggered, nearly fell with the crushing weight of her death on his back, and ended up breaking the last relic of her against the wall. A picture where she smiled that familiar,warm smile of hers. Only now, he couldn’t bear to look at another reminder of what he’d lost. Then he ran out of things to destroy and had started attempting to destroy himself instead, because maybe it would also destroy the pain.
Mikasa and Armin had found him and called an ambulance, and here he was, staring into Mikasa’s worried face.
“Eren? You…remember what happened, now?”
Her voice wrapped around him before he could start drowning in the endless sorrow again. Her voice kept him grounded. Mikasa, his adopted sister, his best friend, had always been his pillar of support, and here she was playing the part again. Despite her own sadness, she was forgetting her own feelings to make sure that he didn’t lose all sanity again. He looked at the puffy rings around her eyes and felt a suffocating sense of guilt.
“I’m sorry-“ He was shocked at how cracked and small his voice sounded. “I’m such…a bad brother.”
Mikasa’s face crumpled and she hugged him, tightly, tears dampening the shoulder of his hospital gown. He responded just as powerfully, holding her to him not just to keep her from falling apart, but also to keep him from falling apart, and there they sat, rocking back and forth, listening to the beep-beep of Eren’s heart monitor and the sound of their own sobs. “I miss her,” Eren managed to choke out, and the sadness felt different now. His heart still ached, ached more than anything in the world, but he felt like he was beginning to heal. So, so, slowly, but he was accepting her death nonetheless. Mikasa could sense it, too, and in response she only hugged him tighter. “Me too. But Eren, why did you do that? You got a severe concussion and fractured some bones in your arm. We were all so worried!”
With a start, Eren realised that his head and arm were bandaged up tightly, an IV connected limply to his wrist. He’d been so absorbed in his own thoughts and emotions that he hadn’t even felt any pain- now that he focused, he could feel a dull throb in his temple. Mikasa pulled back and rolled her eyes. “You didn’t notice, did you?” She sighed. “How is it that you can still look sheepish at a time like this?” Eren gave up- Mikasa had always been able to predict his every move before he even knew what course of action to take. She turned serious. “I know…I know that it hurts. It hurts a lot, here-“ she gestured to her ribcage- “and here-“ she tapped her forehead lightly- “and basically here.” Her arms swivelled around her, referring to her entire body. Eren knew she wasn’t referring to physical pain. “And to be honest, I don’t know if I’m ever going to get over it. There’s going to be dealing with the police, and the detective agency- what was it called? The Recon Corps? And we’ll have to have a funeral, and meetings with her lawyer, because I know she left a will behind.” Mikasa exhaled wearily, but she maintained the intensity of her gaze. “But, Eren-“ she clasped his hands tightly. “Please, promise me you’re not going to let this affect you. I know of your dreams to-“
“I promise.” And there it was, a seed of something growing in his ribcage, burning and itching and-
anger.
It was a familiar emotion, and Eren welcomed it. He let it take control of every inch, every fibre of his being, let the anger fill him and balloon in him and consume his entire body in greedy flames. The Titan was going to pay. Now that his mother had been victimised, Eren wanted to become a criminal investigator even more so than ever. He thought it would have crippled him, left him in fear, unable to look at a dead body ever again, but no- the anger was bright and burning and fuelled his desire to reach his goal. He’d avenge his mother’s death, he swore, lying there in his hospital bed, he’d make sure she hadn’t died in vain. He would kill every single criminal lurking in the shadows of this world. He’d purge the earth of its evil. He- he’d kill all of them! Eren had felt this anger so many times before, standing in front of bullies on the playground, defending Armin when a group of seniors had cornered him and ripped up his Science notes, punching a man in the face at a bar before he could feel up Mikasa. It was the very same anger, fed by a righteous desire for revenge, and it felt…right. Balling his fists up, he turned to Mikasa and scowled, the expression slipping back onto his face like it had never left.
“I promise!”
I promise you that I’ll make you proud.
Oh, Eren. I already am.
Eren was angry, and this anger would be the beginning of everything to come.
-
Miles away a dark-haired man rifled impatiently through the documents on his desk.
Abandoned dog…Missing wallet…Will these people get their fucking lives in order already? We don’t have time to sort out their unimportant bullshit.
Then his slender fingers paused on a single sheet of paper.
Red Coded
Case Status: Unresolved
Known As: The Titan
Name: Unknown
Status: Serial Killer. On the run.
Crimes: Murdered 13 people. Injured five police officers.
Noticeable Characteristics: Wears a black mask and a white coat. Kills all of his victims by injecting a poison into their bodies through the neck. Purpose unknown.
Age: Unknown
Gender: Suspected male
Blood Type: AB
Family: Unknown
****Important note: Subject killed another victim 24 hours ago. Victim has been identified as Carla Jaeger, age 43. Cause of death similar to the previous victims. No clues left behind at the scene, nearby items currently being tested for DNA strands. Her immediate family (son, Eren Jaeger and adopted daughter, Mikasa Ackerman) have been notified. They will be brought in for interviews soon.
The man’s eyes scanned the document swiftly, processing the information as quickly as he devoured it. His spine had gone rigid.
Okay, I take it back.