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Look, Mummy, no hands. I’m having to do it all by myself. Look, Mummy, no hands. I used to dismiss you, now I just miss you. As the years fall away from me, I feel my heart sinking; then I look back and smile and I find myself thinking....How careless we are when we’re young.
-'Look Mummy, No Hands' Amanda Palmer
On Eren’s 17th birthday Corporal Levi sneaks him into the city for the day.
They’re supposed to be laying low until they understood where they stood with the Military Police after the seconded kidnapping that had resulted in massive losses of life. Erwin’s only command before shutting himself in to recover was to take no chances and to play nice until they had a plan one way or another.
Eren was to be under 24 hour surveillance in a near abandoned safehouse that the scouts used to use as a restock station. It was extremely unadvisable for him to make an appearance in town or to anyone who might have less than pleasant feelings for a titan shifter. Theses days that pretty much meant everyone. And while he understood the importance of such a command; it didn’t stop the feeling of being smothered in such a small place for so long.
So it stood to reason that Eren leaving for any reason, even with Levi at his side, was a big no-no: Which is probably why acting commander Hanji, sweet Sina help us all, gave the plan an enthusiastic ‘OK’ and helped them sneak out during the guard change.
He knows that this is a birthday gift of sorts, even if Levi will not say as much, and he is grateful for the chance to spread his proverbial wings.
He is.
But Eren’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a bit nervous of messing this, like everything else he touched, up. “Are you sure this is a good idea sir?” He asks looking back at the base that was little more than a smudge on the horizon now.
The corporal shrugs. “Just try not to get kidnapped. Again. If at all possible.” Is all Levi comments on the matter as they make their way into the closest town disguised as civilians.
Eren wants to reach out and— well he doens’t know what he’d reach out for only that he wants to— but instead settles on an enthusiastic ‘Yes Sir!’ and a salute that Levi’s retreating back doesn’t see.
The city of Jinae is large, even for an industrial city. By this point in his military career Eren has seen a great many number of cities in the two walls and Jinae, while an import station for ore, somehow still retained a small town feel to it.
Eren was made even fonder of the town by the fact that he knew this is where Marco had lived and grown up before enlisting. These days the memory of his friend doesn’t make him feel the guilt that it used to, doesn’t make him feel like scum, and he likes to think that Marco is okay with that.
If the situation were different, if they weren’t aiming for stealth he’d like to pay Marco’s family his respects, but there are Military Police stationed here and he knows they shouldn’t risk being found. Levi who seems to understand his better than he does steers him toward the market with a brush, re:shove, of his hand to his back.
Together Levi and Eren roam the city in an unmarked cloaks and are able to enjoy a rare day of being alone amongst people. In the market he buys a few items for his friends back at the base; sweet bread for Sasha, soft socks for Connie who had ruined his last pair weeks ago, a book of fairy-tales for Armin, new hair ties and ribbons for Historia, and dark tea bags for Mikasa.
He is about to get nothing for Jean, just to be a jerk, but Levi stops him.
“Those.” He nudges Eren toward the sugercubes. “Get him those.” The dark haired man’s expression is serious as if they are talking battle strategy rather than the best way to piss off one of their own and Eren is unable to help himself from laughing.
“That would be very mean sir.” He says even as signalling for the shop owner to bag him a few cubes. They are expensive, but the thought of making Jean neigh in anger is well worth the coin.
Levi snorts.“What? If anyone asks its because he likes his oatmeal disgustingly sweet, not because he looks like a horse.”
The brunet hands the owner the money and the lets Levi lead him back into the crowd. “Of course not sir.” He gets an soft elbow in his ribs as a reply as they’re walking away.
“Quit it with the ‘sir’ Eren. We’re laying low remember.” Levi murmurs.
Eren still protests; he remembers the last time he’d simply called Levi by his name at the harvest festival some months ago and how confusing and embarrassing that had been. “But sir—”
Now he gets a hard elbow to this gut that steals his breath away. “Why do I bother telling you anything if it’s going to go in one ear and out the other?”
Okay, he probably deserved that. “Understood.”
Eren leads them to a stall that sells all manner of beeswax soaps; the kind that he knows that the corporal likes best, but refuses to use their limited budget on. “Which one would you like s—” at the shorter man's glare he hastily corrects his slip up. “—uh Levi?” His name at once feels foreign and pleasant on his tongue and Eren is not sure what to think of it.
“None of them.”
“But it’s not as if I have much opportunity to spend my pay elsewhere.”
“No.”
As a rule of thumb Eren does not like to argue with the corporal; both on a personal level and a professional one. He does not think he has to right the question the man who has more than once saved his and his friend’s lives and would likely die trying to do so in the future. But this is a different matter altogether and it doesn’t sit well with him that Levi should go without some comfort when he was able to provide it readily. With conviction the brunet turns toward the owner of the stall, who is smiling a smile that says she’s seen similar spats at her stall many times before, and orders.
“I’d like a large chunk of the milk and honey soap please.” He hands her a small bundle of coins that he know is more than enough to cover the purchase. Levi groans in annoyance.
“Of course, of course, let me just bag that for you.” The proprietress answers with a cheeky smile that Levi clearly does not appreciate.
Speaking of which; “I told you no. You think just because I told you to drop the ‘sir’ that you don’t have to listen to me anymore huh?” He’s not pleased, but Eren thinks that he is hardly ever pleased so he doesn’t let it bother him too much.
“You are mistaken. This is for me; a birthday gift to myself.”
The look of suspicion in his commanding officers grey eyes belays just how much he thinks his claim is bullshit. “Really now?”
For a moment Eren compares this Levi, arms crossed and slumping on a tent support beam looking so heartbreakingly comfortable in his skin, with the Levi he had first met who was constantly fidgeting and generally looking like he had never been comfortable a day in his life. They are contrasting images but both are so incredibly him that it makes the young man wonder if he would ever know him completely. Part of him hopes that he never will so that they’ll always be something new to discover.
Eren grins and thinks that he has finally one-up’d the older man in ways of words. “Yes. This will be my soap, which I will leave in your bathroom just in case I decide to bathe there. One must always be prepared.”
The Proprietress returns just in time to hear him declare such a thing and Eren can pinpoint the exact moment, probably when she gasps and mutters ‘oh goodness me!', when he figures out that he’d just put his foot into his mouth for what feels like the thousandth time where Levi is concerned.
He had not meant to imply that Levi and himself would be sharing a bath together; but he can’t stop the blush that rushes to his face at the idea, nor the traitorous thought that he would not mind. Sharing a bath with Corporal.
This is why Armin always tells him to leave being clever to him.
Eren expects Levi to be annoyed but instead he is staring at him with a look that he only gives him when he has finally done a 3DG technique correctly after failing several times; something akin to being impressed.
Levi plucks the parcel of soap out of the keepers hand and tosses it to a gobsmacked Eren to carry. “Hmmmm, happy birthday to me then.”
Sunset has them returning to the small park where they had hitched their horses and it is there that he comes face to face with a roundabout.
Eren had not noticed it before; the excitement of being in a new city had him catapulting off his horse with little thought to the park when they had arrived. Now that the sun was setting and there were precious few children and parents around, the amusement calls to him. He takes a few steps towards it while Levi merely watches to see what he will do.
The ride is painted in bright colors and several times bigger than the one he pictures from his childhood home. Eren doesn’t really understand just how poor Shiganshina was until he is faced with tiny things like this. How much it must have bothered his proud mother to take him to—
Wait.
Had his mother ever taken him to a roundabout?
“Eren hurry up. Seventeens' a bit old for park rides yeah?”
Eren shakes his head to clear himself of Levi’s question so that he can better concentrate on his own. He has the fuzziest picture of a rusty playground and creaking parts; he tries to remember the details but it is hard.
Whatever his father had injected him with had made not just his memories of the incident blurry but had blacked out large chunks of his childhood. As the days went on and he got older and older it wasn’t unusual to have memories recovered at random intervals, prompted by everyday things. A teacup in a particular shape reminds him of the coffee his father drank, a flower in a certain shade reminded him of the blanket he had as a baby.
“Eren?”
The titan-shifter screws his eyes firmly shut and wills away the itchy feeling in his head that thinking on far away memories often brought him and distractedly swings the bar of the children’s ride.
The slight squeak of the park amusement as it jostles causes the memory to crash through him like a lightning bolt.
A lonely 6th birthday. A scrapped knee. His mother calling out to him—
He feels his feet give out under him and vaguely places Levi yelling his name before everything crumbles before him.
Suddenly, Eren remembers that day with a clarity that hurts.
On Eren’s 6th birthday his mother had taken him to a roundabout.
The small playground that housed it was a fair distance away from their home and could only be visited on special occasions. On this particular day, Eren had turned 6 years old and his father had not been able to return from his trip, doing whatever it was that important doctors did, in time to spend it with them.
The trip itself isn’t particularly special, but it was the best that Carla could come up with on such short notice. Eren, in the way that only a 6 year old boy could be, is moody and bratty the entire trip there but his eyes, so like his mother’s, light up the moment he catches sight of the roundabout.
It isn’t anything lovely; a decrepit piece of junk barely held together with rust around the edges. Carla is almost embarrassed that this is all she can offer her son on his birthday but to Eren’s young mind the metal death trap was paramount to an entire fair.
When he spies it over the hill Eren lets go of his mother’s hand and runs toward the ride as fast as he can, like some kind of wild creature motivated by the need to try out the spinning wheel at all costs. Carla calls out to him to slow down, that she’ll push him if he could manage to be patient for just one moment.
Eren can’t be patient; he doesn’t have a patient bone in his body. Besides he doesn’t need his mother to push him he’s 6 years old now, he’s a big kid and big kids don’t need their mothers to push them on the roundabout.
‘Big kids didn’t need their dads to be there to celebrate their birthdays either.’ He thinks bitterly.
“Eren, be careful!” His mother calls as she struggles to get down the hill he had run down with ease. She loves her life, she really does, but years of hard work and running after a rambunctious son have left her tired, things like this were hard on her knees.
The brunet ignores his mother’s warnings per usual.
‘I don’t need anyone.’ Eren thinks as he takes the metal bar in his chubby hand and begins to run. It’s harder to do than he thought it would be and he skids into the sand scraping his knees in the process. Eren starts crying, he is and always will be a bit of a crybaby at heart, but he bites his lip and forces himself to get back up. ‘Big kids don’t give up either.’
His second attempt goes better and after running in circles for a minute, ignoring the stinging of sand in his scrapes, he jumps on the platform excitedly.
The gravity of the spinning knocks him back into the center of the roundabout and he holds on for dear life. He must have screamed because Carla yells at him again, “Eren! You’re going to get hurt, wait for me, please!”
He doesn’t wait, even if he could get off the ride and wait, he’s too stubborn to do so.
The air makes his already teary eyes water more but that somehow makes it stop being scary and start being fun. ‘It feels like flying.’ He thinks as the wind whips around him, making everything, the sky, the playground, his panicking mother, nothing but a colorful blur. It’s not enough though and he forces his hands to loosen their iron grip on the handlebars. Eren raises his arms above his head, like a bird preparing to take flight.
For a moment he knows nothing but complete bliss and he thinks that this must be what it feels like to use the 3DGear of the scouts he so admires: weightless, completely independent, no nagging mom there to tell him to stop, no dad to forget to come home, just perfect freedom.
“Look mom, no hands!” Eren calls out just before the force of the roundabout becomes too much, his footing too unsure, and he is flung off the ride and into the sand.
When his mother finally manages to get to him he is seeing stars and her face swimming in front of him as she frets.
“Why don’t you ever listen Eren? As much as it may kill you imagine, sometimes I know what I’m talking about. You can’t just run into things without thinking. Do you think I like watching you get hurt?” She kisses the crown of his head and pulls him into her arms, holding him tightly. Her hands, so tiny and worn from house work, are everywhere at once checking for any injury.
The birthday boy scowls when the world finally stops teetering and crosses his arms petulantly. “I’m fine mom. I was just having fun.”
“You were giving me a heart attack is what you were doing.” Despite her harsh tone Carla’s gaze softens when she sees her son’s bloody knee.
Other kids are staring at them and his face is red with embarrassment. His already wide eyes are saucers when she leans down to kiss the wounds like she has always done when he gets himself hurt.
Eren draws the line there.
Carla is surprised when her son kicks at her knees and backs away from her comfort. “I don’t need you to kiss it better anymore! I’m a big kid, I can take care of myself.” Eren watches as his mother’s expression shifts from surprise to confusion to some emotion he doesn’t understand at all.
The problem is that mother and son are too similar to ever see eye to eye. He doesn’t want to take her advice, he doesn’t need it. Eren is only annoyed when she wipes at the cuts with her apron. He is simply too young to understand what he is saying, to grasp just how much it hurts his mother to be told he doesn’t need her. He is a bratty selfish little kid who thinks he knows it all.
How wrong he is.
Carla’s voice is soft when she speaks. “Oh Eren, I—” She doesn’t know what to say, knows that she can’t take his words to heart he was only a child after all. Incidents like this scare her more than she ever wants to admit. Her biggest fear is that it will always be like this, that she’ll never see eye to eye with her child.
Carla desperately wants to hug her son; to remind herself that it’s not always like this, that Eren could be the sweetest boy in the world. Today….today was just difficult for him. Not for the first time she curses her husband’s profession for keeping him away so much.
“I just don’t understand you sometimes honey.” Eren thinks that the road goes both ways and tells her as much.
“Yeah well, I don’t get you either.”
The young mother sighs and reaches out to ruffle his hair but thinks better of it. Her hand hovers awkwardly in the air between them. “Just….be careful okay Eren?”
Eren rolls his eyes, muttering a ‘okay mom jeez’ , before he picks himself up and goes back to the roundabout.
The last memory Eren has of that day is that of his mother crouched in the sand with a dirty apron and a lost expression blurred by the motion of the roundabout.
“Can't you just listen to me this last time Eren?!”
The first thing Eren is aware of when he opens his eyes is the orange and red glow of the sky which means he couldn’t have been out for more than a few moments. The second and third are Levi’s fingers in his hair and his voice calling for him to wake the hell up.
They are sitting on the ground made up of thousands of impossibly small grainy pebbles with Levi’s back propped against the roundabout and Eren’s head in his lap. The younger man hopes that the corporal will not be too upset about having to sit in what he probably considers dirt to accommodate him.
“So what was it this time? Random girls you’ve never met or daddy issues?”
Eren purses his lips in distaste. “My mother.”
“I thought we liked your mother?”
“We do.” He’s not entirely sure what to think about them using the collective we so he ignores it for now. “I...I told her I didn’t need her.” he admits in a little voice filled tinged with shame.
“Ah.” There is no judgement in his tone, only acceptance, and that is one of the things Eren loves most about his commanding officer. For all his huffing and puffing about being surrounded by idiots, he never judged people when it truly mattered. “You wanna talk about it?”
Eren thinks about Carla’s crushed expression and quickly shakes his head no.
Levi pauses in carding his fingers through Eren’s hair. “Is this going to become a baobab thing if you don’t talk about it?”
Despite the ordeal and dysphoria that usually follow recovering memories Eren wants to smile at the reminder of Levi’s baobab metaphor. That conversation feels like it was ages ago and Eren feels much older than his seventeen years. “Later. If thats okay sir? I’d like to keep it to myself for a moment, but I will talk about it later.”
Theres not much left of his mother in his life and Eren would like the opportunity to hold on to her, even if its only a bad memory of her, for just a bit longer.
Once Levi would have pressed harder to make him dig out the painful memory while it was still raw, but now the dark haired man trusts him to make a decision he won’t regret.
It doesn’t mean he has to like it though.“You know I like these little meltdowns of your better when you’re a titan. I can actually do something about those. How inconsiderate.”
The brunet likes to think he’s come a long way in understanding the small inflections and sarcasms that Levi is so fond of using. Last June he had struggled to decode the smallest bit of humor in his words, the idea that he had any at all was a foreign concept that didn’t make much sense. But now it feels like they have been at each other’s side for a lifetime, even if in truth it has only been a little over a year, and Eren thinks he’s learned to decode Levi enough to see that his words, while sounding callous, only mean that Levi was mad at himself.
He doesn’t like feeling useless, that much was clear. Eren doesn’t think he’s been able to do anything but give Heichou more reasons to feel that way and its sours his stomach. Some hope he was for humanity.
With great reluctance he moves himself out the way of Levi’s soothing fingers and sits at his side instead. The cool metal of the roundabout against his back seeps through his cloak. “....I am sorry sir.”
Levi stares at him like he’s an idiot. “Ain’t your fault.”
Eren thinks about how easily he had forgotten one of the few memories he has left of his mother, thinks about that strange girl who looked so much like her but he can’t place; and he’s not so sure that Levi is right.
“My memory—” Eren starts not sure if he wants to go on but he's come this far, shown Levi this much, so he continues. Whats one more deep dark insecurity between friends? Eren likes to think they're almost friends. He’d like to think that they’re something more than friends but he’s still a little unclear on the whole thing if he’s being honest. “My memory is shaky at best sir. What if… what if I've done something horrible and everything really is my fault?”
After everything; the continued loss, the betrayal, the shame, Eren doesn’t think he can take it if the military police tribunal argument was right all along and he really was the cause of all the pain in his and everyone’s life. It was one thing to be a monster, it was another to be the monster.
For a moment the younger soldier isn’t sure he’s prepared for the brutally honest answer that Levi will give him but he steels himself for the worst. Heichou’s brand of honest was an honesty that no one else would afford him for fear of upsetting him but Levi gives it to him regardless, trusting that he can handle it. That trust is one of the most important things that Eren has, that he can cling to to remind him of his humanity when he is uncertain about it.
“Than its all your fault.” Levi says simply. Eren flinches but other than that he just nods shakily; so ready to accept blame for something he can't remember doing.
Sensing that further explanation is needed if any comfort was to be found at all Levi reaches out and lightly fingers the gold key hanging from Eren's neck before bringing it eye level between the two of them. The setting sun hits the metal at just the right angle to make it glow golden-white. “If it is your fault then we start to figure out a way to fix it. Its all we can do. All any of us can do Eren.” There is that collective we again, confirming that even if the troubles of the world were to be blamed on him, he couldn't bare it alone.
Levi would be there; the others would be there. Eren would never be alone, not really.
Levi drops the key back on his chest without a sound but his hand still lingers awkwardly between them; as if he isn’t sure if he wants to reach out and touch him or not.
Eren wouldn’t mind if he did; would like it very much if he did so. But when he opens his mouth to express this want what comes out is: “May I have one more birthday gift sir?”
Levi lowers his hand and instead stands up to brush the dirt and whatever else was on the ground off himself. ‘Good going Eren, that smooth talking never stops coming does it?’ he thinks to himself.
“I thought that the soap was your birthday gift brat?”
Eren jumps to his feet. “With all do respect, you said that was your birthday gift sir.” he replies with a grin plastered to his face.
To his credit Levi looks like he might smile for a moment, but quickly schools that back into a look of appraising disinterest as he sweeps his gaze over Eren. “That remains to be seen.”
Sometimes he really wonders why he thinks he can get away with sassing the corporal without getting flustered in the process. Noticing, but politely not commenting on, the thick flush that has muddied up Eren’s cheeks Levi shrugs. “Whats this wish?”
“The roundabout!” Eren gestures to the ride as if the shorter man couldn’t see it for himself or forgot that it existed in the thirty-seconds since they were leaning on it. “Might you push me sir?”
Levi quirks his head to the side as if he doesn’t quite understand him.
And maybe he doesn’t. For all Eren’s postulating of how unfathomable Levi is maybe Levi found him to be just as labyrinthine; if not more. He likes the idea that there was still so much to be learned about each of them; would like to be allowed to learn what makes the Corporal look at him that that.
“Sir?”
“Get on the metal death trap before I change my mind. If we get back late because of this and someone sends a search party after us I’m gonna let Hanji have her way with your titan. Fair warning.” Eren smiles at the chatter but complies, jumping on the ride and setting himself against the center pillar. He tucks his knees to his chest and winds his arm through one of the rails.
“Ready?” Levi asks strangely serious.
Eren thinks of how once, in what feels like another lifetime, this could have been a memory he shared with his mother. He could have waited for her. She could have pushed him on the roundabout. He could have enjoyed the day rather than trying to do everything on his own and ending up only with scraped knees and a bitter memory of how he had never even tried to meet his mother half way.
But he hadn’t and so now he’ll have this memory instead. The memory of slipping his protective guard with Levi and sneaking into a military police infested city, of pretending to be a normal teenager shopping for his friends, of riding a roundabout at sunset.
He thinks of all of this and decides that while this is not the life that his mother would have wanted for him; she’d have understood how important it all was anyway.
Eren meets Levi’s grey eyes with his own green ones and nods once.
“I’m ready.”
Levi pushes and pushes and the world soon becomes nothing more that a fast moving colorful blur that makes tears sting at the corner of his eyes. Eren flutters his eyes shut, unhooks his hands from the rail, and raises his arms over his head to feel the world seemingly spinning out from under him.
Even after all this time, it still feels like flying.