Chapter Text
Eren always has a piece of straw resting between his lips during field duty. It’s comforting, grounding, keeps his mouth busy during the repetitive labor of tilling the fields. While they work, his thoughts often wander to Before. Home. Back when there were things that made sense.
Before the Wall fell, he’d find himself in countless fights with kids much bigger than him. He’d square up against the same ignorant bullies in small, sleepy Shiganshina, struggling and losing each time. Often, he’d bite them and draw blood—the thrill of his teeth puncturing the skin, combined with his disgust for the metallic tang, only fueled his rage toward his best friend’s tormentors.
He’d never mean for it to go so far, and every time he’d feel regret pooling cold in his stomach, as his mother scolded him and his father cleaned him and Armin up. But in the heat of the moment, the fury bubbling inside him was always too much to bear; he was possessed by the urge to sink teeth into skin, to tear, to destroy.
The sun beats down on them, hot and relentless, taking the soil beneath their feet and under their nails and drying it into clumps, before taking its leave behind Wall Rose. The three look forward to their daily meal after the grueling labor comes to an end. Eren never consciously means to eat the pieces of straw he chews on—it can’t be providing him any real nutrition, after all—but keeping his teeth moving must give his body some sense of satisfaction, even if he’s just tricking it into waiting a little bit longer, holding off until it’s their turn to eat.
On a day like today, when the bread lines are extra long for some infuriating reason, Eren chews completely through a stick before dinner. It keeps him from doing the same to his forearm and hand, which are littered in old scars.
He dreams that night, about sitting with Mikasa on the evening her parents were murdered. The night they’d killed three men together, in some strange, horrifying combination of self defense and vengeance, that still sends bile crawling up his throat whenever he thinks about it for too long.
Eren dreams of a scene so vivid, it feels almost like a memory:
He looks down at his hands, smaller than usual, wrapped around a cold, delicate adult’s hand—his mom’s? ...no, can’t be, his mom didn’t have any tattoos—Mikasa sits across from Eren, holding her mother’s body close to her chest and weeping. Everyone’s skin stained stickyred, the coppery scent lodged deep within his nose.
Eren and Mikasa, with arms far too small to be doing so, hold the lifeless, bloodied body, chests heaving in sync as their grief tears through them both.
He’d never really met Mikasa’s mom—only once briefly on a house call, while he’d hidden shyly behind his father’s leg. Slight lines on her face made her look serious, while her eyecorners creased when she smiled, so he could sense kindness from her as well. Her face here looks so much like Mikasa’s, if not for being both expressionless and caked in blood from the wound that’d killed her.
Then, it suddenly morphs into the soft, familiar features of his own mother’s face. They notice the change together and cry even harder, sobs wracking his body and making his stomach spasm, as the two children lean against one another for support.
He wakes with a start, sweat sticking him slightly to their shared single adult-sized mat in the refugee camp, where the three are now accustomed to huddling for warmth. Eren hears a familiar clack, clack, clack to his left. He nudges her shoulder and whispers something soothing into her ear, until Mikasa stops grinding her teeth. He then tilts to his side and drapes an arm over her shoulders before falling back asleep. Armin groans at the momentary absence of Eren by his side, scooting closer behind and enveloping him with an arm as well.
He puts the brass key in his mouth when nobody’s looking, savors the cool of the metal against his lips and tongue. The key reminds him of his father, in ways that are both comforting and confusing. It’s his only physical piece of home. The single shred of evidence that he was a child, that he actually existed as something other than a soldier, a Titan, a monster. That the home he misses so deeply, actually stood at one point. Maybe, even, that this key will help explain why they’re all suffering so much. He’s grateful, and honestly a bit confused, at the fact that Captain Levi or Commander Erwin don’t confiscate his key for safer keeping—he’s a 15 year old kid, after all. They (well, mostly the Captain) had driven home the point of his unreliability more times than he can count. So, why?
When Eren comes to terms with the terrifying, immutable fact that he is a monster, when he’s being drilled to the point of bone-weariness in order to control his Titan abilities, he is overwhelmed with questions: How did this happen? … Why me? … What does it all mean?
Eren’s confused about so much, but one thing remains clear: initiating the transformation, biting his hand, it just feels right. Why does he know how to do that? Disorientation itches at the corners of his mind, at the frustratingly fuzzy memories, like an important dream just out of reach.
He doesn’t know why sinking his teeth into a chunk of his own flesh makes him transform, but there’s a raw gratification in doing so, in drawing his own blood. Maybe if he somehow manages to keep it all—the loop of harm, this maddening cycle of violence—self contained, perhaps then he can keep everything else from spiraling out of control.
(He has a sinking feeling it isn’t going to work out that way.)
Each time his Titan form dissipates and he’s somehow, miraculously, a regular human again, the inside of his mouth has changed. There are scars along his inner cheeks now even after the eye-marks have faded—a permanent, personal reminder of his monstrous nature.
As if I needed another one of those.