Chapter Text
Eren wakes up under a familiar tree.
His eyelids are heavy as if he’s still tired, but there’s no fatigue.
He feels like he just slept for thousands of years. He feels like he just blinked for a moment.
The world around him does not feel real. The sky is too bright of a blue and the sun should not be shining down like life is meant to exist here. The tree behind him is solid, the bark rough and imperfect instead of something more akin to liquid light. The ground is covered with grass and dirt instead of endless piles of sand
He sees her.
“Huh? Mikasa…?” He asks, his voice coming out as wrong as the world around him feels. His body feels stiff and wrong when he tries to readjust his position to see her more clearly. His wrists feel light and when he moves his arms there is no resistance.
“Let's head back.” The girl says, and it’s lacking the hardness that something in him knows it should hold. She is small. Her hair is long.
Too long.
“When did your hair get so long?” He asks without conscious thought. Then he looks around at the bright and lively world that surrounds him. He can see people walking and talking and living in peace from his spot on the hill. It feels foreign to him. “What am I doing here?"
“You're so out of it.” She says carelessly, like they’re not on a time limit and people aren’t dying around them and their world isn’t hell. “Ask me again when you're awake.”
I am awake. He wants to say, but it feels impossible. Everything is far too wrong for this to be reality. He rubs at his wrists. There is nothing there besides the edges of his sleeves.
“I feel like I had a really long dream.” He tells her. His voice sounds distant to his own ears for some reason.
“What was it about?” The too-young girl asks.
He does not answer. His eyes feel wet.
This is all wrong.
“Eren, why are you crying?” The girl-- Mikasa --now has worry present in her voice. It’s better than the casualness it once held, but still feels off. It’s too soft and gentle.
He wipes his eyes. He’s not sure why he’s crying. He doesn’t feel sad or happy or scared or anything else. He’s at the point where there is so much to feel but it’s too overwhelming so instead he feels nothing but aching numbness.
He stands and his body feels like it’s something disconnected from him. It’s almost like he’s in Titan form, where he’s in control and present but the body still feels distinctly other.
“Let’s go.” He states, and lets his feet lead him to a home that’s nearly a decade dead.
He’s had experiences like this before. The first time he consciously shifted into his full fifteen-meter tall titan form, for example. His body might have been moving and (apparently) fighting, but his mind was tucked away back at his home in Shiganshina with a happy and peaceful life.
He remembers that when he was in the dream it felt so incredibly real, but once he awoke he could easily look back and tell how it was nothing more than an illusion.
This feels so incredibly real, but if he thinks enough, he can remember a ruined Shiganshina and gunfire and airships and he just needs to keep going, keep moving, keep fighting--
He tries to not let his thoughts stray there. He lets days slip by without protest, easily falling into the act of his old naïve and childish and hopeful self who thought he could see the world outside the walls and not find another hell.
Everything comes crashing down when he cuts his hand.
The pain is grounding in a way he hates. The blood a stark reminder of reality on this illusion of peace and happiness.
Then the cut steams slightly and disappears. There’s no one around to see it, but even if they could they’d have to be pretty close to be able to realize what actually happened.
Oh, he thinks dumbly as he stares at something that should be impossible at this point in his life. This is reality.
It’s startlingly easy to convince Grisha to bring him along next time the man leaves Wall Maria. He’s not sure of the exact date or even the year, but he knows that there is some time before a young Marleyan Warrior breaks down the wall and unleashes titans on Shiganshina.
It’s not any one thing that lets him know he has time, but rather many little things. His mom is planting seeds for flowers that should be in bloom when they are crushed by debris. He’s not sure if they died their first year or if they lived long enough to come back the next one. He doesn’t even know if they are the type of flower to come back every year or not. It could be those special flowers that you usually find in Wall Sina where they have the money and time to plant such fleeting things. The seeds were a gift to Grisha from a patient, so they could be expensive.
Armin is starting a book that will have long since finished by the time they’ve had to leave their home behind and figure out how to survive as three kid refugees among far too many. He remembers the boy reciting it to him and Mikasa on a cold winter night, his voice quiet. He can’t exactly remember why Armin was telling it, but he does remember falling asleep peacefully despite having thought he wouldn’t be able to.
Mikasa’s scarf still has a hole that his mom will fix with her sewing kit--a fix that he’ll find Mikasa absentmindedly rubbing at when they remember all they’ve lost. Hannes’s uniform is missing that stain he gets on the edge of his left sleeve that Eren will stare at while the man leads them to the boat. The house two doors down still has a red door instead of the white one he will see crushed and covered in so much blood that it will look like they had never repainted it at all.
He goes with Grisha. The people around him almost certainly have thoughts and feelings about the sudden out-of-character request, but he’s not in a place to take much note of all of that. He lets it wash over him without care.
Grisha is treating a more affluent patient located in Wall Rose. Eren watches quietly and hands the man exactly what he asks for without complaint. He nods politely at the wife of the patient and thanks her for the tea she serves him. He even remembers to take a couple sips.
He goes back to Shiganshina. He sits next to Armin and lets the boy talk about what the outside world might hold and tries to ignore the fact that he’s seen far too much of it and knows all the proper terms for each thing he’s trying to describe.
He goes with Grisha again. He comes back. He leaves. He comes back.
Grisha tells him he can’t come. He draws on what he remembers of his father’s own childhood and how the man raised his first son and asks with the most heartbroken look he can muster if his dad wants him to stop bothering him about his work. He apologizes and walks away with slumped shoulders.
Grisha tells him he can come.
He meets the Reiss family. Freida is young, younger than she was in the memory he has of his dad killing her in the crystalline caverns underneath a church that’s not too far away from where they are now.
When he sees her he states he has to go to the bathroom. “Excuse me miss, but could you please show me where it is?”
Freida, a kind older sister who visits her father’s bastard daughter and gives her love and kindness that the girl would not have otherwise known, agrees easily. When they’re a hallway or so away and he’s reasonably sure that they’re alone, he grabs her wrist with his bare hand.
There’s a shock between them.
His hunch was right. He still holds the Founder.
Or, well, most of it anyway.
“Freida Reiss.” He says as she stares at him with shocked purple eyes that are a few shades off from the ones that looked at Grisha before they both transformed and began a battle to the death that she would not win. “I need to talk to you.”
Despite having held some of her memories and having been close with her half-sister, Eren never really got to know Freida Reiss. He only saw the version of her that she is with Historia and the version of her where he life is being threatened but vow made far before she was born made her bend to a dead man’s will.
Freida is similar to Historia, which makes sense since the older girl was the main positive influence on his former-squadmate’s life--even if she didn’t know it for the majority of her life. She has the same gentleness and care, yes, but also the same quiet determination and questioning nature. She is a strong person, even though she does not outwardly showcase it.
Freida is also very different in one surprising yet crucial way: She wants to live, even if it might not be the best decision for the people within the walls.
Things would have been a lot easier if Historia had had that trait as well. He can still remember the way his heart skipped a beat before rage filled him when Historia agreed to inherit the Beast Titan to preserve Pardis’s peace.
(He had spoken out then, biting and harsh. He was placated with words of finding other ways and the like, but that rage had stayed simmering in him. He was willing and able to share the burden of being a symbol of hope for all the Eldians on Paradis, but the thought of willingly passing it on to future generations made him sick to his stomach.)
(That sickness abated after he cut off his leg and gouged out his eye in a trench kilometers away from the only home he had ever known. It had hurt like hell--especially with him having to focus on the pain so that he could stop his body from reflexively healing--but it had also felt like a step towards victory, towards freedom .)
Another difference: Freida is already a titan-shifter on a thirteen year deadline.
Or, at least, she had been. The Founding Titan, however, seemed to be latching onto its future inheritor and leaving her body so fast that her time is being cut dramatically short. She’s experiencing signs of weakness that Eren knows Kruger didn’t have until his last year. It’s not her that his father is here to treat, since she has not let anyone know about her decline.
Eren feels no remorse in making a plan for this dying girl to eat his father. Grisha Jaeger has served his time and his own sentence is almost up. Besides, there is no place for a man like him in the future. Freida, however, can be helped. They’re both relatively sure that regaining her titan-shifter abilities will stop her imminent demise and might even restart her thirteen year long curse. It’ll only buy her an extra year or so if it does, but they both know that that means the world when you have a countdown speeding towards your nape like an Executioner from Hell.
He does think he might miss the Attack Titan. He does not feel any reservations about his plan, though. He threw away the last of his sentimentality at a restaurant table, his blood slowly staining the white table cloth as he looked into the eyes of his two oldest friends.
He might miss the Attack Titan, but he’ll get over it.
Kenny Ackerman is a strange man, but he’s predictable at least.
Not in combat, no—Eren knows that the man is on Captain Levi’s level, and he would never pretend to be near that. If the man hadn’t been so single-mindedly focused on killing Zeke, Eren doesn’t think his plans would have worked out half as well as they did.
(He thinks he can remember hearing that Zeke killed both Hange and Captain Levi. He does not and never will know the truth, but he strongly doubts the validity of it. There’s a reason his orders were find Zeke’s location despite them already having a set time and location to meet. He knows his half-brother is no pushover, but he also knows exactly what the captain is capable of.)
Kenny Ackerman is, however, predictable in his desires. Eren may have both future experience and past memories, but he’s pretty sure having the Founding Titan and Uri’s niece was all he truly needed.
He’s as honest with Kenny as he was with Freida, which means he says a lot of facts about what happened and not a lot about what he did. He tells him about the Ackerman family as well—the truth, not the lies he told Mikasa.
Ackermans cannot become titans or titan-shifters, but also they cannot be controlled by the Founding Titan like other subjects of Ymir can be. He’s not exactly sure if they’re immune to memory-erasure in practice or not, but he figures the idea will make the man less wary at the very least.
He doesn’t delude himself to thinking that Kenny is loyal to him or anything. That’s not how the man works. He follows strength, but does not devote himself to it. He’ll work with Eren as long as it’s clear that he has the upperhand. Well, at least until he finds something else to dedicate himself to than a dream of understanding his dead best friend with the power of the Founding Titan.
Information on the battle tactics and weaponry of the outside world is a fair trade for ODM gear and access to contacts that can help him move more freely or send information discretely. He’s able to get gear and find a location he can access every so often to practice with it. He hasn’t used ODM gear since quite a bit before they left for Marley. He’s rustier than he likes.
His titan form may be more suited to most combat situations, but he can’t exactly use it like he did in his old timeline. People here don’t know who he is and what he can do and he’s aiming to keep it that way for as long as he can. It’ll be so much easier to move around without his exact location monitored and the people he meets screened.
It had been a small annoyance and he had known the reasons behind it, so he had accepted it. That didn’t mean it didn’t chafe at part of him. It would be a lie to say that it hadn’t been exhilarating to slip away in Marley and start moving without being watched.
It’s easy to tell himself he enjoyed it because it was a demonstration of his freedom.
It’s harder to tell himself that he hadn’t been incredibly lonely.
He seeks out Armin and has the boy read the book on the outside world to him and Mikasa under the tree on the hill.
He’s not quite able to stay in his body, his mind straying away. It’s a calmer disconnect, though, one where when he’s back in the present he can feel Mikasa as a solid weight leaning against one side and hear Armin’s voice speak with excitement and reverence.
He’s pretty sure his behavior lately has been worrying them, but there’s really nothing he can do about that. He doesn’t think he could act like his younger self even if he wanted to. He knows far too much for that. He’s done far too much for that.
He knows he can’t hold onto this moment forever, so he lets every detail sink deep into his mind so it can become a precious memory.
He spends a lot of time with his mom.
He hadn’t realized how much about her he had forgotten. He hadn’t realized how much he had slowly lost over the years as his memory of her faded.
He listens while she tells him of her parents who passed away a handful of winters ago. He listens while she talks about how her and Grisha met and, subsequently, about her old friend Keith who she hasn’t seen around in a while. He listens while she tells him little stories about her own childhood that he never knew.
He listens when she tells him that he’s special because he was born.
It had meant so much to hear it secondhand. He feels almost breathless hearing her say it directly.
That night the guilt eats at him so much he starts throwing up. He’s not able to hide it from Mikasa, so he spends the next day mostly in bed.
It’s awful, having his mother and Mikasa dote on him while he’s sick from nothing from his own actions.
There is a moment, though, where Mikasa is gone and his mother is just sitting on his bed beside her. She has a hand slowly carding through his hair.
“Would you still love me if I hurt people?” He asks.
“Oh, dear.” His mother says, moving the hand so it rests on his cheek. “What is this about?”
“Would you still love me?”
“Honey, yes. I might not love what you did, but that wouldn’t stop me from loving you. ”
She says it like it’s so easy. He feels tears well in his eyes.
“What if I grow up to be a bad person?” His voice is little more than a whisper. “What if I hurt everyone around me and get my friends killed and lie to those who love me?”
“Then I’ll make sure to set you straight.”
The tears start streaking down his cheeks. “But…what if you’re not there?”
“I’ll always be with you, Eren.” She says, and her hand resumes carding through his hair. “I don’t know what the future holds--no one does. What I do know is that you are and will always be my precious little boy. Even if I’m not around, I’ll still always be with you in your heart and memories. You also have your father and Mikasa and Armin and whatever friends you’ll make in the future. If you find yourself on a bad path, you can count on them to be there to set your stubborn self right. You just have to be willing to accept their help. I love you, honey. You have a good heart. It might get you into trouble, but it also causes you to care so much about the people around you. Don’t lose that. Although,” She gives him a slightly mischievous smile and gently pinches his ear. “I would like it if you stopped getting into so many fights.”
He stares into her eyes and tries to memorize her face. “Some fights have to be fought.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean you have to do all the fighting.”