A Sinner With A Smile // An AOT Time Travel AU

Father, I Want A Corpse

"Father, I want a corpse," were the words Eren said to his father on his sixth birthday. They were outside of their house, near the fields, with nobody within hearing distance to these words.

Grisha blinked, raising his head from the herbs he was planning on collecting, a contemplative frown on his face. He did not look horrified nor disturbed by his request, just surprised. To be fair, Eren had begun learning how to dissect rabbit corpses a month earlier, so he hadn't not been waiting for it.

"Whatever for?" he asked instead, his inquiry unnecessary as both father and son knew the purpose of the request.

Eren rose from where he was crouching, patting his dirty gloved hands. The knee area of his trousers had turned brown. Also, his face had patches of dirt on it, probably from touching his face while working.

"I've memorised the human anatomy already, but I would like to see an example to understand it better."

Grisha nodded at the perfectly reasonable answer, turning back to the herbs in front of him and squatting down, starting to pluck them carefully.

"Alright," he agreed, his answer making Eren smile immediately. "I will find a corpse you can experiment on, but only while I'm in the room as well. Wouldn't want to explain to your mother how you cut a finger off, eh?"

The six-year-old pouted at the joke but mirrored his father's actions, taking a magnifying glass from the pouch on his waist and inspecting the flower of a herb in front of him with great interest.

A few days later, Grisha called Eren to the basement and bolted the door behind him. He then revealed the corpse of a middle-aged man on a surgical table, making Eren beam in excitement.

"Thanks, father! If you don't mind me asking, where did you obtain it?" he cried out, hugging his father around his waist, then staring at him from below curiously.

Grisha chuckled at the puppy-dog eyes he was making and ruffled his hair, slightly pensive. It seemed that Eren was like him: unafraid of things that would make grown men cry, drawn into stuff that would make others throw up just at the notion.

Knowing his son, he wouldn't reveal his means of acquiring this dead body, so he saw nothing wrong about informing his son, for he could require it in the future.

"When homeless people die, their body is deposited into a trash yard a few kilometres from here. I went there and selected a freshly deceased one for you. If you need one in the future, there is a wheelbarrow in the storage of my cabin in the woods, so find it and use it to transport the body." he advised as if corpse smuggling was a daily thing to him.

Looking at the jars filled with body parts in the room, it was apparent that it was. Even so, Eren did not think what they were doing was wrong, as his ethical outlook was quite twisted from the way he had lived. The body was already deceased and discarded, why would it be wrong to use it? It wasn't like the owner of the corpse had had a family when he was alive either, or else why would it be in a trash yard?

Eren nodded in understanding at his father, his face lighting up with delight and enthusiasm.

"I understand, father, thank you for telling me."

Grisha merely smiled in reply.

"Shall we begin the lesson?"

{}

Needless to say, a few months later, Eren was already used to smuggling corpses and performing autopsy, Grisha even going as far as to teach him how to transplant organs. It would, of course, be a much more difficult thing to do if the two bodies were alive, but Eren quickly understood the theory and performed a lung transplant on two living birds under the watchful eye of his father.