The Once and Future Monster

Chapter 9

A/N: As always, manga spoilers warning. This time for a vague reference to how Marco died. TRIGGER WARNING: I added the tag "self-harm." Please take care. If you want to skip this, stop reading when Eren arrives at the bus stop.

Eren awoke in the early afternoon after a night of dreaming, screaming, crying, rinse and repeat. The effort required to clean the mess he made last night was too much so he left it, grabbing a jacket and leaving the house unlocked behind him.

His path back to the hideout looked exactly as it did two days ago, yet different at the same time. The potholes in the pavement, tear in the metal fence large enough for a small dog, and patches of yellow grass spotting the dirt path up to the abandoned water treatment facility were more than familiar. But it was also like he was seeing them with new eyes. He felt strangely disconnected from his surroundings.

Annie was the first to spot him, no doubt keeping her eye on the direction he always came from. She said nothing, stepping aside as he entered the building, then silently trailed after him as he made his way to the storage room in the basement. Annie watched from the doorway as Eren pocketed two baggies and did not log that he was taking them. When he turned around to leave, Annie spoke to him with her eyes but he refused to listen.

Reiner and Bert spotted him as he walked past the kitchen. Reiner gripped his arm to stop him but Eren rolled with the movement, bringing his fist to Reiner's cheek.

"That's for Marco."

The words had no impact on Reiner and Bert, considering their blank expressions, but Eren heard Annie suck in a breath. Her face was pale and she stared at him, expression a cocktail of shock, regret, guilt, concern...

"Eren, please—"

Eren ran from the building with his stolen goods. He couldn't look at his siblings, knowing what he knew.

The contents of the baggies in Eren's jacket pockets shook like maracas as he ran. They covered the sound of footsteps calmly approaching from around the corner of the street, but at Eren's speed, which never faded since leaving the hideout, he wouldn't have been able to stop his trajectory to choose another route anyway.

"Aaah!"

Eren collided into two bodies, all three of them toppling upon the sidewalk. He raised himself onto his knees, spotting a baggie that fell out of his pocket beside the darker-haired male he knocked over.

"What the hell, man?"

Eren turned away from the baggie, facing the teens. The one on the left glared angrily until he saw Eren's face.

"...Eren?"

Eren switched his attention to the darker-haired male.

Tears sprung to Eren's eyes. "Marco." Eren reached a hand towards Marco's cheek, but Jean swatted it away.

"Don't touch him."

"Jean," Marco chided, though Eren noticed he looked relieved that Eren hadn't touched him.

Eren sat back on his heels, looking at his old friends — in more ways than one. "I'm really happy for you both. You deserve this life. Going to school, eating dinner with your families every night..." Eren cleared his eyes on his sleeve.

"Eren?" Marco stared at him warily.

For a brief moment, Eren contemplated curling into a ball between Marco and Jean, begging for a place to spend the night. But Eren knew if he asked to stay with them while he figured out what to do with his life, they would let him.

Which is why Eren had to leave now, before he was too tempted. Marco and Jean found peace, they didn't need him bringing his dangerous mistakes into their lives. Eren's eyes darted to the baggie again, and this time Jean noticed, following his gaze.

"Eren, jesus christ," Jean whispered.

Marco flinched and squeezed his eyes shut as Eren seemingly lunged at him, reaching around him to snatch the baggie and stuff it back into his pocket. When no hit came, Marco slowly reopened his eyes to see Eren backing away wearing a smile too complicated to decipher.

"Thank you for everything. Please, treasure every day and live happily."

Jean opened his mouth but his mind couldn't process what was happening and no words came out. He never found the words, but an unexplainable feeling of deep sorrow pierced his heart and mind as Eren ran off.

Eren ran with no destination in mind, darting under the overhang of an empty bus stop when his legs grew tired and sliding down against the plexiglass wall. With trembling hands, he withdrew one of the baggies and almost ripped it in his haste to open it. Eren shoved his pointer and middle finger inside and coated them in white powder, then rubbed them along his gums, relaxing as his gums went numb. He released a relieved breath that he chose the bags that weren't tampered with flour, then immediately knocked his head back against the plexiglass in agitation upon realizing he didn't have snorting papers. Frantically searching his pockets and cursing the time he transferred a loose dollar bill from his jeans to his nightstand, Eren weighed his desperation to escape reality against his better judgement and found a creative solution. The one item Eren always had on him was a switchblade, which he extracted from his back pocket.

Tipping the powder along the edge of his blade, Eren raised it carefully to his nose. The blade nicked a small cut on the skin separating his nostrils as he dragged his nose along its edge, snorting the powder.

For an hour he was embraced by endless green beneath him and cloudless blue around him as he flew with the birds, nothing dangerous to swerve around, neither titans nor bullets. Before them was uninterrupted freedom.

An hour was not enough. Reality crushed him, bringing with it the grey. The grey sidewalk he sat upon, the dark grey road a few feet away from the bus stop he huddled under, and the general grayness that began coating the world the moment he lost his second home.

The thought of living a lie was tempting. He could forget what Reiner, Bert, and Annie had done, what Father Zeke had done, and continue to play his part as the cheeky younger brother, the rising menace of the underworld, primed to kill and command. Only he couldn't forget. And by now, his siblings must have reported his theft to Father.

It crossed Eren's mind that he was no different than the thieving traitor he tortured not seventy-two hours ago. Oh, how the tables have turned. Turned on him, crushing him beneath their weight. The magical white powder tickled his nose but thankfully lifted the tables off him, though the green and blue didn't return. Eren's blade glinted in the sunlight. Curiously, Eren poked himself in the arm. A pinch. A welling of red, no different than the red Eren cut out of the traitor. They were both filled with red, one and the same.

Eren lazily dragged the switchblade across his arm, steadily digging in deeper until he felt the pinch and saw the red. He wasn't any different from the traitor. He was also a human filled with life.

It was hard to see his arm clearly through the blur surrounding him. The only thing that stood out in the grey was the red and suddenly there was a lot of red. He misjudged how far away his arm was. Something whimpered.

Ah, so there were more shades of grey in the world, Eren thought, as he noticed the grey sweater of the woman crouching beside him, concern contorting her face into a look he abhorred. Her lips moved quickly, opening and closing in a funny manner as she spoke into the device against her ear.

To him she said, "I called for an ambulance. I'm going to wrap your arm with my cardigan to stop the bleeding, alright?"

Eren looked down at his arm then lazily smiled up at her as his head lolled back against the bus stop wall. "Don' worry, it'll jus' regenenate." Eren frowned, sounding the word out slowly. "Regenerate."

The woman's hands shook as she wrapped her grey sweater around his arm, obscuring the red. Eren sighed but knew it was inevitable. He closed his heavy eyes, dimly aware of shrill sirens approaching as he escaped from the grey for as long as he could.