A Picture Paints A Thousand Words

Nightmares

(A/N: Levi's P.O.V is written by Vannaluv and Eren's is written by me. -Unraveling)

(Eren's P.O.V)

A child walks with a seemingly bored expression on his face. His grey eyes trail to the ground. His black hair catches the light of the sun as he strolls down a cobblestone path. He's with two others; a girl and a boy. The boy is a blonde while the girl is a redhead.

The two run up and walk beside him. They're both laughing, and they have smiles a mile wide. The black haired boy looks up and gives a small smile. The breeze blows softly past them. They seem so calm. The feeling is inturrupted when blood splatters across my field of vision.

Everything goes black.

It's been seven years since then. I had the dream after my mother died. I dismissed it as a simple nightmare, but they reoccured every night. Each one showed a different scene. I have them up until now at age seventeen. The child from the first dream is a man now. Sometimes I'm scared to sleep.

The dreams are becoming more intense. Sometimes I wake up, drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. They always feel so real. I always feel like I'm there.

Here I am now, walking to school with my two friends: Mikasa and Armin. Armin looks through his camera as he walks, while mine dangles from my neck. Suddenly, I'm falling.

Everything around me disappears. I see him again. He's facing the blond man with narrowed eyes. He appears enraged. The black haired man is tied up against a bed post. Blood coats the blond man's hands. He appears happy in a way. Something happens, something that's never happened before. I catch a name. A sentence.

"Farlan, what have you done?" The black haired man hisses. Ah, so the blond is Farlan.

"I've found my place, Levi. My place is at the top."

"Eren!"

"Eren!!"

Armin and Mikasa's shouts wake me. I get up, confused, putting a hand to my aching head.

"What happened?" I ask.

"You just collapsed! Are you alright?" Mikasa tells me. I nod, but I decide not to tell them about what I saw. They would worry even more. I stand up.

"Let's get going, we're going to be late." I say. We continue our walk to school, chatting away. I soon forget about the vision.

(Levi's P.O.V)

My head is throbbing. I already had a headache from trying to communicate with that brat, and the stupid wolves howling isn't helping.

Maybe it was selfish, I wonder. Me troubling the kid just because I want someone, anyone, to know what really happened that night.

To know that my family was no disgrace, that we weren't killed for associating with witches who stabbed us in the back.

I am the type of person who doesn't get scared easily. Children used to call me fearless.

Farlan had scared me, then.

His maniacal grin and bloody hands.

The red, blood coated knife laying inches away from the chairs they'd been tied to.

He had thought I was angry. I guess after time you get good at hiding fear.

"Farlan, what have you done?" I don't think it clicked in my mind at the time. That he'd killed them.

"I've found my place, Levi. My place is at the top."

With those words, I finally realized it.

My mother, father, even Isabel. He killed them.

I watched him kill them. I did nothing to stop him.

Now, I was angry. Not only with Farlan, but with myself.

I remember him laughing as I pulled and fought against the ropes binding me to the bed, ignoring the searing pain as my skin tore away from my wrists and ankles. I remember him continuing to laugh, even as he took Isabel's blade from her corpse, wiping off any blood as he returned to where I was bound.

She tried to save us. She put up a fight, but knew deep down it was pointless. That she, herself, wouldn't be able to stop our brother's time of madness. I saw the silent tears on her face when she died.

My mother died in her sleep. I always knew she was a much too deep sleeper. She never even felt herself being lifted from her bed, tied to a chair, and stabbed repeatedly.

My father tried to talk sense into the mess that had become my brother. He only succeeded in making him angry. My father's death was much more brutal than any of the others.

Besides my own, I suppose.

I just... I need someone else to know what happened. My family does not deserve to be forgotten as criminals, users of witchcraft.

In which case, I need the brat.

Eren is his name, apparently.

I didn't plan on using him, until I found out who he was.

I had what one could call a "dream" with the brat in it. He had simply smiled at me, saying he'd dreamed of me before, and asking my name.

I told him it was Rivaille, the name my mother had originally chosen for me, but it was changed as my father said it was much too hard to pronounce.

He told me his name was Eren Jaeger.

I wondered for a while why that name sounded so familiar, until it finally hit me.

My father once had a close friend, who went by the name of William Jaeger.

I remembered him well, he was kind, though extremely passionate, especially when angry.

We all assumed the worst when the earl went missing. It would seem he lived through whatever happened to him.

I let out a sigh, which seemed to echo throughout the castle.

I needed to get Eren here somehow.