That boy seemed really tough.
He was here, again, today, carried through the door, clutching at his head, one eye swollen shut, red darkening to purple. The lady who carried him in had yellow hair like his, and round cheeks, like his. Eren had seen him limp through the door a few times alongside an old man with a beard.
He came by once, twice a week at least, with cuts deep enough to be sewn shut, bones needing to be set, bumps to the head so bad that the boy couldn't even walk straight or focus on Eren's father's fingers as he moved them, side to side, in front of his face. The only other people Eren saw more often were the Scouting Legion's soldiers; which, as far as Eren was concerned, spoke volumes about this yellow-haired boy's toughness. Whatever this boy was fighting, Eren knew it was just a matter of time until they went down.
The boy was whisked off into Eren's father's office, leaving Eren to stare at the shut door, the knotted wood and brass door handle, as Eren's mother settled the yellow-haired lady down at the kitchen table with tea. Their conversation went from bland reassurances (of course the boy would be just fine, Eren thought, with no little offense. One time he'd come in with a foot broken so bad that Eren's father said he'd probably never walk on it again, and the very next month, he'd come in, walking, with a broken wrist), to talk of money, which always rubbed Eren the wrong way. Eren knew that his father needed to get paid to support him and his mom, but did he really have to charge people who got themselves hurt fighting for a good cause? Couldn't he give them a discount 'cause they were here so often anyway?
Eren turned around to voice this opinion to his mother. Her cheeks went red and she pinched his ear, and told him to go out and gather some sticks for the fire.
Grumbling all the way, Eren did as he was told. His mother just couldn't see the big picture. If they offered discounts, then everyone in the yellow-haired boy's family would want to come to see them instead of any other doctor. Then they would get more money, and could hire someone to pick up sticks for them, so Eren could stay inside and think about the yellow-haired boy more.
It was rough to always have his smart ideas dismissed like this. Eren spotted a big, meaty stick, and found it to be the home of a beetle family. Eren set it down, let it be. Maybe he'd still gather sticks, even if his family listened to him and got rich. Another stick-getter wouldn't be as careful as he was.
He stomped back inside with an armful of sticks, eyeing his mother over the load, as if to tell her that the errand had not broken his entrepreneurial spirit. His mother told him to go into his father's office to stoke the fire, and put some water on for boiling. The grown-up nature of this chore quieted Eren's righteous anger, as did the opportunity to see the yellow-haired boy up close. He was always whisked immediately into his father's office, a room off-limits to anybody named Eren, but now…
Eren set his hand to the brass door handle, pushed it open, slowly. The yellow-haired boy sat in sunlight on a low, thin bed. The room reeked with the acrid tang of medicine, and the floor was pocked with off-colored stains. Eren carefully stepped around each one, eyes darting from the floor to the boy. The boy stared at his own feet, hands clutching his knees. Up-close, Eren could see the black eye darkening on the boy's face, and the raw, bloody skin where a hunk of his yellow hair had been yanked from his scalp. But, the boy had been through worse, and Eren knew he'd be back again the next week, ready to be patched up again. Eren's heart thudded against his chest, and he laid the sticks down very carefully in the fireplace. If he did a good job, then maybe he could be an assistant for whenever this boy came around.
When the water had boiled, and Eren's father had set a warm compress to the boy's swollen eye, cleaned and bandaged the raw spot on his head, Eren found himself alone in the office with the boy when his father stepped out to talk with the yellow-haired lady. Eren stepped closer to the boy, stopped when he noticed how he winced with every creaking footstep on the wood. The boy finally peered up at him with his good eye, blue as the skies under a fringe of yellow hair.
Eren swallowed hard.
"I told my mom that we should give you a discount," Eren said, finally. "Since you're here so often."
The boy's gaze darted down again. Eren didn't know what else to say, so he simply continued on.
"But you'd only be allowed to come here from now on. Nowhere else," he said firmly. "And your family would come here too. With the discount."
The boy shifted, uneasily. "…thank you," he finally, quietly said. "But I couldn't go anywhere else anyway. You're the only doctor for miles."
This monopoly, also, did not seem fair to Eren. Little did in this world, and the fact that this yellow-haired boy kept getting hurt was just another example of the ongoing trend. Eren dug the toe of his shoe into a knotted hole in the wooden floor, suddenly, somehow, embarrassed.
"…you deserve a discount, though," he mumbled. "The only people that come here more often are the soldiers."
The boy's head lowered even more. Eren made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat.
"The man that you come with sometimes is really old," Eren said, desperate for a topic that would make the boy raise his head, and look at him again. "Old people don't usually come here when they're not sick. He's really tough, like you are."
The boy laughed at that, if only a little. The sound made Eren's stomach feel strange and light.
"Tough?" the boy echoed, soft. "And my grandpa isn't that old."
"But you have one," Eren said, with some awe. "Is that why you get beat up? Because people are jealous?"
The boy's shoulders stiffened. He looked at Eren again, finally again, one side of his face purple and red and swollen, hair still tinted red and damp.
"They think I'm a heretic. I know all about the outside and they think that a person thinking about it will make the walls come crashing down around us. They get scared and take it out on me."
Eren had misjudged this boy. He wasn't tough, he was really tough. Scouting Legion-tough. Outside-tough. Beyond even the outside, the world even beyond that, and he wouldn't let anything stop him. Not a knock to the head, or a broken foot that was supposed to never let him walk again. Eren could almost see the green cloak around his shoulders, and the wings on his back.
"My name's Eren," he said, with no little awe. "And I'm sorry I called your grandpa old. Did he tell you about all those things? Did he see them before the walls?"
The boy laughed, again, and Eren's stomach flipped over. "That was over a hundred years ago. His parents would have been the ones to see it in person, but they, they told my grandfather, and he told me, and…"
The boy paused, picked at the hem of his jacket. "…and my name is Armin."
Armin. Eren grabbed his hand, and stared into his eyes intently.
"Armin. We're friends now. We can think all about that together and then they'll have to deal with both of us."
Armin's eyes (eye, Eren corrected himself) went wide. Eren squeezed his hand tighter.
"I'm really tough, like you. Once I kicked through a fence, and the wood was only a little rotten."
"I get beat up because I'm weak, not tough. I think you're confused," Armin said, soft. "You wouldn't want to be friends with me."
Eren's brows furrowed, a frown crossing his mouth. "The Scouting Legion gets beaten up all the time, and they're tough as anything. They come in here burned and cut up and stuff and then they go right back outside."
Color crossed Armin's cheek, soft and pink, nice and sweet, unlike the angry reds and purples on the other half of his face. Eren was possessed of the urge to lean forward and kiss the compress covering Armin's other eye. He did so.
"Did your grandpa tell you any stories about what his parents saw outside, before they came?"
Eren settled down next to him on the bed, still clutching Armin's hand. Armin stared at their interlocked fingers; thinking, maybe, of a good story to tell.
"…they crossed a huge stretch of water called the sea, on a big boat loaded with people…"