THE BLOOD OF YGGDRASIL
written by A. E. Stover
this version is not edited

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Read a fic where future!Jean and future!Eren interacted with their past fifteen-year-old selves, and thought of writing something silly and quick of my own!

Ha... And then it turned dark.

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[01] the shitty hole from wall rose (i)

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Twenty minutes after the clock hit 7-AM, Hanji burst into his room to screech nonsense.

"There's a guy from Darlek MP slapped cuffs on for digging near Wall Rose!"

"Fantastic. Now get the fuck out."

"No, you don't understand!" Hanji crossed the room with a mad grin, eyes ablaze in a way that made uneasiness crawl down Levi's spine. "He was digging near Wall Rose and he found something! Something incredible! And guess what? MP wants us to investigate! And guess who Erwin chose to send?"

Hanji's face was mere centimeters away from Levi's now. The gleam in Hanji's eyes was not a particularly flattering backdrop for a reflection of his pissed-off face, but it was there nonetheless and it just meant his day was about to be flipped face-first into a stinking pile of warm shit.

"Me! I get to see what top-secret mystery was dug up! And I get to take you with me!" Hanji gushed, pounding ecstatically on his desk. His inkwell jumped and splashed the documents on the table. The documents he'd spent the past four hours re-writing because some freak with a titan fetish and shitty glasses accidentally burned his first copy last night.

Levi shot up from his seat.

"Ah, whoops! Sorry, Levi. Were those the weekly reports again?"

"Get out."

"Get out? But Erwin wants us to—"

"—look in a shit-hole in the ground some fuckface from the hick side of Wall Rose dug up."

"Well, you could word it that way, I guess—"

"Great. Now get the fuck out."

"Okay~ I'll be at the gate in thirty minutes! Don't be late~!"

Hanji disappeared behind a slamming door, successfully emptying his room of all idiocy. Levi gave a warm welcome to the calm silence that was thrown in upon Hanji's departure, and sank into his seat with a sigh as he stared at his ruined paperwork.

A knock broke his short peace.

"What is it?" he snarled, feeling the hairs rise on the back of his neck. If Hanji was here to make some ridiculous remark about the great experience of looking at shitty holes in the ground, he was going to kill—

"Levi-heichou," yelped a voice that was not Hanji's. "I-I'm sorry for disturbing you. I just heard the update about your assignment and I was wondering if I could assist in any way—"

Levi crossed his room and yanked open the door in record-breaking speed. Armin Arlert yelped again, taking a wide step back with enlarged eyes. The blond stammered for a few seconds before finally deciding upon a firm salute. "I-Is there anything I can assist with?"

Levi wanted to smack the kid in the back of the head; one of the brightest of them all, and scared out of his wits by an open door. Grow a pair and let 'em dangle, is what he wanted to say. Instead, he said:

"I'm assuming you've finished your paperwork?"

Armin stood a little bit straighter and he nodded affirmatively. "Yes, sir!"

"Good. Then here," Levi dropped a file of organized documents into Armin's startled hands. "You know of what happened to my first weekly report. You can work on my third."

Armin blinked. "Your third, sir?"

"Yeah. The second's on my desk."

"On your..." Armin peered around Levi's shoulder to where his desk lay. Armin's blue eyes widened an inch before settling into some weird mix of pity and understanding. Levi decided he didn't like the look, but he'd swallow his words and let the kid play the role of the consoling mother. Unlike Hanji or Eren, Armin had tact and knew when to shut his mouth.

"Of course, sir. Understood."

Levi patted Armin on the head. Good boy, he thought and watched a confused smile sprout on Armin's face. "I'll check in first thing when I return."

"Yes, sir! Oh, and good luck with your search, sir!"

Levi raised an acknowledging hand as he walked away. Luck? Ha. What a joke. Teaming with Hanji for anything remotely related to titan experimentation was nothing luck could help with—

—Wait just a fucking goddamn minute. What the fuck did he mean by a "search?"

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"We're digging a hole."

"It's like digging for buried treasure!"

"We're investigating this hole by making it into a fucking bigger hole."

"Wanna see who gets to the mysterious wonder first, or—"

"This is absolute bullshit," Levi ground out, staking the shovel into the cold earth. He glared up at the cloudy sky. "What, Military Police can't tell up from down so they had to call us to do the fucking work?"

"I think it's exciting! Normally, it's illegal to dig near the walls. But we've been specially requested!"

"More like they're fucking bored off their—"

"Levi, there's glowing water coming out of the ground."

Levi looked down at his feet. There was a silvery border around both his feet. The color shimmered brilliantly against the dark soil. "What. The fuck."

"I'm taking a closer look."

Hanji dropped down to grab Levi's left ankle and lift it off the ground. His foot came up with a wet squelch, and Levi narrowly missed the chance to hold an intimate meet-and-greet between his ass and the muddy ground. He balanced on one foot while his other was held a few inches off the ground. He had to touch the sides of the ditch to keep his balance, and the moist soil sticking to his palm made his skin crawl. If Hanji didn't let go of his ankle, he was going to stomp down until those shitty glasses were—

Why was Hanji licking the ground?

"This is very odd. I've never seen or heard of anything like this."

"So you lick it."

"It has a metallic taste but no odor, and it's neither hot nor cold."

"Why did you lick it?"

"It possesses absolutely no reflective properties, and the liquid seems to be quite dense... The temperature must be equal to that of the human body; I can't feel any temperature changes when I touch it."

"...It's changing colors."

"...! You're right! It's beige! Or... tan now. And look, the color is concentrating in the center!"

"Is it just me, or is it rising?"

"It's is! It's is! There's a rapid increase in volume—! Shit, let's get out of here."

The long scramble up the ditch was difficult; Levi used his shovel to drag himself back up to the surface (where were the shitty MP guards who were supposed to be with them?) while Hanji clawed up the steep sides with gloved hands and mumbled something probably only Moblit could decipher.

As soon as they reached the surface, a hiss of steam shot out of the hole they were just in. A horrid stench of rotting flesh and blood rose up in hot, pulsing waves as the metallic liquid surged forward. Levi grabbed hold of Hanji's cloak with a fist to keep the over-zealous scientist from leaning in too close to the edge of the hole.

The liquid substance was rapidly receding. It sunk further and further back down the ditch; Hanji cried in alarm and dug hands into every pocket within reach for clear vials, and whooped victoriously when one was procured.

Levi silently watched the vial slip between muddied fingers and plop soundly into the mysterious liquid. Levi put up with Hanji's despondent wailing and studied the unknown substance in Hanji's stead.

The steam hung thickly in the air as the liquid receded, so it was difficult for Levi to take explicit note of details as they were revealed. So he wasn't sure of what he was seeing until it was half-way revealed.

First, Levi had seen a light-brown color emerge from the silvery substance. He didn't know what to make of it (was it shit?) until the liquid pulled back even further to reveal a second layer of color in dark brown. Close beside, taking up space all on its own, was another spot of brown, this one a shade darker than both the others. They were clumped masses resembling drowned weeds or fur that Levi thought he recognized but couldn't identify. He watched the liquid recede further to reveal something pale in color extend from the clumped, brown, fur-weeds and flare out in full 360-degrees and— Oh. Oh, fuck. Oh, shit. No way — No fucking way. What the fuck was this screwed-up mess of a discovery doing in the presence of the goddamn Military Police? Why. Just, why.

"Levi..." Hanji's voice quaked with something akin to awe. "Are you seeing what... I'm seeing...?"

"No," he lied, willing all of this to be a joke so he could just go back to his paperwork.

A wide smile spread suddenly across Hanji's face. "Good. Because I'm seeing Jean and Eren in that ditch."

That's what Hanji saw, but Levi wasn't sure what he was seeing. He saw a human with Jean Kirschstein's weirdly-styled hair and Jean Kirschstein's wiry, lean body crouched in front of another human form with Eren Jaeger's mess of hair and Eren Jaeger's lean and muscular build.

He and Hanji stared at the immobile bodies of Jean Kirschstein's double and Eren Jaeger's copycat with silent, stony faces.

Then, Levi grabbed a shovel and started tossing dirt into the ditch.

Hanji was on him in a heartbeat. Hanji grabbed the shovel and tried to confiscate it. Levi retaliated by jabbing Hanji in the side with the shovel. "What are you doing?" came the horrified screech, well-modified so it could pass as a loud whisper.

"Military Police'll grab 'em on the spot," was his explanation. He didn't stop shoveling dirt back into the hole. "You want 'em gone before you can get your hands on 'em? No? Then bury them now and bury them good."

"There has to be another way!"

Levi paused for a moment to stare seriously at Hanji, and then at the two doppelgangers in the ditch. Then he shoveled more dirt into the hole.

"Levi!"

He ignored Hanji's protests and just kept shoveling.