All Eren knew was darkness.

It was a thought, a feeling, a presence. It lingered inside and around him, constant, like a comfort that warmed him and a parasite that ate away at him. Some days, the darkness was his safety, his home. Some days, it was his terror. There had never been a time where he was severed from the darkness.

And the only thing that came close to bringing him light, was him. Teacher.

At first, he did not know or understand why someone wanted to help him. He had been small, and lost, and helpless. Details that he could barely recall, lost in the recess of his childhood. But his Teacher had been the one to rescue him from the darkness. If only, just to bring an illusion of light.

The morning air was warmer, fresher than usual. It had an edge to it like dampness, like wet dirt and trampled grass. With it was the musty smell of still water. Smell was an important sense for Eren. Not as much so, however, as others.

Eren listened for the noises that confirmed his suspicions of his surroundings. Leaves nudged soft caresses above him, and the blips of the occasional sound of the calm water was heard. He focused especially so on the voice, a hands breath from him.

"What do you see today?"

Eren moved his head toward the noise instinctively, smiling at the sound. "I see a brook. Trees, and it is warm. There are clouds, and it might rain today. Are we in the garden?"

It was the calm reply, "Close. We are in the far field. Just past the rear of the house. Remember? I lead you along the path."

"Yes, the path with . . . stones. Not dirt."

"Yes. Good. What else?"

Eren squinted out of habit, though there was nothing he focused on physically, "You are sitting at my feet. Why?"

There was no reply. Eren imagined the man making no face.

"Why won't you sit beside me?" Eren patted the bench to his right, "So I ccan tell what you feel."

"I want you to learn how to do that without touch. You need to know how to sense emotions on your own."

Eren tried to suppress the slight frustration in his belly, reminding himself that his teacher only wanted best for him. His words were true. Eren could not function in society, trying to tell what people were feeling by pressing his palm against their faces, like he did with his teacher. No, that would not do. Levi knew, he knew exactly how to help Eren learn. He told him one day, that he would be able to be like any other boy his age. Even without eyes to see.

Eren, however, did not feel in the mood to play guessing games. He spent hours every day learning from his Teacher, as he had since he could remember. When he was a boy, his learning was a combination of elementary schooling and simple tactile tasks like washing and dressing himself, tidying his room, and ascending the stairs. But he was young then Now that he was grown, though it had taken him a few years to learn the house from top to bottom, he could run around the halls faster than his Teacher. His studies focused on literature, maths, sciences and history. He learned more complex actions like identifying currency, cooking, and as of late human conversation and interaction. His Teacher was a patient man, and Eren knew that the long hours spent were preparing him well.

But for now, in the warm of the far field, he wanted to learn something different.

"Teacher …"

"Yes."

"Tell me . . . how long have you been teaching the blind to see?"

"I've instructed many other students, as well as you Eren. It is what I have been doing for nearly my entire life."

"How many students have you helped?"

"Many."

"Did you teach them privately, like you do to me?"

"No. You are and will be my only private pupil."

"How . . . Teacher, how did you find me?"

Again, silence was something Eren was attuned to. Like the darkness, its twin, silence was clear to him.

"Teacher?"

"Eren …"

Yes, the tone of Levi's voice, Eren knew. It was still a subject he would not touch.

"It is too early for this now."

"Teacher, I am not stupid."

"I never said - "

"I am not stupid because I am unable to see!"

Eren heard how his voice rose with emotion. He was not angry, rather, excited to speak his mind.

"I know I cannot learn without you, and I am unable to function on my own yet. I know how much you have assisted me, and I thank you. But I am not stupid, or unaware, or too innocent, because my eyes are not able to see. I feel like you feel. My hands can sense the warmth or coolness of touch, hear the edge of anger in a humans voice. You taught me that. I know that I had parents, once. I know that I came from somewhere. Why, then, won't you tell me where? How teacher?"

"Eren, it is not - "

"Please help me to know - "

"Enough for now, Eren. I understand your words. But you are tired. It was a long walk here. Come, now, to dinner. You can eat. And we can speak later."

Eren was indignant, determined not to go, but the emotions dissolved like nothing but a morning frost in the touch that found his forearm. In the warmth of light that wa his teacher. Levi gently helped him to his feet, and Eren rose, wapping his arm around Levi's like he did, and assuming pace beside the man. It was a silent walk back to the house.

Often, promises are spoken like whispers. As if the covenant words are too sacred to be shouted. Or maybe, they hold just too much integrity to be proclaimed. The weightiness of a promise is like the sense of guilt on a conscience. It can only be relieved when it is resolved.

Levi had become a master at these delicate, intricate things called promises. He never broke them, as fragile they would often be. His word was truth. That was a promise he made to himself.

Eren had settled much upon returning to the house. After taking tea and a light meal, Levi had settled the boy in his bedroom, sitting in the chair close to the dim fire like he liked. The light of the flames, if burning fully, were too much for the sensitivity that his eye still held, even if there was none at all. But when the fire was stoked dim, the boy was able to see the subtle glow. It had always the trick of soothing him.

Levi noticed, though, that its trick was not particularly working then. Eren sat, legs folded beneath each other like a resting lamb, knitted blanket shadowed his shoulders, and his eyes were skittish. Being an expert with treating the blind, Levi knew straight away that this meant the boy was unsettled. Much to his own dismay.

Of course, it was a mixture of feelings. He above all hated seeing even in a state of unhappiness, even if it were simply uncontedtedness. Being his primary and only caregiver, he knew the boy better than the boy knew himself. Aa sad a thought that was. Levi recognized the shade of the ruddy brown hair, the shape of his hands. The stature of his shoulders, the wrinkle of his brow, every type of smile he showed in his face. Especially, though, the cloudy bloom of his green eyes. For an unseeing human, Eren had the brightest and liveliest of eyes Levi had seen. It was a silent understanding that he knew everything about him.

On the other hand, Levi feared that solving the boys unhappiness was impossible with his request. There was a reason he had ket things from the child. Yes, he was still just a child. And that innocence he denied was still very clear. In his laugh, and nature. When he threw his shoes playfully at his teacher, or hid himself around the house for scares. Unhappiness could not be resolved by adding unhappiness. Levi, though, knew that his promise to the boy should be kept. Despite the consequences of the truth he withheld.

Eren tucked his head down, and gestured in up again; he was listening, Levi knew by the movements. He watched the boy the eyes still unsettled, until his head was turned to also face his own. The eyes, unseeing, nearly focused on his gaze.

"Teacher?"

"Yes."

"I am looking upon your face?"

"Yes. Well done, Eren. You followed the sounds of my breathing."

Eren nodded, "You are breathing quickly, teacher. You're anxious?"

Levi chuckled, "Not so much as to concern you."

"Teacher … remember when I was a boy, the day I was trying to find the washroom, and I fell down the staircase?"

Levi wrinkled his brow. An odd time to recall that memory. He did know it though, very vividly. Eren had only been seven years old, a time where he began a transition to higher levels of independence. Levi would leave his side for a time, and Eren would be forced to find his way alone, as long of a time as it took him to complete the tasks he desired, as much as he may have called for his Teacher's assistance. Levi could still recall the resounding thumps of the boy's body tumbling down the flight of wooden steps, still hear the gentle whimpers Eren had made, little form curled in pain upon the landing. It had been one of the boy's worst falls, out of the many they had gone through together.

"Yes. You caught yourself at the bottom, but you cut your head."

"I remember thinking about how you had instructed I must be alone. I was scared, because it hurt, and I did not get up until you came for me. If you had not been there, I would have been too frightened to do anything. Without you to help me back to my feet, I felt like I may have lay there forever, helpless on my own strength. Have you ever been frightened like that, Teacher?"

Levi sensed where they boys words were leading, "Frighened … because I did not have you by my side?"

Eren nodded.

"Yes. It seems as if I was, until I had you here."

Levi stood from the stiff chair, seeing through the glass to the far side of the room how the clouds had formed into uniformed layers, knitted tightly into greyish woven nests of rain in the coming distance, just as the boy had said they would. Levi took to the windowsill, hands meeting hands behind his back, clasped at the small, as he thought for a moment on his words. It only took a moment. For this memory, it was even more vivid that the one of Eren's fall.

"Three times. Three. It was never a number of significance until the night, the night you appeared. Not to suppose it is lucky, or favoured. No, but it is significant. Your mother was young. Far too young, in fact, for what she was suffering through. As I have told you, those in the world who have less than others see the most suffering. Your mother lived in a home, one for young women without money for schooling, a family for support, or a job to make income. Often times these women were taken in only if they were to bear children, to save space for those who need a bed the most. Your mother was one, as well. When I volunteered at the home, working with any unseeing women, she was eight months into her pregnancy. She was not my patient. She was not anyone who stood out amongst the other women at all. I only came to notice her because she died in my presence."

It was a pause given necessarily, in caution, to see if the outbursts Levi knew were resounding inside the boy would become audible. But now, they remind hidden. Levi kept on.

"It was a pandemic, a sort of flu. Inoculation was futile, and the ones that did outlive the fever were often taken by the cough. I was cleaning the floors like I usually did, trying to scrub out bloodstains, to dispel the scent that lingered from vomit and defecation, and impending death, when your mother had collapsed in front of me. She had been saying to me, something. I don't remember what. The nurses there helped her into a bed, and it seemed like a blur that occurred, but somehow in the span of moments you went from the inside of her small body to the outside. She died, then. The nurses had taken you to the room with the other infants, to dress and clean you. I did not know how or why I had been put in that place, then. At that time, however."

"It was later that night as I was ridding the last of the waste, behind the brick building, that I realized why. It was three times I heard the noise. Each one, timid, and still determined. I dismissed the first two. But the third made me stop and turn. It was the one that made me move toward the corner of the building, to look onto the ground and find the small body of an infant child discarded onto the pavement like the waste that littered about it. I still recognize your face as I did in that moment. And after that, I had you by my side."

Levi turned toward the boy. Eren's face, blotted by firelight, had the sheen of fallen tears.

"Teacher … why did they … why did they throw me aside?"

"Your mother was simply another dead body. Without her to care for you, you were no better than to die with her as well. It was only what they thought best."

"Why … did not not throw me aside as well?"

Levi smiled, "I made a promise to you, just as your cries called to me to your side. That you would be by my side always."

Eren reached, the gesture Levi knew meant 'let me know your feelings'. Levi knelt beside the boy, letting him direct his hand onto his cheek, feeling the curve of his ips, the shape of his brow.

"Teacher … you are calm."

"Yes. This story is dear to me. Even though it is sorrowful."

"Teacher … what else?"

"Hm?"

"Do you know … why I cannot see?"

Levi felt a coolness settle in him. He moved the hand on his face away.

"Eren."

"You know why, don't you?"

"You have heard enough for tonight. Rest, now, and I will speak of more in the morning."

Eren's compliance was nearly instantaneous, obviously informed of enough to make his entire body exhausted with the effort of the truths. Levi watched the heavy head fall, gently assisting it to rest upon his lap, idle hands stroked the ruddy hair, the soft strands as if he were a small boy.

Yes, now, it may be his last night of innocence. It was no better time to allow him this than now.

Levi waited a minute or so, allowing Eren to calm, his breaths to slow pace and his heart to keep time. He spoke aloud, but only to himself then, voice a whisper just barely audible above the crackling fire.

"My line of work allowed no distractions. My devotion was to my students alone; those who employed me did not allow you to be with me. Prejudiced bastards … knew you came from the scums. They forced me to abandon you, if I desired to stay. I knew that you with me would be a burden. A child is no easy load to bear. But neither could I leave you behind."

Levi moved his hand slowly, bring up the knuckles to brush up and down upon the fair face near his own. Eren's green, vague eyes shifted beneath his eyelids.

"From the moment your eyes had opened, I captured each glance of the green eyes upon my own. I savoured your every smile in response to mine. The most beautiful stare that claimed me. I could not let that go. How could I have broken my words to you?"

Eren and his entire being, even those skittish eyes, took pause in deep slumber.

"It was one day behind the house, in the far field, I took you out to play. You loved to play in the grass. You loved to find flowers in the gardens of weeds. It was that day, the first time you tried it. You saw something in the distance. What it was, something insignificant, but you turned toward and away from me. You ignored my words, calling you back to me. And you retreated from my side. I realized in that moment that you could not run from me, if you wanted to live a happy existence. I realized that if you could somehow need me as much as I needed you, only then could we remain."

Levi thought to deny it, but it was unmistakable. The heaviness in his chest and the tear that rolled down his cheek.

"I only wanted you to be happy. I held you … and I shone the light into your eyes. And it was three cries you gave, until that could be so. Until the brightness became so clear, it could no be expressed. Until it took over the light."

Silence. The twin to darkness, and yet maybe even its equal. Levi stopped his hand, moving it to wipe the single tear from his face as if it dd not occur.

"Those green eyes forever dulled were my foulest sin, and my comfort. Even so, after what I did, you clung to me, like the inevitable shadows that cling to a figure in the sun. For you, then, became my deepest darkness. And I became your only light."