Disclaimer: I don't own Shingeki no Kyojin, and am making no money off of this fic.
AN: This fic has been edited and re-posted.
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Delete Winter by luvsanime02
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Chapter 1: The First Frost
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Grisha Jaeger runs up the hill as quickly as possible, desperately trying to ignore the feeling of dread in his stomach, and praying that he isn't already too late.
The front door is ajar when he finally gets to the cabin, and there's a body splayed across the entrance. His only consolation is that the corpse is obviously that of an adult. Still, Grisha feels his heart skip a beat, only to start a much faster rhythm as fear grips hold of him tightly.
"Eren…" he calls out, but the plea escapes his throat only reluctantly, and comes out as a hoarse croak of a whisper. He walks forward, no longer running, now so very afraid of what he might find when he enters the tiny cabin.
Grisha isn't expecting the only other dead bodies inside to belong to two more adults, and for two children to be huddled together in a corner, alive and dripping with blood. He races forward.
"Eren!" he cries out, dropping to his knees. "Are you alright? What did you think you were doing?!" Grisha can't quite keep a tremble out of his voice, and his hands sweep with practiced precision over his son's body, searching for wounds. It takes Eren tugging harshly out of his grip for Grisha to stop and stare instead.
"I didn't do anything wrong!" his son insists passionately. The young Ackerman girl is silent beside Eren, clutching his arm. "I was just getting rid of some monsters! I had to help her!"
Grisha blinks, and takes a moment to absorb his son's words. Slowly, he turns around to look closer at the bodies. There are three men, all lifeless and already starting to bloat, and all obviously recently stabbed to death. There's also a knife on the floor by the children's feet. The blood spatters all over the kid's clothes and hands and faces, that Grisha at first mistook as theirs from unseen injuries, is already slowly beginning to dry brown.
The young Ackerman girl has a scrape on the corner of her mouth, but otherwise, she doesn't look seriously harmed. Her eyes are locked onto Eren's face.
"You…" he starts to say, but Grisha honestly doesn't know how to finish his thought. These three dead men murdered two good clients of his, decent people who were only quietly living together in peace. Those men then kidnapped the Ackermans' young daughter, and tried to do who knows what to her before Eren intervened, and probably also intended on selling her later. Grisha will have to examine her more thoroughly after all of this, just to make sure that she isn't more injured than she appears. At least her clothing isn't obviously torn.
"I'm cold," she mutters softly into the silence, breaking into Grisha's thoughts. He stands back up, ready to offer her his coat, but Eren has already taken off the scarf that Carla knitted for him, and he begins to wrap it around the girl's neck. There are spots of drying blood on the fabric, but neither of the children pay this fact any attention.
"It's okay now," his son says to her firmly. "You're going to come and live with us, and you'll be my sister. See, you're warm now, right?" The girl lets go of Eren's arm, and reaches up with her trembling hand to run her fingers along the soft scarf before she nods slowly. Her hand then comes back down and clutches his son's in a desperate grip.
Grisha has no idea what to do next. All he knows is that his son has just murdered three men in order to save a young girl's life. That isn't possible, can't be, shouldn't be, but the evidence is right in front of Grisha's eyes, even if Eren hadn't already confessed to him. His son, who is only a ten-year-old boy. That won't stop him from being arrested, tried, and probably sent to a mental institution or something for years, if Grisha calls the police right this second.
Fifteen minutes later, and all three of them are walking as swiftly as possible away from the cabin, a blazing fire heating their backs as they hurry back down the path. Grisha is pretending to be unaffected for the kids' sakes, but in reality, he can't get both of them to his car fast enough. The surrounding area is small, with a dirt path leading straight up to the cabin from the house where the Ackermans lived. Once the police discover their murders, it won't be long before they also notice the path and search the cabin, especially with the fire now sending smoke through the air as an ominous beacon.
With two bloody but astonishingly calm children in his backseat, and with no real idea what to do or think about everything that has happened today, Grisha begins driving away. He turns the heater in the car on high, remembering the girl's comment about being cold, and worries about shock setting in.
Grisha doesn't actually want to cover up the murders of the Ackermans. Can't, he suspects, even if he tries. All that Grisha wants to do is to obscure the scene and muddle the evidence just enough that he can somehow convince the police that Eren wasn't involved in the murders of those three men. That he wasn't even there. That Grisha went to visit the Ackermans alone today, and found the bodies and the fire when he arrived. He'll have to hurry home and then come back, leaving the children in Carla's care for now.
As the inside of the vehicle turns toasty warm, and he watches incredulously in the mirror while the two children behind him fall asleep, Grisha thinks about what exactly he's going to say when he calls the police, and he hopes, for his son's continued freedom, that he can somehow pull this off.