Poison
Chapter Text
Eren's first memory is of his death.
He wakes up when his body is about three. Only, he isn't waking up because he wasn't asleep. He recalls running through a sprinkler with his mom - not his actual mom, mind, but the woman who birthed this body and that boy - when he slips. They're on grass, muddy grass, so it doesn't hurt the little body, be Eren remembers all too clearly how his body hit the ground after being shot. A direct hit to the chest with one of the smaller titan weapons. In his titan for, he wouldn't have noticed the damage before it healed. Human, however, his chest was caved in, a gaping, bleeding hole where bone and flesh should have been. Steam poured from the wound but it wasn't enough and he died to the sight of Mikasa filleting his murderer with her swords. He wakes up with the wind knocked from his lungs, balanced on tiny hand and knees on fresh green grass that isn't soaked with his blood.
It's not half as bad as those first few times he woke after a shift, but still. Jarring. Terrifying. He might spend then next several weeks in a catatonic haze. At the end he has all of his old memories back and an impressive list of doctors that know his name.
Eren Jaeger. Son of Grisha and Kalura Jaeger. It's the same in this time as the last. Only, despite Grisha being a doctor, this man and his... father are near opposites. Previously concerned with his work, family coming second, this Grisha spends as much time as possible at home. He works long shifts at a local hospital and comes back wary and worn, but excited to see his wife and child again.
Eren feels sorta bad about avoiding him after regaining his memories. He just can't stand to be alone with the man, the man who shares the name of that bastard from his original time. That has nothing on the stomach heaving sick that he feels whenever he sees he mother smiling and giving music lessons. He watched her get ripped in half by that grotesque, always grinning beast. That scene haunted his sleeping hours until the fresh horror of watching Levi's squad get shredded overshot it, nearly six years later. Even still, it popped up like Bertolt at the gates. One kick and in flooded the memories.
His parents don't understand. He doesn't expect them to. Not really. Not when he can't stand to look at them. He knows that before the fall he was just a happy little boy and after - after he's still a little boy on the outside, but his memories are of fighting a war. A war against titans and humans and the thing that dared call itself his father. By the time he was ten, Eren knew blood and death like the back of his hand. He'd killed, fought, and been helpless to save his own mother.
Memories like that, the thoughts and actions that accompany them, do not belong in a three year old.
When his fourth birthday finally swings around, the list of doctors he has visited is ridiculous. Psychologists. Psychiatrists. Neurologists. Physiologists. A physicist, once, but that was more of an accident than anything else. Doctor after doctor after doctor and no one can give his parents a definite answer. One suggests a pet, so his parents buy him a little black ball of fur. A puppy. Eren names her Anka. Her name was the first word he has said in close to four months. When that doesn't work, another suggests more social interaction with his peer group would help, but, well.
Eren's temper was shit when he was older (older in the past, as opposed to now, more than a thousand years later, when he's younger. Seriously? What is his life? First titan shifting, now this?) and now that he's a kid again with limbs that don't work right and a whole new language to learn and names to remember and all the fucking brats at the daycare his parents send him to - it's all too much. The first day in, some boy who looks like Connie knocks over the block castle he's building - it is supposed to be the survey corp headquarter, but the proportions are wrong - and he snaps. The kid is on the ground before either of them realize what's happening, his face bloody and screaming like he's being murdered. Eren is screaming at him in common when he comes back to himself, flying fists stilled under the weight of what he has just done because ohshit this is a civilian kid! and he feels like puking.
His parent frantically withdraw him from the program and they're off to see a whole new raft of doctors.
Yay. Doctors.
He hears rumors at one hospital of another boy with similar problems. He's unpredictably violent, has screaming night terrors, has problems speaking and understanding English, and doesn't seem to recognize his own parents. Refuses, more like. Eren's parents shudder, glad that their son apparently got off easy with whatever this is, and are firm in their denial when Eren asks to meet the other kid.
Eren knows things aren't going to work out at school when he starts a year later. He's been careful to hold his temper in check, to mark out all the entrances and exits and places to hide before the first hours is up. During nap he sits still on his cot and focuses on the breathing exercises Levi taught him. Four in, hold, four out. Every out of place noise makes his twitch though. His blood pumps faster, heating his skin as the steam rises in defense. Preemptive healing.
The teachers frown at his behavior. It's unusual to the extreme that a five-year-old will opt for, or even know, meditation when he could be messing around. It's not like Eren is the best behaved kid in class. He twitches and shifts in his seat constantly during any quiet working time. He can't seem to play attention at story time, unless it's a story about the Wall or titans. Then he's still, unnaturally so, soaking up the child-rated information that everyone knows by this point. And his art - his art is disturbing. His teacher is almost scared to give the boy something more refined than crayons by the end of the first week. Page upon page of red and brown, bloodied rust stains and dismembered corpses. Shadows and gunpowder, cannon blasts that can almost be heard as the scene expands from one page to the next. He a good artist, that's to be certain, but it's almost like the art matters less than putting it on paper.
"Well class," the teacher chirps at the start of the second week. "I thought that before we start writing practice we could do a little coloring instead. How does that sound?" There is a cheer from the kids. Eren looks up, slightly apprehensive. He's always a little apprehensive when the teacher changes the schedule. "I want you to draw a picture about what you dreamed last night."
Eren slumps back in his chair. That isn't something he's thought about before. He thought, when the nightmares didn't resurface with the memories, that everything was fine. He's been able to sleep properly for the first time since Wall Maria fell. The paper in front of him sneers back, mocking. Blank and white and pristine. It holds silence under the heavy chatter and clatter from the other kids, white teeth grinning.
"What wrong, Eren?"
And the answer slithers its poisonous, condemning way from between his lips. "I don't dream."