the name's Jaeger.
Eren Jaeger.
(•̀⌄•́)
-whips off sunglasses-
-pokes himself in the eye-
28
I See Some Light
I went immediately to his desk. I knew I didn't have a lot of time—I needed to hurry. But when I opened the door and walked in, I needed to take a second. A single second. Being in there again was refreshing. It smelled familiar, felt familiar. Clean and fresh, the beds perfectly made. I remembered laying in that bed with my arms around him, lips pressed to his neck, eyelashes in his hair. I blinked the memories away and got back to the task at hand. I sat down at his desk and grabbed the old photograph of Levi and his friends. My fingers were trembling, but I managed to open the frame and pull it out. I turned it over to see if I could find anything. All I saw was the date. Five years ago.
I was looking for a way to contact them. Levi told me that he didn't keep in touch with them anymore, but I figured that they would know something about him. They were my last hope to uncover the secrets everyone was trying so desperately to hide from me. Farlan and Isabel. I didn't even know their last names. I had asked Hanji and Petra, but they hadn't known, either. I put the photograph back into the frame and wished that his laptop were around—I knew the password (assuming he hadn't changed it) and might have been able to find something there. I glanced through the books on his shelf, and found a little black notebook. Smaller than the one he usually carried around, and it looked much older. I whisked it from its spot and began to flip through it. It was a little diary, with dates scrawled at the tops of the pages. Each entry was only a few sentences long, and hardly sentences at all. They were names of places and things and even people. The oldest date in the notebook was seven years ago; Levi had been fifteen.
I knew I didn't have a lot of time left, but I also knew that if I took the notebook Levi would notice. I looked nervously at the door and kept flipping.
Farlan...Isabel...Farlan...Isabel...
"There!"
It was written right there in his pristine handwriting. I took a quick picture of it with my phone.
Isabel Magnolia.
"Fuck, what about Farlan?"
It was on the last page. Dated four years ago. He had written their names out.
Farlan Church.
Isabel Magnolia.
And across their names he had drawn a giant X in red marker. A chill ran down my spine.
I had what I needed, so I put the book back, made sure that I left everything the way I'd found it, and ran back to the kitchen before Hanji came out of the bathroom. Not before noticing, a tremor in my heart, that the picture of me and Levi was still on his desk. I was still shaking, from adrenaline and longing, when I sat at the dining table just before Hanji walked back to finish their ravioli. They gave me a crooked smile. I smiled back, realizing that perhaps Hanji had taken longer in the bathroom on purpose.
That night, I stayed up late again—but it wasn't because I was searching for information about the crime syndicate. I was searching desperately for information about Farlan Church and Isabel Magnolia.
"Eren, it's two o'clock, go the fuck to sleep," Jean grumbled from his bed.
"Fuck off, horseface."
I put on my headphones and played Arctic Monkeys and kept searching. I started on every social media site that I could think of, knowing what they looked like, but I couldn't find them at all. Which immediately struck me as odd. It wasn't very common for someone to not have any social media presence at all. So I decided to go to Levi's social media pages and see if I could glean any information. But, if he had ever had photos of them or relationships with them online, he had completely gotten rid of them, because I found no trace of Farlan or Isabel on any of his profiles. Growing frustrated, I turned to one of those online phone books. I knew it was a longshot. And, as expected, I found nothing. I couldn't find anything about the Church family, nothing about the Magnolia family—hell, I couldn't even find information about Levi's side of the Ackerman family. When I was angry and irritated and confused, at five o'clock in the morning, I forced myself to get a few hours of sleep.
I wasn't going to give up. I decided to take this as far as I could.
After class the next day I dragged Armin with me to the city and went to the police department. In fact, I had been dragging him through this whole journey with me. I had essentially drafted him into being my partner in crime, had told him everything that I knew in an attempt to figure things out—at this point, Armin knew just as much as I did. I had told him everything, but we had reached a dead end.
"Eren, are you sure this is really necessary?"
"Yes."
"O-okay."
I walked inside and went to the information desk, Armin anxious at my heels.
"How can I help you?" the officer at the desk asked.
"Hi. I'm trying to find someone's contact information, but I can't seem to—would I be able to here?"
"Well, I can't make any promises. Depends on if they've chosen to make their contact information public. But I can check for you," she said with a friendly smile. "Have their names?"
"Farlan Church and Isabel Magnolia."
I wrote their names down on a piece of paper and gave them to her. She disappeared to a computer in the back room, leaving me and Armin alone in the reception area.
"You don't think you're taking this too far?" he asked. He was looking around, eyes flitting from one corner to the next, twisting the edge of his shirt.
"No. They're my last chance to find out anything about him," I sighed, leaning my elbows against the desk.
"Why don't you just listen to Mikasa? Forget about him. Move on."
"You honestly think I'm capable of doing it?"
"No? But it's at least worth a shot, I think..."
"Nah. And besides, I think it has something to do with Mom."
"I still think this is a bit much."
"I'm already in too deep, anyway."
"You keep saying that."
The officer came back out, a confused and solemn look on her face. She looked at me and shook her head.
"Sorry, kid, but...ah..."
"What? They're not in the database?"
"No, they are," she sighed. She sat down and shrugged her shoulders heavily. "But they've both been dead for four years."
"They're...they're dead?" I could hardly get the words from my mouth. Armin grabbed my sleeve and tugged on it lightly.
"I'm sorry. Did you know them?" she asked.
"N-no, I didn't, but...I was hoping they could help me find something. Um, okay. Well, thanks anyway."
"Sure thing. Hope you find what you're looking for."
Armin and I left, my mind in a haze. When we were outside, in the frosty post-winter air, he let out a sigh of relief and tugged on my sleeve again.
"Even the universe is trying to tell you something," he insisted. "See? The only leads you had haven't been alive in four years. Just let it go."
"You still think I'm going to?"
"No, but it was worth a shot."
We went to the park and sat down on a bench. I needed the fresh air and green grass and blue sky to organize my thoughts, to calm myself down and rethink my plan.
"That's weird. Levi told me that he didn't keep in contact with them anymore, but he never told me that they were dead."
"I don't think it's weird. He hides a lot from you," Armin said. He was swinging his legs and sitting on his hands, staring out at the people walking past.
"I guess you're right." I leaned my head back against my arms and crossed my legs.
"But you know, this could be as much of a clue as actually talking to them," he mused. "Actually, it might be the final clue we need."
"Huh?"
"Well, let's think about what you already know."
"All right, Sherlock."
"So what do you know about Levi?"
"That before he came to university, he was a criminal who had been evading the police for a few years. They just couldn't find him."
"Okay. What kind of criminal?"
"I don't actually know, but Erwin told me that he'd...you know, actually killed people."
"Right. Alone?"
"No. No, not alone. He told me himself that he wasn't alone."
"But do you know anything about the people he was with?"
I paused, and glanced over Armin. He was still staring ahead, smiling. A little girl and her mother passed by, and he waved at her.
"Farlan and Isabel?"
"Probably," he nodded. "Do you know anything else about them?"
I thought about the hill and the gardens.
"Isabel showed him the gardens and they stole a car together once and drove it out to the middle of nowhere," I said.
"It's likely that Levi didn't work alone. He worked with Farlan and Isabel—whatever that means. I don't think it actually means anything, though. I think they just found themselves in an unfortunate situation and were trying to make it on their own."
"And it's likely that he was close with them," I finished.
"Yeah, that, too."
"Okay, so I guess that's one mystery figured out. Levi, Farlan, and Isabel were working together on the streets. Does that mean that the two of them were wanted by the police, too?"
"Most likely."
"But when they found Levi, he was alone..."
"And?"
"And...?"
"What did Erwin tell you about that day?"
"Well, nothing much. He just said that Levi was alone in the cell, that he was bloodied up, like he'd been...in a fight..."
My voice trailed off. Armin turned to look at me as the possibilities suddenly hit me. His face as cheerful as always.
"And before that! Levi told me that he was holding a grudge, or something," I said, jolting up. My skin was crawling with excitement. Armin nodded, urged me to continue. "So you think that on the day they caught Levi, he and Farlan and Isabel had gotten into some kind of skirmish, and the two of them were killed?"
"Well, there's obviously the possibility that they had died before that, but...to be honest, I think the former explanation is more likely. Because a dramatic fight in which two of his friends die would provide a probable pretext for him being apprehended by the police."
The puzzle was becoming clearer and my ecstasy was unbearable.
"But we still don't know everything," Armin continued. "Like, how would the three of them find themselves in a situation so dire that two of them wound up dead? And how could a situation like that actually lead to Levi being arrested? Not to mention, how did he escape alive?"
He raised his eyebrows at me, waiting for me to answer his questions.
"Fuck, Armin, I don't know."
"You can be so dense sometimes, Eren," he sighed with an exasperated smile. "Think. You said it yourself. It might have something to do with...?"
"MY MOM!"
"Shh! Not so loud!"
"Holy shit! You think...you think the same crime syndicate that killed my mom killed Farlan and Isabel?"
"I guess I can't be sure, but that's what it looks like to me."
"Jesus, Armin. How did you figure all this out?"
"Elementary, my dear Watson. First of all, if he was involved in some way with a crime syndicate of that caliber—even if it was just a run-in by chance—it would explain why the police were able to finally apprehend him. Sure, a gang like that is expert at weaving its way through the underground networks of the city, but remember what Levi said to you on New Year's? 'Even when they're apprehended, they don't talk.' Which implies that the police have enough information about them to be able to track their movements, even slightly. So if Levi, Farlan, and Isabel ended up in a skirmish with them, it would increase the likelihood that they be found by the police."
"Fuck..."
"Second of all, it would explain their actual deaths. Based on what Mikasa told you, Levi—and I would assume Farlan and Isabel—were pretty much experts at survival by that point. I mean, they had been living on the streets long enough. That would make sense. But a crime syndicate like that could easily take out three loners. Unless, of course, we've made a mistake in assuming that it's just the three of them. But I don't think we have."
"Okay, but if that's true, then how the hell did Levi survive if Farlan and Isabel both died?"
"That's where my reasoning gets messy," Armin sighed.
"How long have you been working this out?"
"Since you told me everything," he smiled. "Anyway, you bring up a good point. So far the story goes that Levi, Farlan, and Isabel were living together and making their way through life on the streets. For who knows how long, making enough trouble that they had the police on their tail. And then one day they have a run in with the skull-and-roses crime syndicate. Or, maybe, they've been having little squabbles with them for a while and things have come to a head."
"You make it sound like Levi was some mob boss..."
"He could've been, for all we know. So, anyway, they have this showdown with the crime syndicate. It can't have been very big, otherwise Levi wouldn't have gotten out alive. Maybe a group of four or five grunts? And we can assume that Levi et. al were skilled enough to take on at least a few people. So they fight. Isabel and Farlan are killed—Levi is roughed up pretty badly, based on what Erwin told you. But he managed to survive. How? A few possibilities..."
"Hit me."
"First (and least likely), Levi was just an overall more skilled fighter and was able to take everybody out, even after Farlan and Isabel died. Second, after their death (or during, though I doubt he was that much of an asshole), he managed to escape with his life. But I doubt that one, too, because Levi doesn't seem the type to run. Third, and what is probably most likely, Levi was pretty much cornered, now having to fight alone. And at this point the police show up and apprehend him, in a way also sparing his life."
"And then they took him to the station, where he met Erwin."
"Exactly. I think it would be helpful to know dates, though. If the date of Farlan and Isabel's death is the same as the date Levi was brought into custody, that would confirm a lot of things."
"Shit."
"Of course, this would also explain how he knows so much about the crime syndicate. It would also explain what Erwin and Levi told you about...you know...how he'd killed people. What was it he said to you?"
"He did it to protect something important," I said, though the drunkenness of that night made things a little bit hazy.
"So we can assume that he killed members of the syndicate to protect Farlan and Isabel..."
"But they died anyway. He said it himself. He lost everything."
"Right. And, finally, his involvement with them would explain why the police let him go."
I had been generally following up until that point.
"Huh? How? You've completely lost me, Armin."
"Think back. What was the reason Erwin gave you? For wanting to get Levi out?"
"He said that he didn't think he was a bad person, and that he could be useful."
"There it is. The only clue we need," Armin smiled. "Useful. The only reason the police would let a criminal of that level go would be if they could use him. Now you tell me: how would they be able to use someone like Levi? Someone who knows the underground world—and specifically about this very evasive and powerful crime syndicate?"
"Oh, fuck. They could use him to track them down."
"Bingo."
"You think that Levi bargained with the police to get out."
"I'm almost one hundred percent certain that he did. Encouraged by Erwin, of course."
"If he agreed to help them, they would let him out."
"And if he held a grudge against them for killing his friends, there would be no reason for him to refuse."
"Armin."
"Yeah?"
"You're a fucking genius."
I threw my arms around him and squeezed him as tightly as I could.
"Ow, Eren!" he laughed, hugging me back. The world seemed clearer. The burden on my shoulders lighter. Things that I hadn't understood were suddenly making sense.
"Hey, do you think we'd be able to go back to the police department and get the dates?"
"For Farlan and Isabel, yes. Probably not for Levi, though. It's likely that his arrest was completely taken off the records."
"Shit."
"There's really no way to confirm my suspicions without getting it from Levi or Erwin...or even the police," Armin said with a helpless shrug.
"Wait, I'm still confused," I blurted. "What does any of this have to do with me?"
"I don't think you're actively involved like you've been made to believe," he replied. "I just think it's because your mother was killed by the same people, and—"
"Wait, if he bargained to get out by helping them, then that means...oh my God."
"Yeah."
"That's what he and Erwin are doing." I leaned back against the bench, eyes wide, mind boggled and skin cold. "It's not that he was involved with the crime syndicate. He still is."
"Which is why he doesn't want you close to him. You have a grudge, too."
holy shit
even deeper than i thought
"So you think that when he and Erwin disappear, it's for that?" I murmured. With the last bit of breath in my shriveled lungs.
"It would explain a lot. Like his injuries, and the fact that nobody knows where he goes. And, of course, the fact that he's with Erwin."
"This can't be real."
"I might be completely off the mark, you know. The explanation could be completely different. Especially if Erwin or Levi have given you false information."
"What about Mikasa?"
"What about her?"
"How does she know everything? Is she involved, too?"
"I don't think she's involved. But I think her being close to Levi has something to do with it. He trusts her, I think. Actually, it probably goes even further than that."
"How...?"
"I mean, it might have to do with the fact that they're related. She might need to know for her own protection. Because if he's involved in some battle against this crime syndicate, it's possible that they would try to use her as leverage. Not that they could—not with the way Mikasa is. You know."
"Maybe that's why her mom died. And why she was so angry with Levi."
"Maybe."
"Armin...what the fuck did I get myself into?"
finally armin gets his moment
if you don't like armin come fight me
