**written by: blueTshirts**

12:28 AM

"I'm just saying. Isn't it weird that women tend to be intrigued with murder more than men, and yet men are more likely to kill rather than women?" Hanji asks like an idiot.

Erwin who's sitting across from her raises his eyebrow and tilts his empty wine glass to the side. "You're a homicide detective Hanji."

"Exactly!" she says. "Why are women so entranced by the dangers that are likely to happen to them? It's like chickens working at a McDonalds."

"Have you ever seen a chicken working at McDonalds?" Erwin asks as he raises his wine glass to his lips to sip at nothing.

"No, but that doesn't mean there isn't one out there."

I groan to myself. Petra pats my knee and gives me a smirk. Erwin and Petra have no idea how long I've fucking listened to Hanji rant about stupid shit. And yet they continue to insist on doing a wine night once a month together. They don't have to work with Hanji everyday. I do.

The shriek of my phone is the first thing this evening to make Hanji quit rambling for a single fucking moment.

I don't dare to spare a moment considering taking the call or not. I'm already standing without having looked at the caller and ready to exit the group in their one sided conversation.

Petra looks up at me as I stand. The slight squint in her eyes tells me that she's jealous of my luck. I raise an eyebrow at her.

"Just a moment," I lie, already having decided that I'll hang up the call quickly and smoke for another twenty minutes on the front porch.

I step away from the creaky patio chair of Erwin's backyard and glance at my phone. I pause.

Hm.

"Who is it?" Petra asks, noticing my slight hesitation.

I stare at the phone. It's past midnight on a Friday night. Why would he be calling me this late?

"Eren Jaeger," I state without looking up at my wife.

"Eren-?" Petra starts but is cut off by Four Eyes.

"Eren Jaeger? At 12:30 in the morning?" Hanji asks as her attention is immediately diverted to our "favorite" little project.

I look up at Hanji with a flat expression. She obviously cares more than I do considering the worried look on her face. Erwin watches me with a careful stare. Eren Jaeger's psychiatrist doesn't have as much freedom with conversations about his patient, usually Hanji and I try to avoid the topic of the Jaeger's around Erwin just because we know it's not fair to him.

I sigh and answer the call.

"Detective Ackerman-"

"Levi?" A worried voice hushed with hurried breathing asks through my phone.

My eyebrows narrow. I look at Hanji knowing she's listening. "Where's Eren?" I ask the unknown voice.

"Levi, it's Armin. Armin Arlert? Eren's friend."

Fuck.

"I know who you are Armin, why are you using Eren's phone?"

A shaky sigh whispers through staticy reception. "We need help. I don't have a lot of time but we're in danger. Please, send the authorities to the Jaeger Estate immediately." Armin Arlert's voice is chopped with jagged cuts in sound and coated with anxiety.

Hanji's face twists as I look at her while listening to Arlert's frantic voice. "What happened, Armin?" I ask in a low voice.

"One of our friends is dead." A hiccup catches in Armin's voice. "Possibly more."

I lower the phone and speak to Hanji who is looking at me expectantly. "Call 911. Send them to the Jaeger Estate for a 187."

Hanji buffers. Her eyes twitch for a brief moment at what I just told her. Another second passes and she pushes herself from the circular metal table and yanks her phone out her jeans.

I lift the phone back to my ear thankful for the heavy breathing on the other end.

"What's a 187?" Petra asks standing with a concerned glance at Hanji over her shoulder. Hanji has already busted her way back into the house to gather her coat and her keys with the phone propped against her ear with her shoulder. I can hear my partner telling the dispatchers how to do their job in a manic tone,

I amuse myself with the look on Petra's face for a moment. She's concerned. She's always concerned but never worried. Petra knows what's about to happen. She doesn't know cop lingo or the complete horrific history of the Jaeger family, but she's smart enough to put two and two together to know that I'm going to be busy tonight. Petra's been on this ride with me far too long to expect an explanation for everything I do.

"Levi?" A voice whispers over the phone.

"I have to go, meet you at the house," I tell my wife with a soft grasp at her hand as I start walking out of the backyard and around the house to the driveway.

"Levi, should I come?" Erwin calls as Hanji passes the giant man with the phone still in her ear.

I spare a moment to squint at Erwin. I hope not. "Not yet," I tell him. I then turn to start jogging to the car behind Hanji.

"We're sending emergency responders now, Armin. Are you in a secured area?" I ask the kid as I duck into Hanji's silver sedan. I start calculating the distance to the Jaeger estate. It could take us up to an hour to get there. An hour is too long.

"Um, not really, I'm going to have to hang up before it gets suspicious," Armin says.

A bolt of anger fueled by adrenaline tenses my muscles. I maintain a level tone with the kid to not scare him. "Find somewhere safe to stay until the authorities get there, understood?"

"Yeah, I got it, just make sure to tell them that most of my friends are in the woods," Armin says, his voice getting quieter and quieter as the phone call carries on. Ideally, I'd keep him on the phone until help arrived, but I don't think that's going to happen.

"Don't do anything stupid, kid, just wait it out," I say hoping he understands. I'm sure he will. I've known the Jaeger family for a year now, Armin Arlert is practically one of them at this point. This kid is brilliant. I just hope that genius in him is smart enough to maintain composure.

"I, okay, I'm-shit, sorry."

The line goes dead.

The anger pulsing through me wants to tell Hanji to speed the fuck up, but I don't think we can go any faster than we already are. With Hanji's emergency lights on, we speed through empty streets in the dark hours of the night on our way to the infamous Jaeger estate.

I hold my hands in curled fists and imagine all the possibilities of the reason for that phone call.

"What happened? Who's that? Armin? The little blonde brainiac kid?" Hanji asks as her knuckles are stained white with the force she's holding the steering wheel at.

"Yeah, it was him, he was using Eren's phone," I say containing every syllable of my words.

"A 187, seriously?" Hanji asks.

No, not seriously. I hope. But it's close enough. Code 187 is for murder. The reason that a kid is dead at the Jaeger estate right now could be for a million reasons. All reasons that I'm hoping for. But we don't work in an optimistic industry. To survive with our jobs you have to expect the worst, period.

"Are you the first person he called? Why didn't he call 911 first?" Hanji continues to ask.

A rock sits in my gut and forces a combination of guilt and dread through my blood. "He wanted to make sure I knew."

"He wanted to make sure you knew what?"

I pinch my fore finger and thumb over my eyes. A headache begins to build between my eyebrows. "He wants me to know that something's up with Eren."

"What's up with Eren then?"

"I don't know," I mutter. I can feel Hanji's glare bore holes into the sides of my head. "He didn't say anything about Eren, but there would be no other reason why he called me rather than 911. He's a smart kid, he knows what he's doing."

"Sure he does," Hanji says to herself. "All the smart one's end up being just fine, don't they Levi?"

Bile raises in the back of my throat and I try not to think about what we could be walking into. Or what could have already happened by the time Armin called. Or what's happening right now after Armin hung up.

I conjure up every possibility to Armin's plea. Each one makes me feel sicker. But we have to be prepared. We need a plan for everything. We can't let anymore kids die.

I think back to the phone call I had with the same anxious little Arlert kid a week ago, and wonder if I could be the reason that this is all happening.

"I'm worried about Eren," Armin said like a mother.

I blinked slowly. I leaned back in my office chair and stared at the wall of newspaper clippings and printed articles about Zeke Jaeger that I had pinned to the cork board. Jaeger had taken over my life, his little brother included now that I had to keep an eye on the kid as some kind of parole officer.

"Alright, anything else?" I asked blandly.

"Uh, Officer Acker-"

"Detective."

Armin cleared his throat. "Sir, I understand that you're a very busy man but I just wanted to let you know that Eren has been displaying some concerning signs recently."

I worked my jaw and let my eyes fall to the drawer where my cigarettes are stashed. "Like what?"

"Well, it's a little complicated, but I'm worried that he might be a danger to himself, or someone else." I could practically see the kid pacing as he talked to me. I had spoken to many parents of at risk children and I can say that Armin Arlert had put it on himself to take the responsibility of Grisha and Carla Jaeger. It annoyed me.

"Did something happen?" I asked glancing at the time. Two more minutes and I'll hang up.

"I think Eren has been keeping secrets, I think he may know something about Zeke," Armin said.

"You mean the Zeke we have in custody that has confessed to everything?"

A pause drowned over the phone.

"Yes?"

I sighed leaning forward and hunching over my desk. I scratched at my jaw as the need for a cigarette grew. I really didn't have time for this shit.

"Look, kid, I get that you're concerned for your friend and I appreciate you reaching out to me, but if nothing has happened then don't fucking call me-"

"But Detective-"

"Don't interrupt me. Only call me when something needs to be done, otherwise I'm not Eren's babysitter or parent." Armin stayed silent for the moment. That was another thing that came to annoy me about the kid. He tended to talk, a lot. And I already got a lot of that from my partner. "Eren has a good psychiatrist that he sees every week. If Dr. Smith thinks Eren needs a 72 hour watch then he'll determine that. Leave this to the professionals, kid."

The conversation ended quickly after that. Armin gave up and I hung up. Easy as that. I knew Armin was hiding something, but I didn't think it was that important if he didn't want to tell me the truth.

Regardless if what Armin was saying had any validity or not, it's better to be safe than sorry. I called Erwin later that day to tell him about Armin's concerns. Erwin said he'd handle it and that was the end of it. This wasn't our first rodeo, and this definity wasn't something new regarding Eren Jaeger's case.

It's no shock that the kid might be carrying around some fucked up shit. The kid's got problems, but that's perfectly normal in his case. Not like we'd let it get to a dangerous point, but it's enough for us to continue to keep and eye on him. Over the past year I've witnessed Eren blow up at burning chicken nuggets, drive three states over because his sister was hanging out with their blonde friend instead of him, and throw pens at Erwin when asked if he thinks violence is an appropriate reaction to conflict.

I knew that Eren was hiding shit, but everything will be exposed in due time. I'st just a matter of what he's hiding is the issue. Now that Armin had expressed new concerns, I wanted to make sure Eren didn't start some emotional break again. And so when he called me later that week to tell me that he was planning on having a get together with his friends at his family's cabin, I got as many details out of the kid as I could. But it's not like I could force him to not go or be a fucking chaperone. I just hoped Eren was doing this for some kind of interpersonal bonding.

Now sweat mattes the palms of my hands. What if I was wrong? What if Erwin didn't catch on to something Eren said? What if we've let ten other kids into a trap because I didn't listen to a little shit a week ago?

I grind my teeth together and watch the streetlamps whizz by as Hanji pushes 100 miles per hour on the highway.

Whatever happens I just hope that it's not too late. Whatever happens I just hope Eren isn't the cause of something terrible.