A/N: I do not own Attack On Titan! All of it belongs to Hajime Isayama! Some of the characters' names were not given out in the anime or manga, so I made them up. So keep that in mind when reading this!

Also, this is on Ao3, I just have a different user on there. I have more uploaded on there than on here, but I'm currently working on getting all the available chapters on here.

Warnings: Blood, Angst, minor character death.

This is going to start off pretty angsty, and it's a slow burn, but please stick with it! It'll get more humorous later on.

Thank you!

When it first happens, Eren is playing in the garden, slingshot in hand. He's only four.

His favorite game, shooting the weeds that sprout up on the small plot of soil his family owns, keeps him busy while his mother makes lunch inside.

The broiling sun beats down on his small back as he takes another pebble into the pocket of the sling. He fires it, missing the larger weed towards the front of the garden, and instead hits one of his father's healing herbs.

Eren cringes, his small feet carry him over to the crime scene, trying to straighten the plant with tiny, underdeveloped fingers.

He can feel tears coming to his eyes, understanding only that his father will be angry, when he returns from the trip his mother has told him the man is on. One of the plant's leaves are limp on his fingers, bruised with the force of the pebble. Hopelessly, he tries to right it, bring it back to it's original place before the incident happened, but nothing is working. Eren starts to sniffle, tears leaking down his cheeks.

Then, small feet, smaller than his, step in front of him. Two skinny legs bend down, bringing into Eren's sight a blond bowl of hair, bright balls of the morning sky peering into his own emerald orbs.

The boy tilts his head to the side, staring.

Eren's lip wobbles pitifully.

"What's your name?" A high voice asks, childlike and immature like Eren's own.

Eren wipes a dirty fist across his cheek, scrubbing away the wetness that still lingers.

"'S Eren," He says, and then, like his mother taught him to, "Yours?"

"Armin!" The blond raises his hands in the air, towards the sky matching his eyes, and smiles brightly. His laugh echoes as a little tinkle in the air between them, happy and gleeful. Eren thinks he looks like the sun.

Armin brings his hands down then, pointing at Eren and tilting his head curiously again, like only a minute ago. He blinks, small finger steady and directly in front of Eren's cheek, almost touching his face.

"Why're you crying?" Eren scowls childishly, hiding one hand behind his back while the other scrubs more hurriedly at his face than before. He's still crying, that much is obvious, and it makes him mad that this strange, sun boy gets to see him like this. Only his mother and father get to see him cry, because he's a big boy who doesn't let people he doesn't know talk to him, let alone see him sad.

Besides, he hasn't cried in a whole week, not since he fell and got a splinter in his knee after falling on the floorboards. Eren is very proud of this accomplishment.

"'M not crying!" But Armin keeps looking at him, smiling slightly, kindly, like he really is the sun.

Eren reaches up to wipe at his eyes more, and a tiny hand suddenly catches his own.

A picture, blurry, and slightly gray around the edges, appears in his head. A giant, round cloth, filled with air and attached to a large basket, lands on his eye like a stray piece of dust. Two people, one with hair similar to Armin's and another darker head, get into the basket. The blond one, a young woman like his own mother, is struggling to maintain her grip as the basket rises from the ground. Around them, angry shouts can be heard, distant but still blatantly clear, and Eren knows that this thought, this memory, it isn't his.

It's Armin's.

It's Armin's as the the shouting gets louder.

Armin's as the man in the basket grips the young woman's wrists, trying to pull her up.

Armin's as the gunshots go off in cacophony around him.

And totally, inexplicably, without a doubt, Armin's, as the young woman screams "Armin, baby, don't look!"

With a wet gasp, Eren pulls his hand away, breaking the skin on skin contact.

In front of him, Armin is frowning slightly, brow creased in that way his mother's does when she is worried about him. Those sky flying eyes peer at him, the boy with the dirt streaked cheeks, whose eyes can still see the blood and whose ears can still hear the screams.

The blond tries to move closer to Eren, obviously wary, and once again reaches a hand out to touch. "Grandfather says that you shouldn't rub your eyes with d-"

"Stop!"

Shocked, Armin does, eyes wide.

"I don't want to see that again! I don't!"

"Wh-"

"No! It's scary, so I don't want to! Why did you show me that?!"

"Now, Eren can hear his mother behind him, footsteps light and rushed in the worried gait of a caretaker. Armin looks terrified in front of him, but still crouches where he was, while Eren backs away from him.

"Eren, sweetie, what is it?" His mother, voice calm, gentle.

Eren swallows, sucking snot into his throat and reaching for the embrace that he seeks.

Then, quietly, "Why did they die? Why did you show me that, Armin?"

Silence.

"Why did your parents die like that?"

Comments and criticism welcomed! I take them all to heart!