"I've met monsters. He isn't one."
Levi's pronouncement continued to run through his head even as Hanji returned to the table with three mugs of tea. Even though Eren had declined initially he found himself appreciative of it as he sipped it; whatever tea it was, it was very soothing. Hanji sat down and they all remained in a temporary silence and Eren avoided looking at Hanji in the hopes that they would drop their previous line of questioning.
"Okay, what would make this a lot easier is if you could remember the exact name of the lab that your father worked for. If I can get that I can start to sort through what they were doing and figure out if there's any relationship between your fa – Grisha's work at the lab and him leaving."
Wow, I didn't expect that they would remember that I prefer to have him be called Grisha… though I guess I did throw a fit the other day when Commander Handsome brought him up and said he 'disappeared' rather than left. That's… really impressive that they remembered though.
"The name of the lab he worked for? You couldn't figure it out?"
"You didn't exactly give us much to go on the other night. Starts with 'C' and maybe has an 'R' in it isn't all that helpful."
"How many labs that work on vaccines and whose names start with 'C' are in Shiganshina?"
"There's only one right now; Creek Labs. Ten years ago there were two more in addition to it." Hanji flipped back through their notepad. There was a Corso Research Facility and – this one doesn't have an 'R' in it – Campbell Industries. All three of them worked on vaccination research or manufacturing. Do any of those names sound familiar?"
"No… well, Corso does but only because our neighbor worked as a custodian there."
"So none of those are where your father worked?" Hanji was staring at their notes and flipping through, clearly becoming frustrated. "You'reabsolutely sure?"
"Did any of them have offices on the border of South Stationary and Eastside Park?"
"So you've been there? You were at the labs?" Hanji was looking at him excitedly.
"Yeah, but it was only once and my memory is really fuzzy. I think I was about five or six then."
"But you remember that it was on the border of those two districts?"
"I remember going to the park after so it must have been close enough to walk. The park is really big though and it's a pretty long border between the two districts. Were any of those labs there?"
"Nope. Creek was Downtown but moved to Westview recently and the other two were in South End." They were grinning widely and Eren couldn't help but be puzzled.
"Those are all at least five miles from where I remember the lab being."
"Exactly. Whatever lab it was clearly was very small and working under the radar." Eren's stomach plummeted. He's not a monster. He can't be a monster.
"Were there any labs in that area? Whether they started with 'C' or not."
He watched as Hanji opened up their laptop and felt his heart pounding and nausea taking over. Please let there be something, please…
"Capitol Medical Manufacturing has an office right on Eastside Park, but they were administration and sales. There was a Sentinel Testing that was along the border but pretty far into South Stationary…" Hanji had frozen looking at their notes. "They closed up that facility about two months after Grisha left."
"That seems like too much of a coincidence." Eren's voice was hopeful even though he couldn't figure out what he was feeling. Relief that Grisha hadn't been working for a shady lab that didn't exist, additional nausea that the facility would close up shortly after Grisha left, fear about what they had been working on.
"But clearly you didn't look into them since it didn't fit the description. So we can't really be sure that's the right place." Eren's head jerked towards Levi as he spoke, his silence had made Eren forget that he was present at all.
"Let me pull up what I can right now."
"Where would we be without Google?" In spite of the seriousness of the situation Eren had to suppress a smile at Levi's sarcasm.
"It looks like they were a small testing facility that processed urine and blood samples for Shiganshina City Hospital. They went out of business because the hospital built a new wing to bring all of their processing in-house. They hired most of the staff from the labs that they contracted with when they closed. I'm still going to look into this but if Grisha worked there… well, there's a chance that I jumped the gun on the vaccine thing. Sorry."
"It's fine. I just… I don't think he would be experimenting on people who he was trying to help. He was a bit of a shit parent but he was pretty dedicated to serving the community."
"Okay, well I'll look into the South Stationary-Eastside Park area to see if there's anything I missed. I'll look a bit more closely at labs that didn't deal with vaccines since it looks like Sentinel is a good bet even though it meets none of the criteria you gave us."
"Sorry about that, I really thought that it started with a 'C' but I know he did something with vaccines."
"I'll definitely be casting a wider net this time around. It's just that there are actually a lot of labs in Shiganshina so I was trying to narrow things down based on what you gave us. Having a specific region now makes it a bit easier."
"Still… I'm sorry for not remembering things properly."
"Human memory is a faulty thing. Don't worry about it, Eren. We all make mistakes."
Eren sat back as Hanji began to tap away at their laptop and started slightly when Levi reached to grab his plate as he began to clear the table. He watched as Levi slowly began to wash the dishes and place them in the drying rack, it was quickly filling up en though he hadn't even started on the pots that Eren had used to cook everything. He felt awkward simply sitting at the table while Hanji was clearly absorbed in their research and got up to start drying dishes.
The sound of running water and rhythmic scrubbing was soothing, as was the repetitive motion of drying the dishes. His mind began to calm down from his previously keyed up and nervous state and he turned over Levi's words again.
"I've met monsters. He isn't one." What kind of monsters have you met, Levi? Have you fought supervillains who were monsters? No, I've been following the Survey Corps for ages… I can't think of any truly monstrous villains they've dealt with. At least nothing like someone experimenting on an entire district of people they're supposed to be helping. Does the guy who controls the Military Police count as a monster? The Titans are monsters, aren't they? How many of them have they dealt with? Are they the monsters he's met?
Levi finished the last pot and handed it off to Eren to dry.
What qualifies as monstrous?
He was startled out of his thoughts by Levi snapping his fingers in front of his face.
"I think that pot is dry enough." Eren stared at the now-dry pot that he was continuing to rub at.
"Right, just lost in thought."
"You shouldn't force your memories."
"What do you mean?"
"Even if you're angry with him, you want so badly for Grisha to have done nothing wrong. There are shades of gray, kid. Just because he worked somewhere shady doesn't mean he was a monster. Don't force your mind into remembering things that aren't real. You sounded pretty sure that the lab's name started with a 'C' and that maybe it had an 'R' in it the other night. Don't convince yourself otherwise because it looks like there's a convenient solution that absolves Grisha of any guilt. He doesn't have to be innocent to not be a monster."
"So you think I remembered it right the other night?"
"You sounded at least a little confident then, now you sound like a yes man. Just run through it in your head; what words sound familiar?"
They ended up leaving shortly after finishing the dishes since Hanji was clearly engrossed in their research again. Hanji barely acknowledged their departure, giving Eren and Levi a half-hearted wave; they didn't even look up from their laptop as the both of them walked out the door. Eren knew that he was supposed to be the one taking the leftovers home with him but was already planning to "accidentally" leave them in Levi's car. They drove in silence down River Road to avoid the construction on Washington. The poorly lit road swallowed them in darkness and Eren stared out the window at the moonlight bouncing off the river.
He frowned at his reflection in the window and closed his eyes, trying to run through words and willing himself to relax.
Corso… Creek… Crestor… car… carbon.. cardiovascular… Carlisle… carrot… cor… cordon off… Cordyline stricta… Corbin… Court… curt… cro… Croton… Crohn's…
"Cronus." Eren opened his eyes and turned to look at Levi. "The lab was called Cronus."
.
Okay, so a lot of people have brought up Hanji's research and Eren having magic blood or whatever and I just want to give you a cool tidbit and tell you that Hanji's research is based on an actual real world study on cortisol levels.
I'm linking two articles that are really interesting and I highly recommend reading them because holy shit it's crazy fucked up but anyway, the short version:
Cortisol is a stress hormone and prolonged elevated and irregular levels cause a lot of cardiovascular health issues. Someone like Eren who gets kidnapped a lot and is under a lot of stress would probably have elevated and irregular cortisol levels; potentially even when he isn't in a stressful situation. Also he comes from a low-income background and guess what? Being poor is really stressful.
But you know what else is really stressful? Institutionalized racism.
There was a study that found that institutionalized racism is so stressful that it causes legitimate and serious health issues. It is super insidious and fucked up. The original study was focused on women of African Carribean descent in the US and just wow. Seriously, look into it. I can't hyperlink the articles here and the URLs are insanely long for the links that I have so here's the link to the AO3 chapter with the links at the bottom:
archive of our own dot org/works/1620422/chapters/4749804