When Faced With Adversity

There's No 'I' in Peace

The first thing Eren noticed was the pain. It was sharp, slitting across the nape of his neck. But no more than a scrape, a misjudged slice.

A paper cut with blades.

Eren roared and flayed his arm out. He hit something, something small. It felt like swatting a bug. A fly, perhaps? No, it was too big.

Another sting of pain, creeping over his forearm. This time, it felt deeper. A true cut. Eren roared and dropped to his knees as pain erupted everywhere, flicking up his shins, his shoulders. Every attack was so precise, so fast, he barely had time to react at all.

"Eren!" Someone called in the distance. "Eren! Eren!"

His neck erupted into a fiery pain, flames licking at his scalp and spine. Everything was going black. Everything was slipping.

Someone called his name.

~~~

A FEW HOURS EARLIER

The camp was silent, a ghostlike quiet falling over the place.

Levi sat hunched over the dying embers of his fire. His hands felt numb, fumbling with the rock which he was methodically scraping over the length of his blade. A strong breeze whipped through the place, causing the hairs on Levi's forearms to raise in retaliation. His fire was snuffed out, fading into a cloud of grey smoke.

"Crap." Levi mumbled, moving to find two sticks to start anew.

But something stopped him. A sound, one that shouldn't have been there.

It sounded like crying, like pain. A hurt whimper.

Levi shuffled as silently as possible, crouching down on the balls of his feet, swords drawn and ready.

The mumbling grew louder, morphing into a series of inaudible moans.

"Eren?" Someone whispered. Levi sat back on his hams, processing the current situation.

A loud crying and the clattering of something metallic. "Eren, wake up!" The voice had grown urgent. It was Armin Arlert's, Levi thought. It sounded like the young cadet.

"Eren," And there was Mikasa. "Its okay. It's all okay, Eren."

Levi was just contemplating slapping Yeager into the land of the living to avoid waking the whole camp when he was blown backwards, his back colliding with the wet earth with a painful thump.

Blearily, he blinked up at the sky. He hadn't broken anything, just winded... Winded?

Eren!

Levi leapt up, spinning around to face the camp. He'd been blown further away than he thought, but he could still see the chaos from where he stood.

A loud, agonised, inhuman cry rang out through the forest. Lightning sparks were just fading into an bomb-like billow of smoke, the air congested with the strange substance. To an outsider, it'd look like an explosion, but Levi knew better.

"Damn it, Eren." He knew this would happen eventually. He knew it....

Eren had grown increasingly restless over the weeks prior to their expedition. It'd been passed off as PTSD. His nightmares waved away as nothing more than his childish mind processing the war. Still, Eren was no ordinary 'child'. The superiors should have known that, should've been more careful.

Eren had been so close, so many times, to transforming within headquarters. It was a naive mistake on the leader's behalf to allow this to continue on. Levi had to burst into the male bunk room so many times during the many nights post-war to stop Yeager from gnawing into his hand. There'd been so many close calls he thought he'd die early from stress. Forget titans, this kid would be the death of him.