Summer in the Rain (Ereri/Riren AU)

Act Three

Hi I wrote again

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Starting work on a most unusual Friday meant two days off until I had to work again. Even being work, the weekend can't pass fast enough. For weeks, I've idled around the house, helping my mother with her duties, despite her ill-favored words telling me not to, that as a teenager I should be out, having fun, relaxing.

But most of my friends, being from a higher class, had taken this break to ship themselves off to camp or exotic vacations I couldn't even dream of. It had taken my parents years of saving up their money for them to be able to buy a house in Trost. Not that it was an expensive town to live in. The houses were fairly cheap, as were the taxes. But living in Trost and living in Trost were two different things.

It was the kind of town famous celebrities would move to when they wanted to dissapear. It was the kind of town you could live in just fine, make a few friends, but stay a social recluse. But truly living in the town mean socailizing, attending expensive events, dinners and such. My parents tried as hard as they could, but they just couldn't afford it.

And so I was stuck to being content with my dirty shoelaces and my dry rose petals. I glanced up onto my dresser to reassure myself that they were, in fact, still there. And there they were, the two faded, formerly-red flowers, lazily reclining in the china vase. The fanciest thing I'd probably own.

I was eight when they were given to me. I remember it-the hazy, partially-contious realization that I wasn't in my bed. The string of panicked words dribbling from my mouth as I was jostled around, engulfed in dazzling lights. The strobe lights, there echoes of color freeze-framing the blanketed snow outside.

Christmas, was all I could think. Today's Christmas. I opened my mouth to try and tell the concerned faces huddling around me, but they were intent upon examining my body. I tried to speak once more, but the...effort...I fell into what I thought was sleep.

I woke up the next morning to an even brighter light. Heaven-like, I guess. I remember thinking I was dead, but my parent's faces bringing me back to life. But the face of my once-handsome dad and my timelessly-beautiful mom were alien to me. They were older, greyer, wiser, sadder. My dad's eyes had began to droop, and his hair was longer, and duller than I had remembered it.

My mom was as beautiful as always, but even she seemed different. The teams upon teams of doctors herded me and my parents together, sitting us down with apolagetic and sympathetic glances, as words were passed between them.

Coma, one of them whispered.

Five years is a long time...

No.

No.

This isn't happening.

Yesterday was Christmas, I internally screamed as I escaped from my parent's needy grasps. I sprinted out into the snow that was just there yesterday. As the sun seared my raw eyes, I looked down to clear pavement. My knees lost their will to cooperate with the rest of my body, and I toppled to the pavement. My bare knees stung from the heat of the pavement.

Everything around me was wrong. From the blooming cherry blossoms, to the oddly-colored pastel green grass, to the patches of still water by the side of the road, to the blistering hot pavement beneath me. I slowly uncovered my arms from my face, barely registering how long my hair had grown to, and screeched when I laid eyes on my reflection in the puddle.

This wasn't eight-year-old me. This was teenage Eren Jaeger, with higher cheekbones and older eyes and longer hair and harier legs. This wasn't me. Footsteps, and a closing door behind me. I sucked in a breath, thankful that I could remember the footsteps after all this time that hadn't passed for me.

"This is for you," My mother sat down next to me, cross legged. As I looked at her, I noticed that she really hadn't aged all that much. She was still the same mother that had raised me in the eight years of my life I had lived, and watched over me in the five years I hadn't. Her hair was a little grayer, eyes a little softer. If one looked close enough, frown lines lightly sketched into her face.

I looked away as she took my hand in hers. My hands nearly swallowd hers, they had grown so much. "You'll always be my baby," She whispered, before slipping something thin and fragile into mine. I looked back to her, and at our hands, and at the two roses in between. They looked old, like her, and ready to fall apart.

"I brought you flowers, the first week you were-" I cleared my throat so she didn't have to say the word. "I put them beside your table, and I promised myself that as long as I bring you flowers, you'll be alright. I waited for the roses to wilt so I could bring you dasies, and they started to crumble. All exept for these two here." I tried to smile for her, but my lips, unused in the past five years, started to split.

"Those roses are yours, now. As long as they're still here, you'll be alright." She gathered my awkwardly large body in her arms and held me until I was, in fact, okay.

I shook myself from the daydream. That was a long time ago. I'd had almost two years to adjust to my new life. I had more freedoms as a teenager, and more responsibilites. School and my grades were problematic at first, but I was a quick learner. My friends welcomed me back with open arms-well, most of them. Not Jean, that asshole.

My parents had tried to keep our troubling finances a secret for as painstakingly long as they could. But nothing lasts forever, and my mom eventually let the expensive cat out of the bag. My coma treatment was far more expensive then I could've imagined. I pleaded and pleaded to get a job. I was old enough, after all. But it wasn't until summer of my fifteenth year that I was granted the job of paperboy.

Everywhere I went, there were always whispers. Apolagetic glances, turned down by my harsh glares. Words muttered behind empty hands. I was always that kid who had been cheated five years of his childhood.

My parents even thought about moving, but I begged, pleaded, and threw an eight-year-old tantrum until they reconsidered the notion. I had decided a long time ago that this was where I was going to stay. This town, however shitty, was where my deepest roots were.

I snapped myself out of my jog down memory lane, and nerly crashed into the flowers on my desk. How they had survived for for seven years was a mystery to me, but I was glad to have them. I reached out to steady them, my fingers running over their dry petals.

I barely registered the soft crunch as I withdrew my hand. A single petal fluttered to the floor. I froze mouth agape. For seven years I had touched these roses, and not a single thing had come of it.

Something's changed.

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Hey guys, so I'd really like to start working on this again!

Thanks for bearing with me. See y'all soon. And happy holidays!!

~Faith