The Injury Conundrum

Please Just Tell Your Friends the Truth Man

His heart beat in his ears as he tried to will himself to get up, to get away from this horrid scene. It was obviously a titan, a dead one at that, but why only part? And why was it around him? Why was he alive for that matter?

After watching his shaky breath form soft clouds as he continued to exhale for a minute, he shifted his arms to his front, using them to rock forward on his feet. He stood to his full height as he walked around the still disintegrating mass with wobbling legs, only to see the tarp.

The bloodstained tarp, with more than he'd ever seen. Even after he'd killed those two men in the cabin, he didn't remember seeing this much blood.

So that wasn't a dream then.

Although the evidence of his actions was clear as day on the forest floor, oddly enough the blood that had been there previously was gone from his torso and, thank Walls, his pants as well. From where he was standing he could see a glint from his blade and the mirror as well-they must've gotten dropped in his attempt to grab the towels- and while both were soaked in blood, they seemed no worse for wear.

Bringing a hand up to his neck, he couldn't feel any pitting or scarring from the wound, and the skin didn't feel sensitive either, but he had to check. If it was at all noticeable when he went back to the camp, it'd definitely raise some questions.

Questions he probably wouldn't be able to answer.

The mirror was filthy, having attracted numerous bugs and dirt in his absence, but he ignored it in favor of licking his thumb and rubbing it in a circle around the mirror to at least make something visible.

While it wasn't the clearest reflection, he couldn't see any discoloration around his throat, meaning that any issues could easily be explained away.

Good, that was good.

No visible issues meant no questions, and no questions meant nobody had to find out.

He continued to angle the mirror around, in order to see more of the side of his neck, until something caught his eye.

Something was on the lower part of his cheek, leading upwards towards his eye.

He moved the mirror upwards, until he could see the full extent of whatever was there, only to see the marks stop slightly below his eye.

They seemed to start on the bottom of his eyelid, following the curve of his cheekbones downward, and when he brought his fingers up to wipe them off, he'd found they weren't marks at all, but rather indents.

Ok, that was more than a little odd.

He kept running his fingers over them, marveling in how natural they felt, as if they had always been there, yet as he stared at the mirror they looked alien. Totally wrong.

They seemed to be slowly shrinking, the pointed end moving further and further up his cheek as the skin pulled itself together. It looked similar to way cuts healed on him, just without the exposed tissue and blood, so it was obvious that's not what they were.

But what could they be?

Nothing he could think of made indents like that-not even when he fell asleep on a pile of vines that one time-they were far too perfect, each running parallel to each other, and nothing had really been on his cheek in recent memory.

Except for-

Eren turned back to look at the steaming mass, now no taller than the sole of his boots as he thought about what had happened.

He hadn't just been in the titan. He hadn't opened his eyes to a large cavity. He hadn't been able to move once he woke up.

He had been fused with the titan, his hands and feet fully enveloped, with thick meaty tendrils connecting to his face. He'd had to rip them to shreds just to escape, and when he did...