When Eren awoke again, he immediately noticed two things.
One, he was certainly not in the barracks, because holy fuck, his head was laying on one of the softest pillows he'd ever felt, the blanket draped across him actually felt warm, and, best of all, he hadn't awoken with a back aching like he'd suddenly become fifty years older.
Two, his head was pounding while his eyes felt crusty and sore, a feeling he hadn't felt since the refugee camps. It took him a second to piece together exactly why he felt as if he'd been crying for hours, and what could have happened to make him feel this way before the previous day's events came rushing back to him.
He shot up, eyes wide as he remembered how he'd broken down over something as stupid as throwing up on Armin's shoes, and while Eren knew exactly why he'd been so upset, it must have looked really fucking pathetic to Armin.
"Shit..." Eren moaned as he lowered his heads into his hands. He'd wanted to make them feel better, not worse!
And after Annie had covered for him so nicely too...
"Hey, sleeping beauty, you done yet?"
Speaking of Annie, she was sitting cross-legged where Armin had been last night, and while the area looked clean, Eren wasn't sure whether he should inform her that he had puked all over the area in front of her last night.
He decided against it, more for his own sanity than her's
"Uhm...yeah, I'm up." Eren responded, slowly lifting his head from his hands. "What are you doing here?"
Annie uncrossed her legs as she used the arms of the chair to pull her up to her feet. "Waiting for you to wake up. I thought that much was obvious."
Ok, rude.
"Yeah, I get that, but why you specifically? Where's Mikasa and Armin?"
"They've still got training for today, but you better thank your lucky stars that it was me."
"Why?" Eren asked. "No offense, but it's not like we're best friends or anything."
"None taken." She responded as she reached into the drawer of the nightstand next to her and pulled out a thermometer. "Mrs. Servott is out for today, so she told us that someone had to stay with you and take your temp every few hours."
Eren paled as he heard this. Holy shit, yeah, that could have been really bad.
"Yeah, I don't think you need me to tell you why that could've been bad."
"So you've just been, what, writing down fake temperatures?"
She gave an amused huff before shrugging and saying, "Basically."
"Huh."
The more Eren thought about it, the more it made sense. Due to their shared interest and abilities, anything that threatened to have Eren discovered would be a massive and unnecessary risk for her as well, considering the fact that she probably had many of the same weird features that he possessed.
That would make it extremely easy for anyone trying to find other shifters, so it was probably in her best interest to make sure that he stayed undiscovered.
Eren decided to file that information away for later.
"So are you going to tell me what was up with the little stunt you pulled at dinner yesterday?" Asked Annie, breaking the silence.
"Uh, I guess I was sick?" Eren offered.
"Nope, not a possibility."
"Well, uhhhhh...wait, does that mean we can't get sick?"
Annie just sighed and put her head in her hands. Sweet fucking christ, trying to get answers from this boy was like pulling teeth.
"No, you can still get sick, but it'd have to be a really bad disease, or infection, or infection, or whatever to take us down."
"Take us down in the sense that we couldn't fight, or like, straight up kill us?"
"Couldn't fight." Annie supplied. "I don't really think anything other than taking off your head or nape could kill you."
"Ah, I see." Eren replied, looking thoughtful. So the similarities between a titan shifter and a titan itself really did run deep. "So could-"
"Before you ask another question, titan shifters, outside of their titans, are basically just normal humans but stronger and more resilient."
Huh. Well, when he really thought about it, it made sense. After all, titans were just like strong, giant, naked people, so it'd make sense for a shifter to just have those last two attributes taken away.
"So what I'm hearing is that if I challenged Reiner to an arm wrestling competition, I'd win." Eren replied after a moment.
"No, you wouldn't he-" Annie took a deep calming breath before she continued. "That's not what I meant, and you know it."
Eren just shrugged and said, "Hey, I thought it was a fair question."
"Eren, I swear to whatever's holy that if you keep this up I'm gonna rescind my offer before I even tell it to you."
Now that got his attention. "Offer? What offer?"
"Well, I was thinking about that little lie that I told your friends-"
Eren flinched a bit at the mention of the lie.
"-and I thought, why not make it a reality?"
"What?"
Annie sighed as she got up and grabbed her jacket off of the coat rack. "I'm offering to train you, not just in your abilities, but in your fighting skills in general."
She turned around to gauge Eren's reaction, and was not surprised in the least when she saw him staring up at her with bright eyes.
"Wait, wait, you'll-you'll really teach me how to fight?" He asked excitedly.
Annie just gave him a soft smile and nodded.
"And how to use my abilities?"
She nodded once more, but was starting to realize that this would probably be how he responded to every bit of vague information she gave
"And-"
"I'll teach you whatever you want to know." She responded dismissively.
Eren jumped out of his bed and ran towards where his clothes from the previous day had been resting, pushing past Annie in the process. "Let's go then!"
Annie reached down and smacked him lightly on the back of the head. "Not now you idiot! You're supposed to be resting for the rest of the day."
"But I thought you said-"
"Not today, obviously." Annie huffed as she placed her hands on her hips. "If you're really that eager we can start tomorrow, but just relax and try not to be too much of an idiot today."
"Yes ma'am!"
-
The next day Eren was buzzing with excitement. He was going to get to train! He was going to find out more about what he could do, how he could help humanity! He knew that other people were taking notice, but he just couldn't help it. This was a chance of a lifetime and he wasn't going to squander it.
Both Armin and Mikasa had taken notice, but rather than being suspicious of anything, were simply happy that his mood was better, chalking up all the extra energy to a day of doing nothing.
Normal training passed by quicker than he'd ever remembered, and as soon as lunch came around he found himself almost choking in an attempt to finish.
After sputtering for a bit when some soup went down the wrong pipe Armin finally asked, "Is everything ok? You know you have plenty of time right?"
Eren just nodded as he continued to shovel soup into his mouth.
"Mhm, m'just tryin' to finish fast so I can get back to trainin'"
"You've got training with Annie today again then?" Mikasa asked while she fiddled with the end of her scarf.
"Mhmm"
She averted her eyes and continued, "I just don't get why you felt the need to lie about it, and still won't let us join in."
Eren stopped for a second, bread halfway to his mouth as he responded, "Because if you come, you'll just get into a fight with Annie while Armin picks everything apart."
"No I wouldn't." She responded while Armin looked at her in disbelief, "and plus, I could- I could train you y'know!"
Eren just snorted as he responded, "Like you tried to do when we were kids? Yeah, sorry I don't have the strength to throw a full grown man over my shoulder."
'Well, actually now with my shifter abilities I might be able to, but that's besides the point' Eren thought to himself.
Truth be told, he wasn't entirely sure, as trying to separate the strength he'd gained from training with freaky titan strength was near impossible, especially considering that he still hadn't figured out exactly when he'd gained the abilities.
He still had vivid memories of small injuries that took forever to heal as a child, so he hadn't always had his abilities, but he also couldn't think of any event that would have suddenly caused him to gain them, which left a couple options.
Either he always had the ability to shift, and it was simply dormant throughout his childhood, he did something to obtain the ability on his own, or someone gave it to him at some point.
The first option was easily the most preferable to Eren, as the second two implied that he either had missing memories, or getting the ability to shift was much less noticeable of an event than Eren had previously assumed, both of which had horrifying implications.
"Then I simply need to teach you how to get stronger." Mikasa huffed, "Which is very difficult to do when you refuse to let me help you."
Eren was about to retort, but Armin decided to put his hand up and responded, "To be honest, I wouldn't be that eager either, considering that your idea of getting Eren stronger involves throwing him into a wall."
"And?" she asked as she raised her eyebrows.
"And I don't think that being thrown into a wall is gonna help me get stronger." Eren said dryly. "Besides, it was Annie who offered and I wasn't gonna be rude and turn her down."
Eren began to gather his plate and utensils as Mikasa mumbled "Yet you're ok with turning me down." under her breath.
Luckily Eren didn't seem to hear as he simply picked up his things and brought them over to the drop off station before walking over to talk with Annie.
After he was sure Eren was out of hearing range, Armin continued, "To be fair, Annie has done a pretty good job of teaching him hand to hand combat."
Mikasa glared at him before responding, "Sure, but I still think it's weird that he won't let us come to train with him."
"That's because you would try to fight Annie the second Eren gets thrown to the ground."
"I would not."
Armin stared at her for a moment before reminding her, "Yet, you already have."
She opened her mouth to respond before submitting and shrinking back down in her seat.
"I get that you're concerned, believe me, I am too," Armin started, "but we can't keep hounding Eren over every little thing. I think it's stressing him out."
"You think that was what caused his outburst two days ago?"
"No clue." He admitted. "But I was just thinking that he seemed to get more stressed and defensive the more that we questioned him, even though it turned out to be something pretty small and something he would have probably told us about had we left it alone so..."
"So what?"
"So I think we might have been smothering him a bit."
Mikasa scrunched her face up in confusion. "Well, it's not like I've been treating him any different than I ever had before?"
"I know, I know, but he never really enjoyed all of the looking after him we did, even when it was necessary, so now that he's trying to get better at something, he might see us as trying to stop him from doing so."
"But he definitely knows that we just want the best for him, right?"
"I'm sure he does, but let's be real here, Eren hasn't always been the brightest lantern, so what we see as only trying to help, he may see as us trying to stop him."
"Are you calling him stupid?"
"To be honest, yeah kinda."
"I still don't see how he'd suddenly think that we're smothering him." She huffed.
Armin simply shrugged and responded, "I don't know why either, but he's always been kinda odd about this kind of thing, and we are getting kinda close to the end of training so..."
"So he thinks that he should be able to do everything on his own, and no longer needs too much assistance from other people." She finished with a deadpan tone.
"Bingo."
"Yet he still can't ever properly tighten his straps on his own." Mikasa muttered, which elicited a small laugh from Armin.
"You know how he is." Armin offered with a smile. "Besides, they both seem happy, so I don't really think there's that much of a reason to worry for now."
Mikasa still looked somewhat unconvinced, but eventually agreed. "I just hope that he doesn't get hurt..."
-
Fuck, if Eren asked one more stupid question Annie was gonna bash his skull in, fuck, why had she agreed to do this again?
Oh yeah, because he's probably the coordinate and she needed him to trust her enough that she could bring him back to her hometown without issue.
(and also because she felt bad for him because he didn't know anything about being a shifter and was literally hurting himself to find out more, and Eren was actually kind of a nice person who didn't deserve this-)
"Ok, ok, so hear me out. If I were to somehow fall off of the wall and shift just before I hit the ground-"
"Eren, I am literally this close to hitting you if you finish that fucking sentence." said Annie as she held her forefinger and thumb in a circle.
Eren looked at her, confused. "But your fingers are touching?"
"Exactly."
"So can I finish my question?"
"If you want to lose all of your teeth, yes."
Eren looked thoughtful for a moment and Annie wanted to cry. Holy shit, was he actually considering it? After a painstaking minute he seemed to decide against it, shaking his head before asking, "So if you kicked them out would my teeth grow back?"
"Well look at that, we're here, which means no more questions." Exclaimed Annie as she threw her arms out to display a wide clearing.
The first thing that Eren noticed was that each of the trees on the edge of the clearing had large raw patches, as if someone had spent hours meticulously pulling the bark off of the edges. These trees also had all of the brush that he'd normally expect to crowd the roots pulled away, leaving a clear area at the base, save for a few stray leaves and twigs.
The second thing he noticed was that Annie now had a knife, a real knife, not one of the fake ones that they were normally given for fight training, and holy shit was she much more intimidating with one.
"If I may ask," Eren stated calmly, now much more fearful of the repercussions of asking unnecessary questions, "why exactly do you have a knife?"
She glanced down at the knife held loosely within her right hand, then back up to Eren. "Why, are you going to report me to the commander?"
"No, I've got my own I just-"
"Good, because we're going to be doing some actual fight training."
Walls, Eren was just getting more and more confused by the minute. "So why do you have the knife then?"
"Let me play out a scenario for you real quick." Annie sighed. "Somebody is trying to kidnap you, and you don't have any weapons. Do you think that they'll see this and think, 'oh this boy doesn't have any weapons, let me be nice and put mine down to make it equal'?"
"Well, no-"
"Exactly. They're going to see that and think that they have an advantage." she said as she took upon a fighting stance. "I'm trying to teach you how to take that away from them."
"Yes, but isn't that what they're teaching us in normal training? Why do we need a real knife?" Eren asked as Annie dropped her stance.
"Because I've watched you grab that stupid rubber knife more times than I can count, so you're ovbiously not treating it as if it were real. Think of this as incentive."
"But if I heal a knife to the hand shouldn't be that big a deal, right?"
Annie almost, almost brought her hands to her face to rub her temples before remembering that she did in fact have a big ass knife still in her right hand, and even then she still considered doing it.
Fuck this boy is stupid.
"Are you trying to get yourself caught?" She asked incredulously.
"No, but I thought you were gonna teach me more about being a shifter, not necessarily how to fight against someone with a knife."
"I am trying to teach you how to be a shifter," She exclaimed, "and you wanna know the first thing you gotta learn before anything else?" Eren nodded. "You learn how to not get caught."
Although it wasn't a thought that came up often, Annie occasionally wished she had the ability to see through things, a wish that was very strong at the moment as she could almost feel the gears turning in Eren's head.
"And one of the quickest ways to get caught is to do something stupid and have someone see that you heal much quicker than a normal human."
His eyes widened as he realized this. Oh fuck, it didn't matter if he could use his (admittedly kinda cool) titan strength to overpower a single opponent if he ended up steaming some wounds shut afterwards, as it wasn't like he could fight the entire government.
Or could he?
Deciding that that line of thought was swiftly veering into what Armin liked to call 'bad idea territory', Eren decided to shelve it for a rainy day.
"So you're going to teach me how to fight without getting injured?" He asked with much hesitation.
"Oh not just teach," she replied, twirling the knife in her hand, "I'm going to drill it into your head until it's the only way you know how to fight."
She casually tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as she stated, "First we're going to start with grappling." and suddenly Eren had a very bad feeling.
-
"Ok, ok, I give, I give!" Eren screamed as he was pinned to the ground, the knife held in Annie hands only centimeters from his left eye.
He breathed a sigh of relief as she let go of his wrists and removed the knife from the general vicinity of his face, before pushing himself up slowly, using his arms to brace himself. Even though he knew it wouldn't last, the burning in his muscles felt like it'd stay there for days and all he wanted to do in the moment was lay down and take a solid nap.
"You ok down there sleeping beauty?" Asked Annie as she extended a hand to Eren, at which point he noticed that he'd actually had his eyes closed for a minute.
Ignoring the hand offered to him, he pushed himself up and replied, "Yeah, I'm totally good, but holy shit you hit like a truck." Sweet Sina, he was glad that all the bruises he had would heal up before he got back to camp, because that would have been a really uncomfortable conversation.
"And you hit like a little bitch." She responded nonchalantly.
"Oh shut up. Not all of us can be as freakishly strong as you or Mikasa."
"Funny, because from what I've seen your issues here aren't due to strength."
"Huh?" Eren asked, confused. That was mostly what they were out here training for right? That and technique?
"You seem to be lacking in motivation." Annie answered, "Although I do think that you're giving an honest effort when you try to grab me, once you fail, or I start to pin you, you just kinda give up."
"That's because you're too fucking strong to escape from."
"Except I've been giving you some pretty easy chances to break away and you've just been throwing them away." She began to point the knife at him and asked. "If someone was truly trying to kill you, would you do this? Just give up the second something gets too hard?"
"No, I'd fight-"
"Really? Because from what I'm seeing it looks like you'd just let yourself be killed."
She could see Eren start to fume in front of her, so it was obvious she was hitting something right on the nose, even if she wasn't sure what. Now to finish him off.
"I mean, you talk all this shit about killing titans, but let's face it, they're bigger and stronger than you could ever hope to be, and if you give up every time something is stronger than you then-"
" Shut up !" Eren screamed as he launched himself at her, once more attempting to grapple for the knife, but his movements were slow, predictable.
Annie easily sidestepped him as he stumbled forward. She grabbed his collar as he attempted to turn and pulled him over her shoulder to the ground. He briefly attempted to push himself up before Annie placed her foot squarely in the center of his chest, knocking the wind out of him in the process.
Even though he had absolutely zero leverage, he still attempted to pull her off of him, clawing at the thick leather of her boots and using his legs to push himself up, an attempt which was ruined by Annie simply leaning more into the foot that was on his chest. She could hear him wheezing as he still snarled at her, so she decided to simply stand there for a minute to let him collect his thoughts, to let him realize what he'd done.
"Are you done yet?" She asked coolly. "Got it all out of your system?"
"Get...get off me." He wheezed, obviously struggling to take in air. To be honest, Annie pitied him a bit at this point. He truly made for a pathetic sight, small reflexive tears bubbling at the corner of his eyes while bits of drool made its way down his chin, but it still seemed he hadn't learned his lesson.
"No, I don't think I will." She replied with a smile, "Because this is your first very important lesson that I want you to remember until the day you die." She leaned in closer to his face, placing more and more weight onto his chest as he groaned. "Rage will get you nowhere, so don't you fucking dare do that again."
She abruptly pulled back and watched Eren suck in a large breath of air, before rolling to his side and coughing. "What the fuck was that for?" he asked breathlessly while Annie simply continued to stare him down as if he were an idiot.
Although he probably deserved it in this case.
"You seem to be under the impression that letting rage guide you while you fight is a good strategy. I'm simply correcting that." She shrugged as she walked over to the knife that had been thrown in the struggle.
Eren glared at her. "Still you didn't have to absolutely obliterate my ribcage to do so."
"Wow, obliterate, that's a big word. Armin would be proud of you." She mocked while she watched Eren continue to fume out of the corner of her eye. Despite this, he still kept himself right where he was and decided against attacking her again.
Good.
That was good.
That meant that at the very least he was somewhat able to learn from his mistakes.
"Look I'm not here to torture you or anything, but for some reason the only way you seem to get things through your head is through brute force."
"Could've fooled me."
Annie sighed as she looked him over. While she had planned for this to be one of the first lessons she would teach him, it probably could have gone a bit smoother.
(She'd also made a bit of a mistake in thinking that Eren would be immediately motivated to do his best, therefore quickly see improvements and trust her more easily, not that she'd admit that.)
"Tell you what," Annie said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, "Since you seem incapable of doing it yourself for now, I'll give you an incentive."
Eren looked almost offended at the assumption that he couldn't motivate himself starting with a, "I'm not-" before being silenced as Annie held up her pointer finger.
"Every time you are able to successfully complete a task I give you, I'll answer one of your questions, no matter how stupid."
Eren thought it over for a second. On one hand, he didn't really like the idea of someone else creating incentives for him, as he was plenty motivated on his own (as long as it was something directly related to titans), but on the other hand was the offer to get whatever he wanted to know answered for something that he'd already planned to do anyway.
In the end his curiosity won out over his pride as he replied, "Alright, I'm in."
She smiled viciously at him and said, "Ok then. Get ready because we're going to continue with grapples, and I hope for your sake that your performance is better than it was before."
Same thing again? That was fine by Eren, especially now that he had a clear motivation.
Besides, how awful could it be?
-
The answer to his previous question was apparently, pretty goddamn awful.
After being thrown over Annie's shoulder for the tenth time Eren had finally decided he'd had enough.
"Ok, ok, I'm done for today!" he cried as he threw his head back into the dirt. Walls, when Annie had previously told him that she had left plenty of opportunities for him to get free she must have been fucking lying, because no, there weren't any chances.
"Hmm, giving up again already?" She taunted, tossing the knife up and down in her hand.
Eren turned to glare at her before deciding that laying on the ground was much more comfortable than attempting to get up at the moment. "That's not going to work on me a second time."
"Shame." She called out as she moved away from him to pick up her jacket. "It would have been really funny trying to watch you grab me, as tired as you are."
He just huffed and continued to lay there for a minute, relishing in the cool breeze that flowed over his face before he was roughly yanked to his feet by his shirt collar.
"You can take a nap here if you'd like, but I think your friends would be a little upset if you weren't back by dinner." Annie pointed out, and while Eren had to agree, he really didn't want to get up.
He let his eyes close for a second, which must have been much longer than he'd originally thought because soon he was being roughly shaken awake and was dropped onto his knees.
Annie nudged him lightly in the back and said, "Look, I understand why you're tired, I would be too if I did nothing but get hit all day, but I'm not going to carry you all the way back to the barracks."
Even though the forest floor seemed to sway under his feet Eren pulled himself up and began to trail after Annie, simply focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, until something that she's said in her previous statement started to stick out to him.
"Wait," Eren asked, "does healing up a lot cause you to be really tired?"
Without even breaking a sweat she picked up her pace and replied, "get a successful grapple and you'll be able to know."
The only thing that stopped Eren from screaming was their proximity to camp.
-
Although he certainly didn't have very much fun after the first couple sessions, as time went on, Eren could actually see himself improving.
At first it'd just been things he expected, like better physical and mental stamina, as well as having a much easier time during normal everyday knife training with his peers, even if he'd previously had a lot of trouble defeating them. However he'd also noticed some unexpected improvements, like his accuracy during 3DMG training.
Even Jean had admitted that he was somewhat impressed with his improvements! (Even though he'd immediately back tracked afterwards, Eren still brought it up occasionally in smug conversation.)
And as he'd improved, Annie had upped the difficulty of what Eren had to accomplish as well, as she'd already been forced to answer a couple of Eren's questions, and was somewhat regretting making a deal to do so, as while it meant she no longer had to answer stupid 'what if' questions ever second of the day, now the questions he asked were much more meaningful.
He often asked questions that she either couldn't give or legitimately didn't know the answer to, both of which she would previously give an option for him to ask another question with, however after several questions which gave away far too much information for her liking, she'd taken that privilege away.
Which landed both of them where they were now, six months later.
"Eren, I've told you more times than you can count to avoid the blade at all costs, not to shove your face directly into it." She admonished, as Eren wiped at a closing cut on his cheek.
"Sorry I just...see the goal right in front of me and," He stuck out his arms and mimed a grabbing motion at the air, "just go for it."
Annie stared back at him, unimpressed. "Yeah, I got that after the fifth time you got cut attempting to grab the knife."
"Sorry..."
"Don't be, the only person you're hurting right now is yourself, literally."
They stood in silence for a couple seconds, waiting for the cut on Eren's cheek to fully close, when Eren got a bit of a grin on his face.
"Although I did get hit," Eren started as he wiped the dried blood off of his face, "technically I did disarm you, which means you have to answer a question."
Annie stared at him for a second. Technically he was right, as she hadn't put in any sort of caveat a few days ago when she announced that the next part of training would be to attempt to disarm her, however it wasn't good to encourage any type of physical injury that could be seen healing.
But she would be the first to admit that he had been doing surprisingly well recently, so she decided to let him off easy.
"Ok, fine but-"
"How does a person get the ability to shift?" Eren asked suddenly, cutting her off.
Ohhhh boy, that was not a question she really wanted to answer. "First off, I'm going to finish my previous sentence, since it seemed to interrupt the beginning of yours."
Eren shrunk back a bit. "Sorry I just, I've been thinking about it ever since I realized that I can shift, and haven't been able to do anything anything about it because I keep forgetting-"
"As I was saying," She stated rather loudly, "asking a question this time is fine, but from now on to get something answered you must disarm me without getting hurt."
She stared back down at Eren, just to make sure he'd been paying attention, as he'd certainly disregarded some things she'd said before because he'd been too focused on a previous question, but also to allow herself to think of a good answer to the question he'd asked.
Obviously, she couldn't tell him the truth, as it would simply lead to more questions that she was still trying to figure out herself-such as how the fuck had he gained the ability of the coordinate-but also because it could easily be brought up to question her motives later.
And with how things were playing out, she'd really need Eren to trust her for things to go smoothly.
But fuck, how the hell was she supposed to soften up the process of passing on a titan so that Eren wouldn't have any further questions or get upset over how he'd (presumably) gained his abilities.
And of course there was still the issue of her having literally no fucking clue how he'd gotten them either, as it seemed that all of those within the royal family were bigshots in the government on the godforasken island.
She'd entertained the idea that Eren secretly was a bigshot, a royal family member in hiding, but after watching him freak out over whether or not his eyebrows would grow back after Jean had accidentally set them on fire, she'd decided that no. No matter how good of an actor Eren could possibly be (and it seemed like he was a pretty fucking horrible one) there was no way he could pretend not to be a part of the royal family this well.
So she decided to tell him the most basic, watered down version she could think of. A version that was even more vague than what they'd told her when she was becoming a warrior and said, "Another shifter gives it to them." and Eren's face lit up like a goddamn lantern.
"Wait, really?" He asked as she nodded. "Holy shit, holy shit ! That's kinda really cool but also really fucking scary."
She was about to ask exactly why, because that was kind of an odd conclusion to jump to before he continued with, "because y'know I'd thought that maybe I'd always had it, but it just didn't really surface until I was older, but it being given to you makes so much more sense."
Fuck.
Fuck.
Saying he'd had it his whole life would have been so much simpler, holy shit, why didn't she think of that. Now he was just gonna continue to ask questions and jump to his own conclusions, which were admittedly, wrong most of the time, but still.
As Annie sat and stewed in her own thoughts, Eren continued on. "But I don't remember anything that was all that important being given to me except for-except for..."
Once Eren had fully trailed off and stopped talking Annie glanced over to him and noticed that he seemed to be...kind of distressed actually, which was vaguely alarming.
Although he hadn't shown any signs of remembering who he'd eaten, nor even when it'd happened, she'd always entertained the possibility that he'd remember at some point. She just prayed that it wasn't right now.
"What's wrong?" She asked. "You seem to be thinking pretty hard about something."
Eren ignored her for a second before snapping out of whatever thought he'd been in with a, "Oh, no, s' all good, I just..."
"You just what?"
"I dunno really." He responded noncommittally. "I was tryin' to think of when something important was given to me to see if I could pin down when I got the ability to shift, but all I can think of was when my father gave me this weird key."
"A key?"
"Yeah, it's on a rope and such with my civvies, but I can't really remember when he gave it to me, just that it was at some point after the breech."
"The fall of Maria breech?"
He stared at her like she had three heads for a second before asking, "What other fucking breech was there?"
"Hey, I haven't lived your life." She retorted as she put her hands up in surrender, "For all I know it could have been after your house got robbed."
He exhaled sharply before apologizing, "Sorry, I'm just...annoyed that I can't remember all that much about it. I mean it's probably not even related to shifting in the slightest, unless the power is given through keys."
She hummed as she entertained the thought for a minute. That would be an amusing (and much less bloody) way of passing on the power of the titans.
"Just to make sure," Eren asked as he placed a hand on his chin, "The power to shift isn't spread through keys, right?"
"No, definitely not."
"Hmmm." He hummed as he mulled it over. "So how does a person give another one the power to shift."
"Well, I think I've already been generous in answering two questions when I really should have only answered one, so if you want to know, good luck on disarming me."
"Fuck."
-
Although it'd been over two weeks since Annie had last promised to answer one of his questions, Eren had found himself unable to even touch the knife, unless he was on the receiving end of the blade.
Numerous times he'd been close, oh so close, with Annie at a disadvantage, pushing into a corner, but at the last minute she'd simply swipe the knife out in front of her, much faster than he could react to, and the exercise would be over.
The worst part was, it was always the same place she'd aim for, just a small slice below his left cheek. Once he'd noticed he thought that it'd be easy to avoid or deflect, as he always knew where the slice would be coming from, but she was just too damn quick.
By the time he was pulling back or ducking she'd have already made the incision and at that point grabbing the knife would be useless, as he was already guaranteed to not have a question answered.
(He'd still disarm her afterwards though, both to avoid the verbal lashing he'd gotten after the first time he gave up, and to still practice, as giving up after a tiny cut was not a great strategy against someone who wouldn't stop once that first cut was made.)
It also didn't help that no matter how long they continued to fight for, no matter how much he'd attempted to tire her out to make things easier for himself, she never seemed to get tired.
Walls, he'd even instigated a small fight between her and Mikasa in an attempt to make it a little easier on himself later in the day, but had only proceeded to get the most through ass-kicking of his life.
Which brought him to his current situation.
Even though their training session for today had just started, Eren was already frustrated beyond belief.
That's not to say he was doing poorly, per se, as he knew that he'd improved, and with what little time had passed today, he could see that he was getting closer to disarming Annie than he had within the past two weeks, but fuck he was so close!
He'd have a grip, then cut, he'd have her pinned to where he was absolutely certain she couldn't get him, then cut, he'd try to duck under where she was swinging the knife, but nope, still the same fucking cut on the same fucking cheek, and he was starting to get fucking mad.
So, he'd grudgingly admit that all of the events that followed were probably his fault, however it would take quite a bit of convincing to get to that point.
Annie had been 'cornered' up against one of the many trees on the edge of the clearing, and he'd had one of his hands wrapped around her right wrist, though he knew from experience that she'd still be to get the knife to his cheek eventually, although totally stopping her wasn't his goal.
He saw her feet shift, as she moved her weight to her toes to start to push forward and then-there!
She began to push against the hand that had been holding her wrist back as she brought it closer to him, so he shot up, out of the crouch he'd been holding and pulled his head back, placing his cheek out of reach so he could easily wrench the knife out of Annie's hand once it came close to his face, a plan that should have worked perfectly, except for one thing.
Eren had forgotten that by pulling back with his hand still wrapped around Annie's wrist that he'd be pulling Annie along with him, and by placing his head out of rage, he'd basically placed his neck on display, but he was far too focused on his own goal, of simply pulling that knife out of Annie's hand to notice until the cold metal of the knife began to bite at his throat.
Then everything happened in a second.
He saw Annie's shocked face for a split second before a burst of light seemed to envelop the both of them, a burst of hot air smacking Eren in the face for a second, before everything went dark.
When he awoke again-which he hoped was only seconds-later the first thing that he noticed was that everything was much smaller, and by much smaller he means absolutely fucking tiny.
The trees that had previously towered over him now stood only a few meters above his line of sight, while Annie wasn't even in his immediate view. His arms and legs felt as if they were thick and swollen-which reminded him of a time when he was younger, more careless and willing to play around a wild wasps nest, getting stung until his hands seemed to mimic a water sack-and his head felt inordinately foggy.
Although it took a couple seconds to process he realized that this sudden height and feeling could only mean one thing, once it did, he was understandably freaked out. He jolted in place as he realized that oh fuck, Annie was still probably somewhere near him and if he moved there was a good chance that he would crush her, which he really, really didn't want to do.
He tilted his head down to look for Annie and took in the sudden changes to his body at the same time.
Although he was unmistakably a titan, as what else is fifteen meters tall, human shaped and naked, there were some pretty distinct differences between him and what he'd seen of other titans, including the one he'd been in his dream.
For one, rather than sporting a bloated gut and massive limb deformity he seemed to be perfectly proportional, simply looking like a large, muscular human, minus the pointed nails which he now seemed to sport from his fingers.
Fuck this was bad.
And he couldn't find Annie.
Fuck this was really bad!
He refrained from moving, if only to make sure he didn't step on or harm anyone that could be nearby (although he sincerely hoped that it was only Annie) and focused on scanning the ground.
As he leaned forward, he could see hair move forward into his frame of vision, and now that he thought about it he could feel it over his ears and tickling the tops of his shoulders too, which meant that it must be significantly longer than it previously was.
He breifly wondered if that would be a trait that carried over to once he was outside of this titan body, and if his hair was included in things that would regenerate quickly, but that line of thought was quickly shelved as he heard a small noise coming from below him.
He continued to scan the ground for any sign of Annie, a yellow blur, anything , but the ground just stayed a confusing blob, no matter how hard he focused.
He wrung his hands nervously, preparing to take a step backwards before-
"Hey!"
Eren froze in place.
The voice was faint, but certainly there, as if someone was yelling at him from across a field, but he still couldn't see anybody, so he continued to look around, now scanning the low area between the trees when he heard it again.
"Hey I know you can hear me! I saw you stop!"
Ok, so somebody was definitely calling for him, and the more he listened, the more it sounded like Annie.
Taking a gamble, Eren decided to slowly crouch down, placing his weight into his heels and leaning backwards, as he'd heard the voice coming from in front of him.
As he lowered, a familiar blur of blonde slowly came into view-albeit much blurrier than he remembered-and soon became clear enough that yes, Annie was still standing right in front of him.
"Oh, good you can actually hear me." Said Annie as she casually tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "That's good because I wouldn't have believed you if you said you couldn't with those big ass ears."
What?
Eren brought his hands up to his ears, pushing back part of his hair in the process, and found that yeah, they actually were quite different.
They certainly were much longer, extending out from the top of his ears into sharp points. The way he imagined them reminded him of a fish's fins, as he could feel the steep end which led into a gentle slope downwards, eventually ending where he'd normally expect his ears to end.
Although it was certainly odd, the more Eren thought about it, the more it made sense. Even when he had been standing at full height, he'd been able to hear Annie shouting to him without much trouble, and could now hear her as if they were simply talking face to face.
And the more that he thought about it, the more he could hear.
He could hear the wind rustling the leaves around him, the scurrying of some small woodland creature as it moved within the brush, the shuffling of birds above him as they prepared to take flight. If he focused extremely hard, he could even hear faint shouting coming from the direction of camp, but couldn't really make anything of it.
"Ok Eren, I'm gonna need you to answer and do a few things real quick, you got that?" Annie asked from below him.
He nodded, the motion almost tipping him over as he struggled to keep his balance with how swollen and heavy everything felt.
He heard Annie chuckle at him as he regained his balance and turned his head down to glare at her, as this was certainly not a laughing matter but was only met with a, "How many fingers am I holding up?"
Although he could hear her just fine and was almost certain that he'd normally be able to tell, for some reason he couldn't discern the answer to her question at all.
He could see that her arm was extended upwards towards him, her hand in a fist with at least one finger up, but couldn't determine how many or which fingers were up at all.
The image he saw was far too blurry, and while he probably could have gotten a bit closer to see more clearly, he already knew that he didn't exactly have the greatest balance in this form, so he decided against it.
"Are you just going to sit there and stare at me, or are you going to answer me?" Annie asked impatiently, placing her free hand on her hip.
Eren huffed, the action releasing a small cloud of steam before he tried to say, "I have no clue."
The key word there is tried, as the second he attempted to talk as he normally did, something seemed to fizz and pop in his brain, almost like a candle that hadn't been lit in far too long, and the only thing that came out of his mouth was an incoherent gurgle.
Annie stared back up at him, confused as he attempted to talk again, trying a variety of phrases, with each having a similar result. It didn't help that for some reason he was struggling to move his mouth and lips in a way to actually make the words somewhat coherent either.
As he continued to try, he noticed something else odd. He tried to shift his jaw forward to chew on his top lip, only to find that it was totally locked in place, both his top and bottom row of teeth touching rather than his top moving over them. He also felt a sort of breeze on his teeth, as if he'd left them exposed for far too long, but couldn't for the life of him figure out how to pull his lips back down.
He brought one of his hands up off of his knees and felt around where they should be on the front of his face, only to be met with smooth skin. The hand moved downwards and rather than being met with any sort of flesh extrusion, it simply found his teeth.
He continued to run his hands over the front of his face, starting just below his nose then moving downwards, because holy shit he didn't have any lips!
That was weird, oooh that was really weird. He opened his mouth a few times and let his teeth clack together before Annie got his attention once more.
"I understand that this is probably a bit strange for you-" understatement of the century "-but we really need to focus on one thing right now. Getting you out of there."
Within the strangeness of the situation, the odd feeling of being shoved into another body, Eren had totally forgotten that to anybody else he'd just look like a normal titan.
With this realization, he began to panic.
From what Annie had said, it certainly sounded like there was a way she knew to get out of here, but Eren still had no clue what it was. He had no clue if it'd been painful, if it'd knock him out for hours afterwards, if it involved some sort of weird item that she had to go back to the barracks to get, leaving him alone, oh walls please don't leave him out here.
He was sure that Annie could see him get distressed as she called back up to him, "I don't know what you're freaking out about, but I'll let you know that getting out of there is pretty painless."
She then mumbled "most of the time." under her breath, and Eren was sure that he wasn't supposed to hear that, but fuck, he had and that was not comforting at all.
"Ok, what you're gonna have to do is think about where your real body is-its located in the nape by the way-and think about pulling your head back, out of the titan." She explained, which was of almost no help to Eren, because what the fuck.
The two stared at each other in silence for a second before Annie sighed and placed a hand on her forehead. "Ok, what you're going to do is close your eyes."
Eren shut his eyes, suddenly feeling much more scared now that he was cut off from one of his main senses in a body he didn't know too well, but he could do this!
He would have to get out at some point, and if Annie said that this was how you did it, he was gonna trust her.
"Now you're going to pull your head back, Eren. Pull it back and push again the flesh as hard as you can, on the count of three."
Ok, fuck, this didn't sound like a good idea anymore.
"One!"
Eren took a deep breath, he could do this, he wasn't going to hit anything, everything was going to be fine.
"Two!"
Annie was much more experienced with this than he was, and had probably done this numerous times before. She knew what she was talking about.
"Three!"
And with that Eren pulled back as hard as he could, not exiting the titan, but rather slamming his head into the tree behind him hard enough that for a second, Annie was sure that he'd knock the tree over.
Eren began to reel from the pain, because holy shit that hurt like a bitch, what the fuck Annie, but that didn't last long as he picked his head up to glare at Annie...
Then promptly passed out.