At the end of this long day, and once again chained in bed within his cell, Eren sits on his pillow, reclining against the cool stone wall. He was exhausted from another difficult day with the Survey Corps, under constant threat within treacherous territories. The expedition had been intercepted and rerouted by a collision with a small cluster of titans. Despite the poise of his guardian leader, who flawlessly zipped through the air as though he was born to fly, butchering the largest three offenders with unrivaled speed, nonetheless three members of their party were unfortunately devoured by the terrifying creatures.
Not bad... all in all...
Three casualties being an extremely low number considering the circumstances, Eren resists any urge to recall their names and faces. It was not that he has become desensitized to the continuously mounting death toll, but that his primary reason to avoid this recall, was to forgo listing off all of the titan casualties he has witnessed to date, and protect himself from the dagger to the heart at the end of the list; revisiting his mother's tragic death, and reviewing her vicious murder as she was crushed by giant teeth within the twisted grinning mouth of an insurgent abomination.
Tonight, however, avoiding the names and memories of the brutally deceased does not spare him the dreaded recollection of his mother's demise. Subconsciously, the scarred child within him would always be screaming out for his dying mother, often even the slightest recognition could trigger these traumatic memories. For many, avoidance can be the sharpest form of recognition.
Plagued by the invasive and violent thoughts of his mother's brutal death, Eren, in frustration, pounds his fist, cuffed by clanging irons, into the wooden mattress frame.
"Fuck!"
As the pain of tragedy stokes the fires of ambition, the young soldier's vow to kill all titans burns brighter within him. Now that he has uncovered his own terrifying potential, to be able to transition into titan form himself, Eren truly could become the biggest weapon humanity has against the encroaching threat. However, even that would not save his mother now.
Eren is struck by a heaviness more burdensome than the metal bindings, as he solemnly remembers his mother's love, sullied by her dying screams.
Gritting his teeth, the young soldier hisses to contain the boiling emotions.
Then, by the grace of imagination, the scene of his mother's death in his mind begins to shift and alter. In this vision, Eren was being dragged from the family home, where his mother was trapped below a crushed building, exactly as the reality he experienced years ago. Only this time, as he reviews the violent scene, a small, irritable hero appears on site.
The cutthroat little homicidal genius, flits and flips through the air between the buildings, serving up cold hard death on his blades with shocking accuracy.
Levi...
For a single fleeting moment Eren imagines the relief he might have felt had his mother been spared the horror of her grotesque destruction.
He...
could have saved her...
then...
Eren knows this illusion is but a flight of fancy, only the hopeless whims of a traumatized child, but the vision itself is a miracle on it's own. Levi was not there to save him back then, but the thought alone rescued him from a few moments of anguish, saving him from overly fixating on an unchangeable past. For now, this is respite enough.
As one brilliant and graceful thought seamlessly leads to the next, Eren begins to daydream about the many glorious moments of victory that came by the long swords within Levi's slender hands. The young man's mind wanders between vision after vision of his petite captain painting the skies with the exquisite fluidity of his zip lining sky dances and the dexterity of his blades sparking fireworks of fountaining blood.
Once again, Eren's admiration for the captain is accompanied by a familiar tightening in his pants.
Not this again...
The giant stuffed bear stares, sitting on the wooden table, watching Eren squirm.
Caught using... that...
Mortifying...
The young man decides to alleviate the problem without any further analyzation of the correlating circumstances nor use of the bear.
Eren slides the pillow from under him, expecting to repeat his experience from the night before. However, the pillow is still unwashed, and worse yet it is entirely flattened out and now looked to offer no aid in the matter at all.
Bear Levi scrutinizes Eren's behavior with his heavy, hollow eyes.
"No." Eren pronounces firmly to the bear.
The young soldier searches the room with his eyes, looking for a better solution, anything he could press himself into. Unfortunately, the room is fairly barren, and neither wood, stone nor metal offer accommodating options.
