dappered | IT WAS LIKE A NIGHTMARE

[ After Trost, no one seems to know what to do him. Pixis is busy directing the extermination of the remaining Titans and after that the resettlement, fielding a thousand questions about how everything is going to get repaired, whether the sealed wall will hold, how long will it take to remove the corpses of the soldiers before an epidemic sets in. Erwin and Levi are presumably in communication with their superiors in the Interior, arguing over what the hell they're supposed to do with a teenager that can turn into a Titan. They want him for the Recon Corps after he recovers, Eren doesn't doubt that Levi had been honest with him about that, but even he understands that this is causing a shitstorm politically and bureaucratically for a bunch of people who probably aren't even going to believe the reports.

So he sits in the cell and listens to gossip and tries to be as obedient as possible, even when the guards call him a monster and a freak. The first week is pretty easy since he's preoccupied with nearly dying from fever, spending only a few hours awake each day and the rest of the time sweating and shaking in a delirium or dead asleep. When he remembers himself enough to know his own name he asks desperately after the 104th, after Armin and his brother, and sometimes the guards or the medical personnel sent in to scratch their heads over him will grudgingly give him what little news they know, but they won't let him out and they won't let anyone else in. Not until Armin figures out where they'd been keeping him by sheer guesswork and shows up in the dead of night, teary-eyed and all apologies for taking so long, babbling about how he couldn't risk bringing Mikasa along with him in case he hadn't guessed correctly and got arrested.

Eren almost dislocates both shoulders trying to get to him, the chains not quite long enough to let him reach the bars of his cell, both wrists yanked back behind him as he strains, furious and maybe a little teary-eyed himself because he hasn't seen Armin or Mikasa since before the mission and had only been told later how Armin had to cut him loose of the Titan form and drag him out. Armin reaches through the bars for him automatically, fingers just barely brushing Eren's face, and then jerks back, getting a hold of himself and firmly ordering Eren to do the same before he manages to hurt himself. In a shaky voice he reports that everything is okay, or at least okay as their lives could be, Mikasa is okay but pissed, of course, being kept away from his brother, and promises that he'll bring him as soon as he can, that all Eren can do in the meantime is just be cooperative and remember that he won humanity's first victory against the Titans and everyone knows it. The government won't let anyone execute him. Probably.

He understands what Armin isn't saying with his big pleading eyes, he's telling Eren to not go back to his original idea of escaping alone, of leaving Armin and Mikasa behind.

It's an easy promise to make with Armin in front of him, tangible and breathing. When it's just the guards and the blank stone walls and the long echoing hallway, all he can think about is whether Armin and Mikasa are safe, if there've been any more attacks, what they're doing, if they've gone and gotten themselves arrested trying to sneak in for him. Mikasa might be a star cadet and all that but Eren doubts that will protect him if he does something really stupid, as Mikasa is prone to do when he gets it in his head that Eren needs protecting.

He tries not to think about it. He tries to focus on the questions that his interrogators ask endlessly, how can he have this ability, what does he know about it, what does he remember, and he gives them the same wooden answers over and over again until they're satisfied that he's not lying. He leaves out the parts that don't make any sense to him, the fever delirium dreams that are just a jumble of sensations, heat and hunger and a pure whitehot rage that filled every inch of him and left no room for anything else. Mikasa and Armin don't come and he finds himself flexing his fists, testing the chains, breathing heavily and half-expecting to see clouds of steam rising around him. There's something in him and he doesn't understand it, isn't sure he wants to, he wants his family back because they ground him and he's never needed that more than now. ]