Chapter Text
Eren's default state was probably argumentation. He always had his hackles raised, prepared—no, waiting for the moment someone tried to shut him down. Sometimes, it was with his mom. Other times, it might be Mikasa, or the town bullies, or the lazy-ass Garrison Corps. It was rarely ever Armin, since he was surprisingly good at mitigating verbal conflict. That and he wasn't the type to argue back all that often, but yes, sometimes it was Armin. Today, however, was his father.
"I don't want to stay at home and learn about stupid plants!"
"Please, Eren, they're not just plants. They're medicine."
Grisha wasn't home consistently, so Eren quarreling with him was a rarer occurrence. It didn't make him go any easier on the man.
"But it's really boring," he said.
Grisha squat down in front of him, so they could be eye-to-eye, but Eren found it insulting. He wasn't that short!
"Son, you know I'm not home all the time. What would happen if I was away, and Mikasa or Armin got hurt? If you learned how to treat injuries, you'd be able to help them."
"Mikasa could never get hurt, and Armin's got us to protect him."
"What about yourself then?"
"I'm not a wimp. I can handle the pain."
His father let out a deep sigh. "You make it sound like you expect to get hurt."
"Dad, why shouldn't I be allowed to do what I want? I just don't care about medicine!"
Grisha put his hands on his shoulder, which helped calm him down a little. "Okay, let's say you don't learn about healing. You do what you want, running around town and playing with Armin and Mikasa. What would happen if another kid in the neighborhood got sick and couldn't go play like you?"
"Well, I don't know them. Why would it matter?"
"They have the freedom to do what they want, the same way that you can do what you want. Wouldn't that be sad? Or what if they died? Then they couldn't do anything at all."
Eren paused.
"Being alive and well is its own kind of freedom," Grisha said, looking into Eren's wide eyes. "Wouldn't it be nice to help other children have that, rather than being bedridden?"
After a moment, Eren muttered, "I guess so."
At that, Grisha must've known he had him.
"I'll make you a deal," he said. "If you promise to learn about medicine with me a few times a week—"
"You'll spend less time in the basement and play with me more?" the boy cut in.
Grisha chuckled and ruffled his hair in a way Eren pretended he didn't like.
"Yes, I'll do that. It's a deal, right, Eren?"
"It is," he replied. "Let's go play now!"
"No, we're having our first lesson now."
"Hah!?"
Porco had inherited the Armored Titan, to no one's surprise.
Except for maybe Reiner, but there was certainly no surprise that he was disappointed. Frankly, he should've known better. Mindless devotion didn't compensate for being useless, and he might as well be more worth as a foot soldier. Porco couldn't help feeling some satisfaction at Reiner's pathetic face as Commander Magath told them their finalized assignments. It would be Zeke as the Beast Titan, Pieck as the Cart Titan, Bertoldt as the Colossal, Annie as the Female, Marcel as the Jaw, and him—the Armored.
The Armored Titan was, objectively, the best one, of course.
What bothered him though, was how his brother now looked at Reiner and avoided Porco's eyes. Marcel was always the calm, level-headed one between the two of them, but right now, he looked more stressed than Porco had seen him be in a long time. Did something happen that he missed? Porco looked between him and Reiner, trying to discern the problem.
Did Marcel think Reiner should've gotten a Titan over one of them? That Reiner should've gotten the Armored Titan instead? That was ridiculous. The current line-up was the strongest it could possibly be.
This absurdity didn't stop him from cornering his brother after their meeting.
"What's wrong?" he said, as soon as they were alone at home.
Marcel turned to frown at him. "What do you mean?"
"Don't play dumb. Your face completely changed as soon as Magath said I would inherit the Armored Titan," he said, crossing his arms and planting himself in front of him. "What up with that?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," his brother said, moving to walk around him.
"Did you want to be the only Galliard Warrior? So you could be special? Was that it?"
Marcel gaped for a moment. "Why would you think that? Not everyone's a stupid and prideful like you!"
"Huh?" Porco shouted, outraged. "Do you want me to beat you up?"
"You can sure try, you little—"
And that was how they ended up wrestling in the middle of the cramped hallway, and Marcel got out of a round of questioning.
If he had to admit, Eren's heart wasn't really in the whole doctoring affair. Becoming Grisha's apprentice was little more than means to an end, an excuse to be around his father more. And if it made him a bit proud of Eren, all the better.
It wasn't until he saw one of his father's patients rushed half-dead into his office that he really started to understand what his father did. The man's was body bleeding and contorted in ways that made him simultaneously appear like a monster and someone mauled by a monster. Eren had half a mind to think he'd been attack by a Titan. He would find out later that the patient had gotten in a bad accident with a carriage and its horses. He didn't know if it was the patient's fault or the driver's, but the end result was something he couldn't take his eyes off of. If it weren't for Grisha's frantic efforts to save the man, Eren would have thought he was already dead. Eren had seen more blood before—that time he and Mikasa killed the scum in the woods—but why did this seem to bother him so much?
"Eren! What are doing here?" Carla exclaimed, quiet enough to not disturb his father. "Let's get you away. You don't need to see this."
She ushered him towards the hallway, but he didn't move.
"No," he whispered. "I think I need to see this."
His father turned and noticed him then. When his mother tried to pull him away again, admonishment about to break across her tongue, Grisha said to him, "I could use your help, Eren."
"Grisha! He's still a child, and you haven't been training him for that long," his mother said.
Eren shook his head. "I'll be fine, Mom. I-I learn better with hands-on experience."
"Eren's right. Come quickly," Grisha urged. To his mother, he said, "I won't make him try anything out of his depth. Don't worry, honey."
As Eren walked up to his father's side, Carla brought a hand to her mouth. Her eyes flickered to the patient before looking away with a wrinkle in her brow. "That's not what I'm concerned about," she said, but she left without further protest.
Afterwards, in the kitchen, he threw up into a bucket with Mikasa patting his back.
"You didn't have to do that. He wouldn't been okay with letting you try an easier patient first," she said, eyebrows creased.
"Stop babying me," Eren snapped as he wiped his face.
"Having your first ever patient die would be too much for anyone no matter the age."
Eren swallowed back another rise of bile. "I'm fine."
He could still hear his mother and father arguing in the other room, probably about the same thing Mikasa had been trying to tell him. Eren sat back, pushing the bucket away from him.
After a moment of silence, he groaned. "Seeing him like that... For the first time, I got this unsettled feeling. Not doing anything felt really wrong, Mikasa."
"Oh," she said.
"I think I understand a little better what Dad was talking about before," he said, looking at his lap. Then he leaned forward, quickly enough that it started Mikasa. "And I wasn't throwing up because I was weak or anything."
"Of course," she said immediately.
"I'm serious!"
She nodded slowly.
"It was because I recognized him." Eren said, adverting his eyes as Mikasa widened hers. "I realized it halfway through. On his shirt, the parts where there weren't blood, I could see some of the stains that came from the stuff he sold. He was one of the stall-owners who wasn't an asshole. He defended me from those bullies a couple times before."
The boy buried his hands in his hair. "Damn it! Why did he have to die like that? It's not fair!"
Mikasa looked at him with troubled eyes, lips pressed in a line.
"This world is stupid." Eren shook his head. "No, i-if I knew more about medicine, maybe he wouldn't have died."
"Eren..."
"If I had taken Dad's lessons more seriously, maybe I could've done more to save him. If I had been better—"
"It's not your fault," Mikasa said sharply, almost making him flinch. "Even if it was, it's as much as your father's fault. He was there too."
He blinked at her. Eren dropped his hand into his lap. "But I still need to get better, don't I?"
Mikasa quieted at that. What could he do besides move on?
"Yes" was all she responded.
Porco never brought up the Armored Titan matter again. It was mostly because he wasn't sure if he would like the answer. What was done was done. What Marcel thought wasn't going to change anything. He still thought Marcel was being annoying though. Porco was his brother for goodness's sake. He really should've told him to begin with, but no, Porco was stuck here with this curiosity that was taking a long time to fade.
He made sure to hit his brother extra hard when they paired up for sparring practice.
Soon, it stopped being much of a concern. They received their Titans. They became Honorary Marleyans. They were being given their first missions. They were fighting real battles and, moreover, winning them for Marley. They were forces of nature in the most unnatural sense, and Porco felt more powerful than he ever had in his life.
Then they were given their most important assignment yet.
A small group of them were infiltrating Paradis and retrieving the Founding Titan from the devils. He, Marcel, Bertolt, and Annie were already being lauded as heroes before even leaving. Porco could get used to this.
But he could feel that his brother was unhappy with something, even more so after the mission as announced. Marcel look at him like Porco's presence at strategy meetings was wrong, and the feelings from weeks before started bubbling back within him. He clenched his fists under the table as the other boy's gaze flickered away from him. If Porco confronted him again, Marcel would make some more unwarranted comments about him being childish.
Porco grimaced. Marcel was fairly mature, so he likely wouldn't have childish reasons for his behavior. The problem was, Porco probably was childish, and he wasn't able to come up with non-childish reasons for what Marcel was thinking. He and Marcel always talked and played like nothing was wrong, and maybe nothing was.
Porco would always have one solace. Their mission was in a couple months, and by then, only the mission would be on both of their minds.