Chapter Text
Summer was a brutal season. It had some good qualities, he supposed—school was out, there were crop tops and belly button piercings, swimming in public pools, tanning—but the heat was a disaster. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t believe a word of anyone who said they honestly liked summer with all the heat and the heatwaves and those times where the air conditioner thought it was so funny to break down just when he needed it—
Summer was brutal.
It was even more brutal when he had to be outside in it—and he wasn’t swimming or pressing his crotch against the ever-cool and gentle vibrations of the electric fan.
There was a possibility that he had envisioned they might consider awnings or little umbrella hats—maybe even a pair of shades that didn’t fall down his nose when he sweat too much.
Nope.
Just the thrum of the sun’s heat beating down on his back. Merciless. He wanted to punch the sun in what he imagined some stupid and damn goofy face that was grinning down at him.
Khakis weren't made for summer—if they were really so summer-friendly for this kind of work, they’d make them thinner—or something. Maybe they were a fashion disaster because the fabric was so damn thick he felt like he was waddling with a tent for pants.
It wasn’t even a tent in the fun kind of way—when Jean showed him a dirty story as a joke where the writer describes the guy’s boner as pitching some kind of tent in the pants—he didn’t remember any time when his own dick did that. Awkward boners just meant a really screwy lump coming from his jeans. He didn’t think his dick was strong enough to pitch a tent. Maybe it was drinking more milk or weird fruits—
“Hey—kid.”
He raised his eyes slowly—a pair of boots that he was pretty sure were rain-boots, not work-boots, khakis, a khaki jacket over a polo, and—
Oluo.
“—you’ve been starin’ at that damn pot for five minutes. You going dig it up or what?”
Eren blinked—then looked back down again.
Right. He was in the middle of a dig.
That’s why he was outside in the brutal heat of summer.
“Uhm—yeah, sorry—”
“Geez. Fucking brat. Y’know, if Hange saw you slacking off—”
He was pretty sure Oluo had more to say—he was always running his mouth like that because he was a veteran digger, especially if Petra wasn’t around—but the fact that he bit his tongue interrupted it. Eren grimaced at the wet sound it made.
Oluo did that a lot, too. Petra said it was because his tongue was stretched out from him wagging it around all the time. Eren didn't know how he had managed to keep a straight face.
“Get back here, Oluo! You haven’t finished helping me with this skeleton!” was Petra’s loud yell from across the site—signaling Oluo’s hurried steps away and indignant muttering.
Eren made a face at him once he had turned away. The guy was obnoxious, but Petra was nice—her cooking sucked and the water she brought always tasted funny from the vitamin powder she’d put in, but she was pretty cool. He couldn’t get away with anything around her, though. That was annoying. He swore she had the eyes of a fucking hawk, just like Mikasa.
His gaze finally lowered from Oluo’s retreating form and back to the pot he was unearthing. There wasn’t anything special about it, just a standard copper pot—probably used by soldiers stationed at the foot of the wall to warm their meal or something. There were a lot of bottles around, too. Petra had muttered something about them being alcohol bottles. Eren's thick brows furrowed. What kind of soldier drank on the job, anyway?
“Eren!”
That was Petra yelling again.
“Damn it,” he muttered, looking up to see Petra motioning pointedly at the pot he was supposed to be unearthing.
“I know this is your first dig since you were hired—” she continued to yell, “—but try to focus on your square! Break’s in ten minutes!”
Eren nodded, feeling his face heat—maybe it was just the sun again, making him want to stand up and curse at the heat it was giving off since punching it wouldn't exactly work, but he quickly ran the bristles of his duster along the edges of the pot instead.
His first dig—damn, he didn’t know how long he had dreamed about it. Out in the field, digging up skeletons, maybe even finding a skull with a structure matching that of someone important. The thrills—even the heat was what he had itched to be a part of since he was ten.
The Wall Age—still one of the most mysterious points of history, more than cavemen or the spoken language of the Egyptians—so mysterious that only a few of the names of prominent figures or heroes during that time survived. Their best resources were sketches and written notes—most poorly drawn, most smudged beyond recognition—faces of those who planned to be remembered lost to nature.
The bristles stopped moving, head turned to look over his shoulder.
The outermost of the three walls loomed behind him—crumbling, no longer the height historians said it used to be, but still impressive enough to leave him breathless. Could they—those who lived back then, people who lived in fear of monsters that ought to belong in fiction—have really relied on just stone to protect themselves from the outside world?
He was one lucky bastard to be working at the base of the wall on his first dig. Most got stationed inside one of the cities. That was boring work—importance be damned, he wanted to be a part of this team—the ones that got to work at the most unexplored sites, the ones unearthing artifacts that could finally lead to connecting the mess of strings that was the timeline of the Wall Era.
Others called this team the Freedom Team—the ones that freed unknown information. Petra Ral, Oluo Bossard, Eld Jinn, Gunther Schultz—and Hange, the sometimes leader and always all-time top expert on the Wall Age.
Now he was a part of them.
A grin crept up on his lips. It was hard not to make a stupid face.
He was going to do it someday—discover the long-lost journal of a soldier like Petra, or mission papers like Gunther—something important and ground-breaking to shine some hope on finally fitting the missing pieces of the era.
He would. He would do it.
Gloved hands pulled on the pot’s base—it was loose enough from the dirt now, and popped out easily. Eren wanted to work on the skeleton rather than the pot, but Oluo had said he wasn’t experienced enough to handle something so “delicate”. Eren might have been able to scrounge up a bit of respect if he hadn't called him a brat and bit his tongue, at which Eren nearly choked from trying not to snicker.
He was supposed to respect these guys, after all—and act mature, as Mikasa always reminded him, because twenty-three apparently equaled manners and good behavior.
“Oh! I see y’finished unearthing that pot, Eren! Which is great, because—”
Hange.
Eren didn’t even need to look up, but he did.
Hange was probably the equivalent of Bill Nye the Science Guy when it came to the Wall Age—throw in some extra crazy, really dirty hair that he was sure was an archaeological dig of its own, and a never-ending supply of energy, and one got Hange the Wall Age Guy—girl, crazy—Eren usually stuck with plain crazy.
It was hard enough to keep up with just her talking, especially since he actually tried to listen instead of being a dick like the rest of the team and wandering off when she started speaking Wall Age lingo.
Maybe it was because anyone who stayed usually spent two hours getting their ear talked off.
“—because I want you t’come with me! Oh, oh—we’re doing something really exciting! Super exciting, if you ask me, but don’t, because they’re starting up the machine in five minutes, and I don’t want to miss the moment all that stone crumbles like—”
“Wait—Hange—” it was hard to get a damn word in, and Eren kind of felt like he was in elementary school again, trying to get the teacher’s attention just to go to the restroom before he pissed his pants. “—what d'you mean? Stone crumbling? Is the wall coming apart? Is—”
“Oh, don’t get your undies in a twist! There’s some sort of hole in the ground underneath a section of the wall that we’ve discovered!” she gushed, waving a hand frantically in the general direction of a segment of wall a few feet down. “It’s a pocket—a bubble, like underwater, where there’s air—but it’s sealed by some rubble, so I have one of those big corkscrew machines, and—”
“Now? But—don’t you have to talk to mister Smith before—”
“Eren, don’t be such a stickler for details! Erwin’ll be fine with it—I’m seventy percent sure. C’mon!”
He realized vaguely that there really wasn’t much of a choice, almost dropping the stupid pot with how hard she yanked him up.
“What about Petra and the others? They’re—”
“—busy! Too busy, and they’ve seen machines go through pockets under the walls before! You’re the newbie, so consider this a rite of passage, my dear Eren—maybe we’ll even find somethin’ good other than all those boring skeletons we found last time. Bunch’a nameless soldiers, unfortunately—no papers or indications—”
“Yeah, I read about that in the newspaper—”
“—of course y’did! Now—let’s go!”
And they were going—Eren hadn’t realized he had been dragged along most of the distance till they passed a gap in the wall, where none of it remained except a few small boulders shorter than he was. When he turned his head, he could see the expanse of land beyond it—grass rippling from the humid wind that yanked at each blade.
To think that for so many years, no one during that time saw this—the grass, the hugeness of it all, despite the fact that it was right on the other side of the wall—right there for a peek. It was almost kind of ridiculous to imagine.
History had a weird way of progressing.
“—and here we are!”
Eren hadn’t even realized Hange was babbling the whole time, but her announcement got his attention—along with the fact that he almost stumbled over a pathetic excuse for safety cone.
Right at the base of the wall segment they had stopped in front of was a large hole—looked about twelve feet high and wide, and all he could see inside at first was darkness as Hange dragged him towards it—never-ending darkness, like going down a huge throat. The tunnel dipped drastically as they went, and Eren muttered a curse as his legs dropped heavily at the sudden incline, ankles protesting sharply. A minute of uneven, jerky walking passed, then Eren saw his first bit of light as they came to a corner. It was coming from stationary LED camping lanterns—all white and blue, more like a bruising rather than light, but it served its purpose as they rounded the corner. Eren almost slammed his face into the immediate wall of rubble he was met with.
After a quiet “fuck” and startled blinking, he asked—
“Uh—where’s the machine?”
“Oh—it’ll be here in a second!” Hange insisted, staring up at the top of the rubble. Her eyes looked even more unsettling in the periwinkle glow.
Eren followed her gaze. The ceiling was pretty far up—way farther up than the top of the entrance had been.
“What do y’think is behind it?” he murmured—more quietly than intended, as if not to disturb whatever was behind it—a hell of a creepy thought.
It wasn't like anything could survive hundreds of years in there. There was kind of an eerie feeling, like standing before an unmarked tomb, unsure of the identity of whomever was encased behind the stones. Some part of him wondered if there could be someone alive in there—a dumb part of him, anyway. He imagined a deranged old man with a long gray beard and yellow teeth happily singing to a stone with a face drawn on it with blood.
Hange was shaking her head.
“Could be anything, kiddo. More skeletons, hidden goods—maybe even stacks and stacks of copper pots for you to look at!”
Eren shot her a look—she was giving him a wide grin, teeth aglow.
It seemed all he had unearthed that day was pots. How many did an old civilization need, anyway?
“Is there anything we know about this part of th’wall?” he asked after another passing moment, gaze shifting to squint at the rubble right in front of his face. There weren’t any gaps for him to see through, but he wished there were—he could feel the adrenaline starting to pump through him rather viciously, making his arms tingle and knees fidget.
This could be part of his big break—eyes widening slightly with realization. Being a part of this—if something important, even mildly so, was behind the rock and dirt, he would make the city paper and news. His mom would be proud of him—Jean would be the most jealous bastard on the planet.
He just wanted to yank the rubble out himself. In fact, the adrenaline was making him feel like he really could. It was almost painful, and Eren swallowed thickly, feeling the saliva push against his adam's apple.
Hange started talking again, running her fingers against the crevices of the rocks with vigor.
“Well, not really—I did find a few chests with some documents in them near this location, but most of the pages were too yellow to read with human eyes, so I’m waiting for the scans to come back from the lab—from your dad, actually!”
“He’s—er, a part of this dig?”
There was a sense of embarrassment when someone mentioned his dad. His dad was pretty cool, in his own way. He did a lot of the more science-type stuff for artifacts they sent back—cleaning them, scanning and removing hundreds of years of decayed lettering, but it was the typically negative dad-and-son-working-at-the-same-place atmosphere.
Some said that was the reason he got a job in the first place and a place on the Freedom Team so quickly, because his dad worked there and knew mister Smith.
It stung, but this wasn’t some crappy got’a-prove-myself movie he would go see with Armin at the cinema. They could talk shit all they wanted—he was going to prove he was made for this anyway, even if his dad hadn’t also employed there.
The bastards could forget about making him feel sour over a job he’d wanted his whole damn life.
Hange kept going.
“Yup! I’m expecting them tomorrow, so if he doesn’t deliver, know that I’m making you put the heat on him!”
Eren shrugged his shoulders a bit sheepishly—contacting his dad at work wasn’t high on his list. That was even more embarrassing than sharing the same workplace.
Hange started to move now along the wall of rubble, hands tracing an invisible line. Eren quickly followed, boots scraping the loose dirt.
“We don’t know anything?” he ventured finally, the pads of his fingers drifting across the jutted edge of one of the rocks.
“Nothing! Just something about a mission—like most documents, it’s a little dull—a few smudged out names and numbers.”
“Oh, that’s—that kind of sucks.”
“Yeah, pretty disappointing, but—”
The roar of an engine caught their attention. The tunnel filled with light all of the sudden, and Eren quickly covered his eyes with his arms. The damn headlights were ridiculously bright, and all he could see were spots for a moment. However—
It was finally here.
This could be it.
. . .
“Are we all good?”
It was probably the fifth or sixth time Hange had yelled that.
Eren glanced around again just in case, restlessness prodding another once-over. Everyone involved—mostly standard workers, heavy lifters, and the guy operating the machine—had their gear on, which included masks, goggles, and helmets. There were a lot of dangerous possibilities when doing a dig like this—the roof collapsing, rubble flying out, foul air. Hange had put several stabilizers up against the roof of the tunnel just in case. Scenes from "The Mummy" instantly came to mind, but Eren gave his head a sharp shake. Damn Marco and his movie nights.
He couldn’t get himself to stay still, shifting from foot to foot as his eyes went back and forth between the corkscrew bulldozer and the wall of rubble. Hange had said repeatedly not to expect much, though Eren was pretty sure she was even more excited than he was. He couldn’t help it—the anticipation made all of his limbs stiff, and the rapid, edgy breaths had the inside of his mask a little too warm for comfort.
Everyone was standing behind the machine now as the engine came on. It roared loudly, echoing inside the tunnel, making the noise that much more amplified.
Eren felt like his heart was going to bust out of his chest.
When it moved forward—spewing rock off to both sides as it made contact—he felt like the beating had stopped.
Minutes passed.
A few more.
Suddenly, the engine was off. Everything and everyone stopped moving.
“We’re through!” the driver finally hollered, leaning his head out of the side-door’s window.
Hange practically screeched—a noise that Eren was sure was louder than the engine despite her mask—and ran forward, stumbling over rubble and disappearing into the dust cloud that was forming around the hole.
Eren didn’t follow her at first, utterly still as the cool air gushing from the new entrance brushed across his cheek and rippled against his sleeves.
This was air that hadn’t been breathed for hundreds of years. This was history flowing into the atmosphere, into his lungs.
He made a face. Maybe he should have joined the writing club like Armin had suggested. That had to be the sappiest shit he had thought to himself in a while.
Finally, he made his feet move, steps carrying himself along the same path as Hange. Over the rubble, into the dust cloud—
Stars. Stars against the wall of the cavern, creating a shimmery blue hue over the brown.
It took him a moment to remember that he was in a hole in the ground—it wasn’t nighttime, and there was no possible way there could be huge balls of light and gas beneath dirt—
It took him another second to realize what he was staring at.
There were two of them—side by side in the middle of the cavern, propped up by boulders. They were glittering because of the camping lantern Hange was holding up to them.
Crystals. Two humongous, shapeless lumps of crystal.
Eren had to remind himself to breathe, adrenaline once again painful as he pulled the mask off of his mouth and slid his goggles up to rest on his forehead.
Hange was practically hyperventilating. She had already ditched her mask.
“Eren—” she breathed, the hand that was holding the lantern up to them shaking viciously. “This is it—this is the break we’ve been looking for—this is—this—titan crystal! And—”
She screamed all of the sudden, startling Eren out of his stupor as he fumbled over to her.
“—what? What is it?”
“—people! People inside! Eren!”
The crystals were both incredibly foggy, and from the distance he had been standing at first, there was no way to see, no way at all, but up close—he could see a dark lump inside each crystal, definitely figures of some sort.
People.
Two people preserved for over hundreds of years—priceless for archaeology.
Hange was gone, screaming to the crew to get mister Smith on the phone right that instant, having shoved the camping lantern into Eren’s arms and nearly face-planting herself into the ground with how quickly she had thrown herself out the entrance.
Eren watched her go, mind blank, then slowly turned his gaze back to the crystals as sweaty fingers set the lantern down on the ground in front of them.
It was mesmerizing to see the light bounce off the dents.
Hesitation—his hand raised in front of one of the crystals, centimeters from running his fingers against its surface. Goosebumps raised the hairs on his arms, causing a startlingly painful shiver down his spine.
How many hundreds of years had it been since someone had touched these? Placed them there? Left the entombed bodies for someone else to discover?
He pressed his fingers against its surface, the aged air in his lungs stuttering.
It was surprisingly warm despite how cool the cave was, and Eren flinched before pressing his fingers more firmly against it, watching as the pressure from his own muscles fit his hand to the crystal's sharp angles and dents. His skin turned white for a moment before blood rushed back. His mouth parted as he exhaled shakily.
Everything else about titans disintegrated. All that historians had were the records from those of the past. Titans left nothing behind—no bones, no skin, not even traces of blood—
Except for the crystal.
It had only been mentioned once. Eren remembered learning about it during a lecture in college, a small mention right before the professor had moved on to the possible reasons that titans were “susceptible to death by that of their nape”, but he had always remembered it in the back of his mind. He wasn't sure why, really. No one else in class paid special attention to the note, but there was something about it that made him feel like he had forgotten something. Some historians believed the possibility of its existence, and others did not. He had never decided if he did.
But—here it was.
It wasn’t going to be a small mention in some two-hour lecture anymore. He was right there touching what they'd be taking notes about.
“—wonder who’s inside,” he murmured—quietly, as if the people inside were sleeping—a weird thought to have, one that made his stomach flutter uncomfortably. “—and how long you’ve been in there. Five hundred years? Six hundred? Damn—seems you’re perfectly preserved, too.”
He was pressing his face to it now, squinting, trying to see the figure inside just a little bit better.
Details were completely distorted by the crystal’s fogging. The figure seemed small—maybe a teen—and one hand was outstretched. Eren squinted till his eyes hurt and he had to blink, rubbing them with his fists.
“Shit—forgot they had dirt all over them.”
Ignoring the sting of the dust, and he ran the nail of his thumb along the crystal’s surface.
“Don’t worry—uh, whoever’s in there—you’ll be out soon.”
A short laugh, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Great—I’m talking to a damn corpse. That’s kind of gross.”
Loud voices started to approach the entrance now, and Eren quickly yanked his hand back down to his side just as Hange and the rest of the team entered.
They all stared with wide eyes. Eren wondered if that was what he looked like when he first saw them—bewildered, open-mouthed.
Petra whipped out her iPhone and took a picture, muttering about the flash as it bounced off the cave walls, whiting out the crystal's sparkle. Hange had her special camera, and was already circling and snapping shots, practically heaving with over-excited breaths.
“Eren!”
Hange was right up against his shoulder, and Eren nearly jumped out of his damn skin.
“—wh—what?”
“Stand in front of this crystal! I want to take your picture!”
“Well—I—”
“Go on!”
Eren shuffled his feet for a moment, then nodded, turning his back to the crystal and taking several steps to the side.
“A little more to the right!”
Eren gave her a sour look, but obliged.
“Perfect!”
A bright flash—Eren blinked with momentary blindness.
“Now—move out of the way, you’re in the crystal’s shot!”
Eren grinned as he moved. He felt a bit giddy from it all, though the notion passed that maybe he ought to feel a little creeped out by the fact that he had just taken a photo with a dead body in some crystal like it was a famous landmark on the side of the road.
This is it, Eren. This is history right here, and you’re a part of it.
“Hange.”
She looked up from the viewer on her camera, huffing impatiently. Eren hurriedly continued.
“Did you call mister Smith?”
“Oh—I did—”
“What did he say?” Eren interrupted, taking a few steps forward. “—when are we getting the bodies out?”
Hange clasped her hands together—tried to, at least, but her fingers knocked clumsily over the camera she seemed to forget she was holding.
“As soon as we get crystal samples! I’m glad to see you’re just as excited to see the corpses as I am! Oh, just imagine—” She was practically swooning now, and Eren made a slight face, brow furrowing. “—perfectly preserved bodies and clothes—maybe even uniforms! Or—or—even civilian clothes! With D.N.A. traces that could link us to so many—”
She was rambling now, and Eren was distracted by the arm Oluo had thrown over his shoulder.
“Well, brat—”
“Hell, Oluo—I’m twenty-three—”
“—shut up. Looks like y’got lucky, being a part of something so historic. Y’know, you should be digging up more fossilized plates and shit with the rest of the juniors—”
“Oluo!”
Oluo winced at the sharp tone of Petra’s voice.
“Will you leave Eren alone already? I swear—”
“It’s, uh—fine, Petra, it really is,” Eren interjected, shrugging—more to get Oluo’s arm off his shoulders more than anything else.
Petra smiled, then turned her attention back to the crystal.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” she crooned after a moment, taking a step so that she stood beside Eren. Oluo had grudgingly taken a stance on the other side of him.
“Yeah,” Eren murmured back. “Did you look closer? At the bodies?”
“Mhm! I think one’s a woman, and one’s a man.”
Eren snorted slightly, turning to look at her.
“Wait—how do you know? They’re so foggy. The only thing I could see is that the one in that crystal has their hand out.”
Petra smiled widely.
“That one is the one with the guy inside.”
“Petra just knows these things,” Eld interjected from behind them.
Gunther nodded, adding a hum of agreement.
Petra continued. “—seems kind of sad, doesn’t it? The guy in the crystal. It looks like he’s reaching for someone—or something.”
Her tone was purposefully mysterious, and Eren fell into uncomfortable silence, gaze reverting back on the said crystal.
It had looked that way—the body twisted as if in desperation. What had he been desperate for? What cause? Or for whom?
“Don’t space out on us,” Eld teased, jabbing his elbow into Eren’s arm.
Eren forced a grin at him.
“I’m not—just thinking.”
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Oluo muttered. Petra pinched him.
“We should give them names in case we can’t figure it out,” she declared suddenly. “You should name the one with the guy, Eren—to commemorate being part of your first big find.”
“Uhm—well—”
“Come on,” Gunther urged, offering a slight smile. “It might seem a bit morbid, but it’ll help with paperwork.”
Eren pursed his lips. A dozen names ran through his head—Mike, John, Spencer—the first names that would come up on a basic Google search.
“I—I duh’know,” he faltered.
“Well, I’ll go ahead and name the girl,” Petra offered gently. “She seems like an Abbie to me.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
A sigh whooshed from Eren’s mouth, running a few fingers through his hair.
“Well, how about—Lewis? Or—”
“Lewis is perfect!” Petra gushed, nodding fervently. Eren smiled widely at her. It was nice to get some damn approval for once.
Hange had finished her photo-shoot, almost bouncing as she walked up to them, covered in dirt and sweat and still wearing the ridiculous goggles over her eyes.
“Abbie and Lewis, huh?” she squeaked in satisfaction, her ponytail bobbing erratically at the several hard nods she gave them.
“I just wish we could get them out now,” Eren mumbled—a little more loudly than intended, feeling his face heat with the murmurs of agreement that echoed in reply.
What would they look like? Would they still stay preserved once they were out of the crystal? How were they going to crack it? When could they do it?
“Equipment should be coming in from the city tomorrow,” Hange explained. “Titan crystal isn’t exactly like actual crystal—they didn’t have much to compare it to back then! There seems to have been some erosion taking place, so we should be able to chip it off ourselves now that it’s weaker. But—I need some things on site for the bodies that we don’t actually have at the moment.”
Eren nodded slightly, but disappointment swelled up in his chest.
Could he really wait until tomorrow?