After showing Armin his meager vocabulary, the small human had made it his mission to teach Eren every word he could possibly think of. He was also recently introduced to the small drawings on paper that supposedly also translated into words.

Humans--it seems--love to exchange words.

Now, months after the start of his learning, Eren listens to Mikasa tell simplified stories about life before the wall was destroyed while they break up the recently-thawed soil. There are still many things he has had to ask for clarification on, but his humans are patient teachers, and always try to explain all that they can.

Mikasa is in the middle of telling a story about Armin chasing down a 'chicken ' (which is apparently a bird that humans eat, and Eren feels relieved that humans do in fact eat meat), when he sees it.

A few rows away one of the humans clutches at their stomach with a cry before collapsing to the ground. Eren drops the tool in his hands and rushes over, but the nearby humans have beat him to it, and he can't get close to the swarmed human.

Beside him, Mikasa makes a sad sound, and Eren looks harder at the fallen human. It seems to be alright now, and it waves away the helping hands as it struggles into a sitting position. As the humans part, Eren sees something he doesn't know how to interpret.

He gets Mikasa's attention, gesturing at the human on the ground and miming a distended stomach with a worried fervor. Was it some kind of human illness? Could his humans catch it?

Mikasa nods solemnly. "I know. Carla is in no state to be working."

Eren frowns. Realizing that his meaning has been lost, he repeats the gesture. "What...is it?"

Mikasa looks between him and the invalided human as if to figure out what he could possibly mean. Slowly, Mikasa says "Carla is pregnant, Eren." When no response is forthcoming, frowning silver-blue eyes glance to the ground in contemplation. "She's...making a person. In her stomach."

'Person'. 'People'.

That was what humans called themselves. For some reason they did not like being called '

humans'

, but could not give an exact reason as to why. It takes a full minute for Mikasa's meaning to sink in, but when it does, he looks at the sitting human with wide eyes.

It was a female.

And she was gravid.

Why weren't they running for their lives?

Mikasa had expected several different possible reactions as she explained Carla's situation to Eren --curiosity, interest, even revulsion-- but the look of out-right terror on his face was something she had not prepared for. Slowly, Eren reaches for her hand and begins to tug her away from the woman.

"Eren, what's wrong?" He shakes his head at her question, simply tugging harder and managing to pull her far from the small crowd of people before he starts to sprint. "Eren?" She manages to free her hand and grabs ahold of Eren's shoulders to stop him, pulling him down to her height. "Eren!"

He whimpers, and it gives her pause. "Eren, are you alright? What happened?"

The boy frowns, eyebrows pulling together and mouth twitching as he finds the words. "Dan...ger." He looks at her with pleading blue-green eyes, and she looks between them to try and glimpse what could possibly be going through the boy's head.

"Carla?" she asks slowly, pointing back at the woman in question "You think Carla is in danger?" Eden seems to take a moment to sift through her words before shaking his head. "You think she 's dangerous?" This time he nods vigorously. "Because she's pregnant?" This time Eren's nod is exasperated, as if he can't possibly fathom why she doesn't understand. She shakes her head. "Eren why would Carla being pregnant make her dangerous?"

Eren's look is helplessly vexed and he raises his hands --fingers curled slightly inward at sharp angles-- and mimes a clawing motion. "Anger. Protect."

When Mikasa finally gets it, she wonders not for the first time if Eren had actually been raised by wolves. "No Eren, no, you don't have to worry about that." She tries to find a way to put it in words he's already learned. "Carla?" she points back in the woman's direction "No anger." She mimics the clawing gesture and then shakes her head, flattening her hands placating. "Carla

safe

. No danger."

Eren looks at her with blatant skepticism, but she manages to usher him back to their row to finish working for the day with little difficulty.

While there are no other incidents, Eren doesn't look in Carla 's direction for the rest of the day.

Eren trusts Mikasa. That's all there is to it. If Mikasa said that the female was not a threat, then he would just have to take their word for it. That doesn't make it any less surreal, however, to be working next to a gravid female.

Aside from Eren, females and hatchlings are the only Titans with cannibalistic tendencies, and Eren had lost an arm to one long ago when he'd accidentally wandered into her territory. It was not an experience he wishes to repeat.

Another thing that disturbs him as he works next to her is her scent. Maybe it 's normal for a gravid human to have the odor of sickness and malnourishment clinging to her, but it is definitely not so for a Titan to smell as such. Titan males would often sneak into a female's den--on the rare occasion that she left--and regurgitate meals for her--sometimes becoming a meal themselves if they didn't leave quickly enough. As such, all of the females Eren has ever met have all been well-fed.

He wonders if reproduction is another way in which humans are different.

Eren thinks Titan reproduction is a fairly straightforward process. When a female had begun forming eggs within a small inner-pocket in her stomach lining, she would approach a male, secreting a pheromone that acted as both a paralytic and an aphrodisiac.

Upon scenting her, the glands in the back of the male 's mouth would swell and begin leaking fluid, and the female would waste no time sealing her mouth to his. In most cases, they would remain locked together like this--sometimes for up to an hour--exchanging pheromone-filled saliva and glandular secretions.

Only once she was certain that the eggs were properly fertilized, would she release the male, slipping a final wave of hormones into his mouth that would cause him to vomit immediately. When he'd regurgitated his latest meal, she would consume it and if the male was lucky enough, he had not drawn her attention in that time and she held no further interest in him.

After she'd done this to enough males to ensure complete fertilization and gorged herself on stolen meals, she would hole up in a den to let the eggs grow, only leaving to obtain more food.

When the eggs were finally ready to be lain, she would make rounds of her territory, slaughtering any Titan she came across until the area was deemed secure before digging a hole in the ground and vomiting the soft, slime-covered eggs into it. Once the brood was safely buried in the earth, she would leave and never return. Titan hatchlings emerged from their eggs many months later full-sized and skinless, and immediately upon hatching would begin devouring their nest-mates until only the strongest or fastest survived. After a week, most hatchlings were indistinguishable from adults.

Eren thinks of the Colossal, all naked muscle and sinew; and the Armored, livid red stripes showing through gaps in protective plates; and of the Female, only half-skinned. What was it about being a Hyperion that made them so susceptible to looking like vulnerable hatchlings?

He shakes his head, trying to remember the last time he actually saw a hatchling. Unfortunately for both species, there was something in human meat that made it essential to the formation of Titan eggs. As such, Titans were drawn to the scent of them like a drug. They couldn't digest them, but males would regurgitate them later for a female to find, the preservative slime in their vomit repelling all males with a rancid scent but drawing any female around to it immediately. Only after a female had consumed human flesh would the eggs begin to form.

It was why raids on human colonies have been becoming more and more common. The need for a brood was a powerful one, and with the Female leading the other Hyperions, the humans didn't stand a chance. It made Eren all the more determined to protect the tiny creatures.

Which is of course why--on a rare day off from working--he is perched in a tree, waiting.

When he was still Titan-sized, hunting was easy. He was faster and stronger than almost every other creature out there, and his usual diet of Crius-class Titans simply didn't have the brain or brawn to defeat him. The only time he would ever need to

stalk

his meals was for fun.

Now, however, there was only meager, scrawny prey around, and the few small rodents and other animals that werescurrying about were small and fast. He had a hard time even getting near one, let alone catching enough for a meal.

The birds are the key. Eren is sure of it. They have the ability to fly over the high walls and feed from the plentiful fields and forests that surround the human colony, and were plump and nourished. He is determined to catch one, and this had seemed like the best way to go about it.

A twittering to his right draws his attention, and he spies a small blue bird.

Dropping his body down to hug the branch like he's seen many predators do, he slowly creeps forward. Hand over hand on the rough tree limb, he pulls himself towards the bird, who remains very much oblivious to its impending demise...

Or, would-be demise.

"Eren!" The bird startles at the sudden sound and takes off with a flurry of wings.

He glares down at his friends through the foliage 'less than thrilled.

Mikasa looks mostly amused, but Armin looks terrified, and begins desperately trying to convince him to come down, as if Eren was going to injure himself from a mere fifteen-foot drop.

Eren finds the idea preposterous at first, but then he recalls the unfortunate incident in the fields a few weeks ago when he was informed that humans did not heal as quickly or as completely as Titans. He also learned that they did not eat their own severed limbs (or toes, as was this situation) and that it was impolite to imply that you would like it if they did not want it.

Regardless of how fragile humans are, Eren does not share those weaknesses, and he is determined to catch a bird if it 's the last thing he does.

Making up his mind, he hooks his legs over the branch and swings down to dangle upsidedown from it. Armin shrieks and clucks like a bird himself, but Eren just levels a frown in their direction.

"Shh." he says, putting his new words to use. "I hunt."

Dark eyebrows crawl up Mikasa's forehead while Armin continues to fret. "Hunting what?"

Eren hooks his thumbs together and wiggles his fingers. "Bir-d."

Mikasa snorts. "You don't have weapons or traps. How are you going to catch it?"

Eren bristles at the slight to his hunting abilities, and he narrows his eyes. "Shh. See me."

The correction 'Watch me' is shouted up through the branches as he climbs back into position, but he just grunts at the human and doesn't attempt to imitate the phrase like usual.

He soon becomes vaguely aware of his humans settling down to rest underneath the tree, but he focuses on shielding himself from view like a good hunter as he waits for his prey.

Mikasa sighs as she convinces Armin to sit down.

"He's going to get hurt, Mi. And what then? If he can't work, he'll get smaller rations."

She shrugs. "Well maybe he can hunt."

"Mikasa!" He snaps in a hushed whisper, at least mindful of Eren's "request" for silence. "You know as well as I do that Eren's the only reason we're here. I'm useless, you're a girl" he gets a glare for that "If Eren weren't as strong as a horse, we wouldn't have gotten this job and you know it."

Mikasa glances away. It was true. Farming work was back-breaking, but it came with the highest rationing and living quarters. If Eren hadn't been with them that day, Armin wouldn't have been given work at all and she would have probably been sent to work as a seamstress or mill-worker--jobs that got neither quarter nor extra rations. And if she didn't get a job there...she shuddered. When her parents were killed, she'd heard what the men had said about her being

exotic.

It's very likely she would have been sent to work in a brothel.

She glances at Armin. If he hadn't been with her that day her parents died, she probably would have stayed frozen in shock, unable to do anything but watch. Who knows what they would have done with her if he hadn't grabbed her hand and bolted through the back door into the woods.

She owes her life to both of these boys, and she couldn't have chosen better people to owe a debt like that to.

MIkasa smiles softly, looking up at Eren, silently marveling at how still he is. Usually he can't seem to stay immobile for a second, always flitting around with a mix of curiosity and excitement. Now, however, it looked like he was carved in stone. She hadn't heard even a rustle of leaves since he'd climbed back up.

"You think he'll actually catch anything?" She whispers, glancing sideways at Armin.

The boy huffs out a laugh. "Who knows."

Minutes pass in comfortable silence until suddenly there's a commotion of flapping and squawking above them. They look up just in time to see Eren break the neck of a large crow with his teeth.

"Eren! Don't put that in your mouth!" Armin shouts, and Mikasa laughs at the affronted look Eren gives them.

They take the catch home, Eren radiating smugness the whole way.

That is, until they actually start cooking it, and he gives them a completely betrayed look as he tries to rescue the meat from the fire.

It takes Armin a few minutes of explaining that

all

meat had to be cooked in order for it to be eaten before he was allowed to take the bird from Eren--who watched the entire cooking process with a generous amount of suspicion.

Mikasa tries not to laugh as Armin kneels by the fire, turning the spit nervously as Eren hovers directly behind him, watching intently. She fails miserably when the meat starts popping and Eren lets out a low growl, causing Armin to squeak and jump.

Humans were so odd. Every day Eren would find some new cultural practice they had that made no sense. Like putting

perfectly

good

food

into

fire

.

When the food was finished warming--

cooking

, Armin had called it--he takes it from the wooden stake and rips it into quarters. Ignoring the questioning looks directed at the fourth piece, he hands the humans theirs, and they thank him profusely. The smell of the fresh meat makes his mouth water and he wastes no time digging into it.

The taste alone was worth the time squatting in a tree, and he could feel it slide down to settle warmly in his stomach. The bones had softened in the heat, and he decides to give the humans credit--they probably would have been much harder to swallow with his tiny human throat without the

cooking

. He looks over at the others to see them tearing into their portions with abandon, and a sense of pride wells up inside him.

He could protect his friends, keeping them fed and warm if nothing else. It was nice to know he was helping to repay the debt he owed them. Without his humans teaching him the human way, he would have been lost--stuck inside the walls of a species that wanted nothing more than to kill him while at his most vulnerable and with no way of communicating to them.

When the sounds of ripping and tearing had slowly died down, Eren looks over at the others to find them nibbling on the small bones to remove the last shreds of meat. He looks down at their piles of uneaten skeletal pieces, and frowns at yet another odd human custom he hadn 't known about.

Why did they leave the bones for last? Did they save them for something? Was it impolite to eat the bones in public? That seemed suitably odd for a human custom. They did not do this with the food bricks or the chunky liquid food, and Eren flounders for a bit.

Armin begins cleaning up both of their left-over bits, making a pouch with the bottom of its shirt to collect the bones. The human frowns in Eren 's direction. 'Eren, where are your scraps? I 'll take them outside. '

He glances to the side guiltily. 'Scraps? '

Armin points to the pieces in the make-shift pouch. 'It means 'the parts you didn 't eat. The bones? You remember that word right? Bone? '

Eren mutters something under his breath, and Armin asks him to speak up. 'Bone 'I eat. '

'Eren! '

Unfortunately, the lecture he receives informs him that it is not so much a

cultural

reason as a

biological

reason that humans did not consume the bones of animals, and that because of the complex human digestive organs, things that went

in

easily did not necessarily come

out

easily. He was not looking forward to the next few days if Armin's predictions were correct.

Thoroughly chastised, he scoops up the fourth piece that he had ripped off, and begins wrapping it in a cloth. The package is sloppily done, but it does the job. He looks out the window. The sun is still relatively high in the sky, so the other humans should still be out enjoying their day off.

Humans 'being the odd creatures they were 'had a cyclic way of measuring time, and every seven days they had a day with no tasks to do. All of the days in the cycle had names, but Eren hadn't quite seen the point of naming

time

, so he wasn't as eager to learn them.

"What's that one for?"

He looks up to see Mikasa staring at the package curiously, and he feels his face heat. He doesn't know the rules about this kind of behavior, but every instinct in his body was telling him that it was the right thing to do. Still, he looks at his feet when he answers.

"Car...la."

Mikasa's eyebrows shoot up. "That's...really nice of you, Eren." He breathes a sigh of relief that he won't be going against human tradition. "I thought you were afraid of Carla."

Armin looks up at that. "What?"

"Yesterday, Eren freaked out when he realized Carla was pregnant. He thought she would be dangerous to be around."

Armin blinks. "Really?"

Eren huffs and crosses his arms. He chokes out a string of newly-learned words and hopes they make sense. "Still think danger. Not mean...want...Car-la hungry. Egg...need meat...make grow." His face screws up at the choppy wording. Not wanting to explain any more than that, Eren rushes out the door, ignoring the calls of his name behind him.

He'd seen the hut the female went to when she got home, and he heads for it now. His palms wet and his mouth dries at the thought of entering a female's den, no matter how much Mikasa had assured him that it was safe. The memory of his arm being chewed from its socket by an enraged female is still fresh in his mind.

He's trembling slightly as he reaches the door to her den, and his hand fumbles with the latch as he enters, shutting the door firmly behind him. Spying two cots pushed together like in his own hut, he walks over to place the parcel on it.

Halfway to the bed Eren realizes he isn't alone, and his heart seizes in his chest.

The female--Carla--sits in a small, wooden chair with a book splayed open in her lap. Her eyes are wide as she stares at him, neither of them moving for an eternity. The wind whispers outside the open window, rustling leaves and causing the shutters to rattle slightly. He tries to remember how far away the door is without tearing his eyes from the female. He 's in unfamiliar territory and it doesn 't bode well for him.

Eren whimpers, and it breaks the spell between them.

"W-what are you doing here?" The book slides to the floor as she struggles to stand, one hand braced on the arm of the chair and the other on her swollen stomach.

Eren backs up quickly, bumping into a small table and causing various items to clatter to the floor despite his hurried attempts to steady it. He glances up to see the female looking startled. Taking advantage of her confusion, Eren slowly,

cautiously

places the wrapped parcel of meat on the table....

And hurls himself through the window behind him.