Chapter Text
The doorbell rings.
You grimace and stand.
He’s here. Your new student. The student who couldn’t take class anymore with the rest of the music students because he ‘had trouble getting along with some of them.’ The student you were asked to teach because you were the only one who could keep him in line, and apparently the shithead couldn’t just pick another class to get his art credit.
You swing the door open.
Eren Jaeger is taller than you by a good few inches – no surprise there, everyone’s taller than you are. Brown hair that looks like he made an attempt at brushing it, an attempt that was ruined by the wind that brushed it across his forehead. Blue-green eyes, wide, unblinking, betraying nerves and yet another failed attempt of his: an attempt to appear cool. Maybe that wasn’t the right word. Maybe it was something more along the lines of not absolutely moronic. Or not terrified.
“My name is Levi. You will call me Levi, Professor, or Professor Levi. You will not call me ‘prof,’ ‘prof Levi,’ or any other strange term that crosses your mind. My full name is Rivaille, I’m sure they told you, but as I assume you cannot pronounce it correctly, you will not use it.” You stand back and let him step inside. “You will take off your shoes here – God, I hope your feet don’t stink. You will not track dirt inside. You are in my house, not a classroom, and I will not tolerate messes of any kind.”
He removes his shoes, betraying anxiety yet again – he misses the heel of his shoe, something that wouldn’t cause any trouble for a calm person, and nearly falls over.
You watch dispassionately as he struggles with his shoes for a moment.
He straightens, somewhat red in the face, and waits.
You do a sharp about-face and lead him into the living room, dominated by a baby grand piano.
“Cherry wood, Altenburg, nine years old. I keep it in perfect condition. You will treat it as though it is the most precious, valuable thing you’ve ever seen, or you will not come back. If I see you hit it, if you bang on the keys like a child discovering noise for the first time, if you open it roughly, you will not come back. It is a piano, a musical instrument and a work of art, my medium of choice and clearly yours as well, if you refused to choose a different class, and I trust you will treat it properly.”
He nods, a flicker of determination in his eyes.
You suppose you have to give credit where credit is due.
Most students would have flipped you off and walked out by now.
You nod at the folder in his hands. “Sheet music?”
He nods.
“Pick whichever song is your best and play it, and then pick whichever song is your worst and play that.”
He slides onto the bench, sifts through his folder, and pulls out two songs: a piano arrangement of Beethoven’s Fifth and the first movement of Mozart’s Sonata No. 4.
He plays through Beethoven perfectly fine, with a steady beat and proper timing.
You almost want to say you’re impressed.
If nothing else, he has potential.
And then he starts playing Mozart.
You stop him after the fifth measure. “How long have you been working on this?”
He ducks his head. “A month.”
You raise your eyebrows. “Four weeks? How often do you play?”
You see a flush creeping up over the back of his neck. “Every day.”
You take a deep breath. “Tone-deaf shit canoe.”
He glances up at you in shock.
“Play it again.”
The kid’s going to make you earn your paycheck.
By the time he leaves, though, he has the first few measures smooth, and looks pleased with himself.
You glance at the clock. He left at nine, right on time.
Good. You can’t stand it when people don’t leave when they say they will.
You can’t stand having people in your house in the first place.
The phone rings.
“Levi,” you answer curtly.
“Hey Levi, it’s Erwin. How’d Eren do? Is he too much trouble? I suggested sending him somewhere else, but you were the closest, and they insisted on asking you first – he’s a sophomore, he’s got no car on campus.”
“He’s acceptable. He arrives and leaves on time, he doesn’t argue, and he has skill and potential. I’ll train him.”
You hear a faint sigh, and when Erwin speaks again, it’s a little quieter, a little less forceful. “Thank you, Levi. I appreciate this, I really do.”
“It’s no trouble at all.” You sit down at the kitchen table. “Why did he get kicked out of class again?”
“Poor behavior.”
Your frown deepens. “I hate to undermine your authority, and you certainly understand the situation better than I do, but if I might make a suggestion?”
“I trust your opinion, as always.”
“Eren might not be the problem. He appears to be well-behaved, intelligent, determined, hard-working; I didn’t get the impression that he was violent or argumentative. Of course, I don’t know the situation, and can’t understand how he interacts with other students. But in my opinion, it might be wise to re-examine the situation.”
Erwin is silent for a moment as he thinks. “From the professor’s reports, Eren tended to fight with one student, Jean Kirstein. The professor was never quite certain who started it, but Eren did turn violent last week, prompting his move out of the class. I’ll keep tabs on the class and on Jean, and I’ll keep you posted. Does that sound all right?”
“It does, thank you.”
You discuss the weather and other equally unimportant topics before hanging up, and when you take the phone from your ear, you sit back.
Eren had turned violent.
Of course they sent him to you.
Eren had been quiet, polite, had even cracked a joke or two. The kid had a dry sense of humor; you can’t see him taking a joke the wrong way. He had taken your curt orders without complaint: clearly he was not the type to get emotional over small things.
Jean Kirstein.
You roll the name around in your mind.
What could he possibly have said that provoked Eren Jaeger into violence?
You turn the question over in your head as time ticks past, the only noise the soft hum of your refrigerator and the quiet click of the analog clock in the next room.
You have no answer when midnight rolls around, but you’re mentally exhausted from going in circles, and you fall asleep with the hope that you won’t have the nightmare tonight.
You have it anyway.
The lock clicked. The door opened.
You walk in.
The man raises his gun.
His daughter appears in the doorway and sees you and wails, young but old enough to understand that it’s still dark and there’s a strange man that she doesn’t know and that her daddy is holding a gun and that she understands none of these things or why they’re put together and only that they’re scary.
You pull your gun out of your holster.
You point it at her face, right between her wide eyes.
You pull the trigger.
You hear the sharp blast of a gun.
You see red.
Your torso snaps up, your eyes wide in the dark, your heavy breathing loud in the silence, head whipping back and forth, looking for the girl, the little girl whose face is branded in your memory, but she’s not there, no one is. You’re alone.
You struggle blindly to get out of your bed, sweat-soaked sheets twisted around your leg like hands, or mud, dragging you down, holding you down in the dirt, pulling you down to suffocate you –
You topple out of bed, dragging yourself out of the sheets with shaking hands as you pull yourself blindly towards the living room, shaking the sheets off your leg as you sit down at your piano, trembling fingers grazing over the smooth keys before settling on E and moving, not dancing, not gliding, but jerky, rough movements, the sound more noisy than musical, more sharp than smooth, grating against your ears and invading your brain in the way that only badly-played music can, the melody getting lost in the unsteady beat and the chords.
You stop before the song does, cutting it off halfway through as your hands clench into fists, banging down on the keys.
No, no, you can’t hit the piano. You can’t hit the piano, you can’t hurt the piano, you can’t break the piano, the piano must be here, and you begin to play more softly, quietly, soothingly, an apology to the inanimate object that speaks more sweetly than you ever have that soothes you as well, calming your heart rate.
The air stops crushing your windpipe, and you pull in deep breaths, slowly relaxing your muscles.
You drop your foot on the damper pedal, and the note holds steady.
A drop of sweat falls from your forehead onto one of the keys. You grimace and wipe it off.
You suppose you could go to bed, now. The nightmare rarely comes twice in one night.
You glance at the floor, at the long, twisted sheet that you dragged out with you, leading back into your bedroom, the dark hole in which you sleep.
When the sun pokes its slim fingers through your windows, they find you playing Mozart’s Sonata No. 4.