"Go! Go! Move it!"

"Don't let your bag down! What don't you understand about that!? You brought it, you carry it!"

"Pick that bag up! Pick. That. Bag. Up!"

"You're all going to be carrying weapons. I don't know if I'd trust you with a bloody butter knife!"

"Is your ass jealous of the amount of shit you just said?"

"I bet your brain feels as good as new, seeing as you never FUCKING USE IT!"

Over the next few weeks Eren heard every insult he could have imagined coming out of the Drill Sergeant's mouth and then some.

They walked, jogged and ran; climbed up ropes and over slippery wooden ramps; carried heavy equipment and weighted bags; and listened to insult after insult as the shattered recruits were slowly moulded into soldiers.

They were running through the forest that morning. Armin and Mikasa were way at the front and Eren, yet again, was close to the back.

"Pick up the pace you lead-heeled laggards!"

In front of him Marco half stumbled over his feet as he struggled to pull his bag tighter into his body. Behind him Christa tripped over a root, only to be hauled up by Ymir right behind her.

"This is no time for a nap you little shit bags. You are starting to piss me off! Get off your asses and move!"

Eren frowned heavily at the jarring angry voices around him. Was there really such a need to yell like that? Why couldn't they just run and enjoy themselves?

"Jeager! Pick up the pace!" Shadis shouted, before spurring his horse forwards and moving onto someone else.

The slight weight on Eren's back suddenly lifted as Reiner pulled off his bag and swung it onto his shoulder.

"I am fine, Reiner," Eren told him, pulling the bag back off the surprised cadet.

"You don't seem that out of breath Eren," he stated with a light pant.

"Why I be out of breath?" Eren asked with a smile.

Reiner chuckled faintly between each heavy breath, irritably scratching his nose as they ran together.

"Reiner! Get your arse back to the front! Right now you're only being useful as Titan bait!" Yelled Shadis, pulling back his horse to the back.

It was odd but Eren had noticed Drill sergeant Shadis had stopped yelling at him so much in the last few weeks. Perhaps he realised that Eren didn't really find him that intimidating, maybe he finally got used to Eren's slow pace.

Eren wasn't sure. All that he did know was that he needed to keep pace with most of the trainees, just in front of those in the back.

He noticed that those who were right at the back of each activity were the ones who most often would later disappear, sneaking off into the caravans in the evenings and never coming back.

Armin said they were going to the fields to farm food for the military.

But why come here if you want to do that? He didn't get it. Eren didn't want to do farming anymore.

In the end, between the back and the middle seemed a good place to stay. It also stopped Shadis from saying particularly nasty about him. Mikasa tended to get very irritable when that happened.

But this was only in the physical side of his training. The other parts were much more difficult for him to figure out, at least at first.

There were many tasks they had to do, like cooking food and cleaning the sleeping barracks, toilets and halls. Eren wasn't very good at these things. He had never done any of that stuff before; he never needed too.

He didn't eat (if he could help it) and Armin did most of the cooking back in Trost. Cleaning seemed like a waste of time back there too; there was no getting away from dirt no matter what you did.

Eren didn't really get why things had to be clean. Subsequently when he was told to clean the toilets he was completely stumped about what to do. In the end he chucked some water around and dragged his cloth over a few surfaces and hoped for the best. It obviously wasn't good enough by the shouting he received by one of the instructors an hour later.

The less said about his cooking the better. Needless to say the other recruits quickly worked out a system where Eren was never given the duty again.

It wasn't just the jobs that were difficult though. There was some odd thing they had to do each day where they had to spend up to five hours sat on small wooden benches listening to some wrinkled man speak nonsense and draw pictures on a black piece of rock. Armin called it "lessons".

Eren just didn't understand why they had to do lessons, what did it have to do with fighting Titans?

According to Armin it had a lot.

Every evening now Armin would hurriedly go over his notes with Eren, trying to explain the lessons in a way that he could understand.

The letters were vaguely familiar and Eren felt quite proud of himself when he read out 'run' to a very surprised Armin.

Eren however did not feel quite so clever a month later as Armin leaned over his shoulder watching him try to read these symbols.

"Geh- eh- ah- err," he murmured aloud, trying to keep his voice low as the other recruits swarmed around them on their way out of the canteen and back to the barracks.

"It's gear, see the g makes a 'guh' sound and the e and the a? Together they make an 'ee' sound,"

Eren looked up incredulously from the book to Armin. He had just spent the last month trying to memorise all the big and small scribble shapes properly with Armin and Mikasa, only to find that they didn't even make the same sounds?

There was a solid thump as Eren shut the heavy book, pushed up and away from the table and picked up his equipment bag.

"Eren where are you going?"

"I are- am going flying," Eren muttered stopping as he caught Armin's worried expression. "Do not worry. It is dark. They will not see. They not- will not put me in high,"

Armin frowned as he tried to work out what he said and Eren took his chance to quickly escape out of the canteen door.

He ran and ran, galloping across the fields as he made his way to the woods, before quickly taking out and putting on his gear.

As he took flight, as he was pulled up from the earth, it felt as if his worries were washed away from his body by the cool rush of air against it. His ridged, tense frame melted as he fluidly swung around the tree and pulled himself up through the tight, narrow gaps between the branches and trunks.

His feet, now bare and released from their confines, didn't touch ground nor tree for more than a split second for hours as he jumped up to higher heights and leaned back into the free fall. Flipping and spinning in the quick momentum. He breathed in deep, easy and happy in the star-kissed darkness.

It had been a hot day, sun hammering down on him from an open window as he tried- oh how he tried- to make sense of what the wrinkled old man was telling them but the energy had been brewing deep in his bones all day. He needed to run, to fly, to do something. Perhaps that was why he had such difficulty concentrating with Armin as well.

"Eren!"

Eren stopped himself short, anchoring himself between two trees as he stared down in surprise.

A sliver of moonlight caught the blond's head as he made his way through the trees and Eren gave a quiet woop, swinging around to crash into the earth before his friend.

"Hey Armin!" He grinned toothily.

Armin couldn't resist smiling back despite his surprise at his friend's sudden entrance.

"I am to go back?" Eren asked, breathless grin fading as his earthly worries drifted back into his head. Armin's startled smile faded too and he found himself shaking his head.

"...No, it's fine Eren. You look- I mean- I'd like another lesson, I'm starting to feel slightly rust- I mean- out of practice,"

And just like that Eren was grinning again, grabbing Armin's hand and pulling him deeper into the woods.

"Great!! I still have not teached you falling,"

"Taught," Armin corrected with a renewed grin.

Every so often, after that night, when everything became to irritating or Eren felt too tight in his own skin, Armin would take his hand when it got dark and go with him to the forest.

Mikasa went too after the first few times. Eren felt guilty for forgetting to include her when he saw the flicker of hurt form on her face as she found out. He explained that she was doing so well during the day that he didn't think she even needed more lessons but with the look she gave him at this he quickly decided otherwise.

He made sure she was included every time they went out after that.

They had to keep it quiet though and not use too much gas as, both strictly and not-strictly speaking, they weren't allowed to use their gear unsupervised yet.

Sometimes he just went running in the early evenings, simply enjoying the wind and the slow thud of his feet on the ground as he made his way around, only putting on his out-of-breath show when he could feel others eyes on him as they went back to the barracks to sleep.

"- saw him out there. Did he annoy Drill sergeant Shadis again?" He heard Marco asking Armin when he got back one evening.

"I don't think so," his sunflower returned with a frown, turning away from distantly watching this evening's arm wrestling match, just as Bertolt slammed down Ymir's arm with a shy smile.

"That idiot is a deadloss, did you see him huffing and puffing out there? Don't know why he's not been carted off to the fields yet," Jean muttered, non-so-subtly checking around to make sure Mikasa wasn't in earshot.

She wasn't, she was talking briefly with Bertolt and Ymir a little way off as they speedily started gathering their laundry for her.

Armin, however, was very much in earshot and promptly turned to level a deep glare at the horsefaced man.

It was about as effective as being glared at by a bunny.

"He's not going to the fields Jean!"

"...Armin he does seem to be having a few problems with the physical side of all this," Marco chipped in with a slow careful tone.

"Yeah, the other day I saw him collapse after only one run of the obstacle course," Connie butted in with an incredulous look as Sasha followed after him, arms full of gas canisters.

"Eren! Uh hi!" Shouted out Sasha really obviously as she caught sight of Eren, hovering by the door.

Connie flashed bright red as Eren approached them.

"Hey Eren," he smiled guiltily.

"Hey," Eren returned with sadness.

"Eren, your shirt is filthy," came Mikasa's voice, suddenly behind everyone.

All of them jumped, even Armin.

How long has she been there? They wondered fearfully.

"I did go through the object race again," he explained, picking at the shirt that he had to climb through the earth tunnels in.

"Well give it to me and I'll take it to get washed," she said in a no-nonsense tone.

Eren blushed deep red at the thought of  Mikasa and stripped off his shirt, passing it over to Mikasa.

There was a sudden clatter as the canisters in Sasha's arms tumbled to the ground.

She didn't even try to pick them up.

"You oh kay Sasha?" Eren asked her with a worried frown.

Sasha didn't seem to be listening. Eren looked around with a confused look to see if the others had noticed Sasha's strange behaviour but it didn't look like they had.

They all seemed to be staring at his stomach and chest with blank wide eyed expressions, all apart from Armin who was massaging his brow as if he had a headache and Mikasa who was looking at everyone with a small smug tug to her lips while blushing deep red.

Eren looked down, wondering if he got mud on him or something but no.

"Armin?" He asked blankly.

"Stop showing off and go get another shirt Eren," Armin told him with a twitch of his lips. Bemused, Eren left to do so, frowning as Jean turned around and started banging his head on a bed frame.

"Sasha you're drooling," Mikasa scolded as he left.

Strange behaviour of the other cadets aside, Eren was starting to have fun with all this training. He was getting better at this cleaning thing (although he was still banned from cooking) and with Armin's help he was starting to understand more and more of the words the wrinkled teacher was saying.

But best of all he liked teaching Armin and Mikasa again, flying in quick formation with them and watching as they continued to get better day by day. Unfortunately they couldn't always stay up as late as Eren. They tended to get tired and prone to make mistakes the next day if they didn't get enough rest. So sometimes Eren would go out by himself, running and climbing and flying late into the night.

It was on one such night, just under one year into their training that Eren made a mistake.

He was seen.

"E-Eren?!" came a female voice.

Eren looked around sharply in surprise, before remembering he was in free-fall (as Armin called it) and needed to stop.

He swivelled his hips round and shot up his cables, slowing his decent down sharply to flip and push his left hand down against the rapidly approaching earth. He released his cables with his right hand and used his momentum to flip himself round to stand upright again before the intruder.

Sasha stared at him with the widest eyes he had ever seen on her.

"That. Was. Awesome!" She squealed.

...Shizer.

"Uh Sasha can you not speak to other about-" Eren waved his arm about himself then the trees. "-this?"

"Why not? That was amazing! You could get in the top ten if you did that in front of Shadis!" She raved, waving her arms excitedly, missing the pallid look on Eren's face. "How'd you get so good? Why've you been holding out on us?"

"I do not want be in top ten. Please do not tell any other. I will- I-" Eren stopped, the light of inspiration in his eyes, "I will give you my food, if you do not-"

"Yes! Yes! Okay I won't tell!" Sasha interrupted, jumping forward to grab Eren's hands with a glazed jittery grin on her face.

Eren felt himself relax as he gently tried to pry his hands away from Sasha's vice like grip.

It was only at that point that he suddenly noticed the strange wooden half hoop across Sasha's back. It looked slightly like a bent branch but with a sting connecting the ends.

"What is it?" He asked, pointing at the thing on her back.

"Oh! Well, you won't tell I suppose. I was going hunting," she grinned toothily, releasing Eren's hands to take the strange thing off her back.

How does a stick and some string help you hunt? Eren wondered to himself curiously.

Perhaps some of his confusion came across on his face as Sasha started to explain.

"There really just isn't enough meat in that canteen! I wanted to shoot down a bird or two but I haven't seen any so far," she sighed very sadly at that and Eren found himself frowning.

"There some owls tonight. High in branches. I take you up and you show me how use?" He suggested, smiling as he saw Sasha's eyes light up.

His smile quickly spluttered and died as he realised the girl in front of him was starting to leak profusely from multiple orfaces.

"Eren, I think this is the start of a brilliant friendship!" Sasha sobbed, grabbing Eren's hand again and enthusiastically pumping it up and down.

Eren felt distinctly nervous.