Eren could spill some of it, messy and angry, like he had a half-cocked plan to when they talked in the food court. That sure as hell hadn't gone how he'd thought, and now there was a shift, and something was different. He wanted to hurt with that cheap ass attack during the game. He doesn't want to cut any deeper, not now. It's selfish to tell Reiner what happens and it's selfish to keep it to himself. There are no good choices.
He stares off at the horizon, the water stretching on. It's not anywhere near as far across this ocean-lake as even the trip to Marley proper was. But from here, he can't see that. There's just water and sky.
He thinks of the first time, everyone running around in the water. All he could feel was dread, knowing what would happen and not being able to explain how or why or when. He could drift away into that day. Everything changed that day, though it had already changed. But the world was suddenly so much wider in a tangible way. Reading about it in his father's journal was different. Even his fucked up memories that knew better were different.
Standing there in the ocean, all he could think about was death. That's all it's been for years, death and more death until there is no one left to die, or until Eren himself dies.
If you want to stop me, you'll have to stop me breathing.
He opens his mouth to say…well, who knows what. He closes it again.
Reiner says his name and the present sits in stark relief against the future/past. This is not their ocean. There are no enemies here. The only enemy here is next to him, their fingers interlaced. Eren doesn't want him to be anywhere else.
We can be something different.
As in Folkmore, Eren lives with the terrifying question, though: what if he can't? What if he can only be a monster? It's not as if you get to come back from genocide. Sure, sure, he hasn't actually done it, walked through it, lived it. But he's lived it a million times in the past couple of years, the parts of it that he knows so well. And the truth of it: he would do it anyway. If he goes home, it still happens. Even thinking about it, given a choice, he knows he would make the same one over and over again, so that the handful of people he loves too much could be free. Reiner, too. In the end, if he lives through it, won't he get to be free too?
What do you want to be? Reiner had asked him. Alive, he had said, and it was one of the truest things he's said in ages.
"We all made shitty choices," he finally says, which is also true. "We were born in a world that didn't want to give us choices at all. We were born in cages, both of us."
That is not what he meant when he called them the same, something Reiner can probably discern, but it is something he believes. The contempt for those cages drips from his voice, sits in the lines of his face, here and not here, staring at a memory as much as the skyline in front of them.
He feels Reiner's hand squeeze his again and he pulls himself out of it, looking sideways again, anger slipping away from him as he wills it to. His hair is still a mess, clinging to his face in wet pieces. He finally uses his free hand to push some of it back.
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He stares off at the horizon, the water stretching on. It's not anywhere near as far across this ocean-lake as even the trip to Marley proper was. But from here, he can't see that. There's just water and sky.
He thinks of the first time, everyone running around in the water. All he could feel was dread, knowing what would happen and not being able to explain how or why or when. He could drift away into that day. Everything changed that day, though it had already changed. But the world was suddenly so much wider in a tangible way. Reading about it in his father's journal was different. Even his fucked up memories that knew better were different.
Standing there in the ocean, all he could think about was death. That's all it's been for years, death and more death until there is no one left to die, or until Eren himself dies.
If you want to stop me, you'll have to stop me breathing.
He opens his mouth to say…well, who knows what. He closes it again.
Reiner says his name and the present sits in stark relief against the future/past. This is not their ocean. There are no enemies here. The only enemy here is next to him, their fingers interlaced. Eren doesn't want him to be anywhere else.
We can be something different.
As in Folkmore, Eren lives with the terrifying question, though: what if he can't? What if he can only be a monster? It's not as if you get to come back from genocide. Sure, sure, he hasn't actually done it, walked through it, lived it. But he's lived it a million times in the past couple of years, the parts of it that he knows so well. And the truth of it: he would do it anyway. If he goes home, it still happens. Even thinking about it, given a choice, he knows he would make the same one over and over again, so that the handful of people he loves too much could be free. Reiner, too. In the end, if he lives through it, won't he get to be free too?
What do you want to be? Reiner had asked him. Alive, he had said, and it was one of the truest things he's said in ages.
"We all made shitty choices," he finally says, which is also true. "We were born in a world that didn't want to give us choices at all. We were born in cages, both of us."
That is not what he meant when he called them the same, something Reiner can probably discern, but it is something he believes. The contempt for those cages drips from his voice, sits in the lines of his face, here and not here, staring at a memory as much as the skyline in front of them.
He feels Reiner's hand squeeze his again and he pulls himself out of it, looking sideways again, anger slipping away from him as he wills it to. His hair is still a mess, clinging to his face in wet pieces. He finally uses his free hand to push some of it back.
"I don't wanna sit here anymore," he says.