THIRTEEN • Eren Jaeger

CHAPTER 18: Interlude, Loophole

What makes a life, a life?

The events in it? The things you'd achieved with grace or failed to do? Kindness? Love? Hatred? Your life, which had been lived repeatedly, felt like you were only waiting for the next 'big thing' to happen. The Fall of Shiganshina, Historia's rise to the throne, Eren seeing the ocean for the first time, falling for your best friend. That was the natural series of events. You could try to stray away from it all you wanted, but that was it.

You were never reborn or reincarnated. It was your life. The same things happening over and over again. Everything happened in due time.

Perhaps time was just a concept you made up to process events in the material world.

It's nothing like the Paths realm.

There is no tangible way to grasp the Paths and how it worked to manipulate time, but you have to try. You are neither alive nor dead. You are a floating consciousness in the Paths realm, waiting to grasp a new life, a new chance to save the boy you loved. In-between loops. A fated cycle — with birth came death. For creation, destruction. With Eren...

You sit up, sand running down your face. Eren leans to give you space, but you grip his sleeve and pull yourself toward him.

"Do you remember?" you ask desperately. "Dirt on my face! Eren, please. I'm trapped in a—mph."

It's comical, how close yet so far you are. Your voice is running away, eager to spit it all out. You'd gone more than a century in total of years without being able to tell anyone, and now, at last, you are somewhere where you might have the power to do something.

"Calm down," says Eren. He picks up a fistful of sand and lets it fall through his fingers. "This stuff is what composes us Eldians. I mean to repair your injuries, and when you woke up, that was the first thing that came to mind. That's all."

"That's what you mean by dirt on my face," you realize. You get excited. "It means... You say it to me because when I die, Ymir brings me back to life! Isn't that right? Founder Ymir did this to me before the reset!"

"Reset? Reset of what?"

"That's the thing, Eren," you finally snap. Your voice is carried away in the domain's vacuum. "I can't tell you and I don't know why. Someone's manipulating my biology to sew shut whenever I try! Everyone thinks I'm fucking crazy!"

You exhale, willing yourself not to cry, but it's difficult. You were so tired. Your shoulders start to shake with empty sobs, no tears coming out—just the empty battleground of defeat. It's almost like you're laughing, the corners of your mouth stretching back.

Eren takes your cold hands in his.

Although he could act tough, he hated seeing you sad. His mind was addled with many things from the future, but it knew to comfort you like you always did for him. His arms wrap around you in an embrace, and you curl into him.

He's so warm. He smells like a candle. It's familiar and you're sure that he has held you like this at least a thousand times.

You're desperate for love and understanding. It's all you ever wanted, anyway.

"[Name]," Eren says softly. "I see things too."

It takes you a moment to process it.

"Eren...?"

"I don't understand it either," he says. "I don't know why... I'm the one reforming your face, forming it out of dirt. That's Ymir's job, isn't it?"

"You're not supposed to know that Ymir reforms us Eldians yet," you realize.