Between life and death, there is hope. But every ending has the same outcome: the Rumbling razes the earth, taking the person you love with it.
After you die, you reawake in the day you met your best friend, Eren Jaeger. In every life you relive, y...
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"If you could go back in time and change something about your life, would you do it?"
Eren writhed often in his sleep. Ever since discovering he was a Titan, he had been getting visions. Sometimes of death, mostly of you. It was nothing new for traumatic stress to hinder the Survey Corps, but somehow, this was different from the others.
So when you came into his room one night after he woke up screaming from the nightmares, he was deeply humbled by your forbidding candor. It came as no surprise whenever you did. Ever since childhood, you had always been the type to ask him how he was. Seeing you shuffle at the edge of his bed reminded you of one particular memory from Shiganshina, when you and Mikasa were having a girls' sleepover, and you came to see him because you didn't want to leave him upset.
Even as cadets, and throughout your first few months in the Survey Corps, you always knew what Eren wanted. You told him things like you could read his mind and predict everything. Eren, don't drink the alcohol from Pyxis, you're going to vomit it later. Eren, you didn't clean the top floor properly, Levi will chew you out. Eren, don't go out today, it's going to rain and you'll come back all drenched like a cat.
He knew that you had asked him that question because he needed a distraction. He had lived in his head more than his body. He needed someone to ground him. There were many things he could want to change. Many people he would have wanted to bring back. You often reassured him that he was on the right track making the right decisions, but even you sounded like you were in doubt. Not of him, but in yourself.
No one knew how you could predict and measure things so well but seem constantly frazzled, always thinking too much about every little thing you did. Eren realized that it was really you who had to be reassured.
Instead, he said, "Everything in my life led to you being here for me right now. So probably not."
Your eyes softened. Eren nearly loathed it. You had such a tender gaze whenever you looked at him that it was excruciating for him to not stutter.
"What about you?" he asked.
"I don't know," you replied, and you sounded honest.
"Why'd you ask?"
"I don't know," you repeated.
Now, you sounded like you were hiding something from him.
You shuffled into the bed beside Eren. It reminded him of being a kid again, back when you would create pillow forts at night, and pretend to see the ocean. It felt as though he had done this before with you hundreds of times. None of it phased you, clearly used to it. The two of you spoke in whispers and stared at the ceiling, merely feeling each other's presence.
