ｉ： ＡＵＧＵＳＴ ２４ [ the battle is over. the fortress is gone, the cries of chained wyverns still like the wind— they did it. they saved the town from destruction, and all should be cheering.
coming across this weary man was alarming. eren’s clothes are stained with blood that is not his. the shifter lines scarring down his face are creased and damp with tears that have made his eyes puffy and sore. he feels a little numb, as if he’s floating, unaware of what had just happened moments earlier.
he looks back at the disaster scenery before him, the destruction left by armaros now an eerie silence. staggering backwards into a splintered bench, eren’s breathing begins to escalate the more his blue eyes search. they look at his hands, his clothes, around him. they sting horridly again, until all he can see through them was blurry landscape, until his throat burned up to the air he inhaled in rapid breaths.
until his chest hurt.
eren jaeger cries with no suppression. raw emotion pours from him as he sobs, as his voice cracks and whines after each gasping breath he tries to take. clover jaeger was dead, his sister was gone, he couldn’t hope for her to be back tomorrow when that’s not how death always works, not when there was little to trust in the twisted reality they lived.
he was not there when he should’ve been. he offered help, he gave encouragement, and it led clover to an end he hadn’t foreseen. he believed in her, trusted her— and yet again, a lesson he should have learned plenty of lives ago— his faith had played a part in killing her.
there were few here that eren truly loved, and it’s today that a part of him had died with one. his mournful cries ring through the air, an occasional mix of desperate laughter chimes with the frantic jabs he makes against wood and clobbered cement, until his weeps single out into just weeps.
he thought, he hoped, for maybe a few seconds each day, that he was in a reality where he’d never feel this again. and here he was, in a cycle where history constantly repeated itself to him, as if fated to falter and lose those dear, because of him.
it was always because of him. ]
ｉｉ： ＡＵＧＵＳＴ ２５, ２６ [ for those who would like to get in contact with eren during this frame: it’s easier than you think, but harder to keep up.
message him, and he’ll probably answer bluntly. meeting with him while he walks his dogs won’t be a colorful greeting— his eyes are bloated and circled with tired, dark rings, and he’s quick to go back inside to his home.
maybe you want to pay a visit to his apartment, it’s nearly an entire floor all to himself. if he’s good enough company to receive company is a completely different story, but hey. maybe he needs it. ]
[He'd been in the fight. He had joined with Natalia and Akira because he saw the town in danger. He hadn't learned until much later that it had been Clover....Eren's sister.
He doesn't understand how it was possible, or what even happened. He just knows he needs to find Eren. He needs to find him before he can worry about anything else.
So Elliot will walk around, looking for him until he finds him. He's a little roughed up from the fight, but his healing power has healed over any injuries. Finally he'll find him. While others might be intimidated by Eren's loud reaction, Elliot approaches without hesistation, putting his hand on his shoulder gently to get his attention...or to at least let Eren know he's not alone]
[ eren hadn’t heard elliot coming to him, jolting in his seat when his shoulder is touched and twisting his neck to see who it is. his heart skips a beat, to think that somewhere, somehow, his intoner sister had resurfaced, injury-free and alive. there isn’t disappointment when he realizes it’s his boyfriend past the blurry vision, another beloved that he shared a different bond with— but his chest twists with a pain that couldn’t be soothed by pills or mixes.
a wicked voice in his mind asks him: who’s next?, and he turns his body willingly to him, red face, wet clothes, cascading tears and all. there’s even blood on his face that he hadn’t bothered to clean.
he can’t speak through strong snorts and hiccups, the words keep wheezing out and cutting off before he could complete a sentence, but he wants to hold him and be held. he doesn’t want to lose anyone else. he doesn’t want to lose him, of all people, but circumstance forces him to see the possibility, and he hates it.
if elliot could piece the fractured and stuttered words together, he’ll understand what eren’s trying to say: it’s my fault. ]
[It breaks his heart to see Eren in such a state. Already he was sad at losing Clover before he could truly get to know her, but seeing Eren like this hurts like a knife to the heart.
But this isn't time for his own comfort, he focuses entirely on Eren. He kneels down and wraps his arms around him, intent on holding him tightly and giving him the support that he needs. He'll hold him as long as he needs it, nothing else matters.
It's hard out out the fractured words, and the bits he does make out hurt so he'll just soothingly say]
Shhhh....shhhhh....
[Things weren't okay, but he didn't need to punish himself]
[ eren might not be the best at quieting down, and he doesn’t truly think about how messy and stained elliot’s going to be if they hug, but— too late. the second elliot gives signal that his arms are moving, eren’s own arms practically fly around his back without second notice. his face burrows into his shoulder and his cries go muffled, not silenced. his whole body trembles into elliot’s, his shoulders shudder up and down until he’s gasping to breathe all over again.
he holds him tightly, because in this life, he has lost one, now two, and he never wants it to become three. how much control did he have over that? it’s what terrified him the most in this moment of stripped free will. free will didn’t mean anything if you couldn’t change an outcome regardless of what you do.
it takes quite a while for eren to soften in volume; he still shakes and he still embraced elliot as if fearful that he’d be robbed of him, too. only giving his mouth room to breath fresh air near his boyfriend’s neck, eren whispers to him, the quake in his voice ever present but settled enough to speak. ]
I told her . . . To get to know Four better. [ he inhales a hissed breath, and snorts through his running nose. ] I told her to, to— use her power, t-to control, it.
[ his breathing roughs up again, and the calm that he had only seemed to feign that he achieved slips from his fingers like water. like the dying flower that slipped through his hands and disappeared. ]
She knew how— d-dangerous it, was and I still— [ still encouraged her, still told her to push on, because running away from it was worse.
if he knew this would’ve happened, he would’ve told her to wait. ]
[Elliot holds on tight, not caring at all how tightly Eren is clinging. He rubs his back soothingly, to help get him to breath. He's there for Eren, just like all the times Eren's been for him.
Lucky for Eren, his hearing is good enough that he can make out that quaking whisper. Oh...poor Eren. Of course he would blame himself for this. ]
You had no way of knowing this would happen. [He whispers back, but with a firmer tone in his voice] Learning to control your power is sound advice.
[Out of control powers could be just as dangerous. He's seen it happen with Eren and Natty. ]
And...this might've happened even if you hadn't said anything.
[For all he knows, this could've happened eventually no matter what. Clover didn't exactly SEEM in control with all this]
[ eren says, louder than his hushes and defiant to the words in his favor. why was it better to think it was his fault? maybe to save the blame, or any blame clover had on herself, or anyone else. maybe it was something he felt as if he could shoulder somehow.
or maybe it was just easier to accept that he could’ve done something, rather than live with knowing that there was nothing he could do to change anything, as if this was all fated to happen. ]
This could’ve been stopped, [ he swallows sharply, and dry ] if she had more time, her own time. Not someone who’d— keep . . . Nagging. I’m not Mom, I’m— I’m her brother. And I wasn’t there.
[ this is starting to feel like a cycle he didn’t want back in his life. inhaling, eren pulls himself away from the longtime embrace, hands still gripping elliot’s arms tightly, but his eyes— his eyes are desperate and pleading, his face is a mess of tears and fluid, and for once, with emotion as raw as it could be, it shows: he’s afraid. not of what has just happened, he can’t do anything about it now, but perhaps what the earlier words entail for him.
that he’s fated, again. ]
I need to know that I could still change things, Elliot. Or else everything I live for . . . Doesn’t mean a thing again.
[ he needs to know that his choices are still free. that if he wasn’t there for clover, he’d had to live with that guilt, in punishment for his own neglecting, and change for the better. change his path so that this wouldn’t happen again. ]
[You know, there's a little irony in the fact that Eren is blaming himself for always acting like he's right...and then immediately goes to try to talk over Elliot's disagreements to show that he's the right one here.
Elliot picks up on that irony anyway, but he won't point it out. Most of what Eren is saying is coming from a place of pain and grief. It's so easy to feel helpless in times like now.]
You can still change things. Your life has meaning, Eren. Just...not everything for everyone.
Some things are...out of our control. [He'll lift up his hand to brush Eren's hair out of the way] We don't...neither of us are Clover. We don't know what caused it. But I don't think it was you..or at the very least, you alone.
[ eren has massive flaws he can never fix even when he’s aware of them
but opening his mouth to talk back brings out nothing. his voice doesn’t come. he has nothing to say, he has nothing to change things around and make at least a little bit of this bearable. these things just aren’t meant to be be enjured easily.
so eren falls back, silent and verbally subdued, his head hanging and his shoulders still occasionally jumping from hiccups. after that stretch, and only moments of his simply holding elliot’s hand, he asks genuinely, with his head searching for his shoulder to rest on and elliot’s scent to breathe: ]
What do I tell Mom?
[ it was a serious question— does he wait? does he say something now? what if retrospec brings her back? what if they don’t? ]
It was Elliot's turn to be quiet, because that thought hadn't occurred to him. And now that it has, it makes him feel incredibly guilty for not thinking of it. He didn't have parents anymore, so it was easy to forget other people had someone to check in with. People loved them yet weren't on the app so they couldn't understand everything.
What do you even say...]
I...I don't know. [He'll admit to it. no point in pretending otherwise] What...do you think she'd want you to say?
I’m afraid to say something, or wait, [ another tight swallow, so much that his throat smacks. ] and be wrong.
[ it was probably one of the worst things to be caught between. ]
Mom’d always want the truth.
[ but maybe . . . it should be something he could think more about. maybe after— ]
I need to— [ his eyes water when eren glances down at his clothes, but weep he doesn’t. he only blinks rapidly to keep them at bay, and wants to get up. ] I need to help clean this up.
[ eren nods, mostly in apology to what elliot meant— it’s easy to mix things up when you’re head is running laps upon laps. having a hand against a splintered bench, he’s sure to dig deep into the wood in one swoop, else he’d think twice to hurt himself. a little of his own blood was all he needed anyway. ]
. . . I don’t know what she’d want.
[ which was highly troubling. after this? it was hard to pinpoint what clover was feeling, why she broke, why she did this. with the mind sent she had been in now, it was almost possible to think that she’d want out of everything asap. she was gone, end of story.
but eren knows that love was all she really wanted, even if it hadn’t been enough. ]
[the girl who ran away before the dust settled. the girl who couldn't bear to be there any longer than she had to. she's not expecting much from him right now. she doesn't even know what she's going to say or if her messages are going to get through. it takes her... too many tries to get out something that doesn't sound awful.]
[ it takes a while not for eren to read it, he does so the moment it pops up on the screen of his phone and tweets, but to respond. firstly, because he honestly hadn’t felt like it. a half hour or so gives him enough time to think on it— he hadn’t seen her afterwards. where was she then? he realizes he didn’t even ask.
soon enough: ]
No. But I’ll see you, if you don’t mind.
[ tagged to the message is his address and floor number to his room. just tell security you’re here for eren and they’ll let her through. ]
[but what if she does mind? fortunately she's had some time to prepare in the interim, mostly just by trying to burn off excess energy by pacing around the parts of the apartment that her roommate isn't in. all it does is build up more energy, too much to respond to his text, too much for her eyes to focus on for a moment, but once they do she's off. it doesn't take her long to start walking to the address, to give her name to security, to head up to his room and knock on his door.]
It's Lina.
[she hears herself say it but she's barely present. it's like all of this is playing out in front of her and she's just being carried along, powerless to stop anything. she was a coward. she is a coward. she can't even make herself stop dissociating long enough to be here for him. she doesn't deserve to be here right now.]
[ the tapping of eight paws come to see what’s at the door first— the mystery scent earns a whine or so, but all ceases when more human steps come over to open the door for her. ]
Come in, [ eren says, quiet and with a short bow of his head to greet her. his dogs, both a german shepherd and a pitbull-boxer mix are well behaved and obedient, sitting, staying, and waiting. the mutt is a little more anxious, tail wagging furiously under him to get the command to greet the new human, while the shepherd . . . isn’t as enthusiastic. he stays at eren’s side, and sighs as he lays down by his feet. he’s more of a veteran with his owner, and knows full well that something’s wrong. he looks just as dim as the human jaeger next to him.
the apartment is large, two floors, of refined modern taste and low lit golden lights. there’re paintings on the wall, one of the dragon they rode on some days ago and the titan eren can create, japanese style watercolors painting a magestic scene of friendly battle. there are some realistic models of sports cars decorating the space between family photos, many with him and his boyfriend, or him with clover, or him with clover and his mother, a photo of a father nowhere to be found. an electric drum set sets just by the living room leading to the view from wide windows. the whole place is probably that on a good day: beautiful. it’s just rather depressing now— eren has that sort of emotional impact.
at least, once lina steps inside and eren closes the door behind them, kaiser, the mutt, goes off into the dog corner to grab something on the floor, bringing a squeaky kong soccer ball to the visitor, looking between her and eren with a constant saggy tail. perhaps she could make his human smile? ] I’m sorry.
[even before everything hits her and she realizes how opulent his place is, it strikes Lina that she really shouldn't be surprised. this is just how her life would be, isn't it. just getting confirmation that everything she suspected about the world Clover ended up in—but then she remembers her sister again and everything drains out of her all over again. she's not paying attention to the dog trying to make her happy, but she... god, it would be nice not to know what the hell is going on. she appreciates that the dog is trying.]
[they're all trying. some of them are doing better than others.]
It's fine. [lying.] Us not talking was normal anyway. [she hates this. she can't figure out how to make words happen right. she's looking at Eren while she talks but she's more looking past him. only half of her feels like it's here right now, which frees her up to say things without a filter holding them back.]
[ eren doesn’t have much of the energy to talk back to it being normal that they don’t talk. it’s something he had been meaning to fix ever since he dreamed of them, and now—
look at them, united by the worst possible thing that could happen to all three of them.
kaiser eventually gives up, glancing at both humans with saddened eyes, and huffing as he lays down instead, the toy still next to his muzzle. all eren can do is look down and listen, anyway. he does let his eyes wander up once he hears her. she ran away. in other times, maybe eren would’ve been appealed, and snapped at her. she left clover. if they were siblings, she should be doing differently, right? she should’ve been there.
but what does eren know about being in the right? thinking back to when he was talking to elliot— he said one thing and did the opposite all over again. flaws are cruel things, he doesn’t know how to change it. it’s like it’s always on autopilot. with a thought, now looking at her, eren shrugs his shoulders up, and from the counter takes two cups, filling hers with water first and running it across the counter to her. ]
You did what you had to do.
[ it was eren’s only ticket into armaros. if it weren’t for lina, they probably would’ve succumbed to cannons, no matter how large eren could become. ]
[no, she didn't. she didn't have to run. she didn't have to do anything but she got it in her head that she needed to be there to try to save her sister when there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it. she was never going to be strong enough. she was never going to be able to protect Clover. she hadn't been able to for years. why would this have been any different?]
[she takes the water absently, but the surface isn't still while she holds it.]
What did she do to deserve this?
[it's not a question that needs an answer. it probably doesn't have one. she probably hadn't done anything. Retrospec does this. it just does this and nothing anybody can do will stop it from happening once it's made up its mind. nothing matters. nothing matters.]
[ maybe she had a brother to push her. maybe she had seen something that eren hadn’t. perhaps she didn’t have to die, but it happened, regardless of it being an accident or not. for a moment, eren has no answer. he feels the weight of personal guilt on his shoulders instead.
it’s the same question he’d always make about his father, about people at the hospital. he’s learned a lot from there and still keeps learning. he tries to tower over these lessons as learned, but in the end— eren is as flawed as any human could be. he doesn’t hold his glass, because the water wouldn’t be still either. ]
She did nothing. [ he doesn’t blame minato, or lina, or clover herself. he blames himself, but he doesn’t dare to verbalize it. that’s the sort of thing you suffer silently with. lina’s company had yet to achieve the rank to hear it. ] But we always need someone to blame.
[ eren puts his head in his hands, before raising it up to keep his reddening eyes only at a glance of color and nothing more. ]
[and Lina blames the world. she still blames the world and still hasn't accepted that some problems are her own fault but right now she can't even bring herself to get angry at anyone or swing it around into "if i'd been nicer", "if i'd been better to her", "if i hadn't been such a fucking bitch then maybe my sister would still be alive" because none of that is productive and she's still. scared. of being that vulnerable.]
[she's scared a lot, she guesses. setting the water down, she joins Eren in putting her head in her hands, rubbing her palmheels against her closed eyes in a useless attempt to stave off tears. her voice is already fraying as she brings up memories of meeting in a dream, of being better sisters to each other no matter what.]
She was going to help me look for scholarships. For culinary school.
[this is miserable. she doesn't even want to think about it. she can't. she doesn't want to think about anything right now because it's all going to come back to Clover and how they were going to be better and how they were better sisters than the world allowed them to be and how they were going to be better and now she'll never have that chance because one of the people she loved so much it made her heart ache has been torn from it and she won't... she won't ever recover. she can't. how can she?]
[her breathing is ragged, too. she's trying so hard to keep herself together. geteilt und zusammengebracht.]
[ there’s a small stretch of silence, eren’s shoulders are shaking, but soon, it’s apparent that he isn’t crying when he inhales: he’s laughing.
none of this was funny— he’s only remembering her. he’s thinking of what she asked him on the phone, and what he suggested. she went the whole extra mile. she did something that eren was feeling something different for. he’s feeling like he made a difference in stark contrast to her end. it’s ironic.
at the same time, eren is far from happy. it’ll take some to move on, but the more he thought about it, he wondered: would clover be enjoying the attention or tell them to stop weeping? ]
[Lina isn't... surprised. she's been through grief before. nothing as serious as this, but close enough to it. people react differently. and maybe she's been waiting for something to break for a while. maybe she wants any excuse she can to not cry, and she can't even make herself be mad at Eren for laughing because she gets it and it's. the most sickening kind of infectious.]
[she leans down, nearly resting her entire head on the counter, propping herself up only by her forearms now, and there's a monotonous string of nearly-silent laughter coming from her throat before she even realizes it. her hands are still dry, so she's not crying yet, but she knows she's going to soon. but for now, she can take this, and she's even ready to answer when he asks.]
I cook. I wanted to start making Clover food again, like I did when we were kids. I thought it might help.
[ he wants to be thankful, but at the same time—
grief doesn’t go away. he knows what he knows of lina through a twisted dream, but weren’t they all human? he wished he could’ve been having this talk earlier, maybe with clover sitting there next to them.
well, they shouldn’t stop looking, even with clover’s life-or-death status up in the air. eren crosses his arms on top of the counter as well, and kaiser seems to wander curiously over to the laughing. because laughing was— good, wasn’t it?
his eyes are tired and worn from stinging so much. ]
If you know the places she was looking into, let me see it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
BACKDATED TO AUGUST
ｉ： ＡＵＧＵＳＴ ２４
[ the battle is over. the fortress is gone, the cries of chained wyverns still like the wind— they did it. they saved the town from destruction, and all should be cheering.
coming across this weary man was alarming. eren’s clothes are stained with blood that is not his. the shifter lines scarring down his face are creased and damp with tears that have made his eyes puffy and sore. he feels a little numb, as if he’s floating, unaware of what had just happened moments earlier.
he looks back at the disaster scenery before him, the destruction left by armaros now an eerie silence. staggering backwards into a splintered bench, eren’s breathing begins to escalate the more his blue eyes search. they look at his hands, his clothes, around him. they sting horridly again, until all he can see through them was blurry landscape, until his throat burned up to the air he inhaled in rapid breaths.
until his chest hurt.
eren jaeger cries with no suppression. raw emotion pours from him as he sobs, as his voice cracks and whines after each gasping breath he tries to take. clover jaeger was dead, his sister was gone, he couldn’t hope for her to be back tomorrow when that’s not how death always works, not when there was little to trust in the twisted reality they lived.
he was not there when he should’ve been. he offered help, he gave encouragement, and it led clover to an end he hadn’t foreseen. he believed in her, trusted her— and yet again, a lesson he should have learned plenty of lives ago— his faith had played a part in killing her.
there were few here that eren truly loved, and it’s today that a part of him had died with one. his mournful cries ring through the air, an occasional mix of desperate laughter chimes with the frantic jabs he makes against wood and clobbered cement, until his weeps single out into just weeps.
he thought, he hoped, for maybe a few seconds each day, that he was in a reality where he’d never feel this again. and here he was, in a cycle where history constantly repeated itself to him, as if fated to falter and lose those dear, because of him.
it was always because of him. ]
ｉｉ： ＡＵＧＵＳＴ ２５, ２６
[ for those who would like to get in contact with eren during this frame: it’s easier than you think, but harder to keep up.
message him, and he’ll probably answer bluntly. meeting with him while he walks his dogs won’t be a colorful greeting— his eyes are bloated and circled with tired, dark rings, and he’s quick to go back inside to his home.
maybe you want to pay a visit to his apartment, it’s nearly an entire floor all to himself. if he’s good enough company to receive company is a completely different story, but hey. maybe he needs it. ]
i
He doesn't understand how it was possible, or what even happened. He just knows he needs to find Eren. He needs to find him before he can worry about anything else.
So Elliot will walk around, looking for him until he finds him. He's a little roughed up from the fight, but his healing power has healed over any injuries. Finally he'll find him. While others might be intimidated by Eren's loud reaction, Elliot approaches without hesistation, putting his hand on his shoulder gently to get his attention...or to at least let Eren know he's not alone]
Eren...
no subject
a wicked voice in his mind asks him: who’s next?, and he turns his body willingly to him, red face, wet clothes, cascading tears and all. there’s even blood on his face that he hadn’t bothered to clean.
he can’t speak through strong snorts and hiccups, the words keep wheezing out and cutting off before he could complete a sentence, but he wants to hold him and be held. he doesn’t want to lose anyone else. he doesn’t want to lose him, of all people, but circumstance forces him to see the possibility, and he hates it.
if elliot could piece the fractured and stuttered words together, he’ll understand what eren’s trying to say: it’s my fault. ]
no subject
But this isn't time for his own comfort, he focuses entirely on Eren. He kneels down and wraps his arms around him, intent on holding him tightly and giving him the support that he needs. He'll hold him as long as he needs it, nothing else matters.
It's hard out out the fractured words, and the bits he does make out hurt so he'll just soothingly say]
Shhhh....shhhhh....
[Things weren't okay, but he didn't need to punish himself]
no subject
he holds him tightly, because in this life, he has lost one, now two, and he never wants it to become three. how much control did he have over that? it’s what terrified him the most in this moment of stripped free will. free will didn’t mean anything if you couldn’t change an outcome regardless of what you do.
it takes quite a while for eren to soften in volume; he still shakes and he still embraced elliot as if fearful that he’d be robbed of him, too. only giving his mouth room to breath fresh air near his boyfriend’s neck, eren whispers to him, the quake in his voice ever present but settled enough to speak. ]
I told her . . . To get to know Four better. [ he inhales a hissed breath, and snorts through his running nose. ] I told her to, to— use her power, t-to control, it.
[ his breathing roughs up again, and the calm that he had only seemed to feign that he achieved slips from his fingers like water. like the dying flower that slipped through his hands and disappeared. ]
She knew how— d-dangerous it, was and I still— [ still encouraged her, still told her to push on, because running away from it was worse.
if he knew this would’ve happened, he would’ve told her to wait. ]
Why do I think I’m always right—?
no subject
Lucky for Eren, his hearing is good enough that he can make out that quaking whisper. Oh...poor Eren. Of course he would blame himself for this. ]
You had no way of knowing this would happen. [He whispers back, but with a firmer tone in his voice] Learning to control your power is sound advice.
[Out of control powers could be just as dangerous. He's seen it happen with Eren and Natty. ]
And...this might've happened even if you hadn't said anything.
[For all he knows, this could've happened eventually no matter what. Clover didn't exactly SEEM in control with all this]
no subject
[ eren says, louder than his hushes and defiant to the words in his favor. why was it better to think it was his fault? maybe to save the blame, or any blame clover had on herself, or anyone else. maybe it was something he felt as if he could shoulder somehow.
or maybe it was just easier to accept that he could’ve done something, rather than live with knowing that there was nothing he could do to change anything, as if this was all fated to happen. ]
This could’ve been stopped, [ he swallows sharply, and dry ] if she had more time, her own time. Not someone who’d— keep . . . Nagging. I’m not Mom, I’m— I’m her brother. And I wasn’t there.
[ this is starting to feel like a cycle he didn’t want back in his life. inhaling, eren pulls himself away from the longtime embrace, hands still gripping elliot’s arms tightly, but his eyes— his eyes are desperate and pleading, his face is a mess of tears and fluid, and for once, with emotion as raw as it could be, it shows: he’s afraid. not of what has just happened, he can’t do anything about it now, but perhaps what the earlier words entail for him.
that he’s fated, again. ]
I need to know that I could still change things, Elliot. Or else everything I live for . . . Doesn’t mean a thing again.
[ he needs to know that his choices are still free. that if he wasn’t there for clover, he’d had to live with that guilt, in punishment for his own neglecting, and change for the better. change his path so that this wouldn’t happen again. ]
no subject
Elliot picks up on that irony anyway, but he won't point it out. Most of what Eren is saying is coming from a place of pain and grief. It's so easy to feel helpless in times like now.]
You can still change things. Your life has meaning, Eren. Just...not everything for everyone.
Some things are...out of our control. [He'll lift up his hand to brush Eren's hair out of the way] We don't...neither of us are Clover. We don't know what caused it. But I don't think it was you..or at the very least, you alone.
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but opening his mouth to talk back brings out nothing. his voice doesn’t come. he has nothing to say, he has nothing to change things around and make at least a little bit of this bearable. these things just aren’t meant to be be enjured easily.
so eren falls back, silent and verbally subdued, his head hanging and his shoulders still occasionally jumping from hiccups. after that stretch, and only moments of his simply holding elliot’s hand, he asks genuinely, with his head searching for his shoulder to rest on and elliot’s scent to breathe: ]
What do I tell Mom?
[ it was a serious question— does he wait? does he say something now? what if retrospec brings her back? what if they don’t? ]
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It was Elliot's turn to be quiet, because that thought hadn't occurred to him. And now that it has, it makes him feel incredibly guilty for not thinking of it. He didn't have parents anymore, so it was easy to forget other people had someone to check in with. People loved them yet weren't on the app so they couldn't understand everything.
What do you even say...]
I...I don't know. [He'll admit to it. no point in pretending otherwise] What...do you think she'd want you to say?
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[ it was probably one of the worst things to be caught between. ]
Mom’d always want the truth.
[ but maybe . . . it should be something he could think more about. maybe after— ]
I need to— [ his eyes water when eren glances down at his clothes, but weep he doesn’t. he only blinks rapidly to keep them at bay, and wants to get up. ] I need to help clean this up.
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[What Clover would want. Respect the wishes of the dead and all that.
He stands up when Eren gives the signs he wants to do so, sticking close to him. Keeping an eye on him.]
Let me help you.
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. . . I don’t know what she’d want.
[ which was highly troubling. after this? it was hard to pinpoint what clover was feeling, why she broke, why she did this. with the mind sent she had been in now, it was almost possible to think that she’d want out of everything asap. she was gone, end of story.
but eren knows that love was all she really wanted, even if it hadn’t been enough. ]
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ii
it's lina
[the girl who ran away before the dust settled. the girl who couldn't bear to be there any longer than she had to. she's not expecting much from him right now. she doesn't even know what she's going to say or if her messages are going to get through. it takes her... too many tries to get out something that doesn't sound awful.]
do you want company right now
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soon enough: ]
No.
But I’ll see you, if you don’t mind.
[ tagged to the message is his address and floor number to his room. just tell security you’re here for eren and they’ll let her through. ]
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It's Lina.
[she hears herself say it but she's barely present. it's like all of this is playing out in front of her and she's just being carried along, powerless to stop anything. she was a coward. she is a coward. she can't even make herself stop dissociating long enough to be here for him. she doesn't deserve to be here right now.]
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Come in, [ eren says, quiet and with a short bow of his head to greet her. his dogs, both a german shepherd and a pitbull-boxer mix are well behaved and obedient, sitting, staying, and waiting. the mutt is a little more anxious, tail wagging furiously under him to get the command to greet the new human, while the shepherd . . . isn’t as enthusiastic. he stays at eren’s side, and sighs as he lays down by his feet. he’s more of a veteran with his owner, and knows full well that something’s wrong. he looks just as dim as the human jaeger next to him.
the apartment is large, two floors, of refined modern taste and low lit golden lights. there’re paintings on the wall, one of the dragon they rode on some days ago and the titan eren can create, japanese style watercolors painting a magestic scene of friendly battle. there are some realistic models of sports cars decorating the space between family photos, many with him and his boyfriend, or him with clover, or him with clover and his mother, a photo of a father nowhere to be found. an electric drum set sets just by the living room leading to the view from wide windows. the whole place is probably that on a good day: beautiful. it’s just rather depressing now— eren has that sort of emotional impact.
at least, once lina steps inside and eren closes the door behind them, kaiser, the mutt, goes off into the dog corner to grab something on the floor, bringing a squeaky kong soccer ball to the visitor, looking between her and eren with a constant saggy tail. perhaps she could make his human smile? ] I’m sorry.
Even more for not talking to you sooner.
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[they're all trying. some of them are doing better than others.]
It's fine. [lying.] Us not talking was normal anyway. [she hates this. she can't figure out how to make words happen right. she's looking at Eren while she talks but she's more looking past him. only half of her feels like it's here right now, which frees her up to say things without a filter holding them back.]
I ran away.
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look at them, united by the worst possible thing that could happen to all three of them.
kaiser eventually gives up, glancing at both humans with saddened eyes, and huffing as he lays down instead, the toy still next to his muzzle. all eren can do is look down and listen, anyway. he does let his eyes wander up once he hears her. she ran away. in other times, maybe eren would’ve been appealed, and snapped at her. she left clover. if they were siblings, she should be doing differently, right? she should’ve been there.
but what does eren know about being in the right? thinking back to when he was talking to elliot— he said one thing and did the opposite all over again. flaws are cruel things, he doesn’t know how to change it. it’s like it’s always on autopilot. with a thought, now looking at her, eren shrugs his shoulders up, and from the counter takes two cups, filling hers with water first and running it across the counter to her. ]
You did what you had to do.
[ it was eren’s only ticket into armaros. if it weren’t for lina, they probably would’ve succumbed to cannons, no matter how large eren could become. ]
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[she takes the water absently, but the surface isn't still while she holds it.]
What did she do to deserve this?
[it's not a question that needs an answer. it probably doesn't have one. she probably hadn't done anything. Retrospec does this. it just does this and nothing anybody can do will stop it from happening once it's made up its mind. nothing matters. nothing matters.]
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it’s the same question he’d always make about his father, about people at the hospital. he’s learned a lot from there and still keeps learning. he tries to tower over these lessons as learned, but in the end— eren is as flawed as any human could be. he doesn’t hold his glass, because the water wouldn’t be still either. ]
She did nothing. [ he doesn’t blame minato, or lina, or clover herself. he blames himself, but he doesn’t dare to verbalize it. that’s the sort of thing you suffer silently with. lina’s company had yet to achieve the rank to hear it. ] But we always need someone to blame.
[ eren puts his head in his hands, before raising it up to keep his reddening eyes only at a glance of color and nothing more. ]
Were you guys talking more?
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[she's scared a lot, she guesses. setting the water down, she joins Eren in putting her head in her hands, rubbing her palmheels against her closed eyes in a useless attempt to stave off tears. her voice is already fraying as she brings up memories of meeting in a dream, of being better sisters to each other no matter what.]
She was going to help me look for scholarships. For culinary school.
[this is miserable. she doesn't even want to think about it. she can't. she doesn't want to think about anything right now because it's all going to come back to Clover and how they were going to be better and how they were better sisters than the world allowed them to be and how they were going to be better and now she'll never have that chance because one of the people she loved so much it made her heart ache has been torn from it and she won't... she won't ever recover. she can't. how can she?]
[her breathing is ragged, too. she's trying so hard to keep herself together. geteilt und zusammengebracht.]
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none of this was funny— he’s only remembering her. he’s thinking of what she asked him on the phone, and what he suggested. she went the whole extra mile. she did something that eren was feeling something different for. he’s feeling like he made a difference in stark contrast to her end. it’s ironic.
at the same time, eren is far from happy. it’ll take some to move on, but the more he thought about it, he wondered: would clover be enjoying the attention or tell them to stop weeping? ]
You cook?
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[she leans down, nearly resting her entire head on the counter, propping herself up only by her forearms now, and there's a monotonous string of nearly-silent laughter coming from her throat before she even realizes it. her hands are still dry, so she's not crying yet, but she knows she's going to soon. but for now, she can take this, and she's even ready to answer when he asks.]
I cook. I wanted to start making Clover food again, like I did when we were kids. I thought it might help.
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grief doesn’t go away. he knows what he knows of lina through a twisted dream, but weren’t they all human? he wished he could’ve been having this talk earlier, maybe with clover sitting there next to them.
well, they shouldn’t stop looking, even with clover’s life-or-death status up in the air. eren crosses his arms on top of the counter as well, and kaiser seems to wander curiously over to the laughing. because laughing was— good, wasn’t it?
his eyes are tired and worn from stinging so much. ]
If you know the places she was looking into, let me see it.
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