[He lets go when she pushes back, slightly startled, and more than a little injured by the action. Can they still be friends like this?
[She's right, too...He can't imagine how something like ending the world would bring his friends happiness. But he knows...that his goals are larger than that, too. He has the weight of all humanity on his shoulders, and at only fifteen.
[Is he fighting the impulse to break beneath that weight because he truly trusts that whatever decision he makes in the future has to be the right one? Or has he just resigned himself to the fact that there's nothing that can stop him now...?]
I'm not lying...[His voice is very quiet.] I love them...
Eren, I– [Neither of those statements were ever in doubt.] I know you do. [But that’s just the problem, isn’t it?
[It’s so frustratingly true—she has no idea what he’s faced, what he will face. A story and a single outburst is nothing next to it all. That’s not in doubt, either.]
[And yet.]
I just… I want things to be different. F-for you. [Hasty addition, there. Aubrey shakes her head, closes her eyes for a moment. Her hands have fallen limply at her sides; it doesn’t hurt any less, really.] Does it… have to be like this…?
[The killing? The world he lives in, the view on it he’ll come to take? His insistence, which he’ll inherit even more strongly than she’s already hearing, that he can’t go back from this? It’s… everything, really.]
[Eren has periods like this. They've been getting worse and worse lately; a dreadful feeling that creeps up on him and makes his heart beat slow, his brain go quiet. Numbness. Something reaching toward apathy, but not quite connecting. He's just so...sorrowful inside, these days. He wishes it would go away...The emotion bleeds out through his eyes now. He hasn't gotten good at dulling them yet...]
I want things to be different too. That's exactly what I want.
[But...
["Does it...have to be like this...?"]
Aubrey...could we...talk about something else for a while...?
[His voice is very distant now.]
I...I don't know what else to say...
[A covert "yes". He begins grieving before she can even walk away. No way things can go on like this...]
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no subject
[She's right, too...He can't imagine how something like ending the world would bring his friends happiness. But he knows...that his goals are larger than that, too. He has the weight of all humanity on his shoulders, and at only fifteen.
[Is he fighting the impulse to break beneath that weight because he truly trusts that whatever decision he makes in the future has to be the right one? Or has he just resigned himself to the fact that there's nothing that can stop him now...?]
I'm not lying...[His voice is very quiet.] I love them...
[All of them...Aubrey too.]
no subject
Eren, I– [Neither of those statements were ever in doubt.] I know you do. [But that’s just the problem, isn’t it?
[It’s so frustratingly true—she has no idea what he’s faced, what he will face. A story and a single outburst is nothing next to it all. That’s not in doubt, either.]
[And yet.]
I just… I want things to be different. F-for you. [Hasty addition, there. Aubrey shakes her head, closes her eyes for a moment. Her hands have fallen limply at her sides; it doesn’t hurt any less, really.] Does it… have to be like this…?
[The killing? The world he lives in, the view on it he’ll come to take? His insistence, which he’ll inherit even more strongly than she’s already hearing, that he can’t go back from this? It’s… everything, really.]
no subject
I want things to be different too. That's exactly what I want.
[But...
["Does it...have to be like this...?"]
Aubrey...could we...talk about something else for a while...?
[His voice is very distant now.]
I...I don't know what else to say...
[A covert "yes". He begins grieving before she can even walk away. No way things can go on like this...]
no subject
[It’s just about a non-answer. But in a way, they both knew it would come to this, didn’t they?]
[Just once more, Aubrey reaches out. Wraps her palm around his face, and thumbs at the emotion that overflows. He’s still so young, it seems…]
Yeah. [An exhale of a word.] Okay.
[And she lets go.]