𝙃𝙚𝙧 𝙁𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙤𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙣 𝙋𝙖𝙨𝙩 || Eren Jaeger

𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓇𝓊𝓂𝒷𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑔 (𝒱𝐼)

21

----

Should I tell them? They should probably know. It feels wrong to keep this to myself.

I woke up at daybreak mortally scared. A hopeless dread hung like a cloud above my head as I walked to the nearby stream and splashed some cold water on my face.

I kneeled in place for a good 6 six minutes, strangely catatonic, watching my rippled reflection in the water with a strange disconnect.

Eren's nonsense really got under my skin. His babble about time and his cryptic warnings didn't make sense to me. I thought about it all last night until I exhausted my brain to sleep. It's no use; I've been handed a puzzle but none of the pieces match.

I need to talk to him again.

Seeing him yesterday in that... place brought me equal parts joy and frustration. I finally got a chance to be alone with him, properly talk to him, but of course, chaos struck and now I'm more confused than I was before.

I've been debating telling the others. But it has nothing to do with finding Eren's location, and I fear it might distract from that goal. We already know that Eren can be in two places at once. The first time he communicated with us via that dimension he was physically in Shiganshina, his terrifying Founding Titan recently transformed.

So really, I would just be giving them fruitless information and a whole lot of worry.

That girl... Ymir. The way she looked at me. I've never seen her before, but by her gaze, I could tell she knew me. Or rather, it felt like she somehow knew all about me.

I can analyze and revise everything about that moment. But what really sticks with me is a hollow, shivering feeling. The feeling that...

I'm going to die. Soon.

"I can't see this again." That's what he said as I was bleeding out.

Logically, it doesn't make sense. No one can predict their death. But... that's my final impression from yesterday's encounter. I'm going to die very soon, and Eren knows it.

How does he know it?

"Jo, are you okay?"

"Huh?" I look up to see Reiner staring at me.

We are carting across a dust bowl headed for the port. The sun beats down on us, our horses slow and hungry.

His tawny eyes seek mine out. "You're crying."

I immediately touch my cheek. It's wet. Only now am I tasting the salt at the corner of my lips.

How embarrassing.

He takes a kerchief out of his jacket's breast pocket. He offers it with a blatant shame that reveals the thoughts running through his mind: that he fears how I perceive him, that he misses how we used to be, that he feels unworthy of meeting my gaze.

But he does it anyway and holds my gaze with a rueful desperation. I guess in his mind, hateful acknowledgement is better than no acknowledgement at all.

Lucky for him, I've been full of hate for a long time now. I'm tired of it.

"Thanks." I say in a small, awkward voice and take the kerchief. I wipe my eyes and inwardly question why I was crying in the first place.