COMRADES • Eren Jaeger

FROM THE AUTHOR (2023)

MAJOR spoilers for comrades and attack on titan

It's been a while! How are you doing?

It's been three years since this fic began. Enough time has passed—I have now "forgotten" that I authored this which thus allows me to finally read it as a reader (predicted the future). I was pretty harsh on myself when this fic was ongoing. I'm a lot kinder to myself now because of it. I mean, really, why was every chapter 10k words...? I guess I really was just that crazy about Attack on Titan. Now, Attack on Titan has ended.

I reread this fic and I was honestly really shocked by how sad it was. I totally blocked out the ending from my mind and it trips me out how utterly devastating it is. To think that Y/N was almost fated to be imprisoned in the Paths realm alone, without Eren or any of her comrades... yeah I was definitely sick in the head for dangling that. Reading that had me screaming, crying, and throwing up even though it was past me who wrote it.

I adore the relationship between Reader and Levi so much. The fic starts and ends with them. Part of me thinks that this book shouldn't be just branded as Eren/Reader but also a familial Levi & Reader. I placed great importance on their relationship and how Reader's character in Part 1 idolized the Survey Corps which led her to take extreme actions in Part 3 like Erwin. 

Rereading Comrades also reminded me of how much I loved circular endings.

For example, in Allies, it starts and ends with Y/N on a train to Liberio. In the beginning, she is shown to be innocent on the train, almost naive and helpless because she's at the mercy of the Warriors. In the end, she's riding alone, bloodthirsty and vengeful. It shows how everything is just a cycle and the concept of good and bad in war is all about perspective. I love the irony of the title being Comrades but Y/N ultimately ends up alone every time.

Another example is the first and last words Levi utters to her: "Open your eyes." vs "Close your eyes." Like, open your eyes to reality, kid, you're going to suffer. Close your eyes to it, you've suffered enough—you're just a child.

About Y/N: My poor girl. I purposely made her heart a people pleaser in Part 1 because I wanted to shatter it into a million pieces. I made sure that she acted like a child because I wanted to show the contrast after she was going to be forced into adulthood. She was pretty broken by the end and it makes me really sad.

In Part 1, she's your typical main character. Good-hearted, well-liked among her peers, and brave to take on hell. This was because I wanted to flip the switch and absolutely crush her (more later). Part 2 gave an insight into what she could have been like if the world wasn't so cruel, which is why I think Allies is the most romantic. She's still similar, but a lot less abrasive.

She was soft and slightly idiotic in the beginning of Allies because she was going to become a total monster later on. I was well aware of how frustrating and impulsive she was. I made sure her naive Allies character contrasted with her Comrades self, who was clever, sharp, and witty. Her Marley arc had to happen because it exposed her to the politics of Marley and how the world views Eldia, and the separation from Paradis leads her to fall for Eren even harder than before, which sets up her inner turmoil of "sympathy for humanity vs love for Eren" in Enemies.

And then Part 3. I was definitely having the time of my life making her suffer. She was in a washing machine of betrayal, deceit, and overall asshole behavior. She's no longer agreeable. She goes insane trying to make Levi hate her but it just doesn't work because he knows her so well. Since she no longer has the capacity to fight for the Survey Corps, she goes insane trying to save Eren from himself. Then, it became apparent to her that the most important things in her life were her comrades — the Survey Corps, which circles back to her character in Part 1.

She did not find peace in death. Oh my God, I wanted to throttle myself when I reread this fic and realized how sad it was to have made her in the purgatory that is the Paths realm. Like holy shit, that is just so evil. But from the very beginning, when the first idea for this fic came into mind and I didn't even write anything yet, I knew her destiny was to be sentenced to the Paths realm like Ymir.

This is because her soul is tied to the Founding Titan, which she borrowed to kill Beaurlin village, and she was the temporary vessel after Eren died. In the canon story, it all ended with Eren's death, but in this story, Eren gives her a chance to do what she wanted to do because throughout the end of Allies and Enemies her goal is to find an alternate solution (which she unfortunately fails to do because she's trapped).

Thus, she has Levi kill her once Eren was dead, and she tells him so in the scene where she says "It has to be you." She makes the choice to end the era of the Titans because it did more harm than good. Eren wanted her to be free, but she just couldn't be. There was no way to save her, the same way she couldn't save him.

I was honestly really devastated when I reread this and realized just how long she was really trapped in the Paths realm. She was shut out from the "real" world, and time doesn't pass in the Paths, so she spent all that time in the sand vaguely knowing that the others, especially Levi, were growing old without her.

Here is the craft: Y/N was never "special." She's not royal blood. She's not a Titan. Not an Ackerman. In the first chapter, we see her envy Mikasa because she has to work twice as hard just to keep up. She only had the shitty luck of being born with the DNA of an ancestor who was involved with Founder Ymir two thousand years ago. She's only human. So, she chooses to sacrifice her life. It's the only way.

At least in the very end, she reunited with Eren.

Reader and Eren. There is no world where they can live without the other. Reader orbits Eren like how the moon orbits Earth. How the Earth needs the moon orbiting it to make the ocean mean something. It starts as puppy love in Part 1, then they get serious about each other in Part 2. Eren admired her until it turned into a crush when they became close in the Scouts. When she's taken away, he falls apart because Reader is his rock. He knows she's always going to support him. This sets up Enemies, where we see Reader by Eren's side despite going against him.

Then, Enemies. Oomph. This is where things spiral out of control. I purposely made her noble and strong in Comrades and clueless and naive in Allies because in Enemies, every good trait she had was going to be absolutely destroyed. Every pent up trauma—from childhood abuse to watching people get eaten, constant betrayal that led to paranoia, dying, manipulation, and even unresolved mental problems like PTSD—comes back and turns her into this ruthless, heartless monster.

Every single hardship she went through always saw her responding with optimism: dismissing her injuries, scrambling for socialization after losing memories, etc. Yes, she did have her moments where she was rightfully sad or blowing up with anger, but after a while, it all built up. In Enemies, it was like opening expired food you had ignored and realizing with horror that rot had been growing all this time, leading to a revolting spoil. It was the culmination of every single trauma.

Until now, I don't think that a happy ending would have worked out. She was pretty much doomed from the very beginning, where she was pushing away her shock from finding out her family was murdered to look strong in front of Erwin, to Erwin capitalizing on this, and Levi being hesitant despite trying to make her strong. Can you tell that I love Levi so much? I believe that his relationship with Y/N is the deepest and purest form of love in this fic. They remind me of Ellie and Joel from The Last of Us.

Anyway, since Attack on Titan is ending, I will be publishing around three special chapters including some deleted scenes. I've made so many good friends since I started this fic and I miss them all so much. This includes my readers. If you were one of them, please know that I'm rooting for you, and don't hesitate to reach out because I'd love to see how you're doing now. <3