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The conversation he’d planned so many times in his head hadn’t played out the same way in reality.
He thought of many ways to greet his little brother, yet the thing that he ended up saying once he caught sight of his hunched over figure on the bench, having his one eye gazing directly into him, and his meagre, worn-out face, was: “It looks like you’re starting to look a little bit like father…”
It’s not what Zeke had hoped to say earlier this morning at the hospital grounds, but the thought escaped his lips before he could trap it.
His little brother sat there, with the loss of a leg and his eye, silent as he listened to his brother speak. Then when he spoke up himself, he astounded his brother with his words.
The determination with which he spoke about realising his and his brother’s dream, it was unlike anything else Zeke had expected it to be.
The blond is lying on his bed now, arms crossed behind his head as his eyes absently gaze at the ceiling.
Thinking back on the conversation as it truly played out, he corrects himself.
Despite looking a bit like father, Eren is nothing like him. Eren has got the will and a dream that oppose that foul man who endeavoured to turn both his sons into muppets of himself.
Eren wants to end the suffering of the Eldian people by turning the euthanasia plan into a reality.
He thinks just like his big brother, moves forward like him too.
Giddiness is what the elder brother’s state of mind is enveloped by at this very moment and Zeke feels sappy to know it.
He then turns his head to the side, catching a glimpse of where he once used to put his baseball on the nightstand.
It’s not there anymore, now residing within the palm of Eren’s hand.
Eren failed to catch it when Zeke tossed it to him as a way to seal their deal, instead letting Zeke see it fall onto the ground. The suspicion had quickly risen in Zeke’s mind as Eren bent over to pick it up, but it is now making him feel guilty for immediately doubting the little brother who’d shared his dream with him so determinedly seconds earlier.
The blond chuckles dryly, aware of how the little brother who he’s just begun to know has already slithered his way into his elder brother’s heart.
“When I save the world,” he mutters to the emptiness of his room, “it will be with you.”
Fin