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“Be quiet,” Eren tells him.
Reiner hasn’t said anything. Nobody and nothing has said anything, rather — where they’re being held, even the wind holds its tongue. Thick stone walls, a small barred window offering a condemned view of the sky, minimal light. No Titan powers anymore to break through any of them. Weeks ago, the physical part of making it out would’ve been child’s play, nothing to even consider beyond all the other lives the building would drag down as it fell.
Weeks ago, Reiner wouldn’t even think of making the attempt, too busy counting down the time until he meets his end in some Titan’s boiling hot belly. The feeling that curled around his spine and into each of his vertebrae when the Founder died shook him in its attainability, a kaleidoscope of glorious light in his vision in exchange for his fall; in exchange for humanity. In exchange for change and a future. In that future the earth is little more than dust and whatever survivors are left hold nothing but righteous contempt, yes, but in that future Gabi and every other Warrior candidate can grow old. It is Reiner’s responsibility to show them how that’s done, move past observations and predictions.
“I didn’t say anything,” he says, after he gathers the energy.
Eren’s face twists. He’s being a lot more expressive than he was that day in Liberio, like he’s obliged to appear more human, now that he is part of that category. He doesn’t look at Reiner, though, just pushes against the door again.
“Give it up,” Reiner says, “Marley is much better at building holding cells than you guys were.” And even in Paradis, regular human strength was far from the only weapon needed to get in or out of those; Annie’s a testament to that.
“Shut the fuck up, Reiner. Do you want us to stay here? Thought you’d at least not want to get lumped together with me.” It lacks the acerbic edge of the Eren he knew during training. The person standing in front of Reiner is a new, half-formed thing: a person he hardly knows. It makes Reiner’s own surprise at seeing him sting less. After a second, Eren’s eyes narrow. “Are we in Marley?”
Reiner shrugs. “Probably not.” From what he can tell from the view. But Marley’s huge.
“Probably?”
“It’s not like we were allowed to roam through the country freely.”
It’s not like he has cared, except when he has. What the armband meant was hammered home early on, by his mother’s downcast looks, by the expectations, by the path Reiner himself carved. And this, here: a freedom that got snatched away again. A missed appointment with death.
“And you still chose to move forward for them.”
Reiner bites his tongue. The bars shine from the sweat in Eren’s palms where he has gripped them, time and time again, feet pushing against the wall and inevitably falling on his back. Reiner himself holds no such delusions; he knows the only way they’re getting out of this will be in bags.
“And for you. To stop you. Thought we managed.”
A glance in his direction, unaffected. “You did.”
“You lied about being dead.”
“I didn’t think you were brave enough to check on my corpse.” Eren bares his teeth when his only response is silence, like he expected it, hand shooting out to press against Reiner’s throat; claustrophobic. “Are you happy now? Soon, both of us will be rotting. Are you feeling relieved, Reiner?”
“No,” he answers, truthfully. “I wasn’t happy to see you.” With it come other thoughts: I was prepared to see you die. I wanted the end. Memories and happier times have garroted around his neck too many times, but there is no way to measure death against death. Not the ones they both have caused, nor the ones Reiner thought they have both wanted to welcome. Evidently Eren hasn’t; he’s standing across him, still with pride, still with the same venom he had in the forest of giant trees and Shiganshina, like someone who still believes his unassailableness is a trait wanted.
“But you’re happy that pathetic life of yours can finally meet its end.”
Reiner backs away and hits the unsympathetic stone. There’s the venom. There’s disdain in Eren’s words he hasn’t encountered since— before leaving Paradis the first time, actually. Their last encounter, Reiner on his knees, begging for forgiveness, feels foreign. Reiner doesn’t try to hide the way his brows furrow or the way anger doesn’t come. Blame and guilt do, but those are companions, friends that have made his body their home and have stayed there. Constant, even when Reiner has fought for something more — something beyond what he was, when he finally has continously refused the repose a bullet in the brain can offer. So, no, he doesn’t want Eren’s forgiveness now. He wants his family.
“No,” he says again.
A head tilt, curious like a puppy. “Then help us get the fuck out of here.”
“We can’t.”
Eren rolls his eyes.
“It’s not about— whatever you think it is,” Reiner tells him. “It’s not about meeting justice, it’s the mechanics, it’s how you’ve tested everything.” There’s no way to threaten anyone with their current bodies. There’s no way to break anything except knuckles on stone or each other’s bones. They both know this.
Eren retreats at that, seemingly satisfied. Like all he wanted to do was drag out Reiner’s thoughts.
-
It’s mostly silence after that. A jingle as the chain that keeps the door half-open is secured, their food getting in. The person — guard? — that comes is dispassionate, not like the small crowd that forms intermittently outside and their murderous, shouted wishes. Reiner winces every time he can make out the words. Eren doesn’t.
-
He wakes up with Eren straddling him one night.
“What are you doing?”
The only things the room offers is pale slivers of moonlight and the perfect stillness of the structure. Eren, likewise, offers nothing; he leans closer, hair tickling the exposed skin of his collarbones. “I don’t know. What are we doing? Waiting to die?”
“Waiting for Pieck and the anti-Titan artillery to free us, I’d hope,” Reiner says, breathless.
“She wasn’t all that friendly with me.”
“We fought together, and she can’t free me without also freeing you.”
A hand trails closer to his throat again, then upwards to feel Reiner’s stubble that’s threatening to move onto being a full beard. Even after everything, Eren treats his limbs like they’re bladed weapons. “But she hasn’t come yet.” No, she hasn’t, but Reiner chooses to believe she will. Or he’ll give himself fully to the rage — that of the people, Eren’s. Either/or. “Weren’t we raised as cattle, Reiner? Both stuck in hutches, just like we are now. Why not behave as that? We can pass the time.”
Time seems like the only thing they have anymore. Reiner says nothing else, because what can he say? That this is a bad idea? That they’ll both regret it? He hates Eren for having survived, but hates himself more for being all the more glad for it.
It’s reflex that has him grab Eren’s wrist before his fingers knot themselves in Reiner’s hair; Eren looks surprised by it.
Reiner asks, “And if I say no?”
They both hold still. In the seconds before Eren responds Reiner, humiliatingly, realises he expects to go ignored.
“Will you?”
Will he? No. Isn’t this just the cycle and how it comes back? The steel trap door that he, himself, opened?
So Reiner shakes his head. “I won’t.”