"No," Eren says, "I'm not." There are other things Eren has to live with instead, but they aren't comparable (and at least 90% of them are his own fault). He could argue, of course. He could go off about that day and how fucked up it all was, but what's the point?

Even Eren can't change the past, not really. He orchestrated more than anyone (besides maybe Armin) will ever know, but he can't go back and make someone not die. He couldn't save his mother; he had damned her instead, ironically saving Bertholdt, who he would later help murder.

There is no end to this violence and tragedy. That's part of Eren's motivation to just kill everyone, so that this kind of shit would stop happening. He's aware on some level that it never will, not really. People are still people. But as long as his loved ones get their long lives, he can't let it matter.

And he couldn't let his brother destroy their own people. Someday he'll tell Reiner about that (does Reiner even know they're brothers?). Now is not the right time.

He lets out a breath he's unaware he's holding and squeezes Reiner's hand briefly.

Let me trust you.

What a terrible thing that must be, he thinks. He had broken all the trust anyone had in him. Could Reiner in his own time have ever trusted him? He doesn't know. He wouldn't, in Reiner's shoes. He didn't trust Reiner when he first showed up here. Somewhere along the line, that changed, and now he would trust Reiner more than anyone except maybe Armin. Maybe. He's done shitty things to Armin, too, or will do, or is doing. None of them have ever been immune to the ripple effects of damage that spiral outward from Eren. Apparently that's still true here, though he kept Jean and Mikasa from seeing something that could catastrophically alter their world view.

"All right," is all he manages to say. "I'll try."

He doesn't say I want to be trustworthy or that he won't let Reiner down. He's sure he will. He always does. He already has.

He finally moves to walk again, though he's still content to let Reiner barge on ahead. Reiner is the one with the emotions to work out here, not Eren. (Mostly because Eren still doesn't do that very much. Baby steps!)

Not long ago, Eren would have said it was fine if no one trusted him. He understands why they might not. It's on purpose, after all. He's a traitor, a deserter, and a murderer. Even if he hasn't done that yet, there's plenty he has done. Destroying Liberio. Lying to pretty much everyone. Conspiring with Zeke, a known enemy, who has done unforgivable damage to the Survey Corps.

It's a long list, even before they hit genocide.

But now there's this. It's not just Reiner, of course. It's Armin. Levi. Hange. He wants them all to trust him again, just a little. He wants to be worthy of that trust.

We can be something different.

He doesn't know if he believes it. He wants to, wants to think that his promise to Levi to be better matters. But there was that thing on the network, someone telling him that if he didn't want forgiveness he wasn't better. Marco saying someday he had to be sorry.

Will he ever be sorry for the world? He can't possibly afford to be, not after everything. He's already so close to drowning. If he's sorry, then he'll go under. Even at the end of everything, there in the remnants of the world with Armin, it wasn't that he was sorry.

So maybe he'll never be better. He'll come around to accepting that, just as he accepted long ago that he's more monster than anyone ever dreamed he could be.

But Reiner wants to trust him, and that twists in his chest, warm and light. After everything that Reiner knows — which is really most of it, now — he says let me trust you.

They walk further into the forest, the city out of sight behind them. There are flowers and blooms here, just like always, an eternal spring landscape. Eren thinks of a flower field out of time and chews on his lip.

He's still doing that, worrying a tear in the skin without meaning to, always self-destructing when he can't figure out what else to do, when Reiner speaks again.

Eren drags his teeth over his bottom lip, something slightly more purposeful. When did telling the truth get so fucking hard?

"Yes," he answers. There's no point in lying about it, no point in dodging the question, obfuscating. Part of him wants to, the part that has been a liar in some skewed form of self-defence for years on end. Instead, he just lets the simple truth hang between them.

"I lost everyone else before I went back to Paradis," he says. Lost is a funny word to use to refer to people who came and saved him from the hell he raised in that city, but Eren knew it was true. He lost them the day he walked out of that hall to go enlist in Marley's military, knowing at last that there really was no other answer. They would always be hated. They would always be in danger.

He had to lose them to save them.

And Reiner just got caught up in the storm, didn't he?

No. Eren made sure Reiner was part of it, a witness to one of the last things he would do as a human being, the beginning of the end of the world. He dragged Reiner into it on purpose, unable to let go of a boy he had looked up to, who had broken his heart, who he had hated, and who he finally understood. Reiner is maybe the only person he has ever learned to stop hating.