Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry, you don't know how lovely you are
I had to find you, tell you I need you, and tell you I set you apart

TWELVE

You eliminate your biggest enemy—yourself.

As you hung in limbo through the Paths realm, your obsession only grew until you were pushed to your very last limit.

You have often thought you were the solution, that you were put into this world to fulfill the tasks required of you. But wars and destinies were dense with terrifying uncertainties, causes and effects, unsolvable computations, positives and negatives that could never reach a boxed numerical answer. There was no solid equation. You could only reason with humanity.

One spared life could result in the deaths of thousands of innocents. One slaughtered life could cause societies to flourish better than untouched biomes. A few words could change the course of history, but you couldn't get them out.

Eren was in love with you—that, you were certain.

You were awful. You ruined his life. 

Not only have you hurt his feelings repeatedly, but you had made him go through eleven lives of suffering. You couldn't do that to him anymore. Knowing that it was all your fault made you certain that you were unworthy of being an object of his affection and desire.

It was so simple. You couldn't believe you hadn't thought about it before.

You were the problem.

You always tried to make sure that Eren would not fall for you so he wouldn't bring it upon himself to orchestrate that hell, and die early. It was a spurious solution.

You had to remove the error.

You had to remove yourself.

Perhaps you didn't belong in this world. Your presence has only ever made Eren's life worse. It didn't matter if you loved each other. Maybe it was for the better that you left.

So when you woke up in your bed that day in Shiganshina, only seven years old, you sat up and went to your mother. Instead of doing your task to tend to the garden, you stayed inside and wiped the plates clean. That was all you had to do to never meet Eren.

You peeped through the curtains. Sure enough, Eren was there, leaning over the fence.

"Eren, come in," you heard Carla calling. "Don't bother our neighbors."

"Yes, Mom."

When he realized that there was nothing of interest happening, he slumped and let his mother call for him to go inside.

With a heavy heart, you spent your childhood never going out and meeting Eren, Mikasa, and Armin. You heard their voices from your room as they spoke over each other in Eren's house, squeaking about going to the outside world.

Everything followed from there.

At first, it was terrifying. You'd never had to navigate the world after Shiganshina alone. The refugee tents in Wall Rose were jam-packed, and it was difficult to survive without a group. But you persisted. You observed from a distance as Grisha took young Eren by the hand and led him off, and when Commander Shadis carried him back to his cot. He had the Attack Titan.

You spent a year essentially alone, careful to never interact with your friends. It was as if you had just been blipped from existence.

At first, it was tolerable. Even if you sometimes starved as a child, because no one would share the scarce food with you.

When you entered the military, things changed.

Everything you did, you did alone. You enlisted in the 104th Southern Cadet Corps by yourself instead of with your friends. As Commander Shadis walked around examining the new recruits, you glanced and saw Eren at the far end. His eyes were harder than you were used to.

You also saw Grisell, who had made it into your class section. You realized that because you didn't enlist at the same time as Eren, Armin, and Mikasa, your original spot had been filled. You were placed in the other section where Grisell originally was, so you wouldn't see your old friends as often as you now resided in separate dorms and took different classes.

Your life, which had once been so full of laughter and felicity despite the horrors, was now reduced to a blank and stressful existence as you removed yourself from the timeline. You avoided your friends like the plague—and you weren't even sure if you should still call them your friends as they didn't even know that you existed.

Like they never knew you. Like they never loved you. To them, you were just another face passing by, irrelevant and meant to be forgotten.

You ate dinner in the mess hall alone, or at least tried to, but to your dismay, Historia—Krista, really, you've learned your lesson—plopped down at the bench on your opposite side and tried to say hello. It somewhat disarmed you, seeing the fake bubbly girl she used to be after living the previous loop where she was pregnant and empty-eyed. When it became clear that you weren't going to talk, and looked down at your food, she left you alone and continued eating her food as Ymir sat in front as well.

"When I graduate, I'm gonna join the Survey Corps and slaughter every last Titan from this world!"

Did he always have to be this loud?

You had to look at anyone but your main cast of friends. Your eyes landed on Grisell. You remembered how she once told you that she had always admired Eren from this moment—the moment he stood and declared that he'd slaughter the Titans. Surely enough, her eyes were wide and sparkling at the handsome boy standing before her.

Dinner ended without you talking to anyone.

Every last color in the world seemed to drain itself in your gaze. You felt the bind of your isolation cage you within mental prison walls, tying your hands behind your back and rendering you unable to move.

The years passed slower than the previous loops, which had once been insignificant blurs. Now, you could feel time passing like quicksand; slow, terrifying, ready to kill you. Something you couldn't escape now that you were in.

Your friends did drills without you. They fought hand-to-hand without you. They sat through lectures without you. All the while, you would be in another room or at the back of the class if you were lucky, watching them interact with each other.

They laughed together in groups. You were an outsider now, sentenced to self-imposed exile.

Your absence resulted in sometimes empty moments. You could see the loops affecting them. They would pause and forget what they wanted to say. Silence dominated the air whenever there was a time wherein you were supposed to say something in the original storyline. Mikasa and Armin seemed quite confused whenever this happened.

And Eren.

It took everything in you to take your eyes off him.

During a certain drill when he had to learn how to fix equipment, it had to be done in pairs. You used to pair up with Eren. Now, you were watching from afar as you did it alone—you already knew how to do it, anyway.

With a drying mouth, you watched as Grisell made her way to Eren. She tapped him on the shoulder and gave him a smile. "Mind if I pair up with you?"

Eren gestured to the equipment. "I don't see why not."

Her eyes widened. "Really?"

"Yeah," he said. "Come sit."

Her thin fingers brushed over his as they worked to fix the equipment together. Her pale cheeks were flushed with something like shyness and pleasure as Eren began some dorky ramble about the importance of good equipment in the battlefield.

She readily nodded to everything he said, which made Eren shoot her a small half-smile as he demonstrated how to latch the hooks in the omnidirectional mobility gear.

"See, the metal attaches here, so when you're in a high place and it needs to support your weight against the Ti—"

"Oh gosh, I'm rather thick at fixing equipment," she said, laughing. She played with the ends of her hair, just like you did. "I'm kind of bad at most things in the military, really, unlike you. You're a lot more athletic than me."

"Huh?" He raised his brows at her. "That won't do in the military. D'you want me to teach you?"

"Really? You would do that for me, Eren?"

Eren nodded.

Grisell beamed at him. "That would be great, 'Ren."

At that, you blinked so hard you swore you had dust in your eye. No. You couldn't interfere. You had to save him because falling in love with you would kill him somehow—you were certain, even if you couldn't properly explain it.

You didn't know why you were suddenly so furious at this girl. This random girl, with her soft face and corn-yellow hair, whom you had never found relevant ever in all the twelve lives you'd lived so far other than the fact that she had been too weak to win against you, had suddenly taken an interest in Eren. Expressed a liking for Eren. Suddenly you were digging into your memories for the moments that you pointed a gun at her Jaegerist sneer and shot it, watching her drop dead, as morbid as it may be.

It occurred to you—you had not once done anything to instigate Grisell to join the Jaegerists or admire Eren as the only thing you'd changed never involved her. This meant that she had probably felt like this towards Eren in previous loops too, even without your interference. It was natural for her to like Eren.

The thought that it was possible for other people to like Eren too made you want to rip your hair out. Like you were going even more insane than you already were. But it wouldn't be right of you to say it aloud. Eren was technically not yours.

But then again, wouldn't it be cruel to stake a claim on Eren, and let him live his life without knowing romantic love? If removing yourself was the way to save him, shouldn't that happiness be what you wished for him?

You knew you were an asshole for even thinking about it. It wasn't right. You always rejected Eren's advances, anyway. The rational part of your brain reminded you that this was what was right. However, your heart screamed that this was not what you wanted.

Perhaps the loops were not the curse. The real curse was living without love, knowing you could have changed it. To fall in love over and over again, with the same boy, and no other heart would satiate the burning need inside your soul to meet him.

When you graduated from the Cadet Corps, you made sure to pretend that you were not an adept physical fighter so your name wouldn't be read aloud for the top ten at graduation. Instead, considering that you spent most of your time alone and inside, you focused on theoretical pursuits like Armin. You were brilliant. You graduated top one in tactics.

At graduation, you watched as Grisell congratulated Eren as he walked up to the podium for the award being in the top ten. She didn't make it, but she was clearly proud of him. Eren thanked her, letting her take his hand and shake it vigorously. His handshake was firm in hers.

In Trost, for some reason, Armin took your place in your original squad and of course, Grisell had to be with Eren. She, like Armin, had been mute with terror when the Titan came upon her, and Eren saved her.

When the battle settled, you heard the whispers. That Eren was so sweet for it, that the other cadets suspected that something was going on, that she looked so good with him. He was always saving her, her knight in shining armor. It was obvious that she had a thing for him, the only question was if he would do something about it.

You wanted to argue against that. Eren would save anyone. You knew that better than anyone. But you couldn't speak. You weren't supposed to know him. You had no place in Eren's life.

Once Commander Erwin heard of the lecturers in the military commended you as an incredible tactician, even better than Armin Arlert, he recruited you for the Survey Corps. There was an interview to be done and you knew it was because the commander wanted to smoke out any traitors like Annie Leonhart. When you were placed under Hange's squad as Moblit's assistant, you nearly freaked out.

If you were to be in Hange's squad and help with the experiments, then it was almost certain that you'd have to interact with Eren. You came up with all sorts of wild ideas on how it could go wrong. So, you insisted to Moblit and the rest of the veterans that you were best suited to work in Hange's lab, doing things like analyzing Eren from a safe distance.

"I'm a tactician," you said.

Levi's lip curled in a sneer. "You're a kid."

"You don't have any other researchers at your disposal," you pointed out.

"Fair point," he said gruffly. "Just do what Hange says."

Thus, you were taken to the castle headquarters early. You helped Moblit organize his files, find the exact books he and Hange needed to read, and if you were lucky, you'd be told to analyze odd things like Eren's fallen tooth or samples like saliva under a microscope and report back on what you'd find. There was nothing special about it. Eren was a normal human like anyone else—even if the others couldn't quite see that.

How laughable. You never met each other, and yet you still knew everything about him.

A scene you'd replayed so many times started again. The recruits were coming to the castle on horseback. You saw Mikasa and Armin and fought your urge to hug them in greeting. Eren ran out, just as he always did, and to the downturn of your mouth, you realized that Grisell had joined the Survey Corps instead of the Garrisons.

She dismounted her horse and ran to throw her arms around Eren's neck. At first, he tensed up uncomfortably. Then, he eventually returned it, stroking the back of her hair with something that resembled gentle affection.

"I'm so glad you're alright," she said. "You're my best friend, Eren."

He was mouthing something to her. You couldn't hear, and you weren't sure if you wanted to. Maybe he said You're mine, too.

That night, you locked yourself in Moblit's laboratory, telling him that you weren't hungry when he called for you to join the recruits for dinner. 

Your research proved to be valuable. You were so conveniently good at solving problems that should have otherwise been impossible due to everybody's ignorance of the outside world, that you were never called to fight in the most brutal battles and instead stuck to Hange and Moblit.

Locked in your ivory tower, throwing yourself into research you didn't even remotely like at all, you withered as you watched Eren live with someone who was not you.

-

Grisell was a different girl, and she did somewhat fill in your empty space, but it was never the same. She was nothing like you. She was soft and somewhat idiotic, but she was kind. Even if Mikasa and Armin weren't exactly her biggest fans, Eren at least had the decency to humor her whenever she came flocking to him like an overexcited swan.

She laughed at all of Eren's lame jokes. She often wrapped her arms around his bicep, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. You had thought that maybe no, maybe it wasn't true and you were only seeing things, but you were quickly proven wrong.

You overheard the group talking, minus her. Connie was prodding Eren with a cheesy tone, asking how he could tolerate her constant throwing herself at him.

"She's not that bad," said Eren.

"Aren't you going to date her or something?"

He would. You knew he would. He always readily dated and loved you.

But surprisingly, for once you were wrong about a decision Eren made. He just shrugged, and that was the end of it.

"Not sure. Love makes a person's brain soft."

You were in disbelief. Eren, the lover boy, calling love soft?

Whatever. He was always a bit frosty as a teen because he hardly knew how to express his feelings, given that he was constantly clouded by anger and stress, on top of his quiet self-loathing. He'd fall for her eventually.

True to his word, Eren was not as soft as you remembered. He was no longer the sweet boy you used to know as a child back in Shiganshina. Now, he showed his emotions less and became more determined to kill Titans than stopping and smelling the roses that you once brought into his life. Everything followed just as it did without you: the Female Titan fight in the Titan forest, the breach of Wall Rose, the discovery of Dina Fritz as a catalyst for the Coordinate. Eren used to carry you back to the Wall, but now he had trudged back alone.

As you predicted, that didn't stop him from responding to Grisell. Eren helped her carry her bags to her dorm whenever the Scouts had to move. He made sure she was safe whenever she was in danger. He let her sit by his bedside whenever he was recovering from experiments, and mused whenever she read something aloud to him.

It was no surprise. Eren had low self-esteem even if he didn't show it. He needed to feel needed.

One time, you saw Eren tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear. They were conversing, whispering, laughing. About what, you had no idea. You'd never know.

Another time, after Historia became the queen, when Sasha was swiping some of Connie's leftover food, you saw Grisell nudge Eren.

"Guess she's a hoarder," she said, and he chuckled. An inside joke that you'd never find funny.

You tried to ignore it, you really did, but you were almost obsessed to the point it seemed as though you were in love with her with how much she ran through your mind.

What was the joke? What had happened? Were your friends in on it, or was it only between the two of them? Why did Eren laugh? Was it really funny? Your inside jokes with Eren were much funnier, weren't they? Or did Eren prefer her comforting presence over your constant stressful nature?

Was he better off with her?

You checked the date on the calendar. It was supposed to be the day you and Eren snuck out of the orphanage and gazed at the stars. You couldn't remember how many times it had happened, and now, there were no stars for you to wish on. Maybe Eren took Grisell there instead. You imagined her laying on the grass, cuddled up to him as he whispered about the Hydra and Andromeda and all the fairy tales of your youth to her, his lips brushing against her ear; and you wanted to cry wolf at her for stealing your place even though you had willingly handed it to her.

The pain ripped through you like a sharp knife had been pushed through your heart, and you were left to bleed alone, wounded—like a pathetic dying doe.

"I hate you, I hate you, I hate you," you whispered to yourself in the mirror. You could never be enough for the timeline to fit you in his life. You were unlovable, too damaged to give Eren a happy ending. "I hate you."

The rage and anger tore your body into shreds until you were sobbing alone. You could physically feel your heart squeeze until it broke, every last string snapping like a weak spool. You'd loved him and you couldn't simply extract that love like it was blood. It was DNA, coded into every thread composing your body, and would remain after death.

"Are you sure you don't want a day off, [Name]?" Moblit asked one night when he stumbled upon you stacking books on a text with dark circles under your eyes. "You never seem to rest."

"I'm so close to a breakthrough," you lied, and lied, and lied. "It'll be useful when we fight Titans."

He patted your head. Moblit was the only solace you had; the older brother whom you never appreciated before. He knew you in past lives, and although he never really knew you then, that didn't matter. He used to, and you secretly starved for the death of your loneliness. He knew you now. You wished you had talked to him more in previous lives.

"Even scientists have to know their limits."

Your 'breakthroughs' were just basic sciences you learned from Zeke back when you were in Marley in previous loops, but to society within the walls, you were a goddamn genius. An unnamed hero.

You could hypothesize that Eren's body regenerated because Titan body cells regenerate on their own, which technically was not a lie. Ymir was somewhere in the Paths realm, regenerating them. But you also remembered that it was not exactly Ymir—the last time you'd been in the Paths, it was Eren who fixed you by smothering dirt on your face until you were healed.

-

In the Survey Corps headquarters back in Trost, the oil lamp burned as you hunched over your desk in your private laboratory, writing down notes and mathematical equations that would explain the laws of time and the universe, which proved to be an impossible task.

It was the 30th of March.

Eren's birthday.

You used to be happy, bouncing all over the place as you ran to make it a special day for Eren, but now you had hidden yourself away because he didn't know you. You didn't want to look at him and painfully remember all your past memories that he knew of but could not understand.

You were working on a machine that needed activated charcoal. It was for Hange—a device to preserve Titan samples before they evaporated into the air. You theorized that oxygen was the cause of the flesh disappearances, much like how fruit rot because of it. Thus, the charcoal would absorb the oxygen before it could affect the samples.

Hange praised you for it, saying you were brilliant for coming up with such a logical alternate hypothesis. However, you knew it was null. It was not science that backed the evaporation up.

It was the Paths realm, where Eren's consciousness and deepest desires were imprisoned. He unknowingly kept bringing you back to life, wanting you to do something. To solve the problem and free him.

Maybe somehow, Grisell was the missing piece, the correct equation. You were gone. Maybe she was his rightful love.

If she managed that victory, and Eren yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, you would cover your face, turn to the wall, and die. But you couldn't die. If you died, the loop would reset. If this worked, and Eren grew old, he would marry her and have children with her because that was who he was and you would spend the rest of your life alone just to keep him alive.

Your charcoal spilled all over your wooden desk, clouding like dust onto your nose. That was your last straw. You snapped and stood up, kicking the table leg. It felt good to lose control.

"Useless!" you whisper-screamed, kicking a chair. "You're useless..."

But you weren't sure who you were talking to: Grisell, Eren, or yourself. You'd rather Eren fall in love with Mikasa or Historia; at least then you'd tolerate that he loved someone you actually liked. But Grisell had a poor mind; nothing original bloomed from her small heart; she had no opinions of her own and followed Eren wherever she went. She despised Mikasa for being close to Eren, and found Sasha's gluttony disgusting. Your other friends welcomed her because they were good people, but she was more like Floch than anyone else—stupidly in love without real empathy.

But why not you? Why not love you? Why not love him?

You felt like such an idiot, and you knew you were one, too. Eren had given you eleven chances to fall in love, and the one time he did not, you thought you'd die of heartbreak. You were quite literally deteriorating.

Maybe he was right. You couldn't live without him just as he couldn't live without you. Maybe you did have to let him fall in love with you.

Now that you saw what your life would be without fate crossing your path over his, for the first time, you allowed yourself to wonder: what would happen if you actually told Eren how you really, truly felt?

You could fight and go back to your original fate without alterations. You could chase him through time, revisit the Paths, do anything with the copious knowledge you had. But if he were to die, if fate were better off not making a slave out of him, or that Eren deserved to suffer. That was not right, either.

I love you. I love you. I love you. You would scream it in the open sky, swallow it in the dark breadth of the ocean. He might never see, but you will know. You would be every last victim, you'd kill them all in cold blood and take anyone's place in the story, and every time Eren breathes nature's wind and his heart beats with the substance of life, it will be because you love him.

Maybe... you thought. Maybe I should just tell him.

Three simple words, enough to rewrite the entire universe.

You heard giggling from the outside hall, and the sound of footsteps. The doorknob turned, and Eren and Grisell spilled into the dim laboratory. Upon seeing you, right in the middle of your frazzled state, they both froze and straightened up with wide eyes.

Her hand landed on his chest even though she hadn't really stumbled. It was as though she had pushed him inside and fell through with him.

"Sorry!" said Grisell. "We thought no one was here!"

Your chest tightened. Why were they here? Why were they looking for an empty room? What were they doing?

Your first impulse was to nod, smile tightly, look down, and move on. Because you didn't know him and you were the reclusive lab assistant—you were getting through the days, you had enough on your plate.

"I'll just—" Grisell shuffled back. "'Ren, I'll find someplace else."

Her footsteps pattered down the hall, fading, leaving you alone with Eren. You thought you would actually die on the spot. He had to leave.

"You have dirt on your face."

Out of pure shock, your eyes widened and snapped up to meet him.

Eren pointed at his cheek, rubbing at invisible marks. "Here. Um... it's under your eye."

Right.

You brushed it off, but he remained rooted to the spot.

"You're Moblit's assistant, right?" he asked. "I've heard about you. All good things, of course."

You raised your brows but averted your eyes. Why the hell was he talking to you?

"Everyone says you're really smart. I never really saw your face until today, you're really... um, you're kind of familiar. Have we met before?"

You shook your head, just the teeniest movement to show him that you wanted him to leave you alone, but Eren persisted. He was piercing you with his eyes, drinking your image in.

"You sure?"

"I have to work," you said. Your voice was distant and cold.

Realizing that you were dismissing him, Eren looked taken aback.

"Hey, uh..."

You glanced up.

"Thanks for everything with your Titan studies. I know it can't have been easy... I mean, you don't even take credit for all your hard work."

Your hand rested on the device. It was trembling from having to hold back from him.

Before you could open your mouth in response, Grisell popped her head through the door.

"'Rennie, are you done yet?"

"Sorry, I was just talking to Moblit's helper, nothing important."

"Oh—right." She gave you a once-over, seemingly unimpressed by what she was seeing. Your sleeves were stained with ink and your face had soot while her glossy hair was combed back. "Hiya."

You nodded reluctantly. You were shaking so much, you were afraid that if you ever had to talk to her, you'd blow up. 

"Bye..." Eren waited for you to tell him your name, but you had already turned away from him. "Um... yeah. Bye."

You glanced back as Grisell took his hand and tugged him out. Before the door shut, you could see her pulling him close to her so that she was holding him. You couldn't see his expression from behind.

The door shut as she pulled him into a passionate kiss.

You heard thudding on the other side, and you wondered if it was her hand or his hand slamming against the wall in fervor. It must have been Grisell's hand—Eren had a bigger palm. Fuck, why were you even thinking about this?

You tried to take a deep breath, and ignore the sting of seeing the two of them together. You shut the door to your laboratory, sat down, cleared the ink-stained papers, and picked up a pencil instead of a quill. You gripped shakily it as it hovered over the blank parchment, trying to recall the formulas you had been working on for your research.

You wondered if they would sleep together. After all, there was no other reason for them to be looking for an empty room on his birthday, of all days.

Something dusty was covering your hand and falling onto your wrist. Lead. The pencil had snapped.

"Happy birthday," you whispered for what felt like the thousandth time you'd uttered the words, "'Ren."

-

Questions of science, science and progress do not speak as loud as my heart
And tell me you love me, come back and haunt me, oh, and I rush to the start