The rest of your life essentially played out without you. It turned out that there were some things that truly just did not involve Grisell. You stood back by the beach as you watched Eren point a finger at the horizon. She hated the ocean and stayed back. Other times, you slunk in the shadows as the Marleyan volunteers arrived and secretly colluded with him. You didn't interfere.

Eren had tried talking to you more after your single interaction, but you always shut down the conversation. You were always busy and often locked the door to your laboratory. Eventually, he took the hint and left you alone, doing his best to forget about you.

Grisell didn't seem to notice the way Eren's mental health slowly declined. For what felt like the millionth time, you watched the light fade from his eyes, the green morphing into smoke.

When you left for the trip Marley, Eren left just as he did the first time. Even then, he didn't seem to pay her much attention. Without you existing in his life, he seemed much more depressed than before, like everything in his head was a meaningless void.

It pained you to see him in that way. He was disinterested in most things and moped like a teenager who thought the world was against him, which he quite literally was.

Now, he had started a war.

Your absence did not change anything. He would slaughter everything regardless. But you wondered. He did know you, in a very distant way.

Was it for you? You wondered. Even if he didn't love you now, was it still for you?

And when Grisell ended up becoming just like Floch when every nation in the world threatened Paradis, you wanted to sneer with contempt. Eren had escaped the prison, and for some reason, she felt like her first line of action would be to hostage the Survey Corps who were especially close to Hange, the first one being you as you were not in Levi's squad.

She burst into your laboratory, where you were napping through the ordeal of menial things you no longer cared about like the military's chain of command breaking, government authorities getting murdered, and the entire world threatening to flatten Paradis. It was easier to sleep than to live in the real nightmares.

You didn't exist in this universe, you were wracked with anxiety, and you had post-traumatic stress disorder from repeatedly living through these events. Running away never helped.

"Get up, this is an arrest."

You lifted your head, blinking groggily when the first object in your line of vision was the point of a black pistol. Grisell's teeth were bared with hatred, and you had a feeling it was not because you were Hange's assistant.

"Oh, this is an arrest, now?" you asked in a mocking tone. "What, do you want me to write you a lab report?"

Grisell pointed the gun at your temple.

"Another word and it's a bullet through your head," she said. "You'll understand when Eren rebuilds the Eldian Empire to its full glory."

You wanted to laugh. "You've been throwing yourself at him all this time, and he couldn't even be bothered to talk to you about this?"

"What?"

"Go on," you said, stepping closer so the gunpoint was pressing right in the middle of your forehead. "Kill me. Let's see what happens."

You'd died in many horrifying but unique ways. Getting shot in the head again would be nothing.

"Eren did tell me," she said fiercely. "I knew about the Rumbling before anyone else did, he confided in me! I helped him gather soldiers to help him, I knew about the Marleyans—"

She was cut off when you yawned. You wanted to go back to sleep, you were tired, you knew everything. Her greatest crime was not that she had claimed Eren for herself, it was that she was so utterly uninteresting that it was pathetic to see her attaching herself to someone like him.

Eren didn't tell her why he was doing the Rumbling, and strangely, you felt sorry for her.

Offended by your disinterest, Grisell gritted her teeth. The look of total aggression didn't suit her. She was better off being the idiotic sheep you knew she was always meant to be. You couldn't fault her for falling for Eren. But now that she was talking to you, you couldn't help but want to provoke her in petty revenge.

"Let's see if 'Ren will allow it," you said nastily.

"He doesn't even know you," she said. She was agitated, wondering why you even called Eren by that nickname that she thought was hers. "He doesn't even love you like he does me."

You wanted to laugh at her. You knew that if Eren truly loved her, he would make her hate him. He would have tried to turn her away from the war. Instead, he had manipulated her into becoming a Jaegerist, just so he'd have a lackey who would do the dirty work for him.

Maybe this was fate. This was always meant to happen, even in a universe where she had been with him.

"You're right," you said. "He doesn't love you at all. You don't even know what his real plans are."

"How do you even know what his—!?"

Before she could say anything else, the door to your laboratory swung open, and Eren walked in. His gaze landed on you, who had been pressing the gunpoint to your forehead, and he lifted his hand to reveal the bloody slice on his palm.

"You're dismissed," he said to her. "I have some things I want to talk about. With her."

He cocked his head to the side, at you. Furious, Grisell stormed out of the room and slammed the door, leaving you and Eren in vacuum silence, much like the first time.

After a few moments of staring at each other, you spoke up. "What do you want?"

Eren scoffed. "Straight to the point. I want to know how you knew about my plans."

You had lived these neutral years, pushing down your emotions to avoid integrating yourself into the story. And yet, everything was still going to happen the same way. Eren would die.

It was all for nothing. All this pain, of watching Eren prance around with some idiotic girl and your friends never knowing or loving you and subjecting yourself to semipermanent loneliness, had been for nothing. Nothing at all.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Even if you knew everything. Even if you tried everything.

The palpable thick tension between you rose the longer you eyed each other. Perhaps the timing was bad, but all you could think about right now was how hot and masculine Eren looked with his long hair tied back into a bun. After all, you had not forgotten.

You knew what he tasted like, he knew what you tasted like, and somewhere deep inside, Eren stored those memories too. His cool demeanor was hard as stone, but you knew that he had been frazzled when he realized that you knew what he was going to do soon.

"I know everything, Eren," you said maliciously. "What are you mad at me for? I never interfered with you."

"Who the fuck are you?" Eren demanded, brows furrowing. "And don't give me some bullshit answer. Who sent you?"

You shrugged. "You sent me."

"I barely even know you."

You flinched. You hid how hurt you felt with sarcastic banter. "Damn, Eren," you said. "Don't you know that girls know everything? I was a god in a past life, you know."

By now, Eren's facade was breaking. His face shifted from angry to confused. He looked as though he was going to combust.

"You're insane," he said.

"Don't get hot and bothered about it," you said, rolling your eyes. "I'm crazy for you."

Eren sputtered, not expecting you to have flirted with him instead. At that moment, you could see the real him come out—the teenage cadet was still in there somewhere. You knew Eren like the back of your hand, you'd memorized every expression on his face, and you even knew how his biological instincts worked.

You knew what was happening. His old memories were converging in his head again, piecing together broken fragments from past lives. He knew you, but he had no idea who you were.

You walked out the door before he could question you further. He could hostage you and arrest you all he wanted; you knew it wouldn't change anything, and you knew you should no longer care.

But before you could leave, some invisible force stopped you. You knew Eren was watching you, trying to figure you out. It was his natural habit. You turned around. Your mouth spoke like you weren't in control. You knew him better than you knew yourself.

"In another universe, a lifetime was waiting for us. I'm selfish. I wish I had let myself be part of this one too."

Eren's mouth turned down.

"What the—what is that supposed to mean?"

"You have every second to turn back and rethink what you want," you said. "You can stop the Rumbling. You can run away if you have to. You can give up the Founding Titan and end the Titans even if the world hates Eldians."

"Never," said Eren. "I have to keep—"

"—keep moving forward," you finished. "That is what you tell yourself, but going forward will only bring you back to the beginning."

Eren glowered.

"No one can take my freedom."

You were sick of hearing him talk about it.

"You don't even know what real freedom is," you said. "As long as you're alive, you will never be free."

It was the final conversation you had with Eren in this loop. In your twenty years of living this life, you had only ever spoken to him five times, each one ending in him trying to reach out to you only for you to turn away from him. Realizing that he could only ever die was your last. Somehow, you felt as if this was your last chance.

-

The Paths realm shows you many things.

Even when you were left behind on Paradis, because you weren't part of the Alliance and merely a spectator now, you were still connected to that reality.

You could see many things as you paced around your laboratory, as if your physical body was in one place and your mind was in another. You saw it playing in your head like a broken roll of the moving pictures you used to watch in Marley.

You saw the battles ensuing without you.

During the port battle, Grisell escaped alive. You were not in the Alliance to shoot her, as you did in previous lives when she was just another face to you. Instead, she had gone with Floch in attempting to foil the flying boat's takeoff.

Gabi shot both of them in the head, and their corpses drowned in the sea. Eren had never tried to save her, or seek for her, and essentially dumped her like she was disposable trash.

Mikasa struggled having to fight the most difficult Titans alone, and Armin's self-hatred only increased without you to reassure him that he was doing the right thing. Jean and Connie were even more badly injured, as were the rest.

You saw Eren, his mind elsewhere while his real body slept in the Titan, much like you right now.

Your emotions, which had been building up like a dam holding back a vast body of water, began to break you. All you could see were your faults, the things you had failed to do, the promises you could not keep, and the guilt crushed you like you were sinking into the trenches. Your friends were injured, and people were dying.

Eren was going to die, and there was nothing you could do to prevent it. All you could do was watch, the ghost spectator that you were.

Suddenly, the Paths scenes changed. You were standing on the head of some object you couldn't make out, watching the child version of Eren spread his arms out above a sea of clouds.

"This is..." he said with a dreamy delight, "...freedom!"

He turned to you. His eyes widened, like he swore he had seen you before.

At this point, your heart ached. You were tired of this suffering, sick of it, loathing yourself and all the negative emotions your self-inflicted pain had put you through. But you couldn't help it when it was your twelfth time watching the person you love the most kill himself over and over again, and there was nothing you could do but watch.

"Hey!" the child Eren said. His voice reminded you of your repeated childhoods, and how happy they were before everything fell apart. "Don't we know each other?"

You swallowed. "You don't know me."

You blinked, and Eren was fifteen years old again, and so were you, and the wind was blowing at your clothes and causing the hem of your brown uniform jacket to whip around.

"But..." His brows knitted. "I swear I do."

"No, we have never known each other before," you said. "Not in this life."

"But you know me."

Your mouth was bitter tannin. "I knew you."

In another blink, you and Eren were seventeen again, and his hair reached his shoulders.

"But you don't know me," you repeated.

"Does that matter?" he asked. "I want to know you."

"All I ever do is—"

"—make me happy? Make me want to be a better man for you?"

How could he say such things so easily?

Through the choking up of your throat, you chuckled and looked at your shoes. "How can you feel that way if we barely know each other?"

"I don't really have a reason," said Eren, rubbing the back of his neck like he was the little kid you met. "But if so, then..."

When you looked back up, he was the adult version of him you knew, the last time you saw him. He held out a hand to you.

"...let me get to know you again."

When you woke up, you were not a child in your childhood bedroom, nor a scientist shut up in her laboratory.

You were lying on a grassy field, and the sun's position told you it was twilight. Despite the light painting everything it could touch auburn, the stars were out, constellations spinning across a blushing sky. You sat up, wondering why Eren had conjured this place, out of all places.

A few meters away, you could see a house, tiny and calm and beautiful. There was a garden beside it, full of blooming flowers of all pretty colors and sizes, laced with ivy twine, just like the garden you used to take care of as a child.

When you heard crashing waves and turned your head, you realized that you were on a plateau. You got up, walked by the edge, and saw that beneath it was a stairway that led to a beach, where the vast ocean lay glittering in orange. This was, for all your lives, your ideal place to live quietly.

"Careful, you might fall."

You turned, and Eren was there, standing. He had been watching you the same way he always did. His hair, you noticed, had been snipped neatly, leaving him with an undercut.

"Why are we here?"

"You never gave me a chance to know you," he said. "So I'm taking this chance now."

The dots clicked in your head. Eren was using the Paths realm to create another alternate universe, one where you could get to know each other away from all the bullshit. But you recognized this universe, one that you had forgotten a long time ago in Loop One.

This was the four-year universe Eren had created where the two of you lived together after running away from everyone and everything. You had been almost appalled back then. An unmarried pair, living together? You weren't even a couple.

Those four years were just a dream.

But Eren had been such a liar back then, saying Hey, it doesn't have to mean anything, it'll be just like before when we were kids.

Not because you had told him you liked him, but because you told him that you liked the idea of running away from everything instead of confronting your fears. It had never actually happened, it was just an idea in Eren's head that he brought to fruition because he had the Founding Titan and could thus alter the Paths realm to let you inside it, just as he was doing right now.

Right after the illusion ended, he was killed.

It made you wonder and question yourself about what was real and what was not. It was also why you often connected things to the Paths realm, and a terrible realization overcame you knowing that Eren was the one technically controlling the loops and everything in it, he had chosen you to be the one to save him in these repetitive universes called loops.

You looked to the sea, the one you and Eren have so often dreamed about. "I'm tired, 'Ren."

You felt his presence step near you, feet on the grass. "What do you mean?"

You looked back at him. He was so beautiful.

"I'm tired of running after you. Aren't you tired of running after me?"

At first, he seemed taken aback. Then, he gave you a lopsided smile. He was walking up to you now, in his hand a tiny flower.

"I'm not. And... I don't think you're tired of me either."

Reluctantly, you accepted the flower from his palm. It was the flower you had been watering the first time you woke up from a loop.

You sighed, twirling the stem and watching the petals spin. He loves me, he loves me not. "I'm not."

"See? I know you so well already."

You shrugged.

"Even if you bring me here, and we get to know each other, you will die once your thirteen years are up," you said. Your voice choked up again. "I can't take it, Eren. Don't do this to me—don't be with me only to leave me in the end."

"Then, please promise me, when you figure it out you'll know what to do," he said. "I think you do. Deep inside, you know. I don't know you right now, but I don't want to live not knowing you. So... just let me."

"I'll ruin you," you said.

"Then do it," he said. "Ruin everything. Ruin me. You're the only person who ever could."

Perhaps you were pathetic for it, tethering your soul to a person out of sheer love, but what the hell were you supposed to do? You loved him, you loved Eren so much it hurt. You'd love him until the oceans run dry. He could ask for an apple, and you would axe the evil from the forbidden tree just so his stomach would be full.

If he wanted this, and so did you, you couldn't refuse. You couldn't stand to live in a world where you didn't love each other; couldn't stand to once again grow old without him too. You had to change, had to accept things as they were instead of trying to change everything else.

There was just nothing you could do.

The only thing you could do was love him.

"Then let me go to Thirteen, 'Ren," you whispered, letting him hold you, and you wanted to cry in relief when you finally felt him embrace you after years without so much as touching his pinky finger. He buried his nose in the crook of your neck. His soft hair ticked your cheek. "I'll ruin you again."

-

When you finally snapped back into the real world, you were standing in your laboratory. Your mind felt as though it had been shattered into a million different fragments. You had been with Eren in a secret seaside universe for a moment, ensnared in his warmth, and the next, you were standing alone in the lonesome chill of your private room.

A harsh series of knocks rapped on your door, and you opened it to see the Military Police woman you knew as Hitch. She had come to deliver a message; the Alliance was back on Paradis.

If they were back, it meant that the battle was over.

To your horror, you knew what that meant. If it was over in this lifetime, it meant...

"Eren Jaeger is dead," Hitch said simply. "So is most of humanity."

You stared at her, mouth dry, lips parting like you needed water. Luckily she took it in stride as though you were only shocked to hear of it, like you were a Jaegerist as the rest of the country was. The Rumbling has once again destroyed the earth and the person you love was dead.

Hitch thought you only knew him from a distance. She had no idea how much it was affecting you. Either way, she did not even know who you were, anyway.

She waved a hand in your face as your vision blurred. You couldn't breathe.

"Did you hear me, Miss...?" she trailed off, not knowing your name. "I'll repeat, Eren is dead. He was murdered in battle, his head got sliced off."

"I see," you said, mind strangely blank. "Thank you for informing me."

Hitch nodded curtly, her face reasonably impassive, and allowed you to gently shut the door. Her receding footsteps shrank. You wished she hadn't been so graphic about the ordeal, but everything was heartless after the Rumbling.

You slowly sank to the floor, pressing a hand over your mouth. Your heart was beating rapidly, like drums pounding in your ears. A heavy weight pressed over your chest, rendering you unable to breathe until you were alternating between quiet sobbing and gasping for feeble breath. Your vision blurred, from the salty tears or something far more sinister, you had no clue.

Alone again. Eren died again. You had put yourself through so much unnecessary pain and trauma, just for the same thing to happen again.

You died just as you lived: alone, in your laboratory. You were only a spectator, fated to forever be isolated in this life. So when the cause of death this time was of a literal broken heart, no one was there to witness it, as if you had never existed. A forgotten candlelight snuffing out.

That was it. You had finally lost it. It was over. You couldn't do it anymore.

There was nothing else left to do.

Nothing, except to tell Eren.