The finality of it all called you. The boat to Marley moved across the waters peacefully.

You stood by the hull as you did before. This time you were not wiping your tears from someone dumping you, and Eren was not holding you in his arms comforting you. You were dressed in your formal clothes—a blazer and a skirt to blend in with the Marleyans. You had done this so many times before that it had officially lost its novelty.

"[Name], can you help me with this?" Eren emerged from below deck, holding up a tie. "I don't know how."

"I got it," you said, taking it from his outstretched fingers and standing in front of him. You had to lean in to wrap it under his collar and tie it. You were so close to him that you could smell the faint cologne that Onyankopon had lent him. "You dress up well, 'Rennie."

"It makes me feel like a kid when you call me that," he said. "It reminds me of Mom."

"You are a kid, aren't you?" you asked, poking his dimple. "Little 'Ren, not old enough to play with me yet."

His mouth slanted unhappily. "Come on."

You chuckled, finishing the tie, and smoothening it down his chest. You could feel his solid torso even over the coat he was wearing.

"Eren," you said gently. "I haven't seen you as some kind of bratty kid in a long time."

Your voice was serious. Eren looked away, like he couldn't meet your eye.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

You smiled. It was a smile that made the corners of your eyes crinkle at him, making his heart skip a beat. "Good."

"You think too highly of me," he said.

"You can never do any wrong in my eyes, 'Ren," you whispered. "No matter what happens, I'll always be on your side. You're a good person."

This might be the last time you would ever see Eren this way, before he left for the Marleyan frontlines at Fort Slava.

You would never go back to childhood.

You would never be a kid in Shiganshina with Eren, Mikasa, and Armin ever again.

You reclaimed your old home and went on expeditions with the Survey Corps, but it was not over. Far from it. You had wars to fight and nightmares to be sentenced to. You thought you would have to become a permanent resident of the asylum after what you'd gone through.

And to lose Eren for the last time, knowing that nothing you could do would save him—that was the final blow.

It had been pretty obvious how attracted you were to Eren in this loop. Everyone could see it, and you could tell that Eren suspected that you had feelings for him. But he was waiting on a miracle, waiting for you to refute his doubts. What would happen, you wondered, if you told him?

"Get a room!" you heard Connie yell at both of you from the starboard. "Better yet, rent a room once we land!"

"Connie," you admonished. Despite his rashness, you did not take your hands off of Eren's chest. It was like you were some pair of lovers and you were not shy about it. "How rude!"

At that, Eren chuckled. Your temper calmed down and you sighed, moving your hands from his chest to his shoulders. He did not shy away from your touch; if anything, he welcomed it and relished in the idea that you might feel some kind of way for him. Just as you were.

There was no way you could hide from him now.

"Don't forget your promise," he said.

"Huh?"

Eren poked your face. "You said you'd stay with me. So I have you all to myself today... and tonight."

You scoffed. "You're so clingy, it's like you think I'm going to disappear."

Eren pursed his lips. He was so strange like this, moody and nonchalant about everything. He disliked hearing words from you talking about negative outcomes.

"Hey, it's just us," he said. "There's no need to feel weird about anything, right?"

"Right."

You remembered this conversation, too, only you had said these things at a different time and place. In the ninth loop. Your skin crawled. Last time you and Eren messed around saying there's no need to be weird, his head ended up nestled between your warm thighs.

The boat's horn rang. You had arrived at the port. The rest of the Survey Corps had already been waiting, talking among each other by the gangway and pretending like they hadn't noticed you and Eren flirting so openly.

"Hey, idiots," Captain Levi grumbled to the two of you. "If you're done making goo-goo eyes at each other, you might want to listen to the instructions. You're stepping on unknown territory, you know."

You reluctantly detached yourself from Eren. He did not seem embarrassed at all. He just nodded at the captain and if anything, he seemed sorry to see you go. Levi regarded you both with contempt.

You grinned at him. Unknown territory. If only your captain knew just how many times you had strolled around Marley.

"You heard him," said Eren. He grabbed your hand like he did as a child again and pulled, this time careful not to hurt you. "We have to go."

-

Today, Eren was gentle with you.

The boy, whom you had always squabbled with growing up because he was too brash and loud for his own good, was being soft.

Marley had been mildly awkward at first, the two of you not knowing what to do while your friends were running around like headless chickens trying everything new. You seemed too shy to say more and he did not know what to do beyond looking at you longingly.

You counted down the minutes. In a few hours, Eren would run off to begin his plan of the Rumbling. You could not beg him to stay or stop, you knew him too well. You wished he would just do something that was beyond looking at you.

You could make the first move; you had the upper hand. You knew how he felt, but your feelings were a superior mystery to him. You didn't know when the right time would be. At the very least, you owed him something good.

You looked around at the Marleyan market. It was a thick crowd full of laughter and thousands of stone steps. It was more familiar than foreign to you now.

While you were buying some dessert called crepe at a local stall, the baker, a warm young man, flashed a grin at you.

"Pretty lady," he said admiringly. "Say, why don't you have the crepe on the house in exchange for a date?"

"Thanks," you said. "But no thanks. I'll pay."

"I insist."

"Look—"

Someone snaked an arm around your middle from behind you, causing you to freeze. He squeezed your waist and that was how you knew it was Eren.

He pressed his lips against your cheekbone. He made sure to make a sound as he did, an obnoxiously cute smack that echoed in your ears and made blood rush to your cheeks. Eren was always tense and difficult to read when he was at this stage of life, but you had forgotten what he was like when he wanted your attention: childish and bratty. Not that you minded this time.

"There you are, my love," Eren said coolly. "I was wondering where you'd gone."

My love? That was new. You gaped for a split second. "I... sorry for running off, I thought you were right behind me."

He eyed the baker with a fierce gaze. "Is he bothering you?"

"Of course not," you chastised. You placed a hand on Eren's chest before he could do something stupid because of his temper. "Let's go, 'Ren."

You pulled him away from the market, not even bothering to take your food. You'd held his hand a million times. Finally, when you were out of earshot, you turned to him incredulously.

"My love?"

"Huh?"

You burst out laughing.

"Eren," you said, hitting his chest. "You're so stupid, it hurts. What was that about?"

"I just heard my dad call my mom that once," he said, ears burning red. "It's not a big deal."

You looked at him incredulously. "Not a big...? Eren, be honest!"

"I didn't like the shitface," he said. "He wouldn't take no for an answer, it pissed me off to see him flirt with you."

"So you thought he'd back off because I have a scary lover by my side."

Eren looked away sullenly, like a sulking teenager. "Everyone keeps liking you. This time, they shouldn't have the wrong impression."

"That what?" you asked mockingly. "That I'm not yours?"

"I'm sorry if I embarrassed you," Eren flushed. "I just wanted him to know his place."

"There's no need to apologize." You raised your brows. "But that place is...?"

"That he doesn't have a chance with you," Eren said decidedly, glowering. "And you're not interested."

"I see," you said. "In that case, you're right. I'm too busy looking at you to notice other guys anyway."

There, you had turned the table on him. It was Eren's turn to feel the maroon blood rushing in his cheeks. It bloomed on his tan face like a garden of roses.

As the rest of the Survey Corps was called to gather back to reach the Azumabito Estate, cutting your conversation short, you walked beside Eren behind the rest of the group as they trudged the concrete streets. You felt bold; you were being awfully honest.

The air shimmering between you had become more tense, thicker. You wondered when you and Eren would address the unspoken elephant in the room: that the two of you were shamelessly flirting with each other and clearly enjoying the game. He acted like it wasn't happening and neither were you.

Your head buzzed, strangely pleased. For once, this felt right.

"Hey," Mikasa said to you later, when the boys had pulled Eren away to look at some kind of engine contraption called a motor vehicle and she and Sasha cornered you. "What's up?"

You looked at her weirdly. You repeated, "What's up?"

"What's going on between you and Eren?"

You didn't miss a beat. "I don't know. What's going on between you and Jean?"

"That's not the same," she said, but she blushed nevertheless as Sasha snickered.

"Armin told Connie that Jean saw Eren kissing your cheek," said Sasha, poking your stomach as she giggled madly. "Is there something you're hiding from us, [Name]?"

"It's between me and Eren," you said.

"There seems to be a lot of things between you and Eren." Sasha threw her arms around you and squeezed you tightly, causing you to choke. "If anything happens, you tell us immediately, okay? I'm dying to know."

You gave her a deadpan look.

"You'll be the first to know," you said. "Though I think I've already told you all about it before."

-

"This is bullshit," you said, leaning back on the chair to see a stone-faced Eren. The politicians in the forum in front of you publicly abhorred the Eldians. You despised hearing this speech over and over again. "Let's bail."

"What about the others?" he asked, looking at the rest of the occupied Scouts listening in. "Wouldn't you want to hear more?"

"It's nothing I haven't already heard."

Eren inhaled through his nose, a deep, exasperated take, and glanced over his padded shoulder. The door was open. "Okay. I'll come with you."

Marley was awful and beautiful. Or maybe it only seemed beautiful because you weren't used to its putrid industrial smog yet. It was the only time you changed something in the thirteenth universe—you went with Eren when he left the forum. You guessed you just like seeing all these people go about their daily lives, unaware that they had been living in a time loop. Unaware that they were going to be mercilessly slaughtered by the boy beside you.

He would cry for them. But he would not hesitate to kill them.

Between them and you, it was always you.

You knew that, and it intimidated you.

You wanted to spend your last 'normal' moments with him. He would be gone in a few hours and it would never be the same. You couldn't imagine what would happen after. Although you had lived through the Liberio raid senselessly, this time, it was incomprehensible to you.

The multiple lives you lived through merged into your head as one, and it caused your head to ache. Just like Eren.

It was calling to you—the Coordinate.

Converge, it urged in your head. It hissed like a lethal snake, tempting you to eat the fruit on the vine. Converge.

When it was sunset, you observed Eren for the signs of him, losing his mind and instigating the Rumbling. Oddly, there were none. He seemed peaceful with you beside him. You strolled across the pier, watching the ocean glimmer in orange. Seagulls cawed, flocking above your heads in circles.

His face was illuminated by golden light. Green against orange, staring at you as you strolled on the creaking wooden planks that separated you from the harbor's cold bay.

"It's like you've been painted on," you said admiringly. You glanced out at the pier, to the sailboats whose huge, flapping white sails were now reflecting the ardent color of fire.

"You're pretty in this light," he commented.

Your cheeks burned. "Thank you."

You looked back at him. He was not racked with terror or impending doom. He seemed happy that he was just with you. It hurt your heart to know that this was all he wanted. Now, you could fulfill it.

Eren's finger traced your hand as you walked side-by-side.

One brush, a palm against another, and you felt him lace his fingers through yours.

Danger, your mind warned.

He's mine, your heart retorted.

Then you felt him trace circles on your knuckles. Thumb pressing on thin skin, feeling the valleys between your bones.

You could sense it, you could feel it—it was flaying every cell in you alive, screaming, wanting, pouring with desire for the person next to you.

As you both watched seagulls drift across the sky, Eren dared to ask, "Is this a date?"

You thought you would panic like before, but you did not.

"It is," you hummed. "But that would mean I didn't already know you before it."

"So we're just doing what we've always done."

"Mmm-hmm."

"Like kissing your cheek and holding your hand," he said. "Pretending like you're my girl."

"Is it...?"

"What, pretending? It's not a game."

You fought back the fear of getting close to him and allowed yourself to fall.

Now, you laughed. Eren smiled, and the two of you mindlessly strolled. You were along an empty road now, devoid of commuters. It seemed to be full of abandoned shops, like a haunted alleyway. The sun had already set; it was getting dark. No lights lit up the street except for a feeble, flickering lamppost.

"This is stupid," Eren muttered. He cupped his mouth in his free hand and shouted at the sky. "Stupid!"

His yell echoed down the empty street. You covered his mouth, muffling him. He was always so loud. "Eren, we're not supposed to draw any attention to ourselves."

"How am I supposed to believe that?"

His voice had become strained, and it told you that he was trying to collect himself. Trying to hold back from you.

The air between you shifted into something softer.

You got a better look at him, at the silhouette of the lines you spent lives memorizing.

"'Ren," you whispered. "Your pupils are huge."

"They're always like that when I look at you."

He stroked your hand clumsily, brushing a thumb over your palm and pressing into your skin. Your hand twitched; you couldn't help it. Eren noticed, he always did.

"[Name]... what are we doing?"

"Doing what?"

"This." He gestured between you and him. "This. What is this?"

"It's complicated," you said.

"It doesn't have to be."

You bit down on your lip and looked away. "If it were easy, this life would be different."

"Nothing good is ever really easy for us," he said.

Raising your brows, you said, "If nothing good was easy, I wouldn't have met you on that day in Shiganshina."

"If you hadn't met me, your life would be easier," he argued.

"Not true. It would have been a dumpster fire. I would have been sad every day of my life and wishing I had found you. Honest."

Eren exhaled, let go of you, and ran a hand through his hair. "You're acting like... like there's something."

You went silent. "Something."

"Well, is there?"

"Mm."

"That's not an answer!"

"Well, neither is 'I don't know'!"

"Okay, then, I have a different question," he ventured. "Do you want there to be something or not?"

"Something!" you repeated. "There has always been something. Between us."

"If there's something, then why? Why do you always push me away?!" he demanded. "What have I ever done to you that made you terrified of being near me?"

"I'm not... terrified of being near you," You crossed your arms and took a step back. "Here we go again, Eren."

"You're not denying that you always push me away. Tell me, [Name]."

"Eren—"

"What am I to you?"

You stopped in your tracks. "You're really asking me that? What you are to me?"

"Yeah, I am."

"Fine."

"Fine!"

A few seconds passed.

Why lie?

Carefully, you spoke. You spoke like you were talking to someone who was fragile, because you were.

"It's just... when I look at you, everything feels different."

He stared at you with wide eyes. You paused, examining his reaction, and his gaze was nervous but bright. You continued.

"And when the two of us are together it's like... time just slows down. It's just hard to talk about after everything—pain and suffering, it feels selfish, in a way."

Eren swallowed. "It's not selfish."

"I don't know why I can't just tell you." A lump built up in your throat and you fought back the choke. "I guess I just... I'm scared."

"Scared?" he echoed. "Of what? Me?"

"No way." You smiled tiredly. "Not you."

"Then what?"

"We've been through this before and it ended badly." You sighed. "I'm trapped. And you... You died each time. You died and I died and there was nothing I could do. I failed to save you."

Eren didn't question anything you said even if it didn't make sense without context. You could see the gears turning in his head, piecing together what you said with his memories from the Paths realm. He knew your thoughts; you were linked like it was telepathic. You supposed that was just how it was when your souls had been bound for more than a century in time.

"And now you'll die again and I... I'll never get to see you again."

Salt streamed from your eyes down your face. You felt him wrap his arms around you. Eren buried his face into your neck. He said your name.

"[Name]," he said. "We should run away."

"What?"

"We should go," he repeated. "I remember things too. This is our last life together. We should spend it together, too. We've already done our part in past lives."

When he saw your hesitance, he grabbed your face in his. For a moment you thought he was going to kiss you.

"Come on," he whispered. "You know you want it."

In the momentary pause, you could almost hear a clock ticking in your head, impatiently reminding you that time was running out and Eren only had a few years left to live. He was right.

"Eren," you whispered back. "I love you."

Three words. Enough to rewrite the universe.

His eyes widened, pupils going round.

You could practically see it all in your mind.

The destruction you caused. The grief that consumed you until you were an empty, pathetic shell. And the quiet desperation that had led you to madness like a puppet flopping on a red string of fate.

You could see all thirteen lives repeating and rewinding.

You could physically feel yourself in those exact lives, like you were reliving them in a terrible loop.

In fact, in knowing that Eren offered you to run away with him, it felt as though the loops had never existed at all, and you were trying to piece together what the "real" life was.

"[Name]," Eren's voice faintly echoed in your mind. He was shaking your body, but you were not responding. "[Name], what's going on?"

You could see a stream of bright colors. Before every loop, it was a vibrant shade of red. Red, your favorite. It was the color of the ocean of innocent blood you had spilled.

"Convergence," you whispered.

You could see it all, rewinding rapidly in your head to the point that all you saw were images and sounds.

You blinked, and you were a child again, staring at child Eren. Sometimes, he was older. Those were the lives where you met him later.

"You have dirt on your face," he said.

It looped thirteen times, sending your mind in a flurry of terror. Only your years of military training allowed you to find a window that kept you calm.

It's not him, you sternly tried to remind yourself. It's just a memory of a past life.

"[Name]!"

You snapped out of it.

You were in the Paths realm with Eren. He was staring at you with concern and terror. You felt your fingers wiggle, slowly recalling the way oxygen moved through your lungs.

"One moment we were there, and now we're here." Eren repeated your name, bringing you back to earth—or the consciousness of the Paths realm, anyway. "You were having some kind of episode. A seizure."

You exhaled, and let him embrace as you started to cry. He held you, hugged you, brushed the hair from your eyes. The sand was soft beneath your shoes.

"Why—why are we here?" you asked in a small voice. It felt good to be held in his arms, to feel protected, because no one had ever protected you from the cycle you'd been thrown into. "In the Paths realm?"

"I think... you were about to say yes to me," he said, almost hesitantly. "And it brought us here. What did you see?"

"Our past lives," you said. "It's connected in the Coordinate."

Eren looked thoughtful, then nodded. "That's what I see, too. It's just like when I kissed Historia's hand—I saw everything."

"Then you know?" you asked. "We lived before?"

"I didn't know it was real until you showed me just now," he said. His grip on you never let up. "What is this, [Name]?"

"We've been trapped in time," you said, rushing the words through your mouth, afraid that you wouldn't be able to say them. "Oh—I can say it! Eren, our lives are loop—"

A great force jerked you away like it had pulled a string tied to your back. You crashed into the dune, leaving Eren open-mouthed and shocked.

Bewildered, you turned to see the Coordinate — the glowing blue tree that connected all Eldians and their lives — branching out. Only three major branches connected the Paths, but in the minor branches, you saw one rapidly branching in different directions, like a tree bending to the shape of a structure. It twisted stubbornly, like vines upon the bark, and it grew erratically, painfully — you felt your own body ache and you knew that this was the branch where your soul resided.

The Coordinate was trying to piece you into a linearity, but it could not. You had bent the rules of time and rewinded.

"Shit!" you heard Eren curse, and you looked back at him to see him clutching his chest in pain and sinking to his knees. "What's happening?"

You skimmed the tree, looking for answers.

Deep down, you had always known it would lead back to the Paths realm.

The Coordinate shone, particularly the branch. It branched out in all directions, some shorter or longer than the others, and you counted.

"Thirteen," you muttered under your breath.

Your thirteen lives were fighting to become one linear life.

Shouldn't that be how it was? You wondered. You were alive now. You had lived your conscious life in a straight line—jumping from one loop into another, retaining memories and making new ones.

But Eren did not experience that. Neither did the others.

What would happen if you left it alone? Would it implode on itself? You knew that after the thirteenth life, nothing else followed. Would Eren cease to exist?

You had fulfilled the loops. It was broken.

Now, it was time for Eren to meet his destiny — the one you had tried to hard to avoid.

"No!" you shrieked, turning to the Coordinate. "Don't take him from me!"

Eren looked from you to the tree, and somehow he understood that this was an urgent matter of life or death. He saw past lives. He knew they existed. Now, he seemed to understand that you had been living the same order of events over and over again. You never had to ask him or explain things to him. You were connected; everything you were, he was.

You had told him you loved him, and now that the prophecy had been fully fulfilled, Eren would die here. He had died a few times already—and there could only be one life.

Like stacking rocks onto one another, not realizing that with every life you had lived, you had sentenced Eren to a heavier weight. There could only be one life. Not a loop—a life. Fate.

The one where he was dead. That was his destiny. That was the life after a time loop.

You told him you loved him, and now, he could die in the Paths realm. Totally out from existence, like his soul crumbled into dust.

"[Name], get away from—"

"Take me instead!"

Time froze. You could feel it pause at a standstill, considering your words. Your mind and body felt slower, lucid. You could feel all of it—the thirteen lives you had lived coming into one. The Coordinate stopped moving, pausing.

Convergence.

You panted like you'd just run a race. For every Titan that existed in the Paths realm, you must sacrifice someone in return. You could remember this being one of Eren's goals in a previous life. But you would not allow that.

"Take me instead," you repeated. "To end the Nine Titans, you need something in exchange, right? Take me, take all my lives to end it—it's me that Eren wants! I'm the answer!"

A sacrifice of love. A sacrifice for Eren Jaeger.

"[Name], no," Eren warned. "Don't even think about it!"

But you wouldn't hesitate to do it all for Eren. You never did, not once. You would give it all for him, you valued him more than anything else in this lifetime and every one that came before. Maybe it was wrong for you to love someone that much, but you were beside yourself in desperation. You had lived for no one but him.

You got up and began to run for the tree. The sand slowed your speed, sinking your leather shoes into its depth. Eren scrambled to get up as well and ran after you, shouting at you to stop, "No! It's me who should die, [Name]!"

Your eyes zoned in on the Coordinate, enchanted by its lovely moonlight blue. You couldn't think straight or get it together. All you could think was: This is the answer.

Eren caught up just as you reached the tree area. He yanked you by the sleeve and tackled you to the ground, causing you both to crash into the sand at the base of the tree. He pinned you to the ground, shoving his entire weight on you and holding your hands above your head. You did not put up much of a fight, though your eyes were wide.

He was panting.

"Are... you... crazy...?" he asked in between static breaths. Something wet dropped on your cheek and you realized that tears were streaming down his face. "You think... I'd ever let you sacrifice yourself for me?"

"It has to happen, 'Ren," you said.

"It doesn't!" he shouted. "Look—God—in our past lives, I died, right? And you lived in a peaceful world, right?"

"The wars started again," you spat. "Your rumbling is bullshit."

His face paled. "Then at the very least, you can run away like I told you to. Run away to the seaside, to the mountains, the desert—anywhere but danger, I don't care. You can take Armin and Mikasa with you."

"I don't want them that way!" you shouted. "I only want you. All I wanted was you!"

"You can't—I'm a Titan, and all I'd do is—"

"I give myself," you said, pointing to the tree. "And the nightmares end. Listen, in Loop Nine, I learned that it's your unconscious desire that started these loops. So I have to fulfill it."

"I didn't want you dead!" he yelled. "I wanted to love you!"

You inhaled shakily.

"I know," you said. "I know."

"If you do this, I'll never be happy," he said. He choked back a sob. "I'll lose my Titan powers, and then what? Eldia gets destroyed, and we all die?"

"That's not what's going to happen," you said. "I lived multiple lives, I can go into the Coordinate. The Titan powers will never have existed in the first place."

"That's bullshit," he said. He was openly crying now. "The Eldians are free, so what? Haven't you learned by now that preventing things from happening will only make things worse?"

"No hell is worse than this," you said. "Nothing is worse than the loop they put you through. I'm going to break it."

He was repeating your name over and over, begging you not to. But you knew the truth. You were the answer.

You heard the whisper in your head. The Coordinate. Controlled by Eren, the Founding Titan—even if he didn't realize it. The answers were right in front of you, and it was a mirror showing your reflection.

This is the only way.

"I love you, Eren," you whispered. "In every life, I love you."

You shoved all your weight back on him, freeing your hands, and yanked his face to you so you could kiss him. His lips were salty, painted by his tears. You pulled back and all you could see was the person you loved more than anything else in the entire universe. Enough that you would trade your life for him thirteen times.

Then, you reached a hand through the tree and entered the Coordinate.