bakerstreet | Changes

[Back to her earlier point, then:]

Despite what you might assume, I'm not particularly fond of human experimentation.

No? Just happy to do all the violent bullshit with none of the data?

It's the same fucking thing, you idiot. It's treating people like things. You can tell yourself whatever you want, you've made your position pretty fucking clear.

I don't see people as things, either. [Animals, maybe, depending; but, no. Eren was well aware of the inherent value of each and every human life when he made his decision.]

I'm not saying it to comfort myself. I don't need that.

You seem to find everything I say offensive. [Not that he's necessarily saying she's wrong for that.]

We could easily talk about something else.

I find you offensive.

[She thought that was pretty obvious.]

You're a genocidal piece of shit fascist who still acts like he's better than me. I don't have to care what you think.

Or what we've got in common.

We've got a lot in common. [He'll say it until her head explodes. It's true.]

You're right, though. You don't have to care what I think. You can tell me I'm wrong until you're face turns blue. That's fine with me.

And you'll, what, vomit out more nihilistic moral relativism until you get mad and rip my arms off again?

Great. Sounds like so much fucking fun. I love being condescended to by Nazis.

Did I get angry? I don't remember getting angry.

You got angry. I remember that. [No nihilistic moral relativism in that one. Now he's just trying to get under her skin.]

No shit. I'm always fucking angry.

I know I'm a fucking mess. We're not talking about me.

[Bethan... you literally were.]

[Trying to get this woman to calm down long enough to stop slinging assumptions feels impossible, so...Eren will just continue poking the bear. What does he have to lose?]

This feels familiar. You're a fan of talking in circles.

You don't seem to want to talk about me, either. What's the alternative, then? I'm listening.

You could fuck off and die?

[He has a point, which makes it worse. She doesn't like being reminded of how much she talks in circles - how much the mental spiralling can turn into verbal spiralling, too. Or, given how she's starting to pace, into physical spiralling.]

[She rakes both hands back through her matted hair, grinding her teeth. Part of her wants to take the cycle the rest of the way - attack him again, get her ass handed to her again, die and wake up and feel like shit. It wouldn't achieve anything, but then again, none of this is going to achieve anything regardless.]

[Eventually, she turns on her heel and flops down on a nearby wall, still fidgeting, scratching at her wrists and the backs of her hands. Her glare is sour and impatient, but she does seem to have decided to change tack a little, at least.]

Okay, fine. What do you think we've got in common, besides both being crazy? I'm all fucking ears.

[They'll start with the objective. Maybe she'll actually entertain a conversation.]

I was changed as a child too. I'm not sure if you'd call it an experiment since the result was well known, but I was given inhuman abilities. I'm sure you remember.

"Super soldier" sounds fitting. A weapon.

You seemed like less of a super soldier. More like a fucking kaiju.

[She is, genuinely, trying. She chews at her fingernail until she manages to draw blood, her shoulders hunched up around her ears and her eyes not meeting his at all. But she is trying to entertain the conversation, if only because there doesn't seem to be much alternative.]

Who by?

[He'll try too, then - be honest, even (not that he hasn't been - it's a bit refreshing); anyway, it isn't exactly a secret.]

My father, in so many words.

[In so many words.

[There's a pause.]

What's a kaiju?

[That cuts through to her, where nothing else has. It shows in her expression, which for a moment registers something other than anger or disgust - a genuine horror, and, behind it, a genuine pity.]

[For all that she has been through herself, the one thing she has always had - whether she wanted it or not - was family. It's the one thing that anchors her, which keeps her, if not sane, at least somewhat grounded. It feels almost physically painful to imagine what it would have been like if, instead of being the one who she knew deep down would save her, her father had been one of the faceless men in the lab. If he had been the one holding the scalpel.]

Fuck. I...

That fucking sucks.

[What else can you even say?]

[It's the sort of statement that brings about pity in others, but Eren has no one to blame but himself - at least, that's what he's convinced himself, and maybe it really is true. Time stopped making sense a long time ago. He doesn't know if his father was the first to inject him with the titan serum - Eren, ten years old, screaming, begging him to stop, telling him he was afraid - or if he only did it after Eren whispered words of hatred into his mind nine years later.

[What else can you even say?

[It's all pretty impossible to explain.]

It's not pretty. [He can agree with that, at least. If she knew the method in which his father managed to actually transfer the Attack and Founding titan, Bethan would probably lose her lunch.]

I can't resent him for it, though.

[It comes back in flashes. All that fear at the hands of someone he'd always trusted more than anything, then some slurry of trapped consciousness that he barely remembers - and then, Eren, kneeling in the grass, staring at his father's bloody, broken glasses; Grisha was gone.

[It still hurts. Inside there's someone small who still remembers wanting to follow Grisha to other districts and help people. He never wanted to admit to his father that he'd been crying. He admired him.

[And then, all at once, he didn't anymore.]

Whatever way you look at it...he paid his price too.

[She doesn't want to sympathise with him. It kind of ruins this whole angry, ugly, cathartic thing, if she sympathises with him. It's much easier when he's just being an uncomplicated authoritarian asshole.]

[But she can't tell herself he's lying, either. It would be convenient if he was - but it's very obvious, if only because of how he brushes it off, that he isn't.]

Guess that's something.

[It's more than she got. Nobody - at least as far as she knows - paid for what happened to her, except her family. And yet... that's not helpful, really, either. Because when it's put in front of her like that, it's so fucking obvious that it doesn't matter what price anyone paid. Revenge doesn't make it not have happened.]

[She scrubs a hand over her jaw, and goes back to biting her nails.]

How old were you?

Edited 2024-08-11 13:48 (UTC)

[It's clear to see that she's disturbed. He can't blame her. She just told him that she'd been through the same, though he's certain their respective Hells were quite different.

[Not different enough, maybe. Eren's monotonous tone trudges along, though there is something marginally more subdued about it.]

Ten years old.

And you?

[Biting her nails isn't doing the trick any more. She bites her hand, instead, grinding her teeth down until she tastes salt.]

[I don't want to do this I don't want I don't help me I don't want to go back]

Eight. When they threw me out.

[Ah. Eldians in Marley join the military at six years old; Warrior candidates are turned into monsters the same way Eren was. When he was younger, he would have told anyone that fighting was his choice. He knows better now. He's seen the way the world cannibalizes its children. He doesn't resent it for himself, but, despite how Eren feels, thinks, what he will do, he is ever the contradiction. The world is a terrible place, but the people in it are all just people.

[It's not enough to save them, but Eren doesn't hate an eight year old girl who was made a human experiment. Of course he doesn't. Bethan was innocent. It's a terrible tragedy - an unforgivable sin. He gets it.]

I'm sorry. [He really means that.] I resent that that happened to you.

[She bites down on her hand; his jerks violently on his wrist. He doesn't seem to notice.]

Edited (little addition - they are the same, sorry) 2024-08-14 21:33 (UTC)

[She looks up then, glaring at him with eyes that look suspiciously red-rimmed. It is, at the very least, in the top five most vicious glares she has given him.]

That doesn't fucking help anything, does it?

Why the hell would I care if you're sorry?

[She might be a bit touchy about pity.]

[That makes two of them. He doesn’t outwardly react, of course. He’s gotten pretty good at that.]

You don’t want to hear it? Me either.

I’ll say it if I want to, though. It’s the truth. I’m not looking to gain anything. It sure as Hell doesn’t change the past, does it?

It doesn't change shit.

[She shakes her head in agreement, picking at the bloody bitemark that she's left on her hand.]

You know what I don't get? I don't get how you go through some shit like that, have that kind of boot on your neck, and all you want is to be the one wearing it.

[Yeah, just because they're having a conversation now, that doesn't mean she's not going to take potshots at him.]

I don't think any answer I give you would satisfy that question.

You're not standing in my position.

Thank fuck for that.

[She's back to chewing on her thumbnail, drawing a crimson bead of blood that she doesn't seem to notice.]

...Now what?

Tell me something else.

[A beat.]

Is it all rotten? [It seems that all that's left in Bethan's heart is hate.]

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cw: mild self-harm

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