bakerstreet | Changes

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.]

[She gives him a long, sideways look, from under the greasy fall of her hair. Her lip curls a little.]

Be a lot fucking easier if it was, huh?

Is that what you tell yourself? That it's all like this, everyone's rotten, so there's nothing to save?

No.

There's goodness on both sides. I know that.

Answer the question.

[She scowls at him, and sucks the blood off her thumb, flexing her fingers. The bite mark on her hand is pink and indented, but already starting to fade. She stares at it for almost a full minute.]

I haven't killed anyone.

[Probably untrue, and in her heart of hearts, she knows that. But she's never meant to kill anyone, and that still counts for something. It has to.]

[She sighs, and looks up at him.]

I don't fucking know, okay? But I'm not a murderer and I'm not a torturer and I don't...

[Another sigh, equal parts aggrieved and tired. He doesn't have a right to this. Any of this. She can't shake the feeling that she's back in therapy, except if she flips a table or puts a fist through the wall, it's not going to get her out of it.]

[Which means, to her disgust, the only ways she can see are silence or the truth. And she's pretty sure he can outwait her on silence.]

...I've got a little brother. Fucking spoiled little brat. [But there's something different in the way she says it. It's not a real insult, and it's not hateful. It's so fond it's almost normal.]

When he was born, I decided to get better. I took the pills, I ate and drank and quit bashing my head on things, I even went to the fucking shrink. I tried. I never hurt him. I'd never fucking hurt him.

I dunno. Maybe it means it's all rotten, if that's the best I can do even when I try like hell. But he's a good kid. I didn't ruin him all the way.

[Eren listens, just as he always has, when Bethan speaks. He asked for a reason; it's a story he wants to hear. He couldn't say why. Sometimes Eren's mind only makes sense to Eren, and sometimes it simply doesn't make sense to anyone. Bethan is right. It would be a lot easier if everything, everywhere was rotten, but it isn't. For whatever reason, he still wants to know that, even if it hurts.

[At last, he speaks, and it's simple - casual, albeit as flat as ever.]

I've wondered before what a relationship like that might be like. My brother and I didn't know each other while I was growing up.

[They know each other know, but that's another ugly story. He feels disgusted to have brought him up at all, honestly, but it doesn't show. He's gotten good at pretending he can stomach Zeke.]

[The fact that she can't get under his skin is all the worse because he keeps getting under hers. In this case, not in the same way his politics do - it's just that family is important.]

[She doesn't want to feel sorry for him. It's the last thing she wants. But even more than her parents, even more than Uncle Eoin, her brothers have been the anchors holding her to the world ever since she got back to her family. Imagining not knowing them hurts - especially because, while she's often thought that they would both be better off without her, she knows damn well that she would be a worse person without them. To this day, it's Dara's weekly visits that mean she eats food, takes occasional showers, and takes slightly more care not to get herself killed. And it's the thought of them that stops her from being way, way more violent than she already is. She'd be lost without her family, too.]

[Which means now she's having empathy for this fucker, which is the worst.]

You got anyone?

[Quid pro quo is a double-edged sword; Eren should know this. He asked Bethan a painful question; she asks him one, and it's a natural one.

[It would all be easier to stomach, Eren thinks, if one could tell themselves that it was only happening because Eren had never known love. Surely, to do what he's doing, one must have never known love. Who would do it despite?

[Someone might do it for love. Someone is.

["You got anyone?" Not a brother. Not a father or a mother - not anymore. Aside from that, though...he's spoiled for choice.

[It just isn't enough.

[He searches for words - enough to provide an answer, but not enough to hurt; it's impossible. He still doesn't know their fates, but he knows that the battle comes. He knows that their deaths are possible - likely, even...

[He has to believe they're stronger than he is. He has to believe they're braver.

[He knows they are. Eren loves. He loves desperately, violently, mournfully. He loves. He loves. He loves.]

There are people that I care about. [His words are cheap. It isn't enough. He feels guilt, rotten, decaying. He longs.

[He can't list them all. He'd rattle off names all day - Armin, Mikasa, Jean, Connie, Sasha - God, Sasha, dead - Marco, dead - Reiner - Reiner Braun, and Annie, even - yes, even Annie. Captain Levi, Commander Hange (dead, dead, dead). Historia, whom he met with on the farm - protected, loved, cherished. He thinks of Petra, and Eld, Oluo, Gunther, even after all these years - their faces, their trusts, the indents of bite marks on their hands - like Eren's bite marks, like Bethan's bite marks, but she'd never trust him, and they shouldn't have--

[Eren's eyes flicker back up to Bethan. He's lost focus. Pupils dialate through stormy green, and he evens his gaze back into something cold, false--

[He tries, but. She gave him her brother. He should give her something.

[Why not? They're both here.]

Armin. And Mikasa. [Mikasa. Mikasa. Mikasa. The grief is insurmountable. In his mind, he's cradling her safe in his arms - finally, finally, but it isn't real. He'll craft her a world from scratch - he'll build them a cabin with his mind and they'll live there until he wastes away, the world crumbling all around them.

[Eren rolls his head on his shoulders, cracking his neck. He can't look at Bethan for a moment - this is his distraction. His hand jerks violently as his side.]

We grew up together.

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cw: mild self-harm

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jesus christ the way I blacked out for 10 minutes and wrote you a novel