bakerstreet | Changes

It's a pretty common question, don't you think? Why do I need a reason?

It's a pretty common question when you meet someone. Not after you pull their arms and legs off and grill them on their fucking life story.

I skipped a step. [Humor? Hard to tell. Eren doesn't really do that anymore, and was never much good at it anyway.]

Try not to think too hard about it. [Yeah right. He had a reason after all, actually.

[Remember his name. He wants you to.]

[She sneers.]

I think too hard about everything. 'S kind of my whole deal.

[In between thinking way too little. Thinking about things doesn't mean being sensible about them, anyway.]

Your mind must be a crowded place.

[Hm. There's a beat of silence.]

Are all of the memories in your mind your own? [Only wondering...]

Fuck're you talking about? Yeah, they're mine. I'm not fucking psychic.

And I don't even have half of them, anyway.

[Or, well... she does, but muddled up and missing parts. And she's not about to correct herself on that, since she didn't mean to say it in the first place.]

[Too late. She's said it.]

You don't have them, or they aren't clear? [He's more than psychic, but he can't read her mind; he just has certain suspicions about the mutable nature of memory.]

What are you, my fucking shrink?

[Funny joke. She hasn't seen a psychiatrist or a therapist since she bit that one doctor's arm when she was twelve.]

None of your fucking business.

A "shrink"? [Not exactly an apt term, considering.]

Psychiatrist.

Where the fuck did you crawl out of, anyway?

[Stupid question, and she knows it. But, really - how do you not know what a shrink is, Eren?]

Hm? [Eren cocks one eyebrow up; to his credit, it's more expression than he usually shows.]

What do you mean by that? The reality I came from?

Even if I told you, you wouldn't know what I was talking about. Paradis Island on a planet called Earth. Probably not the same as yours. Apparently there are a lot of places called that.

And they don't have psychiatry there?

Fuck. Maybe it is Paradise. [Tongue in cheek, obviously. Much as she hates doctors, she's not actually dense enough to think Eren's world sounds good just on that.]

[He does know what psychiatry is, vaguely, and he's had experience with it, believe it or not, so he gets the joke. He thinks it's odd that she bothered making one. It's always dangerous to start seeing someone as a human, but that impression has already settled in by now. He wishes she'd smiled. He wants to know what it looks like on a face like Bethan's. Not quite right, if he had to guess.

[Realizing he must have mumbled, he raises his voice just a notch and corrects her pronounciation.] Paradis. [That is: pair-a-dee.]

Though, some do call it Paradise. [Somehow, his tone is dryer than its ever been, when he says that; cold, but he continues.]

I hadn't heard of psychiatry there. Our doctors only worked with bodies, as far as I know. My father was one. [Yep! Same fuck off he mentioned earlier!]

Growing up, we didn't know that the mainland - Marley - existed. Once I went there a while, I learned about psychiatrists. Doctors that treat the insane, right? [He's really not trying to be an asshole when he says that. It's the term they use.]

I knew a few. [He inclines his head a bit - perhaps a touch of...humor, if not wryness, to this, himself? Essentially saying - Me? Spending time with doctors for the insane? Shocking.]

But I've never heard them called a shrink before.

[What, like she's not allowed to know French?]

[(She does not know French.)]

Doctors that try to. [Important distinction. As a self-described crazy bitch, she can't say it ever did much for her.] 'S not like they're any smarter than the rest of them. Just weird motherfuckers trying to get in your head.

And they're patronising as fuck.

[Eren quite brazenly scoffs, which is, again, more than he usually gives - and it's in commisseration.]

Trust me. [Funny.] I know.

They don't actually try to help anyone. Not where I come from.

Eldians are kept in their hospitals to keep them quiet until they rot and die. That's all. [Has he even mentioned the word "Eldian" to her yet? He can't remember.]

Actually, they'll try to kill them faster if they can. Or more slowly, so long as they suffer.

See, I knew it! I fucking knew it!

[She seems to have forgotten to hate him, for a moment, in favour of something strangely triumphant. Rationally, she doesn't know it at all: rationally, she knows that she's paranoid and that most of the doctors she's seen probably weren't war criminals trying to cull the excess population. But irrationally...]

[Listen. Sometimes, it's weirdly validating to hear someone echo back the voices in your head.]

They're all the fucking same!

[Eren doesn't realize that it's paranoia talking, and his expression shifts just barely into something...

[Intrigued, if not vaguely concerned - but it's most likely that the emotion itself is hard to decipher regardless.]

They did that to you? Where you're from?

Why? [The same reason? He wouldn't be surprised.]

[She blinks, and looks, for a split second, a bit embarrassed. Just briefly, before she rallies back to righteous disgust.]

Not to me. But, you know... people. Tuskegee. Nelly Bly. All that shit.

[Which, she's realising as she says it, definitely means nothing to him.]

I've never heard those names before. [And there is just a bit of an edge to his voice that relays this should be obvious. She clocked that one right.

[He has a guess - a revealing one, but it isn't a secret.]

A race? [There's just a beat, and then.] In our case, anyway. That's my guess.

[She shrugs.]

Yeah, I guess. A lot of the time.

But sometimes just... poor people. Crazy people, disabled people. Queer people, a lot of the time. Women. Anyone who's not fucking powerful enough to miss.

That's how it fucking works. Medicine, politics, law, all the shit that comes from the top. It just... it's there to clear the way, you know?

They're a bit subtler than you, is all.

[It all makes sense. Terrible sense. Eren's face betrays nothing.]

Some things are universal, then.

[For the record, though:] That isn't my reasoning.

[Ugh.]

...Fine. Fuck it. What's your reasoning?

[Knowing she'll regret asking, if only because he might start thinking it matters. It doesn't matter. The outcome's what matters. But... maybe she wants to know, a bit, whether there's a reasoning that makes it seems less evil.]

[He's used to reciting it - can't be sure what he's already told her, and what he hasn't. What Bethan doesn't realize - what Eren keeps well hidden, despite everything - is that his mind is a nauseating slurry of his own memories and the memories of others; knowledge of infinite time and all the maddening effects that come with it.

[There's no pretty answer, of course. He wants to save the people he loves - maybe that's the most attractive; he wants to see the world empty, because it disappointed him - that's the ugliest.

[He starts with the practical, the logical. He's doing it only because he has to - because there is no other choice.]

The world seeks to destroy my people - Devils with dirty blood. That's what they think. [Maybe it's true that Eren is a Devil but it isn't because he's Eldian.]

I have the power to stop that onslaught, but there's only one way. Others fail to see this.

Negotiation, or one battle - it will delay the inevitable. Those from my home sought to end the conflict for fifty years.

I can't accept that. My people will live long lives in peace. That's what I'm assuring.

[He expects resistence; would almost be disappointed without it.]

It's as simple as it's ever been. You fight, and you win, or you die.

[She's not about to let it go without resistance, it's true. But she does actually listen, at least, and with uncharacteristic thoughtfulness.]

Yeah, you know the funny thing about that? People keep fighting. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they nuke a population from orbit. Sometimes they get everything they fucking want out of the war.

Never been a time when everyone lived all happy and peaceful, though. No matter how many people died for it.

[This, she is aware as she says it, is the same argument they had before. But also...]

Who's your people, anyway? The count the ones who disagree with you?

[Suddenly he doesn't have ears - can't hear anything she's said until the last two questions; can't afford to think that way, maybe, true as it is.

[The real truth is in the people. Paradis suffered when the walls came down as well. Thousands of the people Eren claims to be protecting died, terrified and confused.

[His people are still alive. There's no telling if they'll remain that way, but he intends for them to; he intends for them to kill him in the process.

[But his answer is simple enough.]

Of course I do. They all disagree with me. [Because Floch and the Jaegerists are simply not his concern. They can agree with him all they want - he depended on that for a significant portion of his plan, and they delivered on exactly the manipulation he constructed.

[It's the people who he made a promise to in that cart that matter; only them and a small handful of others.

[They will live long lives in peace. If war begins again once they're gone, he doesn't care.

[He doesn't say that. ~~He's also categorically wrong.~~]

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cw: ableist language

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cw: fictional racism, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, medical abuse (yeah it's bad)

cw: medical paranoia

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cw: fictional racism allusion

cw: non-fictional racism allusion, also various other institutional bigotry

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cw: fictional slurs, fictional racism, genocide

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