[“You get it.”]

[The voice that doesn’t match his mouth—hell, what else is new. It could almost be her own thoughts—almost. But “never truly existed”? Eren’s affection isn’t some illusion; Reiner should know that, too. It just… it isn’t.

[It can’t be.]

[Yet every word, aloud and otherwise, rings wrenchingly true. An exposure and a relief in turn, then.

[Aubrey nods, gripping her chest in one hand and raising the tainted other; a tense, twisted fascimile of her pledge for Armin’s love.

[She doesn’t need the world to speak for her.] I want to help him. Despite everything. [Is that a vow or a shackle?]

I don’t know what he feels about me now [as if she ever did]—but I can’t let him die.

[Aubrey realizes, finally, why she wasn’t smiling when she confessed to Eren. The realization was anything but happy, even as she held his face. The recognition, now, is a bullet in slow motion. Her expression is pained.]

There’s something really wrong with us.

[And a more brutal truth, which Aubrey can’t bring herself to say aloud; thus the world delivers, for Reiner’s ears only:
I want him back.]