[What a terrible, gouging relief.

[Reiner shares this—this love, this burden. This desire to help the man (the boy, almost, even now) intent on killing himself—hellbent on putting that responsibility in his loved ones’ hands. And here’s Aubrey and Reiner, taking up the task in another world, where no one’s lives are at stake but their own.

[Because they couldn’t stop caring about Eren at gunpoint.

It’s killing us, too.

[What else can they do?]

[And yet—Reiner’s quiet confession, afterthought that it may be; that catches her, too. Just what it ignites isn’t clear yet. The grip on her own chest presses tighter, as if she might rip her heart out with enough effort.]

Not for good. [He still smiled. He still laughed. Aubrey might have been lying to herself, but was Eren? It wouldn’t have crushed him so thoroughly if he’d been faking it all.] I-it’s as you said—he hasn’t shown it in a long time, but it’s still there.

[Her hand and Armin’s in Eren’s, all three of them chained… that wasn’t a lie, either.]

We can bring it out again.

[“We have to—I have to. There’s nothing else left.”]