Not another second was spared explaining yourself when you didn't need to. Eren made it clear that his men were yours to command. When you left that house, they followed. That was their only job, to follow you and your commands, and that's what they did. You're not sure if Jean and Connie followed as well but that didn't matter much to you.
You were ten hours ahead of schedule but you didn't regret a thing. The window ten hours from now was just the safest option, the option with the least collateral damage because Reiner and Grisha would be alone with none of their men.
Unfortunately, you'd run out of patience, which means that if Reiner and Grisha's men got in the way, then so be it. As you drove everything around you just started to blur, you felt as if all the trees became one, all the lanes in the road became one, and everything you felt was only centered on one emotion.
Anger.
As you drove you heard your phone buzzing, you saw the number was unknown but you answered it anyway. Eren was using burners, he texted you from one last time so you didn't think anything of it this time. When you answered the phone, he didn't say anything other than an address before hanging up right after.
He wants you to meet him, you recognized his voice the second you heard it and you also noticed how off it sounded. You haven't made the singular phone call you needed to make to get Eren's men to the location where Grisha and Reiner would be, which meant you could afford to make this little detour.
You make a U-turn and head towards the address Eren said over the phone. You recognized the area just off the top of your head, it was a park right off the highway and it wasn't too far from where you were either.
Half an hour later, you arrived at the address and double-checked by putting it into your phone. Your map led you to a more secluded area of the park, it was a completely different section with a field of grass cleared out and then surrounded by trees all around.
As you approached this field of bright green grass, you saw Eren waiting there for you. He was just standing and looking at his phone in one hand, he looked up when he heard you step on a handful of leaves underneath your shoes. He smiled gently at you, relieved by your presence. You had a harder time getting yourself to smile given your situation but for him, you managed to force a soft smile back as you got in front of him.
"I heard what happened...to Mikasa. I'm sorry." His smile dropped as he apologized but it wasn't his fault so his apology didn't mean much to you, leaving you unable to find a reply while in front of him.
"I also heard that you plan on rushing in ambushing Grisha and Reiner." He acknowledged, the tone of his voice wasn't what you were expecting at all and it threw you off.
"Correct."
"I know you're upset...I know how you're feeling and while a week ago I would have agreed with what you plan to do, I can't anymore." He confesses and you can feel your heart sink, you almost don't believe what you're hearing at all.
"Stop. You're sounding like Connie and Connie was asking me to pretend like any of what they've done has been fair. He wanted me to overlook their unfair decision and I hope that you aren't asking for the same." You interrupted with a head shake and he sighed before speaking again.
"You're right, what they did to you and to me is unfair...but I'm asking you to not overlook it but to let it end with us." He stated and you truly thought you were hearing this all wrong, he couldn't have been saying what you thought he was saying.
"You have evidence to get them arrested—concrete evidence. Let the unfairness end with you and I."
"No. They don't get to get away with what they've done. Mikasa was innocent, she was never involved yet they didn't just murder her they left her to bleed out slowly and painfully...alone. Reiner took more from me than my rib, he took my sanity, my hope, my life...he and Grisha have taken everything from me and you want me to give them the mercy of handing them off to the police?!" Your tone had grown rough, it was as if you weren't even speaking to Eren.
"We can't have both y/n. This life and...us, it doesn't work, people become collateral because of the consequences of being involved in this. I've accepted that...and I choose you, this is me choosing you." He expresses and steps closer toward you but you find yourself wanting to take steps back.
"What are you talking about?" You question, your voice is a little shaky and you're looking at him for an answer but it takes him a minute to gather himself.
He's trying to figure out whether or not he should say what he desperately wants to say. All of a sudden he reaches for your hand, holding it with his fingers locked between yours.
"I love you...and to love you, I have to choose you. So I'm choosing you y/n, I am choosing to let this all end with us." He says calmly, looking you dead in the eyes and suddenly his touch that you remember always feeling cold...doesn't feel like anything at all.
You can't feel him, his hand holding yours and with the words coming out of his mouth...you feel, nothing. Nothing but anger.
All you do is shake your head, you can't move your lips to say anything to him but what you do know is that what he's saying to you isn't right. You shake your head repeatedly and snatch your hand away from his, like he's a stranger to you.
"I've been abused, tortured, and betrayed...I've watched my mother die, now Mikasa has died and I might as well have died at the hands of your father and Reiner. You don't even know what you're asking of me." You claimed, you looked up from the grass beneath you and met your eyes with his.
"I am no longer willing to risk your life for my own personal vengeance. Your life means more to me than anything and as much as I'd like to kill my father and Reiner, you mean more to me than that. I love you...if that's what loving you, costs me I am okay with that." He says those three words again, sending shivers throughout your body and disbelief to your heart.
"Stop saying that." You demand firmly and try to avoid unlocking your eyes from his but the softness in his eyes reminds you of sweeter moments.
"I love you—I am in love with you." He says again despite your demands, your heart starts thumping and it makes you feel uneasy.
You get a sour taste in your mouth, one you can't get rid of it. You take two small steps back, separating yourself from the man you once would've wanted to take five steps forward to.
"No...if you loved me, you wouldn't be trying to stop me." You denied it and watched the expression on his face change slowly, his eyes were full of desperation before but with what you said, he changed.
"No, it is because I love you that I can't let you risk your life carelessly!" He snaps at you, taking a step forward closer to you but you move three steps back.
"You saw what Reiner did to me...you saw the physical scars, you saw how I couldn't bear to see fire or a knife and yet you're still trying to stop me. You told me that you'd bring me his head but you're a fucking liar." You argued back to him and watched every bit of light leave from his eyes, the space between the two of you was suddenly infinite.
"If loving you and not wanting you to risk your life makes me a liar, I'm okay with that." He rebuttals and you just scoffed at him before looking off to the side.
"You know what? Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you do love me...but we have very different definitions of love clearly." You stated and did your best to keep your composure and not raise your voice again.
A silence falls between the two of you, the infinite space between not your bodies but your hearts is hard not to miss. You've never felt so far apart from Eren like you did in this moment.
As you are speaking to Eren, he is not even the one on your mind. Mikasa is. Your mother is. You are, everything you've lost is what's on your mind. All that you've lost due to Reiner, your father, and Grisha. They all had some kind of involvement in everything that has been taken from you.
Your mother was killed by your father, he choked her until she stopped breathing. Reiner cut Mikasa in non-vital areas but he cut deep, he let her bleed out slowly and painfully all alone. Grisha...he kidnapped you and sold you off to Reiner, just for Reiner to spend two weeks torturing you and taking you apart piece by piece like a puzzle. He destroyed you, there was no denying that.
"I would do anything for you and you know that. You know I would put my own father's head on a plate for you if that's what you wanted. You know how far I am willing to go for you, but that also means how far I am willing to go to make sure you remain alive. I will not risk your life any more than I already have. I won't." He says back to you but you hear none of it, you don't want to.
You can't even believe that this is the same man who promised he'd kill Reiner for you. This is the same man who had done terrible things to his own "friends" in your own protection but now...now he was backing out?
"You're scared...is that what all this is?" You raised your brows, thinking you were understanding why he was acting this way and you weren't.
"Y/n—"
"Take that fear and go tell Connie and Jean about it. Don't waste my time with fear I don't have." You stated and felt completely separated from him.
"I will go through with this with or without you. My decision was made without you and I will go through with it without you." You added and took a final step back, further separating yourself from him.
You have a calm and firm expression, the difference in your expressions is something you noticed but you can't afford to stop what you're doing because of him. He doesn't look nearly as calm, the light in his eyes is gone and instead replaced with a gloss that gives the impression he's on the verge of tears.
You turn around.
You don't allow for him to say anything else because you're afraid he might convince you if you stay any longer.
There's a difference between you and Eren. You both lost everything dear to you but you didn't want to protect him...you wanted to put an end to those who threaten his very life. He wanted to protect you, he wanted to save and cherish the last flower in the garden that had been destroyed. You wanted to destroy those who destroyed that same garden. That was the difference.
You walked away from him, heading off the grass to the cement pathway and you reached into your pocket to grab your phone that you then put to your ear.
"I need a favor."
——-
EREN POV:
Y/n's mother. Y/n. Mikasa. My mother...
And me.
We've all been collateral in a bigger game, collateral to my father and what he wants for himself and my half-brother. Y/n and I are the only ones to have survived being collateral yet here we stand, on opposite sides.
It was only when she walked away that I realized what was happening. My righteousness is not what it is supposed to be. I thought I was right...I thought I was right when I was chained to my father, listening to everything he told me to do and raised me to be without question. Now I thought I was right to tell y/n that we can't have both but if I thought I was right before...who's to say I'm right now? I was wrong then, I know that now, but that means I could be wrong now.
How ironic of me to tell her not to do the very thing I've been helping her do. I gave her my men to command to reach this point yet now that we're at this point, I'm asking her to back down. Sacrifices were made, not willingly, my mother, her mother, and Mikasa...they were all innocent in this. Even y/n.
But I am not.
I am not innocent in any of it. There is blood on my hands, just as much blood on my hands as my father's and for that, I cannot sit on my high horse. I do not have the higher ground like I thought I did. I don't have the right to tell her what she should and shouldn't do...especially when my father deserves it yet I did.
I did not kill Zeke or his mother, Dina, like I said I would. I found them, both of them, but with that information, I didn't do anything. I want all of this to end with me and y/n.
Levi told me I couldn't have both and I thought I could but now I see...I can't. My mother tried to have both and she ended up murdered, dead in her son's arms. Both do not exist. You can't be a loving individual and take the lives of others or engage with those who take the lives of others while being a loving individual, it just doesn't work.
I see that now.
Could anyone really say she was going too far? At what point has the line for too far already been crossed? She was tortured for two weeks, her innocent best friend was murdered in cold blood and so was her mother...too far didn't even exist compared to what they've already done.
But my hypocrisy may have just cost y/n her life.
Y/N POV:
"Since Armin purposely led us to the wrong place, I've found out where Reiner and Grisha will actually be. It's not a warehouse, it's an office building." You announced and placed the blueprint you retrieved for the building on the table.
You wanted to leave now but the favor you called in required you to return to Eren's estate and get everyone on the same page.
"I'll be direct when I say this, Reiner and Grisha are mine. I do not care to murder carelessly, my targets are Reiner and Grisha only but those who get in my way, including you all, will be considered collateral damage." You clarified loudly and looked a few in the eye before returning to the blueprint.
The favor you called in was from Pieck, she never said it but you knew she had men to spare for a price. She's more neutral than anybody in this chaos so she supplied you with the numbers of men you needed to match Grisha and Reiners combined before you just stormed in there.
In return for men you promised her territory, territory you'd be in possession of when you put a bullet in Reiner and Grisha's head. Territory you didn't even want but used to make a trade-off.
"I should also clarify that I have no care for any of you. Your lives will mean nothing to me when we ambush them, if you want compassion if any of you are to be injured, leave now. You will not have my compassion, my only goal is to have their debt repaid to me with their lives." You added in the middle of explaining your plan on how they were to infiltrate the building.
"None of you owe me any loyalty, I'm aware of that. Unlike Eren, you all will be granted a choice after all this is over. I know some of you were recruited to work for Eren forcefully, join me in this ambush, and after this is over, those who may wish to leave this kind of lifestyle are free to do so without any fear or restrictions. Including those of you who work for Pieck." You informed and you could feel the atmosphere around you change when you promised those who wanted it, freedom.
"Y/n?" Connie shuffled through the crowd and you looked up from the blueprint to look at him and what he had in his hand.
He approached you, he had a small box in his hand and handed it to you when he stopped next to you. You took the box after giving him a strange look.
"It was left at the front door." He explained and you proceeded to open the box.
There was no name on it, no note. Just a small white box.
When you pulled the top off you were met with further heartbreak. A finger. The finger wasn't random, it was a ring finger. More specifically Mikasa's ring finger...still wearing the same ring she wore since childhood that you'd recognize anywhere.
They sent you her fucking finger even though she was already dead.
The room was silent yet you felt like you could hear your heart beating so loudly it rang in your ears. You shut the box quickly and wipe the sudden tear running down your cheek off your face.
"We leave in an hour. Get the trucks as I instructed and load them with every fucking weapon you have." You held onto the now-closed box but quickly walked past Connie and through the crowd to leave to gather yourself.
By sending you this they were mocking you, all of this was funny to them.
It wasn't fair. Mikasa hadn't done anything wrong...she wasn't involved whatsoever yet she lost her life simply by being your best friend. She was murdered while you were with Eren, oblivious to what was going on and it cost her, her life. When you left the basement, reaching the top step and walking out to the hall you found that your blinking had slowed as you held this box.
You could still feel her presence when your eyes shut, it was as if she never left until you opened your eyes again and you were met with the harsh reality that she was in fact gone. You owed it to her, you owed her revenge, Reiner should not live another day on this earth, and neither should Grisha. You would make sure that they didn't, even if it cost you your own life.
You truly believed she was a far better friend to you than you were to her. She kept you grounded, kept you from losing your mind and she was the comfort you sought for after being kidnapped. She leveled things out for you and you would never find that in anyone else.
You stopped where you were in the hallway and let a few more tears flow, you haven't cried over her death like you needed to. You haven't sobbed the way you felt like sobbing because you couldn't justify sobbing when you could be planning instead but just for a moment...a second, you let your guard slip. You thought about how much better she made your life, how much better she made your childhood despite having the father that you had.
That minute you spent silently crying, was only have to stop when you reminded yourself what her death meant.
It meant blood for blood.
And all of a sudden that meant not just Reiner and Grisha...what Eren couldn't do, you would do.
——-