Destine to be His (Eren Jaeger x reader)

Not His

You wait patiently for night fall. 

Allow yourself to continue to be thrown around by the bustle of camp like a limp, staggering deer. Avoid suspicion, and keep everyone's eyes off you. 

Eren is surprisingly the easiest to avoid, probably because he's already too busy preparing the attack on El Mundo and the Peninsula. So you stay quietly in your tent for much of the day, planning out your escape. 

Eren said that he would not start the Rumbling early. He claimed he didn't want to take any chances if El Mundo still stood a chance against them, but he agreed that he and Zeke would launch an attack on the Peninsula in only two days time. The clock was ticking, you had to act now or never...

"Hey birdie." A soft voice behind you break you from your thoughts. Eren's tall figure looming over you. You'd been so lost in thought you hadn't even heard him come in.

You look up at him slowly, his emerald eyes scanning you softly, trying to find a reaction in you. Probably something to explain you absent mindedness, but instead he finds nothing. Perhaps that's because even after all that's happen, all it takes is one look into those wild, green gemstones, and your mind goes blank. 

"Hey..." You mutter, breaking his gaze to look at your hands. You twirl your ring on your finger awkwardly, but Eren seems to notice. 

"I have something to show you." The titan shifter announces suddenly. You watch him turn and pull open a drawer in the bed side table. He slowly removes a string necklace with a golden pendent. 

When he draws closer, taking a seat beside you, you realize what it is.

A key.

It is clearly old and worn, but shiny nonetheless. 

"This was the last gift my father gave to me." Eren explains simply, perhaps a bit too simply, twisting the worn leather string between his fingers. You glance up into Eren's eyes, expecting to find sadness, but instead you just find confliction as he stares at the tiny golden thing. "This... and his titan." He mutters with a bitter edge.

Eren slowly runs his fingers over the soft grooves of the metal piece before turning his gaze to you. "But it's more than that... this key is the bridge between our worlds..." He takes a deep breath and you feel it against your side with how close he's sitting. "Without out it I'd have never known about the world beyond Paradise, I'd have seen what the world beyond is like," Eren let's go of the key, his hand taking yours firmly, lovingly, and you see your silver ring twinkle next to his. Eren looks up at you slowly, a gentle smile on his face, the first one you'd seen in days. "without this key I'd never have met you, y/n." 

Eren holds onto your hand tightly, perhaps afraid that if he let go, you'd disappear forever. His gaze darkens slightly with sadness. "My best friends betrayed me, my people rejected me, I've seen too many good people die, too many bad people live, and there are too many voices in my head, I may very well go mad!" Eren snaps, his face contorting into pain and you see his ocean eyes shimmer with agony. Haunted by the relentless ghosts of his father, and those who'd come before him.

You feel your own eyes water upon seeing his pain.

Eren takes a deep, ragged breath, trying desperately to keep it it together. "When that happens... when I do finally loose myself..." He whispers slowly, turning your palm over in his. He presses the key into your palm gently, curling your fingers around the cool metal. 

You feel the weight of it. Of his dreams, his hopes, his agony... his future and his past, all complied in that tiny piece of metal sitting in your palm.