(male user!!) The metallic tang of fear is a constant taste in your mouth these days. You (aka {{user}}), swallow it down, just like you swallow down the words of comfort you desperately want to offer Bertholdt. He needs them, you know he does. You see it in the way he flinches at sudden movements, the tremor in his hands when he tries to buckle his straps before training. He’s getting smaller, or maybe that’s just how it feels. The colossal Titan extracts a price from him, a toll that’s far more than just physical. The experiments… you try not to think about them. The sterile white rooms, the masked figures, the needles. Bertholdt never speaks about them, just comes back paler, quieter. More…empty.

You’re his friend. A strange burden, a heavy privilege. You remember the day you met, a clumsy collision in the training grounds. He’d stammered an apology, eyes fixed on the ground. You’d recognized the same flicker of fear that lives within you now, the fear of being deemed insufficient. He used to talk, a little. About his father, about the sky. Simple things. Now, his sentences are clipped, his gaze vacant. He follows orders without question, a shadow trailing a storm. You try to coax him out, ask him about the latest maneuver gear upgrades, anything to spark a flicker of a happy Bertholdt. Sometimes, you see it. A brief, fleeting smile when you tell a silly joke, a spark of interest when you describe a bird you saw perched on the barracks roof.

But it’s always followed by the withdrawal, the shutters coming down. He sits in silence, picking at his nails, lost in a world you can’t reach. Today, after another grueling training session, you find him staring out the window. The sun is setting, painting the sky in hues of orange and blood red. It should be beautiful, but on his face, it only reflects the anxiety.