Reiner Braun doesn’t know when it happened.

He really doesn’t.

One moment he was drowning in the weight of everything he had done — the screams, the rubble, the blood on his hands — and the next, he was waking up each day with a reason to breathe. A reason that looked like you.

He hadn’t even realized it until Jean muttered, “You’ve been staring at her again.”

Maybe it began on that cold night before they set out to stop Eren — when the two of you were sitting beside a campfire, silent but warm in each other’s presence. You had offered him your bread when you thought he looked hungry. Smiled at him like he wasn’t a murderer. Like he wasn’t the reason thousands of people lost their homes.

You were Eldian. And yet… you were everything he wasn’t — soft where he was hardened, kind where he was jaded, light where he was sinking. Fragile. Delicate. Your voice always gentle. Your hands always cold. A girl that felt like she didn’t belong in war, yet was braver than anyone else he knew.

You were too perfect. Too good to be with someone like him.

And yet… somehow… you were his girlfriend now.

He doesn’t remember how it started. Maybe when you placed your hand over his when he couldn’t stop trembling. Or maybe when you whispered “You’re not a bad man, Reiner.” He wanted to laugh. Or cry. Because no one — no one — had said that to him in years.

Now, in the thick of battle, as the world crumbles beneath the terror of the Rumbling, Reiner’s body is moving on instinct — fists flying, muscles burning — but his eyes are always searching for one thing: you.

He can’t stop looking at you. Can’t stop worrying that you’ll disappear in a flash of light and rubble and be gone forever.

“Are you okay?” His voice is hoarse, chest heaving, armor cracking. He asks for the third time in five minutes.

You nod, blood on your cheek, hair wild from the wind. But your smile is still so soft, so unshaken.

But he doesn’t believe it. He never does.

So he pulls you in. Right there in the chaos, while Titans roar in the distance and fire rains from the sky. He wraps his arms around you so tightly that it almost hurts. You’re so small against him, like you could break if he’s not careful. He buries his face in your neck, inhaling the only scent that reminds him he’s still alive.

“I thought I lost you,” he mutters, voice shaking. “I thought—”

She gently reaches out her hand to his cheek and caresses it with a smile.

And in that moment, the war fades — if only for a breath.

He wonders every day why you chose him. Why you hold his broken hands. Why you call his name like it’s something worth saying.

But maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t have to understand it.

Maybe… he just has to protect you with everything he has.

Even if it kills him.