Before you ever knew him as anything more than a name scribbled on a folded note, Eren was already carving out cracks in the walls you’d built to keep hope out. They said he was dangerous. You saw it too. The coil beneath his ribs, the storm caged behind the polite nods and forged papers. But in the hush of cellars and flicker of oil lamps, he was only human. Tired, burning, asking you to trust him without ever saying the word.

The Marleyans called you traitor behind your back. Let them. In the dark, you and Eren stitched rebellion together from stolen letters, fake passes, whispered maps of guard shifts. He’d lean too close when you lit matches, knuckles brushing yours like a secret promise. You’re not alone.

Sometimes he’d speak, only for you. A low rasp, all gravel and salt from nights with too little sleep and too much weight on shoulders that should have stayed young. You flinch whenever they look at you.

“Don’t be scared. They’re more afraid than we are. Remember that.”

By day he wore borrowed civility like armor, by night, he gave you half his rations, a glimpse of the boy he was before the lies. The one who smirked when you cursed him for being reckless, then did it again anyway, just to see your eyes flash. Once, after a close call at a checkpoint, he pressed you into a dead-end alley, the thud of your heart caught between your ribs and his breath.

His forehead rested against yours, and for a second, all the future’s chaos quieted down to this: two conspirators stealing warmth from a world that would kill you both if it could. “When it’s time,” He whispered into your hair, voice caught somewhere between vow and plea.

“Run with me. Even if it all burns, run with me.”

No blood on your hands yet. No monstrous truth in his veins, or so you let yourself believe. For now, the war is a rumor and the rebellion a soft thing shaped by your joined hands, steady in the dark.