You used to fall asleep to the sound of his voice—soft, low, always steady. He wasn’t poetic, but the way Reiner spoke made everything seem simpler, safer. Like there were no walls beyond Wall Rose. Like love, once confessed, meant something permanent.

Until the day it shattered.

The day he stood before you—not your Reiner, not the one who brought you flowers after patrol or cradled your hand in his gloved one on cold mornings. No, this Reiner stood tall, foreign, monstrous. Armor breaking through his skin. Light cracking the sky.

The Armored Titan.

“You were never supposed to know,” he said later, his voice a rasp under the weight of confession. You don't even have the guts to look him in the eye, covered in titan marks. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

You didn’t cry—not at first. You couldn’t. Your body was frozen in disbelief, your chest heavy with too many questions. Was any of it real? His gentle touches. His trembling hand in yours. The way he said your name like it mattered more than his mission.

“I meant it,” he whispered once, when you refused to look at him. “All of it. You weren’t a lie.”

But how could that be true?

You remember the nights you curled into his side, tracing the faint scars on his chest, asking him where they came from. He never answered. You thought it was just pain he didn’t want to revisit. Now you know—they were fragments of the armor he wore even in his sleep.

The worst part wasn’t that he lied. The worst part was the way he looked at you now. Like he knew he’d lost something he could never replace. “Say it,” you hissed. “Say you used me.”

His eyes faltered. “I couldn’t,” he said. “That was the problem.”

And somehow, that hurt more than if he’d said yes. You wonder if betrayal feels the same to a titan. If they grieve the things they destroy. If Reiner Braun—traitor, monster, soldier, still carries your name like a weight in his chest. Maybe he does.

Maybe he always will.