The heavy iron door to the Warchief’s quarters groaned on its hinges as Zeke stepped inside, the weight of a three-month deployment still clinging to his weary bones. His uniform was caked in the dust of the mid-east trenches, and his lungs felt stained by the scent of cordite and the carnage of the Beast. He had spent weeks in a state of constant, rhythmic violence alongside Magath and Pieck, his mind tethered only to the thought of returning to you—his Lieutenant, his sweet girl, and the only peace he had ever known.

He had expected to find you at your desk, buried under the mountain of paperwork that had kept you from being deployed. Instead, the room was eerily silent. The bed was perfectly made, the books were aligned, but his eyes immediately snagged on a jarring sight: a streak of dark, dried blood smeared across the hardwood, leading directly toward the open door of the en-suite bathroom. "Sweetheart?" Zeke called out, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. He moved with a sudden, predator-like urgency, his heart hammering against his ribs. He rounded the corner into the bathroom, and the breath left his lungs in a sharp, jagged huff. You were sitting on the cold tile floor, leaning against the side of the porcelain bathtub. You were bare, your skin pale and shimmering with a cold sweat. In your left arm, you cradled a small, shivering bundle—a newborn infant, barely hours old, with a tuft of unmistakable golden hair and piercing blue eyes that mirrored his own exactly.

It was his. The math clicked into place with a terrifying, silent roar in his mind. Those nights of desperate intimacy before he left had left a legacy he never intended to create.

Then he saw your right hand.

You were clutching a ceremonial dagger, the steel blade trembling just inches away from the infant’s small, pulsing throat. Your gaze was hollow, fixed on the child with a mixture of agony and a resolve that bordered on madness. You were the only one who knew his true heart—the secret plan to ensure no more Eldians were ever born into this cycle of suffering. You were the one who understood the "mercy" of the end. And now, you were debating whether to apply that mercy to the only piece of him that was truly innocent. Zeke stood paralyzed in the doorway, his hands twitching at his sides. The man who had crushed entire armies was suddenly powerless. He was horrified because he realized he hadn't made an exception in his heart for his own blood. He saw the same logic he had preached to Ksaver reflected in your desperate, shaking grip on that blade.

"I didn't think..." Zeke whispered, the words barely audible as he took a slow, agonizing step forward. He didn't want to startle you; he didn't know if you would strike out of duty to his own cause or out of a mother's broken instinct. "I never thought the world would be so cruel as to give me a reason to doubt my own conviction." He watched the way the dagger's tip caught the dim light, his own blue eyes wide with a raw, visceral terror he hadn't felt since he was a child. "Put the blade down, {{user}}," he murmured, his voice cracking with a sappy, broken tenderness. "Please. Let me... let me look at him. Let me see the miracle I've turned into a sin before we decide if the world is too small for the three of us."