Chapter Text
Soft silt beneath his fingers was the first thing Erwin felt, which didn't make sense since he should be lying in a field of bloody gravel from the Beast Titan's deadly pitches. He dug his hand into the velvety feel of it and let his other senses gradually return to him.
All was quiet except for a soft, not entirely unpleasant whooshing sound that filled the scentless air. He felt neither hot nor cold. He let his eyelids crack open, and above him was a deep purple sky decorated with twinkling stars and a column of light that splintered off into branches like an ancient, glowing tree.
His eyes sprang open and he abruptly sat up. This was not what he thought hell would look like.
"Hello, Commander," said a voice to his right, and he turned to see a young man slowly approaching him from several metres away. Erwin squinted and looked closer at his face, trying to place why he seemed so familiar...
"Eren Jaeger?" Erwin realized with disbelief. "How... what is this?"
Eren glanced around him, then looked back at Erwin. He was so different from how Erwin had seen him just hours ago in Shiganshina. This Eren was taller, and his hair was longer, but it was more than that; something in his expression was so dark that it was hard to reckon the young man before him with the eager, driven teenager from the 104th.
"This is the Paths," Eren said, and Erwin thought even his voice sounded leaden. "It's how all Eldians are connected, through our founder, Ymir."
Erwin got to his feet and went to brush the silt off his clothing, surprised to find that it hadn't stuck to him at all. "I don't understand."
"I know. But you will. I'd like to give you all the answers you were looking for."
"Answers? How did you know...? How are we.... What is all this? Are we dead?"
"Not yet, but soon," Eren replied without emotion. "You never made it to the basement, Commander. Would you like to start there?"
Erwin's mouth dropped open, stunned into uncharacteristic silence. "I don't..."
Eren turned, and suddenly an old wooden door was in front of them. "Come," he said, and he opened the door.
Beyond it was a dark, organized, study that had the unmistakable cool mustiness of a cellar.
The basement.
Erwin's heart raced. Despite his momentary inability to wrap his head around his situation, he couldn't resist the temptation of all the answers to his wonderings somehow being offered to him in that moment.
He entered the room and the quiet purple land disappeared behind the doorframe, replaced by a set of dark stone stairs. When he turned to face the interior of the basement, he was startled to see the Eren he recognized, Mikasa Ackerman, Levi, and Hanji standing and staring with trepidation at two books on the desk before them. The older, darker version of Eren observed from the shadows.
"We're standing in my memory now," he said, watching his younger self hesitate to lift the book's cover and receive tender assistance from Mikasa. "This is the moment everything... the past, present, future... everything changed."
Erwin's mind danced frantically at the implications of his words. Eren's memory... of the basement.
"So the mission to retake Maria succeeded, then? We killed Braun, Hoover, and the Beast Titan, and sealed the wall?"
"Sort of," Eren said with a disinterested shrug. "The mission succeeded, but Reiner and the Beast Titan escaped. We'll get to that later."
The Beast Titan had escaped. Erwin moved closer to look at Levi's face. How had he failed? How was he taking the failure? Levi's closed-off face was slightly pinched, and Erwin knew what that meant.
"Who survived, on the other side of the wall?" he asked.
"Squad Levi, and Hanji."
"Squad Levi and Hanji," Erwin breathed. "But that's..."
"Eight of us, plus one survivor from the Beast Titan's attack. But we succeeded, Commander."
"And you made it here, to the basement."
"Yes."
Erwin took a deep breath as the pieces started to fit together. He didn't understand nearly enough yet, but it was clear from Eren's cool composure that he had both time and answers, and he was willing to share them with his (former, soon to be dead?) commander.
He turned to the people in the memory, his eyes lingering on Levi before standing next to him and reading over memory-Eren's shoulder.
"So everything... my father somehow got it right. We were right all along."
Erwin stood with Eren on the sandy shore and gazed out at the expanse of shining, undulating blue. His mind whirled with the information from the basement that was as overwhelming as the revelation of the sea, and he was flooded with a devastating combination of relief, wonder, grief, gratitude, and fury. He gripped his hair in his left hand and felt in danger of tearing it from his skull.
"You got some of it right," Eren corrected, "just as the Wallists got some of it right, just as the Marleyans and the Restorationists did... but no one ever understood the full history and meaning of it all besides the Founding Titan."
Erwin dropped his hand and looked at the young man who suddenly seemed so, so old. "Which is you," he said.
"Which is me," Eren repeated.
"But you weren't able to access this power or knowledge before."
"No."
And then the sounds of the Survey Corps experiencing the ocean for the first time pierced Erwin's consciousness. He left Eren's side and wandered the shore, taking in the unusual screams of joy instead of terror. He saw Levi sitting on a rock not too far away with his shoes off and his trousers rolled up to his knees. He looked out at the water with a slightly pained expression, fiddling with something in his hand. As Erwin approached, he realized with stab in his chest that it was his bolo tie that Levi held. His hand automatically went to the stone at his throat, and sat in the sand next to the memory of Levi, wishing he could reach out to him.
"So how did you unlock it?" he asked as Eren walked over and joined him. "The Founder's power, I mean?"
Eren laughed once without mirth and gave Erwin an unusual smile. "From my point of view, it's all kind of funny now. Mm... not funny, but the irony is, well, it's cruel, really." He turned back to the scene of his comrades splashing in the waves. "The man who killed you and robbed you of your dream to reach the basement is actually the one who made it possible for you to learn of its contents anyway."
"So you learned the Beast Titan's identity then?"
Eren nodded. "Zeke Jaeger."
Erwin felt like his eyes were going to pop out of his head. He gaped at the oblivious Levi next to him, then back at Eren. "You mean Grisha's... your father's... your brother?"
"The very same."
Thoughts scrambled into place in Erwin's mind, making sense of previously inane bits of information. "I see... because Grisha's first wife had royal blood, which of course was passed to Zeke... and his connection to you combined with the royal blood must have somehow allowed you to unlock the power of the Founding Titan, which previously could only ever be used by royals bound to the vow to renounce war... incredible..." Erwin stopped rambling when he realized Eren was chuckling next to him.
"Well, shit." Eren's mouth twisted into something bitterly rueful. "I have no regrets about fighting to save Armin, but we never could stop ourselves from wondering how things would have turned out if it had been you instead. It took you about an hour to figure out what took us years to piece together. And now that everything is the way it is... I've never once looked back, but fuck, if I knew it was going to be like this..."
"Eren, I'm afraid I don't understand you," Erwin said.
"No, but you will." He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. "I need you to know everything, Commander. I need you to have all the information before you help me decide."
"Decide what?"
"If it's all worth it."
If the memory of the ocean was a peaceful dream, this new scene was nothing short of a nightmare, as bad as any Erwin had suffered.
"So this... this is what war looks like beyond the walls," Erwin said grimly as bullets whizzed through the air and bombs exploded around them, he senses accosted by suffering and death in every direction. "This is a human versus human war."
"Yes and no," Eren said, and Erwin followed his gaze to the sky, where something huge and metal was miraculously flying above them.
"Oh..." Erwin whispered, marvelling at the airship, but he didn't have long to sit with his wonder. Small figures, too many to count, were pouring from the ship and falling through the air, parachutes blooming above them to slow their descent.
And then... one scream, louder and more urgent than all the rest, cut through the air. Erwin's amazement turned to horror as brilliant flashes of yellow light erupted beneath the parachutes, and the next thing he knew, titans were raining from the sky.
"No.... no!" he couldn't help himself from yelling as he watching the humanoid monsters crash into the enemy's encampment. Because to Erwin, they weren't the enemy. They were just people suffering the same fate, the same fear, that his people had been subjected to for the last century.
They had finally unraveled the mystery of titans and found the freedom they'd sacrificed so much for....
But this... this wasn't freedom.
This was hell.
"Why is this happening?" Erwin cried, unable to maintain his composure in the face of the unstoppable tragedy all around him.
"They don't know any other way," Eren said calmy. His empty apathy was deeply unsettling, and it wasn't until Erwin heard muffled grunts of pain behind him that he turned to look into the trench they were standing over.
This memory of Eren had long hair like the one next to him, but he wore a khaki military uniform, and he was sawing off his leg.
"What..." Erwin whispered, horrified and transfixed as he watched the determined young man thrust his own bayonet into his eye. He had never seen such terrifying tenacity from any of his other soldiers... save one, whose quiet and steadfast determination looked much, much different.
The scene changed, and they were standing in a city with huge brick buildings and wide streets that rumbled with horseless carriages. The memory was not meant for Erwin to take in the sights, though, so he watched as Marleyan soldiers ruthlessly antagonized wounded Eldian veterans, laughing as they fell screaming and shaking to the ground. The act was so repulsive, especially after witnessing the traumatic scene of the war, that bile rose to Erwin's throat.
He recognized the crippled, semi-blind Eren among the veterans who had fallen, and saw a young boy with a yellow armband helping him up with gentle kindness.
"Who is that?" Erwin asked.
Eren's apathetic demeanour somehow deepened even further. "A pawn."
Well, that was a sentiment Erwin resonated with more than Eren knew. Or maybe Eren did know, and that's why he was here, witnessing these memories in the moments before his death in Shiganshina.
The scene changed again, though they were still in the same unfamiliar city.
"This is the internment zone Grisha wrote about, isn't it," Erwin realized as he observed the endless yellow armbands and the haggard faces bearing witness to their oppression and poverty.
"Yes."
Memory-Eren was standing next to a brick building talking to a man with blond hair, a matching beard, and glasses that obscured his eyes. Erwin listened in silence as the conversation placed more pieces into the puzzle. This was Zeke Jaeger... the Beast Titan... the man who killed him... and the man who apparently wanted to rid the world of Titans through mass eugenics.
"Eren... I must say, I'm shocked that you agree with him," Erwin said, glancing over at Eren. His expression had finally morphed from apathetic to something vaguely resembling disgust, and Erwin understood. "Ah... another pawn?"
"They were all pawns," he spit. "In the end, I was, too."
The scene shifted again, and Erwin was standing on the shoulder of Eren's titan form, looking at burning rubble littered with the dismembered body parts of what had clearly been hundreds of people.
"Oh..." The sound escaped him before he could stop it. Every time he turned his head, some fresh new horror and revelation of the greater world's truth awaited, and it was making him dizzy. He gripped a lock of titan hair with his left hand and watched as battles of titans and humans waged around him. It was nightmarish, lethal chaos. Ahead, the Beast Titan lumbered through the streets, and Erwin could just make out a small form flying gracefully through the air towards it.
"Horrible, isn't it?" Eren said, appearing at Erwin's right side.
"Eren, this is..." Erwin's throat felt tight.
"It get's so much worse, Commander."
Erwin didn't know if he was ready for that. He had always been so sure of his ability to stare down any horror and remain steadfast in his charge forward, but this was all coming at him so fast, and he still didn't understand why Eren was showing him all this to begin with.
"How many years have passed? Since the battle for Wall Maria?" Erwin asked in a daze.
"Four."
"All this in four years..."
"Maybe less... or maybe not at all, if we'd saved you instead." Eren's voice sounded, for the first time since he'd brought Erwin to this trail of memories, unsure and hesitant. He sounded like a boy again.
"So that's why you're showing me all this," he guessed. "You want to know what I would have done differently."
"I don't know if we'd really be able to answer that without going through every single moment of the last four years, and I'd rather not live through it all again," Eren said. "But all this, and everything that's still to come... I can't help but wonder, if there's a way to prevent it, should I take it?"
Erwin looked out at the battles before him just as Levi felled the Beast Titan.
"Well, at least one good thing came of this," he said, letting go to the titan's hair to gesture towards Levi's small frame standing over the fallen beast.
"Unfortunately... no."
Then they were standing in a wooden and metal vessel that was moving so smoothly it was almost imperceptible. Only by catching a glimpse out of a small window did Erwin realize that they were flying. It was unlike flying through the air with vertical maneuvering gear- fast, but this speed was smooth and calm...
But he wasn't there to marvel over this new form of flight. The Eren of the memory was chained up against the interior wall of the flying vessel, and leaning against the wall adjacent to him, shirtless and steaming with titan blood, was an otherwise unharmed Zeke Jaeger.
Levi stood in the middle of it all, looking with unmasked hatred between the two brothers. He made a comment about Eren's face being as kickable as ever, and Erwin almost smiled. Almost.
"So this was all part of a grand scheme? This attack?" Erwin asked.
"Part of my scheme. I roped them into it without their consent," Eren answered. "And they still..." he trailed off and shook his head as the news was delivered about Sasha's death. It did not particularly mean anything to Erwin, but he watched Levi's face carefully as he learned of yet another fallen subordinate, another cherished comrade. Levi had had nearly five years with this squad, and judging by the trajectory of events, he was going to lose everyone all over again.
"Let's leave this one," Erwin said, turning away. He felt Eren turn a mildly questioning eye towards him, but said nothing.
They traveled like that through Eren's memories, and Erwin slowly learned all the details.
He watched the Jaegerists explain calmly, delighted with their own cleverness, how they'd drugged most of the MP, and some members of the other military branches, with Zeke's spinal fluid.
He watched Trost transform into a battlefield between the world within the walls and Marleyan forces.
He watched the Beast Titan appear yet again, sitting atop Wall Rose as Eren tried to make his way towards him while fighting off the Armour.
He heard the Beast scream, and watched the rest of his former comrades turn into mindless, people-eating monsters.
He watched Eren's head get blown clean off his body, watched something slither through the air from Eren's neck and attach to his severed head the moment it fell into Zeke Jaeger's open palm, and he felt the Earth shake when Eren activated the rumbling.
"Eren, the walls... just how many titans did they contain?" Erwin asked as the cavalry of colossal titans flattened the ground beneath them in their mindless march.
"Millions."
"But this... this will..." Erwin had never been rendered speechless so often in such a short period of time. Then again, he couldn't be sure how long he'd been doing this. How much time had he experienced, witnessing the events of his future and Eren's past?
"Yes. It... it might destroy the whole world. I honestly don't know yet." Eren was standing next to him on the head of the monstrous skeleton that moved like a freakish millipede among the red sea of titan bodies. He stared ahead, expressionless, and for a moment Erwin thought he might hit him.
"Eren!" he shouted. This was so beyond anything he ever could have imagined. It was too enormous, too horrific... "Eren, surely this can't be worth it! Why are you doing this?"
For a moment there was just the deafening roar of thousands of ceaseless titan footsteps.
"After Shiganshina, we were awarded medals of honour by Historia," Eren said. "After she hung the medal around our neck, we were supposed to kiss her hand. When I did, well... that connection with her royal blood gave me a vision of the future. A horrible, devastating future that I couldn't really understand, except for one thing..."
Eren turned and look Erwin dead in the eyes. "All this, the reason I always kept marching forward and never looked back, was because it would lead to the eradication of the power of the titans from this world."
They were back beneath the purple sky, sitting on atop a soft, silty dune. Erwin hadn't spoken, too lost in contemplation to know what to say yet. Eren waited patiently, arms wrapped around his legs, chin resting on one knee.
"I'm not sure what you're looking for from me, Eren," Erwin finally said. "What are you hoping to accomplish here?"
Eren heaved a heavy sigh. "I'm not sure either. But you, more than almost anyone else, dedicated your whole heart to the fight against the titans. You sacrificed everything- your soldiers, your arm, your own happiness- for a future of freedom. You, more than anyone else, might be able to understand why I did all that I did. But now that it's happening, I can't help but wonder... is it all worth it? To rid the world of titans... but at the cost of potentially the entire world outside the walls?"
Erwin felt his forehead crease in thought. "I thought I'd had to make some terrible decisions as the Commander of the Survey Corps, but I've never dealt with anything of this magnitude. To know 2000 years of history, to be able to travel through time at will and visit any Eldian through this place... Eren, you know what they call someone with that kind of power, right?"
Eren looked down, said anything.
"So why would you- by every standard, a god- come to a mere human with such limited knowledge, perspective, and bias?" Erwin finished. "What could you possibly hope will come from this?"
"I want... I don't know," Eren said quietly. "I wanted to see how you'd react to it all. You pieced it together so quickly, the mystery about royal blood and the Founding Titan. You took in all the information at every turn and understood the situation in a way that we desperately needed all those times. And I thought, maybe if you'd been with us, things wouldn't have turned out this way. Maybe the rest of the world wouldn't have to die."
"But the power of the titans... would it still be eradicated?"
"I don't know."
"The weight of lives," Erwin mused bitterly. "The endless moral nightmare of war."
"Some part of me... the part of me that's just Eren Jaeger, really wants to destroy the rest of the world. That part of me is filled with so much anger and hatred that I can't contain it, I've never been able to. But the part of me that's the Founding Titan is more complicated, more... compassionate. It's filled with 2000 years of pain and grief, and the complete and utter exhaustion of Ymir's eternity of slavery in here, all alone, trapped by the curse of love."
Erwin eyebrows furrowed, not understanding.
"Ah, I haven't explained Ymir," Eren realized. "It's not that complicated, really. She loved someone against all logic and sacrificed her life for him. Because of that one choice, combined with the titan power she'd accidentally found, this place, this curse, was born. And she and the rest of the world have had to suffer because of it ever since. All because of love."
"I see." Though he didn't, not really. Erwin spent a lot of time in thought, but love wasn't one of the things he often contemplated. Perhaps he should have. Maybe then he'd better understand this situation he now found himself in. "So you want my counsel?"
"Yes..." Eren hedged. "But I also... I'm sorry, but I also want you to choose. I can't do this alone. I need someone else to know what I know, and decide if it's worth it or not."
"In other words, you want to pass off the fate of the world into my hands."
"I've always been weak," Eren said with a shrug. "I suppose becoming a god doesn't really change that."
Erwin shook his head. "You're many things, Eren, but weak has never been one of them." His voice was thick with frustration. He didn't want to offer comfort or advice. He didn't want to decide on the fate of the whole Goddamn world. He'd run towards the Beast Titan with the belief that all that was behind him, and he'd felt... well, he'd felt really fucking relieved.
"Right now," Eren continued, "you're frozen in a moment of indecision that could potentially change everything. Despite all odds, you clung to life after Zeke's attack. You clung to life on that rooftop while we all wept and screamed and begged, and I think it was because of this. I think that rooftop is a defining moment in history, and if we want... we can go back and change everything."
"By saving my life instead of Armin's." Erwin was so tired.
Eren nodded once. "If that were to happen, it would all start over there. Everything here... well, I don't know if it would keep happening and we would switch to a new timeline or what, but we would never know. We wouldn't know about any of this. We would be right back there in the city, still having yet to reach the basement to find the answers you looked for your whole life."
And that was another thing irritating Erwin. "How did you know about that, by the way?"
"You said it yourself. I'm basically a god. All Eldians since Ymir are connected through the Paths, which I have unlimited access to. I've been here for what feels like many, many years. Maybe decades. I've learned a lot."
"And yet you still came to me?"
Eren shrugged.
"Well, I can't say I understand it from your perspective..." Erwin said slowly, rubbing his hand over his face, "but with the burden of all those lives on your shoulders... I'm familiar with that particular pain, albeit on a smaller scale."
"There's something else, too." Eren shifted a little. "Like I said, I've spent a lot of time here, and I've learned a lot. Because of Mikasa, I learned as much about the Ackerman bloodline as I could. It was difficult, since they're one of the few bloodlines that are immune to the powers of the Founding titan. But in everything I learned, it all came down to one undeniable truth: Ackermans are, for whatever reason, extraordinary people, and to receive the love and devotion of an Ackerman is the rarest and most beautiful gift this world has to offer."
Erwin sat in stunned silence, his mouth hanging open a little. "Eren, what...?"
"It's not just your decision what happens on that rooftop. It's a decision made under a bond of complete and utter trust." Eren paused. "Commander, would you like to see the Captain again?"
Erwin felt his heart shudder to a stop. He had to consciously remind himself to breathe again. "You can do that?" His voice sounded distant in his ears.
"Ackermans are hard for me to reach except in moments of extreme vulnerability," Eren explained, "but there's one moment, not too far from the present moment that I'm in, where I can reach Captain Levi. Time works differently here. I can give you that, as much as you need, to make a decision together. If you want. And I'm prepared to continue on my current path, if that's what you decide. But if you want to try to change things, if you think none of this is worth it... I'll trust whatever choice you make."
"And Levi...?"
"It's up to you if you want to bring him in to this. Like I said, you'll have as much or as little time as you need. I won't even need to be there. But I can't do this alone, Commander... it's too much."
"I understand, Eren," Erwin said quietly, still not sure that he did, but knowing in his heart that this was the role he was born to play, and he'd have to play it one last time, it seemed. The question that stood, though, was whether or not to bring his loyal subordinate, his most trusted confidante, his best friend into this. It certainly didn't seem fair, though it was hardly fair what Eren was doing to him right now. But should Erwin shoulder this new burden alone?
Maybe Eren was right in asking for help. Maybe Erwin should follow his lead. Levi always wanted to be there for him, never felt like he could do enough to help. Maybe this was a way he could show Levi just how much value he placed in his judgement.
"Ok." He heaved a sigh and stood. "Ok," he said again. "Take me to Levi."