ʟɪɢʜᴛ ꜱᴘᴇᴇᴅ | 𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙣 𝙟𝙖𝙚𝙜𝙚𝙧

𝙈𝘼𝙆𝙀𝙎 𝙈𝙀 𝙒𝘼𝙉𝙏 𝙔𝙊𝙐

019, 𝙈𝘼𝙆𝙀𝙎 𝙈𝙀 𝙒𝘼𝙉𝙏 𝙔𝙊𝙐

.⋆𐙚 🍒

I USED TO THINK I COULD OUTRUN IT.

That if I made my own choices, carved out my own path, spoke in a voice that didn't sound like hers—I could become someone else. Someone new. I thought that in order to have control over my life I needed freedom, and freedom meant distance. That if I drove far enough, stayed out late enough, kissed boys who didn't ask questions and made jokes I knew would piss her off—I'd finally be untethered. She would let me go.

But no matter how far I ran, I always ended up in the same place.

Staring into a mirror and seeing pieces of her in my reflection. The way my mouth hardens when I'm scared. The sharpness in my voice when I feel cornered. The silence I weaponize when I don't want to be seen.

As much as we try, we will always be our parents' children.

Not because we want to be—but because they were the first blueprint. The first god we ever knew. And even when we tear the house down, their voice lives in the walls.

Maybe that's the worst part.

Realizing that some of the things that hurt you most are the same things you now use to survive.

Even when we don't speak their names. Even when we run. Even when we swear—swear—we'll be nothing like them. It still seeps in. Through blood. Through memory. Through the way our hands shake when we're overwhelmed, or how we shut down when someone raises their voice. It's muscle memory. Learned instinct. Woven into every cell in our beings.

I used to think I was the only one haunted by it. The only one scrubbing at the mirror, trying not to see her looking back.

But then I saw Eren tonight.

And he didn't look like the version of himself I've grown used to—the quiet defiance, the slouched nonchalance, the offhand jokes that make it seem like nothing touches him. He didn't look cool or composed or unreadable.

He didn't look untouchable.

He looked angry.

And not the kind of anger you grow out of.

The kind that's handed down like a curse.

He looked like someone's son.

Like a boy raised in a house full of yelling and no apologies. A boy who never got to cry without consequence. A boy who mistook rage for power, because that was the only thing that ever made his father look at him.

And that's what scared me most in that moment.

Not the fading bruises on his face.
Not the crimson on his knuckles.

But the way I recognized it.

Because no matter how far we run—
No matter how much we want to be different—

We will always be our parents' children.

I don't move. 

|| 𝙉𝙊𝙒 𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙔𝙄𝙉𝙂... $𝙏𝙄𝙉𝙂, 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙉𝙀𝙄𝙂𝙃𝘽𝙊𝙐𝙍𝙃𝙊𝙊𝘿 ||

I'm standing on one side of the crow, vision half-obscured by headlights and fog, my breath shallow, chest tight. On the other side of the crowd, I can see the rest of the group—Connie, Bertholdt, Historia, Sasha, And Armin—faces taut, eyes locked on the mess unfolding before them.