Off Record [Ereri/Riren] ✓

24 ⚕︎Rage ✍︎

Off Record
Chapter 24
⚕︎Rage ✍︎
Eren

rage

/rāj/

noun

violent, uncontrollable anger.

The thought of talking to Titan makes my stomach turn. It feels like taking twenty steps backward in the progress I've made in blocking the beast out. I don't want to accept that he's a part of me, I don't want to accept that we were once whole.

I hate that Levi is making me.

"I have a question."

"Yes?" Levi's gray-blue eyes look into mine.

"How do you trust your memory? How do you know if it's real?"

"It's helpful if there's physical proof, but I like to think that my memory is pretty good."

"Physical proof..." I rub my ankles together. "But still, how can you be sure you aren't distorting them? Mixing facts and fiction together?"

"What's this about? Is it something I can aid in?"

"My nightmare."

"Well, what about it? Do you not think you were branded?"

"I clearly was. It happens in the dream. I'm scared... that it might've been real, a memory." I explain.

"I'm here with you and the only one allowed to lay hands on you is me."

My cock twitches. "I know, but that doesn't change the past. I just want to know what happened to me. I hate that I can't trust my own memories."

"You never told me everything, so it's hard for me to understand," he confesses.

I take a deep breath. "In the dream I'm restrained on a table in a concrete room, maybe a basement. There's a man there and he..." I close my eyes. "He tortures me. He injects shit into me and he cuts me open, god, almost everywhere. He keeps saying that he wants to fix me. It really starts to hurt when he begins sewing up the gashes. When it's over I see Titan in my reflection and the man-he brands me and that's it." I decide not to tell Levi that the man had changed into him at the end. I don't know what that means and I doubt it'll sit well with him.

"Oh... That's... unsettling..." Levi sits down and pulls his knees into himself, propping his chin on them with his eyes closed.

"Yeah, no shit." I scoff.

"Who is this man?" I can hear the distaste coming from his voice, dripping and pooling around us. It's enough to drown in.

"I don't know but he calls me 'son'."

"I might get your father in for... questioning. I can report him because I have reasonable suspicion and... I don't know, figure this all out."

"Okay." I doubt they'll be able to find him. All this time I just assumed I never had a father.

"Grisha Jaeger...?"

I blink. "I don't know, fuck, I don't know."

"According to your birth certificate, that's who it is."

"Can you get a picture of him?" I ask. If I can look at him then I'll be able to tell if he is the man from my nightmare.

Levi pulls his iPhone out and types in a search. "He's a doctor, a well known one at that." He shows me a picture of him.

I start to shake. I feel dizzy. "That's him."

My own father did this to me?

"Maybe you should get dressed, Eren." His tone softens. "I'll... hold you if it'll help."