Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

Eren met Bertholt Hoover properly three days later, and the meeting told him almost nothing except that Bertholt was, without question, the worst liar of the three.

It happened by accident, the way most important things in Eren’s life seemed to — a supply crate too heavy for one person, a corridor too narrow for two people to pass without acknowledging each other, and suddenly Eren found himself hauling one end of a crate alongside a tall, quiet boy who wouldn’t meet his eyes and whose hands, Eren noticed, trembled faintly the entire walk to the storeroom.

"You’re Bertholt," Eren said, once the crate was safely down.

The boy went very still. "Reiner told you."

"He mentioned your name. Nothing else."

"That’s — " Bertholt exhaled, some of the tension leaving his shoulders, though not much. "That’s good. I mean. I don’t know if it’s good. I don’t know anything anymore, honestly, I haven’t for weeks." He glanced toward the door like he expected someone to appear and end the conversation for him. "You’re not what I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"Someone colder, maybe. Or angrier." Bertholt’s hands twisted together, an old nervous habit Eren recognized instantly because Armin had a version of it too. "You held a dying man’s friend’s hand at formation last week. Reiner told me that too. I don’t know how to reconcile that with what we’ve been told you’re supposed to be."

"What are you told I’m supposed to be?"

Bertholt looked at him properly for the first time, something haunted behind his eyes. "A weapon. Just a weapon, wearing a boy’s shape so it’s easier to approach." His voice dropped almost to nothing. "I don’t think that’s true anymore. I don’t think it was ever true. I think I’ve just been too afraid to say so out loud until right now."

He left before Eren could respond, footsteps too quick to be casual, and Eren stood there a long moment turning the strange, fragile honesty of the encounter over in his mind — a third piece of the puzzle, more frightened than either Reiner or Annie had let themselves appear, and somehow that fear felt more honest than either of their careful control.

He told Mikasa and Armin that evening, the three of them tucked into their usual corner with fresh bandages still faintly staining Armin’s fingers from another long shift.

"Three of them," Armin said slowly, working it through. "Reiner, Annie, and now Bertholt. All sent from Marley, all carrying some version of what you carry, all apparently more conflicted about their mission than whoever sent them probably accounted for."

"That’s either very good news or a trap designed to look like good news," Mikasa said, cutting straight to the thing Eren had been avoiding thinking too hard about himself. "Three people expressing doubt is either three genuine consciences cracking under pressure, or a coordinated strategy to earn exactly the trust that makes eventual betrayal easier."

"I don’t think it’s a strategy." Eren turned Bertholt’s trembling hands over in his memory, the genuine fear in his voice. "Nobody fakes shaking that badly on purpose. Reiner’s controlled. Annie’s controlled. Bertholt isn’t controlled at all. If this is an act, he’s the worst actor of the three by a wide margin."

"Or he’s exactly convincing enough that you believe that," Mikasa pointed out, gently but firmly. "I’m not saying don’t trust your read on him, Eren. I’m saying hold it carefully. The same way we’ve held every other piece of this puzzle. Hope isn’t the same thing as certainty."

"I know that."

"I know you know it. I just keep needing to say it, because I think it’s the thing you’re most likely to forget in the middle of caring about people." She said it without accusation, just plain observation, the kind only she ever managed to deliver in a way that didn’t sting. "That’s not a flaw, for what it’s worth. It’s usually the reason people end up trusting you enough to tell you the truth in the first place. I just don’t want it to be the reason you get hurt."

Eren found Bertholt again two days later, this time deliberately, catching him alone at the edge of the training yard during a rare lull between drills.

"You said you don’t think it was ever true," Eren said, without preamble. "That I’m just a weapon."

Bertholt startled, glancing around before answering, old habitual caution winning out even now. "I shouldn’t have said that."

"But you did. I want to know why."

Bertholt was quiet a long moment, hands twisting again, before finally speaking, voice barely above a whisper. "Because I’ve watched you for months now. Since before the attack. I watched you carry a wounded recruit on your back for half a mile rather than leave him behind for a faster retreat. I watched you argue with your own instructor about fairness in squad assignments. I watched you kiss a girl on a rooftop like the whole world hadn’t already ended once and wasn’t currently trying to end again." His voice cracked, raw. "None of that is what a weapon does, Eren. Weapons don’t carry people. They don’t argue for fairness. They definitely don’t fall in love."

The observation landed with unexpected weight, and Eren found himself, for a strange moment, unable to answer at all.

"Then why are you still here?" he asked finally. "If you don’t believe the mission anymore?"

"Because believing something different doesn’t make the danger of my situation disappear." Bertholt’s eyes were wet, though he blinked hard against it. "I have people back home too, Eren. People who’ll pay for my failure if I simply walk away from this. It’s not as simple as choosing to be good instead of following orders. I wish it were. I think about wishing it were, every single night."

Something in the confession landed close enough to Eren’s own history — a boy carrying an impossible weight not entirely of his own choosing, terrified of the cost either direction demanded — that he found himself, against every careful warning Mikasa had given him, reaching out and gripping Bertholt’s shoulder.

"I understand more of that than you’d think," Eren said quietly. "I’ve spent almost two years carrying something I didn’t choose either. It doesn’t make either of our situations simple. But it does mean I’m not going to pretend I can’t understand why you’re still here, even hating it."

Bertholt looked at him, something fragile and grateful flickering behind his frightened eyes. "Reiner said you’d be like this. Understanding, even when you probably shouldn’t be." A shaky, almost-laugh. "I told him it was probably a trap. He said maybe it was just you being decent, and decent people are rare enough that it’s worth the risk of believing in one."

"What do you think?"

"I think," Bertholt said slowly, "that I want to believe Reiner’s right. I’m just not sure yet if I’m allowed to."

He walked off before Eren could press further, leaving him standing alone at the edge of the yard with yet another fragile, complicated thread woven into an already tangled puzzle.

That night, on their strip of ground behind the barracks, Eren relayed the conversation to Mikasa in full, watching her expression carefully for the concern he expected.

"You’re building relationships with all three of them," she said slowly, once he’d finished. "Not just watching them. Actually building something."

"Is that wrong?"

"I don’t know yet if it’s wrong. I know it’s dangerous." She considered her next words carefully. "But I also watched you do the exact same thing with me, once. Choose to trust someone the world had given you every reason to be wary of, because something about them felt worth the risk anyway." A small, rueful smile. "I can’t exactly criticize you for a pattern that’s already worked out rather well for both of us."

He laughed, some of the day’s tension easing at her honesty. "So you’re not going to tell me I’m being reckless?"

"I’m going to tell you to be careful, which isn’t the same thing as reckless, and which I’ll probably keep telling you for as long as we both live." She leaned into him, steady despite the mounting complexity of everything unfolding around them. "But I trust your instincts about people, Eren. You saw something true in me before most people bothered to look past the surface. Maybe you’re seeing something true in them too. I just want you prepared for the possibility that not every one of them survives the pressure they’re under long enough for that truth to matter."

He pulled her close, the weight of the conversation settling into something heavier but somehow more bearable with her steady presence anchoring him against it.

"Sixty-nine days," he murmured.

"We’ll be ready," she said, the same unshakeable certainty carrying through despite the growing tangle of allies and enemies and uncertain in-betweens surrounding them. "Whatever Reiner, Annie, and Bertholt ultimately choose. Whatever Marley sends next. We face it together, the way we’ve faced everything else."

He believed her, the way he always did, and let the promise settle warm against the mounting cold of everything still waiting to arrive.

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