Bertholdt's initial answer tells Eren what he wanted to know — what Bertholdt remembers. Of course if you're dead, then waking up must be a strange thing. He wonders how it felt for Hange, but he doesn't dare ask them anything like that.
The next thing Bertholdt says, though…
Anger clouds Eren's expression, something familiar and easy. He cannot allow despair, sadness, the anguish he feels at Armin's absence. He's reasonably sure Bertholdt didn't say that to cut him this deep, but it does it all the same.
"I won before we even met each other," he answers, his neutral tone clouded with the simmering rage he can't ever rid himself of. He will always hate the outside world and what they did, Marley and its oppression, the hatred everyone feels for descendants of tyrants. Eren deserves their hatred, but most Eldians didn't do anything wrong.
Bertholdt only did what he could, a child turned into a nuclear bomb. Like Reiner, Bertholdt loves his comrades deeply enough to become a murderer for them. Like Eren, like Armin, like any of them except maybe Zeke.
He knows he said too much, said something that must seem nonsensical to Bertholdt who died before Eren's grim future became reality. It was always there as far as Eren is concerned, his experience of time warped into all at once. He had known the outcome his whole life, somewhere buried inside him, hidden from himself so that the ending would be what it had to be.
He doesn't quite reel it in, but he keeps talking.
"Did it feel like you won when you tore down our walls? When you found out it was me that you were supposed to take back to serve a country that hates you? We weren't even human to you, just island devils you came to wipe out."
He takes a breath. He should shut up, but Eren has never in his life stopped running his mouth on time.
"No one won shit the day you died. Armin almost burned to death to stop you. My lame ass brother killed pretty much all the Scouts with boulders, and we…"
He chokes on that. Erwin's death had been a hard blow but it had to be Armin that lived.
"It was war," Eren finally says, some of his anger cooling as he spins through too much in his mind. "It wasn't victory. It was just war."
His disgust for the idea of war is palpable. He used to glorify fighting because they were fighting titans. He wanted to save "humanity," but it wasn't like he actually cared about people outside those he had claimed as his own. What he really wanted was to avenge his mother's death. Reiner will always be responsible for that, but Bertholdt and Annie will too.
Eren himself is, as well, an accident he could not correct, saving the boy in front of him and damning his mother and the whole world to death all at once. He doesn't consciously realise it, cannot face it, but just like the truth buried in him for most of his life, it waits there to be uncovered. There's only so much anyone can hold, though, even Eren.
He stopped hating Reiner. They're too the same; he understands Reiner too well. Reiner is the only person he has ever stopped hating. There is no redemption or forgiveness, not for Reiner and not for Eren.
We can be something different.
He wants that to be true even as the urge to just get in a fight boils in his blood.
Can he stop hating Bertholdt? He doesn't know yet. He never thought about it; Bertholdt was dead, at his and Armin's hands. Even Ymir could not resurrect the dead.
tw references to genocide, war, child soldiers, general aot things etc
The next thing Bertholdt says, though…
Anger clouds Eren's expression, something familiar and easy. He cannot allow despair, sadness, the anguish he feels at Armin's absence. He's reasonably sure Bertholdt didn't say that to cut him this deep, but it does it all the same.
"I won before we even met each other," he answers, his neutral tone clouded with the simmering rage he can't ever rid himself of. He will always hate the outside world and what they did, Marley and its oppression, the hatred everyone feels for descendants of tyrants. Eren deserves their hatred, but most Eldians didn't do anything wrong.
Bertholdt only did what he could, a child turned into a nuclear bomb. Like Reiner, Bertholdt loves his comrades deeply enough to become a murderer for them. Like Eren, like Armin, like any of them except maybe Zeke.
He knows he said too much, said something that must seem nonsensical to Bertholdt who died before Eren's grim future became reality. It was always there as far as Eren is concerned, his experience of time warped into all at once. He had known the outcome his whole life, somewhere buried inside him, hidden from himself so that the ending would be what it had to be.
He doesn't quite reel it in, but he keeps talking.
"Did it feel like you won when you tore down our walls? When you found out it was me that you were supposed to take back to serve a country that hates you? We weren't even human to you, just island devils you came to wipe out."
He takes a breath. He should shut up, but Eren has never in his life stopped running his mouth on time.
"No one won shit the day you died. Armin almost burned to death to stop you. My lame ass brother killed pretty much all the Scouts with boulders, and we…"
He chokes on that. Erwin's death had been a hard blow but it had to be Armin that lived.
"It was war," Eren finally says, some of his anger cooling as he spins through too much in his mind. "It wasn't victory. It was just war."
His disgust for the idea of war is palpable. He used to glorify fighting because they were fighting titans. He wanted to save "humanity," but it wasn't like he actually cared about people outside those he had claimed as his own. What he really wanted was to avenge his mother's death. Reiner will always be responsible for that, but Bertholdt and Annie will too.
Eren himself is, as well, an accident he could not correct, saving the boy in front of him and damning his mother and the whole world to death all at once. He doesn't consciously realise it, cannot face it, but just like the truth buried in him for most of his life, it waits there to be uncovered. There's only so much anyone can hold, though, even Eren.
He stopped hating Reiner. They're too the same; he understands Reiner too well. Reiner is the only person he has ever stopped hating. There is no redemption or forgiveness, not for Reiner and not for Eren.
We can be something different.
He wants that to be true even as the urge to just get in a fight boils in his blood.
Can he stop hating Bertholdt? He doesn't know yet. He never thought about it; Bertholdt was dead, at his and Armin's hands. Even Ymir could not resurrect the dead.
This place, though…this place manages.