[Forgiveness is hardly on Aubrey’s mind at all. Even for that brief, fleeting evening when things might have turned around… well, maybe it should have been implicit in “it’s okay” or “we’ve all made mistakes,” but Aubrey can’t hear it that way. She doesn’t deserve it. And she can’t quite give it, either; she couldn’t to them, and she can’t to Eren now, even as his nails on her back seem to plead for it.

[There’s an apology, and there’s hurt, and with time and some scrap of mercy it fades into a scar. That’s what Aubrey knows.]

[She knows his seemingly endless kisses, pins and needles between declarations of love and hate strangled together, will stay with her forever.]

[Eren’s voice is calmer now. With the panic at bay, feeling seeps back into Aubrey. It’s warm. It’s atrocious.]

[She keeps holding him.]
I don’t know how much we can help it. [A quiet, repulsive admision.]

Before, when I got… set off… [Less whispered, now, and gripping Eren closer still—] …the world took you away from me.