Chapter 51: Watching the Watchers
Eren spent the next two weeks doing something he’d never quite managed before: waiting, patiently, without acting.
It went against every instinct the countdown in his chest had trained into him, but Armin’s advice held steady in his mind — careful, not reckless — and so he watched Reiner and Annie the way he might watch weather building on the horizon, gathering information instead of confronting the storm directly.
"He’s good with people," Armin reported one evening, having apparently appointed himself the group’s unofficial intelligence gatherer. "Reiner, I mean. Reliable, well-liked, the kind of recruit other people naturally follow. If he’s hiding something, he’s hiding it behind being genuinely likeable, which is either a very good cover or means he’s not actually hiding anything sinister at all."
"And Annie?"
"Annie keeps to herself almost entirely. Doesn’t participate in barracks gossip, doesn’t form obvious attachments, trains alone whenever she’s not required to pair up." Armin flipped a page in his ever-present notebook. "If I had to guess, I’d say she’s the more cautious of the two. Reiner blends in. Annie stays apart. Different strategies, but similar goals, maybe — staying unremarkable enough not to draw attention."
"Except neither of them has managed that," Mikasa pointed out. "Not really. Their skill alone draws attention, whether they want it or not."
"True. Which either means their handlers — if they have handlers, and I’m speculating heavily here — decided the skill was worth the risk, or means they’re not being handled at all, and we’re building an elaborate theory around two recruits who are simply, genuinely gifted." Armin closed the notebook, frustration evident. "I hate not having enough information to be certain either way."
"Welcome to the last two years of my life," Eren said dryly, and Armin’s answering huff of laughter, despite the tension, eased some of the group’s collective unease.
The opportunity to learn more arrived unexpectedly, during a supply run that paired Eren, by rotation assignment, directly with Reiner himself.
They walked in silence for the first stretch of road toward Trost’s supply depot, the cart between them creaking over uneven cobblestones, until Reiner finally broke the quiet with the same careful, assessing tone he’d used during their earlier match.
"You’ve been watching me," he said. Not a question.
Eren considered denying it, then decided against the effort. "You noticed."
"I notice most things. Occupational habit." Reiner’s expression stayed unreadable, though something in his posture had shifted, more guarded than his usual easy friendliness. "You’re not wrong to watch, for what it’s worth. I’ve been watching you too, since formation. Since Shadis went quiet at your friend’s name."
"Why?"
Reiner was quiet a long moment, weighing something Eren couldn’t read, and when he spoke again, his voice had dropped low enough that only the empty road could overhear.
"Some people carry things that show, if you know what to look for. Reflexes too sharp for their training. Knowledge too specific for their upbringing. A kind of weight behind the eyes that doesn’t belong to someone who’s never really fought for their life." His gaze cut sideways, sharp and direct. "You carry that weight, Yeager. I’ve seen it before, in exactly one other person, a long time ago. I’d like to know why."
Eren’s pulse spiked, old instinct screaming caution even as curiosity warred against it. "That’s a strange thing to say to someone you’ve barely spoken to."
"Maybe. Or maybe I’ve spent a long time looking for someone who carries the same kind of weight I do, and I’m tired of being careful about it." Something almost vulnerable flickered behind Reiner’s carefully controlled expression, gone as quickly as it appeared. "I’m not your enemy, if that’s what you’re worried about. But I’m also not in a position to explain everything today. Some truths take more trust than a single supply run can build."
"That’s frustratingly familiar advice. I’ve heard some version of it from at least two other people this year already."
Reiner’s mouth twitched, something almost like genuine amusement breaking through his guarded caution. "Then maybe that tells you something about the company you’ve been keeping without realizing it."
He said nothing further for the rest of the walk, and Eren, turning the strange exchange over in his mind, found himself with more questions than answers yet again — a pattern, he was beginning to realize, that seemed to define every important conversation in this life he’d been given a second chance to live.
He relayed the conversation to Mikasa and Armin that night, all three of them huddled in their usual corner long after curfew checks had passed.
"’The same kind of weight,’" Mikasa repeated slowly. "That’s not an ordinary recruit’s observation."
"No. It’s not." Eren rubbed at his temple, the day’s tension finally catching up to him. "I think he’s carrying something similar to what I’m carrying. Not identical — but similar enough that he recognized it in me, the same way I might have recognized it in someone else if I’d been looking properly."
"Could he be from Marley?" Armin asked, already reaching for his notebook. "Given everything your father told us — about power passed down through specific channels there, about anomalies like you being exactly what people from that world would hunt for — it would make a strange kind of sense if Marley sent more than one anomaly through the walls to watch for exactly this kind of discovery."
"That’s a lot of speculation built on one cryptic conversation."
"It’s the best theory I’ve got with the information available. I’m allowed to speculate until better information arrives to correct me." Armin’s pen moved quickly across the page. "Regardless — if Reiner’s from Marley, watching for the same things Kessler warned us about, that changes the shape of the danger significantly. It’s not just outside forces hunting for you anymore. It might be someone standing directly beside you in formation every single morning."
The weight of that settled heavy over their small circle, the countdown in Eren’s chest ticking louder with every new variable added to an already crowded equation.
"Then we keep watching," Mikasa said finally, her voice steady despite the mounting uncertainty. "Carefully. We don’t confront him directly, not yet, not until we understand more about what he actually wants. But we don’t let our guard down around him either, however genuinely likeable he seems to be."
"Agreed," Eren said, though something in Reiner’s brief flash of vulnerability during their conversation stuck with him uncomfortably — not quite trust, but not the flat wariness he’d felt toward Kessler either. Something more complicated, sitting somewhere between suspicion and an unwilling, cautious kinship.
Later, alone with Mikasa on their strip of ground behind the barracks, Eren finally let himself voice the fear that had been building since the conversation on the road.
"What if he’s like me?" he asked quietly. "Not an enemy. Not exactly an ally either. Just — someone else caught in the middle of something bigger than either of us chose, carrying a weight he didn’t ask for any more than I asked for mine."
Mikasa considered this carefully before answering. "Then he deserves the same chance you got. To choose what he does with that weight, rather than being defined entirely by where it came from." Her hand found his. "But that doesn’t mean you extend trust blindly, Eren. Understanding someone’s burden doesn’t automatically make them safe to lean on. Sometimes the most dangerous people are the ones carrying the heaviest, most sympathetic weights."
"That’s uncomfortably wise."
"I’ve had a lot of practice being wise around you specifically." The old joke, worn familiar now, pulled a small, tired smile out of him despite the day’s heaviness. "We’ll figure out what Reiner actually is, in time. Same as we figured out Kessler, your father’s secrets, the Ackerman name. We just keep gathering pieces until the picture finally makes sense."
"And if it doesn’t make sense in time? If whatever’s coming arrives before we’ve finished gathering pieces?"
She was quiet a moment, and when she answered, her voice carried the same unshakeable certainty that had carried them both through boars and Titans and every secret finally spoken aloud.
"Then we face it with the pieces we have, together, the same way we’ve faced everything else. Incomplete information has never stopped us before, Eren. I don’t see why it should start now."
He pulled her close, some of the day’s uncertainty easing at the familiar warmth of her, and let himself, for a little while, simply exist beside her instead of turning every new variable over and over in search of answers that weren’t ready to arrive yet.
Eighty-two days remained on the countdown that had shaped nearly his entire second life.
Whatever Reiner truly was — enemy, ally, or something more complicated than either — Eren intended to keep gathering pieces the same patient way he’d learned to face everything else this second chance had handed him: carefully, deliberately, and never, ever alone.