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reiner braun x f!reader

warning: profanity

reincarnation au

-/-

what do you do when you can crush someone with the palm of your hand

-/-

The first time he sees her again in this life, he doesn't know what to do. His wife had just finished giving birth, and when he held her in his arms, this tiny bundle of life, he did not feel the warmth that most new fathers felt. Instead, ice-cold fear and regret latched themselves to his veins and began leeching his life again. Even as an infant, he knew it was her.

This is how you killed her, remember? his mind coos, and the disquietude in him begins to take root.

Because this is exactly how he'd killed her in their last life. He held her in his massive arms, her not suspecting a thing. She did not deserve death, not then, never now. He fears the time when she will remember what he did to her, he fears when she will remember just how much she hated him.

-/-

The first time she has nightmares, Reiner knows that he cannot keep the facade of being her father any longer. He sits with her on the edge of her bed and she asks him with too much maturity for a nine-year-old why he killed her.

Reiner doesn't know how to respond. So he doesn't.

They sit together in the suffocating quasi-silence modulated only by his roaring thoughts and her nonverbal inquiries.

He wants to ask for her forgiveness, but he knows that she will never forgive him. He is, and always will be, a monster in her eyes. An unforgivable monster that despises himself.

When the nightmares keep coming back, she does not ask for his comfort anymore. She rejects his presence for the first time when she is fourteen, old enough to realize that she hates him but not old enough to fully acknowledge the reason why. Her eyes are narrowed into cold slits as she stares at him, daring him to come any closer to her. The innate animosity in her eyes is almost enough to force him onto his knees.

Almost.

Instead, he nods his head in understanding and lumbers away, walking back into his room with his wife as he listens to her quiet sniffling coming from next door.

The next morning the entire house is enveloped in an wintry silence that threatens to shatter and cut anyone who dared to broach the topic of why it is there in the first place.

-/-

"What were we in our last life?" she asks him one day.

He is fifty-six and she is twenty, and he knows that this is the day when she will sit down and listen to him. Her mother has just passed from cancer and she is home from college to attend the funeral. She'd never willingly come home and have to confront him.

He takes a deep breath and steels himself for the onslaught of questions that he knows is coming.

"Why did you kill me? Where are all the others? How the fuck are you my father?"

Reiner simply sits in the driver's seat of the car and stares outward, unblinking.

"Are you going to answer me?"

"We... were friends in our last life," he chokes out.

"Is that all?" she sneers, "Because when I have these-- these fucking dreams, we were never 'friends.' Friends don't kiss each other before a battle. Friends don't fuck when their superiors aren't looking. Friends don't tell each other 'I love you' every time they're alone."

Maybe this is Reiner's supreme punishment, as if hating himself every waking moment of the day isn't punishment enough. She knows that he is a monster and she hates him, but what hurts the most is that he once got a taste of her love.

He was able to dip his hands in it, swirl it over his fingertips and anoint himself in its sanctified splendor. Whether it was as her lover, when he was given the chance to smooth his calloused hands over her equally rough skin and taste her lips, or as her father, when he was given the chance to throw her up in the air and catch her as she let out high-pitched peals of unsullied laughter.

Jesus may have died on the cross to absolve all humans of their sins, but he is not human. He is an unholy mistake that no one is willing to look at because who has ever prayed for Satan? Who has ever prayed for those who need it most?

Reiner swallows thickly and admits, "We were lovers."

Her gaze hardens and she tilts her head to the side. "Why would you kill your lover?"

"I had to." He squeezes his eyes shut and rubs his face.

"Why?" there is no malice her voice now, only resigned curiosity.

He has no answer for her, because even he does not know why he had to kill her. He could've easily spared her life, put her gently on the ground and run off with Annie and Ymir and Bertholdt, but he did no such thing.

The fact of it all is that he killed her, he murdered the one he loved most and now this is her ultimate retribution. He can only look at someone who gave him so much and cannot touch.

"I don't know."

She scoffs, "Of course you don't."

"I'm sorry."

"Of course you are."

The silence is smothering.