The Worst Girl
"You're the girl who saved me that day. You're the worst girl in the world."
The words Eren had spoken were laced with nostalgia. He believes she truly is the worst girl he has ever met.
Since their cadet days in the 104th, the two rarely had a chance to converse or more accurately, Eren never bothered to talk to her.
From the moment he met her, he saw straight through her bullshit. A façade of faked kindness, a veil of lies covering something unknown to him. All the other boys regarded her as a Goddess, someone who could do no wrong. The girl was the embodiment of the perfect lady. She treated everyone so nicely and acted so sweet that it made him sick. A voice in his mind always told him that every gesture she made, every action she took in the name of others, was so damned forced and unnatural. No one could ever be that perfect, absolutely no one. It just wasn't in the human nature to be so. He didn't trust her one bit. Whatever ulterior motive that she had, to act that sickeningly sweet, he didn't want to be associated with.
That was Christa Lenz, a mask covering who she truly was. A fake persona created to gain the affection of others, something she was starved from the moment she came into the world. Eren recalled the day the new Levi squad had dinner in the cabin, the moment when she told them of her past.
She was the bastard child of a mother who never loved her, one who openly hated her with all her blackened heart. Her father had slept with a maid which led to her creation, all while he was married. She was illegitimate, a mistake, someone who should've never existed. The father left his daughter to fend for herself for years. When he did return, it was the first time she had ever met him, and it led to the death of her mother whose last words were "If only I never had you!". It was then she took the name "Christa Lenz".
Eren recalled many aspects of his life. It was so different compared to hers yet similar at the same time. One difference was that he couldn't ever imagine his own mother not loving him, even with all their arguments about his laziness and his persistence to join the Survey Corps. While that part was different, their childhood was practically the same. Both of their mothers were murdered, hers by a human and his by a Titan, while they watched. It was the same with their fathers. Grisha had loved Eren but Rod had abandoned her. However, both of them were used. Grisha had fathered his son only to have him inherit his Titan powers, effectively shortening his lifespan to the status "13 years left." On the other end, she was essentially the backup plan in her father's eyes, a vessel to inherit a Titan power… just like Eren. Both cases ended up with them killing their fathers.
They were both important to their people, with her as the queen of the walls and him being the one to save Eldia. They were also kidnapped on multiple occasions. All these contrasts and parallels made it easier to relate to her. The girl who he had secretly loathed, who he thought was nothing like him, was ironically his mirror.
Eren thinks back to that day sometimes, the day she saved him. It started out with him gaining the memory of his father going on a murderous rampage to slaughter nearly the entire Reiss family. He had found out he was no one special. He wasn't "Humanity's Last Hope", just an ordinary boy given a stolen power that didn't belong to him. The many people who had died for him, the many he couldn't save, and the weight of his guilt had broken him. He had given up. He just wanted the pain to end, to have her eat him, gain his powers, and save humanity by killing every single titan. He didn't deserve to live, not after knowing the sins of his father had committed upon her family, especially not when he later found out he was the one who convinced his father to do so.
He was ready to give back to her what was he had stolen. He begged her to eat him and let his suffering and everyone else's end. But what did she do? The girl defied her duty to save humanity, she broke her father's back, and made a mad dash for him. When she told him they were leaving, he thought she was out of her mind. He continued to cry and beg for her to end him as she continued to free him from his chains.
"Shut up, idiot! Just shut up, crybaby!" She scolded in an annoyed tone as she smacked him in the head.
She pulled off the chains connecting his waist. "Exterminate the Titans?! Who the hell wants to do that bullshit?! I'm starting to hate humanity! Let'em get wiped out by Titans! I'm humanity's biggest enemy! Got it?! I'm the worst girl who ever lived!" She stated with conviction.
Every single word she had said was selfish. In that very moment, he knew Christa Lenz was truly gone. The nice girl would have never said or even thought about doing the things she did. The nice girl, he guessed, would've listened to her father and saved humanity. But that mask was gone. It was then and there where he saw her, the real her.
The person who told him to get his shit together, the one who had condemned humanity for him, the one who had saved his life, was Historia Reiss.