Creation began on 09-01-23

Creation ended on 09-03-23

Attack on Titan

The Penance of Redemption

A/N: We all understand the necessities behind the drive for redemption, but what if redemption was used as a form of torture? What if the failure to atone was met with a different form of suffering for the condemned?

"…Do it again," Eren recalled the man say to him before he kicked him in disgust. "This is the eightieth attempt where I have granted someone the chance to fix their mistakes. You may think I'm being cruel and unforgiving, but make no mistake, boy, I want you to seek salvation. Until that happens, this shall serve as your punishment. Every time you fail, you will go back to the beginning…and do it all over again. Retribution through redemption. Those that don't seek salvation must suffer to earn it! And those that seek salvation must go through Hell, time and again, in order to obtain it! Can you obtain salvation? Can you earn forgiveness for your soul?! That is up to you! Until you can, you will live with the memories of your forsaken actions. You will see everyone you have ever harmed, manipulated…or condemned…and you will either change their fates…or repeat the shame until you make the wrongs right. On the bright side, if you fail, you will have many chances to get it right next time. You cause the Rumbling, you gotta do it over again. You so much as kill a significant number of lives, you gotta do it over again. You do anything that causes the despair of those you dare to call your friends or allies, no matter what you say or try to do, no matter how careful you are to cover your tracks, you gotta do it all over again. Greater rewards await you on this path. I wish to see you succeed. Seek redemption, Eren Yeager. Restore light to your soul. Restore the light…and banish the darkness within. Go, do this now!"

Gasp! Eren awoke to find himself sitting by a tree within Shiganshina District, a little boy again, looking up at the confines of Wall Maria.

No, he realized that he was now condemned to do as Brother Correction aimed for him to do. You can't do this, Brother Correction!

But no matter how unfair he found this to be for him, he had no choice but to fall in line and do as what was requested of him to do. All he had to do was do things to change people's fates; he had limited carte blanche to do as he pleased so long as he did so to change the lives of others. Whether this man was a god or some sort of devil, he had no say in any of this if he was being punished for his actions. There was no choice for him to refuse this penance he was being made to pay. He actually tried to refuse this a few times, only to find that even his inactions carried repercussions because he knew what was going to happen and didn't tell the people that could do something, something Brother Correction chastised him on.

"People say that knowledge is power, and yet when you possess such a power, you let it go to waste, thinking that if you do nothing, then nothing will happen. You can't ignore it just because you know it's going to happen. Unless you change things, this penance of redemption will never end for you."

"What do you expect from me?!" He asked him.

"What do I expect from you, Eren Yeager? What I expect from everyone I give a chance to atone for their viciousness. I expect you to do something different from what you did previously. I expect you to make different choices that alter the outcome of your life and the lives of those around you. I'm disgusted by the immaturity of you young people who think you know better when you know absolutely nothing about nothing. You show no restraint when you're faced with situations that don't go your way. The ones that do show restraint are the ones that will be rewarded for their actions when the time comes for them to receive their just rewards…even if they're not what they're expecting of them to be. If you can't get that through your rage-driven system, then you're just going to go through the same retribution for the rest of your existence. You remind me of a time where I punished you for a similar mistake you refused to change. You forced me to go the route of the tormentor instead of the savior…and I took everything from you and the world you were going to destroy for the sake of self-righteous belief of freedom. Nobody is free. Nobody is ever free. Freedom…is nothing more than a lie designed by the people nobody ever sees to feed the ignorant masses into believing because it gives them a sense of purpose, something they think is worth believing in because they have nothing else to believe in. I'm one of the people that nobody ever sees, the faceless nonentity that goes through this endless existence as a nameless force that makes you face the horrors of what you've done with a choice to undo it all…or answer for it all."

"Aaugh," he groaned as he found himself realizing that he was back to the year before Mikasa's parents were murdered again. No matter what I do, I can't stop what happens.

Except that he could stop what happens if he tried to. All he had to…was let go of his arrogance and let those that could do more than he could have ever wanted to do with the knowledge of what comes beyond the world of tomorrow.

"Eren," he recalls Armin saying to him in an earlier attempt to make right his wrongs, "if someone offered me a chance to go back in time and change my life, I'd accept with little question over what I was to do in order to make it a better one from the one I have. If I could save my grandfather…or even my parents, I'd do everything possible. What would you do with your second chance to change things?"

Except everything I do doesn't seem to be enough!

"If someone gave me a second chance to fix your mistakes," the voice of Ymir in another attempt told him, "I wouldn't waste it trying to tell you anything I know. I'd just want to be with Historia. I'd tell her how I feel and spend the rest of my life with her. Is there anyone you'd want to be with?"

"If you wanted to, you could put an end to the Titans right now," Zeke's voice in another failed attempt went; in it, he chose to disclose his issue over this penance with his brother, who turned on him in the end. "You could've ended it all in an instant, but you chose not to. You chose not to. So I'm going to. I'll save us from a future where we suffer if you can't, Eren."

How can I stop this?! Eren wanted to know. TELL ME?!

But he already knows all that he knows and everything Brother Correction told him prior to being dealt this penance. It was Eren's own fault if he failed, over and over again, one way or another, through his actions or inactions. Even if he were to try and take his own life, it wouldn't change his predicament; Brother Correction had taken every precaution in order to keep Eren from taking the loser's way out or trying to avoid his retribution, making suicide inaccessible. This was because he did this not to punish those he chose to offer redemption to, but so they could work for it and give it their all. If Eren knew what was more important to him than freedom or fighting against oppression, he would do what he could to protect them, excluding keeping secrets that were not worth hiding from them.

"Secrets are like evil, Eren," Brother Correction told him in a nightmare where his Titan turned against him. "Evil is a shapeless force. It is a poisonous miasma. It's a wretched feeling which, when acted upon, can only lead to suffering."

His friends, his family, his home, no matter how many times he tried, he couldn't protect them, and this man that held power greater than the power of the Titans, expected him to make better choices in the end.

"Eren?" He heard his father's voice as he looked up and saw him standing in front of him.

"Father," he calmly greets him.

"Something on your mind?"

"You wouldn't believe me, even if I told you."

"He told me you were quick to judge."

"What?"

"All I'm going to say is that you have all the time in the world to be a better person. If you're going to help people, then you need to let go of your previous intentions and focus on what is right in front of you."

"What are you…"

"You keep failing because you can't let go of the future you have seen. If you can't let go of it, you can't see that the future can be rewritten. You have done nothing to change history with your second chance. You have to let go of the future in order to change the past."

"I can't do that."

"Then you're stuck in your loop, Eren. Someone that has the power to change things for the better, but refuses to do so, is someone that doesn't believe he deserves a future at all. Now, I'm through with being manipulated by the power of the Attack Titan and I don't want to take the Founding Titan from the Reiss family. You still have a choice to make right your wrongs. This is your life here. Your home. You decide what happens."

Grisha then walks away from him, leaving him to ponder his options. Whether Eren was able to make sense of what he was told by someone he probably had some sense of understanding was up to him. Nobody could or would baby him if he was too stubborn to let go of his previous intentions and seek new ones. As he could only hope that his son would change, Grisha found himself wondering why this stranger would force a fate on his son when he could've given this opportunity to someone else who had nobler intentions and was willing to let go of their previous intentions for a better future.

-x-

All he could do was wait and see what Eren would do in this life that had no end to it, but he was fine with that. After all, he was eternal; time was meaningless to him because he had all the time in existence to do as he needed to change things, to punish those who did wrong and save others who longed for the chance to do right. Plus, Brother Correction had other priorities that required his attention; he had to deal with a bunch of depraved goblins, punish a woman for her scientific experiments that were too unethical and perverse against the nursing staff at her medical ward, restore the friendship between two girls in a situation that was art imitating life too closely, and afterwards, he had to condemn mother/father pair for manipulating their own child into casting out the current world they had known in favor for a world that had no possibilities because everyone in it was gone, becoming a literal Hell on Earth for the youth that longed for his relationships restored to him. So, his schedule was busy and he couldn't waste time on one person that was too stubborn to change his mind about what he could do when someone gives him a chance to do better. In addition, there were other realities where he could give other people second chances to make better choices in their lives that will affect the lives of those around them.

If it comes to it, I'll give the chance for redemption to Ymir next time, he thought as he prepared to walk through a rift in space. She'll want to see Historia again and stay by her side.

To atone, perchance to be forgiven for one's transgressions

A/N: If it feels like a torture method, then it is a torture method. If one is given a chance to fix their mistakes and refuses to do so, then they will have to relive the chance to do so until they can change things or go mad from whatever it is that they do or did, knowing that they will go no further than such. You tell me who you would want to be given a second chance to do better. Who's more deserving than Eren? Armin? Levi? Reiner?