It was like watching Eren erect a wall around his heart and retreating behind it. But Atem had already witnessed the intensity of his emotions, experienced it first hand. He knew something like that didn't have to be a curse in the way the other expressed it.

"Is that so?" The pharaoh set his jaw and squared his shoulders, assuming authority. "I thought I was talking to the same guy that said we have to keep moving and fighting. Even when we make mistakes. And even when people die." He broached the subject, careful, without so much as an ounce of pride because Atem had also tasted the bitter reality of his own failure, the one that lead him to provoke Eren in the first place.

The same failure that lead to the haunting sensation that his hands would never be clean again.