Chapter Text
She had her arms wrapped around her as she walked, her soft-toed shoes scuffing against the cold concrete of the building’s floors. She could barely hear the sound over the deafening roar of the Rumbling that shook the island, every gargantuan step of those titans a promise in ink of a million lives taken.
Mikasa knocked. She wasn’t worried about waking him – she knew Jean well enough by now. There was no chance he could be sleeping. Still, he didn’t answer, and assuming the noise she’d made was drowned out by the thunderous march that fractured the ground, cracked her resolve, and threatened to bring her to her knees at any given time, she pushed open the door, knowing there was no reality where she could turn around and go back to being alone.
Jean was on his bed, a blanket draped around his shoulders, his back against the wall and elbows propped up on knees. Tight against his ears were his own hands, and that which he stared so flatly at was nothing at all.
His face was unfamiliar.
So he was becoming lost in the darkness, too.
“Jean?” she asked softly, stepping towards him. He still didn’t hear her, and made no indication that he even knew she was there. Mikasa continued forward, studying his face as it came closer. It scared Mikasa, those strong features broken to blankness. She’d come to this room in her own search of support, of some sort of anchor she could desperately cling onto because she didn’t know what the hell else she could possibly do to keep her own heart beating – but she neglected to estimate how hollowed Jean must have been, too.
“Jean…” Mikasa reached out and touched his shoulder, making him flinch and whip his eyes up to her in shock, but then he sighed away his surprise as he came to recognize her face in the trembling night.
“Mikasa,” he started, eyes dropping back down to look at the floor. “What are you doing here?”
It was a question she didn’t really hear, because she had her own already touching the tip of her tongue. “Are you alright, Jean?”
He scoffed softly. Answered honestly, “No. Are you?”
“No,” she whispered. Whatever distance between them closed and she sank down onto the bed beside him. The sound of the mattress squeaking was drowned by the blood-seeking procession occurring outside, and Mikasa felt her desperation turn, just briefly, to a flick of anger because she wanted to hear that stupid sound, and she couldn’t, and she wanted to just get used to that marching, to tune it out like she could the chirping of birds or the sloppy slurping that Sasha used to do at every meal, but she couldn’t. God, she missed that, Mikasa would give anything in the world to trade those shattering footsteps for the sounds of Sasha smacking happily away.
Mikasa was nearing a state of collapse at every passing step, and she was going to lose herself to it. Perhaps it was uncharacteristic of her, perhaps it was something she wouldn’t have done in any other circumstance, perhaps she would have but she’d never know and she did not care anyway because her feeble grasp on sanity was slipping and she needed any sliver of light she could find – so she slid her hand around Jean’s back and leaned into his shoulder, needing to feel him real and present.
She used to do this with Armin, when feeling scared, or weak, or lost. It was a little different with Jean, for he was a lot taller than Armin, and not quite as soft to lean against. And, unlike Armin, Jean was not quick to return to touch – but after a few long moments, he did. She felt a few of her hairs catch on the bristle of his jaw before he leaned fully against her head and stilled. They said no words.
Everybody was gone. Her parents, Mister and Missus Yeager, Commander Erwin. Captain Hannes. Sasha. Armin had gone after Connie, and Captain Levi and Commander Hange were more than likely dead.
And Eren…
Eren.
Mikasa was almost entirely, horrifically, exclusively alone now. Except, she thought as she curled her fingers into the fabric of his shirt, this one person.
Jean was all Mikasa had left.
The pub was dim, but a pleasant sort of dim, comfortable on the eyes. The air smelled slightly of nicotine, which Sasha and Armin found offensive, but she sort of liked. The ale in her glass was half gone, but Mikasa kept getting too distracted to finish it. With a cheek in her hand, she let her eyes roam along the bar, eyeing the gloss of the counter, thinking it looked nice. The bars back home had counters of wood. Eyes continued to drift, taking in the machine tucked in the corner with the rotating disk and bell-shaped attachment, which spat out soft, horn inspired music. This was a discovery she continued to be flummoxed by, despite having heard recorded music for weeks now.
She took note of the art hung off the walls, studying the way the paint was arranged differently from the styles back home. She listened to the way people talked, always interested to hear new words she’d never heard in a language she’d always spoken. Her eyes followed the coat of a woman, thinking it was a material she’d never seen before. It looked soft, and pretty. The coats back home were practical and bulky. She never thought she’d disliked them before, but looking at that light blue coat made her think twice.
The coat folded as the woman sat at the bar.
“It is so cold out there, can you believe it?” she said, her voice at a normal volume but in a pub relaxed enough that Mikasa could hear. “Yet here I am, getting another cold drink. Maybe my mother was right, there’s something wrong with me.”
“Oh, well, I guess with that logic, there must be something wrong with everyone in this room,” Jean said back. He’d been standing at the counter for a time now, waiting to refill his drink, and it had taken him a moment to realize the woman was talking to him.
She laughed at his joke. “I guess you make a good point!”
Jean smiled at her.
“My name is Johanna, by the way. I come here a lot, but I haven’t seen you before.”
“I’ve been once or twice,” he lied, cleverly, Mikasa thought. “I’m Jean.”
Mikasa’s soft expression had become less easy. She wasn’t looking at the pretty of the blue coat anymore. She didn’t like strangers talking to her friends.
“So,” Johanna said, perking her chin on a palm. She leaned into him. “Are you here with anyone?”
Jean blinked a little quickly. It was clear to Mikasa that Johanna was flirting, and strongly, but it seemed to catch Jean off guard.
“Um, my friends,” he said. Johanna laughed again, and Mikasa’s less easy expression tightened more into annoyance. It was not a joke he’d said. Jean, for his part, seemed mildly taken aback. The tops of his cheeks flushed.
Mikasa had never seen someone come onto Jean before. Back home, he had a reputation for being difficult and short tempered, which, admittedly, he was both. Johanna, however, was unaware of that, and must have simply found him attractive.
Had Jean been flirted with before? Mikasa found herself wondering. He must have been, he was always cracking jokes about his prowess, but she herself had never seen him with another woman. Connie had a girlfriend once, though it didn’t last long. Sasha always had men pining after her, they were all used to that. Armin was too shy, though Mikasa had seen him fluster at a number of tall people. And Eren…
Eren had kissed a girl when they were kids, once. He told Armin it was gross, but they were only ten. Plenty of people had expressed interest in him after the victory in Shiganshina, but Eren had never cared for any of it because his life was too unfair, too tumultuous, to have room to think about relationships beyond the ones he already had.
Mikasa had kissed before. It was her first time being intoxicated when it happened. That night was the night that it was announced the last wild titan had been eliminated. The absolute joy and euphoria was so pronounced throughout the entire land that happiness was practically made of matter.
She was a very pretty girl, and she was dancing on tables, and her ale was sloshing at the way she was kicking around, and Mikasa was laughing at her clumsy, yet confident display of cheer. They kissed that night. It was nice. Mikasa liked it. The girl wasn’t someone she wanted to pursue, dating was not something she felt particularly motivated by, but…kissing felt nice.
Had Jean kissed before?
The barkeep slid a drink across the counter to Jean. “Here you go, mate.”
Jean picked it up and passed him a coin. “Thanks.”
“Oh, what are you drinking?” Johanna asked. “Do you mind if I try? I’m looking for something new.”
“Uh, actually, I’ve got the flu.” Jean quickly took a sip and started back towards the table. “Sorry, you wouldn’t want this. Nice to meet you!”
He retreated and Mikasa looked quickly away at his approach, for some reason not wanting to be caught watching. When he dropped back into the seat he’d left a few minutes ago, scooting it forward before lifting the drink back up to his mouth, Mikasa felt relieved.
She’d been expecting him to reciprocate the attention, and oddly, such a thought made her stomach queasy.
She didn’t like strangers talking to her friends.
The amount of dust that had managed to accumulate in a closet that had only been untouched for a few months astounded Mikasa. It drifted down like a light gray cloud, making Connie cough and Sasha to skip backwards to avoid it, leaving Eren and Jean to lift down the boxes and get faces filled with dust.
“Very mature, you guys,” Jean scolded, making a disgusted face as he passed the box to Armin, who set it on the floor.
“You two are the strongest, so it’s only fair,” Sasha defended, wiping at her shoulders to shuffle away the dust.
“Not true,” said Jean.
“Yeah, Connie’s got Jean beat any day,” Eren mumbled. Jean shoved his shoe into Eren’s shin, making him nearly drop the box he had, and Eren scowled at him.
“This is ridiculous.” Armin was pittering through the objects and files in the box. He lifted something resembling a children’s book, but it was clearly in a language none of them had seen. “The amount of objects Hange has collected over the months is…almost impressive.”
Jean scoffed. “And yet they conveniently had to be out of the flat the day Levi made us organize this.”
“Ssh,” Eren said harshly. “He’ll hear you, dipshit.”
“Aw,” Jean teased. “You scared?”
“You’re gonna be real tough when he catches you.”
Jean just rolled his eyes and lifted up to get another box. Mikasa was placing obsolete things Armin had given her, things like old newspapers or junk mail Hange found interesting, into a pile. She turned one over – GET A BIG DEAL ON A BIG CAR, YOUR WIFE WILL LOVE YA FOR IT! It had a drawing of a man in a three piece suit with a comically large hat, standing beside a woman seemingly not dressed for the weather her husband was. Mikasa lifted an eyebrow and tossed it into the discard pile.
“Sasha, take this, would you?” Jean asked, twisting around to give her a box with a scrunched up face. “God, this is nasty. I’m going to give Hange hell later for this. Who knew we had a hoarder in our flat.”
Sasha took the box with a snicker. “Gives you something to do.”
Jean stuck his tongue out at her. She did it back.
Mikasa kept glancing up to watch Eren and Jean pass boxes down, their grossed out faces making her smile. Jean in particular was being more melodramatic than necessary, which he sometimes did when he wanted to make Sasha laugh, and she found herself enjoying it more than the silly post in her hands. Sasha did as Jean was fishing for, which was snort.
He reached up for a box, the white collared shirt he was wearing smoothing out at the stretch, and she found herself noticing the breadth of his shoulders. Surprising herself a little, she felt impressed with him, remembering how skinny he was when they were kids. He passed another box to Sasha, the wrinkles of the shirt folding in when he twisted towards her, and it felt natural to wonder if he’d become strong elsewhere – and he had. Her eyes drifted. Usually, he had on some sort of jacket, or at least a vest, but he’d taken it off when they opened the closet doors and were greeted with the first haze of neglect. He also had his sleeves rolled up, the cuffs folded and curved.
She glanced at the pile of papers Armin absently held out to her, and she put them with the rest. She looked back up to watch Jean take another box down, this one further back on the top shelf, stretching up to get it, then he fluidly came back down on the flats of his feet and twisted to give the dusty thing to Sasha.
There was something a little mesmerizing about the way he moved. She had noticed it before, it certainly wasn’t the first time, but he had this strange sort of easy grace. She thought it was because of how skilled he was with the ODM gear, nearly besting even her at it during training, making him a dexterous individual, but every time she saw it in such a casual setting, no wires or steel in sight, it continued to almost surprise her.
“Mikasa,” Armin said again, making her blink away her distraction. She looked over to see Armin holding out a ripped up brochure that needed to be discarded, an expectant look on his face, and she took it. She suspected it was not the first time Armin had tried to get her attention.
“Don’t worry, Mikasa,” Jean said lightly as he passed one of the last boxes to Sasha. “He said he’d be back soon.”
She didn’t know what that meant. She looked at him, waiting for him to continue, but he was making another silly face at Sasha, who gave him a smack on the shoulder. Then, she realized Eren wasn’t in the room; she hadn’t even heard him announce his departure, likely for the toilet or a drink, and it made her uneasy to think on how distracted she’d been to not even hear his voice. She cleared her thoughts and set to focus on her task.
Mikasa tossed the brochure onto the discard pile and stopped watching Jean clear out the closet.
The gunshot was strikingly loud, making her gasp, her already exhausted face falling open in sudden terror. She was running, and fast, arms pumping, legs burning, her palms caught on the corner of the wall as she scrambled up the steps because Jean was up there. A gun had fired where Jean was, why was a gun firing at all? The battle had ended!
Three more gunshots rang out, and she felt the wail of terror pressuring the swell of her closing throat even as she bounded up the stairway.
“Armin…what should I do?”
“It seems like Jean may need your help around here.”
They’re gone, they’re all gone, Armin is gone, Eren is gone, I can’t lose —
She saw him first on his knees. Eyes hollow, near lifeless, and Mikasa’s entire being could have been stripped from her very bones, the despair so eviscerating she nearly felt physical pain –
– until she registered the body on the floor. It was pooling blood. It was dead.
And it was not Jean.
She didn’t even look long enough to identify the body. Didn’t care. She walked around it.
“Jean, what happened?” she asked, but he was staring straight ahead at nothing, those eyes wide but seeing only something in his own mind, and he didn’t seem to notice her. “Jean?” she tried again, placing a hand on his shoulder, and the contact gave him a small startle. Slowly, his eyes dragged up to her.
“Mikasa…”
Then Floch appeared, kneeling before Jean, placing his forearm across a knee as he spoke.
And Jean looked away from her.
They were small tables, round and a little rickety and draped with off-white cloth to cover the worn chipping. The lights were a dim beige, making the large, bustling room seem hazy with the wet cigarettes of those at rest, and there was a persistent smell of either booze, sticks, or sweat– but the place was remarkably alive, the music weaving through every dancing body, past the fingers clapping together at the downbeat of every measure, the whistle of the flute twining with the fast strike of the violin, and as the couples swung, and the men hopped, and the women whirled, the boots of every person made the walls dance, too.
Mikasa didn’t know when she’d begun clapping at every beat like the rest were doing, but she’d been swept up in it, her palms coming together, her eyes scanning those up and dancing together with a smile wide on her face. Sasha ducked beneath the outstretched arms of one couple gracefully, her hair whirling as she did, and Connie followed before they embraced in a clumsy hold and started spinning round each other again, oblivious to Mikasa’s grin and spectating eye. Then she found Armin, who accepted the raised arm of Hange to twirl beneath, their fingers staying clasped as he did, and she watched him laugh loudly, though she couldn’t hear the sound.
Her eyes came to the seat beside hers, which held Armin’s autumn coat, then drifted across the table to watch Eren’s softly smiling face. Levi leaned over and whispered something to him, a joke it seemed, and he pointed to Hange and Armin – they both laughed. She expected Jean to laugh too, but it didn’t seem to reach him; he was too distracted, sitting with an ankle across his knee, facing the floor of those dancing, entranced. All Mikasa could hear, still, was the music, and the thumping, and the collective joy that permeated this shared corner of the world, but she could see his palms coming together in time with hers, with everybody’s, and his lifted foot was bouncing perfectly in beat.
His lips moved to say something nobody could hear and he pointed out into the crowd with a grin and a laugh, and Mikasa looked over to see Connie doing the same back at him, and although neither of them were properly communicating, there was elation in the action that made both of them jut forward in laughter. Connie went back to dancing with Sasha and Jean went back to smiling to himself, clapping, his eyes moving to scan the band up on the slightly lifted stage in the back.
His cheeks were a little flushed, from the heat of the room or from the few drinks he had. Likely both. The roots of his hair were sweaty and damp, making his neat hair both frazzled but flat, and the first few buttons of his blouse were undone. Eren shifted beside him, the movement in the corner of Mikasa’s eye, and she turned her chin out of habit to look at him – but she couldn’t seem to complete the glance.
The flute whistled wistfully and the violin strung splendidly and the harmonica buzzed blatantly and the night swiveled in an endless balance of tranquility and vehement vigor, and for that moment in time, for that one, precious night, Mikasa knew how beautiful the world, as it existed, could be.
“Just tell me why,” she asked, almost imploringly, as she watched him clean the handgun. “You don’t have to, you could have told him no!”
“Because it was the wisest option, Mikasa,” he said flatly, the weapon clinking as it was disassembled, somehow still audible above the march of the titans.
“How?” Mikasa moved towards him, tiring of seeing his back. “You know what he’s capable of!”
“That’s exactly why I said yes. He’s…” Jean tensed, then turned his chin over his shoulder, his eyes scanning the room nervously. It was a small armory, though, and barely qualified as a large closet. “He’s dangerous,” he finished lowly.
“That’s my point. We could have laid low until we figured out what to do.”
Jean shrugged, then went back to rubbing the oil into the barrel. “What is there to do?”
Mikasa let out an exasperated breath at that. The truth was, she didn’t know. She wanted Armin to tell her, and he couldn’t, so she asked it of Jean. And now she was even more lost than before.
“I don’t know,” she said weakly. “But we can’t join them, Jean.”
“We aren’t. You stay out of it.”
“What?”
“It isn’t safe.”
There was a flare of something in her belly at that, maybe anger or confusion. “But you’re doing it!”
No response.
“Jean!”
“Mikasa,” he said, almost harshly, “just stay low. Don’t piss them off. Don’t say shit about the Rumbling, don’t say you don’t agree with them, don’t do anything like that. Alright? Blend into the background.”
“How long do you expect you can keep this up?” She stepped up quickly beside him, making him regard her out of the corner of his eye. “How long will you pretend to be one of them? Because the longer you do it, Jean, the deeper in you’ll get and the harder it will be for you to climb back out.”
The corner of his jaw tightened. “You think I don’t know that?”
“You are on thin ice,” she said, wanting to cry. “When Floch gets even a whiff of your true loyalties, he’ll–”
“What are my true loyalties, Mikasa?” he asked. It made her stop short, her tongue thick in her mouth, because he sounded like he was truly asking her the question. Like he was somehow unsure – Jean, the person she least expected to be unsure about something like this, didn’t know the answer to his own question.
She didn’t know what to say, but knew she had to say something. So all she could manage was, “What?”
“Loyalties to what?” he asked again, more softly, the clatter of his weapon louder than his voice, making it nearly inaudible above the Rumbling. “The world? What for?”
“How could you say that?” she choked out. If she felt lost before, she now felt as though she were drowning, lungs filling with water and sinking her down. “Don’t tell me you think what Eren has done is right, because I won’t believe you.”
“I know it’s not right,” he refuted.
“Then what?!”
Jean slammed the empty ammo chamber against the bench, and while at first Mikasa thought he was angry, on his face was something horribly similar to fear. “What are we supposed to do about it, Mikasa? What?”
“I…” Mikasa shook her head, entirely to herself. “I don’t know.”
“The world wanted us dead, and we snapped. I know what Eren is doing is sick, but dammit, he’s got a fucking army of monsters and you and I have what, a gun?” He finally looked at her, with just as much emotion that must have been in her own eyes. “I’m sorry, Mikasa. I am. But right now, my priority is your safety.” He blinked suddenly, then swallowed. “And…when Armin and Connie get back, their safety, too.”
“But Jean–”
“This, I can control,” he interrupted. “This, I can do.”
“So we do nothing?” she whispered, feeling the tear run down her cheek. Jean’s face loosened as he watched her cry, but she couldn’t help it because the thought sent her reeling, made her want to vomit, made her body turn to something not her own. “We just let those billions of people die?” Another tear fell, then three more. “Billions, Jean.”
He took half a step towards her, his palm lifting – but then he let it drop and he turned. Jean wrapped his fingers around the edge of the table and leaned against it. “I’m sorry, Mikasa. This is just too big for the two of us.”
“We could have laid low,” she said dejectedly, not bothering to wipe the tears from her face. This was all too much, all of it, and the shock was making her physically unwell. “We could have stayed away from Floch, and talked this through.”
“If I’m next to Floch, I hear what he says. That’s invaluable.”
“You’ve put a spotlight on yourself is what you’ve done.”
“Will you keep your head down?” he asked, still facing the table. “Please, Mikasa.”
The weapon’s chamber was clattering. Vibrating against the steel. Buzzing from the ground’s quakes. Jean pressed a hand down onto it, and it stopped.
“Can we talk more when Armin gets back?” she asked, hating how weak she sounded, but she couldn’t accept Jean’s answer as the final one. Though she knew it was their only choice for the present, she could not accept that it would hold true forever. She just couldn’t.
Jean nodded. “Yes.”
Finally, she wiped a hand across her face. This, at least, gave her an end in sight – when Armin returned, they’d figure this out. It was a goal, it was something to look forward to, it was something.
“Alright,” she agreed somewhat shakily. “Alright, yes, I promise.”
Some of the tension left Jean’s features, his shoulders falling away from his ears. He blinked at the wall, lifted the chamber from the table, and slid it firmly into his weapon. “Thank you.”
“And she just looked at me like I was the crazy one!”
“Well, you asked for hot tea with ice, Connie,” Armin said, laughing. “What did you expect?”
Connie sputtered. “I wanted to try it! They have ice pre-made here!”
Mikasa smiled to herself, shoving her hands in the pockets of her coat. The air was chilled, but had a pleasant crispness that filled her lungs nicely. Six pairs of boots clicked against cobbled streets. Sasha gave Connie a playful shove.
“It wouldn’t taste any different, dummy,” she joked. They walked along a neighborhood with soft hills, many of the front gardens being elevated along the side of the walkway. “You’ve had cold tea before.”
“But not with ice.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“No, you’re just not creative. None of you are.”
As the conversation continued, Mikasa noticed Jean’s arm kept lifting mindlessly, even as he spoke and continued to tease Connie, like the rest. Her eyes followed the length of his arm, curious as to what he was doing.
“I’m tellin’ you,” Jean said as he touched the petal of a flower, “if you had asked the waitress for cold tea, she wouldn’t have looked at you so strangely. Instead, your ass said yes, I’d like a hot tea with ice, please.” He did it again, touching another petal of a flower they passed, and Mikasa thought it was sort of endearing. It didn’t seem as though he knew he was doing it.
“But I have had cold tea, Jean, you deaf dog. I have not had hot tea with ice.”
Eren started laughing, the sound novel as of late. “Connie, you just might be hopeless.”
“I think that’s giving him too much credit, Eren,” Jean added, fingers rubbing on a red flower as they walked along another raised garden. “I think he already is hopeless.” Mikasa, being behind them all, was suddenly curious – she took the same petal between her fingers, the stalk of the flower barely having time to still from Jean’s touch before she was on it. It was soft, far softer than she expected, and felt like velvet. She plucked the petal, hoping the flower wouldn’t mind – it had plenty others – and ran it over her thumb.
When they arrived home, they walked in to the smell of, ironically, steeped black tea. This inspired another round of jests and jokes, all at Connie’s expense, as they shuffled in, removed their boots, and began to hang their coats.
“I don’t even care anymore,” Sasha dismissed as she fell onto the couch. “Just bring me some of that tea, Connie, and don’t you dare put ice in it.”
“See, now I regret telling you guys.”
Mikasa knocked some of the sediment of the town off her boots as she unbuttoned her coat. Eren’s coat had less buttons than hers and he shrugged it off, then went to sit beside Sasha. Armin followed.
“You should regret it,” Jean said. He gestured his hand out, palm up. “It’s downright embarrassing and I’m ashamed to call you my friend.” Mikasa blinked at the hand. “That poor waitress looked at me next, as if she expected I’d say something equally as stupid.” She cautiously extended her coat, which Jean took and hung, simply offering her a quick smile. He stepped past her and into the living space. “You pull something like that while I’m with you again, and I’m disowning you.”
“You guys are being dramatic! It wasn’t that crazy!”
“What the fuck are you guys on about.”
“Captain Levi,” Sasha said to him as he entered the room. “Ask Connie about the tea he wants to try.”
Connie suddenly sunk into himself at the suggestion.
“See!” Jean laughed, pointing. “Now you know how ridiculous it sounds!”
“Shut up!”
“Tell me, Connie.”
“Uh…”
“Go on.”
“You know, suddenly I can’t remember.”
It was another lonely night, but devastatingly quiet. Mikasa’s fingers clawed into her own arms as she walked down the hall, hating herself for how much she wanted the sound of the Rumbling back because at least then, she knew where the titans were.
Now, she didn’t.
They were somewhere else. Moving along. Marching off to maim and massacre. It was quiet out there – so quiet.
She wanted to be beside Jean again, feel him there, and it made her feel weak and stupid and lost, and Mikasa hated feeling weak and stupid and lost, but sitting on his bed last night, and feeling her dear friend be so near, not even an inch from her own skin, had been more relieving than she could have hoped.
Her belly was so nauseated. She hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t slept, either, but she would need to do both at some point if she wanted to keep living, keep moving forward – being with Jean, at least, could subside some of her physical symptoms.
The door was slightly ajar. Mikasa’s brow knit, wondering if he somehow wasn’t in his room, despite it being so late, but when she pushed open the door, the spreading angle of hall light crossed over him.
He was sat against the far wall, one leg bent and palms braced on the floor. His hair was a bit messy. He looked…disarrayed. When the door creaked open, she saw him go tense, his sight rising to greet hers, but when their eyes met, that strange look on his face fell quickly away. He blinked several times and got to his feet.
“Mikasa.”
“Jean,” she said, taken aback. “What happened? Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” he replied. “I, uh, just had a bad dream. Fell out of bed.” As she got closer to him, she saw his throat move in a swallow. “I’m fine,” he said again.
“Are you sure?”
He moved a hand through his hair, smoothing it out. “I’m fine.” His face fell into something more familiar. “Are you okay? It’s late.”
“I just thought I’d see if you were awake.”
“Oh.” Jean sat back down on his bed. He gave the spot next to him a pat, and she sat down beside him. This time, she heard the squeak of the mattress.
“I didn’t see you much today,” she said quietly. The air, the ground, was still far too steady, too quiet, and it made her voice piercing. “Just at the speech.”
“There was, um…” His hands fumbled together in his lap. “A lot of…of meetings. Discussions.”
“I’m sure nothing I want to hear about.”
“No,” he said softly. “I’d think not.”
Meetings, discussions, information about what the future of Paradis would look like without the burden of the rest of the world. Gravely curious, Mikasa pondered what Floch could possibly say to make his plans sound appealing to their people. Not the soldiers, whom he’d given a foul speech at earlier, but the civilians. The ones who lived in homes, and who had no stock in sides.
“Did anything happen today?” she asked.
It was a vague question, but it left a lot of room for him to answer in whatever way he saw fit. What she was asking was in regards to their precarious securement in this unstable pit of vipers.
“So far,” he replied, “no.” A moment passed. “Nothing.”
Mikasa glanced up at him meekly. She wanted to rest against him again, but without the shaking of the earth, it felt out of place for some reason. So, she didn’t.
“Did you keep your promise?” Jean asked. “Stay out of trouble?”
“I did nothing today, if that’s what you mean.”
“You were at Floch’s speech. I can only assume you went to other places, too. You must have been doing something.”
He was perceptive. Mikasa was not lying to him, she had stayed out of trouble, just as he asked, though she equally knew it was in her best interest. That being said, she had no intention of cowering in a corner. Mikasa’s day had been spent sleuthing in the shadows, leaning against walls, observing quietly – to spectate, to listen, to learn.
She’d slinked around before Floch’s speech, and she had after, too. That speech was only a sliver of her day – yet she couldn’t shake the effect it had on her. She heard every word Floch said, every spit of poison, and each sentence that came from his mouth during that time had only tightened her rigid gaze on Jean beside him.
“You could join us too, you know. We’d love to have someone with your skill on our roster.”
Mikasa barely offered this person a look. She was unaware of what he looked like, or who he was, but he was small and grimy and beneath her. “I’ll pass,” she replied.
“Well,” he nearly scoffed, likely offended. “Whatever reservations you have don’t seem to affect Jean up there.”
At the height Jean was at, the way he looked down at her made his eyes partially lidded, his lips thin and in half a frown. He was so still, the eyes on her hardly even blinking, that it made her go just as tense as he was.
She sleuthed around after that, needing to understand what form her country was taking. Soldiers either shook in their boots or celebrated foolishly at every turn, and soldiers were either ordered what to do by threat, or gave threatening orders themselves. While the spinal fluid wine was no longer available to keep the involuntary Yeagerists tied round the staunch ones’ fingers, it didn’t need to be. Good men had been broken from their former selves, torn down from who they’d been, and molded into something weak, thin, and pliant.
“You told me my son would be safe if I followed your orders,” he sobbed, falling to his knees and grasping at the sleeve of the Yeagerist with the white band. “You told me he would be safe!!!”
“Your son died for a righteous cause. I suggest you see it through unless you want his death to be in vain, old man.”
Clean-up efforts were underway. Men and women with red arm bands were forced to sweep the streets, clean the debris, clear the bodies. While red no longer denoted ingestion of the wine – considering those people were dead – it did denote the people who had to be coerced into being Yeagerists. It was them who performed most of the clean-up.
“Shit, Marleyan soldiers are strewn along every rooftop!” the man laughed, clapping his friend on the back. “Good lord. Fuckers are gonna bake in the sun for how long cleaning this mess up will take.”
“Not to mention the poor suckers too near the walls,” said the other. “Can’t imagine the disaster over there.”
He, too, was laughing.
“Mikasa?”
“Yes?”
Jean stared. “Did you hear me?”
“Oh.” She’d become lost in the sound of the joy in the center of a blood-strewn street. “Sorry, yes, I did. I was just walking around, seeing how things were going. That’s all.”
“Hm.”
She fidgeted with her hands on her lap. Took a hard swallow. She needed to think of the goal, the thing, the one thing, to look forward to. “Do you think Armin’s reached Connie yet?”
“Honestly, no. I don’t.” He seemed disappointed in his own answer. “Connie’s a quick rider, and I don’t think he’ll change his mind of his own accord, or give Armin any chance to catch up to him.”
She sighed heavily and leaned forward, clasping her hands instead of continuing to wring them. “I hope he manages. Armin, that is. That boy doesn’t deserve to die.”
Jean didn’t say anything to that. He’d mentioned before that he thought it was possible they could use the boy to their advantage, feed him to someone else, and she wondered if he still thought that.
“When they get back,” she continued at his silence, “let’s talk about options, alright?”
“Mikasa,” he said tiredly, “please, don’t.”
“Jean.” She turned towards him. “I can’t sit here and do nothing. I can’t.”
“Right now, you have to.” He looked at her seriously. “You have to.”
“But you said when Armin gets back–”
“Fine, but until then, I don’t want to hear anything about it. Nothing. Please.”
Her lips stayed open, though no other words followed, because Jean was imploring her to drop this, this man who had, time after time, risked his own life – and others – in fear of taking someone else's. Yet he sat beside her now, displaying none of that kindness.
It was a quality of his that she’d long admired, and truly did not understand. Perhaps it was because she’d taken her first life at such a young age, and had grasped the idea that life was for the fighters, for the strongest, but Jean’s continued resistance to kill always made her reconsider that.
There was the sharp hiss of the ODM wires combined with the rush of gas as she pivoted herself around midair, watching, agonizingly slowly in her adrenaline-fueled mind, as the woman whipped past her and landed harshly in the cart.
Mikasa was racing back, but she knew she was too far. Levi yelled, but he was too far.
But Jean was quick, and strong, and lithe, he’d handle it, he wasn’t truly in danger, the woman had made a mistake by targeting the cart. As Mikasa expected, Jean knocked her down, and pointed his barrel at her, but then he did nothing. He still did nothing. Again, Jean, oh god, did nothing, and he was being overpowered, he fell into the corner of the cart, fingers gripping the wood for support, the hat billowed off of his head, scattering behind and rolling along the cobbled street, and Jean’s face opened in blank realization that he was going to be killed.
The shot rang out, she saw the splatter of blood, and it took her a horrific moment to realize that it wasn’t Jean’s body that flew out and tumbled onto the ground.
That woman had been an enemy, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
The billions of people about to be slaughtered were innocent, and he wanted to hear nothing about it.
Mikasa found herself standing from the bed. She looked down at him, but his eyes were on his hands. He knew why she’d stood.
“I don’t want to talk about it until Armin gets back,” he said again to his fingers, the words almost sounding like an apology. Mikasa lingered on him a moment longer.
“Okay.” It was all she could say. She didn’t know what else to say.
Jean wouldn’t look at her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mikasa.”
It stung, those words, right in the soft part of her belly. It shouldn’t have, she was the one who stood, after all, it was clear that she wasn’t going to stay as long as she had the night before, but those words were still a soft dismissal.
They were in this together, that was always true, but they were not doing it in tandem. She shouldn’t be hurt by this. She shouldn’t blame him, the man who’d spent the entire day in the company of murderers, for not wanting to discuss a topic they currently had little control over.
Mikasa turned on her heel and left, shutting the door behind her quietly before starting back down the hall. Each step that led away from his room made every following breath that much more thin. No, she shouldn’t be hurt.
But she was.
It was astounding that despite all that happened, she still had the capacity to be left speechless.