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Annie rose groggily on her first day in the Military Police. So here she finally was. This had been the goal all along, right? To be here in the center, safe and sound. Of course, there was that other thing, but the point had always been to live life safe in the inner city.
And yet, it felt strange and oddly barren. Most of her life had felt that way, but at least during training she had found people to relate to on a basic level. Whether or not they were actually friends was beside the point - they were there. They were lively. Being around people, people like Reiner and Bertholdt, reminded her that people had actual emotions, rather than all being machines - monsters - going through the motions. She never entirely did the whole best friend thing. At least not the way Sasha and Connie did, or even Jaeger's little trio, but it was something she watched from the walls, completely intrigued.
That was why this new environment felt so barren. Only one other person from the top ten had come to the Military Police with her, and she knew he felt the same way she did. They would never be able to buddy up and fill that void. They both knew that they would only ever be comrades. There was someone else who was meant to be there. Someone else was supposed to have joined the police with them, and he wasn't there. He wasn't there, nor was that life that Annie had come to appreciate so much. The melancholy fog that was normally kept confined to her own mind hung over the entirety of the Military Police. And it was her fault.
"Ready?" she asked her partner in her usual tone of voice once he stumbled out of his bedroom. He was lacking the fire he had always seemed to have. The bags under his eyes told too much about the kind night he had had.
"Nope," Jean responded. He had adopted Annie's usual tone for his own.
"That's the spirit."
Jean of course had always had his prickish attitude, but he had lacked the tragic background that had screwed up so many of the trainees early in life. Annie remembered their very first day - they had been so young. Shadis had tormented many, but left a few alone. She had been one of them. Back then, Jean had been among those bullied. He was so confident back then. He was so set on coming to the Military Police, and so sure of his skill. And he had been skilled, of course. But now he was here, and Annie had a dark feeling that, were Shadis to walk through the trainees once more, Jean would be among the passed over. Jean had skills, characteristics, and attributes that carried him to this exact position, but the biggest factor was missing, and it was uncomfortably obvious. There was a void in Jean's eyes - a void Annie was starting to see more and more frequently - that he had not planned on being a part of his future in the police force.
"What are we even doing today?" he asked plainly. She tilted her head slightly, dull blonde strands falling down. She was inspecting him more than the question - his unfaltering expression that hardly changed when she turned towards him. It made her sick to her stomach.
"I s'pose going over basics. Instruction?" Annie replied, hardly aware of the words she was saying. Not that it mattered. She knew Jean wasn't listening, and didn't care to either. He was just speaking to feel less numb. She knew because she had done it herself countless times. She knew the voice. She knew the expression.
He gave the slightest shoulder shrug and they joined their fellow members downstairs, and although they didn't speak to one another again, they stayed near each other throughout the day. Annie couldn't tell if it was just to be around something familiar or if he was trying to fill a void, and frankly, she wished it were neither. Nothing was familiar now, not even herself, and it was no use filling voids that were more like black holes, holding in everything and letting nothing out in return - not even light. Even if he were trying to fill that blaringly obvious empty space, she wished he would do it with anyone except for her. She had created the black hole, but could do nothing in her power to make it go away.
The first week felt like it would never end. Every day felt the same, though the cloud felt heavier. Annie couldn't focus on anything she had thought she was going to do once in the police force, and she could tell that she was fading into the background, hardly standing out the way she did in training. She did what she could to get by, carrying out orders, though doing nothing above and beyond. She worked as a regular person, which was more than she could say for Jean.
He was going through the motions, if that. By looking at him, you never would have been able to guess that being here had been a dream of his. He never lifted his head, so Annie found it a wonder that he was even able to tell where she was all the time in order to stay near her. It was completely miserable watching him. People-watching had been how Annie absorbed emotion forever. She felt love and friendship usually because she saw it expressed between other people, but that was impossible now. Annie could nearly feel her own health draining just by watching Jean mindlessly performing his duties. Before long, she would feel lifeless herself. She was no longer surrounded by relationships to feed off of. Just one despondent boy who seemed to be trying to siphon off of her the same way she was doing to him. She felt sorry for him that she was the only one he ended up with - there was perhaps no worse person to try to absorb any positive feeling from at all in this particular moment. Even if Jaeger (who could hardly open his mouth in Jean's presence without starting a spat) had joined the police, it would have been far better for Jean's health. Even if the bickering was filled with negative energy, at least it would have been energy.
Jean had once been one of Annie's favorite people to watch. Not on his own, of course. This week proved what good he did on his own. Honestly, though, it seemed that none of Annie's comrades were ever interesting on their own. Which worked on well overall, since they all clung to someone else anyway.
The golden trio had a relationship full of surreal hope, determination, and confidence. It was alright, but could be disheartening at the wrong moment - especially when you knew that it was no good. Bert and Reiner were always there to talk to (or listen to), which she needed, but reality sometimes hit really hard when she was with them. Sasha and Connie were such blissful idiots together that her soul actually felt light when they would joke around, and Ymir coddled Christa in a way that almost radiated comfort to those around them. They were all important, but nothing compared to that one special relationship. Jean had always been a favorite of Annie's to watch for one reason and one reason only - Marco.
Jean had always had that sort of cynical fire that he would shoot off at people, and while that always made for an energetic atmosphere, it couldn't hold a candle to the atmosphere produced when Jean and Marco were together. They understood each other in the most complex way. Perhaps to everyone else it looked like just a plain best-friendship between two boys, but to someone who watched and memorized the way everyone was with each other, someone like Annie, it was obvious that there was some much more. Annie had seen them have entire conversations with just their eyes. She had seen them find each other from across a room, having the exact same reactions to something, and then laughing together without needing to say a word. They weren't side by side every moment of every day - the training environment had made that impossible - but when they were, it almost seemed as though their individual movements were dependant on the other's. Marco would lean in as Jean would tilt. Jean would raise a hand just as Marco would lower one into his lap. They were like two waves, ebbing and flowing into one another, and it was mesmerizing to behold. So they weren't just best friends the way Eren and Armin were. They didn't just pal around like Connie and Sasha, and though there was no doubt they loved each other, it was not quite the same as Ymir with Christa either. They were soul mates. It was an undeniable fact that they had been drawn together by the universe. If only the stars had been positioned correctly at their fated births.
That relationship only made it that much more heart wrenching to watch Jean. Everything that had made him a favorite was now gone. He was more like a shell now, and it only confirmed her beliefs that he had been Marco's soul mate, because now that he was gone, it was all too clear that a piece of Jean's soul was missing. And there was no replacing it.
Every now and then, Jean would say something and startle Annie out of her mind.
"What did you say?" she asked him on Saturday after their second week was up.
"Nice day," he repeated dully. "No clouds."
Annie shifted her eyes up without moving her head to observe. It was true, though she was almost surprised that Jean had even noticed. After a moment, he spoke again.
"...Marco would have loved it."
No, please, stop talking, Annie pleaded desperately to herself. So he did still have feeling. But this was not the right kind of feeling. Please, don't say another word.
"He...would notice those kinds of things when I never would. He would look up and tell me how beautiful the sky looked. I never noticed. Now I can't stop noticing."
All Annie had wanted was for Jean to act like he was more alive. Now that he was, she needed desperately for him to stop.
It's my fault he's like this anyway. And now I'm the only one here, so I suppose it's my job to look after him. I didn't ask for this. But she knew he had never asked to be miserable either. And Marco had never asked to die. He had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Why did it have to be him, then? Why did he have to be the one to overhear everything and die? Why couldn't it have been... She stopped herself from thinking further. Anyone else could have been listening and anyone else could have died and none of it would be better. She would still feel the guilt and she would still be left babysitting their leftover friends.
"Yeah, the sky is nice," Annie finally brought herself to say. Might as well. It wasn't going to fix anything, but it wouldn't make anything worse.
"He probably has an incredible view from up there," Jean said, and there was almost a twinge of wonder in his voice. Annie soaked it in, like alcohol on an open wound.
Well, I'm glad. The view will be nothing where I'm headed, she told herself. Maybe Marco was better off where he was anyway. No, not maybe. He was definitely better off. It was the people left behind that deserved sympathy. The ones left behind were even more dead.
"He must have," Annie replied. Jean turned to her, and she would have been relieved to see the small smile on his face, had it not been paired with the complete emptiness in his eyes. It was like looking into his ghost without his soul. "Come on, we have work..."
They continued the duties of the day, and although Jean was obviously still thinking of the worst, she thought that their small conversation had been progress. As they went throughout the day as usual, she caught him looking up at the sky multiple times. It was a breath of fresh air - not perfect, but it was something. Watching him was impossibly bitter, but at least it wasn't lifeless anymore.
They split up when they returned to headquarters that night. Annie stretched on her bed awaiting dinner - this was one of the hardest times of day, just being alone with her own thoughts. It was dangerous, allowing her mind to think of herself when there was no one else around to focus on. The dinner bell was a relief when it came. She wasn't entirely hungry, but the act of eating in itself and being surrounded by others was always a welcome distraction. Jean usually ended up eating beside her, which was no surprise, but she didn't know if she could handle him there, dully pushing his food around the plate. Especially after their earlier conversation. If he started talking about how Marco would have loved eating with them, she knew she wouldn't be able to stomach the meal.
But Jean was not at dinner. She shrugged and ate at a table with a few others, hardly contributing to the conversation, but pleased for a change that there were people somehow able to stand being there. Still, she knew it was her responsibility to see why Jean didn't eat, even if she would have rather done anything but that.
After dinner she trudged up to his room and rapped at his door. "Hey, you there?" she asked, and without waiting for a response, she let herself in, prepared for a crying Jean or a sleeping Jean or a Jean staring at a photograph of Marco.
Instead, she found no Jean at all.
Alright, what's the deal, she asked him mentally. A chill went up her spine as she noticed the open window, curtains billowing in the light breeze. A rustle caught her attention and a slip of paper tumbled toward the open window. She looked around once to be sure no one was watching, though she knew at this point it wouldn't matter, and she shuffled towards the window to pick up the slip. She hoped it was a doodle, or possibly a number Jean or his roommates had to remember for something. She hoped it was not a photograph, or some poem or quote Jean kept around to remind himself of the boy.
After all of that hoping, it turned out to be worse than anything.
The handwriting was plain - not sweeping or looping or tragically beautiful as it should have been for what it was. It was just plain.
Annie,
Thank you. Please tell everyone I have gone home.
She could feel the heat leave her body and her heart sunk as she surveyed each point of the note. The way he addressed her by name, even when she had been too afraid to address him first. The thank you, surely for watching over him and being there, even when it had been her fault that she had to watch over him in the first place.
Home. That would have been the most comforting word of all. It would have been perfect to be able to think of him truly returning home, seeing family, and quitting everything. She almost let herself believe that that was truly where the billowing curtains had taken him to, but an added line destroyed her fantasy. She crushed the slip of paper in her hand and heaved it out the window, crying out as she fell to her knees.
P.S. I was right. The view from up here is incredible.