Chapter Text
.1.
Jean
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If he said it with his chest, with his heart beating and head pounding, would it have been for something? Would it make her stop, pause, consider him even for a second? Jean never doubted that it wouldn’t, so he couldn’t bring himself to do it. No matter how much support he got from Connie and Sasha, he couldn’t make himself disclose his feelings to her. She loves Eren. Simple as day; clear as fuck. He doesn’t see a world where he could change any of that, and so he doesn’t dare dream.
But damn if--if she doesn’t make him sweat and nervous as hell.
Damn, if he doesn’t find himself reaching for his collar, his buttons, or his hair today, desperate to fix anything that could be fixed. It doesn’t matter, he thinks—he tries to convince himself in the mirror, but sometimes, what he feels inside contradicts what he knows is true. He still finds himself gasping for breath at the thought of meeting her again, heart beating too loudly in his own ears, and head pounding with all the possible ways their meeting could go. He tries hard not to lead his thoughts down a certain path—he can’t let himself be excited for something hopeless after all.
He has long accepted the fact that she is his , in the most minute of ways—like an exquisite rainbow after a glorious rain, or a melody he keeps on hearing but could never learn. How when she would look at him, the rest of the day just fails in comparison to the experience of looking her in the eyes. How when she would sometimes seek him, that conversation would be replayed over and over until he’s fast asleep, waking to the memory of a distant dream where he’s braver and more assertive with his feelings. He has very little of her, and yet... She’s managed to be everywhere.
“Oi, Reiner, what the hell?” Connie deadpans at the man currently sniffing Historia’s letter like a creep. Reiner has it in his hands, excited to read it, and is looking like he’ll never let it go. The sudden interruption halts Jean’s trajectory, and he winces at his valiant but meager effort in no longer being affected by thoughts of her, after all the miles and years that separated them.
“Historia’s handwriting is so beautiful, and it smells so good, too. I wonder how she is. I can’t wait to see her.” At that, every single one of them pulls an incredulous face, not realizing how comical the whole scene looks.
Jean pauses as well, still not quite understanding Reiner’s newfound humor after the Rumbling. It’s another one of his cringy and weird one-liners, something he never thought he’d have to hear the man speak after everything he’s gone through in Paradis and in Marley. Call it virtue signaling, but he would never do something like this to Mikasa, and he just can’t deal with Reiner when he’s being like this to a woman he supposedly still has a crush on. He looks at the scene behind him in the mirror and knows he’s got to be the one to once again break the joke and let the man know his place.
“Oi, how many times must I tell you to stop lusting after a married woman, you asshole? Leave Historia alone, and Connie, please get that letter from him. We’re already hated enough as it is, and I don’t want that guy causing a scene on this ship because he’s a letter-sniffing creep,” Jean says, trying to be light in his tone while sending across a serious message. Reiner looks up at him and knows he’s being checked again. They’ve always had these kinds of scenarios in the past, where the rest of the group would say something to gauge his reactions, trying to see if he has yet once again developed a new personality to keep up with the world.
But before Reiner could form another retort, Jean notices as Pieck raises an eyebrow, clearly about to say something as well.
“You say that Jean, but how about you? You’re clearly worried about your hair right now. Who are you trying to impress, huh?”
Ah, damn that woman. She clearly hasn’t let go of her recon skills as the Cart Titan, and Jean inwardly scrambles for an excuse.
“Ah ha-ha, well, you know how the press keeps following us. I wanna make sure I look good in the newspaper and the history books, you know. Make the school girls swoon over me,” He added a wink at the end for good measure. Pieck only sips her tea, as Connie and Armin snicker and Reiner chuckles, all of them clearly not sold on his alibi.
“Don’t you mean picture books about horses, Jeanboy?” Reiner adds, clearly amused that the tables have been turned and Jean is now on the hot seat. Completely pissed at the notion, Jean bites back with a taste of Reiner’s humor.
“You’re making me even more disappointed that you get to live a nice long life, Reiner.” I wanna kill you sometimes, is what he astutely chose not to add.
Before Reiner could come up with a retort of his own, Annie thankfully enters their lounge, having spent a few minutes outside to do whatever Annie does, and sets her gaze on Armin.
“Paradis Island is within sight now. Armin, do you really think things will go well? To think that the same group who destroyed the walls, betrayed Paradis, and killed Eren... the same group that the Eldians revered, would become ambassadors of peace negotiations between them and the Allied Nations, isn’t it too idealistic of us to be the ones doing this... ” Annie says, voicing what all of them have been thinking of at several points during their trip. They’ve already gone through this several times now, and Armin always ends up convincing them every single time. Annie must be really anxious about the situation outside if she’s still agitated about the possibility of taking her last breath the moment she steps foot on Paradis.
“I actually wouldn’t be surprised if moments from now this ship is blown to pieces,” Pieck adds in, adding fuel to the fire yet remaining deceptively calm about the hypothetical scenario she’s suggesting.
Armin moves to speak, but Connie beats him to it.
“This is Historia we’re talking about, okay? The same Historia who took both Jean’s mom and mine to safety right after the Rumbling. If she took them under her wing of protection, she’d protect all of us as well. I have no doubt about it.” Jean nods at his friend’s passionate answer, also convinced that Historia is their ace and queen, quite literally.
Despite Connie’s confidence, however, Annie remains unconvinced, as pessimistic about their dealings as ever.
“Or they could take advantage of us in our weakened state and-”
“Annie,” Armin interrupts her downward spiral, “Conflict between people will never end. But if they see us all together like this, everyone would surely want to know... what we all experienced. Why... the very same people who were at each other’s throats not long ago, are now coming together to Paradis, to appeal for peace. We owe it to this world to at least try. We’re the only ones capable of doing this, and you know that” he finishes.
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At the dock, as the horn blares their arrival, Jean allows those words to sink in. Armin is right. They were, after all, the cursed race. What was once a simple curse has now become something else. It lies upon their hands to not make this endless cycle of hate continue in the way it always had, or everything... everything would be in vain. Eren’s actions, Mikasa’s suffering, Armin’s efforts at redemption, would all be for nothing if the world goes to war again. It has to stop. And if stopping the cycle requires them to peel away all the layers of privacy until all that remains is anguish and hope; if they have to strip down the story and relive everything that ever happened that fateful day, then so be it.
They have to tell the story that unfolded before their very eyes and hope the horrors of that day won’t continue in another war between humanity.
“Jean? Are you okay? ” Armin interrupts him. Jean turns his gaze toward him, his arms supporting his position against the railings.
“Huh? Yeah, I am. ” Looking over at the man beside him, Jean knows Armin is searching for a distraction. Even if he doesn’t show it, Armin is human and he is clearly as nervous as the rest of them over their impending fate at the hands of the queen and her cohorts. Armin did all the negotiating for them, and he definitely knows something about the queen’s plans. Whatever they may be, it’s making him slightly agitated as the ship moves them even nearer to Paradis.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks and Jean looks up at the sky again, thinking of what to tell him to distract his friend. He finds a bird just overhead, circling above their ship for a while now, and he smiles at the perfect excuse flying in the sky.
“Oh, nothing important,” he answers, waiting for Armin to prod him more.
“No, tell me. I’m sure it is,” Armin insists, falling prey to his scheme. Jean executes his next act perfectly, pointing at the bird above them, drawing Armin’s gaze towards it as well.
“Look at that bird. How free it is. I think it’s the freest out of all animals,” He says, careful to keep his expression stoic and contemplative.
“I agree, but why do you think so?” Armin asks, intently looking at him, waiting for a serious answer. The problem is, he’s not getting any.
Jean locks his gaze toward him, now sporting a smirk that’s just centimeters away from guffawing.
“It’s so free that even if it shits on top of our heads, it can go away with it.”
Armin stares at him for exactly two seconds, face blank, before he erupts into laughter. He joins in, his chuckles carrying across the wind, carefree for once. He wishes for more moments like this because it feels nice to laugh without a care in life. To laugh about the simplicity of the free world they’re striving for—still fighting for. They are minutes away from seeing for themselves just how much Paradis has changed, after all. More importantly, he’s minutes away from knowing and seeing for himself how Mikasa has really been all these years. If the letters from Historia telling them she’s fine and coping well holds any truth. If she’s really taking care of herself like Armin says she is.
Which brings him once again to unconsciously checking his hair before he grunts at the winds for tossing it sideways, and at himself for once again caring for someone who’s probably already forgotten about him. He reaches for the comb in his pocket, cursing himself silently for being so conscious and vain.
But what the hell was he supposed to do, anyway? If he had the choice to wipe away these feelings and have a clean slate, he probably would. If he could swap away his heart for something that yearns for someone else, he would probably switch it in a heartbeat. But he knew he was screwed now the exact same way he was screwed ten years ago—the same flustered boy alive inside him had yet to disappear. That domineering presence of her and the majestic flight of her hair against the wind is still one of the most treasured images he keeps alive in his head. Simply put, she ruined every other girl for him no matter how hard he tried.
Three years out of Paradis. Three long years that he spent away from her, not even granted the chance to utter a goodbye. Those three years were spent in vain for him, every day wasted on trying to find the perfect reason to forget she ever existed—to see if he can yearn for someone else the way he does for her. Every day, he was thankful he survived the rumbling. Mikasa pulled all of the stops imaginable and did the most heartbreaking thing any one of them has to do: kill the one man that means the most to her—Jean’s pain for Eren’s death could never hold a candle to the excruciating grief she probably had to carry since that day.
That was enough to mellow down his nerves, replacing them instead with the dull ache of experience and unresolved trauma. He puts down the comb and follows everyone to the pier, where a car is bound to take them back to the place he calls his home, the land he’s exiled from. It’s sad to think that his mom is probably the only person in there right now who would greet him with open arms. Jean knows for damn sure that the moment she sees him, she’ll hug him instead of giving him a beating, though that is probably what he deserved. Everyone else might have seen it as incredibly disrespectful that he had chosen to cut off communication with his mother these past three years, but he couldn’t allow his mom to be pulled into the mess he decided to put himself in, ten years ago. It’s true that he’s lucky to still have his only family alive and kicking, and he would do everything he could to protect that. Historia has done an incredible job at making sure she’s comfortable from what he can gather from Connie’s correspondence with his own mother, and he’s forever grateful for that. His mother is a strong woman, but he would never allow her to suffer any more than she’s already sacrificed to support him before he joined the Training Corps.
But today is a day taxed with too much emotion and too many complications, and he doesn’t want anything else other than to go back to his mother and their home. He feels weary down to his bones, and that’s despite the fact that he had had a good night’s sleep. This is a different kind of ache. If before, he yearned for a world free from titans and the curse of Eldians, now he’s just longing for a place to finally call his own. No matter how selfish that dream might be—didn’t he deserve it? But the fight must go on. It would be so easy to tell Armin he won’t be doing anything for anyone anymore. Disappear. Reinvent himself. Go back to his selfish ways. But that was a Jean he no longer recognized. There is a new fire within him. There is a new ache that comes alongside it.
It burns... and it burns, and he’ll have to keep feeding it charcoal lest his heart runs cold.
Mikasa
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If she said it with her chest, with her heart beating and her head pounding, would it have been for something? Would it change anything? Three years of asking the same question every single day and there is no doubt in her mind that it wouldn't. It's hard to accept that fact, no matter how much comfort she gets from Armin’s constant letters, no matter how much she tries to build herself every single day, there will always be something missing. She has thought long and hard about it and even until now... she doesn't have a concrete answer. How do you know, exactly, how you loved someone? Is there a rule book somewhere that could help her understand if what she felt for him was the same way her parents felt for each other? Does one simply realize it one day, everything else then falling into place? She doesn’t know. But if there is one thing that she is sure of, it’s that she loved Eren more than anyone else. Simple as day. Clear as fuck. But that love wasn't enough to save him in the end. She had to save the world instead.
There is no simple way to describe it. Three years after Eren's death, and the world is still suffering the consequences. There is no end in sight, and the goal they all sought hard to accomplish is still in a struggle with the rest of Paradis’ morals and beliefs. When once, she believed she was an ally, now she sees just how much of a pawn she had been—that they all still are. It’s the same sun that turns up in the sky after every dawn, and always—always, she’s up before it. She waits for it to rise, and tries to rationalize its existence. Is the world still a place that deserves to be hopeful? Is that why it still insists on shining? Isn’t it tired of their woes and misgivings? She contemplates all things now—the world is a place she still doesn’t understand. But every day, she gets up. Every day, she tries... somehow.
Beyond this land lies a world of ruined souls. It’s insane to think that it took only one of them to bring about this mass destruction, but it is a different kind of agony to know the very person who wrecked the world she tried to save. It is a different kind of pain to live with, knowing that the boy who gave her renewed purpose in life was the same man who willingly took it from everyone else. It was a different kind of cross to carry when a part of her still believed she could have done things differently—loved him the way he needed to be. But there is no point in drowning herself in hypotheticals every single day—she does enough of that in the tub. What she has to do instead is forcing herself out of bed each morning since then, slowly reintroducing herself... to herself.
When she looks in the mirror, sometimes she sees nothing out of the ordinary. Sometimes, though, there’s a different sight that torments her. It could be that she sees his ghost. Other times she sees a woman she can’t recognize. Sometimes she sees a demon looking back at her until she decides not to look into it for as long as she can. She develops a habit of fixing her clothes through the surfaces of the shiny things that surround her: Kitchen tools. Weapons. The river. Anything else but the mirror.
Before long, her hair grows longer and she starts to look more and more like her mother. For a long while, it made seeing her reflection even more unbearable. But sometimes, she dares it. Looks into her mother’s face looking back at her for five... seven... ten seconds. And it’s those times that her gaze finally allows itself to soften. It’s the only thing she has to remember her by, aside from her clan symbol. It’s the only thing she loves without a pinch of animosity nor pride. When her time is up, she covers the bathroom mirror and goes about her day. There are still things to do, people she has to look into.
The Yeagerists do not want them anywhere near the land they chose to sacrifice, and they probably can’t be faulted for that. Historia has already done so much to keep her here, and away from the suspicious troops, rallying and looking for any Alliance member inside Paradis. The first year after the rest of the world got flattened into pebbles and anguished souls, there was utter chaos in the land. Historia had to allow the military to do it their way and make sure the civilians were all at peace for their safety. It was a successful compromise on the queen’s end; people were quick to trust once again in the plan that the monarch had for everyone on the island. But it also harbored a strained dictatorship that was wisely hidden from the people of Paradis—the military quickly grew thrice in number and the Yeagerists were once again in power. Historia had to pretend she was all in for brute and force. But the truth of it was that she and Armin have been executing their plan of redemption slowly but surely. With the cooperation of Kiyomi and her parliament over at Hizuru, Armin and the rest of the Alliance has negotiated for peace, although not all of them know all of the details. Here on the island, it’s only Mikasa and a few trusted officials who can work for the queen closely. She follows Historia’s instructions and delivers the information she’d gathered. The less people know, the more likely they are to succeed. It is now time for the world to know peace.
It was a long three years of living a quiet hidden life and occasionally visiting Eren’s grave under his favorite tree.
Today is the day she can finally come out of hiding.
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Mikasa brews coffee, the aroma setting a smile on her face as she puts the cup near her nose and she allows warm seconds to pass before she takes a sip. She looks at the letter in front of her, laid out on the table with Historia’s clean writing informing her that the rest of the Alliance will be arriving soon. Levi, Gabi, Falco, and Onyankopon in the afternoon, while Armin, Annie, Connie, Reiner, Pieck, and Jean—the peace negotiators—are to arrive this noon. She contemplates what they must look like now. She wonders if life had been kind to the others outside this island. But most of all, she misses them. Aside from Eren and Armin, they were family. The Survey Corps who fought that day have a bond that she wishes upon nobody.
After she finishes her cup of coffee, she goes into her closet to find a change of clothes. So much has changed regarding her wardrobe. What was once a closet full of white button-downs and military equipment and uniforms has been toned down into a mix of comfortable blouses and long skirts, as well as cardigans: clothes of hers and Sasha’s when they could still afford a downtime back then. What fit her, she kept, since Sasha’s father insisted. When at times it felt a little too lonely being on her own, she dons some of Sasha’s frilly clothing and she might be imagining it, but her smell lingered even to her clothes. She gets herself bread from the ration Historia would deliver through a trusted court man without fail, and she would think about all the times she talked with Sasha. There are too many of them she has to keep alive in her head. She tries her hardest to replay the memories, ashamed of the fact that even Eren’s voice is something she can sometimes no longer recall. Her scarf hangs onto the side of her closet, always there for the taking—a remnant of him that she can never throw away. On nights where civilization is quiet and unassuming of an enemy’s presence lurking amongst them, she dons it and goes for a walk despite the chilly night breeze. Today, she picks it up again in remembrance of Eren’s death. Exactly three years since she dealt the final blow. She still misses him every single day.
Taking a look outside the abandoned cabin she has been occupying all this time, she reckons she still has enough time to visit the grave before the others arrive. The day is bright, and despite it all, she allows herself to hope. It’s days like this she misses Armin the most. She’s tried to write and keep up with him outside of the classified information she and Historia tell him, but it was hard considering the amount of travel he had to do, and the limited access she has within Shiganshina. He always has a different mailing address, and the letters he would send back would always smell like a foreign place she will never belong to. Sometimes, Historia would visit her herself, carrying books and other souvenirs Armin has sent for her. She’s happy for him, that he finally gets to travel the world like he’s always wanted to. Even if the circumstances aren’t ideal, Armin is an adventure-seeker at heart, and that was why he was the best person for this job. He knows how to relate to people from a place he’s never been to because chances are, he’s already read about them, and he knows how much suffering they went through. Jean, too, would probably come a close second, but Historia said she had other plans for him. Plans that, if he allows the queen to bestow upon him, would send him into Mikasa’s care, doing the one thing that has kept her skills and sanity intact all these years: espionage.
It was a hard choice to make, but Mikasa has made peace with the fact that Historia agreed to Eren’s plans. There are just some things that the queen can’t speak about, but she sees a pang of guilt in Historia’s solemn eyes every time she would meet her. So she tried her best to make some sense of what she’s seen, and she knows that they both wanted the same thing: quiet and peace.
So when one afternoon, as she busies herself with crocheting a new blouse and Historia knocks on her door, struggling to tumble words out of her mouth, she tells the queen to take a few breaths first and come back like the queen she knew her to be. Historia obliges, and knocks on the wood again a few minutes later, her steely gaze determined and her stance confident. She tells Mikasa of the rumors she’s heard—about the uprising she has to support in paper but has to quietly tame down: how an absurd Yeagerist manifesto has circled the military barracks, and how she now has to know where the root is and cut it efficiently. After thinking hard about her revelation and plan, Mikasa asks only one thing:
“You agreed with the Yeagerists before, Historia, so why stop now?”
And as she awaits Historia's answer, she sees it again: the shame and the guilt, and everything she just can’t talk about. It takes Historia a long while to speak again, but when she does, Mikasa finally decides.
“Because this isn’t part of Eren’s plan. This isn’t what he wants, and I’m just tired of always fighting. The people have never known peace Mikasa, and I know that I had inconsiderate ideas of how to attain it, but I am once again being shamelessly selfish. For my countrymen, for my family... and for my daughter. And I’m asking you to help me because I know you want the fighting to stop as well. Please, Mikasa, you're the only one who can help me finish this task.”
She accepts the job.
It was enough. For her, it was enough of an answer to keep going on and cooperate with her queen and her friend. When two weeks later Historia tells her that Armin has known about the plan for longer than she did, she just nodded in understanding.
A few weeks from now, the final part of their plan has to be executed. Armin and the rest of the Alliance would be in Hizuru, preparing for the arrival of national leaders from the countries that survived, and if everything goes according to what they hoped for, Historia would be there as well. But Mikasa can no longer do it alone. She will need a guiding hand, someone to support and shadow her, a compatriot she can trust her life with, without a single seed of doubt.
Jean would have to choose to stay for her.
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