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It is the third week of the Paradis’ Peace Talks, and you are on the tenth day of the rest of your life, although you don’t know it just yet.
Your preoccupations are elsewhere. Waking up, you immediately search for her, for her small figure curled up next to you, in deep sleep, her regular breath only a subterranean movement. You smile, thinking you would like to wake her up, gently, kissing her on her beautiful hair, and then on her forehead, and her eyes, and her nose, and her mouth, and as you have engagements only late in the evening, for a moment you think of all the things you could do today, together, with her.
But then you remember she has another appointment today.
*
“The only reason I would accept going back to Paradis.”
Born as one of her biting remarks, years ago now, but you still remember it. You remember everything she’d ever said to you, especially the things said when you two were alone, sharing a drink, where she would use humor and sarcasm to mask her emotional truths.
You said to her, at the time: “Why not.”
She looked at you then and said nothing, but you know that she registered what you said, that she kept it in her mind. You understood that later, when she talked to you about him, one of the few relationships of her life she had been open to talk about, albeit still with some reservations, up until a few days ago, when everything started to change.
“He cared for it so much,” she told you. “Almost to the point of obsession. He wouldn’t even let his mom wash it, as he didn’t believe she would take good care of it. He did it himself. The others would not understand.”
Even now, remembering about it, you look at your hand.
You do understand.
But then, that was just a passing thought, a silly idea, a flight of fancy, as she would call it, since she is so grounded, pragmatic. Going back to Paradis after all was just a mirage for a number of years, and now, with the tough mission that has been given to you, with all of the commitments you have on the island, pursuing such a “silly idea” would be inconvenient at best, and fruitlessly dangerous at worst.
There, then, you do not agree.
“Maybe you should still try,” you said to her one of the first days on the island. “Did you try talking to Reiner about it?”
You don’t know whether she or you were the most surprised at your proposal.
Rationally you knew she was right. It was going to be inconvenient, and maybe even dangerous. And still, you felt like you needed to give her that, to give that hope to her, that flight of fancy, you being the king of all flights of fancy. Even if you were not together then–or maybe especially for that–for the strange way it made you feel having her just beside you. She, with her polite, clean smile in the face of the damn Jaegerists, and you not being able to bend over her to hold her tight… as if it was something you would have done previously at other public events. No, you did not. You kept your displays of affection private. But now, on the island, you just could not resist, and could not reason anymore, and you were astounded at yourself when you reached for her hand when visiting Sasha. She was there on Gabi’s behalf, of course, but she was there for you too. Only as she lightly squeezed your hand back you finally felt like crying, liberated.
You felt that you needed to be there for her just the same.
And not just to her.
So you told Reiner, “At least to make this request you will have an excuse to talk to Historia face to face.”
You expected Reiner to play up his idiotic persona, there, but he did not. He just said: “Yes, I will request a meeting with Historia. I will obtain the permit to retrieve Galliard’s personal belongings.”
*
So here he was, now, ready to see Pieck leave with Reiner to head to a clearing just outside of Shiganshina that she and the Jaw had used as a base when infiltrating the island back in 854, before the Rumbling started. Reiner talked to Historia and made it happen. They got the permission to dig, although with no help, either from the military or the civilians, and they would have to declare all of the findings to the military police. They would be able to keep whatever belonged to the Marleyan Army, however. Or to their fallen soldiers.
Pieck needed that, for her years-long mourning. And Reiner needed that too.
Annie stayed out of it.
“I’m fine as it is. Have your moment.”
She is going to spend the day in Shiganshina with Armin and Mikasa.
She still has trouble processing how to feel about her life in Marley as a Warrior candidate. She’s afraid that opening that door would lead to other pain. It’s not Pieck who tells you that, but Armin.
You saw that too when a young soldier told you the truth about Instructor Shadis’ death, in a very private setting. He tells you that the Jaegerists hid under the carpet: that Instructor Shadis died in the attempt to stop the Jaegerists from following you as you tried to stop the Rumbling. That he blew up the train with the reinforcements, and that he probably saw his death blowing up the Jaegerist ship together with General Magath.
Pieck talked for a long time about Magath, with you, a jumble of conflicting emotions overwhelming her.
“In later years, especially, he had less of a temper with us, and with me especially he had always shown a certain level of caution… he would not have me hurt.”
But still, “I can’t ignore him having been the whip of Marley on us. It could have gone way worse… it wasn’t fair anyway. And I understand how others may not feel like mourning for him.”
Annie did not mourn for him, in fact, but she cried for Shadis.
You cried too, later, in your room. And you understood why Annie was crying; you do now discount how those three years could have been, in fact, peaceful years for her, maybe even happy, sometimes, despite her desire to go home. Years of stasis during which she was, overall, well treated, well-liked, even loved. You feel this, you understand this, because those have been after all the happiest years of your life, and years that would never come back to you, but that you can still relish on when feeling down.
Something she may not do with her years in Marley, probably.
She needs more time, is what Pieck says to you. It’s ok, we’ll talk to her later.
You nod and you kiss her goodbye.
*
As you have been moved to the hinterland now, closer to the headquarters of the government to discuss your points with the Jaegerists, and closer to the Queen that can protect you, you can also reach more easily your hometown of Trost to go see your parents.
And you thought you were going to spend the full day with them, not to waste any time you can have together, even if you feel the guilt eating you already when you tell them:
“I’m not staying on the island after this. I’m going back to work for the Allied Nations outside, you see.”
You can’t tell them: they need me more there. Nor: I can do more for you too, there. You don’t have that courage. You’re leaving them among the wolves, after all the time they spent fending them off for you and your honor.
“But Connie’s mother is going to come with us and I thought…”
You’re fearful of their answer to this as well. And the answer comes.
“But dear boy, we have our life here…”
The life the Jaegerists tried to turn into an example of what happens to those who do not think of the greater good of the island. A life pretty constrained, decent but constrained, a life to live in discretion and modesty, while your other relatives who embraced the regime are expanding in the South.
“We would just be a burden to you, Jean.”
They would not, they would not. Not for you. But they’ll be subjected to the post-Rumbling politics, to the scarcity of food and of services still. So you can not rebut, and you just tell yourself be with them, make them happy that way, for the shortest of time, appreciate them for not hating you for leaving them alone once more.
And yet you cannot stop thinking that you should be elsewhere, that morning.
Your mother notices, and in the end, you tell her.
“I… my colleagues may need my help in a project, north of Shiganshina, today.”
Your mother looks at you for the longest of time, then just nods.
“Wait a moment,” she says.
She comes back ten minutes later with a basket filled with sandwiches for you and “your friends”.
As you say goodbye to your parents, that day, you feel you want to cry.
*
You arrive at the location when it’s almost midday. There is a small group of soldiers surveilling the scene. You notice the one who talked to you about Shadis. He does not show to recognize you, now, but at that meeting he told you he remembered you from the day the Rumbling started. You don’t remember him, but you don’t tell him: the memories of those days are so confused, anyway. He looks up to you, he told you, for the decision you’ve taken, for your bravery. He told you he wants to do the same, that he wants to be brave, that he wants a better future for Paradis, a future in which people could speak their mind, in which the military career will not be the only option to get a decent life, an honorable life, for young boys. You can’t tell him that you were once an idiot who didn’t think anything of a militarized state or that longed for that very honorable career, nor that your actions led Paradis to where it is now.
You just told him to be prudent.
Not that he would need that advice. He is still alive, after all: he knows already.
Now your focus is on the hole in the ground, however. You get that Pieck and Reiner, together with a guard of the Allied Nations that followed them there, managed to excavate the terrain by about one meter.
“This is not the first one, we dug another two west of here, but they weren’t the right points,” says Reiner. “But this one should be it.”
You look at Pieck, crouched down, the shovel on the side, detaching pieces of soil with her bare hands. When she saw you she was startled at first, but then she just nodded and went on with her excavating job.
You look at Reiner expectantly.
“What can I do to help?” You say. And then you add: “If it’s ok for me to help.”
Reiner nods gravely, and then throws a glance at Pieck, still down on her knees and hands.
“I don’t think we are there yet,” he says to her. “You used to dig far deeper holes as the Cart.”
She raises her head to look at him and says: “I was such an idiot, wasn’t I.” Her voice is firm, and the words are delivered in a perfect sardonic tone, and yet you understand that she is almost out of her depth, now.
You cannot see her like that anymore. It hurts.
You take off your jacket, throw it on the side, and you enter the dig site to crouch next to her.
You should not advertise your relationship in front of the Jaegerists, and that’s what makes you win your battle.
“Let me,” you tell her, gesturing towards the shovel.
“I can do it,” she replies. “I should do it.”
You look at the side she’s digging and the ones of the other two, and then at her again.
“Please,” you say. “Let me be your hands, this time. Remember what we agreed on.“
To share.
It sounds as if you’ve already agreed to marriage when of course, you’ve been barely together—really together, now—for four days now.
It is time for you to show her what you meant, when you offered her your hands, when you asked her to be with you.
Yes, something in the back of your mind is already decided on the fact that you’re married. It is not so far off, in the end, being it such a frequent dream of yours.
But now it’s not about playing husband, it’s just about getting things done, and as quickly as possible.
You wait for her answer looking at her in the eyes. She concedes, in the end. She hands you the shovel and she stands up.
“But I’ll need to stay here to tell you if you are onto something.”
You nod. You look at Reiner.
“Ok, we can start again,” he says.
You start digging.
*
The boy was still a Warrior candidate. He was not happy about it, but there was not much that he could do but follow orders. He fought in the Eldian unit, like other Warrior candidates. First on the list in case there was a Titan to be inherited.
The boy was still a boy, waiting for the return of his brother from the island of devils.
There was a young pilot, once, working on the K— mission. The Warrior Unit worked in close contact with him, the strategy to conquer K— being a number of raids with Pure Titans led by the Beast descending from the sky.
The boy was there on reserve, so he just stayed aboard while his comrades invaded the land below him. So he talked to the pilot. He was Marleyan, but he was nice to them. He was tall and blond and funny. He described to the boy what it was like, to fly the blimp, to have that power. To do that with flying boats, too. He had started with bad prototypes with his uncle. He joined the Army to make flying his profession, so he could do it all his life, so that he would not have to care about the people who stayed on the ground. He did not say he regretted it, but it showed. The liberal ideas he did not share in words he shares in glances and smiles, in actions, in kindness. He was not made for war, but he was so very good at what he was doing that it didn’t matter, he kept doing it anyway. Maybe if he was really good at everything, really really good, then maybe he could make a difference.
The boy listened to him. By now, he was disillusioned about merit and rewards. He still cared about being the best, but it did not matter, it didn’t change anything, it could not move mountains, it could not break great walls. He had cried and he had punched walls without results, in the past. If only he had another chance to show it to everybody. That they were wrong, that he was the one to be chosen, to fight along with his brother, to make his parents proud.
And still, the boy kept listening to the pilot, entranced.
It was probably just an effect of the environment of those days, the long flights in the mists, the quiet, moonless nights… he could not even hear the rumble from there, the explosions and the destruction, there was nothing below, everything was above. The joy in a thought that he could not touch but that it was just an inch from being reachable, the idea that being oneself could suffice.
He tried to explain that feeling, but he could not choose the right words for it.
And yet the pilot understood anyway. He was older and he recognised the path the boy had taken. He thought he could help him find the way to the next turn, a happy one. And, he said to him, maybe you could help me find mine, too.
The pilot gifted the boy his bomber jacket, then.
Next time we’ll find each other we are going to need to fly in a swifter way, he said.
The boy took that to heart, and made the jacket his uniform. The commander, who was so rigid about everything, and so critiquing of the boy’s behaviour, closed an eye on that. He said to him you are still in a garment issued by the Marleyan Army. Behave. It’s still Marleyan Army’s property. Take care of it.
The boy did take care of it.
So much, in fact, that had to fix one of the ribbed cuffs when the news that his brother was dead reached him. He had to care for the jacket and fix the cuff, and that’s why he could not beat to death the impostor who survived, while his brother did not.
And he had to repair a pocket too, one evening, and he was late at his appointment with this girl that he had to eat to get his brother back.
Again and again, he cared for the jacket as he waited for his brother’s memories to resurface. They did not, and he was frustrated and angry and full of pain, but he should not lose his cool, he had to be deserving of the jacket.
And even without his brother’s memories, he still had the memories of the pilot, didn’t he?
Especially now that the pilot was MIA.
*
Pieck told you the story, and the end of it.
“The man died about a year after that mission,” she said. “But we never knew, and Porco never knew. For us, he disappeared while on a mission. I got to the truth only years later.”
“You did?” You asked.
“I did. The things that Porco told me about the pilot made me suspect he was a young, hopeful idealist. One that could still change the system from within. Because he was so good. But as the truth about Zeke’s betrayal came out, I began to have other suspicions altogether. I didn’t tell him, however, and maybe it was for the better.
“When we were on the boat to Odiha, I asked Yelena if she ever knew a man with that name. She told me that yes, he was one of her comrades, an anti-Marleyan volunteer, albeit Marleyan—ironically, exactly like her—. He survived the crash, but was gunned down by the head of one cell because he would not obey orders, he would not ruthlessly kill other Marleyan soldiers. Given his origins, they suspected him of being a spy. Instead, he was really just an idealist who believed the Eldians deserved human rights.”
You think of her words as you shovel your way through that dry clearing in the Shiganshina District.
*
Boys who trust their friends too much.
Boys that won’t be saved.
“Luckily I don’t believe in anything,” you have said to her once, but she laughed at you then.
“Are you kidding me?
“This is not like your insecurity, your need for people to tell you you are handsome, right?
“You are the most moral person here, Jean. You are second only to Onyankopon, at best.
“This is why Armin is so adamant about hearing your point of view. Him being the amoral one, he needs the balance.”
That stunned you.
“You have morals too,” you told her.
“Yes, but I never really acted on them. I’m a hypocrite.”
What are you, then? You too don’t go getting yourself killed, as people with morals and ideals do.
Sure, and that’s why you’re here. The rest dies. Didn’t she say once, “They die, or they save themselves only thanks to a lot of luck, maybe occult help they don’t even know about”?
*
Presently she is calling for you.
“Here,” she says, “Something is here.”
You help her get to the object that is surfacing from the dirt, first with the shovel, then with your hands, as she is down again, using her hands too. Reiner reaches you and helps you with excavating the perimeter of it. It is a small metal container.
Soon it can be taken out, and opened.
Inside, two red armbands and the clothes that go with it, two dog tags, a variety of small weapons, and ammunition.
As the Jaegerist soldiers come closer, she takes out her skirt, she flaps it in the air.
Oh, well, she has a thing for long skirts, you know that. You too have a thing for long skirts, how to get to see the things they hide. But that’s not the moment.
This one, anyway, is completely ruined, but still, she smiles at it as if she has met an old friend. Then she throws it on the side and goes back to searching the box.
You make a gesture to the Jaegerists to stay behind. The Allied Nations guard is themselves between you and them now, telling them something with a calm tone.
Now Pieck has fished out of the box another garment. The one she had been looking for. The bomber jacket that once belonged to her comrade and friend. She smiles even more broadly, then, but as she squeezes the jacket in her hands, with her arms, against her chest, you cannot stop looking at her eyes, shiny with a hint of tears in them.
You want to reach for her, to hold her, to wrap yourself all around her to protect her, but you know you can’t do that now, and that it won’t do much unless she allowed for it.
So you keep looking at her, as she looks at the jacket more closely and then from afar, shows something to Reiner, also quite moved at the finding. He is saying something but right now you can’t hear. You will ask him later.
You look at your hand. Despite having used work gloves when you used the shovel, the palm still hurts.
There is no wound, however, nor scratch. Whatever that is that pulsates with pain right now, it lies inside.
Still, you search for it, as if it could make itself visible if you try hard enough.
Instead of that, after a while staring, you see her fingers appearing around your palm.
“You hurt yourself,” she says.
“No,” you say.
“It’s from before,” you want to say, but you do not.
She’s staying silent. You raise your head to look at her, you find her intent at looking at your palm.
Then, she lightly squeezes the side of your palm, and raises her head herself to look at you. There is gentleness and awe, and you nod.
You know you should not rush to it. You know you should not think of it now.
But you know that you are going to marry her.
*
She cries only after, as they are back and safe at the villa where you are staying for the time being. You are together, just the two of you, in the dining room, she is having tea while sitting directly on the table, the objects you retrieved, her clothes, Galliard’s, on a chair, neatly folded over a sack you used to carry them. It is just a moment, you look at the clothes and then at her again, and you see that she is crying.
In truth, you haven’t seen her cry often, not even as you witnessed the crudest effects of the Rumbling right in the year that followed it. She spent most of those days trying to forge connections, dealing with practical matters, and looking after you as you had those moments when every sound was too loud and fear had a grip on you and you could not breathe. She did not cry, then, and you learned how her expression slightly changed when something was deeply bothering her. She was good at keeping it all hidden.
But after all, you’ve decided it was no more needed. Not between the two of you.
And she is in. She just cries.
And you go to her, place your own cup of tea on the table next to her, you nudge her on the hand so that she would do the same, so that you could just hold her completely, have her cry, silently, against your chest.
“I’m sorry,” you say. You feel her nod, and then she pulls away and looks at you. She still is crying but she is also smiling at you, not her usual, public smile, but her real one. A sad smile nonetheless.
You kiss her; you kiss her mouth her eyes her nose her temples.
Then, a noise.
“Um, oh, sorry, I didn’t want to—“
You sigh. Pieck turns to face the newcomer.
“It’s ok, Reiner.”
They were to meet here, after all, you were just keeping her company.
You also turn to face Reiner.
He looks embarrassed in having caught you in your private moment, and maybe slightly surprised too, but you’re thinking about Pieck, and Reiner’s state too, and you feel to play it straight for once. You nod.
“Yes, it’s ok, don’t worry,” you say to Reiner.
Then you turn to Pieck.
“I’m going now. I’m in my room if you need me.”
You try to correct yourself. She does not like the verb “to need” when she is the subject of the phrase. But she seems ok with it.
Sharing. Maybe this is really happening. You hope so. She needs you and you need her, after all. You have to learn to lean on each other.
“Ok,” she says, and she smiles again, her eyes still watery, shining. “Thanks.”
You turn, but then you think better. Well, you’re safe, and by now Reiner must have understood what passes between the two of you. You turn again to Pieck and kiss her again quickly on the lips.
“Ok. Later,” you say then, and you leave the room, patting Reiner gently on the shoulder.
As you descend the stairs you meet Annie too, a dark look in her eyes. As she sees you, however, she nods in recognition.
But you don’t say anything, she just reaches the door to the drawing room and disappears behind it.
*
Later, you meet Reiner outside, balcony, first floor. He’s taken up smoking, and you, who would do that just for the company, sometimes join him to share a cigarette or two together. Things haven’t been easy but it is getting better, and that ritual surely helps.
“So, what are you going to do?” You ask, passing Reiner the cigarette. “With… Porco Galliard’s belongings.”
Reiner gets the cigarette from your hand, takes a puff, looks at the horizon in the distance.
“I’m going to bring the dog tag back to his parents,” he then says. “I think they’re still staying in Dadwene for the time being.”
You nod.
Reiner looks at you.
“The jacket… I’ll be keeping it,” he says. “I would leave it to Pieck but that makes her suffer too much. She feels guilty about his death, Galliard’s parents were not… nice to her.” He shakes his head. “When the fault is mine. He died to save me.”
You know the story, roughly.
“And to save Falco,” you say.
“Yeah.”
He snorts. “He’s not over it either. Maybe at some point… I’ll pass it to him. Maybe he can wear it. I don’t know, really.”
In the past years, Reiner has been lost, many and many times over. Making sure he would be able to resurface was a collective effort on your part. He did the rest. Most of it. Not definitive.
Now it feels like he is lost, but in a different way. His gaze reaches infinite lengths even as he’s looking at you. You wonder whether he somehow found a way to reach PATHS again. He must be looking at his own memories.
In fact, when he speaks again, this is what he says to you:
“We didn’t have the best relationship.”
He is talking about the Jaw—Porco Galliard—and him.
“Even before I got back and he learned that Marcel died—again, for me—we… we didn’t.”
You know some of it, but it has always been Pieck the one talking to you about it. It is the first time you talk with Reiner about such a thing.
“I was kind of an asshole, back then, as a candidate, you know,” he says.
“You were kind of an asshole back in the cadets as well, although in a different way,” you reply.
He looks at you, nods, and then sighs. “Well, the difference was,” he says, looking down at the garden around the villa. The four o’clock flowers are lit by the lanterns outside. You see they are open, blooming, vibrant in their striped coloring, white and fuchsia, fuchsia and yellow. “He was kind of an asshole too. Always provoking, always sneering at me. I never got how he and Marcel could be so different, being brothers and all.”
“It doesn’t excuse you,” you say.
“Well… well Jean, you were an asshole too, you know.”
He’s firm and accusing, although benevolently.
“I don’t know how many times I saved you and Eren from getting in trouble with Shadis, or how many times it was—”
He stops.
You know what he was going to say.
“You can say it.”
Still, you lower your eyes.
“What? I—“
“You can say it. If you feel like it. I… I am ok,” you say.
These days you are. After talking with Pieck some days ago especially. You feel that it is not just that you can live with it, but that you must live for it.
“The times Marco stopped you from getting in trouble.”
You look at Reiner, you nod.
He still runs away.
“Or when Mikasa saved you all by stopping Eren.”
And then he notices that he said something even bigger. He shivers.
“Back then. When you had your stupid fistfights, I mean.”
But there is no turning back, and after all, even looking back at those years you see the red threads that modeled your destiny… and the destiny of humanity as a whole.
In essence, always the same thing.
Except maybe for the fact that back then Mikasa rather complicated the things for you, instead of making them easier.
But then again, “Well, I’m glad I got through it and succeeded in not being an asshole anymore.”
“Well—“
“Hey! Weren’t we talking about you and Porco Galliard?”
You put off the cigarette against the railing of the balcony, then you throw the butt on the ground. You look back at Reiner, challenging.
“What—! What should I say?”
He explodes at first, but then he looks down and sighs. He is serious again.
“I… I just… it’s not fair that Marcel’s wish of saving Porco from an untimely death could not be granted. And that’s my fault, actually.”
“He chose to save you.”
“Yeah, because in the end…”
He shakes his head a couple of times, and then he looks for more cigarettes in his jacket pocket.
He lights another, takes a puff, and then a long breath.
He says, now calmer:
“In the end he was right, he was the better person. The bigger person. And not so different from Marcel at all. Selfless.”
He pauses.
“It is just that I wish he had the chance to live through it. To experience… life. As an adult. Like I am. And then have another chance at a relationship. Uh. Of course. Like we are, um. Ah.”
He takes another puff and this time almost chokes on it. He has said something he gives a higher meaning to, something that you don’t have the tools to comprehend.
“Sorry, I—“
It does not matter, you are still here. You pat him on the back, take the cigarette from his hand.
He stops coughing but he has tears in his eyes. Maybe it was the coughing, maybe not.
“In the end most of the time I feel that I’m just bad. You know. That I don’t deserve it.”
“I get it,” you say. You bring the cigarette to your mouth, then you change your idea, you lower your hand. “In the end, I won’t be the one volunteering to sacrifice myself, either.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m not staying here. In Paradis.”
“Historia’s proposal?”
“Heh. You want to offer yourself?”
“Fu—no.”
Of course, it would make no sense, because you are pardoned from State Treason but you’re still a Paradisian, while Reiner is not. He currently is, still, just the Enemy. An Enemy that should still stay away from the island even though he fancies the Queen so so much.
But maybe he would still be better than you. He would succeed where you have failed and you will always fail.
When Historia asked you to stay, reinstated as a high-ranking officer, as a commander, next to her side, to bring back Eldia to a space made for reasoning, not fighting… your first instinct was to say no.
The images that came to your head, all at once: the ample boulevards of Pilli at the very beginning of spring, the Jaegerists saluting their arrival with their fists up in the air, the pulverized ruins of Liberio, Floch’s death, the sudden appearance of yellow, vibrant shrubs in the fields of Campo, Pieck’s smile, the warmth of your mother’s hand when she reached for your cheek at your first meeting in three years, Reiner refusing to get up, the refugees lining up for the daily food rations at Fort Salta, the fine wines of the Rasna regions, Annie crying and screaming, the open fields of Shiganshina, the Jaegerist shouting their motto, Pieck’s laughter, and then you felt the pang at your unresolved argument (since you were broken up at the time) and then…
You wanted to save your skin. And you have to admit it.
Selfless your ass. Not even a little bit. Not even an ounce.
Then you thought that was the old you talking, hence that you must accept.
Finish by fixing the chaos you started when you participated in the first coup that threw the island into chaos.
Then the reasons you gave yourself later, again to refuse, for the official declination you offered to Historia ten days ago, they are just excuses, right?
You just don’t want to be here, constrained by walls made of water and angry people, playing politics with idiots. You want to be out and about, bigger games, bigger things, fewer responsibilities overall because shared among you all, fewer risks. And, well… romance.
“So I just run away from my responsibilities, in the end. I should have told that Surma kid so that he would stop saying that he admires me and all.”
Then Reiner shakes his head. He takes the cigarette from your hand, it is out now. He pinches the end, puts it aside. Then he places his other hand on your shoulder.
“Jean, that’s stupid. We need you with us working at fixing the wastelands, not here assassinated.”
You look at him.
“You know that is what would happen, right?”
You avert your eyes but still nod.
Yeah, it is most likely you would get assassinated in under a year of your stay. Regardless of what Historia would do for you. But maybe then the island…
“You are more useful out there.”
Armin had said the same, despite “the feeling you could have an impact here, Jean, so do please consider it.”
And still.
“I can’t tell Pieck about it. About the proposal. I’m ashamed. She thinks I have morals.”
“She’ll think you chose the world to stay with her and she’d be riddled with fear of being a burden instead of carrying it all herself,” is what Reiner responds. “Be serene. You’ll tell her when the time is right.”
Surely he knows her quite well.
And that is the moment when awkwardness finally dawns on you.
You breathe.
“You know,” you say, “I’m serious with her.”
He looks a bit startled by your statement and says nothing.
“With Pieck, I mean,” you add. In case he needed that.
He does not.
“Yes, I got it,” he says, and just nods. He lights up the cigarette, taking a puff to make it burn, and passes it to you. “I know you are,” he says.
He too is awkward about it. You accept the cigarette, uncertain, and that makes him add: “Serious. That is. With Pieck. I didn’t know you’ve already… but then, after that other evening, um… I get it. I knew about it anyway. Kinda. That you liked her. When the Prince knelt in front of her at least and you started panicking… well, that was pretty telling, right? Um—”
“Don’t ruin the moment, Reiner. Threaten me or just be quiet.”
“Right,” Reiner says. Then he looks at you. “Wait, threaten you? Why?”
You sigh and cover your eyes with your hand, shaking your head slowly.
“Never mind.”
He didn’t want to be in more awkward moments regarding his new relationship status. And Reiner had no rights over Pieck anyway.
You uncover your eyes, the hand in front of them. It is not hurting, for now. You feel the memory of her fingers running over your palm.
You smile to yourself.
—
And that’s when Reiner interrupts your thoughts.
“Oh, about not hurting Pieck or else? Annie will do that later. She really hated listening to you guys yelling the other evening.”
Oh fuck.
You didn’t want that.
And could you have some fucking privacy, anyway?