Chapter Text
The noise in the street was becoming unbearable.
“Pieck,” her father said, “I think it’s time you open the window.”
*
Pieck stood up from her seat.
“Jean, it is time. Let’s go get our luggage.”
They were about to reach the Belsina Central Station. Pieck could not wait to see Gabi and Falco: it had been two months since the last time and she was sure she would find them completely changed, again. It was that time for them, turning seventeen in less than half a year.
Jean followed her, a hand on her shoulder while with the other he still kept the newspaper under his eyes. He was still trying to decipher a Rasnan opinion piece.
“This is ridiculous,” he said, as he would from time to time. “Did the lightning tell them we are doing good or bad with the commercial treaties?”
“Sssh, not here,” Pieck said, leading him to the storage section. “And anyway, both. You know how they work.”
He had been so worried about the reception of those damn treaties, he would even look for opinions of the diviners of lighting.
She did not believe a thing, of course.
He let go of the newspaper only as they reached the racks their pieces of luggage were stored in; he consigned it to Pieck and went to bring down her suitcase first, and then his. They were stored in the highest rack: she would not even try, even if once she would have just climbed the racks to beat him to it and tease him. She didn’t need that anymore, however.
“Thanks,” she said as he handed her the suitcase. He bent over to kiss her too, and she responded enthusiastically, dropping everything and wrapping his arms around him, as there was no one else around for the moment, the train trip had been long and soon they would end up in Levi’s kitchen (“don’t you dare try anything here”). A little privacy was welcome.
She just felt happy, and would not care to be carried away by the warm buzzing sensations in her chest.
Not exactly comfortable, but neither of them cared. She suddenly found herself suspended in mid-air, having to grasp at the racks behind her to sustain herself as they made out. It’s not as if she would not climb anything anymore: she just needed a different reason for it to happen. That was bliss.
However, as Jean slid his arm under her lower back she felt something falling off her the pocket of her jacket.
“Ah, ugh,” she said. “Jean. Tickets.”
Those were the proof they did not want to leave lying around on the luggage car floor.
“Damn,” he said. While still keeping her at her place, with a hand he reached for them. They ended up on a lower shelf. He grabbed them.
And then he said, “Come on, not again?”
Pieck sighed. Even in the dark, he saw.
She knew the moment was gone, then. She jumped off and reached the ground, and started smoothing down her skirt. There wasn’t time for much really, anyway.
“Pieck, they got my name wrong. Again.”
“I know, my love,” she replied, sighing.
It was a recurring thing in the Rasna regions. It was always Kristein, never Kirstein. It was a small thing that changed nothing (most of the time), but Jean got annoyed every time.
“The train manager said nothing when checking our documents,” Jean said.
“They know they fuck up all the time. It’s ok.”
“Ugh.”
“Oh come on, Jean.”
“I want you to see you so accommodating once it’s your name too and—Uh—“
He stopped and blushed. That gave her a halt as well, in fact.
They weren’t married. Yet. They haven’t talked about the possibility. Yet.
But surely enough, Jean was anticipating the future in his daydreams, as usual.
It would be all fine, if not that the thought made Pieck’s legs go weak.
She tried to ignore the feeling.
“Oh, and when is that?” Pieck said, in the teasing tone she could muster at that moment. “Are you proposing?”
It was as if she pulled a trigger in him somewhere. He stood there, serious, his eyes locked on hers, and he simply said, “Yes.”
Well, she did not expect it to happen like this, she thought.
“Jean…”
And suddenly he got even redder in the face.
“Not—not like this!” he said then, and he first grabbed her by the shoulders, and then knelt in front of her.
“Jean, really…”
Ok, maybe she did want an official proposal, Marleyan style, but there, on the train, when they were about to get off?
But it wasn’t like that. He was no longer looking at her, but at his suitcase. He grabbed it and opened it nervously.
“Jean?”
He looked back at her, his eyes wide open.
“I… I needed to tell you this, so—“
He rubbed his face with his hands. He was losing it?
“Jean, it’s ok, I didn’t want to—“
Three minutes to the arrival in Belsina.
He grabbed her hand—now she was crouching next to him, mildly concerned—and led it to grab a piece of fabric coming out of his grooming pouch. Delicately, she followed his lead and took it out, and she saw the alternating colors, the vibrant yellow and the blue.
It wasn’t ready but she didn’t need to ask what color was next. She understood.
“I thought,” he said, now a bit calmer, rolling his hand over hers, the piece of fabric between them, “I thought you would have liked it like this, but—we needed to get back to Liberio first, and then I thought that I should have informed you of my intentions, before it happened, right? Because—“
“Yes,” she said, laughing, “You definitely had to inform me beforehand.”
She was also in tears, now.
“So, do you—should I proceed?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said, sniffing. “Yes, please, do.”
He smiled broadly, then, and grabbed her by the shoulders to bring her near to him, to kiss her.
They sure were giving a spectacle.
This is in fact how the train manager found them, on their knees, kissing over an opened suitcase, Jean’s belongings scattered disorderly on the ground.
“Sir, ma’am, is… is everything alright?”
“Yes,” said Pieck, interrupting the kiss. “We are getting married.”
The train stopped in Belsina Central Station.
*
Months later, she arrived in New Liberio, where her father was, settled now in a functional apartment in the new residential area most of the original Liberio Eldians decided to go back to live, with the new city under the jurisdiction of the Allied Nations.
Her father met her at the docks, and as soon as she saw him she felt her chest warm with love, and joy for the time she would get to spend with him in the next days, before the next job started. At home.
And as she thought of home, everything in her body vibrated with anticipation.
“Pieck,” her father said, pulling away from her hug, trying to get from her suitcase to bring home (“never!”). “Isn’t Jean joining us?”
Jean had come to politely greet her father, and to kiss her on the temple, but then moved away to talk with some functionary. He had just gestured them goodbye, from afar, his gaze caught only by Pieck.
Pieck looked at her father.
“Dad, he is joining us,” she said. “But… not now. Later.”
He understood.
He smiled at her, kissed her on the forehead, and said: “Then let’s go home.”
*
Pieck felt guilty for not telling her father earlier, but the truth was that she wanted to tell him in person, and they were going to have just so many days in Liberio.
He did not care. He was even excited.
“What, are you so eager to get rid of me?” she asked him after dinner, as she saw him looking outside from the window, down the street.
The apartment was on the first floor, a good compromise between the insulation and the effort her father needed to get home, especially as he had also the use of the building elevator.
He turned to her.
“Well, it’s about time!”
“Hey!”
But then they closed the shutters and talked about many things, and forgot about it until the first notes hit the glass of the window.
It was “I’ll tell you a secret.”
First one single voice, then a choir of others, then a single voice again.
It felt strange, something out of another life. Who was she again? Her hands joined together, she sat at the table, and looked at her father from time to time, timidly, while he cleaned the table from what was on it, other than the rest of their dinner: a bowl with fruit, a few chestnuts, the nutcracker, some old newspapers.
They sang “Under this sky” and then “Agreste, farewell,” and then even “Before turning.”
He had a nice voice. She knew: she had heard it before, although mostly as he sang together with the others, and singing other kinds of songs. Now it was different, and it was all hers.
She had closed her eyes by then, and just listened. Until her father spoke to her.
“Pieck,” her father said, “I think it’s time you open the window.”
Yes, she knew.
“He has to wait. Just a little more,” she responded.
A pause, outside. By then, the whole neighborhood must have been aware of what was going on. She did not hear the kids from the floor above yelling while playing anymore, but between songs, some voices of encouragement, others of snark. Well, she was imagining that, because only the songs broke through the windows of her father’s kitchen.
Finally, the first notes of “The light from your window”. Again, a single voice singing. Now with a certain strain: it was, after all, the tone of the song.
Ten, she thought to herself. Nine, eight—and while she counted, she finally stood up and approached the window, and opened it very slowly, and without making a noise. Or so she thought, because every sound but the song, now at the end of the verse, loud and clear as the windowpane was not a barrier anymore.
…Six, Five…
The air of the winter night was biting with cold, and yet she felt it so lively.
The refrain started, more voices now, and that was when (“…Two, One!”) she opened the external wooden shutters all in one go.
She saw him immediately, and as she met his gaze, and he hers, he had to stop singing, the song continuing carried by the others. She could not speak: she knew she was about to cry anyway. She would allow it, tonight. Just staring into his eyes was enough, wasn’t it? She had brought her hands on her cheeks and could not let go of them, a slight, biting itch in her throat.
Then he found his voice again, but not to join the others in song.
“Come down,” he said loudly to her, “Come down to meet me.”
That was when the lady from the apartment upstairs decided it was time to throw a bucket of icy water down at the serenading party. The water and the bucket itself.
Jean was right at the center of its trajectory and wouldn’t even move, but Reiner, from his left, quickly moved him over, and took the hit in full.
Some people began to clap. Others shouted enthusiastically.
Oh well. Thanks, Reiner.
Time to really come down now, wasn’t it?