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Jean didn’t realize his bones hurt this much.
He knew they’d hurt after all the years being spent in relentless fighting, but he didn’t know they'd hurt this much. He assumed the pain would go away as soon as he lead a more relaxing life, but it seemed to stay.
His mother had opened the door to his childhood house with a wide grin and tearing escaping her eyes. She never cried when he was a kid – a sign jean took for her strength. But when she stood infront of him, head near his weary but beating heart, he heard her sob. And out of all things she could do, she thanked him.
Him. she thanked him.
And what for? For returning empty handed? Returning with less than he had started out with? Returning without bringing you?
He had promised her in those letters he wrote to her almost every other month that he’d bring you along with him when he would finally come back home after all these years. That his mother would love you and show you around jean’s childhood garden and make you his favourite food in hopes you’d love it too. he wondered if his mother was waiting for you as much as she was waiting for him.
But the wait would have been futile anyway. You would never grace his old house, your soft footsteps would never pad along his childhood room that still had his old drawings and sketches and clothes that he bet his mother still kept in his closet, collecting dust.
He hugged his mother close to his chest. After he was ushered inside by the older woman, she had promptly made him tea with milk the same way he’d drink it as a child and some toast with a little bit of sugar sprinkled on top. The same toast you had tried to make in Marley after he told you about his old favourite treat. he remembered you putting a little too much sugar on it, and when jean complained about it, you just shrugged and told him his bitter attitude would be fixed if he ate the whole thing.
He ate the whole thing. Not to fix his ‘bitter attitude’ but to see your smile on your face as you prepared to make the second piece of toast, this time with less sugar.
His mother talked about all the things he’d missed. She talked about how Mr. Thompson’s boy ran away one time, and how he came back at night after he became too hungry. The boy’s mother had given him a beating after that, jean’s mother recalled. Jean smiled as he blew his tea to cool it, something he had to now get used to doing by himself. You’d always make the tea hot and let it cool down as jean slept through the sunrise. The commander position had been too much for him to handle as he sat through sleepless nights trying to complete the endless paperwork and future plans himself. You’d try to stay up by his side, but ended up passing out after having to help armin with the new train track plans the entire day in the blazing paradis sun. the milky tea would cool down to be a temperature which jean actually enjoyed sipping it in, so in some ways, the sleeplessness would be worth it.
He remembered you trying out coffee for the first time in Marley. Your nose scrunched and eye twitched as you drank the bitter liquid, but you tried to maintain your composure infront of the azumbito who had so kindly offered you the drink. The cup went untouched after the first sip. Jean had to finish it off so you wouldn’t feel bad about being rude to your hosts, and with his stone face as he sipped the wretched thing, he saw your shoulders relax a bit. He remembered thinking he would make you pay him back, but for now, it would be worth it.
his mother knew better than to ask him about his experiences. She remembered when he wrote that letter describing when jean found his dear friend dead. The letter was one of the first he had ever written to her. It was short and to the point, but jean’s mother treasured it nonetheless. His mother told jean how there had been a shortage of apples for a while now, so her horse in the stable hadn’t seen his favourite treat for a long time. She left out the part where she would look at the empty stable next to her own horse, the one occupied by jean’s father’s horse.
Jean’s father had always been a touchy subject in the Kirstein household. Jean himself had his mother’s last name due to the reason, refusing to take his fathers. He’d leave and return at random times of the year, claiming something about “having work” which jean, even as a child, didn’t believe. He would almost always return an ungodly amount of time later, in the late hours of the night, claiming he missed his ‘wife’ even though the ring on jean’s mother’s hand was long gone, kept in the drawer in her closet. She told jean that she would give the ring to him when he decided to get married himself so that it could be like a family heirloom instead of something that made her see the man that she grew to hate.
She had kicked jean’s father out soon after she got better after being sick, when jean had been in the second year of his cadet training. She wrote the news to him in a letter that went unanswered for a long time. Jean didn’t acknowledge it until after the war in trost, when he diligently answered his mother’s letters – new and old – after you had told him to treat his mother better. He realised his stupidity the night you told him that after the close call to his death, he might as well tell his mother he was alive and somewhat well and that his teenage rage bullshit with his mother would only keep hurting the woman.
He detailed his apology in the next letter he wrote to her. She brushed his stupidity aside, saying she forgave him. she then asked about you in the letter.
Jean’s next letter was three whole pages long, front and back.
As he cleaned up from the warm and much needed dinner after a long day's travel, he wondered if she still kept that letter.
Jean wished he could go back. he wished he was here with you instead of alone. He wished you rode your horse alongside his and complained about how your back was hurting because of the long journey. Jean wished he could massage your back to relive you of the discomfort like how he used to after you had been slumped on your desk for too long.
he tried to swallow down the lump in his throat, shifting his attention to cleaning the dishes.
But how could he focus? Your hands weren’t wrapped around his waist, cheek pressed on his back like you used to back in Marley, in your shared apartment supplied by the Azumabito’s as the scouts tried to act like normal Marleyans and somehow gather information about the military and whereabouts of the suicidal maniac. But in your little home, coated in beautiful silence, you and jean were just…that. Just people. Not trying to stay alive on the rooftops of trost while fighting cannibalistic giants, not infront of your friend’s and old commrades’ graves asking for forgiveness, not a commander and his assistant. You were just two people, sharing a house, doing the dishes after eating dinner, with your feet touching the same ground, warm skin touching warm skin.
Jean sighed. The basin was a relatively new invention to paradis, and he was glad for that. He couldn’t imagine dipping his hand in the dirty water like he had to during his cadet days after you had been separated from him to clean up the stables.
Stop thinking, he tried to will himself with futile results.
Missing you would be an understatement. Missing you would be saying that you were only gone for a couple of days. Missing you sounded more like a promise, like a hope that you'd come back to him and he’d stop missing you. he wasn’t grieving you, either. He grieved marco. He grieved sasha. He grieved the commrades that died on his command, and he knew for a fact that grief wasn’t what he felt for you.
No, this felt more like… an ache. Residing deep in his muscles because they couldn’t hold you, residing deep in his lungs because they couldn’t smell the scent you left behind – the freshly washed clothes and the smell of flowers. After you had discovered perfumes in marley, it was over for you. you tried every single one, finally settling on the one marked as “pure blossom” and jean remembered calling it a stupid name because they could’ve just named it “flowers” instead of something pretentious, but the smile on your face made him pull his wallet out anyway.
The ache, as he decided to call it, was more dangerous than the grief. The ache felt more like a habit he had left behind instead of memories that would rush into his head. Habit of seeing you wake up next to him, of seeing you cutting up vegetables alongside him, of you strapping on his ODM gear. Things you had done to him a million times before, things he couldn’t call memories because memories would imply that he was going to forget them soon, or that he was intending to bury them with his countless other memories, but for him it felt like a cycle. Like the spinning of the candy floss he bought for you at your first carnival in the interiors of paradis as a cadet.
He hadn’t notice his mother walking back into the kitchen when she laid a hand on his shoulder. He had subconsciously stopped scrubbing the dishes, his hands frozen under the running water.
“I’ll clean up the rest, jean-bo. I set up your bed, so go and sleep.” She said.
Jean breathed. Nodding, he wiped his hands on the napkin next to him.
His upstairs room, as suspected, had been left untouched. He assumed there would be dirt everywhere, but jean’s mother seemed to have cleaned it. He sighed an affectionate smile.
The air in his room smelt like old wood soaked in rain. He padded his feet over to the window near his closet to let some fresh night air inside.
resting his chin on his palm, he looked out the now open window. The moon was full and beautiful, and under his room was the perfect view of the garden his mother was so fondly and patiently growing.
The moonlight gave just enough light to the flowers she grew. If memory served jean correct, some were tulips with their closed buds. Some were uncanny to white roses, but he wouldn’t know with the dim lighting. His eyes wandered the place, observing the flowers in the different staged of being bloomed, until they landed on them. The poppies.
The red flowers looked almost purple with the moon’s glow and the indigo night sky, but that didn’t stop jean from recognizing them, not after everything.
“poppy.” He whispered.
“poppy. Poppy. Poppy.” He repeated, like he thought saying it enough times would bring you back. he remembered how sasha had told him that if you say a name of a dead person three times infront of a mirror, their apparation would appear infront of you. sasha was from a small village, and the extents of her superstitious knowledge never failed to surprise jean, and he brushed her off saying it was just something her grandmother would have made up.
But although jean didn’t have a mirror infront of him, he hoped the conviction in his voice would do the trick. He hoped his tears would mold you out of the ground you had sank in after death, he hoped his hand pressed to his chest would breathe life to your sculpture and that you'd be here, infront of him, glowing beneath the moonlight, no longer in a pool of your own blood on the cold floor, that your warmth would be yours again.
But all he did was sob and repeat your nickname in between the pleads of your name, soon becoming incoherent and jumbled mush. His right hand was pressed on the centre of his chest where it hurt the most, where the only thing that would heal it would be your signature kisses to it, like your own handmade key. Like how his was on the tip of your nose. His left hand clasped his ear, hoping he would hear the sweet tunes of your voice again, but all he heard instead were his sobs and the gunshot that killed you.
But one of his wishes was granted. If he were not to hear you or touch you or feel you again, he could at least see you as he closed his eyes tightly. He saw the first time he’d seen you without your clothes, only in your undergarments. The curtains of his room were closed, as you both laid on his cool bedsheets. Jean’s eyes roamed your body, marking every bruise, fresh and old, and every scar, new and healing and healed. He remembered asking himself why the priests in the churches prayed to a god in the walls when his god was here, infront of him, breathing, and how they could ever worship something that wasn’t even half as real yet holy as you, how they could plead to the sky when you were intertwining his pinky with yours, and how they could devote to their readings even if they could never find the words you say to him in the scriptures. How could they worship someone who has never touched them the way you had to him, your hands now tracing his jaw, trailing down to his adams apple as he swallowed, then to all the scars on his chest and arms, the ones he’d always kept covered. Did the gods they worshiped make them feel free of all their sins as they claimed to the same way he felt his sins wash away as you held his hand? Jean was never the religious type, but he did remember thinking, no, knowing, that there had to have been some god in you. that you had to be a god. And of course, he couldn’t say these things out loud in a way that would make sense, so he just continued to look at you as his eyes fluttered shut that night.
His mothers hand encircled his shoulders as she sat down beside him, back pressing the wall with the window jean was previously looking out of.
His mothers hand encircled his shoulders as she sat down beside him, back pressing the wall with the window jean was previously looking out of.
his mother guided him to sit at the edge of his clean bed. she sat on the edge of the mattress, and jean instinctively rest the back of his head against her knees.
it was something they used to do - whenever jean would be bullied, which happened quite a lot, his mother would ask him to sit on the floor as she massaged his head and took away all his worries. he'd rant to her about the boys with raspy voices and bruised knuckles would pick on him and him only, while his mother reminded him he was special, that he was okay, that the boys only did that to him because they lacked the confidence jean had.
and when jeans mother, once again, brushed her hand through his hair, his sobs ceased. he still wanted to scream, burst out in the tears that he had already exhausted to an extent, but instead, he sat there with wet eyelashes and cheeks with closed eyes, thinking about you and the things he wished would happen. that's the only thing he could do, he realised. all he could do now was wish and dream and picture a life with you by his side instead of living the horrid reality without you.
his mother broke the silence. "tell me about them," she asks.
she doesn't have to; she knows everything there is to know about poppy from her point of view by Jean's numerous letters detailing his experiences which somehow always consisted you. but she asked anyway. maybe because she wished someone would have asked her about jean's father when he left because not only did she have so much to say, she felt as though if she didn't, then it would be less real. then it would be all in her head. and if her son was anything like her, he was feeling the same way right now.
jeans hands shook, something he had grown used to since being a scout and waking up with nightmares; only this time, you weren't with him, holding his palms with your fingers until they stopped moving feverously. with one of his hands on his chest and the other in his lap, he took seven deep breaths in the same way marco had taught him. inhale, hold for a couple seconds, and then exhale. he repeated that until he gained his voice again, until he was sure the lump in his throat had dissolved a little.
with his mother's hands still in his hair, Jean found the strength to speak. he opened his mouth.
“they… the first time we talked, they called me flower boy.” He said hoarsely, and even if he had exhausted his tears for atleast two weeks, his eyes still burnt from a memory he couldn’t go back to. He saw it clearly, as if it were yesterday; the dining hall was packed, the smell of moist old wood and stale bread and steamed vegetables stained the atmosphere. The fire lamp behind you hit the side of your face, and he heard your voice clear as the night sky outside – “flower boy” you had said and if jean had food in his mouth, he was sure he would’ve spit it out.
“it wasn’t even..” jean smiled sadly, “it isn’t even a romantic nickname like honey or babe or sweetheart but it still made me choke up and blush. I think it was the fact that it was a personal nickname that I knew they wouldn’t call anyone else. and we had this stupid competition where we’d see who could go through the forest faster with our new ODM gear and one time they crashed into me because they lost control and I was on crutches for the next two weeks and they felt so guilty about it that they made me a flower crown every other day. I wasn’t even mad at them, not really. I just wanted them to continue making the flower crowns so I pretended to be mad at them.” He said. His voice regained it’s strength, palms facing upwards on his lap, taunting him as they lay there empty without yours intertwined in them.
His mother hummed knowingly. She knew what it was like to be in the crutches of strong teenage love, feeling like she had an entire world to explore with this newfound vision. How she wished she could go back and tell her younger self to enjoy that rose-coloured feeling while it lasted.
“and they never stopped calling me that. It felt wrong for someone else to call me that,” jean explained, and he felt his hand drift to the centre of his chest, feeling his heart beat. It seemed calm now, he noted, how the rhythmic vibration didn’t seem as erratic as before. maybe his mother was right, maybe all he needed to do was talk about you.
But how long would it take? How long would he have to blabber on about you, which he would do very gladly, for his still beating heart to know that you were no longer here? That you weren’t the reason it would flutter and thrum against his chest? how much longer would he have to keep reminding himself that you wouldn’t stop him in his tracks if you ever spotted a poppy on your way to a bakery in marley?
“I don’t think I can….i don’t think I can live without them, ma. It hurts. It hurts so much.” The cold hand on his chest started shaking again. “I don’t want to open my eyes without them. I don’t want to…I don’t know what to do, ma, what do I do? What do I do with all of what I’ve felt and keep feeling for them?” he asks raspily, desperately, like his mother would know the answers to questions she herself hadn’t been able to answer. Jean turned his head towards her, placing his cheek on her lap as he closed his eyes once more. If his mother couldn’t answer him, surely the darkness would be able to do something, right?
“sweet heart… I will be honest, I don’t know. I wish I did, but I don’t. its like your hands don’t know what to hold anymore, isn’t it?” she paused. “I wont pretend to know what you’re feeling. But all I can say is that you keep loving them, jean-bo. Preserve it. Keep it locked up only for them. And then, when time comes, and when your chest stops aching so, you can let it go.” She says.
Jean shakes his head, “but what if my chest never stops hurting?”
His mother doesn’t answer.
Jean knew at a young age that his mother didn’t always know the answer. Where other boys would spew facts and trivia about the world as their mother told them, jean’s mother would only answer him with an apologetic look and a “you’ll know soon enough jean-bo. And when you do, be sure to tell me.” and sometimes jean would be jealous of the other boys for having a mother like theirs, but he would shake away that jealousy quickly enough, coming home to his mother with an unbuttoned shirt, crying because the button broke off during a rather aggressive play of catch, and his mother would quickly sew on a shiny new button to it’s original place.
He learnt that his mother may not have all the answers to the world, but atleast she’d know how to fix them. How to fill in the cracks of the questions to make it her own wall.
But now he was here, on his mother’s lap, asking her to fix his broken heart, asking her to fix his collapsing lungs and shaking hands, looking for answers he knew he couldn’t find. He knew you took the answers with you, and he knew the threads you so intricately wove into him, into his veins, were unravelling until there would be nothing but a husk of a body he once knew only through your stitches.
His mother took his shaking hands in her own, forcing him to sit up straight. Her thumbs rub over his scared knuckles. She lets out a sigh.
“I don’t know.” She mutters. Its an apology.
He doesn’t know either. He’s sorry too.