Chapter Text
Jean sat quietly on the train tracks, the night sky full of stars above him. He thought back to the time when he and his friends had built this very track. He remembered the time when Armin was chasing Sasha around till they were both out of breath, and it felt good to think of those memories but at the same time it hurt.
He remembered when they built this specific section of the tracks, the area was a small field of tall grass. The first thing they had to do when they got there was cut a long strip of grass away so they could place the tracks down. One of the things Armin had noticed when they were there was that there was only one tree in the whole 3-mile field, and it was rather small and grew sort of at an angle. Jean had always enjoyed the way Armin could point out small little details, and it was also coincidentally right next to that strip they had cleared.
As he reminisced in his thoughts, he hadn’t even noticed Armin coming up behind him till the blonde touched his shoulder, then Jean jumped slightly and turned around. He could never get used to the way Armin looked now. Every time he saw him, he felt sick to his stomach, the same feeling he had felt the day Armin was scorched by the colossal. Jean had thought he would never have to see Armin on the brink of death like that, but the image of his burnt and charred body on the gable roof could never leave his mind. Now Armin was a walking reminder of the suffering and torture he had endured that night.
Even though he had seen it happen, he would never get used to the way the dried blood stuck to Armin’s body, how the dark red was a constant reminder that this could never go away, no matter how hard they tried.
Jean felt lucky that his death was quick, unlike Armin’s. He didn’t even remember what happened after he saw the light of the train approaching besides waking up and his vision being worse than usual. Although when he realized he was being carried but his body wasn’t, it scared him, it scared him a lot. Luckily, the only evidence left of his death was the blood on his neck, and technically the string that served as a constant reminder that his head and body were being held together by stitches. Since Armin couldn’t talk for quite a while after his death, Jean had put the pieces together himself; he had died from being decapitated by the wheels of a train.
When Armin sat on the tracks next to him and held his hand, he felt a bit of comfort, knowing they still had each other. Sometimes he wished they had just stayed in the underground prison, maybe if Armin hadn’t found a way to pick the lock both of them would still be alive. Jean only imagined what their life would be like if they were alive, he imagined him and Armin living a good life on the island, or possibly even in Marley after everything. Possibly one day, they could’ve adopted children to raise as their own, but Jean found that unlikely, considering they never really would’ve been able to confess without the fact that they were no longer there, in the real world with everybody, alive.
He replayed the common memory in his head. The two boys had snuck out of the underground prison and left the door wide open for their friends to follow, but somehow the cell door closed before anyone else could leave. The two boys had a plan to go find something to use to open the door again, but as they snuck through the halls, one of the yeagerists found them. They would’ve fought back, but the man threatened to hurt or even kill the others back in the cell if they resisted. Without much choice, they surrendered.
Jean was pulled out of his thoughts by Armin’s question, whose voice was still fairly muffled and quiet to the point where it was hard to make out what Armin was saying, “What are you thinking about?” Jean turned to the blonde, looking him in the eye, his one good eye. Jean answered quietly, “That night…”
Armin immediately looked down and away and just nodded his head in understanding. Jean felt as if he was going to break down and sob every time he saw Armin. Once they were caught, Floch had taken matters into his own hands without even consulting Eren. Jean liked to think Eren wouldn’t want what happened to them happen if he had a choice, since they were still sort of his friends, or at least Jean hoped the brunette still at least wanted what was best for them.
The two of them kept within a 10-foot distance at all times as they walked miles out, assuring that Armin wouldn’t transform. The group of yeagerists, whom they had once trained with and got to know over the years, knew Armin wouldn’t risk transforming with his friend so close.
He remembered being brought to the tree by the tracks surrounded by the tall grass, and he remembered being tied up and told to sit by the tree. He had expected them to do the same for Armin, but instead, two of them had grabbed an arm each, and Floch had started stringing thin wire from the tree branches. Suddenly, the loud crunch of bones snapping filled the night. They had somehow managed to snap Armin‘s legs. At that moment, Jean felt like he was going to vomit when he saw the way his legs bent backwards at the knees, blood and bone sticking out grotesquely in certain places.
Jean struggled against his restraints when they broke the poor boy's arms as well. They then pinned him to the ground so that even when he regenerated, he wouldn’t be able to move. He saw Floch take out sewing thread, a sewing needle, and a knife that was the size of a letter opener, but definitely sharp enough to be considered a dagger from a small bag. Jean knew Floch was a bit messed up, but there was no humanity in that ginger at that moment. He started dragging the small knife through the flesh at the corner of Armin‘s mouth and carved it up to his cheekbone. Immediately blood had begun gushing out of the injury. Floch then began twisting the knife to make the edges a lot less cleaner, and many times more painful.
Jean couldn’t hear his protests for them to stop over the sound of Armin‘s pained wailing. It was like they were carving a smile into his face. It was a twisted, messed up joke. They were torturing a kind soul for no reason. Jean’s blood went cold when he heard Floch speak up. “Do not allow yourself to regenerate. If we see the steam from your regeneration or have evidence that you are healing yourself, we are going to do whatever we do to you 10 times worse to him over there.”
Jean knew Floch didn’t like Armin, hated would even be a bit of an understatement, which was mostly because the ginger had once told the blonde he shouldn’t be alive straight to his face when he was already dealing with survivor's guilt. But to manipulate and threaten to hurt Jean if he dared to heal himself was much too far. Jean was screaming at Armin to ignore the man’s claim, and that he should be focusing on healing himself. But Jean knew Armin too well, and immediately the steam coming from his injuries ceased.
Jean watched in horror as Floch began stitching Armin's mouth shut so he couldn’t make any more noise ever again. He struggled against his ropes, because even back then he couldn’t bear to see this happen to anyone, let alone the sweet boy he cared about so deeply.
Jean felt himself gagging as the blood spilled all over Armin‘s white dress shirt, the stench of iron filling the air.
Jean physically couldn’t watch as Floch used the same knife to stab Armin in the eye, gouging it out The worst part was that the muscle and nerve endings were still attached to the eyeball, so it was dangling from its socket as it dripped and gushed chunks of flesh mixed in the syrupy blood, some parts of this cocktail of gore had yellow undertones and was stringy instead of liquidy.
Jean had to swallow down the urge to vomit as they picked Armin up. Jean then thought back to when Floch had strung wire in the tree as they began to break Armin’s joints in even more places so they could unnaturally bend his limbs as they tied him to the tree. Jean could hear the muffled pleads from Armin’s stitched mouth, Jean could feel the warm tears running down his face as he watched his friend being brutally tortured. He wanted nothing more than to just be back in that stupid underground cell, and if he couldn’t have that he would gladly take the ability to stop them from doing this. Would gladly take the ability to stop them from manipulating Armin into not regenerating by putting Jean’s well-being at stake.
If Jean could he would hold Armin forever and comfort him, he would take him down from that tree. The very tree Armin himself pointed out that day. He wanted nothing more than to hold the broken body that hung from the tree. He could only sit and watch as one of the two people who were holding Armin down earlier, took a thick branch from the soil beneath them and swung it as hard as he could at Armin. He could hear the crunch of his ribs as the man beat him like a fucking piñata. soon Armin went completely limp, and his chest stopped moving to indicate any breathing.
Armin was dead.
Jean couldn’t even scream to indicate his emotions. he was too shocked to even react when the same two guys who held Armin down grabbed him and positioned him so his neck lay on the rails of the train track.
He was only snapped out of his post-traumatic daze when he heard the loud horn of a train, one of the new inventions the volunteers had shown the people of Paradis.
By the time he realized what was going on, the train was already too close are we could do was stare at Armin’s broken and abused body that hung from the tree from where he was, his last thought before the train had killed him, was how ironic that the train tracks him, Armin, and their friends had built is going to be the death of him.
“Hey Jean, why are you on the tracks again?”
Jean was brought back from his flashback of the sound of the sweet blonde. Armin had some how found a way to talk through the stitching over his lips, for some reason no matter how hard he tried. He could never pull the thread out completely after death, but he was able to loosen them to the point where he could speak.
“Waiting for the night train,” Jean replied. The taller male thought back when the remains of their bodies were still there, back when Armin‘s body still hung from the tree. They refused to go over here. But when they heard the familiar voice of Mikasa, they ventured back. Only when they saw the horrified look of their friends, and surprisingly Annie and Reiner, and those two kids that snuck on the airship, only then did they realize their friends had no clue what happened to them until they saw their rotting bodies. Neither of them could ever forget the look on their friend's faces.
Of course, as spirits they could go anywhere in the world they wanted at any given time, even though their friends couldn’t see them, they could still see their friends, they got to see how they aged, see how they got to live a life.
They heard the train horn, a sound both of them had gotten familiar with. If they had physical bodies, the light from the locomotive would’ve cast shadows as it came up behind where they sat. Armin rested his head on Jean’s shoulder as the train got closer. It’s not like they could get hit by a train anymore so when the train came, they just sat as their nonexistent bodies passed through the cold metal.
Jean always thought about something he had heard Armin say back in the cadet days, something that really applied now, even though human flesh isn’t forever, the impacts people leave behind are.