Archive of Our Own ^beta

 Your body told me in a dream it’s never been afraid of anything.

— Detail of the Woods, Richard Siken.

When I have closed my eyes and looked at you,

I have seen more than I have ever seen of you.

'Jaeger, headquarters.' 

The forest, again. A forest, again. Leaves. Leaves, leaves, leaves, rustling here, flying there, blue sky white clouds red red blood. Wind, cold on his face, cold, so cold on his hands, howling in his ears, hurting his head, so loud so loud so 'Jaeger, now.' 

Someone is crying, someone is crying louder than the wind, now. So much louder than the wind, and sounding ten times worse, and if the wind had been howling he doesn't know what this sound is. Someone is screaming in pain, sobbing, wailing. Howling in his ears, hurting his head, so loud so loud so ‘Jaeger, now.' 
 
'Tell the shorty—'
 
'I don't.'
 
'He said, he said—' That's Armin's voice, now, that's Armin, stepping towards him in that floral sweater he always wears, and his bright white sneakers, and his eyes so blue, and swords in his hands.
 
'I don't.'

---

From the moment we are born, all of us are free. 

Eren stares at the words, graphite dust littering the ruled page; he’s pressed the pencil too hard in his frustration. 
 
It’s less a question of coming up with the words, more the challenge of finding them from wherever they’ve hidden themselves. Professor Zoë insists that waiting for inspiration to strike is the path of least resistance, that one must be ready to stay up all night with coffee and slave over a page. (On more than one occasion, Eren has felt the need to point out to his classmates that perhaps this staying up all night business is what accounts for that look in their eyes. He refrains. Mostly.) 

While he tries to follow their advice most of the time— they must know something, with that grin of theirs— this is different. He knows enough to trust his instinct, and his instinct tells him that he just might need to sit in this near-empty café at— he checks his watch— 3:35 AM and stare at his journal until he remembers the rest of the words.

The new waitress is kind; smiling as she pours out another coffee for him, soft brown eyes to match her soft brown curls. ‘Pending assignment?'

‘Pending epiphany,’ he chuckles, wrapping his cold fingers around the mug. At his last syllable, the door of the café swings open, so harshly that the little bell they use swings right off the frame and swings wildly in the winter wind. Eren starts in his seat, nearly flinging one of the cushions off in his alarm, and looks up to glare at the intruder. 

A boy of his age, clearly, black earmuffs and a smirk that promises that they will start off on the wrong foot if they start off at all. Eren can’t see much else of him until Mina at the counter flicks one of the string lights on, little bulbs lighting up, weaker than Eren’s lamp. 

And in that light he sees the boy clearly for the— first— he sees the boy clearly— feels his breath catch in his throat, physical, rough— narrow brown eyes, light brown hair in cold-ridden spikes, dark at the edges from precipitation. Later he will find the lights fitting, dim lamps and damp streets, just enough for recognition— just enough for confusion.

’This place open again?’ the boy has a mellow drawl— Eren feels his heart shoot up into his throat where his breath is still caught, feels it plummet back down to his ribs. Green, blue, white fill his vision, blue, white, red, receding quickly, leaving him to stare at the boy.

‘Twenty four hours now, the only one on campus,’ the waitress beams, while Mina turns one more light on and Eren sees more of the boy’s face— defined jaw, defiant set. ‘We don’t usually get many students at this time—' 

‘I see one, though.’ Eren immediately hunches his shoulders and turns back to his journal, doesn’t want anything to do with the boy, from the moment we are born, all of us are free. The world, humanity, and our lives—

No, that feels wrong. Sounds wrong. Out of place. He clears his throat and takes an ambitious gulp of his coffee, and promptly chokes on the burn.

‘Graceful,’ the boy says, flopping down onto the couch across him and depositing his duffel to the floor, beside his legs. Eren draws his journal and notes to himself defensively, leaving behind professor Zoë’s assignment, which the boy picks up and turns over.

‘Write about freedom,’ he reads out. ‘Free verse accepted.’ 

Eren furrows his brows in what he knows is a death glare, and holds his hand out for the boy to return the paper. The boy raises his own but leans over, and Eren catches an inhale of something sharp and grassy. It’s so familiar that it might’ve been his own cologne, or the detergent he borrowed from Armin. 

‘My name,’ the boy says, leaning back and linking his hands behind his head, ‘is Jean Kirschtein. I just got back from Munich. You, my friend, were not here when I left.’

Jean Kirschtein. Hundred-and-fourth.

‘Eren Jaeger,’ he mumbles, burn forgotten. ‘I joined a week late. You shouldn’t act so familiar with strangers.’

 ‘We aren’t strangers, though,’ Jean says, and Eren feels that breath-catching-heart-shooting phenomenon again.

‘We aren’t?’ The lilt marking his question is almost hopeful, he thinks.

‘No. See,’ Jean continues, leaning forward and grinning like something out of a framed photograph, ‘I’m already nicking your coffee.’ 

The moment is lost in Eren’s squawk of protest, a little bit of coffee spilling over to his journal, and now he’s murderous. Mindfulness of surroundings has never been one of his strong suits; he lets out a loud hey, watch it and yanks out a tissue from the dispenser to dab at a stain, head heating up with annoyance and a number of other things.

‘Oh, shit, I’m sorry,’ Jean says, helping with another stain before (to Eren’s utter shock) pulling the entire thing towards himself. ‘What’s this? Free verse?'

‘You can’t just look at people’s— give that back!’ 

‘Sure you can, how are we going to be friends otherwise?’ Jean bends down and unzips the duffel, pulls out something that looks like a sketchbook. ‘Here, look.’ 

‘I don’t want to look! Just give me my journal!'

‘From the moment we are born, all of us are free.’ 

Eren grunts in resignation and sinks back into his seat, clutching the sketchbook tightly, as if it were an item of ransom, which it probably is at this point. ‘Happy? That’s all I’ve got anyway.’ 

‘Well, no wonder you aren’t writing more. Your foundation is faulty.’ 

‘What?'

‘From the moment we are born, all of us are free,’ Jean reads out in a high-pitched voice, and Eren is actually amazed at how quickly one can get annoyed with a fellow human being. ‘What is this freedom? Define this freedom for me.’ 
 
‘That’s the fucking assignment.’ 

‘If you’re unable to discuss your assignment, how will you complete it? You want to say we’re all free from the moment we’re born, but you can’t define what that freedom is? Is it so inherent that you can’t specify it, or is it so foreign that you don’t know shit about it? Then are we free or not, if radical poet Eren Jaeger cannot explain to mediocre art student Jean Kirschtein what he means by this birth-given freedom—' 

‘Bring him a coffee, please,’ Eren says to the waitress. ‘Put it on my tab.’ 

---

Eren loathes mediocre art student Jean Kirschtein. Mostly because he isn’t mediocre at all, in anything except social cues, maybe. 

As some sort of ineffective retaliation to the theft of his journal and dignity, Eren had viciously flipped open Jean’s sketchbook— five minutes ago. He’s been on the first page ever since, gaping. 

Eren has never pretended to understand art beyond being able to judge whether bunches of lines put together look pretty or not; whatever poetry he can wring out of strokes of paintbrushes and charcoal and whatever else it is that artists use is merely translation to ruled paper from plain. As a result, he finds almost all art impressive— but this goes beyond even his token awe as a layman. This…this is something incredible.

The very first page has a…he thinks it’s a section of a wall. It doesn’t look like cement, or bricks. More like large stones, maybe. Or just one large stone, and across it, roses. So many roses, and so well drawn that Jean must’ve spent professor Zoë’s prescribed slaving hours over this paper— but Eren always thought that roses needed to grow from the the ground, and these roses are just…rising out of nowhere, it seems. He’s pretty sure he’ll get a broken nose for the trouble of verifying Jean’s botanical knowledge, but the question slips out anyway, after a long silence interspersed with him humming noncommittally in reply to each and every one of Jean’s questions.

‘Where are they growing from?'

‘Hmm?'

‘The roses. Where are they growing from? They seem to start and end on the wall itself.’ 

Jean doesn’t say anything for a long time, and even in these brief minutes of knowing him, Eren finds it strange. He looks up from the sketchbook— reluctantly; he wants to stare at it until the drawing is memorised— and raises his eyebrows. Jean is looking into his coffee with a half-smile on his parted lips, and damn it, annoying as he is, he’s fucking handsome.

‘First one to ask me that,’ Jean says finally. ‘People usually fear questioning artistic license.’ 

‘Well?’ 

‘Cracks,’ he grins, looks up. ‘They’re growing along cracks.’ 

Eren turns the page carefully, almost expecting the back of the wall to be visible on the back of it, but of course, he finds only the yellowish white of a blank page. ‘I didn’t know that was actually possible outside Instagram. Is there soil inside, then?'

Jean laughs, a nasal, paining sound. ‘I guess you could say that.’ 

‘You guess?’ Eren leans forward; he’s curious in spite of himself. Maybe not as much about the rebellious flowers and their sustenance as about how much an artist actually thinks while drawing something. If there are backstories to their works too, always, or if strokes run shallower than words. If there is a backstory to this wall or was Jean just bored and particularly skilled at flora. ‘What do you mean?'

Jean puts Eren’s journal down, picks his mug up, and steam rises from it steadily, veiling his face like clouds cling to mountains sometimes. Eren’s fingers itch to pen that untimely line somewhere.

‘Flowers grow over graves, right?’ he asks. Not a question as an answer, but a question as a question, the hope in the furrow of his brow reminding Eren of his own request not ten minutes ago; we aren’t?

‘I’m sure they do,’ Eren replies, almost reassuringly.

The time is 3:53 AM. It is beginning to rain outside.

---

— Write about freedom. Free verse accepted. 

From the moment we are born, all of us are free. The world, humanity, and our lives—

---

Eren wants to be friends with mediocre art student Jean Kirschtein. He doesn’t think he’s ever wanted anything more, anything else. In the end his assignment is incomplete, and professor Zoë tells him not to rush it. That freedom is an ever-changing thing anyway.

---

Maybe Eren has always been too angry for love. Or, maybe Eren had always been too angry for love. It doesn't mean that he doesn't still feel that rage, no matter how long it's been (eight, eight years since his town fell and he lost everything he didn't know he'd considered to be home). It just means that maybe now, he has enough time for the other thing too, or enough time to understand that the two might not be all that different.

Or, as Jean put it one night, you are just a dense fucking human being. I'm going to kick your ass. Come here.

In the way Jean exists with him, Eren feels invincible. More so than he always does. With Jean, he feels invincible even in the dead of the night, when fear sometimes liked to creep in, before. With Jean behind him, just an inch behind and almost beside, he feels that nothing could ever touch the bastard. Nothing and no one can ever touch Jean Kirschtein as long as they exist together, like this, in this violent way of theirs, in the way Jean always comes flying to him.

And Jean always does. Jean always comes flying to him. Angrily, happily, in tears, in love. They've danced across rooftops in tangles of wires, and they've dangled from branches so high that they almost touch the clouds, and Eren has seen Jean in every light. In the forests that they race their horses to the moment Levi lets them off for the day, Jean's light brown eyes take on the hazel that the leaves give them, and Eren is entranced, Eren is calmed.

And in the chilly stone hallways with their torches along the walls, Jean's eyes are warm and sweet like honey, and his sharp nose and sharper jaw are defined by these delicious shadows that Eren wishes he could draw instead of Jean. And Eren is entranced, Eren is calmed. And late, late at night when they should be asleep, they put on their warmest clothes and sneak off to lie in the damp grass and stare up at the sky. The bright stars, the quiet cities that they roam, their footfalls muted in the dust of the streets— in the light of those stars, Jean doesn't belong to this land anymore. And Eren is entranced. And Eren is calmed.

In the way Jean exists with him, and always comes flying to him, angrily, happily, in tears, in love, Eren finds that he might have been a little short of angry enough for love. But Jean— Jean is loud and annoying and tries unsuccessfully to hide a temper as short as Eren's, if not as hot. Jean is a morning and noon of frost, Jean is the crackle of bonfires. When the stars come out in the wake of the sun, Jean is the sound of the evening birds.

Eren loves him with all of his angry young heart. Eren loves him with all of his angry young heart.

---

The open mic at Les Ailes was started by one of Eren’s seniors, an enthusiastic girl who graduated a couple of years ago. He never knew her, but he’s grateful anyway. If there’s one thing he enjoys more than reading and writing words, it’s speaking them. His mother always told him that she hoped he’d be able to find a hobby that allowed him to talk as much as he wanted, so he regularly sends her clips of his performances, fifteen second Instagram shorts of his final lines, slightly shaky videos of entire poems. The students like him already, and he likes that. 

There is a difference in the tones of writing a piece and reading it out, so he’s never really understood how to perform his own poetry. He’d rather read out others’ with the intonations his mental voice presents to him when he’s going through them, because it’s easier and simpler and he can comfort himself that there is still a percentage of his own heart that he hasn’t laid out in front of everyone.

Even though it’s his first autumn here, he knows human tendency enough to predict that the audience and performers will gravitate to something that feeds the melancholy in their hearts. While he wouldn’t call himself something as simple as sad, he has to admit that it’s easy to fall into the feeling even when he’s surrounded by people, just through the words falling from his lips. He always thinks of leaves when he’s sad, or maybe he gets sad when he thinks of leaves; leaves, branches, and a gray-grey-gray sort of stone that he hasn’t seen in real life but thinks he might have recognised on the first page of Jean’s sketchbook.

On a cool, late evening near the end of September, he pulls out an annotated copy of Plath’s works. When he clears his throat and starts with You do not do, you do not do, Anymore, black shoe, the café door opens with the same obnoxious force behind it that it had last week, and he knows it must be Jean, and it is— he comes in laughing, phone held to his ear, and Eren stops reciting. The silence makes Jean look up, eyebrows raised, and he mutters something into the mouthpiece and pockets his phone.

‘My bad,’ he says, rubbing the back of his head and grimacing. ‘Uh… carry on?'

Eren doesn’t want to be annoyed. And he doesn’t want to not want to be annoyed. Choosing instead to ignore this predicament altogether, he clears his throat and returns to Daddy.

He’d have thought that after the strange experience of looking at Jean’s drawing (just the one, he never even went beyond the wall) and the stranger feelings that followed, he’d be nervous around Jean the next time they met. Instead, this is the first time he’s seeing Jean after parting with him (reluctantly, with sleep-heavy goodbyes and little waves of their hands) and he still knows he’s not going to stumble over words or stutter. However, he will admit that his eyes are probably going to lift to Jean now more often than not.

He doesn’t see the point in performing a piece that he doesn’t actually feel something about. Sometimes, like right now, he doesn’t even know what ties him to the piece or the piece to him, but he feels something anyway and that something translates to the changes in his voice, and he lets it flow through him.

His accent is always good for Daddy, the words not quite as much rolling off his tongue as they are dropping. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. And in his pauses, he locks eyes with the audience, and with Jean, who hasn’t taken a seat or moved from the doorway. His face is filled with that token surprise at someone like Eren being capable of this. Beyond that, Eren sees something else, some strange sort of focus that he’s never been awarded with before; a blush rises to his cheeks and he returns to the text.

‘Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through,’ he reads, and as always, he tries not to cry.

---

Afterwards, Jean comes up to him. Today he’s switched out earmuffs for a beanie, a small, adorable tuft of hair pressed against his forehead. Handsome.

‘That was brilliant, man,’ he says. ‘To be honest, I kind of got mad at your dad a little.'

Eren laughs at that, and Jean grins wider. ‘To be honest, I kind of got mad at him too.’ His father is an honest man with a private hospital and a willingness to go along with all of Eren’s fancies, but poetry is poetry and emotion is emotion. 

‘So you’ve taken a liking to this place, then?’ Eren asks over their third pair of coffees. Jean has been babbling nonstop about temperamental life drawing teachers and how difficult it is to come across the exact kind of reference he needs to paint something or the other (Eren got a little distracted by the movement of Jean’s hands, his fingers curling like a musician’s, knuckles slightly chafed) and ordering a very specific blend of coffee every time he comes up for breath. He’s probably been here again after meeting Eren, and the thought pleases him.

‘Sure have! It wasn’t here when I left, just like you. It was under renovation or something, I think.’ 

‘You seem kind of offended that you weren’t informed of my presence, you know.'

‘Of course I am.’ Jean puts his third coffee down and tilts his head, resting it on his hand. ‘Such a pretty thing and no one bothered to tell me.’ 

Eren rolls his eyes and fiddles with a sugar packet, occupies his fingers with something other than rubbing over his glove-covered birthmark. Flirting comes easy to Jean, he’s realised, and he’s a little envious but mostly proud to be a target regardless of how brief a period he’s actually known the boy. ‘I never saw more of your drawings in the end.’ 

‘I don’t have that book with me, but there’s a new one that I started, if you want to see.’ Jean’s already digging through a cliché satchel and pulling out a smallish black sketchpad, and Eren accepts it with a smile.

His smile slips off the moment he opens it. The first painting, not drawing, if that’s the distinction, is of him. A side profile, his lashes stroked out as long as they bother him by being, hair mussed up the way it only gets when he’s nearly finished writing a piece, and Jean hasn’t seen him like that, not yet, so he doesn’t understand how he got every stray curl right. It cuts off around his shoulders, but he can see that he’s wearing some sort of hooded shirt, and the green of the fabric is so accurate that he finds himself asking about it before even questioning why he’s in Jean’s book in the first place. 

‘I tried to remember the exact colour,’ Jean says. ‘Well, not remember. I mean. Think of? Come up with? I knew there was a shade of green that suited you.’ 

His words are strange in a manner that Eren can’t pinpoint beyond mixed tenses, but against all better judgement, he lets it pass. ‘Should I be looking into restraining orders?'

‘Maybe,’ comes the laughing reply. ‘Are you creeped out?’ 

Eren has never had the patience or intelligence for high-maintenance things like dishonesty. ‘Not really, no. A little flattered, maybe.’ 

And it is flattering; he might never be able to judge how much time has gone into a piece of art but just looking at this one, he feels honoured. The thought of Jean looking for this exact shade of green, trying out patches on a different paper, gives him shivers that have nothing to do with the chill setting into the night air. Trailing his fingertips as close to the paper as he dares, he tries and fails to stop a new smile from curving his lips. ‘When did you paint this?’ 

‘The same night that I met you,’ Jean replies. ‘I was going to write something under it. BaudelaireBoy69.'

‘I am not a—‘ Eren huffs, reluctantly closes the book. ‘What are you doing after this?’

‘If I was doing something I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you.’ Jean plucks the book out of Eren’s hands and leans back, smiles that easy smile that Eren shouldn’t already be habituated to. ‘What if you decide to tag along and ruin it?'

‘I’m not the one who drew a bloody fantastic portrait of you in my sketchbook.'

‘Bloody fantastic? Thank you!’ 

‘I—‘ It’s too late, though; Jean’s already laughing and Eren can already feel another blush too many. ‘Crap. You know what. Look, I know this restaurant near the river. I think it’s nice.’ 

‘Does the restaurant think you’re nice too?’ 

‘Damn it, Kirschtein!’ Jean Kirschtein, hundred-and-fourth. Jean Kirschtein, hundred-and-fourth. 

---

— Write about freedom. Free verse accepted. 

From the moment we are born, all of us are free. Were. Once upon a time, there were walls. Big ones, high ones, mostly unbreakable ones. Many lived within them without knowing why, and others lived within them in spite of knowing why. 

I hate walls. I’ve always hated walls. I’d live on a tree if I could. I’d live on a boat if I could.

---

It's Jean who kisses him first. He's fifteen, still fifteen; he can't believe it's only been a few months since he joined the troops, since Rose fell, since he met Jean, since— since everything. It feels like he's aged so much, like everyone's aged so much, like he was standing confidently on Rose's gray-grey-gray stones such a long time ago.

Eren never had a moment in particular when he realised he was in love with Jean. Never a sudden pause while doing something else, thinking oh. Never some drawn out, nervous look shared between them, because they've always been too busy fighting to have an awkward moment. Never some sort of beautiful dream about Jean under a fucking waterfall or something. Instead, he feels as though the feeling sparked and grew louder with every bit quieter their arguments became, and it grew gentler with every blow they landed. He swears to this day that there were times when the collision of Jean's knuckles with his jaw made him smile more than growl, and he thinks that it was probably while on the receiving end of one of those punches that he must have thought I'll kiss that smirk off your face one day. It never came as a surprise.

Even so, it's Jean who kisses him first. He's fifteen, and Jean sixteen, and if he's grown any taller like Mikasa says he has, it sure doesn't feel like it because Jean still has to lean down. 

They're in his and Armin's room when it happens. Jean'd knocked a minute or two ago— knocked— and has been sitting on the edge of Armin's bed since, leaning forward and watching with shameless interest as Eren folds his clothes and sets them aside. 

'Did you want something?' 

'Yes,' Jean says. 'I did. Want something, I mean.'

'Yeah, that's what I asked,' Eren says slowly, after a pause. 'What d'you want?' 

'You remember a while ago, when we caught Marlo and Hitch?'

''Course.'

Jean shifts to the floor, sits right beside him. Picks up a shirt and smoothens it out, folds the sleeves. 'He asked why I took a chance on him.'

'And?'

Setting the shirt aside, he looks up at Eren. 'I told him he reminded me of another idiot.'

Eren's hand curls instinctively; the shirt bunches up in his fist and he clears his throat. 'Are you here at midnight to pick a fight with me, Jean?'

Jean blinks, then frowns, tilts his head. Eren had never imagined that someone could look so innocent and annoying in the same moment, but Jean always takes things to new levels. 'What the fuck? Are you really as blockheaded as I've always assumed you to be?'

'Why don't you tell me?' Eren drops the shirt to his lap and leans forward, bracing himself, elbows on knees, ready to fight or at least knock foreheads. 'You're the one who walked in here to argue about something that happened fucking months ago—'

'I,' Jean takes a deep breath, pinches the bridge of his nose, 'good lord. This is ridiculous.'

'All right, you know fucking what—'

'Listen.' 

Eren raises his eyebrows, widens his eyes. He's fucking listening.

Jean straightens up a little, then, gets on his knees; shifts closer to Eren than he thought was possible, and there goes that pile of shirts he spent forever balancing, and now he's leaning backwards and hitting the side of his bed. 

'Are you listening?'

And then Jean is leaning down and then their foreheads are touching, and Eren thinks he doesn't want to punch him for the moment, and he hopes the feeling will return soon.

'Are you still listening?' Jean whispers, and Eren is staring at his lips.

---

He thinks, later, when he's awake too early and Jean is still asleep (and taking up half of the bunk) that he probably won't have another first kiss in his life. Life is so short. Life is so short sometimes, and now that he understands that there is something about Jean Kirschtein that has been drawing him close all this while, he doesn't think he'll ever have the time to think about kissing someone else. He has his friends, and he has his superiors, and he has his goals— and if those are things that seem strangely permanent even in a time like this, then he knows for sure that of all things, in five years or ten, he will never stop wanting to argue with Jean over a dinner table while the others look on and laugh.

He looks down at the brown mess that is Jean's bedhead, and slowly, slowly, runs his hand through the soft spikes. In the first pale light of the morning sun, Jean looks strange. Eren wants to draw him close and protect him.

---

‘Did you have a nice evening?’ Armin asks, looking up from whatever new diagram he must be reviewing. As always, Eren takes a moment to blink the strange shock that the blue of Armin’s eyes always gives him— really, he’s lived in France all his life but those eyes are blue— and grins.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I grabbed dinner with that new friend I told you about the other day.’

‘Again?’ Armin raises his eyebrows. ‘That isn’t really a new friend anymore, this is like the fifth time.’

Eren clears his throat and shrugs his sweater off, idly remarks that he’ll have to bring out the heavier coats soon. (The only relevance of the observation to him is that Jean wears beanies on a regular basis now and it might not be an exaggeration to say that it makes his day.)

‘Jean, right?’

Eren nods, settles on the carpet beside Armin’s feet. ‘Jean indeed. What’re you doing? More plans of world domination?’

‘This is a circular flow model, Eren,’ Armin sighs. ‘I study economics.’

‘And mathematics. We’ve discussed this, you’re a genius. And scary. Scary genius.’ Even Eren laughs a little while saying that; for all his intelligence (and there’s a lot; he’s a year ahead of Eren in spite of being the same age) Armin probably couldn’t hurt a stuffed toy. In their so-far brief time together as flatmates, he’s shown nothing but a quiet, gentle demeanour.

‘What are you reading these days, then?’ Armin says, taking a plum out of the plate in front of him and sliding the rest over to Eren. ‘Last I remember, it was Shakespeare, no?’

‘Yep.’ Eren grabs one himself, bites into it, getting juice over his hand as usual. ‘I’m on Baudelaire now.’ BaudelaireBoy69. ‘Mostly it’s just the prescribed reading for my classes, though.’

‘Don’t let your academics pull you from poetry, okay?’ Armin’s eyes reflect the light of the table lamp so brightly; Eren has to blink to clear his vision again. ‘Always keep reading.’

‘Says the nerd who probably calculates the exact volume of shampoo he needs every mor—’ Eren laughs as he dodges the cushion Armin throws at him, and feels glad again that he found someone so easy to live with. When he first met Armin, he wouldn’t have imagined deciding to take up his La Carte des Colocs offer, but he’s glad he did. Even if it’s affected his nightmares— he almost takes it as a positive change, in fact.

‘I’ll calculate how much beetroot I need to slip into your food so that you eat it without realising.'

Eren stops laughing immediately. 'You wouldn't.'

---

I have seen you living and I have seen you dead;

at your most alive you were lying still,

not moving, not breathing.

'Jaeger, headquarters.' 

The forest, again. A forest, again. Leaves. Leaves, leaves, leaves, rustling here, flying there, blue sky white clouds red red blood. Wind, cold on his face, cold, so cold on his hands, howling in his ears, hurting his head, so loud so loud so 'Jaeger, now.'

Someone is crying, someone is crying louder than the wind, now. So much louder than the wind, and sounding ten times worse, and if the wind had been howling he doesn't know what this sound is. Someone is screaming in pain, sobbing, wailing. Howling in his ears, hurting his head, so loud so loud so ‘Jaeger, now.' 

'Tell the shorty—'

'I don't.'

'He said, he said—' That's Armin's voice, now, that's Armin, stepping towards him in that floral sweater he always wears, and his bright white sneakers, and his eyes so blue, and swords in his hands.

'I don't.'

---

Eren never wakes up crying from his nightmares. He's had them all his life, and in a way he chooses not to realise how bad they are; he's never known anything better in sleep. Some nights, yes, he dreams of the Alps he spent the first few years of his life in; those dreams are silent and washed out and hurt more than the bloody ones for all that they are rare. The bloody ones, though, come to him at least once a week and when he wakes up he is always winded but never scared. Always, the sound of that person crying is what lingers in his ears, the last thing he hears in slumber and the first he hears in consciousness, like some sort of terrible broken rooster.

Armin is something new. Eren knows that people can't dream of faces they've never seen, so he supposes that Armin's presence should've helped him give life to one of the characters in his dreams. What puzzles him is that he can't agree with that theory completely. Rather than a character fitting perfectly onto Armin, he feels more like he's discovered that it was Armin. It's happened before; once, after having sat across a stern-looking bespectacled woman in the tram, he'd found her standing in what looked like a courtroom that night, still holding her copy of Le Figaro. Another time, a girl, heavily freckled, who'd served him and his friends tequila with a wink, winked the same way in a dream before disappearing in smoke.

The fact that his mind can come up with the image of a crying Armin is disturbing enough in itself, but combined with the confusion of it feeling pervertedly right, it makes for too much thinking at— 6:21 AM, as the too-bright screen of his phone tells him.

'You all right?'

Eren starts a little and looks up, right at Armin and his eyes so blue, and swords— he shakes his head, blinks, nods. Armin purses his lips, but doesn't press it. 'You fell asleep on the couch again, I didn't want to move you. I'm leaving for university.'

'Of course you are, you big nerd.' Eren smiles lazily as Armin rolls his eyes and walks back to the kitchen. He said— he said—

I don't.

---

— Write about freedom. Free verse accepted.

From the moment we are born, all of us are free. What the hell is wrong with you?! Didn’t I tell you I was counting on you?

---

The colour of the revolution is red. Their flags are red, and Historia's gown is red, and the streets run red and for a moment, a day, a second, the night sky is red with clouds. When the sun breaks through those clouds, the sharp slashes of its rays on the cobblestoned paths are red. The Reconnaissance Corps are showing the people what they have been seeing for years, and Eren has never been prouder.

In the rabid mess of the celebration, he catches sight of Jean, and the image is burned into his head in that split second. Jean, in the dust awakened by their dancing feet and the smoke of the fireworks, with one of those flags—  

And when he smiles just so, there is a fleck of blood on his lips, red.

---

At Historia's orphanage, they kiss behind trees and in the basement when she's not making them run six errands an hour. Connie catches them once, and guffaws loud enough to make them resolve never to be caught again. They have other reasons, too; one look from Levi is enough to put the fear of God into their very veins, and they're not interested in having him, of all people, walk in on them.

Jean puts up the most thunderous fight with Armin, who is the only one willing to listen, when Eren once doesn't wake up for four days after helping with one of the execution devices. His strained, loud voice is what Eren wakes up to, contrasted with Armin's efforts to calm him down. He can't help but smile, even though it hurts even to be conscious. And when he comes to the next time, they are both asleep, heads leaning on their crossed arms on either side of him. Mikasa is in the doorway.

After nearly six years, he's managed to rebuild a home. Complete with apple picking, and the screams of children, and the smell of real food.

A month later, it's Eren who puts up the most thunderous fight with anyone willing to listen, and those who aren't, either, when he hears talks of naming him Historia's consort when they come of age. Historia is equally enraged, and every now and then in the heated discussion, he thinks that she's going to sincerely punch Levi this time, or even Erwin. Or even Eren himself, for looking at her one second too long. He's glad someone shares his indignation, and he's gladder that that someone is the queen.

'It would only be in name,' Erwin tries for the fifth time. 'Besides, we are talking about two years from now, surely you—'

Eren can't even count on one hand the number of times he's disrespected Erwin, because he's never done it. But he crosses his arms, clears his throat, looks Erwin in the eyes as bravely as he can.

That night, Jean chastises him even as his hungry hands roam under Eren's shirt. 'They're ten times smarter than you'll ever be,' he says, pressing kiss after kiss everywhere that he can. 'Can you just do as you're told for once in your fucking life?'

'You're awfully content with this for someone who's kissing me.'

'Yeah, well,' and now it's Eren's turn to hold Jean up against the wall, still shorter than him, damn it. 'Think about it. The queen and the royal titan asshole. You'd be famous and—'

'What the hell are you talking about, you bastard?' he laughs, breathless, teeth grazing over Jean's shoulder. 'Who wants to be famous?'

'What do you want, then?'

From the moment we are born, all of us are free. 'For you to shut up and kiss me properly, maybe?'

'Eren.'

'Shut up,' he says, 'and kiss me properly. You are the only person I will want.'

---

'Hey, Jaeger,' Jean says, vaulting over Eren's table, swinging his legs so that they knock with Eren's. 'Model for me.'

Eren glares at him first; he nearly knocked over everything Eren holds dear to himself in this life: his laptop, his journal, his copy of The Colossus, and his it's past midnight and I forgot to have dinner so I'm compensating with sugar coffee. 'Why me?'

Jean doesn't smile when his lips part. Instead, he leans forward and touches the back of his hand to Eren's cheekbone. And Eren can't even break eye contact, can't even look away from Jean's eyes even as Jean slowly runs his hand down, to his jaw, knuckles cold on his skin. It leaves a trail of something between a strange simmering of pins and needles and absolute electrification.

He's never been touched by Jean before, since they don't normally kiss in greeting. The contact doesn't feel like he met Jean an entire month ago. But then again, the contact doesn't feel like he only met Jean a month ago.

Then, Jean pulls away. 'I don't know, you asshole. Just do it.'

'Convincing as your argument is, I'm a little busy right now,' Eren replies after a moment. 'I have a report to turn in—'

'I'm not saying do it today,' Jean says, and unlike Eren, he's absolutely unabashed in inspecting his knuckles like he just punched Eren instead of caressing him. 'I'm just saying do it at some point.'

'And my reward?'

'I'll bump you up from asshole to buttmunch,' Jean grins. 'How's that?'

Eren growls and swats Jean's thigh, don't give me this shit on a Monday, and Jean yelps, drawing a probably reflexive shh from both the girls sitting in a nearby booth. Eren looks sympathetically at their piles of chemistry textbooks as Jean apologises, and turns back to his laptop. His text looks much more uninteresting than it did two minutes ago, when Jean hadn't entered the café yet. Jean might be annoying but Eren prefers his company to Hagège's. Eren prefers his company to almost anyone else's, probably, on this campus. The realisation of that fact doesn't bring as much embarrassment as it theoretically should.

'Okay, for real,' Jean says. 'Come over to my place this weekend, we'll make some good food.'

'I really need to—'

'I'll make some good food,' he interrupts, 'and you can do your language thing at the table. Bring Karl Marx too, I like that guy.'

'You'll scare him, I'm sure you have a sacrificial altar or something—'

'I make,' Jean says, leaning so much into Eren's space that Eren can barely see him anymore, 'really good apple pie.'

'Sold.'

---

On a particularly rainy morning that Wednesday, Eren is shuffling through texts to see what he can perform for the day. He's paused at Racine (je n'en mourrai pas moins, j'en mourrai plus coupable) when he feels a sudden grip around the hem of his shirt.

It's Jean, asleep and absolutely unaware of how he's twisting Eren's shirt between his fingers. Eren stops moving; he knows a nightmare when he sees one. Jean's spread out quite ungracefully (except that he manages to look so damn good even while carelessly sleeping) on the other end of the couch, having drifted off at around 4:00 AM, and Eren had decided to just let him be. Now he feels regret— not only the selfish one of losing Jean's conscious company for that time, but also that of having to see Jean even the slightest bit upset.

But just a couple of seconds later, Jean's grip loosens and his eyes open, and he turns straight to look at Eren, who gives him a small smile. 'Morning, slacker.'

'Fuck off,' Jean exhales, but he reaches almost immediately for his sketchbook and a pencil, and shifts to face Eren. 'Go back to work.'

'Aww, drawing me is a comfort?'

'Shut up, Eren.'

He laughs, obnoxiously, but ends up choosing Hugo, and he thinks the way he says je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps shouldn’t visibly comfort Jean the way it does, and he wonders if Jean knows how it ends. And when he speaks the end, it hits him as if it is the first time that he is reading the poem, and instead of just Jean turning pale and distracted, it’s Eren himself, too. 

After he finishes and settles beside Jean, he finds himself looking at the boy over and over again, as if to verify that there isn’t any of that gray-grey-gray around him, of that wretched wall and every stone from those lands of Eren’s dreams.

The same evening, they run into Armin at the city square, at the threshold of the bookstore (honestly, Armin, it's not even fun to point these things out anymore). The three of them sit near the fountains, Eren being the only one equipped, with his flip-flops, to dip his feet in (and also the only one reckless enough to do so, as Armin doesn't fail to add) while the other two prefer to share a bag of grilled chestnuts and comment on who's going in and out of the Apple store across. 

If it didn't feel so overwhelmingly natural, Eren would be surprised at how natural it feels. He has his flaws, among them a possessiveness over the ones he loves, but for the first time, he doesn't mind seeing Armin and Jean interact so casually; the little smile on Armin's face actually warms him inside. And maybe it's then, sitting with his feet in freezing fountain water and his sleeves rolled up so that he can feel the spray, and with the smell of warm chestnuts in the air and the far-off sounds of an accordion, that he realises that out of everyone he's met at university, Armin is by far his best friend, and that out of everyone he's met at university, Jean is his most intriguing one. 

He doesn't care which one of those realisations is more important, doesn't think either is; for now, there is an almost-familiar comfort in letting Jean and Armin argue over the reliability of Apple chargers and thinks he knows exactly how Armin's face will look if Eren ever says I think I feel something strange for Jean.

---

But: he’d like for these things to happen at his time.

'A—' Eren blinks at Armin, is hit by the blue, and has to blink again. 'Armin, no. He's going to make apple pie and I'm going to be quiet.'

'No offence, but that really does sound like a date to me. You being quiet...'

'I am surprisingly capable,' Eren says, drawing himself to full height (which unfortunately isn't very grand, as mentioned mercilessly by Jean every other sentence), 'of being quiet. I have work to do.'

In the end, Armin manages to convince him that it's a date— just about as much as Eren manages to convince him that it isn't— and sends him off alone. In the tram, Eren leans his head against the window and looks out at the city and its lights which are already glowing against the darkening sky even though it's barely 5:00 PM. 

It's this time of the year that Eren loves the most, unlike most of his countrymen— the bustle of the station, the gentle drizzle, the fountains of Gallia and the lights of Petite France. He hopes to go there with Jean someday to stare at buildings. He thinks Jean wouldn't mind staring at buildings, especially those buildings, so typical of the city and so overwhelmingly familiar in their timber frames to Eren that he might as well have been their architect.

Jean lives within walking distance of the campus, but this is the first time Eren's going to see his apartment. He doesn't quite know what to expect— canvases everywhere, or littered pages, or a complete collection of Marvel figurines, or— he catches himself rubbing at his birthmark again, and shoves his hands into his pockets to avoid it. It's really becoming a nervous tick these days; he doesn't like it.

Jean buzzes them in and opens the door to something that Eren had definitely not expected. The entire apartment is in whites and reds, at first glance, and then he notices all the paintings. The one on the wall to his left is so green that he actually steps back into the corridor.

'This forest,' he murmurs. 'I know this.' The trees are tall and green green green and he can see the finally calmed look that must've been on Jean's face when he stroked out the faintest rays of the sun that filter through the thick cover and onto the ground below, the light darkened into green, and the shadows lightened into green, and he reaches out, grips the doorframe, tight.

'You haven't even removed your shoes yet,' Jean says, raises an eyebrow, and Eren collects himself and steps inside, unlaces his boots. 'But yes, that is, indeed, the forest of Compiègne and I'd really like to know how you recognised it from one painting.'
 
'I didn't know it's Compiègne.'

As if he didn't already know how astonishing Jean's art is, seeing all his work displayed on white like this plunges him into awe once again. There is simply so much of it; skies and stars, yes, in purple and blue and maroon, but also a stack of books beside a candle, and horses, and mountains, and Eren thinks he might actually be getting dizzy with the overload of colours.

'Jaeger? You alive?'

Eren turns from the paintings to Jean, and there it is again— that strange feeling, of falling, that he's never felt before. If anything, getting too absorbed into something and feeling mental resurfacing as intensely as physical, has always been his problem. He actually half-expected to feel that when his attention was diverted from the paintings, but instead he finds himself sinking deeper. It's the most chilling (and burning, oh, but burning) sensation he's ever had, and Jean's concerned face does nothing to help.

Then Jean flicks him between his eyebrows, and it flies— almost literally— out of his head. 'Ouch, you bastard!'

So maybe in the end, Armin isn't completely wrong and Eren isn't completely right. They don't do much else than argue over everything from TV shows to choice of beverage (apparently Jean isn't as big a fan of tequila as Eren is, and Eren detests vodka) but then the sun sets and Eren actually gets to work, and Jean to drawing, and the kind of comfortable quiet that fills the apartment is almost nostalgic. Their steady rhythm of charcoal against paper and fingertips on keys is only broken now and then by Eren sighing, or Jean flipping pages.

Eren learns that Jean, in frustration over not being able to find a brush as thin as he needed, tweezed hairs out of the thinnest one he had and uses that now. 'Size zero, as it were.' He learns that Jean really does make good apple pie and serves it with ice cream messily dumped on top. He learns that Jean, at any given time, has at least two flavours of ice cream in his freezer and two bottles of sauvignon blanc in the chiller.

And yet some of the things he learns don't feel like they are being learned. Yes, he learns that that song about Léa the Parisienne gives Jean goosebumps, but he doesn't learn that Jean loves potato soup. He doesn't learn that Jean loves heights, which he doesn't (even looking up at the city cathedral makes him nervous). Doesn't need to learn that Jean is one of those people who don't mind when Eren sings to fill even silences that don't bother him. That the look Jean gets on his face at the first line Eren sings is something that he might not have allowed to play across his face in a long, long time, such a long time. 

Rather, those are things that filter suddenly through his consciousness like that golden-turned-green sunlight when it hits the stone-ridden ground in their forest— like the sound of a stream getting clearer and clearer over the crunch of leaves under hooves. Once he knows those things, there was never a time when he didn't know them. Once he remembers those things, there was a never a time when he had forgotten them.

'That pie was so good I want to cry,' he chooses to say, and Jean takes a dramatic bow and says something inane about how fantastic he is. That Eren should learn from him and not be so useless and short tempered— and if Eren proves that irrelevant observation by chucking his soapy sponge at Jean, well, the bastard had it coming.

He ends up missing the last tram home, but neither of them pretend to be too disappointed about it. Jean, as he also learns, has an impressive collection of action films, and their common passion keeps them up till the first pale light of that morning sun filters through the blinds like it did through the trees once.

In that light, Jean has always looked strange. Eren feels that reasonless anger that he sometimes does, like when he says daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through, or when he sees the way Armin flinches at loud sounds and gunfire on television, or when he eats stale bread. The pale light on Jean’s face angers painfully, and Eren wants to draw him close and protect him.

Jean, in his sleep, mumbles please. Mumbles don’t ever. Mumbles other things, but Eren is falling asleep too, on the same couch, his blanket over Jean’s, and he’ll ask later.

---

In his defence, Jean never says anything like I want to take you away to him. Eren’s heard that sentence sometimes, whispered among other lovers. It’s as if for the two of them, Jean and him, that concept doesn’t exist. 

When Eren turns eighteen, the first thing he says to Jean is that they can get married now. Jean laughs for ages, genuine, almost surprised that Eren can crack jokes. And Eren laughs along, and laughs harder because Hange has promised him his first mug of mead, and he’s heard that it tastes divine. 

But yes, and it works against him, and them, and what they are still fighting for: there are nights when they pull the sheets above their heads and talk in whispers about how it would be if the world were, for a while, just the two of them. If these sheets were their sky and the bed their earth, and the only thing they needed to live was this safety, so close that it is almost tangible. Lying under those sheets and humming old lullabies and battle hymns, Eren traces in new ways the paths on Jean’s hand and vows to himself that rings or not, ceremonies or not, the living proof of his love is Jean himself— staying alive, the two of them, to spite the world and bring home freedom. 

It’s always him, though, who pulls in outsiders. First Mikasa and Armin, then Levi because someone needs to keep the world clean, and then Erwin because the thought of Levi without Erwin is unsettling, and then Hange— Jean always laughs, says am I not enough, and Eren always replies someone needs to keep us off each other sometimes. And it’s true, it’s true; without others to remind him that there are more things he lives for, he feels sometimes that he might slip and fall into Jean the way stones roll into ravines, and he wouldn’t mind that death, no, but the world needs him. And Jean needs him. And these citrus-smelling sheets need him. 

---

The Reconnaissance Corps have begun their hunt for new lands, and some recruits are heading into forests while others climb higher on the mountains that not many have been to before. Eren, never having been very fond of heights in spite of his training, follows Jean on those paths purely to see the fascination in Jean’s eyes mount with every new high. Jean loves mountains, and Eren, despite his nerves, really does love them too. Has some kind of relationship with them that he only slowly discovers the savage nature of, different from his thirst for the sea; belittling at times and uplifting at others, making him feel the presence of the unwilling god he houses inside himself at times, and sometimes putting him at the feet of that god. 

‘We’ll come live here,’ Jean says, one day. And that is a dream Eren is willing to accept into his system. The wind is in his hair and he’s never been stronger, so strong, the two of them, on their hyper horses and his gloves scratching over the bites on his hand that have long since turned to scars— so strong, the two of them and all of them in their camaraderie, that they could die with their next breaths and go out laughing. And that God is in the strangest of places; flowers, graves, Jean Kirschtein’s smile.

But oh, so terribly, so terribly when he looks at those snow-covered peaks and hears birds he’s never heard before, he has never so bitterly felt the longing to go home with Jean. To just go home, and see Armin’s books and Mikasa’s scarf, and hear Sasha and Connie’s laughter and the arguments that Marlo and Hitch get into even today, to be with the people he loves the most and has sworn with to protect these lands and win over more— and, through it all, to have Jean beside him, grabbing his collar and growling threats, grabbing his collar and growling promises, grabbing his collar, grabbing him. 

---

— Write about freedom. Free verse accepted.

And on those days the sun beat down upon us and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and how different it was, and how different it was.

---

Eren, for someone who hates vodka, does consume quite a lot of it when prompted to. Or even unprompted. He's always been one of the strongest heavyweights in his group of friends, but vodka is possibly the only drink that really displeases him.

This, however, isn't the case with Jean Kirschtein, who drinks vodka like it's water and scrunches his nose up every time one of their friends (usually Hitch, that little devil) orders a tequila paf. 'Disgusting,' he says with more and more emphasis after every shot of vodka that he downs for the chartreuse ones that Eren does. Soon enough, Hitch is killing the proverbial it (among actual people, probably) on the dance floor like Eren's quickly learned she always does, and most of their friends have joined. How he and Jean managed to get two groups of people from different disciplines to get along is a mystery, especially since Eren hangs out with quite a bunch of law students, who are usually the joke of the campus.

'So then she says to me,' Jean slurs, waving a salt shaker around and getting some over the bar, 'that at the end of the degree everyone turned atheist and started smoking. I've never been gladder to have dropped philosophy.'

Eren, buzzed himself, can't really come up with a response because he's afraid that if he opens his mouth he's going to decide to say something that he shouldn't. Instead, he takes a moment to close his eyes and focus on the silence in his head— it never leaves, oh, it never leaves— and then opens them again, and looks at Jean. So...so. So annoying.

'So annoying,' he says, and Jean glares at him.

'Who, you? Definitely,' he says, and Eren snorts. 'Why d'you gotta start a fight outta nowhere?'

'Not starting shit.' Eren grabs the salt shaker and holds it just out of Jean's reach, laughs loudly. 'Just stating facts.'

'Fuckin'—' Jean flails around wildly for the shaker, curses. ‘I’ll state facts. Fuckin' shorty.'

Eren drops the shaker.

'What?'

'What?'

'What'd you just call me?'

Jean frowns, then realises, and puts his hands down. He stares at Eren for a long while, and Eren stares back. If they kissed right now they'd still remember in the morning.

'In my head, there is a world,' Jean says. 'There is a world in my head.'

'Me too,' Eren whispers, and maybe it's lost in the chorus of the Stromae song playing loudly, fuck, he doesn't even remember where they are. 'Yeah.'

Then: ‘Life is so short,’ Jean says, and he’s sober suddenly, alcohol only on his breath and nowhere else. 'Life is so short sometimes.'

'Me too,' Eren whispers. 'Yeah.'

---

The first time Eren had asked Jean about those times when he nodded off and woke up looking haunted, Jean had blatantly changed the subject to a new art store that had opened at Broglie. They have those, like, little printed tapes. I want to buy every single fuckin' washi tape in this city, man, I swear to God. Eren had ordered their fourth coffee of the night and wondered if looking out for Jean actually meant not letting him sleep. Then wondered when he started to wonder about looking out for Jean.

Sometimes he feels like he is gentler than he is supposed to be. Not in that he is timid, or quiet— because he is neither, far, far from both. He feels, rather, that he steps more carefully on the earth than he does in his dreams. That his voice can be much louder, much rougher, much angrier. And sometimes, when he does something impulsive, he feels a tiny chip of wood wedge into the place it was cut out of.

One of those chips of wood is his inability to leave someone be. He's never been one to know when not to prod, when to back off, what truthful remarks to keep to himself. And so, after that first time, there are many times when he questions Jean. You said tell him when you were asleep right now. Tell who? Oh, come on, I won't tell anyone if you have a crush on Gunther from the gym. You know I won't leave you alone until you tell me, right? I won't leave you alone.

Jean, to his credit, is as enthusiastic about evading the questions every time as if it were the first. The only time Eren manages to wring answers out of him, the most he gets is I don't know, man, sometimes I dream about being hit in the head. Probably your annoying ass.

My annoyed ass, you mean. And that face deserves to be hit.

It doesn't seem as funny right now as it did then, but maybe nothing would be very funny to Eren right now anyway. Not with Jean, asleep, clutching his cushion so hard that his fingertips are white, not whimpering, not making a sound, but gritting his teeth so hard that Eren sees the twitch in his jaw. The agony of not being able to wake him up is filling Eren's head with heat, but he restricts himself to just placing a hand in Jean's hair. Stroking a thumb over his temple and distractedly noting the contrast of their skins, his golden brown and Jean's the palest rose, he tells himself that he would hate for Armin to wake him up from the vision of the Armin in his dreams. That it's difficult enough to forget those images without being interrupted in his recollection of them.

Jean's heart always beats at a fever pitch. Eren feels it now, under his thumb. And then Jean inhales sharply, and Eren can tell he's afraid to open his eyes. He knows that feeling all too well.

'Rise and shine, dickhead,' he says softly, and Jean's eyelashes flutter, moving with them Eren's heartstrings. 'It's me, you're out of ice cream.'

'Get more then,' Jean mutters. 'Fuckin' leech.'

'Get your ass up and sleep in bed for once.' Eren pinches his earlobe, and Jean growls and bats his hand away. 'You're going to break your back one day.'

Jean's eyes open at that, and he feels like he said something wrong.

---

'Wrap up,' Armin says without looking up from his newest world domination model. 'It's supposed to be windy today.'

'Like you've left the house in a year,' Eren shoots back, tugging gently at Armin’s ponytail, but he grabs a scarf anyway. Jean will probably have something to say about him wearing a red scarf over a red sweater, and that something won't be very kind, but he doesn't really care. His mother made both and nothing his mother makes could ever look bad. (He loves her more than he can really understand. It makes him want to cry sometimes. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.)

'The shoes, Eren.' Armin looks up, then, raises an eyebrow at him. 'The temperature is consistently in single digits now, please tell me when you are going to pull out your boots.'

'Never,' Eren says, purposefully slapping his foot against the carpet. Armin shakes his head and waves him out the door, and Eren is grinning when he bounds down the stairs. Outside, it is indeed windy, but he stays loyal to his choice of footwear and bravely makes his way down the street to the main road.

The dome of the station, covered in penguin posters for the winter, is visible the moment he turns the corner of their neighbourhood. Eren always loves that moment, that one split second of the busiest part of the city suddenly coming into view, reminding him that there are hundreds of people just a few hundred metres away from him, running around to get to places. He barely manages to make it to the tram and almost misses his stop in his combination of nerves.

Jean's waiting at the stop, and there's that goddamn beanie again, Carhartt mark just a little off to the side, and that tuft of hair standing out against the rich blue fabric. Eren shakes his head and smiles, and steps up to Jean with a breathless hi.

The cathedral was Jean's idea entirely; Eren would rarely prefer to step into that place, in spite of its beauty. There is something about such buildings which unnerves him despite having grown up between them. He prefers modern constructions; the timelessness of preserved ones confuses him to the point of nausea. Still, he knows that going there with Jean will be all right. It always was.

He manages to get his flip-flops caught on the cobblestoned path three times. Jean doesn't laugh anywhere near as much as would have normally, but Eren tries to pass it off as date jitters— not that this is really a date. He's not quite sure what this is, actually, except that it's different. Special.

When the tower finally looms up, he reaches out involuntarily and brushes his fingertips against Jean's wrist just for a moment. Jean stiffens at the contact, then takes Eren's hand. Even through both their pairs of gloves, Eren feels the warmth of his skin.

'I know,' Jean murmurs.

Inside, the cathedral is as beautiful as it's ever been, candles and lights and colours on the glass. The winter air rests just on this side of musty and the stones of the walls are cold to the touch. The slightest noise echoes, and so Eren keeps his silence until Jean stops short in front of the candle racks. The votive candles are Eren's favourite part of any church; despite not being religious he always lights one when he visits. He smiles at their flickering light on Jean's pensive face, and tries to break the mood.

'Well,' he says. 'Am I being made to pay for my sins?'

Jean snorts, but doesn't look up from the candles. Eren prods again. 'Are you a believer?'

'In him?' Jean points up, still not looking away. 'We hang out sometimes. He likes your flip-flops.'

Eren blinks for a moment, then laughs, shakes his head. 'You little menace.'

'I asked you to model for me,' Jean says, then.

'What, here?' There aren't many people, it's true, just a few unseasonal tourists taking pictures and the staff of the cathedral, but regardless, he wouldn't think the lighting is adequate enough to draw in. The sun is already dying outside, light blues turning dark, and it's only the golden chandeliers and the candles painting everything the kind of warmth that takes Eren back to...to something. Lanterns, and wood, and laughter, even the sight of his own scarf on a neck paler than his. It's like walking into one of his dreams. There are so many reasons he loves and hates these old, wise buildings, and he reels them all in right now and raises his eyebrows at Jean.

'I'm not going to draw right now,' Jean clarifies. 'I just wanted to see what you look like here. I won't forget it.'

And Eren knows he won't; he never has. Never did.

'You're not even looking at me right now, though. How else are you going to memorise my pretty face in these pretty lights?'

'Shut up,' Jean laughs, but he still doesn't look up. Eren steps forward and slips a euro into the donation box, chooses a candle. He lights it up using one of the others, engrossed, as always, by the slow way in which the wick ignites and the wax drips.

He places it carefully in one of the empty brackets and joins his hands, closes his eyes. He rarely wishes for anything other than his parents' happiness, but today there is a white noise in his head, as behind his eyelids the little flames turn to phosphenes. He's always thought of himself as so strong, so strong, doesn't ever really know what to ask for himself of a God he doesn't believe to be benevolent.

And when he opens his eyes and turns around, Jean is standing there, still, in the last, diffused rays of the dying sun, and looking like Eren is the source of every tear he has ever cried. And he steps forward, and Eren steps forward, and Jean reaches out and circles his index and thumb around Eren's hand, and he reaches out and places his other hand in the crook of Eren's neck, and Eren can't help his shudder.

'Can you show,' Jean says, almost as if he doesn’t actually want to see whatever it is, 'can you show me— can I see your hands?'

It's spoken so softly that only Eren hears it, and yet it's so loud that he wonders that no one else did. He looks down slowly at Jean's shaking hand around his own.

Like this, with Jean’s fingers on the nape of his neck and the heel of his hand, Eren is struck with a sentimentality deep and blinding in its potence. In this moment, he understands that they will never be just Eren and Jean again. After he removes his gloves, they will never be just Eren and Jean again.

And yet, he gently pries Jean's hand off his wrist and slowly, slowly pulls one glove off, then the other, like he rarely does even in his own home. As expected, the chill hits him immediately, but he doesn't mind his oversensitive hands for once, because if Jean needs to see them, Jean needs to see them.

He silently presents his hand to Jean, who turns it to its side. His eyes focus directly on Eren’s birthmark, and he thinks he isn't the only one who won't forget what the sights of this terrifying cathedral look like. All the air rushes out of Jean's mouth in a pained exhale, and his eyes well up in an instant.

'Lord,' he chokes, and brings Eren's hand up to his lips, presses a kiss that fits perfectly around the ring of the bite-like birthmark and all at once, Eren feels too big and too small for his body, feels like he might break this floor, these walls. Jean's lips are blazing. Jean's lips are blazing. 'I'm so sorry, I never noticed, I'm so sorry—'

'Why are you sorry?' Eren whispers. 'Besides, it's not even that noticeable.' Besides, we met three months ago. We met three months ago, right? He doesn't understand any of this, except the idea that he's supposed to won't leave his mind, and he feels that presque vu like a half-forgotten word on the tip of his tongue, and he wonders when his life became so strange.

'Stay with me tonight,' Jean says. 'Can you? I'll cook whatever you want. I'll—' 

'Shh.' Eren curls his fingers around Jean's, shakes their hands a little. 'We'll cook together. Okay? We'll cook together.'

Behind them, the bells have been ringing for years and years. Jean doesn't let go of his hand for the rest of the night.

---

The next not-yet-morning, he wakes up. Unfortunately. The first thing he does is extend a hand. The place beside him is empty. The place on the bed beside him is empty, so it wasn't a dream. It wasn't a nightmare. He is not going to come flying. He is never going to come flying again.

He waits anyway. The sun isn't up yet. So maybe the empty place beside him on the bed won't be empty when the sun comes up. When the sun comes up, maybe the place beside him on the bed won't be empty anymore. He won't be cold anymore.

The sun comes up, and he remembers that the day before, he waited in the courtyard until the sun went down. The sun doesn't care much. It doesn't matter to the sun, that the place beside him on the bed is empty. It goes down and comes up anyway.

When it's high up in the sky and Armin begins to stir, Eren sits up. He's not in his room. He realised about an hour ago. He's in Armin's room. And this bed is not his. And the place beside him on the bed that is empty is always going to be empty. No matter what bed he lies in. No matter what grass he lies in. No matter what mountains he finds and climbs. He is never going to come flying again.

---

The knock at their door is unusual. No one ever knocks at their door. His door. It's his door now, which no one knocks at. He isn't a corporal, or a captain, or a commander. He is a boy. Sometimes he turns into a giant. No one knocks at his door.

'Eren? Can I come in?' That's Hange's voice. He thinks he says yes. Or maybe they assume he wants to say yes. So they come in, close the door behind them. 'Good evening. I brought food. Thought you might be hungry.'

Is he hungry? He thinks he's hungry. He takes the bread, and the mug of soup, and he sets them on the nightstand. Eat, Mikasa had told him once. He sent her away this afternoon, he thinks. Told her he's fine, isn't going to cry.

'Are you sorting his things?' Hange's voice is soft like it gets sometimes. They sit on the floor beside him. 'Do you—'

'No,' he says. 'I'll do it. Sorry. Thank you. I'll do it.'

He thinks they might be smiling, but he isn't looking up. There are so many things on the floor around him. His clothes, his boots, the cloth he used to clean his gear. A stack of papers wrapped in leather, tied with jute. He doesn't know what he'll do when he unties that jute.

'I wasn't offering help,' Hange says. 'I'm asking if you want a safe for his drawings.'

'You knew.'

'We all did,' they laugh. 'We've all caught him once or twice.'

'I'd like a safe. Thank you. Yes, I'd like a safe.'

'I'll arrange for one.'

The clothes still smell like him. Eren doesn't want to take his name. Eren doesn't want him to have existed. For just a little while. Later, when Eren is stronger, he can have existed again. It'll be fine then. It'll be fine then. For now, the clothes still smell like him. It's devastating. He is never going to come flying again.

'Eren, do you want to go back to the capital for a while? You can rest a little, and—'

'No. Sorry. Thank you. I'll stay.'

The clothes still smell like him. They smell so much like him, and now it's time to pick up the papers. He picks up the papers with their leather and their jute, and he unties the jute and unwraps the leather, and he holds the papers in his hands. The soup must be cold by now. The soup must be cold.

Skies and stars, in black and white, and a stack of books beside a candle, and horses, and mountains. And flowers, sometimes, over Maria and Rose and Sina, and that way Mikasa has of pulling her scarf over her nose in winter. The way Armin's hair has grown out, and his shoulders have grown out, and the way he has grown out. Connie in a field, Ymir and more flowers. A smiling child, a basket of apples.

Eren. Eren, Eren, Eren. Eren— Eren— Eren. Asleep, awake, angry, not.

'This—' he says, looks up, remembers Hange is there. He's glad someone is there, he thinks he's falling. He thinks he's falling through the floor. Turns a paper towards Hange. It's him, black and white but for the green of his cape, looking up at the sky, smiling. 'What do I do with this? What am I supposed to do with this?'

'Keep them safe. Keep them all safe.'

'And otherwise?' He's falling through the floor. The soup must be cold by now. The soup must be cold. He is never going to come flying again. 'What am I supposed to do otherwise?'

'Remember,' Hange says. They reach for the bread, break off a piece. Hold it out until he puts the papers down. 'Remember what they took from you. Avenge him.'

Remember, Hange is saying now. Eat, Mikasa had told him once. He wishes that for once, he would know what to do by himself. He wishes that for once. For once. He would know what to do by his fucking self.

---

I couldn’t see for the tears in my eyes, love.

You couldn’t see for the blood in yours.

'Jaeger, headquarters.'

The forest, again. A forest, again. Leaves. Leaves, leaves, leaves, rustling here, flying there, blue sky white clouds red red blood. Wind, cold on his face, cold, so cold on his hands, howling in his ears, hurting his head, so loud so loud so 'Jaeger, now.'

Someone is crying, someone is crying louder than the wind, now. So much louder than the wind, and sounding ten times worse, and if the wind had been howling he doesn't know what this sound is. Someone is screaming in pain, sobbing, wailing. Howling in his ears, hurting his head, so loud so loud so ‘Jaeger, now.'

Him.

'Tell the shorty—'

It's him.

'I don't.'

It's him.

It's him crying, crying louder than the wind, now. So much louder than the wind, and sounding ten times worse, and if the wind had been howling he doesn't know what this sound is. He is screaming in pain, sobbing, wailing. Howling in his ears, hurting his head, so loud so loud so ‘Eren. Hey.' It's him. It's him. It's him. It's him. It's him—

'Eren!'

Consciousness is kinder than the sound. Armin's bright blue eyes still seem to reflect those swords he always holds up. Eren mistakes his sweater for a jacket first, and doesn't know why that matters. But then the smell of the huit legumes soup Armin always keeps in stock hits him with the echo of— his own screams— burning in his ears, and before he knows it, he's got Armin in something that's more of a headlock than a hug. His hair, sliding free of its band, tickles him but he doesn’t care. 

'It's all right,' Armin says while Eren stares at the steam rising from the soup behind them. 'I'm safe. I promise. I'm not there anymore.'

None of that should make sense to him, but it does, because Armin is smart and intelligent and perceptive and so, so dear to him, and he's here, and he's safe, and he's not there anymore. Eren finally lets him go and sinks back against the armrest of the couch, makes an apology.

'I can heat up minestrone for you,' Armin says, and Eren is always— always— always so grateful.

---

The dream haunts him for days. He doesn't talk to anyone (which is easier since Jean is out of town), buries himself in assignments and extra reading, answers professors in mumbles and forgets to eat. He still remembers the cries— has he ever forgotten?— and he can't recognise his voice in them, but he knows now, he knows it's him. It was him. It's always been him.

Whatever goes on in his head has never made less, or more sense than it does now. He doesn't know if his melancholy results from knowing that it really was, in the end, his voice, or if it just comes from the fact that if he knows his own voice to have sounded like that at some point, it means the dream is that much closer to reality. He'd never thought that it was all fiction, but maybe before now, he'd never thought of it as absolute reality either. The resulting confusion keeps him up past sunrise several times, and he tries to comfort himself by writing broken phrases on odd pages of his journal. 

When he finally regains his strength, or rather, gets tired of not being strong, he walks into Les Ailes with his work and finds someone at the mic. The café is as welcoming as ever, warm lights, warmer smilers, to make up for the almost-terrible cold that now chills all their days. He's finally admitted defeat and switched his flip-flops for boots, switched gloves for mittens, and he's more eager than he'll admit to see Jean in beanies every day when he returns.

Of course, they push him on at some point, and he stares blankly at Mina for a minute before starting to speak. One of his own, this time, to his own surprise.

He's barely through the epigraph— dans le fond des forêts votre image me suit ; La lumière du jour, les ombres de la nuit— when, of all people, professor Zoë makes their way to the front of the audience. He'd never even noticed them.

He focuses on the lights that their glasses reflect, on the twist of their dark brown hair, their blue and white scarf. Reminds himself that he still has to turn in the first assignment of the year, freedom, in spite of having completed every assignment they handed out after.

They listen intently, without a smile for once, to everything he has to say about gray-grey-gray stones and footfalls that shake the ground and dancing across rooftops. When he finishes, they nod at him, and he doesn't think about it beyond that. He doesn't think about much these days, except those cries, screams, howls. His cries, screams, howls. His crying, his screaming, his howling.

---

— Write about freedom. Free verse accepted.

From the moment we are born, all of us are free. Were. Once. Before. Listen, don’t ask me things like these, it makes me angry. It makes me so angry. It makes me so fucking angry.

---

Jean, when he returns, is not all that different, but not exactly the same he used to be either. He's regained most of his ability to annoy the living shit out of Eren, but minus some of the laughter that comes after. Instead, Eren catches him sometimes staring at the same pages in his sketchbook over and over— new ones that he filled in after that day at the cathedral. Two pages in particular, one after the other: a half-coloured in drawing of the Alps in what looks like January— snow-capped, with light strokes of orange and red where the sunrise is colouring them, the rest of them as grey as they look in Eren's once more-upsetting dreams. The other, a pair of hands, Eren's hands, around a piece of bread. They look like they would if Eren ever took his gloves off anymore, except that his birthmark is not only a birthmark, but an actual set of wounds. Scabbed over, still beading blood in some places, dark even against his dark skin. 

Their dynamic is confused and confusing right now; both of them silent more often than not, both staring at each other more often than not, and Eren wishes that it could have been simple. That they could have kissed that night over spilled salt, in a bar on a boat, that they could've woken up the next day remembering perfectly. This isn't negativity between them, no, but there is something bittersweet about their interactions now that Eren doesn't understand, and it puzzles him.

The first time he goes to Jean's apartment after what happened, he spots immediately that all of his previous paintings are gone. Compiègne, the horses, the books. The walls are absolutely blank, and it's unnerving.

'I'm working on something else,' Jean explains as Eren takes his shoes off. 'A big one, it's in the back.'

'Show me.'

'You won't understand.' 

'Show me.'

He steps through the pages and pages of sketches lying on Jean's floor— messy for the first time— to the small studio he has partitioned off the bedroom. The canvas propped up there has him stopping short.

It's him, of course. Standing in a place that looks like the cathedral, but not quite, and the way the walls and pillars transform into something else entirely is unbelievable. The stained glass of the windows turns into stone; the arches morph into gray-grey-gray stalactites, the too-sharp point of one right above Eren's head. And Eren— Eren stands there in his faded blue jeans and fucking flip-flops, but on top, it's that green hood that Jean first drew him in— attached, he sees now, to a cape.

He can barely bring himself to turn away, but when he does, the expression he is met with stuns him. With the not-cathedral behind him and Jean in front of him, Eren thinks that another chip is pressing back into place in the wooden pole going through his chest. The realisation that he might not be concerned, and he might not be kind, but—

God is in the strangest of places; flowers, graves, Jean Kirschtein's smile. 

But then: 'Told you you won't understand,' he says, and Eren sees red for the first time in a long, long while.

‘I won't understand?' His hands curl into fists by his sides, and Jean still has that nearly-condescending look on his face, and now Eren remembers why Jean annoys him so much. 'What do you know about me?'

'Oh, I know enough,' Jean grins, and Eren knows it's a defence mechanism, knows he shouldn't take the bait, but he wouldn't be Eren fucking Jaeger if he didn't. 

'You'd probably know more if you actually listened when I talked,' he says. 'Do you think you're the only one with thoughts here?'

'Well, Armin's pretty sma—'

'I lost something,' Eren cuts in, doesn't know where he's going with this, and instantly, Jean's expression goes blank. 'In a dream.' It was always him crying, crying louder than the wind. So much louder than the wind, and sounding ten times worse. It was always him screaming in pain, sobbing, wailing. Howling in his ears, hurting his head, so loud so loud so 'I lost something, I lost something that I loved so much.'

Jean says nothing.

Eren laughs, a little desperately. 'I don't even know what the fuck I lost, man. I just know that I lost my fucking shit. You— you think sitting there spouting enigmas makes you cool and mysterious?'

'I never—'

'To lose the thing you love the most in the world,' and he wishes he could stop these words, they're paining him more than doing anything else, 'it hurts like a shard.'

Jean says nothing.

'You'll never know what I'm talking about,' he hisses. 'But God, I wish it was the other way 'round.'

Jean says nothing, for so long.

Then, with that same impassive face, he picks up the water mug posed beside the canvas and flings it to the floor. And when it breaks, Eren doesn't flinch, but Jean does, and as the water wets their socks, Jean's face screws up.

'What can I do?' he whispers. 'What am I supposed to do?’ 

This— what do I do with this? What am I supposed to do with this?

Eren wants to hit him. Eren wants to grab him by the collar and knock their foreheads together, and then he wants to kiss him. Eren has always wanted so— many— things. Has never found one thing in this consciousness that he wants but can't achieve, and hasn't found one thing in his dreams that he wants and can.

Jean is both, and Jean is here, and Jean is loud and annoying and tries unsuccessfully to hide a temper as short as Eren's, if not as hot. Jean is a morning and noon of frost, Jean is the crackle of bonfires. When the stars come out in the wake of the sun, Jean is the sound of the evening birds. 

Eren loves him with all of his angry young heart. 

'I'm hungry, let's make dinner,' he says quietly. 'Let's not fight anymore.'

Jean nods, looks up at Eren, nods again, lips parted. 'Yeah,' he says. 'Yeah, let's not fight anymore.'

---

That night, he calls home for the first time in two weeks, a new record for him. His parents have never prodded him much since he moved from Colmar; it's actually always him who calls and asks about the latest recipe his mother has come up with, any new staff under his father, anything, everything.

This time, he's already planning to skip every pleasantry with his father as the call connects. He doesn't know what he'd expected, but it's his mother who says hello on the other end, and all of a sudden Eren feels something give inside his chest.

'Mama?' He sounds like a child even to himself, but he can't help it, can't help it anymore. 'It's me.'

'Eren?' Her worried voice has never sounded so sweet and saddening. 'Are you all right, sweetheart?'

'Mama,' and he lets out a sob and immediately presses his fist to his mouth, shakes his head, focuses on the cars passing in the street below the balcony. 'Mama, I'm sorry, mama.'

'Sorry for what? Eren, do you want to speak to your father—'

I don't even know what the fuck I lost, man. I just know that I lost my fucking shit. I lost something.

He wonders just how many things he's managed to lose inside of his mind and memory.

'No,' he says. 'Just wanna— I just— I'm just so sorry. I'm so sorry.' There was a time when he couldn't lift heavy things. There was a time when the ground was so close to him, and another time when the ground was so far. There was a time when I couldn't lift heavy things; I'm sorry. I lost something that I loved so much.

There is silence on the line for so long that he begins to think she's actually looking for his father, but then she sighs. 'I love you, Eren. I would do anything for you. Anything.'

It's his turn to be quiet, as his few tears start to clear.

'Anything,' she repeats. 'As many times as I have to.'

'I know,' he says after a while, eyes on a bird on the rail of the opposite balcony, the blue flowers of the potted plant it's pecking at. 'I know. I'll never forget.'

'You never did.' 

When he's calmed down, he tells her (again) about Jean, and she says (again) that he should bring Jean home one day. And (again) it hits him that she's never met Jean, and he doesn't know what to make of the dismay that brings.

---

'This,' Levi says, one day later, or ten days later, 'is a very expensive drink. It's not like the mead you get at the corner store. It comes from the mountains. Only the high ranks have access to it.'

Eren stares blankly at Levi and the bottle in his hand. It doesn't look special to him. Levi doesn't look special to him. He doesn't remember where they are. He doesn't think he knew in the first place. It's a room. An office. Levi's office? Erwin's office. Has he slept?

Why?

He understands why. He does. He understands everything. Do you understand that? It was Levi who said that. Wasn't it? He understands it. He does. He understands. He understands everything. He's grown up. He's smart. He understands everything. He is never going to come flying again.

'Eren.' 

'Is it strong? The drink, is it strong?'

Levi looks at him. Eren can't tell what Levi is thinking. Eren can't tell what Levi is wearing. Eren can't tell where they are. It's a room. An office. Levi's office? Erwin's office? 

'Yes,' Levi says. Is it a reply? To what? Did he ask something? 'I'll give it to you if you promise not to puke over the desk.' 

Puke in your shoes if you have to.

Our luck is only going up. You'll see.

'You think all we do is puke.'

'Well, you are a bunch of brats.'

'I'm twenty.' Where was my turning-twenty cake? I hope someone makes one for me next week.

'And I'm thirty seven,' Levi says. Why is he saying that? Where are they? Eren can't tell where they are. It's a room. An office. Levi's office? Erwin's office? 'You'll always be a brat to me.'

'Is it strong? The drink, is it strong?'

Levi looks at him. 'Yes. Do you want some?'

'Yes.'

He pours it out, and it's a beautiful colour. A kind of green that he would have loved. The glass is sparkling clean. It must be Levi's office. Is it an office? He doesn't know where they are. He understands everything, though, He understands. He's the same age now. Not just for a week. Forever. He's the same age forever, now. He is never going to come flying again.

'I'll match you drink for drink,' Levi says. 'Don't tell the other brats we drank together.'

'I won't,' Eren says, and he drinks. It tastes horrid, not a kind of taste that he would have loved, even if it's a kind of green that he would have loved. It's strong, stronger than mead. Levi is still pouring his share out, and then Eren remembers that they were supposed to drink together. He doesn't really care. He doesn't really care about a lot of things these days. This day. Right now. He's not sure how long it's been. He's not sure where they are.

'You know,' Levi says, pouring out another drink, 'we managed to fortify that settlement in the end. It wasn't in vain.'

'That's great. Name a street after him.'

'Jaeger.'

‘He’s the only one who didn’t return from that mission. Name a street after him, or I will set that entire place on fire.'

'I didn't say no.'

The second drink doesn't hurt that much. It still tastes horrid, not a kind of taste he would have loved, even if it's a kind of green that he would have loved. It doesn't hurt as much going down, and he's getting used to the smell, and this time Levi is fast enough that they tip their glasses together. 

'This isn't something extraordinary,' Eren says. 'Why are you drinking with me? It's not such a special occasion.'

'Let's just say I have a soft spot for your snot-nosed self,' Levi says. 'I told you. Too much grief brings only defeat.'

'I'm strong. I'll be stronger.'

'I can break all your bones in forty seconds.'

'They'll never defeat me.'

'They won't.' And he knows that getting Levi to agree is something rare, so he takes the bottle and pours out a third drink for himself. He really is getting used to the smell, and he remembers to pour one out for Levi too. 'They won't if you don't let them. Things are different now. Not as shitty.'

Just because it's not as shitty as it used to be— 

'Hey,' he says. ‘Corporal. Captain. Why?'

'Why what?'

'Why?' The third one goes down like water. 'We were almost safe. We were safe for a while there, we could've stayed that way.'

'You could have, yes,' and that's the second time in an hour and a year that Levi's agreeing with him. 'If you had chosen to. Did you choose to?'

'No.'

'Why didn't you choose to?'

'Because we wanted more.'

'Why did you want more?'

From the moment we are born, all of us are free. 'Because I am me.'

'Well, there you go.'

Levi doesn't say anything for a while. Eren stares at the bottle, and his glass, and his hands, and his shoes, and outside the window where the sky is light even at...he thinks it's supposed to be midnight...because it's raining, and so there are clouds. He understands this. He understands everything. He understands. That he is never going to come flying again. But he doesn't understand why. They were almost safe.

'Not in our lifetime, Jaeger.' Levi pours the drink into the glass again, and slides it towards him across the table. 'Not in our lifetime, child.'

---

The office is not quite like he imagined it would be, but then, he doesn't know what he'd imagined anyway. Birds? A hamster on a wheel? A snake?

Instead, it's much like the office of any other professor he's had appointments with. Wooden floor, a window overlooking the brief stretch of woods on campus, and a few photo frames on the desk. Two men in one, a blond and a brunet, two cats in another. A mug with some winged pattern that makes him nervous.

'You know this isn't going in your final grade, right?'

Eren blinks, looks up at professor Zoë. 'I'm sorry?' 

'You don't have to worry so much about showing it to me,' they say. 'I won't be grading it, I just want to see how you write.' 

He admits that it does take some of the pressure off, but most of his uneasiness remains; it's not the grade he's worried about, it's the content itself. He only half-understands it himself; he doesn't expect them to make sense of it, and he doesn't like the idea of creating anything less than the best impression possible on professor Zoë. It might just have been one semester so far, but his respect for them knows no end.

'Honestly, it's a mess,' he laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘ And I’m not…quite done yet. If...if it doesn't make sense, I could explain what I was thinking when I—'

'Eren,' they cut in, gently, and they're the only professor on campus who doesn't refer to him by his last name. 'Just show it to me.' 

Laughing again, he reluctantly hands his laptop over and clears his throat as they take it. His thumb goes to his birthmark again, but these days he's stopped bothering. Irritating it soothes the rest of him, and at this point he'll take what he can get.

— Write about freedom. Free verse accepted.

From the moment we are born, all of us are free. I remember thinking this again and again, and I feel as if it is the first thing that comes to my mind when I am in pain. Sometimes, it brings more pain with it. Sometimes, thinking this thought feels like there is something going through my chest, and it’s too physical to be just an emotion.

I feel so many things that are too physical to be just emotions, and I feel so many things that slip through my grasp as though they never existed in the first place. The streets, the buildings, the river; they all carry something that I don’t know and know too well. They all say they weren’t free, once, the stones on the pathways, the glass of the church. 

Maybe the litany of this thought never stops in my head. Maybe that’s why it hurts. Maybe that’s why everything hurts.

'You've always been a bright boy, haven't you?' Professor Zoë says after a bout of silence. 'You talk a lot with your hands.'

Eren laughs again— it seems like that's all he's been doing— looks at his shoes, scuffs them against the floor a little. 'I don't know about that.'

'Not yet,' they say. 'You'll roam the world, Eren. I see it in your words.'

And that, he knows. That, he knows. It's what keeps him up at night when other things don't.

He doesn't realise he said it aloud until he hears professor Zoë laugh. It's high, and loud, and he wonders how many big things they've already done.

'Look up,' they say, and he does.

For a long moment, they say nothing, leaning their head on their hand, looking intently at him until he feels almost scrutinised.

Then: 'We must never sleep,' they say, eyes bright, smile kind. 'We must stay awake and remember.'

---

The café is not very crowded. Eren supposes that’s to be expected for six on a December morning, when winter has finally settled in, bringing with it cold, cruel winds and rain that isn't much better. There must be ten, maybe fifteen students, all with coffee or tea in their gloved hands, eyes expectant and smiles sleepy. The lighting, Mina’s favourite strings of bulbs, is gentle and perfect, and really, Eren doesn’t think there is a season he loves more than this. The glass fogged up, the clock reading 6:03 AM, and the book in his hands well-worn and marked in pencil.

'One of my favourite pieces,' he begins, leaning forward, 'is from The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by Lawrence of Arabia.'

The door opens, then, with a hesitant quietness that alerts him of Jean's presence. He looks as tired as he's looked since that day he threw his mug to the floor, and it makes Eren ache to see him that way without knowing how to fix it, without knowing if he even can. Jean looks at him and averts his gaze quickly; a half-smile on his lips that Eren wants to kiss and swallow. He wants to stomp his foot on the part of the floor that Jean is looking at now, wants to grab Jean's hair in his hands and say fist to fist, let's go, like always.

'I loved you,' he begins, and Jean blinks and looks up again, lightning fast. 'So I drew these tides of men into my hands—' 

Jean doesn’t move.

'And wrote my will across the sky and stars—

'—to earn you freedom,' he says, and good God, his voice hasn't cracked like that in years. 'The seven pillared worthy house—

'That your eyes,' his eyes, Jean's eyes, those eyes glimmering right now like in his lines, 'might be shining for me when I came.'

I loved you.

Jean tilts his head, entreating, almost, the slope of his brows and the tears in his eyes. So here they are, a look on Jean's face that makes Eren realise just how underwhelming the naive dreams of his past were; to have found his freedom in the icicles on Jean's lashes and his little miseries littered in the foliage creeping up his arms. 

How he stumbles his way through the rest of the poem, he doesn't know; his eyes are only on Jean and his voice trembles every so often. The others must have noticed, but he can't bring himself to care. Jean must have noticed, but he can't bring himself to care.

When he finishes, Jean is still near the door. Eren clutches his text tighter in his hand and walks over to him, across the café in what seems like one giant stride. On the way, Mina still manages to hand him a hot mug, and he takes it without looking, and a few drops spill over and seep halfway through his glove, and they step outside.

The sun is coming up inch by inch, but it's still so dark, and so blue, and he's so beautiful. He's so beautiful that Eren doesn't know what to do with himself, encased in steam as they are, in mist, with Jean's lips trembling, the most moving Eren has ever seen him look. Our brief wage ours for the moment. Jean who paints with God's colours, Jean who loves him so. 

'Bastard,' Jean whispers.

---

That he lives to be twenty is more surprising to Eren than to anyone else. They’re in a time, finally, where they can go beyond sweetened milk and fruit, or bread and honey— Mikasa bakes, bakes a cake, something that had only been the stuff of dreams but a few years ago. When he puts the first piece into his mouth, he has to take a moment so that he doesn’t bring it back up after swallowing. It’s soft, and it’s sweet, and the Reconnaissance Corps must never have enjoyed a meal as majestic as this. Even Levi is smiling. 

‘Where was my turning-twenty cake?’ Jean mutters, stabbing his carrots with his fork. ‘I hope someone makes one for me next week.'

‘Wait, I’m the same age as you again,’ Eren says. ‘Ha! You can’t play the elder card anymore!'

‘For a week.’ 

They drink that night, even though they know they have a mission in the morning. The original purpose of the Corps, regardless of the time, has remained the same over the years— to explore beyond the walls (far, far beyond the walls now) and see the reach of the titans, see if they can reestablish populations in outer lands. They’ve expanded much more than anyone thought they would, including perhaps themselves, but the world is big and Eren is thirsty. And Armin is thirsty. And Erwin is thirsty. And with their thirst they infect the others, who lift up their blades and shout. 

Eren wants to find bigger mountains. He’s only twenty, and he wants to see forever the way Jean laughs in the snow under leafless trees. 

‘Happy birthday,’ Jean whispers into his mouth later. His lips taste of mead. ‘Last one more year. One more after that.'

---

‘Now, I don’t care how hungover you are,’ Levi begins, walking around them in that intimidating way he always does. ‘Puke in your shoes if you have to, but today we’re scoping out the rest of this forest and the ruins that Braus discovered last month. Understood?'

‘Yes, sir!’

‘And if you do puke in your shoes, it’s your ass that’s answering to Erwin, not mine.’

As he climbs onto his horse, Eren smiles. Across him, Jean is kissing the handle of his sword again. ‘Can’t believe you still do that.'

‘Our luck’s still shitty, you know? Just because it’s not as shitty as it used to be—' 

‘Aren’t you a joy,’ Eren says. ‘Our luck is only going up. You’ll see.’ 

---

That Jean doesn’t live to be twenty one is perhaps equally surprising to everyone. 

---

'Jaeger, headquarters.'

The forest, again. A forest, again. Leaves. Leaves, leaves, leaves, rustling here, flying there, blue sky white clouds red red blood. Wind, cold on his face, cold, so cold on his hands, howling in his ears, hurting his head, so loud so loud so 'Jaeger, now.'

He is crying, he is crying louder than the wind, now. So much louder than the wind, and sounding ten times worse, and if the wind had been howling he doesn't know what this sound is. He is screaming in pain, sobbing, wailing. Howling in his ears, hurting his head, so loud so loud so ‘Jaeger, now.'

'Jaeger. Jaeger. Eren.'

---

The sight of Jean lying limp on the ground is one that Eren wants to etch in marble, frame in gold. His forehead covered in blood, so much blood, and his hair dark with sweat, and his eyes, his eyes closed as if he's only asleep and Eren can reach over and kiss them, kiss his still lashes, kiss his pale lips. Eren, oh, Eren could reach over across a city and bring him to life.

'Jaeger.' Levi's voice from behind him is cold and steady. 'We have to move back to headquarters. Now.'

'Jean. Jean,' he says, and then he's moving, because Jean isn't across a city and Jean isn't moving and Eren needs to be there to make him move, and so he moves himself, takes a step towards— but why, why won't Levi let him— why— '—no, listen, just one moment, corporal. One second, I just need to— listen, just one moment, all right? Levi. Listen. Levi.’ He’s asking so calmly. He’s asking so calmly.

He's being lifted now, he feels it, lifted so easily as if he is still a child, he's being slung ungracefully over Levi's shoulder just like all those years ago, and his mother trapped under the rubble of his home and his small hands on all that wood and stone, and Levi is Hannes in his speed, just like Hannes, just like that day, again and again and again, and this time Eren doesn't resist even for a moment, even as that sight of Jean, the one he wants to etch in marble and frame in gold, gets more and more distant.

When he's back on his feet, near a building, a building he is supposed to know, Levi looks at him. Face as impassive as always, and he says, ‘You are not what he died for. Do you understand that?'

Eren stares at him. What did he die for?

'Too much grief brings only defeat.' Eren stares at him. 'You have far to go, you don't need to see his corpse right now.'

His corpse, Eren thinks. Jean. Jean, yelling and stomping his feet and punching walls and wincing in secret. Jean, kissing his wounds. Jean, kissing his blade. Jean, in the filters of the forest and the first pale light of the morning sun. Jean, awake. Jean, awake. Jean, always awake. Jean, sleeping but in his arms. His corpse. His corpse.

'I think,' he says. 'I think you shouldn't have taken me away.'

Then Levi does a strange thing. He reaches out and cups Eren's jaw, his hand rough and foreign, thumb pressing into Eren's cheek. He says nothing, shows nothing on his face, but Eren can smell smoke on his skin. Levi says nothing, shifts his gaze to the building behind Eren, the one he is supposed to know, and starts to walk inside.

He leaves Eren standing there, staring across the courtyard as if he will find Jean flying towards him at any moment now. Any moment now. There hasn't ever been a moment when Jean hasn't come flying towards him. Angrily, happily, in tears, in love.

He stands there until sunset. And then it is Armin, walking slowly through the gate, his face so sad, so sad. His hands holding his blades by his sides, bloodstains on his shirt. They must be Jean's.

Armin notices him and his face crumples more, but Eren is still standing there and waiting for Jean.

'He said—' Armin begins, and Eren interrupts him.

'I'll hear it from him,' he says.

Somewhere between soup and meat that night at dinner, he realises that Jean is never going to come flying towards him again. Mikasa reads the way he goes still in that way she does, and wraps her arms around him in that way she doesn't. Eren stares at his plate, and his water, and the table, and his hands. Jean is never going to come flying towards him again, and every bite of food he swallows from this moment on until the end of his life will remind him that Jean is never going to come flying towards him again. Every drink of water and wine, every rose he sees.

Armin tries, again, to say something. Later, in a broken whisper across the narrow space between their beds. 'He said, he said tell the shorty—'

'I don't,' Eren says dully. 'I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear any more last words. Go to sleep.'

Outside, an owl hoots. Outside, the wind howls. Inside of Eren there is a silence. Inside of Eren there is a silence.

---

'Jaeger. We have to move back to headquarters. Now.'

The forest, again. A forest, again. Leaves. Leaves, leaves, leaves, rustling here, flying there, blue sky white clouds red red blood. Wind, cold on his face, cold, so cold on his hands, howling in his ears, hurting his head, so loud so loud so 'Jaeger. Jaeger. Eren.'

'He said—' That's Armin's voice, and that's Armin, stepping towards him in his bloodied shirt and his muddy shoes, and his eyes so blue, and his blades in his limp hands.

'I'll hear it from him.'

'He said, he said tell the shorty—' 

'I don't. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear any more last words. Go to sleep.'

---

This time when he wakes, there are tears in his eyes. This time, the first time. The only time that counts.

For a moment, he can't breathe. Knows he's supposed to inhale, expand his lungs, but can't.

Write about freedom. Free verse accepted.

If he didn't know before, he knows for sure now, for sure, why he can't do that fucking assignment. Why he couldn't explain anything. Why he— why— how is he supposed to explain? How is he supposed to explain, that now, as if there had ever not been a now, that now, when he closes his eyes and sees Jean with his cape and his hair and his blades and his stance, how is he supposed to explain that—

When I have closed my eyes and looked at you, I have seen more than I have ever seen of you. 

---

Armin's sleeping figure, in all its inactivity, looks so dear to him now that he can barely take the image of it. He doesn't know how he manages, but after a moment or two he is on his knees at Armin's bedside, unable to take his eyes away from how the small reading lamp lights up his hair, and his brows, and his face. Armin, older now as he was then, quiet, patient, and always his best friend.

Eren puts a hand on his shoulder and shakes him, once, twice. He frowns and opens his eyes immediately, and oh, his eyes are so blue, they are so blue.

'Eren? What's wrong? Are you all right?'

'What did he say?' And now Eren's fingers are curled in Armin's nightshirt, trembling even then. 'Jean. What did he say?'

'What are you talking about?'

'He said tell the shorty— what, tell the shorty what? Armin.'

Armin is silent for so long that Eren fears, for a moment, that he's wrong after all. That Armin knows nothing, that maybe even Jean knows nothing with all his drawings and his dreams, but then— but then he sees a telltale glimmer in those blue eyes, and relaxes, relieved.

'You said you'll hear it from him,' and Eren laughs, rubs a thumb over his cheek. 

'Okay, I'll make him say it too. But you first. You first.' And after all, he's been waiting for so long. He's been standing in that courtyard for a thousand sunsets, and Armin has been sitting on this bedside for a thousand more, and Jean, Jean has been waiting forever.

'He said tell the shorty "no regrets",' Armin says. Eren closes his eyes and slumps against the bed frame. 'Go now, quickly.'

---

It takes him four tries to put the code in— the code that he’s long since memorised, and it felt so natural, so obvious, so obvious that they’d fall into place in each other’s lives— and he wishes he could blame it on the cold. When he finally comes to a rest outside Jean's door, he pauses for a moment, that human uncertainty raising its fists against his bone-deep conviction.

But then he remembers Jean's lips on his hand in the cathedral, and then he remembers the way he'd whispered bastard not a fortnight ago, and he's always known every drawing Jean has ever made. His ringing, then, is frantic and impatient.

Jean opens the door within a few moments, sleep-deprived and beautiful. 'Eren—?'

And he opens his mouth but he can't find his voice. Jean's shirt is white, and spotted with red paint, and it's beautiful, and it freezes him with fear. Those eyes, that hair, those hands, holding a brush even now, and Eren's mouth is still open but he still can't find his voice.

'Eren,' Jean says again, and he wants to grab him, hold him close, never let him go again. Never again.

'They grow,' he blurts out, and Jean frowns. 'Over graves.'

'Eren, are you drunk? What—'

'We planted some,' but thinking of that when Jean is here in front of him, here and alive and safe, makes nausea stir in his gut, and he shakes his head. 'I can't say it. I— flowers. You asked. The first time we met.'

The slowly-dawning clarity on Jean's face is one of the most important things Eren has ever witnessed. He’s calmed down marginally; can notice the shadows under Jean’s eyes now, the confused furrow of his brows. The evening shadow on his jaw, and now, all that desire Eren has been brushing off all this while hits him, combined with a desperation he hadn’t recognised before. 

Jean. Jean, yelling and stomping his feet and punching walls and wincing in secret. Jean, kissing his birthmark. Jean, in the filters of the Compiègne and the first pale light of the morning sun. Jean, awake. Jean, awake. Jean, always awake. Jean, sleeping but in his arms. Alive. Alive. Jean Kirschtein, hundred-and-fourth. Jean Kirschtein, hundred-and-fourth.

'It was you,' Eren says, voice cracking. 'That day. When we fought. I said I lost something.'

'Please don't be fucking with me right now. Don't fuck with me, okay?'

'Shut up, you useless— you—' He leans against the doorframe, forehead against cool wood. He thinks he'd wanted this to be more dramatic, with more yelling and crying and church bells too. But he's breathless in his hurry, afraid it's a dream, and he wants nothing more than to touch Jean with these hands of his, to hold him. He wants it to be as quick as possible. 'No regrets.'

Jean looks like someone ripped the breath from his lungs. 'Oh, God,' he says. 'My God.' 

'Please, just—' But Jean is already shaking his head, reaching forward desperately with trembling arms, and Eren surges into them. He surges into them, and the relief that courses through his body makes him weak. He inhales again and again this exhaustion of years, the frisson of their touch, the grief. 'Jean Kirschtein, hundred-and-fourth. No regrets, huh?'

'Not one,' Jean says, clutching Eren to himself so tight, so tight. 'You bastard. You death-seeker. Oh, God, Eren.'

---

It's Jean who kisses him first. After ages and ages of standing by the still-ajar door, his hands clutching fistfuls of Jean's shirt and Jean's on his waist, they pull away, slow, unwilling. Eren looks into those eyes that he can't believe he'd forgotten for a while, the near-transparency of their brown, the delicate lashes, and again, always, tears. Almost as if Jean is making up this time for all the tears Eren cried then; feeling his pain, breathing his smoke. Living all this while in a memory he couldn't bring himself to describe exactly, that neither of them could.

'Good evening,' Eren whispers, and Jean laughs and shakes his head, leans forward, presses their foreheads together. 'What? I still have manners. I wasn't raised in the jungle, you know.'

'In the— Eren, I swear to God.' But now he's moving, and their noses are brushing, and Eren can smell bitter, bitter coffee on his breath. Jean is so close now, so close. He's going to be this close forever, now. Tonight, and the night after, and the night after that, and he's going to last the year, and one more after that, and one more, and this Jean will turn twenty one and twenty two and twenty three and he'll do it right here in this museum of an apartment, his colourful hands caught in Eren's bitten ones, skin to skin.

Even though it's Eren thinking these jumbled thoughts, it's Jean who kisses him first. As he comes ever closer, Eren wonders for just a moment which one it will be— the soft ones he used to get before bed, or the fierce ones, almost like attacks, that he himself used to inflict on Jean's lips before they climbed onto their horses, shoulders sore and hearts strong— but then their lips are touching and he stops wondering.

They'll never have a first kiss again, he realises, and he's never been happier about something. They'll never have a first kiss again, but this Jean has a body Eren hasn't explored yet, and even if he already knows how to make it sing, he's missed that song. Oh, but he's missed that song.

'We don't even have to be careful this time,' Jean says against his throat as he moves to take his jacket off.  'Don't have to worry about hurting—'

'When was I ever worried about hurting you?' But the joke wounds his throat on the way out, because they used to throw punches like flowers, but when they touched without violence it was terrifying. It was painful.

So now, Eren seeks to numb pain for once instead of provoking it. Yes, he pushes Jean backwards onto the bed when they manage to reach there in their kissing and stumbling, but he also stands where he is just to stare at that unmarked chest, the jeans low on those hips, that familiar half-smile, half-smirk on Jean's face.

'Come on,' and when Eren doesn't move, he repeats it, softer. 'I'm tired of waiting.'

Life is so short.

‘Me too,' Eren says, and in an instant he falls over Jean, gathers him up, presses his lips to that fever pitch straining against his throat. ‘Yeah.'

---

When he steps out of the bathroom, towelling his hair, Jean is nowhere to be seen. For one moment, his chest clenches; he knew they should've showered together, even if just to avoid being apart for those few minutes. Then he notices the balcony light and exhales, relieved.

'Your hair's still wet,' he says, stepping out. 'You'll catch your— a cold.'

'Then you'll just have to cook for me,' Jean replies, holds out a hand. Eren takes it, and lets Jean pull him down to the cushions on the floor. 'Or we can fall sick together. Solidarity.'

'Yeah, no. I can't recite Caesar with a stuffed nose.'

'You recite Caesar now.' Eren hums and wraps the blanket around himself, presses his shoulder to Jean's cool one. 'I study art.' 

He doesn't want to start thinking about it, but the memories are automatic and can't be stopped now that he's acknowledged them all. Even sitting here with Jean right beside him, it fills him with a loneliness, a fear, a silence. 'I found them.' 

'Found what?'

'The drawings,' Eren says, voice thick suddenly, salt in his mouth. All those drawings, each one of them, never as colourful as the ones littering Jean's apartment, but just as beautiful. The forest, the mountains, the horses, and Eren. 'When I was going through your things. I didn't let anyone else touch them.

'Kept them forever,' and finally the tears spill and he presses his hand to his mouth, feels them hot and fast on his birthmark.

Jean swears under his breath, and then he's shifting to face Eren. 'You dramatic asshole. You're absolutely useless, I swear to God, you fucking bastard—'

'I am,' he sobs, then. 'I'm the biggest fucking bastard on this planet, I couldn't— wasn't even there when you, oh God, I'm sorry, Jean—'

'Shut the fuck up.' Jean's voice is low, almost angry. 'I said no regrets, you think I'd have used my last breath for that if I hadn't meant it?' He smiles, brushes the backs of his fingers over Eren's cheek. 'I think I should've just hit on Mikasa instead. One last try for old times' sake.'

'You jackass, I always knew I was consolation prize.'

'Shut up,' he says again, softer now, breath hitching. 'I hate your stupid ass anyway. Shit, here I go. Fuck you.'

'Solidarity,' Eren laughs, even as he puts his hands on Jean's chest, rubs his thumbs over the soft fabric of his shirt. 'We can stay up all night crying like children and I'll walk into professor Zoë's— holy shit, Hange.'

'I wonder if they remember me. Or you. Or anything.'

Remember, Hange had said, and Eren doesn't think they could ever have forgotten. That memory brings new-old tears to his eyes and he curls into Jean, who takes him in willingly, draws the blanket tighter. We must stay awake and remember. Remember what they took from you. Avenge him.

I lost something. I lost something that—

'I love you,' he says as a life-time late afterthought, a little desperately. 'Jean. You can hate my stupid ass all you want.'

For a while there is only the sound of their breathing. His, irregular and shaky; Jean's, deliberately steady.

'The last thing I looked at was the sky,' Jean replies. 'But the last thing I saw was you. You have a really fucking killer smile, you know that? No comfort to a dying man.

'I love you, you bastard,' he says. 'God, but don't I love you, radical poet Eren Jaeger.'

Even though it pains Eren to move away even for a moment— Jean's whimper of protest doesn't help— he turns around so that he can see the sky too. His back to Jean's chest, their arms now twined over his stomach; and Jean presses his lips to Eren's temple in an amalgamation of heartbreak and intimacy that they were once only able to afford in the lights of dimmed lanterns hung on branches.

The stars are bright tonight, the city is quiet. These cities, their cities, Berlin, Trost, Shiganshina.

Eren closes his eyes and flies once more.

---

That he lives to be twenty five is a bitter, bitter fact. The morning of his birthday, he throws his water jug at the window in a sleepy attempt to douse out the sun. It doesn't work, because the sun doesn't care. And God, if he exists, doesn't care.

Two months later, in a ceremony where he gets to drink again that terrible green drink he will always associate with the memory of loss, Armin is named commander of the Reconnaissance Corps, and Mikasa the captain directly under him. Their resemblances (including physical) to Erwin and Levi are so nostalgic that Hange bursts into tears.

Maybe Eren had stopped believing for a while that this day would come, but here it stands: there are talks of the last of the ships being ready within the month, and he hears (squad leader) Marlo yelling every day at the new recruits that if they don't know how to swim, they're not welcome aboard. Every titan in their current territory has been slain, and further lands lie beyond the water. Eren hasn't been that far yet; he freezes every time the mountains start to disappear and turns back. Some things just can't be forgotten. The fall of his mother's hair, the shine of his father's glasses. A hundred different ways in which he used to say you bastard.

After the celebration, it's just the three of them again, on another set of stairs like they sat ten years ago, but the stars aren't that bright. The lights aren't that bright. They haven't been bright for a while now, a few years now, half a decade now.

Sometimes it's hard not to think that the world is against him. Sometimes it's hard to think that the world even exists anymore. That there are places that they have yet to explore, and that those places could hold anything good. That any part of this world could hold anything good anymore. Sometimes it's hard to remember that life has continued. Sometimes it's hard to forget.

'So,' Armin says. 'We made it.'

Mikasa hums, probably smiles. Eren doesn't take his eyes off the ground. Hasn't for a while now. A few years now. Half a decade now.

'Eren,' he tries again, and Eren tries to remember that they're his best friends. 'We're finally going to see the ocean. Are you excited?'

He laughs, clears his throat. 'Sorry, I guess...I guess I don't really want to see it all that much.'

There's a long silence that follows his statement, during which the wind picks up. During which he plays with his hands and notices that the lantern near the landing has gone out. Some or the other light is always going out in this goddamn city.

'Don't be fucking ridiculous,' Armin says then, over the howling wind, and Eren looks at him, eyes wide. 'You...I know you. You're not even capable of giving up on your dreams, no matter what happens.'

'I—'

'I'm sorry,' Mikasa interrupts, and this time she is smiling. 'He's right. You just don't have it in you, Eren. You can't give up.'

Eren laughs again, turns back to look at the ground. The stones are gray-grey-gray, like the walls, and the roads, and the grave. His boots are dark against them.

'Besides,' Armin says, 'there are very big mountains out there. Bigger than the ones we've seen. The highest in the world.'

Eren focuses on the gray-grey-gray stones. Eren focuses on the gray-grey-gray stones. Eren focuses on the gray-grey-gray stones.

'Wouldn't you like to show Jean someday?'

Eren focuses on the stones. He focuses on the stones. He doesn’t focus on the strange pain filling his chest. He focuses on the stones. He is never going to come flying again. He doesn't focus on the strange sound filling the sky. 

Somewhere, far from where Eren is focusing on the stones— someone is crying. Someone is crying, someone is crying louder than the wind, now. So much louder than the wind, and sounding ten times worse, and if the wind had been howling he doesn't know what this sound is. Someone is screaming in pain, sobbing, wailing. Howling in his ears, hurting his head, so loud so loud so loud.

Then:

---

— Write about freedom. Free verse accepted.

Yes.

---

When he sees Armin again, the first thing he does (after, of course, pouncing on the boy and holding him close, laughing into his hair) is ask how long he’s known about all of it. He doesn’t doubt for a second that just like Hange, Armin’s aware of every single thing.

‘Last summer,’ Armin says, when he’s tied his hair back again (Eren might have been too enthusiastic in his greeting, but he doesn’t really care). ‘It took me a few weeks to figure out, but one night I dreamt of a meeting with prof— Hange, and retained their full name and looked it up.’

‘And you what, just messaged them saying I think I know you from another life?’ Jean asks, rummaging in the freezer, definitely to hide his face. ’That must’ve gone well.'

’They were wearing our wings of freedom in the picture I found,’ Armin replies. ‘It was safe to assume they knew.’

The second thing he does is ask about Mikasa. Now that he remembers everything, his urge to see her (and give her the red scarf he's stretching between his hands right now) is upsetting. He doesn't recall coming across her anywhere in the city, but the university has more than forty thousand students and almost every faculty imaginable, so he wouldn't be surprised if she's been studying in the building beside his all this time.

'You might want to sit down for this,' Armin says, with that smile that Eren now knows he gets more frequently this time 'round than he ever did before, 'because— well. Just sit.'

Jean joins Eren on the couch with a tub of Ben & Jerry's that he doesn't remember buying at all. Eren reaches automatically for his hand, cold as it is, and links their fingers together loosely. They haven't been able to stay apart for more than a few minutes at a time since the night before, and even if it's only been a few hours, Eren wonders if that anxiety will ever fade. They have decades and decades to make up for, after all, and again he tenses a little, and again Jean squeezes his fingers.

'Well?' he says. 'Where is she?'

'She doesn't remember anything for the moment,' Armin replies. 'I'm sure she would've hounded us down by now if she did.'

'Of course,' Eren says. He doesn't suspect for a moment that Mikasa wouldn't have barged into his apartment through his window within a couple of hours of remembering him. 'So is she here? Is she a cop or something?'

'Mikasa,' Armin says, slowly, 'is sous-chef at her mother's restaurant in Tokyo.'

Jean drops his spoon back into the tub. Eren blinks.

'A— excuse me,' he says. 'A restaurant.'

'Two Michelin stars,' Armin grins. 'You want to go there next?'

---

When Hange sees them next, they laugh and laugh, and pull Eren in and mess up his hair irreparably. 'You know how hard it was not to just yell in your face?'

'I'm pretty sure you did that on one or two occasions anyway,' Eren says into their shoulder, but he's laughing too, and when he pulls back he adds, 'I'll turn it in on Monday.'

'Take your time,' they say, and they grin. 'My work here, as they say, is done.'

'Well—'

'Oh! Except. I have to make a call, hang on.'

He should, perhaps, have been able to tell who they called just from the tone of their voice, but he's never been the most perceptive of human beings, and for once, neither is Jean. Only the smile on Armin's face alerts them that something might be up, and they don't understand until there is a very ominous-sounding knock on Jean's door the next day. 

Who knocks, Eren mouths as Jean goes to open it, and regrets it immediately when he sees who it is. 

'I know you're supposed to be a tortured artist or something, Kirschtein,' once-corporal Levi says, striding right into the apartment, 'but I swear to God if you don't have a clean place for me to sit I'm turning right around and leaving this place.' 

'Levi,' Eren says, while Jean laughs and hides his face in his hands. He doesn't even have focus for Erwin, who's right behind, and Hange, leaning against the doorframe. 

'Jaeger,' he says. Voice clipped as always, still that stern look on his face. 'Cut your hair, you shitty brat.'

All Eren can remember is the dull pain of Levi's shoulder jutting into his sternum as he was carried away, and all Eren can remember is those rare, rare smiles of his, and all Eren can remember is those ridiculous cloths he used to tie over his nose, so he doesn't even try to justify the way in which he throws his arms around Levi's lean frame.

'Do not think,’ Levi says, 'that I can’t break all your bones in forty seconds even today.’ But then his hand is in Eren’s hair, clutching a little bit too tight, and his exhale is unsteady.

Things seem to be moving so fast now that he remembers, and at the same time he feels as though he won't be satisfied until he's met everyone and knows they're safe. Armin's done a good enough job of tracking down all of their friends, but to Eren's disappointment, not all of them are even aware of their identities. Not yet, at least.

'I think it might be within one or two years of adulthood,' Armin explains, 'from what Hange and Erwin told me about their comrades. Hang on for a while, I'm sure Sasha's going to come running across the border into town soon enough.'

It takes Jean a week to ask about Marco. It takes him a week more to forgive Marco.

'He honestly didn't want to disturb you,' Armin says. 'Besides, Florence is kind of far—'

'Disturb—' Jean groans and turns to Eren. 'How—'

'Stick to one flavour of ice cream and we can go in a month,' Eren says, turns his laptop towards them. ‘I won't let you kill him, though, I'm just saying.'

---

There isn't much that changes. After all, Jean still studies art, and Eren still studies languages, and Armin still studies economics (and mathematics). After all, Mikasa is still sous-chef a continent over (and she will come running one day and Eren will wrap his scarf around her), and Levi is still a martial artist across the border. But maybe Jean doesn't have to worry as much about where the images in his head come from, and maybe Eren feels just a little prouder of the languages the world has managed to resurrect and will continue to do.

Sometimes he has to tug on Jean's wrist in supermarket aisles because Jean's found, again, that one brand of orange juice that smells just like it did then. Sometimes he has to wake up Jean at night just to see him conscious and concerned, to erase the memory of his blood-covered face and the cold that came with the sunset that day.

When his mother meets Jean, she runs a hand through his hair and smiles, and asks if he's ever tried adding bourbon to his apple pies. Jean asks her to show him, and Eren cries that night. He cries a lot, and Jean tries not to, but Eren cries enough for the both of them.

But for times like those, there are ten more when they borrow Hange’s car and drive on the highway just to drive on the highway, windows down, Jean so handsome in his sunglasses, and Eren’s favourite song somehow always ending up on the radio. For each of those times, there are times when Eren wakes like he’s washing ashore, and finds that Jean’s arms are still around him, warm and strong and streaked with paint sometimes. There are times when they cook together, while Armin and Erwin discuss world domination (and Eren’s problematic flip-flops) in the living room, and Eren knows with such confidence that one day, soon they will all be together again— and, through it all, Jean will be beside him, grabbing his collar and growling threats, grabbing his collar and growling promises, grabbing his collar, grabbing him. 

It's only a few months later, almost a year since they met, that Armin brings it up.

'By the way,' he says, 'they're called the Himalayas, they're a really big—'

'I know what the Himalayas are,' Eren says indignantly.

'Really?' Jean cuts in. He smiles at Eren, and behind him, the leaves of the fall are turning from green to red.

And when he smiles just so, there is a fleck of paint on his lips, red.

'Aren't you going to take me there, then?'

Then:

---

‘Yes,’ Eren says.

---

— Write about freedom. Free verse accepted.

When I have closed my eyes and looked at you,

I have seen more than I have ever seen of you.

I have seen you living and I have seen you dead;

at your most alive you were lying still,

not moving, not breathing.

I couldn’t see for the tears in my eyes, love.

You couldn’t see for the blood in yours.

 
When I look at you now, when I close my eyes,

I feel every pain you have ever felt.

 
When I look at you now, when I close my eyes,

I hear every laugh you have ever cried.

 
I will close my eyes and tell you a secret,

you who I see more than I have ever seen.

When I found you, I lost everything.

When I found you, I found everything.

We shall meet again in Petersburg,

as though there we’d buried the sun,

and for the first time, speak the word

the sacred, the meaningless one. 

— We shall meet again in Petersburg, Osip Mandelstam.

What is the blessed word? Mandelstam gives no clue.

— The Blessed Word: A Prologue, Agha Shahid Ali.