Chapter Text
For Marco, Jean joined the Scouting Legion. For Marco, he was brave. For Marco, he fought. For Marco, he survived. Again and again and again. Along the way he lost others, friends and strangers alike but all brothers and sisters in arms. He mourned those he could, but his original promise was always to Marco. In death, as in life, it was Marco that drove him forward to be better than he was, to ride out of those gates knowing he would return with head hung and eyes glazed or not at all.
He found the letter waiting for him when he returned one day from an expedition in late March. It had been six months since the battle of Trost, but it might as well have been six years. Jean was worn and tired and numb inside and out from rain and too many hours on horseback. He skimmed the first few lines, but as he kept reading realization doused his insides in ice water. His hands shook so badly he had to slam the letter down on a table. The air he tried to suck in was solid.
He left his quarters without so much as ever taking off his boots. No one asked him where he was going. He saddled a horse rode off into the storm with the letter clutched in his fist like a lifeline. The deluge and darkness drove visibility down to an arm’s length, but he spurred his horse on with eyes fixed on the invisible horizon.
The rain turned into a drizzle sometime in the night, and when dawn started to break Jean saw Wall Rose stretched out before him. He pushed his horse harder, and when he was forced to dismount at the gates of Trost he broke into a run himself. If it wasn't for the chipped stone on the buildings where 3D Gear had once been latched, Jean would have thought he was in a different city. Buildings sprouted where there had once been rubble and death. Life bustled as if the cobbles had never been washed with human blood. Jean's vision swam.
It was a miracle he ever even found the apartment. It was in an area that had clearly been recently rebuilt, right down the road from the site of the make-shift military hospital. The hospital was still there, though somewhat more permanent and turned over to civilian use. Jean didn't stop to catch his breath outside, but took the steps two at a time to the second floor. The ink on the letter was smudged from the rain, but the words were by now etched so deeply into Jean's mind that he didn't need to doublecheck the apartment number. It was only after he banged on the door that he realized how he must look, soaked from battle and rain and without adequate sleep for days.
It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing in the whole world but the smile that greeted in him on the other side of the door like not a moment had passed. It was only half a smile, granted. The other side was black and cracked, with pink scar tissue peeking out underneath. Only one eye crinkled, as the place where the other should have been was covered by a large dark eye-patch. But that half a smile was twice as sweet as any he had seen in his life.
Jean heard his name on Marco’s half-blackened lips, but could do nothing but drink in the sight him like a man dying of thirst. He wanted to say so much but his own lips could do nothing but tremble. It felt like if he exhaled, Marco could blow away back into the wind. Barefoot on shards of glass, he took a step forward, then another. Like adjusting a house of cards he reached up his hand and ran a finger on Marco’s good cheek. It was solid. Marco smiled again. He opened his mouth to say something, too, but before he could Jean had his arms around him. He held on like his life depended on it. An arm reach around to hug him back. On the other side there was only a limp knotted shirt sleeve. The only sound in the world was Marco’s crutch clattering to the ground.
The tears came all at once like a broken dam. Jean gritted his teeth against the great fat rolling ones but the sobs broke out before he could stop them. The sounds melted together into a whiny and then into a wail. Once started, he couldn’t stop. His whole body shook with the effort of gulping down air. Through it all Marco lent him his shoulder, asking no questions and rubbing soothing circles into his back. Jean didn’t know how long they stood there like that, how many minutes or hours or day it took the tears to stop and the wails to subside, but when he pulled back and saw his friend still so very real in his arms, he felt light enough to soar.
Without thinking, he took Marco’s face in his hands carefully, like handling a baby bird, and kissed him. A peck at first to test the waters, then another, then a third, until Marco was kissing him back and crying and laughing all in one. For the first time since reclaiming the ground on which they now stood, Jean laughed too.