#ons chapter 131 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

4izawas · 1 year

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𝐈 𝐇𝐎𝐏𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔’𝐑𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐘. | 𝐉. 𝐊𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐈𝐍.

𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: more than anything, he just wants her to be happy.

𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐦: attack on titan | 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: jean kirstein/f!reader, former eren jaeger/f!reader, mentioned background eren jaeger/jean kirstein | 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: nsfw ; minors dni | 𝐰/𝐜: 17.94k.

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: canonverse, spoilers for chapters 131-139, angst, character death, previously established relationship ( eren jaeger/reader), smut, slow burn?? maybe kinda, jean has ptsd, formerly unrequited love, terminal illness, lovemaking, gentle sex, kissing, hand holding, slight scratching, missionary, mention of animal death.

— 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐦𝐞 !!

𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 in what felt like a long time, Jean didn’t know what to do.

It had been a few months since their hellish lives had come to a head, and while the remaining members of the secondary Levi Squad and their Captain were happy it was all over, the realization that Y/N knew Eren’s plan months before he went through with it was crushing to them.

Armin and Mikasa had suspected, of course — they all had, if they were honest, she and Eren had been so serious that they were more than willing to murmur back and forth about wedding plans when everyone else was around, and every time they did it warmed their friend’s hearts ( and made another’s hurt, but he was too content with the fact that Y/N would be happy to even think about fighting for her now ). In hindsight now, though, Jean guessed, it was all a mask for them to keep Eren’s plans all hush-hush. He knew that if he’d found out, even he would have definitely fought to keep Eren on their island where it was safe regardless of how often they’d bickered back and forth, because whether he admitted it or not, Jean did care about Eren and he wanted him to live.

“You’re all leaving?” Her voice is shaky and quiet, a stark difference when compared to how she’d been hoarse for two weeks from the way she’d screamed when Eren’s Founder had collapsed.

The Captain scoffs, and Jean winces at the sound. He’d always been more than tolerant of Y/N, more so than he’d ever been of the rest of them even, but ever since she’d admitted that she knew what Eren was going to do before he did he’d held her at an arms’ length just like the rest of them had. He doesn’t say anything, of course, because he hadn’t spoken to Y/N even once in the months following her confession, and every time he avoided talking with her Jean could see how much it hurt her — he’d even say with confidence that she’d prefer being struck by him than ignored, but the Captain didn’t even look at her anymore unless he absolutely had to, so that wouldn’t happen any time soon either ( and honestly Jean had a strong feeling in his gut that their Captain was hurting far more than he wanted to admit, not only about her confession but about both Eren and Commander Hange as well; everyone knew that the Captain had a soft spot for them both regardless of how he spoke to them ).

Jean could admit that he understood how betrayed the Captain felt if he was honest.

“We don’t belong in Marley, Y/N,” Conny mutters, refusing to look at her. He’d avoided her completely since they’d found out, almost as much as the Captain, even; Jean immediately looks down at his shoes when he sees the way her face falls. It hurt him to look at her, hurt to see the way she was desperately searching all of their faces for some hint that it was a cruel joke as a means of some sort of revenge on her for holding her tongue while remembering how she’d blurted out a confession to being aware of Eren’s plan for mass genocide. “There’s no way we’d ever stay. We’re going back to Paradis.”

“But the peace treaty—!“ Y/N argues softly, mentioning the treaty that had come about thanks to Eren’s actions coupled with their own, but no one there really gives half a shit about the treaty but her at that point. they’re all far too impatient to get on the boat and leave Marley for good.

“Deal with that yourself if it’s so important to you,” Mikasa says through gritted teeth, interrupting the other woman. “We have to get back, Historia’s still on bed rest from giving birth so Armin’s holding down the entire island right now.”

As Jean boarded the boat, he remembered the look on Y/N’s face when she found out Armin had left without saying goodbye to her specifically, and he recognizes that same look on her face as she watches Conny push the Captain’s wheelchair over the onramp to board the boat. “I’ll wait here for all of you,” she whispers, her eyes never straying from the Captain’s back, “even if it takes a whole ten years, I’ll wait—“

“You’ll be waiting a hell of a lot longer than that,” Conny grumbles under his breath, not intending for her to hear it but her hearing it all the same. Jean’s heart plummets in his chest when he sees the look in her eyes shatter and a barely visible veil wash over them.

The same walls she’d lowered with them one by one back in their cadet days had just gone back up.

She whispers gentle goodbyes to all of them, getting huffs from the majority of the group, a single muttered complaint from Mikasa, and a quiet “Goodbye,” from Jean himself, but the last person she looks at still won’t look at her. Regardless, she bids him farewell in the only way she can now even though she knows he won’t answer.

“Goodbye, Captain,” she whispers softly, a heavy silence filling the space between them all, and as the boat pulls away from where it was onced docked at the pier Jean sees the tears form in her eyes; they’d all hurt her by leaving this way, he knew that they had, but what were they supposed to do? She could have talked Eren down, she was always able to talk him down, but she didn’t — instead she ran off with him to Marley and helped him trick Falco before starting the Rumbling and a mass march for genocide.

Regardless of this, though, Jean still has an aching feeling in his chest telling him that he wasn’t making the right choice.

He looks up at her again, the breeze making her hair move ever so slightly with each soft burst and her skirts dancing around her legs as she stood there watching them leave her, her arms hanging limp at her sides as she stood alone for the first time in her life. She wasn’t making a single sound, just watching them go with tears running down her cheeks before she looks down and lifts one scarred hand to wipe them away with the backs of her knuckles, tearing her eyes from them for the first time all day today.

Go.

Jean didn’t know who or what told him to, he just knew he needed to get back to her, and he ignored the strange surge of familiarity that came with the urge.

Go back onto the pier now. Go, before you’re too far. Before it’s too late.

At the last second — and with everyone he’d boarded the boat with shouting for him to come back in clear panic, even the Captain ( something he took a silent pleasure in later, because apparently he did care about them all after all despite the facade he always put on ) — he makes a mad dash for and hops the railing on the deck of the ship then jumps again, barely catching himself on the edge of the pier. Splinters puncture his fingers as he claws at the wood and his feet kick at open air as everything from his shoulders down dangles off the side. He looks up, his hair wild and poking into his eyes, and sees that she’s still not noticed thanks to the bustle on the rebuilt pier. The voices of his friends echo behind him as he finally finds a foothold and pushes himself up and onto the pier, resting on his hands and knees for just a second to catch his breath before looking up so quickly his hair flips out of his eyes and then pushing himself up.

He’s running to her now, pushing his way through the crowd in his desperation, and Y/N looks up just as he throws his arms around her, cradling her close to himself and whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry — I won’t leave you too, Y/N, I promise…”

He feels her hug him back tightly and start crying into his chest, and he just holds her and repeats himself while petting her hair gently, neither of them looking back to the boat that was still ever so steadily getting further and further away from both of them, and for the time being they don’t care at all. They just hold one another, taking comfort in the familiar warmth they both gave off even as it began to rain and people around them started pulling out umbrellas. Jean carefully pulls her over to a stand and buys one, opening it up while letting her keep her arms around his waist before offering his arm.

“Let’s go back to the apartments, Y/N,” Jean whispers, referring to the apartment set gifted to them by the Marleyan government as reparations, and she just nods tiredly before linking her arm through his and resting her head on his bicep.

I hope this makes you happy, runs unspoken in his mind, but he shakes it away and they walk away from the pier in the rain together, their backs to the ocean in a way they both wished Eren had chosen all those years ago.

It had been so long since he’d had the time or privilege to notice, but Y/N was an exceptionally hard worker.

Maybe that was why Commander Smith was so fond of letting her help him in his office with his paperwork that he’d send into the Capitol in Sina; she wasn’t one to make mistakes, and it showed as she worked hard in her government issued office in Marley as she worked tediously going over the peace treaty offered to Paradis by all of the major nations that had formerly condemned it and it’s residents’ existences. It took hours of the day away from her, forced a worrisome amount of exhaustion to overtake her normally breathtaking features, and in between every little fix to the documents she made, she had what felt like endless visitors from hizuru and other countries popping in to add their own pieces and request slots to sign the treaty at the upcoming celebration of three years’s peace that Marley was hosting. Marleyan officers were, of course, also among the foot traffic that made its way in and out of Y/N’s office, only the majority of them now had a different respect for her in a way Jean hadn’t experienced in his years in Marley undercover.

“She’s beautiful for a devil,” one had muttered, his friend chastising him immediately for calling her such a name after three years of such easy, unparalleled peace, and then his eyes had widened in shock when he rounded the corner and realized Jean had heard what he’d said and was staring him down in an anger he’d not been on the receiving end of in years.

“She’s so kind! She’s nowhere near being the devil we were told they’d all be, and you know it,” his friend had hissed, bowing to Jean immediately. “I apologize for what he said, please forgive us both.”

Jean had looked at him half in disgust and half in hesitance; this was the first time a soldier from Marley had bowed to him despite the three years of peace their nations had shared, and he didn’t really know what to do. On the one hand he was grateful that the soldier spoke up for her, but on the other he didn’t know whether or not this was all a front to save face since he’d overheard them. What to do?

He was about to answer when his attention is caught by someone else. “Oh, let them alone, Jean,” Y/N’s voice had called from the doorway to her office, and everyone turned to look at her. She was leaning against the doorframe, and the brightness in her voice and the way she looked hadn’t managed to betray the exhaustion Jean saw clearly in her eyes. Absently he wondered if Armin was half as tired running the military back home in Paradis, but he shook it off in favor of quietly huffing towards the two soldiers then striding past them to join Y/N at the doorway to her office. She smiles at him once he reaches her, and says, “Thank you,” before ushering him inside her office and closing the door behind them both.

Sighing heavily, she tiredly walked towards the chair that stood behind her desk and then practically collapsed into it, her head in her hands, which was where they were now. “I’m so tired, Jean — I don’t know what to do anymore,” she admits, “Why did they have to choose me as the standing foreign ambassador for Paradis? I’m going to make a mess of everything.”

Jean sends her a soft smile and strides over to her, leaning against her neatly put together desk. “No, you won’t — you’re doing a great job, I promise. You’re just tired is all, because frankly you haven’t been sleeping enough.” It was true; most nights after he forced her to go home and to bed he’d hear her walking around downstairs absentmindedly even at the wildest hours possible, whether he’d woken from some nightmare of the past or he himself had stayed up working.

“You think so?” she asks softly, looking up at him with slightly widened eyes. He nods, and she sends him a fond smile. “What would I do without you here with me?” she asks sweetly, squeezing his hand, and he practically melts.

“I — I — I have no idea,” he murmurs, looking down at her and how she held the back of his hand to her cheek with his own burning in an almost violent blush. She chuckles softly, a smile curling the corners of her lips upwards ever so slightly.

“I think I’d be a wreck,” she whispers, squeezing his hand again one last time before letting go and standing from her seat. She strides back to the door and opens it, popping her head out and politely asking a maid, “Would you mind readying a pot of tea and a cup of coffee for my office?” Jean hears the other woman ( she was much older than Y/N, he knew, and she’d worked in the building for years before the Rumbling had reached Marley’s shores — despite that, though, he’d heard her telling the other maids that she’d never been treated as kindly by anyone else as she was when she worked under someone dubbed ‘a devil’ by the government ) give a swift affirmative and take off as fast as her middle aged knees would allow her.

“That woman’s a saint,” he mutters, sitting down in one of the comfy leather chairs in front of Y/N’s desk. “I’m only twenty-two and my knees and hips seem to want me dead for what I've put them through — and don’t even get me started on the pain from my back!”

“That’s because of our use of the 3DM gear,” Y/N replies from the door, closing it gently and striding back over; Jean hears the heels she insisted on wearing to work ( no matter how many times he told her they were impractical and she’d agreed ) clicking against the dark hardwood floors as she approached him. She slips in front of him and sits on the lip of the desk with a soft smile on her face. “They’ve always caused physical issues with the bodies of Scouts, retired or otherwise, due to their prolonged use in the field. Captain Miche used to complain of it often.” She smiles wistfully, and Jean remembers that before she was on the Levi Squad with Eren and himself she fought under Captain Miche Zacharias — at least she did until her own squad was wiped out thanks to the Beast Titan, and starting with Captain Zacharias himself. Jean frowns as he also remembers that Y/N had witnessed the entire thing, the Beast Titan letting her go after recognizing her as ( unbeknownst to them at the time ) ‘the girl his little brother was smitten over’. She’d been forced to watch from the back of her horse in horror as he was ripped to pieces by titans right in front of her; she’d told Commander Smith in front of everyone that Zacharias’ last words to her were for her to save herself and warn the others of what they’d seen, and she’d not spoken of him since.

“So you’re still as smart as Hange said you were,” Jean says through a tired grin of his own instead of what else he was thinking of, and he places a hand on Y/N’s knee as she looks away from him seemingly to hide the look on her face; unbeknownst to him her face is burning from embarrassment, but regardless of whether or not he’d ever notice ( would he feel the heat she could swear was emanating from her cheeks? Y/N had no idea, therefore the safest bet was to look away while she regained her composure ) she looks away and out the window, watching the bird that always seemed to be nearby fly past.

“Being good at making observations doesn’t make one smart,” she mutters quietly, and Jean just laughs.

“Well, I think you’re smart, and you can’t change my mind — if you weren’t smart, how would you keep all the old politicians in line as well as you do?” he asks, raising an eyebrow, and she scoffs playfully.

The sound of a knock on the door rings through the room, the sound of the maid just sent off for tea and coffee having come back with it coming through it, though her voice was muffled. Y/N stands back up and walks to the door, replying teasingly as she does, “Those old men aren’t exactly focusing on my smarts as much as they are my physical attributes.”

Jean stews over this information with a pout on his face and his arms crossed as Y/N takes the heavy tea tray and thanks the maid, who closes the door for her since her hands were full, then carefully walks back with it to her desk. She picks out the dish filled with fresh chamomile leaves and flowers and sprinkles equal amounts in one of the pyramid shaped teabags before carefully placing it in the teacup the maid had brought for him. Noticing that Jean’s been quiet, she decides to mention it. “Something on your mind?” she asks lightly, focusing on pouring the steaming water into Jean’s cup, and he sighs.

“I just… just thought that thinking all those old political codgers staring at you was just me,” he admits, and she just chuckles in response and begins adding the perfect amount of honey and milk to his tea with a small shake of her head.

“They don’t actually look to me as a figure of authority, Jean,” she says quietly, “And they never will. They just know that if they hand me more paperwork that they don’t want to do, I'll do it — and before you say it, yes I’m going to continue to do it.” She’d interrupted him before he even managed to get his protests for her to tell them all to do their own, and he just silently takes his cup and stews over this information as well while she begins to sip at her coffee.

It wasn’t fair. She was amazing, her work ethic unparalleled, and as a reward they objectified her like she was nothing but a slab of meat and they treated her like horse shit. It made him want to burn everything to the ground in her name, just so the bastards would realize that she deserved better.

Is this how you felt, Eren? he thinks, sipping the honey chamomile tea in his hand. Is this how it feels to want to burn everything to the ground for the one you love when you know their life will be a hard one?

Jean finds the celebratory banquet following the peace negotiation beyond extravagant.

Several large tables stood in front of the walls of the dining hall in the capital, an almost endless line of chairs ( but really only a few hundred — seven, maybe? ) and candles filled golden sconces along the walks and a series of thirty candelabras or so per table, and the food was more than anything Jean had ever experienced before. The men and women around him were dressed their absolute best in silks and velvets and fabrics he’d never even seen before — but that was only after everyone had joined him downstairs. The night had initially started off seriously with around three hundred and seventy or so politicians, ambassadors, and rulers of various nations gathering in a large meeting room and taking a seat at one of four tables along each wall so that they could face everyone in the room. Jean had not been one of these people unfortunately, considering he had no political power and no longer was a member of the Paradisian military, and because of this he’d been forced to follow a few members of staff downstairs to wait in the dining hall with the delegations that had come with each person who did go inside.

As the long hours passed by with no sound coming through the doors of the room upstairs, waiters went around the room, offering wine to the waiting companies, and Jean’s hand shook without him intending it to as he took a glass from one man and accepted a rather generous pour of the red liquid into it. He hesitated to drink it, memories of past allies turned beasts because of poisoned wine flickering in his mind like one of those novel motion pictures that had started becoming popular in the last few months ( Jean himself wasn’t much of a fan of them, but his heart twinged every time he saw a flyer for them and he thought about how much Conny or Sasha would have loved them ). He still remembered staring down at a monstrous Pixis, damned to a hunger that even Jean knew after what had happened in The Battle of Heaven and Hell ( as people who weren’t there had dubbed it; Jean supposed it fit, seeing as Eren’s name had morphed from what it was to whispers of ‘The True Devil of Paradis’ once they’d been saved and the rebuilding had started ), a hunger that couldn’t ever be sated.

Eventually loud crashes had sounded as the doors above them closed, and footsteps echoed overhead as everyone in the meeting hall began making their way downstairs and to the dining hall. Y/N was one of the last to enter the room, taking her place by the leaders of Marley, Hizuru, and a handful of other primary nations as they announced with bright, fake smiles that the peace plan was a success and that starting from that moment all gathered nations had allied themselves with one another. Cheers had filled the room, and Jean had seen Y/N’s sigh with relief before taking a glass of wine for herself ( also with a hesitation, he’d noticed ) before he made the decision to make his way through the celebrating throngs to stand by her side.

“So I’m guessing everything went well?” he asks after finally sidling up to her, motioning to imply his intentions to tip some of his wine into her glass to refill it once he saw she was getting low ( despite holding it for only a few minutes as Jean struggled to get to her through the crowd ) then just shrugging and swapping glasses with her. She chuckles and nods her thanks to him, taking a sip.

Swallowing the wine in her mouth, Y/N licks her lips slightly. “Yes, thank Ymir,” she replies, leaning against him slightly. She sounded absolutely exhausted, but she continued so she could bring him up to speed. “Signatures from every person present in the room were laid on the document I wrote; no one had any issues with the wording or anything.”

Jean’s eyes widen, and he lets out a shocked bark of a laugh, “That’s amazing! I’m so proud of you.”

She smiles at him softly but doesn’t say anything, sipping at her ( his ) wine quietly after tearing her eyes from his and looking out over the raucous crowd. He stands closer to her, careful to not let himself get bumped by the people rushing past, which is how they spend the next two or so hours ( in between visiting dignitaries rushing up to speak to Y/N and congratulate her on a wonderfully written treaty ).

By Ymir, I hope you’re happy, he thinks, sipping at a glass of champagne and watching Y/N flit sociably around the room. He could tell by the way that she smiled at each person that came up to her and vice versa that she was uncomfortable, and that the look in her eyes wasn’t excitement like everyone else clearly thought but anxiety. Y/N hated large crowds of people, but somehow she always managed to work her way through them better than any extrovert he’d ever met; it had always been something Jean admired about her, if he was honest.

Another hour passes of Jean in a corner and Y/N speaking with various men and women before it’s announced that they’ll be moving again. Jean looks for Y/N in the crowd and notices once he spots her that, despite being dressed just as prettily as the other women ( more so, in Jean’s opinion, but this was a celebration of a peace treaty being signed so he couldn’t very well insult the citizens of visiting nations ), she’s obediently following the people who’d signed the treaty without hesitation. She doesn’t look back for him, not even once, and it makes something ugly-feeling twist in his belly as he sullenly follows her as well as the rest of the crowd.

He’s led into a massive ballroom, and above them all hung an enormous chandelier made of crystal and gold that lit up the room; Jean remembered Y/N complaining that it would take months to be handmade because she was given a specific deadline before the time that the chandelier would be done, but the artists who had made it had forgone all other projects in order to focus on it when Y/N had offered them extra payment if they could please get it there even a half hour before the following dining began. They’d gotten it finished a week early, and Y/N had gone out of her way to praise their work and time efficiency, and they’d smiled as Y/N gave them payment even more than what they’d been promised ( they’d argued at first, but Y/N insisted that they keep it and after a lot of pleading from both sides they had ).

As all of this runs through his mind, he’s startled by a hand being placed on his arm. It’s touch is instantly familiar and as soon as he locks eyes with Y/N he relaxes, calmed by her presence alone.

“Dance with me?” she offers quietly, holding her other hand out to him. He takes it up immediately and leads them both to the dance floor amongst the other pairs that had settled together. Resting one hand on her waist and holding one of her hands in his other, they gently sway and swirl around the room to the crooning music that quickly becomes an afterthought.

“You didn’t wait for me,” Jean mutters, still a bit hurt that she’d not even bothered to make sure he’d been able to keep up. Y/N just smiles almost coyly and shrugs.

“I knew that you’d follow me,” she replies with ease, allowing Jean to spin her to the beat of the song the musicians were playing.

Jean’s eyebrows furrow at her words. “You knew I would?”

Y/N nods, a pleased look on her face as they move around the dance floor as one. “Mhmm; you never left me alone longer than an hour unless we were sleeping when we were cadets you know, and nothing changed once we were full fledged soldiers.” Jean’s cheeks heat up in a blush, slight embarrassment filling him once it hits him that she’d noticed all these years.

“Sorry,” he mutters, looking down at their feet and only making his cheeks burn hotter when he accidentally looks down the front of her dress instead of at his shoes like he’d honestly intended.

“Don’t apologize, I thought it was cute!” Y/N says soothingly, and he looks up at her just as their dance finishes. They bow to one another, and Y/N sends him a gentle smile. “I have to go — more people to speak with,” she explains, backing away. She pauses before she disappears into the crowd, though, and looks back at him with a gentle look on her face. “Wait for me?” she asks through a genuine smile, and he nods.

“Always,” he whispers as she hurries away, taking her place beside the leader of Marley and joining their conversation as easily as a duck swam in water.

After a few more hours ( and well into the night ) she finally makes her way back to him again and, leaning so close it made his heart race, whispers in his ear, “Let’s get out of here — there’re too many people in here for either of us to really be comfortable.”

Placing his and her empty glasses on a nearby table, he allows her to take his hand in hers and lead him out of the room, rushing down the stairs and out the doors behind her, helping her over puddles in the streets so she didn’t ruin her dress, wandering around outside and finding citizens of Marley, Eldian and otherwise, celebrating loudly.

It appeared the news of the peace treaty had reached them as well.

They made their way through the celebrating throngs and finally they stopped in front of an old coffee shop that ran all day and all night. Choksing it to take shelter in for the time being, they go in quickly and order two coffees with a breathless smile before rushing off to sit at the windows. Fireworks crackle, pop, and light up the sky through the window and they both watch in rapt attention — Y/N the fireworks through the window, and Jean the colors of the bursting fireworks in her eyes. A warmth fills his heart as it usually did when he gazed at her, and the only thing that shook him from his stare was a waitress placing their coffees down.

After a while the celebration continues on and Y/N and Jean just decide to bite the bullet, paying for their coffee and rushing out the door and home, each of them talking avidly about how much they liked the coffeeshop. It was fashioned on the inside after the ones in Trost, after all, and run by an older Paradisian woman that Y/N mentioned was married to Pixis before he’d died; her name was Dolores, and she laughed as she remembered how gleefully Pixis had laughed about it with her when Y/N had made the joke that he’d ‘connected the Dots’. They both start laughing, and still are by the time they’ve reached the house they’d bought after leaving the apartments. They dance around gleefully for a bit, drunk on life itself, before they both finally call it a night.

“Goodnight!” Y/N calls softly, kissing his cheek gently before disappearing into her room while humming, and Jean sighs and staggers into his room, drunk on the feelings that had bubbled up all night and the way she’d kissed his cheek. He closes his own door before wobbling over to his bed and collapsing on it with a light laugh.

“Goodnight…” he whispers, closing his eyes and falling into a much deserved sleep.

That night, despite the fun he’d had, Jean’s head is filled with the worst kinds of nightmares.

It wasn’t as if it was anything new, of course; nightmares are a nightly occurrence for Jean, and he’d learned to live with them over the past few years.

He dreams of Sasha often.

His mind frequently reminds him as he sleeps of the face she’d made after she was shot, and the way she’d looked at him once she realized what had happened. How a mixture of shock and fear and also… of apology had flashed through her eyes all at once, and all within a few seconds. He’s plagued with the sounds she’d made as blood bubbled up in her throat, of the way she’d attempted to gurgle out some string of words that none of them had ever managed to translate.

He still wonders what she was trying to say. Who was she speaking to? What was she thinking? He knew she was scared, he’d seen the raw terror in her eyes, saw when she realized that she was going to die.

Other times he dreams of the brief time he was a titan, of being a mindless beast with no self control— just hunger. Those dreams give him a more out of body experience, and he watches himself attack everyone he loved that was still with them. He has more fictionalized nightmares of being unable to stop himself from devouring Y/N, or the Captain, or Mikasa, or Conny ( despite the fact that Conny was turned with him ). The thoughts that come afterwards once he wakes up always include the phrase ‘what if?’. What if he’d actually attacked Mikasa? What if he’d eaten the Captain, bitten and chewed and swallowed him up? What if he’d trampled Y/N as she begged for Eren to let everything go?

He also dreams of the Rumbling. Of the sounds of thousands of giant feet stomping across the ground. Of the screams of enemy soldiers and the sounds made by the colossal titans’ feet as they stepped on and crushed them, ending the screaming. Jean dreams of the devastation that the Rumbling had caused, of all the lives that had been stolen — innocent men, women, and children, of all ages. Infants. Sometimes Jean would hear a baby’s cry echoing to him from somewhere out in the burning devastation, a cry that — no matter how fast he ran to it, trying to find the source — would always be snuffed out.

He hated that one. He always ended up waking up sobbing inconsolably, and primarily because he knew it had happened. Children had died — little kids. small, pure, humanity’s future. Their lives had been snuffed out like a freshly lit candle, and it killed him inside.

Then there are the nights he dreams of Eren.

Those are some of the most difficult. he’d grown up with him, had known he had anger issues, but he’d never actually expected the other man to take things as far as he did, had never expected him to murder so many people, and a part of him — ugly and poisonous — wonders if maybe he’d not been such an obnoxious ass to him, would things have turned out different? If he was just a better friend — or a friend to him at all, really — would any of the results of that changed his mind about the genocide? Would he have listened when they begged him to stop?

Whether Jean ever wanted to admit it out loud or not, he knew he’d loved Eren. The other man was a part of his life for so long, regardless of however much the two of them bickered back and forth. He was his family. He loved him dearly, loved him as much as he did Conny, as he did Sasha, as he did Y/N ( although in vastly different ways, and if he had the tiniest crush on him back in their cadet days that was his fucking business and he’d take it to his grave ) and Mikasa and Armin, the Captain and both Commanders Hange and Erwin, Historia and ( begrudgingly ) Reiner and Annie, and Marco—

God. Marco.

After all these years, he couldn’t even remember what Marco looked like anymore. He had freckles, didn’t he? Jean wasn’t sure. All he could remember of him now was the mixture of scattered, burned bones and ash. He couldn’t remember any of his features anymore, or how tall he was, or what his voice sounded like, and it killed him. Yes, he’d forgiven Reiner for what had happened, but that didn’t change how much the memory of him hurt, or how the knowledge of how he’d been murdered felt like a knife to the gut whenever he thought about it.

Back to the initial point, though. Eren. Jean had mourned alongside Y/N when Eren died, albeit silently, unlike the rest of his comrades. They’d pushed Eren’s existence to the backs of their minds, the series of events that they’d just gone through just being way too much for them to handle… so they didn’t think about him. Didn’t speak for him. They just declared him dead to Paradis and the rest of the world, and that was the end of it to everyone else, but Jean remembered how Y/N had cried when she’d finished listening to the announcement. She’d been an absolute wreck, speaking to everyone and no one all at once asking why they’d had to say that, apologizing to her dead boyfriend for not being able to stop them, and no amount of comfort had been able to console her, not even from Armin or Mikasa or the Captain.

That was the night she’d confessed that she’d known, and they’d all withdrawn from her at once. The night she’d been reminded yet again of her dead lover, she’d lost everyone she loved most in one fell swoop. It was horrible… but time passed, everyone but Jean left, and over the three years that had passed since the two of them grew closer because of it. Jean learned things about her that he’d not known before, things that she’d only reserved for Eren’s ears, and he felt proud.

Of course, there were a few things she refused to speak about, and her dead boyfriend was one of them. Y/N told him that he wasn’t the issue when it came to Eren, she swore it, and Jean understood and didn’t blame her. He knew that even thinking his name hurt her, much less openly talking about him. After all, the scream Y/N had let out as the Founder had fallen rang through his ears every time he closed his eyes and was transported back to their final battle. He remembered the way she’d looked, soaked in blood ( hers and that of others ) and half dead, wailing like a dying dog.

Jean didn’t think she’d actually said his name out loud since he died, even after all these years — four whole years, she’d not said his name, not even once, after devoting nearly her whole entire life to loving him more than her own life.

Memories and thoughts of Eren aside, by far the worst nights are when his brain won’t let him even have a second’s rest and he dreams of all of them. Sasha. The Rumbling. Eren. Y/N.

All of these nights end with him screaming in his sleep and Y/N coming into his room and carefully waking him. She never asks him what he had dreamt about that made him act that way, and he never tells her. He doesn’t have to. He knows she has the same dreams. No, she just holds him, and she rocks him. She hums soft lullabies she’d been sung as a child in Shiganshina. She tells him of the trouble she and Mikasa and Armin and Eren had gotten into as children, as cadets, and everything after.

Most nights it was easy for her to wake him, but others weren’t, and he’d struck her before. Once he was fully awake and she’d calmed him down fully she excused herself and he went back to a fitful sleep, none the wiser because she’d acted like usual. She’d cleaned herself up and tended to the area so it only bruised minimally, but Jean still felt guilty for it the next morning regardless and cried and cried until she miraculously managed to calm him down again.

Tonight was one of the harder nights, and Jean had nearly punched her while panicking ( she didn’t tell him this, just ushered him out of his stuffy room ). Afterwards, once she’d managed to get him breathing fine again, she’d poured them both a hefty glass of wine and they’d huddled together in the kitchen quietly. Jean had pulled out a chair and sat himself down by the table and she had leaned against the kitchen counter just over the sink in front of a window. Both had a death grip on their overfilled wine glasses, and after a long silence filled only with the sounds of their breathing, Jean speaks.

“Tell me a secret,” he says simply, taking another drink of his wine. Y/N quirks an eyebrow up at him.

“A secret?”

“Yeah. Something you’ve never told anyone else,” he replies, swallowing a big gulp of wine and shivering slightly. “Anything to take my mind off… that.” He spoke, of course, of the memory of Eren’s decapitated head in Mikasa’s arms and the screams Y/N had let out at the sight of it, and of the way she’d pulled it from Mikasa’s hands and cradled it close then fallen to her knees in absolute hysterics as the other woman stood over her crying. Armin had come running and had collapsed next to her, throwing his arms around her and holding her tight while sobbing himself, and Mikasa’s legs had given out beneath her and she’d succumbed to her own pain, weakly crawling over to her remaining two friends and allowing Armin to hold her as close as he was Y/N. Y/N wouldn’t let her touch her, and Jean remembered how, when this actually went down, it ushered a sudden surge of fresh tears and hiccuped sobs because Y/N was pushing her away. This time, though, Y/N had woken him before it had gotten there, so he’d not had to watch Mikasa crumble all over again.

He refused to tell her what that night’s dream was about.

Y/N looks out the window, seemingly thinking until a sad smile twists her lips and she takes another sip of her own wine, tears slowly welling up in her eyes and glittering like pain-filled diamonds. “Eren and I got married before he decided to destroy Marley,” she admits, not seeing how big Jean’s eyes got at her confession. How ironic was it that he was learning something about her relationship with Eren when he’d just had a nightmare involving the both of them?

“Married?! When?!” he sputters, drops of wine sliding down his chin until he uncaringly wipes them away with his shirtsleeve; he knew that it would stain, but that was the last thing on his mind at the moment.

“Before he decided to destroy Marley,” she says, repeating herself, and Jean mentally kicks himself for such a stupid question. His attention is brought back when she continues speaking. “It was a really small thing — no one we really knew was there. An Eldian licensed to marry other Eldians was in the refugee camps, and Eren and I met with him that night we all drank together and had fun… we got married that night while the rest of you were drunk and came back before Hange and the Captain came back and found us all asleep. The man who married us was killed in the Rumbling, along with our two witnesses, so I can’t really do anything about it anyways; I suppose his name isn’t mine to claim now.”

In the back of his mind Jean notes that Y/N’s just said Eren’s name not once but twice for the first time in four years, and that she’s still avoiding saying Captain Levi’s. He’d never really noticed it before, but just as she’d never said Eren’s name she’d not said Captain Levi’s in a long time either. Levi avoiding her after she admitted to knowing Eren’s plans must have hurt her more than she’d admitted. Maybe she’d tell him about that another time.

He never gets to ask more questions, instead being prompted by Y/N to give her a secret in return.“I — I— I-“ he stutters, then shakes his head, “I only have one, and I don’t think that it’s appropriate.”

“Tell me,” she murmurs, still not looking at him.

“Y/N—“

“C'mon, Jean, I promise it’s okay,” she murmurs, her eyes locked on something outside the window — was it a bird?

Something in her tone of voice made him relax, and he sighed heavily before tossing back the rest of his wine and groaning. “Hmm. Okay — um…” he rubs the back of his neck, beyond nervous. After her confession about marrying Eren, was this really okay?

He jumps when the feeling of something covering his hand reaches him, and he looks down to see that it’s Y/N’s. He looks up at her with wide eyes, but she’s still not looking at him — she’s just staring out the window with tiny tears in her eyes from talking about her dead boyfriend ( husband, Jean corrects himself, still somewhat reeling from this; was he really the only person that knew? ) and holding his hand. He takes another deep breath, then just decides to spit it out.

“I’ve been in love with you since I met you in the 104th,” he says quickly, squeezing his eyes shut. Hetenses up when she pulls her hand back from where she was holding his and he tries not to cry, just knowing in his gut that he’s an idiot and he’s ruined everything. His mind begins to race as he desperately tries to think up ways to save face, to fix what he’d just colossally fucked up, but he can’t think of anything.

While Jean’s going through this mental turmoil, Y/N has never looked away from the window. She’s watching the bird fly back and forth, tipping its body this way and that before finally going towards the window. It flies by slowly, tilts its body up and down once ( almost in a waving motion ), then turns and flies off and away from her. Y/N lets out a shaky breath, her heart racing, and she places her wine glass on the counter in favor of using the hand to cover her heart. The tears start falling now, and she can’t stop them; she couldn’t even if she wanted to.

“Goodbye… Eren,” she breathes through her tears, and the second his name leaves her lips the figure of the bird disappears into the sun.

They stand together in silence for a while after that, Jean numb to the world around himself as he panics, but her laying her hand on his face brings him out of his mental ramblings, and his eyes shoot open and lock on her. She’s standing in front of him, a soft look on her face that Jean had only ever seen her wear around Eren himself.

“I know,” she whispers, looking not quite into his eyes with the sad smile she’d worn speaking about her dead husband still on her face — only this time it’s different.

“You… know?” he whispers, his eyes wide as he swallows hard.

Y/N nods. “Mhmm, always have,” she admits quietly, rubbing along his cheekbone with her thumb. They stand together in silence for a long moment, the only change being Jean leaning into her touch and one of his hands coming up to gently cup the one Y/N had on his face. He closes his eyes and just basks in the moment, not knowing if he’ll ever get her touch this way again, and is promptly startled when she says his name after a long while of the two of them standing there. “Jean…” she breathes lightly, and his eyes open to see hers shining with something he didn’t recognize.

“Yeah?” he asks in a whisper just as quiet as how she’d breathed his name.

“Kiss me,” Y/N replies, and his eyes widen. She, the woman he’d been in love with for over a decade, wanted him to kiss her? And after everything they’d just talked about?

“Are — Are you sure?!” he asks in a strangled voice, and she smiles softly and nods, placing both hands against his cheeks so she can cup his face. She tilts her head to the side ever so slightly and a fond looks overtakes the sadness in her eyes as she smiles up at him.

“I’m completely sure,” she murmurs, running one thumb along one of his cheekbones like she’d done before, and with that final piece of permission. Jean slowly, gently, leans down and captures her lips with his own.

Her lips are soft and she tastes sweet, a sweetness that came partially from the wine they’d both been drinking but that also just came from her, a taste singular to herself, and he relished it. All his life since he’d joined the military back on their home island he’d been desperate for even a scrap of the romantic attention she showed Eren, for some sliver of love that was different from the love she showed their other friends, and now he had her completely. She was, for all intents and purposes in this moment, his and his alone.

He pulls back from her lips with a gasp, his chest heaving from the lack of oxygen, and she takes the initiative and begins peppering kisses across his revealed chest and neck. “Take us to bed,” she whispers pleadingly, and he only has to look down into her eyes for a second to make the decision they both desired.

They stumble into his room in a mess of wandering hands and desperate kisses, Jean’s shirt long forgotten on the kitchen floor and Y/N’s shorts kicked off somewhere in the hallway. After struggling for a few minutes with the buttons of her shirt, Jean just lets out an annoyed growl and rips it down the middle, buttons popping off of the cloth and scattering everywhere as Y/N unties the string to his pajama bottoms and giggles when the buttons go flying. Once they’re both in nothing but a pair of panties and boxers they back up until the side of the bed catches at Y/N’s thighs and she falls back, taking Jean with her. He’s got her pinned to the bed, holding himself up with his elbows and with her body between them. Her legs are spread and his own rest between them, and he just stares at her for a moment before her face lights up with a radiant smile.

“Hi,” he whispers, and she giggles breathlessly.

“Hi!” she replies, a genuine smile on her face, and Jean grins and begins kissing her again. They gaze at one another for a minute before Jean asks her again, sounding concerned, if she was sure that she wanted to do this, and she just smiles softly and nods. “I am,” she whispers softly. “Please, Jean… I promise, I want this. I want you.”

To hide the sudden rush of euphoric tears that fill his eyes at the words he’d waited to hear her say for what felt like his entire life he drops to his knees so his head is between her thighs. She sits up on her elbows on the bed and looks down at him in curiosity as he slowly traces the hem of her panties with one long finger before slowly letting her head fall back as he covered her clothed warmth with his own mouth and licked gently at her through the fabric of her panties. His tongue caresses the fabric, his saliva seeping into the cloth and mixing with what wetness she’d left on them already as her body instinctively prepared itself for him. Her thighs tremble on either side of his head as he carefully sucks at her clit through the fabric, and she lets out a cry that has him stopping instantly and looking up at her in alarm amd in fear that he’d somehow hurt her.

“O-Off,” she whispers shakily, pushing at the top hem of her panties. “Want ‘em off — please!”

Jean obliges easily, wanting this moment to be as perfect for her as possible, before pressing back against her slick cunt. His tongue gently parts her lower lips and draws a line up the length of her heat until he reaches her clit, and he begins drawing various shapes and writing out several different words to see what she liked best ( Jean found that she most enjoyed stars, circles, and, oddly enough, the word ‘cantaloupe’ ). Like a seasoned musician he plays her like a finely polished instrument, and her body sings underneath his touch. “Oh—by Ymir, please!” Y/N wails, her hands grabbing desperately at his hair. She tugs at it gently, pulling his face deeper into her core as his tongue toys with her dripping entrance and rolling her hips up into his face to get some sort of friction against her needy clit. She lets out a short, sudden scream and clamps her legs around his head as she cums hard in his mouth, Jean making a clear effort to take in whatever she gave him. He gives her a moment to rest, watching her breasts heave and almost hearing the way her heart races, before delving back into her, his tongue swirling expertly around her clit and dipping teasingly into her hole. Before long, though, her want for his cock supersedes the feeling of his mouth on her pussy and she wants him covering her again.

“Fuck — up here, Jean, come back to me!” she pleads softly, and he’s back on top of her in a second. His face glistens with her juices, and she tangles her fingers in his hair before pulling his face towards hers so they can kiss again. It’s slow and sweet and gentle, and Y/N melts happily into the mattress as his lips meld against hers.

When they break away for a moment, both of them breathless, Hean speaks to her. “What do you mean?” he asks quietly, rubbing his nose against hers affectionately, “I never left you.” She whimpers softly in a wordless request, and Jean obliges by carefully easing her panties off as her arms drift down from his hair to rest around his back then creep under the waistline of his boxers, her nails slightly scratching at the skin of his ass as she pushes them down. His hard cock slaps softly against her belly, soft and warm and the weight of it more than pleasing; the soft pink head was leaking an almost endless stream of precum that quickly made its way to pooling just above her navel.

“I-In — fuck, please, put it in!” Y/N begs, and he kisses her again in response before taking himself into his own hand then pressing the tip of his cock against her entrance and pushing in, gritting his teeth as her slick heat envelopes his length. Both of their eyes roll back as they slot together almost perfectly, Y/N’s nails digging into his back slightly and Jean’s hands fisting in the sheets as they rest together there, basking in the feeling. After a moment, though, one of them breaks the pleasant silence that was once punctuated only by their shaky breaking.

“Move. Please,” Y/N asks quietly, and Jean withdraws for a second, hissing as the cool air hits his wet dick, before pressing back inside slowly. He watches Y/N’s eyes widen and her pupils grow even larger than they were before as she’s filled, and a shaky smile makes its way onto her face. He smiles back at her, his smile morphing into a blissful half grin as their shared pleasure builds and he creeps closer and closer to orgasm himself — then he notices it.

She’s crying. Crying and smiling and even laughing a little.

“What is it? Are you okay?” Jean asks, alarmed yet again. She shakes her head and lifts her hand so she can press it against his cheek like she’d done in the kitchen. His movements slow to a stop and he starts to get off of her when he sees her shake her head, his eyes widening in a panic, but she throws her other arm around him and holds him as close to her as she possibly can.

“N-No! Don’t stop!” she cries, then sniffs a little and lets out a single, short laugh. “It’s just… This. It’s so good, it feels so perfect.”

“So… So you’re okay?” Jean asks, unconvinced, and she nods.

“I’m more than okay,” she says quietly, and she smiles up at him. “I love you, Jean.” It takes a second, but then the words hit him, and his world stops all at once in the best way.

She loves him. She loves him. Him, Jean Kirstein. Love. This… he’d been waiting for it since he was thirteen, and now she’d just told him the words he’d wanted to hear for so long. This was beyond better than her telling him that she wanted him, this would be a moment he never forgot — because how could he? The woman he’d been in love with for over a decade had confessed that she loves him — and just as he’d known when he was fifteen and she’d saved him from a titan during a recon mission and again when he was nineteen and leaping from a boat to rejoin her on the docks, Jean knew that nothing could ever change the way this woman made him feel.

The two of them start up again, Jean’s hips rolling against hers and his balls slapping against her ass in a perfect rhythm that had them both letting out cries of pleasure. Endlessly the same thoughts ran through Jean’s head as he pleasured the love of his life, never changing: He loved her, and she loved him. They loved each other.

And later that night, once everything was done and while she sleeps, he watches the way her chest rises and falls while she sleeps comfortably next to him, and he absentmindedly rubs his thumb over her upper arm and whispers, I hope you’re happy.

A soft hum and Y/N pressing closer to his warmth is the only response he gets, and once the darkness that came with sleep overtakes him he doesn’t have a single nightmare.

After that night, Jean moves all of his things into Y/N’s room; he’d forced her into taking the master bedroom when they’d gotten the house, and since they were together now she’d insisted he sleep with her from then on. He was more than willing to move his things, and now he got to spend every night in a peaceful rest and every morning he got to wake up to the sight of her either still sleeping or dressing quietly so she could go downstairs to make breakfast. His favorite ways to start the day were when he woke up first and got to see her sleeping for a little bit or when he woke up to the feeling of her lips peppering soft kisses across his face. The years pass this way, and he loves every minute of it

During all of this time together, the same thought that he’d had as they drifted off races through his mind as they spend time together more often than even before. They frequent the coffeeshop they’d stumbled upon after the signing, and discover that it’s a great place to pass the time and enjoy each other’s company while dozens of people mill around happily outside. They spend hours of their lives there, just talking and watching and embracing the feeling of having one another, and it’s absolutely perfect.

They board trains to visit Annie and Reiner where they live alone together out in the middle of nowhere in a farmhouse ( the two were desperate for quiet after everything ended, and with Annie’s father having died around ten months ago she and Reiner had packed up and moved out ). Days are spent with the two blondes, reminiscing over the good times they’d had in the past or memories they’d made since then. Jean didn’t forget about what they had done to Marco, but after all this time of knowing, he’d made some headway into forgiving, so after Y/N visited them about a dozen or so times on her own he’d joined her, and he’d been more grateful to see familiar faces than he’d expected. Now they went by train to see them around once a month and had the greatest time.

He’s annoyed when they’re invited to a hero’s banquet hosted by Marley and funded by Hizuru because it’s to be held on a night he’d promised to take her out on a date, but she just laughs and tells him that it could still count, and that maybe even the others would be there considering they were a part of the group of ‘heroes’ that had saved the world from the Devil of Paradis. They meet Reiner and Annie at the doors and the four of them stay close to one another, Y/N dancing the night away with all three of them and drinking her fill of the wine supplied by their hosts. Watching her dance so happily while completely unaware or uncaring of the world around her other than Annie laughing as they spin together makes him smile sadly, and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her that their Paradisian friends aren’t there, and he carefully carts her home once she’s tipsy enough to persuade into bed to sleep.

During all of these little excursions, he hopes desperately in his mind that she’s happy, and thinks likewise when she’s scrawling out letter after letter to Armin and the others telling them about her week, what she’d seen or heard on the streets, new recipes she’d tried, how her work was going, and then she’d move on into asking about their own lives, wanting to know what they were getting up to or if they’d gotten married in the years that had passed.

She never got any letters in return, but she didn’t stop writing — at least, until the mail carrier told her that all of her letters were being burned by the recipients, sometimes right on the spot as they received them. He could tell how much it crushed her, but discovering that even their former Captain himself was letting her unopened letters hover over an active candle flame until they were nothing but ash falling from his fingers had her in tears. Jean knew why, of course; she’d told him all about her late night rendezvous with the Captain to drink tea and speak of their days, pasts, or whatever else piqued their interest of conversation that day, how they’d started around seven or eight months before the attack on Trost District after she’d quietly gone to comfort him after a member of his original team had died regardless of his snarls for her to leave and how she’d known that he cared for her in return when her own squad leader, Zacharias, had been killed and he’d purposefully sought her out and looked for her until he found her quietly crying on the roof where she’d hidden away from even Eren, who’d been searching the compound for her himself. He’d just… sat there, she’d told him, in a silence that wasn’t so awkward as it was equally mournful before he hesitantly pressed their shoulders together and let her lay her head on his right one to cry.

“We were close,” she told him through small tears in bed that night, “I swear that we were… but some things can’t be forgiven, I suppose.” Jean didn’t have the relationship she did with the Captain and before she’d told him he’d been completely oblivious to it, but regardless his heart hurt at the blatant heartache in her voice. He’d held her after she said that, and she’d cried into the crook of his neck until she fell asleep.

She didn’t send any more letters after that, and she didn’t write for what felt like forever after Jean would come home every day to her writing. She would sit quietly at her desk and look down at a piece of paper before eventually getting up and abandoning it, unable to find anything that brought her enough joy to write about it.

One day he comes home, expecting to find her sitting silently at her writing desk, unmoving, only to find a trail of mud from the front door to the guest bathroom, and he goes inside to see he washing dirt from this absolutely massive ( and clearly old ) street dog who’s just panting happily as she cooes to him that he’s handsome while sitting in the tub with him and washing him off, and when he laughs and she sees he’s there she just grins at him and tells him that she’s ‘named him Gerolf, so they definitely have to keep him now’, and with life in her eyes and smile finally on her face again Jean couldn’t bear to tell her no, so he didn’t.

The days from then on out pass with ease as he watches her dance and sing happily around the living room with the dog, the huge thing’s paws on her shoulders as she laughs and sways with him before kissing his nose. He would have joined her, but the sight of her enjoying life so fully was something he couldn’t bear to tear his eyes from, much less interrupt.

A few months or so after they took in Gerolf, Y/N began to write their former comrades again, but now she chose instead to put the letters away in the closet in the room with her writing desk in it, clearing it all out just for the purpose of storing the letters there. She never really answered Jean when he asked why she didn’t send them, instead skirting around the questions and changing the subject. Jean never pushed, because not only was it not his place since she didn’t want to tell him but because he also knew she’d tell him in her own time should she ever desire to do so.

Their lives for the next three years or so ran smoothly aside from a small handful of minor bumps ( dips in work, some new furniture being lost during shipping, Jean breaking Y/N’s favorite cup, the small cake they’d ordered falling when they got married in private ), and they were happy. They’d made their home in Marley and in each other and they fell asleep in one another’s arm’s with Gerolf, as old as the hulking monstrosity was, in the bed at their feet.

Throughout the years, Y/N opened up more about her relationships with her first husband and the Captain, and Jean made sure to listen attentively as she did so. He listened closely when she described nights she’d shared with Eren, curled together in front of fireplaces and under covers, of kisses stolen in passing and quick ruts in abandoned corridors, and of confessions of love given daily that always felt like the first. She spoke of her time shared staring up at the night sky with the Captain on the roof of the Scout Corps. headquarters, of the times he let himself rear his head back and genuinely laugh with her on horseback as they raced through the open plains within the walls, of the endless stories shared between them over tea drank at midnight and the warmth between them when they leaned together on cold nights spent outside while on the run from the Military Police.

It didn’t take much for Jean to finally realize just how much the Captain shutting her out hurt her even before she’d told him this, and now after having peered at least a little into the deep extent of their private relationship his heart stung for her. She’d just lost Eren, and then she’d lost her closest friend as well as the rest of her family only a few weeks later.

“Armin and Mikasa were more Eren’s friends than mine,” she’d admitted while cooking once. It had been sudden and had surprised him into turning around from his place chopping vegetables at another counter, but she’d just sighed and continued. “I love them dearly, really I do, but our relationship just wasn’t the same. It felt wrong to complain of my troubles to them when they had their own, so I just tried making money every way I could to support the four of us while we were more or less on the streets after the fall of Wall Maria. It wasn’t until I was drafted a year before the rest of you that I met the Captain, and you’ve heard the majority of how our relationship started.” Of course he had, she’d told him that what felt like forever ago; how she’d found Captain Levi after a member of his squad had died around seven months before Trost had fallen and she’d comforted him even though he’d yelled and screamed until his throat was raw, and then held him after he fell to his knees crying because the soldier had been a long-time comrade and he couldn’t take any more death and hold it in. She’d told him how Captain Levi had tried to weakly push her away before just melting into her hold and sobbing into her shoulder because it was just all too much, and she’d told him how they’d spent the night together on their knees on the floor mourning — and then, come morning, how she’d said nothing about what had happened even though the Captain had wept himself into exhaustion in her arms and had slept there for hours. Her knees had ached for a week, she’d remembered, but it had been worth it. All of this was said with a fond but wistful smile on her face, a look she usually had when thinking about Captain Levi. She laughed a little when speaking about the looks he’d sent her way when he’d thought she’d tell others about his sudden show of emotion, then her eyes had softened when she said that that, once he realized she wouldn’t utter a word of it, was when she’d earned his trust.

Her eyes always grew sad when speaking of the Captain’s trust in her, and Jean always felt bad for her when he noticed she was missing the man. She’d been his right hand for what felt to Jean like their entire time in the Scouts, always seeming to know something about him that no one else did that got her an in on his life — and he supposed that she did.

It also made sense now, why Armin and Mikasa were unable to console her after Eren’s death, Jean realized in silence, but he still didn’t understand why the Captain’s soft words and even gentler touches hadn’t worked either. She later voiced that the guilt from the knowledge of what she’d done to contribute to Eren’s assault kept her from accepting his comfort, because she felt she didn’t deserve it. She still hadn’t said his name. It had been around seven years at that point.

Jean didn’t push it.

After that, she didn’t speak of the Captain again for a long, long time and avoided Jean’s questions about him, but she was more than willing to answer those he had about Eren. It made Jean feel accomplished, knowing he was helping her heal from the loss of her first husband, and honestly learning more about Eren made him heal too — but it also made him realize that, despite all of the teasing and time spent with him, the majority of what he thought he knew about his character were nothing more than childish ideations of a crush he believed unrequited; when Y/N had told him over coffee ( she hadn’t drank tea since her fallout with the Captain, she’d mentioned once that the reminder hurt her heart too much and he’d never offered her tea again ) in the living room while sitting in her favorite chair that Eren had actually returned his little ‘crush’ for around two and a half years, starting sometime in the middle of when they’d been knee deep in their military training. Jean had turned bright red and tried to argue that he didn’t have a crush, but she’d just giggled into her drink and gotten comfier in her chair to the sounds of him sputtering out protests.

The nights spent with warm drinks in front of the fire with Gerolf at their feet and the radio softly crooning behind them were his favorite, if he was honest. He’d never felt more loved or at home than he did with a cup of coffee ( he’d sworn off tea for his wife’s sake ) in one hand and one of Y/N’s clasped in the other, his toes buried under the warmth of Gerolf’s furry stomach and the sound of one of Y/N’s wild stories from her days under Captain Miche’s command reaching his ears. Every night spent this way ended with a smile on his face and warmth in his heart, and he knew that he never could have possibly been happier than he was in these moments and with the life he’d chosen the day he’d leapt from that damned boat.

Of course, everything changed for them when Y/N got sick.

They didn’t know what it was, and she’d brushed his worries off at first when he’d mentioned how he didn’t like the persistent cough she’d had for two or so weeks. He tried to relax, to accept that it was just a stubborn cough, but after two months of worrying when he’d come home from getting groceries one day to Gerolf barking in panic and her unconscious in a lump on the floor he’d had enough and taken her to a doctor. That’s when they found out she was sick — and it was also when they found out that Marleyan doctor’s didn’t know what the hell she had. Jean had, despite Y/N’s insistence that she was okay, taken her to every doctor feasible and had called upon doctors he couldn’t take her to, hosting them in their home as they checked Y/N over.

They all came to the same conclusion in the end though: they had no idea what sickness she had, just that she was terribly ill and that the outlook was grim. After the thirty-ninth doctor came to them, then reached the same realization and shared his findings, Jean had stopped calling doctors to the house. Y/N tried comforting him, tried telling him that she was grateful for how much he’d tried, but nothing she said worked and he grew depressed as things got more and more difficult for her.

The winter and summer months were always especially rough, when the cold practically seeped into her bones or the heat made her sweat the flesh wrapped around them off. The cold air made it difficult for her to breathe and made her lungs ache, and the heat did the same but even worse. They couldn’t go on long walks with Gerolf together anymore, and their visits to the coffee shop they both loved so much grew fewer and farther apart. She didn’t take the train to visit Annie and Reiner any more, and they’d written their worries to them when the second meeting was missed, but Y/N had eased them with mentions of being tight on money; it wasn’t exactly a lie, as Jean had used up the money she’d put away for travel expenses for her doctor’s appointments and other medical expenses of hers, and she couldn’t travel anyway so what use did they have for a travel fund at the moment? However, where it wasn’t exactly a lie, it wasn’t true either. They weren’t low on money in the slightest, not with all of their funding from their years in the military back on Paradis that they’d saved and the money that the Marleyan government had given them along with properties as reparations and then more money they’d earned through their jobs here, but neither Y/N nor Jean told them that and allowed them to take comfort in the belief that money was the sole reason Y/N didn’t come to see them anymore.

Two years pass this way, with Y/N ill and the doctors with no clue as to what was wrong with her. Jean didn’t want to tell anyone about Y/N’s illness, no one but doctors, because he wouldn’t have to, not since she would get better — why worry them when Jean could handle it? He would take care of her on his own just as he had for the past nine years, it was his job. And if the handful of years that followed were spent with her still sick, what of it? Things had to get worse before they got better, Jean of all people knew that.

Eventually he does admit that Y/N’s not feeling her best to Reiner and Annie, but he doesn’t tell them the full extent of her medical issues — but after the three and a half year mark, however, he was forced to tell them everything. They’d come to visit Jean and Y/N instead of the other way around and when Jean had run out to grab food Y/N had fainted into Reiner’s arms when trying to make coffee for everyone. When he’d caught her and seen her eyes rolled back in her head with only the bottom of her irises showing and Gerolf barking worriedly they’d panicked, and Reiner and Annie’s panic had only gotten worse when she wouldn’t wake up. Jean had returned home right as they were about to rush to the hospital, and he’d stopped them and taken Y/N from Reiner’s arms despite the protests of both blondes, carefully lowering her to the floor and cradling her close to himself, quietly murmuring requests for her to come back to him before quietly admitting that her illness was much worse than the little chest cold he’d written them about.

They move back to the city after that, intent on helping where they can. Annie cooks for the four of them, and Reiner does some extra shifts at a bar in town. Jean works just as hard, trying so desperately to make extra money for just… more time — even if Y/N didn’t expect much more.

In the year that had passed where she was her illest she’d written three more letters: the first telling them that things had taken a turn for the worst, the second when they’d hit that bright spot that made them think she was getting better, and finally the third when she’d realized that no, things weren’t getting better, and that it was most definitely her final run, which she’d separated into several split letters for each of their former friends. Those she’d put in the top drawer of her bedside table, still unable to make the walk to her desk.

It had taken her an entire week to finish them, and when Jean had asked what was in the last letters and she’d told him that it was full of her goodbyes to everyone they loved on Paradis he’d nodded understandingly then excused himself to shower, where he’d sat beneath the hot spray and just cried for what felt like only a few minutes but what was really hours, because it had finally hit him: no miracle was going to happen for them. After nearly twenty years of living in close quarters together every day, Y/N was going to die. He was actually going to lose her. This wasn’t like when she took those few week and a half long trips alone ( at her own insistence ) to visit with Reiner and Annie in the country where they’d moved to escape everything before they’d moved back, this time she wouldn’t be coming back to him. He would really be alone. For good.

When he’d finally gotten out, she’d not said anything to him. She could see how puffy and pink his eyes were after crying for so long, and she’d heard one mournful cry before he was able to cover his mouth properly, but she never mentioned it.

Jean had appreciated it, even if he’d never said so.

Life carried on regardless of the way Jean felt about Y/N’s illness. On the Days he didn’t have extra work, Jean did whatever he could around the house to keep his mind off of the impending hell he would be forced to face. He’d eye Gerolf, and the way the mutt kept constant contact with her, or spend hours cooking special meals he knew Y/N would enjoy. Other times he would stand at one of their bookshelves in the living room for hours, perusing his options but never making a decision on what to read.

“I want you to know that it’s okay for you to move on,” Y/N says one day from her place on the couch while he stood at the bookshelf; she’d been crocheting a blanket despite the shakiness in her hands. “Once I’m gone, you know. It won’t hurt me for you to love again and remarry.” Jean, once pacing while deep in thought over his next move, freezes once the words register in his mind, and his heart burns. Despite being the one in agony daily, according to the endless doctors, still Y/N thought of him first; how was it that she managed to love so selflessly? Jean knew by this point that he was being greedy and selfish, doing all of this when the outcome had already been made clear; Y/N had taken the diagnoses with ease, almost welcoming death in a way Jean hadn’t understood. He’d been angry about it at first, before she’d explained that she’d already lived a life better than she thought she deserved, followed by admittance that she wasn’t surprised that she was dying young and rather had been expecting the universe to cut her life short; “It’s only what I deserve,” she’d said, “for the horrific atrocities I assisted Eren in creating.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re okay with it or not,” he whispers, his chin shaking and tears filling his eyes as he looks down at his shoes. He hears her make a questioning noise from the couch, and a clink as her crochet needles clack against one another, and he continues, knowing she wasn’t offended. “They don’t compare — I couldn’t — it wouldn’t be…” The words won’t come out alongside his shaky breathing; he watches through blurry vision as the wooden floorboards between his black shoes darken with teardrops he couldn’t keep from falling. It takes him a long moment to get his breathing back in check, but he eventually manages it.

“They wouldn’t be you,” he finally grits out, new tears joining the old on the wood flooring. His fisted hands shake, and his heart twists when he hears her sigh; it isn’t mocking, or ill-intended, but the way she’s resigned herself to her death hurts him.

“I said the same about Eren,” she whispers after a long, near-silent pause that had been filled only by Gerolf’s snores and the crackling fire. A sound of pain leaves Jean’s throat without him meaning to, and he turns to her with tears streaming down his face. She’s placed her unfinished blanket to the side and is just… looking at him, and it breaks him. Her eyes are soft and kind, and he can see that she’s unafraid — nothing like him.

“But I — I can’t,” he whispers, the words coming out in a breathy sob in time with fresh tears. He staggers over to her weakly before falling to his knees before her, clutching her skirts tightly in his hands and burying his face in her lap before collapsing into his grief. She wasn't even dead, and yet there he was, crumpled on the floor at her feet and sobbing into her dress like a mere child. He was a soldier, he’d fought in and helped end a war, he’d battled immeasurable monsters and demons, but he still mourned, and before she was gone — and through it all she runs her fingers through his greying hair and whispers softly that everything would be fine.

One evening, months after he’d dissolved into tears and after a day spent with her unable to leave the bed for how weak she is and how painful it is for her to walk, when she’s at what feels like her healthiest yet and Jean feels safe sleeping in bed with her rather than in a cot by their bed, she begins speaking to him.

He’s not actually asleep. He's taking the time to bask in what life she had in her still, to spend as much time with her as he could even if it meant exhausting himself. The feeling of her heart beating against him and the sound of her breathing in his ears keeps him from losing himself in the fear of what was to come.

He felt himself a coward.

One of her hands gently combs through his hair, spotting a few greys here and there as she does so; he can’t see it, but they make her smile weakly. He'd survived long enough for grey hairs to settle in, albeit at thirty-one. she swallows hard, sudden tears popping up in her eyes and threatening to fall. “I hope you’re happy,” she whispers softly, holding his hand with the one not petting him as she lays almost uselessly in bed.

She jolts slightly in surprise, the sudden movement making her very bones ache, when he starts crying as soon as the words register in his mind, Jean lifting his head as the salty fluid treks down his cheeks and leaves slick lines in its wake. “I could have never been happier than I have been with you,” Jean whispers back, smiling lovingly down at her through the tears in his eyes that made his vision beyond blurry. She smiles, squeezes his hand, and weakly tugs him on top of her where she lay on the bed to carefully balance himself on his elbows above her.

“Make love to me,” she whispers to him, small tears in her own eyes as she clutches at one of his shirt sleeves desperately. He’s not seen her cry since before she’d been given the initial diagnosis, so it stuns him for a moment. The unspoken ‘one last time’ echoes through both of their minds, but both refuse to say it and ignore it in favor of slowly getting undressed one Jean regains his wits — because moving too fast would hurt her, despite today being one of her best days in years, and neither of them wanted that.

Jean rests his forehead against hers, fresh tears welling up in his eyes as he smiles softly. “You’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever been blessed enough to see,” he breathes, and he hears her breath hitch in response.

“I love you,” is her only reply, and that’s when he presses inside. Jean’s hips slowly rolled into hers, ever so careful to not jostle her and keep it feeling good for them both. It had been so long since they were together like this; her body was just too weak to handle it, but now they were trying — Jean could hardly believe it.

“O-Oh my God,” Y/N whimpers, swallowing the spit that had accumulated in her mouth as pulses of pleasure filled her body, “Oh — oh, oh, J-Jean-!”

“Shhh, I’ve got you,” Jean whispers, reaching a hand up to gently cup her chin before leaning down to kiss her softly. Her arms come up and wrap around his neck as he slowly fucks into her, her tiny gasps and his low grunts filling the room. Gone were the days of the headboard banging against the wall so hard that paintings and photographs fell off of it, but present still was the love shared between them.

Before long both reach orgasm, moaning out declarations of love and utterances of one another’s names as they do. The rest of the night is spent silently shared between the two of them, naked and intertwined in a warm, perfect mess.

Happily.

She was gone by dawn the next morning.

Jean hadn’t woken when she’d passed, he’d only woken to her body in his arms. He’d not known at first, not until he’d kissed her forehead and discovered how cool her skin was; she’d been so beautiful at the time, soft and sweet and peaceful looking — but then he’d realized, and he’d screamed. The neighbors had woken to the sound of his raw, agonized yelling, and they’d broken the door down getting in before realizing what had happened once they saw how he clutched her to his chest, her arm limp against the bed as he did.

There had been no consoling him, this they knew. They just alerted medics and the police and quietly went to mourn as well, already missing the woman that often offered parts of the meals she made to them, even going so far as to cook them both entire portions while the woman had been pregnant and her husband overworked leaving both exhausted.

Many good memories were had of the Kirsteins; the two would miss Mr. Kirstein’s wife.

It had taken nearly an hour for the medics to convince Jean to let them take Y/N’s body, and both before and after he was an absolute wreck. She’d been fine only a few hours ago, she’d been so warm and happy and alive — and suddenly he wakes up and she’s gone? Just like that? It’s not fair.

For the first time in seventeen years — ten at her side as a friend, and seven as a husband — he’s without her. He’s lost.

In an almost cruel act of irony, the owner of the coffee shop they went to every morning put it up for sale the day after her funeral. Apparently the only funds they’d been getting recently were from the Kirsteins themselves as well as about four other regulars, so slowly but surely the funding had just… run out. Before long the place was dark and quiet, and looking at it hurt him. All it helped him remember was Y/N, when all he wanted to do was forget.

He locks himself up in their home for months, his only company being an also-mournful Gerolf, who whined whenever he was near something she favored. Most nights are spent sleeping in his chair in the living room as well; how could he possibly sleep in the place where she had died? And he couldn’t just sleep on the couch either, her blanket was laying there — she’d not finished crocheting it, so he couldn’t touch it. Instead, he just slept in his chair with his hand in Gerolf’s fur, lazily scratching at it where he knew it would please the also depressed dog.

Just before the sixth month passes, Jean quietly creeps back into the bedroom he shared with Y/N, and promptly bursts into tears. He sits on the floor with his back to his side of the bed and his face to the doorway and sobs into his hands. He must be loud, because Gerolf is roused from the deep sleep he’d been in and the old dog brings himself into the bedroom before pressing his way between Jean’s legs then slumping against him, massive and warm and so comforting that Jean can’t help but throw his arms around him and sob into his fur, whimpering about how he misses her and wants her back. Gerolf remained silent, of course, unable to speak in anything but barks and grumbles, but his presence alone is enough to comfort Jean.

They slept in Jean and Y/N’s bed for the first time since her death that night.

After that, Jean begins to acclimate to life without her. Clinging to their dog like a lifeline, he rebuilds his own mental strength and gets back to everyday life. He begins cooking again, and he stops being so timid around Y/N’s usual areas of the house. He carefully folds the unfinished crocheted blanket and puts it on Y/N’s pillow, and he never allows anyone or anything to sit in her chair, but other than that? He begins to live in the house again.

And then comes his newest problem.

Jean doesn’t know whether or not he wants to visit Paradis or send letters to the others who’ve been burning the ones Y/N had been sending all these years, informing them of her death and burial, because regardless of whether or not he’s happy with the fact that they’d ignored her for years ( he’s not ), they still grew up with her, fought beside her, lived, ate, and slept alongside her. They should know, he thought to himself, and, leaning back in the chair at Y/N’s writing desk that had now become one of his favorite seats since her passing ( since she’d loved it so much before ), Jean eyes the closet that Y/N had kept locked since she’d become too frail to even walk to the aforementioned writing desk. Swallowing hard, he blinks away sudden, unexpected tears. More letters were in there, he knew that there were, because she’d started storing them there when she found out the others were burning hers upon receiving them.

He began thinking back on all the times he’d seen her sealing letters, and begins doing the math, only getting angrier as he does. Once he adds up all the letters in his head that they’d burnt that Y/N had sent ( one hundred and sixty-eight of them ) that led to her just writing them and filing them away in her closet, it was a lot easier for Jean to decide not to visit Paradis to tell them, or to even write a letter.

Then three months pass, and Jean’s thirty-two.

He’d never expected to make it this far when he started his life in the Scouts, but he’d made it out. Then, when he’d married Y/N, he’d thought they’d die old and happy together — but then she was gone, just like Marco and their other friends, leaving just him and Gerolf.

And now Gerolf was gone.

Jean and Y/N had both been expecting it, even before she was gone, especially since the old street mutt was at least fourteen when they’d found him. Regardless, the loss of his last living domestic link to his wife sends him into a spiral, and he locks himself away again. Reiner and Annie, who had tried endlessly to get him to let them in so they could comfort him, are shut out again with no means of getting him to talk to them. Why would he make the effort? The world had taken everything he loved most from him. He had no reason to make an effort anymore.

Then, after another two months, Jean goes out and buys the coffee shop.

They reappear in Jean’s life and ask for her a year later.

He’d turned to greet whoever had come into the coffee shop, and once his gaze locked on their easily recognizable figures he couldn’t believe his eyes. Almost immediately as the disbelief came anger, and he forced himself to turn away with the greeting dying on his tongue. He snatches a dirty glass, almost breaking it against the side of the wide sink, and begins to wash it. He’d heard through the grapevine that they’d come to the mainland, but he’d steadfastly refused to seek them out, still angry on Y/N’s behalf.

He can hear them all chattering brightly behind him, two of them ( which sounded like Mikasa and Armin ) asking where Y/N was so happily that it made Jean’s heart twist in an ugly way inside his chest and he barely could resist the urge to throw the glass he was rinsing at their heads wherever they stood behind him.

No ‘hello’? No ‘sorry for ditching you and then burning your only sources of communication because we were mad and refused to let go of a grudge, do you think you can forgive us’? Alright. Fine. Two could play at that game.

“She’s been dead a year,” Jean answers without turning around instead, a swift twinge of cruel satisfaction striking through him as a sudden quiet falls over the familiar voices behind him. He doesn’t bother looking after that either, choosing instead to continue cleaning the glass in his hand as a shaky ‘W-What?’ reaches his ears, coming from behind him in an aged rendition of Conny’s voice ( a voice that, despite his own internalized fury, he finds that he’s missed ). He doesn’t answer right away, just like last time, and finishes cleaning that glass then puts it away before reaching for another and speaking again. “She died. Two years ago almost to the day, now — four more weeks and it will have been,” he laughs bitterly. “What a morbid turn of events that would have been, had you come then, wouldn’t it?”

“H-How — Why?!” It’s Mikasa’s voice, shaky and startled and hurting, and Jean takes a wicked satisfaction in it. It was good; they deserved to hurt like he’d hurt since she’d died, deserved to feel pain after abandoning their friend for years. It was nothing short of karma.

“Sick,” is all he replies with, and he can almost hear their heart’s plummet. Everyone present knew that Y/N’s mother died of a hereditary sickness a few years before Maria fell to the titans — hell, Armin and Mikasa themselves helped Eren comfort her as she cried over her at her mother’s funeral. Jean even knew for a fact that she��d gone into more detail about her mother’s death with the Captain, who hadn’t said a word but who Jean knew was shaking ( which he could see in the reflection of the metal shaker he was washing now ). The sickness Y/N had died from was something that commonly ran in families from the Underground where the Captain had come from, and considering Y/N only saw the sun for the first time a week after she turned six and her mother dropped dead from the illness two years later, Jean wasn’t surprised that it had startled him — and he didn’t feel sorry for him, either.

Like with Mikasa, he considered the Captain’s current feelings deserved.

He throws the rag down and gingerly places Y/N’s favorite glass on a shelf of it’s own, swallowing hard and taking a deep breath before letting it out all at once. “I’m done here,” he mutters. “Follow me — or don’t. I don’t really care.”

He leaves after that, the group following single file and waiting patiently as he locks up the building early, and the sounds of their footsteps against the sidewalk have him fighting of the urge to whirl around and yell at them to just fuck off. This was all Y/N had ever wanted, to see them again, and now they were here — almost two years too late, but here nonetheless.

The group stop outside of the house Y/N and Jean had ended up living in, having desperately needing to escape the damned reparation apartments that only held bad memories, and they wait in silence as Jean unlocks the door and goes inside. He leaves the door behind himself open, and after a moment’s hesitation Levi is the first to enter, the others following like faithful but hesitant hounds in his wake.

It’s dark inside the house, and Jean’s thrown his overcoat onto one of the stylish but comfortable-looking black couches in the living room and is sitting in an armchair. It looks like he’s not paying them any mind, but Levi can feel the younger man’s eyes on him as he moves to sit down in a chair that looked unused, as he didn’t want to appropriate anything Jean preferred, especially in the man’s own home; he owed him that much.

“No!” Jean snaps suddenly, making everyone jump and Levi freeze in place. Jean sighs, but doesn’t tear his eyes from his former Captain and the chair he was touching. “Not that chair. That — That was Y/N’s favorite chair.”

His explanation was enough for Levi at ‘that was Y/N’s’ to make him jolt away from it as if it were on fire; he carefully makes his way over to the couch and grunts as he sits down next to Armin, who takes his cane from him helpfully and leans it against a side table. Y/N’s chair is given a wide berth by everyone else who takes a seat or stands in the living room.

The room is silent for a long time, no one saying a word. The tension filling the spaces between them was almost thick enough to bite without being able to break through.

“She never stopped writing them,” Jean says suddenly, his words spoken in a low tone and volume as the people in the room listen silently, “She kept going up until the last year; couldn’t — she couldn’t make the walk to her desk…” he stumbles over his own words when he remembers the last day she’d tried, the day she’d fallen to the ground and hadn’t gotten back up. She’d never walked again after that, and she’d hated it.

“I… Jean I’m so sorry. It must have been so difficult losing a friend you’d known for so long and dealing with all of this by yourself,” Armin says softly, his voice shaking. He was hurting too — all these years he’d wasted being angry, and for what? A woman loyal to her lover? A close friend loyal to another close friend? He was a fool.

The previous silence overtakes the room once again, but this time it’s different, an unexplainable anger filling Jean’s body at the mention of the word ‘friend’ then disappearing just as suddenly only to be replaced with something that couldn’t be explained as anything short of exhaustion for life.“Wife,” he corrects quietly, making them all freeze and go silent again, “I married her seven years ago.”

No one seems to know what to say.

Getting up, he disappears into the bedroom and quietly walks over to said desk, gingerly taking the key hanging from the crooked nail he’d messed up accidentally that she’d begged to keep just because she wanted to remember his wild cursing before going to unlock the closet holding the letters. Picking up the case she’d asked him to put them in a month before she’d passed, he lugs them into the living room before dropping them on the table with a loud thud.

“Take the box and get out,” he mutters venomously, leaving no room for argument as he retreats to his and Y/N’s bedroom and locks the door; his own letters had been placed on Y/N’s writing desk, left untouched all these months — but maybe it was time for him to read them.

As he unties the brown twine holding them together, he hears everyone in the living room leave, the door shutting ominously behind them as they do, and Jean’s surprised at first that it doesn’t hurt as much as he’d expected it to — then again, he’s pretty much dead already without Y/N, so what did it matter?

Shaking as he holds the first letter Y/N had written to him tightly enough to strain the paper but not crinkle it, he begins to read, but he only makes it to the third before he finally breaks.

“‘Think of me fondly’,” he reads aloud, laughing breathlessly in a way that slowly and painfully turns into heavy sobbing. “How couldn’t I?” he asks pleadingly to the letter, almost as if he thought it would be able to answer him. It, of course, didn’t, and he cast it across the desk and away from himself in favor of leaning on his elbows against the top of the desk and burying his face in his hands to cry longer, his tears falling and landing on the smooth wood of the desk top, slowly but surely forming small puddles that seeped into the pores of the wood and disappeared, just like she had all those weeks ago.

Y/N was gone.

Gerolf was gone.

His comrades? They’d not been a part of his life in years.

Jean was alone. Just like he’d feared for years. He’d told Y/N that years ago, even before she got sick, and she’d still left.

He pushes himself up and staggers away from the desk, one of her letters clutched in his fest while the other wipes furiously at his face as he wails like a child. “It’s not fair,” he whispers, his entire body wracked with sobs. “IT’S NOT FAIR!”

He shakily collapses to the floor and falls against the bed again, just as he had a year ago — only this time, Gerolf wasn’t there to comfort him. This time, he was alone with his pain and fear, and it showed in his tears and words. All night long, he screams and cries and mourns his losses — Marco, Sasha, Eren, Y/N, and he mourns his comrades, the people who had abandoned him just as surely as they’d abandoned his wife.

After the sun rises and shines through a window, he blearily looks outside. A sparrow sits on the windowsill, a large bird he faintly remembers seeing years ago ( but that he’s unsure of where he saw it ) at the sparrow’s side, both looking through the window at him inquisitively. He stares at them, unsure of what to say and afraid to move should he scare them off, when the larger bird takes off, circling around the house judging by the fact that it keeps flying by the window. For three loops of the larger bird’s flight, the sparrow stays on the windowsill, just staring at him, before finally pecking at it and taking off to join the larger bird. They disappear into the light of the rising sun, and suddenly Jean doesn’t feel the urge to cry anymore. Instead, he gets to his feet and pulls out a suitcase before beginning to pack his things, ready for a trip out to see Annie and Reiner.

It was time to start over — even if that didn’t mean falling in love with someone else again.

#jean kirstein x reader #jean kirschtein x reader #jean kirstein x you #jean kirschtein x you #jean kirstein x y/n #jean kirschtein x y/n #attack on titan x reader #aot x reader #attack on titan x you #aot x you #attack on titan x y/n #aot x y/n #shingeki no kyojin x reader #snk x reader #shingeki no kyojin x you #snk x you #shingeki no kyojin x y/n #snk x y/n #— 𝐈 𝐇𝐎𝐏𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔’𝐑𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐘. | 𝐉. 𝐊𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐈𝐍.

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