Dislocation
Category: Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Canon Divergence
Rating: Teens
Summary:
“For fuck’s sake,” Reiner hisses, gesturing at Jean with the sleek pistol in his hand. “Why did it have to be you?”
Jean steals the clothes from a laundry rack on a balcony. They are too small, and press against his bruises. But they will help him pass as a local.
Dawnlight is spreading across Liberio. Someone is wailing. All around him the dead are being wrapped in sheets and piled into carts. He wonders if Marleyans are being put in along with Eldians, or if there are different carts for each one. Are there enough carts for that?
Stop thinking about it , he tells himself. It is his own fault for being left behind; he had tried to pull a comrade out of the rubble, and had missed the window of time to escape on the airship. And the comrade had died. The cry Jean had let out had been animal.
He limps along. Every time he takes a step, a hundred shards of glass pierce through his ankle. Fractured, probably. Still, he cannot stop; he needs to find shelter, away from the eyes of the Marleyan military, who are in every corner, searching for survivors, or for enemies.
How long can he hold out? There are water fountains around the city, but he has no money to buy food. The refugee camps are a tenuous option: he does not want to bring trouble to already troubled people. And someone there might rat him out in exchange for a reward. He would not even blame them; he understands desperation. He also understands greed, though he wishes he did not.
Jean’s foot knocks against something light, and he glances down.
A red shoe, around the size of his palm, seared to charcoal along one side. The laces are still tied neatly in a bow.
Jean lurches to the side of a building, keels over, and vomits bile, and even when there is nothing left to throw up, he keeps heaving, and shakes through it. When his stomach finally settles, he spits the worst of the taste from his mouth and wipes the wetness from his face. He blinks and a pile of crushed charred bones stare up at him from the sidewalk with their thousands of dark eyes. When he blinks again, they are gone.
This time, he manages to control the nausea.
He trudges on, though he does not want to, stumbling now and again. Forget the bones for now, he tells himself, desperate. He gropes for something else to think about. Sasha is a good choice. Sasha is funny. But right before they began their attack she had said she had a bad feeling and Jean had worried, because Sasha is never wrong with that kind of thing, and he had snapped at her: Stop talking shit .
No, no. He pinches his forearm, right over a bruise, and the pain shocks the world into focus again.
A pair of soldiers, dirt-streaked and grim, march towards him. His heart jackrabbits. He finds himself hunching his shoulders, even though he knows it does nothing; he is not a small man.
One of the soldiers frowns at him. “Hey, you.”
Jean tries his best to look Marleyan. How should he hold himself? Is there something about the structure of his face that gives him away? “Yes?”
“Your shirt’s on backwards.”
“Oh!” Jean plucks at his shirt with jittery fingers, again and again, as if to underline, Yes, the shirt, that is the funniest thing about me. He itches with sweat. His smile is so wide it hurts his cheeks. “Thank you, officer. Had a long night.”
“We all did.”
Jean walks past them slowly, so it does not seem like he wants to get away from them, and the soldier says, “If you see anything suspicious, report it immediately.”
“Yes, sir!” His tone and posture were possibly too military, because the ensuing silence is doubtful.
After he turns a corner, he breaks into a half run, wanting to get away from those soldiers. His ankle protests and he grits his teeth and ignores the spots in his vision.
Soon he finds himself in a part of the city that is mostly intact. Some places are already open for business; Jean passes a cafe with sandwiches almost falling apart with stuffing in the window display, and in another world, he may have stopped to gawk at them. He slinks through the alleyways and backstreets, trying to keep out of view, not meeting anyone’s eyes. A child in a frock yells, “Good morning!” at him and he jumps and thinks, Did she know the kid whose shoe I kicked? and forgets to say anything back.
A rest, he needs a rest. A few minutes will not hurt.
He staggers into another alleyway, leans against a brick wall, and slides down onto the ground, taking great gasping breaths.
Had everyone gotten safely on the airship? Are they having breakfast now? Sasha can eat in any situation, but Connie might have difficulty. Shame. They must have stocked the good stuff, knowing it would be a hard night, potato omelettes and sausages. Best of all are the pastries filled with crushed almonds. Jean tries to focus on breathing, but all he can think about is munching on those pastries with Connie and Sasha while sunlight warms their faces.
Heavy footsteps. Skid of shoes against cobblestones.
Jean makes himself raise his head.
Unasked-for memories drown him: Armin giving the order to check the walls. Hange, staring with hesitancy at Jean. The taste of ash. The reek of burnt flesh.
Reiner’s beard is more of an uneven stubble, and the bags beneath his eyes are deep and grey. Blood and sweat blotch his clothes. Has he been doing damage control since last night? “For fuck’s sake,” he hisses, gesturing at Jean with the sleek pistol in his hand. “Why did it have to be you?”
Jean looks around. Blocked on three sides. A metal switchback staircase runs to a first-floor balcony, but it is behind Reiner.
Option left: fight.
He struggles to his feet, wishing he could have thought about the pastries a little longer. “Was it those soldiers who tipped me off?”
“I was hoping they were just paranoid.” Reiner scrubs a hand over his face, like Jean is a mere inconvenience. Perhaps, in this state, he is.
Jean lunges.
The gun fires, and misses. Jean twists Reiner’s wrist and tries to kick his legs out from under him, but his injured ankle is weak. Reiner pummels a fist so hard into Jean’s jaw that his vision goes white, and when he becomes aware of his surroundings next, he is on his back, staring into an endless barrel. The taste of copper is in his throat.
Reiner keeps the gun aimed between Jean’s eyes. Jean watches Reiner’s hand, finds himself disappointed that there is no tremor in it. This is foolish: they were never friends. Reiner must have gotten through the days by fantasising about crushing all their spines one by one in his titan hand.
He wishes he could dissolve all the memories he has of Reiner, all the things he knows about him, that he knows Reiner’s comrades know about him: that he likes his bread with apple jam (but once acknowledged that Jean’s preference of brie is stellar), that he is a poor cook and a worse seamster, that he sleeps on his back with his hands folded on his chest, like he’s trained himself to impress the higher ranks even when unconscious.
“Really, Jean? You’d attack a titan shifter with your bare hands?”
Jean’s laugh turns quickly into a wheezing cough. “You know. Survey Corps. Don’t know when to quit.”
Reiner’s face is a stone. “Your people - ”
Jean jolts out of his daze. “ My people?” He can feel himself growing hysterical, but does not care. “There never were any ‘my people’! There was humanity and there were the titans and that was all. Until you lot showed up, and suddenly there was us and them , and I had to care about who I was born as.” He curls up and covers his ears with his hands. Even now, he wonders briefly if he is in some nightmare, if he will wake up in his scratchy blanket in the barracks with problems that can be solved by cutting out their napes.
Reiner does not react to the outburst. “Your people are responsible for this mess in Liberio.”
Jean should say, And what about the mess you created on Paradis? but he knows that will not change anything. It will not wipe his mind of the memory of that tiny, burnt shoe. “What’s the chit-chat for? Kill me or take me hostage already.” He will not do well as a hostage; he is not good with pain. If Reiner does not get rid of him now, it will be better to off himself if he gets the chance, or else he will reveal everything there is to know about Paradis.
Reiner says, solemn, “Against my better judgement, I’ll end your misery. Consider it a debt repaid.”
“How kind of you.” Jean hauls himself up. He will not be shot while lying down.
Reiner’s expression turns thoughtful. “How did you ever agree to this attack? Surely you were coerced.”
Anger flares in Jean. “You think I can’t make my own choices?”
“You were always…” He hesitates, seeming to search for words. “Soft.”
Jean wants to rail against that. He wants to rip Reiner’s hair out by the roots, tear into him like a wild dog.
But Reiner is right. It is Jean’s fault that Reiner is alive. Hange should have killed him.
And yet, even now, he does not regret it. He cannot regret saving a life. Perhaps it is a flaw in his character.
Something like regret passes over Reiner’s face, and is gone. The gun holds steady. “Need a moment?”
Jean looks up at the sky, one last time. Pastel blue and cloudless. There had been a pastel blue and cloudless sky the day the Armoured Titan had first broken through the gate, too. What a waste. They could all have been ignoring each other and having a picnic.
In his head, he rolls through the people he knows and hopes they see the end of this war, but more than that he wishes he could be there to see it with them. When he is finished, he glances at Reiner, who looks alert but unbothered, and says, “Today or next week, traitor?”
Reiner fires.
A high, tinny ringing drowns out all other sounds.
Jean’s knees are on the ground and his left ear is a ball of agony. The alley is spinning.
Reiner’s mouth is open, like he cannot believe he did not kill him. He looks away and the gun lowers just an inch. “Damn,” he says. “Goddamn everything.” His voice comes from far away, across a haze of buzzing. Jean knows he has lost hearing at least partially in one ear.
Reiner is breathing hard now, his eyes wide and darting. At length, he gives a frustrated cry. He stalks over to Jean and hunkers down, his face a rictus, so close that the sour sweat on him makes Jean wrinkle his nose, and presses the gun to Jean’s breast. The metal is a shock of cold through Jean’s thin shirt. He can see the deep cracks in Reiner’s lips.
Jean’s voice comes out steadier than he feels. “Do you think that will make it easier?”
Reiner does not speak for a long time. His finger remains on the trigger, so Jean does not want to risk knocking the gun away. Jean’s knees are starting to hurt against the cobblestones. “It’s selfish,” says Reiner, sounding defeated, “but I’m tired.” He puts the gun in the holster at his hip.
Jean is both relieved and disgusted. After slaughtering so many people, does Reiner get to stop at Jean? Jean does not know, but he wants to make Reiner feel bad about it. “Reiner, when I think that I ever cared about you, I feel ashamed.”
Focus returns to Reiner’s eyes, but he does not look angry or affronted or confused. He does not look anything at all. Jean is prepared to get his teeth knocked down his throat, but Reiner says quietly, “For better or for worse, the feeling is not mutual.”
Jean thinks, You’re lying . He thinks, You’re a coward. He knows neither is true.
Reiner stands up. “Wait here.”
“Why would I do that?” says Jean, incredulous.
“Run if you want, but I’m only trying to help you.” He disappears around a corner.
Jean considers fleeing, but eventually settles on sitting still; if Reiner wanted him dead or captured, he could have had it done by now. He touches his ear, hisses; the top of it has been blown off by the gunshot. How is he going to treat that? He sighs and shuffles towards a wall so he can rest against it, and only realises he had dozed off when Reiner shakes him by the shoulder.
Reiner pushes a large brown paper bag into his arms, and Jean looks at it blankly. “Just,” Reiner says awkwardly, “to tide you over. Don’t overthink it.”
Inside are cotton pads, bandages, antiseptic wipes, soap, and, wrapped in more grease-spotted brown paper, one of those gigantic sandwiches Jean had seen in the cafe. He thinks, It’s not enough . He thinks, You should not have given me anything.
He lifts a corner of the bread and finds a fold of brie, and stares at it.
“If anyone asks, I shot you and you lived. Now don’t let me see you again.”
Jean tries not to be grateful. If he is grateful, he might forget that they are enemies.
He wants to forget that they are enemies. He wants to forget that he has enemies at all.
He clutches the paper bag against his chest and squeezes his eyes shut.
“Just hang on a little longer, Jean,” murmurs Reiner, or perhaps Jean only imagines him saying it. When he opens his eyes again, he finds Reiner looking at him.
Reiner seems as if he is about to say something, but then drops his gaze. He turns towards the main street, across which the buildings loom high and strange. From somewhere in the city comes the heavy clang of bells.
Jean stays there, against the wall, with the smell of meat and brie in his nose. He imagines what might happen if the Corps do not come back for him. Don’t go , he finds himself thinking, all at once loth to be alone again. His hand reaches out, as if on its own accord.
But Reiner has people to report to, people to eat breakfast with, and he leaves without a look or a wave, while the bells are still ringing.
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Canon Divergence
Rating: Teens
Summary:
“For fuck’s sake,” Reiner hisses, gesturing at Jean with the sleek pistol in his hand. “Why did it have to be you?”
Jean steals the clothes from a laundry rack on a balcony. They are too small, and press against his bruises. But they will help him pass as a local.
Dawnlight is spreading across Liberio. Someone is wailing. All around him the dead are being wrapped in sheets and piled into carts. He wonders if Marleyans are being put in along with Eldians, or if there are different carts for each one. Are there enough carts for that?
Stop thinking about it , he tells himself. It is his own fault for being left behind; he had tried to pull a comrade out of the rubble, and had missed the window of time to escape on the airship. And the comrade had died. The cry Jean had let out had been animal.
He limps along. Every time he takes a step, a hundred shards of glass pierce through his ankle. Fractured, probably. Still, he cannot stop; he needs to find shelter, away from the eyes of the Marleyan military, who are in every corner, searching for survivors, or for enemies.
How long can he hold out? There are water fountains around the city, but he has no money to buy food. The refugee camps are a tenuous option: he does not want to bring trouble to already troubled people. And someone there might rat him out in exchange for a reward. He would not even blame them; he understands desperation. He also understands greed, though he wishes he did not.
Jean’s foot knocks against something light, and he glances down.
A red shoe, around the size of his palm, seared to charcoal along one side. The laces are still tied neatly in a bow.
Jean lurches to the side of a building, keels over, and vomits bile, and even when there is nothing left to throw up, he keeps heaving, and shakes through it. When his stomach finally settles, he spits the worst of the taste from his mouth and wipes the wetness from his face. He blinks and a pile of crushed charred bones stare up at him from the sidewalk with their thousands of dark eyes. When he blinks again, they are gone.
This time, he manages to control the nausea.
He trudges on, though he does not want to, stumbling now and again. Forget the bones for now, he tells himself, desperate. He gropes for something else to think about. Sasha is a good choice. Sasha is funny. But right before they began their attack she had said she had a bad feeling and Jean had worried, because Sasha is never wrong with that kind of thing, and he had snapped at her: Stop talking shit .
No, no. He pinches his forearm, right over a bruise, and the pain shocks the world into focus again.
A pair of soldiers, dirt-streaked and grim, march towards him. His heart jackrabbits. He finds himself hunching his shoulders, even though he knows it does nothing; he is not a small man.
One of the soldiers frowns at him. “Hey, you.”
Jean tries his best to look Marleyan. How should he hold himself? Is there something about the structure of his face that gives him away? “Yes?”
“Your shirt’s on backwards.”
“Oh!” Jean plucks at his shirt with jittery fingers, again and again, as if to underline, Yes, the shirt, that is the funniest thing about me. He itches with sweat. His smile is so wide it hurts his cheeks. “Thank you, officer. Had a long night.”
“We all did.”
Jean walks past them slowly, so it does not seem like he wants to get away from them, and the soldier says, “If you see anything suspicious, report it immediately.”
“Yes, sir!” His tone and posture were possibly too military, because the ensuing silence is doubtful.
After he turns a corner, he breaks into a half run, wanting to get away from those soldiers. His ankle protests and he grits his teeth and ignores the spots in his vision.
Soon he finds himself in a part of the city that is mostly intact. Some places are already open for business; Jean passes a cafe with sandwiches almost falling apart with stuffing in the window display, and in another world, he may have stopped to gawk at them. He slinks through the alleyways and backstreets, trying to keep out of view, not meeting anyone’s eyes. A child in a frock yells, “Good morning!” at him and he jumps and thinks, Did she know the kid whose shoe I kicked? and forgets to say anything back.
A rest, he needs a rest. A few minutes will not hurt.
He staggers into another alleyway, leans against a brick wall, and slides down onto the ground, taking great gasping breaths.
Had everyone gotten safely on the airship? Are they having breakfast now? Sasha can eat in any situation, but Connie might have difficulty. Shame. They must have stocked the good stuff, knowing it would be a hard night, potato omelettes and sausages. Best of all are the pastries filled with crushed almonds. Jean tries to focus on breathing, but all he can think about is munching on those pastries with Connie and Sasha while sunlight warms their faces.
Heavy footsteps. Skid of shoes against cobblestones.
Jean makes himself raise his head.
Unasked-for memories drown him: Armin giving the order to check the walls. Hange, staring with hesitancy at Jean. The taste of ash. The reek of burnt flesh.
Reiner’s beard is more of an uneven stubble, and the bags beneath his eyes are deep and grey. Blood and sweat blotch his clothes. Has he been doing damage control since last night? “For fuck’s sake,” he hisses, gesturing at Jean with the sleek pistol in his hand. “Why did it have to be you?”
Jean looks around. Blocked on three sides. A metal switchback staircase runs to a first-floor balcony, but it is behind Reiner.
Option left: fight.
He struggles to his feet, wishing he could have thought about the pastries a little longer. “Was it those soldiers who tipped me off?”
“I was hoping they were just paranoid.” Reiner scrubs a hand over his face, like Jean is a mere inconvenience. Perhaps, in this state, he is.
Jean lunges.
The gun fires, and misses. Jean twists Reiner’s wrist and tries to kick his legs out from under him, but his injured ankle is weak. Reiner pummels a fist so hard into Jean’s jaw that his vision goes white, and when he becomes aware of his surroundings next, he is on his back, staring into an endless barrel. The taste of copper is in his throat.
Reiner keeps the gun aimed between Jean’s eyes. Jean watches Reiner’s hand, finds himself disappointed that there is no tremor in it. This is foolish: they were never friends. Reiner must have gotten through the days by fantasising about crushing all their spines one by one in his titan hand.
He wishes he could dissolve all the memories he has of Reiner, all the things he knows about him, that he knows Reiner’s comrades know about him: that he likes his bread with apple jam (but once acknowledged that Jean’s preference of brie is stellar), that he is a poor cook and a worse seamster, that he sleeps on his back with his hands folded on his chest, like he’s trained himself to impress the higher ranks even when unconscious.
“Really, Jean? You’d attack a titan shifter with your bare hands?”
Jean’s laugh turns quickly into a wheezing cough. “You know. Survey Corps. Don’t know when to quit.”
Reiner’s face is a stone. “Your people - ”
Jean jolts out of his daze. “ My people?” He can feel himself growing hysterical, but does not care. “There never were any ‘my people’! There was humanity and there were the titans and that was all. Until you lot showed up, and suddenly there was us and them , and I had to care about who I was born as.” He curls up and covers his ears with his hands. Even now, he wonders briefly if he is in some nightmare, if he will wake up in his scratchy blanket in the barracks with problems that can be solved by cutting out their napes.
Reiner does not react to the outburst. “Your people are responsible for this mess in Liberio.”
Jean should say, And what about the mess you created on Paradis? but he knows that will not change anything. It will not wipe his mind of the memory of that tiny, burnt shoe. “What’s the chit-chat for? Kill me or take me hostage already.” He will not do well as a hostage; he is not good with pain. If Reiner does not get rid of him now, it will be better to off himself if he gets the chance, or else he will reveal everything there is to know about Paradis.
Reiner says, solemn, “Against my better judgement, I’ll end your misery. Consider it a debt repaid.”
“How kind of you.” Jean hauls himself up. He will not be shot while lying down.
Reiner’s expression turns thoughtful. “How did you ever agree to this attack? Surely you were coerced.”
Anger flares in Jean. “You think I can’t make my own choices?”
“You were always…” He hesitates, seeming to search for words. “Soft.”
Jean wants to rail against that. He wants to rip Reiner’s hair out by the roots, tear into him like a wild dog.
But Reiner is right. It is Jean’s fault that Reiner is alive. Hange should have killed him.
And yet, even now, he does not regret it. He cannot regret saving a life. Perhaps it is a flaw in his character.
Something like regret passes over Reiner’s face, and is gone. The gun holds steady. “Need a moment?”
Jean looks up at the sky, one last time. Pastel blue and cloudless. There had been a pastel blue and cloudless sky the day the Armoured Titan had first broken through the gate, too. What a waste. They could all have been ignoring each other and having a picnic.
In his head, he rolls through the people he knows and hopes they see the end of this war, but more than that he wishes he could be there to see it with them. When he is finished, he glances at Reiner, who looks alert but unbothered, and says, “Today or next week, traitor?”
Reiner fires.
A high, tinny ringing drowns out all other sounds.
Jean’s knees are on the ground and his left ear is a ball of agony. The alley is spinning.
Reiner’s mouth is open, like he cannot believe he did not kill him. He looks away and the gun lowers just an inch. “Damn,” he says. “Goddamn everything.” His voice comes from far away, across a haze of buzzing. Jean knows he has lost hearing at least partially in one ear.
Reiner is breathing hard now, his eyes wide and darting. At length, he gives a frustrated cry. He stalks over to Jean and hunkers down, his face a rictus, so close that the sour sweat on him makes Jean wrinkle his nose, and presses the gun to Jean’s breast. The metal is a shock of cold through Jean’s thin shirt. He can see the deep cracks in Reiner’s lips.
Jean’s voice comes out steadier than he feels. “Do you think that will make it easier?”
Reiner does not speak for a long time. His finger remains on the trigger, so Jean does not want to risk knocking the gun away. Jean’s knees are starting to hurt against the cobblestones. “It’s selfish,” says Reiner, sounding defeated, “but I’m tired.” He puts the gun in the holster at his hip.
Jean is both relieved and disgusted. After slaughtering so many people, does Reiner get to stop at Jean? Jean does not know, but he wants to make Reiner feel bad about it. “Reiner, when I think that I ever cared about you, I feel ashamed.”
Focus returns to Reiner’s eyes, but he does not look angry or affronted or confused. He does not look anything at all. Jean is prepared to get his teeth knocked down his throat, but Reiner says quietly, “For better or for worse, the feeling is not mutual.”
Jean thinks, You’re lying . He thinks, You’re a coward. He knows neither is true.
Reiner stands up. “Wait here.”
“Why would I do that?” says Jean, incredulous.
“Run if you want, but I’m only trying to help you.” He disappears around a corner.
Jean considers fleeing, but eventually settles on sitting still; if Reiner wanted him dead or captured, he could have had it done by now. He touches his ear, hisses; the top of it has been blown off by the gunshot. How is he going to treat that? He sighs and shuffles towards a wall so he can rest against it, and only realises he had dozed off when Reiner shakes him by the shoulder.
Reiner pushes a large brown paper bag into his arms, and Jean looks at it blankly. “Just,” Reiner says awkwardly, “to tide you over. Don’t overthink it.”
Inside are cotton pads, bandages, antiseptic wipes, soap, and, wrapped in more grease-spotted brown paper, one of those gigantic sandwiches Jean had seen in the cafe. He thinks, It’s not enough . He thinks, You should not have given me anything.
He lifts a corner of the bread and finds a fold of brie, and stares at it.
“If anyone asks, I shot you and you lived. Now don’t let me see you again.”
Jean tries not to be grateful. If he is grateful, he might forget that they are enemies.
He wants to forget that they are enemies. He wants to forget that he has enemies at all.
He clutches the paper bag against his chest and squeezes his eyes shut.
“Just hang on a little longer, Jean,” murmurs Reiner, or perhaps Jean only imagines him saying it. When he opens his eyes again, he finds Reiner looking at him.
Reiner seems as if he is about to say something, but then drops his gaze. He turns towards the main street, across which the buildings loom high and strange. From somewhere in the city comes the heavy clang of bells.
Jean stays there, against the wall, with the smell of meat and brie in his nose. He imagines what might happen if the Corps do not come back for him. Don’t go , he finds himself thinking, all at once loth to be alone again. His hand reaches out, as if on its own accord.
But Reiner has people to report to, people to eat breakfast with, and he leaves without a look or a wave, while the bells are still ringing.