Near midnight, Jean Kirschtein opened the drawer in his bedside table, pulled out a match and a candle, and pulled back the cloth wrappings on a tiny orange sphere.
Make sure you eat it before it goes bad! the attached note had said. Fruit like this doesn't last very long and it's already spent quite some time getting to us from the southernmost part of wall rose.
It was a truly special treat. Fruit like this was expensive. Jean's mother had received two in return for repairing a noblewoman's torn wedding dress a few nights before her wedding. Two oranges. One for Jean, one for the rest of his family back home. For once, his mother's kindness was not lost on him. His gaze wandered to the bunk beside him, where his best friend Marco slept. In the dim light from the candle, his eyelashes cast long shadows over his freckled cheeks. Jean could imagine the way his eyes would light up, the way those cheeks would dimple, when he pulled him aside, wished him a happy birthday, and offered half the orange to him.
Jean would have given Marco the whole orange, but he reasoned that Marco would refuse to eat it unless Jean got some too. Or at least that's what he told himself as he imagined how delicious the fruit would be. Marco wrinkled his nose in agreement with Jean's silent musing, drawing his attention to the tiny scar near the tip. Aware that he was staring, Jean replaced the orange in the drawer and blew out the candle, making sure Marco's peaceful face was the last thing he saw.
A baby's cry woke Jean the next morning. For a moment, he was back at home, in his room, and the neighbors' baby was once again waking him. Then he opened his eyes, and he was at training camp.
Wait… a baby at training camp?
Jean rolled over to see if the noise had also woken Marco, but his best friend wasn't in bed. In his place was a rumpled pile of sheets, wriggling suspiciously and emitting childlike, hiccupping sobs. The other trainees were rubbing their bleary eyes and looking around, unaware of Marco's absence. Another wail sounded from Marco's bed, and Jean got up warily to investigate.
When he pulled back the sheet, he was met by two wide brown eyes – Marco's eyes. His mouth, open in mid-cry, suddenly relaxed into a baby-toothed grin and his teary eyes crinkled at the corners.
"Marco?" Jean asked.
"Sean!" The baby said, lisping the pronunciation of 'Jean.' His mouth opened in shock, and Marco giggled. Jean reached down to lift the baby into his arms. To his surprise, Marco put his chubby, freckled hands on the sides of Jean's face and planted a smacking kiss right on his lips. "Pretty Sean!"
Blushing, Jean quickly set him back down on the bed. By now, the other trainees of the 104th squad had crowded around.
"BIRDIE!" Marco yelled as Bertholdt leaned in for a better view. "Up HIGH, Birdie! Up high!" Bert looked around at the others, sweating nervously.
"You'd better do what the kid says," Reiner said, not even bothering to supress his smile. Ever-so-gingerly, Bert lifted the child into his arms.
"Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!" Marco's glee abruptly stopped when Bert brought him to rest, holding him gently but firmly against his chest. "Higher, Birdie!" If his sweat levels were any indicator of his inner state, Bert was getting more and more nervous by the second.
"Maybe you should take him, Reiner."
"No!" the child said firmly. "I want up HIGH. Pleeeeeeeease?" Marco's bottom lip began to tremble and his eyes widened to an impossible level of spurned cuteness, and Bert had to relent. After cajoling Bert into holding him with his arms fully extended over his head (no amount of pleading could convince Bert to toss him up in the air), Marco began giggling so fiercely that he began to cough, and Bert handed him back to Jean. Jean decided to let him totter around on the bed for a while so they could discuss his condition, but in his younger state he was so cute that for the most part, they couldn't take their eyes off of him.
Unused to walking on the springy surface of the bed, Marco tottered and tumbled. On one such perilous episode particularly close to the edge of the bed, he toppled directly into Reiner's arms. One look at the vast, muscly expanse of Reiner's chest told him that Reiner could crush him like sour fruit and that this was not a happy place to be, and he began to wail.
"Not want Why-ner! Too big! Want down! Want doooooowwwnnnn!"
Crestfallen, Reiner replaced Marco on the bed. He immediately tottered to Jean's side. Safe in the confines of Jean's arms, Marco buried his head in his hands, immediately peeking through his fingers at Reiner. Reiner stared at his knees, betraying almost no sign of how upset he was at the baby's rejection. Almost no sign, but his bottom lip was set nearly unnoticeably into a pout.
"Why-ner?" Reiner pushed his lip out even more, turning his expression comical. "Why-ner?" With a dramatic sweep of his hand, Reiner wiped away an imaginary tear. "Don't cry, Why-ner." A few fake sniffles later, Marco was carefully tottering back to Reiner's side, laying one chubby hand on his arm. "Why-ner not cry." When this failed to produce results, Marco climbed back into his lap and bestowed another one of his tiny kisses, this time to Reiner's cheek. "Why-ner NOT cry."
Seconds later, Reiner was bouncing the child on his knee, both of them giggling.
"What's this?" Marco asked, pointing just above Reiner's eyeball.
"What?"
"THIS," Marco reiterated, poking insistently at his face.
"That's er, my eyebrow…"
"Pretty," Marco decided, and settled comfortably into Reiner's arms, tracing his finger repeatedly over his arching brow.
"He is so freaking cute," Connie said from his seat on the other end of the bed.
"Yes, but what happened to him?" Eren asked. He'd been sitting on his bunk since waking up and seeing the baby. He instinctively looked to Armin for an explanation.
"Isn't today Marco's birthday?" Armin said.
"Yeah, but we didn't turn into babies on our birthdays. I don't see what that has to do with it," Eren replied.
"Connie's right though. He is really cute…" At the sound of Jean's voice, Marco crawled out of Reiner's arms and struggled over to him.
"I haveta tell you a secret." He pulled Jean's head down and cupped his tiny hands around his ear. Then, in a very audible whisper, "My tummy is hungry." There was a grumbling sound from the region of his stomach. "See? It's telling you so."
Thinking of the orange, Jean knew if he pulled it out now he'd have to share slices with everyone in the barracks.
"He needs food, guys."
"Shadis will see him if we go out there," Armin said.
"We'll just have to hope for the best, I guess," Jean said.
So they adopted a formation. Jean, of course, took center, hiding the baby under his coat ("So cozy, Sean"). Reiner led in the hope that his massive frame would shield Jean completely from the view of anyone they encountered. Eren and Bertholdt formed an honor guard on either side to further conceal Jean, and Armin and Connie took up the rear. Thomas and Mylius scouted some distance ahead, with Nac standing by to run any messages from them back to the main Marco Protection Unit. The rest followed a few steps behind, ready to form any sort of distraction occasion could require.
"I'll bet whatever he has is contagious," Daz moaned from the back of the group. "We're all doomed."
"Shut it, Daz," Franz said. He elbowed the elderly adolescent in the ribs. "You look like you could afford to drop some years, you wrinkly old fart. Lighten up."
A few moments later, Nac came running back from around a corner.
"We have to retreat. Thomas and Mylius ran into Mikasa. They're nervous and acting weird. She knows something's up. We have to hide." But there was no time. She rounded the corner mere seconds later. The first thing that she noticed was Eren standing unusually close to Jean.
But Eren hates Jean, she thought. Something was definitely not right.
"What's going on?" and then, noticing that every boy of the 104th trainees squad were present except for one, "Where's Marco?"
"Here I am!" he cried exultantly, popping his head and both arms out the top of Jean's jacket. "Hi, Mikasa!"
"Marco?!"
"Yep!" he waved his small freckled arm at her.
"What happened to him?"
Jean sighed wearily. "We're not entirely sure." As he was relating the morning's events, Marco leaned up to whisper in his ear. Obeying the orders given him, Jean set the child down. Marco ran over to Mikasa, his bare feet slap-slapping on the grass and his oversized shirt (the one he'd worn to bed the previous night when he was much older) flapping in the wind.
As soon as he was hoisted up into her arms, Marco took hold of the stray lock of hair dangling between her eyebrows and gave it a good, sound yank.
"Ow!" Luckily, Mikasa did not drop the child in shock and pain. Instead she prised the small fingers from her hair and said, "Marco, that HURT. Don't do that again."
"Sorry." Because he looked appropriately abashed, Mikasa did not set him down. "Won't do it again." He tucked the hair behind her left ear. "Too pretty to hide behind hair," he said authoritatively.
"You know, we won't be able to hide him from Shadis forever," Mikasa said. A growl from Marco's stomach backed up her statement and she looked reprovingly at Jean. "He needs breakfast."
They entered the mess hall with Marco happily enthroned on Reiner's shoulders, Bert having flatly refused this burden for fear of dropping the child. All the girls save for Mikasa had already taken their seats, and Marco waved proudly down at them.
"What is that," Shadis demanded. "Which of you thought it would be funny to bring your little brother to MILITARY TRAINING CAMP of all places?"
The situation had to be explained to him in full, with the girls gathered around in the hopes that this was the last time the story would be relayed. Marco sat on Krista's lap, burbling in delight while she spoon-fed him porridge.
Like any self-respecting military camp leader presiding over a flock of immature adolescents, Shadis immediately assumed a brilliant hoax was in place.
"So this is really Marco," he said sarcastically. "Of course it is. Your friend woke up as a baby today." There was an ominous pause. "DO YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT?! I'll find the Bodt boy and you can bet there will be punishment for this little joke… punishment in such abundance it'll rival the amount of cow shit in these fields and the amount of HORSE SHIT-" he paused for breath "THAT YOU ALL MUST HAVE FOR BRAINS IF YOU THINK I'M GOING TO BELIEVE YOU."
At this, Marco absolutely erupted into tears, giving such a performance even Shadis' ire dimmed in comparison. Scooping up the child, he whisked him out of the room, slamming the door behind them. A muffled, "AND IF EVEN ONE OF YOU MORONS HAS MOVED SO MUCH AS A MUSCLE WHEN I GET BACK IN THERE, THERE WON'T BE ANY MEALS FOR THE REST OF THE DAY." Sasha paled and Connie patted her on the arm.
In the boys barracks, clutched in Shadis' arms while he frantically searched for an older version of the cherubic child, Marco was not happy.
"Sadis. AM Mah-co. Please put down. Want to play with big kids." Shadis paid him no heed. Finally, patient though he was, Marco had had enough. He took hold of Shadis' beard and tugged his head down. "Sadis. YOU go look for Mah-co. I want to play with the big kids."
"Absolutely not. Immature teenagers. They'll drop you on your head."
There was only one thing left to do.
Approximately fifty seconds later, Shadis stormed into the mess hall and deposited a fiercely wailing Marco on Jean's lap. Raking an 'I-dare-you-to-say-I-let-this-child-bend-my-will' glare over the trainees, he stomped wordlessly back out into the morning sun.
The door had not been closed for a full minute before Marco's eyes crinkled into a smile and his burbling laugh filled the room. "Tricked him."
"Can I hold him, Jean?" Krista asked.
"No." Ymir immediately sat down beside Krista, throwing her legs across her lap. "First of all, you're cute, and he's cute, and that's – " She removed her legs to look Krista in the eyes, " – too much cuteness. We'll all be killed. But hey, if you really want someone in your lap, I guess I could try and help you out…"
Sasha was taking advantage of being confined to the mess hall. She had three potatoes, raw actually, spread out before her and was sizing them up, trying to figure out which one to eat first. Connie was behind the counter in the kitchen, rifling through several drawers.
"Here, eat this," he said, returning with some bread. "I bet it'll taste better than raw potatoes, you weirdo."
Sasha was on the verge of sinking her teeth into the loaf when she felt an insistent tugging on her sleeve.
"Want," Marco said.
"Haha, good luck with that, Marco." Connie laughed. "She'll never give up even a crumb." He turned around and sauntered back towards the kitchen. "I'll try and find you something else."
"WANT," Marco repeated. Around Sasha and the child, jaws were dropping. Sasha had paused, mid-bite. She was looking nervously at the child. Her hand began to shake as she pulled it away from her mouth and handed it down to him. He smiled angelically in return. He was just taking his first bite in when Connie came back and dropped the small cup of milk he'd been holding. It shattered on the floor, a cacophony of shattering china in the dead silence.
"Did… he…? She… gave him the bread?"
"His eyes… they got all big and… I don't know what happened I just… had to." Sasha stared in horror at the child on her lap, eating what was supposed to be her snack. "He has superpowers…."
"Thanks, Sasha." And then he placed a sloppy, crumb-filled kiss on her cheek. "You can have a bite if you want." But she could only bring herself to take the tiniest of nibbles.
After this there commenced among the trainees a very complex discussion of Marco's predicament. They'd been debating for twenty minutes over whether it was magic or a time skip or some fissure opening up in the fabric of space before they noticed Marco, who had been sitting on a chair beside Jean and swinging his legs while he listened, was gone. They checked under the chair, under the table, under every other table, and finally Mina poked her head out of the slightly ajar doorway. She smiled.
"Found them!" she said quietly. "Come see. But… shh."
On the front steps of the mess hall were Annie and Marco.
"But Annie, I wanna play. I wanna go outside and play."
"Shadis said we can't go outside. We have to wait for him to get back. You don't want him to get in trouble, do you?"
"Wanna play." A frown darkened his features.
"Well, we can't. But we can sit here and listen to the birdies. If Shadis comes back we'll just run inside quick. Is that an okay compromise?"
"Comp-mise." Marco settled happily into her arms, keeping his eyes fixed on her face. She stared off into the distance for some time before she became aware of the scrutiny.
"What's up, big guy?"
"Pretty Annie." He reached up and tapped the end of her nose with his finger. "Boop." Annie couldn't help her smile, nor could she help her laugh. Her normally narrowed eyes widened in happiness.
"Thank you, tiny gentleman." The sound of Shadis tearing through the men's bathroom in the building beside them made Annie cringe. "Time to go back inside!" She very nearly barreled straight into the little crowd gathered behind the door, still stunned into immobility by the impossibly rare sound of Annie's laughter.
"What are you guys staring at?" she asked. Marco yawned colossally. "The kid's tired," she said, dumping him unceremoniously back into Jean's arms. He surrendered happily and wrapped his arms tightly around Jean's neck.
"Wanna bedtime story." Jean had barely opened his mouth when he said "Not you. Want Armin to tell it. From his book." Armin's feeble protests were completely ignored.
"Please read him the story?"
"I wouldn't mind hearing a story too, now that you mention it."
"Come on, Armin! For the team!"
The book he was carrying was about different types of metal and their suitability for anti-titan warfare. However, in the interests of pleasing Marco, he spread it open on his lap and began reciting a tale told to him by his own parents in his early childhood, a story about a little boy with freckles who grew wings and flew over the walls and over the mountains, over the sea and over the deserts, describing each of these places in minute detail, for Marco had of course never heard of a desert. His voice went deep when Marco met the sea serpent, and everyone around him imagined a majestic creature bigger than any titan and a thousand times nicer. He let Marco give the voice of the hero, adapting the story to fit what Marco said. He spoke in the high tones of a pink bird called a flamingo while Marco was hacking his way through the jungle. Finally, Marco's eyes began to droop and Jean had to provide the voice. By the time Marco landed back among his family and friends to tell them the incredible story, he was fast asleep.
The rest of the day passed much in the manner of the morning. Marco woke up about an hour after falling asleep to play with the rest of the trainees (except Daz, who wouldn't come anywhere near him), being entertained by their wild ideas for games like 'Pass the potato.' In this particular game, Marco was the potato and Sasha was hungry, so the trainees ran around the room, passing him to one another to keep him away. When she caught him, she said "I'm going to eat you up," and tickled him until he got a tummy ache from laughing.
Shadis came back as the sun was going down. "It seems Marco is better at hiding than I thought possible. I'm too tired to properly admonish you tonight. Everyone back to your barracks. Bedtime without dinner today. And please, for the love of god, put that kid back where he came from."
Having spent the day in the mess hall with nearly unlimited access to food, no one except Sasha was upset by the prospect of missing what would amount to their seventh meal of the day. However, as Jean carried Marco back to his bunk and the other trainees hustled off for evening showers and tooth-brushing, he knew it was time to give him his birthday present.
"Close your eyes," he said. "Time for your present!"
"Present!" Marco wiggled excitedly. Jean pressed the orange into his tiny hands. "BALL!" he screamed, and was on the point of flinging it to the floor to see if it bounced when Jean scooped it up and began to peel it. Marco's lips puckered. "You broke the ball…."
"I didn't break it! It's food! Open up! Here comes the airplane!" and he popped a slice of fruit into Marco's mouth.
The orange lasted all of five minutes. With juice dribbling down their chins, they snuggled together on Marco's bunk. "Not leave. Not go over there, not sleep over there. Stay. Not want monsters to get me. Sean can get the monsters." The other trainees did not disturb the two sleepers when they came back, although Reiner did fuss over making sure they were properly tucked in.
Jean awoke with something terribly heavy on top of him.
"Good morning, Jean." Marco's eyes twinkled down at him. "Thanks for my present yesterday. It was delicious."
Marco was lying on top of him, fully grown and, to Jean's embarrassment, still dressed only in the shirt he'd worn to bed. Keeping his eyes firmly on the freckled face of his best friend, he couldn't help but smile back.
"That was the best birthday I've ever had. Although waking up like this – " he made a sweeping motion with his hand to indicate how Jean was trapped beneath him, "– definitely beats yesterday. And how about another kiss?"
"MARCO!"