A/N: I don't know what it is but it's about Jean and Marco and it's sad so read at your own risk
we're always falling
It's the sensation of falling that hits first.
Time is dangling off the wall behind him and blood is dripping from the ceiling and the ground beneath him is wet, damp grass but he's falling and falling along with groundless fears and accusations and guilt and oh god oh god please somebody help me i don't want to die alone-
There was a story once. A story about two boys, chasing their dreams. Not beyond the walls, no, never beyond the walls (because he damn well knew that ambition and idiocy were separated only by a single tightrope, frayed with wear and tear and countless countless tears). Their dreams were manageable, well within reach, and perhaps that was what made them more cruel than even the stupidest, craziest, desires.
His head hurts. There's a pounding resonance of jeanjeanjean and bloody hell is it irritating. He thinks numbly of wings and wonders if he could fly; fly off to a world where he could be free, free to map countless freckles stars across a never-ending body sky.
But there are no wings. Instead, his ears ring and the right side of his body aches and he closes his eyes to drown it out.
(maybe he's not cut out for flying after all)
He can go back, back before grief and anger and self-loathing. Go back to when there was only numbness. Numbness and a disbelief so deeply embedded in his chest that it twisted and pulled and tugged until he would have torn open his chest to remove it if he could.
He can go back even further, when his heart was whole and grief was a mere afterthought hastily scribbled onto the margins of his life. He could, but he wouldn't, for if grief was once an afterthought guilt is now a title, big and bold, on the cover page, a sprawling monologue scrawled neatly and precisely on each worthless page.
(marco was right-handed. it lessened the guilt a little.)
Jean Kirschtein is was will forever be a coward. The cracks that now define his heart have changed, but he himself hasn't. He thinks it's for the better; when it's his time to go, the ticking of the clock will not have reduced him to a being so foreign that he will never be recognised by the most important people.
What does the world look like when you can only see half of it?
Happiness is relative. In war it's unnecessary, a motivation at best and a regret at worst.
He doesn't know how to define it, the elusive nonentity called happiness. He can laugh and smile, form the word with a pressing of lips and a hiss of breath, but happy is a question mark used to poke fun at him and laugh at his misfortune.
Maybe he was happy once. Maybe happiness had been there all along, behind him as he trailed after red scarves and supporting him even when he was being a complete idiot. Maybe he'd always been happy; he just never noticed.
When the bandages come off and the blood stops trickling, he'll awake and pick up his weapons and get back to work. He'll kill titans and hunt down traitors and try to stay alive.
Perhaps that will be his whole life; perhaps he won't even have a whole life to think about. With bad luck, he might very well be trampled by a giant stinking titan foot next week (it's a job hazard).
But as the blood is evaporating off his clothes and he zips through the air like some crazed projectile from hell, he thinks about smiles and skies and stars and dreams that could have been.
He's falling and falling and he knows he could never be happier.
(it's a bitter feeling)
