Soot, dark red clay and grass stains spotted up his pant legs. His breath was heavy. The dirt smudged on his unshaven face and sun-burnt scalp that stung whenever he so much as lifted a hand to scratch it. His canvas boots were lodged with cracked mud and stray blades of prickled weeds that he had tossed aside and somehow walked back over.
This was what Jean looked like after his endless days in the fields, lumbering home just after the sunset had turned a kind of reddish and started down the faraway wall. His hair was matted to his sweaty forehead. His steps were shaky and uneven, tense and wavering after so many hours of hard labor that, no matter the time that he had dedicated, he could never really get used to.
The crisp money that rested in his stained pockets made it all worth it, at the very least. It meant more food, warmer clothes for the winter, and (most importantly) medicine.
Though as exhausted as Jean was, he walked quickly, practically shoving himself in-between the thinning crowds of workers coming home and members of the garrison laden with 3D gear that made people sacrifice at least half of the sidewalk for them.
Whenever those soldiers passed him by, Jean wrenched his eyes away from them and tried not to look. It still hurt to even so much as look.
Not that the memories were painful, just the thought of wasting his life for something that he never really got a chance to pursue was enough to make Jean look away and cringe. He didn't like that rush of relief that he got, that sickening and bubbling selfish impulse that he should have thanked his lucky stars that he wasn't there any longer.
What was even worse was that he recognized their faces, at least some of them. They didn't have the same roundish plump youthful look that they had all had as recruits those years back, but tense and set. Their names were lost to him, but they still smiled and waved whenever they passed him by on the cobblestone road.
Jean would wave back, but he would never look them in the eye.
The streets were so much emptier nowadays, with so many people out on the walls and so little time to repopulate all who had been lost those years ago. And maybe that was a good thing. More people only meant more mouths to feed, after all.
As the sun crept lower and lower and hid itself behind the Trost wall, so Jean kept walking. The houses were all the same here, built compactly and so tightly together that there was scarcely any room for whatever else might have dotted the town squares. It was a shame, too, as so many of those houses had been standing vacant for so long.
It was no wonder that he and Marco had been able to get one, and with just the skin of Marco's slim pension.
In the middle of one of the eastern streets was that house, looking just like the others with its slate grey finish and rigged shingles. There was a porch out front, just big enough for two chairs and a tiny table at most, but enough for them.
Jean quickened his pace when the house was in sight, his fabric shoes slapping loud against the smooth cobble.
There, sitting on the porch like always, was Marco, bundled up in his wheelchair with the hideous patchwork quilt that his mother wove for him lodged about his lap. He had not noticed Jean coming up, what with the heavy book in his lap and his one hand pressing on the spine to keep it set on the page. His clothes were soft and loose, but stained at the front. Many of them were.
His empty right arm and pant sleeves hung down across the metal grating of his wheels. He was leaning to his right, unstable, but with the tip of his chin just buried underneath his collar, and the 'bad' side of his face well-hidden from any onlookers.
Jean knew that Marco did such a thing on purpose whenever he was taken outside, as much as Marco denied otherwise. It wasn't even a matter of self-consciousness over the webbing of pinkish scars and bald splotches that swept over the right side of his scalp, nor the canyons of broken dead flesh that had yet to be taken away from the side of his face.
Marco didn't care about any of that. He only cared about the way that his nephew shrank away from him whenever his sister visited, eyes wide and brimmed with terror as Marco would beg, plead for him not be scared.
And when they inevitably left early, Jean could swear that he had never seen his 'friend' look more utterly heartbroken and inconsolable.
As Jean edged his way up the porch steps, Marco wrenched his eye from his book and gave him a half-smile. "Welcome home!" His voice was light and tired, just from sitting. It must have been a bad day for him.
Jean crossed the porch way and grabbed for the other chair, tugging it along close to Marco's and ignoring the way that its sharp legs scratched at the oaken boards. "Hey." He settled down next to Marco's 'good' side and reached for his hand. "Doing alright?"
Marco didn't lift his head to face Jean. It was hard for him to move his neck, but he glanced down and let his softened fingers weave through Jean's calloused ones. "Alright, I suppose… Pa came over today instead of Ma for a little while." His cheery smile faltered. "He didn't stay for too long though, just enough to get me to the bathroom and get some food."
"He got your medicine too, right?" Jean asked. He stroked the bed of his thumb against the back of Marco's hand in little circles. "All of it?"
"I think so, yeah." Marco closed his eye and tried to shift his shoulder to the side, just to roll his head closer to Jean's. "He had me put most of it on myself, though. It was kinda hard without a mirror." He smiled and chuckled, but his laughter sounded more like a series of harsh gasps than anything else. "I guess I should have just swallowed my pride and asked for help, but I dunno… "
Jean curled his free hand about Marco's half-scarred forehead. "You know you're kind of warm right now. Sure you're feeling okay?" he asked.
Marco's head was lolled to his side. Jean pressed the hollow of his palm against the back of his neck and gently lifted it erect and turned it towards him.
And Marco's face, at least what was left of it, was red with shame. He kept his one eye down, the deepened socket of where the other should have been stared back at him, yawning blackness and giving way to packets of tough scarring and matted skin that had taken so many hours a day to keep clean.
His lips could only frown half-way, the rest being too paralyzed to so much as twitch. "I'm so sorry," he said. His eye was watering, spilling over the last bit of smooth, freckled skin that he had left. "You look so worn out and here I am complaining. Again."
"I'm not worn out," Jean lied, "but you know you say that everyday, right? You got your own shit that you have to sift through." He kept one hand firmly about Marco's neck, just to support him while the other reached to pet at his mangled brow and swipe away the tears.
Marco licked at his lips, wincing as his tongue grazed over the edges of his exposed flesh. "I know," he said. He glanced up at Jean's face, then back down to the frayed ends of his coarse work shirt. "But so do you. I know that this isn't what you wanted." His bitter smile cracked up the side of his face. "It can't be what you wanted."
"Don't be so sure, you know?" Jean brushed away Marco's bangs and let his palm rest atop the 'good' side of his scalp, the part that Marco could actually feel. "I don't mind taking care of you, Marco."
No, he didn't. If it meant running away from those gore splattered rooftops and roughened walls, Jean would have done anything at that point. Marco was, as he would ever be loath to admit, his ultimate excuse for an honorable discharge.
And that was where the guilt came in, for both of them, two cowards turning tail when the other couldn't fight for any longer.
Marco didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to be said, but he did look up at Jean's eyes and tried to smile in that broken, floppy way of his.
Jean knew that Marco could read him like a book, could see the stress lines that had started to form in the corners of his eyes, could pinpoint just how depressing or awful the fields had been one particular day just by that bare red tint that would settle into his rheumy eyes.
That sense of constant exposure and nakedness had always bothered him. Sometimes, on his worst days, Jean almost felt as if he was just emotionally tugged along whatever train he needed to be on to keep Marco content, just to keep him sane in a world that despised the crippled.
"Jean?"
Jean shook his head, cracked a smile, wrinkled at the edges, and leaned in to press his bleeding lips against the tip of Marco's nose. "It's nothing," he said, and let the side of his cheek rest against his. "Nothing at all."
As twilight darkened into dusk, Marco took up his one hand and looped it about Jean's waist, digging his fingers into the dirty cloth. "If you're sure… but you can talk to me if something's bothering you, you know that, right?"
Jean knew, and as he wheeled Marco back into the bare rooms of their house, smeared waxy paste onto his shriveled scars, hoisted him onto their bed and unbuttoned his clothes, he never spoke at all.
When night came, and when a storm had settled in, Jean kept a firm arm about Marco's shaking chest.
The thunder sounded like the footsteps of a titan to him, Marco had admitted. Wasn't he so silly?
"But really, Jean, you need to get some sleep," he had said, amidst his own shivering and Jean's neverending caressing at his side.
But Jean never stopped, kept going, kept caring, and with the tip of his finger would lightly trace the map of pink scars that ran all over Marco's body. It was all that could really, honestly distract him from just how warped his life had become.
'Warped' was a good, neutral word.