Author's Note: Some might recognize this from my other story, Again, but that was more of an idea I scratched out before posting. I decided to actually make it into a story, a little side project to clear out some ideas while I focus on my other fics. First chapter can be read as a oneshot. Please enjoy!
Rating: T
Warning: Violence, gore, reincarnation AU, OOCness, reincarnation, swearing, Jean-centric, yaoi, slow updates, Jeanmarco
Summary: Jean is a skeptic through and through. He doesn't believe in karma or god or reincarnation – he's too busy fighting a war and surviving – but when he wakes up to a world he doesn't remember living in, the heartache is enough proof for him. Jeanmarco, reincarnation AU.
Prologue
Jean's twenty six when he dies, caught in a titans maw in an effort to save another, and he doesn't feel anything but regret that he won't be around to see the end of this war, won't be able to live and make Marco proud.
He's twenty-six, but he feels like he's two hundred and sixty instead. Years of leading good soldiers to death and personally visiting once happy families to deliver bad news (and sometimes body parts) will do that to a person, he reflects sardonically. Those trips are never pretty, and usually, they end with him heaping more guilt onto his shoulders.
He doesn't remember that being part of the job description when he reluctantly agrees, despite his reservations and disbelief (who would follow him into battle?) to co-command the Survey Corps with Armin once the Commander passed away, naively believing he'd gotten the better end of the deal as a field leader – he hates politics with a passion and Armin has always been better at talking circles around the Capitol anyway – but he always knew there was a reason for the lines on a once-young Erwin's face at the end of every day. Five years later, he sees the same lines on his own face, pale and drawn, when he has to write another letter of condolences and apologies and things he still feels as sharply and clearly as the first time a man died under his command.
Armin still says what Historia used to say (until Ymir went down, taking over a dozen titans with her; then she never said anything at all).
That it's bad for him to pile on the guilt.
That he shouldn't take the deaths personally.
That he's a role model all soldiers look up to.
He's their strongest now, after all. As strategic and resolute as Commader Erwin Smith, as fierce and swift as Lance Corporal Levi, as strong and fearsome as Mikasa Ackerman, as inspirational and determined as Eren Jaeger, he embodied the ideals and strengths of his comrades and mentors before him.
Each death is a crushing blow to moral and survival, so he does what a friend once told him he excelled in.
He assesses the best course of action and relates to the soldiers, urging and pushing for everyone to keep moving forward despite the grief of losing another battle, another friend. He's not quite as successful or charismatic as Eren (the admission still stokes the fire of competitiveness their rivalry has always burned in him, and he wonders if it's strange to find comfort in a dead man but figures he's long past caring anyway), but with Armin's calculative intelligence and cunning manipulation coupled with his own brutal honesty and brash overconfidence, the world keeps spinning and they keep fighting. Until now.
Sorry Armin. Keep those idiots in line for me.
The apology flashes through his mind like quicksilver, but he refuses to cower between the titans teeth, sparing a thought to haunt the cowardly bastards hiding within Wall Sina.
This was a suicide mission from the start – all Survey Corps missions were, really – but he knows he went too far nearly a year ago when he stood up to the higher-ups in the Capitol for their treatment of their citizens and the soldiers under his command as well as the Garrison and Military Police. The idiots truly believed he had been trying for a rebellion within the walls, had believed it for several years when he became a well-known figure, and had made attempts to have him removed from his post or executed for all the power and support he had supposedly engrossed. Darias Zackley, Commander in Chief and controller of all three military factions, had done nothing of the sort, especially when he'd had the foresight to know where the lines would be drawn if a true rebellion were to occur, nevermind the absolute anarchy that would rise at the unjustified death of the make-believe "revolution's" leader. Even Armin had commented, quietly with a dark, pensive expression that contrasted greatly with his kind disposition, "A new beginning," but Jean never quite understood the cryptic words.
Unfortunately, within the last few weeks, Zackley had mysteriously passed of 'natural' causes and another had risen to his status under the Capitols thumb. Jean never bothered to remember the mans name – why should he waste time on a coward that didn't have his respect? – but he wishes he did now so he could curse him with every fiber of his being.
There was too much shouting and fighting, but through the blood roaring in his ears, he swears he hears his name being called by a voice he hasn't heard in nearly a decade, and he smiles through the blood.
The research team, once lead by Squad Captain Hanji Zoe and taken over by two of her loyal prodigies, had made great advancements in human technology that Jean had personally taken an interest in (longer ranged weapons, biochemical warfare, compounds that only targeted a titans physical composition) by testing new gear for them and using their equipment on the field.
His hand closes over the newest one, and he gives his last command.
"Retreat!"
Moments later, when his soldiers are a safe distance away and he's conscious enough to draw all the titans in the area towards him by shouting obscenities and avoiding death for a few seconds longer, an explosion rocks the earth and incinerates every titan within a two-mile radius.
Jean's twenty-six when he dies, co-Commander of the Survey Corps and one of their best and brightest soldiers, and even though he doesn't feel anything but regret that he won't see the end of this war, he knows he lived well and made Marco proud.
Author's Note: Short but hopefully this will develop more in the next chapter, if I can scrounge up enough ideas for it. Reviews and faves are greatly appreciated! Might end up as a oneshot anyway, so I'll change the summary then.