Chapter 1: Prologue
"See, the luck I've had
Can make a good man
Turn bad
So please, please, please
Let me get what I want
This time"
- The Smiths
"Man, this life sucks…Had I known, I should've told her…"
In retrospect, it seemed somewhat inappropriate. Sitting on the rooftop in Trost, out of gas and out of time, the baked clay tiles squeaking under the rubber soles of his boots, he should have been thinking about his family, the people of his hometown. Instead, he was thinking about her. He was always thinking about her.
Besides, he hated those sons-of-bitches from his hometown. For living in a relatively populous district town, they all still behaved like a bunch of country bumpkins. He wasn't like them—he never was, but now especially he was certain he had set himself apart. He graduated 6th in his class. Soon he'd be living in the interior—well-fed, surrounded by bourgeoisie comforts and urbane citizens endowed at birth with effortless savoir faire. The people of Trost would become a distant memory, and so would any thought of him ever being one of them. That's what he kept telling himself anyway.
He lay in bed a night, his thoughts constantly alternating between two things—the rueful victory he would soon have over his humble beginnings…and her. He was aware, despite being 1st in their class, that she had no intention of joining the Military Police. Surely she'd be following that idiot Yeager into the Scout Regiment. It was another thing Jean despised Eren for—the fact that Mikasa would likely perish at a young age as a direct result of joining the Scouts, which, of course, she would not be doing were it not for Eren.
But knowing this, Jean had yet to deal with the reality that, in a few short days, he and Mikasa Ackerman would join different regiments and go their separate ways. The Military Police rarely operated outside of Sina, and the Scouts spent all their time venturing outside. There was no realistic expectation that their paths would ever cross again, and the idea was so gut-wrenching, he had blotted it from his mind entirely.
But now, the gas was gone out of his tanks and the ground had run out from under his feet. He had to simultaneously face both certain death and the idea that, in the unlikely event of his survival, he would be bidding an unceremonious farewell to the only person on the planet he ever looked forward to seeing.
He hated life. He hated Trost. He hated everything and everyone. Everything in life was stupid to him. But he liked her. In fact, he thought maybe he loved her. He'd never been in love before, so it was hard to know. He just knew, in his young life, he'd never felt this way before. And if he survived today he knew he would soon feel something entirely new: a broken heart.
He'd resigned himself to that from the start. The umbilical cord between she and Yeager didn't stretch far enough to allow him to squeeze in between them, and he had no earthly idea how to go about cutting it. He supposed only Eren could do that. Still, you don't choose who you love, and his agony was too blissful, too tantalizing to deny. So he swam in it, swam deep and freely, and enjoyed it while he could, knowing afterward his heart would harden and dry out forever like the pit of a fleshy fruit, smashed on the cobblestone, left out in the sun.
But that didn't happen. He survived Trost and joined the Scouts. Not even for her. He'd done it for himself. He wanted to be a worthy person. That's the best way he could think to explain his decision. In spite of the status he would gain, he suspected somewhere deep down that joining the Military Police would make him hate himself in the end. And since he hated most things, it didn't seem like he could afford to hate himself.
Although his choice had ultimately been unrelated to his desire to be near her, Jean made a deal with himself on the ride over to the abandoned castle that was to be Squad Levi's new homebase, on the 104th cadet corps' first day in the Scout Regiment: assuming he and Mikasa were both still alive in six months and he hadn't worked up the nerve sooner, he'd tell her everything.
A/N: I cannot believe I'm starting a new multi-chapter fic when I've been so horribly neglectful of my others, but here we are. Something came over me yesterday, and I realized I had fully crossed over from being an Eremika shipper, and had hopped firmly onto the Jeankasa train. I think it was the Jeankasa hug from the 2nd Escape from Certain Death teaser that pushed me over the edge. I find Jeankasa to be a woefully underrepresented couple, and I intend to mine this ship for all of its worth. Enjoy! Read and review!