"Arlert!" Jean called from inside the wagon. The day was particularly grim and cloudy today. The sun had disappeared yesterday behind the wall of rolling grey and the residual warmth from the hotter days had faded. The cold and dull weather had done nothing to ease Jean's almost constant annoyance from his company.

Armin had stopped them at scattering of brick, thatched rectangles someone had apparently dubbed a village. After a night of coarse bedding and lying on the hard wagon wood it felt like the world itself was out to irritate him as much as possible. He was definitely grateful for the ride because he knew that it would have been infinitely harder to get there but...

"You're just wasting time!" he yelled in the direction of the nearest house.

"Excuse me, Mr Kirschtein was it?" began Renata, the woman travelling with Armin. She had the unhealthy frame of someone who looked stretched but Jean never had the same level of intimidation over her as he had Armin.

Jean glanced up and arched an eyebrow. "Yes?" he said irritably. Armin was careful. Too careful. Renata knew as well as he did that Armin had almost cost them their schedule numerous times yet only ever seemed to find fault with him.

She pulled a pair of glasses from a tangle of beige-like hair and polished them unnecessarily on her shirt as she spoke. "I understand that you are here as a measure of security. However, you do not have the authority to question the work of either Mr Arlert or myself. If you continue I will have to..."

"Leave me here? I know, so I apologise," he lied. Renata did not look convinced but fortunately she never bothered to press any further. Sometimes he wondered if she was trying to exercise power, not that Jean really had any high horse.

"Everything is wrought with human error so it is normal for the time taken to fluctuate every so often." Her words were unnaturally framed in an attempt to sound formal which really didn't suit her very childish voice. Although, to be honest, nothing about her fitted together well. Her voice with her nature, her frame with her hair, her wide eyes and thin lips. Renata was not an attractive woman in Jean's opinion which made her fickleness even more grating.

Jean scanned the nearby area. There was no clock tower so she couldn't tell how long Armin had been gone. If there had been one it would have stood out like the king's clothes in Trost amongst the bare fields and dirt road stretching the big patch of nothing between the nearest towns. Jean had read Armin and Renata's orders so he was pretty sure that they weren't obligated to stop at every hamlet they passed.

He shuffled to the side and readjusted himself but couldn't ignore the two lines he felt engraved into his back after leaning against the short wooden fence for so long. Jean threw himself to his feet and muttered a makeshift excuse for the other supervisor he didn't really care about. With a moment of staggering around on needling legs, Jean clambered over the ledge and jumped down to the dusty earth below. The thin grass already looked like it had been stampeded so he wasn't going to lose any sleep over ruining what he was told was someone's lawn.

A door was ajar so he followed that inside to small shop. The shelves were old and stacked with precarious glass jars which convinced Jean to keep to the centre of the room instead of risking the sides. Armin was listening to the apron-clad man standing behind the desk. If his wild hand gestures said anything, it was clear to Jean it was a heated discussion, albeit one-sided.

"...winter all those years back. Arthur is still swearing by it! I don't think none of fields really ever recover'd from it, y'know? More an' more people in the towns an' all want to keep givin' 'em food so we have to bend over backwards over 'ere!"

Armin nodded and made a small sound of interest but it sounded to Jean like a panicked hostage. He rolled his eyes, the shopkeeper too involved in his own story to have noticed Jean yet, and reached for the blonde's arm.

"Mr Arlert. We have to leave now," he said with an air of convincing importance.

The shopkeeper glowered, obviously angered at the interruption, but Jean's blank face allowed him to get away with ignoring the man. Armin's expression wavered but Jean tugged harder on his arm and pulled him out of the shop with little possible resistance.

"If you hear out every sob story in Wall Rose we're not going to get anywhere in time!" Jean hissed quietly to Armin as they passed the threshold back into the dull chill.

Armin started to worm out of Jean's hold so the soldier let go. It was better than seeing the civilian's pathetic attempt. "I know that. But the less connected towns," Jean raised an eyebrow at the glaringly inaccurate term, "are being left by the wayside. It may not be a part of my current job but these are the exact situations I want to be able to improve."

Brown eyes narrowed at the blue. "You can do that when you get to it. For now, let's not waste time for no reason. You've got to get to the edge of Wall Maria before the show starts. A week or not, I'm not sure anymore whether you're going to make it. For goodness sake, there's a time and place for side jobs!"

"I'm sure," Armin replied simply.

He walked back to the wagon without any further words. Jean gritted his teeth. Armin wouldn't dare forwardly insult Jean. Surely someone as smart as he was could tell Jean could beat him up at any moment yet he could hear him testing him. Jean's straight lips downturned into a scowl. He forced himself back into the vehicle and kept quiet as Renata chatted with the driver. Jean didn't know much about where they were heading but he knew that they should be able to reach the end of Wall Rose by nightfall. They'd given him that information before Armin had kept them at a random hamlet so he doubted that they wouldn't be travelling through the night.

Thankfully, the supervisors were obligated to check up on a village only in the mornings and evenings, after everyone had stopped. Jean made sure they didn't waste any more time that day.

The rough road did not pass smoothly under the old vehicle's thin wheels so the passengers felt every single peddle or pothole jostle the entire trio. The sunless sky yielded no information on the time so it had confined Jean to staring into the distance to pass it. Travel had been rare for the soldier before then; he either stayed in Trost, the Training Camp and Stohess without much need for wagons. It churned his stomach but he'd found earlier that staring into the horizon managed to quell the sickness. It never appeared to affect Renata yet Armin reacted exactly as Jean expected him to: quivering on the wooden planks.

"Shouldn't you already travel a lot? Being a supervisor and all," Jean said, not glancing away from the landscape.

Renata laughed and nodded. "He does. Believe or not, Mr Kirschtein, he has improved."

Jean raised an eyebrow. "Wow, you're pathetic, Arlert." Armin moaned in weary reply. Renata laughed again.

"It is quite obvious that you are not doing much better, Mr Kirschtein," she said. Jean glared and the dark-haired blonde rushed to explain herself. "I can tell that you are not used to travel either, Mr Kirschtein. My mother drove a wagon daily to trade with the nearby towns so someone like me is used to transportation where someone from a district would clearly be different."

The surface beneath them lurched and hurled all but one to the side. Armin curled over and Jean's arms flailed at the abrupt lack of stability. "It was likely a rock," Renata explained and at that moment, Jean realised how annoying her formal-baby voice was.

"Shut up! I could guess."

She instantly withdrew and the two civilians met each other with unreadable expressions. Jean crossed his arms and turned away from them, his face burning. It was anger at his embarrassment at his anger. He pulled his legs to the side and tried his best to make the rigidness comfortable. In naivety, Jean hoped for sleep but reality soon showed its face. His breath was heavy like plumes of fire set off by that single spark of indignity. Jean's scowl grew and he forced his eyes to close, at least feigning sleep to avoid the gaze of the other two. He wondered whether he would hear the two speak yet neither of them opened their mouths. The silence was a heavy curtain and it did not lift for the sake of Jean's eavesdropping.

The long uneventful time allowed Jean's rage to ebb down. Jean discovered that thinking time was not the best thing for him to have. He couldn't help but mill over his plans. Marco's killer would be punished, that was a certainty for Jean, yet he wasn't quite sure what that meant, even to himself. His mind clouded whenever he thought about it though it was in a different, darker way to the way he'd been after Marco's death. His actions would be inevitable, even if they were invisible to his mind at present.

"Jean!"

The soldier's eyes flew open before even realising they were closed. Jean bolted upright at the urgent voice and crashed headlong into Armin's, causing both their cries to echo from their mouths and off their wagon's cover. Both young men writhed and clutched panging heads until the ashen-haired one managed to wrench open an eye at the other. He pressed a hand to his temple and gritted his teeth while Armin had to clamp a hand over his mouth to stop his shouts from drawing too much attention.

"What the hell?" Jean hissed.

Armin groaned and as he did so Jean was strangely reminded of his first day of training. The instructor headed him, all because he'd voiced his wishes to join the Military Police. To tell the truth, it was a weird thing for pain to remind him of.

"Urgh, Armin? Arlert, what do you want?" Jean said.

Miraculously, through his shaking jaw, Armin managed to push out some words though he did so in a calculatedly quiet voice. "O-Outside – Ow, it hurts –" he couldn't help but remark. "We all need your help, Jean."

Jean's eyebrows knitted together, confused. "What? Why would you lot need my help?" he wondered. To his surprise, the supervisor seemed puzzled at what, at least he thought, was a perfectly typical response for him.

"Wh-? Jean, there's a disturbance going on outside and we need your help to sort it out! You promised to be our guard, didn't you?"

He muttered a swear but tried to make sure that Armin didn't actually hear it. He slid up the wagon's hard edge so he was upright again and rubbed the back of his neck. His sleep had been dreamless at a cost. Jean's lips were a slash across his face while the creases in his forehead deepened further. He had expected to be haunted by shock at night yet there had been nothing. Just darkness.

Jean moved to his feet, attempting to minimise the noise he made, and crouched to keep a low centre of gravity. "Okay, Arlert, tell me this; what did you see?" he asked, quietly and forcefully,

Armin's eyes became bright, alight with the recollection of knowledge. "We've almost reached the stop site for today – You were sleeping for quite a few hours now I think about it – but the driver stopped the wagon. He noticed something near the woods and Renata went to find out what was happening."

"Wait!" Jean held his index finger up to Armin's face and Armin stopped talking, obedient under panic. "Why in the world would Messman go out on her own?" His eyes flickered to the slit of outfit visible through the fabric then soon returned. "It's dark and she's –" For lack of a better word, "– her!"

"Well, what did you expect? You're as approachable as a hungry bear to her."

Jean had no words so he simply scowled in response.

"It must be a robbery, or a kidnapping," Armin continued with his face becoming more and more distraught as he went. "I'd guess two or three but I don't know."

There was a creaking of wooden planks as they bent weakly under Jean's movements, causing the two of them to wince. The soldier breathed deeply, then continued onwards. He jumped from the wagon into the fading light outside the cover. This grass was muddy and it wasn't a surprise seeing as there was a large woods in front of him. If Jean strained his ears he could hear a sound deeper than leaf rustling and more human than the birds' screeching.

Jean swore again and turned back to Armin. "I...I'll need you to come with me, Arlert."

His eyes shot wide in surprise. "Wh-What? B-But I-I'm not a soldier! I'll just be a burden!" Meanwhile, Jean's mind was desperately churning to find a way to resolve this way while trying to avoid thinking about all the hours he'd wasted in training. The Military Police may have always been his endgame yet he had never bothered with the human-on-human training. It hadn't counted towards his final grade so it hadn't mattered. Maybe he'd always dreaded the possibility of actually needing it one day.

"Yes. I don't care how strong you are, Arlert. Two against who-knows how many is at least better than one. I thought you would have figured that out, your 'great' brain and all. Do you have a plan?"

Armin crawled over the wagon and eased himself shakily to the ground. It wasn't a comforting image. The small blonde dusted himself off and wrung his hand in the other from fright despite not even being at the forest's edge yet. "I-I can't say anything for certain yet. Wh-Who knows what we're up against. Until I know where Renata is I can't do anything; I'm worthless without information, Jean."

"Fine. Just...Just get ready to run. You should be able to provide a distraction, I guess. C'mon." Jean gestured for Armin to join him and he took the first step towards the woods. He needed to act braver than he felt but nonetheless he was grateful for the shadows' cover. It could hide the hesitation in his paces and the nervousness in his scanning eyes.

The forest soon engulfed them, swallowing them whole like the mouth of a great monster. Something flashed in Jean's mind but he quickly dismissed it. There were no titans in Wall Rose. Darkness flickered past his eyes from the small breaks of fading light appearing every so often between the skeletal branches. The undergrowth was soft with moss, mud and grass yet it roots wormed their way from the trees to the two men's feet, seemingly determined to trip them up for the darkness to take. Jean focused on the immediate path worn away from footsteps and narrowed his eyes, no longer allowing himself to notice the cawing birds, the reaching branches or even the phantom noises he heard riding on the gusts.

This plan of selectivity started to work for the young MP. Whether it was conscious or not, as long as he focused only on making the next step he could do so with strength. Somewhere, Jean knew he was terrified, however, now it did not weigh on him. That job, unsurprisingly, was Armin's.

The blonde quivered and yelped a hastily muffled cry every time his foot snapped a branch below or scuffed a wild mushroom. When they weren't darting around, his eyes would snap shut in retaliation to his fright, something that wasn't remotely helpful.

"Calm. Down!" Jean hissed impatiently. The heart of the woods loomed closer steadily, as would the assailants Armin described. The trees were thick and darkening, the path less and less defined. Both pairs of eyes strained like torches, searching into the almost black, and although it was their cloak, Jean knew it would soon be their wall.

Armin gulped down breaths and apologised wheezingly. "I – Am – AH!"

Jean stuck his arm out and gripped the falling civilian, paying no mind to the certain pain his iron-clamp hands caused him. Jean tugged Armin back to his feet, a near-effortless gesture, and covered the shorter boy's lips for him. Armin flailed and clawed at Jean's hands but it didn't take long for his bright gaze to fall on the other's expression. Jean's face was pointed and still, the face of a hunter having sensed its prey.

Slowly, and noiselessly, the blonde eased his way out of the ashen-haired soldier's grasp. He studied the latter's look and soon followed his gaze to past the trees and into a clearing. Armin carefully stepped forwards with watched, precise steps in order to remain as silent as he could and then peered through into the clearing.

Compared the slivers of little light from the moon and sunset, the lantern was the sun. Armin had to blink back from the sudden brightness and wait for his eyes to readjust. Squinting, he recognised the silhouettes of three, all blocking the wavering fire from different levels. One was standing, the moving blob of their head indicating that they were surveying the area, ineffectually considering that they hadn't yet noticed Armin or Jean. Another figure, this one shorter, was slouching and had their head bowed, looking down at the third who was kneeling on the ground.

Armin shivered, bringing his hands up to his arms in a feeble attempt to pass it off as cold. His eyebrows were knitted and the corner of his lips downturned. Even as blind as he was to the scene, he could not escape the dread it created.

"…ere's nne there." Jean and Armin simultaneously leant closer, reaching out for a better hear of the situation.

The first and second figures had moved away from the low third so now they could understand each other's hushed tones. The blocks of shadow they'd provided shifted, shining a backlight on the two. Neither the solider nor supervisor could make out faces but the glow behind them illuminated two heads of brown hair, identical enough in shade and different enough in shape for Armin.

He moved closer to Jean's ear and whispered hurriedly. "Siblings," he guessed. "One brother and one sister, I'd say." Jean nodded yet didn't reply. After only two or three seconds Armin realised it was because he expected more so he looked back. "Young adults by height. Quite a bit older than us though. Maybe strong? They certainly don't look on the lean side to me, although that could just be the poor lightning. Nothing is for certain but the third doesn't appear to be a part of their group. It must be Renata. She is captured."

He turned to watch Jean's face and saw it was grim, until Jean remembered Armin's eyes on him. The lack of confidence was wiped away and replaced by an unreadable nothing.

"Hah!" The taller figure, the brother, hissed victoriously at the woman. "Hah! I told you it wasn't military. I. Told. You!" There was obviously an attempt to control his volume but his hushed voice was still loud enough for Armin and Jean to understand with ease, even from their distance.

"Yes…" the sister growled in return. "But there were still pe – Wipe that smile off your face! This was not a win – still people out there. We're not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. We could still get caught. We-" A note of panic crept into her voice, turning it shrill. "We could get arrested! We need to let her go. Kidnapping is much worse than stealing, Law!"

"Technically, it's still stealing. Just, you know, a woman instead of money."

"Lawrence!" The woman started to pace. "By the Walls. By the Walls! If I go to jail, there is nothing I won't do to get you in there with me!"

There was an exasperated sigh. "Lawrence!" he warbled in an unflattering imitation. "Calm the heck down, El. How about we just dump her? Leave her here so we can get a move on already."

There was another sigh. A quieter one closer to Armin. Confusion flashed through his features and he turned to see what it was before a large snap drew everyone's attention.

Jean was standing in front of him, a large stick in hand, and his eyes wide in warning. Go! he mouthed, his eyes hard, before darting through the gap in the trees.

I'm about to earn your nickname, Jaeger, Jean internally sighed, feeling unbelievable idiotic as he brandished a branch.

He sprinted and raised the makeshift-weapon above his head. The two kidnappers were staring at him and ready since they'd clearly heard. However, to Jean's mild amusement, it didn't stop him from getting a good hit in first. The wood crashing into the side of the man's neck, sending him flying to the side and out of the way.

Jean's eyes actually widened at his miraculous success. Soon, the soldier remembered their captive. Although her eyes were hidden behind a sheen of light from the lantern walling her glasses' lenses, Renata's eyebrows were high in panic and her jaw was trying to move under the gag, making her fright clear.

A glimpse of a shadow lit up Jean's eyes. "Get her away from here!" he yelled, seemingly to no-one. The target of his words became even less clear to the assailants as he had already turned his head to face them.

The woman, her expression caught sinister in the uplight, rounded on the newcomer. In her hand something glinted; it would have been dangerously invisible if not for that. It was a knife.

Jean refused to waste any more time. The traditional ways he'd been taught had been long since forgotten but he was never entirely useless. He surged forwards and the branch shot downwards before the woman could even think about what to do. The bark collided hard with her hands indiscriminately and the knife leapt from her hands while she cried out in pain.

A boot stepped on the hilt and kicked it back, Jean hoping it hadn't hit someone, before catching the man – Lawrence she'd called him – in the chest as he pounced. All breath exploded from his lungs and the kidnapper landed in the grass, gasping. Vaguely, in the background, Jean was aware of Armin reaching Renata but it had all become strangely blurry.

A recovered kidnapper, balling up her presumably stinging hands, tried in vain to attack Jean again but Jean soon realised that neither of them knew nearly as much as he did. As a hand approached the branch in his hands seemed to transform into metal, a memory of a soldier's sword. It snapped into his enemies and threw them back. It wasn't a thrill. It wasn't a dream. It was a strangled feeling behind his eyes that was hot yet cold. It overtook Jean.

"...J...an...Jean. Jean!" A voice built and built, saying his name over and over. A sobriety returned slowly like a trickle of ice water running downwards from his head to his heels. He pressed his hand to his cheek, It was stiff and raw. He'd been hit...

"Mr Kirschtein, l-let's go," Renata said in a wailing tone. Jean turned and saw her jogging next to Armin and him. Her expression was frazzled but there was something strange in her eyes. To be honest, it was an expression Jean never thought he'd see directed at him: a mix between appreciation and fear.

"Wha..?" Jean started but Armin was dragging him out of the clearing. He noticed the branch was gone. "What actually happened back there."

"You saved me," said Renata breathlessly. "Thank you. Thank you, Mr Kirschtein."

The rest of the forest blurred past the three of them as they ran. Armin led them back the wagon with his breathing shaking his weak frame and loaded them all in.

"Woah! Mr Arlert, what..?"

"You don't have to worry about it," said Armin, hurrying. "Get going, quickly!" The driver's eyes were wide at the surprising volume so he rushed to get the wagon onto the road. Armin sat himself down and pressed his hand to his heart. He couldn't seem to believe what had happened.

"This...Is..." he huffed. "Why...I'm not a...Soldier!"

Jean arched an eyebrow, but he did so sluggishly. He felt worn and oddly lethargic. "You wouldn't have survived a single day in my training, Arlert."

He looked around and found Renata still staring at him,

"Thank you," she said again. She'd been muttering that to him for a while at that point and in all honesty, Jean was getting slightly annoyed.

"That was so nice of you."

Jean shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "It was either that or getting left behind." He met her eyes pointedly and her face blossomed pink.

Armin actually smiled at this. "You didn't have to, Jean. You could have easily taken the wagon. I know for a fact that you can be persuasive when you want to be." His words sounded like a joke but his voice was strangely sincere. So sincere and free of any malice than any words were stolen from Jean.

Unsure of what to do or say to their responses, Jean rolled over and looked away. The darkness quickly eased him to sleep, but his mind continued to weigh uncomfortably heavy.