I don't sleep my first night back behind bars. How can I? Even after the handcuffs come off, the restlessness seeps through my veins the moment the cell door locks behind me. The hours stretch into eternities of me pacing back and forth across dirty floors, dust crunching beneath my feet. I should be eyeing up weak points in the cell, thinking of how to get out. I should be thinking of the plan, reworking the details to compensate. I should be thinking of something, anything to clean up the mess I've made.

Instead, I think of Jean.

Maybe it's for the best. As far as he'll know, I will have dropped off the face of the earth, out of his life. He'll have his family and his job and his girl and the life he wants so much more than me. Maybe it's leaving home all over again, and the only thing I'll leave in my absence is a sense of peace.

Christ, what a load of bullshit. I don't like the person I've become since I've been in Dallas. Self-pity doesn't look good on me.

Still, that knowledge doesn't do anything to stop the sinking feeling in the pit of my chest. I can't tell if it's the loss of my freedom or the loss of him that's making everything spiral inwards - or maybe I'm just refusing to admit to myself that the loss of freedom and the loss of him have become synonymous when I wasn't paying attention. Without him, I got reckless. When I got reckless, I got myself arrested. This is what addiction is. I made the irreparable mistake of letting Jean Kirschtein become something I needed to function normally, and this is the fallout of trying to quit him cold turkey.

So maybe it's the close quarters of the cell, maybe it's withdrawal symptoms. Either way, I pace. I wear a groove in the concrete floor and chain smoke every cigarette I've got in some futile effort to convince myself that nicotine tastes like him. I press a hand to cool cinderblock walls and feel my lungs already starting to starve for free air. I ignore the fatigue pulling heavy at my bones up to and past the point that my vision goes blurry and I swear I can hear that last I can't echoing over and over again. There's nothing to mark the passage of time, but eventually the sound of cars outside starts to hum through the walls, the shuffles of the other prisoners waking up reverberate up and down the cell block. Morning.

I should be halfway to Chicago by now, windows down, driving through countryside that's green and thriving instead of barren and dusty. I should be reaching down from the gearshift to grab Jean's hand over the open stretches of road, watching the weight fall off his shoulders and his smile losing its sadness with every mile. I should be doing anything other than sitting in a county jail with a bunch of unruly drunks waiting for fate to drop an anvil on my head. Sucking in ragged breaths, I pace some more, wonder if this is what it's like to go insane. God knows I've been climbing up the walls in my own head for years. This is just a bit more literal.

Little by little, the cell block starts clearing out. Angry wives and mothers show up to drag hungover husbands and sons home, cell doors clanging and rebukes flying in their wake. There's no one coming for me. Connie's a hundred miles away, like hell Sasha's finally going to develop a soft spot for me to the point of bailing me out of jail, and as far as Jean knows, I left Dallas last night. The road to ruin, as it turns out, is a lonely one. I pace until my footsteps bounce around the empty hall, turning back on me until it sounds like an army's marching around the tiny confines of my cage. The quiet isn't doing me any favors.

Time takes on a strange amorphous quality, and in the space of minutes or hours I end up curled in on myself in a dusty corner, forehead pressed to my knees and sharp, uneven breaths washing humid warmth back across my face. There was a reason I brought Connie along with me for two years of gunsmoke and racing heartbeats. Me and my demons, we don't get along too well when we're left by ourselves. The things I push down come back too quickly when I have the time and solitude to think of them, rise up and drown me.

What the hell is us, Marco?

Runnin' with you was great, but I can't do it anymore.

Our son is dead.

My nails dig violent little half-moons into the heels of my palms where my fists are clenched too tightly, the pain not doing much to spike through the oppressive haze of everything I've lost, not enough to cover up the phantom ache across my back or the much more present agony roaring in the center of my chest. There's not much point in trying to fight it, anyway. Nothing to fight for. I've always said that I'm nothing without my plans, but facing the reality of it guts me.

This is what I have now. Being a puppeteer in control of my own marionette limbs, piloting myself over to stretch out across the metal shelf that serves as a bed and staring up at the cracks in the ceiling.

The locked door at the end of the cell block clunks and swings open, footsteps scraping over the grit caked to the concrete. I don't even have it in me to look up, mapping out the lines of cobwebs in the corner while the movement draws closer and someone knocks tentatively against the rusty bars of the cell door. "Mr. Bodt?"

"I'm sittin' in a jail cell after being brought in for armed robbery; addressing me formally just comes across as patronizing," I sigh, craning my neck upwards long enough to see a tall guy with short-cropped dark hair around my age hovering anxiously outside the cell. Suit and tie, briefcase, inherent look of unease. My head drops pack onto the bed with a dull thump and a spark of pain across my skull. "What."

He laughs nervously. "I'm Franz Kefka? Your court-appointed attorney?"

Oh, for fuck's sake. "They caught me with a gun in my hand. The hell do I need an attorney for?"

"It's how the system works," Franz Kefka the Court-Appointed Attorney shrugs, looking like he's afraid I'm going to lunge at the bars or something when I sit up and roll my shoulders, groaning at the stiffness in my back. "Although given your situation, it's good that you realize that there isn't really much I can do for you with you being caught red-handed, as it were."

"As it were," I snort, raising an eyebrow. "You look like you're twelve. How long you been outta law school?"

"Um… a month?"

"Fantastic." The word comes out in a long, cynical drawl, a tension headache starting to throb behind the center of my forehead. "So, you got any idea what I'm lookin' at?"

"Well, once you add up everything with breaking out of the McLennan County jail, the breaking and entering and auto theft charges that they're pressing in relation to that, with another armed robbery charge…" He trails off, counting up my sins on his fingertips like they're childhood mathematics. "Like I said, there's not much I can do."

"No more county jails, then. I'm going to big-boy prison, ain't I?"

"Most likely. Your arraignment is this afternoon, and of course I'll see what I can do, but…"

"You can't do shit; that's why they put you on the case," I snap, scrubbing a hand down the side of my face and screwing my eyes shut to block it all out. "They let me off easy in Waco because I passed myself off as a dumb kid and spun up some lie about having a family to feed. They're gonna throw the book at me this time."

"I won't argue with you there," Franz Kefka grimaces, shifting his weight back and forth. He can't wait to get out of here. Probably scared of catching delinquency like some sort of moral flu. "At any rate, I'll see you this afternoon, I've got, uh… I've got a meeting?"

"I'll be waitin' with bated breath," I deadpan in response, lying back down. Cracks in the ceiling. Cobwebs in the corner. Fading footsteps and the door closing.

I am nothing without my plans.

There's no telling how much longer I lie there and let it all sink home, the fact that I have until this afternoon to re-evaluate, to take all these little pieces scattered around my feet and rebuild them into something I can work with. The fact that it's impossible. I can't make anything happen with a few hours in an empty jail and who knows how long in some high-security joint with no help and no hope of breaking out. I'm crafty and quick on my feet and a manipulative bastard, but I'm not a magician.

In the face of all this, I could swear something that feels almost like longing pulls tight at the pit of my stomach when I think about the garage and the creaky floorboards of Jean's front porch, everything I was so ready to run from a few hours ago. Funny, how your priorities change when you're on the cusp of losing it all. Except it's not funny at all. The realization burns, sears all the way to the core of me, and I hate it, I hate this, hate how all it took was a pair of pretty eyes and nicotine lips to warp everything I've ever wanted and make it seem hollow.

I hate that I caved for him. Softness looks even worse on me than self-pity.

The cell block door opens again, a flurry of movement punctuated with the clang of a billy club hitting the bars and the harsh voice of one of the two cops who brought me in. "You got a visitor."

Lovely. Perfect. Just what I wanted right now. A witness to my ruination.

"Sasha, if you're here to preach or gloat or whatever the hell it is, save your breath," I hiss, staring determinedly at the ceiling and waiting for the sound of her retreat. It never comes. Growling a stream of curses under my breath, I sit up in one fluid motion, more than willing to vent my anger on her if she's stupid enough to stick around. God knows I've spent enough time as Sasha Springer's verbal punching bag that she owes me a good jab or two. "Bet you laughed hard enough to bust a gut when you found out, didn't you, you miserable harpy-"

"Does it look like I'm laughin' to you?" Jean says.

He looks like a ghost of himself, pale and faded with heavy, sleepless shadows beneath his eyes. My first instinct is to go to him, brush my thumbs over the prominent ridges of his cheekbones, will warmth back beneath his skin until he's bright and laughing and mine again. I stand slowly, glancing to the side to make sure that the cop who escorted him in is out of earshot, down the hall and out of our hair. I can feel my weakness for him rearing its head again, and I hate myself for it. Only a fool manages to feel contentment on the wrong side of a jail cell door. "Hey, darlin'."

But for all of my unwanted softness, there is none of it in Jean. I've seen him irritated before, seen him exasperated with Eren's nagging or how much the price of necessities tugs at his already-frayed purse strings, but I've never seen him angry, not until now. Standing on the other side of the bars with his shoulders stiff, he looks at me with eyes that are too hard for me to even try to meet their gaze, every sharp plane of his face cast into relief by something that looks strangely like betrayal.

And who have I betrayed? He knew what he was signing up for the moment he let me kiss him over a stolen trumpet in his dusk-lit bedroom; I tell myself that repeatedly in a failed attempt to keep the guilt from rendering me useless. The only person I've betrayed is myself, my own goals, and all for his sake. If anyone is going to cast blame, it should be me throwing it at him. But I can't. God help me (why would He?), I can't, not when I can almost see the hurt seeping out from beneath his skin, painting his clenched fists and staining his rumpled work shirt. The same one he had on yesterday, still buttoned up crooked from where I took it off.

The implications of that clarify in an instant and hit me in the stomach like a bag of bricks. He didn't sleep at home. He changed his mind. He went back to the garage and waited.

Oh, darling.

"Jean," I half-whisper, moving over to the door and slipping a hand between the bars to rest in the curve between his neck and shoulder. If anything, his anger only flares, the sort of burn that almost feels like ice at first, deceptive to the point that you don't have time to pull your hand away before your skin is scorched and scarred.

"Don't," he hisses after a second, jerking away and shaking his head. "Don't."

My guts drop all the way to my shoes. "I never meant for this to happen. You gotta believe me, I-"

"I'm not sure what 'this' you're talkin' about," Jean laughs bitterly, running a hand through his hair and swearing under his breath. "Me? You getting shipped off to jail again? I know damn well you already regard me as the biggest mistake you've made since you hit Dallas, so my guess is that you're referring to you getting arrested for armed robbery."

"You're not a mistake," I tell him.

"Bullshit."

"Jean, please." I've never done well with pleading, but for him I'll make it work. I'll beg, I'll get on my knees and fucking grovel if that's what it takes to make him look at me with something other than that crippling disappointment and pain written all over him right now. "Just hear me out."

Another humorless laugh, and his arm snaps forward, a sharp slap bouncing off the concrete as he tosses a newspaper down through the bars onto the floor of the cell. Today's date, rumpled pages, a glaring headline that reads WANTED FUGITIVE APPREHENDED IN WEST DALLAS GROCERY.

"There's something you meant to happen," he says, sounding so unbearably hollow that his voice almost makes my ears hurt. "I hope you're happy. You finally got your front page write-up. Ninette's been crying all day."

Two words. Two little words, Marco, it's easy, and maybe it won't fix anything, but you owe him that much. Go on, say it. "I'm…"

But how can I be sorry when there's a little thrill of victory sparking through my veins? How can I be sorry when I've been swearing for years that one day my family would look at my name in headlines and somewhere far away from them I'd laugh until my entire body ached?

I never did know how to apologize.

"Save it," Jean snaps, both absolving me and condemning me at once. For the first time since he got here, our eyes meet for more than a second. He sucks in a deep breath that shudders outwards across his limbs, almost seeming to deflate as he slumps forward to rest his forehead against the bars, the force of his rage no longer enough to hold him upright. When he speaks again, he sounds very small. "What were you thinking, Marco?"

That I've lost everything I've ever tried to hold onto and you were the newest and freshest loss on a long list. That I had something with you that I couldn't even understand, and watching it slip away still somehow hurt more than a physical wound ever could. That I missed you before I even left. That everything I've ever planned seems hollow and meaningless without you, and I can't live with myself for letting you happen to me. That if this is what I think it is, the price is too damn high, and I've got no idea how to steal it. That you said you were fine before me, and I was fine before you, and now neither of us are fine without each other. That you deserve better. That I should have been smarter.

That I love you, damn it all to hell, I love you, I love you, I love you and it's ruining me.

"That I needed some cash for the road," I shrug.

"You needed…" He trails off into a disbelieving huff, shutting his eyes tightly and letting go of the bars before he looks at me again, accusation heavy on every syllable. "I waited for you. I went home and I packed my shit and I said goodbye to my family and I waited for you, sat there and thought you didn't even give enough of a shit to let me make up my mind. And you needed some cash for the road."

"Made sense at the time." A horrible excuse, but the only one I have. It's better than admitting that the loss of him drove me to recklessness. Owning up to that sort of weakness isn't something I want to do, even if it's to Jean. "Besides, you were talkin' like you were gonna stay."

"I wanted to stay," he chokes out, twining his arms around his torso and curling forward like he's trying to hold himself together. "I wanted to stay and be who I'm supposed to be and live my life and be normal, but ever since you showed up I can't. I can't do it. Gettin' outta here with you was the one shot I had at being okay, and you went and got yourself fuckin' locked up!"

The last two words explode into a ragged shout, echoing up and down the cell block. Jean looks like he's itching for something to punch, but he's got enough sense of self-preservation to refrain from slamming his fist into unforgiving concrete or steel. Hell, I'd let him have one good swing at my jaw if I thought it would make him feel better, but no one ever threw a decent punch through metal bars and a scuffle would bring guards running. I'm not ready to lose my chance to talk with him frankly yet, and so I don't suggest it.

"C'mere," I mumble, sticking my arm out through the bars and looking at him expectantly until he steps forward and takes my hand. I try not to notice the nervousness pulling taught at his posture, try not to see how his gaze shoots worriedly down to the end of the hall, try not to think about a lost future where I could hold his hand for hours on end and kiss the sadness out of the corners of his mouth and find out what the sunrise looks like spreading warmth across his skin as he sleeps. Those possibilities are gone, nullified by bad timing and my own foolishness. What I have now is lacing our fingers together and tugging Jean closer until both of us are pressed against opposite sides of the bars, bringing my free hand up to rest against the side of his face. "I'm gonna figure something out. This is just a minor hiccup, a little bump in the plan-"

"The plan don't exist anymore, Marco," says Jean, chiding me like I'm some sort of slow child for thinking otherwise. His voice wavers, spreading warm across my lips as he rests his hand over mine against his cheek and grips it hard, trying to drive his point home. "There ain't a plan that you can make in all this that'll work. The plan is you go to jail for this, and I stay here and wait for you."

"You'd do that?" Frowning, I pull back to get a better look at him, trying to spot the lie and not being able to find it. "You'd wait?"

"Do I have a choice?" he asks, looking so unbearably broken. That was me. I did that to him.

I have never come closer to saying 'I'm sorry' in my life.

Instead, I turn and press a kiss to the inside of his palm and sigh, "Yeah. You got the choice to walk outta here and pretend you never met me. You can settle down and get something going with Mikasa and probably be pretty happy if you give it enough time. Ain't much of a life to be had here, but you could make one, if you wanted."

"I don't want that," Jean says.

"Then what do you want?"

"You."

I laugh softly against his hand and turn back so that the very tips of our noses touch, unable to get closer because of the bars. "Then you'd best be prepared for one hell of a game of tug-of-war with the Texas Department of Corrections, darlin'. I'm a popular guy."

"And I'm patient," he nods, jumping when something clangs down the hall and taking a quick step back. "How long were you supposed to be in jail in Waco?"

"Two years." But I'd gotten off lucky. That won't happen this time.

"I can wait two years. We'll write, I'll come visit you, two years is nothing-"

"Yeah, but that was before I busted out of jail, broke into a house, stole a car, drove to Dallas, robbed a pawnshop, and held up a grocery store, Jean." I hate sounding so defeated, especially in the face of his newfound hope, but my talent for optimism has never been that great to begin with. "If this is what you're gonna choose, you need to think realistically. It could be five years. Eight years. No way to tell until this afternoon. And if I go somewhere that ain't a hick-ass county jail, there'll be no chance of gettin' out early. Not with Connie locked up in Waco. Can you really sit here and wait? Is it worth it?"

"Shut up," he replies flatly, eyes narrowing to thin amber slashes as he moves forward again and reaches through the bars to grab me by the shirt and tug me back towards him. "You don't get to pull this shit. You don't get to drop into my life and turn everything inside-out and make me question myself and what I want and... and question everything and then just. You don't get to stand there and try to talk me out of us. You got no right."

"I make a habit out of doing things I got no right to do," I grimace, peeling his fingers off my collar to tangle them up with my own again. His hands are bruised and fragile, the knuckles of spindly musician's fingers red and split. He's already hit something he shouldn't have. It's good to know that I'm not the only one here who's suffered a recent lapse in judgment, although mine inevitably has worse consequences than an aching hand and a broken heart.

"Yeah, and look where it landed you."

"Look, you said you wanted to get out." It's been a while since they let him back into the cell block. They'll be coming back to clear him out any minute, and there are still things that need to be said. I try to rush, stumbling over my words and feeling like something in me is splintering as I reach forward and settle my hands behind the hinges of his jaw, ensuring that he can't look away. I can't afford for him to hide right now. "And I said that I could help you get out, but the truth is, you can do it without me. You can get outta this town and head North and make it without me."

"I can't." Jean swallows heavily, features set in stubborn defiance. "And even if I could, I wouldn't want to. I've spent my whole life waiting for a chance to be something other than what people want me to be. A few more years ain't gonna make much difference."

The fact that he's much more level-headed about all of this than I am probably has something to do with me being the one sitting in a jail cell, but I'm grateful for his steadiness nonetheless, dropping my hands to his shoulders and exhaling shakily. "I'm scared as hell."

"I'd be worried if you weren't." A hand slips through the bars to press against the shirt and skin covering my frantically pounding heart, thin fingers resting between my ribs like they were made to fit there. It helps. "I know this whole situation's shit. But I'm in it with you. And I ain't going nowhere, whatever consolation that might be."

"Even though your mom's probably horrified and your sister won't stop crying?"

"Mom's horrified at a lot of things, and trust me, Nettie'll be more than capable of handing down her personal punishment the next time you see her," he laughs, his palm skating up over my chest to reach up and lace fingers absently through my hair, ignoring my little grumble of protest that it's probably too grungy for human contact. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. One day at a time."

"Days seem awful long when you live 'em like that," I hum, leaning unconsciously into his touch. How long will I have to go without it? How many years of nothing but coded letters and supervised visits and weighted looks? I want to kick myself for every time I could've held him but didn't, for taking so long to make a move in the first place. A week or so of stolen kisses won't last years. He says that he'll wait now, but I've seen too many sad men leave prison to go home to empty houses where someone who made them the same promise once lived. What little I know of love is limited to Jean, but I know that memories are tricky things, that what goes out of sight soon goes out of mind. If - when - I'm gone, he'll start to forget one good week in the face of innumerable bad ones. This will fade.

I'll fade. The idea's always made me feel sick, but now it makes me feel like my heart's about to stop.

"We're gonna get outta here someday," he says, and there's such conviction in it, all the fervor of the faith my parents always had in their Bibles and hymns that I could never seem to find. "Just like you said. You and me, the sky's the limit, the world's our oyster and all that shit."

"Is that really what you want?" I ask.

"I wanna not feel like I'm walkin' on eggshells just to live." This is not the Jean of a month ago, a week ago, of yesterday morning, running from himself for the sake of normalcy. Maybe he's putting on a brave face for my sake, or maybe it just took me getting thrown in prison to make him realize that life's too short to live it for other people's comfort, but either way, he sounds stronger. There's no tremor to his voice anymore, he doesn't try to look away or hide or skate around what he's trying to say. I think, for the first time, I'm seeing Jean at the full extent of who he is rather than who he's expected to be.

And God, he's beautiful.

"I wanna get in a car with you and drive until we're somewhere that ain't all dust and dirt anymore," he says, thumbs brushing across my temples and the ghost of a hopeful smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. "I wanna take my trumpet into grimy hole-in-the-wall jazz bars and play for shitty tips and fall asleep with you on a creaky motel mattress and wake up the next morning and decide where we're headed next. I wanna get the hell outta Dallas and the hell outta Texas and never come back, even if I have to wait a while to leave. I want you even if it means waiting and I wanna make enough money to give my family the life they should have and I want a life where I actually feel alive and I really, really wanna kiss you right now."

He is so, so beautiful.

"Better make it a good one, darlin'," I whisper, taking one last look to make sure the coast is clear. "It's liable to be the last one you get for a long time."

It's awkward and slightly painful with the bars in the way, but even despite that, I don't think anything compares to Jean yanking me forward until we're as close as it's possible to get and crushing his lips to mine, bruising and almost frantic in his urgency. I've kissed plenty of people. I've done plenty of things with plenty of people, to be honest, but I've never been kissed like I mattered. Like the last breath of air in the world was tucked away inside my lungs and I was the only chance at life left in a barren existence. I've never been that for someone, never had the chance to be a saving grace when I was too busy being an agent of destruction, but Jean holds me like I'm something worth keeping, and I curse myself for the tightness that tugs at my throat when his fingertips trace the tendons in my neck and slide down to my shoulders, holding me in place and wordlessly saying stay, stay with me, you mean something.

All the striving for headlines and history books, all the pain and scars and nightmares, and that's all I've wanted for four years and however long before that.

I wanted to mean something.

The dooknob at the end of the hall turns, and we both pull back, breathing heavily and watching each other through the bars.

"I'll wait," Jean says again, trying and failing to be inconspicuous as he wipes the shine from his kiss-swollen lips on his shirtsleeve.

"Come to the courthouse this afternoon," I almost choke on the words, clinging to the bars and watching him slowly step backwards, making the distance seem normal. "I can't do this alone, Jean, I can't…"

"I'll be there. I promise." That's all he can get out before he's being escorted back the hallway towards the door, looking over his shoulder with every step.

"Bye, darlin'," I whisper as the door shuts behind him.

Me and my demons, we don't get along too well when we're left by ourselves. And the moment it sinks in just how alone I am in the empty cell block, just how alone I'll be in a different cell on a different day for God only knows how long, they all come out to play.

When they come to get me for my arraignment, I'm a blubbering mess in the corner, too far gone to even feel ashamed.

The Dallas County courthouse is much bigger and much ritzier than any I've ever been hauled into in handcuffs before, but the grandeur is kind of lost in the sinking, sick feeling I get when I'm dragged out of the back of a police car to a crowd of people watching me with owlish, disbelieving eyes. People I met while fixing their cars at the garage. Eren, who's looking at me like I'm something that crawled out from under a rock, not too different than the usual expression of disgust. Mikasa, still in her nurse's uniform, who just looks sad for some reason. I don't even spot Jean in all the clamor until I'm almost inside. He's been home since he left the jail, shaved and changed and gotten all pointlessly dolled up for the sole purpose of watching me get shipped off to prison.

Fucking rich kids, man.

The inside of the courthouse has the same quiet, solemn atmosphere of a church, which doesn't make me feel any more comfortable about the situation. The last thing I need is to associate my surroundings with an entire childhood of aching knees on a hard wood kneeling bench begging God to absolve the sinful nature of my existence and wondering if praying hard enough would change me. It wasn't until I was older that I started to wonder if there was even anyone up there listening, a few more years before I decided that if there was, he certainly had bigger things to worry about than who I wanted to fuck. I swear I can almost hear creaking pews and warbly organ music as I'm led down a wide hallway and into a courtroom, shoved into a chair beside Franz Kefka, the world's worst court-appointed attorney.

A weary-looking judge trundles in, and everyone rises in unison. Almost liturgical.

Bless me, father, for I have sinned, and everyone here knows it.

I look over my shoulder as a low, droning voice reads down a long list of charges, scanning faces until I find Jean's. He smiles tightly, the motion not quite reaching his eyes, mouths I'm right here, and I wish that the reassurance made it easier to breathe. Fraz Kefka elbows me in the ribs, hissing at me to turn around, and I do so reluctantly.

There is no clever loophole here. I haven't been given an out. The only option is to play the game and play it well.

The judge harrumphs and flips through some papers before looking up at me. "Son, I don't believe I've seen a kid your age get into this much trouble in my natural life."

"I seem to have a talent for it, Your Honor," I reply, trying very hard to reign in the smirk that wants to come out with it.

"That you do. Any particular reason you decided to escape from prison, steal a car, and hold up a grocery store?"

Because I'm a dead man walking who wants to stick it to my parents for denying my existence, all while becoming infamous, robbing the countryside blind, and hitting the road with my lover, who happens to be your friendly local mechanic.

"I had a very troubled childhood, Your Honor." Yeah. That about covers it.

"And apparently a troubled adulthood. One that I fully intend to nip in the bud," the judge rumbles, looking down at his papers again. "And so, for one count of prison escape, one count of breaking and entering, one count of auto theft, and two counts of armed robbery, you are hereby sentenced to serve sixteen years at Eastham prison farm."

Everything tunnels inward, and I can't make sense of my surroundings anymore.

Sixteen years.

It took me eight years to realize what I was, another two to realize what it meant and the secrets I'd have to keep.

Sixteen years.

It took a year and a half for the wounds on my back to fully heal. They kept getting infected because there was nowhere for me to lie down and rest long enough to let them knit themselves together, tearing them open anew every time I had to move my arms too much.

Sixteen years.

It took me a month to fall in love with Jean Kirschtein, only wind up turning around in a numb haze in the middle of a courtroom to watch him collapse, Eren holding him up with wide eyes and frantic murmurs into his ear.

Sixteen years at Eastham prison farm.

And now my religious crisis is solved. There has to be a God, and this has to be his way of punishing me, because this is nothing short of heavenly architecture. It's nothing if not divine humor, the irony of the fact that I served sixteen years of hell on one farm just to run away and end up serving sixteen years on another.

But the eyes of the wicked will fail, and escape will elude them; their hope will become a dying gasp…

We raised you better! You know better!

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts…

I didn't give birth to an abomination.

It took me sixteen years to die the first time. I wonder how long it will take now.

It's not under my control, a little tickle that starts in my chest and spreads outwards in icy tendrils, constricting around my throat. Back in handcuffs, lead around the table and towards the aisle. I start chuckling.

Sixteen years at Eastham prison farm. A giggle slips out between my gritted teeth, a manic grin stretching at my lips until my whole face hurts.

Sixteen years until I can kiss Jean again.

The peals of hysterical laughter rend my throat as they claw their way up out of my lungs, each and every sound painful. I can't breathe, tears of psychotic mirth streaming down my cheeks as I double over, clutching at my stomach. I'd throw up if I could stop laughing long enough to do it. It takes two cops to haul me out of the courtroom, looping grips under my arms and dragging me backwards so my heels scrape across the carpet. I'm laughing too hard to walk.

I catch sight of Jean just before we get out the door, muffling sobs into his hand and watching me with a look of utter horror. It's worth a shot. Not like anyone else will understand what it means. The ravings of a madman. Maybe that's all my love is after all.

"How long can you wait, darlin'?!" I cackle, tears swimming too thick for me to make out anything but him anymore. "Just how long can you wait?!"

He doesn't say anything. Of course he doesn't. But his face says enough in the seconds before the courthouse door shuts in my face.

It says, not sixteen years.

I laugh up to and past the point that they throw me in the back of a transport car and send me up the road, curled up on a cold metal floor and howling with everything I've got in me, because there's nothing else left for me to do. I've read poems about the world ending in fire or ice, with a bang or a whimper. Mine ends in loud bursts of sobbing laughter. It's all gone.

I am nothing without my plans.

I am nothing without him.

I am nothing without…

I am nothing.