"But why can't I go?!"

The sun outside the barn is nothing short of blistering, the worn fabric of a thrice-handed-down shirt sticking between my shoulders and the patches of exposed skin starting to burn but I don't care, buoyed by some sort of righteous rage that makes me bigger than what my hatefully little body can contain.

"Because you're a kid, Marco," Miles sighs, saddling up his horse and barely even looking at me. That's what happens when you're the youngest of six brothers. You're the annoyance. The inconvenience. The one under everyone's feet. They push you to the sidelines and try to forget you.

Not today.

"I ain't a kid! I'm eleven; that's old enough! Michael's going and he's only a year older than me!" I protest, kicking angrily at the dusty floorboards and scowling at my oldest brother. Miles probably doesn't even remember what it's like to be eleven and so much smaller than your dreams, eighteen and six-foot-something with an accepted application to start training for the Texas Rangers next year. I might as well be talking to a brick wall.

"I get to go 'cause I blackmailed Miles and threatened to tell Pa I saw him sneakin' off with Emily the other day if he didn't talk him into letting me go," Michael calls from a few yards away, sharp features curled into a smirk as he crosses the barn tossing an apple back and forth between his hands.

Miles rolls his eyes, reaching over the stall door to smack Michael upside the back of the head as he swaggers out of the barn with a laugh. Grumbling, he lifts a hand to brush back dark curls I'm surprised Ma hasn't chewed him out for not cutting yet and says, "Michael's going 'cause we need an extra set of hands, and it'll be hard enough keepin' an eye on him without throwing you into the mix."

"I won't be a pain, honest! I can help!"

He just shakes his head, still not even bothering to look at me. Behind us, the barn door rattles open, a wave of heat rolling in from outside in the wake of Maddox and Matthew walking in with coils of rope slung over their shoulders, identical faces sprayed with identical freckles and mouths curved into perpetual, identical smirks. Matt stops, blinks, tilts his head. "What's all the ruckus?"

"Marco wants to go on the cattle drive," Miles sighs, the same tone of voice Ma uses when she talks about foxes getting into the henhouse again.

"So?" Maddox shrugs. "Let him."

"Yeah, let me!"

"Cattle drives are dangerous, Marco." Like I didn't know that, like I haven't been paying attention to it my whole life. With an exasperated sigh, Miles finally deigns to look at me, leaning on one of the stall's support posts and grimacing around the cigarette perched in one corner of his mouth. "I went on one when I wasn't too much older than you, wandered off and got lost for four nights and five days. Almost died."

Which, of course, only serves to make me more excited, clambering up to sit on top of the stall door and gaping up at him with wide eyes. "Woah, really? What happened?"

"I don't remember."

"Aw, bullshi-"

"Watch your mouth," says Miles, flicking the side of my head and trying to fight back a smile. "But really, I was starving and dehydrated by the time Pa found me. A lot of it's blurry. And the stuff I can remember, well… I don't really wanna remember it."

"Hey, Marco, wanna know a secret?" Matt snickers, coming back out of the tack room and walking over to ruffle my hair. "If you wanna get him to talk about it, you gotta get him drunk first."

"Yeah, then he won't shut up about his big heroic adventure," Maddox chimes in, leading his horse behind him with a grin. "Because nothin' enchants the ladies like talkin' about drinking your own piss-"

Miles shuts the twins up with a glare that could melt steel, and right there, right now, it's easy to see why he's going to be a lawman. It's not just being the oldest that makes people want to listen to him. It's something in the way that he carries himself, something unspoken that I can only sit there with my useless eleven years of life experience and envy. People see him. They notice him. I've always wanted that, but there's something about the idea of putting on a badge and answering to a chain of command to get it that's never sat well with me. But hell, I can't even talk my way into a cattle drive. At this rate, I don't have much of a future to worry about.

"Why don't you two go help Martin with the tents and actually do something useful 'stead of bumpin' your gums?" The twins disappear almost disturbingly fast. Grumbling under his breath, Miles lifts me up off the stall door and sets me down so he can lead his horse out, squatting down once he does so that our eyes are level. "I'll talk to Pa and see if you can go on the next one. But it ain't gonna happen this time."

"Why d'you not wanna remember what happened?" Easily distracted, I keep pressing the issue even after the others are gone, smoothing the hair that Matt rumpled up back into place.

"'Cause it ain't pretty," Miles sighs, standing back up and ruffling my hair all over again. "Sometimes when bad things happen, it's best not to think about 'em. You take stuff outta your nightmares and dwell on it, and it'll drive you crazy."

"So you just block it out?"

"You keep livin', Marco," he says, climbing up into the saddle and squinting out the barn door. "That's the only choice you really got. Keep livin' or don't. That's why you shouldn't go on one of these drives 'til you're older. You're too young to have to make that kinda choice. If I had my way, you'd never have to make it at all."

"I just wanna get off this damn farm," I grumble, crossing my arms over my chest.

"You will someday, kid. And I ain't gonna tell you to watch that mouth again."

"What's the holdup in here?" A long shadow falls across the door in time with a sliver of ice jabbing downwards through my spine despite the oppressive heat.

"Nothin', Pa. I was letting Marco help me clean up before we left," Miles covers flawlessly, not even a blink to give away the lie, and I wonder for a moment if his talents are really best served upholding justice.

But my father sees through bullshit with an eagle eye, stares the both of us down from the saddle of his Pinto before his scrutiny finally settles on me. I feel it crawling around under my skin, like he sees everything, the desperate desire to get out and the sin of my ungratefulness and the sin of something much worse that I keep locked up tight behind clenched teeth while I pray to stop looking forward to going into town on Sundays because the grocer's son who's about my age has the prettiest blue eyes I've ever seen and my whole body feels hot every time I see him and-

"Ain't you s'posed to be in the house?"

My guts sink like lead. "Yes, Pa."

"Then why're you out here?"

"I… I wanted…"

"I told you to stay outta your brothers' way and go help your mother with Maura." I know that tone of voice, my whole body tensing up in anticipatory terror of him getting down off his horse, and God, do I wish I could run. "How am I s'posed to expect you to be the man of the house while we're gone if you can't even mind, Marco, I swear to-"

"It's my fault." I have to fight tooth and nail to keep from gaping disbelievingly up at Miles, who keeps a perfect poker face as he clicks his tongue and trots his horse out into the yard, swiping an arm across his forehead. "I stuck my head in the back door and asked him to come sweep out the tack room 'cause Martin didn't have time to do it this morning. I didn't know you'd told him to stay inside."

It's a blatant lie - I snuck out through the kitchen when Ma went upstairs to get Maura from her nap - but it's enough to defuse the situation. Pa nods at Miles stiffly before looking back at me, the danger in his gaze fading out to mere disapproval. "We'll be back in a week. Take care of your sister, mind your Ma, and stay outta trouble, you hear me?"

"Yes, Pa." Like I have a choice.

I climb out onto the roof of the house through the attic to watch them all ride off, peeking over the rusty gutters as my father and my brothers disappear into vague blurs on the horizon. The closest to any excitement I'm ever likely to get. I scowl and grip the loose shingles, debating on jumping off just to feel the rush that would come before the broken bones.

"Marco!" Ma yells from downstairs. Maura's crying again.

"Be there in a minute!"

The sun's finally starting to go down, but the long shadows across the house and the yard just look like bars on a cell. I feel claustrophobic and, for some reason, needlessly terrified. It's hard to breathe, my lungs fighting the weight of the horror that feels out of place in the here and now.

Is it the here and now? The edges of the world are soft, and I can't, I can't…

"Marco," Ma's voice is warped, brassy, deeper. "Marco? Marco!"

"Marco!" Jean elbows me in the ribs, and I damn near jump out of my seat, whipping around with a strangled little yelp and a choked, paralyzed gasp before the panic settles and I take in my surroundings. Not the farm, and not a jail cell. A car, jolting down a dirt road in the dusty afternoon, Jean behind the wheel, his face worried and drawn. "Are you okay?"

My whole body aches. I don't know why I'm shaking. There's a constant fear curled in the back of my skull, I feel like squirming out of my skin with something other than a solid wall at my back, and I've got six months of hell straight out of the pages of someone's most fucked-up nightmares pressing at the lining of my chest. Am I okay?

Sometimes when bad things happen, it's best not to think about 'em. You take stuff outta your nightmares and dwell on it, and it'll drive you crazy.

So I stop thinking about it, smile at him and reach down to squeeze his hand. "Never better, darlin'."

"It's just that you been staring out the window for an hour, and…"

"I'm just tired." Leave it at that. Please, for the love of my sanity, leave it at that.

He looks at me for a long moment, something in his eyes that says he doesn't quite believe me, but he doesn't press it. Instead, he exhales heavily and looks back out the windshield, drumming long fingers on the steering wheel. "You never said where we're headed. I've been driving north, right?"

"Huh?" I blink, still trying to tether myself to reality. Here with him is better than Eastham or Telico or any other living hell that's haunting my head, but I can't stop myself from feeling dissociated, set adrift and held only by the place where his fingers twine up with mine. "Oh, yeah. We're going to Dallas."

Jean pulls off on the side of the road with a cloud of dust and screeching brakes, turning back to me with wide eyes and the color draining from his face. "The hell we are."

"We gotta go back, or else-"

"I can't go back to Dallas!" he cuts me off, hands flying up to his hair and panic ratcheting his voice up half an octave. "I packed up all my shit and left, Marco, and they know I'm gone by now. I can't just go back."

"Believe me, the last place I wanna go right now is Dallas!" I snap back, pinching the bridge of my nose and trying to stomp my fractured psyche into submission so I can fucking think already. "But there's something in your house that I gotta get before we hit the road. I've been workin' on a plan for five months, Jean. I need you to trust me."

"I do. You know I do." The look he gives me is almost wounded, a hand brushing the side of my face but twitching away when I wince in pain as it skates over the bruises there. "I just… what could you have possibly left in my house that's important enough to run that risk?"

"The money I stole from the pawnshop back in July."

If possible, Jean goes even paler. "Jesus Christ."

"We need that money, or we're fucked. I wouldn't ask you to go back if we didn't have to," I tell him, reaching over with a still-shaking hand to smooth his hair down. I hope he doesn't notice the tremors, but the way he holds me a moment too long when I lean over to press my lips to his forehead says that he does. "Now drive. Please. The more distance I put between me and that place the better."

Jean eventually nods and pulls the Model T back out onto the road, his lips pressed into a thin line as he squints against the sunlight. "How much money'd you leave at the house?"

I shrug, trying to remember the number of stacks I'd shoved in the paper bag before hiding it in the linen closet and hoping Mrs. Kirschtein or Jean would find it after I was gone, a parting atonement. "Probably 'bout three-fifty, four hundred dollars."

Jean makes this weird wheezing-choking sound, one hand lifting off the wheel to scrub down the side of his face.

"I was gonna leave it for you and your folks, but due to circumstances, my contribution's gonna have to wait." I try to roll my shoulders, hoping to shrug off some of the discomfort that comes with having open space to my back, but the motion hurts so much that all I get for it is a low moan of pain and a panicked flash of the memory of what put the bruises there in the first place. I can't afford to think like that. The choice I have is to keep living or don't.

I decide to keep living, shove the screams to the back of my throat.

"So, what happens after we get the money?" he asks, and it's enough to draw me out of my own head, to bring my focus to the task at hand. As much as I talk about the value of never being weighed down, I'm indescribably glad to have Jean as an anchor right now.

"It's kinda complicated," I sigh, trying to rub some of the dried blood off my lips and only serving to reopen the split in them with a pained wince, the taste of copper coating my teeth. Rest. Rest needs to be on the agenda somewhere. Hadn't factored that in yet. "But if you're askin' what our next stop is, we're headed to Houston."

"Thought you said we were gonna go North."

"We will, after we go to Houston."

"But why-"

"Because I've actually been thinking about this, Jean!" He practically recoils from the bullwhip-snap that covers the words, and a bloom of regret softens me for a moment before I remember that my damned softness is what landed me in this mess in the first place, grit my teeth and ball my hands up in my lap. I can't afford any more lapses, any more stupid mistakes. My last one resulted in this, in months of praying to die in my sleep and nightmares that didn't end when I woke up and scars that go a hell of a lot further than skin deep. No more.

"And you think I haven't?" He murmurs, the horizon and the late afternoon sun mirrored amber in his irises. Damn it all.

He is so beautiful, and I am so weak.

"Well, given that you just busted me out of prison with an unloaded gun, I'm inclined to say 'no,' but…" Jean glares at me, and I can't help but laugh, the sound feeling odd and unused in my throat. "Just giving you a hard time, darlin'. But we really do need that money."

"I thought about this." He's not laughing it off, not letting me change the subject, his focus glued to the road and his grip going white-knuckled on the wheel. "I thought about you. Every day. And I tried not to, but here we are, so the least you can do is tell me what the hell you plan to do in Houston. We're in this shitstorm together now, Marco, and we have been since I pulled out that gun, so stop treatin' me like an accessory and start treatin' me like an accomplice, because God knows the law will if they catch us."

Silence falls for a moment, and I can't come up with a retort, because he's right. Being forthcoming has never been my strong suit, but for his sake, I'll try. Groaning, I rub a hand along the uninjured side of my jaw and let my eyes drift shut. "You got a fuckin' cigarette? This one's a doozy."

"Yeah, yeah, here," Jean nods, passing me a smoke and a book of matches, fingertips brushing the tendons across the back of my hand as he pulls away. God, six months and he goes from terror to tenderness where I'm concerned. It was almost worth it.

"All right, so if we're gonna do this, if we're gonna go on the road, we gotta be adequately prepared," I start, sparking the match to life on my thumbnail and lighting the cigarette with a grateful drag. "'Cause right now, we got one revolver and a box of bullets to our names, and that ain't gonna cut it. We need guns, we need ammo. I got a contact in Houston that can get us both. Problem is, I owe that contact a substantial amount of money."

Jean frowns and asks, "How much money?"

"I reckon about two hundred and fifty. Plus interest."

"God Almighty." Letting out a low whistle, he shakes his head and gives me a sidelong glance. "How'd you end up that far in the red?"

"I, uh." A nervous laugh sounds like a death rattle in my chest. "I may have been doing a job with Connie on a contract for this person and decided that it would be more prudent to run off with their share of the cash. And subsequently gotten arrested."

Jean's face is set in a perfect deadpan as he makes the turn for Dallas, voice flat when he speaks. "So your plan is to take stolen cash from my house, drive to Houston, make a house call to someone you ripped off for two hundred and fifty dollars and ask 'em if they've got any spare artillery laying around."

"Two hundred and fifty plus interest," I mutter, scratching at the back of my neck.

"Great plan."

"You got any better ideas?!"

"Yeah, my vote goes to something that ain't gonna get us killed!" Sucking in a breath through his teeth, he lets his head fall back against the seat, tendons in his arms flexing from gripping the wheel too hard. "Y'know what, no. I trust you. It's probably gonna get me a load of grapeshot in my ass, but I trust you. We'll grab the money and get the hell out, and pray that my folks ain't home."

He trusts me. I'm in no mental state to try and figure out why that knowledge makes everything a little more bearable. Jean's trust doesn't erase any of this, can't take away the sleepless nights or heal the bruises, but it makes me rest a little easier in my seat as we continue up the road. For now, I don't have to be scared of leaving my back unguarded. He's got it.

Somewhere between the fork in the road and the outskirts of Dallas, he reaches down and grabs my hand. I finally stop shaking.

My choice is to keep living or don't. I've chosen life. I've chosen him. And if my demons and my memories have something to say about it, they'll wait until I'm more vulnerable than this to rear their heads. They always do.

Jean gets antsier the closer we get to Dallas, insists that we pull off the road and wait until after dark to drive to his house, something about his mother having bridge night on Sundays and the possibility of us sneaking in and out without anyone being home. Three hours parked in the stifling heat behind an abandoned gas station, dust blowing back and forth across the windshield of the Model T. Jean sleeps. I know better than to let myself slip into unconsciousness. The last thing he needs right now is to hear me wake up screaming.

Three hours, Jean sleeps, and I spend that time doing anything to stay out of the inside of my mind. I squint at my dim reflection in the window and try to clean up the dirt and dried blood plastered to my skin, do the best I can to wipe Eastham off of me with one of Jean's handkerchiefs and pure determination. I stare out the front of the car and pay close attention to the way the wind picks up the dust and swirls it around until it gets too dark to see. I curl up in the corner between my chair and the car door and just watch the steady rise and fall of Jean's chest for a while, the graceful arc of his spine as he curls inward and mumbles something in his sleep, the flutter of his eyelashes against his cheekbones. Those few precious nights before everything went to hell, the handful of times we sprawled out across his mattress in the dark laughing about stupid shit and kissing the smiles off each other's lips, he always left after I fell asleep, went back to the living room to sleep on the couch. Better that way, he said. No one would ask questions.

I think now that if I'd ever had the chance to see him like this in Dallas, I might have been persuaded to stay. For someone who claims to be as restless as I am, Jean has something about him that makes you feel settled, even against your will.

It's a stupid idea, but I still lean forward and ghost the pads of my fingers across the line of his cheekbone, the curve of his neck, trying to relearn him. He mutters something again and turns his head into the touch, flattening my palm against his cheek, and the little frown that's been furrowing his brow and pulling at his lips softens. My chest feels tight.

This was never supposed to happen. I went my entire life believing that it just wasn't something I was built for, and I was beyond fine with that. Being what I was, that was already complicated enough without throwing emotional attachment into the mix. I never wanted this before, never wanted the idea of my touch calming someone's nightmares, never considered making plans that revolved around waking up to the same face for more than a few nights in a row. I never wanted Jean to hit my veins like a full flask of whiskey in ten minutes flat, to send me reeling and grasping for anything to keep me from falling. I didn't want his crooked smile doing weird things to my heartbeat and I didn't want kissing him to feel like coming home and I sure as hell didn't want him to have to bust me out of jail because of whatever he feels on his end of the equation.

I didn't want to love him, but I do. That's the one thing in all of this that's guaranteed to not change. The law can haul me back in tomorrow, and I will love him. My plans can crumble to dust and float away on the wind, and I will love him. Everything can catch fire and collapse around us and the whole world can go to hell in a fast car, and I will love him. I will love him. I will love him.

Jean wakes up with a sharp jerk and wide eyes that calm once he sees me still sitting there. With a sleepy smile he looks over at me and asks, "You get any rest?"

"Yeah," I lie, looking out to the empty horizon as he starts the car again and pulls back onto the road. "Best sleep I've gotten in months."

I will swallow the screams and refuse to acknowledge the nightmares and I will keep living, and I will love him.

Jean drives up his street with the headlights off, winces when he shuts the car door like the quiet click is a gunshot in the dark. There's no light coming from the house, but that doesn't seem to help the nervous tension tugging at his shoulders as we walk up onto the porch, his fingers trembling visibly even in the shadows as he reaches for the door.

"You sure you wanna come in?" he whispers. "You can wait in the car if you want."

I shake my head, reaching down to wrap my hand around his, turning the doorknob together. "If there's gonna be a confrontation, I got things to answer for just as much as you do. C'mon. We need to be quick."

Inside, it's dark and quiet. Everything is the same as it was the last time I was here, the radio hunkered down in the corner of the living room, the faucet in the kitchen dripping steadily. Our footsteps creak on the aging floorboards, and Jean winces, turning back to me and mouthing, "All right, where'd you leave it?"

"Linen closet, top shelf." He nods and shuffles carefully back towards the hallway, easing open the closet door and grimacing when the hinges creak. I feel useless standing there, shift my weight back and forth for a moment before I wave Jean down from the other end of the hall. "I'm gonna go grab stuff to eat from the kitchen. We can take some food on the road so we don't have to-"

"No."

"Jean-"

"No," he snaps, the low volume deceptively masking the stern tone as he whips around to glare at me, eyes hard. "I can do all the shit I did today, I can come back to Dallas and go do God-knows-what in Houston with you and hit the road on the run from the law, but we are not stealin' so much as a goddamn saltine cracker from my family, you hear me?"

My strong-willed, stupidly noble boy. I try not to look too fond, know it'll probably just make him angry. "Well, I don't know if you've seen me lately, but I can't exactly walk into a diner and not raise any eyebrows."

"I don't care, you're not-"

"Jean?" A thin, wavering soprano, scared and uncertain. A child's voice.

"Shit," I hiss, ducking into the kitchen and flattening myself against the wall. Jean would have blocked her view from the end of the hallway, and I was standing in the shadows to begin with.

"Jesus, Nettie." Jean lets out a wavering breath, and from where I'm standing I can see his face as he whips around, the paper bag in one hand while the other presses to his chest. "You scared me half to death. Where's… wait, are you here by yourself?"

"I'm s'posed to be at the Wagners', but I came home."

"You walked home alone in the dark? What have I told you about-"

"What'd you do, Jean?" Ninette says, her voice still not sounding like itself as she cuts him off, soft and on the edge of fear.

Jean sucks in a breath. "C'mon, let's get you back to the Wagners'."

"No!" And there's her fire again, the sudden shout splitting the still air. All I can see from the kitchen is her shadow, and it takes a step back, shaking its head. "No one'll tell me what's going on, and I ain't going nowhere 'til you tell me!"

"Nettie, I don't even know what all's happening right now, okay? But you shouldn't be here on your own." He squats down in front of her, a hand coming up to brush her hair back from her face.

"Ma came home from bridge night and we were having dinner and Eren came runnin' in here like a house on fire, said he needed to talk to her and shoved me out on the porch. They talked for a bit and then Ma came out all pale and stuff and told me to run on up to the Wagners'. I couldn't hear nothing they said, but Eren was crying his eyes out, Jean; I ain't never seen Eren cry before."

"Oh, God." Jean sounds absolutely mortified, and I have to bite back a growl of rage, because of course Eren would come running straight to his family, of-fucking-course he would.

"You did something, didn't you?" Nettie whispers, the betrayal in the words so profound that it even hurts me, and I'm not the person it's aimed at. "Something bad."

Jean sighs again, standing back up, and says, "You might as well come on out."

We could have gone without the money. We could have done a job somewhere between Eastham and Houston and avoided this entirely, and I would have taken the risk over this, over carving a smile into my face and forcing myself to step around the corner in all my battered lack of glory. "Evenin', Miss Ninette."

She's grown in the last five months, as children tend to do, taller and even ganglier, all coltish limbs and scraped elbows and amber eyes widening from across the hallway. It's hard to see the details in the dark, but I notice every ounce of disbelief etched into her face as she walks past Jean and over to me, trace the progression of shock to anger.

And I see every motion of her hand balling up into a fist, thumb on the outside, before it cracks right across my already bruised jaw.

Pain and the taste of blood explode in my mouth, the impact whipping me to the side so hard that I have to hunch over to keep from falling right on my ass, looking over at Ninette's livid expression and swiping the back of my hand across my mouth. The skin comes back stained sticky red. "Been workin' on that right hook, little darlin'?"

Her lower lip wobbles for a moment, eyes swimming before she lunges forward again. I half expect a punch to the gut, but instead she throws her arms around my waist and clings, shaking and biting back sobs. "I oughta beat the tar outta you."

"Probably, yeah, but I think someone's done the job for you already." Levity. Light. If I can joke about it, I can push it back, can ignore the uneasy tingle crawling up my spine.

"Ma said you tried to steal all the money from that grocery store," Ninette replies flatly, stepping back and looking up at me.

"I've stolen lots of things," I admit. No use lying to her now.

"Yeah." She's got the same look Jean does, the one that makes you feel like she's looking right through you, seeing your ulterior motives even before you do. "And now you're gonna steal Jean, ain't you?"

"Nettie…" Jean starts.

"He is!" Furiously, she whips around and smacks a hand against his chest, shaking where she stands and pawing the tear streaks from her cheeks. "You two are gonna run off. That's why Eren was so upset and Ma looked so scared. He's stealing you."

And that was the plan all along, wasn't it? Stealing him? From the day I decided that Jean wasn't something I could leave behind, I had every intention of taking him from the people he loved with no regrets. I never considered the consequences because I've never given a damn about the people I stole from, but that's just another weakness that snuck up to cripple me long before I ever noticed it. I caved for Jean, and I caved for his family. I caved for the sweetness his mother showed me that I couldn't remember from my own. I caved for the bits of Maura that I saw in Ninette, for the parts of her that were entirely her own. In one month of stillness, I painted three massive targets on my own back, and right now it feels like there's a bullet sinking home in each of them.

See, this is what happens when you let people in. The human body has trouble carrying one broken soul around. When you try to take on more, you start to crumble.

"Ninette, listen." Even the smallest movement still hurts, but I bite back the ache rocketing through my limbs long enough to sit down on the couch and gently tug her over by the wrist. We used to be at eye level like this, her standing and me sittting. Now I have to look up, plaintive in some weirdly fitting sort of way. "I promise that nothin' bad is gonna happen to Jean, okay? Cross my heart and hope to die."

"Why should I believe you?"

"Well, there's a long list of people who'll tell you that you probably shouldn't, Eren Jaeger being at the top of it," I grumble, wondering how weak I've gotten that the waylaid faith of a nine-year-old is enough to wound me. But in the wake of that thought, an idea takes root in my mind, and I give her hand a little squeeze before letting go and looking at her over steepled fingers. "But if you want, we can handle this like a business transaction. You know what collateral is?"

Ninette frowns, fixing me with a skeptical look. "It's something you give the bank, I know that much."

"Right. See, when the bank loans you money, you put something up as collateral for it. Sometimes it's a house, or a car, something important to you. You're promising the bank that you'll take care of what they gave you and give it back the same way it was when you got it, and if you don't, they keep your collateral."

"You wanna give me collateral for my brother," she deadpans.

I shrug, kicking my feet up on the coffee table and trying not to wince. "If you'll accept it, yeah."

Ninette seems to mull it over for a minute, looking between Jean and me a few times before she crosses her arms tightly over her chest and nods her head sharply. "What'll you give me?"

"Well, I ain't got much by way of material goods at the moment," I tell her, counting off my necessities and possessions on one hand. "I need the car. I need the clothes on my back. I need what money I got. But we can think of something."

"It don't gotta be something big. You said something important, right? Something that means a lot to you?"

What do I have that means a lot to me? Jean, obviously, but he's the one I'm bargaining for at the moment. And before him, there were only my plans, my delusions of grandeur and the schemes I wove to achieve them. Before him, there was only gunpowder and car chases, sprinting footfalls across a prison yard, Connie's ragged breaths beside me, the shadows of a burglarized house and the hum of a stolen engine. There's no way to take all those plans and give them to her, no material vessel that holds all they represent.

Well. Maybe there is.

Smirking, I yank the worn old newsboy cap off my head and place it carefully on hers, tilting it to the side so it sits crookedly on top of her messy blonde hair. "Why, I think it looks perfect on you, Miss Ninette."

She runs her fingers contemplatively over the brim of the cap, lips pressed into a thin line. "And this means you gotta bring him back safe."

"You have my solemn vow."

"We need to go," Jean whispers, looking out the front window even though there are no headlights coming down the street. "God knows when Mom and Eren'll get back, and that's a conversation I don't wanna have."

I can't fault him there, humming in assent and hauling myself off the couch with a choked little groan of pain as Jean walks back over and pulls his sister into his arms, a hand smoothing down the hair that the cap's ruffled into a mess. I'm glad that I can't see his face from this angle. I've watched him break on my behalf enough times without adding this to the list.

"I won't tell anyone I saw you," Ninette croaks, fighting tears again and valiantly wiping at her eyes when she takes a step back.

"Thank you," Jean sighs in relief, bending over and pressing a quick kiss to her forehead. "Now, listen. You gotta follow three rules while I'm gone. Rule number one, you stay in school. No cuttin' class, no dropping out to get a job selling newspapers or something. Rule number two, no fightin'..."

Nettie lets out a wordless squawk of protest.

"...unless Tom Wagner hits you first, and if that's the case, you kick his ass," he finishes, grinning. "And rule number three, I want you to mind-"

"Mind Ma, yeah, I know."

"No, minding Mom is implied." Shaking his head, Jean bends down to her level again, cradling her face between his palms. "I want you to mind Eren. He promised me that he'd take care of you and Mom if I was ever gone. You remind him of that promise. And if he tells you to do something, you do it, understand?"

"Yeah, yeah," she rolls her eyes, shoving Jean's shoulder with a smirk I can tell she doesn't quite mean. "Get outta here, knucklehead. You're the worst outlaw ever."

"Well, I got time to practice. I love you, kiddo." Jean hugs her again before standing up and making his way over to the front door, pausing on the threshold and just sort of staring around the place.

I never had the chance to look at what I was leaving behind, dodging blows as I left and running until my legs couldn't hold me up anymore. And standing here, watching him, I begin to wonder if I didn't almost have it better. I didn't have time to think of what I'd lost until it was already out of my reach, didn't have to tear myself away because that had already been done for me. Jean has a different sort of strength than getting up from a beating and walking away with your head held high. He's got the kind of strength it takes to stand there and watch everything he has right in front of him, to make the decision to turn around and walk down the porch steps with a shaky breath and a muttered "I'll be sure to write."

For all the weakness I've gained because of Jean, I've only seen him get stronger. It's a strange dichotomy, this give-and-take spiral of loving and letting go that we've tugged ourselves into, but I can't help but think that freedom looks good on him even through his heavy heart, a spark in him that wasn't there before. It's dim beneath the sadness that weighs him down on the way to the car, but it's there. And it's beautiful. And he's beautiful. And this is what we have now, no second guesses or turning back.

Our choice is to keep living, or don't. Jean chose life over a decades-long suffocation in Dallas. And that, that's enough to make me a little braver in the face of all the blackened memories tugging me backwards to Eastham and the things I'm telling myself that I don't remember.

"I can drive if you want," I offer, noticing how tightly he's gripping the wheel once we get back on the road headed south.

"No." Jean shakes his head, staring intensely at the small circle of road in the headlights and nudging the speedometer a little higher. "No, I want to. I'll drive 'til I'm tired and we'll find somewhere to stay."

It's a clear night with a bright moon, but I don't say anything about the way it catches the wet lines across his cheekbones thirty minutes out of Dallas. Sometimes we don't want to be alone with our weaknesses. I reach over after another mile and rest my hand over his on the gearshift, and he clings back like I'm a lifeline he has no idea is fraying by the second.

We've chosen to live. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how to do it with both of us broken and more lost than we'll admit.

Somewhere to stay ends up being some roadside motel outside of Huntsville that looks like it's seen better days. Jean handles the checking in since he's the one who doesn't look like he's gotten on the wrong side of a prizefighter, and I sit in the car until he comes back swinging a clunky keychain around his finger and opens door number 12 with a flourish. I don't have any bags to haul in with me, but my body feels heavy enough, shoulders slumped by the time I make it in out of the dusty night. The room's got faded carpet and peeling wallpaper, but there's an inviting-looking double bed made up against the far wall, something Jean and I both stop and look at for a few seconds, the implications of it sitting unspoken between us until he breaks the silence.

"Guess I don't have to go sleep on the couch tonight," he breathes, running a hand over the threadbare duvet before bringing it up to press against the spot on my ribcage where why heartbeat thrums the loudest.

"Guess not," I nod, but before I have time to say anything else his lips are on mine and everything blurs into a heated confusion, my bruised jaw aching sweetly beneath his touch and split lips stinging where they meet his. It's not as graceless as the frantic kiss back in the cell block, more calculated, more careful. Jean's taking his time, and for a moment, I'm inclined to let him.

But then in some odd time skip my shirt's ended up on the floor and there are fingertips skating up my spine and oh God no what not again-

Panic. Blind, knee-jerk reaction panic that slams into me with lethal force. This is what jumping off a skyscraper must be like. My bones shake and I feel my insides liquify before they convulse, arms flailing wildly until I'm out of the grip that holds me and a good five yards away, gasping for air and fighting the bitter sting of bile rising in my throat. My heart is slamming against my eardrums with loud, wet thumps and nothing makes sense, surroundings blurring, iron bars and ugly wallpaper, concrete and carpet, and I don't know where I am, I don't…

"Marco? Sweetheart, are you okay?"

Jean. That's where I am. That's who I'm with. The panic doesn't disappear, but it dissipates, becomes manageable. I suck in a ragged breath and shake my head, grasping for words. "I'm…"

I'm not even close to okay and I haven't been since they put me in that hellhole. I'm not telling you even a fraction of what happened in there and I don't ever intend to because knowing the truth would break you like living it broke me. I'm scared that I came out of there a different person than the one who went in, and I'm starting to think that I've just been putting Old Me on like a costume to stay functional. I'm scared. I'm lost. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

"I'm gonna go take a bath," I choke out, running a hand through my hair and cringing at how dirty it is. "I'm disgusting right now. Nice long soak'll do me good."

I run the water so hot that steam clogs up the bathroom and I feel like the skin is about to scald right off my bones, and it doesn't do me any good. I grab a washcloth and scrub until there's no more dirt or dried blood and I'm raw and pink and look like I've been flayed alive, and it doesn't do me any good. I wash my hair three times and watch the soap bubbles pop in the water one by one, and it doesn't do me any good. The water goes murky with all the grime, and even though my head's well above the top of the tub I still feel like I'm drowning, still feel five months that I'm trying so hard not to remember crawling under my skin.

I chose to live, but it's a harder decision than it sounds when you've been dead inside for a long damn time.

Somewhere between that realization and the last bit of soap fading out into the dirty water, the full impact hits, the levee breaks, all the walls I put up in my head long enough to get me out of Eastham and out of immediate danger crumble like paper beneath a tidal wave, and I don't even notice the horrid, gasping, would-be screams clawing up my throat until they start to hurt, curled up in a chipped porcelain tub with my head pressed to my knees and trying for all I'm worth to yank the hair right out of my head.

The door to the bathroom opening doesn't process, and I'm too far into my own head to recognize the hands prying my fingers off my scalp until I've already flown into a borderline-animalistic fight to get them off and slopped half the water out of the tub, fighting until Jean's voice cuts through the terror, "Hey, you're okay, you're okay, it's me, you're safe, you're okay."

It's like clicking a switch. A breaker blowing. Instant shutdown.

There's no resistance as I somehow end up pulled to my feet and wrapped in some ungodly mess of towels and led back into the room, dressed like some sort of living doll and tucked under blankets curled up against Jean's chest. I don't think I blink once the entire time, eyes wide and vacant until something flips the switch again and I start shaking, clinging to his shirt and sucking in deep gulps of air.

Sometimes we don't want to be alone with our weaknesses.

"You're okay now," he whispers, and I don't have the heart to call him a liar, to tell him that he hasn't quite gotten what he signed up for. "We're gonna do everything we said we were. You and me. You're safe and you're out, Marco, you're outta there, okay, just breathe."

Am I? Am I really? Being shattered was never part of the plan. I never factored in time to spend putting myself back together, and shivering under worn-out blankets in a shitty motel room doesn't seem like any kind of place to start doing it. You can't put yourself together without finding a solid place to do it, and I can't stay in one place for too long without falling apart. I am a paradox. I am the worst kind of paradox, and I am doomed to functional brokenness at my absolute best.

"I'll never get out, Jean," I whisper into the dark hours later, not even sure if he's asleep or not. "I'll never get out."

My best shot is running with everything I've got in me and praying that eventually I'll find a door.