**written by: blueTshirts**

12:10 AM

My heart's thrumming in my chest. My hands tighten around the body of the late Dr. Jaeger's rifle. I can hear Jean's breath wheeze quietly in the back of his throat even though he's trying to be quiet. Somewhere in the back of my mind I question the sanity of this plan, even the sanity of the situation. I wish we hadn't come. I guess Jean was right.

I crouch behind the curtain of the back sliding door of the cabin. Jean kneels next to me behind the kitchen counter as we both peer out at the dark outside waiting for headlights and a car horn to start going off. I try to avoid looking at the drying blood beneath our feet. I can't think about that right now.

It's dark, everything is black. The only light is from the moon through the trees. I squint through the darkness looking for any sort of movement. Dread fills my gut as my vision plays games with me. The harder I concentrate the more it seems like there are shapes around the trunks of trees, wandering animals through the bushes, arms swaying in the wind, demons lurking at the edges of shadows.

I swallow.

I almost jump when I feel Jean's hand wrap around the back of my bicep. I glance at him. He's terrified. His face is clouded in sharp, dark shadows and fear. My chest aches knowing that this is literally one of his worst nightmares when coming here. First off, he honestly doesn't like Eren, plus, he doesn't care all too much for the rest of them. He came because I asked him to. Besides the fact that Jean is surrounded by people he'd rather not be around, he's in the middle of the woods. Jean's from the city, he'd rather be in the slums surrounded by crime and garbage than in the middle of woods with creatures and nature. He's completely out of his element.

And now this shit is happening.

I hold eye contact trying to tell him with my stare that I'm sorry for all of this happening, that I'm going to take care of him, and that I love him so much. I see his shoulders sag with a sigh.

Reiner and Berthold are already gone with Sasha and Connie right behind them. I'm fairly certain that the four of them will be alright together, they're a tough batch now fueled by fear and survival instincts. If they come in contact with the killer, I could almost feel bad for the guy with what they'd do to him if he tried anything.

I do my best to stay optimistic. That's all we have at this point. We just have to stick to the plan and this might work. I trust the other guys. I just hope there aren't any surprises for us around the corner.

Jean and I both wince at the echoing car alarm going off on the other side of the building. Flashing lights bounce off the trees. The shadows seem to move even more. The strobing light does nothing to settle my fear for what we're about to throw ourselves into.

My hand reaches up to the handle of the door. I muster as much strength into my arm to keep it from shaking. Before I can vault the door open, Jean grabs my wrist and pulls my hand away from the handle.

"Jean-" I blurt in a whisper. He ignores me and pulls my arm towards him. He smashes our lips together and gives me a panicked and desperate kiss. I almost wish he hadn't, it settles a deeper fear into my bones that I didn't want to think about. The thought of one of us getting hurt, or worse, makes me want to back out of the plan and fend for ourselves in fleeting fear.

His hand moves to the back to my neck to pull me back. He stares into my eyes, serious, a courage moves it way into his muscles that does it's best to hide from the fear. He tells me that he's got my back with his eyes. I swallow a rising feeling of suffocation.

"Don't be a hero," he says quietly as he grabs the handle of the door himself and looks out the glass door for a last check to see if anyone is waiting for us.

I hate it when he says that. My shoulders tense and my thighs cramp from the crouch. 'Don't be a hero.' It means protect yourself in Jean's way. He knows me. He knows how I'd jump in front of a bullet for a stranger. He wants me to protect myself at all costs, but I just don't think he understands me on that level. I can't imagine someone getting hurt if I can do something about it. It's not worth it.

"Let's go," Jean says over his shoulder.

Fuck it.

Jean squeezes through the crack in the door he opened, looking again side to side for any lurking presence. He motions for me to follow after him; coast must be clear. I close the door behind me and the two of us start to move as quickly as we can into the woods with as little noise as possible.

I can feel my heart in my head and my blood run hot through my limbs. Even though it's probably forty degrees outside I start sweating immediately. Without using our cell phones for flashlights, (so we don't draw any attention to us) the two of us do the best navigating we can manage in the flashing headlights. It feels like we're running out of a night club that's being shot up. All the fear and all the disarray.

The further we get into the woods the dimmer the lights become. Each step disappears into the darkness before it lands. There must be a trail, but without light there's no way to tell if you're stepping onto a branch or a snake. My breath quickens, panic rises in my throat as my lungs deal with my stumbling movements and frantic brain.

What if this doesn't work? We are literally running blind in near complete darkness with no sense of direction to wherever this Love Barn is as a murderer is chasing us. We're blind hamsters racing around a clear tank like we're some play things. How do we even know the killer is dumb enough to fall for our gimics? What if he's already killed more of our friends and are coming for us next?

I stop as my breathing makes my head feel like a balloon stretched thin with too much helium. My heart races faster than my thoughts and I feel like collapsing into a ball of panic. I grip the gun as if it'll protect me from the fear. As if I can just shoot the fear away. As if I could protect myself with this thing at all. What if the fear is more dangerous than the killer himself?

I shake my head feeling dizzy as I do so. Don't be like that, I tell myself, everything is going to be okay. You can do this.

"Marco?" I hear Jean's voice echo through the darkness. Shit. Flight instincts kick in as I snap out of my panic and I run to his voice just so he'll shut up. We have nothing if not inconspicuousness.

But I can't see him. I can't see anything. I'm running with a loaded gun in the middle of the woods with no light looking for my boyfriend. My feet feel numb as they stumble amongst exposed roots and ragged rocks. My body moves just because there's nothing else that I can do with rational thought.

My heels grind to a halt when I see a light blink on in the distance. I stare at it for a moment as it scans the trees. I hope it's Jean, but it could be someone else. I subconsciously flick the safety off the gun and place my finger next to the trigger.

"Marco?" I hear Jean again, he's being as quiet as he can but it still makes my spine shiver with fear. The light beam sweeps away and I can see the shape of my boyfriend in the glow. Thank god.

I start walking towards him. He may be drawing attention to us with the light but at least it's two of us against one. At least, I hope it's only one.

Jean's flashlight sweeps over me and the light burns my eyes, I squint and raise my hand to block the beam from my line of vision.

"Thank fuck," I hear Jean say under his breath from about twenty feet away. I continue walking towards him as he lowers the light so it's on the ground between us. A sense of ease comes with seeing Jean. Not that I'm calm but at least I'm not panicking.

Jean walks to me. He looks over his shoulder and scans the trees. I do the opposite and look solely at Jean in his jean jacket and green flannel. I focus on his face, at his eyebrows scrunched in focus and his lips in a slight frown. His shoulders are tensed up towards his ears and his hand that's not holding his flashlight is curled into a fist at his side.

I just want to go home. I want to go back to our little apartment and watch anime in bed with ridiculous amounts of barbeque chips. I just want to hold onto Jean without letting him go, without letting him wander away from me in the dark woods, without letting him get killed by a neighborhood psychopath.

Jean locks eyes with me and his slight smile gives me strength.

Then Jean disappears.

The ground beneath me collapses with a snap. I'm falling and the slight light that Jean had is gone. I don't know if my eyes are opened or closed. I'm falling for what feels like forever into darkness. The panic in my head locks my bones in ice and clamps my jaw shut. I can't even scream I'm so scared.

My body slams onto cold, hard dirt. My face bounces off the ground and a shooting pain bursts in my face. I don't know if the gun shot off or it's just a bang echoing in my ears.

My breath coughs out of me a moment later, sounding like I'm choking on a gut punch. I roll onto my shoulder and groan as sharp pains pierce at my side. I can't tell if they're sticks and rocks or my bones poking out of my skin. I breathe slowly as every movement feels like jelly and my head feels full of worms.

I continue to roll until I'm on my back, I groan again at the pain. But I can see the sky, the trees, the stars in the darkness seem to rotate slightly as I stare at them. Either the earth is moving really fast or my head is spinning.

A bright light blinds my view of the sky and I wince at it and then my head pounds at the sudden movement. I raise my hand at the light. I hear a voice call my name through what sounds like water.

Am I dead?

Wait, no. I know that voice.

I'm snapped back to reality.

I sit up frantically and a wave of nausea makes me feel like I'm about to pass out. But I swallow the feeling and look up at my boyfriend behind the flashlight. I can't make out the features on his face but at least I can recognize his voice.

"Marco are you okay?" Jean asks. He looks like he's miles away. My arm over my head looks desperately far from my boyfriend.

Wait, no. He's not miles away. Just focus. You busted your head, you probably have a concussion. You just have to stand up and Jean can help you. You must've fallen. There's dirt and leaves all around you. It's like a hole. You fell into a hole. Just stand and you'll be okay.

My brain struggles to grasp the situation as I continue to stare up at Jean kneeling miles above me. I'm gonna be a doctor. I should be able to take care of myself. I swallow and I taste blood. Everytime I blink my head pounds. My limbs feel like bundles of straw. I don't know how I'm going to stand.

"Grab my hand," Jean says above me. I notice that he looks over his shoulder. Oh shit, right, we're being followed by a murderer right now. Time is of the essence.

I try to take a deep breath through my nose but my nostrils are completely blocked. Shit. I probably broke my nose. That's gonna make things more difficult. I shake my head and try to get my legs beneath me. I notice that the hole that I've fallen into isn't all the big. It's big enough for me to lay down with my arms stretched above my head, but that's about it. Why is there a human sized hole in the middle of the Jaeger woods?

My slushy brain freezes for a moment as the realization comes to me. Oh my god.

Panic finds my body again. Thankfully, with panic and fear comes adrenaline and cortisol. Which means it gives me enough energy to claw myself to my feet and ignore the reverberating pain in my head.

My breath quickens with thick blood in my throat, I feel like I'm breathing with mashed potatoes coating my esophagus. I frantically look up at Jean and his outstretched hand. But even with as far as the both of us can reach, we still can't get to each other's hands. Maybe this grave is deeper than I thought.

"Jean," I whine as I feel my muscles scream and my bones pop from reaching so hard. This isn't going to work.

"Come on baby, I got you," Jean says as he dangerously lowers the upper half of his body further into the hole to reach me. But it's still not enough.

The fear of helplessness brings tears to my eyes as I look frantically for something to pull myself on. I hiccup my breaths as my shaking fingers fail to grab anything that won't crumble beneath my hands.

"Wait," Jean says as he starts to take off his jean jacket. He holds one of the arms and lowers the other side of the jacket to me. "Come on, you got this."

I frown at the coat. What if it rips and I only fall to hit my head again that'll completely know me out. But I don't think I have any other choice here.

I grab the jacket as far up as possible and try to dig my toes into the dirt walls to push myself up. Each of my steps only dig deeper into the earth, I'm only making the grave deeper for myself. I choke on a sob.

Jean's pulling with everything he can on his end. The jacket digs into the ground around the edge. Jean's heels drive themselves into the grass as he pulls. I blink up as dirt continues to fall towards me.

Just as I feel myself grab hold of the first steady piece of earth, everything breaks. The ground beneath Jean's feet fling chunks of mud at me. My hand rips open what seems like was the only thing that was keeping this grave from filling in on itself.

Jean falls back as the ground around him collapses inward - into me. Soil pushes me back into the grave and buries me alive. In a matter of seconds the walls of the hole break free and fill every part of the empty space with me in it.

Whatever moonlight I see disappears behind the earth. My screams are buried away with the rest of me as my mouth fills with dirt and grass. Every flinging and desperate movement I make is trapped and forced into stillness as I'm buried underground.

I'm going to die.

I can't breathe I can't see I can't scream I can't move. I'm trapped. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die and they might never find me. My family will never know what happened to me. Jean's alone. Jean's watching me being swallowed alive. He could be killed. The gun's gone, buried somewhere with me. He's in the woods alone with a murderer and no weapons. He's gonna die.

I was going to be a doctor. I wanted to save lives. I was going to get married. I wanted to have kids, a dog, all that cliche stuff that people made fun of. I wanted that. I wanted it with Jean. I was happy. I was happy. My life was good. I was happy.

Now I'm dying in a hole with dirt in my lungs and no way to save myself.

A burst of pain explodes over my face and I would scream if I could. I open my eyes. I'm able to open my eyes. I can't breathe. I still can't breathe. I'm going to see the light fade away from the earth as I die.

Next thing I know, I'm bent in half coughing my brains out. My arm is over Jean's leg as I puke dirt into more dirt.

Once I'm done coughing, my breathing is more like hyperventilating. There's still so much pressure. It's still so hard to breathe. But by the looks of it, the top quarter of my body is uncovered from the earth.

I'm alive.

Jean's frantically clawing fistfuls of dirt away from my torso. He's crying and digging and panicking. I find that I can lift my arms and do so to grab handfuls of his shirt. I'm not letting go of him. Not if my life depends on it.

With my arms around Jean's back I can feel his wheezing breaths come in rapid succession. Somehow he finds the strength to wrap his arms around my torso and yank the rest of my lower body out of the ground.

We fall back as my body is completely free. But that's not enough for Jean as he scrambles to pull the both of us further from the filled pit not trusting any of the ground around it.

He rolls me on my back and looks down at me as he sobs. "Marco, Marco, talk to me baby," he hiccups.

I stare up at him with my body limp in shock. I'm conscious, I know that, but my brain seems to be a go-kart crashed into a wall of tires. No words come to my mouth. I'm somehow alive but I feel like I'm dead.

Jean buries his head in my chest crying something to himself. He then looks up at me. "We got to go baby, they probably heard us," he says. This time he doesn't wait for a response. He lifts me until I'm sitting up and then takes one of my arms and wraps it around his shoulders.

My body responds decently and I manage to grab a hold of his shoulder and get my feet positioned under me as he helps me up.

"Can you walk?" Jean asks with exhaustion in his voice. I nod my head. Jean takes the answer for what it is and leads us deeper into the woods.

The more we walk, the more my body acts on its own. I'm walking mostly alone with an arm still wrapped around Jean because I don't want him to get any farther from me than he already is.

It's still so dark. My eyes feel more adjusted to the lack of light at this point at least. But it's still too dark to navigate properly.

"Fuck-" Jean curses quietly as we trip over a tree branch. "We need light." I stick my hand out palm up. Jean understands and hands me his phone. "You sure you got it?"

I easily open his phone and turn the flashlight on. I don't honestly know how I'm doing this. Maybe it's the pinnacle of survival hormones. I can feel my brain moving like honey on pavement but my body still responds easily. And yet, I still haven't been about to manage a word to my mouth. That must be the shock that's messing me up.

Jean guides us as I direct the light at the ground in front of us. We're moving pretty slow but that's better than nothing, or being dead.

Something glints in the white light from the phone. Jean notices too and stops.

"What the fuck is that?" he asks himself. He unwraps my arm from his shoulders and I panic and grab the fabric at his shoulder. Jean looks up at me and a pained expression crosses his face. He takes my frantic hand and laces it in his. "Don't worry, I got you."

I don't say anything and continue to hold Jean's hand as he squats in front of the object. He tilts his head. "Is that blood?" he says.

I try to focus on the sharp thing on the ground but my vision is pretty screwed. My eyesight seems to have gotten three times worse all the sudden. Everything is blurry and distant, I couldn't make out what we're looking at even if I tried.

"What the fuck?" Jean mutters, "Is this a fucking bear trap?"

I squint at the object. And with my imagination filling in the holes of what I can't see, I can probably distinguish an open bear trap on the forest floor.

Jean stands back up and away from the thing. He looks over his shoulder and takes a deep breath. "Let's keep going, and we need to be careful."

I frown looking at the woods in front of us. And as if God were looking down on us now for the first time this evening, I think I can see the blurry shape of a building down the path.

I shine my light at the structure and Jean curses in joy.

We walk to the barn. I just now remember that we're here for Ymir. Something pounds inside my head and I stumble from the pain. Jean helps me stay up and on course. I breathe through the pain hoping that the adrenaline continues to serve as a painkiller for a bit longer.

We make it to the barn. But unlike Connie's colorful title for the place, it seems nothing like it's cracked up to be. The 'Love Barn' is really just a barn. It's got rotting wood panels and smashed windows. This place doesn't look like it's seen any love in years.

Jean and I make anxious glances at each other. Jean shakes his head and reaches out for the pull on the barn door, it creaks open gently.

Jean pokes his head inside. "Ymir?" he calls into the darkness, "It's Jean and Marco, you here?"

Nothing.

Jean shrugs and we enter the barn and shut the door behind us.

Instantly, the smell of something burning makes the pounding in my head worse. I groan and lift a hand to my head to try and ease some of the pressure. I feel like I'm going to collapse.

"Here," Jean whispers. Now that we're inside everything seems so loud. The only noises inside the wooden walls are creaks from the wind and the sounds of me and Jeans breathing. Jean holds his hand out for his phone. I give it to him.

He examines the barn with the flashlight. And just like the outside, the inside is discernibly barn-like. Piles of hay line half the barn in separted piles in pins. Old, aged tools hang on the walls and stack against each other. Rakes, shovels, hoes, picks, hand-saws, hammers, and anything else have been left to expose and rusted away from its original self.

Power tools pile haphazardly on the other side of the barn. A lawnmower, blower, a couple of chainsaws, a trimmer, and some other tools that I can't make out also look like they're rotting away.

Jean freezes when his light shines on a body laying in the middle of the barn floor.

I freeze. Now a familiar fear paralyzes me as I stare at the body, unmoving. I don't let my brain think. If I think, I'll panic. I do my best to keep myself together as Jean steps cautiously towards the person.

Jean takes a glance at me over his shoulder, and then back at the body.

He kneels next to it, leans down to look at their face, and then recoils back to stand with his hands over his face.

My breath leaves me and I do my best to not completely collapse back on my ass. I fumble for the wall behind me and sink to the floor. Tears well up in my eyes and my brain screams in pain. I know that recoil of panic at this point. They're dead. Of course they are. This can't be happening.

Dread fills my gut. My chest tightens and tightens, my breathing hurts, my head hurts, my everything hurts.

I stare at Jean as he runs his hands through his hair and turns to continue looking at the barn, searching. He pauses and goes to pick something off the ground. But I'm not paying much attention to him at this point. My body is falling apart and my mind is right behind it. I lose my senses as my eyes rest on the body on the floor that's barely visible without the light.

My chest hiccups. I lean my head back on the wall as exhaustion makes my body feel two times heavier. How are we going to make it out of here alive?

Light illuminates from where Jean's fiddling with something. He stands as he shakes out a match with a lit gas lantern at his feet. The entirety of the barn fills with a glow of light.

My breath picks up again with anxiety. Oh god, I can't do this anymore. I can't panic like this anymore, it's pushing me to insanity.

I weakly roll to my knee and reach out for the lantern. What if the killer sees us? We can't do this. We can't do this.

Jean takes my hand and comes to sit quietly next to me leaving the lantern to burn.

"It's okay," Jean says as he blocks my worried gaze towards the light. He lifts a hand to my face and it really fucking hurts but I don't want him to let go. "It's okay," he says again, his face falling to look like he's both deathly afraid and completely exhausted. I sit back against the wall and look at him as tears spill over my cheeks. I don't dare to make a sound but I can't keep the tears from coming.

"I don't think any killer is out there," he says softly. I stare at him, my expression blank except for the tears, my brain like dead leaves in frozen snow. "There isn't a killer out there," he says more definitively.

I don't ask. I can't ask. I blink more tears over my cheeks and look back at the body. Something inside my chest snaps. Whatever connection that the brain has to the heart is now severed. I stare at the body as if it's like the rusted power tools around it. It's just like everything else. It's normal. It's fine. Everything is fine.

I lick my bottom lip, it tastes like grime, sweat, and blood. I try to clear my throat. Mashed potatoes. I blink heavily. I want to go to sleep.

"Ymir?" I ask with barely a voice to my question.

Jean nods and massages my fingers in his hand. "Yeah," he sighs.

We sit there in silence for a while. The tears eventually stop. But I don't stop looking at the body, at Ymir. I'm sitting propped up on the barn wall barely holding myself together. I imagine I won't make it much longer like this if these things keep happening. I wonder how much longer any of us have at this point.