[AN] oi. long time no update. happy kwanzaa, yule, hanukka, merry christmas, happy new year, ect. I hope you guys had safe, fun holidays with your loved ones. anyways, sorry it's been so long. I haven't had access to the internet lately, but now I spend all my days on my new touch screen laptop, blogging and watching anime and reading fanfiction.

花有重开日，人无再少年
huā yǒu chóng kāi rì, rén wú zài shào nián
Flowers may bloom again, but a person never has the chance to be young again. - Chinese proverb

Chapter 4: Bluebells

"Those girls are like bullets, and we're just arrows."

Jean glanced over at his comrade, Marco Bott, and a feeling of unease took claim of him. There was more behind Marco's words, and it reflected in the front of his eyes, as he watched the backs of Mikasa and Nephele become infinitesmal specks that blended with the rest of the forest, his smile small and uncharacteristically dim. From far away, every single one of them -every single human- were just a few inconsequential specks flecked throughout something so much greater than even the sum of them all.

"What's with the look?" Jean inquired, replacing his worn blades with a pair of new ones from his gear. He let the busted scraps of metal fall dozens of feet below the tree branch they were on, watched as they silently descended onto the forest floor of crushed, decaying leaves and pine needles. They always trained in the forest, which made Jean wonder how well the cadets would do when sent out to conquer other terrain less suitable for their omni directional gear.

"I just wonder what's worse; being strong and having the responsibility of protecting everyone else, or being so weak that others risk their lives trying to protect you," murmured Marco, already finished changing his own blades. They were prepared, but they weren't ready to continue pushing forward just yet.

Shrugging, Jean gave his gear a hard pat, the dull thud resounding like the pump of a single heart beat. It was like he was trying to reassure himself that it wouldn't suddenly fall to pieces with the slightest touch. It was astounding how much their lives depended on those hunks of cold metal.

"It sucks either way, because that means that someone is probably going to end up dead. It'd be a lot better if there was no one in need of protection, and no one who had to protect," Jean said solemnly. He thought that Marco wasn't acting like his usual self.

Marco shook his head at himself and smiled, tilting his right blade to gather a bit of the light it reflected back into his eyes. "Yeah. But until then, we'll need to keep fighting so that a world like that exists one day."

After sneaking another quick glance at Marco, Jean decided to lighten the mood with a boisterous laugh, patting his friend on the back as he had his ODM. Marco grunted from the impact, his eyes widening as he momentarily feared that the tap might push him off of the branch that they were perched on. "And that's not gonna happen if we sit on our asses in a fucking tree, talking about our feelings while everyone else is training!" Jean teased, before sliding off of the branch and dropping like a rock. He soared through the air like a leaf in the wind after shooting his cables into two parallel trees and releasing them once he gathered enough momentum to swing himself forward, before being swallowed by the sea of emerald.

Jean's booming laugh of triumph echoed throughout the dense forest, stirring the creatures that cowered in their holes and rousing several birds into flight. Marco wondered who it was that Jean had beaten to one of the various decoys scattered around the training area, and imagined them glowering as Jean flaunted his victory.

"I can't even seem to hold a candle to you," Marco affectionately remarked, standing up and supporting himself with a steady hand on the tree trunk.

He stepped off of the branch and let physics do the rest for him.

It was hard to tell which one of them had the superior abilities, but Nephele knew the answer better than anyone else. If it wasn't for Nephele's drive, Mikasa would be way out of her league. She was capable of so much more than Nephele, but the reason why they performed almost equally was because of how hard Nephele pushed herself. So, she aspired to be even better than Mikasa was. If she could surpass the silent, exotic beauty in talent, then she'd be able to outperform almost any soldier. At least, that was her belief.

There was just something that Mikasa had that Nephele lacked. Something that every soldier had that Nephele didn't.

Strength.

Because of how blatantly obvious it was, Nephele ironically neglected to try to improve that subject. Her workout routine focused on her core and lower body, rather than her upper body. She also refrained from building any significant muscle mass. To Nephele, stronger just meant better. She failed to view her incapabilities at a different angle because of something so trivial: she didn't want to have the figure of a strong woman. There was a barrier in her mind, and she was trapped inside of it.

Nephele allowed herself to fall rapidly towards the ground, leaning her body forward and then suddenly shooting her steel cables high up into a tree that was a few meters from the five meter decoy she was aiming for. This allowed her to gain inertia as the cables swung her forward in an upside down arc. She let her mind drift in the clouds while her body drifted through the air, trying to see the azure sky through the dense canopy of leaves the color of the Survey Corps' cloaks. For a moment, she imagined her body dissipating like fog, a cloud that's fallen too close to earth, and flowing with the current of the wind. She craved freedom, but was on a strict diet of self-oppression.

Too soon, however, did gravity remind her of her corporeality. Before she fell too low, she shot her cables into two trees, peering through the foliage to catch a glimpse of her target; the crude eight-or-so meter tall wooden decoy cut to resemble a 2-dimensional humanoid figure, like a titan. On the nape of the decoy was a block of dried leather that the cadets were to slice with their swords, which Nephele could see because of how stark the contrast of its red color was against the green of the woods. She looked around her surroundings, searching for any shapes that might be maneuvering swiftly between the trees. She saw none, yet proceeded with caution, using a significant amount of gas in her tank to propel her forward faster than inertia alone could. She knew exactly how to bend her body for less wind resistance, her legs tucked beneath her and her back arched. It was like dancing in the air.

She just didn't get there in time. Maybe the victor was already ahead of her, or maybe they were just faster, but the swing and flash of a pair of blades signaled Nephele's loss. Mikasa cut a clean, sizable chunk out of the thick leather with her swords just as Nephele had entered the clearing that the decoy was posted, and landed nimbly on the branch of a tall tree on the other side of the clearing. She gazed at Nephele impassively, her dark eyes unreadable especially from this distance, and Nephele sighed at her own defeat, smiling softly.

"You beat me," she congratulated after finding her own suitable perch to rest on. Mikasa always beat her; second sucked.

"I wasted a lot of gas," murmured Mikasa, adjusting one of the knobs on a tank. Though Mikasa wasn't the best at small talk, she decided she might as well try. "I heard that a few members of the Survey Corps are going to be visiting in a week or so."

Nephele was caught off guard by this, not because of the Survey Corps impending arrival, but because it was Mikasa who told her. "Huh. Wonder what they're coming for," she said.

"Maybe to get more recruits," offered Mikasa, absently tugging on her scarf. She had dirt caked under her nails and scratches on her hands and a few skeletons of dead leaves in her obsidian hair. Nephele hid the dirt well beneath a few coats of burgundy polish and was carefully pulling out a twig from one of her curls.

"Yeah. Mostly everyone who makes the top ten joins the Military Police, and everyone else signs up for the Garrison." Nephele could think of one particular cadet who'd be ecstatic when the Survey Corps arrived. "The Survey Corps needs all the help they can get."

Silence brewed between them for a while, so Nephele decided that the conversation was over. She put her hand on the tree trunk to steady herself as she prepared to return to the check point. She had only scored two points during this drill, and was disappointed in her poor performance.

"We should probably get going. I bet Shadis is going to fire the return flare soon," Nephele suggested. Now that she didn't have to focus on training, she could weave through the trees with her ODM as she pleased.

"Yeah."

An insistent breeze tugged on Nephele's uniform like a lover's hands, and she let it carry her where it pleased. She closed her eyes and stepped off the branch, her heels peeling off a few pieces of bark, and imagined that she was falling from high up in the clouds rather than just dozens of feet above the ground. The wind mussed up her hair, but for once she didn't mind. She felt at peace, falling fast, dangerously close to hitting the ground. But when she was just five meters from the earth, she released her cables and shot them into a tree perpendicular to her and released a gust of gas from her tank. The cables were quickly pulled taunt, jarring her body so that her harness dug deep into her flesh, and she couldn't wait to see the purple bruises that they'd leave on her ivory skin the next morning. The momentum brought her swinging around the tree, and she released her cables to fire them at another tree northwest of her. Nephele continued this routine, crisscrossing through the trees like a needle as it sews.

Knees tucked under, back arched. She once saw Mikasa using this technique and thought she looked graceful while doing it, so she adopted the practice. She also learned a few tricks while watching Jean as well.

'Right... Jean.'

His name elicited memories from the night where they ran aimlessly through the forest together. It was the first night they spoke. She smiled demurely at the fond memory. Nephele liked forests, and spent most of her time training in the one nearby either by herself or with her fellow cadets on official drills, but she wished she could get a better glimpse of the sky.

"See? Without all those trees, the sky is really bright."

Jean had been right. Above the cliff overlooking the charcoal colored valley beneath them, the sky had been freckled with stars of varying intensities, some flickering in and out of existence while others were incandescent and brilliant. Maybe the dimmer ones were just small towns built in the heavens, and the brighter ones were cities alive with celestial lights. The moon was eclipsed, cloaked in night's blanket, so there was nothing in the sky to outshine the stars, which flowed through the darkness like a river of fireflies.

Nephele had been breathing heavily before she saw that sight because of their run, but as soon as Jean raised his finger and pointed up like the needle of a compass for her to follow, her fatigued body seemed to be fueled with energy and life.

And then Jean climbed down the bluff, and Nephele yelled at him, worried that he might fall, and then he plunged into the darkness below, and the first thing that pierced the light again was his hand, clutching a fistful of drooping bluebells.

"You used to have a garden, yeah?" he had asked, climbing back up the cliff face. He wore that stupid grin,all dimples and teeth, with a speck of dirt on his cheek and his hair tousled from the brisk wind. "Not many flowers grow around here, but you can find bluebells growing on the valley bluffs."

Jean didn't know what he was doing, but that's what made his innocent act of kindness so much more meaningful. Nephele should have cried. Bluebells were her mother's favorite. Ligeia had said that they drank up the colors of the sky, once at midday and once at twilight, to get their mauve hue.

An emerald comet trail blazed across the night sky of her memories. It was the signal flare to return to the checkpoint and receive evaluations, and it hung above her head, suspended in the morning sky of the present. The orb of effervescent light then dimmed and collapsed upon itself, falling silently to the ground until it was extinguished completely. Only then did she realize that her body was still moving separately from her mind, so she continued to give it control, letting her it carry her back like it was someone else's.

[AN] oh, and I was wondering if you guys would like to see this fic with any pairings. I was thinking about an eventual Mikasa/OC, but I also really admire Levi Heichou so... ah well, feedback would be gratefully appreciated! thank you for following, favoriting, and reviewing this story. thank you for even bothering to read it~