CHAPTER 12

The weather rehearsed for the end of the world again. Ironically the only day the rain stopped falling was an occasion where the mood would have required it. After the incident they didn't have practice for two day, so that they could remember those who passed away, but Jean suspected that the break had more to do with the important looking people in fancy clothes, who appeared in the camp unexpectedly, knocking on Shadish's door, than the sentimentality they said it was. The fact that an even darker expression sat on Shadish's face than usual also confirmed his theory, that something was going on, but the adults kept silent about it and no one cared enough to ask.

These two free days mixed with the rain was a perfect opportunity for something that Jean didn't want to do at all. He would rather have soaked to the skin and passed out from muscle soreness than stare out the window, deep in thoughts and follow the raindrops racing down the glass. Jean had no problem admitting that he and sentimentality weren't really a thing, but contrary to popular belief he often thought about important things. How long would the walls keep standing? Why were there titans and what were they, really? Why were they eating humans if they were not even hungry? There were a lot of questions which still remained unanswered, even after so many years passed. Hundred years flew by and they weren't any closer to the truth. However between all this uncertainty, Jean was sure of one thing.

He was fucked.

He knew he was incredibly selfish thinking that, but he doubted that anyone would have wanted to be in his shoes. The confrontation was looming over his head like a dark cloud, ready to turn into a thunderstorm any minute. And Jean wanted to avoid that storm as long as possible.

It's not that Kalmbach surviving wasn't the biggest relief he had ever felt, because that would be a lie. He also wouldn't deny that he cried on the day the riders took her back; it was a horrible day, but the memorial on the next was even worse. Shadish talked for a long time, but he couldn't recall any of it. In those two days he became an expert on tuning out conversations in general. He wasn't even thinking about Kalmbach. He just felt numb as if he was empty and lacked compassion or guilt. Everything he was supposed to be feeling was just not there. Marco mistook his behaviour for worry and kept reassuring him, that Kalmbach was going to be fine, so Jean tuned out him too. He didn't want to think about Kalmbach, he didn't want to hear her name and he wanted to be left alone. So instead he thought about mundane things. Questions like why were there fancy people running up and down, taking turns at Shadish door or why was the weather so temperamental. Ignorance was truly bliss.

It took the medics three days to put most of the bones back to its place, disinfect the wounds and bandage her up. It took another day for her to wake up. It was only then that Jean snapped out of the peaceful denial that swallowed him up so comfortably. It was also the time that he realized he was fucked.

…

As it turned out Jean was also a coward. More than a month passed since she woke up and he still hadn't gathered the courage to talk to her. He told himself that if she wanted to speak to him she could have done so. His other favourite excuse was that she was recovering and he should just let her rest. Considering all the bandages she looked just as bad as on the day she awoke. She walked around – limped around the camp every day with one of the medics, so Jean supposed it was some sort of exercise to help her healing, although it looked really painful. Kalmbach kept wincing and she was very slow, but Jean wasn't a doctor and he wasn't about to question the guy's method. It also meant that he had a perfect reason why he should not bother her at that time of the day, which made avoiding her a little easier. He could do things without worrying about running into her, so he basically did everything he managed in that one hour. Always being fast and efficient he never crossed ways with her. But no matter what, he always met her at the same time; when the sun would usually be the highest on the sky.

Lunch.

Even when he sat at the furthest table from hers they could still perfectly see each other. It was hard to avoid someone sitting five meters away from you. It was ridiculous. He knew it was. He knew he should have been the first one to greet her, the first one to offer her help. Instead, he was the last. There was no question that Marco was disappointed with him; his friend made that clear saying things like 'you are acting like a child' and 'grow up'. Deep inside he knew that Marco was right – that bloody bastard always was -, but as the days passed it just became too uncomfortable for Jean to talk to Kalmbach, let alone bring up their last argument. He shuddered even just thinking about it.

The day things went downhill started out quite normal. Being a deep sleeper combined with Marco giving him the silent treatment ended up with him waking up late, which was unacceptable, as Shadish reminded him at the top of his lungs. Jean made sure to send a dirty look to his friend, hidden behind Reiner, which he answered with a slight flush appearing on his cheeks. Good, he thought. He should feel guilty. It honestly pissed Jean off how Marco was acting lately, as if he hadn't done the same thing to another kid. He was a freaking hypocrite.

Feeling annoyance settling in his stomach he resigned himself to a lengthy sulk session where he promptly ignored Marco for the rest of the morning. He was fed up with everything; the tell off from Shadish combined with Marco looking down on him from his moral high ground set his mood for the whole day. By lunch he was feeling angry and snappish so he slammed down his tray hard enough to startle Marco who was quietly slurping his soup moments before.

"Jean," he stuttered trying to wipe the soup escaping his lips. His freckled ear flamed up in embarrassment and while Marco was busy being horrified over the patch on his shirt Jean sat down next to him. His own soup spilled out from the force of the impact, but Jean lost his appetite anyway.

"Do you plan to stop ignoring me anytime soon? Because it's getting really tiring."

Guilt, Jean recognized the moment it appeared on his friend's face. Marco opened his lips, ready to answer, but Jean was having a bad day and all the pent up pressure let his mouth lose and the words started flowing.

"Don't you feel a bit like a hypocrite? Since you are so comfortable on your high horse, I would like to remind you that you did the same thing before me and I don't remember giving you shit for it. Nor would I have if I knew about it. I thought we were friends."

"We are!" Marco said pleadingly. "We are friends," he said again in a softer voice.

"Well, thanks to your friendship I got yelled at today."

Marco looked away in a small silence. This time Jean decided to wait for him to continue. "I'm sorry about today," he mumbled.

The silence was heavy and uncomfortable. When did they become like this? Jean wondered. They always had companionable silences, something that Jean shared with only a few people. His mother was once one of them. He remembered sitting in the same room with her, studying while she was cooking something that usually smelled incredibly good, hence he was chubby all the time. That's no longer a problem; training everyday made him lose all the extra weight. He didn't mind. He looked better now, fitter, and slimmer. Chubby Jean was in the past now, along with his mother's cooking.

Jean stared at his spilled soup, feeling homesick.

"Is it going to happen again?" Jean asked.

Marco shook his head, before meeting his eyes. "No. I'm sorry."

Jean searched for insincerity in the brown pair of eyes and when he found none he let out a dramatic sigh.

"Fine," he muttered, not quite losing the annoyance from his tone. "I will forget about it. But don't do it again."

Marco gave him a smile so heartfelt, that Jean found himself smiling back. Inside he felt relieved that the ignoring each other thing was finally over. He would be lying if he said he hadn't missed Marco's company. Sure, he was still angry that Marco replaced him with Reiner in the last few days, but he was happy to get his friend back.

They sat in silence — in a companionable silence — as they ate. The soup was nothing special; bit too salty and the vegetables were slightly undercooked, but Jean devoured it with a newfound appetite. It didn't even matter that he disliked carrots, his bowl was empty in a matter of minutes. Marco was still slurping his own, an annoying trait he'd gotten used to enough by now to just ignore it. As he looked around it was easy to pretend that nothing horrible happened a week before. Most of the people chatted about things he couldn't hear, but based on their content expressions the topics couldn't have been that bad. Sasha and Connie acted just like before, loud and obnoxious, but happy all the same. Life went on. People moved on. Most of the people.

He hadn't looked at her in a while. Even when he did he rather looked through her. He knew she was there, but he always looked away before his eyes could linger long enough to really see her. To see her bruises, the way her light skin turned into ugly purple or how her blonde hair was hidden behind the layers of bandages. Now, he just stared. He couldn't look away. Some unknown force made him notice every last scrape as if to just mock him. Look what you've done. And it worked. The happy feelings he had moments ago disappeared, leaving him empty. Almost as empty as she looked. She had that faraway look in her eyes, as if her body and mind were at two different places. She just stared at her soup without eating it, holding the spoon between her fingers in a gentle way he didn't knew she was capable of. In his mind she was always someone rough with a thick skin that nothing could get through. Instead she just looked… vulnerable.

And that's when their eyes met.

Jean was fast; he broke the eye-contact the moment it formed, but it was too late. He imagined this a lot of times. He expected anger, disappointment. Accusation, that it was all his fault, he expected her to shout at him words that even Shadish wouldn't say.

But there was nothing.

She looked at him calmly, the same way she was looking at her soup, the same way she looked at everything. An empty look that caused the temperature to drop so low, that even when the sun was burning up the fields it just felt chilly.

He didn't notice Marco watching him, until his friend said his name.

"Jean…"

"I won't," he interrupted, because he knew what he wanted to say.

"I know you are getting tired of me saying this… but you should talk to Amy."

Jean kept his expression calm by an effort of will. He didn't want to have an argument with Marco right after they reconciled, but he couldn't help to feel irritated. "Why is it so important to you? You can't even say that you are such good friends because I rarely see you two talk."

"You know it's not the same. You've spent much more time together; she only talked to me when you were around. You are right, Amy is not my friend, but yours and I don't want you to destroy that thanks to your lack of communications."

Jean couldn't help the surprised laugh that escaped him. "Excuse me? That's rich, since it was destroyed thanks to you insisting that I communicate with her. And we were never exactly friends to begin with. I don't see how talking with her would change any of that."

"But maybe if you apologized…" Marco tried again but was cut off by Jean's abrupt response.

"I won't apologize."

Shocked by the firmness of his voice Marco looked somewhere between taken aback and disappointed. He knew it shouldn't bother him, since it was still none of his business, but the idea of Marco thinking lowly of him made him ramble on.

"I don't mean that I'm not sorry," he explained in a low voice, so nobody could hear them." Because I am. I do feel guilty. When I look at her I can't help thinking that half of her injuries were caused by my own hands but I still don't think that what I did was wrong. I mean look at her! She's a bloody cripple! I trained with her. What saved her wasn't skill. It was luck."

After that Jean grumpily started scraping the bottom of his bowl with his spoon. Marco watched him quietly. For some reason, his friend's lack of words annoyed him more than Marco lecturing him. He could swore that there was even a little pity in his eyes.

Irritating.

"Would you stop pestering me if I did?"

Marco blinked. "What?"

"Would you," Jean said again, in a tone as if he was talking to a child, "stop pestering me if I talked to her?"

"Yes!"

Marco turned so happy in just a few seconds, a bright grin appearing on his face. To balance out, Jean scowl only deepened.

"It won't change anything, I'm telling you."

"It will make you feel better, Jean."

"I don't care."

"But I do," said Marco and for a moment Jean felt a bit better.

...

That feeling evaporated quickly when her fist collided with his face.

It was his fault really. He didn't see the signs when he walked up to her. Later the slight changes on her face were clear in his mind. Her jaw tightened, her whole body froze. It should have given him a clear enough message to leave her alone. Not to mention what she said when he opened his mouth to talk.

"Don't."

One word, nothing more. He should have walked away then, but he never was the best at reading people. So he spoke. He rambled about how he was sorry that it took him so long to talk to her and how he was glad that she was okay.

And then she hit him.

She broke his nose. He never had a broken nose before, but he was sure the bone was damaged. It crunched all too noisily under her knuckles. It was a straight left, he realized a moment before the impact, a fucking punch he taught her himself. The pain didn't register at first. He was too busy being amazed that he got hit that hard. He felt it a second later.

"Fuck!" he yelped, staggering back a few steps, tears in his eyes, hiding his face behind his hands. He touched his nose and cursed again as blood oozed onto his hand.

"Are you insane?" he shouted looking up just enough to notice her fist approaching his face in a rapid speed. With an ungraceful move he ducked out of the way, feeling the light breeze her fist left on his cheek.

But his escaping move only saved him once.

Drawing her arm back, she drove her fist into Jean's nose again. Head flying as his eyes locked on the sky, Jean stumbled. His right foot slid on the concrete and he braced the heel of his boot against the rough ground. His hands rose to cover his bleeding nose, eyes squeezing shut. A single tear leaked down his cheek. Head coming forwards, nose throbbing, he glared at Kalmbach over his fingers.

"You are fucking crazy," Jean snarled, spitting out the blood. "I just wanted to talk!"

"Go fuck yourself, Jean!"

Kalmbach stepped forward, left leg pulling back and struck out. Her instep slammed into Jean's shin followed by a sharp pain. Jean yelped, his right leg lifting off the ground, head dropping as he leaned forwards. Seizing the back of Jean's head with her fingers, she tried to force his skull down to ram her knee upwards into his face.

Jean reacted this time. He was faster than her even in with a bleeding nose and a possible concussion. He caught her knee before she could reach his face, gripped her calf and twisted it left with all his strength.

She wasn't healed, not even close, but Jean now didn't care. He was furious. And at that moment he wasn't above hitting back. He didn't care how she fell to the ground, holding her leg, sobs escaping her mouth, because all he could taste was iron and his face burned with pain.

She tried to kick him again, but he caught her leg and pulled it under him. They were both lying on the ground and they were both wheezing, but Jean climbed on top off her, catching her fist, that were now aimlessly striking out. She hissed as his grip tightened around her wrists.

"Could you fucking stop?!" he said out of breath.

"Or what?" she spat. "Are you going to beat up the cripple?"

"Are you kidding me? You hit me! You broke my fucking nose!"

"Good! I hope it will be ugly as hell!"

She tried to wiggle out of his hold, but his grip didn't loosen.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I saw ten people die, that's what's wrong with me!"

Jean felt the exact moment she gave up. Her arm went limp in his hand, her leg stopped kicking around. And then their eyes met. She wasn't crying. If anything her eyes were wet from the pain and Jean abruptly let her hands go. And in that moment a body slammed into him.

"What the hell are you doing to Amy, you bastard?"

Eren. Of course.

"I wasn't doing anything," he said pushing Eren away, wiping his nose. Wary of that idiot attacking him he only stole one glance at Kalmbach. Armin was fussing over her as he helped her up.

"It's okay," she said.

Eren looked at her in disbelief.

"But, he-"

"I said it's okay. I broke his nose first."

A mixture of relief and humiliation washed over him. Relief that no one will start hitting him. Humiliation that he was beaten up, by a girl, who could barely walk.

The blood smeared over his head from his nosebleed hid his flushed skin efficiently. And without another word he turned around and left.

Seven months passed before they spoke again.

Hey guys. It's been a year.

A lot has changed in my life since then. I've changed schools – I've been studying animation ever since September.I don't really want to make up excuses. I believe the delay was caused by numerous circumstances. Schoolwork was tiring and I drew a lot, but I kept writing all the same. Just different things. It's not that I lost interest in Attack on Titan or anything, because I hadn't. But I had other things on my mind and time just flew by.

Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter, even if it has been such a long wait. I'll try to update regularly, but we will see how that goes. I'm afraid to promise anything, but I really want to finish this story. We are nowhere near the end, so don't worry.

Thank you for your patience, guys. I hope you can still enjoy this.