Wrote this for an anon prompt on tumblr: "Jean realizing the contrast between his cosy, privileged childhood while Armin had to work the fields after the fall of Shinganshina and cope with hunger, cold etc."

I loved the prompt a lot. So, as usual, this ended up a lot longer than I intended.

Jean was used to having his sleep interrupted. Being in the Survey Corps didn't allow for a lot of rest, especially when you had three superiors with no understanding of the words 'calm down', two comrades that were constantly being kidnapped, and an entire race as your enemy.

However, the last thing that Jean had expected to wake up to was Armin telling him that he had an urgent package delivery from his mother.

Now that the package sat in his hand, he wasn't sure exactly what he was supposed to do with it. Urgent usually meant that something was wrong, or would be wrong if it didn't get here on time. What if she didn't have enough money to keep buying food? Or what if she had hurt herself by carrying too many groceries? What if she had died?

Well then she probably wouldn't be sending a package...

"Jean, are you okay?" Armin asked. He still stood in the room, too curious too leave but not bold enough to ask to see what's in it.

"Yeah."

"Do you want me to leave?"

"No, it's fine. Stay." It might not be fine, but having Armin here helped him to think otherwise. Bad news was supposed to come when you were alone and fragile, not with people you cared about. Not that his previous experiences had held true to that...

He pulled the lid off.

"What is it?" Armin asked, even though he could have easily looked into the box himself.

"It's..." Jean paused, staring into the small container. He laughed. Just how had his mom managed to accomplish this? "It's my mom's cooking. My favourite meal."

"Food?" Armin leaned over now, staring into the box. "How is it so fresh? There's no way they would deliver it that quickly."

He wasn't exactly sure how his mom had managed to convince the Corps to deliver the package. One thing they had been told upon first entering the Survey Corps was that there was no receiving mail from civilians. When Jean had questioned it, Armin had said it was probably because they were constantly moving, or that they didn't expect the majority of the soldiers to be alive long enough to receive it.

Leave it to his mom to accomplish the impossible.

"Well, that's my mom for you. If she wants something done it will happen."

"Your mom sounds amazing," Armin commented.

As annoying as her nagging could get, there was no way Jean could disagree with the description.

"She is, and she's just as good a cook." Jean picked up the spoon that sat in the container. He smiled slightly, imagining what was going through her mind when she packed it. She probably thought he ate all his meals with his hands or something. Though, if he was being honest with himself, he wasn't ready to get out of bed yet and he probably would have resorted to eating it with his hands over risking going downstairs and having others ask for a taste. Sasha had been trying to get a hold of his mom's cooking ever since she had lost to it in the cook-off back in their trainee days.

Jean raised the spoon to his mouth, stopping only when he noticed that there was still one other person in the room with him. So he hadn't exactly avoided everyone...

"Here." He extended the utensil out to Armin.

Armin blinked. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

If it had been Eren then there was no doubt in his mind that he would hear 'because you're a selfish asshat.' But this was Armin, the one too polite to even ask for a taste even though he'd been staring.

"Well it's yours, and you said it's your favourite meal."

"Yeah, which means I've had it a ton of times before."

That was all the prompting Armin needed. He leaned forward hesitantly, opening his mouth so slowly that Jean thought he was trying to imitate the gates of Wall Rose. He'd said it was okay, hadn't he?

Jean shoved the spoon forward, cramming it into the other's mouth before his arm fell numb from having been held there so long.

Armin made a choked sound, coughing slightly after Jean pulled the spoon out.

Armin didn't say anything, but the shocked face that he made was enough to force Jean to hold back a laugh.

"That's amazing," was the verdict he gave after he had finally swallowed.

"Told you."

"I can't believe she got this delivered here as an urgent package."

"Well that's my mom for you. Besides, last time I talked to her I told her that we wouldn't be back for a long time. So she had to deliver it before we left. It's the last time I'll get to eat it for a while."

"Oh... And I ate part of it. Sorry."

"Don't be. It's not like I haven't had to go without before. When Wall Maria fell food prices skyrocketed. We couldn't afford eggs, or tomatoes. They said there wasn't enough because of all the refugees. We ate potatoes for almost two months, it was horrible," Jean complained, recalling the memory.

He remembered how he had heard the adults at the market talking, saying how unfair it was that they had to pay so much for vegetables when the refugees got to live on the farms and steal as much as they wanted. The government already pays for their food anyway was a phrase he had heard more than once.

He had been outraged by the rumour as a child, consumed by the selfish thought that they had inconvenienced him. Even though his mom had told him more than once that they had to share, he was still angry at them. His family had barely gotten by, and the people who had invaded their land could get whatever they wanted and they didn't even pay for it.

He knew better now though. He knew that the refugees had it far worse than he did, regardless of how much food he was getting. He still had his home, and his mom. But that didn't mean that he still didn't feel a bit bitter.

So he didn't understand why he felt so compelled to ask. Perhaps it was just his way of seeing if any of his actions as a child were justified. He'd been wrong about so many things, and changed his mind on so many more. He just had to know if he had been right or not.

"Hey... Armin. Can I ask you a sensitive question?"

"What is it?"

"The adults that worked on the farms... Did they ever steal food?"

The silence that followed was brief, but it was enough for Jean to pick up on. "No."

He'd been stupid. What had convinced him that it was a good idea to ask this? He hadn't even thought it through all the way. Armin, Eren, Mikasa... All of them had lost their family when the wall had fallen. How would Armin even know?

"I'm sorry, Armin. I didn't mean to sound accusatory or anything. I mean, you probably wouldn't even know. None of you guys had any parents left to work the fields." Shit. He was messing this up even more now. Just apologize for everything, apologize for this conversation.

"There were no adults working the fields," Armin said. "At least not after the first month."

"But then that means the farm workers were..."

"The kids."

Armin didn't say any names, but he didn't need to. Jean already knew who it included.

"And to answer your question," Armin continued, though Jean wanted to tell him to stop. He had only been asking out of curiousity, he hadn't meant to bring up this. "Yes, we did steal food sometimes. Eren tried a few times, but after his second time getting caught they threatened to send him outside the walls too. And even though we knew it was a bluff we got scared anyway. So after that Mikasa did all the stealing, but only when she got the chance."

Armin paused. "I was always too tired after the work to even walk home, let alone run away if I got caught. So I never tried."

Jean wasn't sure how to reply. He'd had no idea that was how the farms were run.

When he was eleven he had been running around with other kids his age, picking up sticks and pretending they were Military Police members. They'd run around and hit each other, and laugh when the other got hurt.

Meanwhile Armin and Eren and Mikasa had been working on the fields, growing food for others to eat. So that he could eat. The food he had had on his plate every night... Was it possible they had been the ones to grow it?

The thought disgusted him; made him disgusted with himself that he had ever complained about it.

"I'm sorry." It was the only thing he could think of to say.

"Don't apologize. You did nothing wrong."

Maybe not out loud, but he'd been doing it in his head; making assumptions of what life was like for others.

"It's only human to get annoyed when your daily life changes," Armin started. "As a kid I got upset when Eren's dad started taking him on his doctor's visits with him, even though I knew it was important for Eren to learn. So I'd go there everyday and ask if Eren could play when I knew he wasn't home. I just wanted to show Carla that I was annoyed."

Jean tried to imagine what Armin would act like when he was annoyed, let alone as a little kid. The thought was impossible.

"Did it work?"

"No, I did it so much that Carla thought I was lonely. So she invited me inside and started teaching me sewing," Armin confessed, his face flushing red slightly as he said it. "Hey, don't laugh!"

He couldn't help it. Now that was something he could picture.

The conversation had returned back to something he could handle, but he still wasn't sure what he was supposed to say. He looked down at the meal in his lap, which was quickly getting colder. Maybe... "Hey, Armin-"

"Hey, Armin!" Connie shot up the stairs, out of breath. "You said you were going to be quick! Levi's coming, you have to get back to your post."

Armin's eyes widened.

Connie disappeared back down the stairs.

It was only now that Jean noticed that they were both in uniform. Why was Armin even up here if he was supposed to be on watch? Jean looked back down at his meal. Of course, Armin had taken the 'urgent' part seriously.

"Sorry, Jean, I have to go."

"Hey Armin, wait," Jean called out.

Armin stopped, foot halfway down the first step.

"Want another bite?"

Thank you for reading. Comments are greatly appreciated.