I'm a little sad that this is the one that is getting posted on Valentine's Day because it's depressing as hell but also hopefully kinda beautiful in a sense? (But not really, it's mainly just sad.)
Chapter Rating: T
Chapter Warning: Major grief, some adult themes in the way of death and whatnot, some language
World: Canon; it'll be fairly obvious as to what time once you start reading.
Word Count: 883
People always said the world got dark when you lost someone you cared about. That wasn't true. The world didn't get dark. You just realized how dark it already was.
Jean learned this with sudden and alarming clarity. It wasn't when he was staring down at Marco's body, half-eaten and mangled against the side of a building, slumped in the street among all the horror and destruction. Lying dead in the streets where Jean grew up. It wasn't when they piled body after body onto the pyre, the flames burning the entire night. It wasn't when Jean broke down in front of his friends and let out tears for Marco.
It was when he stared up at the bunk above him at night and knew it was empty now.
The thought left an aching hole in his chest. No, not a hole - something that festered and crawled, living inside of him and gnawing at the edges of his thoughts. It was something that breathed and consumed him like he was oxygen for a flame. It was a creature that sucked on the blood in Jean's veins. It made him feel tired, beaten.
With sudden and alarming clarity, Jean Kirstein realized that this world was dark.
For three nights, he lay in his bed without getting any sleep. Three nights passed while he stared up at where Marco should be. At the end of those three nights, he was expected to make a choice to serve the human population. He wondered if he'd stick with the decision he'd made, the one he'd made for Marco.
But then again, was it really for Marco? If there was one thing Jean knew it was that Marco wouldn't want Jean gallivanting around beyond the walls, slaying titans and endangering himself in Marco's name. He'd want Jean to take the easy way out, live a cushy life with the Military Police, father some children or some stupid shit like that.
The thought made Jean sick to his stomach.
But he knew he wasn't really doing this for Marco. He was doing it for himself. He stood by the words he once said to Eren. If Jean went out there, if he ventured beyond the protection of these walls, he would die. Top ten, so what, who cares. It didn't mean a thing. There were monsters and horrors in this world that someone like Jean wasn't capable of dealing with.
Those monsters would kill him. He would become one of those horrors. His comrades would watch him be swallowed whole, or torn in half by huge teeth, or be trampled and bent into a broken, crumpled heap, just like Marco.
The sad thing was that it's exactly what Jean wanted.
It wasn't about glory or martyrdom or being reunited with his lost friend. It wasn't about any of that bullshit. It was about how this world was disgusting and pathetic and how it made Jean nauseous to live in it. It was about wanting to leave it all behind, because once Jean realized how dark it was, there was no escape from those thoughts. They clung to him like vicious shadows wanting to strip back his clothes so they could dig into his skin and rip away his flesh, peel it all back so they could crawl inside and make him a part of them.
Jean didn't want that to happen.
He didn't want to be consumed by the idea that despite how shitty it was, this world was the best that life had to offer. People in this world accepted their circumstances. Soldiers accepted their comrades deaths and moved on to fight another battle. To avenge them or some other bullshit. People who had never seen a titan, never seen the destruction, the fear, the panic, those people accepted the false safety of the walls and they lived their lives worrying about who their children would marry or whether or not they'd be able to pay their landlord next week.
When Jean saw those people he wanted to scream. He wanted to take someone they cared about and rip them in half and throw the pieces in the street. He wanted to see the despair on their face when they found them.
That's what this world had made of Jean. It had turned him into a vile, hateful, spiteful being, and Jean never wanted that.
All Jean wanted was to leave this world before it could turn him into one of those people who settled for what the earth offered him, a tragic, black existence.
Marco had often spoke of a place full of light and peace, a place beyond the walls, beyond this world, he would say. Jean never understood what he had meant but Marco had seemed so sure. He had this brightness to him, but his face especially glowed when he talked about this...light place. Jean found himself hoping that Marco found this place. Whatever it was, whatever he meant by it. All he knew was that if it existed, it certainly wasn't part of this world. Jean could only hope that Marco was right, that this place was real and that Marco had found it.
Because Marco was gone. And with sudden and alarming clarity, Jean knew the world would stay dark forever.