Chapter 4

The fist-sized hole is a dud. Neither Jean nor Marian can make it any wider. Pulling on it just makes debris fall, and they're not willing to risk a collapse.

So, they try again. After a brief discussion, a new spot is chosen, and it's back to digging. Jean stabs into the cold earth with a broken windowsill while Marian scoops the loosened dirt out of the way. At about fifteen centimeters deep, Jean starts digging horizontally, underneath the debris, and, hopefully, towards freedom.

Jean works on carving the edges of the hole away, so it'll be big enough for them to fit through. He leans forward to dig at the deepest part of the hole. The motion is enough to make his ankle squeal. Apparently, it hadn't been cold or the injury that'd made the broken bone numb, but inactivity. The deeper the hole got and the farther he had to stretch, the more it hurt.

"Want to swap?" Marian asks as she piles a handful of dirt against the opposite wall. Jean watches her and winces. She sits on her knees, stretching forward and back in a motion that makes his foot ache in sympathy.

"No."

They dig in silence, then—

"It's your ankle, isn't it?"

"There's nothing we can do about it," he says with a grunt as he plows the windowsill into the earth again.

"I can check the splint. Tighten it maybe. There might be pieces of ice we can use to bring the swelling down. And of course, you could take a break, go to sleep, maybe give your body a chance to recover..."

"I'm not tired."

Marian sits back and examines him from top to bottom. Jean feels his ears burn and tells himself it's the cold and not the attention that does it.

"Look, I didn't want to say anything, but I've seen raccoons with smaller dark circles than you," she says with a gesture to her own under eye. Jean freezes with the panel of windowsill still buried in the ground.

"Did you just compare me to a raccoon?"

"Not all of you. Just the dark circles."

He looks at her. More hair frizzes around her face than is tied into the braid. Sweat oozes trails through the blood and dirt on her face. Her lips are more chapped than dried mud on a sunny day. Overall status: exhausted, filthy, and thirsty.

"You're not exactly a prize," Jean quips with an exaggerated gesture that's supposed to mimic her bedraggled hair. Marian's eyes narrow.

"I may be disgusting, thirsty, and starving, but at least I'm not sleepy," she says, gesturing to her own circle-free under eyes with more emphasis.

"I told you, I'm not tired!"

"Yeah, and I'm a magical fairy that's going to wave my wand and poof us out of here!"

"I wish you'd hurry up and do that."

"We've been over this, Jean. It only works on the third full moon of the year that lands on a Wednesday, and only when the wind blows southeast, and the dandelions are blooming. I can't change the rules."

They hold each other's gaze for a beat, but then Marian's lip twitches and the two fall into a fit of snickers.

"A raccoon," Jean says with a shake of his head. He resumes digging, hoping the conversation will move beyond well-intentioned nagging.

"Just think of it as a compliment. There's plenty of cute raccoons, dark circles and all."

"Oh?" Jean cocks an eyebrow at her and grins as she flushes and determinedly stares at the dirt in her hands and only the dirt in her hands.

"Shut up and dig, Mr. Hasn't-Slept-In-Two-Days-But-Magically-Isn't-Tired."

And Jean does just that.

Horse Face, Dog Leg, and Raccoon Eye Bags. At this rate, he's going to be a whole damn zoo before he's twenty.

They dig into the night. They pause for an awkward potty break and to suck at some ice chips they find buried in the cool, dark recess of the wreckage.

Jean won't admit it, but his eyelids feel like they're heavier than a titan. He tells himself it's the night, but his vision is blurry and speckled with black dots, and oh, isn't that close to freckles, to dried spots of blood, to the gaping black hole nestled between rows of titan teeth threatening to tear you and suck you down, down, dow—

"It's a nice night. Not too cold, not too warm," Marian says while pawing dirt out from inside the hole to Jean. They'd made significant progress. Marian's head and shoulders disappear inside the hole. The pair switched a few hours earlier because it was easier for her smaller frame to dig inside the cramped tunnel.

"Yeah, it's so warm, we got to eat ice for dinner," Jean grumbles. He shakes his head to chase the sleepiness away.

"It's nice and quiet," Marian continues. There is a moment of peace as Jean basks in the soft noises around them. The soft thumps of dirt moving, the shifting of moving earth, a muffled owl coo, a rumbling stomach…

Jean snorts and rubs his own aching tummy. He swore the ice they'd munched on had only reminded his stomach that it was empty.

"And the ground is comfy."

Another lie. The ground is hard as ice and the walls are literally hardwood.

"Just think of how good you'll feel after a full night's rest."

"I can't sleep, Marian," Jean says softly, then silently curses his runaway tongue. Marian shimmies out of the tunnel. The fist-sized hole in the ceiling lets in enough moonlight to make her eyes glint like a fire spark.

"Think about it, Jean. Even if we manage to dig our way out of this, we're still a two-days ride from the ranch or your base. It'll be even longer if we can't find horses. If you don't sleep, you're going to be too weak to make it there."

She's right, and he knows she is.

He still doesn't want to do it.

"It won't be pretty," Jean says, his eyes skittering away at the admission.

"We already discussed your similarities to a racoon. That's where my expectations for you and 'pretty' are."

He snorts and runs a hand through his hair. He's exhausted. Not just in a sleep-deprived way, but in an adrenaline crash, wounded, poisonous levels of fear accessed kind of way.

If Jean doesn't sleep, he won't make it back. He won't make it back to Sasha and Connie's laughter, to Mikasa's shy smiles, to fights with Eren, and Armin's thoughtful observations. He won't make it to his mom again, much less a nice house in the interior with a wife and baby eagerly awaiting his arrival home.

Jean catches Marian's eye, then nods before crawling towards the farthest wall and pulling his hood up.

"I'll keep watch," Marian says as Jean slips into a well-deserved sleep.

And watch Marian does.

She sees the rays of moonlight disappear beneath cloud cover. She sees her breath turn into visible puffs as the temperature drops lower the longer the night lasts.

She sees Jean shiver and burrow into his cloak with a mumble. She unbuttons her canvas jacket and, with careful fingers and held breath, lays it across him. She sees him gradually relax beneath the extra warmth.

His sleep is more important than her comfort. Not only is he their best chance for survival if a titan attacks (she doesn't have the first clue how to use swords, much less ODM gear), but he's injured. Marian may have grown up on a ranch in the middle of Fredericksburg-nowheresville, but she'd read everything she could get her hands on. And medical science—figuring out how things work and why and how to improve it—is her favorite.

She knows why your muscles get sore after riding a horse all day and how best to fix it (stretches and rest.) She knows why horses and dogs may bite and how to treat both injuries (poppy for pain, goldenseal for infection, and rest for recovery.) She knows how to help someone who gets bucked off a saddle and bonks their head (check pupils and awareness, monitor for eight hours, then let rest.)

So yes, Marian knows that sleep is Jean's best chance for recovery. Sleep is the body's greatest medicine. And in this cage of debris, it's the only real medicine she can offer.

But for sleep to work, it actually needs to be restful, and Marian sees the moment Jean's starts to be anything but.

It starts with a finger twitch that looks like a phantom trigger pull. He mumbles and winces but doesn't wake. Marian fiddles with the bottom of her shirt. She doesn't want to wake him up, not when he needs sleep so desperately, but it feels cruel to knowingly leave Jean trapped in a nightmare

It's okay as long as they don't get any worse, she thinks. Marian turns back towards their hole, deciding that if she can hear him with her head buried in dirt, then she'd wake him.

She doesn't make it there. A whimper like a kicked puppy stops her mid-crawl. Heart clenched with guilt, Marian shakes Jean's shoulder.

He wakes with a tornado of motion. All Marian sees is a twirl of emerald cloak and a glimpse of wild hazel eyes. Then all she sees is dirt as her arm is wrenched so far back, she's bent almost in half. There's heavy breaths behind her and bruising grips on her arms. Marian slowly pulls against the hold, her heart thundering like a racing horse.

"Jean?" Her voice is small and shaky. She felt dumb, trying to wake a soldier that had practically admitted he had traumatic dreams. Hell, maybe she'd been dumb way before that. She blindly trusted Jean didn't mean her any harm even though it was just the two of them, and he was a big man, and she was an admittedly scrawny woman. There was no one to help if Jean turned out to be something other than a well-intentioned Scout.

Jean's grip doesn't waver.

"I'm sorry. I should've just yelled at you or poked you or something. I'm really sorry, just please, let me go. I won't —"

The hold disappears, and Marian stumbles away at the lost pressure. She rights herself and scoots away, holding her bruised arm.

Jean sits with his knees pulled up to his chest. He grips his tawny hair and stares into nothing with wide, bloodshot eyes.

It's silent for a long time. Marian breathes deeply until her heartbeat slows. Her wrist and upper arm ache, but she's sure they're just bruised. Jean doesn't move except to grip his hair so tight, it's a wonder he isn't yanking it out.

"I'm sor—"

"Don't you dare apologize again," he says roughly. "Not after what I just did."

Marian is shocked into silence. A frosty breeze weasels its way through the maze of rubble. She wraps her arms around her middle, trying to chase away the shivers that wrack her body. Her navy button up does little to combat the cold, but her jacket lies close to Jean, clearly thrown off in his panic.

And it was just panic, Marian reminds herself. It wasn't okay, but it wasn't intentional.

And if it wasn't intentional, there was no reason for Jean's eyes to bleed with guilt.

A distraction. That's what he needs. Something to focus on other than the situation at hand. It's like tapping someone's knee while giving them a shot in the arm. Think about anything but the ongoing pain.

"I peed my pants in the middle of class once."

Jean's eyes snap to hers with an incredulous tilt to his brow.

"It was third year. We were doing group presentations on crop cycles. Me, Pierce, and Heidi had corn. I had to pee all day, but our teacher, Ms. Schmidt, was so scary. 'You aren't learning if you're pissing,' is what she used to say. She made the last girl who asked cry so hard, she threw up. So, I was way too scared to ask. I kept telling myself I could hold it, but right in the middle of talking about the structure of corn roots, I felt the first tinkle drip all the way down my pant leg. I stopped talking and everyone was staring at me, but I couldn't stop it. I just froze. Then Heidi saw what was happening. She grabbed Ms. Schmidt's flower vase off the desk and dumped it on me. 'Rain makes the corn grow!' That's what she said. Ms. Schmidt turned red as a pig in the sun and lectured Heidi six ways to Sunday, but she let me go get cleaned up in the bathroom. Until a few days ago, I thought it was one of the worst days in my life."

The distraction works. As she speaks, Jean's hands slip out of his hair. His eyes lose that haunted look, although they are still red and wet. Another icy breeze brushes against their skin.

Jean reaches for her jacket, smacks some of the dirt away, and offers it to Marian.

"It won't happen again," he vows as she pulls the jacket on. It still holds some of Jean's body heat and putting it on is almost like being embraced. Marian chews her lip, then shrugs, deciding not to agree or disagree.

"I'm sorry. You're not hurt, right?" The apology makes Marian feel better. It was proof he hadn't done it on purpose, and that he didn't intend to do it again. That he felt terrible it'd even happened.

"I think we've done enough of that today. Apologizing," she says. "So, let's make a deal. No more sorry."

She flushes beneath Jean's intense gaze (she didn't think he had any other kind of look, not with those narrow, burnished gold eyes) but forces herself to maintain eye contact. She means this. No more wasting time apologizing. They have no one but each other to rely on. They can't afford to waste time with pretty words when there are problems to solve and actions to take.

"Alright. No more sorry." Jean says with a nod.

"Good. Now I've got two apologies under my belt and an agreement that says I don't ever have to give you one," Marian says with a smirk. Jean rolls his eyes. The gesture only has half of the sass it had earlier in the day, but it's enough. The Scout and the farm girl are okay and ready to try again.