Chapter 8
"Can we stop?"
"Not yet. We need to get farther away from Rossen."
"But Jean," Marian whines, jostling the arm looped over her shoulders, "we're like twelve kilometers away. And I'm hungry."
"We're maybe six kilometers away. And here. Have a..." Jean's voice fades away as he reaches for the bag on his back, only to touch nothing but cloak.
That's right. The titan had ripped the bag off.
Their food supply is gone.
Marian stares at Jean's unburdened back with disappointed eyes.
"You had one job."
"I was a bit busy!"
"Me too! Trying to drag your big ass through a fence!"
Jean gapes at her. Minus the recently acquired injuries, he's perfectly healthy. Tall and muscular too, thank you very much. It's not his fault Marian's short and built like a mouse.
His expression gradually morphs into a smirk as he remembers what had happened before they ran into the fence.
"If someone hadn't fallen on my broken ankle, maybe I could've climbed through that fence on my own."
"I apologized!"
Jean's smirk grows.
"And I thought we agreed to stop saying that word to each other."
Marian stops. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water.
"That's not fair. I was a bit preoccupied," she says. Terrified they were about to be eaten, upset she'd hurt him...
"So was I!"
"Fine," Marian huffs. "I said the word. How can I atone for such an error, you poor abused raccoon?"
"We keep going until the sun sets. Then we can find a place to hunker down for the night. Who knows, we might find some food on the way."
Marian glowers but steps forward with more vigor, dragging a limping Jean behind her. He wants to walk, well alright. They'll walk.
By the time the sun is a mere blazing blob on the horizon, Jean is beyond ready for a rest. The longer they walk, the more of his weight Marian bears. He's trying to hold his own, but his ankle can't take it. All the running, sneaking, and climbing has rendered it a swollen mass of shrill, icy pain.
Not that he'd admit it.
"Are we allowed to stop now, oh wise and powerful Scout?"
Jean makes a show of examining the horizon.
"Looks like sunset to me, whiny farm girl."
"I prefer the term 'ranch warrior.'"
Jean snorts as Marian lowers him onto a nearby rock. She plops onto the ground, takes off her bag, then props her aching feet onto Jean's rock.
"What's in there? Food?" He asks. The mere thought of food makes his stomach growl. She turns her head enough to give Jean a look worthy of a disgruntled mother.
"I've got a knife, a flask, lots of socks, and a blanket. Cause my job was to get winter gear, if you'll remember."
"Long as you don't have another one of those scarves," Jean says, tugging his own hood up as a breeze whistles through the trees. "We need to find shelter. It's going to get colder."
The temperature wasn't much of a problem right now. The two of them had been moving almost non-stop since early that morning, but come night, when they're not moving, and the sun isn't there to warm them—they'll really start to feel the cold.
"We could make a tent with the blanket?" Marian suggests.
Jean shakes his head. "Not enough cover."
"You really think the titans will follow us this far?"
"I don't know what to think. They shouldn't have been there to begin with. Either way, I'd rather be safe than sorry."
Marian stares at the snow-covered branches above them. There's so much of it, it almost looks like powdery clouds against a navy sky. She sits up with a groan, her own stomach grumbling and post-adrenaline rush exhaustion hanging over her like a boulder.
"You just want me to keep walking."
"Walking is good for my 'big ass.'"
Marian flushes. She twiddles with the end of her braid.
"I shouldn't have said that. It wasn't nice."
Jean wonders if an apology without saying the word 'sorry' breaks their agreement.
"Or true," he says, grin growing as her fiddling increases and her mouth puckers into a pout.
"...let's go find some shelter," Marian says as she stands and reaches down to help Jean up, "before your head gets even bigger than your ass."
They stagger deeper into the forest until they come across a hip-tall stone nestled beside a trio of closely packed trees. It creates a triangle of space, just big enough for two people to stretch out in. Jean deems it good enough. Marian deposits him inside their new shelter, then takes the blanket out of the bag. She tucks and knots it around the trees and boulder until it creates a roof and covers most of the exposed areas.
Marian crawls into their shelter and squeezes in beside Jean. The make-shift tent is just tall enough for her to sit up straight, although Jean's head bumps against the ceiling. A frigid breeze slithers in through the gaps, but it's the best she can do. Marian takes out the flask and drinks some of the snow water before offering it to Jean. He takes a swig, then reaches over to fill it up with more snow.
As he reaches for the patches of snow, his legs shift. He sucks in a breath but determinedly pretends nothing is wrong. Marian catches the pained expression, then squares her shoulders, preparing for a fight.
"Jean. I need to look at your foot again."
He sighs so deep, it's a wonder his ribs don't rattle.
"There's no point," Jean says.
"There is too. I can rewrap it. Maybe ice it."
"That's just what I need. More ice."
"Jean..." Marian says. It's twilight outside the tent and dark inside. He can just make out her expression. Wide, almost pleading eyes with the weight of worry lying heavy in their chestnut abyss. A small, tight frown. Strained jaw.
Jean feels something in him uncoil. He nudges his foot towards her, running his hands through his greasy hair. It's gonna hurt. Again. But if it will make Marian feel better...
"Okay. You can look at it."
Marian starts. She hadn't expected to get her way so easily. Siezing her chance, she grasps his heel and tries to keep it still as she peels his boot off. She removes the extra socks until a bandana wrapped foot is revealed. Even beneath the bandana and sock, it's obvious his foot is swollen. She unties the bandana, gnawing on her lip when Jean winces at the touch.
The last sock is so tight, Marian pulls the knife out of her bag and cuts it off. His ankle is purple as the night sky and big as her fist.
"I'm gonna ice it and see if we can get the swelling down. We'll rewrap it in the morning. We've got to keep it stable and find a way to manage the pain."
Jean nods, then leans back against the tree, fists clenched at his sides. It'd hurt the first time she'd wrapped it. He doubted it would feel any better after the abuse it'd been through today.
Marian takes two socks, sticks one inside the other, then carefully pulls them onto Jean's foot. She stops where the swelling begins and folds the extra material over itself. Hopefully, it'll protect his toes from the cold. Then she grabs the snow-filled flask and holds it on top of his ankle. Ideally, she'd alternate between a cold and hot compress, but there's no fire and their body heat won't be enough to matter.
Jean peels his eyes open. While it isn't comfortable, it hurt significantly less than he thought it would.
"What it really needs is rest," Marian says quietly. She peeks at him through her lashes. The last time she'd suggested he slept, it hadn't exactly gone well.
Jean meets her gaze, and she sees a flash of that scared, wild thing he'd become. He shakes his head.
"What if we try something?"
"Something?" he asks blandly.
"My mama has...episodes sometimes. She won't eat, won't leave her bed. If it's too bad, she won't even talk," Marian says, remembering blank eyes staring through her no matter what she did or said. "No one can pull her out of it, but my Daddy found a way to help. He'll sit beside her and talk about all the good things going on. Our house, our work, how big the harvest was, the blooming flowers...everything. It doesn't fix the problem, of course, but I think being reminded of all the things we have makes the things we don't seem smaller."
That sounds an awful lot like talking about feelings. And Jean doesn't do that. He's a big fan of the shove-it-down-and-pretend-it-doesn't-exist method.
"I don't think that would help," he says.
"Do you have a better idea?"
Something tells Jean that his original answer—spend the whole night fighting sleep, forcing himself awake if he falls into anything deeper than a doze—isn't the right answer.
"I'll take first watch?"
"Yeah, and never wake me up to swap."
"I'll sleep! Just not very well." His voice fades as he realizes his argument is non-existent.
"It's worth a try, Jean. We can't keep you off your feet, so the least we need to do is let it heal at night."
Jean scowls at her from inside his cloak—and it is a scowl, not a pout, no matter what Marian would say.
"It's like," she searches for the right word, her face brightening when she lands on it "snuffing out the bad with the good. Maybe if you're full of the good when you fall asleep, the bad won't be able to sneak up on you."
She doesn't know just how deep his bad is. Pretty words can't scrape out the grief embedded in his bones, the screams of his friends and comrades echoing between his ears, the blood soaked into every line of his skin. There are no words to erase the hopelessness that haunts his heart.
But snuffing out a flame isn't erasing it. It's making it so small and weak that it can't burn anymore.
"We can try it," Jean says with a heavy expression, his cheeks blazing at the admission, "but the second I start dreaming, get away from me. I'm not...there when it happens."
Marian nods. She pushes the flask to a different part of his foot. It needs to be on there a while longer, but she's scared to let his foot get too cold. Already, she can feel the temperature drop with the rising moon.
"We have an awesome tent," Marian starts. "And fresh water."
Jean looks around for his own answer.
"We've got lots of socks."
"I've got my beautiful scarf," Marian says with a flip of the scarf's chartreuse tail. Jean shakes his head but doesn't comment on the abomination.
"I have my swords."
"And I have my knife."
"We're not trapped beneath a pile of rubble," he says, tugging his cloak around himself more snugly. The wind is turning bitingly cold.
"Pierce, Ronnie, Ava, and Puck are alive." Marian doesn't add the probably. There were no remains, and until she saw or was told otherwise, they were alive.
"Sasha and Connie are alive." They were too. There was no other option.
"I have Mom and Dad waiting for me at home."
"I'll get some leave because of this ankle."
"That's one way to look at it. What about those pancakes? Eren and..." Marian searches for the other name and lands on it, "Mikasa's pancakes?"
"Yeah. They're real fluffy, and so buttery you don't need to add anything to it."
"Sounds like a nice 'you survived' present."
Jean nods. He watches Marian from his cloak cocoon as she puts the flask away and pulls on all the socks she can over his mangled foot.
"That's a good too. We survived," she says.
"So far."
"Jean!"
"Fine. We survived and will continue to do so."
"That's right. I've got these comfy boots too. That's a good."
They continue swapping goods back and forth until Marian finds herself speaking to gentle snores. She curls up against the boulder, using her scarf as a shield between her face and its cold surface. She watches Jean's chest rise and fall through heavy eyes. She's so tired, she can't muster the energy to fight the weight pushing against her. Surely, Jean would be loud enough to wake her up if he started dreaming. She wasn't supposed to wake him up anyway, but she didn't think she had the heart to passively watch him suffer.
When Marian falls completely into dreamland, it's to a lullaby of wind and distant wolf howls.
