sateenvartija | Jean Warrior AU; Annie version for @immobilized

Thing hasn't exactly gone as planned with the attack on Trost. Eren turning out to be a shifter had wildly changed all their plans. And with the new mission that Pixis gave them, they hadn't exactly had time to regroup and plan again, needing to act like good soldiers for a while longer before they could move on.

Then the hole Bertoholdt had made was sealed, and the remaining titans were killed. They were left to clean the town. Jean had found Marco's body on a side street, broken and bitten into. His gear was missing, which didn't exactly make sense with the injuries being focused on his upper body. No one else seemed to notice that was weird, when they started carting the body away towards the funeral pyres. Maybe they assumed his gear had already been collected for spare parts.

Jean had a sinking feeling in his stomach. From what he remembered, Marco had decided to go look for their remaining classmates to make sure they make it back. Jean hadn't, since he was low on gas, but had trusted Marco to be alright.

Due to that sinking feeling, Jean hurried through the streets to find one of his warrior comrades. Mostly, he was starting to feel angry that their attack went so badly, even failing to do what they wanted, and it cost him Marco.

He spots Annie and runs towards her. They're relatively alone, just a few more unknown soldiers were carrying tossed out gear parts away, so he felt like he could yell to get her attention. "Annie!"

There's definitely anger behind his voice. Anger and a lot of sadness.

If she keeps moving, she might not have to think about it.

She's apologized to the broken bodies of their comrades already, knowing the person she's apologizing to can't hear her anymore. He's dead, calling out to them to talk it out. Reiner doesn't even remember what he's done, leaving Bertholdt and herself as the sole holders of Marco's last moments.

They haven't been able to look at each other since.

So she carries the body parts, the dead that she wishes were faceless, to the carts and watches them get hauled off. She doesn't think about the fourth, human member of their squad that was close to the boy who's gear she stole.

Until she hears him calling her name. She looks up from the cart she's watching roll away, gaze flickering to the retreating Garrison members and back to Jean.

He sounds angry.

"What is it?" She asks, injecting as much ice into her tone as possible.

Annie had always been the one Jean couldn't get a read on. Even now it was hard to really know how she was feeling.

Jean looks around once more. They were alone, but he kept his voice lower still.

"I found Marco", he says, not even trying to soften the blow. "It looks like a titan got to him. But the weird thing is... for some reason his gear was missing. Even if the titan only bit his upper body."

There's a meaningful pause.

"Any idea what happened?"

Annie can't help the way her eyes flick to the side when he asks about Marco. She's not sure what she should say; she could admit they killed him, but Jean, like Reiner, was getting closer to these islanders.

"He must have ended up getting caught by a Titan," she says flatly, not looking at Jean. "Who knows what happened to his gear - maybe someone grabbed it once they saw he was dead."

Jean probably knows her well enough to realize she's lying - she's not looking at him but beyond. Her voice is devoid of all emotion too, a carefully chosen tone.

Jean does realize she's lying. Pretending like she didn't know anything. His hands forms fists. There's anger behind his eyes that he usually manages to keep hidden.

"Don't lie to me, Annie. You know something. I need to know what happened, so tell me!"

It was no secret Jean was close to Marco. Reiner had (hypocritically) complained to him about it. Jean didn't care about how this made him look.

Her gaze finally slides to him again, her indifferent expression twisting for a moment. She looks pained, and scared. Just a sixteen year old girl wrestling with having killed someone she cared about - but she wipes her expression clean after a moment.

Compartmentalize. Nothing else matters other than getting the coordinate and finding her way back home.

"He heard Reiner and Bertholdt talking," she says instead, her voice low. "About the wall. Reiner chased him down, and I... took his gear, like Reiner ordered me to."

He can guess what happened after that, since he found Marco's body. Selfishly, she's glad it was Jean and not her. She doesn't know if she could handle looking at him, after having to hear him die.

The truth always hurts. Jean's eyes widen, mind picturing the scene. Marco was smart. Too smart. And he wouldn't just stay quiet about what he heard. So he knew why Reiner had to chase him down.

But he couldn't accept it. Marco died because the idiots had talked about the plans in the open.

Killed by people who he thought were his friends. Jean digs his nails into his palms, rage returning.

"Those fucking idiots! I'm going to..." He wants to say he's going to kill them, but realistically he wouldn't have a chance. Besides he wasn't supposed to be this affected. But he was and he couldn't just turn his emotions off.

Instead he punches the nearby building in his frustration, yelling nonsense. That would leave a mark, but he didn't really care.

"It could have happened to us at anytime. We would have had to kill them then, too." That's why they met in the dead of night, but that didn't make it impossible. If someone had found them, overheard them, they would have died.

Sure, she believes Reiner and Bertholdt made a mistake, but that doesn't change the outcome in the end.

"You can't do anything about it," she says, and her gaze slides somewhere far away. "Reiner is getting worse. He..."

She actually stops. If Jean looks at her, her eyes are closed tightly.

"He asked... 'Why is that Titan eating Marco?' afterwards. If he doesn't join the Military Police, Bertholdt will follow him. It'll be up to us to work from within."

Jean freezes.

"He. What...?"

Reiner had been acting weird for a while now. The line between being a warrior and soldier getting a little too blurry. And now this? Jean couldn't even yell at him or punch him senseless without making him even more confused. Potentially breaking him even further. There's always yelling at Bertholdt, but that could also affect Reiner. They were rarely ever apart.

It wasn't fair.

Jean's quiet, mulling things over in his mind. His hand aches, but he didn't draw blood, at least. Any blood he has on him isn't his.

He had wanted Marco to join the Military Police, so he would be away from the battlefields. Away from potentially needing to be killed (even if their aim was to kill everyone, hah). That way, he could focus on the mission.

Well, not he had anything to distract him now. No danger of Marco entering the Survey Corps. He didn't care that much about anyone else, unlike Reiner did. He could just focus on the mission at hand, even if he wasn't happy about how that was accomplished. Be the good human Warrior like he was expected to be.

Finally, Jean speaks again.

"... I'll stick with the plan and join the Military Police, no matter what. You don't have to worry about that." His voice is definitely cold. He's still mad at Annie, too, but with what he just learned about Reiner, most of his ire is focused on him.

"We should head back."

What is this feeling? When his voice is cold, mirroring her own, she suddenly wants to apologize. She knows she's feeling guilty, and she's been apologizing to corpses all day - but Jean's only connection to Marco is the one he forged despite all warnings.

And yet, she still wants to.

She bites it back, along with all the other feelings clawing at her throat - the grief, the anger at Reiner, the anger at the situation she's in - and starts following Jean.

"Bertholdt will help him," she says, finding her voice level. "If anyone can manage Reiner, it's him."

She doesn't underestimate Bertholdt. She knows what he is, how deep his resolve goes. He might even be stronger than she is.

"Yeah", Jean agrees. Berholdt always had a good handle on Reiner. At least if they were together, it was less likely for Reiner to screw up and say something he shouldn't. Or just regain his focus for the mission in times of lines blurring.

"Honestly, I'll be relieved if they join the Corps. Jeager is definitely joining them, so at least the's someone to reel his suicidal ass in."

He's careful not to say anything that might sound too suspicious. Which is why he says things like he does, even if he means that it's good for their mission.

They're actually passing by people now, so Jean's roundabout way of talking is a good decision to make.

"I still wouldn't join," she says instead. "Not even for a best friend."

The good thing about Bertholdt and Reiner joining, is that they'll be able to feed information back to Annie and Jean in the interior. Annie choosing to join the Corps now would be too suspicious.

It would probably make sense for Jean to join the Corps now, considering Marco's death being a 'motivator'. But at the same time he can just continue being an asshole and only think of himself and that would be just as good. It's not like he has anyone else to think about, now.

(Well, he does care about the three warriors in some capacity, but he's also the youngest of them and the only one that's not a shifter, so it's hard to get attached the same.)

"Yeah, I wouldn't either. Anyone who joins them has to be some sort of crazy."

How on the nose Jean is with that, she thinks. Regardless, they return to the groups cleaning out the corpses. Annie does her best to hold her guilt and apologies inside, biting them down until they're just another part of the cold that sits in her stomach.

She can almost convince herself she doesn't feel anything when she watches the pyre with Marco's body burn. The others seem like they're waiting for Jean to say something - but he doesn't. He picks something off of the ground, and whatever it is, she decides, he can have. If an unidentified bone brings him some kind of comfort, so be it.

When it comes time to declare their units, she is the first to walk away, towards the Military Police. She doesn't turn around to look at anyone else. She trusts that Jean will follow, as they planned.

Jean can feel the expectations of both Connie and Sasha, at least. That he would say something inspiring or right on this moment, like Marco had believed he would. In a way it feels like betrayal. But he was always meant to betray all of them.

During the selection Jean doesn't spare a glance at them, even if they look at him. Instead, he starts walking right after Annie, leaving everyone behind (Reiner and Bertholdt, too, as they did decide on Corps). The charred bones in his pocket feel heavier with every step, but he walks where the Military Police is waiting.

He and Annie are the only ones out of the 104th there. After they've confirmed they're part of the top ten, they're accepted to the unit, just as planned.

The Military Police barracks are all the way in Stohess. They spend one more night in the old barracks before leaving by horseback.

Jean doesn't say goodbye to anyone. Not even Reiner or Berholdt. They knew their roles.

She can see how surprised the Military Police representative is to only get two out of the top ten to ride back. They won't be the only one - there will be graduates from the other wings of the cadet corps - but they'll be the only ones from their section.

Annie doesn't sleep well that night, too haunted by the screams. It's probably obvious in the bags under her eyes when she mounts the horse she'll be riding to Stohess. She doesn't offer an explanation for it, though.

She doesn't say goodbye to anyone - not even Eren or Armin. It's a somber sendoff. It's a long ride, but it doesn't take longer than the length of the daylight to arrive in Stohess, the sun just starting to dip behind the walls as they arrive.

The MP member who rode with them lets them know where the barracks are, and which assignments they have. Annie's rooming with a girl named Hitch; it seems Jean is rooming with someone called Marlowe, a name so similar to Marco she almost hears it as that when they tell Jean. It makes her glance to him, despite her otherwise icy indifference the ride over.

The name definitely makes Jean freeze a little, since he also heard it wrong. Especially since it could have and should have been Marco rooming with him, not this random guy. He quickly snaps out of the shock and nods in confirmation, but his hand is definitely in a fist behind his back.

They're dismissed, free to go find their rooms at their own pace. Jean focuses his back mind on the mission mindset. Conceal don't feel.

"Once we've settled down for a while, should we meet up and share our thoughts?" Neutral term, as if they're just friends who want to share what their new places and roommates are like.

"Yeah. I'd like to know more about what's good around here." Like someone talking about the best places to drink or eat, and not their potential plan to kidnap a fellow shifter and take him away.

Oddly, instead of just turning away, she offers her fist, instead - the way some boys would bump knuckles as both a greeting and a goodbye, waiting for Jean to match the movement. Likely an attempt to seem like better friends for anyone watching.

It's definitely not something they usually do, but it makes sense in the context. So Jean bumps his knuckles against Annie's before parting ways. Even if it was to pretend, it still felt kind of nice to have something like that.

Some time goes by as they settle in. Jean finds Marlowe ridiculous with his sense of rightfulness and wanting to right the wrongs in the Military Police. In a way, it reminds him of how Marco would have probably been like. It doesn't help how he feels about Marlowe. It mostly twists a knife in the wound.

After a week has passed, Jean receives a letter from Bertholdt. It's not weird to get letters from your former classmates, after all. On the surface it looks like a normal 'how things are going in the corps letter', but Annie and Jean would know how to read the real meaning behind it.

They decide to meet up, somewhere private and quiet, so Jean can give her the letter.

"Bertholdt sent you well wishes, too. I think he was too shy to sent it straight to you."

Well, Jean had kept a connection to Reiner and Bertholdt, by hanging out with all the 104th guys occasionally, while Annie made a point not to interact with them much. So it made sense that way that the letter was addressed to Jean instead of Annie.

He did also get a letter from Connie and Sasha, but that hadn't been important.

Jean had heard the news about the Survey Corps successfully capturing the Female Titan. He hadn't been around when it happened; he had been given a mission in one of the northern districts of the capital instead. It's not like he could have done a lot to help her without getting potentially caught up in everything himself - and most likely it would have just ended with both of them caught. At least by staying away from it, he now had a chance to help her.

All the Survey Corps members had gone to retake Wall Maria in Shiganshina. They were about to face with Reiner and Bertholdt, and most likely the war chief and Pieck, too. It meant the security around the Survey Corps headquarters was very lax. Jean could easily just sneak in. There were some guards keeping watch outside the room of Annie's crystal. Quietly, Jean used his 3DM blades to kill them. It didn't matter if he did. He wasn't going to stay in Paradis after this, after all.

Once the guards were dealt with, Jean could walk into the room where Annie was. He had never seen someone encased in a crystal before, but he knew it was possible. He also knew Annie could get out of it herself. She just needed a reason to.

"Annie. It's time. This is the best time to leave and never look back. We can go home."

Jean Warrior AU; Annie version for @immobilized

pain train that is Trost

hehehe

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time skippy forward a bit

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Time to come out, Annie