Chapter Text
Day 1: Reunion
The blistering heat did little to help Jean’s already sweaty palms and fried nerves.
They’d spent so long away from Paradis that he’d grown accustomed to the more agreeable weather in Southern Marley, immune to suffocating summers and frigid winters that he used to suffer.
Yet, his clammy palms and trickles of sweat were as much product of emotion as weather, provided by the approaching Shiganshina skyline on the horizon.
They were finally returning from the outside world to deal with repercussions on the island.
Finally going home after three years.
Finally going to see Mikasa.
Even after arriving at the port that morning, the idea still seemed slightly absurd to him. Yes, he and the others had grown up with Mikasa, but Jean had always held an immutable reverence toward the Ackerman—her skill, her talent, her bravery, her looks, to be frank, all contributed to a sense of otherworldliness, as if she were too good for this life, for the world even after it had grown past the walls. The fact that she had saved the world by killing Eren only exacerbated this feeling for him, even if all he wanted was to see her again, to make sure she was well after so much time alone.
Half of him wanted to run to her, to say hello, to ask her how she had been, while the other, less mature half wished to skip the event all together and avoid confronting his feelings at large, instead telling himself that they had dissipated altogether. But if seven years of no attention from Mikasa did little to shake his crush, three years out in the world barely left a dent.
Nevertheless, visiting her was now unavoidable—Historia had requested they stop there overnight on the way back to the capitol while she dealt with matters at the port.
Jean absent-mindedly ran a hand through his hair, leaning back against the seat of the car, knees knocking into Reiner’s next to him.
“Aww, you’ve ruined your hair already. Was it worth the half-hour of combing?” Reiner teased after looking over.
Jean rolled his eyes, not particularly in the mood for such banter. He fought the urge to look into the window and check his reflection once again. “I’m not sure Reiner. Did sniffing Historia in person compare to her letters?”
The blonde blushed, turning his face away in embarrassment, remembering his speechlessness when he had once again seen the queen. Luckily the rest of the group was spared from cringing in embarrassment, as she was completely absorbed in other matters and oblivious to Reiner’s lingering infatuation.
Pieck laughed sharply from the front seat, having recently become a partner-in-crime for Jean and Connie’s jokes at Reiner’s expense.
“Braun, don’t tease him. You’ll make him more nervous than he already is.”
Reiner scoffed. “What do you have to be nervous for? Pieck, Annie, and I are the ones that could be arrested at any moment. What will you get? A scolding from your mother?”
Connie chimed in from Reiner’s other side, tilting his head toward Jean. “If you knew his mother, you’d know that is just as bad.”
Jean shook his head, ignoring their conversation but shooting Pieck an incredulous look for almost blowing his cover. Whether she was teasing or had deduced the correlation between his anxiety and their impending reunion with Mikasa, Pieck could do real damage by letting Connie and Reiner figure it out.
Reiner remained oblivious, but unfortunately talkative. “Speaking of nerves, do you think Mikasa is one to hold grudges? I know last time we were kind of working together, but before that she tried to kill me with a thunder spear—”
Pieck laughed again. “That’s a question for Armin, though I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she waved her hand. “Even if she roughs you up a little, I think you need it, anyways.”
He blanched at that, finally shutting up and grumbling to himself, spurring a tiny smile in Jean.
The rest of the ride was thankfully quiet, each simmering in their own thoughts. Jean found that he quickly began to regret the silence he had wished for, now unable to use his friend’s conversations as a distraction from his own worries.
He had told himself over and over again that it was better to let go of Mikasa. She hadn’t paid him much attention in the past decade, and Eren’s death would hardly change that. Though she had grown to trust his word and advice, Jean might have been imagining it all, perception altered by his personal feelings toward the girl. Being leagues away from her, life consumed with diplomatic struggles did little to dissipate these thoughts, because for every moment not occupied with that day’s struggle for peace, he had been wondering how she was. What she looked like. If smiles came easier to her, if tears were few and far between, if her skin still glowed under the sun and if her hair still blended into the night, brushing her nape like raven feathers on the wind.
He needed to see her one more time, once more to test if he was finally immune the drop of his stomach and the skip of his heart in her presence, even if his pathetic self shouldn’t even tempt that desire. Jean balanced a thin line of wanting to see her again, like Armin and Connie, and wanting to run for the hills, like Reiner, for a different but equally as fatal reason.
Sighing heavily, Jean stared at the window, discreetly examining his reflection in the window, brushing his collar straight before catching Pieck’s eyes in it, her face settling into a reassuring smile that he immediately avoided, embarrassed that his turmoil was so evident.
“Ah, I think this is the street we’re supposed to meet on! The next block is the old headquarters!” Connie exclaimed.
Jean looked past his reflection and into the street, confirming Connie’s suspicion. The street, mostly repaired from the damage acquired from the first invasion and the attack from the laced wine, was relatively busy for a hot afternoon. A few young women hung in the shade of their parasols, chasing children heading to a river, others gathering in the sunken enclaves of shops offering standard goods and even a few imported items Jean recognized.
The car screeched to a halt, the driver mumbling a complaint about the heat and opening his door, signaling that they had arrived at their destination.
“Ahhh,” Connie sighed, hopping out into the street, arms raised above his head in a stretch.
Jean followed from the other side, long limbs finally relieved from the cramped car, sweaty skin grateful for the thin southern breeze unhindered by previously erect walls. He glanced around, willing himself not to search for who he wanted to encounter and instead looking for any sign of the other party’s car. Armin’s voice sounded from behind him, he and Connie turning to find Armin and Annie only a few paces behind, emerging from their automobile.
“Wow…” Armin murmured, hand subtly laced with Annie’s, the blonde looking unusually nervous. Their budding romance had been quite the unexpected discovery for Jean, Connie, and especially Reiner, whom it took two weeks to convince their relationship hadn’t been a sick prank. Pieck had known, somehow, by some secret ability shared between women.
“It hasn’t changed much…” Armin said, almost spinning in a circle, glancing over the rooftops of now taller buildings. He finally snapped out of it, squeezing Annie’s hand as he looked toward Jean. “Where’s Mikasa?”
On the verge of replying that he didn’t know, Jean quickly glanced over Armin’s shoulder at a dark-haired form on the opposite side of the street, only to find that his breath had quickly evacuated his lungs and his head had become woozy from heat stroke. Coupled with the tell-tale withering of his gut and the failure of his heart to beat steady, Jean immediately knew he had failed to evict her from his mind.
Fuck. Armin looked at Jean incredulously, eyebrows furrowing in confusion until he turned to follow his line of site across the street.
She was just as beautiful as ever, even with the awkward smile on her lips and the rosy pink on her cheeks from the heat. Whisps of her bangs were plastered to her forehead with sweat, somehow elegant and not disheveled on her, the rest of her locks now grown out and fastened behind her head, freeing the nape of her neck which he so oddly admired.
It was unfair that she was that perfect, that he could so easily be overwhelmed by her existence, shocked into silence by a mere meeting of her silver eyes and his amber, how quickly he was reminded that she did not belong to this world, much less his.
Crossing the street, she offered Armin a big smile, trotting over quickly to meet them, and Jean pretending his heard didn’t race like an engine when she briefly glanced over his face quirking up her lips even if he gave her nothing but a face carefully concealed with indifference.
“Mikasa!” Armin exclaimed, letting go of Annie to wrap her in a hug, now only a little shorter than her after three years. Tears gathered in the corner of her eyes, causing Jean a moment of panic before he realized they were of happiness, pure joy that they had returned to her.
“Armin,” she whispered, tightening her arms around his shoulders before releasing him, pulling back to stare at his face, examining him like a mother would her now grown child, finally returning home. A few whispers passed between them before she let him go, nodding to Annie with a smile before turning to Jean and Connie next to him.
Jean momentarily lost the ability to speak, unsure of what he should say—hello? Nice to see you? How have things been? —None of which were near satisfactory.
Busy filing through his mind for an appropriate greeting, Jean was unprepared for the flash of dark hair and white clothing that charged and him and Connie, only aware that she was hugging them once he registered a lithe arm squeezing his shoulder, a dark mass of hair only inches from his nose, settling into the space between the two men.
Rendered speechless and breathless from her sudden attack, Jean took a moment to gather his thoughts before returning the hug, unabashedly lowering his face into her scalp, an arm wrapping around her shoulders to squeeze back as he inhaled the clean scent of soap on her hair.
He swore he could feel her smile pressed into his shoulder.
“Ermmm…” Reiner called out.
Jean glanced up, intending to stare down the blonde, uncomfortably standing off to the side, sweating absolute buckets from either Mikasa’s presence or the scalding heat, or more likely the combination of the two.
“I hate to break up this lovely reunion,” he continued, “but it’s really hot. As in, I’m on the verge of collapsing hot.”
“Oh!” Mikasa exclaimed, releasing Jean and Connie to look at Braun, who Jean swore flinched under her kind gaze. “I’m so sorry—we should get going to my house. I hope you don’t mind the walk—there isn’t a road suitable for cars yet, but I promise it’s worth it.”
The half-hour journey turned out to be well worth the effort, just as Mikasa said.
Her home was out of the city, still incorporated enough in the town to not be lonely but sequestered enough to be spared from Shiganshina’s day-to-day bustle.
Best of all, the two-story cabin resided just on the brink of the woods, a dense canopy shielding the windows from the sun—everyone had audibly groaned in relief as soon as they had entered the cool foyer, furnished with a sofa and chairs, mismatched as if they had been scavenged, though they were all in relatively good shape.
“Damn!” Connie had said while looking around the clean and rather spacious home. “You’ve really done well for yourself, Mika!”
Jean frowned not at the comment but at the nickname. When had they gotten that close?
Mikasa blushed, moving into the kitchen to bring out a tray already prepared with bread and jams. “It’s no big deal. I helped with some work around the village, and a family offered to help me fix up the cabin since they didn’t really have change to spare. My last place wasn’t as nice.”
Armin smiled, settling down on the couch next to Annie and Pieck, reaching for bread Mikasa had set down on a low table. The blonde girl gave an edgy smile.
“You’re saying you’re well liked in the town? Hard to believe, Ackerman.”
As if reminding everyone that her cheerier persona did not displace her brutal Ackerman heart, Mikasa sent a glare toward Leonhart, narrowing her eyes and chilling her smile into a straight line. “It’s also hard to believe you ever sucked it up and were honest to Armin but look where we are now.”
Armin choked a bite of bread, coughing into his hand, Jean and Connie’s eyes widening. Pieck laughed and Annie merely maintained a guise of indifference before shrugging in concession, slapping a hand on Armin’s back to help him find air.
“I knew it wasn’t just me that thought it was obvious!” Pieck smiled from her seat.
Well. Mikasa was clearly less aloof and detached than she had led on—even Jean hadn’t made the connection between Armin and Annie until he had caught them in an…untimely and intimate entanglement in a palace hall.
“Regardless,” Mikasa waved her hand, propping herself on the edge of an armchair. “I’m happy for you both, and I’m very glad you’re all back. The people in Shiganshina are wonderful, and I was happy whenever Historia was able to visit, but I’m glad you are all back home.”
Jean smiled at that, also genuinely happy he had returned to Paradis after so long in the wide open world. He missed Trost, Mikasa, his mother, of course, and every other terrible and wonderful thing about the little stretch of land that had wreaked such havoc in the world.
Armin sighed in thought, nodding in agreement before looking slightly paled, gears churning in his mind. He cleared his throat. “Ahem…and…I hate to ask this so outright but…is there some sort of memorial?”
Jean instantly understood…the source of all the destruction, the one who had simultaneously uprooted them and freed them, in some perverse way.
Eren.
Mikasa had returned to Paradis to bury Eren Yeager.
He glanced up to find her smiling sadly, gazing out the window into the distant sky, fingers lacing together on her lap. “I’ve buried him…like I said, where he used to rest often, under the tree.” She swallowed, suddenly meeting Jean’s eyes and then Armin’s weary ones. “We can go visit him, if you’d like. It’s not too far, and you all can cool of again before dinner.”
To see him again. To confront him, headstone to face, one dead and the other forced to endure the mess he had left behind. Walls, Jean hated that he had so much to say to him, so much he didn’t get to talk about during their conversations in the paths. He hated that Mikasa loved him too much to leave him, and he hated most of all that he still loved him as a friend, admired his bravery and strengths despite all of his terrible flaws. He wanted to scream and cry and hug and sob on that grave, even if it made him more pathetic than he already was, moping about the past love and loss after he was granted a whole new chance at life and freedom.
“Jean?”
He glanced up, unaware that his gaze had drifted to the oak floorboards. Mikasa was staring at him with gentle concern and anticipation, as if she had just asked a question.
“Sorry,” he found his voice, straightening his spine and rejoining the conversation. “Did you ask something?”
Mikasa gave a tiny smile and nod. “Are you alright with visiting Eren before dinner?”
He swallowed. There was no avoiding it, really. “Yes.”
Their visit to the tree was, in a word, dismal.
Despite wanting to say many things, wishing to catch up with Mikasa and ask how things have been, express joyous laughter at finally being reunited, their party was met with mutually agreed upon silence as they traversed the hill.
It was as if Eren still held ownership over them, even in death, even buried six feet under the earth, labeled by a headstone Jean didn’t dare to read and flowers that would never have grown in his world.
Armin had kneeled by the grave, shedding quiet tears, Mikasa soon joining him, soothing a hand over his back. Even Connie, usually the least serious, silently stood by his friend, eyes trained but composed.
Jean stood a few paces away, as if avoiding entering the circle of emotion he wasn’t yet ready to display in person. His words for Eren were private, hurting, and bottled up.
He just wished they could forget about him altogether.
Even after their light dinner and cooling bath, into the deep night after they had been led to rooms to sleep, Jean’s missing words for Yeager still rattled about deep within his skull.
Trying to sleep, therefore, was miserable—his insomnia for once was not a result of Connie’s incessant snoring or Reiner’s odd mumbling.
He could only take it for another hour before he rose out of bed, trousers sitting low on his waist and shirt absent due to the heat, intending to journey downstairs for water because he had suddenly decided he was parched and that would be the end-all-be-all to his problems.
Dodging Connie’s leg sticking out from the edge of the bed and slipping on a thin shirt, he creaked downstairs, grateful that, even if childish, they had all agreed upon leaving a gas lamp in the hall, illuminating the stairs sufficiently.
He cringed at every creak of wood under his weight, praying he wouldn’t rouse the others, slowly creeping toward the kitchen. Intending to reach for the cupboards for a glass, he was surprised to find a form sitting at the dining table, head resting on the wood atop its forearms, distinctly human but almost ghostly from the sparse moonlight on its white robes.
A telltale glint of blue-black hair resolved his fear for the supernatural.
“Mikasa?” he whispered, just loud enough so that she would wake.
“Hm?” she groaned, bleary eyes catching his, hair uncharacteristically mused and free from its earlier ponytail. “Oh, Jean!” she gasped, the fatigue leaving her eyes as she straightened, wiping away at the moisture that had gathered underneath either from sleep or emotion.
He smiled regardless, slightly amused with her disheveled state.
“Are you alright?” they asked each other at the same time, lips tilting gently afterwards as they were waiting for the other to respond.
Jean answered first, quenching her worries. “Just getting some water. Can’t seem to sleep well.”
“Ah, yeah. The upper floor gets hot at night.”
He only nodded because that was a better explanation than the truth.
“And you,” he tilted his chin, nudging it at her place on the table. “Falling asleep in the dining room?”
Mikasa’s cheeks seemed to redden, though he was unsure whether he had conjured it up in his fatigue or if it was a trick of the dim light. “Um, I can’t seem to sleep either…” she sighed, eyes darting to her hands. “It’s oddly unsettling to sleep in a full house after so long alone. Different noises and sounds I’d forgotten.”
Jean chuckled. “I understand. Sleeping with Connie or Sasha, you become unsure whether there’s a ghost in the house or if it’s just their snoring.”
Mikasa smiled, genuine and pretty, and Jean wished nothing more than to draw it from her again and again.
He hadn’t realized he was staring until her eyes met his and her face fell in concern, Jean then blushing and clearing his throat.
“Right, well…I’ll leave you to it, I guess.”
He went to walk away, turning to head back up the stairs and away from whatever awkwardness he might have conjured.
“Jean,” Mikasa called from behind him. “What about your water?”
Fuck, Now he looked even more like an idiot. He halted in his steps, turning on his heal. “Erm. Right. Water.”
She smiled again and Jean wished he didn’t deceive himself into thinking it was a mocking grin, occupying himself with raking the cabinets for a glass.
“Above the sink, the left cupboard.”
He swore silently. “Right, thank you.”
Sure enough, the cups were stored there, Jean quickly pouring himself a cool glass, downing it so quickly he might’ve choked, then depositing the glass into the sink and turning.
Her odd smile was gone, instead turned into an expression of contemplation, brows slightly drawn together as she stared at him, Jean unable to move under her gaze.
“Well,” she started, again fidgeting with her hands. “If you already can’t sleep, you’re welcome to join me. Not that I’m doing anything, really. But you’ll probably grow bored and annoyed just laying in bed.”
His heart skittered, even if it was only a friendly gesture, the logic of her words flying straight past his head and instead focusing on the fact that she wanted him there.
Waiting for his response, Mikasa flicked her eyes up from her clasped hands, considering his expression as one of rejection or affirmation, while Jean was so desperately trying not to let his emotions appear so evidently.
He responded with the tap of his feet as he crossed their distance, his lungs surging when she gave him the smallest of grins, her foot reaching to push out a chair across from him so he could sit.
Momentary silence settled over them, incredibly comfortable and natural, unlike their previous bouts of awkwardness, filled instead with a silent agreement that there was nothing to be said, not in the moment while they were busy reacclimating themselves which each other’s presence.
“So,” she finally spoke, silver eyes meeting his, and Jean thought this was the most talkative she had ever been. “You all are really back.”
He smiled. “Yes, we are.”
Morning hours came quickly, time forgotten during their conversation.
Fatigue became interest became excitement and then fatigue again as they grew prey to their lack of sleep, finally capturing them on the brink of the day, Mikasa transporting herself to her room and Jean to the couch.
He had made her smile a total of nine times within those hours, and five times it had reached her eyes.
How easy it was to pull them from her now, with lighthearted words and anecdotes of his travels, mere summaries of their lives in the past three years bringing nostalgia to him and happiness to her, knowing that they had been treated well.
He had told her all he knew about Armin and Annie, about Pieck’s roll as wingman, of Reiner’s continuous crush on Historia and fear for Mikasa, Connie’s antics in pursuing Marleyan woman and his own efforts to keep them under control.
Jean learned about Mikasa too, about how she had returned to a half-destroyed city that had flourished in three years, her first and only time attempting to drive an automobile and the stray cat that had made her attic a home. She had smiled when describing the orphanage, she brought supplies to, the families she would help with small jobs and playing nurse when the doctor’s assistant had fallen to the plague. She truly filled the hole in the town’s heart, in their heart’s, in his heart, digging herself back in just after he thought it had mended.
But for once he felt not guilt.
It was unspoken after that night.
Their group was scheduled to stay in Shiganshina for a week, and every restless night or quiet moment was spent with her, basking in her conversations and relishing her willingness to be with him.
He told her stories of every place they had visited, down to the details of dress and cuisine. After spending an unnecessarily long time describing a dish from Hizuru, called tamagoyaki, Mikasa vowed to try and make it for him, the next day writing a letter to Kiyomi to procure a recipe.
Mikasa exchanged his stories for more of her own, tales about her dedication to the village, about the children she had taken care of and the odd jobs she done, even if the villagers had doubted her ability to carry bags of flour or hammer wooden planks.
She had a habit of surprising people like that, in both appearance and attitude. Jean thought himself better than most in this regard, after so many years of friendship.
But for once, he was surprised, when she grabbed him by the hand as they were leaving and told him to come back.
He said yes, because if there was one person he could never deny in the world, it was her.
Plus, she still owed him tamagoyaki.