Right Where You Left Me | Reiner Braun

Chapter 3 - Fragmentary

851

E

"Where did you run away last night?"

My nerves froze as I held the handle of the kettle. I braced myself for anything. My skin was a sensor that could feel the warmth of another body from a mile away. My eyes had developed a peripheral vision almost as sharp as the main. Bracing myself was an automatic action I made whenever Jerome was at the house, and I used it like a switch. My door is locked. Off. His coat is on the rack. On. And it goes for a lot of tiny, microscopic signals that I had learned to notice. 

He had a tendency to get irritated over the simplest things.

"I just had to leave for a while." I said, my back turned to him. I was making coffee on the kitchen counter. "For a walk."

"And who was that man with you then?"

The handle slipped from my slightly shivering hand, and a shock of hot water slapped my palm. I jumped in the sting, causing the cups to clink and echo through the room. His chair legs scraped. The newspaper slammed to the table. I hated how everything sounded together and rung in my ears. When you live with such a man, you get such a sharp sense of hearing.

"What's the matter?" Jerome snarled, his footsteps coming up to me. "You've been doing that thing for years and then suddenly you slip?"

"It's just a small blunder." I said under my breath, internally hissing as I pressed a cloth over my hand. "Please calm down."

"He bedded you, didn't he?" He started to growl. "Took you to an inn and you let him lift your skirt?"

"Please stop."

"I'm not wrong, am I? And when your foolishness bears fruit, who'll carry your burden? I've always told you to be wary around bastards."

"And I have been careful."

"But you never listen to me." He went on, like he didn't hear me. In this house, he never heard me until I said something he didn't like to hear. "So you'll leave me, won't you? I raise you and then you repay me by ditching me because of some boy who's also going to leave you anyway."

"He's a friend." I said. "I'm just trying to make friends, Jerome."

"You've got enough of those friends where you work." He spat, slumping back to his chair. "It would do you good mingling with upper class ladies.  Not some lowlife donning a red armband!"

When I turned around to bring his coffee to the table, he was gesticulating angrily. "The only good they ever did was to become military weapons. Then again the other countries are inventing ways to counterattack those titans. Soon enough they'll be useless to us."

I placed the coffee cup down on the wooden table, the square tablecloth now longer on one side. Some beer had spilled on the corner, too. Clawing up my throat was the urge to speak up about Reiner's kind being more than just pawns to use for our country's conquests. But I knew better than to add 'clean up bottle shards' on my to do list today.

There were things people want to do but they cannot because they are lesser in power. I want to be a part of the movement to treat Eldians just as humanely as we treat all other races, but alas- I did not have the courage those activists had, nor have I the time to contribute to solving a bigger problem when I have a million smaller ones.

And I hope the world forgives me for being so weak in that aspect. For being neither in black nor white. For being in the gray.

Jerome took the coffee and downed it to sobriety. I sat meekly next to him and tried not to utter anymore words now that he had quieted down on his usual fit. Ever since his third campaign, he had been seething with wrath, for a reason he had never confided in me about.