United in Grief (Jean Kerstein x Reader) (NSFW)

The Beginning

I woke up in his bed one morning, with a pounding headache and his arms curled around me. I was naked. He was naked. Fuck. What the fuck did we do?

He looked at me. I looked at him. The silence between us was deafening. At that moment, we both knew without saying a word that everything was different now.

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                                                                                United In Grief 

Synopsis: You are in love with Marco. Jean is in love with Marco. you hate Jean. Jean hates you.  When Marco dies, everything changes. 

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"Marco!" I yelled, laughing, trying to keep up. Horseback training was challenging, and Marco constantly teased me about it. For whatever reason, my horse just never agreed with me. He was riding far ahead of me, although he promised he would stay with me.

Joining the cadets was never something I would have predicted for myself. My childhood dreams were limited, but it was the same for everyone. How big can one dream when the only thing keeping one from being devoured and torn to shreds is 3 walls? The day I saw a titan in the flesh, though, everything changed. I escaped within an inch of my life. Most of my friends were devoured or crushed in the rubble.  Families were broken apart, and grief hung in the air as we boarded the ferries to take us to wall Rose. After the day Shiganshina fell, something changed within me. I couldn't sleep. I would wake up in a cold sweat at night, heart pounding, wondering if I was about to be crushed by rubble or eaten alive. Some nights were worse than others, and I would stumble to the bathroom of the government-assigned refugee housing and lose my stomach. The world changed, and I changed with it. I couldn't feel. I could barely breathe most days. It was like the light in my soul had vanished along with my hometown. A part of me wanted to fight the Titans and avenge my fallen friends, but another part of me couldn't burn the image of the colossal titan out of my head. The will I had to fight was crushed by the fear of losing my own life. I was terrified. I wanted to get out of the outer wall and live in the interior, as far away from the danger as I could. As far away from the titans as I could. And the way to do that was to join the cadets, make the top 10 of my class, and become a member of the military police. As soon as I was old enough, I signed up and was shipped off to training, where I became a member of the 104th Cadet Corps. Maybe, in my new life, I could find some semblance of normalcy in this fucked up world. 

The first week of military training was brutal. My lungs burned, and every muscle in my body ached, but there were no breaks. Not a moment of rest. It made sense. You don't get a break when you're running for your life. Over half of the people who signed up were gone in days. I hated training and didn't even like fighting, but I was somehow still standing. I had set a goal to make it to the top ten and ride my way to the interior, the safest place within the walls. I couldn't just give up because my body hurt. As the years of training passed, though, I couldn't help but feel like the dream of making the top ten was more far-fetched than I thought. 

I tried my best to get along with everyone. Christa and Sasha were the nicest to me, Armin was nice enough, a little shy, but Marco and I just clicked. I couldn't help but be drawn to him. Soft-spoken, kind, yet strong-willed, he was everything I wished I was. He reminded me of who I used to be. 

After a long day of hand-to-hand combat training, I was battered. He smiled at me and offered his hand to help me up. "Marco." He said. "Yeah, I know. We've talked before." He laughed and said, "Just in case you forgot." The sun was going down, and most of the people in our regiment had retreated to the mess hall for the night. He helped clean me up and we talked long after the stars came out. About our dreams, our worries, and our aching fears at how long we both had to live. Nobody ever really talked about what exactly we were throwing ourselves into, joining the cadets. It was a dark, heavy, curtain that hung over all of us. His golden eyes shimmered as he told me stories of his hometown. When I was with Marco, I felt some old parts of myself that I thought were long dead returning. He felt like home. I became close with the members of my squad over the years of training, but I never wanted to get too close. I didn't want to form emotional attachments to these people then see them die in the worst ways imaginable. Slowly, though, my heart betrayed me. I couldn't help but wish we were born into a different world.