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↳ 05 , survivors
warnings : alcohol use, abuse, slight angst, mild violence
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❝my heart is buried in venice,
waiting for someone to take it home❞
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Resting after being prodded and pried about your powers by a fascinated Hange all day, you sat back in your bed and looked to the ceiling. The constant exhaustion of the Scouts didn't fit your old lifestyle. You used to be able to work on your own terms, accepting jobs from clients when you wished, as you wished. Now, there was a chain of command, and Elisha and you were at the bottom. You couldn't help but feel like you were being held captive, after all, if you disobeyed they could turn you in.
As if on que, the door barged open. At the door, a rosy-cheeked Elisha stood grinning at you, clearly tipsy. Now wouldn't be the time to talk to her about anything too serious.
"y/n, you have to come and join the party downstairs! Everyone's celebrating Historia's coronation!" she exclaimed, buzzing.
"I'd rather not be hungover for the ceremony," you laughed back at her antics.
"Excuses, excuses. We've still got a couple days until the ceremony!"
"You know what I'm like..."
"Ugh, why can't you just have some fun!" she nagged, pulling you out of your bed and down the stairs by your wrist.
The mess hall was full of drunken faces, all laughing over nothing as the thick smell of rum hung over the room. Elisha dragged you over to a table where Historia, Armin and Jean were sat.
"Hey Historia... Congratulations, you know, with everything," you smiled a little.
A nudge at your shoulder surprised you as Elisha chimed in, "Come on
y/n, stop being so awkward. Be the party animal I used to see you be!"
Heat filled your face as the others' eyes lightened up in surprise at Elisha's comments.
"You didn't strike me as the party-type," Jean smirked, only making you heat up more.
"Yeah, she's all dark and moody and angsty," Elisha joked.
"Come on, have a drink on me, even Armin's having one," Historia offered.
"Thank you Historia," you smiled slightly, lifting a glass of spirit to your mouth.
There was a reason you didn't drink very often anymore. There was a reason Elisha hadn't seen you be a 'party animal' in quite some time. Yet tonight, it seemed unavoidable, so you reluctantly took a sip, and then another. And another.
Soon enough, you were the life of the party, singing along to the band's songs with your words all jumbled up, and laughing along with Elisha and the others.
"Get on the table y/n! Go onnnnn!" Elisha coaxed you, lifting you from the ground, by the waist, and onto the wooden surface of a table.
The bemused faces of your comrades looked up at you as you danced along to the music, your movements starting bouncy and eventually becoming more lewd. Running your hands through your hair, you then slid them down across your body, highlighting every curve and contour underneath your clothes.
"y/n has moves!" Sasha cheered from below, taking a bite out of some bread as she swayed along to the music with Connie.
Your eyes met a pair of honey ones, and you refused to avert the eye contact, making sure Jean watched your every move. Rocking your hips from side to side, you dropped down and swung them back up again sensually, your fingers tracing the seams of your clothes.
A very light pink frosted Jean's face while you followed his eyes wherever they went, never breaking contact as you stepped down from the table and towards him, using the benches as your stairs. Every step closer to him you took, the more flustered the man got, and the harder it was for him to hide the way he had been looking at you.
Taking his chin to my fingers, you cocked it in the direction of your face lightly and looked across his handsome features. "Bet you wish you were nicer to me when we first met now, don't you horseface?" you teased him, letting go of his face.
"For fucks sake, even you've caught onto that stupid nickname," he cursed.
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Hours later, your consciousness was restored and you found yourself sleeping on the floor with some of the others. To one side of you, Historia was peacefully hunched against the wall, and next to you was Jean.
Somehow, in your slumber, you had managed to fall asleep with your head laid gently in Jean's lap while his arms had circled your shoulders, holding you into him as one of his hands rested on your hair.
A strange thought hit you as you realised, you had never been as comfortable as you were right there.
The last few years had been focused on not getting caught when on your various killing streaks, all while living in the Underground, a rather grungy location. Your childhood hadn't exactly been a walk in the park either, filled with tragedy after tragedy, and your innocence being stolen away from you at such a young age.
Never had you been remotely comfortable as you were now. Yet, it was less a feeling of comfort, and more of security and safeness. In these barracks you finally had a place, friends - not just work partners. Friends who, after only days, laughed and drank with you, and, on the more serious side of things, had even bothered to save your life.
In these arms you were safe; safe to rest without worrying about who was after you, and what horrors you had committed.
The newfound feeling toyed with you heartstrings, your chest tightening as you felt Jean breathing beneath you. You couldn't deny... he was pretty. Very pretty. His long brown hair, honey-coloured eyes that you couldn't help but admire.
While you watched, the hand that was resting on your shoulder began to unconsciously trace gentle circles against you as he began to stir. Shutting your eyes tight, as to not have him be aware that you were laying in his arms knowingly, you remained where you were. You felt his body shift beneath yours when he woke up, yet he didn't move, or move you off of him. Instead, you both lay there, neither of you willing to let go.
This went on for a little while, before you decided to speak, "Jean, you awake?"
"Uh- Yeah, sorry," he stuttered slightly, taking his arms away from you as you lifted yourself off of his lap to face him, your hands resting on top of his, either side of him.
"Good morning," you smiled, making a streak of blush cross Jean's cheeks and his eyebrows lifted a little.
"What?" you questioned his surprised look.
"N-nothing, y/n, just the first time I think you've smiled at me, that's all," he answered, stumbling over his words again before easing up a bit.
You raised a brow at the sweet boy, before smiling uncontrollably again.
"Sorry, all the alcohol from last night must still be messing with me," you shook your head, Jean catching your smile as if it were contagious, and his soft gaze lingering on you even when you moved away.
"y/n..." he murmured your name.
"What?" you replied back, keeping quiet as to not wake the others up.
"What... made you do it?"
"Do what?"
"What you used to do... In the Underground. The killings, y/n... I just don't get how someone like you..."
Your heart tore a bit, as you realised everyone here still saw you for a killer, killing out of evil. There was someone, who, once, saw you for more than a ruthless murderer.
ˏˋ°•*⁀➷
The spiked stones on the cobbles jabbed into your bare feet, cutting them in all manners of ways as you ran down the backstreets of a small town in the Trost district, where you were born. Blood still staining the clothes on your back, now dry and brown, you found a dark dead end to rest for the night.
As a young girl lost in the mazes of backroads, you should have known better than to just hide in such a deserted location. Barging down the dead-end were two boys, one much larger than the other, who he was beating to a pulp. Your eyes locked onto the smaller boy, and he groaned out one word,
"Help."
So that's what you did. Taking the knife, that you had used only the previous day, out of your pocket, you ran over to the fight and held it to the larger boy's throat, threatening him with his life. In the blink of an eye, part of you that you had never felt before was activated, and it didn't hold back.
The simple threat was enough to deter him and send him running the other way, leaving you with the scrawny boy, who sported short black hair.
"Th-thanks. I'm Lance," he offered his hand to you, not even questioning why you had a knife, why you slept in the street, or why your clothes were coated in blood.
Instead he looked you straight in the eye, with no other emotions but loving gratitude.
"y/n l/n," you shook his hand; he then took it in his and began to lead you out of the alleyway.
"You don't have anywhere to sleep, do you?"
"...No."
"Come stay with my mother and I, please. It's the least I could do after all this."
"Thank you."
And so began the next year of your life, in the relative comfort of Lance's home, living under their roof, and under the cold gaze of his mother, Alia. She had never taken a liking to you, constantly threatening you when Lance wasn't there to see it, wanting you out of her house.
You couldn't blame her, she was suspicious of your past; she had every reason to be. But you were just a kid.
Lance showed you nothing but love, the first person that ever did, which made the act of violently taking his mother's life one afternoon all the more evil, even if she had been on the verge of ending mine moments before.
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Swallowing the lump that was gathering in your throat, your eyes sank as the memories replayed, how they always did. Blood, a knife, a victim. That's how it always went.
"I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to come out like that-" he apologised, his eyebrows knitting, making your chest twinge.
"It's fine; it's nothing I haven't heard before... I suppose I did it to survive, but my life isn't worth all the ones I took, if that's the answer you're looking for.
The first two, the ones that sent me down the path of being an assassin, I only killed them out of fear, they were gonna hurt me, I swear, and badly.
I was just a girl, you see.
Then the ones I killed for work, for money, it was for was so Elisha and I could live, I didn't get a kick out of it or anything, not like how all the stories say. We were desperate... I had to put on an icy front so I wouldn't crack and fall apart. You don't know how bad it is down there, Jean..." you whispered to him, staring down at your shoes.
Immediate regret filled you, realising how much you had overshared. Drinking really had an effect on you, making you talk about it as if it were any other conversation, with Jean of all people.
"y/n... Forgive yourself; sometimes surviving is the only option."
"...But how can I survive with the weight of their lives on my back? Many of them were just as evil as me, crooks.
But, the one who took care of me when nobody else would, a boy just my age, I killed his mother. He was the only one who defended the idea of me not being a crazed murderer, and I proved him wrong. She gave me the option to run, or she would kill me. I killed her, then disappeared to the Underground, leaving him with nobody left.
Why didn't I just choose run instead?"
He drew in a long, sorry breath as his eyes softened at you. "...Believe me, if I could do something that would take the pain away, I would... As you said, you were just a kid. A kid who had it bad from the start. There's nothing you can do to get those lives back..."
He paused before speaking again, "However, I suppose you can at least do something with your life, help humanity instead of hinder it.
Give them a reason for your survival at the cost of theirs to be worth it..."
Your eyes connected with Jean's solemn ones.
"I promise you, there's a reason..." he finished.
For the first time in what had been a numb eternity, tears formed in the corner of your eyes, and they soon welled up with emotions you had been holding in for so many years.
"Hey, hey, don't cry now," Jean murmured, wrapping his arm around your shoulder and pulling you into a comforting embrace.
You rested your head over his shoulder, so he couldn't see the tears trickling down your face.
"...This damn alcohol, getting me all emotional like this..." you mumbled into his neck.
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word count : 2204
a/n: thinking about how in s1-3, eldia is pretty much medieval so miss y/n is throwing it back to like the mf harp laksmdndbw.
also i hope the backstory isn't too complicated! there's kinda a lot of detail with it.
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