"So, did you see him this morning?" Connie asked from beside me, crouching down to help me clean the cannons we were tasked to do so.
"See who?" I ask, acting innocent. I could almost feel Connie rolling his eyes next to me as I kept my eyes trained on the cannon before us.
"Don't play dumb. You know who."
I'm silent for a few moments, only the sound of the wind and cadets talking rose in the air as we stood atop the walls. Not paranoid about the ash-brown haired boy listening to us, given he and some of the others were positioned elsewhere, I spoke to Connie.
"No. No, I didn't see him," I mumble out. Connie stills from beside me, his hand laying flat on the heavy artillery.
"You're avoiding him," he states, going back to his cleaning. I don't say anything. Connie sighs, making me look into his big yellow eyes as he turns to me. "You should really speak with him, Y/n."
My hand clutched onto my rag tighter but then loosened it with defeat. "I... I don't know," I trail off, uncertainty in my words.
Connie peered down at me, his brain working for once. "What did you guys even fight about last night? I thought he was going to ask you to be his-" He cut himself off with a suspicious cough. Clearing his throat he began to talk again. "Yea, what uh, what did you guys even fight about?"
I wave away the suspicions from his random cough, slouching to rest my butt on my heels. "He wanted me to join the MP."
Connie nodded, waiting for me to go on, his eyes looking eager for some unknown reason. I look at him weirdly then admit what both Jean and I said. The boy's face immediately sweatdropped in disappointment, as if he was expecting to hear about a love confession or some shit.
"Damn," he mutters out, going back to cleaning.
"Yeah..."
"Well maybe you should've asked him to join the Scouts if he was so worried about you," Connie said as we both scrubbed into the wood and metal of the cannons.
I snorted. "Please, Jean in the Survey Corps? No way would he do that, especially if I asked him."
"I don't know, people do crazy things when they're..." Connie muttered out from under his breath.
I lean closer to him, not catching the last part. "What?"
Connie stares at me with wide eyes, the blood leaving his face to make his face paler than usual. He stutters for a bit, making me scrunch my eyebrows in confusion. All I asked for was what he said...
"I'm joining the Scouts!" He exclaimed, catching everyone's attention. My eyes widened in amazement.
"Wait, really?!"
Connie nodded fastly up and down.
"What? The hell you mean you're joining the Scouts?! What happened to the MP? That was your whole thing!" Eren exclaimed, butting into our conversation.
I saw Connie's cheeks reddened from beside me. "Forget about it. A guy's allowed to change his mind, okay?"
I punch the boy in the shoulder, startling him a bit.
"Ow! What the hell-"
"When were you going to tell me this, you dumbass!" I yell out, punching him again in the shoulder with a gleeful smile.
"I-I don't know!"
I just shake my head in amusement and leer up closer to him with a smirk. "It's because you would miss me all the way from the Interior, huh?" I say while wagging my eyebrows up and down.
He shoves my face away. "Of course not." I gasp dramatically from beside him, placing a hand on my chest.
"I think your speech yesterday lit a fire under him," Mina says to Eren, a soft smile taking place on her face in between her two low ponytails.
"Oh," I mutter out disappointedly.
"Ain't nobody talking to you! His temper tantrum had nothing to do with it!" Connie denied, his pink blush still dusting his cheeks.
"Take it easy," Thomas said, walking up to the group. "It's not like you're not the only one." The blonde hair boy blushed, his finger going to scratch at his face bashfully.
I gape at Thomas, my mouth dropping open. "You too?!" I say loudly, pointing my finger at the blushing boy.
"What? Are you serious?" Eren breathed out, not really believing his eyes.
"Can you guys keep a secret?" Sasha says from all of a sudden, opening up the side of her jacket to reveal something. "'Cus I totally just helped myself out to the officers' pantry!"
"You did not!" I laugh out, standing up to walk closer to the drooling girl who held a thick, round slab of meat in her hands. Wait, that didn't come out right.
"Sasha! They could throw your butt in the clink for that!" Eren exclaimed as the group huddled together as they watched Sasha in astonishment.
I poke the girl in the stomach, making her almost drop her prized possession. "Why didn't you let me tag along?!" I said to the girl, forming my tone into mock betrayal.
"I know, I know! I'm sorry! But it just looked so good I had to get my hands on-"
"What is wrong with you two, seriously?" Samuel said from behind us.
"What isn't wrong with them?" Connie said with a deadpan face.
"It'll be fine, I'm willing to share! Can you imagine the sandwiches...?!" Sasha says and begins to shudder at the thought.
"Great now let me have some!" I say over the others' calls.
"Put it back!" Connie says, his voice rising.
"Yeah! Do you know how rare meat's been since the titans took Wall Maria?" Mina states.
"Um, a little bit, yeah." I snort at Sasha's answer to Mina's question.
We all watch as Sasha walks up to a crate and lifts the lid, storing the meat safely inside. "Just look at it this way," she says. "Pretty soon, we'll take back all the room we need for livestock."
Samuel takes a deep breath and cringes his eyes shut. "I would really like a slice please!"
"Hey, if he gets one then so do I, j-just so you know!" Connie says.
"Me too, I'm in on it too!" Mina says from next to Eren.
"C'mon, don't just stand there!" Samuel says and we all walk away from a still delirious Sasha. "If they see us slacking off, we're in for it."
I nod and crouch down next to Connie again, rubbing again at the cannon's rusting metal.
"So," Connie says. I look at him with expecting eyes. "Before we leave for the Scouts, I think you should talk with Jean," he says sternly. He looks adamant on this so I have no other choice but to nod.
"Fine," I huff out. "But I really- What the fuck!"
All of a sudden a great big bolt of yellowy-green lighting hit the earth, making the Colossal Titan appear in its place. It's small, sunken in eyes met mine as I crawled away from it, pushing Connie behind me who was shaking like a leaf.
"H-Holy shit," I murmur out, still in shock and surprise.
Then a large wave of steam hit us all, knocking everyone off from our place atop the stone walls, making us fly backwards. I quickly shoot my ODM gear hooks into the wall, letting me lean heavily against the hard surface. My boots skid to a halt as I watch Samuel fall unconscious to the ground.
Too far away, I look towards the area around him to see Sasha still there. I'm about to call out for her but she's already on the move, flinging her body into a front flip to get over a section of the wall, and shooting out her hook for his leg. After seeing that Samuel was secure as he could be with Sasha's grappling hook in his leg, I jolt when I see a hole in Wall Rose.
"They're gonna get in. They're gonna get in!" Connie says hysterically, voicing everyone's thoughts.
"It's happening again," I breathe out. A blinding rage takes over my memories as I recall all of Miche's stories about the fall of Wall Maria; reading the papers on how so many people lost their lives. I look up to the Colossal Titan that had one of its hands positioned atop the wall, it's face staring above over Trost District.
"Y/n, stop!" I ignore Connie's yells as I start to launch myself up the walls with my gear.
"This is it, you fuckers! This is our chance to take this bitch down once and for all!" I yell out as they call gasp from beneath me. Not a second later Eren's right on my heels, yelling to everyone else as well.
"Time to take out the Colossal Titan! Don't let it get away!" The green-eyes boy screams out to the still shellshocked cadets beneath us. Now right by my side, I look to Eren with a stern look.
"You check on the cannons while I try to get its eyes!" He nods to me as I point my arm in the opposite direction I was headed to.
Eren and I race up the walls on either side to where the Colossal Titan stood, its red muscled face and skin peeking over the edge. Slowing down just a bit so that Eren could distract the tall titan momentarily, I shot up as fast as I could a second later, catching the fucker off guard as my body sailed up and over the side of the wall; it didn't even have time to blink as I lodged one of my blades in its eyes.
When my body shot up the side of the walls I twisted my body, using my abdomen to reach around and release one of my blades that stuck itself nice and deep into one of the eyes of the Colossal Titan. Its other eye stares at me in what I thought to be disbelief- as if it wasn't expecting me to attack it.
My feet landing on the top of the wall, ignoring Eren's starstruck look, I keep my glare on the titan's eye that still ogled at me, never wavering once. With my hand holding onto one of my triggers that still held a blade, I pointed it at the Colossal Titan, signaling that he was already dead.
I still kept my deadly gaze on it as I jumped up in midair when it's arm came swinging at Eren and I from behind me. While jumping I shot off to the sides of the walls, Eren swinging down next to me a second later.
"It took out the cannons..." I murmured.
"It has intelligence!" Eren exclaims after a moment.
"Tch. This is fucking fantastic," I ground up with clenched teeth and raced back up the walls.
"Y/n, what's the plan?!" Eren screams out.
I turn to him and meet his eyes. "We go for the nape and take it down! I'll swing around so we'll be coming at it from both sides!"
I don't wait for a word of confirmation from Eren as I'm already taking action, my body swinging around the titan and rehooking my ODM cables into the wall again. It only takes me another second to be in the air again, my body above Eren as he sprints across the titan's red, muscular skin from atop the wall.
"Now!" I yell out as Eren and I shoot our cables towards the titan's nape. I smirk to myself when I see that our cuts would be accurate by both of our velocity and usual accuracy in drills.
"Take this!" Eren yells out as we both swing our blades down, ready to slice through the Colossals' nape, but that never comes as the fucking bitch disappears in midair, leaving us to slice through the thick wave of steam it concocted at the last minute.
The city of Trost met my widened eyes as my arms stayed in their swinging motion. "No," I breathe out. Still in shock Eren swings and catches my falling body in his arms, taking us up to the top of the walls. I look down from over his shoulder to see the mark where the lightning bolt hit and two footprints, but nothing else.
"It's just... disappeared," I whispered out. Eren's silent as his arms grips me tighter, busy with his own thoughts. I get angry now, almost taking Eren and me both down as I wriggle in his grip with pent-up fury. "He just disappeared!"
Eren and I land on the walls, him handing me off to Connie who was trying to calm down my shaking body.
"Y/n, Eren! What happened, did you take it down?!" Thomas yelled to us.
"He's gone! Just like five years ago..." Eren breathes out, looking back down to the ground.
"Y/n! C-Calm down!" Connie yells to me as I smash an already broken barrel onto the ground in anger, kicking it off the walls a second later. My shoulders still tense, hands still clamped into fists to contain their violent tremors, I turn back to Thomas, Connie, and Eren.
"We need to go back to HQ." They look at me, confused.
Not even a second later a Garrison Regiment soldier walks up to us after swelling up from the side of the wall. The three boys salute him with thinking, leaving Connie to nudge me in the rib when I hesitate.
"Look alive! Upper east Colossal Titan response is in effect! Report to HQ! If you got close to the damn thing we need details!"
"Sir!" We yell out with tight salutes.
"Okay, let's go!" I say and launch off the walls. We all passed over the evacuating citizens who raced down the busy streets; all of their faces held panic and fear, holding nothing besides the clothes on their backs. I tear my eyes away from the sight as HQ looms in the distance.
Soon enough the three of us, following with Sasha and the others slightly behind us, went to give our reports to whoever was in charge, and after two quick minutes of that, we were ordered to refill our gas tanks and blades.
We all made our way over to the wall holding the large ten-foot gas tanks. Taking our time we fill them up to the brim, securing them back into our gear. After being settled, I leave the others to go and refill my blades, given I already used and lost one of mine while the others didn't even take theirs out- well, all besides from Eren.
I weave my way through the cadets swarming the place, nerves running off them in waves, nodding once to Mikasa when I see her with Eren and Armin. The girl nods back but does no more than that she goes back to watching Armin in his frantic state. I frown while looking at the boy; of course, he would be nervous, he'd be crazy not to.
After stalking up on a new blade I walked over towards Connie and Sasha as we were all herded into the square. My eyes blinked away the harsh sunlight form being in the torch-lit armory for so long.
For the next five minutes, all the cadets stood as a higher-up told us our orders and where we would be placed. I kept my hands behind my back as my eyes unconsciously looked for a certain ash-brown-haired boy. Mikasa already told me that she and her group were fine, which included Jean, but it still didn't ease my worries. I needed to see for myself if he was alright.
Finally, my eyes caught onto Jean's tall figure two rows in front of me. He wore the same tan-colored Cadet Corps jacket like the rest of us, a light green shirt peeking out from underneath. His undercut hairstyle met my eyes as I looked towards him, but as if sensing my gaze the boy turned his head around, his eyes widening when he saw me already staring at him. I quickly shot my gaze away, looking down at the ground with a frown.
"If it comes to it, lay down your lives! Dismissed!" My attention goes back to the bearded man in front of us. I copy everyone else in salute and walk off to get some water, my throat parched.
I roll my eyes to myself when I don't find anywhere to get water here with everyone in a hurry. Reluctantly walking back to the others I see Jean and Eren run into each other. I plan to stay clear of that, not prepared to talk to Jean just yet, but when I see the two start to raise their voices I head over. Now was not the time to get into a petty fight.
But before I can get there I see that Eren handled it, actually giving Jean what I think was a pep talk. The taller boy walked off, his nerves seeming to be pushed down further than how they were from before.
Jean, not even noticing my presence with his head tucked down, passed by me without so much of a glace, but before I could even stop myself my hand grabbed on his forearm.
I stayed looking straight ahead, but I could still see Jean's eyes open wide at the sight of me.
"Y/n," he breathes out. I don't say anything for a few moments, even though I should be apologizing right now, or at least talk with him like Connie said to do, but I just couldn't right now. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get any words past my lips that thinned into a straight line.
I turned my head to look into his amber eyes that wavered with anxiety as they looked into mine. My face softened at his gaze and tense body. He was still scared shitless.
I gripped his arm tighter, and he looked like he was about to say something but I beat him to it.
"Try not to die out there, yeah?"
Jean just looks at me with his eyes wide, and I go to leave, dropping my hand from his jacket to my side, walking a foot away now, but he pulls me back. His hand grabbed onto my own jacket, making me turn so that when I collided with him my face met his chest softly. His arms wrapped around me while one of his hands was sprawled on the back of my head, pulling me closer to him.
My arms creeped up around his middle, underneath his own arms that locked me in an embrace. I took the chance to nuzzle my face into his chest- muscled with years of training- and take in his scent.
His hand dug into my hair more, pushing my head closer to him, his head coming down next to mine. "Be safe out there," he says softly.
My heart warms at this side of him; usually, he would've just threatened me if I got killed or something.
"I will." I pull back slightly, ready to leave with Armin and Eren's squad, but he keeps me close, our faces inches apart. My cheeks warm at the close distance and how Jean was looking at me.
"Soldier Y/n," a voice said from behind me. Jean and I spring apart, a blood-red blush spreading on the boy's face. I turn my head to see a random Garrison soldier there.
"Yes?" I say, holding back my scowl from the interruption, but also confused about what he wanted with me.
"You've been assigned to the rear guard with the Elites. The squad leaves in two minutes." That's all he says before rushing off to Mikasa in the distance.
I turn back to Jean to see him glaring at the soldier with a scowl on his face. I snap my fingers in front of him, gaining his attention again.
I point my finger at him. "I meant what I said earlier. You better not die, okay," I say strongly and go to turn away but his hand stops me for the second time today.
"Wait, Y/n..." I peer up at him, waning for him to continue. He drops his hand and rubs the back of his neck, looking away. He mumbles something under his breath.
I hold up my hand to my ear with a smirk, already knowing he was trying to apologize but failing to do so.
"I'm sorry, what was that?" He whips his head back to me with a glare but his scowl forms into a wobbly grin at my own smile.
"Shut up," he says, pushing my head away from him. "I'm sorry okay. I was being a real ass last night. I'm sorry."
"Yeah, you were." Jean looks down, hanging his head in shame. "But," his head turns up, "I was being a bitch too."
"No, you-"
I hold up my hand, silencing him. "I was, okay. But we're even now, yeah?" I say with a hesitant smile. He nods in glee but then places a smirk upon his face.
"I knew you'd come running back to me," he says, wrapping his arm around my neck and ruffling my hair in a chokehold. I elbow him and shove him away, readjusting my ponytail.
"Oh, shut it. I just felt sorry for your moping ass," I fired back, crossing my arms over my chest.
"Don't deny it, Y/n. I know you-"
"Y/n!" I turn around to see Mikasa waving to me. "We have to leave now." I nod to her and hold up a finger, circling back to Jean.
I looked at the boy, looking over him for one last moment until I had to leave. Jean stares back at me.
He nods, not saying anything else- he doesn't have to. I nod back and turn away from him, walking back towards Mikasa, ready to head with our squad and take back Trost.
𝐚/𝐧
𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐩 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬, 𝐢'𝐦 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧 😍😍