You're Not Alone

•30•

We head to an area with about a dozen trees, so we can hide within the middle. Jean and I whistle for his horse, but so far nothing.

"I can go out there with Bodt and -," I get interrupted by Jean.

"Bodt? That's your horses name?"

"Well yeah..." I look next to me at the gray horse with a small smile.

"Huh... funny. Well it somehow fits her. But no you aren't going out there," his voice hard, making me realize there's no use arguing.

"Fine, we'll just keep whistling into the wind," I roll my eyes.

I look behind me at Reiner and Armin. Armin got hurt pretty bad when that female Titan knocked him off his horse.

Right now Reiner is bandaging up Armins head to control the bleeding. Hopefully with the concussion he can still think.

"Where'd they get this? How old is your gear?" Reiner asks.

"Don't worry about it," Armin deflects. "It came off like it supposed to, so it didn't break. Should still be in decent shape."

"All right. That's something, then," Reiner unrolls another thing of bandages. "Still down Jeans horse, though. Not an ideal situation."

Reiner looks over at Jean who's still whistling for his horse. Armins light enough he can probably ride with me, that means we still need Jeans horse.

"We can't get movin' again until our horses show up," Reiner sighs.

Jean hangs his head; "Why did Reiners horse come back like an old lover and mine is still AWOL?"

"We can't afford to stay out in the open like this," I turn and face Bodt who's munching on some grass.

Worse comes to worse... one of us will have to get left behind... I shake the thought from my head. We can't just leave anyone here. That's practically murder.

Reiner is too large to have a second rider, my horse can't hold two people... maybe Armin, but that means we need to get Jeans horse to come back.

"Keep calling," I look at Jean with a serious expression.

" What do you think I'm doing," he rolls his eyes.

I turn on my heel and sit in front of Armin. He has his head bandaged and is looking straight ahead, right through me.

"Armin," I place my hand on his knee and he flinches. "I guess your head is still a little shaken up, huh?"

"Um. I might be a little foggy, yeah." Armin sighs.

"It's okay. The choice isn't gonna be any easier with you thinkin' clearly," Reiner stands up from the ground, hovering over the two of us. "One of us is gonna have to stay here. We need to figure out who."

Jean stops whistling and turns around at Reiners words. All of us look at him. He said what we were all thinking, but how is one supposed to make that decision.

"Wait a sec!" Armin shouts. "I mean shouldn't we at least fire off a smoke signal first? If everyone kept going straight, Row Four, Squad Three ought to be in close proximity to us by now."

"Oh I love you," I pull Armin into a big hug and he winces in pain. "Oh sorry."

Jean takes out his smoke gun and let's off a shot.

"Well that's the emergency signal. I doubt anyone's gonna see it and think, 'hey, somebody must need an extra horse.'"

Jeans sarcasm isn't helping right now. He walks ahead of us and I begin to play with my fingers. I guess I picked up Eren's habit...