The Night After the End

Reunion in Destruction

Last warning for aot manga spoilers ):<

The Rumbling was over. The earth had stopped trembling, replaced by an eerie quiet in the hours after Eren's death. Everyone was dead.

Jean stumbled through the door to his room, bumping into the frame as he shakily shut it behind him. He had flown back home, spending the whole time staring at the flat landscape, titan footprints leaving flat rumble in their wake. How much blood saturated the ground? Mikasa clung to Erens draining head calmly the whole time, as if he was simply napping in her lap.

Jean keeled over his trash can, feeling like he was about to throw up, but nothing came up. Eren was dead. Hange was dead. Sasha was dead. Erwin was dead. Marco was dead-

Bile splattered at the bottom of the can, and Jean clutched at his heart as if it burned. His eyes blurred and he staggered backward. Everything was over, no more war, no more death, no more fighting. Hatred overtook the relief as he thought about the cost they paid, no, the cost millions of innocent civilians paid to get here. Nothing could ever justify what they had done.

Jean was asleep before his head even hit his pillow.

****************************

He awoke in a field of sand, a vibrant and familiar moonless sky glimmering high above his head. Horror dripped down his spine as he recognized The Paths, and he bolted upright, sand shifting at his feet. No one was there. He whipped his head around, and no one was behind him. Endless sand dunes stretched on, seemingly endless. He had almost calmed down when a soft hand rested on his shoulder. He whipped around again, and there stood Marco. They made eye contact, and Jean felt an all encompassing wave of relief wash over him. Suddenly Jean was in his 14 year old body again, wearing his training uniform he had been wearing in Trost, the day he had lost him.

"Wh- Ah!" Jean jumped back, hand grasping for a sword that wasn't at his side. He began to panic, his defense stance shaky and weak.

Marcos held his hands up in a peaceful gesture, pacifying in a way that Jean had only ever seen Marco succeed in. His eyes radiated sympathy and sorrow.

"Jean, calm down, it's me."

Jeans face scrunched up in anger "Like hell it is! What are we doing here? The Paths are gone, it disappeared with eren, when he, when-"

Jean tensed up, and grabbed his shaky arm "shit..." 

Marco waited a moment before stepping forward. "Yeah, it did."

"So we're not in The Paths?"

Marco paused for a long moment "Well, no... I don't really think where we are matters. The Paths are timeless. Maybe they died with Eren, but it doesn't mean they're gone." He approached Jean carefully as to not distress him. "I think you should sit."

Jean inspected Marco through narrowed eyes. This must be some sort of trick, this wasn't Marco. Marco was dead, Marco was gone, this person standing before him was an imposter. And yet it even as the thought formed, Jean knew it wasn't true. Marco was real, and in front of him. It was in his eyes, eyes he had come to recognize, and love. Eyes he had lost.