[2014] Requiem (Category 2: >1000 words)
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smashconTitle: Requiem
Author: Kyadera
Rating: PG
Prompt: “Better to fight for something than live for nothing.” - George S. Patton
Fandom/Series: Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan
Word Count: 1840
Disclaimer: I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin or any of its characters, all creative rights belong to their Hajime Isayama, and I make no profit.
Summary:
In an empty world, Marco is Jean’s best friend, the one he loves most. But all good things come to an end and all too soon Jean finds himself, once again, lost.
Requiem
Jean was glad that Marco wasn’t with him as he walked through the corpse laden street. Jean was glad that he and his friend weren’t reunited after the battle they had won in such an unpleasant place.
The reek of rotting flesh and hum of bloated flies left Jean nauseous. He was eager to leave, so he trudged past the twisted bodies and avoided the dead, stiff backed and head turned away. The tap of his heels on the cobble stones seemed deafening over the quiet crying and murmurs of young soldiers heaving the corpses of their comrades into flesh filled carts.
Jean looked away and tried not to remember that they were all but children.
His quick steps stopped abruptly, frozen, when Jean saw it.
He hadn’t meant to look, he didn’t mean to see.
He jerked his head away and turned his face to the ground.
He hadn’t meant to look, he didn’t mean to see.
He clenched close his eyes and fists, and tried to forget. Jean gritted his teeth, nails biting his skin. He wanted to forget what he saw, he wasn’t sure if it was what he thought it was, but he wanted to forget never less.
Please, please, Jean bit his lip, please no. He could feel the sweat on the back of his neck, the taste of blood heavy and sickening in his mouth.
No, no, it couldn’t be, he’s safe, he’ll be there when I go back to the barracks, and we’ll celebrate the battle we won together.Jean swallowed thickly as his vision blurred.
He had promised.
Jean wanted to forget. He hitched in a shaky breath and opened his eyes.
He remembered a wave of nausea creeping up his spine when he found Marco, the way his hands went cold and how he forgot to breathe.
Marco seemed to have forgotten how to breathe as well.
When he finally heaved in a breath, there were hot tears pressing on his eyes and a rising tightness in his throat.
Jean looked Marco in the eye but Marco didn’t look back.
His blank pupils were fixed to the sky, his face upturned to meet ashes drifting idly under the blanket of heavy clouds.
He must have been looking up when he died.
He had died.
Marco had died and now he was rotting with blood smeared across his teeth and a halo of crushed bone blossoming around what was left of his face. What used to be a gentle, kind smile now leered at Jean, Marco’s teeth bared in a grotesque reflection of his once friendly grin.
Jean swallowed back something threatening to be a sob.
Perhaps if he had followed Marco, rather than hastily retreating over the walls himself, perhaps if he had been there with him, Marco would be here picking through corpses with him, warm and well and unstained of red. Perhaps if he was less selfish Marco wouldn’t be left as an empty shell of broken bones and stagnant blood.
And perhaps, with lead weighted remorse, Jean was glad that he saw his friend lying propped against a bloody wall, and maybe he was glad that Marco wasn’t forgotten among the army of faceless corpses.
x—x—x
Marco is Jean’s friend, the one he loved most.
Marco was always so selfless, so caring. Perhaps Jean should have learnt something from him.
(Soft voiced and sweet tempered, Marco was the one he woke up next to each morning and fell asleep with each night.)
Jean was glad he shared the barracks with Marco, where they used to chat in hushed murmurs after the lights went out.
(They shared trivial secrets that had meant the world when they were young and naïve and Marco would listen to Jean’s paltry babble of their comrades behind their backs.)
Whenever Jean caught Marco looking at him he had always smirked and Marco would offer cheery smile in exchange. Their friendship was a precious sort that was hard to come by.
(Jean enjoyed the lilt of his voice, the way he would play with Jean’s hands when they talked.)
Marco was Jean’s friend, the one he loved most.
x—x—x
He should have talked to him more, spent more time with him when he could. He should have pushed aside his selfish thoughts, his empty pursuits and false bravado and spent more time with Marco beside him.
It was rather late for that now. All he could do now was regret and wish, to contemplate and to try and forget.
He stood there, under the eaves, Marco lying at his feet, and spent a long time wishing.
He wished that Marco was about to greet him from around the corner, that it was just a mistake, a bad dream. He would have been glad to see him, even in such an unpleasant place.
Time passed with every wish, and every wish was more unlikely to come true with passed time.
So Jean stopped wishing and he started regretting.
x—x—x
Regret washes a person’s soul blank, it’s something that takes memory and twists it, revisits it, forgets it.
When a doctor dressed in cold white and an indifference gaze approached him, regret and something heavier, something that pushed around inside him with a ghostly hand that crushed his throat, muted her words, and Jean found it hard to respond.
It took a few too many breaths for him to confirm, that yes, his comrade was dead.
She regarded him dully after annotating Marco’s death and left with a crisp rustle of her sterile white coat.
The world felt strange, far away and muffled as Jean trudged mindlessly through the maze, through days. There was a period of time that he can never remember; indistinct and fragmented memories of marching back to camp with cartfuls and cartfuls of cold, decaying flesh that was snatched from him, leaving behind a haze, a void.
A blank mind and blank motives.
For an indefinite time, Jean mindlessly lived life, catatonic and always, bitterly, cold.
x—x—x
He was inert until he was standing in front of flames. The lapse in his memory ended and the stifling, white blankness crumbled around his head and all he saw were seething, snapping flames writhing in the arid air and choking smoke.
Muffled white noise dissipated to the almost deafening roar of fire grating over the sobs and cries of a hundred soldiers. Jean blinked, dazed, absentmindedly raised his hand to shield his face from the spitting sparks and took a step forward to stand just a few strides away from the hellish flames.
A few, hesitant breaths of swirling smoke were taken. His sixth breath caught and he coughed, eyes stinging, into his sleeve. He blinked until his vision cleared and looked at what burned before him.
He saw jagged, charred black forms laid in piles of wood. It was then, he knew, that the corpses were being cremated.
A desperate sort of panic seized him, and Jean mindlessly walked, eyes fixed, to the open flames in complete disregard of the dry, searing heat blowing ash at his face, of the startled, tear streaked faces of his comrades behind him. His eyes hurt from the smothering fumes and his throat felt too tight when he fumbled through the scorching cinders.
His tears weren’t from the sting of smoke when he closed his blistered hand around a shard of ashen bone, and when he clutched his fist by his face and cried the throttling regret that had cocooned him fell apart and Jean knew what to do. He stood there for awhile, his shoulders hitched in sobs and his head bowed down. Marco was lost and Jean knew it, so he had stopped crying and he stopped regretting.
When his tears slipped away they left behind hard set eyes and a firm lined mouth, and Jean had eyes only for the future.
x—x—x
It was then that Jean decided the decadent dream he had held for three years - to live a lavish lifestyle in the Military Police - was a child’s dream. He was born in an empty world with chaos beyond just a set of bricks, a valueless existence bound by entropy in the languishing grasp of humanity.
In his empty pursuit of self indulgence, he had been given a light in the form of a comrade who wore an easy smile and an open heart, a light he ultimately loved but lost. Perhaps his life was emptier than before, and perhaps in the following minutes, hours and days he yearned for Marco’s company. But Jean not left with empty hands, for he understood what Marco had seen. He was more aware of his world than ever, and Jean decided to change the flaws he saw.
His comrades were first confused by his renewed motives and ideals, then quelled, impressed and then finally, they understood.
The slope of his shoulders and the bite in his words told them Jean wasn’t the snarky boy they had known anymore, and they knew what had changed him. So they never said anything when one of them had caught him hunched over a particular grave, talking to no one in particular, and they never exchanged a word when Jean stared a moment too long at the empty chair across him or when he held the door open a little longer behind him, as if a friend was passing through.
Time passed and wounds closed but never quite healed, and Jean hosted more scars than the eye could see.
x—x—x
After all the ashes were swept away, and after the monotonous cycle of restless nights and tired days out training for a greater cause rolled through a season, Jean knew he had found light again. It wasn’t in a familiar place – he saw it filtering through the feathers of a bird wing, in the bright eyes of a certain boy who had no sense of self preservation, and most importantly, in the crest of a legion who sought it.
x—x—x
It was night and torch heads flickered restlessly, illuminating the stage with a balmy glow. A stiff backed man with golden hair and piercing eyes asked, ordered, for enrollment in humanity’s fight for freedom. Jean shifted his stance on the dusty, earthen ground, tilted his chin up high and listened.
Even as rows and rows of soldiers dropped their shoulders, turned their backs and left, Jean stood anchored to his post. Perhaps he thought of Marco, of his good natured smile and warm amber eyes, and it gave his shaking arms the strength to salute.
x—x—x
Fist clenched over his heart, Jean fought. After years had slid past and though the familiar green fabric across his shoulders became threadbare, freedoms crest on his back never sullied. Seasons cycled through and soon Jean fought as an honored captain and an exalted soldier for humanity.
And after years and years, Jean still fought with the name Marco pressed from his lips to his blade.
***
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Author: Kyadera
Rating: PG
Prompt: “Better to fight for something than live for nothing.” - George S. Patton
Fandom/Series: Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan
Word Count: 1840
Disclaimer: I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin or any of its characters, all creative rights belong to their Hajime Isayama, and I make no profit.
Summary:
In an empty world, Marco is Jean’s best friend, the one he loves most. But all good things come to an end and all too soon Jean finds himself, once again, lost.
Requiem
Jean was glad that Marco wasn’t with him as he walked through the corpse laden street. Jean was glad that he and his friend weren’t reunited after the battle they had won in such an unpleasant place.
The reek of rotting flesh and hum of bloated flies left Jean nauseous. He was eager to leave, so he trudged past the twisted bodies and avoided the dead, stiff backed and head turned away. The tap of his heels on the cobble stones seemed deafening over the quiet crying and murmurs of young soldiers heaving the corpses of their comrades into flesh filled carts.
Jean looked away and tried not to remember that they were all but children.
His quick steps stopped abruptly, frozen, when Jean saw it.
He hadn’t meant to look, he didn’t mean to see.
He jerked his head away and turned his face to the ground.
He hadn’t meant to look, he didn’t mean to see.
He clenched close his eyes and fists, and tried to forget. Jean gritted his teeth, nails biting his skin. He wanted to forget what he saw, he wasn’t sure if it was what he thought it was, but he wanted to forget never less.
Please, please, Jean bit his lip, please no. He could feel the sweat on the back of his neck, the taste of blood heavy and sickening in his mouth.
No, no, it couldn’t be, he’s safe, he’ll be there when I go back to the barracks, and we’ll celebrate the battle we won together.Jean swallowed thickly as his vision blurred.
He had promised.
Jean wanted to forget. He hitched in a shaky breath and opened his eyes.
He remembered a wave of nausea creeping up his spine when he found Marco, the way his hands went cold and how he forgot to breathe.
Marco seemed to have forgotten how to breathe as well.
When he finally heaved in a breath, there were hot tears pressing on his eyes and a rising tightness in his throat.
Jean looked Marco in the eye but Marco didn’t look back.
His blank pupils were fixed to the sky, his face upturned to meet ashes drifting idly under the blanket of heavy clouds.
He must have been looking up when he died.
He had died.
Marco had died and now he was rotting with blood smeared across his teeth and a halo of crushed bone blossoming around what was left of his face. What used to be a gentle, kind smile now leered at Jean, Marco’s teeth bared in a grotesque reflection of his once friendly grin.
Jean swallowed back something threatening to be a sob.
Perhaps if he had followed Marco, rather than hastily retreating over the walls himself, perhaps if he had been there with him, Marco would be here picking through corpses with him, warm and well and unstained of red. Perhaps if he was less selfish Marco wouldn’t be left as an empty shell of broken bones and stagnant blood.
And perhaps, with lead weighted remorse, Jean was glad that he saw his friend lying propped against a bloody wall, and maybe he was glad that Marco wasn’t forgotten among the army of faceless corpses.
x—x—x
Marco is Jean’s friend, the one he loved most.
Marco was always so selfless, so caring. Perhaps Jean should have learnt something from him.
(Soft voiced and sweet tempered, Marco was the one he woke up next to each morning and fell asleep with each night.)
Jean was glad he shared the barracks with Marco, where they used to chat in hushed murmurs after the lights went out.
(They shared trivial secrets that had meant the world when they were young and naïve and Marco would listen to Jean’s paltry babble of their comrades behind their backs.)
Whenever Jean caught Marco looking at him he had always smirked and Marco would offer cheery smile in exchange. Their friendship was a precious sort that was hard to come by.
(Jean enjoyed the lilt of his voice, the way he would play with Jean’s hands when they talked.)
Marco was Jean’s friend, the one he loved most.
x—x—x
He should have talked to him more, spent more time with him when he could. He should have pushed aside his selfish thoughts, his empty pursuits and false bravado and spent more time with Marco beside him.
It was rather late for that now. All he could do now was regret and wish, to contemplate and to try and forget.
He stood there, under the eaves, Marco lying at his feet, and spent a long time wishing.
He wished that Marco was about to greet him from around the corner, that it was just a mistake, a bad dream. He would have been glad to see him, even in such an unpleasant place.
Time passed with every wish, and every wish was more unlikely to come true with passed time.
So Jean stopped wishing and he started regretting.
x—x—x
Regret washes a person’s soul blank, it’s something that takes memory and twists it, revisits it, forgets it.
When a doctor dressed in cold white and an indifference gaze approached him, regret and something heavier, something that pushed around inside him with a ghostly hand that crushed his throat, muted her words, and Jean found it hard to respond.
It took a few too many breaths for him to confirm, that yes, his comrade was dead.
She regarded him dully after annotating Marco’s death and left with a crisp rustle of her sterile white coat.
The world felt strange, far away and muffled as Jean trudged mindlessly through the maze, through days. There was a period of time that he can never remember; indistinct and fragmented memories of marching back to camp with cartfuls and cartfuls of cold, decaying flesh that was snatched from him, leaving behind a haze, a void.
A blank mind and blank motives.
For an indefinite time, Jean mindlessly lived life, catatonic and always, bitterly, cold.
x—x—x
He was inert until he was standing in front of flames. The lapse in his memory ended and the stifling, white blankness crumbled around his head and all he saw were seething, snapping flames writhing in the arid air and choking smoke.
Muffled white noise dissipated to the almost deafening roar of fire grating over the sobs and cries of a hundred soldiers. Jean blinked, dazed, absentmindedly raised his hand to shield his face from the spitting sparks and took a step forward to stand just a few strides away from the hellish flames.
A few, hesitant breaths of swirling smoke were taken. His sixth breath caught and he coughed, eyes stinging, into his sleeve. He blinked until his vision cleared and looked at what burned before him.
He saw jagged, charred black forms laid in piles of wood. It was then, he knew, that the corpses were being cremated.
A desperate sort of panic seized him, and Jean mindlessly walked, eyes fixed, to the open flames in complete disregard of the dry, searing heat blowing ash at his face, of the startled, tear streaked faces of his comrades behind him. His eyes hurt from the smothering fumes and his throat felt too tight when he fumbled through the scorching cinders.
His tears weren’t from the sting of smoke when he closed his blistered hand around a shard of ashen bone, and when he clutched his fist by his face and cried the throttling regret that had cocooned him fell apart and Jean knew what to do. He stood there for awhile, his shoulders hitched in sobs and his head bowed down. Marco was lost and Jean knew it, so he had stopped crying and he stopped regretting.
When his tears slipped away they left behind hard set eyes and a firm lined mouth, and Jean had eyes only for the future.
x—x—x
It was then that Jean decided the decadent dream he had held for three years - to live a lavish lifestyle in the Military Police - was a child’s dream. He was born in an empty world with chaos beyond just a set of bricks, a valueless existence bound by entropy in the languishing grasp of humanity.
In his empty pursuit of self indulgence, he had been given a light in the form of a comrade who wore an easy smile and an open heart, a light he ultimately loved but lost. Perhaps his life was emptier than before, and perhaps in the following minutes, hours and days he yearned for Marco’s company. But Jean not left with empty hands, for he understood what Marco had seen. He was more aware of his world than ever, and Jean decided to change the flaws he saw.
His comrades were first confused by his renewed motives and ideals, then quelled, impressed and then finally, they understood.
The slope of his shoulders and the bite in his words told them Jean wasn’t the snarky boy they had known anymore, and they knew what had changed him. So they never said anything when one of them had caught him hunched over a particular grave, talking to no one in particular, and they never exchanged a word when Jean stared a moment too long at the empty chair across him or when he held the door open a little longer behind him, as if a friend was passing through.
Time passed and wounds closed but never quite healed, and Jean hosted more scars than the eye could see.
x—x—x
After all the ashes were swept away, and after the monotonous cycle of restless nights and tired days out training for a greater cause rolled through a season, Jean knew he had found light again. It wasn’t in a familiar place – he saw it filtering through the feathers of a bird wing, in the bright eyes of a certain boy who had no sense of self preservation, and most importantly, in the crest of a legion who sought it.
x—x—x
It was night and torch heads flickered restlessly, illuminating the stage with a balmy glow. A stiff backed man with golden hair and piercing eyes asked, ordered, for enrollment in humanity’s fight for freedom. Jean shifted his stance on the dusty, earthen ground, tilted his chin up high and listened.
Even as rows and rows of soldiers dropped their shoulders, turned their backs and left, Jean stood anchored to his post. Perhaps he thought of Marco, of his good natured smile and warm amber eyes, and it gave his shaking arms the strength to salute.
x—x—x
Fist clenched over his heart, Jean fought. After years had slid past and though the familiar green fabric across his shoulders became threadbare, freedoms crest on his back never sullied. Seasons cycled through and soon Jean fought as an honored captain and an exalted soldier for humanity.
And after years and years, Jean still fought with the name Marco pressed from his lips to his blade.
***
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Please take the time to comment on the fanfic. Thanks.
