Chapter Text
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(Tiny murder children with empathic abilities making friends.)
Mikasa was the first one to stay with Eren. The first one to hear him and keep listening. Eren could remember shouting, then a hand around his throat that stopped his voice and blocked his air. Furious green had found terrified black and Eren had screamed. Voiceless, and soundless, silenced, and breathless with the edges of his vision strobing and going dark. Eren had taken all his rage, all his determination, bundled that will to survive, that desire to fight, wound it all into a tight ball and shoved it though the paper thin walls separating their minds until his voice filled the blank numbness of Mikasa's soul.
'If you don't fight, you can't win! If you lose, you die! If you win, you live! Fight, and win, and live!'
Mikasa's body had lit up like foxfire, like the passed on torch of purpose made visible. Eren's strength and Mikasa's strength together bound to one goal. Her lunge had broken the floorboards.
Later, they stood looking into each other's eyes, awed and entranced. Eren had wrapped his scarf around Mikasa's neck, and she buried her nose in the red-dyed wool to hide her smile. They never said a word even as their minds and souls curled together.
'Stay with me?'
'Always.'
/.../
Armin was the second, his subtle, dreamy thoughts winding around Eren's impetus and Mikasa's blade-narrow focus. Armin was quiet schemes and little whispers of knowledge. He was the determination to learn that matched Eren’s will to act, and the slow gathering of resources to meet Mikasa's predatory patience.
The smooth run of Armin's thoughts stuttered the day things with his tormentors escalated. There was a knife at Mikasa's throat and the whispers spun together in a scream.
There was a plan in Armin's head that merged with Mikasa's calm centeredness propelled along by Eren's wild rage. The web between them pulled tight, sang like violin strings under a bow, and like one being... they moved.
Later, bloody but triumphant, Armin stared at Mikasa and Eren with complete understanding. Silently, they stared back at him, accepting and knowing. Eren with a grin, and Mikasa's face smooth with calm. Both with a whisper in his soul.
'Stay with us?'
'Yes, of course. We're family.'
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(Even vengeful rage monsters have reasons for getting angry.)
If you lose, you die, so you had to fight in order to live. If you wanted to live, you had to win, so you had to fight. Cowards and quitters, those who ran away or gave up because it was easier, they were dead meat walking. Living was in the struggle, in the fight to best and triumph and overcome your advisory.
Jean's plan to go into the Military Police so he would be safe? That pissed Eren off. The top ten, the best fighters of each trainee batch, they were the ones who should be out there fighting and killing Titans. If Jean had the talent to make the top ten and still ran way to hide like a weakling? Eren would kill Jean himself.
Eren's initial anger with the other boy never did abate. In fact, their mutual animosity grew as it became more and more apparent that Jean had incredible potential... and was going to waste it catering to pathetic noblemen. It was all Eren could do not to strangle Jean in his sleep and hide the body behind the latrines.
That may have been why it took them so long to notice what was happening. Then, about six months into their second year of training during a group exercise...
'Mikasa go up circle around I'll follow secondary Eren frontal charge distract them Marco take the left flank in target the weak link Armin on support watch for changes reinforce as needed go!'
At the other end of the course, after ripping through the run like the other teams were not even there and setting a new time record in the process, the team of five blinked the adrenalin haze from their eyes and looked at each other in shock. That was not quite the lesson the cadet instructors had meant the factitious group to learn. On the other hand, the benefits of putting aside personal issues in favor of professional teamwork had been very clearly illustrated.
"What in the name of all three Walls was that?" Jean's tawny eyes were wide but the connection still hummed between them. Armin's guile taken from theoretical to practical and Eren's wrath tempered into steel-sharp drive and Mikasa's apathy turned into lightning-quick strikes and Marco's open acceptance weighted with judgment and Jean taking all the disparate pieces that made a brute-force club of a team and whittling them down into a blade and the effortless freefall of trust and knowing you were going to nail the landing. Jean gasped and shook his head as Eren's voice in his head squeaked and gibbered in confusion, tangled up with Mikasa and Armin and Marco all flailing and trying to sort things out so they made sense again. "Jaeger, what the fuck did you do?"
"Hey! I didn't do anything!" Eren flushed even as 'dear Sima he's cute when he blushes' echoed and Jean's soul curled soft-warm-mine around the links and purred like a dragon with its treasures. Eren sputtered. "Why're you blaming me? This is your fault, horse-face!"
"It's always you fault, Jaeger. Haven't you realized that yet?" Jean smirked, thoughts already refocused and processing the new status quo while Eren reeled and tried to find his balance and Marco sighed 'always provoking him there are better ways to cop a feel Jean.' Eren's blush deepened but Jean just laughed, shaky and slightly scared but dealing with it with a pragmatism that was frankly terrifying to witness from the inside. Most humans indulged in small delusions that let them deal with the traumas in their lives but Jean held no illusions. The dual-toned blond was so sane it bordered on going out the other side as a mental disorder. "Come on, we've got stuff to talk about."
/.../
From as outsider's perspective there was nothing to see. Just a group of five trainees sitting in a lopsided circle in a storage room used to hold rope and cord and 3DMG training equipment. From an outsider's perspective there was nothing to hear. The cadets were just staring silently at one another, not a single one speaking. Nothing worth observing was going on, even if the motionless silence was bordering on creepy.
From the inner perspective of the five teenagers, things looked far different. From their perspective, all too much had changed.
Eren was seething because (now Jean could not deny understanding why all the Titans had to die) his special bond with Mikasa and Armin had been invaded by the horse-face and his freckled sidekick (and no Eren was not struggling to beat down the gleeful cheers of success in his subconscious over collecting two more contacts of quality on par with Mikasa and Armin.)
Jean was trying very hard not to crumble because (Eren had witnessed the fall of Wall Maria in person and seen his mother crushed in a Titan's teeth and no wonder he had issues and that did not even touch on Eren's murder-spree meeting with Mikasa) Jean was in their heads and they were in his and (Jean could not help but consider all the ways that this sort of connection could be used on the battlefield if they could link each others awareness into a group reflex and) already Jean could feel his survival instinct expand to include the other four in his plans.
Armin was staring at Jean because Armin may have been smart but Jean was calculating, Jean had an awareness about how situations and people worked together to produce outcomes that was firmly grounded in harsh reality and (if Armin could utilize that maybe his crazy, impossible plans could actually have a chance in hell of working and) already Armin could feel the change in the connections between their minds (Jean on the inside was far more calming than Armin had thought possible, a steadying force of logic and rationality anchoring them against tragedy.)
Marco knew he was taking everything far too calmly but (Eren and Mikasa and Armin were fine, had been linked for years and the connection obviously had not impacted their individual identities in a negative way) it was just a better method of communication, faster and clearer than speech or writing (there was no chance of misunderstanding motivations and goals when not only what you thought but how and why and all the collective life experience that fed into your decision making process was shared freely among the collective) but it did explain why the Shingenshina trio had such a hard time relating to the rest of the 104th.
Mikasa was quietly happy (now her family was stronger) the larger their number the more eyes there were to watch their backs (and blades to be raised against the dangers lurking about, always ready to loom and threaten what meagre happiness they had managed to scrape together.)
Eren swallowed hard, green eyes flicking from Jean to Marco in an uncertain search for something unknown. Joining with Mikasa and Armin had not affected him like this. Marco he could easily see fitting in with them. Marco had a gift for fitting in everywhere and anywhere. Jean though… (Jean was solid. Stone pillars holding up a roof. A steel latticework supporting growing vines.) Jean would change them.
‘Are you going to stay with us?’
‘You’re ours now. We aren’t going to let you go.’
Marco blinked and glanced over at Jean. The blonde was wearing that blank expression that had always made Marco worry about his friend’s sanity, but now he could feel the churn of Jean’s thoughts as points and projections and possibilities were examined, picked apart, discarded, set aside for later contemplation. Choices and considerations pared down and crafted into a series of plans that provided multiple paths to the best possible outcome (priority given to survival rates over every other goal.)
‘… oh, wow.’ Armin’s eyes were shining with a strange mix of admiration and avarice. The waifish blonde was rather obviously developing a massive man-crush on Jean’s tactical ability. Jean looked confused because, really, he thought it was obvious. Marco giggled as Jean came to the startled realization that he was the only one in their collective who thought the way he did. Eren, Mikasa, and even Marco were far more likely to act entirely on instinct. Armin was book smart, but it was all just theory to him. Armin knew about tactics, but that was a very different thing from thinking tactically.
‘Huh. Weird.’ Jean sat back with a pensive frown. The admiration from the others felt good, made him happy that for once he was not being taken the wrong way, but this was just the way Jean thought. What was there to be proud of when his mind just worked this way naturally? It was not like Jean really had to put much effort into it. Sure, he read the tactics manuals in his spare time, but that was just because they were easy to understand.
‘Different elements make a greater whole. Like braided rope. Like medicines. Like steel alloy.’ Eren was fire and Mikasa was ice and Armin was air, but that had never stopped them from being a team. All their differences only made them stronger. Too much Eren and they would never stop. Too much Armin and they would never focus. Too much Mikasa and they would never start.
Jean shook his head. ‘What else to we get out of this? Just understanding? Does distance have an effect? How is this possible?’
Armin shrugged. They had never felt the need to separate. Eren had hazy, half-remembered flashbacks of his father taking him down into the basement as lamplight gleamed on filled syringes. Mikasa quirked an eyebrow and jammed a knife into her thigh.
The blood steamed as the blade slid free, the wound closing without a scar. Jean stared, and Marco blinked again. The process was eerily like the way Titan corpses decomposed, but Mikasa was not the only one who healed that fast. Borrowed strength, lent speed, shared health. Armin could keep up with Mikasa and Eren, thanks to this. Mikasa could splinter stone with her bare hands, thanks to this. Eren had re-grown the arm he lost in Shingenshina, thanks to this.
Jean pulled out a boot knife and nicked his thumb, eyebrow cocked as the wound boiled slowly away like a pot burning dry. Well, that was an interesting trick that raised their collective survival odds a considerable amount. Tawny gold met green and Jean nodded slowly. Eren was the starting point (the focus) the center, but perhaps, with time, they could all learn to reach out. With everything that was shared, that ability was the most important.
Eren grinned, wide and bright as Jean stopped trying to look down on him and started looking at him. Now that was better. Jean smirked and surrendered to the inevitable. At least in the Scouting Legion they had a chance in hell of escaping notice by the wrong people. The healing ability alone would whip the clergy into a frenzy. Eren did not care, he was just glad that Jean was not going to waste his talents with the 3D manoeuvre gear on the corrupt nobles on the inner wall.
‘The Titans are going to die. We’re going to kill them all.’
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