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He could already smell the corpses burning.
No.
No, no, no. Not this again.
Jean held his head, squeezing his eyes shut. This was just a dream.Trost was over. Trost had been over for months.
This wasn’t real.
This wasn’t real.
This wasn’t real.
He rocked back and forth on his heels, refusing to open his eyes. Every atrocity had been committed to memory and to the backs of his eyelids. He no longer needed to dream to bring his nightmares to life.
And just like that the screams began.
The same familiar fear was beginning to take him all over again, his hands shaking as he gripped his head.
“Jean! Please help me!” Mina wailed, her voice pleading and raw with terror.
He couldn’t open his eyes.
“Please! I don’t want to die!”
The screams became louder, more frantic, and the earth began to shake. Titans were approaching, flooding the streets, he could feel it. His comrade’s shrill shrieks filled the air, growing in size as his world began to tremble.
He couldn’t open his eyes. He didn’t need to see this again.
Wake up, Jean. Wake up!
“Jean!”
He knew that voice.
His eyes snapped open.
“Marco?”
There he stood in one piece, looking to him for leadership. There were people dying, and yet Marco had come back for him. There was a niggling piece of doubt in his mind screaming that something wasn’t right, that this Marco wasn’t right. He knew better, and reached out to grab his arm. It was warm.
How could a corpse be warm?
“Jean, we have to get out of here. You lost your gear, quick, take mine!”
Jean was helpless to relive his mistakes. It should have been him to die, not Marco. All he could do was watch in horror as his hands slowly took his gear from him. Why was he taking it? There wasn’t any gear on his body when he finally found what was left.
“Marco, I—” His palms were sweaty, his voice caught in the back of his throat. He couldn’t hear his own voice over the screams of the other cadets being torn asunder. Instead he looked down at his feet, frozen with fear as he tried to ignore the sickening crunch of bones between titan teeth. The cobbled streets began to run with blood, the sickly substance quickly reaching his boots.
“Jean…”
He snapped his head up to look in horror.
“Jean, I’m scared to die….” The sweet happy boy in front of him began to smile, eyes welling up with tears. His voice was all wrong. “Please don’t let me die.” Blood slowly oozed from his left eye, his smile drooping, “I don’t want to die alone.”
His friend reached for him, but Jean stepped back. This wasn’t real. Marco’s face began to melt, his body slowly falling apart before his eyes. “A leader doesn’t leave his men behind. So why did I die alone?” Bits of his face peeled off, the skin falling into the red river beneath them with a sickening thud. Already his shoulder bone was exposed in the smoky haze, pearly white where it had been picked clean.
“Why did you let me die alone?”
What was left of the other cadets suddenly filled the streets, all of them horribly mangled and wall-eyed. Their lifeless eyes stared dead ahead as flies laid their eggs amongst the pools of blood. They slowly made their way towards him, feebly begging for their lives with swollen tongues. Thomas was among them, dragging himself along his front, his entrails trailing behind him.
“I didn’t mean to let you die, Marco!” Jean shouted, tears springing to his eyes as he backed away from his former comrades. He couldn’t run from death for it was there to greet him at every turn.
Marco just smiled at him sadly, “I’m so scared, Jean. I’m so scared.”
The sickly sweet smell of rotting meat filled his nostrils and he felt the need to wretch. He looked down to see the front of his uniform dyed scarlet. How did so much blood get on his clothing? He realized with horror that it wasn’t his own.
“Get it off! Get it off! Get if off!” His hands clawed at the material, but he only spread the filth to his hands. He’d never be clean again.
Marco suddenly fell against the pavement, heavy like a sack of meat. He was still reaching out to Jean, his grizzly transformation complete. Despite his trembling hands, Jean began to back away and reattach the stolen gear. This was so wrong, so horribly wrong, and yet he couldn’t help his selfish hands from clinging to life.
He found himself abandoning him all over again, zipping away as Marco became smaller and smaller in the distance. He could still hear him sobbing in his ear, as if he’d been there to witness his dying words. If only he had been so lucky.
“Please don’t leave me behind.”
“Please don’t let me die alone…”
“Jean.”
...
He sat straight up, body trembling. His heart was pounding, and his head with heavy with a volatile mixture of grief and guilt. It was still dark in the barracks, and was thankful that he had nothing but the soft sighs of sleep from the other scouts to ease his mind.
This was the third time this month. It had been months since Trost, and he had seen many more of his comrades die; yet he was still haunted. It gave him a bitter sort of comfort to know he wasn’t the only one with ghosts from that day. Connie and Sasha had been there too, and voiced similar nightmares.They made an effort not to mention it much, but when they did they were never too forthcoming with information. He couldn’t blame them, not with how their eyes glazed over when they talked about it. Perhaps the first cut would always be the deepest, and the one they remembered the most. It was true for Jean, anyways.
He had been trying to bury the memories of how he had to carry pieces of his friends to burn, but his conscious wouldn’t let him forget. To this day, he remembers how frighteningly light Marco’s body felt in his arms, and the smell of rot that filled his lungs.
How could such a warm person feel so cold?
This wouldn’t be the last time he’d dream of that day, or of Marco. He covered his face with shame, self-loathing bubbling up from deep within as he tangled himself further into the sweat soaked sheets.
Poor sweet, sweet Marco.
Despite his best efforts, he found himself choking back a sob. “I’m sorry.” He mumbled into his hands. “I’m so sorry, Marco.” How could you beg a shade for forgiveness? It was up to him to get his friends to safety, and he couldn’t even do that.
He was too scared.
Who could forgive a coward?
It was only under the cover of darkness that he finally allowed himself to weep. It was pointless to cry for them; the dead did not sleep and had no use for his tears no longer.
But he cried anyways, for he would always be haunted.