A/N- it’s a good chapter, I’m proud of it ;) let me know what you thought! Since this is also a cherry au, I’ll say this, this story will not affect Cherry whatsoever!
Warning- Swearing, angst, mentions of alcohol use, LONG CHAPTER! SLOWBURN, talks of death, ptsd and slight mentions of domestic violence
Pairing- Jean Kirstein x reader
(Let me know if you want to me be tagged)
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September Thirtieth. Time: eight twenty-one am. Battery percent fifty-one.
You: I’m sorry about yesterday. Things happened and I couldn’t make it, I wanted to let you know but my phone was dead all day. Can we make it up today?
Jean probably won’t answer anytime soon, or at all, but he needed to know you are genuinely sorry.
He might not believe you. You know you wouldn’t believe it, but from the bottom of your heart you were remorseful. And you truly did plan on making it to tutor him, but things did truly end up happening and you couldn’t go home until the next day.
Hopefully he understands. Even if you aren’t giving him a good reason, the true reason why you weren’t able to go like you agreed.
I often wonder, just how many nights have you laid awake with visions of blood stained hands and the deafening screams of your comrades? And just how many nights do you plan to spend like this, wide awake and flinching at the slightest of sounds.
I don’t know how you do it but damn, all this pain, all these nights and you still haven’t let your heart turn into something ugly; you always survive no matter if you want to or not and you wear your survival like a badge. You live even though you’ve got no one left to live for. They take it as a fact that even if the whole lot dies there’s one soldier who will survive, he always has, right? He has to. He’s Humanity’s strongest afterall. You walk in the walls and everyone has their eyes on you, what do they see? Strength? Power? Pride? Survival? They feel that you’re invincible, completely bulletproof. God, if they only knew that humanity’s strongest ain’t nothing but a broken broken man who can’t even get a decent nights sleep because of the sheer trauma that never seems to subside. A clean freak who cleans till his hands bleed raw, why though? Is it really as simple as you not liking filth or are you trying to get rid of the crimson from your nightmares? Are you trying to cleanse yourself of all the sins you think you have to atone for? Do you too think like the commander did? Do you wonder if you’ve been locked out of heaven too?
How could you be when you’re one of heavens own? A man with an endless potential and reasoning for evil but a choice to be and do good instead. A kid left on the brink of death and a man who just can’t seem to die. It’s not your choice that you survive when everyone you’ve ever cared for never does but it’s your choice to live with it nevertheless and show how survival, as inescapable as it is, can still be beautiful. And damn if it isn’t a choice with no regrets.
I’ll always always look at you at the depths of my despair, captain. Cause if you can breathe still, then anyone can.
