Chapter Text
…I must have been unconscious for a while.
I didn't realize that I nearly died –
so I came to terms that everything was changed…
Chapter 1 - That Fateful Morning
“Wake up,” he whispered softly in her ear, tickling her with his warm breath.
Jeanne groaned and rolled over, away from him. “Fuck off,” she grumbled into her pillow.
Marco only laughed. “You never have been much of a morning person, have you?”
She grunted at him. “And you continue to be the most obnoxious morning person on the entire planet,” she complained, putting the pillow over her head.
She could practically hear the goofy smile on his face as he replied to her. “Jeanne, it’s time to get up. You’ve got work.”
“I’ve got a good fifteen minutes before I need to wake up,” she retorted, muffled underneath the memory foam pillow.
Marco clicked his tongue at her. “Fine. I’m going to shower, unless you’d rather have some fun first…?”
That got her attention. She removed the pillow from her head and glanced at him, still lying beside her. “What did you have in mind?” she grinned at him. “Maybe that thing where we- wait, are you going to ask me again?” her grin immediately dissolved.
Marco’s face fell, and he blushed, looking away. Yep, he was definitely going to ask her about the ultimate elephant in the room.
“You were, weren’t you?”
“I don’t know why you’re so opposed… Connie and Sasha seem really happy, you know? And Asher is really cute, he’s such a good baby. I know ours would be good too.”
“You can’t possibly know that, and besides, it’s not a good time right now.”
He paused, and she knew what he was thinking before he even said it. “There’s never going to be a perfect time, Jeanne. What if we wait too long?”
This had been a conversation they’d had many times before. Ever since Sasha had gotten pregnant, Marco had had babies on his mind. On the one hand, Jeanne knew he would be an excellent father, and wanted him to have that experience. On the other hand… she knew how absolutely incapable she was with children, and that was enough of a deterrent.
Jeanne rolled over, turning away from him. “I’m not ready!” she snapped.
She heard Marco sigh behind her, but he still reached out and touched her arm tenderly. “Okay,” he said softly.
“Will you leave it alone, now?” she said, hoping that her irritation was obvious.
“I will.” She could practically see the expression he was making from his tone of voice, probably something akin to a kicked puppy. It wasn’t enough to make her turn to face him.
She felt him kiss the back of her head. “I’m going to shower,” he said quietly, and she felt him get up. He shuffled around the room for a few minutes, getting his stuff together, and then Jeanne heard the bathroom door shut gently behind him.
Jeanne rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling. She was wide awake, now.
A baby. Marco desperately wanted to have a baby, and Jeanne wasn’t budging. Did that make her an awful person? She had wondered, more than once.
Before they’d gotten married – soon after they’d started dating, in fact - Marco had told Jeanne that he had always wanted to be a parent. She hadn’t thought much of it, just assuming that she’d be ready eventually. But now, at 26, she still didn’t feel ready. And Marco had been okay with that… until the past year, anyway.
Sasha and Connie had found out that they were expecting at the end of January, and since then, it was like Marco had an itch he just couldn’t scratch; an itch that seemed only resolvable by getting Jeanne pregnant. Every time they saw a baby out in public, went to visit his extended family, or heard about some celebrity adopting a child, Marco’s attention was solely on that. He would talk for upwards of an hour at a time about how great it would be to start a family, and about how awesome a mother Jeanne would be.
The thing was, though, there’s no way Marco could know what kind of a mother Jeanne would be. And the thought of being a mother was so terrifying to her besides… well, it just wasn’t something that she was going to think about.
So it was always an instant shut down when Marco would bring it up. Jeanne wasn’t ready to think about it, let alone consider actually allowing it to happen.
Jeanne sighed, and shook her head. That was enough thinking about it for one day, she determined, pushing the thoughts from her mind.
She eased herself out of bed, stretching while trying to ignore the sounds of her body cracking and popping. She wasn’t that old yet, surely, but damn, she felt like it sometimes. Trying to ignore that thought as well, she padded across the room, bare feet cold against the hardwood floor of their small apartment. There, another great reason not to have a baby – their home was just too damn small for that. She’d use that excuse later, when Marco inevitably brought the subject up again.
Jeanne headed towards the bathroom, where she could hear the shower running. When she opened the door, the humidity greeted her like an old friend, and she hummed happily, stepping inside and shutting the door back behind her before the pleasant warmth could escape.
“Jeanne? Are you coming in?” Marco asked. She realized he must have heard the noise she’d made.
“I am. Is that cool?”
“Of course.”
She stripped down, out of his boxers and t shirt, then slipped off her panties, flinging her clothes to the side. Her bra was the last to go, and it was thrown unceremoniously behind the pedestal sink. She made a mental note to retrieve it later, before pulling the curtain slightly and joining her husband in the shower.
The water droplets from the showerhead glistened on his freckled skin as he rinsed the shampoo from his hair. Jeanne looked at him with approval as the water began to rinse clear, and he opened his eyes to look at her. “Are you just going to watch me?” he asked, giving her a lopsided grin.
She hummed thoughtfully. “I like the view,” she murmured, reaching out to touch his chest.
Marco shivered under her touch. “Yeah, my view is pretty great right now too,” he said softly. There was a hunger to his voice that made her feel warm.
Jeanne pressed herself against him, feeling him growing hard against her. Marco groaned. “I don’t think we have time,” he said, grimacing.
“You’d rather me stop?” she purred.
“I didn’t say that.” He looked at her desperately.
“Don’t worry, we’ll make it quick.”
It was a little difficult in the shower, but the two managed, and they still had enough time to clean themselves, surprisingly. Marco got out of the shower first while Jeanne finished up. He was still grinning like an idiot as he toweled off.
“That was great Jeanne. We need to do that more often.”
“We can’t sleep in as late if we make that into a habit.”
“I’d be willing to get up a little earlier.”
“I wouldn’t.”
Marco laughed, and she heard the door open, then shut behind him. A blast of cold air assaulted her as she pulled back the shower curtain, residual from when he’d exited the room.
Jeanne dried herself off, then wrapped her towel around herself, heading back into her room to get dressed. She grabbed an apple from the bowl on their small kitchen counter for her breakfast, her lunch from the fridge, and then left to go about her normal workday at the hospital.
She didn’t realize that fateful day would be anything but normal.
Armin was already waiting on her, parked near her building. He smiled at her warmly as she got into the passenger side of the car. “Good morning.”
“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”
“Not at all.” Armin waved to Marco, who had just come down and gotten into Jeanne’s rusty old sedan. Marco waved back, and blew Jeanne a kiss. She snorted and felt herself blushing, even though Armin had almost certainly been witness to more embarrassing acts than that.
With Marco’s car in the shop waiting on a transmission replacement, the couple was down to one vehicle to be shared between the two of them. Carpooling together would have been ideal; however, they worked in entirely opposite directions, with Jeanne heading to downtown Trost for the hospital and Marco heading to the suburbs to the high school where he taught. Armin had been gracious enough to offer transportation to Jeanne, since they were working on the same campus… though there was a big difference between her management job and Armin’s position as an ER doctor.
It was interesting to Jeanne, that they remained friends. Even though Armin was busy nowadays, he still made time for their high school friend group, which Jeanne appreciated. Even if it was simply an act like offering to pick her up for work, Jeanne respected the fact that the people in Armin’s life mattered enough to him that he made an effort to maintain relationships. With the amount of money Armin was surely making, he could have replaced them for a more affluent friend group. But Armin remained as humble as ever, and it meant a lot to Jeanne.
“So, any news on the transmission?” Armin asked as he pulled out of the apartment complex’s parking lot. It was still early in the morning, but traffic was already picking up. Armin was driving carefully, as always.
“They’re waiting for some parts to come in, I think. Marco’s been the one talking to them, he says it’ll be a few more days.”
“That’s unfortunate. But I don’t mind bringing you to work until then.”
“It’s nice of you. I should thank you more often.” Jeanne snorted softly.
Armin shrugged, and offered her a shy smile. “It isn’t a big deal, Jeanne.”
Sometimes, when he looked at her like that, Jeanne wondered if Armin did consider her just a friend. She’d honestly been wondering since high school, but… Oh, that was right, he’d been going out with a new guy, recently. She could bring that up. “How are things with that guy you were going out with, by the way?”
Armin blushed, and looked away. “Ah, it didn’t work out. He wasn’t interested in a committed relationship.”
She nodded, frowning. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s okay. You didn’t know.” The car grew quiet, and Jeanne was left to her own thoughts.
Thinking once more to their friend group, it was honestly amazing to Jeanne how they had managed to stay together. Most of them still even lived in the same city. Trost was like that – once somebody got there, they never seemed to leave. To her, it seemed a curse and a blessing at the same time. Jeanne was comfortable there, but… she’d always wondered what it would be like in another place. A place where she hadn’t grown up, where she still ran into people she despised.
What it came down to was that Trost was just too damn small.
Eren Jaeger, the bastard, had managed to escape. Mikasa, too. They had moved back to Shiganshina, shithole that it was (in Jeanne’s opinion). Eren had gone first, naturally, with Mikasa following as she always seemed to. Armin, the third member of that trio, had stayed, rather than trying to fiddle with the different medical licensing procedures there.
And for the most part, everyone else had stayed, too. Sasha and Connie were still in Trost, and likely weren’t going anywhere, now that they had a family. Ymir and Historia were traveling, doing some volunteering abroad (well, Historia was. Ymir was just following Historia and making sure nobody messed with her small wife), but their home base was still Trost. Reiner and Bertholdt had opened a restaurant locally, so they were pretty much stuck. Annie was even around still, doing… something. Jeanne wasn’t sure what it was she was doing, but whenever there was some kind of special occasion around the holidays, the small blonde would attend, as quiet and terrifying as ever. The gang was, for the most part, all there in Trost.
Marco had talked about moving to Jinae before, but Jinae was a small town. If Trost, a city, was too small for Jeanne, the small farming community of Jinae would drive her crazy. She’d resisted him, but she’d started to wonder recently if she was being too stubborn. Still… Trost was her home, and had been since she was born. It wasn’t an easy thing to leave behind.
“You’re very quiet today. Is everything alright?” Armin asked, jarring her out of her thoughts.
“Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” she answered quickly. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”
“I understand. Working under the pressures we do… it can be a lot.”
Jeanne snorted loudly at that. “You more so than me, but yeah… it’s not an easy place to work.” Her position as an office supervisor was more exciting than she had originally expected. Jeanne really had just wanted something to pay the bills, so she could work on her art in the meantime. What she’d ended up with was a position where a lot was demanded of her, for not much pay.
“Are you still thinking about leaving?” he asked her gently, referring to a conversation they’d had a few months back.
“It depends. Marco’s wanting to get his Masters, maybe, so it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to be jobless while he’s doing that.”
“Understandable. Still… you shouldn’t make yourself miserable.”
“Sometimes life just works out that way, you know?”
“… I guess so.”
They pulled into the parking garage of the hospital, and Jeanne bade Armin farewell as they headed off towards two separate buildings. It wasn’t long before she was at her desk in a small building on the Trost Memorial Hospital’s campus, and starting the day’s duties.
She glanced at the clock on the wall opposite her desk. 8:04 am.
Just 8 more hours to go.
She felt like she’d spent the day looking at the clock, but finally, she glanced at the clock and it gave her some good news. 12:02 pm – time for her lunch break.
She pulled out her leftovers from last night, the lasagna that Marco had artfully prepared, and stuck it in the microwave before sitting back down at her desk. She was just about to pull out her phone to fiddle around on Facebook when the door to her office was thrown open, causing her to jump.
“What the fuck- Armin? Why are you – oh, oh God. What’s wrong?” she asked, seeing the look on his face. She’d never seen Armin look so pale… he was nearly shaking. What Jeanne had originally mistook for sweat on his face, she now understood to be tears. That did nothing to ease her worries.
“Armin! What the hell is going on, tell me!” Jeanne demanded, standing up and moving towards him. She wanted to grab him when he didn’t immediately answer.
Armin took a shaky breath, before finally speaking. “I think… I think Marco may be dead,” he said, the tears falling freely from his eyes.
Her world felt like it ended.