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Everything was going in slow motion, they couldn't believe what was happening. A Marleyan had gotten aboard their ship, she had a gun. Everyone heard the shot, they were in frantics to find out who it hit. Except for Connie and Jean. They watched as it hit Sasha, as she herself realized what happened, and as she fell to the ground. It had hit her from behind, just below her ribs on the left side. The 2 dropped with her as their comrades went for the shooter. Their worlds stopped spinning at that moment.
Their ray of sunshine, their rock, their best friend, their Sasha, was laying in their arms, dying. They did their best to put pressure on the wound, tried to keep her talking, to keep her with them. Eventually Jean had to rip himself away from her to inform the captain and the commander of what was happening. Seeing that smug bastard Eren nearly made him lose his composure, but he dutifully delivered the information to his superiors. The already tense air was filled with a sense of dread.
"Thank you for informing us Jean. Dismissed." Section commander Hange managed to keep a stoic face as he Jean had spoken, but it was beginning to crumble in the silence. Before Jean could even register his dismissal the door opened behind him, and when he turned his world shattered into a million pieces. Connie had walked in, unable to look up from the floor.
"Sasha is.." Connie's voice shook, unable to bear the reality of the news he was about to deliver, "she's.." Jean felt his eyes glass over as they welled with tears, this couldn't be real. "She's dead."
The tears fell, Jean took a step towards Connie and grabbed his arm. "Did she have any last words?" Eren piped up from the corner of the room. The first thing Jean had heard him say in months, maybe years at this point.
Connie weakly responded, looking up at Jean, "She asked, for meat." The pair looked at eachother somberly before crashing back to reality by a cruel sound. Eren was laughing.
The broken men looked at him horrified. Could he really be laughing when their comrade, their friend, had just been murdered? The punch landed by Levi couldn't have come sooner.
They walked back to the room where Sasha was resting. No, not resting, dead. The room where Sasha had died, where she had been cruelly murdered in front of them. They watched as the shooter, a child, was dragged towards the captain in the room they had just left. The grieving cries of their friends was all that could be heard in the small airship. Mikasa and Armin huddled over Sasha, trying desperately to wake her. Connie and Jean could only look at eachother. Minutes before Jean was pushing Connie off of their group embrace, Sasha laughed the whole time. But now as they held each other, a person short, they could only hope to never forget her laughter.
-
Mere days had passed since the attack on Marley, in that time they had informed Niccolo of Sasha's passing, as well as her family, and they'd had a lovely funeral for her. Jean and Connie were still grappling with the fact that their best friend, the closest thing they had to family, was gone. Now all they had was each other. Neither was sleeping well, and they spent most of their time together.
On a particularly bad night, Connie had been having nightmares of losing Sasha over and over again. He came to Jean for comfort, knocking on his door in the middle of the night went much better than expected. Jean had also been awake, and opened the door immediately, as if expecting Connie. They fell into each other, knowing exactly what the other needed.
"She was my everything, my twin," Connie sobbed out, "I think I loved her, and I'll never get to tell her." It took all his might to speak clearly, but even if he hadn't Jean would have understood him, he always did.
Crying less, Jean began speaking, "I loved her too, I can't believe she's really gone. Thank Ymir I still have you Con, I'm not sure what I'd do alone."
Calming himself, Connie muttered into Jean's shoulder, barely above a whisper, as if afraid what he said was true, "Maybe I love you as much as I loved her. I couldn't bear to be without you both, I can barely handle losing one of you."
It was as if something clicked then and there, Jean gently grasped Connie's face and pulled it backwards. Gazing into each other's eyes, a million unspoken words came with that look, all the things they never got to say to Sasha, and all the things they never said to each other. Jean slowly led Connie to his bed, and they fell asleep in each other's arms. That was the best sleep they'd ever gotten.
-
This was it, this was the end for them. In their attempts to stop The Rumbling, they had released some sort of creature from Eren's titan. Almost like a centipede or some other type of bug. The creature had released some kind of gas, and assuming it was the same type of gas released in Connie's home town of Ragako, they would become pure titans soon. Wrapping an arm around each other, Connie and Jean accepted their fate.
They looked at eachother, like they had that night, and it meant just as much as it had the first time. They closed their eyes, and just held each other. And then they transformed, and then it was done. They had lived their lives, helped some, hurt others, and left the island. They escaped the walls, and maybe they couldn't stop Eren, but they had tried their hardest.
-
Connie sat up, unsure of how he had gotten there, or even where "there" was. Looking around, he saw a groggy Jean sitting up as well, and that's when he remembered. They had become titans, but then what were they doing sitting there looking at each other fully human? It didn't seem to matter as they embraced and held onto each other as tightly as possible. They shared a look, except this time, they let themselves move forward. An unwavering gravity pulled them towards each other, and as their lips gently met, they felt whole again. They may not have Sasha there to join them, but they would always carry her memory.
Shakily standing they take in the scene around them, families crying and holding each other. And Sasha, standing right infront of them was their ray of sunshine, their rock, their best friend, their Sasha. Of course she wasn't really back, it was just her ghost, or maybe her soul. But they got to see her smiling, and they got to say goodbye. Life would never be the same without her, they knew this, but they could see her in the world around them. They would never truly be without Sasha, not when they had each other.
-
Returning to Paradis wasn't exactly something they were looking forward to after all that had happened. The others had been bickering the whole trip, Connie and Jean just watched in amusement, chiming in occasionally. They would be ok, Connie had decided, whatever was thrown at them next would be childs play compared to the suicidal maniac trying to destroy the world. If they just kept moving forward, nothing would stand in their way.