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There is a thumping melody through his temple that allows Jean Kirstein to take a moment and set aside his grief, because it reminds him of music.
His mother had, when she was alive, had a vinyl collection and a player and she had danced around to it until the world had spun into each other and he had only thought that she looked loved.
The dog had barked and his father had laughed, had gentled the next song into a slower melody and held his mother in tight arms as they blended the dance into each other.
As he flickers this image in his mind, he choses to remember that image of them, happy and proud and in love, rather than the way he had found their bodies, zombified and empty and - and Jean’s mother's eyes had never lacked light since he had been born.
Jean's mother had never looked empty.
As he flickers this image in his mind, he remembers that the only person he would want to slow dance with in the kitchen, to, is standing across from him, looking unsure.
"You're...certain?"
He couldn't not be - it had been a stupid move and a dumber risk to throw himself between Armin and a biter, but Armin was critically more necessary to their group's survival than Jean himself. He couldn't be not sure when the teeth imprints are worrying away at his skin, when all that's left of him some moments, is that bitemark.
He fades between before times and apocalypse and sometimes, he comes back disappointed. The zombies had led a terror crusade amongst all of humanity, had brought disease flagrant, and reminded humans that the thing most dangerous were humans themselves.
They had lost so much, he thinks, looking up into Reiner Braun's eyes, but Eren Yeager had been their most recent loss, influenced by his own hubris and his own lack of will to continue.
Sometimes, by their close connection, Jean wasn't sure that Armin hadn't been almost on the receiving end of the bite on purpose.
It was a grim idea.
It was a likely one.
Jean didn't ask - they all had their bad days and their impossible missions, but Jean had been thrown when, after arriving and hiding at his parent's massacre, the group had come looking for him. He can still picture Annie's knife in his mother's temple to put her down as another infected - he remembers the taste of bile that had been left in his mouth.
He had cradled her body and apologized for being a shit son, sorry Mama until Reiner had carried him away.
I'm going to turn into her. Into my mother. He never says because the sheer despair and aggravation in Reiner’s eyes is too vast.
Jean wishes he had hidden it until he died. Jean wishes he still had the capacity to feel rage about it rather than this melancholic, broke nothingness.
"I can..." he swallows, his voice thick with it, and he's thinking about losing Sasha only a month ago, of losing Hange a week after and that had been critical for them: Levi had still been on control since then, doctoring Armin into Hange and Erwin's old seat. Armin was not taking well and Jean had been okay at advising him into the role, into helping him settle.
Part of him laments that he'll never see Armin in control.
Part of him just hopes they get better that way.
He finishes, voice hoarse and eyes feeling a little wet, "...feel it."
It burrows into his side, not enough to kill him quickly but enough that Connie has been hardset on barely leaving his side. He had been firm that night he wanted to be alone with his boyfriend.
With Reiner.
With Reiner, who is firm on his anger and his upset and the look in his golden hues that he is seeing his entire world, his life, crumple before him.
Jean wishes he had the tears left to sympathize him.
Reiner’s breath hitches, his voice thick with emotion, "Armin said Hange was looking for something - a cure."
His laugh is monotonous, firmly unamused and hopeless - some part of Jean, the part that had been full of attitude and life, had died around Marco's death. He was learning to get better around yesterday when he was bit.
Maybe, it doesn't matter.
Maybe, it was the universe's last laugh at him.
Whatever it is, it isn't his laugh. "The only one who could figure out Hange's notes, is Hange themselves."
In his next blink, he can see Hange's burning corpse, can hear their anguish as much as he can recognise the distress in their eyes when they had been alive.
It had saved the group.
It had damned the group to hell all the same.
Death doesn't mean anything, not really, Jean considers, staring down where Mikasa had wrapped bandage over his waist with uncharacteristically shakey hands, and smoothed it over with a promise of him being okay.
He would not be.
He will either die or become one of those flesh-eaters: the latter is not an option for him.
This form or the next, he will not let himself be a liability to their group.
What use is a guard dog if it can't submit?
He watches Reiner, Reiner and his handsome face, Reiner and his absolute, overwhelming love for him and all he can spit out is, "I'm sorry."
"D-Don't-" Reiner stammers, his voice hiccuping on its own sadness, its own depressive traits before he finishes, "Don't be sad. I can't...I can't think of you apologizing to me."
When I'm gone, Jean knows but instead, coils his tags into his hand and pulls until the choke of the necklace eases the pain of knowing Reiner will be alone once he's gone.
Instead, he leans into his shoulder and, as steathily as he can, pulls the iPod touch they've found that miraculously still worked and that now houses a picture of him and the song of his choice on it. The iPod had been one of Connie's younger siblings, one that Jean had never met when they were in university together, but it had been clear when Jean had charged it that a child had liked this, with its various Marvel characters stuck to the back, and it's apps downloaded. Jean had noticed Connie's brother had been a very big fan of Temple Run.
Jean wishes he could have met him, that maybe - just maybe - if there's an afterlife, he'll be able to bound over Temple Run and Connie with his brother and Sasha.
He misses her.
He misses Reiner, who stands in front of him and who he will be dying on soon, but he also misses the Reiner who didn't look at him like he will have nothing left after Jean dies, like he's already dead.
He considers the pills he took, the way that one of the group is going to have to put him down before the pain gets too much or he hurts someone - he had asked Levi to do so, but the shorter man had never answered.
It had felt like a parting gift from his father.
Jean feels his own pulse in his wrist, considers the time he has before he's swept in the pain or the grasp of his own spilt pills, and he knows that he doesn't have any more time to dawdle. If this is going to happen, it has to happen now, before he - or the iPod - runs out of battery.
"Dance with me," he murmurs into Reiner's shirt as he catalogs the scent of his longterm boyfriend into every corner of his mind. Please, he wants to tack on but doesn't. Reiner has always been weak for Jean's requests.
Reiner hitches a sob into his next breath before he helps Jean stand, leaning almost entirely into Reiner's chest and his feet drag and - and Jean had seen a movie where the dead were fast, where zombies tore people apart quickly; sometimes, Jean wonders if theirs were just as reluctant as he feels to do anything harmful, even in death.
Their bodies are pressed together so tight that catching air feels impossible between them and Jean had been so careful with the song choice, had found one on the iPod that was by the same band his parents used to listen to. Dragging his feet and leaning almost entirely on Reiner, who supports his weight without hesitation and with open depression, Jean has the scary thought that he'd like to consume Reiner, that if he put his teeth to his neck and swallowed - that they'd never be apart again.
He doesn't dare do it, instead hooks his chin over Reiner's shoulder to hide the tears that fall at the thought of causing his partner any harm.
"I love you." He murmurs.
The iPod dies a little after Matchbox Twenty gets to the chorus.
He doesn't make it much longer than that.