Husbandry

The standard socks issued to the cadet corps were, in Jean’s opinion, shit, and noticeably shittier each passing year. Before he enlisted, his mother tutted that wool was scarcer since Wall Maria fell, but god, did he hope the Military Police uniform was top of the line, from head to toe. He said as much to Marco, whose annoyingly measured defense was, “Any family struggles to clothe growing children.”

Well, Jean didn’t particularly think of the military as parents. Look at Shadis, and that nut Pixis. The nobility and the MPs probably hoarded all the quality goods long before any other branch saw them, but when Jean’s toes wriggled against the inside of his boots, he cursed ranking officers and their pantries full of meat, and Pixis’ liquid diet, and really, how only the cadets and Scouts ever needed good socks.

He just had to make do this last winter before the 104th disbanded.

So Jean sat with his legs criss-crossed on his bunk one chilly evening with a crinkly pile of yarn he’d reclaimed from a sweater. From the barracks supply closet, he’d scrounged together a spool of thread, a reasonably sharp darning needle, and two mismatched knitting needles.

“Jean, you know how to knit?” Marco looked at Jean over his book.

“Of course, I’m not a child,” Jean said. That’s right; he didn’t need his mother. And if he decided to stop being ashamed of the household skills she’d smacked into him only when he saw Mikasa and stupid Eren sewing together—her letting down a skirt seam, him doing a pretty ugly job at fixing a collar Jean might have yanked on once or twice—that was his business.

“My sister showed me how to reinforce heels, but repair is hard.”

“Are they holding up for you, then?” Jean was focused on picking up a row of stitches.

“Oh, they’re fine.”

“Once we’re MPs, we won’t even wear through our socks enough to need replacing or reinforcing.”

“MPs do a lot of legwork.”

“You might.”

“If you want to…” Marco took on that gently goading tone Jean recognized. “You could ask the others if they need any help. Especially anyone going on winter training.”

Jean scoffed. “They can help themselves.”

Well, everyone knew how to sew. It was part of their field medicine course, though now as Jean knitted back and forth across a tiny patch, he felt quite smug about his own ability. But how to lord it over everyone without doing exactly as Marco suggested? If Mikasa’s scarf ever got caught in a tree branch, not that she’d ever be so sloppy, Jean could mend it better than Eren. Surely. With some practice. Maybe he should study some stitch patterns other than stockinette.

Jean didn’t make a habit of staring at people’s feet, but his eyes flicked around their cold dorm as he finished kitchener stitching across his toe. Connie and Thomas were playing cards on the floor, and he could see even in the dim light that the backs of Springer’s ankles were felted, probably because he shoved his boots on and kicked them off with reckless abandon. Thanks to Hoover’s sleeping habits, Jean already knew he doubled his socks for warmth once the first frost hit. Right now, he and Reiner seemed to be sitting across from each other on their top bunks. Armin was standing nearby, talking to Bertolt. Jean could recognize Reiner’s beefier leg dangling between the beds.

“Oi, Reiner," he called out. "You’re pretty flat-footed.”

“What was that, Jeanbo?”

“Your soles are holes.”

Reiner hopped down, the floor of the boy’s barracks creaking from the impact. He bent to peer at Jean under the top bunks a few beds away. “Excuse me?”

“Give me your socks.”

The older boy looked at him quizzically, then reached up into his cubby and threw Jean a (thankfully) clean pair. Jean unrolled them and confirmed they were thin the same place. He tutted—like his mother, damn it—and set to work.

He didn’t realize Reiner had come over until the mattress dipped beside him, and a large, warm hand covered his forehead. “What the hell?”

“Are you sick?” Reiner asked. “You don’t seem like yourself.”

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t know you could darn.”

“Darning is weaving. This is knitting.” He glanced up and saw non-comprehension in the blond’s eyes. “A hillbilly like you doesn't know the difference?”

“We didn’t get a lot of raw materials in my hometown.”

“Really?” Jean said. “Krista said farmers and shepherds left behind whole herds of livestock when they fled to Wall Rose.” Eren always said they were no better than cattle for hiding within the Walls, but for all they knew, those Maria cattle could have wandered through both gates and seen more of the world than any human by now. It was a whimsical enough image to stick in Jean’s mind, assuming Shiganshina was laid out like Trost: a parade of cows filing out like the stupid Survey Corps, titans paying them no mind at all. “I guess if I was a cow, I’d take titans over Sasha any day.”

Reiner barked a laugh. “This really is impressive, Jeanbo. Your mom taught you?”

“Yeah,” Jean said. Weirdly, he couldn’t detect any mockery in his tone, which was the default ever since their drills in Trost.

“That’s good,” Reiner said. “A soldier should be self-sufficient.”

“Yeah? What’s your excuse, walking around basically barefoot?” Jean broke the yarn with his teeth to prepare sewing the first patch down.

“No one in my family really knit.”

“Well, give me your other socks.”

“This is it.”

“What? These and the ones you're wearing?” They received five thick, knit socks every fall to account for the trainees’ adolescent growth spurts, and five pairs each the spring in a lighter yarn.

Reiner shrugged. “I gave two to Bertolt.”

“And the other?!”

“Walked through.”

“What do you mean through.”

“The soles disappeared.”

"Goddamn nobles. Cheapass yarn.” He tossed the mended sock at Reiner’s chest.

“What makes this different?” Reiner held it up to the light to peer at it, as if he hadn’t just demonstrated a shocking ignorance of textiles.

“Added cotton. Older wool.”

“I thought maybe you’d keep your advantage over the rest of us for winter training.”

“Yeah? I don’t want to see anyone’s toes fall off from frostbite." He jabbbed his working yarn-and-thread through the second sock. "And what if I collapse? You’re the only one who could carry me to safety.”

“So this is self preservation to you.”

“Yes.”

“I see.” Reiner’s amber eyes glinted with amusement. “It doesn’t get that cold here. This far south, I mean.”

“But I bet all your shoes fucking stink. This is also for Bertolt’s sake, actually, having to sleep next to them. Why does he take your socks?”

“He’s always had poor circulation.”

“Right.” That’s what pissed Jean off about Reiner more than the older boy’s good looks, and general popularity, and monologuing on what it was to be a soldier: his martyr habit. It wasn’t obvious, like Eren counting down the days he’d rush into a titan’s jaws, or Marco’s selflessness without guile. There was something dark underneath. Jean couldn’t figure out what.

Yet.

He set down his mending and dug around for the bag of personal affects he’d brought the day of their induction, and dumped its contents between them. “Here.” Jean speared two folded pairs of dark brown, nearly black socks with his free knitting needle like a kebab. “My mom thought I’d be your size by now.”

Reiner blinked down at the fabric Jean had just flung into his lap, then squished it experimentally with his bear paw of a hand. “Wow. This feels really nice. Are you—”

“They don’t fit me, and if I need bigger ones, it'll be when I'm Military Police.” Jean did not want to hear “are you sure?” because he wasn’t. He helped his ma unravel the shawl that used to be that yarn, another reminder that Trost was once secure and well-resourced, that Jean quickly learned about scarcity four years ago. “Just don’t let Shadis catch you wearing them. And don’t give them to Bertie.”

When Hange cuts his legs off above the knees, Jean wonders if his fucking socks are on Reiner’s steaming, disintegrating feet.

++

For every new thing Jean learned in their three years at sea, he gained another reason to to be angry at Eren Jaeger.

The magnitude of loss they encountered defied comprehension. They met the last speakers of languages already driven to obscurity by centuries of Eldian and Marleyan conquest; Jean wrote Onyankapon as soon as he met a family of migrants from the older man’s home country. The port cities they docked in were half-resurrected ruins, ancient skylines flattened to ad hoc housing. The only grim positive Jean could note was, besides technology, the Rumbling had also flattened wealth disparity, somewhat, though the further they got from Paradis, the more he saw aristocrats and industrialists who reminded him of Dimo Reeves before the attack on Trost.

True to her nickname, Queen Historia was inordinately interested in what the ambassadors could say about the world’s biodiversity. It made a kind of sense, really, for the figurehead of a military government to do the work those trigger-happy freaks neglected: infrastructure and agriculture. Keeping the country fed besides armed. The few times they’d lost track of Armin on their journeys were when he’d wandered away with the rare scientist disinterested in Titan biology, but fired up about the nonhuman lives those damned Colossals strolled right over—something called a coral reef, species of trees that once rivaled their own Titan Forest on Paradis, endangered, flightless birds.

They were nearing the end of a week of meetings with Paradis’ leaders, a smaller gathering of Historia’s less homicidal advisers, when Reiner spoke up during a rare lull in Armin’s chatter.

“Reiner, we grew up together. I told you you’re welcome to call me Historia.” Her words were kinder than her tone. Of the Warriors, she gave Pieck the warmest reception at the pier, though these last few nights Jean noticed the queen slinking off with Annie around dinner time.

“Can I ask what happened to the island’s livestock? When the Wall Titans walked?”

It was an insightful question that none of them thought of, so focused on making their—well, the world’s—case to the hostile Paradisians. Historia’s face stayed nearly neutral, but Jean swore her brow raised minutely. She was surprised and—dare Jean think it—touched.

Look, they met her consort briefly, and Jean thought they had more of a sibling relationship. If anything, they looked like what he and Eren would be as a married couple. He’d gotten out of Annie that Historia had a possible girlfriend. Either way, Reiner had no business trying to charm his way into her good graces, and Jean fixed to kick him in the shin under the table before Historia responded.

“It’s funny you should ask,” the queen said. “You’re actually responsible for a breed of feral sheep that’s terrorizing some farms in the north.”

Jean didn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t that. “What?”

“Remember, Kirchstein?” Reiner’s arm was braced across the back of Jean’s chair. He did it so often lately that Jean didn’t even notice, but he saw—what the fuck?—Historia and Annie trade a look. “You said shepherds abandoned whole herds of animals when we attacked the wall.”

“But what—”

“An abandoned flock mated with a breed no one had seen in over a century,” Historia continued, “and when Eren tore down the Walls…”

“An invasive species,” Armin realized.

“The few we’ve managed to study actually have a lovely, long staple length. If we could only domesticate them, Paradis could easily enter the world fiber trade,” Historia mused. “And if genetic diversity is a serious concern for shepherds across the sea, we could even freeze and ship their—”

One of the bureaucrats coughed, and the discussion droned on.

Jean nudged Reiner’s calf with his shoe. “See? You created life.”

“What does she mean ‘terrorizing’?” Reiner murmured.

“They’re probably like, overgrazing or something.”

“So they’re stealing food out from under kept flocks.”

Jean felt the urge to kick bubble up inside him again. “Reiner.”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

++

Truly, Jean was joking when he told Historia his plans at the ambassadors' farewell luncheon the next day: “Visit my parents, then hike, I guess.”

“Hike?”

“Well, I’ve seen more of the world than my own homeland, and I figure the Jaegerists are pretty concentrated in the south and west, right? And I’m not in a hurry to get on a boat again.”

“That’s a wonderful idea,” Armin said. Right—other than one or two expeditions shortly after they retook Maria, the Survey Corps hadn’t really surveyed the entirety of the island except to establish guard stations along the coast. Really, they got pretty lazy once they got their hands on an atlas from Hizuru.

“Anyway, the Kirchsteins are city dwellers, so I’m sure my parents are enjoying the change.”

“They’re lovely. Practically family,” Historia said softly.

Jean felt the tips of his ears heat. “Oh god. They're not annoying you?” He could picture it now: his father trailing behind Historia with his inane, stream-of-consciousness questions like she wasn’t a head of state, his mother knitting baby clothes at the speed of light even though the princess was toddling age by now.

“Of course not. The way they dote on Frieda, I can tell you were a happy baby.”

“What do you say, Reiner?” Jean elbowed the older man. “Let’s see these armored sheep of yours.”

Pieck and Annie were headed back to Marley to help with its restoration. Armin wanted to spend more time with Mikasa, and in Jean’s opinion, should really join Annie and face her terrifying dad. Connie’s mother lived with the Brauses and traveled to Ehrmich District for regular physical therapy. Reiner…

Jean could tell that the peace mission was exactly that: a mission. As long as he had a mission, Reiner knew what to do with himself. But after the fact? Jean didn’t speculate as to why, but Reiner seemed reluctant to return to Marley, even with his mother and Gabi there. Maybe he just needed more time.

“No, seriously, Jean, Reiner—could you?”

And that’s how, eight days later, in the bedroom his parents set aside for their globetrotting son, Jean and Reiner woke to two pairs of military lugsoles thrown onto the covers, which mostly landed on the backs of Reiner’s legs, strewn as he was over Jean like a heavy quilt. The blond grunted and flinched at the impact, and Jean blinked himself awake to make out Historia in the doorway with a iceburst lantern.

“God, Historia, you just walk into houses uninvited? Before sunrise?”

"This is my house," she said archly. The Reiss lands spanned quite a few estates that Zackly’s junta expropriated from the old nobility, and now included Historia’s main residence, the royal orphanage, a women’s shelter, and smaller farms and cottages that housed families like Jean’s.

Jean kneed Reiner in the hip. “Get up, you oaf. First light, remember?”

The Kirchsteins didn’t think twice about the soldiers’ refusal to squabble between the bed and the living room sofa. Really, all four of them—Jean, Connie, Reiner, and Armin—had shared beds for over a decade, in a way, from Reiner planting himself between Jean and Eren’s nighttime bickering in the barracks, to Connie appointing himself Armin’s chaperone (“I don’t think Annie would appreciate being treated like some maid in need of protection,” Jean huffed, to which Connie stuck out his tongue and Reiner chuckled to himself).

And Historia had the least reason to judge of anyone Jean knew. He’d caught her with Ymir decidedly not sleeping more than once. So why was her face at war between a stern, imperious glare and barely suppressed giggles?

“What?” Jean bit out.

“You’re cute.”

“You hear that, Reiner? She says you’re cute.” Reiner burrowed his face into the pillow by Jean’s neck.

“No, the pair of you.”

“The hell does that mean?”

The queen rolled her eyes. “Ten minutes.”

They had three objectives: meet a shepherd named Reger, a former vassal of the Reisses who volunteered to move outside Wall Maria six years ago; observe the flock for a week, ideally getting an accurate count of their age and gender distribution; and, only if possible, shear one and bring back its wool.

To that end, whenever Jean and Reiner were free from his parents, Historia’s terrifying maternal grandmother trained them to handle the beasts, though the royal flock was allegedly docile as kittens. Jean wouldn’t know, the way one ram sent him flying into a pile of shit when he looked at it wrong, but Reiner took to husbandry with the same annoying ease he did everything as a cadet, and if Jean’s heart raced a little, seeing the man hoist an ewe over his broad shoulders like it weighed nothing? Well.

“Why do they like you so much?” Jean grumbled. He was already on the horse Historia lent him. He even had time to saddle Reiner’s while the blond dilly dallied with a pair of lambs that danced around his shins outside the stables.

“They just don’t like you,” Reiner quipped. “You don’t like horses, do you? Two-legged ones, anyway. Not the queen’s nice horses, oh no.” He scratched the lambs behind their ears like fucking dogs. “I have to go now, though. Thank you for seeing me off. I know, I know…”

It took a little less than half a day for them to cross where Wall Rose once stood. Colossal footprints aside, Jean was struck by how, well, wild the terrain was compared to the south. They stopped at a creek to eat their lunch of onion and mushroom pasties made by Jean’s mother when Jean decided to be brave.

“Reiner.”

“Yeah, Jeanbo?”

He was well and truly desensitized to the name after the week they just had. “Why are you here?”

“You asked me to come.”

“Not really.” Jean scratched his jaw. “I feel like I just like. Brought you.”

“You said, ‘Let’s see these armored sheep of yours.’”

“Yeah, that’s not a question.”

“Jean.” Reiner licked his fingers, slick with lard from the pastry dough, looking him in the eye. “I want to be here.”

Jean stood, too quickly, and made to clean up after their picnic. “We’re not calling them armored,” he said lamely.

“Or ‘titanic,’ I take it.”

“Doesn’t that make you think of a 5-meter sheep? Can you imagine? Pieck’s titan, covered in fleece.”

Reiner leaned back on his hands, not helping, his eyes closed with the afternoon sun casting shadows of leaves across his face. He really did look better these days, Jean thought, and not only since Eren ended Ymir’s curse. Two weeks on land, even the land he’d tried to destroy, smoothed the perpetual furrow in his brow, and lightened the shadows under his eyes. He even clenched his jaw less in his sleep.

Jean's parents had the very opposite effect on him.

This Reger character lived in a cottage at the foot of a mountain that, apparently, could be seen over Wall Maria. Jean imagined the horizon taunting any residents the same way Armin said birds pointed to something beyond Shiganshina. They made it there by nightfall, as planned, the chimney puffing merrily as late spring still managed to bring an evening chill.

Jean expected Reger to be a hunchbacked old man, probably smoking a pipe of some kind and probably a bit of a pervert like the late Dot Pixis, but the spry figure that flagged them down wildly with both arm was, in reality, a tall and sturdy woman of an age with Jean’s parents, whose gruff voice and overall manner reminded him of Ymir. Her hair was a solid, steel gray, and shorter than Jean’s, but longer than Reiner’s.

“The bluefaced sheep these pests come from were bred for commercial wool,” Reger explained over their dinner of river fish roasted over an open fire, boring but practical. “Made a pretty penny for Lord Stielike, because they grew more fiber than necessary for their survival. But the wild ones they fucked shed naturally. You know what happens to their crossbred bastards?”

Jean and Reiner shook their heads.

“They don’t shed. So these giant, lumbering things tumble down the hills with 15, 20 more pounds of fleece than they should carry, with all kinds of shit caught in them. Actual shit, brambles, thorns, poisonous berries, parasites, you name it. The worst part is they can overheat and die, which is why they stick to shaded areas.” She took a swig of what smelled like gasoline to Jean. “When the flock was smaller, I could track them down and shear them before summer, but they’ve multiplied, and I’m getting older.” Reger patted her knee. “Can’t exactly zip around like I used to.”

“How many were there when Wall Maria opened?”

Reger clicked her tongue. “Two dozen, give or take.”

“And last you counted?”

“At least eighty, and that’s only around here. Her majesty writes they’re spreading west?”

“The estimate is closer to a five hundred.”

She whistled.

They laid out their bedrolls on Reger’s kitchen floor. Jean flopped onto his side and saw Reiner’s golden eyes reflecting the firelight as the blond watched him, inches from his face. Jean flinched back, embarrassingly. Reiner smiled. “Reminds me of that wilderness training.”

“We weren’t in the same group.”

“Details. These the same sleeping bags?”

“All the shit Historia gave us is old, surplus.” Jean said tiredly. “Even if I wasn’t persona non grata, I was sick of what the military became. Fucking wimps way too reliant on guns, wouldn’t last a night without a roof.”

“You sound like an old man.”

“I’m younger than you.”

“Kids these days. Is that you, Shadis?”

“And they’re so wasteful. So much equipment from the titan days is perfectly serviceable, or salvageable, and just sitting in warehouses.”

“Like those shitty socks.”

Jean’s mouth went dry. He wasn’t thinking of that at all. “Go to sleep.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing his physical exhaustion to subdue his brain. He shuffled closer to Reiner’s body heat like a bundled up worm, and dreamt a feather-light brush over the bullet scar on his cheek.

++

They left the horses in Reger’s loosely-defined pasture, where she kept only an old goat, and continued their journey on foot. In three years traveling together, Jean found he often overtook Reiner’s walking speed, and was pretty smug to confirm he’d grown taller than him when they hauled him into their alliance in Shiganshina. He slowed his pace and glanced behind him, ready to taunt Reiner to catch up, only to see the other man's tongue poking out in concentration as he maneuvered a—

“Are you spinning yarn? Right now?” Jean recognized the drop spindle from his childhood in Trost. He noticed Reiner had packed a simple canvas sack that was soft on prodding, which Jean assumed was clothing, but it was a gray-brown wool top, of all things, now tucked under Braun’s arm.

“Your mother taught me.”

“We were there for a week, when did you find the time?”

“Whenever you disappeared with your father.”

“I was sparing you,” Jean said, exasperated. “He asked me whether you peed inside the Armored Titan or stepped out.”

“I always tried to go before, but you know, the adrenaline kind of takes your mind off it once you’re in.”

“I don’t know that, Reiner. But would it kill you to wait until we set up camp? You're even slower than normal.”

“Alright, Jeanbo.” He tucked the damn spindle away with a grin. “You’re just jealous cause you couldn’t get the hang of it.”

Jean grit his teeth. “You’re friends. With my mom.”

“She told me so many stories…”

“Okay, fuck off.” Jean sprinted ahead, like a child, and Reiner’s warm laughter followed.

Reger said a large concentration of the flock was quite happy around the base of a mountain a little way’s west, so their best bet was to find high ground that let them track their movement from above. As they started their ascent, Jean heard more and more rustling in the bushes and trees around them, creatures of all sizes darting out of their path. He startled on more than one occasion.

“That was a deer,” Reiner said.

“I knew that,” Jean snapped. “I’m not this fucking jumpy, you know.”

“Oh, you’re cool and collected as can be, I remember.”

“I’m just out of practice.”

“Do you want to hold hands?”

“No,” Jean said too quickly.

“It’s understandable, you know.” Reiner stretched, threading his fingers together behind his nape, like they were strolling through some city square. “We’ve been pretty sedentary for three years. And you just got your ass handed to you by a ram.”

“He hates me.”

“You just have to grovel next time.”

“There won’t be a next time.”

Reiner spotted a clearing in the treeline ahead of them that proved flat-enough for camping, which they reached well before noon. “Look.” Jean reacted in time to see a fluffy, filthy blur that dive into bushes downhill from them with all the grace of a canon.

“How much do they weigh again?” Jean said faintly.

“Ewes, 200 pounds. Rams around 250.”

“So if one jumps onto us while we’re sleeping, we’re dead.”

“I don’t think we’re in danger of that. Reger said they stay pretty low.”

Jean let out a deep breath and started unpacking their tent, muttering about his own stupid big mouth, his mother’s big mouth, and cattle-rearing goddesses and their insane propositions he, admittedly, didn’t get until Armin explained (“Frozen sperm can be really valuable!”).

“This was your idea, you know,” Reiner drawled.

“Yeah, and they’re your invasive sheep.”

“It’s really beautiful here.” Reiner had binoculars in his hand, but he was looking away, in the direction of the eastern coastline.

“Yeah, and it’s fucking cold.”

“You can knit us sweaters,” Reiner said. “I’ll keep the big, scary sheep away from you and turn their coats into yarn.”

Jean cleared his throat. “Marley’s warmer, right?”

“Liberio is. It's a big continent.”

“Winter must’ve been a shock for you three.”

Three. They danced around each other’s pain, really, since the night Jean punched the shit out of him and accidentally hurt Gabi in the process, so neither of them mentioned Marco or Bertolt, or any other cadets who died in Trost, or the terror Eren brought to Liberio.

But Jean didn’t feel any alarm. Hurt, but an old hurt.

And Reiner didn’t show any outward reaction. Just hummed.

True to Reger’s description, the sheep more or less followed the shadow of the mountain like a sundial, and they observed a steady trickle that came and went south, toward farmland, until it became too dark to see. At this altitude, the temperature was significantly cooler, and Jean gave up all pretense and nudged his way into Reiner’s bedroll, tucking his knees above the blond’s and pressing his face into that stupidly broad chest. Reiner’s hand settled between Jean’s nape and shoulder, a familiar weight.

“Knitting for this circumference would be a massive pain,” he mumbled.

“I can’t really do anything about that, Jeanbo.”

“That’s a lot more yarn than for like…” They weren’t all that different in size. “…Annie. Annie and Armin could both fit into one of your shirts.”

“I think Armin’s still growing, somehow. Maybe Annie and Historia.” Reiner seemed to hesitate, then said, “You don’t want to see Mikasa?”

Jean stilled, and moved just enough so his words wouldn’t be muffled. “She’s family.”

“She’d say the same thing about Eren.”

“Eren’s also family,” Jean said, surprised at the simplicity of it. “But they’re kind of both gone. I don’t know. It’s good we saw she’s doing well, but…”

“But?”

“But you’re here.”

++

Jean woke up to a cavernous whuffling against his ear, and something wet and warm disturbing the hair on his crown. His eyes flew open—centimeters from a dark, ovine snout.

“Reiner,” he whisper-screamed.

The sheep butted its nose into Reiner’s sternum, above Jean’s head. God, why did he sleep like the fucking dead? “Reiner!” he said more firmly, and jabbed his stupidly hard abdomen. The oaf gave a particularly loud snore before his eyes blinked open far too languidly for Jean’s tastes.

“Why, hello,” Reiner greeted, his voice scratchy and rich. His forearm tightened across Jean’s shoulders, but his heartbeat was steady. “Jean, you have to slide out the side of the roll.”

“I have to?”

“Yes.”

“Then let go of me.”

Jean shimmied out of the sleeping bag then the tent so ungracefully, allowing Reiner to sit upright and offer the sheep his hand to sniff, murmuring nonsense. “She’s a ewe,” Reiner called.

“Great, just great,” Jean said. He started reheating the water they’d collected the day before, shuddering at the feeling crawling over his skin and the smell stuck in his nostrils. The beast’s stumpy little tail twitched contentedly as Reiner negotiated his own way out of the tent.

“And she’s pregnant,” The damn sheep was looking up at Reiner with heart eyes, following his every move. “I don’t have any snacks for you, girl, you gotta look yourself.”

“But why is she here?”

Reiner scratched behind her ears, and she practically purred. “We’re in her home, technically.”

“I mean pestering us in bed.”

“She’s just curious, aren’t you? Or are you extra uncomfortable, wearing all this fleece while growing a baby?”

Jean’s brain was short circuiting. “So we should shear her, right?”

“No.”

“What? We don’t have to set up a trap or anything.”

“Didn’t you pay attention last week?” Reiner chided. “It’s best to shear right before lambing, so the lamb’s birth weight is optimal, so the ewe will find somewhere safe to lamb, and so the baby bump draws the skin taut to lower the chances of accidentally cutting her.”

“You’re really fucking annoying, you know that?”

“Jean.”

“What?”

“What should we name her?”

“We?”

“Yes, we.”

“Krista. She sent us here.”

“I was going to say Sasha.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s eating our breakfast.”

Sure enough, the damned ewe’s head was buried in Jean’s backpack, audibly crunching through the maple grain bars his dad had foisted on them. “You fucking glutton—”

Reiner, the sap, placed himself between Jean and the thief. “Jean. You don’t want to piss her off.”

“She pisses me off!”

“Look,” Reiner said, “I’m gonna test something. I’ll go see what I can forage, or failing that, fish up another bass. Stay here.”

“What—?”

“And calm down.” Reiner disappeared down the mountain with his new, odd-toed shadow at his heels.

Jean wanted to scream. He stomped over to his bag and confirmed the damned beast hadn’t destroyed anything else, besides drooling all over the tin of black tea leaves Jean pilfered from the royal family’s pantry.

The sun was just beginning to peek over the eastern horizon, or the lowest point you could point to in a mountain range, so it was probably later in the day than he’d normally guess. Damn. Left to their own devices, he and Reiner would probably wake up at noon.

Jean was tired. If it weren’t for the homicidal fanatics that wanted his head at the center of the island, this would be the perfect place to stay a while. It was practically the edge of the world. North of Paradis was more ocean, and a massive, icy continent inhospitable for humans, anyway. His last four years as a Scout, he’d only seen the northern coastline once, with just some of the Special Operations Squad: Levi, Connie, Sasha, and Armin. At the time, he’d thought it eerier than the reclaimed wasteland, but as he looked around, he saw it was quite untouched by the Rumbling since the Wall Titans marched south; maybe that’s why these damn sheep were so wild and unbothered.

“Look what Sasha showed me.”

The ewe hurried into their camp ahead of Reiner, braying happily. Reiner held up a largemouth bass, and a massive bundle of greens. “Is that rocket?”

“Rocket?” Reiner repeated. “Arugula. What the hell is rocket?”

“What’s arugula?”

“And burdock, and wild garlic.”

“Okay, if this gives us the runs, it’s…” Jean looked at the beast, and felt himself give in. “…Sasha’s fault.”

It ended up being one of the better wild salads Jean had ever improvised. Reiner folded up their spare bedroll to cushion the rock he sat on to spin his yarn while Jean used the binoculars. When they traded watch, Jean tried his level best to doodle Sasheep—he’d settled on calling her in his head, too heartbroken to fully commit to saying her name out loud, yet— with a scratchy fountain pen, and he regretted leaving behind the soft lead pencils he found in his room on Historia’s farm.

Sasheep wandered off, but never far, butting her head under Reiner or Jean’s hand for pets every few hours while they made up stories about what the rest of her kind was up to.

“I really only see a few dozen, Reiner.”

“Sometimes I count 50, but other times it looks like more than a hundred.”

“Supremely unhelpful.”

“I swear, some of them leave and come back. They must be the thieves.”

“That’s a lot of distance to cover.”

“I think these are mostly ewes. It’s rams that are terrorizing the countryside.”

“Okay, so they’ve spread out. We can’t assume this is all of them.”

“What if it’s not them?”

“What, they’re being framed?”

“Maybe. What if it’s the bluefaced ones trying to come back home, but their owners don’t recognize them? Or they died?”

Jean pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why are we the ones doing this? Aren’t there scientists?”

“This is a new problem, Jean. Extinction and rebirth on unprecedented scale.”

“Fucking Eren.”

Reiner’s handspun was turning into a lumpy, but structured single ply. When Jean tried to learn as a boy, he always tore the wool while drafting, and was too impatient and defensive to watch how his mother fixed his error.

Braun would be a good son to one Mrs. Kirchstein, Jean decided.

“You said no one in your family knits.”

“Hmm?”

“Before our last winter training.”

Reiner didn’t take his eyes off the spindle, and Jean nearly apologized before he answered: “Wool was rare in Liberio, and expensive."

We didn't get a lot of raw materials in our hometown.

"I must've noticed that all our things broke easily, and they cost double, sometimes triple of any prices I saw outside the zone, once I became a Warrior candidate. But when I went back”—after Mikasa, Connie and Hange blew him up under Jean’s orders, after Sasha took a roof tile to the gut—“I looked around more, and wondered where everything came from. Gabi’s mother briefly worked in a textile factory, where they had knitting machines.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“No, she explained it to me. She would wind the yarn onto these hooks, then pull levers all day to make almost a hundred hats a week.”

“All for Marleyans to buy for cheap, I imagine.” He watched Reiner work for a little longer, and an idea sparked in his mind. “Reiner?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s look at the sea tomorrow.”

Heading down the mountain without horses, or ODM gear, or clearly defined trails was a challenge, especially in the dark. After their fair share of embarrassing stumbles—Reiner skidding down a wet rock and Jean screaming like a girl after grabbing onto moss—they found themselves on a rocky beach around eight o’clock, hand in hand. To their surprise, a few of the wild sheep hopped along the shore, insulated and indifferent to the biting wind, ashy sand clinging to their fleece.

“This is miserable,” Reiner said.

“Yeah, it is.” Jean looked down at their clasped hands, and thought fuck it before he pressed a kiss to Reiner’s knuckles. The shorter man laughed, disbelievingly. “What?”

“Kiss me like you mean it, Kirchstein.”

Jean took Reiner’s jaw in his free hand and did just that.

++

“What’s this?”

“Open it.”

Jean thought Gabi was an annoying little shit as a child soldier, but now, a sullen teenager who spent far too much time with Levi Ackerman, she was somehow even more volatile. Reiner whispered to him that she and Falco were fighting, which made Jean really, really want to backtrack on the gifts they brought for the kids, but it was too late.

Gabi slid her thumbnail under the tape, carefully, just like her cousin opened packages, and blinked down at a pair of cheerful lilac socks, with a tiny intarsia ‘GB’ below each cuff in a rich green. “Oh.”

“‘Oh?’”

“This is such an old man gift.”

“Isn’t your best friend fifty?”

“Forty-two, Kirchstein.” Levi didn’t even look up from his newspaper.

“These are artisan goods, Braun, grown and handspun on Paradis Island by the Armored Titan himself—”

“I know that,” she said with an eyeroll.

“—and lovingly knit and dyed by your cousin-in-law." Jean paused. "Please say purple’s still your favorite color.”

“Yes, Jeanie. Thank you.” Jean ruffled her hair, even though she was shooting up to an impressive height. “Hey!”

“I came here to see my old captain, and put off seeing your aunt. Why aren’t you at home?”

“None of your business.”

“Okay, fine. Why don’t we head back there after us old men have a chat?”

“Fine.”

“Wash your dishes, Braun,” Levi called.

“Fine!”

Jean plopped onto the loveseat next to Levi’s wheelchair. “Here.” He didn’t bother with wrapping since Levi found it wasteful, but his gift matched: monogrammed socks, in cream white and iron gray.

“This the only thing you know how to knit?”

“It’s my best pattern, yeah.”

Levi smiled more easily these days, and he held up the wool to the light. “Neat.” A profound compliment, in Jean’s book. His gray eyes flicked over to Jean’s hand, at the silver band around his ring finger. “How’s Braun?”

“You could come over for dinner, too.”

“Tch.” Somehow, Jean thought Levi hated Karina more than he did.

“What’s up with baby Braun?” Jean asked.

Levi rolled his eyes. “Falco is going to medical school. She doesn’t know what she wants.”

It was such a normal thing to hear about a pair of kids that Jean felt tears prick his eyes.

“The fuck, Jean?”

Jean dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief—his first attempt at embroidery. He was really turning into his mother. “I’ll tell her she can stay with us for a while. Or forever. The farmhouse is too damn big. The sheep keep wandering in. Feral, my ass.”

“Your life sounds disgusting.”

“I washed your socks twice. Lanolin is actually good for your skin.”

“Don’t comment on my feet.”

“I also have some for Onyankapon, but I think they’re in Reiner’s luggage. Is he around?”

Levi shrugged. “He’ll be back eventually.”

Jean could not wait to gossip to everyone he knew.

At dinner with the Brauns and Grices, Fingers and Leonharts, Falco brightly thanks Reiner for his socks—forest green, his favorite shade, with small, lilac FG’s—while Gabi screams bloody murder. Armin and Mr. Leonhart talk about Hizuru, where he and Annie just visited Mikasa. Pieck prods Jean for the latest about Historia, since apparently the two were loyal pen pals and, Jean thought privately, had an ex in common, in a roundabout way.

Jean looks down at his and Reiner’s hands under the table, at the cuff of the undyed, chocolate-brown sweater bunched up on his husband’s forearm, which Jean just managed to finish before their trip to Marley. Jean squeezes his hand and smiles.