eldia

10 | when the sun rises

Jean was rudely awaken by the sound of someone knocking frantically at his door. He groans and turns the opposite direction in bed, his pillow covering his cold ears. "Mm, why am I always getting woken up like this?" He groans.

He sits up in bed and rubs his eyes so hard that he sees stars for a second. The knocking doesn't cease so he drags his feet over to the door and when he opens it, Mikasa stands there looking deathly pale. "Mikasa? Is everything okay?"

She looks around the hall quickly before she pushes him back into his room and shuts the door behind him. "Did you drink the tea last night?"

He frowns for a moment. His still groggy brain couldn't recall what she was referring to.

And then it hits him. You handed him tea last night right when he was trying to talk to you about the letters. He couldn't really remember much after that.

"Yeah. I guess it knocked me out." He says scratching his head. Was it because he was still half asleep that he couldn't remember how the conversation afterwards went?

Mikasa shakes her head slowly. "You don't know, do you? You didn't catch on to her."

He looks around his room and tries to remember how he even got here. Is this where he talked about the letters with you? "What?"

"She's gone." Mikasa explains. "She gave you and everyone else that tea to put them to sleep so she could leave without anyone stopping her."

Jean's confused face drops flat. He even takes a few steps backwards. "She..." He laughs a little. "There's no way."

Mikasa stares at him, her face as serious as he's ever seen it. She clearly wasn't joking.

Panic began to set in. Why couldn't he remember anything? Did you really run away and where did you go?

"She has to be here somewhere." He tried to convince himself. "There's no way she just left. It's not possible, there's guards in every corner and I was watching her. I—"

His hand lays flat on his forehead as he moves messy, morning hair out of his face. "I was watching her. I had just saw her. She was in the kitchen and..."

It began to all slowly come back to him. He had ran home to find the letters and wasted hours trying to look for them inside the house when they were buried in his backyard the entire time.

Once he found them and finished reading them, he ran back to the castle as quickly as he could. He recalled noticing how eerily quiet everything was and how strangely still the night was. He didn't pay much attention to any of it because he was purely focused on finding you. He thought maybe he couldn't hear anything because of how hard his heart was beating.

When he found you, you were exiting the kitchen with a single mug in between your hands. You smiled when your eyes met his and you claimed to have been looking for him just as he was looking for you.

He held up the letters to you to showcase he had finally found them and he could recall the way your eyes stretched in horror and how the life drained from your face.

Before he could say much, you held the mug out to him, claiming you made him whatever was in it. The way you looked at him, almost pleadingly, made him take the drink right away. He didn't think twice about it for some reason. He was appreciative of the fact you thought of him. He didn't even bother to ask what it was.

He remembers walking to his room with you beside him. He can recall you trying to comfort his anxiousness by saying no one was going to see you go into his room alone with him.

He now understood what you meant. You had put everyone else to sleep. That's why it was so quiet. That's why there was no one else around.

He was the last one.