It should be Jean standing at the ocean, digging his bare feet into the cold sand, watching the thunderstorm rise over crashing waves, tears blown away by salty wind and dried from the fading sun. It should be Jean, clenching his hand around Eren’s little key, the one that’s always around his neck and dangling where his chest is warm, where his heart is beating softly, steadily, forever. It should always be Jean, seeing the ocean as they’d promised each other, right there when Eren had lost all his limbs from being cut out of the Titan once more, writhing and crying in pain, Jean holding his body and kissing the screaming ache in his bones better.

It shouldn’t be Eren, standing there motionlessly when the storm went down, when rain pattered on his face and carried his wild desperate scream into the skies.

It shouldn’t be Jean’s wings of freedom, the emblem from his jacket, clenched tightly in Eren’s shaking fists, dried blood splattered all over it and the white colour of the wings… gone dark.