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[sub][color=Silver][i]The Siege of Amone, September 11th - [b]A break from it all[/b][/i][/color][/sub]
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[color=Silver]	Jean looked somewhat happy with his own response to Luke, taking in a sense of pride for the confidence required for such a small endeavour. It wasn't that the content of the authoritative drive was something of extreme intellect or even any brilliance, but more the fact Jean had to build up a lot of courage to say the words he did. According to the lovely Diana to his right, it seemed to have worked considering her tears now flushing out. Part of Jean's heartstrings were plucked with great tension, like that of a guitar or a plectrum against a viola, but part of Jean's motive was to stay strong and try to push past those emotions. Luke's response was still yet to be seen, but Jean was suddenly more taken aback by another interjection into his own final consideration of confidence. His own friend and NCO, Mr Black, turned up and began to summarise what Jean had said. For a moment, Jean froze in place, staring at Isaac with a small sense of disbelief. To the Francian, it felt like his attempt at encouraging his own confidence and sense of dignity was tossed aside by Isaac, who came in prancing around about morale and card games, repeating what Jean said towards Isaac in the most laid back manner conceivable. There was no major reason why, but Jean felt a strange annoyance to having himself interrupted and summarised in such a short and bland way. It wasn't that what Isaac was doing wasn't particularly done with malicious intent, but the way he'd came in once again made Jean look more incapable of delivering some form of authority on his own. Some could've referred to it as Jean's fragile insecurities and true lack of dignity, but Jean himself saw it as a small provocation of his own ability once more, making his face dim and darken with slight self-pity. How embarrassing...Luke was probably laughing on the inside about how small, soft Corporal Robin-Charpentier had to get help to gang up on him. Everyone had this goal to make Jean the better person, but it was at times like these when an indirect and accidental damage to what little pride Jean still had left that made him slightly down in place.

	It didn't take much to shove a man already on the edge. Right now, in this very inn, Jean had felt like he'd been through so many emotions that it was unmatched by any theatre of war thus far. Even back home, his standards of emotions and shift in mood was spread over several days or weeks, and in three days within Amone's unholy walls he'd covered most of the positives and negatives for what to feel and when to feel it. Love, anger, hatred and sorrow. Trauma and memories were a large part of his time at the inn and they themselves were far too indivisible from the distinguished reality and false manifestations of his own mind. This war had done a number on him. Jean felt pent up inside with his emotional baggage. The world had fallen apart, crumbled before his very eyes. Anomalies only once thought within fiction were conceived right here, and right now, in the reality of the world. Outside, rainfall reminded him on an hourly basis that there was no true happiness within this inn. Everyone was distracting themselves. Everyone was hiding from the reality of the war. Jean had been doing that for seventeen years prior to his own enlistment, and now he was being shown the music. Fuck, fuck it all. Get out of gutter, Jean. He'd tell himself a lot that all he had to do was focus on the reality at hand. Jean was a failure. Jean was a traumatised failure. Everyone here had already established their place in the war, whether they were going to be the moral compass, or the supporting friend, or the lover, or the drinker, or the arsehole, or the sad one...Jean was nowhere to be seen. Jean had disappeared completely, vanished like the ashes of some Mediterranean volcanic plume.

	What was worse than disappearing completely? Well, not existing in the first place was one thing. Jean still felt like there was no establishment. Maybe people only cared about him out of pity or sympathy? There was no real connection to him or his counterparts, except from the few good conversations he had with Isaac and Reyna. Michael and Franz were also good assets to have, as Jean yearned to converse with them more, and Lucia had been a recent well-induced addition to his Jean's own personal recovery, but still the Francian never felt like he truly belonged. Sent in by pressure of social class, thrown into a position of false power and rationalism, and Jean was nothing more than a shadow of someone else's greater story. He was the background to someone's origin tale, or an extra to their stage performance. Everyone had goals, aspirations and futures laid out ahead of them. Jean had nothing. Honestly, Jean felt like his only true purpose in life was to make the others feel better about themselves. He didn't have it the worst either, so sometimes he felt like his huge mental health issues were incomprehensible to everyone else's much more eventful lives. He was no protagonist to anyone's future history lesson. Jean was not anyone's future.

	Jean stood up, turning away for a moment and mumbling something to himself. Part of him had suddenly vanished. His aura was now a void, and it was easily detectable to the keen-eye. It was as if he were a spectre, floating in-between everyone else's conversations and presence, haunting them with the stoic realisation of pain, agony and war. His face felt pale and devoid of all colour. His eyes were drawn into a greyish murk, blemished only by the bloodshot anguish of the Great Europan War, as it was no called. There was nothing great about this. Jean wanted to hold that gun to his head again, but this time there was at least the self-control to stay very well away from it, and to instead talk to the greatest medicine ever conceived by a human: Private Reyna Hall.[/color]

[color=Aqua][b]"Please...enjoy your [i]card game[/i], I don't think I'll sit this one through, but remember the prohibition on alcohol for today and tomorrow. I don't want any distractions for our mission, okay? We're here for a reason, and we can try to do it well. Now...just...uh...just stay happy, I guess?"[/b][/color] [color=Silver]As Jean moved away, he approached Reyna, who was sitting alone with a book in her hand. It was her journal of course, as Lucia had already tried to swipe it up as her usual nosy self did, but so far she'd failed in every way to get a hold of its small leathery body. Luckily for the beauty that was Reyna, she didn't have to worry about Jean being invasive. He could empathise. His poems had been swiped twice since his introduction to Squad 1, and nothing was more frustrating that having your secrets and thoughts leaked without any sort of personal approval. It was damaging to morale and to confidence. Whilst Inès did compliment his writing, there was a sense of deprecation towards how she took it beneath his own consent. Those were the sort of moves that didn't boost confidence for someone like Jean, but rather challenged them further.

	As he walked over to Reyna, he hesitated for a moment. One of Jean's biggest fears was being the antagonist to her life. Was he being that? He was certain that she was on good terms with him still, but a huge part of Jean's issue was that he could never see the best side of reality. It was the fear of disappointment and embarrassment, but for him it was a case of just taking a deep breath and being himself, not actively acting out of his ordinary self. Jean pulled out a chair nearby her and sat down politely and carefully as to not disturb her elegant and almost formal aura. For some reason, Jean was immensely attracted to her elegance, as it showed a level of grace and virtue on the battlefield, no matter the situation. She was like a beacon out on the coastline of Francia, one that helped guide lost ships inwards. Jean thought that, to himself, that was what Reyna was to him. He smiled and nodded his head with respect as he took his own deep breath, taking out his flask and having another sip of the tea he saved from yesterday.[/color]

[color=Aqua][b]"Good morning, Reyna. I hope you had a comfortable night. You seemed to have raised some popularity amongst the squad with you tea yesterday. Diana was going on about it constantly, and I still have some in my flask here now."[/b][/color] [color=Silver]His chuckle responding to his own statement was met with a softness and tender care to his own form and tone. Jean was still quite nervous around her, but not in a similar way as everyone else. She made him feel somewhat bright on the inside. Something about the way they spoke made him happy. It just did. No one could ever explain that feeling. And for Jean, Reyna was the key to realising what was truly worthwhile in this god-forsaken world.[/color] [color=Aqua][b]"As sweet as you are, the tea is."[/b][/color]

[color=Silver]	Jean looked down at the table, slightly red in the face himself, before he sighed heavily and decided to mention something that had been on his mind for quite some time in his dreams. Something dark was coming, something that Reyna was to be heavily involved within. Jean knew this because of what Lucia had said in her own worries, and they were now shared and reciprocated by her Corporal, himself. With a quiet nod, Jean lowered his voice and leaned closer to Reyna, looking at her with a serious gaze of care and compassion, as if he just needed to hear her response just to soothe his troubled mind.[/color]

[color=Aqua][b]"R-Reyna...I must ask you something, if you don't mind?"[/b][/color] [color=Silver]Jean's formality came out once more, as it usually did in their solo conversations. But this wasn't one with anything lovely or wonderful to go with it. This time, there was a hint of regret to what he had to ask.[/color] [color=Aqua][b]"Do...do you remember Hill 58, or Garnia? When...when we first met? That was a lovely moment, but I said something to you that I now realise burdens my promise. I said I wanted to make sure you made it through the war without witnessing the horrible things I did, without having to do the horrible deeds the commanders made me commit towards. But, when we go on to our objective, in the tunnel system, I [i]have[/i] to send you into those depths, almost alone. I don't want to, Reyna, and I'm sure you might feel like it's necessary, but I want to know how...how do you feel about it? Is it something to be nervous about? And if it is, can I help in any way? I mean...you've got such a bright future and life ahead of you, I don't want to put that at risk, at least not any more at risk as it is simply being here on the frontline. And, please don't take this as some sort of overly zealous attempt to [i]preserve[/i] someone. You are capable of many great things, but even the strongest sometimes cannot handle what we have to go through. I may not be the strongest in mind, but...in my heart I am, so I know what it might be like."[/b][/color]

[centre][sub][@Bushman501][@Landaus Five-One][@FalloutJack][@Yam I Am][/sub][/centre]