"There's no better feeling in the world than having a best friend." It was a saying Jean's mother had always told him as a kid.

Even though he didn't fully understand the words, he believed them with all his heart. As a kid, he had always believed everything his mother had said. He knew now though that she had likely made the words up to make him be nicer to the other kids in the town.

Of course, it hadn't worked, for even as a kid he always spoke his mind, but he had still managed to make a few friends anyway.

As a kid, he had thought that friends were plentiful. He had always been part of that large group of kids that hung out together every day in the small fields that surrounded the city. They were the type of kids that didn't have to worry about ever being alone because there were so many of them. They were the type of kids that would exclude others, laughed at those that had no one else to hang out with. Jean had thought it was the right idea at the time. He had his own friends, he didn't need to worry about others. So even though they didn't last long, as fights were common among the group, none of that mattered, as they always had someone new to take their place.

Over the years, many people had taken on the role of his best friend. But just as quickly as everyone else, they changed or left or moved on. After his mother had spoken to him though, he was different. He actively tried to keep his friends. He tried keeping what he hated about them hidden, and he suspected they did the same. He wanted to have a best friend, to have that feeling that his mother had told him about, because the world was filled with pain. Eventually though, he couldn't keep up the charade, and lost every one of his 'best friends'. In the end, he came to accept himself as what he was: brutally honest and proud of it.

He'd rather be that way and only keep the friends able to stand him than to have to hide just how much he hated everyone. He didn't need a best friend, because it was always quantity that mattered. The more friends he had, the more he could rub it in to other kids who didn't have them.

So Jean had gone on not understanding just what those words his mother had told him meant, and not really caring. Someone you could tell anything to, without having to worry about what they think? He was like that with everyone, and he still had yet to find that person that actually agreed with him. Best friends had never brought him anything of importance, nothing that he could care about.

So he never really understood what a best friend meant. To him, it had just meant someone that you tried your best to get along with more than others, someone that sometimes lasted a bit longer than the others.

Marco Bott defied all of that. Marco never pretended to get along with Jean, never tried to agree with him. He spoke his mind and told Jean he was wrong just like so many others had. He was yet another person who disagreed with Jean's thinking, and honestly Jean was fine with that. He'd given up on the idea of a best friend, because he didn't think such a thing existed. So he kept on talking, being brutally honest with everything he said, yet unlike everyone else Marco didn't leave. He didn't get angry, he just chided Jean and told him he was wrong in a way that didn't even sound like an argument. As time went on and Marco still didn't get angry and leave, Jean began to notice that he was different.

Marco's words had always been true, and even when they had been insulting to Jean's character, they had always been completely kind. He would speak his mind openly to Jean just as much as any of his 'best friends' before him had. There was something different though. Unlike everyone else, these words weren't meant as insults, nor were they meant to hurt. They were meant to show that he cared.

It was a type of honesty that only Jean, the most honest guy he knew, could appreciate.

He had finally figured out what a best friend was: it was the person you could be honest to about anything and still have them be around.

All of it came too late though. It wasn't until he was gone, that Jean saw his body lying in the streets, that he realized just what it was he had felt. Just what he had meant to him, and what he had lost.

He had found a best friend and lost him before he even figured out what he was.

So he still couldn't come to make sense of the words he had once heard, for he had never realized what the feeling was until it was torn apart from him. To him, a best friend came with the feeling of pain, the feeling of loss, the feeling of powerlessness. Marco Bott had been possibly the best person he had ever met, but in this world, where life was short lived and death was meaningless, having a best friend only brought pain.

Still though, his friendship guided his life, and Jean ended up in the Survey Corps, fighting for what he now felt was right.

It was there that he came to interact with Armin Arlert.

From the start, he had always thought of Armin Arlert as weak. He had thought that was too weak to take care of himself, and would always stay in the back crying and needing others to support him. There was no way a kid like him could fight, or even speak his mind.

Yet after every criticism about the Survey Corps, every insult aimed at Yeager, Armin would always be there, ready to talk back. He would be there and he would tell Jean that he was wrong and refute his claims, showing him a different side that the brunet had even refused to acknowledge before. For a while, Jean thought he hated him. After all, he was Eren's friend, and how could he possibily like a person he constantly argued with? But after a while Jean came to realize that this was different. Armin wasn't calling him wrong because he disliked him. In fact, it was the opposite. There were many people that lied in this world, that spoke without thinking, that talked as if they knew the absolute truth when really they knew nothing. Armin didn't even speak to those people, didn't give them the light of day. The only reason Armin ever bothered to correct his words was because he cared enough to listen to them in the first place.

It was when Jean figured that out that everything came crashing in around him, and by then it was already too late. They had become friends, and he had come to care about him more than he realized.

At least this time he had realized...

So now, as he stood by Armin's side with a hand on his shoulder, he came to feel the pain again. The pain that he had thought was supposed to go away with the feeling of a best friend, for the words had said it was the best feeling in the world, hadn't they? So why did he feel so much pain now?

As his best friend's eyes fell onto the other brunet in the room he knew why. Once again, Jean had been the one by Armin's side in the battle, and once again he was the one by his side in the aftermath. Eren just stood away, oblivious to what had happened and what was currently occuring in front of him. And it tore Jean apart, because he knew he would never be able to compete. There was no way he could compete with over a decade of history.

He would forever be one position below Yeager in everything he did.

And now as Jean watched on, knowing that he would never be Armin's best friend, he knew that the words that had preoccupied him since childhood had to be false.

Having a best friend was not the best thing in the world. In this world, he no longer thought it was possible for a state of pure bliss. The only thing he knew for sure was that a best friend meant pain, rejection, jealousy, and loss. Having a best friend was the worst feeling in the world, because you can never really have a best friend. They always disappear, or belong to someone else.

The development of Jean's relationship with Armin in canon is one that I'm glad he is getting, but at the same time I can't help but imagine it comes with many pitfalls for him. In particular though, I thought of the saying that there's nothing worse than your best friend being best friends with someone else and couldn't help but think of him.