"Don't Give Up" by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush

May 5, 2003

On Monday, Jean came into work extra early. Despite being half an hour before his shift, he still saw Eren in the break room, drinking coffee while eating a bagel. At least he was actually having breakfast this time.

Jean passed by the break room and down a hall to Levi's office. He knew the CEO always got there early, and sure enough, when he knocked a voice called out to him.

"Enter."

Jean walked in to see Levi was also having a cup of coffee. He looked up from his computer as he saw Jean in the doorway.

"Kirschtein? I've never had you come in here before."

Indeed, it was the first time Jean had seen the inside of the CEO's office. It was sparse but immaculately clean, with the rich, dark wood desk polished to a reflective shine.

Levi huffed. "If you're here to ask if we can have a Cinco de Mayo party, I've already told Hange and three others, no."

"It's not that, sir. I'd like to talk to you about Jaeger."

Now Levi sat up. "Eren? Is there an issue?"

"Not about his work. It's just... there's something I want to do, something I'd prefer he not know about, and I want your permission before I do it."

Levi's eyebrow arched up. "Tell me."

* * *

May 12, 2003

Another week rolled by. Eren hated missing the bus. A single missed transfer meant fifteen minutes less time to relax in the morning. Even worse, he ran out of his house without his coffee thermos. The caffeine headache was starting to kick in, and he could barely keep his eyes open. It was a miracle he made his other transfers without falling asleep at the bus stops.

Eren sighed as the bus pulled up to his final stop. He elbowed his way through the crowded bus, fighting to get all the way to the back door. By the time he arrived, it was just starting to close, so he forcefully shoved the door open. No way was he also missing his stop and getting dropped off a few blocks down the street!

Finally, he was out, and he slapped his face a few times to wake himself up. Coffee! He seriously needed coffee.

He was almost at the doors of the office building when he heard a cat's meow. Eren paused as he also heard someone talking cutely.

"Good kitty. I bet you're hungry."

That voice!

"Good game, Eren. I bet you're hungry."

Pitched high, it sounded like Jean from back when he was young, and it triggered a phantom memory with no context. Eren walked over to the side of the building. There was a space between their office building and the next. To keep it from turning into a dingy alley, it had been built up like a tiny garden. During lunch, some of the workers even preferred to eat there. Eren used to, back when he did not simply eat at his desk. He had not been back in this garden-alley in months.

He saw Jean bent over, petting a skinny tabby cat. Jean had brought a can of cat food, and the cat was purring, eager to eat some.

"A shame no one feeds you," muttered Jean. "You're a pretty boy, yes you are!"

Eren covered his mouth to hold back a laugh.

* * *

1985 (Age 6)

Jean hobbled up with a cat in his arms almost as big as he was.

"Can we keep him, Mommy?"

Nancy gasped at seeing the huge cat. "Heavens! Jean-boy, get away from that."

Eren squealed at the beautiful, big cat and began to run forward, only to find Nancy's hand grabbing his arm and yanking him back.

"Eren, no! Don't go over there."

"I wanna play with the kitty."

"No!"

Jean nuzzled the spotted cat with tufts on its ears. "Please, Mommy, can I keep him? He's pretty. Poor kitty lost part of his tail. I'll take care of him an' feed him an' pet him every day, I promise."

"Jean-boy... that's a bobcat!"

* * *

PRESENT DAY: 2003

Eren snickered at the memory suddenly in his mind as clear as day. Jean always had a way with animals, and he nearly gave his parents a heart attack more than once by befriending wild animals. It was seriously a miracle he had never been mauled.

Eren knew that animals could sense a person's true personality. He would have thought that Jean would be hated by all things, humans and animals alike. Seeing the cat purr, twirling around Jean's ankle, made Eren smile softly.

Maybe Jean was not totally a horrible person.

Not that this absolved him of all the harassment and anguish he put Eren and Armin through, every nasty and hateful thing he said over the years, but it made Eren wonder.

Had Jean merely portrayed himself as a tough guy to hide his softer nature?

Just then, he remembered how kindly Jean had treated him on the hospital rooftop. It made Eren feel awkward. Jean had been genuinely concerned. If he was pure evil, he could have used that moment to demolish Eren when he was at such a staggering low. Instead, he had hugged him and urged him to cry it all out.

It was like there were two Jeans, and Eren had no idea which was real.

Satisfied with the cat heartily eating, Jean picked up yesterday's can and turned to throw it away. Just then, he saw a shape in the alley. Like a wild animal staring at him through the foliage of an urban jungle, he saw those huge, teal eyes.

The second they made eye contact, Eren turned and fled into the office building. Jean was left with his face flushed.

Why was he embarrassed to have Eren see him helping a stray cat? What was the big deal?

He threw out the old tin can and headed to the office. On the elevator ride up to their floor, Jean pulled out his phone and checked emails. One made his eyes widen.

"Ho-... -ly... shit."

* * *

https://youtu.be/AfsS3pIDBfw

"Hands" by Jewel

Eren knew it was a bit pathetic that work was his happy place. Working meant he could momentarily forget his worries about bills or his mother's well-being. There was always another client who needed his help, another email to write, another form to fill out.

In a world that felt like nothing he did helped anyone, here he felt useful. He made the lives of others better. Marginally, sure, but it was something of which he could be proud.

That meant breaks were a shadow of darkness looming up on him. He turned down offers to go out, because if he bought anything, he thought 'This money could go toward Mom,' and if he stopped for too long, there were two dreaded pamphlets ready to haunt him.

It happened again this time. His mother had scolded him to eat more, and not wanting to worry her, he was making a concerted effort to eat. He packed a bagel for breakfast and finally made himself some coffee, which he hoarded with desperation. No one else was in the break room. He normally liked the solitude, but now it made his mind focus on the darkness.

He reached into his briefcase, pulled out the two pamphlets, although he had read both enough times to recite them. One had information about the oncologist in the United Kingdom, a man by the name of Dr. Erwin Smith, said to be the world's best surgeon in his field, although his methods were deemed experimental and dangerous. Still, they worked, and that was all Eren cared about. He had talked to the people at Dr. Smith's facility, but when the issue of cost came up, Eren nearly had a breakdown.

£50,000 per surgery. Because her cancer was advanced, she would need at least four surgeries, plus an aggressive four-week treatment plan that began at £150,000. He had been warned that Carla's treatment would likely be twice as long, thus twice as expensive. Some money could be saved by her returning to her own hospital for recovery between sessions, but that meant a lot of flying back and forth. Carla might not have the energy to do that, yet staying at Dr. Smith's recovery clinic for many months would cost a considerable amount more.

The treatment plan would cost a minimum of £500,000, although with transportation, housing, and other expenses, it would realistically cost closer to $600,000. Eren looked into what he could get if he sold their family's house, but in this economy, $500,000 was optimistic. Even if he convinced his mother to sell the house, it would still not cover the cost.

It really did seem like a dead end.

The other pamphlet was one his mother forced him to take. It was on hospice care, different facilities, different forms of care, with his mother circling a few that caught her eye.

No! How could she give up? Sell the house, take out loans, Eren had even searched the Dark Web about selling a kidney. It turned out that was illegal, but he did find out he could legally make money as a bone marrow or sperm donor. He seriously considered it, only to find out that it did not pay nearly enough.

Eren covered his mouth, holding back screams as he looked at the two pamphlets.

Was there really no hope left?

His eyes burned just thinking about it.

"Hey."

Eren grabbed both pamphlets, shoved them into his briefcase, and slammed it down just as Jean walked up. He yelled, "What the hell do you want?"

Jean shrugged. "If those aren't porn mags, I'm not interested."

Eren rolled his eyes. "Pervert."

"It's a joke, stupid. Anyway, I got you something."

"Not interested," Eren snapped.

"You will be with this."

Jean yanked a chair over, plopped down beside Eren, pulled out a laptop, and brought up a web page. Eren stared at it. He saw a picture of his mother from many years ago, with Eren and Jean on either side of her. Eren had never seen this picture before.

"What is that?"

"I set up something for your mom."

"You what?" Eren yelled. "You put a picture of my mother up on the internet? That's an invasion of privacy. Where did you get that picture anyway?"

"From my own photo album. It's a picture my dad took."

Eren looked at the website. "Cash for Carla? You made a website?"

"Sure. I thought, at the very least, I could raise some money for your mom, maybe get her some more chemo, or help her in... other ways," he mumbled. "You know, make her life more peaceful."

Eren scowled as he thought about the hospice care pamphlet.

"You have the luck of the devil with you, Eren Jaeger." He logged into an account and showed him.

Eren stared blankly. Confused, he turned his eyes up to Jean. "What the hell did you do?"

"Nothing. All I did was shoot an email around the office and gave everyone the link to this website." He clicked to show the donors. "You'll see that most of the early donations are around here. Reiner, Bertholdt, Hange, that cute nurse, even your cubicle neighbor, Ouro."

Eren gasped as he saw one massive donation. "Levi Ackerman."

"Yeah, look at that. Bastard actually has a heart of gold. He donated the most out of anyone. After it made the rounds here, I realized it wasn't enough, so I sent the link out to every person I knew from school. I used emails, bulletin boards, Usenet, Friendster, spammed everyone I knew on ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, I even found this new site called LinkedIn and posted to some groups there, everything I could think of. You're lucky I'm so popular," he boasted.

"Fuck off," Eren whispered without anger, too overwhelmed as he looked down the donations list and saw names he knew. Classmates, old teachers, his high school wrestling team, the guys on the basketball team where Jean had played before moving. He even saw Armin and Mikasa's names.

"Ah, yeah," Jean muttered, realizing Eren had seen that part. "I found them on Friendster. It was a little weird to write to them after all this time. Mikasa cussed me out," he said with a light laugh.

Jean saw Eren continuing to scroll, more and more, thousands of names with the amounts they donated next to it, some modest, some generous.

"The internet is a crazy thing. You just have to share it with the right person, and it blows up. One of your wrestling mates shared it on a chatroom for cancer survivors, and it went viral. I checked this morning, and the donations exploded from about $70,000 to... well, this." He waved to the screen.

Eren shook his head, still unable to grasp that number. Someone must have added a zero, right?

"Now you have nothing to worry about. You can fill in your bank info to deposit the funds. In fact, I'll give you full access to the account—not like I need it—that way you can show your mom and reply to people with a thanks, whatever you deem fit."

Eren blinked a few times, then looked away without saying a word. By his confused and angered face, it was obvious that he would not accept this so easily. Jean grew impatient, feeling awkward by the idea of being generous.

"What is it now?" Jean asked in a huff.

Eren's voice began in a whisper and grew to a shout. "I don't want your pity. This is precisely why I didn't want anyone to know about my mother's condition, why I hid it, why I even told Mikasa that everything was okay, that treatments were happening, and I simply didn't mention the cost. I didn't want her to worry. I don't want anyone to worry, and I sure as hell don't want to owe anyone a debt."

Jean whacked Eren over the head. "A donation isn't a debt, you idiot. It's a present. You won the fucking lottery, and you need to accept that. 90% of these people don't even know you. They're cancer survivors, they know what it's like, and they want to give your mom the best chance possible. One wrote that she hopes your mom will join their chatroom one day. Just read some of the comments. These people know your pain. They aren't going to demand anything of you. So take the money, get your mother the best damn treatment in the world, and if you still want to repay any of us, then swear you'll cherish your mother for the rest of your life."

Despite the words, Eren sneered in anger, shaking his head as he looked at the screen.

Jean huffed in frustration. "Look, this is the reason why you're falling apart. You don't ask anyone for help, and you carry the load all by yourself. Stop being a stubborn dickhead and accept help once in a while! The site's yours. You can't return the money, so just be gracious and accept it."

With that, Jean stormed off.

* * *

A rumor spread that Eren now had enough money for his mother. The office was overjoyed that the website had raised plenty for the procedure, the flight out to the UK, as well as follow-up care.

Bertholdt was the only one to really notice the grief in Eren's face. He went over to him while he was waiting for a client to email back.

"Is everything okay?"

Eren jolted, and he realized his computer had gone into screensaver mode while he stared blankly. "Yeah, fine, just... tired. Stressed."

"I was hoping the money would take care of those issues."

Eren seethed at the mention of his newest problem.

Bertholdt knelt beside Eren in the cubicle and lowered his voice. "What is it, really?"

Eren shook his head. "I didn't want pity, especially from Jean."

"Jean really likes your mother. He said something about how she was like an aunt or a second mother to him."

Eren scowled. "I don't remember it that way. Jean is the sort of person who will hold this against me for the rest of my life. I'm thankful everyone donated, really, but... why did it have to be Jean who did this. I feel like I owe him a huge debt."

Bertholdt chuckled. "You know, Jean mentioned wanting to do this anonymously, but he couldn't. He even asked your sister if she would claim she was the instigator, but since all the early donations were from work, that was an obvious lie. Then, he asked me if I would take credit."

Eren's jaw dropped. "He... didn't want to take credit?"

"He said it would be awkward and you might not like it. Apparently, he was right," Bertholdt muttered with a sad chuckle.

"Well, screw him!" No way would he prove Jean right on anything. "Do... Do you know how this works? I've never done something like this before."

Bertholdt pulled up a spare chair and showed Eren where to put in the bank information. Then, with a nervous hand, Eren clicked the Transfer button.

"There you go!" Bertholdt said brightly. "You are now proudly $750,000 richer. I recommend you use that money quickly before you get hit with taxes."

"This is insane," Eren whispered, as if someone might realize this and rob him right there in the middle of the office.

"It really is, but it shows that the world can be a kind place after all. Amidst all the bad, there are truly good people out there. I should show you the Usenet post. There are literally tens of thousands of people who couldn't afford to donate but said they would pray for your mother. With all those prayers, no wonder you ended up so blessed."

Eren shook his head again. This was insane! It was unreal! A warm ache seared his heart, and his eyes began to burn.

"I'll be back, gotta pee," Eren blurted out, and he took off, stumbling as he bolted out into the hallway.

Bertholdt watched with a secretive smile. He had clearly seen the tears that trickled out of Eren's eyes. Over at his desk, Jean also watched Eren flee the cubicle farm and shook his head.

"Crybaby," he muttered, but he let it be for now. That prickling that had begun to stab his heart had become a soothing warmth.

* * *

Eren ran to the restroom and into a stall, where the tears flowed down thickly.

Everyone! All these people wanted to help out.

People who had known him his whole life, classmates who went to school with him for years, teachers who knew him only one semester, total strangers...

He imagined everyone's smiles, all that encouragement, and tens of thousands of people all praying for his mother to get better.

"Thank you," he whispered to all of them.

He dried his eyes and walked out a side door to the garden-alley. The stray tabby came out, and Eren smiled down at him.

"Been a long time, Bob," he said, bending over to stroke the cat's back and watching the tabby arch up into his hand. He had named the cat Bob thinking it was a funny pun. Bob the Cat: bobcat. Now he recalled that childhood memory with Jean, and he wondered if that moment had been hiding in his brain, dormant but inspiring him the whole time.

Eren sat on a wrought iron bench, pulled out his cellphone, and dialed a number. With the cat slithering around his ankles as he pet it absentmindedly, Eren listened to the rings until a receptionist answered.

Greeted by someone with a strong British accent, Eren instantly sat up straighter.

"Yes, Dr. Erwin Smith's office? This is Eren Jaeger. I called last week regarding possible treatment for my mother, Carla Jaeger. Yes, about that... well, it seems I have enough money now, or I should say," he muttered humbly, "I have some very generous friends. Yes, that's right, I'd like to set up an appointment as soon as possible. I'll have to see how to get her from our hospital to London... oh, the doctor owns a private jet? I dunno, how much is that going to cost—"

Eren's words cut off, and he smiled as he realized that money was no longer an issue.

"You know what? Let's do it! If she can get to you guys sooner, that's all that matters. When can you send the jet? So quickly? Great! And that's only for the initial exam, right? How soon can she start with treatments? Oh, nice! Yes, definitely, definitely, let's get her in as soon as possible. Yes, I understand the costs, more than you can imagine!" he said with a weary laugh. "Yes, I'll let her current oncologist know. We'll get you all of her records as soon as possible. Thank you so much. Seriously, thank you!"

Eren hung up and collapsed back onto the metal chair.

"Heh."

The laugh struggled up, a sound deeply buried for so long, it felt foreign in his mouth. Another bubbled up, like from under a deep, thick swamp.

"Ha-ha!"

Like pressure released from a bottle of soda, the laughs bubbled up, fizzing, effervescent and tickling in a throat that had not known laughter for such a long, long time.

"Hahahahaha!"

Eren burst out into laughs, and the cat scrambled away, unsure what to make of this weird human. His laugh echoed around the alley, bounced off the brick walls, and got lost in the noisy downtown traffic.

Far up in the office building, unseen by Eren, Jean stood by a window and gazed down. A gentle smile spread on his face as he faintly heard the sound of Eren's laughter, not bitter and wry, but a real, honest, heartfelt laugh.

He had not heard that sound since they were children, and it was nice to see the old Eren back. Silently, Jean slipped back over to his desk and went straight back to work. After many minutes, when Eren returned to the room and went over to his desk, Jean did not even look over.

His smile was repayment enough.

# # #

# #

#

Don't Give Up is a 1986 duet by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. It was written to give people hope during the difficult economic conditions in the United Kingdom under Margaret Thatcher. Peter sings about the isolation, loneliness, and despair that comes with economic hardship, while Kate sings words of hope and encouragement.

Don't give up 'cause you have friends
Don't give up, you're not beaten yet
Don't give up, no reason to be ashamed
Don't give up, you still have us

Hands by Jewel is a powerful 1998 song about taking the power to make positive change into your own hands. Small acts of kindness can have a lasting (even life-saving) impact on others. "In the end, only kindness matters." So spread kindness to someone today.

Bobcat — a wild cat native to North America. It gets its name for its short "bobbed" tail. Bobcats can be found in urban areas—in fact, we get a lot of bobcats where I live—so Jean finding an adolescent bobcat and wanting to take it home is totally possible, actually does happen, and can be extremely dangerous. Although keeping bob cats as pets is legal in some U.S. states, it is not the kind of undertaking anyone can manage. Bobcats have never killed a human (unlike some dog breeds) but they are still wild.

Early Internet Crowdsourcing — This chapter takes place in May 2003, three months before Myspace, a year before Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, 2 years before Reddit and YouTube, 3 years before Twitter, 7 years before Instagram and GoFundMe, 8 years before Snapchat, and 13 years before TikTok. If you wanted to crowdsource to raise funds, you had to make a website that could take donations, then go onto boards, chat forums, message people you personally knew, or hope a chainmail went viral. People still managed to do it, but "crowdsourcing" didn't even become a word until 2006.

Bulletin boards, Usenet, Friendster, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, LinkedIn — Ahhhh, the days before social media was really a thing. It was a weird time.

Bulletin board systems were some of the first chat rooms starting way back in 1978; they reached peak use in 1996. The rise of the World Wide Web made bulletin boards obsolete (I don't recall ever using one) yet my husband said he still used them in 2003.

Usenet had existed since 1980, worked similar to bulletin boards, but the focus was on forums; it is the granddaddy of networking, spawning the terms "spam," "FAQ," and "flamewar." Due to a rise in child pornography within the forums, AOL discontinued Usenet access in 2005, and the already dwindling user base all but dried up; however, some "old school" computer geeks still use Usenet to this day.

ICQ began in 1996 and was among the first stand-alone instant messengers. It still exists and has 11 million users. It is especially popular in Hong Kong after WhatsApp's controversial privacy policy changes.

AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM, began in May 1997. I joined just a year later, and this was the chat service my husband and I used when we first met, up until 2007 when Gmail integrated AIM into their chat service. AIM was discontinued in 2017.

Yahoo Messenger began in 1998, when it was called Yahoo! Pager (I had a pager... God, I'm old!) At its height in 2006, it had 22 million users. Yahoo Messenger was shut down in 2018.

MSN Messenger released in 1999, marketed under the MSN brand until 2005, when it was renamed Windows Live. It discontinued in 2013 and was replaced with Skype.

LinkedIn launched on May 5, 2003, so it would be VERY new. (It's supposed to be May 12th, so it existed for merely a week at this point, but hey, try everywhere.)

Friendster went live on March 2003 and exploded to 3 million users within just a few months, so although it would have been brand new at the time of this story, it was also immensely popular and totally would have been a way to spread information.

Fun fact: Friendster's founder refusing to sell his company to Google is considered to be one of the biggest blunders in Silicon Valley history. While it's easy to say "Wow, this guy sold for a few million and the company is now worth billions, what an idiot," the opposite is what happened to Friendster.

Google offered Jonathan Abrams $30 million in Google stocks before they took their company public if he would sell Friendster to them. Believing (rightly so) that social networking would be the next big thing of the tech world, Abrams was faced with the bet of a lifetime: do you take the easy bet, accept the $30 million, and walk away, or do you hold onto your hand and bet on your company making billions?

Abrams turned down Google's offer. Those stocks are now worth $30 billion. The board of directors ousted Abrams from his position as CEO just a few months later. With Myspace arriving a few months later in 2003, followed by Facebook in 2004, the value of the company would tank to a mere 5% of what it had been worth in 2003. It was turned into a social gaming site in 2011 and shut down in 2015.

It's not that Abrams was a fool for his bad bet. After being ousted as CEO, he would take his "golden parachute" and invest in multiple startup companies, including AdBlock, Docker, and Instacart. He has a net worth of tens of millions of dollars ... but he's also known as "the man who could have been a billionaire."