Chapter Text
You saw only what you wanted to.
There were flowers blooming between my teeth,
promises wrapped around my hips,
handstands in the gangly corners of me.
There were blades in my hands.
I was carving my name into your side and
you were calling me soft,
calling me gentle.
I do not think you were paying attention.
- “For the One Who Loved My Hands More Than Anything Else” by Trisha Mateer
Memories from the before are always bitter in Eren’s mouth, reminding him of a time when he had a mother, a father, a home. Before only visits him on his darkest nights, when the fires go cold in whatever ramshackle house they’re staying for the night, their bellies hollow and their mouths dry. Before used to mean more to him, it used to be the sort of thing he longed for, but it’s hard to long for much when he can card his fingers through Mikasa’s hair whenever he wants, can taste her breath on the air as she sleeps next to him.
That time before the world was torn from its axis by disease, a flu that descended upon the world like a dark shroud. First, it was only a few places, supposedly contained, and then it was everywhere. No one’s ever been able to figure out why exactly that happened, only that it doomed them.
He still remembers the way his father’s voice broke during their last phone call. He was sixteen then, walking Mikasa home from elementary school. They had been neighbors, their parents were friends, and his mother was always loaning him to the Ackermans for favors. Taking Mikasa to the park, helping her with her homework. Driving her to ballet practice on the days when both her parents had to work late. It always surprised him how little he minded, even though Mikasa was seven years younger than him.
She must’ve noticed the air between them shift, startling to a stop at his side. Watching him with those dark eyes of hers, concern etched into her forehead. It had hurt him, to see her look at him like that, he’d forced a smile as he tried to make sense of the disconnected, scrambled sentences his father was shouting at him over the drone of heart monitors, codes being called, a hospital under siege.
“Eren, you need to listen to me. Take Mikasa. Take Mikasa and the car and leave. Don’t stop driving until you get to the cabin, there should be enough provisions there to last you three months. That should give you enough time.”
“Three months?” Eren had said, struggling to keep his voice even as Mikasa peered up at him. “Dad, what’re you saying? What about you? And, Mom? And the Ackermans?”
“Damn it, Eren. We don’t have time to talk about people who are already as good as dead. This thing…it moves faster than anything I’ve ever seen. I probably already have one foot in the grave already.” Eren still remembers the dryness of his father’s laugh and how, immediately, he descended into a fit of coughs. Only then did it begin to dawn on him what his father was saying and what it meant. “Please, tell me that you understand. Tell me that you’ll go to the cabin with Mikasa and never look back.”
Before, he went to school everyday, driving a hand-me-down Toyota Corolla with a sagging bumper. He skipped class sometimes so he could smoke weed with Armin under the bleachers and talk about philosophical bullshit like the weight of a soul or the materiality of free will. He ate dinner with his parents and sometimes his half-brother when he was in town, stinking of cigarettes and cheap booze. And, he walked Mikasa Ackerman home from school, holding her hand whenever they had to cross the street even though she was starting to get a little too old for it.
Seven years have passed. Enough time for the before to begin to lose shape, becoming indistinct, vague. He’s forgotten his mother’s face, doesn’t remember how many fingers of whiskey his father used to have before bed. Where Armin wanted to go to college or what color Historia Reiss’s panties were when they fucked for the first time in a closet during a party. Whether he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps when he graduated from high school or if he was going to be the disappointment everyone expected him to be. What it was like to be selfish and think only of himself, not having to consider the needs of a little girl who looked up at him with eyes as big as saucers, overflowing with admiration.
Until he’s completely forgotten what it was like to live without Mikasa at his side.
Eren always insists on celebrating her birthday. She’s never understood why; they don’t do anything for his, even though she remembers the day like it’s written on her insides. She had to remind him that he turned twenty-two last year, he’s always forgetting things like that because he says they don’t matter.
But to him, her birthday matters. They’ve been trekking through Trost’s wilderness for the past couple weeks, hunting and collecting berries and anything else edible they might find. It reminds her of those first sunkissed days they spent outside once they left the cabin. Finding out just how much everything had gone to shit.
Neither of them had retained much hope, the last news reports they’d caught before the televisions flickered off for good had been the stuff of nightmares. Eren hadn’t hidden it from her, he didn’t know how, still a child himself. But on the nights when she let out a small, terror-sharp gasp at whatever images flashed across the screen, he’d let her sleep in his bed with him, because he knew she was more likely to have nightmares.
Even now, she doesn’t understand why he was so good to her. She’s sixteen now, the same age he was when he became her everything. She can’t imagine doing what he did, bearing the weight of her with such grace. He never complained, was almost always patient with her. And on the rare occasions that he lost his temper, he’d make it up to her with some grand gesture: chocolate chip pancakes, a BB gun that he found in the depths of a basement, letting her take a long hot shower.
Together, they found their way through ruins of Paradis Island, trying to find a place that they might want to call home. They have yet to succeed, real civilization only became possible in what feels like the past year. Eren’s always apologizing for it being just the two of them, he seems to feel guilty about it, like he’s failed her in some way but she’s never minded it. Sometimes, when they spend a few nights in some ramshackle town, she’ll try to talk to other kids her age but it never goes well. Not when she can feel Eren’s gaze on the edge of her.
She’s heard stories of girls like her who aren’t as lucky. Taken in by men who promise to protect them, keep them safe, and then do the exact opposite. Eren has always been good to her, so impossibly good, always watching out for her, his touch never lingering for too long.
It had been different, when she had been younger. There was rarely distance between them, he seemed to understand that she needed comfort. Especially once the phone lines went down and it became clear that no one was coming. She doesn’t know what she would’ve done without the solace of him, what she might’ve turned into.
But eventually, she got too big for piggyback rides and sharing a sleeping bag when it was cold. He showed her how to do her own laundry so he didn’t touch her underwear anymore. They no longer bathed at the same time and when they stayed in abandoned homes, he closed the door to his room. And, sometimes, he’d leave her at the house of a kind family so he could spend the night somewhere else, and eventually she learned that whatever he was doing while he was gone was a secret, adult thing.
Once, and only once, she asked him about it. She was fourteen then, and had spent a bit more time around kids her age, ones that barely remembered the before like her. They’d swap stories of things they heard from the older kids, first about what might’ve been on TV or what clothing was in style but, ultimately, the conversation always drifted to sex.
She always left those conversations with more questions than answers. She knew it was the sort of thing Eren wouldn’t want to talk to her about but one night, as they laid under the stars, it was agony, keeping all of her curiosity inside of her. It was a warm summer night, so they were both lying on top of their sleeping bags. She turned her head a little and saw that he wasn’t able to sleep either, his eyes fixed on the stars.
“Hey Eren?”
“Sup, Mika?”
“You love me, right?”
“Of course, I do. You should know that without asking me.”
Needles of heat stuck in her throat, making it hard to breathe. She still doesn’t understand how she got the words out of her mouth, only that once she did, they changed everything.
“If you love me, why don’t we have sex with each other?”
Eren sat up abruptly. There was hurt in his eyes and she didn’t understand how it got there. “What the fuck? How could you ask me something like that?”
She turned away from him, burying her face in her sleeping bag. “Sorry,” she murmured and self-disgust weighed on her like an anvil, making her wish she could disappear into the earth. But before that desire could take root in her, she could feel the warmth of Eren’s body behind her, then his arms.
“Don’t cry, Mikasa,” he whispered into her hair. “You have nothing to apologize for; you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“If I didn’t do anything wrong, then why are you mad at me?” she said with a sniff.
“Hey, can you turn around so you can see that I’m not mad anymore?”
She did what he said, even though she wanted to pout a bit more. When she faced him again, he was smiling. “See? Not mad. Your question just surprised me and I didn’t react the best and I’m sorry. I just…wasn’t expecting you to ever ask me something like that.”
She was confused when he looked away from her, almost like he was shy. His hair was loose around his shoulders and it shielded some of his face from her, but what she could see had a red gleam in the moonlight.
“You still haven’t answered my question. You promised you’d always answer my questions, even if you didn’t think I’d like the answer.”
“I did promise that, didn’t I?” he said with a groan. Still, she could tell from the way his brow had relaxed that he had softened considerably. This was the first time in a long time that he’d been this close to her. Unable to help herself, she buried her face in his shirt. Letting out a contented hum at the smell. “Before I answer, can I ask where this question is coming from?”
“Some of the girls at the last town asked me if we were.”
“What?”
Mikasa jerked away from him like she’d been slapped at the harshness of his tone. Immediately, he realized what he’d done wrong and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I’m not mad at you, Mika. Can you tell me what they said?”
She blushed. “Just that…you were handsome and they were wondering if we had sex. And, when I told them we hadn’t, they said that that meant that you didn’t love me and you were probably going to leave me behind somewhere once you found someone you wanted to have sex with.”
Something flashed in his eyes that almost scared her. Anger, but with a darker edge. He sighed and carded his hand through her hair like he used to when she was younger. “God, and I thought it was a good thing that you were talking to those girls,” he muttered, almost to himself. “I do love you, Mikasa. More than anything. You’re very important to me and I’ll never leave you behind.” He stroked her hair as he said it, letting her lean into his touch.
“Then, why don’t we have sex?”
Suddenly, he yanked his hand away from her like her skin was radioactive. He must’ve seen how this hurt her feelings but he seemed at a loss as to what to say to her. “Because…uh…a lot of reasons. But the most important one is that you’re too young for that, Mika. You’re still a kid.”
“How much longer am I kid for?”
“God, you’re really fucking persistent, aren’t you? Fine, you’re a kid until you’re eighteen.”
“That doesn’t make sense. You were younger than eighteen when you started taking care of me and you weren’t a kid then.”
“That’s because you needed me to be an adult. So that’s what I was for you.”
It hurt to be reminded of how much Eren had to give up to take care of her. Her anguish must’ve been evident on her face because he softened toward her once more, leaning close to her to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t regret it, Mikasa. I never have. And, one day, it’ll be time for you to be an adult and you’ll probably want nothing to do with me.”
After that, he told her it was time for bed and his tone left no room for argument. They haven’t talked about sex or whether she’s a kid or not ever since. She’s tried her best not to think about it. But the thought has taken root in her, barbed and blood-soaked like wire. A feeling that sticks in her whenever she lets her eyes linger on Eren for too long. Noticing all the ways he’s changed, in the time they’ve known each other. His shoulders are broader now, his hands bigger. A sharper line to his jaw.
Once, she saw him kissing someone. It was in a town that was not-yet a town, a couple weeks back, staying in a house with a family that’d be kind enough to take pity on them. They usually attract that sort of attention, especially once Eren shares their story. Most of the time, he pretends he’s her brother by blood, and even though they don’t look that much alike, everyone believes it because of the way they act around each other.
Families were no longer the strict thing that they had been in the before, multiple and sundry collections of children and adults living under one roof in all manner of combinations. One of the unpartnered women must’ve caught Eren’s eye because, at night, Mikasa heard him, leaving the bed they’d been given to share and slipping outside the door. She still doesn’t understand why she did it but she followed, peeking out the crack of the door.
He was in the hall, pressing one of the younger mothers against a wall. She had her fists against his chest like she was trying to push him away, but there wasn’t any force behind her hands and eventually, they fell to his chest, tangling themselves in her shirt and pulling him closer to her. Mikasa’s mouth went dry as she watched him lick into this stranger’s mouth, something in his eyes that she’d never seen before. She didn’t get to see what happened next, no matter how badly she wanted to. Eren made a strange cut-off sound into the woman’s mouth and then told her something in a roughened tone of voice that made her body melt into his more easily. Whatever he said, it was convincing, and she opened the door next to him and led him behind it.
He didn’t come back until a couple hours later and Mikasa laid awake for all of them. Thinking about what they might be doing together. At least once or twice, she peeked her head out of their room and the only sound she heard was the dull thud of wood against the wall. Her whole body got hot when she thought about what it might be. As soon as Eren opened the door, she went stock still, pretending to be asleep.
Thankfully, he was too distracted to pay her much mind, not even one she opened one of her eyes to look at him. Whatever he’d been doing down the hall, it had made him sweaty, and he pulled off his shirt before he got into bed. When he turned his back to her, she saw long, angry red marks trailing down it. It was almost enough to make her say something, ask him if he’d gotten hurt, but then she smelled the floral notes of a woman’s perfume on him and realized that, probably, whatever had happened had been the sort of thing that he’d wanted.
She barely slept, worried that he’d abandon her for whoever he spent the night with. She was pretty, Mikasa guessed, in a homely way, and she definitely kept staring at Eren when they were all eating breakfast together.
But he didn’t pay her any mind, spending the majority of the meal talking to the other adults about what upcoming towns might be decent places to settle down for a while. He only broke away from the conversation when he noticed her staring sullenly at her plate of pancakes. “Eat, Mikasa,” he told her, using his father voice. “We’re going to cover a lot of ground today. You’re gonna need your strength.”
They left as soon as she was done eating and he didn’t spare that woman another glance, no matter how much she looked at him. It was cruel, but Mikasa couldn’t help but take pleasure in how little mind he paid to her, how despite momentary lapses, his attention never truly drifted from Mikasa, that she was the center he hewed to. Adhering to the promise he’d given her when she was fourteen with such faithful commitment, there was almost a religious fervor to it.
And she knows that that should’ve been good enough for her, that she can’t possibly want anything more from him after all he’s done. But every night, want haunts her like a ghost. Tendrils of feeling she just barely understands, only that she knows they lead back to Eren.
At night sometimes, she dreams of tasting his mouth. Of pushing him away from her in the secret way women do when they want men to pull them closer. Of what it would be like, to be his completely.
He used to know exactly what Mikasa was thinking just from looking at her. She’d been an honest child, especially when it came to him, unable to keep a secret from him even if she wanted to. Besides, even when her expression was illegible to him, he could always ask and she’d tell him immediately, without the hint of shame or knowing or any of the terrible, emotional afflictions that came with growing up. It was easy to love her then, when she was small enough to carry on his back wherever they went. When his feelings toward her had a name that he understood.
He doesn’t know when Mikasa started to change, only that now, he has no fucking idea what to do with her. Gone is the happy-go-lucky, starry-eyed preteen who’d trail after him in the woods for hours without complaint. It’s not that he doesn’t love her anymore, he knows now that loving her has become a permanent part of him, the only light he had during those first couple years of dark, when everything seemed hopeless and they found death around every corner.
But Mikasa is less open to him now. More prone to secrecy and silence, looking away from him when he tries to catch her eye. She takes time away from him more often than he used to and, try as he might, he cannot stop unease from creeping in whenever he isn’t able to catch sight of her, even if she’s told him exactly where she’s going.
He’s started to have dreams, the kind that jar him into waking covered in cold sweat, where she’s taken away from him, and he’s left with all the cruelty he’s perpetrated for her sake with nothing to show for it. After dreams like this, he can’t help but lie awake for hours. Watching the gentle rise-fall of her chest until he believes she’s real.
He woke from such a dream this morning. Tried his best to wash the taste of it from his mouth with cold water from the river but, stubbornly, it clung to him, following him back into the tent and making it impossible to sleep. Not when he could see the rhythm of her pulse, so clearly in her neck. Eventually, he gave up and decided to get a jump-start on finding her birthday present. Waking her only a little so he could tell her where he’d be if she woke up looking for him.
When he left their camp, the sun had just begun to crest over the horizon. A winter chill still pulled stubbornly at the air, forcing him to wear one of their heavier coats, pilfered from his father’s closest at the cabin. Sometimes, he thinks he might still detect hints of the way his father used to smell, cigarettes and disinfectant buried underneath a warm, woody aftershave that his mother purchased faithfully for Grisha every Valentine’s day. But he knows this is a childish wish and does his best to ignore it as he approaches the remnants of Krovla.
It’s always strange, entering a city he remembers visiting before everything went to shit. Krovla was a couple hours drive from Shigansina, but his father sometimes traveled there for business. Once or twice, he let Eren come along with him, and he followed him dutifully on his rounds at Krolva General Hospital. It had been a moderately sized town, more bustling than Shigansina, and he remembered being overwhelmed by it, so much so that his father had to grab hold of his hand to keep track of him.
Now, Krovla is not even a shade of what it used to be. Towering buildings riddled with broken windows, the distinct stench of rot wherever you go. It had fallen quickly, like most places, the hospital filling up in twenty four hours, then the city collapsing into complete disarray after that.
He and Mikasa had watched it happen. He remembers how she turned into his chest when they showed footage of the dozens of body bags, lining the halls of the hospital. She had been so small then, his hand spanning more than half of her back and he held her while she cried, her tears wet and warm against his skin. He had been thankful for her sobs, if only because he hadn’t felt anything ever since he got off the phone with his father, and it was good that one of them cared about what was happening to them.
Eren takes the path into Krovla he and Mikasa scratched out for themselves that leads directly into the residential area. It’s best to avoid cities and downtowns, the sprawling buildings providing more space for those with malicious intent to hide. They’ve learned how to make due with whatever they might find in the suburbs or neighborhoods, and, thankfully, the countryside is full of them.
The sound of his boots crunching against the pavement echo through the deserted neighborhood. He turns down one of the smaller side-streets, looking for one of the houses where the yard’s littered with the plastic shit kids like to play with. Usually, those houses had the most stuff, and people tended to avoid them due to an understandable distaste for finding the decaying corpses of dead children.
Like everything else, Eren learned how to numb himself to it like he did, especially when said corpse what was standing between him and Mikasa having warm enough clothes when the chill of winter sets in. From the emptiness of the driveways, it’s fair to assume that these people met their end elsewhere, maybe in a supermarket or in the hallway of a hospital.
He’d been a shithead before the end, trying on trouble to see if he liked the way that it felt. He hadn’t been particularly good at it, getting caught more often than he got away with anything, but he picked up some tricks and they’ve served him in this wasteland. One of them is lockpicking. He pulls out one of Mikasa’s bobby pins and jiggles it in the lock of the biggest house on the block.
Before stepping inside, he pulls the cloth he wears around his neck over his mouth to keep out the rot and mold. The air inside is stale, like no one has been inside in a long time, which can be a good or bad and you never find out until it’s too late. Slowly, he walks through the doorway and into what used to be the living room, his hand resting on the handgun he takes with him whenever he goes somewhere other people might be. Desperation does ugly things to the best of men and he’s learned to always be prepared for it, his shoulders permanently hiked up around his ears like a beaten dog.
Thankfully, a quick scan of the first floor of the house doesn’t uncover any signs of life. Like many houses, it exists in a form of stasis: pans still sitting in the sink, books scattered across the couch, a remote lying on the carpet. Backpacks sitting next to the door alongside children’s shoes, three pairs of them in differing sizes. A briefcase and what looks to be a laptop bag are hooked over a coat rack.
He avoids the kitchen completely, the smell of decay too much for him to take, and heads up the stairs. He takes them slowly, carefully, listening for any responding rustling or movement. Once he’s made it halfway up without a sound, he takes the rest of the two at a time. After keeping himself and one very willful girl alive for seven years post-apocalypse, he thinks he’s earned himself a little recklessness.
Still, he opens the door to each bedroom with his gun just in case. Only slips it back into his jeans once he’s checked every room over. Like the rest of the house, everything’s just where the family must’ve left it. Eren never likes being in homes like this one, it’s like walking with a ghost looking over his shoulder as he picks through their shit.
Usually, he likes to take his time scavenging, it’s one of the few forms of entertainment he’s got and he has to keep his mind sharp somehow. But today, he’s looking for something specific: a birthday present that’ll wipe that sullen look at Mikasa’s face for at least twenty four hours. Maybe a couple days, if he’s lucky. He misses her smile, he can’t remember the last time he saw it.
Thankfully, it seems like a teenage girl must’ve lived here as well. Hers is the second room from the staircase, with pink walls and a moldy floral bedspread. Unfortunately, her room is also decorated with pictures, which Eren prefers to avoid; it makes sweat drip down his back, feeling like he’s being watched like that. But he knows he has the best chance of finding what he’s looking for here, so he’s willing to stomach it.
Still, he can’t help but notice that the girl who lived here seemed to have a lot of fucking friends. Pictures of them cover her walls, their notes to her littering her desk. Reminding him of everything Mikasa’s missing out on. Maybe that’s why she’s been so pissy lately, he reasons to himself as he picks through the girl’s closet. Most of the it’s too girly for her, but he does find one promising item: a dark red, thick wool scarf. She’s always getting cold, it must be because of how goddamn lean she is. No matter how he tries to make sure they’re eating enough, the only thing that seems to stick to her body is muscle.
He grabs a few books from the bookcase, ones with sparkly covers like the other ones he’s seen Mikasa take when she picks through houses with him. They must be about girly shit because whenever he asks her what she’s reading, she gets all flustered and stuttery before telling him to mind his business in a furious huff that he has to do his best not to laugh at because she’s always looked too cute for her own good when she’s pissed.
Sometimes, he can’t help but worry. He was sixteen when hope was ripped away from him, and it’s made him cruel. His heart calcified over, the only soft part reserved for a teenage girl who doesn’t seem to like him much anymore. He can’t tell what this world is turning her into, only that it isn’t what she would’ve been if it hadn’t fallen apart. She probably would’ve been an Honors Student, shyly raising her hand because she always had the right answer. Destined for great things, like college in the island’s center, making her parents proud.
But instead, she lives in a rotting wasteland, her hair almost always tangled, dirt smudged across her face, most of her clothes his hand-me-downs, shins permanently bruised and arms lined with pink and white scars. When he slips back into their tent, she’s still sleeping, her fist curled next to her face, drool pooling at the side of her mouth, buried deep in her sleeping bag like a cocoon.
When she’s asleep, he can so clearly see the little girl she used to be, the one who remembered what it was like to have a mother, who had people other than him in her life. Now, more than ever, he’s been wondering if he’s up to the task. He’s only twenty-two. Nowhere near old enough to be father or even the sick parody of one he pretends to be whenever they go into town and he catches men leering at her. No, he’s just a boy, and everyday, he grows more and more terrified of being found out.
He nudges her into waking by jostling her shoulder gently. Having done this enough times, he’s ready for her panic, the way her body jumps through the air, her knife in her hand just like he taught her. Only when she blinks her eyes open does she drop her hand. “What time is it?” she says, her voice sticking in her throat a little with sleep. He crouches next to her, keeping her present hidden behind her back.
“Dunno, later than usual. It’s your birthday so I decided to let you sleep in.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Is that my only present?”
Eren thumps his fist against his chest in an expression of feigned hurt. “You really think I’d let you down like that?” For a moment, he thinks she’s about to smile but before happiness can take root in her, something chases it away. “Listen, close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“So I can give you your real present.”
She lets out a frustrated little huff but does what he says anyway. “Cover them too,” he insists, knowing from experience she’s the type to peek. He reaches behind his back to produce her clumsily wrapped present. Like always, he’s had to make do with whatever paper he could find, pieces of leftover newspaper, a dead kid’s homework that he found buried at the bottom of a backpack he scavenged, what looks to be a collection of receipts. It isn’t the prettiest package but it at least makes an attempt at being festive. He tosses it in front of her.
“Okay, you can open them now.”
Though she raises an eyebrow at his wrapping job, she knows that this is all he’s capable of so she might as well not make a fuss about it. She tests the weights of the present in her hands, squishing the places where the scarf is bunched up. “You know, I’m too old for stuffed animals,” she says, pointedly, and he’s overcome by the most frustrating combination of annoyance and adoration. “Just fucking open it already, Mikasa,” he says with a groan, falling back so he can lean on his elbows, his legs stretched out in front of him. “You know, you were less picky when you were younger.”
“That’s because I was just a kid. I didn’t know any better,” she sniffs indignantly. Still, she does as he says, sliding her nail through the paper.
“Are you saying you’re not a kid anymore?”
To his surprise, she meets his gaze, a steely sort of determination in her eyes. “I’m not,” she says and something about the intention held in her tone unsettles in. Still, he forgets about it almost immediately when her face cracks open with the first genuine smile he’s seen in months as she finishes unwrapping her present. “I love it,” she says, turning the scarf over in her hands, uncovering the books as well. His cheeks hurt, which must mean he’s smiling too, probably a little too big.
“Here,” he says, holding out his hands to take the scarf from her. “Let me put it on for you.”
Mikasa goes stock-still. He used to do this for her all the time when she was a kid. The snow in Shigansina often came on suddenly and her hands would be too cold to do it herself. He never minded, it was a small thing, an easy thing, and it always seemed to make her so happy. No one else smiled at him like she did, even back then.
He wraps it around her neck slowly, making sure that it covers all the skin exposed by the sweater of his that she sleeps in on most winter nights. He leans back from her when he finishes, wondering why her cheeks have gotten so pink. It isn’t that warm in the tent, that’s part of the reason he got her the scarf in the first place.
“There,” he says but she doesn’t say anything in response, doesn’t do anything. Just keeps staring at him with eyes that are wide like quarters. But before he can ask her what’s wrong, she curls her fists into his shirt and pulls him to her in a sharp-toothed kiss.
She dreams of him most nights, ever since this rot made a home in her, turning her into a needy, hopeless thing. In most of them, they’re back at the cabin. The fire is roaring, the TV playing horror after horror, and Eren’s holding her like she used to when she was a kid but she isn’t a kid anymore and he isn’t either and she can feel his muscles, taut underneath his skin. The hard lines of his body, the places where he’s gotten strong so he can take care of her better. When she settles into him, he doesn’t stiffen, just smiles, burying his nose in her hair. His lips soft against the shell of her ear. The softest pressure, almost like a kiss.
What happens next is always opaque to her. Sometimes, he kisses her. Other times, she kisses him. Most of the time, he holds her tight against him, so close she can feel the rhythm of his heart against hers. Once or twice, it went further, following a choreography that she had just barely figured out from the books she’s read, conversations with other girls that had been raised in the wild.
Him, touching secret places inside her that sit her aflame. Doing whatever it is that he does with those other women that makes them all desperate for him. She’s seen the way they look at him, after he’s had his fill, the longing that swallows their irises as they remember.
This dream goes further than any of the ones she’s had before it. This time, they aren’t on the couch, they’re in the bed that used to belong to Eren’s parents. The whole time they stayed there, they left that room untouched, Mikasa sleeping in Eren’s old room, Eren in Zeke’s. But her dream self seems to have led her here, her body beneath Eren’s as he kisses her. The shadow of his body dwarfing her, making her feel small like she did when she was a little girl and he used to be able to carry her anywhere.
And she should feel scared, she’s never done anything like this before and perhaps the only thing she truly understands about sex is that it can lead to trouble. She’s seen girls younger than her, spanning small hands over their swollen bellies. Heard stories of graves dug in soft earth for those of them who aren’t lucky. But she can’t imagine ever feeling scared of Eren, he’s always taken care of her, even when he had to sacrifice parts of himself to do it.
He’s been with her during all of her worst moments; the time she got hit with the flu and had a fever for three whole days when she was ten, too weak to even bathe herself, and like always, he took care of her faithfully, without complaint. Or, the time she got lost in the forest on her own when she was thirteen, having wandered off from the trail when he wasn’t looking, and by the time he found her, she was absolutely hysterical, a mess of snot and tears, clinging hopelessly to his shirt. He has held her through every nightmare, bandaged all of her skinned knees. Taught her how to stab through a man’s gut, the precision needed to slit a throat.
Perhaps, the only truth she has to believe in is that she knows Eren would never hurt her.
She wakes in a panic, like she always does, but this time, it’s with the memory of how his lips felt against hers. And, of course, Eren’s there, and the sunlight’s pouring across his face, making his eyes glint in the goldenlight. Shadows rim his eyes, some stubble growing in, washed out like how his face gets when he doesn’t get much sleep. He must be worried about something, he never loses sleep for no reason, but she knows that he won’t answer if she asks him about it.
She knows she hasn’t been kind to him lately. She knows he doesn’t deserve it. But it’s so hard when he’s so close to her all the time, completely oblivious to her and the way he makes her feel. She misses the way they used to be with a longing that threatens to consume her. She misses when there was no distance, when she could reach out for him and he’d always reach back. But she has nowhere to put this feeling so she spits anger and entitlement at him, desperate for a reaction, for a reason to act out.
But he is always patient with her. Painfully so. Even if she’s been awful to him ever since he woke her up, he still hands her a present. Even if she tells him she’s too old for stuffed animals, he still tells her to open it with all the pomp and circumstance that he can muster. And even if she initially had her doubts, they all vanish the second she rips open the package and sees the perfect present before her.
Lately, Mikasa hasn’t known what to do with her feelings. It used to be that she could feel them passing over her, like the shadow of a cloud. Dark things, but she was never worried about where it might take her. But now, feeling swallows her whole. Making her forget all of the reasons why she shouldn’t kiss Eren, why that’s not the sort of thing that they should do.
His lips are dry and coarse, catching on hers as their mouths meet clumsily. She can feel the warmth of his chest beneath her fingers, the hammering of his heartbeat. She thinks she counts ten of them before he’s jerking back from her, eyes wide. She doesn’t recognize the expression on his face and that terrifies her, they’ve been together for so long it’s hard to think that there’s something that he’s felt that she doesn’t know the name of. She falls back, tears stinging at the edges of her eyes. Clutching at the scarf that he just gave her like it’s the only thing tethering her to the earth.
Eren isn’t looking at her, almost like he doesn’t want to, and the thought makes her heart plummet into her gut.
Crying, like many things now, comes on suddenly. She used to pride herself on her ability to swallow her sobs, she knew it made things easier for Eren. But now, sadness seems to collect in her chest, rising like the tides, until it fills her to the brim. Spilling out of her in tremors, her body bending with the force of it. He’s going to leave, she tells herself. He’s going to leave, like those girls said he was going to. He’s going to leave and she’s going to be all alone and-
“Mika. Mikasa. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Eren’s shirt smells like firewood when she buries her face in it. He holds her tight, like he’s trying to keep her sadness inside her. “M’not going anywhere,” he murmurs in her ear because, like always, he knows exactly what she needs to hear. She tilts her head up to make sure she can see the truth in his eyes. He reaches for her face, smoothing away some of her tears with a swipe of his thumb. “You…uh…just did that because you liked your present a lot, right?” he says, his gaze pulling away from her.
The tight feeling in Mikasa’s chest, that loosened once she felt his arms around her, returns with a vengeance. She can see in his eyes what she’s supposed to say, even though it isn’t the truth. She swallows, burying her nose in her scarf before giving him a nod. A half-hearted attempt at a lie that he must be choosing to believe in because he smiles at her like he does when he wants her to think that everything’s okay.
“Then, let’s just pretend this never happened,” he says, using his adult voice. “Besides, I got a whole day of birthday planned for you and it’d kinda ruin it if you were crying the whole time.”
She glares at him, wiping her nose on the collar on his shirt sleeve in retaliation. “I’m not gonna cry all day,” she says indignantly and he smiles like he does when he knows he’s gotten her goat. But for some reason, the mirth doesn’t quite make it to his eyes. Before she can ask what’s wrong, he gets to his feet. When she tries to get up herself to follow him, he places a firm hand on her shoulder and pushes her back down.
“Stay here and get dressed. I’m gonna go check the traps for some breakfast.”
He leaves her behind, even though she usually goes to check the traps with him every morning.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” Eren murmurs to himself as he stalks away from the tent, the heels of his boots crunching against the cold, hard earth. “Shit, fuck, shit.” As soon as he’s far away enough from the campsite that he knows Mikasa won’t be able to hear him, he kicks his foot at the nearest tree as hard as he can. Blistering pain shoots up his leg but it isn’t enough. He throws his fists at the trunk, beating at it until his bones go numb and he’s stained the wood red.
Panting, he falls against the tree. Wondering how he’s going to explain the wounds on his hands to Mikasa.
He doesn’t understand how he could’ve fucked up this badly. He thought he’d been doing all the right things. Giving her her space, only sharing a bed with her when it was absolutely necessary. He kept the worst parts of himself a secret from her, unleashing them on the willing women who always seemed to approach them wherever they went. Almost as if they could tell that he was the sort of man who was made for ruining.
He tried his best not to notice when she sprouted breasts, ignoring the sharp clench of his gut when he caught other men, boys even, looking at her. Once or twice, he ended up beating the shit out of them, on the nights where he was able to find somewhere safe for her to stay. Their blood on his hands made him feel a little bit better, even if he always stopped himself short of killing them. Leaving a trail of corpses in their wake would only cause them trouble, and he was doing everything he could to avoid that.
But, no matter how hard he’s tried, this is where he’s ended up. He can still taste her in his mouth. He can still feel her small fist against his heart. He hates himself for the way he let himself be overcome by her.. Unable to believe that the gloomy teenager who spent most of her time ignoring him could think of him with anything other than embittered annoyance. That she could think of him that way at all.
It must mean he’s done something terribly wrong. He’s always known he was going to fuck her up somehow, but he never thought it’d be this bad. As he tears through the forest, half-heartedly looking for the rabbit traps Mikasa set for him the previous day, he remembers the terror in her eyes when he pulled away from her. How it held him still for a moment, forcing him to swallow himself so he didn’t hurt her even more.
The first trap he comes across is empty, but the second, deeper in the forest, proves more fruitful. A large rabbit is caught in the snare, its beady black eye moving around wildly as it bleeds out. Must’ve only gotten caught within the past hour or so. He used to hate it when he found them like this. At first, he’d wait for them to die on their own, but he quickly realized the cruelty in that.
The first couple times he had to snap a rabbit’s neck, he closed his eyes and thought of Mikasa. She’d still been a child then, no more than ten or eleven, and her face was starting to go gaunt, her collarbones catching on the collars of his hand-me-down shirts. He knew she needed something more than the remnants of the nonperishables that had been left in the cabin and he knew the only way for that to happen was for him to harden his heart. So, he did it for her, like he’d done so many other things, and every time, it got a little easier.
Until he barely thought about it at all.
Now he knows that death is a mercy so he wastes no time in breaking the rabbit’s neck. It’s on the bigger side, a heft to its back legs that promises tender meat. The perfect treat for Mikasa’s birthday. He slips it into his backpack, trying his best to ignore the dwindling warmth of its body as he walks back to their camp.
On his way, he stops by the river they’ve been using for bathing to wash his hands. He used to do shit like this all the time, when he was still learning how to bear the weight of Mikasa’s life along with his own. He wasn’t always good about it, but he knew from experience that it didn’t take much to leave a permanent dent in a child., so he did his best to handle it out of her sight. He learned how to dress his own wounds and now, he can do it quickly. But Mikasa’s less naive than she used to be and he can tell she’s starting to not buy his excuses.
He comes up with a halfway decent one by the time he sees the bright red of their tent in the distance. He can see Mikasa too, sitting outside the tent with her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees. She’s staring right in his direction. Almost as if she didn’t trust that he was coming back. The sight makes him hate himself more than he already did and it takes everything in him to force a smile but he does it for her sake.
“Hey, remember what I said about crying on your birthday,” he says, pulling the rabbit from his bag. He sees her eyes widen a little at the sight, but it’s not enough to wipe the worry completely from her face.
Still, her new thing is lying poorly so she sniffs indignantly before grabbing their breakfast by the scruff of its neck. “M’not crying,” she says but from the the way her voice sticks in her throat, he knows that’s a lie.