Work Text:
Her mother has been anxious ever since Wall Maria fell. “There are so many strangers milling about, Mikasa,” she would say in a half-forgotten tongue, worry etched on her face. “Be careful when you go out, alright?”
“Alright, mother,” she replies, but she seethes inside and the hand around her sickle tightens. She’s born for more than this, she thinks, more than a disappointingly quiet life in her village with a husband who might genuinely love her, but would always treat her like a fragile secret. Everyone marries young here. In a few years it would be her turn, and lately her parents had tried to slip hints of that nature into their conversations with her. She doesn’t mind her mother teaching her traditional embroidery, but the bright reminder that she should pass it on to her children was a hidden barb. Mikasa has no desire to settle down, and she doubts she would change her mind in the next few years.
She hacks at the stubborn weeds around her family’s lands, and when she’s done with those she slices the curved blade through the air instead. She imagines a faceless man, lunging towards her with arms outstretched, and she swipes the sickle across the man’s empty chest and smashes an elbow into his nonexistent nose. She wonders what she could do with a hunting knife, or a rifle. What she could do with proper training.
She wants to leave the cellar of their modest house, go beyond the safe confines of Rakago and see the world; if the world is full of cruel and dangerous people like her parents say, then she simply has to become more dangerous than them.