Chapter Text
art by @winterofherdiscontent
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Wall Maria, the forest outside Shiganshina District in the year 845
The afternoon sun shines brilliantly in the clear late-spring sky. Birdsong floats on the air as Mikasa and Mother work behind the house, weeding in the garden.
Mother dutifully prevents any weeds from popping up, allowing only for neat rows of plants. Mikasa has learned how to pull the weeds down at their roots before they can grow too big. She doesn’t particularly like weeding the garden but enjoys spending the time with Mother.
“Do you remember Dr. Jaeger?” Mother asks as she shakes excess dirt off of a carrot.
“Is he the man who brought over the smelly bath powder?”
Mikasa tugs at the stem to pull a carrot from the dirt but struggles. Mother reaches over and places her hand over her daughter’s, helping her wiggle it free.
“You need to pull harder,” Mother says gently, placing the carrot in their half-full basket.
Mikasa looks down in acknowledgement. She always hesitates to pull vegetables too hard, afraid to break the stem off.
“And yes, you remember the oddest things, Mikasa,” Mother laughs.
Mikasa frowns. “Why is it strange to remember? We never have visitors, after all,” she says quietly.
Dr. Jaeger had worn round glasses, neat clothes and a trim beard. He was tall and slender, with a solemn face, but not an unkind one. He had prodded at her legs with gentle hands and declared she had growing pains. A rank mixture to put into her bath water was the prescribed remedy.
“What about Dr. Jaeger?” Mikasa asks.
Mother plucks a ripe strawberry from the bush.
“He’s going to bring over his son tomorrow, a boy around your age.”
Mikasa’s eyes widen.
“What for?!?”
Mother’s smile fades, her expression surprised. “Your father and I thought it would be nice for you to have a friend, someone your own age to talk to.”
“But…” she objects but stops short. She tries to think of way to express how she doesn’t want to meet the doctor’s son, doesn’t care to at all, but she remains silent, her hands fisted in her skirt.
“Come inside. It’s about to rain,” Mother says.
“How can you tell?”
There isn’t a single cloud in the sky. It’s the nicest weather they’ve had in weeks.
Mother smiles. “I always know. I have water in my spirit, it makes me wise.”
Mother always says things like this. Mikasa wonders what they mean but prefers not to contradict her.
“...and I can feel it in the ankle I broke when I was a young girl,” she adds lightly.
Mother stands up and leaves to go back inside, but Mikasa doesn’t follow, her attention drawn to movement on the strawberry bush.
“Come along, Mikasa,” Mother calls.
But Mikasa doesn’t hear, instead captivated by what she’s found: a silken web spun between two plants, its beautiful gossamer strands fanning out from the center. A small black spider works its way toward the center, where a fly is trapped.
Mikasa watches entranced as the spider spins web around a fly. The fly struggles, wings fluttering futility as the spider entombs its prey, tighter and tighter until it’s nothing more than a tiny, trembling ball.
“Mikasa!”
Mikasa shakes her head and quickly follows Mother inside, her thoughts trapped in the spider’s web.
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Mother is right as always. The rain falls so hard that evening that Mikasa fears the house will collapse. Thunder booms in the distance and lightning flashes sporadically, illuminating the dark room.
“Wow, it’s a big storm tonight,” Father says as he gets ready for bed.
“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?” Mikasa asks.
Usually she sleeps in her own bed in the corner of the room, but her fear of the storm makes the twin mattress seem cold and unwelcoming.
“You’re getting to be a little old for that,” Father chides, but Mikasa can tell that he will be easily convinced.
“Please?”
Mother and Father share a look and sigh.
“Alright,” Mother says, patting the empty space in the bed beside her. Mikasa smiles and hops up, the frame creaking as she curls up under the blankets.
“I’m glad we have each other to keep warm,” Mikasa says after they’ve all settled into bed. She presses her cold feet up against Father’s leg.
“Brr, you’re freezing, Mikasa!” he laughs and and presses his own cold feet to her’s.
"Dad, stop that!" she giggles.
“Shh, be quiet you two,” Mother admonishes, though Mikasa can hear the smile in her voice despite the darkness of the room.
Mikasa wraps an arm around Mother and closes her eyes. She tries to sleep but in the quiet of the room can’t stop thinking about the doctor’s son, how she doesn’t want to meet anyone new, that she’s fine with things the way they are.
And what if he makes fun of her? She assumes he lives in a town, maybe even a city like the ones she’s read about in her books. He probably knows many things she doesn’t, he probably goes to a school with other kids and a teacher who isn’t his mother or father.
“Mom?” she whispers.
“What is it Mikasa?” she replies after a moment.
“I don’t want to see the Doctor’s son.”
“We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
“I don’t want to,” she insists.
Arguments between Mikasa and her parents are rare. She trusts that what they say is best, yet Mikasa is certain that this visit from the doctor’s son is a bad idea.
Mother sighs.
“Don’t worry about tomorrow, it isn’t real,” Mother runs a hand through her hair gently. “It’s an illusion. All that matters right now is now.”
Mother always says things like this that Mikasa finds confusing, even annoying. But before Mikasa can argue Mother pats her hair soothingly and Mikasa’s mind begins to quiet.
Raindrops plink on the cabin’s tin roof. The calming scent of lavender in Mother’s hair fills Mikasa’s nose and helps her mind to wander. On the edge of waking and dreaming she remembers the day that has passed.
Her thoughts turn to the fly in the web, and Mikasa wonders why she couldn’t look away as the spider trapped her prey. Why didn’t she help the fly? Why did she watch?
She thinks of Mother and how she always knows when it will rain, because of her spirit of water. As Mikasa falls asleep, she wonders to herself what kind of spirit she has.
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The rain continues to fall the next morning. Mikasa's head throbs but she tries to ignore it. Last night she dreamed, of what she doesn’t remember but it was unsettling, so she tries to ignore it. Father peels potatoes while Mother puts a salve on Mikasa’s brand, which is still healing.
“This is healing very well, Mikasa. You did so well,” Mother finishes examining the wound on her arm and begins to wrap it up again. Mikasa feels warmed by her praise. The sting of the strange knife had caused Mikasa to yelp when Mother carved the symbol into her arm, but she had stoically borne the pain.
“Never forget, this is from our family,” Mother adds. “We’ve done this for generations. Someday, if you have children, you can pass it down to them!”
Mikasa plays with the bandage covering the scabby mark. The shape matches a mark on Mother’s arm. Mikasa feels proud to have things passed down to her from Mother’s family. Even if she never met them, the brand feels like a way she can know them.
“You always talk about children, but I have a question,” Mikasa says carefully. “How do you have children?”
“I think you should ask your father,” Mother says, her voice a little more high pitched than normal.
Father stops peeling the potato and his eyes widen.
“Hey, Dad,” she looks at him, his are eyes wide and cheeks a little red like he has a cold.
“That’s a good question,” he laughs, “I’m not quite sure, we should ask the Doctor when he gets here.”
Mikasa doesn’t understand why they’re both acting so strange, but her worry is completely replaced by the reminder that the Doctor and his son are coming to visit.
“Father, I don’t want to see the Doctor or the Doctor’s son!”
“Mikasa—” there’s a knock at the door that interrupts Father.
“That must be them. Mikasa, try to be kind,” he says sternly. But then his expression softens. “You’re such a kind girl,” he rests a hand on her head before he turns to answer the door.
Everything seems to happen slowly.
Father slumps to the ground, a cry caught in his throat as blood blooms from his chest.
A roughened, dark-haired man with an axe gripped tightly in his hands steps over Father’s twitching body.
“Pardon the intrusion,” he drones, his blood-spattered face twisted into a sneer.
Mother grabs the knife from the table, her knuckles whitened by her grip.
“Listen,” a second, taller man behind the first says, “just do as we say, unless you want to get your head split open.”
Mother screams at Mikasa to run away as she charges at the killer with her knife. They struggle with one another, Mother screaming as she brandishes the knife. The man curses.
“Dad,” Mikasa wimpers, her breathing fast and labored as she looks back to Mother.
The axe lands into Mother’s shoulder with a sickening thud that Mikasa feels in her heart as Mother collapses to her knees, blood spraying onto the floor as she gasps for air. Mother reaches for her.
“Run...Mikasa…”
But Mikasa is too stunned to move. Her feet have sprung roots, burrowed deep past the floor and into the earth below as she looks down upon her dead mother and father.
The killer grabs her shirt and lifts her by it. He tells her to behave, but her mind is far away.
The men tie her up and lay her on the ground. They bicker but it all sounds far, far away. Her body is stone and her spirit is gone.
They throw her into a carriage roughly and cover her with a blanket.
The road is bumpy. Rain beats on the outside of the carriage. The rope rubs her wrists raw and her brand bleeds through the bandages, but Mikasa doesn’t care. All she can see is her parents dead on the ground, their life bleeding out on the floor of their home.
She thinks of the fly, a shroud of silk consuming it as it had struggled to escape. She is like the fly now, her own shroud the blanket covering her as she waits to be consumed by the spider.
No, she thinks, perhaps she is worse than the lowly fly.
At least the fly had struggled.