Chapter Text
“How could this happen to me?”
Beside Mikasa, Eren’s head hit the desk; the dull thunk accompanying his groan. Used to her brother's theatrics she turned back to her own papers.
“A correctional officer! They placed me with someone who couldn't make it as a police officer!”
“You don't know that for sure. Maybe they wanted to be a corrections officer.”
Eren straightened up, “Who did you get?”
Wordlessly Mikasa passed over the sheet Eren was already reaching for. She watched his face as he scanned the sheet and had to stifle a chuckle at his look of indignation as he whipped his head from her sheet to his own and back again.
“We have the same guy. Same days too. How come this keeps happening? Mikasa did you bribe Professor Shadis?”
“I didn’t bribe the professor.”
Eren’s eyes widened, “Did you threaten the professor?”
Mikasa nearly rolled her eyes at the earnest stage whisper and chose to ignore the question completely.
“So this guy, Levi?” Mikasa glanced over at her paper, still clutched in Eren’s hand, “He’s a probation officer. That should be an interesting topic for an essay.”
Eren scoffed, “Whatever. I was hoping to be placed with a detective or something since that’s what I’m doing after we graduate. Here,” he handed back the placement sheet.
“You know that's a difficult line of work to get into. You have to start at the bottom and work your way up and chances are you would start out somewhere with a high crime rate. I wish you'd consider a less dangerous career,” despite Eren’s eye roll she persisted with the same argument she'd launched time and time again, “you could go into law like Armin, or something else entirely. Art maybe. Or English. Or a trade. There are a lot of great jobs out there that have a high demand. You don't need to be a police officer or a detective or anything like that.”
“No, I do have to but you don't have to keep following me around! I can do it alone.”
Looking away she mumbled, “someone has to keep you alive.”
By this point the rest of the students had mostly finished filtering out of the classroom and impatient faces were poking in. Mikasa collected her books as next to her Eren jolted to attention as the students for the next class began wandering in. All she could do was shake her head as he cursed lowly, shoved his items into his bag and ran out of the classroom without a backwards glance. By this point she was used to her brother's hasty exits from Shadis’ class. She had warned him that it was a bad idea to have a class on the opposite end of campus immediately following the one that just let out but, even though Armin had backed her up, Eren had a way of doing things the way he wanted to regardless of silly things such as logic and common sense. She mostly found it endearing.
Making her own leisurely way out of the class and out of the building and into the sunny, brisk autumn day she headed to the nearest campus coffee shop. She had time before her next class to go over the assignment and begin laying out the essay portion. While she was academically on par with Armin it was only through a great deal of hard work and focus. She simply couldn't make the same intuitive leaps from point A to point J as he did. She knew what worked for her though and of course she had strengths that her slight friend didn’t. It was all a matter of perspective.
Despite Eren’s pessimism Mikasa was eager to complete this assignment. It had the further bonus of potentially swaying the rash young man. She didn't hold out a lot of hope that this would be the case but one could never tell.
For as long as Mikasa could recall Eren was determined to be a police officer, or better yet a detective, and he took the idea of “Serve and Protect” more to heart than anyone she had ever met before. She knew though, in the depths of her heart, that Eren was too much of a risk taker for his chosen field and would get himself killed. She had two options - talk him out of it or tag along to keep him out of trouble. The former was less and less likely with every passing year of criminology courses and so the later, in what was now their fourth year, was looking like an uncomfortable necessity. Mikasa didn’t want to be an officer but even more upsetting was the thought of abandoning the one person who had made her feel safe as a child. Whose family had welcomed her with open arms when her own parents had passed away. No, either Eren changed his mind or she would do whatever it took to keep him safe. Anything to pay back a debt she could never, ever, fully pay off.
Anything, she thought with a note of finality as she bent her head over the page in front of her and began outlining her final essay.
The soft scratch of pencil on paper was soothing for her and she passed a pleasurable hour in a sunny patch of the bustling, coffee scented room. The essay was worth a remarkably large chunk of their grade so Mikasa didn’t want to leave it to the last minute. She made sure to include everything she possibly could about the probation officer they had been placed with. It wasn’t much; a name, Levi Ackermann, years in the position, eight, and a reputation for ruthless efficiency with his clients. She had more to write about the duties of a probation officer and used that to pad out the rough introduction she was working on. By the time she had to leave for her class she had as much started as she could. She’d have to wait on the shadowing experience for the ‘lived’ portion of the essay and her conclusion on whether she could see herself in a probation officer position as well as her reasoning as to why or why not. She already knew how Eren would answer that portion of the essay - but as for herself she would wait and see.