Chapter Text
It was the first time she woke up to mesmerizing emerald eyes.
Since the crushing and sorrowful moment when she had taken him into wanted and caring custody till the day before, she was solely the one who woke up first from both, so this was the first time he woke up before her. She flinched startled blinking her dark confused and very still sleepy eyes trying to focus with desired and needed detail in those beloved and familiar brilliant green orbs as she held her shaky breath captive inside her tense chest fearing that letting it out was going to break the compassionate miracle given to her with merciful kindness.
The absent-minded known eyes kept staring unblinking and lost in foreign and lost worlds away from her framed by an inexpressive cherished face. For the very first time in a very long time, so long ago that she couldn’t point out when was the last time, she felt totally at ease and comfortably free to let go of her controlled mask and her apprehensive body showed it painting a small and heartfelt smile in her relaxing lips. Her bewildered mental and emotional state disappeared before her expression turned softer and her now awaken eyes stared back grateful and calmly at his own still and at the same time distracted and attentive.
She started breathing normally again praying that her need for oxygen didn’t break this wanted and longed for moment and when it didn't happen she had sincere trouble to keep her watering black eyes from spilling unshed tears of solacing relief and unforgettable nostalgia.
“Good morning, Eren.”
She finally had the courage to muster at least that three simple and welcoming words, and the last one, that last one word that meant the whole world to her, was spelled out with blatant care and painful melancholy. Lying down both there on their side, sharing the same big bed and facing the other surrounded yet by some shadows of the persistent early morning and the rays of the new day coming she felt at home. Like she always did when Eren was with her since that fateful day when her parents had been murdered viciously and she had awakened her true and powerful self, all thanks to the young man who became family from then on and had now blinked slowly without saying a single word. It didn’t matter, she told herself, not daring to move an inch of her resting body. This little gesture of him, the way he had awoken first this mere miraculous day, it was more than enough.
Thinking in what to say but not really minding it because she could keep staring longingly and thanking from the bottom of her heart at him without feeling awkward or nervous, he was the one who surprised her again acting on his own. Eren, with a light but relaxed breathing, reached over her with obvious effort that broke her heart a little like always, lessening the space between both and not really touching her just rested his head against the space in her neck before closing his eyes once more.
Mikasa stayed wide eyed and motionless, in total awe letting him do that simple action. Her throat tried to betray her shamefully when a sob almost got out without permission but she couldn’t do anything about her rebellious eyes. Some tears escaped unconsciously against her will and she then just took a deep breath trying to take back the reigns of her cracked façade. Those few runaway tears ended falling on top of his disheveled brown and straight hair and Mikasa accommodated her own shaking body landing her right cheek on top of Eren’s head, letting him stay protected in the space in her neck, between her chin and her chest as she shortened the gap between both and hugged him loosely with delicate and caring gesture.
Don’t cry, you’ll wake him up. He needs to sleep and rest. Give him that. She was able to recover from her small ashamed breakdown and remained quiet and unmoving in her cozy position, with Eren close to her, sleeping peacefully and profoundly, and both covered by soft and warm blankets and lulled by the soothing waves of the ocean some meters away from their small but comfy home.
Today was going to be a one fine day.
And Mikasa was praying to whoever was listening in honest and heartbreaking gratefulness for it.
The routine was a nice change of scenery despite her initial belief that after the kind of life she had before she was going to find it plainly boring to pass by. In fact it was the opposite; the routine became a balm of peace and a greeting refugee providing security and prediction. And more importantly, it was what Eren needed to start healing at his own pace, even knowing, because she knew it with overwhelming sadness and broken resignation that he wasn’t going to heal completely ever. Not his injured body, not his shattered mind, not his pierced heart, not his burned soul. And his will, that it was once pure steel of persistency and an indomitable wild force was now so worn out and trapped in inner worlds of fragmented and bittersweet memories.
But it was alright for her. She didn’t mind his embracing silence nor didn’t she mind that he needed help to do some things and a little push to do others. She didn’t mind being his human walking stick when he needed to move around. She didn’t mind having him sleeping in the same bed as her; it was big and snuggling enough for both. He was family at the mere, true and meaningful end.
She dared to shoot a glance towards Eren, who was sitting with his now eternal partner, his quietness, on an unmovable rocking chair by the entrance of their house looking through the opened window with absorbed green eyes that blinked slowly from time to time and blank expression written all over his face. He mostly didn’t require help to bathe himself or eat by himself and he didn’t require any to use the toilet or brush his teeth. She was the one who shaved his beard when it was necessary. But putting aside the actions covering his basic needs he needed input to do others that weren’t of that kind. Like sitting down, getting up, walking around or lying down to sleep. If he was left sitting down on that rocking chair all day and night surely Mikasa would find him the next morning just there. If he was left standing in a corner of the room all day and night surely Mikasa would see him falling to the ground finally when his body gave out. He would spend all night and the next day lying in bed if she didn’t’ come to get him up. He wouldn’t walk ever if she didn’t take him by his arm prompting him to do it, entangling it in hers and using her body to support him as his walking stick.
But Mikasa didn’t mind any of that and she wouldn’t want it any other way if that meant not having him at all. She was kindly patient and encouraged him with all the honest and immeasurable care she held within her battered and worried heart.
Her contemplative expression softened watching him and then she turned her attention to wash the dishes after having a tranquil and delicious breakfast.
The routine was the same since the early days when they came to live here away from everything and everyone. Nobody or almost nobody would think to look for them when Armin and she planned to hid Eren at the end of The Rumbling and the War. Armin was a trustworthy person and respected and that was why it was easier to do it. He had plainly lied with incredible ability to everyone saying that Eren was gone, that his body and all that made him what he was were gone like the feared and dangerous Titans were. The dreaded enemy of the world was finally dead after causing so much breathtaking destruction and crushing death. Mikasa had supported his lie and she realized then and now that for Armin and for her it hadn’t been totally a lie and it had been easy because in some way Eren had died in that moment. A weary and relevant part of him had died and Armin and Mikasa had relied in the heavy recognition of that fact to put up a lie to the world and their friends. They had realized it immediately just after she recovered his mangled and unconscious body and it had served them despairingly right to tell the lie. They had cried and they had mourned with their friends for the loss of Eren Yeager, their partner, their brother in arms, their friend, their enemy and their savior.
She had cried and mourned for her love for him that it went beyond a family’s bond and that she kept to herself not wanting to make it a burden for Eren now.
He didn’t need her pestering him about her unresolved feelings, the feelings that Armin could see clearly and had tried to talk over with her but she had refused it because right now her heart didn’t matter, her love wasn’t important. Not that kind of love anyway. She guessed that some of their friends saw it too and probably they had seen it a long before she started to recognize first unconsciously and then willingly that she loved Eren more than she had thought possible and in a way that she had started to feel since years ago but she had brushed it aside putting other priorities on top that were much more significant and went hand in hand with their survival at risk and their lives in constant danger. But no one of her friends had dared to talk to her about her unsolved feelings and insecure heart, not even Armin who had looked at her hesitant in heavy quietness and had looked at Eren then, lying in bed covered in bandages and barely breathing and in coma, briefly by the corner of his hazel eyes with doubt. Mikasa didn’t want to know then what had transpired in that moment but she guessed that it was something related to Eren’s true feelings towards her, feelings about family, about care and love for a sister.
Mikasa didn’t need to hear Armin saying that Eren cared truly and deeply for her but not in the way she desired fervently but hid behind her controlled, serious and loyal mask. Armin had looked at her later with softened eyes filled up with understanding and a rare spark of frank regret and clear shame. Armin didn’t need to feel like that being between Eren and her, trapped in their emotional issues. So she didn’t pressure him or stress him asking unnecessary questions when she had very certain answers already in her heart.
“Come on, Eren. It’s time for our walk.”
She told him after drying her hands with the towel and preparing the bag she always took with them when they went out for a walk on the empty and beautiful beach. She leaned over him taking his left arm and using her other hand to bring his attention to her with a little tap on his right shoulder. Eren blinked once in that slow and hypnotizing way he did now after waking up from his preoccupying coma and tearing down ordeal. Mikasa narrowed her dark eyes with childish and relieved happiness. It was true that this little reaction of him was unsettling at first if you weren’t used to it, it had perturbed her the first times she had seen him doing it like that, but now when he was doing it more often she couldn’t help to take it as a blessing in disguise, as a good sign of better things to come, hopefully.
He had been the first one to wake up this day, she remembered gladly and that had to mean something after all.
It had been Armin’s idea to stay hiding in Paradis by the way. Mikasa agreed with him, of course. Who was going to think that they had remained in the same place that was their home and where they had been born? The other one who knew about the secrecy of Eren Yeager being alive was Historia, and Mikasa was very grateful and in debt with her. Even when Historia had been busy with her duties as a new mother and being Queen, after giving birth to a beautiful baby girl whom she named Ymir, a name with so many correlations to Eldia’s dark, bittersweet and unavoidable history, and to Ymir, the one who had loved Historia deeply and who had been the main reason for the blond Queen to start living by herself on her own terms. Even when Historia was dealing with the aftermath of The Rumbling and Eren’s actions against the world and Marley she was immediately offering them help and she had been the one giving them the house at the beach to live. The house was enough far away from the previously walled up cities that once where Mikasa and Eren’s home and it had all the basic things to live comfortably arranged by a concerned Armin who prepared all he could for his two broken friends.
It was a simpler way of life, a calm one, a silent one, with only her being the only capable of uttering words but not a lonely one having Eren by her side.
The place surrounding them was precious and thriving with Nature, and then there was the ocean extending its mighty and beautifully stunning waters, its soothing and dangerously magnificent waves, and the instinctual and elemental sound of its salty song. Mikasa walked slowly with Eren hanging from her left arm, hers serving always as his strong support, and the bag carrying within bottles of water and juice, some easy to eat snacks, a blanket and a beach umbrella. Both dressed casually and lightly, now with their feet naked feeling the funny sensation brought from the sand they were stepping on as their shoes were already tucked in the useful and big bag she carried with them.
Soon she had Eren sitting down in the blanket and being sheltered from the warm and brilliant rays of the sun by the beach umbrella, watching aimlessly with lost in thought gaze at the blue ocean and the incessant waves washing ashore and she was with her feet inside the lukewarm waters and stretching up with closed eyes and relaxed sensation letting out a heavy sigh of contentment.
Mikasa used her right hand to cover enough her watering and aching eyes from the sun when she ended the stretching up. Every time she was here, close to the beautiful ocean and all the power it brought with it, she couldn’t help remembering the first time they had seen it. It was so long ago, left in the pages of the sad and painful but joyful and happy moments dwelling too in that past despite the terrible circumstances and vividly colored within her clear memories.
Such an unknown place for all of them, all of them paralyzed in total awe and stunned shock, watching for the very first time the grand blue ocean and its playful and scaring waves, realizing for the first time with innocent dread and amazed curiosity that Paradis wasn’t’ all the world, even when they knew it already, but watching the ocean was the final straw, the confronting and doubtless truth, the recognition that outside its sheltering borders there was an unknown world, a world that had shunned them, a world that they didn’t know and was full of possible striking surprises and fearless dangers.
“Is the ocean, and beyond that ocean lies freedom. That’s what I always believed. But I was wrong. The only thing we’ll find out there is the enemy. Everything here is exactly like I saw in my dad’s memories. If we kill every last one of our enemies out there will we finally be free, then?”
The echo of those long happened words, said by that now silent but loved voice, caused profound and smashing pangs of pain inside Mikasa’s heart. But what really tugged with long nails like needles at it and clawed her soul was Eren’s frank and patent expression. He had looked so heartbreakingly childish, with that innocent realization and condemning confirmation that had broken something within him, as he had pointed out with his hand of long and elegant fingers at the far away and mysterious horizon, with green saddened eyes and absent-minded expression.
Mikasa noticed just then that there were tears falling down her face and that she was facing now at the horizon just like Eren and all of them had done in that unforgivable and bittersweet moment, with her loose arms hanging lifeless by her sides, with choked sobs hurting her throat. She forced her black eyes to blink to contain the rain of her useless and damaging crying but more tears came out mocking her and her sobbing was more audible now to her disappointment of herself and pathetic shame. Why are you crying now, Mikasa? Nothing change remembering this and letting it to affect you so. But then, why her tears didn’t stop, her mildly controlled tears, and her sobbing didn’t lessen nor didn’t quiet?
She knew that thinking in what if was completely pointless in this point. Thinking in what could have been changed was simply just in vain and a waste of time. But oh how it hurt to think in the possibilities lost in the time, lost for so many unpredictable and unforeseen circumstances. Eren, how it was to know things in advance? How it was to see memories from different times and from different people? It was painful and hard, isn’t it? It must have been such a burden to carry on your own. Everyone trusted in the advantages that gave us but now I realize that I never took the chance to sit down and talk to you about it, about it all, really talk. Could that have helped you a little?
She was distracted from her hopeless and saddening musings when she apparently heard some noises coming from behind her. The sound of the waves clashing and the seagulls flying by focused her again. The fresh air made her dark hair to dance and she took a deep breath before turning around to look at Eren preoccupied for leaving his side for a long moment and scolding herself inwardly for it. He was sat down still as she had left him but she had the sensation that he was really looking at her and not only staring abstractly at the marveling scenery. She blinked a few times to wipe her eyes casually, even if Eren wasn’t really in all his mind she didn’t want him worrying futilely for her, it was her job to concern for him this time, and clearing her throat from the reminiscent leftovers of sobs she walked back calm and firm towards him and the spot she had chosen for both to rest and enjoy the view.
When she was close enough to Eren she analyzed his eyes again knowing and expecting already with hopelessly foolish realization that she had imagined what she saw coming from him. Eren was his old person like always, his old person that he was since he had survived The Rumbling and had been protected by her, Armin and Historia. She tried to not show how visibly disillusioned she was, it wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t do anything about his current state and she had been the one imaging things due to the engagingly maddening spell this place put on her and her treasured memories. So she sucked up her disappointment and looking at him with that softening expression that only he could brought out from her and paint it in her usually controlled and serious face she knelt down before him with a little blissful smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
“It’s so a good day, don’t you think?” She said relaxed now positioning herself carefully by his side. “It’s isn’t too cold and neither too hot. It’s perfect, I guess.”
Mikasa looked at him by the corner of her caring eyes watching with mystifying attention at his long hair dancing with the fresh wind, just like hers was doing before and now. Eren’s hair was now by his neck, like he kept it in the last years and framed his face perfectly giving focus to his green eyes. Mikasa stared then at the front realizing that hers was a little longer now and she hadn’t thought in cutting it again. In fact, she wanted to leave it growing like she used it in her younger years. She had decided a short hair in the late times because it was more practical for her to brush it and take care of it. But now she didn’t have to do it anymore. She was freed from fighting, freed from killing, freed to do whatever she liked with her hair and her life. She had tried to cut Eren’s hair before, thinking that maybe he wanted it shorter like in his younger years but there had been some nagging and instinctual reaction coming from within her telling her that she was mistaken. And something in the deep of Eren’s eyes had looked strangely (and probably illusory she had to admit it sadly) disgusted and surprised with her image reflected in the mirror holding a pair of scissors.
“I know how to use the scissors, you know, Eren.” She told him furrowing slightly her brow a little offended but finding bewildered and hilariously ashamed that she was amused too, behind her common serious stance. “Seriously, I used sharp weapons. The scissors shouldn’t be a problem.”
It had been such an ironically upsetting and heart-warming feeling to notice and accept that she had found in herself against all odds and her own opinion of her person her nonexistent sense of humor after so much and in this kind of broken situation.
Similarly she had found that Eren wanted her to shave his beard when she had suggested looking at him over his shoulder and facing the mirror on the bathroom that she was going to leave it like that (she didn’t really know what Eren preferred then). But the way she half imagined and half apparently seized his faint disgusted reaction told her immediately that he didn’t want to keep the beard. Personally she preferred him without it and she guessed, due to this little moment that she assured herself sorrowfully as half his own decision, that the beard had been more part of the disguise he had chosen to wear in Liberio. Is it because of it that you don’t want it? She mused sadly finding honest comprehension in that question. Remembering the destroyed place and the tragic chain of events unfolding there it forced her chest to throb painfully with a myriad of feelings that she couldn’t ponder about now or she hadn’t finished processing yet. She shook her head inwardly trying to focus just in the moment at the present.
Just to focus in Eren and in her, in the tumultuous, scaring and deep ocean extending before them and reaching other lands away from here with ancient arms, in the hot and grainy sand resting under their naked feet and in the warm and bright sun shining above their weary heads. The repentance, the suffering, the sadness, the anger, the frustration, the impotence and the ignorance were with her and her friends 24/7 so she could at least right now try to put their thorny seeds aside and only enjoy the view and the sensation of downcast calm.
“Time to sleep, Eren. We have a long day, don’t we?”
Mikasa said peacefully covering Eren with the soft and warm blankets with tender and devoting gesture. Today it had been the first day too that they had spent more time at the beach. She always decided to return earlier because she didn’t want Eren to get excessively tired or probably sick, something she dreaded profoundly after watching him recovering slowly on that secret room and in the secret bed after The Rumbling and the War and submerged in a coma. But this day had started unusually and she had chosen to stay a little longer at their private beach eating some snacks and drinking their bottles of juice and water.
It made her wonder if Eren really liked it this way than the shorter walks and moments they previously had. He didn’t seem bothered in any form and even she dared to think with that aching doubt of seeing things that weren’t there if she had guessed right noticing him even more focused than before. Not that it was a lot of improvement and probably like always she was imagining his reactions to fit with her desperate and demanding expectations. Sighing exhausted she brushed away some strands of his hair from his forehead in a soothing way as he stared at her with absent, opened and unblinking eyes. The light coming weakly from the lamp by their side showed her in a ghostly and desolating form the mass of scarring drawn in his damaged body, in his ruptured skin. She had gotten used to it after spending days and nights by his side and helping him more before, less now, to get dress or undress. His body should be obviously scarred after all that happened and all he did, and even they didn’t know all the details, like Armin said. It was like staring at a human jigsaw and even his face showed some deep and distressing scars that she didn’t see now as malevolent foreigners housing in his flesh and disrupting his skin. It was Eren all along, without them or with them. Just Eren, her Eren. And hard to look and thick edged scars weren't going to change that simple loved fact ever. So she smiled softly as she did all nights before he closed his emerald eyes saying the same she hoped comforting words.
“Good night, Eren. Sleep well. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”