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Dear Mikasa,
How are you? Sorry, I suppose that is a difficult question to answer, but I think about it often. After everything. Every night when I wake up in a sweat, toes dipped in a pool of blood, I think of how you must be feeling. Do you dream of this too? Of him? In my dreams sometimes he is as we saw him last, big and cruel and with lifeless eyes, sometimes there is a punch to my gut and he shoves me to my knees and hurts me. But other times he is small, we both are— the three of us— and his hand extends to mine, to help me catch up to the both of you. We are running up the hill and it is beautiful, like it was when we were younger. But in the end, he is always dead. That isn’t a dream, though huh. It’s reality. I sound silly I suppose— a bit like Eren, sometimes I can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t.
Anyway, I am okay. It’s not all bad. I really wanted to tell you, it felt kind of insane to have you not know. The nights have gotten easier for me, when I wake now I don’t feel like screaming anymore. Don’t get me wrong: the nightmares do not leave me easily, there is far too much blood on my hands for that. But I don’t feel alone in them anymore. When I wake there is a hand in mine, a warm body next to me, someone who sees these terrors behind closed eyes and understands them. What I’m trying to say— God, it’s embarrassing to admit it, is that Annie and I… Well, you knew already didn’t you? Annie told me that you knew. That you took one look at her and knew her feelings. I kind of envy that, to be honest. I wish I could have looked at her and just known. It would’ve saved a lot of fumbling and stupidity on my part. But anyway, it’s not like we had time for romance then. Even now it feels weird calling it that— I feel guilty. So many people probably never got the time for romance, they were killed. By us. Neither did Eren— well I don’t have to tell you about it.
When I first knew that I liked her, I was a mess— we knew nothing back then, titans were monsters, so far removed from us, the foreigner, the enemy, the invader. I was in love with a monster and it should’ve repulsed me, but it didn’t. When you looked the other way I went down to the cellars and poured my heart out to her. And then I became a monster and I suppose it all equaled out in the end. But that’s the thing, Mikasa— nobody made me a monster, I always was. At the end of the day, nobody painted the blood on my hands, I dirtied them. It was my fault Eren became the way he did, did you know that? I showed him those books, I made him do what he did and then I couldn’t save him— God, I’m sorry, Annie says I should stop saying things like this, that it’s not my fault, and some days I believe her, but most days I don’t. Today isn’t one of those days. Sorry, it must seem pointless to keep talking about this, but what I mean to say is that it is always on my mind. The human cost of my survival, I mean. I am alive, and safe— and in love, even— and I don’t often feel like I deserve it. On bad days, when I close my eyes Bertholdt is looking at me, into my eyes, into my skull, he can see my every thought. He can see me living the life he was supposed to live, holding the hands of the girl he was supposed to love. But on good days, and it is hard to keep repeating this to myself, I tell myself that I deserve it. Because I need to keep moving forward. Because I sat next to Eren when he knew was about to die and watched him cry because he knew wouldn’t get to live a long life with you, with us. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? We deserve to be happy. I want to be happy, I want you to be happy. I wish I could see you and know you were doing okay.
In two weeks, I will board a ship— Annie and Jean and Connie and Reiner and Pieck, they are coming too— for Paradis. We will visit Historia. I know you don’t want to be part of this anymore, I know you just want to rest. But I hope I’ll get to see you. We’ll be visiting the headquarters for a week. Please come see me, Mikasa. I miss you.
Love, Armin
Armin,
This is the fourth letter I’m writing to you, all previous attempts are now in the trash. I miss you so much. I wish we could all live in the same town again. I wish I could invite you and Annie for dinner. Yes, I could hear you gushing through your letter, and it makes me happy that you both are happy. But please don’t call yourself a monster, Armin. You were never a monster in my eyes. Annie, on the other hand…
… Just kidding.
You asked me a question and I don’t quite know how to answer it. How am I feeling? I don’t know. On some days I barely know that I’m alive. I built myself a house on the edge of the forest, and when I was building it I had something to do. Something to keep my hands busy. The days would be tiring and the nights sleepless. Armin, this is going to sound very strange to you but after I came here, I felt as if I didn’t know how to be alone. I didn’t know how to sleep alone. I didn’t know how to cook alone, I didn’t know how to walk alone. Well maybe it isn’t strange, because all our lives we have been together. I have never truly been alone before this. But my loneliness is now particularly difficult: it is as if, for each day prior to that day , I had a different life. For four long years, I had Eren. Did he tell you that? That we lived together? That I woke up to him and went to sleep with his arm around my waist? That when I cooked he would stand behind me, or chop the vegetables or go fish, and when I slept before him, he made sure to cover me with blankets? I didn’t know it when I told you I was leaving, but it is the loneliness that feels most disorienting. For so many years, I have never known what it is like for Eren to not be by my side. And even for that brief time, when he left me to go to Marley, I was still reaching for him. Now I have nowhere to reach, nothing to reach for. The bed is cold, and I need to chop firewood myself, if I want to be warm. Nobody cares if I am cold and tired. I have nobody to care for.
You talk about good days and bad days: On bad days I am awake but I cannot find the strength to do anything, I feel like I am drowning in my tears. On good days my eyes are closed and they only open in dreams– dreams where Eren is still with me. We go down to the creek to fish together and get tired of waiting so we go for a swim. On cold nights, we sit by the fireplace with a warm blanket and the heat of his body and I convince myself I will never be cold again. I hear him call my name, and I feel like my being has a purpose, a meaning, and things make sense to me. On other days I feel like I am only half-alive, my body carries itself to the market, it buys food to keep itself alive, my body takes out the right change to pay the woman at the vegetable cart, says hello to the son of the baker who tells me I need to eat more— apparently I look weak, I was never weak before this, I used to be strong.
I don’t really question if I deserve to be happy. I don’t know if I can be. I don’t know if I have it in me to move this body, this soul, without the immense burden of loss. Inside me there is a pit, a black hole, and I don’t know if happiness will survive inside it. But it makes me happy that you are happy. Your letter made me smile. Of course I will visit you. Please keep writing to me, Armin. I cannot wait to see you.
Yours,
Mikasa