Work Text:
The whispers come the same day the blood won’t go away.
There’s a knife, somewhere, discarded on the floor by her feet, and there’s blood on her hands that her trembling fingers and the pumice stone can’t chase away, and she can’t breathe for the fear of it all, that an animal will smell it and come for her like those men did, like they did for her-
A bolt of pain strikes her head, lancing from left jaw to right temple, across her forehead and down to her chin. She cries out. Falls back. Grits her teeth and closes her eyes. Mama it hurts! she used to cry, and her father would comfort her, saying “I’m sorry, sweetheart, it’s your Ackerman blood. I never wanted this for you. I’m so sorry.”
Ackerman. Ackerman. Mikasa Ackerman. Her name. Family name. No family, they’re all gone. Dead. Mama died never knowing she was safe.
Mama told her to run. She didn’t run.
Mama thinks she’s dead.
Dead like Father said they all would be if they left the woods. This is our home because it’s safe. We live a quiet life without fear here.
She looks at her mother, the pain throbbing through her skull and into her eyes second to the sudden feral need to see . Like the dead deer and doves in the woods Father would bring home, with necks snapped and fur or feathers wet with blood, Mama is lying there. Blood on her skirts. Where the little one lay, now gone too. At least- at least the baby was warm.
It? He? She? Mikasa sobs, once. Can’t breathe. Mama, it hurts.
She wonders if she’s dying. Penance for that kill, the one in the cabin that dug splinters into her feet from a broken floorboard. She stumbles to her knees on her own bloody floor and reaches for her mother’s blood-wet hand.
Her skin is cold. Have to warm her up. Have to have to have to.
She rests her head. She sleeps. Mama’s body is still so cold.
The whispers wake her up.
They come from under her ear. Mama? Beside her. Father? She looks up and looks around. The whispers make no sense at first. Little murmurs. Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa.
“Mama?” Her voice is raspy and raw. From screaming? No. She doesn’t scream. There was– Someone was screaming, right? Her ears ring. She sees green eyes. Feels a cold little hand cutting her free. “ You don’t have to be afraid. Your name is–”
Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa.
“Right?”
Mama is cold. She has to be made warm again. Mikasa touches her neck and her fingers come away blood-crusted and trembling. Father is cold too, when she crawls beside him.
“What do I do?” she tries to ask him, words heavy on her tongue.
He told her once that people bury their dead so they have a place to rest. She doesn’t remember why she asked. Something had happened in town, she thinks. Something…something, she doesn’t know—it doesn’t matter. The earth is warm, she knows it. Knows it from plunging her hands in the dirt to keep the garden growing.
Make them warm.
Make us warm.
She knows she’s strong enough to move them. Strong enough to pierce someone’s heart through his back. She sees the knife. Blood on her skirt. She’s strong.
She pulls Father out first. Digs the hole with him beside it so it’s comfortable, just like he did when he built him and Mama a better bed, a nicer one with a real mattress. Mikasa’s earliest memory her mind can latch onto is of him laying beside the bedframe and the slats to see if he would fit. Mama laughed. He was so tall-
Is. Is! Is tall! Cold and tall, cold and tall.
The shovel was made for him. Not for her. It’s tall, like him. He said she might be tall one day. She wanted to be like them both…but not now. Not cold.
She’s so cold. Trembling with it. The shovel clangs against the ground.
The graves are wide. Graves. Grave. Grave like sad, like dead. Dead. Dead.
They still whisper. It’s dark and cold. The moon is out to light her way. She puts them beside each other, Mama half-laying on Father like the way they slept when she crept into their beds at night. You’re always so cold, little one, Mama would murmur, rubbing warmth into her arms with her head cradled between them on their pillows.
Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa.
“I’m cold,” she whispers.
The ground gives way. Her head aches. Screams. Pulses.
She lies between them, in the cold dark earth, for the last time.
Men come. Tall men with roses on their jackets. Looking at her house. Hers. Her place. Looking for what… For her? No. They did a bad job. She hides in the woods. Two sunrises have come and gone. They can’t see her.
“Shit,” one says. “Look at all the blood on the floor…” He hisses through his teeth. “No one survived this.”
“Dr. Jaeger’s son swears there was a little girl. She ran away, or so he said.”
“That’s why we’re both out here instead of back in Shiganshina.” A sigh. “If it wasn’t the good doctor…”
“Meaning, if it wasn’t Carla,” and they both nudge at each other.
She holds her breath. They leave her house. Don’t even look at the place Mama and Father sleep.
They leave. She is-
Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa
-alone.
Mama told her to run and she didn’t run. Disobedient daughter. Bad girl. Mikasa roots her feet to the floor and looks at the dried blood. The stains.
Cleans them. No one can see them, see her house, see it. See Mama and Father gone.
Goes to the edge of the fence to throw out the mop water.
She steps over the threshold of the property. Just a little. Not on purpose. To throw the water away, far enough where the blood won’t bring animals here.
Something screams. Someone screams. Loud, high-pitched, lancing into her head, making her drop the bucket and clutch at her temples.
MIKASA MIKASA MIKASA
She stumbles back. The screaming goesgoesgoes stops. Stops.
Disobedient girl
No. No she’s good, she’s good, she won’t leave. She’s not supposed to leave. Woods are safe. Home is safe. A world without Mama and Father is cold.
Safe.
She doesn’t leave.
She won’t leave.
She’s good.
She’s…
Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa.
“I found you!”
She’s hands-deep in the dirt, listening to the whispers, when someone shouts.
Someone?
Him.
Him.
The boy. The boy who-
“Mikasa, right?” He comes around the fence. To the garden. The screaming…she waits for it. Mama, it’s okay, he saved me. He fixed it. He protected me.
“Mikasa, right?” he repeats. It’s him. Dr. Jaeger’s son? Right?
Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa
She nods, once. It’s almost pushed out of her, the sudden movement. His eyes are so green. So green and right there. Watching.
“You ran away. Three days ago. When we—when I found you. You killed that man and you ran away.” There’s a scarf around his neck. Red like blood. It dances when the wind blows. “Can you come back?”
Back. Back where?
“Home. We wanted you to come home with us. Don’t you remember?”
Home?
Home. This is home. Can’t leave. Won’t leave. Home is safe home is safe-
“Mikasa? Hey, it’s okay, I didn’t mean to–”
–Home is safe homeis safe homeissafe–
“–upset you.” and he’s kneeling in front of her in the dirt, hands on her upper arms and it stingsburns get away I’m so cold and they can’t warm me up anymore.
“You’re freezing.” He takes his hand away. To the scarf around his neck. Unwraps it. Places it around her, winds it around and around again, covering her mouth. Her neck. “It’s warm, right?”
Her heart pounds. It feels wrong. Disobedient. Something else, someone else to keep her warm.
Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa.
She touches the scarf. It’s warm from him. The boy who saved her. Gave her a knife and told her to fight. Mama would tell her if it wasn’t safe. Would tell her to run. She would listen this time, she promises she would.
But there’s no screaming. So it must be alright.
He’s still waiting. Her voice doesn’t work right. It’s raspy. Stuck in her throat. When she says, “It’s warm,” his eyes light up and his cheeks go all pink.
“I-I’m glad.” Glad. She knows the words but the meanings are going away. “I’m Eren. Dr. Jaeger’s son.”
She nods. Words are gone now. It’s hard to think sometimes. The whispers are enough. She can think in their direction and feel warm. That’s all she needs.
“I won’t…ask you to come home– back, I mean, back – again, okay?” His eyes are narrow now. His hands are still touching her. Her heart, where it beats. Her arm. “But…it’s not safe out here.”
Home is safe. Here is safe. When she leaves, the screaming stabs her heart her head her body like they did to Father like I did to that man Mama I’m sorry Mama do you hate me–
No. She was good. She protected this boy. Eren. Eren. It’s okay.
She just can’t bear the screaming.
“Safe. It’s safe.” Her voice is muffled by the scarf. Before she can pull it from her mouth, his fingers are there. Pulling it away. His cheeks are still pink. “Safe here.”
A little furrow between his eyes. He shakes his head. Looks down, pink over his nose and cheeks still, and those eyes widen. “Are you okay?!”
Okay? Okay. “Yes. Why?”
“You’re still- That’s what you were wearing. That day.” He looks…confused? Scared? She can’t find the name for what she sees in his eyes. She looks down instead.
Oh. “Oh.” Blood. Mama’s. Father’s. Hers? No. Someone else’s. “Do you…” and he looks shy. Hides his face in his shoulder. “Do you have more clothes?”
Yes. It seems so silly now. To care. To mind. But she has to. You don’t have to look perfect, but looking nice is nice, Mama used to say in the face of protests against hair-combing or clothes mending.
She stands. The scarf is so warm. “Yes.” His eyes do something every time she speaks. Light up, like the sun peeking through a green tree leaf.
“Good.” He stands too. Dusts off his knees like Mama used to after planting.
Blood. Blood. It’s all she feels now, blood on the hem of her dress, dried and chipping at her skin when she moves. She goes inside. He’s still standing there. Backing toward the fence. Go. Go away. My home. Not yours.
“Mikasa!” He’s calling her. Her name sounds wrong in his mouth. Not her name. Her name is the whispers from the graves. “Mikasa! Can I come back tomorrow?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. And he returns anyway.
She might like that, she decides.
Might.
The visits are longer.
Eren comes at morning every other day. Brings her warm bread. Sausages. Tea that’s cool but still tastes sharp-sweet. Stories about this boy he knows. Loves? Mikasa thinks it’s love, how Eren’s voice shapes his name. Armin. Ar-min. He knows things, everything, Eren says. Has a book about something called the sea.
She doesn’t talk. Not really. Her voice hurts when she tries. Eren puts his hands on her chest and throat and tells her not to worry about it. He gets taller over time. That’s how she measures time. By him, how tall he is. Like a tree, with roots getting wider and trunk getting rounder.
She’s sick, one day, when he comes. Thrashing with fever. Mama and Father have left her. The whispers are gone. Eren comes, kicking through the door and halfway through a sentence, and then he sees her, wide-eyed and trembling, and says, “ Shit, Mikasa, what’s wrong?!”
She can’t speak. Can’t say anything. He comes back does he leave? Where are they? and someone else is with him: light-haired and pale and sweet, running fingers through her hair, saying, “Mikasa, I’m Armin. Eren’s friend. It’s okay, I won’t hurt you.”
Something cold on her neck. She cries out and flinches away. The sharp clarity of fever makes her brave; she twists from the grasp and reaches for Eren. Eren. Warm.
“Mikasa, you’re burning.” Her name sounds nice in his mouth. “Shh, shh, it’s okay.” He sounds confused. He gathers her in his arms. “Armin, help me,” and she’s in the air, moving, dipped in cool water in the tub she hasn’t touched in a long time.
“No!” someone cries, a thin and trembling warble. “Cold!”
Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa, the whispers soothe and she turns her body to them, sweater sopping wet and dripping onto the floor from how she throws her arm out. The fever is going away. The whispers are back. Mama, it hurts.
It does hurt. Her body, her chest, her eyes. The other boy, Armin, he touches her gently, pressing a cold cloth to the back of her neck. Eren soothes his fingers through her hair, making a small tsk sound when his fingers claw at knots.
“When’s the last time someone combed it?” he asks in the tone of someone who doesn’t really expect an answer. She doesn’t know the last time she thought about someone’s voice. The fever makes things brighter. The whispers are gone.
“Eren.” She doesn’t know why she says it. His eyes widen. Brighten. He smiles – at her? at her – and she almost flinches away from the light of it.
“Mikasa.” The dripping of water off his fingers, off Armin’s hand, is so loud. “You- you said it.”
You said it. What? His name? Has she not before? “I-”
“Shh, don’t talk,” Armin interrupts. “Your throat, it’s all red. Inside.” His voice is a bit small. “I looked. Sorry. I know that’s weird.”
She doesn’t know. Her name in Eren’s voice is all her mind can hold onto. They dry her and carry her to bed, still wrapped in towels we’re not going to take her clothes off, Armin!! and Eren wraps the scarf around her again. She sleeps, voices carrying her into dreams, carrying her into–
“We can’t, Armin, I promised!”
“You promised what?”
“That I wouldn’t ask her to come home with me again!”
“Eren, she’s going to die if we don’t do something. She’s so small…and sick! A-and she’s all alone out here!”
“She’s not alone! I come to see her!”
“Eren…”
“She can’t go, Armin. She won’t.”
In her fever dream, Mikasa calls herself by name.
She looks in the shining mirror her mother used to braid her hair and thinks, Mikasa. Me. I am Mikasa Ackerman. It doesn’t sound like noise in the dream. Doesn’t sound like anything.
She looks out the window, at the bright and shining world, and she steps over the property line and walks to the warm, green place with the tree Eren talks about. She sees it, tall and proud, and stands in the sun. Over him, where he sleeps. She smiles. He looks so peaceful.
In the fever dream, there are no whispers. Only stones over the graves she dug. Only quiet in the woods. She moves through town – Shi-gan-shi-na, she remembers learning to sound out the name – and trades her embroidery and lace for meat and potatoes and apples. Brings one to that tree and gives it to Eren. Her hair is untangled. Her body is whole.
She wakes, sweating and shaking, and the whispers are there to greet her.
Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa.
Why would she ever need anything else?
Love, Mama’s voice tells her, is how we stay alive. We love other people and we love ourselves so we choose to live.
Love. Love in the ground. Love in the whispers she thinks about. Thinks to, so she doesn’t have to speak.
But she speaks when Eren comes. His name. He says hers back. Mi-ka-sa. He calls her Mika and it feels like…like something else. Something soft and kind. Mi-ka-sa didn’t run away, the noise means she’s a bad girl, a bad daughter. But Mika …she’s someone’s friend. Special person. Armin calls her a confidant and explains what it means.
She doesn’t understand people, usually. Doesn’t see them, so it doesn’t matter. She likes Armin and Eren though. Armin is sweet and bright, the taste of a berry bursting on the tongue. When he smiles, the sun is in his teeth.
Eren is a day where it rains and the sun shines all at once. Green eyes, soft hands, all focused on her. He says her name like it’s fragile. Comes to her with bruises and cuts sometimes and only squirms a little when she fixes them.
Fixes them, because she knows blood. It’s on her hands all the time, after every nightmare.
Sometimes he finds her at night. Taps at her window and smiles when she lets him in. Tucks himself close to her, his hands on top of hers. Tells her he dreams about it too. “They deserved it,” he says with rock-hardness in his voice. “They were animals. They deserved it.”
Mama and Father? Deserved it?
“No,” he whispers – soft voice now, soft and sweet – when she asks, words scraping her tongue raw. “No, no, Mika, no. The men who took them away from you deserved it. Your parents never deserved it. Not ever. Don’t ever think that.”
He pets her hair. Tugs on it until she makes a shape with her mouth that he likes. A smile? She tries. Doesn’t know how.
He smiles, and it’s real. “You’re okay,” he tells her and she believes him. Why would she not? When he says her name, it sounds like something. She doesn’t know her name when he doesn’t say it. “It’s okay, Mika. We won’t talk about it anymore.”
Something happens one morning. The ground shakes. A feeling in her stomach, dark and deep and dangerous. She ignores the screams lashing at her skull and runs through the woods, to the edge of them. For the first time since…since that day, her blood is singing danger danger danger, and it’s enough to drown out the ghost-screams.
She stops when she sees. Her breath tastes like blood. Burning. The town is burning. Shi-gan-shi-na. Burning burning burning. Heads, tall heads, roaming the streets. Titans? Eren told her of them once. Monsters. People-eating monsters. Worse-than-me monsters.
Loud. So loud. The screams reach her, even here, and she claps her hands over her ears. Mikasa, run! she remembers Mama crying, and she screams too, Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa drowned out by her own voice, own words, long and loud.
Gone. Gone gone. She knows what destruction looks like. The loggers in her woods cutting down trees, the carcasses of crushed birds left in their wake, it all showed her the same thing. She knows how it looks when a world is gone. Animals without homes. People without anything.
Eren will come. It’s the clearest she’s thought in…so long. So long. Eren will come. He’s supposed to come today. He will come.
Eren doesn’t come back. She dreams of his body crushed. Bleeding and broken like Mama’s and Father’s. She wakes up in the night and is outside. Sleepwalking. Halfway through digging a smaller grave. For him. For her.
She finishes. Hopes it’s not too small.
Shiganshina burns. Empties. Eren isn’t coming back.
She kills one. A Titan. It comes to her at dusk and reaches for her, over her fence, toward her garden.
She has the knife. Always has the knife. In her pocket or at her hip. Eren’s knife. Dead Eren, lost Eren, Eren who talks to her too. Not in whispers. Just dreams.
She doesn’t hesitate this time.
Screams. Stabs. Again, again, again. It’s slow, stupid. Not like the bears she kills. Not like the elk. Just a thing. Thing that took Eren away too. And Armin. Sweet Armin made of sunshine.
She stabs and stabs and it dies. She uses it to fertilize the crushed garden where the Thing fell.
Titan. Thing.
She stabbed it like Eren stabbed that man. Dead Eren. Lost Eren. Did it hurt when one of those Things killed him? It must have. Death hurts.
Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa. The whispers are just noises now. Words without meaning. Wasn’t that my name, Mama? Mi-ka-sa Ack-er-man.
Wrong. All wrong.
There are no voices. No words. Just her breathing and the labored footsteps of Things. Titans. Every day. She survives through her garden. Hunting animals. Wearing her mother’s clothes, kept washed and nice. She can’t sleep by their graves anymore.
They still scream. When she leaves the fence, they scream. She tells it to stop, the screaming, because she has to hunt. She hunts at night, now. No Things to kill her. Eat her. Home is safe homeissafe homeis-
Years go by like this. She is tall. Bleeds, sometimes, between her legs. She’s older, then. She thinks about being older one night as she creeps through the trees. Older means taller. Hungrier. There’s a crackling sound, like a rabbit running, like good meat she needs for winter, like–
Stop. The whispers save her this time. She hears them: Horses. Fire. Murmurs.
Voices?
No one comes here leave me alone leave me alone-
“Mikasa?!” What is that noise?
She drops the knife. Her father’s bow. Tries to run, but her feet are rooted to the ground. Not again notagain no nonononono have to run have to run homeissafehomeissafe– and there’s the jingling of something, footsteps and-
Arms. Around her. Arms holding her. A heartbeat. “Mikasa!” Wet on the crown of her head. Arms. Hands. On the scarf. She looks up. Up?
Eren. Er-en. Eren.
“Eren?” she tries to say, mouth small and voice bleeding in her throat. Those eyes. Hands. Him. Him. Not gone not gone not gone. Here here herehereherehere
Not real. Not- not real she can’t breathe everything is dark everything is him everything is the smoke from Shi-gan-shi-na and he’s here this is him she’d know those eyes anywhere.
“Mikasa, it’s really you, oh thank god it’s you, thank god,” and he’s pulling her close, knees down on the ground, pulling her to him, head buried in her scarf, hand on her hair, “Mikasa, you’re alive!” he’s saying and there are voices, voices and she’s moving because the screaming is so loud, so loud suddenly, MIKASA MIKASA MIKASA and she runs.
Runs home. To the fence. Eren is there, behind her, panting: Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa the whispers soothe and, “Mikasa, Mika, it’s okay, you’re okay,” Eren is saying, hands on her back, her chest, pulling her close, whispering, “I’m sorry, I forgot you can’t be away from here, it’s okay. You’re okay.”
Er-en. Eren. Tall. Tall and wide-eyed. Scars on his hand. Bites? Teeth? Eren. Eren Eren ErenErenErenEren.
“Mikasa.” Whisper. Quiet. He’s standing- he’s on. over. the grave she made for him. Filled it with- with dirt and flowers, she can’t breathe, he’s- it’s not real, he’s a whisper too, he can’t be real-
“Mikasa,” whisper again. Soft voice. Dead boy. “Mika. I’m real.”
Takes her hand. Presses it to his heart. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. “Real,” he says again. “Real, Mikasa.”
She tries. To speak. Touch. Breathe. “Real,” he says a third time. “I’m real.”
She believes him. There’s something in her mouth. Salty. Spinning. She falls.
Dark. Cold. She shivers. Someone touches her. Sweet and soft. Sweet-soft and careful, murmuring Mika, Mika, I’m here and she wrenches her eyes open to see green eyes.
Eren. Eren. She reaches and he comes to her, pulled in like a fish on a line. “Mika,” he breathes and his eyes flutter. “Mika, I thought- god, I thought you were dead. I thought–” and he stops. Shakes his head. Presses his fingers to her cheeks and forehead. “You’re so cold,” and he takes off the green thing around his shoulders, laying it over her and Mama’s quilt and her blanket. “I missed you.”
Missed you. Warm.
She can’t think anymore. Lets the dark pull her under.
When Eren speaks, her mind goes quiet.
He’s older now. Broader. Darker. His hair and eyes, his voice. He tells her terrible secrets in the dark – that he is a Titan, can turn into one, but he’s better than those Things because he kills them. He’s going to fix the wall and fix Shiganshina, he says, and then we’ll be free then we’ll be safe and I can come back here and take care of you Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa–
He asks her things too. “How did you survive?” and “You’re not eating enough, are you?” She can’t answer. Can’t manage more than small nods and shakes and shivers. Words are hard. Hard to think when his hands are on her. Her body is hungry for this. Him. Warm, soft, sweet.
When the sun comes up, he has to go. She feels herself slipping, mind tethered to him, the whispers of her name in his voice that he fed her between sentences about war and blood. I have to go, he says like a curse and, you’ll stay here, won’t you, Mika? Until I can come back?
She will stay. Home is safe. Home is safe. She tells him this with her hand pressed to his chest and watches, apart from herself, as his eyes fly from her eyes to her mouth to her breasts to her legs.
“Mikasa,” and it doesn’t sound like roughened noise when he speaks that way. Sounds like her. Like it could be her. Like those letters in his mouth might have belonged to her before she gave them to him.
Yes?
It’s the only thing she can think, feel, form with her lips until his are on hers and–
Oh.
Oh.
Warmsofthungrywarm oh please please more her skin is hungry for it, for him, the way his broad hands slide over her shoulders and up to her jaw, cupping her cheek with rough fingers. He murmurs in his throat and walks her backwards to the bed, bending over her like–
“I have to go,” he whispers, sounding broken open, something spilling all over his words like the blood of deer after she slits their throats. Her head spins, a good thing this time, and she lets a small wounded-animal sound free when he pulls away. “Stay inside, here, where it’s safe until I come back. I’ll come back. I’ll come back and see you soon. Say you understand.”
“I-” and she tries, oh, she tries, her voice rough and garbled in her mouth. “I un-der-stand.”
He smiles, hungry eyes and teeth. “Good girl,” and he goes away like that, leaving heat in her body and under her clothes.
She’s good. She stays inside. She hears screams, feels the ground rumbling, sees something dashing through the trees outside.
She stays inside.
I’m good. I’m good. I’m-
She’s hungry. Not for food. She has enough of that. Her body wants to be touched again. Like Eren did. Her skin is burning, prickles of sweet heat dancing over her body. The way Eren touched her lives in her bones now, follows her into dreams, drowns out the whispers from behind the front door.
Eren’s voice silenced them. She wonders why it doesn’t make her feel empty. Wonders why she wants more of that silence, more of him, more of his voice
He’s not dead, she tells herself when she wakes slick with sweat. He’ll come back. He’ll come back.
She’s sleep-warm, sweat-warm; when she throws off Mama’s quilt, the part pinned between her legs presses down and-
Oh.
Good.
It feels nice, wetter and warmer than she should be, than sleep makes her. She thrusts her hips forward a little bit and oh it’s good, warmth rolling through her legs, hips jittering and more, more–
She reaches for her pillow. Rolls on her stomach. Presses it under, presses her hips down, lets out a sigh when it makes the pressure in her stomach pulse. She closes her eyes, rocking back and forth, and presses one hand to her opposite shoulder, her cheek, like Eren did, like-
Eren. She whispers the name, she thinks she does, she presses two of her fingers to her lips and tries to kiss them like he kissed her mouth, and she rocks and rocks and oh oh oh Eren Erenpleasepleaseplease ohhhhh
She shivers. Shakes all over and the world is warm and good and so blurry, she’s falling and flying and…and everything is quiet.
He comes back.
Armin comes too. Sweet boy with the sun in his teeth, and she wants desperately to hold him but he won’t let her until he gives her something: a small rock-thing Armin says is delicate and careful, Mika!
“It’s a shell. From the sea,” he says with a special kind of reverence, and he tells her it was real, everything in that book, and Eren sits beside her and it feels real again, them and her and the warmth of her scarf and their laughter.
Eren calls her Mikasa and it’s not noise; not her, but not noise. Armin calls her Mika and it’s warm and sweet. They tell her they missed her, make soup with her dried meat and fresh vegetables. She wants to ask Eren if he can put his mouth on hers again but doesn’t think they should do that with Armin right there.
“Mikasa…” and Armin looks worried. She can see it, read it in his eyes the same way she can see the sun rising and setting. “Mikasa, now that the wall’s gone back up, more people are going to come out here. You might not be alone anymore.”
Why? She wants to be alone, wants to be here, at home, where–
“It might not be safe anymore.” Eren’s eyes have ghosts in them, dancing like the fire’s shadow on the walls. “People will come and- and you shouldn’t be alone.”
She says nothing. Armin goes for more wood for the stove, the fire. Alone, Eren watches her. She wants him to put his mouth on hers again. Again again again you’re warm I’m warm with you–
“Stay.” The word scrapes from her throat. Armin blinks fast, swallows. Eren freezes like she’s hunting him. “Stay. Safe, with you.”
His eyes dig into the scarf at her throat. “Do you…you wear that all the time? Still?”
She hums. Watches his mouth. His tongue licks his lips. She wants–
He does it again. Lips on hers, but hungry. Wanting, like he would swallow her down and eat her up if he could. Like the Things- Titans- oh she can’t think when he cups her cheek, little sparks dancing over her skin, down to her throat, he’s so warm .
“Mikasa,” he breathes in her ear, nosing where the scarf is. “Do you know what we’re doing?”
Kiss. She knows the word. Too small for what this is. He hums, bites softly, teeth too gentle, says, “Mika, we can stop,” but he doesn’t want to stop, she can tell. She can tell he loves that she's blinking up at him with wide, innocent eyes, loves the taste of her inexperience on his tongue, and she doesn’t want to stop anyway, wants him to teach her just as much as she hates the thought of other girls knowing how he feels under their hands too.
But they do. Armin clears his throat. Sighs. “I figured,” is all he says, and Eren looks at her like she’s burning him up inside.
He comes back. He stays. It’s right. Always supposed to happen, she thinks, and now he’s safe and she’s safe and he doesn’t have to bite his hand and leave teeth marks all over himself. Doesn’t have to bleed or cry.
But he does cry. The first night, he wakes up with tears on his cheeks and she kisses them until the salt makes her thirsty. When he twists away and calls himself a monster, she grabs his hands and shakes him.
“No.”
His face twists. She’s wearing his scarf, always wears it, and he frees his hands to grab it. “I should never have given you this,” he snarls and she bares her teeth. “I’m gonna die and leave you alone with it,” he half-sobs and her teeth unclench as she gasps.
His shoulders slump. Dying, life draining, fight rolling away from him in waves. He looks up from under his hair and says softly, more tears, “I’m sorry, Mika. I’m so sorry.”
He tells her. Titans like him die. He will go away from her. He knows when.
It hurts. She kisses him.
Everything feels bright when she does, brighter and more real than anything she’s felt since Mama and Father died. He tastes like salt and sweat when he licks into her mouth; she lets him, kisses over his lower lip and sighs when he nips at her, teeth leaving sweet-hurt marks.
She gasps little tiny syllables meant to sound like his name between rolls of her hips, clumsy movements that make him shiver. She likes the shivers. Wants them again. “Eren, please, I need-”
“I know what you need,” and his voice is different, a low deep growl, making her shiver and sigh. “You don’t even know– God, I could do anything to you, gonna give it to you, gonna- godfuckMikasa ,” and he’s slipping from her grasp, kissing over her breasts and her stomach and her body feels real, feels like a body again, whole and alive and existing. “Wanna taste you,” he mutters against her hipbone, kissing the skin, nipping when she keens. “It’s okay,” he soothes and then his breathtonguemouth is on her, making her feel a kind of good she never knew existed before this moment.
“Good girl,” he murmurs when she cries, a bitten-off sob with her head thrown back. “Come on, Mika, come on, give it to me,” and she’s flying, flying, so good sogoodErenErenErenEren and she falls, crashing and shaking and sobbing, and godgodgodgodgod ohOH there it is again, alive and sparking pleasure rumbling through her body, hips rolling desperately into his mouth.
She settles, somehow. Eren is smiling. Talking. Soothing his fingers through the wet heat of her, moving up to press his body against hers, chest to chest and lips to forehead, cheek, neck. Calling her good, calling her sweetheart calling her Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa
His hips roll. He’s so hot. Warm. His eyes roll back and he moans, once, a short sound that makes Mikasa want to shatter all over again. “Eren,” she gasps, canting her hips up, letting the same instinct that calls her to fight or freeze take over. “Need- need-”
“Need what?” and oh his voice is wrecked, broken open and desperate. She doesn’t know, lets out a breathless keening sigh. “Are you empty, Mika? Need something to fill you up?”
“Yes!” She’s so empty, cold and wet and needs him, needs to be full and warm, needs to be–
“Mikasa,” he sighs it out, sliding home, pressing his mouth to her collarbone, her lips. It hurts, but everything hurts, good and bad and between, and he feels good, heartbeat pulsing inside of her, lips panting against hers. “God,” he groans. “Oh, Mikasa.”
It’s a blur after that. Shifting hips, rocking up the bed, her hands on his shoulders, his gripping her waist. Pounding into her after she asks harder Eren please? and growls of say my name, say my fucking name, Mikasa.
It’s so good she can’t think. Can’t whisper. Can’t do anything but Er-en ErenErenErenEren oh oh ohhhhh and she falls so hard and fast she seizes up, wailing to the sky, clutching at him, the world, everything and spasming around him full full so good so good more more more make me feel.
“I will,” he promises, so apart from himself that his eyes are black and blown-out. “Gonna-ohgodfuck-gonna make you feel good again, Mika. Just for you."
“For me,” she whispers back, mindless, fingers dancing around his throat like he likes.
He snarls. Presses into her so hard she shouts. Fills her with jerks of his hips, sobs and little humps of his hips, cursing and saying her name like she’s a god. When he stops, goes limp atop her, she wraps herself around him, body chanting warm warm warm so good ErenErenEren.
Everything is quiet. Everything is him.
Time goes too fast.
He makes her promises – that he’ll stay with her until the end, that he loves her, that he’ll wrap the scarf around her now and forever – but he makes her make promises too.
“Find Armin,” he says again all the time he says this all the time, “when I die, go and find Armin and he’ll look after you. I don’t want you to be out here all alone, Mikasa.”
He does that too. Makes that noise. Says her name. It almost sounds like hers again. Sometimes he makes her say it, kisses her between the words My-name-is-Mikasa-Ackerman. She likes the kisses but not the sore-hoarse feeling of those letters in her throat.
“Promise me, Mika,” he says with her head over his heart and his breath labored in his stomach. “Promise me you’ll leave here when I go, you’ll go find Armin and be safe. Please.”
There are more things he’s not telling her. Secrets that wake him up crying or shouting. She tries to fix it, fix him, but he shakes his head every time. Pulls her to him and under the blankets, running his fingers through her hair and saying it’s okay, it’s better now, you’re here, I’m okay. She likes helping him. Healing him.
It’s almost enough to convince her that everything is okay. That this is good. Home is safe and Eren is safe and everything is good.
But she knows. Knows when it's his time. Wakes from a nightmare of an axe in Mama’s throat and Run Mikasa run!! and when she looks up to see his eyes half-lidded and watching, she knows it’s time.
“I love you, Eren,” she tells him. Kisses the lines sunken in his cheeks. The gashes under his eyes. He brings her up to him and exhales his last breath into her mouth through a kiss.
It’s dark. No more heartbeat. She curls into his side again still warm have to keep him warm have to stay with him.
She lies beside him, in their bed, for the last time.
Armin comes to take him from her.
They bury Eren together under the tree he loved. The screams haven’t come for her in years, since Eren came to her, and she’s grateful. Mama and Father understand she loved him, wants to make sure he sleeps safely underground. She’ll stay with him. Curl up around the little stone Armin made for him and keep him safe.
Armin cries. Great heaving sobs. She puts a hand on his back to feel them and wonders why she can’t make them stop.
She hears Eren’s whisper too: Mikasa. Mika. Sweet girl. All the things he called her. Gone. Never heard again.
“Mika…” Armin says when his tears dry, “will you come back with me? Like Eren asked?”
She has no reason to speak. No words to say no can’t don’t want to don’t make me homeissafe homeissafe–
He asked you to go.
She looks out. At Shi-gan-shi-na. People live there again. Too many of them. They come to her woods and scare away the game.
I can’t go.
Homeissafe home is safe-
“Mika, please.” Armin’s looking at her, wet eyes and dark circles under them, and she thinks you’re a Titan too and you’ll die too and I’ll be–
MIKASA MIKASA MIKASA
No no more screaming no more- and there’s this ugly awful sound, a wailing cry and her head aches like it did when Mama and Father died and Armin’s holding her, pressing her head to his chest and wrapping her up in the scarf and Eren’s gone dead never wrapping it around me again never coming back no no nononono
Armin goes home alone.
She stays.
Looks at herself in the mirror. Mama’s mirror. Eren’s mirror, he used it to tie his hair back and shave his face, looked in it to braid her hair or to ask her to say her name.
My name is–
No. She said all she needed to say.
I love you.
She thinks about saying it.
Who would hear her?
I love you.
Her throat body head heart aches.
I love you.
She breaks the mirror. Takes the knife and cuts away her hair, the hair Eren loved and combed and pulled on and it’s all wrong he’s gone hurts it hurts I want to go home homeissafehomeissafe–
And when she wakes on the floor it’s all numb and sweet. She goes to the grave. Sleeps beside him.
Why would Armin ask her to leave?
This is where she belongs.