she turns like the ocean; she tells no emotion

Summary: Mikasa wore the scarf wherever she went, ever since that night when she became the lone survivor in a cabin full of dead bodies. Armin was the only other person who understood that while Eren Yeager died protecting her, he didn't move on. Ghost!Eren.

Pairings: A tiny bit of Eremika, blink and you'll miss it.

Warnings: Character death, violence, PTSD, flashbacks, (non-graphic) threats of sexual slavery/assault against underage characters. A scene in which Mikasa is repulsed with food. A scene about Mikasa's first period, if that kind of thing squicks you out. Themes of violation and control (when it comes to Eren possessing people). Unhealthy, codependent relationships. Let me know if I missed anything and I'll add it to the warnings.

A/N: *pokes head into new fandom*

Hi there.

*thows in fic*

*runs away*

But seriously, the first SnK fic that I write involves killing off a major character. I'm so sorry. It's keeping in tradition with the source material, I guess. (Also, the title comes from the song "Lonely Nation" by Switchfoot.)

(this is an ending.)

There was a dead body on the floor.

There were actually four dead bodies, but this was the only one that mattered to Mikasa. This was the body of the boy (Eren, his name had been Eren) that had saved her, too late for her to save him. This was the boy that killed two men for her, died for her.

She stared blankly at the body. It was cold. So was she.

"You should take my scarf. It's cold."

She looked up and gasped. "But you're – "

Her eyes darted to the body. It was still there, motionless and broken. When she looked back up, the boy was gone.

A trick of the light. The stress of a fractured mind.

She unwrapped the scarf from around the body's neck anyway. Doing that exposed the ugly, splotchy bruises around his neck. She almost put the scarf back but at the last second clutched it to her and wound it around her own neck. Ice skittered down her spine.

-x-

"Where did you get that scarf?"

It was the first thing that Doctor Yeager said to her. He knew where she had gotten that scarf. He hadn't seen his son's body yet.

"He gave it to me," she said quietly, fingering the red scarf. It was true. "Eren did."

"Where is he?"

"Over there," she said, pointing to the interior of the house. "But he's – "

Too late. She was too late (again) and now Doctor Yeager was rushing past her into the house. He was going to see his son's body, hoping for the best only to find the worst.

He thought that he was prepared for whatever he would find, but she knew that he wasn't, because the worst was walking in on his son's body, lying still and pale on the floor with a ring of bruises around his neck. She knew the moment that he discovered the body, because there was a loud wail of agony.

Her sense of time got a bit muddled then. It was still cold. The scarf was cold. She didn't want to take it off. She shivered and pulled her coat tighter to her. Her clan mark throbbed. She stared at her knees until the police came.

-x-

"Eren gave you that scarf?" was the second thing that Doctor Yeager said to her.

"Yes."

"Keep it then," he said, turning away from her.

That was all he said to her. He didn't talk to her when the police asked her questions. He didn't talk to her as they studied the blood splatters and the dead body. He didn't really talk to anyone.

The boy – Eren – was sometimes there, sometimes not.

-x-

What do I do? she wanted to ask. Where do I go? I have no one now. No one but a little dead boy who was crouched beside his corpse, staring at it intensely. Even his father's voice did not stir him.

She didn't say any of that, because Doctor Yeager was a father that had just lost his child and it was her fault.

He looked down at her and, for a moment, Mikasa thought that he was going to smack her. With her newfound understanding of the world, she could have had him on the floor if he tried. She would have let him hit her though.

He didn't. Instead, he asked, "Do you have anywhere to go?"

She shook her head.

"Come with me." It was the last thing that he said to her. He didn't offer her his hand. He just started walking and she fell into place by his side. She glanced back once. The boy – Eren Yeager – wasn't there anymore. His body's eyes were open in death, accusing her. One of the policemen covered the body, blocking her view. She turned back around and kept walking.

-x-

Only once, she ventured to say something. "He saved me."

Dr. Yeager didn't reply. She knew what he was thinking. It was an unfair trade, his son's life for this girl's. The wrong child had died tonight.

Mikasa completely agreed.

-x-

He dropped her off at the children's shelter. It was more than she deserved. Mikasa could understand. He had lost a son and was not inclined to gain an unwanted, unworthy false-daughter.

-x-

There was a funeral for Eren. Mikasa attended, despite the whispers.

The casket was lowered into the ground.

Eren seemed disbelieving. He flickered in and out of existence, trying to touch his parents. They were lost in their own grief and deaf to his cries. His mother's shoulders were shaking with every breath. His father's face looked as if it had been carved out of stone.

Mikasa's eyes were dry and her hands were steady. When she walked away, Eren followed her. A small, blonde boy stared at her as she left.

-x-

There were funerals for her parents too. Not many people came to either. Mrs. Yeager came to both. When he was present, Eren alternated between staring solemnly at the caskets and staring fixatedly at his mother.

-x-

It turned out that her dad had some rather large debts to pay. The house and most of their belongings were taken as compensation. Mikasa didn't really care. Material things didn't matter.

She did keep a few trinkets though. She knew that it was stupid sentimentality, but she felt better knowing that at least she still had Mom's bracelet. She wore it over the bandages that were wrapped around her clan mark. The rest of the things were donated to the city, to be used for the good of humanity.

-x-

Attending his own funeral seemed to have jolted Eren out of that strange half-existence. He was visible and present more often. He had also started asserting his wishes. Unfortunately, he tended to get stuck on them and start repeating things.

"We should go see my dad. We should go see him. We should go to see him."

"Eren…"

"We should go."

He wasn't listening to her anymore.

"We should. Go. Go! Just go! Just go away!" he yelled at her. He disappeared before she could say that she couldn't leave, because he was the one following her.

-x-

Sometimes, there were entire days upon weeks that Eren went without mentioning his parents. Sometimes they were all he thought about.

-x-

He never asked to go see his own grave.

-x-

Once, Mikasa asked him, "Do you regret it?"

Saving me, she meant. Saving the girl who was too slow to warn him (there was a third) and too slow to save him (the third strangled him, wrapped his big hands around his neck and squeezed).

"There's no room for regrets in me."

"Then what is there room for?"

He shrugged. "Anger, I think."

"At me?" She wasn't sure if she wanted to hear his answer.

"Nah. At pretty much everybody else, maybe. I'm not really sure. I don't want to go inside of myself to see what's there. I'm pretty sure it's the not good stuff. Probably, it's hate and rage. Maybe it's just emptiness. I don't know and I don't want to know."

That was the most that he had ever said about his nature. She didn't ask him for more details. She didn't need them.

-x-

The children's shelter was little more than a place to sleep and get meals. Even then, it was barely adequate. The rooms were crowded and the food was barely edible. Stealing was rampant and fights broke out with regularity, usually over who got the prime places to sleep. Every so often, there would be an outbreak of lice and everyone would have to get their head slathered in a foul-smelling goop that stung the eyes.

Mikasa didn't mind. She knew that it was run by overworked volunteers and subsisted on donations. She was lucky to have a roof over her head and food in her stomach. She was lucky to be alive.

-x-

(About a week after she had been dropped off at the shelter, Mikasa knew that this was not the place for her. "Home is where the heart is," one of the matrons had chirped. Mikasa's tongue had pressed hard against her teeth. For some reason, she was having difficulties resisting the words, "Home is where my parents and a young boy were brutally murdered.")

-x-

Mikasa would have been considered one of the 'wild children' – that was, those children who were allowed to run rampant through the streets, whether through circumstance or indifference – if not for the fact that her new personality type was completely opposite what people expected of her.

She did indeed roam the city without adult supervision, but she caused no disturbances. She was neat and well-mannered. She was quiet. People didn't mind her.

Her wanderings kept her busy at least. She was indifferent to most things these days, but she found that she enjoyed walking around the city. For obvious reasons, she preferred to spend the majority of her time outside and she would explore the city with Eren from dawn until dusk. She had been to the city before, but she had spent most of her life living in the more isolated farmlands. It was interesting, and it made Eren happy.

He would point out the various plants growing throughout the city. Eren was the child of a doctor so he knew the different kinds of plants and what their uses were. Mikasa's mom had started to teach her a little of that before she had been lying on the floor with a gaping wound in her neck and blood that was spreading beneath her to make a dark wet stain –

Before she had died.

Mikasa enjoyed walking alongside Eren and listening to him chatter or rage, depending on the mood he was in. She was the only one who could listen and she did so willingly.

Sometimes they would go 'Kalura watching.' This was the closest that Eren could come to his mother, so Mikasa never begrudged him of this, even though it was hours before he was satisfied.

Kalura Yeager was a kind woman, well-liked and respected by the community. Though her face had grown sallow and tired, her spine did not bend under the weight of her grief. She was a strong woman.

-x-

Mikasa visited her once. Just once. Ostensibly, it was to thank her for coming to her parents' funerals, but it was mostly so that Eren could see his mother up close.

It turned out that he couldn't handle it. He started sobbing and moaning and gnashing his teeth. When the cutlery began to vibrate, just a little, Mikasa decided that it was time to get out of there.

"I need to talk to her! Just let me talk to her!"

She didn't say anything. She couldn't, not with his mother in the room.

"Don't ignore me," he hissed.

He grabbed at her neck and his icy fingers sunk into her. She gasped in pain. Eren pulled his hand out like he'd been stung.

"Is something the matter?" Mrs. Yeager asked.

She shook her head and rasped out, "I have to go. Sorry."

She left in a hurry. Eren didn't try to stop her.

-x-

(He didn't ask her to see his parents again.)

-x-

On one of their daily walks, sounds of a scuffle reached them. To their right, a group of boys was kicking a smaller boy who was hunched over in the dirt, protecting a book, it looked like.

"Hey! They're beating that kid up!" Eren said indignantly.

Mikasa gave him a blank stare.

"We've gotta go do something about it!"

"Okay," she said. Because she owed him, this boy who saved her life and was killed for it, all because she was too slow to stab a man. If he wanted to demand compensation by having her attack those boys, she would do it. She would never be able to pay off her debt to him, but she would do it.

She owed him. She wore her guilt like a beacon in the form of a red scarf.

So she ran at them and taught them a lesson of the world's cruelty. They had already learned this lesson, but now they were on the receiving end of it.

Eren cheered her on, his excitement making the window shutters rattle. The boys were bruised and on edge by the time Mikasa let them run off to go lick their wounds.

She considered the blonde boy lying prone on the ground. He had uncurled, though he still clutched his book to his chest protectively. He stared up at her with wide eyes. He too had learned the lesson of the strong and the weak, and seemed resigned to his fate.

She left before he could open his mouth.

-x-

Of course, the bullies ganged up on her the next day. Six on one and it was a mêlée.

It was brutal and it was messy. Mikasa made cheap shots, pinching and scratching and biting just as much as she threw punches. She wasn't above flinging dirt into their eyes either.

She knew the desperation of needing to win, at all costs. She downed most of them pretty easily. She hadn't been able to save people before

(mom, bleeding out and dead on the floor)

(bruises, around a corpse-child's throat)

(her, trembling and unable to move)

but now she was different and she knew how to take down some city boys who hadn't ever been on the receiving end of their own cruel ministrations.

One boy grabbed at her hair, trying to pull her to the side and unbalance her. She pivoted, kicking high and hard. His head snapped back and some blood got on her only pair of shoes. Her eyes narrowed.

-x-

They stopped bothering her after that.

That didn't mean that they had learned the lesson properly though; they went after easier targets, like the blonde boy.

"What's your name?" she finally asked him after fighting off his attackers again.

"Armin Arlert."

-x-

Mikasa took it upon herself to teach Armin what she knew about fighting. He was a fast learner and became as proficient as could make him, but for all that she taught him, he still didn't fight back. This led to her and Eren finding him in various scenarios that inevitably ended with Eren yelling some form of, "Yeah, that's right! You better run!" to his bullies' fleeing backs.

This time, he continued with a smug, "We sure showed them." Mikasa couldn't deny him his satisfaction, because although they were afraid of her, Eren was also partially responsible for scaring them off. His presence unsettled them and in his anger he started rattling objects, which led to accusations that Mikasa was 'weird.'

"Are you okay, Armin?" she asked, turning to look at him.

"Fine," he said, struggling to his feet. He didn't ask for help and she didn't offer it.

-x-

Eventually, Mikasa got tired of continually getting into fights. She had to teach them a lesson again, but it finally stuck. Armin was as off-limits as she was.

-x-

Somehow, this whole thing culminated into a kind of friendship, tenuous at first but one that grew stronger with each passing day. The first sign that Armin was really opening up to her (and Eren, though he didn't know that) was the day that he marched up to her and plunked a book down in front of her. He thumbed through the pages, finding the dog-eared ones quickly.

"Grandpa was hiding this from me," he said. "Look here, Mikasa. It's a book about the Outside world." He stared at her with challenging eyes, probably waiting to see if she would call him a heretic like so many others.

"A book about the Outside world?" Eren repeated. "Mikasa! A book about the Outside! A book…about Outside."

Oh. He was starting to fixate on it. He did that sometimes, though never to the degree that he had with his parents.

She gazed levelly at Armin. People's hang-ups about the Outside didn't concern her and Eren wanted to hear about it, so she said, "Go on."

He seemed strangely relieved, but quickly shook off his apprehension and was soon babbling on about the things that he had found in the book. He talked about bodies of saltwater called 'oceans' that covered most of the world.

Mikasa couldn't help but raise an incredulous eyebrow at that. "The merchants would have grabbed all that salt up immediately." Everyone knew about the merchants' greed and salt was in short supply.

"No, it's true! These oceans are so big that they can't run out of salt!"

It was hard to imagine, but Mikasa didn't doubt it. Neither did Eren, who was transfixed. "Outside…" he breathed.

-x-

Now that he knew that Mikasa wasn't going to denounce him as a heretic, Armin started telling her more about what his forbidden books said. According to the books, the Outside had water that burned and land covered in ice and huge stretches of sand.

"So much knowledge was lost, and now people can't even talk about the Outside, which makes our ignorance worse, but just imagine everything that must be out there!" His eyes were bright and fervent. "I'm convinced that the world is so much vaster than anything we've been led to believe. Just think of it, Mikasa!"

"Outside," Eren sighed wistfully from behind her. His cool breath chilled the back of her neck.

-x-

Armin hesitantly told her that his parents would be making an expedition Outside, as civilian researchers with a squad of military personnel to escort them. It would be great, he said. They would learn so much. Mikasa wasn't so sure, but she didn't voice her doubts; it would change nothing.

Armin's mom and dad set out on a muggy summer's day. Eren made her go so that he could see them off, even though nobody but Mikasa knew that he was there. She stood silently beside Armin, watching them until the portcullis was shut.

They didn't come back. A Titan attack, of course. A slaughter.

Mikasa tried not to think about what their bodies would look like after roasting in the sun at the height of summer.

They had closed casket funerals – what little was left of their bodies was hardly fit to be shown – and Armin spent the entirely of each service staring at the coffin lids.

-x-

Armin became more withdrawn than usual. Mikasa didn't push him to talk about it or anything. He would deal with his grief in his own way and empty platitudes would be no comfort at all.

-x-

By this time, it was no secret that Armin was obsessed with the Outside (just like his fool parents, the whispers went, and look what happened).

"I'll fulfill their dream," Armin now insisted.

Mikasa glanced at Eren, who was by her side, as usual. She thought about how much she bent to his will and how little she minded. She had no right to lecture Armin about living another's dream.

Armin still felt the need to explain himself to her. "I don't want to live my life with my nose in a book, oblivious to everything that goes on around me. I don't want to waste away inside these Walls, like, like…"

"Like cattle," Eren sneered.

"Like cattle!"

Mikasa started. Had he just…?

No, that was ridiculous. His face was open, and his blue eyes were guileless and didn't stray to the spirit by her side who was suddenly staring at him as well.

"What?" he asked nervously, already starting to shrink into himself. Whatever boldness that had overcome him was already retreating to that hidden place inside of him.

"It's nothing."

"I know I could have phrased that more politely, but that's how I feel."

"I don't mind. Your views or how you express them. You should speak your mind more often."

"Maybe…"

He appeared oblivious to her searching gaze. No, Mikasa finally decided, it really was nothing.

-x-

If he noticed her scrutinizing eyes on him – which he almost certainly did; he was the most observant person that she knew – over the next few days, he didn't let on. Eventually, she dropped it. She was being too cautious.

-x-

Mikasa had good reason for her vigilance though. People couldn't see Eren but that didn't mean she couldn't give something away with her behavior. She had trained herself not to react to him when around other people. She didn't slip up. She was quiet and respectful and she never talked to Eren in public.

Still, the rumors spread. According to the other children (and adults) she looked different, she acted weird, and strange things were always happening around her.

This was all true though, so she didn't resent anyone who said such things. She didn't really care what people whispered about her so long as they didn't start acting on their fear and hate.

When she became friends with Armin, the rumors only grew. That weird girl and the heretic. However much they were resented though, no one bothered them anymore. Mikasa's newfound reputation came in handy.

-x-

Armin was by far the most affected by how the others treated him. He was a kind soul, and he didn't understand why the world was so cruel. Mikasa tried to explain that there was no particular reason why, it just was. Armin wouldn't accept that; he needed rationale. He always had questions that he wanted answered. One of his most prominent ones was:

"What is the Outside like?"

Right behind it was the question:

"Why do they call me a heretic just because I want to see the Outside?"

To the latter question, Mikasa simply replied that it was the nature of humans to fear what they didn't understand. She didn't have answers to the former question, but that was alright because Armin wanted to discover them for himself.

-x-

"Oi, Mikasa."

She didn't acknowledge Eren at all, because Armin was right there, leaning against a tree and reading while she lay next to him in the grass. Eren often did this, asking her questions that she would answer later.

"Armin reads a lot, doesn't he? And he'd have access to books that we don't, right?" Rhetorical questions. "Do you think that he'd have any books about spirits? It'd be nice if we had more information."

Mikasa didn't answer.

"Nevermind, tell me later."

She noticed that Armin's eyes had stopped their rapid scanning of the page.

"Mikasa…" he said slowly, without looking up from his book. "Can you…see him?"

-x-

So it turned out that Armin could see spirits.

This clarified several things and was very relieving. Their friendship grew in leaps and bounds after that day. Now Armin and Mikasa didn't have to guard their words so that they wouldn't accidentally reveal the supernatural. Now Eren had someone else to talk to.

-x-

It didn't surprise Mikasa that a few weeks later, Eren told Armin what had happened in the cabin that night, confessing his own part in the murders and subtly giving Mikasa an out. He would shoulder the blame for all three deaths, if Mikasa let him. She didn't.

It felt wrong to keep such a secret from Armin, so she told him about how she had stabbed the man who had strangled Eren to death. She had stabbed him right in the heart, she said, eyes fixed on Armin's face as she watched for his reaction. Her more practical side whispered that no one would believe Armin anyway if he told. Probably.

Armin didn't blink. "I thought it might be something like that. Everyone knows what happened to Doctor Yeager's kid."

Everyone did know.

He chewed on his lip a bit before adding, "And everyone knows that you were the only survivor."

The only survivor in a cabin full of dead bodies but no one had questioned her too closely because she was a traumatized little girl.

"So you figured it out?" Eren asked.

"I read between the lines," Armin said.

Eren laughed. "I'll be you did."

From that day on, there was an easing of tension. The three of them grew closer still, and not long after, Armin invited them to live with him.

-x-

Actually, the day that he asked them happened to be the day that a huge thunderstorm rolled in. Within minutes, they were soaked, and the children's shelter was on the other end of the city.

"You can stay at my house for the night while the storm passes," Armin said and Mikasa took him up on his offer after a quick moment of thought. As they hurried through the streets, he continued, "But I know that children's shelters aren't the best to live in, and we have plenty of room. I know my grandpa won't mind…" he trailed off anxiously.

"You didn't ask him yet?" Eren asked.

"It was a spur of the moment thing. Ah, we're here. If you would follow me?"

Mikasa mentally shrugged. Awkward social situations were one of her specialties. She just refused to be embarrassed and put on a stoic face. Eren was a spirit and would therefore be spared any uncomfortable tension.

Armin's house was attached to his grandfather's bookstore, right behind it in fact. They went through the shop entrance and a little bell chimed as Armin opened the door. It was late, so there were no customers in the shop, just an elderly man sitting behind the counter. He looked up from his book when they entered.

"Hi, Grandpa. This is Mikasa."

His eyebrows rose. "Your friend is aware of her tagalong?"

Armin had already told them that his grandfather was like him, so Mikasa simply said, "Yes. His name is Eren."

"And if she hadn't been then that would have made it awkward," Armin grumbled.

"If they're hanging around with you then I'm assuming that they're used to awkward." Armin went a bit pink, but took the comment in stride. "Can Mikasa stay the night?" he asked.

"I thought I'd have to wait at least a few more years before you were bringing girls home."

They both stared at him blankly. He sighed. "Yes, she can. But no funny business, you hear?" Mikasa startled, until she realized that he was talking to Eren.

"Yes, sir." On his part, Eren seemed more subdued.

They made their way to the guest bedroom.

Armin shuffled uncomfortably by the doorframe. "Sleep well," he said.

"Armin," Mikasa said. "Thank you."

-x-

Mikasa was sewing, timing her movements to the chop of a knife in the background. Her finger jerked as a prick of pain travelled up it. A speck of blood bloomed and she sucked it away.

The knife stopped. She looked up, frowned; the knife was all bloody. "Dad…" she said. Her father turned around, red soaking through his shirt and spreading outward.

There was a 'thump' from behind her. Mikasa knew the sight that was going to meet her eyes. That didn't stop her from rushing to her mom and collapsing on the ground in front of her. She pressed both of her hands against her mom's neck to try and stop the bleeding.

It didn't work. Blood was dribbling from between her fingers in spurts that grew weaker and weaker until they stopped. (Too slow, too weak, again.)

She noticed movement in her peripheral vision. Eren knelt down next to her and clasped her bloody hands in his cold ones. The ring of bruises on his neck stood out in stark relief. His lips were dry and cracked, Mikasa noticed, as they formed words that she couldn't hear. He kept repeating himself until the ringing in her ears had faded enough for her to hear:

"Mikasa, wake up."

-x-

She woke to Eren's face leaning over hers. He moved out of the way as she peeled the sweat-soaked sheets from her body and got dressed in the dark. She traced her clan mark before winding a strip of cloth around it. The scarf was the last thing that she put on. She wrapped it around her neck and mouth, tucking her chin down so that her eyes were hidden by her hair.

Neither of them said anything as she crept down the stairs and toed on her shoes before slipping outside through the back door. The sun wasn't up yet, so it was still chilly and dewy grass dragged at her ankles.

"Race you," she said quietly, then took off. Eren kept up with ease, but it wasn't really about the competition. It was about running until her legs and lungs burned, running until her feet were flying on the ground, running until she wasn't thinking about anything anymore.

As the sky lightened, she gradually altered her course so that they were headed to the children's shelter. With Eren's help, she had found a really good hiding place so that the other kids wouldn't steal her things, but now was a good time to fetch what little she owned.

-x-

They made it back to the house before breakfast, and neither Armin nor his grandfather asked where they had been or what was in the bag slung across her shoulder. She would have told them though, that she was carrying most of her earthly possessions and was wearing everything else that she owned.

Her life was contained to this. She reached up to press her hand against the scarf. Her life was this. She didn't mind.

-x-

Living with Armin didn't actually change much of their daily lives. His grandfather didn't place that many restrictions on them; his rule of thumb was 'no funny business,' which Armin told her encompassed everything from not washing their dirty dishes to murder.

Mikasa found it easy to live with him and there were benefits to living with someone who owned a bookstore. Mikasa did prefer practicality over abstract philosophising, but learning came easy to her and Armin liked having someone his own age to hold intellectual conversations with. She started educating herself again.

Eren remained wary of Armin's grandfather, but being within reach of his books meant easier access to all of his books, including the forbidden ones about the Outside. This placated Eren, who would spend hours flipping through books while Armin and Mikasa tended to the shop.

This was actually how Eren fine-tuned his control over moving objects. To begin with, he had only been able to turn the pages by focusing really hard and waving his hand at them. This usually had the effect of flicking through a large number of pages at once, which was inefficient and frustrating. He then spent lots of time honing his control until he was eventually able to even pick up books and thumb through them.

When Armin asked him to explain how he did it, he said that he had to focus on his hands as solid objects and fill them with energy. There was also a certain amount of mental flexibility involved, as he sometimes needed to trick his mind into believing that he was able to do it. It was tiring, but the more he practiced, the better he became.

Out of the three of them, Armin had the most knowledge about spirits and he had a lot of ideas about how to apply it. It was him who suggested that they start experimenting with Eren's capabilities, which they both agreed with.

-x-

As it turned out, Armin had more of an imagination than Mikasa and put Eren through more rigorous testing. They were able to quickly establish that he was not able to sleep or eat, along with the fact that his eyesight seemed to be perfect.

Armin hypothesized that Eren imposed on himself the same restrictions as the living, considering that he could float if he wished but didn't do that often. He could shatter glass if he really put his mind to it, but they decided not to test that anymore because of how expensive glass was. This led to testing Eren's ability to make the objects around him float and move around. At first, this ability was sporadic, but he trained himself in it until he was quite proficient.

They also discovered that while people could sometimes subconsciously sense him, animals were more perceptive. Mikasa had noticed that most animals tried to avoid her; now she knew why. Concerning the elements, his presence could freeze water and make small fires sputter. Little gusts of wind tended to herald his arrival, and when he was angry, little cracks might even form in the ground beneath him.

It was an educational few months.

-x-

Sometimes, Eren periodically disappeared.

When he was completely absent, she could feel it, like a gaping hole in her side. When he wasn't – when he wasn't quite there but he wasn't fully gone – she could feel the chill around her, just hovering.

"Eren is the most aware spirit that I've ever encountered," Armin said lowly, as if he was afraid of being overheard.

There was a chill at her back and the hair on her neck was standing on end. Mikasa decided not to mention that Eren was – at least in part – in the room with them.

-x-

According to the few texts that they had on spirits, most spirits needed an anchor. In their case, it was obviously the scarf. As Eren put it, "It's just, the scarf. It's not my scarf and it's not your scarf. It just is."

That was a good explanation. Mikasa liked it.

Armin eyed the scarf thoughtfully. Mikasa reached up to fiddle with it.

-x-

They established the limits of how far Eren could go from his anchor. Through repeated tests, they found that he could only get a certain distance away from the scarf before he vanished. He would reappear by her side later, disoriented and bad-tempered. They eventually concluded that he had a range of about two metres, give or take.

"I don't mind," Eren assured her. "You're interesting."

Mikasa blinked. She didn't consider herself very interesting at all. She was more likely to describe herself as boring.

When she told him this, he laughed. "A girl who killed a man and lets a dead kid hang around her? If that's boring then I want to see what you think is exciting."

Mikasa's mind flashed to gripping a knife handle tightly and stabbing, watching the blood soak outwards. She had been doing that a lot, remembering that night at the oddest of times. It was fine. She was fine.

-x-

When they weren't testing Eren's supernatural abilities, they were wandering around until they found a good place to rest. Armin would flop down on the grass and she would follow his lead at a more sedate pace. They would crowd around a book and read through the afternoon until their growling stomachs couldn't be ignored.

Today, she ended up leaning back against the side of a building, with Eren curled up next to her and Armin's head propped up against her stomach as he read aloud. Mikasa tilted her head back and closed her eyes, letting the sun warm her face as a counterpoint to Eren's cold pressing into her side. The sound of Armin's voice washed over her. There were worse ways to spend a day.

-x-

One night, Mikasa and Eren sat in the shadows of the staircase and listened to Armin and his grandfather argue. That they were fighting was rare enough in itself, but Armin's voice was raised, making it an even more unusual occurrence. The cause of the fight was Armin's wish to explore the Outside.

"There's plenty of death inside these Walls! You don't need to go rushing off to go find it Outside!"

"I'm going to find life," Armin had replied. His voice was firm. "And I'm going to live it to the fullest, no matter how short it might be."

"You stupid boy," his grandfather whispered, pulling him into a crushing hug. "You're going to get your fool-self killed."

"I don't want to simply survive. I want to live. And I can't find that satisfaction in a cage."

"You can have a satisfying life inside the Walls," he said, almost pleading.

"No," Armin said, full of regret. "I can't."

-x-

Mikasa thought that she might have once been able to live a fulfilling life inside the Wall. But that illusion had broken as easily as Eren's body had that night.

She tried to imagine being satisfied with a life inside the Wall. She didn't really have anything that she enjoyed. No, that wasn't quite true. She enjoyed making Eren happy. She owed him and he deserved it. He was everything to her, though Armin had slowly and unwittingly been worming his way into her heart.

She would do what Eren wanted and live his dream of joining the Survey Corps for him, but she thought that she would be happy with a simple life inside the Wall, so long as Eren and Armin were with her.

-x-

Then they decided to see if Eren could step into people and control them. Armin's books had referred to it as 'overshadowing.' Naturally, they would use themselves as the test subjects. Once they actually tried it out, they decided that it needed a new name. Eren was nothing like a shadow. No, he was an overwhelming force and it was more like…possession.

It was relatively painless, but it was cold, numbing. It felt like everything that she was made of was being suppressed, pushed down under the force of Eren's will. Eren possessed their – her? no, their – body, filled it with himself until there was no room left and they had to be pushed further and further down. He dripped through the cracks and took up space that she didn't know she had left to give.

(She hadn't thought that she had that much self-identity left to subdue.)

-x-

After, she realized that blood was trickling out of Armin's nose. She brought her hand up to touch under her own nose. It came away smeared with blood. She turned her head (slowly, like the muscles were stiff) to consider Eren.

He looked…energized. His face was fierce and there was a fire in his eyes that Mikasa had seen before – when he was stabbing a grown man in the chest with a knife.

"You're so alive," he said. "Both of you. Even you Mikasa."

She wasn't as surprised as she would have been. She had felt her will as Eren pressed his down upon hers. It was stronger than she had thought, though it was still no match for his. How odd though, that her will to live would have been triggered by his possession of her.

"So alive," Eren repeated.

He promised that he wouldn't do that without their permission. Armin had insisted.

-x-

Mikasa could see why Armin was reluctant to let Eren possess him again.

A body was only meant to hold one spirit, she thought. And Eren's sprit was so very strong.

-x-

Mikasa let him possess her body more often than was healthy, probably. An obvious detrimental side effect was the headaches that she had started getting.

"Sorry," Eren muttered guiltily.

She shook her head at him fondly. They went away easily enough. All Eren had to do was reach a hand inside her head and let the icy-prickles do their work.

-x-

Eren was able to hone his ability to step inside of her and wear her living skin. Mikasa found a simple pleasure in Eren's joy in being alive in some small way. She didn't mind the numbing effects. Life was good.

-x-

And then the Colossal Titan appeared.

-x-

A hand on the Wall, a monstrous face above it. The Wall, kicked inward, large chunks of it flying to land on shops, houses, people. Screaming and smoke and steam (Titan steam). And Eren's voice, too loud and too close, saying in her ear, "My Mom's house is that way!"

And then he was running and his feet were barely skimming over the ground and Mikasa was being pulled along. She had the feeling that if she stopped, the scarf would choke her.

And then Eren was surging into her and she wasn't in control of her body anymore. It wasn't nearly so painless this time, like icy needles being shoved through her nerve-endings.

"Mom! Mom!" she was shouting, in a voice that both was and was not her own. She was Mikasa Ackerman; she did not shout. She did not cry. But her body was not hers to control right now, and the tears streaming down her face did not belong to her, though it was her body that produced them. Eren's panic was her panic; their heartbeat was loud in their ears.

Mikasa was slipping down faster. Eren was clawing his way further in, lodging himself so far in that she'd never be able to get him out. The body fell to its knees in the rubble and began scrabbling at the debris.

"Mom? Mom! It's me, Eren!"

A woman (Mom), her face twisted in a grimace of pain and confusion. "Eren?"

"Yes, Mom, it's me," her mouth said. "It'll be okay."

Her eyes were fixated on the scarf. "A cruel joke," she whispered.

"It's not a joke, I promise, Mom. We'll explain everything when we free you."

"No, my legs," she said. "Run! Run now while you still have the chance!"

"I'll carry you," Eren insisted with her mouth. "I'm going to save you! We're going to save you!"

"Why don't you ever listen to me?" she cried out. "You could at least obey my last wish!"

And Mikasa thought of her own mom, who screamed "Run!" at her motionless daughter until she was cut down.

Dimly, Mikasa wondered what – Mom! – Mrs. Yeager saw when she looked at them. Armin had wondered how thin the veil between life and death was when someone was about to die and she needed to stop thinking like that because Mom was going to die! Concentrate, Mikasa!

But Mikasa couldn't. She couldn't focus at all because everything was fuzzy and heavy why was this beam so heavy

They clawed at the rubble until the stubs of their fingers were bleeding. And still they kept going.

The body wasn't getting enough air, it was switching between rapid shallow ones and deep gasping ones. Stupid, weak body. Too heavy! (Mom, please.)

She couldn't think. Their thoughts were twisting around in her brain, where did they begin? Was this where they would end?

They pulled at the beam.

Pull harder.

We're trying!

(Please Mom, get up.)

Titan. Primal fear. Hate.

We're scared.

She couldn't think. There was only action.

TitanTitanTitan!

Someone grabbed at them and they yelled. They had to go back. Mom was still there! They were being carried further away and the Titan was still headed towards Eren's mom. Her hands beat the back of the man who was carrying them. "Wait! We have to go back!"

The last thing they heard was Kalura Yeager (mommy) shouting, "The key! You must give it to Grisha! He has answers in the basement – "

The rest was just flashes:

A leering face, spindly fingers plucking their Mom from the ruins of the house, lifting and squeezing –

Bodies weren't supposed to bend that way and that grotesque head was tilting back –

A gaping jaw.

Mikasa couldn't look away. Eren wouldn't let her.

Crunch.

Her face contorted and their vision blurred with tears, for just a moment. They stared at her hands. They were bleeding. They were holding a key.

Her body was taking tiny, hitching breaths. Eren shrieked. Her mouth said, "No, no no no no nonono," then broke off into a low moan that kept going.

Then there was anguish and pain and she was drowning in the howling storm of Eren's emotions. There were no words anymore, just a keening wail that grew and grew.

Mikasa didn't cry, in public or in private, she didn't scream or yowl or whine – Mikasa didn't make any of these animal noises that were coming out of her body, but Mikasa didn't really exist at the moment. She gasped, and then Eren was gone, ripping himself out of her.

She went limp (so heavy) and stared blankly at the ground (so tired). Her nose was bleeding. She could feel it dripping sluggishly, leaving a little trail. Like they were leading the Titans right to them, she thought half-hysterically. Did that actually happen? Could Titans follow blood traces the way other predators did? (We're trapped behind these Walls like fucking cattle – )

No one knew much about the Titans, except that they were evil evil evil – she stopped herself, because she could feel the imprint of Eren – but it wasn't really him; she knew that because it was so empty – in her mind, pressed into her thoughts so deep that she knew he wouldn't ever leave her.

She felt comforted. She felt like she was going to throw up.

While she was fighting down the nausea, Hannes must have felt like it was safe to speak.

"I didn't know that you were that close to her, Mikasa."

Her voice was hoarse from screaming. "There are a lot of things that you don't know."

-x-

Somehow she made it to the evacuation ship and then there was Armin, standing right beside her where Eren was not, supporting her. He saw the dried blood around her nose and knew what had happened.

Her nail beds were raw and exposed, caked with grime and blood. Armin was gentle as he cleaned them best he could. He tried not to hurt her. So gentle. It didn't hurt anyway. It didn't feel like anything.

It was quiet in her head.

Eren still hadn't reappeared.

-x-

When he came back, Eren said, "I'm going to kill all the Titans."

He said, "Every last one of them."

He said, "I'm going to kill them all."

Mikasa believed him.

-x-

(Later, Eren said, "I'm sorry."

Mikasa forgave him. Of course she did. How could she do anything else?)

-x-

In all of the confusion and horror that came with being forced to evacuate their home because of a Titan invasion, it took a little while for the shock to wear off. Once it did, there were pressing needs, like food and shelter and identification papers.

Temporary housing had been set up – though calling it 'housing' was a bit of a stretch – so that took care of one need. (The inner walls had children's shelters, of course, but they weren't for Outsider refugees.)

They were supplied with refugee cards, which basically verified that they were from Shiganshina and therefore had no other documentation. If they lost those, then they really would be like ghosts in the system of bureaucracy that kept churning.

The issue of food was a bit more worrying; it became very quickly apparent that there were too many people and not enough food to go around.

-x-

Once, they overheard a guard loudly wishing that more of the refugees had died so that there wouldn't be as many mouths to feed. Eren snarled. Somehow, the man tripped and ended up sprawled in the dust. Low chuckles rippled through the crowd. The man's ears burned red in humiliation, but there was no one that he could blame his loss of dignity on. He stalked away, leaving Eren looking immensely pleased with himself.

Even with fear-mongers like that guard, there was enough food for now, and that was what mattered. Surviving one day at a time.

-x-

Surviving was hard though, and it only got harder as time passed and resources diminished. For a small while, they had Armin's grandfather, and then he was sent off to die in a meaningless war.

"He didn't come back as a spirit," Armin whispered, clutching at the hat. "Why?"

Mikasa could give him no answer.

-x-

Mikasa didn't ask if he had seen his parents' spirits after they had died. She wasn't that cruel. Perhaps being a spirit influenced Eren's tact, because he never asked about Armin's parents either.

-x-

She pitied Armin sometimes. Not all ghosts were like Eren.

And after the Titans breached the Wall, there were a lot of restless spirits.

-x-

Those who mocked Armin for being weak did reluctantly acknowledge his incredible intelligence, but none of them understood his mental fortitude. After all, he had grown up seeing the spirits of the dead, and not all people slipped away peacefully into the night.

According to Armin, there were plenty of refugees who had come back from the war as spirits. Missing limbs were the norm, and tame compared to some of the other injuries that the spirits had retained. From what little he shared with them about it, Mikasa gathered that it was not all that unusual for Armin to see spirits with their heads caved in or their guts spilling out of their torso – or for them to be little more than a head and torso together.

Of those that had been bit in half by the Titans, Armin saw shadows and phantoms. They were not fully aware and followed patterns. They were beyond his help. There was one woman, he said, who sometimes appeared in the market, always doing the same thing: dragging herself around by her arms and reaching out to people who couldn't see her.

They avoided that particular market.

It wasn't like they had money to shop there anyway. Armin became remarkably proficient at pickpocketing, but he was also the better actor of the two of them; it was usually fell to him to deceive marks with that air of innocence that he could wrap himself in while Mikasa relieved them of their money. Eren contributed too, making things fall or bang together to provide a distraction.

They got by.

-x-

They learned to go without; they learned what it was like to feel cold and hungry and dirty. Always dirty. Mikasa got used to the persistent feeling of uncleanliness. Being able to brush her teeth was a lost cause, but she quickly learned how to wash herself without taking her clothes off.

There were usually working sinks in the public washrooms. Using the cold water that these sinks provided, she would wet a rag and rub at the rough bar of soap that she and Armin shared until there was a bit of a lather. Then she could scrub her skin in patches until the worst of the grime was gone. She could also tilt her head under the tap and clean her hair that way, scrubbing at her scalp with soapy hands and rinsing as best she could. Her hair dried stiffly and became coarse because she didn't have any soap specifically for hair, but it was at least a little less greasy.

In the summer, she would also clean her clothes in a sink; after, she would wring out as much water as she could from them and then wear her damp clothes to let the sun dry them. In the winter, however, she didn't wash her clothes all that often, because they stiffened in a layer of ice instead of drying.

She and Armin wore their clothes until they were threadbare before getting replacements. It was more difficult to steal clothing, so they generally saved up some of the money that they stole until they were able to afford new clothes. It made all the difference in how they were treated, too. How presentable they appeared directly correlated to how respectable they were assumed to be. Two polite, slightly dirty children with nice clothes were treated with much less suspicion than two ratty refugees.

-x-

In the slums, it wasn't just that people couldn't get clean. It wasn't just that necessities like food and shelter were in high demand but in short supply. It wasn't just that no one cared enough about the refugees to vaccinate them to prevent disease or to give them medicine when outbreaks happened as a result. (Everyone knew that they weren't really welcome in Wall Rose and that the more the refugee population dropped, the better.)

In addition to all that, there were also the leers that were directed at them in the guise of warnings that the slums were dangerous for two kids to wander alone – one of whom was an 'Oriental' while the other was small and pretty.

But they weren't alone and Mikasa wasn't worried about these would-be traffickers. Not anymore.

Eren's hatred for traffickers was eclipsed only by his hatred for Titans, and he poured out his fury on those who would dare hurt Armin and Mikasa. It was always satisfying when those smirks turned into whimpers of fear.

Mikasa used her haphazard fighting skills, as did Armin. He had long since accepted that fighting against those who would hurt them was now a necessity. Their adversaries were no longer young, untried bullies but old predators in human form.

They fought quick and dirty in order to live another day. They were refugee children in a city full of refugee children. Eren was a dead child in a world where children died every day. People didn't have any sympathy left over for them and they learned that they could rely on no one but themselves.

Usually they applied a combination of Mikasa's physical prowess with Armin's tactical knowledge and Eren's supernatural abilities. Sometimes, though, there were complications and things didn't always go according to plan.

-x-

Once, they were ambushed by four men, although they thought there were only three at first. They each claimed one, Eren quickly pinning one man to the wall by shoving his hand into his chest and squeezing the heart. He had only recently developed this technique and it took a lot of focus and effort from him, but it was very effective.

Armin was finishing off his and she had just downed hers. She was intending to go help him when he shouted, "Mikasa! Move!"

She reacted instinctively, jumping to the side even as her mind caught up to the quiet cues that her body was responding to. She heard the whisper of cloth and saw the gleam of a knife sliding into the space where her torso had been just a few seconds before. With a sweep of her leg, he was unbalanced, and a swift kick to his kneecap finished the job. He crashed heavily against the cobblestones and Mikasa stared blankly down at him. This man had almost killed her.

Eren took great pleasure in crushing his heart. Neither of them protested.

After, Armin shyly told them that a spirit had warned him.

"You saved my life," Mikasa said.

"You saved her life," Eren repeated.

Armin's face tinted pink at their gratitude.

-x-

After the initial numbness had faded and their basic needs had been met, they realized that Grisha Yeager had disappeared. The chances of finding him were slim. People would be sympathetic to their plight, but resigned. There were plenty of missing people. The majority of them would have been eaten by the Titans.

So they searched for him themselves at Eren's insistence. Armin asked as many spirits as he could to help. Eren stretched the boundaries of his freedom, but no matter how hard he strained himself, he couldn't find his father.

Mikasa asked anyone she could for information. There was a trick to it, softening her face and letting her lips quiver a little. She wasn't as good at it as Armin was, but it got the job done. When dusk fell, she donned another persona. She didn't make a very frightening picture, but she let her emptiness bleed into her eyes and stared people dead on. It unnerved them enough to talk.

People recognized his name ("Grisha Jaegar? Isn't he the man that saved us from that plague?") but no one had seen him and not a whisper of a rumor reached them.

The key burned in Mikasa's mind.

-x-

One day, Mikasa noticed that Eren's face had been changing, little by little. That shouldn't have been happening but she knew that she wasn't imagining it.

"You're growing," she observed one day.

They had learned was that he couldn't see his reflection in a mirror or a pool of water, but he was able to see his own elongated limbs and map out the plains of his face with his fingers.

"Huh, I guess I am."

-x-

"Spirits aren't supposed to age. It doesn't make sense," Armin said when they told him their findings.

"Nothing about Eren makes sense," she pointed out.

"I know, but I'd still like to know why," he sighed. Armin had a scholar's mind. It was a pity that it was being wasted in the slums. Armin had a future, she thought, then immediately felt guilty and glanced at Eren, who didn't. It was her fault, but he never blamed her for it. He never gave in to hopelessness like she did sometimes. His eyes never lost that spark.

-x-

Mostly, they spent a lot of time living day-to-day and waiting until they could apply to the military. It was their new goal, with Eren being its strongest advocate. He hated Titans. Mikasa and Armin did as well, but he was the one who really pushed for them to join the military.

It would give them a roof over their head and the guarantee of three meals a day. It would also ultimately gain them an early and gruesome death. They both knew that but, honestly, for them, death wasn't the all-consuming fear that it was for others.

Mikasa knew that she would go wherever Eren directed and Armin wasn't about to leave them. "As if I would let you go on your own," was his justification. He was telling the truth, but Mikasa knew how much it affected him to see the dead refugees shuffle around in anguish. He still waited until they were both old enough to join the military together.

That day came soon enough, and as soon as they were both able to, they signed up. The only documentation that they needed for their applications were their refugee papers and then they went in for a preliminary physical, which Armin squeaked by. They were fortunate that the military wasn't very picky when it came to accepting applications. After all, Mikasa thought cynically, it needed all the cannon fodder that it could train up.

-x-

Their first day, Mikasa and Armin sat by themselves in the mess hall with Eren an invisible presence hovering behind them. Drill Instructor Shadis had passed over her and a few others when he berated the rest of the group earlier in the day; Mikasa could see that there were some who were curious about that. Some people had found out that she and Armin were from Shiganshina and it looked like they wanted to ask about the Titans' attack. She ignored them, preferring to listen to the surrounding conversations. One guy's voice raised above the quiet din as he declared that he wanted a nice, safe job with the Military Police.

Eren growled. There was a cracking noise and some cutlery began to rattle.

She went on eating evenly, Armin following her lead. People eventually looked away and she muttered, "Calm down, hothead." Eren subsided with a grumble, though he continued to glower across the room.

They would probably get a reputation here as well. Eren's little display was just icing on the cake. That was fine with her.

-x-

Some guy – she thought it was the same one who had been talking about how he wanted to join the Military Police – complimented her on her hair. She didn't know why; it was just hair. Although, she considered, she had finally gotten access to a hot shower and some good quality-soap earlier that day, so she was clean like she hadn't been for a long time and her hair was shiny again. Eren, hovering beside her, flicked at it and asked, "How are you going to fight Titans with long hair?"

She had a very vivid vision of being plucked from the air from her hair. The image continued to its logical conclusion: with Mikasa being gnashed between the teeth of a Titan.

She blinked away the vision of red pulp spraying everywhere. It had unsettled her enough that she said, "I'm going to cut it," out loud before remembering that she shouldn't reply to him in public. She kept walking and hoped that no one had heard her.

She was dimly aware of the commotion going on behind her: Someone was yelling, "What the hell did you wipe off on my shirt?" and the guy's deadpan response, "My faith in humanity." Her fellow trainees were a bit odd.

-x-

Mikasa got along well enough with the girls who were in her dorm, but their interactions had some stiltedness that came from unfamiliarity and distrust. They weren't that far into their training, however, when something happened that brought them all closer together. The event in question was Mikasa's first period, and it was…an interesting experience.

-x-

Mikasa's body had been changing on her, growing taller, which she didn't mind, and growing curves, which she wasn't so keen on. She endured this second occurrence with stoicism and gave it as much attention that it deserved. That was to say, not much at all.

Sometime before signing up for the military, she and Armin had gone to get more clothes, so that they wouldn't look like dirty Outerwall refugees any more than they already did. Among the things that she had bought were breast-bands, because it had become apparent that she could no longer ignore the changes that her body was making on her. "You'll be a woman soon," the shop assistant had giggled and Mikasa remembered thinking of all that she had endured in her short life (blood and fear and pain and screams). Was she not a woman already?

She had dismissed the comment as unimportant. Perhaps she should have paid more attention.

She wasn't naïve. It had been many years since she had been that innocent girl who had asked her parents about where babies came from. She knew where babies came from. She was no stranger to the perversions of adults. Men who followed her down alleys (and subsequently regretted it) had told her what they wanted to do to her and the traffickers had spared none of the gruesome details.

But somehow she had missed this. No one had prepared her for it.

-x-

This was how it happened:

She went to bed with a minor ache low in her stomach. It might have been something that she had eaten, but Sasha seemed fine and that girl had cleaned off a significant portion of her plate. She decided to try and sleep it off, hoping that it was nothing. She had a restless sleep until Eren woke her in a panic over the spreading blood across her upper thighs.

Her first thought was that she had been attacked because there was no other explanation for the stabbing pain in her lower abdomen. Her second thought was to castigate herself for letting her guard down. Her third thought was that her carefully probing fingers had found no wounds on her stomach. The problem was coming from…lower.

Eren was babbling that he hadn't seen an attacker, he hadn't even noticed anything until she had turned over and he saw the blood, he was so sorry, he didn't know what was wrong, was Mikasa alright?

At this point, Eren's fluctuating emotions knocked a little mirror off of a nightstand and it shattered against the floor. This woke a few of the other girls up, and no matter how discreet Mikasa could be, there were limits and she was bleeding.

In the confusion, Ymir was the one who finally explained to her what was happening and it was Krista who supplied her with the materials needed to take care of it. Bandage wrappings with cloth pads that needed to be changed regularly. A pair of pants to borrow because hers were bloody. A packet of herbs to empty into some hot water to take away the pain.

A quick trip to the kitchen to boil some water couldn't be arranged because they locked the doors at night. The kitchen's security was top notch (Sasha's fault, obviously), so there was no getting around that. She ended up drinking lukewarm water with herbs that were insufficiently mixed in; it tasted like sludge and Mikasa drank the whole thing anyway because it helped, bring the pain in her abdomen to a dull ache.

She wasn't impressed with the knowledge that he body was going to be doing this to her every month for decades. And anyway, she thought with an annoyed sigh as she stripped her bed of its sheets and piled all her bloody things into a corner to deal with tomorrow, how was she to have known? The men who shouted lewd comments to her as she walked by had never once mentioned this, nor did women talk about this openly.

After she flipped her mattress over as a temporary solution, she told Ymir this. The other girl had grumbled but sat them down and given the whole dorm an impromptu lesson on puberty and sex and safer sex. By the end of the conversation, Eren was looking as queasy as she felt.

And all in all, it was a rather unfortunate event that none of the other girls ever teased her for, because it turned out that a fair number of the girls had also badly needed the information and were grateful that Ymir was willing to provide it.

(Mikasa didn't think it was a coincidence that soon after this incident, they were given mandatory Sex Ed classes. And just when Eren had been able to look her in the eye again without blushing.)

-x-

Ultimately, Mikasa found the whole period thing irritating and time-consuming. It was messy and inconvenient and the last thing that she needed was more blood in her life. By the end of the week, she had come to the definite conclusion that whoever had designed the uniform pants had obviously not been a woman.

-x-

As her relationship with the other female trainees tentatively grew, Mikasa also turned her attention to the matter of her studies. Besides the physical aspects of their training, the instructors placed a focus on classroom learning that she had not predicted, which Armin was naturally delighted at.

Mikasa had enough of an education that a girl from her background was expected to have. She had essential life skills, like: how to bargain with shopkeepers, do the repairs needed in a house, milk a cow, do the laundry, fight off an attacker, sew, identify poisonous plants, balance finances, cook, chop off a chicken's head, stab a grown man so that he was sure to die – Mikasa knew a lot of things.

Schooling had been mandatory in Shiganshina but only up until the age of twelve. Most people learned their letters and numbers, but folks were practical – even if they were deliberately ignorant about the danger that Titans possessed – and a complete education wasn't required for many jobs. Then there was the Titan attack, and no one cared if refugee slum kids were in school or not.

Mikasa, who had grown up on a farm, had never set foot into a classroom in her life. Neither had Eren, for that matter; anything that Doctor Yeager couldn't teach him, Kalura could. Armin had attended a public school for one year only, before dropping out because of bullies and boredom. He had access to books that his peers didn't (and never would, if one considered the books on the Outside that he had found) and was content to learn at his own pace.

In any case, the classes at the training centre were a fairly new experience for the three of them. Armin took to them like a duck to water now that there were no snot-nosed brats throwing things at the back of his head – largely thanks to Mikasa and Eren's efforts; anyone who so much as looked at Armin wrong was liable to be visited by a dead-eyed girl wielding knives or they'd have a series of coincidentally terrifying supernatural events happen to them.

-x-

So maybe they developed a bit of a reputation. A freaky duo, Ackerman and Arlert were, best not to get on their bad side.

Whatever. It helped when they wanted to be left alone, like when they were trying to learn. Mikasa didn't mind sitting still for the classes, but it was more difficult for Eren, who floated lazily around and made the occasional disparaging comment. .

Fortunately for him, they didn't spend too much time in the classroom; they had to attend the classes mostly to make sure that they knew the basics of different subjects and wouldn't embarrass the military. The only subject that they delved into with depth was that of Titans. This was also the only class that Eren would be still for. He sat on the floor next to Mikasa and soaked in everything that they were taught about the Titans. After each class, his eyes would be both hungry and hunted, green gleams in a corpse-white face.

-x-

Eren said, "As a kid, it was my dream to join the Survey Corps."

And then he was murdered and attached to the girl that couldn't save him, she could help but think.

"I know." She did know. Eren got like this sometimes. He would repeat things that he had already told her. The best she and Armin could figure, it was a result of being a spirit. Recently she had found herself forgetting that he wasn't alive anymore (he talked with her and grew older with her; he was always with her – he was her friend), but then he would do something like this and remind her all over again.

She let him ramble for a minute, and he started to get more frenzied. When she glanced over at him, she saw the bloodlust in his eyes. Oh, he had started ranting about Titans. A twinge of hate crept through her brain, but she let go of it, aware that feeling Eren's residual emotions was one of the effects of being possessed by him as often as she was.

" – kill them all," he said, then blinked and settled back into reality. He didn't acknowledge his lapse in memory though she knew he was conscious of it. He used to be distressed at his slips, but now he just accepted them. Instead of commenting on it, he grinned at her, wide and toothy with his eyes squinted shut. "But Mikasa's the best, so she's going to live that dream for me!"

"Yeah," she agreed. The bruises around his neck stood out sharply. She touched the scarf.

-x-

Eren had disappeared a little while ago and the jagged emptiness at her side was unsettling, so she looked for Armin, who would understand. She found him reading in a hallway near the kitchen. She gently nudged his leg with the toe of her book and he peeked up from his book. She was holding her 3D Manoeuver Gear underneath one arm, and with her other hand, she held up a cloth and bottle of cleaning oil. He nodded and she dropped down beside him. Once they were both settled and comfortable, she began to meticulously clean her 3DMG. After a few minutes, Armin leaned into the contact and soon he was completely engrossed in reading again.

Since they had made sure to be as unobtrusive as possible, no one bothered them or even really interacted with them (except for Sasha, who had only grinned and put a finger to her lips as she snuck into the kitchen).

When Eren flickered back to her, he simply sat on Armin's other side and rested his head on his shoulder.

-x-

As a rule, Armin said, spirits didn't tend to interact with the living. Not the way Eren did, at least.

He was a singular case, because of how self-aware he was. He had followed the scarf at first, Armin theorized, confused and disoriented, not yet realizing that he was dead. He should have faded into nothing more than an occasional chill; most spirits, once they realized that they were dead, didn't stick around. But Eren had become fascinated with Mikasa and had just hung on, a tenuous grip that strengthened as time passed.

"I think he takes your life force," Armin finally confided.

Mikasa considered this. It made sense. "I don't mind."

"I know," Armin said. "I just wanted you to be aware of it."

Mikasa regarded him. He accepted her and Eren, and he tried to look out for them. "You're a really good friend, you know that?"

He smiled shyly. "Thanks."

-x-

Some spirits seemed to be able to sense that Armin could see them. Mikasa would occasionally see his clothes flutter even though there was no wind or the room would get very cold for no reason. She knew it wasn't Eren, because those things only happened when he was angry or excited.

They were trying to get his attention, Armin explained. It was mostly harmless.

Sometimes it wasn't.

One time, Armin came back from the library with red-rimmed eyes and scratches on his arms. Mikasa wasn't going to say anything, but Eren, being brash like he always was, asked about them.

Armin said, "A spirit wanted me to tell her daughter who had killed her."

"But your arms are all scratched up."

"The dead usually don't interact with the living." His eyes flicked between the two of them. He added, almost apologetically, "When they do, they don't know limits. They forget how easily the living can get hurt."

"Oh," Eren said, and dropped the subject.

Later, when Eren wasn't around (he had disappeared to wherever he went when he wasn't with them), Mikasa told Armin, "Eren doesn't hurt me."

Armin stared at her for a long moment. "No," he said finally. "I guess he doesn't."

And that was the last time that Armin brought it up. He was a good friend that way.

-x-

Once, Mikasa had asked Armin if he knew how to get rid of spirits.

"Not permanently. I can temporarily banish them, but I can't send them off to the After. From what I've read, that information used to be available, but after the Titans appeared, humanity forgot. There are so many lost souls out there," he said softly, "that need to be put to rest."

-x-

Mikasa wore the key under her clothes, close to her skin and protected by the scarf. She hadn't forgotten it and neither had Eren.

-x-

Eren would go through these random bouts of sullenness and depression. If she didn't know better, Mikasa would think that it was puberty. She had personally never experienced the mood swings that seemed typical to her age group, but Eren was like the poster boy for emotional difficulties.

"I just get so angry," he confided to her. "I don't think I was like this when I was alive."

Mikasa thought back to a little boy who stabbed two men, and then kept stabbing and stabbing. She said nothing.

-x-

Sometimes, she asked, "Eren, what's wrong?"

Sometimes, he replied, "I wish I could kill them all."

At these times, his voice was so forlorn that for an instant he sounded like the little boy that he wasn't.

-x-

As the years passed, Eren was able to move further and further away from the scarf, though he didn't like to.

"It makes me lose myself," he had explained to her once. "I start forgetting and I just become angry. I'm not a very nice person when I'm angry."

Mikasa accepted this confession with the solemnity that it deserved.

-x-

Eren was selfish. It wasn't a revelation.

Mikasa was also selfish. Armin was too.

She bore no grudge against Eren, who just wanted to feel the sun on his (her) skin again and be alive for a little while. Neither did she resent Armin, who wanted to keep his identity and body as his own.

Mikasa understood both viewpoints.

She privately – or what passed for private, because there was no such thing as private when there was someone else in her mind – thought that she was a good balance for the two of them. She had a body that she was willing to let Eren borrow and none of the reservations that Armin had.

-x-

There was blood dripping down her fingers, she was choking on dust and tears, and her mother's body went crunch – No, no. That wasn't her mom. That was Eren's. Her mom was behind her, whispering "Run," as she grabbed her arm and squeezed tightly.

"Run, Mikasa," she repeated.

"I'm trying," she said. "You won't let me." Her mom was digging her nails into Mikasa's skin until her clan mark burned.

The pressure abated as her mom hit the floor in a spray of blood.

-x-

She jerked awake, her mother's accusing stare following her into consciousness. Sweat prickled at her back and her pulse fluttered in the hollow of her neck. She reminded herself that Eren was there, watching over her. She eventually drifted back to sleep with the chill of his hand on the back of her neck.

-x-

The days passed by quickly enough for Mikasa, who didn't consider it bragging to acknowledge that she was one of the most skilled trainees there. It all came easily to her. She was a natural. A prodigy, her instructors said.

That wasn't to say that she slacked off. Quite the opposite, in fact; she worked hard and reaped the reward of a strong body. She could feel herself improving every day and she was pleased by her progress. Eren, however, did not have patience like hers.

"I'm just getting frustrated," he burst out. "Training is taking too long."

"You might be already dead, but I'm still alive," she pointed out. "Titans can harm those of us made of flesh and blood." Oh. That was the wrong thing to say. She could feel a tiny tremor starting in her hands as her mind darted to an image of flesh torn from bone and blood spraying out in a fine mist. (Don't think about it.)

Her hands had finally stopped shaking. Ever since that night, she had been in complete control of her body – when Eren wasn't sliding his way into her mind, at least. Now it was changing on her, growing taller, and curvier, and occasionally bleeding.

And her hands quivered. Not often and not a lot, but they did. She had found her mind returning to scenes of carnage and dwelling on them. The smallest of things could set her off, though most notable of them was the smell of burning meat.

"Don't say that, Mikasa!" Eren snapped, drawing her out of her momentary lapse.

"It's true though."

"I won't let you die! I'll protect you!" His eyes shone green in a bone-white face.

She found the courage to able to suppress her body's reaction, which she did so ruthlessly. Her hands stilled. Her breathing was steady and even.

-x-

She needed to let Eren possess her, let the cold burn her away.

-x-

That was exactly what she did. One week later, she let him into her body and he pushed her down and away. She sunk. She floated. Everything was fine.

-x-

She couldn't let Eren possess her too often, however. Putting such strain on her body was ill-advised now that she was in the military. Not only that, but Mikasa Ackerman's body couldn't be seen moving with anything less than perfect grace, not to mention that Eren had distinctly different mannerisms than her.

As an alternative method of coping with her increasing nightmares and flashbacks, she had started to sew again. She hadn't had the time or supplies to sew while they had been living in the slums and by the time they started up their military training, Mikasa had pushed it from her mind.

Sewing always reminded her of her mother, but instead of being assaulted with sudden, violent memories of her death, Mikasa felt a connection to her. Every so often, she would stop to brush her fingers against her hidden clan mark. She let the repetitive movements lull her into relaxation.

Marco came across her one evening, and he revealed that he also knew how to sew. They started practicing together in one of the common areas during their free evenings. Armin usually studied off to the side, with Eren reading over his notes and giving him little quizzes.

On one such evening, Connie wandered in on them, and proceeded to pester them until eventually confessing that he had always wanted to learn how to sew. He gave them both a little glare, like he was daring them to say anything about it. They didn't. Marco, because he was a nauseatingly kind person, and Mikasa, because she didn't really care.

So that was how it came to pass that she and Marco started trying (with varying degrees of success) to teach Connie how to sew. He was determined, and what he lacked in talent he made up in enthusiasm.

-x-

Their little sewing lessons drew some attention, most noticeably from Bertolt. He had taken to hovering somewhere in the background before finally stepping forward and shyly expressing a desire to learn as well. Wherever Bertolt was, Reiner was sure to be close by. In no time at all, Bertolt looked right at home with a needle held gingerly in his large hands but Reiner wasn't having as much success.

Krista and Ymir had been passing by and Krista couldn't help but stop to come to his aid. She then roped Ymir into grudgingly admitting that she knew how to knit, although she claimed that Mylius was better at it than her. Mylius was indeed very good at it, and soon the air was filled with the quiet clacking of his and Ymir's knitting needles.

They came back the next day too, and the next after that. It was around this time that Jean skulked in and meekly accepted a needle and thread from Marco, mumbling something about it being practical to know basic repairs to clothing, given that Titan-fighting tended to be hard on clothes. Every so often, his eyes would dart to Mikasa and his ears would flush red.

Then Thomas and Nac dropped by, looking for Mina, who had been sitting off to the side with Armin. It turned out that Thomas' mother and older sister were seamstresses, and he was more than happy to help. He left for a little while, returning with a large sewing kit and a stammering Franz, who explained that he wanted to make something nice for someone (as if they weren't all aware of his giant crush on Hannah).

Somewhere along the line, Annie had slipped in, and had entered into a quiet conversation about literature with Armin and Mina. Eren, apparently bored of listening to their discussion, flitted between people, watching people's progress – or lack of it. He laughed as Jean hissed out an expletive; from the sounds of it, he had pricked his finger again.

By the time Sasha wandered in a week later, wondering where everyone kept disappearing to, Connie was well-versed in the basics of several types of needlework. He almost choked when Sasha plopped down beside him, gnawing on a piece of (probably stolen) bread, and asked what he was making. Mikasa thought that she was making a lot of unnecessary contact with Connie, and when she actually leaned her head against his shoulder – supposedly to get a better look – Connie's face resembled a tomato. Mikasa took a moment to share a smirk across the room with Annie.

In the end, it was a sizable group that had come together to work on various types of needlework. Mikasa surveyed this group of people with something like contentment. The feeling only increased when Eren curled up next to her, a cold presence pressing into her side.

And that was how the 104th Trainees Squad Sewing Circle started.

-x-

At one of their meetings, Drill Instructor Shadis stepped in to the room they had commandeered, saying something about wondering where all of his trainees kept fucking off to. He stopped, and carefully surveyed the scene with a deadpan expression.

It could have been the giant, floral blanket that Franz was making for Hannah, (his reasoning was that it would be like giving her flowers and a warm hug at the same time). It could have been the lacy tea-cozies that Thomas was helping Bertolt make. It could have even been the pink sweater that Ymir and Mylius were knitting for Krista. Whatever it was, D.I. Shadis clearly wasn't in the mood to deal with it, and he stepped back out.

Mikasa personally thought that he had no cause to complain, given that requests for mended uniforms decreased significantly among their trainee class.

Honestly, it wasn't even the oddest thing that he had caught them doing.

-x-

The oddest thing they had done would probably be that time that Krista had made everyone flower crowns on a whim. No one wanted to hurt her feelings – Jean muttered that it should be a capital offense and everyone within earshot nodded in agreement – so they all wore them.

"It should look ridiculous, but it doesn't," was Eren's pronouncement when Mikasa and Armin presented themselves to him.

Armin scrunched his nose and said doubtfully, "It's hard enough to get people to respect me without the flower crown. Maybe I should just take it off." A few people had done so already, though not where Krista could see them.

"If you can terrify people in a flower crown, you can do anything," Mikasa said gravely.

Armin had to concede the point.

Mikasa spent the rest of the day walking around with a flower crown. No one laughed at her. In fact, the consensus was that she was becoming a little bit unhinged. It was very satisfying, Mikasa found, to unnerve people on purpose, instead of having the word 'freaky' lobbed at her behind her back.

And anyway, it made Krista beam.

They had training that evening, so Mikasa made it a game with herself to see how long she could last during the 3D Manoeuver Gear training course without dislodging her flower crown.

D.I. Shadis was giving her 'are you serious?' looks. Mikasa was very serious.

Some of the others caught on to her game, and eventually the clearing was filled with a bunch of people moving through the air at high speeds, flipping and turning while trying not to lose their crowns.

Mikasa won, though Annie came in a close second and Reiner wasright behind them.

Eren sat on a tree branch and watched from the sidelines, kicking his feet with a sad little smile on his lips.

-x-

Sometimes, Mikasa didn't want to eat. It would never last for too long, but there were days when she felt her gorge rising at the thought of spearing into food and tearing at it with her teeth. Days when the idea of chewing and swallowing food down into her gullet was unthinkable.

On those days, she would avoid the mess hall until she felt hollowed out and Eren would float in front of her face, green eyes worried. He would be close enough that she could feel his cool breath gently fanning across her cheek as he asked, "Hey, Mikasa, are you okay?"

She would reply with, "I'm fine."

He would say, "Alright," and then sit next to her, as close as he was able to. He was a cold not-quite weight against her, making her side numb.

On those days, Mikasa waited for the numbness to spread to her whole body.

-x-

Like her (and unlike Eren), Armin knew the value of patience, but he never stopped looking for things to do. He still felt like he needed to be more useful, despite multiple assurances from Mikasa and Eren that he already was. Consequently, it wasn't unusual for him to begin a conversation with the words, "You know what I could do?"

"What?" Eren asked.

"I was thinking about whether I could utilize the dead as my spies." When he received no opposition, he continued, "You remember when we were searching for Doctor Yeager and I got spirits to search for him?" A rhetorical question; of course they remembered. "I was thinking something like that. I'm better at talking to them now. Bargaining and bribing and playing them to my expectations. It's just," he shrugged one shoulder, "an idea. It sounded better in my head…"

Mikasa turned the idea over in her mind. It was an interesting one and if anyone could pull it off, it would be Armin. She had no objections. "It's a good idea. And it sounds just fine out loud."

"What she means is that it sounds totally awesome and you should definitely try," Eren 'translated.'

That wasn't exactly what she had meant, but it was close enough.

"Ah, Eren, I had also hoped that you would help," Armin said.

"Sounds fun. I'll do it."

Mikasa approved. It would be good for Eren to have something to do besides follow her around watching all of the things that he wasn't able to do. It had never seemed to bother him before, but the things that he had been missing out on then hadn't had to do with killing Titans. She suspected that was part of the reason why he was so jittery lately.

-x-

Armin threw himself into his new project with a fervor that suggested that he had been thinking about this for a long time. He enjoyed finding out what made people, dead or alive, tick. Employing trial and error, he cajoled and tricked and bribed a fair number of spirits into doing his bidding.

As for Eren, they had found out that over time, he was able to retain more of himself when he moved away from the scarf, enough so that he could almost cross half the city without becoming a tangled knot of rage. He still didn't like it.

"I don't want to leave you," had been the new explanation. "I'm still me now, but it just gets so lonely being away from you. I like staying with you."

Mikasa had accepted this revelation with a pleased little smile that she wasn't quite able to conceal, but now Armin wanted Eren to be able to move even further. They were both determined and it wasn't long until Eren brought back his first piece of blackmail: information from all the way across the city, passed between people who thought that no one was around and that it was safe to whisper their secrets. Mikasa was there when Eren delivered his report and she saw their smiles mirror each other, all blood and fire.

Armin was a subtle scary. He was the kind of person who didn't hide his intellect, but he let people assume that was all there was to him. Not many people knew just how ruthless he was, she thought, as his smile became sharp satisfaction.

-x-

Graduation snuck up on her and before she knew it, she was doing some final assessments which were pretty much for show. The day before graduation found Mikasa sitting on the floor of her dorm and cleaning her 3D Manoeuver Gear. Eren was floating beside her, hardly making an effort to appear human, corpse-pale and flickering in the light. He suddenly whirled around to face her. She was used to his abruptness and waited for him to say whatever had jumped into his mind.

"Mikasa," he said.

"Yes?" The dorm was empty so it was safe to answer him aloud. Besides, she could tell that what he had to say was serious.

"Have I ever told you how much I love you?"

She reflected. "No."

"Huh, really? I thought I had already said that. Okay then," he said as he pushed himself into her line of vision. "Mikasa, I love you," he declared, looking straight into her eyes.

If he was anyone else, Mikasa would think that he was trying to manipulate her. But he was Eren. He wouldn't do that. Besides, he had no need to do so. She'd do anything for him.

It didn't even matter what kind of love he was talking about; she would take whatever he gave her. She always did. He was the same. Greedy, they were both so greedy.

"I know," she said. "I do too."

These were the unspoken words that didn't need to be said. Still, it was nice to have verbal validation.

"I can't live without you," he said with a cynically amused half-smile.

"I know," she repeated. She wanted to wipe that look from his face (kiss the bitter smile from his lips). She couldn't do that though, so she comforted him in the only way she knew how. "But I can't either."

"That's true," he mused as he leaned against her, a cold pressure on her shoulder that was a counterpart to the warmth in her heart.

-x-

Mikasa graduated first among her class, Armin tenth. His written grades were beyond reproach, but while his physical prowess had improved, he was never going to be a powerhouse. That was okay though, because they were both part of the top ten trainees and they had first choice of divisions.

They already knew what they would pick; Mikasa was going to live Eren's dream and Armin was going to live his parents'. At the same time though, they weren't only following other peoples' dreams while stifling their own. Mikasa had come to realize that while she still absolutely wanted Eren to be able to vicariously live through her, she was joining the Survey Corps for herself too. She thought that Armin had also recognized this, probably a lot earlier than she did.

The Survey Corps would allow them to protect humanity while also escaping from the Walls. The Survey Corps had a high mortality rate, but the chance of temporary freedom combined with the opportunity to gather data on the Titans was enough of an incentive for the both of them and Eren's happiness at this only furthered their own. Things were going according to the plan.

-x-

Then the Colossal Titan appeared again.

-x-

There was a dull horror permeating the air, a hopelessness that Mikasa could have gone her entire life without feeling again. People were staring straight ahead, voiceless or babbling hysterically. Here and there, someone was leaning over to retch or to brace themselves because they felt their knees giving way.

Armin was to provide backup to the frontlines while Mikasa was assigned to the advanced squad that would help with the evacuation. She could see only the faintest tremble of Armin's muscles. More than anyone, he knew what Titans could do to the human body. Still, he was determined and he quipped that he would see them later.

Eren stayed with her a little while, then he said, "I'm going to go see how Armin is." She acknowledged him with a little nod. She was very grateful that Armin had worked at extending his range so much because it allowed him to move between them for checkups and information relay.

-x-

For a little while, she didn't have time to think at all, as she was busy with covering civilian evacuation. Her thoughts would periodically turn to Armin and Eren, but she remained focused on helping civilians get to safety.

Then some selfish merchant decided to block one of the escape gates with his wagon.

Standing on the steaming corpse of a Titan, Mikasa's blood cooled until all of her focus was crystalized on this pompous, privileged man who was delaying evacuation and didn't have enough common sense to fear her. He was making noise about telling her superiors about her behavior until she shoved a (dulled, not that he knew that) blade right under his nose and asked him, "And what kind of tales can a corpse can tell?"

She would have done it too. He must have seen it in her eyes, because he scrambled to obey. It was satisfying.

She made a mental note to tell Eren about it when he came back because she had a feeling that he would approve. She frowned down at her swords. The edges of the blades were worn and blunted already. Eren wouldn't approve of that.

She couldn't kill things (Titans, people) with dull blades. They needed to be sharp for cutting and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing. She apologized to the Squad Leader for being too hasty and wasting two swords on one attack.

He stared at her. "Seriously, what happened to make you so…?"

She blinked, still stuck on the image of a sharp knife piercing through flesh. "What?"

"Nothing."

She pulled up the scarf so that it hid her face as she was thrown back into the most vivid flashback that she had in years. Cold and blood and stabbing and choking –

When she came out of it, she took a moment to reorient herself. There was a bit of sweat beaded at her temples and her heart was racing. Easy enough to ignore. She just needed to find a few Titans to kill. She would be fine enough soon.

-x-

It had been too long. Eren should have been back by now. As much as she didn't want to jump to any conclusions, she felt that something must have happened with Armin. As soon as she was able, she searched them out.

She didn't find them, but she came across a large cluster of soldiers spread out over several rooftops. Most of them were sitting, sporting grim expressions and cradling their heads in their hands. She recognized most of them, so she twisted in the air to land on one of the roofs. The reason for their hopelessness became clear when Sasha explained that Supply Headquarters was overrun by Titans and they didn't have enough fuel to make it over the Wall. They had permission to fall back but no way of doing so.

Mikasa's mouth tightened. She had noticed that she was running low on gas, but she hadn't realized that there was no way to get more. Barring a miracle, they would be trapped in Trost as the Titans infested it.

Reiner and Bertolt suddenly tensed and Mikasa turned to see what they were looking at. Her muscles went taut. From the west came the remnants of 34th squad: Armin and Mina, supporting between them a dazed Mylius and moving as quickly as they could despite the hindrance. "He hit his head," Armin explained when he got close enough. "He probably has a concussion."

That wasn't exactly the information that she wanted to know most though, and it definitely wasn't the reason that Mikasa had readied her blades. In order of importance, her questions were: Where was Eren? And – she tightened her grip on her blades and prepared to launch herself into the air with some of the precious fuel that she had left – why was there a Titan plodding sedately behind them?

"Titans can get nosebleeds?" Samuel asked.

The quiet question sparked realization in Mikasa's mind, so when it whipped its head to the side to focus on her and reached its hand out toward her, she stumbled away from it more because she was caught off guard and reacting on instinct than anything else.

It flinched and let out a low noise, but it continued to reach for her, slower now. It poked one fleshy finger at the scarf. She blinked. It poked again. An animal noise was rumbling out of it. "Mmmmiiii. Mmiii-kkkaa – " Whatever it was going to say was cut off, along with the back of its neck.

Connie dropped down beside her, wiping his forehead with his arm. All that really served to do was wipe the gore on it in a messy streak across his forehead, not that he noticed. "That was a close one, eh, Mikasa?"

"Titans can speak?" someone else asked at the same time.

Mikasa ignored both of them. She knew what the Titan had been trying to say. She stared at its corpse, watching the steam rise, waiting. She saw a wisp that she almost mistook for steam, until she saw it sink into the neck of another Titan. "Fine," she said. "Everything's just fine."

That Titan trudged over and Connie cursed. "What, another one?"

"Leave it!" she snapped.

"But, Mikasa – !"

"I said leave it. It'll be fine."

Her suspicions were confirmed when Armin said, in a low tone, "Mikasa – "

She cut him off. "I've realized."

"It saved us," Mina said suddenly. "There was this abnormal. It ate Thomas and Nac." There were a couple of sounds of dismay at that. They were both well-liked. "It almost ate Armin. It would have got the rest of us if that Titan," a rough gesture at the first Titan's rapidly decaying corpse, "hadn't gone on a rampage. It only attacked other Titans. And the other Titans attacked it too."

"That one will too," Armin assured her, before raising his voice. "Don't attack this Titan! It won't harm us; it only wants to attack other Titans! We've got to get him toward the supply building! It will get rid of the Titans swarming it and we could get more fuel! We could survive this!"

The reactions were not positive. Eventually, Armin got tired of the noise and slammed his boot down against the roof-tile. It would have looked obnoxious if it weren't for the serious expression on his face. "Look!" he yelled.

He then launched himself at Eren-in-the-Titan's-body and swung himself up onto his shoulder. He proceeded to stomp around and yell in his ear despite the horrified protests coming from their fellow soldiers. The Titan's eyes didn't so much as twitch in his direction. From there, he jumped and latched himself onto the Titan's nose. Eren remained calm and focused.

That was a lot of trust that Armin was putting in Eren, but he had experienced being possessed by him and he knew how strong Eren's will was. "He's the best chance we have!" Armin yelled from on top of the Titan's nose.

"It's an abnormal! It could be biding his time!"

Mikasa was pretty sure that Armin actually rolled his eyes. "Fine then! If this doesn't convince you then nothing will!"

Mikasa was close enough to hear the quiet, "Open up, and be gentle." The Titan's mouth was already slightly open from panting, so it was easy for Armin to slide downwards until half of him was enclosed between the Titan's jaws. Mikasa was fairly sure that she was the only one who noticed how pale he was and she abruptly remembered that Mina said he had almost been eaten before Eren had saved him.

That might have convinced them of Eren-the-Titan's good intentions, but it also convinced them that:

"You're absolutely batshit fucking crazy, Arlert!"

"And yet I'm alive!" Armin retorted.

"Fine! Fine! We'll help! You nutjob!"

"Very much appreciated," Armin called back sweetly, before heaving himself out of the Titan's mouth with a grimace. His legs were coated in saliva. "The things I do for humanity," he muttered, shaking his head.

While all this had been going on, the Titan had still been walking steadily toward the Supply Headquarters. They came across other stranded squads on their way there and convinced them to help, usually by way of Armin providing another 'look, I'm in a Titan's mouth and I'm not dead' demonstration. Titan-Eren endured it all very well.

-x-

Once they got to Supply HQ, Eren-controlling-the-Titan's-body performed as predicted, slaughtering the other Titans with what Mikasa was sure was no small amount of joy. He waited outside while the humans broke through the windows. There, they found the remnants of those who were supposed to manage Supply HQ. Mikasa let Jean vent his frustrations a little bit, then left Marco to calm him down.

They learned that the Titans had got inside Supply HQ and had made it all the way to the main armory. Before morale could sink again, Armin announced that he had yet another plan. This time there were much fewer objections.

-x-

His plan worked, of course. It was very resourceful, considering that they didn't have that many supplies available to pull it off. The relief of her fellow soldiers was palpable and Mikasa allowed herself a small smile before catching Armin's eye.

He still had an idea for using Titan-Eren, she could tell. She ambled over to him and they quietly debated falling back behind Wall Rose. When she asked him what other options were there, he said, "That boulder. Do you think we could…?"

"It's possible," she said, needing no further elaboration.

"It's too ambitious though," he said, chewing on his lip.

"We could gain back territory for the first time in humanity's history," she said, aware of the listening ears around them.

His eyes were wildfire bright, but still indecisive.

It was his plan and she would be content with whatever he chose to do, but she reminded him that, "The more we delay, the more Titans enter Trost."

Armin nodded. He closed his eyes and thought for another few minutes. She knew that he was carefully going over the different ways that his plan could play out, but Mikasa could feel the tension rising in the room as people waited for his answer. He opened his eyes and took a deep breath. "Everyone! I have a plan!"

-x-

After the initial incredulous shouts had died down, Armin explained his proposal in more detail. With Mikasa backing him and two successes already under his belt, people were more inclined to listen. His plans had delivered them right to HQ with only minimal casualties while ridding the storage room of Titans by using only rudimentary supplies to gain them more fuel. They had seen Armin slide himself into a Titan's mouth without being bit in half. But there were limits. And Armin had just run into them.

"Are you crazy? You want us to depend on a Titan? You want us to protect it?"

To Mikasa's surprise, it was Jean who retorted, "They just saved us, twice-over."

"Exactly! We're about to run out of luck."

Even more surprising was Annie's bored contribution of, "Only idiots rely on luck."

"And Arlert's plan relies on luck!" was the rebuttal.

"No, it doesn't," she said levelly. "You know him. Tell me that he isn't the smartest person here."

"Smart people can still be idiots," Dazz said.

"Oh, I agree," Annie said with a private little smile. "But I don't think that's the case now."

"The whole thing might be moot anyway; I bet the Titan's wandered off or something."

Armin raised his eyes skyward as if begging for patience. "Then let's go see."

As Mikasa had expected, the-Titan-that-was-Eren was still in the same place that they had left him in. She might have thought that he hadn't moved at all from his position if it weren't for the fresh Titan corpses strewn about the street.

Armin moved into his line of vision and yelled. "Do you think that you could pick up that boulder and block the hole in the gate with it?"

The Titan's body gave off the impression of pondering. It gave one short nod.

"Do it then! We'll cover for you!"

A fresh round of protests began and Armin snapped back, "He can pick up a boulder to block the gate!"

"To crush us, you mean!"

Armin didn't dignify that remark with a response, saying instead, "You've already depended on a Titan today anyway!"

"That was different!"

"How?"

"We didn't have any fuel; we were desperate!"

"You're still desperate," Mikasa interjected quietly. They all turned to listen to her. Her reputation was coming in handy again. "Sure, you've got enough fuel to get over the Wall now, but remember that the Armored Titan could show up at any time and break through it."

She saw some faces drain of color at that. Now to hammer the point home. "If you want to run away and hide then go ahead. Spend your last moments with your family. But I will be staying right here so that I can protect my family."

She wasn't good at passionate speeches but she allowed her absolute conviction to leak into her voice. The faces around her slowly changed, hardening into determination. A little emotional manipulation went a long way, she had found, and tugging on heartstrings was sure to elicit the response that she wanted.

Armin gave her a thankful smile and took charge again. "We have to do this quickly though, before more Titans come through the gate. Someone send a message to the higher-ups about what's happening. And while you're at it, tell anyone you meet along the way."

"The fuck are we supposed to tell them? That we're putting our faith in random abnormal Titans?"

"Tell them that we're going to reclaim Trost."

-x-

Working their way through Trost was difficult, but Titan-Eren moved fast and they were making good time. When three people came soaring through the air to land in front of them, Mikasa recognized one of them as her temporary commanding officer while working with the elite to evacuate the city so she signaled to Armin to stop.

A woman with short white hair said, "Commander Pixis sent us. I am Rico Brzenska. This is Ian Dietrich, who is in charge of this mission, and Mitabi Jarnach." She was obviously the spokesperson of the team, and neither of them indicated that they minded her taking the lead. She continued, "We are an elite team meant to ascertain the situation and its possibility of succeeding. What is going on here?"

They told her. Her expression twisted into incredulity. "You were actually serious?"

"Yes," Armin said firmly. "Please allow us to explain." What followed was an account of all that had happened, with Armin using every persuasive technique that he knew. He needed to be very convincing, given that they had started a very risky mission without waiting for the go-ahead from their superiors.

After he finished, there was a tense moment of anticipation before Dietrich nodded at Brzenska. With deliberation, she opened a small metal box, chose a canister from it and loaded it into the flare gun. She aimed toward the sky and shot. A trail of green gas streaked up through the air.

They had permission. They had a chance to prove themselves. With this acknowledgement from the elite, a new energy filled them and they threw themselves back into their task, revitalized. This new vigour didn't help them though, when the Titans swarmed in even greater numbers.

Eventually, Dietrich shouted, "There are too many Titans; we need people to draw them off! Get as many people as you can and crowd against one corner of the Wall. Let Commander Pixis know. Anyone with elite skills should stay behind to help protect him."

Even with this change in strategy, Titans surged past the rough perimeter that they had tried to establish, tearing into the flesh of Eren's Titan. Mikasa forced herself not to panic. It wasn't like Eren could die a second time. She hoped.

Jarnach and Brzenska took care of the Titans attacking him but Mikasa could see that it was already too late. Eren's Titan shell was on the ground, not moving.

"It's over," someone said mournfully.

"It's not," Armin said sharply, eyes fixed on the Titan's corpse. Mikasa knew what he was looking for… There! A tendril of energy that quickly rose up from the steam. It was thinner and more translucent than it had been before and Mikasa found herself holding her breath as it danced into the sky before zeroing in on a target and diving down.

"It's dead. This endeavor was a failure," Brzenska said tersely, her hand moving toward her flare gun. "Your actions have saved the lives of those who had run out of gas, but if you stay here, you'll get them all killed."

"Just wait," she said as another Titan lumbered towards them.

Eren had chosen a big one this time. It had a misshapen head but its distended muscles would be more than capable of lifting the boulder. "That Titan will help us," she said, pointing it out with her sword.

"You're joking," Jarnach said flatly. Mikasa could see why. This Titan looked like it had only just finished eating a couple of people, judging from the bloodstains on its lips. But it had been close by and it was big enough to carry the boulder.

Eren's movements were more awkward and jerky. The trickle of blood from its crooked nose grew more profuse. Mikasa knew what that meant, so she wasn't surprised when its hand lashed out at her; she just jumped away while Eren got the Titan's body under control again.

"Sooorr-eee," it grated out. One of the people behind her swore in shock. "Wiiilll-pooww'rrrrrr."

The words were barely-formed and guttural, likely because of inadequate vocal chords, but Mikasa understood. "Its willpower is stronger than the others'," she said, which she knew was a non-explanation for everyone but Armin. "It's okay. It won't hurt me."

Brzenska's eyes were on her again, narrow and calculating. "On your own head be it."

Mikasa could accept that. To prove her trust in the Titan – her trust in Eren – she jumped up onto its shoulder, Armin right behind her. It only needed to turn its head to bite either of them. It didn't, of course.

Instead, it ploughed on, and didn't stop until it reached the boulder. Up close, it looked much larger than Mikasa had thought and a sliver of doubt worked its way into her mind. Titan-Eren had no such compunctions; he plucked Mikasa and Armin off of his shoulders gently and placed them on the ground. Then, with a determined roar, he picked up the boulder. Mikasa could see the strain immediately, his muscles bulged and trembled as he tilted his head to carry the boulder above it. Slowly, relentlessly, he walked forward. Every footstep was like an earthquake, steam huffed out from his nostrils with every breath.

Mikasa could see the faces around her transform into hope and they fought off the Titans with restored spirit. The only way to lead the Titans off was to run on the ground and distract them, which was as good as suicide. They did it. They were riding on a high of adrenalin fueled by desperation.

An odd thought drifted through Mikasa's mind as she watched Eren. The manifestation of human rage…

With a roar, the Titan's body heaved the boulder down and it crashed into place with a loud rumble. Eren howled in triumph.

Brzenska's legs collapsed out from under her, and she just stared while tears filled her eyes. She raised the gun to the sky and shot out a yellow flare. Success.

All eyes were turned to Eren, wondering, awed. It wouldn't take long for those same eyes to narrow in suspicion and fear, Mikasa knew. There would be questions. Big ones, from powerful people. But for now, everyone was stunned silent.

At that moment, with Eren-the-Ttan's roar echoing around her, Mikasa didn't care one bit.

-x-

After, Armin quietly explained to her what had really happened while she was still helping with the civilian evacuation. "He leapt in and used his abilities to…propel me out, I guess. But then the Titan's jaws snapped shut before I could do anything." He took a shuddering breath. "I thought, for a moment, that he had died. I know, it was irrational, but I thought that somehow, he was gone. Then, I saw the Titan start attacking other Titans and I knew what had happened." His story confirmed what she had guessed.

"Where is Eren now though?" she asked.

His frown told her that he didn't have an answer for her. "He must be tired," he offered eventually.

"Yeah…"

She scanned the courtyard. People were milling around, but there was an undercurrent in the air. Commander Weilman was looking too jumpy for her tastes and she didn't like some of the looks that were being aimed at them. The uneasy feeling grew.

Before she had a chance to suggest to Armin that they start making their way toward an exit, a shout rang out, "Ackerman! Arlert! Report to Commander Smith!"

-x-

They were brusquely escorted through the corridors by grim-faced soldiers who refused to answer their questions. As it turned out, it wasn't just Commander Erwin Smith who had come to see them, but Captain Levi, Humanity's Strongest, as well. This made Mikasa uneasy. She had been prepared for questions from their superiors, but she didn't like that these particular people were expressing interest in them so soon after Eren had been possessing Titans.

-x-

Commander Smith was sitting at his desk, looking completely absorbed in his paperwork. Captain Levi, on the other hand, was openly staring at them as he leaned against the Commander's desk in studied relaxation.

Mikasa wasn't fooled by either of them.

She and Armin had been allowed to sit in the chairs in front of the Commander's desk, but it wasn't a very comfortable experience. Mikasa could feel Captain Levi's stare boring into her head and no one was speaking; the only sound that broke the silence was the Commander's pen scratching across his papers. It seemed like they were waiting for something. For Mikasa and Armin to crack first? It wouldn't happen.

Having them Armin seated in uncomfortable chairs was a transparent tactic designed to unsettle them while also allowing even Captain Levi to loom over them. Mikasa was considering the other power dynamics in the room when the door slammed open. Armin jumped a little in his seat and her shoulders tensed. Neither Commander Smith nor Captain Levi had any visible reaction.

"I'm ready!" a woman announced as she burst into the room. "I'm here to get to the bottom of the mysterious phenomena of Titans suddenly aiding humanity!"

"You're late," Captain Levi said.

"Nonsense! There's no way I could be, not with such an occurrence to investigate! Multiple Titans in different classes that had previously been eating humans all turning on their fellows to help humanity!" She gave a little twirl. "Ahhh! I'm dead, aren't I? I'm dead and in Paradise and this is my reward!"

"Don't be stupid," Captain Levi snapped.

"Hmm, you're right," she said, inspecting her surroundings with a thoughtful eye. "Paradise would be cleaner."

The Captain's eye twitched.

"You must tell me everything!" Not giving them a chance to respond, the woman continued, "They're calling you two some kind of Titan-whisperers!" Mikasa was sure that the rumors were worse than that. 'Outerwall witches,' she had heard.

"Perhaps you should introduce yourself first," Commander Smith said smoothly.

She laughed sheepishly. "Right. Squad Leader Hange Zoë, please to meet you!" she said, turning the full force of her attention onto Armin.

"P-Private Armin Arlert, likewise," he managed to get out, pulling himself together admirably.

"Arlert? As in, Maria and Alphonse Arlert? The researchers?"

"They were my parents," he said quietly.

"I met them briefly. I had a chance to get to know them. Before they went on that research trip. They were good people."

"Yes," Armin agreed. "They were."

Mikasa watched her closely. Was this manipulation or some kind of attempt at genuine compassion? She couldn't tell. Either way, she thought it was cruel.

Squad Leader Hange didn't continue that thread of conversation, instead turning to Mikasa.

Genuine compassion then, probably. Odd.

"Private Mikasa Ackerman," she introduced herself quietly.

"Lovely! Now that we've all gotten to know each other, the details, if you please." There was a manic gleam in her eye that suggested that she would have 'the details' even if they didn't please.

"What details?" Armin asked, too transparently for Mikasa's tastes.

Squad Leader Hange didn't look the least bit deterred. "Now that's the question, isn't it?"

There was a flicker in her peripheral vision. Her eyes slid to the side, quickly enough that there would be nothing suspicious about it but slowly enough to ascertain that Eren was okay.

"I'll kill you all," he was muttering. His eyes were glazed over and he didn't seem to be aware of his surroundings. There was a little smile on his lips.

Squad Leader Hange was still talking. Mikasa tried to keep her attention split between her and Eren.

"…destroy all of you…" he hissed.

"You two!" Squad Leader Hange suddenly declared, pointing a finger at them. "You two know something! And I won't rest until I find out what it is!"

"Mikasa!"

Long years of practice enabled her not to startle at Eren's sudden exclamation, although her hand spasmed a little. Armin's leg jerked. Damn. There was no way that hadn't been noticed.

"I did it," Eren said, his eyes wild, twin beacons in the bruised hollows of a pallid face. Now the bruises that ringed his neck looked like some kind of trophy. "I possessed those Titans! I killed Titans!"

All three of their superiors were studying them with hawk-like intensity. They were acting too suspicious. Dammit.

She knew what happened to those who talked to people that weren't there.

"Private Ackerman," Captain Levi said. "If you know anything about this, you should say so now." She was suddenly aware of the key, resting under the scarf and hot against her skin.

She exchanged a look with Armin. He gave her a little nod to tell her that he would follow her lead. The decision was in her hands.

She glanced at Eren. His teeth were bared in a savage grin as he said, "With this, we can destroy the Titans!"

Then again, it wasn't really a decision at all.

(this is a beginning.)

A/N: We're just going to leave this here on a hopeful note. Maybe in this alternate timeline, things will change enough that certain people who should not have died (yeah, you know exactly who I'm talking about) will get a chance to live. Maybe Mikasa will eventually learn to handle her trauma in more healthy ways.

[SPOILER ALERT for those who haven't read the manga.] I also don't want to deal with how Eren – a spirit with a lot of rage and hate – would react to the betrayal that he would feel from the other Titan shifters, especially since he wouldn't be incapacitated (eg: tied up and waiting for his amputated limbs to grow back) and would be entirely capable of taking his revenge. [END OF SPOILERS.]

Also, a note on Mikasa's characterization in this fic: I wondered how she would react if Eren had died that night and then how that trauma would be furthered by their supernatural connection via the scarf. Basically, I was trying to get across the guilt and self-recrimination that she would feel over how she could have saved him if she was faster, her determination to give him a life since his was cut short, her own self-interest in letting him possess her so that she could stop feeling for a little while, etc. So let me know if I succeeded? Because, seriously, I spent way too long on this.