Disclaimer: Characters belong to Hajime Isayama.

Series drabbles/ficlets. No pairing; if there is, then the most you can get out of this fic is borderline Eren/Mikasa, but either way they will bend towards Family/Friendship more than Romance or anything else.

Theme set: Gamma, taken from 1sentence community LJ. And I broke basically all of the rules, so, yeah. orz.

Review, if you would be so kind. Enjoy your reading!

01 - #11. midnight

Mikasa never sleeps. Or so he thinks.

At least, she never sleeps when he is around, when he is awake. Things like this are not uncommon back when they still had home – it was always her who woke before dawn and stayed up past midnight, doing dishes and cooking and sometimes just staying silent. He thought it was a women's thing, considering how much time she and his mother spent talking to each other in the dim light outside of his window, whispering something he could not quite catch and letting it fade into the dark like some tangling threads of thin smoke.

But sometimes she was just alone, curling up ever so lonely in their couch and sinking in the silence and for one second he thought she was going to cry. No, his Mikasa wouldn't cry. But his Mikasa wouldn't let herself go either, always self-binding in some kind of duty that he never understood, from chores to protecting him. As if she was paying some debt, one barrier that separated her from the real daughter she was supposed to be, carefree and sweet.

He still believed it was a women's thing, until he thinks that maybe it is only a Mikasa's thing. Now that their parents have gone – her parents have gone twice, he reminds himself – there is no mother or such for her to spend the night with. Still she stays up late, sometimes in his room and sometimes in hers, and even though he can never actually witness he knows that still she is lonely. There are no dishes or cooking for her to do now, no books to read, no attacks that should be wary about. There is only her, fully clothed but naked to her core being, and in his dreams he often sees her looking out of the window, eyes yearning for something that has long died in the moonlight. Times like that he wants to reach out so bad, to tell her that he is here for her, that she shouldn't be lonely and should smile more like never before. But the moron he is never does, always retreating to the shadow of his mind, vaguely reminding himself that this hand almost killed her once and these eyes used to show no mercy.

She never spoke a word about the accident. He never had the guts to ask her about it, either, despite her denying his crime in front of others and his horrifying realization.

What marred her pretty features is something unforgivable.

What kind of family is he?

But then again, maybe he has never really been her family.