Something I'm working on! I guess this can be a sort of beginning I suppose. Updates will probably be few and in between since I started school again and it will take up most of my time.

This is an Eren and Mikasa AU, which I suddenly had the thought of a while back. I'm thinking of making this a couple chapters long depending how big updates are I suppose.

Title is from the poem 'i will wade out' by e.e. cummings.

I do not own SNK ect ect.

Eren Jaeger didn't believe in fairy tales.

He thought they were silly, merely children's play.

Of course, when he was younger, he enjoyed them. His mother used to help him build a makeshift fort out of chairs and blankets. They would climb under it and she would tell stories about a princess who was stronger than even the toughest of soldiers, who could defeat a thousand men, who was an army rolled into one human girl and he was infatuated with the thought. He continued to enjoy that story until the passing of his mother, which he still hasn't gotten over yet.

He had also enjoyed it when his best friend Armin would tell him stories. They would sit under the big oak tree in their local park, and Armin would bring out his book that belonged to his grandpa and they would lie there together reading from it, reenacting scenes and mimicking the voices of the characters. Sometimes they would stay out so long that Eren's mother or father would go looking for him and find the two boys asleep and they would laugh and invite Armin over for dinner because of course he was like a second son to them.

They don't do that anymore.

Eren misses it, but it hurts too much to even think about it. He's still friends with Armin, hell, Armin is what keeps him sane most of the time, and the only friend he has.

He thinks he's an almost different person after his mum died.

It was something that couldn't be helped. She was sick. It came so suddenly that Eren was knocked down and he didn't have enough time to get back before she had passed away. He clearly remembered the day she died. It was December, and it was snowing.

It fell silently, and that was how his mother died. The snow seemed to mute everything, quiet things down until it was just the sound of the slow beep… beep… beep… that showed him his mother was still alive. He remembered her grabbing onto his hand, and telling him his favourite story. Before she had gotten to the ending, the slow beeping of the monitor stopped, and so did she.

He was childish, back then. He recalled the moment he woke up his dad and try to make him kiss her so that she would wake up. He had never seen his father more distraught in his whole entire life. His father had to bring him out of the room, while the nurses took care of his mum, and explain to him that life wasn't a fairy tale. That you couldn't bring back the dead no matter how hard you try.

No amount of kisses could bring back Eren's mother, and on that day was the day Eren stopped day dreaming of dragons and knights and princesses.

On that day, Eren grew up and realized life didn't give a shit about what he wanted.