"Take. Your hands. Off me."

Eren's voice was very low, in the same way a tiger makes little sound as it stalks its prey. Mikasa certainly wasn't prey , but it startled her all the same. He never talked to her like that. Even when yelling. When he lectured her, he was always yelling at her. He never lectured her with that quiet, dangerous tone. But Mikasa ignored the warning.

"Look," she said. "I made your mom a promise. I'm not going to let her down. I can't let you go try to take back Wall Maria. Not alone. I know she died, but there are other reas-"

The tiger's claws were out.

"Don't you dare talk about her!" He screamed. He brought his hand back and slapped her across the face. "STOP PRETENDING LIKE IM SOME INFANT WHO NEEDS SOME FUCKING MILK! I DON'T NEED YOU TO CODDLE ME! I DON'T NEED YOU! I DON'T NEED YOU! I DON'T NEED YOU! GET OUT OF MY LIFE! YOUR'E A CRUTCH! YOU'RE A CHAIN!"

"I DON'T NEED SOMEONE AS WORTHLESS AS YOU AROUND!"

The slaps to her face stung like bees. Eren was slapping her. Eren was telling her she was worthless. Eren was telling her she was a chain.

'Eren...w-why? I was just trying to keep you alive. I...I...'

Then something just snapped.

She grabbed Eren's arm, and smoothly twisted it before hearing the bone snap. Next she brought her fist to his face, after which she flipped him over and stomped down on his back.

"Mik-Mikasa?" He choked out before coughing blood.

Eren's P.O.V.

He hadn't meant for it to get this far out of hand. He hadn't meant to slap her. What he said about not needing to be coddled had been true but none of the rest.

Now here she was, with her foot on his back, pressing his almost broken nose into the hard floor. Eren could just barely move his head enough to get a good look at her.

What he saw before him allured him and at the same time scared him to death.

His sister had always had a darkness behind the storm colored orbs of her eyes, and now it was out in full force. They were wide, with pupils that were dilated greatly. Her face seemed cloaked in shadow. Blood, his and hers, stained her face, and hands. Mikasa's mouth had become a jagged slash in her face, a smile that could belong to a laughing child, making arts and crafts with her mother while her father hunted, or to a cat intending to keep the mouse it had just caught.

And that face was staring right back at him.

A tiger can't last long against a hunter with a gun, now can it?

"Don't worry, Eren," his sister said, her voice quivering but her smirk unwavering. "Mikasa will take care of you. She'll make it all better."

She kissed his forehead, then sat him up in her lap, watching all his injuries.

'What the hell have I done?' Eren thought.

Mikasa put Eren's ear to her breast as she wiped his nose.

"Can you hear that, Sweetie?' She asked. "That's my bell. It rings as long as I'm gonna protect you. It'll be ok! Mikasa's got her big swords to fight off the Titans!"

His sister started rocking him back and forth very gently, singing a nursery rhyme he barely remembered from his childhood.

"Rock a-by baby, in the treetop..."

No tiger can leap perfectly.