A/N: So yeah. I'm writing a threeshot.
Warning: Mention of suicide, reference to sex.
Mikasa does not cry. Not when she sees his closed eyes. Not when she sees the blood that streaks his face that will never smile again. She does not cry at his funeral. She hears Armin, beautiful innocent Armin, speak about how his death is a reminder that we are all mortal. He could barely hold himself together. He broke down halfway through his speech. She watches Levi speak, coldly, almost as if the boy that was the closest living thing he had to a friend was not dead and gone. She wanted to be like him, strong and quiet, hiding her feelings until they go away. Except real life doesn't work like that. After the funeral, she locks the door to her room and sobs. The first person to come looking for her is Armin.
"Mikasa?"
No answer.
"Mikasa, if you want to be alone that's fine, but just know we're here, all right?"
No answer.
It wasn't her lack of affection for Armin that kept her from responding, it was her lack of caring. The world could end right now and she couldn't care less because hers had already collapsed in on itself. She had learned in school that when a star dies, its mass becomes too great for itself, so it collapses and becomes a black hole. That is how she feels. Once beautiful, she has collapsed into the enigma that is herself. But she remains, alive and fighting for the boy she loved.
"Mikasa, it's time for dinner."
Jean is next. She doesn't answer him either.
"Mikasa, please eat."
His voice is pleading. She will humor him.
"I'm not hungry, Jean."
"I brought your food if you don't want to leave your room."
"Thank you."
Mikasa eats in silence. It is two days until she leaves her room.
Years pass, and still she remains. She could have killed herself a long time ago. She contemplated it too. Fifteen year old girl who had lost the boy who was her sun and stars, the very pillars of her existence. Who could blame her? But after many long hours of consideration, she decided not to. It isn't what Eren would want. She would be his legacy.
Mikasa is a captan now. She has underlings, but she does not speak with them often. It is better to stay away and not get hurt, she tells herself. It is almost ironic what she has become. She is Levi. Who could have known that she would become the man she used to detest so much. They are the closest thing the other has to friends. They sometimes have a drink together. Talk about things they don't remember the next day. Sometimes she wonders when she began living like this. Cutting her ties to people as soon as she sees them. She almost never speaks to Armin anymore. When she does it is in the form of a formal letter, written strictly for military purposes. Or, it is in the form of choppy small talk at the formal parties that she detests. Official gatherings in Sina that no high rank military official such as herself would not go to. They were almost solely for political purposes, and politics are the one thing that Mikasa can't stand. Being where she was in the military, she was expected to openly have a political view. She didn't. She simply stated that she would support the king through thick and thin.
Sometimes she saw children when she came back from outside the walls. There is a light in their eyes that is no longer in hers. Young and unbroken by war. Mikasa had long ago decided that before he died, she did not have the slightest idea of what broken was. But then, she wasonly fifteen at the time. Though slightly fractured, at the time, she did not know broken. She did not know shattered.
She once thought that if she saw his face again the hurting would stop. Oh, how very wrong she was. She sees him everywhere now and that hurts even more. She sees him in the flowers trampled by the horses when she leaves the walls. She sees him in the face of every bright eyed and hopeful little boy when she returns. She sees him when she sees each group of new trainees, hopeful, of course. She cannot stop seeing him when she sees their bodies. She tastes him on the lips of every lover she has ever had. Whenever she goes to bed with a lover she cannot remember the name of, she thinks that it might have been better with him. So, she imagines it is Eren. It does the opposite of help.
Sometimes she sleeps with Levi. It means nothing to either of them. It is merely a way to cope with emptiness. No strings attached, but in a marionette type of way. Though the mighty are still alive, they fell a long time ago. She does not ask what he has lost. It seems it would have been an invasion of his privacy. She has made guesses, though none she would voice directly to him. It could be Eren too, but more likely it was his squad, namely Petra. She didn't know much firsthand, but Eren always said that they seemed a bit too friendly. But it wasn't her place to ask. She knew that he had other lovers, and he knew that she did too. And that is it.
The story of Mikasa Ackerman is a tragedy, or so it would seem. To the girl herself, her story only seems empty. Just like her soul and mind, the story of her life was hollow, a room without objects. Mikasa Ackerman was an echo, and the voice that she belonged to is gone.