a/n: I chose different surnames because they're different characters. I can admit with no shame to having thoroughly enjoyed these movies, despite their cornier moments.
He finds her at last, in the shadow of a courtyard, a prison of broken steel. She is seated at an old piano. The notes are quavering and out-of-tune, but the melody enchants him for a reason he can't quite define to himself.
"Mikasa."
She stops playing before he's uttered a single word, as if anticipating his presence.
"I'm just…." Eren doesn't know how to describe the emotions bubbling in his chest. He wants to say a hundred things, ask her so many questions, but there will be time for that later. "Glad," he decides, for the moment. He is glad to see her again, not overjoyed, nothing as fancy and dramatic as that. Simply glad.
"Glad?" she echoes. She looks disappointed, angry. Subtly disgraced. "That baby was eaten. And so was I."
But you survived, he thinks, with the desperation that is only betoken of one who has something precious left to lose. I've found you again.
She looks at him another moment, then pushes her gear aside to unbutton her shirt, starting from the hem. He's confused until she pulls apart the fabric to reveal an ugly, jagged scar, raised and pink-yellow upon her complexion. He can only stare at it, in spite of modesty.
"The world is cruel," she tells him, and has never doubted her less in his life. How could he ever understand this sacrifice? He wants to understand, he's seen what Titans can do to a human, but she has, too. They are evenly matched. "I'm just going to kill the Titans," she concludes, and returns to the piano but does not play.
Eren wants to ask her more. Wants to apologize even though it is fruitless; there's nothing left to say to this black-haired stranger. He takes a step forth when something small and blunt hits the back of his head. Eren winces. It falls with a soft thump to the earth. He looks. It's an apple with a bite taken out of it. He picks it up and denies the image that accosts his mind; a man with a red crater in his head where his face should be.
"Sorry," says Captain Shikishima, with a pile of apples at his side in a burlap sack and another bouncing in his hand, at the ready. "Did I interrupt?"
Eren looks at his sister.
"No." Something changes in her tone. Her eyes are empty and cool.
Captain walks over and takes a bite out of the fresh apple. He leans down and offers it to Mikasa.
"Want it? It's good."
She waits for him to act and he puts it to her lips. She takes a bite without any real emotion, feigned or natural. Captain is smiling as he looks at Eren and never breaks eye contact, not when he withdraws the fruit, nor when he walks behind her and folds an arm over her to lock them both within a strange embrace.
The meaning is evident.
And Eren walks; no, staggers away, leaving her to him. Why is he walking away, he wonders. He should say something. Maybe. But it is a weak argument. Captain Shikishima is the authority here, and Eren's nothing but a lowly soldier. What can he do? What could he have said? Mikasa's chosen her path; he's chosen his.
That changes nothing. He's taking advantage of her and you're nothing but a coward.
Captain owns him as good as her and Eren hates himself for ever thinking he could have admired the man. And yet he can't quell the traitorous little voice in his head; he's a great man, he has to be. How did he capture the hearts of so many people? But it's wrong, Eren thinks angrily. It's abuse of authority! What kind of honorable man would do that to a subordinate?
Yet he also knows Mikasa won't listen to him; she never has, she won't this time. This stranger is not his sister.
Something snaps, long repressed, now released; Eren screams, short and clipped and animalistic. Screams again, hands over ears like he can get the voice of his conscious to shut up, but of course he cannot.
A hand claps over his mouth and the first impulse is to sink his teeth in, right down to the bone.
"Calling the Titans again?"
He fixes on the perpetrator, wide-eyed and unreasonable until he sees that it's only Hiana. Her question resonates in his ears. Eren doesn't know anymore.
"Sorry," he says quietly.
She shakes her head. "It's me who should be apologizing."
For what, Eren is unsure.
Numb and defeated, he allows her to take him by the arm and lead him away.