SNK (c) Isayama Hajime
"Psst! Mikasa, wake up!"
Mikasa opened her eyes to find Eren's face rather close to hers, watching her intently with a spark of excitement in his green eyes.
"Eren? What's going on?" she whispered as she sat up, rubbing her eyes tiredly. She watched as Eren lit a candle lantern, a warm glow lighting up their room. Her gaze drifted from him to a small pile of books placed haphazardly on a blanket on the floor.
"Come here! Bring your blanket too!" Eren whispered as he crawled silently over to the door, peeking out of its crack. "Thank god, Mom and Dad already went to bed." He shuffled back over to where she was sitting, her blanket wrapped around her small frame. He took one end and pulled it up over the both of them so it was wrapped over their heads, almost like a fort of some sort.
"Eren, what are you doing?" Mikasa asked as Eren brought the lantern closer to them. The candlelight illuminated their small fort, and Mikasa's breath nearly caught when she saw the smile on his face. She'd only known him for a few months, but she knew it was a rare sight to see him smile like this.
"I borrowed a couple books from Armin. They're about the outside world!" Eren whispered excitedly, his smile growing even bigger. "Mom and Dad don't know I have these, so don't tell them." Mikasa nodded wordlessly, knowing fully well that he'd get in big trouble if they knew. No one was supposed to show interest in the outside world- it could get you killed.
That didn't seem to faze Eren though. "Say, Mikasa. Did you know there's something called the 'sea'?" he asked, pointing to a picture in one of the books he opened, "It says that when you look out at it, you can't see an end to it! And apparently it's full of salt too."
Mikasa almost giggled at his enthusiasm. "Really?"
"Yeah! And look! There's huge forests where it rains all the time. They've got all kinds of animals." He pointed at a picture of a particularly colorful bird. "Isn't that cool?"
"Yeah." She smiled softly as she pointed to another picture of nothing but sand. "What's this, Eren?"
"It says it's a 'desert'. There's nothing there but sand and its super hot." Eren paused, his boyish smile melting away into a more serious expression. He looked over at Mikasa, his eyes boring into hers with so much intensity she almost blushed.
"What?" she squeaked out, slightly embarrassed at her meek response.
"We're going to see these one day, Mikasa. I swear it to you. We'll get out of these walls and see the entire world, no matter what."
She leaned onto his shoulder, reveling in his warmth. She unconsciously buried her face in the red scarf he had given to her. "If that's where you want to go, I will go too."
"We'll do it together.."
Mikasa hummed in response, wrapping the blanket tighter around them as Eren continued to tell her stories, his voice and warmth soothing her into a deep sleep.
I saw a piece of little!mikaere fanart on tumblr and couldn't help myself. I'd put a link to it but i can't (damn you ffnet!) so if you really want to see it, you can find it linked on my tumblr version of this story at mugiwara-time dot tumblr dot com.