Her blood encompassed his small body.

This…

I'm losing my family again.

He was on his knees. His hands pressed to the wound, but the blood wouldn't stop. "Mom," He kept saying. His voice wore thin until he was choking on a sob. Tears slide down his throat and his hands trembled. His fingers were curled around hers.

"Eren," Mikasa almost called him his name. Memories of hide and seek and skipping stones and the smell of freshly baked bread and the feeling of being tickled with lilac petals until the point of laughter turned to ash in her mouth. Happiness was a tightrope to walk. She had become more of a friend than a bodyguard. Guilt was a dirty needle in her arm. It was an infection that seeped through her.

"Get up."

He was on his knees. His eyes twisted up to the sky, but there was no sky above him – only the ornate gazebo stared down at his grief stricken face. There was no earth beneath him to bury his loss. He prayed to a god that didn't exist because denying god was easier to swallow than the thought of their prayers falling on deaf ears.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention and she gripped her sword tightly. They were surrounded. The assassins were fast. Impossibly fast. They moved like a fevered dream and left bloodstains in their wake. Her knuckles were white and sweat beaded down her forehead irritatingly.

He couldn't move. His legs were going numb, crumpled under his body. He rocked back and forth like arrhythmic lovers locked in an embrace. She grabbed the imperial heir by the scruff of his winter coat and pulled him to his feet.

"Run."

Mikasa remembered her mother had said the same. Run. Run Mikasa run. But she hadn't. She couldn't. All she could do was watch helplessly. That was what Eren did as his mother was killed before his eyes. As he was pulled from her grasp.

"Mikasa," His screams drew distant as he was dragged further away from her until all she could hear was her heart beating violently.

Mikasa was knocked to the ground. She was on her stomach and there was blood on her chin. Her heart swelled with rage and pulled apart her ribcage. She would break every bone in her body to get him back — to keep him safe. But that was the lie. She believed it more so than he – a child, a prince at that – there was no safe. Not after this, not even before. They had been deceiving themselves.

Opulence encircled them, but the granite and the silk was not the city beyond the walls. She couldn't protect him. She couldn't shield him from that world. They would eat him alive.

Her blade was kicked aside. A hand fisted her hair and flipped her onto her back. It brought tears to her eyes, but she didn't cry.

Mikasa heard a man's voice. "Don't kill her,"

She couldn't see their faces. They wore masks and she didn't recognize the uniform. The tip of his blade scratched her skin lightly, but with a sigh he sheathed it.

She could see worn leather boots out of the corner of her eye. A kick to the head and it was lights out – blackness.

The ground she lay on was cold and running with cracks. With heavy eyes she looked up at the sky. It was a pretty, textbook shade of blue. The clouds were still. They looked almost painted on.

Mikasa got to her feet hesitantly. Her breathing stilled as she took in her surroundings.

A fallen city floating in the blue, edifices drifted out of time. The walls were spider veined with crevices and the familiar smell of blood coated her lungs.

Everything she had ever felt seemed to erode. All her anger and fear ran on like suicidal sentences until they dripped dry. She was washed blinding clean. Her heart sank (or rather leapt from the highest balcony) when she saw a man or at least what she thought to be a man standing with his back to her in complete silence. The silence ate away at her.

His presence lingered like a vomitus stench until he faced her.

He looked more like a demon or a god than a man.

His skin was bone white and drawn tightly over the bones of his face. He had dark hair and darker eyes. There were shadows gathered under his eyes and his mouth was a thin line.

"Is this a dream?" She asked.

"A dream," He seemed amused, "No."

"Then," She was a curious thing, with eyes more dead than alive and pale skin laced by unruly strands of dark hair.

"Am I dead?" Was her second question and again his answer was no.

"Where am I?" If this wasn't a dream and she wasn't dead then she still had reality to face and that reality was the Empress was dead and she had lost her charge. She had blood on her hands. Blood she'd sworn to protect.

"Where am I?" She asked again – louder this time. His silence drew her attention to the scene of the Empress dead. It was her sword that killed her. Mikasa stood over her body.

"This isn't what happened," Her voice was more determined than confident. Her memory was foggy. Remembering hurt and not just emotionally. Her head throbbed when she tried to recall the order of events, but she knew she would never hurt the Empress – least of all Eren.

"Why are you sawing me this?"

Her shadow smiled saccharinely. Her lips were cracked with blood and her hands were bruised and she couldn't remember smiling with dust in her lungs.

"Because you need to understand,"

"Understand what?"

"Who you're up against,"

"Tch," She clenched her hands into fists. "I'm not scared."

He smirked. "You should be. If not for yourself then for him,"

The apparition turned to a small boy.

Eren…

Her heart seized up. Her hand reached out instinctually for his, but she knew he was no more or less real than this place. Her fingers closed around thin air.

"Is he?"

"Alive?" smiled Levi, "Yes."

She didn't know how long she had been here. Time seemed to stand still as if it waited on her instead of her constantly chasing it only to have it slip through her fingers.

"What's your name?"

What is this, twenty questions? It had been awhile since he had had a guest in his home and his etiquette had been left out in the rain to oxidize.

"Levi," He answered softly.

"What kind of name is that?"

"It's French, I think."

"We're a long way from France."

"It was a long time ago. I don't remember who I got it from."

His name was a trinket in some dusty, forgotten box he only thought about on rare occasion.

He reached for her hand. He didn't have to. It was a courtesy. He could have marked her without touching her. He could have done anything to her.

"What," She paused to carefully grate her voice around her words, "Are you doing?"

"I want to give you a gift."

"A gift?" She repeated.

"To help you on your path… You fascinate me. I'm interested in what you do next."

"Thanks, but no." She looked around for an exit, but there were none. They were alone here.

"You'll die without it." But as soon as he said it he realized she didn't care about her own life. "Eren will die."

She let him take her hand into his.