A/N: Whoops. Look what just came out of me out of nowhere. I really have no way of explaining this. Basically, it's yet another multi-chap story, and I am very sorry about that. On another note, happy birthday to my queen, Mikasa Ackerman (2/10)! Thanks for reading, and please don't forget to share your thoughts and message on tumblr if you have any questions. Reviews are very much appreciated! :)

.: We Are Made of Stardust :.

.: Chapter I: Hush :.

Silence is many things—awkward, uncomfortable, stale—but it is not quiet. In fact, if you were to ask Mikasa Ackerman, she'd call it incredibly, ridiculously loud. Deafening, really. The kind of boisterous shout that requires no words, only a hollow look from Mom's eyes and the inaudible echo of words that cannot bring themselves to be said.

She's dying.

In her silence, Mikasa understands. Daddy went the same way she's going: drowning in liquor, grousing over drugs he'd inhaled way past the required prescription, cursing God, the world, fate or whatever, for the life he was made to live, as if it were not himself who created it. Silence is just as loud, just as irritating and revolting as any other shrilling scream.

Daddy left, in silence.

Mom fell into depression much the same way. It happened slowly, quietly, then misery snatched her up and sunk her to the bottom of countless Grey Goose bottles. They piled up like barricades, dividing what was left of their family. On one side, there was Mom—or, well, what remained of her—and on the other, Mikasa, left to gape helplessly as the epitome of grace itself, the very embodiment of beauty, her invincible gorgeous mother turned out to be very much human after all. Piece by piece, her glorious facade broke as her life caught up with her. And where Daddy liked to blame his problems on the world, Mom liked to blame them on her daughter. Mikasa, once a token of much pride, now resembled all the opportunities her mother lost, all the nights she had to skip on partying to babysit, all the weight she gained and allure she lost due to the punishments of motherhood.

And yet, it wasn't always this way. There was a time, long ago, when the world had color. When parents didn't split and fathers didn't disappear and mothers didn't give up on raising their child. That time has long since gone, and Mikasa, an eighteen-year-old, is nearly a grown woman. Yet she clings to the purity she once held, the oblivious innocence of her childhood; for it, if anything, remains clean in her life. Untouched. Beneath the stoic mask she wears is just a kid. But she's so good at hiding herself, you see. At silencing her inner voices. When you're raised in a broken home, silence—pretentious smiles and fake laughs and oh no I'm fine yeah I'm just tired —becomes an art.

In her own tragic way, Mikasa Ackerman is an artist. Her body is her playground, and with swollen knuckles and split lips and and bruised limbs, she carves a crater into the world, fights her way through all the cruelty, all the ugliness, and refuses to give into the throes of petty, pointless sadness. Self-pity never made anybody great. Look at her parents. Look at her mom—alive, breathing, but dead all the same. Mikasa refuses to become like them. Every punch she throws, every kick, every dodge and duck and flinch is a testimony: I refuse, I refuse, I refuse.

Outside of the ring, though, fighting with your body isn't much of a benefit. All it gets you is detentions, and enemies, and a shitty reputation that repels any normal being from prowling closer than a foot away from you.

Jean Kirchstein isn't a normal being, though. There isn't a normal bone in his body. So when Mikasa rolls into school, he's the first one to greet her. Everyone stares. That's all they ever like to do. Whether it be in admiration, or disgust, it makes no difference. Through the callused shell of her skin and bones, deep into her core, past all the silence, there's a loud, loud, loud scream, aching to be heard, ignored—and none of them, none of them, ever hear it.

"Good morning, Mikasa. What're your plans for today?"

Jean. With his odd, double-toned hair and sleazy grins, doesn't take the hint when she blatantly ignores him. She picks up the pace, clutching her books to her chest and walking much, much faster so that he's stumbling behind her. And even then, still: "Hey! Wait up!"

"What is it, Jean?"

"I just wanted to see how you're doing."

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

"Thanks."

"That's not what I meant! I meant—"

"Please, leave me alone."

He stalls, staring. Mikasa walks, but after a few steps more, she hears him go, "I'm sorry."

Cringing, she stops.

Way to go, Mikasa. You have all the endearing qualities of a chicken nugget. Congrats.

"Jean," she sighs, turning around to face him. "Forgive me. I'm just—"

"Rough night?" he motions to the bruises on her arm. Mikasa pulls her shirt sleeves further down to hide them, murmuring a yes.

"Another fight?"

"...Yeah."

"Your mom?"

"Still sick."

"So she's still at the hospital."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry," he laments, honest and kind as always. "I shouldn't have bothered you today. I gotta learn how to pick my days better; can't have you snapping at me like that, or you'll lose your only friend."

Mikasa finds herself fighting back a tiny smirk (but very tiny, okay). "I'm not your friend."

"So you're my girlfriend!"

She knocks him one on the arm.

"Ow! Okay, I was joking. It was a joke. Jokes. Know what those are?"

"You're an idiot."

"You love me."

"Hardly."

He groans, clutching his chest. "My heart! It can only take so much in one morning, you know."

Somehow, somehow, he pulls a full smile from her lips. He gawks at her, smirking.

Mikasa shakes her head. "Come on. Let's go to class."

Jean, you see, isn't a bad guy. He's stubborn and annoying and sometimes spits when he talks, but in his heart, there's goodness. Despite the crush he's had on her for months, he's one of those rare breeds of human that don't make her totally uncomfortable (only slightly) and that's okay.

They walk, onward into the mob of mingling voices, empty heads on empty bodies carrying backpacks and books. Jean's going on about some horrible car accident that happened last night, how apparently not all the bodies were found or pulled out of the wreckage, how poorly the media covered it all. It's all interesting to a normal person, but to Mikasa, the world cannot bear one more tragedy. She sighs. It's 9 a.m. and she's already feeling so damn tired. Just being is exhausting. Existing is very much like shouting constantly through your pores, and hoping that somebody will hear you.

—o—

The main road home is blocked by police cars, so Mikasa takes the "path of tall trees" as she used to call it when she was little.

Her uncle Levi hated this road. "All these big ass trees," he'd grumble, going on about how useless they are. Seven-year-old Mikasa would scoff, "Trees aren't useless, they give us oxygen!" and that always earned her a glare, a hissed out "smartass". The only reason he didn't like them, she told herself, was because he was so darn small. Uncle Levi hated things that made him feel tiny. Which was funny, because almost everything did.

Levi, too, is gone now. And perhaps that is why she loves this road so much. She scarcely ever takes it, reserves it for only special occasions or absolute musts. Every trip through these trees is to be cherished, as they are good memories from her childhood. Every leaf carries a memoir, a small hope. Through the glass, she sees the branches swaying, tugged by the wind. The radio plays, quiet, so the sibilant sighs they make go unheard. This is one of those instances in which silence is a good kind of loud. She ratchets off the music, and in the muted murmurs of the trees around her meandering car, she makes out her uncle's voice. Stern. crass, yet tender, full of tough scraping love—like tree bark. And then, all at once…

Peace.

Somehow, out of the blue, it finds her. It comes sometimes with silence. It comes sometimes with the reminiscent quieting of her soul. She misses him. She misses him so much. If she had to choose between a life without Uncle Levi and death, well… she certainly wouldn't choose this life. Some days, she can hardly bear it enough as it is.

An question sparks within her. What if? What if she kept on driving, never took her turn to head home? What if she just drove, and drove, and drove on forever, made a new life, a new self, became reborn in some way? What if? She could start from scratch. At eighteen, she could create a new name, a new past, a new future for herself—a future where Jean Kirschstein isn't her only friend and her father's absence isn't so blatantly reflected on the cool shells of her mother's eyes. This moment is her life, and in one split second, the difference between turning right or keeping on straight is what will define the rest of her existence. Go home, or go home. Your choice, Mikasa.

For a split second, everything is black.

Just like that, a blink, and then suddenly, the world is spinning.

Tire screeches, like many things, are incredibly, ridiculously loud. They swell up, twist, spin, blur, catapult straight to a bone-breaking jolt and then shattering glass, crunched up metal, and screaming trees introduce a broader, more permanent blink:

Silence.