Disclaimer: I own nothing
The breakup is devastation. She is caught in the rubble of the aftermath.
Although she felt like she shouldn't really be surprised that he'd broken up with her, Mikasa still revels in the shock. Everyone— including her— had always thought they'd make it, you know? They were that couple that people saw staying together in the long run. Apparently though, Eren didn't see them that far into the future.
She should have known a few months back when he started talking non-stop about Annie and how great of a coach she was at the gym. He'd always talk about how great her techniques were and how fast she'd have him on the ground and bruising. It was like lightning, he said. His departure was too, Mikasa thinks.
Technically, he never really cheated on her. Mikasa is always careful not to voice it out, but in her head, he knows he did much worse than cheat on her. Sometimes, Mikasa wishes he had just been cheating the whole time. Maybe that way, it would hurt less. He'd waited though. He'd waited for the right time to break up with her and although he was already in love— although he already knew he was in love with Annie— he stayed by her side and pretended to love her just as much as he'd always had.
Mikasa had known it was coming, but she didn't want to say anything. She didn't want to lose him. So she waited.
When he works up the courage— when finally the time is right, he sits her down and runs her through a long winding speech about how long they'd been together and how things weren't the same as they used to be— they're love had died and dwindled. He spoke about it so simply, as if it was a flame that had simply run out of wood or maybe had been rained on. As if it was really as simple as that.
"You and I have been together for five years," he says. She'd always thought it would be longer.
"And you know I love you," but she doesn't. What she knows is that he did love her, but not anymore.
"But something's changed." He says it like the change is something between them. Mikasa knows the truth though. Her feelings are no different from the time she'd realized she was in love with him to now.
She knows the only change there really is are his feelings for her.
She wants to go back.
The next few weeks pass in a blur and she doesn't know how much time passes. She doesn't mind. She likes the stillness, the silence— the way things, even her, are left untouched. In the quiet standstill of everything, she feels herself mesh into the walls, into the untouched apartment.
Maybe if she were still enough, she would merge so deeply into it all that she would be a part of the past— of a time before everything fell apart. The only past she ends up in though, is Eren's.
She looks for it in the walls, in the cracks in between the floor, in the drawers that were now empty where his clothes used to be, on the side of the bed that used to be his and even in the pockets of some of the clothes he left behind. She tries to look for— the montage of pictures, the journal entry or maybe a list of things that she'd done badly— where they went wrong.
She can't find it and she's convinced that it's because there was never anything wrong with them to begin with. But Eren is out the door and she's alone and it disproves her conviction so much that she feels like a train that's been derailed and is falling into a ravine.
And she allows herself to fall.
A month later, she starts rearranging. She starts moving things around to fill up the empty spaces where his things used to be. She changes the pillow arrangement and instead of two sides, there are two pillows in the center of the mattress.
She cancels out his space as if it would cancel his existence out of her memory. She moves the furniture and gets rid of things that she has in pairs because Mikasa is no longer part of a pair now that Eren is gone. She is only part of herself.
A week later, she stars to clean the walls. She tries to wipe him off the walls, scrubbing at the remnants, but like a stain, there are parts of him that never come off. The next day, she paints over the current wallpaper the same way he'd painted over her with Annie's imprint.
It doesn't truly get rid of him. She can still see the old apartment imprinted in her mind. Behind closed lids, she sees the old walls, every stain and trace of him etched into her mind. She figures you never really can bury the things you love completely, but somehow the change makes her feel—not better, but—good.
She starts putting his things in a box. There's not much he's left, but as she goes about the house, she finds tiny things that aren't hers; a polo at the back of the closet. A few papers shoved at the bottom of the dresser drawer, some cuff-links that most certainly weren't hers and whatever else she finds that isn't hers. In her head, she calls it 'the-box-of-things-he-left-behind'.
Sometimes, she stares at it, wondering if she'll fit in there too.
Three days later, she sends the box (via FedEx) to his—and Annie's—new address. Along with the box, she sends away all her questions she knows he can't answer, all the hopes and plans that she had for them, and all of her lingering attachments. On the list of particulars and things inside the box, her name is (regrettably) not there.
Instead, it says, 'Things that are no longer mine to keep'.
When he opens the package, there's a flash of red at the bottom of the box beneath all of his things and that's when he knows that it's really over.