Title: Pathétique

Pairng: Eren x Mikasa

Summary: The first time Eren Jaeger meets Mikasa Ackerman, she goes to her first funeral at the age of twelve years while softly humming the second movement of Beethoven's Sonata Pathétique.

Note (1): genderbent!eremika, focus on music so I apologize for those who are not familiar with music terms

Note (2) : I do not own any part of Shingeki no Kyojin, just this plot(? what do even call this)

Pathétique – with pathos; marked with great emotion

The first time Eren Jaeger meets Mikasa Ackerman, she goes to her first funeral at the age of twelve years while softly humming the second movement of Beethoven's Sonata Pathétique to herself as she peers from over her mother's arm at the lowering of the two magnificent caskets through the haze of the pouring rain. At this age, she doesn't really understand the magnitude of loss that is associated with death, nor does she really know why she's even standing here in on this cold, gloomy day that keeps on raining.

The Ackermans, the honored deceased of the procession, were close friends of her father, though Eren never actually met them before in her life, which probably was because the several times they had come over to visit, Eren had been out at the large tree by the creek after school has ended to avidly listen to Armin's daily story time, because Eren had ardently believed that Armin could tell stories a lot better than anyone ever could, and one of the best parts of his storytelling was that he always had an abundance of stories to tell her that were different everyday unless Eren specifically requested to listen to a certain one again.

When she first heard about the news of the Ackerman's untimely departure, Eren was reading one of Armin's books at the kitchen table, rocking her ballet slippered feet back and forth, while her mom washed the dishes and Debussy played softly in the background when her father had stumbled in through the door and staggered to the table in a disoriented state.

"They're gone, Carla." Her father had taken off his glasses to rub his eyes in a futile effort to remove the sorrow within them and Eren's mother finished drying her dishes to lay a comforting hand on his trembling shoulders, while Eren just watches in complete shock to see her strong father who was there for her all the time tremble violently, without any attempt of restraint. "There was a drunk driver, and they couldn't make it out. Mikasa's the only one alive."

According to Eren's father, Mikasa Ackerman was the sole survivor in the fatal accident concerning a drunk driver that took the both of his parents' lives, leaving him parent less and without any other family to take care of him. Fate, Eren recalls her father saying, had wielded a double edged blade in this situation; it had taken the lives of two parents but had the ironic mercy to spare their only child to outlive them.

By now, the coffins were completely covered in dirt and people were starting to leave, yet when Eren turns to walk to her family's car, she notices that her parents were not budging less than a centimeter from their spots, and they didn't seem to be moving anytime soon, much to her dismay.

"Mama, I'm cold." Eren's hands are frigid to the touch as she tucks the loose ends of her scarf into the many loops around her to prove her point, but when she glances over to her mother, she feels a twinge of annoyance at the lack of attention that her mother who was still gazing at the general location where the Ackermans are both buried as if she expected the two of them to actually arise out of their coffins, hand in hand and smiling as they did the first day Carla Jeager had recalled meeting the wonderful family.

She lets out an indignant huff, and says "I'm going into the church then." she turns on her heels to the dilapidated building, but pauses, peeking over her shoulder in hopes of maybe eliciting some type of reaction of her parents, but they seemed to haven't had heard her.

Eren stalks off to the church in hopes of a warmer place to be, just anywhere but being outside with the ceaseless pouring of rain.

Eren shuts her eyes and lets out a contented sigh as she feels the warmth permeate her the moment she entered the church, and she flops down on the rickety bench, no doubt her mother will scold her for this, but she doesn't really care what she does at this point because heels were not typical to Eren, and they're painful to walk around, believe it or not, so Eren feels justified in just lying on the bench.

Eren sat up abruptly.

She was fairly certain that there was no one in the building except her.

But she could hear music, specifically piano music, floating throughout the church leaving no corner untouched by the beauty of it.

Her fingers skittered against the wall briefly, and Eren padded down the corridor.

It was the second time Eren sees Mikasa that day, and she's fairly astonished to see Mikasa playing with so much emotion because when she first saw him that day, silently standing there as the two caskets that carried his parents were lowered into the rain sodden ground, she thought he was, in essence, like a doll, a porcelain one at that, because he looked really lifelike but there was a certain lifelessness in him and at that a fragility to that as well.

"Hello." she calls out to him from the doorway and is disappointed to see the bright emotion in his eyes fade away into black walls void of the previous glimmer in his eyes, and Eren won't willingly admit to anyone that the wonderful vitality he exuded by just playing the piano really made her heart race a little faster, but her disappointment quickly melts into pure determination to revive that spark and so Eren marches over to the boy sitting at the piano and plops right next to him.

Ignoring the startled look in his eyes that she chooses to ignore, Eren forces her to stare at the faded logo on the piano before speaking to him, and silently thanking that quirk that her father had for classical music that was to the point where their house wasn't ever really silent – Debussy, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Strauss and many more composers had always been there with the Jaegers – classical music is very much the essence of Eren's life, she grudgingly admits.

"Fur Elise is really pretty; do you know any other songs?" she speaks again, and Mikasa took this as an opening and plays several lines of a different piece.

"Fantasie impromptu." Eren is pleased with herself, and she subconsciously shifted closer to Mikasa who, if he was any more uncomfortable being in her presence, showed no indication of it.

So it was then when they both began to play a trivia where he begins to play about a line or two of a piece to which Eren is pleased with how extensive her knowledge is of music, as she recognizes and calls out the lines of music Mikasa plays, and even though he hadn't spoken the entire time they sat there, Eren felt as if she spoke enough for the both of them and she knew that Mikasa spoke as well just through music in this case.

It was then when Eren notices that all of the lines pieces Mikasa plays are all in minor; all of the pieces were negative sounding, and although Eren really appreciates the beauty of grave sounding music, she thinks that a positive sounding wouldn't sound that bad.

"Could you play something in, I don't know, major?" she speaks and Mikasa's fingers still before he withdraws them from the piano.

It was silent for a while and Eren glances over to Mikasa who stares at his hands for some time before placing them on the piano, tentatively pressing a single key and before the single note rings out to its full capacity of a sound, Mikasa jerks his hands back as if he were scalded by the cool keys and he looks at Eren in despair.

"I – I," Mikasa's voice cracks from the lengthy amount of time of disuse. "I don't remember any pieces in major."

And that was when Eren sees that he wasn't as dead as he looks and he only looked like that because he truly believes that he should have died with his parents and it's so much easier to believe that notion than actually think that he could even possess the audacity to even think about living when both of his parents cease to even breathe.

Eren looks at him for some time and when her heart clenched a little too hard for her comfort, she reaches out with both hands to clasp Mikasa's and shivers at the frigidity in the boy's bony hands. So she removes her warm red scarf and haphazardly loops it around Mikasa's neck until all she sees is his obsidian eyes and frankly, Eren thinks that his eyes are all that she needs to see to understand Mikasa.

She pauses for some time, gazing at the brightening of Mikasa's eyes, before softly speaking. "It's warm, right?"

Mikasa's eyes widened, and ah, Eren thinks to herself, there it was. The bright emotion in his eyes had when she saw him for the second time was back, and Eren felt an expanding feeling in her chest. She smiles, and takes his hands again to place them back on the piano, "I know this one piece of music that you can play," she says as she pretends not to see the tears that are shimmering in his eyes because if she looks at him, she'd probably start crying too.

"It's called Pathetique."

Mikasa was truly gifted as a pianist, Eren thinks to herself with a strange hint of pride. It didn't take much time for him to listen to the piece on Eren's music player and start to play Pathetique with a great air of ease, as if he had played this song for a great amount of time. She notices he didn't remove the scarf from the original position she wrapped it in and she was practically beaming at the silent boy by the time her parents had found the two of them and stood quietly at the doorway before: "Eren."

"Mama, Papa." Eren stood from the bench and made her way to her parents before turning back to Mikasa, who currently stood up to stand by the old grand piano, and she tilted her head, her aqua green eyes shining with emotion, asking him the silent question of Where will you go?

Mikasa, still adorned with her red scarf, gave nothing but the tiniest raises of shoulders.

"It was nice meeting you…", he paused. "Eren." As soon as her uttered out her name, Eren's chest started to hurt a lot and her vision started to blur before she turns to run into the arms of her parents.

"Eren." Eren could feel the vibrations in her father's chest as he spoke in bemusement concerning her strange behavior, and she gripped his jacket a little bit tighter, no doubt there will be wrinkles in his suit tomorrow because she really didn't want to say goodbye to Mikasa, but she didn't know what else to do. She made a new friend, and now she was saying goodbye, Eren thinks bitterly as she inhales the calming scent of her father, she really was no better than the boy's parents who are six feet under.

She was absolutely the worst.

"Mikasa." her father spoke in a grave tone. "Come live with us."

Eren's scrunched eyes snap open and she loosens her hold on her father's jacket to stare at him with a hopeful incredulity. It was the nod of confirmation from her father that makes her whirl around to the boy standing at the piano whose face is still obscured by her scarlet garment, and sprints back to him, ignoring the pain from her heels, because all that matters now is, Mikasa, Mikasa, Mikasa. She grasped both of his warm hands and smile widely into his furiously blinking onyx eyes.

"Let's go home, Mikasa. To our home."

Suddenly she sees nothing but black suit and she blinks back tears when she feels trembling arms grasp her shoulders too tightly, but that's okay, Eren thinks, everything is okay now, as she strokes quivering back of Mikasa whose tears are dampening her dress, but it's all okay when Mikasa whispers softly, "Okay."

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fin.

a/n: Comment if you enjoyed this fic, please, and thank you.