The red of her scarf coiled around his fingers. It used to be thicker, warmer…wrapping her in comfort on a winter night, but now it was frayed at the edges. It had been worn thin. It used to smell like Eren. Pine trees and lemon cake, now it smelled like fabric cleaner. Clean. Like him. She was the only mess he didn't clean up, couldn't rather.

He felt every quiver of her beating heart like he held it in his hand instead of a piece of clothing.

Mikasa could see the fire reflected in his eyes. She had trusted him. Trusted him with a piece of her soul, but seeing him run his fingers over her scarf dug at her. It opened a wound she wasn't ready to let heal.

With that look gnawing at him he threw the scarf into the fire. Let the flames consume the part of her he couldn't.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. She made a dive for it, her fingers stretched towards the flames, but he held her back.

She pounded her fists on his chest and shoved him back, almost knocking him to the floor. She stopped herself, her balled fist hovering an inch away from his face. He wanted her to hit him, after all he deserved it (he deserved worse), but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

He pulled her to him, wrapping her in his arms. It didn't feel like an embrace. It felt like he was smothering her.

The flames crisscrossing like veins over their skin. The walls were painted with their shadows. Silent and lingering like ghosts. They wanted to devour them.

"I'll buy you a new one." Levi whispered.

"I don't want a new one…I want," Him. Back. He wasn't coming back.

"He's gone." He was trying to help in his own way, by rubbing salt into bleeding wounds with a smile on.

"Don't you think I know that?" She blinked back the hurt and breathed. In and out, there was no comfort in the rain pita patting on the window or warmth in his embrace. His fingers were glass shards digging into her arm.

"Are you jealous of a ghost?"

No. This once he didn't breathe his lies.

She lived in the hollow ground with Eren.

But she died with Levi. Between the sheets, in the trenches, within the spaces between his fingers and the time it took to cross the room and wrap her in his arms. She didn't cry out his name. Or breathe it in the morning or tell him of her dreams. He was a sharp blade against her skin, a jagged smile across her thighs. She shivered against him.

She wasn't his to have or hold, but she let herself love him in a way. She used to be afraid of fire. Now she was the flickering flames, blue to orange.

It was her birthday. Another day to remind her she survived and Eren hadn't. To remind her she was a year older and her parents weren't. She had never seen the sense in celebrating such things.

"Aren't you going to make a wish?" Armin asked. He smiled. He smiled so beautifully and it tore her in half.

There was nothing to wish for. Years gone by weren't marks on skin that defined her.

The amount of gifts sickened her. Levi's especially. A silk-blend scarf, the kind of beauty she knew nothing of.

It wasn't for warmth. It was for decoration. He wasn't trying to be her home.

She ran her hands over it and wrapped it around his neck.

"It looks better on you anyway." She said, all the while smiling. She was a better liar than he was.

"Close your eyes."

Mikasa sighed, but did as she was told.

Something cold brushed across her opened hand. Jewelry, a pendant to be exact.

"It belonged to my mother."

"Oh." She just said. She knew he was lying. He always lied. But she didn't bother to drawl her words or roll her eyes to let him know she knew. "I can't take this."

"Why not?"

"If it was your mother's you would know why."

"You're right," He didn't look at her. He didn't want to see the pity, the satisfaction. "It doesn't belong to my mother. I stole it when I was a kid."

"You remember that far back?" She smiled coyly.

Levi raised an eyebrow, but continued.

"Because I never knew my mother," She almost put her hand over his and he almost let her.

"I liked to pretend she give me something like this. Something I'd eventually give to the girl I, to you."

"What do you think we are? Boyfriend and girlfriend?" Mikasa laughed bitterly.

"You'd like that wouldn't you?" If she was going to try to poison him and make him choke on her own bitterness he wouldn't spare her from his caustic tone.

"But we are friends aren't we?" She cocked her head at him like a loaded gun.

Levi grunted. They had never been friends, but he could see her loneliness had sunk holes in her defenses. In the lies she told herself and him.

He closed her hand around the pendant. "You should keep it."