She finds him in a pool of his own blood, his chest caved in like plaster. There's splatters, blood and bone spreading along the cobbles, and her mind flashes to the frescos she saw in the churches around Wall Rose, before that went down. The whole fact of Eren dying, right before her, breathing heavily as she smooths his hair, bears an unmistakable poetic irony about it. In a kinder world, idealists like Eren would live solely on the force behind their words, the intensity of their conviction.
Death is a cruel bastard of a god.
"Mikasa," he mumbles, half-delirious with shock. She notices that his heartbeat is getting fainter, that there's less blood flowing - his body is simply shutting down as it expends the last of its energy. She leans in.
"Yes?"
Eren coughs and hits her across the cheek with a spray of red spittle - she doesn't mind, not at this point - and says, "I'm sorry for being an idiot. Should have stayed behind-"
He coughs again, this time with a little less force. An old man's wheeze.
"Shhh," she shushes, cradling his head in her lap. "Don't exert yourself. You'll only make it worse." The words simply come of their own free will, a remorseless fact. Sentiment has never been one of the things she's excelled at since her parents died, but here, she wishes she could bite her tongue and make her statement fade. She is telling the boy she loves that he is going to die, the boy who killed for her. Who has broken bones everywhere after that bitch Annie beat him into a pulp and a missing leg, already digested and excreted by now. Goddamn her mouth.
Despite the situation, Eren laughs. It's the only genuine sound of amusement she's heard him make in a year, and it makes her feel warmer at the sound. Carefully, she unties her scarf and drapes it over Eren's torso, covering the ugly wound. Affording him some dignity while he passes. Eren has always had a vulnerable sense of pride; she knows that he sees her efforts and doesn't let it go unspoken. His shaking hands wrap around hers, she kisses him once on his forehead, the only part of him that's clean.
Not much longer.
"Thank you, Mikasa," he says, smiling feebly, and that is it. His breath stops. He's just a bag of empty flesh now, nothing to sustain it, nothing remarkably Eren about it. The other Titans are jostling for prey in the square. Eren's gone.
"Love you," she tells him, as if it counts now that he is not listening.