Witness of the Dark

by TheStupidSheep

x

I don't own Shingeki no Kyojin

Mikasa's nightmares stopped, but she still woke up at the same hour every day, and now it was because she couldn't help but think about him. She walked in her room, fighting with herself to get her crazy ideas straight until the morning light reached her room. She felt the same necessity calling, the forest asking her to embrace her in its darkness.

Eye bags got darker in her face as the days passed, but her parents didn't say anything about it. She asked for privacy and this request was always accepted thanks to her determination in everything she did. However, she never took advantage of this. In fact, she sometimes wished they put on more pressure, like typical parents did.

It was the way the people she loved treated her that made her more self-conscious of her own decisions and thoughts, which let her to not talk about her problems or worries. Not her feelings, not her opinions, not her likes or dislikes… She did it only when it was asked, and sometimes she didn't even answered at all.

And now that was troubling her. If it wasn't for this, she would had spoken of what she witnessed long time ago, she would had looked for help, would had screamed the truth to everybody in the club, would had found more terrifying the death of that woman than her current obsession with the killer.

Now it's too late, she thought one of those nights in which she couldn't sleep, walking towards the end of the backyard. The gloom felt so wrong, yet her only desire was to hear his captivating voice again.

She stood right at the beginning of the woods, her hands sweating inside her grey sweater. The breeze moved her hair strands in a slow motion, hitting her cold face and making her remember her weaknesses. She opened her mouth around five times, but no words came out. She let a little breathe pass through her lips, nervousness in every furious beat of her heart. Closing her eyes, she convinced herself she wasn't wrong. At all.

It doesn't feel that way.

"Are you there?"

Mikasa opened her eyes. The forest was as dim as a wolf's mouth, but silence wasn't in its areas today. She heard all kind of natural sounds coming from there, and it felt so normal that courage polluted her insane resolutions. "Tell me you're here, please." She whispered, and her plead was in vain. He wasn't there, she could feel it. Mikasa was alone, completely alone. Her fists clenched with anger coming up through her body until it exploded in words. "What have you done to me?!" She screamed, but not louder enough to wake up anyone. "I can't… I can't stop thinking about you." Admitted in a low tone, her eyes glaring at the dark as if he was hiding there.

After some seconds, Mikasa shook her head and entered to her house. Yes, he wasn't there, but his presence wasn't essential to answer her own doubts, all of them based in her desires: she wasn't angry because of her insomnia, or angry because of what he did to that woman or what he did to her.

She was angry because he didn't come back, he didn't come to see her, to follow her as she sensed days before he popped up from the dark to face her.

Darkness is the place in which the most dangerous creatures of this world live.

That's what her father used to say when she was younger, a way to ensure she didn't try to go in the forest alone.

How was she going to tell him she witnessed the worst of the dark and wanted to do it again?

…

Five days before the auditions for Le Corsaire, Mikasa's friends went to her house. All of them were finally in the town and it was almost the end of the summer. In some days, most of them would had to go back to university.

It was hard to make a reunion, since each one of them had to visit different places before going to Maria City. However, they had a great opportunity and everything was arranged in a very short time.

Mikasa's house wasn't the main option to make their crazy meeting, but she was so lost in her herself that she said yes when her friend —and dancer like her—, Historia, asked her if they could choose her house as the place of encounter.

Now, almost twenty boys and girls were inside her house hanging out.

She went out of the house some hours later, fresh air waiting for her. She sat on the little stairs of the door, admiring the moon that looked like it was being hold by the top of the pines. It was weird to see the clear sky with only some little, fluffy clouds that danced among the stars. Her expression went delighted, internally deciding she was going to remember the beautiful sight the rest of her life.

Seconds later, Armin opened the door at her back and sat with her, a fair smile in his lips.

Mikasa didn't try to stop when she looked at the trees in front of her, tension showing in her face.

"What?" he said as he followed her gaze. Mikasa let out an awkward sound and smiled, her eyes widening.

"Nothing. Are you having fun?"

Armin smiled too, his blue eyes lighter with the reflection of the moon on then.

"Yes. I missed the group. We didn't have this fun since our last days in high school." He saw Mikasa's calm face and coughed silently. "I haven't… seen you a lot with them tonight. Is there something bothering you?"

Mikasa heaved a sigh, her eyes falling in the forest again. By the way he was observing her, Mikasa knew he noticed her tired face long time ago.

"I'm having problems to sleep." She confessed. Armin was the closest she had to a best friend while she was in High School. After he got a scholarship in one of the most prestigious universities in the country to study physics, she felt a little lost, not because she needed him, but because it was a strange feeling she never experienced before: being separated from someone loved.

"I can see that." He put a thoughtful expression. "Is it because of Eren?"

She smiled. After all, everybody knew what she felt for him.

"No." She waited some seconds to continue. "I wish it was that the reason."

He raised his eyebrows in an aggrieved expression, but then he nodded.

"What is it, then?"

She thought about it for a moment, pondering her words.

"I guess is my future. Recently, it's been feeling so, so far away from me. I still want to go to Opera Royal Ballet, you know that."

He smiled.

"Is it hard?"

She observed the sky.

"No."

"Nothing's hard for you."

Mikasa flushed, but her serene mien didn't change.

"I wish dancing was hard for me."

"Why?" He asked.

"Right now…" She murmured, holding her chin in the palm of her right hand as she took a deep breath. "Is what I need the most. Eren's like that, isn't he? He doesn't rest until everything's perfect. If it were that way for me too, I wouldn't have time to think about other things."

"Other things, like…?"

She tightened herself in the jacket.

"Things… but enough about me. What about you? How's life at the university?"

Armin laughed, but let the topic turn over him.

"Harder than I thought. Finding the X never felt so difficult before." Both laughed quietly. "But I never had so much fun trying to." He flushed a little, a side smile coming to his face as he looked up to the sky. "I'm so happy to see you, Mikasa. I missed you. Girls aren't common in our school, and is hard to live between competitive nerds."

She raised her chin.

"I'm a nerd too."

"You were a nerd. Now you're the next Prima Ballerina Assoluta."

She gave him a little push.

"I missed you too." He grinned and put his left arm around her, making her rest her strong body in his chest. After some seconds of pure silence, Armin spoke again.

"You know you cannot be like this all the time, Mikasa. One day, you're going to explode."

She closed her eyes, swallowing. He was right, she needed to talk about this with someone.

"I've been obsessed with something… I don't want to, but is like water." She opened her hands in front of her face, analyzing them. "It escapes from my hands when I try to keep it in control. I don't know why is it so difficult, but that's not the worst part."

Armin's blonde hair looked white thanks to the light of the moon, almost as white as his face in that moment.

"The worst part is that I-"

"HOLY HELL! ARMIN, YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS SHIT!" Screamed Eren inside the house.

Mikasa's eyes went huge. She separated from Armin, putting space between them, fear showing in her face because of what she was about to say. The blonde one saw how she changed to her old attitude again, but if he had something to say, he kept it to himself.

"Sorry, Mikasa." He stood up, walking to the door behind them. "We'll continue this conversation later. Are you coming inside?"

She denied, her eyes on the sky.

"I'm staying."

"Alright, then." He turned back, getting into the house. "I'm coming, Eren!"

What Mikasa didn't know was that Armin saw it since they started talking: how her shiny eyes focused always in the forest.

…

He is a monster.

Yet she woke up after dreaming with him.

He killed an innocent woman.

Yet she tended to forget that when she thought of his face.

He is dangerous. He is going to kill you.

Yet she was walking through the backyard again, craving for something she couldn't understand, something she didn't want to understand, just feel.

He is here.

She sensed it, the difference in the air, in the atmosphere. That night the moon was lightning everything as it did hours ago. With all the lights out and the music of the meeting with her friends off, the stars were clear in the sky, its glow making the forest look like a magical place… If it wasn't for the silence. The only sound was her own unsteady breath and the minimal motions of the pines, caused by the breeze.

She glared at the woods.

"I know you're here." She said. "Please, come out to the light."

No motion. Mikasa stood there, her fingers scratching the fabric of her green pijamas. Then, slowly, the same silhouette of her dreams appeared beyond the trees that weren't reached by the dim light of the moon, his steps so calm and soft it looked like he was floating.

Light touched his face, and Mikasa saw his eyes. Today, they were different.

His irises were red, red like blood.

He has killed someone else recently.

Mikasa felt her legs weaker. Nevertheless, she didn't think of going back not even once, and when he was finally standing just five steps from her, Mikasa realized she wasn't scared anymore: just terribly nervous and anxious.

You wanted this.

She bended slowly, her grey, human eyes never deviating from his red, dangerous ones. She sat on the grass, her heels pressing against her buttocks, and she exposed her life to him. His eyelids had fallen until they were only two splits that promised death, curiosity in them.

When she felt her heartbeats normalize, he spoke, sending the same chills through her skin.

"Brat." He said, his voice making her take a deep, shaking breath. "You're a naive human. You kept coming."

She looked away, a furious blush covering her cheeks.

"How do you know that?" She murmured.

His face showed amusement even when he wasn't smiling.

"Your smell is all over the place."

She cleared her throat, feeling offended.

"Don't." He hissed. "I didn't say you smell bad."

Her eyes went to his face again, suspicious.

"Is not like I did it on purpose." She spoke, trying to ignore the fact that he read her thoughts through her face. "You…" She felt her face getting red. "Are always in my head and I can't… stop it." I don't want it to stop. "I have this necessity to… come here and…"

But she couldn't say anything else. She knew what was next: Can you stop it? Can you leave me alone? Can you disappear and stop coming? Still, only mutism came from her lips.

He stared for a long moment, but Mikasa sensed he wasn't really paying her attention. His mind was away from there. He turned his great back to her, and Mikasa watched how he stood for three long minutes in that position.

In that moment, she took note of how normal he looked from behind. A simple man, perhaps from a powerful family, based on his clothes. The way he was standing, so casually, yet showing reservation, could had been easily confused with a business man during a vacation trip.

On the other hand, all of these went invalid when his aura reached her: a desperately alarm that told her he wasn't a trusted one, that she must had ran away since the beginning. Yet, her chest screamed every time she thought about him, her hands shook, longing his skin like if they knew who he was.

Mikasa covered her mouth, not understanding how her need for him was bigger than her fear.

He chose that moment to look at her again in a tensed way.

"Did you feel it that night, in the club?"

She blinked.

"What?"

"An uncontrollable attraction to us."

Mikasa frowned, but she thought about it… and yes, she remembered having felt that when she heard the woman's voice. However, it wasn't as hard and desperate as she felt it with him.

"Yes."

For the first time since she saw him, the vampire sighed, his exotic features showing something closer to anxiety. He took a step closer.

"Are you feeling it right now?"

Mikasa's heart started to beat so hard that she didn't need to answer, he heard it, somehow. Even with this, fury flashed in his eyes, like he couldn't believe it.

"You don't care what I am."

She swallowed, tears accumulating in her yes. A little no came from her lips. He grinned, mocking her. Mikasa frowned.

"I don't care you're a vampire."

She said it. That was it, the stupid, unbelievable, yet terrible truth. He was a vampire and she didn't care.

"Do you care now?"

The next second and without blinking, he was over her, his hands grabbing her wrists, his strong knees pushing her torso and between her legs.

She couldn't breathe, the air got stuck in her chest just as she felt his body, his harsh, cold hands touching her. Fire exploded inside her, and she tried to tell him how deep he affected her, but it was impossible. The only she could do was say no with her head as little cold whispers touched her skin, making her melt. He was cold, really cold, yet she never felt something so heated going crazy inside of her before.

He wasn't breathing either. His fists tightened on her wrists and Mikasa's lips opened without any sound coming out.

"Do you care now?" He growled, his voice transforming in something that definitively didn't sound human.

He showed his true face.

His eyeteeth transformed in big tusks, so big that he had to open his mouth to not cut himself. They angled until a series of small, sharp and lethal teeth replaced the humans he used to have, and a roar came out of him, huge enough to made her tear, thanks to her amazement. The sclera of his eyes turned black, making the red of his orbs more sinister than before, and Mikasa doubted there was an animal that could resemble the horror he showed. Little drops of saliva hit her face as the roar ended, and the silence that followed was like an omen of her death.

Tears rolled down her temples.

"I'm not afraid anymore." She managed to say.

They stayed like that for some seconds, both impacted because of what that meant.

His face went back to his human form as he stood up, pure shock in his features.

Mikasa sat and stared at him, that was sitting against a tree now, his eyes never letting go of her body, going from her toes to her head and then back to her toes, obvious unbelief in them.

"It's impossible." He muttered. "How's…?" He stopped, his eyes going to the house behind her. In a sudden, his face went to the same cold expression. "Your mother is waking up." He glared at her. "If you're intelligent enough, you're going to go back to your house and never think about coming here again."

NO!

Mikasa's hands went to her chest, pain crossing through it like an arrow.

"No…" She whispered.

He denied, desperation floating from his aura.

"I know what you want, Mikasa, and it's not me."

What is this? Thought Mikasa, why does it hurt so much to let go of him?

"Please…"

She heard the door behind her being opened.

"Mikasa? Are you outside again? What was that?"

Her mother turned on the flash of her cellphone, and Mikasa murmured please before he transformed in ashes until there was nothing. The lightning reached her, showing she was alone now.

Her mom got closer.

"Mikasa? Are you crying?"

She touched her cheeks.

That was, she was crying.

You're not… You can't leave me.

She was sure, he was going to come back to her.

Like Eren said, holy hell, that was hard to write. I did a Playlist of the main songs I listened to while writing this. You can check it out in my profile or in my tumblr, I'll be adding songs as I update the story.

Also, this fanfic is going to be a little slow burn (or whatever the name of this type of fanfic is) so you need to be patient until we reach the moment we're all waiting for *raises eyebrows like Hange-san*

Thank you so much for your reviews and good messages. What do you think of this chapter? Please, let me now, I'm dying to see if you liked it or not!

También hablo español, así que pueden escribirme sus comentarios en ese idioma si así lo prefieren.

Thank you, see you next update!

La que tals.