Eren was brought back to the present when he heard Mikasa enter the kitchen.

"Are you okay? I thought I heard something break."

"Sorry I woke you up. I dropped a plate when I was drying it."

"Which is why there's a dent in the wall over here?"

Silence stretched a moment.

"I'm sorry." Eren's voice was soft as he stared at the floor. "I had a nightmare about mom and when I woke up I couldn't help but think about Grisha and I just got so angry about it. Everything that's happening right now is probably because of him and I just want everything to stop. I want to research fucking fish, not get caught up in someone else's stupid war. Trost was supposed to be different."

Mikasa walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around him, holding him while his throat felt like it was closing up and his eyes burned. He could feel the wet heat ready to overflow from his eyes. When Mikasa held him tighter he blinked and allowed a few tears to escape; one shuddering breath later he was straightening up and Mikasa was unwrapping her arms.

"Feeling better?"

"Yeah."

No, not at all.

"Okay. Now are you going to tell me what happened to your face? Because this is the second time you've come home with it all fucked up."

"Yeah, I'd really rather not talk about it."

"Too bad." Mikasa's voice made it clear that she would brook no arguments. "What happened?"

"Levi offered to give me some self-defense lessons; it's fine."

"Excuse me!? The midget did that? Is everyone in the Survey Corps going to hurt you? You've got more injuries from them than these Titans they're supposedly protecting you from. What the fuck, Eren?"

Mikasa's eyes were narrowed and her face was taut with anger. Her fists were balled up and shaking. She would strike a far more terrifying figure if it weren't for the neck brace and the bed head, but Mikasa being less-scary was still scarier than most people could ever be.

Eren took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts.

"The Survey Corps are rotating watching to make sure that nothing happens to me while you're out-of-commission since the Titans want me for whatever reason." He paused a moment and Mikasa nodded in assent. "And apparently Levi is the one who's going to end up taking a bunch of those shifts... watches? Anyway, he thought that it would be good for me to practice some self-defense to make things a bit easier; just in case something did happen. So he met me after class yesterday – that's where I was – and we went to one of the other buildings that the Survey Corps apparently owns…"

How much do I actually want to say?

"I couldn't really hit him, he wasn't doing anything more than blocking my attempts to hit him. I just didn't want to fight him, it was too weird and I couldn't help thinking about who he was and it was pretty pitiful. He hit me to get me actually pissed off at him; it worked. I ended up tagging him back after a bit."

Mikasa tried and failed to hold back a snort of laughter.

"Anyway, I sort of froze up because I hit him a lot harder than I meant to and he got pissed off at me and punched me in the face again." Also a kick to my side but she doesn't need to know that. "It was really shitty of him, but also I kind of get where he's coming from? He's not exactly a warm and fuzzy person and I don't think he knows how to give constructive criticism. Probably doesn't even fucking know what it means."

"When I'm okay to take this stupid brace off, I'm going to kill him."

"Mikasa, please just leave it. I really doubt he's going to suggest trying to do any self-defense work with me again."

"Why's that?" She looked mildly confused. "If he was bitching about it making his job easier and apparently it gives him free reign to beat you up, why don't you think he's going to continue with it?"

Deep breath. Just tell the truth.

"We kind of got into an argument right after."

"Over what?"

"…uh…" Fuck it. "The fact that he punched me in the face when I was standing totally still and not even trying to defend myself.

"That's pretty fucking valid. Shorty's so pissed off at you because you argued that he isn't going to work with you anymore? That's fucking ridiculous."

"No, it's more like we both said some stupid things and now it's going to be really awkward for a bit. I don't actually know that he won't work with me anymore but I can take a pretty solid guess that I'm right."

"As long as he isn't blowing off his shifts watching you, I guess it isn't that much of an issue."

No, that's exactly the issue. I don't want to be protected like some princess in a tower, I'm sick of this bullshit. Ugh. Levi, did you really need to call me out about my crush when you did?

"Yeah." Eren stared into space in the direction of Mikasa's left shoulder for a moment, still in his own thoughts. "I'm going to have some cereal or something and head to campus. I didn't get a chance to finish my lab last night and even talking with Armin I couldn't figure out my thesis topic. Oh fuck, everyone's going to ask about my face."

Mikasa pulled him into a gentle hug.

"At least your eyebrow is pretty much healed. Though maybe you could have told everyone that you got mugged and your adviser would give you an extension on your thesis topic. You would have looked even worse with the bandages."

"I wish. No way is the department going to give me an extension. I need to submit to the IRB."

"Well, good luck. I'm going to go back to bed. Promise to not hurl around anymore plates?"

"I'll stick to juice glasses."

"Please, he isn't worth you getting upset about. Don't think about him so much, okay?"

"Yeah, sure."

Tell that to Commander Handsome.

.

IRB stands for Institutional Review Board. You have to submit all research proposals requiring live subjects to them so that they can evaluate your methods and check for ethical issues with your work (especially if people are involved) and you can't start anything until they grant approval. Dunno about other schools, but at mine the IRB only convened every three months so if you missed a submission deadline you were royally screwed.

Sorry about the academia acronyms.