Eren has less than four years left to live.

It is something she has always known. The unspoken truth that follows them. Mikasa still does not know how to cope with the thought of him leaving. Every time, she is ravaged with body aches and head pains. There are days she has the cabin to herself and she's hit with a startling clarity that she must get used to this silence. A life without him, with only memories to spare.

Desperation grips her, and she wants to tear down the calendar on their wall, or plead to the goddess to save him. She feels it like a wound bleeding. A fear she has no courage to face. A battle she's already lost. For all the pain she's endured in her life, this one is still unlike any other.

Mikasa begins to wonder if she shouldn't have furnished their cabin with so many personals. Jars filled with sand and seashells they collected from the beach sitting on top of the fireplace. Flowers and leaves they've pressed onto parchment and framed on the wall. Baskets woven by hand occupying the corner of the room.

All of these precious mementos soon to become aching reminders.

She shakes her head, tries to shake off the sore notion, but her heart unravels with every break and every snap. There are days she feels restless and it takes everything in her not to burst and spill hot tears.

Eventually, she preserves this cabin like a keepsake and takes nothing down.

The door unlocks and interrupts her train of thought.

"I'm back!" Eren calls out as he enters their cabin and stows his shoes away.

He makes it five steps into the house and then she's on him, arms snaked around his middle and face buried in his shoulder. The distraction is enough. He floods her senses and she seizes him like an escape, embraces this like waking from a nightmare. He is dirty and muddied after his fishing trip, but she cannot find it in herself to care.

"You're clingy today," he murmurs in her hair.

She only hugs him tighter. "I just missed you."

Eren chuckles, and she feels the reverberations in his chest. "I'll make it up to you."

Mikasa lets him go and reaches up to wipe dirt off his cheek. For the rest of the night, she hovers. She cannot help herself – it is her nature and love language. He stopped brushing her off a long time ago anyway.

She bakes a small cake for his birthday: a vanilla-flavoured concoction topped with fruit and light icing. The recipe was given to her from the wives at the market, some of whom claimed to have been watching her for a while now. They gushed at young love, and giggled when her cheeks flushed pink. She shrunk and brushed off their comments, not wanting to remind herself the truth of it all. Mikasa swears she never scurried out of the market faster.

Later, she stares at the finished cake with more apprehension than pride. All she can think is that he has three more birthdays left, three more years, three more cakes and suddenly she's half-tempted to throw it into the trash. It will do more harm than good.

She steels herself against it, and reluctantly presents it to him when they sit for dinner.

He turns to her with a surprised gaze and she carefully gages his reaction, almost waiting for him to harden and arrive to the same realization.

It never comes, but she grows anxious anyway.

"I made it for your birthday," she starts, because he's not saying anything. "I've never baked a cake before, which is why it's so tiny. It's nothing fancy either, and it probably doesn't even taste sweet."

She doesn't mean to minimize her efforts, but the words pour out of her mouth before she can stop them. Meanwhile Eren stares, listening to her preamble and probably picking up the nervous cues behind them.

She swallows hard and continues, "We don't have to make a big deal out of this. I just wanted to do something special for today, but instead all I could think about was–" Suddenly she feels like crying, and she has to blink the sting out of her eyes.

There is a deafening silence. For some reason, it always comes down to this.

From the corner of her eye, she catches him slicing the cake with a fork and taking a sizeable bite. He contemplates for a short moment.

"It's delicious," he finally says, gazing at her with tenderness. "You're too hard on yourself."

He cuts another piece and holds it out for her to taste. She accepts it, and savours the soft texture and taste of vanilla bean on her tongue. She's right: it's hardly sweet, but she thinks she prefers it that way. With a finger, she wipes the crumbs off her lip and notices him staring.

"Do you like it then?"

He nods easily. "I do."

With a breath of relief, they trade bites one after another until the plate is cleaned.

Afterwards, when they're in the middle of cleaning up, she feels the warmth of his body behind her, his arms looped across her chest and his lips pressed against her temple. She relaxes into him and when one of his hands trails down to her abdomen, she wastes no more time.

She turns around and catches his lips in a bruising kiss. She can taste remnants of icing and sugar on his tongue, and asserts her desire by pulling him closer, hands roving everywhere and slipping under his shirt. All her pent-up frustration from the day disappears like smoke, and gives way to a different kind of desperation.

He welcomes her boldness and tries to keep up, dragging her cardigan from her shoulders and peppering breathy kisses along her jaw. Not one to forfeit her dominance, she palms his length, stiff and hard against her thigh. He grunts in response, and finds her lips again.

Mikasa gasps when he hoists her up with one arm, and her legs instinctively wrap around his waist. As he walks them over to their bedroom, she concedes that the rest of her chores will have to wait until morning.

They know this dance by now. They've woken to several mornings twisted in bedsheets and limbs tangled. Many nights he encourages her to take control, experiment and satiate her curiosities. Meanwhile, she tries to convince him she's not made of glass.

Tonight he doesn't hold back.

Her back hits the mattress, and she watches as he tests her entrance. She is wet enough, and his fingers slip inside her so easily that her back automatically arches to meet him. He pumps at a steady pace, and draws out the sweetest whimpers from her mouth. Even as she urges him, he doesn't let her finish.

She aches with unfulfillment, and before she can gripe about it, he hooks his arms under her knees, pulls her legs forward and starts to fuck into her hard and desperate. Mikasa cries out, mouth wide and loud with feverish groans. The rhythm he sets barely allows her to keep up, even as her body tries to arch and move with his thrusts. Soon she gives up altogether, taking whatever pleasure she can find, soaring into delirium and moans turning into strained gasps when he repeatedly hits that spot that makes her jerk and writhe underneath him.

When she reaches her peak, she throws one arm over her face and the sounds of her voice come out like sobs. It is enough for him to follow and find his own release. They lie together in the aftermath and haze, her hands stroking his hair and his face buried between her neck and collarbone.

Later that night, she is lying next to him, head resting on his bare chest and hand over his heart. His breathing is soft and calm, but she knows he's not sleeping.

She pats his chest lightly, "Eren?"

He grumbles out a sound, indicating he'd heard her.

She feels awful bringing it up now, but it's plagued her mind the whole day and she knows she won't find rest until it comes out.

"How come you… I mean, why is it that you don't…" she bites her lip, struggles to say it even now. He strokes her back, encouraging her to go on. "Do you not grieve? About our future, I mean."

His gaze stays on the ceiling. "Grieve?"

She sighs. "Sometimes I think I worry enough for the both of us, but maybe you just do it when I'm not looking."

"What brought this on?" he asks.

"Your birthday," she pipes up, a frown marring her features. "It's not fair. Everything has already been taken from me, and even now, I am still losing. I feel it every time I think about you leaving, or the years we have left."

Eren brushes the bangs out of her eyes. He thinks of apologizing for his numbered days, for leaving too soon, for causing her pain, but knows it will change nothing.

She buries her face in his shoulder. "Sorry for bringing it up."

He shakes his head.

"It's fine," he says. "And I do grieve. More often than not, actually."

She takes it back, because of course he does. She can't even recall what made her think otherwise. Even now, there are parts of him that are still subdued. Perhaps it's for the better.

There's a question at the tip of her tongue, and she hesitates to ask, "How do you cope with it?"

Silence befalls them once again.

She's about to waive the inquiry – in hindsight, it's a loaded question to ask a dying man – but she feels his chest rumble underneath her. Not the wracked and thrashing sort of tremble that accompanies grief or sorrow. It's light, and effortless. Mikasa anxiously peers up at him.

He's laughing, of all things.

"Sorry…" he says, clearing his throat. "You caught me off guard."

Mikasa shakes her head. "You don't have to say anything."

"I cope because of you," he says suddenly.

"What?"

He exhales a slow breath. She feels it underneath, and matches her own breathing to his.

"If I really wanted, I could spend the rest of my life fretting and worrying about what's to come, but…." His gaze is heavy, filled with something intense, significant and purposeful. It spreads to her too, and the feeling becomes tangled in her heart, forms a lump in her throat. There's not a word for it. He lets out another breath, and the corner of his lips tug to a smile. "…I'd rather spend it with you. Mikasa, wasn't it you who gave me that choice?"

The words flow off his tongue easier than anything that's been said, and the stark realization of it leaves her breathless.

Her face crumples, as if something within her bursts and breaks. For once, it is not the same and familiar body ache that's ravaged her like a sickness. It is something different entirely. All her life she wished for this: a caring pair of arms to ease her through life and all of its cruelties; someone to shelter her from reality.

She thinks of his younger self, for some reason. Rude, reckless and highly temperamental. And yet, he's also the same person lying underneath her now. He's grown and changed so much, and yet she loves him the same.

Mikasa makes up her mind then, to make the same choice. She shifts in bed until she's hovering over him, foreheads pressed together. She leans forward, presses a light kiss against his mouth until he's returning it, pulling her down and deepening it.

I choose you too.

Right now, nothing can break this peace.

It sounds strange, but Mikasa has to learn how to live in the present. How to live for now, and not worry about what happens a week from today, or months down the road, or the year ahead. The learning curve is steep, but there are many reasons for it:

She is no longer in the military, and is free to reshuffle her priorities that don't push timelines or goals.

Eren is not the same impulsive boy he once was. He will not charge towards danger with reckless abandon, and he is within her reach every day.

Mikasa is happier this way. It allows her to forget, even momentarily, and minimizes the breaks that threaten to consume her whole.

Time slips away from her, and she lets it.

Days are spent gardening, fishing, and building a life she never knew she wanted. Nights are spent in his arms, either quiet for comfort or loud with passion. The relationship they share is nothing like the one she dreamt in her youth, but it's better in all the right ways. Eren is actually the quieter one between the two of them, and she never has to clamour for his attention. In return, she takes care of him and tells him she loves him without needing to.

This love is real, she thinks. Much like the love of their parents, and she is grateful for their example.

But the grief still lingers every now and then.

It sneaks up on her in the most blissful moments, and comes in the form of small, nagging reminders that this will not last forever. It always catches her off guard, and she has to ground herself against them.

It catches up to him too. There are times he clings onto her, or distracts himself with work, chopping more wood than they need until nightfall. On the hardest of days, he holds her steadfast and tight, or makes love to her like it's the last time.

She knows his desperation like it's her own.

In these moments, she wishes time would wait.

But it doesn't, of course. Time has no agency and pays no heed to her cause.

This blissful life comes to a screeching halt when a storm festers in the sky and a downpour of relentless rain hits the mountainside and reaches their cabin.

Mikasa has to cut her hunting trip short when it starts to pour. As she runs home, the deluge of water quickly turns the dirt into mud, and every step she takes threatens to suck her boots under and cause an accident. The sweltering summer heat combined with the downpour makes her struggle for breath, as if she is drowning in this rain.

She is soaked from top to bottom when she finally makes it home. When she sees him, Eren is inspecting the leaks in the roof of their house. He's laid out buckets all over the floor to catch the droplets of rain that have seeped through, and he is so caught up in the task that he barely notices her.

As she collects herself, she realizes with shocking alarm that part of their floors are flooded, their furniture is in disarray, and all the crops they have carefully tended and grown cannot survive if this goes on. The tampered state of their home strikes like an awful robbery and still, this indifferent rain and storm continues to hammer and beat down on them.

And still, this indifferent rain and storm continues to hammer and beat down on them.

It draws forth memories of that fateful day. Yes, that gruesome time she'd been forced to watch her own parents struck down in front of her, pale and bleeding, and how in that instant, her world collapsed and crumbled under her feet. She thought of how nothing could hurt more.

Right now, it feels as though it is still happening. As if she never left that godforsaken cabin.

Mikasa doesn't even notice Eren in front of her until he touches her shoulder. His face is resolute, as if he has a plan. He's being pragmatic, but somehow it's not helping.

"Go find shelter outside, and stay away from the rain. I'm going to reinforce the rafters, and it could take a while."

When realization dawns on her, she grabs his wrist before he can make it out the door.

"No!" she screams, because this is quickly turning into an awful nightmare.

He turns around and gazes with confusion.

She doesn't know how to explain to him that she doesn't want to see his titan again. She doesn't want him to use it. They shouldn't have to resort to that. The mere thought of Eren biting into his hand, blood spilling and becoming that humanoid beast is something she can no longer stomach, because it is the very reason his life hangs in the balance.

"We can fix this ourselves," she pleads.

His confusion only deepens. "But we'll get sick in the rain."

She shakes her head. He tugs his arm away, takes one step forward, but she catches the end of his shirtsleeve. "Eren, please! You don't need to transform! You shouldn't have to. It's in the past now. We've moved on from that–"

"Mikasa."

She stops, because she knows she is unravelling and now his expression hinges on anger. There is a fire kindling in his eyes that aches familiar, something she has not seen in a long while. She cannot recall the last time he'd been stern with her.

He yanks his hand from her grasp, and it sharpens the ache in her heart. As if noticing, he repeats his command, albeit much gentler.

"I'll be back. Find shelter in the meantime."

Eventually, she curls up against a sturdy tree with branches long enough to shield her from most of the rainfall. The lightning strike signalling his transformation blends too perfectly with the rain and storm, and it makes her wince. Even now, she still cannot fathom the swirl of emotions coursing her mind and beating at her heart.

Falling back to old habits, she brings the damp red scarf up to her nose. The familiarity of the old and tattered thing has never failed to comfort her in the most trying times.

Hugging her knees tighter, she forces herself to watch his titan. A hard-hitting sight to behold, because she hasn't seen it in two years. This dull and harrowing realization sinks and cements itself in the spaces of her heart. Time is catching up to her now.

In the distance, he re-aligns the wooden rafters of their roof and secures one of their tarps over the leaks – a temporary fix. She knows he will use his titan again to rebuild it, and a bitter sensation settles in her mouth.

It is still raining when he finishes. By the time he's cut himself out of his titan and makes it back home, Mikasa has already swept the debris to one side and is halfway through scrubbing their floors. Her efforts come off vain and hopeless, but it is difficult to care about anything besides restoring this place back to its former state.

When he crouches beside her, she quietly asks for space. To his cocked brow, she reassures him she's not angry with him, because she's not.

She knows this grief very well. A part of her always knew that it would find her again and take root. No amount of distractions will get it out this time. She is mortified and distraught, but somehow it feels important. Feels necessary.

She cannot find it in herself to say it loud, only knows it deep inside of herself.

It doesn't stop raining.

Mikasa falls asleep blocking the low murmurs of thunder, and wakes to the patter of rain against their windows. Her mind goes to the garden every once in a while, wondering if any of their crops could survive this storm. When the rain loosens to a light drizzle, she takes the chance to salvage what is left and gets her answer.

Nothing.

She punches a divot into the ground, knuckles white and shaking.

They are drowned. She only finds mud, wilted leaves and dead roots. Even her plants have suffocated from this storm. She sits back on her knees and feels the rain seeping through her hair, and soaking through her scarf and cardigan. The muddy terrain below her seems to boil and bubble underneath this sweltering heat and humid rain.

The downpour worsens then. She watches the thunderhead spiralling above the mountains, gathering another storm within its grasp. She should retreat to the confines of the cabin, but instead she sinks in this rain.

Fuck.

She mulls over the pain in the heavy fog of her mind, and weeps in the confined spaces. It was inevitable; every break and every snap colliding and bursting and erupting at the seams. There is nothing to wake her from this crumbling resolve. It hits her like open floodgates, a broken dam, or a single spark of wildfire.

I'm going to lose him.

Ackerman blood pumps through her veins, fuels her with the strength of a hundred men, and yet she is powerless to protect those who matter. She curses the stars and the goddess for saddling her with such a tragic and atrocious destiny; tending a love inside her that would grow beyond measure, only so she can watch him fade and wither too soon.

I would have to give this up.

She crouches into the field, head buried in her arms. Her hands grip the dirt beneath her like a lifeline, like it's the only thing tethering her to this earth. She screams until her lungs give out, throwing her voice into the howling winds and joining the cacophonous sound. Her mind fills with images of life without him – she's always resisted them – and the inevitability of it all comes down like crashing waves, robbing her of air and space to breathe.

She can almost feel the comfort of his arms starting to leave her. It renders her desperate and gasping for breath. Like a fish dragged out of water, or rain drying up in the sun.

I would have to forfeit all we've built and grown.

She exhales with exasperation, and feels her chest heaving.

But this life is paradise. Eren is my–

"Mikasa!"

Home.

She misses the panic in his tone. She misses his voice altogether.

He is all I ever–

A jacket is laid on top of her. Strong arms wrap around her.

Wanted.

She tries to breathe in deeply, and finds the task arduous with the weight on her chest and the lump in her throat. Her hands latch onto him like an anchor in this storm, and she holds on tight. He gently caresses her back in a steady rhythm – consistent and grounded in light of this erratic storm.

One, two, three. One, two, three.

Mikasa follows his motions like a musical beat.

Eventually, she finds her breath.

Somehow, her despairing soul is rocked to quiet mending.

What am I to you?

Eren takes her hands and pulls her to her feet. She grasps onto him and follows him home, knowing he will ease her out of darkness again. He is the only one to soothe her aches, quiet the noise and let everything else fade into the background. She loves him completely for it.

You are everything.

Lucidness returns to her as she dries and changes out of her wet clothes. Her face is red and puffy and there is a heaviness to her gait, but she comes out of the bedroom anyway and joins him in front of the fireplace. For a while, she holds out her hands and gleans warmth from the radiating fire.

"The storm makes me restless," she breaks silence, eyeing a few wandering embers.

He gives a hum of agreement.

She turns her head to peek at him. "I'm sorry. I promised I'd do my best not to bring this up, but…" She shakes her head, pushing herself to say it in spite of her reluctance. "…I can't see beyond the next two years. There's nothing there. No future, no cause... Almost as if time will stop completely. And then I find myself wondering if things would have been different had we chosen to stay behind, but it's not as though the curse would…" Her voice trails off completely, and she rubs the sting out of her eyes. "Sorry. I don't mean to ramble."

He watches her, expression crinkling a little.

"It would have been the same," he tells, just above a tired whisper.

Mikasa's face drops and she swivels to face him, legs still tucked underneath.

"How?"

Eren swallows hard, face twisting in pain and jaw hardening. The same expression that finds him when he dreams in memories, or speaks of destruction.

"It would have been by your hand instead," he says plainly, but not without reservation. "I'll lose myself and use the founder's powers to start a war. Destroy the world according to her will. I push through with it knowing it's wrong and cruel, but my actions won't be justified. You'll stop me because of it."

Her entire face becomes hot all of a sudden. She just stares at her clenched fists, unsure why he sometimes speaks as though it's still going to happen, and refusing to comprehend how she could ever –

Eren touches her shoulder, as if reading her mind.

"Mikasa. You do it to save me, and I wouldn't have it any other way. You'll save humanity because of it, and nobody will live in fear of titans after that."

She's shaking her head, eyes closed shut and nails digging into her skin. Even two years past, and she still doesn't understand. She doubts she will ever understand. To choose between Eren and the fate of the world is too cruel of a decision to even fathom, let alone rest on her shoulders. As if the world hasn't been unkind to her already.

She breathes with exasperation and looks at him with finality and defiance.

"I don't want to make that choice," she says, but then quietly, in the back of her mind, she wonders if she already did.

His expression softens a bit. "Everything changed the night you told me you loved me. It made me feel… human, because I loved you the same."

She stiffens with the truth, face twisting and crumpling between anger, pain and confusion.

"No one ever made me feel that way. It was mine the whole time," he continues, taking her clenched fists in his fingers and unwinding them. Her palms hurt, but she finds comfort in his hands folding over hers. She's trembling like she's on fire, but the calm and unchanging green of his gaze drowns out her rage.

"Escaping here was something I wanted, a choice I made with my heart. I would do it again and again, unless…"

She stares at him, unsure of the reason his voice breaks.

Eren sighs and dips his head, making certain they are seeing eye to eye.

"Mikasa, do you ever regret this?" he asks for the first time, with obvious difficulty. "I only have two years left. It will never be enough, and even now I still cause you so much pain and suffering–"

"No," she cuts off, settling the argument once and for all. She shakes her head furiously, halting the thought before it sails. "I would do it again."

And without thinking, she springs forward and throws her arms around his figure. Her kiss is hard and desperate. She is determined to prove every word. He returns it in full, and she cannot imagine why she would ever choose otherwise.

"I love you," he says, even though he doesn't need to. She feels it in everything he does.

They part only so their foreheads can press together, breaths mingling in between.

"I wish we had more time," he murmurs softly. "That was the wish I made under the stars."

She pulls back to memorize every line and curve of his face. "I love you too."

It's the only thing that needs to be said, and suddenly she is grateful for their choice.

Afterwards, she holds him tight and close to her, knowing she will do so until she is forced to let go.

She loves him and he loves her back. On the surface, it seems easy, but she knows in some dark crevice of her mind, that even though this love is selfish – escaping to these mountains was selfish – it is also good.

It is clear like the blue reflective sheen of the ocean. Bright in the dark like the constellations in the night sky and the stars they wished upon. Beautiful in the midst of this world's unending horror and cruelty.

Her source of strength. The root of his humanity.

This love is enough.

Time will come when it will teach her to grow, too.

The rain stops and gives way to a brighter morning.

From her window, Mikasa spots the luminous streaks of colour in the sky, no doubt left behind by the storm, and feels as though a heavy weight has been lifted off her chest.

Eren is still sleeping beside her and quietly she extracts herself out of his embrace. She makes her way outside, where the sun warms her face and a soft breeze sweeps past her. The silence is easy and comforting. For a moment, she allows herself to bask in this delicate peace.

In the corner of her eye, she finds something in the garden. Perhaps not everything drowned in the rain.

Campanulas.

Mikasa crouches by the patch of purple-petaled flowers and traces her finger along one of them, careful not to disturb their growth. She wonders how they managed to endure the flood, even bloom as a result of it. So frail in appearance, but their roots must be deep, sturdy and strong.

Strange how this bellflower seems to follow her wherever she goes.

It grows under the wrath of the titans, and weathers the worst of storms. It is the only thing to survive the wreckage. It's almost incredible how they managed to grow such a thing; she and Eren are so damaged themselves.

Perhaps this flower will remain. Just like the memories they've made.

Mikasa glances at her surroundings. The mountains in the distance, the trees circling their cabin, the river flowing downward and everything else still standing.

She sees this home they've built and finds pieces of him everywhere; his heart is carved in everything they've made, and said, and done.

When he passes on, maybe it will be enough.