There is a certain innocence in remain embraced, under the moon and the stars, on a frosty February night, for an unsealed time.
For the first time in years, time doesn't matter.
Everything is silent, voiceless. Space is infinite around them, and there are no more boundaries. Eren feels naked, alone. He allowed her to enter his world, made of insecurities and a lot of fear, and encompasses her, by marking the beats of his heart against his ribs without feeling more fear.
He becomes aware of how tight he is holding her, the warmth her own body radiates, how his body looks purpose-built for moments like this.
The emotions he feels flowing through his veins are strong to make him feel, strange, alive, present, but they seem destined to be confined between his ribs forever. He inadvertently smells the scent of her hair, senses her sobs against his chest and something that goes beyond that - something that tells him that the reason Mikasa cries is as clear as the Moon tonight,
but decides to ignore it.
Rather, he begins to doubt that what has assaulted him up to that moment is true, and he believes nothing but what he feels inside.
One day, sitting on a cold asphalt of a foreign city, while rats will ruin among the leftovers of a canteen on the sidewalks of a dark and desolate street, he will think that perhaps the most naïve, and true moment of his life was that one. When he had tried to do something for her, and she unknowingly made him feel what makes a man feel true,
What makes a man feel alive.
He learns in this way, however, that what originates from the heart wants much more than words, when his mind begins to be contaminated with thoughts that he had never done before.
Eren discovers a different instinct that night.
His hands drive him, and what started moving them doesn't matter anymore. After that moment, the shiny tears that arise from the corners of her eyes never come to completely strip her face.
His hands act in nature, as if it were something they have always done, caressing her back, arriving at her face, while his thumbs trace away the paths of her tears, completely, again and again.
They're hot, while his fingertip touches them. They become rough when it reaches the scar. His stomach closes, and vipers begin to strangle him, until whatever he was thinking shuts up, and he remains alone, in the world, in front of her, a spring bud that resists the freezing cold of winter.
He'd like to give her more and make her promises that he can't keep, just to make her feel better.
She has her eyes closed, remains silent, her sobs calm down at his administrations. Slowly, she raises the crown of her head by instinct, and her forehead touches his lips a few millimeters, and Eren wonders what a boundary is. If they exist. If the timeline that divides the day from the night, tomorrow from today, is the same one that he feels he wants to overcome right now.
It's a dip in the void, he thinks, as he looks at the lashes wet with tears, the pink on her cheeks for their contact. She rests her hands on his chest, at least as unconscious as he is, and opens her eyes slowly, and he wonders why now, why now, why he would take her face in his hands and kiss her.
"Why are you crying?" he asks her, and it's a whisper.
His eyelids feel heavy; the senses are completely blurred by her presence, so close, by the scent of her hair, by the tiredness and the strange sensation in his chest that grows out of proportion.
'... because of me?', he wonders.
And he can't get out of his head the feeling that maybe he is right.
Mikasa has her eyes closed, totally abandoned to his hands, as if safe and far from danger.
"Uh?" she utters slowly; her heavy eyelids began to rise slowly, discovering the storms behind the night. She pauses at that exact moment - he feels her breath on his mouth - and as aware of the distance he has voluntarily diminished, the warmth of his hands on her cheeks to stop the stream of tears running across them, how delicate his thumb is on her cheekbone, and how close their chestes are, she snaps her eyes open.
Oxygen begins to return to the head, and as close as it gets, how pressed they are against each other becomes clear, Mikasa lowers her hands again, her lips separate, and her cheeks turn red.
Eren, in reflection, grinds his eyes, and as if he woke up from a dream, realizes that he still has her face in his hands. He lowers them, puts them in his pockets, takes a step back.
Eren has no idea what she is apologizing for, in his ears the words appear confused and distant. He feels stupid and betrayed by himself. She tells him it's best to go back inside or he will catch a cold – and Eren would like to tell her that he hasn't gotten sick since he was nine. But he doesn't.
Because his mind is still intoxicated by those thoughts.
"Why?", he begins to wonder, when she smiles at him and gives him goodnight,
"Why do I feel like this?"
Tired? Confused?
What had just happened?
The feelings of a moment ago seem disappeared, and all that it's left in his heart is…
Despair.
He returns to the room in slow, drooping steps – or perhaps it's better to say that his feet dragged him there, against his will - after being in the cold for a good hour, with his hands in his pockets and his gaze fixed on the ground.
He struggles to keep his eyes open enough to see the dorm hallway becoming familiar. He carries the weight on his knees at every step, and once arrived, he stares at the door in front of him.
The hand on the handle hesitates for a few seconds before opening, and all of sudden falling asleep out there is an idea that sounds even better than facing Armin's gaze in case he's awake,
... at such a late hour, with so many questions in his head.
Trying not to make noise, he closes the door behind him.
The weight he carries inside, and on his shoulders is such to make him stay with his back resting on it, one foot against the woody surface and the other on the ground, for a while longer.
He wishes he could sleep and not think, not think.
Not to feel.
He wants to close his eyes and let go of what he has seen, heard and felt and postpone everything until he'll be able to put things right.
For this reason he observes for a moment the distance between the door and the bed, aware he doesn't even have the strength to completely take off his clothes off – and evaluates for a moment the idea of going to sleep exactly like this...
... even if sleeping seems impossible now.
His face must really suck right now.
Noticing he's not alone, Eren shouts down his doubts the very moment his eyes and Armin's meet halfway in the room.
His expression looks...surprised, probably to see him returning at such a late hour,
which is, about, one hour after his return.
Or maybe for how horrible he looks, with that not-shaved slight beard and messy hair and probably dark-dark circles under his eyes.
Their eyes cross, and his greeting draws Eren's attention from the whirlwind of thoughts. Comfortable as he looks, he has a hand resting under his head, and his feet dangle from the bed.
He seems to forcefully ignore, and at the same time not, the atmosphere dropped into the room the moment his best friend set foot there.
Eren takes one last moment before taking off his shoes. He doesn't have the strength to answer at the moment, and he wonders when he will ever be able to.
In his head there are so many disconnected points, which have to do with what he feels beating in his chest, what instead his duty tells him to do, and the cruel truth that is before him today and in five years.
He shakes his head.
The lantern's dim light illuminates the space enclosed between the four walls. The shadows master the sky, for how late it is outside the window, but it's clear enough to catch a glimpse of the stars.
and then he looks at the Moon.
It was there, too, an hour ago,
when for the first time something spoke to him more clearly than any other voice, memory or thought that voices in his head,
and his hands acted on their own account at the very voice of an unknown instinct.
He takes off his shirt, throwing it in his chair. His eyes are tired, they beg him to rest, losing the shade of green and turning more into grey.
His muscles start not to move anymore under his command; his movements are not synchronized with his thoughts, which are far from where their seat is located. They take shape, they begin to connect the first point to the second, to consecrate a truth that... Eren is not ready to hear.
He takes off his shoes, and sits on the bed.
He has the instinct to pull his head back to make thoughts slip away.
But... why would he?
Who does he want to make fun of?
It's all so clear that every attempt to divert the flow of his thoughts–relieving his sense of guilt – is useless.
And at the same time not.
Chaos and a perfect order reign in his head. There is a stream of thoughts that doesn't have a beginning or an end, but it is all connected.
If only someone could put in words what he feels.
If only he had never opened his eyes.
Under the touch of his hands, which have punched injustice and suffering, which have seen blood – and not only his – he now feels only warmth, and it's as if her cheeks have imprinted a memory not only in his mind, but also in his hands.
It doesn't make sense, but he's doubting he ever got back in his room.
The lamp continues to illuminate, and Eren lies on the bed, covers the eyes with his forearm, and puts a hand on his stomach in hearing all the vipers twist in his belly, and comes to a stupid, unique, certain conclusion:
Oh
how much he would like to sleep right now.
This 'processing' everything in such a short time only increases his headache, and he believes that if he observes the ceiling for a few minutes with his eyes open until they become dry, maybe he will sleep.
It seems that "confusion" is the only word he knows the meaning of, at the moment, and he hates, he hates himself.
And what annoys him is that he would like answers, which he can't have at the moment, and he'd like to throw everything out, but something's holding him back. He doesn't know the words to explain himself – and feels as if a punch in his heart is exactly begging him not to.
What is it?
And why can't he talk about it?
Does that mean growing up, too? Think it's fairer for certain things to ingoche in the heart than to give it rope?
The heavy and strange air that entered their room at the exact moment Eren set foot there, is impossible not to notice, for Armin.
His question, though genuine, immediately warns his friend.
"Is everything all right?" Armin asks, in a sleepy and low voice.
"You look... devastated."
Maybe he's gone a little too far, but to be honest with himself, he just wants to... be sure that his off-stage outing served any purpose.
His companion makes a single hint with his head, and remains motionless like a statue on the bed. He covers her eyes with a forearm, while the other falls dangling on his abs and then on his side.
"It's all right."
Somehow Armin gets the message. Nodding, he looks to the side at his companion, wrinkling his eyebrows slightly, and silences for a few seconds. Then, his sight adverts to un undefined point of the wall in front of his own bed.
"It was... a difficult week for everyone. And she must have been very afraid."
Silence falls again in the room, and Eren's lack of response makes Armin doubt that perhaps something has moved, in him, and certainly makes him realize that he doesn't want to talk about it.
Things change. So fast, he would add.
Once, if there were any problems, Eren's inability to put into words what passed through his head was offset by Armin's brilliance to understand it. Their universes were similar at the time, although they were distinct in many facets. Eren was an open book, and Armin could read books better than anyone.
But Armin respects him. Things change, for everyone. He nods again, and blows out the candle to their side before tucking under the blankets.
He wishes him goodnight, and at an unreceived reply, closes his eyes.