Hi. It's been a while.

I'm sorry about the last author's note I left. Well, I've managed to suppress that shitstorm for now, and I've worked up the confidence to post another chapter. I should probably take the advice my commentors gave me and stop saying "it's only going to get worse." Pretty obvious that's a turn-off to a lot of readers.

This chapter is the shortest that I've posted in a while, so I don't have much to say. However, the school year is finished for me and I can (hopefully) spend more time on my writing now, both fanfictitious and original work. I've left the original stuff abandoned for a pretty long time, so I think it's about time that I picked it back up again.

This chapter was beta'd by my two fandom friends frozenheart23 and volatileSoloiste. They also beta'd the last few chapters for me. I've been meaning to credit them for a while, but for some reason I kept forgetting. Just wanted to say thanks for reading my shit. :3

Good news. I finally restarted my author blog. Mind you, it's still under construction, so there might not be very much to look at for at least another week or two. I've decided to make pages for my stories (The October Story finally got some fan art. Yay!). The blog's new name is "the-angstiest-author." That way I can continually change my username and it'll work, so long as it has "angst" somewhere in it. Hooray for indecisiveness.

I'm still following the tags "fic: tmiu" and "fic: the monsters inside us" if anyone even cares.

That's enough for now.

Story time.

I didn't speak at all on the way home. Mikasa didn't push me to. Neither of us said a word in the entire thirty-four minutes it took for us to get back to our house. We both noticed that I was walking even slower than usual. I didn't even try to stop myself from thinking about why. Then when we got home, I went up to my room, shut the door, and screamed into a pillow until I passed out from exhaustion.

I had been trying so hard not to think about it lately. I'd been pushing the thought away all summer. The YCSG had been to blame for that. I wouldn't deny that much. And for a long time, I hated them for it. For giving me hope. For wrapping me up in friendships I didn't need. For making me think that I had a chance. I guess when you finally have a little shred of happiness in your life, it's suddenly that much harder to think about losing it.

At that meeting, I remembered.

It had been so long since I had felt like the doomed, worthless lump of mutated cells that I knew, deep down, that I really was. I had almost forgotten. When I was with the support group... when I was with my friends... it had all felt almost normal. Like maybe I knew them from school instead of group therapy. We never acted like anything was wrong. And over time, maybe I'd subconsciously convinced myself that that was really the case.

But it wasn't. And it had taken the extremest of measures to remind me.

I'd met all of those people that I had decided to call my friends because I had cancer. And my cancer was killing me. It was happening slowly, but it was still happening. Maybe Mikasa, and my dad, and even Dr. Erwin didn't want me to believe it, but it was. Every time I relapsed I broke down a little more. And the line had to end somewhere. My cancer could drag itself out for years if it wanted to. And I knew that someday it would hit me so hard that I wouldn't be able to bounce back.

They could tell me as many times as they wanted that I was getting better, but I wasn't.

I was going to die. Maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but I would, and infinitely sooner than someone who was actually healthy.

That night, I fell asleep before my dad came home. I almost had another dream about Levi, but something woke me up and the dream was ripped away from me the moment I saw his face in my sleep. Then, as soon as my eyes were open, I knew I wouldn't be going back for the rest of the night.

Levi. He had been the first. Everything else had happened because of him.

I had no reason to like him the way I did, but at the same time, I had every reason. If I had any sense left in my head, I would have hated him for what he'd dragged me into. But I couldn't. I couldn't think of Levi that way. I felt nothing but... I didn't even know what it was anymore. I wanted him. I wanted his attitude, his moodiness, his busy schedule, his perfect body, the little glimpses of emotion he showed me whenever he let his guard down, the way he secretly cared when he really wanted to and everything else that came with it. But I could never have him. Not as long as things were like this. Not as long as I was sick. I was nothing but a chore to him. Just something he had to take care of. But my feelings still wouldn't change, no matter how many times I forced myself to see the truth.

It doesn't matter, I told myself as I lay there, my face streaked with tears that had been falling for no reason while I slept. It's just a crush. Just a stupid crush. It'll be over before you know it. He'll never like you back. Then when you're dead, he'll move on. It won't matter how you felt now. No one is going to remember. No one is going to care. Especially not him.

For some reason, knowing that hurt more than anything else.

Just like it had for the past four years, the world kept on turning without me. Monday rolled around, the school week started, Mikasa was gone for seven hours a day and I still hadn't set foot outside of the house since Saturday. My tutor came in four times that week, and I straggled through more lessons and online class work when he didn't. Whatever time I had left was dedicated to drowning my feelings in the fictional struggles of whatever TV show characters Netflix had to offer me. Then, before I knew it, Friday had passed. Mikasa was home for the weekend. I'd spent a whole six days without once leaving the house.

On Saturday morning, I woke up before her for once in my life. I had completely lost track of my sleeping schedule, deciding to just drift off whenever I felt like it. This had led to an extraordinary number of online assignments finished and turned in sometime around 3 AM. I must have somehow gone full circle and fallen back into a somewhat normal sleeping pattern, because while I was sitting in the kitchen and picking indifferently at a bowl of Chex, Mikasa walked in wearing a pair of gym shorts and a crumpled tee shirt.

I glanced up from the breakfast that I was making a half-assed attempt to eat. Mikasa seemed like she was barely even paying attention to what was in front of her. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, raked back her messy, tangled hair and pulled the door of the fridge open. She mechanically took out a bottle of V8 juice, poured herself a glass and hip-checked the door shut. Mikasa didn't notice me sitting at the table and watching her until she put her glass down directly across from me.

She blinked, and her eyes appeared to refocus and widen a little, but she dropped back into her half-asleep stupor a second later. Neither of us said anything for an entire five minutes while we sat there. And when someone finally did, of course it was her.

"'Morning. Didn't think I'd see you down here so early."

"What constitutes early?" I tossed back, stabbing at the soggy remains of my cereal with the end of my spoon.

Mikasa shrugged. "I dunno. Earlier than me."

"What time is it?" I asked.

"It's..." She peered over my shoulder and glanced at the clock on the microwave behind me. "About eight thirty. How long have you been up?"

"No idea. A few hours, maybe," I replied. I dropped my spoon back into my bowl and gave up on trying to eat whatever was left. I really wasn't feeling it anymore.

"You really need to get your sleeping pattern back under control, Eren," Mikasa remarked, picking up her glass and draining whatever was left. "I woke up at like, 2 in the morning a few days ago, and I heard you typing in your room. What the hell were you doing up that late?"

"Online school stuff," I said. "And I was up a lot later than that."

"How late?"

"You think I know? I wasn't looking at the clock. I think I saw the sun come up, though."

Mikasa sighed and stared at her empty glass. "Sometimes I just really don't know what to do with you."

The two of us went back to hanging around in silence as Mikasa got up again and fixed herself a piece of toast. I sat at the table, doing what I did best (something in between nothing and overthinking, if you haven't gotten the gist at this point). My sister didn't sit back down at the table, choosing instead to perch herself on the counter and eat her toast there. She kept looking back at me every few seconds, then taking her eyes away whenever I noticed. I wondered why for a little while. But I figured the question wasn't worth asking.

It wasn't until the toast was gone that she finally asked. "Are you okay, Eren?"

Her voice had come up so suddenly, but I didn't care enough to be startled. I looked up at her from the table. "I think so. Why do you ask?"

It was a lie. I should have known that Mikasa wouldn't fall for it.

"Because there are a shitload of warning signs that you've been displaying lately. That's why," she said, looking me dead in the eyes.

"Warning signs?" I echoed, raising my eyebrows.

"Yeah. A lot of them."

"Like what?"

"You haven't been sleeping normally, first of all. You haven't left the house in a week. You haven't been eating lately, either."

"Um, Mikasa?" I interjected, gesturing emphatically at the bowl of Chex that I had been working my way through shortly before she had walked in.

"You got halfway through it and gave up. That's not eating, Eren. That's a shitty attempt at covering up the fact that you're not."

"But that's this morning," I said indignantly. "What about the rest-"

"Eren, I am literally the only person who watches you eat, ever. And what you've been doing over the past week hasn't been normal."

My argument fell flat and I shut my mouth. I couldn't compete with her. So I resorted to sighing heavily and surrendering. "What were the warning signs for?"

"A lot of things," she explained. "Depression, mostly. But-"

"Hold on. Depression?"

Mikasa paused in the middle of her explanation and fixed her gaze pointedly on me. "Yeah. I looked it up. Some people say that depression can be a side effect of cancer."

"Depression isn't a side effect of cancer," I said. "It's a side effect of dying."

The kitchen went silent for a second. Mikasa stared at me, a look of sleep-stifled distress on her face, like she was trying to be shocked but it was too early in the morning for the feeling to register correctly.

"You're not dying, Eren."

"Yes, I am," I replied, meeting her level gaze with mine. "That's sort of what happens to people with cancer."

"It doesn't mean it's going to happen to you."

"Yes, it does. It might not be happening right now. But it is happening. There's no way around it."

Mikasa stared at me for a while, before sighing and dropping her eyes to the floor. "We all have to die sometime. So if that's how you really want to see it, fine. You're dying. But so am I. And so is Dad, and Armin, and everyone else on the planet. It doesn't just happen to people with cancer. It happens to everyone."

"That's not what I mean by dying, Mikasa," I shot back, anger seeping into my words. "I don't mean living out your life and wasting away while you get old. I-"

"I know what you mean, Eren!" Mikasa snapped. I shuddered in my seat. She froze up, as if she hadn't realized she'd started shouting all of a sudden. I blinked and stared at her, my eyes wide, and she stared back, looking just as surprised as I was. "I know what you mean," she repeated, her voice soft again. "And you're not dying, Eren. Not yet."

"I will be someday," I said listlessly.

"Maybe. But not today."

The room was quiet again after that.

Mikasa dropped her plate into the dishwasher and left after she figured out that I didn't want to talk anymore. I went back up to my room, and three hours later I heard the front door swing open and slam shut. Mikasa had left to go meet some of her friends at the park down the block from the library. I knew that much. She'd never told me when she would be back. But I didn't care. She could be gone until tomorrow and it still wouldn't matter. For now I just wanted to curl up in my room and be as alone as I could possibly get.

That was exactly what I did. Within minutes, I was bundled up in my comforter with my laptop open in front of me, my shades pulled down and my headphones over my ears. Halfway through my third consecutive episode of Sherlock, my phone buzzed next to me on the mattress. I snatched it up and glanced at the screen. It was a text from Armin.

Arminnie Mouse: eren i am SOOOO BORED. don't want to wait until the next meeting. you want to come over?

I didn't bother answering.

I wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone. I just wanted to not live my own life for a while. But I couldn't do that. So the closest thing that I could find was losing myself in someone else's.

I didn't even hear the front door swinging shut when Mikasa came back home.

"Eren?"

I blinked slowly, my bleary eyes unable to focus on anything but the screen in front of me. Somewhere outside the realm of my headphones, someone was calling my name. I wondered who. But that still wasn't enough to make me feel like taking them off.

My bedroom door swung open and light flooded in from the hallway outside.

"Eren, what the hell?!"

A small, startled noise broke out of my throat and I scrambled around in my comforter nest, trying to shield my burning eyes from the sudden burst of sunlight. "Fuck. FUCK. Agh, for the love of-"

"Jesus, Eren. I can't believe you're actually... fucking all over again..."

Finally I reached up and slid my headphones off of my ears. Mikasa's voice rang clear through my room.

"Christ, it's like a fucking bat cave in here," she grumbled as she strode into the room and yanked on the cords of my shades. They snapped into their folded positions and the light in my room brightened to the same intensity as the hallway. I squinted my eyes and glanced up to see the formerly blue-gray sky painted with a warm, orange glow.

The sun was setting.

I turned back to Mikasa, a rock settling in the pit of my stomach. "Mikasa..."

"No." Mikasa was standing in front of my bed, one hand perched on her hip and the other held up to stop the stream of lies that was about to come spilling out of my mouth. "No. Save it. I'm sick of hearing all your "I'm fine" bullshit, because you are obviously not."

"Mikasa, seriously, I-" I opened my mouth to protest, but she cut me off again.

"There is something wrong. And don't you fucking dare tell me that there isn't." She sat down on the end of my bed and pushed my laptop into the corner. I stared longingly at it for a second before my eyes were dragged back to hers. For what could have been either thirty seconds of thirty minutes, neither of us said a single word.

"You gonna say something yet?" she demanded in probably the gentlest way I would ever hear. If there even is a gentle way to demand things, that was what she did when she asked me.

I held her gaze, my face stuck like a deer in the headlights. "What do you want me to say?"

"Nothing. There's nothing that I want you to say." I watched the charcoal in her eyes soften into ash. "I just want to know what's been making you act like this."

"Nothing's been making me act like this," I said, more to convince myself than her. "This is just how I am. It's how I've been for pretty much forever. I really think that you would have been used to it by now."

"You weren't like this during the summer," she pointed out.

"Then that was an anomaly."

"The entire summer was an anomaly?"

"Yes. And now things are back to normal." I pulled my comforter tighter around my shoulders as if it could protect me from how much she cared. "So can we drop this? Can you just leave me alone now?"

"No," Mikasa insisted. "I don't care what you say, Eren. I'm not leaving this room until you tell me what's wrong."

I ripped my gaze away from hers and dropped it into the sheets. "It's nothing."

"No, it's not."

"Fine. But it's not important."

"Eren, if it's making you act like this, then obviously-"

"Like what?" I burst out before she could finish. "Mikasa, how is this making me act that it's suddenly become such a big fucking concern to you?"

And then everything turned into a replay of that morning. Staring at each other, no one able to say anything and nothing going on. Just a lot of tension and anger hanging in the still, quiet air.

"Is it because of Ymir?" Mikasa asked, too soon and yet not soon enough.

I nodded. I didn't think that I could make myself say the words out loud.

"Are you upset because she died?"

I nodded again.

"Do you miss her?"

I shook my head this time. That wasn't even close to the truth.

"Yeah, you weren't really all that friendly, were you?"

Another head shake.

"But it's still because of her?"

Another nod.

"So what is it?"

I stared at her, still feeling as if I were gazing down the barrel of a loaded gun.

"Eren?"

I lowered my gaze again and took a slow, deep breath. "It's just... what happened to her... it made me think about it again."

I didn't even have to explain what it was for Mikasa to understand. "Is that why you said all of that stuff to me this morning?"

I nodded again.

"You didn't really mean it, did you?"

I sighed and looked back up at her, clutching my comforter and wrapping myself as tightly as I could. Mikasa sighed in defeat. She leaned forward on her knees, wound her arms around me and hugged me close.

"You're not dying, Eren," she said. "You were fine all summer. And you're going to be fine for as long as we can keep you that way. Got it?"

I didn't know why she even bothered saying anything. We both knew that I wouldn't believe her. But I nodded anyway. If it made her feel better, I could at least pretend that I was okay. Even if it was just for a little while.

Mikasa pulled back, letting one hand linger on my shoulder just long enough to give it a rough-but-somehow-affectionate squeeze that only Mikasa could ever give. Her lips quirked into a small, determined smile that coaxed one out of me as well.

"I know you like him, by the way," she said.

At that very second, my entire body lost all function. My deer-in-the-headlights face was back and running full force. I went so long without blinking that my eyes started to burn.

What.

What.

"WHAT?!" I screamed. Or I felt like I was screaming. I couldn't really tell, since my head was sort of floating off my shoulders at the moment.

Mikasa hadn't reacted to me. The WHAT must have come out as more of a stupefied mumble. Her little smile fledged into a fully developed, face-splitting, I-fucking-knew-it grin. "I know you like him."

"Th-that I like who?" I spluttered, trying not to look as though my insides felt like they were melting. I felt all the color starting to drain out of my face. Shit. Shit. Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit...

Mikasa scoffed and shook her head. "Levi, you dipshit," she said. "I know you like him."

I let out a long, breathy sigh. My lungs felt like crumpled-up plastic bags in the split second before I inhaled again. "Since when?" I groaned.

"Um... Not long," she replied. "I mean, I thought about it before, but I wasn't really sure or anything. But what with the way you were teasing him at the last meeting and everything..."

My face went from ghastly pale to tomato-that-someone-just-set-on-fire in seconds. "I-I was not teasing him!"

"Okay, okay fine. The way you were harmlessly flirting with him."

"It wasn't flirting either!"

"Fine. But whatever you were doing with him..."

"It doesn't mean anything," I protested. "I don't like him like that. We're just friends." Maybe not even that much.

Mikasa tilted her head and cocked an eyebrow at me. "Really? So all the times I saw you wake up with a hard-on were because you only like Levi as a friend?"

If my face could have gotten any redder, it definitely did. "H-how many times have you seen that happen?!"

"Doesn't matter. It was still more than I would have liked to. And I'd never seen it happen until you started hanging out with nurseman again."

"Maybe that's because I was just better at covering it up."

"Or because it wasn't happening at all."

I groaned in frustration and rolled my eyes back, reaching a hand up and and rubbing at my forehead that had started aching as soon as Levi had gotten dragged into this conversation. "I don't like him," I said again. I wasn't sure who I was trying to convince anymore, Mikasa or myself. "It's not like that between us. I don't... I'm not..."

"Gay?" Mikasa finished for me.

I looked up, my eyes verging on coming out of their sockets. "Mikasa!"

She held up her hands in front of her, trying to stave me off. "Hey, if you are, it's not a big deal. Really. You can like whoever you want. It doesn't matter to me."

"But I'm not gay, Mikasa!" I shouted at her. I was blushing so hard that I was sure my face would burst open and start bleeding all over the place.

"Okay, fine," she acquiesced. "You're not." She was quiet for a second, just long enough to let me sigh in relief, only to ruin everything by adding, "But if you were, I can't really say that I would be surprised."

"What makes you say that?" I asked, momentarily stunned.

"Eh." She shrugged. "Just a feeling. You never feel weird talking about guys that you find attractive. You remember all those times I would gush with you about how cute I thought some of the guys at school were? You'd just play along as if it were nothing. Like that sort of thing just came naturally to you."

"I just... I don't think it should be as weird as some people make it out to be," I admitted. "That's all."

"So," Mikasa said after a moment of silence. "Are you..."

"I'm not gay," I said. "Or... I don't think I am, anyway."

"But... you still like Levi. As not a friend. Right?"

I sighed, my face blazing. "I... I don't know," I murmured. "I mean, I don't like guys. Not in general. But he's... I don't know. He's an exception, I guess?"

Mikasa exhaled and a satisfied little smile lit up on her face. "I knew it."

"Please tell me you're not going to try and set us up or anything," I said, fixing her with a deadened stare.

Mikasa wrinkled her nose. "What? No. Why would I do that?"

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Because I fucking hate Levi. He's a dick."

I knitted my eyebrows. "Why?" I asked, even though I probably knew the answer already.

"Um, he's insensitive, he's sarcastic, has a serious attitude problem, doesn't give a shit about anything, has the emotional range of a sea sponge, always has that look on his face like he's got a broom handle up his ass..." Mikasa stated, listing out the reasons on her fingers.

"Okay, okay. So maybe his personality kind of sucks," I admitted. "But so does mine."

"How does that help at all?"

"I don't know. I'm a piece of shit, he's a piece of shit, maybe we could be shit together?"

A Mikasa's face pulled into a smile and she let out a musical laugh. "So you want to live angstily ever after with your hot angry nurse boyfriend but your cancer is giving you shit about it? Is that why you're so upset?"

My smile dropped off my face and I felt my blush drain out of my cheeks. Way to hit the nail on the head, Mikasa.

The expression on my face registered straight into hers. "Too soon?"

"No," I said softly, shaking my head. "Not soon enough, probably."

My sister sighed and dropped her gaze down into the bedsheets. The both of us were quiet for a while, neither one of us sure what to say next. For once, I decided to take the plunge.

"Whatever you're thinking right now, you can say it," I said. "Doesn't matter what it is. I probably need to hear it anyway."

"That's the thing," Mikasa said, looking back up at me. Her eyes had gone soft again. "I don't even know if there's anything to say."

"Well, if you're not going to say it, I will," I said. "I've been a total overemotional pansy about all of this and it wasn't right for me to shut down the way I did. And I'm sorry. It's just how I deal with things. And I'm trying to get past it. I really am. It's just... it's going so slowly."

"What are you trying to get past?" she asked.

I opened my mouth to answer her, but I shut it just as quickly. The strategy made sense in my head. But out loud, it just sounded so stupid. It made me look so weak. As if I weren't strong enough to just face my problems head-on, like I had to hide from them until they went away. And as much as I hated myself for it, that was exactly what I was doing.

"Is it Levi?"

I blinked and my eyes flicked back up to Mikasa, then suddenly widened into cue balls. My heart went cold. Why the hell did she have to be so good at reading my mind?

I closed my eyes and let a long, heavy exhale rush out of my lungs. "Yeah," I murmured. "It's just a crush, Mikasa. I'm going to get over it eventually."

"And what if you don't?"

There was that question that had been bothering me for the past I didn't even know how long anymore. I had told myself over and over again that all of this shit was temporary and I would be past it soon enough. But for some reason my mind always went back there. Even though I had just about convinced myself that things would change, there was always that shadowy little doubt that they wouldn't. I couldn't predict the future. There was really no way to know until it actually happened.

Damn Levi and his stupid uncertainty principles.

"I will," I insisted. "I'm not going to let it go any other way."

Mikasa looked at me for the longest time, saying nothing but displaying a complicated array of emotions switching back and forth in her eyes. Finally she said, "Okay." She leaned over and glanced at my laptop where she had pushed it into the corner of my bed. The screen had gone dark from disuse. "What were you watching?"

"Sherlock," I said flatly. "The Hound of Baskerville episode."

A flicker of interest broke through the emotional hurricane in Mikasa's eyes. "That's my favorite one," she said brightly. "Can you unplug your headphones? I want to watch too."

"Okay," I said, reaching over to drag the computer close, pulling my headphone jack out and pressing the power button to wake it up. Mikasa stood up from my bed and went to pull down the shade on the window that caused the most glare. Once my computer had booted up again, she settled down on my bed next to me and I undid my comforter nest just enough to squeeze her in. I dragged the little red bead back to the beginning of the episode while Mikasa got herself comfortable.

Soon, the whole conversation we'd just had got lost in a sudden influx of snarling, hallucinogenic gas, and John's sad attempts at getting a girlfriend. And I was glad they did. Not that I regretted coming out to Mikasa about... well, everything. But the whole experience had been just uncomfortable enough for me to never want to go through it again.

All I wanted was for things to be nice for once. To be normal. The support group had done that for a little while, but then it had gone back and thrown everything into my face all over again. So I was done with that. It was a road that wasn't worth going down again. It would always end up taking me to Hell, no matter how nice the trip there was. Now this, sitting with my sister rolled up like comforter sushi and losing myself in a fictional plotline...

This was all I had.

The next meeting of the support group was scheduled for Monday.

I didn't go.

I would never go to another support group meeting for as long as I lived.

I'd decided that as soon as I had woken up that first Saturday night, after another dream about Levi had made me wake up crying instead of turned on and breathless. The YCSG was the reason why I was so damaged. It had given me hope for a less sucky life only to rip it away again and hammer in another reminder why I couldn't have it. I'd gone four years without having friends. There wasn't any reason for me to desperately need them all of a sudden. And Levi... Levi was just another one of them. Another amenity that I didn't really need.

Armin texted me after the meeting ended, asking me why I hadn't shown up. Then he texted me again a few minutes later. And again. And again. But I never answered him. And eventually, the messages stopped coming in.

That took care of one problem.

Now there was only one left.

But getting Levi out of my system wouldn't take that much effort. As long as I remembered not to go to the meetings and did my best to stay out of the hospital, I wouldn't have to see him for a long time. And by then, I would have gotten over myself and moved on.

Until then, I just had to keep remembering.

Liking people when you have cancer is dangerous.