Disclaimer: Characters belong to Hajime Isayama.

Themes taken from 1sentence community LiveJournal. Set Gamma. Borderline Eren/Mikasa, if you want to.

#11. midnight

Mikasa never sleeps. Or so he thinks.

At least, she never sleeps when he is around, when he is awake. Things like this are not uncommon back when they still had a home – it was always her who woke before dawn and stayed up past midnight, doing dishes and cooking and sometimes just staying silent. He thought it was a women's thing, considering how much time she and his mother spent talking to each other in the dim light outside of his window, whispering something he could not quite catch and letting it fade into the dark like some tangling threads of thin smoke.

But sometimes she was just alone, curling up ever so lonely on their couch and sinking into the silence and for one second he thought she was going to cry. No, his Mikasa wouldn't cry. But his Mikasa wouldn't let herself go either, always binding herself with some kind of duty that he never understood, from chores to protecting him. As if she was paying some debt, one barrier that separated her from the real daughter she was supposed to be, carefree and sweet.

He still believed it was a women's thing, until he thinks that maybe it's only a Mikasa's thing. Now that their parents have gone – her parents gone twice, he reminds himself – there's no mother or such for her to spend the night with. Still she stays up late, sometimes in his room and sometimes in hers, and even though he can never actually witness it he knows that still she is lonely. There's no dishes or cooking for her to do now, no books to read, no attacks that should be wary about. There is only her, fully clothed but naked to the core, and in his dreams he often sees her looking out of the window, eyes yearning for something that has long died in the moonlight. Times like that he wants to reach out so badly, to tell her that he is here for her, that she shouldn't be lonely and should smile more like never before. But the moron he is never does, always retreating to the shadows of his mind, vaguely reminding himself that this hand almost killed her once and these eyes used to show no mercy.

She never spoke a word about the accident. He never had the guts to ask her about it, either, despite her denying his crime in front of others and his horrifying realization.

What marred her pretty features is something unforgivable.

What kind of family is he?

But then again, maybe he has never really been her family.