"Do you think there's ever going to be a way to touch the sky?" Eren asks Mikasa one evening after dinner when they're laying together under the stars. At age nine, it's one of the many curiosities that Eren has.
It's really too cold for them to be outside without sweaters on but neither of them seem to notice, a blanket beneath them protecting them from the dew forming on the grass.
"In the future, maybe," Mikasa answers, one hand behind her propping her up as her other makes designs with the lights in the sky, mentally giving them all names: The Commander, The Roses, The Wings.
They don't speak about why they look at stars so often, about the desire to know the world outside of the walls. Looking upwards in to what seems like infinity is oddly comforting; there's no walls, no boundaries up in the sky.
Eren prefers to look at the clouds during the day but knows Mikasa has a preference for the stars at night. He'd asked her about it, once. She'd quieted down for a moment before telling him, "You know they tied me up after they killed my parents. All I saw were clouds out the window for what seemed like hours when I woke up. I don't think it was, but it felt like it."
He'd never felt the need to ask her about it again.
"If I ever go up there, you can come too. And Armin," Eren tells her, pointing his finger upwards into the sky, tracing his own patterns. She wonders what he names them, if he names them the way she does.
She tugs the scarf around her neck tighter, covering her mouth and nose. Her words are muffled as she says, "Can I pick where we land?"
Eren's nose crinkles and she's grateful for the scarf that hides her smile. He sighs, loudly and dramatically, before saying, "Fine, but I get to fly us there."
"What will Armin do, if I pick the place and you're flying us?"
"He'll be the one to get us the directions there," Eren says with such confidence that it leaves her no room to doubt his plan. He turns to her and smiles, so wide and large she feels her face flush beneath the scarf.
Mikasa lowers her eyes, chews on her lower lip, thinking about his plan. Finally, with some reluctance but not much, she says, "Okay, I'll go."
"Great!" Eren starts, immediately beginning to tell her about his idea of how they can preserve food, of how they'll share a bed, how someone will have to stay up late on guard duty (just to make sure they don't crash into…in to what, exactly?).
She hears him but finds herself slowly tuning him out, instead taking the time to inch herself closer to him, so slowly that either he doesn't notice or doesn't care. It isn't until she puts her hand on top of his that he pauses, glancing at her for a moment with confusion clouding his face, before smiling again and saying, "Want me to tell you what I've been naming the stars? I like 'The Commanders Scouts' one best, let me show you where it is!"
She's sure surprise must be etched across her face for just a moment, gone so quick he misses it, that when she says, "Yes, show me where they are," she forgets to mention she's named some of her own.
It isn't until Eren laces their fingers together with one hand, pointing at the stars and their names with another, that she remembers her own; but by then she can think of nothing but her and Eren, hundreds and hundreds of miles away.