"Mikasa? How are you today?" Doctor Grisha Jaeger tries to look at the teen in the eyes, but she avoids his like any other day.

"Just like yesterday" her answers are always short, straight to the point.

"Nothing new?" he keeps trying, but she just turns her back to him.

"No"

He sighs, rubbing his eyes from under his glasses.

"My son, Eren, will be here tomorrow. I've talked to you about him before, remember? He is going to be a doctor and needs practice. I hope you don't mind?"

She shrugs.

She pretends to be asleep when the Jaegers talk about her, her illness and how they may cure it. The son, Eren, asks too many details and doesn't get many answers, and for a moment she wonders if it's because Grisha doesn't want to scare her or if it has nothing to do with her.

"Can I stay for a while?" Eren whispers to Grisha.

"You should let her rest. She had a bad night-"

"I'm not going to wake her, don't worry" she hears a sigh and a closed door before a chair is softly put beside her bed.

She opens one of her eyes to look at him. There, on the chair that Levi usually uses, is a young man with Grisha's eye and hair color.

"Hello" he smiles, placing his elbows on his knees. She just looks at him, but unlike the nurses' his smile doesn't fall. "I'm Eren, I'm sure that my dad told you that"

They spend some time after that with him talking as she glares at him, just wanting for him to get out.

When he is at the doorstep, ready to leave, he turns around and says "I'll make you smile a real smile".

She looks at the door for the rest of the day.

"Petra and Isabel send you this" Levi takes a little bag full of candies out of his coat, placing it on her hand "They're your favorite" anyone who doesn't know Levi Ackerman would have thought that his voice stayed the same in the whole time.

"I don't want them" but Mikasa knows him. She knows he is pleading by the end of the sentence, but she can't bring herself to take the candies. Had she really liked those?

"Mikasa, I know you are a strong girl. I know that if you put some effort on it, you-"

"WHY?!" she yells, sitting suddenly. He attempts to stop her, but she is on her feet before he can. "Why do I have to try?! Mom already died because of this, she tried and she failed, Levi!"

"You are not mom!" he stands up too; looking madder than Mikasa had ever seen him "You are young! You have time and you haven't given up! You can't! " he takes a deep breath, clenching his fists.

"Levi, we both know that is not true. They said six months two months ago" tears threaten to spill over her cheeks, but she manages to hold them. She had already cried enough "And mom never gave up"

The look Levi gives her makes her doubt that.

"C'mon, you can't be like that! You know I made you laugh!" Eren pouts from the chair, pointing her with his finger.

"Alright, maybe a little" she gives him a tiny, real smile and that makes him almost shine.

"You should tell me about yourself" he offers her a candy from her bag, nudging her leg with it.

She takes a small one.

"You haven't really told me about you" she raises her eyebrow, and he straightens on his chair.

"Alright" he clears his throat, leaving the candies at her side "I told you about my first –and only- dog, the time I pissed myself in class, that time I fell down my treehouse and Armin had to carry me…I guess I should tell you about my family" he looks at her as if asking for permission, as if asking if it's okay so she nods.

He thinks about it for a second, frowning a little before taking a deep breath.

"My parents loved our family deeply. Fiercely. They were young when I was born, but they were so happy… I have never doubted that my father loved my mother, and she loved him back with all of her. I used to pretend that I was disgusted when they kissed but now… I miss it so much… going to the kitchen in the morning and seeing my father reading the newspaper, and my mother drinking tea, holding his hand…I was eleven when she died.

"My father has told me a thousand times that it wasn't my fault, but how can it not be? I was a reckless kid; I didn't look both ways before crossing and the next thing I knew she's pushing me out of the way. God, I still remember her face before the asshole ran over her. He didn't even try to stop the goddamn truck. Someone took me away screaming and after that all I saw of her again was the closed coffin before she was buried" he breathes slowly after that, weeping his tears carefully. She notices his hands are shaking.

"I was eight" she begins, trying to calm herself down before she opens her soul to him "when my mom fell ill. My brother was eighteen. He was always away because of college, so I thought that he hadn't suffered like me. He didn't have to see our mother slipping away from us slowly, didn't have to see her fighting to breath, fighting to stay awake.

"I was so wrong. He didn't get to see her for the last time; he didn't get to be with her, to support her-I guess that's why he is always here with me. He doesn't want me to feel alone again. He doesn't want me to become my mother, who would smile at us and then cry to herself. She carried all of that alone…and I was too young to notice" she wipes a stray tear with her fist, bringing her legs to her chest.

"You're going to make it" he whispers, taking one of her hands on his own.

"Are you really becoming a doctor?" she asks one afternoon, looking at his too young eyes and too young smile.

"Eh…not really" he rubs the back of his neck with his right hand, giving her a nervous glace "I'm still in high school?" it sounds more like a question than an answer, so she gives him a raised eyebrow and he has the decency to look ashamed "But my dad is really trying, alright? And he's a good doctor!"

"Shouldn't you be in school?"

"Nah, Armin got me covered"

If what the doctors said to her was true, she has only 68 days left the moment she realizes she fell in love with Eren Jaeger.

They were laughing about something he said when she realizes it's a real laugh, the ones that makes her feel happy; like laughing is worth it.

She then realizes that when he looks at her, she feels happy.

It doesn't make the illness go away, nor the feeling like she is going to die anyway. But he makes the next day something she can´t wait happens, so she supposes that she should enjoy it for as long as she can.

37 days before the day doctors said she would die; Levi takes her to the beach. Grisha and Eren go with them, in case something happens, they say.

She really doesn't feel weak, but she can see the way the cold affects her more than them.

It's a cloudy day, and the breeze makes her hair go wild, but the saltiness in the air and the sound of the waves is something she has to hear and feel before she dies.

They kiss on the journey back, and she ignores the way Levi looks at her when they get her back to her room.

She's done caring.

She doesn't live for the 183 days the doctors said she would.

She lives for 200 and she enjoys every extra moment.