Mikasa hated nights like this, when she was supposed to be sleeping yet she couldn't, staring at her ceiling wide awake.
She'd always sigh and turn around, trying to find comfort between her sheets and failing for a long time.
Sometimes, she'd grab her phone and text Eren or someone, but tonight she couldn't as she knew he wouldn't answer.
So she settled for the next best thing, and opened the gallery of her phone. In a special folder with the very original title of "selfies", all the selfies she and Eren took in the last three years were kept, from the most recent to the oldest.
The most recent one was one of Eren and herself in their last date, five days ago in a simple restaurant. He was wearing his favorite shirt and she was wearing her scarf under his hoodie, both smiling. She, as most normal people would, was looking at the camera. Eren, on the other hand, had his eyes on her with a gentle smile and a faint blush.
She felt a warm feeling inside her, from her head to her toes as her eyes filled with tears.
Passing to the next picture she smiled as she saw herself smiling, Eren far away in his swimming trunk right in front of the sea, with his hands on his waist as if proud of himself.
As she moved her finger across the screen of her phone to pass from one photograph to the other, she felt as one by one the tears started to fall.
She saw themselves with their robes the day they graduated from High School; she saw her whole group of friends smiling at the camera the last weekend before school ended. She saw Eren and herself in their backyard, silly faces making her cry harder.
She saw every photograph, one by one, taking all the time she needed to memorize Eren's face in her memory, and she found him looking at her in most of them, either smiling or looking like a fool.
A fool in love, he would have said.
She was almost reaching the ones taken in the first days of relationship, when Armin's face appeared in her screen, his name and number indicating his call.
"Hello?" she answered it, sniffing and wiping her tears.
"Hey" she heard him, his voice low and raw "I couldn't sleep, so I figurate you can't either"
"I can't do it, Armin" she cried, hot tears and broken sobs escaping at least "I can't go tomorrow and stand there, so many people are going to be there"
"I know. I know" he whispered, and she heard him sob quietly, like he was muffling them with his hand "I don't think I can"
"Don't make me go, Armin, please"
"I won't" he promised, and she knew he was nodding.
"I can't say goodbye. I just can't. And those people…they are going to act like they know what I'm going through, but they don't!"
"I know" she heard him whisper, and then everything was quiet for some seconds.
"I never thought he would be the first one to leave" she whispered, and she reached to his nightstand, where his cellphone was still laying. She unlocked the screen, her face smiling down to her like nothing was wrong; like he was still there "I still call him, just to hear his voice again"
"I did too"
She looked at his phone in her hand, and locked the screen just to see them there, both smiling and happy and him looking at her, and she couldn't do this. She couldn't and she threw the phone away, screaming as she sat and she pulled her hair and she hang up on Armin, and wailed and kicked because how could he be gone?
Funerals never sounded like a death sentence until then.