Author's Note: The next eight pieces are my entries for the June 2014 RivaMika Week.

1.

Mikasa knew she had never been in love. She thought she had been with Eren, but that was seven years ago now, and Eren had moved on without her, until he was just out of her reach. It had broken her feeble heart to hear the news.

She supposed it hadn't been his fault though. She had tried to tell him, and failed, every time stuttering like a winded fool, and never coming out with the words that she needed to say.

Until it had been too late.

But by then, she knew that he was long gone, and he wasn't looking back, nor had any intention of doing so. He had wished her luck in her own endeavors of love, whatever that was supposed to mean, and gave her one of his boyish smiles, winking at her for some goddamn stupid reason.

She had gotten drunk that night. Cursing and swearing at her impossibly bad luck, and tumbling out of the dirty bar, trying to return to the Scouting Legion's Headquarters. But she had been so inebriated and pitiful in her pain that she had just ended up broken and crying, a heaping mess crouched on the black sidewalk.

And that's when it had happened.

Amidst her salty tears and heaving breaths, she'd seen him stop in front of her, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, dark suit jacket buttoned tightly against his chest.

"What a waste. A single word of rejection and this is what my second-in-command is reduced to? Only a girl would cry over a boy. A woman though…is a different matter. Pull yourself together Ackerman."

He'd snapped at her from above, and when she'd muttered at him to politely fuck off, he had knelt down and given her the slap she'd much deserved. And needed.

She'd gone home with him that night, then the next, and the one after, and the one after that. Until it had become a routine: she'd get slammed in some shady bar in the downtown, trying to forget her pain in the bottom of a glass, and he'd come pick her up in the dead of night, always showing up at exactly the right time. And they would stay together until the morning: she would wake on his chest, feeling the contours of the muscle, and his even breathing would soothe her, calm her, protect her, until she fell back asleep again.

She guessed it had been around seven years ago when she absolutely knew. There wasn't a rational explanation, especially when he made it so goddamn difficult to pin down her exact feelings. And some days, she wanted to slit both their throats, to forget the pain of lost loves she knew both of them hid, to lose herself in this cruel world, and to save him from the loss.

But that was unfair. And whenever she saw those narrowed eyes and catlike smirk, felt that raging inferno radiating from his very being, she knew. Because she figured that's what it was supposed to feel like. Not the blinding worry and suspicion she had always felt around Eren, nor the annoying prickly feeling she had thought she'd felt with Jean.

This one was different. It burned so hot inside of her, she felt invigorated just by standing next to him. It felt like happiness and bliss and sadness and chaos and hot and cold and angry and infuriating and just…like peace. Because she'd finally found it.

And she knew she would continue waking up next to him until she couldn't wake up anymore, because heaven forbid, she loved him.

And she knew he loved her.

True love, she decided, was something once found, could never be forgotten, nor lost, nor cast aside. It was something to remember and cherish.