See you later, Eren: Chapter 2

Title: A long nightmare

Here we are with chapter two! I made sure that this one was a long one to make up for the previous chapter, and I managed to get it out earlier to compensate for that as well.

I truly appreciate all the encouraging comments, and I'm glad you all let me know how excited you are with the premise. I'm pleased to inform you that I have completed by story outline and have very exciting plans for this fic, so I hope you will stay tuned. Without further ado, enjoy! (apologies in advance for the mistakes that I may have made. Didn't get a chance to re-read this many times but wanted to get it out soon!)-Y

Mikasa opens her eyes, the warmness of blankets and nearby candles enveloping her. The nighttime chirping of crickets is all she hears, and when she realizes she can see, a small, worried boy is standing over her bed. And when she realizes she can feel, an uncontrollable stream of tears fall down her cheeks.

"E-Ere-" she whispers to the boy, who is visibly shaken up, confusion and a profound worry expanding across his face, with those passionate emerald eyes as the point of origin. However, none of this holds even the faintest, dimmest candle to Mikasa's bewilderment. She doesn't understand, the situation seems idyllic, just like her dream that she had moments ago, though it already felt like it had been 2,000 years. Another difference: this felt real... this feels so real. She can feel the warm air on her cheeks, the slight itch of her bed-head, the tiny creak of the wooden floors as the boy before her shifts his position forward ever so slightly.

"Is this real?" The logical side of her brain, the emotional side, she doesn't know which one, ponders in the smallest corner of her mind. She isn't sure which makes less sense, and which is more surprising: the fact that she's warm, wearing the soft nightgown she knows she hasn't worn in years, the fact that she's eye level with the boy she's had to raise her chin slightly to see to for the better part of three years, or the fact that this boy...

This boy is Eren.

At this, like she did with her last dream, she figures that none of this makes sense. She probably died inside the founder's mouth, she can almost remember the feeling of falling and the pain of a sudden crash, but not quite. But... as she looks at Eren, her Eren, she decides that it just doesn't matter anymore.

A wail escapes her throat, followed by another, followed by an intensely high-pitched inhale, and she knows she's sobbing. She closes her eyes in a futile attempt to keep the tears from falling, and she leans forward, not understanding anything but not wanting to, as the one thing she knows for sure is that this is Eren. All the memories of how him and this cruel world have hurt her billow up to the surface, and she decides to take this golden opportunity to finally begin to express how much she loves Eren, and how much she misses him.

She is sobbing harder as she forces herself into Eren's embrace, burying her face into his skinny shoulder, trying to muffle the sounds that are bordering on screams at this point, but failing miserably. She feels Eren slowly wrap his arms around her, hesitantly. She doesn't dare look at his eyes again, knowing it will only make her further bawl her eyes out. But she supposes that its getting worse whether she's looking at him or not, all she can do is cry harder and harder.

She feels parts of her fingers and toes growing numb, undoubtedly from the hyperventilation of her sobs, and she can feel Eren's arms around her oscillating a bit, realizing that she is shivering excessively. The small, rational part of her mind that usually dominates her demeanor pokes out, wondering that, if this is death, "why am I about to faint?".

But Mikasa's emotions come back in another grief-filled wave, and she hugs Eren harder, hearing a grunt from him that sounds like a mixture of surprise and worry, but very quiet. And she then realizes how loud she must be wailing, but she can't bother to care, about any of it. She knows she's dead, she has to be, and so she just keeps letting her sadness out.

However, after what feels like hours, though she knows it hasn't been that long, she realizes that there was no end to her cries. "that doesn't matter if I'm dead... I can cry for as long as I want", she thinks to herself. But it still feels so real, and she realizes that Eren is shaking too, ever so subtly. "why is he shaking? can't he just let me love him? can't he just let me be sad?", another part of her thinks.

"it's true..." the logical side of her peeps out once again, "if you were dead, wouldn't everything be still? even if some how, some way, you were able to see him after death, why is he acting like he's alive?"

Mikasa doesn't know, which, if even for the smallest of moments, diminishes her sobs, giving her an opening to try to understand what's going on.

When her brain finally attempts to comprehend her situation, she sees that Armin is also here. "why is Armin here? why isn't he helping Reiner, Annie, and Pieck?". But... he too looks small, small like he did when they were orphans. She looks in his eyes and sees a similarly great amount of worry, and then she hears Eren acknowledging Armin's existence with great fear in his emerald greens, barking a panicked order at him.

"Armin, Go get someone! I think Mikasa's sick!", clearly Eren got that idea from the unbridled shivers, but she wonders how she could be sick if she's dead. "Right!" Armin responds, quickly running to and opening the frail door, his escaping figure the last thing she sees before she hears him speak again.

"Mikasa, everything's gonna be okay..." Eren says, his tone of voice completely shifting to one of a consoling brother, something she swears she hasn't heard like that since they were little kids. However, the slight quiver betrays his great amount of worry, and the combination of both of these elements make her go back to her uncontrollable sobs. "Eren..." she finally chokes out in an extraordinarily pain-filled voice, but still the strongest she could muster, noting that it was higher pitched than she remembers.

"What?" he says, obviously not realizing that she has nothing else to say, words utterly failing to do justice to the utter misery, love, regret, and confusion she feels. But... the way he says it, the way it slightly raises in pitch at the end in a comforting and innocent manner compels her to respond. But with what? She doesn't know, so she lets out a sliver of what has been building up.

"Whyyy...?" the words withered as they left her tongue, closing her eyes and whimpering loudly and painfully. Eren responds with a brief "uh", leaving dead air for Mikasa to continue to sob, which she is okay with, as she thinks he couldn't possibly know the answer to that question, even if he did appear to be the same Eren she just kill-

The memory of her killing him comes back, which makes her cry harder, if that was even possible. "Why what?", he quickly asks in panic, probably thinking that her intensified cries were a result of his response.

"I'm sorry..." Mikasa whispers. For everything. For letting him ever get hurt, for never telling him how she felt, for never expressing herself in the scant moments that he showed attention and affection for her that surpassed his dedication to titans, for not kissing him when Hannes died, for killing him...

But most of all, for whatever she did to make him feel like he had to call her a slave, whatever she did to make him feel like he had to go where she couldn't follow.

"For what?" he innocently questions...

Mikasa shakes her head and continues to cry. She can't really feel her legs anymore, and her face muscles start to numb, telling her that she'll only be able to cry for so much longer unless she calms down. Fortunately, a distraction had made it's way into the room in the form of a tall man. "Go to sleep" the man grumbles in a low, tired, and annoyed voice. She doesn't bother registering what he says as she forces herself to try and calm down, holding her mouth shut and scrunching her nose in pain as a muffled, high-pitched whimper still manages to make its way past her throat. She sees Armin's face explode in pity, as his shoulders slouch and he walks towards her.

"Mikasa, it's okay, me and Eren are here" he remarks in an innocent attempt to console. She tightens her hug on Eren, painfully aware of the fact that Eren was gone and never coming back. Even if her mind is playing some sort of sick game, it doesn't matter right now. "Eren is right here and he's letting me hug him", she thinks, quieting her cries but unable to completely stifle them.

She hears the grown man sigh, "alright... if you're not gonna quit crying," she feels him wrap his arm around her waist and hoist her up with ease. "What?" she thinks, not resisting his pull as she is too overwhelmed by the multitude of thoughts and emotions. "How is he doing that?", she questions, knowing that while she wasn't particularly tall for her age, she still shouldn't be so light.

But then, the thought dawns on her and she slightly berates herself for forgetting "I'm not nineteen anymore... I'm probably as old as Eren and Armin".

But still, she can't find the strength or willpower to care about her being roughly hoisted by the belly to the man's side as he walks out of the room. She hears Eren scream "hey!" before quickly following the man, to which Armin yells "Eren!" in an attempt to keep him from doing something stupid.

Mikasa uses her tear stained eyes, glancing at the kids in the main room, and to the sides where many other doors full of kids open up. Some of them look shocked, but most of them have an emotionless, if not somber look on their faces. Mikasa feels the tears continue drop down her eyes, and she sighs internally, knowing that she can't do anything about it, so she looks away with a hint of shame, because there was a time when she was the stoic one. Now, she's a mess, a sobbing, shivering, pitiful mess, and she knows the man holding her is keenly aware of that fact. She expects to feel disgust emanating off of him, not having the highest opinions of these types of soldiers, due to how they treated her, but instead she finds she can't place his emotions. She realizes that he's probably used to this; throwing out kids that cry enough to cause a scene, and she sees that he doesn't take an enormous amount of pleasure out of this.

An orphanage... that's where they are, Mikasa recognizes.

She's soon broken out of her thoughts by cold, hard terrain, opening her eyes to see that she's outside, a few other groups of kids strewn about the sizeable front lawn of the building, far enough away to where she can't hear anything they're saying, not that its her business.

The tears that had stained her cheeks now began to sting a bit as she registers the chill that attacks her in the form of a modest breeze. "What time of the year is it?" she finds herself wondering, but soon pushes herself out of the situation, remembering the fact that she, very obviously at this point, doesn't belong here.

"Hey, bastard!" she hears the all-too-familiar petulant cry of Eren, presumably angry at the man for throwing her outside on a cold night like this. She looks back to see him kicking his shin, grunting defiantly as he does so. The man scowls in pain before focusing on the boy. "You wanna join her? Fine by me" he says as he grabs a flailing Eren and throws him on the ground near her. She hears his pained grunt as he hits the ground, and though, like always, a part of her wants to scream "Eren!" and protect the boy before her, she stops herself.

Without another word, the soldier turns around and retreats back inside, closing the door behind him. Before even a few seconds of silence, Eren shifts his attention, his tone once again shifting to a more comforting one, making her heart explode with love despite how much she doesn't want it to. "Mikasa!" he says as he gets back down into a criss-cross position and grabbing her arm. "Mikasa, your cold's gonna get a lot worse out here!" he says before frantically grabbing his thin jacket and trying to wrap it around her. She is reminded of how much she is shivering, and almost accepts the jacket, but grabs it and lightly shoves it back to him instead.

"What are you doing?" a part of her thinks to herself. "this is a dream, or the afterlife, or something... it doesn't matter what you do". And despite her recognizing that this world she's in now makes no sense, she can't just let Eren be cold. Eren gives her an incredulous look, "What? You're sick, Mikasa".

Mikasa shakes her head, ready to explain that she truly isn't sick, but she hears the front door open again and looks to it, only to see Armin approaching with multiple blankets and a glass of water. "Mikasa! I brought some blankets for you, wrap yourself up before you get worse" he says as he hands her the blankets. This, she accepts, whispering a "thank you" pitifully, which makes Armin sigh.

She is still sniffling at this point, occasionally letting a forcefully quiet, high-pitched sob escape from her, leaving both Armin and Eren in a state of great concern. However, they let her sit there with her thoughts, which Mikasa isn't sure she's thankful for or not, as Eren keeps the blankets enveloping her from blowing with the breeze, after realizing she wasn't doing anything about it herself. This eventually allows her shiver to dwindle, but other than that, they let her cry.

And cry she does, for some time.

When she's finally either done or out of tears, Mikasa herself not knowing which, she keeps her eyes fixed on the ground in shock. She perceives Armin shifting nervously in response to her look, but she doesn't think she could explain herself even if she tried, even if she wanted to. For now, she's far too busy slowly realizing that she's not in any kind of dream.

"I remember what happened almost perfectly... what the hell is going on?" she thinks. She's obviously in the past, but there's no possible way that she's actually in the past, righ-

"Mikasa..." she hears Eren mutter. He has a terrified look on his face, and she knows why. "You've never been thrown out before... what happened?" he says softly. Mikasa looks in his eyes, and sees the confusion and visceral fear, like what a kid sees when their parent starts crying. Maybe she was better at being a mother figure to him than she thought...

But her memories attack her again, and when she keeps looking into those green, passionate eyes, all she can think of is how they looked completely different back then... full of hate, disgust, apathy, but also pain. She internally cringes at the words he spoke to her then...

"Now I finally understand why."

She can feel the memory pounding its way into her thoughts, and she knows there's nothing she can do but wait for it to finish playing out.

"I couldn't stand to look at a slave who always followed orders without question."

She stands, feeling the urge to vomit, but refrains. She instead slowly walks away while holding her head, massaging the headache she didn't know she had.

"Ever since... I was a kid..."

"Eren..." she hears Armin grab Eren's arm, most likely to keep him from following. She had her back faced to them, walking a few paces away as she knew she had to get away from Eren in order to properly process the situation without crying.

"Mikasa."

She looks down once she's a comfortable distance away, nearly trembling at the most, maybe second most painful memory of her life.

"I've always hated you"

She doesn't cry like she expects herself too. But she supposes it makes sense... she's cried enough tonight. And, that memory has played in her head on repeat since he said it. Sometimes it took a position of prominence in her mind, and sometimes it didn't, but it was always there. And she realizes... that wasn't even more than a week ago, even though it felt like 2,000 years.

She doesn't know which to believe, the face that Eren just gave her, or the face he gave her back when he said those words. For the first time, she really thinks about the daydream she had with Eren while they were fighting him. She knows that wasn't real... right? "well, now I'm in some kind of past world... I don't think I trust myself to know what's real or not anymore".

Mikasa turns her head to look back at the twelve-year-old Eren and Armin before her, and she still can't believe her eyes. "What is happening?". Eren, after looking at her with confusion since she awoke, finally lets realization adorn his face. "Did... did you have a nightmare? Like when we were younger?" his eyes are hopeful, probably because he hopes he's found the right answer.

In a way, Mikasa supposes, she did.

After a bout of silence, "you could say that" is all she responds with, leaving Eren scrunching his brow slightly at the vague response that he can tell has a subtext he can't possibly fathom. But, ever the indomitable spirit, he responds with "what's that supposed to mean?"

Mikasa doesn't respond, looking off to the side to see the grass swaying in the cold wind. "Maybe it was a nightmare... a long, long nightmare", she thinks to herself. An incredible amount of relief and wonder threatens to explode out of the pit of her stomach just at the thought... the thought that there was no Marley, no Jaegerists, no paths, no rumbling. But... that just can't be true. She knows how dreams felt whenever she would awake from one, and this wasn't it. All of her senses and even her gut 'Ackerman' instincts were telling her to accept this new reality, but her mind, her pain, and her excruciating memories were telling her that that stuff did happen, it did happen.

It happened... and now she's in this world. Everyone is younger, but is this really the past? Is everyone she knew still alive? "I'm in an orphanage... Carla and Grisha must be dead", she notes. Her thoughts are interrupted by Armin and Eren speaking to each other in hushed tones, probably thinking that she couldn't hear them because of the distance she had between them. But, being twelve-year-olds, they were wrong. "Do you think this has anything to do with the period?", Eren asks, a redness threatening to bloom on his face at the embarrassing, to an adolescent at least, subject matter. Mikasa raises her eyebrows, noticing that if she were actually twelve years old, she would be blushing furiously at that remark, but she's fine, if a little confused as to why he would bring that up.

"I'm not like I was at twelve... I'm still me, the rumbling did happen, it was real, this is not..." she convinces herself. She looks over to the two again to see their conversation. She sees Armin look down and ponder Eren's question for a bit, finding it funny that despite how smart Armin was, he was genuinely considering the notion of a period resulting in an emotional breakdown. "No, I don't think that happens to most girls..." he responds, "that was a week ago, anyways" he reminds Eren as he rubs his hand over his neck in contemplation and embarrassment.

Mikasa stares down at the ground and furrows her brow, suddenly remembering her first ever period. "God... I was so scared at the time, I thought I was dying", she reminisces.

But wait... "After that, we moved to another orphanage near the eastern section of Wall Rose...", and like that it all came flooding back to her, and her eyes widen slightly in realization. This was that orphanage. She remembers this. Well, not like it was now, no... but she remembers the room that they were in, and she remembers that they were close to Armin's twelfth birthday. "So we can become... soldiers..."

But this never happened... she can faintly remember her experiences in this orphanage, but she never remembers crying, never remembers being thrown out.

"This is actually the past..." Mikasa finally comes to grips with it. "But... can I change it? like I have already?"

She gasps aloud, "can I stop the rumbling? can I keep it all from happening? ...can I save Eren?"

Tears threaten to return to her wide eyes, "have I been given some new chance? or am I going to wake up soon..."

She keeps trying to pinch herself, mentally and physically, not wanting to wake up but needing to make sure this wasn't some dream. The breeze comes in again, forcing her to shiver, and that gives her the hope she needed.

"...should I kill him?", she ponders for the briefest of seconds, knowing all too well what he would grow up to do. But this thought is immediately shut down as she gazes at those emerald green eyes, and she sees the innocence, the hope of youth, and the very prevalent lack of apathy, which she still can't believe she's seeing. "Ever since the basement... you've had this look in your eyes..." the look that broke her heart every time she saw it. "But... it's not there", and she knows that she can't kill him. Even if he's destined to rumble the world and tear her heart to pieces.

"I've already killed him once today, I'm not doing it again." she affirms to herself. Yet, what he said and did won't leave her mind. She remembers him killing the innocents of Marley, him saying that he hated her, him brutally attacking Armin when he had the bravery to stop him where she didn't. She closes her eyes in regret. "I couldn't help you Armin... I was weak". But she is reminded of his death, and she scrunches her brow resolutely. "I'm not a slave... I'm strong because of who he was, because he saved me... it wouldn't have worked with anyone else..." she says to herself. She looks back at the young boy, the dissonance between what she sees now and what she what she had killed an hour ago wracking her brain.

"Are you the boy who saved me... or the man who destroyed me?"

Her body weakens in despair, but also pure tiredness. "when I wake up, I'll be back, back where I was".

And she gets down on her knees, letting tiredness overtake her as she perceives Armin and Eren running up to her.

When she awakes from her dreamless sleep, a significant part of her forgets all that has happened. She thinks she might still be at the camp, with Jean, Connie, Armin, Hanji, Levi, and the Marleyans. But, the memories of killing Eren quickly return to her, and with it, the absurd but undoubtedly true fact that she is back in her twelve year old body... and she feels the grass poke at her skin and her eyes adjust to the bright sun.

"Oh..."

"Right"

She sits up, taking in the sight around her once again, this time slightly warmer and much brighter, as the new day came. She instinctually finds herself wondering what time it is, only to fully take in her situation again and wonder what day it is. She is fairly certain that it must be somewhere close to Armin's birthday, so probably November 3rd or a few days to a week before then. She moves her head to the left, surprised by the feeling of her hair brushing against her shoulders, a problem she hasn't had to deal with for a long... long time.

However, she is kicked out of her nostalgia by the figure of the young Eren sitting next to her, dark circles clearly visible under his eyes and head threatening to completely droop off his head. Though she hardly has the will, she sees her love in a poor state and habitually lets out her age old catch phrase, "Eren..."

Knowing she had to follow up, she continues "have you slept at all?"

"hmm?" is all he responds with, his eyes close to shutting entirely, but the grogginess of his voice is all she needs to confirm her suspicions.

She glances to his side to see Armin laying down, covers draped over him while he lightly snores, "at least he got some sleep...". She sighs, a part of her wondering why Eren would stay up, but another part knowing exactly why, which tugs at her soul. The memory of who Eren used to be attacks her through his twelve year old form. She supposes it makes sense, after all, Eren was nothing but an innocent boy who wanted to avenge his mother at the time, and she is back in that time. She wants to be touched by Eren's gesture, and she knows she would probably blush a little bit under any other circumstance, but the dichotomy stays ever present in her mind, and she can't bring herself to.

So, she stands up, "get some sleep Eren, I'm sure they'll let us back in, so you can have a bed" she says rather emotionlessly. She never put much emotion in her words, so she didn't expect Eren to think twice about what she said, but when she looks back, he looks upset, a hint of hurt in his eyes. Could he tell? She masks her face completely, which makes him put his head back down, "yeah..." he responds tiredly.

And even though she's screaming at herself to walk with him and take him to a bed, prepared to confront the guard if he were to keep Eren from sleeping in a room, she can't, because she's still coming to grips with how upset she is at him. She knows he doesn't know of anything he's done, but she can't help but take out her anger on him. "maybe he already has those future memories... and he knows what he'll do one day", she considers, mostly in an attempt to justify her anger at the boy. But she can't bring herself to fully believe something like that, because his eyes tell such a different story.

But then again, maybe she wasn't as good at reading Eren as she thought.

Regardless, she makes her way back into the building without him, anxious to collect her thoughts some more by herself. Once she enters the main room, she walks over to take an empty seat on one of the wooden chairs. Looking around, she notices a few of the kids giving her confused or surprised looks, and she thinks back to what she did last night. She realizes that it was so unlike her. At no point in her life did she ever really act so sad and distraught. These kids don't know her well, but they probably got the idea that she was reserved, quiet, and stoic, and it may have spooked them to see her like that. She thinks back to all the times she ever showed such emotion, and she realizes that it was only whenever something happened to Eren.

She scoffs at herself mentally, "you shouldn't be this attached... quit being a slave". Her eyes lower, but she is keen on keeping any emotion to herself this time. "But I killed him... I killed him, so I'm not a slave"

"only after he told you to"

"he didn't tell me to"

"yes he did"

"when?"

"..."

"besides, you did it to save him, in a way you're still his slave"

"but... I love him"

"then you're a slave to love."

She sees Eren and Armin entering through the front door. There's quite a few kids here, but the two walk over back to their room just fine, with Armin placing a hand on Eren's back to steady his tired form. He looks at Mikasa with an apologetic look. Eren doesn't spare a glance, probably too tired after staying up all night watching her.

"but he kept me safe"

"just so he could use you later"

Mikasa looks back at the floor, feeling an urge to sigh sadly but holding it back effectively.

"you're nineteen, quit acting like a child"

She ignores her mental self-deprecation, thinking back to Eren's lack of sleep. She thinks that if she scared the kids in the orphanage who barely knew her, she probably terrified Eren. "why is he worried about me if he hates me?"

She leans forward, legitimately pondering the thought, "he said he's always hated me..."

She thinks back to Eren's face, the last look he ever gave her, it was so full of pain, regret, sorrow, purpose, but not hate. That face could have meant anything, but not hate. Mikasa buries her head in her hands. "I don't understand, Eren".

But, when thinking of this Eren as not the man she killed but as the boy she loved, she isn't actually that surprising that he acted the way he did. Sure, it was unusual for Eren, ever since his mom died, to try to comfort or look after Mikasa, but from his perspective it must have been an unusual circumstance to begin with, so it was warranted. She guesses that as soon as he's done sleeping, he's going to approach her and ask her thousands of questions, so she needs to sort her thoughts in the meantime.

First order of business: what the hell happened? She can tell she's in the past, and that this isn't just some dream that happens to have her, Eren, and Armin as pre-teens. Too many things work against that, as she is perfectly sentient, able to think about the fact that she is thinking, which she usually can't do in dreams. Second of all, besides the nature of her return to the past, nothing about it is necessarily weird or completely illogical, unlike most of her dreams. And finally, she can feel everything... it just can't be a dream.

She could have died, yes, but then why does she have the memories of everything that happened to her. "is that what happens when you die? you just come back to your past self?". If that were the case, then why isn't Eren acting different? he died too...

She must be in the past, and judging from their conversation about her period, the timeline is the same, so maybe she can change it, maybe she can... save Eren?

The thought makes her stomach fly, but her rational brain very quickly shuts it down.

She remembers the kiss. She was kissing his disembodied head, the sight of it making her shudder in an existential type of discomfort and pain.

"Eren had the Attack Titan... and the Attack Titan knows the future."

"Maybe not completely, and maybe it comes in a confusing jumble of memories, but at the end of the day he knew what he was going to do, ever since he touched Historia's hand"

"So... either the future is set in stone, or it can be changed..."

"If it's set in stone, then that's probably something that Eren realized, and there's no point in changing anything"

"But if the future can be changed, then despite knowing the future, Eren thought that the best course of action was to continue with the rumbling"

Mikasa sighs, "If Eren finds out about Marley and the curse of Ymir, what's stopping him from just doing the rumbling again? what can I do to convince him? last time I tried to talk to him, he shut me out and I couldn't do a thing..."

"It's hopeless...", she thinks to herself. She stands up out of the chair, walking back outside, to where a majority of the kids have settled to either play or talk with each other. She leans her arms against a part of the wooden fence, this time gladly taking in the cool breeze. The peace... the happiness... the contrast it had to what she had experienced previously is astounding, giving her a sense of dread as she looks to the sky longingly.

"This is what you took away, Eren", she thinks, recalling what it felt like to look over the Colossal Titan for the very first time, and have it ruin her life. She can only imagine what it felt like to be a child, not knowing a damn thing about titans, and seeing hundreds, no, thousands of Colossal Titans prepared to squish you into nothing...

She grabs her head, soothing the discomfort in her head that she knows will turn into a headache soon. "just because I'm back where I started... doesn't mean it's over. It still happened.". She hears footsteps approaching her, and she looks to her right to see Armin also starting to lean on the fence. She looks back ahead, avoiding his gaze. Her mind isn't even slightly as jumbled or conflicted towards him as it was towards Eren, but knowing what became of him... all that he would go through... gave her a dreadful feeling.

"Maybe... I'm back here just so I can watch it all happen again. All the same death. All the same pain."

There was only silence. At first she thought that Armin was letting her have her peaceful quiet, like he did frequently when they interacted together as adults. But looking at his face, she realizes that this Armin is probably just trying to think of a way to broach the topic. She can't blame him, she's only ever cried in front of Armin once or twice... and excluding the times she did after their training, she doesn't think she ever has. In retrospect, Mikasa thinks it quite strange, because she was so comfortable around Armin now. But back then, while they were certainly close friends, the dynamic was very different. She was always the strong, responsible one that protected him from bullies when they got too much for Eren, so it must be weird for him too.

"Sorry... for crying" Mikasa finds herself speaking first, her mind pushing past the surrealism and trying to stay in the moment. She hoped that would get easier over time.

Armin's eyebrows raised a little but went back down as he looked at her, "uhh, it's okay, me and Eren are just worried about you" he says, the tone of voice seemingly asking Mikasa for her to elaborate on why she cried. Instead, she hums in acknowledgement. A bit more silence follows.

"I finally managed to get Eren sleep, even though he didn't really want to, so that's why he's not here... in case you were wondering", he adds.

In case you were wondering.

Mikasa widens her eyes ever so subtly. "what's that supposed to mean? is he figuring me out already? he's only twelve, he shouldn't be this smart". She sighs internally, and briefly wonders why she's bothering to avoid telling Armin about her feelings. "Obviously he wouldn't believe me if I said I was from the future... right. He wouldn't. No one would. He's only twelve, too, he probably wouldn't understand what I'm feeling"

"I'm not even sure I understand it myself".

"Mikasa" he interrupts.

"You've really got us worried"

"Sorry" she responds blankly.

"Maybe an explanation would help us feel better"

"..."

"Why were you crying so much last night?" he almost went down to a whisper, as if he was trepidatiously approaching some taboo phenomenon.

"I had a nightmare" she put an active effort into this lie. Surely herself, with all her nineteen-year-old tact and stoicism, could craft a lie that would fly under this pre-teen's radar. After all, the best way to lie is to add some truth in there, and there was. It was a nightmare in most senses of the word, just maybe not the literal definition.

"oh..." he responds, looking down at the fence. She's pretty sure he bought it. But she really doesn't want to bother explaining all this to Armin, one who's had none of the traumatizing experiences that she's endured the past 4 years, so she decides to keep going.

"Surely Eren's told you about them. I get nightmares sometimes."

"Yeah, he's told me about them..." he pauses, "but I thought that they hadn't happened in a while". Tsk... this inquisitive little kid.

"I've gotten a lot more to have nightmares about since then", this was definitely true, no matter which timeline you look at.

This puts Armin at a bit more ease, which lets Mikasa shift into a more comfortable position, happy that this was enough for the boy. She desperately wants to talk with him... even if he doesn't know the truth that she knows, she realizes that this is still Armin, and she really hasn't got to talk to him about... anything that wasn't deathly serious since Eren disappeared in Marley. But, her disbelief at her time-traveling circumstances, and her dread at the future she's starting to believe is inevitable, keep her from fully embracing it.

"Yeah... I guess that's true. Sorry, it was just a bit of a shock, you know?"

"Yeah"

"Especially for Eren. That's why he stayed up all night, got really worried about you."

"Stop it..."

Armin continues, "after a while of just sitting down next to you, I asked him if he was going to try to get some sleep"

"he said, 'no, cause she always felt better when I was awake, back when she had a lot of nightmares'"

Mikasa had to put an uncomfortable amount of effort into keeping her face neutral. "Why did Armin have to say that...".

She remembers it... of course she remembers it. Every night when she would have a nightmare, whether it was her being attacked by the kidnappers, or her parents being brutally murdered, or something else, she always started crying and pushing the scarf into her face. Some nights she didn't want to bother Eren, but he always woke up regardless, and he let her cry into his embrace, or just be there as she cried into the scarf. He would always whisper the sweetest, kindest words without even meaning to be touching... words she held on to, and will continue to hold on to for the rest of her life.

The battle in her mind was now intense as she weighed the equally true facts of Eren's actions then and Eren's actions after the basement. She wants her... mommy and daddy back. She remembers their warmth, and the total comfort and ease she felt when they were with her. She could never comprehend the idea of true hardship back then. But... when she thinks about their warmth, all she can think of is Eren, her affectionate feelings somehow exceeding those for her parents. At least in some particular ways. But when she thinks of her Eren, all the pain of the future assaults her heart, and so continues the viscous cycle of misery and grief. The idea of killing the young, twelve year old boy is in many ways less palatable than the idea of killing her own parents, but that's what she did.

She actually killed Eren.

"So... you're going to talk to him, right?" she registers Armin saying, breaking her out of her thoughts. She gets the sensation that he's been talking for some time, and she has totally missed whatever it was he had to say. "Maybe it would have made me feel better". Though, she doubts it.

Without wanting to risk exposing the fact that she had zoned out, she forces herself to say yes, leaving Armin with a relieved smile. "that's good, I'm sure he'll be up soon!"

Too soon.

"Mikasa, What kind of nightmare was it?! I mean, only if you want to talk about it... but really, it's been a long time, even I stopped getting bad nightmares about mom and dad. So what happened? And why did you cry so hard? You've never cried that hard, Mikasa!"

It was hard enough to even look at him after everything she's still trying to process, much less actually try to answer the onslaught of questions that were being hurled at her. She sees his interrogating yet soft eyes, full of concern and curiosity, and she could tell he was eager to make her feel better, and probably eager for her to stop being so cold to him. But those eyes, she keenly remembered those eyes telling her that he hated her... though, they aren't nearly as dilated as they were then...

It's true though... she continued being cold it him even when Armin brought him to her, something that she's absolutely sure Eren noticed. It gave her a small bit of satisfaction, but mostly just pain, because she knew too well that this wasn't that Eren Jaeger. Still, the battle in her mind left her unwilling to accept either version of him, so she remained in emotional limbo, her head throbbing just for good measure. "sorry..." she finds herself saying, just like she did for Armin, but when Armin listened to her words to discern her emotions, Eren gazed into her eyes, which he must have known was a far more accurate determiner of her inner thoughts. She could steel any part of herself, except her eyes...

And so this conversation wasn't going particularly well for her. Most of anything she said was noticed instantly by Eren as either a complete lie or a half truth that disguised her real emotions. Luckily, he was just as inarticulate as he always was, and had trouble trying to explain to her what didn't sit right with him, and why he felt upset, so she knew she wouldn't be put on the spot.

"You don't have to apologize, I just want to know what's wrong"

"Nothing's wrong"

"B-but you're acting different"

"Different how?"

"I-I don't know, I mean, it's like you got scared of something... you've never really acted like this before"

Mikasa looks back down to her shoes.

Eren continues, "and when you woke up, you just told me to go to sleep, like, you didn't even let me make sure you were okay..."

"You were tired."

"Quit it, Mikasa!" his temper was getting the better of him again.

"Quit what?"

Mikasa knows exactly why Eren felt so displaced by recent events, but it appeared as if Eren was still trying to piece things together himself.

"You're doing it again! You're not telling what's wrong!"

"Eren, I'm fine"

Eren sighs emphatically, clearly exhausted with Mikasa's closeness. A part of her regrets what she's doing, because she knows he wants to be there for her, but there's nothing he can say that can take away the pain of what he did; what he will do.

Eren calms down a bit, something she finds uncharacteristic, but she supposes the situation perhaps warrants it. When it came to her well-being, Eren was always more stubborn than he usually was towards things, which is saying quite a lot. It makes her sad, but at the same time all the more resolute in affirming that there was nothing wrong.

"I'm just... I know you're not telling me everything. And it makes it harder to be there for you like you were for me..."

She looks back up at him in a mixture of surprise and sadness. He continues, "when mom died I always felt like I could tell you and Armin everything that made me upset, cause I knew that you were going to help me kill all the titans, and I trusted you..."

Mikasa's heart starts to warm dangerously. "Stop it"

"Stop it"

"Eren..." she squeaks out, concern and pity betraying the cold and indifferent façade she tried to keep up.

But nothing follows, because she truly doesn't know what to say. "but then you cried harder then you ever have, and you suddenly don't want to talk about it, and that's scary, Mikasa."

"I want to make sure you're okay, just like when we were kids" he finishes, referring back to when Mikasa would pour out everything she was thinking about when she awoke from her nightmares.

The battle in her mind is starting to shift, and she knows that if Eren keeps talking then she'll just want to hug him again, and be with him. Her headache is beginning to make her eyes hurt as she struggles to reconcile her emotions. And with it, she remains utterly silent, which manages to tip Eren off that he's reached to her.

After a few peaceful seconds of silence, she sees Eren shift his body in her peripheral vision. She looks to him and her eyes widen, tears beginning to poke out of the corners of her eyes as he says, "also..." and hands her back the scarf.

That damned scarf

She didn't even remember that it must have slipped off while she was thrown out last night, and she realizes that that's probably part of what made Armin and Eren so uncomfortable, because she never parted with that thing unless she had to. But there it was, "you left this in the room last night... maybe that's why you were shivering, you were cold?" he ponders... so innocently.

"oh..."

She grabs the scarf and looks down at it, making Eren furrow his brow. Noticing she isn't grabbing it, he lifts his hands and wraps it around her neck, just like he did on that night. This time, he makes more of an effort to put it on correctly, and Mikasa's eyes widen further as she gasps, the tears now visible at the bottom of her eyes, but not falling out. He notices, but doesn't say anything.

And the battle is over. Her mind has left its limbo as she looks into his eyes and decides that these are the eyes of the Eren she loves. He definitely didn't wrap the scarf around me in the last timeline. And all the emotional turmoil ceases as she grabs his arm, "I will save you, Eren... I won't let you destroy the world... and I won't kill you"

"I'm sorry..." she whispers, this time with pure emotion, and Eren nods in understanding, eyes revealing his gratitude that she isn't shutting herself off again.

It doesn't matter how she got here... all that matters is that she won't waste this opportunity. She will use her skill, she will use her knowledge, and she will destroy that old, apathetic Eren. She will make sure that Eren never comes to fruition.

He saved her life. And now she can finally save his.

There it is! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and though I know not as much substance came with this one plot-wise, I realized I needed to not only describe Mikasa's shock at suddenly traveling back in time, but also her grief with having just killed Eren. So, I felt the extensive introspection of this chapter was justified. After all, this is an eremika story, so the Mika part needed to be introduced! Don't worry, we will get plenty of Eren POV stuff soon! Please leave a review telling me what you thought! Was it good, could it be better, don't hesitate to let me know, and thank you! -Y