Chapter Text
The long boat journey and the rattling streetcar ride through the war-torn landscape were surreal. Eren eventually reached his own station, only to find his heart sink. The name on the sign was right, but the scenery was wrong. The town was gone, replaced by a desolate, charred field that looked like a cruel joke played on him by the world.
Eren wandered through the ash-dusted path, but as every silent, burnt corner reminded him of what had been lost, panic set in. He began to run.
He skidded to a halt in front of his home. The warped iron gate told him he was in the right place, but where his beautiful home had once stood, there was nothing but a jagged mountain of blackened rubble. The foundation was all that remained of the grand house, slowly vanishing into the grey dust of the earth.
The silence following Eren's thoughts was shattered by a voice that sounded like wind through dead leaves.
"Eren Yeager...?"
A woman stumbled out from the barracks next door. Her dark blonde hair was tangled and dull, and she gripped the doorframe for support as she stared at him with eyes wide in shock, as if she were looking at a phantom.
It took a moment for his heart to even react, but eventually, the recognition hit him. It was Ms. Springer, the neighbor who used to bake enough for everyone in the neighborhood—the mother of Connie, Martin, and Sunny. Seeing her looking so broken and ragged by comparison sent a fresh jolt of dread through his chest.
"How is this possible? Weren't you a kamikaze pilot?" Ms. Springer asked, her voice trembling.
Eren's hollow response—the empty, haunted look in his eyes—was enough for her. It was a reaction that told her everything: that he hadn't thrown himself into the flames.
A light seemed to die in her eyes, replaced by a bitter, caustic fire. She knew what the people thought of the survivors. She knew what the cowards had done while the heroes died. The sorrow she’d felt earlier evaporated, replaced by pure venom.
"You're a disgrace! Look what happened because of cowards like you!" She snarled, lashing out with words that cut much deeper than any bomb.
"If you'd only done your job... my children wouldn't have died!" Ms. Springer's voice cracked, the accusations ripping through the smoke-filled air.
The weight of her words was crushing. The air raid that had turn Eren's childhood into ash had claimed her three children as well: Connie, Martin, and Sunny. Her grief had curdled into an unrelenting malice, and she turned that malice entirely on him.
Ms. Springer’s eyes were hard and hollow as she stood her ground, staring Eren down with a look that brooked no defense.
"Do you know what happened to my parents?" Eren whispered, his own voice quivering in the heavy air.
Ms. Springer shook her head, her movements sluggish and weary, before she began to turn away. She hesitated just long enough to offer one final blow.
"Everyone died. This area was surrounded by fire. Your family will have the same fate as my children," she replied, the tone of her voice devoid of any empathy. She walked away without looking back, leaving Eren alone among the charred stones.
Eren slumped against the gatepost, the cold metal of his jacket scraping his spine as he slid down to the dirt.
As the twilight settled over the valley and light faded into shadows, Eren clutched his mother's letter. It was a piece of paper that had become both a comfort and a torment.
“My dearest son, Eren… Please be sure to come back alive.”
He held onto those words like they were sacred, but now, standing amidst the rubble, they felt hollow and ironic. He had followed her command, yet he was here, alone, in a wasteland.
"Come back alive, right?" he muttered to the empty, growing darkness. No one answered, except the sound of the wind whistling through the scorched earth.
The ache in his bones grew into a leaden weight, and the last traces of color bled from the sky, leaving him in a world of gray and black.
His "home" was little more than a pathetic shelter built out of scrap wood and rusting metal in the corner of his parents' former ground. It provided shelter only in the most technical sense, doing little to keep out the dampness of the evening air.
Eren lay huddled on the hard earth, the void in his stomach growing larger with every passing hour. Three days without sustenance had left his limbs heavy and his head thumping with a dull ache. He wondered if it would be easier to simply let the darkness take him, to let himself waste away amidst the ruins.
Yet, the primitive, gnawing instinct to survive was far stronger than any desire to die.
A kilometer away, the black market thrived—a chaotic island of goods and smells amidst the poverty. The thought of a hot meal, something actually flavorful, hit Eren like a physical weight.
His own body felt like a separate, uncooperative entity, a biological machine that refused to shut down even when his mind wanted it to. He watched his hands shake, mere observers of his own survival.
"THIS IS MUD!" a voice erupted from the distant market crowd.
It was a standard, grinding protest—the sound of the city's endless frustration. But for Eren, that roar of human presence was a visceral reminder of how far he had drifted from the realm of the living.
The protest's murmur had swelled into a roar, and suddenly the crowd peeled away to reveal a frantic scene. A young woman, weighed down by a massive, awkwardly shaped bundle, was scrambling frantically through the street.
Behind her, several men, looking much tougher and decidedly more menacing, were closing in.
Unthinkingly, Eren stepped into the line of flight. He didn't know why; perhaps it was a remnant of the duty his commanders always spoke of.
She didn't wait for an answer. Before Eren even knew if his hands could keep their grip, she slipped through the crowd, desperate to escape her pursuers. The weight hit him hard, forcing a small gasp from his lungs.
The woman’s chase faded into the background as the vendors and loiterers quickly swallowed the disturbance, resuming their daily trade.
Eren stood frozen, the weight in his hands now feeling impossible and fragile. He gingerly unraveled the layers of heavy, coarse cloth. To his utter confusion, the bundle began to move.
"Huh?" Eren sputtered, his jaw nearly hitting the dirt.
A small, wide-eyed infant stared up at him from within the mass of rags. The baby seemed unaffected by the chaos, looking around with a dazed, calm expression that contrasted sharply with Eren’s own panic.
The sun began to sink toward the horizon, staining the sky with brilliant, burning shades of amber and gold.
Eren stared down at the small baby, feeling completely out of his depth. He didn't have any reason to care about this child—to look after its needs or to risk his meager safety for it.
With a sigh of reluctant acceptance, he carefully placed the bundle into the wooden crate he had been sitting on. Turning his back to head toward his own shelter, he found himself stopping after only a few steps.
He looked back. The baby was there, kicking its small legs and flapping its tiny hands with an innocent, wide-eyed enthusiasm.
Gritting his teeth, Eren sighed one more time and reluctantly went back. He picked up the bundle again, more firmly this time, and set off down the road toward his cramped shack.
"Hey!"
Eren had just entered a narrow, shaded alleyway when the woman's voice cut through the dimness.
"Finally. Where did you go?" Eren asked, slowing his pace.
"It's your fault for sitting out in the open. I'd be seen." the woman retorted. Her voice was sharp with agitation, but as she stepped up to him, she reached out and snatched the bundle from his arms with practiced speed.
"You’ve been hiding the whole time?" Eren asked, eyes narrowing as he tried to make sense of the situation.
"Yeah, waiting for you to get up and move." the woman retorted. Her irritation flickered as she shifted the bundle slightly. She held up a few rice balls—the meager goods she must have scavenged from the market—which had become her focus of priority.
"I bet you're hungry," she cooed, her voice softening into a melodic, loving pitch completely different from her abrasive tones. She pulled a small, crushed rice ball from her sleeve to present to the baby.
Eren stood there, feeling like a bystander to a weirdly intimate domestic moment between a woman he didn't know and a baby that had felt so heavy in his arms.
Eren continued his march toward his place, feeling a profound weight lift from his shoulders now that the infant was no longer his responsibility. He just wanted the solace of his own silence.
"Why didn't you just abandon her?" the woman called out, her voice lacking any venom, but when he didn't answer, her face began to droop.
"Hey! I asked you a question!"
"And leave her in a place like that?" Eren's tone remained flat as he moved further away.
She let out a genuine, delighted laugh that cracked through the stuffy air of the alley. She suddenly hopped into a lively stride, walking around him in a circle with a grin that had replaced her earlier annoyance.
"Ha! I knew you weren't as heartless as you seem!" she said, sounding thrilled with herself as if she'd just solved a great mystery.
Eren kept his focus on the cobbled path, his jaw set in a line of irritation. He didn't want the warmth of a conversation or even the intrusion of a company that had seemingly decided he was their new friend.
"Please don't follow me." he said, his voice laced with annoyance as he picked up the pace.
"Are you going to leave us to die on the street?" she asked, her voice brimming with a certain playful audacity that seemed to completely ignore his plea for distance.
She began skipping slightly in her stride, the tiny bulge of the baby’s bundle resting in her arms, seemingly unbothered by the man whose space she was so stubbornly invading.
Eren made it back to his makeshift barracks, finally hoping for quiet. But as soon as the woman breached the threshold, any notion of solitary sanctuary vanished. She immediately claimed the small, crude stove at the entrance, dusting off an old pot.
The sun had finally finished sinking, leaving the interior in twilight. Eren watched in annoyance as she boiled the rice balls into a thin, watery soup.
"After you're done, you're leaving." Eren asserted.
She hummed, ignoring him with practiced ease, leaning down towards the baby.
"Hear that? He's so mean and scary," she cooed.
Eren gave an irritated huff at her comments, the blunt bluntness clearly aimed at annoying him.
"Where's your husband? Is he a soldier?" Eren asked, trying to pierce through her lightheartedness with a sudden spike of curiosity.
"Do I look like I'd have a husband?" the woman answered with an eye roll, though there was no real anger in her tone.
She went back to stirring the thin soup, though her eyes softened for a second. She picked up a small corner of a rice ball and offered it closer to the infant's mouth, as if testing its readiness.
"Well, whose kid is she?" Eren's question dropped into the air, seemingly cutting through the domestic-sounding scene. A heavy silence fell over the barracks.
The woman stared into her cooking pot for a long moment, as if deciding whether or not the child's history was something worth sharing with a stranger. With a sigh that seemed to drain a bit more of life from her, she turned her gaze back towards the small bundle.
"During the air raids... her dying mother begged me to take her." she said quietly. The humor in her voice had completely vanished, replaced by the weariness of someone carrying a burden far heavier than a single baby.
"So you... have no relation to that child?" Eren asked, his eyes fixed on the small, helpless thing in the woman's lap.
She nodded silently, staring ahead.
"What are you, insane? You're in no state to care for a baby!" Eren's anger flared hot and sudden, fueled by the absurdity of the situation.
"You couldn't leave her either." she retorted, her tone flat and unflappable. She gestured between the two of them—Eren, a boy himself, and a woman living off scavenged scraps.
She reached for a wooden spoon to stir the soup again, her expression revealing nothing of the battle she must have been fighting just to keep this child afloat. The sound of the simmering pot filled the quiet space, and the baby let out a soft, hungry whimper.
"Name is?" Eren's questions were direct, though he softened the harshness of his tone slightly.
She didn't answer right away. Instead, she reached down and pointed to the stitching on the corner of the swaddle. The thread formed a single, clear word: "Akiko."
"No, I meant you." Eren sighed, rubbing his temple.
"My name is Mikasa." she replied, refocusing her attention on the infant.
She began to slowly spoon a bit of the watered-down rice broth into Akiko's mouth. The baby bubbled and made small, grasping motions with her fingers. Mikasa stared at the baby with a strange expression—not quite joy, but a fierce, almost desperate sort of protectiveness that looked like it had been forged in the fire of those terrible raids.
"What about you? You have a family?" Mikasa asked, her gaze drifting towards the small memorial area where the wooden box and his parents' items sat.
Eren's eyes traveled toward the photograph in the oiled paper. It was a small, silent piece of proof that they had ever existed.
"My parents were killed in the air raids." Eren said, his voice clipped and careful, as if he were trying to force the words into a box so they wouldn't spill out of him.
"Then you and I are the same." Mikasa replied softly. She focused intently on feeding Akiko, refusing to let her hands tremor. It seemed as if Mikasa’s parents were also killed during the raids.
The two of them fell into a heavy, shared silence, the small wooden barracks feeling much smaller and more crowded with the weight of things unsaid.
Eren turned away from the memorial, unable to bear the silent accusation of the photograph any longer. He sought refuge in the real, too, but when he looked back toward Mikasa, he saw that they had already surrendered to exhaustion.
"What? No, you can't... stay..." he muttered, the words dying in his throat. He stood up and marched over to them, intention set on shaking Mikasa awake and kicking her out before she made herself even more comfortable.
But he froze. Mikasa and Akiko were curled together in the corner, so still and calm that they looked almost painless for the first time since he’d met them. The fierce, wary guard Mikasa usually kept had completely dropped in her sleep.
With a quiet huff of frustration, he sighed and pulled his thin, worn blanket from his cot. He walked over and gently draped it over them both.
It seemed as if Mikasa and Akiko had made themselves permanent residents at Eren’s barracks.
A few days have passed. Mikasa and Akiko are still in the barracks with Eren.
The daily grind of survival had somehow integrated Mikasa into the corner of Eren's makeshift existence. She didn't just linger; she took up residence with a quiet, efficient momentum. Whether she was scavenging for scrap pieces to patch up the cracks in the wooden frame or searching for bits of seasoning to liven up a pot of mush, she acted like she belonged.
She carried herself with a quiet sense of accomplishment each time she made a small improvement, seemingly unmoved by Eren's repeated, though increasingly less effective, attempts to protest her stay.
One day, as Eren headed to the water source with his bucket, he spotted the familiar silhouette of Ms. Springer. She was sitting in the corner of her own barracks watching the Eren’s barracks with narrow, suspicious eyes.
Eren's body tensed. He aimed to duck his head and speed up, hoping to avoid any confrontation, but he wasn't fast enough.
"Hey! What's the story?" she barked, her voice cutting through the midday air like a whip.
"What do you mean?" Eren asked, his face remaining a neutral, unreadable mask.
"Don't play dumb. That woman and baby you picked up." Ms. Springer said, crossing her arms tightly. Her eyes drifted toward the entrance of his barracks, full of scrutiny. "Since when did you become a charity worker, Yeager?"
"They just showed up." Eren replied, trying to sound indifferent.
"It's a bit late to play the hero. Count me out. I'm through caring." Ms. Springer spat. She turned her gaze toward the empty, charred landscape, her expression drifting into a blank, detached void. It was the same vacancy that had occupied her since her children were taken by the air raids.
Eren rolled his eyes, ready to abandon the conversation, but the sound of Ms. Springer’s movement caught him off guard. She had lunged to her feet.
"Wait. Is that woman able to breastfeed?" she asked, her voice tight with a sudden, pressing question.
"No, she’s not the child's mother." Eren stated bluntly.
"Wait. What?" Ms. Springer gasped, her indifference vanishing like smoke in the wind. Her sudden maternal alarm was as sharp as a gunshot, and even Eren felt the jolt of her concern.
Her eyes scanned the distance, looking past Eren and straight toward his shack, her brows knit in severe, frantic worry. She seemed to forget for a moment that she had just declared herself finished with the world.
Later that day, Ms. Springer found herself helping take care of Akiko. She moved with unexpected efficiency, maneuvering the bottle carefully so the child could drink, her brow furrowed in concentration.
"At this rate, she'll die of malnutrition if not properly fed." she stated, her words final and grim.
Turning her attention to Mikasa with an accusatory stare, she threw her hands up in disbelief.
"So, you found a child but you have no idea how to care for it. What were you thinking?"
Eren and Mikasa exchanged a look. Mikasa seemed more stung by the comment than annoyed, her hand resting protectively on the blanket around the baby.
Ms. Springer then placed a bag of rice into Mikasa’s hands with a huff.
"You don't have to eat it. Adults can survive on anything. This rice is for the baby." she grunted, then reached down to give Akiko one brief, surprisingly soft smile before she turned on her heel.
Mikasa and Eren immediately rose and scurried after her, both of them offering frantic, deep bows in thanks. Mikasa’s eyes were brimming with relief.
"Well... there goes my prized white rice. What a nuisance, I swear." Ms. Springer muttered to herself, her face returning to its scowl as she ducked into the doorway of her own barracks.
Eren and Mikasa had just gained an unlikely ally in Ms. Springer.