Chapter Text
"Why don't I feel sorry for you?" Eren inquired from the doorway.
Mikasa sat quickly trying to look decent. He sat next to her and pulled out the hand that had the serum catheter with an impenetrable look. Grisha had put it there.
"Look at me."
His fingers glided roughly over her wrist and she forced herself to look at him feeling her face burn. She knew Eren inspected her as a doctor, but having him so close made the blood in her veins reverse the flow, even her thoughts became uncoordinated.
"What the hell were you thinking?" He unplugged the serum tubes.
"Your mother won't let me do anything..."
"Why is that....? you're still reestablishing yourself, Mikasa". Eren scolded, removing the cannula.
Mikasa looked away in shame.
She was bored of doing nothing and didn't think it would do any harm if she exercised a little. However, contrary to what she intended, she ended up giving Jaeger more work. Lucky Grisha was home and helped her when she had a rough time.
Eren realized her embarrassment.
"What have you trained?"
"Abs" she mumbled almost inaudibly.
He opened a smile. Why wasn't he surprised?
"Flex your belly."
"What?"
He didn't repeat it, and before he got ready, two of his fingers collided with his abdomen.
"Really..."
Mikasa suppressed a smile "That's what I say, a a standing body rots."
She then noticed his hand casually standing in her womb, as if he didn't even realize it. She blushed.
Eren walked away, "Rest, you've tried too hard today."
Before he reached the door, Mikasa gathered the courage to stop him.
"Can you stay here tonight?"
He waited.
"I mean, just until I sleep," she rectified.
He got used to spending the night with her in the hospital. Even when he was on duty, he took time off with her. She felt at ease. Safe.
She didn't want to tire him out any more, but she couldn't contain the urge to ask him to stay for a while.
Eren's throat became dry. He agreed, settling at his bedside.
Mikasa intertwined one of his hands to his, lying.
She fell asleep quickly.
Eren watched her. Her slow breathing and dark hair thrown on her face, he wondered if he should go out, and even if he knew it was the right thing to do, he couldn't even wish for it.
He slid her fingers over her dark hair, wishing she could fall asleep with him. The newfound tenderness he felt made him want to stay by her side all day long.
He leaned over to her and whispered a fact that had become commonplace. Lost in daily life, it was a late perception, but it needed to be said in some way.
As he told it he felt better and went out closing the door behind him.
….
Eren only kept his promise weeks later.
He covered her with recommendations.
Not touching her own face.
Not to be around people
Your immunity is still low.
Don't get sick again.
She could repeat those warnings back and forth in a different order than Eren did.
"I'll only do that because you beat the old man." He took another turn at the scarf around her neck and pulled until it covered her nose.
She nodded positively and he gave her his hand.
The square selling the ice cream was a block away and Mikasa chose a vanilla one. She always looked forward to trying one, but until then she had only seen it in magazines.
"It's very sweet and creamy" she delighted, concentrating on the shell.
"You really never tasted it?"
She assent.
Paradis' negotiations with the continent were recent, as was the arrival of some delicacies. As she rarely allowed to come out, she hadn't had the chance yet.
"Wouldn't you?"
"Since you insist" Eren took the ice cream from her hand.
"Eren, it was to buy another".
"Don't be stingy."
They sat on the bench and took turns with the shell.
The sun was high, the sky was clear. The trees started to leaf after the hard winter.
The people who passed in that prosaic setting, immersed in their own worries, gave an air of normality that she enjoyed more every day.
"You know I have to go back, don't you?" she asked after a while thinking about her attachment to those trivia.
"Why don't you turn him over to the police?" Eren asked.
He'd read each of the papers Mikasa kept in the false bottom of the jewelry box.
"I can get more." she could. She lived with Sandes long enough to show him why you can't put an enemy inside your own home.
"They are enough ..." Eren replied. Mikasa had collected illegal contracts, which attested to Sandes favoring land purchases and even negotiations with the government. He could even respond for treason.
Mikasa paused her eyes on the horizon.
"He's not the only one who should pay for what happened to my family."
Eren resigned herself to the silence that followed until she resolved to continue.
"Some time ago I heard the voice of my father's killer. He was well dressed, had an elegant carriage. I didn't see his face, but I remembered his voice. He's out there, getting rich selling you know how many girls... If only I..."
"I won't stop you," Eren declared in a sober tone. However, there was no compassion in his face when he turned to her "But I don't think you're being sincere."
"What?"
Eren stood up.
"Ask yourself what held you all this time."
Mikasa swallowed dry and only followed him when she realized he was walking a few steps ahead.
…
Eren's mood didn't change until the next day and she was surprised when he joined her in the garden cutting aubergines with a compenetrated expression of who solves a derived function or does a semiotic analysis.
"Cut the stem" she indicated.
"Eren never went to help in the garden," Grisha observed next to his wife between the balcony columns.
"I'm surprised too" Carla collected one of the baskets that was already full of fruit "You didn't tell me how it was yesterday".
"It was good."
"Not for my ice cream that Eren ate almost all."
Carla's mouth opened "Did you guys share ice cream?"
Mikasa nodded and a loud laugh cut the air.
"What?"
"Nothing, it's just that on the continent..." Carla tried to recover and failed, bursting into another laugh.
"Darling..." Grisha tried to intervene but Carla couldn't help herself by absorbing a breath of air.
"On the continent they have a name for it."
"Darling, Mikasa will be embarrassed," he looked to Eren for help, but in the other hand of what he expected, the traitor had a contracted smile on his face.
Mikasa peeked at the two confused, "Name?"
"Eren can answer, can't Eren?" She turned to her son, who pretended to be busy pruning the middle leaves of the aubergine foot.
"Let's get out of the sun," Grisha determined, pulling his wife by the waist.
"We will, yes. Then tell me if you like the ice cream."
She turned around leaving Mikasa unanswered.
"Don't think too much" Eren dismissed the matter by putting a lilac flower in her hair.
She touched the prop by instinctively arranging it.
It would be boring to say that Mikasa's face blushed with unexpected attention.
Eren's intense gaze on her sometimes had the same effect of ember on her skin.
"It's beautiful."
"So you will too" she took another flower from her foot and put it in the brown hair that fell loose on his shoulders.
Eren didn't complain, on the contrary she allowed her to put more than one. As revenge, Mikasa ended the day with a wreath.
"The king and queen of brinjal flowers" Carla made fun when she saw them.
...
"My mother was mocking, just forget it" Eren shrugged, leaning back on her study table in the room after finally clearing up her doubts about the provocations in the garden.
She looked at the bookcase feeling able to look at anything but him. He had books on medicine, philosophy and even literature. And none were sorted by topic.
"Did you pick them all?"
"No, some were my father's, some were Armin's loans."
She wandered around watching other objects from the room. She hadn't been there until then.
The stethoscope was on a shelf and she caught it not resisting the curiosity.
"You gave up the clinic?"
"No, but I intend to re-evaluate society."
"Sandes won't want to leave."
"Fuck, I can make him quit."
Mikasa stood still. Once Sandes decided something was his, he wouldn't give up.
"I like your project. It's big, ambitious."
"I just want to get over-"
"The island's delay" Mikasa heard it countless times "I'm not complaining."
She positioned the olives from the stethoscope.
"Let me see your heart."
Eren understood the interest with which she looked at the equipment. It was the same as the childrenshe attended, the request had even taken time to come.
"Is everything all right?"
"Yes, it's a good heart".
The sound in her chest was vibrant, just as Eren himself was. He was alive, well. The nightmares she sometimes had weren't just that in front of that sound. She let herself close her eyes.
Eren hesitated to look away.
She was so close. Her lips were ajar, her skin he knew was soft...
How could a woman be so beautiful?
"Any diagnosis?" he tried to distract himself by pulling conversation.
"You're healthy, can run a marathon," she walked away.
Eren almost regretted it.
"I do. One more month in this house and you'll graduate med school."
"That's what I have in mind."
…
The last day she spent with the Jaegars she played for them.
And she played what she was feeling.
The days with them were like resting on the flowery meadow, closing your eyes and hearing the murmuring of the leaves. They brought the amenity of spring. Even if the storm announced itself, with lightning and thunder, they were quickly silent before its grandeur.
"Primo vere" he read a note in the corner of the score, lying beside her in bed "you write too much for instrumental music."
"Help in interpretation" Mikasa leaned back on him "It was what the ancients called spring, meaning "first summer". They considered it a freesh and softer summer."
"It makes sense" he began to read the sonnet attached to the back cover "the exhalation of the Zephyrs" I would find it very beautiful if I could understood a line that."
"It's the bland, pleasant breeze that comes from the West."
"So it's like describing the soft blow of wind over water."
Mikasa agreed.
"Legend has it that Zephyro was once a ruthless wind, capable of tearing down ships and destroying plantations. Indomitable. Until he fell in love with Cloris, the queen of spring."
"And let me guess: love made him soft," he provoked. He liked how she became more talkative when the theme was her songs.
"In some way. The legend deals with the balance their love was able to bring nature, making it fertile, renewing it. More than lovers, they were allies."
Eren nodded, the sights returning to the sonnet lines in a silent reading.
Carla's play slipped through Mikasa's mind. Indirect kiss. Nonsense. She tilted her head to see Eren. He was serene, his beard was crisping his cheek again.
Love. It was a concept until then distant when you put yourself in the romantic perspective.
She slowly approached.
In a confused urgency she pressed her lips on his.
It was fast.
It didn't last half a second.
Eren didn't sketch any reaction, and if he did, she wouldn't see it. She hid her face in his chest, as if to protect herself from how vulnerable she felt.
He kissed her forehead, inhaling the sweet fragrance of her hair.
"Did you hear what I said the other night?" He asked under his own breath, "I meant exactly what I said."
She warmed without waiting for him to see. Eren slid her hand across her waist, stroking her, "Go to sleep."
She nodded and it was easy to fall asleep from the warmth of his arms.
She got up before the day broke. The Sandes chariot was already waiting for her, as she had requested.
Time was indifferent to her whims. All the seasons passed.