Chapter Text
Mikasa enters the Commander’s office following Eren, Armin and Jean. Her chest tightens slightly, but she silently chastises herself for feeling nervous. She’s never been to a meeting involving strictly strategy, let alone one at such a late hour, and she can’t help but feel slightly out of place.
Since they hold the power of the titans, Eren and Armin have participated in all senior-level strategy meetings. Jean, a newly minted squad leader, has attended for the past several months. For Mikasa, however, this is a first, and her relative lack of strategic importance irks her.
A dim gas lantern and the full moon illuminate the room. It’s not much for a war room — really just an office converted out of necessity. Mikasa wedges herself uncomfortably between her childhood friends as the group crowds around an oak table strewn with maps and figurines representing foes. Reams of books line the walls from floor to ceiling, a collection slowly accumulated from past commanders of the Survey Corps — though Commander Hanji’s surely expanded it with numerous volumes from her personal collection.
Hanji peers up from the far of the table, her eyes sullen with fatigue but still shining that mad glint of genius, if even a bit dimmer. Her appearance has changed slightly over the years. Instead of her former messy ponytail, the commander pulls her hair into a sleek bun more fitting of her post. But the sharpest difference is the ever-present frown pulling at the corners of the her mouth.
“I have recent intel from the Garrison Regiment that more ships are approaching from the west,” Hanji gestures to the left side of the map and draws a circle with her pointer. “We need to destroy them before they make landfall.”
Hanji turns to Armin with a knowing glance.
“The power of the Colossal Titan is best suited to destruction on this massive of a level, and the enemy won’t be expecting him.”
“Will Her Grace be accompanying us this time?” Jean interjects.
“No,” Hanji says sternly. “The risk for Her Grace is too great, and the intel Sasha and Connie gathered strongly indicates that the titan threat will be minimal.”
Mikasa hides her urge to smirk. She’s relieved Historia won’t be with them, but is immediately ashamed by her pettiness.
Eren can only use the Coordinate when in contact or in close proximity with Historia, and in the past they had collaborated with great success. Mikasa recalls the scores of stampeding titans bending to Eren’s will, his hand intertwined with the beautiful queen’s beneath the afternoon sky.
The image arouses a childish jealousy within her. Even worse are the somber glances the two of them exchange when they think nobody is watching — that gets under her skin in a way she can’t put words to.
Her dependence upon him simultaneously irritates her and sustains her, weakens her and invigorates her. As they’ve grown into adulthood, Mikasa has felt Eren pull away from her more and more, and it scares her. If he pulls too far, she can’t protect him — and she needs to protect him.
“Eren will serve as a diversion, transforming on the shoreline,” Hanji points along the coast, “and then throwing the explosives into the fleet while the Garrison uses their catapults. They’re inaccurate and probably won’t land, but that won’t matter. Because at the right moment, Eren will take Armin and throw him as far out into the ocean as he can.”
Hanji and Armin share a serious look, and Armin nods for her to continue.
“Armin, at the optimal moment, will transform in the air. The explosion created when he transforms is extremely powerful, if he does it right it should take out a large portion of the fleet.”
The room shifts nervously. Over the last few years, Armin had worked tirelessly to master his Titan form. But it was well known that wielding the Colossal Titan’s powering also drained Armin, initially leaving him bedridden for days afterward.
“I can do it,” he says gravely.
Mikasa feels a wave of pride for her friend. His determination to prove himself has carried him far, and Armin has become a man who falls down seven times and gets up eight.
“Levi,” the Commander looks over to her right hand as she addresses him, “You and Mikasa will protect Armin from enemy fire while Jean coordinates three other Survey Corps squads against a titan threat. The Garrison will provide additional support, as always, should we encounter another titan shifter, and—”
“What about Eren?” Mikasa snaps.
Mikasa hasn’t interrupted someone so rudely in years, but the thought of being separated from Eren in battled immediately sends her into a panic.
Hanji looks at her severely but with a collected calm.
“Eren has more experience sustaining his titan form, as well as more stamina than Armin. Armin’s titan form is also slower, and he needs the close-range support from our best soldiers. Taking him out will likely be the enemy’s immediate concern.”
“But kidnapping Eren has always been their number one concern,” Mikasa says tersely. “Possession of the coordinate is the only reason they haven’t totally annihilated us, and without Hist…” — she catches herself before she has a complete lapse in decorum — “…Her Grace, Eren can’t use the coordinate ability.”
“Mikasa,” Eren says sharply, his voice harsh in a way that she’s never had from him. “I will have support from Jean’s squads. I am capable of using a titan’s power alone.”
The way he speaks doesn’t sound like Eren, not the one she knows. His words are heavy, older than their short eighteen years — as if he were a school teacher reprimanding an unruly student. The words sting even more as she realizes that Eren and Armin knew about this plan prior to the meeting, and they didn’t tell her.
Her gaze turns stony and blank when she glares at them, Armin’s face with tinged with concern while Eren’s is focused grimly on the figurines before them. Armin’s concern annoys her, but Eren’s indifference makes her seethe. As a girl she’d brushed it off, but her patience for being ignored had withered over the years.
Mikasa then notices the whole room is staring at her, so she bites her lip for the rest of the briefing, thumping out a hollow salute on her chest when they’re dismissed. She makes sure she’s the first out of the room, ignoring the two shifters even as Armin calls after her.
She storms into her room and strips off her gear, letting it clank on the ground, not caring whether her harness and wires tangle into a deadly mess.
Mikasa collapses back onto her bed and stares up at the ceiling, the wooden beams tinged with dust and the lamp’s light casting a low glow over her room. She’s irritated, anxious, but most of all frustrated with herself for letting herself get this angry about Eren being Eren.
She doesn’t want to admit it to herself, but her anxiety about fighting apart from Eren surely goes back to the incident a few months ago.
She had been standing on Eren’s shoulder and he’d taken an artillery shell directly to the nape suddenly and fallen out of his titan form.
Without thinking, on pure animal impulse, she’d grappled to a tree. When she looked back and realized what she’d done, as she watched him fall through the air to the ground, she had yearned to go back, to catch him, to save him, anything — but her body wouldn’t move.
The fall had knocked Eren out for two days. He healed, of course, but seeing his limp body fall dangle in the air, his broken limbs had splayed on the ground, his blood pooling beneath his skin before he began to regenerate — it makes her shiver.
She hears a knock on the door and it snaps her out of her memory, replacing the fear with irritation.
It’s probably Armin, she thinks indifferently. He’s the only person besides Sasha who would knock on her door so late at night, and she’s in the field with Connie gathering intel.
“You’re mistaken if you think I feel like talking right now,” she says as she opens the door.
“I don’t particularly care how much you feel like talking,” Captain Levi says dryly.
“Sir,” she says quickly, standing up straight and stopping herself from saluting out of habit because she’s in her nightgown.
“Tomorrow, you’re with me,” he says clipply.
“I’m supposed to take the Garrison soldiers for combat training tomorrow.”
He scoffs.
“Waste of your time. I’ve been trying to get you off of that detail for weeks.”
This surprises her. Mikasa assumed the Captain had never spent any amount of time thinking about her or how she spends her time.
He crosses his arms.
“Still, it’s too late to find a replacement, so you’ll have to go. Though anyone who’s been outside the walls even once would suffice… So, 1230 at the maneuvering course with the tallest post.”
“Understood,” she replies.
He turns away from her without a goodbye, but before he leaves he glances over his shoulder at her gear strewn all over the room, a look of disgust on his face.
“And take better care of your equipment for fuck’s sake. I’m surprised you haven’t flown your ass into a tree yet if this is how you handle your shit. It had better be calibrated right or you’re in for a bad time tomorrow.”
She clenches her jaw at his reprimand, but when she tries to reply with something witty she sputters angrily while he walks down the hallway toward his room.
Mikasa wakes before the sun rises so she can spend adequate time calibrating and cleaning her gear — something she prefers to do in the morning hours, rather than neurotically needing to clean it before she sleeps. Something about lubricating the intricate moving parts, the meticulous but simple way she needs to clean with tiny pieces of linen, checking the air pressure on each side — it puts her in the right mindset for a day of training.
She eats a bowl of porridge quickly, its glue-like consistency so familiar it doesn’t even bother her anymore. She grabs her gear and downs a mug of black coffee so hot it makes her eyes water before she goes out to the armory to get training blades for the day.
She walks briskly to the training course where she told the Garrison soldiers to meet her, and she quickly gets irritated when she’s the first one there.
They’re a new rotation of soldiers she’s had the whole week. They should have a basic understanding of how to show up somewhere on time.
She clenches her jaw as she sees them meandering over the hill, their rose-embroidered patches standing out in the morning sun.
If she were more like Jean, she would yell at them to hurry up, but her apathy prevents her from caring about what they do. After all, if they don’t care, why should she?
Dany, a blonde slip of a girl, is the first up for the maneuvering course, followed by Geo, Timothy, and Peter.
She watches them move slowly, not slicing nearly deeply enough through any of the dummies to actually fell a titan. She knows they’re more competent than this, that they’re just being lazy.
She watches passively, wasting her time as a squad of what may as well be canon fodder swings past her.
She used to feel bad for having thoughts like this, but after all of the years of death and bloodshed she just feels angry. She’s tired of watching people devoured, tired of being kept awake at night lamenting the fact that she can’t protect everyone.
She’s silent as the soldier make their last pass through the course. The last one, Peter, approaches the last target, and at the last minute he simply swings past it, not even attempting to slice.
Mikasa’s eyes narrow, her hands clenching so hard she feels the handle creek under the pressure.
He swings down and starts talking about getting lunch.
“Why did you stop?” Mikasa growls.
She’s shorter than he is, but she snuck up on him quickly enough that she’s startled him.
“I asked you a question,” she says firmly when he stammers back a nonsensical reply, clearly afraid. Some sick, animal part of her relishes in his fear, because he should be afraid of her.
“Why did you give up? You didn’t even try to slice at the target on the last pass? Why!? Why didn’t you even try!?”
Mikasa can hear his squadmates panicking in the background as she lifts up the lazy Garrison soldier by his shirt and slams him against a post.
“Is that what they teach in the Garrison? To give up when it’s difficult? When you’re bored? Are you going to be bored when you’re watching your friends get eaten alive? When they’re yelling for your help—”
“Set him down, Mikasa.”
Mikasa glances over her shoulder and sees a bored-looking Captain Levi and an apprehensive Jean, in addition to the horrified expressions on the other Garrison soldiers who are clearly too afraid to move.
Shame mixes with her anger. She shouldn’t have let herself get so upset over nothing. They’re just the Garrison, after all — they’ll either be operating canons or end up dead.
“Mikasa,” the captain reaches up to her wrist and lightly pulls her fisted hands away from Peter.
She drops him quickly, returns to her senses and storms off.
She can still feel her heart racing, her vision still sharp from the adrenaline and fear she’d sensed from the other soldier.
What the hell is wrong with me?
She walks alone to the course Captain Levi mentioned the evening before. The sixty meter post looms over her ominously. She thinks back to when she was a girl and everyone wanted to play around noon because the wall didn’t cast its shadow over the district.
“How often do you get angry like that?”
She jumps a little because the captain managed to sneak up on her. She turns to him and shrugs.
“Every now and then.”
But that’s a lie. She finds it happening more frequently, that sometimes she feels uncontrollably, wildly, maddeningly angry. To the point that she wants to throw things, break things, yell at people. Honestly, it’s starting to scare her.
He looks at her appraisingly and sighs.
“It’s normal, if you think about it. There’s a lot to be angry about. I notice I find myself feeling that way when things are slow like this. Last time we saw real combat was … maybe three months ago?”
She thinks back to what had amounted to practice for Eren to use his coordinate ability with Historia and how she’d still needed to kill four titans before he’d figured it out.
“When you’re too busy worrying about staying alive you don’t have the time to be angry,” Levi says. “But when there’s time, sometimes angry is all you can be.”
Mikasa can tell he’s remembering something, though she has no clue what. Still, the fact that he’s experienced something similar comforts her.
She notices this is one of the longest conversations she’s had with him. Right when she’s about to thank him for his words, he looks at her boredly and sighs.
“So, to keep yourself from killing Garrison soldiers with your suppressed rage, why don’t we figure out how we’re gonna maneuver up this thing by ourselves while avoiding artillery fire.”
Mikasa scowls at his nonchalance but knows he’s right, that focusing on something else is the best course of action, so she directs her attention to the challenge at hand.
Eren and Armin had built this towering post while in their titan forms for the Legion to use in training. For a year or so, Armin’s titan form had been so difficult for him to sustain that it hadn’t been practical for him to transform every time they needed to train, and thus the colossal post was born.
Levi looks up to the top, his hand shading his eyes from the bright afternoon sunlight.
Such a small man, looking up so high.
The years have lessened the hostility between the two of them, though there is still a tension that never dispelled. Their whole squad is friendly with him aside from her. Eren and Armin will occasionally play card games with him late at night, Jean cuts out crass comics from the Saturday edition of the paper and shares them with him, Sasha makes an after-shave oil for him out of cloves that she replenishes every time his birthday comes around and Connie cuts cedar chips and puts them into linen bags to keep moths away from clothes.
Perhaps it’s telling that one of the only things they’ve shared is silence.
She’s not sure that there’s much more necessary between the two of them. She has fallen into a habit of trusting him. After everything it would be almost impossible not to.
She won’t forget his face all those years ago, his face when he’d resolved to let Commander Erwin die.
“I figured we should both get practice ascending to an elevation this high. I’ve only done it once or twice. The last time was after I’d had a concussion and it didn’t leave me feeling confident,” he says with no preamble.
“Mm,” she agrees.
He sighs almost wearily and readies his cables.
“I’ll be blunt” — she doesn’t know why he says this, because he is always blunt — “I don’t think that going into Armin’s hand is the best course of action. He’s not adept at using his hands, and I don’t want to end up smashed up against his neck or dropped. The cables aren’t long enough to scale all the way up to his shoulders, so I’m gonna extend my cable as far as it’ll go then use gas to propel my momentum upward to the platform. If you think that’ll work for you, give it a try.”
There’s no way he would recommend this to anyone besides her, they’d end up dead. On the occasions they have worked together, he never tells her what to do or how to approach something, merely tells her what his plans are. More often than not, his approach is what she’d been thinking herself.
He readies his left hand, his body already tensed in preparation for the jerking motion of being pulled into the air.
“See you up top.”
She watches him ascend, higher and higher all the way to the platform above. She knows that someone like Armin would be able to analyze exactly why his movement works, why everything about it is perfect, breaking down each part like some sort of complicated dance.
But to her, it simply looks right. That’s the only word she can put to it.
Once she’s sure he’s landed, she aims the trigger as high up as she can manage. The cable screeches forward and she tenses her body to prepare for the hard jerk when the cable lands.
She doesn’t think about it, but maneuvering is equal parts tension and relaxation. If you don’t tense your body and the cable lands, the quick start in momentum will knock the wind out of you, maybe even harm your neck or limbs.
Many people remain tensed the entire time, either afraid of the potential landing, nervous about being in the air, or just unable to relax when there’s such a high potential for injury or death. This usually makes people slow, clunky, and imprecise.
To truly fly, to move quickly, you need to let your body relax. She neither likes nor dislikes the feeling of the air rushing through her hair and stinging her eyes, but she will admit there is a certain amount of freedom to it. For a moment things feel easy, and a moment is sometimes all she needs to feel some relief.
She has to use a quick burst of gas to propel herself up high enough to land on the platform, but not so much that it would be problematic in a combat scenario. Most people use too much because they create too much resistance with their bodies by not tucking in their limbs or economizing their movements.
She has tied her hair back, but they’re high enough that the wind blows against her face and stings her eyes.
“That worked better than I anticipated,” he yells over the wind. “But the thing to be aware of is in combat, we’re going to be stuck up here. There aren’t any tall enough anchor points to slow our descent and we can’t count on Armin being able to lower us to the ground if the shit hits us hard.”
Mikasa nods in acknowledgement.
She reaches to her gear to point to the lower posts made specifically for descent from the platform when it hits her: a wave of panic, overwhelming her until her hands are shaking.
She can see it, can see Eren falling through the sky, can hear the cracking of his bones as he bounces on the ground limp like a ragdoll.
“Mikasa?”
She tries to speak but she can’t, her throat has closed up and she’s dropped to her knees, staring at the ground far below.
What’s wrong with you?
She tries to get up and move. It should be easy for her because she’s Mikasa Ackerman but it’s not working. It’s a new detail every time — Eren’s bloody, bruised skin; his broken limbs splayed about on the ground; his pallid face and swollen joints.
All because I let him fall.
“What’s wrong?”
She shakes her head, unable to respond.
He sighs wearily, every inch of him looking like the tired, put-upon man he is. He slings her over his shoulder like she weighs nothing and carefully descends.
Levi sets her on the ground unceremoniously and runs a hand through his hair.
On the ground she quickly comes to her senses. The world stops spinning and she’s not seeing Eren falling from the air anymore.
“The hell was that?”
“Nothing!” she says quickly.
“Right, I just had to carry you down like a kid because you were feeling lazy,” he drawls.
She feels feverishly warm from the flush creeping up her neck and she adjusts her scarf to hide it.
“I’ll handle it,” she dismisses.
“Alright, fine, go up again. But this time I’m not going up, so you’re fucked when you want to get down.”
Mikasa grits her teeth and for a moment she impulsively thinks of doing just that, flinging herself back up to the platform just to prove that he’s wrong, but she knows he isn’t.
“Well? Go ahead,” he goads, though his tone says that he knows she won’t do it, that she’s too afraid.
“No?” His expression darkens. “You need to get it together before those ships come in. Everyone is relying on us to protect Armin while—”
“I can’t stop seeing Eren falling, okay?” she snaps.
She throws her blades to the ground and suddenly she’s rambling.
“I wanted to save him, inside I was telling myself to go, to catch him but my body wouldn’t move, all I could do was watch him fall and I don’t know why, so now all I can think about when I close my eyes is his body limp on the ground and his broken bones,” she shakes her head and looks away from him, ashamed that she’d let herself control like this.
It’s quiet for a moment, a beat of silence to let her collect herself before he speaks up again.
“There’s a reason you couldn’t go to him when he was falling,” he says lowly. He looks at her and their eyes meet. “Part of you knew that letting him fall was the right call. You knew that he’d recover and that, had you tried to catch him, you could have died.”
Mikasa inhales shakily at the weight of his words because she knows they’re true. Deep down, she knows herself, knows that in a moment like that she always knows the right thing to do, can always command her body to do things that others can’t.
And I held back.
She remembers when her body had wanted to kill Bertholdt and Reiner and her mind had made her hesitate because she hadn’t wanted to kill her friends. Eren had been kidnapped and so many had died.
She had vowed that that would never happen again.
“You’ll make that call again and again because it’s the right thing to do, and you always know the right thing, Mikasa.”
She remembers those words from years ago. Hearing him say it like that makes something click inside of her, like a tumbler in a lock falling into place when the right key is turned she knows that he’s speaking the truth.
“You’re right,” she agrees firmly.
He nods slightly at her.
“Let’s do it again then, a few more times to make sure we’ve both got it.”
They maneuver up the post three more times, both of them with a natural precision that makes practice seem almost redundant. Despite their skill they both know how much rides on their ability to perform on the day of the battle.
The sun has started to set by the time they’ve perfected their approach. They walk in shared silence to the mess hall for dinner.
Since finding out about their shared heritage, they’ve reached a reluctant understanding of one another. Perhaps it’s because of their mutual oddness in relation to anybody else. She thinks that it’s similar to how Eren and Armin are. The power of the titans is a heavy burden that they both shoulder. At times their closeness had made Mikasa feel left out and, in her weaker moments, jealous. But she can’t begrudge her friends this understanding, this companionship, because in moments like this she’s glad to have someone to … not talk to about it.
Because that’s what she and Captain Levi do. They don’t talk, and somehow that helps.