Chapter Text
Now.
Eren wishes for the strength to rid the world of all evil and that is too large of a wish for him to handle the repercussions. Mikasa sees his soul gem darken rapidly with every witch he slays, his head thrown back in a laugh that balances on the fine line that is sanity and his teeth glinting under the sheen of red that coats it. It is her who grabs him by the hand when the witch dies, the labyrinth collapsing in on itself to shrink into a grief seed, which she snatches out of mid-air and presses to Eren's soul gem, hung on a cord around his neck.
He's learnt early on not to fight her and he stands placidly, awkwardly, as the darkness seeps out of his soul gem, turning it from the colour of night to day. "Thanks, Mikasa." he tells her quietly when she's done and watches silently as she presses the grief seed to her own soul gem, the red of the crystal within burning fiercely through the darkness. "You know, you don't have to do this all the time."
"I do." comes her curt reply as she tosses the used grief seed aside. Eren's eyes flicker away from her, following the arc the grief seed makes through the air before disintegrating into nothing when it hits the ground. Her own eyes stay fixed on him, memorising the lines of his face and the curve of his eyes although she knows that she will never forget his face. "I have to do this because you won't do it without me around."
Eren doesn't have a reply to that and a sheen of light covers him, his battle outfit being replaced by his normal school uniform. Without a word, he turns away from her and walks off, leaving Mikasa to mimic his actions before striding after him.
---
Kyubey knows better than to stick around the two of them because Mikasa has sliced him to pieces every time he showed up near Eren, extra bodies be damned. He never knows why she hates him so much and he finds it a curious thing. Usually the girls (and boys now) that he contracted with welcomed his company, seeing that he was the one to grant their wishes and give them power after all. He is like a god to them and only this girl called Mikasa Ackerman refuses to worship him, standing by her own mysterious beliefs that seem to centre on the boy called Eren Yeager, one of the first magical boys that he had chosen to contract.
Curiously enough, he doesn't remember forming a contract with her and yet he senses a power from within her that unmistakably has his touch.
He also wonders why she is so obsessed with Eren. Does she too sense the immense potential lying within him?
No matter. It was inevitable that the two of them would fall to their own despair and turn into witches. Such was the fate of all magical girls and boys. Once that happened, he would just move on and seek out other children and offer them a miracle and a new power in exchange for everything that they were. The story of Mikasa and Eren would be nothing more than a curious memory at the back of his mind to recall when he was idle.
The little blond girl with the icy eyes and her two friends seemed like a good choice to contract next. He just needed to wait for the right moment.
---
Take One.
The knife plunges into her mother's neck and all she sees is red. Her mother is limp on the floor, her hands loose around her own throat as if trying to stop her life from flowing out in crimson rivulets. Mikasa doesn't remember anything other than that as the hands grab her roughly, crude voices cursing as they slip in the blood pooling around her mother's body. Then she is in motion but her feet do not move under her and her hands are tied behind her back.
It is then that they run, quite literally, into a witch's labyrinth.
Her captors don't stand a chance as a lovely, cheerful yellow flower blooms before them, exactly five petals unfurling into a magnificent thing that towers above all of them. It waves daintily in the air before them and the petals rotate like the blades of a windmill, revealing rows and rows of gnashing razor-sharp teeth set within it. The man in the lead doesn't even have the chance to run before the flower swoops in to bite him in half, the upper half of his body disappearing into its gaping maw. A lump makes its way down its stalk and it bends its head away from the rest of them as if sated by its meal. Her remaining captor drops her and turns to run but something else swoops down from above and cleaves his throat open, twin blades shining under the viscous, crimson liquid that runs along its length. More stab wounds follow and she watches, enraptured, as a boy wielding twin blades falls to his knees on the man's chest and runs his blades repeatedly through the prone body.
"Scum. Beasts. Murderers." Mikasa hears him hiss through his teeth, suppressed sobs muffled in his throat. There is the tell-tale glint of tears in his eyes and she wonders who he is crying for.
She feels something coil around her body but her body is so cold and her nerves won't accept the response to move even as a snakelike vine wraps her up triumphantly and lifts her off the ground. There is a bud pulsating at the centre of the warped space they are in, lovingly tended to by shovels that plunge into the ground and pat down the soil around it. Above, a sun and a rain cloud alternate dancing above it, taking turns to shower the bud with their attention.
The sentient vine positions her right above the bud, uncaring if the rain soaks her or if the sun's rays scorch her, and the bud under her gives a little shiver before it unfurls gracefully, petal by petal. The red of the rose that blooms reminds her of her mother with a rose of her own in her throat and then she finds herself falling to the ground.
A weight slams into her before the vine can lower her into the middle of the rose, where teeth have formed in place of petals and smile up at her pleasantly. They snap agitatedly as the boy from before severs the vine holding her and presses the handle of a blade into her hand urgently as vines close around his limbs and yank him backwards into the waiting maw of the rose. The shovels clear a path for him as he is dragged through the dirt, little seedlings pushing through the soil to touch his body reverently with shy giggles and he kicks and thrashes through it all.
"Fight!" he screams at Mikasa as he digs his heels into the soil. "Fight or we'll both die!"
There is something looming over her – she can feel it – and as she looks into the boy's eyes, brimming with such an intense will to live, her body turns on instinct, the single blade in her hand slicing through the flower that had been inching towards her, shredding its petals into creamy white confetti that falls over her. The boy screams something incoherent at her and she heads towards him at a run, bending down to scoop up his other dropped blade as she does.
She can feel it, the way the soles of her feet dig into the earthy ground as she runs, the weight of the blades in her hands, the press of the intricate handles against her skin. This is living, she thinks to herself, this is what it means to fight and to be alive. The muscles in her legs bunch under her and she leaps into the air, bearing down on the vines holding the boy, her saviour. Without his binds, he is left sprawled against the ground as Mikasa dives straight at the rose, the heart of it all, and plunges her hand, blade and all into its centre. For good measure, she slides in the other blade, ignoring the feel of carnivorous teeth shredding the skin of her hands.
Soon enough, the rose freezes then blackens and crumbles. As the world disintegrates around her, she finds herself unable to move again, watching the wilting rose dissolve into ashes with rapt attention. She's so cold, feeling the blood trickling down her arms warm against her icy skin.
Hands close around her arms and the blades she is holding fade out of existence. Someone shakes her and she looks up, startled, into the face of a boy not much older than her.
"Hey, are you ok?" His fingers are slick with her blood, loosening his grip on her as she comes out of her stupor.
"I'm cold." she tells him, her voice barely making it out of her. It is perfectly stable despite the volume but something in it makes the boy furrow his brows.
He is wearing something different now, just a normal school uniform with a bright red scarf wrapped securely around his throat, which he pulls at with blood-stained fingers.
"Here." he says decisively as he loops the scarf haphazardly around her neck. "Now it's not cold anymore, is it?"
It isn't, with the worn wool cocooning her in warmth and she feels the tears that wouldn't come just now pool in her eyes.
"It’s not," she chokes, the sound of her voice muffled by the scarf. "It's not cold anymore."
Years later, she kneels at the side of the boy's body – whom she had come to know and love as Eren – and his hands are so, so cold in hers and the light in his eyes so dim. As she keens, the sound of grief raw and laden with her loss, a strange white creature leaps down before her and promises her the moon if she was willing to make a contract with him.
She doesn't want the moon.
She just wants to protect Eren the way he protected her.
It is enough, the creature says. It is enough for him to make a contract with her to fulfil this wish of hers.
---
Take 3.
Armin wishes for his grandfather to live again, his baby blue eyes so full of hope as he kneels before Kyubey. The incubator's ears perk up and Mikasa has to look away in disgust, her hands tightening against the handle of her blades. She should have disposed of him before he had sunken his claws into Armin, who had been grieving the death of his grandfather, his only remaining kin. Instead, she is forced to stand by as Kyubey extracts a soul gem from Armin's body, as blue as his eyes and the sky above them, effectively killing him and damning him to the fate that all magical girls and boys were bound to meet one day. She clenches her teeth so tightly that they creak and the muscles in her jaw twitch from the effort. She can feel Kyubey's eyes on her and she knows that he feels her revulsion even if she doesn't show it on her face.
Lying on the hospital bed, the old man takes a staggering breath, the first since he was declared dead mere minutes ago. As his chest rises and falls as he takes in more air, Mikasa feels a chill grip her, fear gnawing at the edges of her senses. She whips around frantically and Eren is standing behind her, his eyes overly wide as he watches life seep back into Armin's grandfather. There is something wrong and she instinctively takes a step towards Eren. The incubator watches them silently from the side, his beady red eyes absorbing whatever information he can gather from the scene unfolding in front of him. The miracle of Armin's grandfather is forgotten by them, even as Armin throws his arms around his grandfather and weeps in joy.
"Eren?" She takes another step towards him and reaches out a hand towards him, intent on closing the distance between them.
Eren remains still, his features slack and the blood draining from his face. "Kyubey can bring back the dead." he says, his voice usually so full of conviction now dull and flat. "I… I could have wished for my mother to live again."
The sense of wrongness intensifies and Mikasa is sure that it is coming from Eren, pulsating from him in disconcerting waves. "Eren." she says warningly, her hand hovering above his shoulder. Something in her doesn't want to touch him when there's something obviously off with him now. She knows that if he follows the tracks of this train of thought, something bad will happen and she can't let that happen. She needs Eren to be safe.
"Mikasa." He meets her eyes, so full of regret and despair that she can't stop herself from flinching. "I shouldn't have wished for revenge. I should have wished for my mother to come back."
Mikasa watches in horror as darkness seeps down from the top of his head, overflowing down his face and wrapping its tendrils around his head like a macabre embrace. What follows is a split that begins at his face and spreads down, bisecting him neatly into half. His soul gem peeks out from under his shirt and the light within it has been completely consumed by darkness. She watches in sick fascination as large hands grip either side of the split in Eren's body and rips him in half, a titanic figure emerging from the folds of his skin. Armin screams behind her and she is blown backwards into him as the darkness within Eren's soul gem leaks out of its confines and engulfs the area around them. When she has the presence of mind to look again, she can't find his brilliant blue-green soul gem anywhere and there is a grief seed stuck into the floor beneath Eren's lifeless body.
"What did you do to him?" Mikasa screams as Kyubey lands on her shoulder, fluffy paws digging into her. She has a hand closed around his throat before his hind legs touch down on her. "What did you do?"
Kyubey tilts his head to the side, blank eyes observing her without emotion. "What do you mean? I merely granted his wish. Everything else he did on his own."
Brick by brick, colossal walls close in on them and she gets the same disorienting feeling from them as she does with witches' barriers. Although Armin is new to this, it seems that he shares her sentiments.
"Mikasa." He says quietly, fully transformed and standing protectively in front of his grandfather's bed. "I think Eren's become a witch."
Her fingers tighten around Kyubey's neck and she knows that all she has to do is squeeze her fingers together and his head would come off like a cotton-stuffed toy. "How is that possible?"
"It is very possible." Kyubey assures her, unfazed although at the brink of death; he has bodies to spare after all. "After all, the next logical step for magical boys and girls to take would be to turn into witches. Isn't it just like how children like you eventually grow up to become big adults one day?"
A primal cry rips from Mikasa's throat, one that she hasn't heard since that first day, and she slams Kyubey down into the ground. She looks up into the face of the giant that is Eren and felt a sob burst from her, her fingers scrabbling at the front of her scarf for the tiny hourglass embedded in it.
All she wanted was to protect Eren and she had failed again. But no matter, she would try again, as many times it would take for Eren to be safe.
---
Take 7.
This time, she sees the tragedy coming before it happens. As Eren turns despair-filled eyes on her, Mikasa lunges forward and smashes the handle of her blade into his soul gem, polluted beyond help with shadows. Her other hand is already at her neck, the hourglass grasped tightly in her hand.
"I am so sorry, Eren."
She goes back again.
---
Take 12.
Armin's grandfather doesn't come back to life and it pains Mikasa to see the boy with hair the colour of the sun and a mind sharper the edge of her blade as a shadow of his former self, haunted and huddling in on himself.
Eren still dies, but this time not as a witch.
---
Now.
The carnival descends upon them, dancers fluttering in on a wave of death and gaudy animals stamping decay into the ground beneath their feet. Behind it all, their queen revolves in the sky, her hands outstretched to bless the earth with damnation and her painted lips stretched grotesquely wide in taunting smile.
Mikasa hears the sound of Eren's blades being unsheathed and she wills her own blade into her hands, clasped in prayer before her blade materialises in between them.
Please, let this time be the one where Eren is safe.
If there is a god in this world, she hopes that they hear her this time. They have forsaken her countless times and she is just so tired of it all that she isn’t quite sure if she can reverse time once more for Eren’s sake. The hourglass tucked under the folds of her scarf is cracked and yellow and she holds it together with nothing more than tape and blind hope. It looks pathetic, a perfect reflection of her soul – which is what it actually is really.
Eren leaps into the fray before she can look up and Mikasa follows blindly after him, her eyes fixed on his surroundings and the printed wings on his back, making sure that nothing strikes him down as he heads for the giant laughing doll that mocks them from her place in the sky. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see similar flashes of light, the sharp emerald green of Jean on her left and the sweet glittering pink of Krista on her right. Below them, on foot and cutting a swath through the lines of familiars, she can see flashes of Sasha and Reiner, interweaving with each other. Like her, Reiner has an eye constantly on Krista, even as he slams a heavy fist into the face of a grinning doll that gets too close.
This is the first time Mikasa has managed to keep so many of them alive to face Walpurgisnacht. Usually it was just her and Eren. Sometimes, Armin contracted and it was the three of them up against the nightmare of an entourage that Walpurgisnacht brings into the town. Never has she gathered so many allies in one timeline. It is strange but not unappreciated; more people meant a higher chance of Eren's survival after all. She isn’t proud of what she had to do to gather them, but it was worth it if she managed to keep Eren safe at the end of it all.
They have a battle plan too, a nice solid plan that was thought up by Armin in one of the past timelines and brought to this timeline by Mikasa. The boy himself doesn't join the fray in this timeline; Mikasa made sure of that herself, turning away every time they came face-to-face in the cold corridors of school, his face slack with apathy and hers stricken with guilt.
They have Walpurgisnacht surrounded on all sides, four of them boxing in the giant doll in the sky and two of them keeping the numerous familiars away from them. The idea was to unleash a barrage of attacks on a concentrated area before too much of the town got destroyed. The endgame was the evacuation shelter right in the middle of Shiganshina which held the entire town's population, thinking that they'll come out when the unnatural storm blew through. If Walpurgisnacht managed to reach that far, they would have no choice but to abandon the fallen town and all its people.
Mikasa only hopes that she is left with enough strength to drag Eren away at that point of time. There were times where she could do nothing but watch helplessly as Eren was crushed in the wake of the destruction Walpurgisnacht brought down upon them. Other times, she found herself laid out beside him, both of them part of the wreckage Walpurgisnacht had bestowed upon this damned town, side-by-side as the world fell down around them. Each time she clasped the hourglass hidden in the folds of her scarf and unravelled the events that had happened, all evidence of her failure, going back to a time where Eren was still alive and by her side.
She has done this too many times, lived through so many of Eren's deaths that sometimes her memories start to collapse into her present reality. When she looks at Eren's back, the contrasting wings on his mantle rise from the cloth, feathered tips spreading out wide into the air and bursting forth brilliantly from his back. Phantom walls close around her, pulsating with the stench of a witch, and the breath catches in her throat, refusing to escape back into the world outside. But then she blinks and the wings vanish, the walls never existing, and she is simply looking at Eren again.
Walpurgisnacht looms before them and she tears her eyes away from Eren for a few precious seconds to carry out her part in this plan, which has to work, her blade flashing as the red of her magic ripples through it and rips into the head of the laughing queen. Bright lights dance around the spinning doll as the rest of her comrades let loose a barrage of their own attacks and the large concentration of magic around her is suffocating. Mikasa slashes at her target mindlessly, hands as sure and steady as the time she took down her first witch to save Eren. When her blade dulls, she discards it and lets it fall to the earth beneath her as two new ones materialise in her hands, deadly sharp and singing out for witch blood.
Beside her, blue sparks fly as Eren lays into his own targeted area, guttural screams tearing from his throat as he attacks Walpurgisnacht with his all. He is not as strong as Mikasa and neither is he as true in his aim, but what he does have is his tireless strength and sheer ferocity that stems from the pure, undiluted hatred of the witches.
Gradually, the witch stops moving, the gears above creaking to a stop and the doll hanging limply in the air, wrong side up. Mikasa embeds a few of her blades into the side of its head for good measure, red flaring from her hands to the tips of the blades and exploding while buried inside the witch's body. None of them have stopped attacking; none of them dare to risk it with a foe like Walpurgisnacht.
On her left, Krista pulls back the bowstring of her weapon, a cluster of pink forming on the taut line. When she releases it, arrows of light rush out like a meteor shower and strike the witch's body. On her other side, Eren hacks away at the front of its face, a leaking mass of darkness where its laughing visage was previously. Sparks fly when his blades accidentally strike each other and they leave tiny burn marks on his skin, which disappear as fast as they appear. She can't see Jean from where she is now, but she can feel the impact of his attacks on the other side.
Mikasa won't believe that they have defeated Walpurgisnacht until the skies return to blue and the nightmares around them have scattered into dust. In some of her previous tries at slaying the most powerful witch, she let her guard down too early and Eren had paid for her carelessness. She won't let it happen in this time.
Then something slams into her side and she is knocked away from Walpurgisnacht, her hands slipping away from the hilts of the blades she had driven into the witch's body. Even as she falls, she claws at the air for something to grab onto, something to pull her back to where she was previously because if she leaves Eren's side now something was sure to happen; she's learnt that much from the past timelines.
"I-I'm sorry." The weight around her stutters feebly and when she finally looks down at the arms wrapped around her waist, she finds them attached to Sasha who smiles sheepishly up at her through a blackened eye. The light pulsating from her soul gem is dangerously weak and Mikasa cannot find it in her to lash out at her, instead making sure that they both touch down safely on a piece of rubble that juts out from the floor at an awkward angle. Sasha can barely stand on her own and Mikasa eases her carefully onto the floor, taking inventory of the injuries on her body. By looking alone, she can tell that Sasha is out for the count and even if her body could hold out, her soul gem wouldn't.
"What happened?" Mikasa asks, an undercurrent of urgency in her voice because Eren is alone and unprotected up there, never mind Jean and Krista.
"We were overpowered." Sasha tells her, hands rising above her to gesture in the air weakly as she speaks. "Me and Reiner were fighting and then all of a sudden blam! this huge wave of familiars came rushing towards us. I got separated from him and then I ended up in this state as you can see, heh."
"Was he still fighting when you left?"
"I guess so? I couldn't see him properly through all those things. Say, do you happen to have a spare grief seed with you? I think mine's at the limit." She holds out her soul gem, fixed into a bracelet encircling her wrist. The darkness has begun to set in, bubbling up from deep within and crawling up the walls of her soul gem.
Mikasa turns her head away from it, a sick, lurching feeling ebbing up in her. It reminds her too much of the timelines where she failed to save Eren from falling to grief and the witch emerged from him, turning him into one of the monsters he loathed so much.
"No." she says, even as she feels the weight of a grief seed hidden in the folds of her scarf, lodged right beside the cracked hourglass. She needs it in case something happens to Eren.
"Heh." Sasha smiles up at her and Mikasa knows that she's been seen through. "I figured that you would say that. Got to protect the princess and all, don't you?"
Mikasa doesn't say anything.
It is not the first time she had to do something like this, sacrifice someone's life for Eren's sake, but she never gets used to it. There was always that sense of guilt that would form deep in her chest and fall into the ever-growing pit of self-loathing and disgust in the centre of her being. Sometimes when it was too much, she could feel it spill over and a new crack form along the marred glass of her soul gem. She never let it get any worse than that, clamping down on all these emotions bubbling within her and forcing it under control. It was things like this that formed witches and she would never let herself turn into one.
Neither would she let anyone turn into a witch ever again.
Gently, she pries Sasha's soul gem from the ornamental bracelet and lays it down on the floor beside her. The other girl knows what's coming next and she gives Mikasa an encouraging smile, a faint tremble working its way down her body.
Mikasa lifts her sword, hands clasped together in a prayer for a fallen friend, and brings it down on Sasha's soul gem.
---
Take 19.
A trail of crumbs leads her to the other magical girl, who is crouched down on the ground and picking something off the ground. From where Mikasa stands, she can see her holding something in one hand from which the girl takes a bite of every now and then. A faint tune fills the air between them, cheery and not entirely in tone and Mikasa recognises it as a festival song, not one of Shinganshina's but from one of the neighbouring towns.
A smile tugs at her lips but she suppresses it as she drops the tip of her blade lightly onto the ground, making just enough sound to warn the other girl of her presence. Instantly, the girl spins around, still low on the ground and although readiness is in every inch of her stance, Mikasa has to smother a laugh when she sees the loaf of bread clamped between the girl's teeth.
She wills the blade in her hand away and raises her arms to show that she means no harm. "You're Sasha Blouse, aren't you? I need to talk to you about something."
Sasha mumbles an unintelligible reply through her mouthful of bread and Mikasa waits patiently for her to chew and swallow before producing a more understandable answer.
"How do you know my name? Who are you anyway?"
Mikasa takes a few cautious steps forward, easing up as Sasha drops the tip of her crossbow. She's careless, Mikasa notes, but it wasn't as if she meant her any harm in the first place. "My name is Mikasa. I patrol Shinganshina with my partner, Eren."
"Oh, it's nice to meet you then." Sasha rises and gives her hand a quick wipe down on the front of her skirt before offering it to Mikasa. "I'm from Dauper and sometimes I pair up with Connie so I guess you could say that he's my partner?"
Mikasa clasps her hand and stray crumbs press between their palms, which she pays no mind to. "It's nice to meet you too."
Handshake and introductions done, Sasha falls back into a comfortable slouch, crossbow dangling loosely from one hand. Up close, Mikasa can see that the fingers around it are tense and arm muscles taut as if ready to shoot at any time. Maybe Sasha wasn't as careless as she thought she was after all.
"So," Sasha says as she tears another chunk of bread out with her teeth. "What do you want to talk to me about?"
"Sasha, have you heard of Walpurgisnacht?"
---
Now.
Mikasa buries Sasha’s body because that is all she can do for her at this point of time, laying one of her blades atop the makeshift grave as a tribute to her fallen friend. She has already spent enough time away from Eren and previous experiences have taught her that things tended to go very wrong when she wasn't watching Eren.
The clouds above her have coalesced, veiling Walpurgisnacht in a thick shroud and hiding everyone else from sight. The occasional flash of magic breaks through the cloud cover but it isn't enough of a reassurance for her, even as she counts the number of times she sees a blue spark shine through. The situation on the ground has changed since the start of the battle, where the buildings are now wreckages and are but mere remnants of their former glory, half-sunken into the ground. Familiars dance a distance away from her, leering faces telling her they won't leave her alone for long and she knows that she has to move now.
Reiner is nowhere in sight, even if he was last seen on the ground with Sasha. She pushes him to the back of her mind for now as she darts around concrete structures with their wire skeletons exposed, looking for a tall enough platform to launch herself back at Walpurgisnacht and join the others. The tell-tale lights in the darkened sky dim gradually and urgency gnaws at her as she leaps up onto half a building to find a way back to the fight. All she asks for is for Eren to be safe just this once.
Her body is weightless as she leaps from structure to structure, each one taller than the last before she finally makes it to one which is still standing tall and ends close enough for her to launch herself back into battle from. Her feet touch down onto unshattered glass that frames the building, a vertical path back to Eren, and she runs.
Even though she knows that her soul isn't where it was supposed to be and her body is nothing more than a shell, it's still exhilarating, the way the blood within her starts pumping faster and the muscles in every part of her body flex with her movements. It's the feeling of being alive, something that she would never forget even through the multitude of timelines she has lived through. It's something that Eren had given her, the knowledge of what it meant to fight and to win the right to live.
The glass under her feet runs out and then she is airborne, blades at either side as forces her body upwards against gravity, praying that Eren is still safe. But then, like a rejection of her fervent prayers, a shrieking laugh pierces the air and that is when she knows that she is too late and that things have gone all wrong again.
Bright lights pass her on their way down, three falling stars headed for the ruined earth beneath them and one brushes against her, a dying blue glow silhouetting the figure within it. Her instincts kick in before Eren can fully pass her and she drops her blades to wrap her arms around his burnt out form, falling to the ground with him.
Her magic swells up within her and flares outwards, enveloping the last of his magic with the fiery red of hers and she hopes that it will be enough to protect the both of them from the impact of meeting the ground at this speed. Against the wind cutting at her face, she forces her eyes open to locate the other two forms of Jean and Krista, the glow of their magic stripping away from their prone bodies they close in on the ground. Across from them, a recognisable figure speeds towards them and veers off towards Krista, purple magic lancing through the sky to close in around her body.
And at that moment, she watches with a strange calmness as Reiner turns his head and she can see the glow of his magic in his eyes and the pure, undiluted hatred for her before the ground rushes up to meet her and Eren.
---
Take 22.
She sees a dead man walking and while she is used to seeing people that should be dead alive in different timelines, she has never seen this particular person alive in any of the timelines she has gone back into. Usually, he was already dead in the time before she restarted her loop. But the shorn blond hair and sturdy frame is unmistakably Reiner's and as he cuts down the witch she had been tracking for the past week, she observes him carefully from a vantage point somewhere above him. He doesn't seem to notice her as he picks up the magical girl she knows as Krista from the ground and stands her back on her feet.
Mikasa follows Reiner for the next few days, leaving Eren to patrol the town under explicit orders not to engage a witch or a familiar on his own and that she will know if he does so. Every time she tracks Reiner down, he's spending time with Krista, surprising her at the front gates of her school and taking her out on long pseudo-dates that mainly involve him teasing her in a way that is uncharacteristically Reiner. There is something in the way that he looks at her that reminds her of the way he had looked at Bertholdt and Annie, and it is disconcerting to see that same look directed at Krista, who Mikasa is sure that he has never met before now.
Finally, Mikasa finds him alone one day, wandering aimlessly through the quiet spaces of town while Krista is held back after school hours. She falls into step behind him, calling out to him and he walks on as if he hadn't heard her. It takes a tap on his shoulder for this person who is undeniably Reiner to finally stop in his tracks and regard Mikasa with puzzlement.
"Reiner? Who’s that? Who are you?" Reiner says. He gives her a once over briefly, eyes narrowing as he registers something about her. "You're a magical girl, aren't you?"
Mikasa falls back, wary. This is not the Reiner she knows, a boy slightly younger than her who was steadfast and giving, and who was never seen without the company of Annie and Bertholdt. "Who are you?"
This Reiner looks down at her with something like amusement as he says, "I guess that answers it then. Reiner, huh? I don't know whose body this is, but he was dead and his body was vacant. Kyubey said that our soul gems steer bodies but he never did say that it had to be our own."
“I know whose body this is.” Mikasa tells the stranger in Reiner’s body. The body language, the odd quirks, the devotion to Krista and not Bertholdt or Annie, it’s all wrong. “You’re Reiner Braun. You're the boy who lived next to me.”
A look of surprise comes over Reiner’s face. “Oh?” The tone of voice is all wrong too, flippant and light, not steady and trustworthy like Reiner’s had been. “You knew this guy? I’m sorry about that. I'm not Reiner though. You can call me Ymir instead.”
It’s all Mikasa can do to keep herself from stabbing this person who was not Reiner in the throat. Her magic pulses in her, responding to the rush of emotion that breaks over her. However, no blades appear in her clenched hands. She needs this imposter alive so that he – she – can fight for her on Walpurgisnacht.
“Stay out of my way.” is all she says, so quietly that the venom in her voice nearly goes unheard. “All you need to do is help us take down Walpurgisnacht. You've heard of it haven't you?”
Reiner – no, Ymir – brings herself up to her full height, her gaze challenging as she stares Mikasa down. “Everyone's heard of it. But why should I help you? It's madness to try to fight against something like that.”
“Do it to keep Krista safe. Walpurgisnacht will wipe out this town and everybody in it, including your precious Krista.” She’s hit the nail on the head if the way Ymir stiffens is any indication.
“What makes you think I can’t just take Krista and bring her to some faraway place before Walpurgisnacht hits town? Why do we need to help you take down that thing?” Ymir’s voice is deadly soft to match hers, the glow of magic crackling in her eyes.
Mikasa isn’t intimidated by this show of power; she’s seen worse things in all of her lifetimes after all. “What makes you think you can take Krista out of this? You know her the best and you know that once she hears about this threat to the Shiganshina she will never leave.”
“I can make sure that she never hears about Walpurgisnacht.”
“Can you?” Mikasa simply says and gazes back at Ymir as it dawns on her.
“You bitch.” Ymir’s cool demeanour cracks, the lightning in her eyes intensifying. “You've told her about Walpurgisnacht already, haven't you?”
“I'll leave that up to your imagination.” Mikasa replies calmly.
She feels the bolt of lightning lance down towards her and ducks out of the way before it makes contact. There is a scorch mark in the ground where she was standing and Ymir gives her no time to prepare herself before a full lightning storm comes down upon her, its purple light blinding her. But Ymir doesn’t have the experience she has, painstakingly built up across timelines, and Mikasa has the tip of her blade to the soul gem resting against Ymir’s neck as the lightning dies down.
“I’ll kill you.” Ymir hisses, her gaze poisonous as she pins Mikasa down with eyes that are livid with rage.
“Surrender, Ymir. We need each other to take down Walpurgisnacht.”
It takes a while, but Mikasa takes her blade away from Ymir’s neck when she finally sees broad shoulders slump in defeat. The blades dissipate and Ymir falls to her knees, hands covering her face and fingers digging into short blond hair. Mikasa leaves her where she kneels on a ground decorated with black starbursts, the air around them sharp with the smell of burnt ozone.
---
Take ??
Mikasa always finds herself back here, Walpurgisnacht rampaging over their town while she lies broken in the ground. Eren is dead and she sees no reason to stay in this time any longer.
She goes back.
---
Now.
Mikasa always finds herself back here, Walpurgisnacht rampaging over their town while she lies broken in the ground. Eren is dead and she sees no reason to stay in this time any longer.
She can't go back again.
At the end of the day, she is only human and she is just so, so tired of reliving the same sequence of events over and over again. It always ends in the same way no matter how hard she tries and Eren's fate just gets worse with every fresh start.
In every timeline, she has a year to spend with him, sometimes less, before Walpurgisnacht descends upon them unfailingly. Every repeated year, she starts at their first meeting, right after he saves her from her first witch and she receives the same red scarf from him, a familiar hourglass already embedded into its material as he loops it around her neck. He brings her back home to a father who treats her with sharp-smelling medicines and tells her that she is welcome to join their little family if she wants to. From there, they slowly start to build up a relationship, where Eren learns new things about her like her newfound strength and her rigid unwillingness to leave his side even as he leaps into battle after battle with witches. For Mikasa, it is as much a reunion as it is a way to imprint everything about Eren deeper into her memories. Even then, in each new timeline, she learns something new about him, little things like the way he catches on to the end of her scarf unconsciously when he thinks she isn't looking, a confused look on his face as he releases his grip immediately.
She's lost track of the number of times she went back for him and the number of years she has spent with him, only to lose him again and start all over again. Sometimes, she thinks that this is better, when the years meld together into one never-ending timeline and she forgets about all the deaths she has witnessed Eren going through. She can't remember the days before she became a magical girl and before she met Eren, the halcyon days spent safe in a house that held a family made up of a father, a mother and a little girl, who lived out a normal, happy life.
Nestled in the folds of her scarf, she hears her soul gem crack. She can't go back again.
"I'm sorry, Eren." she tells the boy next to her with his eyes closed as if in sleep, dull blue-green eyes hidden away from her behind still eyelids. "I don't think I'm strong enough to do this again."
Another crack appears in her soul gem and the sky above her blurs. So this is where their story finally ends, at the end of the world that they failed to stop. Maybe Eren was just never meant to make it past this point and every time she went back in time it only prolonged his suffering. She was just being selfish in her own way, not going back to save Eren for his sake, as she had always told herself, but for her own.
She reaches for the dimming crystal in her scarf with a trembling arm, plucking it out and holding it above her head. Blackness has begun to seep into its depths and it was only a matter of time before she joined Walpurgisnacht in this twisted new world. If anything, she doesn't want to turn into a witch, one of the monsters which Eren had devoted his entire life to slaying. Mikasa shifts her hand, positioning her darkening soul gem in the space between her and Eren, right above the hard ground that separated the both of them. She gathers what little energy she has and raises her soul gem high into the air to slam it back onto the ground and let her soul escape with the shattered fragments.
A hand on hers stops her before she can go through with it and Mikasa turns her head to see Ymir crouched over her, wearing Reiner's body and using his strength to claw the soul gem out of Mikasa's grip. There is a wild look in her eyes as she cradles Mikasa's soul gem in both hands, blocking out what little light it emits.
"Don't you dare." Ymir tells her, her voice coming out as barely more than a harsh whisper. "Don't you dare give up now after what you've done. Krista's gone, you know. Her soul gem was smashed so I couldn't even find her a new body like mine even if I wanted to." Hysterical laughter bubbles from within her and Mikasa can't do anything in the face of this madness that's unfolding before her.
Her throat is dry from all the crying she's been doing and her eyes feel heavy and swollen. She can't find it in her to lift her hands any more. Her last shot at a death that's peaceful enough by her standards is in the hands of another, whom she had forced into this battle. This must be karma catching up with her after all those restarted time loops.
Mikasa shuts her eyes, giving in to her body's incessant urging to do so. "What do you want, Ymir? Everything's over. Walpurgisnacht won."
The familiar clink of glass against glass reaches her ears and she opens her eyes to see Ymir holding a grief seed to her soul gem, leaching out the darkness which had almost engulfed the deep red light within.
"You aren't going to die. You are going to fix this," Ymir's gaze bores into hers and Mikasa sees the grief brimming behind crazed gleam that lights up her eyes. "With whatever magical time-travel powers that you've been using to save Eren over there. I know all about them and I know you can fix this and I'm begging you to please bring Krista back. I... need her."
She doesn't know what to do as her soul gem is forced back into her hands and she is pulled up onto her feet. Ymir keeps an iron grip on her arm as she drags her away from Eren, past the wreckage and the carnage that was the proof of their war against Walpurgisnacht. The witch queen herself is still standing, lazily revolving in her throne in the sky as she surveys the crumbling world beneath her.
This is what Ymir wants her to see as she brings Mikasa further into the heart of their battleground, the sound of grief seeds shattering underfoot. They stop in an empty clearing in the midst of the debris and Ymir lifts a hand to the sky, tracing the path that connects Walpurgisnacht to the shelter in the middle of town.
"Krista loves this town, you know, and all the people in it, no matter how pesky or annoying they can get." Ymir tells her, eyes fixed on the doll that is gradually closing the distance between her and the shelter. "It's the same with Eren, isn't it? I know they both grew up here. God knows why else they would be so devoted to this wreck of a town." Her gaze slides sideways to fall on Mikasa, "This is why it's not over yet. I don't know how many times you had to go back to save Eren's ass and frankly I don't care. I would do the same in your place, if it was for Krista. No matter how many times it would take, I would just keep going back and saving her like the selfish human being I am because I don't see any reason to be around any longer without her. You can't just decide to stop doing stupid things for the people you love."
"I don't know if I can. It's been so many times, I just..." Mikasa's magic pulses within her, strong again, but she can't find it in her to do more than stay standing.
Eren. Her whole life had revolved around him, redoing the events leading up to his death over and over again, and seeing him die in the increasingly cruel ways that the universe threw at them. She's seen too much and every time it had ripped out a part of her, left to die beside the Eren of that time, even as she dragged what was left of herself into another timeline. She's not sure if she can handle that one more time, not with a crumbling soul gem and so many parts of her given away that she isn't sure if she has anything left to give.
Then there's a hand at the front of her shirt and she barely registers the stinging pain of a slap across her face and that Ymir is suddenly much closer to her than she had been before. "Stop it with the excuses. You're scared of seeing Eren die again? Then go back this last time and do it right. After this many run-ins with death, you should know how to avoid it. All your different timelines, they're not for you to go back and make the same mistakes, they're chances for you to change things up and make a difference in that timeline."
Ymir shoves her away and Mikasa stumbles back, losing her footing amongst the crushed debris under her. She falls hard to the ground but she barely feels the pain, her thoughts focused elsewhere.
There might a way. She's never tried it before but this is the last time she'll ever be going back and if this doesn't work, she would have to admit her loss to the universe and Eren's fate. But before that she'll fight with everything she has.
She rises from the ground, back straight and shoulders set, ready to take on the world again because that was precisely what she was about to do and what she had been doing for the last few years of her life. Across her, Ymir registers the change in her and offers her a weak smile, just about hopeful at the edges.
"I'm going to do it." Mikasa tells her, unravelling her scarf from around her neck. "Just this one last time. I'm going to end it all."
"About damn time."
Her soul gem falls from the loose folds of her scarf and into the palm of her hand, where she rewraps her scarf around it and her forearm, keeping it secure. The residue warmth of the red cloth seeps into her skin and she remembers the first time Eren had given her the scarf, a silly little action that had no real impact against the cold then. But it was his way of connecting her to him and reminding her of the beautiful things that the world still held despite its cruelty.
"Goodbye, Ymir." Mikasa says as she clasps both hands together, the light of her soul gem shining through the red of her scarf.
"Have a safe trip." Ymir tells her then adds, softly, "Don't forget to bring back Krista too."
Mikasa nods. But before she goes back for the last time, she thinks back to everything Ymir had said and raises her head to look at her, hesitantly. "How did you know?"
Ymir meets her gaze head-on, her face carefully neutral for a heartbeat before she looks away, a smirk spreading over her face. It's not like the ones Mikasa is used to being on the receiving side of, uncaring and flippant. There's something bitter about the curve of her lips this time, directed not at anyone else but herself. It's echoed in her words as she says, "When you've gone through as many bodies as me, it's almost like immortality, don't you think? I'm not that much different from you, and it wasn't that difficult to piece things together after learning about your particular magical power."
That's enough of an answer for Mikasa, even if she doesn't have a reply to that. She sees Ymir wave at her, the barest fluttering of her fingers, and she thinks about someone standing alone in a dying world, in a body that wasn't even hers and how lonely that must feel. Ymir was right about the both of them not being that different after all, except that while Mikasa has Eren by her side through every timeline she's gone into, Ymir had probably been all by herself while going through all the different bodies of people who were considered dead to the world.
In a world full of tragedies played out by different people, she was lucky that she had found Eren in it all. Even if the sky fell and the world slid sideways out of its place in the universe, Eren would always be by her side, simply because she would never leave his side. That was the whole purpose of her being after all, she thinks as the light of her magic engulfs her.
---
This time when Mikasa goes back, it is not to a place that is cold and drenched in the stench of withering flowers but to a house that is bathed in the sun and where the faint sound of laughter drifts along in the warm air. She's standing outside the Yeager's house, but it's not the same one that she had been living in for the past repeated years. Where the house that she, Eren and his father had been living in was quiet and distant with grief, the house before her sings of life, from the freshly whitewashed walls to the flowers blooming brilliantly in the box windows. Faintly, through an open window, she can see a boy, not yet weighed down by grief and loss, and a woman, who she has never met in her life but whose face she has seen countless of times in a small picture by the fireplace.
This is Carla Yeager, dearly loved wife and mother who was taken away from this world way before her time. Carla Yeager, who was the reason behind Eren's resolve to fight against all the evils of the world, starting with the men who had taken away the person he loved best in the world. And if she had gone back to a time before Carla had her life forcefully stolen away from her, it meant that she had finally reached a time when Eren had not yet made a contract.
Mikasa looks down at her hand with the red scarf still wrapped tightly around her fist and her soul gem pulsates gently in reply within the centre of her palm. She made it. This was her last chance to save Eren from his convoluted fate and probably her last act as a magical girl. Regardless of anything, she would make everything right this time.
Somewhere in the distance, she hears the bells of the clock tower start to ring and she counts six chimes before it falls quiet. It's still bright outside, but the sun has started its descent into the horizon. She knows that she's made it to the right time, but it's still too early for that to happen, the incident that would force Eren into a contract that would mark the start of his damned fate. Mikasa has heard about it countless of times, bits and pieces of Eren's story that she has gathered through the different timelines. Each time she dared to ask him about it, or when he opened up to her willingly, she heard it recounted differently. Sometimes, he omitted parts about his mother's death, describing the men who killed her with excruciating detail instead and other times she lost him to his grief as he talked about the way his mother had fallen to the floor and how beautiful she had been when she had still lived and loved him. It's a story that hits her particularly hard, simply because of how uncannily similar it is to her own, and she wonders if it is because the cruelty of this world often manifested in the same way or if Eren had sought out children who were to suffer the same fate as him and tried to stop it before the tragedy played out. She had never gotten a proper answer out of him about that.
Nevertheless, Eren had saved her and this time it was her turn to save him. She had failed in all of her previous runs, but this time it would be different. The time that she is in now is completely unfamiliar ground but she knows that this is probably her best shot at saving Eren once and for all. Although she's never done this before, she knows what she has to do.
When night falls over the sleepy neighbourhood that Mikasa is in, she wraps her scarf around her neck and tucks the hourglass safely amongst its folds, where she feels it meld into its worn material. The clock tower chimes eight times in the distance and she settles back down against the wall of the Yeager’s house. Through the weathered brick walls, she can hear Eren's voice, faintly, as it rises and falls while in conversation with his mother. Carla's voice is softer and Mikasa can't make out what she says distinctly, but it has a soothing quality to it. It reminds her of her own mother, who met the same fate as Eren's. It has been such a long time since that happened and she can't quite recall that moment with clarity, but if she closes her eyes she can still remember the smell of blood in the air and the rivulets of red trickling from her mother's throat.
Ten o' clock, the clock tower chimes at her and the lights in the house go out. It's not time yet and she thinks about a mother and son lying down, warm in their beds and preparing themselves for a new day tomorrow. Somewhere across town, a father works late into the night and doesn't come back home that night. He never gets to see his wife again and his son grows distant, ruined by the bloodstains on his hands and immersed in a war of his own against all the evils of the world. One day, his son disappears and is never found.
Mikasa doesn't want that to happen again.
At two o' clock in the morning, the muffled hum of a car breaks the silence of the neighbourhood and Mikasa rises, stretching her limbs out and coaxing warmth back into her body. The engine is abruptly cut as it nears the Yeager’s house and Mikasa inches out until she can peer around the corner of the house. The car had stopped right before the entrance of the house and she can see figures moving around inside, two in the front and one in the back. As soon as the first of the men takes a step out of the car, she is there with a blade to his neck and she shoves him back into the car as a deep swath opens up in his neck. The man coming out from the other side of the car has a gun pointed at her and she throws a blade right in his face before he has a chance to pull the trigger. He's dead even before he hits the ground and Mikasa turns her attention to the last man in the front seat, whose door she had been blocking with her body.
A bullet shatters the car window and she dodges out of the way before darting back to thrust a newly manifested blade through the open window. She feels the metal hit flesh and she drags it across to slice the man's hand off. He screams in pain as both hand and gun fall to the floor of the car, and Mikasa places the edge of her blade right across the skin of his throat.
"Shut up." she tells him because the last thing she wants is for Eren and his mother to wake up. The man complies, even though he looks close to keeling over in shock. "Why are you doing this?"
"Who are you?" the man starts and then falls silent as Mikasa pushes her blade deeper into his throat.
"Why are you doing this?" Mikasa repeats, more forcefully than before.
"For money, what else!" the man babbles hysterically. "The Yeagers are loaded, aren't they? Grisha Yeager's a doctor so he should be rolling in cash. All we were going to do was snatch his wife and kid and threaten him for some money–"
"You were going kidnap them? Not kill them?"
"Hell no. Hostages are only useful if they're alive–" Her blade cuts into his flesh and the last of his words dissolve into gurgles as the blood flows freely from his newly opened wound.
Mikasa leaves her blade there as she backs away from the car. Everything had been over in an instance. For people who would have so thoughtlessly ruined the lives of other people, they were so pitifully weak. The last man had said that they had only intended to kidnap Eren and his mother, but she knows that in every timeline they would have killed Carla when she proved too much to handle. All Carla had wanted to do was to protect her son – just like how Mikasa's mother had tried to protect her – and they had brutally murdered her for that. It revolted her.
Methodically, she goes around to the other side of the car to retrieve the body of the second man she had slain and shoves his corpse back into the car. There are bloodstains on the floor but she doesn't care about that as she closes her eyes and reaches out with her remaining magic. As long as the bodies were gone and Eren and his mother were safe, everything would be alright.
In her mind's eye, her magic manifests as a web of red threads spread out into the night sky and blanketing the town of Shiganshina. It's a large area to cover and what little magic she has left is stretched thin. Still, it is enough as something rancid catches on one of her threads, which she recognises as the scent of a witch. The web disappears and she focuses on that single thread leading her to the witch. It doesn't seem to be too far from where she is, which is lucky for her as she opens her eyes again and turns her focus on the car. A barely visible red glow surrounds the car and when she takes a step forward, its wheels turn silently to follow her.
The car moves obediently by her side as Mikasa follows her thread all the way to the witch's labyrinth, which starts in the mouth of an inconspicuous-looking alleyway. The entrance is barely wide enough for her to coax the car into driving itself into and the side mirrors snap off as the front of the car disappears into nothingness. The rest of the car is quick to follow and then it vanishes entirely, taking the bodies of the murderers with it. Mikasa doesn't enter the witch's labyrinth at all, even though the magic in her soul gem urges her to fulfil her duty to defeat the witch. Her only purpose in tracking down this witch was not to slay it, but to make use of its labyrinth.
If there was anything she learnt from all her repeated years of experience, it was that a witch's labyrinth was probably the best place to dispose of bodies. Victims who wandered into a witch's labyrinth never returned to the real world even after the witch was defeated and its labyrinth collapsed. That held true for just about anything that was left in the labyrinth, including the bodies of people who were killed outside then brought into the labyrinth. It's something about a witch's labyrinth that she disliked, but it had proved useful in preventing any troublesome investigations into the deaths of the people killed by witches, or otherwise. Other than that, this witch was some other magical girl or boy's problem to handle, not hers and definitely not Eren's.
With that settled, Mikasa heads back to the Yeager's house.
She feel light-headed and giddy with something like exhilaration as she walks home, keeping her eyes on her feet and meticulously placing one foot before the other. The rest of the world spins by in a blur as she moves onward, headed back to where Eren was. Did she dare say that she had finally did it? Saved Eren once and for all from his awful, convoluted fate? It seems almost too good to be true after all this time, all these years of living in an endless loop. She wants to laugh out loud. Why didn't she think of this from the start?
In the distance, the clock tower chimes again but she doesn't bother counting the number of times it rings out. Nothing mattered now that Eren was safe and would never have to die at the hands of a witch or as a witch. This time, Eren would never have to take up his blades against all the evils of the world. He could live a normal, peaceful life without ever knowing what a witch really was beyond what was taught in children's tales and why was it that people sometimes vanished without a trace even though they had seemed perfectly fine. He would never have to face the fear of going up the greatest evil of them all, a congregation of despair manifested in the form of Walpurgisnacht and she would never have to see him fall repeatedly to it or to his own despair. She doesn't even know if she'll get to meet him again in this timeline, where all the wrongs in his fate were mended and their paths might never cross.
She comes to a stop, having reached the house and something sitting on the front step of her home makes the blood run cold in her veins.
"Hello there." Kyubey greets her cheerfully, his plumed tail swaying behind him. "You must be the cause of all of this."
Mikasa doesn't have enough in her to summon her blades, but she can still step on his body with enough force to crush him under a foot. It's a futile effort, one they both know, as a perfect copy of Kyubey appears from the side of the house, where she had spent her night sitting at. He looks at her reproachfully and then leaps up onto the step to eat the remains of the previous body.
"What are you doing here?" she hisses at him as he finishes eating and licks a paw placidly.
"I think you should know the answer to that." he tells her, his unblinking eyes fixed on her. "After all, aren't you here because of the immense potential you feel in Eren Yeager?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm saying that this boy may have the potential to become the greatest magical boy this world has ever seen!"
"No."
"Come again?"
"No." she says and there's a force behind that one single word, stemming from her pure hatred of this creature that stands in front of her. "I won't let you form a contract with Eren."
Kyubey cocks his head to the side. "Why not? You were the one who nurtured him into the perfect magical boy material, weren't you? If he forms a contract with me, he'll be the strongest ally you will ever have. Wasn't that your intention?"
She feels her world crumble apart ever so slightly around her and the cold sensation congeals in the middle of her chest, aching numbly as she forces herself to keep speaking. "All I wanted to do was to protect him from this. From you."
"I don't see why you see me as an enemy. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen you before today." He studies her and she can see the gears in his head turning, trying to comprehend her. "All I know is that there has been a large concentration of energy forming around Eren and that there was definitely somebody behind that." Something seems to click in his head and even as his face remains blank, there's a tinge of wonder to his next words. "I see how it is. It's mysterious, isn't it? How some things just seem to keep repeating? There was a magical girl who did the exact same thing before you."
Mikasa can't breathe. Her entire body feels frozen in place and her lungs won't work as she tells them too. "What happened to her?"
"I can't seem to remember." Kyubey tells her and she knows that that's a lie. "But this method of building potential in one magical girl or boy seems to be very effective, if not a bit troublesome."
"I won't let you form a contract with Eren."
"That's up to Eren himself. As long as he has a wish, he can become a magical boy. You've done well in nurturing Eren but I don't think there's anything else you can do for him." Numbly, she reaches for Kyubey and he slips out of her fingers, leaping onto another step to avoid her. "Besides, I think you should be worrying more about yourself at the moment."
He's right, she realises as a stabbing pain comes from deep within her. Mikasa pulls frantically at her scarf and her soul gem falls into her palm. Once upon a time, her soul gem had shone a strong and brilliant red and her magic had coursed through her body, fierce with the desire to protect. Now, lying in the crack between her palms, her soul gem is filled to the brim with darkness – so much like Eren's every time he fell to his despair – and she feels cold, just like the time when she had first met Eren.
"No," she whispers as she stares at her tainted soul gem. "Not yet."
At the edge of her sight, she can see Kyubey watching her carefully. His tail waves jauntily behind him, casting a wavering shadow on the door of the Yeager’s house. The first rays of the morning sun have started to shine down on the town that she has lived in all her life and wonders if this is how it all ends, with her failing to protect Eren even after she has given up everything for him. That would be her despair and what would finally drag her down into becoming a witch.
She didn't want it to end this way.
Her vision blurs before her and suddenly she sees something glint in her soul gem. There's something left in there, fighting valiantly against the darkness that threatens to consume it. Hope bubbles up in her and she turns away from the house and Kyubey to allow the rising sun to illuminate the soul gem in her cupped palms. The barest speck of red glints back at her and she notices something else connected to it, a red thread as fine as a spiderweb leading back into the Yeager's house. She reaches out to touch it with a trembling finger and when the tip of her finger brushes against it, a lifetime of memories flashes before her.
Eren.
Compressed within this thin line that connected her to him, was the memory of a timeline that she had lived through and abandoned once everything had went wrong. Now, she could see that it wasn't only that one thread, but a series of threads all coming from that one surviving speck of red within her soul gem that stretched out to Eren, all representing the numerous timelines she had gone through for his sake. There were so many of them, now that she could see them, all taut and glimmering softly in the morning sunlight. These were the source of Eren's immense potential that Kyubey had said, further proof that she had been the cause of Eren's convoluted fate all along.
And if she was the cause of it all, she could still fix it.
Gently, she lowers her soul gem onto the ground before her and smoothes out her scarf, which she then carefully winds around her neck. Rather than come this far back in time, she should have done this first. Somewhere in deep within her, she had known all along that she was the one being stubborn and holding Eren back. It was her selfishness and inability to let go of the person who had been kind and who had been the only beautiful thing in a world full of cruelty that had caused all of this. Thinking back, maybe it had seemed that Eren had never done much for her, but she still loved him all the same because he had done the most important thing for her, which was to give her a place to exist and live on when it seemed that everything in her world had fallen to pieces.
With her scarf in place, she doesn't feel cold anymore and the warmth that spreads to the tips of her fingers gives her the strength to summon one last blade. She drops to her knees as it forms in between her hands and she clasps her fingers around the hilt before bringing the tip down on her soul gem with what was left of her strength. The sound of glass cracking resounds in the air around her and she lets her hands slide from her blade. Before her, the threads connecting her to Eren start to snap, one at a time at first and then almost simultaneously, all of them breaking and fading away in the morning light.
"What are you doing?" Kyubey asks from behind her. "Eren's potential is... disappearing. That's such a waste."
Mikasa turns her head to smile at him. "That means that you don't have to form a contract with him any longer. There should be others out there with much more potential than Eren has now."
He stares at her for a heartbeat longer and then shrugs. "Eren's potential just isn't strong enough now." he tells her as he leaps off the steps and starts making his way down the street. "So this is goodbye. It was nice meeting you, whoever you are."
With Kyubey gone, Mikasa turns her attention back to her soul gem, where a crack runs from where the tip of her blade had met the glass and the darkness bleeds out, flowing out of the glass and dissolving into the ground. Only the single speck of red is left behind in the empty soul gem and as the darkness leaves, the red spreads to cover the vacated space. For the first time since she became a magical girl, her soul gem looks beautiful again, glowing a strong red in the light of the rising sun.
The last of the threads snap and her bond with Eren is completely severed. The weight of all her repeated timelines centred on him vanishes and she hopes that this means that Eren is saved, once and for all. She has nothing left to give him and she prays that he can make it on his own in this world where she won't be by his side.
She can feel her strength leaving her, even as her soul gem gleams anew before her, and she raises her head to the sky above. It has been so long since she has properly seen the sunrise and as it creeps up from beyond the horizon to bring light back into this town, it reminds her of all the things, beautiful and warm, that still existed and had kept her going all this while. Because of them, Mikasa thinks that in spite of all the tragedies this world had, be it hers or someone else's, she was still glad to have lived just a bit longer in it.