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Mikasa sits under the tree, her chest lighter today than any of the other days. She would visit Eren’s grave often, sometimes with Armin, who would sit next to her and hold her hand. Spend her time with the little brother she never had.
And the lover she had lost.
It has been six years since the war. March has arrived, and with it, spring. The weather still has a sharp slice of cold to it. But warmth has begun threading its tendrils with the cold of the winter.
Mikasa sits in the shade of the tree, watching birds fly by. Then she realizes they are making swooping motions, diving down and flying back up. She turns to look at the headstone, then back at the birds, an unmistakable pull tugging her towards the circling creatures.
Some distance down the hill she sees one of the birds, its wing bent at an odd angle, struggling to fly away from his peers. In the moment, she feels a connection to something bigger than her, the way she had felt when Eren had talked to them all through Paths.
It’s almost as if she can hear his words in her ear, impossibly close. Find me, Mikasa. I’m so close to you. Just reach out and touch me.
She listens to the Eren in her head, which is where he will live till she dies. The lightness in her chest gave way to a rock-hard ball of grief, which would perhaps be her burden even when she is six feet under. The memory of Eren Jaeger was to be her burden and her gift.
The birds take one look at the approaching human and fly away, calling to one another in their proper speech, to which Mikasa would never be privy.
Found him, she has. They seemed to be screaming. Screaming in gleeful delight. She has found the devil, the demon, the king.
Mikasa paid no heed to the hideous squawking of the birds who bore her Eren’s name. The parasitic Jaegers took their mirthless, raucous chattering and flew away, leaving the injured Jaeger behind.
The downed bird looks at her with beady eyes, which seem to flash green to Mikasa. A particular shade of green, which then coalesces back to the natural black these birds own. She reaches out to touch the bird, carefully so as to not spook the injured animal. It doesn’t even move.
When her fingers make contact with the soft down feathers of its head, the bird seems to wilt into her hands, relaxing after the tension of holding out its own against so many foes.
She cradles the bird carefully, wrapping the body in her (Eren’s) scarf, leaving its injured wing untouched.
She takes the bird to Armin, who was studying what some of the non-Eldian residents called zoology. Armin could not fathom why Mikasa had tears in her eyes when he was setting the bird’s wing in a splint. But yes, he too can feel the great pull of something.
Something (power) bigger than themselves.
Later that night, Annie pulls Armin aside and tells him that she felt something that afternoon. Like the world had suddenly tilted on its axis. Not by much, not by far, but enough that their bodies took time restoring equilibrium.
Once an Eldian (titan), always an Eldian.
Armin and Annie, both lie awake in each other’s arms, their blood thrumming with the change that seemed to take place that afternoon.
Mikasa would bring the bird to Armin everyday, always wrapped in her (eren’s) scarf. Always cradling the creature like it was her baby. He noticed a change in Mikasa. She seemed happier, not the scared teenager which she had still been in the years before the war, not the grieving warrior either. She seemed reborn.
Armin’s anxiety about the afternoon gave way to bliss in those weeks. The anxious pull of something (titans) in his blood gradually lessening, morphing. As though healing him from wounds he didn’t know existed.
Was it just him, or did the grass seem greener these days? More vivid than it had ever been? Was it just his mind or did the rosy blush on Annie’s cheeks had taken on a more vital tone? Like all this time they had been living a half-life, in a twilight zone, and somehow their life was seeping back into them, cell by cell, tissue by tissue.
March is coming to an end and the island seems to be blooming. Like there is aphrodisiac in the air, but not one that gives the illusion of happiness, one which is happiness itself.
Mikasa sits in the shade of her (Eren’s) tree, the bird perched on his shoulder, tugging at strands of her hair. Her hand rests on the rock which marks her boy’s grave. It’s his birthday today.
March 30th.
Happy birthday, Eren. She thinks. The bird hasn’t left her alone even once. Following her on feet when its wing was in a splint, then following her around on wings, even waiting outside her bathroom for her to be done with her humanly duties.
She touches her cheek to find tears there, reminded painfully of a much younger them, pile of wood on her back, drool on Eren’s sleeping face.
His face, marred by titan marks in his final moments is still clear as day in her head. She feels her blade cut through his spine, beheading him. It was why could never make her own dinner now. Blades make her nervous.
And the kiss. Their first and last kiss. The barest brush of lips on her own.
She hasn’t kissed anyone else.
Doesn’t even plan to.
The bird dips on her shoulder, wings spreading out to maintain its balance. Its beak nudges against her lips.
Mikasa suddenly feels nauseously strong vertigo. The bird drops in her lap, cooing a low mournful tune. Her head splits in a headache and she can’t help but scream.
Then there are hands covering her hands as she cradles her head, the headache ebbing away just as suddenly as it had come. The hands pull her own hands away from her head and hold them.
She registers the green eyes first, green as the sea, green as grass, even sometimes falsely appearing golden if the sunlight bent this one way. Green eyes that should be dead. But no, below the eyes is the bridge of a nose, long sloped, but fine, below which is the pair of lips which had seldom smiled in the years before him death but was now split wide in an overwhelming grin.
“Mikasa,” he gasps, holding her hands so tightly, she feels they might break. She feels ages old and newborn at the same time, but when she looks at Eren he looks… timeless.
He kneels in front of her naked, and timeless but real, so real she wants to reach out and touch him. But curse whatever fear makes her doubt his realness.
“Mikasa, I’m here,” he pleads when she pulls her hands from him.
She edges back, away from him, as far as the tree would allow, her back pressing into its hard bark.
Whatever phantom, whatever hallucination this Eren is, she must fight it.
Maybe I have finally lost it. She thinks mournfully.
The timeless Eren gets up, the air around him shimmering, shifting, taking a form of… titans, of the monstrous shiny centipede, then disappearing back into Eren. Whatever Eren this was, he was no human.
This Eren was the source of whatever apex power had bled out of Eldia with the war and was now returning in its most potent form.
The Eren takes a few steps towards her, uncaring of his nakedness and slips his arms around her waist. Mikasa hasn’t felt this helpless since that day decades ago when she watched her mother and father get murdered while she could do nothing.
“Are you real?” Her voice trembles, fearing the answer. “Am I dreaming?”
“No, you’re not dreaming…” He sighs her name in her neck, over and over. This god, this human, titan, founder, attacker…
Eren.
She raises her arms around him and sobs, all the pain in her chest disappearing.
Eren just holds her tighter, to convince her he is real, he is here. He is hers.
“H-How did you-“
“The birds,” he says as way of explanation.
“I was a bird, Mikasa,” he gestures to the Jaegers, “for a long long time.”
Then he pulls back and looks at her, the air around him again shifting, giving the illusion of him being the attack titan, then the armoured, then the Warhammer.
“Then I decided I wanted to come back to you.”
He cups her jaw and kisses her under his (their) tree.