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"Cause, I built a home
For you
For me
Until it disappeared
From me
From you
And now, it's time to leave and turn to dust"
-- To build a home, Cinematic Orchestra
It's in the little things that she does. Waking up to the sun streaming on her face, on sheets that are white with little pink painted flowers… alone. It's in the space that she walks from her bed to the kitchen, in their her little stone house, with the pots and pans that can serve two.
Every step feels out of place, incongruent, out of touch with the reality she was so sure of, moments before when she was nestled in her dreams. Her fingers trace the walls of stone, the little strips of concrete that hold it together as she remembers the days she spent building it
(they'd spent days building their haven, their escape from reality. They'd argued and bantered, made love on the floor of a house that didn’t have a roof.)
There's a stillness in the air that feels too quiet to be real, broken only by the heaviness of her breathing. A harsh sound that had lost the harmony of its partner.
(she remembers the sound of his harsh breathing, skin slick against hers with sweat from their fevered passions.
It filled their space and made it whole.
He made her feel whole.)
It's almost reminiscent of conversations she's sure she's had in the past, conversations that whisper to her in her memories, of words that bear a foreign weight in her mouth… the weight of never having been spoken. Sometimes, when she's weak enough to give in to the wisps of her fancy, she can feel the words take on a life of their own, falling breathily on the side of her neck, the tickle of lips scraping against her lonely skin, the heat of a person who wasn’t with her, entangled in her limbs.
On her worst days she is given to tears that start quietly, tears that are brought upon by beautiful memories (or dreams, she doesn’t know the difference anymore) - memories of a beautiful man, and his beautiful eyes and a beautiful love he had shared with her. Memories that have left no effigy to remember them by, none other than the ache in her heart that brings her to her knees, clutching at her stomach, heaving in harsh breaths, desperate to wake up from this never-ending dream of reality.
When she ends up at his gravestone, the one carved by a better version of her, a stronger one, one that could call him her most beloved, her dearest - there's a feeling of loathing that she can't escape because he warned her of this, begged her to respond differently.
And with a painful trick of her memory, she hears his voice saying, "… forget me, Mikasa." She remembers the countless times he's said it, with sorrow, with grief, with jealousy, but always, always with love. She remembers him whispering these words into her chest, dampness rolling down her breast, remembers him mumbling that he just wanted her to be happy, wishing so much that he could stay by her side.
"… You've made it impossible for me," she murmurs, tears dripping down her chin on to the gravel by his tombstone. "You're everywhere, Eren."
And it was true, in the walls of her house, the décor that she had chosen (just like the house they'd lived in), the silences that she choked on, the sheets that she slept in. "… I can't even cook without thinking of you," she chokes on a laugh, remembering the illusions of the times they'd cooked together, the first meal he'd made for her, the time he'd trailed kisses down her neck until she'd forgotten what she had on the stove.
Wiping her eyes, and her cheeks, tucking a wisp of her hair behind her ears, she says, "… I'm trying to be happy." She smiles, a watery beautiful quirk of her lips, and she gives into just one more memory of him placing a kiss on the side of her mouth. "… It's been a year, and I'm trying, my love."
She places the daisies on the feet of the grey stone and whispers hoarsely, "… but how could you ask me to forget you, Eren?"
It was perhaps the cruelest thing he'd asked of her. To give up all the memories, all of the feelings that tied up the pieces of her heart and kept her together after the war. And regardless of how much she wants to honour his love and his sacrifice she murmurs selfishly, "… I'll remember you as long as I live."