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Ten years had passed since the first attack and still they sought answers. The days of believing themselves to be the last of humanity were long behind them, but some days the titans of days past seemed like quaint conflicts to be quickly resolved with the flick of a wrist – if they ever had a sliver of a chance of meeting one of them out here.
The time would soon come for the attack titan to pass on to the next person. The thought of it made Mikasa’s stomach churn, but Eren had kept the same resolve that he’d had since Queen Historia’s coronation. Try as they might, she and Armin could never understand how Eren went on, and yet he did – never leaving their side, never shifting into the attack titan over the last six years.
On this morning, however, Mikasa awoke in a cold sweat and could not go back to sleep. The images stuck out to her as though imprinted into her vision, appearing even when she closed her eyes. Not helping was her blocked airways – which the Eldian soldier did not notice until it announced its presence in the most unpleasant of ways.
“hh...hH’IChh’t!”
She groaned and rolled over in her bed, her sinuses now under pressure as she readjusted herself. Sniffling got her nowhere. With a sigh, Mikasa pulled out a handkerchief from the cupboard at her nightstand and blew her nose. Using the slight bit of light in the room, she noticed that it wasn’t even six o’clock yet.
Hours passed and she somehow managed to get just a little more sleep – but that dream still wouldn’t leave her mind. She couldn’t tell Eren, but maybe Armin would understand; maybe he'd had the dream, too.
The Marleyan town outside had slowly started coming to life as usual. The few people down on the streets certainly seemed more lively than Mikasa felt at this very moment.
Before leaving her small apartment, Mikasa prepared herself for the day as she normally did – stopping to blow her nose a few times in between. Due to her condition, she had to refrain from wearing Eren’s old scarf today; she couldn’t risk accidentally sneezing and messing it up. Armin, who she found with a few other soldiers at the lobby in the middle of the floor, was quick to notice.
“Mikasa,” he said with a smile. “Good morn— oh. Are you okay?”
She returned a smile with a very minute one of her own. “Good mornd’ing, Arm’bin.” Immediately after saying that, she cringed; she did not mean to make herself sound so sickly. “Just a headcold.”
Armin nodded, grimacing slightly. “I can tell. Your voice sounds stuffy and your nose is red.”
“Ar’bin,” she began. “Actually – can we discuss this privately?” Just as suddenly as the question came, so did a particular niggling that made her screw up her face and turn her head into her elbow in response. “hITT’CHh’m!!”
“Bless you,” said Armin. “And sure. Follow me."
The two of them went down the hall to the room Armin had been stationed in – which was just a few doors down from where Mikasa was stationed. All along the way, Mikasa attempted to keep herself quiet, knowing there were still many – such as Sasha and Connie – who were still asleep. Silence would have been easier to achieve if not for the tickle that had started to nuzzle up within her sinuses.
They were at Armin’s door when he began to pull his key out and Mikasa’s breath began to hitch, only stopping when she pinched her nostrils shut and held her breath. Seconds later, she breathed a sigh of relief. Right after, Armin unlocked the door – at which point he gestured her inside.
“I know it’s probably not what we’re here to talk about,” he commented, closing the door behind him. “But do you know how you got sick?”
Mikasa sniffed. “Not exactly,” she mumbled. “Other than, well, all the work we’ve been doing and the little amount of sleep I’ve been getting might finally be taking a toll on me.”
Armin couldn’t help tilting his head the slightest bit at the mention of sleep. “You haven’t been sleeping?”
“I’ve been up since five in the morning,” Mikasa said, sniffling again. “The reason why is probably going to sound dumb to you, but you’re a good person, Armin – so I’ll trust you with it.”
Her friend remained silent, now sitting across a small table from her as he held his breath in anticipation.
“It’s a stupid recurring dream – and every night it happens, it gets a little worse.” She sighed. “I feel like it’s all part of some series of events where Eren leaves us all and becomes the kind of monster that all Eldians of Paradis all been accused of being for centuries.” Mentioning Eren now, Mikasa questioned whether he would have been able to take that kind of information well – even if these days he rarely ever outwardly expressed anything other than apathy or dismissiveness to any situation. Even being able to see him cry might have filled her with the hope that her childhood friend hadn’t completely left them by now.
Sitting still, Armin kept quiet for a moment, mulling things over almost as a therapist would. “These wouldn’t happen to be the kind of dreams that give you headaches, are they?”
Mikasa wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. “I think they are.”
“If they are, your dream could be the same kind of vision you were talking about when Eren would signal you to fight.”
She hesitated. “Maybe. But what could that mean? That I’m looking into the future? The kind of future where Eren destroys everything?”
“I don’t think it’s the future,” said Armin. “Maybe an alternative—”
“hhiIH-CHh’M!”
Armin paused, listening as Mikasa sniffled and fought to keep herself from looking like a mess, covering the lower half of her face with a hand.
“Sorry,” Mikasa stammered.
“It’s okay. Here.” He passed her a tissue box.
“Thank you.” She took one of the tissues and blew her nose before wiping it several times.
As she cleaned herself up, Armin went on. “The Eren we know couldn’t do something like that,” he insisted. “Maybe if he were the same as he was when we first walked outside the walls of Paradis, but he has completely lost all of his edge.”
To that, Mikasa could only nod in agreement. Whatever had happened during the coronation was almost equivalent to the onset of a brain-deteriorating disease. While Eren was still fully capable of doing the things Levi or any other higher-ups tasked him with, it was only the bare minimum necessary. In a year, Mikasa predicted, he would be lucky if he were still useful as anything other than a titan fighter.
Thinking such things over, Mikasa was caught off-guard when Armin spoke again. “Try telling him?”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Huh—?” She held her gaze on Armin for a moment, then blinked back to reality. “Oh. I...I don’t know.”
“I’m not trying to force you to do anything, and I promise I won’t tell him myself,” he said. “I’m just throwing that idea out there.”
“I understand…” Mikasa sniffed again and pulled out another tissue to wipe her nose. “Do you know if he already left the building today?”
“I think he did, yes.”
Finding him was going to be a bit of a struggle, then. In this city, he could have been anywhere; she recalled the time their group all went to the tents outside of town and drunk themselves into a stupor well into the night, or the time she had her first taste of ice cream and he reacted to it with an astonishing amount of familiarity. Knowing Eren as he was now, however, he very well could have been under the bridge.
Thanking Armin one last time, Mikasa took a few extra tissues and both of them headed outside before splitting up shortly thereafter. Again she found herself struggling not to sneeze as she exited, then finally did once she was outside. The chilly, crispy air tickled the back of her nose almost any time she breathed – and as she went down the busy streets, she made sure to avoid as many people as possible, hoping not to spread her cold by accidentally sneezing or coughing on someone who came too close.
Of all the things that could have come as a result of nightmares, a cold was not something she had anticipated. She could only be grateful that this wasn’t happening during a titan invasion back in Paradis – though this did little to mitigate the fact that sickness was sickness.
Near the southeastern edge of town, the number of people seemed a minuscule, dwarfed amount compared to where she had just come from. In addition, she had a good view of the ocean from here – where, after passing a lighthouse, there seemed to be nothing but sparkling blue under the still-early sun.
The bridge went from the edge of town and bled into the outside territories which comprised mostly of commoners’ homes. Not seeing Eren anywhere nearby, Mikasa stole a look at the still-rising sun, its rays glistening off the ocean, relieving her chilly skin as the wind stilled for a moment, then came back again.
Just as it seemed she could breathe properly again, the moment was stolen from Mikasa as she rummaged through her pocket to find one of the clean tissues Armin had given her, her eyes rapidly blinking open and shut.
“hhITCH’tchH’m!” The Eldian bent at the waist, her hand still in her pocket. She only just managed to grab one of the tissues as her breath hitched again. “hICHH-chH’UMm!!!”
Mikasa groaned. She couldn’t remember the last time she sneezed twice in a row like that. Not wanting to remove the tissue from her covered face just yet, she blew her nose again and immediately looked for a trash can – which she found over by the lighthouse. After discarding her soaked tissue, she turned back around to see the bridge again – only this time she noticed a pair of legs on the dirt just under the body. Perhaps sensing her as she began to approach, the person behind those legs leaned forward and revealed his face.
At that, Mikasa paused, glad to be at an end to her little journey. “I knew I would find you down here, Eren,” she said, stepping closer as her old friend remained in silence. It wasn’t until they were nearly at arms’ reach, her looking down at him, when he spoke.
“You know where to find me,” said Eren.
“I feel like I always have.” Relieved, she sat down on the dirt under the bridge next to him, noticing how he held his gaze to the ocean. “How are you, Eren?”
He hesitated to respond. “Is there anything I haven’t said before that would apply?” he asked. “Every day is the same for me now.”
Without meaning to, Mikasa sniffed. Eren took notice. “Did you get sick?”
“I have a cold, yes.” A stone dropped in her stomach. “Would you like me to leave?”
“No,” he insisted. “You can stay or go; it doesn’t matter to me.”
Though Eren did not even look at her as he spoke, Mikasa responded with a nod before looking out to the ocean, as well. Again she sniffed and she found herself breathing between her two barely-parted lips, trying her hardest not to break up the rhythmic ebb and flow of the shoreline.
Instead it was Eren who broke up the rhythm. “Mikasa.”
She turned her head toward him. “Wha’d is id’t, Ere’nd?” Right after speaking, she cringed, searching through her pocket for a moment before pulling out another tissue.
Whatever was on Eren’s mind seemed to leave in a moment’s notice, leaving him silent as Mikasa relieved some pressure on her sinuses. After she finished blowing, he went on. “How did you get sick, anyway?” He said it in a way that seemed to suggest he knew how – or that he knew she was sick before she got here, which itself wasn’t possible unless someone had ran over to him in the time it took for Mikasa to get here from their squad’s residential building.
That was a question she didn’t want to answer, but she couldn’t handle leaving Eren without a proper response. A sharp pounding in her head blared to life momentarily as her longtime friend looked up at her, his eyes asking more questions than his lips could ever form.
“It’s…” She didn’t quite know how to phrase it – and the fact that she couldn’t get the words out seemed to only make her headache worse. “It’s my overactive imagination.” Again her head pounded as if punishing her.
“What?”
His forcing her to be specific on this matter left her with no way to mince words. “I’m having nightmares, Eren,” she explained. “It sounds so stupid to you, I know, but I see images of you…” She didn’t want to finish the sentence. “Starting the Rumbling.”
Just after she spoke, Eren was silent for a long time – but whether his silence was there to give him a moment to think or to give Mikasa a moment to recuperate, she could not be sure. By the time he spoke again, she’d held her breath for so long that she felt she might pass out.
“What you saw wasn’t a dream,” said Eren. “It was a reality that I stopped.”
Mikasa didn’t dare repeat his own words at him, but she didn’t understand entirely what that meant. Likely sensing her confusion, Eren went on. “There are multiple ways our relationship with Marley could have gone – and I decided on the path of peace.”
Still she hesitated with every word. “You decided?” she asked.
“Yes.” Eren did not elaborate any further on that. “And Marley has let us live here as one of their own.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Whether or not they were allowed in this city, they were still treated like second-class citizens, given armbands to denote themselves as Eldians and forced to answer to the whims of a government that did not want them. She could recall only a handful of times where someone on the street would yell her or someone she knew, but these moments stuck out to her almost as much as the titan attacks on Paradis. It was almost a wonder how, with his history, Eren didn’t find the need to fight back this kind of social oppression.
An almost unbearable period of silence between the two transpired. Again Mikasa sniffed, though this time not as wetly as before. “You knew about my dreams, didn’t you?” she asked. “You knew I was having them recently.”
“I did,” Eren confirmed. “I knew you were going to have a problem with your dreams keeping you awake today, too. What I don’t know is how long you’ve been kept awake.”
Mikasa didn’t know why that mattered, but she obliged. “Since five o’clock.”
“Hm…” He muttered something under his breath. Ever since he had revealed to her and Armin that he could look into his own future, he hadn’t let them forget it. It was an ability which seemed to strain him more than any other oppressive force ever could. Knowing there was no way she could possibly sympathize, Mikasa merely remained silent and still as they both looked to the ocean.
It seemed almost an hour had passed as the two of them sat in silence, feeling themselves protected by the very bridge itself. Eren had chosen a quiet place to get away from everything – and with his state of mind, getting away was just what he needed. A few times Mikasa would take a glance at his eyes and he would keep looking forward, not even acknowledging her – just looking ahead as he always did.
When at last Mikasa decided it was time to go, she made her presence known, brushing some of the dirt off her pants as she got up. “I should get back,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re okay and that you were able to put my mind at ease a little.”
She almost expected to see a smile when she said that, but that was not what she received. “You’ll be okay, Mikasa.”
With that, she made her way to the edge of the bridge’s underside.
“And Mikasa?”
Pausing mid-step, she looked over her shoulder at him.
“Bless you.”
She blinked, frozen for a moment. “Th-thank you?” Another blink. “I’ll see you later, Eren.” She then continued on her way back; it was unlike Eren to make a comment on such an inconsequential passing moment that had happened nearly an hour ago.
Only a few steps further, Mikasa stopped mid-step. Practically paralyzed, her breath caught in her throat and the bridge of her nose wrinkled as an invasive presence returned, making her nostrils flare in anticipation as this presence lingered deep within them. A fleeting moment passed when the sensation went away, only to come back with the slightest push from the lightest breeze.
“hHICh’CH-chhUM!!”
Everything seemed to go silent right after that. She then thought for a moment: did Eren foresee that sneeze? Perhaps he did, as she swore she could hear chuckling from under the bridge just then.
The fact that Eren was able to get some time to rest today made Mikasa suspect that she’d be able to take this day off, as well. Maybe once she found Captain Levi, she could ask him and she could get back to bed – as, for once, she didn’t fear the images in her head. None of it was real, anyway; all of it was in her head.
All in her head.
Plus: the more she stayed out here, the more she needed tissues.