Chapter Text
The ceiling was probably the most interesting and entertaining thing about that whole damn cell. Something to focus on. Something to stare at.
She sighed quietly for what seemed like the fortieth time today. Nothing new appeared to be happening on that ceiling but she didn’t move or look away. Nor did she flinch when the old metal hinges cracked and the heavy door opened. She must have been so deep in her thoughts, that she’d missed the footsteps. Probably the voices, too. Were those voices even talking to her?
”Hey, girl, you’d better eat somt’n this time. Anoth’r plate left untouched and I bet ya get in some kinda trouble, don’t ya think?”
So the voice definitely was speaking to her. She recognized him. It was the same man that’d kept bringing her food all those past days sheʼd stayed locked up. She didn’t know his name but assumed he was just some guy working in the kitchens. Or maybe an MP? Didn’t matter. Shame, though, that recently he had been coming to her cell in vain.
Mikasa lost count of days since she’d stopped eating. Was it two days now? Was it a week? She didn’t know. Time passed vaguely, while she was locked in there, with no windows and no sunlight to give away the time of day or night, just the unsteady dim flickering of torches along the stone corridor.
Another contributing factor was that she didn’t care for the time when the others were coming to visit. Maybe it was Armin, who came almost every day with his upbeat “Good morning, guys!”, or Sasha, who, having her wounds healed more now, was coming down there every now and then for a quick chat before trailing off to walls know where she was supposed to be at that time. Once, she even brought some snacks she’d managed to steal from the kitchens, that girl.
Mikasa cared less about all that with every passing day. Or night. She didn't sleep well. Mostly, she stared at the walls or that damn ceiling with its little cracks, which remotely looked like miniature lightnings, reminiscing those huge real ones that would ornament the sky during those rather stormy nights right before winter came.
Little cracks, huh? She could almost physically feel the cracks in her, too.
She’d lived like that for years. She lived to protect him. To be beside him. To be there and save him from all the bad that the cruel world had been putting on their shoulders every day for the past…how many years, was it five? Six? Didn’t matter.
It was all going to hell right now. Some eight more years and he would be gone. The boy…or rather a young man now, who she’d been caring so much about all those years, would be gone. Just like that. And that, provided they lived long enough to even reach that moment. Their lives as soldiers, as Survey Corps members had no place for certainty, especially for things like long-time planning on living.
The realization of what was happening was slowly kicking in and taking its toll on her. When she first heard it, it didn’t make any sense. Walls, it wouldn’t make sense even now. Thirteen years. What an odd number. What terrifying truth was lain on the pages of that old notebook. Was it even the truth? No one could say for sure. But if it were true, and for the time being, there were no grounds to believe Eren’s father was trying to lie in his personal scribblings, which possibly not a single soul could ever get to read, then it was…well, some kind of hell, one she didn’t yet understand the full extent and helplessness of.
”Soldier! D’ya even hear me?” Yet again, she was being pulled out of her pondering, and listened to the man. “I said, you gotta eat something. You don’t look good, so that should help ya a bit.”
Help? Could anyone really help her at the moment?
The man got out of the cell, and Mikasa shifted in her bed to face the wall now. Another breathtaking crack-lightning planted on the cool-gray stone. She heard the clanking sound of keys locking her up again and the footsteps that continued along the corridor. He was probably carrying some food for Eren, too, she thought, as she heard the man’s now distant voice speak to someone a bit further away.
She felt extremely exhausted. From thinking and overthinking, from just laying there all the time, from the helplessness she felt about the whole situation she’d found herself in. In the midst of all the feelings and thoughts she mulled over and over, the girl fell into some very anxious sleep.
“Mikasa. Wake up.”
Someone was in the cell, towering over her curled up body and slightly tossing her shoulder.
What time was it? How long ago had she dozed off? Who was waking her up?
Mikasa was trying to focus on her surroundings and understand what was going on, but the light was bleak and her vision blurry. She rubbed her sore eyes with the knuckles and opened them again to see who was bothering her so hard-induced sleep. Well, that was a bit of a surprise.
”Why you here?” Her voice sounded startled.
”Didn’t believe you were trying to starve yourself to death.”
Now there he was, with his words and facial expression cold and wry as usual.