Chapter Text
Eren comes to, suddenly, blinking the sleep from his eyes. The space next to him where Mikasa was is empty, and his heart drops.
Was it all a dream?
If everything that happened between them wasn’t real, Eren doesn’t think he can muster the strength to go on.
A nightmare. The worst fucking nightmare-
He hears a sound from the kitchen.
A sob.
A heaving sob that sounds too much like heartbreak .
Eren jumps from the bed and practically runs out of his room.
“Mikasa.”
Mikasa.
He doesn’t see her at first, because she’s on his floor, her legs tucked under her, next to the counter.
When his eyes land on her, all he sees is pain .
Fuck.
Why do you always end up hurting her?
“Mikasa,” he says, moving towards her, his arms outstretched. “What happened?”
He gets closer, but freezes as soon as he sees the paper on the counter.
His heart drops.
Fuck.
It’s a drawing of a dream he had, and a memory of hers.
From a past life they lived together. A past life he hid from her.
She looks up at him, her eyes red.
“Eren Jaeger ,” she whispers. “Your name is Eren Jaeger .”
Eren Jaeger. The Usurper.
He doesn’t know what to do, so he nods, carefully. They never talked about it; this. As far as Mikasa knows, or rather knew , he was just an ordinary man.
Not her lover from a past life .
She sniffles. Eren never wants to see her cry again.
“Say my name, Eren.”
She’s staring at him, and for the first time he cannot read her eyes. She knows.
Mikasa knows. Now he wants to cry.
“Mikasa,” He whispers. He’s afraid that if he says it any louder, she’ll disappear. She’ll leave him. She’ll walk out the door and never come back, and just like before , he’ll never get to be with her.
She blinks. “Say my full name, Eren.”
He steps toward hers again, but she holds up a shaky hand.
He makes a sound in his throat.
“Mikasa...Ackerman. Your name is Mikasa Ackerman.”
The name he always woke up saying.
Mikasa. Mikasa. Mikasa.
Another tear rolls down her cheek.
“You knew that. You knew my last name already. How, Eren?”
He’s silent.
Fuck-
“How, Eren?”
She is the judge and he is the confessor.
“Because,” Eren starts, “for the last nineteen years, I’ve had dreams of you, Mikasa. Of our life-” He chokes out.
“I-I was an idiot, who thought he was crazy, and when I saw you I panicked, because I thought I dreamed you up-”
She interrupts his stammering with a hiccup.
“Do you have any idea how stupid I felt? How lost I felt? Here I figured you just thought I was some clingy hookup. I felt stupid for feeling this way when all we did was fuck, Eren. When I saw you on the sidewalk I finally felt like I wasn’t crazy. ”
He looks down.
“And then you lied ? You know what? It didn’t even matter that you didn’t remember. You were just there all of the sudden, and I felt peace. For the first time, ever since - ever since…”
Her voice trails off.
He knows she’s talking about his death.
Mikasa’s tears remind him of another time. He wasn’t good enough for her then, why would he be now?
“But...You-you remember?” She asks, and her face has grown impossibly white.
It’s really more of a statement, because the answer is clear, right in front of her, on on the fucking piece of paper and reflecting Eren’s eyes.
“I remember all of it.”
She watches, her eyes blurring from the salty tears that she just cannot hold back, as Eren’s mouth opens and closes. It’s like he can’t find the words-
“All this time?” Her voice cracks. It has only been a day, and yet it feels like it’s been forever.
He nods. If he speaks, he might not be able to hold back.
“Did you mean this?” Mikasa waves her hands in the air, and he assumes she’s talking about the time they’ve spent as “supposed” strangers, in the shelter of his apartment.
“Of course I did, Mikasa.” His voice is quiet, somber.
She bites her lip. “So, you did all of this - knowing who I was, who we were. You fucked me on your bed, we slept together, and you knew our history.”
He thinks back to the way she felt in his arms. He’d die to feel her like that for the rest of his life. “Yes.”
“And now, Eren?”
“What?”
“What does this mean ?”
Now, Eren’s impatient. “What the fuck does that mean, Mikasa. You want me to tell you to go? You already know everything. I thought you’d hate me, I-”
“Hate you? God, you’re just as dumb now as you were before. I can't believe this. Why would I stay here, with you, if I hated you?”
He says nothing. He starts to realize how much of an idiot he was. “I was going to tell you, Mikasa. I wanted to the minute I saw you, I just...panicked. I didn’t think you’d know it was me.”
“How could I not recognize you? I've spent my entire life loving you, missing you, wanting to be with you. I know your voice, I know your eyes, I know your soul, Eren. How could I not…”
She loves him.
Mikasa starts to stand, her legs shaky, her mind moving a mile a minute. Her ears are ringing and her blood is burning and her hands are trembling because it’s really him.
It’s him, it’s him, it’s him.
Eren Jaeger, her soulmate - the man whose heart she’d never thought she could possess because life has taught her that love is a curse.
And yet, here he is. In this perfect world where there are no titans, where there is no war, where there is no rumbling.
There’s no one here from her past life to drag her down or for her to hold onto like a poisoned lifeline, reminding her of constant pain and heartache.
No one.
Just the two of them.
It’s more than she can bear.
Mikasa falls back to the floor, her palms pressed against her eyes as if she can will the tears away, as if she can block out the reality she doesn’t know if she can face.
But she can’t, because this time, Eren sinks to the ground with her. He whispers her name, again and again, as his arms loop around her. He pulls her against him, rocking her slightly, trying to stop her crying.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he says.
Slowly, she pulls her head back, looking up at him.
His hands hold her face now. She doesn’t know whether to kiss him, the way she’s always wanted to, the way she did just hours ago, the way she did in another life, or to run away, because of all that's happened between them.
She swallows. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mikasa stares into green eyes, haunted by time and desperation, and she thinks she may understand.
He’s still touching her, in a daze, as though he’s convinced something terrible is going to happen in this perfect reality and take her from him-
“I don’t deserve you,” He murmurs. His cheeks are wet. “It’s that simple. The things I’ve done-”
Mikasa wants to scream -
“I can’t get past them. But I just can’t stay away, Mikasa.”
She gasps. Her fingers curl into his shoulders, she marvels at how soft his skin is.
I don’t deserve you.
God, what a lie that is.
Slowly, she brings her forehead to rest against his. “Eren,” She whispers. Her cheeks are still wet. He shakes against her.
“In this life, I have spent each day waiting for you, the only thing keeping me going were flashes of you from that past reality. You don’t-”
Eren chokes on air. His eyes squeeze shut as he trembles around her.
“You don’t understand,” Mikasa continues. “I need you, and you’re here now, right in front of me, for whatever reason. I've lost - we've lost so much. I can’t let you go,” She cries.
“I’m not the same person I was 2000 years ago, or whenever it was.”
Her voice still shakes.
“I spent too long, keeping to myself, keeping my feelings to myself. I’m not going to live like that now - or ever again. I can’t. Not after I lived like this, for nineteen years, starved from the only thing to keep me going. And I-I don’t remember everything. I don’t want to remember everything-”
She feels Eren suck in a breath.
“I just want you.”
All I want is just to be by his side.
“Please.”
Her eyes are closed now, the pain of this life and the one all those years ago, flowing between them as though there is an open wound somewhere.
Maybe there is.
One of Eren’s arms is wrapped around her waist, the other in her hair. His skin is warm, she realizes. It always has been.
Mikasa opens her eyes. Eren is looking at her, and her heart soars because it’s the way she knows she’s always wanted him to look at her.
Like she’s everything.
She wants to cry. She wants to yell, she wants to get up and dance.
“You have to know by now,” He begins, after moments of silence. His hand moves from her hair to her face, his thumb stroking her cheek with the gentlest of touches.
“How much I…”
Mikasa is sure she has never felt this light.
“How much I love you,” Eren finishes.
She remembers then. It’s a flash, sudden and bright, in the back of her mind.
Mikasa...What am I to you?
The memory is fleeting, and she’s too caught up in the feel of Eren’s skin to chase after it. She doesn’t know where they were or why it was said, but within her she knows that if he were to ask her again, her answer would be different.
“I never said it then,” Eren mumbles against her, their foreheads still touching. “But I do. I always have. I could never stop.”
He reaches for one of her hands, and brings it off of his shoulder, intertwining their fingers. He kisses the top of her palm.
“I know now,” She breathes. “Even if I didn’t know then, I know now. There’s nothing here keeping us apart, Eren.”
She takes a hand and brushes strands of brown hair from his face, tossed around by the wind. “We’re free. And I love you.”
“Say it again,” He whispers. “Please.”
She leans up, pressing a kiss to his forehead. Mikasa catches his tears with her hand.
“I love you.”
The boy who sought freedom has it now - it’s right there in front of him. Eren pulls back slightly, looking down at the only one he needs.
His hand moves to Mikasa’s chin, and she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever known, in any life and any reality. Eren pulls her in, kissing her the way he wants to, in both this life and the last one.
-I didn't care to state the plain-
“Your hair has gotten longer, hasn’t it?” Eren notices.
Mikasa gives him a look. She moves onto her side, facing him. He said that to her, once before. He knows it, too.
He smiles. “Too soon?”
She rolls her eyes. Eren’s been in a playful mood, ever since the kitchen incident, two days ago. He’s been “testing her memory,” and his attitude takes her back to when they were nine and the little shit would get into fights.
The kitchen incident.
After he confessed, they stayed on his floor, talking.
“ Even if I hadn’t remembered ,“ He said, “ could you honestly believe that you were just a hookup?”
Mikasa dropped her head. “ I don’t know, Eren. It all seemed too good to be true, anyway. I figured it wouldn’t last.”
He shook his head. “ You’re missing the point. Even if I had no recollection of you in a past life, you would have been it for me, Mikasa. In any reality, you’re it for me.”
Mikasa was silent.
“ I don’t remember this,” she had said after a few minutes of simply holding each other. “ We never talked like this. Just the two of us. We’re a lot more talkative in this life.”
Eren looked down. “ I’m sorry.”
“No, Eren. We’ve just had more time to just...live.” She was silent for a minute. “ I’d go through it all again, just to eat pancakes with you.”
Then, she started to laugh. Eren resolved, right then and there, to try and coax that sound out of her every day for the rest of their lives.
Mikasa never seemed to laugh a lot in their past life.
“ I love you.”
He carried her back to the bedroom after, and told her that “ food could wait .”
That shut her up.
And now , he was like a clingy pet; he couldn’t give her a moment's peace. He followed her everywhere.
Some part of him always had to be touching her as well, and perhaps it was his way of proving to himself that yes, this is real.
“Or, I could buy you a red scarf!”
“ Eren.”
He winces. “Sorry. That was funnier in my head.”
He grabs her hand, pulling her towards him. Mikasa groans.
“Eren, I love you, but you kinda wore me out, I don’t think I can go another-”
He winces as he finishes adjusting her so she’s lying on him. “That wasn’t my intention. You’re just comfy.”
She smiles.
“Besides, I’m not that insatiable.”
Mikasa looks up from where her head rests on his chest.
“You’re nineteen years old, and have too much stamina,” she mutters, “and, to quote your own words , we’re ‘making up for lost time.’ Sometimes-”
Eren clamps a hand over her mouth. “Okay, okay , I get it, woman. Not everyone can handle-”
Mikasa moves and kneels on the bed, trying to get off him. “I think it's time for me to go.”
Eren’s face drops, immediately, his teasing forgotten. He grabs her waist before she can get away.
“What? Why? I’ll shut up, I just like seeing you blush-”
“I’ve been here for three whole days. I need a change of clothes, I need to water my plant...I got shit to do, Eren. I have my own apartment, you know.”
He scowls. “Then I’ll come with you.”
She pats his shoulder, plopping down in his lap.
“Then you’ll be living with me for another three days cause you won’t want to leave. It’ll be an endless cycle.”
Eren is silent, though his hands toy with the hem of her shirt.
“Besides, I have work tomorrow, and you’ve got your odd jobs to go and do.”
He looks up at her. “Work? Where the fuck do you work?”
She sighs. “If I tell you, you’re gonna show up there.”
“And?”
She laughs, her head falling onto his shoulder. She can’t see, but Eren thinks he might be smiling harder than he ever has in his life.
“I work at a flower shop.”
Eren draws circles into her back.
“Really? A flower shop?”
“Yup. Then I teach women’s self-defense on weekends.”
She picks her head up off of his shoulder, looking at his reaction.
“Good. You were always the strongest person I knew.” His arms get even tighter around her.
Mikasa punches him lightly, then snuggles back down into him, her face tucked between his neck and collarbone. “Someday we’ll talk about it, Eren. About all of it.”
She feels him nod.
“But right now,” she continues, “I just want to be with you.”
He unwraps one of his arms from around her, and lifts her face with his free hand. He leans down and plants a kiss on her lips, softly. He will never get over how right her lips feel against his.
He should’ve done this a lot sooner.
It doesn't matter. They have a whole life together now.
When he pulls away, she’s blushing again, and Eren makes up his mind.
“Move in with me, Mikasa.”
“Okay.”
As it was written on his gravestone, it became.
Another life.
This was it.
Eren kisses her again, because in this life, he can.
-I care for you still and I will forever-