#aotauweek2021

[coldeggtart]

Don’t leave me

[bnhayyy]

Mark of Divergence

Fandom: Attack on Titan

Wordcount: 4.8k

Ao3 Link: Click

Summary: As the alliance sits around the bonfire, Bertolt reminisces on how they ended up there - and worries about what a particular person will do going forward.

Notes: Soulmark colors do have meaning for this au. If you’re curious and don’t want to puzzle it out yourself, feel free to check out this post for reference. This fic was written for day 3 (and lowkey day 2) of @aot-au-week! It is dedicated to @elderkale and @cookietonwrites, with thanks to Celadon for betaing!

Bertolt can't help but be unnerved by soulmarks.

It isn't the concept itself that makes him uncomfortable. The thought that people can fit together so well that they are intrinsically tied is kinda sweet. (Except for the occasions when it isn't.) It's the power that they hold - the way they influence people by spelling certain bonds out for those who might otherwise take too long to realize them. And, as he sits by the bonfire, eyeing the alliance that has formed to stop the man once deemed humanity's best hope, the effects are almost visible.

A soulmark is what made Ymir decide to turn back.

*

For a moment, it looked like she had given up, but when she looked at the rose-gold crown at the back of her hand, something changed. Bertolt would never pretend to know what goes on in Ymir's mind at any given moment, but if he had to guess, it reminded her that even if she feels weighed down by her cosmic debt, she still has something to live for.

...He can understand why she came close to forgetting in the first place. For a long time, he had assumed that the crown had been her only mark. Then at Shiganshina, they received a brutal reminder of what they were up against when, despite everything, they were nearly wiped out at the hands of Zeke, Pieck, and a furiously powerless Porco, with just a handful of Marleyan soldiers and artillery and their disposal. Scouts died, and Bertolt supposed he was selfish in that, for all that their trust in him was still highly tenuous at best, he was grateful that none of his former classmates were among them. But he was. He was grateful even though scouts still died and Commander Erwin himself was so badly injured that he had to retire.

Ymir wasn't there though. She was back within Wall Sina, the soulmate of the queen. She acted unbothered, but he could see the shadows of guilt behind her eyes when he saw her next. He wonders if that is why their pointless conversation had somehow evolved into her confessing that she had many more marks, across her shoulders and chest, but they were hard to see, having faded into the light silver of ghost marks more than sixty years ago.

Now, he wonders which has had more influence on her being there with them; the rose-gold crown on her hand, or the silver scars cast across her chest.

*

Soulmarks made it easier to convince Reiner to go with him when he suggested that they surrender.

*

They were supposed to be loyal to Marley. They weren't supposed to care about the island devils. Yet Reiner was all but riddled with marks that matched theirs, and Bertolt... Bertolt didn't want to see anyone else die. He didn't want anyone else to die and he himself wanted to live. In those moments, he realized that he held a painful, desperate desire to live, and even with his true identity known, he knew that he had a better shot with the “devils” of Paradis than the "heroes" of Marley. So he'd tried to persuade Reiner, and the marks burning his skin like a brand meant that it wasn't very hard.

He doesn't think Reiner has ever truly forgiven him for convincing him, the knowledge of what his betrayal would have meant for his family hanging over his head with every waking moment. But that's fine. After all, Bertolt never apologized.

...He used to wonder why he doesn’t share any sort of soulmark with Reiner. He had hoped that he might turn out to share one with Annie, but when he found out about the bright red crystal she shares with Armin, he realized that it had been hopeless all along. Reiner hadn't been like that though. Where Annie kept her marks close to her chest, Reiner willingly shared his, so Bertolt knew that they didn't share a mark and was perplexed as to why.

It became more apparent after their uneasy return to the scouts. Their identities being known made Bertolt more aware of his own than ever, but not having to keep that secret anymore also had some effect. Getting to live, even if only because they were more useful alive than dead at first, had an effect. The newly-installed queen ordering them to repay their debts to society by serving the scouts for the rest of their short lives had an effect. Bertolt had straightened his shoulders, bore the looks, and found reasons to continue on. Reiner was a different story.

Bertolt had been moving forward with the painful understanding that even if they lived, Reiner would have suffocated under the weight of his guilt if they went back to Marley. What he didn't expect was that it would come for him anyway. The difference was that his surroundings reminded him of what he had done rather than his guilt-ridden memories, and the fate of his family became a new weight on his conscience. For a long time, Bertolt would catch him shooting glances at the golden footprint on his arm, his confusion over it still being there fading into sick understanding as the weeks slipped by.

Where Bertolt found a new will to live, Reiner's death wish began to dog him like a second shadow. He never vocalized it, but he didn't need to. It became more and more apparent as the days passed, with the way he just took any harsh word said to him and the way reckless, sacrificial moves started to add up. Everyone knew by the time Historia was crowned queen. Bertolt wanted to help, but he didn't know how. He had already struggled to handle Reiner's split personality, but this was something new and awful. He knew, logically, what was happening. Yet he couldn't understand. There was a part of him that just couldn't parse how or why they had reacted so differently, why Reiner was struggling so much when, based just on how much he had come to care for the others, switching sides should have helped him most.

It was then that Bertolt realized why he and Reiner didn't share a soulmark. They were and still are friends and comrades, but their relationship is and always has been one of circumstance. In another lifetime, a kinder lifetime, their paths never would have passed. They were friends and comrades who never would have meant anything to each other if left to their own devices.

Bertolt was not the one to prevent Reiner from handing himself over to oblivion at the first opportunity. Instead, he was saved by the people he did share marks with, the ones he had come to care about so much that it had torn his mind in half in the first place. Historia - blue bandage - who even though they didn't talk much, remained unwavering in her order that he not be executed. Connie - purple tooth - who managed to be shockingly understanding, his own losses making it easier for him to understand the reasons for the betrayal. Jean - violet sword - full of pain and rage for the silver wings of freedom emblazoned on his shoulder blade, who had eventually cornered Reiner and furiously declared that he wasn't allowed to die after what he did; it was an easy escape that did nothing to make up for what he'd done. Even Eren - golden clasped hands - and the debt he seemed to think he owed him.

...Reiner had been the first one to realize that something was very wrong with Eren. Now, Bertolt wonders if things might have gone differently if they had listened.

*

Soulmarks make Eren's current course of action that much more inconceivable.

(How easy it can be to forget. For all of the people who alter their course of action because of one soulmark or another, there are always those who don't.)

Not all of them feel the unique weight of Eren's turn, of course. To those (still) aligned with the warrior unit, Eren is just an enemy of humanity.

(They do not see what they see. While he is just a devil to them, those who knew Eren before see a friend who has wandered so far down a terrible path that he has become near unrecognizable. They do not know that it is as heartbreaking as it is terrifying. They do not know how it stings like a betrayal even though he claims to have his reasons. It makes Bertolt wonder - if this is how they all felt, back then?)

Magath and Pieck are more focused on keeping an eye on Porco, on the risk that his vengeful rage toward Ymir and Reiner does not boil over in a way that may risk their tentative alliance.

In a way, that particular microcosm of tension is almost a relief. It is not pleasant, but the way the old hurt and anger of the Galliard brothers threatens to reach across the groups helps distract at least some of them. Reiner frets and flutters, always keeping some degree of distance between himself and everyone else, while the people he never expected to actually give him a second chance shoot him concerned looks. Ymir is similarly distanced from everyone, although it is with the ease of someone who has not spent any significant time with them in over a year. She garners less worried looks from the scouts than Reiner, and certainly less hateful glares from Porco, but she does get far more uncertain looks from Pieck and Magath. Even Yelena seems unsure of what to make of the woman who got her titan by pure chance.

The children hover at the edge of this drama. Specifically, Gabi hesitantly hovers by Sasha, visibly comfortable inserting herself back amongst the warrior unit after all that has happened, but also not ready to forgive Reiner and uncertain of who else to attach herself to, and Falco hovers close to Gabi. They are another matter entirely, another story tied up in soulmarks and world-shattering realizations.

*

None of them should have been surprised. Sasha has a history of difficult soulmates.

It didn't start that way. Connie and Jean's blue marks are fairly straightforward, and even if it's a little surprising that she's rumored to share a third with the reclusive Mikasa Ackerman, it isn't shocking or problematic. They started growing to be more of an issue after she met the girl represented by the golden farmhouse on her bicep. Although her bond with Kaya seemed fairly straightforward, their first meeting sounded outright traumatic. The blue leaf that represented Reiner gained a new weight after a certain point in time, but the shock was dulled by the knowledge that four of her comrades also shared marks with him.

No, Niccolo was the one that really threw expectations and preconceived notions to the wind. The discovery that her fiery red frying pan correlated to a Marleyan prisoner of war was an "exciting" incident for everyone involved. But even after that whole fiasco was resolved, the meaning of the long golden mark running along Sasha’s cheekbone remained a mystery. Its shape was seemingly nonsensical - some sort of combination of an axe and a gun. At that point in time, Bertolt had never seen anything like it, let alone met anyone with an identical mark.

There had been three among their ranks with mysterious gold marks at the time. Sasha, with her weird hybrid weapon, Reiner, with his footprint, and Levi, who the former 104th had been shocked to discover had two - a flower on one shoulder and a teacup on the other. Soon after that, Bertolt had overheard Sasha excitedly wonder if her and Reiner’s gold mark might be the same person, if they might be one of Levi’s as well. Jean had told her that she was talking nonsense, that he couldn’t think of anyone who needed three separate guide marks.

That was before they met the girl made to bear the weight of Reiner’s betrayal.

...Turning against Marley hadn't been an easy decision. Bertolt had understood the repercussions that Reiner's family would face - it is why he didn't and still doesn't blame him for any seed of resentment that may have been planted in the aftermath. It is why, as he trudged back to the scouts, uncertain of if he would live or die, he found himself praying that his father had peacefully passed away during the mission. But knowing the consequences of your actions and seeing them first-hand are different things entirely.

Ymir chose to turn back because of her soulmate. Bertolt decided to surrender because they were doomed without her, and because allowing the armored titan to Marley would only mean more suffering for the people he could not deny he had come to love, he had been able to convince Reiner to do the same. Because Reiner had surrendered, his family had been sent to paradise.

But they were not the only ones capable of pulling the threads of fate. Rumor had it that Zeke Yaeger had once been a promising young cadet in a difficult situation. And when he looked at the girl whose fate was nearly sealed by her cousin's actions, despite the differences in their situations, Bertolt theorized that he saw a similarity. Or maybe it wasn't as sentimental as that. Maybe merely saw an opportunity. Whatever the case, the outcome was the same, a story shakily breathed out by a shell-shocked young girl as she watched the hybrid weapon marked across her forearm flicker with intermittent hues of silver and coal. He reached out to the girl and offered an opportunity - work for Marley, earn her place as one of their warriors, and prove that she was not like her cousin. Redeem her family's good name from beyond the grave.

So Bertolt and Reiner became Paridisians in all but name, and Gabi Braun became a creature of fury.

Fury. It isn't surprising that that is all she felt when Paradis came knocking on Liberio's door and killed droves of innocents, including two of her only companions. All because the scouts discovered too late that they couldn't actually control the devil known as Eren Jaeger. He cannot blame her for seeing red and breaking onto their ship. For all the horror of the moment, he cannot blame her for taking fire on the first islander she spotted.

Even after hearing it from her own mouth, it still feels like a stroke of luck great enough to near-divine intervention to know that she flinched. That she saw the unique soulmark plastered on Sasha's cheekbone, and in the same instant that Falco lunged at her, she flinched. She flinched, and although it took hours for anything to be confirmed, hours of blood and stress and fear, the bullet landed painfully, but not fatally.

For all of the propaganda drilled into her head, for all of her despair and hatred for the island of devils, almost killing your soulmate does something to you. In Gabi's case, it dulled her fury enough for her to start to listen. To witness the grief and love of the people around her, the way Marleyan Niccolo was clearly only barely restraining from taking violent action on behalf of a "devil", how, despite Falco's ardent defense of her character, he wasn't the only one insisting that no harm befall to her. It made her witness their humanity. And that, Bertolt suspects, may have made her start to consider who exactly killed her family.

She is still hesitant around most of them, more so than Falco, who, while frightened and out of his depth, is also burningly curious and has a good head on his shoulders. She refused to so much as talk to Reiner until after Zeke's attack. But she is hesitant around the Marleyans now. She also apologized to Sasha once she was stabilized enough to move, which has to count as some sort of progress.

...The soulmark makes sense now. At some point during Zeke's attack, Gabi apparently killed a titan with a gun in order to save Kaya. A delighted Sasha had declared it the mark of a "titan-killer supreme".

So, no. Now that Bertolt thinks about it, none of it is surprising. Not that Sasha shares a soulmark with the girl who almost killed her, and not the fact that of Gabi's five marks, all but Kaya's blue ribbon and Falco's purple feather are golden.

She is already starting to grow out of her fury. Although she does a remarkable job of holding herself together, because Ymir once turned back for her soulmate, because Bertolt followed her and got Reiner to come with him, because Zeke saw a similarity or an opportunity, and because Eren turned out to be the devil none of them believed he was, Gabi Braun is a broken child.

Bertolt hasn't once been able to bring himself to look her in the eyes.

*

For the rest of them, there is absolutely no escaping the larger shadow hanging over their heads. Levi is too injured for much of his face to be visible at this point, but Bertolt has seen the flickers of pain and regret across the Commander's face. He would be willing to bet that Eren has not left their mind once this entire time. (He also has no doubt that they are already set on what must be done.) Even without bandages, Levi has always been far harder to read, but he suspects that Hange's feelings are a good indicator of his own.

Armin is far worse. His countenance is someone who fears that he may be losing his best friend, who wants to cling to the hope that it might not be too late, but has already accepted the truth somewhere deep down. He and Annie have been sticking by each other's sides all through the night. Bertolt does not know how much Armin truly helps when Annie is so fresh out of her crystal and struggling with her own pains, even subtly contributing to the cloud of other tensions with her own unresolved tensions with Reiner and untouched history with Marley, but he thinks it is still good that they have each other. Even though Armin is one of the people he has found some degree of kinship with in the past years of with Scouts, he does not dare approach them.

Worst of all is Mikasa. There is a greater gulf between her and the rest of the Scouts than Reiner, Ymir, or even Bertolt can lay claim to. It makes sense that she would be further away than Reiner or Ymir, he thinks. Mikasa always held herself at a degree of distance, whereas Reiner was always social and seemed to have half of their tattered group as soulmarks besides. Ymir is a relatively distant person with only one living soulmate, but she cannot be feeling anywhere near the level of devastation that she is in at this moment. But Bertolt? He is a distant person with only a single soulmark that he does not know to correspond to any specific person. Even knowing that Eren may well be her whole world, seeing her so much further away feels wrong.

Bertolt slowly scans the crowd gathered around the fire and does not spot her. He frowns.

"Has anyone seen Mikasa?" he asks.

It’s Hange that answers, glancing up from where they have been carefully watching Levi. “She said she was going for a walk. That was a while ago though…”

Heavy silence fills the air. Bertolt is rising to his feet before he can think about it.

Armin and Jean move in the same instant. In Jean's case, it is the flinching motion of someone about to stand, but he freezes when he sees that he isn't the only one. His gaze slides from Bertolt and Armin to Reiner, then to the warrior unit, to Annie, to Ymir, and finally to the children huddled a few places down from him, before he reluctantly settles back into his seat. Armin, however, is already halfway standing. Bertolt meets his gaze and slowly shakes his head. Armin frowns and glances at the forest, but ultimately looks back at Annie and sits back down with a small nod in Bertolt's direction.

There is something haunting about the forest. It is not the threat of Yaegerists that makes him feel that way either. Rather, it is something about the night. The night and what might come with the day.

It is a relief that it does not take long to find Mikasa. She is sitting hunched at the base of a tree, her scarf tucked over her nose, gazing up at the sky through the tree's canopy.

Bertolt hesitates. It feels wrong to say anything, but even worse to walk away. He knows that she will have noticed him even if she does not show it. Even if she hasn't... it would be wrong to walk away.

Ultimately, he walks up and sits down a few paces away from her, at the base of the same tree. He pulls his legs up against his chest, wraps his arms around them, and rests his chin on his knees.

They are silent for a little while. Then, softly, she asks, "when did you know that what you were doing was wrong?"

Bertolt swallows. His gaze drops to his right ankle. It takes a little while for him to find the words, but when he does, he whispers, "Shiganshina. Right after I kicked the hole in the wall, when I looked down... that's when I knew."

*

Precious few people know about it - Former Commander Erwin, Commander Hange, and Captain Levi, because he couldn't keep any secrets from them after the truth was revealed, but also Reiner, Ymir, and presumably Historia - but Bertolt's only soulmark is on his ankle. It is a bright burgundy replica of the wall that once protected Shiganshina.

...In his time on Paradis and the years before that, he has not met anyone with a similar mark. He would suspect that his soulmate is dead, eaten or crushed to death in that initial attack, were it not for the fact that the mark has not yet turned silver.

That does not mean that he thinks there is someone out there for him. No. Instead, Bertolt has come to suspect that maybe he doesn't have a soulmate. He looks at his mark and wonders if it is possible for people to be bound to concepts, memories, moments in time. He looks at his mark and sees a warning. A grim reminder.

Perhaps it is egotistical of him to think that his mark is unique, but even so, it is the only thing he can think of. His mark isn't meant to tie him to someone or guide him to them. It is there to make sure he can never forget the worst thing he has ever done, to make sure he never does it again.

How funny, then, that it didn't even work. Just because the hole in Trost's wall was plugged doesn't mean that it was never created. He can try to do better in what little time he has left, sure, but it still happened.

...He wonders if Eren has secretly had Liberio's wall encircling his ankle this whole time. Marvels at how, if he does, it didn't stop him either.

*

Mikasa makes a slight noise. It is too faint for Bertolt to tell what it is, and he doesn't bother commenting on it, because he's well aware that they aren't actually talking about him.

Several minutes pass before she speaks again, her voice carefully neutral in the way that he knows is designed to hide pain, even if he isn't used to hearing it from her. "Why did you keep going?" she asks.

Because of Reiner, is the treacherous first thought that he doesn't say. It is needlessly cruel and doesn't apply to their situation for a variety of reasons, least of all being that if there was anything Reiner could have done to stop this, he knows that he would have in a heartbeat.

"Because I was scared of what would happen if I didn't," he says instead. "Annie was the same. And Reiner..." Bertolt hesitates, because out of the three of them, he knows that this is the one that matters.

*

Eren has never been secretive about his soulmarks. There's a reason why Reiner is his only soulmate outside of Mikasa and Armin, even if it took them this long to realize the truth.

...He's caught glimpses of the faux-scarf wrapped around Mikasa's neck beneath the real one, and it is a darker crimson than the actual fabric. The cresting blue wave on Armin's collar bone is several shades darker than it ought to be. The golden clasped hands over Reiner's heart have a black sheen in the right light.

It is possible for golden marks to be mutual rather than just one person guiding the other. Bertolt has long suspected that was the case for Eren and Reiner. However, he also assumed that Reiner's part was done after he revealed his identity. Everyone did. No one considered the alternative until the roles had already begun to reverse and it started to make a sickening sort of sense.

The signs were always there. They just didn't want to see it.

*

"I don't think Reiner realized he could stop until someone else made the decision for him," he says. "I think... If Ymir hadn't gone back, he would have kept going until someone stopped him."

And he would have been stopped, Bertolt realizes with the sudden clarity made available only by retrospect. Because he and Eren were soulmates for a reason, and if Eren's soulmarks weren't enough to prevent his betrayal of humanity, it goes to reason that it would have happened in a world without them. And Reiner never would have been able to stand by and watch as he repeated his mistakes on a much larger scale. It provides some small iota of relief to how much he has watched him struggle over the past years, because if his path was going to lead him here regardless, then at least he has had time for some of those wounds to heal before the probable end of the world.

But Eren is not Reiner. He does not appear hobbled by guilt in the way Reiner was, and no one is going to come across and commit a greater atrocity to force him back onto the right path.

"I can stop him," Mikasa says, and there is a desperate sort of hope in her voice. And Bertolt...

In that moment, Bertolt is startlingly certain that she can. He has never claimed to know Mikasa Ackerman well, but he knows that she is braver than him, stronger than him, and not truly quite as distant. Eren may well be her entire world, but he also trusts that she will not sacrifice everyone else's to protect it.

He trusts that she can and probably will be the one to stop Eren. He just doesn't trust that she will stop him the way that she hopes she can. Or maybe she will. Bertolt doesn't have any true way of knowing. But as he listens to her make her proclamation, voice vulnerable and raw in a way that he has never heard from her, he vows that he will do whatever he can to help her. Whatever the path ahead may hold.

He doesn't say that though. Instead, he remains quiet for several minutes before murmuring, "We should head back. The others will be getting worried."

For a moment, there is no response. Then he hears Mikasa begin to stand and follows suit. They walk back to camp together and do not have another private conversation until the Rumbling has been seen to its bittersweet end and all of their questions have been answered.

All but one.

*

Precious few people know it - only Armin and, once upon a time, Eren - but Mikasa Ackerman has five soulmarks.

The first is a silver scarf wrapped around her neck, once a deep crimson, now a mournful silver.

Armin's bright blue book rests on the palm of her left hand. She has never felt a need to hide it.

A cheerful blue potato rests on her stomach, and she will never tire of teasing Sasha for it.

The fact that the tiny purple paring blade hidden on the side of one of her fingers corresponds with Annie's is a secret that dies with them.

And the mark that she has spent years of her life refusing to think about or acknowledge, but is beginning to think that she may be able to address eventually.

Near the tattoo on her right wrist, where it is easily and reliably concealed, rests a bright burgundy replica of the wall that once protected Shiganshina.

[shiplikeme]

Eruris!!!

I wrote an Eruri MerMaid AU Thread on Twitter! Check it out ! 💙💙💚💚💚💚💚💚💙💙💙💙

I’m still writing but half of it is up!

It’s inspired by the new official AOT merch depicting mermaid!levi & king!levi!

It’s also one of my submissions for the @aot-au-week (my twist on a domestic royal AU)!

🧜🏼‍♂️🤴🏼🧞‍♀️

[bnhayyy]

The Call (1)

Chapter Title: Slayer

Wordcount: 4.1k

Ao3 Link: Click

Notes: Written for day one of @aot-au-week , since a Buffy AU very technically counts as a College AU, and because it's the least I owe @cookietonwrites for convincing them to take on another fic. As you can see, the idea quickly spiraled into a multi-chap, for which I am not even remotely apologetic.

Summary: There is only ever one slayer at a time; the chosen one, a girl strong enough to fight against the vampires, demons, and forces of darkness.

 Mikasa has accepted that for her, being the slayer means living a reclusive life, haunted by the image of the first person she failed to save and unable to ever truly let anyone in. However, everything is called into question with the arrival of Annie, a girl who claims to also be a slayer. Mikasa's life becomes much less solitary seemingly overnight, but friendship is followed by a deadly conspiracy, and with it, the threat of loss and heartache.

Mikasa's world consisted of a haze of blurred vision and the gentle buzzing in her ears. She blinked, and the figures on the paper before her solidified into numbers for a heartbeat before fading out once again. Trying it a few more times didn't yield any better results. It only made her aware of how much her eyes burned and how heavy her eyelids were. How heavy her entire head was. How easy it would be to just slip forward and… 

The buzzing reached a crescendo. A hand reached out to grab her shoulder. She jerked back upright to find Armin sitting across the table from her, one hand still extended and a worried expression on his face. 

Mikasa faltered. Words played at her lips, semi-contradictory things like 'it's fine' and 'what's wrong', but none of them felt right enough to actually be voiced. Instead, Armin was the one to break the silence. 

"When's the last time you slept?" he asked. 

Mikasa sighed. He must be really worried if he was cutting straight to the point like that. 

"Don't worry about it," she said, even though she knew it wouldn't work. 

Armin's frown deepened as a hint of disapproval trickled onto his features. He pitched his voice into a whisper to say, "you don't need to go out every night. You can't- you shouldn't be doing this alone."

"I do," Mikasa countered. "I'm the only one who can. You know that, Armin."

There was one girl in the whole world charged with keeping the forces of darkness at bay. She couldn't cast that duty aside just because she was tired.

It was with that thought that she realized that her gaze had begun to drift back toward the table. She snapped it back up as Armin asked, "does Erwin know how thin you're wearing yourself?" 

Mikasa pursed her lips. "Erwin's only been here for a few weeks. He'll get used to it."

"You shouldn't be used to it," Armin insisted, the softness of his voice warring with the rapidly mounting undercurrent of anxiety. He was still talking, too, about how Erwin wouldn't approve and she would be more productive if she wasn't dead on her feet. She didn't absorb any of the actual words, his voice fading back out into that gentle, incoherent buzzing.

Then there was a flicker of movement as something faded into sight in the corner of her vision, and everything Armin said became utterly doomed to sail right over her head.

Mikasa very determinedly did not look at the figure. She didn't turn her head and didn't allow her eyes to move in his direction beyond that first involuntary twitch. It didn't matter. He leaned forward, and she caught a glimpse of the green eyes peering out from what she knew would be a placid-yet-piercing expression.

"He's right, Mikasa," he said. "You need to take better care of yourself."

She allowed her eyes to flicker shut even though it did nothing to block out the man's voice. The voice of her own imagination.

"You've always been like this," he sighed. His voice had a whisper of warmth in it today, a touch of fondness tucked within what sounded like age-old resignation. "But you shouldn't. You're at your best when you have our friends with you."

Something flickered within her at the comment, although she was pleased to note that she managed to keep it within. There was no need to remind the hallucination that she didn't have any friends. Not even Armin, truly. Because for all that they were fond of each other, no amount of fondness could ever make up for-

"-kasa?"

It was the hint of iron intertwining itself with the worry in Armin's voice that got her to open her eyes. Mikasa forced herself to look at Armin and only Armin, who was leaning halfway across the table at this point.

"You really need to get some rest," he said. She moved to open her mouth, but he cut her off by asking, "you don't have trigonometry for five more hours, right?"

Mikasa nodded.

Armin gave one short, decisive nod, which appeared to be more for himself than anything. "You should take a nap, then."

The shift in her expression was subtle, just a faint downward turn to her lips, but apparently still enough for him to catch, because he quickly added, "you're going on patrolling again tonight, aren't you? Even a couple of hours would be better than nothing. I promised to meet up with Annie in a little while, but. I could walk you home?"

Mikasa didn't bother asking who Annie was, but she didn't protest either. She could see the logic in his argument, even if it felt painfully like a waste of time. "No, it's alright," she said. "I can walk myself."

Armin frowned. "Okay, but you will-"

"Go home and take a nap. Yes." She was already standing up as she finished agreeing. If she was going to keep her word, then it would be better to get it done sooner than later. The earlier she left, the sooner she could return. "I'll see you tomorrow," she promised.

With that, she turned around and left without taking another look at the boy who maybe, in another world, could have been her friend.

Or the distorted memory of Eren Jaeger.

*

Mikasa laid in her bed and closed her eyes.

*

Thud.

"Clear!"

Thud.

"Clear!"

Thud.

"Cl-"

Coughing. Choking, sputtering, straining, a strain in her chest that turned into an ache resonating throughout her entire body. A pain worse than anything she had ever felt in her fourteen years.

Shouting. Rushing. Urgent voices talking rapidly. Not to her, with her aching body and spinning vision, but to each other. White coats and flashing lights. They were talking, talking, and there was something she had to say, something more important than the flashing lights or the unreal pain or the whisper of strength that shouldn't be there. There was something, someone, she had to ask about-

Her voice cut off in a hoarse croak when she tried to speak. Her throat stung, like it had been worn ragged by- by-

Salt.

Memories flashed by her in a dreadful kaleidoscope. The parents. The men. The boy. The other man, the one they'd thought would help. The sea - he'd thrown them in the sea, her and-

A jolt of energy. Mikasa forced herself upright and grabbed the wrist of the first person she saw. Surprise was on his face. Surprise and discomfort; her grip was stronger than it should have been. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was-

"Eren," she croaked.

"Eren." The white-coated man's voice was softer than she needed it to be. Focused on her. He needed to be focused on not her. "Is that your name? Eren?"

Through parched lips and a throat like sandpaper, she croaked out, "where's Eren?"

The man gave her a long, sad look. No. No. He shouldn't be looking at her like that.

"He saved me," Mikasa pressed. "Then he- the-" monster “- we went in the water together."

One faltering moment that lasted for an eternity.

The man redirected with talk about her. What's her name, can she describe what she's feeling, she's okay, it'll all be okay - it didn't matter. It didn't matter and it wouldn't be okay. It didn't matter, because in that moment, he didn't need to answer.

His expression spoke only of death.

*

She woke up feeling more awake, but just as tired as she had been before.

*

Mikasa didn't even try to pay attention during trigonometry. The nap may have refreshed her to some degree, but not enough for that. Besides, she still had a solid C. Spending class zoned out was... admittedly detrimental, considering that she had been in a similar state for her last two classes, but not so devastating that she wouldn't be able to recover from it. She would just have to cram as hard as she could once she had the opportunity to spend a few nights on her classwork. It wasn't a pleasant routine, but it had gotten her through her first two semesters of college. She could make it work for this one as well.

Besides, she had more important things to spend her brainpower on.

A girl had been marked absent during roll call. Mina Carolina. A single absence was not unusual in and of itself, but although Mikasa couldn't claim to know Mina well, she had not seen the girl take a day off before. That didn't mean that she couldn't - she could be well and truly sick, or an emergency could have popped up. People took days off all the time, even those who normally didn't.

The trouble was that there had been a marked increase in people turning up absent lately. Most of them never returned. There were no bodies found or hints as to their whereabouts. They were simply never seen again.

Mikasa didn't want to feel a sense of distant mourning. She wanted to hope that Mina would show up at their next class with some excuse for the teacher about how she can sick or had to deal with an unignorable situation. However, that same part of her had also wanted to hold out hope for Franz and Hannah when they disappeared from her American Literature class, and now they were nothing but faces on missing posters.

The semester had only been in swing for a month and a half. Mina would be the third victim person she had shared a class with. Not third overall - just that she had shared a class with specifically. When she scaled the radius up to encompass the entire campus, she would be the fifth disappearance.

According to Erwin, Paradis' level of supernatural activity was on the low side of average. She suspected that that was the reason he had been hinting that they should relocate. He felt that she was wasted here, and as her Watcher, he wasn't comfortable doing nothing about it, no matter how new to his position or unwelcome he was. And truthfully, five people disappearing off of a college campus during the first semester and a half wasn't unusual. College was stressful. She didn't know the details regarding two of the disappearances, and even with the couple who had seemingly disappeared off the face of the like, a human culprit was just as likely as a demonic one, if not moreso.

So why was she so certain that Mina Carolina had met her death at some point since she had last seen her?

Why did she feel like she had failed to stop it?

Once the feelings of dread and guilt grew strong enough for her to be actively aware of them, Mikasa decided to redirect her attention to the students who were there. 

Armin probably would have been one of her classmates if she hadn't insisted that he not take any classes that run past sunset and directed him to the morning trigonometry course instead. However, it wouldn't have been a large class even with him and Mina. 

Four of the students scattered across the room were unknown to Mikasa. However, her seat near the back of the room allowed her to keep an eye on them with relative ease. That, in turn, allowed her to be fairly comfortable in her assessment that they were normal human students. 

She could say the same of her four other classmates as well. They, however, were a little higher on her radar. 

Closest to her, his desk seated directly in the last few rays of evening sunlight, was a muscular blond man. Mikasa thought that his name began with an 'R', but didn't know much else about him. He'd caught her attention with a loud, outgoing personality and general demeanor that made him seem like an odd fit for the class. At the moment, it looked like he wasn't paying much more attention than Mikasa herself, fiddling with the ring on his left hand and only occasionally glancing up at the teacher. 

The blonde next to him was as much of a stranger, but she at least looked like she was focusing. She had gained Mikasa's attention by joining a week after classes had started. Since then, however, she had proven quiet and distant, only interacting with her classmates when she glared at the man next to her for trying to talk to her while she was working.    

Jean Kirstein, meanwhile, clearly didn't want to be a stranger. Over the past year, he had made a few attempts to reach out that she could admit were enduring. If she didn't have her duty, he might be someone she could consider a friend. As it was, she couldn't bring herself to do anything but brush him off, for his own sake. He didn't pay her much attention in class though. That wasn’t to say that he was completely focused, even though he had claimed a seat at the front of the class. She often glimpsed him speaking to the student next to him. There’d also been enough instances when she’d heard a frustrated comment from him regarding the course for her to get the sense that trigonometry wasn't particularly easy for him. However, she also suspected that he was hardworking and dedicated enough to make up for it.

The student next to him was Marco Bott. Cheerful and painfully earnest, he was honestly mostly notable to Mikasa because he was Jean's friend. He seemed like a good person though. That meant he was a reminder of why Mikasa couldn't let Jean become her friend no matter how hard he tried or let herself rest no matter how much Armin tried to insist. If she faltered, if she slowed, there would be consequences.

Mina used to sit behind Jean and Marco.

The sound of chairs being pushed back and writing implements being put away drew Mikasa out of her stupor. Rather than look at the clock, she glanced out the window.

The sun had already begun to set.

She quickly stuffed her textbook, pencil case, and notebook in her bag, feeling only a brief pang of guilt for the blank sheet of paper that stared back at her. The items landed haphazardly, and she knew that if she looked, they would likely only partly obscure the stake, crossbow, and knife that laid carefully arranged at the bottom. She zipped it shut before anyone could get curious and try to sneak a peek; a reflex even though she knew that no one would be bold enough to try that with her.

Despite being the last one to start getting packed, she was the first one out of class. Just like she always was. From there, it didn’t take long to get off the campus.

The first two blocks of Mikasa's walk went like she was heading home. It was as she reached the third - the one that would have lead back to her apartment - that she took a sharp right. From there it was four blocks straight on, then one block to the left. A simple route, but one that had come to haunt her nightmares.

Dusk had descended on the cemetery by the time she reached it.

Logically, she knew that she wasn't likely to run into anything for several more hours.

Instinctively, she knew that Mina Carolina wasn't likely to return to class.

This wasn't a night to take risks.

Mikasa wandered deeper into the graveyard, where she was less likely to be spotted by any passerby, and pulled out her stake. There, she began to wander.

It wasn't a small cemetery by any means. That was what made it the ideal hive for demonic activity. Not only were cemeteries where the majority of newly turned vampires rose, but large ones were also rife with additional dead bodies and crypts. This one was even separated into several different sections, which made it easy to get lost.

Getting lost made it easy to watch the time slip by.

A couple of hours into her patrol, a familiar figure flickered into existence at the edges of her vision. She didn't say anything to him, and he followed her silently, gaze occasionally flickering to one side or another as he took in the graveyard. As if he might notice anything before she did. Technically speaking, she supposed that he might. He had "caught" things a few times in the past, when she was subconsciously aware of something but hadn't been fast enough to process it with her conscious mind. It was the only thing that made sense, for all that she desperately wished that it wasn't.

A slayer whose hallucination needed to point things out for her couldn't mean anything good for the world.

She forced herself to look away from the figment and focus on her surroundings.

Not five minutes later, the sound of shifting earth caught her attention. Mikasa turned and strode toward it, her grip on her stake tightening and her gaze fixed straight ahead. Within seconds, she had spotted it; a grave with the earth beneath it stirring. As she watched, a hand punched up and out of it, grasping desperately at the ground. The head came next - an unfamiliar man, his face distorted by lumps across his forehead and nose, slitted yellow eyes, and fangs. The visage of a vampire prepared for predation. It glared at her as it struggled and snarled, eventually freeing its other arm. Once that was done, it had a much easier time dragging itself to the surface.

It never got the chance to free itself fully. The second its chest was completely exposed, Mikasa sprang into action. She grabbed the thing by the lapels of its dirt-stained tuxedo and dragged it upward. Fear flicked across its face, causing the predatory features to fall away and leaving a normal face behind. A face that could have been human if she didn't know better. She didn't allow herself to look closely.

In a blink, she had rammed her stake through the vampire's chest and into its heart. It dissolved into dust a few seconds later. Mikasa stood and watched the flecks flutter back down to earth.

She was drawn out of her reverie by a firm, "you shouldn't be patrolling tonight."

Mikasa grit her jaw. "I already rested," she pointed out.

"It isn't enough. You've been exhausting yourself, one little nap isn't going to make up for that."

"You just saw me kill a vampire."

"Yeah, and it took way more out of you than it normally would."

Mikasa whirled around to face the figment. Something in her chest threatened to hitch as she allowed herself to look directly at him, just as it so often did, even years after he first manifested.

The thing before her almost could have been a ghost. It wasn't though; god knew she had done enough research on the subject. Ghosts, when they visibly manifested at all, took the appearance they wore at their time of death or at another point in their life.

Eren Jaeger had been fourteen when he died. Even if he responded to the same name, this grown man with distant, unreadable eyes couldn't be him.

He wasn't anything. She'd run all of the tests as she learned more about the Supernatural. She wasn't haunted, there weren't hints of a demonic presence lingering around her - there was nowhere he could have come from other than her own mind.

He was nothing but a manifestation of her guilty conscience. She had come to terms with that years ago, yet she was still wasting time arguing with him.

At that instant, it was suddenly very tempting to look away. However, she forced her gaze to remain steady as she coldly said, "leave."

The figment blinked. "Mikasa-"

"No," she interrupted.

Something flickered in the illusion's eyes. It was difficult to identify, caught behind that distorting wall that so often covered his emotions, and she didn't even bother to try. He opened his mouth again, but she didn't let him get another word in.

"I'm not willing to put up with you tonight," she said. "Get out."

His expression finally came together into something real and visible. Alarm. "Mikasa, move!"

Mikasa lunged to the side just in time to avoid being grabbed by the shoulder.

She spun around to find a burly vampire standing over the ashes of the one she'd just killed. He was musclebound and bulky enough that he might be somewhat difficult to face in hand-to-hand combat - but not so much as to stand a real chance against her. "Slayer," he snarled. "I am going to grind you into dust."

Mikasa didn't bother responding. He lunged forward and she spun to the side, ducking beneath his flailing fist to get behind him. As she moved, she noticed that Eren had disappeared. Good. She sprang forward, stake in hand, only for the vampire to swing back around at the last moment and grab her wrist. He squeezed, a horrible grin on his face, and she had to fight to keep from automatically releasing her grip on her stake.

As the vampire leaned forward, she twisted to punch him in the sternum with her free hand. It only made him falter for a moment, but it was enough for her to wrench her wrist out of his grasp. It was also enough for her to come to a terrible realization.

Her blows weren't as hard as they usually were and she was moving slowly.

Eren was right.

There wasn't any time to ruminate on that. The vampire lunged forward, and Mikasa dove to the side again. She leaned into the momentum and swung her leg out to land a kick to the vampire’s side. He stumbled, a curse on his lips.

It didn't bring her any sense of victory, for as she brought her foot down, it landed on uneven ground. Not observant enough.

Pain shot up her ankle and the world began to tilt.

Eren still wasn't anywhere to be seen. Funny. If her mind was going to conjure up even a distorted version of Eren Jaeger, she would have expected it to happen when she died. She had thought that he would watch.

Mikasa hit the ground, the side of her head slamming hard against a flat gravestone. The world continued to spin around the sound of the vampire chuckling. She clenched the hand holding her stake, only to find that it must have fallen out of her grasp during the fall.

She forced herself to sit up, hands pushing hard against the ground to make up for the way the world was spinning around her. When she looked up, the vampire was glaring down at her. She tried to stand up, to scurry back, but her ankle gave out when she tried to bear weight on it. A sprain - just a sprain - nothing that wouldn't heal in a couple of days with her abilities, but even a sprain couldn't bear weight immediately. The vampire was saying something now, but she couldn't make out the words, couldn't hear anything past the buzzing in her head, couldn't feel anything but the sensation of warm blood oozing from the cut in her head.

The vampire was reaching for her.

She hadn't wanted to take a risk, and because of that, she was going to die tonight. And Eren wasn't even there to see it.

Maybe that was fitting. She hadn't witnessed his final moments either. Maybe he wanted her to die alone as well.

The vampire's hand closed around her neck. She forced herself to look up, to at least look her death in the eyes-

- and the vampire exploded into dust. In his wake stood the blonde girl from her trigonometry class, stake in hand and gaze locked on Mikasa.

The girl said something. Mikasa blinked, hearing her words, but unable to process them. The girl frowned, and Mikasa grit her teeth, just to give herself another sensation to focus on.

"Repeat that," Mikasa ordered.

The girl extended a hand. "I asked how badly injured you are," she said.

Mikasa ignored the hand and moved to force herself to her feet. Her injured ankle protested once again, but she bore the majority of her weight on her other leg and managed to get upright. "I can handle it," she said. "Who are you?"

The girl didn't seem at all off-put by Mikasa's blunt question. If anything, she seemed like she expected it. "Annie Leonhart," she said.

She paused for a moment. It did nothing to prepare Mikasa for her next, impossible words.

"I'm the slayer."

*

Weeks later, armed with only an axe, her memories, and the desperate research of a lonely girl scared she was losing her mind, Mikasa went hunting.

She found the one who had snatched them from the bodies of the original monsters and tossed them into the ocean.

She took his head, and he turned to ash at her feet.

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