They weren't friends despite the drunken conversations and lingering touches. They spilled their guts on bar tops and laid ash to kinder skin. Their skin was their badge of armor. Their scars were their medals. Their frown lines and dark circles their recommendations. Everyone knew their names. Some idea of their story etched itself in the hearts of young men and women across the country. They were the faces of glory, the faces of death.

Ghosts couldn't get hurt and monsters couldn't love. They lived in the silences. In the moments before the kill, burnt into their closed eyelids, but it was never the same as the first time.

You don't get your first anything back. Your first kill, your first kiss, your first fuck, your first "I love you." The one you really meant; not all the meaningless ones that came after. Words only said to make your 3AM lover stay, forgotten long before the first sliver of daylight. Whispered carelessly pressed against the sheets, teeth marks and sprawled fingers.

But she didn't stay. She wouldn't stay even if he told her, even if he did love her which he didn't.

It wasn't that he didn't believe in love. No, he was merely indifferent to it as he was to all gods who ruled over man.

She didn't need an excuse or an invitation to show up on his doorstep. When his hair was in his eyes and his voice was groggy with sleep.

Levi pulled her to him. All tiptoes and hands slamming the door shut. His arms encircled her waist. He kissed her, from her breasts to her lips. Dancing in the hollows of her collarbone, over the taut muscles of her shoulders, his tongue traced the bruises he had made the previous night. The ones she covered up with his scarf.

Don't ever say his name.

It was the only line he didn't cross.

Put a toe over, erase with his breath, conceal with kisses.

There was yearning in her touch that made her grasp on his hips a little tighter, her teeth sink into his bottom lip, her tongue linger on his Adam's apple, her lips brush over his earlobe.

They walked backwards awkwardly, her leading, until he felt the hard edge of his bed against the back of his knees. He fell with her on top of him.

His fingers inched up her back, hitching over every bump of her spine. He kissed her slowly, brushing aside her hair and kissing her jawline.

She guided his hand between her legs. His fingers brushed lightly against her, moving in circles. She drew her lower lip into her mouth, biting it until it was red. Her head lulled back as she closed her eyes. He breathed her in. This different side of her, no one, but him knew. And she was beautiful.

The tattered ends of her scarf tickled his chest as she kissed him.

It had come unraveled, hanging loosely around her neck and down her breasts. He moved it aside, his thumb rubbing her nipple.

"You know, I can think of some good uses for that thing—" He mouthed.

"Shut up." There was a smile in her voice.

"Make me." Levi chuckled softly.

She kissed him.

"No, I mean make me."

She pushed him back against the bed. Her hands were on his shoulders, holding him down. She looked at him inquisitively. Until her mouth tugged sharply off to the side, smirking.

She tied him to the headboard.

"Tighter." He urged, inhaling sharply.

"Mikasa,"

"Don't say my name like that."

"Like what?" He smiled crookedly.

"Like that."

"Then fuck me until I forget your name."

Mikasa trailed kisses down his chest. She licked at his naval, her teeth gently grazing skin that had never seen the sunlight. He swallowed thickly, pushing his head back against the pillow, and closing his eyes. She pushed his legs up roughly, leaving fingerprints on the inside of his thighs.

She wanted nothing from him – if 'nothing' was him writhing under her, moaning obscenities.

They weren't lovers. Fuck the rumors.

Lovers made promises to each other. Lovers didn't hold onto the past with bloody nails and solemn eyes. Lovers didn't keep their hearts wrapped around their necks or scream the names of the dead into pillows. Lovers shared. He only shared his bed.

Levi only knew three things about her. One, she was stubborn. Two, she was loyal to a fault. And three, she wasn't afraid to die. He would have detested those traits, if they hadn't been hers – uniquely, painfully hers. They distorted her while making her who she was, a fighter.

They had one thing in common: they didn't make it easy for anyone to love them.

They fought together. On the frontline and in the darkest corner of the small room they shared. He taught her everything he knew. Sometimes they made it through the night without her interrupting him by sticking her tongue down his throat, but never without fresh bruises and rug burn.

When every candle had been blown out and every prayer had been whispered they were there. They were the flames that flickered to blackness; they were the gods being prayed to.

Mikasa rested in his arms. The sheets by their ankles, their clothes on the floor, and his arm snuggly wrapped around her – safeguarding her. His fingers lightly trailed her collarbone. Her long black hair tickled at his mouth. She had let it grow out. The only light was the sun slowly waking up and peaking one eye at a time through the fog and into the dusty veil of the half drawn curtain of his bedroom. She wanted to stay in the darkness with him.

His head rested on her lap. She combed his hair with her fingers, humming softly. Her mother used to do this when she couldn't sleep, but she didn't tell him that.

He looked like a boy in his sleep.

"Don't go." He murmured, clutching at her hand. She smiled almost.

Exhaustion wore down his defenses. Not like he had any walls she hadn't already broken through.

"I'm just going to watch the storm." She whispered.

"Go back to sleep." She kissed his forehead. But he didn't sleep. He watched her. She looked different somehow. Like a stranger in her skin.

She was naked in the darkness, alone with her thoughts, and the lightning only illuminated her body. A canvas he knew every surface of.

Mikasa looked over her shoulder at him. He shifted in the bed, making room for her. She seemed to hesitant, breathing in the stifled air and waiting for silence to befall (thunder cracking the inked black sky), before coming to him.

She was on her knees. Her elbows rested on the edge of the bed. It was the closest he'd ever seen her come to praying.

His fingers curled around hers, bringing her hand to his mouth and kissing her palm.

"I'm pregnant."

Her voice was so soft he barely heard it, but her words echoed through him.

His tongue felt like old parchment. All his words were ink – spilling down his throat, drowning him. She'd never seen him look at her like that before. Distant, the way he looked at everyone else.

If there was anything left of her heart to break his silence would have broken it.

"I can't keep it."

He didn't let himself imagine them as a family. As more than this moment, in this world there were no futures. No promises, only moments. He didn't dream, but briefly (his eyes fluttering half-closed) he pictured himself happy. But happiness was a fool's game and he only liked games he could win. Besides, what would he do with kid?

"I know," Was all he said.

He didn't let go of her hand.

She hushed him, kissing his eyelids.

"I," She caught herself. Love you.

"Hey," Levi touched the back of her arm. "Will you look at me?"

Mikasa sighed exhaustedly, fidgeting in her winter coat and looking intently at the snow frozen ground. She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, her forehead bunching up. It was her signature "go away" look, reserved especially for him. He remembered that look almost fondly. Back when they were strangers.

"It was my loss too." She said softly. Words were fire and she was tired of being burned.

"Then why don't you seem sad?" He had always been small, but his slight body swam in the oversized sweater and in the winter white his skin became transparent.

"Because that life isn't real,"

"You are the realest thing in my life."

Mikasa laughed sadly. She wanted to break his heart, but knew she already had, and bloody his face – but she got no joy out of destroying beautiful things.

"Don't think I don't think about it because I do, all the time."

"Did you want a boy or a girl?" Levi asked.

"A girl," Her voice cracked a little.

"Me too," Levi smiled.

"You would have made a good mom." Not that he knew what a good mother was. Not that he knew anything of love. "No…better than good, great."

Mikasa smiled, but he had never seen her look so sad.

She had scars, the kind that could only be seen up close. They ran miles deep.

His fingers curled tightly around hers. His thumb brushed over her bruised knuckles. She burrowed her face in the crook of his neck, an arm wrapped around him, her chest not quite pressed against his.

"I'm sorry," He had apologized before, said those words a thousand times, but he had never felt the searing guilt he felt now.

"We'll be more careful, I'm sorry." He whispered into her hair, kissing the top of her head.

"We don't have a future." She breathed deeply. "Not me, not you, not anyone. And I can't leave someone behind, I know what that's like and I won't do that."

The cold bit at her eyes. "We have to stop this. Whatever this ever was, it's over."

He had known it was over before it had begun and that neither of them were getting out unscathed. He felt her tears on his skin, and pushed her away, before his arms enfolded her and never let go again.