Mikasa came out of nowhere.

It was a Friday, I remember because me and Armin (he's my best friend) had been playing in one of the back rooms of the book store, and we only get to do that on Fridays while I wait for Mum to pick me up after she's done the cleaning and the shopping and whatever other stuff Mums do on Friday.

We were building a fort out of the shelves and the books – Armin's grandpa always hates when we do that, he says 'those books are fragile' and we say 'sorry sir' but we keep building anyway – when the bell over the door jingled and Dad came into the store.

That was the first Weird Thing.

Mum always picks me up on a Friday, because Dad doesn't finish work until super late sometimes – Mum says his job is really important and that a lot of people need him a lot of the time, so I guess it's okay that he's not around all that much and anyways, Mum is cool enough.

The second Weird Thing was that he didn't come say hi. Mum always comes to see us, even when she's carrying shopping bags bigger than me and she's breathin' heavy and her cheeks are red and I know that all she wants to do is go home. She always comes through to the back room and says 'wow! You built this all by yourself?' and we always nod and say 'uh hu', and Mum always smiles and ruffles my hair and then she says 'sorry' to Mr. Arlert in that quiet voice Mums use when they don't want kids to hear 'em.

But that day it was Dad, and he went straight to the front desk where Mr. Arlert was reading the paper, and Mr. Arlert put the paper on the desk and they said some things and then they both looked kinda sad. When Dad gets sad his face gets full of lines. His nose and his cheeks and his forehead and his mouth are made of lines and usually they're soft, and they go in all directions but when he's sad they're hard and they all go up-and-down and it was happening then, the worst I'd seen them since the time Grandma left us.

I looked at Armin and he looked at me and we didn't say anything. We sat in the fort – it was dusty from all the old books and the back room was kind of cold – and we spied on the front desk while Dad and Mr. Arlert talked about whatever it was that was making them sad. I remember picking at a scab on my knee – I got it playing down by the river with Armin (that's one of our favourite places to play, even though Mum doesn't like it very much because it's dangerous) - and it bled when I pulled at it.

And then Dad came in and he said 'ready to go, son?' and I said 'do you like the fort? We made it ourselves' and Dad didn't say anything. I waved goodbye to Armin, and I thanked Mr. Arlert on the way out like I did every Friday, and he said 'have a good weekend, Eren' which was the third Weird Thing, because he normally doesn't say a word.

It was sunny when we got outside, which was cool because it was really early in April and usually it's still kinda wet and cloudy but that day it was warm and fresh. It was so warm I had to take off my scarf – Mum always makes me wear it when the weather is cold so I don't get sick, and it's red and kind of ratty 'cuz I wear it so often, but it's still nice.

I said 'can we go play catch in the park?' and Dad was quiet for a little while and then he said 'not today, son' and I said 'okay', even though it wasn't.

When we got closer to the house Dad stopped and he said 'Eren, listen. We have a guest staying with us, okay? She's around your age' and I said 'a girl?', which I wasn't happy about because the only girls I knew were the girls at school, and the other boys bully you if you talk to them, and I didn't wanna get bullied for having one staying in my house. But Dad said 'yes, a girl, and you need to be nice to her, you understand? She's had a rough few days' so I said 'okay' again, even though it wasn't okay at all, and Dad nodded and squeezed my shoulder, and then we rounded the corner and I ran the rest of the way, up the front steps and into the kitchen.

And there she was.

She was sitting in my chair at the kitchen table, and Mum was kneeling in front of her like Mums do when they're trying to be friendly and not like Mums, and Mikasa was sucking on her shirt sleeve with one of her legs bouncing like mine does when I'm nervous before a Big Race.

Mum looked at me and she said 'hi, honey' and I said 'who's she?' and Mum looked at Dad in that way she looks at me when I've done something to embarrass her in public. Dad scratched at the back of his neck, shrugged a shoulder and said 'I didn't know what to tell him'.

'Eren, this is Mikasa. She'll be staying with us for a little while', Mum said, and I said 'okay' because I knew that's what she wanted me to say.

Mikasa wasn't lookin' at us. She was staring at her own toes with the biggest, darkest eyes I've ever seen, almost as dark as the hair on her head but not quite as shiny, and her leg was still bouncing and it was making the chair legs creak.

I said 'why is she here?' and Mum looked back at her, and she did the Mum Sigh – the loud, slow one Mums do before they tell you something important – and then she said 'I'll explain soon, I promise' which I understood to mean it's Grown Up stuff and you're too little to get it, which made me kind of mad, but last time this happened Mum and Dad sat me down and tried to explain Taxes and it was really boring, so I decided I didn't want to push again.

'What time's dinner?' I said instead, because it was getting late and I hadn't eaten since lunch and I was starving, and Mum said 'Soon, I'm just making pasta today, with that tomato sauce you like. I haven't been shopping yet' which was the fourth Weird Thing. Mum always does the shopping on a Friday, even that time she had the flu and was too sick to cook after, or that time she broke her wrist slipping on ice Christmas before last.

The only time I can remember that she didn't shop on a Friday was the week Grandma left us, because that Friday they went out all dressed in black and left me with Uncle Hannes, and when they finally picked me up we had to get take away food on the way home, because Mum hadn't been shopping yet.

I said 'kay' and Mum said 'why don't you show Mikasa some of your toys?' and I looked at my feet because I wanted to say no, 'cuz she's a girl and my friend Reiner always told me that girls shouldn't play with boys toys, which I thought was weird, because they're just toys and my mum has played with them before and she's a girl, but he said it's what his dad told him, and his dad is a cop and he knows a lot of stuff so he's probably right.

I dragged my feet over to Mikasa – Mum whipped my shoulder with the tea towel because my trainers sometimes leave marks on the wood and they're really hard to clean off – and stopped in front of her chair. She looked at me with those huge eyes (they're so big and they're black as night and you could definitely fall in 'em if you looked too close) and I looked at my shoes and said 'wanna come play with my cars?' and she said 'okay'.

She slipped off the chair and onto the floor. Her bare feet made this slapping noise on the wood, like mine do when I run really fast without socks on. I didn't know what to do with my hands – if I want Armin to move anywhere I pull on his sleeve, but Mum always told me it was rude and I shouldn't do it – so I put them in the pockets of my jeans like my dad does and I went upstairs. I knew Mikasa was following me because the stairs are really creaky and I could hear her behind me the whole way up.

When we got to my bedroom door I stopped and turned and said 'wait here', and then I got some spare socks from my drawers and gave them to her, because my bedroom floor sometimes has splinters and they're really not nice to take out the bottoms of your feet.

I've got this huge toy box that lives at the end of my bed that Dad made when I was even smaller than I am now and it's dark wood and I keep all my cars and games and dolls in there so that I know where everything is if I wanna play with it. I opened it up and moved to one side so Mikasa could take a look, and I said 'you can play with anything' and she reached for my Buzz Lightyear and I said 'except that'. She put it back and picked up one of my new Transformers and I said 'or that', and she put it back and made a face like she was thinking really hard.

'You can have this one' I said, and I gave her an old toy car. It still worked okay, it just wasn't as cool as my newer ones and the wheels made a weird scratchin' noise and they sometimes jammed if you played with it for too long. Mikasa took it and ran it back and forth across the floor in front of her knees.

'You don't talk much' I said, because she hadn't said many words at all and I wondered if maybe she was real stupid and hadn't learned them yet, but then she looked up at me and I saw the whole world in her eyes and I realised she knew an awful lot more than I did and for a minute, I felt kind of sad for her. Mikasa just pulled her sleeve up to her mouth and took it between her teeth, then went back to rolling the car.

We didn't say much at all while we played, and then Mum called us down for dinner and I was quiet while we ate, sneaking handfuls of grated cheese from the bowl when nobody was looking and listening to Dad talk about work while Mum gave Mikasa worried kind of looks.

After I helped wash the dishes – I turned nine last month so now I gotta do more chores than before – Dad took me up for a bath and I got ready for bed, and I didn't see a thing of Mikasa for the rest of the night.

It's been a week now and she's still here. She's started talking more and she's actually pretty cool - she's been to loads of places I can't even pronounce the name of, and she says she's eaten snakes and sharks and dogs but I don't know if I believe her. One day I asked her where her parents were, but Mum shouted at me and Mikasa went really quiet and stopped eating her lunch, so I've never brought it up again, even though I'm still curious. Mikasa didn't talk for the rest of the day, but next morning she was back to normal, like nothin' had happened at all.

Just another Weird Thing in a very long list of Weird Things.

This is my first time posting an SNK fic to fanfiction - you can find more of my writing on tumblr someone-stole-my-shoes, so feel free to drop me a follow. I do take prompt requests, but I'm a little swamped with them right now so if you do have one in mind, it might take me a while to get to.

Anyways, I hope you liked the first chapter - chapter 2 is also done, so I'll post that as soon as. Please favourite or follow if you wanna, or drop me a review if you have the time.

Thank you for reading!