Word Count: 5,341

Mikasa stared intently up at her bedroom ceiling. Staring, staring, practically glaring at the plain, whitewashed slats. She sighed softly and rolled over on her bed, changing the focus of her intense gaze onto the back of her hand. Glaring, glaring, practically daring it to have something happen to it.

She sighed again, much louder and frustrated this time. She was almost tempted to write something on it herself, but her mother didn't like it when she did so. She's so old fashioned , Mikasa thought. What's the point of having the same markings on your skin as your soulmate if you're not allowed to talk to them like that?

She propped her head up on the palms of her hands and stared out the window at her mother's garden, the one she sometimes helped keep. It was a fun pastime, but lately she'd been feeling more and more cooped up in the tiny cabin she, her parents, and younger brother called home. Sure, it had been fine and dandy a couple years ago, when she was the only child and much smaller. But being seventeen now and with most of her parents' attention directed towards her brother, she just couldn't find it in herself to feel contented anymore.

Something, be it merely teenage angst, the desire of humanity to never be kept in so small a cage, or simply feeling as though there was more to life than living alone in a rural mountain, was growing inside her. She couldn't quite put her finger on what it was, but she could sense it, bubbling, rippling, overflowing inside her like a fresh, clean spring.

She felt something warm tickle against her cheek. Ah, she thought. He's up to something . She gently brushed her cheek with her fingertips, and feeling the coarseness of freshly scraped skin, decided her soulmate had gotten into another one of his fights.

A sickly yellow bruise began blossoming on her shoulder. She paid it no mind as she got up off her bed and walked silently out the door. He'd always been like this, her soulmate. Getting into various scrapes and spats every couple weeks was what happened to him. She never knew why, and the sheer amount of bruises and scratches that showed up on her skin had alarmed her parents when she was younger, but once they realized they weren't actually hers, they had calmed down. At any rate, they'd been petering out for the last few years.

She opened the bathroom door to look in the mirror, just to affirm her suspicions. She opened the thick, white curtains covering the small window to let in more light and tilted her head so that she could take a better look at her cheek. Yup. He's fighting , she mused as a smudge of dirt showed up on her forehead. With a small smile of exasperated acceptance, she opened up a cabinet drawer for a washcloth so she could wash her face. At least one of the upsides to having little to do all day was that there was nothing stopping her from doing things like this.

Absently, she picked out the last rag from the bottom, but as she unfolded it, a small, black pencil rolled out from between the folds and fell to the floor. Curious, she folded the cloth back up, put it on the rim of the washbasin for later, and picked up the pencil.

It wasn't graphite in the center, that much she could tell. It was far too dark, a shade of midnight black, to be even considered. The pencil was too finely made, its wood too red, too smooth to be just the kind for learning to read and write. And it was coated in a thin layer of black paint, and golden letters she couldn't read were embossed on the side.

She swiped her finger across the point, not sure what she was expecting. Certainly not for it to leave a black streak.

She looked up. There was a streak of dried blood on her upper lip, smudges all over her face and neck, and various scrapes and bruises scattered across her body. She looked back down at her hand, with its dark black pencil streak. An opportunity was presenting itself to her.

She pocketed the pencil, grabbed the washrag, and scrubbed her face clean, hoping that her soulmate's fight was over by now. She wrung out the rag, and headed right straight back to her room.

Calling her soulmate a ' he ' wasn't something she'd always done. For the longest time, she hadn't considered the gender of who she was meant to be with, only who they would be to her. It was a number of years back, when she was nine, that she learned he was a he.

She was playing in the woods that day, chasing the fairies dancing through the evening air. When she grew tired, she plopped down at the banks of the nearby creek, daintily removed her shoes and socks, and let her tired feet feel the cool water wash over them.

She poked a finger in the thick mud, then drew it back out. Having nothing else in particular to do, she traced a few simple letters onto her arm with it: hello

She screamed when the ruddy letters started forming next to her own by their own accord: who r you

Finally realizing it was someone else scratching their own arm in order to respond, she hastily washed away the mud in the stream, wiped her arm dry on her dress, and carefully wrote in mud as response: i'm you

And to her, it was true. She remembered her father telling her that mother was just another part of him. They were two in body but one in soul, a part of another that could not be severed.

that's stupid , the ruddy scrawl replied. Out of room on their left arm, they continued, albeit far more messily, on their right: I'm a boy. Are you a girl?

Mikasa glanced up at the sky. The orange glow of the sunset was fading away, making way for the first faint stars twinkling against the deep, velvety blue of the night. Her bedtime was rapidly approaching. Washing away the mud and drying her arm again as fast as she could, she shifted into a squat, ran her finger through the mud one last time. Scribbling ' Yes ' on her arm, she shook it off just as quickly, picking up her shoes and socks and running as fast as her little legs could carry her back home.

She examined her fingernails now, kept very short and neat so that they wouldn't snag or break on anything (also making scratching itches a pain). At least, that's what her mother always told her; she privately suspected it was to make sure she couldn't scratch out words on her arms or legs.

She sat down on her bed, the strange pencil in her hand, and all of her pale forearm as her canvas. Her hand hovered over the part near her elbow for a few seconds, feeling suddenly at a loss for words. Slowly, she rested her right arm on her left, and her left on her lap, hunching over the both of them in a way that would make her mother swoon from how bad for her spine it was.

At long last, the words came to her, the same as they had been those years ago. In perfect, tiny writing, she wrote on her arm: Hello.

For a what felt like forever, nothing happened. Her forearm remained completely blank with the exception of her lone greeting. Then, suddenly, a small spot of black exploded in the center of her arm, followed up by a messy, nearly illegible reply: Uhhhhhhhhhhnnn Eiem cant' respond rijht nou he's beeem inco– encab– INCAPACITATED. But uhhnnnnn I'm his fried Armin

The words often smudged together, and by the time the message was complete, the entire first few words were impossible to read from the letters running together. Whoever was writing on… Eiem? must have been using ink.

The words all ran together before getting crudely cleaned off. Mikasa watched it, fascinated by how without even touching it, the ink left her skin, leaving only a dark grey stain on her otherwise clean arm. When nothing happened for a few seconds, she realized that was her cue to say something.

Eiem? she ended up asking.

Oh, sorry , came the somewhat neater reply. EREN, that's his name. Sorry if you can't read my writing that well.

It's alright, Mikasa wrote back once the ink washed itself away again. She paused for a minute, finding herself once again without words. With nothing else to do, she asked the only other question she could think of: Is he ok? He seems to get into a lot of fights.

Her words were wiped away, leaving a prominent smudge on her arm, but for a few terrifying minutes no words, from Armin or otherwise, came back to her. Butterflies began to flutter in her stomach, scared of the unknown.

He's okay, Armin scrawled. We were just sparring a couple minutes ago. He hasn't gotten in an actual fight in a couple years. Sorry if he ever scared you like that. He never really wanted to write on himself because his mom's a clean freak, and because you didn't seem to want to talk.

Sparring? she thought. Ah, they must be in the military.

She had never heard of the walls that surrounded them, or of the titans that roamed outside of them, or of the military that fought beyond them, from her parents. Nor had she read about it in the few books around her home. Nothing in her waking life could have ever pointed these things out to her. Indeed, how fitting it was that all she had ever known about life beyond the mountain was told through her dreams.

Dreams were not a frequent visitor of hers, but when they showed up at her door, she welcomed them warmly. In exchange for her hospitality, they often told her stories about a different version of her, one that had cut her hair short, one that flew through the air like a bird, one that fought for the freedom of humanity for the mere reason that a boy, one with green eyes who she somehow knew had saved her from losing her own freedom as a child, wanted it more than anything else in the world.

Never had she ever seen the reason why she followed the boy like his own shadow did; all she knew is that he had saved her. To some degree, the self she saw in her dreams confused her. At what point would her debt to this boy be paid? And was not protecting him the way she did in some way the same as not being free at all? She sometimes wondered.

Yet even so, the version of herself she saw only through sleep was one that tugged at her heartstrings, one that made her long to break free of the tiny bubble she called her world. If she could just reach that freedom, reach those walls, reach that boy she saw in her dreams. Perhaps then the longing within her would cease.

What's it like out there, she carefully wrote on her arm, to see the world as it truly is?

Truthfully, it's a little frightening. It's kind of hard to enjoy because we're always moving so fast, Armin explained. And if something goes wrong, we could get brutally mauled or eaten by a titan.

For some reason, despite the terrible world that visited her in her dreams, the idea of mortal danger lying outside the safety of her little bubble in the waking world had never occurred to her, and realizing it now shocked her to the core.

The world is cruel, Mikasa realized. She sat up and stretched her tired back, looking out the window at the summer flowers blooming in the garden that was just beyond. A faint smile tugged at her lips. But it's also very beautiful.

Her forearm tingled, a sign that someone was marking her soulmate's skin again. Looking down, she saw a sloppy black line striking through all that had been previously written, followed up by everything getting meticulously rubbed away. Once their skin had been sufficiently cleared, a new hand began to form the words.

Why don't you talk more often? the new, less loopy (but more scribbly) writing asked.

Her heart leapt up from her chest into her throat, then fell with a splash into her stomach, scaring the butterflies inside, all in the span of a second. She knew. She had no idea how or why, but she knew this was the other half of her soul writing to her. She remembered reading about this phenomenon once, just once, in a book she found in a travelling peddler's cart. How strange it was indeed to experience it firsthand.

Trying to calm her erratic heart, she adjusted her hold on the pencil and forced her muscles to relax. My mom thinks it's best for us to just meet as it happens, she wrote. Even though I don't think you'd ever find me without help, she thinks it'll happen.

There was a pause, in which she finally calmed down enough so that her mind no longer buzzed as though filled with bees, lasting several minutes that each felt like hours.

You could come find me .

Find… him? Now that was a thought that had certainly never crossed her mind.

Find him. It certainly could be done. But she had no ending point, no idea what he looked like or where he would be.

Yet at the same time, it was new. Something different than the simple life in the little bubble she had lived in all her life. And, she'd be free to spread her wings and to find him, Eren. Something new, something different, something free.

All were things she innately craved.

All were things she could do.

I'll find you.

"Mama, we're almost out of clean rags. I'm going town to the river to clean them this afternoon. Is that okay?"

Mikasa's mother looked her over, seemingly more than a little suspicious at their request. "Do you need them?" she asked.

"Yes." That was at least a truth, unlike the statement that they needed to clean the rags. In reality, she had hidden most of them so that she could use this excuse to get out of the house. She had even waited the two weeks to be able to use it honestly, and had spent that time well by planning.

"How many more days?"

"Five, including today."

"Tch." Her mother shook her head. "Well, if you need them that badly, I'll go after lunch."

"You don't have to do that; I've done laundry before."

"You don't know how to get blood out."

Mikasa couldn't argue with that.

Her next opportunity presented itself to her in the form of a travelling peddler who arrived at their doorstep the next evening.

As her mother was bartering, Mikasa snuck around to the back of his cart, just to see if there was enough room so that she could smuggle herself in among the goods. There was, and she planned to sneak away at dawn.

All went according to plan at first: the peddler stayed for dinner and the night, for the mountain they lived on was too isolated to get to the nearest town before sundown. Mikasa went to bed early that night so that she could rise early the next morning.

But the peddler had left before dawn, and she was devastated.

Instead of waiting for or creating her next opportunity, Mikasa took advantage of the night's natural cover when she realized the peddler had already left.

With nothing but her black pencil in her pocket and knowing nowhere else to go, she went into the familiar woods surrounding her house, all the way over to the creek she had played in as a child. There she chose to rest.

The night before, she'd had a dream. Yet, while she somehow knew it was of the same universe she often dreamt of, it seemed a little different this time.

She was young, for one thing, around the age of nine. She was also at home, for another, which had never happened before in these dreams. Not to mention it didn't really look like home. There was blood everywhere in the room: on the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling. And it was cold. And dark.

It was home, but not home.

She could hear two unfamiliar voices muttering to each other in the background, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. She couldn't move. She had neither the strength nor the willpower to do so.

The door creaked open behind her, and she paid it no mind until–

"Die! Die, you fucking bastards!"

The spirited yell roused her mind, and she turned her head to see what was going on.

Everything was blurry, but her vision steadied and focused on a boy her age stabbing a grown man, eyes filled with unbridled rage. It was the same boy she found herself so unquestionably dedicated to in the world she saw in her dreams.

Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly in shock.

The second the two men lay unmoving in pools of their own blood, the young boy scampered over to where she herself lay and cut her loose. He introduced himself, though she couldn't quite catch his name.

Something began to tug at her mind, but sitting up in her dream caused a seam

less transition into the waking world.

She found herself sitting up, her feet long gone pruny from being in the creek for so long. She looked up at the sky. The royal blue she had fled by had made way for the pale grey of dawn, but even that was fleeing in favor of a vibrant orange hue that signalled the rising of the sun.

She was just rubbing the sleep from her eyes when she noticed a strange man lurking in the shadows nearby. She nearly screamed, but he held a finger up to his lips, effectively shushing her. She trembled as she pulled her legs out of the creek; he took a few steps forward and into the light.

"Hey, you, kid. What's your name?" he asked with what sounded like a default sarcasm.

"M-Mi–" she began, trembling as she pulled her feet out of the stream.

"Your surname ," he icily corrected.

"Ackerman."

He examined his nails with his narrow grey eyes. "You live on this mountain?"

"Y-yes."

"Got any siblings?"

"Yes."

"Ages and genders?"

"One, an eight-year-old younger brother."

"Tch." The strange man looked up. "Too young," he muttered, then crossed his arms and glared down at her. "What about you?"

"Seventeen, female."

"Who's your liege?"

"My… what?"

"Someone who you'd follow to the ends of the earth if they asked you to. Someone who you trust unconditionally." His cold demeanor dropped for a second as he searched for a way to describe what he was trying to explain, then hardened his gaze again and waved it off. "Hard to explain."

Mikasa's mind instantly flashed back to her last night's dream and the green-eyed brunet boy she always saw in that parallel universe. She shivered, though not from the cold. "I don't know," she replied.

"Hmm." He regarded her carefully, and she dared not move while under his scrutiny. "Care to join the military?"

She blinked in surprise. On one hand, sheer, dumb luck had dropped the perfect opportunity to find her soulmate right onto her lap. On the other, this was a stranger asking her, and she didn't know what he might be up to.

"What?" became her only reply, one of utter shock and disbelief.

"You're an Ackerman like me. You'd be useful in our next expedition outside the walls."

They were related?! She was related to this emo-looking stranger?!

"What?" she dumbly said again.

The man looked a little shocked and offended. "Didn't your old man ever tell you anything? You've got relatives living outside this mountain, you know."

Mikasa shook her head.

The man sighed. "I can tell you everything if you join us, but if not, then I can escort you home anyw–"

"No!" she cried, scrambling to her feet.

He stopped, raising an eyebrow at her. "No? To what? Are you running away?"

Guilty, she nodded, just the slightest bit ashamed to be admitting it.

"Tch."

"But I do want to join the military," she said.

The man grunted, obviously pleased. "Good," he said. "Follow me, then."

Levi Ackerman, he said his name was, captain of the Special Operations squad in the Recon Corps. Formerly a thug of the underground, he'd proven himself to be the strongest soldier humanity had to offer in the fight against the titans.

Her cousin.

Well, distant cousin. She wasn't too sure of the specifics, but he had affirmed without a single shred of doubt that they were indeed somehow related.

And while he didn't make her go back home because she didn't have her parents' permission to join the military, or anything else of that sort, he did make her write them a letter of goodbye so that they wouldn't come after her in the future. He signed it alongside her, too, so that they would know it was legitimate, and that was the end of the story. Neither one of them brought up the fact that she had run away from home ever again, not even to question why .

She was initiated into the Corps privately and without any training; after all, there was a mysterious power within her that Levi vouched for that was sure to be unlocked soon enough. That alone was enough to let her in with no questions asked.

She could only hope that what he was telling her was true.

She was to be a part of his squad, but not for her skill. No, she hadn't proven herself in battle yet and hadn't yet earned herself the honor of being called an elite. She was to be a part of his squad for one purpose, and one alone: monitoring. Because Levi was the only surviving Ackerman to have unlocked and mastered these mysterious powers to the Corps's knowledge, only he would know if she was progressing properly.

She met her new squadmates at dusk two days after running away. Well, all but two. They were apparently out for experiments with the resident scientist, but she was told nothing else, for it was all classified. Nevertheless, the four remaining members introduced themselves with great warmth.

"Oh, it's going to be so nice to have another girl on the squad again!" a brunette, ponytailed girl named Sasha squealed as she led Mikasa to what would be their shared room. "It's awful lonely sometimes, especially when it's that time of the month and the only other girl became queen a couple years back."

She sighed, pulling on Mikasa's arm and leading her into a simple room with two bunk beds, with only one bed of the four looking as though it had been slept in within the past year or so. The only other thing in the room was a simple dresser with a potted plant on it in front of the one narrow window.

It was small and unlived in, but it was to be her new home. However, she didn't mind that thought as much as she would have thought.

Sasha pulled Mikasa over to the one bed that looked used and plopped down on it, dragging the other girl along with.

"I know it's rather empty in here, but the castle's so big and the Corps is just so small ; most of us could probably room alone with all the empty rooms this place has got," was the first thing the brunette lamented about. "But it's better than rooming with one of the cadets, in my opinion; they're all younger than us…"

Mikasa began to tune her out, choosing instead to stare out the window at the fading light. She could see but a sliver of the sky from where she was, but she could still see it was beautiful from the slight bit that was visible. Though parts of it were obstructed by a dense column of steam, she could still watch as the dusky pinkish-purple swiftly fade away into the shades of royal blue, and the first faint stars lifted their faces to the night.

They twinkled to the moon afar, which itself captured Mikasa's attention. Still low in the sky, she could see it clearly now that the pillar of smoke was gone, and its beauty struck her in a way that never had before.

She was drawn out of her trance by the sharp crack of the lighting of a match. Startled, she glanced over at Sasha, who had leaned over and lit a candle but was now grinning somewhat sheepishly at her.

"Sorry," she said. "I noticed you weren't listening, so I thought maybe I could light a candle and sneak away to the kitchens without you noticing." She pulled a candle holder out of one of the dresser's smaller drawers and stuck the lit candlestick on it as she put the object by the plant. "Do you want the top bunk or the bottom? The top's not dusty, I promise, and the bottom isn't bad either, just a little slept in."

Mikasa felt tired suddenly, and she could hardly stifle the yawn that suddenly came upon her. "The bottom's just fine," she managed to mumble as she lay down and fell asleep.

She was woken sharply by something poking her in the side. Blinking slowly to let her eyes adjust to the bright rays of moonlight streaming into the room, she glanced around the room and sat up.

She stuffed her hand into her pocket, where the poking had come from, and pulled out the little black pencil she had brought from home. Its now blunt tip had jabbed painfully into her side as she slept, causing her to awaken.

For a while, she simply stared at it, unsure of what to do now that she was wide awake.

But the ample moonlight shone through the window and illuminated her open hand and the pencil held in it, and she knew what to do.

Listening to Sasha's soft snores coming from the bunk above, for want of a sharpener or any blade really, she dug her nail into the wood of the pencil and chipped away at it, exposing its soft, black core and making it easier to write with.

Sweeping the slivers under the bed, the pencil hovered just above her skin. She was scared to write anything. Her heart was pounding, but she didn't know why. But she swallowed it, her fear, in hopes that she would drown the butterflies compounding in her stomach.

Hey , she finally wrote on her arm. The strokes were no longer fine and easy to read, and it no longer tickled as it brushed up against her sensitive forearm, for most of the tip had crumbled away when stabbing into her side just minutes ago. Are you awake?

She lay down on the bed and shivered with anticipation. She squinted at the moon, so strangely bright yet not quite full. It seemed smaller than it had before she had fallen asleep. Briefly, she wondered if her soulmate was also looking at the moon or if he was asleep. She found the latter more likely, since it was a rather unholy hour to be awake, and yet–

Yeah , came his reply. It appeared he was using ink again, nevermind where he got it, for the letters dripped and distorted slightly from the moment they were written. I was out doing experiments with Armin this afternoon but I just can't sleep right now.

Experiments? she thought. Huh, well that sounded familiar, but if it was only him and Armin doing them without the apparent resident scientist, then it surely must have been only a coincidence.

The moon's too bright, I guess, he continued, followed up by a brief, almost expectant pause. So, how are you?

I joined the military, she told him, hoping to somehow convey the swell of pride in her heart through four mere words.

Really? Which branch? From through the wall, she could hear the loud creak of a bed as someone assumedly rolled over in their sleep.

She adjusted her own position on the bed, scooting closer to the wall and putting her back against it, nevermind the strange tingly sensation it gave her. Survey corps, she told him just as he began scribbling out his previous question and replaced it with, Wait, stupid question.

There was a pause in which neither person wrote anything, then they simultaneously began to rub away the words on their arms.

My uncle pulled me in , she began to explain, but her words were lost when Eren (Eren, Eren, Eren. She'd been forgetting she could call him something other than just "her soulmate") wrote in the exact same place at the exact same time.

You're not a trainee?

No, she explained again. My uncle Levi pulled me in. Said something about there being something important about being an Ackerman. I joined his squad so he could monitor my progress.

He rubbed away the words on their arms, leaving a distinct black streak where they had been, but he didn't respond right away.

Come outside.

Pocketing the pencil, she obeyed without a second thought. She opened the door, walked a few steps and–

"Ai!" she yelped when she crashed into someone in the dark.

"Found you," he breathlessly said.

Dazed, she looked wildly around until her eyes landed on the one other person in the hall with her. He looked just the same as the boy she protected and followed in her dreams, from the green eyes right down to the same lopsided grin he was giving her right then.

She was suddenly overwhelmed with feelings, feelings which came from so many sources, from the fact she had found him to the other fact that he was the same as the boy in her dreams. She couldn't help it; she began to cry, her mouth agape from shock and want of something to say, but no sound came out.

He reached out and tugged lightly on her long, black hair. "You look nice with it grown out," he told her. "But you might want to cut it short again; it might get caught in the gear."

She was still speechless, if not more so than before. Had he dreamt of her, too? Did they share more worlds than one?

"But first, I think this is long overdue."

She felt something soft and warm snake around her neck, and the ends of it were flicked over her face. She pulled the ends of the scarf off her face and looked at Eren. Tears were now flowing down her cheeks, thick and hot and fast, but her voice seemed to have finally found its place.

"Found you."

Author's Note: Started this way back in February on a writer's block and it's just been in my drafts ever since. Figured I should finish it up, and well, here it is. It's not that bad, but I feel like some of the themes could have been tied up better. Oh well. It's kind of long the way it is right now anyway. I like how it ended though, kind of open ended and such. Yeah. Also I wonder if any of you got one of my I guess jokes towards the end, since "ai!" sounds like "I" and then Eren finishes up her apparent sentence starter with "Found you". Idk I thought it was cute.

Reviews would be v nice ples but if that's not something you're into I understand. Faves would also be nice but if it's not good enough for that I understand that too. I hope you all have a greaaaaaat daaaaaay~~~