title: always

pairing: eren ო mikasa

setting: up to episode 12 in the anime. I AM HOOKED.

summary: "Let me come with you," she says. And he always, always relents

disclaimer: own nothing!

"Let me come with you."

Eren grunts, jasmine-green eyes sharp. "Mikasa, I'm just getting firewood."

"I know," she says, voice soft. Her voice is always soft—never gentle, but soft, and sometimes tender, but only ever with Eren and maybe, maybe Armin. "Let me come with you."

His wisp-thin patience snaps. "Mikasa." Even when he's angry, her name still sounds beautiful in his voice. "I'm not a kid, not your little brother. I'm not a child. I don't need you to protect me."

She eyes the boy before her: ten years old, hunger-thin, and wild-eyed. There is a certain slant of wisdom—of age, of sentience—in his gaze. Not the sort of wisdom that the children of this war-stained world have all come to live with; his is an acute awareness, something, Mikasa thinks, that only those who have faced death could ever truly know.

He's killed for you, her mind murmurs, And you've killed for him.

"Let me come with you," she says, a third time, and finally, he relents.

X

"You're really joining the Survey Corps?" he asks her, over the fire-light.

"If you are, I am," is all she says. All she needs to say to explain herself.

Eren pinches the bridge of his nose, and sighs. Hard. It isn't meant to be angry or cruel, it is what it is: tired. Pained. "You don't have to. You really, really don't. Mikasa, you don't owe me anything. So don't do this for me."

"I'm coming with you, Eren," she tells him, voice firm. There is no room for argument. She pulls at the ends of the fate-red scarf at her neck—force of habit, she chides herself, ungraceful—and looks him in the bright, wide green of his eyes. Like meadows, she thinks, like the gardens of her child-years. "I won't let you go alone."

"I'm not—" your baby brother, not a child, not something you need to protect. She hears the speech a mile coming, and tunes it out, and, as always, remains by his side.

Because he does need her.

And she needs him.

X

"Let me come with you, Eren." The words are so very familiar in her throat, her lungs: they are like air and water. They don't form a question—they never had. She'll always be with him. And even if he never says it, he'll always be with her.

Eren is half-blind with his own nerves, with the idea of controlling Titan skin and bones that are not his own. He eyes the boulder from miles away, hands clasping around the key at his neck as he barks: "How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not your baby brother. I'm not a kid. I'm not something you need to protect."

It's almost a plea. Don't do this. Don't die: his eyes scream what what his words cannot. You don't need to protect me. I'm not your kid, not your little brother.

You're right, she wants to say. Mikasa feels the words in her teeth and bites them back. You're not, she wants to say. She wants to step forward, wants to stop time. Wants to stop this war and stop Eren from running, wants to trail her palms to either side of his face. Wants to breathe him in and lean in close and have a moment to herself, a moment to be fifteen and in love, because that's what she is, really—fifteen and in love.

And that's why she says nothing. Because this is war. And she can't be fifteen and in love. All she can do is follow.

She is going to follow Eren even before the order to protect him is given. She will always follow him.

But before the officer comes, though, before she is given the word, there is a split-second where Eren glances at her eyes for a moment too long, and then the red of her neck, and then her eyes again.

And she wonders.

And hopes.

If maybe he is fifteen and in love, too.