Attack On Titan: Dreams

He glares at his boots and curses internally at how he has let the situation affect their relationship. Even without the features his dream pushed upon him, it had been a caring and wholesome, and comfortable relationship just fine the way it was.

He hates how far they have fallen.

"I'm not upset with you."

Her voice cuts into his reverie, even and calm, reeling him back into the present. But then, he looks up at her to find that her composed tone is only a clever mask, betrayed by the troubled knit of her brow, and the tight curl of her fists at her side.

"It's just... is this how it's going to be between us, from now on?"

Her voice cracks, and he frowns deeply at how the words come out so quietly almost fearfully, as though she is gathering every ounce of courage in her possession to pose a question he honestly does not even have an answer to.

And the more he ponders on her words, the more they scare him.

She is vocalizing doubt about their relationship their friendship and acknowledging that there existed a possibility that they two could stay in this strange limbo forever, all due to a stupid hang up he had, that even he could not understand.

He doesn't want that.

He doesn't want this - this grating tension and inability to speak to one another.

And neither does she - he imagines it's why her voice is shaking, it's why her eyes are starting to glisten, and it's why she sounds so sad.

He sets his jaw, because an ache far different from the swell of guilt he has become so accustomed to presses across his chest, and the urge to gather her into his arms is suddenly overwhelming.

"I'm..." she shakes her head lightly, "I... I shouldn't have said those things."

And the ache instantly worsens and consumes him whole, and he is suddenly so angry with himself.

'You really shouldn't have. Then we wouldn't be in this mess,' the defiant, rational part of his brain says, though in large part, he does not agree with the sentiment at all, and the conflicting sides throw his head into even more chaos.

"Mikasa... " his tongue feels like lead as he says her name, and he is just there, just there on the cusp of spilling it all out because he can't stand the fact that he is the reason for the dark circles under her eyes, the bruises on her fists, the frown on her face, the scar on her abdomen, the scar on her face, the scar on her heart -

"Eren," she says his name firmly, and it seems as if something within her has snapped, because she is shaking her head at the floor, her eyebrows arching up, and she is blinking more as though she is willing herself not to cry, and he feels his expression begin to mirror hers, his mouth curving into a deep frown.

"I know. I already know that you don't want... all that. And... and I'm okay with that. I really am."

'How can you know that when I don't even know that?!' he screams on the inside, because she doesn't know.

She doesn't know a damn thing.

She doesn't know what he's thought of every day since she said those words and kissed him and so cruelly poisoned his mind with thoughts of a life beyond the hell they lived in - poisoned him with vivid thoughts of pleasure and pure happiness that he previously never even had the capacity to entertain. She does not know that he could not unsee the swollen pink of her lips or the imagined pregnant swell of her belly, and she does not know that the thought has crossed his mind that maybe someday, when their lives and humanity's fate were not hanging in the balance, he could, perhaps, want all that too.

Her downcast eyes, travel up slowly to meet his pitiful gaze, and like that very night, her eyes search his, waiting for him to say something. And he just blinks back and swallows, unable to speak because he can't very well say any of that.

And again, his silence is the reason she looks completely defeated and takes a step backward and his body, as though reflexively telling him not to make the same mistake twice, falls in step almost automatically, as he reaching reaches out to tug at her sleeve.

"Mikasa, let me "

"Don't."

The lone syllable is loud and cutting and stern, her voice shaking with restraint as she moves her arm out of his reach, charcoal blues meeting his bewildered gaze head-on.

The rejection is more jarring than he expects it to be, and his hand drops slowly to his side, mouth hanging agape in dumb shock.

She stares at him, eyes shining, and her expression softens as she shakes her head.

"You don't have to do that," she says for the second time that day, and though her voice is much quieter, there is a distinct edge to it. "You don't have to feel guilty, and you don't have to make anything up to me."

It is silent, and all he can do is listen because he is completely paralyzed.

Her mouth opens and closes as though she is trying to piece the next sentence together in her head, until finally, she shakes her head again, expression completely crestfallen.

"I've decided... I don't need or want anything from you when this is all over."