Chapter Text
Four years have passed since the Alliance stopped the most devastating event in human history: the Rumbling. Ever since, the world has been rebuilding itself slowly but steadily. Try as they might, the people could never forget the atrocities caused by the usurper of the Founding Titan, Eren Jaeger. Seen as a devil, a monster, only a handful of people in the world knew Eren for who he once was—not just for what he did at the end of his life. Even then, among that handful of people, only two knew the real purpose behind the Rumbling. Mikasa sat to the left of Eren's grave, leaning against the tree where the tombstone was placed. Below her, she could see the many houses and shops newly built on previously untouched land, now that all the walls which once constricted humanity had fallen due to the Rumbling. A few days ago, Armin had sent her a letter, saying that he and the others would be arriving on the island soon. "Eren,” she murmured, still looking toward the towns below. “Everyone will soon be here, to meet you.” She turned her gaze back to the tombstone. “You’re happy, right?” She looked away, staring at nothing in particular.
When she looked back again, she sharply inhaled.
For a moment, she saw a significantly younger Eren napping beneath this very tree, his head bowed, with a younger version of herself trying to wake him up. The memory struck her with a painful clarity, from more than a decade ago. Back then, Eren would fall asleep here, and she would find him and wake him before it got too late to return home after collecting wood.
Tears welled up in her eyes at the memory — a time when there were no titans to fear and no world to save. There was only Eren: stubborn, reckless, with a determination no one could match. The boy who saved her. The boy who wrapped his scarf around her and promised to do so forever.
She couldn’t stop the tears from falling, dampening the scarf around her neck. Closing her eyes, she tried to wipe them away, but they wouldn’t stop. She covered her mouth, muffling her sobs.
After some time, the tears stop falling, but her heart still achingly longs for the person she loves. “I wish I could see you again.” But Mikasa knows that there's no way for that to happen now, after all, he's dead, killed by her own hands. A bird suddenly latches onto the scarf at her neck, and she gasps, thinking it will take away the faded red thread that still carried his warmth and scent. Instead, it wraps the loose end around her neck before flying off. She stands up and follows the bird as it flies away. She smiles genuinely, “Eren,” she breathes, “You wrapped this scarf around me… thank you.”
The wind carried the bird out of sight, and Mikasa stood there a moment longer before turning away from the hill and walking toward her home. It's a two-bedroom cabin, not small, but not particularly large either. The Queen, Historia Reiss, offered houses in the interior to her and her friends, but Mikasa politely rejected the offer, wanting to be close to Eren's resting place, although she didn't outwardly state that. After arriving home, she remembers that she was supposed to go to the market for groceries today. She enters her room, grabs a modest amount of money hidden in one of her closet drawers and stuffs it in her purse. Ready… she thinks. She leaves her house and locks the door, just in case anyone uninvited tries to steal whatever she might have inside.
The boy opens his eyes and finds himself in the middle of a town. He doesn’t remember anything before waking up, except falling into the river while fishing with his father. He thinks he saw his father dive in to save him, but the memory is blurry. The boy stands up, having been leaning against a wall. After a few moments, his mind registers that he's completely lost, possibly far beyond the areas his parents ever allowed him to go by himself. The worst part is that he doesn't know where his father is either. Panic and fear cause tears to well up in his eyes, but he quickly closes them, stopping the tears from falling, knowing crying wouldn't help him now.
Regular passersby barely give him more than a glance—not that they have any reason to. He forces himself to think despite the panic and fear creeping into his mind. The boy remembers something his father once told him. If he ever got lost in the woods—where his father had taken him to learn how to hunt—or if he got lost in town, he should think about how to get home, or how to find his father or mother, whoever might be with him, instead of panicking. Father and mother would always find him, no matter what.
He sees the back of a blonde-haired man walking and runs up to him, hoping to ask for help. The man is wearing a dark grey suit, looking a bit out of place here. He tugs at his right sleeve, making the man turn slightly to face him. Immediately, the boy notices his vibrant blue eyes, seemingly glowing under the shadow of the hat he’s wearing.
The boy finds himself staring longer than he should. The man looks oddly familiar — not from memory, but from description. As if he’s finally seeing someone he’s heard about before, even if he can’t remember when or why.
It doesn't matter now, I need to know where I am first.
“M-mister,” the boy stutters. “Would you mind telling me exactly where this place is?”
The man now turned fully toward him and saw the small boy, slightly anxious and sweating. The man's eyes widened as he took in his features. His eyes were a breathtaking shade of green, a color he had only seen on one person before. He looked very similar to his late best friend, but quickly dismissed that thought.
He crouched down to meet the boy’s eyes and asked gently, “This is a small town near Shiganshina. Are you perhaps lost?”
The boy freezes in place, eyes widening. Shiganshina? He’d never heard of such a place. He truly was completely lost.
The man noticed the boy’s growing anxiety and stillness and said, “I’ll take that as a yes. What’s your name?” The man was taken aback by how quickly the boy composed himself, his face showing a quiet determination.
“Noah,” he answered shortly.
“Noah,” the man said with a smile. “I’m Armin. How did you get lost?” Armin asked, trying to gather information that might help him find Noah’s parents or home.
“Armin…?” he repeated quietly, as if testing it. His brows knit together, confusion flickering across his face before he shook his head. “Sorry. I’ve just… heard that name before.”
He glanced down briefly, then answered the question anyway.
“I was out fishing with my father, away from our house, when I accidentally fell into the river where we were fishing.”
Armin’s face lit up with concern. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Noah said, “but then I found myself slowly losing consciousness and woke up to find myself here.”
Armin thought for a moment that Noah’s story seemed quite outlandish, but he quickly dismissed the thought. The boy seemed genuinely lost and truthful. He hummed, trying to think of what to do to help the young boy find his parents, when Noah interrupted his thoughts.
“But just to be sure… this is in Marley, right?” Noah asked, wanting to confirm that he was still in the same nation as his home.
Armin’s eyebrows rose slightly. Marley? He couldn’t possibly be from there, he thought. But he quickly hid his surprise. “Well, not exactly,” he said. “Tell me, where are you from?” He tried his best to conceal his curiosity, wanting to know whether the boy really was from Marley.
Noah hesitated only briefly. “Marley,” he said. “That’s where I’m from.”
Armin’s suspicions were confirmed, though he found it bizarre. How had a young boy, whose home was apparently in Marley– a nation now almost entirely flattened by the Rumbling– ended up on Paradis Island? And how had he presumably drowned, only to wake up in Shiganshina with no injuries or health problems?
Just as he was about to ask where he specifically lived in Marley, a familiar voice called out to him cheerily. “Armin, is that you?” He quickly turned away from Noah toward the direction of the voice.
“Mikasa!” He smiled broadly upon seeing one of his best friends from childhood.
The surprise in seeing her also caused him to momentarily forget about Noah’s situation.
Armin noticed how her hair is much longer than he'd last seen it, now reaching her mid-back. She also looked more full of life, the tension in her shoulders, which she once almost always had as a soldier was no more.
“When did you arrive on Paradis?” Mikasa asked.
“Just a couple of hours ago, actually,” he said with a smile, standing up from his crouched position. Mikasa smiled in reply, inexplicably happy to see her best friend after four years.
“But where are the others?” Mikasa asked as she doesn't see any of her other friends nearby. “They're not too far away from here.” Armin answers reassuringly.
“Actually, I was just on the way to see you. What are you doing here, though?” Armin asked her, genuinely curious.
“I ran out of groceries, so I came down to the town to shop.”
Her eyes widened when she noticed the kid standing beside Armin — those green eyes. She had only ever seen them on a single person.
Noah, lost in thought, finally snapped out of his trance when he noticed Mikasa looking at him wide-eyed. “M-mom?!” he exclaimed at the sight of her.
“E-eh?” Mikasa was taken aback, confused as to why this young boy would call her his mother. She was only 23 and hadn’t even kissed a man(if you don't count her kissing Eren's lifeless head), let alone had a child. And the only one she would have done so with was now gone.
Why had the boy called Mikasa his mother? She surely didn’t have a child. And yet… there was something about his face — the shape of his eyes, the curve of his mouth — that felt oddly familiar, as if she had seen it somewhere before. The thought of being anyone’s mother, let alone a presumably Marleyan child’s, felt impossible. Her heart raced, confusion and disbelief swirling together, while Armin’s mind struggled to reconcile what he was seeing — a boy calling Mikasa “mom,” when in all reality, she couldn’t possibly have one.
Just then, they heard a shout to their right.
“Noah!” A tall and lean brunette man with a pendant hanging off of his neck, leaning forward with hands on his knees and breathing heavily, turned toward Noah. “I’ve been…” The man paused to take another breath. “…searching everywhere for you.”
Realizing this was indeed his father, he momentarily forgot about his supposed mother as tears welled up in Noah’s eyes. “Dad!” he exclaimed, jumping forward. The man caught him, hugging him tightly to his chest.
The man’s eyes softened as he hugged his son. Relief and exhaustion battled across his face. “You really have a way of worrying your parents, you know,” he murmured, holding him just a little tighter.
Mikasa didn’t move. It was as if the air around her had thickened and every sound fell away.
The man holding the boy shifted his weight — and for a moment, her gaze locked on something that felt impossibly, painfully familiar. Her heart raced, confusion and disbelief swirling together. His voice, the shape of his jaw and nose, the color of his hair which seemed to be shorter than she last remembered, and the exact same shade of green his eyes bore. No matter how many years would pass after his death, she could never forget this man, now only a few feet away.
Her breath caught. “It–it can't be…”
Armin, standing beside her, went still, eyes widening as much as they could. His heart hammered, and for a beat his mind refused to make sense of what he was seeing — because he knew that face. He knew that voice. He had talked to him in his most vulnerable state, when he was already destined to sacrifice himself for him and his friends, and for freedom. He had cried and clung to his lifeless head.
“That’s…” Armin’s words died in his throat.
Mikasa took a step forward without realizing it, her heart pounding so loudly she thought it might give her away.
He was standing there.
Alive.
“Eren.”