Chapter Text
Marley, 1947
Mikasa blinked her eyes open as the sun's rays peaked through the clouds and searched out her face, rousing her from an afternoon nap. She yawned and stretched her arms above her head, slowly coming to a sitting position from where she had been lying down with her sisters in the shadows of the grape vines. This was a favorite activity of theirs—going out in the morning promising Mama and Papa that they would go pick the fresh fruits, then playing hide and seek afterwards between the trellises and leaves until they wore themselves out and climbed into the shade for a slumber. Umeko and Kyō were still asleep, snoring softly on either side of her.
Smiling cheekily to herself, Mikasa grabbed a twig from the dirt beneath her and began to prod her younger sisters with it in turn until they arose.
"Rrnngg stop ittttt," Kyō muttered with her eyes still closed, left hand outstretched and blindly batting away at the offending stick. Umeko sat up with a comically loud yawn, her mouth stretching open to an unnecessary degree. Her little sisters were such drama queens.
"C'mon, get up Kyō. If we don't get back with the grapes soon Mama and Papa will send Yūka after us," Mikasa chided, abandoning her stick and resorting to physically pulling her sister up by her arms while she continued to pretend to sleep. The mention of their strict older sister snapped her eyes open however; Yūka would certainly chew them out for playing around in the fields rather than coming straight home to help with more chores.
"She thinks she's sooooo grown up now that she's 16. Haruto wasn't like this when he was her age!" Umeko lamented as she dusted the dirt off her knees. She'd always had a soft spot for their older brother.
"Yeah, but Komeni definitely was," mumbled Mikasa, to which the other two nodded gravely. Their oldest sister was nothing short of a menace to society and kindness everywhere (in their eyes, at least).
"Mika, if you start acting like that when you turn 16, I'm stealing your hairbrush," declared Kyō as she quickly rebraided her hair that had come undone during her nap.
"You steal my hairbrush all the time anyways!" Mikasa hmphed with an eyeroll, to which her sister shot back a sly grin and a shoulder shrug. Gathering their baskets, the three girls started the trek back home, giggling amongst themselves under the afternoon sun.
Years later, Mikasa would remember this as the last true day of her childhood. The last stretch of innocence before she learned first hand how cruel this beautiful world could be.
They came at dawn.
Mikasa had always known on an intellectual level that she and her family were not safe. As Eldians in Marley, they were openly hated by many. Usually this just meant upturned noses in the marketplace and rude comments on the street, but Mikasa knew that there were some out there who wished them harm and were willing to act on that wish: specifically, the Hellans.
Eldians in Marley were both an ethnic and religious minority. Most Eldians believed in the Founder Ymir, that she was a goddess incarnate on earth. Most Marleyans considered Ymir to be an important prophetess, but not a deity herself, rather one who prepared the way for the coming of the true God, Helos.
Most Marleyans practiced their faith in peace; the distaste many had for Eldians came more from a place of racism than from their differing religious views. But Hellans were extremists. They saw anyone who did not follow Helosity as evil to be expunged from the earth. Eldians who found themselves in their path could either convert from their "wicked" Ymirism or die. And that was if they were in a generous mood—most of the time they simply killed without question.
But as much as Mikasa knew these dangerous people existed, she never truly imagined they would come for her loved ones. Until that day.
The day that she, a naïve youth, learned just how cruel this world can be.
Mikasa awoke to the sound of thundering hooves. They shook her violently out of slumber, jostling the old wooden bed frame she lay on. Jumping up in a fright, she ran to the room where her parents slept.
"Mama! Papa! Wake up! Something's happening!" she cried, shaking their arms to rouse them.
"Mmmikasa, what's wrong?" her father asked, the sleep still in his voice, but the second he heard the hoofbeats he jolted upright.
"Mineko, get the children. Get to the main room. Get the hole ready," her father ordered as he threw on his shoes and ran to look out the front window. Mikasa felt her mother yank her by the wrist out of the room as she yelled the rest of her children's names to wake them up. Mikasa ran back to the room she shared with her sisters, yelling at them to hurry, while her mother went to the boys' room to grab her infant brother Hikaru, with three-year-old Udo already scooped up in Haruto's arms.
Quickly, they all gathered in the back room. Her father entered moments later, his visage grave.
"The Hellans. They're here."
Mikasa watched the color drain from her mother's face as she herself tried to process the words. She knew the plan for this scenario—they had gone over it as a family many times before. If the Hellans came to their village, that meant they were looking for Ymirist men to kill (Helos forbid the slaughter of women and children). If this happened, their nice Marleyan neighbor, Mr. McGath, would come over with his apple wheelbarrow. They would dig a hole in the wall in the back of the house, out of sight of the main road, and Papa would escape in Mr. McGath's wheelbarrow.
Mikasa knew this theoretically. But the reality of watching Haruto dig the mud bricks out of the wall hit her like a truck in that moment. Tears sprang from her eyes, welling over with the terror of losing her father. Everything was happening so fast. Her world was spiraling out of control before her very eyes and all she could do was stand and watch.
Papa hugged each of his children one by one to say goodbye. When it was her turn, Mikasa did her best to etch every detail of the moment into her mind—the scratch of his beard against her face, the warmth of his arms around her back, even the scent of his morning breath as it stung her nose.
She watched as he gave Mama a quiet kiss, as they tearfully gazed into each other's eyes while he whispered words of love to her before straightening his back and turning towards the hole Haruto had finished digging out of their wall. Mikasa tried to follow, only to find herself impeded by Komeni with a strong hug from behind; she gasped when she saw that even her usually stone-cold eldest sibling had tears in her eyes.
Mikasa wept as her father crouched to crawl through the hole, thrusting herself out of Komeni's arms as she tried to hold her back and latching onto her father's shoulder with an iron grip, yanking him around.
"What if I never see you again?" she sobbed as her father gave her one last hug.
He pulled back to gaze at her, holding her wet, tear-stained face in his large, calloused hands.
"It will be okay, my love. Trust in the Goddess. She will watch over us both until I can return."
With that, Mikasa's father disappeared through their wall and into the waiting wheelbarrow.
And she watched as Mr. McGath wheeled her entire world off into the distance.
Mikasa did not see her father for two years.
At first, she would sit in the front window all day and stare down the street, eyes peeled for her papa. No longer did she spend her free time playing with her sisters—now, the second she finished a chore, Mikasa was back at her post, gaze transfixed on a sight that would not come. At day's end, when the sun snuck back behind the mountains and the moon rose to steal its spot in the sky, she would slump back to her room, defeated and dead inside. Every day that he did not return was another crack in her heart.
Mikasa's only true respite was in slumber. When in her dreams, the Goddess would appear to her.
Mikasa had been having dreams about Ymir since she was six years old. In them, She would grab her hand and take her flying around the village and surrounding countryside. Since her father had left, Mikasa had come to treasure these dreams even more; she saw them as Ymir watching over her, just as her father had said She would.
But life moved on. And eventually, so did she—locking away a piece of her heart in the process. Mikasa would smile at her mother, would giggle with her sisters, but the light no longer reached her eyes.
Mikasa was 12 by the time her father made his way home. It was a tortuous 24 months, with not so much as a letter to let the family know whether he was dead or alive. Being in hiding, it was too risky. But finally, the wave of extremism seemed to calm down; the Hellans lost steam, their numbers dwindling. And so it was that her Papa could finally return home.
The day Mikasa's father walked back through their front door was the happiest day of her life. The reunion was a blur of tears and limbs as all 10 family members embraced, their patriarch at the center. The rest of the day was spent recounting everything he had missed in the past two years—Papa wanted to hear every story from every child, no matter how insignificant; he had missed them so, so dearly. He shed tears when Hikaru, a babe of just three months when he'd left, walked across the room blabbering up a storm.
As joyous as the occasion was, there was somber news as well. Her father shared with a pained expression that his older brother, her Uncle Kenny, had not been as fortunate as he had—he received word through the underground Eldian grapevine that he had been murdered by the Hellans about nine months ago. Mikasa heard her mother gasp as she herself tried to process the news, her eyes glued to the singular tear threatening to escape from the corner of her father's eye.
At that moment, the light that had begun to return to Mikasa's eyes dimmed. Not entirely, no—how could it, when she finally had her beloved Papa back? But the thought of never seeing her dear uncle again, of knowing his life was snuffed out by people who considered her and her family spawn of the devil, made a part of her soul freeze over.
Mikasa refused to be hurt by this cruel world again. And if that meant hardening her heart to its beauty, so be it.
A bright girl, Mikasa graduated from high school two years early. At 16, she left the Marleyan countryside to study nursing in her mother's homeland, Hizuru. Upon graduating four years later, she returned to Marley and started working at a hospital in the capital, Liberio.
Life was good for Mikasa—she loved her work, and after four years away she was now living somewhere where she could see her family more easily but was still far enough away from them to feel independent. She had even started dating someone—a kind, polite young man named Jean whom she had met in the small but tight-knit Eldian community in southwest Liberio. She couldn't ask for anything more.
One night, about six months after Mikasa had started her new job, she had another dream visit from Ymir. This time, they flew to the hospital where she worked. Floating inside, Ymir brought her to a room where a young man lay unconscious. Circling his head were two symbols: the first Mikasa recognized instantly as the uneven star that served as the international icon of Eldians, adorning the armband she was forced to wear; the second was unknown to her, one half blue and one half white, resembling feathers. Despite the Eldian image revolving around his skull, something about him seemed foreign. Maybe Paradisian?
Ymir gestured toward the man with her head, smiling at Mikasa. "This man will take care of you now."
Mikasa turned her head, brows furrowed in confusion. "What do you mean, my Lady?"
Ymir's gentle features softened, eyes filled with a cosmic knowing. "I mean that this is the last time I will visit you, my child. From now on, this man will be your protector, your support. But I will always be watching over you, until you come home to me."
Mikasa's eyes suddenly stung with salty tears. She wasn't ready to say goodbye. Throughout her life, even in its darkest parts—she shuddered at the unwelcome remembrance of the years her father was gone—Ymir had always been there for her. What was she to do without her?
"But…but why, Goddess? Why can't I see you anymore? What’s so special about this man? And besides, I already have a boyfriend who I very much like," Mikasa insisted, a feeling of stubbornness growing within her. But Ymir simply smiled back, unyielding of answers.
Slowly, the room around them began to fade, the deity dissolving into light before Mikasa woke with a start. The dream still sat vivid in her conscience. What could it mean? Was that really the last time Ymir would ever visit her?
Confused and alone, Mikasa tossed and turned before sleep finally found her again. But this time, it was dreamless.