Touch - EreMika

Chapter 1: Uncharted Territory

 "It's nothing."

The words come out in a rasped cough, and she licks her chapped lips, half-lidded charcoal blues locking onto distressed emerald greens. She attempts to roll onto her side and rise, but he halts her movements, pressing gently against her shoulder to push her back into the makeshift bed of piled blankets.

"Shut up," he replies with a shake of his head.

She doesn't protest, and he doesn't know whether she's too weak to resist, or if she's not even attempting to because it's him.

Whatever the case, she silently complies and stares up at him, and all is still.

Then, another cough pierces the silence and wracks her body, and she hisses in pain at the involuntary jerk, her hand reflexively wandering down to the area above her right hip to brush over the wounded region. He winces at the pathetic sound and sight, as though the pain has hit him secondhand.

Clucking his tongue, he directs his attention to her abdomen, shifting onto his left knee and pulling the loose shirt up to expose her lower torso.

The white wrappings around her lower abdomen that he had just put in place were already staining a deep crimson - to match the scarf around her neck, he morbidly muses.

The sight is unsettling.

He sometimes forgets Mikasa even has the ability to bleed, and her current state is a rude and unwelcome awakening.

To add insult to injury, he is the reason for the disquieting scene before him.

He clenches his jaw, quietly seething, his teeth gnashing together so hard they might break, and he has to squeeze his eyes shut just to cool the rage that threatens to bubble over at the thought.

"Hey."

Her voice is a soft rasp that cuts into his spinning thoughts, and he feels her fingers gently brush at the hair on the back of his head. The simple syllable and touch is enough to pull him out of the dark depths of his own mind.

He tugs the shirt back down to cover the bloodied bandages, turning to find her eyes trained intently on him.

"It's not as bad as it looks," she assures him.

He frowns.

Even now, she's trying to comfort him, and absolve him of well-deserved guilt. For the decade he has known her, such behavior has never ceased to irritate him. But now accustomed to it, he says nothing, instead letting out a disgruntled sigh. He shifts back onto his right knee, scooting closer to her, sitting deeper into his kneel, as her hand drops from his hair, back to her side.

"Do you need anything?" he almost asks, but he's not sure what more aid he can provide. She's already taken the medicine they have available onsite, and her wounds have been treated as necessary.

So he stares at her, at a loss for what else to do, and she stares back, unsuccessfully attempting to mask her labored breathing and exhaustion. Muting a cough by keeping her mouth closed, her hair falls into her eyes, the sight and sound only adding further to his helplessness.

He lifts a hand to brush her bangs from her eyes, and nearly pulls back, when his eyes catch upon the distinct line of smooth, puckered skin below her right eye. It's the scar. The mauve line is a subtle, but permanent fixture on her face, yet he had forgotten until now that it, too, was his doing.

He shudders, pangs of guilt cutting into him for his negligence.

But aside from the scar he had directly given her all those years ago, there was the fresh, deep gash in her abdomen she had obtained upon shielding him - in addition to the nicks and bruises on her hands and arms and legs and back, collected throughout their tenure with the Survey Corps. Were they not all his doing, too? The only reason she had ever received them was because she had voluntarily followed him into this hell.