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Are you happy, Mikasa?
Mikasa remembers some things from her childhood. The part of it left untainted by death she remembers vividly. She remembers her father and that one question that’s perpetually hanging on the tip of his tongue. What a strange question it had been. How ambiguous. But Mikasa’s never one to hesitate, yes, she would say, nodding enthusiastically, the world is beautiful and full of wonder. She still hears her father’s voice sometimes. Always are you happy, Mikasa?
And she hears it now in the quiet of the waiting room at the hospital before everything changes. Before the nurse calls her name. Her hands are clammy the threads have come loose where she had been picking at the hem of her dress.
“Mikasa Ackerman?”
—
Then there are the other parts of her childhood. She remembers her mother teaching her how to embroider. Look mama, look at what I made! And her mother is beaming with pride- One day you will teach your children. Her mother says. And Mikasa had smiled, asked her father something stupid about how children are made. There’s a simple answer to that of course.
First you find the girl of your dreams. She will appear as a passing apparition, one that drains you of your ego, your pride. Then you will go off to war and fight alongside one another. She will save you, and you her, in more ways than one. And one day, with a flip of a switch, night becomes day, and in the light, she will think you’re rather easy on the eyes, handsome even. And in this light, everything comes easy- you spill the milk. Next thing you know you’re breathing next to one another in a dark room. Night after night. You don’t talk about the spilt milk.
Even though it goes unspoken, Mikasa thinks about it sometimes. She thinks about it at the dinner table of Levi Ackerman’s little house in the forest- of her lover who’s sitting beside her. He’s sweet like honey, her lover boy. The way his nectar adorns her thighs, trickling between her legs, thick like sap.
The trepidation she had felt at the doctor’s office now dulling to a nervous throb.
She thinks about it as Jean pours her some wine, watches as it sloshes about the chalice. She’s brought back to reality with a gentle hand atop her own. Hey… You alright? The question is swimming behind Jean’s eyes. And she smiles at him. Good, good… And she hopes to god that if Levi had noticed anything he wouldn’t say. Then again none of them are strangers to moments like these. Where the soul transcends the flesh and wanders about the earth in search for something- for someone. Levi has had his fair share. Freezing momentarily when he hears the rumble of a plane overhead, the faraway look in his eyes when he watches Jean hook his pinky around Mikasa’s.
She catches Levi’s gaze from across the table, attempting to read her face and something flashes across his face. Whether it’s realisation or sympathy, Mikasa holds his gaze gently, pleading- not now. Give me time. Not now.
The conversation flows but her wine remains untouched.
—
Mikasa remembers wanting. When she had been a child and her mother had promised her a family of her own. But plans change. She had cut her hair, made her body hard, run off after a boy into the thick of battle. She kills the spark of something they call desire. But it seemed to have survived the war. The image still persists. Of her at the table sewing little flowers onto the hem of a little shirt, having someone ask her mama, how are babies made? What did you and papa do?
Her cheeks are hot as she frames her belly with her hands. Tentative and gentle, like she would a glass chalice filled to the brim with milk and honey, quenching a thirst so unbearable that she could die. And through the nerves, through the apprehension and the unease, there’s a sliver of calm. A small trickling stream carrying with it a promise of a life that’s worth living. Gods.
She looks at the sleeping figure beside her. It’s the middle of the night now and he’s in deep slumber. A steady breath in. A steady breath out. She sighs. Oh Jean, what have we done.
He stirs when she strokes his face with the back of her hand, grazing his stubble, tracing his lips with the pad of her finger. Never would she have thought this would be the sight she’d wake up to every morning- that she’d look forward to waking up to. But the universe has its way of saying remember that boy you used to hate? The one who had a crush on you since he first laid eyes on you? Yeah, well, you’ll learn to love him so much you’ll ache. And Mikasa feels her heart squeeze when he blinks an eye open- then another. Immediately, he smiles. Yes? There are stars in his eyes- the Shepard who has travelled across the fields to see her. To hear the good news.
“Sorry I woke you…” she whispers. It’s still too late/early to break the silence. Jean hums a reply and pulls Mikasa down towards him and wraps his arms around her. He rubs circles into her back, where her flesh has gone soft. Good. No more fighting. She watches in wonder as her body changes. How it has shed some layers of muscle in favour of softness. Good. This, she recognises as herself, as the woman she had imagined growing up.
“Bad dream?” He asks. They’ve all had their share of nightmares. Of Jean jolting up in the middle of the night in a blind panic, only to calm down when he feels Mikasa beside him. Of Mikasa and her terrors that are so real she wakes up screaming. But it’s not a bad dream, not this time. She shakes her head. You’ve come to hear the good news, haven’t you? I’m just thinking how to deliver it.
“Just thinking…”
“Of?”
“Children…” she smiles at him, a little nervous, a little too tentative and uncertain for it to just be a thought. “What do you think of children?”
“I uh… They’re cool I guess?”
They’ve both been down to the orphanage. Mikasa had watched as the kids sidled up to Jean, watched as they took turns to try and scale his back, watched him laugh and wrestle with them and give them his Survey Corps jacket to play with. And something in her just aches. She recognises this feeling as wanting.
“I meant… Children of your own…”
“Ha…” Jean‘s pulse quickens under Mikasa’s clammy hand. His own children. As opposed to children in general. Oh. It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it. In fact he had thought about it a lot- having his hero’s welcome after the war, marrying the girl of his dreams, having a few kids to chase after. But the thing about reality is- it’s different from your dreams. They came back from the war- a simple end that featured a quiet night at the pub and a long shower after to rid of the stench of death. Instead of celebration, the best they can hope for is recovery. But this- finding one another, this little play at domesticity- lies somewhere in between- between homecoming and new beginnings. And Jean doesn’t know if he can ask for anything more. What would children of his own mean in this little dance of theirs.
“I mean- I’ve always… Wanted… I don’t know… In the future maybe?” Jean says. They’re still young. It’s okay to talk about this unnamed, ambiguous “future” which has no form, no expectations. Just an amalgamation of plans that may never come to be. The great unknown. The future. Mikasa has her head against his chest now, his dream girl. She hums a reply, tracing her finger along the scars on his chest where the harness had cut in, where things have clawed their way and left their mark. Her mind races beyond her control. What does she say now when whatever she has to say will throw them off this comfortable orbit they have established. What will become of the two of them now that they’re spilling over the edge of being three. Will they have space?
“What about you?” He asks, fingers threading through her hair. She’s growing it out now, and he sees the girl he first met back when they had been children. Mikasa inhales, takes in the scent of Jean’s cologne, now muted under layers of soap and rinse. Mikasa feels safe and warm, and like a nesting animal, she lets her guard down.
The silence is expectant. She will have to say something. Past her nerves she has to be brave and spill. One breath in. Another out. And Mikasa has always been forthright- sever the nerve, get it done and over with. One breath in, two breaths out.
“Jean… I’m pregnant…”
More silence.
But when she looks at him, she gets to watch the stars in his eyes burst into light- supernova- yes, that’s it. The Shepard boy with the galaxy in his eyes, now bursting into bright light.
She opens her mouth to speak. She wants to hear everything. What he thinks of it. What he thinks of her. Of them. Instead he presses his lips against hers and drinks her up. Kisses her until the thirst is quenched. Until she sees stars and he’s just a mess of a scattered heartbeat and a reservoir of desire. Gods. He could die now, he could.
It’s a lifetime later when they pull apart. Laughing when they see the tears in each others’ eyes. Laughter, more tears, and then laughter again. And Mikasa thinks maybe words are overglorified because nothing can replace the way he’s looking at her now. She kisses the tears at his cheek as a way to keep the tenderness, stored inside her belly like seeds.
He kisses a trail down from her lips, to her chin, between her breasts, down to her belly.
“Hey…” he says against her skin. She giggles. “Hey baby…”
“I don’t think it can hear you yet…” she says. Their child- an ambiguous, unchristened composition of milk; of honey. Later they will dream up names for the child. Sasha if it’s a girl; Marco if it’s a boy.
“Gods if you look anything like your mother I’ll be a dead man…”
Her heart aches. She could die. Oh, she could die.
“And if they take after their father?”
And already she’s imagining it. Her child- /their child- with the handsome face and auburn eyes.
“Then there’ll be broken hearts all over town…” He beams with pride, and she sees the same boy- the sweetest boy in the world hiding behind his ego.
And she hears it hanging in the air- that question, however ambiguous, needs an answer.
“Are you happy, Jean?”
He makes a sound of genuine surprise- like a child being asked the obvious- are you kidding me? Of course, of course, of course!
“I have dreams of this, Mikasa…” he replies. He could go on and on, but this is forever, they’re living in it. There’s still time.
“And you?” He looks at her, “are you happy, Mikasa?”
Her boy is sweet as honey.
And she’s never one to hesitate.