Attack On Titan: Dreams

The next day, when the sun is warm on his back, and his knees are pressed into the grass, hands caked with dirt, he is filled to the brim with thoughts of moonlit raven hair splayed against bedsheets, and serene charcoal blues that crinkle in gaiety, and pink lips that part to give way to a rare and joyous sound.

And all the while, he is in the midst of executing one of Levi's stranger tasks (gardening, of all things) and it is so mindless that his brain has no choice but to wander towards the issue at the forefront of his mind which, for once, had very little to do with titans.

While he still found such thoughts to be an inconvenient nuisance, their inevitability and frequency had forced him to, at the very least, be able to sit with them as opposed to resorting to self-harm to halt them altogether.

And as the day wore on, and his mind rewound his most recent dream over, and over again, he found himself comfortable enough to snort about it - mostly at how absurdly romantic he had been in it.

His dream-self was absolutely over the moon, head over heels in love with his childhood friend and fierce protector. Throughout the fantasy that had played out, his dream-self was also extremely physical and always found a way to place his hands (or mouth) on her which he found completely odd and uncharacteristic.

'Pfft. Like I'd ever say or do all that...' he muses with an airless laugh.

While he had come to appreciate Mikasa's comforting touches and embraces, shining a more than platonic light on such interactions was a completely foreign concept to him, which rendered his dream-self's actions even more confusing.

He hadn't even ever kissed someone until that night - nor had the thought of doing so crossed his mind, aside from the times the other boys would speak about their perversions in the bunks.

While his first thought was unintentionally Mikasa at such times - not at all due to some weird attraction, but by virtue of the fact that she was the most prominent female presence in his life - he quickly dismissed such acts and thoughts as a waste of time when there was so much more at stake.

But, then again, he'd had that one dream about Mikasa.

And that was only after he'd experienced the mildest level of bunker-talk with her.

And, he had thought frequently about the contents of that dream in his ensuing waking hours.

Perhaps he really was no better than his comrades, and perhaps all men unfortunately were someday fated to think in such a way.

But, he recalls that they had focused purely on physical acts and women's outer appearances, and he had never once reduced Mikasa's value to her appearance.

In fact, he had barely even taken note of it, other than the very obvious fact that she looked different from everyone else no one else he knew had the lustre and silk of her jet black hair, or the peculiar beige tone of her skin.

Though, now, while recalling all that foolish bunker-talk and reflecting on his dream-self's way of thinking, he supposed that he could agree that Mikasa was, in some way, objectively... aesthetically... agreeable.

That is to say, the more he thought of it, he supposed he preferred the... look of her face to that of other women.

Her eyes were smaller than most, and bore a distinct slant and shape that was unique to her, and her alone. And he supposed that this rare feature complimented all the rest complimented the soft, yet pointed curve of her nose, and the rose pink tone of her lips against the very particular beige, yet snow white, canvas of her skin.

And he supposed that, if he were to buy into his shallow comrades' bunker talk, and his obsessive dream-self's line of thinking, Mikasa was actually, maybe, quite... pleasant to look at.

Maybe.

He supposed.

However, one thing he and his dream-self could agree on, without any reluctance at all, was that Mikasa had an amazing body.

His dream-self's admiration of her abdomen throughout the course of the dream was somewhat grounded in truth. Even he himself did not possess the discipline she did with her workouts.

'The body of a soldier with great discipline,' he muses to himself with an impressed nod.

He exhales through the side of his mouth as he begins to dig a new hole, and the image of her bare abdomen flickers across his mind which then rapidly dissolves into vivid imagery of his first dream of her. In response, he shakes his head vigorously and continues to dig, now all but stabbing frantically into the earth.

He focuses back on his most recent dream to will away the lecherous thoughts, and as he runs through the imagined events once more and distances himself from the thought of her bare abdomen, he takes note of one small, unrelated detail that piques his curiosity.

'Rin.'

In his dream, they had named their first child Rin. Why that of all people. (Since the author wanted to. :?)

Goosebumps prickle his skin, a shudder running up his spine.

It was eerie.

He reaches into the sack next to him, filled with the bulbs Levi had instructed him to plant, and plucks a bulb out before gingerly placing it into the small pit he has dug.

And as he pushes the earth back into the hole with his bare hands, he finds that he cannot stop thinking of the imaginary little boy with his eyes and her hair, named Hannes.

He wonders if, in addition to Mikasa's demeanour, little Rin would also inherit her strength.

And suddenly, he imagines the small boy, grown to perhaps six years of age, with his face and her nonchalant expression, sauntering across a bustling marketplace and carrying a stack of crates twice his size and weight with surprising ease - and he imagines himself walking alongside the child and gazing down at him with a proud smile as others starred on.

"You know, I had heard gardening helped people relax."