Attack on Titan Fanfiction – The Stowaway: Chapter 13

When Sleep is Terrifying

“They were so small, Jean, just a bunch of kids,” she would say between heaving sobs. 

Jean would hold her close, have a towel ready to wipe away the tears that wouldn’t stop falling months after the war was over. “Shhh, my sweet angel, shhh…”

“The littlest one had a head about this size,” she’d explain, holding her hands in the shape of a grapefruit to show him just how small. “I think she was about six or seven. Just a little girl really, but fatally wired from head to foot…”

Sometimes she’d torture herself by thinking up impossible scenarios. “If we married at nineteen and had Eren take away the Ackermann curse, then we could have had a little girl like her…”

Jean would hold his poor wife in his arms, shushing her, stroking her hair, kissing the top of her head. “You did what you had to do, Mikasa.”

“Please don’t hate me, Jean! I’m not a child killer!” she would cry out suddenly in the middle of the night. When he woke up to hug her to his chest, she’d explain between sobs, “I had to do it. We ran out of options. I had to do it, you see…”

“I know, my angel, I know. How could I possibly hate you? No one’s blaming you. No one’s hating you, except the rotten Marleyans who came up with the child soldier idea,” Jean would try to reassure her. 

It went on for a month, the constant weeping when they were at home. At night she tried to sleep, but often she would wake up, cold sweat beading her forehead, mouth wide open in a soundless scream.

The horrible nightmares started the night after the incident. When she closed her eyes, she began dreaming of the faces of the children she had to kill. Angel faces floating in the air, but then in a flash they transformed into terrifying ogres shooting flames from their mouths, burning down the entire forest and all the people in it. That was one of the better ones among her nightmare menagerie. The worst one was herself transforming into an ugly beast, plucking angel children from the forest and dropping them into her gory mouth, chewing on them slowly as she snickered at their pitiful screams. Sleep became impossible for Mikasa. 

Two months later she started washing and showering obsessively. 

“I can feel the warmth of their blood on me,” she explained to Jean. “I cut their throats and their blood spurted all over me…”

Jean caressed her cheek, mumbling soothingly, rubbing lotion all over her face and body because all that constant washing was irritating her skin. Mikasa lay on the bed and wept like a child.

It was partly this situation that put Jean in a bad temper at work. The public wanted to celebrate him and his wife as heroes, because what they did, in fact, was heroic in every sense of the word. They were able to beat back the Marleyan forces, formerly one of the strongest in the world. Thanks to Jean’s overall war strategy the hostilities lasted for only five months, and the result was a miracle. There was cause for celebration. 

But the admiral was not in the mood. All he could think of was his failure. If only he and his anti-aircraft weapons were able to shoot down whatever aircraft the child soldiers had been on, then this whole killing-children-in-the-forest incident would never have happened. 

Whatever successes he had racked up in the battlefield felt empty and hollow as he watched his wife suffer terribly.

What could he do, really? He was so incensed at Marley for weaponizing the children that there were times he wished they just let Eren Jaeger flatten the whole country when he had the chance. 

Each night Jean came home to his sorrowful wife, held her, embraced her, tried to rock her to sleep, which he soon stopped doing because sleep made everything worse for her. So he just stroked her hair and hugged her to his chest in bed while she rested her cheek over his heart, listening to the sound of it beating. He knew she remained wide awake, and stayed like that all throughout the night.

The months went by, filled with emotional pain and mental anguish. 

As a couple their sex life had gone from very active to none at all. Sex was the last thing on Mikasa’s mind these days. Desire and sensation had left her completely, her body feeling cold as stones under a frozen waterfall in the middle of winter.

But in the cloud of her mental disorder she became aware of how difficult it must be on her husband. She watched Jean as he prepared for bed: tall, strong, handsome, virile, in the prime of life. Guilt began to gnaw at her. How hard it must be for him–working all day, rebuilding their battered military, doing something huge and unprecedented for their island, and then coming home at night to his broken wife. 

“Jean,” she says as he gathers her in his arms. “I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to recover. It must be so difficult for you…me like this…your needs unmet…” She started to cry.

“Shhh, my sweet angel,” Jean murmured, wiping away her tears with long, gentle fingers. “Take all the time you need. Focus on getting better. Don’t worry about me.” He tilted her face so that her eyes met his. “You know I love you no matter what.” 

He kissed her on the forehead, pulled the blanket over them. She buried her face in the crook of his neck and he felt her sigh against his skin. “I’m so lucky to have you, Jean.” He tightened his arms around her.

Soon, the exhausted admiral was snoring softly in his sleep. Mikasa lay awake in his arms, thinking. She was indeed lucky, having this support network: a loving husband who was a rock she could cling to in times of anguish and sorrow, her intuitive and loyal aide-de-camp Layla Graf, her closest friend Armin, not to mention the Queen herself. 

Then Mikasa’s mind drifted to her poor commandos. Many of them were not as lucky as her, she knew. All the military could offer at present was the most rudimentary counseling, along with a short paid leave. Not enough. 

We Earthlings in the 21st century have come far in terms of our understanding of what we now know as post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. But in Paradis at the time, very little was known. The war with Marley was their first interstate war and many in the military, including those in leadership positions like Jean and Mikasa, had little idea on how to deal with war trauma.

She thought of what they’d accomplished so far. With Graf at the helm, Mikasa’s team were putting together a proposal for post combat care, based on their international research on what was then still termed as ‘shell shock’ or ‘combat fatigue’. 

They needed doctors, researchers, new medicine, support groups. They needed to learn from and work with mental health specialists from Muroitevleh, a country that was scientifically advanced but thankfully not at war with them. At least, for the time being. Armin mentioned they should soon be able to form diplomatic relations with Muroitevleh. 

I need to send a team there. We need to learn as much as we can. We need an entire new system for effectively dealing with the emotional fallout of war. 

This is how it went in Mikasa’s head for months after the war. She barely slept a wink, because each time she dared close her eyes the nightmares would take over.

Night after night, Mikasa would lie awake in the dark, head pillowed on Jean’s chest, imagining just how truly traumatic ground zero was for the troops that survived it. My poor troops. I need to work harder for them. 

She was supposed to be different. She was supposed to be strong. She made her first kill at the age of nine. A veteran soldier from the titan era, she had seen so much gore she learned to become immune to the effects of it. 

But nothing, nothing at all prepared her troops for the bloodbath of man versus man, adult versus child. It was harrowing precisely because it was brother against brother, sister against sister.

On a psychological level it was far easier killing titans because they were gigantic and disgusting. Even after they learned that the titans were forcibly transformed Eldians, the titans were still titans. They had to kill them else they’d eat the islanders to extinction. 

But man versus man was difficult on an entirely different level. Each time you aimed your gun to shoot you were looking in the mirror. The enemy looked just like you. The only thing that made them different was the uniform. Dress the same way and you could have been comrades. 

In her nightmares floated the faces of the thousands, nay, countless enemy soldiers she killed at close range. In a different time, in a different place, on another planet, they could have been her comrades. Her cadets. Her subordinates. Her peers. Her friends. Her children even.

The war was immensely traumatic to even a battle-hardened veteran like herself. She tried to imagine the amount of rationalising and normalising her young troops have to put themselves through to numb the pain. The shock must be stupefying. 

She tried imagining what it would be like for someone who had never been in battle in the past, who was just out of basic training, who’d never killed another human being before. A hundred times more traumatic? A thousand times? It must be like waking up in hell. 

Night after night Mikasa continued to be plagued by horrific nightmares. When darkness fell she fought with the demons in her mind. In the morning she woke up along with her husband, splashed cold water on her face and cleaned her teeth, pulled her boots on and went to work. She actually looked a little worse for wear, destroyed on the inside. But there was so much work that needed to get done. 

The world didn’t stop for a struggling fighter, especially one whose major battle wounds were in the mind and not on the body. 

It is nearly impossible for non-combatants to understand the extent of the trauma, the tremendous struggle taking place in the deep dark corners of a broken fighter’s mind. But Mikasa understood, knew that there were so many others who were struggling, so many others without a support network like she did.

She of all people had to pull herself together. For her precious Royal Marines. They needed her. There was plenty of work to be done so she needed to keep on fighting. For herself. For them.

Because I am strong, she told herself. Stronger than anyone on the island, save perhaps for Levi Ackermann. Colonel Mikasa Ackermann-Kirschtein had to get better. She had to get stronger. She had to keep herself alive in order to help and protect others. It was her duty. Her choice. 

It wouldn’t be so hard, she thought, if only I could get some undisturbed sleep. If only the nightmares would stop haunting me.

That night, as with all the other nights since the war, Mikasa woke up from a restless dozing, mouth wide open in a silent scream, cold sweat making her pyjamas clammy and uncomfortable. 

A battering headache started to pulsate in her temples. Breathe, breathe, she told herself. She felt like drowning. She knew all too well that a commando didn’t have to die in order to lose their life in a war.

Thank you so much for reading! Please consider sharing a thought or two in the comment section below. Your comments give me life and are a real source of encouragement. xoxo, hana

Next – Chapter 14: Live Cargo

Back – Chapter 12: What Had to Be Done

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