I live, I die, I live again [Eren J.]

3: Being Adopted (Unwillingly) into a Friend Group

A month into Training Camp and the 104th were finally starting on Anti-Personnel Training.

Mikoto was living for it.

After all, she'd only waited fifteen long ass years for a proper spar. Granted she'd be up against total noobs, for the most part, but roughing them up could be fun— some, like Red Scarf and Muscle Pig, had even had potential.

High off the thought of a nice spar, she'd been in an exceptionally good mood that morning... right down till Green Eyes plopped himself in the seat across from her.

" Mornin', Mikoto, " he greeted, eyes glittering with nerve-grating mischief. 

Mumbles followed his lead, mumbling a hesitant 'good morning' as he sat down next to the brunette. Red Scarf, silently took her place on his other side, nodding once in greeting to her bunkmate. Mikoto could feel the dull ache of clenching her teeth too tightly bloom in her jaw.

" I helped you and this, this is how you repay me? " The redhead groused. " With friendship? " The boy merely shrugged.

" You say that like it's a bad thing, " he replied cheekily. She resisted the urge to slam her (or his, preferably his) head down onto the table.

Since that fateful night where she thought him how to breathe, Green Eyes had badgered Mikoto. Between crowding her at meals, begging her to teach him more about breathing and following her every move with those eyes of his, she'd been thoroughly assaulted with his friendship.

Of course, where he went, his little tagalongs did as well.

Mumbles found the courage from time to time to ask her about her technique, eyes pinned to her as she performed any given exercise. Even Red Scarf had even begun to greet her in the morning— like their standing non-verbal agreement to ignore each other's existence had been done away with. She was being smothered under friendship— and that wasn't even the worst part.

The worst part was she couldn't decide if it was a bad thing. And a part of her— the part that was Guren— felt that that, that tiny little sliver of positive emotion towards the idea of friendship, was a betrayal.

That catching herself almost snorting at one of Green Eyes's startlingly sarcastic quips... or choking down the desire to pull Mikasa's hair up for her... or even the biting back of laughter that bubbled in her chest when Mumbles looked terrified at the prospect of one of her empty threats... all of that was traitorous.

That teaching the boy with the startling green eyes Total Concentration Breathing out of sheer desperation to not be so alone in this new world was traitorous.

To them.

Since she'd arrived at the training camp (with the treat of being murdered at any given time gone) she devoted many of her moonlit hours laying out in the field picturing the faces of her comrades... her friends.