And When That Light Goes Out AOT

2

I'd never understood what people meant when they said that they felt "numb" toward something. I never had much of a problem feeling until recently. In fact, most of the time, I would've loved to be numb, because numb was better than hurting, right?

Wrong.

I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry, I wanted to punch walls and punch people and I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry more than anything, but no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn't. I could look at their faces in pictures around the house. I could listen to the voicemails they left for me in the past that I never checked. I could read their handwriting and signatures. I could smell them on the furniture and their clothes and their bed. I couldn't cry. I knew that I was supposed to be a wreck. Any normal person would've been. Any normal person would've sobbed for hours on end and left the house because it reminded them so intensely of what they had lost. I couldn't feel anything.

Mikasa followed me out into the living room after I finally got out of bed. Her eyes were puffy and red and tears stained her cheeks. A sick, twisted part of me envied her ability to cry. I didn't want to comfort her. I wanted to steal that from her, I wanted to steal her tears and her pain and make them mine. I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me.

She took a seat beside me and turned to face me. We made eye contact and she looked at me for a long time with an expression I couldn't quite read. "This... I am so sorry."

"What are you sorry for? It's not your fault. They were your parents too."

"I know, but not by blood. It's different."

The next thing I knew, words were rolling off of my tongue before I had a chance to think about them. I felt a disconnect from my mind as I listened to my voice delivering words that I knew I didn't want to say, "Don't be sorry. We don't have time to sit here and feel sorry for ourselves, you of all people should know that. We need to take care of everything. We need to call family members, worry about what to do regarding funerals if their bodies are even whole enough for that to be an option, we have insurance to deal with and finances to worry..."

Shit. By the time I managed to stop myself, Mikasa's eyes had glazed over and tears were streaming down her face. She wore an expression that I had only seen a few times since her own parents had died. She was completely expressionless and looked hollow despite her tears, but I saw incredible pain in her eyes. I immediately remembered what she'd said at lunch earlier that day.

"You know that I'm generally good at keeping my emotions in check, but I still have them."

"Mikasa, I'm so sorry. It's just a lot to handle, I don't even-" She cut me off with a terse shake of her head and looked into my eyes with an intensity that made me flinch. I knew that she was fighting something inside of herself, probably trying to figure out if it would be wise to take care of her own well being or take care of my ungrateful ass. She chose the former, and I couldn't blame her. She looked away from me, stood up, and left for her room without looking at me again.

I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and sighed heavily. Digging my own grave with my mouth again. What was that, the third time today? Now I had officially pushed away the only on my side, the only person I had left. Not only had my parents been taken away from me, but I had effectively pushed away Mikasa in the cruelest way possible. If they were directed at her, she couldn't be there to stop me from saying things that I would regret.

The worst part of it all, I realized, was that I still felt nothing. It was a different kind of nothing, however, it was different from what I had felt at school. I still felt numb, but now I felt like something had scooped everything out of my chest. I felt empty and it was a vast, overwhelming emptiness; my body was suddenly the Mariana Trench drained of water.