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Mikasa closed the box as soon as she realized at what she was looking.
The mistake was understandable. The bureaucracy was still in an uproar from the coup and Ackerman was an unusual name. Plus there was the fact that the exact connection between Captain Kenny Ackerman and Captain Levi was kept quiet.
Hoisting the box into her arms, Mikasa set out to find the Captain. They hadn't talked much about their shared ancestry, considering how distant it was. She wasn't sure how he would react to the contents of the box. For all she knew, he would throw it out immediately. Still, she had a feeling he had taken the death of his uncle harder than he would admit. If the box and what it contained helped him reach closure of some kind, then it was worth the hassle.
She found him in his temporary office, the door opened wide while he was looking over some maps. She knocked on the doorframe to catch his attention.
"Mikasa? What is it?"
She stepped inside and closed the door. This was a private matter. A family business in a sense.
"This was delivered to me earlier today," she said, lifting up the box a little. "Personal effects of the deceased Captain Ackerman of the Military Police." She caught the quickly suppressed grimace on his face. "I thought you might like to look through them."
"Why would they-" he stopped speaking as he came to the same realization as she had earlier. "Ackerman, of course."
"Where do you want me to put it?"
He rolled up the maps and set them aside, clearing big enough space on the table for the box to fit in. Mikasa set it down and turned to leave.
"You can stay," Captain Levi said. She turned to look at him but he was focused on the box. "There might be something about the family."
They hadn't talked much about their shared ancestry, true. That didn't mean Mikasa wasn't curious about it. She had known so little about both of her parents' history, having been too young to be told back then. Part of her mother's history at least would always be with her, in the symbol on her right forearm. Her father's side, though, had been vague and without anything tangible to show.
"Thank you," she said and he nodded, flipping open the top of the box.
There was an old hat on the top, the felt of the brim worn and thin and with a couple of holes. It was dirty, too and Captain put it aside quickly with a scowl. Under the hat were weapons, a small pistol with a cracked muzzle, a broken knife with a rust-covered blade, a razor with too many teeth to be of use. There were the basic hygienic supplies, a comb, another razor, a whisk, a small bowl. A folded coat laid underneath, slightly dusty but in a relatively good condition.
All of those things were nothing unusual but the same couldn't be said about the few items underneath the coat. There were some notes and pages torn from the newspapers. A rather long list of names, some of them crossed out, most of them not. Mikasa recognized few of them, from the clean-up they had done at the cave-in to account for the members of the Anti-Personnel Squad. There was an envelope with a lock of hair, the shade of blond nearly identical to Historia's.
The photograph was at the very bottom.
It was old, somewhat torn around the edges, the original black-and-white colour faded into grayish tones. The people in the photo looked impossibly young. A tall and lanky man, with a long face and a lopsided smirk stared straight ahead. The woman next to him had a soft smile and was looking to the side.
Mikasa didn't say anything when Captain picked up the photo. She didn't comment on the way his hand shook a little or how he handled the picture with more care than he needed.
"I forgot the details of her face years ago," he spoke in such a low voice she could barely hear him. She didn't think he had meant for her to hear him. She should probably leave but something kept her back. If it was her in his place, she would appreciate some words of comfort, no matter how clumsy and awkward they would be.
"You look a lot like her," she said and when he looked at her, she shrugged. "It's obvious when you compare the picture to you, mostly the eyes and the nose."
"Is that so?"
"Mhm."
Neither of them said anything else for a while, both too lost in their own memories. When Mikasa glanced at Captain, she found him staring at the picture with a soft smile and she found another point of comparison - he had his mother's smile, too.
In a different world, in a different life, she could have met and spoken to the woman herself. In a different world, in a different life, she would have her parents with her, too. In a different world, in a different life, she could have and would have. In a different world...