Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Humans were surprisingly similar to titans. They shared many features when the humans weren’t swaddling themselves in extra skins. Though he supposed that while they had a lot in common, this human still looked nothing like the small swarming titans Titan was most familiar with.

It was so small, but it wasn’t misshapen and oddly proportioned like he was used to. This human with its dark hair made him think more of one of the night creatures, like a howler - strong and sleek, the colour of storm-torn skies - than his own round-bellied kin.

Titan had never seen a human up close before. Well, not a living one, anyway. But the dead ones didn’t tend to last much longer in titan country than the living ones: either way, it was a rare experience. Still, he knew of them, and knew their smell and the vibrations their beasts made when thudding across the plains - but so did the rest of his kind, so Titan tried to avoid them despite his curiosity.

He was big enough to ward away most other titans, such as the smalls who were weak and often stupid, more liable to fall over from the weight of their own heads before managing to get a bite out of him. For those that were less stupid, his rumbles of threat-dominance, bigger, kill-you, were usually enough to ward them off. He was bigger and stronger than a lot of individual titans, but humans attracted more titans than what would swarm naturally; these were bigger, bolder kinds that weren’t so easily swayed by his threats.

All of his kind would eat him given the chance.

On this day, Titan had been seeking shelter in a copse of tall trees when the scent of human, blood, and titan, mingling in unholy matrimony, reached his nose on the breeze. Evidently, Titan had no love for other titans, and while he usually went out of his way to avoid them, today had been one of the same in a slew of many. He was bored, and boredom left an unscratchable itch under his skin that he had found out, through some trial and error, was sometimes best sated with violence.

That, and the scent of blood had him curious.

The human was in a tree - it didn’t appear to be awake. It had attached itself to a branch using its shiny contraption so it wouldn’t fall from where it was slumped between the crook of the branch and the tree trunk. Below it, scrabbling at the bark, was a swarm of seven or so smalls, buzzing irritably like bees as they stumbled, grabbed, and climbed over each other in fruitless attempts to each lunge at their prey. Stupid.

There were no bigs around, which was fortunate for the human who would have been well within reach had that been the case. Titan tested the earth for any vibrations that would signal the presence of any titans other than the smalls still in the area. Finding none, he stepped from the trees.

Hungry, the smalls chittered.

He tore into their midsts, scattering them like flies. They stammered and juddered their confusion, both at the interruption and his scent. Food, meat, eat?

He rumbled back replies of anger, bigger, kill.

One stumbled away then, smarter than the rest and taking heed of his threats. But the rest were too frenzied and made stupid by the scent of human and blood that still dripped from the air. Titan too, smelled like prey, so the smalls changed tactics and went for the kill they thought they could reach.

But he had been fighting for his life all of his existence, so he stomped on one’s head as he reached for another, tearing out its nape with his teeth, feeling content.

The human was still asleep when he finished, but he could tell it was still alive by the vibrations that echoed through its chest when he nudged it. Peering into its slack face, he noticed some blood along its hairline. He sniffed it, taking in the odd smells it carried with it. Old smells that he couldn’t decipher but suspected were from the human-hive, and new smells, like blood, sweat, and sap.

Titan withdrew. He was familiar with injury and pain, even if for him both of those things were fleeting. He knew of many of the creatures that shared the land with the titans, there was little else for one such as him to do but watch them. He had whittled away years following creatures and learning about them, so he knew that, despite how alike humans and titans were, they were not alike at all. Humans were like creatures, and creatures did not heal as he did.

So, when Titan made the decision to bring the human with - to wherever next that may be - he was careful when moving it, mindful of its leg which sits oddly and similar to that of a howler he had once found. He delicately pinched the strange spikes that held the human to the branch and plucked them from the wood, cradling the human. Its head lolled, its body was so limp in his hands.

Titan took it in one palm, carefully adjusting it with the fingers of his other hand.

It was time to go. The blood on the human was not the main source of the smell permeating the air and Titan could now sense the rumbles of other titans, at least one big, in the distance. They were downwind, so leaving now would leave them unlikely to be tracked.

Part of him wanted to go look, to seek out the source of the smell, but he suspected there wasn’t much left to be sought and he was unwilling to risk losing the human in a fight or to more bigs than he was capable of taking on.

So, Titan walked away, taking the human with him.

———

When Levi woke up, nothing made sense.

His body ached with bruising, his head throbbed shooting pangs of pain like nails being hammered into his skull, and his leg burned cold with a specific type of pain that even as he was, confused and disoriented, Levi recognised as broken.

He didn’t open his eyes, not yet, not daring to move until he could gather himself together and regain some sense of motor function. Like this, he was defenceless, and something wasn’t right. Feigning unconsciousness for a while longer was the only upper hand he had.

He was warm, too warm. But he wasn’t inside, and if he was still with the scouts he’d either be in the process of being moved or back at HQ - though last he had checked they had been several days' ride from the Maria. He was surrounded by the scents of mulching leaves and tree sap, that specific unnameable combination of outside and forest, not hospital smells like bleach and antiseptic - though that’s no doubt where he should have been.

Birds chirped above him, somewhere to the right, and leaves rustled in a breeze Levi couldn’t feel. He was so warm.

On cue, something beneath him rumbled and Levi’s breath hitched, his body locked up as a chill of adrenaline spiked him. Hot breath, surprisingly scentless Levi would later note, hit him like steam from a titan-sized kettle. Levi opened his eyes and immediately tried to throw himself backwards with a snarl, images of gaping jaws and bloody bones cracking between huge teeth flashed through his mind.

Levi’s attempt to get away came up unsuccessful as he slammed into a wall of titan flesh. His sight went whiteout as pain flared like lit gunpowder from his head to his evidently very broken leg. Fuck.

Levi sucked in a deep breath, trying to quell the urge to gasp as his body slumped temporarily beyond his control, against the titan’s chest. It vibrated against his back as the titan rumbled, growled, made an indecipherable sound that Levi might have described as inquisitive were he talking about a cat and not a fifteen-metre class titan.

When his vision stopped churning with spots, Levi was left staring into a pair of very large blue-green eyes, framed by a curtain of long dark hair. The titan’s palm which Levi was sat in, had him held against its oddly, by titan standards, sturdy chest as it leaned over him, watching Levi intently. And Levi, frozen and caged, was left with nothing to do but stare back.

The titan had a heavy brow, shading its big eyes, and a straight, sharp nose. It was lipless, its exposed jaw was jagged - two-tiered so that the back of it on either side was a level higher than the front.

The titan murred again, opening its mouth slightly. Its head tilted just so, allowing Levi to see one of its long, pointed ears twitching.

Why hadn’t it eaten him?

Short of its ears, the titan didn’t make any other movements; it was the strangest and yet most life-threatening standoff Levi had ever been in. For once, he wasn’t sure he could see a way out. His leg was fucked and he wouldn’t know what he could do with it until he was able to take a proper look at the damage - it likely needed splinting; if he was to make an attempt at escape, he’d risk a fall from the titan’s hand that in the state he was in he might not be able to safely counter, and even if he wasn’t in a steady battle to retain consciousness, there was jack shit he could do to fend off a titan the size of this one with nothing more than a dagger.

He’d already ascertained that, while his gear was still attached, a heavy, comforting weight at his hips, the triggers seemed to be busted and the anchors were loose. He’d been down to his last set of blades when he’d hit the tree - the last thing he could clearly remember - but they were both gone now, snapped off.

He couldn’t stop looking at those walls-forsaken teeth.

The titan eventually got bored of their stare-off, and suddenly Levi had a face full of titan finger. With no other weapon, Levi freed the dagger he kept at his thigh, slicing into the finger with a furious hiss.

The titan drew back, making noises again. But Levi was too preoccupied trying to calm his racing heart and get a fucking hold of himself, to take much notice.

Currently, he was lodged against the seam between the titan’s other hand - the one that was holding him up - and its chest. There was nothing stopping it from crushing him right then. It could pulp him or tear him in half, no matter his little knife. So, why hadn’t it eaten him yet?

“Stop toying with me, damn you!” Levi growled, angry. So very angry, his body felt hot with the force of it.

Just end it now, end it quick. Death wasn’t all bad, and Levi had always known, ever since Isabel and Farlan, ever since he’d been the only one to make it out, ever since he’d said yes to Erwin, that this was how he would go out. At least he’d be joining them at last. He’d been thinking about it for a long, long time.

The titan grumbled like it knew what Levi had said. And then, at last, it started to move.

Levi took a deep breath and closed his eyes -

Only for the titan’s hand to move downwards, lowering to the grassy ground below. Levi opened his eyes at the shift in gravity, staring as the titan stretched its whole body forwards to place its hand palm up at the base of a tree.

It burbled, blinking at him.

Cautiously, never looking away from the titan’s face, Levi stumbled gracelessly out of its hand, pulling himself against the root of the giant tree. He stretched out his leg across the ground but kept his other knee bent defensively with his dagger in hand.

There was a confused, delirious sort of hope churning with nausea in his gut as he watched the titan back across the clearing where it sat down, cross-legged and uncomfortably human-like across from him. He squashed it down. This was some sort of fucked up game. It was playing with its food.

It made a sound again.

Levi shook his head and resumed their stare-off through narrowed eyes, until his adrenaline ran out and his eyes began to droop and he passed out once more.

Chapter Text

Titan was unsure of what to do with his new charge. It was painfully obvious that another difference between titans and humans was humans had no comprehension of titan rumbles. He had tried to communicate ally, safe, peace, but the human had not replied. Instead, it stared baleful and defiant up at him through the parting of its black hair.

Now it was asleep again; something it had not seemed pleased about, as every time its eyes began to slip shut and its head leant towards its shoulder it had tried to shake itself awake again. This time, however, it had been unsuccessful and had curled into itself where it was nestled into a hollow in the tree roots - one of its extra skins pulled taught around it.

So, after sending testing vibrations into the earth and deciding there were no other titans close enough to warrant concern, Titan had left the human and the clearing to hunt.

He was new to hunting, having only done so once before. The injured howler he had watched over many cycles before had needed food which Titan had taken upon himself to provide. This much Titan had been familiar with from watching other creatures; they needed food, wanted food much like the titans who are not Titan wanted food - though titans, Titan included, did not need as the creatures did. Titans were ruled by hunger, certainly, but they received all their energy from the sun and not what they consumed. It had taken a long time to realise that this was not the same for creatures.

Titans were not so different from the creatures though. Especially the sharp-toothed creatures like the howler. They craved life too. The lives of weaker, smaller creatures were taken to sustain their own, which were bigger; stronger. It was a curious cycle.

Titan wondered if it was the same for humans; he did not know what teeth they had but they carried things like teeth and he knew that sometimes they could kill titans. So, he wonders if they too, need to eat the weaker and smaller to live - and if so, maybe humans and titans were more alike than he thought.

He scented the air and wandered off into the trees. Many of the creatures he had seen the strong creatures eat were too small for him to catch, and as the strong creatures didn't get eaten often, even by other bigger strong creatures, he thought they must not be good for eating.

In the end, Titan got lucky. The creatures were too used to titans to panic at his presence amongst them, which he took advantage of. He returned to the human with a sharp-eared, thin-legged creature. It was around the same size as the human, which had given him pause, but he was unsure how much humans ate, his only frame of reference being creatures such as the howlers which ate a lot.

Titan put the creature down like an offering a few metres off from the human where it would be noticed and sat back down in the titan-sized impression he had left in the grass.

———

The titan had not moved. Or well, it had if the deer carcass, neck broken, laying next to the fire Levi had made, was anything to go by. It had left while he was unconscious, which was unnerving, and brought back the dead animal before returning to its original, cross-legged position. Which was more unnerving.

Levi ground his teeth, disquieted and frustrated by the titan’s behaviour. It had brought him food instead of eating him, and wasn’t that disgustingly ironic? All the laws of titanhood - rules that were absolute and guaranteed, and this titan followed none. All titans ate humans, except for this one? That was a poisoned chalice if Levi ever saw one. He wasn’t… he couldn’t be that lucky.

The thought left him confused and frustrated and sore. He was too tired now, for the rage that had simmered under his skin. He wanted to be angry, but he didn’t have the energy anymore.

It had taken him longer than he would like to admit to start the fire now crackling before him in a scratched out pit of dirt. Longer still, to gather the kindling and wood required - he had been nigh crawling until he’d found a small branch strong enough to support his weight. If he planned to make it out of this alive, and that was still a very big IF - because maybe the titan was toying with him like some hugely overgrown child deciding to play the long con with its food - then he could not afford to damage his leg further.

It had occurred to Levi, sometime that morning, that while his death was still all in favour, it did seem like it was going to be within the next hour, or even the next four hours. Perhaps not even within the day. So, shelving imminent death for the time being, Levi focussed on staying alive for a bit longer.

The only reason he knew how to make a fire with sticks was Hange, walls bless their twisted, twisted heart. Hange was the reason Levi knew a lot of strange - or perhaps commonplace for anyone who had not grown up in the underground - things that had kept him from dying or losing his head in the above-ground world. Not that he would admit that to them, though they undoubtedly already knew.

Part of that included the splint he had crafted and was now attaching to his leg. He tested his leg before binding, doing his best to work through the pain and past the swelling to determine how bad the break was. Gritting his teeth through the pain, Levi determined it was likely only a minor fracture and was straightforward enough that he realigned it himself. That, at least, was something the underground had familiarised him with.

The fracture had come from when he had skimmed a titan hand reaching for him; his momentum with the ODM gear had been too much to avoid the hit completely but he had managed to avoid the titan and therefore most of the damage. Still, it had been a stupid, stupid mistake. What had actually done him in was the head injury he received when he hit the tree and overbalanced - leaving him with what he suspected was a mild concussion. The rest of his injuries were bruising and a few small grazes.

Finishing the splint, Levi moved on to skinning the deer. He hadn’t had to skin an animal since survival training (an idealistic yet hellish several weeks of training meant to equip scouts with the tools to survive lest they get stuck in titan country - idealistic due to the assumption anyone would last more than the hour. But, well, he was still alive, so maybe it counted for something). However, the grime accumulating on his clothes and skin, the old sweat dried in his hair, the flaking blood down his shirt, was starting to trigger a desperate, unfocusable, restlessness, and an old phantom itch under his skin, made worse by the deer blood that seemed to crawl up his arms.

Levi looked away and focussed on cooking the meat to think about anything else. The meat ended up charred but he could not find it in himself to care; he was starving.

He watched the titan through narrowed eyes as he ate. He had wondered while starting the fire if the smoke would attract more titans, other titans - normal, predictable titans that would treat him as food instead of giving him food - but decided, in the long run, it wouldn’t matter either way and his immediate hunger was more important.

The titan warbled.

“What?” Levi said.

It warbled again.

“What?” Levi repeated, to which the titan cocked its head and let out a different, yet familiar, questioning murr.

Levi’s brow furrowed. Something that felt distinctly Hange-ish niggled his mind.

A minute passed.

Levi pointed at the food, and, feeling silly but soldiering on, motioned bringing it to his mouth and eating before pointing back. “Food,” he said.

The titan’s ears twitched and after a moment it cracked open its jaw and warbled again, this time clearer and pointed. Watching Levi for any adverse reaction, the titan slowly lifted a hand and pointed at the meat.

Levi, eyes wide, nodded hesitantly. “Yes.”

The titan trilled happily, pointed at the meat and warbled once more.

Levi sucked a sharp breath in, before releasing it, long and slow. “What the fuck,” he said.

———

Levi had not yet discounted the idea that the titan may eat him, but if the thing didn’t... Levi didn’t know, but it was beginning to feel less and less likely. He didn’t know anything anymore. His worldview had been flipped on its head like he hadn't thought it would ever be again since leaving the underground behind for good.

His throat was dry from lobbing words back and forth between himself and the titan for the past several hours. He had finished half his canteen and would have had more if he wasn’t concerned about how long it needed to last. But he wasn’t as worried as he probably should be, because a deep, hopeful part of himself he usually kept squashed and sounded a little like Hange, was convinced he could get the titan to take him to water.

Not everything was clear between them, even if the titans had a language system, it was rudimentary at best. From what he could understand, the titan had different sounds sourced in rumbles and vibrations that communicated simple concepts and objects. Food was one, tree another, cooking was not, but hot and sun were.

The titan stayed sat the whole time and hadn’t moved other than to point at things and copy Levi’s gestures. Levi, who also hadn’t moved, despite the itch in his skin growing with his sweat as the heat of the day peaked.

He had passed out during what he guessed was late afternoon yesterday, and he didn’t know how much time had passed before being taken by the titan and his squad being attacked - he had refused to think about that up until now. The fact that the titan had found him implied that either everyone else nearby was dead when it did, or that it had partaken in the carnage. Neither thing was something Levi wanted to contemplate. Either way, he had woken up to the early morning sun that morning, so he knew at least a day had gone by. He had been part of a special expedition, travelling at night and sheltering in the day which meant the expedition had been far smaller than what it would have been and they had been several days' ride from the Maria when they had been attacked. They had been tasked with mapping out the surrounding area, but the cartographer - and likely everyone else - was now dead.

He sucked in a deep breath, a decision made. Either he stayed here in standoff with the titan, either dying of dehydration if the titan truly did not want to eat him or being eaten by said titan, or he enlisted the thing’s help and maybe lived to see a few more sunrises.

It was three-to-one option in favour of death, even the one was questionable but it had more potential than options two through four. At least when he did go out he would go knowing more about titans than Hange and the scouts combined.

After a half an hour guessing game, the titan finally seemed to understand what Levi wanted. It stood up cautiously, towering over Levi who was leaning precariously against his support stick. Definitely a fifteen-metre abnormal class titan.

“I’m not letting you carry me,” Levi said to it, friendly titan or not - they weren’t at that level of trust. The titan rumbled back its noise Levi had come to understand as confusion and he waved it off. Which in retrospect probably didn’t help.

“You,” he said, pointing at it and then pointing at the surrounding forest, “water.”

The titan warbled a yes, taking a step towards Levi. It took everything in him not to step back.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “You, water. I,” he pointed at himself, before motioning, “follow.”

The titan warbled uncertainly but in the end, took a few steps towards the clearings tree line, ears twitching. It glanced over its shoulder at Levi who hobbled snail’s pace behind, a frown he barely restrained from turning into a scowl, on his face.

It was slow going, painfully so. Levi breathed through the pain. Walls, it was frustrating. But he was a pragmatist and there would be no use letting it get to him here and now. Here and now, there was certain death or moving forward - otherwise known as uncertain death. The better choice of not many.

They had been walking for approximately half an hour when the titan stopped. It stopped regularly between steps to check Levi was still behind, and while the distance was meagre due to their slow pace, Levi was dead tired and aching. He did not notice it had stopped until he had to pause to wipe away the sweat that had started to drip uncomfortably into his eye, at which point he glanced up at the titan ahead.

The titan had stopped, its body gone taught and its long ears twitching.

Levi had an educated guess about what that meant, but he didn’t have time to think about it before the titan was spinning around on its heel and as gently but speedily as it could, jammed Levi in its mouth.

———

The human was slow but decidedly resilient. It did not make sense that titans healed instantaneously but the rest of the creatures did not, would it not be better if all creatures healed like him?

The human was using a small branch to hold itself up as it moved and it had used other small branches to stick to its injury using one of its extra skins. Titan was not sure yet how that helped but his noise of question had not been understood at that time.

And how fascinating that was, human communication. Titan had always known that they did it, odd little creatures that they were, but the string of complex noise the human used was nothing like titan rumble. It made Titan think of birds, so many different notes and tones in so many different combinations.

His tongue was too clumsy for the intricacies of humanspeak, but maybe one day he would get it. For now, he had already learnt several different humanspeaks - like how now, he was leading the human to water, he could hear the bubble of a river, not far off, all because the human has asked. Although it really would have been a much quicker journey for it had it let Titan carry it like he had when he had found it.

They had been walking for a while when Titan felt the first rumble of another titan. It was coming this way and, by the feel of its rumble, it was another big.

The human’s scent was strong and the titan was approaching from downwind, Titan didn’t trust there not to be a fight and he did not want to lose the human just yet when he was learning so many things. So he did the first thing he could think of to hide it.

The human let out a yell of surprise and protest, but it didn’t last long before it was muffled behind Titan’s teeth. He flipped the top of his tongue over in his mouth, holding it there so the human had enough room behind his teeth and wouldn’t run the risk of being swallowed.

Moments later the ground vibrations intensified and the other titan came weaving through the trees, scenting the air.

Food, it rumbled, hungry.

The other titan was the same size as him, but its head was disproportionately large, its chin elongated and cheeks puffed around exposed teeth and small lips. It looked down its nose at Titan, sniffing hungrily.

Too late, mine, Titan rumbled back, eaten. He added threat tones of stronger, my territory.

It took a step closer, still scenting the air. Titan rumbled deeper, mine. Leave. Anger. Kill. He couldn’t snarl or roar at the titan as he usually would when staking claim and dominance, as that could risk his human being scented or swallowed.

Eat you, titan rumbled, stepping closer.

Titan rumbled one last warning before moving forward himself. He moved quickly, much faster than the other despite being the same size. He couldn’t go for the quick kill of using his teeth to rip open the other’s nape, so instead, he moved in low, throwing his weight into the big to send it to the ground. It fought and writhed, clamping its teeth into the meat of Titan’s shoulder and tearing out a chunk as Titan pinned its arms, bringing his lower body up to better pin its torso as he slowly ripped off one of its arms and then the other, to then flip its flailing body over and, using his knee, drive his weight into its nape, crushing it. It stopped moving then, and moments later, small wisps of steam began to shed from its corpse.

Titan rocked back on his heels, stepping away from the body. He took another moment to stretch his senses out into the surrounding area, testing if there were any other threats but finding none. So, he carefully opened his mouth, bringing a cautious finger to the line of his teeth and holding it there, waiting.
After a long pause, something touched his fingertip.

Withdrawing his finger, Titan cupped his hand below his mouth and slowly tilted his jaw, allowing the wet, red-faced, human to climb out and glare at him. It slumped in his palm, having no other choice anymore, carefully propping its injured leg out in front of it.

He rumbled apologies, but the human did not seem to be paying attention, leaning its head over the side of Titan’s palm, too focussed on the big’s corpse disintegrating below them.

It dipped its head up and down a few times, a gesture Titan was beginning to recognise as an affirmative of some kind, before looking him in the eyes and pointing back out at the trees.

“Water?

———

Levi’s skin was crawling and he had to resist the urge to wretch.

His trip into the titan’s mouth had been a shock to the system he hadn’t expected. He was surprised by how, at the thought of being eaten, dying - despite being something he had considered as such an inevitability being stuck in titan country - made him realise how much he wanted to live.

There was also the split-second sense of betrayal that had lanced him, when the titan’s teeth had first shut, encapsulating him in wet, claustrophobic, darkness, waiting to be swallowed. However, as he had guessed before being put in the titan’s mouth, there were more titans in the area; confirmed when the titan’s aggressive rumbles rippled like earthquakes through Levi’s body, setting it alight with pain and making him grit his teeth, desperately trying to hold himself steady in the titan’s slippery mouthscape.

The whole experience had left him unsteady with anxiety and leftover adrenaline. It had been a long time since he had felt as vulnerable as in those moments. A dagger could do nothing in the face of these beasts, not to mention his injury would normally have him out of the field for weeks.

That and the coating of titan saliva was setting his already raw mental reserves ablaze. Titan saliva, like the rest of their bodies, evaporated, and therefore left no substance and if anything would leave him cleaner than before. But that did little to settle Levi’s already frayed mind and left him feeling ill.

The titan had placed him down carefully at the bank of a shallow, tapering river, no more than a few feet deep and five metres wide. Levi had lost his stick, and so was now balancing precariously on his right leg as he stripped off his gear and outer layers as quickly as he could. It had taken a lot of restraint to not throw himself into the water as he was, but doing that would make it far harder to strip than it already was.

He stumbled, cursing, and the titan let out a curious murmur. Levi looked up when the light above him dimmed, meeting the titan’s wide blue-green eyes, its mouth parted slightly, wafting warm steam over Levi. It was crouched with its knees to its chest, one hand extended to Levi. Its hand was curled in a loose fist except for its pinky… which it offered him.

“I hate you,” Levi told it, carefully placing his hand on the appendage. The change in weight distribution finally allowed him to reach the buckle giving him trouble and his gear hit the ground with a clatter, discarded with his cloak.

Using the titan’s finger, he pulled off his right boot and the remains of his shirt - half of it ripped into the strips stabilising the wood on his left leg. He let the titan go after lowering himself to the ground to undo his splint and remove his other boot and pants, before re-tieing it tightly with a grimace.

The water was shallow enough to sit in up to his waist, the soft flow of its currents gurgling and lapping at his skin. Levi focussed on scrubbing his forearms and the relief that washed through him with it at being clean at last. He didn’t want to look at the titan and acknowledge his current situation, so for a moment, he closed his eyes, threading water through his hair, pretending he was anywhere else, and just trying to breathe.

He was Levi, one of humanity's best, and right now he had a fighting chance.

Blood stubbornly clung to his clothes, but the water managed to get most of the remaining dirt out of the material of his cloak, shirt, and pants. The blood might fade with time and sunlight, but Levi was grateful for small mercies.

After finishing cleaning and refilling his canteen twice, he laid the sopping clothing in a patch of sunlight to dry. By his estimation, it was an hour or two past noon, if he moved them with the remaining sunlight they should be dry within a few hours.

In the meantime, exhausted, he sat down in the grass. With one last look at the titan, who looked to be sunbathing, Levi shut his eyes; focussing on feeling each intake of breath through his body, the rush of blood in his veins, and tried to remember how to feel alive.

Chapter Text

“Le-vi,” the human said, pointing at itself. “Levi.”

Titan rolled his tongue against its teeth, gurgling. Giving up he rumbled, open-mouthed - as his rumbles carried better that way when talking to the human - Small-mine, pointing at the human, Levi.

Levi (the titan wondered if that was the word humans used for humans or if, like titans, they used identifiers - Titan thought of himself as Titan, Strong-Alone, but he did not know what the other titans called him) shrugged his shoulders, saying something Titan couldn’t understand. “Close enough.”

Levi pointed at Titan, “now you. Me, Levi. You…?”

Titan released a crackling trill from the back of his throat.

Levi shook his head. “I can’t say that,” he made a series of softer sounds than Titan’s, looking thoughtful. “Ehhhrreh-gn… Erreehn. Eren?”

Titan repeated his rumble, copying Levi and pointing to himself, adding Small-Mine and pointing back at Levi.

Levi nodded, pointed again to himself. “Levi,” he said, then pointed at Titan. “Eren.”

Titan considered that for a moment before nodding his head like he had seen Levi do and burbling his agreement.

“Okay,” Levi said, running a tiny hand through his hair, “right. Thanks for saving my ass, Eren.”

They were still camped by the river, two day cycles had gone by since they had arrived. Titan wished he had paid more attention to humans before because Levi was fascinating. Once more he had hunted for Levi, and once more he got to watch as the human-made small-sun, “fire”, as Levi called it in humanspeak. The nights had seen Levi huddled close to the fire, wrapped in his extra skins, while Titan stayed in his place nearby against a tree.

Titan let himself sleep. The threat of other titans was gone in the dark hours when there was no sun to provide his kin energy. Once more Titan was different from the rest of the titans, he could remain wakeful for a few hours into the night, though too long and too much would eventually leave him drooping, unable to move.

They passed a few days like that until one morning Levi was awake before Titan - Eren. Levi stood closer to him than he had voluntarily come since Eren had offered his finger for support.

“Eren. Need food.” Levi said, looking up at Eren with an imperiousness he normally associated with other bigs, too confident in their dominance because of their size.

Eren cocked his head at the little human, he did not have size to laud his strength, yet he stood like the strongest titan, despite the crane of his neck required to meet Eren’s eyes. Eren was not intimidated, but he huffed with interest and amusement - if anything Levi’s actions made him more endearing. He portrayed himself as strong, dominant, threat even as his scent betrayed his skittishness. The tang of his anxiety spiked as Eren offered his palm but nevertheless, without hesitation, Levi carefully lowered himself in.

Humans were very complex.

That resulted in Eren learning new humanspeaks such as “Stop!” which Levi called up at him as he leaned over the side of Eren’s palm, gesturing to the ground, “Food.” And that humans ate many things, they ate meat like howlers but also plants like the creatures he had brought Levi.

But not all plants, only some, which confused Eren.

They continued on like that for a few day cycles, the fear-worry scent disappearing from Levi as he seemed to become more sure Eren wasn’t going to eat him. Eren had never eaten a human and didn’t feel any particular urge to start now but had no way to clearly tell the other that.

Currently, Levi was sitting at the bank of the river, eyeing up a tumbled river stone in one hand. Eren watched him take the silver claw he used to cut things, and scrape its edge along the wet stone, bringing it close to his face every few strokes for inspection.

“Oi, Eren,” Levi said, glancing at him over his shoulder, “I can feel you staring, you brat.”

Eren didn’t understand most of that humanspeak which Levi appeared to understand just from the look on his face, letting out a soft ‘tsk’ before turning back to his claw, which he lifted slightly.

“Knife,” he explained. Eren had played this game with him enough to understand he was naming the claw. “Stone,” he said as he lifted the stone.
Eren murmured a pleased affirmation back.

Levi looked back over his shoulder again, twisting slightly to better face Eren. He placed the knife and stone on the grass. “Wall,” he said this time, using one hand to gesture a shape and the other to point out, into the trees. “Wall.”

Eren thought he had become quite good at their little name game, but this one had him stumped. He mumbled confusion.

Swiping a hand through his hair, Levi said, “Okay, let’s try that again. Human,” he gestured at himself, “titan,” he gestured at Eren, “deer,” he said lastly, pointing at the remains of his fire.

‘Deer’ was the humanspeak word for the sharp-eared creatures Eren had had the most luck in catching. Ah. Levi was teaching him the humanspeak for their kinds.

As was their game, Eren cracked his jaw and rumbled back his own words, slow and deliberate, which brought a small smile to the corner of Levi’s mouth. The human nodded, repeating the humanspeak again and waiting for Eren’s reply to familiarise themselves with the new sounds.

“Titans live… trees, forests,” Levi said, “humans live walls.”

He made the gesture again, this time using both arms to indicate a tall, long thing. This time Eren understood.

Human-hive, Eren told him, nodding.

“Yes. Eren take me walls?”

Eren processed the question for a minute before dipping his head. Yes.

———

Returning to the walls was going to be a longer journey than Levi hoped.

Though realistically, the thought that he may actually return was also more than he had hoped but every day spent uneaten in the strange, intelligent, friendly, titan’s company, brought him closer and closer to the possibility of returning alive.

His understanding of the world had been crumbled to dust and reformed by Eren’s curious prodding and wide eyes. Levi was beginning to like the titan. And wasn’t that backwards.

Liking the titan went so far against everything Levi had been taught it wasn’t even in the realm of conceivability. Titans eat humans, that was an absolute rule. But Eren didn’t. Instead, the titan brought him food and helped him forage, and had brought him to a reliable source of water after fighting off another titan that undoubtedly would have followed said rule.

And if Levi thought about it too much he was going to give himself a migraine. Walls, he wanted a cup of tea.

The titan could also talk. Well, talk may be an exaggeration but Levi had seen the way Eren’s face twisted in thought as he tested sounds around his mouth with every new word Levi taught him. But his system of rumbles, more vibration than sound most of the time, were becoming more and more distinct to Levi as the days passed.

Eren, confirming that he could get Levi back home, had left Levi at a surprising loss. He was… relieved, hopeful, there was no doubt about that. But just because Eren had said he could, did not mean they were suddenly prepared to go charging back through open titan country.

Levi was no fool. The mission he had been on had already taken him approximately three days' travel on horseback from Maria. That was not counting whatever the unknown distance Eren already carried him when he was unconscious. Having a titan at his beck and call, Levi suspected, would not revolutionise the time as one might think. And, while he did want to live, every man had his limits and Levi was not spending three days (likely more) hiding inside Eren’s mouth.

He also needed to give his leg more time. Levi healed quickly, borderline unnaturally so, but it would still take five to six weeks for him to be fully back on his feet. And risking too much movement that early on would only set him back. Especially if, say, that movement was running away from a hungry titan.

It had already been a week since the failed expedition - Levi had avoided thinking of his undoubtedly dead soldiers, their faces cast shadows in his mind which threatened to consume him. He couldn’t afford the distraction, as callous as that was if he were to make it out of this alive. The time to mourn them would be when he made it back to the walls.

And if not, Erwin would soon suspect something had gone wrong. The scouts would mourn in his place.

Eren burbled a question at him. Levi waved him off. “I’m fine you nosy lug. Mind your damn business.”

The titan blew steam at him but slouched back into the patch of sunlight he was sunbathing in.

Grass stains be damned, Levi followed suit, staring up at the blue sky watching him through the treetops. Levi sighed and shut his eyes to it - darkness was simpler than the expanse that knew too much and asked too many questions.

He would need to prepare.

He was going home.

———

It was hell all over again.

Levi was back, rain falling like his own tears couldn’t as Isabel’s empty green eyes stared at him. They were wide, beseeching him to save her even when it was already too late, and they were dull, so dull, and it was so, so wrong.

Not again. Not again, please not again.

A soft sound reverberated from Eren, his jaws parting to release a puff of steam that mingled with the rain. He was sat with his knees splayed in front of Levi, his eyes were half-lidded and dark, shrouded by the wet hair plastered to his face. His right arm was missing, the main source of the steam fogging the air. But he was alive, and so was Levi.

“...Eren,” Levi said slowly, blinking water from his eyes. “Eren.”

Not Isabel. Not anymore.

Levi tried to stand, to move towards the titan. His foot slipped in the mud, pain ricocheted through his splinted leg. His useless gear clanged noisily at his hips. Mud splattered his face as his hands hit the ground. Each breath came too shallow, too quick.

Deep breaths; he steadied himself, staring at his mud-coated hands. In - one, two. Out - one, two.

Try again.

Gritting his teeth, Levi ground his good heel into the ground, pulling himself to his feet. Rain ran heavily in streams through his hair and down his face, it soaked through his clothes, making every movement heavy.

Eren chittered anxiously at him.

“Worry about yourself, you big oaf,” Levi snapped at him without heat. He hobbled lopsidedly over to the titan. Eren also sat in the mud, though much of his form was left hazy and obscured by the clouding steam rising from his injuries and combining with the rain.

Eren extended his remaining hand for Levi.

“Drop me and I’ll kill you,” Levi said.

Their trip had started smoothly. They had stayed within the forest for the first day, Eren had only paused twice - sensing other titans - but they had not strayed close and Eren and Levi continued on uninterrupted. They moved slowly because as they travelled in the day, Eren had to be on high alert for titans and any faster would make for an unforgettable journey for Levi, who was camped in Eren’s palm pushed horizontally against the titan's upper chest. Moving like they were, Levi adjusted his estimate to six or seven days travel time, accounting for their speed and the likelihood that they had already been further out than Levi had thought. Maybe eight days depending on the titan threat as they ran out of tree coverage and hit the plains.

Eren, once again, over the last three weeks of their camping by the river, had proven himself to be the most abnormal of abnormal titans and was able to stay awake for two to three hours into the night. Levi might have chosen to utilise that, but they had come across a decent water source and he had decided to make camp.

It was on the second day that things changed.

The trees had thinned around midday, Eren had chittered nervously from the treeline but gave no indication of titans, so they had carried on.

They had been aiming for another copse, the trees still a way off but within Levi’s sightline when a titan had emerged.

Eren stopped.

The distance had blurred its features, but it was evident in the way it stilled that it had seen them. Levi might have guessed just from that, that the thing was an abnormal if it wasn’t already clear by the way it moved on all fours. The titan watched them, unmoving, for a minute made longer by the way Levi’s breath caught and his pulse thrummed with anticipatory adrenaline.

There was nothing he could do to protect himself. It was all up to Eren.

Then the titan turned around and disappeared back into the trees.

Eren rumbled something indecipherable but soft, the vibrations grounding Levi. He then adjusted their course to skirt the trees and they walked on.

Until the quadruped titan stepped from the trees again, this time flanked by two others, one small and big-shouldered, lightly pot-bellied with a curled blond hair, the other larger, closer to Eren’s height and thin, brown hair cropped at its ears.

That day Levi learned he wasn’t the only one the titans would eat given the chance. At least he and Eren had that in common.

What followed was the most fucked up version of Cat and Mouse Levi had ever witnessed, let alone partaken in. The titans stalked them into the open plains, Eren backing away to maintain what distance they still had but unwilling to take his eyes off the threat.

The titans took their time, separating from each other in an attempt to net Eren.

Levi slapped his hand into Eren’s chest to get his attention.

“Me up!” He yelled, gesturing to Eren to hold Levi by his shoulder, and then pointing at Eren and twirling his finger once in a gesture for Eren to turn around. “I look. You run.”

Eren understood, raising his cupped hand to his opposite shoulder, allowing Levi to stay in his palm but prop himself up to watch over Eren’s shoulder as the titan turned and picked up his pace.

Inevitably, they were caught.

“Left!” Levi yelled.

The smallest of the three titans lunged first, and that was the last Levi saw before he was ungraciously shoved into Eren’s mouth.

The dark, warm, wet cavern of Eren’s mouth was familiar but no less awful than before, made worse by the fact that Levi now had a vested interest in the titan’s continued existence. He braced himself clumsy against Eren’s teeth and the underside of his tongue, as Eren’s threats rippled painfully through Levi’s body and Eren moved from unseen blows.

Until suddenly, Levi was free. It was luck that had the hit sending Eren to the ground, so when Levi went flying from his mouth it was more momentum than a fifteen-metre freefall he had to worry about. Instinct had him rolling, protecting his broken leg as best he could as he skidded across the ground. The fall left him several metres from Eren, who was pushing himself up with one arm - the other missing - a furious roar now tearing from his empty mouth.

One of the titans was a steaming heap of flesh, but the quadruped and the small titan were still alive and incoming.

But Eren made for a much fiercer opponent when given use of his teeth. He roared at the quadruped, lunging for it and sweeping it up, over, and onto its back where his jaws clamped into the meat of its shoulder. Neither of them noticed the smaller titan’s attention shifting.

Levi stumbled back as it approached. Of course, that was when the first drop of rain fell from the rapidly greying sky, splattering against his cheek.

He snarled at the titan, pulling his dagger from its sheath and loosing the sharpened stick he had kept spare from where it was attached to his splint. He raised them defensively. The titan continued its approach, unfazed. Up close it was eight to ten metres in size - its eyes wide and lidless and its smile eerie.

Levi couldn’t get around it as he was, couldn’t go for its achilles like his instincts told him to. He wasn’t fast enough with the splint hindering him. Instead, his best option was to -

He kept his arms high and his muscles relaxed as the titan’s hand wrapped around his middle and lifted. It brought him higher, higher, closer. Until Levi was close enough to ram the spear up the titan’s nasal cavity.

It froze, its sense of smell blocked enough to disorient it for just a moment long enough -

Eren roared, his one hand latching onto the small titan’s arm as he wrenched it back towards him and crushed its head in his teeth.

Levi slipped back to the ground, sliding in the muddied grass, his breath ragged, and tried to stop shaking.

Chapter Text

Of course, once the rain came it did not stop.

The initial storm that had hit them had been nothing but a harbinger of the weather to follow. Autumn had finally arrived in full glory, bringing with it the winter rains.

After their encounter with the three titans, the weather had worsened; winds picked up, howling and biting like dogs, hammered home by the strike of each plummeting raindrop. The chill might’ve left Levi hypothermic if Eren weren’t a walking firestone.

The oncoming storm had caused them to backtrack. The darkened afternoon sky had slipped quickly and unnoticeably into evening, which they used as cover to keep moving. Eren had moved with a sense of purpose that spoke of a destination in mind, so Levi did not protest their movements going in the opposite direction of the walls.

Levi had naturally good vision in the dark, something he had never lost in the years since coming topside, the weather made it difficult but he could still make out the shift in terrain. It roughened, boulders and jagged, crumbling stone began to spear the ground, and scraggly hills mounded, growing larger as they went on.

Eventually, Eren stopped in a shield of trees, murmuring tired assurances. He sat heavily against the tree, Levi still cupped in his hands.

Exhaustion and cold made his bones feel brittle and heavy. For once Levi didn’t protest remaining in the titan’s hold. And so, it was like that that they both fell asleep.

———

The rain didn’t stop for three more days, most of which stormed violently. Thunder cracked whips in the flashes of lightning that split apart the churning sky, streaks of white in the black. On the fourth day, the heavy rains faded into a gloomy drizzle.

It had now been over four weeks, a full month, that Levi had spent in titan country in the company of a titan.

Eren had spent the last days in the rain, keening his melancholy like a child with nothing better to do. He had brought Levi to a cave set into the base of a cliff, the cave was a good size at the opening and made for the perfect shelter for a human. However, it was not big enough to accommodate whiny fifteen-metre class titans, which meant Eren was only able to comfortably fit his head inside, the rest of his body was left prone and exposed to the rioting elements. Something he persisted in making a noise about if the sad, throaty grumbles he was making were anything to go by.

Levi didn’t think Eren could even feel the cold.

“Would you quit your crying?” he said, flicking a stone at Eren’s nose. “Don’t make me come out there to kick your giant, naked ass.”

Eren huffed.

Levi brandished the stick, more of a branch really, that he was sharpening and narrowing his eyes at the titan.

“You were due for a clean, you filthy brat. Suck it up.”

Of course, Eren took that as an invitation to withdraw completely into the rain. Levi returned to his task with a click of his tongue, only for Eren to return a minute later. The titan leered at Levi for a moment before he shook his giant - now rain-soaked - head, water splashing everywhere.

Levi stared down at his now wet clothes.

“You’re dead, you little shit,” he snarled. But Eren, puffing amusedly, withdrew from the cave before Levi could move, knowing he wouldn’t risk the cold. Levi could still hear the titan’s laughter.

They stayed by the cave for an additional day once the rain let up, to confirm it was not only a temporary respite. But the darkness had been bleached from the clouds, and on the day they decided to move on, Levi could even see a return of blue.

They doubled their travel time again, both unwilling to risk another attack like the one before. They travelled through what cover they had reached the day before while the sun was high and waited until dusk to cross any open spaces they encountered. It would get harder, Levi knew, the closer they got to the walls and the open fields there. But while their steps were slow, each one took them closer to their goal.

Making it back alive was worth the wait.

Eren fought off more titan’s, but none like the abnormal quadruped and its groupies. Though Levi still spent more time than he would have liked inside the titan’s mouth.

There were some days they barely travelled at all. Normally on these days, Eren’s ears would prick, he would look at Levi and gesture widely out past the tree-line, keeping his communicative rumbles as low and as little as possible.

Levi had already guessed that titan’s operated on a combination of scent and vibrational sensing to locate and communicate with each other. It wasn’t a stretch to guess what walked beyond the trees. Some titans liked to travel in packs.

At some point, they had crossed the five-week mark and were nearing the sixth. They called it early and set up camp with a few hours of daylight left.

Deciding it was time, Levi untied his splint. “Give me your hand?”

Eren burbled but complied, offering Levi his pinky.

Levi stood carefully, using Eren as support to pull himself up and test his weight on his left leg. He flexed his ankle, then tried bending his knees. When both came up pain-free, he nodded. His left leg felt weak but healed, and free at last from the splint which had been inhibiting his movements.

He took two tentative steps using the titan’s support, before breaking off and walking over to the closest tree. When he turned around a headed back, Eren was watching him. Levi smiled. It was a small, unpracticed thing. “Thanks,” he said.

———

Levi sat loose-limbed in the crook of Eren’s shoulder as the titan wove through the giant trees.

It was surprisingly stable seating between the dip in muscles; Levi tapped one heel against Eren’s skin to a half-remembered tune, the other was propped beneath his knee.

There was a chill in the air, but sunlight dappled Eren’s warm skin and the woodland below through the evergreen leaves. Birds chirped in the deceptive calm; something bigger rustled in the underbrush. Levi didn’t bother worrying; Eren seemed unconcerned, occasionally chittering back at the birds with strange small chirping noises that were out of place coming from the large titan, but were surprisingly endearing.

Then Eren snuffled.

“What is it?” Levi said. Eren sniffed again, don’t-know, he rumbled. Human.

Eren lifted his hand for Levi, who stepped into his palm. Kneeling, Eren placed him on the ground. The titan was on all fours now, his shaggy head level with Levi.

He reached out a large hand, pushing aside a dense patch of shrubbery between the bases of two trees. Levi stepped forward so that he was standing next to Eren’s nose in time to feel his soft release of breath as the titan let out a soft keen.

Beneath the shrubbery, exposed by Eren’s hand, was a partial human skeleton. The skull was browned and worn, jaw sitting agape; there were pieces of a disjointed spine and rib cage loose like a child’s game of pick-up-sticks or knucklebones, and Levi could make out one arm sunk into the dirt, small weeds poking around it. There was no lower body. Instead, there were scraps of leather and a shred of what looked to have once been green material poking out beneath a scapula. A testament to the durability of the material, for all the years the body had undoubtedly sat there, slowly eroding forgotten and alone.

Levi had learnt the names of many dead scouts over the years. Scouts had to leave their dead more often than not, so, they kept their names instead; carrying them forever upon their souls until their own inevitable ends caught up to them. Each name was a weight, but a weight well carried - one no scout would ever spurn, let alone want to.

Levi carried many names. The scouts traded them often, through snatches of conversation in the mess, lamenting words on dark nights, prayers before the gate. Levi collected them all - for when their original bearers could no longer.

And then he would collect their names, too.

Looking into the empty eyes of this scout, he wondered if he had collected their name; if someone back home still thought of them now, or if they were forgotten - their existence an unknown to anyone bar Levi and Eren.

They would have died alone, afraid. Petrified.

Levi knew those feelings.

Once upon a time, they might have both looked into the same sky. Maybe the scout might have laughed, smiled, taken the hand of another and looked forward to each coming day.

Longing burned within him. There was nothing here, but if he had the scouts name he could return them nonetheless. Give them remembrance - the only thing he could afford to give nowadays.

There was no way to know. His chest ached and his throat felt thick. Levi swallowed.

He put an upturned fist over his heart in salute, and whispered a hoarse, “I’m sorry,” to the dead scout. The words were too simple for what he wanted to say, but they sat heavy with it regardless.

Eren burbled a soft question at him.

“I’m fine,” Levi said. “There’s nothing we can do. Let’s go.”

———

It had been a total of two months and one week since Levi had met Eren.

Travel had been stilted over the last few days, but the terrain had slowly become increasingly familiar as they moved forward.

They stopped moving well into the night - Eren had gotten better at remaining awake well into the night hours. Levi didn’t bother with trying for a fire, had bothered less and less as time had worn on unless he needed it to cook. Eren was both shelter and warmth enough, even as autumn kicked in and the last of the summer heat fled from the sun.

“We’ll reach the wall tomorrow,” Levi said, perched in Eren’s palm; watching moonlight reflect in titan’s eyes.

Yes, Eren rumbled, watching him back. Wall close.

Levi didn’t know how he was going to do it or if he could even convince the higher-ups and the scouts, but -

“I’ll come back for you,” he told Eren, "if you want."

Hange would froth at the bit to get a look at Eren, and the titan had already proven to be an invaluable resource. He was unlike anything humanity could have imagined in regards to the titans, and to have him fighting on the Scouts’ side could turn the tide of what felt like an unrequited war. Eren could be the key to humanities success.

That, and, Levi liked Eren. The titan had saved and cared for a human. He was a big dumb baby that didn’t like the rain and was curious about everything and nothing and found a pissed-off Levi to be the most entertaining part of any day.

Levi liked Eren. Two months with solely the titan for company would do that to a guy.

He didn’t want to see the titan as just another notch on some scout’s blade. He didn’t want Eren to die without even a body left to bury.

Eren puffed steam through his teeth at Levi.

Levi rolled his eyes at the titan, unseen in the dark. “I’ll stop overthinking when you finally learn about pants.”

To which Eren raised his other hand and pointed at Levi’s crossed legs.

“Okay, whatever. Smartass.”

Levi moved onto his side, propping his bundled up cloak under his head. It smelled like old woodsmoke and something distinctly Eren.

The titan’s soft rumbles echoed through his bones.

“Tomorrow,” Levi said, staring out into the darkness. The stars above twinkled knowingly.

———

Eren froze midstep. Levi felt him go tense.

“What is it?”

Eren’s eyes were focused on the horizon line, where the wall should be appearing any minute now.

Titan, big, big, Eren said, he emphasised the word twice, followed by a confused-distraught chirrup.

“How big?” Levi asked, concern mounting and anxiety beginning to prick holes in his chest.

Eren shook his shaggy head. Big, he rumbled again, this time tapping his foot meaning he couldn’t see the other titan but was sensing its vibrations through the ground.

Levi didn’t know what that meant. Titan’s rarely exceeded Eren’s size, and if they did it was only ever by a few metres. Eren’s reaction was not one Levi was familiar with.

“The wall,” Levi said, “Eren. We have to get to the wall.”

Dread began to pool in Levi’s stomach. Intuition said whatever it was, it was bad.

And it was at wall Maria.

Chapter Text

Wall Maria should have been a welcoming sight.

Instead, a behemoth loomed at her gates, like a demon come collecting. Titans swarmed like flies at the gutted hole where the main gate had once stood. The same gate Levi had exited over two months earlier. Now it was rubble, its stones shattered and strewn; the indubitable symbol of protection it had once been crumbled as the first titans carelessly ambled through.

Levi had never seen a titan of that size. He would have never imagined it was possible. It was taller than the walls, rippling with red, raw, exposed musculature, and steam pumped off it like its whole body was a healing wound. Its legs were thick trunks, thicker than even the great trees that he and Eren had taken to sheltering in, stabilising its gigantic body, one giant foot was obviously what had kicked in the wall.

Eren didn’t need to be told to run. Levi allowed himself to be pressed tightly into the titan’s chest. Every step Eren took juddered through Levi like a second stronger heartbeat as they tore towards Maria.

Time stretched endless before them. An irrational part of Levi feared they would never make it, that some greater being, perhaps that of the colossus before them, would be determined to keep them away.

When Eren finally slowed, the colossal titan was gone, which caused panic to momentarily ripple through Levi because where could a giant of that size have just disappeared to -

But other titans still streamed through the ruined gate and into the city beyond. They paid Eren and Levi no mind, lost to a frenzy brought on by the scent of humans in their thousands.

“I have to get in there,” Levi said. Eren seemed to understand, or perhaps he was of the same mindset, as he lifted Levi to the same shoulder position as when he fought the quadruped, and charged through the throng.

Eren would need both his hands and his jaws to fight. Levi needed a new set of gear.

“Eren!” Levi called. “Take me there!” He pointed at a tall roof four blocks over.

Eren slammed an eight-metre titan into the side of a building, crushing its nape, and veered down the next street.

“Go,” Levi said to him once Eren had placed him on the desired rooftop. “Fight.”

Eren glanced between Levi and the encroaching titans, gurgling.

“Go. I’ll be fine.”

Finally, Eren dipped his head in a nod and spun on his heel.

Be careful.

Levi turned and sprinted across the roof, aiming for the heart of the Shiganshina.

Levi had just jumped his fourth roof when he finally saw what he wanted in the form of a young garrison soldier zipping past.

“Oi!”

The soldier’s eyes widened and he bombed his landing, crashing to his knees on the roof tiles beside Levi.

“Sir, you need to evacuate-”

“I need you to give me your gear,” Levi said, seriously.

“What?”

“Your gear. I need it.”

Levi knew he didn’t look like much; his hair was shaggy and reminiscent of Eren’s; he’d tried his best to keep his clothes clean but his pants were more beige than cream from all his tumbles in the mud and dirt, and there were a few devilishly persistent grass stains on the knees he had gotten struggling with his splint. That, and his grey shirt beneath his jacket and cloak had evident length missing where it had been torn up and repurposed. There was also a large hole in his cloak where it had been caught on Eren’s tooth during one of Levi’s trips inside his mouth.

He had finally done away with the bulk of his ODM gear bar his harness a few weeks ago; deciding it was more hindrance than help. He had been out of gas since Eren had found him and the wires had been damaged. But still, he had kept it for as long as he had in the weak hope he might stumble across a dead scout with their gear intact, morbid as that sounded but gods knew there were a lot of them out there, they had seen evidence of that, and salvage it.

“Look kid, those are titans. Are you going to fight the titans?”

“I -”

“You have family, don’t you? Think about them. You don’t wanna fight the titans, kid. So give me your gear and get outta here. Live, for fucks sake. Leave the suicide acts to the scouts.”

“You’re a scout,” the soldier said, and then his face slackened in realisation. “You’re -”

“Yup. No time. Your gear.”

The soldier shed his gear, passing it off to Levi who pulled it on with old familiarity. Like putting on a second skin.

He rolled his shoulders into the familiar weight, feeling lighter despite it.

“What’s your name, soldier?”

“Arno, Captain Levi, sir.”

“Point me to the nearest evacuation point, Arno.”

“Yessir!”

———

Eren had never liked his own kind but seeing the way they carved through the town, idle and smiling, leaving destruction and blood, human blood, so unlike ephemeral titan blood; bright red and wet, glossy in the sunlight where it pooled and spattered along paving and walls and tiles… it made rage, unfamiliar and yet not, uncoil inside him like a creature long forgotten in hibernation finally awakening.

He was angry, so angry, his chest ached with it, his fingers itched to crush, rend, tear. Eren roared, spittle flying as he unhinged his jaw and tore off a titans head. Its flesh squelched, and blood flooded his mouth, evaporating on his tongue.

Death was different when it came to humans. What was left behind when the titans had finished stayed, limbs strewn. It brought an odd permanence to the loss, heightened the true gruesome nature of death and pain. The titans didn’t need to eat, to kill them, but they did anyway, thoughtlessly, carelessly, unwaveringly so.

They didn’t care either way.

Eren had never liked his own kind, but it had been a non-issue before; something that just was. he didn’t like them but they were there, they were a natural, expected factor in his daily existence. He had never hated them quite as he hated them now; the feeling welled up within him with foreign strength. He looked upon the ruined town and its dead, and he loathed.

Life was delicate; before Levi, Eren hadn’t really understood what that meant. He knew the cycles of life, of the creatures in his forests, as they died and lived in repeat. But they had all been the same to him in the end. But how clever creatures were, became, when life was not endless, painless - a titans. They had so many tricks for survival. They learned and created so many things.

They were special. Levi was special.

Now, Eren saw his kind for what they really were, mindless and beastly, and he saw Levi’s face in the faces of the dead humans he passed. He had never considered the permanence of death before he realised he had something to lose. Something the titans would take without a single thought.

Eren was not like the other titans, he did not kill as they killed. He was greater than them.

So he would be like the strong creatures in the forest that preyed on the weak; he would kill the titans.

He would kill them all.

———

Levi zipped through Shiganshina.

He rounded up as many people as he could, ushering them to the evacuation point. Titan upon titan fell before him. He hadn’t found Eren again yet but he trusted the titan would show up.

Levi hadn’t arrived in time to stop the second abnormal titan, which a Garrison soldier had informed him was covered in a hard plating like armour. The Colossal Titan had taken out the outer gate, allowing the Armoured Titan to get into Shiganshina and take out the inner gate into Maria’s main ring. It was obvious the two had some modicum of intelligence and were working together but since then both had vanished, leaving the regular titans to flood the city and beyond.

“Sir!” Ena, a blonde Garrison officer, called. “We have to evacuate. We’re being overrun.”

“Not yet. Go if you must. I won’t blame you,” Levi replied, coiling his body as he lept off a building. He threw himself high into the air, at last catching a glimpse of long brown hair.

“Eren!”

Levi angled his body, throwing himself into his own momentum. He dipped and spun like a madman, cutting into one of the titans now going for Eren. He was surrounded, as the people were evacuated on the boats, the titan’s had finally turned on different prey.

He touched down on Eren’s shoulder, one large blue-green eye flicked down at him in acknowledgement.

“We kill these,” Levi said loudly to the titan, “then we go. Too many here, if you stay you die.”

Eren nodded his shaggy head in understanding.

Levi flew off his shoulder as Eren slammed his hand into a titans neck. He spun viciously, slicing another’s nape. Ena and another soldier he couldn’t name joined him.

“Don’t touch that titan,” he instructed them, pointing to Eren. “Kill him and I’ll kill you.”

Steadily they whittled down the numbers. Ena was surprisingly competent for a garrison soldier.

“Ena! Jos!” A new voice called, and two more soldiers joined the fray.

Levi was facing the wrong way when it happened. His blades buried in the nape of a ten-metre titan with stupidly large ears.

“What is with this thing?” Someone yelled.

Another said, “Don’t -!”

And then with a vicious spray of blood, Eren’s body was toppling. His teal eyes were blown wide in surprise as he fell. The titan was unused to humans except for Levi, he hadn’t expected - hadn’t protected himself against human force.

Levi couldn’t hear the sound over the blood roaring in his ears, but he felt the thud.

Levi hadn’t protected him. He had failed again.

And something in him crumbled alongside Eren’s titan flesh.

“EREN!”

———

He didn’t kill the soldier, but it was a near thing.

“Do you know what you’ve done?!”

Someone hooked Levi’s shoulders, in a vain attempt to halt his advance. The Garrison soldiers and himself had gathered on a rooftop, away from the incoming flush of titans.

The idiot soldier, Eren’s killer, looked down his stupidly big nose at Levi, folding his arms at his chest. “It was just a titan.”

He felt sick. His lungs weren’t taking in air like they should, his body felt cold and tight and hot all at once. Fury flooded him, it was the only thing keeping him on his feet.

“He was not just a titan,” Levi snarled, teeth bared animalistically. And then, without looking over his shoulder, said, “If you do not let go of me I will break both your arms so bad you’ll need help wiping your shitty ass for the rest of your fucking life.”

The soldier holding him, Ena’s nameless partner, released him and took a harried step back, raising his hands.

“You will give me your name, soldier. And then you will walk away before I kill you.” Levi stalked forwards and wrapped his hand in the fabric at the soldier’s collar. “Better thank your lucky stars there are witnesses,” he hissed. “Now, your name, soldier.”

“Pickley. Anson Pickley, sir.” Finally, the soldier looked cowed. A small bead of sweat tracked down the slope of his brow.

“Good,” Levi said, and then delivered an uppercut with his other hand into the soldier’s torso that left him doubled over and retching.

“That titan,” Levi said, raising his voice for the rest of the garrison soldiers, “was one of a kind and was the best hope humanity had against the titans. When a titan finally eats your sorry asses I hope you remember that. Don’t you ever let me see your shitty face again, Pickley. Or mine will be the last you see.”

And with that Levi zipped away, headed for the boats and hoping someone, anyone, had whiskey to spare.

Another name. Always another name. One he could never bury no matter if he wanted to.

———

Eren woke in a dream.

Everything felt fuzzy. And hot, so hot. It hurt. Heat had never hurt him before; heat from the sun kept him alive.

Why did it hurt?

Some instinctual part of him had Eren pulling, tugging backward to get out, get away from it. Like a rope snapped, he came free. Bright sky and steam assaulted his senses, his lungs convulsed making him clasp at his chest and lose the balance Eren hadn’t realised he’d had.

He fell backwards tumbling down the smelting corpse of a titan and landing with a thud on his back. Eren looked up into his own face, his own glassy eyes and two-tiered jaw - things he had only ever seen in distorted reflections on water.

His face stared back at him, gigantic and disintegrating.

A choked, aborted rumble lodged in his throat. Eren rolled onto his hands and knees, hacking.

“Kid? Kid!”

There was someone speaking, humanspeak. Not Levi. It was followed by the thwip and zing of the humans’ funny flying gear.

“Oh walls, why are you naked? Wait no, that doesn’t matter. How on earth did you get here? That’s a dead titan, oh fuck. Oh, fuck.”

The corner of a familiar-looking green cloak fell into his sightline from where it now draped down his shoulders. There was pressure on one of his shoulders, and giant boots appeared in his vision.

“Hey, kid, I’ve gotta get you outta here. We need to get to the boats. Can you stand?”

Hands gripped his arm, tugging him upwards, and Eren looked up into the face of titan. It was blond and freckled, with large brown eyes, and it wore clothes which was very strange. Was it trying to eat him, too?

He felt so weak. His body shook with it, clumsy and tremulous. Nothing was right, nothing worked. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t fight, couldn’t kill -

“That’s it. You’re okay… Breathe with me. In, out.” The titan placed Eren’s hand on its chest and took several slow, deep breaths he couldn’t help but focus on and match. “There you go.”

Eren stared into the strange titan’s eyes. They were warm and seeing, so different from normal titans eyes that were usually blank and cold, despite the mirth of their expressions.

“Okay, my name is Davy, can you tell me yours?”

The titan spoke humanspeak. That was new. But he knew that question - name. Levi’s name was Levi and Eren’s name was Eren. Because Levi had given it to him. A humanspeak name.

“Errrrrhhhg,” Eren said.

Davy’s brows creased. “Hmm okay, maybe we’ll just leave that for now. I think you may have a concussion.”

The next thing Eren knew, Davy was lifting Eren and pulling him to his chest, his legs around Davy’s waist and his arms around his neck.

“Hold on, kid. God, we really need to get you some pants.”

Pants. Eren knew that word. He nodded against Davy’s shoulder. Levi liked pants.

“Okay, seriously. Hold on,” Davy said, and Eren choked on his tongue as they were suddenly launched into the air. He clamped his arms and legs around Davy, panicked, breathless rumbles escaping from his chest.

Eren watched over Davy’s shoulder as the world flashed by and it suddenly occurred to him that Davy was not a titan at all. He wasn’t giant… Eren was just… small.

Eren was small. And Davy was a human, like Levi.

Eren was small.

Why was he small?

Where was Levi?

There was a clamour below. Eren looked down at an odd river, wide and unnaturally straight. An odd-shaped thing floating on it like the leaves he watched fall from trees in the orange season. It was filled with people; Eren didn’t think leaves could carry people. He could carry people though: he carried Levi all the time.

Davy’s feet hit the ground near the not-leaf.

“Titan’s are coming this way,” he said to another human, this one brown-haired like Eren. Davy untangled Eren and set him on the ground. “Walls, you’re heavy. Can you take one more? And could someone get him some pants?”

“We’ll fit him. He’s a kid. Got no other choice,” the other human said. “What are you gonna do?”

“Job’s not done. I gotta go back. I’ll catch the next boat.”

The second human nodded solemnly. “Good luck.”

“You too. And you, kid,” Davy said, rubbing his hand over Eren’s hair. “Though I s’pose you’re a bit old for me to be calling you kid. Must be the big brother in me.”

Eren blinked at him, rumbling his confusion.

“Come, boy. Onto the boat with you,” the other human said.

“Thanks, Mirabelle,” Davy said, raising a hand before he zipped back into the air.

Eren was ushered onto the boat with the rest of the humans. Before he was completely lost to the crowd, he looked back at the way Davy had gone, catching sight of his tiny silhouette as it flew over rooftops.

Davy flipped once in the air as he changed course, just a coloured blur against the grey backdrop of the wall. The silhouette of a titan rose between the buildings.

Eren watched, unable to restrain a flinch, as the human flew right into its waiting hands.

Chapter Text

The journey back to headquarters sucked. The boats were crowded and filthy, people packed like fish to a tin. Sweat, dust, and blood coated the survivors, exhaustion aged their faces and tugged at their shoulders. Tear tracks visibly marred the grime stained faces of many as they watched their home shrink, now little but a glorified burial site. The boat travelled the canal to Trost, away from wall Maria and Shiganshina. Someone sobbed.

Levi was tempted not to return to headquarters, not for a few days at least. He felt hollow and wrung out, and beyond all, tired. Everything was empty. He should go to the pub instead, drink away his sorrows maybe. But that had never been his style of grief, and besides, he had fuck all money. Everything was back at headquarters, including a hot shower.

Eren’s loss was jarring. Being back amongst his own kind, knowing Eren had died for them, was moreso. It was too much. People were too much, too small, too close, too many. Levi’s skin began to crawl in a way it hadn’t in weeks and it was an effort not to scrub at his skin to remove things only he could see. It wouldn’t do to make a scene here, not while everyone was also suffering.

Levi kept his head down for the journey to Trost, listening to the wails of refugees and knowing he wasn’t the only one to have lost someone. So many people had died. So many people he hadn’t been able to help. He cared about every life lost under his command. Every scout that had died and would die, every civilian he hadn’t reached. But Eren…

It had been a long time since Levi had cared like that. And for a titan too.

He flipped his cloak inside out to hide the worn scouts’ insignia and pulled the hood up to hide his face, fending off any questions he received with noncommittal grunts and one-word answers.

When Rose finally loomed like a divine protector and the boats landed in Trost, Levi slipped away. There was nothing more he could do for the refugees.

Headquarters looked like it always looked and always had looked - surprisingly polished and imposing. A lot like Erwin actually, the bastard. The gate to the main courtyard was open and appeared to be unmanned, but Levi knew there were scouts lurking somewhere.

The sight of the place, both his partial home and the bane of his existence, caused a heaviness to sink into his bones and swipe the breath from his lungs. It had been a long two months. More.

Levi debated sneaking in, getting to his hopefully not repurposed rooms, and cleaning himself up before going to bed. Not seeing any scouts, not Erwin, and not even Hange. Avoiding the inevitable fanfare that might just, after all these years, be his breaking point.

If he was going to go out, he should at least take Erwin with him. Courtesy and all, as they had met when Levi had been bargaining his murder. It would be poetic irony.

Levi sucked in a deep breath and decided to go in straight. See how far he’d get.

He kept the hood up and strolled through the gate, heading for a side entrance.

It was just his luck though, that before he could make it halfway across the courtyard, Eyebrows himself exited the main entry, two scouts at his flank. They looked to be in an important discussion, Erwin’s face was pinched in thought.

Levi saw the second the man saw him, his great eyebrows furrowing.

“You,” he said, and it was clear he was talking to Levi who stopped moving as all attention swivelled to him, the obvious flaw in an otherwise perfect scene. “Remove your hood and state your name.”

“Erwin,” Levi greeted after a pause, finally pushing his hood back. “It’s been a while.”

———

The girl seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Mirabelle had left Eren with the throng after finding him some pants, speaking muddled words he couldn’t understand.

It was too much. Davy had died, Eren could have saved him. But he didn’t. Davy was dead. It was his fault. What about Levi? Was Levi dead too? Was that why Eren couldn’t find him? Could he have saved him but didn’t like he didn’t save Davy and now Levi was gone too? Levi was gone and Davy was dead.

The titans killed them. And Eren was a titan. But now he was not.

Davy had died right in front of him.

Eren’s breath had quickened painfully and he couldn’t stop it. His body was confused, there was so much, too much foreign sensory input. Smells were muted and sounds were different, more localised but less distinct and separable - he couldn’t focus on one or the other or pinpoint them for all the ruckus of the humans surrounding him. His mouth was strange, wrong. There was so much physical sensation, the humans were everywhere, everywhere he moved there was another brushing up against him, he couldn’t get away, he couldn’t get free -

Arms wrapped around his shoulders, drawing him close so that his face was pressed into the crook of a shoulder.

Levi -

Not Levi.

His nose was pressed into red material and long black hair tickled his cheeks. The human smelled like Levi, but not. It also smelled of sweat and blood and fear, and something else Eren couldn’t place but itched at his mind.

She was smaller than Levi, a young human then. Not fully grown.

The human wasn’t Levi, but nevertheless, Eren’s human lungs steadied, his breath slowed and calmed. The scent was something to focus on, clear and singular rather than the muddied pool of human scent that afflicted the boat.

Slowly the girl pulled away, not saying a word. Her hands still braced Eren’s shoulders. Eren stared into her expressionless face, at her big eyes, dark like stormed skies and lightly bruised by blue. Her eyes said what her face didn’t.

Eren lifted a hand and lightly touched her cheek.

“Mikasa!”

Their gaze broke and her arms fell from his shoulders. She turned to the sound of the voice. A small sun-haired human pushed through the crowd towards them.

“Why’d you just run off like that?” the boy said, “oh… Who’s this?”

Mikasa shrugged her shoulders, tugging the red material at her throat up to her mouth.

“Okay… Well, my name’s Armin. It’s nice to meet you. What’s your name?”

Name. Right. Eren had already done this dance with Davy. He opened his mouth but he didn’t know how to make the humanspeak sounds and these humans wouldn’t understand his rumbles, not like Levi.

Eren closed his mouth and shrugged like Mikasa, a gesture he recognised from Levi.

Armin blinked. “Uhm, okay. Are you alone? Where’s your family?”

Shrugging again seemed like a safe answer.

Armin glanced at Mikasa, he met his eyes unblinkingly.

“You can come with us then,” Armin said decisively, grabbing Eren’s hand to lead him back the way the boy had come. Mikasa stood at Eren’s side. Armin gave him a soft, sad smile. “You’ll be safe with us.”

———

Armin and Mikasa weren’t Levi, but they were nice. Eren decided he liked them and added the two to his growing collection of special humans. Once he had Levi back he would have everything he needed.

They had been together for several days now. The humans were looking for something, but Eren didn’t know what a “grandfather” was yet so he didn’t know how to help.

It was strange living amongst the humans. There were more of them for one, Eren never saw as many titans as he saw humans in a day. That, and everything was big. Much bigger than Eren was used to - even a lot of the humans were taller than him which was disgruntling, but that had nothing on the human structures. Eren had mixed feelings about being small, but he liked the new humans he had met and every day seemed to bring something new and interesting.

They spent the nights in a big human structure, full of other people from the boats. Sometimes they were given food and water, which Eren normally wouldn’t have looked at twice if not for how enticing it suddenly smelled.

He was different like this. Small. He didn’t get as much energy from the sun, though it definitely did help, and now he needed and therefore wanted, water, and the thing Mikasa had called “bread”. He also felt cold sometimes, colder than he had ever been as a titan, and that was annoying and needed fixing or he might get something called a “sick” and that was apparently bad. According to Armin.

Eren wondered if he could humanspeak now too. There must be something good about being a human or all these humans wouldn’t be humans.

He rolled his tongue around his mouth a few times to get a feel for it, gurgling while he did.

Armin looked at him strangely from where he was leaning against a wall.

“Errrrehhhh-n,” Eren tried, thinking of how Levi always said it. “Errr-en.”

“Mikasa!” Armin called, gesturing to the girl. “He’s… talking?”

Eren pointed to his chest. “Eren,” he said.

The two humans had asked his name a few time’s over the days they had spent together. Eren always shook his head, feeling unable to reply and lacking the bilingual communication he and Levi had formed.

“That’s your name?” Armin asked.

Eren nodded. Then paused, cocking his head. “Y-esss.”

The sounds all depended on his tongue and lips. He had to trial their placements a few times to get the sounds he was looking for.

“Mee-kasa. Arrmin.”

Armin beamed.

Mikasa stood at Armin’s shoulder, her face slackened in surprise, her mouth opened slightly. She looked searchingly into Eren’s eyes.

“Eren,” she said, and then moved forward to pull him into a tight hug.

Eren grinned over her shoulder at Armin. He couldn’t wait to show Levi.

———

“I’ll admit, it feels a little like I’m seeing a ghost right now,” Erwin said, sitting down at his desk. His eyes never left Levi.

“You’re not crazy, Eyebrows, if that’s what you’re worried about. But, yeah, can’t exactly say it wasn’t a near thing.”

Normally, Levi would have opted for the distant approach. Leaning against the wall where it was easier to move quickly should any such situations arise, instead of trapping himself in a chair. But call it arrogance, or more, perhaps, world-weary exhaustion; Levi took the chair offered to him, figuring after two months in titan country, a chair wasn’t going to be the thing that killed him.

“How the hell are you still alive, Levi? Don’t get me mistaken, my best soldier - and my friend - returning from the grave is… a miracle, to say the least. But how on earth did you do it?”

“I don’t suppose you’ll let me have this conversation after I’ve showered?”

The look on Erwin’s face said he’d really rather have it now - lest Levi vanished again, which admittedly may have been in the cards - so Levi sighed, looking imploringly at the ceiling.

“You’ve already sent for Hange, right? Because I’m not going to say this twice.”

Erwin nodded. And on cue, loud footsteps thundered in the corridor beyond Erwin’s office door. Said door went flying into the wall not a moment later. Hange, glasses askew and hair like they’d just been dragged backwards through several bushes, stood in the doorway.

“Levi!” Hange crowed, sniffling, before throwing themself at him. “I thought you were dead...”

“Well, I’m alive, Four-eyes. So you can stop crying over me, okay?” He patted their back, squashing the relief that suddenly flooded him at seeing his two friends in the same room. “I’ve got something you’ll want to hear.”

Hange took the other chair, and for once, didn’t say a word.

“I should be dead, there’s no beating around the bush about that,” Levi started. “But I didn’t because I was rescued.”

And then he told them all about Eren, the friendly, intelligent titan. He told them of his intuition, bringing Levi food that first time; Eren’s language and location system, using vibrations; how Eren learned, his understanding growing with each word Levi taught and was taught in turn.

And lastly, because he could see the disbelief on Erwin’s face - usually so masked - and the growing question on Hange’s, explained, “He was killed in Shiganshina, by a Garrison soldier. I can’t offer you any more proof than my own account and anything the soldiers still alive witnessed during that fight. But he changes everything we know about the titans. Everything.”

Hange was a lunatic, but surprisingly intuitive sometimes. They seemed to sense something, or maybe he didn’t have as much control over his expression as he thought, because suddenly they were leaning forward again and pulling him tightly to their chest.

“I’m sorry,” they said quietly into his ear. “I’m sorry you lost him.”

After a stiff pause, Levi gave into Hange’s embrace.

“I… I should’ve looked out for him better,” he said quietly.

Hange hummed, and the vibration grounded him as they ran a hand through his hair.

“Why don’t we reconvene tomorrow,” Erwin said. “Your room hasn’t been touched, Levi. Everyone was too afraid to do it and Hange refused.”

Hange released him at last, allowing Levi to stand from the chair.

“Tomorrow then,” he said with a nod, not meeting their eyes as he turned and walked to the door.

Stopping, Levi asked, “Erwin… the families…?”

“Taken care of,” Erwin said. “As soon as it became clear the mission had failed. The families received proper compensation and there was a communal send-off.”

Levi nodded. “Thank you,” and then he stepped out the door, closing it with a soft click. Leaning against it, he shut his eyes and took a deep breath, steeling himself.

He would write letters to the families of the lost soldiers, they deserved to know what had happened and news of his return would soon be widespread. They deserved to know why he had made it back when their husbands, wives, sons, and daughters hadn’t.

It had been dumb luck. For once in his life, it was simply sheer dumb luck.

———

After a week, the refugees were put into what Armin had explained were “labour camps”.

All three of them were put to work doing manual labour and in return receiving rations. It was there that they found Armin’s grandfather, a taller human with hair the colour of clouds and deep lines on his face, also working in the labour camps in return for food.

Neither Armin nor his grandfather were particularly strong. Mikasa was better, but Eren was the strongest and biggest so he did his best to shoulder the load when the others stumbled.

Armin had told Eren that he was older than Mikasa and himself. Eren had been confused by that at first but then Armin had pointed at his grandfather and the wrinkles lined his face and told Eren that he was in his seventies, drawing many lines in the dirt to explain numbers, whereas Armin was only twelve and Mikasa was thirteen.

Eren didn’t really understand what the number corresponded to, Armin said something about the sun but that was all Eren had got. However, he did understand the size disparity between the numbers. Armin’s grandfather was a lot, Armin was a little, and Eren was slightly more than Armin.

“You don’t know how old you are?” Mikasa had asked him one evening. Eren, at that time, had not known how to answer, so had shrugged as he had taken to doing when he didn’t understand.

Armin had peered into Eren’s face then, scrutinising his features - his own face screwing up in thought. “I think you must be around fifteen or sixteen, you’re older than us but you’ll probably get taller.”

Armin and Mikasa took over for Levi in teaching Eren humanspeak. They were huddled together one evening to keep warm, and Eren was eavesdropping on nearby conversations of the other refugees to pick out what words he could understand.

“Armin,” he said to the boy dozing on his shoulder.

“Yeah, Eren?”

“What is… humanity’s strongest?” Eren knew the words human and humanity, and the word strong, but he did not understand the combination.

It was Mikasa, curled with her back to Eren’s front as he ran the hottest of the three of them, who answered. “They’re talking about humanity’s strongest soldier, one of the Scouts. Captain Levi.”

“Levi?” Eren said sharply.

Mikasa twisted her head to look at him over her shoulder and explained, “Captain Levi went missing on the last scouting expedition but he returned alive. Everyone thought he had been eaten by the titans.”

Eren hummed, trying for nonchalance even as his pulse rocketed and he felt like his insides might burst from the rush nerves and excitement that flared inside him.

“Mikasa,” Eren said, “what is Scout?”

Eren had heard the word before, possibly from Levi, but had no definition.

“They’re… part of the military. The soldiers. There are three different groups, the Military Police, the Garrison, and the Scouts. The Military Police are the soldiers around here,” Mikasa said, and Eren pulled a face. He didn’t like them. “The Garrison guards the walls, and the Scouts kill titans.”

He knew she had simplified it for him, but he understood.

“Mikasa,” Eren said again and she hummed to let him know she was listening. “I want to be a Scout.

———

Levi had tossed and turned all night.

The room was the same as he’d left it, wood and stone and bare but for his few personal effects. His desk had a neat pile of paperwork stacked to the left, his pen was still placed just so, an oil lamp sat to the right, another sat on his side table by a book he had never finished, next to two candles and a matchbox. It was all pristine and dust-free which had been a relief. Maybe Hange’s doing, but the loon had never had much of a mind for cleaning anything that wasn’t lab equipment. Perhaps Erwin’s then.

Nonetheless, it was too quiet without the sounds of the forest, the wind, and Eren’s puffing breath or the rumbles and purrs from his chest. And too cold without the titan’s ceaseless heat. The sheets felt foreign against his skin and the mattress was wrong in a way he couldn’t place, too flat, too hard, too soft.

It’s what it wasn’t that was the problem.

The ceiling loomed dark and caging, his breath was the only sound in the silence, painfully singular, painfully loud. Levi rolled onto his side to stare out the window. He hadn’t bothered pulling the blinds - he rarely did since leaving the underground and it wouldn’t have mattered if he had; he wouldn’t sleep tonight and even if he did, he’d been waking up with the dawn for months.

Levi had spent much of the last few months sleeping in the titan’s palms. As the autumn had set in and proper shelter like the cave had become scarce, Levi had had no choice but to give into Eren’s nudges. He spent most of his days in his clutch as it was, what difference did the nights make? Even so, it had been hard at first to give over his night hours when he had the choice, the first time after the attack excluded. Even if Eren slept too, sleep was where one was at their most vulnerable. Even after the titan had proven himself, time and time again, Levi’s instincts still warred with his thoughts. There was nothing Levi could have done against Eren even in his waking hours, but his instincts told him seeing his death coming was better than not.

Even so, the first night he had given in, lulled by the encompassing heat of Eren’s skin, Levi had slept better than he had in a long time.

Not sleeping wasn’t all bad though - that way Levi didn’t have to face whatever nightmares his subconscious had prepared for him this time.

“You look like shit,” Hange said when Levi opened his door that morning. There was a pleased note to their voice, even as they took in his dishevelled state and bruised under-eyes. They had that look in their eyes when they looked at him, that relieved softness that Levi rarely saw, saved for special occasions.

“You really know how to make a man feel special,” Levi said dryly after a moment, leaning against the door frame. “The fuck do you want? It’s early.”

Hange has never been affected by his words and they weren’t about to start now. “You weren’t sleeping, what does it matter?” They said, moving past him before Levi could protest, waving a small bag in his face. “I brought Moblit’s good scissors.”

Levi raised an eyebrow. “I can cut my own hair, you know.”

He’d thought about trying last night, staring into the small bathroom mirror hung on the wall. The light of the oil lamp flickered and made his face gaunt with shadows. The hot shower and use of soap at long last had been heavenly, but they had done nothing for his appearance. Levi hardly recognised himself.

His face was thinner, and his hair had overgrown his undercut making the underside sit oddly and the longer parts around his face fall into his eyes. It was still his face, but it was different. He stared into his reflection’s eyes. They were different, Levi didn’t know how, but they were. He wasn’t the same; he’d changed and he didn’t know if it was for good or bad.

In the end, he’d decided against staring at his reflection for longer than necessary. The haircut could wait. In the end, it looked like it had found him.

Hange hummed under their breath. “Yes, but it’s cute, you sometimes miss this little bit at the back -”

“Okay, okay. Fine,” Levi grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Do what you will but I never want to hear the word ‘cute’ leave your shitty mouth again.”

“Great!” Hange said with a clap, then pulled his desk chair out into the middle of the room. They spun it around to face him with a flourish and a grin. “Sit.”

Levi sighed, there was little point arguing, though any other day he might have made them pick a different spot for the hair that was going to end up coating his floor. But no matter where they were he would likely end up cleaning anyway, so Levi just kicked the small rug at the end of the bed out of the way and sat dutifully in the chair.

Hange stood at Levi’s back, they draped a small towel around his shoulders and began gently running a comb through his hair. There was a soft touch at the back of his neck. “Tilt your head forward.”

They were both silent for a while, the only sounds were the soft snip of scissors as Hange trimmed his undercut.

Then Levi sighed. “Before you ask, I don’t want to talk about it. You know most of it already and I’m writing a report, you can read that instead.”

“I wasn’t going to ask.”

Hange seemed to sense Levi’s raised eyebrow. “Okay, so I might’ve asked. I hadn’t decided.”

Levi rolled his eyes and scoffed lightly.

“I just - an intelligent titan... it’s amazing. And one with sympathies for humans! You were right, I thought over everything last night and this really does change everything we know. I wonder why it chose you though…”

Eren’s big dumb face popped into Levi’s mind unbidden. He glared at the floor.

“He - it didn’t choose me. It was chance. It was… he was just a titan. A weird, abnormal titan…”

“You don’t really believe that,” Hange said, there was no question in their tone.

No, he didn’t.

“It doesn’t fucking matter, Hange,” Levi said, scrubbing a hand down his face. “He was an opportunity that I lost. It’s done. Now we take what we can learn and move on.”

Hange’s hand carded through his hair. They sighed. “While even I can admit the strangeness of the circumstances… it’s okay to grieve, Levi.”

He didn’t say a word. He couldn’t say a word. Levi’s throat was suddenly cinched tight. He stared unblinkingly at a knot twisting the wooden boards of the floor.

There was a final snip of scissors and the sound of Hange stepping back. They released a slow breath that ruffled his freshly trimmed hair.

“I’m glad you’re alive, Levi. Thank you for coming back. I’ll see you later today.”

Hange cleared away their supplies and left the room without another word, leaving Levi to stare at the floor. He swallowed thickly.

He needed to get the broom.

Chapter Text

Armin had been an insular child.

He was always wrapped up in thoughts too big for most children and especially too big for adults. He had never gotten along with the other neighbourhood children back in Shiganshina, he was skinny and knobbly and he didn’t like their rough and tumble games or general roughhousing just as they did not like his quietness and his big, creepy eyes, sneering and jeering at him whenever he got too close.

Instead of games, Armin liked knowledge and learning, another thing he had been scorned for. He had never made friends and he knew his bullies better than he knew anyone outside his family, but his grandfather and his books were all he needed.

That was before Mikasa.

For a long time, Armin had been unsure of what exactly had drawn them together and bound them thenceforth as ‘friends’. Mikasa had appeared one day, quiet like him, but a different sort of quiet - in those days she hardly spoke a word except when prompted. Even at that age, Armin could recognise the solemnity behind her silence, the heaviness in her eyes contrary to the quick, light-footed way she carried herself.

The realisation would come later, after meeting Mrs Jaeger, who had ushered him in after Mikasa, welcoming him together with a broad smile. Her hair was thick and such a dark brown that it looked black, her features were lovely and feminine, only the softest wrinkles were beginning to crowd her large, honey-coloured eyes and belied her age. She didn’t look like Mikasa at all.

Carla Jaeger was also similar to the two of them - they all had lonely hearts with people shaped holes that could never be filled.

Armin and Mikasa first met on the stone steps that bordered the canal where Armin liked to go when he knew his bullies were otherwise occupied, to enjoy the sunlight on the water and think of greater things than the stone pavings and red-roofs that filled his day. He often imagined the light dancing on the water was that of another, far greater place - greater than even he could imagine. An expanse of blue to rival the sky.

Mikasa had sat wordlessly on the steps nearby. They never exchanged a word but neither moved for what felt like hours. There was something right in that moment and ever since that day Armin wondered if she had felt it too.

The second time they met, Armin had been cornered by three older boys, thick-shouldered, gap-grinned, and self-aggrandising, the three took notable pleasure in snubbing Armin’s nose in the dirt and they enjoyed it even more when they caught him with one of his precious books.

He had learnt his lesson after the second time they had found him with one and rarely brought them from the house nowadays, but on this day he had thought the three were busy with schooling. Evidently, he’d been wrong.

Mikasa had appeared once again from nowhere, like an avenging angel, and effortlessly thrown the boys to the ground; they’d soon run off mortified by being beaten by a girl. After retrieving his book and dusting off the cover gently, Mikasa had turned, offering it to him with a small, crooked smile.

And ever since that day, they had stuck together by silent, unanimous decision. Armin had made his first and only friend.

Until Eren.

The point was, Armin did not have a good frame of reference for what constituted as ‘normal’ when it came to friendships. If he had he would have known that Eren was the oddest of them all, and even now, he at least suspected as such.

Eren was strange. There was no question about that.

He had drawn Mikasa in like a moth to a flame. One moment she’d been at Armin’s side, dead-eyed and so quiet he would have been tempted to check she was still breathing were her hand not clenched in a death grip around his, and the next she’d sat up and disappeared like a dog on a scent - only for Armin to find her hugging a stranger. Which would have been weird for most people but was frightening for Mikasa.

Eren couldn’t talk. He hadn’t been able to tell them his names for weeks. He had zero sense of personal space; he made strange noises, sniffed nearly everything he encountered (which had made for some awkward apologies), and didn’t blink enough when he stared - and he stared often.

He was also curious about everything and seemed to know nothing. About anything.

Armin had briefly contemplated if he had been born wrong, or maybe he was just painfully simple. Or maybe he had been abandoned in a forest as a baby and had grown up with wolves for parents like in the plot of one of Armin’s storybooks.

But Eren proved to be a quick learner, so Armin concluded that he had likely been injured in the fall of Shiganshina. A head injury despite the lack of blood on the boy, amnesia of some kind like that one old lady who had fallen off a step ladder that time. Though she had quickly regained her memory and she had never lost the ability to talk.

Even so, Armin liked Eren. He was warm on cold nights, and strong and enduring during the long days spent labouring. Some days Armin believed the only reason they’d made it was because they had found him, especially after his grandfather - Armin’s favourite person in the world, his rock, his only surviving family - was sent on that suicide “recovery” mission to retake Wall Maria.

Armin was young, but he had never been naive. He recognised the cull for what it was, he knew food and resources were short - Shiganshina may have been the first to fall, but in Maria’s compromise, the remaining three outer districts and all the villages within Maria had had to evacuate to Wall Rose as well. Trost wasn’t the only district overwhelmed by refugees and the hungry mouths they brought.

It was then that Armin’s faith in the system truly slipped. In the eyes of the government, they were only burdens now and they were treated as such. They could see it in the disdainful eyes of the MP’s tasked with supervising them - keeping them in check, keeping them under control. They scoffed and sneered and spat at the refugees, dirty from long days, communal living, and only the occasional access to washing facilities, like they were little more than rats.

Armin had been called as such.

He didn’t need to know the official outcome of the mission to know he would never see his grandfather again. He had been inconsolable for days. Mikasa had tried her hardest to comfort him, but though grief was a familiar burden they shared, she had never known what to do when confronted with someone else’s. Eren had been confused, he hadn’t understood the orders that Grandpa Arlert had shared with them and had stared in horror at the tears that had sprung like wells down Armin’s face. Nevertheless, he seemed to understand their sadness and in the wake of Grandpa Arlert’s departure and anger had burned in his eyes as he had bundled up both Armin and Mikasa in his warm embrace and snarled at anyone who had come close.

Months had passed since then. Now night was beginning to take hold of the hall; Armin was sitting on his bedroll, his back propped against a wall below one of the wall lamps with a blanket pulled around his shoulders to fend off the cold and a book he had scavenged sat open in his lap. That night the three children had been lucky enough to claim that spot in the commune, Mikasa always tried to get them a spot as close to a wall as possible, so there were fewer angles to defend. The girl in question was at his side also using the low lamplight as she frowned at the kitting in her hands. The frown was an uncommon expression on her face, she was usually so confident and aloof and good at everything she tried, but the knitting brought out a surprisingly humane part of her Armin hadn’t seen before. One that dropped stitches and stabbed their own finger.

The wool was brown and the needles were repurposed sharpened sticks. Armin didn’t know what she was making yet but he suspected it was less about the product and more about making anyway. Carla had been teaching her to knit before; the woman had knitted a lot back in Shiganshina, she had claimed that a widow who had never remarried such as herself had a lot of time on her hands, smiling all the while as she fitted Armin a new vest. It was one of the nicest things he had ever owned.

“It calms the mind and gives it focus,” she had said, giving him a secret grin. “Those are powerful things.”

The scarf Mikasa always wore had been Carla’s work too, though it was much less ornate than her usual work, the red stitches simple but tight and uniform. Mikasa once told him it was because it was one of her earliest pieces, made for someone else who had never received it.

“What doing?” Eren asked in Armin’s ear. He had been so distracted in watching Mikasa that he didn’t hear Eren approach until he was nigh on top of him.

Eren pressed tightly into Armin’s side, pushing one arm behind the boy’s back so he could prop his chin over Armin’s shoulder. Eren’s nose brushed his cheek and his eyes were giant and luminous from the proximity and the way the yellow lamplight glowed in their watery surfaces. Armin had been unnerved at first at the way Eren took space so casually, he was thoughtlessly tactile, but he had eventually grown used to the constant touch and invasions of his personal space. Eren was so warm that in the cold nights it was more of a benefit than anything.

“I’m reading this book,” Armin explained, pointing to the neat text in the pages, even though that wasn’t what he had been doing.

“Reead-ing,” Eren repeated the new word slowly, peering at the open pages in Armin’s lap.

“Yes, reading words.”

“Words?” Eren asked, puzzled, pointing at his own mouth as if to gesture at the words he had just said.

“Yes, words are spoken but they can also be written - uh… marked down and read, which is reading,” Armin said, holding up the book so Eren could see the letters inscribed. He pointed to a word at the top of the page and said it pointedly, repeating it with the next until Eren’s expression cleared and he nodded in excited understanding, a wordless sound exiting his throat.

“Armin teach me?”

Armin smiled at Eren’s excitement. “Of course.”

Eren beamed, his face crinkling pleasantly in the lowlight. “Later,” he said. “Now come?”

It sounded like a question but Eren was already hauling Armin up and dragging him towards the large doors of the hall, Mikasa wordlessly put her knitting down and trailed after them. There was a couple that they often slept by that she trusted enough to watch their bed mats, not that anything would be taken in their absence - it was a code among refugees and no one carried anything worth of value anymore anyway.

Eren lead them into the darkened streets, down a few alleys before he reached a low building, a rickety-looking ladder hung partway up the wall with a bin pulled underneath it - likely by Eren if the way he immediately clambered on top of it and began scaling the ladder was anything to go by.

“Eren, no! What are you doing?” Armin said, a loudly as he dared in the quiet alley. A shiver racked his body.

“Climbing,” Mikasa said, appearing at his side.

Eren had reached the top and hauled himself onto the flat rooftop. He peered at them over the edge.

“Come!” he said, his tone unhushed and unworried. Armin flinched, glancing around for fear of someone hearing.

A hand gently clasped his, Armin looked at Mikasa’s shadowed face. She squeezed his hand once.

“Okay,” he said with a sigh, and let her lead him to the ladder.

“You first,” she said. “I’ll catch you if you fall.”

He nodded, she would. She’d done it before. Carefully, they both climbed the ladder and joined Eren on the roof.

Eren glanced over at them as they sat next to him. He sat with his legs thrown before him, leaning back on his braced arms as he watched the dark, cloudless sky above and the twinkling flecks of stars that scattered carelessly across it like loose seeds in a field; his face was lit only by them and the moonlight.

“Look,” he said, gesturing with his chin to the sky - evidently the reason he had dragged them here.

Armin opened his mouth instinctively to explain about stars to him but Eren was already talking again.

“Levi like s-stars,” he said, in a tone like that should explain everything. His tongue caught on the last word and Armin wondered when he had learnt it - he didn’t remember teaching Eren about the stars.

“Levi?” Mikasa asked evenly, zeroing in on the more important part of Eren’s statement.

Eren’s eyes didn’t leave the sky as he hummed in reply. No further answer seemed forthcoming.

Armin had never met a Levi and hadn’t heard of one in the hall they stayed in, bar the way Captain Levi of the Survey Corps name was bandied around in all manner - reverence, disdain, a threat to unruly children in the street that if they didn’t behave Levi might think them a titan and come for them too.

It wasn’t like Eren to meet people without Armin or Mikasa at his side, even though he ran off a lot - distracted by all manner of miscellany - anything or anyone he found particularly good or interesting, he always eventually dragged them back to. Much like now with the stars.

Was ‘Levi’ from before they’d met Eren? Was he remembering at last?

Curiosity burned Armin’s tongue but there was little point pressing Eren when he didn’t want to talk, Armin had learned. Eren would open up eventually, reticence wasn’t in his nature. So he held his tongue for the time being and turned his face to the sky.

It was a beautiful night.

———

The first time Petra saw Captain Levi, she nearly flew into one of the great trees she was running drills around.

He stood silent and still on a branch, like some kind of ghost as he watched the Scouts darting through the forest. A breeze ruffled his dark hair and swept at the tail of his green cloak. His features were unclear from the distance but she knew it was him. There was no mistaking him.

Despite not being able to make out his eyes, her skin pricked with the weight of his gaze from where she watched him back in the tree she had clumsily landed in. She wondered if she imagined the way his head tilted ever so slightly to the left, the only movement he made in acknowledgement of her gaze.

At that time she had been fresh from the Cadet Corps - the only one within the graduating top ten to join the Scouts. She hadn’t known how naive she had been back then, graduating from the Cadet Corps, especially the top ten, they were all so self-assured in their ignorance. Then, she had never seen a titan, only having notions of what horrors she was volunteering to face.

“What are you gawking at?” Another recruit asked, raising an eyebrow as they landed beside her. “Some of us are on cleaning duty tonight and the longer you waste here, the longer I’ll be up tonight.”

Petra pivoted, incredulous. “Do you not see him?”

“Who?”

“Captain Levi,” Petra said, turning back around to stare out into the canopy. She blinked, once, twice.

“Captain Levi? Here? I don’t see anyone but you still wasting my time. The Captain has better things to do and so do I.”

With that, the scout flipped off the branch - which Petra thought was unnecessary and wholly petulant - and zipped away into the green. He had been there, there was no mistaking that and she was not about to let the words of someone so rude let her think otherwise.

The stories never did the truth justice, for the titans or the Captain. Because the second time she saw him was as a wraith on the battlefield.

She killed her first titan that day and it had nearly been her last. Her blades had sunk into the fleshy nape of a ten-metre - the sensation was different than what she had prepared for, slashing dummies and cut-outs; it was easier almost, as soon as she broke the barrier of leathery skin and hit muscle, blood jetted viscously in wide arcs.

She had been separated from the rest of her squadron. Fear made her heart run fast; her blood thrummed hot, a combination of adrenaline, dread, and a foreign visceral excitement set her body on an electric edge.

That was a titan - a titan she had killed. She was so caught up in it all, the conflicting emotions that made her knees shake and the pride that surged through her at her first kill, that she nearly missed the second titan converging on her and she did miss the third.

The second titan reached a knobbly fingered hand towards her. Spinning, she launched off the first’s corpse and sliced through its fingers, using its shoulder to propel herself around and go for the kill.

But the third - smaller, faster - jumped. It dislodged her lines and set her careening towards the ground. A shuttered scream tore from her, as her insides went nauseously weightless in the fall. Her body tried to adjust, attempting to roll into the landing she had practised so many times in drills, but still, her shoulder thudded painfully into the ground, jarring through her body and rattling her bones - her jaw clacked together like a hammer strike on an anvil. Her knees struck the dirt and Petra tumbled, rolling to a stop.

She blinked away blood, the blue of the sky above her distorted in her vision like rippling water. Choking on the lack of air in her winded lungs, Petra gagged, and gasped, blurring her vision further as tears pricked her eyes. Breath returned to her in painful stops and starts, grating through her airways like gravel.

Still floundering like a landlocked fish, her eyes met the small titan’s.

This one was only a six-metre, but it towered over her with wide, unblinking eyes, its form blocking out the sun. Its nose was big and wide - its mouth split in a toothy grimace, and short brown hair hung lank over a misshapen forehead.

Petra stared into its huge glossy eyes and saw her own death reflected there; she saw herself in a heap on the ground, clutching her injured shoulder, her blades were loose - scattered and broken into jagged shards around her, blood ran down her grazed face. She stared into the reflection of her own face and she saw a scared, lonely little girl. Prey.

And she hated it.

Anger surged through her. Petra dragged herself up, slowly, first to her knees, then to tenuous standing. She swayed dangerously but didn’t fall, gritting her teeth against the pain.

Then she bellowed a wordless, furious roar in its face, brandishing what remained of her sword.

The titan didn’t flinch or move back - she hadn’t expected it to - but it did cock its head like it was evaluating her war cry and had found it lacking. The second, taller titan, had rounded on her now too - this one was blonde and gap-toothed with a soft, almost gentle smile hiding its killing intent.

Petra had regained full control of her lungs and took a deep, steadying breath, bracing against what was to come. She kept her blade raised and her eyes open - hers would be a warriors death and she would die knowing she had done so with honour.

She had chosen this life and now it was choosing her.

A twang of releasing cables followed by the distinctive pressurised hiss of gas releasing sounded over the thudding of her heartbeat. A dark shape sped like an arrow through the smoky air, blades glinting white in the sunlight.

He moved like something not human; something not confined to human limitations, to speed, to gravity, to weakness, to exhaustion. Like a wolf wearing a facade of human skin; Captain Levi was every bit the story, but he was also more.

He hunted the titan like it was he who was the giant. Within seconds he had them scattered, away from Petra, within seconds more he had felled them like trees. Giant steaming trees.

Petra swallowed. Trembling with relief so great her knees gave way and she sunk back to the ground. She stared transfixed at the blood painting the grass in wide arcs, fuming delicate smoky tendrils that dissipated into the air.

An extended hand entered her sightline - she hadn’t heard him approach. Sharp blue-grey eyes watched her steadily from a surprisingly youthful face, framed by his dark hair. He was younger than she had thought.

“On your feet, soldier,” he said, his voice deep but smooth.

Petra took his hand, allowing him to lift her to her feet; he braced her before she could stumble.

“Can you ride?”

Petra sucked in a breath through her mouth and steeled herself. “Yes, I can ride.” It would be painful and difficult, but not impossible and better than being grounded in titan country.

“Good,” the Captain said, whistling sharply for her horse.

“You saved my life,” Petra said, intending to thank him but he shook his head at her, knowing what she was going to say and not wanting it.

“Living is the hardest part of the expeditions,” he said to her. “But the job’s not done, so focus and dedicate your heart so that you live to fight another day.”

Petra could only nod, taking his words to heart. This was her first expedition and she was determined for it not to be her last. She wasn’t home yet.

She still carried those words with her when she saw him the next time - this time with three expeditions under her belt.

Sunset had washed the barracks in gold, the sky was an easel the sun had painted bright in yellows and pinks and oranges.

It was chance that Petra stopped where she did and looked up when she did, admiring the sky from the courtyard, the way the light crested rooftops of the buildings and gilded the stonework. It was chance that she could see him at all, tucked up on the roof and mostly out of sight as he too, watched the sunset.

It was strikingly human - the way he sat there in the dying sun, eyes on the horizon. It was easy to forget, she thought, when it came to people like the Captain, that they were people too - they were the same at their hearts.

A soft smile rose to her cheeks unbidden. Dedicate her heart, he’d said, live. This, she decided, was what she was fighting for.

Another soldier walked her way, calling her name. Petra turned and went to join them and pretended she had never seen him.

———

“Ya know what we’re doing here?” Oluo asked, tugging at his collar, sweat beading with nerves at his hairline.

Petra shook her head, equally nervous but refusing to let it show. Apart from a stolen fork from the mess which she fully intended to return, she had done nothing wrong. A fork wouldn’t warrant a visit to the Commander’s office and unless Oluo had also committed cutlery theft, it could not be that which meant it had to be something else. Something different.

She knocked on the door for the both of them and it swung open a moment later. Gunther, a dark-haired Scout a few years her senior ushered them in. She stared at him in silent question but he just shook his head minutely, standing back to attention. There was another taller blonde man next to Gunther who Petra couldn’t name. All four of them seemed to be in the same boat, which provided her with a modicum of comfort.

Petra straightened, stilling her fidgeting fingers as the rest of the room’s occupants looked her and Oluo’s way.

“Good, now you are all here,” Commander Smith said. “Welcome.” The Commander sat at his desk, his hands neatly clasped on the desktop and not a meticulous blond hair out of place. Captain Levi stood behind him leaning with his arms crossed against the window sill, surveying them all, his face a blank canvas. Neither one of them showed any hint of why the four of them had been called here.

Until the Commander twisted in his seat to share a glance with the Captain, who rolled his eyes in reply.

Returning to face them all, amusement twisting his lips, the Commander said, “You are probably all wondering why you were called here,” he paused for dramatic effect. “We called you here today because each one of you has been personally selected to be a part of the Special Operations Squad now running under Captain Levi. Otherwise known as the Levi Squad. Congratulations.”

“We’re not calling it that,” the Captain said, sending a dirty look the Commander’s way before facing The rest of the room. “Meet me at the training grounds at dawn. I need to whip you shitstains into shape before any of this ‘squad’ bullshit.” Then he strode past them and out the door, kicking it shut behind him.

The Commander gave the four of them a serene smile. “He looks forward to working with you.”

Chapter Text

Eren couldn’t go to the military right away. Well, he could. Probably. If he looked as old as Armin said. The age requirement for the military was fifteen, but going now would mean leaving Armin and Mikasa behind. Eren wouldn’t do that, couldn’t do that.

Eren wouldn’t fool himself, it might have been difficult but he could have escaped the walls if he wanted and returned to his life as a titan. A part of him longed for his life as a titan, the simplicity of days under the sun, open sky, his own indubitable strength. Titans were free - albeit chained to their rather strong desire for human flesh - humans were less so, they had rules and a far more rigid hierarchy than titankind. They had these complex systems that denied them things as simple as food at times which Eren couldn’t understand. They also had the walls.

But as much as part of him yearned for the wildness of titan life, Eren could not bring himself to miss it. He couldn’t leave Armin and Mikasa, Levi; returning the wilderness would mean returning to loneliness - something he hadn’t even realised had dogged his every step until it was gone.

Humans were better than titans, even with their rules. Eren could live with being small if it meant he could stay.

In addition to the age requirement, Armin had also explained to him that all military candidates for all factions went through three years of training before joining their chosen sector. Eren was getting better at the whole human schtick, but he didn’t think he’d be enough under the scrutinous eyes of the military. Though he doubted they were looking for titans disguised as humans, he still wasn’t very fluent in humanspeak or human customs. He wouldn’t get through the training as he was. Not yet.

It had taken a few days for the others to agree, but eventually, they decided, come two years, they would join with him.

“Where else are a bunch of orphans going to go?” Mikasa had said. Armin had only nodded, a determined look on his face.

So two years it was.

They passed their days in the labour camp. It wasn’t easy, food got scarcer and scarcer, the work long and hard for so very little in return. And for the first time, Eren felt the full wrath of winter. But the three of them fought and clawed for their place, supporting one another when they stumbled, and when began coughs wracked the camp.

Eren already had an appreciation for human resilience but sitting with his new humans made something warm bubble up in his chest.

The Survey Corps was the best place for him, Eren knew. Levi was there for one. It had taken some time and countless nights ticking over the fall of Shiganshina in his head, but eventually, Eren realised the reason Levi hadn’t come back for him was that he thought Eren was dead. Eren himself had stared into the glassy eyes of his giant corpse; he remembered fighting titans, Levi calling his name, and then humans joining him. He remembered a sharp twinge at the back of his neck and Levi shouting. All Levi would have seen was Eren’s body as it crumbled.

Levi didn’t know he was small now. Levi didn’t know he was alive.

Joining the scouts meant he could join his first human once more, and bring his other two humans with him. He could keep them all in one place, together and protected under his watchful eyes. He knew titans, knew battle; the scouts made the most sense however long he decided to stick playing human - even if that was forever, and then if he wanted to return to titan country as his old self, the scouts would open the door.

———

Eren was seventeen. Or at least that was the age they were faking on his papers.

“All our papers were lost in Shiganshina,” Armin had said when the three of them submitted their applications. He had looked away then, down at his hands clasped in his lap. The picture of a desperate, traumatised orphan - his eyes glassy with unshed wolf’s tears.

People rarely asked twice after they mentioned Shiganshina.

His name was now officially Eren Jaeger, seventeen years old from the Shiganshina District. Mikasa had gifted him his last name, much like how Levi had gifted him his first. Apparently, it was the last name of Carla Jaeger, the widow who had taken Mikasa in after her parents had died. Carla had died in Shiganshina, eaten by a titan, but Mikasa said she would have liked Eren and wouldn’t have minded him taking her name. It was fitting, Mikasa said with no further explanation.

Now, they were donned in cadet uniforms, second hand but nevertheless the nicest clothes Eren had ever worn, lined up in a sea of cadets like themselves, with one Instructor Keith Shadis yelling in their faces.

“You there!” Shadis said, stopping in front of Armin. He leaned in close, so much so that Eren could feel the man’s breath on his skin and could see the trenching lines that mapped the instructor's face like it had been taken to by a drunken cartographer. “Who are you?”

“Armin Arlert, from Shiganshina, sir,” Armin said, tense and unblinking. His right hand was fisted upwards over his heart in salute.

“Yeah?” Shadis said, standing up at last. Sunlight crested his bald head, casting dark shadows around his inset eyes. “That’s a stupid name. Your parents give you that?”

“No, sir. My grandfather,” Armin stood straighter mentioning his grandfather, an edge of defensive pride in his voice.

Shadis eyed him. “Arlert, what are you doing here?”

“Trying to aid humanity’s victory, sir.”

That was a rehearsed answer, Armin’s feelings were far less patriotic and Shadis seemed to recognise the falsehood as he harrumphed, eyes narrowing with the miserliness of a jaded old man. Eren fizzed, fighting the urge to bare his teeth. Shadis had no idea who he was talking to; Eren would crush him like the ant he was if he so wanted - and he did, the urge growing stronger with Shadis’s every grating word.

Perhaps sensing the violent intent towards his person, Shadis’s eyes flicked to Eren next. He met Eren’s gaze, who met his stare unblinking and unflinching. Shadis was the bigger party, but Eren had taken down bigger titans than himself before; he wasn’t about to fracture under a human’s attempt at proving dominance. It was a shame the man would not understand the fighting rumbles.

Shadis’s mouth opened as if to say something, but after a too-long pause nothing came. Instead, he coughed, once, stepping back, and moved to holler at another unfortunate cadet in the third row back.

Eren watched the instructor’s back, hearing similar replies to that of Armin’s from the other cadets. Glory or safety, those who didn’t trip over their feet to spout valour for humanity did instead for the king with intentions for joining the MPs.

Eren found the idea of a king stupid and the idea of joining the Military Police even stupider.

“And what of you?” Shadis said, like a storm cloud to another poor cadet.

“I would join the Military Police, sir! And dedicate my heart in service of the king!”

Eren scoffed and Mikasa’s elbow slipped like a blade into the meat of his flank.

———

Instructor Shadis didn’t waste time, but nevertheless, it was dark before their first day of training finally drew to a close and he dismissed them with a snarl.

Now, Eren sat in the mess hall next to Armin with his head on his hand, feigning drowsiness, as he surveyed the slopes of tired shoulders and drooping eyes of his fellow cadets as they bumbled around the tables. Conversation hummed softly like a beehive; Eren sifted through the noise but found nothing of interest.

His eyes came to rest on the broad back of one of the boys. There was something off about some of the cadets. They smelled normal, like humans, but there was a faint trace of something else. Something like ozone. Eren cursed his dull human nose, unable to pick up more.

They were friendly though, no different from the other cadets. One of the girls was quiet, and one of the boys reeked of nerves, but so did a lot of the cadets. Perhaps this was just another strange human thing he hadn’t encountered.

“Eren,” Mikasa said, sitting down next to him at a table in the mess. “What’s wrong?”

Eren shook his head, dismissing his thoughts. It’s not like he knew everything there was to know about humans. The scent of food distracted him and Mikasa handed him two plates, saying, “Pass one to Armin.”

Armin was on Eren’s other side, slumped against Eren and half asleep. Training had been hard on all of them, but even with the strength they had gained in the labour camps, all of them were exhausted - Armin in particular.

“Armin,” Eren said, gently, nudging the boy. “You need food, then you can sleep.”

Armin groaned but opened his eyes, reaching for the plate.

“Hey, you guys are from Shiganshina, right?” Connie, the boy with the shaved head, asked, sitting down at the table. Several others followed suit.

“Yeah, what of it?” Eren asked.

“That means you saw the titans, the Colossal Titan? How tall was it really?”

“Big enough to look over the walls.”

“What? But I heard it stepped right over them,” a narrow-faced boy piped up.

Another said, “I heard that too.”

Eren frowned. “That’s stupid.”

Mikasa nudged him pointedly and Eren grumbled. Humans. “It wasn’t tall enough for that.”

“Well, what did it look like?” Connie asked.

It was clear Armin wasn’t listening and Mikasa was uninterested in all other goings-on other than keeping Eren’s temper in check. “It barely had any skin, and it was… smokey.”

“Smokey?” a horse-faced boy said, raising an eyebrow.

Finally, Armin perked up, having finished most of his food. “He means it released a lot of steam.”

“What about the Armoured Titan?”

“I didn’t see it,” Eren said. He had heard about it from Mikasa and Armin later on and it hadn’t sounded like any titan he had seen before.

“Guys, we should probably stop asking questions. I’m sure they want to forget some things,” that was the freckled boy, Marco, who Eren had been introduced to earlier. Marco shot him a kind smile.

“Oh, sorry,” Connie said, though it sounded like an afterthought and curiosity still wrinkled his brow.

“It’s fine,” Eren said. “Knowing about the titans is important, especially if you plan on joining the scouts.”

“You’re planning to join the Survey Corps?” The horse-faced boy asked incredulously. “Are you nuts?”

“Yes, I want to be a scout.” Eren recognised the boy; he dampered a small sneer. “And you said you wanted to join the Military Police - to take it easy, right?” Eren scoffed. The boy had been another one of Shadis’s interrogees and had already made his motivations clear. Eren had no good feelings towards the Military Police, after watching them kick around refugees just in the name of something to do. It was them that had sent the refugees and Armin’s grandfather back into Maria.

“Better that than suicide. I don’t get a kick out of titan-chow like you do, you think joining the scouts will make you look cool or something? I bet you’ll be wetting yourself before you even get on the gear.”

Eren restrained a snarl, temper suddenly flaring. “I don’t know what you are so worried about. You stink like horse, no titan would want you.” There were too many eyes on him, too many people watching him. There had been so many people today, so much talking, Eren was beginning to feel rubbed raw. He was overwhelmed, he was… tired. Taking a breath he stood and stepped from the bench, as he walked away he could hear Mikasa pull a tired Armin to his feet and begin to follow.

“What’s his deal?” Horse asked, still seated at the table behind him.

“Well, you were kind of rude,” Marco said.

Eren stepped outside and didn’t hear anymore.

“Sorry,” he said when Mikasa joined him.

She shrugged. “He deserved it. Besides, it was kinda funny.”

———

They whittled down long days in sun and rain. Training was tough, brutal even - Eren could see it etched into foreheads, strung tight down stiff-straight shoulders, and the way it melted like snow the softness of youth from their bodies and eyes, leaving only hard ground.

They learned and improved, every one of them, and those who stayed fought with more than blood, sweat, and tears to prove it. Eren couldn’t help but admire the cadets' tenacity, so it was inevitable when, try as he might, Eren couldn’t help it as he collected more humans into his ménage. It was less of a choice and more that no matter how he set up walls, the other cadets had ways of sneaking past.

Connie hadn’t let his questions die after their first night's meeting and had proceeded to sit at Eren, Mikasa, and Armin’s table henceforth. With him followed Sasha, who Eren had later caught in training with a small stolen wrap of honeyed meat - the girl had kept a straight face and let nothing on but Eren’s nose was sharp and the scent was unmistakable. He’d caught her eye pointedly, before glancing down at the small mound in her jacket pocket.

“I’ll split you a quarter if you keep your trap shut,” she’d hissed under her breath, keeping her gaze ahead as an instructor coached the others on forest survival tactics.

“A quarter?” Eren asked, “you’ll have to do better than that.”

He’d had no plans to dob the girl in, but the smell was starting to make his mouth water and he couldn’t focus on the teaching. Perhaps this was how the titans felt.

Sasha reigned in a snarl. “Fine. A third.”

“Half,” Eren stated, “and you teach me how to shoot. In return, I’ll help you whenever you want to steal more.” He’d seen her skills in a variety of tests they’d already partaken in - Sasha was an excellent shot with a bow and Eren had been curious.

Sasha twitched and side-eyed him. “Deal. But I want your bread roll tonight as tax for me doing all the work this time.”

Eren couldn’t argue with that.

Following her were Marco, Thomas, and Mina, though the latter two often flitted between other groups. There was also Jean, who rubbed Eren the wrong way but who he also found himself grudgingly grateful for. Jean might not understand titanspeak or body language, but he seemed to understand Eren well enough and there was something primal in the way they looked to each other to scrap and release tensions outside of scheduled sparring, sparking a wicked pleasure in Eren when he could snarl at the other boy. Niceties had no place in their relationship - whatever that may be.

Now, Eren sat on a wooden bench next to Armin, icing the consequences of one such scrap with Jean. He had long since stopped letting his titan-healing kick in for his injuries, he was rarely hurt badly enough to require it and he’d learned quickly that disappearing injuries were suspicious. Besides, he’d grown to appreciate the small aches of hard work and he liked the idea of being equal to his newfound friends.

“Why do you do it?” Armin said as he prodded a split in Eren’s cheek. He framed his words as a question but Eren had learned to recognise when the other boy didn’t actually want him to answer.

He did so anyway, saying petulantly, “He’s got a dumb face.”

Armin sighed longsuffering. “You’re lucky Mikasa wasn’t around.”

Eren shot him a feral grin. That’s exactly why he’d picked that timing to provoke Jean and from the exasperated look on Armin’s face - he realised.

The sound of feet scuffing in the dirt drew Eren's attention. He watched the lanky form of Bertholdt as approached. Bertholdt confused Eren, who had lived for so long in an environment where size dictated all, the boy broadcasted nerves, reigning his body in tight to make himself smaller than he was. When he got close enough, he sucked in a chesty breath in what looked to be an attempt to steel himself.

Armin gave him a bemused wave while Eren cocked his head at the other boy. He glanced over Bertholdt’s shoulder, searching for Reiner who rarely strayed from Bertholdt’s side. Or perhaps it was more the other way around.

Eren had not had much to do with Bertholdt in the months since he’d joined the Cadet Corps, but he liked Reiner well enough. They often sparred together in combat training, Reiner having size and bulk and Eren, being himself: quick and strong and used to tactless brawling with bigger opponents. Titans were not taught to fight, they did not have passed down techniques like the humans, but Eren had plenty of experience dropping others to their knees anyway.

“You’re from Shiganshina, aren’t you?” Bertholdt asked without much preamble.

Armin answered, “Yes, why?”

Bertholdt scrubbed the back of his neck, “I just…” he glanced away, looking over his shoulder - perhaps for Reiner. “We - I heard that you guys want to be scouts.”

Eren glanced at Armin, who raised his eyebrow minutely before looking back at Bertholdt. “That’s right.”

“But if you’re from Shiganshina, that means you should know how terrifying the titans are… so why would you decide to become soldiers?”

Armin’s brow furrowed. “I think that day changed something in all of us,” he said, “but I agreed to it when Eren suggested we join the military because after the government forced people into that insane plan to retake wall Maria, I thought about the injustices committed in the name of this war and I had to do something.”

Eren hummed his soft agreement to Armin, squeezing his arm gently. It was then that Eren picked up another set of footsteps - Reiner’s if the heavy tread was anything to go by. His blond-haired appeared around the barracks, catching sight of Bertholdt and quickly moving to pick up his usual tag along.

“I see,” Bertholdt said. “Um, Reiner and I… we know what it's like, is all. The titans, that is. We came from a small mountain village in East Maria, they got to us before the warnings could. Everything was so panicked… I don’t remember much.”

“Hey,” Reiner said, coming to stand by Bertholdt and placing a hand on his shoulder. “Why are you discussing this now?”

Bertholdt glanced at Reiner, surprised, and emotion Eren couldn’t parse tightening on his face as the two boys exchanged some silent communication. Bertholdt swallowed, turning back to Eren and Armin. “Sorry, my point was… you aren’t like the others.”

“The others?”

“Those here who don’t understand how terrifying the titans really are.”

“Bert, come on. Enough,” Reiner said, but Bertholdt steamrolled on. Eren’s interest had already been piqued by the odd body language the two displayed, but it was even more so now; Bertholdt usually rolled beneath Reiner’s will, even if it was subtle. For once he seemed to be showing that extremely long spine of his.

“The vast majority are here because they don’t want to lose face. They were told they were admitting to being cowards if they chose to be workers, so they became trainees. But we’re not really so different. We chose this because we’re hoping to join the Military Police, because they’re safe, deep in the interior. If that doesn’t work… I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t know how much will I have on my own…”

“There is nothing wrong with valuing your life,” Armin said, “that’s what makes you human.”

At that last point, something in Bertholdt seemed to come loose. “Human,” he said softly, looking at the floor. “Yeah…”

“Come on Bert,” Reiner said, tugging Bertholdt away. “We’ll see you guys later, okay? I look forward to training with you more. You’re a beast in hand-to-hand, Jaeger.”

“Sure,” Eren said, for a lack of anything better.

“That was… weird?” he asked Armin, not entirely certain - some elements of human behaviour still eluded him. Humans made communication so complicated.

Armin shrugged. “It’s the trauma.”

———

When Mikasa had still not shown up a few hours later, Eren went looking for her. It was one of their few days of respite from training and the three of them had been lucky to not to be on roll for cleaning or cooking - which usually meant that they would spend the day together but Mikasa had disappeared shortly after breakfast.

Eren found her on the hill overlooking the lake, resting her chin on one of her knees pulled tight to her chest. She didn’t turn when he neared, but he knew she had heard him - Mikasa always knew. She made no moves to stop him though, so Eren sat down next to her and turned his face towards the shimmering water below.

She was sad, that much he could tell. Mikasa rarely showed outward sadness, but he could see it in her posture, in the knots in her shoulders, and the way she blinked, slow and distant. Mikasa didn’t cry; her pain had always been too much for tears.

They didn’t say anything for a while. Eren plucked a daisy from the lush grass surrounding them, spinning its stalk between two fingers as he waited. The detail in the world was amazing, he’d come to find, much of it was lost to titans purely due to their size but being small, being human, allowed Eren to see so much more than he had realised possible. He pinched one of the daisy’s petals, rubbing it between his fingers. He’d never been able to hold a flower as a titan.

Eren glanced up to meet Mikasa’s gaze as she observed him.

“I used to sit in the fields in Shiganshina,” Mikasa said then, unprompted, turning back to the view. “There was this one spot under a tree I’d always stop under where these little blue flowers used to grow. I used to go there to… escape. I’d look at the sky and pretend I was just out for a bit and that my parents were waiting for me at home and that as long as I was there they would still be waiting.”

There was not much Eren could think of to reply to that, so he placed the daisy in the grass and reached for Mikasa’s hand instead. He tugged it into his lap, intertwining their fingers in silent comfort; there was not much he could say, he didn’t know what having parents was like and what it would be like to lose them but he thought he might understand in part, what that kind of loss might feel like when he imagined losing her. He remembered that first time he had thought he might lose Levi when attacked by the quadrupedal titan. They had hardly known each other at that point, but when the small titan’s fingers had wrapped around Levi, lifting him - Eren vividly remembered the unfamiliar, unfiltered panic and fear that had rushed his system with the force of an avalanche; fury had charged behind shortly after. He wondered at the holes those emotions would leave behind - when there was no one left to soothe their wake.

So he didn’t know, but perhaps he could imagine. His grip tightened around hers.

“I never told you what happened,” Mikasa said, her eyes staring glassily at the water below. “I was under that tree that day,... when the Colossal Titan appeared. Armin had come looking for me and we were on our way back when it appeared. I - I’ve always thought, since then, that if I hadn’t gone that day Carla might not have died. I could have saved her…” Mikasa sucked in a breath hard through her mouth. “She was trapped in the rubble of our house. I wasn’t strong enough - I couldn’t get her out. So I lost her too. She took me in, she was my-” Her words stuttered, choking off. Her free arm tightened around her knees. “…I lost her too.”

“Tell me about her?” Eren asked softly, rubbing his gently along the back of her hand. It felt like a risk, asking her that; Eren didn’t have any inherent practice with handling others' emotions, but it felt right. Mikasa had never liked sharing her emotions, but Eren saw the way night terrors haunted her sleep, leaving her shaking and small. Levi had been like that, had carried on like she did too, despite the way the bad dreams still clung to their shells and hung shadows around their eyes.

Screwing her eyes shut, Mikasa said, “She was kind and stubborn, and she’d rub my head when we both couldn’t sleep. She wasn’t my mother, but I loved her… You remind me of her sometimes. She would have liked you - it’s why I thought you should have her last name. If anything she would have wanted you to have it; she had lost people like me, her husband and son. They were killed years ago but her son’s name was Eren, too.”

Eren hummed in faint surprise.

“She believed he was still alive,” Mikasa said, tugging at her red scarf. “Her last words to me were to find him because she couldn’t.”

Eren could see the question in her wide, dark eyes before she asked it.

“Where did you come from, Eren?”

Nowhere he could tell her about - not yet. He opened his mouth, then shut it, trying to find a gentle lie.

Mikasa sighed before he could come up with one, seeming to sense his inner turmoil and budding non-answer. She turned away from him again, but didn’t pull her hand from his. “One day I’d like to repay her kindness forward; I’ll look after him like she looked after me.”

Finding his tongue at last, Eren said, “Then I’ll have to look out for you - for her. Someone has to watch your back.”

“I’m glad we have you,” Mikasa said after a pause. “You and Armin are my family. We’ll look out for each other.”

Family. Yes, Eren decided. That’s what they were.

Mikasa moved closer, leaning her head on his shoulder. Eren smiled.

Chapter Text

Instructor Shadis didn’t like Eren.

The man did not like any of the cadets really, but Eren seemed to hold a special flame to the burned-out candle that was the instructor’s heart. Shadis lurked and leered through training sessions, and, despite having the visage of a desert-worn corpse, he was forever on guard and watchful. His eyes always strayed back to Eren - something the man evidently despised if the way he caught himself and scowled harder, making the lines of his face into trenches - like he could sense the threat in him maybe.

Eren watched on impassively, waiting for instruction as Shadis sneered, his teeth audibly grating. Eren might have found it amusing if it weren’t so annoying; at first, Shadis had avoided him like the plague, insofar as it was possible for him to do so, but as he had adjusted to Eren’s presence amongst the cadets that had changed. It was curious, the stiffness to his posture when confronted with Eren, and the way he inadvertently displayed his mistrust in similar ways to that of the animals Eren had spent his days watching beyond the walls.

Humans were not nearly as good at concealing their emotions as they thought they were.
However, Shadis’s now watchful eye was proving to be a pain and Eren was beginning to chafe under the scrutiny. He couldn’t slack off or lag behind as some of the other cadets did, whether to share a laugh or take a needed respite and he could never find a free enough moment to sneak off. Eren had often toyed with the risks of attempting a shift - he knew he could do it, he could feel the titan roil under his skin, aching to be let out. At the end of it all, Eren had spent far longer living as a titan than as a human.

Eren had yet to discover what about him set Shadis on edge. At first, a part of him had worried that the man somehow knew his secret, but how could he when Armin and Mikasa didn’t even know? And as time wore on, it seemed more and more unlikely when Eren was by large left alone rather than hauled off for execution or at least to some kind of cell. Human nature, he’d discovered, was rather reactionary and surprisingly violent and he’d seen one too many spiders suffer similar fates.

“Jaeger,” Shadis spat, spittle punctuating the word - even Eren’s fake name seemed to piss him off - “you’re up first with Leonhart. Time to show the rest of these louts what you’ve learned.”

Eren blinked twice, long and slow and big-eyed just to watch how Shadis’s face puckered like a cat’s behind, before nodding demurely (because that annoyed the man more) and wandering over to the sparring area.

He scuffed the compact dirt with his toe, watching as Annie walked to join him. She was stone-faced as usual, each movement she made was tightly controlled as she dipped her head to him once and sunk into stance, fists raised.

Eren knew Annie only in the way one knows a passerby on the street, by the speed of their walk, the style of their hair, and flights of half caught conversation. Despite having trained alongside the girl for over a year, Annie remained aloof. She was acquainted with Reiner and Bertholdt - all of them coming from the same mountain town raided after the fall of Shiganshina, though from what Eren could tell, their relationship seemed more cursory than anything; born of proximity rather than connection. The only person Annie seemed to genuinely be friends with was Mina, who was friendly with everyone and never had a bad word to say. The girl in turn spent most of her time split between Thomas and Annie.

The one thing Eren knew for sure about Annie was that she was damn good when it came to sparring. It was not often that she applied herself in training, despite her innate prowess, but Eren had watched her, had recognised the way she moved long before he actually saw her fight. In those first weeks of training, the other cadets were learning to fight but Annie already knew how, knew better.

Eren raised his own fists. Unlike Annie, he had no formal training beyond that of cadet training but years of brawling with other titans had taught him how to use his body - his opponent’s body, their weights, momentum, size. This body lacked the raw titan strength he had possessed, but all was not lost.

Eren grinned.

The “Begin!” had barely formed on Shadis’s tongue before Annie moved. She swept low, darting into his space with an attempt to get under his guard. Eren pivoted left, blocking, before moving forward in retaliation. Annie blocked easily and used his momentum to throw him off balance. Eren stumbled and caught a glancing fist to the shoulder as he did so. He used the opportunity to get into her space and force her back.

They went back and forth like this for a while, clashing and separating. Back and forth they went, clashing and separating. Human fighting was exciting, Eren had long since discovered, though the spars and drills the cadets ran missed the life-or-death edge that really got one’s blood pumping. There was also a disappointing lack of teeth allowed.

Annie seemed to have had enough: as they came apart her jaw tensed and her eyes narrowed and as Eren went to move in for another strike, she attacked.

Annie swept low in a similar move to what he had begun with, but instead of going for a blow as Eren expected, she threw open his defence and caught him with an arm wrapping around his shoulder and the other around his chest.

The breath in his lungs emptied with a rattle as his back slammed into the ground.

“Surrender,” Annie said, there was a breathy quality to her tone.

Eren could dislodge her, he could have done many things differently in the fight - though none of them he considered fighting fair. Now, his instincts warred; the beast in him was desperate to fight, to win, to clamp down on the ridge of muscle along the junction of her shoulder and her neck with his teeth and tear. Eren tamped down a warning growl, grinding his teeth, and reminded himself to be human.

He shifted his focus instead on escaping her grip. His right arm was trapped above his head, his left had raised instinctually to claw at her arm where it wrapped around his throat where it slowly cinched his breath. He could dislodge her, but doing so would require brute strength that human Eren shouldn’t possess.

“Enough,” Shadis snapped, perhaps sensing the edge that had entered the air. “Well done, Leonhart.”

He dismissed them both back to the rest of the watching cadets, calling up another pair for a demonstration.

“Are you okay?” Mikasa asked as soon as he reached her, her brows pinched.

“I’m fine,” Eren said, “she’s good - I didn’t see that move coming at all.”

There was a laugh behind him and Eren turned to meet Reiner’s eye. “That much was evident,” he said with a chuckle, “how’s it feel to finally be the one put on your ass?”

“Not too bad actually, I don’t get why you complain about it all the time,” Eren said with a small grin.

“Oh, you’re on, Jaeger.”

Reiner was good in his own right and Eren often sparred with him when he was looking to break a good sweat and burn off some steam but the other cadet had yet to get more than a handful of wins against him and they settled for ties more often than not.

“Use your feet, Springer!” Shadis yelled ahead of them, where Connie and Thomas were now sparring. “If your footwork still looks like that by the time we reach Survival training, you’ll be getting the boot.”

———

Cold tickled his nose. Eren huffed out an annoyed breath that frosted gently in the air. Beside him, Armin’s teeth clattered and even Mikasa suppressed small shivers.

Eren liked cadet training, he liked being human and doing human things; he liked learning. He liked the way his human body felt, the way his muscles strained and adrenaline spiked. He liked sparring, he liked flying.

He did not like Survival training.

Eren was cold-resistant, or at least that’s what he understood himself to be after caring for his humans winter after winter, trying to tamp their shaking with his own body. He ran hot according to Armin, but being resistant did not apparently equal impervious. His nostrils stung and he couldn’t smell anything, his fingers and toes felt strange, and above all, he was wet. Snow and sweat made his shirt cling icily to his skin. Titans didn’t wear clothes, titans shouldn’t wear clothes; clothes were cumbersome and annoying and got wet and damp and sticky and were now rubbing in all sorts of places they shouldn’t.

He should do it. Now. If there was any time to throw it all to the winds it was now - Eren could turn into his old, cold immune, naked self and be free of this cursed mountain in minutes rather than hours.

He scowled. They hadn’t even been allowed ODM gear.

Eren kicked at the snow petulantly, grumbling his frustrations with a string of unintelligible throaty rumbles. Mikasa patted him on the back consolingly, well used to the noises accompanying Eren’s strangeness.

Armin sneezed and soft white flakes spun from his hair to join the snow crunching at their boots.

“We’re nearly there,” Mikasa said assuringly, though how she knew that Eren couldn’t say. It’s not like Shadis had bothered giving them a map.

However, not even another half hour of trekking later, a peel of smoke appeared against the skyline between the crests of pine and snow. They stumbled through the heavy wooden doors of the outpost - even Mikasa’s knees wobbled - greeted by a wash of warmth from a large fireplace and a too-wide smile from one of their instructors.

Ten minutes later, Reiner, Bertholdt, and Annie joined them. Reiner congratulated them on being first while Bertholdt offered them a timid smile. Each took a seat at the table Eren had claimed closest to the fire and took a proffered bowl of hot soup, though they appeared to be well-faring despite the arduous trip.

Armin had yet to shake the chatter from his teeth.

The sun was getting low, but slowly the rest of the cadets trickled in. Jean, Sasha and Connie had arrived next, followed closely by Mina, Marco, and Thomas who were now sitting pink-faced from cold around the table with them. Everyone was tired, wet, and cold - Jean’s shivers were enough to rattle the bench and he had hardly said a word about Eren beating him to the outpost, though Eren was sure he’d get an earful later.

“Shadis can eat his own boot,” Connie grumbled. “I wish he had kicked me out - Survival training officially sucks.”

“Hmmm,” Sasha mumbled in what sounded like agreement but her were eyes half-closed and she was listing off to one side. “Boot leather is gross. I had to give up a perfectly good pair of shoes.”

Jean blinked and frowned bemused across from Eren. “You’ve tried it?”

Sasha opened one eye to peer at him and patted her stomach absently. “Needs must. I’ll take a steak any day.”

“Leather is actually very high in protein,” Armin said from beside Eren.

Some others overheard the boot conversation and joined their table to chime in when Armin spoke again, his eyes scanning over the faces in the hall. “Where’s Ymir and Krista?”

“I haven’t seen them come in… they were with Dax, weren’t they?” Thomas said.

“Ymir’s pretty tough, and Krista is tougher than she looks - shouldn’t they have arrived by now?” Connie said.

“They might have gotten lost…?” Marco suggested.

As if in answer the wind outside howled mockingly.

“They’re not here…” Eren said. He stepped over to one of the windows, pushing aside the blinds, and peered out into the dark. Human’s were no good in storms. “Which means they’re out there, in the storm.”

Something fizzled in the air and something cracked in the distance. A faint trace of light lit the horizon.

“Shitttttt,” Connie breathed next to Eren where he’d joined him at the window. “It’s a thunderstorm. There’s no way we can go out there.”

Eren frowned but didn’t contend. Maybe he could -

“Eren,” Mikasa’s grip was gentle but firm on his arm, Armin flanked her, wringing his hands. She knew what he was thinking, he could see it in her eyes and feel it in her grip.

“We need to think first,” Armin said. “There’ll be no helping them if you’re dead.”

The wind beyond wailed once more.

———

Ymir breathed, slow, unsteady, her breath misting. Her heartbeat reverberated too loud in her ears and her hands shook in her lap, so she pretended it was the cold even though it had been years since she had been this warm. The snow was slushy around her from the heat of her skin and the storm had left snowflakes in her hair that now ran like tears across her skin, following the lines of transformation marks that gouged her cheeks.

She felt old, so old, and so, so young at the same time. She supposed all those long years in between didn’t really count - half-remembered impressions and blurs that they were. She’d always thought, though, especially in moments like these, that a part of her remembered. Somewhere deep down, Ymir remembered everything.

No, she couldn’t feel it in her body, in old scars and rust-jointed knees, but she felt it now, in each breath, in the numbness superseding her mind, in the invisible, unidentifiable weights that hung from her shoulders and the blade she could feel waiting to drop above her head. In the way she couldn’t forget it had all happened.

Sixty years was a long time after all.

Her titan carcass disintegrated in front of her, its bones crumbling and flesh flaking like the pastries from that corner stall she’d used to steal so long ago - the heat of it smoking the cold air and puddling the snow around it into a small lake. But its eyes were still glossy, reflecting the light of a few too-bright stars shining from a clearing gap in the clouds, still watching her knowingly.

Ymir knew what she was. She’d known ever since that first lucid moment, blood flooding her mouth and bones picked between her teeth, but this was the first time she’d transformed willfully, and for a girl at that.

(A part of her had always feared that transforming would take her right back to where she started, mindless, hungry, a pure titan.)

But Krista was safe. And that was enough.

Why was that enough? When had Ymir decided to care so Walls-damned much?

She fisted a handful of snow and hurled it at a tree with a snarl. These people were rubbing off on her, all that stupidity and dedicate your hearts tripe, that unknowing innocence they couldn’t help but hold... She knew where it led but she couldn’t help but admire them for it.

Ymir scrubbed a hand over her face, feeling for any lingering transformation marks, and stood. Her pants were sopping with snowmelt and her boots squelched with each step.

She’d taken Dax and Krista as close to the outpost as she’d dared before retreating alone - Dax had knocked himself unconscious in a fall and had broken a leg, and Krista was delirious with cold by the time Ymir had returned. If Ymir had been simply human they surely all would have died (but if Ymir had been simply human she probably would have welcomed it).

Even so, Krista had opened bleary eyes when Ymir’s titan had gently scooped her and Dax from the snow where Krista had huddled them both. She had held Ymir’s gaze steadily for a year-long second before they drifted shut again.

It had occurred to Ymir, not for the first time, that now would be the perfect chance to run, to put it all behind her and forget her guilt for her own sake because so little Ymir had done (and yet so much) had ever been for her own sake. And her life had not truly been her own for a long time.

And yet, one foot in front of the other, she kept walking forward.

After all, Ymir had always been a sucker for a pretty face. That and the job wasn’t done yet.

Krista was smart, so so smart, Ymir could see it in her eyes and the lie of her smile. Ymir might get caught by staying. If Krista did figure it out… Ymir would run then. She was nothing if not resourceful.

Cold began to prickle her skin and shivers hastened her steps. Krista, Krista, Krista; Ymir was a fool. She laughed as she stumbled through the dark and snow. A too old, too young fool. This would be the death of her, she was sure.

“Ymir!”

“Ymir?”

Light flickered through the trees, casting the shadows darker. Ymir sucked in a deep breath and wrapped her arms around herself, fighting the last urge to turn away and disappear.

“I’m here!” she called to the dark. “Took you all long enough.”

Eren was the first one she saw, yellow lamplight flickering across his features. Mikasa was close behind, which was wholly unsurprising. Reiner and Connie followed soon after - Ymir tried not to let her eyes linger, turning back to Eren. Mikasa wrapped her jacket around Ymir’s shoulders and Eren draped a scarf around her neck. Ymir hadn’t even realised she’d lost her jacket.

“Thank the Walls we found you,” Connie said, lowering his torch.

Eren was looking at her strangely, his brows furrowed softly. Ymir didn’t take it personally, Eren was a weird guy. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Ymir spread her arms and gestured to herself. “Geez, Jaeger, never took you for a sap. I’m wetter than a brothel but otherwise fine.”

Reiner laughed at that; she didn’t look his way.

“Let’s go,” Mikasa said softly, “the storm might pick up again.”

Eren shook his head. “It’s past.”

Reiner said, “We found Krista and Daz, the others are getting them back to the outpost. Daz has a broken leg but otherwise they’re okay.”

“I - that’s good. We got separated.”

“We wouldn’t have come out here if Eren hadn’t been so insistent. Shadis will have our heads when he finds out,” Connie huffed petulantly.

Eren was still looking at her oddly when Ymir met his gaze. “My hero,” she said dryly.

He chuffed a laugh. “Mikasa is right, we should go.”

“About time,” Ymir said. “I’m freezing my balls off.”

———

“The Ripper has been increasingly active ever since Maria fell.”

“You seriously believe the Ripper is connected to the fall? He’s never left Sina.”

“That we’re aware of.”

“I don’t know why you’re so concerned - the Ripper’s activity has led to an increase in scout recruits, has it not?”

“Garrison, actually.”

“Like that’ll save em’.”

“What, they’re more scared of a man than man-eating beasts?”

“Our recruits are joining a cause; they’re fighting for humanity, freedom-”

“Freedom from what? Be honest with yourself man.”

“The Ripper’s activity is beside the point; there are systems in place to combat him and the MP’s best are on his trail. We will not prevent more murders squabbling and I believe we were brought here for other reasons as it stands.”

“Right, murders for a cause.”

Levi shifted pointedly at his place against the wall and the man’s mouth shut with an audible clack of his teeth. Levi ran a steely gaze over the rest of the room’s occupants, Commander-in-Chief Zackly, the commanders and their seconds, and the self-righteous politicians that had ingratiated their ways into military business in the false name of the people. He knew them all. Their faces, their names, their mistresses, paramours, and their wives. They lived small lives. Levi scoffed under his breath and folded his arms at his chest.

“The reason is Maria. I’m sure Commander Dawk has the Ripper situation well in hand,” Pixis soothed. “Commander Smith, I believe we were discussing formative plans for retaking the Wall?”

“That’s correct,” Erwin folded his fingers together on the table. Levi rolled his eyes. “As you know, the Scouting Legion has resumed survey missions over the past year - this time within our own territory of Maria. The intention of these missions is to survey the titan presence now within Maria and collect intel so that eventually we might move forward with set missions to reclaim Wall Maria. However, as you might also know, the fall of Wall Maria four years ago returned to us Captain Levi, who had previously been missing for two and a half months in titan country.”

All eyes turned to Levi, who met their gazes with a raised eyebrow.

Erwin continued, “The Captain brought with him some revelations about the titans and our experts have been working on alternative methods of subduing titans based on these revelations, but it has caused us to question how much more is unknown about the titans that could be learned in a controlled setting. Hence, I am here today asking for consensus of our council to allow for endeavours to be made to catch a titan and bring it within the walls for thorough experimentation.”

There was a ripple throughout the room - a change in currents as the words settled in. Some had the decency not to let their thoughts show on their faces, most did not.

“Surely not,” Deputy Commander Qulls hissed, “that is preposterous. It’s endangerment!”

Erwin raised a pacifying hand. “Everything we as humanity know about the titans comes from field experience, from scouts, my scouts. It is time we gain an upper hand. Especially as we have already seen proof that intelligent titans exist in the forms of the Colossal and Armoured titans. I do not believe humanity can overcome the enemy without knowing the enemy as it appears they might know us. For the good of humanity.”

There was a pregnant pause before the Commander-in-Chief finally spoke. “We will take your request into consideration, Commander Smith, and reconvene in a months time.”

Erwin dipped his head in thanks.

When the meeting adjourned at last, Levi fell into step beside Erwin and together they exited Mitras’s Command Headquarters. They waited until they were well away from any potential curious ears before speaking.

Erwin spoke first. “Well, that went better than expected.”

Levi snorted softly. “Don’t tell Hange that, you’ll get their hopes up.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?” Erwin asked with a knowing smile as they walked.

“Yes. Besides, you know they’re all spineless idiots in there and Zackly’s calling it to a vote.”

“He did not state that.”

Levi stopped. “Erwin.”

Erwin paused a step ahead, turning back to raise an eyebrow at Levi before sighing softly. “He did not state it but yes, you are right. These matters are beneath him and ultimately I believe he does not care either way, so yes it will likely be left to a vote. I have some favours I will need a hand with calling in.”

Levi nodded at the implication and they did not speak until they had put Mitras far behind them.

Chapter Text

Today was graduation day. A ceremony had been held that afternoon, full of stoic faced officials and solemn gestures that had had Eren yawning into his hand - a gesture that inconspicuously echoed through the rest of the cadets as the excitement had been too much to simply wait out the night before and most of them had decided to begin the celebration early after Sasha had revealed an impish grin and a stolen cask of wine.

Now, an evening breeze swept through the town hall they were all gathered in, mingling with the warmth of bodies, alcohol flushed cheeks, and the flames of oil lamps that edged the room.

It was an official celebration, despite the fact that graduating from the Cadet Corps did not soldiers of them make - they would still be considered cadets until their applications were approved and they were inducted formally into their chosen branches, then receiving their uniforms and insignias.

“You’re still joining the Survey Corps, Eren? Even after you ranked in the top ten? What a waste,” Connie said, drawing out the last word and gesturing sloppily with his mug so that liquid sloshed over its rim onto the hardwood table between them.

“But didn’t you rank, too?” Daz asked Connie.

“Oh, yeah,” Connie waved his empty hand. “Eighth. But that’s beside the point.”

Krista laughed softly, leaning against Ymir’s shoulder. She’d ranked tenth.

“I’ve had my mind made up from the start,” Eren said. “What’s the point of training all this if you’re only going to go live a cushy interior life? That’s what’s really a waste.”

“Still! The scouts? You better splurge for some good food at your funeral.”

Sasha nodded in agreement. “I’m all for good funeral food, but why not the Garrison? That’s what I’m thinking. Close to the markets and the ranking officers food cabinet.”

“The Garrison isn’t enough,” Eren said with a frown. While better than the MP’s, they were a bunch of skiving drunkards. Eren had other motivations for joining the scouts, but even so, he liked to think if he had lived as a human his choice would have been the same. Living within the walls had given him an insight that had only caused him to admire the humans that risked themselves leaving them more. The walls were protection sure, but they were also cages. Cages that had proven infallible. “You all know about titans, but you don’t know them. I do,” he said. “The Colossal Titan and the Armoured Titan are still out there, I’m not naive enough to think they won’t be back. At least the scouts try to make a difference. I’d prefer to fight out there with them before the fight is brought to me in the interior.”

“He’s got a point,” Reiner said, approaching the table the cadets sat at. “We’ve all been deceiving ourselves if we think the Colossal Titan won’t be back. I’m with Eren. Better to live fighting for something than to die over a nice bed pillow.”

“You’re all idiots,” Ymir said, but there was something pensive in her expression.

“I’m joining the scouts as well,” Armin said.

“Armin, not you too…”

Mikasa raised her hand. “Me too.”

“I thought you were the sane one!” Connie said.

Mikasa shrugged.

“So many people have already died. Twenty per cent of the population...” Eren said, staring into the mug he was holding. “Taking back Maria will be the first step towards making amends. I don’t want their lives to have been in vain. I’m going to kill all the titans. I’ll fight for them.”

Before, as a titan, Eren had killed to survive. But five years as a human had sparked an internal fire within him - he suddenly had a purpose. He was a titan that was unlike all the other titans, and now he was a human. The human part of him cared.

“Whatever regiment you all pick… I hope you live long and happy lives,” Eren said, before leaving the table and the rest of the cadets to debate his words.

He left the hall and stepped out into the night air to sit on steps outside, staring up at the dark sky.

There was a soft click as the door behind him was opened and shut before Armin and Mikasa sat next to him. Light from an oil-lamp hanging on the wall of the building taunted the edges of their shadows.

“Thank you,” Eren said after a minute of silence. He had never doubted they would change their decisions, it had never even occurred to him they might want to.

“You can’t get rid of us now,” Armin said with a smile.

“We’re family,” Mikasa said. “We have to stick together.”

“I’ll protect you, no matter what.”

“Sure, Eren. But we’ll protect you too, okay?”

“Okay.”

The stars above them twinkled.

———

The cadets had received the day off after graduation, those who hadn’t already would use the day to finalise their decisions but most of them chose to spend the time milling about Trost and exploring the shops and market stalls. Eren, Mikasa, and Armin were such cadets. They had been invited to join with Sasha and Connie, who had also dragged along Thomas, Mina, Marco, and Jean.

“Come on, come on, come onnnn!” Connie called, “I heard the Survey Corps are passing through here and I wanna get a look.”

As usual, Eren noticeably perked up. “Scouts?”

“So predictable, Jaeger,” Jean grumbled.

Eren ignored him and followed Connie’s lead. A crowd was already gathering in the street ahead.

“They’re here!” Someone called before an answering cheer rose from the crowd.

“Ow, ow,” one of the cadets complained and Eren echoed the sentiment as an elbow found its home in his gut.

“Move over, I can’t see.”

“You’re standing on my foot.”

“Connie, why is your head so fucking big.”

“It’s not my fault I take after my dad!”

“You’d think for having such a big head you wouldn’t be so stupid all the time.”

“Hey!”

A horse whinnied. Atop it sat a tall, straight-backed blond man. He had an austere, serious air about him, exasperated by a big, straight nose and thick furrowed eyebrows framing his blue eyes. His green cloak was draped meticulously around his shoulders.

“That’s Erwin Smith,” Jean said, somewhere behind Eren. Commander Smith was a popular topic of debate among the cadets, Eren had heard much about him over the last five years - things like Erwin Smith was crazy, running the most foolish of fool’s errands, but that he was also the best for the job, the only one for the job. Nobody commanded the scouts as he did, especially with Humanity’s Strongest at his side.

“Go Commander!” someone in the crowd yelled. “Thrash the titans!”

Eren’s gaze flicked past Erwin, to the man riding on the next horse. He couldn’t help the rumble of Small-mine that slipped from his chest at the sight of his first human.

“You’re purring again,” Mikasa murmured.

“I’m not a cat,” Eren grumbled back.

It was a relief to see him again; Eren loved all his humans but Levi had been his first and had known him in a way the cadets did not. Levi looked well, less ragged than when Eren had last seen him - fresh from the wilds of titan country. He was bigger now, in perspective, but he was still smaller than Eren had thought he’d be. Eren was bigger than him in both forms, he thought, mildly smug.

Eren wanted to go to him. He wanted Levi to look at him, to recognise him.

“Captain Levi!” People cheered.

“They say he’s as strong as an entire brigade.”

Levi rolled his eyes, shifting away from the crowd and saying something to a wild-haired person riding next to him, their glasses glinting when they tilted their head back, laughing. That made Levi shake his head.

Levi didn’t look Eren’s way as he passed and disappointment mounded heavy in his gut. He itched to move, forcing himself to remember that later, when he joined the scouts officially, he could seek Levi out properly. The Survey Corps induction was in two days. He could explain everything then. Later.

“I heard his titan kill count is in the hundreds,” Marco said.

“He did get left in titan country for two months and come out alive,” Thomas said.

“Didn’t he return during Shiganshina?” Mina asked. “Wait… did you guys see him there?” She was looking at Eren, Mikasa, and Armin.

“No,” Mikasa said. “We didn’t.” Her tone made it clear she was unimpressed with the question.

Eren hummed. “I did.”

“What?” Mikasa said, her eyebrows lifting ever so slightly as she turned to him.

“You never mentioned that, Eren,” Armin said.

“Yeah,” Jean snorted, “That’s ‘cause he’s lying.”

“I’m not lying.” Eren glared at Jean. “He fought in Shiganshina; I was there.”

“Then how come Mikasa and Armin didn’t know? That doesn’t sound like something someone like you would keep to yourself.”

Eren growled through his teeth. “Maybe if you bothered to pull your head out of your ass every once in a while, you’d know me well enough to judge that. Besides, you all know I had a head injury. I didn’t recognise him until now.”

That was a lie of course, but it had been his official story for a long time now and played its part effectively. Eren hadn’t known the words “head injury” for quite a while until after they had begun to be commonly thrown around in conjunction with his name. Armin was the one who had first used them - everyone had assumed that the reason Eren was so odd and had trouble speaking was that he had been injured in Shiganshina, a head injury of some kind leaving him needing to relearn basic human functions. And Eren had never said anything to contradict it.

He had also never said anything about Levi. It had never come up and the three of them, Armin and Mikasa in particular, didn’t like to talk about Shiganshina. Apart from his blatant interest in joining the scouts, Eren had never included Levi’s name in his rationale - it was personal. But seeing him now made it feel like he could breathe easier, like everything was okay and he hadn’t realised that it hadn’t been before; it brought up all kinds of human emotion that sometimes made Eren vainly wish he had stayed a titan. Things were so much simpler then.

“Whatever,” Jean said, shoving his hands in his pockets and spinning on his heel.

“Horse-faced prick,” Eren grumbled.

“I heard that!”

“You were supposed to.”

Jean stalked off.

“Don’t mind him. He’s just sour you ranked higher than him,” Sasha said, sharing a look with Connie and turning to follow Jean.

Eren turned around at the distinct sound of military issue boots on cobble.

“Mr. Hannes?” Armin asked, watching a tall man with cropped blond hair and a tweedy moustache wearing a Garrison uniform approach.

“Hey, kids,” the man said with a warm smile. “I heard you both were graduating. Mikasa, I recognised your name at the top of the class. Thought I might see you around here…” He ruffled Armin’s hair. “Walls, you two really shot up didn’tcha?”

“It’s nice to see you, Hannes,” Mikasa said with a rare smile. “You’re looking well.”

“What, not like the old drunk you knew before?” Hannes laughed. “I’ve moved up in the world. You’re looking at the chief of the Corps of Engineers! I don’t suppose I’ll see either of you in my ranks, will I? Must be straight off to the interior with you, won’t it? ”

“No, we’re joining the Survey Corps,” Armin said.

“You… what?”

“The scouts.”

“But - Shiganshina. After all you’ve been through, you're joining the Survey Corps?”

“It’s because of all we’ve been through that we’re doing it,” Armin said. “We need to do it. You understand?”

Hannes nodded, sighing. “I do, actually. How do you think I fixed my old ways? That abnormal titan saved my ass that day and I decided I couldn’t keep wasting my life after getting a second chance.”

Armin frowned. “Abnormal titan?”

Eren had been milling off to the side, waiting for his friends to finish catching up with their old acquaintance. He’d recognised the name from stories Armin had told of his and Mikasa’s childhood, but he didn’t recognise Hannes’s face. Still didn’t, but -

“Yeah, everyone always talks about the Colossal and the Armoured Titans, but there was a third one that was weird. Well, weirder than usual. Fifteen-metre class without a doubt, muscular; it was all proportional - which is odd for a titan, ya know. I had already got you kids to the boats, but someone was stuck down one of the roads. I was trying to get them out when a titan comes outta nowhere, reaching for me. Though I was a goner. But then this abnormal comes sprinting down the street, tears the nape of the first titan out with its teeth, and then just keeps running.”

“How come we never heard about this?” Armin asked, wide-eyed. He shared a look with Mikasa.

Eren had been pretty lost in the bloodlust that day; he couldn’t remember Hannes or the titan he had apparently saved him from - Eren had torn out a lot of napes with his teeth - but there was no doubt Hannes was talking about him.

Hannes shrugged. “It sounds pretty unbelievable is my guess, that and I only met one other soldier that said she saw it. Apparently, it was fighting other titans then, too.”

“A titan that fights titans,” Armin breathed.

Another Garrison officer called Hannes’ name, weaving through the dispersing crowd. “That’s my cue,” Hannes said. “It was great seeing you kids, I expect you to come visit an old man every once in a while, okay?”

“We will,” Mikasa said.

“Take care of yourselves.”

Hannes walked off with a wave over his shoulder, leaving the three of them in the road, the rest of the cadets having wandered off after Jean.

“Have you ever heard of a titan like that before, Armin?” Mikasa asked.

“No, never…”

“Come on guys,” Eren said. “Let’s go find the others.”

Guilt gnawed on his bones. These were his best friends, his only friends - they were family. He had lived as a human for the past five years; at first, Eren hadn’t had the trust or the words to tell them who he was, but now he had long since passed both those milestones. He had never had good reason to bring it up. Before today he hadn’t realised any soldier would have cared or noticed his titan form in Shiganshina.

Eren chewed on his lip. He planned on telling Levi - he could tell them then. When they were all together.

They deserved to know. He had been lying by omission for such a long time he didn’t know any other way.

“Are you alright, Eren?” Mikasa asked.

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “Just thinking about the scouts.”

“One-track mind,” Armin joked, slinging his arm around Eren’s shoulders. “It’s been five years and sometimes I wonder if you’ve ever thought of anything else.”

———

“Titans, titans, titans!” Hange crowed, wiggling in their saddle. “Aren’t you excited, Levi?”

Levi shot them a bland look. “I’m on the edge of my seat,” he said dryly. “Oh look, I think I see a titan now…”

Hange spun around, craning their next this way and that. “Where? Where?”

When Hange turned back around, Levi leaned over his saddle and flicked them between the eyes. “Would you look at that,” he said when they lurched back with an indignant cry, “turns out it was just you, dumbass. You’ll be titan food in no time if you keep it up with that racket.”

Erwin shot them both a look from over his shoulder where he was riding ahead. Levi pretended not to see it. It would be the usual you’re supposed to be setting a good example tripe that they usually received.

“Besides, we’re not even past the gate yet.”

To which Hange tisked, sitting up in their saddle imperiously. “Ah, but you should know as well as any that it pays to be cautious, Levi!”

Levi scowled.

It wasn’t long before they had passed the gate and were entering wall Maria - now titan country.

They rode through grass and trees, and along empty roads lined with empty houses. They were separated into squadrons, Levi and Hange were leading different teams at the front of the charge.

They rode for an hour, until eventually, their formations devolved, useless as they reached part of Trost’s outreach township, buildings becoming denser and better for use of ODM gear than horseback. It was the ideal area for titan confrontation minus the civilians that had once inhabited it, the areas surrounding Trost’s gate were filled with shrubbery and low treescapes which weren’t good for maneuverability - unlike the forests of giant trees to the east of Maria, much like that Levi had seen in open titan country.

Levi had already taken down several titans when Hange flew by with a whooping cry. They came to a stop a few rooftops ahead, where two titans were already approaching.

“Come to me, my darlings!” Hange called, throwing their arms wide. As another titan ambled over to join the others reaching for them, Hange unhooked a canister from their belt with a wide, slightly deranged, grin.

Levi fired his anchors onto the roof beside them as Hange threw the canister from the roof. It hit the paving between the titans with a set of metallic clacks. There was a pop, followed by a hiss, and then a foul stench began to permeate the air.

Levi wrinkled his nose, stepping back instinctively. This was unfortunately not the first time he had had the misfortune of encountering the stuff but familiarity didn’t make the experience any easier. He felt his eyes water at the pungency.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes!” Hange yelled, “My prototype works. But now we have to test if it works! Walls, I love science. Come on, Levi!”

“Fucking hell, Four-eyes,” Levi muttered, following Hange as they zipped off the roof. The titans still tried to track them with their eyes, but the two humans were difficult to follow while in flight. With the titan’s sense of smell well impeded, the things were disoriented and ungainly as they moved, confused by the conflicting sensory information.

It was proof enough that Levi’s experience with titans relying heavily on their olfactory senses was right. And that Hange’s hypothesis that they could weaponise that weakness, using it against them to gain the upper hand, was correct.

It looked like that wouldn’t be the last time Levi was forced to go nose to nose with Hange’s walls-damned stink experiments.

“Do you ever think about anything other than titans,” Levi grumbled at Hange. “You forget they aren’t the only ones with a sense of smell. Disgusting.”

“You’re such a party pooper,” Hange said, still grinning. “All I can smell is victory.”

“Then I recommend you take a trip to the infirmary when we get back. That shouldn’t be left untreated.”

Hange pouted.

For all that the smell was worse than a cadet’s lavatory, Levi could admit that what Hange had made was good. It was effective, as he’d suspected when he’d first broached the idea only to find Hange had already begun mind-mapping.

“With this technique in higher supply, we could corral the titans,” Hange said tapping their chin. “We’d probably need a more consistent fume or a quick barrier method - something like pop-up netting maybe, depending on the environment. It would be weather dependent too…”

There was a crashing bang like thunder in the distance. Levi’s head snapped around in the direction it had come from, back towards Trost.

“What was that?” Hange asked, watching Levi with uncharacteristic seriousness.

The sensation in his gut plummeted before alighting with rage. The scouts hadn’t been there, back then. They hadn’t seen it, hadn’t heard it; none of them knew.

“The Colossal Titan,” Levi said, already throwing himself into the air. “Find Erwin, return to Trost.”

Hange nodded and zipped off.

Levi released a baying whistle for his horse, flying low through the streets as she reached him before hurling himself into the saddle and edging her into a gallop back the way they came.

He could only hope he arrived in time.

Chapter Text

“Can I tell you a secret, Eren?” Armin asked.

They were sitting knee to knee on the worn stone steps that lined the lengths of one of Trost’s canals. It was one of their off days from the labour work and Mikasa had gone to scrounge extra food as Armin had recently come down with the sickness that was flooding their camp, leaving the two of them to watch over each other here. It was nothing serious, she had told Eren, even though her eyes had been tight and her brow had held a lasting crease. Just a mild fever and a headache - even though Eren had heard the way coughs racked through the bodies of their hallmates in the night.

Armin’s gaze was doe-ish and imploring when he turned around to face Eren. Abandoning the twig he had been using to dig at the downy moss that grew in the grout between the stones, Eren blinked and nodded, recognising the type of question even as he racked his brain for the last word.

“You have to swear you won’t tell anyone,” Armin said.

Ah, secret. That’s right. Eren had many of those.

“I won’t tell,” Eren agreed solemnly; who was there to tell?

Armin nodded absently, his gaze shifting to his hands where he picked at the worn skin around his nails in nervous habit.

“Back in… Shiganshina, I used to go down to the canals all the time,” he said, “I liked to watch the water because it was always moving, always flowing - even if it didn’t look like it. It was the only thing apart from the scouts that left the walls. I had a book that used to belong to my parents that I liked to read there…

“The book it was - I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. It would have been bad if anyone found out about it. Especially the MP’s. It talked about things… outside the Walls things like deserts which are plains of sand - finer than anything you can find at the lakes,” even with that explanation, Eren didn’t know what sand was, but he nodded along anyway deciding he could always ask Mikasa later. “And the ocean, which is a body of water bigger than all the lakes within the Walls combined. Like a reflection of the sky.”

Eren nodded then, placing the description as the big water he had come across in his wanderings. “Really blue,” he said. He remembered liking it; Eren was a creature of the sun and the sun had liked it - making it shine even better than the glassy jewelry the rich ladies from the nice streets wore - so it made sense that Eren should like it too.

“Yes, blue,” Armin said. “My parents went missing when I was a baby. I think… I think something happened to them. I think they were trying to follow the river, find the ocean… by - by leaving the Walls… But something happened. Something must have happened.”

Eren’s nose wrinkled in confusion. He scrubbed his face with his hand before Armin could turn and see. Armin had explained parents to him before, had explained how his grandfather was the parent of his parents. Humans weren’t like titans, Eren had learned, they needed to be looked after by bigger humans until they were big enough themselves. Humans were also not supposed to leave the Walls unless they were scouts. But Armin’s parents had done that and they had never come back. The scouts always came back… mostly.

Eren did not really understand what Armin was saying, but he felt the gravity of it nonetheless. He knew it was important and anything important to Armin was important to Eren, too.

“If… I just wanted you to know… if anything happens to me it was my own choice. I am choosing to join the scouts because… because I need to see it for myself. I need to know if it was worth -” Armin stopped, swallowed, and turned his eyes back to the water.

Eren didn’t know why anything would happen to Armin. Eren was there to protect him, nothing would ever happen to Armin while he was around. An unhappy grumble scratched from his throat.

Amrin glanced at him. “It was my choice. I just… I just wanted to say that.”

“Your choice,” Eren agreed, knocking Armin’s shoulder with his own. A grin stretched across his face. “I’ll protect you.”

A small smile began in earnest at the corner of Armin’s mouth. “Yeah, you will. And I’ll protect you too, okay?”

———

The Colossal Titan once more knocked at their gates.

Eren was standing on Trost’s wall. And then suddenly he wasn’t. Steam bodyslammed him backward, off the ramparts, sending him into plummeting freefall. The other cadets, Mina, Thomas, Samuel, Connie, Sasha, fell beside him; dark specks amongst the smoking steam, barely identifiable from the debris. He thought someone might be screaming, he couldn’t hear over the pounding in his head and the pressurised static in his ears. It might have been him.

Just moments ago they had all been laughing, smiling, shirking their duties, and wasting time in the way that only newly graduated cadets could - bolstered by their successes and the absent eyes of their superiors. The air was tinged with the sweet scent of honeyed meat made all the sweeter by its stolen nature, embellished by Sasha’s wide, self-satisfied grin as she’d pulled it from her jacket even as Connie had caught her in a headlock and roughed her hair in an insincere scolding.

It happened between moments, between breaths, the Colossal titan crashed into violent being, appearing as if speared from the sky; a bloody tear ripped in the soft blue fabric of existence. Lightning crackled in wide golden arcs around it, making the air snap and frizzle with charge.

Now, it smelled like ozone, seared muscle, and the specific scent of ruin that always accompanied untempered destruction.

Eren roared a titan war cry. Instinct snapped into place like the clasps of his ODM gear. He fired his anchors, shooting back up; the change of momentum jolted through his body like a whip crack. He flung himself upwards, back towards the titan. His anchors sunk into the sizzling, exposed meat of its upper arm, and then, for a split, weightless second, the titan’s eyes flicked his. Its gaze was shrewd and wrongly fathomless for a titan. Eren’s breath hitched.

A giant hand reached for him.

Eyes widening, Eren jetted to the right but the pressure of the steam tumbled his flight, throwing him off course. Gritting his teeth, he changed his angle and swept upwards. Raising his blades, he launched his body in an arc around before shooting back down like an arrow towards the Colossal Titan’s nape.

Before them both, the titan’s arm swept across the top of the wall, through the battlements - the cannons - like they were little more than a child playset. Stone and metal flew, more dust clouding into the air and stinging Eren’s eyes. Just before his blades met flesh another blast of steam threw him backward. Eren released a guttural cry of rage.

It was targeting the cannons. That alone confirmed Eren’s theory that the titan at the very least was tactically intelligent.

He braced against the steam, preparing to fire his anchors into the titan again.

But when the steam cleared, the Colossal Titan had vanished. Disappearing just as suddenly as it had appeared, and just like it had in Shiganshina, it had broken through the wall.

And just like Shiganshina, Trost was under siege.

———

They had been doing maintenance on the fixed cannons, now there weren’t any cannons to fix.

The cadets had quickly been herded away from the breach to Trost’s military headquarters where Eren had quickly been stormed by a flurried Armin and Mikasa, who had promptly examined him for injuries but found none except for the singed ends of his hair - hardly distinguishable under the layer of dust clinging to him like a new layer of ghostly skin. The only injuries were those of Thomas and Sasha who had received mild scalding from the Colossal Titan’s steam and Samuel had been speared through the leg when Sasha had used her grapple to keep him from falling to his death.

Under the instruction of the Garrison, all bar Samuel were relegated with the rest of the cadets into teams. The Garrison soldiers made up the brunt of a central vanguard, intended to strike along the main titan breach, where numbers would be thickest. The cadets were acting flank support. Eren had been assigned to squad 34, along with Armin, Thomas, Mina, Nac, and Mylius; the later two cadets he hadn’t interacted with much but they were decent soldiers from what he could recall and had always been friendly enough.

Mikasa was the only one not in a team. Instead, due to her top placement in the Cadet Corps, she’d been placed with the elite soldiers in the rear guard.

Her brows had pinched faintly in the way they always did when she was worried and upset and trying not to let it show.

“Don’t worry, Mikasa. I’ll look after Armin,” Eren said, knocking her shoulder gently with his. “We’ll see you soon.”

“I’ll come back for you both. As soon as I can get away, I’ll come find you,” she said. There was a slight tremble to her tone and she had a white-knuckled grip on the scarf at her throat. It made sense, Mikasa had had too many people taken away from her outside of her power; the more human he became the more Eren thought he could understand.

Armin smiled at her, despite the way his knees shook even when he stood evenly weighted. “We’ll be okay.”

“I promise,” Eren said, sharing a look with Amrin and nodding. “Be safe,” he told her, taking her hand and squeezing it.

After a too-long moment, she’d nodded sharply once and then turned on her heel to join her squad.

However, the Garrison’s plan had been unsuccessful if the influx of titans was anything to go by. They were everywhere - Trost was overrun with giant caricatures of its usually bustling late mornings. There were too many.

The sight of them ignited the parts of himself that he had not even realised he had laid to dormancy. It was bloodlust, waiting and wanting; an anxious excitement that beat like frenzied birds in a cage behind his sternum. Eren itched in the confines of his human skin. So small, weak, fragile in the face of the opposition. He could tear them apart, rend them to scraps, but not like this. Not as he was. The titan within him hooked fingers in his rib cage and roared for release in the drum of his heartbeat. He beat it down.

Things went wrong too quickly.

It was a mistake, a dumb mistake. A name called and a head turned, and then a titan, a small, one of those who Eren was so accustomed to dismissing as non-threats, was lunging, falling. And Eren was crashing, bloodied and short of a leg, onto a nearby roof.

Armin was screaming his name.

Eren groaned, cursing himself for his carelessness.

“Eren, Eren - oh walls, walls, fuck. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. You promised.” Armin was above him, his eyes wide and horrified, his hands were on Eren’s shoulders. “Stay awake, okay? I’ll get help.”

If there was even help to get. The vanguard had been overwhelmed; titans had swarmed them like flies on carrion. Eren had looked away for a second and already half of squad 34 was dead. A rock of misery lodged in his throat. This had been his life for five years and suddenly it was crumbling rapidly and uncontrollably in his hands, turning into the uncatchable sand of Armin’s book.

He could have stopped this. He should have stopped this.

“Armin,” Eren tried to say, but the sounds came out garbled. “-fine. I’m fine. I’ll… heal.”

“No, Eren. No, you won’t,” Armin sobbed, his tears dripping fat and wet onto Eren’s cheek. Eren tried to frown. He would heal though, he always healed. Wasn’t Armin listening?

Eren watched confused as Armin’s eyes grew impossibly wider and he moved backward, away from Eren. Only he wasn’t moving away - there was a giant, gnarled hand wrapped around Armin’s waist, reeling him in, away, towards a giant, toothy mouth.

Eren moved.

Without another thought he pushed himself upwards onto what remained of his knees and pushing off with not quite human strength on one foot, shot himself forward, using his arms to catch himself against the titan’s teeth. Using an arm and his leg, he jammed the titan’s mouth open, catching Armin’s hand before he slipped down the titan’s throat.

“I’ll see you soon,” Eren said, adrenaline pumping his system into clarity. Armin’s shocked face was the last thing he saw before he called all his strength and threw the other out of the titan’s mouth. The momentum of the throw sacrificed his footing and the titan’s jaws shut like a beartrap on his arm. Instantaneously, Eren was swallowed by the dark.

No, he said even as the titan’s tongue roiled beneath him, sending him slipping down its slick, feverish gullet. Anger, bigger, kill-you.

And finally, Eren said yes to the beast lurking within his skin. Static crackled and light flickered, and for the first time in five years, Eren would be a titan again.

He burst from the titan that hard dared try consume him, tearing it in two. And Eren, steaming with blood and titan flesh, looked towards the oncoming hoard and roared.

Finally.

———

Elsewhere in the city, Levi looked up.

———

Trost was under attack.

Levi moved like a bullet through the city, shouting orders and trying to get some walls-damned fucking order into the oafs losing their heads like they were chickenshit instead of soldiers. Too many of them were underprepared, too many of them had picked the brave and daring soldiers' route thinking wrongly that it would be a rare day they encountered anything bigger than their own drink bloated stomachs, and taking their home issues out on cats. It was arrogance, it was ignorance, it was innocence.

Levi gritted his teeth and pushed down his fury. Everyone knew of the titans but few of them had ever had to know them. That was what the scouts were for.

He had made record time to Trost and it quickly became apparent that just like Shiganshina the Colossal Titan had appeared like Levi’s personal waking nightmare, kicking in the city’s gate before vanishing once more - leaving Trost crawling with titans come calling like rats out of a drainpipe. Like flies drawn to shit, it was like they had each been sent a personal invitation, embossed by the king himself - they always seemed to know.

Using the titans as anchor points when the trees thinned, Levi had quickly scaled the wall when it became clear there was no easy way of entering through the now hole that had once been Trost’s main gate. He had left his horse in the tree line, trusting her to remain even though there was no guarantee he would see her again, no guarantee it would be possible to send someone back for her, no guarantee anyone would survive the rest of the day. A squadron of Garrison soldiers had been clucking like agitated pigeons - fat and useless - behind the ruined parapet. Levi overlooked the embarrassing relief that washed all their faces and leadership qualities away at the sight of him in favour of getting the facts. The soldiers outline what little they knew of the evidently failing plan of the squadrons below and the placements of any relevant personnel - as if that mattered to Levi.

After exchanging his gas canisters and refreshing his blades from the Garrison members he asked, “Have we got anything to stem this?” Something had to be done, even if the gate was not sealable longer-term. They needed something to slow the opposition down so Trost could evacuate survivors. That, in itself, would have to be a problem for later.

Finally, a blond man with an uncomfortably sparse-haired mustache spoke up. “We might have something - it's still experimental and if it works it won't last forever but it should slow them down.”

“Do that and do it quickly,” Levi said, running through plans in his head before the hiss of releasing gas, quickly followed by the thuds of multiple anchoring grapples, interrupted him.

“Captain,” Petra greeted, landing light-footed beside him, the rest of his team at her heels. “Section Commander Hange sent us ahead.”

“It’s good you’re here,” Levi said, before getting straight down to business, “Petra, Oluo, I want you to gather a team and focus on evacuation efforts. Erd, Gunther, shadow me. Whatever you do, don’t die. I’ll kick your asses if you do.”

Exchanging one last nod with the Garrison soldier, Levi took a steadying breath and lept off the wall into Trost and the sea of giants below.

———

Eren moved through the streets like he was possessed. The human rationale he’d been cultivating since first seeing Levi in that tree five years ago took the backseat, watching over what was happening like a dispassionate bird while his body acted.

His blood pumped with exhilaration and his body tingled with the anticipation of each kill. Eren’s fingers tore into the flesh of a frumpy, pig-nosed ten-metre - he didn’t bother using his teeth on this one, savouring the act instead by digging into its nape with his hand and ripping. Another crowded him from the right, Eren caught it with one leg, unbalancing it and allowing him to bodyslam it into a building. Red roof tile shattered around them, cascading to the streets below. He roared in its face, spittle flying, but its jeering smile remained unchanged even as he tore out its nape from the front.

He moved rapidly through the streets, cutting down titans with liberating brutality. Eren thought of Shiganshina, of Davy the Garrison soldier. He had long suspected Davy had saved his life that day and lost his own in return. So Eren killed the titans here, now, in retribution. For Davy, for Mina, Thomas, Nac, Mylius, who he should have saved.

Eren slammed a six-metre titan into the ground, grinding his heel into its nape. Another approached, this one bigger with gapped teeth and tiny eyes. Food, hungry, eat-youKill-you, Eren growled back, eyes sharpening.

The titan hadn’t stood a chance. Eren tore out its nape, spitting it to the ground with a rumble of approval.

The wind picked around him and Eren froze, reality slamming into him. Mikasa. Her scent was in the air but he couldn’t see her. She might try to kill him, he knew that. She wouldn’t recognise him like this, he couldn’t expect her to. But where was she? Where was she?

Eren put a hand over his nape, walking forward. The shaggy head of a titan bobbed towards him along a side street up ahead, visible above the two-story rooftops. A big like him.

It wasn’t looking at Eren. It was looking down.

Eren ran, coming to a stop at the intersection. There on the ground, blades drawn and looking between the two titans was Mikasa. Her face was carefully blank but Eren could see the faint quiver in her blades where her hands trembled. There was no blood, her hair was windswept but other than that she was okay. She was okay.

Locking eyes with the other titan, round-cheeked and dark-haired, Eren growled. Mine, he told it.

Kill, hungry, it said.

Moving swiftly but carefully, Eren stepped over Mikasa, his sharp ears picking up her hiccupping gasp, and lunged into the titan. He slammed it into the wall of one of the tall, stacked buildings that lined the street. It grappled with him, keeping its arms to its chest and Eren’s face as it tried to grab at him, not allowing him close enough to kill it.

He screeched angrily into its face, hooking his heel behind its leg and sending it toppling. Eren had to move quickly to pin it down, they were too evenly matched in size and its bulk was making out to be a problem even though Eren was undoubtedly the more powerful of the two. He was restricted by the small size of the alley road - using his full strength would likely only end in trouble.

Finally, straddling it, Eren pinned its head to the ground with one hand and sunk his teeth into the skin of its nape.

He paused over its steaming corpse, ears twitching, before he carefully picked himself up off the body and turned to Mikasa. She hadn’t yet moved from where he had left her, only raised her blades higher as he had moved. She met his gaze and they stood like that for a long, quavering moment. Eren’s human heart felt like it might stop.

“Mikasa!”

Armin dropped out of the sky with a twang of firing anchors.

“Armin,” Mikasa said, her tone warning but full of relief. “I’m out of gas. Where’s Eren?”

Eren hadn’t seen Armin when he’d transformed so it was a relief to see him now, whole and hale. But walls, he had regrets. He should have told them. Armin averted his eyes from Mikasa’s but both she and Eren could hear every word he didn’t want to say.

What was it with everyone he cared about ending up thinking he was dead?

“No,” Mikasa said, her expression dropping to nothingness.

“I’m sorry - it’s my fault, Mikasa. It’s all my fault.”

Mikasa pulled Armin to her tightly with one arm, still keeping one blade held high even as they both grieved. Tears were budding in her eyes even as she refused to look away from Eren, who didn’t dare to move. “I should have been with you,” she said, voice more choked than Eren had ever heard it. “I should never have agreed to leave you both. It’s my fault.”

Eren warbled softly.

That startled Armin, who pulled his face from Mikasa’s shoulder and wiped his eyes with the back of one hand. “I’ll fill you in when this is done. We’ll… we’ll do something proper for him.”

Mikasa nodded, her face reddened and taut.

With that Armin turned to face Eren. “You!” he said, pointing at Eren. “Can you understand me?”

It was the boldest action Eren had ever seen from him and instinctively Eren glanced behind himself to check for soldiers before looking back at Armin with wide eyes. Armin was speaking to him?

Unsure of what else to do, Eren dipped his head in a yes.

Even though Armin had asked the question looked like he hadn’t actually expected Eren to reply. “Um, okay. Right… Are you going to try and eat us?”

Mikasa looked at Armin in shock and Eren wrinkled his nose at the question, then slowly shook his head.

“Armin…?” Mikasa asked, hesitant.

Armin swallowed visibly. “I thought I recognised him from Hannes’s description, the titan killing abnormal. So, I followed him here. And it looks like Hannes was right. Though I didn’t think he would understand us until he made that noise - I… I thought it couldn’t hurt to try.”

“Armin, you’re amazing,” Mikasa said.

Armin’s cheeks pinked and he coughed. “Thanks. Look, you’re not the only one who’s out of gas. I’ll be running low shortly too - I already had to salvage what I’ve got,” that made Armin look a bit green, “but the supply depo’s been overrun. No one can replenish. So, I’m thinking that if we can get this titan to help us, we can use him to retake it. It’s that or we’re dead either way.”

Eren nodded his head when the two looked his way in question.

Armin took a deep breath.

“Okay then, follow me.”

———

“Captain Levi! There’s a titan at the supply depo -” that was Briggs, one of the slightly less useless Garrison officers Levi had encountered up till now.

Levi’s blades whipped through a titan’s eye, blinding it. Re-anchoring on the thing’s shoulder, he went in for the kill. “There are titans everywhere, Briggs. What’s your point?”

“Apparently it’s been killing other titans, sir.”

Gesturing wordlessly for Erd and Gunter to continue, Levi changed his directory, sliding to a stop on the roof tiles next to Briggs.

“Explain.”

———

It was Eren

Levi swore his heart stopped at the sight of him. It shouldn’t be possible. Levi had seen him die and yet Eren, or a titan that looked exactly like him, currently had another titan in a chokehold outside the supply depo, several other titans rapidly approaching.

A few trainees were doing their bests at taking out the rest and Levi quickly joined them, his heartbeat now racing, thrumming through his body like an electric charge.

The titan moved like Eren, it shared his mannerisms and fought like him.

Levi sliced through the napes of a balding ten-metre, pushing off its corpse to get closer. Fuck it all. He tried to push down the hope starting to bubble up in his chest.

“EREN,” Levi yelled.

Eren’s ears twitched rapidly and after dispatching the twelve-metre he’d been fighting he turned, letting out a warbling burble that Levi recognised as his name as Eren searched for him, head twisting.

Oh. Oh.

Levi landed on the roof next to Eren, nearly skidding off the tiles.

“You stupid fucking titan,” he said stepping forward as soon as his grappling lines were reeled in. He suddenly pissed off beyond measure, but so terribly happy, relieved, disbelieving. “You -”

Suddenly there was a trainee in his face. Make that two trainees.

“Wait! Captain, you can’t kill him!” That was the blond, soft-faced one. “Please, sir. He’s helping us - he’s killing titans,” the boy pleaded.

The girl shadowing him did not look so pleading, one of her blades was out and lifted ever-so-slightly. Levi recognised the threat for what it was.

“Put your fucking blade down, brat,” he said to the girl, not about to be intimidated into submission for something he hadn’t even been planning to do. “I’m not gonna kill him. I’m gonna give him a piece of -”

The boy’s jaw dropped in horror and the girl’s eyes went wide like moons as a hand scooped Levi up, not quite grabbing him. Levi had heard the idiot approaching but he still hadn’t quite expected that. Nevertheless, he allowed Eren to man-handle him, relaxing his body through the sheer force of experience, because it was Eren and that was what Eren did. He then righted himself in Eren’s palm, turning to look right into his giant blue-green eyes.

“Five fucking years,” Levi said. “Five. Fucking. Years. I thought you were dead. I could kill you for that, you know.”

Sorry, sorry, sorry, Eren chittered through his teeth staring imploringly at Levi. Miss Levi, sorry, not-dead. Lost. Levi, Levi.

Levi’s titan was a bit rough, but he quickly puzzled through the old familiar vibrations. Levi put his hand on Eren’s sharp nose, the heat of it familiar, and said, “I’m happy you’re alive.”

Yes, alive. Alive. There was a happy note to the sounds and a crinkly to Eren’s eyes that suggested he was smiling.

“How are you alive, Eren? I saw you die…”

His noises pitched rapidly for a few seconds with half aborted words. Finally, Eren rumbled human, Levi-human, Eren-human. Understand?

No, Levi didn’t understand. He recognised the individual sets of Eren’s vibrations and noises that formed his words. Human, Levi-human. That Levi could understand. But what did Eren mean, Eren-human?

Levi frowned.

“Captain Levi, sir… Are you talking to the titan?” the boy asked.

Levi looked back at the roof where the two were still watching. “Yes, I spent nearly three months with him - I picked up some things.” He looked back at Eren and then past him to a set of oncoming titans. It seemed their grace period was up. “We’re coming back to this conversation later,” he warned and Eren hummed. His comprehension had gotten better. “You’d better not die on me again.”

“Wait, sir…” the girl said, “did you call him Eren?”

Levi cocked an eyebrow, she looked tense. “That’s his name, or at least it’s what I’ve always called him.”

When he glanced back, Eren was looking at the girl. He keened softly.

There was definitely something going on here, Levi decided. But right now, none of them had the time.

“Cadets, you’re now with me. I’ll lead and Eren, you’ll follow me and pick off the leftovers. What are your names?”

“Armin Arlert and Mikasa Ackerman, sir,” the boy, Arlert, answered. Ackerman, Levi had heard of her. Top of her class.

“Right, you two will backup Eren. Are we clear?”

The cadets saluted. “Yessir!”

Chapter Text

The Garrison’s engineers had come through at last; a reinforced steel net speared through with harpoon heads had been lowered over the breach. Levi was under no illusions - it was as the Garrison soldier had said, the net acted as a temporary measure at best: the titans attempting to enter Trost speared themselves on the net, in turn blocking other titans with their own body masses, but there was only so long the net would hold up under the onslaught of the pileup and still live titan bodies, weighted and writhing as they were. But in the meantime, the titans were stalled and Trost was given a breath of opportunity.

The weight of that fragile slip of time was heavy on Levi’s shoulders but time had always been a luxury that he was so rarely given he wouldn’t have survived any other way if he wasn’t long used to functioning without it. At least the number of titans in the city began to stagnate, though doubtedly dwindle if the way the Garrison was waddling around like lost ducklings with sticks up their arses was anything to go by. Levi’s squad should have regrouped at the evacuation centres and begun instruction on dealing with any titan numbers that had reached that far into the city.

As it had been in Shiganshina, the city was flooded with titans as if they had been called to gather like soldiers to arms, ready to invade the walls under the behest of the Colossal titan - somehow the ugliest general to grace the Walls to date. It was unnatural; Levi knew titans clustered around the walls - lured by the human populace kept within - but they didn’t all gather at the walls, as evidenced by Levi’s experiences, and they didn’t commonly travel in packs (though the trio of abnormals from Levi’s time with Eren did come to mind).

They’d known it but they’d never really known it; other titans didn’t appear to share Eren’s intelligence, but nonetheless, it seemed that the Colossal and Armoured titans’ were able to communicate with them - if not control them. Levi tucked the thought away for a later time when he could pass it off to Hange, providing they hadn’t already long since come to the same conclusion.

For the time being, Levi was babysitting the rest of the cadets from the liberated supply depot. They were regrouping on the flat of a three-story roof after having cleared the immediate area of titans under Levi’s guidance (more than one cadet had been so relieved at the sight of him that they had burst into tears). The only titan currently insight was Eren who was only visible from the head up where he now peered big-eyed and unblinking at the cadets like a child at a toy store window.

Levi tsked at him under his breath which caused Eren’s sensitive ears to twitch and he huffed a hot breath at Levi in reply.

The cadets, apart from Arlert and Ackerman, shifted uncomfortably amongst themselves, their eyes flicking between Eren and Levi, who had turned his back on the titan to observe them. He resisted the urge to cross his arms, instead keeping his hands on his blade handles, as he scanned their faces.

They had already seen Eren in action and some of the cadets now looked more intrigued than nervous but they maintained a healthy wariness in the situation. They were still on the cusp of soldierdom but their skills fresh and sharp when under good direction, though they were unbalanced by inexperience and a lack of confidence. Yet equally, Levi thought, his mind turning over most of his and Eren’s encounters with foreign soldiers, they were not so emboldened by arrogance and habit that they were bold enough to act without orders or question Levi’s judgement - except for one that was.

“There is no way you got recruited by Humanity’s Strongest and then also just coincidentally found the most abnormal of abnormal titans that eats titans instead of humans? And what, you just expect me to believe Captain-fucking-Levi just also has said titan trained and saddled up like some Walls-damned horse!? Where’s Jaeger? No doubt that dick put something in my food and this is really just one big fucked up nightmare.”

The cadet who had spoken was looking at Arlet and Ackerman; Ackerman’s fists were balled and her jaw ground visibly, Arlert, unnaturally in tune with her, placed a tight hand on her shoulder before she could grab the cadet like she obviously wanted to. Arlert’s face was curatedly blank - evidently, the cadet had struck a nerve.

Captain-fucking-Levi was beginning to feel an itch in his own fingers that might just be sated by knocking the cadet onto his Walls-damned arse. Levi withheld a scoff and bit back the sharp words brewing on his tongue; the cadet needed reprimand for irresponsible conduct and disrespect, yes, but now was the wrong time to let his own emotions get the better of him. His scowl did not go unnoticed by some of the more perceptive cadets.

Before he could step in, Eren huffed pointedly at his back, his breath riffling the back of Levi’s hair. Horse Eren murmured, in a vibrationally low tone Levi could only interpret as petulant. It was enough to break Levi from his Captaining, and he turned to give the titan a bemused side-eye.

It took him a moment to flip the titan word around in his head. Levi remembered tracing shapes in the dirt with a stick, repeating explanatory words and having words repeated back at him as he pointed to stick-figured people and warped, round-bellied, short-necked horses - because it was so much harder to remember proportions when he was concussed and a terrible artist anyway despite how much time he spent around the creatures.

“Because he called you a horse?” Levi asked, unable to keep all the disbelief from his tone.

Eren flicked an ear in what Levi took for a no and raised a cautious hand to rub one deliberate finger down his cheek. The motion immediately recaught the attention of the rest of the cadets who shared indecipherable looks and shuffled their feet like skittish sheep.

“Seriously?” Levi asked.

Eren stared at him unblinking again. What a little shit.

“What… what did he say, sir?” Ackerman asked after a tense second.

“He thinks this one,” Levi said, reading between the titan lines of Eren’s gesture, and gesturing with a thumb at the mouthy cadet, “has a face like a horse.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” the cadet said, scrubbing both hands down his face, his voice pitching with hysteria, “the titan talks! Now you’re going to tell me you turned Jaeger into a titan and he somehow found a way to be a bigger, bullheaded asshole than he already is.”

For some reason, Arlert and Ackerman both turned sad eyes on Levi. Ah, so “Jaeger” was probably dead, that would explain some things.

“Shut up, Jean!” one of the cadets - the one with the buzzcut - hissed in Levi’s periphery followed by a soft thud and grunt of pain from Jean from what Levi suspected was an elbow to his stomach.

“Not cool, man,” a large blond said.

“Enough,” Levi snapped, “you’re supposed to be soldiers. Are you telling me that this is the best the Cadet Corps can produce? If you’re going to act like children throwing shit I’ll throw you to the titans myself,” Levi said, and, with a pointed stare at Jean, “Your name, cadet?”

The cadet’s face had blanched, as if only just realising what a verbal shithole he had just dug himself. “Uhm, Kirstein. Jean Kirstein, Captain Levi - sir.”

“Hmm,” Levi said. He was another one of the top ten. “I don’t think I have to tell you to shut your mouth, Kirstein, before someone does it for you.”

“No, sir. I mean -! Yes, sir!”

“Good,” Levi said. “Now, if the rest of you brats brave enough, we are going to head towards the evacuation centres with much resupply equipment as you each can carry - because if this supply depo has been shut off then it’s likely the other is running low or cut off as well. Your other focus, for those up to the task, is to keep soldiers off this lug’s back,” Levi said with a gesture at Eren, “he’s our greatest weapon and if he dies I’ll be holding you all personally accountable.”

Kirstein flinched, as Levi levelled a last stare at him.

“Yes, Captain Levi,” Arlert said, with a salute to his heart, prompting the rest of the cadets to hurriedly follow suit.

As usual, however, just when things looked to be going in their favour, everything went to crap.

Levi really should be more used to it.

———

No matter what he said or what threats he levelled, Levi refused to have anyone die on him.

“Get out! Go!” He said, hooking the long-haired brunette cadet by her waist and skimming the giant knuckles of the hand that had been reaching for her. “There are too many for you to handle. Get out. That is an order.”

The cadet gave him a wide-eyed, shaky nod from where she had slipped to her knees on the roof when he had let go of her.

“Get up, go! Tell the others, send for help,” Levi pulled the flare gun from his belt and pushed it into her hands before spinning around and shooting his grapples into the fleshy shoulder titan that had been reaching for the girl, as its head swung slow, and cumbersome to look back in their direction with too big, too blue eyes.

He looked back to see the girl had joined another female cadet, the sharp-faced blonde. He couldn’t delude himself that they would be alright - no scout was ever truly alright - but they might just make it out today.

No one had predicted the sudden wave of titans that had appeared like the starved rats in the underground scenting blood.

Eren’s ears had pricked, his head immediately swinging in Levi’s direction, as he rumbled a confused, disconcerted noise. The hair on Levi’s nape prickled. That was the earliest sign that something was going wrong. Even so, the minutes eked by, long and choired only by the twang of the cadets’ grapple lines and the thud of Eren’s footsteps as they made their way through Trost.

And then finally, Eren came to a sharp, complete stop - seconds before the first heads revealed themselves over the roofline, which was quickly heralded by the first runner, an abnormal eight-metre titan that had rounded the next street corner and all but launched itself at the lowest available target: Eren’s knee.

After that, the flow hadn’t stopped and too soon it became apparent that they were being swarmed. It was like every titan left within Trost had come, like they’d been called to Levi and his merry band of cadets - not exactly an all-you-can-eat buffet. Levi didn’t have the time to think about it, to acknowledge how wrong it was - titans didn’t swarm, not lest it was towards a great number of people - because every time he cut one down, there was always another to take its place.

“Get out of here!” Levi yelled to any cadets listening as he lanced himself between two titans, “get as far away from here as you can!”

“Marco! I can’t - has anyone seen Marco?”

The titans collapsed in an exhaust of hot steam. A bead of sweat wended down Levi’s brow. Kirstein was moving between buildings, his head swinging to and fro as he searched.

“Kirstein! Get out of here!” Levi said, unable to keep the bite from his tone. “Do you want to die?”

Levi couldn’t hear his reply over the hiss of gas. Steam continued to muddy the air from the titan corpses, clouding his view for seconds that stretched like an age. Levi threw himself upwards to escape the smog, clearing it and letting his body freefall so that the only sounds were that of the wind rushing past and the yelling down below -

A titan had caught Kirstein by his wire.

All of a sudden there was a bellow, loud and furious, and then Eren was barrelling at the titan, catching it around the bloated waist in a tackle that sent it to the ground and causing Kirstein’s wire to slip from its grip.

Levi caught the release switch on his blades, letting them fall to the streets below with a barely audible clatter, and angled himself towards the cadet. He shot out a high line into a nearby chimney, still using the momentum of his fall to swing low and catch Kirstein around the waist with an arm, the force of it knocking the breath from Levi’s lungs and causing the cadet’s ODM gear to thud painfully into the meat of his thigh. The only thing that kept them together was the upwards force of Levi’s swing. He gritted his teeth, releasing his grappling anchor at the last possible moment to send them sprawling onto the rooftop.

Inhaling deeply, once, twice, and after completing his mental check and confirming nothing was broken, Levi pushed himself up, shaking the unsteadiness from his limbs with each controlled breath. Levi paused to spit blood from his mouth, pushing down the wave of disgust at the sight; it would be a long while before he was properly able to flush the immutable metallic tang from his tongue.

“Sir-!” Another cadet - Braun - had landed on the roof and was hauling Kirstein to his feet.

“I’m fine,” if that’s what you wanted to call it. Levi had never been able to find it within himself to regret leaving the underground, no matter how he wanted to, no matter the rainbow-coloured shit the walled city above had dished him. But sometimes there were days - few and far between though they were - where he felt just a little closer to it. “Get him out of here and for fuck’s sake…” Levi dragged a hand through his hair, lamenting the sweat that clung to it. “Quit trying to be titan shit. No one’s got time to clean that crap.”

Levi didn’t stay for any more gibbering. After checking his gear for any sign of malfunction and refreshing his blades he propelled himself back into the air.

Back on the street below, the titans had compounded on Eren. Ackerman was already there, dodging grabby fingers and teeth. Levi joined her, not bothering to call her off.

Eren roared, striking out with his fists, but it was clear he was losing. The titans, varying in shape and size, were beginning to dogpile him. Steam blurred his figure as his body tried to heal injuries opening too fast for it to keep up - Eren was being eaten alive.

It was at this moment that help finally arrived, called by the flare Levi had passed off. The distinct sound of ODM gear hissed through the air as Garrison soldiers descended. Levi moved, flipping through the air and jetting his gas towards Eren, not about to let everything that had happened in Shiganshina be repeated here.

“Don’t kill that titan!”

Eren slapped a hand to his nape, but it was enough of a distraction to let one of the two titans he had been fighting to get an upper hand and its teeth tore into his shoulder. The other one hooked grabby hands onto his bicep, open-mouthed and pulling. He screeched.

“You idiots,” Levi hissed, intercepting a soldier moving for Eren - the weakest link. He might have been moving on the other titans, but Garrison soldiers had a bad track record in Levi’s eyes, so he wasn’t about to take that chance.

“Eren!” Ackerman yelled, striking down one of the titans.

Eren steamed, big gusts of it clouded the air, his hand dropped from his nape - his other hand was missing to the elbow.

“Eren, if you’re in there… let me help you. Please let me help you. You’ll die. Let me get you out…” Ackerman said, stopping on a roof as close as possible to Eren.

Eren gurgled at Ackerman, more steam leaking from his jaws.

“Please…”

Slowly, Eren nodded. He raised his hand again, running the side of it along his neck in a cutting motion.

“You’re sure?”

He nodded again.

And then Levi was helpless to do anything but watch as Ackerman squared her shoulders and, firing her ODM gear so that she landed between Eren’s shoulders - his posture bent to accommodate her - she raised her blades and plunged them through Eren’s exposed nape.

“NO-!”

Levi moved as Mikasa fell to her knees on Eren’s back, reaching into the hole she had just made, and wrenching.

“Eren, Eren,” she said, heaving backwards. Her arms were hooked around the chest of another person. Another person she had just pulled from the neck of a titan. From Eren.

Levi jarred to a stop beside her just as the person groaned, opening blue-green eyes that blinked twice before focusing on Levi.

Voice rough as if from misuse or perhaps scalding from the heat surging from the titan corpse below them, Eren said, “Levi.”

———

“I won’t let you kill him.”

“This isn’t your jurisdiction, Captain.”

“I think it fucking is.”

Levi stood between a firing squad, led by one Kitz Weilman, captain of the Garrison’s first division elite forces, and a boy. A human boy who was a titan, who was also a human and just happened to be named Eren.

Eren whose face was unfamiliar and yet so painfully not. His hair was long and dark, slipping loose from its tie at the back of his head to frame his face just so, which was beginning to sharpen with that final edge of maturity. His eyes were the same, too blue to be green but too green to be blue - the only difference was their size. And yet they were still too fucking big for anyone normal, Levi thought irritably, fighting the urge to look back at his charge as Eren’s gaze burned holes in the skin between Levi’s shoulder blades.

He had also been dressed in a cadet’s uniform - albeit a rather tattered one missing a worrying amount of sleeve and a shoe - because he was, apparently, a cadet.

Levi-human, Eren-human . Ah. So that's what that had meant.

Leasing a too-controlled breath for anyone besides Erwin to consider it an aggrieved sigh, Levi surveyed the firing squad before them and stated, “He’s under my protection.”

This was a mess. Levi hadn’t had time to react before the Garrison soldiers had raised the alarm about the titan-shifter and were on them like flies on shit. And now they were here. Surrounded by idiots and Levi was pissed off and confused, and frankly, that was pissing him off more.

“It’s a titan,” Weilman spat, his slug of a mustache quivering. And this is why Levi hated the Garrison. Weilman’s words echoed that of Pickley’s from five years ago.

“Maybe so,” Levi said. “But that titan could be the key to saving humanity. You would take that away?”

“You scouts,” Weilman shot at him venomously. “Always harping on to further your agenda -”

“What will you do when the Colossal Titan returns?”

Eren shifted on his feet behind Levi.

It happened as if in slow motion. Levi’s eyes flicked to a jumpy looking soldier behind Weilman, manning one of the many cannons pointing at Eren, himself, and the brats that had refused to leave Eren’s side. The soldier flinched as Eren moved and suddenly a cannonball was rocketing towards them.

“No!” Eren cried.

Levi was swept backwards, a hair-trigger second before his fingers could pull the triggers on his ODM gear. Steam and hot flesh surrounded him where Eren’s arm had tucked Levi and the two cadets under his chin, shielded by the bulk of his body.

“Stop! Please!” Arlet yelled, scrambling out from between Eren’s titanic limbs with his hands up non-threateningly. “Don’t fire!”

Levi followed, with a gesture to Ackerman to be at the ready.

“Get out of the way! That is an order!”

Arlert shook his head a touch too frantically. “I can’t do that, sir. Can’t you see he’s on humanity’s side? Please. I’m begging you, listen to me. He can seal the breach, humanity can use him. But not if you kill him first!”

“Don’t move, Eren,” Levi said lowly, Eren watched him out of the corner of one big eye, behind a fringe of dark hair. His arm still covered the lower part of his face where he’d thrown it to curl around and shelter them. A lazy curl of steam drifted from the gap.

“I believe the cadet has a point, Weilman. You’re not intending to take out Humanity’s Hope and Humanity’s Strongest Soldier all in one go, are you? Stand down, soldiers.”

“Pixis,” Levi greeted the newcomer, placing a hand on Arlert’s tense shoulder as he stepped forward. Arlert turned a wide-eyed stare his way

“It’ll be okay,” Levi said, for lack of anything better. It would be okay because there was no way he was going to let things be any other way. Levi nodded to Ackerman who took Arlert by the crook of his elbow and hustled them both protectively a few steps back towards Eren.

Pixis weaved through the Garrison soldiers and cannons on the roofs above them, coming to a stop beside Weilman.

Levi stayed in place, unwavering, before the three.

“Levi,” Pixis returned smoothly. “I must say, while I’ve never pictured a situation such as this… you’re the last one I would expect to find defending a titan.”

“These are extenuating circumstances.”

“So it seems,” Pixis said, his weathered face thoughtful. “I think you’ll forgive me for pointing out the titan in the room, however. While I acknowledge perhaps reactions were hasty,” Pixis looked pointedly at the soldier who had fired the cannon. “And I assure you, such actions will be dealt with accordingly, they are not necessarily unjust. However, whether this titan is a titan or a human at heart, it listens to you, doesn’t it? Or else it would have eaten if not you, then us.”

“He does.”

“Then you can command… him?”

“Yes.”

“Then I think it is fair of me to ask you to prove it and if you can do so, I will order my men to stand down.”

Levi nodded, conceding. “That can be arranged. But know that if your soldiers fire without reason again, it will not be the titan you have to worry about.”

“Of course,” Pixis said with a smile.

Levi turned back to Eren just as the cannonball popped out of his steaming flank, falling to the cobbles with a jarring clatter. Arlert flinched but Ackerman’s steady gaze never left Levi.

“If anything goes wrong I want you two to get out of here,” Levi said quietly, as he turned to them, facing away from the Garrison. “Find Erwin and tell him everything. I trust Eren, it’s the rest of these idiots I’m worried about.”

He did trust Eren. Despite whatever weird shit it was that they were caught up in now, Levi trusted him. Had never stopped. It had been hard-won, but Levi wouldn’t be standing there if not for the titan. Human… boy.

Ackerman nodded, taking Arlert’s shoulder and drawing him back a few steps.

“You hear that, didn’t you, brat? We have to put on a show. Think you can do that?”

Eren’s ears twitched.

“Okay, can you sit up for me?”

Slowly, Eren moved, turning his head to look at Levi and Garrison cautiously, before pushing himself upwards into a sitting position and crossing his legs.

“Can you bring me to your shoulder?”

Eren placed the back of his right-hand flat on the ground, palm up. Levi stepped into it, bracing his knees as Eren, slow and controlled, lifted his hand to his shoulder. Levi stepped out, fisting a hand in a lock of Eren’s hair.

“Stand please.”

When Eren stood and Levi was looking down at the Garrison soldiers lining the roofs instead of the other way around, he asked, “Is that proof enough or do I need to teach him to waltz while we’re here?”

Pixis seemed bizarrely pleased with the outcome, the lines around his eyes crinkling like a not-quite grin. “That’s plenty, Captain. Thank you. Stand down, men. I trust that Captain Levi can control this titan and for now that is all you all need to know.”

The Garrison soldiers still looked uncertain, but given no other choice they backed off. Lowering guns and stepping away from the cannons.

Pixis stepped closer to the edge of the tiled roof he stood on, leaning over to spot Arlert and Ackerman.

“Now, cadet, tell me again what was it you were saying about using the titan to seal the wall?”

———

With Pixis’s oversight, they planned to put Arlert’s plan into immediate effect.

“Pixis, a word?” Levi said, with a gesture for the two cadets to stay and a warning stare at their resident titan.

“Of course,” Pixis said jovially (too jovially for the current situation in Levi’s opinion), inclining his head and waving off the officers at his side.

“I would like to request for one of your officers to locate my team. I believe they will be best suited to guard Eren under my lead.”

“Ah yes, the Levi Squad. They’ve been instrumental in our successes today, I believe many lives have been spared because of them. You have an excellent team, Captain. I’ll send someone for them right away.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Levi said, in a rare bout of formality.

“If I may ask, Captain,” Pixis said, pausing to watch for his reaction, “I won’t do you the disservice of prevaricating, I am but an old man after all and time is short; my officers talk, you understand, and after your formal return after Shiganshina’s fall and Commander Smith’s briefings, it is not so hard to pin a picture together. This is the titan that rescued you from beyond the walls, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Hmm, I don’t think I fully believed it until now. And until today, you were unaware that he was also… human?”

Levi raised an eyebrow. “That is correct. And I believe it worth noting, that until Shiganshina, Eren himself was also likely unaware - that is, if you’re implying what I think you are.”

Levi did not, in fact, know that for sure. But he had never shied away from lying to authority before and didn’t plan to start now. But Pixis’s meaning was obvious, and Levi knew with absolute certainty that Eren played no role in whatever greater shitty game was being played above their heads.

“Ah,” Pixis smiled knowingly, making ravines with his wrinkles, “I do not mean to offend. But I am glad to note we are on the same page. Where there is one intelligent titan, who just so happens to be able to at least appear human, then one must wonder if there are more.”

Levi nodded, conceding the point. “I was not aware of Eren’s ability to become human but his intelligence and ability to learn have been apparent since the beginning. It was no stretch back then to believe that the Colossal and Armoured titans’ are intelligent titans with bigger goals than just human consumption. And now…”

Pixis hummed thoughtfully. “Today has been quite full of unprecedented revelations. I will agree with you and your cadet, Captain Levi, in a hundred years there has been no such breakthrough as this. But it does beg the question, what human - even one who is part titan - would desire our deaths so vehemently that they would go through all the trouble of breaking in our doors.”

Levi’s thoughts flicked to that titan, the one that had set him on this path - even though a part of him knew he had been heading here a long time before. He remembered its hooked nose, the glint of its amber eyes, and the oily sheen of black in the rain as it had flicked its head impetuously and tossed aside what remained of Farlan’s body with a mordant slop of blood. It made him think of Kenny.

“You should know the nature of men,” he said, after a too-long moment.

Pixis raised a brow but Levi remained impassive; his origin was no secret amongst the brass and Pixis had been a member of the Garrison for too long - it had never had to be stated that people came with their own kinds of hell.

In answer, Pixis segued, “You are aware that soon this will be beyond your hands? Premier Zackly will be informed and your titan will go to trial.”

“I am.”

“Good. In that case, I wish you both the best of luck,” Pixis said, with an incline of his head and a faint, indecipherable smile.

The nature of men indeed.

———

“My team is being fetched, we will be the ones to guard you. It’s no secret that other titans, given the chance, want to eat you nearly as much as they want to eat us, so my team will handle any threats. That, and, the Armoured titan is still unaccounted for and we need to be prepared if it decides to show up,” Levi said when he rejoined Eren and the cadets. “Pixis is handling the Garrison and gathering any soldiers willing to join your plan, Arlert.” Levi had to admit, it was a good plan. Arlert had proposed they use Trost’s monolith, a large, scenic boulder in upper Trost, that had been there for since before memory, to block the wall. A lift impossible for anything other than the giant they had at hand.

Arlert had potential. Erwin would agree. He would probably even get that slight crook to his mouth when scheming and things were falling into place. Arlert taken under Erwin’s wing would make for a terrifying pair.

“We don’t have time,” Levi continued, “not right now, but as soon as this is over I will be talking to all of you. Obviously, there is a lot to discuss about what’s been happening in the last five years.”

Arlert looked a breeze away from tears and Ackerman, as stoic a façade as she so diligently maintained, didn’t look much better, both their eyes often straying to Eren’s figure, sitting cross-legged with his hands neatly folded in his lap like a schoolchild; though Levi could tell by the taught set of his shoulders he was still all too aware of the precarious position they had been landed in. And what a load of horseshit it was.

Eren’s ears twitched and his eyes were just a touch too big when Levi tilted his head to look pointedly into the titan’s eyes; he looked sheepish, guilty - like he wanted to hide behind his long hair no matter the fact hiding was impossible, big as he was. He showed no sign of returning to human and Levi didn’t want to force him out in the way Ackerman had already so helpfully demonstrated, not this time - not while he didn’t know fully how Eren’s titan to human ability worked, lest he risk injuring him (though Levi found himself doubtful it’d keep) or if there were only so many transformations Eren could handle. That, and, somehow the thought of cutting into Eren, splitting his nape in the killing maneuver… Never before had the thought of killing a titan been a problem, it shouldn’t be a problem - especially knowing Eren wouldn’t apparently die from it - but Levi’s mind was in Shiganshina again, as it had been since the wall, the mighty, indomitable wall, had once again been cracked open.

Even so, it was evident Eren didn’t want to face any of them - Levi included - as a human yet. The rush between Ackerman pulling his human form from the neck of his titan to being dragged before the force of the Garrison had left little time for discussion or explanation. And by the walls did Levi want a fucking explanation.

“This would be much easier,” Levi said gratuitously, “if you could talk.”

Eren burbled the strange, rolling breathy sound they had once-upon-a-time made for sorry because unsurprisingly it had never made it onto the official Titan vocab sheet.

“Sir,” Ackerman said, stepping forward. “I would like to request to join your team in escorting Eren while he blocks the wall.”

Levi had had a funny feeling that would be the case. The set of her brow was determined and the look in her dark eyes was decidedly stubborn - a touch too stubborn. Likely she would be joining regardless of his answer. She had the potential to be both a great and terrible soldier. “You’re good, Ackerman, I’ll give you that. Don’t fuck it up completely for this lug - you’re not alone looking out for him.”

Eren made a soft indigent grumble.

“Is that a yes, Captain?” Ackerman asked, her face unchanged.

Levi snorted softly. “Fine. But who’s watching Arlert?”

“Captain Levi sir, if I may -”

Levi could already tell where that was going. Fucking shitting damn fuck. “If you must, Arlert. But if either of you die I’ll exhume both your corpses just to throw you to the titans again.”

“Captain Levi!”

Levi turned as his team landed in the courtyard. Petra spearheaded them and it was credence to their professionalism that they only spared Eren a cursory wary glance. Levi stepped forward to greet them, introducing them to the cadets and -

“This is Eren, the titan from five years ago.”

Aluo coughed.

“Sir,” Gunter said uncertainly, “we were under the impression that that titan had died?”

“So was I. I will fill you in as we go. For now, we have to keep this titan alive and block the Wall.”

“Yes, Captain,” Petra said, with a sharp salute, hand over her heart. “We won’t let you down.”

“You ready, Eren?” Levi asked, turning to him.

Yes, the titan murmured, still in sitting position.

“Ohhhh,” Aluo started, his tone edging disbelief, “Hange is going to have a field day when they see this.”