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Hanji is rotating a pig's jaw in one hand and a scalpel in the other when Petra first meets them. "Hey! Could you hold this for a moment," they say. They drop the scalpel.
Petra, already reaching out for a handshake or salute, bends toward the falling metallic glint instead. The same precision that gets her sword through titans' necks nabs her the scalpel without a scratch. "Petra Ral reporting—" she falters. Hanji has a face like quicksilver: it shifts from startled to pleased to evaluative in a moment, and absorbs anything you show it. "At your service." Technically, she isn't reporting to anyone. She's just been hearing the banging and crackling from their lab for a week, and sleep has begun to give up on her. "I wanted to speak to you about your experiments, if you have time."
"Oh, excellent." Hanji holds up the jaw, a pyramidal wedge of bloody flesh and bone and neatly positioned and number-tagged needles. "You've fought titans, haven't you? Of course, I've heard your kill record has surpassed mine! You know how non-aberrant titans will eat you, they're not only interested in killing humans? I wondered what would happen if we took that ability away from them, unhinged the lower jaw or cut them through the larynx or trachea, so they couldn't swallow us. If you look closely at 2, here..."
Petra pays as much attention to Hanji themselves as their whirlwind lessons in comparative anatomy. They're intensely expressive, their hair escaping its bun as they gesture, their fingers opening and closing and folding at the knuckles like they're pressing on the control box of the 3DMG, and Petra has always prided herself on her judgment of people—Hanji isn't just avoiding a conversation about the lab's schedule, she's sure. They mean every enthusiastic word they say about titans, and when they say they would love to have Petra come by again, they mean that too.
She's eager to prove them right.
*
She and Hanji don't share much. Petra's used to being underestimated; Hanji opens their mouth and it's impossible not to have a strong opinion about them, good or bad. Petra was a daughter whose parents cheered her on, no matter what she tried, and instilled in her a sense of tact and courtesy. Hanji was a child whose parents fueled their initial fury, which they honed to slaughter-rage outside the Walls; they took the lives of almost as many humans as titans before they, as they put it, figured out what worked. "We all have something to balance," they say, and she hasn't a debt anywhere near Hanji's, but there's a viciousness to their voice that makes it easy for her to believe them. The two of them share this: no one can judge them as keenly as they judge themselves.
*
"Come right in," Petra says to the knock. The half-dozenth or so knock. Disaster could strike at any moment, witching hour (the least active hour for titans) or not, but she has a blanket around her that is approaching warm (albeit not exactly there yet) and she was woken by a gentle drumming of the knuckles on her door. The knock she was trained to shock awake and swing out at would leave bruises in the herald's palm—this isn't it.
"Hello," says Hanji Zoë, and topples onto Petra's floor like a tossed mannequin.
Usually people crumple inwards a limb at a time. The older members of the Survey Corps have, however, told Petra that Hanji tends toward single-minded devotion. Even in falling they give their task their all. Petra's arms instinctively propel her out of the bed, but Hanji has already converted all of their own potential energy to slamming into the ground. "Are you all right," Petra asks, also looking herself. There's a splinter under one of Hanji's nails when Petra lifts their hand, and some of the thickest calluses Petra has ever seen under the folded thumb.
Hanji raises one eyelid. Inside their glasses their lashes clump together, wet from melted frost. "If you're trying to tell whether I'm about to puke, you'd be better off checking a little higher."
If Hanji can wriggle their shoulders like that, they're not a danger to themselves. Petra lets go of Hanji's stained fingers, clandestinely runs her own under her nose to confirm the coloration is more likely from liquor than violence, plucks the splinter without even a grimace from her patient, and switches routines. Off comes the comradely concern, on goes the friendly interrogation. "Any reason you chose my room to refresh yourself in, then?"
"No."
"You can't be so drunk you've turned inarticulate," Petra says, and Hanji laughs.
"If I were to come to you after each expedition, and you continued to talk to me... that would be strong evidence that you like seeing me inarticulate, I think," Hanji says, syllables crisp, "and if that's the case, I have five strong pieces of evidence. Supplies are expensive for this experiment—" Hanji can say 'expensive' like no one else can. Their debt, Petra remembers, suddenly wanting a drink too. "—I am forced to accept a small sample size."
Petra thinks they wanted something more than a conversation tonight, but their body seems to have spent all its resources. They finish their sentence, give Petra one of the glitteringly sardonic smiles they use to soften or harden a sentence depending on the circumstance, and black out.
"What would you do without me?" Petra says, fondly, as she nudges Hanji into a forward curl with her toe, the better for picking them up, and conscientiously tucks them into the still slightly-warmer-than-room-temperature corner of the bed Petra vacated upon Hanji's entrance.
And what would I do without you? Never say Petra's loyalty to her CO wavers—but if something were to happen to him, she would gladly serve under Hanji. Who is she kidding? She'd follow Hanji anywhere, or take them at her side or at her back, or under her in the sheets; go with them, if need be, to the mouth of hell.