Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Two garrison soldiers picked their way through the ruins of Trost district.

"I've never seen anything like it," one whispered as they scanned the myriad mix of titan and human bodies below them. "I mean, I was told they were fearless, but... shit... it was like they weren't even concerned they were going to die. That green eyed kid even tried to choke that titan on his way down. Didn't even try to get out, heard him screaming that he was at least going to take the titan down with him."

They both shuddered. "What are they teaching kids in basic these days?"

"Walls know." the first man replied. "Wouldn't want to have been that freckled kid though. That was gruesome. He said something right before that aberrant landed on him right?"

"Yeah. Not again."

"Not Again?"

"Yeah, doesn't make sense to me either."

The two of them landed on a rooftop and made their way to the body of a cadet splayed out flat on the roof, cracked tiles encircling him. One of the garrison men gave it a poke with his boot, the boy let out a groan.

"Sweet Sina!" the man gasped, "He's still alive?"

"Figures," Jean groaned, pushing himself up. "What happened? Last thing I remember was being grabbed by this fifteen meter and swallowed."

"It just spat you right out," the garrison man answered. "Flew over two blocks. It's amazing you're still alive."

"Figures. It just figures," Jean muttered, reaching into jacket and removing a battered hip flask. A battered hip flask suspiciously similar to the one Commander Pixis wore, and which had recently gone missing. Jean unscrewed the cap and took a swig. "What about my squad, any of the other cadets make it?"

The two men shared a glance. "No," one of them answered at last. "You're the only one we've found alive."

"Fuck!" Jean swore, taking another long swallow. "Those assholes left me to clean everything up by myself again!"

"Wha...?"

"It's all Jeager's idea, I'm sure of it," he snapped. "Don't go easy! Make of big mess of yourselves and let Jean clean it all up, because he never dies!"

He cast a disgusted look at a mess of blood, viscera, and loose limbs spread down across half the street below. He took another long swig. "And of course Sasha has to go making a big mess of it too, as usual. Potato Girl can't get it through her head that it's better for everyone if she just keeps herself in one piece instead of spreading assorted bits across half a block. FUCK! It's going to take hours to get this all cleaned up, and of course it never restarts until we've got everything into the pyre and swept away!"

The two garrison men shared an uneasy glance, and began backing away really slow.

---
The scene before her was nothing like Captain Rico Brzenska had ever seen before.

When she had heard that the cadets from the training complex had disregarded orders, she had expected to find them either hiding in terror, drinking themselves stupid in some abandoned wine cellar, or attempting to desert.

She had not expected to find them laid out on the rooftops surrounding Trost’s central plaza, eating popcorn and drinking obviously stolen wine.

She had also not expected to see two titans squaring off in the middle of the plaza. One had glowing green eyes, and a skull-like face, the other was blonde and very obviously female. Both seemed to possess both a level of intelligence and unarmed combat skills previously unheard of in titans.

“What is going on here?” She snarled turning towards a brown haired girl perched on a chimney pot. (Sasha Braus if she recalled correctly.) “What in the Rose’s name are you lot doing?”

It was a very intimidating display, one of her best. Sasha didn’t even flinch.

“Betting on titan fights,” the cadet answered, as if it should be obvious. “You want in? Odds are currently 25:1 for Eren, 5:1 for the female titan.”

“Eren?”

“Brown haired titan.”

Something clicked in Rico’s mind. “You’re saying that titan is Cadet Jeager!?”

Sasha looked at her blankly. “Who else would it be?”

The whole situation was absurd. There was no other way to look at it. They were in the middle of a battle for humanity’s existence, and these cadets were betting on two titans fighting. (One of which was apparently one of the cadets.)

It was then she noticed a titan approaching out of the corner of her eye. She was about to scream out a warning when Sasha beat her to the punch.

“Ymir’s got it.”

As if on cue there was a spray of blood from the titan’s neck, and the beast collapsed. The form of a figure in 3D gear was soon seen approaching them. The cadet skidded across the roof-tiles, coming to a perfect stop in front of them.

“Got more popcorn and wine,” Ymir stated, holding up a burlap sack.

“Where’s Marco?”

“Some idiot strung a metal clothesline across the street. Took his head right off.”

“Damn,” Sasha swore. “He’s going to be pissed he missed the end of the fight.”

---

The Armored Titan charged towards the final gate of Trost District, impervious to the cannon shot ricocheting off its armor plates. Unswerving and unstoppable, there was nothing anyone could do.

“Shit,” Armin muttered as the titan charged past him, and Bertholdt. “There goes my plan.”

Bertholdt didn’t say anything, he just glanced behind Armin. “Where’s Marco?”

“You know that ugly statue on that one mansion overlooking the MP offices?”

“The one with all those swords and hooks pointing outwards?”

“Right in front of that equally ugly stained glass window,” Armin finished. “Well Marco hit a banana peel when he landed. Sent him right into the statue and both of them right through the stained glass window. I think I heard dogs barking when he landed.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah…” Armin grimaced. “Where’s Reiner?”

Bertholdt wordlessly pointed towards the Armored Titan charging towards the gates.

“Shit,” Armin swore. “He got eaten by that thing again?”

Bertholdt didn’t say anything.

“The problem is, there doesn’t seem to be any real way to stop that thing when it gets up ahead of steam,” Armin muttered, more to himself than anything. “It just smashes right through the gates and then disappears like the colossal titan, and by that point the garrison is too busy trying to stave off the other titans to…” Armin suddenly started, in the way of a person who has just come to a simple, yet dramatic realization. “Of course…”

“What?” Bertholdt asked, a bead of nervous sweat trickling down his neck. That couldn’t be good.

“It’s so simple,” Armin muttered. “We don’t need to stop the armored titan. It doesn’t matter if the gates get destroyed!” He turned to Bertholdt, a terrifying expression on his face. “We just need to kill all the titans before they get to the gate!”

It was at that moment that Bertholdt really felt afraid.

---

The Scouting Legion knew something was wrong the moment they got within eyesight of Trost. There were numerous signs. The strange lack of titans, the massive plume of steam filling the sky, even the fact that the gates were gone.

That however, did nothing to prepare them for the sigh that greeted them inside.

There was a mountain of titan corpses piled in front of the gate. A literal mountain, its peak looked like it went up over the tops of the Walls, but it was hard to tell due to the massive cloud of steam emanating from the pile.

Even Hanji was rendered speechless.

“What happened?” Erwin whispered to a nearby stationary guard, who from all appearances appeared to be just as stupefied as they were.

“Th-they… they just…” the man seemed to have trouble organizing his thoughts. “They just killed them all!”

“Who?” Erwin asked in alarm.

“The cadets!” the man sputtered. “The ones that just graduated from the academy! The colossal titan appeared! It kicked in the gate, titans started pouring through and then… then those kids just started killing them. I’ve never seen anything like it. They even stopped for a break half-way through because they ran out of titans to kill and had to wait for more to show up. And then they just went at it again.”

It was then that a voice drifted out from somewhere in the steam.

“Two hours and thirty four minutes! Beat our record by a half hour!”

“Too bad Marco chocked to death on that hardtack during the break!” Another voice shouted. “We might have been able to shave another quarter hour off.”

“So we learn the Heimlich maneuver next time,” someone shouted back. “That should at least keep him from croaking before we’re over two-thirds of the way through them!”

“What about ways to lure more in. We could really beat our record if we didn’t have to wait for more to show up!”

“Military police covered in gravy?”

“Worth a shot.”

Erwin nudged Levi in the sides. “Remind me to ask Shadis what it is they’re feeding the kids in basic, and whether or not the Legion has the budget for it.”

Levi didn’t answer.

---

Chapter Text

It was always the same. Every time. No matter what they did, it always reset. Always! From the exact moment the last of the funeral pyres burned themselves out, it would restart. Regardless of what they did.

Except this time there are no funeral pyres to burn out. Because this time, no one died. Not even Marco, even though they had had to administer the Heimlich maneuver to him once and CPR twice.

For once, in as long as they could remember, time didn't restart. Not even when the mountain of titan corpses in the middle of Trost finally was nothing more than a whiff of steam on the breeze.

And for the first time in what has been a very long time, they're not really sure what to do.

At least until someone brings back booze.

---

There are question. A lot of questions. Questions like how the hell were a group of green graduates from the academy able to do in a matter of hours, what the entire fucking military hadn't been able to do in five years.

Those kids were good. Shadis knows that. But he also knows that they weren't that good. He would have said that no one was that good.

Except no one can deny that all those titans didn't kill themselves.

The only problem is that if anyone has answers, it's those kids. And no one can find them.

It's only when he stumbles across the priest, wandering lost and confused through the training complex, that he gets an answer.

---

Silence reigned in the cabin. In the minds of it's inhabitants, that was entirely too much noise.

"Kill me," someone groaned.

"Can't," someone else groaned back. "Too hungover."

"Marco's still alive right?"

"Unfortunately," said boy mumbled. "I feel like an aberrant landed on me."

"You would know."

"Shut up." Ymir snarled from her blanket nest in the corner. "For walls sake, just shut up!"

"Has anyone seen the priest?" Krista murmured instead. "There was a priest right?"

"Pretty sure," Hanna grumbled. "Me and Franz got married somehow."

Jean took that moment to let out a loud groan, pull a pistol out from under his pillow and point it at his head.

*Click*

*Click*

The flint struck uselessly against the strike-plate.

"Who unloaded my gun?"

"I did," Armin croaked from his place atop a wardrobe. "I unloaded everyone's guns."

"Why?"

Armin took a long swallow. "Everything's changed guys. Time should have restarted. It didn't. How do we know it's going to do it again? This..." he took another deep swallow. "This might be our last chance. No trying again after this."

"Are you sure?" Someone whispered, they sounded almost... afraid.

"Only way we'll know for sure is if time resets itself again," Armin responded. "Other than getting ourselves killed and seeing if we restart again. But that's kind of an all or nothing deal."

"Fuck," Jean muttered, dropping the pistol. "You mean we'll have to recover from these hangovers the hard way."

"Look on the bright side," Armin remarked. "With the way things go. You probably wouldn't have been able to kill yourself even if the gun had been loaded."

"Shut up."

---

The new recruits were strange, Erwin decided. The whole, single-handily stopping a titan attack in its tracks aside, they were definitely an odd lot.

In light of their deeds, it had been decreed that admission into the Military Police would be open to all members of the former 104th trainee corp.

Only about five had shown up to be admitted. Of those five none of them had been able to keep a straight face through Nile's speech. Two had even burst into hysterical laughter before he was half-way through.

Four more had shown up to be admitted into the Stationary Guard, at least they had made it through Pixis's speech without bursting into laughter.

As for his speech, he had given the usual discouraging spiel, the grim recitation of casualty numbers, and the horrid truth about just how low their odds of survival were. Upon seeing their lack of horrified shock, he had then gone on an addendum about the various gruesome ways he had seen soldiers under his command die.

The collective look on their faces had all but screamed, "That's it!?"

That look alone was why he now found himself going over a complicated list of flare-signals Arlert had apparently devised on the spot, because Shadis had assured him there was no way Arlert had this system in place before the Battle of Trost, and trying to make sense of it.

The list itself was nearly a foot long and included a list of colors far beyond what were normally manufactured. Some of them were quiet sensible, including one system in which a fired flare would ask for status, and the responding color gave the answer. Possible answer ranged from "Fine," to "Drunk," to "As good as dead." Others were a little on the odd side, most likely a result of Arlert trying to anticipate every possibility. A sub listing which detailed which colors to use in order to flag a danger so that others didn't blunder into it; listed such dangers as metal clotheslines, banana peels, and ugly statuary. Some signals however were just bizarre. A dark orange flare indicated that someone had found booze. A neon pink one indicated that life was not worth living, and suggested mass-suicide. A dark blue one was listed to mean that Marco had died.

What was so important about Cadet Bodt that his death needed it's own flare, Erwin wasn't sure.

And that was only scratching the surface. Erwin did however make careful note of the flare color which signaled the opinion they should frag their commanding officers and called for a vote on the issue.

---

On the bright side, the ending of the time loops means they are free to experience new things. They can actually live life for a bit, instead of being thrust back into a never-ending battle. It's almost surreal to be back in a situation where the outcome of every action wasn't carefully mapped out.

It's also terrifying. For all the monotony, they at least knew Trost. Every back-alley, every banana strewn roof-top, and the personality of every Stationary Guard member stationed there. Heck, they had even started to have a long-term antagonistic relationship with specific titans. And if they ever slipped up, they could at least comfort themselves with the fact that there was always a second chance.

Now they have none of that.

But at least the many, many repetitions gave them time to sharpen their skills.

---

Armin swore violently as he jerked his leg out of reach of a titans jaws. It was rapidly becoming apparent that fighting titans in a forest was slightly different than fighting them in an urban environment. But, all things considered they were doing okay.

As if to accentuate that point, Eren, in titan form, took off the attacking titan's head with a single well placed blow.

"Is Marco still alive?" he called out, spinning in mid-air to skid across a titan's shoulders and strike at it's neck.

"Amazingly," Krista called back as she skipped by him, ham-stringing a titan in the process and giving Ymir an opening to finish it off. "We haven't had to give him the Heimlich once."

"Amazing." Armin agreed, coming to a stop on a branch. He could see the battle already winding down as any titans within striking distance were cut down. Too be fair it was only a small group. About ten to twelve titans.

As Eren took down the last titan, Armin noticed several Legion members riding towards them, as they got closer he recognized Commander Erwin and Levi.

They looked pissed.

Frantically, Armin tried to think of what they may have done to piss off said men. The he glanced back at Eren, still in titan form.

Shit.

He knew he had forgotten to tell them something.

---

The sun was just peeking above the edge of the Walls, when Levi was woken up by a rooster crowing. A familiar rooster.

"It couldn't be..."

It couldn't. That rooster was dead. Levi had shot it himself the night before they set off to leave for the expedition. He had staked the carcass and burned it, just to be sure.

He tore out of bed and stared out the window. Sure enough, there was the rooster. Perched on the ridge of the roof, crowing its heart out. The same, red bodied, green tailed rooster Levi had last saw down the sights of a rifle right before he pulled the trigger.

How was the rooster back from the dead!? How did he even get back from the expedition? He couldn't even recall the return trip. All he could recall was...

Getting his arm bitten off as a titan swallowed him.

He stared at his right arm. As whole and undamaged as it was before the expedition. Slowly, his gaze drifted towards the calendar on the wall.

It couldn't be.

This had to be some kind of strange, cruel trick. Because unless he had forgotten to update his calender for a long time, than it was two whole weeks before the next expedition was set to head out.

"What the fuck is going on!?"

Chapter Text

He's gone back in time. That's the only explanation Levi can come up with that makes even the least amount of sense. The only other explanations is that this is either an extremely elaborate prank being pulled on him by Hanji, or that last night's round of drinking with his squad was more wild then he recalls and that his memories are actually a strange hallucination brought on by the shady beer they had drunk. However Hanji is still unable to regrow limbs, and both him and his squad have been drinking that shady beer for years with no ill effects, so time travel is at the moment the only viable theory.

Everything is as he remembered it. Right up to the little things he didn't recall until he saw them being done again. The rumors and speculation about the cadets massacring a titan army in a matter of hours he hears are exactly the same, equal parts awed and terrified. Everything is the same.

Right up until they get to the cadets.

Instead of joining the Garrison and the Scouting Legion, the whole lot of them join the Military Police. Every single one of them. They listen through Nile's speech with expressions of somber seriousness, and not one of them so much as cracks a grin.

And that changes everything. When they set out on the expedition, they don't have a squad of kids able to massacre titans like they've been doing it for centuries, and they definitely don't Jeager turning into a titan out of the blue and leveling the playing field.

They return with half the legion wiped out, again, demoralized, weary, and to a cloud of thick black smoke billowing out from beyond Wall Sina.

That's when they first hear about the coup.

---

"Do you hear something?"

"No." Levi didn't even look up from his hand of cards. This was his fifth time playing this game with his squad. It was always the same. At the moment he knew without a doubt that Oluo's hand was worthless, Gunther only had a pair of threes, Eld had a flush of spades, and Petra was sporting four of a kind. Nothing ever changes.

"I hear it too," Petra adds. "It sounds like a goose?"

Except them.

They change all the fucking time, and Levi doesn't know why. Trying to predict what those fucking brats would do was next to impossible. On some loops they were all drinking themselves into a stupor, others times they were absconding with the Legions supplies in the middle of the night and hewing a bloody streak half-way to Shiganshina, and most of the time no one had any idea what they were doing, not even the brats themselves.

"I'm hearing things as well Captain," Eld spoke up. "Sounds like the recruits are up to something. Maybe we should check it out."

"I hear nothing," Levi snarled. "It's nothing. We are not going anywhere." It's the first time in what seems like years since he's been able to sit down with his squad and he is not going to let those brats ruin it for him.

"It's smells like something's burning!" Oluo had climbed to his feet and looked ready to check it out.

"You get your ass back here and play your shitty hand," Levi hissed. "There is nothing burning, and we are not going to check it out even if there was. We are going to sit down and we are going to play cards. Are we clear?"

Four fearful nods answered him. Slowly, carefully, as if afraid he was going to bite their heads off. Levi's just about to open his mouth and announce his play when there is a loud cry of "TIMBER!" and the floor gives way beneath him.

---

"I hate those brats," Levi growled, glaring sourly at the wall.

"Why?" Hanji paused from bandaging his chest. "I like them."

"You weren't the one who had a house collapse on top of you."

Hanji just gave a cheery little hum. Levi glares in response. He's about to open his mouth to add another caustic comment when an idea hits him. A cruel terrible idea.

"You know, one of those titans was Jeager."

Hanji freezes as she takes in the information. "What are you talking about?"

"You didn't know Shitty Glasses? Jeager can turn himself into a titan. The brown-haired one with the glowing green eyes and the stupid skull-face. I'm surprised the Commander didn't tell you."

The look Hanji gives him is a mixture of pure disbelief, yet Levi can see the traces of excitement bubbling up.

"I think he's in the barracks with the other trainees," Levi adds. He doesn't mention they are all recovering from hangovers.

Hanji looks at him like he's just told her the secret to life, and then she's gone. A satisfied smile crosses his face as he leans back in his chair.

That'll teach those brats to stage titan fights in the middle of Headquarters.

---

Not even the fucking rooster can spoil Levi's mood when he wakes up. Sure, Jeager had ripped him to pieces in revenge. But he knows that not even that would have gotten Hanji off the little shit's back. Besides, for the first time in a long time, he knows exactly what needs to be done.

His fingers find the rifle he has stashed under his mattress.

He's going to kill every single one of those brats before they can even think of fucking up his plans. Then he'll kill the rooster again.

He opens the door ready to do what needs to be done, and discovers two things very quickly. One, that the brats have come to similar conclusions as him, and two Lenz is a unexpectedly good shot with a crossbow.

---

This has gone on long enough, Erwin decided. It was funny at first but now they had crossed the line.

He casually emptied his teacup into a nearby plant. The plant, evidently deciding the tea was not to its taste, responded by shrieking, twitching, and dying.

Levi and the new recruits had been trying to kill each other. He doesn't have the foggiest clue as to why. It had been funny at first, watching the lot of them sneaking around late at night with knives, clubs, piano wire and nailboards, but now it has gone too far.

Poisoning the food supplies was simply unacceptable. Tea is simply too expensive for the lot of them to go around poisoning what little they have. He would put a stop to this first thing tomorrow morning.

---

This has gone on long enough, Erwin decided. It was funny at first but now they had crossed the line.

He carefully tests the point on the giant spike protruding from the seat of the office chair he had just been about to sit down in. Evidently the whole thing had been rigged to send the spike right up the ass of the first person to sit down on it.

Levi and the new recruits had been trying to kill each other. He doesn't have the foggiest clue as to what either of them could have done to make them hate each other so much is so little time. It had been funny at first, watching the lot of them prowl the halls of Headquarters armed to the teeth with all sorts of deadly implements and stage ambushed out of the shrubbery, but now it has gone to far.

Booby trapping the furniture was unacceptable. It was hard enough to ensure you got the right person and didn't kill anyone important, like him. He would put a stop to this first thing tomorrow morning.

---

This has gone on long enough, Erwin decided. It was funny at first but now they had crossed the line.

The tiger let out another snarl and lunged. Erwin blocked it with his desk chair, somehow managing to keep just out of reach of the great cat's fangs and claws.

Levi and the new recruits had been trying to kill each other. He doesn't have the foggiest clue why the two of them seem to hate each other with such burning vitriol, seeing that as far as he knows none of them had laid eyes on each other before the graduation ceremony. He probably should have known something was up when Levi showed up armed, but to be fair he had no way of knowing that the courtyard had been rigged with blasting explosive and that the whole ceremony would rapidly degenerate into a massive free-for-all battle. It had actually been kind of funny at first, watching the two of them battle in the hallways, around the courtyard and across the roof, but now they had gone too far.

Hiding giant predatory animals in the storage closets was unacceptable. Not only did it put them in a bad mood, but they made of mess of the storage closets while they were trapped inside. He would put a stop to this first thing tomorrow morning.

---

"I think we may have gone a bit too far," Reiner remarked, holding up his arm to shield his eyes from the glow.

"Possibly," Marco admitted, squinting a bit in the bright, searing light.

"I blame the midget," Mikasa added.

No one argued that point as they watched the gigantic fiery mushroom cloud consume the Inner city.

"I think we're going need a permanent solution to Levi," Krista suggested hesitantly. "Killing him just doesn't seem to cut it."

Armin just nodded in agreement, and flipped open his little black book to the section of "Things Hanji is Not Allowed to Have."

"Do any of you guys know how to spell 'uranium?'"

---

The brats are gone. Vanished into thin air. No sign of them anywhere.

It's driving Levi nuts. They're up to something, he just knows it. As much as he would dearly wish for them all to drop out of existence, he knows damn well that's not likely to happen. For them to vanish so suddenly means they're most likely plotting something big.

He's a nervous wreck for two whole days. Constantly checking around corners, jumping at the smallest noises, and freaking out and a single odor out of place. Twice he dragged his squad out of bed in the middle of the night and had them search the woods with him, convinced the brats were hiding in there waiting for the opportunity to strike.

His relief is great when the Scouting Legion's entire stockpile of supplies is stolen the next day. He knows what this means. The brats are making another push for Shiganshina. Whatever their reason, they're leaving him alone. His first order of business is to head down to one of the seedier areas on Trost. There's a pub there, an old favorite.

The place is practically deserted when he arrives. Not surprising, it is the middle of the morning after all. The only people there are a couple seated at a corner table, the collars of their coats pulled up and the brims of their hats pulled down. Doubtlessly folks the Military Police would dearly love to know the whereabouts of.

There's also a girl with blond hair wiping down the tables. Levi doesn't recognize her, but he's also never been here this early in the morning, so for all he knows she just works the morning shift.

"What can I get for you sir?" She asks, coming up to his table. She looks familiar somehow.

"The strongest shit you got," he answers instead leaning forward to study the girl as she heads back to the bar. She's definitely familiar, almost a bit like...

The realization hits him about the same time the net does. Ackerman and Jeager throw off their disguises and are kicking the shit out of him before he's even hits the floor. The net tangles around his limbs, preventing him from reaching the folding knife in his coat, the long stiletto concealed in his boot, or even for that matter getting up and fighting back.

"So..." Arlert brushes some dust of his skirts and peers down at him. "Time looping is a bitch isn't it?"