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Hanji Zoe is laying on her back in the grass. The evening air is calm, but there is a new chill in it that’s exciting. Autumn is coming, she realizes. Her best friends are sitting next to her, tucked in tight against the cold. She stretches her legs and arches her feet, relishing the pull in her calves and the way the release of tension shakes its way up her spine. Training had been hard today, and the thrill of having found a small moment of relaxation makes the stony field next to the survey corps barracks feel as comfortable as her old bed from home had, before it had been broken along with most of Shiganshina.
She’s tired, but she’s happy. As happy as she has been in a while, anyway. The constant deaths of her friends always weigh on her, and a part of her brain is always working to find a newer, better, smarter way to arm itself. She knows she has a lot riding on her shoulders. She knows that her gift, or her curse, or whatever it is- this ability to turn into a titan at will, with a swipe of fingernails against her cheek- is worth something. She just wants it to be a large something.
But here and now she is mostly thinking about her day, and the crick in her neck, and the chemical makeup of titan saliva, and whether or not her commanding officers are happy. There are few moments when her mind is still.
She holds her arms up above her, her thumbs and forefingers touching each other, framing a bird-shaped swirl of cumulus with her hands. The sun is low in the sky and the clouds are ringed in gold.
“Do you think our squad leader ever laughs?” she says, absently, to Levi and Erwin.
“Jaeger?” says Erwin, squinting at her, “He smiles at Captain Arlert sometimes.”
“Does he?” says Levi, turning toward them, letting his legs fall open as he shifts to uncross them, his knee leaning against the comfortable warmth of Hanji’s side, “I hadn’t noticed.”
“I just think,” Hanji says, flipping over onto her stomach, “that he probably did when he was a kid. I bet he was cute.”
Levi snorts.
“What?” she says, nudging him with her shoulder, “He’s got those pretty green eyes. I bet he was a sweet kid. And every kid smiles, right?”
He just shrugs.
“Every kid except you, anyway,” she says.
“Kid Levi smiled sometimes,” says Erwin, looking at him seriously, “When he got to beat people up for harassing me on the playground.”
“Oh, oh!” Hanji kicks her feet back and forth in the air, all thoughts of the Survey Corps officers lost to the memory Erwin had just called up in her mind, “Remember the first time we found someone bothering you, Erwin? You were all tiny still, and talking about your dad’s research, and some meathead eleven year old was about to knock your teeth out?”
“We really don’t need to discuss this,” says Levi, grimacing, “We were all there.”
But Erwin is already grinning at the memory, nodding, “The kid saw you two run up to us, even scrawnier than I was, and he just started laughing. I remember he asked you ‘Who do you think you are?’ and-”
Hanji cuts in, clapping her hands gleefully, “And Levi had this big, crazy grin on his face, and he said in his tiny little thug voice,” Levi covers his face with his hands as she stops to clear her throat in preparation for her impression, “‘I’m your worst nightmare.’”
The deep rumble of Erwin’s laugh and Hanji’s shrill howling almost drown Levi’s defense of “I was just trying something out, okay?”
When Hanji doesn’t stop laughing, Levi flicks her ear. She sticks her tongue out at him, ignoring his glare, and pushes herself up to sitting cross-legged, a knee resting on both of the boys’ thighs. She could needle Levi further, but she knows when to push and when to let go when it comes to him. They didn’t start their lives bound by blood, but they’re bound now. It’s sort of like the solidarity of siblings, but there’s more to it than that. And she’s had years of practice by this point, so she knows to step back.
She turns to Erwin, who knows why she’s shifting the conversational focus, because he’s been there alongside her for even longer.
“Too bad,” Hanji says, “too bad all those jerks can’t see you now, Mr. I Need A Bigger Set of Maneuver Gear Straps Every Month,” she says, punctuating each word with a poke to Erwin’s broad chest.
Hanji feels Levi’s muscles relax against her.
“God, they’d shit their pants,” Levi says, his voice almost reverent at the idea.
When Hanji looks at Levi then, he’s pulling his scarf up to cover his mouth. She sees the corner of his lips tug upward just before they are hidden by the red fabric. She knows he saw her catch him at it, too. He rolls his eyes, but he pulls up the scarf higher, and she knows that behind it, he’s smiling for real. It’s enough.
“Anyway, you were talking about the officers, not us,” Levi reminds her.
“Oh! Right!” She says, and rests her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, “I just think it’d be a hard job, dealing with the titans and trying to keep all of us alive, too. I think I’d like it, though.”
“What, being a Squad Leader?” asks Levi.
“Mmm,” she nods, “Or Commander,” she says, her eyebrows raising, her back straightening, “Though that might be more your specialty, Erwin.”
He ducks his head, blushing. “It’s hard to picture anyone besides Commander Kirschtein doing that job.”
“Yeah, but think! They probably have access to all kinds of information about the titans. All this history and biology that we don’t even know about!”
She looks over at the table the officers are crowded around. Captain Arlert and Squad Leader Jaeger are bent over some kind of paper spread across the table, their faces tense, their foreheads almost touching. The Commander stands over them, more watching the two of them than whatever it is they’re looking at. Corporal Ackerman is leaning back in her chair, her feet propped up on the table, cleaning her fingernails with a knife.
Levi shakes his head. “Yeah, but think of all the messed up things they have to do to keep that history and biology under wraps. And I wouldn’t want to have to babysit a bunch of shitty little kids who keep trying to die. I’ll leave making all those decisions to you two depraved assholes. I’m fine just…” he waves his hand, “killing titans.”
“Noted,” Erwin says, smiling, “When we’re in charge, I’ll keep you on titan slaying duty. It’s what you do best, anyway. I’ll do all the dirty work for you.”
“I like this plan,” Hanji says, and puts an arm around each of them, pulling them closer. Levi leans his head against hers, and Erwin rests his elbow on her knee. Her voice is quiet as the sun dips down below the treeline, “We’ve just got to stay alive long enough to get there.”
~*~*~
Across the field, Armin Arlert is pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and tilting his head to the side, trying to stretch out a knot that’s been building in his shoulder all day. He is poring over a map that’s spread out on the rough wooden table, and blinking away the fact that he hasn’t slept in 19 hours. It isn’t unusual for him, this sleep pattern, but his Commander isn’t about to let him get away with it this time. With a hand on the back of Armin’s neck, a thumb pushing into the tensest part of his nape, Jean Kirschtein speaks, “Let it be for now, Armin. We can look at it again tomorrow.”
Armin wants to say no. He wants to lose himself in the most recent round of strategizing and only come up for air once he’s convinced that whatever plan he’s come up with will be the best for all the lives he’s gambling with. He tucks a stray strand of hair behind his ear. It’s too late in the day to bother redoing his messy ponytail just to accommodate it.
“All right, then,” he sighs. He leans back, lets his eyes close, lets his back muscles relax into the pressure of Jean’s fingertips. When his eyes finally flutter open, they land on Eren, who is sitting across from him, next to Mikasa. He’s smiling in that slow, warm way he does sometimes. Armin feels his foot nudge against his own under the table.
“You see them?” Eren says, nodding across the field.
Three of their most promising soldiers are laying in the grass, looking up at the sky and laughing with each other.
Armin nods. “What about them?”
Eren shrugs, “I dunno, they just remind me of us sometimes.”
“You didn’t know each other when you were that young, did you?” says Jean, his thumb pausing against the side of Armin’s neck.
“No,” says Eren, “But sometimes I think it would have saved me a lot of trouble if we had.”
Jean laughs and drops his hand, smoothing out Armin’s jacket on the way. Armin puts down his pen and stretches, rolling his shoulders. He can’t hear what the three kids in question are talking about, but he can see the easy way they lean on each other, and the comfortable angle of Hanji’s chin as she smiles up at the sky. He looks back at Eren, who is watching them. His face is relaxed and distant, but happy.
“Or you would have just started getting me into trouble earlier than you did,” says Armin, “But it would have been nice, growing up with all of you.”
“You probably wouldn’t have liked me much,” says Jean, “I was kind of an asshole as a kid.”
“You were still kind of an asshole when we met, really,” says Eren, his gaze still locked on the three cadets. Jean just laughs, shrugging.
“I think they’ll make it, though,” says Mikasa. She speaks softly, but they all turn to her. “We have that in common.”
“I hope so.” Armin’s gaze shifts to Jean as he says it, because he knows how much he worries about that. His eyebrows are knitted, but he’s smiling. Armin looks at Eren, next. There are creases at the corners of his eyes that Armin hadn’t noticed before. He wonders how much of their existence is due to late nights of guard duty and mission planning, and how much is from smiling. Signs of age are reassuring to see, in a way. It means they’re still alive. They make Eren’s face seem a little wearier, but no less handsome, really. It’s probably that, more than his own sleepiness, that causes Armin to say, “All right, I give in, let’s go to bed.”
Armin rolls up the map and stands up, arching his back. Mikasa straps her knife back into the sheath on her thigh in silent assent, and stands.
They all walk toward the castle together, and they wait when Eren stops and turns toward the only people left outside. “Get some sleep, you three. You’ll want it for the workout we have planned for tomorrow.”
Erwin stands up quickly, his arms in salute before the other two have bothered to start standing. He reaches to pull them up. The adults wait, watching them as they rise. When Hanji, Levi and Erwin walk toward the barracks, it is with their arms linked, and with smiles pulling at their cheeks.
Armin smiles, too, and waits for Eren to catch up. It’s good that they have each other, at least, he thinks. They’ll need it.