Chapter Text
“But most hearts say, I want, I want,
I want, I want. My heart
is more duplicitous,
though no twin as I once thought.
It says, I want, I don’t want, I
want, and then a pause.
It forces me to listen,”
— Margaret Atwood, from “The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart”
“Understand, I’ll slip quietly
away from the noisy crowd
when I see the pale
stars rising, blooming, over the oaks.
I’ll pursue solitary pathways
through the pale twilit meadows,
with only this one dream:
You come too.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, “Pathways”
When Hange first heard the soft pattering of horse hooves in the distance behind her, she didn’t bother to look up. The field mice in Shiganshina moved faster through the greenlands come early spring, and Hange knew that if she broke her gaze with the small creature before her, it would dart across the meadow the minute she lost her focus.
“Come on,” she whispered softly, hoping the mouse could understand her. “Just one little step.”
A familiar voice suddenly called for her as the sound of horse hooves pulsed louder. “Hange!”
The mouse’s head perked up, and Hange’s heart skipped a nervous beat. “Ignore him, please.”
“Hange, I know you can hear me!”
The mouse quickly bolted at the noise, but it moved in the wrong direction. Once she heard the sharp snap! from the makeshift trap, Hange jumped to her feet with a scream.
“I did it!” She finally turned around for a brief moment to face Moblit who came to a halt right at her side. “I actually did it!”
He panted as his white-knuckled hands slowly eased their grip on the reins. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you all afternoon.”
With a wide smile still plastered on her face, Hange reached down and held up the trap and its dead victim like a hard-won prize.
Moblit shook his head, marveling as if he’d only just come to know her and her odd nature. “I thought you had fallen in the river again,” he explained, “and you’ve been killing mice this entire time?”
“I didn’t mean to kill this one,” Hange answered defensively. She looked down at the rodent in her palms and studied the metal bar caught across its limp body. “I wanted it to be caught on its tail, but maybe if I play around with the spring mechanism for next time so that when it’s triggered—”
“My mother needs you back home. She said it’s an emergency.”
Hange looked up at him and partially sheltered her eyes from the sunlight that peeked over his shoulder. If living with the Berners over the years in the aftermath of her parents’ death had taught her anything, it’s that Mrs. Berner had varying definitions for the word “emergency.” There were the medical emergencies where she called Hange into the drawing room to inspect the faintest scratch on her body, the fashion emergencies where she tried and failed to stop Hange from leaving the house with mud-caked boots or tea-stained skirts, and, of course, the romantic emergencies where she told Hange of the so-called lovely men across Paradis who were open to marrying her and insisted that she must consider them all.
“And what kind of emergency might that be?” Hange asked with an arched eyebrow.
Moblit answered with a shrug. Hange sighed and mounted the horse with his help.
“Let me guess,” she said as they began to ride back home. “Did she touch her teacup before it cooled down this morning and she’s now convinced that she has third-degree burns all over her arm?”
Chuckling, Moblit stated, “I think she perhaps found a tear in that purple dress of yours and now she officially believes that you’ll die a spinster because it’s your only handsome piece of clothing.”
“Hey!” Hange quickly let go of one arm around his waist and hit his ribcage gently, making him laugh harder. “I’ll die a doctor, thank you very much!”
By the time they stopped at the Berner home deep in the northern countryside, they were still making quips at each other, hitting shoulders in between giggles. But when Mrs. Berner ran out delicately carrying an elaborate purple dress and hoarsely screaming Hange’s name, they both stopped.
“Oh dear,” Hange muttered under her breath at the same time Moblit said, “I knew it!”
“There you are!” Mrs. Berner shouted. “There’s been an emergency—is that a rat? You know what, don’t answer, we have so much to discuss.”
As quickly as she came outside, Mrs. Berner went back in. Hange and Moblit exchanged glances before running after her.
“What’s going on?” Hange asked when she found Mrs. Berner in her bedroom, hunched over the dresser in search of an item. Warm afternoon sunlight slipped through the open windows and poured onto the purple dress on the bed that had been in her arms moments ago.
“Soldiers,” Mrs. Berner replied with a bright grin. She pulled out a few small floral hair pins.
“Soldiers? What soldiers?”
“In Trost! They concluded the final round of peace talks with Marley in Liberio last week—it only took a good year, didn’t it? Goodness, everything should’ve ended three years ago—but you know that estate with the large manor right on the border of Rose?”
“No.”
“The one that looks like a castle?” Moblit asked, leaning against the doorframe.
Mrs. Berner nodded. “I believe one of the troops is going to live there now that everything’s over, and he’s throwing a celebration before the week’s end. Everyone will be there!”
“What’s that got to do with Hange?”
“Don’t you see?” Hange answered. She walked over to the purple dress and twirled the mulberry satin ribbons stitched on its shoulders. “She wants me to charm one of those poor men into marriage and leave you two alone at long last.”
She said these words sarcastically, but Mrs. Berner frowned still. She looked so much like her only son in that moment with her short, snow-white hair nearly falling into her eyes. “Oh, don’t say that. You know we love you. And you also know that I don’t have much time left.”
Hange looked at her and stared. She’d heard those words over and over again since Mr. Berner’s death last winter, and with Moblit’s recent engagement, they’d only grown louder. “I’ll conclude my apprenticeship with Dr. Jaeger by summer’s end,” she said as she always had to, “and I’ll be out of your hair when I open my own medical practice. I promise.”
“Hange,” Mrs. Berner said sternly, “please be serious. When Moblit gets married in the coming months, the land will be his, and I’ll be off on my own in Sina living out my days with every other miserable elderly person in Paradis. Come now, what’s with all the fuss about getting married?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to get married.” She searched for more words in the silence. “I . . . it’s—I’d like to become a doctor first.”
“You can be a wife first and then a doctor later.”
Hange wanted to bitterly laugh and say, “That’s impossible when it comes to the men of Paradis,” but Mrs. Berner spoke again.
“Nearly every young unmarried woman will be at that estate in Trost for the celebration.” Her voice was now back to being gentle and honey-sweet. “Even that Braus girl from down the road, the one from Dauper, she’ll be going.”
“Sasha? ” Hange couldn’t control her laughter. “But Sasha doesn’t want to get married! Are you sure she’s not just going so that she can sample all the free food there?”
Mrs. Berner ignored her comment. “Her father’s offered to let you go there with her on their little phaeton. Their horses are strong enough to carry the two of you.” She heaved out a frustrated exhale at the look on Hange’s face. “Do this for me, Hange. At the very least. Please.”
“Think of how much you love dancing at these types of things,” Moblit chimed in, “and meeting new people!”
“I am fond of dancing,” Hange mumbled to herself. She traced another calloused finger over the dress. “But to be quite fair, military men tend to be very dull in both conversation and footwork.”
“The event will be hosted by the Survey Corps,” said Mrs. Berner. “I thought you admired them. You were so adamant about joining if women were allowed to fight a few years ago.”
Hange froze. “The Survey Corps? I thought they were stationed in the capital for the time being? Because of high-level debriefs with the Military Police?”
“No, I’m fairly certain they’re all home on furlough for the spring. I was talking with Mrs. Lowe about it the other day—Hange? Hange! Where on earth are you running off to now?”
But Hange was already out of the bedroom and soon out of the Berner home, dead mouse in hand, leaving behind a confused and irritated Mrs. Berner and an amused Moblit in her wake.
༺ ❦ ༻
Hange beamed when she saw him. “Eren!”
Sitting on the grass before the steps with his hand clutching a baseball, he saw her too. “Shit,” is all he said before trying to get up and run, but Hange tackled him in the blink of an eye.
“I didn’t know you were back home already! Your hair’s grown so long, I love it! When did you get back? How was Liberio? It’s been far too long, we have so much to catch up on!”
“Get off of me, woman!” Eren pretended to struggle beneath her weight, and a smile tugged on his lips. “Don’t tell me you walked all the way here.”
“I didn’t,” Hange stated. “I ran.”
“You’re so strange.” He gave her one real push off of him. A pause. “Why are you holding a dead mouse?”
Hange didn’t know why she suddenly forgot this fact on the run to the Jaeger household. Her hands unclenched around the creature and its trap. “Oh,” she said faintly. “It’s for your brother, we’re doing research together now whenever I’m not working with your father. I was actually supposed to bring it tomorrow. Is he home?”
Eren snorted. “When is Zeke not home?” He then stood from the ground and held out a hand to help her back up on her feet.
The Jaegers, like the Berners, viewed Hange as an extended part of their family. On bright and warm days, the distance between the two homes never seemed too far, and Hange discovered this a few months before the war broke out. Her parents had just died from an acute virus, and all she could do in the aftermath was follow the doctor who had done his best to treat them home and beg him to teach her all that he knew about medicine and the sciences. She didn’t expect to become so well-acquainted with his sons in the process, much less watch one of them grow up so fast.
Remembering this, Hange smiled to herself before saying, “Be nice.”
She followed Eren into the house where she admired the paintings that adorned the deep-colored walls like she usually did whenever she set foot inside. Her eyes were glued to them as she spoke with Eren about his time in Marley during the brief truce and how much he had missed home. The only time she craned her neck down was when she found herself standing in front of Zeke in Dr. Jaeger’s private study.
Almost immediately, her free hand unconsciously smoothed out any potential wrinkles on the long brown skirt that she was wearing. There always had to be something about Zeke’s presence that made her hyper-aware of her own. In the presence of other men, especially the ones that Mrs. Berner begged her to court, Hange never cared about what she looked like. She kept her bangs and high ponytail as unkempt as they wanted to be and she often made a show of her dirty glasses. Before Zeke, however, she felt timid and took on the need to act the way Mrs. Berner instructed her to in a man’s presence: poised and soft-spoken and full of grace. She failed all the time, of course, but she still did her best to try.
Zeke didn’t seem to notice, and if he did, he rarely showed it. Despite her nervous laughter and the constant fixing of her glasses whenever he hovered around her when they conducted scientific research, he kept conversations with Hange restricted to politics, science, and, if he was feeling particularly open, his time growing up in Marley before Dr. Jaeger migrated to Paradis after the first Mrs. Jaeger passed away.
Today, he did notice. His blue eyes flickered between her hands, and for a moment, Hange believed she was dreaming. An amused smile appeared on his face. “So you caught one?”
He languidly walked over to her from the table littered with books, and overcome by his tall and broad figure, Hange was at a loss for words. “I—yes! I wanted it to be alive so that, you know, we could run experiments, but this was my first time testing out the trap. And I’m awfully sorry for coming a day early unannounced. I had no idea Eren was back home, and I only found out because Mrs. Berner wouldn’t stop going on and on about that celebration that’ll be thrown by the Survey Corps over in Trost.”
“Captain Levi’s ball?” Eren asked as he tossed the baseball he held to Zeke who caught it perfectly. “Since when did Mrs. Berner care about our movements?”
“Since she decided that I need to get married as soon as possible regardless of when I’ll become a doctor,” Hange explained. She walked over to the sole table in the study to set the mousetrap down and with her back turned to the Jaeger brothers, she said, “That’s why I’m not going.”
“I thought you loved dancing,” stated Zeke closely behind her.
She quickly turned around. “Why is everyone saying that?”
“Because it’s true. Aren’t you the one who knocked over a table at a tavern a few years ago because you were twirling around the room so fast?”
She glared at Eren. “That was one time! And the promise of dancing isn’t nearly enough to convince me to spend an entire evening with a bunch of military men in search of a husband.”
The younger Jaeger brother laughed. “I mean, that’s not the point of the ball. Not everyone in Paradis thinks like Mrs. Berner.” He then plopped himself right in the brown wingback chair at her left. “Come on, Hange, we’re celebrating! We’re officially independent from Marley and they’re not going to try to annex us anymore. The war’s over! You’d rather stay cooped up in here with Zeke or getting lectured by my father instead of having fun?”
“What? No, that’s not the case at all!”
Hange adored fun. She knew that the Berners loved her dearly, but it was also true that they couldn’t quite understand how she was so full of endless energy. Nobody could. She ran across fields barefoot, she excitedly jumped into rivers, and she spoke a good two to three decibels above everyone else when she was overjoyed. As she stood there thinking of how much she was most likely tolerated instead of loved by others, she remembered how pleasant it was to forget all of this in a sea of people who were also eager to forget their troubles, kicking her feet and twirling to music while brimming with zest. It was almost enough to make her reconsider attending.
But before she could say anything else, Zeke seemed to sense her discomfort and turned to his brother to ask, “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
Eren rolled his teal eyes in mock annoyance and left. Zeke didn’t give Hange room to say anything else when he said, “Let’s start dissecting this poor bastard, shall we?” and smiled when she let out a happy squeal.
༺ ❦ ༻
A few days later, Hange regretted caving in to the emotions that Eren’s words poked a hole in. She covered her hands over her hair when Mrs. Berner outstretched her arm.
“We made a deal!” Hange cried out and dashed across her bedroom.
The spoken contract with Mrs. Berner was short and simple: Hange was to attend the ball in Trost if—and only if—she could keep her hair in a ponytail, and she had to engage in deep conversation with at least one unmarried man for more than a few minutes and report back to Mrs. Berner as soon as she returned home.
“I know, but you look so beautiful with your hair down,” said Mrs. Berner as she began to chase her around the room.
From the window, Hange heard the gentle gallop of a one-horse phaeton just outside. Sasha called her name in a sweet, singsong voice, and it didn’t take long for Hange to run into the humid evening air, forgetting to pick up the hem of her dress and letting it collect grass along the way. She bid a dismayed Mrs. Berner goodbye with a wave and then turned to Sasha, saying, “We have to go before she comes over here and strangles me.”
As the phaeton lurched forward without question, Sasha said, “I’m so excited!”
Hange studied the bright-eyed girl beside her. She wasn’t as dressed up in her simple brown ballgown and her hair wasn’t decorated with any kind of accessory. It nearly mirrored Hange’s, only Mrs. Berner made sure to stuff it with floral pins as a compromise.
“For all the food that’ll be there, I’m assuming?”
“No! Well . . . yes,” Sasha admitted. She and Hange never interacted much despite the fact that Mr. Braus came to trade horses or grains with Moblit at the end of the week over the last two years since they moved onto the plot of land down the far road, but their conversations whenever they passed by each other on their horses or stopped to chat beneath a tree in one of the meadows taught them enough about each other. “Although I heard that this is the first time someone will be living on that estate in over twenty years. I had no idea Captain Levi was so rich!”
Hange remembered the name from Eren and nearly wanted to ask, “Who’s Captain Levi?” but then chose to mask her ignorance about the main players of the war. She only knew of Commander Erwin, and all that she cared about when it came to the war was the prospect of peace and the technological advancements that could be shared between Marley and Paradis in the aftermath. She decided to say, “What’s the big deal about this estate? Even Moblit said it looked like a castle. That can’t possibly be true.”
And yet it did, in fact, turn out to be more than true. When Hange caught a glimpse of it in the distance later that night, her turn in the round of small talk with Sasha came to a halt. Her words faltered, and she stared dazzled at the windows that glowed about drawn curtains, rows of them, each illuminated from afar by the torchlights outside that looked over the long stretch of garden and all its water fountains and statues. Hange continued to look like this—mouth half-open in both curiosity and wonder—even as she and Sasha descended from their ride behind a length of carriages far grander than theirs.
Music swelled from the inside. Hange could hear it long before the two were halfway through the front garden, and when she came to the center of it all, standing still on the ballroom floor while Sasha held on to her arm amidst a party in full swing, it took her a moment for her to remember what to do in situations such as these. Eren was right; these days, she did stay cooped up either at home, the Jaegers’ study, Dr. Jaeger’s practice in town, or the island’s largest public library in Rose. It had been so long since she sprouted social butterfly wings and flew wherever. And so she began to dance.
She danced and drank champagne from the silver trays that seemed to float in the air with the help of white-suited servants, and she brushed off each bump into other partygoers with a light laugh. When she inevitably lost Sasha to a table backed against the plum walls that teemed with food, she turned her attention to other people and well into the night, she’d spoken to troops and Marleyan migrants who were happy that the war was over all the same, young women in eye-catching dresses who would’ve been the apple of Mrs. Berner’s eye had she been there that evening and handsome young men who she evaded once asked to dance with them.
Hange only stopped when she heard, “You came!”
To her left, she saw Eren standing with two men away from the life of the ball in the corner of the room. His hair was pinned up nearly like hers in its own ponytail, but that wasn’t what Hange’s eyes were focused on. Beside him, next to the tall, blue-eyed man with neatly-parted blonde hair and well-groomed brows stood an expressionless man who seemed to be looking over her frame with a cold gaze. The clothes he wore looked sharp and regal though they were the standard men’s attire for the night. A black coat hugged his white linen shirt that puffed at the neck.
“Hange, this is Commander Erwin Smith”—he pointed to the blonde man—“and Captain Levi Ackerman.” Eren finished off the introduction as he said, “Erwin, Levi, this is Zoë Hange, but—”
“Everyone just calls me Hange!” she interrupted loudly with a wide grin.
“—we all call her Hange.” Eren stated at the same time she spoke.
She didn’t give the commander or the captain time to speak. “I’ve heard so much about you both! Well, not from Eren. It’s not like he wrote me letters while he was away,” she spoke, pulling Eren’s ear playfully and eliciting an, “Ow!” from the young soldier. “But I’ve read so much in the papers, especially about you, Commander Erwin. Thank you for your service—thank you both, actually. And this is a lovely ball that you’ve thrown, Captain Levi.”
Commander Erwin looked amused at her bubbly character, but Captain Levi simply stood there, unmoved. Suddenly, he said, “Do you usually speak to others by obnoxiously screaming at the top of your lungs, Miss Hange?”
For a split second, her smile wavered, but it returned when she chose to say, “It’s because I’m having fun! We are at a party after all, Captain. I doubt you’d be able to hear me otherwise.” In his eyes, she thought she saw something familiar: the same look that was found in people when they believed that she was a bit too much. But there was something else there that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. “You know, for a host, you don’t seem to be doing a good job of having much fun yourself. Don’t tell me you’ve been camping out here all night. Eren, Commander, is he paying you to keep him company?”
Commander Erwin cleared his throat with a poorly held-back laugh. “Eren briefly mentioned that you’re a doctor? Am I getting that right?”
“I’m his father’s apprentice,” Hange corrected with a nod.
Captain Levi didn’t let her previous comments slide. “There’s nothing wrong with keeping to yourself at a ball.”
She eyed him playfully. “Do you dance, Captain?”
“Not if I can help it.” The answer was quick and terse.
“You should try it, then. Who knows, it may loosen you up a bit and put a smile on that face of yours.”
“Could you excuse us?” Eren abruptly said as he pulled Hange back into the dancing crowd. “What are you doing?”
“Am I embarrassing you in front of your superiors? Forgive me.” She half-meant it.
“No,” Eren replied, ever the one to never quite care about consequences. “You don’t want to make an enemy out of Levi. They don’t call him this country’s strongest soldier for nothing.”
“What will he do? Declare war on me?”
“No, he’s . . .” his voice trailed off as his eyes wandered behind her. She followed his gaze and saw a young, raven-haired woman in a simple black-and-white gown gliding across the room as if on air. Eren returned his focus to her after a delayed pause. “Just behave. Please.”
Hange hated those words. She felt all the buzz within her simmer down. Every muscle in her body now sent aching signals to her brain as if it suddenly became aware that it spent the entire night in fast movement. She pressed a hand to her forehead and felt sweat. A sigh. “I need some fresh air.”
Eren called out to her, but she continued walking through the pulsating swing of twirling bodies and a manic orchestra, clinking glasses and a sea of voices. She didn’t know what she was looking for; she certainly wasn’t ready to leave, not yet, and not without Sasha (and where, she wondered, was that girl?). Surely there had to be a balcony somewhere on which she could take a breather; she was convinced that she saw one in the distance on the journey here.
Hange passed open room after open room, and her mind wandered off to Captain Levi again. Does one man really need this much space? What kind of host looks so miserable at his own party? Why did he look at her like that—?
She stopped. Taking three steps back to return to the entrance of a room she just walked by absentmindedly, a head of straight blonde hair spilled over one end of a fainting couch that faced her. Hange could recognize that head of hair anywhere.
“Annie?”
The blonde woman shot up in a flash, turning around as if she was ready to fight. She softened at the sight of Hange who walked into the small white-walled room. A grand piano rested pinched into the corner. “You gave me a fright.”
“What are you doing in here?”
“Hiding.”
“From who?”
“From what,” she countered in her soft, monotone voice. “I’m hiding from a marriage proposal.”
Hange’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, that’s exciting!”
“Oh, please. You know it’s not.”
Hange took a seat beside her and studied how tired the young woman looked. She always looked tired and often bored. About a year ago, she had the exact same expression on her face when Hange had met her for the first time at the public library in Rose in the Rare and Foreign Books section, hoarding textbooks about a strange practice abroad called “martial arts.” To this day, Hange couldn’t understand why they got along so well.
Annie continued to explain. “I’ve already said no twice, but it’s no use. My father practically has a home waiting for us in Libero now that the war’s over.” She began to tell Hange of a young man named Bertholdt Hoover—freakishly tall, dark-haired, milquetoast, and always seen with a broad-shouldered blonde wingman at his side. You can’t miss him—who she grew up with here on Paradis as migrants before the war of independence broke out. Now her father was seeking a return to his homeland, but he couldn’t settle there unless he or someone he knew was a newlywed planning on raising a family, according to the conditions of the new Liberio Peace Treaty.
“Goodness,” Hange blurted out when she finished speaking. “I’m so sorry, Annie. Aren’t men such humorless poppycocks? As if we can’t live life on our own terms! Oh . . . no offense to your father. Obviously. I know how much you love him.”
“None taken,” said Annie with a small smirk that Hange almost missed. “Although I know you’re too much of a romantic to truly believe that. One of these days, Hange, someone will catch your eye and soon, you’ll have to eat your words.”
Hange was going to counter that with something, but it wasn’t like she could say that she had completely let go of the dream that a man could both make her a wife and let her go on to become one of the few female doctors in Paradis. As she opened her mouth to somewhat agree, footsteps were coming up the hall and two deep male voices were heard in crescendo. With an immense amount of strength that shocked her, Annie pulled her out of sight from the open door and shushed her when she giggled at their position on the floor.
“Well?” asked a familiar voice. Commander Erwin.
“What?”
Hange rolled her eyes at Captain Levi’s voice.
“There had to be someone.”
“And yet, there wasn’t.”
“You’re being very difficult. What about that friend of Eren’s? Miss Hange?”
Annie looked at her with a quizzical brow. Hange shook her head as if to say, “I have no idea why they’re talking about me.”
“The loud and annoying one?” Captain Levi answered monotonously, as if he was describing something as simple as the weather on a plain day. “Physically, she’s perfectly tolerable, but not beautiful enough to tempt me.”
A rare scowl bloomed on Hange’s face.
One set of footsteps tapered off deeper into the corridor. Commander Erwin shouted, “Levi? Levi, wait! Don’t be like this!” and ran after him.
When all was silent, Annie stood up and asked, “What’s going on?”
Standing up slowly, Hange said, “I haven’t the slightest idea.” Then: “Can you help me find Sasha? I want to go home now.”
༺ ❦ ༻
When they found her nearly an hour later, seated on a long couch in the largest drawing room Hange had ever seen, food in one hand as she spoke animatedly to a group of young men surrounding her, Hange wanted to ask, “Have you seriously been here this entire time?” It wasn’t as if the actual search had been easy; whenever Annie saw a tall man with black hair, she had ducked into any available corner and pulled Hange with her, ruining any chance either of them had at finding Sasha in the first place.
What stopped her was her recognition of some of the men in the group surrounding her. There was Armin Arlert, Eren’s childhood best friend who had volunteered in the war with him (and who Hange hadn’t seen in far too long), a long-faced man with ash-brown hair that she recognized from early in the evening when he begged her to dance—what was his name? Jason? John?—and Captain Levi, as stone-faced and wretchedly unhappy as ever, without his blonde-haired confidant. Armin was the first to see her and Annie as they drew closer to the small crowd.
Sasha, without noticing Hange’s presence, continued her little performance of words. “. . . although, when I was fifteen, there was a farmhand who fell so hard for me that he wrote me so many pretty verses.”
“And that put an end to it all, didn’t it?” Hange stated, remembering the story. All eyes fell on her now. “I wonder who first discovered the power of poetry in driving away love?”
“Hange!” Sasha ambushed her with a hug.
“I see you’ve been having fun, but it’s high time that we left for home. It’s getting awfully late.” This was only half-true.
“Hi, Hange,” said Armin gently, giving her a small, awkward wave. She waved back, but then realized that his focus wasn’t on her at all as he spoke, but on Annie. “And, um . . . ?”
“Annie Leonhart.” A curt introduction. Armin still kept staring.
Unable to read the conversational rhythm of the room, Captain Levi spoke directly to Hange. “I thought poetry was the food of love.”
She turned to him and remembered his words from before when she was hidden out of sight unbeknownst to him. An amused smirk appeared on her lips. “Perhaps of a fine, stout love,” she explained, “but if it’s only a vague inclination, then I’m convinced that one poor sonnet will kill it stone dead.”
Being satisfied with the answer she’d given, she tugged on Sasha’s arm and was prepared to leave, but one question from the captain stopped her: “So what do you recommend? To encourage affection?”
Hange thought she heard a slight flicker in his tone that sounded genuine, but she brushed off the thought as quickly as it came. He was sprawled against his section of the couch with one arm thrown against its back, waiting for a reply. She searched his eyes for evidence that this was a trick question. Nothing showed.
With a dazzling, mischievous smile, she said, “Dancing. Even if one’s partner is barely tolerable.”
Confused faces gawked at her, but what made Hange satisfied as she left was the startled look on Captain Levi’s face: eyes slightly widened, lips softly parted in shock, and a gaze lingering on her even long after she was out of the room.