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Hange doesn’t see it coming.
One second she’s soaring, 3D maneuver gear singing at her hips, propelling her effortlessly through the air. And then a slayed fifteen meter Titan is toppling in front of her, and his bulbous head is striking, bulldozing through the nearest building.
Rubble explodes out.
She’s moving too fast. Even as wind resists, screaming at her ears, momentum drags her unrelentingly forward. Debris – splintering wood, shards of brick and stone – fling out. She can’t turn, can’t evade. There is no time.
The wind steals her stuttered breath.
Brick and stone pelt her body as she curls. She sees the shards of masonry a second before they hit. Her eyes squeeze shut, and she feels the pop of small objects striking her goggles. Next is the whining protest of cracking glass. Maneuvering wire snaps back and she’s falling, tumbling through air.
She hits the ground, letting her legs buckle beneath her. Rolling, her shoulder takes the brunt of the impact. As she tumbles, 3D maneuvering gear crashes against cobblestone. She feels it release, its bulky weight abandoning her.
Limp, she rolls until momentum at long last gives her up.
Uneven cobbles press against her back. Dazed and aching, she stares up at blue. A breeze buffets her prone figure. Cool and crisp, it stings her eyes, drawing water.
And then her hands are at her face, because watering eyes mean air and air means – jagged shards of broken glass press warningly against her fingers. And she’s fumbling with leather, yanking frayed goggle straps over her head.
She has to hold them up, dangle them right in front of her to see.
Broken. The lens in the metal frames has shattered, leaving nothing but jagged remnants of glass clinging to the curved metal.
Hands closing, clenching over tattered frames, she sits up, twisting to look around. She doesn’t register the glass slicing her palms. The world has been rendered imprecise, a horrible blend of shapes and colors; the objects around her are reduced to blurs, indistinguishable and vague.
Useless goggles clutched against her stomach, Hange tries to remain calm. She slows her breaths; works to control the thundering beats threatening to overtake her chest.
She can’t see.
She’s endured more perilous situations than she can count, survived hard falls, even faced Titans without the aid of maneuvering gear, but never has she felt terror such as she feels now.
The ground quakes, tremulous beneath her. They are coming. They are coming and she can’t properly see.
Her hands pat her hips, though she is already certain that what she seeks is not there. The pouch was attached to her maneuvering gear. When her gear had come loose, her spare goggles would have gone with it.
When the road beneath her gives another shake, she’s finally spurred into action. She has to move. Get out of the open. Find shelter. Something out of sight.
But first -
Dropping the broken, useless goggles, her hands run over the ground, feeling, searching. The rumbles are growing louder. She can hear the thunder of distinct footsteps when her fingers finally brush metal. Triumphant, she grabs up the blade.
Rising, she turns, craning her neck. She can make out the dark silhouettes of buildings. They line either side of the street. If she can get close, she’ll be able to find an entrance.
Jarring steps shake the ground. The Titans’ herald. They give her haste.
Clutching the blade, Hange stumbles toward the closest building. She’s almost there. She can just make out a blurry, shadowed door.
Before she reaches the sheltered sanctuary, an unseen object catches her foot.
She falls. Hands and knees sting from the impact.
Beneath her palms, the ground shakes. The air shifts, displaced; the hairs on the back of her neck rise in warning. And she knows: she’s no longer alone.
Her hands are numb, testaments to the adrenaline coursing through her body, overwhelming her system. Adrenaline won’t help her, she’s well aware. It will dull her senses, exhaust her faster. But she can’t quite stem her rushing breaths or curb her racing heart.
The Titan looms over her, a hulking, indistinct shape, neatly blending with nearby buildings.
She hasn’t felt a fear like this, visceral and consuming, since childhood. Beneath her childhood home, there’d been a cellar. Though a single, short staircase was all that separated the musty basement from their bright, warm home, as a child, she’d been loath to enter the dark space. Despite her parents’ reassurance, she was convinced a monster lurked in the darkness, hidden, always just out of sight.
Sometimes her mother would send her to fetch tools from the dark room. On such occasions, she’d creep down the stairs, a pilfered butter knife held in her stubborn grasp. As soon as she ventured past the reach of the light, she’d imagine she could hear it scurrying in the dark. Sometimes, when she stood on her toes, reaching for the desired wrench, she thought she could feel the creature’s foul, malodorous breath, a snort of air against the back of her neck.
And now, crouched upon the ground, she feels the hot, stagnant gust of Titan breath washing over her back.
But this is not her parents’ cellar. And she is no longer a child, lost, scared of what she can’t see.
Something shifts.
When her hands tremble, it is no longer terror which moves them. Fear has been replaced, pushed out by its close cousin.
Hange seethes.
She’s angry. Angry at the hulking creature above her. For putting her in this situation. For after all these years, making her feel like a child. Helpless, petrified of the creatures in the dark.
When a blurry appendage reaches greedily towards her, she surges up. With a savage cry, the blade swings up, arcing over her head. Thick, swollen fingers rain down.
When his other hand reaches, she slices it with a second cry. And when the creature’s round, lilting head leans in, jaws insistently snapping, she stabs viciously upward. She feels the blade sink into the soft, malleable muscles of an eye.
It rears back with a cry. But the ground is again rumbling. Listing, towering shapes stumble towards her. Too many. She knows the blade in her hand will have already begun to dull.
She cannot win this fight.
Yet when they lumber toward her, she shouts at them incensed. Defiant.
When the next titan reaches for her, she swings out, screaming her anger. Anger at the unfairness of such impossible odds.
Another hand reaches. She cuts it too. Panting, she screams her grief, her anguish, her frustration; to have come this far to be felled by a hard fall and a pair of broken goggles.
When she swings at the next Titan the blade sticks. Dulled, it can no longer cleave cleanly through flesh. When the Titan jerks back, her only weapon is dragged from her grasp.
Empty handed, she stares up. The mountainous figures are bending in. Her knees feel weak, but she forces herself to stand. Macabre as it may be, she can only think that she would much rather die with a clear view of the world.
One of the shapes detaches from the rest. It falls forward and the ground shakes. She can hear its mouth opening, the Titan’s moan as its jaws stretch wide.
And maybe, maybe she can gouge its eye. But with what? Even if she manages it, the desperate act would gain her at most, seconds to run. And where would she run? She can’t see.
She feels its breath and wonders if Ilse was this afraid.
It rears back and-
She hears a woosh and then thwack!
The blur of a Titan falls back, lifeless.
Seconds later, there is a second thwack and then a third. By now she can hear the distinct whirr of maneuver gear. A single set. It is accompanied by an eerie whistling – the sound of blades spinning through the air, slicing at a near inhuman velocity.
She hears the sound of slicing flesh as the fourth and fifth Titans are dispatched.
Five titans in one go. She wonders if that might be a record for him.
When she drops, the ground jolts her knees. Her cheeks are wet, though she can’t recall crying.
There is a snap and a crunch. Boots tap over pavement.
“Hange.” His voice is strained, like he hasn’t yet managed to get enough air.
A shuddering breath. “Levi.”
His figure, though blurry, is becoming distinguishable from the hulking shapes behind him.
“What the hell happened?”
“I – my goggles.” She gestures to her face. “I couldn’t see. Lost all my blades but one. I thought-” Something catches in her throat. Stubbornly, she tries again, “I thought this was-” it.
He’s close enough now. She can make out some of the lines of his face. There is a sharpness, a harshness in his features. Red paints his skin and clothes. When he finally speaks, his voice is pinched. “Not today.”
There is a beat of silence. When he next speaks, his voice is low, sullen, normal. “I’m going to tell the new recruits a Titan knocked you on your ass today.”
Ah. Yes. Normalcy. That’s good. In fact, she clings to it, in much the same way that a drowning man holds tight to a tossed rope.
She laughs. It is hoarse, croaking. “Like you’d do much better. You try fending off a Titan half-blind.”
It is a strained banter. Nowhere close to the caliber of her usual retorts. But Levi doesn’t miss a beat.
“I would rather have chronic constipation than your shit vision.”
“You honestly expect me to believe you don’t have chronic constipation?”
A huff of air. He crouches beside her. His hand is in his jacket, rifling for something in an inner pocket. At last, he pulls out a compact container. Deft fingers flip it open, and then he’s lifting something with straps. Glass and metal reflect light.
Turning towards her, he reaches up, slipping leather straps over her head. Fingers carefully bracing the metal rims, he slides the goggles down her forehead and onto the bridge of her nose. “There.”
And just like that, the world, crisp and focused, is hers once more. And Levi, still kneeling in front of her, is again in full detail. The Titan gore that splattered his face and clothes is beginning to steam. Hand bracing his leg, he stares at something in the distance. His expression is drawn. She thinks it’s been a long time since he’s looked so tired.
Fingers brushing the metal frames, Hange savors their cool pressure on her nose. An extra pair of goggles. Why did he have them? “How did you-”
“Moblit. He foresaw shit like this happening. Told me he would be carrying an extra pair.”
“Moblit?” He had a set of goggles too?
Levi glanced back. “It wasn’t a bad idea. And you leave goggles fucking everywhere.” He nodded to the goggles on her head. “It was easy to pick up a pair you left lying around. Thought it would be best. His idea was fine. But Moblit’s not fast enough. The poor asshole can’t keep up with you.”
He says it like it was nothing, carrying a square, awkward container in his jacket all this time.
“Levi. Thank you.”
He looks away, shying from the open sincerity in her tone. “Try not to fucking break this pair.” And with that he stands. “Erwin called a retreat. I’ll call our horses. You can get your gear?”
She can. As she shuffles on sore legs, hurriedly collected the scattered maneuver gear, she spares a glance at the abandoned town, no longer a mass of shapes and colors. The Titans are steaming, decomposing beneath the sun. Monsters. But no longer creatures of nightmare. For she can see them. And what’s seen can be understood. And what’s understood can be fought.
Levi stands at the corner, fingers at his lips. He whistles a shrill summoning for their mounts. Watching him, she touches the goggles, nudging them down until they fit comfortably on the bridge of her nose.
“The horses are coming.” He looks over his shoulder. “You get everything? We could still run into more of the fuckers on our way back.”
“Got it,” she says, and gives the leather straps at her waist a precautionary tug.
The ride back is mercifully uneventful. They manage to connect with the regiment without running into any wandering Titans along the way. The lack of Titans is an anomaly for which Hange is, for once, grateful.
After her encounter, she feels drained – physically and mentally. It occurs to her she hasn’t had such a close call in – well, ever.
After a few weeks, however, she’s back to her usual routine. She’s reasoned that humanity’s war won’t be pausing in light of her traumatic experience. And so she presses on.
A month after the expedition, she resumes her Titan experimentation. If Levi makes a habit of walking the grounds in conjunction with her scheduled experimentation days, she doesn’t mention it. Neither does he.
Inevitably a new expedition is scheduled, and the appropriate plans and strategies are made. Whatever residual nerves she may harbor are forcibly repressed. She understands such feelings are a nothing but a hindrance to a scientist or soldier. And she is both.
It is two days prior to departure when she discovers one of her spare goggles has gone inexplicably missing. Snatched by a quick hand, she imagines, from the bookshelf on which they’d been left.
She studies the location of the crime, fingers sliding over the shelf, and realizes why the scene has drawn her eye. It is clean. Here, the dust and grime which has settled over the surrounding ledges like flurries of snow, is noticeably absent.
When she next sees Levi, she notes the subtle rectangular indentation beneath the left breast of his jacket. And it isn’t entirely reasonable, she knows. But the sight settles her nerves. For the moment, her fears are allayed.
She doesn’t speak of it. As they prepare for departure, she says nothing and he says nothing right back.
But as they ride out, she’s aware of his gaze, watchful and alert. As fast as she rides, impatient, hopelessly driven, always, by that which eludes her, he bends low over his horse, keeping up with even the most reckless canter.
The sky is clear, the scent of grass, crushed beneath galloping hooves is poignant and severe, and Titans wander, always waiting.
For now, she thinks, it’s enough.