A/N: I was going to kill Levi in this one but I couldn't do it.

Disclaimer: I don't own SnK

"Don't you ever do that again, do you hear me?"

Mikasa was lying on a bed in the sickroom, the sheets stained white swathed around her and her harnesses a tangled mess on the table next to her bed. She briefly contemplated keeping her eyes shut and let him think she was asleep, but she opened her eyes anyway. Captain Levi was standing by her bed, arms crossed over his chest, and his face showing the most emotion that she'd seen him display before. In a way, she vaguely thought, it seemed fitting that the only emotion he would ever express would be anger; especially if it was directed at her. She would be the first to admit that she was overtly disrespectful to Captain Levi—she'd expected some sort of reaction to come out of it ages ago.

"If I'm ever in danger, you don't come swooping out of the fucking sky and try to break your fucking bones trying to get me out of there. You get everyone, and you leave." His eyes seemed to be trying to burn a hole through her, and she resisted the urge to fidget uncomfortably under his gaze. She forced her face to remain impassive under his glare, before he turned abruptly and left, the door slamming after him.

It was 3 in the morning, by her estimate. The moon hung high in the indigo night, a thin sliver of silver in the backdrop of the stars. It was nice.

"Fucking brat, did you not learn anything from the last time?"

Her eyes were shut tightly, but she knew it was Captain Levi, here to (probably) yell at her again. There was absolutely no one—or so she was convinced anyway—that couldn't recognize him just by his voice alone. She opened her eyes, and waited for his image to stabilize before her.

"Didn't I tell you not to come after me?" Levi demanded. She thought of how, in a way, it was a good thing that she was so tightly wrapped up in her bandages; even if she wanted to fidget now, there was no way she was going to be able to. Her face remained emotionless as she stared at him, meeting his gaze evenly as she waited for him to storm out like he did previously. Tonight, though, he didn't seem like he was going to leave without a proper answer from her.

"I don't like leaving people behind," she finally said.

"Cry me a river." He snapped. "If you want to be an asset to humanity, you damn well learn to leave when you're still alive."

"Is that why you're still alive?" She arched an eyebrow at him, ignoring her sore muscles protesting inside of her.

He glared at her for a few more moments, before stalking to the door. At the threshold, he paused for a moment. "Don't waste all the resources humanity has sacrificed to groom you into the soldier you are now." The door shut loudly behind him, and the candle by the door flickered slightly at the gust of wind it produced.

Mikasa let out a quiet sigh and gingerly allowed her muscles to relax again. She'd almost forgotten how lonely the sickroom was at night, without Eren and Armin and the rest of the squad coming by to check on her at all hours of the day.

It was half past 2 in the morning and her harnesses were tangled up in themselves on the table next to her bed. The moon was bright in the night sky, brighter than all the stars she could see. It was nice.

"Fucking hell, Ackerman."

Levi was here again. She'd dropped the honorific from his name, officially, since she figured that if you saved someone three times it placed you on equal footing, even if he did have a higher rank than you. She opened her eyes. Abruptly, Levi sighed and sat on the chair by the bed.

"I would have gotten out of it myself."

"No, you wouldn't," she disagreed. It was a lie—she knew he would have managed to get out of the situation. With more broken bones and maybe missing a few minor limbs (fingers, and such), but still alive nonetheless. But when she'd seen him flung by the Titan, flying without the usual grace his 3DMG lent him, she'd jumped without thinking, intercepting him in mid-air, blocking out the rest of the Titans lumbering towards their position. She'd landed hard on her heel, shattering it, and he'd cursed her thoroughly while gaining control again and bringing the both of them out of the mess.

He ignored her rebuff. "Start to learn to leave things behind, Ackerman. If you don't learn that lesson, I won't feel comfortable leaving the squad behind to you." Her eyes flicked to his in surprise, breaking the impassive mask she'd held firmly onto until now.

"Don't look so surprised," he glared at her. "Apart from myself, you're the strongest soldier we have to offer, and the only one I'd trust with my squad. So stop trying to save everyone and getting yourself into dangerous situations—there'll be no one left to manage this bunch of idiots if we both die."

There was silence then, one alive with tension and surprise. Then, "You were getting Connie, weren't you?" Mikasa's quiet question ballooned, taking the air with it as it went. "I saw—out of the corner of my eye—he was trapped between two Titans, and you went in to get him."

"Tch." Levi picked up her harnesses and started to untangle them. He didn't answer her question, instead focussing on picking through the knots in his hands, his nimble (and intact) fingers dancing through the loops. "When I die, Ackerman, you're getting the squad. I'd suggest you learn to differentiate which battles can be fought, and which can't."

"Then stop trying to make me do your job, and make sure you come back alive," she hissed. "You've already made me scrub kitchens and stables and mess halls for you; don't make me have to do your job for you, too. Besides," she added mutinously, "I could argue that you don't pick your battles, either,"

"Point taken, Ackerman. I'll try not to get killed, and you won't do anything stupid." He finally said.

She let out a soft hum of agreement, her head rolling back on the pillow. The moon was almost full in the night sky, and it illuminated the lining of the clouds. It was 3 in the morning when she finally drifted off to sleep. She woke up the next morning to find herself snugly wrapped in the sheets, and her harnesses folded neatly on the table.

"Fuck," Mikasa breathed, her breath hitching.

The week had been long, and bloody. The Titans had finally stormed in, and battle had raged on. The seeming insanity had been drawn out over a period of time, and was finally winding down as Eren, Reiner, Bertholdt, Ymir and Annie smashed their way through the Titans' ranks and carved opportunities for humanity to take a giant step forward.

She'd seen soldiers ripped into 2 and thrown on the ground to be trampled upon; she'd seen men and women stuffed into the Titans' gaping maws which smiled obscenely in the midst of the chaos and horror; she'd seen people screaming their last words in high-pitched, grotesque terror—and still she flew on, slicing necks here and there in practiced discipline, refilling her gas as and when she could, replacing her blades almost religiously every two hours.

And yet—when it was almost over—she found herself in a living nightmare, unable to move. She'd run out of gas minutes before, tumbling to the ground, thankful to be relatively unharmed on the blood-soaked arena. But that was before she'd taken her coordinates and found herself far from and of the stations set up for soldiers to refill their gas—and far from any other soldiers, who were facing down the last of the Titans together. A Titan had moved towards her—Aberrant—15 metre class—her mind raced, throwing blank, useless facts at her.

Just as it was closing in on her, something swooped in from above, picking her up by her waist.

"Damn it, Ackerman. I thought we'd agreed to try not to let ourselves get killed," a familiar voice sounded in her ear as she swung through the air with him. She watched the setting sun as she felt the familiar jerk of arms swinging round to slice a Titan's neck, and heard it fall to the ground with an unlikely thump.

"You weren't supposed to get yourself killed," she said, still breathless and almost hysterical with relief. "I was just supposed to not do anything stupid,"

"You don't call this stupid?" He demanded, as he changed course halfway through the air. She didn't reply, still struggling on trying to get her breathing under control. He glanced back at her quickly, then landed on a tree. "Snap out of it, Ackerman," he hissed, a firm hand placed on her shoulder, warming her through the Survey Corps jacket.

She caught her breath and forced herself to take several deep inhales, her eyes fluttering open and shut, alternating between the two. Sometime in the minute she had taken to get herself under control, she noticed something off about his stance. "What happened to your leg?"

"Must have sprained it. Are you alright now?" He asked, picking her up easily, ready to let loose again.

"How?" The wind whipped through their hair and into their eyes, but her mouth was next to his ear, and she could tell by the way that he tensed that he'd heard her.

"When I picked you up," he grunted, landing on the platform in the trees near a gas tank. "Fill it up."

She obeyed automatically, her hands moving quickly over the machinery. "I thought you said to learn to leave people behind," she murmured. When she turned back for his response, he was gone, and she only saw a darting figure in the air, aiming for the tangle of hot blood near the walls.

The sickroom was dark and quiet; only one bed was occupied. The other injured soldiers had been carted off the hospitals within Wall Shina to be treated, but Levi had told Erwin in no uncertain terms that he would be staying here to deal with the aftermath of the war, and Erwin had accepted it.

Before leaving to the inner city, both Hanji and Erwin had come in to check on him and make sure everything would be fine. To his slight surprise, Hanji had offered to clean up the corner of the room for him, saying that he probably wouldn't be able to rest well if there was even a speck of dust floating around. While that certainly wasn't true, he hadn't felt any qualms about taking the scientist up on her offer, and had made her wipe down the furniture at least twice, and redo the sheets so that the creases were eliminated. She'd scowled, Levi had shrugged, and Erwin had stood by and watched the scene with slight amusement.

He'd slept for a while after they'd left, but had woken up towards the end of the evening, and had spent hours staring at the darkening sky beyond the window. Now his eyes were shut and he was trying to get back to sleep, but the nightmares were plaguing him that night and his consciousness struggled against the pull of exhaustion. He was contemplating getting out of bed anyway, to fuck with Erwin's orders, when the door to the room opened quietly.

"Levi?"

Mikasa Ackerman. There wasn't a chance that another brat wouldn't be attaching 'Captain' to his name before addressing him; and besides, he'd grown accustomed to her voice in the dark, and that was that right there.

He opened his eyes and looked straight at her, the light in the hallway behind her throwing dramatic shadows into the room. She stepped in and shut the door behind her, and crossed over the empty space to him.

"Thank you for not making me do your job for you," she finally said, taking a seat on the edge of his bed when she couldn't find the chair that Hanji had taken away and hidden when she couldn't clean it to Levi's satisfaction.

"At least one of us kept the promise, then."

She scowled at him, then softened. "I can't believe we won the war,"

He looked at her then, the girl whose eyes were heavy with exhaustion from the past few days, whose domineering spirit had almost been worn away to nothing. "Tell me, Ackerman, why are you here trying to talk to me at 1 in the morning when you should be sleeping?"

"You should be sleeping, too,"

"Humour me."

She sighed, shifting slightly on the bed. "I can't sleep. I don't understand how everyone else can sleep so peacefully—I look at them lying there, and I keep thinking, that's how they'll look like dead."

"Nightmares?" He guessed.

A faint draft of wind blew in through the open window, and she nodded, pulling her red scarf around her tightly. Levi arched an eyebrow, then pulled his blanket half off, moving to a side of the bed. She looked at him in confusion, and slight alarm.

"I'd rather you didn't end up with a cold by the end of tonight, if you're going to be staying here."

She wondered slightly at his passive tone—as if he did this all the time—but gingerly slid into the space he'd recently vacated. A quick movement of his arm ensured the blanket fell evenly about the two of them, and she thought for a quick moment that so stern was his demeanour that not even bedclothes would disobey him.

They lay there in silence for a while. Then, "I get them too."

"Nightmares?"

He gave her a slightly aggravated look, before turning his gaze back outside the window. "Everyone I've outlived come back to haunt me another time, another day. They don't mean to, I'm sure—that's what makes it worse."

She caught his hand under the blanket, relaxing when he didn't pull away from her grasp, or demand to know what she was doing. Instead, his fingers tightened around hers, and their silence stretched far into the night.

They fell asleep at 2 in the morning, by Mikasa's estimates, the full moon vibrant over the bloodied grass, the dew on the blades just beginning to clean itself in the cool night air. The sky outside was lit up with brilliant constellations tracing new shapes in the dark, forging a new path in the blackness before them.