She was beautiful. So beautiful and warm it made him sick. Where she walked, light followed. Endless nights were spent agonizing over her, her scent, her smile, the touch of her fingers on his wrist. She'd invaded every blocked off space within him and seemed oblivious to it. As if it happened entirely by accident. He vowed not to love her.

Nothing could come of it. It was some fun, an outlet. It didn't mean anything, he'd plead with himself as she giggled at brazen caresses. Disgusting, he lied to himself as he brushed golden strands from his pillow.

He simply hadn't the room for love. His existence began and ended with the recon corps. What was the great Captain Levi without the titans? Nothing but a man, and men were fallible. She was the achilles heel he was desperate to be rid of. She'd stuck her little hands right into his center and rooted around, tugging at his guts, pulling and digging until finally she grasped his heart.

"What is it you want?" She posed the question one night in his bed, the red in her cheeks finally fading. She should have been long gone by then.

He couldn't answer her, too ashamed of himself to be honest. He wanted to kill titans, to raise humanity up, to quench his anger. Spill the blood of every titan and match the blood spilt by his fallen comrades, drop for drop.

She scared him. Made him yearn for something more - for the things he forbade himself long ago. What place did children or marriage have in his world? Oh, how he wanted to say 'you'. Wanted to press his mouth against hers and say 'you'. Every inch of you. Your deep kisses and your laugh. Your skin under my palm and your hand on my neck. Make love to you and not care who hears. Nights with you, mornings with you. To walk through the forest with you, lie with you, hold you, completely unafraid. A future.

Instead he ran his fingers through his hair and counted the specks on the ceiling.

"What do you want, Petra?" His voice was near monotonous, as though they'd met in his office and not in his bed.

Her clear eyes didn't leave his face and his didn't leave the ceiling. Petra didn't mind. She drank in the line of his nose, the shadow his brow cast over his face, the white gleam of moonlight in his eye. They'd kept the candles lit, and his face seemed soft. He was still hot beside her. For an unbearable moment he worried she'd seen right through him.

She laid her head back on his shoulder and joined him in his ceiling gazing.

"To stay like this for a while longer. Enjoy what I have now." White fingers slipped through his and she gripped his palm tightly. He ought to send her back to her room.

"Get some sleep, we head for the forest early tomorrow morning."

Her cheek was already squished against his shoulder, her head heavy with slumber.

The time he would spend with her stacked up to mere months in the scheme of his life. A speck, a small window of light in the whole expanse of history. But it was all he had. All they would ever get. And just once, he'd given into someone else. TIme passes, things change, and people leave, but what they had in those months could never die.