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The winds aren't as wild on top of Rose in the afternoons in comparison to the rest of the day, so the initial thought that the lines had come loose during the morning hours is perfectly, sanely plausible.

Moblit spins into his propulsion, landing with acrobatic ease on the platform of the wall. Strange, he tells himself as he glances down at the quilt over the Titan's face, the lines are as tight as they were before… they don't look like they've been tampered with at all. He catches sight of Hange seated directly above the monster's forehead. And she doesn't seem too concerned over it… she was there when I left.

Well, the thought would have been plausible, if something didn't feel so terribly off about the whole thing.

"Squad Leader?"

Hange jumps to her feet like a startled cat. By the way her hands immediately move away from the blades she almost connected to her hilts, he knows she was lost in a troubling state of mind. Any closer and they would have to scrape his remains from the tier. "Moblit?"

"Sorry ma'am, didn't mean to scare you."

"It's, uh, it's fine." She visibly relaxes, despite the tension in her gaze. "What are you doing up here?"

He blinks absently for a moment, pondering her words, increasingly confused at her unexpected question. "I… I thought you called for me? Didn't you tell Eren that you wanted to see me to fix one of the lines, when you saw him in the barracks before?"

Hange's lips part. And then her expression drops.

"Moblit… I haven't left the Wall all day."

He swallows drily. "Oh no."

"Eren."

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I have to do this. I have to do this.

I want to do this.

Eren works quickly with the contents of his sack, every now and then reciting Annie's name, glancing at the injuries of her body. The scar on her abdomen, where he had stabbed her straight through, is still raw with irritation. Scar. It had healed. "Annie," he tries again, insistently shaking her too still form by her shoulder, "please wake up, we're running out of time! And this was your freaking idea, don't leave me to do all the work!"

And then… her eyes flutter open. "Mm… Eren, it's about time… it's really cold down here."

He chortles, whisking the sheet from her body as he pulls out the uniform she had left in his old room, that he grabbed before leaving Castle Utgard in its rubble of remains. "Sorry, I had to clean up a mess at Castle Utgard before I could come get you. Seems a Titan buddy of yours brought a horde of Titans into Wall Rose."

Annie sits up gradually, adjusting to the lead in her body as exhaustion gradually disperses from her system. "Titan buddy?"

"Something about… an Ape Titan?"

She furrows her brow. "I don't… I don't know anything about that."

Eren thrusts the clothes into her hands. "We'll discuss it later. I couldn't buy as much time as you wanted, so you need to move quickly." He helps her stabilize herself on the floor as she attempts to stand, and after a minute to familiarize herself with her weight again, she proceeds to throw on her uniform, minus her jacket to allow her body better maneuvering to strap on her belts. "There's a back exit across the hall if we make it up the steps in time. It's a shortcut through the supply room, so we can grab some gear and canisters."

"Eren…"

He faces her, adjusting her belts on her chest. "Yes?"

"Are you sure you still want to go through with this? I mean… if you come with me, to the Village, there's no guarantee when you'll be back, or how the Scouting Legion will act upon your return. They may treat you as a criminal. They may even opt to execute you on sight."

Eren gestures for her to turn and he tightens the straps along her waist, back, the loosened one on her thigh. "That's a chance I'm willing to take."

"Even after everything I've done?"

He lets her face him once more, her skylit orbs hazy with the regret of everyone she's killed, all his friends, his family – after hurting Armin, killing Erd, Gunter, Petra, Auruo… "This isn't about you," he says decidedly, "it's about the future. But this"—he takes her wrist, tracing her ring with his middle finger—"this is a promise that I'll protect you, no matter what. So even when it's not about you, or us, please… please don't doubt me, or doubt that what I'm doing is right."

Annie swallows the lump in her throat. "Okay. Let's go."

He completely takes her hand and guides her up the ascent to the main level. He glances around quickly before they sprint for the opposing end of the hall into the supply room. Eren shuts the door gently behind them, snapping the lock into place.

Annie checks the inner belt sizes of the female gears for numbers before finding her fit. Eren rifles through the men's options on the opposing wall. "Can I congratulate you on that excellent crying performance in the city though?" she muses as she locks the gears into place on her loops. "You screamed right in my ear but I had already lost consciousness before I got annoyed with it. Very believable."

Eren tightens his straps and snatches up four canisters of gas as she collects blades from the bottom shelves. "Ann, I love you, but less talking, more escaping."

He loads the tanks into her gear ports as she pops the blades into her holsters. They trade positions a moment later, just as the commotion begins outside the basement entrance. Eren finishes sheathing his last pair of cutlasses and gestures for them to exit silently through the outside door.

And as they step into the back alley, a familiar figure clears his throat. "And where the fuck, exactly, do you think you're going?"

Eren goes rigid in his spot. "Captain Levi…"

Shit.

Annie knows, that although Levi lacks any gear at the moment, he could catch up to them before they had any chance of making it to their escape route. The man stands only several meters away, three bounds out of reach – he could grab one of them if they tried to run for it.

"Captain, please." Eren raises his hands defensively, showing the opposing soldier that his fingers are not on the gas levers, so he makes no move to flee. "Just hear me out… This isn't about Annie or me or anything that's happened… I need her help to save humanity, and the only way to know I'm doing the right thing is to make a move before it's too late. I've wasted too much time behind these walls, making no progress. You have to understand-"

"I do."

Eren parts his lips, but fumbles for words. "You… you do?"

Levi turns his gaze to the blonde shifter poised behind her fiancé. "I agree that we've all been taking too long. I wish you would have given us more time, but I do know that time has never been on our side."

Somewhere close by, a resonance of shouting hums through the air, calls of 'They've escaped!' and 'They couldn't have gotten too far!'. They're coming, and if the shifters didn't make a break for it now they would certainly be caught – and all of this, their plan and their future, would be gone with their heads at a public execution. Eren frantically glances between the street behind them and his squad captain.

"Eren, you know better than anyone what must be done now." Levi tilts his head, gesturing for them to run. "My team didn't die for nothing. Show me that their sacrifice meant something to you."

After a brief moment to absorb his words, Eren aims his hilts for the nearest building's roof top. "Thank you, Captain."

And with a blast of gas he rockets up and over, landing on the tier with acrobatic ease. Annie exchanges one last look with the veteran soldier. "I'm sorry," she whispers, and she follows Eren onto the roof and over, disappearing into the city with Humanity's last hope.

Stupid brats.

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Occasionally Eren and Annie will notice that the Scouting Legion is right on their tails and they cut through side roads, streamlining through the streets, barely avoiding the mass of citizens bustling around, but the thick crowd allows them to maneuver into narrow alleys so their pursuers lose visual. It buys them enough time to escape back on the roof tops, Wall Maria's signature clock towers providing them with proper leverage for swinging on arcs.

Their gas canisters are running dangerously low, however, by the time they make it to the passage that will lead them down into the Under City.

This one, unlike the other they collapsed during their brawl, is lined with lit torches, and Annie sticks close to Eren as she guides him through the slums, abiding to the route she knows so she can easily avoid the presence of the Military Police in their sectors. Three too-thin, too-sickly children in their rags - because honestly, Annie doesn't think she can call them clothes anymore, not through all that soot and old blood stains - jump up when the duo pass by them, begging them for scraps of food. Eren takes a moment to pat down his pockets before he digs up three coins, giving one to each.

"Thank you!" they giggle in chorus, taking off for the main market, or perhaps to show their parents what the nice man in the uniform gave them.

Something hardens in Eren's gaze. "I've only ever heard of how horrible it is to live down here," he mutters some time later, but she shushes him (we can talk about it when we have that kind of time to waste) until they reach a cavern wall that is lined with stairs carved out of the compressed stone.

"This is it," she remarks, taking point.

She guides him up, carefully, ascending nearly five stories up to the platform that branches into an opening in the wall. It is pitch black. Shit.

"Let me go first," Eren offers, taking her hand and stepping first into the awaiting unknown. She hesitates for a brief, almost unnoticeably quick second. "You'll be okay. I promise."

She exhales a shaky breath, and after another beat of silence, lets him take the lead. They squeeze between the passage walls; Eren keeps one hand stretched out to stop himself from running face-first into rocks, sweeping from side to side, moving swiftly to find the exit.

A small light ignites in the shadows up ahead. The flickering torch flame illuminates the darkness, outlining a face that vaguely reminds Eren of his fiancée, the features of the nose almost like a perfect reflection and eyes as translucent blue as the sky. Moving up from his seat on a crumbling slab of cobblestone, the man easily rivals Reiner in terms of bulk but isn't much taller than Eren himself.

He turns to them as they approach him in turn. "Daddy," Annie utters, gazing up at him expectantly.

His frigid gaze passes between her and Eren. "This is him?"

"Yes."

Then his attention diverts to their hands, still entwined from the walk, before he rushes forward, pulling his daughter into a hug. She's smushed against his superlative mass to the point that she thinks he might flatten her, but it is a hug all the same and she gladly accepts it. "My beautiful daughter," he whispers into her hair, "my beautiful, beautiful Annie…" A moment later he reaches out and sucks Eren into the moment. "My son…"

Eren pats him awkwardly on the shoulder, moving his other arm around Annie's waist to keep them from pressing so uncomfortably together, but then he remembers – remembers that neither his nor Annie's parents ever got to watch their child grow up, forced into maturity before their time so they could pretend to be making a difference in this unforgiving world.

And for the first time in forever, Eren knows that everything will be okay.

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A/N: Y'all need to have a little more faith in me. Final chapter up next~