continuance; noun — the state of remaining in existence or operation.

You've been waiting, so now's the time if any. I hope this (early, a month exactly) birthday fic is just as interesting as it would be a month from now. I just wanted to say happy fucking birthday, Jade, and hopefully it's the best you've ever had, whatever the reasons. I'm so thankful that NightClan exists because of you; had your majestic admin ass not created it I would have never made some of the close friends I have, including you. I've had some of the best moments of my life with you guys and it hasn't even been two months. It's all thanks to you. I'm truly grateful to have you as a friend (ahem, a wife) and I hope this fic lives up to your expectations. I love you, and happy birthday in advance, my love!

.&.

do or die, you'll never make me,
because the world will never take my heart.

— welcome to the black parade; my chemical romance

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Red painted the sky, flashing upwards in an arc until it fizzled out high in the air. Titans.

The flare was repeated down the line until it reached them and Levi pulled the gun out from under his cloak, shoving a cartridge, redredred, almost always red (everything he touched), into the side before turning it skyward. His own flare arched up and disappeared, and the next group down the line shot their own after his.

The trees were close now, almost like the eerily giant ones near the Walls, too similar to erase the memories from forests like these. The hooves of his horse were drowning out almost every other noise as they sped up, but the pounding of inhuman feet was louder, the crashing of tree boughs as they split in two, and he watched as the first one emerged from the trees, 14 meters tall and well-muscled, running straight for them.

He turned, catching Eren's eye as he did.

"Don't transform unless you're ordered to!" He called back. He waited until the other three (only god knows why they gave him all four shifters, or perhaps erwin, though some days he suspected the two were interchangeable) looked back at him, nodding their heads, despite the fact that Bertholdt wouldn't be able to in the trees.

Annie Leonhardt's sacrifice had not been in vain. In the ruins of Shiganshina, fighting for their lives (ymir was with them, humanity's ally, although the other two were more reluctant and annie leonhardt was still a prisoner) she made her decision. Against orders, she transformed, bolts of lightning crackling over their heads as the Female Titan leapt headfirst into the mass of titans that had appeared from seemingly nowhere, like the ground had opened up and birthed them from the center of the earth itself. Reiner had screamed something and then he was gone, replaced by the Armored Titan with Bertholdt on his shoulder.

"We're done for! He'll kill us all!" Someone had screamed, he didn't even know their name, but the Armored Titan hadn't turned towards the humans (towards their natural prey). And he hadn't even had time to stop the rest of the former 104th, his squad, from taking to the air after the two of them, and by the time the last titan fell to the ground dead, Armin had pulled what was left of Annie Leonhardt's human body from the ruins.

They watched in silence that night, in the ruins of a ghost city, as she burned. The pyre sent a smoke trail into the sky that was still there come morning, and he could see it in their eyes, in the eyes of kids barely seventeen and eighteen, that they'd been here before, had set their friends bodies in the midst of indistinguishable piles of dead and watched them disappear.

He remembered watching Sasha grab Jean's hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing until his knuckles went white from the pressure. He'd suspected for some time now that the 104th locked ghosts inside their hearts and threw the keys into the same fire their friends burned in, but seeing it was something else entirely. Like he never gave them enough credit for the gaping wounds and broken bones that they fought through to save those they loved. And he knew, somewhere inside his own ghost-filled heart that they still blamed themselves for every death that happened on their watch and off it, because maybe if they had been there it wouldn't have happened at all.

He understands that.

"Sir!"

He snapped back into reality. Jean was beside him, nodding towards the titan, much closer than before and he nodded once before they were both in the air, their horses grabbed by someone else, and they were under the shadows of the trees in seconds. Jean fired a hook, cobalt and sharp ivory wings billowing out behind him, and swung towards the nearest tree with the titan's eyes following him, maw opening as he focused in on him and no one else.

Just as planned.

Levi was quicker, a hook sunk deep into the skin of the titan's neck, and he spun, once and then twice, the blade slicing through flesh and sinew and the titan was falling to the ground with blood spewing from the back of its neck.

Another one had appeared, only six or seven meters this time and Sasha yelled something in her best garbled mountainfolk accent, and it turned like it wanted to have a goddamn conversation with her but Mikasa was there behind it and Sasha swerved her horse around, narrowly missing getting by its body as it fell.

It was quiet, too quiet, if you asked him, as he landed on the ground with Jean just behind him. He looked around, towards the direction the two had emerged from but the ground had stopped shaking. He looked up, seeing the faint tremor of the leaves and his eyes narrowed, the slightest movement catching his eye.

What the hell.

Something was wrong.

Historia screamed, a bloodcurdling sound, and he barely had time to react, looked up again to see one leaping down from the trees, directly above them, wouldn't be able to get out of them out of the way in time—

A thunderous clap deafened him for a brief second, something blurred overhead, they were all yelling at once, and then the titan was gone, correction, the titans were, because the Armored Titan had jumped clear over them, slamming into the other titan before crashing to the ground fifty feet away from the force.

Why did no one ever fucking listen to him.

"Reiner!"

He didn't even know who screamed it but they were all moving at once, scrambling for their horses and another one leapt down from the trees with a smaller companion clinging to its back like an infant and amidst the chaos he barely heard the, "Ymir, don't!" before there was another titan standing in front of him where Ymir had been seconds before, and then seven meters of human-turned-titan was leaping into the trees, crashing into smaller titans. Connie and Historia hung on to separate shoulders, blades out and glinting in the dappled light as they sliced necks, the huge corpses raining down along with the more horrifying live ones, eyes bright and eager.

The dinner bell had rung, loud and clear. And they were the meal, served on a polished silver platter.

The direction they had come from was swarming with smaller titans and the hulking form of the Armored Titan was looming in the space they had to go, throwing enemy bodies like a child's doll backwards over his shoulder so hard they landed outside the trees. Ymir was still dancing high above them, grabbing tree limbs like a gymnast's bar as she swung forward. His blades were half gone already, stained with blood he didn't remember taking; his body moving on autopilot, trying to kill as quickly as possible.

Two of his four shifters had transformed and one wouldn't be able to in this environment, so where was—

Bolts of white-hot energy crashed over his head, sea-green eyes flashing and an unearthly howl echoing through the forest.

—Eren.

Later he would possibly kill all of them, or himself, he hadn't decided yet. Now it was too late, he couldn't cut the three of them out and survive; all of them would die (not again, it won't happen again).

"GET OUT OF THE TREES—!"

He made sure every head he could count had locked onto him for confirmation and watched them blur past him, counting in his head.

Reiner scooped Sasha off the ground in a giant hand and then Bertholdt was hauling her up onto his shoulder, leaning precariously into empty air. Ymir was still in the trees, now moving in the direction of safety with Connie staring back at him and Historia tucked into the crook between neck and shoulder. Eren was turning to follow, Mikasa perched on his shoulder, blades still held out and she watched as Jean retracted his hooks, arching through the trees and Eren reached out with one monstrous hand and snatched him clean out of the air (we have to go).

Three titans. Six humans.

Not seven.

Fuck.

"Arlert!"

He spun in a full circle on the branch he had landed on, searching for blonde hair, a green just slightly unlike the leaves, anything.

Nothing.

He turned around, looking to where the Armored Titan's form had halted in the trees, looking back, hesitating to go without someone and Eren had paused entirely, poised between two trees, eyes flashing and fists clenched and Jean and Mikasa looked ready to go with him, find Armin, didn't want to go a step further without someone, they couldn't lose somebody else.

"Go!" He yelled at them, simultaneously firing a hook at a nearby tree and he swung away from them, around Eren's head and disappeared back into the thickest of the trees.

Where is he?

A titan launched itself into the air near him, gripping the trees in pursuit of Levi, steadily pulling himself closer and he slammed his gas into overdrive, pushing himself faster, scanning the ground for something (don't let it be a body, not again).

And then he saw him, just barely, surrounded by six titans all over ten meters and he still had both blades out, deadly sharp, but launching himself straight up to get the vantage point would mean suicide, with their hands looming and teeth sharp to cut through bones, his bones. Blue eyes flickered to him through the space between, widening a bit, he thought he was dead for sure, his eyes had already admitted defeat.

Then Levi was upon them.

The first one hadn't seen him coming, none of them had, and it goes down in seconds along with the first of his now empty blades. The rest pinpoint him in seconds despite the fact that he hasn't stopped moving (new prey) but the second isn't quick enough and his blade slices through skinless flesh, blood splashing hot and cloying against the side of his face.

The third's reaching for him when Armin takes to the air, using the advantage of the two corpses to dart out in between, and the four left are reaching for Levi anyway, and he's yelling at Armin (go! find eren, before I kill you myself) and then Armin's gone, fading into the trees.

A hand wraps around him, courtesy of the third and his blade slices through fingers and then neck, and it lands, crumpled, on top of its two friends. The fourth goes down before it even moves and he's shooting straight, like one of Sasha's well-aimed arrows, to the back of the fifth, holding out his blade to the side when he realizes that it's not there, gone completely and he's out of them. He tries to backpedal, tries to glide to the nearest branch and get away, but it's exactly that moment when his gas canisters decide to empty themselves out entirely, and then he's fallingfallingfalling, and he closes his eyes because he doesn't want to watch a titan devour him, and all he can think is I didn't expect to die saving the lives of those brats.

As far as last thoughts go, that's about as shitty as it gets.

Someone screams, yells his name somewhere amidst the chaos, and he cracks his eyes open, sees an uneven jaw and oddly pointed ears, black hair passes in front of his face and blades, and then two hands lock around one of his forearms and he's being yanked up, so hard it feels like his arm is being ripped from the socket. He forces himself to look up, through the blood dripping into his eyes (he's covered in it, steaming and fresh) and he sees Scouting Legion wings and Jean is hanging off of Eren's shoulder, hanging onto him. He yells something behind him and then Armin grabs his shoulders from behind and yanks, pulling them both up. He has no clue what Eren's doing, he can barely see through the blood in his eyes, but the three of them are jerked violently, and they slam hard against his neck. And then he sees the titan hanging from Eren's jaws, the largest one, reduced to a mass of bubbling viscera and bright red blood, dripping from his lipless mouth.

Reiner bursts out of the forest, tearing a tree clear from the ground and it topples over onto the mass grave of titans. Ymir is crouched on the ground below them, like she's daring any more to appear and challenge them. Eren drops the remains of the titan and Mikasa lands neatly on his shoulder, blades stained with the blood of the last.

They're moving, as one, out of the small clearing and towards the trees. He vaguely registers someone keeping him in place, he doesn't trust himself to hold on, his fingers are so slick with blood and the scent's so thick he feels like he can't breathe. He doesn't know if it feels like minutes or hours have passed; like someone smashed every sense of time he had to pieces.

The light is bright, unnatural, even, when they emerge from the trees and Eren's titan form collapses to the ground, sending shudders up and down his spine and through the ground beneath them. Despite the titan in his jaws not a few minutes ago and the wild punches, he's injured and bleeding heavily, if the steam if anything to go by. Mikasa has already maneuvered herself behind the neck, ready to cut Eren out and Jean and someone he doesn't recognize, he doesn't know where Armin's gone, carefully get him to the ground. He ends up on his hands and knees, blood dripping from his hair into the grass.

He hears more than sees Sasha and Connie free Ymir from the titan body, the thick, squelching sound of innards being moved. He looks up, sees Ymir's bloodied form and the stark red lines under her eyes where the nerves ripped free, but then Historia all but pulls the taller girl into her lap, wrapping her arms tight around her.

Bertholdt has already freed Reiner and they sit, shoulders pressed together in the grass, eyes wide with shock like they can barely register what has happened.

There's a hand on his back, he doesn't know if it's Jean or someone else and he doesn't have the energy to look up, not that he can really see anyway. His limbs are trembling and there's a thick pool of blood in his mouth and gathering at every dip in his face and there's a puddle of it beneath him.

"Is he— shit, is he okay?"

Levi looks up, sees Eren held up by Mikasa's arms, and he lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. They're all alive, bleeding and exhausted but here, and that's all that really matters. He waves a hand, idly, and he doesn't really know what it's supposed to mean but Eren lets himself slump back against Mikasa, visibly relieved.

He can hear the hoofbeats as the rest of the Corps emerges from the woods, gathering around the slowly disappearing shifter corpses. He slowly maneuvers onto his side and rolls flat onto his black, turning his head to take in their surroundings.

The treeline has ended about fifty feet behind them, and directly to the other side hills, almost dune-like in appearance, slope and cut off their vision to the other side. Other than that, everything around them is relatively normal.

If you could call a forest-filled with tree-climbing titans normal, that is.

Hearing the sounds of the other horses soon alert him to the fact that they don't have any now, they were turned into titan food the second they were abandoned, or they're squished flat on the forest floor. His plan for the immediate future is to now send Sasha out to steal eleven horses without anyone noticing.

It wouldn't even surprise him if she could do it anymore. He's long since gotten over every one of their weird talents, like her stuffing an entire army's worth of food in her mouth and being nothing but content, and Jean and Ymir's late night snark wars that never ended until Eren shoved them both off their respective beds.

It almost feels as if his life would be stranger without such things happening, now.

Erwin's staring at him from a few feet away and he rolls his eyes at Levi's inability to gather the energy to move, turning back to Hanji and Moblit. He glares at Erwin's back, not wanting to do much else at the moment. Erwin knows he's okay, he's seemingly always okay (on the outside).

He closes his eyes again and feels Jean stand up beside him, and he can sense how his muscles tense up, going rigid completely.

"Armin!"

What in the ever-loving fuck is going on now? He's never going to be able to close his eyes for more than a few seconds. He props himself up on his elbows, squinting his eyes against the light, searching for Armin. And then he sees him, alone.

Armin had collapsed at the top of one of the hills, shape silhouetted against the burning sky (he didn't think he was injured, but he wasn't moving). Eren was struggling up towards him, body feebly trying to heal itself through the waves of steam floating into the empty air. Despite Mikasa trying to slow his journey (you'll make it worse— eren, stop) he pushed on, legs shaking to hold up his bleeding body.

"Armin, what's wrong. Armin, are you—"

He could hear from his position at the bottom of the hill how Eren's voice shook and trembled, how the words got stuck in his throat the second he reached Armin, and he could see Mikasa's paper white fingers tighten on his arm.

They were staring over the crest, into what he couldn't see.

He didn't know what made him get up and move, albeit shakily, his feet operating on their own and his fingers dropping the bladeless hilts to the ground to be forgotten about. The hill was steep, steeper than it looked, but there was the slightest bit of sand under his feet through the tangled grasses, and shit, this was happening.

This couldn't exist. Things like this only existed in the books Armin fell asleep on at three in the morning and in framed paintings in rich Sina houses. Not here. Not in real life, so tangible and clear it seemed to be an illusion, ready to shatter.

"Holy fuck."

Jean's voice snapped him out of it, eloquent as ever. They had come up from behind, the three of them, Connie and Sasha attached to either of his sides like if they let go everything would disappear. Ymir had both arms wrapped around a trembling Historia as they sunk to the ground together, the glossy tears in Historia's eyes reflecting back the scene before them. Bertholdt all but dragged Reiner's broad form up the slope, still weak from being cut out of the Armored Titan's neck, but that light in his golden eyes was unmistakable.

Hope.

"That .. That's it," Armin whispered, but it sounded so loud, like the rush of blood in his ears or the thunderclap of a transformation, but loudest of all was the stark silence that followed his words.

"That's the ocean."

It was blue and green all at the same time (of course it was the same fucking colour as eren's eyes, this was just turning into a bigger cliché by the second), lapping gently at the edge of the sandy shore, spraying salt into the air in plumes that misted away across the breeze. It stretched out as far as the eye could see, falling over the horizon.

Briefly, from the corner of his eye, he sees Sasha lean around Jean, cocking an eyebrow at Connie. The boy (he's eighteen now, dammit) has barely a second to react before she grabs his arm and tugs him down the slope, shrieking something unintelligible and Connie's laughing and it feels as if he hasn't heard such a sound in too long.

It's ruined— of course it is, when Connie stumbles, trips over his own two feet and promptly eats sand, landing face first halfway down the hill. Jean can't bite back a snort and Historia's laughing through the tears, everyone's shaking their head or giggling and he can fight titans and beat the shit out of teenagers in front of a full court but he's unequipped for this.

Connie's back on his feet now, chasing after Sasha like nothing at all had happened and she's already knee-deep in the water with her gear still on and she's never going to be able to wear those boots again, he thinks. The blood is washing away into the water like it was never there, and Connie disappears as he dunks his head under, only to come up with an accumulation of bubbles as he surfaces.

"This water tastes like shit!" He splutters, waving his hands frantically at Sasha who most definitely has no hope of ever stopping her laughter at the rate she's going.

"You're not supposed to drink it, dumbass!" Ymir calls, grinning down at them. He promptly spins around and gives her the finger before diving after Sasha, who is already wading farther out. Ymir shifts, getting Historia in a comfortable position across her back before making a mad dash down the hill towards the water like she wasn't just cut out of a titan. The latter is shrieking all the way down, looping her arms tighter around Ymir's neck (slow down, I don't want to end up like connie!) but Ymir splashes into the waves still holding her, and they go down, limbs tangled, as a wave smashes into her knees.

Levi's seriously demanding a refund on his feelings if the day continues on like this.

Reiner leans back on one hand, wrapping his other arm around Bertholdt's shoulder, and watches over his friends below (they came back as warriors, as friends to humanity) and he looks content to sit there for days despite the steam rising from his body and his blooded uniform.

In the new few seconds, Jean moves and grabs both of Armin's wrists, yanking him to his feet. There are two sets of hands on Armin's back— Eren and Mikasa, always with him, and they steadily push him forward until they're moving down the slope, towards the beach, towards the ocean.

Halfway down Jean leaves them and rockets down the hill and he's at Sasha's side in seconds (how many new pairs of fucking boots are they going to need after this). He puts both hands on her shoulders and pushes her under the water, silencing her downright demonic screeches as she tries in vain to fight him off. It's nice, seeing something other than a scowl or glare on Jean's face for once, but he's gone seconds later as Connie slams into his side in his quest to save Sasha.

By now Armin has stumbled into the shallows and promptly gives up walking, settling himself in water that's only a few inches deep, but he's never looked so damn happy. Mikasa sits down next to him, smiling softly, leaning her shoulder into his as Eren charges into deeper water.

A hand lands on his shoulder, surprisingly hard and he'll deny the fact that he jumped a little later on. He turns, meets dark brown eyes behind a pair of smudged glasses.

"Levi," Hanji grins, hand tightening on his shoulder.

"What do you want, four-eyes?" He questions, trying to keep the glare off his face. Right now, he doesn't even have the heart to shake her hand off; his arm still burns like hell and his limbs are slick with steaming blood, slowly evaporating into the air. Her smile grows and she bumps her shoulder against his.

"We're going in."

"There's no way in fucking hell I'm going in there. Do you understand how fucking filthy that water probably is?" He spits back, because there's no way, thank you very fucking much. He can see it in her eyes, the way they brightened with excitement, with the acceptance of a challenge.

"Well, the water's not any filthier than you," she points out, raising her eyebrows at him, and he can't help the glower that crosses his face because she's right.

"Hanji," he warns, voice dangerously low. She takes one last step towards him, closing the distance, and wraps her arms around, trapping him against her chest and she pushes him backwards and then the ground tips under his feet and it's gone entirely.

Lance Corporal Levi is rolling down a hill and he is not very fucking impressed by the fact.

Reiner's booming laughter is the first thing he hears, but then all he can hear is Hanji screaming in mock terror against the shell of his ear and his own head hitting the ground along with the pebbles clinking against his gear and the grinding of his already aching bones. By the time they roll to a halt at the bottom he can barely think straight and there's sand in places he didn't know existed.

Right there, Levi decides he really fucking hates the beach.

The senior officers at the top of the hill are staring, eyes wide, because humanity's strongest solider is lying flat on his back with Hanji sitting half on top of him, excitement still written plain as day across her face. Erwin is trying to smother his laughter behind his hand but he's doing a damn horrible job; he can hear the muffled sound from here and for once Erwin doesn't look as defeated, without Mike or Nanaba by his side and it's so strange that he freezes. Then he realizes that everyone behind him, the (not anymore) kids in the water, his squad, have gone silent and he turns his head to see their eyes bugging out of their heads, and it's quite possible everyone in the immediate area is staring at them.

A hand wraps around his calf and he realizes Hanji has already gotten one of his boots off while he's been looking around and she's steadily working on the other. He kicks out at her with his other foot, hitting her in the ribs but she barely flinches, tanned fingers tugging at his heel, before calling out.

"Eren! Help me with this! Actually, all of you would be even better!"

His eyes widen in horror, there is no way in hell, they wouldn't.

"You shitty brats! If you even touch me—"

His words die in his throat, because he can see it in their eyes, all of them, the decision has been made in a few simple glances between members of the group.

"Don't you dare—!"

Eren's the first one out of the water with Jean on his heels, and then Sasha grabs Connie's hand and is chasing after them, Ymir scoops Historia up from the waves, already moving, and he must be having some sort of twisted nightmare and he'd like to wake up right fucking now.

Hanji's full blown sitting on his chest now, trying to wrestle his arms away from where he's clamped them against his ribs. Another pair joins hers, working at the same hand.

"Kirschtein, I will make your death as painful as fucking possible!" He yells, and he doesn't even know who he's kicking anymore, but it really doesn't matter. Jean grins back at him and then Sasha and Connie are grabbing his legs and just fucking perfect, Eren's grabbing Mikasa and Armin and what in the world did he do to deserve this.

Jean and Ymir free one of his hands and in the struggle to get it back Hanji and Eren wrench the other one away from his body. Then he's being lifted up and he realizes that he shouldn't have taught these brats anything that they could ever use against him.

He hears splashes as their feet enter the water and someone was going to write this down in the history books, just to fucking humiliate him. Right alongside the titles of Captain and Corporal will be 'most likely to get ganged up on and thrown violently into water against his will'. And then the hands are leaving his wrists and ankles, and if only there was a goddamn tree in the water, maybe he could fire a hook into that and save himself.

Not that there are any trees in the water, and he no longer has the gas to propel himself anyway.

Fate hates him, he supposes.

He's airborne for a split second, and he can't even imagine what his face looks like right now. He hits the crest of a wave, the top bubbling over him and he's gone.

The first thing he notes is that the water is fucking freezing, what are they even doing in here in the first place? The second is that, thankfully, the remainders of the blood are washing away, staining the water around him a light pink. However, he can't even tell what direction he's in, how he landed, and there's no way in hell he's putting his eyes at the mercy of the water. Blindly, he reaches his hand up and breaks the water, and he pushes his feet into the sand at the bottom, propelling him towards the surface

His head breaks free and he sucks in a gasp, feeling the cold even more now that the air's hitting him. He's only about waist deep in the water but he's drenched and his clothes are stuck to him in the worst way possible. Levi wipes the water from his eyes, pushing his hair away from his forehead. He licks his lips, tasting salt and Connie was right, it tastes like shit. He turns his head to the beach.

Hanji is in front of them all, right where the waves end, arms thrown out like she's going to protect them all from his wrath. They're all trying to hold back their laughter, but then Hanji grins and Levi only has time to think where's Jaeger before hands grab his shoulders from behind and he's going down again.

This time he doesn't give a fuck about his eyes, he opens them wide under the water and looks for Eren, just barely catching sight of him. He reaches out with one hand, brushing against a gear strap on Eren's side and then he's gone, moving quicker and Levi doesn't know if it's even possible to swear profusely underwater but he's still trying.

He stands up again and he's even colder, even more drenched, and somehow Eren's already at the beach, sand sticking to his clothes and he's smiling and practically howling with laughter, clutching at his stomach with both hands and he sinks to the ground in a heap, gasping for breath.

It's freezing and he's soaked and probably dirty for life and he's angry, but then he looks at the group of them, with Hanji throwing her arms around them and the smiles, genuine happiness written across their faces, with Reiner at the crest of the hill practically choking on his own laughter, and Historia sitting on Ymir's shoulders, chin resting at the crown of her head and Jean's arms slung across Eren and Connie's shoulders .. and, and—

He doesn't have words for how he feels about that.

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end.

Reviews are love.

- Rowan