Author's Note: I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin or any of its respective characters and am in no ways affiliated with its creator, Isayama Hajime-sensei, bless him. These stories are written for entertainment purposes only and I am in no way profiting from them in any financial terms whatsoever.

Meet

You run one final swipe of the now crimson handkerchief against the dull edge of your blade and raise it above your head into the moonlight. It reflects white against your eyes and you are forced to blink in pain. You place it back into its sheath and spend the next ten minutes washing your handkerchief in sewage water. You are tempted to use your drinking water but you have no idea when you will have some again. You are wise beyond your years due to the pain you have had to deal with at so young an age so you wrinkle your nose against the stench as you squeeze and wring. A close inspection: it has turned into a muddy white but at least it isn't red.

You fold it and pocket it. You will hang it to dry properly when the sun comes out.

You escape the moonlight and walk silently towards the row of tall houses. You blend in with the shadows and feel a lot more comfortable. It is an hour past your bedtime but you still aren't sleepy. Today's events run through your head again and again and you still feel a little nauseous when you remember why your blade got splashed with red in the first place.

Your eyes are trained in the darkness and you come to a halt as you encounter a strange sight. There is a girl in the darkness, perhaps fifteen years older than you, and she has red hair. That is the first thing you notice. The second thing you notice is the folded wings on the back of her green cloak and you feel like you have seen them in one of your dreams before although you can't remember which exactly.

She looks strange because such beauty doesn't belong here, in these narrow, stinking alleyways you call home. She doesn't belong here because it is nearing midnight and women should never be out once the sun falls.

You are ten meters away from here but your trained ears hear her voice. "Where am I?" she mutters, perplexed. "Where are the others? What am I doing here?" She feels her nape and neck, a little warily, and runs a hand up and down her spine. "Am I… dead?"

You think she is crazy and move to turn away but pause. You squint. You realize with strangled horror that she is and she isn't. There but not entirely, like a ghost, like the words beauty and hope and peace and love.

You hate those things. They let you down and gave you nothing but pain. You decide that you hate this girl too. You hold your breath and start to tiptoe forward. Bigger men would come to hurt her soon anyway and saving her from the trouble would be doing her a favor…

"Who's there? I'm armed!"

You pause in your tracks and squeeze yourself flat against a wall. You admire her for scoping you out quickly, considering she isn't from around here. You see fierceness cloud her amber eyes but the hostility is mixed with worry and fear, like those of the chickens you are capable of stealing and killing, like those of that man who tried to strangle you earlier today when he realized his mistake too late.

She is in a dead end and once you step in front of her, there would be no space for her to escape. It is nearing midnight and no one would be around to see her soundlessly drop to the ground…

"Heichou? Is that you?"

You freeze; your heart constricts in fear. If you turn around to look at who she was talking to, you won't be able to defend yourself from her. If you try attacking her now, the man behind you would kill you. You are trapped.

The best you could do is to hide in the velvet smooth darkness and wait for them pass by. So you do. While you wait, you stare at her wide amber eyes and you wonder how golden they would look in the sunlight. They stare back at yours and you could see comprehension dawn in them.

You transform your legs into a spring and tighten your grip on your knife. Any second now, she would regret ever coming to this place.

"Hei- Levi!"

You gasp audibly and your eyes widen on their own. You do not have any friends or family and no one knows who you are. You have never met this stranger before and yet she just said your name out loud.

You tense ten times more as she drops to her knees and pulls you close to her. She had run towards you as you stood gaping at her and you are ashamed to know you could have killed her then but didn't out of shock. You decide to end this now and the tip of your knife is against her nape. But you feel her start to tremble: she is crying against you, her tears hot on the side of your neck and one of her hands gently pushes your head towards her shoulder, the other firmly but not uncomfortably pressed against your back.

A curious sensation mildly storms around your navel before climbing up to your wildly beating heart and staying there. You realize that no one, save perhaps when you were a baby and couldn't remember, has ever touched you without malice or plans to hurt you for the first time in seven years…

She repeats your name again and again and does the unthinkable. She sits down, her feet tucked beneath her lap, and lifts you – you are so surprised that you drop your knife – and she settles you down on her lap before wrapping her arms around you again. You have enough strength to strangle her but the sweet scent of her hair drowns you and you don't. You do not understand why she is crying. Your chest feels strange as if it's been covered by a thick warm blanket on a winter's eve. Your fist, tightly clenching her shoulders, begin to relax and because you have no place to rest them, you let them stay there. Again, you feel as if you have seen this somewhere before, in a long forgotten dream and the longer you sit, the warmer you become and your heart feels lighter and your shoulders slump.

"Who are you?" you whisper as softly as you could. You are afraid she might leave if you tried anything drastic. "Are you what children call their mother?"

To your surprise she chuckles – no one shows this much emotion in the Underground City – and she gently pushes you away from her so that you could see her face, all glazed in tears. "It doesn't matter," she said, smiling and settling her hands on your face, rubbing her thumbs against your cheeks. "What matters is that you remember what I tell you, okay?"

You nod your head as she wipes away her tears with a knuckle. You wonder if you should consider lending her your handkerchief. She lifts you again, – this time you do not bother to resist – sets you on your feet, and skneels in front of you. She must be a very short lady because you tower over her, even if only by an inch. She places her hands on your shoulder and looks at you straight in the eye.

"Levi, I want you to say this and believe in it, alright? 'I am loved no matter what.' Do you think you could say that for me?"

This lady is very strange. "I am loved no matter what," you say. You do not believe it but you wonder why you ever thought of hating this woman.

She nods her head at you. "I want you to say that to yourself before you go to bed each night, okay? Especially after bad, sad days, will you promise me that?"

"But why should I do that?" you ask. Her smile shrinks by a fraction, and tears begin to hover at the tips of her eyes.

"Because this world is a cruel place and life is almost never easy Levi… but I don't want you to worry about that just yet." She smiles again and instead of wiping her eyes, she wipes yours as if you've been the one crying. "It's okay to fall down and fail sometimes, do you understand? It's okay to make mistakes, and make the wrong choices, and cry…"

"No, it's not," you say, slightly irritated. How naïve she is to think like this! You take it upon yourself to explain. "Failing is not an option. The smallest sign of weakness could kill you out here."

"That's not always true," she smiles and rumples your hair. "You will be my weakness in the future and it's because of you that I will remain strong until the end."

You feel your face contort itself in your confusion. "What do you mean?"

A clock from somewhere up above you begins to chime. Is it just you or is she getting paler? "I do not matter, Levi. Just… just always remember. No matter how hard things get, no matter how cruel life seems, there will always be someone who loves you, understand? Even if you can't see them, or hear them, or touch them anymore, they will always, always be with you, do you understand me?"

She is starting to fade back to not being. Irrationally, you know that you will never see her again and panic grips your heart. You do not want her to leave, not yet, not ever. "Wait!" you cry but you couldn't even touch her anymore. "Don't leave me!"

"Remember, Levi," she smiles at you and she is so beautiful, she could be perfect, perfect if she could still touch you, perfect if her voice isn't starting to fade into the heartless whisper of the wind, perfect if she wouldn't leave. Still fading, quicker and quicker, she leans towards you and touches her lips to yours for a fraction of a second. You feel her, not physically, but her warmth is real and soft and wonderful. "I love you, Levi," she whispers and her eyes shine golden. You blink back the tears and stretch out your arms to cling to her but she is gone.

The rain starts to fall through where the piss and mire of the world above fall on your head when you happen to pass beneath them. Suddenly lost and lonelier than you have ever been in your life, you begin to cry…