A/N: There was a review mentioning how they'd like it if there was a scene showing how they got together and at first I thought there was no way I was going to write this because I only know how to write bordering-on-romance or past-the-confession-stage-romance because let's face it I'm a hopeless romantic but with no experience in this area whatsoever? But then this sort of came into my head and it's short (especially in comparison to the first chapter) but hopefully it does justice to the now two-shot and hopefully y'all like it.

I know it probably comes off as OOC but I have a headcanon that Mikasa and Levi are much nicer to each other when they're alone as compared to how they treat other people

Disclaimer: I don't own SnK

Mikasa and Levi continued to read together every day, long after she'd opened his room door to see him walking around gingerly testing out his weakened muscles, and long after they'd started training together again, flying around the trees and slicing neat gashes into the back of the bogus Titans' necks. While Titans were no longer a problem after the Final War, as people were starting to call it, their training didn't seem complete, nor as satisfactory, without a few deep cuts into the foam on the back of the necks. When Erwin had finally put his foot down and told Levi that he couldn't spare more men to constantly fix the gashes on the necks of the fake Titans, both he and Mikasa started to stay back for a little while after training to fix them themselves. At first Levi had suggested practicing on real Titans instead (i.e. Eren), but a glare from Mikasa had led to a roll of his eyes and the appearance of a sewing kit.

While most of their time was taken up by training, or by helping out with the reconstruction of Wall Maria and expeditions out of the walls to reclaim lost settlements, the both of them still managed to carve out lulls in the day to sit down together and read. The two of them could be found perched in the branches of a tree, or sitting together in the middle of the long grass of a field, or on a bench in the stables; their locations frequently changed, but the one thing that stayed constant was the presence of a book, and either Mikasa's almost deadpan tone with barely noticeable changes in inflections, or Levi's oddly soothing voice with obscenities and sarcastic commentaries on the side.

Eventually, they'd run out of books, and through some odd event or another, had ended up coming up with stories to tell each other. They took turns every day; one day Mikasa would be spinning a tale of a knight stuck in a tower waiting for a princess to turn up and save him from the wicked witch his own desires had created, and the next day Levi would be telling her about the bird who flew too close to the sky in search for the moon in the storm that he got swallowed up by lightning, and spent the rest of eternity next to the waxing and waning of the moon, watching it die and be reborn again month after month without end. Often Mikasa's stories were fantastical, and usually resulted in happy endings and happy people. Levi, on the other hand, seemed to take perverse joy in throwing his characters into death and eternal damnation, punishing them with a brutal hand.

So it came to be that the two of them were sitting in the branches of a tree, taking a break that Erwin had forced on them from helping with the reconstruction efforts of the wall.

"Eren and Armin are going to leave after the Wall has been reconstructed," Mikasa began, almost conversationally as she leaned back against the rough bark of the trunk.

"Oh?" Levi reached out from the branch above her and plucked off a ripe apple, and tossed it down to her.

"They're going to look for the things in Armin's books," she explained, turning the apple over and over in her hands. "The plains of sand, ice, and liquid fire,"

"Are you going with them?"

"... I don't know," she admitted. "I thought I was going to be with them forever, and I thought I was going to be happy, or at least okay with it. But I don't want what they want, and they don't want what I want."

He waited, the hitching and unhitching of her breath signalling there was more to come that she wasn't quite ready to let out yet.

"I love Eren and Armin. I really do. And I'm really happy that they got together; if anyone deserves them, it's the two of them." Mikasa finally said. Above her, Levi winced slightly at the convoluted words tripping over themselves; a sure sign that this was the first time she was admitting this to herself, as well. "But sometimes when I'm with them I feel like we can't go back to just being Eren and Armin and Mikasa, but now the three of us are ErenandArmin and Mikasa, and I don't like the way it makes me feel sometimes,"

She let her eyes fall shut, allowing the sun to warm her eyelids and savouring the light filtering through the skin. She felt the branches shift above her, and the one beneath her shake as Levi balanced himself next to her.

"Not all change is bad," he told her, his breath hot in her ear. "And feeling that way doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. It's what you do with your feelings that counts."

Levi didn't seem inclined to follow up with his comment, instead shifting his weight on the branch for a more comfortable (and probably safer) seat next to her. She sighed, leaning slightly into him, her knees drawn to her chest and feet pressed against his unconsciously.

"It's your turn for the story today," Mikasa finally said, her thumbs polishing the apple cupped in her hands.

Levi looked at her on his left, but her face was obscured by her dark hair, now grown out and blowing in her face, and the tattered red scarf he made sure she washed at least once a week. "I thought we'd do something different today," he began, almost conversationally. "I'll start the story, but you decide how it ends."

"That's cheating," she objected. "You're supposed to come up with the whole thing by yourself,"

"I know, but you're always telling me that I need to learn how to lighten up and allow people to have happy endings. You can teach me how today."

Mikasa let out a long suffering sigh, but nodded her head next to him anyway. "Go."

"It's a warm day out. It's not the perfect day to go swimming, but it's damn near it anyway, and most everyone has gone down to the lake for a break they haven't had in months. There have been repeated warnings of rain in the late afternoon, but no one really cares, because it'll be a nice break from all this heat that's been building up recently.

"There are two people who are not amongst the group gathered in the lake. Instead they sit in an apple tree, away from the noise and commotion and laughter, closer to the sky than to the ground. The boy tosses an apple to the girl, and listens to her talk about her friends, and her feelings, and thinks that he'd do maybe anything to convince her she's not the monster she thinks she is, and to take off some of the weight on her shoulders and in her eyes.

"And he thinks a little bit of the time they've spent together since she'd started nagging him back to health all those months before, and the Titans they've sliced through and the books they've read through and the stories they've been through. And he also thinks about all those times in between that he's wanted to hug her, or kiss her, and he thinks that maybe now would be a good time to tell her about them, and maybe see how things go from there. And he hopes that it isn't a bad time, because he's insensitive and brash, as she likes to remind him, and probably isn't the best candidate to be her boyfriend like he hopes to be."

She looked at him then, her fingers long stilled over her polished red apple. Instead of looking straight ahead with an impassive face, like she expected him to, he was looking right at her, his head tipped up slightly, eyes guarded, with an imperceptible lift to his lips.

"Go," he said, tone almost challenging.

She directed her eyes at the apple she was still holding, her slight smile blocked out by her hair falling over her face.

"The girl holding the apple thinks maybe the boy isn't as brash and as insensitive as he makes himself out to be, but is every bit the rough and vulgar gentleman he presents himself as. And she thinks of all the times she'd have liked to hug or kiss him too, and she thinks he'll make a decent boyfriend for her."

"Just decent?" Levi scowled next to her, his shoulder slightly knocking into hers.

She smiled at him, her hair now pushed back and no longer flying in her face over her eyes and lips, then gave him a small, chaste peck on the lips. He snorted at that, but put his arms around her, securing her body against his, his lips resting on her shoulder. She allowed herself to relax against him, legs pulling away from her chest and reaching forward instead, one stretching past his own legs on the branch, the other dangling off of it. And instead of fields of sand or water, she allowed herself to think of a home in the woods surrounded by trees and grass, and thought that she could be happy there instead.