Skin me alive for taking forever to write this. Life and stuff, you know how it goes.

Actually, no. I just have been a lazy fuck. Please do try to forgive.

Enjoy chapter four, my loves. Despite how obnoxiously long it is.

There wasn't much a physically incapacitated person could do in the Recon Corps. Help in the kitchen, fill out paperwork, maybe grease the gears of the 3DMG. But there were only so many times Levi's gear could be cleaned and inspected before it was unnecessary. It wasn't like he was using the gear, so it was pointless. He himself felt pointless. He was a waste of space and should be killed right there on the spot.

Then Hanji reminds him that it's only been two days out of commission and that Levi is being a bit of a drama queen. Then she suggests that he go get some fresh air and maybe bark orders at the unsuspecting low-ranking soldiers. That would make him feel better for sure.

And it was making him feel better, telling the bald-looking kid go clean the horse stables, knowing he couldn't stomach the smell. Or sending the freckled tall girl and her angel-looking counterpart to separate ends of the castle for chores, knowing the freckled girl would probably fall prey to separation anxiety.

In the short run, there were no missions planned. Commander Erwin was still recuperating his control over the Recon Corps after that atrocious 57th expedition. Levi immediately stopped thinking about that. Wounds were not meant to be revisited. So in an attempt at distraction, he made his way in the direction of the training field. Watching the fat soldiers trying to keep up with the running would serve for good entertainment, albeit kind of cruel.

But he felt his stomach drop into the pits of his excretion guts when he got there. Levi stood at the top of the hill, looking down at the sight below. There was Mikasa Ackerman, the one and only soldier under his complete command, training with Commander Erwin.

Commander Erwin took over Mikasa Ackerman's training with the good grace of allowing Levi the time to heal, but it was obvious he just wanted to take a hands-on crack at the prodigious girl. And there he was, assisting her with training. It was no exceptional regiment, nothing more than what Levi himself would demand from the girl,

However, there was something apparent in Mikasa Ackerman's face, and that was what made Levi feel odd. It was an interesting feeling, one he had never had before, or maybe he did, but it was too long ago and too fleeting for him to remember. She was looking pleasant with Commander Erwin. Granted, this was Mikasa Ackerman and she never looked conventionally happy. But he saw how wide her eyes were, as if she was visually feasting on whatever strategies Commander Erwin had to offer. There was no argument in her inflection, no scowl poisoning her pretty face, both of which had become typical of her and Levi's dynamic.

Mikasa Ackerman was not only known for her well-hidden intelligence and her inhumane physical capacity, but for the respect she treated others, and especially her superiors. And Levi always begged to differ with that last statement, with the evidence of her chagrin on their day-to-day training basis. He assumed it was just a figment of everyone's imagination. But there she was, responsive and, well, obedient.

Levi, her captain, was obviously the one exception to the rule. She didn't respect him as her captain, and that thought was nice and snug, deep under his skin.

But what was that invitation into her psyche? She would like to show him what had happened to her?

He wasn't sure if that offer really counted as a demonstration of trust. After all, Eren Jaeger kind of shoved her into it. Mikasa Ackerman did seem genuine about it, Levi came to think. He could not, though, see the relevance between her past and their future. Their future? That insinuated too much of a conjunction between the two of them. Titan-slaying and the pissy Eren boy were the only links between the two of them.

But his interest had been piqued, and had he decided to be honest for a good second, he would admit to being sort of anxious to recover from this concussion. The sooner he'd recover, the sooner he could take Mikasa Ackerman up on that offer. She asked him to go find her, and for the first time in a long while, he was willing to search.

There was only so much he could speculate about the girl before it started sounding a tad bit improbable. Nearly every human alive had lost someone to a titan attack, it seemed. That situation sounded a bit...anticlimactic for someone with such an emotional tolerance as hers. Was it a long-winded tale of love and loss? She was too young—seventeen, right?—for anything pertaining to some intense love story. And on top of that, her last five years of existence centered around this hellhole of warfare. He'd like to doubt her betrothal at the age of ten. Maybe it was aliens. Bigfoot. She stubbed her toe one night and because of it, she lost all faith in furniture.

Levi scoffed at these thoughts. He had more important things to worry about than whatever bruising the girl had to undergo. Like he said, five years of her life had been within the confines of the Recon Corps. Five years was plenty to package it all away, and to move forward. This all seemed ridiculous, come to think. He'd be in his right mind to ignore whatever shit this girl was shouldering, all in the name of professionalism. It was settled. Forget Mikasa Ackerman and her—

"Captain Levi?"

There was Mikasa Ackerman, right in touching distance. His legs carried him all this way while he was so consumed in his own thought.

"Is there something you need from us, Levi?"

And there was Commander Erwin next to them, his height actually kind of comical in comparison to him. Commander Erwin was tall and well-spoken, handsome. No wonder Mikasa Ackerman was so responsive to his direction. There was an itchiness all over his innards when he thought about that.

The two were expecting an explanation from Levi, that much was certain. The question came when Levi tried to think about a response. He didn't intend to confront them—it just sort of happened. Such a lack of attention and such an ideomotor phenomenon actually kind of startled Levi. He had better control over himself than that. But they were still waiting for Levi to speak, so he'd have to scold himself later.

While trying to quickly formulate something—since he didn't want to openly admit to his decision of keeping their association professional, let alone in front of Commander Erwin—he looked at Mikasa Ackerman, as if an answer was buried deep within the ivory pores of her smooth face. Her eyes held steady toward the ground, as if the grass beneath her feet was the next enemy on her list of vengeance. Levi could not see that scar above her lips—such rosy lips—but he knew it was there. Physical evidence of her struggles. They existed, and they were real. Levi had scars of his own. It was only natural for him to sympathize so heavily. And so he sympathized, so deeply—enough to completely negate his decision he had made not even a full minute earlier.

Mikasa Ackerman asked him to come find her, and he considered this the search party.

"Ackerman, I just wanted to inform you that I had been mulling over the suggestion you made a few days prior. And I have come to decide that I will discuss it further with you this evening."

She nodded—so slightly, it was as if she hadn't moved at all.

"I'll see you at the dining hall tonight."

This was the dining hall, and it was tonight.

Levi was not anticipating anything. It would be a conversation over a cup of tea, at most. She said she would like to show him what happened. Maybe she had a photo or memento to show, or maybe a demonstration?

Definitely no ounce of anticipation.

It had to have been nine o'clock—he should be relaxing over his cup of tea, alone. There was the chair he always chose to sit at, and there he was, not sitting in it. He was pacing. And when he realized he was pacing, he immediately stopped in his motions. Captain Levi did not pace. He had a firmer grip over his anxiety. No nail-biting, no teeth-grinding, no face-flushing, and especially no pacing. He wasn't a child at the front of his class, giving a presentation on a topic he hadn't bothered to research. And certainly, he was not some boy on his first date with a girl. Especially if that date was Mikasa Ackerman. Nerves were not a thing that existed in Levi's body. He felt, sure, but he would never let it present itself visibly all over his face or body language, let alone both.

Then he was hearing footsteps and his back straightened, as if the top of his spine were to shoot out of the top of his skull, though the ceiling, and into the heavens.

Still no ounce of anticipation.

But there were those footsteps. They were heavy and frequent and...numerous? Either Mikasa Ackerman grew eight legs in the span of six hours, or she had someone with—

"Captain Levi!"

And either Mikasa Ackerman turned into a boy in the span of six hours, or that voice wasn't hers.

It wasn't, he came to discover. Eren Jaeger turned around the corner, voice loud and aggressive, even in an empty room in the dead of night.

"What are you doing here?"

Levi's question practically answered itself when Mikasa Ackerman trailed a few steps right behind Jaeger's. There was a heaviness that sent his spine back down from the heavens, right through his skull again, and spear itself downward into the pits of hell. He felt almost stupid feeling so anxious, even though anxiety was not synonymous with his personality. Of course there would be no intimacy with Mikasa Ackerman—not that he was expecting intimacy with her, nor did he particularly seek it. But Eren Jaeger's presence made this whole discovery and demonstration of trust sort of pointless. She didn't want to share this piece of her with Levi, so she neeed to bring Eren along to assist her. Or have him do it for her, which seemed to be like salt in the wound.

He didn't bargain for a package deal when requesting Mikasa Ackerman to meet him, but he also didn't feel like making a big deal out of it—making a big deal would imply that he was expecting something more personal. And while it was questionable on whether he actually did or not, he was not going to let that debate be known to either of them.

It was surprising when he finally noticed the familiar machinery belted around their respective hips, and it was even more surprising when Mikasa was the one to step forward and speak.

"I need you to get your maneuver gear."

This horse ride was much too different from the last time he and Mikasa Ackerman ventured out past curfew. Not to mention the presence of Eren, and heading in the complete opposite direction of the previous destination, added to the dissimilarity.

When venturing into the city that first time, everything was slow, cathartic. Levi even dared to say it was peaceful. It was just Levi and Mikasa on the entire planet, it seemed. But this time, it was different. Different, but not unfamiliar. So familiar, that in fact, Levi would openly admit that he was nervous.

It would take days, maybe even weeks, in advance for Levi to prepare for an expedition outside the walls. Missions were minor, lasting a day, usually less, and never going farther than a few hectares away from the walls. But when Commander Levi would call for an all-present meeting in the courtyard of the castle, and have his strategists hold up those giant papers behind him, Levi knew he would have to take the time to prepare. Those tactic papers signified an expedition—the more papers to display, the longer they would be out of the safety of the walls. Sometimes a few days if they were lucky, maybe a week or two if they caught a bad break, and there was always that one expedition that lasted months. There was no hell in comparison to knowing that death was a bitingly real and intimidatingly likely possibility—every hour, every day, every week, month after month.

And because of that, Levi would need to revert into his own mind in preparation. He needed to, not persuade, but tell himself that he was going to come back alive. Levi would need to recite it until it was fact, worthy enough to be put in books and taught as a religion. There was no god or gods to Levi, only the one and only true proverb that kept him sane: do nothing but survive.

Levi was in his own head, saying this ad nauseam. Why? Because this horse ride was so familiar. Silence was deafeningly loud, with even the sound of the horses unable to penetrate the cochlea. There was nothing in the atmosphere, except from that tangible heaviness stemming from the lurking ominousness. Levi could taste it on his tongue, and the sourness made him wince. The three of them were riding so fast, too fast, and with such purpose.

However, Levi was giving them the benefit of the doubt. Their adrenal glands were overflowing and sloshing over their better judgment, and the childish daredevils in each of them wanted to ride fast. This was a race, and Levi had no need to think what he had been thinking. No need to recite his asinine proverb because no one would be in a situation that would demand survival.

That proverb was for when he would be leaving the walls. And Levi wanted—no, needed—to assume that they weren't going anywhere.

But they were riding completely perpendicular to the wall.

Mere coincidence, he assured himself.

He kept assuring himself, all the way up to the point where he would need to stick his head straight upward in order to maintain the top of the wall within his view.

And when Mikasa Ackerman, their leader of this quest, finally slowed to a halt and dismounted without any room for discussion, he was still assuring himself.

Still assuring himself, even when he was feeling the hard coolness of the wall underneath his palm.

Benefit of the doubt, coincidence, ignorant bliss—whatever it was called, Levi tried to desperately maintain it. This was all a hilarious joke, and Levi tried really hard to fake a laugh about the whole thing. Mikasa Ackerman was confident in her motions—yet again, there was never a time where she wasn't. Eren Jaeger possessed assurance as well, stemming more from his dire hubris than anything. Still, Levi tried just this one time to trust the instincts of someone other than himself.

"Hitch your horses to this tree," She demonstrated with her own horse, looping the straps around the trunk and pulling tight. Eren, without even a twitch of an eyebrow, followed suit. Levi was completely dumb in going with the direction. Taking direction from someone ranking below him was only the first of many surprising things to come, Levi figured.

The horses were secure, the moon was full, and their nerves were shocked. Levi could see the trembles and the short breaths and the cold sweats. That didn't stop Mikasa from positioning herself, that slender finger of hers already positioned over the trigger that shot out the grappling hooks.

"Up we go."

And up they did go.

Because, really, he couldn't leave these two kids blindly jumping to their deaths in the dead of night. Mikasa had a striking sense of purpose in her motions, and dying when there was a purpose at hand was the worst way to go. Dead with unfulfilled goals and let-downs to the survivors. Levi couldn't let that happen to her, or to Eren. Levi was older, more skilled, and had exhaustively quantifiable experience on his side, so there was no way in hell he was going to let someone die so simply. Not when such a pretty face was at stake.

So, yes, up they did go.

It was a difficult climb, since it was hard to hook onto a flat surface. There was a way around that problem, and that required their hooks to break and pierce into the walls. That would leave marks, evidence of a breach. But the Garrison wouldn't assume much because, quite frankly, their common senses were lacking depth. But the three offenders kept their motions quick and stretched the length of their hooks to its maximum in order to minimize the damage.

More rule-breaking, all instinctive to Levi.

There was no time at the top to appreciate their panorama. A Garrison guard, despite how clueless, would eventually find them and send out an arrest warrant, and laying at the hands of Commander Erwin—or worse, the politicians in the innermost walls once they'd find out about this breach—would be the punishment of a lifetime. They might even be stripped of their ranks and forced into civilian life, no matter their value to humanity. Politicians did not seem to care, because in an attempt to not look so pathetically useless—which politicians were—they would send even the messiah himself straight to the gallows.

So getting caught was definitely the foremost objective. Other than that, Levi was at the whims of the seventeen-year-old girl who had been outside of the walls enough times to count on one hand.

And the next whim she subjected to them was the free-fall. A running jump off the ledge, letting the gravitational acceleration do the work. Heights meant nothing to Levi, so he didn't so much as blink when his feet were no longer underneath the solidity of the walls. In his free fall, he noticed in a quick flash of distraction that they scaled the walls of Trost. The city was a streak of light at the corner of his eye before he refocused his attention on his present action.

The present action of nosediving straight into the nightmare of titans and darkness.

He knew he needed to demonstrate how to safely land. There were lessons in basic training over it, but it was taught verbally and in theory, listed as one of the many skills that is needed to know for the sake of completion, never for any actual practical use. Levi locked his body tight into position, face pointed toward the ground, to increase his wind resistance and give time for Mikasa and Eren to observe. He took less than a second to commit to a tree, found its sturdiest apex, aimed, and fired. As his path of free-fall started to ween in favor of the direction of the rope, he treated the tension as a swing of sorts. As he swung more parallel to the ground, he retracted the rope to get more distance between himself and the ground. The velocity was reduced significantly, he was no longer at risk of plummeting, and it was just a matter of proper timing to know when to release the hook on the tree and fall the rest of the non-lethal distance.

It was a simple science, one that Levi hoped that both Mikasa and Eren could learn in a matter of seconds, because there was only so much free-fall time before they were both mangled and dead on the ground. Levi squinted his hardest to find their figures in the air, and when he realized how difficult it was for him to see in the dark, he knew there was no way that either one of them was able to watch his textbook landing.

Then there was Eren, barely visible among the leaves. Levi watched the way he didn't grapple onto a tree until the last possible minute. The hook finally caught, and his motions mimicked the swinging of Levi's. It was awkward and the way he was jerking around as he latched back and forth onto each tree was bound to leave some bruising, both internal and external. It still absorbed some of his momentum, and his injuries were inconsequential because Eren had that disgusting lizard-like trait of regenerating. If he were to slam straight into the ground, it'd hurt him significantly, but the damage would only be momentary. However, regeneration did take time, and Levi did not want to sit around right next to the wall, waiting for the damn lizard boy to regrow bones and phalanges, and he'd be damned if he would be stuck carrying Eren until they were far away enough from the Garrison. So, although it was ugly, Eren's landing would suffice.

But that was only one of the two brats he was stuck with. Where was the one whose idea this was in the first place? A part of Levi wanted Mikasa Ackerman's body to make nice with the ground as consolation for putting him in this position, but she didn't regenerate, and he knew her landing would somehow work out, Levi's demonstration as reference or not.

Worry started to rake over Levi's guts. It had already been a few minutes and there was no sign of Mikasa. It was scientifically impossible for her to be anywhere but on the ground. Maybe she was mangled in a tree, and so Levi kept his eyes out for that red scarf somewhere amongst the foliage. Eren was bordering on full-fledged panic mode when Mikasa was nowhere to be found.

"Relax, Jaeger. Gravity did not suddenly stop existing. She has mass, therefore, she is somewhere on the ground."

"It's not that," Eren had more control over his voice than Levi expected. "It's whether she's alive on the ground or not."

Levi didn't need that possibility verbally expressed. Mikasa was the best of the best, and it would have been a shame if she died of something as futile as a fall. He didn't want to think about it.

Then there was a pattering in the distance. Levi unsheathed his swords, immediately remembering they were in titan territory.

"Whatever you do, Eren," Levi warned lowly, not letting any room for argument. "You will not, under any fucking circumstance, turn into a titan while we're out here. I'll kill you if you even try."

"I understand," Eren whispered, thankfully extracting his swords instead of raising his hand to his teeth. "If Mikasa is injured, she won't be able to handle a titan alone."

"Then we better hope she's fine."

And with that, Levi pulled himself into the trees, hoping his dark green cape would camouflage himself amongst the branches. He also hoped that titans lacked 20/20 vision.

Levi strained to hear those footsteps so he could pinpoint the source, take two slashes to a nape, and get onto recovering Mikasa. When he finally heard the noise again, he hesitated. Titan footsteps were heavy, slow, and usually erratic. This noise was light, frequent, and rhythmic—almost similar to a horse?

"Captain Levi!"

As soon as he registered the femininity of that voice, he slowed down, perching himself on a branch. It was hard to make out anything, but he saw the moonlight filtering through the tops of the trees, reflecting against something red.

"Is that you, Ackerman?"

"Where is Eren?" She answered in lieu of confirming her identity. Under the slight moonlight, Levi saw the sheen of a horse's coat. A following neigh affirmed that, in fact, Mikasa Ackerman was alive and well, atop a horse.

"Where the hell did you get a horse from?" Levi could only ask. It seemed to be the most prevalent of things on his mind.

"I aimed to land on the outskirts of these woods," She explained as fast as her mouth would comprehensively allow. "Horses congregate at the nearby pond. There were at least five that I spotted."

He wanted to ask how she knew this, and how she knew there was a nearby pond. But there were bigger fish to fry, even though Levi could not stand the taste of fish. "Jaeger is just a few feet away. Locate him and meet me outside these woods."

Levi carefully dodged the twigs and the branches, unable to travel with speed due to such a lack of visibility. Eventually, he got to the point where he saw the clearing. Not wanting to be stranded on flatland in titan territory, he maintained a scoping point on the furthermost tree. He looked in the distance, trying to visualized where exactly this party was headed. Of course, it was dark and there wasn't much to see except for what was immediately in front of him. That included his own hands, which was probably the extent of the list.

An overwhelming urge to play connect-the-dots with the stars hit him. The sky was infinite above his own head, and although he was pretty short to begin with, he couldn't help but feel so helplessly puny under the expanse of the universe. His heart was palpitating at the nothingness all around him. He was confined to such a small piece of something bigger for his whole life. His comrades were always so obsessed with traveling outward, but Levi couldn't help but wonder why they didn't think about traveling upward. What was up there? Were humans only relevant here on earth, or were they up there too? Did that go for the titans as well? What if the answer was not in annihilating the titans, but migrating elsewhere? Migrating into the stars?

Levi liked to think each star was a comrade lost, and that was just their way of keeping in touch until he was in the sky amongst them. There seemed to be billions upon trillions of stars, and the amount of people Levi had lost was only a paltry fraction of that number, but sometimes it really did feel like he had lost that many, and more.

Maybe that sparkling star over there was Petra. She always had the best smile, one that never, under any circumstance, went away. It wouldn't be physically on her face from time to time, but it was always radiating from her heart. Even from her dead body.

That moving one had to be Gunter. He was always in the middle of some course of action, never bothering to rest, perpetually in motion. He wished he could have had that same intense sense of duty. If only Gunter was still alive—maybe Levi could've learned a thing or two.

Auruo had to be the big fat star. While Levi respected his skills, the arrogance and need to be the center of attention got to him. It still didn't dull the pain of losing him.

Then there was that star that almost looked like it was conjoined with the one next to it. Erd always went on and on about his fiancée, showed pictures of a enviously beautiful woman. The way he put so much into another human being—Levi could hardly picture such a bond, and couldn't even try to imagine that bond stretched out to fit a lifelong marriage. But it gave him faith that maybe, just maybe, there was another human out there on this planet he might be willing to let in.

"Captain Levi!"

Mikasa Ackerman's voice shot him out of his stargazing. As if psychological muscle memory, he revoked those thoughts of his squadmates. There they went, locked deep within his cerebrum, never to be seen again. No more wound-licking. This was titan-territory, they were pressed for time to achieve whatever mission they were on, and visibility was not on their side. In short, there were more pressing issues to attend to. There always would be, so no more looking back.

He couldn't look back because he wasn't going that way.

So he stood up—he didn't remember sitting down on the branch in the first place—and locked his eyes downward to the shadowy figure of the pretty girl on horseback.

Levi sighed, jumping down to the earth below.

Sure, he was physically capable, perfectly able-bodied to perform even the most arduous of feats. And sure, he had the mental discipline to fight through the pain and go for long periods of time. His endurance was what separated him from the average solider. That stamina carried him to hell and back, with enough still in him for a round two.

That didn't mean it didn't suck. It did suck, and sometimes, Levi wished he was weak enough to justify crying.

Bareback riding on a horse wasn't that bad.

Long-distance riding on a horse wasn't that bad.

Bareback riding on a horse for a long distance? Levi wished the gods almighty would smite him then and there.

It was convenient that they had access to horses, sure, so they could cut traveling time significantly. But wild horses don't come standard with a saddle, shoes, and trust in human beings. It was rough, with enough bite marks and bruisings to attest to the difficulty, but the horses were probably the worst of their travels.

Titan territory is what they called it, but it didn't seem that. In all the miles they traveled—somewhere among the double-digits at this point—there had only been a titan sighting once or twice. Even then, nightvision did not seem to be a trait at their disposal, so the encounters were brief and merely a matter of evading and outrunning, neither of which required much fortitude.

But Levi's legs were starting to cramp, the moon was at its peak in the sky, and he had that pressure in his bladder that didn't exactly bring good news. So he took a grin-and-bear-it approach, minus the grin part. He'd be sure to tie up both these brats and subject them to waterboarding when this was all said and done.

And he continued to blindly venture god-knows-how-far. He was being led to, statistically speaking, his death. Why was he out here again? To learn whatever Mikasa Ackerman faced in her path? Levi bitterly wondered why a two-minute monologue wouldn't suffice, and why he had to be dragged all the way out here. The dramatics were through the roof. Except there was no roof, because they were in the middle of fucking nowhere and there was no architectural building to provide said metaphorical roof.

Levi had racked up enough deplore to keep him from agreeing to do anything for anyone ever again, and by that point, it almost seemed that their speed was reducing because of how long they had been riding. His mind was playing tricks on him. The brats had done it. They had literally driven their Captain Levi to the point of batshit insanity

Then he realized that Mikasa and Eren were, in fact, slowing down in actuality. A break was what Levi needed, but he knew that time was of the essence, and there was no room to get to wherever in the sweet merciful fuck they were going, and make it back to the castle before wake-up call.

This was a terrible idea and Levi should have said 'hell no' back over at the wall.

It seemed that they were in the foothills of a mountain, with no trees in sight. This was, strategically, the worst place possible to take a break. Or if they were switching to traveling by foot, Levi would be damned if he got volunteered for hiking. Either way, Levi was this close to vocalizing his depletion of patience. He dismounted right behind the two shitheads, wondering why the fuck they weren't moving or saying anything.

Mikasa reached for Eren's hand, touch hesitant and unsure. Levi watched as Eren tightened his hand around Mikasa's as an act of comfort. Great. He had been dragged all the way out here to supervise a date.

He opened his mouth, ready to say exactly what he was thinking—nothing nice, that was for sure. But Mikasa beat him to the punch, voice soft, almost lost in the cold breeze.

"Here it is."

Levi looked around them, at the sight that brought them all the way out here in the first place. It was a cottage. Or a cabin. Levi wasn't sure what exactly differentiated the two. But either way, he was brought out here to look at some nasty, abandoned, wooden infrastructure. This stupid little house, of which couldn't be bigger than his own room in the castle, was bringing the most emotionally-sound human being to her knees.

And Levi watched her fall, down to the ground, releasing the hand of her most important person. There was no denying the wretchedness of her voice.

"My old home. The house where my parents were murdered."

An obnoxiously long chapter to be paired with an obnoxiously long author's note. Feel free to stop reading at this point, because I would. And it's my author's note, so let that paint a picture for how irrelevant my commentary is.

Anyway.

On a technical note, I wanna clarify a few things.

First: oh my god I spent forever trying to make this entire scene geographically accurate. For the life of me, though, I could not figure out where shit was supposed to go, and in the end, I kind of haphazardly threw it all together.

Someone start a petition for an official map of the cities to be released.

Second: canon is my priority, aside from making this verbally appealing and getting Levi to mack on Mikasa, but I still rearranged shit to make things work in my favor 'cause I'm 1) lazy, and 2) shameless. Therefore, I hacked out all the big plot bullshit, i.e., Annie/Bert/Renier, Ymir/Christa/Historia, Eren's basement, etc.

I can't put my own twist on it to make it feasibly canon, so forgive my shitty ploy to deliver mediocre pwp.

On top of all that, I upped Mikasa/Eren/everyone's fifteen-years.

I know I did that like two chapters ago, but here is my official explanation 'cause I don't want someone to be like, "Boo, how could the 57th expedition just happen and still have Mikasa be seventeen?"

To which I must contend, "Have you ever written kiddie porn? It's not cute."

So yes. Seventeen.

And so I will depart with a request for you to review. Be sure to include long-winded author's notes after the review to mock me.

No but really, I love you. You are all just too kind, it's kind of unreal.