850.
Sasha couldn't remember the last time she's hunted for leisure. She hadn't felt the familiar curve of a bow and arrow in her hands – save for a particularly unpleasant experience in Dauper – since before she enlisted. She'd have picked it up again sooner, save for Levi's insistence that she recover in full before exerting herself. It was almost comical to watch the Lance Corporal dote on her as he nursed her back to health; however common the knowledge of his softer side, it was always entertaining to see it appear.
Sasha's heart began to beat faster, a tingling sensation in her veins that smiled at her like an old friend. 'A deer?' she mused to herself as her ears pricked at a faint rustle in the underbrush to her right. She could picture the outline of the animal, its head bent to graze at the foot of a rosebush, its haunches drawn up into the air; she could see the shadow of the creature's hindquarters cast by the setting sun. She nocked an arrow, drew the bow up to her ear, and took a deep breath-
"Oi, Sasha!" Connie Springer exploded from the underbrush behind her. A shocked Sasha's arrow flew wide and to the left as the shadow of a deer scampered into the darkness of the forest. "You're out of bed!"
"Connie!" Sasha shrieked, "I had our dinner practically on a platter!" She gazed longingly towards the brush some 30 meters away. "A deer… so much meat… gone with the wind…"
"Well, Sash," Connie begins, "ever since the threat of invasion went away, so many of us have been able to gather meat and replenish…" he trailed off as he saw his compatriot's downcast eyes. He shut his mouth and rocked back on his heels before grinning and peering around at Sasha's face.
"Cadet Braus!" he barked. Her head shot up and she turned to him, eyes wide with shock. "Are you mopin', Potato Girl? Do you know what we call maggots who mope, Potato Girl?" She was smiling now; he could see it tug at the corner of her lips.
"What do we call them, sir?"
"Titan Chow, Braus!" He bellowed it at the top of his lungs, grinning as Sasha doubled over with laughter and collapsed to the ground. "So stop goddamn mopin', maggot! Get up here, you goddamn ninny, and let's catch you a new deer!" He extended his hand to the hysterical girl, but she batted it away softly.
"Connie, you already scared off every animal in a 3 kilometer radius." She could barely squeeze out the sentence as her eyes brimmed with tears of laughter. She rolled over onto her back and gazed at the sky, a palette of orange, blue, purple, and gold. Connie plopped down onto the grass next to her.
"You know," he began. "Back in Ragako, I used to lie up on the roof with my mom and we'd look at the stars together. She told me all about these star patterns up in the sky, called them constellations or somethin'. Some of them are way cool. You can't see him now, but there's this one called Orion. If you see three stars in a little row right across the sky, they say that's his belt. They call him Orion the Hunter-" he grinned at Sasha. "-just like you." She didn't reply, but he could see her smile out of the corner of his eye. They sat in silence a little while longer as the sun began to crawl across the horizon. Her stomach rumbled.
"Connie, let's go get dinner." He frowned a little bit. He was hungry too, but it was just so comfortable here.
"Don't want to look at the stars for a little bit?" She shook her head.
"It'll get real cold soon when the sun goes down, and I know you're hungry too." He recoiled playfully backwards as she poked at his stomach.
"Home, then?" He queried with a smile.
"Home." She returned it – her teeth shone like pearls in the light of the setting sun.
A/N: In spite of the summary and chapter 1, this story isn't actually completely Sasha-centric. It focuses on every surviving member of the 104th Cadet Corps in the time in between 850 and 854, some more than the others.