Good morning, all! I tripped and fell into the SnK fandom, and now I can't seem to get out. Anyway, it's a crime that we don't have more fanfiction, so here is my offering to the SnK gods. I hope you like it!

TW: Canonical levels of blood, guts, and violence in some chapters. Character death. Hand-wavey science. Terrible medical practices-don't try this at home, kids. Mild language, some spoilers, made up spoilers for things that never happen in the manga. Hanji. I think that's it for warnings.

Rivaille heard the harsh breathing of his comrade from his position on the floor. She was-they all were-injured and exhausted after fighting and running for the last...the last something. A month, maybe, or two, or a lifetime. It could have been as short as a week. All Rivaille knew was that they were the last two humans left in the world, excluding Eren, who was nearly constantly in his titan form these days, drawing attention away from his companions. It was exhausting and Eren was going to die if he kept it up, but Rivaille knew he was in no condition to stop the titan. Rivaille wasn't in any condition to do much of anything, these days.

Not since some bastard titan had cut off his leg.

Eren and Hanji had nearly had to abandon him when he couldn't run with them, before Eren had had the brilliant-but-terrifying idea of carrying Rivaille in his mouth. Never again would Rivaille underestimate the unpleasantness involved in that mode of transport.

But it didn't matter. Soon none of it would matter, if Hanji was right about this. To travel back in time, to prevent so many losses and betrayals...

At first, it had been an idle idea. They hadn't even though it was possible-Hanji wasn't that kind of scientist, after all; her area was more 'what even are titans' than 'how do we travel back in time to fix everything that's ever gone wrong.' It had been at the very beginning of the end when Eren had made some remark about remembering exactly how he would do things differently for 'next time.' As there was no 'next time' to speak of, Rivaille had asked him what he could possibly mean by that, and surprisingly enough, Eren had come out and told him the bizarre truth: ever since he could remember, Eren had thought about everything as if he was going to travel back in time and redo it later-it allowed him to live his life to the fullest, he'd said.

Rivaille thought that that kind of thinking would do exactly the opposite, but then again, Eren was a little odd.

After that the two of them had always mentioned what they'd change if they were able to do it all over again, everything from half-jokes to vows of revenge.

Not long after that, the last betrayal ever to befall humanity had happened. That was what they called it-the Final Betrayal. No one at all had seen it coming, and the majority of the soldiers had been killed in one single night by That Traitor. Even after that, they'd been stupid and hadn't realized who the culprit was, allowing a second massacre the next night...thankfully, Rivaille had managed to keep some of his brain cells, and he'd been with Eren when the teen had been attacked. Between the two of them, they'd managed to escape, though Eren took a truly ridiculous amount of damage in the process.

Or, considering who they were fighting, Rivaille had come out relatively unscathed.

Either way, the walls had fallen not long after that, especially since there were very few soldiers left to patrol them. The Scouting Legion had taken the least amount of casualties for once, but nearly everyone with real skills or experience had died in the first attack. It wasn't as if the newbies weren't talented, but there had been about twenty soldiers against what seemed to be every titan in existence. Before reinforcements could arrive, nearly everyone had died and Wall Rose had been lost.

While the fighting had been going on, Rivaille had sent four different people out to report the traitor to the central district, but all four had been caught and killed with their message undelivered. Since most of the military had been called into Trost temporarily by one of That Traitor's ploys, most of them were killed in the massacre, and That Traitor had managed to get into the city center undiscovered and kill all of the soldiers there, as well. Rivaille still couldn't believe that no one had questioned the need to have the entire army gathered in Trost, and even after communications had been lost, no one had suspected That Traitor.

After that, the entire army had consisted of the very few people who had escaped the massacres; which had been those who hadn't been called to Trost or the central district (a grand total of fifteen incompetents from outer districts), Eren, Hanji, and Rivaille himself. And That Traitor. It hadn't been a bright, optimistic picture.

In the central district, now the only place with a wall, there had been no living government officials, no room, no food, and no order. People had been killed in the street and eaten by other people just to put food in their mouths. Eren had been forced to flee the instant he'd set foot in the district, and even then, he'd barely escaped with his life. Rivaille had carved a path for the two of them to run away on with the last of his energy, and they'd run far from humans. Rivaille couldn't tell you to this day why he'd exiled himself to follow Eren-perhaps he'd seen where humanity was going, or perhaps he'd had some inkling of the companionship he'd find with the titan.

Either way, only the territory outside of Wall Maria had been safe from cannibalistic poachers, and that had been full of titans. They'd met Hanji there, forced into exile like they were for her obsession with titans. She'd taken the time-travel idea and run with it, insisting that she could make it happen. Rivaille had let her have her coping method, and that's all it had been-until she had woken them up during her watch and another her had appeared, this one half a minute older than the one that had woken them up. The body of the older one had flickered and disappeared-back to her own time, they'd figured out half a minute later-but she had managed time travel.

After that, they'd stopped moving around like they had been doing. They'd set up a hidden lab in a cave at the base of a mountain, and Eren and Rivaille had begun keeping titans away. Then Rivaille had lost his leg, and it was just Eren out there. All day. Every day. When he was clearly exhausted and his wounds weren't healing as fast as they should. Which was stupid.

Rivaille may have disapproved of that decision just a little. His instincts as a commanding officer had always screamed at him when he was sending a soldier to their doom, and more than that, he may or may not have gotten a bit attached to the last two companions he had left.

But now Hanji was certain that she could send them back to before Wall Maria had even fallen, which they'd deemed far enough back, and was trying to find a way to keep them there. She'd insisted that there was a way to transfer their memories to their younger counterparts; citing that Eren had been hit with a syringe of something that had made him lose his memories once, so therefore there had to be a way to restore a person's memories. In fact, the more research she did, the more she insisted that they'd be able to put their entire consciousnesses into their younger selves and leave their older bodies behind to fade back into the future. Eren and Rivaille didn't bother arguing with her, since she would simply break the fabric of reality to prove them wrong anyway.

Having a mostly-sane genius on your side was good, Rivaille reflected. A completely sane one wouldn't invent time travel.

All she needed, ironically, was a little bit of time. She even thought she'd have it ready today, whatever 'it' was, and they'd be able to simply walk out of this time and into the past. All Rivaille could see was scrap metal littered around the cave floor, collected mostly in one corner; a couple of syringes; and water bottles acting as test tubes. It had been a miracle that Hanji had managed to salvage that much equipment at all. She was messing with the liquid in the water bottles at the moment, making increasingly excited sounds until she finally whirled around, jumping out of a crouch to face him. In two strides she'd crossed their cave/secret laboratory to reach Rivaille.

"I've got it!" She exclaimed. "Gimme some blood."

Rivaille was used to her mild insanity, and knew that her excitement didn't necessarily mean that she'd found the secret to a more permanent time travel, but all the same he felt some flickers of hope in his gut. He looked her dead in the eye with an expression that he knew was intimidating and asked seriously, "What is it?"

"I think I've got it, if we drink from the left bottle, give some blood, and then put it into the middle bottle to treat it, and then we evaporate-"

Rivaille cut her off, not feeling that he needed to know every detail of the process. He probably didn't want to know every little detail of the process. After all, one of those water bottles had been his this morning, and he didn't want to know what he'd been drinking if not water.

"Will it allow us to travel back in time?" He asked her.

She looked at him for a moment, calming down a little as she did. "It will give our memories-our 'souls,' really-to our younger counterparts. We should be able to get in, find our younger counterparts, inject them with our altered blood, and change as much as we want. There's some risk that we'll die horribly, of course, but at least we'll learn more about creating temporal rifts!"

That was...well, probably the best they were going to get, really. They had no time to waste, either.

"Let's find the brat and drink up, then." He ordered her. She shook her head.

"We should start by making one mixture. You're the only one who's drunk the first solution, so we know it's not poisonous, but we have to wait a while after we've drunk it to make the second. Will you be alright with having one less day of memories than Eren and I?"

Rivaille twitched a little at the suggestion that he was being used to test for poison, but he knew Hanji well enough to know she wouldn't risk his life like that.

Wouldn't she?

...She definitely would.

At least he hadn't actually died.

And missing a day of memories...that wouldn't be bad. If they took his blood now, and left tomorrow, he'd just be missing a few hours of sleeping and perhaps some conversation, and if anything happened he could ask the other two about it. It shouldn't be a problem.

"Let's do mine now, then, and then take Eren's and yours tomorrow." He decided concisely. Hanji let out a cackle of unholy glee and proceeded to stab him with rather more force than necessary with the syringe. There were downsides to having scientists that were only mostly sane, too.

She scurried back to her patch of floor and proceeded to do several things, many of which Rivaille suspected weren't part of the actual procedure. At least, he hoped they didn't actually have to dance gleefully over dangerous-looking mixtures. It was unsanitary, if nothing else.

There it is! That's my baby, and I'm putting it out into the big, bad world full of flamers and murderers and...why am I doing this, again?

Anyway, I really hope you enjoyed the prologue, and I'm sorry it seems so rushed. It just came out that way, though I'm pretty sure next chapter will be better. I'll see you soon! Thanks so much for reading!