Note: This drabble was actually written ages ago (read sometime last year), and I'm only just now getting the nerve to post it publicly. OTL Enjoy.
Invoked
They had this mutual understanding. Titans would be their end. In one way or another, the monstrosities were in their fates, and would be what made the plural singular, or even nothing at all.
Titans would be the death of her, she knew it. It was a fact that Zoe Hanji had come to accept. There were risks in every aspect of her position within the Survey Corps; from the very nature of the things the corps accomplished, down to her very research.
The Survey Corps were the first line of defense against the Titans. Before the wall's breach, it was their job to leave the sanctity of those towering bastions and seek the abominations outright, to stare death in its very face. She'd chained a few for her own purposes, ones that were not entirely selfish, fascinating as the creatures were. No, these reasons were for the betterment of the human race as a whole. Their entire survival depended on her research. She had to pin point where they came from, and how to stop them. But a caged Titan was far more terrifying and far more unpredictable than anything else on this vicious planet.
And it was the acceptance that one day, much as she hoped and prayed to the contrary, that a titan would be her demise allowed her to face them day to day with a sense of resignation, and kept her resolute.
Levi understood this fact, too. He knew the hazards as well as she. However, it never set well with him.
It was a notion that plagued his mind in his waking moments and in his dreams. He'd seen far too many of their brothers and sister in arms fall in a Titan's wake, or mangled by those gaping maws. The images might as well have been burned into his skull. In his nightmares, she replaced those soldiers. It was her who landed in bloody heaps at his feet. It was her being ripped limb from limb, or disappearing behind a bar of pearled teeth, never to reemerge.
But she slept so soundly at night, only wakened when those nightmares got the better of him, never from her own. She met the titans head on, with such vigor, and a grin plastered on her spectacled face. Her eyes lit up like the sun when she made a connection, and her notes made sense. She knew any chance could be her last, and she made the most of it.
It was an overwhelming myriad of emotions he had to sort out, knowing the woman he loved had conceded to her fate, and to watch her find happiness in something he loathed with every fiber of his being. But he would deal with it. At least she had found a sliver of happiness in a world and life that had so little of it to offer. He found some bittersweet solace in the fact, should it ever come to fruition, she would meet it with a smile, and no regret. And she just hoped he was never there to see it happen.