Author's note: This story is an AU based on chapter 34 of the manga, the only difference being that Wall Rose wasn't, ahem, 'breached' sometime before the Scouting Legion's secret mission to unmask Annie, but only months later. Also, assume Mikasa, Eren and the rest of the trainees are all at least eighteen.

I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin, Hajime Isayama does – he just won't give his characters a break lol, so I'm doing it in his stead. Also in this chapter, I'm borrowing / messing with some of the canon dialogue from page 19 of Chapter 37.

Warning: M is for language and some rather interesting things that may happen later.

Chapter 1

No More Blunders

In a damp underground room somewhere within the Stohess Military Police Headquarters, a young soldier named Eren laid sleeping, recovering from the battle against a titan that had taken place in the same day and managed to ruin a small section of the district. Seated on a chair next to his bed, Mikasa, his ever-present adoptive sister, moved herself closer to get a better look at him, absently reaching for her red scarf – before she remembered she had left it to dry after washing it carefully, like she always did after a battle.

Besides his well-being, something else troubled her deeply.

When she had finally been able to find him amidst the chaos and the steam in the wake of Annie Leonhardt's defeat by his titan form, he had been thrashing in Armin's arms.

"...off of me, Armin!" Eren growled deliriously as he struggled against the smaller boy. "Where are they taking her–"

In a state of semi-shock from discovering the slumbering titan inside the wall she had been perched on, Mikasa flew down as soon as the first orders to retreat reached her ears, quickly locating her two boys and disengaging her maneuver gear hooks to land closest to them.

Armin looked like he was at his wits' end. "Eren, quiet down right now, we need to get away from here without being seen! There's already a commotion and we don't need more civilians seeing you emerge from a titan! Plus didn't you see that thing inside the wall? Oh, there you are Mikasa, help me take him away!"

As if in reflex, she quickly knelt in front of her adoptive brother to check for injuries, before reminding herself that she wasn't supposed to see any now that he could regenerate like a titan.

"...How are you feeling, Eren?" She tried to steady her trembling voice.

Eren held her hand in a vice-like grip. "Mikasa, don't let them kill her. Don't do anything to her before we know what's really going on. Promise me!"

Armin frowned sympathetically at Mikasa's rapidly darkening expression.

"What?" She asked breathlessly. Scouting Legion soldiers were already converging on the three so they could take Eren away from the public eye, but he kept shouting hoarsely.

"I know that I can talk to her... Just give her some time. I won't forgive them if they – WAIT! LET GO!" He protested as the three men carried him away. One of them gave a salute before they took their leave.

She felt Armin's hand on her shoulder, urging her to get out of her stupor and start walking. Together they made their way to safety, both at a loss for words in that moment.

For the life of her, Mikasa couldn't understand his hesitation to confront Annie in that underground passage earlier that day and his irrational worry for her, not after everything she did. Was it because he felt they were so much alike, sharing the ability to shift into titans? Was he hoping she had an ulterior, noble motive for taking countless lives? What exactly was he trying to delude himself into?

Why was it that she still felt so miserable, even though Eren was safe and sound with her? What was it that made it hurt so much inside?

Forcing herself to stop over thinking everything, she left her chair and sat on the ground, laying her head over her arms right next to his face carefully as to not rouse him.

A few hours had passed since then. It was not the first time she'd done that – just watch over him in his sleep. He usually moved around restlessly on the bed, frowning, before he fully relaxed, but this time it was almost like he was in a coma, the way he was so still, his features so lax.

Irrational fear washed over her then, and before she could stop herself, she had knelt and laid her head on top of his chest, listening for heartbeats. The sound reminded her too vividly of the last time she had almost lost him forever. And the other time. And the other... There she was, over thinking it again.

She really should stop being a crybaby when it came to Eren. Mikasa removed her head from his chest before her trembling could somehow wake him up.

She forced her breathing to settle down as she very lightly stroked away a few brown strands of hair from Eren's face. When she was sure she had calmed down enough, she lifted herself from the floor, dusted off her pants and made her way out of the damp room so she could wash up a bit, hoping Eren wouldn't wake up while she was away.

"Are you done, Mikasa Ackerman?" A bored voice sounded very close to her.

Leaning on the wall right next to the door was Corporal Levi, arms crossed, in his impeccable black suit. How long had he been waiting outside? She had probably been too distressed at the time to notice his presence.

Stifling her gasp of surprise, she saluted him exaggeratedly, lifting her head up higher so hopefully the shorter man wouldn't notice her red-rimmed eyes that had been brimming with tears just a moment before. "Sir! Yes, sir," she replied rather stiffly.

An uncomfortable moment passed as Mikasa felt the weight of his scrutiny. If he did notice her vulnerable state he paid it no mind, or at least didn't let it show on his face, what with his eternally listless expression.

"I want to have a word with you. But before that, you must see something first. Come," the Corporal finally said, removing himself from the wall and walking past her. As soon as his back was turned to Mikasa her posture relaxed, but she still hesitated for a bit before following him.

Mikasa kept a few steps behind the Corporal, an underlying tension following them through the underground corridors of the Military Police Subdivision Headquarters. To make her feel worse, at some point she came to notice the way the Corporal walked – rather slowly, compared to his usual brisk pace. While others might think he was in no hurry to reach his destination, she was painfully aware of the almost unnoticeable limp in his gait, or the careful way he moved his left leg every time he took a step. Guiltily she remembered that, in her haze to rescue Eren that time in the forest during their last mission, her insubordination had cost the Corporal an injury that meant cost him an indeterminate time away from fighting. Did Commander Erwin and the others already know who was at fault for this? Could it have to do with what the Corporal wanted to talk about with her?

Mikasa's train of thought was interrupted abruptly when they stopped before a heavy steel door guarded by two Military Police officers, who silently made way for them at the Corporal's nod of assent. Loud screeches, thumping noises and shouts emerged as soon as the door was opened to them, and for a while Mikasa could only see smoke and the faint shape of many fellow Scouting Legion soldiers. She vaguely heard Squad Leader Hanji shrieking with impatience at some poor subordinate.

She followed her superior deeper into the chamber, feeling slightly uncomfortable for not being in her full uniform around her fellow soldiers, particularly the Corporal. It couldn't be helped that she was clad in plain clothing, though, since she hadn't expected to be summoned so soon. The steel door behind them was shut with another loud bang that added to the chaos inside the room and shook her from her silly embarrassment.

As some of the smoke cleared, her eyes slowly widened at the surreal scene that was just revealed to her. She then understood exactly what was going on.

Brushing off a speck of dust from his suit, Levi casually watched Mikasa as she stared up at Annie Leonhardt's crystallized form held up in countless chains in the back of the room. All around her, men and women worked to secure or strengthen these chains, while others tried different ways to penetrate the hard shell with elaborate tools and machines. The rest that was not involved in those two activities worked to reinforce the walls with thick steel panels, sharp prongs and other strange contraptions.

They couldn't break her shell after all, so the only thing they could do was restrain her. Mikasa questioned herself about what exactly their sacrifice had amounted into.

What she felt then wasn't just impotence. Impotence was the feeling humanity shared faced with the endless threat of mindless titans, something similar to what she had experienced in Trost when she had learned of Eren's supposed demise – a mix of ineptitude, resignation and most of all loss.

No. Right then, bubbling inside her, was a slowly building anger.

Mikasa finally understood then the peculiar meaning behind the recent unmasking of Annie Leonhardt. While Eren's ability to turn into a titan was still shocked many, it was the concept of someone else actively using this power against humankind that was unthinkable, unforgivable.

Because that meant the enemies of humankind were sentient beings as much capable of treason and cruelty as other humans. Because those who lived in fear behind the walls could, from now on, somehow pinpoint who or what they were fighting against.

Didn't Eren want something, someone to direct his anger towards? There it was, in front of her, and yet–

And yet he reacted exactly the opposite way, and now Mikasa felt this bitterness that was so much more difficult to hide behind her usual aloofness.

To distract herself from these feelings, she turned to her superior, opting to try to read him instead as he stared icily at what lay in front of them. She wondered exactly how he'd managed to keep his own mask of indifference up, when he had lost so much more than her just so they could get their hands on the traitor before them. No one inside these walls was free from anger and resentment, Armin had once said to her. If Levi's mask somehow cracked, would she find something similar to what she felt right then?

Feeling uncharacteristically curious, Mikasa wished she had better read his actions when they confronted Annie that time in the forest. Because she guessed that right then, in that moment, was probably the closest Corporal Levi had come to breaking down.

"The meeting is over," Levi began in a strong voice, allowing her to hear him over the commotion in the room while still giving them some privacy in their conversation. "Commander Erwin and the District Chief have come to an agreement about today's events. For now, the Scouting Legion is stuck in Stohess to babysit this fucker..." He waved his hand at Annie's slumbering form. "...Until we receive more funding from the Central Government. That's because our other sources of money have gone to shit since the last time." He glanced back at her apathetically. "Don't just look at me like that. You may ask me questions, you know."

Used to his crass comments, Mikasa brushed them off as slightly worse than usual bad mood. "Corporal, about Eren... What will happen to him?" Mikasa let out one of the questions that had been haunting her ever since the fight with Annie had ended.

From the look on his face, he wasn't really surprised at her question. "I assume you already know his summon to the King was canceled." At her nod, Levi spoke again. "First of all, your precious little Eren will be safe for a while, so don't worry, " he mocked. "That is, until Hanji gets her hands on him. After witnessing the multiple abilities Leonhardt displayed in her titan form, she has been too fucking eager to have Eren try them out. She is right to think that maybe if he masters these abilities, we'll have the key to breaking that shell and interrogating Leonhardt." The Corporal sighed and smoothed his short dark hair away from his brow before continuing.

"Second, despite our utter failure in the last expedition and the loss of innocent lives in the last fight, Eren managed to make himself pretty useful here in Stohess. There are many witnesses to his prowess as a titan who are on our side. Though I gotta say Leonhardt's capture wasn't exactly all his doing." Corporal Levi looked pointedly at Mikasa, which made her feel strangely uncomfortable. Did she mess up again?

"I'm saying yours and that brat Arlert's performance was good. Impressive, even." As if to illustrate his point, Levi looked around him, which prompted Mikasa to notice with some surprise how some of the Legion's soldiers who passed by stared almost reverently at her, and not just the Corporal.

"Thank you, sir." Mikasa didn't dare to recall exactly how rare it was for the Corporal to praise someone, lest she become even more disturbed by this encounter.

A minute passed with no words between them, the commotion in the chamber not much of a distraction from the literal elephant in the room chained before them. Mikasa took the time to reminisce about her fight with Annie before Levi startled her again, this time with a question of his own.

"I'm curious... what did you say to her that time?" He asked, his ice blue eyes for once locked on her almost coal-black ones.

Mikasa had a feeling she knew what he was talking about, but pretended not to know what it meant. "I'm sorry, sir?"

"That time you were standing on the wall above Leonhardt's head, and had just cut off all her fingers. That was a good move, by the way. It was rather refreshing to see a titan get scared shitless – almost makes up for having to watch everything from the sidelines. So. What did you say?"

It hadn't dawned on her until then that the Corporal had probably watched their fight, even though he was currently incapacitated – it must have been frustrating to witness all the action from afar. Her mind wandered back to that moment.

"...Annie, fall." A kick between the eyes, and the female titan was falling, agonizingly slowly, and oh, how long she had wanted to do that–

Had she enjoyed it?

Mikasa turned back to stare at the impossibly hard shape encasing Annie, who had taken so much away from them in such a short time, and onto whom they could not pass immediate judgement nor get answers from, despite every single sacrifice they'd made. The one who had almost taken Eren away from her, in more ways than one.

"I said 'Rot in hell, you fucking traitor bitch,' Sir."

The Corporal snorted softly. "I see."

"So, Mikasa, I've been talking to the Commander about it, and it's been decided you'll be working directly under me during our stay in Stohess." He said casually, just like that, and turned to leave the room.

What was that?

"Report to me tomorrow morning at dawn and we'll go over your duties. Dismissed," he added, slowly making his way to the door.

His announcement was so sudden and unexpected that Mikasa at first didn't know what to think or how to answer him. Was the Corporal somehow giving her a chance to make up for her blunder in the forest? Or was he going to punish her for it by possibly making her life hell as his direct subordinate? In any case, it was exclusively her fault that the Legion's strongest soldier couldn't fight at the moment, so it was up to her to make it right – no matter what it took.

She hurried to follow the Corporal, struggling to find the words to reply to him.

"Sir! I understand. I'm also deeply sorry... for the last time."

"I don't know what the hell you are talking about."

"I've directly disobeyed your order and caused you an injur–"

Levi's brow twitched and he rudely interrupted her. "Look. I know why you did that. What I don't know is why you're so attached to Eren. Regardless, from now on you're going to have to control yourself. Not only for him, but for the sake of your fellow soldiers – do us a favor and get the fuck out of your small world." Resuming his pace, he opened the door so he could get out of the tumultuous room. "I do not expect another blunder from you." And with that he made his way out, not turning to see if she followed him or not.

Reaching for the door handle before it closed on her face, she hurried after the Corporal, wondering for once what would become of her, and not just Eren. She had only a short moment to gather her resolve.

It was only after the heavy doors were shut behind them and they were a good distance away from the soldiers guarding the room that she could reply with conviction.

"Yes, sir. I will make sure there won't be any."

Author's Note: Oh Mikasa, I almost pity her now.

Next update will be in July, and I'll try to finish this in the same month, for this story won't be long.

Reviews are appreciated and very inspirational!