Reality Sucks.

Disclaimer: I do not own AoT/ SnK

Mentions of death and blood, but I guess you already know that.

Have you ever had that one dream?

The dream so real, you actually felt like you were falling? The dream that scared you awake, that left your heart pumping furiously, hammering against your ribs? That dream that let beads of cold sweat slip from your face, forming intricate, beautiful shapes at each dip and indent of your body?

Have you ever had a dream so real: a dream that brought all your numbed senses to life, which left your eyes sore, your ears ringing, your taste buds tingling and your nose stinging?

Hange fell victim to these sort of dreams every night. Dark visions attacked her sub-conscious mind, and she couldn't bring herself to utter a word about them. Hange had seen things that even God, or whoever was up there, would fear during her time in the Scouting Legion but never once, had these came close to surpassing her stupid nightmares.

She often dreamt of Levi. Levi, humanity's strongest. Levi, her friend, her dear friend… Levi, her partner. Levi, that short little dork who she loved so greatly, yet so stupidly. She dreamt of his death, which of course, she never thought of it actually happening. He was humanity's strongest, after all. There was nothing that could simply defeat him, she said, time after time again. She believed that. She hoped that. She prayed that.

No matter how many times she told herself that it was just a dream, that it was all just a dumb dream, she was always afraid and it would never stop. Every time she closed her eyes before she drifted off into her fitful slumber, she could hear the sound of his flesh splitting open. His blood, squirting through the fat, greedy fingers of those titans. And the sound, the sound of his broken, mangled corpse falling to the blood soaked grass and landing with a wet slap. She could always imagine it.

His blood was thick, coating her hands a crimson shade, and it was utterly foul. Her hands were dyed with the living essence of her beloved. And for every moment that it happened, she willed herself to wake up. She willed herself to take control of her dreams, and imagine herself finger painting instead. But she would be finger painting with this blood, on the blank canvas before her.

Time after time again, she grabbed his face and stared into his already lifeless eyes. The last sliver of what was there, disappeared before her, before she had time to process what happened. She would bite down on her hand, until tooth cracked down on bone. The blood in her mouth was metallic and with her heart folding in on itself, she couldn't tell if it was his, or hers.

But there was one thing she knew. Levi, was dead. Her sweet, little Levi.

And she would wake up.

Blood pumping in her ears, and with her eyes wide and alight, dancing with fear, she reached to her side, expecting her flushed skin to caress Levi's - which was paler, cooler. A good nightmare remedy, she mused. She knew that Levi, even in his tired and grumpy state, would utter a few 'comforting' words. Keeping in mind that it was his version of comforting, she knew that it would still have the same effect on her.

But her hand contacted nothing. Nothing but the tidy side of Levi's side of their bed.

And that is when her whole world came crumbling down. This was the reality she was dreading; this was the reality that she began to fear more than her dreams. Levi was dead. A few months dead, at least. She pushed it away, choosing to ignore it and she tried to make a living from it in blissful ignorance. But it wouldn't work. She couldn't escape - no matter how hard she tried to outrun it, it would eventually catch up. And it would slaughter her.

Her Levi was gone.