Word Count: 2,309


The remaining cadets stared at the doorway. And who would ever blame them? After all, from what had just happened, it really looked as though Levi and Hange had just spontaneously had a kid and no one had bothered to tell them about it. Considering their dynamic, that alone should have been enough to put some people in shock.

"Do you guys really think that Hange and Levi suddenly had a kid?" Connie suddenly said, asking the question that was quite clearly on everyone's minds. "I remember seeing the captain reading some letter and Hange holding that same kid sometime this morning. It's kinda hazy, but I'm pretty sure he told Jean and me to go clean the kitchen." He scrunched his nose, thinking. "Then I think I passed out."

"Well, if we think about this logically, no one here was pregnant, so that rules out anyone in the Corps," Armin replied.

"Dude, none of us would have ever thought it was someone in the Corps. It can't have been some man sleeping around, since Levi-Heichou doesn't read other people's mail or invade their privacy like that, and like you said: no one was pregnant," Sasha pointed out.

"But, the baby definitely wasn't a newborn, since it wasn't all wrinkly and red. Maybe someone was pregnant and they just… left it here. Or something." He paused, then shook his head. "Nah, probably a foundling. The letter was probably addressed to the captain because he's the most iconic of all the soldiers. Everyone knows him. Not many people know all that much about the other veterans. So, yeah."

"How would the mother get all the way out here, though? The nearest village is two hours away on horseback, and the walls surrounding the castle have but one gate, and it's guarded at night," Mikasa countered.

"Well, it's the most logical explanation I can think of right now. Do any of you have anything better to offer?" Armin replied.

A few seconds passed, and no one had argued.

"Maybe it just came out of nowhere," Eren blurted out.

Everyone turned and stared at him.

"I'm at least three percent sure that's not how babies are made, Eren," Armin said.

"That's not very sure."

"Fine, I'm absolutely positive that's now how babies are made because we've seen pregnant women in Shiganshina, Eren."

"Squad Leader Hange was talking about how titans are far too light for their weight and should be literally impossible, but you don't see them ceasing to exist just because of that."

Everyone else sighed and turned back to their food.

They ate quietly. No one said anything until Levi entered the room, and everyone snapped to attention, saluting him.

"At ease, brats. I'm looking for that small brat. Did Hange take her?"

"Who, that baby Christa was cuddling earlier?" Sasha asked.

"Yes, that baby," Levi snapped. "We need to make sure it legally exists. It didn't come with a birth certificate, and having a baby that doesn't legally exist means that we don't get more government funding to support it, which means less of everything for everyone."

"Whaaat? We're keeping it?" Connie asked, his mouth still full of food.

Levi glared at him, scowling disdainfully. "Springer, that's disgusting. And yes, we are keeping her."

Many questions bubbled from the cadets' throats, but Levi would hear none of it. "Shut it. Tell me where the turd is, or I'll tell Commander Smith to put you all on latrine duty for the next two weeks on top of all your regular chores."

Mikasa raised her hand. "Hange took it to do science experiments with," she told him.

"Tch. Typical Hange. I'd better make sure she doesn't accidentally kill her, then," Levi said and turned to leave the room.

"Wait, Heichou!" Eren called, and all eyes were on him. Levi himself paused and glanced behind him. "Whose baby is it?" the cadet boldly asked.

"That doesn't matter right now," Levi very calmly (and quite coldly) answered, then left before anyone could stop him.

The cadets awkwardly returned to their breakfasts for the third time that morning as Ymir returned. No one said anything or even took note of her return. They simply ate as they were lost in thought.


Hange put the baby on her worktable so that she may around her dark and poorly lit laboratory cleaning syringes, sterilizing needles, preparing vials, so on and so forth. She had never done a paternity test before, but she'd read old medical books dozens of times before; she was confident in her abilities as a scientist. Even if her specialty lay far beyond that of pediatrics, it wasn't that far beyond. Titans weren't that different from children, right?

Right.

She partially unwrapped the child so that she could wrap a piece of rubber around its arm to form a tourniquet. She wasn't sure why that was a required procedure, but she did it anyway. She pulled up her surgeon's mask and dabbed at the baby's upper arm with alcohol. Again, she wasn't sure why she needed to waste perfectly good whiskey on a baby, but it's what the fraying textbook said, and she wasn't about to take any risks.

She looked at the diagram in the textbook. It showed a hand wiping the underside of a child's elbow, not its upper arm. Oops.

Hange sighed and plugged the mouth of the whiskey bottle with another cotton ball, briefly swinging the bottle upside down to dampen the ball. She crouched down and was about to start dabbling it on the underside of the baby's elbow when the door slammed open.

"Hange. You are not doing science experiments on this kid," Levi firmly said from the doorway.

She paid his words no heed. "Ah, Levi. You're here. I can't seem to find your blood sample anywhere in our records, so now would be a good time to remedy that. Please sit in that seat there," she commanded, motioning to a dusty old seat near her worktable.

Levi scowled. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to do a paternity test on the kid to see if it's yours. I mean, you had this pretty suspicious gig going on with the letter being addressed to you, and I mean, come on. Simple genetics. She has traits that closely resemble phenotypes that are almost exclusive to you. I'm not an idiot."

"But you are crazy," he interjected, but it was ignored.

"With some luck, we can confirm the biological mother as well, assuming she's among our records."

"That chair is filthy and most likely so are your tools."

Hange stopped and looks offended, though it seemed about seventy percent serious and thirty percent mock. "Levi! I would never stab a child with unsanitary equipment! That is illegal and you know that. How dare you think that," she said. Strangely, she didn't sound too, too serious when she said that. She reverted to a straight face. "Now sit down so I can draw your blood, too. If it helps, I'll draw the kid's blood first so that you can clean up yourself and your area," she finished, finality in her tone.

Knowing better than to get in the way of Hange when her mind was set on knowledge, Levi sighed and dusted off the chair the best he could and watched Hange sanitize the baby's arm with… God, was that their best whiskey? Where did she find that?

Whatever. He only knew he would miss that whiskey when the kid got old enough to walk and talk.

Thinking of her only as "the kid" made Levi suddenly remember he hadn't picked out a name for her yet. Christa had told them it was a girl, but he couldn't think of any names that he liked at the moment. He was rubbish at coming up with names off the top of his head, so he ran through his memories, thinking of girls he knew in the past that he could name it after. He'd never really known any aside from a select few, but the name that came up in his memory hit a flashback.

He stiffened as his first expedition began to play in his head.

He remembered riding away into the fog, alone. He remembered screams and the feeling of nausea and panic together as he worried for the lives of his friends. He did nothing about it then, for he thought he had more important things to do, but the part of him in his head was screaming a loud "no!"

His stomach twisted as it came to the worst part. A soldier, bleeding to death near a tree. Croaking at him to kill them. He remembered the head of the lively girl he and his friend had taken in, laying on the floor, fear and shock emblazoned on her face, the dark, drying blood coming to match the same shade of red her hair was.

Levi tensed further, but couldn't stop the memory. He saw the upper body of his dear friend Farlan, eyes glassy and mouth agape, bleeding out onto the grass as an abnormal titan gnawed almost lazily on the lower half.

The rest was a blur. Levi eased as the memory faded away, and he became aware of his surroundings. The first thing he saw was Hange's face, and he flinched slightly.

"Ah, you're back. You were off in your own world for a few moments there. I'm almost done collecting your daughter's blood. Don't worry about it. I know exactly what I'm doing," she told him as she got out of his personal bubble. "This is a strangely cooperative baby you have here, Rivaille."

He cringed at her calling "Rivaille" because it was the false last name they had given the government when he had first joined, for they knew not his true last name, but he remained silent and it went unnoticed as Hange rambled on.

"She hardly flinched when I put the needle in. And yet, she couldn't stand falling a few centimeters when I tossed her this morning. She's an odd one, all right." Hange checked on the baby and saw that the vial of her blood was nearly full. "Oh! I should get that," she said and swiftly removed the needle, undid the tourniquet, and plugged the wound with cotton and medical tape. She then patted her very gently on the head, careful not to cause her harm via the soft spot on her head. "All done."

Hange turned to Levi and picked up a different needle and tube. "Your turn." She grinned. She replaced the rubber strip on Levi's arm as he rather reluctantly held it out and dabbled a few more drops of whiskey on the underside of his elbow. She then swiftly stabbed him in a vein and let the blood flow into a vial attached to the other end of the tube. Then, she sat back in wait.

"Have you thought of a name for her yet? She can't just go around without a proper name, you know. Plus, then we'd never get those government forms filled out," she said.

"I gave it some thought," he slowly said. "But all I could think of was a little girl who thought of me as her big brother. Her name was Isabel."

Hange remembered. She'd been there. She could tell he was about to go all mushy flashback on her, but it was so rare that Levi opened up to anyone that she decided not to tell him that she already knew exactly what happened.

"She died on our first expedition. All that was left of her was her head." He stared off into space. "I don't want to name a child after someone I can't remember without their screams echoing throughout my mind." They both fell silent because his emo-bomb left them both feeling pretty awkward.

"I'm surprised it hasn't shit the blanket yet," Hange commented, changing the subject. "It's not wearing a diaper beneath that blanket, you know." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "Or maybe it has, and we just haven't been able to smell it yet." She gently removed the needle from his vein and slapped a cotton ball and medical tape on the puncture wound.

Levi reached for the baby he might as well accept was most probably his daughter and held her for the first time. Strange. He'd known he'd had a kid for about four and a half hours, and yet he hadn't held her until then. She smiled up at him, reaching for his face with her small baby arms. For the first time in forever, Levi smiled. But just slightly.

"Are you going to name her or not?" Hange asked.

Levi knew he sucked at naming kids. "You can name her," he decided, getting up. He handed his daughter and the authority to name her over to Hange, and he left the room.

Hange tucked the girl into the crook of her arm as she stoppered the vial that held Levi's blood before most carefully labeling it in her illegible (to everyone but her assistant Moblit) handwriting. She placed it in a beaker holder with the much smaller vial of the baby's blood. Then, holding the baby in two arms, she lifted her up towards the dim light fixture again.

"Well, this should be fun," Hange said to herself.


Revised Author's Note iii. hah i remember when i spent three days researching goats and money for this. good times. still messed up at one point lol. i

was a lot... harsher... when i first began writing fanfic. looking back on it, the trigger thing i can still feel is very raw and emotional, but i still remember it was because drew on my own experiences with bad experiences, of which i still hadn't really... overcome yet. of course, it's been a while since then and of course i develop with the characters. i changed up the scene just a bit, but that was mostly for comprehension's sake. as i guess a bit of an... homage, i guess, to who i used to be, i left it in more or less the same state it had originally been in.

anyway. hope you enjoyed! ! leave a review if you wish (i sure wish lmao), and as always, have a greaaaat daaaay~~