I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin

A/N: I know I said there will be one chapter left, but I promise...the next one is definitely the last one~! Thank you for the reviews, this was something I just wanted to write.

Reinforcements promptly came and eliminated the Titans around them, clearing the path so that Levi could safely ride to camp. He returned with Erwin already commanding an immediate evacuation of everyone; horses, tents, and supplies were being gathered for leaving. The group that had left to attend to the flare signal returned shortly after Levi with only a report of a single casualty.

Petra rode beside Levi as preparations were already made for her team. When she saw the bloody mess known as Hanji, who was still rambling on and on, she uttered,"What the hell happened to her?"

"Get a cart, put Hanji in with the others, she's in no condition to ride," Levi instructed her.

"Well obviously!"

And so it happened.

Within half an hour, they spread out in formation.

Dawn had reached with the sun beginning to color the sky pink. Erwin had placed the carts and injured in the middle of everyone.

-...-

It was truly hell to go on for a week. Somewhere along the way, the brilliant woman, now branded as a madwoman by some of the men (she showed signs of being delirious), had caught a terrible fever, forcing her to be kept under watch throughout the journey. Both Petra and Levi switched places to keep an eye on her as she stayed in the cart with the others; she had a head injury, something that needed to be cared for in the Walls, and now, a fever, something that demanded sleep.

Petra's turn to keep watch came and so she sat at the edge, one hand holding the railing while the other supported Hanji, preventing her from falling to the middle where another injured man was. They were only an hour away from Wall Maria and were planning to enter through Shiganshina, thus, all formations have broken and they had returned into a single file line.

"She stopped asking for Sadie," she reported when Levi trotted by.

Hanji had barely spoken, in fact, she had stopped talking two days ago. It was from exhaustion; all had assumed she went over the edge for some reason, yet the levelheaded ones reasoned she was hallucinating from her trauma.

Levi peered over at them, then at Hanji. The medic had done his best and wrapping her head with gauze, he attempted to reset her ribs but she still needed better treatment from home. Petra reached over, took a canteen of water, poured it over a cloth, and brought it to Hanji's forehead. With a fever lasting this long, the medic had also stated he doubted she could make it back alive at all.

This was the third day she had been inflicted, she never showed signs of getting any better. It was wonder how she was even still living.

"That's a good thing," Levi told her,"at least she's still breathing. Wake her up."

Petra gently nudged Hanji, the woman groaned in response and cracked an eye open. Those brown orbs tiredly looked up at them before being hidden away; that was her only way of communication. Petra gave a worried glance and then motioned for him to come close. She lifted Hanji's head to expose her neck to him.

"I was washing her face this morning after the medic said it was alright move her around, I found this soon after," Petra informed him. Upon her clear skin were the remnants of a fading bite and a bruise that was ebbing away; surely it was proof someone had taken a bite at the skin. "It looks like it's getting better."

Levi studied it for a moment. "...did you tell anyone about this?"

"Only you, Corporal. I guess this means...Sadie is real."

He gave a visible frown. "Don't let anyone know of this, especially not Hanji. I don't want her to sir up shit, it's enough she has an obsession with Titans. For all we know, it could have been a wolf that bit her, gave her rabies or something, made her go fucking crazy-"

"But this means there could be others living beyond the Walls, wouldn't we-"

Levi' overpowered her. "I'll ask her personally about this when she gets better, for now, just keep this to yourself. Don't come to stupid conclusions."

Reluctantly, Petra nodded and returned to attending Hanji.

-...-

Hanji awoke to find herself in the infirmary of the Shiganshina headquarters.

Everything was a blur. She remembered as far back as trying to escape a Titan's grip but then after that, well, she was drawing a blank. There was an incredible soreness coming from her torso, she surmised she had been rescued after she had lost consciousness. Her hand went to her head, it was throbbing yet bearable. She groaned as she rubbed one eye.

"You finally broke through," she heard Levi's voice,"about fucking time."

Hanji huffed. "How long?"

"Five days after we got here, you nearly had it for a full week. Both the medic and Doctor Yaeger said you wouldn't make it, guess you're in debt to them, you fucking Four-eyes," he informed her. Judging from his voice, he was sitting to the right of her at the bedside. "Do you feel you can speak?"

"Yeah," she managed to say as she tried to sit up. She expected him to help her but he didn't, he stood there with his arms crossed. Eventually, after a brief struggle, she propped herself up and onto her elbows, only then did he give her pillows to support her back. He offered her her glasses, she gratefully took them and saw the world clearly. "...I know most wouldn't want to know, but what happened?"

She saw Levi take a hold of his tea, it was resting with a set on the bedside table; a book was nearby, it told her he had been waiting and keeping watch over her. He sipped some of the beverage and placed it down. He began,"You were part of a decoy group-"

"I know that part, I set off a flare and no one came. My cables got caught and I had to leave my Gear, after that, well, I can't remember anything."

"Alright, I'll start to when I found you. You were at the base of a tree, a complete, bloody fucking mess; you broke some ribs and got a bump to the head, it took Doctor Yaeger a couple hours to reset your skull as best he could and also staple a couple of your ribs-"

"The ribs were from getting crushed by a Titan," she explained,"and my head...I must have hit a rock or something when I dropped, I don't know."

Levi continued to stare at her with those intense eyes that were lined back under the orbs. She grimaced at seeing that look, she wished he offered better expressions but Levi was Levi, he would never change. A chill ran down her spine, the way he was looking at her felt familiar but it was like her mind retracted from pulling out a memory.

"Not surprising, Doctor Yaeger told us you'd suffer some form of amnesia from both trauma and the fever," Levi told her. "Anyway, when I found you, you were screaming for someone to come back. You weren't screaming for help."

Hanji's brows creased at that. "Really?"

"Bloody-murder, yes, you really were. Do you remember Sadie?"

That name rang a bell to her as her eyes widened. She tried to think back once again, then she was met with a blank thought. That name sounded important to her, though the meaning had been stripped away, she couldn't remember why.

Levi pressed on. "You kept asking for her throughout the trip, do you not know?"

Sadie. Sadie. Sadie. Her fingers pinched the bridge of her nose. I may have became delusional after getting hurt...Sadie was probably a hallucination, something terrible may have happened, my mind may have tried to cope with it.

Hanji tried to think harder. It was like trying to read a book and at the reader's disparage upon finding the climax of the plot, a page had been torn out. She had to accept it and, somewhere down the line of her life, it would all come back to her; she couldn't spend the rest of it trying to remember what happened, she could die the next day and her efforts of research would go down the drain.

However, in her chest, she strangely felt empty. It was like something had began to grow there and taken root before being pulled out. The woman couldn't make sense of this but perhaps it would be better that she couldn't remember.

Slowly, putting her hand down, she licked her lips and shook her head. "...no, I don't know who Sadie is. Do you know her?"

Levi sighed. She couldn't tell if it was out of relief or exasperation. "You were the one who raved about her. God, you're a grown woman, Hanji, you shouldn't be having imaginary friends, it's enough that you have a perverted obsession with our enemies. Only the insane have those, perhaps you are insane yourself, given what you do."

She was used to this sort of talk. She shrugged. "Who knows-" Her finger went to her head tapped her temple, she gave a smile. "-maybe this mind will unlock the victories of humanity." Suddenly, she frowned and placed her hand down again. "But I suppose it's better to not know certain things."

"Hm, for once you make a sane decision," Levi said, drinking his tea once more,"well, get back to sleep, you might relapse on your fever."

His eyes gazed at her, she took notice of it. He was staring at something, she asked,"What? Is there something wrong?"

"No, just go to the sleep."

Little did she know, he was staring at the bite on her neck. It had become little markings by now and was only visible to those who knew of it. Petra had kept quiet about it, just as he instructed her. When she had no reaction to the name Sadie, he had concluded that she had simply gone delusional for the time being. The Doctor had assured them that Hanji had not contracted a severe illness of any kind, such as rabies, that would have driven her into the state he had found her in the forest.

"She only needs rest to regain her grip on reality," Doctor Yaeger's voice echoed to him as he watched her ease herself onto her back,"she may have lost some memories along the way, so give her time. Hopefully it is limited to the present day rather than her past."

-...-

Erwin had placed Hanji out of duty for the next month to give her time to recover, along with the others.

The Recon Corps had decided to take that month to recover their its bearings as well. Slowly, things became normal, everyone continued on with their lives. Levi visited Hanji every so often to keep her company, he showed dislike in her but, as a close friend, he felt obligated to see her. Petra and Mike would drop by as well, leaving books from Hanji's study so she wouldn't bore or annoy Levi to death.

By one week, her illness had gone.

By two weeks, Hanji was able to walk again without having someone to help her. She never spoke of Sadie again, much to Petra and Levi's relief. The Corporal insisted that the bite came from an animal, Hanji never knew of it as a mirror was never offered to her, and Petra was willing to accept the story as is.

She was released from care with prescriptions of pain medication. Soon enough, she was back in her lab, fiddling away with various samples of Titans and chemicals.

Everything had fallen to being relatively normal. At times she would lose her focus, her thought process would stall but instances like that would be overcome and she would return to work. When she had just figured a way to prevent Titan blood from staining their cloaks, she was informed that the Recon Corps had decided to send a division out to the field earlier than what Erwin had originally planned.

Still under the hiatus of three weeks (her month of recovery had not been fully completed), she rode on horseback to bid Levi and the others farewell and good luck. That day, she wore a long, simple dress and had a shawl wrapped around her, she looked much like the civilians around her as she held to her sorrel's reins. By the time they reached the end of Shiganshina, the gates had slowly opened, the group had walked out of it with the new recruits singing the old tavern song, not knowing of the dangers that lie ahead of them all.

Once the gates had closed, she rounded her horse back up the main road and decided to head back to her lab where she could occupy herself as she waited.

Another week, the fourth and final one, had come by.

It greeted her with the sound of bells ringing just a bit passed noon, signifying the return of the Recon Corps. She was excited to show off the new cloak she had developed during her time, it would cause the blood of Titans to vaporize in an instant; some would care less about it but she knew Levi would particularly be thankful for such an invention. She chose not to ride out today to meet them, it would have been a sore sight to see the defeated; she ranked among them so seeing them would remind her that humanity had not gained a foothold in its war against Titans just yet.

Garbed in her familiar uniform, she met up with the injured who limped and licked their wounds all the way back to headquarters.

Levi was the last few who arrived, his eyes darkened with an obvious grief but he tried to not show it as best he could. When he spotted her, he gave her a fierce glare but it didn't stop her from approaching. She came by his side and silently walked beside him. When she had escorted him to his room, he told her,"Leave me alone, I can take care of myself, you Four-eyed fuck."

"No, you took care of me so it's my turn to do so for you," she replied defiantly. It earned another glare but it softened when she pushed in and readied the bath. He achingly removed his Gear and propped it against the door, along with his fan. His cloak, soaked in Titan blood, was tossed to a hamper, along with his jacket.

"I'm not injured," he informed her as he found her drawing the bath half-way. He tossed his jacket to another hamper in the bathroom.

"Mentally, you are, you're showing it like a badge," she pointed out to him, going over to undo the straps of his harness. It would take one person to get it on but normally, after a tenuous day, two would often be useful. She took off the back vest and he did the rest, following it was the dress shirt that was now drenched from sweat and blood.

They didn't speak at all when he got into the bath. Levi didn't mind her watching him nude, he figured Hanji was just Hanji, her interests would lie in Titans rather than people. He saw her as a perverse individual when she referred to such beasts as her pets; they were supposed to capture a Titan for research over the course of a week but complications arose and they were forced to retreat.

As he took a deep breath, he heard Hanji break the silence,"I had a dream last night."

This was a first to hear her speak of something personal to him. His brow quipped up as she went to sit at the edge of the window that was parallel to the bath. He snorted,"I'm not a therapist you can pour your secrets to." He wanted to see how she would react. She didn't look at him as her attention was drawn to the outside. She situated herself on the windowsill with the glass opened outwards. "Also, if you're contemplating suicide, I'm not catching you."

It was a four story drop. The window faced the gate of Wall Maria, it was the one that lead to the territory of Titans; the sun had begun to set, leaving a reddish tint to the sky that was lined with yellow clouds.

Hanji continued on, ignoring his indirect threat. "It was about bits and pieces of what happened before you rescued me."

"I thought we had this conversation already," he deadpanned her.

She shrugged. "I remember running in the darkness and then someone was there-"

Levi rolled his eyes. "It's your mind fucking with you. You saw no one, you saw nothing. Can you just drop it?"

Hanji brought her knees to her chest and she rested her head on one, she faced him and gave a soft look. She chuckled,"I guess you're right then."

It grew quiet once more. Levi began to scrub away at his skin as she looked out the window, proposing another question.

"Had you ever felt truly alone?"

It was his turn to let out a soft laugh under his breath. "I ought to ask you the same considering you coop yourself up in your lab every day. You've been like that since we joined the Recon Corps." He lathered the soap once again. "...I've had a team wiped out before my eyes the first time I went on an expedition, I was the only one who survived. I suppose that was the first time I felt true loneliness, it was brief since Erwin came to me by the end of the hour."

"That was the same for me earlier." She was referring back to the slaughter of the decoys. "I always wondered...why we were both able to live through that, we could have given up but we carried on. I can't see how I managed to handle that on my own, so...I'm fully convinced someone was there."

Levi washed his face with the water, splashing it over while letting out an obvious irritated sigh. He grabbed towel and began to dry himself with his back to her. He wrapped it around his waist and strode to the wardrobe in the bathroom. "Aren't you supposed to be a scientist? You're only convinced you see and touch what's there? Fuck, you even gave a lecture on how it's impossible for anything paranormal to exist."

"True." She would agree to that, she looked away so that he could have privacy to get into a new uniform.

"If you continue your raving about this, you're going to convince yourself that you used magic to save yourself..."

Her eyes widened at the word. "M...magic?"

Everything else he told her drowned out, she felt something come back to her, something that her mind had attempted to lock away; he saw the expression on her face change, he stopped speaking as well. She was getting close to remembering, all too close, but then a flash of light blinded them both and the sound of thunder over the earth pulled her thoughts away; the building rumbled and she nearly fell, he reached out with one hand and caught her by her shoulder, keeping her balanced.

There were screams in the distance and their attention was brought to look outside. Above the wall was the head of a Titan that clearly towered over the 50 meter barrier of Wall Maria. It took a full minute for them to process that it was there, it took a full minute for that...creature of sorts to suddenly kick a hole into the gate. Within a matter of seconds, all Hell broke loose within the city.

As they watched in horror of the debris raining down upon the innocent with the giants flooding through the hole, Levi quietly and calmly instructed the woman that had frozen in place,"We're in no condition to fight, not now...gather everyone, tell them to retreat behind the back gates."

"What about the evacuation of the civilians?" She asked, her voice slightly shaking.

"The able-bodied will take care of it, for now, get the injured out of here..." When she didn't move, he barked. "Now! Go! It's a fucking order, didn't you hear me, you Four-eyed shit!?"

He barely had time to tie together his ascot under his collar as both took off, running out of the bathroom; he lagged behind to equip himself with his harness and Gear while Hanji fled to round up the hospitalized troops. The rest that happened was simply chaos.