Epilogue: One Again

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"Hange, do you have any more butter?" Levi searches the cupboards of Hange's kitchen, frown deepening at the state of them with each subsequent cupboard he opens. "What happened to you helping me cook?"

He's met with silence, and the only thing he hears is the stew simmering away on the wood burning stove. With each passing second that Hange doesn't respond, Levi becomes more irritated, and he stalks out of the kitchen and down the hall towards her room, where the door is shut. Unfortunately for her, a closed door never stopped him from entering through it.

He slams it open, and from where she's laying on her desk that's covered haphazardly with papers, she springs awake. "I was just on my way, I swear!"

"What the fuck kind of selfish prick are you to make me cook Christmas dinner on my own?" Levi snaps. "Did you think I wouldn't notice when you didn't come back from the bathroom?"

"Please," she moans, "not so loud. I've been up since the crack of dawn."

"We've been up since the crack of dawn because we're making Christmas dinner for underprivileged children. I've been checking on your turkey for the past hour. When are you going to start pulling your own weight?"

"You're mean," Hange says, pulling herself to her feet once she realizes Levi isn't going to shut up until she joins him in the kitchen again.

"I'll show you mean," he snarls, and she scurries past him to return to the kitchen, though not without a glint of mischief in her eyes. "By the way, do you have more butter?"

"Nope. That was the last of it."

"I'll go get some more from the market. Keep the place from burning down while I'm gone."

"I just need to keep the turkey wet, right?"

"It's called basting, dumbass. And prepare the potatoes too. Wash, peel, chop into bite-sized pieces."

"Titan bites?" she asks, her grin toothy and feral. Luckily for her, Levi doesn't have anything in his hand to chuck at her face.

He ducks out of her home after buttoning up his jacket, pulling the collar up when a cold gust of wind hits. The streets of Mitras are not the most familiar, but he's been to Hange's military-subsidized home enough to find his way to the market. The streets here are clean, filthy rich, cobblestones picked from the best of the best, lampposts forged from the finest metal. They finally have electricity here in the heart of Paradis, and Levi has to admit that it's nice, especially in the winter months when the sun sets earlier.

Personally, he hates it when the weather gets this cold. Even though the snow never stays for long, the chill is just enough that it penetrates straight to his bone. The weather numbs his body, slows down his reaction time.

Sakura would love this weather though. She always complained about how it never got cold enough around Christmas in Konoha, that it never really felt like Christmas when she didn't even need a jacket. She'd rejoice at the cloudy skies and the opportunity to bury her face in a scarf and wear boots lined with wool.

Levi absent-mindedly spins his ring around his finger, a habit he's developed ever since they've been separated. The ring has dulled a bit over the years, its surface a little scratched from the constant wear and battering against things as he cooks, works, builds. And still it remains on his finger, like an anchor, like a reminder. Sometimes it's the only thing that keeps him from thinking that it was all a dream, that she, along with her world, was just a fantasy his mind conjured up to pull himself from the depths of his own soul.

This is his third Christmas without her. He refuses to think about how many more he will have to spend this way.

Although he's not technically alone. Because for the past three years, he and Hange have made Christmas dinner for children who live in the Underground, which has mostly been rebuilt since the Rumbling. This day is always chaotic, keeping Levi busy enough that he doesn't have to think about what's always lingering at the back of his mind: how he is here and Sakura is not. But he still feels alone by the end of the day, sleeping on Hange's couch and listening to the quiet before waking up early the next morning to begin his long journey home to his lonely house on the countryside.

He pulls his collar up high enough to cover the lower half of his face, weaves through the crowds of people who are likely at the market to make last minute purchases just like himself, and ignores how loneliness makes everything feel colder.

—

By the time Sakura finally exits the operating room, her feet are numb and her eyes are only still open through sheer force of willpower.

"I didn't think we'd ever get that hemorrhaging under control," Shizune sighs, sounding just as exhausted as Sakura feels. "How'd you know the source of the bleeding was behind the liver?"

"I don't know," she replies with a yawn, "just a hunch. I can't really remember why I thought to look there." The hours of the incredibly long surgery blur together in her delirious, sleep-addled brain.

She looks at the clock at the end of the hallway. It's nearly three o'clock in the morning. That would explain the delirium.

"In any case," Shizune says, "I'm not going to be in before noon tomorrow, if that's okay."

"I'm not going to be in at all, so I won't be around to be mad at you. Not that I would."

The two women part ways at the hospital's main entrance without much of a goodbye. Sakura forces one foot in front of the other, mostly on autopilot as she makes her way home. The full moon lights up the sky. The air is brisk. And even though morning hasn't quite arrived yet, it's still past midnight, so…

"Merry Christmas to me," she says into the dark. A heartbeat, and then quieter, "Happy birthday, Levi." Although knowing him, he won't even acknowledge it if he can help it.

Sakura exhales, barely seeing her breath in the air. Three years is a long time when she doesn't know if she'll see the man she loves ever again.

It's possible that she could be sent back to Levi's world again, or him to hers, but it's equally possible that the cracks of the universe will forever remain shut. She's always wondered if bringing him here all those years ago was a mistake, that she had upset some cosmic balance when she shot her cable into his shoulder in a desperate attempt to save his life. If, ever since then, the universe had been trying to right her wrong, now that they are both where they belong, they will never see each other again. The way it was always meant to be.

The idea of it is too much to bear.

So she'll keep waiting. It's what she does best, and it's the only thing she can do.

—

Levi curses under his breath when Hange jabs her sharp elbow into his ribs. "Levi, there's a woman staring at you. She's pretty."

"Stop being gross. I'm married."

He looks anyway. She's young—too young—long brown hair tied to the side and spilling over one shoulder. Her eyes are doe-like, innocent and holding an obvious admiration for him. When she notices that he's watching her, her cheeks set fire to an obvious blush and she averts her gaze.

"You're not legally married, and it's not like Sakura would find out," Hange points out, to which he violently digs the steel heel of his boot into her foot. "Ow! Okay, I get it!"

The Underground tends to be extra cold this time of year, buried in the depths of the frozen earth, but the room is warm tonight. Torches line the walls and a number of bodies heat up the air, the children crowded around the long table and a handful of adults helping out with plating and serving the food that Levi and Hange prepared. With the chatter and laughter in the room, it almost feels like they're on the surface, unworried about their aching bones or where their food will come from tomorrow. Levi hates that he can't bring these children up above where they deserve to be—he sees so much of himself, of Isabel and Furlan in them—but he can bring them this. He can bring them Christmas dinner.

The children dig into the food, too hungry to thank Levi and Hange or even look at them, but he doesn't care. He doesn't know how to talk to kids anyway, and they're honest by nature, so the fact that they're practically inhaling the meal means that they're enjoying it. He eats standing in the corner of the room, his plate considerably less filled so as to leave more for everyone else, and he feels, in this moment, content.

The young woman who was watching him approaches him with the demeanor of a timid rabbit. She's pale and thin; she probably lives down here too.

"The kids have been talking about tonight for an entire week," she says with a small smile. "Do you do this every year?"

"Third year in a row," he answers, chewing a piece of potato. "Not sure how long I'll keep this up for."

"Well, they love it." She pauses, and he catches her eyes flicker to his left hand. No matter how much time passes, he can't help himself from noticing every detail of every person and every thing. There are just some habits that time can't erase. "You're married?"

"Yeah."

Her gaze falls on Hange, and then she sounds disappointed. "She's very lucky."

Levi frowns. Gross. "Not to her."

"Oh. Where's your wife?" At her question, a lump grows in his throat. He swallows it down and clenches his jaw, considering how to answer her question. He considers not answering at all.

"Not here," is what he settles on.

"Not here as in…?"

His next words come out edging on feral. "She's not dead, you imbecile." The way she jumps at his tone makes him apologetic, though not enough to actually apologize.

"S-Sorry, I didn't mean to imply as such." She ducks her head and scurries away, the way she moves reminding Levi of his subordinates after he barked something particularly nasty at them.

He could be wrong, though. Sakura could be dead. She could've taken a risky mission and reacted too slowly. She could've given her life to save someone else's. There are plenty of situations where Sakura could die, all of them equally noble and heartbreaking, and those thoughts haunt him more than he cares to admit. They had left him alone during the chaos of Christmas dinner, but now they're back again at full force because of that stupid woman.

He's in a foul mood for the rest of the night.

A few hours later, as he and Hange are hauling empty pots and trays up the long, long staircase, Hange asks, "What did Zofia say to you?"

"Nothing."

"It didn't look like nothing."

He doesn't respond, and they continue in silence.

Fifteen minutes later, when the moon is bright above their heads and he feels a breeze on his skin again: "She asked if Sakura is dead."

A pause. "I'm sure she didn't actually."

"She did."

"Okay, even if she did, she's young and bad with her words. She's probably sorry."

"The Titans probably felt sorry about eating people too, but that doesn't change what they did."

Hange seems to understand from his tone that it isn't really about what Zofia asked or didn't ask, although he doesn't know how, but he's long since known that she's too intuitive for her own damn good. "Sakura's not dead," she says, and Levi's grip turns white-knuckled on his heavy tray of pans.

They don't know that. There's no way for them to know that.

One day the earth could open up and swallow him whole, take him back to the one place he truly ever felt was home, and he could find it cold and empty. Levi used to think about the fighting, about how his soldiers would be gobbled up and how death could come for him at any moment, and now he can only think about all the different ways Sakura could disappear from this life. He's no good without her, his thoughts are obsessive and they always take him to the worst possible places, relentless and never-ending.

"Levi." Hange's hands are full, though he doesn't doubt that if she could, she would touch his arm. "Even if she is dead, she'd be so sad to know that you're wasting your life thinking about it."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" he asks.

"It's supposed to make you reconsider yourself," she answers, voice firm. "Christmas is the only time I see you. You spend the rest of the year by yourself in that house. You can't be alone all the time like that, you'll go crazy—hey, Levi!"

He has to work extra hard with his shorter legs to outwalk her down the quiet streets of Mitras, but luckily, she doesn't try to catch up. When he reaches the door of her house, he places his tray on the ground to fish the spare key out of his pocket. He dumps the dirty kitchenware in the sink and leaves it all unwashed, passing Hange without a word as she trails behind him into the house to head straight to the linen closet where the extra blankets are. He'll sleep on the couch tonight as he always does, and he'll leave in the morning before she wakes. By next Christmas, she'll have dropped the subject and they'll be fine again.

This is what they do every year. They slave over the meal, they feed the children, she tries to talk him out of being a bitter old man, and he ignores her for the next three hundred sixty-four days.

But something about what she said rubs him the wrong way this time.

She'd be so sad to know that you're wasting your life thinking about it.

Of course she'd be sad. He's fucking sad too—that's the point. As if he wants to live like this. As if he knows any other way to be.

—

"Merry Christmas, Sakura-chan!" Naruto tumbles into her apartment uninvited shortly after noon with Sasuke in tow. Sakura jumps in her seat at the kitchen table, nearly spilling the steaming mug of tea in her hand.

"You know you could just knock, right?" she asks with a smile, closing the photo album that she was perusing. "The spare key is only for emergencies when I'm not home. Merry Christmas, Naruto, Sasuke." She glances at what her teammates brought with them: Naruto has a handful of wrapped gifts, and Sasuke is holding a bag of groceries in one hand, and in the other hand is bag of what smells like dango. Her stomach involuntarily growls—she woke up not too long ago and hasn't eaten yet.

She can't help but feel warm at the sight of her best friends unloading their things all over the kitchen. They know that Christmas Day is the saddest day of the year for her, and have made sure to fill it with laughter and light ever since she returned. She can't say that they ever fully succeed, but they certainly make it better.

"What's all that?" she asks Sasuke, who's unpacking the groceries. There are two bottles of wine, some fruit, and several different spice packets.

"Naruto said Levi used to make this warm wine stuff this time of year," he replies.

"Oh, mulled wine! Yeah, he did. It was really good. Do you know how to make it?"

"You boil it with fruit and spices, how hard can it be?"

"I don't know," Sakura says with a frown. "He was always really particular about it."

"He's particular about everything," Sasuke replies, and something about the way he speaks about Levi in present tense makes her frown melt away.

"Yeah. That's true."

"Dango!" Naruto exclaims, shoving a pack of the dessert into Sakura's face. "And I'm boiling some water for instant ramen, I assume you want some." She doesn't really, but she doesn't tell him that.

The mulled wine ends up being pretty bad, somehow too sweet and too bitter at the same time, but it's alcohol so they drink it anyway. They exchange gifts—Naruto got her a sweater she isn't sure she'll ever wear, Sasuke a new pack of senbon—and later, full on food and warm from wine, they watch Christmas movies in Sakura's living room, huddled together on the couch, until Naruto announces that he needs to have Christmas dinner with Hinata's family.

The three of them walk together until Naruto gives her a bear hug and veers off in the direction of the Hyuuga compound. Sakura and Sasuke make their way to the markets to fill their bellies with street food because neither of them want to cook dinner. The streets are festive, aglow with twinkling lights, full of people who had the same idea as them. If it were a little bit colder, then it'd be the perfect Christmas.

Well, not perfect, but Sakura has never been one to ask for more than what the universe has been able to give.

In the end, they settle for okonomiyaki. Sakura sits across from Sasuke in the booth, quiet as she contemplates whether she wants seafood or pork. She decides on seafood—it's Levi's birthday, after all, and that's what he would choose.

"Thanks for coming into town today," she says. "It means a lot to me."

Sasuke shrugs. "If we didn't drop by, you'd just be staring at your photos all day, wouldn't you?"

Sakura blinks in surprise. She didn't realize he had noticed that. She has an album of photos, mostly filled with pictures of her and her friends, but there are a handful of pages that contain Levi. He never did care much about being photographed (something about not understanding how it worked and therefore adamantly ignoring it), but there are still pictures of them together, of the grand opening of his teahouse, of the moments in between that didn't seem to matter at the time but now she's thankful for. She usually makes a conscious effort not to look at those photos too much, but she gives herself a pass on Christmas Day—she needs to remember him, even if it hurts.

"I wouldn't have stared at them all day," she finally says. "I probably would've stopped by now."

"That's still more than enough," he replies. She only responds with a smile, so he motions to move on to the next topic. He starts, and then hesitates. "I."

Sakura raises her eyebrows, imploring.

"I'm thinking of coming back."

Her heart skips a beat and she thinks not to ask, not to hope, but she has to. "Coming back as in…?"

Sasuke shifts in his seat and refuses to make eye contact with her. The action is clearly vulnerable in a way he would've never shown her when they were even a little bit younger, but years have passed and time has changed them both. "Moving," he says. "Back to Konoha."

The smile that blooms across her face is unmistakable, and if there's a better Christmas gift out there, she can't think of it.

"That'd be amazing," she says, and means it. "Does Naruto know?"

"Yeah. I told him yesterday."

And there Sakura sits, across the okonomiyaki grill from Sasuke, the most whole she's been in years.

—

When Levi wakes up the next morning, the sun is just beginning to light up the sky with pinks, purples, and golds. His body is sore from the lumpy couch, and when he stands up and stretches, his back creates several popping sounds. Jesus, he's getting old.

He grabs his toothbrush and heads to the kitchen to brush his teeth over the sink, and freezes when he sees Hange already awake, sitting at the kitchen table and nursing a fresh cup of tea. Her hair, usually tied in its signature ponytail, is unkempt today, tumbling over her shoulders in unruly waves and making her look startlingly feminine. It's only in this moment that Levi realizes that he doesn't really see her as much of a woman at all—she's just Hange, with her weird enthusiasm and bleeding heart.

There's a second cup at the empty seat across from her, still steaming, beckoning him to it. He wordlessly brushes his teeth and slides into the chair, a finger tapping incessantly against his thigh. She isn't supposed to be awake yet—she's never awake at this hour. Their conversation from the previous night returns to haunt him; he always dismisses her annoying, yet justified concerns; he always lashes at her like some caged animal when she pushes even a little bit too far. He is too cruel and she is too understanding. One day, he thinks, she'll finally give up on him too.

"You're up early," she says lightly, her voice betraying none of the worry that he sees in the lines of her forehead.

"It's hard to sleep on a shitty couch," he replies.

She shrugs, as though the couch isn't the reason why he never sleeps well. She'd be right.

"Remember when we knew nothing about Titans, and it was all we could do just to stay alive?" She leans back in her chair and stares upwards at the ceiling, reminiscing. "And Erwin finally approved of expeditions to capture them so I could run my experiments."

Levi isn't sure where she's going with this, but he decides to entertain her anyway. "With no regard for your own safety, mind you."

"Even though all Titans were inherently the same, each of them still had their own quirks. Some were calm. Some were quick to anger. Some preferred company, some didn't. The thing is, Levi, I always knew—that there was something human about them. I just couldn't prove it. I was sure they felt the same agony that we felt. And now that we know that truth, I can't help but wonder what it's like to be turned into a Titan. Do they have conscious thought? Are they driven by instinct? How do they know to eat humans in order to return to being one?"

"What the hell are you trying to say with all this?"

Hange doesn't seem bothered by his obvious impatience. "Every living creature needs something. Most of us need to eat, to sleep. But Titans needed to become human again, and that one desire overrode everything else. Sometimes—" She levels her eyes on Levi. "Sometimes, we need something so badly that the knowledge we're hurting those around us isn't enough to stop us."

He narrows his eyes at her, kind of annoyed, but mostly confused. "Are you calling me a Titan or something?"

At his question, she blinks, throws her head back, and guffaws. The sound fills the kitchen in a way that makes him scowl. She doesn't have to laugh that hard. It was just a question.

Eventually she quiets down, long enough for her to answer. "You miss Sakura," Hange says, and Sakura's name on her lips is enough to make his back go rigid and his blood run freezing hot. "You miss her and you just need so badly to hurt less that you think being alone will somehow make you feel less lonely. That having company will just remind you more that she's not around." Her head tilts in question. "Did I get that right?"

Fuck her, fuck her and her ability to see right through him. Levi didn't even know that was what drove his actions, but the moment she put it into words, he realized that she's right yet again, because that's Hange, always taking him apart and psychoanalyzing him until he's nothing but an angry open book in front of her, and he both loves her and hates her for it.

He takes a long drink of his tea and doesn't answer her question. She leans forward and rests her chin in her hand, expression somehow both firm and soft at the same time.

"We've been through hell together, Levi. We've seen things, horrible things that we'll never be able to forget. We've lost more people than we can count. There's nothing you can say or do that'll push me away from you. I'll always come back." Her lips curve into a small smile and her eyes are brutally honest, terrifyingly vulnerable.

Levi swallows the lump in his throat. "Annoying," he mutters.

Her smile widens. "For you, always."

In the three Christmases that he has spent with Hange, this is the first time she's awake in time to catch him leaving the next morning, so he makes them a simple breakfast of bacon and eggs. She talks throughout the meal about infrastructure plans and other things that Levi doesn't really understand or care about, and he nods and grunts in response when he finds it appropriate.

"Anyway, so they're trying out fireworks for the first time on New Year's Eve," she says as she chews on her bacon. "Theoretically, they're explosions in the sky that vary in color depending on the material that combusts. They're supposed to be really pretty! You should stay until then."

"I know what they are," he says. "I've seen then in Sakura's world."

She hums thoughtfully. "Interesting. Even in two completely different worlds, science still seems to progress the same way. You should stay anyway—it must've been a while since you've last seen them, right? Are they really as pretty as people say they're going to be?"

Levi shrugs. "They're fine. They're bright lights in a dark sky." That being said, it was never the fireworks themselves that he enjoyed, as much as it was the company that he had—Sakura, always staring upwards with wonder, the colors illuminating her face. "I don't want to keep sleeping on your couch."

Hange finishes the last of her tea with a loud gulp. "There's a pretty decent inn a few blocks down. Or maybe I could figure out another setup for you—"

"I'll just come back in a few days."

She stares at him, mouth agape, as if she can't believe that he hardly needed convincing. Levi frowns. "Shut your mouth or I'm going to change my mind."

He'd never say it out loud, but maybe she's right. Maybe he needs to let her in. Maybe after three years, he's finally ready to.

Hange waves enthusiastically at him when leaves her home. He nods at her, with perhaps the smallest hint of a smile on his lips, before pushing off the ground with chakra in his feet to jump across the rooftops.

Travelling across kilometers of land would be easier by horse, but moving this way makes him feel connected with Sakura somehow. Levi has developed his endurance in his time alone; with his current abilities, he'll be home by nightfall. He relishes in the silence of being alone, clearing his head of the chaos of Christmas. He forgets the blurry haze of cooking. The hungry children. Zofia's probing questions. The cold wind whips past him as he flies and he lets it sting his skin, pulling him from his mind and placing him squarely in his body instead.

These are the winds of change. He can feel it. They are harsh and unrelenting, and that, Levi thinks, is the only way to get him to change at all.

—

When he arrives home that night, the first thing he does is heat up some water for a hot bath. Once he's clean, he sits on the rug in the living room, in front of the fireplace, wrapped up in a thick wool blanket he purchased from the market a year ago. He thumbs through a leather notebook, one that he found underneath the bed not long after Sakura disappeared, sitting inconspicuously and collecting dust. Only the first few pages are filled with her writing, scribbles of various techniques that she had planned to teach Levi in their long life together. There are checkmarks beside the majority of them now; he had slowly worked through the list, deciphering her half-thoughts and pedagogical musings, but there are some that he could never figure out. He supposes he never will.

When the exhaustion from the day's travel finally sets weary in his bones, he rises to his feet and climbs up the stairs to the bedroom. He opens the wardrobe and stares inside; most of the clothes inside are his, but some of Sakura's still remain: a few blouses and two sets of uniforms. Levi fingers the cuff of one of the shirts for a moment before pulling the sleeve to his nose and inhaling once. The clothes hardly smell like her anymore, but sometimes, when he tries hard enough and closes his eyes, it's as if she's right there with him, alive and warm.

He could stand there and breathe into that shirt all night (has done just that on a few occasions in the beginning, when the ache was too great), but he forces himself to let go, to close the wardrobe and step away. And finally, he crawls under the covers of the bed, blows out the candle, and settles into sleep.

—

In the next two days, Sakura is reminded of the fact that Sasuke is a man of action.

It happens like this: on her way out to pick up some groceries one morning, she notices a listing for an apartment unit three floors down from her. When she sees Sasuke for lunch a few hours later, she mentions it to him. By that afternoon, he's made an appointment with the seller to see the inside of the unit, and sometime between then and the next day, he's signed the contract, paid the deposit, and moved in.

It's abysmally empty inside and she has to lend him a futon until he purchases a bed, but when they, along with Naruto, drink sake and reminisce about their childhood on the floor of Sasuke's empty living room, her heart feels so full. She wishes Levi knew that this happened—that it might have taken them years to get here, but Team 7 is finally reunited with no grudges, no hidden romantic feelings, no desire for revenge. He never thought that Sasuke would come around—if only he could see him now.

"Not that I didn't like living with you," Naruto half-slurs, eyelids heavy with alcohol, "but I'm not going to miss having to share a bathroom with you."

"We're practically neighbors—I could visit you literally any time I want," Sakura enthuses.

"Well, don't," Sasuke says.

"We're going to need spare keys," Naruto says.

"You say that like you don't just break into places whenever you please."

The thought of it is so emotional that Sakura has to swallow back tears. This is all so beautifully mundane: simply visiting Sasuke, drinking, and talking just because they can. She's experienced enough in her life to know that moments like these are to be cherished and never taken for granted, and she thinks about how lucky she is that despite all that she's lost, she still has her two best friends to live her life with.

She and Naruto don't leave until the late hours of the night, and when she returns home to her own apartment, the silence is a shock to her system. The air is untouched, still; she flips on the light switch and pours herself a glass of water lest she have a headache the next morning.

(She can almost hear Levi asking her, "Can't you just heal any hangover you might have?" and she nearly answers him, before remembering that he's not there. She's had too much to drink—moments like these make the veil separating them so thin, makes her think she can just reach across the way, touch him, and pull him over.)

Having Naruto and Sasuke eases the loneliness, but it doesn't change the fact that at the end of the day, she always returns to an empty home.

She leaves her empty glass on the counter and heads to the bedroom. On the way, she passes the cupboard that holds all of Levi's baking utensils; the closet where she stores his shoes; the towel rack where she still hangs two towels because one just looks too lonely. She doesn't look at any of these things because they're simply a part of her home, so much so that she hardly even thinks about them anymore.

The alcohol makes Sakura drowsy, and she drifts off to sleep in no time, curled into a ball on the left side of the bed. After all, the right side belongs to Levi, and she would never take that from him.

—

Levi, cheeks pink from the cold, finds Hange in her favorite tavern in town on the evening of New Year's Eve.

"You look grumpy," she remarks, waiting patiently for him to flag down a server to order a beer, desperate for the alcohol to warm him up.

"Fucking freezing when you're practically flying through the air," he mutters. "I can't feel my feet."

"Only you would complain about being able to practically fly," Hange says with a fond smile, rolling her eyes. "I'm glad you came."

Levi is too, and he lets her know by not disagreeing with her.

They eat, drink, and talk in the tavern until people begin to move, signalling that the fireworks will be happening soon. Hange is vibrating with excitement as they follow the crowd out into the cold, dark night; Levi pulls his jacket tighter around himself, although it doesn't really help.

"Wow, it's packed," she observes when they come to a full stop in the middle of the street, unable to go further due to the number of bodies occupying the area. "It'll be hard to see the fireworks from here." She makes a startled squawk when he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her close to him.

"Hold on tight," he says, and she barely grabs purchase around his shoulders before he gathers his chakra in his feet and pushes off the ground.

They land on a rooftop, and the wind is colder up high than it was down below, but Hange looks happy about it so Levi doesn't mind.

"Can we actually get a little bit closer?" she asks. "They're setting them off by the river."

He scoffs. "Are you never satisfied?" Nevertheless, he lets her grab hold of him once again as he jumps from rooftop to rooftop, bringing them several blocks closer to where the fireworks will go off. The streets beneath them are packed, full of people who are excited to see them for the first time; he wrinkles his nose at the thought of being down there with them. The wind, as cold and bitter as it is, makes better company.

He's warming his hands with his breath when the first one goes off, exploding in the sky in a brilliant white. The lights twinkle brightly, falling in arches and dissipating until they're no more. Not even a second later, the next one goes off with a loud crack, this time red. Beside him, Hange is silent. Levi glances over and sees her eyes glued to the sky, wide with wonder.

"They almost look like flares," she says, and it surprises him when he realizes that it's true, and that it's been so long since he's been on an expedition that he couldn't make that connection for himself.

It's been three years since the last time he fought, and before that, even longer.

The Levi who dreamt of seeing the sky with Isabel and Furlan would have never imagined seeing something as spectacular as fireworks. The Levi drenched in Titan blood, serving as Erwin's weapon, would never have thought that peace was possible. The Levi who kept on losing his comrades, time after time, shouldering the heavy burden of survival, would have never felt the stillness in his soul that he does now.

Oh, how time softens even the most hardened of hearts.

—

The days between Christmas and New Year's Day is always a timeless blur of slow mornings, late nights, and good company. Sakura spends those days with Naruto and Sasuke, helping Sasuke shop for home necessities and decorating his apartment.

It's New Year's Eve now, and Konoha is alight with festivities. The shrine is packed, there are lines at every food stall, and people have begun to gather for the fireworks. Sakura, Sasuke, Naruto, and Hinata are sitting on a blanket atop of a building, which tends to be the popular choice among shinobi in order to avoid the crowds of civilians below.

"I upped the budget for the fireworks," Naruto says with a grin. "There will be more than there have ever been!"

"That's what you're wasting taxpayer money on?" Sasuke asks.

"I'll have you know that we conducted a census earlier in the year and one of the highest ranked things that people wanted was bigger and better fireworks. You think I just abuse the power that I have?"

"Stop pretending like you're a good Hokage," Sasuke replies. His voice is gentle and there's the ghost of a smile on his lips.

Naruto is about to snap at him with a retort of his own, only to be eased by Hinata's hands on his arm. A second later and the first firework goes off, and the two men fall into silence, comfortable. Content.

Sakura sighs quietly and smiles, leaning in until her arm touches Sasuke's and her weight rests against him.

Comfortable. Content.

—

The demonstration only lasts five minutes before some sparks land where they're not supposed to and a few trees catch fire. Everything stops, and murmurs ripple through the crowd. It's anticlimactic, but Levi doesn't expect any different from this government, which is bumbling at best.

"Maybe they'll continue once they get the fire under control?" Hange says hopefully.

"I doubt it," Levi says. He can no longer feel his fingers. "I'm heading back to your place. I'm cold and tired."

"Can you at least get me off this roof first?"

Levi helps Hange down to the ground, scowls when she takes the opportunity to smother him in a hug with a goofy grin. "See you soon," he grumbles.

"Bye!"

He jumps over a few rooftops, landing on the ground a few blocks over where the streets are deserted. It's warmer down here where the buildings can protect him from the wind, and he walks at a leisurely pace through side roads and back alleys. It's quiet, and other than a drunk young couple fooling around in the dark, he's left undisturbed.

Levi rounds the corner and steps onto the main road again, but it's empty; everyone is still gathered at the heart of town. The stillness is unusual for Mitras, but he wholeheartedly welcomes it.

He hears a loud crack split the air. In the first breath, he turns around to look the way he came to see the fireworks igniting once more.

In the second breath, he realizes that the sky is dark, and that he's falling.

Levi chokes on his own voice. "Hange—"

And then he's gone.

—

When he lands in the training grounds, steadying his weight on his feet, it feels like he's dreaming.

It is dark, but everything is familiar. This clearing. Those trees. This is the last place he saw of this world before he got taken away years ago. In the distance, he can still hear fireworks going off.

Why now, of all times? What changed?

The question makes him smile wryly to himself, because that's something Sakura would ask.

And then his eyes widen.

Sakura.

Levi takes off as fast as he can to the heart of Konoha, traversing the streets like he knows them like the back of his hand—

And of course he does. He's lived here for years. He built his life here. This is his home.

He swallows the lump in his throat and continues to run. His heart is racing. It feels like his skin is on fire. Like he's dying and coming to life all at once.

He's home.

—

Sakura straightens up from where she was leaning against Sasuke and looks around.

Other than the four of them, this rooftop is empty. Team 10 is on the next building over; Ino and Chouji are fighting over some snacks, and Shikamaru looks like he's taking a nap despite the fireworks splitting the sky open with magic and light. All in all, things are normal.

And yet, she could've sworn—

She has half a mind to think she's imagining things. It wouldn't be the first time she felt a chakra signature and mistook it for Levi's—the mind can easily make things up to fill unbearable voids. Sakura looks around once more just to be sure, even though she knows she won't see the person she so desperately wants to see, and then she settles against Sasuke again.

"Everything okay?" he asks. His voice resonates in her ear, rumbling far lower than the high and sharp cracks of the fireworks.

"Yeah." Her own voice sounds distant. "I just thought, for a second, that I felt Levi's chakra signature."

A pause. "Do you still feel it?"

"No. I'm just imagining things."

Sasuke doesn't say any more, but his arm momentarily comes around her shoulders and squeezes.

"The fireworks are pretty," she offers.

She feels him scoff more than she hears him, and his exasperation draws a smile to her lips. "They're excessive."

"Yeah. But they're still pretty."

—

He took to the rooftops immediately, because he knows that's where she likes to watch the fireworks from. In the ten minutes it took to find her, all he could think about was whether he'd find her at all, whether she'd be in any of the places he looked, or if she was dead and he would search every corner of this world and still come up empty.

Just like three years ago, when she didn't come home for dinner.

But when he did find her, he froze.

He couldn't see her face but he knew it was her. Her vest was as red as he remembered and her hair—shorter than he imagined, but still fairly long—was tied back in a loose ponytail. She was sitting on a large blanket with Sasuke, Naruto, and Hinata, and the image of the four of them was just so—

Levi masked his chakra immediately and leapt to the shadows. For the number of days he'd missed her for, the number of nights he'd yearned for her, now that she was there, he didn't know what to say. He didn't know if she still wanted him. With how close she was sitting to Sasuke, resting her weight against him, it almost looked as though—

(In ways, loneliness made much easier company.)

Now he makes his way back to their—her apartment, ignoring the fireworks going off in the sky. By the time she returns home, he will have the right words. He'll be ready.

The spare key is where he remembers it to be: behind the potted plant on the sill, although the plant is dead now because he was always the one who watered it. Levi enters the apartment, flips on the light switch, and closes the door behind him.

He doesn't count how many minutes he stands there in the living room.

So many things are unchanged. An extra pair of fingerless gloves on the drawer by the door. Books and scrolls strewn everywhere. Empty mugs on the coffee table. He takes comfort in the fact that so much time has passed and yet Sakura still remains herself, full of whimsy and excitement and a thirst for learning.

He leans over the photo album sitting on the couch and flips it open. On the very first page is a collection of pictures of him and Sakura together. His heart twists.

Levi sits down and continues to flip through the photos. He never really cared about them much, but it would've been nice to have had some in his time alone. They would've helped him remember the exact details her face, would've helped ease some of the pain. Or maybe they would've actually made it worse—at this point, he doesn't know anymore.

He continues to turn the pages until he comes across photos of Sakura with other people, and then he shuts the album and places it to the side.

Levi sits on the couch, spins his ring on his finger, and waits.

—

Sakura feels it again when she and Sasuke are a block away from their apartment.

A flicker, just barely at the edge of her periphery. She stops in her tracks the moment she notices it, spinning around, eyes sweeping the area, but all she sees are a few villagers who are minding their own business, and Sasuke, who is watching her with a raised brow.

That's the second time in one night.

"It's—it's nothing," she says to Sasuke, even though it's obvious she's distracted. "Sorry." She resumes the walk towards their apartment, and he doesn't press any further, for which she's thankful for.

Sometimes Sakura scales the outside of the building when she returns home, but when she's with Sasuke, they take the stairs. They climb them in silence, step after step, seemingly spinning in circles as they turn for each floor. The higher they go, the stronger the chakra signature gets, and even though her body is strong and she has put it through much worse than this, her lungs are shallow and she's out of breath as she climbs. It feels like her entire being is on fire, because she swears she knows this chakra signature, she knows it like she knows she loves Naruto and Sasuke, knows it like she knows the sun will rise every morning.

She walks Sasuke to his door, wringing her fingers as he fishes his key out of his pocket. When he does, he turns to face her, his black eyes startlingly clear. No hiding. No walls.

"You're not crazy," he says. "I feel it too."

Sakura stops breathing.

"You should go. He's waiting for you."

"But what if he's not?" she whispers. "What if we're wrong? I can't—I can't, Sasuke—waiting for him is fine, I can spend a lifetime waiting for us to be reunited, but I can't hope like this, it'll destroy me if he's not there—"

Sasuke grabs her shoulders and holds her tight. An anchor. "You're the strongest, most incredible woman I'll ever have the privilege to know. And you're going to go up there, you're going to open that door, and you're going to see the man you love."

She gnaws at her bottom lip, and her voice is watery when she asks, "Can you please come with me?"

His eyes soften. "Always."

The journey up three flights of stairs is torturous, both achingly slow and lightning quick. Before Sakura can prepare herself for what may or may not be behind her door, she's standing in front of it, fingernails digging crescents into her palm.

She can practically see him in there. Sitting on the couch. Pacing behind the coffee table. Flipping through one of her books. Digging through her disheveled kitchen. His hair askew, obscuring his stormy eyes. The way his head tilts when he looks at her. The sharp line of his jaw. That perpetual frown on his lips.

She glances over at Sasuke, and he nods. "Go on."

Her hands are shaking as she slides her key into the keyhole and turns.

"I can't," she whispers.

His next question causes blood to rush to her ears and the edges of her vision to go fuzzy. Of all the people in her life, it's somehow him who's with her, giving her the push she needs. Of all the people who could've been here in this moment, it's Sasuke.

"You either open that door or you don't. Which do you choose?"

Life is all about choices. That was the first thing Levi ever taught her.

Sakura takes a deep breath and opens her heart. Then, she opens the door.

Notes: A long time ago, I noticed a trend in other people's fanfiction and my own where we almost always only write about the inception of a relationship. Once the two characters got together, we pat ourselves on the back and moved on to the next thing. And ever since then, I've been obsessed with the idea of actually exploring the facets of a relationship, in all of its shortcomings, ugly truths, and beautiful moments.

This was my attempt at that. All of the plot, all of the war—it was just a catalyst for Sakura and Levi's emotions and how they overcame them with themselves and with each other. All I really thought coming into this story was that I wanted them to struggle fiercely, so that when they came out on the other side of it, it would truly feel like they were destined for each other simply because of how they continued to choose each other, even when things seemed impossible. Because I truly believe that loving someone means choosing them every single day. I'm really hoping I conveyed that.

If you made it all the way to the end of this story—congratulations! It was a doozy. And thank you for coming on this journey with me. I am so sad it is over, but I think it's time to let these two rest. Maybe I'll write about them again someday, but for now, I can't imagine anything for them that I haven't given them already. And maybe that's okay.

I would love all of your feedback, good and bad.