Hello!

welcome to the second instalment of whatever this is...if you haven't read 'Green Wings' - pt 1 of the series - I'd recommend doing that first just because i'm not sure if i've succeeded in making it make sense without it (i did try haha) but i think the context might make this a better read.

i hope u enjoy it, though i feel i should mention that the focus is once again on all the members of the orig special ops squad and what their day to day (or month to month i suppose) shenanigans/ lives in general might have been like.. ^^

finaaally i'm hoping to continue updating on sundays as much as possible - but it might be every other week for a while until life chills out again.. these chapters have to be a bit more self contained than before, so is taking longer to edit and make them make sense!

cheers!

January

"Remind me why I agreed to this again?" Eld huffed.

"Because it's fun, and you're having a good time." Petra said through gritted teeth.

"But he's such an ass."

Eld scowled at Oruo, who was riding a donkey some metres away, wearing a sash that said 'birthday boy' and hurling a lasso around. Lina was doubled over giggling while Gunther was trying to get Oruo to stop riding the poor creature, and narrowly evading getting caught in the lasso.

"It's meant to be a joint birthday party." He added and Petra looked at him a little guiltily.

"I really didn't think he'd take it this far." She muttered, wringing her hands.

The idea was a shared party as both Oruo and Eld's birthday's were fairly near each other, plus nobody had been back from their winter break in time for Oruo's actual birthday, and the guilt had gotten the better of Eld. They'd agreed to each pick one activity for the day; Eld of course had picked the normal birthday activity of drinking and dancing at a bar in the town (they were headed there in the evening), but Oruo…

…they were at the town petting zoo (it was just the local farm) - the only 'attraction' still open in winter-time, and were wandering around a large barn, looking at the various farm animals as they shivered in their pens. Eld's fiancé Harriet wasn't able to make it down, the first of many disappointments it turned out…but several of the veterans had made it along: Moblit, Nifa and Nanaba were hanging around an enclosure containing a few llamas, and Hange was pointing at a pig and chattering animatedly next to a disgruntled Mike, who looked like he'd rather be anywhere else.

"What's wrong Eld, not enjoying your big day?"

The Captain appeared behind the pair of them, his voice low and bored as always.

He'd said nothing at all when the squad'd invited him at dinner a week ago - but then, this morning, he asked what time they were leaving and they almost had a collective heart attack. It was an even bigger surprise that he said he'd go with them after finding out that their first activity would be at a farm. Of course, he was refusing to go anywhere near most of the livestock, and had stuck rigidly to the 'paths', avoiding every instance of straw and mud where possible, wrinkling his nose in disdain. Eld really wasn't sure why he'd come along at all, but he supposed it was nice that the Captain was celebrating the squad's birthdays in some way.

"Oh - Captain!" Petra smiled warmly, "I think Eld's just sad that he doesn't have a birthday sash like Oruo's, but Lina made that one from scratch apparently so-"

"What? No - what? I'm not sad that I don't have a sash." Eld scowled, "I'm pissed because Oruo's birthday was three whole weeks ago and he's galavanting around as if it's all about him."

"If you want I can try and find a bit of old rope and-"

"Petra! I don't want a sash!"

She pouted, and Eld's expression softened.

He sighed, "Sorry for snapping. I just-"

She stopped him with a hand on his arm and, eyebrows raised, gestured with her head behind them, to where the Captain had walked off and was engaged in some kind of staring contest with a huge brown bull. They both smiled;

"I bet you the bull blinks first." Petra said lowly,

"Ooh…" He whispered back, "How much?"

A heavy lasso thudded at their feet.

"Guys." Gunther was panting and doubled over, "You gotta hide this. He's terrorising the livestock."

—

The bulls eyes were like black glass.

"Never had you pegged as an animal lover." Mike grumbled.

Levi hadn't even noticed him appear.

"Hm." He replied.

Mike sniffed, "Hm."

Animals were filthy, but they had as much right to be here as people, and usually Levi found they were more reliable. They didn't scheme and manipulate. He preferred the company of his horse to most people. Screw that - all people.

"INCOMING!"

"OH SWEET MARIA!"

…huh?

The incidents that followed occurred rapidly - at such a speed in fact that even Levi had trouble fully making sense of them. And Levi was a man who knew speed.

He glanced to the left, where an unbridled, unmanned donkey was suddenly hurtling towards him, braying manically. He just about managed to take a step back, and his hair whipped his face as the donkey raced between him and the bull, at which point he realised it was being chased by the entirety of his moronic squad, who were sweating and yelling a variety of insults at one another and the beast. Not seconds later came the unintelligible angry shouts of the farmer, and, sensing something further was amiss, Levi jumped forward and span around a hundred and eighty degrees, flattening his back against the side of the bull's pen just in time to avoid an entire flock of bleating sheep as they followed the galloping donkey and his chaotic squad out of the barn and into the icy fields beyond.

At some point during the mess of events the remaining veterans had run outside to assist in any way they could, leaving Levi completely alone in the barn with the remaining livestock.

…

"Tch."

He took a single step forward from the pen, scowling and dusting off his long woollen military jacket.

He paused, then side-eyed the bull.

"Regular Sunday for you then?" He deadpanned.

The bull grunted, and its hot breath condensed on the cool air.

"Hm."

—

How embarrassing. Didn't farms have trained dogs to do this?

It had been a solid twenty minutes and Petra was completely red in the face. She, along with the veterans and the farmer were desperately trying to herd the escaped sheep into an outdoor pen, but their attempts were proving fruitless: the sheep were darting between them and splitting up at every given opportunity.

"Blaargh!"

Ah, the distant sound of Oruo's bitten tongue. She sighed.

A sheep bleated at Nifa, who shouted back at it almost hysterically; "They're laughing at us!"

Petra was certain that the scouts could never come back here again, this little mishap surely meant a lifetime ban.

"Where's the ass?" Eld shouted over.

Petra pointed in Oruo's direction and Eld howled with laugher, "My bad - I meant, where's the donkey?"

She shook her head. Only the goddesses knew where that donkey had gotten to at this point.

A sheep darted passed her, chased by an alarmed Moblit, who gave up running and stopped next to her, breathless;

"It's funny," He muttered, "We humans think we're so smart, but all us trained soldiers in peak physical condition can't even herd twenty sheep."

Petra laughed awkwardly, wiping her brow, "Yeah. It feels wrong to say this but, killing titans might be easier."

"AHHH!" Gunther bellowed a war cry and tackled a sheep as it tried to run past him, but ended up clutching onto its wool, panicked, as it dragged him along the grass.

"Let go!" She cried out, "Gunther - let go!"

—

Surely it'd been long enough now. The intermittent shrieking had significantly died down, which was a good sign. Levi took a slow breath, then traipsed outside, hands in pockets.

He was just in time to catch Eld (who was now somehow wearing the 'birthday boy' sash) ride in on a horse and catch the rogue, roaming donkey with a lasso, to ecstatic cheers and claps from the surrounding veterans. Levi almost rolled his eyes at the bombastic display and briefly considered insulting the man's shitty beard to take him down a peg or two.

The sheep were huddled in a pen behind two small barking dogs, Lina was shouting expletives at Oruo, and Mike and Nanaba were trying to placate the irate farmer off to one side.

He exhaled wearily. He knew he shouldn't have come, but the excursion had piqued his interest…

That was an 'acceptable' way of putting it.

It wasn't that he'd simply noticed Petra's ankle length moss-green skirt under her long military jacket of the same colour, and realised that (bar the heavy duty farm-appropriate walking boots) the squad were all going to town in their Sunday best. It couldn't simply have been that he'd never seen her in a dress before, and a curious part of him wanted to know what she looked like in one - enough to drag him all the way out to a damn farm - even though he knew it was a selfish want, and would ultimately be detrimental to his attempts to suppress his inappropriate feelings towards her.

…

Anyway, this was unquestionably a more interesting day out than what he'd had planned, which was…surveying the perimeter of the grounds...again.

Since the return from the winter break Petra was bright, warm and gentle as she had ever been; she continued to check up on him, making sure that he was properly eating and resting - but - she'd stopped assisting him in the evenings with his paperwork. That was an interesting development that had, as with many other things, gone unspoken between them. Now she bothered him as minimally as she could whilst still remaining attentive, and she was strictly professional in their every interaction. The casual sparkle he'd often caught in her eyes was gone, replaced with the sharp focus of the battlefield, or the politeness of an arms-distance.

He should have been thrilled, it was, after all, what he wanted. Broadly speaking he was thrilled with it. Her misguided affection for him had appeared to vanish, and he found he could believe that her diligence sprouted from her trustworthy, tireless temperament, and not because she wanted to impress him for any unprofessional reason. She was smart, and so it hadn't taken her long to realise the folly of her ways - to leave her childish fantasy behind her like some shattered snow-globe.

As for him…

It was only natural that the tiny, insane part of him that felt for her would protest the change. Having no prior experience with 'matters of the heart' as Erwin might say, it was to be expected that on occasion, he might slip-up and indulge his insanity…which was how he'd ended up at a petting zoo on his one day off this week.

He bit back a sigh, and chose to instead fill his lungs with the clean, fresh winter air.

"Hange…?" Petra asked tentatively.

She'd caught up to them as the group walked through the town towards a bar Eld had selected.

"Oh Petra! To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Petra blinked, catching sight of the smallish wooden box they held clutched in their hands. It had six small holes drilled in the lid, and she was certain she hadn't seen them carrying it earlier on in the day.

"Um…what's in the box?"

"I'm glad you asked." They said with a grin, "Frogs!"

"What?!"

"Yes! You see I found a few of them in the mud heaps and an old log by the brook outside. Did you know that a group of frogs is called an army? I wondered why that is. I'm thinking there has to be something about frogs that makes a good army, and maybe if I study them I can find out."

"Right…that sounds…don't frogs hibernate in winter? Did you wake them-"

"Did you have something else you wanted to ask?"

Petra coughed and wrung her hands, her eyes flicked to the back of the Captain's long green military coat as he walked up ahead, the emblazoned scouts emblem shifting ever so slightly with his movement.

"I've just been curious for a while now…"

Hange's eyes sparkled, "I've always known you possess a curious mind."

She smiled weakly, "It's not a big deal or anything but…I was wondering if you ever met someone called Isabel?"

Hange stopped in their tracks. Petra followed suit.

They pushed their glasses up their nose, "Ah."

Petra's eyes brightened, "Is that a yes?"

"Yes." Hange replied, though their brow was twitching, "Isabel and Furlan were from the underground city. They joined the scouts along with Levi - the three of them were inseparable."

Were.

That could only mean one thing.

"Oh." Petra whispered, looking at her feet.

"Why do you ask?"

The pair began slowly walking again.

"The Captain gave me something of hers is all - an old bottle of remedy, I just thought…maybe…"

Hange smiled, "Levi has always been very private about his past. That said, if there's something you want to ask him, you should. I'm sure he'd be more than willing to oblige you." They looked at her with some intensity.

"Oh…" Petra's face was heating up, "No, that's ok. I shouldn't be prying at all…it's private. I guess I was just wondering if I should return it to him, if Isabel was someone special then…maybe he'd want the bottle back."

"Hmmm…" They frowned, "I've never heard of him giving anyone anything before except a black eye, so I'd assume that if he gave you something, then he's ok with you having it."

Petra's reply was unconfident,

"…yeah. I hope so."

Hange scratched their head with their frog-free hand, "Most of us scouts have had to deal with significant losses - personal and otherwise - it's the nature of the job. But Levi…" They looked a little wistful.

"Huh?"

Petra stared at them with wide-eyed fascination as thousands of micro-considerations flitted through the scientist's eyes.

"…it can't be easy, being the only one." They said eventually.

"What do you mean?"

"Well." They began seriously, and Petra got the sense that this wasn't the first time they'd thought about it;

"He's spent the majority of his life living somewhere else with a different culture and upbringing, a place where a person never gets to see even the most basic elements of nature; trees and flowers…titans…

Imagine then discovering those things for the first time, your world would be turned upside down. It's hard to fathom the shock that would bring about in someone. On top of that, you have the fact that, though we look the same and speak the same language, our lives - the lives of everyone he knows I mean - have been remarkably different; we're completely used to these things; flora, fauna; none of them are an anomaly. We assume they will always be there, because we've been surrounded by them from birth.

Say then, that the only two people in your life who understand that life-altering change - who understand what it is to learn a whole new world as an adult, and who understand where you've come from and what you've been through…vanish in the blink of an eye…"

It felt like knives were stabbing into Petra's sides whenever she took a breath. She'd never even considered any of this. She was in awe of him, and simultaneously she felt entirely selfish for not having given it this kind of thought before.

"…it's more than any of us will ever be able to comprehend." They uttered.

Petra opened and closed her mouth sadly. She stared at the back of his coat as he walked ahead, her heart heavy.

"I never…even thought of that. Any of it." She muttered eventually.

"Why would you?" Hange looked at her with a little concern, "It's not as though he's an open book." They smiled a little, "Don't worry yourself my dear. He can handle himself. He's not known as 'Humanity's Strongest' for nothing."

Petra returned the faint smile, "True."

"I never thought they'd take 'mad as a box of frogs' literally." Eld said, clinking his tankard with the squad, "That's a new one."

"Moblit's out in the street searching for them right now." Oruo drawled.

"The frogs?" Gunther asked.

"Mm." Oruo's lifted his tankard to his lips, "Frogs aren't allowed in an establishment such as this."

"Why not?" Gunther pressed, brow quirked.

"Too jumpy." Eld replied.

Oruo smirked, "If that were the reason then Petra wouldn't be allowed in here either."

"Hey!" She scowled at him, then, with a shake of her head,

"…what I don't understand is - how did the frogs get out of the box in the first place?"

Eld caught her eye, "The question of the moment."

"A guy at the door hit the box out of the Section Commander's hand, I saw the whole thing transpire." Oruo guzzled his beer, then lazily waved his hand, "Frogs everywhere."

"No!" Petra gasped, "That's so cruel!"

"Pfft. They deserve it, what in the hell did they think they were doing carting frogs around anyhow."

"It's because a group of frogs is called-" Petra began, "Oh, never mind."

"Oruo." Gunther started, "You might want to go and save your girlfriend, I don't know what the Captain is saying to her, but she looks terrified."

"Eh." Oruo shrugged flippantly, before doing a double take towards the bar, "Shit!"

He immediately stood, a kind of fearful scowl plastered across his face and marched off.

Eld looked after him, "Good news about his sister though eh?"

"Yeah." Petra gave a warm smile, watching Oruo bluster and stumble around his words while the Captain looked on, blank and immovable. The nerve that jackass had to say she was jumpy. "It's really good. They think she'll make a full recovery by spring."

Gunther smiled, "It was nice of the Captain to let him go back and visit before the break. I'm sure it helped Olga to see her big brother."

"I guess if the Garrison were offering to pay two weeks of his wages…" Eld shrugged, "What about James? You convince him to apply to the compound office?"

Gunther looked a little disgruntled, "He says he'll think about it."

"Really?" Petra's voice was laced with concern, "I have to say…I thought he'd be more enthusiastic."

"I get it." Gunther scratched his nose, "I mean, why apply to be surrounded by your former comrades, seeing the life you had before."

"Right." Eld muttered, "Yeah, makes sense."

"He thinks he'd prefer to check out the library in town, see if they have any positions open. That way he's still near enough to the base that I can see him regularly."

"That's a nice idea." Petra pat his arm encouragingly, "Sounds like a good compromise to me."

"I'm not against it." The dark haired man replied.

Wind blasted through the tavern as Moblit ran through the door, panting, his hands on his knees;

"…fr…frogs…" he croaked, pale and sweaty.

"Oh dear." Eld smirked, "He doesn't look very…hoppy."

Petra guffawed, "Toad-ally."

They high-fived. Gunther groaned.

—

"You're an asshole!"

"I already told you, the sheep thing had nothing to do with me!"

Oruo and Lina were in the middle of what was likely their fifty-ninth argument of the day.

"You could've lost that poor farmer half of his livestock-"

"Honestly Lina, I seem to remember you finding it all hilarious at the time! You change on a dime-"

Levi made the conscious decision to tune them out when the pair of them started bickering, which was almost as soon as Oruo appeared. He leant with his side pressing into the wooden bar and glanced across to the corner table where the rest of the squad were sat.

The day had been nothing short of chaotic, but, that familiar feeling of calm washed over him as he allowed himself a moment to take in the picture of Petra.

She was laughing in her full green skirt, white off-the-shoulder blouse and strappy black under-bust corset which was laced with red ribbon, and attractively accentuated all of her curves. His heart beat strongly and evenly as he studied her form; her waist which dipped in and out; her bosom somewhat pushed up, moving steadily with her breaths and chatter; her cheerful eyes, that comforting colour of golden-honey, bright and sparkling with a winter-day's freshness.

It was a far cry from her usual military attire. He'd never seen her look so feminine, dainty even. It brought him some amusement to imagine someone describing her as 'dainty' to her face; he knew if that were to happen she'd waste no time in knocking them out.

His eyes flicked away, and he momentarily wondered if he'd been staring for too long, but the tipsy, giddy atmosphere of the bar seemed to have everyone distracted, and it wasn't long before he found himself once again glancing over to the corner table.

She was undeniably beautiful; a cloud in the vast open sky beyond the wall, soft and far away. He wasn't a man who indulged himself often (or ever, except for the odd fancy cup of tea), but he reasoned that it wasn't hurting anyone if on occasion…if for today he let himself admire her delicate movements from the green fields of earth.

Sometimes all you could do was be a spectator to greater things, and Petra Ral, through her boundless generosity, fighting spirit, and concern for the wellbeing of every living thing, seemed to embody everything that made humanity worth saving.

Just as the slow, roaming clouds informed of an entire world beyond the walls, now and then when he gazed at her, he could almost see a life beyond the scouts. That was a thought he did not hesitate in extinguishing shortly after it arrived, all the while knowing that it would persist…it always seemed to return in some small way. And Levi was all too aware that that kind of hope, when given attention, was dangerous.

He knew better. Levi was too burdened with the responsibility of his own strength to take that kind of fantasy seriously.

Yeah, the day as a whole had been a lawless, irritating nuisance but…

…he didn't regret it.