A/N: SPOILER WARNING: Again, if you have not read or watched the first half of season 4, do not read this chapter unless you want spoilers. As in, don't even read the first line.

As always, thank you all so much for reading. Obviously, the story will be wrapping up over the next three or four chapters so I really just want to let all of you who have this far know how much I appreciate you.

If you have any thoughts or critiques, please let me know in a review. You can even point out typos! I'm always finding them and editing but nothing finds problems like another set of fresh eyes.

Disclaimer: I do not AOT/SNK or any of the characters used in this fic.

CHAPTER 14: PRECIPICE

Sasha was dead.

Levi hadn't seen her get shot, but he had seen her body, but the words still felt no more real to him. Since the end of the assault, everything felt muddled, a blur of angry shouts and tears and complete and utter confusion that plagued his soldiers.

Connie and Armin were too devastated by Sasha's death to do much more than clean up her body and wrap it in her Survey Corp cape. Mikasa did what she did best: simply disappeared.

That left Jean, Hange, and Levi to establish some sense of order amid the chaos. After they had adequately restrained the two kids, Zeke, and Eren—for all the good that would do if Eren decided he didn't want to be restrained—Levi set off down the metal corridors of the giant flying behemoth to seek out Mikasa. It still astounded Levi that such a thing could be made to fly, so he made sure not to think about it too hard.

He found Mikasa sitting alone in the empty aircraft armory. She had her head tilted back against the metal wall, eyes squeezed shut tight as if trying desperately to pretend she was anywhere else. Levi understood that feeling all too well.

"Are you pissed at me?" Mikasa didn't answer.

Levi thought back to an hour ago when they had hauled Eren into the aircraft as it rose out of the smoke. "Well aren't you a filthy sight? Looks like you fell in a pile of shit… Eren." Then he wound back and kicked him—hard. The impact reverberated up Levi's leg as he felt the bones in Eren's face shatter. In the split second before his foot connected, Levi had the brief thought that Mikasa wouldn't be happy with him for that, but he didn't care. He was so goddamn pissed at Eren he would gladly incur Mikasa's wrath if it meant satisfying his own for just a brief moment. And Eren really did have a very kickable face.

Then everything really went to shit… which was saying something given the events of the day. Those two brats—Gabi and Falco, Levi thought he remembered their names—had somehow managed to sneak on board and, with one singular bullet, managed to tilt the day from somewhat of a success to an utter disaster.

Levi leaned against the doorway, keeping his distance until he could gauge how angry she was. "I'd understand if you were. I kicked him pretty damn hard. That doesn't mean I'm going to apologize though."

"I'm not," she said bluntly. "Angry, I mean."

"Then what the hell are you?"

Mikasa opened her eyes finally to look at him, a mixture of raw pain and anger flashing across her face. "I'm trying not to be anything, because if I let myself feel right now I'll…" she trailed off, choking down the lump that formed so suddenly in her throat.

He crossed the room in a few short strides and sat down next to her and took her hand. With the other, he raked a hand through his hair, feeling the crusty blood flake as he did so. "I honestly don't know whether to be furious at that little shit for dragging us into this hell," he paused, searching for the right words, "Or impressed because he actually managed to execute that hair-brained scheme of his."

"Did he execute it?" she whispered. "Did this accomplish anything? Was the price we paid worth it?"

The first thought to pop into Levi's mind was: Was the price they paid ever worth it? But he didn't give that growing seed of doubt voice. To do so, was to nurture it, and they couldn't afford for Levi to start doubting now.

Thousands had died that day. Innocent people whose only sin was getting caught in the crossfires of a century-old war over nothing. Despite all the death and destruction the events of the day revealed when the smoke settled, he knew that wasn't the price on which her mind circled like water around a clogged drain.

Sasha.

The food-thieving, potato-munching loud-mouthed archer with an impossibly warm spirit, now rendered into a mere shell growing colder by the moment in the next room. Levi had never had any strong feelings for the food-obsessed freak, but now that she was gone, he felt an odd sense of emptiness. She was a good soldier, and what was more, a good person. Of all the Scouts who had boarded the aircraft that morning, she was perhaps the most deserving to still draw breath, and yet the only one who didn't.

"Sasha died fighting for what she believed in. That's all any of us can hope for," he said casually, hoping it would disguise how much her death ate at him, too.

"What, to be killed by a cowardly little girl who couldn't accept she lost?!" Mikasa cried. She whirled on Levi, her eyes blazing with rage and grief. "Don't give me that shit, Levi. Sasha didn't die fighting! We already won the fight. Sasha died because that little girl couldn't accept that!"

"You were once that little girl. You killed people for your own sake, just like she did." Mikasa was silent, retracting her hand from his as though his touch burned her. Levi winced, but he'd already said too much to back down now. "When you killed those men who killed your parents, you thought you were doing right by you and by Eren, and whether or not you actually were in the right hardly matters. To those men, and their families, you were the villain. Same goes with this girl. I'm sure she was brainwashed no different than Annie, Berthold, and Reiner." Mikasa scowled at him, their trairous former comrades being the last thing she wanted to think about in that moment. "I know that's not what you want to hear, but don't lose sight of the fact that there is no right and wrong in this world. Morality is entirely subjective."

"Just because you killed a lot of people and hate yourself for it doesn't make you a fucking expert on morality."

"That's my point. I've killed more people than I can count, and I know for a fact I wasn't always the good guy. In fact, I'd be so bold as to say I rarely am. So who the hell am I to lecture, you ask? A soldier who's just too damn tired to keep hating, to keep making excuses to make what we've all done more palatable. It's just part of an endless cycle of hatred and unless we stop it, it'll just continue. More Sashas will die. Maybe change means we forgive that little girl." It all sounded asinine to him as he spoke the words aloud, but he couldn't stop his mind from grasping at some semblance of reason for it all. Then he shrugged. "Fuck if I know."

Suddenly, everything Mikasa had been trying not to feel came crashing down on her, Levi's words acting as the proverbial guilt straw that broke the camel's back. She buried her head in her hands as all her anger and grief dripped from her eyes like water from a broken faucet.

Levi pulled her into his body, feeling each muscle contract with every sob that violently wracked through her chest. He was suddenly transported back to that fateful night in his bedroom when he had ordered Mikasa to let go. And she had, in just about every way possible. It had been almost four years since that night when everything between them irreversibly changed, and he had never once seen her like that again—until now.

Levi wanted to whisper how it was going to be okay, how it wouldn't hurt like this forever, but he couldn't bring himself to lie to her. Instead, he just said, "I'll miss her, too."

Mikasa continued to cry for a few moments before settling into an empty numbness, the only sensations in her body a dull throbbing her head and the scratch of sandpaper over her eyes each time she blinked. Whether from crying fact that she had barely slept in days, she didn't know.

She moved a little, just enough to give Levi a lidded glance through a curtain of eyelashes still studded with little diamond-like droplets. "I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?"

"That I'm not stronger."

"What have I always told you about apologizing for stupid shit? Besides, you are not the one who needs to be sorry right now. If anyone should be, it's me. That was cruel of me. I guess that's still my default when things go wrong."

They were quiet for a few moments and when Mikasa finally spoke again, her voice was ragged and hoarse.

"I'm no stranger to loss. I lost my family twice. Just about all of my classmates are dead, but the six of us… we survived so goddamn much. I guess somewhere along the way I must have started believing we were invincible. How stupidly naive of me." By the time she finished, she was trembling, squeezing his hand so tightly he thought she might break it. And he let her.

"Maybe so, but your mistake is thinking that's a bad thing. Fuck, sometimes I wish I weren't so jaded as to still have hope that any of us will survive this. To be surprised when they don't. I've just lost too many people to still hold onto that. And if you're not there yet, then good. Hang onto it for as long as possible."

Mikasa nestled deeper under his arm, resting her head on his shoulder. "It hurts so much to do that thought. I don't know how much more hurt I can take."

Levi squeezed her, knowing he was helpless to take away her pain this time. If Levi could shoulder all her sorrow, her grief, her pain by himself, he would in a heartbeat, but that simply wasn't how it worked.

"As much hurt as you have to in order to wade through the shit and see what's on the other side. They call us humanity's strongest, but that doesn't just have to mean battle prowess, you know. You're the strongest person I know, Mikasa. If anyone can fight through this hell, it's you."

"But I'm so tired of fighting," she choked, sounding utterly broken.

He buried his mouth in her hair to plant a lingering kiss on the crown of her head. "Yeah, me too."

It pained him to see her like this and pained him even more to acknowledge the fact that she had been right months ago when she predicted that Eren's leaving meant the change of everything. The brat had set into motion a chain of unstoppable events that, if this mission were any indication, would slowly but surely decimate them all.

"Ahem." Levi and Mikasa looked up to see Jean in the doorway, eyes averted as if he had just walked in on them doing something far more unseemly. Even though he wasn't looking at her, Mikasa could tell he looked tired, too, dark bags weighing heavily under his now red-rimmed eyes. "I don't mean to interrupt, but we're back over Paradis. Prepare to land."

They were back in Hell, but at least it was a familiar Hell.