A/N: SPOILER WARNING: This chapter jumps to the second part of season four and leads into the climax of the entire story, so if you haven't read the manga and are waiting for all of the anime to be out before watching, don't read beyond this.

This was going to be the second to last chapter, but you know how writing sometimes goes…and goes and goes. Suddenly the chapter was so long I decided to split it into two. The second part isn't quite done yet, but should follow in a few days.

I'm quite pleased with this chapter. It has a lot packed into it. A little humor, a lot of sadness, some fluff, and a huge moment for our two heroes.

Thank you so much to those who have reviews (especially cbchloe200 for your very kind words- they mean so much to me).

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

CHAPTER 16: FORWARD UNTO DOOM

Levi had been blown up. That was the only thing Mikasa could think about.

"He's alive but he's not fine." Hange's words reverberated through Mikasa's mind, so loudly that she hardly heard any of what was spoken in the debriefing that didn't directly address her. Nor did she much care about everyone being reunited again after so much had happened. There was only one person she desperately wanted to see, and he was the only one not in the room. He's alive, she repeated to herself, trying to shut out her mind's vivid's imaginings of severed limbs and blackened flesh. All that matters is that he's alive.

Finally, the meeting was dismissed and everyone dispersed—except Mikasa, who lingered back with Hange. "Commander Hange..."

Hange sighed. "I already know what you're going to ask. You want to see him." Mikasa nodded. "I'm inclined to say that Levi shouldn't see anyone right now…"

"Hange, please–"

"Let me finish," Hange quipped. "While I'm inclined to say that, I also know that if there's anything that might help speed along his recovery, it's you. Come on. You just need to promise me that you'll remain calm when you see him."

Mikasa hesitated, her chest tightening in fear at what she might find, but nodded.

"Alright then. Follow me." Mikasa did as she was instructed, silently following Hange out of the stone outpost and into the forest where the carts and horses were stashed. "I know it seems odd to keep in the forest rather than in the hut, but since we'll be moving on here shortly until we reach the port, it seemed best not to move him more than necessary," Hange explained.

Finally, she stopped in front of one cart filled with a pile of bloody rags and bandages. Mikasa did a double-take before realizing that the pile was breathing. Irregularly, as if every inhale came with a great deal of pain, but still breathing. Levi.

"If he's asleep, let him stay that way."

"I'm not asleep," came a muffled voice that Mikasa barely registered as Levi's buried beneath layers of gauze and bandages that obscured almost the entirety of his face. "How could I be with those brats making all that racket?" He tried to push himself up, but Hange promptly stopped him with her hand.

"Nope. You either behave and stay still or I'll march Mikasa right back away from here."

Maybe it was wishful thinking, but Mikasa could swear she heard his patented tch. "Fine, but you don't need to babysit us."

Hange waved a hand beside her face and turned to leave. "Yeah, yeah, fine I'll leave, but if you open up any of those wounds, just know I won't be the one to patch them up again."

"Thank God. I'm not sure she didn't make things worse," he said, to which even Mikasa managed to crack the tiniest of grins.

She crawled into the cart and sat down cross-legged beside him. Hesitantly, she reached out to gently touch the unbandaged part of his face, her cold fingers a shock to his hot, feverish skin. Her brow furrowed, a gesture of concern Levi didn't fail to notice. "I'm alright," he said softly, but it was a lie and they both knew it. The creases between Mikasa's eyebrows deepened in displeasure. "Well, I'm alive anyway. That's something."

It was something indeed. Mikasa was suddenly filled with a familiar ache to crawl into his arms and pretend the world didn't exist...only this time his arms were bandaged tightly to his sides effectively meaning there were no arms to crawl into. Her favorite escape from the hell they called life was now simply a reminder of its cruelty. She didn't know what to say to him, didn't know what she could say that they didn't both already know.

Instead, she lay down beside him, nudging in as close as she dared without hurting him further. "Eren's…gone," she said finally, her voice sounding dead and hollow. "And I don't think he's coming back this time."

Levi fidgeted despite Mikasa's attempts to still him until he had turned enough to look at her. "Tell me what happened."

So she told him. About everything he had said to her, about his theory of her being effectively nothing more than a slave to her Ackerman instincts–"

"Bastard," Levi interjected. "Anyone who's spent two seconds around you knows you're way too damn stubborn to be anyone's slave. I'll kick the shit out of him for that."

But when she told him about him hating her, his outward annoyance dissolved into a silence that signified Levi's true rage. How fucking dare that brat…

Mikasa continued, recounting how Eren had turned Armin into his personal punching bag and everything Yelena has told them later about Zeke's sterilization plan, finally bringing her tale of the last month to a close.

"If that's all true, then Eren really could be doing all this to protect us," she pondered. "Part of me wants that to be true, wants to believe some shred of the old Eren is still in there and still cares, but that's selfish. To actually hope Eren plans on destroying the world just so that we can live free. It doesn't make it any better if he's protecting me or not. Because if he is, he's just willing to sacrifice everything else, and that's not Eren. Look at me, rambling on. You should really be resting, not listening to me gripe like a child.

"You're not a child. He's put you through a lot." Not "you've been through a lot", Mikasa, mentally noted. Levi obviously placed the blame squarely on Eren's head, and while it hurt her to admit it, she could hardly fault him for that.

"I have to deal with Eren," she said, with far more conviction than she felt. "Somehow."

"If it came down to it, could you kill him?"

"I wish people would stop asking me that."

"And you know damn well I wouldn't if the answer wasn't crucial."

Mikasa again considered it. Every other time anyone had asked, she had been filled with rage and scoffed at the sheer absurdity of that outcome. But things were different now, and as the words fell from Levi's mouth, she felt no anger. Instead, she felt an odd mixture of grief and a fierce desire to protect what was right in front of her, no matter the cost. Eren, for all intents and purposes, was already gone, but Levi was still there, still alive, still willing to fight with and for her.

"I doubt you've ever considered something to be more important than Eren," Annie had said after asking her the same thing. But Annie had been encased in crystal for four years. She knew nothing of her and Levi, of the things that had changed so dramatically since their virgin days in the Scouts.

You're wrong, Annie. This is more important. And suddenly, Mikasa knew her answer, even if she couldn't yet say it aloud. Even still, Levi noticed her eyes change, saw her dark orbs turn from pools turbulent ocean to hardened slabs of slate, and he knew…If it came down to it, she would do what she had to.

"That's my girl," he said, taking her hand loosely with his bandaged one.

"And what about you? What will you do?" Mikasa asked, but her tone clearly implied a different question: what CAN you do?

"I'll fight, like always. My goal is still to kill Zeke. The bastard has evaded that fate twice now, and I'm more than a little pissed that shit's still standing in my way of letting me fulfill my last promise to Erwin."

It was a noble mission, but that didn't change the fact that Levi looked as though he had one foot in death's doorway. "Levi, I know fulfilling that promise is important to you, but you can't even stand right now. You only have two fingers," she said, her hand tightening carefully so as not to hurt his bandaged right claw.

"Two fingers are all I need to work the maneuver gear." Mikasa frowned at him, clearly not satisfied with his determination to charge back into the fray when he had barely escaped the last with his life. People called Levi unhuman, but his broken, bandaged body proved otherwise. He may have had inhuman skills, but Mikasa knew that he was as fragile and mortal as the rest of them. "Relax, my love," he said, reading her worried expression and struggling to lift his arm high enough to cup her cheek in it. "It's not the first time I've done things I shouldn't in my physical condition."

Suddenly, Mikasa couldn't help but crack a grin, even though nothing about their situation was worthy of it. "What? What's that grin for?" Levi asked.

She gave a breathy laugh. "I don't think you've ever called me a pet name besides 'brat' before."

"Well, don't get used to it. I did almost just die. I'm not feeling myself quite yet."

The waves acted as restless as Levi felt as they knocked the metal hull of the ship from side to side. Each lap sent Levi wobbling on his already unsteady, aching legs. He found balance branched against the metal walls as he hobbled through the labyrinth of corridors. He had finally managed to shake Armin's attempts to get him to keep resting. More rest wasn't going to do him any good at that point, but there was something that might.

He found Mikasa alone in one of the ship's smaller bunk rooms, laying down with her back toward him. For a second, he thought she might be sleeping until he saw her legs fidget uncomfortably.

"Hey," he said, sitting down on the bed beside her and resting a hand on her hip. Her warm touch, felt even through the layers of bandage on his hand, sent a rush of desperate desire coursing through him. What he wanted to do was take her in his arms, strip off her clothes, and make love to her with everything he had. Unfortunately, that wasn't much and he begrudgingly knew his body wouldn't tolerate much of anything like that right now.

At his touch, Mikasa stirred and sat up, swinging her legs around so that they dangled off the edge of the hard mattress. Her eyes swiveled upward to meet his, their dark depths swallowing him all at once.

"Hey. How are you feeling?"

"Oh you know, like I just survived a fucking bomb exploding in a five-meter radius," he growled. "But otherwise, peachy. You?"

"Like I've been awake for three straight days and nearly lost the one person I have left to lose," she retorted. "But otherwise peachy." Even there, on the brink of outright war, she managed to make him smile, but it didn't last long.

"You know we're probably not walking out of this alive, don't you?" He posed it as a question, but in the end, even one so bitter as this, she was a soldier. He knew damn well that she knew. "I shouldn't be alive right now. Mikasa, I should have died back there. If Hange hadn't found me, I would have. So I guess I should be thankful that I get to sit here with you one more time at all."

Mikasa snuggled in, wrapping her arms gingerly around his torso. "I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again, so I guess I should be glad, too," she said, but the sadness tinging her voice suggested she was far from that.

Levi pulled her closer, happy to exchange the pain that shot through his torso for a little more of her warmth. "I suppose it was foolish of me to get my hopes up for a happy ending. That was never in the cards for me. I can't complain too much, though. I had four glorious years with a woman I love more than life itself. So if this is truly my end, I guess it is a happy ending of sorts. I just wish I could have given you more. A house somewhere in the countryside, a peaceful life without those damn ugly titans, kids if you wanted them…a chance to just stop fighting."

"You gave me everything, Levi."

"Not everything. Not yet." He went quiet then finally said. "I was going to ask you to marry me when this was all over. Hell, I even bought a ring. Pretty thing, too, if I do say so myself. I'm sorry you'll never get the chance to see it. I'm sorry for a lot of things, Mikasa," he said sadly.

"Now who's the one apologizing for—what was it?—shit that's not your fault?"

He laughed weakly. "Watch it, brat."

"You're well enough to call me that again, so I guess I should be relieved."

They fell silent again, Mikasa tilting her head to rest on Levi's shoulder. After a few moments, she plucked up the courage and said, "So ask me now."

"What?" he said, retracting in shock a little so that a few centimeters of space yawned between them.

"I said, ask me now."

"I just said I don't have the ring."

"You think I give a damn about something as silly as that? Ask me, Levi."

"Is it even a proposal if one is strong-armed into it?" She glared at him until Levi heaved an exaggerated sigh, unsuccessfully trying to suppress the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. He turned to her. "Brat, from the moment I met you, you have been nothing but a pain in my ass. An infuriatingly obstinant, reckless pain in the ass. But I can't imagine my life now without you. Mikasa Ackerman...will you marry me?"

She leaned in and took his face in her hands, careful to avoid the still-bandaged parts, then kissed him, long and slow, pausing just long enough to whisper. "Of course, I will."

When they finally broke apart, Levi chuckled. "You're only saying that because you know you don't have to follow through."

Mikasa locked eyes on him, staring so intensely that he found he couldn't look away, even if he tried. "If by some miracle we make it out of this alive, I swear on my life I will marry you, Levi."

Finally, the full meaning of her words hit Levi, slamming into his stomach like a fist and sending his heart into his throat. She wanted to marry him, wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. The fact that that future would almost certainly never come to pass hardly mattered. What mattered was that she could imagine a world in which it would, and that was enough for Levi.

"Ahem." With difficulty, Levi drug his eyes away from his entire world and looked toward the doorway to find Hange.

"It's time, you two." She sounded sad, as if she also knew this mission only ended with one thing. "Inspect your gear and prepare to board the flying boat."

Mikasa rose and offered a hand to help Levi up. He steadied himself against her body before willing his injured leg to hold his weight.

Before they walked through the door, he stopped her and pulled her back. She turned to look at him curiously, thinking he was having trouble walking, when he crushed his lips against hers, pouring everything he had—all the love, the pain, the anger, and even the fear—into that one kiss. For all he knew, it could—no, it would—be the last time he would ever kiss her.

Finally, when they parted, Levi tilted his forehead to rest on hers. "I will love you always, Mikasa. No matter what happens after we walk through this door, know that I don't regret a damn thing. Knowing what I know now, I'd go back and do it all over again, the only difference being I might not have waited so long to kiss you. These last years were the only ones in my life that meant anything. Thank you for that."

There was so much Mikasa wanted to say, but she could find no words and so she continued staring at him until Levi moved for the door. "Forward unto doom?" he asked, extending his hand for hers.

Without hesitating, she took it and followed him onto the deck. Whatever happened, they would at least be together.