Notes: I am embarrassed. I don't know what this is. I hardly know what happens after the 4th Shinobi War, and I hardly know what happens after the battle at Shiganshina. All I know is that this pairing would not leave me alone and I needed to purge it from my mind. Did I succeed, or did I just create a fleshed-out headcanon that will be with me forever? We have yet to find out.

I am making plot up. I don't understand Marley and Paradis politics. It's all background noise to Levi and Sakura's relationship, so if you can accept that fact, then buckle up, we're in for a ride!

Two, Then One
Part 1

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Sakura can't say she knows what happened.

What she knows is that it was so loud that her head felt like it was splitting. What she knows is that the air suddenly changed and went cold, and she saw the earth and the sky splitting, and it felt like some deep darkness was beckoning to her. What she knows is that as she was struggling to gain her footing, something or someone or some cruel twist of fate carried by the wind gave her a violent shove, and she was suddenly falling and falling and falling.

It couldn't have been longer than a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity of blackness. Her breath was held, suspended in her lungs as she plummeted—and suddenly it was bright again, and she could see the clear blue of the sky.

She forced her body to reorient itself, feet down, arms shielding her face. She could see the green of the earth below—there were trees, so many trees, and all of them so big. The branches and leaves cut and scraped her skin as she fell through, and the force of the chakra lining her bottoms of her feet as she landed on a thick branch was enough to snap it and send her falling again.

But the buffer was enough. When she landed on the grass, tumbling and rolling, nothing in her body broke. She'd have some significant bruising, but nothing a little time and patience wouldn't heal. It was certainly better than what could've happened, considering the distance she fell.

After standing to her feet, she glanced around her. This was not where she was before.

Sakura remembered this: The barren lands of the Earth Country. Sai and Naruto. A hard battle, a seemingly losing battle.

But she was alone. And what she saw was green upon green upon green.

Somewhere in the distance, she heard an explosion. And she did the one thing she knew how: she ran towards it.

The trees gave way to a vast plain of flat land. The source of the explosion wasn't far; she could see smoke trailing into the sky, still thick and fresh. She crossed the distance easily, but when she arrived, she couldn't say she understood what she saw. A wooden cart, obliterated to pieces. Two four-legged creatures, dead. Chunks of flesh scattered everywhere. And a body, in the tall grass, right by the creek.

It was bad. His middle was split open, organs spilling out, staining all of his clothes with blood. Shrapnel was buried deep in his face. And still, as she pressed two fingers to his neck, she could feel a pulse. As she hovered her palm over his mouth, she could feel faint breathing.

And so she got to work.

Sakura can't say she knows what happened. But she knows this: the man likely would have died without her. So she doesn't question the sequence of events that led her here—she merely accepts that they happened, and that they needed to happen. Even when people arrive on more of those brown, four-legged creatures, sporting the same clothing as the man she saved, pointing weapons at her, she raises her hands and is not afraid.

She's always found meaning in the most hopeless of situations. It's what got her through the hard days, the long nights, the years and years of waiting for Sasuke. So she pulls meaning out of thin air in this moment as she slowly stands and steps away from the man, unconscious but undoubtedly alive: he needed her, badly. She was simply brought to the place where she could save him.

—

This world, she thinks, is so alien.

She deduces that it must be another world. Nothing else would explain these stone buildings, tall and abundant, or these impeccably lined cobblestone streets. Nothing else would explain the mysterious technology these people wield. (3DMG, someone had told her. She whispers the name over and over again, shaping the sounds with her lips until they become comfortable to say.) Nothing else would explain why they need this technology to fly, to attach themselves to surfaces, to do all the things that Sakura only needs a little push of chakra to achieve. Nothing else would explain why these people feel none of the energy that she has coursing through her system, this innate strength that she began to hone as a child.

And nothing else would explain these walls, so tall they look like they touch the sky, looming above her wherever she goes.

When she gets home, however she may, she will never speak badly of the Konoha Council ever again. The bureaucracy here is stifling, infuriating—just old men talking over each other and trying to prove each other wrong—but Sakura answers whatever questions they throw at her, although she can tell that her answers mean little to them. They don't understand her, the way she doesn't understand them.

She is given a cell. It's hardly cage, given her strength, but she doesn't fight. A woman with glasses and an eyepatch visits her every day to talk to her and ask her questions. She's a little crazed and very curious, but Sakura likes her because she believes her. She repeats the name until it's committed to memory.

"Hange, when will I get to leave? I can't stay here."

"I don't know, but I'm working on it. In the meantime, can you explain to me again how you healed Levi? Wait, can you heal me? Let me go grab a knife…"

Levi. Sakura hasn't seen him since he was a mess of flesh and bones by the river. She hardly remembers his face; when she tries to conjure it up, she can only think of the shrapnel, and how red his pulverized insides were.

—

He comes and sees her on the third night.

He is whole and he is human and he is alive. Sakura lights up when she sees him, jumps up to her feet and closes her fingers around the bars of her cell. "It's Levi, right? How are you feeling? Your guts were a bit of a patchwork job, given how close you were to the explosion—you can't have possibly fully healed yet, what are you doing walking around? Also, I had to take out your spleen, sorry."

Her barrage of words seems to have little to no effect on him, and she is suddenly reminded of Sasuke. His face only flashes for a moment behind her eyelids when she blinks, but it leaves her winded nonetheless.

Sasuke is out there, somewhere. And there is no way for her to tell him that she's here.

"I'm Levi Ackerman," Levi says. "Thank you for saving my life." A pause. "Will I be fine without my spleen?" His voice jolts her back to the present, to this alien world, to this dark cell and to the sight of the shadows of the torch on the wall dancing across his skin. His face is still scarred from the shrapnel; she had deemed it lower priority and quickly closed what needed to be closed.

"You'll be fine, technically. Your immune system is weaker now though, so try to stay hygienic. Oh, I'm Haruno Sakura, by the way."

Levi Ackerman. What a strange name.

"I know. I read the reports. Come, Haruno. You're free to go." As he says this, he's pulling a key out of his pocket and unlocking her cell door. "Hange is waiting for us."

"Sakura is my given name, not Haruno," she tells him. "It's different where I come from."

He only contemplates this for a moment, but it doesn't seem to matter much to him. "Sakura, then. Let's go."

"Wait. I want to do a quick follow-up, if that's okay." Before he can accept or decline, her hand is already around his wrist and pulling him towards her bed. "It'll be quick, I promise." She feels him resist, but not much; a tiny burst of chakra has him laying down. He looks a little stunned.

They know nothing about her. Despite their questioning, they've only asked about her medical abilities and how she got here. They have no idea that she is strong, that she's a fighter, that she could easily topple the walls that surround them, and she had decided not to tell them. She can see from the look Levi gives her that he is not someone who lays down easily, so she pretends not to notice how the gears turn in his head as he stares at her, trying to figure out how he is on his back.

Her hands glow green as they hover over his middle. "You should breathe," she advises him, "or else I'll have saved your life for nothing."

"This is what you did to me back then?"

It's amazing. The damage she predicted he'd still have is not nearly as severe as she thought it would be. Nevertheless, she connects the tissue that is struggling and helps along the recovery that still needs some time. When she finishes there, she moves to his face—her fingers barely brush across his cheeks, wiping away the scars marring the skin there.

"There. All better. Can you sit up and tell me how you feel?"

Levi pushes himself upright. He touches his own face. "All the pain is gone."

She smiles. "Great!"

Even in the dim lighting, she can tell his eyes are a stormy gray. When he stands, even though it's just barely, he has to look up at her. And yet, even with his short stature, Sakura gets the feeling that he is not someone to be messed with, and that perhaps it's a blessing that she's on his good side.

Still. How strong could these people be? Surely, they don't compare to the strength she has seen, the strength that she's born from.

As she follows Levi up the stone steps and out of her supposed prison, she wonders if she has more secrets, or he does.

—

They say she is in Trost, although that means little to her. At her request, Levi brings her to a library, where she spends all day reading. When he finds her again in the evening, she has gone through several books and cried more times than she can count.

There is nothing here. There is no knowledge of what had happened to her, why she ended up here, or how she could possibly go home. Instead, she sees the same map over and over again, and every book only goes back one hundred years.

And the drawings. They are hideous. Monstrous. Grotesque.

Titans, they call them. Creatures that eat humans for sport.

That's what the walls are for.

Sakura never thought that anything could be worse than what she's seen. That nothing could have felt more hopeless than the war. That nothing could be more heartbreaking than seeing Sasuke walk away from her yet again.

And yet, here she is.

Her eyes are red and swollen when she looks up at Levi. He looks at her with unfeeling eyes, and she finds a comforting familiarity in it.

"This place," she whispers. "This world. How do you people live in it?"

"Desperately," Levi answers without hesitation. "Pathetically."

Sakura closes her nth book of the day and stands up. "I can fight. Let me help." Because if there's one thing about her that people can count on, it's that her heart bleeds and she will give up every part of herself if it means protecting the people around her—even if it's these strangers. Because she can see some of Naruto's endless enthusiasm in Hange. Because she can see Sasuke's quiet suffering in Levi.

Levi scoffs. "You don't know the first thing about fighting."

It's a gamble, but Sakura decides to take it. It's been a long day of disappointments and giving-ups and she feels like she has nothing left to lose. She gives no warning and steps forward, throwing a punch at him. She just barely sees his eyes widen before he dodges to the left. She catapults herself over the table to get behind him and swipes her legs underneath his feet, but he jumps—as he lands, he spins to face her and tackles her to the floor, his arm pinning her neck down. It is tight and she struggles to breathe—he is not playing. His eyes are narrowed into slits and she can see that he is prepared to kill her.

He's strong, she won't deny that. But she is stronger. In the next moment, their positions are switched, and she is the one pinning him down.

"I can fight," she says again, watching his expression morph from surprise, to confusion, and then to acceptance. "I'm strong."

—

Levi doesn't hesitate. He talks to Hange immediately, and at dawn of the next morning, they ride out with Sakura and the rest of his squad outside of Wall Rose, away from the civilians. He feels Sakura's body pressed to his back the entire time; despite her self-proclaimed abilities, she doesn't know how to ride a damn horse.

When Hange deems that they've ridden far enough, they dismount. "You said you can fight," he says to Sakura. "Show us."

She smiles. Everything about her seems soft and sweet but there is something just underneath her skin, Levi can feel it—something menacing, something dangerous. "I need someone to fight if I'm going to show you anything."

He glances at Hange, and then at Mikasa, Armin, and Connie. "Fine. You can fight me." But as he moves to take off his 3DMG, she puts her hand on his.

"No. Keep that on. I want you to use it against me."

The idea is absurd. She is suggesting that he use lethal blades against her. She is unarmed, she is pink hair and a miracle worker and wet, red-ringed eyes, and she has a death wish.

(Although who wouldn't, upon discovering what they've stumbled into?)

"This is flat ground," he says. "Our equipment doesn't work well here."

She points to the west. "There are trees there. Will that work?"

But if she has a death wish, who is he to keep it from her?

Once they reach the trees, Levi begins to explain the equipment, because he's not some unfair bastard who takes pleasure from fighting dirty. "The cables are to maneuver from one place to another. The gas—"

"Is for fine-tuning the movements, I know. I read all about it yesterday. And those blades." She glances at the weapons hanging at his side. "I know they're meant for Titans, but feel free to use them on me. What? Don't look at me like that. You won't take me seriously unless you go all out, right?"

She is delusional, Levi thinks. She has no idea what she's in for.

"My weapons pouch was confiscated so you have a bit of the upper hand," she muses. "I guess it's not impossible to assume they're surgical tools, but I think that was a bit of a stretch. Anyway, Levi, don't go easy on me, alright?"

Delusional is too gracious of a word. Crazy? Suicidal? Completely batshit insane?

He blinks, and she is gone.

Where'd she go?!

Levi hardly has time to react before he feels the air above him move. He barely shoots out a cable and pulls himself away in time before she makes impact—and when she does, there's a small crater in the ground, bearing resemblance to the imprint of a boulder.

He doesn't have the luxury to think about it, because in the next second, she's in front of his face again. How? He's hanging off the trunk of a tree—

The punch hits him square in the face and he goes flying. He only freefalls for a moment before he catches himself, shooting his hooks upwards and propelling himself with his gas. Fine. If she somehow has the same mobility as him with 3DMG, he won't go easy on her.

The next time they make contact is five seconds later; he is tilted upwards and she is pushing downwards on him; his blades are pressing into her arms but they aren't cutting and he feels her strength pressing him down, far stronger than mere gravity—his eyes glance at her feet and he sees that they are planted firmly on the vertical surface of the tree, as if the laws of physics don't apply to her. One heartbeat later and she wins the battle of strength and he loses his footing, swinging away. But before he can retract his cables and reposition himself, she runs—runs—up the tree, and can he be blamed for his slow reaction time? Is his shock unjustified when she throws a bare fist at the branch that he's anchored to and splinters it into hundreds of pieces?

When he falls this time, he does not try to catch himself. All he can think is, how?

And when he lands, he doesn't hit the hard ground like he expects—she catches him. Catches him. Albeit not cleanly, and they both go tumbling, but she was above him a second ago and then she was below him—

He has no words. As he lays on the ground and listens to their panting, he turns his head to look at her. Her chest is heaving and her impossibly pink hair is mussed but she is smiling at him, and there is nothing malicious about it but this woman both nearly killed him and saved his life just now and Levi finally understands that he needs to take her seriously.

"Your 3DMG looks so cool. Can you teach me how to use it?"

—

Chakra, she calls it. A power that she draws from within that lets her stitch flesh back together, walk on water, move faster than the eye can see. She can create invisible shields on her skin. She can cast illusions. She can summon animals.

Levi can't stop thinking about her.

The government is informed about her abilities. She is granted temporary citizenship. She is under his watch, although he doesn't know what for—if anything, it should be the other way around. With her on their side, they might have a chance. They might win.

She moves with a sort of grace he's never seen in any soldier before. Even when learning the balance and the power of their gear, her movements are fluid, like she's more comfortable off the ground than on it. She unsheathes the blades easily, slices into dummy Titans like they're nothing. Something that takes people years to master, she successfully does so in a week.

"You don't have to do this," he says to her one day as she's refilling her gas. "This isn't your war."

And when she answers, she sounds so sad, so defeated. "I know. I already won my war. But." Her body is so strong, her intellect so sharp, but Levi has come to learn that she will cry whenever the wind changes. "I don't know how to get home. And fighting is the only thing that makes me forget."

Levi places a hand on her shoulder. "You're a part of our family now. It's a shitty, dysfunctional family, but at least it's something."

When she laughs, cheeks still wet with tears, her voice bounces off the trees, ringing clear as a bell and echoing in his heart.

—

The taste of red wine is deeper and fuller than the sake she is used to.

Sakura used to not be much of a drinker, but times have changed. She sits on the floor of her room, underneath the window, staring at the silhouette of the window frame that the moonlight casts on the opposite wall.

Did Naruto and Sai win that fight? Did they survive? Are they looking for her? Do they think she's dead?

Where is Sasuke now, on his long and lonely travels? When will he notice that she's gone?

How will she ever get home? Or…is this her home now? This nightmare place where people don't nearly have the capabilities to protect themselves from the threats outside the walls?

She can help. Surely, she can do some good here.

Her eyes flicker towards the movement at her open door, and land on Levi. He's wearing his uniform like always, and Sakura thinks it's so dull and boring. Everyone wears the same wash of whites and browns and blacks—her own uniform is hanging in her closet, but she can't bring herself to put it on yet. More specifically, she can't bring herself to take off her own signature red.

"What are you doing on the floor?" Levi asks. He sounds bored.

She smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "Trying to reason some meaning into my life." She holds up her wine, which she's drinking straight from the bottle. "Wanna join me?"

She watches him consider her. Levi is all sharp edges and quick calculations; his eyes go from the bottle, to her face, to the floor. When he finally makes a decision, he walks with conviction, pulls out the chair of her desk, and sits. He does not take the offered drink.

"Whose are those?" she asks, gesturing towards the small pile of books on her desk. They were the only sign of this room being lived in before it was given to Sakura—and even now, it still doesn't look particularly lived in. It's not like she has any belongings here.

Levi regards the books. "Those were Petra's." Sakura notes the past tense, and silently understands.

"Was Petra important to you?"

It would be easy to draw the parallels between him and Sasuke. The brooding personality. The lack of small talk. But Sasuke always had a way of compartmentalizing his emotions, stuffing them down so deep that she can't reach them no matter how hard she tried. But Levi—

When she asks him this question, his eyes are so undeniably sad.

"They were all important to me," he says. He sounds tired.

It doesn't matter what world she's in. Loss is around every corner.

She takes another swig of her wine, and says quietly, "I want to go home."

"I don't know how to do that for you."

She laughs wryly. "Me neither. Which is ironic, since you people seem to think I can do anything and everything under the sun."

Sakura quickly learned in the beginning that Levi is not one to offer false comforts, and so they sit in silence for a long time. She listens to his slow, even breathing, and tries to match hers to it. As she thinks about Naruto's bright goofy grin and the way he says her name, she gently knocks her head against the wall behind her to dispel the image. Levi's unasked question is obvious in the way he raises an eyebrow at her, but she doesn't give him an answer. Instead she steers the conversation elsewhere, to a place where she knows it won't break her.

"I've been thinking about your 3DMG. It's so heavy, and yet you move so fast. How long does it take to develop that kind of strength?"

"For most people, a few years."

"How long did it take you?"

She also learned that he is not a bragger. "Not quite that long."

"You're a good fighter, Levi. Really good. I'd be really scared if you had the same abilities as me." She smiles cheekily. "Right now I'm only kind of scared."

"We must look pathetic to you."

"No." Sakura looks at the bottle in her hand. It's still half full, but she sets it down on the floor anyway and stands up. She towers over him sitting in her chair, but she needs to put a hand against the wall to keep her balance. "You're not pathetic, okay? You're not pathetic."

"I wasn't talking about myself specifically."

She takes Levi's face between her hands. She feels him stiffen underneath her palms.

His hair is different. His eyes are narrower, but not quite as dark, speckled like a stormy sky. He is shorter. But if she tries hard enough and pushes the edges of her imagination—

He places a hand on top of hers, but does not push her away. "Who are you pretending I am?"

—

How, he thinks. And why? Why is it that a woman of her caliber is so devout to such a fallible man?

Levi didn't coin Sakura to be a particularly chatty person about the inner workings of her heart, given that she is surrounded by strangers and hardly lets her guard down, but the wine loosens her lips. And when her hands fall from his face to rest on his shoulders, she whispers a name: Sasuke.

He hardly has to ask. The words "Who's Sasuke?" prompts a long, long story—one that has her shoulders slumping as she sits on her bed.

Levi doesn't understand all the details, but he gets the general gist. "How do you know he loves you too if he didn't choose to stay?"

"I just do."

He scowls. "You're fucking telling me that you, a woman who could topple our walls if you so choose, continue to love a man who has threatened your life and your home?"

"Love isn't a choice, Levi."

"Like hell it isn't." His voice comes out as a snarl, and it surprises even himself. "You choose to hold on the way I choose to fight. You choose to ignore the shitty parts of him the way he chose to do things that would hurt you. Life is all about choices, Sakura—it's pitiful that a soldier like you doesn't realize that." She bristles at his words. He sees her hands tightening into fists. She is angry. "Life is too fucking short to go soul-searching. If I loved a woman as incredible as you, I would fight every day to stay."

He didn't quite mean it that way, but the implication hangs heavy in the air. They glare at each other from across the room, and he counts the seconds—one, two, three, four—and her fists finally relax.

"Please leave," she says quietly.

Levi doesn't need to be told twice. In the next second, he is on his feet and out the door. For a brief moment, it almost feels like he's running away.

—

It's big. So big. The sketches don't do them justice. She can only stare in awe and terror as Levi shouts instructions to the people around her. Mikasa (the only one whose name feels easy in her mouth) dismounts her horse and easily takes it down.

It was one Titan. Just one, maybe eleven meters tall. It's not so much the size of it that stuns her, but just how human it looks, and yet how inhuman it acted. Its eyes were empty. Its movements were sporadic. And when Mikasa cut into its nape, it continued to smile, as though it didn't care that it was about to die.

"Sakura. Are you alright?" Levi, on his horse, trots up beside her.

"Yeah." She swallows. "It's just…"

"Fucking nightmarish."

"Yeah. There's…really no way to revert them back to humans?"

"No way that we know how without some big sacrifices, but if you have any insights, we'd love to hear them."

Sakura dazedly shakes her head. "No. I have no insights."

She knows she'll burn her fingertips, but she does it anyway—she reaches up and touches her headband. The metal is hot underneath the afternoon sun, but feeling it there brings her comfort. Because when she stares down at what she's wearing, she sees white and brown and green. They say the emblem on her cloak symbolizes the wings of freedom, but she has never felt more trapped in her life.

"Well, be on the lookout," Levi says. "There aren't too many Titans anymore nowadays, but we can never be too sure." She nods, and his eyes linger on her for a moment longer before he turns away.

She sees the way he watches her. His eyes never left her when he was training her, and even now, she notices him looking at her far more than anyone else on his squad. Is he simply curious, and trying to figure her out? Does he think she's a threat? She can't tell—his eyes are shrouded when he's out in the world, unprotected by the darkness.

But if Sakura is good at anything, it's at reading unexpressive men. She feels that there's a kindness to him, despite his foul mouth and sour expression—so whatever it is that he's thinking about when he looks at her, it can't possibly be ill-willed.

—

She sees the Marley airships, big and mystical and flying in the sky. She sees Titans grabbing soldiers and closing their jaws around them like a quick snack. And then she remembers Levi's words:

Life is too fucking short to go soul-searching.

In this world, people look despair in the face and march forward anyway.

If I loved a woman as incredible as you, I would fight every day to stay.

And she understands.

Life is full of choices. She chose Sasuke again and again and again.

And the cold, hard truth is that he never chose her. Not even once.

—

She finds him in his room that night, writing a report. Levi feels her before he sees her—perhaps it's something about the chakra she possesses, but there is a constant thrum of power around her, a quiet strength that just barely disturbs the air as she moves.

She knocks on his door and he tells her to come in, but when the door opens and closes, he still doesn't look up from his report and continues to write.

"Do you guys usually suffer that many casualties?"

"We lost the majority of our veterans a few years ago, so yes."

"It sounds like an impossible war," she says. "I hear things when I go out. There's dissent among the people."

"Truth, in the face of hopelessness, can be a very divisive thing." Upon finishing his current sentence, Levi puts down his fountain pen and stands to face Sakura. "Do you need anything?"

She smiles softly. "I saw that hit you took earlier today. You must have a few bruised ribs, at least. Let me fix you up."

She's not wrong. He feels an ache all throughout his torso. It pains him to even breathe. This is not the worst shape he's ever been in, and he knows he'll be fine in a few weeks, but she is a miracle worker and she is here and she is offering, and he has no reason to decline, so without a word, he lays down on his bed.

Sakura doesn't touch him when she works. Her hands simply hover over him with that warm, green glow, and with each subsequent inhalation, it becomes easier to breathe.

"We thought we were alone for so long," he mutters, more to himself than to her. "And then we learn that there are humans beyond the walls. And here you are, living proof that there are other worlds out there." He closes his eyes. "We are tiny and insignificant. So what if we all die? Humanity will continue on, even if it's not on this plane of existence. Nothing we do matters here."

"But you're going to keep fighting, right?" she asks. From behind his eyelids, her green glow disappears, and all that's left is the orange flame of his candle. He feels Sakura's hands come to a rest on his stomach. The touch is comforting.

He opens his eyes and looks at her. "I'm not going to lay down and die, if that's what you're asking." He's never seen eyes as green as hers.

"No, of course you won't." She smiles softly, and he knows she's thinking of her home. "I know a few shinobi who fight without chakra. You'd fit right in in Konoha."

"I wouldn't fight if I were there."

"No?"

"Your war is over. There would be no need. I would open a teahouse." At this point, Sakura outright laughs at him, and Levi frowns. He was being serious.

"Well, you'd have some competition, because we have a lot of teahouses." He twitches when he feels her fingers curl on his stomach, playing with the folds of his shirt. "There's no need for fighting because the war is over, huh? That's such a novel idea. Maybe this world isn't so bad after all. Levi, I—" She hesitates, and he sits up. There is no hope though, he is still looking up at her—even standing up straight, she still has an inch on him. "I want to thank you. For taking care of me."

"I hardly did anything. You take care of yourself just fine." For some reason, his voice is hoarse.

"No, but—you talk to me and listen to me. It helps a lot."

He scoffs and turns away, but even against the wall, he can see her shadow. There is no escaping her. "What, has Sasuke skewed your perception of men so much that the act of me treating you like a human being means this much to you?"

It's a low blow, and he knows it. But it's been on his mind, and he has to know if that's the reason why she will always find him first, or if there's actually something else here. Because he can't stop thinking about her. When he closes his eyes, he sees the blur of pink and green, he sees that insignia of her metal headband, he feels her literally breathing life back into his body. He hears her crying at night sometimes, through these thin walls, so distraught and wracked with grief, but when she greets him in the morning she is smiling again, despite her eyes being red and swollen. She is strong in every definition of the word, and she is worthy—definitely more worthy than he is.

And she is strong now. His words were scathing, and yet she doesn't lash at him. "That's not fair, Levi."

"Life isn't fair."

"I keep on thinking, how did this happen? Why did this happen? Why is it that the moment I land in this place, that explosion goes off? Why did I end up right where you were? There has to be a reason, don't you think?"

So she thinks it's fate that brought them together. "I don't think there's a reason for anything. I think I just got very, very lucky."

"You don't think there's a reason why I literally fell from one dimension to another?"

"I don't know if you noticed, Sakura, but however destiny works in your world, it doesn't work here. You've seen it. People die, often for no reason. The good ones suffer horrible deaths, and the selfish, arrogant pigs continue to sit in their castles, comfy and cozy, oblivious to what really happens out there. I've said goodbye more times I can count. If there's any higher being out there somewhere, it's doing an incredibly shitty job."

Their opposing beliefs are inconsolable, but Sakura is stubborn, if nothing else. "Are you saying that you'd rather have died? That it would have been better if I didn't bring you back to this miserable life?"

"I'm saying that there's no rhyme or reason to what happens to any of us." Finally finding the strength to look at more than her shadow, Levi turns his head upwards. The gaze that he meets is fiery, determined—he doesn't know why she's so worked up.

"When I said that wasn't fair, I wasn't talking about life." Sakura moves to sit down beside him, close enough that their thighs touch. Levi isn't sure if the concept of personal space is different where she comes from, or if this is just who she is. "I meant the way you talk about yourself. It's not fair that you don't think your life is worth something. It's not fair that you compare yourself to Sasuke. Because you're right—at the end of the day, every single day, he always chose himself over me. He's selfish. You're not. You're clearly the better man."

"And yet you still love him."

"I will always love him. The same way you will always love Petra. And your other fallen comrades. Love doesn't go away just because you won't see them ever again."

Levi looks at her. "Sasuke isn't dead."

"He might as well be, right?" She smiles sadly. "I might as well be." She sighs and flops backwards, bouncing slightly on his mattress. "Do you think I could make a life for myself here?"

"Sure, if you don't die."

"Would you want to make a life with me?"

The air between them stills. He looks at her. Her hair is fanned around her head like a halo and her arms are stretched upwards, revealing the outline of her body against his sheets. She asks the question like it's easy—and maybe it is for her, because she has nothing left to lose.

And what about him? What does he have to lose?

"I can't promise a life," he tells her. "But I can promise you this moment."

"That's a start, I guess." She smiles, still a little sad but not quite as much as before, and pulls him down. She doesn't use any chakra when she does so, but he gives in easily all the same.

Levi never thought that the feeling of hope has a taste, but he finds it on her lips.

—

"It's called flash-stepping," she had told him, before explaining how it worked. Still, hearing about it is different from seeing it in action.

She wears the 3DMG, but rarely uses it. The only thing she consistently utilizes are the blades—otherwise, she's grabbing Titans by the ankles and throwing them to the ground to access their nape, or flash-stepping up their lumbering bodies to reach their shoulders. There is beauty to her brute strength, but what Levi learns from watching her in battle is that no matter how adept she is at taking on Titans, it is clear that she's spent her entire life fighting humans that are likely far more skilled at hand-to-hand combat than the people of this world. The soldiers she faces have no chance against her—she moves too fast for them to aim their rifles, and once she's close enough, they're as good as gone.

Clearing out the Marley airships that visit the edge of their island has become an easy job for them. Sakura is more of an asset to humanity than Eren ever was.

Levi scowls at this thought. Fucking Eren.

His mind doesn't stay there for long when he sees the bright pink of Sakura's hair approaching. As she walks, she swipes her hand across her face, effectively closing a nasty gash. She makes it look as easy as breathing.

"That's the last of them," she tells him when he's within earshot. "Connie had it pretty rough there for a while, but I fixed him up. He's still unconscious, but he'll be fine."

He nods. "Thanks." Not only does he not worry about her, but he worries less about the rest of his subordinates as well—there has not been a single casualty in his squad since Sakura joined their expeditions. But his old worries are replaced with new ones. He wonders what's happening across the ocean. What Eren is up to.

There is still so much they don't know.

Sakura reaches out to brush the hair out of his eyes, and he jolts, as if burned. Her hand retracts and her eyes widen. "Sorry."

"Not while we're working."

"Sorry."

She wears her heart on her sleeve and he knows she is hurt by his reaction, but no matter how safe they feel, they're still outside the walls. He sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles loudly, and their horses come running. "It's time to regroup. Let's go."

"Okay." It doesn't go unnoticed how easily she mounts her horse now. Just a few months ago, she had never even seen one before—now she looks just like one of them, with the wings of freedom on her back and the 3DMG hanging from her waist. She still wears her headband though, and it glints in her hair when the sun hits it at the right angle. These days, it seems to be the only connection she has to her home.

What would it be like if the roles were reversed? What if he fell out of her sky instead of her out of his? Would he miss this place? Or would it be a relief?

He shakes the thought from his mind. No point in thinking about it.

—

Sakura doesn't really know what this is, but she needs it.

Her nights with Levi make her feel grounded. Simply falling asleep pressed against another living body makes things so much easier. He is harsh on the battlefield—brutally honest and fixated solely on survival—but behind closed doors, he is different. He listens to her talk about Naruto, he lets her explain to him what ramen and chopsticks are, and sometimes he even smiles. She isn't sure if there is a name for what they're doing but it's the warmest and safest she's felt since she dropped from the heavens and straight into his life.

Levi isn't a man of tomorrows and she understands that, but. She needs something to hold onto.

So she asks him one night when they're lying in bed, bare skin pressed to bare skin. "Is this something we're doing to pass the time and relieve the perpetual feeling of impending doom, or…?" She uses the word we to buffer the you that she means, but she knows he understands.

His answer isn't quite straightforward, but for the person who loved Sasuke until the ends of the world, it is plenty. "I don't do anything to simply pass the time."

"So it's the impending doom, then," she says—but she is beaming as she buries her face in his shoulder.

"I could ask the same of you. Is this something you're doing just to ease the pain of existing here?"

Her happiness is pretty quickly snuffed out these days, but this might be a record. "Yes," she says, voice muffled against his skin, "but also no." When he doesn't respond, she moves to prop her head in her palm to look at him. His expression reads unbothered, but she thinks he might be, just a little bit, because his eyes are fixated on the ceiling and he refuses to look at her.

"You're not wrong," she tells him. "Being here is…excruciating. Not because of the hell that exists here, because truthfully, I'm used to hell—but with every passing day, I feel like I'm losing who I am. I dream about home every night. And then I wake up and I'm here. And I'm not Naruto's best friend, or Kakashi's former student, or Tsunade's apprentice, or Ino's lifelong rival…here, I'm just humanity's military asset. I have no history." She bites her bottom lip to keep it from trembling, but she knows she won't be able to stop her tears once they come. "There is nothing to hold onto here, Levi. Except for you."

"So it's to ease the pain," he concludes. He still won't look at her. His jaw is tight.

She reaches out to touch his face. "Can't I feel all those things and still care about you? Are they mutually exclusive?" As the seconds tick past, she feels his jaw relax under her touch. And when he finally moves, it's to kiss her neck, teeth scraping her skin in such a way that her breath catches in her throat.

"I want you," he says, voice low. His breath is hot on her skin. "And I don't want you thinking about some other place or some other man when I'm with you. I know I'm selfish. You deserve someone better, but I'm selfish."

Sakura's arms wrap around him tightly as the tears finally escape her eyes. "I don't think about Sasuke when I'm with you," she whispers, voice trembling. "And you're not selfish. But I'm glad you think you are."

He moves until he is above her. His hair tickles her face and she pushes it up and away, holding his head between her hands. She looks at him through her blurred vision and sees Levi, a man whose stormy grey eyes never turn red, a man she looks down at to speak to, a man who chooses her every single night.

She pulls him down for a kiss and decides to choose him too.

—

The Rumbling, they call it. Sakura understands why. It begins exactly that way, with a low rumble in the ground, a distant trembling from deep below. She feels it as she's walking with Hange and Levi through the streets in the heart of Mitras, after having given a report on her successes since she's joined the military. Her citizenship has been extended another three months. They'd be mailing the official papers to her at the military barracks in Trost.

She has an address now. A room. A place to return to at night.

When they feel the first quakes, they stop in their tracks. Sakura looks down at the neatly lined cobblestone ground, and thinks about the Underground below.

"Levi—" It's Hange's voice. "Wall Sina…"

Sakura and Levi's eyes follow the direction Hange is pointing in. In the distance, she sees the source of the rumbling they feel underneath their feet—Wall Sina is slowly crumbling and falling apart. All three of them, along with every other citizen on the street, are frozen as they watch the wall collapse, revealing Titan after Titan. They're big, bigger than any Sakura has seen before—and for the first time, she wonders if her strength alone is enough to stop all of them.

It's a domino effect—from the initial breaking point, Wall Sina continues to collapse, sending rocks and boulders falling and reverberations shaking the ground beneath them. Everything is falling apart. Sakura looks down again and thinks of the Underground—

With the force of the wall falling in a perfect circle around them, everything will collapse. She looks at Levi and Hange on either side of her—none of them are geared up. Sakura acts quicker than she thinks; both of her arms snake around their middles and she jumps onto the nearest rooftop, and for all intents and purposes begins flying. She can't save all the citizens of Mitras, or the poor souls who will inevitably be crushed below, but she can save these two.

"Sakura—what are you doing—" She's moving so fast Hange can hardly breath or manage a sentence.

Levi seems to understand before she explains herself. "We need to move. The ground's eventually going to collapse under us."

But where? Where can she go? They are surrounded by chaos and Titans and everything is falling apart. She lands on a clock tower and surveys her surroundings, heart pounding in her chest.

"There's a supplies warehouse to the east," Levi says, pointing in some vague direction. "We can gear up there."

"Is there time?" Hange asks.

"There has to be. We're useless otherwise. Sakura, can you get us there?"

She watches the civilians screaming in the streets, the children crying, the men crouching on the ground and covering their heads because they're too frightened to move. The sight is all too familiar to her.

"Yeah, I can. Hang on tight." And she grabs them again and off she goes, pushing off rooftop after rooftop.

"The Titans will go south," Hange says as they fly. "Any damage they create is just collateral. If we can somehow avoid their path…"

"What the fuck is Eren thinking?" Levi snarls. "Does he not care about all the people he'll kill from this?"

Even in this world, Sakura thinks sadly, there is a man who will destroy everything if it means getting what he wants.

When they arrive at the warehouse, the Military Police are already gearing up. From their quick and panicked chatter, it sounds like they're supposed to evacuate the citizens, although Sakura has no idea where they'd evacuate to. Nowhere is safe. If Wall Sina has fallen, there is no doubt that the other walls have fallen too. If, by some miracle, people survive all these Titans rampaging south, what will protect them from the smaller Titans that will inevitably come? What will protect them if Marley troops make it this far inland?

"I need to go back and report on the situation," Hange says after finishing strapping herself in and checking her cables. "Levi, you and Sakura get back to Trost somehow. Gather the rest of the Survey Corps. You need to find Eren. He should be on the island somewhere."

"Got it."

Levi and Hange hardly share a goodbye as she runs, shooting her cables out the warehouse door and flying off. Sakura is still struggling with her gear, trying to slip her leg through the straps, but her hands are shaking. She's faced disaster before, but never of this magnitude. Never with the knowledge that the people here have no real, feasible way to fight and survive.

Levi, already properly geared up, grabs her wrists and holds her steady. When she looks at him, he shows none of the fear that she feels inside. He spends every waking moment thinking of things like this, she knows—he is always still awake when she falls asleep, and already out of bed when she wakes up. Levi is always mentally prepared for the worst and it helps him steel himself during this moment when he squeezes her wrists until she stops moving.

She thinks it's uncharacteristic of him to lean down and help tighten the straps around her thighs, but she lets him. She lets him double check that everything is tight enough around her torso, that the gas is coming out smoothly, that none of the triggers are faulty. And then she wonders if this is his way of saying goodbye.

"Levi," she whispers.

"I have more confidence that you'll make it out of this than I will," he says as he straightens up.

She grabs his collar and tugs until he's on his tiptoes, until they're eye to eye and nose to nose. "You said you'd fight every day to stay," she hisses through clenched teeth. "Prove it. Fight."

He shoves her hands away. His expression is even. There is no hint of the vulnerable man she knows under the cover of night—he is Levi Ackerman, humanity's strongest, ready to give his life for the cause. He says he's selfish, but Sakura never thought for a moment that he is. A selfish man wouldn't do this. A selfish man wouldn't sacrifice himself for his people.

Underneath them, the ground rumbles again. "I'll fight," he says. "I'll die fighting. But Sakura—this isn't your war. No matter what happens, you choose survival. You choose to live." It's not a request, but an order.

"No," she spits, and she hardly recognizes her own voice. "I choose you."

He regards her for one last moment. She hates, hates how calm he is. "Fine," he says as he turns sharply, his cloak flying as he spins. "Do what you want. Come, the stables are this way."

She doesn't know what to make of his answer, but she follows him anyway.

—

It happens fast. So fast.

She sees Mikasa and Armin running towards the one they call Eren. She sees a single Titan from within the walls slowly turning to head in their direction, surely with the intention of stopping them where they stand. She sees Levi barking out orders. She sees all of the chaos around her, but she hears none of it.

What she hears is something loud. It's like a thunderclap, despite the clear blue sky, and it is deafening enough to make her cover her ears.

She sees a small horde of regular-sized Titans (it's ironic now that something standing at fifteen meters tall could be considered regular) and already knows that it's her job to take care of them. She rides her horse to the heart of the storm, determined to take them down quickly so she could join Levi in facing the Wall Titan, but even she doesn't know how this will end because there are hundreds of them, thundering along into the ocean, and if they keep on getting in Eren's way, he will just send more until they're all dead.

But then she hears someone scream Levi's name, and she can't help but turn to look back. He's flying through the air, knocked off of his horse, a trail of blood following his body's trajectory as he lands on the ground, still. Sakura's eyes widen.

A second thunderclap, so loud her head is splitting, and she knows what's happening. She can already feel the ground opening up from under her.

(Is this it? Is this the end? Was she brought here so she could save his life once, and is she being taken away now because this was always where he was meant to die? In this moment, in this place, in an impossible battle?)

No. It can't be. There needs to be more than this. Levi didn't survive this long for this.

She jumps off her horse to close even the smallest amount of distance between them and shoots a cable out at him—please reach him, please—

It lands right in his shoulder and she retracts.

The last thing she feels before the darkness swallows her up is his body colliding with hers, and her holding onto him for dear life.