[AN] in case you haven't noticed by now, I like to sneak Skyrim references into my fanfiction. oooh, I have an idea! if you can guess the two Skyrim references I've made in this fic, I'll write you a oneshot for any fandom and/or pairing of your choosing. if you guess correctly, I'll shoot you a PM and we can discuss the details from there.~ you'll find the references in this chapterand chapter 8.

also, there will be a bonus chapter up next featuring Marco and Jean. I hope you enjoy it.~

as for the quote. I'm quite the fan of Game of Thrones, especially the books. the quote for this chapter has a lot of foreshadowing, and if you can also guess what it foreshadows, I'll write you a oneshot as well! if you haven't noticed, I'm feeling generous lately. I've just been in a super good mood, so that's why I'm giving you all two chances at getting a oneshot of your choosing written by me, and a bonus chapter with one of my favorite ships.

also, coquelicots are poppies, and are associated with war and death, as during World War I the flowers would bloom in abundance in No Man's Land. you've probably gotten a paper poppy from a member of the American Legion Auxiliary around Memorial or Veteran's Day before if you live in the States.

"Every flight begins with a fall." - George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Chapter 11: Coquelicots

Of Nephele's team, there were four women and two men including herself. Moira El-Hashem was a brown haired, tan skinned woman who hailed from the Western Division, as did Olevia Moore, a fair skinned, blue eyed girl of eighteen. The other three were from the Southern District, which included a robust man of twenty years by the name of Gotthilf Eisner, a lanky teen by the name of Milivoj Hejda, and a tall black haired woman named Astrid Caliri.

Nephele had never commanded a dog before, let alone an entire squad of graduates fresh from the crop. Hell, she hadn't even been able to command her feet to move in the face of the Colossal Titan. Looking back on that moment made Nephele grimace. Never again would she let herself look like such a fool.

"Ten meter class, no signs of abnormality, at nine o'clock heading south! It hasn't detected us yet. Caliri and El-Hashem, intercept and distract it. Moore and Hejda, I need you on look out. Eisner, you're with me," Nephele shouted to the graduates currently under her command. This would be her first titan kill, and she needed to make sure that the dance of death was choreographed to perfection.

"Yes, ma'am!" several of them replied in earnest, though Caliri only did as she was ordered, soaring off towards the direction of the target, and Eisner nodded as he maneuvered to Nephele's side.

"Caliri and El-Hashem are the most proficient with their gear, so you chose them to act as decoys, correct?" he noted with a confident grin, so sure that that would be Nephele's reasoning. With his confident attitude and close shaven blonde hair, he reminded her of Reiner Braun.

She spared him a definitive answer and made it clear that she wouldn't condone idle chit-chat. "My reasonings are of no concern to you, Eisner, though I've noticed that you could use a bit of work on your ODM skills. Which is why you'll be attacking the target's achilles and subscapularis tendons. I hope you remember where those are located. Do the achilles first to drop it, then go for the subscapularis to incapacitate it," she instructed as they ran across a clay shingled roof of someone's home, her heels breaking the tiles into pieces in a way that was almost satisfying.

"Yes, ma'am," he muttered almost sarcastically under his breath as they leapt into the air to jump from one roof to the next.

"Good." Looking forward, she saw Caliri and El-Hashem baiting the target, weaving around buildings and quickly retreating. Caliri would get the beast's attention and get it to follow her, then disappear behind a row of houses so that El-Hashem could draw its attention elsewhere. They switched roles after that and the cycle continued until Nephele and Eisner reached the fray. Hejda and Moore flickered from rooftop to rooftop, scouting any nooks and crannies where a hungry titan could reach its hand out and snatch an unsuspecting trainee as they jumped from rooftop to rooftop.

When they were only a few meters from the titan, approaching from the rear, Caliri came in on the titan's right as it was still occupied with trying to reach El-Hashem, who always kept more than a titan sized arm's length from it. As El-Hashem maneuvered into a tight alleyway between several buildings, the titan noticed Caliri approaching in its peripheral vision. Nephele saw its bulging eyes roll in Caliri's direction before she was aware that it had detected her, and when she went to pass behind it, it shot its arm out towards her, its gnarled hand ready to wrap around her lithe frame.

"Eisner, now!" she bellowed to the male before shooting her cables at a building parallel to the titan. She felt the cables pull taut before using her gas to bring herself towards the building, then kicked off the side of another structure towards the titan's hand. She unsheathed her blades and plugged them into their guards as the titan's fingers enclosed around Caliri's body like a cage of flesh and bone. She didn't scream, but her arms were pinned to her sides and all she could do was thrash helplessly. Nephele used a bit more gas as she flipped her body forward and tucked in her knees in a somersault so that she'd practically roll through the air like a wheel, and ended up completely severing the titan's wrist in two different places. Steam poured out of the severed hand, the titan's arm, and the meter wide slice of forearm she had cut off with her swords. The hand lost grip and Caliri deftly sliced off its appendages and secured her cables onto a building, then pulled herself on top of it.

By then, Eisner had reached the titan, and carved through each of its achilles tendons as instructed. The titan reached for Nephele with its last hand as it collapsed, but she sliced off its fingers as it passed her. She embedded her hooks into its shoulder blade and landed there to deliver the fatal blow to the nape of its neck.

"Are you alright, Caliri?" Nephele called out to the cadet, vaulting herself off of the titan's body before it fell to the ground. The decomposition process had already begun, as steam came wheezing out of its skin like a tea kettle, making it seem more apt to call it an evaporation process instead. Her squad converged on the building Caliri had escaped onto. She was doubled over as if in pain, her ponytail coming loose and the strands matted and in disarray.

Caliri was dry heaving, tears and mucus dribbling down her face. It seemed like she was about to vomit, but her mind was too panicked to even allow her body such an unpleasant sort of reprieve. If she were to vomit, it would end up getting in her long, inky hair.

Nephele went to her and knelt by the once impassive woman, then unwrapped the elastic around her hair with her small fingers. Baffled, the girl lifted her head to stare at Nephele with strands of onyx colored hair hanging haphazardly in her face. Nephele smiled and tucked those strands behind her ears, then pulled her hair back into a smooth ponytail. The rest of her squad watched on wordlessly.

"There. If you throw up, now it won't get in your pretty hair," Nephele murmured. Caliri's pale, harrowed face gained a bit of color before she shook her head and got off her knees. Nephele thought that she was well again until Caliri hurried to the edge of the building to retch over the side of it. Nephele and the rest of her squad averted their gazes.

As Caliri was occupied with emptying the contents of her stomach, Nephele turned her attention to the city of Trost. Wisps of smoke twirled through the air at the mercy of the wind, and the disproportionate heads of titans bobbed between houses in the distance. Figures glided through the sky like paper airplanes every so often, and Nephele even glimpsed one getting snatched from the sky by a titan like a child with a toy. She wondered what cadet's fate was currently being smothered between the hand of that giant before getting crunched between its teeth. She heard a scream and wondered if it was theirs or some other hapless human, and then she heard another one and knew that it was Astrid's.

Chemicals exploded into her bloodstream like injections. The skin on her arms rose in tiny bumps, making the fine hairs stand at attention. The scream seemed to enter one ear, pulse through her brain, then exit out the other, leaving nothing in its wake but unsullied instinct. Nephele swiveled her body towards the direction Caliri was in, drawing her swords, and heard her squad mirror her actions. There was only enough time to watch as Astrid Caliri's head and torso were enveloped in the jaws of a seven-meter class titan. Before Nephele could take more than a single step forward, the beast's jaws snapped shut like a bear trap with over five tons of force, effectively sawing through Astrid's body with its incisors. The sound her bones made when they snapped into dozens of fragments between the titan's teeth reminded Nephele of snow crunching beneath the weight of her boots in the winter. When her life's blood splattered on Nephele's pale flesh, she wondered what it'd look like in stark contrast with snow as well.

"Caliri!" screamed some. "Astrid!" shrieked another. Nephele recognized the voice as belonging to Hejda, the bony kid with a mop of dirty blonde hair.

When gravity brought the giant back to the ground, it brought with it the upper half of Astrid's body, but left behind everything else from the waist down. Blood gushed steadily from where she'd been mawed in half, her trousers bloody and tattered. Her gear was still attached to what remained of her harness, the stainless steel awash with crimson.

'For whom and against what do I fight, again?'

Nephele leapt off of the roof and somersaulted in the air like she had when she managed to save Astrid's life. This time, she was avenging her. Blades drawn, she saw a blurry mass of flesh - what she presumed to be the beast's arm - swipe in her direction. Still in the middle of free-falling, Nephele planted her heels against the stone wall of one building and kicked off of it, twisting her body to land upright on the titan's upper arm. She ran up its length to reach its shoulder, narrowly missing its hand when it swatted at her like she was a fly. Part of her wished that she could take her time eviscerating the beast, but she wasn't too confident in her abilities yet, nor did she see the sense in wasting precious time and gas on a creature as insignificant to her as the dirt beneath her new heels. The beast howled, bucked, and reached for her with its hands, but she was too nimble, too quick and precise. Nephele prided herself on her neat, clean, particular way of handling all aspects of her life: from curling her hair to painting her nails and to slicing off the exact measurements of a titan's nape like a butcher carves out the sirloin of a cattle's corpse. One meter long, ten centimeters wide.

She spun on the titan's back with the grace of a dancer to give her blades extra momentum until they made impact then let the rotation of her body carry the swords for her, carving through nerves and tissue. The chunk of meat fell to the pavement and hissed as it lay there evaporating. Nephele kicked herself off of the titan as its knees gave out and released a small amount of gas to reach the roof where her remaining squad members were gawking and sobbing at the events that just transpired before them.

What remained of Astrid's body would decompose at a much slower rate than the titan's would. Part of her wanted to slice open the monster's ravenous belly and salvage whatever parts of Astrid she could find, but what would the point be?

Nephele's blades still had a few good chops left in them, so she flicked her wrists to dispel the rivulets of blood trickling down the metal and deposited them back into her gear. Hejda was on his knees as if in prayer, looking towards the sky for some sort of answer to some sort of question. Maybe he was looking for Astrid's spirit, thought Nephele, as it floated into the heavens, far above the carnage below. His gaze was empty, not searching for anything in particular. His jaw had gone slack, his mouth hanging open. Each breath sounded like he was swallowing razors as tears welled up in his eyes.

"Get up, soldier," Nephele ordered, hating herself for seeming so insensitive after Hejda had just watched his friend get devoured. She wondered what the complexities of their relationship was. She wondered how they first met during those three grueling years of training, and what their plans were for the future. Nephele never knew Hejda and Astrid very well, and had only seen them in passing, but they were together quite often. If she lost someone dear to her like that, Nephele didn't know how she'd feel. But, she knew she couldn't give up hope so long as she had someone to protect. "All of you, get your shit together. Do you see what happens when you let your anxiety get the best of you?! You cry, you die out here!" she yelled, pointing towards the last place Astrid Caliri breathed air.

Eisner, who seemed more horrified than emotionally damaged, ground his teeth together for composure. He shook his head and closed his eyes then pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers as he took a deep breath.

"She's right. We can't stay here. We need to keep slaughtering these monsters or they'll get to the civilians before everyone can evacuate," he said.

"How long will that take? We killed one titan, and we've already got a casualty count! There's still so many of them!" Moore panicked.

"With every death, we learn something," said El-Hashem to her comrade. Nephele wondered what the two meant to each other as well.

"That's right. And what we've learned is that the quickest route to death is led by fear," Eisner finished, his resolve strengthening. El-Hashem nodded. It was clear that Hejda was still disturbed by what happened, but his eyes no longer looked like they would bulge out of their sockets at least.

"Get up, Hejda. We need you," Nephele insisted, holding her hand out to him. She remembered smoothing back Astrid's soft hair with that hand, wondering if her DNA still lingered on her palm. Hejda stared at the hand offered to him and didn't take it as he lifted himself off the ground, dusting off his trousers instead.

"You don't, really. I'm the weakest one out of all of you guys. I'm the one who needs you," he muttered, not even trying to sweeten his words with a shy smile like Armin sometimes would.

Nephele smiled and let her hand fall to her side. "Just follow my lead. If we stick to our plan, no one else will have to die. I promise."

"For whom and what do I fight?"

The crows started circling overhead as more titans loomed below. All that remained of her squad were tattered uniforms, dismembered limbs, and Hejda's severed head, staring at her accusingly. His mouth hung agape, the words that he never got to say echoing in Nephele's head. "You promised."

She was a pathetic excuse for a trainee. Number two? She was even more of a craven than Arlert. In the face of danger, her pretty words were just that; words.

Numb to all her senses but sight, Nephele wasn't sure if the blood on her hands was hers or not. How had it all happened? One minute, her team was systematically slaughtering titans, and the next they were being devoured by them, one by one. How many had there been? Seven? Eight? Eisner killed two, and El-Hashem felled one. Nephele lost count of how many she killed, until one after the other her comrades died. She was ultimately responsible for their deaths. Now, her time had come. After all, did her aspirations really matter anymore? The world will eat itself from the inside out, and the government and King she swore to destroy will die with it.

No, the world will live on without humankind. It would certainly live on without her.

What gave Nephele the right to live anyway, when so many others had died? Her entire squad had been obliterated, and she was too weak to stop it. There had been so many titans… Mikasa would have made quick work of them. What's the point of being strong if you can't protect anyone?

Approaching footsteps brought Nephele back to her senses. First, it was hearing. She heard each step the titan took as it took a leisurely stroll to where she knelt on the ground, the reverberating, terrible pounding like someone was taking a hammer to her skull. She felt the brick road tremble beneath her like a small earthquake was splitting the earth. She smelled perfume and oranges, and across the street she found a wooden cart filled with the fruit, some rolling out and careening down the street as the ground shook every time the giant brought a massive, bare foot down. She tasted blood on her tongue from when she'd bit her cheek to hold back her screams. When she decided to look at the face of the titan that would consume her, she saw a tangle of silver hair growing off of its face. It was the first titan she had ever seen with facial hair, and she wondered why that was the case. Do titans shave? Why is it this one particular titan that has a beard?

More importantly, why was a hand reaching out of its mouth and ripping its jaws open? The hand lengthened into an arm, and the titan collapsed unceremoniously in front of Nephele, its unblinking eyes staring at her. She wanted to scream again. Was this how titans reproduced? Did they vomit out more titans? The titan reached for her, it's wrinkled, gnarled hand beckoning for her to accept it. Rising to her feet on shaking legs and bony knees, Nephele turned tail and sprinted away just as she heard the most hideous sound to have ever entered her ears. It was worse than Astrid's scream of despair as she was bit in half. It was worse than her mother's voice when she murmured "Live for yourself."

That struck a cord in her, played from her own heart strings and resonating throughout her entire being. Why hadn't her mother's last words ever crossed her mind before that moment? These past five years had been spent living for revenge. She had to live.

Turning her head back to search for the source of that terrible, bone crunching sound, Nephele witnessed as something emerged from the titan's body like a parasite that had resided within it only to morph into something large enough to tear its host from the inside out. Blood and flesh rained upon the earth, flecks of crimson dotting Nephele's cheek before evaporating on her skin, burning her and then vanishing without a trace. Stomach acid and fragments of corpses poured out of it like the contents of a beer barrel that had been smashed open, splintered bones protruding from its body like wooden planks. She nearly vomited, her own insides churning from the sight.

And from the wreckage, a creature was born. Its emerald eyes were alive with unadulterated fury, glimmering like gemstones. It rose to stand at fifteen meters tall, its herculean physique unlike any titan she'd ever seen. When it opened its mouth, steam whistled out like the engine of a train as it reared its head to roar at the heavens with indignation. It made her skin crawl. She hadn't realized until then that she'd stopped running.

It payed Nephele no attention. She took a hesitant step back as it started walking in her direction with its new legs, its gaze fixed on something behind her. It placed a seemingly deliberate step on the titan's nape that it had just emerged from, effectively killing it before it could completely regenerate. Nephele turned to see what demanded its attention to find yet another titan, a wimpy little five meter class that was crouched on its haunches as it readied itself to pounce. Surely enough, the beast leapt into the air, both titans completely disregarding Nephele's presence as she stood gawking at the scene between them. The larger titan, the one with emerald eyes, lunged forward, and Nephele hurried to the nearest alley for shelter from the fray.

Nothing made sense.

She lingered just long enough to watch as the larger titan shot a left hook at the others head. It was already evident who the victor of that battle would be, so Nephele sprinted down the alley, the rogue titan's screams following her every step of the way.

The dark alleys were more comforting than the open sky now, holding her close within their confines. Her breath came out it short, ragged puffs, yet still she kept running down the labyrinth of alleys and side streets until a pool of blood made her slip and sent her crashing into the cobblestone. She instinctively covered her face as she fell in the puddle, red waves rolling and then breaking, staining her skin and clothes. She looked up, her vision blurred red, and saw a trail of blood splatters leading back into the open streets. Her trousers had been torn open and the skin over her knees scraped raw, yet still she stood. There was so much blood. If every drop the titans had ever spilled was collected and then rained from the clouds, would it flood the land?

Conflicting emotions and aspirations battled for her heart's favor. Part of her still dreamed of toppling the oppressive government that sent her mother to her death, but in the end it was the titans who devoured her parents. It was the titans who slaughtered her comrades and the titans who crumbled whatever semblance of hope humanity had left.

She followed the candy trail of blood that led to what remained of Marco Bott. The tears wouldn't come, it seemed. She'd wasted all of them on herself years ago. His upper half was propped up against a brick wall, his eyes open but unseeing. Most of the blood he lost had been that puddle Nephele had fallen into, and she looked at her hands, his remnants smeared on her palms.

When she vomited, it was stomach acid, and it seared her throat. She dry heaved, hugging her stomach, and the tears that sprung from her eyes were only from discomfort, and she wished that she could cry more, and she dreaded the look on Jean's face when he would learn of his lover's end. Hadn't Jean suffered enough?

It was cruel, but Nephele couldn't bear to see Jean like that. She couldn't bear to confront him, or hide the truth that was staring her in the face.

Perhaps beyond these Walls bloomed some sort of oasis, and her parents would be waiting for her there…

The rearguard had been obliterated, so she shouldn't be met with opposition once she scaled Wall Rose. After that, she'd travel to the closest military headquarters on foot, hiding by day and traveling by night, when the beasts are less active. There, she'd stock up on fuel and weapons, and head towards Wall Maria. After that, she didn't know what territory laid beyond.

This was what her mother would have wanted, right? She'd want her daughter to see the world, not avenge ghosts and toil and plow soil drenched in blood.

She understood now, why books detailing the outside world had been burned a century ago after the Walls were constructed. Within their pages must have been written mountains made of diamonds that scrape the sky, and grass softer than velvet and rivers of gold. If the people knew the truth, they'd all express desire to venture beyond the Walls. That must have been the government's true goal all along, to herd its people like cattle with no where to run from the titans once they finally toppled the Walls like a house of cards. It was just a giant slaughterhouse.

She'd travel beyond human territory, beyond titan territory, and if the world ended somewhere in between, she'd jump into the void and pray that past the darkness was something to break her fall.

Bodies were in abundance, sprouting from the cobblestone roads like daisies and half dangling off of the roofs of houses like ivy. Nephele abandoned Marco's side to search for one with its maneuver gear still intact. Finally, after ten minutes of evading and avoiding titans, and running on fumes, Nephele found a veteran member of the Garrison laying face down in the middle of the commercial district of Trost. The area was mostly devoid of titans, who had all moved north where their prey was gathered in frightened flocks, so she thought it would be safe to go on foot. She lowered herself beside the man's body, her gaze sweeping back and forth, taking in her surroundings.

The tiny, intimate shops were a familiar sight. Nephele recognized the decorative cakes in one window, wondering if anyone in Trost who had a birthday or other upcoming event had ordered a cake from that shop. She glanced up to look at the wooden sign above the translucent glass door, noting the fresh coat of blue paint over which was carved Patty's Cakes. Speckled blood sullied the long, glass window that dominated the front of the small bakery. After that window would be the fur clothing boutique, and beyond that…

Nephele bent at the knees beside the fallen soldier's body, fiddling with his gas canisters to remove them. She'd look around for titans while using muscle memory to unscrew and unclasp, then screw and clasp again. Though she knew she shouldn't be, Nephele was grateful that he had fallen early in battle. There was over eight tenths of pressurized gas left in each of the cylinders. Still no titans. Looking towards where the rescue shelter was, Nephele took off in a brisk jog to survey the wreckage after she had finished securing the gas cylinders, dreading what she might find.

The clay-shingled roof was caved in, probably from some large titan stepping on it with a heavy foot the size of a carriage. The windows were shattered to pieces, glass littering the sidewalk and jagged teeth lining the windows like the mouth of a titan. The display window that the puppies she nursed the night before slept in was broken as well, with shards of glass dipped in blood scattered all around. Rubble blocked the store's only door, the wooden support beams split in two. There wasn't any barking, which made Nephele fear for the worse.

"Please, no," she prayed to some nameless, cruel god, as she sprinted over to the shelter to peer into its dark, bloody depths. What she saw, she couldn't put into words, and if there was anything left in her stomach she'd have thrown that up as well. When she looked down at the pile of hay where those orphaned puppies had curled up next to her, suddenly she wasn't so forlorn. Instead, her sadness was replaced with hatred and anger, the two emotions that first fueled her passion and dreams.

She screamed at the heavens, called out the gods for their inhumanity, and cursed everything that had ever existed. Her fist smashed against the wooden structure, and her knuckles split more than the oak beneath them did. When she'd lost her voice, everything was silent. The air was still and thick with the permeating scent of death.

Then, she heard it; the pathetic, helpless whimpering. Beneath one of its siblings crushed bodies, the cream colored pup stirred and began crawling towards her, limping but with no visible, life-threatening injuries. It's azure eyes were not unlike her own, she thought. She reached out for it, and it entered her arms so trustingly, its warmth spreading throughout Nephele's entire body. She carefully brought the creature to her chest, where it rested its head on her shoulder, whining as it nuzzled into the curve of her neck.

"You're okay," she murmured, more to herself than the creature nestled in her arms.

The Wall was before her, then beside her, and then beneath her. Nephele looked down at the land below, searching for a path that wouldn't lead straight to a titan's jaws. The closest town was south east from the Wall, one whose name she couldn't remember. Soon enough, Trost would suffer a similar fate. After today, it would start to fall into dilapidation, and the years would wear away the stone buildings, and the birds would eat what remained of everyone's bodies, and everything will turn to rot.

Nephele leapt off of the Wall once more, considering for a few moments of free falling to let the ground kiss her and shatter her bones. Death would be instantaneous, liberating even. She looked to the sky again until it dominated her vision. She saw pictures in the clouds, halos of light and columns of sunbeams illuminating the land. Lifting her hand towards the sun itself, she imagined plucking it from the sky like a ripened piece of fruit and devouring it.

It occurred to her that she was carrying precious cargo tucked safely away in the makeshift sling hanging around her neck that Nephele had made out of a freshly laundered sheet she'd found hanging on a clothesline. She'd wrapped and tied it so that no matter how she moved through the air, the pup wouldn't be able to fall out. Only it's tiny head was visible, and it sniffed at the air as she soared through it with the help of her gear.

That was one reason she didn't follow through with her fantasy. Perhaps it would be easier to go on living if she had something to live for, even if that something was a month old mutt. Nephele pulled the triggers to her cables and skidded down the length of the wall on her heels, letting gravity bring her down as she added more and more length to her wires. She avoided the gaping hole the Colossal Titan had kicked in, where its smaller counterparts steadily trickled into Trost from. Because of this, it was easy for her to avoid them. She released the hooks once she was several meters off the ground, kicking off of the wall to flip backwards through the air and land softly on the earth below.

"Was that fun, Poppy?" she murmured to the creature stowed in its hammock. Poppy, the female cream colored mix, licked her chin with its rough tongue, and Nephele laughed softly before heading southeast at a brisk jog. There weren't any buildings or enough trees for her to efficiently use the ODM, so she'd be stuck on foot until she reached the next town.

The land was sparsely dotted with timber, the soil was loose and dry, but grass was abundant. It was a sea of sun-bleached vegetation, and in the distance Nephele could make out several manmade landmarks. She saw what was once a lumber mill to the southeast by the river of rushing water that slithers through all of humanity's territory, and the beaten cobblestone path that led south to the closest town. The path began at the broken gate of Trost, so needless to say, it would be unwise for her to take that route.

Nephele took off at a brisk jog towards Kiruna, avoiding the path leading to Trost. She never relaxed, always on the lookout for approaching titans. When she saw a figure loping towards her in the distance, she'd sprint in the opposite direction until it was out of sight. Yet she could only avoid them for so long. There were ten kilometers between Trost and Kiruna, and countless titans in between after all.

By the third kilometer, Nephele had become flanked by two titans. She feared for the pup's safety most of all, and hoped that fighting for the life of another would give her more strength than if she were to fight for herself.

How many titans had she killed by now? It was hard to keep track. They all looked the same to her, yet no matter how many she felled, their faces still made her blood run cold.

Unsheathing her blades, Nephele sprinted towards the titan closest to her. She'd have to fell it before the other could grab her. It was a ten meter class, and she waited for it to swipe a hand down at her before plunging her cables into its shoulder. She counted the number of seconds it took for it to bend down and reach her, factoring in its height. One and a half seconds. So, she'd have one and a half seconds to slice out its nape before it could lift its hand to reach her once again. The cables reeled in, pulling her body with it, and Nephele made quick work of the beast, slicing off a chunk of flesh from its nape just in time. The hand that it reached towards her fell just short of three feet, and then its body fell with it.

There was still another target. Nephele jumped off of the titan's evaporating body as the other titan's fist came crashing down. She landed on its hand and sprinted up its arm, slicing off the fingers of its other hand as it came towards her. Blood splattered on her cheek and burned her skin as it sizzled there. She raised her blades high and leapt off of its shoulder, releasing a bit of gas as she spun through the air like the graceful dancers her mother always talked about, her swords tearing through muscle and flesh with ease.

Nephele nimbly landed six meters below and inserted her blades back into their sheathes as she set off towards Kiruna once more.

There was no outrunning the Survey Corps on foot in this kind of terrain. They moved silently, charging for Trost in the formation Erwin developed that she'd learned about in class, and as such they were impossible to avoid.

"Lay down your weapons, Ambrosia," ordered Commander Erwin Smith as he sat atop his destrier, looking down at her even more than he used to. She locked eyes with him, her swords held so firmly in her hands that her knuckles were white and split. She didn't dare lift her gaze and let it wander elsewhere, because where ever Erwin is, Levi is never more than a few feet to his right.

She didn't want to see the disgust on his face.

"I will die if you apprehend me, and I'd much rather perish with swords in my hands," she answered, lifting her chin. She was surrounded by elite members of the Survey Corps, and stood no chance of getting out unscathed. All that mattered to her was pup she rescued from Trost, which squirmed restlessly in the sling she made.

"What's that?" Erwin inquired, motioning with his head at the writhing bundle wrapped around Nephele's shoulders.

"A dog. Am I allowed a dying wish, Commander?"

"No. You don't deserve death, seeing as how much you crave its release," he murmured.

That was when Levi finally spoke up. Nephele heard him scoff, but still refused to look at him.

"Why not give her what she wants? She's running away while her comrades are dying," Levi muttered. He spoke in the same tone he used when referring to titans. Nephele vaguely remembers her mother telling her that it is worse to ignore evil than to commit that evil.

Levi must have thought that she was worse than the titans. Maybe she was.

"And we're wasting time while her comrades are dying. Levi, I leave her to you." Then to the rest of his squad, "We need to get to Trost as quickly as possible."

Dirt and dust took to the air as Erwin and his squad headed for Trost, a blast of green signaling to the rest of the formation that they were moving onward. When the air cleared, all that remained was Levi astride his horse, and Nephele standing in the dirt, swords drawn.

The silence settled with the dust.

"I could kill you right now, and tell them that it was a titan," he said casually.

"Tell me, Levi. Why should I fight and risk my life for people who are going to eventually die anyways?" she asked, searching for answers in his expressionless face.

"Because that's what humans do."

She wanted to love him, and wanted him to love her too. Perhaps in another world or another time, they could have lived together, instead of dying apart.

"My fate has always been to die as a punishment for treason, it seems. Though this isn't quite the way I wanted it to be," she murmured to the ground. The good thing about having a death sentence hanging over your head is that it doesn't matter anymore what you say or do.

"You're not going to die yet. I've learned that whatever Erwin wants, he has a way of getting," Levi said.

A ray of sunlight glinted off of Nephele's blades, reminding her of the way Levi's eyes shine like molten steel sometimes. She could see someone's reflection staring back at her, but the girl in the metal couldn't be her. She's too dirty, too bloody, too old.

"You're right. I can't die yet."

Nephele released her blades and sent them hurtling towards Levi.