First things first: A HUGE thank you goes out to both MercedesCarello and Just 2 Dream of You!

I never could have written this without them.

Several of the ideas contained within this chapter came from MercedesCarello. Such as: the "speakeasy" Connie is running out of the closet, and the scene where Sasha and Connie are teasing Jean and Mercedes about their wedding. By the way, Mercedes and Baena (as well as Fhalz and Oliver- briefly mentioned) all belong to MercedesCarello. They are her wonderful and amazing OCs that I've borrowed for the purposes of adding some humor to this story! They come from her story The Burning Titan, and I highly recommend it. It's an awesome read! (She also helped me edit and polish this chapter up- as she has with several other chapters.)

The idea of the diary's existence came from Just 2 Dream of You and her amazingly funny brain. You should totally go check out her work! You will die from laughter.

I am super grateful to the both of them!

Chapter Seven: Fun

Without the burden of physical training or learning hand-to-hand combat anymore, Eve found she had entirely too much free time. Unfortunately, Captain Levi had noticed as well. He would put her to work scouring portions of the castle they called headquarters. It took him coming back to tell her to do a room all over again only once for her to realize his definition of clean and her own were not so very far from different.

The room she'd started with was a huge room that might have been a library at one point. There were only a few old shelves left in the room that she'd asked a few of the guys to clear out for her (since Peter wouldn't let her lift anything heavier than a tea kettle). That left six blank walls, each about four and a half meters long (~15 ft), and three meters high (~10 ft). Someone had been nice enough to bring her a ladder, but it took her nearly the entire day to scrub the strange yellow slime from the stone walls. Levi had come in, taken one look at the place, and told her to do it again. She was tempted to throw a fit, but she'd seen the gunk still stuck in the cracks and the pebbles caught in the splits between the wooden planks of the floor. If it had been her own home, she'd have done so much more.

The next day saw her in the room again, using a spare toothbrush she'd swiped from a supply closet. That particular supply closet, she discovered to her delight, was loaded with random treasures: a spare uniform jacket (which happened to fit her better than her own), an extra pair of boots (that looked like they belonged to a giant), a broken mirror (with a beautiful and ornate frame), several goblets (all heavy and seemed to be rimmed with gold), an entire case of fine silverware (tarnished), a box of old books (she didn't read much- it was a skill set she'd only very recently found any use for), a locked diary (which wasn't nearly old enough to belong with the rest of the junk), a set of twin silver daggers (which Eve promptly hid away for future use), a crate with various bottles of scented oils (three smelled decidedly like plums, but the other scents she couldn't readily identify), the majority of the other boxes contained tapered candles (scent-free but too waxy), but her biggest find was the leather satchel in an old truck filled with various bottles of alcohol. She'd locked the closet back up, but held onto the key for a while. Hange was the one she'd received it from, but the odd-ball was nowhere to be found, so Eve didn't see the harm in just keeping it.

While the others were out running their laps, she'd started scrubbing again. Armed with a bucket of soapy water, several old rags, and the toothbrush, she'd started to the left of the door at the very top of the first section of wall in the hexagonal room. By the time breakfast was over and Sasha had come to find her, she'd reached the middle of the second wall.

"Wow!" Sasha exclaimed, setting the plate on a little table Eve had placed in the center of the room for that exact reason. "It looks so clean…" Eve looked down and watched as the brunette reached out and touched the first section of wall. "It's not slimy anymore!"

"It better not be," Eve remarked darkly, eyes narrowed down at Sasha with an intensity that made the younger girl take a step back. Eve went straight back to the wall, scrubbing furiously with the toothbrush at one particularly troublesome crack that seemed to hold an infinite amount of the weird, odd-smelling ooze.

"Take a break," Sasha said, already holding her hands up in self-defense from Eve's wrathful look. "You still need to eat!"

"Not yet!" Eve snapped. She was grinding her teeth together. This room had very quickly become the bane of her entire existence. "It. Won't. Come. Off." Each word was accented with the force of her scrubbing just a little harder. The toothbrush snapped in her hand. "Fuck!" The handle, as it snapped, had left a nice cut in the palm of her bare hand that instantly began to burn from the soap. She tossed the broken piece still in her hand away with enough force for it to bounce off the floor and smack Sasha in the forehead.

Eve didn't notice until she'd climbed down the ladder and saw Sasha holding her bleeding forehead with her palm. "That hurt." Sasha gave her a nervous giggle and took another step back as Eve moved closer to her.

"Come here," Eve sighed, her rage at the goo and the broken toothbrush fading away as she looked at her new-found friend. Warily, Sasha took a few steps forward. When Eve didn't suddenly turn into a three-headed monster and eat her skin, Sasha relaxed. Eve grabbed one of the clean, unused rags from her pile and pulled Sasha's hand away before pressing the rag there. After a moment, she pulled it away and found just a small scratch. Peter had taught her that head wounds often bled a lot, but as long as it was just a surface scratch, they usually weren't too serious. The bleeding had already stopped when she pulled the rag away, so she just tried to wipe some of the blood from Sasha's forehead.

"What's the damage, doc?" Sasha teased.

Eve gave her a reproachful look for a moment, then sighed and attempted a smile. "You're fine. Just go wash of the rest of the blood. It's not even bleeding anymore." The nickname had brought a painful flashback of memory to the way Doc himself had appeared the day she'd gone to see her people, disheveled and off balance. "I'm going to see if I can't find another toothbrush…"

"Where'd you find that one anyway?" Sasha asked.

"One of the supply closets full of junk," she said with a shrug. She wasn't about to reveal her discoveries. "Go wash that off- use soap!" Sasha nodded and pranced away. Eve didn't even consider the plate of steaming potatoes waiting for her on the tiny table. Instead, she went straight for the closet. With thoughts about downing a few gulps of the alcohol in the trunk hidden in the back, she pulled the key from her pocket as she made her way swiftly down the long corridor.

Rounding the corner, she found Connie and Jean both at the door, trying to get in. Jean noticed her first. She didn't miss the way that he sort of ducked his head, as if he was ashamed of what he was doing. He tapped Connie on the shoulder and he looked over at Eve before visibly paling and backing away from the door. She moved closer, holding up the key.

"Hey!" Connie protested. "Where did you get that?"

"From Hange," she answered with a shrug. "I was looking for a spare toothbrush to clean those damn walls with."

"You're still going at it?" Jean asked, a little surprised. She nodded once. "Damn. We'd all given up on that room."

"I've got one and a half walls clean," she said, allowing a little pride. "Just takes elbow grease."

"Can, um… can you unlock the door for me?" Connie asked. "I'm looking for something…" She saw through his lie with ease, but didn't call him on it. She was curious about what he was going to go after once he was inside. Stepping closer to the door, she slipped the key into the rusty lock and gave it a few wiggles before it finally clicked open. Pulling it open, she stepped inside and pretended to look through a few boxes for the extra toothbrushes- though she knew exactly where to find them.

Connie and Jean went instantly to the very back of the deep closet, stepping over boxes and side-stepping a stack of crates with ease. She envied them and their ability to move their torsos. She was still all wrapped up with bandages and couldn't do much bending or twisting. It had only been a week since her brawl with Levi in the grass. Although her eye had finally healed up, she still had a few fading bruises and the grass stains in her white uniform pants had only faded, not disappeared, despite her best efforts at scrubbing them clean. She turned her head and watched as they bent over the trunk.

"So that's yours, is it?" she asked, startling them both as if they'd forgotten she was there. With careful and slow movements, she made her way over to them. "Where'd you get it all?"

Sheepishly, Connie opened the bag inside of the trunk and revealed the contents to her. "I have a friend in Ehrmich that gets it for me. I keep it here and trade it for stuff." Jean held up a new-looking deck of cards in one hand and what looked like a wolf carved from wood in the other. "Since I don't get to go to town with everyone else most of the time, this was an easy way for me to still get the stuff I want."

"Why don't you get to go to town?" she asked, watching as Connie took both things from Jean and shoved them deep into his pockets before handing over one of the small bottles.

He sucked his teeth and cut his eyes to the side, annoyed. "I get in trouble over something or another."

"Like skipping out on laundry and dishes," Jean remarked, mostly teasing, but with a slight hint of his own annoyance. "Serves you right. You're lucky you have all this to trade for."

"I need to up my prices," Connie threatened, knocking the lid of the trunk shut with a loud thunk.

"Then no one would trade with you," Jean shot back. "We can all get it ourselves any time we go to the market. It's just easier because it's already here and you keep it hidden from the Squad Leaders."

"Some gratitude would be nice," Connie grumbled.

"Alright boys," Eve sighed, scolding them as if they were four. "That's enough." They glared at each other for a moment more before turning their heads away from the other. "So whose diary is that then?" She pointed at the brown, leather-bound and locked book resting on the shelf above the trunk. Connie managed to grab it before Jean did and stared at it.

"I never noticed this here before," he muttered, flipping it over. She imagined he was looking for a name, but she'd done that already. They'd have to break the lock to get into it. "You got a hair pin or something?" He looked up at Eve expectantly. She shook her head.

"Just the hair tie," she said with a shrug. She moved to the stack of old boxes to Connie's left and retrieved four additional toothbrushes. "It's just a diary. Leave it and let's go before your secret stash is discovered."

"I knew it!" Ymir stuck her head around the edge of the door. Eve rolled her eyes and the tall girl walked into the closet with them, Krista tagging along behind her.

"Come on, we shouldn't be in here!" Krista whispered. "Let's go before someone else comes. I don't want anyone to get into trouble…"

Ymir tossed one causal arm around the smaller blonde's shoulders and laughed. "You're always so sweet, Krista! We won't get into trouble- Connie and Jean will. They're the ones trading for booze."

"Keep your mouth shut and I'll give you some!" Connie pleaded, opening the trunk once more. Ymir grinned and Eve sighed. She tried to move out of the way, but she wound up wedged into a tight corner while Ymir made her selection. She grabbed two bottles. "Hey!"

"One for me, one for Krista," she explained with an easy shrug. "You're buying our silence, remember? Might want to pick a better hiding spot next time."

"I told you this place was too easy to find!" Jean bit at Connie.

Connie groaned. "The door was usually locked! How was I supposed to know there was an actual key? I've always just picked it."

"So that's why you wanted the hair pin," Eve mused, more to herself than to anyone else. Krista, ever the helpful little bee, pulled the object referenced from her hair and held it out.

"What do you need this for?" she asked. Connie snatched it from her hand and bent it before bending over the journal.

"Watch it, shorty!" Ymir snapped at him. "It's rude to snatch things." Eve only watched as he picked at the tiny lock with the hair pin, digging into it until they all heard it snap open.

"What are you all doing in here?" Eve turned her head and found both Sasha and Armin at the door. Armin had spoken up and stepped inside. "Whose diary is that?"

Connie already had the diary open and was flipping through the pages intently. "It's full of mushy love-letter crap!" he griped. Jean snatched it from him and flipped a few pages. She noticed the tint of blush on his cheeks before he quickly turned the page again.

"What does it say?" Sasha asked, cramming her way into the tight space between Krista and the wall of crates beside her.

Jean held out the book to whomever wanted it, and Ymir was the first to grab it. "'Your hair shines as brightly as the sun on the banks of the rapidly flowing river…' What kind of shit is this?"

"I think it's sweet," Krista muttered, her cheeks tinted with a little blush as she looked down at the dusty floor.

"Well it's definitely a guy's hand writing," Ymir mentioned. She latched her arm around Krista once more and leaned close to her ear. "Aw, Krista, do you want me to write you pretty poems and recite them to you?" She finished with a laugh that Eve thought was almost mocking. Krista shook her head furiously.

"There's a lot worse than that," Jean grumbled. "Flip back a few pages. You'll see what I mean…"

Sasha grabbed the book and slipped back towards the door as she flipped through the pages herself. "'Your eyes shimmer like the moon in the black of night, piercing my soul and…' Oh wow… I'm not going to read that!" She shoved the book at Armin who looked down at it for a moment, curious, then held it out as if he didn't know what to do with it. Eve chuckled to herself. Whatever was written there had made everyone blush furiously.

"It can't be that bad," she remarked, slipping out of the tight spot she was wedged in and forcing Ymir and Krista to move back a little as she took the book from Armin. She found a new page. I love imagining your hands touching every inch of your body, and wish they were my own – I'd take you in my hands like the potter takes the clay. Snapping the book shut, she cleared her throat and looked out at the others. They were looking at her expectantly. "I think we need to just leave this here."

"No way!" Connie protested, grabbing the book before she could put it on the shelf they'd found it on. "I want to know who wrote it! There's got to be a name in here somewhere…"

"Why would anyone write their own name in their diary?" Ymir asked, her tone biting and insulting.

"They could have written the name of the person they were talking about," Jean suggested with a shrug. "At least we'd know that…"

"You guys," Krista whined softly, "that's not fair to whoever wrote it! It was a locked diary! We shouldn't be reading it…"

"Oh lighten up," Ymir teased. "We're just having some fun!"

"What kind of fun?" Eve bristled at the sound of Eren's voice and narrowed her eyes at him, then glared openly at Mikasa. They still hadn't resolved their tension from that night in her village when she'd wanted to kill him. She still wanted to, honestly, but she knew she'd never get close enough as long as Mikasa was his shadow. "What are you all doing in here?"

"Eve found this diary," Connie said, holding it up. "We were reading it. It's bad, man. All kinds of gross poems and stuff. We want to know who wrote it."

"Or who it was written about," Jean added. Eve found it funny how they'd been butting heads just a moment ago, but now they were pressing their heads together as they poured through each page in the diary, looking for a name. "This is nuts…"

"Gross how?" Eren asked, confused.

"It's not gross," Ymir corrected. "It's sappy and romantic."

"That's just as bad!" Connie interjected. "I mean, come on! 'Your hair smells of the freshest roses cut on the finest spring day'? Who writes that crap? Not to mention the other stuff…"

"Other… stuff?" Eren questioned. Eve sighed.

"'I can only imagine the way the sweet nectar of your inner juices would taste on my tongue' kind of crap." Jean answered, choosing a random line to read from the page they were currently studying.

"So what do we know so far?" Armin asked, his eyebrows knitted together. "Blonde hair, maybe blue eyes? Anything else?"

"Um…" Connie muttered, his cheeks flaming furiously once more. Eve almost laughed at the way he shifted on his feet uncomfortably, his eyes darting around the room before darting back down. He hunched his shoulders and tried to slide back away from everyone, but couldn't go any farther. Connie forked over the book, leaving it in Jean's hands and shoving his own deep into his pockets. Eve couldn't repress her slight giggle at his discomfort. No one else seemed to notice.

Ymir laughed. "That sounds like you, Krista!"

"What?" Krista said, her face turning as red as a tomato. She shook her head furiously. "No! It can't be me!"

Eve sighed through the raucous laughing and stared at the toothbrushes in her hand. She'd become obsessed with cleaning the walls in that room, and these people were keeping her from her goal. She saw no way to get around them, though. If they didn't all get out of this room soon, one of the Squad Leaders was going to come around and catch them. They'd probably all get yelled at and punished for taking a break so early in the morning. Everyone had chores to do.

"What the hell is going on here?" She rolled her eyes when she heard Levi's question. Everyone froze and she noticed Jean attempted to surreptitiously slip the diary to Connie to hide. When Jean's hand brushed against Connie, he flinched hard, and jumped away from him, toppling one of the stacks of crates containing candles. Everyone was shouting and scrambling- except Eve. She remained perfectly in place and just watched as the chaos ensued.

"What the fuck, man?" Jean shouted at Connie.

"Jean!" Ymir yelled. "You almost hit Krista!"

"Sasha, your forehead is bleeding!" Armin exclaimed, searching for something to use to staunch the blood flow.

"Mikasa, get off!" Eren complained. She'd shoved him against the wall beside the door and stood in front of him, keeping any falling debris from hitting him.

"Ow! Ymir, you stepped on my foot!" Sasha whined.

Eve just laughed, wrapping her arms around her chest from the pain the action caused, but unable to stop. Jean was still trying to scramble away from Connie, who was too embarrassed to even move. Ymir had picked Krista up bridal-style and was shoving by Armin and Sasha to carry her out of the closet. Armin was pressing a stray piece of cloth to Sasha's forehead, and Sasha was leaning heavily against another stack of crates that was swaying. Mikasa drug Eren out into the hall.

"Someone explain to me why you all were piled up in this closet!" Levi demanded.

"Eve found a diary," Ymir spoke up first. Eve's laughter was finally dying off, but she couldn't be mad at Ymir- not yet. "We were reading it, trying to figure out who wrote it."

Levi rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath before addressing Eve herself. "Aren't you supposed to be cleaning?" He looked out at the others. "You all obviously don't have enough to do. I can fix that."

"We were just leaving," Jean muttered. He slipped out of the closet and vanished as Ymir, Krista, Eren, and Mikasa all had. Eve gave a sideways look at Connie. He was still frozen in place, hunched over with his face bright with embarrassment. Armin pulled Sasha out into the hall to better look at the cut on her forehead that had reopened.

"You alright, Connie?" Eve teased. He shook his head furiously.

"Just... just leave me alone!" His voice cracked on the word "alone" and she chuckled again, but made her way out into the hall. Armin appeared to be dragging Sasha to the infirmary. Eve was making her way back to the room she had been cleaning earlier, but noticed Levi following hot on her heels.

"What's wrong with Connie?" he asked. She laughed again, but couldn't keep it up. Her left side was inflamed enough as it was.

"He... read something in that diary that made him rather uncomfortable." She was trying to be subtle, but when she looked over her shoulder, she knew that Levi's blank expression wasn't bored. He didn't understand what she meant. She sighed. How could she put it delicately? "He's got a boner." A hint of surprise flashed in Levi's expression, but then it settled back into his usual bored expression, but it bordered on disgust.

"What is wrong with these kids?" he muttered, more to himself than to her.

She smiled to herself and entered the room she was cleaning. She went for the plate of now-cold potatoes and popped one piece into her mouth. "They got more than they bargained for in that diary. It was... descriptive."

"Ymir said you found it," he mentioned as he studied the one wall she'd managed to scrub clean. He seemed satisfied and she smirked.

"When I was looking for the toothbrushes, I just noticed it on the shelf. Connie is the one who picked the lock on it."

"A locked diary?" Levi asked, lifting one eyebrow. "It was brown, wasn't it?" She nodded once and ate another piece of potato.

"You've seen it before, haven't you?" she asked. He didn't answer, but she knew he had. "I'm curious, too, you know. Whoever wrote that has quite the vivid imagination."

"You have walls to clean. You don't have time to worry about who that diary belongs to." Instantly, she began to suspect that it belonged to Erwin. Levi didn't protect anyone else like that. Unless, she thought, it was his own. She giggled to herself, considering someone like Levi writing such sentimental, romantic garbage. She honestly couldn't see Erwin doing that either, but she couldn't be positive about either of them. She didn't know them that we'll yet. She abandoned the rest of the potatoes and grabbed her bucket before climbing back up the ladder.

"What is this crap on these walls, anyway?" she asked.

"Mold," he answered. Without looking at him, she knew there was an expression of utter revulsion on his face. She grimaced herself and went back to scrubbing the same spot she'd been working on earlier.

"If you're going to stay and chat, you might as well clean," Eve remarked, glancing down at him. To her surprise, he did not turn to leave. He took a moment to glare at her angrily, but his attention focused on the other walls and she watched his fingers twitch. After a moment of silent deliberation, he shrugged out of his uniform jacket and let it hang on the doorknob, then rolled up his sleeves. She watched for a moment more as he grabbed two more rags from the pile she'd gathered. She moved down the ladder and he took the bucket from her. They both began on the walls once more- Levi on the one next to hers, starting from the bottom as she continued from her half-way mark.

Lunchtime passed with more gossip about the diary and who it might have belonged to, but the general consensus was that it must have belonged to someone that was dead. It passed out of conversation, but he was still freaked out about Connie, who he hadn't been seen since the incident. It was Sasha who brought up the decided lack of people present at lunch.

"Where's Eve?" she asked with a frown. "She never eats… Connie isn't here either."

"The Captain and Hange are gone too," Krista piped up. Jean looked around at the slim crowd and realized there were more than just those three missing. It wasn't strange for people to skip out on lunch, though. Many of them would just find something later. He'd done that himself on more than one occasion.

"Eve is probably still cleaning that room," Armin mentioned. He stood to clear away his empty plate. "I'll take her something." Jean finished his food a moment later and copied Armin's actions. He'd had the idea of sneaking away from everyone for a couple of hours and catching a nap somewhere.

"Jean!" he turned at the call and saw Hange waving him over. With a sigh, realizing he'd never escape her now that she was back, he walked over to her. She had a slim white box tied with twine in her hands. "I need you to find the Captain and take this to him."

"I'm not a delivery boy," he grumbled.

"You are today!" she sang with her insane grin. "Hurry up! I need you to come back here as soon as you deliver that."

He rolled his eyes and made to stomp away, but he realized that the last place he'd seen the Captain was when they'd all left the supply closet. He thought he remembered Levi following Eve to the room she was cleaning. No doubt he'd gone in there to criticize her efforts again. Jean made his way up the two flights of stairs and wandered down the long halls, passing the now-closed door to the supply closet. A shiver ran down his spine and he felt sick to his stomach when he thought of when he'd tried to give the diary to Connie to hide.

When Jean turned the final corner to reach the library, he'd just had the intention of sticking his head in the room and asking Eve if she knew where the Captain had gone. Instead, he found Armin standing in the middle of the hall, staring into the room with a nervous grin. He chuckled every few seconds. "Armin?" The blond looked over at Jean and held a finger up to his lips for him to be quiet. His ears began to pick up the sounds of an argument.

"There's still slime all over the wall!" That was Eve's shrill voice.

"It's no worse than yours!" He knew the Captain's bark entirely too well to have to guess that the voice was his.

"Bull shit! My wall is much cleaner!"

"I can still see mold!"

"At least it doesn't feel gross when you touch the walls I've cleaned- not like yours!"

"It's not even dry yet!"

"That has nothing to do with it!"

Jean came to a halt beside Armin and just stared. Eve and Levi were practically at each other's throats, wielding nasty toothbrushes as weapons. For the first time, it became painfully obvious to Jean that Eve was actually shorter than the Captain. He'd known she was short, but he'd always just guessed they were closer to the same height. He had at least five centimeters (about 2 and ½ inches) on her though. He had to laugh, just a little, as Armin did.

"How long has this been going on?" he whispered.

"They were arguing when I got here," Armin answered. "At least five minutes…"

"I wonder how long they'll keep it up." Jean chuckled again, but he must have been too loud this time. Levi and Eve both snapped their heads to the side, glaring at Jean and Armin.

"What?" they both shouted, equal levels of irritation in their voices.

"Uh," Jean stuttered for a moment. He remembered the box in his hand and held it up. "Hange asked me to deliver this for you."

"Eve needs to eat, too," Armin spoke up. "She skipped breakfast."

The two who were arguing gave each other a final glare before Levi stomped away. He snatched the white box of Jean's hand, grabbed his jacket from the doorknob, and pushed passed Armin and Jean on his way down the hall.

"What the hell happened?" Jean asked, still in shock.

"I cleaned my wall better than he cleaned his," Eve stated with a huff. She tossed her rag on the edge of the bucket and pointed to one of the walls. "This one is mine." She pointed to the other. "This one is his." Jean narrowed his eyes, but he couldn't discern any difference.

"Okay…" he muttered. "Well, I have to go see what Hange wants."

"Come on, Eve, you need to eat." Armin insisted. She nodded and Jean turned to head back to the kitchen.

"Pretentious little shit thinks he cleans better than I do," Eve grumbled. Jean and Armin both chuckled. They always despised Levi's cleaning chores- nothing was ever quite good enough, no matter how hard they worked. It was amusing to see that someone had matched, if not surpassed, his idea of levels of cleanliness.

Eve continued her mutterings as they made their way back to the kitchen, but he couldn't understand most of it. The few words he happened to catch always involved calling Levi short and referenced cleaning in some way. "How can you call Levi short if you're shorter than he is?" Jean finally asked, looking over his shoulder at her.

Her eyes widened. "He's not taller than me! We're the same height!" He laughed. Her expression hardened into annoyance with her eyes narrowing and her lips pressed tightly together.

"He's at least five centimeters taller than you are," Jean said through laughs. "How did you not notice?" She crossed her arms over her chest angrily and puffed out her cheeks, declining to answer as she pouted. He pushed open the door to the kitchen, then froze.

"'Cee?" Armin asked, sounding pleasantly surprised. "What are you doing here?"

Mercedes and Baena were standing in the center of the room, chatting casually with Connie and Reiner, who'd finally shown up for lunch. "Hange called for me," she replied with a shrug. "How's everything going?"

"Is everything okay with my people?" Eve asked, her attitude instantly changing into one of nervous concern.

"They're all fine. Fhalz and Oliver are still there," Mercedes answered. "How are you holding up?"

"Levi broke her ribs," Sasha chimed, sliding into the little circle that had formed. "They got into a fist fight over something."

"Seriously?" Baena asked, her eyes wide with concern. "Why would he do that?"

"I needed it," Eve admitted with a casual shrug. "Knocked some sense into me. My people are treating you all well?"

Baena nodded quickly, her light blonde hair falling in her eyes. She gave a bright grin. "That little boy, Leo, he's just the cutest little thing! Mina lets me play with him sometimes." Jean noticed the small, sad smile Eve wore, but he didn't say anything about the situation. He'd always thought of it as a little odd. Was the kid hers or not?

Alik, one of the graduates from the 105th, wandered over to their little group meeting, tagging along behind Krista and Ymir. "Who's she?" Jean watched the faces around him light up and smacked his forehead with his palm.

"Oh, that's Jean's wife!" Sasha said brightly, a goofy grin on his face. Both he and Mercedes reacted in a similar manner: jaws dropping, eyes growing wide, and posture becoming ridged.

"Wait… what?" Eve asked, eyeing the both of them with one brow raised in suspicion.

"Since when?" Baena gasped, sounding offended that she didn't know. She rounded on Mercedes. "How could you not tell me?"

"Oh yeah," Connie continued for Sasha, his casual attitude sent a spike of annoyance straight into Jean's brain, but he hadn't recovered enough to say anything. "They got married last spring- it was a really nice day. Sunny and warm."

"Krista helped us plan everything!" Sasha said brightly, wrapping her arm around the girl's slender shoulders. Krista looked just as surprised as everyone else, but she gave a nervous grin as if she was pretending to be in on the joke. "'Cee's dress was beautiful! All white and lacey! Her hair was down and had these cute little white flowers all in it!"

"And Jean didn't look too bad himself," Connie continued. "There weren't a lot of us there – it was more of an intimate ceremony –but it was really nice. Hey, isn't your anniversary coming up soon, too?" Connie waggled his eyebrows at Jean as if to insinuate something, but Jean was still stuck in the muck of confusion, embarrassment, and outrage.

"The vows were just the sweetest! I've never heard anything more romantic in my life!" Sasha said, tears springing to her eyes to add to the effect. "Armin cried!"

Jean almost spun to look around at Armin, but he couldn't make his limbs move correctly. He sputtered, trying to find something to say to counter this entire conversation. He looked to Mercedes and found her eyes closed with a tight-lipped smile. In a move he almost missed her make, her fist shot out and clipped Connie in the shoulder. He yelped and grabbed his arm, rubbing it. "How is it that you have enough free time to come up with such stupid jokes?"

"Aw, come on!" Sasha whined with her stupid grin still firmly in place. "Lighten up! It was just a bit of fun! We all know it's going to happen one day, and when it does, we'll have it all planned out!"

"Sasha, Connie," Eve stated calmly but firmly, "I think you two should probably go somewhere before someone smashes in your skulls." Connie and Sasha gave her a nervous laugh, but visibly backed away from Mercedes and Jean a few steps before turning and running for the door. "Oh what a day…"

"I'm going to kill him," Jean muttered darkly.

"Not if I get to him first," Mercedes shot back with a smirk.

"So… it was a joke?" Baena asked, sounding just a little depressed. "I mean… I was mad that you didn't invite me to the wedding… But I was still happy you two finally got hitched…"

Mercedes and Jean both heaved heavy sighs and Armin and Eve chuckled. Krista and Ymir wandered away, one of Ymir's hands latching onto the back of Alik's jacket and tugging him along behind her. "Let's give the lovebirds some time alone." Armin and Eve nodded to each other in and they made themselves scarce as well.

"Sorry," Jean said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head with one hand. Mercedes just smirked and shook her head.

Eve slipped outside once she'd rid herself of Armin's nagging (although well-intended) presence, insisting that she eat something. She was wandering around with a half of a loaf of bread in her hand, having promised to finish it. She breathed in the cool pre-winter air deeply. Her left side still ached a little when she took deep breaths, but she was managing. There were only a few people out in the cold. She brought her arms around her chest to keep herself warm, but enjoyed the short break she was allowing herself before she went back to attack the mold on the walls in the library.

The chicken coup wasn't far, so she made her way over to it, just looking for somewhere to go and something to look at. The leaves on the trees were dying and falling off, leaving the grounds covered in a random smattering of red and brown blotches. She could see a pair of rookies stuck raking up the leaves into piles and throwing them all into a wheelbarrow to be carted away. She found herself oddly grateful for her inside cleaning jobs.

The chickens were pecking at the remains of their breakfast, digging at their feathers, or resting on their eggs. She figured they wouldn't lay again after this. It was just too cold. She stuck her fingers inside of the wire fence and received a sharp peck from an angry white hen, but she just laughed softly. The sound of a muted conversation reached her ears and she held very still, trying to pick up on the words.

"Stop it, Reiner!" Her eyebrows furrowed. That sounded like Bertolt… "You have to snap out of this!"

"What are you talking about?" Reiner asked, almost annoyed, but not quite.

"You're not a soldier, Reiner!" Bertolt insisted. She could imagine the tall boy with his hands on his friend's shoulders, shaking him. "You're a warrior!"

There came no reply from Reiner, but a strangely eerie silence followed. She swallowed hard and got the distinct sensation of overhearing a conversation that wasn't meant for her ears. There was no more conversation for a long while, so she turned away from the chickens and headed back for the castle, keeping her eyes peeled. She hadn't seen either of them on her way out, but she hadn't been paying attention. She didn't see them on her way back in, either. There were chill bumps on her arms that she couldn't blame on the cold. Making her way back into the castle and through to the library, she considered Bertolt's words. What was wrong with Reiner? What had he meant when he'd said Reiner wasn't a soldier, but a warrior? It didn't make any sense.

She found herself scrubbing over the wall Levi had claimed to have finished, but she wasn't paying much attention to her actions. Mercedes had shown up, though she didn't know why and the explanation given hadn't been much of one. She'd overheard the conversation between Bertolt and Reiner that didn't make a lick of sense. As she fought to put some sort of explanation to the two situations, she found herself imagining impossible scenarios and far-fetched tales.

With a heavy, painful sigh, Eve returned her attention to the wall before her. Peter would come around before too much longer to quiz her some more on what she'd learned from him. There was little actual practice she could do without having an injured person, so for now she was just learning methodology. She began to think through that instead, pushing all of the other thoughts away for now. She had to prepare herself in whatever way she could for the examination coming in just a week and a half.

So, how did I do at my first-ever attempt at some humor?

I needed a break from the dark and angsty for a while, so I told MercedesCarello I wanted to write something funny, and she helped me out greatly. I really don't think this would be nearly as good without her help- and that of Just 2 Dream of You.

Next chapter we go back to the usual flow of things. I thought this one would be a nice change-up, though. It also helps to describe what everyone acts like when they aren't in combat/Titan-zones, and Eve's growing relationship with the others.

I really hope everyone enjoys reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!