Year 840

Everybody was a little on edge as they mounted their horses and watched as the gates of Wall Maria were slowly opened. Commander Erwin gave the command and the Survey Corps headed out into open land, where titans were free to roam. Reina was not as nervous as her fellow soldiers and, if anything, she enjoyed this environment more than anything. She had a clear and distinct purpose, and every titan that she killed was helping humanity. She was helping humanity.

They weren't riding very far, only to a small town some distance away. Their mission was to establish it as a new supply station, but first they had to clear away the titan-infestation. When they were close enough, Reina engaged her 3D Manoeuvre Gear and sprang to the rooftops, ready to begin hunting titans. She saw a group of three not too far away and headed in their direction, shooting a wire into the back of one titan's neck and quickly slicing it's critical point.

She moved quickly, bounding from one titan to the next, never staying in one spot for longer than a second. Hesitance would kill you, Reina had learnt. She had seen too many of her fellow soldiers die from hesitance or from fear, and to overcome this Reina had learnt to block out her emotions, so to speak. She had decided that in moments of fear, it was easy to instead focus on her captain's command, leaving no room for fear to fester. Clear the area. Secure a perimeter.

Reina heard a scream from her left and her head snapped in that direction, seeing a young woman trapped in the mouth of a titan. Without a moment to think Reina was flying towards her, blades ready. She could see two other titans blocking her path and knew that if she were to try and glide past them, one would most likely catch her. But Reina was unwilling to sacrifice her comrades, so she continued along her path determinedly. She was halted by a booming voice.

"Evans! Retreat." Her head darted around to see Captain Levi behind her, face void of expression despite his quick movements. Reina frowned at him, thinking about their conversation the night she had joined his squad, but began to turn away from him. "That's an order, Evans." Levi spoke again, and Reina turned back around to see the woman disappearing into the titan's mouth.

She looked on, horrified, and the woman looked right back at her. She was reaching out her hand, looking for something, anything to help her, but there was nothing there. Reina wasn't there to save her. The titan's mouth snapped shut and the woman's hand fell to the ground below, landing with a cold thud.

Reina landed on a rooftop clumsily, stumbling over her own feet and collapsing in a heap. She heard a heavy thud beside her as Levi landed on his feet, looking down at her. She looked back up at him with wide eyes, because she had never failed at saving a fellow soldier before and this time, she hadn't even tried. What was the point of her if she couldn't save lives?

"She died. That woman died because of me." Reina mumbled, not necessarily speaking to Levi. He heard her though, and looked at her with disdain.

"She was done for the moment the titan grabbed her. Don't be so vain." Levi told her harshly, and Reina paled. She had never heard someone speak so cruelly.

"Levi." A voice shouted from below, and Levi peered over the edge of the rooftop to see Erwin looking up at him. "We're setting up base here for the night, it's getting too late to head back." Levi frowned.

"Tch." He hated staying at the places they reclaimed, because they were always old and withered and full of dust. Levi glanced back at Reina for a moment, still collapsed against the rooftop, before he left to find a half decent house to sleep in. He understood her anguish because he experienced it with the loss of every one of his men, but there was nothing he could do to change the past and dwelling on these things only lead to insanity. It was best to move on immediately.

Reina hated this part. She didn't particularly have a problem with sleeping outside the walls – she found it exhilarating, but she hated finding a place to sleep. Every house she ventured into showed remnants of a previous time, a happier time. She would find a smashed family portrait and know that two kids were raised lovingly, or she would find tattered love letters and know that two people had been crazy for each other. Sometimes, she would collect things from the houses she visited. It was a good reminder of what she was fighting for.

She didn't much feel like being around people this time, so Reina headed towards the outer part of the town. The bigger houses were always located out here, with elaborate gates and unnecessary decorations. Overgrown shrubs that would once have been magnificent art littered the pavements. Reina tried to ignore the splashes of blood stained into the ground. She picked a house at random and wandered inside, looking for a bedroom on the first floor.

It was always dangerous to use the staircases in these houses, unless they were made of stone or some other hard surface. It would be a terrible shame if Reina were to die from being impaled by a piece of wood trying to climb a staircase. The third door she opened led to a bedroom, and Reina carefully walked inside.

She walked to the old dresser at the back of the room and opened the top drawer, a practiced art of looking for old memories. It was empty. She opened the second, then the third, but these too were completely bare. Reina looked around but found nothing else in the room besides the large bed in the middle, and decided that nothing important had happened in this room. This was probably just a guest room after all, Reina supposed.

She climbed onto the large bed, not bothering to pull back the covers, and lay her head against the dusty pillow. It was slowly becoming dark outside and Reina knew it was in her best intentions to sleep, but she did not want to. She was angry, furious about the woman she had let die, and she wanted to scream. So she did.

She turned over, face down on the pillow, and screamed. She screamed until her throat hurt and her lungs ached and then she screamed some more.

The reason she had joined the Survey Corps was to save lives. Not necessarily the lives of civilians, but the lives of her fellow soldiers. Too many soldiers had been lost to the titan's and Reina couldn't stand it, knew somebody had to try to make a change and figured she was a good a person as any. And despite her cold exterior, it was undeniably easy to press Reina's buttons at the mention of saving lives.

She was furious with herself for letting that woman be eaten, because she knew that someone back inside the Walls was waiting for that woman to return, and she never would. Although the majority of Reina, the sensible part of her, knew that Levi was right in saying that nothing Reina could have done would have saved her, Reina's unreasonable side was telling her that she should have tried to anyway. She supposed that was just her being selfish, wanting some reassurance, and realising her selfish intentions just made her even angrier.

After a while she stopped screaming and lifted herself up, but paused when she felt something against her hand underneath the pillow. She quickly lifted it and found a wrinkled sheet of paper hiding. It was a poem.

I'm looking at you and all I can see

is every reason to why I love you.

Your skin is a map of what you've

been through and even though you can't

see it on the surface, I can see everything

that you will someday be.

And what you are going to become

is someone great, someone who

others will strive to be.

I know that you are afraid of ceasing

without leaving any sort of impression,

but I swear to you that you will be

remembered.

Reina read it slowly and carefully and when she was finished, she pulled the crumpled paper to her chest and hugged it tightly. It was the distraction she had needed, and she welcomed it gladly. She wanted to know more about the person who wrote this poem. She wondered if it was a teenage girl writing a poem to her boyfriend, or an aging woman writing the thoughts inside her head. Her mind was spinning, packed too tightly with so many thoughts, and everything seemed rather overwhelming to her. Before she knew it, Reina felt something warm on her cheek. She lifted her hand and felt the wetness of tears running down her face, and she looked at the droplets on her fingers in astonishment.

"You're a mess." She jumped at the sound of a voice, and she turned to see Levi standing in the doorway of the room. Her heart beat rapidly in her chest from the shock and she scanned him quickly, noticing a bottle of wine in his hand. He saw her staring at it, and let out a sigh. "You're wondering where I found this." Reina nodded, genuinely curious, because wine was very hard to come by and generally costed a fortune.

"These rich houses always have a cellar. The problem is finding a half decent bottle." Levi told her after a moment, looking at the bottle in criticism before he raised it to his lips and took a swig.

"How long have you been here?" Reina asked quietly, and Levi looked at her.

"I came straight after I left you, so it would be safe to assume I was here before you were." He told her, and Reina nodded slowly.

"How long have you been… standing there?" She asked, hoping desperately that he had not witnessed her entire breakdown.

"I heard you screaming and came looking. Long enough, I suppose you could say." Reina grimaced. She crumpled the paper in her hand as she clutched to it tighter and quickly stood to her feet, saluting momentarily before she began to make her retreat.

"Sit back down, Evans." Levi sighed before she could pass him, and Reina paused. She looked at him questioningly but he did not elaborate, just grabbed the paper from her hands and pushed the bottle of wine towards her. Reina stayed frozen for another moment and Levi sighed again, this time in frustration and annoyance. "You know how to drink, don't you?" He asked her brusquely and Reina's eyes widened for a moment before she lowered her head and sat back on the bed again.

She looked up at Levi as he un-scrunched the paper and began to read it, and she hesitantly took a sip of the liquor in her hand. "Is this okay?" She asked as she lowered the bottle, and Levi looked at her over the paper.

"What?" He asked in his usual deadpan.

"To be drinking… We're still on a mission." Levi lowered his eyes again.

"It's fine." He said, but Reina was still unconvinced. What if a herd of titans approached them during the night and they were forced to fight while intoxicated? They would be killed, for sure. But then, she knew that Captain Levi was far from irresponsible and if he said it was fine, then it most likely was. Still, she couldn't help but wonder why he was even sharing his liquor with her in the first place.

For the month that she had been on his squad, Levi had worked her into the ground day after day. She was pushed to her limits and then pushed past them, and she had no choice but to keep on fighting. He worked her harder than the rest of his squad, she knew. She assumed it was because she was new and he wanted her to understand the importance of the Special Operations Squad, but sometimes he would look at her and hatred would flash through his eyes.

"Drink, Evans. It's an order." Levi spoke again, and Reina hesitated only for another second before she raised the bottle again, this time taking a long drink of the liquor. It burned her throat as it slid down but she welcomed the feeling. It had been far too long since she'd had a drink.

Levi lowered the paper and walked towards her on the bed, sitting beside her and taking the bottle from her. He kept the poem held in one of his hands and Reina looked at it nervously, hoping he wasn't planning on destroying it somehow. That was the best thing she had found so far while exploring old houses, and she really wanted to keep it. After a moment, her resolve broke.

"Captain Levi?" She questioned hesitantly, and his eyes darted towards her questioningly. "Could I have that back?" He looked at the paper in his hands and after a pause, he handed it to her. Reina sighed in relief and quickly leant down to tuck it into her backpack, safe.

"Why would you want to keep that?" Levi muttered, and Reina shrugged half-heartedly.

"It reminds me what I'm fighting for." She told him quietly, and Levi studied her for a long second before taking another swig of the wine.

"Humans were so selfish, before all this. So shallow, too concerned with how they were perceived and their 'impact' on the world." Levi scoffed. "Pathetic." Reina played with her fingers in her lap, her body stiff.

"Well, they left an impression on me, so I hope that's enough for them. Whoever they were." Levi glanced at her again from the corner of his eye, and his eyebrows furrowed together. She had been bothering him from the moment she was put in his squad, and he couldn't figure out why.

It was something about the way she spoke, and the way she asserted herself. Levi wasn't sure what it was exactly, but he certainly didn't like it. He had been trying to work whatever it was out of her for the month she had been training under him, but it never faded. If anything, it had just grown brighter and with it, grew Levi's annoyance with the woman.

But now he was just tired, and he didn't care about that thing that annoyed him because more than anything he just needed a drink. Company was irrelevant to Levi, but he wasn't about to kick her out and force her to find somewhere else to stay when it was completely dark outside. It was too dangerous in foreign territory late at night, so they would just have to make do.

"I know you said it's trivial, but I think you'll leave an impression on the world, Captain Levi." He turned his whole head toward her at this, eyes narrowing. "You already have," she continued.

Levi realised what it was about her that bothered him so much. It was everything. It was her. He didn't like the heavy feeling she left in his stomach or the lightness in his head. He didn't like the way she made him feel, didn't understand it.

He pushed the bottle toward her and she took it after a moment, raising it to her lips and taking another long drink. Levi stared straight ahead at the wall, eyebrows furrowed in frustration, as he tried to think through the situation. He had an inkling about what it was he was feeling but he didn't acknowledge it, refused to. He couldn't think about someone in such a sense, especially not a soldier on his squad.

He thought maybe all he needed was to fuck her, get it out of his system and get on with it, but he decided against it. He didn't want the negative repercussions to come back and bite him in the ass if it didn't get it out of his system, and thought it wasn't worth the risk. This just made him more frustrated, more annoyed with her.

He grabbed the bottle off her once again and downed a considerable amount of the liquor and when he stood up from the bed, Reina's arms immediately sprung out to help him. Levi shook her off because it took a lot more than that to get him drunk, and he certainly didn't need her help.

"Where are you going, Captain Levi?" Reina asked hurriedly, ready to chase him.

"I'm going to find another bed. Go to sleep, Evans." Levi told her curtly, but Reina continued following him. She was a little dizzy and had to keep her hands against the wall, but she supposed that was what she got for being such a lightweight.

"Sir, there are no other bedrooms downstairs. Please, just sleep in this bed." She asked him as he headed for the staircase, but Levi ignored her.

"I told you to go to sleep, didn't I?" He turned back toward her and she ran into his chest, surprised at the sudden stop. Reina quickly corrected herself and stood back from him, and Levi glared at her.

"Please, Captain Levi. I don't want you to get injured." She told him carefully. He continued glaring at her and Reina fidgeted in her place, uncomfortable under his hard look. When he neither made any sign of arguing nor turned to continue up the stairs, Reina carried on speaking in the hopes that she was convincing him. "Please just sleep-,"

It took Reina's foggy mind a moment to process what was happening and by the time that she had, it was over. But her lips were tingling and her cheeks were burning and there was no way she could deny that Levi had kissed her. She raised a hand to her lips and felt them, as if looking for evidence that his had been there.

"Tch." Levi realised he had acted impulsively and that wasn't something he did very often. In fact, he only seemed to do it around her, and this annoyed him even more. "Like I said, go to bed, Evans. It's an order." He muttered, before he turned back around and headed upstairs. This time, Reina did not follow him or try to protest, because she was still frozen in her spot – a bewildered expression on her face and her fingers tracing over the surface of her lips.

a/n

Sorry it's been a little longer than usual from my last update! Unfortunately, I have to start school again this week and therefore my updates will be a lot less regular (being the last term of grade 12 and all, it's sort of important) sorry guys :(

Credit for the poem to .com - Check out her writing, she's incredible!

What did you guys think of this chapter? I feel like it's not as good as it could have been for some reason.. not believable, maybe? or too rushed...

Let me know anyway, and ease my concern! Thank you soooo much to all of my reviewers, I would kiss you all if I could! Please continue to show your support for this story! xx