I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin
It could have been well passed midnight, maybe at 0200.
She sluggishly went to the wardrobe.
When work wasn't in the way, she felt dead tired. The motivation of research was what drove her to exceed the limits most would have with the lack of sleep. She'd often venture passed dawn when she was getting close to the end of an experiment or when she would be interacting with her former test subjects, Sawney and Bean.
They were butchered a week ago, much to her distraught, they were precious to her as the gave results she couldn't get from the field. Now that she was out of the military, the chances of extending her studies were gone.
Today was trying for her, she was back to where she was when making a decision would impact the course of her life; Titans changed that view as she was pushed to enjoy the little things in life. Behind the safety of Wall Rose, however, she takes advantage of the many things of life, disregards the small pleasures, and focuses on science rather than living.
Now, in a world where she thought she had found solace, she felt threatened once more.
Her hands pulled back both doors. They creaked open and she found numerous dresses, blouses, and skirts that hung on hangers. At the bottom were shoes and boots, nothing extravagant (she preferred simple things). Hanji was definitely not the type of person to take great care in what she wore or how she looked, often it was others who determined it.
Rivaille, amazingly, offered no complaint to what she looked like, nor did Gabrielle.
Both encouraged her to wear what she felt like. Well, Rivaille would adjust things here and there, clean a splotch or sew a hole (he was odd that way to her), but he accepted her. Her hands felt the soft cloth of every dress and skirt, gingerly touching them until she found something she deemed comfortable.
She took back the hanger and found it to be a white, sleeved dress, no frills nor folds, just a simple dress, though it came with an apron that had a few stains. Edith, the previous owner, was the waitress of the Flora; Hanji had met her numerous times and, quite luckily, had the same build as her. She tossed the dress to the bed, undid the straps that clung to her body, and stripped to discard her uniform on the chair; her boots were left by the foot of the bed, near the door.
She slid the dress on, it fit her well and she smoothed out any wrinkles she had. There was no mirror in the room though she didn't care.
From where she stood, she heard the distinct sound of a broom sweeping across the wooden floor. The man would never cease to stop. Throughout her years, she never figured why he struggled to obtain perfection of which that is cleanliness. He never explained it, he just does it.
Her body ached for rest and so she flopped herself to the bed, groaning at the softness of it. Within a matter of seconds, she couldn't hold back sleep.
-...-
It was 0800.
Tobias awoke to a sight that he had never dreamed of seeing.
Even his dog whined in perplexity as they stood on polished floorboards. Polished. Floorboards.
Their eyes gazed at everything, trying to take it all in.
The tables were free of every speck of dust; the walls where wires and nails dangled haphazardly were free of such obscurities; the windows were wiped so well that he thought they were never there; the bar was wiped down with bottles rearranged by content and alphabetized; the flagons were clean (how it ever happened was strange to him); finally, his eyes settled on the piano near the soot-free fireplace.
It was a grand piano, black by wood and the only strikingly "fancy" thing in the Flora; it made more sense for such an elaborate instrument to be here when flowers hung over the walls. From the night before, it had accumulated dust and looked ready to fall apart, keys yellowing with chords managing to rust. He limped to it, his dog sticking by his side, as he ran a gnarled finger on the edge.
He wanted to cry. And he did.
He had never seen it so clean in what felt like ages. He used to polish it, tend to it, care for it every day and night, he never played a note on it, but after a while, he stopped. Now, with its beauty restored, tears cascaded as he went to the piano bench to sit on it. Throwing his arms over the lid of the keys, he wept.
That was how Hanji found him when she came down stairs. She had heard his weeping and came to see what was the matter. She was awestruck at the sight as well but it didn't surprise her to know it was the quality of Rivaille.
She rushed over to Tobias and sat beside him. The dog whimpered as she placed a hand on his shoulder. "Tobias?"
"Zoe...the piano, the tavern...it looks so beautiful," he rasped out meekly. He threw himself to her and clung to her, his form was lithe and weak, he was lanky and so she let him hold on. "If only Maike were here...I wish I could hear her play..."
Hanji held him back as well. He used to be a cheery man, the liveliest one she knew, how he could be reduced to this had shaken her. He clung to the simple things, to his home, to anything that can give him comfort. Sighing after about half an hour, she managed to calm him down, his sobs now controlled and his speech now even,"I'm sorry...I just...hand't been able to keep the tavern up like I used to."
"It's alright," was all she could say. She would have said more but she was at a loss for words. Eventually, they both got up.
The sound of light snoring reached Hanji as Tobias went to the back kitchens to cook their meals. At the corner, in the dark and avoiding the sun's light, was Rivaille. He had taken to sleep at a table with a broom propped up on the wall beside him. He was slumped over the table, arms were being used as pillows. She went to him and gave him a gentle shake.
"Rivaille..."
He didn't budge.
"Hey, wake up."
Nothing.
A smile crossed her lips.
It's been a while...
She pulled a chair out to be at his side, facing it towards the open floor. With her strength, she easily lifted him up and carried him like a child (that was what she sometimes saw him due to his height), then sat on her chair. She cradled him. A soft chuckle escaped her lips. Secretly, she did this. Often times, others would be around to hiss out giggles and laugh. It was difficult to hold it in.
And then he woke up, gun in hand with the barrel pointed at her forehead when she blinked for a moment. Her mouth hung open dumbly. "...eh?"
"Put me down, you Four-eyed shit," were his first words of the morning.
Her lips curled back into a smile, it was mischievous. His eyes widened, it was the smile she held when she was about to hit that point of being beyond insanity.
"Alright!"
She dropped him to the ground. The gun, amazingly, didn't go off but he exclaimed,"You should never be allowed to handle children, let alone infants!"
The gun went to rest on the floor, it tucked itself behind some legs of a chair after slipping out of Rivaille's hand.
Hanji roared into laughter at chaotic thoughts that came to mind. Seeing Rivaille on the floor, she lunged after him. Her weight pinned him down, her hands traveled to the crooks in his waist and began to fiddle around at his ticklish spots. It sent him bellowing rather than laughing, oh, he was going to be pissed by the end of this. Her legs anchored herself over his pelvis as she straddled him, he wasn't begging but demanding her to stop, though he didn't fight back.
When was the last time we played like this? Her smile broadened when she saw a tear to his eye.
"You Four-eyed fuck!" He shouted, trying to push her away. "Get the fuck off of me!"
She didn't budge, she wanted to see him laugh. He rarely laughed, let along smile, he had a smug smirk when something pleased him but other than that, he remained neutral. She squealed, having a kick out of this rather than the man below her.
Then the yelling stopped.
Hanji eventually ceased her assault and looked down at him.
He stared back at her, eyes fixated on something.
"What?"
"You're not wearing your glasses."
"I'm not?"
-...-
"Zoe," the old woman's voice came to her,"please come here."
Hanji had just finished sorting the books on the top shelf (she had sorted them incorrectly though as authors were not alphabetized). She carefully stepped down from the wobbly ladder and left the back room where most of their texts were kept. Her hands reached out towards the nearest wall to guide her, taking her to the main room where the register and lounging area was.
Only three customers were sitting around at the desks, they were old and had tea served to them, compliments from Gabrielle. Hanji blurred by the old man closest to her as her hand grasped at a wooden chair, she shuffled by and eventually made it to the front. Her hand was suddenly met by another, she was face to face with the elderly bookkeeper; within close range, she could see her clearly.
"Dear, I want you to meet Doctor Yaeger."
Hanji saw the faded form of the man Gabrielle introduced to her as a doctor. She gave a respectful bow as his voice said to her,"Sit on the table there."
She obliged and he went to one knee in front of her. She saw him clearly now; his long hair was tied back as he wore a pair of glasses. Immediately, she told him,"Doctor, my eyes...I can't see."
"Had this been going on long?" He asked as he examined her, his hand widening her right eye.
"She started misplacing books after a half a month of being here," Gabrielle openly complained.
"Actually, it's been like this my whole life," she confessed.
The old woman was kind but she had grown frustrated at the lack of Hanji's output at work. The poor girl could read but she failed to see things ahead of her...literally. Just the other day, she slipped over some loose papers that she couldn't see. It landed her with a bad bump and rendered her useless for two days. There was no problem the first few days as she was assigned to desk work.
Problems only came when she was asked to shelve books.
As much as it was a problem for Gabrielle, it was a problem for Hanji. They both decided to schedule a physician to come by, and he did.
His hand left her face as he went to scour through his medical satchel. After a few seconds, he pulled out a small, leather case; he opened it and revealed a pair of spectacles that lacked frames. He unfolded the little frames and placed them on her face.
"This should fix it," he told her.
Everything was clear to her now.
She was no longer as blind as she thought she was.
-...-
She instantly got off of him and rushed away.
There was panic in her, it struck him odd.
Rivaille managed to get to his feet after he reached for the gun. She was lucky it was unloaded. As he holstered it, Hanji had disappeared up the flight of stairs. His back ached from sitting, it didn't help when she tossed him and began to fucking assault him as though he were a child. He didn't appreciate it, not one bit, but given the stress she had undergone the night before, he could give her a bit of slack.
He went to her room to find her sitting at the desk, her hands holding the pair of lenses she always wore.
She was murmuring something.
"Don't take off on me like that, the hell is your problem?" He asked as he approached.
She shoved her lenses on. A few seconds later, she began to clench her eyes closed and forced herself to remove her glasses. When she noticed that Rivaille enter her room, her expression dropped to a look of dread. "...I figured out why they want me dead. They must have found my documents when they staged the raid in my lab after Sawney and Bean were killed and..." She trailed off and he went to her side to see her fingers tracing the glass. "...I thought it would benefit us but I guess they took it the wrong way. It's in its early stages so I didn't send the documents up just yet..."
As she babbled, the sudden revelation hit him harder than the fastest horse in the Recon Corps.
Her lab was raided and searched as protocol after the slaughter of the two experimental Titans caught after the Battle of Trost. She was the head of the operation at the time, obviously they would go through her laboratory (she had multiple at every base and had numerous others operating them, though her main one was relocated to the Karanese, and she was the most active one in their world).
In order for her to work as a scientist for the military, she was required to turn in reports, anything that traced practically every movement made in order to avoid suspicion of working on anything illegal or detrimental to their cause. She may have neglected such notes for whatever reason she had so when the authorities searched her private quarters, they may have discovered something unsettling.
Whatever those unrecorded documents were, they surely set off an alarm when they were found.
She was a bit of an eccentric, not neglectful.
"...what were you researching this time?" He said, her speech picked up.
"It started with restoring eyesight to those who need glasses; I developed a formula after taking in the composition of blood from Titans, a mixture of both Eren's blood and Sawney and Bean's. I thought I could use their restorative properties, it was just a test. Before Sawney and Bean were slaughtered, I tried it on myself to see if it worked, when I thought it was a failure, I scrapped the idea but kept the notes. Now...this happened."
She pointed at her eyes.
"I can see. It took a full week for it to come into effect. Rivaille," she said breathlessly, she began to beam victoriously,"I discovered how to regenerate our bodies...like the way Titans do!"