soooooooooooooo uhhhhhhhh sorry I left this here to die for *checks notes* a year and a half

I do want to thank everyone who left a comment while I wasn't writing - I REALLY appreciate them and I reread them all the time, they really help when I can only write like a single word on the page 💚

One step onto the rusted staircase descending into the underground city near the ruins of the Reiss family chapel and Levi knew he was back where he'd started, crawling back into the gutter that spat him out. It really did smell different down there; it was what Katrine had said when he'd asked how she'd known. His eyes hadn't even adjusted yet, but there was no mistaking it, like the wealthy who swirled glasses of blood-red wine and could tell the difference between them with only a sniff.

Hange led the way, eager to see how an entire city could remain hidden away from her roving eyes, while Levi and Erwin walked a few paces behind, Armin biting at their heels. Erwin had decided to let him tag along, put that sharp mind of his to use. He at least had the decency to wipe the fascinated look off his face whenever he caught Levi's eye, but Hange hadn't learned that kind of tact. They could all be utterly disgusted, or view it as a colony of insects to inspect with a magnifying glass. Katrine was right to tell him not to say anything about her past, not reveal the dirt she'd washed off when no one was watching; he hadn't had that luxury.

She lingered at the back, chin tucked into her chest and arms crossed, hands balled into tight fists. She'd swiped a Garrison jacket and a new shirt sometime earlier, wiped away the blood and bandaged her wounds. But it was too large, like the clothing a scarecrow wore in a fallow field, hiding that beneath it she consisted of nothing but a few sticks and air. There was a suspicious black stain at the edge of her sleeve that she kept picking at.

"Going off the basis that the underground cities were made as a shelter for if the Walls fail and then used for overpopulation," Erwin said, "then we can make the assumption that members of the Royal Council would want their own separate space."

"So far away from Mitras, though," Hange said. "You'd think they'd clear out the one beneath it."

"Not easy to get rid of mold once it settles in," Levi said.

"Then why'd they abandon it?" Armin asked. "By the look of it, it's half-finished."

"Lack of funds, possibly," Erwin said. "The real question is, was this built first, or Reiss's chapel? Or are they connected in some way?"

"I'd assume so." Hange hopped off the last step onto the cobblestones, rising on her toes to inspect the city. "This crystal appears to be the same as that from Reiss's chapel."

Before them loomed an immense crystal, similar in composition to the crystal cavern lurking beneath the Reiss's chapel. It emitted its own flickering glow, too strong to be refractions of the feeble light coming from their lanterns. Manmade walls and structures, singed and charred by flames, surrounded the crystal like leeches. The scent of smoke and ash hovered in the air, settling over the decay and rotted wood. His nose quivered, protesting his return to the hell he'd sworn to never see again.

The entire place was eerily empty. Garrison soldiers from Orvud had cleared out the remaining priests and MPs, but the possibility that some might lurk in the abandoned buildings behind them made the hair on the back of his neck rise and his fingers hover above the knives sheathed at his thighs.

"Do you recall where you were?" Erwin asked Katrine as they approached the structure. She shook her head, lips pressed together. "Any libraries? Books, records?"

"In his laboratory. But we came out that way." She made a vague gesture at a blackened hole in the wall a few feet above the ground, a few crates at the bottom to climb up. "Everything in it's probably ashes now."

"Lead the way," Erwin instructed, and after taking a shaky breath Katrine clambered up the crates and into the hole. Replacing her at the rear, Levi gingerly climbed through the entrance, avoiding smudging his clothes with soot. Whatever Erwin and Hange wanted to see here better be worthwhile.

They trudged through the tunnels, seemingly endless; Levi could only tell they were making progress since the soot on the walls grew blacker and the stench in the air thicker. He withdrew his handkerchief and pressed it to his nose. Finally, they entered a room largely reduced to cinders, but Katrine didn't stop there. She led them through another doorway which, from the outside, glowed with a sickening yellow-green light. Levi stepped through and his stomach immediately roiled.

Crystals filled the room, all about double his height, similarly shaped to the one encasing the Female Titan's shifter. But none of them held anything that held any similarities to a person. Rather, they held the remains of shredded humans. Ribbons of skin floated around bisected eyes, frozen in clouds of blood. Teeth rested in a long lock of reddish hair. Pressing the handkerchief to his mouth tighter, he averted his gaze to the blackened mound in the middle of the floor. Despite the fact that its features were obliterated, Levi had seen enough of the sort to know it was a corpse. Good thing that hadn't happened to Kenny. Or maybe it should've.

"Oh," Hange whispered with a mixture of horror and awe. "These really are parts of human bodies!" She ran her fingers down one of the crystals with a sick tenderness. "It feels just like Annie's crystal."

Armin knelt to peer into a crystal. "But how did she stay intact while these people didn't?"

"We don't know for certain she's still alive," Hange said. "I can't imagine how this is survivable."

"I don't see any bones," Armin said. "Do you think the bones morph into the crystal?"

Levi turned on one heel and was out of the laboratory in three steps. The ruined hallway expanded and contracted before him. Dying as flames ate him alive was not enough for that man, and if the fire grew teeth and claws and sliced him apart inch by inch until there was nothing left but a spatter of guts and blood, just like in those crystals, it still would be too merciful.

The tunnel split and he threw himself to the left, barely seeing the disintegrating stone walls and scorched wooden beams until a faint smell stopped him, a ghostly hand resting on his shoulder. Iron bars reached up from the cracked floor to the remnants of the ceiling, bent like broken fingers, curling around whatever lay inside its cinderblock palm. Beneath the scent of burnt wood lingered something sinister that sent acid up his throat, an odor so peculiar he could hear the sound of fat crackling and see the flesh melting off of bones. He squinted into the shadows to find what he already knew was there.

They were so small. Fragile, blackened bones encased in fetters that appeared to be smaller than his thumb and index fingers pressed together. They looked more like the thin bones of chickens or quail tossed to the floor after a hearty meal for someone else to clean up. And who would come to sweep these up?

Footsteps echoed behind him and he whipped around. "Don't," he started, but it was too late. Katrine clapped a hand to her mouth, but not quickly enough to staunch the strangled cry that escaped her throat. She collapsed into the wall, leaving a streak of soot on her jacket, but with sudden force pushed herself off and stumbled backward. He reached out to grab her arm. Again, too late. His fingers brushed her shoulder as she jerked away, turning to lurch down the hallway, refusing to look anywhere but at her feet.

"Wait," he said. Her quick steps turned into a sprint and she vanished.

His gaze drifted away from the empty hallway to the cell, once again the only heart beating before a field of corpses. It wouldn't be smart to follow; it wouldn't help anyone. Stilling his breath, he bowed his head, keenly aware that he stood before graves no one knew existed, deaths no one cared to mourn, and leaving them would abandon them to time.

Levi traced his steps back outside the compound, listening for sounds of misery. Once his eyes adjusted, it was easy to find her. There was a deep trench carved out of the earth, containing tracks that stretched from one black hole at his right to another at his left, a platform beside it spanning the same distance. Standing in the trench was a large metal machine, something he'd never seen before, the light of the crystal reflecting off its cold metal siding. Katrine was crouched beside it, her back to the compound, arms squeezed around her knees as if she could crush herself into dust. He stopped beside her, but even though she certainly heard his footsteps, she didn't acknowledge him. The sour scent of vomit mingled with the other terrible odors.

"It's not your fault," he said, even though she wouldn't believe it. She pressed a hand to her mouth in a fruitless attempt to stifle her ragged breathing. "Did you kill that man?"

She dropped her hand and her head bobbed. "I pushed one of them, too," she forced out after a few moments. "Over a balcony. He was...young. A kid himself. I don't...I don't know if he…" She pressed her fist back to her mouth.

Levi kicked at her foot. "Come on. We're walking."

"Where?"

"This tunnel. See where it goes." He started toward the left, around the giant iron machine, and after looking back to make sure she followed, jumped off the platform and onto the tracks. They were thick, solid bars of steel, gently winking at him in the dim light. He wondered briefly how many sword blades or buildings or damn forks could be made with it all as he waited for Katrine to meet him there. She was moving, albeit slowly. Better that than having to drag her.

Once he heard her drop onto the tracks he walked blindly into the solid black abyss ahead, his footsteps bouncing off the tunnel walls as if a hundred others followed. It had to lead somewhere. Or would the next step drop him into a bottomless pit, where so many had fallen for him never to see again?

He stopped. Besides the feeble pinprick of light hovering from where they'd come, he could see nothing. Katrine's footsteps stopped too and the echo faded. He estimated she was a few meters away, by the sound of her breathing. It was so loud, a windstorm trapped in her chest, or maybe every other sound had been sucked up in this tunnel to hell, the bowels of a demon.

"Have you heard of Kenny the Ripper?" he asked. Million other things he could've asked, and he picked that one.

"Yeah." A small, shuddering breath. "I didn't think you were one for scary stories."

"That man we passed before, where I found you. That's him. Was him."

Silence. Unbearable, suffocating silence. "I lived with him," he continued. Wrong word. Existed. Survived. "Underground."

"You– You lived with him?"

"Yeah. 'Til I was twelve."

"So he– Wait. I think I…" She trailed off, her voice swallowed by the cavern. "I didn't recognize him, with those burns. I met him, in Mitras. At the ceremony the Cult had, with the kids. I think he– the First Interior, they did something with the Cult and the serum. He asked about my knife. Your knife."

"It was his. Well, one of them, at least."

She paused. "Then why'd you give it to me?"

Not a question he knew how to answer, so he wouldn't. "What else did he say?"

"Not much. That he was with the MPs. He seemed to know the kids in the ceremony were from the Underground, and that they were marked for death. And that his name was Kenneth Grant Roberts Ackerman."

Two more names to add to the one he'd just learned. "One and the same. Kenny the Ripper's real, and the leader of the First Interior." Kenny hadn't mentioned him, Levi realized with a feeling he couldn't pinpoint as relief or disappointment.

"But if the stories are true, then he killed hundreds of MPs. Why join them?"

"Don't know. But one of the First Interior's main priorities was to slaughter Scouts. And slaughter is one of the things he does best."

"So, you're saying you were raised by Kenny the Ripper? And then he tried to kill you?"

"Wasn't the first time. He had some peculiar training games."

"But he…" She sighed, a small decisive noise. "Well, shit."

"I'm not done," he said with more force than he meant. "The First Interior was down in Reiss's underground chapel, where he turned. The rest of them died, but Kenny scraped by. That's why I was out there." That smile flashed in his memory, yellowed teeth against singed skin. All of you, slaves to something. "He'd always said he knew my mother before she died. But never how. He was her brother."

"You're Kenny the Ripper's nephew?"

"Mm."

"He lived with you for however many years and he never told you?" Her tone was incredulous; he couldn't blame her.

"It was a first-name-only arrangement."

"So you never telling anyone your last name wasn't because you were trying to be mysterious?"

Of course she'd think that. "I wasn't trying to be anything." You tryin' to be a hero? That's what you're drunk on? Kenny's scratchy voice reverberated in his head, the third being lurking in the dark tunnel with them. He shook his head to clear the echo. What was the point of telling her all this? To scare her off, or to get it out of him?

"I thought he looked familiar," she said. "I couldn't figure out why."

He wanted to ask what that was, what made him familiar to her, fill the gauzy memory tattered with holes that might as well be made with a shotgun. But maybe she'd say they had the same bloodthirsty glint in their eyes, shared the same hands destined to carry a blade. You're just like your old man, only good at killing. One day, your fix'll be gone and then you'll be sorry.

"He had a vial of the serum that turns people into Titans," Levi said. "Too much of a coward to use it on himself. But he gave it to me before he died."

"Do you think it's the same as the ones that were in the laboratory?"

"Hange is the person to ask that."

She was silent, considering the implications. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Already handed it off to Erwin. I don't want that burden. When to use it isn't a choice I want to make."

"Leee-vii!" Hange's voice broke through the darkness, booming all around them. "Where'd you go?

"Now we can fucking leave," he said to Katrine. "Coming," he shouted as he started back toward the light.

"What'd you find down there? " Hange answered.

"Nothing. Just a tunnel." He'd shove her back out if she tried investigating. They needed to get out of here, now.

"Look what we found," Hange said, waving a thin red book in the air; she shoved it into Levi's hands as soon as he stepped back onto the platform. On the cover in thin silver letters, it proclaimed, On the Matter of the Ackerman Family. "You said your uncle had that last name, so you would, too. Is there something special about your family you haven't told us?"

Levi didn't answer, opening the book slowly as if something within might ambush him. Instead, rows of small indecipherable symbols sat inside, as unknowable to him as everything about Kenny, about the blood that flowed through his veins.

"Mikasa, too," Armin said. "But why would there be something about her family that the government would want to hide?"

Levi looked pointedly at Erwin. He was the one who knew everything, after all. If Erwin could tell the exact moment that Levi needed to use the shitter, then he'd figured out the entire Ackerman family tree the day before he'd coerced him into the Scouts. But he only shook his head, and Levi passed the book to Katrine. "Lucky you, then."

"Is it the same cipher as before?" Erwin asked.

Katrine opened the book. "Yes," she said, snapping it shut before Levi could read any expression color her face.

"The Garrison soldiers will be the ones cleaning up, given the situation with the MPs," Erwin said. "But Hange will be sure to pick through whatever they bring up."

"I hope whatever explains what the substance Rod Reiss ingested didn't get destroyed," Hange said.

"They extinguished the fire surprisingly quickly, given how remote this place is. Just the one casualty at the laboratory."

Katrine exhaled sharply, but Hange didn't seem to notice. "Was a fire necessary, Katrine? Just think of the troves of information hidden here that went up in smoke!"

"Hadn't thought about that," Katrine muttered, grinding a corner of the book into her palm.

"Are we done here?" Levi asked. "More important things going on aboveground."

"You're right," Erwin said. "Historia's coronation needs to happen as quickly as possible."

Finally, they started back toward the stairs, Levi at the head to make sure no one dawdled. But Hange lingered too much for his liking, falling behind to peek into alleyways. He didn't slow; she could get trapped down there and see how she liked it.

"You decoded the entire cipher that's in that book?" Armin asked Katrine, the two of them behind Levi. "That's amazing! Bet they never thought just one person could break it."

"I just had the willpower," she said. "They assumed anyone who stumbled upon it would give up."

"I tried making a secret code with Eren, back when we were kids. Dumb little notes. But he got so annoyed trying to remember it that he tore up my message to him!"

Katrine laughed, quiet and short as if to not wake the ghouls lurking around them. But a strange flash of envy gurgled in Levi's stomach. Jealous, of a child? Absurd. His pace quickened; the rest of them had long enough legs to keep up. All he had to do was get out. He'd stare directly into the sun if it meant he'd never go back down here, where it might as well not even exist.

It didn't matter that there was an entire dossier kept hidden about the Ackerman clan. The name meant nothing to him; the only use he had for the pages inside was to wipe his horse's ass. He'd lived for years without Kenny, survived long enough to know he only had himself to rely on. Some scribbles in a book wouldn't change anything.

The fountain, tucked away in a forgotten courtyard at the Military Tribunal, was a sad gray pocket of Mitras left to rot as the rest of the city cloaked itself in ribbons and garlands for the coronation. Evidently it had remained that way for years, possibly draining of water and settling under a cloak of dead leaves the moment Katrine and Victoria walked away from it that night, their pruned fingers interlaced. The scalloped edge was chipped, encircling a parched basin littered with twigs and rusted coins. At the center stood the figure of a woman, her amphora forever empty, dust coating her shoulders and her nose broken off and laying at the bottom of the fountain. Katrine closed her eyes, pulling forth the memory of that humid summer night, dangling her feet in the blissfully cool water beside Victoria. They'd been wearing those gauzy white nightgowns, and Victoria's dark hair tumbled down her back. Or had it been plaited? And had she been smiling, or had she pressed her lips into a thin, determined line? Katrine swiped away some debris at the edge, searching for it. It wasn't possible to tell if the memory was real or if she'd stitched it together in her head.

"I…" she started. She what? Stumbled into the truth and let a girl Victoria's age do what she should have done years ago? And even though those strangling hands had been reduced to ashes, it wasn't going to make water flow from the amphora and fill the basin, and if she turned around Victoria wouldn't be sitting at the edge, splashing at her and laughing.

"I found him."

Katrine straightened, shocked by the sound of Elisabeth's voice, but she was the only one in the courtyard. Stupidly she looked up, in case Elisabeth was perched atop the statue's head.

"And he's dead!"

No, to the left. Katrine stepped forward, closer to the stone wall separating her and Elisabeth's voice, and peered through a lucky crack. There they were, their faces perfectly framed by crumbling rock, Erwin's pale and expressionless and Elisabeth's puffy and red. There was an odd shine to her skin, and as she gasped for breath Katrine thought of a fish flopping beneath the butcher's blade.

"He's dead, Erwin, and he's been dead for three years!" she hissed. "And there's no way you didn't know about it!"

"I didn't," he said. "If I'd known, I would have told you. I promise." Promise was an odd word to hear come out of his mouth. It was a word for little girls swapping ribbons, vowing a safe return, and not for a commander seeped in blood.

"You didn't even bother to try. I had to go looking myself. You thought that burying Father meant you could forget about him, but I never did!"

"I didn't forget him, Elisabeth." His voice was quiet, like he could break the words just by speaking them. Silence settled between them, occasionally marred by a sniffle that Katrine knew Elisabeth struggled to keep down. "If he died while still employed by the MPs, then it's something they'd want covered up. You wouldn't read about it in the obituaries."

"There are more important things," Elisabeth muttered. "That's what you always say."

"Commander!" A voice broke the tension and they both turned. "Premier Zackley requests your presence regarding the coronation arrangements."

"Yes, thank you," Erwin responded, the hint of emotion obliterated. Elisabeth stormed away and Erwin walked in the other direction, the two not sparing each other a second glance. Katrine knew better than to follow her, grab her shoulder and spout soothing words at her. So that was what Elisabeth filled her time with when they were posing as MPs. Katrine knew little of Elisabeth's family, besides the fact that both her parents were dead, but her noble rage regarding Erwin before Commander Dok evidently wasn't just for show.

Turning back to the fountain, Katrine stopped when she caught sight of a figure watching her at the courtyard entrance, leaning against the iron gate. Levi. Muttering a curse under her breath, she swiped at the lip of the fountain, sending dust flying into the air. Maybe it would deter him from approaching. But after a few languid steps he was beside her, hands shoved in his jacket pockets and his nose wrinkled at the state of the fountain. "Not one to let family matters stay within the family, huh?" he asked.

"Sorry?" She snatched up a few sticks and threw them to the ground. "I wasn't listening." Had he heard? Most likely, since he and Erwin had been inseparable since the Reiss incident, the two overseeing the reunification of the Scouts and their place in the coronation. She couldn't fault him for listening; the state of someone else's family was always more interesting than your own.

"Right. Good use of your time, cleaning a fountain that no one's going to see."

"You come to check on my progress?"

"No. Thought I'd let you know that the Underground's being cleared out, and everyone's moving up. Before someone else told you."

"Oh." She should've said something better. Good. About time. Leave it to the rats. But leaving the den of vermin could mean falling into the trap of a more dangerous monster.

"Historia– I mean, Queen Historia, ordered a committee," Levi continued. "To oversee the process. Figure out where everyone's going, get them jobs. Make protocols. But knowing how things run around here, there's probably a committee to oversee that committee."

"Who's on it?" Katrine asked. "A bunch of old men who've never sat hungry under a leaking roof?"

"Just about. But Queen Historia too. And me." His cool expression didn't fool her.

"Who'd you threaten to get on it?"

"I wouldn't dare threaten the queen." Humor tinged his voice. "Just doing my civic duty." The thought of him sitting at a table surrounded by a group of shriveled old men smelling of talc and cigars, turning up their noses at him as he glowered right back, almost made her laugh. But it was good that he'd be there, slam them down when they got too self-satisfied. "You could be on it, too," he said.

"Me?" She froze, a petrified leaf dissolving in her fingers. "But I wasn't there for very long."

"Being there a day is too long."

But then they'd know. They'd all know! What was the point of plucking up a spindly little mouse by her tail from the Underground, forcing her to suffer through years of bruises and broken toenails, just to look pretty on a stage? They'd sniff out that there was more to it. The miasma of sweat on sheets trailed behind her wherever she went. "I was too young to remember much of it," she said.

"So? People are going to find out eventually. You told me."

"That was–" She rubbed at her brow. A necessity. If she hadn't told him then, she'd probably be dead. "You'd hide it if you could, wouldn't you?"

His shoulders jerked, a failed attempt at a careless shrug. "I didn't have that opportunity."

Katrine couldn't bear to look at him. Whatever was on his face had to be disappointment, or maybe even disgust. But no one could find that tear-streaked, trembling little girl who hid deep inside her, buried in countless layers of armor that could all crumble to dust with a single word. And then they'd never again see her as anything else.

"I don't have time. I'm supposed to be translating the report Hange found." She wiped one last pebble from the edge of the fountain, thankful there was no way he could know that the book remained unopened and unseen, tucked away in her bag with the syringe of Titan serum. "I'm sure they don't need me, you'll be fine on your own." She turned and walked away without waiting for a response, as if that task was so monumentally important there was nothing that could distract her, though all she would do was sit on her allocated cot and stare at that unopened book and the pale cloudy liquid, unable to see words but instead the charred bones that allowed her to get it. The iron gate screamed shut behind her.

Sara had forgiven Katrine at once, smothering her in an embrace and declaring that she'd known all along it was a ruse when Katrine had explained the reasoning for her hysterics in front of Erwin and abrupt departure with Elisabeth. Mila, however, appraised her with narrowed eyes and crossed arms, a cat sulking in the corner nursing a stepped-on tail, until Katrine folded and begged for Mila to let her accompany her to the coronation fair. The flash of her grin was a little too quick; a sly opportunist.

The Scouts stood in taut lines to the side of the coronation dais, Erwin and the other commanders pinning shining medals to the plush red cloak draped over Historia's shoulders. Whispers bounced around Katrine. A girl just like us, who'd trudged through training, enduring bruises and exhaustion and nightmares of Titans, now stands before us in a spotless white gown, a glittering tiara perched atop her head! But Katrine didn't watch Historia. Instead, she had her eyes on the woman in purple amongst the crowd of people dressed in their finest, the most important and well-connected who had the privilege of sitting directly before the dais. Her skin was luminous, rouge staining her cheeks and lips, ropes of rubies circling her thin neck. Her hand, weighted by an enormous diamond, rested upon her companion's thick arm as if he were a child who might wander away if not held down. Even with the feather-plumed hat shadowing her face, Katrine recognized Irene. Hers was the best outcome any Company girl could dare wish for. It could've been Katrine. It would have never been Victoria.

After the ceremony, the city exploded into chaos. Damp bodies pushed into Katrine as she tried to make her way through the streets, the odors of sweat and crackling meat wafting into her nose. She'd already lost Sara and could barely keep an eye on Mila, who dashed ahead, heedless of the throngs of people surrounding her.

"I want fried bread, and spiced pork, and mulled wine," Mila shouted at Katrine over someone's head. "And then there's a puppeteer recreating how Queen Historia defeated the giant Titan!"

"I thought we were going back," Katrine said.

"You're taking me to the puppeteer," Mila ordered. "I'm not leaving until it's dark enough for the fireworks."

A man shoved past Katrine, causing her to stumble, and then raised his hands in annoyance when stifled by the crowd. With a sudden rush of hatred for him, she brushed her hand against his back pocket and, feeling the telltale bulge of a billfold, slipped her fingers inside and plucked it out, all in the space of a second. Unaware, the man shoved his way through the crowd. She plucked the bills and a few coins out of it, shoved them into her pocket, and without a second look dropped the wallet to the ground. Thoughts of lace for a dress or sweets for her and Mila failed to lighten her mood.

"Katrine!" Suddenly beside her, Mila reached for her hand. "Look at those pretty scarves over there! We should– Oh! Jean!"

Jean, having been spit out by the crowd, turned his wearied gaze down at Mila. He nodded stiffly, then found Katrine. She wondered if he even knew Mila's name. "You're not wearing the MP uniform. I thought you'd abandoned us."

She bristled. "I was never–"

"Back with the Scouts again, I see?" Connie appeared from behind Jean with Sasha in tow, both clutching glistening legs of mutton in their fists. He tore off a piece with his teeth, grease running down his chin. "You come crawling back to Commander Erwin and beg for your spot back? Hope he demoted you to a grunt like the rest of us."

"No." Katrine tried not to grimace. "It was reconnaissance. How better to know what the MPs were up to than be right in the middle of it?" In the frenzy of the coronation, Erwin had apparently forgotten to inform everyone of that fact.

"The message from Nifa said that you told Commander Erwin that he was corrupt," Jean said. "You'd accused him of treason! He lost an arm for us, but apparently that's not enough for you."

"It was his idea!"

"That's certainly convenient," he seethed, "that you got tucked away in Mitras safe and sound while we were being targeted. Someone almost killed Armin! And I had to–" He cut himself off, twisting his fingers. His voice had grown strained.

"Jean, Commander Erwin must've had a reason," Sasha said. "There's no reason why she'd lie."

"Those MPs tried to kill us," Connie said. "Cut him some slack."

The crowds seemed to have doubled around Katrine. "I–"

The sudden clang of a ringing bell stopped her. "Alms for the children!" a stout woman shouted, a plain wooden box in one arm and a brass bell in the other. "Alms for Queen Historia's orphanage!"

I almost died, too, she'd wanted to say, but it was pointless to compare wounds. "You seem to think rather poorly of me, Jean."

"I don't…" He sighed, reconsidering his words. "We all thought it was real. And nobody seemed that surprised."

That stung more than it should. She'd assumed it'd be obvious, that she'd never willingly run back to Mitras, work to protect the people she hated. She hadn't thought of everyone else, even when she'd seen Mila and Sara witness the whole thing. Whatever they'd felt must have hurt.

"Alms for the children!" Another sharp peal. It rattled in the back of her head. In hindsight, that should have been clear. And she'd underestimated Erwin's cunningness, again. There really wasn't anyone else more suited for infiltrating the MPs than she was.

Clang. "The children, wretched orphans from the Underground!" Clang. Her shoulders stiffened. Levi hadn't acted like Jean and the others had, she thought as she tried to remember what he'd said back near Orvud, how he'd acted. But had he figured it out on his own, or had Erwin told him beforehand? Would he think that she would?

Clang.

"I don't abandon my comrades," she said, raising her chin. "You remember that test I gave you?"

"Yeah." Connie grimaced. "My back ached for a week."

"Good. That means you passed."

"See, see? I knew it!" Sasha exclaimed, jumping up and down, but was quieted with a scowl from Connie. Jean, however, couldn't hide his excitement.

"What training?" Mila asked. She'd watched the exchange with wide eyes. "You never said anything about a test."

"Wait one second, here," Connie said, directing his leg of mutton at Katrine. "I can't trust your judgment if you can't even get my name right."

"I don't anticipate that being a problem, Connie."

"It's settled, then." Sasha draped her arms around Jean and Connie, her leg of mutton dangerously close to dripping on Jean's shirt. "You were just saying you thought you were too slow with ODM."

"I still don't see why the captain can't help us with that," Connie grumbled.

"You want to ask him?" Sasha countered. Connie shoved the mutton into his mouth, muffling his answer.

"When, though?" Jean asked.

"When we get back to Trost, after all this is settled," Katrine said, waving her hand at the commotion surrounding them. "Now go do something fun. Not every day you get to be in town for a coronation."

When they'd ambled off, stepping on each other's toes like drunkards, Katrine grabbed Mila's hand and dragged her through the crowd, scanning faces and straining to hear the clamor of the bell.

"I want to train, too," Mila said, her voice nearly a whine.

"Whatever you need help with, let me know," Katrine said. "But not with them. You'll get distracted and slam into a tree."

"I won't!"

Katrine didn't bother to answer, eyes darting. No, no– there! A stout, middle-aged woman held the brass bell aloft, the peals loud and desperate, her face flushed with exhaustion. Her apron was so starched it could stand on its own. She stopped to pin ribbons on those who dropped a coin in her box. Katrine grabbed the money in her pocket and shoved it all in the box with enough force that it nearly dropped out the woman's chapped hands. The woman's mouth dropped open. "Thank you for your kindness, ma'am– Miss?"

But Katrine had already ducked into an alleyway, Mila running to catch up. The alley spat them onto a street just as crowded, but she could breathe a little easier. "I think it's time for fried bread," she said. "My treat."

Katrine found him in the stables the next day, when the cold light of morning swept over empty streets strewn with trampled streamers and forgotten toys. Levi stood before his horse with a half-eaten apple pinched between his thumb and forefinger, his other hand resting on its sinewed black neck. Juice dripped down his fingers, trickling through the crevice of his palm and down to his wrist as the horse chewed the apple. It didn't seem to bother him. She stood out of sight at the edge of the doorframe, waiting for the right moment, but each that passed seemed worse than the last.

"I didn't think you liked horses," he said, wiping his hand with a rag after his horse snapped up the last of the apple core. Evidently, not out of sight enough.

"I don't dislike them." She picked her way over to him, avoiding the odd clumps of hay. "Did you stay for the festival yesterday?"

"For as long as Erwin decided I was obligated."

Katrine smiled faintly, unsure if she was supposed to laugh. An awkward silence settled over them, causing her to fold her arms and dig her fingernails into her skin to force herself to say what had been writhing in her head ever since she'd crammed that stolen money into the orphans' coffer.

"He's getting antsy." Levi nodded at the horse. "Not supposed to let them waste away in stalls while we get so drunk we piss ourselves."

"Was that what you were doing? When you weren't obligated to stay for the festival?"

He didn't deign to respond to that; instead, he leveled her with an unamused glare. She leaned against one of the stalls, watching the horses swish their tails, but his probing gaze didn't shift. His expression turned expectant; he knew she wasn't there to survey the horses.

"That committee." She dropped her arms in favor of tugging at her hair. "When's it meet?"

"This afternoon."

"Oh." So soon! There wasn't enough time to think of what to say, to figure out how to explain without revealing it all, to accept every possibility–

"What about it?"

"Um. I was thinking…" She twisted her hair around her hand, creating pinpricks at the base of her skull. "Do you– I mean, I already said no, but…"

"But what?"

"Is it too late? For me to go, I mean." Say it's too late. But she couldn't look at his face, in case it really was too late, and she couldn't disappoint him again.

"No." She looked up. He wore an odd expression, his dark eyes narrowed but not in the way he normally did, that audacity that made her skin turn hot. Instead, it was soft, questioning but not demanding. "Of course not."

"Queen Historia won't mind? She won't be expecting me."

"Don't worry about her. Though I'm sure whoever the MPs and the government send won't be thrilled to see another one of us there." The corners of his mouth quirked, a sly smile. She returned it as her grip around her hair loosened. He turned back to his horse, running his thumb over the white streak at its forehead. "What made you change your mind?"

"I…" Biting her lip, she stared at one of the horses that observed them. She didn't have a good answer to that, only that it seemed like the best way to stop herself from pacing holes through the floors at night, to make the visions of tear-streaked faces and bones turned to ash less vivid in her mind.

"Never mind," he said, eyeing her foot; she'd been digging her toe into the floor. "Don't tell me if it'll make you change your mind again."

"I won't."

"Three o'clock. I'll be at the front gate." He walked to the entrance, but stopped to look back at her once more. "Don't be late." And then he was gone, like he wanted to disappear before she had the sense to change her mind. But she'd decided she could shoulder the burden of stares and whispers if it meant that the girls who'd been born in the shadows had a chance to grow unfettered in the sunlight, where the worst place they could fall was to the ground where they could pick themselves back up. The best life that they dreamt of would be more than depending on jewels to make them brighter, clenching the arm of a man and praying he wouldn't shake them off. Girls like Anya; the girl she'd been so many years ago.

And, of course, she'd never dare break a promise to Levi.