Chapter Text
all that we see or seem
is but a dream within a dream
--- E. A. Poe
Hange’s eyes snap open.
She bolts upright, noticing first the hard ground underneath her and then the dark grey eyes watching her.
Levi doesn’t blink. Hange exhales, bringing a hand up to push her bangs off her face. There was… a dream. Before. Trying to recall the brief flashes feels like attempts to grasp a shadow.
“Where are we?”
“At the refugee camp. Took you long enough.”
Sleeping bundles are strewn across the hall; children whimper in the wake of Maria’s fall. Hange frowns. There’s something she feels like she’s missing, like a gap in her memory where something important should be. She rubs her eyes and her hand comes back wet. Levi doesn’t look away.
“You alright?”
“Yeah,” she says, unsure, one hand absentmindedly patting the ground next to her in search of her goggles. “I just feel like I had a really long dream.”
A brief pause, a flash of concern in his eyes. Like he wants to press on, but instead he’s weighing his options. “We should get going. There’s a lot to be done,” he says eventually, walking away to keep up with Erwin's endless list of orders.
Hange closes her eyes again, trying to focus. In the hollow silence, something almost hums under her skin.
Eren wakes up.
He doesn’t know what woke him until he feels the hand nudging his shoulder again. He forces an eye open, squinting in the darkness, making out blonde hair, messed up from sleep and big, anxious eyes.
“Armin… what,” he asks, voice muffled from where he’s pressing his face at the crook of his elbow.
“You were talking in your sleep,” Armin says, pulling his hand back and tucking it under himself with the other one.
“I was?”
Armin nods. A wisp of air whistles through the camp, chilled by the night’s hour. Eren feels Mikasa shiver minutely at his side. The scarf barely leaves her eyes visible, wrapped as it is around her face.
He moves so his back is pressed against her right side, making room for Armin to join the pile. Armin happily shuffles next to him, curling up under the thin blanket his grandfather managed to get from the volunteers.
Eren is almost asleep when Armin speaks again. “What were you dreaming of?”
Eren thinks. He can’t remember dreaming, though he has the vague feeling he was talking to someone. Someone strangely familiar. The more he tries to recall it, the more his eyes droop.
In the end, he shrugs. “Dunno.” He manoeuvres so he’s on his back, head resting against Mikasa’s arm and legs draped over Armin. “Night, Armin.”
Armin tries fruitlessly to break free. In the end, he just sighs. “Goodnight, Eren.”
Reiner is a trembling mess, leaning against the tree, emptying the contents of his stomach to the ground. His knees are shaking, he slowly sinks to the grass.
Marcel. Marcel was eaten right in front of him. And Pieck…
“Pieck…” His voice is a scared little thing as he scans the fields. The girl is nowhere to be seen. He’s completely alone in the island of the devils, his one true chance at proving himself has gone to waste, he left his comrade behind and he’ll…
Reiner screams when something touches his shoulder, leaps away from it and holds out his hands, blindly defending himself against the next titan that’s come for him…
“It’s me.”
Only to see the dark haired girl panting beside him, her hands on her knees. Her eyes are wide, haunted.
“We have to go back, locate the Jaw. We can’t lose Marcel’s titan.”
“Wait.” The faintest hints of clear thinking start to slip in his mind. “No, we can’t! The Jaw is faster than the both of us, we’ll waste time searching for them.”
Pieck’s gaze is wild now, shadowed by her devotion. Reiner knows how close she was with Marcel. “How can we be sure the new holder mastered it on the first try—”
“We have to keep moving towards the Walls.” Fear, determination have started to settle in. “I’m not going back to Marley empty handed. We’ll retrieve the Founder and return as heroes.”
“They’re expecting three Warriors,” Pieck reminds him. “How will we explain the loss?”
He knows, he knows damn well of the plan, and they messed up the first part already. Which is why they can’t afford any more failures; and they definitely can’t afford cowardice. Reiner stands on his feet. “I’ll find a way. This mission needs Marcel, so I’ll be Marcel. I’ll fill the gap that’s missing, and we will succeed.”
He offers her a hand, and Pieck takes it.
They keep going, even if their knees tremble.