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She wiped the sweat rolling down her cheek with a swipe of her arm, taking deep breaths using her mouth as she stared at the sprawled man on the cluttered bed, his deep snores reverberating in the small room. Hanji rolled her shoulders and cringed in pain as her joints protested at what she had just done, clearly annoyed at her petulance and stupidity.

She couldn't blame herself. She panicked, she didn't know what to do. She only had two options in that kind of situation: fight or flight. Naturally, she would've approached such a situation straight on, acting nonchalant, borderline reckless—just like her good old self. She would've even drawn her blades at the titans, showing bravery and determination. But he wasn't a titan. She couldn't approach him with her battle strategies and action plans. He was different, unpredictable. No matter how many times Hanji Zoe has encountered such a situation with him, she can't cope. Levi was like a puzzle that was never meant to fit: a battered box full of mismatched pieces that never made sense and yet still does. It was unnerving because she couldn't understand him and yet she does—but really, now that she thought about it she doesn't, not by a long shot. And so, she chose the latter choice, wanting to save face and probably her hide from him—the only person who managed to bring out something that didn't exist in her, the one who unmade her.

She slumped on the floor like a tired scout, head in her hands and knees tucked to her chest. She was sober now, sober enough to realize her mistake of disclosing such information to her two friends with carelessness. She would bet that people heard her confession from the dormitories. She blamed the alcohol, swearing never to touch another in her life.

What would she do now? She thought, leaning her head against the mattress, Mike's legs next to her, hanging precariously. He wouldn't be able to feel his legs tomorrow morning, she mused to herself. Not that she cared, hell, she blamed them too. She blamed everyone but herself.

But it wasn't her fault, at least not consciously. She blamed the irrational part of her: her heart. She wondered how her heart managed to fool her brain to have a mind of its own. It didn't even give her a warning when it happened. It sprung up—like an unwanted weed in her garden of peonies, or whatever flowers there are in a peaceful and beautiful garden—catching her off-guard and leaving her to fend for her sanity.

"Blasted organ," she grumbled, "why won't you just do your job? Is pumping blood a job too easy for you to do? Is that the reason why you have to meddle in my perfectly normal and boring life, to defy the norms? Repeat after me: Hanji Zoe is not a foolish being who renders herself weak with such an inconsequential emotion. She does not love, she does not care—in short she does not feel, especially for someone like him."

Thump.

She sighed, it was a lost cause.

She would've torn her heart out of her body if she didn't need it. But she does, and she just has to deal with the repercussions.

But how would she deal with it? After all, this was her first time to feel this way. Just the thought of it—of recognizing and accepting, finally accepting, that she felt something for him after ages of denial, repression and rationalization—made her throat swell and her stomach churn. She clamped a hand on her mouth and took a breath. She wondered what people usually do whenever they encounter such feelings.

Normalcy. So this was how normalcy felt.

A load of crap, she thought. What made her say such a thing anyways? Normalcy? For her, normalcy was sleeping at three o' clock in the morning with her sheets thrown on the floor, normalcy was tying another titan down while cooing at him, normalcy was not taking a bath for three days straight, normalcy was berating Moblit for his stupidity, normalcy was laughing with Mike about another prank they had planned for Levi.

Not love. Not this twisted, gnawing, disgusting feeling under her skin that she wanted to get out of her body.

It was bad enough that she acknowledged such emotion to exist in her, but to accept? That was too much.

Fool.

Yes, yes she was. Just like he said.

She blamed that day, blamed her carelessness, blamed him for caring, blamed him for bringing the one thing she wanted the most in her life like it was nothing, like it was the most natural thing to do in the world.

But never herself.

Because she was caught off-guard as well.

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She was on the same spot she'd been sitting on the moment Nanaba came to check up on Mike at six in the morning. Nanaba towered over her, a worried expression on his face as he waited for her to reply at his inquiry of how she was feeling. She didn't hide the scowl on her face when she pushed him out of the way, grumbling something about who checks up on someone who's drunk at such an early time. Nanaba chose to be a better man and ignore her jab, patiently telling her to wash up as if she were a petulant child. She ignored him and ran one hand through her tangled hair, the other wiping sleep off her eyes.

"Hangover?" He asked a bit jovially. Hanji resisted the urge of punching him in the face. Among the five of them, Irvin was considered the lightweight, Hanji followed, then Mike, then Levi and lastly, Nanaba. She hated his smug tone and being a morning person. Some people just like to see the world suffer and wallow in their misery.

"Fortunately, no." she grumbled, "But I bet that he would have one later on. Let him have a lie-in."

"And let Irvin have my hide?" Nanaba scoffed, nudging Mike's legs to wake him up, "I'd rather not. Besides, none of us can have a lie-in today. Some people from the Military Police are downstairs, seeking an audience."

She rolled her eyes and pushed herself off the floor, bracing herself for the agonizing pain that would envelope her. As she stretched, she wondered how she managed to sleep there without feeling anything afterwards. "An audience?" She asked him, stifling a yawn behind her palm, "What for?"

Nanaba shrugged and sat down on Mike's bed, a frown on his face. "Who knows? Actually, who cares? I wonder if Irvin would grant them one. It's busy as it is without them sticking their nose in our business."

"Probably snooping around to get new dirt on us." She offered. "Why won't they just let it go? Hell, there they are not doing anything but drinking until they pass out, eating expensive food, sleeping in proper beds while we're here risking our lives, what more could they want?"

"Maybe they're bored."

"Who knows?" Hanji threw back, grinning.

He laughed and pushed himself off the bed. "Why did you sleep here anyways?" He sported a confused look on his face that made Hanji nervous.

"Why, where was I supposed to sleep last night, Nanaba?"

"In your room." Slowly.

"Carrying this buffoon was enough to deplete my energy, you know. How I'd have managed to go back to my quarters is beyond me."

"I mean," He looked thoughtful before asking her, "say, last night, did you—I really can't rely on my memory since I was a bit sloshed last night—" Hanji snorted, "but I vaguely remember you saying something about Levi," she swallowed, "about Petra, then…then…"

"Then?" She pried on, hoping he'd forgotten about it.

"You confessed."

Her heart stopped.

"That?"

"You're in love," he said slowly, disbelief and astonishment in his eyes, as his memory of last night slipped into consciousness, "with Levi."

She couldn't breathe.

"With Levi. My God, Hanji! You're turning red and green at the same time! How on earth can you do that? I've never seen such a phenomenon! I wasn't imagining things? You really did confess to us? You're really in love with Levi?"

"I am not in love. How many times do I have to repeat it? And yes, I did confess to the two of you and it's proving to be the greatest mistake I made in my life! I shouldn't have opened my mouth." She added bitterly.

"You shouldn't have fallen in love with him first." He said amusedly. "Levi. I mean, Levi."

"You are starting to sound like a broken record. Can't you just, I don't know, forget about it? Bury it in the recesses of your mind? Never speak of it again? And what does that have to do with me sleeping in Mike's room and you thinking that I should be in my own bed?"

"Besides being the most logical thing? Levi told me he'd check up on you and Mike last night. At least that's what I last heard him say."

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Did he check up on her last night? On them, rather? Hanji couldn't shake the feeling that he did and he took his time glowering at the two of them. Other than they've been pathetic, incompetent and proved to be a parasite of the Legion because of the stealing, which she didn't do, she remembered doing something idiotic in his presence last night. She should've just fled the scene, ran away and never looked back. To hell with Mike lying concussed on the ground, to hell with Nanaba gaping at her like a fish, and to hell with Levi because of what he had unearthed in her—

The monkey screeched, pulling her out of her reverie. "Now, now. We haven't even started yet."

She even avoided breakfast today in order not to interact with him. Nanaba looked at her curiously and Mike asked her if she was crazy to skip breakfast when they drank last night. She ignored the two and went to her lab, shut the door and demanded Moblit to take in her new subjects. What was wrong with her? Why was she even running away? It was unlike her to run away from a problem or avoid it like the plague. Besides, it was just Levi, he was not a big deal. Nothing about him was a big deal.

She grinned at her joke and blocked off all thoughts about him as she prepared to work.

She was in the middle of extracting an eye from one of the monkeys the scouts caught for her squad when he made his presence known. Levi cleared his throat, catching her off-guard and pulling the eye too harshly from the monkey and crushing it in the process. To make matters worse, the monkey screeched and clawed through its binds as blood squirted all over her coat.

Hurriedly, she mopped the blood off her coat and tried to placate the one-eyed monkey.

"Levi! Don't startle me like that!" She chastised. "Don't you know how to knock? And where's Moblit? He should be cleaning up this mess!"

"I knocked."

"I didn't hear you."

"Probably because of that monkey's screeches and its brothers inside the cage horrified at the preview of their fates."

She looked thoughtfully at the monkeys in the cage, wondering which one will take the spot of their fallen brother. "You're probably right." She pulled the blood-stained gloves off her hands, chucked them into a bin, and missed. She didn't bother picking it up since it drives Levi crazy. True enough, when she turned her attention to him, his eyes were fixed on the gloves. "So, what brings you here?"

"Reports." Still not taking his eyes off.

"Casualties? Or Progress? Which one? Wait, am I supposed to pass some to you or are you here to give me some?"

"What do you think?"

"Both?" She offered. "I don't know if Moblit's done with it."

"You let him do your job?"

She looked confused, "Isn't that what he's supposed to be doing for me?" She walked to her desk, skillfully maneuvering through the stacks of books and paraphernalia cluttering her floor. "Isn't Petra doing that for you?" Hanji flipped through the nearest folder she could grab and threw it. "Moblit should do a bit of cleaning, it's starting to get cluttered."

"That's because you're a rat in a form of a disgusting pig pretending to be a human. And no, I do the reports myself because I am a responsible person."

"Or because you don't want her to do anything." Was out of her mouth before she could stop it. When it finally registered she shut her eyes and mentally berated herself for her tactlessness. "Look, Levi—"

"What?" He was settled in one of her functioning armchairs, riffling through some of the folders he found on top of her out-tray. Once he pulled out a bulky folder, she breathed a sigh of relief. Moblit managed to compile her observation notes, bless that man.

"I didn't mean to say that."

"I don't even know what you're talking about." He chucked the other folders back to the tray.

"I didn't mean to debauch Petra or her duties or anythi—"

"I didn't hear anything you said and I don't care." He reached for the folders once more and shuffled through them.

"Well you should! I mean, you know." She added anxiously, eyeing him with trepidation and terror.

"Know what?" He pulled out the black folder labeled 'Casualty' and turned it open, chucking the other folders back to the tray once again.

She blinked at him. "You know, the one—yesterday—wait," she halted, "you don't know?"

"I'm not you, four-eyes. And frankly, I don't know what's going on inside that unsettling mind of yours." He stood up and took a pen from her desk and began to read. "Unless you tell me what's going on in that mind of yours only will I know."

She worried her lip. He looked at her. She stopped. "Are you going to tell me? Or are we going to drop it?"

"Let me get this straight, you don't know anything about—about—about—" she shuddered, "last night? I mean, you don't know anything at all?" He remained stoic and Hanji felt her heart flutter, heard bells going off in her head, choirs of angels singing in exultation for this miracle. Her lips curved into a smile as she tried real hard not to show any emotion in front of him.

He didn't hear her. He didn't hear her confess to the two idiots last night. She was saved! She didn't need to explain to him about the bullshit she told the two. She didn't have to be embarrassed in front of him. She wouldn't be ridiculed by the man in front of her. She didn't need to deny anything because he hadn't heard anything last night to begin with.

Oh, sweet, sweet fates. This must be her lucky day.

She glanced at him with a wide smile plastered on her face. "So…"

"Are you talking about your session with the drunkard and the poor excuse of a guardian last night?"

Her smile faltered.

"Because yes," He said, closing the report and twirling the pen, "I heard."

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Author's note: Yes, it's a cliffhanger. Yes, I think I know some of you are beyond frustrated thinking about what's going to happen next. I can't promise you anything but this story will end soon. I'll be posting the next chapter soon to make up for the long wait. What do you think will happen next? I'd love to hear what you have to say. Thank you for reading!