I told the stars about you...

How long does it take to recover from an expedition?

One day for the lucky ones. Months for the less lucky ones. Never for the unlucky.

And for the less lucky among them—-the majority—there’s no such thing as a full recovery.

He’s seen everything from sunburns to amputations and he’s been on the receiving end of his fair share of injuries. The human body is just far too complex to reduce to predictions, and his own experience with life has a track record of making him doubt more than believe.

He doesn’t know the right answer, and at this point, he doesn’t bother to put numbers to anything. Compared to Erwin or Hange, he’s just never been good at Math.

Still, just for today, he plays ‘scientist’ like the hundred times Hange has done, although he knows he’ll never even be half as good as her. Only this time, Hange is a case study, a far more fascinating subject than a lot of the other soldiers he’d observed.

She’s an exception to his disdain for research and numbers, because Hange, she doesn’t recover like other people do. She doesn’t grovel and moan in the infirmary until the wounds slow to a dribble and close. She doesn’t take the injury leave, and she doesn’t rot at home either. Only a few months ago, she was stabbed by a hook, and all she did was ask for a dressing and sling then she ran back to the field.

Since the expedition, Hange’s been different.

She’s lucky because she’s a survivor. She’s unlucky because she doesn't get the wiggle room to recover. With Erwin’s death, she only recently became commander and commanders don’t get breaks. Hange doesn’t formally ask for one either. She doesn’t go on those week-long leaves, nor does Levi personally think they have the time for those anyway.

For the first time however, in her commander’s office, she walks up from behind Levi, puts two hands over his shoulders and whispers, “I’m going out. I need a break.”

It’s bereavement or exhaustion, possibly a combination of both. Levi isn’t so sure, but Erwin’s only recently passed. He’s just come back from burying the body, and Hange’s working day in and day out, and there’s a certain glint in her hazel eyes that wasn’t there before.

He looks up at her, and he searches for it again. Her eye is still bandaged, and her remaining eye has that same glint, and she’s studying the documents on Levi’s desk from right next to him. He’s a bit self-conscious about it. He doesn’t read as quickly as Hange does, but only for her, he moves his hand away. “I’ll finish this up. You don’t have to.”

She squeezes his shoulders. “I just need a few hours.”

“A few hours?” Levi straightens up on his seat and turns to her in question. Usually Hange asks for a ‘five minutes’ or even ‘just a second,’ and Levi doesn’t remember her taking more than an hour or so break.

A few hours is in fact…a long break for him or for Hange, practically a full day or a weekend off.

“It’s the autumn festival. Thought of checking it out,” Hange starts, as she gathers her things and pushes them all to one side. “They got tea there, if you want anything…”

Long ago, Levi learned to read between the lines. When Hange’s offering that means she doesn’t want someone coming with her, but there’s a niggling feeling in his stomach, sometimes punching it lightly from the inside. He’s heavy with exhaustion, yet his mind is in overdrive. He gives Hange a onceover, then another.

He’s noticing the change or his gut feels it: Hange hasn’t been the same since they got back from Shiganshina.

But really, after that ordeal? It isn’t a question of who changed. It’s a question of who didn’t.

----

Hange’s changed, and Levi doesn’t note it in how neatly pressed her uniform is, or how now, she seems to tie her hair into a tight half ponytail, completely abandoning the hasty updos of before.

It’s in her attitude.

She doesn’t sway like a reed or flow like a river. She oscillates from one mood to the next. She’s either disinterested by the most learned street performers or she’s stimulated by the dust on the table.

It’s passion. It’s authenticity. Or it’s just Hange being Hange.

And Hange, as she is, draws Levi in. She heightens his senses, clears his vision that he’s double downing on the most minute of changes, and his ears perk up at every tick and tock of the clock. Even though Levi hates Math, she has him counting… or at least her absence does.

A few hours.

How long is ‘a few hours’ supposed to be?

One hour? But she said ‘hours.’

Two hours? But that’s still far too close to one.

Levi’s practically splitting hairs, going so far as counting the seconds. Hange left at 1:32 in the afternoon. It’s 4:30 and she isn't back yet.

Three hours is far more than a few hours in his book. He plays it by his gut. He gathers the paperwork he’d made little progress on, he pulls himself from his very uncomfortable seat, and he rushes out of the room.

It isn’t too difficult to spot the festival. All he has to do is follow silently behind a group of jolly-looking pedestrians, and he’s not calling attention to himself at all.

----

Too many people are focused on the games and festivities to notice the only dull expression among them. And besides, Levi’s going in the exact same direction, though he isn’t trying to get a peek of the ‘largest summer crop’ competition nor is he trying to push his way to the crowds to get the best deals at the farmer’s stalls.

He’s navigating the crowds not for the spectacle, but for Hange. Levi’s shorter than average, and he can only settle for the cracks that open in between bodies squeezed together like sardines, and he’s searching for that characteristic shade of hazel of her half-ponytail.

Levi doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t say anything. The minute changes won’t help.

Hange needs a break. Yet, why is he going after her? If she really needed a break, why is he interrupting her? Why is he searching for her only to take her back to the office?

Maybe he should invite her to do something—anything but work.

It’s only when he’s given up on looking for her and starts focusing on ideas for a day-long break, only when he’s searching for food stalls and empty benches and glades in a forest of people does he find her, leaning back on the bench on some corner of the square. He walks towards her, and he notices her eyes are closed, she seems almost peaceful. It’s as if she’s asleep.

But she’s not. When he’s near enough, she opens her eye and turns towards him as he takes a seat next to her.

“Levi?” she says, lazily but not drowsily. She wasn’t asleep.

“You said you’d be back in three hours.”

“I’m pretty bad with time, aren’t I?” She smiles at him apologetically, and for a second Levi’s confused, then he gets it—she sees it as a reprimand, but it’s concern—nothing more.

A few hours could have been anything. It isn’t her fault. It’s Levi’s fault for being paranoid, so he lets a simple apology slip past his lips. “Sorry.”

“Sorry for what? I’m the one who shouldn’t have been out for this long. We haven’t even finished compiling the rest of the findings from the basement. The report is due in a week and the queen, she’s—”

“Let’s go out tonight,” Levi says. “You know we deserve a break, too.” He doesn’t have to expound. The rest of the survey corps—or at least what’s left of them, have the month off, especially with Sasha still in the hospital. Why aren’t they affording themselves that same luxury? Especially when Hange hasn’t been herself since they’ve come back.

“You have any place in mind?” Levi presses. The question tastes strange, and his tongues heavy. He isn’t used to being the one carrying the conversation.

She used to be excited about these types of things. She’d suggest the mountains in spring or the abandoned castles that seemed to trap a winter chill even in the summers. It’s late autumn, arguably one of the most beautiful times of the year, with the world suddenly exploding in shades of bright red and orange.

Hange isn’t responding like she used to.

Are you okay? Levi doesn’t ask the question, because he knows Hange would probably say she’s just fine. She’ll maybe admit to a little stress or maybe even the grief of losing Erwin, and he finds the way she stiffens up on the bench and the way she folds her hands over her lap say a lot more.

She’s staring out at the crowds, and her eye shifts from one side to the next: Grief and exhaustion are more apparent against a background of festivities. Hange on that bench is practically a still life painting.

Hange blinks and looks away, as if she knows she’s being observed. “Let’s go back?”

“To the office?”

“Where else?” She turns to him, her brow wrinkles in slight irritation or confusion. “We have so much work to do.”

“I just thought you needed a break,” Levi admits.

She stares back up at the crowds, and she’s looking so far as the performers in the middle. She watches one of the farmers display some pumpkin, screaming something about it being ‘his pride and joy of this season.’ Even that big ham manner at which he waved his hands doesn’t sequester so much as a smile from her lips. She could have been watching paint dry for all he knew.

Hange only says five words, nothing at all related to the festival. “Not today. Let’s go back.”

He definitely needs to take her out again, but not now. Today, Levi decides to simply observe. Hange places her hands towards the middle part of the bench, and she pulls herself up slowly and methodically. She keeps her eye first on the ground below, then she slowly looks upwards.

Her eye focuses, then falls out of focus. It’s easy to notice the quick change, when there’s only one eye to observe.

She turns to Levi, a pleading look in her eyes, then she gestures towards the alley. “Stay close to me?”

She doesn’t even need to ask. He always does anyway.

----

Hange’s more careful.

She doesn’t bound into a room, head first, arms akimbo. It’s as if over one expedition, she’s learned the art of scanning the room once or twice, before even stepping into the room. She walks more slowly. Levi used to quicken his pace almost comically just to catch Hange who’s a good few inches taller. Now, he finds he’s slowing his pace, just to match her stride.

He isn’t good with numbers but he’s counting just to keep to her pace. Before the expedition, how long was the walk from the survey corps commander’s office to the conference room? With Erwin, it was five minutes. With the ‘constantly-on-the go’ workaholic Hange, it was three minutes. At her peak of excitement, it took one minute.

Hange now, took far longer than that. He counts four hundred slow seconds, almost seven minutes, then he loses count again. Hange’s an oxymoron embodied. She’s busier than ever, completely buried in the mountains and mountains of paper work, flitting from one deliverable to the next.

But she’s slower, much slower than before, that even with his small stature, Levi doesn’t struggle to keep in pace.

And she’s silent, so much more silent.

Levi! Please! Just one experiment! Just capture one more titan for me! The halls used to be filled with so much more verbal garbage. Levi quickens his pace until he’s a few feet away, until he’s standing right in front of her, that she can’t so simply ignore him. “Hange.”

“Hm?” Hange widens her eye and cocks her head to the side in question.

“What if we go out?” he asks.

“Outside the wall…” She trails off. “To…titan territory?” she suggests. God knows where she got that idea.

“No, just… a vacation to another district. You need rest. I need rest.”

Hange lowers her head. “Let’s see what we can get done first…There are just too many meetings, too much paperwork. Erwin left so much behind, and with Moblit gone—”

“And that’s why we need to rest.”

She doesn’t hear or she pretends not to hear, and Levi doesn’t say it twice. He keeps quiet and falls behind as Hange walks ahead towards the conference hall.

He can’t simply say it. He chalks up this hesitance to some reverence towards their new commander and maybe a fear of insubordination, but something inside him is telling him it’s far deeper than that.

If he insists, she’ll deny, and there are far more productive ways to learn about Hange. Instead, he counts.

It takes a sluggish fifteen minutes to get to the conference room.

----

Hange is squinting.

Levi only notices it, because she doesn’t move as much. It’s like the life in her is concentrated into her remaining eye.

Long ago, she would be one of the first people out of the conference room after an hour long meeting with higher ups. This time, she waits at her table. She feigns business, her head hanging over the notebook in front of her.

The others probably don’t give her a second look. Only because it’s Hange, Levi does.

Lazy doodles, and some scribbles on the side. Among them are probably actual notes, but they’re not as detailed as what he’s used to, nor are they comprehensive enough to weigh her down while everyone leaves the room.

Levi settles on the seat next to her, and he waits. He doesn’t stare for longer than three seconds at a time (he counted), but she seems to notice anyway.

She shifts her eyes towards him, removes her glasses and wipes the lens with the edge of her collar. “Force of habit,” she mutters to herself, a sardonic smile on her face. Funnily enough, she wipes both of the lenses when she only needs one. “Maybe I should get a monocle.”

“You wouldn’t look good in one,” Levi deadpans.

Hange lets out a soft sigh. “I’ve always had bad eyesight, and since we got home, it’s only gotten worse.”

Well, of course it would, she’s only working with one eye now.

----

That conversation stays with Levi, long after the meeting ends. Their routine mellows to the same lull. A week passes then another, and although Levi gives her the opportunity to revisit the conversation, Hange doesn’t, as if she doesn’t want the break.

It’s as if she’s got a suicide wish. She wants to drown in the piles of paperwork.

One day, stiff at her desk, she broaches the topic, but not in a way Levi expected. “Levi, I won’t be coming in tomorrow morning.”

“You won’t be coming in…to the office?”

For a moment, Hange stares at the wall, confused, as if she’s having to check herself. It’s a simple back-and-forth, that comprises the simplest of expressions. There’s no misunderstanding between them, but Levi’s been searching for something for a while.

She’s taking the break alone, when I’ve been inviting her for weeks?

“I just have an appointment,” Hange says.

Levi raises one eyebrow, and he turns towards the door, then at her calendar on the desk. His eyes are sharp, and he could make out the blank space under Friday morning.

He looks back up at her. “Appointment?”

“A personal appointment.”

He stares at her expectantly for a while longer, but there’s some negative emotion welling inside him: jealousy or irritation, he can’t seem to comprehend it. He feels like a three year old again, wanting attention, but he’s an adult who’d had to mature far too quickly. He wants Hange’s attention, but he understands it isn’t as simple as that.

Hange senses it. “I’ll be back by lunch, or even before lunch.” She stares out the window. “The autumn foliage is nice this time of year.” Then she turns to him with a placating look. She’s definitely reading his mind. “Maybe use this as an opportunity to take a break?”

----

Take a break? Levi doesn’t. It isn’t as simple as that.

He doesn’t tell Hange, but he does a little reconnaissance on the meaning behind that little break. He’s asked Jean, Connie, Armin, Eren and Mikasa, any moment he’d catch them.

Armin and Mikasa have been rotting in the barracks since the long break he gave them. Eren has been god-knows-where. According to Armin, he’s been taking much longer walks since they returned, and he’s usually gone for days.

And Jean and Connie? They’ve been back-and-forth from the hospital, since they’ve gotten back from the expedition.

“Hange was here?” Levi asks. They’re all standing stupidly in the hallways, but Levi’s is careful about waking Sasha up.

Jean and Connie are—of course—just as careful of waking her. Jean leans on the doorway to Sasha’s room. “Just for a quick visit. She stayed long enough to talk to Sasha, but she seemed pressed for time.”

Levi blinks back surprise.

Jean puts his hands up. “Don’t worry about not visiting often. Armin and Mikasa are here most days, but they’ve been busy dealing with Eren too.”

“Work has been busy,” Levi says simply. “Did Hange tell you where she was going?”

Jean shook his head. “I was thinking you’d know, especially since you’re always with her.”

----

Levi doesn’t take a break. He walks the whole perimeter of the hospital. One hour passes, probably even another, and Jean even walks some of the hallways with him.

“You think the commander’s in the hospital?” he asks.

“She said she wouldn’t be in the office until one,” Levi answers.

Jean shrugs. “Well she can be anywhere. You know how Hange is.”

How the commander was. Jean hasn’t been with her enough. Hange has only been back-and-forth from the office and home, and she’d only gone out once to the festival. If Hange’s in the hospital, she’s likely still here.

That’s his best rationalization, but Levi doesn’t trust his own attempt with rationalization. His gut had always been so much better at trifling with these things. He keeps mum, and he looks at the clock—eleven.

He hasn’t even had lunch. “I’m going back,” he says.

“To the office?” Jean asks.

“There’s still a lot of work to do,” Levi says.

“Well, if you need anything from us…”

The offer feels warm, although Levi isn’t sure he’d take Jean or the others up on it. One thing he and Hange have in common, is how somehow, they’ve always sought comfort in the bustle that followed the expedition, not in the recovery that usually follows.

He grabs a piece of bread from the hospital cafeteria, and the clock reads a few hours before noon. He’s overestimated the amount of time this would take.

Jesus, he’s bad at math. Or maybe, he just wished time would go faster. He wants to go back to the office sooner. He just wants to see Hange again, that’s it. Wherever she is.

The autumn foliage is beautiful this time of year. Hange’s voice only echoes again, because the hospital courtyard is covered with that same foliage, and that one line is a rare commodity, the only remnant he has of the old Hange, albeit a subdued one.

The Hange of before fixated on even the most mundane things like the changing of seasons. The Hange of now seemed to space out, stare at nothings, fixate on the invisible, on things Levi could have sworn don’t even exist.

The reason he’s observing? He’s been looking for the Hange of before for a while, wondering if she existed still beyond the commander's facade, beyond the haze of duty, especially since Erwin’s death.

He finds her in a bout of coincidence or serendipity, when he particularly isn’t looking for her. Instead, he’d been looking for a bench to eat his bread. She’s in one of those benches in the hospital courtyard, tucked into some alcove. She’s staring up at the autumn sky, The bandage over her eye was replaced by an eyepatch, and her hands.

They aren’t holding piles of contracts or a little notebook where she’d usually jot down her notes. One hand rests lazily to her side, and the other, she reaches it up at the sky, as if she’s catching leaves.

Hange used to find happiness in that.

But this Hange approaches such a mundane activity with a strange type of focus. She furrows her brows and eyes the leaf like it’s some test subject. Levi closes in on her, his footsteps light enough that they don’t even crunch at the heaviest of foliage.

Most days, Hange’s sharp enough to notice him sneaking up. Today, it’s like she’s in her own world, as if there’s something far more fascinating about the falling autumn leaves. Levi doesn’t ask. He doesn’t want to take her out of her trance, so he simply watches from just a few feet away.

A small branch with a crack breaks from right above her.

Hange lunges up for it, her body moving in synchrony. Her agility and coordination are still there, but she misses a few inches. Her hands instead grabs for empty air.

For a moment, Hange looks terrified. Levi doesn’t take any chances. He moves at breakneck speed, and grabs the leaf from only inches from her face. “It’s a small branch… but when the wound over your eye is still healing…”

“It’s almost healed. It’s fine,” Hange says coldly. There’s no warm greeting in those words.

“Is it?” Levi asks. He sits back down on the bench right next to her, and shifts his eyes towards her in disbelief.

“The wound is…” Hange says. “I just went to the doctor today if that wasn’t obvious.”

“And?”

“They said there’s nothing they can do about my eyesight.” Just like that, the autumn just got a little chillier, and Levi could almost feel the first signs of the winter chill.

He’s seen far too much loss to see patterns in the seasons. Autumn is death. Winter is the grief that follows. But they can’t grieve forever, or they might as well just curl up and die.

That’s why we have spring. “So what now?” Levi asks. Long ago, Hange used to ask this same question. Long ago, she used to make deadlines for recovery…by spring, because there’s something more poetic about it.

Hange shakes her head. “I don’t know. I thought the doctors could find some way to fix my eyesight. I lose one eye, and suddenly I can’t tell far from near. Everything’s just flat land. I’m running on my memory of every place, but when things are falling, when there are crowds forming I just…I’m not as good as you at calculating, Levi.”

“Complete and utter bullshit.” This moment marks his first act of insubordination against the new commander, but something he’ll probably never regret. “You’ve always been better than me at Math.” He believes it with his whole heart, and he’d already prepared the ammunition, mentions of how quickly she’d calculated budgets and tariff rates. Among the surviving scouts, only Armin could match her intellect.

Meanwhile, Levi can only stare silently, as she rattles off rationalizations.

“Then how do you explain how good you are at dodging titan hands, and cutting them at the nape with just the right amount of force?”

Hange’s good at math, and she’s just as good at logic. Levi keeps mum, then he says six words he doesn’t think through. “That’s not math. I don’t calculate.”

If Hange thinks it’s a dumb answer, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she keeps her eyes trained on the trees just above. “The branches are at least four feet above me,” Hange says. “Am I correct?”

Just to humor her, he looks up. If he were honest, he doesn’t see numbers in height. He knows how far to jump or how long he has to get away, but he doesn’t see math the same way Hange does. “I don’t know, but you’re probably right. You always were when it came to numbers,” Levi says. “The same way Erwin was.”

“Levi, do me a favor?”

“Hm?”

“Catch a leaf.”

After that last bout of insubordination, he can’t say no. It takes him a mere split second.

“That was five inches from your face, and you knew it almost immediately,” Hange says. "I'm bad at that, now. I notice, one eye gone, I don’t see distance anymore. I’m trying to measure everything to make sense of it… the trees above are at least four feet above me, the leaves are inches from my hand, but numbers don’t matter when I can’t move my body in sync to what I see. I’m struggling to move through crowds. I’m hitting walls because I can’t slow down quickly…”

“That’s not math,” Levi says again, but this time he isn’t so sure if what he’s saying is true. Hange has always been smarter than him when it came to paperwork and numbers, but he’s confident in his fluency at motor skills. “You’re overthinking loss,” Levi says. “Four feet before is not the same for feet now. An inch from before is not the same inch now… We just have to relearn the meaning of ‘foot’ and ‘inch.’”

“We? You’re not the one missing an eye,” Hange says in challenge.

‘We’ because it’s his business just as much as it’s Hange’s. Levi fought hooligans and gang members with a swollen eye. Hell, he’s fought people blind before. There’s no way he’ll let Hange lay low over one loss. “You can go back and fight. You just have to accept this new field of vision. Walk through crowds, run into walls, learn your limitations. We have the rest of autumn and all the way until spring to figure this out. It’s not like we can schedule an expedition in this weather.”

“You think training can fix what losing an eye takes from you?” Since when has Hange been this cynical? It’s Levi’s job to be cynical. “I don’t even know if I’ll be able to fight like I used to.”

“You won’t,” Levi says simply. “But you’ll still be able to fight.”

“Why? Can you predict the future?” Hange turns towards him in challenge.

An overly idealistic Hange to a cynical Hange. The change is far too stark.

How long does it take to recover from an expedition?

One day for the lucky ones. Months for the less lucky ones. Never for the unlucky.

And for the less lucky among them—-the majority—there’s no such thing as a full recovery.

He’s seen everything from sunburns to amputations and he’s been on the receiving end of his fair share of injuries. The human body is just far too complex to reduce to predictions, and his own experience with life has a track record of making him doubt more than believe.

He doesn’t know the right answer, and at this point, he doesn’t bother to put numbers to anything. Compared to Erwin or Hange, he’s just never been good at Math.

Still, just for today, he plays ‘scientist’ like the hundred times Hange has done, although he knows he’ll never even be half as good as her. Only this time, Hange is a case study, a far more fascinating subject than a lot of the other soldiers he’d observed.

She’s an exception to his disdain for research and numbers, because Hange, she doesn’t recover like other people do. She doesn’t grovel and moan in the infirmary until the wounds slow to a dribble and close. She doesn’t take the injury leave, and she doesn’t rot at home either. Only a few months ago, she was stabbed by a hook, and all she did was ask for a dressing and sling then she ran back to the field.

Since the expedition, Hange’s been different.

She’s lucky because she’s a survivor. She’s unlucky because she doesn't get the wiggle room to recover. With Erwin’s death, she only recently became commander and commanders don’t get breaks. Hange doesn’t formally ask for one either. She doesn’t go on those week-long leaves, nor does Levi personally think they have the time for those anyway.

For the first time however, in her commander’s office, she walks up from behind Levi, puts two hands over his shoulders and whispers, “I’m going out. I need a break.”

It’s bereavement or exhaustion, possibly a combination of both. Levi isn’t so sure, but Erwin’s only recently passed. He’s just come back from burying the body, and Hange’s working day in and day out, and there’s a certain glint in her hazel eyes that wasn’t there before.

He looks up at her, and he searches for it again. Her eye is still bandaged, and her remaining eye has that same glint, and she’s studying the documents on Levi’s desk from right next to him. He’s a bit self-conscious about it. He doesn’t read as quickly as Hange does, but only for her, he moves his hand away. “I’ll finish this up. You don’t have to.”

She squeezes his shoulders. “I just need a few hours.”

“A few hours?” Levi straightens up on his seat and turns to her in question. Usually Hange asks for a ‘five minutes’ or even ‘just a second,’ and Levi doesn’t remember her taking more than an hour or so break.

A few hours is in fact…a long break for him or for Hange, practically a full day or a weekend off.

“It’s the autumn festival. Thought of checking it out,” Hange starts, as she gathers her things and pushes them all to one side. “They got tea there, if you want anything…”

Long ago, Levi learned to read between the lines. When Hange’s offering that means she doesn’t want someone coming with her, but there’s a niggling feeling in his stomach, sometimes punching it lightly from the inside. He’s heavy with exhaustion, yet his mind is in overdrive. He gives Hange a onceover, then another.

He’s noticing the change or his gut feels it: Hange hasn’t been the same since they got back from Shiganshina.

But really, after that ordeal? It isn’t a question of who changed. It’s a question of who didn’t.

----

Hange’s changed, and Levi doesn’t note it in how neatly pressed her uniform is, or how now, she seems to tie her hair into a tight half ponytail, completely abandoning the hasty updos of before.

It’s in her attitude.

She doesn’t sway like a reed or flow like a river. She oscillates from one mood to the next. She’s either disinterested by the most learned street performers or she’s stimulated by the dust on the table.

It’s passion. It’s authenticity. Or it’s just Hange being Hange.

And Hange, as she is, draws Levi in. She heightens his senses, clears his vision that he’s double downing on the most minute of changes, and his ears perk up at every tick and tock of the clock. Even though Levi hates Math, she has him counting… or at least her absence does.

A few hours.

How long is ‘a few hours’ supposed to be?

One hour? But she said ‘hours.’

Two hours? But that’s still far too close to one.

Levi’s practically splitting hairs, going so far as counting the seconds. Hange left at 1:32 in the afternoon. It’s 4:30 and she isn't back yet.

Three hours is far more than a few hours in his book. He plays it by his gut. He gathers the paperwork he’d made little progress on, he pulls himself from his very uncomfortable seat, and he rushes out of the room.

It isn’t too difficult to spot the festival. All he has to do is follow silently behind a group of jolly-looking pedestrians, and he’s not calling attention to himself at all.

----

Too many people are focused on the games and festivities to notice the only dull expression among them. And besides, Levi’s going in the exact same direction, though he isn’t trying to get a peek of the ‘largest summer crop’ competition nor is he trying to push his way to the crowds to get the best deals at the farmer’s stalls.

He’s navigating the crowds not for the spectacle, but for Hange. Levi’s shorter than average, and he can only settle for the cracks that open in between bodies squeezed together like sardines, and he’s searching for that characteristic shade of hazel of her half-ponytail.

Levi doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t say anything. The minute changes won’t help.

Hange needs a break. Yet, why is he going after her? If she really needed a break, why is he interrupting her? Why is he searching for her only to take her back to the office?

Maybe he should invite her to do something—anything but work.

It’s only when he’s given up on looking for her and starts focusing on ideas for a day-long break, only when he’s searching for food stalls and empty benches and glades in a forest of people does he find her, leaning back on the bench on some corner of the square. He walks towards her, and he notices her eyes are closed, she seems almost peaceful. It’s as if she’s asleep.

But she’s not. When he’s near enough, she opens her eye and turns towards him as he takes a seat next to her.

“Levi?” she says, lazily but not drowsily. She wasn’t asleep.

“You said you’d be back in three hours.”

“I’m pretty bad with time, aren’t I?” She smiles at him apologetically, and for a second Levi’s confused, then he gets it—she sees it as a reprimand, but it’s concern—nothing more.

A few hours could have been anything. It isn’t her fault. It’s Levi’s fault for being paranoid, so he lets a simple apology slip past his lips. “Sorry.”

“Sorry for what? I’m the one who shouldn’t have been out for this long. We haven’t even finished compiling the rest of the findings from the basement. The report is due in a week and the queen, she’s—”

“Let’s go out tonight,” Levi says. “You know we deserve a break, too.” He doesn’t have to expound. The rest of the survey corps—or at least what’s left of them, have the month off, especially with Sasha still in the hospital. Why aren’t they affording themselves that same luxury? Especially when Hange hasn’t been herself since they’ve come back.

“You have any place in mind?” Levi presses. The question tastes strange, and his tongues heavy. He isn’t used to being the one carrying the conversation.

She used to be excited about these types of things. She’d suggest the mountains in spring or the abandoned castles that seemed to trap a winter chill even in the summers. It’s late autumn, arguably one of the most beautiful times of the year, with the world suddenly exploding in shades of bright red and orange.

Hange isn’t responding like she used to.

Are you okay? Levi doesn’t ask the question, because he knows Hange would probably say she’s just fine. She’ll maybe admit to a little stress or maybe even the grief of losing Erwin, and he finds the way she stiffens up on the bench and the way she folds her hands over her lap say a lot more.

She’s staring out at the crowds, and her eye shifts from one side to the next: Grief and exhaustion are more apparent against a background of festivities. Hange on that bench is practically a still life painting.

Hange blinks and looks away, as if she knows she’s being observed. “Let’s go back?”

“To the office?”

“Where else?” She turns to him, her brow wrinkles in slight irritation or confusion. “We have so much work to do.”

“I just thought you needed a break,” Levi admits.

She stares back up at the crowds, and she’s looking so far as the performers in the middle. She watches one of the farmers display some pumpkin, screaming something about it being ‘his pride and joy of this season.’ Even that big ham manner at which he waved his hands doesn’t sequester so much as a smile from her lips. She could have been watching paint dry for all he knew.

Hange only says five words, nothing at all related to the festival. “Not today. Let’s go back.”

He definitely needs to take her out again, but not now. Today, Levi decides to simply observe. Hange places her hands towards the middle part of the bench, and she pulls herself up slowly and methodically. She keeps her eye first on the ground below, then she slowly looks upwards.

Her eye focuses, then falls out of focus. It’s easy to notice the quick change, when there’s only one eye to observe.

She turns to Levi, a pleading look in her eyes, then she gestures towards the alley. “Stay close to me?”

She doesn’t even need to ask. He always does anyway.

----

Hange’s more careful.

She doesn’t bound into a room, head first, arms akimbo. It’s as if over one expedition, she’s learned the art of scanning the room once or twice, before even stepping into the room. She walks more slowly. Levi used to quicken his pace almost comically just to catch Hange who’s a good few inches taller. Now, he finds he’s slowing his pace, just to match her stride.

He isn’t good with numbers but he’s counting just to keep to her pace. Before the expedition, how long was the walk from the survey corps commander’s office to the conference room? With Erwin, it was five minutes. With the ‘constantly-on-the go’ workaholic Hange, it was three minutes. At her peak of excitement, it took one minute.

Hange now, took far longer than that. He counts four hundred slow seconds, almost seven minutes, then he loses count again. Hange’s an oxymoron embodied. She’s busier than ever, completely buried in the mountains and mountains of paper work, flitting from one deliverable to the next.

But she’s slower, much slower than before, that even with his small stature, Levi doesn’t struggle to keep in pace.

And she’s silent, so much more silent.

Levi! Please! Just one experiment! Just capture one more titan for me! The halls used to be filled with so much more verbal garbage. Levi quickens his pace until he’s a few feet away, until he’s standing right in front of her, that she can’t so simply ignore him. “Hange.”

“Hm?” Hange widens her eye and cocks her head to the side in question.

“What if we go out?” he asks.

“Outside the wall…” She trails off. “To…titan territory?” she suggests. God knows where she got that idea.

“No, just… a vacation to another district. You need rest. I need rest.”

Hange lowers her head. “Let’s see what we can get done first…There are just too many meetings, too much paperwork. Erwin left so much behind, and with Moblit gone—”

“And that’s why we need to rest.”

She doesn’t hear or she pretends not to hear, and Levi doesn’t say it twice. He keeps quiet and falls behind as Hange walks ahead towards the conference hall.

He can’t simply say it. He chalks up this hesitance to some reverence towards their new commander and maybe a fear of insubordination, but something inside him is telling him it’s far deeper than that.

If he insists, she’ll deny, and there are far more productive ways to learn about Hange. Instead, he counts.

It takes a sluggish fifteen minutes to get to the conference room.

----

Hange is squinting.

Levi only notices it, because she doesn’t move as much. It’s like the life in her is concentrated into her remaining eye.

Long ago, she would be one of the first people out of the conference room after an hour long meeting with higher ups. This time, she waits at her table. She feigns business, her head hanging over the notebook in front of her.

The others probably don’t give her a second look. Only because it’s Hange, Levi does.

Lazy doodles, and some scribbles on the side. Among them are probably actual notes, but they’re not as detailed as what he’s used to, nor are they comprehensive enough to weigh her down while everyone leaves the room.

Levi settles on the seat next to her, and he waits. He doesn’t stare for longer than three seconds at a time (he counted), but she seems to notice anyway.

She shifts her eyes towards him, removes her glasses and wipes the lens with the edge of her collar. “Force of habit,” she mutters to herself, a sardonic smile on her face. Funnily enough, she wipes both of the lenses when she only needs one. “Maybe I should get a monocle.”

“You wouldn’t look good in one,” Levi deadpans.

Hange lets out a soft sigh. “I’ve always had bad eyesight, and since we got home, it’s only gotten worse.”

Well, of course it would, she’s only working with one eye now.

----

That conversation stays with Levi, long after the meeting ends. Their routine mellows to the same lull. A week passes then another, and although Levi gives her the opportunity to revisit the conversation, Hange doesn’t, as if she doesn’t want the break.

It’s as if she’s got a suicide wish. She wants to drown in the piles of paperwork.

One day, stiff at her desk, she broaches the topic, but not in a way Levi expected. “Levi, I won’t be coming in tomorrow morning.”

“You won’t be coming in…to the office?”

For a moment, Hange stares at the wall, confused, as if she’s having to check herself. It’s a simple back-and-forth, that comprises the simplest of expressions. There’s no misunderstanding between them, but Levi’s been searching for something for a while.

She’s taking the break alone, when I’ve been inviting her for weeks?

“I just have an appointment,” Hange says.

Levi raises one eyebrow, and he turns towards the door, then at her calendar on the desk. His eyes are sharp, and he could make out the blank space under Friday morning.

He looks back up at her. “Appointment?”

“A personal appointment.”

He stares at her expectantly for a while longer, but there’s some negative emotion welling inside him: jealousy or irritation, he can’t seem to comprehend it. He feels like a three year old again, wanting attention, but he’s an adult who’d had to mature far too quickly. He wants Hange’s attention, but he understands it isn’t as simple as that.

Hange senses it. “I’ll be back by lunch, or even before lunch.” She stares out the window. “The autumn foliage is nice this time of year.” Then she turns to him with a placating look. She’s definitely reading his mind. “Maybe use this as an opportunity to take a break?”

----

Take a break? Levi doesn’t. It isn’t as simple as that.

He doesn’t tell Hange, but he does a little reconnaissance on the meaning behind that little break. He’s asked Jean, Connie, Armin, Eren and Mikasa, any moment he’d catch them.

Armin and Mikasa have been rotting in the barracks since the long break he gave them. Eren has been god-knows-where. According to Armin, he’s been taking much longer walks since they returned, and he’s usually gone for days.

And Jean and Connie? They’ve been back-and-forth from the hospital, since they’ve gotten back from the expedition.

“Hange was here?” Levi asks. They’re all standing stupidly in the hallways, but Levi’s is careful about waking Sasha up.

Jean and Connie are—of course—just as careful of waking her. Jean leans on the doorway to Sasha’s room. “Just for a quick visit. She stayed long enough to talk to Sasha, but she seemed pressed for time.”

Levi blinks back surprise.

Jean puts his hands up. “Don’t worry about not visiting often. Armin and Mikasa are here most days, but they’ve been busy dealing with Eren too.”

“Work has been busy,” Levi says simply. “Did Hange tell you where she was going?”

Jean shook his head. “I was thinking you’d know, especially since you’re always with her.”

----

Levi doesn’t take a break. He walks the whole perimeter of the hospital. One hour passes, probably even another, and Jean even walks some of the hallways with him.

“You think the commander’s in the hospital?” he asks.

“She said she wouldn’t be in the office until one,” Levi answers.

Jean shrugs. “Well she can be anywhere. You know how Hange is.”

How the commander was. Jean hasn’t been with her enough. Hange has only been back-and-forth from the office and home, and she’d only gone out once to the festival. If Hange’s in the hospital, she’s likely still here.

That’s his best rationalization, but Levi doesn’t trust his own attempt with rationalization. His gut had always been so much better at trifling with these things. He keeps mum, and he looks at the clock—eleven.

He hasn’t even had lunch. “I’m going back,” he says.

“To the office?” Jean asks.

“There’s still a lot of work to do,” Levi says.

“Well, if you need anything from us…”

The offer feels warm, although Levi isn’t sure he’d take Jean or the others up on it. One thing he and Hange have in common, is how somehow, they’ve always sought comfort in the bustle that followed the expedition, not in the recovery that usually follows.

He grabs a piece of bread from the hospital cafeteria, and the clock reads a few hours before noon. He’s overestimated the amount of time this would take.

Jesus, he’s bad at math. Or maybe, he just wished time would go faster. He wants to go back to the office sooner. He just wants to see Hange again, that’s it. Wherever she is.

The autumn foliage is beautiful this time of year. Hange’s voice only echoes again, because the hospital courtyard is covered with that same foliage, and that one line is a rare commodity, the only remnant he has of the old Hange, albeit a subdued one.

The Hange of before fixated on even the most mundane things like the changing of seasons. The Hange of now seemed to space out, stare at nothings, fixate on the invisible, on things Levi could have sworn don’t even exist.

The reason he’s observing? He’s been looking for the Hange of before for a while, wondering if she existed still beyond the commander's facade, beyond the haze of duty, especially since Erwin’s death.

He finds her in a bout of coincidence or serendipity, when he particularly isn’t looking for her. Instead, he’d been looking for a bench to eat his bread. She’s in one of those benches in the hospital courtyard, tucked into some alcove. She’s staring up at the autumn sky, The bandage over her eye was replaced by an eyepatch, and her hands.

They aren’t holding piles of contracts or a little notebook where she’d usually jot down her notes. One hand rests lazily to her side, and the other, she reaches it up at the sky, as if she’s catching leaves.

Hange used to find happiness in that.

But this Hange approaches such a mundane activity with a strange type of focus. She furrows her brows and eyes the leaf like it’s some test subject. Levi closes in on her, his footsteps light enough that they don’t even crunch at the heaviest of foliage.

Most days, Hange’s sharp enough to notice him sneaking up. Today, it’s like she’s in her own world, as if there’s something far more fascinating about the falling autumn leaves. Levi doesn’t ask. He doesn’t want to take her out of her trance, so he simply watches from just a few feet away.

A small branch with a crack breaks from right above her.

Hange lunges up for it, her body moving in synchrony. Her agility and coordination are still there, but she misses a few inches. Her hands instead grabs for empty air.

For a moment, Hange looks terrified. Levi doesn’t take any chances. He moves at breakneck speed, and grabs the leaf from only inches from her face. “It’s a small branch… but when the wound over your eye is still healing…”

“It’s almost healed. It’s fine,” Hange says coldly. There’s no warm greeting in those words.

“Is it?” Levi asks. He sits back down on the bench right next to her, and shifts his eyes towards her in disbelief.

“The wound is…” Hange says. “I just went to the doctor today if that wasn’t obvious.”

“And?”

“They said there’s nothing they can do about my eyesight.” Just like that, the autumn just got a little chillier, and Levi could almost feel the first signs of the winter chill.

He’s seen far too much loss to see patterns in the seasons. Autumn is death. Winter is the grief that follows. But they can’t grieve forever, or they might as well just curl up and die.

That’s why we have spring. “So what now?” Levi asks. Long ago, Hange used to ask this same question. Long ago, she used to make deadlines for recovery…by spring, because there’s something more poetic about it.

Hange shakes her head. “I don’t know. I thought the doctors could find some way to fix my eyesight. I lose one eye, and suddenly I can’t tell far from near. Everything’s just flat land. I’m running on my memory of every place, but when things are falling, when there are crowds forming I just…I’m not as good as you at calculating, Levi.”

“Complete and utter bullshit.” This moment marks his first act of insubordination against the new commander, but something he’ll probably never regret. “You’ve always been better than me at Math.” He believes it with his whole heart, and he’d already prepared the ammunition, mentions of how quickly she’d calculated budgets and tariff rates. Among the surviving scouts, only Armin could match her intellect.

Meanwhile, Levi can only stare silently, as she rattles off rationalizations.

“Then how do you explain how good you are at dodging titan hands, and cutting them at the nape with just the right amount of force?”

Hange’s good at math, and she’s just as good at logic. Levi keeps mum, then he says six words he doesn’t think through. “That’s not math. I don’t calculate.”

If Hange thinks it’s a dumb answer, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she keeps her eyes trained on the trees just above. “The branches are at least four feet above me,” Hange says. “Am I correct?”

Just to humor her, he looks up. If he were honest, he doesn’t see numbers in height. He knows how far to jump or how long he has to get away, but he doesn’t see math the same way Hange does. “I don’t know, but you’re probably right. You always were when it came to numbers,” Levi says. “The same way Erwin was.”

“Levi, do me a favor?”

“Hm?”

“Catch a leaf.”

After that last bout of insubordination, he can’t say no. It takes him a mere split second.

“That was five inches from your face, and you knew it almost immediately,” Hange says. "I'm bad at that, now. I notice, one eye gone, I don’t see distance anymore. I’m trying to measure everything to make sense of it… the trees above are at least four feet above me, the leaves are inches from my hand, but numbers don’t matter when I can’t move my body in sync to what I see. I’m struggling to move through crowds. I’m hitting walls because I can’t slow down quickly…”

“That’s not math,” Levi says again, but this time he isn’t so sure if what he’s saying is true. Hange has always been smarter than him when it came to paperwork and numbers, but he’s confident in his fluency at motor skills. “You’re overthinking loss,” Levi says. “Four feet before is not the same for feet now. An inch from before is not the same inch now… We just have to relearn the meaning of ‘foot’ and ‘inch.’”

“We? You’re not the one missing an eye,” Hange says in challenge.

‘We’ because it’s his business just as much as it’s Hange’s. Levi fought hooligans and gang members with a swollen eye. Hell, he’s fought people blind before. There’s no way he’ll let Hange lay low over one loss. “You can go back and fight. You just have to accept this new field of vision. Walk through crowds, run into walls, learn your limitations. We have the rest of autumn and all the way until spring to figure this out. It’s not like we can schedule an expedition in this weather.”

“You think training can fix what losing an eye takes from you?” Since when has Hange been this cynical? It’s Levi’s job to be cynical. “I don’t even know if I’ll be able to fight like I used to.”

“You won’t,” Levi says simply. “But you’ll still be able to fight.”

“Why? Can you predict the future?” Hange turns towards him in challenge.

An overly idealistic Hange to a cynical Hange. The change is far too stark.