Chapter 13: Chapter 13
The silence in Sage’s room was a thin veneer over the cacophony in her head. Every throb in her leg replayed a moment: the anchor firing, the belt cinching, the creature’s wet shriek. She stared at the water stain on the ceiling, tracing its contours like a map to nowhere. A firm, rapid knock broke her reverie.
Before she could answer, the door opened. It was Hange, their usual manic energy subdued into something sharper, more urgent. They held a clean uniform and a small medical kit. “Infirmary’s overflowing. Erwin’s orders. You’re to be patched up and presentable for debrief in one hour.” They tossed the clothes onto the bed. “Can you stand?”
“Yes,” Sage said, pushing herself up. The answer was technically true.
“Good. Clean up. I’ll wrap the leg.” Hange’s tone brooked no argument. They worked with clinical efficiency, unwinding the old, blood-stained bandages. The gashes were angry, inflamed, but clean. “Levi said you ran on this.”
“I did.”
“Idiotic. Brilliant, but idiotic.” Hange applied a pungent salve, making Sage hiss. “He also said you read the fight with the aberrant. Threw a sword as a distraction.”
Sage remained silent, watching Hange’s focused face.
“He doesn’t say things like that.” Hange glanced up, their single visible eye probing. “Not without meaning them. It changes the calculus, you understand? For him. For Erwin.” They finished the new bandage with a tight knot. “Get dressed. The Commander doesn’t like to wait.”
Three floors up, the air was colder. The stone walls of the command tower muffled the distant sounds of reconstruction, replacing them with a pressurized quiet. Levi stood at rigid attention before Erwin Smith’s broad oak desk. Hange lounged against a bookshelf to his left, fiddling with a strange, desiccated piece of flesh from the creature—a souvenir.
Erwin did not look up from the field report in his hands. The only sounds were the rustle of paper and the steady drip-drip-drip of water from Hange’s specimen into a tin bowl they’d placed on the floor.
The clock on the wall ticked off a full minute.
Finally, Erwin lowered the papers. His blue eyes, usually the colour of a strategic map, were the shade of glacial ice. He looked first at Hange. “Your preliminary analysis of the specimen?”
Hange straightened, their voice shedding its casual edge. “It’s not a pure titan. The cellular structure is similar, but the regeneration is exponentially faster. The musculoskeletal design is predatory, quadrupedal, built for pursuit in dense terrain. It’s as if something took the core principle of a titan and… refined it for a specific hunting purpose. It followed sound. It followed them.”
“It followed a unique auditory signal,” Erwin corrected, his gaze sliding to Levi. “A signal that deviated from established protocol.”
Here it came. Levi didn’t move a muscle.
“Captain.” Erwin’s voice was deceptively soft. “Explain to me the sequence of events after the western breach. Your mission was to reconnoitre the interior of Wall Maria for any abnormal titan clustering.”
“It was,” Levi stated.
“Your report states you completed that reconnaissance, confirming the absence of major clusters, and then initiated return.” Erwin picked up a single sheet of paper. “Yet your return trajectory, as plotted by the watchtower observers, shows a radical, unsanctioned detour. A detour that took you directly through the most densely wooded sector of the territory, at night, with a compromised squad.” He paused. “Why?”
Levi’s jaw tightened. “I observed a flare.”
“A standard distress signal? The watchtowers reported no standard flares in that sector.”
“It wasn’t standard.”
Erwin let the silence hang. He leaned forward, his large hands flat on the desk. “It was pink, wasn’t it, Levi? A neon pink flare. The kind you privately issued to a single soldier, against all regulations, without logging it in the corps munitions register.”
Hange’s fidgeting stopped. They stared at Levi, their scientific curiosity momentarily overridden by sheer astonishment.
Levi said nothing.
“You had critical intelligence on interior troop movements,” Erwin continued, his voice beginning to climb, a slow, rolling thunder. “You had a clear path back to a secured rally point. You had a duty to that intelligence, and to the soldiers under your command who survived the initial breach. And you abandoned that duty because you saw a pink light in the sky.”
“It was a distress signal,” Levi repeated, his tone flat.
“It was a joke!” Erwin’s fist came down on the desk, not with a bang, but with a hard, solid thump that made the inkwell rattle. “A childish, absurd, conspicuous joke between you and Renn! A signal that would be ignored by every other officer in the corps as a misfire or a prank! You built a private failsafe, and then you used it to justify a decision that risked the entirety of your mission!”
“The mission was compromised the moment the wall was breached,” Levi shot back, a flicker of defiance in his eyes. “The intelligence was secondary to extraction.”
“Your extraction was assured! Hers was not! That is the reality of command!” Erwin stood, his height imposing, his presence filling the room. “You inserted a personal variable into a tactical equation. You prioritised a single life over the strategic objective. Do you deny it?”
“No.”
The blunt admission seemed to fuel Erwin’s anger further. “What if Hange’s squad had not been in range to intercept? What if that… thing had killed you both? We would have lost our strongest soldier and gained nothing but a mystery! All for what? Because you have a soft spot for a reckless recruit who throws swords instead of following orders?”
Levi’s eyes narrowed. “She read the fight. She adapted. She survived. That’s more than most ‘compliant’ soldiers manage against a new variable.”
“Do not mistake survival for efficacy, Captain.” Erwin’s voice dropped, becoming dangerously calm. “Her survival, and yours, was a product of luck and Hange’s proximity. The pink flare was an act of sentimental idiocy. It undermines protocol. It creates doubt. If your special signals are honoured, why should any soldier bother with the standard ones? You have made your judgment subjective.”
Levi finally broke his stance, taking a single step forward. The air in the room crackled. “The standard signals weren’t an option. The castle was overrun. She used the tool she had. I responded. That’s the end of it.”
“It is not the end of it!” Erwin’s composure snapped. “You will be fined a month’s wages for the unlogged munitions. You will submit a formal addendum to your report, justifying your detour with tactical reasons I will personally approve. And you will never issue a non-regulation signal again. Do you understand me?”
The two men locked eyes, a battle of wills without movement. Hange held their breath, the specimen forgotten.
“Yes, sir,” Levi said, the words clipped and final.
Erwin held his gaze for a long moment, then slowly sat back down. The anger drained from his face, replaced by a weary calculation. “The creature changes things. Hange, you will have full priority for its analysis. Levi, your… intervention… has, ironically, provided us with our first tangible piece of this new puzzle. That is the only reason this is not a court martial.”
He steepled his fingers. “Now. The soldier, Renn. You say she read the fight. Hange confirms the creature’s behaviour was aberrant, unpredictable. Is her recklessness a manageable variable, or a liability?”
Levi didn’t hesitate. “She’s manageable.”
“See that she is.” Erwin picked up a new report, dismissing them. “You are both dismissed. Send Renn in on your way out. I’ll have her account now.”
Levi turned on his heel and left, the door closing with a soft, definitive click behind him. Hange scurried after, grabbing their dripping specimen bowl.
In the stark, empty hallway, Levi paused. He could hear the faint, uneven cadence of footsteps on the stone stairs below. Sage, coming up for her debrief. He didn’t wait. He moved down the corridor in the opposite direction, his own footsteps silent. The echo of Erwin’s words—sentimental idiocy—hung in the quiet air around him, a cold condemnation he couldn’t quite shake. He had been yelled at for less, but never for something that felt, in the silent, hidden chambers of his mind, so unequivocally right.
He passed her on the stairwell. Their shoulders almost brushed in the narrow space. She was clean, her hair damp, the new uniform stark against her pallor. He didn’t stop. He didn’t look at her. But as he moved past, descending into the gloom, his hand rose almost imperceptibly, a single finger briefly tapping his own ribcage where the creature’s tail had struck. A silent signal: Remember your story. Then he was gone, leaving only the chill of the stone and the scent of soap and iron in his wake.
Sage pushed open the heavy oak door to Erwin’s office. The room smelled of old books, strong tea, and a sharp, medicinal odor from Hange’s specimen bowl, which now sat, forgotten, on a side table. Erwin was not at his desk. He stood by the large window, his back to her, a silhouette against the grey afternoon light filtering through the compound’s dust.
“Close the door, Renn.”
She did. The latch clicked with finality. He didn’t turn.
“Your written report is spare,” he began, his voice conversational, as if discussing the weather. “It omits key details. The state of your leg prior to the breach. The precise manner of your extraction from the castle. The functionality of your ODM gear at the time of the pink flare’s deployment.” He finally turned. His face was impassive, but his eyes were not that of a commander assessing a soldier. They were colder, deeper, a private disappointment that cut far worse than shouted blame. “We will start with the leg. You were on restricted duty. Explain.”
Sage straightened her spine, ignoring the protest from her thigh. “The castle was collapsing, sir. Restricted duty parameters didn’t apply. Running was the only option.”
“Running exacerbated your injury. It made you a liability to your team and to the captain who diverted for you.” He took a single step toward her. “A liability I cannot afford. Not now. Not with what we face.”
“I understand, Commander.”
“Do you?” He moved to the front of his desk, leaning against it, his arms crossed. The casual posture was a trap. “Let’s discuss the flare. A neon pink canister. Where did you acquire it?”
She held his gaze. “It was issued to me, sir.”
“By whom?”
“I believe you know, sir.”
A flicker of something dangerous passed behind his eyes. “I know many things. I know Captain Ackerman has never, in his entire tenure, broken munitions protocol. Until you. I know he has never filed a falsified mission addendum. Until today, on your behalf.” He pushed off the desk, his voice dropping, losing all pretense of official detachment. “What is happening between you two?”
The air left the room. The question wasn’t about tactics or protocol. It was intimate, invasive, and laced with a simmering fury that had nothing to do with survey corps regulations.
“He’s my captain, sir. I follow his orders.”
“Don’t,” Erwin said, the word sharp as a blade. “Don’t insult my intelligence. I saw how he looked when he left this room. I’ve just spent twenty minutes listening to him defend a decision that borders on insubordination, using logic he would eviscerate in anyone else.” He closed the distance between them. The familial resemblance, usually so carefully masked, seemed stark in the taut line of his jaw, the intensity of his stare. “He risked everything for a signal no one else would answer. So I will ask you directly, and you will answer. Are you having a romantic relationship with the captain, Sage?”
Her name, not her title, hung in the space between them. She tried to hold his stare, to match the glacial blue with her own green defiance. She saw the commander, but beneath it, she saw the man who had made a different, colder calculation years ago. The man whose secrets she carried like a birthmark. Her eyes flickered, betraying her, dropping to the floor between them.
Erwin let out a slow, controlled breath. It wasn’t relief. It was confirmation of a new, more complicated threat.
“Look at me.”
She forced her head up.
“You will end it.” His voice was low, absolute, leaving no room for argument. “You will cease whatever this is immediately. You will interact with Captain Ackerman with professional detachment only. Is that clear?”
A hot spike of anger cut through her fatigue. “With all due respect, sir, you don’t get to give me orders about my private—”
“I am your commander! Every part of you that wears this uniform belongs to me!” he roared, the control shattering. Then, quieter, deadly. “And I am your father. That part of you belongs to me too. And I am telling you, this is a catastrophe waiting to happen.”
The word, never spoken aloud within these walls, reverberated like a gunshot. Sage felt unmoored, the room tilting.
“He cannot know,” Erwin pressed, his tone relentless. “No one can. Your value, your safety, his focus—it all hinges on you being just another soldier. A romantic entanglement with him? The most observant, most dangerous man in the regiment? It is a direct threat to that secrecy. It is a selfish, juvenile risk that jeopardizes everything I have built to protect you.”
“Protect me?” The laugh that escaped her was hollow and brittle. “You hid me to protect your position. Your ambition. Don’t dress it up as paternal concern now.”
For a split second, she saw it—a flash of pain so raw it looked like a physical wound. It was gone instantly, sealed behind the commander’s mask. “My reasons are irrelevant. The fact remains. Your connection to him makes you a vulnerability. To yourself, to him, and to this corps. He is a weapon, Sage. The finest weapon we have. I will not let your feelings dull his edge or get him killed because he’s distracted by a secret he can’t even name.”
He walked back to the window, dismissing her. “The order stands. End it. Or I will transfer you to the southern garrison so far from the walls you’ll forget what a titan looks like. And I will make sure Levi never knows why.”
Sage stood rooted, the blood pounding in her ears. She saw the river stone on her nightstand in her mind, its smooth surface a token of a world outside these calculating walls. She saw Levi’s hand tapping his ribs on the stairs. A silent understanding, built in a mill and forged in a bloody clearing, was now being severed by a command in a quiet room.
“Dismissed,” Erwin said, not turning around.
She turned and left, the door closing softly behind her. The hallway was empty and cold. She leaned against the rough stone wall, her breath coming in short, quiet gasps. The order was an iron cage. But the memory of the belt cinching around her, of shared flight, of a hand gripping hers in the dark, was a key she hadn't known she possessed. She pushed off the wall and began the long walk back to her room, each step a silent rebellion.
She pushed off the wall and began the long walk back to her room, each step a silent rebellion. The corridor felt longer than the forest path, the stone walls pressing in with the weight of Erwin’s ultimatum. End it. The words were a drumbeat in her skull, marching in time with the throb of her leg.
Her room offered no solace. The maps on the wall were just lines on paper, fantasies of a world beyond this gilded cage. The half-empty glass of water sat where she’d left it, a monument to the life interrupted. She sank into the chair at her small desk, pulling a fresh sheet of paper toward her. The official debrief was over. Now came the sanitized version for the permanent record.
Her pen scratched against the paper, lies forming in neat, disciplined rows. Sustained leg injury during initial collapse. Evacuated with Squad Leonhart. Used standard-issue flare. Each sentence was a betrayal of the truth, a burial of the pink light, the belt, the shared silence in the mill. She wrote until the words blurred.
A soft tap at the doorframe. She hadn’t even heard it open.
Levi stood there, a clean black shirt replacing his blood-stained one, his hair damp. He held two steaming mugs. He didn’t ask to enter. He just did, placing one mug on the desk beside her papers. The scent of strong, bitter tea cut through the room’s stale air.
“Hange said you skipped the mess hall,” he said, his voice low.
She kept her head down, pretending to focus on her writing. “Not hungry.”
He didn’t leave. He leaned against the wall near the window, sipping his own tea, watching her. His presence was a solid, quiet thing in the room, both a comfort and a condemnation. It was the thing Erwin had ordered her to dismantle.
The silence stretched, filled only by the scratch of her pen. A drop of water fell from the damp end of her braid, hitting the paper and smudging the ink. She stared at the blue-black bloom, and the careful wall she’d built crumbled all at once.
A hot tear followed the path of the water droplet, then another. She squeezed her eyes shut, but it was useless. They fell silently, splashing onto the false report.
“Why are you crying?”
His question wasn’t gentle. It was direct, almost clinical, as if assessing a new symptom. She hadn’t heard him move, but he was closer, his shadow falling across the desk.
She wiped her cheek with a rough, angry hand, smearing ink. “It’s nothing. Just tired. My leg hurts.”
“You’re a shit liar, Renn.” He didn’t sound angry. He sounded certain. “Erwin reamed you out. So what? He reams everyone out. That’s not this.”
The use of her surname, his usual sharp formality, felt like a door closing. The order echoed. End it. This was where she was supposed to construct a professional distance, to push him away with cold efficiency. Instead, the truth, the colossal, hidden truth, pressed against her ribs, demanding release. He deserved to know what he was really caught in.
She took a shuddering breath, staring at the ruined report. “I have to tell you something.” Her voice was a broken thing. “And you can’t tell anyone that you know. You can’t say anything about it. Not a word. If he finds out I told you… he’ll send me to Wall Sina. For good.”
Levi was very still. The steam from his mug curled, undisturbed. “Okay.”
His voice was flat. Accepting. It was the tone of a man who expected bad news, who had already braced for a blow. It broke her heart.
She turned in her chair to face him, her green eyes glistening with a pain that had nothing to do with physical wounds. The confession left her in a whisper, so faint it was almost stolen by the dusty air between them. “Erwin… he’s my father.”
For a moment, nothing happened. The words simply hung, incomprehensible. Then Levi faltered. A slight, almost imperceptible recoil, as if he’d been slapped. The placid certainty drained from his face, replaced by a blank, processing shock. His grey eyes, usually so focused, flickered over her features—searching, re-evaluating every interaction, every glance, every calculated risk.
“…What?”
It was just a word. But in it, she heard the foundation of his understanding—of her, of Erwin, of his own place between them—crack and begin to shift. He didn’t move. He just stared, waiting for the world to reassemble itself into a shape that made a terrible, new sense.