After I died

27

Anastasia

"Ana... talk to me." Levi was looking at me from the side. I couldn't lie to him, he knew.Why else would he ever ask a question like that? Levi spoke up again before I was able to finish my line of thought. "I get why you didn't say anything about it. It sounds like something Hanji would make up at 3am after not having slept in a week, but you have to tell me the truth." "I was shot.", I mumbled. "I don't know by who but it was on a mission... I was actually glad. If it wasn't for this, I would've never been able to escape the anchor."

Levi was just standing there, watching me like he was still trying to get a hold of this. "So you're.... really dead." "Yes." "And that woman from Kenny's team...?" I sighed, finally looking up but not in his direction. "We grew up together. She died when we were 19... also on a mission. I know this sounds crazy but-" "Don't care how crazy it sounds." Levi interrupted me. "Look, right now, there's a handfull of people that we can trust an you are one of those people, so I'm offering this once and never again... whatever you tell me, I'll believe you no matter how crazy it sounds but in exchange you have to tell me these things, yeah?"

I slowly nodded, finally looking over at him. "Alright.... I promise." "Good." He started walking. "Now that that's cleared up, let's get back to Orvud." I walked next to Levi in silence for a bit, before finally speaking up about something that's been on my mind. The thought of Eren telling us about the 'founding titan' and how it could defeat all the titans but noone who inherited it, made use of that power because they got corrupted by the first king who probably created the walls. "I have an idea why King Fritz and the titan heirs corrupted by him don't want to defeat all titans." "Go on."

"There must be something behind the titans. Something worse than them. Where I come from there's no titans but the world is still doomed by war and conflict. Because when humans don't have a common threat to fight, they fight eachother." Levi nodded along, he seemed to understand what I was getting at. "I think outside of the walls and far away from the titans, there's a world like mine, they don't fight titans so they fight each other. Maybe the king was trying to keep his people safe by just locking them up, not necessarily the right thing to do but nevertheless effective."

"And how'd you get to all that?", Levi asked as we were quite close to the wall already. "Well, we had similar tactics at the Anchor. If we wanted someone to be our ally, we created an enemy that forced them to work with us in order to survive. Or when wetried to keep someone safe from another organisation, we made them hide away by sending threats and causing smaller 'accidents'. We gave them a threat that was bad enough to make them lock themselves up into safety, but not as bad as what was actually after them." "You're saying the titans are either a unifying enemy or a puffer zone between us and an even bigger enemy?"

I wasn'tsue if he was convinced by my theory but he hadn't made a sarcastic comment about it yet so my chances seemed pretty good. "Maybe both. Andif we assume I'm right and these people outside know about us...maybe they were the ones who destroyed the walls. No one living inside of them himself would do something like that, they must be from somewhere else. I'm... I'm saying that as someone with experience in infiltrating other contries to secure my own, that is exactly whatI would do if I saw a threat in the people behind the walls." Levi looked up, thoughtfull expression replaced by someting more like realisation. Was he actually believing me?

"You shoud tell that to Erwin. Maybe he's had this conclusion as well by now but if not, he should consider it before we start some huge expedition just to end up at war with someone else.", Lvi said, pulling my over by he waist and hookig his 3dmg into the wall to get us up. "I could've also just done that myself, you know, my 3dmgis totally fine." "So?" I was about to reply, but just as we landed on the wall, Hanji pulled me away. "Sorry, I'll give her back in just a minute.", she said, pulling me with her as she started to walk away from Levi.

"What hell had to break tobreak loose for you to kiss Levi and not immediatly tell me about it?!" "Well, we had to rescue Eren and Historia.", I replied, sterrign our walking path a bit so that we'd end up near Erwin at somepoint so I could inform him about my theory. "That is not good enough of reason. Let 'em die, I'd say. This is a kind of situation that needs immediat counceling. So tell me now, what happened?" "We were fighting, cuz he wanted to send me back to the headquarters instead of letting me help with rescuing Eren and Historia. It got to the point where I didn't get why he was so convinced I'd die and he told me he loved me. Well, 'told' is the wrong word, he yelled at me, to be fair, I was yelling too."

Hanji was practically bouncing up and down next to me at this point. "And then?" "Well, I didn'trealllyknow what to say and I didn't plan to but I kissed him and then you came in." She gave me this disappointed look when I hinted at the fact that she interrupted the whole. "Damn it, I should've come later."