After I died

45

Anastasia

Back inside the walls Hanji decided to take us with her to Mitras, eventho that hadn't been the original plan. We joined the meeting after all the officials had left and it was just Hanji and Historia in the room. The queen smiled when seeing us and immeditaly walked over to hug Mikasa, Sasha and me. "It is so good to see all of you, how can I help?" "Well, Levi and Ana are getting married and we thought-", Hanji started but Historia interrupted her, smiling and clapping her hands. "That is wonderful, may I wed you?" "That actually is what we came here to ask you.", I replied. "I would love to.", Historia replied and back they all were to making plans.

After the whole meeting, the others went straight to the headquarters while Levi and I decided to pass by the orphanage first. Maggie was currently playing tag with her friends, but when she saw us, her whole face lit up and she ran over. I picked her up and she hugged me tight with her little arms. It was crazy how already one and quarter a year had passed since we brought her out from the underground city. She was 8 by now. "I missed you so much, little one.", I said while Levi ruffled her hair a bit. "How's it going, brat?"

I put Maggie back down as she took my hand with one of hers and Levi's with the other, leading us towards the orphanage building. "They're teaching us how to read and write. And I'm the fastest out of all the kids here.", she announced proudly. "Now that sounds like you're doing really good.", I replied and she nodded enthusiastically. When reaching her room, I squatted down to be on one eye level with her. "You know, Levi and I, we're getting married." Her face light up again."Really? Can I come? Pretty please." "Of course, Maggie." The little girl jumped around the room. "I get to come to mama and papa's wedding and wear a nice dress and dance and... will you have a big cake?" Her eyes were practically glowing as she asked about the cake. "Probably."

It was all the asnwer she needed to keep jumping around. Maggie wouldn't talk about anything else for the restof the day. Speakingof how prety we'd all look and how we'd have cake and all that, she was probably the most excited out of everyone we've told so far. I could see Levi smiling slightly as she told about how great that would be. Of course we had to leave again that evening but Maggie wasn't sad this time. She seemed already somewhere else in her head.

I spent some time each day with Armin and Hanji, checking the developements happening at our instruction site and trying to think of back up plans for the case that Yelena and Onyankopon were not on our side like they said they were. It was Tuesday morning as I was sitting in Hanji's office with her and Armin, silently checking lists when Armin sudenly asked: "Commander Hanji?" "Yes?" "Who had the last word about saving me instead of Erwin? I mean, who convinced captain Levi?" Hanji sighed, putting the list down that she'd been checking. "Well, to be honest, it was Ana.", she then said and I looked up. "Me? I wasn't even there."

Armin looked confused as well so Hanji decided to elaborate. "I remembered a conversation we had some time ago. Ana, you told me back then that you admired Armin for how contagious his dreams were and how much hope he gave you with his optimistic behaviour." "Yes, I remember that.", I replied and she continued. "You also said if you had to choose between Armin and someone who was just strong or experienced, you'd choose Armin. And we realised that Erwin had always been fighting to find that one answer, to get to that basement, we didn't know what he'd do after achieving that but Armin, you wanted to see the sea and find the world beyond the walls and now we need that more than to just find this one answer."

I was looking between Armin and Hanji. "But again, I wasn't even there to bring that up." "Well, I told Levi that that's what you told me and you know he cares for your opinion more than anyone elses, including mine, probably." Armin looked back over at me. "Guess I should thank you then-" "No.", I interrupted him. "You were the right choice, yes Levi puts much weight on my opinion but in the end he decided himself to save you. And now you gotta keep fighting to prove that it was the right decision which I know it was. And now let's get to combat training, Levi's gonna be mad if we're late." I got up from the couch that I'd been sitting on and went to the door.

The others were already present at the training grounds. They had a few of the guns there and the regular rifles that we'd used before. "There you are, finally. So we can start now, first thing we will go over, because it's probably gonna take the longes to learn, is these guns. Ana." I went over to get one of the guns and took the pieces apart. "You have several bullets in this gun, which means you to not have to reload after every shot like you do with the rifles. So, you make sure that the gun is loaded before taking it with you, then you cock it with this little thing here and aim."

I started explaining how the push back worked and how they best hold it to not injure their shoulders too much with it. Most of them got it pretty quickly but they still had to get their aim better. Aiming with a gun or rifle were indeed two different pairs of shoes. Over the next week we trained close combat, gun handling and also got a little deeper into the rifles. I picked out Sasha and Connie specifically to train sniping. We would probably need some precice long distance shooters at one point so it wouldn't hurt to have two of them already in the team so we didn't have to rely on other troops.