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tsaomengde · 1 year

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“The Mission”

A short story about love, time travel, healing, spaceplanes, and making the world a better place, even when no one will ever know.

---

After the TAG forces shot me out of my cockpit in low orbit, I floated there for about six hours. Something – probably debris from my fighter – had hit me in the back, hard, and I couldn’t feel anything below my waist. My suit’s maneuvering jets let me correct the initial nauseating spin I was thrown into, but they didn’t have sufficient thrust to get me out of my unstable, highly eccentric orbit.

My suit told me I had about eight or nine trips around Titan before my periapsis wobbled low enough into the atmosphere that drag would bring me down below escape velocity. At that point, gravity would catch up with me, I would fall, and I would crash into the surface and die. The suit had an emergency beacon, but no built-in communications beyond that. I was alone in the silent dark.

I sped around the moon at a little less than ten thousand kilometers per hour. The view of Saturn, for the parts of the orbit where it wasn’t eclipsed by Titan, was gorgeous. That was a small comfort, as my brain endlessly analyzed the ways I could go. A bit of debris from the battle could kill me outright at these speeds, or it could puncture the suit on a glancing hit and it would be a toss-up whether I would die of suffocation or extreme cold. My oxygen meter also claimed I had about three hours of air left, which meant I would probably be unconscious or dead by the time I actually hit the ground. And, of course, there was the matter of my probably-broken spine. I suspected I was bleeding internally from that.

Later, when I woke up in a hospital bed on the Agamemnon, they told me that the TAG brass had transmitted a formal surrender eighty-seven seconds after my fighter had exploded. I was officially the last casualty of the Earth-Titan war.

They fitted me with prosthetics so I could still walk, but as the physical therapist with the cute dimples explained to me, there was some kind of incompatibility with my chromosomal something-or-other that meant I couldn’t use them at a hundred percent, which meant I didn’t qualify for combat. My spine, which had indeed been broken, was too damaged to repair with conventional methods. That left experimental regenerative genetic surgery, which was more expensive than the navy was willing to shell out for.

So, at thirty-one, after thirteen years in the navy, I got out with an honorable discharge, a pension that was decent enough but far from what it would take to fix my spine, a chromium heart for my injury, and enough PTSD to fuck me over for the rest of my life.

---

“I don’t care about my legs,” I said to Kate, the first time we ever met. We picked a bar about halfway between us for our first meeting. She had a gin gimlet with cucumber simple syrup. I had an old fashioned. “They get me from point A to point B just fine. I just miss flying.”

“Were you good at it?” she asked, blue eyes very wide.

“I certainly thought so. But then some TAG dipshit blew me out of my fighter above Titan and ended my career, so maybe I was less good than I thought.”

“You can’t fly for one of the intrasolar shipping companies?” she asked. “Or transport?”

I gave her a patient smile. “Do you know what a pilot actually does aboard one of those big fusion torchships?”

“No, actually.”

“They point the nose where the destination is going to be, fire the engine for half the trip, then flip the ship around and fire the engine for the other half. There’s nothing to that. I miss flying.”

She nodded sympathetically. “I understand.” I could tell she didn’t, not really, but that she wanted to.

I moved in with her a few months later. Part of me wondered if it was a good idea, moving so fast, but I was two years from Titan and still waking up screaming in the middle of the night, convinced I was back in my suit, in the dark above the moon. The greater part of me, the selfish part, was happy that someone was there to touch me, to talk to me, to root me back in myself and pull me back to earth from up there in the black.

In that sense, Kate could have been anyone. I never thought of her as replaceable, but there was always a vague sense of guilt, of knowing that I was definitely getting more from the relationship than she was. I voiced this to her once, and she told me I was being silly, and that she loved me, and that was all she needed.

So when she first approached me with her idea for the Mission, I like to think it was that part of me, the part that wanted to be more for her, that moved me to say yes to what was honestly an idiotic idea. Not the part that missed flying. Just selfless altruism and desire to help the woman I loved.

I like to think that a lot.

---

We cracked time travel about a decade after I was born. Much to our collective disappointment as a species, it was not the fun kind of time travel that lets you go back in time and kill Hitler.

Kate, as she told me once we were living together, was part of a DOD think tank tasked with finding some kind of use for the technology. After a lot of experimentation, they came up with what Kate called the Four Rules.

1. It’s time travel, not space travel. If you want to meet Julius Caesar, you had best make sure you’re in Europe when you travel back.

2. It only works by going back. There is no forward travel because the future hasn’t happened yet. The only exception is returning to your point of origin.

3. If you actually do meet Julius Caesar, it’s because your meeting him will not change history in any measurable way. If you try to go back in time to change something significant, it simply doesn’t work. The little box makes the noise, it uses up a lot of energy, and then nothing happens.

4. The corollary rule to number three, then, is that when you travel back in time, whatever you do end up doing has already happened.

I asked Kate what this meant about determinism versus free will, and she primly replied that she was a theoretical physicist, not a philosopher. The DOD was not known for employing philosophers and paying them the kind of money they were paying her.

---

The Mission’s personnel consisted of four people. Myself, the heroic pilot. Kate, the brains behind the time travel stuff and the one who came up with the Mission to begin with. Leon, the aerospace engineer slash DOD contractor. And Ash, the director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. We would go over to Ash’s place, have dinner, and conspire.

Over one such dinner – mac and cheese with broccoli, I remember it vividly for no adequate reason – we discussed the logistical difficulties involved.

“We can’t use anything from the last century,” Leon was saying around a mouthful of mac. “All the guidance systems on those ships are keyed into the orbital satellite network. There’s nothing like that at the target time. We need a craft that can achieve orbit, rendezvous, and de-orbit in a single stage, without remote guidance.”

I nodded. “That means we need a spaceplane. Not just a fighter, but an actual spaceplane.”

Ash chewed over the problem as well as their food. “There might be an SR-75 in decent enough shape we could appropriate from the displays at the museum. The hardest part will be bribing the transport operators to take it to home base instead of, you know, a navy cache where highly dangerous military surplus equipment is supposed to go.”

I raised an eyebrow at them. “That’s going to be the hardest part? What about getting the parts to get it into decent working condition, or the fuel?”

Leon waved a hand dismissively. “Do you know how many spare parts I have lying around at work? How many millions of tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen are stored in poorly-guarded places that I have access to?”

“No. I’m guessing the answer to both is ‘more than the general public would be comfortable knowing about.’”

“Exactly.”

I looked at Kate. “Is the magic box going to be able to send a whole spaceplane back, kitty?”

She wrinkled her nose at me for using her pet name in front of our friends, but let it go for the moment. “The magic box can send anything back given enough juice.”

“Okay, but is the shitty little battery at home base going to be able to give it enough?”

“Probably. If we strip everything nonessential out of the spaceplane, get the mass down as much as possible. I need to know the exact mass of the plane, plus us, when it’s ready for travel.” Kate shrugged. “If it won’t be enough, we can always add to our list of capital offenses and steal a torchship, then use its fusion reactor for the power.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Last resort.”

---

“I don’t really understand why we’re doing this,” I told her one night, in the silence following her helping me out of another flashback.

She shifted a little in bed so she could look me in the eye. “You said you were on board.”

“I am. I’d do anything you asked, kitty, you know that. And obviously I’m excited to get to fly again. But nothing we’re going to do is actually going to matter. That’s one of the four rules, right?”

With a little shrug, she began running her fingers through my hair, which I’d stopped bothering to keep short after I was discharged years ago. It was pretty long by now. “It’ll matter to us, won’t it? And to her?”

“I mean, sure, but the risk-reward ratio is way off. You and Leon and Ash could all lose your jobs, we could get prosecuted by the Justice Department –”

“Vee, why did you sign up to be a pilot?”

I stopped. “I mean, I always wanted to fly.”

“Yes, but what was the reason you put on your application? And the reason you told me on our first date when we were still trying to look really good and put together for one another?”

That took me back, and I snorted gently. “To make the world a better place.”

“Exactly. Does there have to be a minimum threshold of goodness increase in order for an altruistic act to be worthwhile?”

I weighed that particular bit of moral utilitarianism in my mind before I committed to an answer. “No.”

“So, that’s why we’re doing this. To make the world a better place, even by the tiniest, slimmest margin.”

I gently snaked a hand out from under the comforter to lightly boop her on the nose. “And the real reason, since we’re not on our first date and this isn’t an application you’re filling out?”

She stuck her tongue out at me. “I know how much you want to fly again. And I want to see my magic box used for something other than letting rich assholes reenact Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’ without any of the nuance or lessons learned.”

“Dinosaur leather shoes is not the outcome you probably had in mind,” I agreed. The time-travel hunting industry generated billions for the government every year now.

We fell asleep that night, and the next morning, we took a magtrain to Vegas, and from there we went to home base.

---

Home base was an abandoned aircraft hangar in the middle of the Nevada desert. Leon had said something about centuries-old top-secret aircraft testing, when we first conceived of the Mission, and lo and behold, there was a facility with room for a spaceplane. We spent far too much money on the highest-capacity quantum battery civilians could buy, hooked it into the Vegas grid, and watched it take eight weeks to charge.

It had also cost far too much money to bribe the transport operators to bring the SR-75 here, but the deed was done and they hadn’t sold us out so far. They probably assumed we were aviation junkies. What domestic terrorists would bother stealing a hundred-year-old spaceplane when there were far cheaper and more effective ways to kill people, these days?

Kate, Leon, Ash, and I sat at a small table in a corner of the hangar, drinking coffee and going over the ascent profile. Ash’s part was done, having delivered the goods, but they wanted to be here for everything, and I certainly respected that. The spaceplane took up the majority of the hangar space, a sleek black dagger with barely a suggestion of wings to either side. The underside was dominated by a pair of huge jet intakes, and the rear of the plane sported three engine nozzles, the center much larger than either of the ones flanking it. A gracefully curved tail fin slightly forward of the engines completed the vessel’s profile.

“The plane looks like it’s in good condition,” Leon was saying. “I’ve sourced the fuels we need. The main problem is going to be the timing, not the equipment.”

“How so?” Kate asked.

I spoke up. “The SR-75 should theoretically be able to hit escape velocity just on the air-breathing engine mode, but the target has an extremely elliptical orbit, and we’re launching much closer to the equator, so we’ll have to adjust our inclination, too. That means either a lot of burns with the rocket fuel mode once we’re in vacuum, or a very steep climb to orbit. That pronounced an angle of attack might affect the engines’ ability to get enough air to achieve escape velocity.”

Kate blinked. “Still not seeing how that affects the timing.”

I pulled out my personal comm, laid it on the table, and put it in draw mode, so I could trace pictures on its screen with the tip of my finger. I drew a little ball, the Earth, and traced a messy, elliptical orbit around it. I indicated the very top of the orbit, where the line peaked like a mountain summit. “We have about a thirty-minute window to achieve rendezvous with the target. We need to rendezvous at or near its apoapsis, here, where its orbital speed is lowest and matching relative velocity will be easiest.”

I loved Kate, but it was endlessly amusing to me how she could understand quantum and temporal physics and articulate mathematical concepts I could never grasp in a million years, yet still not understand basic orbital mechanics. She gave me a blank look, then just said, “And that’s hard?”

“Yes. It is very hard, kitty. We are trying to hit a target the size of, roughly, a bullet train car, except the target is going twenty-eight thousand kilometers per hour. We need to come alongside it, match velocity with it, perform our docking maneuver, and then decouple. And the parameters of the Mission mean that there is exactly one half-hour window we can do this in if we’re going to avoid violating rule three.”

“I think the best solution is going to be adding some external rocket fuel tanks,” Leon said. “Not much, since we have to think about flight performance and transit mass for the magic box, but even a few hundred extra meters per second of delta-vee might make the difference in your ability to match orbits with the target.”

“Agreed. Just make sure the Goddamn things aren’t going to come loose at Mach fuck-you.”

Leon grinned at me. “I love your optimism, Vee.”

---

Unlike with most modern fighters, and indeed with even-older jet aircraft, the SR-75 did not have a fully enclosed cockpit. The pilot sat in a big swiveling chair in front of the instrument panel, and the main cabin of the craft was accessible from there. It was a spaceplane, and therefore supposed to be able to perform orbital docking maneuvers exactly like the one we were about to attempt, which necessitated the crew being able to actually get up and access the docking port without going fully extravehicular.

Kate sat behind me in a second chair that Leon bolted in there for her. She had the magic box in her lap, hooked up by a pair of very fat and long yellow wires to the bulk of the quantum battery, which squatted heavily just slightly off-center in the SR-75’s main cabin. (“Gotta keep that center of mass where it’s supposed to be,” Leon had said.) She was doing something with the box’s controls, squinting at the small readout which displayed some kind of complicated waveform.

“I’ll initiate the breach when we get to fifteen thousand meters,” she told me. “It wouldn’t do for anyone to actually see us at the target time, because then it just wouldn’t work, but I would rather not get shot down by our modern-day autonomous airspace defenses.”

“Sounds good,” I told her. “Hey. Kate.”

“Yes, Vee?”

I craned my neck around as best I could while strapped into the pilot’s seat. “I love you, kitty.”

Her cheeks darkened a little and she smiled. “I love you too.”

I keyed in the ignition sequence and the SR-75 roared to life. Leon and Ash, both standing a safe distance away outside the hangar so their eardrums didn’t rupture, started waving and giving us thumbs-ups. I gave them a thumbs-up in return, projecting more confidence than I actually felt, and brought the throttle up just a little.

The spaceplane practically leapt out of the hangar. Ruggedized, smart landing gear wheels hit the Nevada desert ground like it was perfectly maintained asphalt. Within twenty seconds I pulled back on the yoke and the SR-75 was in the air, starting a steep climb. I opened the throttle up the entire way and was slammed into my seat with the gee-force.

“JESUS CHRIST WE ARE GOING TO FUCKING DIE!” Kate screamed.

I glanced over my shoulder at her. “You okay, kitty?”

She was clutching at her chest, magic box forgotten, and for a long, terrible moment I thought she was having some kind of heart attack. But then she nodded, looking pasty. “I just got taken by surprise,” she shouted over the roar of the engines. “Sorry!”

“Okay!” I returned my attention to the instrument panel. We were already moving at a good clip, and the altimeter was increasing fast enough that even the digital display was having trouble keeping up. For a long, pure moment, I just relaxed into my seat, hands on the yoke, feeling the currents of air spiraling around the ship. Now, more than ever before my prosthetics, it felt like an extension of myself. I was flying again.

“We’re at fifteen thousand meters!” I told her.

Kate pressed a button on the magic box. Everything blurred like someone just messed with the focus on a camera, except the camera was my brain. When it re-focused, we were still in the plane, climbing toward space at an impressive clip, but all of the global positioning systems were dead. There were no satellites to receive data from, not in this era. However, we had accounted for this; the SR-75 had its own onboard suite of computers dedicated specifically to calculating orbital information.

It was at this point that things began to go wrong. I felt a sharp tug on the yoke. Swearing to myself, I corrected, keeping the plane on course, and keyed a status readout. The SR-75’s onboard systems insisted that nothing was wrong, but that the plane was experiencing significant and unexpected drag.

It hit me. “Fuck me!” I snarled. “Leon’s fucking external fuel tanks! I told him they needed to be secure!”

“What’s going on?” Kate asked.

“One of the external fuel tanks Leon spit-soldered onto this Goddamn thing has come loose, and the drag is killing our velocity,” I told her. “I need to get it off of us, now.”

My gaze was fixed on my instruments, so I couldn’t see the horror in her big blue eyes, but I could hear it loud and clear in her voice. “How?”

“Shearing force. Hold on, this is going to fucking suck.”

I stomped down on one of the SR-75’s rudder pedals with my right foot, the motion almost as smooth as it used to be even with the prosthetic, and spun the plane in a sharp, hard three-hundred-sixty-degree roll. I nearly blacked out, and I know Kate did for a few seconds, since she didn’t go through flight training. But there was a sudden, violent wrenching feeling that went through the yoke into my arms, and afterward the drag was gone.

“Did it work?” Kate asked blearily.

“Yup. And apparently an external fuel canister from several hundred years in the future crashing in the Nevada desert doesn’t fuck up the timeline, since we’re here at all.”

“Are we still going to be able to make it?”

I eyeballed the delta-vee readouts on the navigation display. The lost fuel tank didn’t exactly have a ton in it, and of course, the reduced mass of the ship now that it was gone meant the net loss was slightly ameliorated. But even so, the situation was grim.

“Well, yes and no,” I told her.

“That is never the answer anybody wants to hear, Vee.”

“I should, should, still be able to match velocity with the target and achieve rendezvous. But our margins are basically nil now. If I don’t do this perfectly, we’re going to miss completely.”

I felt her reach out and place a hand on my shoulder, give it a squeeze. “You can do this, Vee. I know you can.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” I told her, and was surprised to hear that it didn’t come out sarcastic.

The ascent became a delicate balance. I was trying to hit escape velocity while still using the air-breathing mode of the engines, which was incredibly efficient compared to the rocket fuel. But as I got higher, the engines needed to work harder to ram enough air in to function, which meant my thrust decreased. Without the global positioning system to feed me flight info, I needed to do it all by feel and eyeballing the orbital information given to me by the onboard computers.

I trimmed a couple degrees off my angle of attack, trying to find the sweet spot between still gaining altitude and not starving the engines of air in the increasingly-barren stratosphere. The SR-75 shuddered, engines straining, and began to threaten me with a stall. I swept my gaze across my instruments. “Fuck,” I muttered, and switched the engines to rocket mode.

Instantly, we were slammed back into our seats again as our thrust suddenly increased dramatically. I glanced at our projected apoapsis, counted to three, then shut the engines down.

In the sudden silence in the absence of the engines’ roar, Kate asked, “Did we do it?”

“Yes and no.”

“Goddammit, Vee!”

I looked over my shoulder at her and gave her my most reassuring grin. “Sorry, couldn’t help it. The drag from the fuel tank breaking loose meant that we lost velocity, which meant we took longer to get to the speed we were needing, and the spin I had to put the plane through shifted our course a little bit. Our inclination is about five degrees off of where it should be.”

“Okay. What does all that mean?”

“We are going as fast as we need to be, but we’re not in the place we need to be going that fast. I’m going to need to do correction burns at certain points in our ascent. We can still make our rendezvous, but we won’t have the fuel to do a proper deceleration burn. I’m going to have to perform emergency aerobraking.”

“In English, Vee!”

“On our way back down I am going to use the atmosphere to slow us down the old-fashioned way.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Is this plane designed for that?”

“Probably.” I shrugged. “Assuming we don’t burn up, I’ll be able to switch the engines back to air-breathing at a certain altitude and land without the need for lithobraking.”

I could see her trace the Latin roots of litho and arrive at the gallows-humor definition of the word. She went even paler than before. “Certainly hope so.”

I let my grin fade as we continued to coast on our momentum, rising inexorably up through the mesosphere into the thermosphere, our speed gradually slowing as we crested toward the very top of our parabolic arc. At key points, I reoriented the SR-75’s nose, now using chemical thrusters to maneuver the craft in the absence of air for the control surfaces to manipulate, and fired the engines in rocket mode, tweaking our orbital inclination until it matched that of the target.

The computers suggested to me, at that point, that we would be able to achieve equal relative velocity, and it would leave us with enough delta-vee to then de-orbit ourselves. We would not be stuck in orbit forever until we died. I blinked hard, banishing the memory of Titan as it suddenly threatened to overwhelm me, and repeated the affirmations Kate taught me. I am not there anymore. I am here, now. I am safe.

Safe was, of course, a relative term in the vacuum of space, going tens of thousands of kilometers per hour. But Kate took my hand from behind and gave it a squeeze, and I was good again.

“We’re going to do a long burn once we’re within ten kilometers,” I told Kate. “That’ll bring our relative velocity to zero. From there we just point our nose at the target, fire the engines for half a second, get as close as we can until we’re either about to hit or miss, fire them again to bring ourselves back to zero relative velocity, and then we do that over and over until we’re close enough to dock.”

“I don’t need to know all the mechanics,” Kate replied, and I could see she was fighting to keep her teeth from chattering. The environmental controls were working just fine, so it was fear she was dealing with, not cold. “I just trust you, Vee. Make it happen.”

I suited action to words. It took ten long, arduous minutes, and by the end of it we were very short on time to actually execute the retrieval, but I successfully brought the SR-75’s docking port, which sat on the dorsal surface of the spaceplane, in contact with the target’s own.

Not that they were remotely designed to be compatible, being hundreds of years apart in origin, but fortunately the SR-75 had the advantage of smart materials incorporated into its construction. Its port sealed itself tight around the target’s, flashing a green light and hissing open to reveal the shiny metal surface of the target.

Kate was already out of her seat, plasma torch in hand, and the acrid smell of it hit my nostrils as she ignited it and started cutting through the ancient hull like butter. It was joined less than a minute later by new smells: faint traces of iodine and ethanol, urine, feces, and a wet, animal musk.

And, of course, I heard barking.

“Got her!” Kate called to me. “She’s in pretty rough shape, but she’s alive!”

“Strap back in, and get her secured too,” I told her. “We’ve passed apoapsis and I need to fire the engines right now for the Oberth effect or we’re going to be stuck in orbit forever.”

I keyed in the command for the docking port to close on our end and release. The leftover atmosphere inside the target puffed out of it in sudden decompression, pushing our two crafts apart, but not hard enough to seriously perturb either of our orbits. That was the engines’ job, and I brought them to life as soon as we were clear.

They sputtered out as they burned the last of the rocket fuel. I looked at our orbital readout. “Ah, shit,” I muttered. “This is going to be a bumpy ride.”

---

We all but rammed into the atmosphere with the entire length of the plane. The yoke bucked in my hand and the instrumentation suggested to me that I was a fucking moron that had doomed us all, but with polite numbers instead of those exact words. I kept an iron grip on the yoke, worked the rudders with both my leaden feet to keep us perpendicular to our approach vector so we would generate more drag and thus lose more speed, and prayed to every God I could think of. Behind me, Kate’s teeth were audibly chattering, but she managed to avoid screaming again, and the dog was remarkably quiet.

The interior of the SR-75 got incredibly hot, naturally. The instrument panel helpfully informed me that it was almost fifty-five degrees Celsius inside, and that was with the life-support system working as hard as it possibly could to cool it. The one saving grace we had was that the spaceplane’s designers had anticipated the need for this kind of extreme aerobraking, and the skin of the craft was designed to tolerate it – in theory. I sweated, and I panted, and I watched our velocity slowly decrease until we were no longer going to boomerang back up out of the atmosphere.

Then I pointed the plane’s nose down, let gravity take over, and switched the engines back into air-breathing mode.

They decided they did not want to start.

“Well, we’re fucked,” I laughed.

“This is a plane, right?” Kate asked through clenched teeth. “Aerodynamic? You can fly it without the engines, right?”

“Well, glide, yes. Fall slowly, yes. Land… maybe.”

I let us half-glide, half-fall until we were back in the troposphere. “Magic box time,” I told Kate.

Everything unfocused again, and when I was able to see once more, my global positioning displays were back online. They told me that, if I did nothing, we were going to crash into the ocean just off the coast of Hokkaido.

I tried the engines again. Still nothing. The reentry had fried them, as far as I could tell.

I started the plane’s nose trending up again, trying to bring us out of the dive and into a climb. The control surfaces bucked and the plane fought me.

“I’m sorry, Vee,” Kate said.

“Don’t start,” I told her. “We’re not dead yet.”

��I couldn’t go back and save you from what happened at Titan. I thought, if I could save Laika, maybe –”

“I know exactly what you were thinking, kitty.” I looked back at her, and the scared-looking mutt buckled into her lap. “It’s okay.”

“I just – when I read about how she died, all alone, in that terrible little capsule –”

“I said don’t start, Kate. I said it’s okay and I meant it.”

She kept going like she hadn’t heard me. “She was supposed to have enough food and oxygen for a week. But the satellite was rushed, and the temperature control system failed. So when she was –”

“FUCK me!” I shouted.

That finally got through to her. “What?!”

“Temperature control.” I quickly hit a series of switches. “The jet intakes were superheated by our reentry. When you switch the engines to rocket fuel mode, they have shutters at the front that close so you don’t get trace amounts of gaseous oxygen mixing with the liquid fuel. Those shutters are probably half-melted shut.”

“And?”

“There’s an emergency release that just drops them completely.” I pressed the button, felt the SR-75 shudder as explosive bolts fired and it shed hundreds of pounds of metal. “Okay. Now –”

I was cut off as the sudden force of the engines firing slammed me hard into my seat. The plane began to corkscrew wildly as the engines put out differing amounts of thrust for the first few moments until the oxygen feeds equalized. Clearly one of the intakes had had less of its shutters blown off than the other, and the plane had needed some time to adjust.

Kate coughed. “The engines? They’re working? We’re not going to die?”

“Oh, we’re still going to die,” I told her. “Eventually, of old age. But probably not today.”

She smacked the back of my head. “Jackass.”

---

The vet gave us a very suspicious stare as we paid our bill and accepted Laika’s carrier back from his nurse. “I have never seen an animal in that kind of shape before,” he said. “Malnourished, half-dead from heat exhaustion, matted shit in her fur, and primitive bio-monitoring equipment surgically grafted into parts of her. I assume you didn’t do this, since it would be colossally stupid to come into my office and ask me to fix her up if you did.”

Kate shakes her head. “No, it wasn’t us. She’s a stray. Found her while we were out on a trip. We felt so bad for the poor thing that we brought her back with us.”

Somewhat mollified, the vet nodded. “Well, make sure to give her the antibiotics for the rest of the week, and call me if there’s anything else she needs.”

We stepped outside, and I opened the carrier to let Laika out. She staggered out, still a little loopy from the anesthesia, and I got her leash onto her without too much trouble.

“You know,” I said to Kate, “when we first shacked up, I said I didn’t want any pets.”

She grinned at me. “For someone who was so against the idea, you went very far out of your way to get me one anyway.”

---

About six months after we brought Laika home, a very humorless man in a snazzy uniform, accompanied by many more humorless men in uniform with large guns, came and visited our house. The humorless man in charge sat and chatted with us for a while, and Laika sat in his lap and let him give her pets.

Nothing else ever came of the visit.

There is no neat bow to tie on this story, unfortunately. I still wake up screaming in the middle of the night, though not quite as often. That probably has more to do with the passage of time and a lot of therapy than pulling a time-travel dog rescue, though. The only point to any of it is that we spent a lot of taxpayer money (since Kate, Leon, and Ash are all paid by the government) and risked our lives to make the world a better place, even by the tiniest, slimmest possible margin.

And perhaps having read about it will have made your world a little better too.

#writing #my writing #story #short story #science fiction #sci-fi #spaceplane #cw: ptsd #ptsd

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honeyjars-sims · 1 month

Text

2.27 Old Wounds

TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains C-PTSD flashbacks relating to child abuse. While not graphic, please use your own discretion in continuing with this post if those topics are triggering or upsetting to you.

Bonnie: I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for coming out to celebrate my birthday with me. We’ve been through a lot as a family, but I’m so glad that we’re all here together now.

Johnny: Happy birthday, Mom!

Chantal and Destiny: Happy birthday!

Trinity: Just cut the cake already!

[laughter]

Johnny: So you’re the kid who’s dating my little sister. What’s your deal? Got a job yet?

Demarcus: No, sir, I’m only 12.

Johnny: Hmm. Well, I hope you’re treating my sister right. I know how 12-year-old boys are. I was one, after all.

[Johnny starts to put his hand on Demarcus’ shoulder]

Demarcus: Ah! Don't hurt me!

[Johnny has a flashback of Jimmy: Don't be such a brat and I won't have to!]

Johnny: I won't, why would you think that?

Demarcus: I dunno. Isn’t that what big brothers do?

Johnny: No! I was just messing with you. I would never…I’ll be back.

[Johnny goes to the bathroom to compose himself]

Bonnie: [holding Darien] And there’s your Auntie Chantal!

Chantal: Hey sweet boy!

Destiny: Sorry Mom, I’m gonna have to take him back so I can put him down for a nap.

Bonnie: Aw, sweet dreams little guy! [to Chantal] Doesn’t he make you want one of your own?

Chantal: Nope! I’m done with men anyhow.

Bonnie: I can’t blame you for that one. They cause nothin’ but trouble.

[The front door opens]

Trinity: Dad!

Jimmy: Hey princess! I thought I’d stop by to say hello since I didn’t get to see you this weekend.

Chantal: Mom, what the fuck? Why is he here?

Bonnie: Jimmy, I told you not to come!

Jimmy: Relax, I’ll just be a second. Hey, Johnny! Listen, I've been wanting--

Chantal: Don’t you fucking get near him!

Destiny: Stay back, Jimmy!

Jimmy: I just want to apologize!

[Chantal and Destiny block Jimmy from getting near Johnny. Johnny runs out of the apartment]

Bonnie: Johnny! Wait!

[Everyone follows Johnny outside]

Chantal: Jimmy, get the fuck out of here before I fucking end you!

Destiny: Leave, Jimmy!

Jimmy: Fine, I’m leaving! This wouldn’t be a problem if he wasn’t such a pussy.

Destiny: [to Bonnie] We’ve got him.

Johnny: [to Chantal] Please take me home.

Bonnie: Johnny, I’m so sorry, I told him not to come. I–

Chantal: Stop! You’ve done enough. Let’s go, bubs.

Previous | Beginning of story | Beginning of chapter | Next

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moonilit · 7 months

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Tiny Jote doodles, you can tell me 6 yo Jote ‘nursed’ a comatose Joshua all you want SE that what SHE thought she was doing because she was a kid

#Joshua: you nursed me when u were six? How?#Jote: i brushed your hair #(She used the brush roughly with a thud)#Joshua gets weird faint ptsd from combs but he doesn’t remember why #Thats why his hair is a big bush #True story #tt #Jote trying to insert chocolate chip into comatose joshua mouth:#The undying nurse: NO-#she is the undying spoiled very loved kid and they all collectively raised her and you will take that out of my dead cold hands #They got her all the cute little dresses #She also is studying chemistry and herbal medicine etc joshua is the treating dummy i mean the friend that let her practice #joshua rosfield #jote #ffxvi #final fantasy xvi

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ineed-to-sleep · 1 year

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Couple of little references I made for my prophet's design bc I love him a little too much

#enderal #enderal forgotten stories #he's literally just Some Guy and yet. I love him so much #my traumatized widdle scrimblo #he's quiet and introverted and doesn't really trust people #but he's also compassionate with others and will help a stranger on occasion #but mostly just 'prefers the company of books' type of guy. loves a good mystery. hyperfixates on magic #goes nuts after his magical talent blooms at the beginning of the story #he's so excited about it. but from just looking at him you'd never guess it #he comes off as dry and unaffected if you don't know him but if you do and you peel off the mask he's literally just a scared little kid #overwhelmed by everything that's happening #but at the same time excited about the wonders of the world #this guy has been through sm and has sm ptsd that it's like. no wonder he doesn't feel comfortable around people #but when he's by himself or with someone he trusts he's absolutely adorable #he likes jespar and once he gets comfortable around him he rambles to him abt stuff it's so CUTE #his name is erin btw. just erin no last name #he's 5'7 and full of bisexualism #oc.erin #sleepyscribble

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elaho · 4 months

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This is the final/touched-up version of the post I made a while ago, along with some story and character lore. I've been thinking hard about what kind of story I want to tell with this graphic novel since I really don't want to put my time and effort into something that isn't meaningful to me.

Story Time: I recently broke up with my INFJ boyfriend of 7 months this December. He was an immature INFJ and it was an unhealthy relationship where I was consistently neglected and my Fi ("Introverted Feeling"), including personal feelings, were not taken seriously or valued.

It was a necessary break-up, but it unearthed a lot of past trauma I was subjected to from *unhealthy* Fe ("Extroverted Feeling") users throughout my life. The realization of my resentment towards high Fe users has brought up a lot of mixed feelings, including both shame for hating Fe and fear of being rejected by it.

I hadn't known Fe to be anything but abusive or manipulative and I had believed firmly that I could never be fully embraced or understood by Fe users because I was too "dark", "depressing", or "anti-social" just for being myself and expressing my Fi.

That is, until recently...

(To be continued with my next post) ;)

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the-andromeda-effect · 1 month

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TW - abuse mention, violence mention, injury mention, mental trauma, ptsd

Caliban had taken many women to his bed the first night he’d met them, and that was the only night they’d spent together. Some he’d dated for a while before becoming sexual. None of those had ever brought about the conflict that he currently felt with Adira as she returned to the bathroom to finish changing. It was not that there was not the physical desire for her, or that he knew that it would be far more than one night with her, but rather that the physical was so far less important at the moment than making sure that she felt safe and secure mentally and emotionally. The other could wait, and he would wait, because he knew how wounded she was in all ways. He did not want to add to that in any way; certainly not if there was a chance of losing the way she looked at him by rushing or pushing for anything. Whenever her eyes and his met, there was something that he could not describe within them, something that awoke a part of him that hadn’t been touched before, and he was finding he liked it.

When Adira was once more behind a closed door, she leaned against it, holding the PJ pants to her as her heart thudded within her chest. She had no idea what had made her so bold as to walk over to Caliban like that and just assume he would welcome her touch upon his bare skin and her help in disrobing. It hadn’t been until she had actually been in the act of doing it that her brain had kicked in. By then it had been too late and the only thing she felt she could do was continue, and now she was thankful that she had. Just his initial response of covering her forearms and hands with his own had almost made her knees give way in relief and also a warm and safe sensation that had flooded her whole body. She craved him in a way that she had never craved Mircea, in a way that she couldn’t even put into words. It wasn't blind lust, it was something deeper.

From the day that she had met Mircea, she had known that they would be married. It was why her father had introduced them. Also from that day, she had alway tried to garner his approval, to please him, to make him proud, to elicit praise. He had at least pretended in the beginning to be somewhat fond of her and that her efforts were more than enough. The lack of overt affection understandable due to theirs being an arranged marriage, but it was one he seemed to desire, something that still confused her with how things eventually went. However, the longer their relationship went, the more it was obvious that she was not who he wanted and that her efforts would never achieve the results that she hoped for. She had still tried, no matter how many times she failed to live up to standards he seemed to change on a whim. Up until the day she had been kidnapped, she had relentlessly tried.

Caliban was completely different from Mircea in every conceivable way. One could say that their marriage was no less arranged than hers with Mircea had been. It was not built on love, but an agreement to provide for her and keep her safe. The difference was that even in the beginning of her relationship with Mircea she had not felt as safe and secure with him, nor had she felt as accepted. Then there was something about the way that she felt when she was held in Caliban’s arms, the way just his voice calmed any fear or anxiety in her, the look in his eyes when he looked at her, his gentle and soothing touch when she was upset or hurting - it was all so new to her; at the same time, it was like what she had always been looking for in the past, but never found.

It was in wondering how he had not found a wife previously, with everything he had already shown her of who he was, that Adira came upon the thought that made her stomach turn: what if there were other women he was in a relationship with when he had saved her? Could she do that again? Could her heart take other women also being in a relationship from someone other than Mircea? If there were, could she even do a fake marriage? Her breath caught and her heart burned at the thought.

By the time that Adira finally opened the door again, Caliban had started to worry if things were okay with her. The room had been too quiet, and she had seemed to be in there too long. He had to keep reminding himself not to rush her. Patience was never one of his virtues, but he knew that if he wanted to unwrap the delicate gift that was the true nature of the woman he now called his wife, he was going to have to learn some. There was something about her that made him confident that whatever new skills he might have to learn or test he might feel like he was enduring, in the end, it would be worth it.

“Is everything alright?” He finally asked as she silently crossed over to the bed and began to place her jeans in the bag that he had brought up for her. She hadn’t looked at him when she came out of the bathroom, nor even when he spoke to her, and this concerned him. Before she’d gone back in, they’d once again been affectionate with one another and she’d seemed to be relaxing. Had she had another panic attack of sorts?

Still not looking at him, Adira’s voice came out soft and stuttered, “I hadn’t thought to ask before if…” She paused, gathering the courage to say what had come to her mind as she realized how much she was attracted to Caliban. It was as if the question was stuck in her throat, refusing to come out. There was a fear of hearing the answer once it did.

“If what, sweetheart?” Calban asked cautiously, as head cantered. He had heard the hesitation and nerves in her voice. He pushed off of the dresser he’d been leaning against to walk over to her. There was definitely something wrong, but he couldn’t figure out what could have changed in just a few minutes.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, her head still bowed as if looking down into her bag. “If you had…someone you were with..you know, when you..we...” As she let her breath out, she steeled herself for the answer. Her hands had balled to fists around the clothing she was holding, as if that would somehow protect her from the answer hurting her. She had known many men who would be with multiple women simultaneously. It wasn’t like she was naive to the way the world of rich and powerful men who looked like him operated. Even those who were married often had more than one girlfriend on the side besides their wife. This was often the life wives of family heads led.

So that was the issue that had suddenly come to bother her. The tension Caliban had been feeling waiting to hear what had upset her faded instantly. He was glad her back was to him because he could not keep the devilish smirk off of his face. Not that he was laughing at her, far from it; no, he was delighted that the beauty was concerned that she might have competition for his affection. To him that meant that she too was starting to feel something for him in the same way he was for her. Otherwise she wouldn’t care if he was in a relationship with someone else while being fake married to her. Being fake married to Adira seemed to get better every time he turned around, and now he was going to have at least two weeks secluded with her in a mountain cabin. Who knew what could happen then?

“And it would bother you if I did?” The shaky inhale of breath after his question gave him his answer, just before his arms wrapped around her from behind. She couldn't hide the slight tremble in her body from him, a tremble that he hoped his next words would quell. Placing his chin on her shoulder, he let his warm breath fan across her neck with his next words, “my darling wife, if there had been, the moment I slipped that ring on your finger they no longer existed.” He gently kissed the crook of her neck and continued, “there is now, and from now on always will be, only you, unless it is you who wants things otherwise between us.” Caliban was never one to share a woman, nor did he expect a woman to share him.

As much as his words comforted her, she also felt like they were too good to be real. “Are you sure that you can be happy that way?” Adira was afraid to even hope, even if she prayed, to a god she had long since stopped believing in, that it was true. She was under no illusion that Mircea had ever been faithful in their marriage, even from the beginning. He’d always blamed her; of course it was her failure as a wife that led him to have to find others.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” He kept his chin on her shoulder and laced his fingers with hers now that she’d covered his hands with her own. Every time he thought he’d figured out how much damage that Mircea had done, something more was revealed. There was no doubt the coming days and weeks would reveal more, and he would try his best never to repeat those wounds. If he could, he would instead heal them.

“Well,I…I don’t know. I just know that no matter what I tried, I was never enough for Mi-” Suddenly Caliban’s hand was over her mouth, cutting her off as she felt herself fully pulled back against him. Her eyes closed, her breathing stilled, and she waited for the pain. Pain always came after the wrong things were said. Hopefully Caliban would not be as brutal as Mircea had been. She still ached from being dragged by Kondrat and the abuse in that basement.

banners by: @cafekitsune

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spookietrex · 1 month

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Here's the thing with my trauma: yeah, it's uncomfortable. Most adults that survived horribly abusive childhoods have uncomfortable stories. My therapist and I regularly comment that my life could have been a true crime documentary with all the crimes and victimization that happened to me. But just because I get graphic with the details and they make you uncomfortable or you don't believe that someone would do something as fucked up as what I'm telling you, you don't get to tell me it didn't happen. Because guess what it did. I did live in a house that was worse than most of the houses on Hoarders where there was regular animal feces. I did live in a house where my mother regularly physically abused me AND gaslit me into thinking I couldn't do anything about it. I was severely sexually abused in a number of vile and disgusting ways. Just because your mind can't imagine the depravity that someone else has been through doesn't mean you get to deny their existence.

Especially if I've already been diagnosed by multiple mental health professionals with PTSD. You don't get to say that my trauma isn't real or it didn't happen because it was just another Tuesday for you.

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sixpennydame · 11 months

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The Better Man, Chapter 6

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | Series Masterlist

Read in AO3 here

Content/Warnings: NSFW, minors do not interact, PTSD symptoms, mention of alcohol consumption, canon-typical violence, death, sexual content, oral sex (fem receiving), vaginal sex

Suggested music:

“I looked everywhere for you. Where were you?” Lars asks, his words slurring.

“Oh, so now you’re worried about where I am? That didn’t seem to be the case earlier.” You see Lars visibly wince at your statement. Does he seriously not know how hurtful he was today? It makes you even more angry. “I was about to walk back to Trost tonight, but I thought better of it and went to talk with Captain Levi instead.”

At that, Lars’ head shoots up. “C-Captain Levi? Why?”

That came out before you had time to think it through. Maybe you should just tell him. Tell Lars everything about you and Levi, your history together..

No..you can’t. It’s too complicated, too convoluted. It would only hurt him, and he would lose trust in you and Levi. Despite all the pain he’s put you through the last year, you still love him. But god, you’re pissed off at him.

“Because he saw what happened in the canteen and was willing to talk with me about it.” You hide the truth from Lars again. You tell yourself it’s better this way. “He told me to be patient with you, Lars. That’s it hard for you all to talk about what happens out there, beyond the walls.” At least that’s not a lie.

You stand in front of him. “And honestly, that’s more information than you ever give me. You were an asshole to me tonight. Actually, you’ve been this way for the last year. You’re distant and cold, and we don’t talk like we used to. It’s like you don’t even want to be with me.”

You wait for a response from him but he just sits there, silently. Your heart is racing and you’re so tired of hurting, so you ask the one thing you’ve been scared to ask. “Lars..do you not love me anymore? If you don’t, just say it and be done with it.”

Lars stands up and moves towards you. “What? No, I…of course I still love you.”

You push down the lump that’s forming in your throat. Tears start collecting in the corners of your eyes, but you blink them away. “Then what is it, Lars? I can’t keep living like this. Your behavior makes me feel so alone, I can’t take it.”

You’re frustrated and hurt, and the alcohol coursing through you is not helping you to think clearly. “All I have is you in this world. Then when you come home, you’re a stranger. I’ve been patient, tried to be understanding…but then you say shit like what you said tonight and it hurts!”

“I don’t know what to do. What do you want from me?” Lars exclaims.

“The truth! What is going on with you? Why are you pulling away from me? Why won’t you talk to me?”

“I don’t know!” he yells out. It startles you and everything halts to a standstill. He sits back on the bed, defeated, his head in his hands. “I don’t know…”

There’s silence. Lightning streaks across the sky, lighting up the room and a loud clap of thunder follows. You walk over to the window. Lars’ eyes follow you.

You take a deep breath to try and calm your nerves and then you just start talking - anything to fill the deathly silence in the room. “When I was a child living in The Underground, we could hear thunderstorms like this, but the thunder was so loud. It was almost as if sound was amplified under the ground.” You stare outside. “I used to get so scared because I had heard of the titans above ground and I thought the sound was their footsteps coming to get me. Sometimes it would get so loud that I would hide under my bed. My friend would pull me out and tell me that hiding wasn’t going to stop the noise. So I might as well face it.”

Levi had been teaching you to be brave since you were small. So why were you so scared now?

You crouch in front of Lars. “Hiding your feelings from me isn’t helping your pain. Please..let me face it with you.” You can see the tears forming in his eyes, the conflict on his face. “You had once told me to let you into my heart so we could endure things together. Now I’m telling you: Let me in.”

He cups your cheek and his eyes soften. “Y/n..I’m so sorry for hurting you. I’ve been distant because I don’t know how to talk about what I’ve seen out there. So much death and destruction..it’s affected me more than I had expected.”

“I’ve seen people I’ve known since my cadet years get eaten in the most horrific ways. Do you know what it’s like to hear someone's body get crushed and eaten? To see your friend’s entrails spread across the ground? To pick up a body that is so mangled, you can’t even recognize who they are? I can’t get these images out of my mind.”

He grabs your hands and looks at you. “And no matter what I do, no matter how many titans I kill, they just keep coming. It feels like it’ll never stop. That we’ll never be free.”

And then it’s as if years of sadness and despair are released. Tears flow from his eyes as he pushes back his hair. “I was ashamed to tell you these feelings because I was afraid you’d think less of me. Like I was less of a man. Someone who couldn’t protect you.”

You sit next to Lars on the bed and take his face in your hands, your own tears streaming down your face. “Lars..I would never, ever, think you were less of a man for having these feelings. No human should have to see the things you and your comrades have seen.”

He hugs you tightly as he cries. “This wasn’t what I thought it would be like.”

“So let’s leave all this behind,” you say to him, looking into his pained eyes. “Leave the Corps. We can start a new life somewhere else. We’ll be together..that’s all that matters.” You’ve begged this before, but maybe this time, he’ll give in.

His eyebrows furrow and he swallows hard. “I..” he hugs you tighter, “I can’t. They’re my brothers and sisters in arms. I can’t abandon them. I won’t.”

“I made a pledge to the Survey Corps and I don’t take that lightly. I promise, I won’t push you away anymore and will be more open with you about what’s going on. But please, don’t ask me again to leave the Corps. I need to know you support me through this.”

There’s no animosity in his voice; only a plea to stand by him. He’s been silently suffering for so long, you wish you could take on some of this pain he bears. “On our wedding day, we promised to support each other, in good times and bad. I don’t intend on breaking that promise.”

And that’s when it dawns on you, even in your drunken state: you’re still holding onto Levi, and that’s not supporting Lars.

You thought you could do it, keep a small part of yourself reserved for Levi; but even though it was buried deep in your heart, it was keeping you from fully surrendering yourself to your husband. And that wasn’t fair to him. “I am committed to you, Lars,” you say, taking his head in your hands, “for better or for worse, we’re in this together.”

You both lie on the bed, holding each other through the rest of the night. Before you drift off to sleep, you hear Lars whisper, “I’m sorry…

…I love you so much..”

——

The next morning, Corps members sporadically make their way to the canteen for breakfast; some hungover, others sleep deprived from staying up too late with their comrades. Even Levi is having a slower morning than usual, having stayed up thinking of what happened between you and him last night - or rather, what didn’t happen. He’d been too cruel to you when you left, hurting you when you were vulnerable. Maybe he could apologize to you before you leave Headquarters, at the very least, make sure you’re doing ok now.

“...and what was that between Lars and his wife last night?” Oluo says to Eld as they sit at their table. Levi’s ear perk.

“Trouble in paradise, I guess. I just saw Lars going to the stables to get his horse. He’s going to take her back to Trost and stay there a few days, I heard. They probably need it,” Eld replies.

Levi exits the canteen and goes to his office. When he looks out his window he sees you, Lars, and Gunther in the courtyard. Lars mounts his horse, then pulls you up to sit behind him. Your arms wrap around him and your head lays on his shoulder, before he finally rides through the courtyard and out the gate. There’s something so intimate in the way you cling to him, your eyes closed as you draw your body closer.

Levi sighs. You two must have talked it through and made up. That’s good, he thinks, that’s how it should be.

At least, that’s what he tries to convince himself to believe.

Two months go by, and when it’s time for the final expedition of the year, Levi expects to see you in your usual place at the gate, saying goodbye to Lars and then to the rest of the squad. When you’re not there, he looks around to see you talking to Lars on the outskirts of the crowd, away from the squad. He watches as he pulls you into his arms and kisses you, your eyes never straying from him as he walks away with his horse.

When they return a few weeks later, it’s much the same. You say nothing to Levi as you head straight to Lars, scanning over his body for any wounds. It’s as if he no longer exists in your eyes.

He feels a pain in his heart, seeing you walk away that evening, because he knows that any speck of love you had for him is gone. You’ve truly moved on.

——

Levi’s eyes were still adjusting to the bright light of the sun as he considered Lobov’s offer: infiltrate the Survey Corps and steal a document from Erwin Smith. In return they’ll gain freedom to live above ground. It was almost too good to be true, and Levi doubted they could trust this man, but there wasn’t much of a choice; he already had Yann. And they might never get another opportunity like this again.

“Farlan, Isabel - go ahead and go back down. I’d like to talk to Lobov myself.”

Farlan raises an eyebrow suspiciously. “Are you sure?” But Levi flashes a look to him that tells him it has to be done. Once they leave, Levi moves closer to the carriage and Lobov sits up a little straighter, as if nervous to know what Levi is going to ask or do.

“We’ll do this job, on one condition.” He takes out a small slip of paper with your name and address on it. “Once we’ve infiltrated the Survey Corps, you’ll give this woman free passage above ground as well. No questions asked.” Levi’s wild eyes flash at Lobov. “If I find out anything has happened to her, or if she’s harmed in any way, I will find you, and I’ll kill you myself.”

Lobov smirks. “Ah..you want your girlfriend to meet you above ground, eh?”

“No. I don’t want you to tell her anything about what happened to me or where I am. If she asks, tell her I’m dead.” Levi’s gaze darkens as he offers the paper through the carriage window.

At that, Lobov leans back and lets out a hearty laugh. “You are an interesting one, Levi. Fine, you have a deal. Bringing one woman above ground makes no difference to me.” He takes the slip of paper.

Levi walks back down the stairs but as he turns a corner, Farlan is there waiting for him.

“Why do you want her to think you’re dead?” Farlan asks, leaning against the wall.

“Because it’s best that way. She’ll have a chance at a better life if I’m not in it.”

“Levi, she’s not going to accept that, you know. Even if they tell her you’re dead, she’ll search for you.” Farlan steps in front of Levi, stopping him. “After this job, just be with her. You think you don’t deserve happiness, but you do.”

“This isn’t about what I do or don’t deserve. It’s about me getting her out of here.” He pushes past Farlan. “We’ve tried for years, with no luck. At this point it’s the only way.”

Levi and Farlan walk down the stairs, each step taking them further from the sunlight. “Besides..who knows when or if Erwin Smith and the Survey Corps will even come down here to look for us.” Levi turns to look at his friend. “But whatever happens, you’re not going to tell her anything about this,” Levi’s face suddenly softens, “..please.”

Farlan sighs and puts up his hands in surrender, walking down the final steps to the underground gate. “Fine…it’s not my place to get involved. But I don’t see you being able to live without her.”

They both walked silently back through their dark neighborhood. What argument could Levi give to that? He knew Farlan was right.

——

Winter turns to spring, then summer, and fall, and soon another year has passed. It’s gone by in a blur for all of you. You’ve been working diligently in the bakery and Mr. Meyer has even taken you on as an apprentice. You’ve discovered that you have a knack for baking and especially love making cakes and pastries. Sugar was something you had never experienced Underground, and is even still a rare commodity beyond Wall Sina. But when the bakery can get its hands on it, you delight in making intricate desserts.

Lars and the Survey Corps have had five more expeditions, each just as dangerous as the last. But Lars always came back to you, without fail. Things have been better between you, since that confrontation a year ago. Lars still struggles being completely open with you, but he’s making the effort; you do all you can to make sure he knows he’s loved and supported.

And that means you’ve blocked Levi out of your life completely. Since that night, you’ve not said a word to him, not even glanced an eye his way. You realized this was the only way to try and forget him and keep your heart loyal to Lars.

And you want to be the kind of wife he deserves.

When you told Lars you might be ready to try for a child, his eyes lit up. A child meant hope, a future, and you were both ready to believe in that. “After this next expedition, we’ll have enough money saved up for some land,” Lars exclaimed one evening. “We could buy some property just outside Trost - have a garden, maybe a few chickens or goats. It’s good for a kid to be raised around animals.”

You knew Lars would be a great father, and seeing him so excited made your heart flutter. But there was one thing weighing on your heart you knew you needed to tell him.

“Lars, I know you asked me not to bring this up again…but if we’re going to have kids, then I think you should leave the Corps.” Your heart beats fast as you tell him what’s on your mind. “I never had a true family when I was growing up in The Underground. I want to make sure our children have us both in their lives for as long as possible.”

Lars is quiet for a moment, pondering over what you’ve said. You were preparing yourself for the usual response, so when he said, “Ok,” you had to ask him to say it again, just to make sure you heard him correctly.

“You’re right,” Lars says gently, taking hold of both your hands. “I want to be a father - one who’s involved in their lives, not some memory to be reminisced over.” He cups your cheek. “In a few months, new graduates will be joining the Corps anyway, so after this expedition, I’ll hand in my resignation to Commander Smith.”

You get up on your toes and hug Lars tightly.

Family. Hope. A future.

Three things you never thought you’d experience in your life, now well within reach.

——

You’re cooking dinner in the apartment you share with Levi when he walks through the door.

“Hey. Are Farlan and Isabelle coming to eat with us tonight? I think I have enough bread today.”

Levi sits down at the table with a sigh, as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders. “No, not today. I wanted it to be just us.”

You look at him and smile as you set the food on the table. “Well if I had known this was going to be just the two of us I would have bought the fancy bread,” you laugh.

Levi doesn’t talk much as you ramble on about your day. He just leans his head on his hands, a sad kind of smile on his face. Levi never was the most talkative, even with you, but today his silence seems contemplative.

He watches from his place at the table as you take the dishes to the sink. You’re humming a song to yourself like you always do, and he realizes that soon he won’t be sharing these kinds of mundane moments with you anymore. A lifetime shared together, soon to be over. Did he make the right choice? But it’s too late to turn back now.

He walks up behind you and wraps his arms around your waist, his forehead resting on the back of your head.

“I love you - you know that, right?” he says, almost in a whisper. “I’ve always loved you.”

Your heart skips a beat. All these years, knowing him as a child, a teenager, and now living with him as a young adult, he'd never told you this. But he didn’t need to: you knew. You’d always known.

You turn around to look at him, then cup his check with your hand. “Of course I know. You didn’t have to say it for me to feel it.”

You kiss him, gently at first, opening your mouth and letting your tongues mingle. His kisses become more passionate, and soon his lips are traveling down your neck to your collarbone. He has you pinned against the counter as he presses against you, your own hands moving down his back to his buttocks.

“Levi…” is all you can breathlessly say when he lifts you up and you wrap your legs around him.

He carries you across the small kitchen to your bedroom, where he throws you down on the bed. You unbutton your blouse while he unbuckles the belt of your skirt and pulls it down and off of you.

It only takes him a few seconds to tear your underwear off of you and his mouth is between your legs, showing you no mercy as his tongue laps at your folds. He sucks on your clit and your back arches in pleasure; your hands immediately grab his hair and your hips start moving to meet his mouth.

With the speed and precision that his tongue moves over your throbbing sex, it doesn’t take long for you to climax. You let out a moan as you cum, but it doesn’t stop him. He laps up your juices like a man obsessed, and the overstimulation almost drives you over the edge again. He lifts his head up, wipes his mouth with his arm and starts unbuttoning his shirt.

“Take off your blouse,” he commands, as he pulls off his boots. You take it off, unhooking your bra as well and throwing it to the ground. Your vulva is throbbing already in expectation of him. When his underwear comes off, he’s immediately on top of you, his hard cock rubbing against your clit, getting you wetter than you already were. Levi could often be an aggressive lover, but there’s something different this time. There’s a kind of desperation as his lips travel down to your breasts, sucking on your nipples until you let out a small gasp.

He sits up for a moment, already breathless, and just looks at you. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, as he takes his cock in his hand, rubbing it against your wet, throbbing sex before finally easing it in. You both look at each other and let out a moan, and then he’s thrusting into you with the same desperation he’s had since he threw you on the bed. Again and again, his hips slam into you as he grunts into your ear. You kiss his cheek and neck in between moans until he lifts himself up and cages your head with his arms. As you look into his stormy grey eyes, you thought you saw a tear run down one of his cheeks, but he starts ramming into you so forcefully that it makes your eyes close. When you open them, he’s laid his head in the crook of your neck; a few more thrusts and he pulls out to cum on your stomach, both of you breathless and sweaty.

He lies on top of you for a few moments before he finally moves over to the side, taking you into his arms as your breathing returns to normal.

“Y/n,” he says your name like it’s the most precious word in the world, “no matter what happens..never forget that everything I do is because I love you.” He kisses you gently and lays your head back on his chest. As you slowly start going to sleep, you thought you heard him whisper, “I love you so much…

…I’m sorry.”

–

A few days pass as usual until one early morning there’s a frantic knock at the door. When you open it, it’s one of Levi’s younger gang members.

“They’ve got him! The Military Police! They’re arresting him, Farlan, and Isabelle!” he says, breathlessly.

Your eyes go wide. “Where?”

Once he tells you the location, you bolt out of the apartment and down the street in your sleeping gown, not even bothering to put on shoes. By the time you get there, the three are being dragged away.

“Levi!” you yell as you run towards them. A Survey Corpsman stops you and grabs you by the shoulders. You knee him in the groin and keep running until another one pins you to the ground.

“Leave her alone! You got what you came for!” you hear Levi say as he’s pushed forward by the men guarding the stairs.

You kick and flail until you feel something knock the side of your head. The last thing you see before you lose consciousness is Levi and the others being led up the stairs that go above ground. When you wake up, they’re gone.

—-

Levi is riding with the rest of the Survey Corps as they make their way to Trost and his mind has wandered to the last days he was with you in The Underground. That was the first time he’d told you he loved you, he recalled. He wishes now that he’d told you sooner, more often. That he’d treasured those moments more with you, even in that awful place. Why now, of all times, he was thinking about it, he wasn’t sure. But his mind was never far from thinking about you, even after all this time, even though he’d barely seen you this past year.

And although you always lingered in the corners of his mind and heart, he was intensely focused on his job, now more than ever. When other corps members took time off after an expedition, Levi stayed at Headquarters to train, always pushing himself to be stronger and faster. Kenny’s words from his childhood rang in his mind: “you can’t protect who you love if you’re weak.”

If he can just keep his comrades alive, if he can keep killing titans, if the Survey Corps can keep pushing forward to find answers, then maybe he can keep you safe and happy. Just like he promised long ago.

The sound of Erwin speaking to him breaks his contemplation. “I hear this year’s graduating class of cadets shows some real promise. Perhaps we’ll be able to add some new talent to your squad.”

“The 104th? Yeah, I’d heard that too. We’ll see how many of them choose to join The Corps this spring.”

“Five years since the Fall of Shiganshina, and not another incident. Perhaps we’re finally making some headway.” Always the pragmatist, Erwin rarely made statements like this, and it surprised Levi.

“Tch, maybe, but there’s still a shit-ton of titans out there. I wouldn’t get too excited, if I were you.”

Erwin smiles. “I suppose you’re right, Levi. I shouldn’t count my chickens before they’ve hatched.”

Levi raises his eyebrow. Erwin always had some kind of dumb-ass saying he didn’t quite understand. “Let’s just make it through this expedition.”

The Survey Corps arrives at the gate, their horses pawing at the cobblestones, eager to go. Although Levi’s squad is further back, he stays at the front with Erwin and Hange, no longer looking out into the crowd for you. He’s given up on catching your eye.

You see Levi ride by with the other officers, but you don’t look up at him. You can’t. Instead, you find Lars with his squad and when he dismounts his horse, you hold him close.

“Just one more expedition,” he says, a gleam in his eye. His smile is bright and full of hope, just like it was when you first met. It’s contagious, and you find yourself smiling too.

“I’ll be waiting. Keep your comrades safe, but most all, take care of yourself. Come back to me.”

“I will.” He gives you one last kiss and once the word is given from their Commander, they’re off and through the gate.

Just a few more weeks, you think to yourself, and then everything will be better.

—-

In the years since Erwin was appointed Commander, the Survey Corps has been working on an outpost near Shiganshina, while creating a supply trail from Trost. It’s been slow and arduous work, as each expedition becomes more about clearing out titan hordes than building, but Erwin hopes they can make enough progress during this expedition before the cold and snow of winter shuts everything down.

Two weeks pass and progress is made on the road, with minimal titan interactions, much to everyone’s relief. Each squad is sore, tired, and eager to return to Headquarters, but as they ride back to Trost, Erwin notices large storm clouds on the horizon heading their way. He and his officers stop to survey the area. Heading north, the Corps is in a wide open area surrounded by a giant forest which could easily hide titans.

“Levi, I’d like you to take your squad deeper into the forest and secure the perimeter,” Erwin directs. “That storm coming our way looks bad. We’re still too far out, so we need to set up camp before it hits.”

Levi nods and then gathers his squad. “We’ll cover the forest in quadrants and move outward. Petra, Oluo, take the south; Eld and Gunther, the west; Lars and I are the fastest with ODM gear so we’ll take the north and east.”

“Yes, sir!” the squad responds as they switch on their ODM gear and fly through the trees, going their separate ways. Lars and Levi split up in order to cover more ground and after checking their quadrants, meet up in one of the huge trees. The wind has started to pick up as the storm gets closer and a large clap of thunder shakes the tree’s boughs.

“I’ve always hated thunderstorms,” Lars says, steadying himself on a large tree branch next to Levi.

Maybe it’s because he’s been thinking and yearning for you more these days, but the storm has Levi feeling nostalgic. He looks out at the huge thunderhead clouds, streaks of lightning illuminating the oncoming darkness. “When I lived underground, I had a friend who felt the same way. The thunder was so loud down there, she actually thought it was titans coming to get her. I guess it does kind of sound like titans - maybe we should do another sweep just to make sure..”

Levi turns around to see Lars glaring at him, his shoulders tense. “You..it’s you, isn’t it?”

“The fuck are you talking about Lars?” Levi instinctively becomes defensive. The air around them both has suddenly turned oppressive and heavy.

“That story…I know it. She told me. You were her friend underground. The one who saved her from her father, and who was able to get her here, above ground. The one she..” his hands turn into fists, “…loved.”

Levi can see Lars putting everything together in his mind. “You both lied about knowing each other. People don’t do that unless they have something to hide.”

He knows he could deny it all, try to explain it away, but the look in Lars’ eyes tells him it’s too late for that. “We’ve known each other since we were children. And we were together for a time, yes, but I hadn’t seen her since I’d joined the Survey Corps, not until you’d joined my squad. We thought it best to put the past behind us and we both chose different lives.”

“Together for a time,” Lars repeats those words with contempt. “So you were lovers?”

There’s silence. Lightning hits close by and a large clap of thunder follows.

“…yes…” Levi confesses.

Lars’ face darkens and his breath quickens. He’s put it all together. “Do you still love her?”

Levi meets Lars’ gaze.

“Yes.”

In a flash, Lars lunges at Levi and grabs him by his shirt collar, pinning him against the tree’s trunk. Although Lars is strong, Levi knows he could easily overpower him, but he doesn’t resist. “Lars,” he warns, “don’t do anything you’re going to regret.”

“Oh yeah? What do you know about regret, Levi? Do you regret leaving her, huh? Or that she married someone else?” His grip becomes tighter. “Have you two been fucking each other all this time, right under my nose?”

“Enough.” Levi breaks free from Lars and pushes him backwards. “Yes, we kept our past relationship a secret, but she has been a faithful wife to you. She loves you.”

Lars laughs. “Does she, now? And what would you know of it? She talks to you often, does she? Tells you her feelings and secrets?”

Levi can see Lars getting more agitated with each question he asks. “It’s not like that with us. Not anymore.”

“But you still love her,” The rumbling of thunder is more frequent now, the wind picking up making it hard for both men to keep their balance on the large branch. “To think I admired you, Levi - I thought it an honor to serve under you. You just chose me to get closer to her, didn’t you?”

Before Levi can even respond, Lars springs toward him again and lands a punch across his face, the force of which sends both men off the branch. Instincts kick in and they send out the grappling hooks of their ODM gear, each landing on different trees.

“Lars, get a hold of yourself! You’re gonna get us both killed!” Levi yells against the wind and thunder, wiping the blood of his split lip off with his arm. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about her - she loves and is committed to you. You’re the man she chose!”

Both men realize the thunder now is louder, more erratic, as if it’s building off of itself. They look in the distant trees and see a herd of titans, heading their way and straight to the camp.

“Shit.” Levi looks at Lars. “Take the right side, I’ll head them off.”

“I know what to do,” Lars says curtly as he flies off.

Levi sees a few abnormals in the herd and he wishes the rest of his squad were here. He shoots out a flare, hoping they and the camp will see it, then charges toward the titans. Lars has already killed one and is about to slice through another. Levi’s grappling hooks sink into the shoulders of a 15 meter and his spinning blades slice through the neck.

“Lars, look out!” Levi yells, as Lars narrowly misses a swipe from a 10 meter. He nods at Levi and then flies around the ankles of another titan. For now, they’ve put aside their feelings - they just need to get out of this alive.

All of a sudden an abnormal jumps out of the trees. Levi is fast to press the handles of his gear to retract his wires, but one is stuck in a tree, and he doesn’t have enough time to move before the titan is hurtling toward him. “Fuck!” He grabs his blades and is ready to defend himself however he can from his position when Lars flies in between them. He cuts through the titan’s hand, but not before it catches his leg in its mouth. Lars yells out as the titan shakes him and then throws him hard against a tree.

Levi keeps pressing the handle until it finally retracts, then he flies up and maneuvers himself behind the erratic titan. His blades cut through the large neck, and as it falls, he sees his squad riding their way. Gunther stops where Lars is lying while the others help Levi dispose of the remaining titans. When each one is dead and steaming on the ground, they all race to Lars and Gunther.

Lars’ breathing is shallow and an enormous amount of blood is flowing from where his leg was bitten off. Levi and the others surround Gunther as he ties a torn cloth around the stump in an effort to slow down the bleeding.

“He’s already lost so much blood, I can’t get it to stop,” Gunther says, in a panic.

Lars is in a daze, tears falling from his eyes onto the ground. “I..I can’t feel anything..”

Levi crouches next to Lars and looks over his body. The intense force with which the titan threw him against the tree must have broken his neck or spine. “Just hold on, Lars, you’re gonna get through this.”

Lars’ eyes move to look at Levi, his complexion becoming more sallow by the second. “Captain…” his voice shakes, “did I make a difference? Is the camp safe?”

Levi gently takes his hand. “You did, Lars. Everyone is ok.”

“Good…” Lars closes his eyes and more tears run down his cheeks. As if in prayer, he says your name, then looks at Levi again. “Take care of her. She has nobody now.”

Levi opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out. He blinks to force back tears.

“It’s so dark…” Lars lets out a long sigh, then his chest stops moving. His head falls to the side and one final tear streaks across his face, mingling with the raindrops that have begun to fall.

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