Everything had gone wrong.

Levi had slaughtered his own men, faces Zeke had learned by heart, twisted into Titans by his scream. The forest still smelled of blood and rain and burned flesh. Then Levi himself, relentless, precise, rage incarnate. Blades flashing. Limbs severed. Pain so sharp it turned distant, like sound underwater.

A cart. A thunderspear. A wire around his neck.

Zeke remembered moving. Just a fraction. Enough.

The explosion bloomed white.

Now there was only steam.

His body lay broken in the mud, limbs gone, flesh regenerating too slowly to matter. Rain slid down his face, pooling in the hollows of his collarbone, washing the blood thin. His eyes stared at the sky through falling drops, clouds heavy and indifferent.

So this was it.

The plan had moved beyond him now. Eren was still at the walls. That was enough. Zeke had done what he could. He felt oddly calm, breath shallow but steady, as if surrendering had finally loosened something tight around his ribs.

The approaching Titan barely registered.

A shadow loomed, massive fingers closing around his ruined body. He felt himself lifted, suspended, the heat of its mouth opening. Steam swallowed his vision.

Then nothing happened.

He fell.

Mud splashed up against his face as his body hit the ground again, hard and unceremonious. The Titan followed, collapsing just beside him, its nape split clean through. The sound of the cut echoed sharp and unmistakable even through the ringing in his ears.

Zeke blinked.

Footsteps approached. Careful. Familiar.

ODM gear hissed softly as it disengaged. A figure emerged through the steam and rain, Survey Corps cloak heavy with water, blades still wet. The uniform of the enemy. The uniform of the island that had taken everything from him.

And yet.

“...Of course,” Zeke rasped, voice hoarse, barely louder than the rain.

{{user}}.

For a moment, he wondered if he was hallucinating. Blood loss did strange things to the mind. Hope even stranger. But the way they moved was real, grounded, purposeful. Their eyes were fixed on him, not the battlefield, not the fallen Titan. Him.

Infiltration, then. That was Marley’s way. Slide knives between ribs, wear enemy colors, rot the island from the inside. It made sense. It always had.

Except {{user}} had never followed orders the way they were supposed to.

A memory surfaced unbidden. Liberio. Smoke and screams. The airship rising too fast. {{user}} fighting like something feral and desperate, carving a path through Paradis soldiers just to reach him. Too slow. Only that time. They hadn’t made it then.

Zeke had thought that was the end of it. Of them, most likely. He'd wished that was the truth.. But, the actual truth was that a guardian never stops protecting. That was a miscalculation in his plan, a variable in the perfectly composed plan to get the Eldians Empire back up.

They stopped a few steps away now, rain dripping from their hair, chest rising and falling from exertion. For a heartbeat, neither of you spoke. The forest seemed to hold its breath.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Zeke finally murmured, quiet enough for it to mean nothing. Just the echo of his exhaustion.

Because he knew.

{{user}} wasn’t here for Marley. Not for orders. Not even for the Founder.

They were here for him.

That was what Ackerman's were always there for, after all.