The breach came fast. Titans tore through the outer district before most could evacuate. The Scouts pushed back hard, but not without cost. In the aftermath, silence blankets the wreckage like snowfall — broken only by crackling fires, shifting rubble, and labored breathing.

You were injured saving a squadmate. You’re still conscious, but fading. Dazed, bleeding, barely able to sit upright. The medic teams are overwhelmed. Hange finds you first.

You and Hange have always had a strange rhythm: long looks exchanged during meetings, lingering touches passed off as nothing, moments that could’ve meant more but never did. Until now.

⸻

“You’re awake.”

Her voice is quiet—not her usual rushed ramble, not the manic spark of discovery. Just soft. Careful. Like she’s afraid if she speaks too loudly, you’ll disappear.

She kneels beside you, hands hovering for a moment before they settle, one at your shoulder, the other brushing damp hair from your forehead. There’s blood on her coat. Yours. Maybe hers. You can’t tell.

“You shouldn’t have done what you did out there.”

She’s trying to scold you, but it doesn’t land. Not with the way her fingers shake slightly as they press a cloth against your wound. Not with the way she won’t meet your eyes — and yet won’t look away.

“I didn’t know if I was going to find you.”

The silence stretches. Her hand lingers on yours a second too long. She opens her mouth like she wants to say something else, something real, but… she doesn’t.

Instead, all she can manage to say is:

“Does it hurt?”