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BG3 Fanfiction Statistics, Part 1

I’ve seen some discussions of BG3 fandom trends floating around tumblr that spoke from experience but lacked hard data to refer to. As a fan of Baldur’s Gate 3, fanfiction, and graphs, I therefore thought it would be neat and illustrative to go through AO3 and document some of the statistics this fandom.

I did a similar exercise back in January and posted the results here. However, I was a bit unhappy with this analysis – it was missing some data that I consider to be relevant, I didn’t end up discussing the results much, and I only posted it to reddit. Most discussions for the creative side of fandom seem to happen on tumblr, so I made this account to post it here.

I will try and be as transparent as possible when discussing how I obtained and processed this data. A copy of my spreadsheet can be found here and contains all of the data I will be discussing. Most of the data I feature in this essay will be presented as graphs. Below each graph I will discuss the patterns shown in the graph and provide what I believe to be some relevant and/or interesting number values. If you want to see all the numbers, please refer to my spreadsheet. If you don’t care about the numbers and/or my thoughts about them, feel free to skim through and just look at the charts!

A note before I start – I gathered this data between July 21, 2024 and July 24, 2024. It is out of date as of my writing this and will be even more out of date by the time you read it. However, I believe the general fandom trends will hold up over time – the same patterns that I observed in January are largely still present in July.

Due to the tumblr post image limit and my preponderance of graphs, I will be breaking this behemoth of an essay into two parts:

General Fandom Statistics, the Player Character, and the Women

The Men, a Character Comparison, and a Pairing Analysis

We are currently in part 1. Part 2 can be found at this link. The rest of part 1 is below the read more because this is very long.

GENERAL FANDOM STATS

This information was found by looking at the side bar when browsing Baldur’s Gate fics. Therefore, this data set includes fics from the previous two Baldur’s Gate games. However, given that the games were released in 1998 and 2000, respectively, most of the fanfiction for them was likely posted to FF.net and the error from including what little fic for them was posted to AO3 is likely small.

At the time of my data gathering, there were 31,043 Baldur’s Gate fics on AO3.

RATINGS

To the surprise of nobody in the BG3 fandom, Explicit fic is the largest category, at 38% of all fics produced. It’s followed by Mature (24%), Teen and Up (20%), General (12%) and Not Rated (6%). Not all of the Explicit and Mature fics are necessarily horny – those warnings also apply to extreme violence (hello, Dark Urge). But let’s be real, most of them are tagged that way for sex.

WARNINGS

Speaking of extreme violence, let’s take a look at the warnings used for fics in this fandom.

Just about half (50.2%) of BG fics have no warnings at all. About 17.6% have warnings for graphic depictions of violence – lower than I would have expected, honestly, for a video game that features as much murder as this one does (at least, how I play it...). About 5.4% of fics feature a warning for rape, 4.7% feature major character death, and 0.5% feature underage sex.

CATEGORIES

AO3 allows users to select any categories from a list of possible options (F/M, M/M, F/F, Gen, Other, and Multi). F/M, M/M, and F/F are pretty self explanatory, Gen fics don’t focus on a relationship, Multi fics focus on a relationship between three or more people, and Other is a catch all for fics that don’t fit into any of the previous categories very well. For shipping with nonbinary (NB) characters, I have seen a variety of approaches. Some people select the category closest to the NB character’s presentation, some select multiple categories, and some select Other.

One very useful tool that I will be introducing here is the use of “otp:true.” When “otp:true” is entered into the “Search within results” bar while filtering tags, AO3 will only return fics that have just one pairing tagged. This filters out all fics that have background pairings or multiple focus pairings. Results with “otp:true” are typically solely focused on that particular pairing.

With all that explanation out of the way, the results:

We can clearly see that the most common category for Baldur’s Gate fics is M/F, with 43.3% of all fics featuring a M/F pairing. 36.4% of all fics feature a M/M pairing, 10.6% feature a F/F pairing, 11.7% are more General, 8.0% feature Multiple people in a pairing, and 10.9% are Other. These percentages add up to more than 100% because a fic can be tagged with multiple categories.

Things change a bit when you filter for “otp:true” and only include fics that focus on just one pairing. In this case, M/M predominates, with a whopping 46.0% of fics. M/F follows with 31.2%, F/F with 11.1%, 7.7% are General, 9.7% are Other, and 3.0% are still tagged as Multi (presumably for fics where the only pairing is a threesome or such).

CHARACTERS

As a last look at more general content before I begin a deep dive into looking at the various characters, I took a look at the 30 most popular character tags.

This was a surprise to me the first time I looked at it in January. In the previous two video game fandoms I was in that had a player character (Mass Effect and Fire Emblem: Three Houses), the player character was the most popular character tag in that fandom. In this case, though, Astarion has the most fics that feature him, and by a pretty significant margin (~5,000 more fics than Tav). He appears in 63.0% of fics. Tav is next, at 46.7% of fics. Then we have the rest of the six Origin characters: Gale (34.5% of fics), Shadowheart (23.7%), Karlach (20.5%), Wyll (18.6%), and Lae’zel (15.9%), as well as Halsin (15.8%) and the Dark Urge (15.3%). That they all are next to each other makes sense, as fics that focus on one character or pairing will often tag the entire ensemble. Lae’zel only showing up 16% of the time seems low, though, for a member of the main cast. To me, this indicates that not many fics are true ensemble fics that include all of the main cast.

After this block of main characters, we drop a bit to Gortash, who shows up in 7.4% of fics. He’s the most popular villain by far, followed by Cazador (4.7%) and Raphael (4.6%). Orin only shows up in 2.9% of fics and Ketheric is featured in only 1.1% of fics.

Jaheira shows up in 4.4% of fics, but her values may include fics from the earlier Baldur’s Gate games. Poor Minthara is the 16th most tagged character and only shows up in 2.5% of fics. Rolan (a tiefling NPC) shows up in more fics than she does.

Despite being featured in previous Baldur’s Gate game fics as well as BG3, Minsc does not seem popular – he’s #25, being tagged in 1.3% of fics.

One thing I did note was the comparative lack of focus on the overarching plot of the game in BG3 fics. I’ll use the Emperor as a barometer for this, as it’s inextricably interwoven into everything having to do with the Absolute, the mysterious artifact, and our protagonists’ immunity to it. Yet, it only appears in 535 fics of over 31,000 – approximately 1.7% of all BG fics. This tells me that there isn’t much engagement with the actual illithid plot of the game in most fics – at least not to the extent where major plot relevant characters are being tagged.

CHARACTER PAIRING STATISTICS

Most of my time for this analysis was spent collecting data for the various pairing tags. I went through the top 300 pairing tags by order of popularity (ending with Mystra/Cazador, of all things) and recorded how many fics each rating had and how many fics each category had both with and without “otp:true” applied. Coincidentally, this included all the pairings with 5 or more fics in them at the time – by sheer luck the 301st pairing tag had only 4 fics. I judged that I could ignore pairing tags with fewer than 5 fics without affecting the results of my analyses too much (also it had taken 4 days to get this far and I was tired).

However, a lot of authors tag their fics with both, say, Astarion/Tav and Astarion/F!OC. But for this exercise I’m not really looking at how authors refer to the Tav/Dark Urge/self insert character in their tagging nomenclature. I’m more interested in how many fics exist for, say, the pairing of Astarion and the player character.

To this end, I combined the numbers for Tav, Dark Urge, OC, F!OC, M!OC, NB!OC, Reader, and You for each character ship. In order to avoid double counting fics, once I had added the numbers for a particular tag I excluded that tag from all future counts.

[X]/PC = [X]/Tav + ([X]/Dark Urge with the [X]/Tav tag excluded) + ([X]/Original Character with the [X]/Tav and [X]/Dark Urge excluded) + ([X]/Reader with [X]/Tav, [X]/Dark Urge, and [X]/Original Character excluded) and so on.

This process dropped the total number of pairings from 300 to 162. However, it also introduces an error. Some fics ship characters with an OC who is not a Tav/Dark Urge/self insert. In condensing all pairings with original characters to the “PC” supercategory, I am ignoring that and counting their original character as a Tav/Dark Urge equivalent. Unfortunately, this is just something I have to live with in order to be able to make the data more manageable, as there is no way to tell which fics are using the OC tag to represent a Tav/Dark Urge and which are not on a mass data scale. I don’t think it will skew the results too much, at least.

I pulled out the top 20 ships for each major character in BG3 (Tav, Dark Urge, the PC, Shadowheart, Karlach, Lae’zel, Minthara, Astarion, Gale, Wyll, and Halsin) before and after I combined the player character tags into the PC supercategory. For each character, I then determined how much of each fic category (M/F, M/M, F/F, Other, Multi) they had, both for all of their pairings and for their pairing with the PC specifically.

Let's start by looking at the player character and its two representatives.

TAV

Tav is in 71 of the top 300 ship tags in the BG3 fandom.

Astarion completely dominates Tav’s ships, with a whopping 9,235 fics (1,839 otp:true fics). In fact, in order to be able to see the tiny little boxes that represent everyone else, here’s another version of this chart, this time with Astarion excluded.

There, that’s a bit more legible. The next highest is Gale, with 2,909 fics (652 otp:true) – less than a third as many fics as Astarion. Halsin comes third with 1,304 fics (207 otp:true) and Shadowheart is the first canon woman to show up, with 806 fics (132 otp:true). Astarion has more than 11 times as many fics with Tav as Shadowheart does. Karlach comes next, with 724 fics (186 otp:true). Raphael comes sixth, with 176 more fics than #7 Wyll who has 442 fics (100 otp:true). Lae’zel is #11 with 300 fics, under Gortash, Rolan, and a threesome with Halsin and Astarion. Minthara is the least popular main character to ship with Tav. She’s #15 with 146 fics (33 otp:true), and has fewer fics with Tav than Zevlor, the Emperor or Haarlep. In a marked improvement from the state of affairs in January, however, she no longer has fewer fics than Kar’niss.

Taking a look at the fic category breakdown, we can see that M/F and M/M predominate for Tav, while there is very little F/F. Dividing the values by the total number of fics, 59.8% of all fics and 50.2% of otp:true fics are tagged M/F, 35.6% of all fics and 34.9% of otp:true fics are tagged M/M, 7.6% of all fics and 4.4% of otp:true fics are tagged F/F, and 13.2% of all fics and 14.2% of otp:true fics are tagged Other. As the proportions of M/F and F/F fics drop when otp:true is applied, I assume that it is more common for M/F and F/F pairings to have background ships or be a background ship (remember that if it is not otp:true, we have no idea if the pairing with Tav is the pairing category being counted.)

THE DARK URGE

The Dark Urge is in 38 of the top 300 ship tags of the BG3 fandom, a bit over half as many as Tav.

While Astarion once again is the most popular character to ship with the Dark Urge (2,165 fics), this time he actually has competition! Gortash/Dark Urge comes in at a very respectable second place with 1,594 fics (about three quarters of Astarion/Dark Urge’s total fic count) and actually beat Astarion by over 100 fics once you apply otp:true (562 fics for Astarion vs 691 fics for Gortash). But after Gortash we once again drop down to numbers we struggle to even see on the chart. Gale is the most visible with 402 fics total (Gale has fewer fics total with the Dark Urge than Astarion or Gortash have with otp:true applied). After that we have a group of Halsin, Shadowheart, and Karlach, all with between 120-150 fics. No other pairing has over 100 fics.

Dark Urge/Tav (99 fics) and Dark Urge/Orin (87 fics) have more fics than Dark Urge/Wyll (83 fics) or Dark Urge/Minthara (80 fics). For Wyll, this is a sign that his pairing with the Dark Urge is not very popular (he drops from #7 with Tav to #9 with the Dark Urge). For Minthara, however, this is a significant climb in the rankings – she was #15 with Tav and #10 with the Dark Urge.

But what’s really interesting to me is the fic category breakdown for the Dark Urge.

The Dark Urge has noticeably more M/M content than Tav does (47.0% vs 35.6% for all fics, 56.9% vs 34.9% for opt:true) and slightly more F/F content than Tav does (10.2% vs 7.6% for all fics, 5.2% vs 4.4% for otp:true), and correspondingly less F/M content. At 13.4% for all fics and 12.8% of otp:true fics, the proportion of Other fic stays just about the same as for Tav.

THE PLAYER CHARACTER

The PC is a combination of Tav, Dark Urge, Original Character, Reader, and You. The PC is in 64 of the top 162 pairings of the BG3 fandom (losing 5 pairings from Tav as I combined Tav/Tav, Tav/Dark Urge, Tav/Reader and so on into one PC/OC category).

The player character was involved in 76.0% of all pairings and 62.1% of otp:true pairings (that is, if you add up every fic for every pairing which the PC is in and divide it by sum of all fics for all BG3 pairings I tracked). This means that over three quarters of shipping in the BG3 fandom is with the player character. It’s not surprising, but it is notable – that’s a very large proportion.

Holy smokes, Astarion! He dominates the rankings even more than before. This time, I was curious to see how much. See below for a proportional representation of all of the PC pairings (note: because many fics have multiple pairings, this circle does not represent the total number of fics but rather the total number of times any pairing with the PC has been tagged).

Astarion composes a full 45% of all pairings with the PC, Gale is bit over 13%, Gortash is 7.3% for all fics and 11.3% of otp:true fics, while Halsin has the opposite trend with 6.3% of all fics and 4.9% of otp:true fics. Shadowheart, Karlach, Raphael, and Wyll all are between 2% and 4% (with Raphael once again beating Wyll). Lae’zel is down at #11 with 1.4% and Minthara is all the way at #16 with 0.9%.

Out of curiosity, I went through all of the PC’s pairings and sorted them by the gender of the person being shipped with the PC.

Oof.

85.7% of all PC ships are with men, 10.4% are with women, and 1.9% are nonbinary beings (Haarlep, the Emperor, and Omeluum). When you apply otp:true, 87.1% of the player character’s ships are with men, 9.9% are with women, and 1.3% are with nonbinary beings.

SHADOWHEART

Welp! Let’s take a look at that 10%, starting with Shadowheart.

If you add up all the fics for all the pairings that include Shadowheart and divide that by the sum of all fics for all 162 pairings I collected, you can see that she is present in 7.0% of pairings. Interestingly, this is true both for all fics and for otp:true fics. She is in 30 of the top 300 ship tags and 24 of the 162 pairings that remain once the player character tags are consolidated.

(I have shortened Shadowheart's name to SH and Shart in various charts to keep the labels from taking up too much room in the graph.)

Lae’zel/Shadowheart is in close competition with Shadowheart/Tav. When all the player characters are condensed into the PC, though, that gap widens.

Shadowheart has 980 fics with the PC, 694 with Lae’zel, 226 with Karlach, 111 with Gale, 61 with Astarion, 51 with Nocturne, 36 with Halsin, 26 with Minthara, and 21 with Wyll (her least popular ship with a main character, at #12). 7 of her top 20 pairings are threesomes – Aylin/Isobel/SH at #8 with 35 fics, Karlach/PC/SH at #9, Karlach/Lae’zel/SH at #10, Astarion/PC/SH at #13, Halsin/PC/SH at #14, Karlach/Wyll/SH at #17, and Gale/Lae’zel/SH at #18.

Lae’zel/Shadowheart has an unusually high number of otp:true fics – almost half of its total fic count. It seems more popular to ship Shadowheart with women than men – both her ships with Lae’zel and Karlach are more popular than Astarion, Gale, or Wyll and her threesomes with women have more fics than her threesomes with men.

The fic category breakdown for Shadowheart matches this expectation.

Boy howdy is Shadowheart fic gay! She has over twice as much F/F fic than M/F fic, just looking at raw numbers of fics. Looking at the proportions of her total fic count, F/F fic represents 71.4% of all of her fics, M/F fic is 35.2%, Other is 10.0%, and Multi is 18.8%. (These percentages add up to more than 100% because many fics tag multiple categories.) This also means that we can’t know that these numbers necessarily include Shadowheart – witness the numbers of M/M fics. All it means is that these categories were on fics in which a Shadowheart pairing was also tagged.

Looking at the otp:true numbers gives us a better picture of what fics where only Shadowheart is in a relationship are like (though this not necessarily an accurate idea of patterns for her overall, as less than a third of her total fics are otp:true). 76.4% of otp:true fics are F/F, 19.8% are M/F, 3.8% are Other, and for some reason 1.2% (9 fics) are M/M. Over three quarters of Shadowheart’s otp:true pairings are femmeslash.

Shadowheart’s fics with the PC character follow pretty much the same pattern as her ships more generally, albeit with slightly less F/F (likely from the loss of the relative behemoth that is Shadowheart/Lae’zel).

32.9% of her pairings with the PC have the M/F tag, 68.1% are tagged F/F, 11.3% are tagged Other, and 18.5% are tagged Multi. Applying otp:true, 25.7% are M/F, 62.6% are F/F, and 12.3% are Other (this likely includes a substantial portion of nonbinary PCs).

KARLACH

Karlach is present in 6.0% of all fic pairings and 5.4% of otp:true fic pairings. She has 31 ship tags in the top 300 ship tags, which condense down to 26 pairings when all player character stand ins are combined.

Her second most popular ship after Tav is with Wyll, though unlike with Shadowheart the pairing is not popular enough to give Tav a run for his/her/their money. Condensing all the player characters widens this gap significantly.

The PC is overwhelmingly Karlach’s most popular ship, with 890 fics. Wyll is second, with 327 fics – less than half as many. Shadowheart and Astarion follow with 226 and 157, respectively. Dammon is next, with 91 fics, and then Lae’zel has 65. She then has a number of threesomes, Minthara (#9 with 32 fics), and Gale (#11 with 18 fics). Halsin is her least popular pairing with a main character, coming in at #15 with 11 fics.

Surprisingly, for all that Karlach is fairly butch, her pairings with men are relatively more popular than we see with the more femme Shadowheart. The category statistics illustrate this clearly.

Compared to Shadowheart, Karlach has a lower proportion of F/F and higher proportions of M/F and Multi fics. F/F is tagged on 51.8% of her fics, M/F on 42.5%, Other on 12.3% and Multi on 27.7%. (Remember that fics can be tagged with multiple categories and that just because a category is tagged doesn’t mean that Karlach is involved in that category.) Looking at otp:true gives us a look at fics where she is the sole focus. F/F is 55.0% of her otp:true fics, M/F drops to 34.4%, Multi drops to 6.1%, and Other stays fairly high at 10.4%.

In Karlach’s pairings with the player character, things change significantly.

It immediately becomes clear that the large number of M/F fics in her general pairings were largely due to her relatively popular ships with Wyll, Astarion, and Dammon. F/F dominates Karlach’s pairings with the PC with 64.0% (67.8% with otp:true applied) of fics, which puts her at just slightly less than Shadowheart. M/F is tagged in 28.5% of her fics with the PC (14.0% with otp:true applied), Multi is tagged 19.4% but drops to 1.2% for otp:true, and Other remains high with 18.0% of fics and 20.2% of otp:true fics with the PC.

Back in January, I noted that of the main cast, Karlach had the highest proportion of ships with nonbinary OCs. I didn’t track the breakdown of OC subcategories this time, but the high numbers in the Other category bear it out.

LAE'ZEL

Counting all fics for all pairings in which Lae’zel is tagged, she is in a mere 3.8% of BG3 pairings, though it rises to 4.5% when otp:true is applied. She is in 23 of the top 300 ship tags, a number that drops down to 18 when I consolidate the player character tags together.

Shadowheart/Lae’zel has twice as many fics as Lae’zel/Tav. Looking at the situation with the PC does not change this much.

Unlike any other main character, Lae’zel’s most popular ship is not with the PC but with Shadowheart. She has 694 fics with Shadowheart, 355 with the PC, 65 with Karlach, 26 with Gale, 26 with Wyll, 25 with Astarion, 16 with Minthara, and 12 with Halsin. She is in an unusually low number of threesomes – only 4. It’s notable though how skewed her numbers are towards women – a threesome with Karlach and Shadowheart has more fics than any of her pairings with a canon man. The various whole team multiship pairings, none of which have more than 11 fics, comprise most of the tail end of her ship list.

Speaking of the tail end of her ship list, what happens when we condense the player character tags is that Lae’zel does not reach a full 20 ships – she drops to 18 pairings. She has more than this, of course, but my methodology ignores all pairings with fewer than 5 fics (which means that my friend’s Lae’zel/Astarion/Tav fic is not counted). Therefore, Lae’zel’s 19th and 20th most popular pairings have 4 fics or fewer. I have represented these missing pairings with little :( emojis, because this is a sad state of affairs.

This is a symptom of a state of affairs in which Lae’zel is just not very popular in the AO3 side of BG3 fandom. Her most popular ship is Shadowheart’s second most popular ship, and the numbers crater after that. No Lae’zel ship other than Shadowheart and the PC has more than 100 fics.

Lae’zel’s most popular ships being women is demonstrated clearly by the fic category breakdown.

Wow! At a whopping 76.3% of all of Lae’zel’s fics and 88.9% of Lae’zel’s otp:true fics, Lae’zel has a higher proportion of F/F fic than Shadowheart. Granted, they’re both sizable portions of each other’s total F/F count. 26.1% of Lae’zel’s fics have the M/F tag, though this drops to a mere 7.1% when otp:true is applied. Other is tagged in 11.6% of fics but drops to 2.0% with otp:true. 18.1% of her fics are tagged Multi but this likewise drops to 4.4% with otp:true.

The pertinent question for Lae’zel is how much of her F/F count is due to her pairing with Shadowheart? How gay are her pairings with the PC?

The answer is... still pretty gay! F/F is not quite as dominant, with 67.3% of all her fics with the PC and 80.0% of her fics where only Lae’zel/PC is tagged – but 80% is a still a really high proportion! This indicates to me that a lot of the M/F in the “All Fics” chart likely does not involve Lae’zel. M/F is tagged in 33.5% of her fics with the PC, a number which is more than halved to 12.7% when otp:true is applied. 13.2% of her fics are tagged Other, which drops to 5.5% with otp:true – much less than for Shadowheart and Karlach. It seems either Lae’zel is not as popular for nonbinary OCs or that a large proportion of the Other tag is from mind flayer Tavs/Durges and people don’t write Lae’zel with a mind flayer love interest.

One other notable fact is that Lae’zel is the only female companion without any otp:true M/M PC fic. It could be due to her low fic numbers in the first place, but I prefer to think that Lae’zel fans are simply more fastidious about correctly tagging fic. It certainly fits her character.

MINTHARA

Ah, Minthara. Unquestionably the least popular of the main romanceable characters in BG3, her pairings only comprise 1.1% of all BG3 fanfic pairings, a number that rises to a whopping(/sarcastic) 1.4% of otp:true pairings. She has only 14 ship tags in the 300 most popular ship tags for BG3, a number that drops further to a mere 9 pairings once I’ve combined all the player character tags.

What’s notable about Minthara’s ship tags is the popularity of the Dark Urge relative to Tav. Minthara has 146 fics with Tav and 80 with the Dark Urge. This is a higher proportion than other main characters have. It may be because more people write her on evil routes (which likely disproportionately feature the Dark Urge) or because she has some very good lines for the Dark Urge and their Slayer form.

Another observation is the lack of primary non-PC ships. The other characters that I look at all have a major non-PC ship – Shadowheart/Lae’zel, Karlach/Wyll, Gale/Astarion, Wyll/Astarion, Halsin/Astarion. Minthara doesn’t really have that. Her most popular non-PC ship is Orin, at #5 and with a mere 45 fics. This is illustrated clearly once all the player character tags are combined.

The PC dominates Minthara’s pairings to an extent not seen with any other character, not even Astarion. She drops from 234 fics with the PC (65 otp:true) to 45 fics with Orin (26 otp:true), 32 with Karlach (16 otp:true) and 26 with Shadowheart (11 otp:true). Every other pairing has 16 or less fics. Tying into that, Minthara has very few pairings with 5 or more fics. She does not even have enough for a top 10! I have replaced her missing pairings with the :( emoji because this is sad.

Another notable thing about this chart, though, is how few fics Minthara has just in general. Lae’zel and Wyll, the other neglected companions, both have at least 500 fics with their most popular partner. Minthara does not even break 250. In fact, none of her pairings with someone other than the PC have over 50 fics.

Another interesting fact is that Minthara is the only character in this analysis to not have any threesomes or moresomes in her pairings with over 5 fics. She doesn’t share, it seems.

For some reason, Minthara has 8 ships with Councillor Florrick of all people. And it’s not all by the same author, which is what I would expect for a somewhat out there pairing. Presumably someone out there wrote a really good fic which then inspired others to play with the idea. In a small fandom like Minthara’s, one fic like that can make quite a difference.

As can be expected, Minthara’s fic categories are pretty damn gay.

F/F is tagged in 79.0% of her fics (77.6% of otp:true fics). M/M is tagged in 21.3% of her fics (17.1% of otp:true fics), Other in 6.1% (4.6% otp:true), and Multi in 8.9% though it drops to 1.3% of her otp:true fics. With these numbers, Minthara is arguably the gayest major character in the BG3 fandom by fic count, though Lae’zel beats her when you take otp:true into effect.

This pattern holds true when looking at her ship with the player character. 77.8% of her fics with the PC are tagged F/F (73.8% of otp:true fics), 23.5% are tagged M/F (15.4% otp:true), 8.5% are tagged Other (10.8% otp:true), and 9.4% are tagged Multi (3.1% otp:true). The latter is a bit confusing given that she has no multiship pairings. It may include collections of Reader/[X] fics that include Minthara.

PART 2

Welp. I’ve run into the tumblr post image limit. For part 2 of this essay, which discusses Astarion, Gale, Wyll, and Halsin and then compares all 8 of the main characters against each other on a variety of metrics, see this link.

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With South Bengaluru's impressive infrastructural advancements in recent years, residents are presented with a unique opportunity. South Bengaluru, particularly Kengeri, boasts outstanding connectivity, a thriving local market, and abundant opportunities. Tucked within this dynamic community is Provident Sunworth City, an oasis of greenery offering a blend of urban conveniences and tranquil surroundings a true City of More. Spanning across 60 acres near the Mysore Road-NICE Junction, this prestigious development seamlessly merges upscale urban living with the peace of natural settings.

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Provident Sunworth City stands out for its exceptional connectivity, a critical aspect in today's urban lifestyle. Situated within a five-kilometer radius of two Metro stations Kengeri and Challaghatta it ensures effortless commuting. Moreover, the proximity to the local bus terminal and railway station, just 6.2 km and 5.6 km away respectively, further enhances accessibility. The nearby NICE Road Junction, a pivotal transportation hub on the Mysore-Bengaluru Expressway, is merely 4 km away. This six-lane elevated expressway, part of National Highway 275, seamlessly links major cities, addressing any concerns about connectivity for Provident Sunworth Bangalore residents.

A Hub of Opportunities

The burgeoning job opportunities in South Bengaluru, particularly for IT professionals, make Provident Sunworth City an ideal residential choice. Its strategic proximity to renowned software parks like Sattva Global City Tech Park (formerly Global Village Tech Park) ensures convenience for working individuals. This park houses industry leaders such as Mindtree, Accenture, and Texas Instruments, all within 7 km. Furthermore, the vicinity to Electronic City and other industrial estates within a 20-km radius provides ample career prospects, significantly reducing commute stress.

Comprehensive Healthcare

Access to quality healthcare is paramount, and Provident Sunworth Bangalore addresses this effectively. With renowned medical facilities like RajaRajeswari Medical College and Hospital, HK Hospital, and BGS Hospital nearby, residents can access expert medical care promptly.

Superior Education Facilities

Proximity to esteemed educational institutions is crucial for families, and Provident Sunworth Kengeri caters to this need. With renowned schools like Tattva School, Marigold International School, and Gurukula Vidya Peetha School within a 10-km radius, families have access to quality education. Additionally, colleges like ACS College of Engineering, RR College of Engineering, and RV College of Engineering offer excellent opportunities for higher education.

Abundant Entertainment Choices

Life at Provident Sunworth Bangalore isn't just about work; it's also about recreation. Proximity to entertainment options like Gopalan Arcade Mall, The Garden Asia Resort, Wonderla, Grips Gokarting, and Clubbing ensures a vibrant and fulfilling lifestyle for residents and their families.

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Investing in Provident Sunworth Kengeri not only offers a luxurious lifestyle but also promises a substantial return on investment. South Bengaluru's rapid development and growing real estate market make it a prime destination for investors seeking remarkable ROI.

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Provident Sunworth Apartment promises an unparalleled living experience with its exceptional social infrastructure and convenient location. Embrace luxury and comfort with spacious 2 & 3 BHK apartments in Kengeri, where every amenity is within reach. Join the proud homeowners of Provident Sunworth Kengeri and experience blissful living in South Bengaluru's largest and finest township.

[machineryequipment]

Global Windows and Doors Market Trends, and Growth Opportunity Analysis Size and Forecasts (2020 - 2030)

Overview

Doors and Windows Market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 5.20% for 2021 to 2028 with factors such as, volatility in the prices of raw material along with stringent rules of government, restraining the market growth in the above mentioned forecasted period.

Windows and doors market has shown an exceptional penetration in developed economies in Asia-Pacific due to growing number of construction activities along with rapid urbanization and prevalence of favourable government policies in various economies such as China, India, Vietnam and others in this region.

In any residential as well as commercial building, windows and doors are a requirement. Windows allow light and sound to pass in, while also providing the space with ventilation. Doors are, on the other hand, for egress and for stopping intruders in the building. Strengthening construction activities around the globe, supported by shifting consumer preference to replacing ageing infrastructure, strongly influences the market.

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Market Segmentation

windows and doors market is witnessing a significant growth in developed economies during the forecast period of 2021-2028 due to factors such as, increasing preferences towards the replacement of aging infrastructure, increasing safety, durability as well as value of residential structures, driving the market swiftly. 

Regional Analysis

Windows and doors market is analysed and market size, volume information is provided by country, product type, material, mechanism, and application as referenced above.

The countries covered in the windows and doors m  arket report are U.S., Canada and Mexico in North America, Germany, France, U.K., Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Rest of Europe in Europe, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of Asia-Pacific (APAC) in the Asia-Pacific (APAC), Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, Israel, Egypt, South Africa, Rest of Middle East and Africa (MEA) as a part of Middle East and Africa (MEA), Brazil, Argentina and Rest of South America as part of South America.

Asia-Pacific dominates the windows and doors market due to the growing number of construction activities along with rapid urbanization and prevalence of favourable government policies in various economies such as China, India, Vietnam and others. The U.S. region is expected to hold the largest growth rate in the North America windows and doors market due to the increasing demand of single family homes in the region.

Key Players

ANDERSEN CORPORATION

JELD-WEN, Inc

PELLA CORPORATION

SGM Window Manufacturing Limited

Performance Doorset Solutions Ltd

ATIS

Vinylguard Window & Door Systems Ltd

NEUFFER WINDOWS + DOORS

Weru Windows Blackpool Ltd

BG Legno S.r.l

Ponzio - P.IVA

Deceuninck nv

RENSON

TOSATTI

[priyanshisingh]

Biological Bone Repair Materials Market Analysis Demand, Statistics, Top Manufacturers, Revenue by Reports and Insights 2030

The latest market report published by Credence Research, Inc. “Global Biological Bone Repair Materials Market: Growth, Future Prospects, and Competitive Analysis, 2016 – 2028. The global biological bone repair materials market has witnessed steady growth in recent years and is expected to continue growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2023 and 2030. The market was valued at USD XX billion in 2022 and is expected to reach USD XX billion in 2030.

Global biological bone repair materials market has witnessed significant growth in recent years, driven by the increasing prevalence of bone-related disorders and the rising demand for advanced bone repair solutions. The market is segmented by type, application, distribution channel, and region, with bone growth stimulators (BGS) leading the type segment and orthopedics clinics representing the largest application segment.

Biological Bone Repair Materials Market Major Challenges revolve around addressing the complex nature of bone injuries and finding effective solutions for their repair. One significant challenge is ensuring that the materials used are biocompatible, meaning they can be safely integrated into the human body without causing any adverse reactions or complications. Another obstacle lies in developing materials that possess sufficient strength and durability to support bone healing while also allowing for natural tissue regeneration.

The global biological bone repair materials market offers growth opportunities driven by technological advancements, such as the development of 3D-printed implants and tissue engineering techniques, which enhance treatment outcomes. In addition, the expanding geriatric population, rising prevalence of bone-related disorders, and increasing healthcare expenditure in emerging markets provide avenues for market expansion and adoption of advanced bone repair solutions.

The global biological bone repair materials market is experiencing significant growth due to the increasing prevalence of bone-related disorders and injuries, including fractures, orthopedic surgeries, and degenerative bone diseases. Biological bone repair materials, including bone grafts, growth factors, and stem cells, offer advantages over synthetic materials in promoting faster and more effective bone healing. Technological advancements, such as 3D-printed implants and tissue engineering techniques, have propelled the market forward. The market is characterized by established players focusing on R&D operations to introduce innovative products and expand their market presence.

The biological bone repair materials industry encompasses various products to support bone healing and regeneration. These materials include bone grafts, growth factors, and stem cells employed in various orthopedic and dental procedures. Biological bone repair materials serve as a substitute or scaffold to stimulate bone growth and facilitate natural healing. These products can be derived from autologous, allogeneic, or synthetic sources. The market is driven by the emerging demand for advanced treatment options and the need for improved bone healing outcomes in patients with fractures, bone defects, and other bone-related conditions.

Browse 190 pages report Biological Bone Repair Materials Market By Type (Bone Growth Stimulators (BGS), Viscosupplements, Bone Graft Substitute, Others) By Application (Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centres, Orthopaedics Clinics, Specialty Clinics, Research & Academic Institutions) - Growth, Future Prospects & Competitive Analysis, 2016 – 2030)- https://www.credenceresearch.com/report/biological-bone-repair-materials-market

North America Dominates

North America dominated the global biological bone repair materials market in 2022, accounting for over 44% of revenue share. This can be attributed to the advanced healthcare infrastructure and high prevalence of bone disorders in the region. Europe is another prominent market, contributing substantially to the global market share. The Asia-Pacific region is experiencing rapid CAGR growth in the biological bone repair materials industry. The rest of the world, including regions like the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, is witnessing the rapid adoption of biological bone repair materials.

Competitive Landscape

Some of the major players in the market and their market share are as follows:

Medtronic Plc

NuVasive Inc

Stryker Corporation

Zimmer Biomet Holdings

Orthofix International N.V.

Anika Therapeutics Inc

DePuy Synthes (Johnson & Johnson)

Bioventus

Arthrex Inc

SeaSpine Holdings Corporation

Sanofi S.A.

DJO Global Inc

Seikagaku Corporation

RTI Surgical Inc

Heraeus Holding GmbH

Fidia Pharma USA Inc

TRB Chemedica International SA

AlloSource

Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation Inc

ITO Co. Ltd

These companies focus on R&D activities to introduce innovative products and enhance their portfolio. Strategic collaborations, partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions are common strategies to strengthen market presence and expand geographic reach. In addition, investments in advanced manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printing and tissue engineering, drive product innovation and differentiation. Market players also invest in marketing and promotional activities to create awareness and expand their customer base.

Why to Buy This Report-

The report provides a qualitative as well as quantitative analysis of the global Biological Bone Repair Materials Market by segments, current trends, drivers, restraints, opportunities, challenges, and market dynamics with the historical period from 2016-2020, the base year- 2021, and the projection period 2022-2028.

The report includes information on the competitive landscape, such as how the market's top competitors operate at the global, regional, and country levels.

Major nations in each region with their import/export statistics

The global Biological Bone Repair Materials Market report also includes the analysis of the market at a global, regional, and country-level along with key market trends, major players analysis, market growth strategies, and key application areas.

Browse Full Report: https://www.credenceresearch.com/report/biological-bone-repair-materials-market

Visit: https://www.credenceresearch.com/

Related Report: https://www.credenceresearch.com/report/radiation-protection-aprons-market

Related Report: https://www.credenceresearch.com/report/bone-mineral-densitometry-bmd-market

Browse Our Blog: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/biological-bone-repair-materials-market-rising-trends-priyanshi-singh

Browse Our Blog: https://medium.com/@priyanshi_97937/biological-bone-repair-materials-market-rising-trends-and-research-outlook-2022-2030-48103ac91b25

About Us -

Credence Research is a viable intelligence and market research platform that provides quantitative B2B research to more than 10,000 clients worldwide and is built on the Give principle. The company is a market research and consulting firm serving governments, non-legislative associations, non-profit organizations, and various organizations worldwide. We help our clients improve their execution in a lasting way and understand their most imperative objectives. For nearly a century, we’ve built a company well-prepared for this task.

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[severewizardphilosopher]

The Untold Story of Credit Suisse's Tellurian Investment and How You Can Profit from It

The Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse made headlines in 2016 when it invested $850 million in Tellurian, a U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) company. The investment was one of the largest ever made by Credit Suisse, and it was seen as a significant vote of confidence in Tellurian's ambitious plans to build a massive LNG export facility in Louisiana.

But the story of Credit Suisse's Tellurian investment is more than just a simple financial transaction. It is a tale of ambition, risk-taking, and the changing dynamics of the global energy market. And for investors, it is a story that offers the potential for significant profits in the years to come.

The Origins of Tellurian

Tellurian was founded in 2016 by Charif Souki and Martin Houston, two seasoned energy industry executives with decades of experience in LNG. Souki had previously been the CEO of Cheniere Energy, the first U.S. company to export LNG. Houston had been a senior executive at BG Group, a British multinational oil and gas company.

Souki and Houston founded Tellurian with the goal of building a new kind of LNG company. Rather than focusing on the traditional LNG model of building massive liquefaction plants and signing long-term contracts with buyers, Tellurian aimed to build a more flexible, integrated LNG business that could respond quickly to changes in the market.

The centerpiece of Tellurian's strategy was a proposed LNG export facility in Louisiana called Driftwood LNG. The facility, which was projected to cost $27.5 billion to build, would have the capacity to liquefy up to 27.6 million tonnes of natural gas per year, making it one of the largest LNG facilities in the world.

But Driftwood LNG was more than just a liquefaction plant. It was also designed to include a pipeline network, storage facilities, and a fleet of LNG carriers, all owned and operated by Tellurian. This integrated model, Souki and Houston believed, would give Tellurian a significant competitive advantage over traditional LNG players.

The Credit Suisse Investment

In 2016, Tellurian was still a young company with a big idea but little capital. That's where Credit Suisse came in.

Credit Suisse was one of several banks that provided a $1.5 billion credit facility to Tellurian, which the company used to fund the early stages of the Driftwood LNG project. But Credit Suisse went further than just providing a loan. The bank also made an $850 million equity investment in Tellurian, giving it a 25% stake in the company.

The investment was a significant show of support for Tellurian's ambitious plans. It also gave Credit Suisse a significant potential return on investment if the Driftwood LNG project was successful.

The Risks of LNG

Of course, the LNG market is not without its risks. The market is highly cyclical, with periods of oversupply and undersupply leading to significant fluctuations in prices. LNG is also a capital-intensive business, requiring huge investments in liquefaction plants, pipelines, and storage facilities.

But Souki and Houston believed that the integrated model of Driftwood LNG would mitigate many of these risks. By owning and operating the entire LNG value chain, Tellurian would be better positioned to manage supply and demand, as well as price fluctuations. And by building a large, flexible facility, Tellurian could respond quickly to changes in the market, rather than being locked into long-term contracts.

The Impact of Shale Gas

Another key factor in Tellurian's strategy was the emergence of shale gas in the United States. Shale gas is a type of natural gas that is trapped in shale rock formations deep underground.

In conclusion, Credit Suisse's investment in Tellurian is a prime example of how savvy investors can identify promising opportunities in the energy industry. By recognizing the potential of liquefied natural gas and partnering with a forward-thinking company like Tellurian, Credit Suisse was able to generate significant returns for its investors. And now, with Tellurian poised for even greater success in the years to come, there may be even more opportunities for investors to profit. If you're interested in learning more about this exciting development in the world of energy investing, be sure to check out Biz Dispatch for the latest updates and insights.

[integratedhomes]

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One efficient strategy is in-store promoting, which might help reach target audiences on the level of buy. We will notify you of a failed delivery i.e. when nobody can be reached at the specified supply handle to obtain and sign for the goods on the scheduled time. Deliveries will usually be made throughout the timeframe of the selected supply type after assortment from point of dispatch and between major centers from Monday to Fridays.

Our comprehensive company solutions embrace boardroom automation, video conferencing solutions, cloud companies, video partitions, built-in screen solutions and built-in audio techniques. Huawei provides clients with robust help in phrases of product test requirements, information security solutions, and full-lifecycle services, so as to meet the stricter wants of government and enterprise customers. Huawei Consumer BG has unveiled a full lineup of enterprise-centric smart merchandise, which characterize a long-term strategic investment on the company’s half. The standout efficiency, safety, stability, and reliability of companies, and availability of smart office and creation instruments, have the potential to revolutionize smart office work in numerous industries. Its rich multi-device connectivity expertise can work seamlessly with cellphones, tablets, monitors, earphones, mouses, speakers and printers. Commissioning a fully automated home or enterprise just isn't a simple matter.

[atthebell]

#and ao3 is also english dominated and even still spiderbit is at number one#if there was a way to count all the twt fics that weren't posted to ao3 i think the difference would be even more pronounced

yeah i will note that a significant amount of the spiderbit fics on ao3 are them as a background ship in a fic not otherwise about them (which is always a factor for trying to do ship stats but is particularly one for spiderbit because as a married established relationship people throw them into the bg of fics quite a bit more than other ships), so that's an important thing to consider about these numbers.

i'll add that it took a very long time for spiderbit to claw up to number one-- slimeriana had a massive lead, along with fooligetta, qtntduo, and various platonic ship tags. and hideduo is growing quite a bit itself, although that fandom is also still dominated by brazilians who are less likely to use ao3.

regardless, though, you're right that tumblr is the odd one out-- that's what i was talking about with my original post, as tumblr is so english dominated that spiderbit doesn't have nearly as much of a foothold compared to twitter (brazilians are the sixth largest demographic on twitter, although that's possibly about to change) and the fandom generally (which, if we extrapolate from the election numbers, brazilians vastly outnumber every other language group, followed by english then spanish much lower and french the smallest). that is why i referred to monolingualism as the biggest detractor for spiderbit's popularity on here, although i think the other reasons i provided were also very relevant and just as irritating

also i don't have numbers bc that's not possible here but as someone who constantly goes through the tags and also for a long time followed like a million qsmpblr people who all mained various streamers, the actual top ships on qsmpblr are:

hideduo/fitpac. this is hands down there is no question here. 1/2 eng speakers.

slimeriana. at one point they were the undisputed number one. charlie fans are fucking crazy. 1/2 eng speakers.

pissa. phil mains are huge on tumblr especially post-dsmp. 1/2 eng speakers.

i don't even know if i would put spiderbit at 4th place quite frankly; fooligetta at certain points was definitely more popular.

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[episims]

Recolors of DeeDee’s Changeable Sim Portrait

Since @deedee-sims wonderfully provided us with the smaller add-ons, I thought I could express my gratitude by sharing some background recolors of these I’ve made for myself. There are eight of them, all of which you can see in the picture above, and it’s all Dee’s work, I just slapped some new colors on it. Even the preview idea was shamelessly stolen.

Download (SFS) (alternate) - I included the main mesh (the largest one in the picture) but get the other sizes along with Dee’s own recolors from here and here! These require either Bon Voyage or the BG version of Travel Poster by @hugelunatic :)

[angelanimedesaray]

Wings in the Dark Chapter 21:  Fall

AN:  The amount of “YOU COULDN'T WAIT FOR FIVE SECONDS BERTHOLDT” comments I got across three websites this story is posted on was GLORIOUS and I LOVED it.

Still figuring out the pacing for the five years before Eren as a Titan Shifter shows up, so bear with me when we hit that stretch.

Also, nothing like listening repeatedly to “You See Big Girl” “K21″ “Ashes on the Fire” and “Attack On Titan/WMID” while writing a massive action chapter :D

Characters:  Levi, Vampire!Fem!Reader, Petra, Oluo, Eld, Gunther, Currently Unnamed OC, Teases/References to Canon Characters Without Naming Them, Various BG Characters

Pairing:  Levi x Reader

Warnings:  Language, Violence, Blood, Death, Injury, Chaos, Tragedy, Peril, Willing Endangerment, Exhaustion

Word Count:  13162

<----Previous Chapter    Masterlist    Next Chapter---->

*Reader’s POV*

The reports that were coming in were shoddy at best, dubious or hard to swallow, earth shattering at the worst.  There wasn’t time for full briefings or finicky details, all you had time to be told before being given an assignment to aid in the response was that a giant Titan had appeared and broken through the wall in Shiganshina, allowing Titans to flood into the pocket city, and then another Abnormal of some kind had broken through Maria itself, with Titans now flooding the third and largest wall.  Warnings were being sent to cities to evacuate, trying to get to towns along the way if they could.  Groups were being sent to try and stem the flow of Titans to at least give the citizens of Maria time to escape.  Garrison soldiers were already being sent to reinforce the escorts for the boats coming from Shiganshina to make sure no Titans swarmed them as they moved upriver towards Wall Rose.

Levi Squad was meant to go to the front lines to try and stem the tides and give the refugees time to escape.  Of course, considering the importance of both you and Levi to the Scouts, and just how vital the advantage the two of you provided was, especially now with this tragedy unfolding around you, you also had strict orders to retreat when nothing more could be done, or you risked losing one of you if you continued.

If, by the time you reached the point the Titans had managed to reach, wherever that may be, Titans had already overwhelmed the area and there was nothing you could do to hold back the tide, then you were to switch objectives and help run the warning through Wall Maria and make sure the towns were evacuating, that the messengers were actually making it to their goals and hadn’t been swallowed up by Titans.

Considering it took roughly a day, in theory, to travel the entirety of Maria on horseback, and that was in a hard run without stopping which was impossible, you all knew by the time you reached the scene, it would be painfully far away from the gate city the Titans had initially broken through.  At best, you would reach an area and take part in a bit of damage control for half an hour, an hour, trying to give the residents of some poor town time to flee.  More likely, you all expected to be given the directive to switch tasks and start acting as messengers to make sure as much of Maria evacuated as possible before Titans swarmed the land entirely.

You, personally, expected that switch in missions to happen around the halfway point to the gate city, sooner, maybe, considering the Titans had a head start and longer gait then the horses.  And it would help you be better prepared, sooner, to think that way.

Currently, you were all in the process of racing towards the center of danger, a grim silence hanging between all of you as you rode as hard and fast as you could, gas and blades still full and unused as--at the moment--you hadn’t run into trouble.  However, you were all on edge, because there was no telling if a Titan had slipped past the Garrison soldiers if they’d managed to keep the Titans contained, or what directions any strays might have gone in, how fast they were moving, and how far they managed to get.

“There’s really no way to seal the gate?” you asked quietly, keeping your gaze fixed forward despite the abruptness of your question causing a slight stir in the group that had been utterly silent up until now.

“No.  They destroyed the seal and everything, and no one was prepared for something like this.  I don’t know if we’ll have a plan to fix it, either,” Eld said grimly near the middle of the group.

“No one knows how the walls were made, so it's not like we have materials on hand to seal it back up so Titans can’t get through again,” Gunther added.

“And I doubt Titans are going to just sit back and give us the time we’d need to seal it, anyway,” Oluo grimly chimed in.

“We’ll worry about that part another time,” Levi cut in sharply, bringing an abrupt end to the darker-toned discussion you’d just initiated in the group.  “Right now our focus is the evacuation, so stay focused on that.”

“Yes, Sir!” came the sharp chorus from the group, and an uncomfortable silence stretched over them all once again.

It was torture riding out there at full speed in silence.  Yes, your hearing would give you a heads up, but so far, you had nothing dependable to go off, no Titan fight sounds at the moment, just the thundering of the horse hooves in your ears and the utter lack of conversation to fill the grim air between everyone coping with the news on different levels.

You, personally, hadn’t wrapped your head around the concept, yet, and were just trying to stay focused on the task at hand, because that was something you could accept and do right now.  Processing the reality of what was happening could come afterwards, like Levi said.  Right now you all needed to focus on the task at hand and on getting out of this alive.

Your gaze drifted towards the back of Levi’s head.  You in particular had a damn good reason to make sure you made it through this tragedy in one piece, despite being ordered to the front lines.  The suddenness of what happened had not completely erased the minutes before the tragedy, the discussion you and Levi had been having, the necklace you’d given him now tucked well out of sight underneath the collar of his uniform like you kept your daylight necklace.

And he’d been about to tell you something, something about what he wanted, before everything happened.  Something that he’d been struggling to get out amid stumbles with his words and an awkward apology for acting strangely towards you recently.

Something important, clearly, but not something that the fall of a wall could wait for.

Something you wanted to hear when you got back, if it wasn’t wildly inappropriate depending on the manner of your return to Wall Rose.

A familiar sound reached your ears, and you straightened in your seat, gaze scanning the horizon for trouble, or any kind of visible sign of what you were heading for.  Already?  They were already this far out?  Sure, the message had to get to Wall Rose, Scouts had to get ready to leave, and you’d been riding for hours, but this was still sooner than you’d expected to be running into Titans.

“Captain--up ahead,” you called to Levi, who inclined his head before getting his weapons ready for a sudden clash.  Up ahead, you could hear Titans roaring and snarling at a still considerable distance, enough that the others couldn’t hear them yet, as well as the sound of ODM gear and people shouting.

It seemed you’d found the front lines.

Eventually, the group came close enough that the others could hear the distant sound of a conflict as well, but you could now hear it in clarity.  You could hear panicked orders being shouted, civilians screaming and trying to flee, the rumble of Titan footsteps, you could hear the distinct hiss of cables fired and whir of gear being pulled in different directions, even the occasional thump of a falling body.

Expecting to come across a bloodbath, you clenched your teeth in grim determination, readied yourself to have to deal with an overpowering scent of blood, and tensed, ready to stand up in the saddle at the first hint of proximal danger so you could leap right into action.

A few more minutes, and into view came a town, steam billowing high into the air from several different locations, civilians fleeing as fast as they could in a general direction towards Wall Rose, others having no choice but to flee in other directions because of Titan threats and conflict cutting off their route to the wall.  Titans of various sizes could be seen moving amongst the houses, and you were certain there were more smaller sized Titans or Titans that had just lowered themselves below the house line that your group couldn’t see.  In the distance, you could faintly hear more Titan activity.

This was the front line?  Already?  They were this far inside the walls already?

Shit!

The horses continued to carry you all towards the chaos as Levi barked out quick orders.  “Support the Garrison soldiers--make sure the civilians get out.  And don’t get killed!”

Once you were close enough the ODM gear could reach a building, you jumped off your horse and fired your cables, eyes set on a Titan that was following a small stream of civilians sprinting for the edge of town with screams ringing in your ears.  You weren’t rushing in blindly, smart enough to know to let your senses do a quick sweep of the area to make sure there weren’t any other threats as you let the ODM gear bring you rapidly closer.  Predictably, the Titan looked up at you as you neared, jaws open wide as it reached a slender arm up into the air towards you.  You disengaged the cables so they wouldn’t get grabbed, twisted your body through its fingers, planted your feet on its wrist, and then raced up its arm, which was only possible because in that split second its arm was horizontal with the ground and you had your vampire speed to cross the distance before your ‘terrain’ grew too steep to cover.

You launched yourself off the back of their shoulder, turning as you jumped into the air so you were facing the back of its head, firing a cable and releasing the gas so you shot towards the Titan’s nape, slicing through it with a low snarl and landing on your knees on the roof of a nearby house as it fell behind you.  You took a moment to let the pain in your knees go away as your body healed itself, gaze sweeping the smoke and fire filled scene to pick out your next target, watching Levi intervene several roofs away to take out three Titans in quick succession before they could grab two Garrison soldiers apparently stuck on the ground but trying to help citizens evacuate, still.

Sometimes, with your vampire abilities putting you so easily above everyone else, you forgot just how damn deadly and good at this Levi was.  You didn’t see it much in your day to day, or when you as the vampire point of the formation, took out the Titans before the rest reached them, but in moments like this, with Titans all around and chaos reigning, as grim as it was, he really shone.

Humanity’s Strongest, indeed.

A small Titan appeared around the corner, its fuzzy hair barely clearing the rooftops as it tried to snatch a civilian coming out of their house at the wrong moment, and you dropped your brief musing to take off again and continue aiding the evacuation as much as you could, well aware that the other part of the city was already rampant with Titans and a deathtrap for the soldiers, so it had been abandoned...and many of the Titans were coming from that direction.

You were steaming yourself by the time you stopped for a second to catch your breath, gaze cast down to make sure a family made it safely out of the maze of buildings as you wiped at some of the Titan blood on your cheek, taking care to breathe through your mouth to lessen the temptation from the blood in the air.  It was polluted thanks to the Titan blood in the air as well, but despite the efforts of the soldiers here on the ground, it was still enough to be disturbing and highly uncomfortable.

Not too far away, but far enough away you shouldn’t have heard if your hearing had been human, you heard a discussion between Levi and another soldier that had your head snapping over in their direction, ignoring the fact more Titans were on the edge of a city that was, for the most part, evacuated by now.

“Captain Levi!  A horde of Titans broke off in the fighting and headed for the river, where the refugee boats are--we were swarmed before we could intercept them!”

“How long ago?” Levi asked in tense urgency.

“Too long.”

“Shit.”

At that, you whistled for your horse, already knowing where this was going--or rather, where you were going.

As you waited for Zephyr to appear close enough for you to drop down and mount her, the conversation sort of continued, though this time it was directed to the other.

“Eld!  Tell the others to switch to the second objective--they’re too spread out by now, and we need to focus on evacuations.  Be smart, head west, pull back when you have to.  Y/N and I are headed east.”

“Captain--” Eld started to say in a displeased voice, but then Levi looked at him or something, you weren’t there, so you couldn’t see, but whatever it was, it made Eld shut up pretty quickly.  “Yes, sir.”

By then, Zephyr had appeared, and you used your cables to maneuver your way down and onto the saddle of the still moving horse, taking up the reins and maneuvering her through the maze of houses in the direction you’d heard Levi, ready to turn around as soon as you saw him and head back east.

You wanted to make sure he didn’t get ambushed by a Titan he couldn’t see while you were waiting on the outskirts of the town for him, which was why you were heading towards him instead of waiting.  Plus, the last thing you were comfortable with doing in a town that was being infested with Titans was staying in one spot, in or out of town.

Levi and his black stallion appeared as you rounded a corner, and you quickly turned Zephyr back around, already guiding her in the direction you were supposed to be going, but pulling back just enough that Levi could close more of the distance between you before you urged her into a full sprint, heading out of the city at breakneck speed and guiding Levi through the safe and uninfested part of the city before you broke out into open country field.  Levi was keeping up with you on his horse, though he was still several paces behind, and no explanation was given as at this point, given your direction and urgency, it was clear you’d heard what was happening and what to do.  The two of you rode hard in morbid silence, both of you hoping that you could make it to the river in time so that, at the very least, you could minimize casualties.  Those boats moved fast enough you thought they might have a chance, but they were still slow enough a Titan could catch them--they were slower than these horses, at least.  Hopefully the horde wouldn’t be so many that the Garrison escort wouldn’t be able to hold them off, but given what you’d witnessed back in the town, as much as you gave them credit for trying...you weren’t too optimistic.  They weren’t the Titan killing regiment that the Scouts had turned into, they didn’t have the experience and skill the Scouts had.  Which made the fact that no Scouts had even been in Wall Maria more misfortune for the people.  It took the Scouts hours to reach where the Titans were.

If you hadn’t been with the regiment, and expeditions continued like they normally did, they would have been, at the very least, in Shiganshina itself, or maybe not far from the gate town within Maria.  At worst, they would have still been outside the walls,  But maybe they would have been close enough to lend support much faster.

If it had been after the expedition, though, they wouldn’t have been in any state to fight--most of them wouldn’t have, anyway.  And they wouldn’t have had you to help them.

Shit.  This whole mess was bad no matter how you looked at it.  There wasn’t much you could wish for to make the situation worse, even--not realistically, anyway.  And Levi would just tell you to get your head out of your ass and stop thinking about shit that wasn’t relevant, that was already past and couldn’t be changed, and focus on what the two of you were doing right now.

Right.  At the moment, you were going to be locked into a perpetual cycle of observe, react, control, retreat, relocate, repeat.  You couldn’t keep getting distracted from that, you needed to focus.

An overwhelming amount of screams up ahead reached your ears as the sound of a rushing river came close enough to reach you.  However, Zephyr was panting beneath you, and pushing her any further at this pace, or trying to force her to go faster, was cruel, and might hurt her.  So, hearing Levi curse you from a few paces behind, you swung around on the saddle and jumped off, tucking and rolling, vampirism your saving grace as you took the brunt of the fall rather well, injuries healing quickly thanks to the healthy dose of Levi’s blood still running through your system, and your speed allowing you to pop back onto your feet and almost instantly overtake Zephyr while injuries were still healing, a broken arm you’d fallen on held in place by the unhurt one while it healed, arm finally stitching itself back together as the river finally came into view.

The screams were largely coming from the people on the boats as Titans waded through the rivers as if it was more simple grassy terrain, arms reaching for the wood and wires, a sad remainder of Garrison troops trying to hold them at bay as people on the boats scrambled and cowered.  There were bodies of soldiers sprinkling the ground for a good stretch before the river, horses without riders trying to escape the carnage, and up ahead of you was a soldier held tight in the grasp of a ten meter titan standing in the water by a boat, squeezing him and raising the soldier to it’s open mouth as the people on the boat watched and screamed.

You were fairly certain there was blood on that boat, too, so this hadn’t been the first time a soldier had been eaten in front of the boats trying to protect them.

You kicked off the ground, Cables attaching to the boat beside it as you put on a burst of speed with the gas, shooting forward with blades drawn, body curving in a way you’d seen Levi do many, many times by now.

With the unnatural strength in your blows and the durability of the ultrasteel, you cut through the Titan’s arms with ease--both of them, halfway between elbow and wrist, the soldier dropping with another, different kind of terrified scream as he fell still clutched in the Titan hand into the water.  Your feet planted on the side of the boat’s cabin roof, body coiling as you ignored the civilians on board, kicking off with cables already finding purchase in the screaming Titan’s flesh as you vaulted towards it, cutting through it’s nape as you sailed right into it, riding it down for a split second as you sheathed your blades, tossed the gear to the grassy ground when it was close enough not to break it with the impact, and jumped off the back of the Titan into the water after the soldier that had plummeted underwater in its severed hand and had not yet reappeared. 

Below the surface, you had to quickly maneuver under the falling Titan that was dissolving even under the water, causing the temperature to heat rapidly.  Much longer and it would be unbearable even for you, so you had to act fast.

Also because this Titan was probably going to crush the soldier in the hand if it didn’t dissolve faster than it fell in the water.  And right now the soldier was at risk of drowning.

Grabbing onto the soldier, you pushed yourself forward into the darkness, spotting the wild thrashings of a man who was almost out of air not too far away.  You swam towards him as quickly as you could manage, lungs starting to burn uncomfortably as you reached him in the stiff hand, peeling the fingers back with your vampire strength as his thrashing grew more death-throes frantic, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and then rapidly kicking once he was free of the hand, hardly clearing the Titan, pulled back by the suction of the dissolving body landing on the river floor.  Soldier still in hand, you kicked towards the surface furiously, though it still took a few seconds before you broke the surface with your stilling baggage.  You gasped in air as he coughed up water, dragging him with you to the shore as you kicked and tried to keep yourself afloat and moving with one arm, pulling him successfully onto the shore.  A familiar and far too close rumble and roar had you glaring at the Titan that was waiting for you, hand reaching out as your grip tightened on the soldier, coughing and gasping for air but still tensed and about to dash inhumanly away.

Before you had to, cables sank into the Titan’s flesh, and you relaxed instinctively as a dark shape cut through the air, Levi appearing on the other side of the Titan with eyes burning at you accusingly before the flesh of the nape even fell to the ground.

You ignored the look, since you had the situation under control even if a normal person wouldn’t, pulling the soldier out of the way of the falling body before you got back to your feet and raced over to your dropped ODM gear, still running as you strapped it all back into place, controls in hand as you kicked up into the air, cables firing into the wood of another boat to launch yourself up into the air, gaze scanning the area, ignoring the faces staring at you with a mixture of fear, awe, relief, more fear, amazement, pleading--none of that mattered, you were focused on the Titans still trying to swarm the boats.

Closer to the one you’d just been at, Levi let out a yell, burning through four Titans with terrifying speed for a human being, while you ended your arc in the air with a sudden plummet towards three Titans by the other boat, slicing through the nape of one Titan on your way down, sinking your cables into a second to launch yourself back up at an angle that allowed you to slide through a second Titan’s in the process before you turned midair, still with enough momentum to be going up, fired into it’s nape before it could straighten away from the boat and coming in fast and hard to kill it as well, this Titan falling so fast that the speed you were falling caused your Scout cape to rip through the air behind you, the thin part of the fabric held by a clasp at your neck almost choking you, though you ignored it, ears perking when Levi called your name in the other direction.

Back onto the cabin roof you went, the people below you exclaiming at the sudden action and still jumpy with the fact a Titan had literally just been about to eat them, before you ran and leapt, cables firing into the cabin of the second, pulling you towards the second boat.  Your feet planted into the side of the cabin, hand grabbing the edge of the roof as you flipped over to the top of the roof, ran, leapt--

Levi was dealing with a smaller Titan that had climbed onto the boat by another larger Titan who had bitten into the boat itself to get the people on it, three more either at the boat and reaching for people or almost there, refugees throwing themselves from the boat into the water in an effort to escape.

You didn’t have to ask what he wanted.

You twisted in the air as Levi made a beeline for the one with its teeth sunken into the boat’s wood, and as he cut deep into the nape of the biting one, you attached yourself to the back of the tiny one that had crawled onto the boat, one arm snaking around its throat as you pulled it back amid the chaos of the people on deck, one step, two, three, and then overboard, releasing it’s throat so you could attack with both hands, cutting it’s nape on the way down and disengaging your cables a split second before a solid arm wrapped around your middle and pulled, holding you firmly to a small but strong body and bringing you high into the air before throwing you even higher.

You caught a glimpse of Levi’s focused expression, the furrow of his eyebrows the only current hint of his concern since he was focused on where he was going and the threats on the other side.

Threats you had a perfect view of from up high thanks to his throw.  While Levi slung himself around the corner by hooking into the cabin of the boat, you dropped from above, cutting through the arm of one of the Titans that had reached the boat and had managed to get its hand on a civilian who was screaming shrilly enough it made your ears throb painfully.  You ignored it as you plummeted and cut through the arm as easily as you had with the Titan holding the soldier, hearing Levi zip by in the air, cutting through two napes above you before you launched up again, hooking around to cut through the nape of the one whose arms you had cut through.

With no immediate Titan threats, you focused on fishing for refugees that had jumped from the boat, cables sinking into the side of the boat as you used the cables to lower to the water, grab onto the arm of a refugee to pull them out of the water, cables pulling you back up to the edge of the boat and helping them back onto the deck before repeating the process again.  Levi was doing something similar, though he was fishing stray refugees that had gone a bit too far away to be within your reach, ones that were closer to the other boat or had tried to swim upstream.

He was done faster than you, since you had refugees swarming you to get a ride back up onto the boat that was still moving, all of them clamoring in the water while your sharp hearing took in a few more coming your way, making you fidgety the entire time.  Levi, however, was back on the shore, speaking in quick, sharp tones to the Garrison soldiers who were left, telling them about the Titan situation to the east, but as long as they made it past the head of the Titans moving north, they should have a straight shot to the wall.

The problem was, with how much their numbers had been depleted with that attack, they were asking Levi to stay and help defend the boats until they could pull ahead of the main mass.

But you two were supposed to be spreading the warning that the wall had fallen to the towns and cities out to the east..  Yet they really needed the assistance.  But every moment spent here was time for the Titans to reach farther and farther in, possibly to towns that didn’t receive a warning.

You finished helping the refugees back into the boat, using the cables but not the gas to conserve it as you got back to shore, whistling sharply for Zephyr again, hoping she’d continued forward at least long enough she was close enough to hear you.  While you waited, you turned to Levi.

“Captain,” you called, getting his attention, though there was a spark of some of that same intense expression he’d given you earlier.  He didn’t say anything yet, though, waiting for what you had to say.  “I think it would be wise for to stay with the boats until they reach the point they’re in the clear again.  They won’t be able to fend off another attack with these numbers.”

Levi’s eyes started to widen with what you were suggesting, before they narrowed in anger and he approached quickly to pull you aside and have a private conversation--that way vampire things could be discussed directly instead of having to muddy the clarity of what was being said by having to use roundabout language.

“Vampire or not, I’m not sending you alone into Titan infested land with no backup,” Levi hissed at you, a protest you could have predicted.

“Someone needs to stay with them long enough to make sure the boats actually make it to Rose, but someone still has to get the warning to the eastern towns.  I’m faster, I can handle myself just fine, if anyone’s going to get close to where the Titans already are, it’s me.  I can go through the southeast towns, warn as many people as I can, and head back when either I meet messengers coming from other directions, or I have to pull back.  And if I get the southeast towns, then when the boats come into the clear, you can get the northeast towns, that way we still warn everybody but the boats stay safe.  We have to split up here if we’re going to help as many people get behind Wall Rose as possible.”

“You’re not faster than everybody else when you’re on horseback,” Levi pointed out.  “And it’s still too fucking risky.  If something goes wrong I won’t be around to help you.”

“I’ll manage.  As for the speed, I can’t keep riding Zephyr like this, anyway.  I’m sure there’ll be someone who needs a horse to get to the wall.”

Levi’s expression darkened considerably.  “That doesn’t help to convince me.”

“We both know I’m the opposite of normal people--I’ll do better outrunning and evading when I’m on foot, anyway.  It’s pointless arguing with me about it because I’m going to do it anyway.  Levi, I’ll be okay, just let me do this.  The longer you stand here arguing with me, the more Titans there will be in the towns I go through.”

Levi’s jaw clenched, he stepped back and cursed, glared at you, then stepped up to you again, hand clenching into the fabric of your shirt as he pulled you closer so you were eye to eye, unable to look away from his intense gaze.

“If you run out of blades and gas, get back to the wall.  If you can’t fight them off, you’re no help to anyone.  If there’s too many Titans in the town and you don’t have the supplies to help them, get to the next town--you’ll save more people getting the warning out while the Titans are preoccupied than you will fighting a battle you can’t win while more Titans move on anyway.  If you get injured bad enough that you’re at half your capability or worse, get back to the wall, you’ll just get yourself killed.  No dumbass hero moved that will get you killed.  You’re--”

“I know, too valuable for the Scouts to lose.  The long run and all that.”

Levi hesitated, gaze flickering down to where he still had a fist curled into your shirt to pull you close, and he tsked, letting go and pushing you just barely away in the process so you weren’t standing almost nose to nose with him when he let you go.  “Right.  That’s why...at least you’re listening to shit.”

His face turned away so you couldn’t see it, he whistled to his horse, who trotted right in front of him, Levi mounting the stallion with surprising ease with how...high off the ground it was.  “When we get through this, we’re gonna talk about these fucking stunts you’re pulling.”

Zephyr finally arrived, standing dutifully just a few paces behind you, looking a bit better now that she’d had a short rest.  Levi met your gaze as he spoke, his expression stony and focused, but his eyes slightly squinted, brows a bit closer than usual, lips pulled in as if holding things back, his grip a little tight on the reins.

He was worried.  Probably a hell of a lot more than even the little things could let on. But that wasn’t going to stop you from going.  As much as you hated the thought of how he’d have to go until the end of this mess, until you were both back behind the walls, to know if you were all right, this was still your best option--in your mind.  The best option that would let you help as many people, so personal concerns had to be set aside.

As if you didn’t hate the thought of him having to break away and go through the northeast towns alone.  But--and you weren’t going to mention this to him out loud because he’d catch on--if he was going through the northeast, he wouldn’t run into as many Titans.  It wouldn’t take that long for the boats to be in the clear, and it was going to take a while before Titans reached the northeast towns, considering they were mostly following the throngs that had come for Shiganshina, throngs that were probably streamlined towards Trost.  They’d be after that mass of people, these were--frighteningly enough--stragglers coming to the eastern and western parts of Maria.  You were all still fairly ahead of the spread, so he shouldn’t run into too many Titans while acting as messenger.  But he was also one of the only people you felt could handle himself just fine if he was on his own--you both knew he could.

Vampires he was at a disadvantage, but Titans, what you were dealing with right now, that was a different story.  He’d be okay.  You were the one braving the part of the walls far more infested with Titans, the areas they were more likely to be in if they were fanning out from Shiganshina.

You were taking the higher risk because you knew your vampirism gave you a bit more security in that landscape than Levi.  It was still risky for both of you, but not as risky as it would be for regular soldiers--it would practically be suicide for them.

But you weren’t going to tell him about that logic that reinforced your belief this was the best course of action, because if you did, he would shut it down fast once he realized it was partially out of a desire to maneuver him further from risk while throwing yourself near the danger.

Though you still had no intention of dying.  There was too much you needed to get back to the wall to hear, apparently.

“It seems like we’ve got one hell of a conversation waiting for us back at Headquarters,” you said as you mounted Zephyr, taking care not to word anything in a way that might jinx your return.  “I’ll have to be sure to make that appointment, then,” you said, then urged Zephyr forward before Levi could take back his decision to relent, feeling his eyes on you as you raced passed the boats you’d just helped rescue, further and further ahead until you came to a bridge that had not yet been raised so you could cross the river and start heading east, angling Zephyr so you were also heading further south at an angle, deep into what was likely Titan infested territory.

You stopped keeping track of the injuries you were collecting on this near-suicide mission, hardly paying them any mind now as you would simply take out whatever offending object caused it--if it was still in you--and keep going, ignoring any pain to the best of your abilities and still moving while it was healing, like you’d done when you’d jumped from Zephyr.  So far, every town you went to you ended up fighting Titans to try and help civilians escape, Titan appearances painfully common while you were out here on your own.  But, like you told Levi, you were one of the best equipped to be doing this mission alone, even if normally it would be a suicide mission.

You were still on Zephyr--you hadn’t yet come across someone who needed a horse to get them north, and most of the time you were busy killing Titans while people were fleeing, so it wasn’t like you had much of an opportunity to offer her, either.  Though, as much as you loved the mare, it was starting to get aggravating, because you knew you could cover more ground without her, but you needed to make sure she would make it back to the wall at the same time.  So, currently, in a sense, you were handicapped.

And you were running out of supplies.  Yet there was still so much ground to cover.

Fuck...you had to get ahead of these Titans…

The next town you came to was again besieged by Titans, but this time, it seemed like the tail end of the attack--mostly because of how small the town seemed to be.  You charged in without hesitation, doing a sweep of the area with your senses once more as you tried to pin down the Titans in the town to exact points, and the number you were looking at.

Not too many, but you were also officially at the point where you were trying to conserve everything.  It was the tail end of the fight, so maybe you should just do a quick pass, make sure there weren’t any stragglers, that most people had escaped, and then move on.  The lesser amount of Titans might mean you were catching up to how far out they’d gotten.

A shrill scream and a whimper caught your attention, your body instinctively bringing you closer to the source.

The source was at the end of the alley, two children tucked into what amounted to a crack in the wall instead of an actual alley trying to avoid the hand of a grasping Titan that would not give up, crouched down and trying to wedge them out, fingers pinched around the younger one’s arm as the older whimpered and tried to hold on for dear life as the younger one screamed non-stop in terror.

One swift motion and you were standing on Zephyr’s back.  One more quick motion, and the cables of the ODM gear had buried themselves into the closest building giving you enough air to have a clear shot at the distracted Titan’s nape, the creature too intent on the possible meal it had a hold of to give you any mind.  You came in fast and hard, making sure the stroke of your blades were just right so you wouldn’t damage what was honestly your last set.

The younger one was still screaming, the older sobbing as you jumped gracefully off the back of the Titan and grabbed Zephyr’s reins, approaching the two in the crack at a hurried walk.

Now that you were looking, you could see it was two sisters that you’d come across, both bloody and tear stained, clothes burned or ripped, staring at you with wide eyes as you gestured for them to come out of the hole.

“Hurry, we don’t have much time,” you said urgently, regretting that you didn’t have the time to talk to them properly and calm them down.  Everything had to be quick, especially in a corner like this, with the younger one still screaming, though it was turning into hysterical sobs at a gradual rate.

The older sister picked up her younger sibling and shuffled out of the crack, looking everywhere like a mouse looking for the cat it knew was nearby.  You picked her and her sister up with ease, getting them up onto Zephyr and guiding the older sibling to wrap her arms around her younger sibling and hold onto the saddle horn as you grasped the reins and quickly guided Zephyr through alleys and streets, using your hearing to avoid wandering Titans as much as you could with the younger sibling the older was trying to console.

“Can you ride a horse?” you asked the older sibling, who hesitated before she gave a none-too-confident nod.  It was probably more of an ‘if that’s what gets us out of here alive’ reply than a definite ‘yes I can.’  You still accepted the answer.  “Good.  When we get out of town, I’m going to point you in the right direction, and you ride as hard and fast as you can that way.  Get to the wall, then follow it to the nearest gate--or flag down a soldier to help you if you can, but make sure you’re always moving to a gate.  When you get inside, tell them this is a Scout horse belonging to Levi Squad--and make sure they know I gave it to you and I’m still alive.  Okay?  If you see any Titans, just avoid them, try to outrun them.  Don’t panic, just run.  And trust the horse, she has good instincts, so make sure you listen to her.”

You spoke with rushed words, but you made sure that the girl understood everything you were saying, ducking and darting through the streets until at long last you came upon the edge of town.  There was a Titan closing in on you from behind, but the girls would have taken off by the time it reached you, so you were ignoring it for now, just keeping loose tabs on it in favor of getting the girls out.

Once you reached the edge and open space was in front of you, you angled them ahead of you, in the direction of Karanase, the eastern pocket city along Wall Rose, since there would be less Titans in that direction and less people trying to shove their way in--it was better chances.

“Hold on.  Hya!” you shouted, giving Zephyr a sudden slap on the rear and sending the horse into a full gallop in the right direction, watching a few moments longer to wish the girls luck before you turned to face the Titan that had just appeared around the house and was staring at you with a constipated look on its face.

“That’s right, ugly, I knew you were coming,” you muttered under your breath, using the cables to bring yourself back to the urban setting, no gas to propel you since you were now conserving it for emergencies only.  You landed on the side of the second story of the house, climbing up onto the roof as the Titan straightened up, leaning forward towards you, arms outstretched.

As you’d done to the other Titan, you leapt up onto its wrist, running up its arm while it couldn’t understand what was happening, jumping off it’s shoulder and twisting to fire cables down to the house below and behind it, giving you the opportunity to sip past it’s nape and slice clean through, landing on the opposite roof with a roll as it fell behind you.  You closed your eyes for a brief second, listening to the town you’d reached, which again, had been at the tail end of an attack.  It didn’t sound like there was anyone else to save, and the blood in the air definitely suggested this had been a bloodbath.

There was no one left to save here.  You’d gotten the girls out, and you were horse free.  Which meant it was time for you to book it to the next town on foot, hopefully outrunning any Titans that had already been on their way there.

Nimbly, openly using your vampire abilities since there was no one around to witness them, you jumped down from the roof and landed coiled on your feet, getting up and darting back out from the edge of town and into open fields again, racing with vampire speed towards what you hoped would be the next town, ears listening hard for any sounds that would lead you properly to a town or village that needed warning or protecting, able to cover much more ground now that you were on foot.

You had no idea what was going on with the warnings, but it hadn’t been as efficient as you might have hoped.  Some towns were empty long before you arrived, others had no idea what was going on.  Some messengers might have gotten through, but it seemed they were too terrified to double back and make sure they got all the towns, or their fellow messengers had made it through other towns.  Maybe some towns just got missed because they weren’t that well known, or their messenger had been eaten before the town could be reached.  Either way, you started seeing more of people and more of Titans after the fifth or sixth town after passing Zephyr off to someone else.  It meant you were finally ahead of the Titans, and the people finally had a chance to properly evacuate without running and screaming in blood and chaos.

However, you gave the explanation, “I lost my horse a while back and ran here on foot, you lucky bastard, now get these people out of here!” far more often than you would have liked, arguing with people who just didn’t believe that the wall had fallen, or could fall, and didn’t want to leave.  You ordered everyone out that you could, trying to forcibly get others to leave when they were one quick intimidation away from complying, and reluctantly leaving behind even the stubborn fools who still refused to leave.

You couldn’t save everyone, and for those fools, it would be their own stubborn stupidity that killed them, not you.  Though you didn’t know what part of an exhausted bloody Scout on foot with next to no supplies left yelling that the wall fell with a hard look in her eyes they didn’t get.

Whatever, there was no point dwelling on it, you’d done your part, done what you could.  If they died because they didn’t have time to leave by the time the Titans appeared, it would be their own fault.

However, as unpredictable and insane as this day was, you could not have anticipated what you stumbled across in one of the towns that had been warned.

You’d been about to run right through, noticing that the town was completely devoid of life, not so much as a whisper of a breath that you could hear.

Until, at the very edge of town, you heard movement.  Human movement, not Titan--Titan had a distinctly different sound to you.  This was the sound of someone moving around quietly in a house--something that wouldn’t be detected by human or Titan ears, just vampire hearing.  Only after you heard the initial movement could you hone in on the soft breathing, the surprisingly steady heartbeat given the situation.

There was someone still here.  Intentionally?  Maybe not.  At least you hoped not.  Who the hell wanted to be here right now, besides soldiers trying to get people out.

And even then, you didn’t particularly want to be here, you were just needed here, so this was where you were.

Coming closer at a semi-quick pace, staying quiet as well but not about to lose your lead on the Titans with other towns suffering for it, which was why you gave up part of your stealth in favor of speed.

Whoever was inside suddenly stilled, holding their breath and only letting out and taking in slight breaths when absolutely necessary, minimizing the sound they made as you got closer.

They shouldn’t have been able to hear you yet…

Suddenly cautious, glancing up at the slowly setting sun that told you there were a few more hours of daylight left before you would be moving in darkness, you slowed down, the house the noise was coming inside coming into view as you approached from the back.  Shadows were getting longer, but sunlight was still dominant, and something made you stay in the light as you crept closer.

“I know you’re in there,” you called when you were a few paces from the wall, eyes sharp on the curtains as you watched for any signs of someone peeking out of the window.  “You need to leave--the Titans aren’t that far away.  You can’t hide here.  You’ll have to move for Wall Rose--”

There was silence, and you scowled.  “I know you’re in there, no point in playing coy with me,” you said, some of your annoyance peeking through as you started slowly walking along the side of the house.

There was more silence, but before you could speak again in a more demanding tone, you finally got a reply.

“I’m not leaving, so don’t bother.”

Male.  It was a young male, too, from the sound of it, that was speaking from within, albeit reluctantly.  Your gaze flickered across all the tightly shut windows and curtains, looking for any sign of movement, but not a single opening that could let in light was even cracked open, and no light from candles glowed from the other side.  There was no scent of burning in there, either, which was further confirmation there was no light.

What the hell?

“If you stay, the Titans will find you, and it will be over.  You have to leave, now,” you repeated much firmer, starting to come up on the front of the house.

“I can’t leave.  Just get out of here.”

“Are you injured?”

“No.”

“Sick?”

“No.”

“If you can walk, you can leave.”

“I can’t!” he snapped back, sounding annoyed now--no, a bit more than annoyed, but not yet furious, at least.

You paused.  Something was off here, something that had the hairs standing up on the back of your neck, a whisper of a warning going through your gut.  So you paid closer attention to what your senses were trying to tell you, standing silently a few paces from the building, just before you could reach the front.

The sound was still barely there, heartbeat a tad bit quicker but still there, and their scent…

You paused.  Took a long, deep breath to double check.

You had no desire to drink their blood well up in you, even with how exhausted you were.  There was no natural pull towards it that there usually was when you came across a human being.  Even if it was something you noticed subconsciously when you were well fed, you certainly noticed its absence now, when you hadn’t even been looking for it with all the humans you’d been around all day.

A fully dark room, able to tell you were coming before they should have been able to, a refusal to step out of the dark house and into the sunlight…

You stilled, cocking your head to the side.  “How do you see humanity?”

“Excuse me?” came the incredulous answer a half-second later.

“I asked how you see humanity.”

“Is now the time for questions?”

“I have time for a couple before I have to leave.  Indulge me.”

“I don’t know...haven’t thought about it.  Weak and stubborn, especially today.  Fearful.”

“Someone’s a pessimist...but at least you’re not comparing them to cattle,” you mused, gaze flickering around your current surroundings, suddenly assured that whoever was inside wasn’t going to risk opening the windows to get a peek at you.  “Do you think they deserve to live?”

“...they?  Not we?”

Your lips twitched towards a smile that he’d picked up on the subtlety.  “I said what I said.  What do you think?”

“...Who the hell am I to decide that?  And why the fuck are you asking me?  Who are you?”

You hummed, your curiosity rising through the roof, but also well aware you couldn’t stay to have as meaningful of a conversation and interaction as you suddenly felt the urge to have with this mystery young man.  “If you don’t mind, I’m going to decline to answer that.  And I’m going to have to leave.  I haven’t had any good run-ins with a fellow vampire yet, and I’m not risking it today.  Not to mention, I have time-sensitive things I need to be doing right now.  You understand.”

There was a sharp intake of breath, sudden movement, and then, “Wait, wait!  You--you’re like me?”

You paused at that frantic, lost tone, something old and painful struck within you to hear it from him.  “You’re new, aren’t you?  To this, to what we are?”

“...Yes.  I-I haven’t met...How are you out there, how are you in the sun, I can’t even open the windows…”

“Now’s not the time for that.  The Titans will be here soon, and I have to warn the other towns.”

“But--”

“I can’t take you with me, it doesn’t work like that.  Listen, they’re less active at night, our time, when we usually come out.  Stay down, stay quiet, and when it’s dark, wait an hour or so, and then run as fast as you can to the walls.  Flag down a soldier to let you in, say you had no way to the wall and they were too close on foot, so you waited until dark to travel.  They might believe that.”

“Please, can you tell me your name, or something, so I can...maybe I can find you, or--”

“No.  No offense, whoever you are--and don’t tell me your name--but I’m not going to trust another vampire right out of the gates, and you shouldn’t, either.  I have yet to meet one with good intentions.  So we won’t exchange names.  I’ll tell you how to get to Wall Rose, but that’s all.”

“Please, I’m still new to this, I don’t...I don’t understand what or why, you’re the first person I’ve met that could give me answers, please…”

“You also need to be careful of vampire hunters,” you continued stalwartly, staring up at the sun.  “They’ll kill our kind without remorse, they don’t care if we deserve it or not.  We’re vampires, and that’s enough for them.”

You heard a slight sob inside, one that did, despite your best efforts, break through the armor you’d been hastily trying to construct against this sudden encounter.

Sighing, you ran a hand through your hair, looking specifically in the direction of the sound.  “Okay...okay...I’ll make you a deal.  Learn to control your thirst, or at least try to direct it away from innocent people, first.  That’s my cardinal rule--no innocent people killed.”

“I’ve been feeding off livestock...making it look like animal killings…”

You clicked your tongue.  “That won’t do.  I know you don’t want to hear it, but that will make your tolerance, your control, shit.  And with Maria falling, people are going to need all the livestock they can get.  Can’t keep picking them off.”

“I don’t want to kill people.”

You softened at the whisper you don’t think you were meant to hear, staring at a rock near the building next door.  “When you get inside Rose, wait until a day where it's rainy and cloudy so you can travel in the daytime.  Go to the elder’s home in Freising, and give them a letter with a time, date, and place to meet at night, and tell them it’s for the Fraiser’s former mystery donor.  We’ll talk more, then.  But I really have to go, now.”

“Wait!”

You didn’t wait--you couldn’t afford to.  You were already doubting your decision--what if he’d been playing you?  Hence why you gave him a roundabout way of contacting you instead of a name and place, that way you could scope it out and come prepared when the time came.  But if he really was a lost, freshly turned young man…

You couldn’t stand to knowingly leave someone behind to suffer the same as you had, and possibly go down a much darker path.  But you also couldn’t stick around and chat.  You had to outpace the Titans and keep warning people, you couldn’t stop now.

Even for the unique case of a newly turned vampire you might be able to help.  Though right now, you couldn’t do anything with the sun out.  You’d have to wait until it got dark to actually do anything for him, and you couldn’t afford to wait around until dark.  You had other things to do.

So you left him behind, hoping he made it safely to Wall Rose in the night and he would be able to reach out to you like you’d asked.

And that it wasn’t all a trick.

Darkness fell, but you kept going.  You were out of blades, out of gas, and absolutely exhausted.  You could hardly see straight anymore, you staggered and weaved, breathing ragged, panting, legs burning--you weren’t even sure you were running at vampire speed anymore.

But you kept going, warning every town you came through, directing people to safety, warning them how far away Titans were, telling Garrison soldiers who were still in these few towns or were about to leave since it was dark the emergency and to get people out of the towns.  Many, many times people asked if you needed a ride back, commented how you looked like you were going to be sick and collapse, asked you to stop, but you said the message had to keep going, waved them off, and kept going.

You were so exhausted, that you almost fell right into a lake, the cold water sending a brief jolt through your system as you backed up, trying to get your bearings, moon shining high above you, head spinning and pounding even as you slowly made sense of your surroundings.

A lake...a big one, at that.  No, huge.  Landmark huge.  If it was the lake you thought it was--not that you’d ever seen it personally, but you knew of it--than that meant you’d reached the far north.  You’d covered the entire east side.

You started to collapse to one knee, finding it hard to get simple breaths in and out of your lungs, legs shaking.  You could just lie here and sleep, right now even the grass would be enough.

No...no, you couldn’t.  You would rest well into the day, and the Titans would find and eat you in your sleep.  You couldn’t stop here.  You had to keep pushing.  But now, you could finally fucking retreat.  You’d reached a stopping point.  Surely messengers had already gone out from the north.  That would explain why you’d been straight up running recently, only passing empty towns--there was no one to warn because they had all been warned up here.

It was time to go back.

You pushed yourself up to your feet, doubled over and vomited as your head spun and vision darkened, body rebelling violently, amazing that you’d actually made yourself throw up for a split second before you realized you were tilting closer to the ground and you had to move now or you were going to pass out.

You just had to reach the wall.  The northern wall.  Someone might actually see you before the Titans saw you, that way.

And you still had your flares.  You could fire a flare for a rescue if you needed to.

But first you had to reach the fucking wall, and the odds weren’t in your favor in your current condition.

You had to try.

So you staggered one drunkenly exhausted step forward, then another, a hand planted in the grass to steady yourself the first few times before you got some momentum and forced yourself to stand, legs trying to give out underneath you with every step.

Just a little farther.

*Levi’s POV*

He hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours.

The Garrison soldiers on the wall, strung out and nervous as they are with what happened, terrified a giant Titan would appear and destroy Wall Rose as well, they were legitimately annoyed by Levi’s presence, not that anyone had the balls to tell him that.  But he caught glimpses of the looks when he turned away from them.  He didn’t give enough fucks to do or say anything about it, though.  

They weren’t going to stop him, even if they tried to.  He’d been up here since he came back through Karanase, prowling the walls from Karanase to northern Utopia, telling every Garrison soldier on duty to keep an eye out for a certain female scout regiment soldier that should be coming through within this expanse of wall, one that would be on foot, but alive and in need of assistance, and to tell him immediately when she arrived because she was one of his.  All of them gave him dubious looks, clearly doubting she was alive, thinking he was some scout who lost their damn mind because they lost a comrade.

But he knew she was alive.  She had to be.  Even if it had been far too long since he saw her.  Even if, in his mind, with how much of a head start she had on him, she should have been here before him.

He knew she would be on foot, because coming through Karanase, he’d been told about the scout horse two girls came to Karanase riding, claiming it belonged to a member of his squad who’d sent a basic message of ‘I’m still alive, I gave them the horse’ with them.  It hadn’t been much of a surprise when the horse had been Zephyr, he’d been expecting it, but it was still nerve-wracking to know she was out there on foot, vampire or not.

And she’d been out there too damn long.  He’d expected at the latest she would be back in the night, and when the dawn’s rays appeared over the wall, he thought he would be sick, mind starting to be officially convinced of all the terrible possible scenarios of what might have happened to her.

He tried really damn hard not to think of the what ifs about letting her go on this dumb suicide run.  Tried not to think of how he should have refused and made her stay, how they should have gone together, he shouldn’t have let her convince him.

One Garrison soldier had the audacity to walk up to him and start to suggest he go back and get some sleep, starting to say that Levi looked like he was going to collapse, but Levi had sent the young man a look that silenced him instantly and made him slink away.

He was exhausted.  He did feel like he would collapse.  He’d been fighting and riding for hours, almost a full day, making it to Karanase as dark was settling.  But even though his limbs shook and his eyes felt so damn heavy for once in his life, telling him he was exhausted--likely from the stress as well as all the physical exertion from this shitshow of a day--he kept moving on the walls, never stopping no matter how much his feet  and legs ached and throbbed in protest, how many times he thought his knees might give out, how many times his mind whispered to just sit down for a little bit, he kept moving to keep himself awake and so he could prowl the length of the wall she would appear at.

She would show up.  She hadn’t promised him, she was wise enough not to do what so many others did and guarantee they would come back just to make it false, but it may as well have been a promise.

They had things to discuss.  Her reckless actions today, for example.  Nearly getting squashed by a Titan as she dragged a Garrison soldier out of the water, running off on her own like that without backup instead of taking the safer option of waiting for him, now making him lose his goddamn mind atop these walls waiting so long for her to show up.  Those were important things they needed to discuss.

And also...there was what he’d been trying to tell her earlier.  But maybe that could wait.  If she--when--she came back, that might not be the right time, he might have to wait, but there were other things they needed to talk about, as well.

The only other sign of her they received throughout the night was the young man that flagged down garrison troops somewhere in the general sector that people fleeing to Karanase came from.  Levi hadn’t paid the young man much mind, especially cause his story was shaky at best--something about having no way to the wall besides on foot, and the Titans being too close to travel on foot, so he waited until dark like some female soldier who he hadn’t physically seen told him to do.  A shoddy story, at best, but it was the most he had to go off.  Even then, though, the young man--teenager, actually--had claimed that conversation with the soldier happened a couple hours before the sun set.  So there was still the entire night that she was unaccounted for.  Besides the information about the female soldier, his shoddy story, and some erratic seeming behavior he appeared to be trying to control, Levi didn’t pay much attention to it--he’d seen all types today, and wrote it off as yet another traumatized civilian reacting in a new way.

Levi weaved, dropping to one knee and biting back a groan, hand planted in front of him as he resisted the urge to even close his eyes.  One of the Garrison soldiers posted on the wall started to walk towards him, but Levi looked up and shot him one of his soon-to-be-routine glares, and the man returned to his post, side-eyeing Levi as he got shakily to his feet.

He couldn’t leave.  Not until she came back.  She’d fucking promised, in her own way, and she was not allowed to break it.  She was the one that had the greatest chance of surviving the Titans, as she always liked to remind him when she convinced him to let her do her risky suicidal stupid shit he was never going to let her do again.

He knew he was reaching levels of irrational, that with anyone else, by now, he would have grimly accepted that they died.  If Erwin knew he was up here, the towering blond would show up and give Levi a verbal lashing and drag his ass back, and for once would be able to do it considering the condition he was in.  But so far, thankfully, no Erwin.  Though Levi knew the Commander knew Levi was alive, he’d sent word back to Erwin so that he would know that much, as well as the comment he was waiting for Y/N to get back.

The world spun again, and Levi steadied himself on a stack of crates on the wall, trying to ignore how the sun made his head throb and eyes burn, letting out a shaky breath.  If he would actually sit down right now, he would fall asleep instantly.  That’s why he had...to keep…

“Hey...does anyone know what the fuck that color means?”

“I didn’t know we had a flare like that.  What is it, pale purple?  It looks like pale purple, right?”

Levi’s eyes snapped open at the overheard conversation, a burst of adrenaline pushing him forward as he hurried in the direction of the Garrison soldier conversation, eyes frantically searching the horizon for the lilac smoke, brushing right past them and ignoring their angry exclamations.

In the back of his mind, he registered that he was on the pocket wall surrounding the city of Utopia, staring off what had to be four miles, at least, at a pale lilac flare that was arcing straight up into the air.

It was her.

Thank God...Thank God...wait, Titans--where are the Titans?

“What was the nearest Titan sighting?” Levi asked, suddenly grabbing an unfortunate Garrison soldier that was nearby and one of many trying to figure out what a light purple flare meant.  He asked because, in case there were late arrivers, they were still keeping track of how far along the wall the Titans had managed to reach, though by now they had to be everywhere.

“About three miles back towards Karanase, ten minutes ago I think?” he asked in bewilderment.

Levi let go of him, hurrying to the point of the wall that went furthest out into Maria, gaze searching the ground of the horizon, looking for Titans or a blip his human eyes might see that showed him where she was.  Purple meant an emergency, she needed help...he needed to go to her.

It was suicide for him to go on foot in his current state, even with fresh blades and gas.  But he needed to function off the assumption she wasn’t going to come to them because of the flare.  And he didn’t have time to go looking for a horse and having it raised and lowered over the wall.

Don’t be reckless Erwin had told him.  And Y/N.  Hell, he’d been lecturing her about recklessness yesterday.

His tired eyes searched the surrounding area, unable to see any immediate Titan threat.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, cursing himself even as he jumped off the edge of the wall, firing a cable halfway down to control his fall, coming to a rather graceful stop at the bottom--until his feet hit dirt and he staggered slightly, cursing to himself again before he took off at a sprint in the direction of the flare.  His lungs burned, skin prickling and eyes scanning every damn inch of land he could see, taking out his blades ahead of time as he sprinted, pushing the exhaustion aside with painfully practiced skill and ignoring the pain, trying to tap into that inhuman power of his to push himself just hard enough to reach her.  He’d worry about getting back once he got to her.

The open space was Titan free, but two, three miles in, he realized it was turning into a forested area.  Refusing to stay a prime target on the ground, he started using the trees and his ODM gear, keeping silent in case Titans were hiding among the trees, hoping the fifteen, twenty minutes it took to run the three-ish miles without stopping at his above-average and well in shape speed, even exhausted, with how he was compartmentalizing right now, was enough to reach her in time if she was truly in danger and the flare hadn’t just been to fire a unique one that would get someone to know she was here.

He heard the Titan before he saw it.  Hell, he saw her first, on her knees, head bowed low, body shaking, a spot she must have vomited a step or two from her, leaning against a tree.  Exhaustion worse than his own--she didn’t seem able to even stand.

And that was when the two Titans burst through the treeline, heading right towards her.  A fifteen meter and a six meter.  Levi’s blood boiled, his focus sharpened as something in him raged not this time, cables cutting harshly through the air and bringing him right to the two creatures, a snarl ripping out of him as he cut them both down two steps from where she was still leaning against a tree.  The cuts were messy by his standards, and he didn’t quite stick the landing, and one of the cuts were almost too shallow, but it did the trick, and they were both falling and starting to evaporate by the time he stumbled his landing on the ground, hurrying over to her side and picking her up after one, two, three tries, his own breathing shallow as he suddenly found her difficult to pick up.

It had been a long thirty-six hours or so for both of them.  Not even adrenaline was getting them through this anymore, it was just sheer fucking will and pain, and only on Levi’s end.  She seemed to have reached her limit.

Still, as he finally managed to pick up what felt like dead weight, she attempted a smile, though her eyes were barely open to even look at him.

“Hey...did I make my appointment?”

Levi took a few unsteady steps forwards, looking around the forest like a paranoid man as he raced out of it in the same direction he came, praying to whatever forces hated him so much to make his life hell that they let him skate by just this once, at least enough to make it to the walls.

“Your late as fuck...and you look like shit,” he returned in a huff, hating that he couldn’t even hide how exhausted he was right now.  “Are you hurt?”

“Nah, just...tired,” she said, sighing and sagging against his chest, looking like she was trying to stay awake on principle since they were still in Titan territory, though he doubted it had been as hard to resist falling asleep as it was right now, being carried instead of forcing herself to run.

He waited until he broke the treeline and it was open field around him with the wall a couple miles ahead, still running at full speed and trying so damn hard not to trip or collapse on himself, though he did stumble a few times, managing to catch himself and keep a tight grip on her as he kept running.  Once he was certain he didn’t see any Titans in their path or close enough to intercept--though he saw a few in the distance that seemed to be turning to head their way, fuck--he chanced looking down at her to make sure she really wasn’t injured.

There was a disturbing amount of blood on her, though he had the feeling not all of it was hers.  Some places, though, her clothes were torn or ripped, giving away--at least to him--that she had been injured, many times, but it had healed and she’d kept going.

“Fucking idiot,” he huffed under his breath, gaze fixed forward as the Titans continued to close in but the wall got closer and closer.  Just a little faster, a little further…

“Levi…” she murmured in his arms, her own arms going limp, exhaustion somehow making her feel heavier as Levi realized one of the Titans was running towards him.

“Shit...sorry,” he mumbled, before shifting her into more of a potato-sack carrying position, pushing himself to run faster, terrified for a few heartbeats he was about to make an amateur mistake and trip on his own two feet and face plant into the dirt for a few seconds as the world tilted, but he kicked up, fired the cables as the running Titan got close enough to leap at them…

His cables sank into the wall, and he released a torrent of gas, sailing up the wall at breakneck speed, releasing the cables again as he was still going up and firing again to reach the edge, leaving the Titans far below as he gracelessly vaulted over the edge and him and Y/N rolled, both groaning from the impact as Garrison soldiers almost instantly swarmed to inspect and make sure they were alright, one of them having the audacity to yell at Levi about how reckless and stupid that had been.

Yeah, he fucking knew, it wasn’t any of their goddamn business.

Shoving a few off him in an embarrassingly weak push, Levi staggered back over to her and shoved the others away, kneeling down next to her.

“She’s my right hand, I’ve got her,” he growled at them before turning his attention fully to her, brushing hair out of her face and pulling her head into his lap as he finally sat down, exhaustion piling on him so heavily he bowed over her with a low groan, the others shuffling away and saying words he didn’t care to make sense of.

“You okay?  You need a drink?” Levi asked her in a low voice, knowing she would know he meant blood, not water, like the others would think.

Her head turned towards him, eyes drooping shut as the fact she was fully safe registered, and she started to pass out, managing two words as fragments of what had to have been a sentence given the way her lips moved between them without sound coming out.

“Later...sleep…”

And she was out like a light, falling asleep in his lap right then and there.  He was going to get up, but just as he’d thought would happen, now that he sat down, he couldn’t even find the will to stand up.  His own exhaustion was crushing him, the stress he’d been under waiting for her to return shattering in the face of his relief and leaving him drained.

“Yeah...yeah...sounds good...for once,” he muttered, finding enough energy to pull her a bit closer so her upper body was cradled in his arms and atop his lap, her legs strewn out beside him.  He weaved, eyes heavy, world darkening, and he hardly even realized when one of the Garrison soldiers, some blonde drunk from Shiganshina that had enough heart to be patrolling Rose to make sure those still alive stayed safe once he’d reached the safety of the walls, steadied him moments before he passed out fully and could collapse on top of her, the last thing he felt being wooden crates against his back, and the feeling of someone trying to wedge something soft between his back and the crates so it wouldn’t be hell when he woke up.

He didn’t have the strength to stay awake after that, though he at least understood someone was trying to give them a place to rest safely atop the walls, the morning sun and activity of the soldiers around them telling the new shift soldiers not to disturb the two scouts who had done the most for warning and evacuating the refugees not enough to disturb their exhausted sleep.

Even if one of them was propped up against a grain sack and wooden crates while the other was sleeping on a stone floor, ODM gear, and the other’s lap and arms.  And after that explanation, coupled with their ragged and drained appearance even in sleep, no one bothered them.  They just let them sleep.

Next Chapter---->

AN:  Before anyone gets up in arms about this and the poor character gets undeserved hate--no, no I am not taking a love triangle route.  Calm down. Lol.

Everything Tags:  @antisteller​  @mochicheeks-world

Levi Tags:  @clary-quinn​ @babydabi​ @whalerus​ @sunny-flo​ @thirstyforsometea​ @hauntedhousecat​ @peaches-and-clouds​ @queenofcurse​ @wubbawubwub04​ @lollobos @pasteldays​ @itsmeaudrieee​ @macaronnv​ @tokyo-banana​ @apuci-kis-szornye​ @morgana-olson​ @yellowminb​ @ashikothedog​​

Wings in the Dark Tags:  @regalillegal​​ @animeluver23​​ @theshylittleelfgirl​​ @queenthorin1​​ @lady-ragnvindr​​ @breezybear @subtlepjiminie​​ @queenondeezmatatas​​ @linxiajei17​​ @levisbebe​​ @toni-jones​​ @pinkberrymilktea @ascybous​​ @emmaandemmal @wolfie3616​​ @aot-fanatic​​ @jencyib @zombiukas​​ @notgoodforlife​

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Investing in Provident Sunworth Kengeri offers not just a luxurious lifestyle but also a promising return on investment. South Bengaluru's rapid development, coupled with its burgeoning real estate market, makes it a prime destination for investors seeking substantial ROI.

Your Ideal Home Awaits

Provident Sunworth Apartment promises an unparalleled living experience with its exceptional social infrastructure and convenient location. Embrace the epitome of luxury and comfort with spacious 2 & 3 BHK apartments in Kengeri, where every amenity is at your fingertips. Join the proud homeowners of Provident Sunworth Kengeri and relish a life of blissful living amidst South Bengaluru's largest and finest township.

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Standby Letter of Credit vs. Bank Guarantee

Standby Letter of Credit vs. Bank Guarantee

Standby Letter of Credit vs. Bank Guarantee. Hi there Yiu Fung Finance Company Ltd is a Licensed Money Lender that was incorporated in Hong Kong on March 28, 1980 under  the  Money  Lenders  Ordinance  (Chapter  163  of  the laws of Hong Kong), with Registration Number: 0080313.

We have Freshly Cut Standby Letter of Credit (SBLC) and Bank Guarantee which are specifically for lease at 4% annual…

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Financial SBLC provider, Financial SBLC’s, rent bank guarantee, Bank Guarantee financing, Bank Guarantee funding, bank instrument providers, genuine bank guarantee provider, genuine loan providers, largest bg providers, largest dlc providers, real bg provider, direct loan lenders, loan lenders for people with bad credit, international project funding, loan lenders no credit check, Fund My project, Genuine loan company, sme loan firm, small business loan, business loan, genuine international money lenders, direct loan lenders for bad credit, unsecured loan lenders.

Top Billion is a Finance Industry professionals with over 19 Years Experience and a focus on providing Bank Guarantee {BG}, Standby Letter of Credit {SBLC}, Letters of Credit, Personal Loans, Business Loans, International Project Finance as well as other financial instruments issued from AAA Rated bank such as HSBC Bank Hong Kong/ London, Deutsche Bank AG Frankfurt, Barclays Bank London,…

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Bank Guarantee financing

Ming Fong Finance Company Ltd are genuine bank guarantee providers. With our world class cutting edge and group capital fund we can finance your signatory projects and help you to enhance your business plan. Our financial instrument can be used for purchase of good from any manufacturer irrespective of location. We specialized in Loans and Project Funding, BG, SBLC, LC, Non collateral loan etc.