Chapter 37: Finally, sleep

After making sure that the whole body of the fallen titan shifter had been burnt completely and distributing the ashes across a nice and calm plain on the area outside the walls, the two young people left with a heavy feeling in their hearts.

They kept running, they had to keep going, they took down one of the unexpected ones, but the army had no information about the rock throwing monkey-looking titan, that alone was as much of a threat as the other two were.

Night came quickly and the two camped among a patch trees.

"How long should we wait before going back inside?" asked the young woman without the usual grin on her face and with a lifeless voice.

"Tomorrow will be fine" replied young man with a similar, albeit rougher, lifeless tone as he kept his eyes on the fire between them.

After a moment of silence the girl asked about something that bothered her "Don't you think that it's weird?"

"What?"

"We haven't seen any titan at all since we left Wall Maria, I mean, the normal ones"

"Maybe they are already all inside of it and there aren't anymore outside" he answered, still looking into the fire.

Minutes passed, then hours, the sky filled with stars was clear of any cloud, but the two weren't in the mood to enjoy it and neither managed to sleep.

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked the girl, she was affected, but it was evident that it wasn't the the extent that he was.

"No... I'll be better eventually, what about you?" he replied hiding his pain behind his usual expressionless face, something that the person that spent her entire life by his side could see right through.

"I'm the same as you, pained and unsure if what we did was right, it was an enemy, but it was still a person, one we had to execute because she was too dangerous" she said with a pained expression, she didn't bother trying to hide it, she wasn't stupid enough to think that he wouldn't see through her.

"But it was the only choice, leaving her alive would have costed us way more lives" he said, with the same words that he wanted to hear, with the excuse that he heard in his mind over and over.

"You are right, therefore you don't have to blame yourself, you didn't kill her, we killed her and we only did that because she held that curse" she said spinning around who was consoling who with this conversation.

An helpless smile found its way on Klemens' previously emotionless face as a low chuckle came from Liesl.

"Right, now stop with that useless self pity and let's keep working toward the end of this stupid war"

"I really can't win against you, can I, Lie?" he asked, now the pain in his heart started slowly disappearing.

I wouldn't ever go away, but it's going to subside at least a bit, sharing the burden was the first step toward real acceptance.

"You obviously can't, now get your shit together and let's go to sleep, we still have a long journey ahead of us"

"Good, if you don't mind I'll take the first round of lookout, so go to sleep early so I can do so earlier as well" he said.

"Nah you moron, we'll sleep together, we both need some hugs right now, no need to worry about titans anyway since it's night and I doubt they'll run after us" she said literally picking him up from the waist and putting him over her shoulder like a bag of potatoes.

"What are you doing moron, let me go!" he exclaimed in clear distress, he didn't want to be treated like an object!

But she ignored his words and laid him down where they were going to sleep, together, right now.

She then laid down while facing him and started embracing him pulling him closer to her.

Klemens sighed strongly, but had realized that she wasn't going to let go and now that he was being hugged he realized that he didn't want to do so either, so he returned the hug and soon enough he fell asleep.

"I love you, Kle" she said ten minutes later and only after seeing that he had fallen asleep and double checking his breathing and pulse.

"Love you too..." he mumbled in his sleep, causing her to have a half heart attack, calming down only after seeing that he was really sleeping and not feigning it.

"Stupid Kle" she mumbled, drifting to sleep right after.

The next morning Klemens woke up, he was now spooning Liesl between his arms with her back facing him.

'What the fuck did I do?' he thought while immediately standing up and jumping away.

"Oh? Hello sleeping beauty" said the young woman with teasing extremely clear in her voice.

"That was just a moment of weakness, fuck you" he said hurriedly with his face entirely red, why did he even accept?

What if one of those titan shifter found them while they were sleeping? Did killing Pieck give him brain damage or something?

"I obviously know that, let's go now, we need to move it" said the woman with a grin.

'Seems like he doesn't remember that, stupid Kle' she thought, what that was needn't be said 'Now it's not the time to talk about that, not here, not now'

"Yeah, we need to move"

ten days passed, instead of coming back into Wall Maria right after as they planned, they decided to take the long path and travelled near the wall, reaching the eastern side and going through the shortest route to reach the district of Karanes, one of the cities they visited during their vacation and the place the survey corps should be stationed to start the journey to Shiganshina.

"It's good to be back" said the shoulder length red haired young woman.

"Yeah, let's reach the survey corps fast, we need to stop this mission, we need a weapon to destroy that armor" replied the raven black haired young man.

They ran once more and for hopefully the last time in this journey, at this point they were sure that they would be unable to move much for a few days as they had never done such a long marathon in their lives, probably over a thousand kilometers in an extremely short time.

"We need another vacation now" joked Liesl.

"Fuck your vacation, I'll go to sleep as soon as I find a bed" replied Klemens with nothing different from absolute seriousness in his tone.

"Fair enough"

In a few minutes they reached the place the corp was currently residing at as Erwin had told them before the start of the mission.

"We are Liesl Stark and Klemens Ackerman, we need to talk to Commander Erwin, is he inside?" stated Liesl to one of the guards inside the base.

"Yes sir, I'll inform the commander of your arrival, for now you can stay here" the guard pointed to a couch nearby at made his way to the commander's office.

When the guard came back he seemed much more tense, but Klemens and Liesl didn't care, he probably realized who they were, being tense was a weird reaction but this guy might be a weird one.

"Hey commander, we're back with bad news" said Liesl barging into the door, if they weren't allowed to be rowdy then no-one was, at least in her opinion.

Inside the room were the Commander Erwin, section commander Miche, captain Levi and Zoe and Zoe's vice, Moblit.

'Was there some important meeting or something for all these big shots to be gathered at the same time?' wondered Klemens, but soon abandoned the thought, if they wanted them involved they would tell them soon enough.

"Stark, Ackerman, it's good to see you alive and well" said Erwin with a small smile on his face.

"Yeah, you're probably the only ones who would survive a mission like that" said Hange Zoe followed by a boisterous laugh, behind which some uneasiness could be felt by those close to her.

Unfortunately, Klemens and Liesl weren't close to her, so they didn't feel anything wrong with that laugh.

"Now, how about you two start with your report, how bad is the situation?" asked the commander.

"The road to reach Shiganshina is pretty much cleared of titans, we killed most on the way during the night as they were asleep so that shouldn't be a problem" started Klemens before motioning to the girl to keep going, he was tired and with this he has done his part.

She glared at him slightly, but still accepted to continue "The bad news is in our enemies, we confirmed the presence of two titan shifters we had no clue about, the first is a Monkey like titan, taller than Eren, body covered in fur, extremely broad chest and arms reach below his knees, from what we've seen his main attack method is by throwing rocks at the opponents, the other was a quadruped, but that's no longer a threat" she said with full seriousness in her voice.

"And why would that be?" asked Moblit, Zoe's vice captain, Liesl could be understood, but saying everything wasn't a problem.

"We killed it and burnt the body" said Klemens briefly.

"If you had the time to burn the body I presume that you didn't kill this titan shifter in battle, why didn't you bring it back alive, or at least the corpse?" asked Captain Hange, who had been extremely excited about the opportunity to examine a titan shifter other than Eren and given that this one was an enemy, she could have been a bit rougher, but she's been disappointed.

"We weren't in the conditions to drag a potential danger around with us alive and dragging a corpse could have slowed us down too much, we burnt to prevent the enemy from passing down her power if they knew the way"

Erwin took in the new information and eventually asked, with a metaphorical sparkle in his eyes "Have you confronted any other titan shifter other than these two?"

"Yes, we faced Reiner Braun, the armored titan, in close combat, our blades cannot pierce its armor so we had to retreat, on our way out the quadrupedal titan ambushed us, we killed it and fled from the battlefield"

Silence reigned in the room, these information was a lot to take in, adding that to their initial suspicion, they needed a few seconds to consider the situation, but eventually the commander spoke "At this moment we can consider that the two of you have the most knowledge about all of us about our enemies, what do you think we should do about our current situation?"

Klemens had already thought about this before, so it only took him the time necessary to organize his thoughts "I think that we should postpone the expedition at least until when we have the necessary firepower to destroy the armored, after that I think that we should change the way we'll go about it, the presence of the Monkey Titan and its extremely long range and their large area of effect could instantly decimate our forces, the two of us are alive merely by luck"

The commander acknowledged his proposition and they'll think hard about it later, but for now he said "Great job you two, you can go rest, tomorrow you'll receive further instructions"

"Yes sir" the two then left the room, going straight to an empty room where they're going to sleep like logs for the next twelve hours minimum.

But back in the room the big shots of the scout corp continued their discussion, but this time they had a different subject to discuss.

"Well, what do you think?" asked Levi, confusing Moblit as he was the only one out of the loop of suspicion on the two.

"The two of them are too fantastic to be real, they faced three titan shifters and remained alive and even killed one, all the while they've been alone in a titan infested land killing everything they came across for fifteen years, if they were enemies, they are doing things far too high profile" replied Erwin.

"I think so too, the only things that point to them being among them are circumstantial in the first place, I proposed my suspicion just because if I was correct it would have been too much of a danger for humanity" continued Hange.

"Wait, wait, I'm lost, what are we talking about?" asked Moblit.

"Hange had a theory, the two of them were trained before they officially joined the army, just like the two previous deserters, they come from a village without other survivors just like the two previous deserters, plus the fact that they had a meeting with the deserters and were at the right place every time, the possibility that they were spies too existed.

And if two people like them had even the slightest possibility of being an enemy while being among our ranks could cause irreparable damage if true, but the chances are even slimmer, especially after this mission" replied commander Erwin, leaving Moblit with a question once more.