'Down to my last set of blades.' (F/N) thought to himself as he stood over another steaming corpse. 'Gas is runnin' low too. Dammit. How'd so many get through?'

Gritting his teeth, he jumped back to the rooftops where Mina was waiting for him. "Alright." He said. "Let's keep moving."

"Wait." Mina stopped him. "Here, you should take this." She said, unscrewing the gas canisters from around her waist.

"What are you doing?" (F/N) asked slowly as he watched her.

"You need this gas more than I do." She said. "Blades too. They're no good in my hands."

Walking up to her, he grabbed her by the wrist. "No. You need that stuff to protect yourself."

Mina laughed bitterly. "Protect myself? Look at me, (F/N). I should be dead right now. The only reason I'm not, is because of you."

"Mina..."

"I'm useless, okay. Just admit it already. You've gone and killed dozens of Titans and all I've done is watched from a safe distance away. I'm dead weight. You should've just left me to die."

"No." (F/N) said firmly. "You aren't useless, you're just scared. And you have every right to be."

"Right, not useless." Mina scoffed. "Just a coward."

(F/N) took a deep breath and placed his hands on Mina's shoulders. "Listen to me." He said. "That fear you're feeling is a good thing. It means you're still alive. And if you think bein' afraid makes you a coward then you're a goddamn idiot. Everyone single one of us is afraid, but it's what you do with that fear that really matters." Letting her go he turned to look out at the destroyed city. "Yeah, you may have frozen earlier, but you didn't run away. And you're not running away now, either. Way I see it, as long as you can keep sayin' that, you're as brave as anyone."

"Not like you, I'm not." Mina smiled sadly. "I could never jump into a Titan's mouth to save someone else."

He laughed. "Nah, that ain't bravery. That's called (F/N) being insane. Look," he sighed, "you keep tryin' to fight that fear 'cause you think that's what makes you brave, but it's not. People spend their entire lives tryin' to fight back that fear. People like Eren and Reiner. They're pretty damn good at it too." He laughed. "But sooner or later the time will come when you have to stare down death, and when you do, all the fighting in the world ain't gonna be enough to keep you from dying afraid. Do ya understand? Fear is a part of life. Fear is a part of you, and you can't fight who you are, not forever. So, instead of tryin' to fight that fear, maybe it's time you try embracin' it. Make peace with it. That way, when the time comes, you can die in peace, too."

"Is that what you do?" Mina asked, hugging herself. "You embrace your fear?"

He turned to look at her, a strange glint in his eye. "Darlin', I live for it."

The girl tilted her head and gave him a curious look out of the corner of her eye. She understood what he had said, but she didn't understand him. Honestly, she never had. He had always been a little strange. The other members of the 104th called him crazy and she was starting to see why. Fear was a biological response to danger. You're supposed to run away from that danger, not towards it.

"Now, enough chit-chat." (F/N) said, firing his ODM gear. "The others should be nearby. We shouldn't keep 'em waitin'."

Nodding, Mina jumped off the building after him. A few streets further they saw the silhouettes of the other cadets gathered on a roof top just a little over a block away.

"Go meet up with them." (F/N) told her.

"Where are you going?" Mina asked as (F/N) dropped to the streets.

"I see someone I gotta take care of." He replied. "I'll catch up in a minute."

Retracting his ODM gear, (F/N) slowed to a walk, the clicking of his boots on the flagstone bounced off the walls of the empty streets. A few of the roofs had been stripped of their clay shingles and there were red splotches scattered about the street where blood had begun staining the cobblestone. To his left was a Titan sized hole in one of the buildings where the steaming corpse still lay, not yet fully decayed. He slowed to a stop as he approached an intersection in the main road. The quiet pleas of her desperation could be heard even before he rounded the corner. 

"Come on. Wake up, baby." She begged. "We have to keep moving."

(F/N) came to a slow stop just a few paces behind her. He wasn't sure if it was the blood loss that did him in or if something else had happened since he'd left them. Either way, it wasn't Franz lying on the ground. It was his corpse.

"Hanna." (F/N) said, gently placing his hand on her shoulder. "He's gone."

It didn't seem like she'd heard him. Instead, she kept pleading with Franz to wake up as she continued applying chest compressions. Taking pity on the poor girl, (F/N) knelt beside her and waited. He kept his senses sharp to pick up on the approach of any Titans, but none ventured near. Something else must have captured their attention. As the minutes passed, Hanna's pleas grew steadily quieter as she slowly lost hope. Her hands were still resting atop Franz's chest, and (F/N) gently wrapped them up in his own, giving them a consoling squeeze.

"I'm sorry."

Finally giving in to reality, the last of her strength left her and she collapsed into (F/N). Though surprised at first, he wrapped his arms around her back as the tears she had been holding back finally burst through the dam. She sobbed into shirt, and through the incoherency of her cries the only thing he could make out was, "why?" He wished she could have been given the proper time to grieve, but the world was a cruel place and time was not a luxury they had.

"We need to meet up with the others." He said. She didn't move. "Hanna."

"Just leave me." Her voice was hollow.

Glancing down, he saw the way her knuckles had clenched around the handle of her blade. "Is this really what you want?"

"I want to be with him." She answered. "And if I can't live by his side, then at least I can die by his side."

(F/N) nodded slowly. "Alright." He said. "If that's what you want, well, I won't try to stop ya."

"Thank you."

Again (F/N) nodded. "I just think it'd be a damn shame, is all. The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the livin'. I'll carry his memory as best I can, but I didn't know him nearly as well as you did. If you go through with this, well, it won't just be your life you're endin'. You sure you're okay with that?"

"Don't try to guilt me into changing my mind." Hanna said, the grip on her blade still tight.

"I'm just askin' a question." (F/N) said. "Look, whatever you decide, I promise you I'll carry Franz's memory with me 'til the day I die. I'll etch his story into every fiber of my being. And if I have to, well, I'll find a spot for your name too."

From off in the distance, he heard the sound of an acoustic shell being fired from the top of Wall Rose. That meant all the citizens had been safely evacuated. Time to withdrawal. Getting to his feet, (F/N) fired his ODM gear into the closest building and resumed his path for the remaining cadets. Better to withdrawal as a group, though he didn't even know if he had enough gas left to make it to the interior. He wasn't sure if he had been expecting Hanna to follow him or not. Either way, he supposed, it didn't matter. It was her choice to make, not his.

He rendezvoused with the others a few minutes later. A pair of arms threw themselves around his neck the second he landed on the rooftop. A small laugh escaped his lips as he recognized Sasha's scent. "Oh, thank God." She whispered. "I told you he was still alive, didn't I?" She said shakily as she stepped out of the hug. "Jean didn't believe me, but I knew you'd be back."

"Course I'm back." He laughed. "After all, someone," he gently squeezed her ass, causing her to squeak ,"still owes me a buck." He said, reminding her of the promise she'd made the day they'd first met.

"So the maniac made it." Jean said from where he sat on the roof. "Great, now we can all die together."

"Eh, I could think of worse ways to go." (F/N) smiled and hung off Sasha and Connie's shoulders. The auburn-haired girl smiled meekly, but Connie just shrugged off his arm. (F/N)'s smile became a confused frown as he looked at his shaved friend. His face was obscured by a dark shadow and his eyes had an empty hopelessness to them. Looking around, he saw the same expression etched on everyone else's faces too. "Oh, I'm sorry." He said, putting his hands up defensively. "I didn't realize I was interrupting the party."

"Party?" Jean spat angrily.

"Yeah, the pity party you're all throwin' for yourselves." He said loudly so everyone could hear. "I mean, my God, just look at all'o'ya. You look like you just watched your best friend die! Which, I mean, yeah, I guess you might've." He muttered to himself. "But still, I've never seen such a miserable looking bunch of sods in my life. What the hell's gotten into all of you?"

"Oh, would you shut up!" Jean shouted, angrily getting to his feet. "We're all outta gas! Not one of us has enough left in our tanks to make it back to Wall Rose, which means we're all gonna die here!"

A few people flinched at Jean's words, only because they knew them to be true. Almost every person was crying and those that weren't all bore a defeated look of acceptance.

"What about the resupply house?"

Jean laughed bitterly. "Cowards have barricaded themselves inside. The whole place is being swarmed by Titans, which means..."

"Which means we've still got a chance!" (F/N) finished like it was the obvious thing to say.

"Still got a chance?" Connie scoffed. "What, are you crazy?"

(F/N) rolled his eyes and turned his head skywards. "Oh my God, yes." He groaned. "I thought we established that years ago. I am cra-zy." He said, tilting his head from side to side with each syllable. "But if you're all just content to sit around here and wait for death to come take you when there's still a fighting chance, then you're all a hell of a lot crazier than I am."

"Shut up!" Jean roared, roughly pushing (F/N) by the shoulders. "We're dead either way! The only difference is you're the only person mad enough to actually run towards their death!"

"No, the difference is that if I'm gonna go down, I'm goin' down swingin'!" (F/N) countered. "Come on you, guys! If we gotta die today, let's die with style. Takin' out as many of those Titan bastards as possible. One last blaze of glory, what'd'ya say?"

The other recruits looked up at him for a few seconds before returning their gazes to the sky or their folded hands. (F/N) looked around at them again before shrugging and taking a seat.

"Eh, whatever." He said, dropping his elbows on his knees.

"That's it?" Jean asked incredulously. "You go from fired up to giving up in half a second?"

"Who said anything about giving up?" (F/N) asked. "If y'all are plannin' on dyin' here, I figure the least I can do is send you off. Plus, HQ's gonna need help identifyin' all the bodies. They'll need a list, and I've already got two names to carry on me. I can carry all your names, too."