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The weight of the Midnight Sun never really lifted. It pressed down on everyone who had survived. And the burden Erwin had carried was now Hange Zoë's, settled onto her exhausted body and her one remaining eye.
The clamor of the royal reward ceremony finally faded. Hange returned to her quiet quarters and began, piece by piece, to shed the trappings of rank: dusty glasses lifted away, the Bolo tie finally loosened. Then she drifted toward the mirror.
Gaunt face. The left side wrapped in gauze — her life, her right eye, all that remained of Moblit. She let out a humorless smile. The nobles and their polished sensibilities wouldn't even allow her to show a wound traded with a comrade's life. Of course they didn't. They never wanted to see anything that came from beyond the Walls.
Carefully, she peeled back the edge of the bandage, letting the wound breathe.
After a moment, she pulled a stack of standard-issue eye patches from the drawer. They were practical and reliable, black leather with a cold sheen, waterproofed on both sides
"Not like anyone else needs them now," she murmured.
The scabs hadn't fully healed, but she fit the patch over her eye anyway, then her goggles. She swept her bangs to one side. A stranger stared back from the mirror — black leather swallowing the left half of a once-familiar face. She tilted her head, adjusting the patch, looking for the angle where the leather and the frame of her goggles could coexist without fighting each other.
Evening light came through the window slats. The one-eyed reflection gazed back in silence, announcing the end of an era.
---
Across the compound, Levi stood alone in the corridor beside the Survey Corps training ground. This place had always been too loud for him. Now the only sound was his own breathing.
Erwin was gone.
Every time the thought came, it pressed down on his chest — heavy, cold. They had retaken Wall Maria. By any measure, a victory. At what cost, though? The Survey Corps bled dry. Government support as slippery as ever. What was left was a mess, and he and Hange would have to hold it together.
And there were the kids.
His brow drew together almost imperceptibly. Armin was trying to master the power of the Colossal Titan. Mikasa coming out of everything harder-edged, her eyes carrying a finality that hadn't been there before. And Eren — since the ceremony, something had been off about that brat.
Floch still had that fire in his eyes — fervent devotion and barely contained accusation, scorching the living Armin, scorching Levi as well.
He didn't regret choosing Armin. What actually sat uneasily in him was something else: without warning, without so much as a conversation, he had shoved Hange Zoë — the person who should have been free to obsess over Titans and argue with him endlessly — directly into the center of the storm.
He could have pulled her aside and talked it through. He hadn't.
On the rooftop, when Hange took Mikasa away, he'd said he was choosing Erwin.
Then he hadn't.
Though the promotion had already been decided, Levi had controlled the timing unilaterally — and the full weight of it had hit her all at once, at the worst possible moment.
Historia was the same story. He'd pushed her forward, and she'd punched him for it, but the punch hadn't changed anything. The moment her royal blood was confirmed, her happiness became an afterthought. Was Hange's situation any different? Levi couldn't shake the stubborn conviction that his choices had, once again, pushed her somewhere worse.
He exhaled slowly and turned toward the corridor that led to her quarters.
There was nothing to do but figure out the next move with her.
Not just maintaining what was left — he and Hange had to carry the truth of the world forward. For the kids. For the people inside the Walls. And for the new Commander, who had just lost an eye and was being forced to face an even more brutal future.
He paused at her door, listening to the quiet on the other side.
Eventually, he didn't knock, and walked back into the shadows further down the corridor.
---
Hange Zoe appeared in front of everyone wearing the eye patch faster than most people had expected. The black leather covered her ruined left eye, but somehow it made the light in her right eye burn brighter. She could even make a joke about it in the mess hall, loud enough for the 104th cadets to hear:
“Looks like I’ll get half-price lenses from now on. Finally a perk!”
After they returned from the shore, she buried herself in everything they'd brought back. The origin of the Titans. Nations beyond the ocean. Humans living outside the Walls. Any one of these discoveries was enough to cut her sleep in half. Intelligence reports spread across her desk. Maps unrolled across the floor. She let candles burn to nothing without noticing. It was an intense drive — as if she could convert every ounce of grief the Midnight Sun had left in her into forward momentum.
---
Levi, by contrast, was a different story.
On the training ground, recruits flinched under his watch. Every small mistake earned a sharp reprimand. The pressure on Levi was visible — the loss of experienced soldiers had hollowed out the Corps' combat capability. He’d become harsher than before, and quieter as well.
Hange had noticed. Of course she had. Outside official functions, she'd barely seen him these past few days.
One afternoon, after a punishing ODM gear session, Levi was refilling gas canisters when Hange appeared with a tray: two cups of black tea, some shortbread.
"Hey, Levi! Good work out there." Her voice rang out. "Top-tier brewing standards. I measured."
"Hange." A beat. "Commander."
He took the tray and set it on the low wall beside him.
She slid one cup toward him, leaning back against the stonework, and watching the last of the recruits shuffle off the field. "How is this batch looking?"
"A bunch of idiots. Makes you wonder what the Training Corps had been teaching them." He picked up the cup and drank. "It'll be a long time before any of them are up to standard."
"Go easy on them," Hange said, though her eye caught the tension held in his face. "Trainees need time."
"Time’s short."
A silence settled between them. Just wind moving through dry leaves somewhere across the yard.
Hange set her cup down, propped her elbows on the wall behind her, and let her gaze drift into the distance. When she spoke again, the lightness had gone out of her voice. "You know, being commander... yeah, it can be a pain in the ass. But I can actually put some of the ideas I've been kicking around forever into practice now. That part's pretty great.”
She turned to look at him directly. "I know what you've been thinking." Her voice dropped a register. "But listen. I need your judgment. On the battlefield and everything that comes after. I've always trusted in you."
Levi's grip tightened around the cup. Tea nearly sloshed over the rim.
She continued: “Erwin's at rest now.”
She said his name plainly. The name that bound them both, heavy and unavoidable.
"The Survey Corps lost him. So." A breath. "We need to do this together. You and me."
Levi looked back out at the training ground. The recruits, newly gassed up, were forming into lines again.
Giving her a single nod, he finished the rest of the lukewarm tea in one go, then headed toward the recruits.
"Don't worry. I'll get them there."
Hange watched him go. It was the first time since the Midnight Sun that she saw the relief touch his face at all. Now it was clear to her: they were still standing together. That hadn't changed at all.
---
Weeks passed. In the Commander's office, Hange was drowning in paperwork. Her left hand pressed hard against her temple, which had been pounding for an hour. Her one eye moved painstakingly through dense columns of text by candlelight. The goggles were becoming a real problem — the heavy frames pressing down onto the edge of her eye patch, driving the stiff leather into skin that was still learning to be skin again.
She never complained about it. She made a joke instead.
"Honestly, this is fine," she said, rubbing at the reddened edge with her fingertip. "Narrowed field of vision means I literally cannot see as many problems at once. Efficiency." She adjusted the patch. "I just wish the lining were softer. Like Levi's cravat. Whoever designed these things definitely never tried wearing them with goggles."
Then she moved on to the harbor infrastructure report.
Levi had heard her. He noted the spot her fingers had pressed, and he remembered the particular longing in her voice — the instinctive reach for something simply, ordinarily comfortable.
A few days later, Levi turned up in the supply warehouse. He ran his fingers across bolts of cotton, linen, and canvas, testing texture and breathability. Nothing felt right.
Eventually, on a trip to the Underground to handle Corps business, he took a detour. He knocked on the door of an old tailor he knew — a man with a reputation for precise work and obscure sourcing. The tailor cracked the door, saw who it was, and let him in without a word.
Even this craftsman, who prided himself on handling unusual requests without blinking, was thrown by how specific Levi's requirements were. Waterproof and abrasion-resistant on the outside. Breathable, skin-safe lining on the inside. An absorbent layer between the two. And the whole inner structure needed to be detachable for washing.
"Still as demanding as ever, Levi," the old man said, turning over the standard-issue eye patch Levi had brought as a reference. "Just sourcing a lining this soft is going to be a hunt. And you want it removable on top of that."
"She won't remember to replace it on schedule. It at least needs to be easy to clean."
The tailor's expression shifted into comprehension. He went to the back of a cabinet and returned with an oilcloth parcel, which he unwrapped carefully to reveal a bolt of fine cotton velvet.
"This came down from upstairs," he said, pointing vaguely toward the ceiling — toward the world above the Underground. "Line it with this on the skin side. Softer than that cravat of yours, I'd bet."
Levi reached out and touched it. The velvet gave under his fingers, surprisingly light for its weight. He nodded. For the padding, he turned down ordinary cotton batting and specified linen — the most breathable option.
---
Even then, Levi wasn't satisfied.
The final work happened at the small desk in his quarters. He brought a candle close and trimmed the wick higher than he needed to. When he sat down with the needle and thread, his fingers still hesitated.
Ordering from the tailor could go through Corps accounts. If he kept going — if he sat here and did this himself — it would be overstepping. A line crossed.
His hands moved anyway. He pushed the needle through the linen panel he'd reserved for the innermost layer.
“Just reinforcing the structure,” he told himself. Nothing more.
The final stitch went in. He tied off the thread. It had taken more out of him than fighting a Titan. But the tight, deliberate seam pressed the center of the lining flat while leaving the padding around it intact — firm support where the socket needed it, cushion where the healing skin needed.
He sat back.
“Just this once.”
He wrapped the finished eye patch in a clean cloth and tucked it into the next supply delivery to Hange.
---
A few days later, Hange and Levi sat across from each other going through the month's accounts. The budget spreadsheet was open in front of her; he was tallying equipment requests.
"Gas canisters, feed for the horses, blade maintenance..." Hange ran her finger down the columns. Then she stopped.
A receipt from a tailor in the Underground. *Custom garments.* The amount was notable. The name in the applicant field was a signature she knew well.
She pulled it out and held it up. "Wait. What's this? "
She waved it in front of him. "Never thought I’d see the day, Levi. Custom clothes from the Underground? Let me guess — Planning to wait until the Corps falls apart and then strut back into the Underground as a sharp-dressed gang boss?"
He kept writing.
“That’s a pretty big sum,” she went on. “Don’t tell me you’re greasing some old connections. Or did you stash an informant in the Underground that I don’t know about? Is this how you keep them talking?”
"Mind your own business, Four-Eyes."
“Hey, don’t be like that,” Hange said easily. “I’m just curious. What was worth the trip all the way down there—and that much money? If it’s a gift for someone, it really can't be coming out of the Corps budget.”
He looked up at that. "It's for internal Corps use. If it puts us over budget, I'll cover the difference myself."
He slid another document across to her. "Don’t you have better things to do? If you’re just sitting around, I’m not finishing the inventory for you."
She studied his face for a crack. There wasn't one.
"Fine. I'll drop it." She picked up her pen again. “Though if you actually have something going on, Levi, you'd tell me. We're—”
She hadn't settled on the right word yet. *The people closest to each other?*
He was already on his feet, pushing the completed inventory toward her. "This is done. The rest is yours."
Watching him leave, she was certain he was keeping something from her. She just couldn't figure out what yet.
---
That night, when Hange got back to her quarters, the new supply batch had already been delivered. She sorted through it as usual — and found a small parcel, wrapped carefully in soft cloth.
She unwrapped it. An eye patch.
Standard issue, to look at it: dark leather, simple cut. Identical to the ones in the supply drawer.
Then she put it on.
The difference was immediate — something fine and gentle meeting the damaged skin around her socket, nothing like the stiff leather she'd been living with. She went still for a moment.
She took it off slowly and brought it to the lamp. On the side seam, she found a pair of small concealed snaps. She worked them open and the inner structure came free.
She examined the lining carefully. The back was a breathable linen weave; the face that rested against her skin was something softer, close-woven and fine. She was about to press it back into place when the lamplight caught something at the center — a cluster of stitches unlike anything else on the panel. Not the tailor's hand. More like sutures. Tight, deliberate, the kind of work you did when the result needed to hold.
She thought of the receipt. *Custom garments.*
"Called it," she said softly, and laughed once. "He was right, technically. Internal Corps use."
---
The next morning, after washing up, she sat at her desk and reassembled the eye patch. Her fingertip rested for a moment at the center of the lining — the stitched place — before she settled it carefully over her eye.
In the corridor, she nearly walked into Levi. They were both heading to watch Armin's Titan transformation trial.
"Morning, Levi."
"Hange."
"That reimbursement you filed came through, by the way." Her voice was light. "Though next time you want to give someone a gift, it really can't go on the Corps account."
He picked up his pace.
"What gift?"
She matched him, falling into step beside him.
She had known he wouldn't admit to it. But the skin around her eye was comfortable for the first time in weeks, cared for by the eye patch he had made and never once claimed. She'd received it.
"Nothing," she said, and shook her head. "Come on. The kids are waiting."
The morning light cast their shadows long along the corridor wall. Side by side, the shadows touched, stretching quietly toward the unknown.