[pls do comment and vote, i appreciate that so much <33]
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The sun has yet to rise from the walls, the sky still a mellow blue and the breaths everyone exhaled were all misty from the chill of an early morning. The city was still sleeping — the perfect time to transfer the two recruits of the Survey Corps to the old headquarters deep in the woods of Rose. The current headquarters will be empty by the time the next expedition rolls around. It was decided that a few weeks after the elite squads settled in the isolated, decrepit building, the entire Survey Corps would follow alongside the other recruits who would be choosing the regiment in the initiation. (If there were some.)
Maeve jokingly told Erwin that he probably let them go to the old headquarters first because he was hoping they would clean up the place before the rest arrived. The bastard didn't confirm nor deny. That snake-like glint in his eyes stayed while Maeve gradually lost her smile. She completely forgot how he made her walk into Hange's lab hours before him, knowing that she couldn't stand the stench so, by the time he arrived, both Hange and the lab would be presentable. She knew he was about to deliver his speech in the initiation but the way he chuckled didn't sit right with her. Plus, Levi was a major puzzle piece in the transfer. Knowing his tendency in brushing his finger on every surface to check for collections of dust, Maeve already accepted that this was going to be a long day.
She checked the length of her stirrup when a voice that was too loud for a silent morning called for her name.
"Darling Vee!"
Maeve gave Levi an apologetic glance, to which the man clicked his tongue as an answer, but not before grumbling how it was too early for this shit. She turned around after patting Pepper on the neck, Hange's bright smile illuminating the stables and waking up all of the members of both Maeve's and Levi's squads. "Good morning to you, too, lovely Han. To what do I owe this pleasure?"
Hange giggled. It had a dash of mischief. This was going to be a while. "You should say goodbye to your godchildren!"
The scarlet-haired woman blinked. "Pardon?"
"Your godchildren! Who else would I be talking about? You've been so preoccupied with the transfer and the paperwork in accepting that little spitfire over there," Hange gestured to the said girl with a jut of their lips (Aurora was trying to wake up a drowsy Eren, who probably talked her ear off last night due to his excitement in finally wearing the green hood he gushed over since he was so young), "that you can't spend some time with them. They miss you, you know." Hange bounced in their steps. "Come, come!" They wrapped their hands around Maeve's wrists, pulling her to the direction of the Garrison's central square.
"Okay, okay." Maeve let herself be pulled by her best friend. She looked back over her shoulder and praised the goddesses of the Walls for Agnes because the second-in-command instantly recognized her silent signal to look after Pepper. The younger woman hastily looped the reins of Maeve's horse in her wrist, saluting Maeve right before she rounded the corner of the stables. "So, how was the experiment going on?" Maeve tried to make small talk. It wasn't a long walk to the central square but she felt the need to ask since Hange had been jittering since she named the two captured Titans.
