nyxie ✦ pixie

You were strong.

It was a feeling you would’ve had the privilege of experiencing if you’d remained in Orvud.

And in the year 841, just three years after enlisting, you became a Squad Captain.

The expedition beyond the Walls hadn’t gone completely off plan. As a Scout, you were more than aware of the fact that you were bound to take losses whenever you ventured outside of the safety of Wall Maria and into the Titan-infested lands that lay past it. As a Squad Captain, you’d seen your own direct subordinates die at the hands of the gargantuan beasts, and you prided yourself on how few and far between those personal losses were.

Because you were an excellent soldier. And in a faction of the military where, more often than not, people didn’t last long enough to become excellent, you were a rarity.

Still. Even with all the contingency plans and formation flexibility and the vibrant flare colors to streak through the sky to communicate between squads, there was nothing that could have prevented your squad from being targeted by an Abnormal titan. 

The beast had come out of nowhere, almost as though it had been buried in the dirt underfoot. One moment, you were telling your subordinate, Analisa, to fire off a green flare to confirm your squad’s position. The next, another subordinate, Hector, was firing off red powder into the sky as Analisa—poor, sweet, wet-behind-the-ears Analisa, was plucked up off the ground, horse and all, by a  9-meter tall Abnormal titan. Your swords were already in your hands as the beast started to pull her screaming body apart. By the time you were in the air, roaring in outrage, the sound distracting the monster enough for it to look up at you as you flew at it, Analisa had lost her left leg.

She didn’t lose anything else. You made sure of it.

The red flares went off in rapid succession, staining the pristine blue sky like blood tainting water. Some of the powder caught on your clothes as you zipped through the air, latching the hooks of your vertical maneuvering equipment into the titan’s body itself, breaking the skin as you twisted and spun around it. 

Your swords made quick work of its hands. But the steam told you they would just grow back, so you didn’t waste a second. 

Forcing the grappling wires into its chest, you spun over the top of its gargantuan skull, ready to slice the nape of the neck on one fell swoop.

But Abnormal titans didn’t go down easily, and this one was no exception to that rule. 

Your blades were so close—maybe less than a meter away from the beast’s skin—when it took ahold of your wires and tugged hard. In a blink of an eye you went from being seconds from killing this monster to your lower torso being inside of the mouth of the creature. Its teeth were coming down and, if not for you jamming your blades viciously up the titan’s nostrils, it would’ve felled you right then and there, snapping you in half. Instead, just a split second after its teeth sliced into your gut, its jaw unhinged with a bellow of pain and you fell. If not for the wires still held in the titan’s palm, you’d have hit the ground.

Instead, in a flash of post-near-death clarity, you retracted the wires. You lurched upwards, over the beast’s head again.

This time, your blades struck true. The Abnormal fell to the ground face-first, steaming impossibly hot as it died and evaporated into nothingness.

You lost consciousness not a second later.

To say that you knew Levi Ackermann personally would be a grave understatement.

To say you were close would be something between truth and dishonesty.

To say you were friends would be ridiculous.

There was a level of mutual respect between the two of you. He was the very best Scout in the Survey Corps, perhaps in history entirely. You were close behind. Your squads often trained together. You knew of his near obsession with cleanliness and order wherever possible. 

He knew you were hiding something.

But just as you didn’t press for answers as to where his frantic need to clean nearly every surface he ever laid his eyes upon, he didn’t dig. You were a good soldier. Your loyalties were so obviously with the Survey Corps that he didn’t really have reason to believe you had any ties to the corruption of the Military Police Brigade. You were a reliable Squad Captain. 

Compared to everyone else in the Survey Corps, the two of you were the closest thing to perfection.

Which was why you weren’t too surprised to wake up to the sound of him stomping into your room at the clinic, his expression dry besides the arch of one eyebrow to denote annoyed confusion.

“Nine meters,” he drawled, “and it snuck up on you?”

Your eyes were closed as you leaned back into the pillows. “Some-fucking-how, yeah. I’m not happy about it either. Analisa lost a leg.” You winced slightly as the words left your lips. It wasn’t your fault—but you were her captain, her commanding officer. You felt the weight of that loss on your heart. Analisa wouldn’t be allowed out on the field again more likely than not. And the severance pay (god, that word was horrible here, wasn’t it?) for a Scout of her rank was abysmal. 

God forbid the government pay their soldiers a livable wage.

“She’ll survive,” Levi said, snapping you out of your thoughts. “Nobody in your squad died. Stop wallowing in self-pity. You didn’t lose a limb.”

You poked one eye open and gestured to your bandaged abdomen. 

“Work on your bedside manner,” you snarked. “I almost died.”

“We all almost die all the time. It’s the job. Don’t complain like you didn’t actively choose this.”

You rolled your eyes. “You were worried. Admit it.” Before he could deny it—though you knew he really wouldn’t—you smirked up at him. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here to lecture me. And I know the lecture is coming. Wanna just get it over with?” You shut your eyes and leaned back into the pillows. “Do it now, while the medicines are still working. If they taper off, I’ll start to get angry.”

Levi Ackermann was not a man of hesitation. You heard the scrape of wood on wood as he hauled a chair over to your side and sat down, undoubtedly glaring down at your form.

“You were careless,” he scolded harshly. “A nine-meter titan doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere. Either you weren’t paying attention to your surroundings nearly enough or you were intentionally luring that monster towards you.”

“We weren’t paying enough attention,” you confirmed. “It was a stupid error.”

“It was a fatal error,” he snapped. “You almost died. Your subordinate almost died.”

“I thought you said not to complain—”

“You can’t be so stupid.”

You closed your mouth. Levi’s voice had cracked, actually broken on the word stupid like it hurt to say in more ways than one. He was angry, certainly. You really had been phenomenally unwise to not pay closer attention to your surroundings, and now you and Analisa were paying the price of your negligence. He was annoyed that you were out of commission and likely would be for an extended period of time because of the extent of your injuries, meaning someone (namely him, probably) would be assigned to train your squad until you were back to work. 

And he was scared. He’d been worried, hearing you were injured. But then he’d been given the more detailed report and his heart had gone still, the blood in his veins going icy cold with horror. You’d nearly been eaten, nearly torn in half. You were unconscious for over a week, he told you, the words coming out in a visceral hiss, and they’d been told that your recovery wasn’t looking too good. The chances of you surviving past that week-long coma were so slim that the nurses and doctors at the clinic in Stohess had told the Survey Corps that they should begin funeral preparations and contact the family.

You’d stiffened at that and Levi’s jaw had clenched as he scrutinized your expression, trying to determine if your reaction was from physical pain or the mention of a family.

“No family to contact,” you told him simply.

“Nothing in your files,” Levi confirmed. “Not from the moment you joined the Training Corps. Generic surname.”

You just shrugged. “Dead parents. Never had siblings.” That much was true. “I… stayed in a Girls’ Home.”

“What Girls’ Home?”

Her home. A dangerous place. She had no qualifications to raise children, just the money and the need to trap little girls in a labyrinth-like mansion in Orvud. No one cared for orphans. No one would bat an eye if she took them in and they were never seen again. Who would throw a search party? Who would issue a warrant to search for a child nobody really had any claim over?

“A bad one,” was all you told Levi.

Levi was quiet for a moment. “Is it still standing?”

You shrugged. “How should I know? I’m not going back.”

“You’re not,” he whispered, almost as though he was trying to be reassuring. “You’re too old.”

If you hadn’t been slightly worried that your organs would fall out, you might’ve offered him a laugh, even if it would have been forced.

“Way too old,” you muttered. “And I’m alive. So no funeral yet.” You shot a wry smile in his direction. “Disappointed?”

“No.” Levi’s voice was hoarse. “Don’t be an idiot. You don’t have that luxury.”

Your brows lifted to your hairline. “Wow. You’re so sweet.”

“It’s not ‘sweet’ to not be disappointed that you’ll live,” he hissed. “It’s the bare minimum.”

“How romantic of you to say that.”

“Your view of romance is distressing.”

There was nothing more you could really think to say after that, so what followed was a few minutes of quiet. The sunlight filtered into the room through the windows behind you, casting warm white-yellow rays through the blinds. Tiny, tiny dust particles caught the light as they floated in the air. At some point, you closed your eyes and leaned back against the pillows again. A few moments later, you felt Levi’s hand brush the back of yours. And then slowly, his fingers interlocked with yours, pulling your palm into his.

You’d done this before. You’d never done more. But that was fine with you. Pain recognized pain, even if the details were hidden under skin so thick it might as well have been armor. Trust was hard to earn among people like the two of you, and though you had his and he had yours, your line of work was too dangerous to make deeper connections. Even this—holding hands and worrying over each other—was foolish. It could go wrong at any moment.

So this was enough for you.

“Let me see it.”

You knew what he was asking for without needing to open your eyes. With your free hand, you pulled up your shirt just enough for him to see the bandages wrapped nice and firmly around your abdomen, concealing the bite wound that had nearly killed you. 

“Is it bleeding through the bandages?”

“No,” Levi said. “It’s not. I’m going to unpeel some of it.”

Your hand dropped to your side. “Knock yourself out.”

He said your name lowly, like he was scolding you for your blase tone. Still, he let go of your palm and carefully unraveled some of the bandages, exposing the wound just enough to inspect it. You were asleep for nine days, so you were fairly certain he’d seen this gash at its worst. The way he exhaled with barely concealed relief confirmed your theories as he rewrapped your wound.

“It’s improved. A lot,” he told you.

You nodded. “That’s good.”

“You’re going to be out of commission for a long time,” he continued.

You just nodded again. “I’d better be.”

“You should be demoted,” he snapped.

You snorted. “Erwin won’t demote me.”

“He should,” Levi insisted.

You blindly swatted at him, fingertips brushing his forearm. “Oh, lay off. Clearly I learned my lesson. I was imperfect once.”

“You weren’t imperfect.”

You opened your eyes to find Levi’s resting glare had softened. His eyebrows were still pulled together the way they always were, like the muscles in his face were just naturally set that way, but his eyes were wider than they normally were. And they looked almost glossy. He took ahold of your hand again, gripping you tighter.

“You weren’t imperfect,” Levi whispered again. “You were human. You made a human error.” 

“Still almost killed me.”

“Even I’ve almost died on missions,” Levi reported. “It’s part of the job. Even the most ‘perfect’ of us risk everything. It’s just how it is.”

You didn’t know how to respond to that, so all you said was, “I know.”

“Good,” he decided, nodding once. 

For a moment, the quiet came back. It was nice. You ran your thumb over his knuckles and watched his eyes harden again into their natural, impossible-to-decipher state. It would have scared anyone else off. But given that her eyes were always practically glowing with malice, this was the best thing you could’ve seen in the eyes of the man you were involved with. The calculated, intentional emptiness was comforting almost.

Maybe that meant you were sick in the head.

But you had to be a little insane to be in the Survey Corps. 

And you had to be significantly insane to do so well.

“I still think you should be demoted,” Levi finally said, ruining the moment.

“I think you should shut up,” was all you said back, smiling.

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