#angelanimedesaray

*Reader’s POV*

Two days had not been enough time, and passed by faster than you could process.

The Scouts had all already been briefed on their positions and duties on the first of the two days, giving them time to confirm, memorize, and prepare themselves.  Those that had been selected to lead the three hundred thousand beyond the walls were admittedly given a wide berth by the others, no one quite sure how to talk to them and giving them the space they needed to process what they were going to be taking direct part in.  During the briefing, you had caught plenty of pale faces wilt in relief when they were put at the rear of the three hundred thousand in the hopes and beliefs that they would have a better chance at surviving if they were at the back.  When the names of the squads staying on the wall to cover a return were called, however, you’d also caught a few bitterly envious glances thrown the way of squads like Levi’s, Hange’s, and Miche’s that were going to be spared the worst of the ugliness despite their skills.

Or rather, because of them.

It might have just been in your head, but you’d felt more stares on you than the others, unable to skip a mandatory debriefing of what was to come and having to sit through the whole thing and simply endure, to pretend you couldn’t see or feel the other scouts staring you down for your apparent perfect health.

Levi didn’t say a word when you followed hot on his heels back to his office and pretty much refused to leave until the late hours of the night, and returned before the sun could rise high enough in the sky for more than a handful of scouts to be moving about headquarters.  That was enough to tell you it likely wasn’t in your head, and he had noticed it, too.

The second day you spent helping with the preparations for the operation that you could do from the safety of headquarters, memorizing the different parts of this operation as a whole so you could follow what was going to be happening, doing equipment checks, repairs, and refills to make sure everything was in perfect condition, running messages for Levi to the other Squad Leaders, Section Commanders, and Erwin, helping make sure all the horses were in peak condition, whatever you could do to keep yourself too busy to think.

But now it was here.  No more distractions, no more busywork, no more delays.  Trost was bursting with even more people than normal as the three hundred thousand and the Scouts–as well as the Garrison members that were helping to make sure all three hundred thousand were here and nobody slipped through the cracks–spilled into the city as preparations came to a head and the time to send them to the slaughter drew near.  The Scout horses were either bearing a rider and finding their positions to herd the three hundred thousand outside the walls, or were secured in military stables near the wall stations themselves for the lucky few that got to wait on the wall to cover the eventual return.

At the moment, you stood with the others waiting for the lift to finish bringing supplies up to the wall, half of the Scouts stationed on the wall already up top to unload the supplies.  There wasn’t much being used for the operation, since they didn’t want to waste supplies on an operation that was meant to fail.  Those that were going beyond the wall had spare sets of blades and an extra canister of gas per scout in the hopes of boosting their chances to return to the wall, hidden as best as possible to reduce the chances of the civilians making them a target to steal their supplies once the nightmare started.  

The Scouts on the wall had a full set of blades and filled gas with a few spares on hand just in case they were needed, though you had a sneaking suspicion that the reduced supplies were not only for conservation, but also to force those on the wall to be mindful of the limited supplies and not have the supplies to rescue a larger number of people in the return trip than what humanity could afford to take back.

Though the Scouts were reluctant and not at all happy to be doing this, Erwin was still being brutally efficient for the true goal in his planning.  It was probably for the best–it would deprive the nobility of any ammunition for grounds to disband the Scouts.

As you waited for the unloading up on the wall to finish and for the lift to be lowered once more, you tried to only look upwards at the wall or at the horses in the nearby stable, trying not to look at the throng of people being gathered to be ushered outside the gate.  Despite your best efforts, there wasn’t a lot for you to look at that didn’t have some heartbreaking scene for you to spot even just out of the corner of your eyes.

One man had a ‘spear’ that was basically a whittled large stick he had planted the blunt end of into the ground and was leaning heavily against, looking at the ground with a blank thousand meter stare.

Another woman was sitting on the ground, no weapons that you could see on her, hands loosely clasped in her lap as she silently cried and people shuffled around her.

What you assumed to be a brother and sister were leaning into one another for support, the brother trying to convince the smaller sister to take the larger kitchen knife they had for a weapon and give him the smaller one.

Close enough that you couldn’t block out the sounds of the sobbed pleas of the little girl, a mother and her daughter were saying goodbye to the father and husband, the mother having to carry the little girl away as she screamed and cried for her papa.

You wished you could close off your hearing, make it so you didn’t have to hear the tearful goodbyes and the sobbing, the pleas, but there were so many people that all the focusing in the world couldn’t drown them all out.  You could focus on the people giving orders, try to keep an ear open for if someone was trying to order you to do something, but even focusing couldn’t drown them all out, you still heard the louder people, the screaming children and cries, all cutting through your focus and demanding they be heard as well.

Your eyes were burning with tears you were already trying desperately to hold back, hands itching to raise and cover your ears, to try and physically block out the sounds that were wrapping around your heart like thorny vines and pulling, as if trying to yank your heart from your chest with every new cry.  But you were well aware that it would look like you were about to have a breakdown, and you couldn’t have that, not here, not in front of all these people that were about to march to their deaths.  Even if the emotions scalding your chest said that you very much were on the edge of emotionally cracking to be witnessing all of this, you could not react, you had to keep it all together, at least outwardly.

A loud clang next to you jostled you out of the overwhelming sounds for a moment, bringing you back to focus on your immediate surroundings as the lift returned to the bottom, the gate opening for the rest of the scouts that were going to be stationed on the wall to get on.  You filed on gratefully and perhaps a little too eagerly, stepping into the corner and leaning against the iron railing as the others also climbed on.  Petra made her way to your side, resting a tentative hand on your shoulder as everyone squeezed in and the gate was slid shut.

“Are you okay?” she asked, voice low enough to not draw the attention of the others in the lift, but loud enough to still be heard over the cacophony of all the people that were filling the streets.

“No,” you told her honestly.  No one was okay today, but some were much better at hiding it than others.  “But I’ll be okay when I’m needed,” you told her.

In response, she gave your shoulder a silent squeeze of reassurance and support, letting it drop away before someone could notice.

The waiting through it all and doing nothing was part of what was going to be so hard.  Once you would be able to go and do something, to cover a retreat and rescue someone, though, you would be able to focus and be more present, and would have the backs of your comrades to help make sure they didn’t die here.

Petra’s gaze was sympathetic, and you noticed that not only was she paler than normal, but there was a tremble in her hand.  You weren’t the only one, then.  All of you were trying to put on a brave face, to stay calm enough that it would hopefully strengthen the people around you to get this done and over with.

The Garrison were busy clearing Titans from the immediate area outside of the wall to clear the way for the three hundred thousand to leave.  Once they did, the large force could hopefully get a couple miles out before running into more Titans, and hopefully it would be far enough none of them could see or hear what was happening.

Hopefully they got far enough away that you wouldn’t be able to see or hear what was happening.

The lift was slow to raise, bringing you higher and higher, allowing you to see more of Trost and to see just how far the crowd that was being herded together stretched, could see the Garrison soldiers standing on roofs and posted at the ends of roads and alleys to make sure the selected civilians didn’t try to bolt.  You’d already heard of one or two desperate souls that had tried and it had ended…badly for them, and you were certain there had been others in the past two days.  How many had been forced back into this crowd, and how many had been killed already?

Don’t be sick.  If you’re sick all the way up here, the people down below certainly won’t thank you for it.

The lift finally came high enough that you could simply turn your head and start to see the top of the wall, several pairs of boots standing near the edge waiting for the lift to finish rising.  You knew which one was Levi before the lift even finished its ascent, gaze meeting his as the lift slowed and came to a stop.

They were a darker grey blue than normal, and it wasn’t just because his back was to the sun right now and his shadow was being cast in front of him.  His arms were crossed over his chest while he waited, the wind this high up blowing his hair and cape around in wild bursts from the occasional stronger gust that he seemed to be ignoring entirely.

He was far more capable of hiding his true feelings on this whole mess than you were, at least right now.  In the more private spaces you two shared you had seen plenty to let you know how much he was hating every second of this.  But up here, amongst the other soldiers and on the way in when you were passing civilians, he remained stoic, eyes fixed forwards, the only giveaway to how he truly felt the darker look in his eyes and the tension you knew how to spot after you’d seen him so many times completely at ease.  You could see he was holding his shoulders higher, that his grip on things was tighter, and his lips were a bit thinner from being pressed together as if he was holding back a scowl or a blatant frown.

Thankfully, as the lift brought you level with the top of the wall, the wind helped to drown out the specifics of the words down below, though you could still hear the mass of sound, the hum of people speaking, and cries and wails of distress and parting still reached your more sensitive ears all the way up here.  Sometimes it felt like the wind was carrying them upwards to you, as if the sound was trying to push you forwards and over the other edge of the wall.

Once the gate opened, those inside broke apart and went with the officers waiting for the rest of their squads to head to their positions on the wall, Levi waiting for you and Petra to eventually disembark just before a group of three that had been reluctantly huddled into the other far corner.  As you came close, Levi took what seemed to be a subconscious half step in your direction, bringing him closer to you as he turned to start walking, leading the two of you off to the left of the lift.

“We’re on the first watch shift for the eastern side of the wall.  Hange’s squad will relieve us after a couple hours and we’ll be on standby with Command until it’s time to rotate again,” Levi reminded the two of you.

You could see Oluo, Gunther, and Eld waiting not too far up ahead, in full gear, sulking and grim each in their own ways.  Eld was staring south out beyond the wall into the lost Maria territory, Oluo kicking idly at the wall beneath him, and Gunther keeping his gaze fixed on the three approaching him with a look that seemed more vacant than focused.

There were no illusions up here about what was actually happening.  Everyone up here didn’t have civilians to put up a front for and were well aware of what the purpose of this mission was.  Up here, it was grim acceptance of a horrific duty.

“For Miche’s Squad,” you commented for Levi, showing that you had heard his reminder and knew what squad you would take the place of after standby.

If this even took that long, with how poorly equipped the civilians were.  They didn’t have a fighting chance, just scraps to cling to in vain for a feeble illusion of comfort.

Once the whole squad had regrouped, Levi divided everyone into pairs–Gunther and Oluo, Petra and Eld, and of course Levi put you with him–and told everyone to spread out on this eastern part of the border wall of Trost, making sure they could still comfortably see the next group over if they needed to pass along information about something spotted.  Levi put you and him in the middle position of the three groups, further away from the center over the gate but not so far from the exit point that the two of you would be as far removed from the three hundred thousand as you could be while still being part of this operation.

As tempted as he may have been to do so, he still did not use his position to get the two of you out of this, but rather put you as close to the worst of it as he could and still give the two of you a bit of privacy from the other squads and command located closer to the center over the gate.

You and Levi walked in silence for the first few minutes, Oluo and Gunther up ahead as they made their way to the farthest point Levi had given.  It was nice to have something else to focus on to drown out a touch more of the noise below.  Up here you could still hear what was happening on the streets below, but you could also hear the wind blowing by, the footsteps of your squad traversing the wall and the slight rattle of the gear shifting and bumping against your thighs with every step, could hear Levi’s steady breathing if you focused on it, could hear his heartbeat strong and rhythmic beside you–

It made the sounds down below a little less distinct, though they were still present.

Levi’s gaze slid to you walking a half a step behind him and within arm’s reach beside him, subtly analyzing the way you were carrying yourself, the emotions flickering in your eyes, the expression on your face as you walked in silence together.  You pretended you didn’t notice, though the façade disappeared once Levi stepped close enough his hand could drop to yours and his fingers could gently brush against the back of your hand.  The gesture was slight and brief, but you felt your skin tingle and warm where he’d touched, and you felt reassured, even if it was only for a few moments, to have him there beside you.

Not alone; weathering it together, like you’d silently promised after Erwin had informed you this was happening.  You were standing with someone who was able to read you well enough he would know if you needed support, and Levi pairing with you when he divided the squad had made sure you would be with him through every step.  Your job would be to return in kind while the two of you waited for your part at the finale of this nightmare.

When the two of you reached where you were supposed to be, Levi came to a slow stop, turning to face out towards the territory of Maria beside you, gaze fixed on the horizon for a few seconds before his gaze lowered to the hills, forests, and fields that were in the more immediate view.

“For now, we keep an eye out for Titans in the area–they need enough clearance to get far enough from Rose they don’t end up attracting a mess of Titans to Trost on their way out.  Once the way’s clear several miles out, they’ll start the operation,” Levi reminded you, and you wondered if he was repeating the information just to try and keep you focused on the here and now instead of the horrific thoughts of what was to come that wanted to seep into every dark crevice of your mind.

“And then we wait until whatever small force is left, returns,” you responded quietly, watching a small formation of birds flying overhead and out over the lost territory stretching out in front of you.

Levi didn’t answer, but it was enough that he didn’t withdraw, either, keeping himself planted at your side overlooking the territory in front of the two of you.

Occasionally, a small team of Garrison soldiers would jump down with their ODM gear and work together to slice through the nape of a Titan, gradually clearing the space that the force below would have to traverse.  The scouts on the wall stayed stationary during the whole process, under strict orders to conserve their supplies until the return trip and leave this part to the Garrison soldiers.  When you glanced to the members of your squad in their respective positions to the left and right of where you and Levi were standing, you could see them shifting restlessly while the Garrison worked, wanting to go out and assist, to help cover the backs of their fellow soldiers, but they held to their orders and stayed where they were, watching and waiting, signaling whenever they spotted a Titan on the horizon headed their way.

You didn’t know how much time passed like that with you and Levi standing close enough your shoulders would brush, but not talking, occasionally signaling that a Titan had been spotted, watching the surrounding area and the Garrison soldiers working their way much slower through the Titans along the wall than the Scouts would have if they were the ones doing the exterminating.

It did, however, give the soldiers inside Trost time to make sure that everyone was gathered and accounted for in the masses down below, and eventually you spotted a Garrison soldier use their ODM gear instead of the lift to get to where command was stationed just above the gate to deliver a message, speaking with Commander Erwin and the Garrison Commander…Pyxis, before receiving their orders and heading back down.

Not long after their departure, the bells of the city began to ring, and you felt your heart leap so violently into your throat you thought that you were going to vomit it right out onto the wall beneath you.  You leaned forward slightly from the force of it, the height of the wall and the sheer drop in front of you making you dizzy for the first time ever as you realized it was here, it was happening.

“Steady,” you heard Levi say beside you, and suddenly you felt his hand in yours, fingers twining tightly with your own, your now joined hands hidden between the two of you so no one else would see.  His grip was firm, hands warm, his calluses rough, but he held you to his side with his strength, as if keeping you anchored right there, pulling you slightly back from the edge that had made you dizzy to look down and keeping your moment of distress from sending you toppling over.

Your return grip was desperate in how tightly it clung to him, though you were careful not to use so much strength you accidentally broke any of the bones in his hand.  Instead, you let more of your arm hook into his, shuffling slightly closer and trying to get your heart to calm back down as the tolling of the bells continued relentlessly, causing your heart to pound painfully in your chest as frantic panic tried to seep into your bones.

This can’t be happening, this isn’t happening.  This is wrong, it’s vile, so many people, so many families getting torn apart, and we’re just going to stand here and let the Titans rip them apart and devour them?  We’re just going to do nothing?  How can this be happening, how can we be agreeing to this, letting this play out?  We should be saving people, not killing them, we’re not here to kill such a large part of humanity, we’re supposed to be preserving it.

The words clawed into your throat like Emery’s fingers had gouged your arms when he met Levi, trying to rake their way out of your throat by force in a scream that felt like it would tear you apart from the inside if you let it find purchase.  But you held them trapped, kept your lips pressed firmly together and your eyes unseeing on the horizon as the gate for Trost lifted.

You knew why this was happening.  You knew it had to happen.  Knew you had to stand here and let it play out, and something inside you was turning wrathful and desperate to have to go against your instinct and desire to do something.  You refused to open your mouth and let it free, though.  You swallowed it down as best you could and stayed rooted in the spot, refusing to look down as calls to advance and flimsy, hollow shouts to fight for humanity and reclaim the land urged the three hundred thousand through the gates, the massive crowd spilling into the lost land stretching out in front of you.

Neither of you mentioned the tremble in your hand, or the blank stare you had that gave away the fact that you weren’t doing your job as a lookout at all right now and were leaving that part to Levi while you grappled for internal stability.  You didn’t mention that you felt Levi’s grip tighten on your own when it started, or how you heard his heartbeat pick up speed.

When the last of the three hundred thousand passed the gates, it lowered once more, the heavy thud of the thick spikes digging once more into the earth a haunting sound that seemed to echo in your ears with morbid finality.

The squad was on standby near the command’s post when you first started to hear it.

Initially, you thought your mind was playing tricks on you, the anticipation and the waiting while filled with dread and unable to do anything but imagine what was happening or about to happen, while also trying to shove the thoughts aside and focus on anything else, could have easily conjured sounds that you imagined you heard in the wind.  Everyone was restless and on edge, though they were all presenting it in different ways as they all waited for some kind of sign or signal that would tell them what was happening.  However, no one wanted to speak, so the silence was filled only by the wind and the movement of the people on the wall.

That notion evaporated when you heard it again only moments later, carried to you on the wind and a bit louder than the first had been.

Screaming.  Blood curdling screams that made chills slip down your spine and set your teeth on edge.

Considering no one else seemed to be reacting to it, only you could hear it.  You and your damned vampire senses could hear the sounds of a massacre underway who knew how far away, carried to you on the wind.

Don’t, don’t focus on it, don’t think about it, focus on someone else, anyone else–

Someone was shrieking so loud and forcefully it made your throat hurt to hear, before it abruptly ended.

It was too silent up here, everyone else was stuck in the suspended silence of waiting and watching, but you, you could hear the man screaming and sobbing for his mother and father, the howled curses thrown at someone for breaking the speaker’s leg so that the Titans would get them instead, the woman shrieking for the scouts to do something–

“Y/N.”

Levi’s voice next to you was just enough to briefly pull you back to where you were standing, a hand pressed against your stomach as if you were trying to physically hold back the nausea overcoming you.  He only said your name, and it only worked for the few seconds he was speaking before the sounds returned of people screaming, pleading, cursing, dying–

“Talk to me.  Please,” you asked, voice coming out in a ragged gasp as the horror and grief and helplessness scorched you from the inside out.  You could not stand here and listen to this–there would be nothing left of you.

“Are you–?”

“I can hear them,” you whispered, and you heard Levi’s heartbeat pick up at your admission, could tell he was standing perfectly still beside you.  “Please.  I need something else to listen to, I can’t…”

More screams for parents that couldn’t come save their children, whether they were long gone in the ground or somewhere behind the safety of the walls and unable to hear their pleas.

“If you want someone to ramble at you, I’m shit at that, Hange might be better–”

“Hange’s taking the lookout position right now, and I’m not in her squad.  Levi, I just…I just need you to talk to me, please.  Anything.  I’ll even listen to every shit joke you can think of, just–please.”

You looked up at him at last with your last plea, meeting his gaze to see that they were slightly wider than normal, he was taken aback, and the look in his eyes to see the pain mounting in yours as you continued to have to listen in the silence–

Levi’s hand was suddenly on your elbow, pulling you with him towards the western stretch of the wall.  “Erwin!  We’re doing a lap, we’ll be back,” Levi called to Erwin without looking back or waiting for an answer.  The squad hadn’t been on standby that long, so you could probably make a lap around Trost and still get back before it was time to relieve Miche’s squad from their watch.

You could feel Erwin’s gaze burning into your back as the two of you walked away, but you didn’t turn around, focused on trying to swallow down the distress that was bubbling in your throat, the hollow feeling being carved into your chest with every scream and plea you overheard.  Levi let go of your elbow once you were walking with him, but he stayed right at your side with how unsteadily you still walked, dizzy with the overwhelming emotions again, the distress, the inability to shut it out.

You had been around death, had heard scouts devoured by Titans while testing out your abilities in the field, had heard murders, heard heartbreaking final moments, heard families butchered during Madaline’s rampage, had been an instrument of death yourself for decades.  Death was not new to you.

What made this so much different was the sheer scale of it all, how it had been intentional and sanctioned, and how you would continue to have to do nothing until there was an acceptable amount of survivors.  The nature of this whole thing…was so much different than anything you’d witnessed or been a part of so far.

And it was tearing you apart from the inside out.

After the two of you had left the command station that had the more concentrated gathering of soldiers, Levi guided you both to walk along the inner edge of the wall, giving you a bit more space from the members of Miche’s squad that were walking along the outer edge of the wall to patrol while on their watch.  It gave you both a bit more privacy, and made it harder for whatever the two of you were going to talk about–or rather, what Levi was going to talk to you about–to be overheard.  You wanted him to already be speaking, for his voice to distract you and drown out the death and horror biting into you down to the bone.  He probably needed the time to think of what to say when you’d simply told him anything.

“I was the boy with Kenny the Ripper.”

Well, that certainly got your attention.  He definitely knew how to distract you from your own thoughts and what you could hear to shift all your attention to him.

You had already suspected–not known, but with the way he had acted when he asked you if you’d ever targeted Kenny the Ripper what felt like ages ago, and the way he’d reacted to your answer, had made you suspect that he was.

That small boy with the haunted blank expression and the tattered appearance, that had looked gaunt and too thin, though seemed to be regaining color and body mass–

That had probably been starving before being in Kenny’s care, which also told you that you had not been wrong in your theory that he had starved before, that this crisis inside the walls had not been the first time he’d started to suffer from that deep of a hunger.

You had asked Levi to talk to distract you, so he didn’t let the statement hang in the air–he instead pushed forward, continuing to talk as you’d asked so that you could focus just on him and his voice.  He wasn’t giving you time to fully process what he was saying, but he also wasn’t giving you time to start to hear the massacre beyond the walls again, either.

“Kenny and I didn’t live together that long, but he taught me how to survive down there,” Levi continued.  He wasn’t exactly looking at you, keeping his gaze instead on the wall ahead that you were walking along, and occasionally turning his head to track the soldiers the two of you were passing so he’d know when to lower his voice to avoid being overheard.  “I’d have died down there if it wasn’t for him.  Then one day he disappeared.  When you told me about your diet, and how long you were in the Underground, I thought you might have the answer for what happened, even if it was going to be a shitty one.  Obviously, that wasn’t the case.”

You didn’t know a lot of the context to that story, but given the fact that he still thought about Kenny’s disappearance to this day and had wanted an answer even if it was a bad one–in this case, the possibility of you turning Kenny into your meal being the reason why he never came back–it was obvious to you that there was more to that story than he was telling you.  You were just getting an abbreviated version of what happened that cut out most of the emotion and depth and left only the basics to be picked through.  You’d have asked for more, but him simply choosing to talk about this now felt big, and you needed to listen to drown out the world.  If you spoke, you could start to hear the massacre you wanted to hear as little of as possible for the sake of your sanity.  So, you were at the mercy of whatever Levi felt inclined to share.  Maybe one day in the future if you were feeling brave, you would ask questions to find out more, but for now, you listened.

He paused briefly, just long enough to take a breath and choose what to say next, though it also allowed a brief lull to see if you could still hear the massacre as you two slowly walked further away from it.

As the screams started to ring in your ears again, Levi spoke.

“Tell me if you stop hearing it.  The other side of Trost at least might be far enough to no longer hear,” he instructed, taking your continued silence as your answer that yes, you could still hear.  Levi’s expression shifted to a frown, thinking over what to say next, probably tossing aside questions you would have to talk to answer and trying to think of things he could simply tell you instead.

“I…didn’t have a father.  And my mother, I remember her, but she died when I was still young.”  You saw the tension in his neck and shoulders somehow get tighter, saw the slight bob of his throat as he swallowed and apparently decided he wasn’t ready to have that conversation–the strained tenderness you caught flashing in his eyes before he turned his head to watch the last few people along this stretch of the wall as you two passed by gave him away–and he quickly changed the subject again. 

“Kenny found me shortly after that.  After he left, I was on my own.  Until a smartass tried to jump and recruit me one day.”

There was something…gentler, about the way he said smartass.  Whoever he was referring to, it wasn’t with anger or irritation, but…care.

And an undercurrent of sorrow.

“There’s not much to say about the rest of the time I was down there.  I survived.  Made money.  Was trying to afford citizenship on the surface.  Came upside for a job.  Got roped into the Survey Corps…decided to stay.”

The brief pause and the abrupt end of the story, even for his brief bare details version of the story he was telling you, told you that it wasn’t so simple.  Clearly, though, he was deciding now was not the time to get into the details of all that.

The way he was telling it all reminded you of how you would speak about your own time Underground or the more gruesome parts of your vampirism–trying to skip past the really unpleasant details and keep it to the bare minimum to answer the questions without making people horrified or pity you for the true ugliness it had been.

Levi seemed to notice the thousand questions burning in your gaze that you were trying to bite down, because a soft ‘Tch’ escaped him as you two continued to walk, at this point pulling farther and farther away from where the soldiers on the wall currently were stationed and gaining more and more privacy.  “If you want to know the details so bad, you can ask another time.  Just not right now.”

In answer, and after glancing back to make sure that the others were far enough away that you had enough privacy to do so, you stepped closer to Levi, reaching out to slip your hand into his, unsurprised to find that he had been clenching a fist beneath the cover of his cape, as if physically holding back the details of his brief story that he’d decided were not details to share right now.

Once he felt your fingers brush against his hand, the fist relaxed, and you were able to slide your fingers between his and gently twine them together in the affectionate gesture that had become second nature to you.  Just to let him know you did want to know, and you would ask later, you gave his hand a little squeeze, which prompted his thumb to gently run over the back of your hand in response.

The silence lingered a few moments too long, and you could hear the sounds being carried to you on the wind again.  Quieter this time, and not as distinct, but still heard well enough that your hand instinctively tightened around Levi’s.

He didn’t need to ask to know, a soft sigh escaping him as he pulled you a bit closer and tried to think up more to say that didn’t require so many breaks and skipped details.

“Y’know, it’s hard to think of shit to say that doesn’t require more talking from you than me.  Most of what I’m thinking of is questions, and since you’re not asking any, it doesn’t leave me a lot to work with,” he grumbled, the complaint seeming to be less of a genuine complaint and more to fill the silence–something he’d normally let sit comfortably between the two of you.  He was just trying not to let the silence linger long enough for you to continue to hear the massacre happening.

If he needed something to work with, then…

“What was your mother like?”

Now it was his turn to have a reaction to the unexpected words.  His gaze snapped right to you, eyebrows raised, eyes slightly wide, surprised into silence for a few heartbeats.

Of all the things you could have gone with–what was it like living with Kenny the Ripper, who was the Smartass, what was the job he went topside to do, what was his trade underground, how the hell had he gotten roped into the Survey Corps and what made him decide to stay, wondering if the two of you crossed paths more than the one time in the more than twenty years you’d both been down there–you asked him about his mother.  Clearly, it wasn’t the thread that he’d been expecting you to pull on.

Levi looked away, the hand threaded into yours tightening for a moment as he turned his attention back to the top of the walls, considering what was the best way to put whatever was circulating in his mind.

“She was…very beautiful,” Levi said, his voice so soft you had to strain to hear it above the wind even with your currently troublesome heightened hearing.  “And elegant.  She always seemed out of place in the Underground.  Everything was shit and filth, but she was…she wasn’t.”

There was an almost reverence that he spoke with, and the way he took his time with his words made you feel like you could feel him reaching for the memories, doing his best to recall as clearly as he could.  He’d said she’d died when he was young.  The effort you felt from him just to recall that little bit made you wonder how young.

You were trepidatious to speak up, to prod into what might have been a sensitive subject, but he’d opened up a little so far, and his complaint had made it clear that you needed to ask a few questions so he could answer if you wanted him to keep talking.  So, you cautiously attempted to ask a bit more about her.

“How did she–?”

“She got sick.”

The short and abrupt response that cut off your question before you could finish told you not to press any farther into that bit of his past, not right now.  It also, however, answered your question, and painted more of a picture than others might understand with those three simple words.  Having lived Underground for almost forty years yourself, you knew how bad it was, knew how hard it was to get medicine, that any decent doctor was found topside, not in the bowels of the Underground.  If she got sick and they were living anything like the vast majority of the Underground residents, there wouldn’t have been anything to do for her except watch, especially for him if he’d been as young as his need to reach for distant memories to remember her suggested.

His grip on your hand was tight, tighter than someone without your vampiric strength may have been able to tolerate, but he hadn’t withdrawn it, hadn’t withdrawn from you.  It was your sign to gracefully back down and change the subject again.

“...I see.”  You didn’t want to give the moment too much time to breathe, but you were grappling with what to say, what didn’t feel…wrong to be talking about while people were dying.

Levi needed a couple more moments to regather himself after the unexpected turn of conversation towards his mother, and when he spoke, despite what you’d asked him when the two of you started walking, he seemed to have decided to break the unspoken rule of the conversation and bring up what was happening, perhaps deciding that even if it was not what you wanted right now, the two of you needed to talk about this.

“Y/N, you couldn’t have done anything to stop this.  None of us could.”

“...I know,” you whispered, your eyes fixed downwards at the city below, one that was unnaturally quiet today.  You knew you should stay silent and let Levi talk, let him attempt to calm you down a bit more, but now that he’d broached the subject, you wanted to say more, to vent some of what had been making you feel like you were on the brink of spiraling that you’d been trying not to think about, out.

“But that’s not the problem.  I know why it's happening, why we have to, I understand that–if I didn't, I wouldn't be here.  I understand having to do what it takes to survive, so others can survive.  I understand that I can't do anything to change it, but that's the problem.  I can’t do anything.  I came here to help, to save people, to make my abilities worth something, to be useful, to make all those deaths I caused so I could survive not be for nothing.  But right now all I can do is wait for them to die…and listen to it.  And everything I'm feeling now, so strongly, I can't–I just feel…helpless.”

As you mentioned it, you realized that you hadn’t heard anything on the wind while you’d been talking–you were finally far enough away that you couldn’t hear the massacre beyond the walls if you weren’t purposely listening for it.  The realization made some of the tension drain from your shoulders, your pace slowing so you could linger in the relief of not having to actively hear the death of all those people.

As soon as you had the thought, you felt horrible for thinking it, for feeling relief to not witness it despite your part in carrying it out, however small it was.

Levi noticed that you’d slowed down, matching his pace with yours.  He didn’t ask why you were suddenly reducing your speed, able to tell that it meant you couldn’t hear the massacre anymore if you weren’t trying to get away from it as fast as possible.  As such, he only walked a couple more steps with you before he urged you to come to a stop with a gentle tug on your hand, turning so he was standing directly in front of you.  He let go of your hand once the two of you were standing face to face, not even allowing you the comforting distraction of his hand in yours so you could focus entirely on whatever he was about to tell you.

“Y/N, this won’t be the only time people die to make everyone else’s survival possible.  It’s going to happen again,” Levi told you, gaze unwavering from your own as if the intensity in his eyes could drive his point deeper home.  “You’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that no matter how hard you try, there are going to be times you’re helpless, people are going to die so you can live or humanity can survive, there are going to be times all the death feels pointless.”

Levi looked away and down at the city like you had, and the silence stretched, his words hanging heavy in the air between the two of you, demanding to be acknowledged and felt.  It was a harsh reality, but…he’d been right to bring it up.  It was something you needed to hear, something you needed to come to terms with. 

“Most of humanity wants to withdraw behind the walls and try to hide from it all.  Nothing’s going to get better if they have their way.  Right now, the Scouts are the ones trying to change that, trying to change humanity’s chances and fight back.”  Levi’s gaze returned to yours, a piercing clarity in his steel grey eyes that drove his words home.  “You’re still in the best place to try and make a difference.  And you’re not the only one that wants to make sure all this death means something.”

Make sure all this death means something.

That was something you could certainly understand, that resonated within the scars and wounds you’d carried with you into the Scouts.  You’d wanted to make all the death that had sustained you the past few decades mean something.  Perhaps another part of the reason you were reacting so strongly was because of the sheer weight of all these deaths added to your shoulders, and the prayer that their deaths would mean something, that this would make a change for the better inside the walls, that things would start to turn around.  The need for it to mean enough to make it worth it…you’d come to the Scouts with blood drenching your hands and the need to make it worth it.

You needed this to be worth it, too.

First you had to survive it.  Not physically, physically Erwin was keeping you out of almost all of the danger.  But emotionally…

Emotionally, each scream felt like a laceration, each ignored cry for help like someone had ripped open your ribcage in search of your heart.  Never before had you hated your heightened emotions so much, the fact that you felt everything so deeply a curse that was going to burn you alive from the inside out and leave you hollow by the end of this if you weren’t careful.  You were cracking under the pain of it all–no, pain was too mild, for you it was stoked into agony–and trying desperately to hold on until the end of the operation, until you could get behind closed doors.

That would be when you could shatter, where it wouldn’t matter when you broke because there was no morale to attempt to preserve, no civilians to put on a brave face in front of, no fellow soldiers you would negatively impact or may forever look at you differently if you shattered in front of them under what seemed to them like no more than the pressure of the wait.

They needed to know they could rely on you when things got ugly like this, and if you shattered in front of everyone when all that was happening was the waiting, they may never trust you in the moment again.

You closed your eyes, trying to take advantage of the silence to regather yourself, to try and shore up your mental and emotional defenses now that you knew when you returned you were going to have to continue to listen to people being ripped to shreds and eaten only a few miles from the walls.  You hadn’t been prepared for it when it first happened, but now that you knew, now that you could take a moment to breathe and regather yourself, maybe…

Having to listen would still be terrifyingly hellish, and Levi would be the only one that knew what was happening, but maybe you could be at least prepared and collected enough to make it through to the end of this operation without cracking in front of everyone else.

Levi shifted closer, and the feel of his fingers curling around your chin prompted you to open your eyes to look at him.  He tilted your head to the perfect angle to allow him to kiss you, the press of his lips soft in stark contrast to the words he’d just said to give you a small dose of reality.  The kiss itself was far too brief for your liking–even with the somber and horrifying situation the two of you were in, you wished he'd kiss you longer, let it last a few moments more.  However, when he pulled away his eyes were searching yours, seeking to know if you were internally steady once more, or at least collected enough to keep moving.

“We can’t stay here.  I told Erwin we were doing a lap, not sightseeing.”

You nodded at the reminder, looking down the length of the wall the two of you still had to walk on the west side of Trost–and you still had to loop all the way back around to the gate at the front.  He was right–you couldn’t afford to linger, you would be expected to return before survivors could start making it back to the wall or before Miche’s squad handed off their lookout position to Levi’s–whichever came first.

Levi’s hand dropped from the grip on your chin to instead resume holding your hand, pulling you close to his side as the two of you walked as if to wordlessly remind you to lean on him for support, tucking his arm in with yours to hold you even closer and make it even harder to take a step away and untangle yourself–not that you were even attempting to do so.

Once you started walking, the comfortable silence that usually settled between the two of you finally returned, though it wasn’t quite the same–not with the knowledge of what was happening at this very moment.  But neither of you felt inclined to break that silence, which gave you the time to ruminate on Levi’s words and better prepare yourself for what you were going to be returning to.

As best as you could, anyway, which you still feared wasn't enough.

The rest of the walk with Levi was mostly silent, which you appreciated, knowing that once you got back to the gate you wouldn’t have the silence again until you returned to headquarters.  The only times that silence was broken was when you asked if Levi would continue to talk to you when you reached earshot of the massacre again–which he agreed to try, of course–and when Levi spoke up to ask if you would be able to hold out until the two of you were back at headquarters.  You weren’t too optimistic, but it was something you were going to have to manage to pull off, either way. 

He knew when you came within range to hear the massacre again.  Your demeanor had switched from the refuge seeking closeness with the comfortable hold on his hand to stiff and upright, your grip squeezing tight enough it seemed you were trying to fuse your hands together.  If you hadn’t been so distressed to still be hearing death, you would have laughed at the fact that of all the things he could have talked about, he started talking about ODM maneuvers.  Advice, critiques, verbal rundowns on some of the coordinated team maneuvers that you tended to practice with the others, advice based on the different environments you could end up in from forests to towns to open fields.

At least it was a topic he could keep going for some time.  When he ran out of things to say about the maneuvers, he switched to an abrupt semi-lecture about making sure you stayed safe when you were leading the formation and advice on how to do that and how to safely engage Titans on your own as much as possible–using some abnormals he’d run into and their strange behavior that could be a problem for even you as examples for why he was telling you something you already knew.  He wanted to make sure that the point was still driven home, that you stayed cautious and made sure to observe first instead of just rushing right into danger.

Recklessness would get even you killed.  That was something you had discussed already but he was taking the time to reiterate.  You supposed now was as good a time as ever to say as much, when all you could really do was listen intently and silently.

Despite not being a normally chatty person, Levi did a fairly good job at talking enough to keep you distracted during most of the wait.  His talkativeness–only for you–did draw some stares, and you were aware that Erwin had been watching the two of you and your behavior since you’d returned. 

In fact, the rest of Levi’s squad were watching how much he spoke with you, how focused he was on you and your own lack of responsiveness he didn’t seem to be taking personally.  You could feel Hange’s eyes occasionally drifting to you as well from across the way, and would have caught her staring more than once if you hadn’t been so focused on Levi.  

However, they were all ignored in favor of giving you something to listen to, and while he did talk fairly consistently, he didn’t speak very loudly.  You hadn’t suggested he do it, and it may have been more about trying to keep the talkativeness and conversation as private as it could be, but his quieter words forced you to focus your hearing more intentionally on him, allowing you to block out more of the sounds that tried to reach you naturally from out in Maria territory.

He couldn’t block every sound, however, as much as you wished he could.  He could only do so much, and despite his best efforts and your focus, the worst of the massacre still made it to your ears, refusing to be ignored.

The most bloodcurdling screams, the sound of bones crunching, the loudest or most high pitched screams and pleas, and the occasional Titan roar.  You could still hear it–not all of it, not as much, but enough.

When Levi noticed you pale, saw you weren’t as focused on his words, caught a tremble in your hands or a shudder wrack your body, he would find an excuse to touch you–nothing too blatantly intimate or clingy.  He would disguise the contact meant to try and ground you back in the present as a thwack on the head that felt more like a soft tap, a poke in the shoulder that felt like a light jostle, or a ‘kick’ at the ankle that was more of a gentle nudge.

Levi tried, and he did make it better to an extent.  His distractions did keep you from having to bear the full brunt of the horror of the operation at least in that moment–but there was only so much he could do.  There was only so much any of you could do in this situation.

By the time the first cry of a returning force was sent up, your nerves were frayed and snapping, your resolve to stay on that wall crumbling as if one of those damn special Titan’s had shown up to punch a hole through them.  By then, you weren’t sure which had been worse–the sounds of the massacre making its way towards you, or the silence that had followed afterwards.

Still, despite the wear of the past several hours that had made your soul heavy and caused what felt like the beginning of fracturing inside your core, you felt that horrible cocktail of guilt and relief seeping back inside you to hear of the first sighting of survivors.

Almost over.  Almost over.  Almost over.

You didn’t let yourself think about what came after, when you were in the silence of your room with no more distractions.

That wasn’t a problem for you to tackle while you were in the home stretch of the operation, that was a problem for when it happened.  You could only handle this one step at a time, and even then, you did not have as good of a handle on it as you were trying to pretend you did.

The trip back was silent.

Not even the horses seemed to be making much noise, their hooves sounding distant and muffled…or perhaps that was just you and the state of numb shock you seemed to be settling into after the operation had finally come to its gorey end.

Blood stained your clothes, a large dark smear staining the white shirt of your uniform and making the fabric stick and cake against your skin.  Your cloak was similarly marred with large splatters of deep crimson, the white feathers on the wings of freedom crest turned red and the blue turned black from the stains.  Stains that would not evaporate in a puff of steam, because most of the blood that still covered you now was the blood of people you’d been fighting to pull to safety, not the handful of Titans you’d killed in the process.

You’d been an even more terrifying sight earlier, before the Titan blood had evaporated to leave behind only the evidence of the people you’d tried to save.

You wished it had all been a blur, that you didn’t remember it all so clearly.  But you remembered every second as sharply as the intensity in Levi’s eyes when he’d been hostile towards you in those early days.

The largest stains on your cloak had been from the woman who’d been bleeding from her abdomen that you had tried to carry on your back up the wall to safety, who had slipped free from a weakening grip around your shoulders and the slickness of the blood soaking your back, had gripped at and torn your cloak on the way down, before plummeting into the mouth of a waiting Titan.

The crimson pool on the front of your shirt came from correcting your mistake and carrying a man bleeding out from a missing arm in front of you as you scaled the wall, trying to get him help before he died from the blood loss.

Blood was still spattered on your face from the young man whose insides had been crushed by a Titan hand seconds before you could reach him, that you had still tried to get to the top in the hopes someone could help, his last few ‘breaths’ coughs of blood onto your face and neck before he passed in your arms before you could even get him to the top of Trost’s wall.

On and on the list went, faces of people you’d been too late to save or had been beyond your help by the time you reached them–beyond help you could give in front of the Scouts and Garrison, anyway, or who had died before you could even have the chance to make such a choice.

Not one of the faces you’d seen on the wall or in the rescue had been the faces of the people you’d noticed this morning in Trost while waiting to go up the wall.  The fraction of scouts who had returned that had been sent out to guide the three hundred thousand had been so slim, especially in comparison to the surviving civilians, that when you had heard so few had returned, when you heard some of the sobbed stories of scouts sacrificing themselves to give civilians the chance to survive near the end, you had not been able to contain your reaction entirely, having to turn away and find an isolated corner to have a moment.  You had stifled sobs and ruthlessly wiped away tears to hear how many had still died to give more of the people a chance to survive.

You didn’t think you could see any of the faces from your graduating Cadet Corps class that had come to the Scouts among the survivors.

Were you the last one of your class left standing already, at least out of those who had come to the Scouts?  Had they all died in this operation?

You weren’t sure when exactly the shock settled in.  Maybe it was when you found out how few scouts returned.  Maybe it was when you heard that the early estimate for the number of people to return from the operation was a measly 185, roughly.  Maybe it was when the adrenaline from the rescue attempts and the fighting with the Titans had come to a halt and the shock was part of your crash.

Through the shock, you knew that Levi was staying right at your side.  He was bloody himself, though he’d wiped what he could from his hands and face earlier and only had the stains that would take a more thorough wash to get, now.  You knew he’d lost a few civilians like you had–you’d tried to intervene on his behalf to buy him time more than once, tried to take care of Titans that were bearing down on him when he was trying to get someone to safety.  Sometimes it was simply too late, sometimes they didn’t even know how bad their wounds were until it was too late, and very few of the survivors had been practically unscathed.  This had been an operation where no one could get out without getting bloody.

Now, however, his horse walked so close to your own that sometimes your legs would brush together, though Levi took care not to guide his horse so close that your legs were crushed between the sides of the horses.  You weren’t guiding Zephyr, not really, but the mare knew to follow the rest of the group, and with Levi’s horse right beside her, she also didn’t wander off and stayed on point.  Levi didn’t speak, didn’t reach out to touch you, didn’t try to wipe the blood from your face or try to offer comfort.  Not yet.  Not in front of all these people, soldier and civilian as you made your silent march back to headquarters, ears rushing with the flow of your own blood and ringing with the sounds of the blood-soaked retreat.

You barely noticed when Zephyr slowed, when you stopped moving, when Levi dismounted his horse beside you–you didn’t even process that he hadn’t stopped at the stables with everyone else, but had snagged Hange to join the two of you as you disappeared further along and around a corner, having Hange there simply to bring the horses back to the stables for the two of you–once he got you down.

When his hand gently covered your own where it was resting in your lap with a loose grip on the reins, you slowly blinked to, recognizing that he’d brought you to the familiar sight of your little garden to have some privacy, to properly try to reach out to you away from everyone else where no one would see if you happened to break.  Sounds were still muffled with the rushing and ringing in your ears, half in the present and half in your own head, but the gentle touch was enough to make you realize you were stiff from sitting in the saddle in such a still and rigid position for so long, and you needed to get off the horse.

Levi’s eyes were brighter blue in the setting sunlight, which only made it seem like they were gleaming with the depth of worry you could see enriching their color.  His grip on your hand was soft, cautious, but firm enough to try and bring you back to the present, to give enough of a pull to encourage you to let go of the reins that had been warped from how tightly you’d clenched them in your fists.

He was saying your name, too.  You didn’t know how long he’d been saying it, if this was the first time he’d tried or if he’d been trying to get your attention that whole trip and you just hadn’t heard him despite the fact he’d been riding right next to you.

His touch, that bright worry in his eyes, and how softly he was saying your name despite the hoarse cracking in his voice from speaking longer and more consistently than he was used to and then having to shout orders over the roar of battle during that retreat–all of it managed to shake you enough out of your stupor that you had more awareness of yourself, could feel the dust, bloody mud, gore, and sweat, the absolute filth that was still stuck to your skin, hair, and clothes, could feel the tenderness in your side where someone’s death throes had caused their leg to spasm with enough force they’d cracked–maybe broken–a rib that had mostly healed by now…

Once you relinquished the reins, Levi’s fingers slipped around your hand, keeping you from clenching it back into a fist and giving you something to hold to for stability, both in general and as you awkwardly dismounted Zephyr, movements stiff and admittedly painful as you worked your leg over the saddle and slid off, staggering a step while you got your feet back underneath you.  Levi’s hand didn’t leave yours the whole time, and as soon as you were steady on the ground, he was pulling you into his side in a much more open and caring gesture than you two had been able to get away with in Trost.

Hange swooped in to gather Zephyr’s reins to add the horse to the train of now three that were going to follow her back to the stables.  Even Hange’s presence and attitude was muted, nothing said by the other woman and her appearance so brief you barely had time to register she was there and catch her inspecting the warped leather of the reins before she was gone from your sight again.  Partially because she left that quickly to give you and Levi privacy, and partially because Levi had turned you away and was walking you inside, the one hand still gripping yours and pulled across his chest to keep you right at his side while the other hand had found its way to your shoulder to keep you steady and help guide you more directly, his arm resting across your back and giving you another sense of support in the process.

As you walked the halls, Levi was quiet for the most part, though every now and then he would puncture the silence with a murmured comment, barely putting volume in his strained voice and mostly depending on your more sensitive hearing to be able to clearly understand what he was saying.

“...Get baths drawn, we both look like hell.”

“Don’t worry about the reports, they can be done tomorrow.”

“Are you still with me?”

That last one he repeated a few times, and he only ever earned a brief dip of the chin in a mute answer that barely counted as a nod.  It was still enough of an answer for him–it was a response, which was an improvement from the entire ride back to headquarters, apparently.

You were still in and out of awareness of your surroundings, given the fact that he brought you to your quarters much faster than it felt like it should have been, and you didn’t exactly remember traversing some of the halls you needed to take to get to your quarters from your tea garden.  He kept his guiding hand on your shoulder but released the hand that was twined with his so he could let you both inside, trailing a half step behind with his arm outreached to keep that touch on your shoulder while he shut and locked the door behind both of you.

Once you were both behind the safety of a locked door, Levi tugged you over to your bed, bringing you to a stop at its foot and placing both hands on your shoulders, standing directly in front of you and trying to catch your glazed over eyes.

“Y/N.  Y/N, look at me.  Get out of your head, focus on me,” Levi ordered, though the concern in his eyes softened any hard edge to the commands.

There was an attempt to do as he asked, your movements sluggish as if you were underwater, feeling like you weren’t quite inside your own body, like you had one foot inside and one foot out.  You did look at him, but you weren’t entirely focused on him, weren’t entirely present.

In response, one of his hands released your shoulder to instead cup the side of your face, fingers threading into your hair.  The warmth of his hand against your skin suddenly made you realize how cold you were, how cool and clammy your skin felt.  The steadiness of his fingers threading in your hair–the first time he’d done it had been awkward and clumsy, and now it was so gentle, careful, and familiar–made you realize you were shaking.  When his thumb brushed against your cheek in response to seeing you coming back to yourself, you felt the slight pull of the crusted blood still on your face being scraped off in the process, reminding you that you were still covered in the blood of all those people–

Mid stroke, his thumb suddenly turned damp and warm, the water–tears–making the blood swipe away easier.

You hadn’t even realized you were crying–when had you started crying, how long had you been crying?

Your breath hitched, and part of you clawed desperately to go back to the numb, part of you cursed him for bringing you back to the present as the feelings started to mount into a boil in your throat and crash over you in massive waves.  Each crest of emotion seemed to slam into you with enough force to make you want to physically recoil, all the emotions you had been too deep into shock to feel all demanding to be felt at the same time now that you were coming back to yourself.

Finally, you could hear silence around his words, silence you had longed for on the wall, for nothing to break through and plague you against your will, just the silence, you, and Levi.  But now, that silence had turned suffocating and dark, filled with an absence that seemed like it was trying to crawl into your chest and expand until nothing remained.

That silence meant death, it meant loss, it meant a void where there had been hundreds of thousands of people drowned in boiling blood and tearing death, and you had longed for it on the wall.

You weren’t sure if the sound in your ears was the rushing of your blood or the heaving breaths you started to take as you gasped for air, your lungs constricted in thorns of pain, grief, and guilt until they felt too small to take in any air, that void finding a space in your chest where your lungs used to fill, starting to devour and press away the rest.

Maybe the sound in your ears wasn’t your breathing or your blood, maybe it was the screams you’d heard layered together and stabbing right passed your eardrums and into your brain like serrated blades.  All you could see was the blood spurting from limbs torn or bitten from people’s bodies, the horrified faces, the blood that had spewed from the mouth of the woman bitten at the waist, the screech cut short by the man who’d been torn apart by two Titans both ripping into him from different ends, eyes burning out and turning empty, bodies torn to shreds or crushed under Titan feet or falling Titan bodies, steam so thick it scalded your throat, eyes, and nose and burned your arms and back, hands that slipped free of your own because there was too much blood on your hands–

Your exhales were harsh sobs that tore at your throat, inhales choking on tears before you could get enough air in, and the slight trembling had turned to shudders.  You were burning from steam and boiling blood and fire and you needed it to stop, the screams to silence, the faces to disappear, this thing in your chest that used to be your heart twisting inside you so tightly it sent spasms through your body–

You couldn’t feel all this, it was scorching you to nothing, that absence sinking its teeth into the ashes of your insides and devouring the space of whatever used to be there, expanding in your chest, pushing down into your gut, up your throat–

“Y/N!”

You’d never heard him sound like that before.  Never, after everything that had already happened, had you heard that intense of fear come out of him, true terror.

Both of his hands had made it to your face while you’d been simultaneously spiraling and consumed, pulling your face up and tilting your head back from the position you’d collapsed into on the bed at some point without realizing.  For a second, it was like breaching the surface of the rapids of emotions you seemed to have been drowning in, a gasp of air–

There was a numbness spreading through you from that void, one that was pleasing in the face of the hell happening inside you, and you started to sink back into it, preferring the dark numbness of that abyss growing inside you at the center of it all to the rapids of emotions you were choking down instead of air.  You wanted that peace of the abyss that had scared you a few moments ago, not the agony of drowning in all the terror and bloodshed you’d seen today.  

The absence let you look at Levi with some semblance of calm collection, to wonder distantly if you’d ever seen him that pale when he wasn’t on the brink of death, if his eyes had ever seemed so wide.

“Don’t you dare!” Levi seethed, and you were taken aback by the agonized wrath in his tone, that it was directed at you, right now, in this moment where you would either drown or empty.  His gaze burned into yours, fingers gripping into your hair so tight you were tempted to think he was anchoring to you and about to be carried away by the rapids instead.

“Don’t you fucking shut out your humanity, don’t you fucking do that to yourself!”  Levi’s voice pierced through the depths like a rod of iron thrust out for you to grab onto, the only thing keeping you in place between the rapids trying to drown you and the void trying to devour you, his hands on your face keeping you just high enough in the rapids to catch a few gasps of air.  “You do that shit now, I may never get you back.  I’m not fucking losing you to yourself.”

Shut off your humanity?  Is that what he thought you were doing?  You didn’t know how.

Though, if that’s what this void was, if it was this calm and peaceful, if you felt a still nothingness, that was far more preferable to the boiling and burning that had been razing every piece of you from the inside out.  Maybe you’d been too harsh on the vampires that had shut it all out, who gave themselves that internal peace and quiet.

“You said it yourself, it would take something just as bad to snap you out of it, that it would be worse when you did.  You said you didn’t want to lose your humanity.  Don’t fucking do it, don’t you fucking do it!”

Levi had stepped closer, now standing inside your bubble, and you couldn’t tell if the grip he had in your hair and on your cheek and jaw was a caress or a desperate clutch.  One of your hands was gripping his wrist, and some part of you distantly recognized you might be gripping enough to cause harm, maybe–hopefully–just a bruise, but Levi was resisting, staying locked onto you and entirely ignoring the grip that was subconsciously trying to peel him away.

“You need to let yourself feel it.  You have to,” he emphasized when he saw you internally recoil from his request for you to keep drowning instead of shutting out the pain.  Your cheeks had started to turn cold, but now you could feel warm tears slipping free again, felt the rapids getting deeper and stronger as the void started to shrink, no longer yawning endlessly below you.  You could see it in his eyes that he saw it, too, saw the shifting in your demeanor again and knew he was getting through.

“It’s shit, and it’s hell.  You’ll survive it–you can,” he asserted when he saw the doubt in your eyes.

You were choking on the tears again, shaking as the thorns of feelings started to creep back into your chest–you swore that it happened faster, that the barbed torment filled the spaces inside far more rapidly.  Seeing you starting to come back to yourself, Levi’s harsher tone softened, though there was still an angry sharpness to some of his words, chastising you at the same time he clung to you.

“You said it yourself, it’s worse, it’s not worth it to shut it out.  Don’t you do that to yourself, don’t you take yourself away from me, not like that,” Levi admonished, a traitorous shake in his voice giving away how much of his words were fear talking and not real anger.

His words cut right through, breaking past any residual attempts to sink into the depths instead and causing your heart to bleed into the rapids, flooding them with the emotions that had been drowning you all over again, and then more as other, older emotions you’d been suppressing and bottling up bled into the rapids with the events of the day.

As you cracked, as the sobs broke free at last, you took your few moments of pained lucidity to reach for him, sliding under his arms and up his back so your hands could cling desperately to his shoulders.  Your face buried into his chest as he quickly took the seat beside you, which allowed you to pull him closer, ignoring the fact that your tears wet the blood on his clothes and smeared more of it across your face, ignoring the blood and grime in favor of holding desperately to him as you tried not to drown in the waves of pain and haunting imagery and sounds ringing in your ears.  He wrapped his arms around you as well, head resting atop your own, allowing you to hide and disappear inside his embrace while you tried to survive the turmoil inside you.

You didn’t mention the fact you could feel your hair growing damp, the wet on your cheek or the warm drops onto your shoulder, or how you could feel him trembling beneath you, didn’t mention that you could hear the hitches in his breath, the clearing of his throat that was just high enough in pitch to let you know he was trying to clear the tightness in his throat.  You didn’t think you had the air to address it even if you tried–every breath was spent on the emotions inside you whether it was in sobs and wails or desperately trying to gasp air before you passed out from the lack thereof.

But you knew that he took the moment to feel his own grief and pain as well, that he listened to his own advice and let himself feel it now while you did the same beside him so that it wouldn’t consume him, either.

Next Chapter---->

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*Levi’s POV*

Levi stayed throughout the night.

He could have gone back to his room after she fell asleep, made sure there wasn’t any chance for one of them to be caught spending the night in the other’s room, but he decided tonight could be an exception.

Besides, he was comfortable where he was, basking in her warmth and the feeling of her resting over his heart, his hand at her side feeling the steady rise and fall of her chest beneath his fingers…she’d fallen asleep so quickly when she was curled up next to him like that, he didn’t want to risk waking her up trying to untangle himself from her.

He didn’t fall asleep in part because he didn’t want to soil the peace of the moment with the nightmares that would no doubt be waiting for him if he did allow himself to fall asleep.  He was still resting, still settled into the silence of the room with her and relaxing into their embrace, he just didn’t sleep, not really.  At most, he might have started to doze here and there, caught between the waking and sleeping worlds.

The fact Y/N kept waking up from nightmares was the other half of the reason he didn’t sleep.  There were periods of time when she was falling back asleep where it would be calm and quiet, and Levi would start to doze near the end, feel his eyelids grow heavy and his vision blurring as his focus on the room around them slipped.

But then her legs would twitch, her hands would clench and unclench, head twitching as if she was looking around, small noises slipping past her lips…

He knew she was going to abruptly wake long before she did, and it would pull him out of his sleepier state and back into the present, already seeking to soothe her before she even finished waking up.  He’d thread his fingers back into hers in a reassuring grip, gently smooth the hair from her face before resting his hand on her head, keeping her held securely against him so that when she woke with a full body start as if she was about to lurch into action, she would find herself already grounded and safe in his arms, far from the danger, blood, and screams that were no doubt haunting her sleep.

She didn’t fall asleep as easily after a nightmare.  She’d hold him tighter, bury her face in his chest–sometimes he’d feel the slip of tears rubbed from her eyes and onto his chest, but he didn’t say anything about it–and work on steadying her breathing, keeping her eyes closed.  They didn’t say anything, she didn’t share what her nightmares were about–they didn’t need to.  They both knew.  If Levi had been sleeping, he was certain he would have been suffering from similar nightmares.

While she worked on calming down and slipping back into sleep, Levi would keep an eye on the room around them, keeping watch to help put her fears to rest until she felt secure enough to fall back asleep.

No matter how many times she startled awake, she kept her hand resting over his heart with her head nestled right next to it, curled up and letting the beating of his heart lull her back to sleep.

He couldn’t have peeled her off him even if he’d tried, though it was the last thing he wanted.  He was savoring this, the sensation of not being alone on one of the bloody nights, the peace he would never have found tonight on his own, the way having her close to him like this made him feel, the way having her fall asleep to the beat of his heart made him feel like…

He couldn’t pin down a word to describe it.  Light, like he would float away?  Warm–she always made him feel warm and comfortable, but this was special, this was something else.  Bright in his heart didn’t make sense and yet for some reason it did at the same time.

Whatever it was, the feeling in his chest at that moment, he wasn’t going to disturb it or cut it short.  He stayed right there beside her the whole night, dozing in the comfortable quiet and keeping watch over her and helping lull her back to sleep when the nightmares returned, long after the lamplight went out on it’s own from a lack of fuel and no one tending to it, until he started to hear the birdsong and the darkness outside her window started to brighten with the approaching dawn.

Now was about the time that he would normally start moving around for the day, but she was still passed out asleep on him with no signs of waking up yet.  Considering her sleep had been rocky with periods of waking between spells of sleep, he didn’t exactly want to wake her up, and he didn’t like the thought of her waking to find him gone after he’d promised he’d stay.

He could stay longer.  If someone went looking for him and didn’t find him in his office, they’d assume he was out and about getting things done for the day–it would be a long time before anyone thought to check Y/N’s room.

He hoped.

Lifting the arm that wasn’t in any way restricted with her lying atop him, Levi gently brushed her hair back from her face, keeping his touch light so it wouldn’t disturb her, and letting his fingers thread deeper back into her hair in the process, taking the time to feel the smooth slip of her hair–softer than normal so soon after a bath– between his fingers as his eyes roamed her sleeping features.  His gaze traced the outline of her eyes, the curve of her nose, the soft lines of her parted lips allowing the gentle breaths to breeze gently across his skin.

She was beautiful…in every way.

His arm tightened slightly around her, holding her a touch closer to him, fingers brushing against the smooth skin of her side.  His mind immediately started to recall the feel of her straddling his leg, the little noise in the back of her throat that had built to an audible, breathy groan as his lips worked their way around her throat, her body arching into him while his hands felt the curves once he couldn’t recall places to trace scars anymore, the smooth warmth so soft and pliable beneath his hands–

No, stop, not right now–

Levi blinked a few more times than he needed to, as if shaking the thoughts free of his mind by doing so.  Now was definitely not the time for those kinds of memories and thoughts.  Today was going to be a busy day once she woke and he got moving–he had his report on yesterday’s events to write, two sets of gear and clothes to clean, he needed to see Erwin and talk to him about what had happened, and he wanted to be keeping an eye on her to make sure she continued to be okay, or at least cope more healthily than accidentally almost shutting out her humanity–

Not today.

Making sure she didn’t break again was at the top of his priority list.  He didn’t really know what advice to give her about how to cope, or even if he could, considering everyone coped differently.  She’d already seemed to have her own methods and had done extraordinarily well in coping with her vampire lifestyle and reality.  He was hoping that now that she had her feet back under her and had been grounded, she’d be okay moving forwards, that she’d find what worked for her.

Last time something had truly bothered her, it had resulted in pages of haunting drawings of his near death experience suddenly filling her sketchbook, looking so out of place amongst her captured moments of the horses and the squad, her nature drawings…

Maybe that was something he could do.

Maybe.

It was dangerous to be heading out as a Scout right now–today especially.  The food shortage hadn’t magically been fixed overnight by the sacrifice of the three hundred thousand, it would still take a little while for things to improve back to sustainable, and today everything was still raw and at the forefront of everyone’s minds.  The Scouts were prime targets, and stepping out into public was just asking for some kind of conflict to break out.

He’d think about it.  Maybe if he kept his head low and went out in civilian clothes, and made it quick and direct, he could avoid the worst of a conflict.

Y/N shifted in her sleep, one of her arms stretching out to lay more haphazardly across his chest, face turning into his chest so that her nose and lips were pressed against his pectoral, and he had to stifle a soft snort at the way her face was now smushed into him, the sound cut short by him holding his breath as her leg rose higher so her thigh was lying across his waist, clinging to him even fast asleep.

Closing his eyes, Levi focused on his breathing, on the steady in and out, on keeping completely still.  He was not going to think of how warm and close she was, how right it felt to have her pressed against him even if it wasn’t the most comfortable when she was partially rolled onto his arm like that, the limb starting to tingle and go numb–

There was a fairly loud knock on the door, enough that it made both of them start, Levi tensing and holding Y/N closer at the abrupt sound, and Y/N startled awake with her head lifting off his chest, eyes blinking blearily without being awake enough to truly see the world around her, yet.  There was light outside her window by now, yes, and most of the soldiers here that had things to do today would be up by now, but he wouldn’t have expected anyone to be here of all places this early besides the two of them–

“Y/N!  Rise and shine!” A familiar voice sing-songed.

He should have known.

“I’ve come to claim you before Short Stack can hog all the cheering up duties.  You’re joining me for some experiments today!” Hange continued to prattle at a volume loud enough to wake Y/N if she hadn’t already.

Levi scowled at the comment about him, glancing down at Y/N as she tried to bury her face in him with a soft groan, pulling the blankets higher until she had the fisted ends covering her hands pressed against her cheeks.  Her eyes were squinted against the morning light in their own protest, undecided if they would rebel and stay closed or if she would crack her eyelids open to start to adjust to the morning light.

“I hope you’re already awake and ready to move, because if not, you only have until I pick this lock before I come in to collect you myself!”

The threat was delivered with a deceptively cheerful voice that let Levi and Y/N know that Hange was not joking, and was in fact prepared to force her way in to see Y/N and to do her part to make sure she was going to be okay.

Levi carefully untangled himself from Y/N as fast as he could without ripping himself harshly free and without making so much noise he tipped Hange off to the fact that he was in here.  Y/N curled into a ball after he’d pulled himself free with a disgruntled groan, staying in that position under the covers for a solid few seconds before her head popped out from under the covers, nose scrunched up and lips pulled into a pout.

Hange had already run into them during their first kiss.  Considering this was a single room private room with the small washroom off to the side and as soon as Hange entered she would be able to see the bed, he had to move before she got inside.  He didn’t want her to also run in on them in their state of half undress in the bed together–he’d never hear the end of it.

Once his feet had silently found stable footing on the floor, he leaned over to give Y/N a kiss on the forehead, scooping his shoes up from their spot on the floor beside the bed, leaning over to snatch his shirt off the floor as well.  He could hear rattling at the door as Hange worked on picking the lock like she’d threatened to do, prompting him to hastily duck into the bathroom and get the door as close to shut as he could without making noise, mere moments before he heard the door to Y/N’s room swing open.

“I knew it–still in bed!” Hange announced once she was inside, her footsteps crossing the room approaching the bed.

Levi drew further behind the door, just in case, already starting to quietly pull on his shirt just in case he was discovered.  A quick glance in the mirror showed the usual shadows under his eyes after a sleepless night, but also smooth and unblemished skin along his throat despite her sensual biting last night–though the old bite marks were still there.  As he buttoned up his shirt, he could also see that the bruise on his wrist had vanished, and every scar he normally didn’t pay any attention to felt more…prominent, this morning.  Thankfully, he didn’t think it was in a bad way.  He wasn’t plagued with memories of injuries and suffering.  Instead, he was imagining the feel of her fingers and lips against his skin last night, treating each spot with tender reverence and providing a new perspective to view each unique mark on his skin.

“Go away,” Y/N moaned, the muffled sound suggesting she was burying herself into her blankets again to try and hide from Hange’s approach.  “Let me sleep.”

“Nope!”

The cheerful exclamation was followed by a rush of fabric, and a strangled noise of aggravation and distress from Y/N–Hange had likely just pulled the covers from the bed to keep her from hiding beneath them.

“You and I are going to spend the morning together, and have plenty of time for nice, long heart to hearts,” Hange announced.

Footsteps drew closer to the door, and Levi quickly slid closer to the door so that when it opened he could hide behind it.

“Does it have to be so early?”

“What are you talking about?  This is the Scouts–You’ve slept in already!  And like I said, I had to get here early if I wanted to beat Levi to the punch before he could whisk you away to keep you all for himself like he has the past few months,” Hange was saying as the door opened and she walked inside, Levi sliding as deep as he could into the corner behind the door and staying as quiet as possible.  He could hear water splashing into a container, likely the small pitcher–

“Now, let’s hop to–If I need to, I’ll encourage you with a nice flash of cool water.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

Levi could envision Hange’s mischievous grin in his mind’s eye as her footsteps came to a halt in the bathroom doorway.

“You bet I would.  C’mon, hurry up, before he intercepts us!”

Y/N sighed, the sound heavy and reluctant, but he could hear movement in the room, and Hange hadn’t moved from her position in the doorway.  She’d finally gotten out of bed and started moving around, prompting Hange to put the pitcher back on the wash basin counter.

“Hey, I don’t see your gear anywhere?” Hange called inquisitively before she bounced out of the bathroom, shutting the door completely behind her and allowing Levi to relax from his cramped, tense position behind the door.  

“Levi probably took it last night to clean it,” Y/N responded without missing a beat.

Safe behind the shut door of the bathroom, Levi slipped on his shoes, barely able to make out the softest chuckle, coming from Hange based on her proximity to the bathroom door since she didn’t seem to have strayed too far from it.

“Are you sure you didn’t accidentally use some kind of vampire charm on him or something?  Cause he’s all tangled up in his heartstrings trying to learn to play them for you.”

It was a damn good thing he was out of sight and was supposed to be quiet right now, because her statement had heat immediately rising to his face, breath catching and held to keep him from trying to snap out a defense that would probably amount to just telling her to shut the fuck up about shit she didn’t know shit about.

“He was just being thoughtful,” Y/N murmured, sounding further away.  She was probably over by her dresser trying to get dressed in something acceptable for off duty but still doing things around headquarters.

“Oh, yes, certainly, that’s all it is, you’re absolutely right,” Hange teased.

There was the sound of Hange’s footsteps moving across the floor towards where Y/N was, and he heard a soft ‘oof’ uttered by Y/N before Hange was speaking again around the sound of stumbling feet, the noise moving towards the door to Y/N’s room.

“Come on, let’s get out of here before someone else tries to steal you away.”

“I really don’t think you have to worry about that, Hange…”

The door opened, shut, and he heard the sound of their voices and footsteps disappearing down the hall.  He waited a full minute after he’d stopped hearing them before he stepped out of the bathroom, looking at the haphazard state the bedroom had been left in the wake of Hange’s determined attempts to drag Y/N out of sulking in her bedroom and getting her to do something else entirely.

The bedsheets were at least tossed back onto the bed, though they were spilling onto the floor.  One of the dresser drawers were partially open, the clothes Y/N had slept in last night were in a pile kicked off to the side in a bundle–

Messier than normal, given how Hange had been rushing her out.

Levi at least took the time to make the bed, shut the drawer, and put the dirty clothes in their proper place before he slipped out of her room once he was certain no one was passing by in the hallway.

He needed to go clean for a while, partially to check that part off his list, but also to cool down and do some thinking.

Or at least distract himself from Hange’s little comment about him and his feelings.

*Reader’s POV*

Hange didn’t waste any time with detours, dragging you directly to her office with far more energy than you could currently keep up with.  You’d intended to sleep in and rest today, and having to abruptly be up and moving around, fully alert, was throwing you off and making you groggy and a bit slower to respond.  Hange didn’t seem to mind, though, undaunted by your sleepy state as she dragged a chair out for you to sit in and went digging for the notes from the last time the two of you had sat down to discuss and exercise–to a degree–your abilities behind the safety of the locked door of her office.

“Ah!  Got it!”  Hange exclaimed, pulling out the notebook you’d seen her use last time to scribble down her notes and theories to go over later.  “I’ve got to hide it from Moblit, but that’s a lot harder to do than it sounds–speaking of, would you be okay with telling him about this before he stumbles across the book on his own?”

You blinked, not expecting the question.  As usual, your immediate thought was, the less people that know, the better, and the easier to contain the secret.  She did have a point that Moblit very well could stumble across it during one of his purges through her room to try and keep things semi-organized and see if he could recover lost items that just got buried in everything else.  He’d open it to figure out what it was to put it in the proper place, and be met with a bunch of notes about yourself and vampires in general.

It made sense, but it wasn’t just up to you.  “Ask Erwin.”

Hange sighed, dropping into the chair directly across from you.  “Guess that’s something I can do when I drop off my report on yesterday.”

You grimaced at the reminder–that was something you still needed to do, since you hadn’t done it last night.

Other things had been on your mind last night.

Hange flipped open her notebook, flipping forwards past sketches of your fangs and scribbled notes in diagram forms to a new page.  “If you haven’t done yours yet, either, that’s something we can get done together and I can drop them off when I go see Erwin.”

You hummed, leaning forwards to rest your chin in your palm.  “That’d be appreciated.  Thanks Hange.  I’ll drop the report off to Levi later, though–I’m sure he’d rather the squad’s reports were turned in altogether.”

Hange hummed, scrounging up a pencil from the desk, leaning in much closer now that she had everything she needed.  “So–when was the last time you fed?”

It took far more effort than you wanted to admit to smother down the echo in your ears of the sounds Levi had made in your ear with your teeth latched into his throat, the feel of his body beneath yours and his excitement–

“Last night,” you said, forcing yourself to stay focused fully on the present before you could spiral any further into the memories of last night.

Excitement sparked in her eyes.  “Oh?  You don’t mind testing your healing rate today, then, do you?  I haven’t caught you so soon after a feed before!”

“I suppose not.”

You held out your hand for Hange to take, sitting back passively as you watched her turn your arm around until she’d picked a spot that wasn’t going to hurt too bad or hit anything important.  She just wanted to see how fast you would heal from an injury, not test something major that would sap some of that fresh strength you had just gained–and a little extra you were still basking in.

After finding the desired spot, Hange fished around for a simple knife in the drawer of her desk, leaning in to see the very start of the cut as she made a quick swipe of the edge down your arm, keeping the sting of the cut short instead of drawing it out.  You flinched from the flash of pain, but kept yourself still after that, giving Hange the perfect view of the cut that was closing back up already.

“That’s amazing–and much faster than the last time we did this,” Hange commented in wonder, turning your arm slightly so that the light hit the healing wound at different angles as the skin stitched itself back together, the scar was left behind, and then began to rapidly fade.

“Well, it had been a bit since I last fed when we last did this.  And Levi and I had been sparring, which means I’d already burned through some energy healing from those…”

“This gives me a great starting point to work with for your healing rate relative to blood drank,” Hange said excitedly.  “I don’t really have a gauge for quality, but if you’re regularly taking from Levi anyway, I can at least use what we’ve done in the past and this to figure it out for your current diet,” Hange was rambling, scribbling in her journal, drawing a rough sketch of the wound you’d just had before it healed for a visual representation of what kind of wound had just healed that fast.

“I’m not going to bite you, Hange.”

“I know!  I didn’t even ask.  Besides, biting me right now would probably be a little over indulgent.”

Indulgent tonight?

You cleared your throat, looking away to pick through some of the papers on the desk while she wrote to distract yourself.  “Well, when you finish with your calculations, do you want to go back into trying to figure out how the necklace works?”

Hange hummed, fingers pressed against the tips of the page to start peeling the pages back, likely to seek out her notes from the last time the two of you had poked at trying to figure out the way it worked, or at least get her finger between pages where she’d need to flip to once she finished with her current writing.

“There’s certainly some aspect about how it works that we’re missing, and whatever it is, I think it’s the crucial piece to actually make a new necklace work.  It doesn’t hurt to keep trying new things to try and figure out what it is we’re missing.  There doesn’t seem to be anything inside your necklace, so what we see is what we get, and yet…” Hange mused.

You shrugged.  “Maybe if we keep trying new ideas we’ll stumble into a breakthrough eventually.”

Hange circled two or three abstract thoughts on her observation diagram, drew some connecting lines, and turned to face you.  “Exactly!  What did you have in mind?”

As you could have predicted, the two of you didn’t manage to unlock the secrets of your necklace today.  It was always worth giving a shot, but the pieces for a necklace that the two of you experimented on still failed to yield any kind of protection from the sun, putting you back to a stumped square one, back to the drawing board.  

After the failure with the necklace experiments and no new ideas to try out today, Hange went back to testing your healing rate, which was less fun since it involved various–minor, consensual–injuries inflicted upon you.  Still, she explored a bit further beyond the brief bit she’d gotten from the earlier wound, trying different depths and lengths–again, with your consent–to test the healing rate with different injury types.

After a bit of discussion, you sat down with her to sketch out some of your past injuries that were not the kind that you would want to recreate–such as Levi’s slash across your chest with the ultrasteel blades, or the sage-soaked wooden weapons from the hunters–giving as detailed of a recreation as you could manage with specifics of when the last time you had fed at that point in time had been, how long it took to heal, if more blood had been required to complete the healing at a more rapid process–

All details Hange soaked up eagerly to help feed her theorizing and analysis.

After the experiments, the two of you had sat down with papers pulled in front of the two of you to write out your reports of what had happened yesterday.  The mood in the room had turned more somber, both of you quiet and working on your recollection of each of your experiences with the horrors of the day before.

The silence in the room was only punctuated by the scratch of your pens against the paper or the occasional rustle of the papers being shifted when you finished a page.  Your eyes were unfocused as you wrote, the lines of the letters on the page contorting across the sheets of off-white as if attempting to form moving images of the haunting scenes in your mind’s eye across the page. 

Not sure if it was stress after-the-fact or if you were still tired after your on again off again sleep, you sighed and leaned forward, taking a moment to pinch the bridge of your nose, as if the pressure could hold back the more visceral images in your mind.

Hange suddenly spoke, her voice filled with a soft and caring edge you had not heard from her yet that caught you off guard.

“I know yesterday was hard on you–I doubt reliving it for a report is easy.”

It was a gentle way to broach the subject, allowing you to answer and direct what part of the conversation to pursue if you decided to talk.  She wasn’t asking anything that you had to answer directly, stating observation more than anything, and she wasn’t assuming anything or speculating with theories you could either confirm or deny.  She left it entirely up to you.

As if delving back into the memories for your report didn’t make your heart heavier with the revisiting of the bloody memories from yesterday, you felt the return of the compression of your chest trying to squeeze itself into a much smaller space as you turned over just how hard it had been, so you could give Hange a suitable response.

“It has to be done, though–the command needs all the facts in case there’s something of discovery in someone’s experience, and…and it will help with figuring out the more accurate death toll,” you told her quietly.

“Well, yeah, those are the more official reasons to do it–but I wasn’t talking about why they need to be done.”  Hange sat down her pen, pushing the book aside and leaning in to peer at you more intently.

You let out a small sigh, looking off to the side and away from her intense gaze for a moment.  “I’ve dealt with death regularly for more than half of my life.  It’s…it’s an unfortunate constant companion for me, even now.  I’m no stranger to the gruesome, bloody, and unfair death in this world.  But this was just…different.  Too much.  I was drowning in it last night.”

Hange let your words linger in the air between the two of you, possibly taking the time to mull over what she should say in answer to that.

“All of us are going to be carrying the burden of this for the rest of our lives,” Hange started.  “I’ve seen some bloody days in the Scouts, we’ve suffered horrific losses in the past.  This was…something else, yes.  On a scale none of us could have imagined, even those of us that have seen the horrors of the Titans time and time again by now.  I promise you there’s not a single one of us that won’t be haunted by what happened yesterday, and you’re not the only one who’s struggling with it.”

Hange reached out to place a tentative hand on your shoulder, giving it a small squeeze and offering you a small, sad smile when you looked back at her.

“But it’s not a burden that you have to carry alone.  You have comrades who are carrying it with you, and some that would probably find some comfort in knowing you’re carrying it with them.  The Scouts have always been about furthering humanity’s fight against the Titans, finding a way to fight back, for humanity to survive, to learn about the Titans and progress in the fight instead of losing ground–and giving meaning to all the sacrifices along the way.  That weight has always been part of what the Scouts have to carry…it’s just a much bigger burden to shoulder, now.  For all of us to shoulder.”

You looked away again when she seemed to pause in what she was saying for a moment, giving you the time to soak in what she was saying.

That was one way to tell you that you weren’t alone, and that there were people who would support you–and that could use your help supporting them along the way.  She didn’t say that it would go away or one day you’d get over it or anything like that.  She let you know you weren’t the only one and that there were people who could understand and carry it with you when you felt it was too big for you.

Like Levi.  Like Hange.  Petra, who had already been worried about you before everything even happened.  Anyone in the Scouts you grew close enough to open up to when you were having a rougher go of things.

“Besides–”

Hange straightened, filling in the silence between the two of you before you could speak as she leaned back, poking at your cheek playfully.  You couldn’t help but feel as if she was pointing out a spot Levi had left behind, some mark from his kisses last night.

You knew he had kissed you there last night amongst many other places.  She didn’t, not necessarily, it was just a guess so long as you didn’t react in a way that confirmed it for her.

Or maybe the intimacy of last night had left you hyper aware in a way that felt so visceral to you, it was easy to think that somehow the others would see it, too, even though they couldn’t, and her poke had nothing to do with Levi’s affections last night.

“I’m sure it’s so tempting to just keep your super secret club to you and Levi for all the highs and lows of what’s happening in your life, but the rest of us would at least like to be allowed in from time to time,” Hange teased.  “He’s been hogging you ever since you two made up, and the rest of us are going to band together and demand play dates.”

You shoved her poking finger away with a roll of your eyes, glad for the bit of lightheartedness to take away from the somber mood in the air and help lift your spirits.  “Aw, Hange, I didn’t know you were so jealous,” you answered right back.

“Of course I am.  You turned down my offer for you to date me instead while you two were going through your rocky period, and I missed my shot–I’m all kinds of jealous that short stack gets the gifted, sexy, vampire girlfriend.”

“Why are you jealous, you have Moblit?”

“Maybe, but you have fangs.”

“I’m not biting you, Hange.”

“Today.”

“How about we circle back to you not correcting me on the Moblit thing?”

“Moblit is Moblit.”

“And Levi is Levi, we don’t have a label for what we are, we just are, so you need a better excuse.”

“So you admit to you and Levi being a thing!”

“Hange, you walked in on us kissing, you know there’s been something going on, that’s not a distraction that’s going to work.”

“And don’t I know it, you two were really going at each other.  Is it always like that with all that pent up tension and–”

“Okay, Hange, different topic!”

Hange chuckled, pushing her glasses back up her nose from where they had slipped in her enthusiasm.  “One of these days, I’ll get you to share all the juicy details.”

You buried your face in your hand, purposely angling the side that Hange was on to hide your embarrassment the best that you could.

She wasn’t getting those juicy details any time soon.  You were hoarding them all to yourself, and you had no desire to share the sounds Levi made and the way his body responded to you, the expressions on his face and the looks in his eyes when it was just the two of you.  Those were all yours to collect and cherish and keep locked where only you could pull them out to admire them.

Levi’s heart was not something you felt inclined to share the inner workings of–you wanted each beat in the rhythm of his pulse all for yourself.

*Levi’s POV*

Levi’s fingers still tingled from how hard he had scrubbed at the blood on their clothes this morning, smelling strongly of soaps and oil after his work on not only his gear and clothes, but Y/N’s as well.  He’d put off writing his report a little longer simply because his fingers had still been sore enough he’d needed to give them a slight break, choosing to do most of his trips to go see people and check in on his squad members besides Y/N, Erwin, and Hange just to give his fingers time to recover.

Erwin was the meeting for after the report was done, while Levi had his attention and hopefully enough time to say what needed to be said before Erwin’s attention was claimed elsewhere.

Maybe.  If Erwin was neck deep in those death notices and sorting the reports to figure out how many, exactly, had died and getting confirmations of death to the many that had lost family yesterday, then he might not have the time to sit down and talk about everything else that still needed addressed.

That was a problem to tackle when he was there.  At the moment, Levi was working on the said report–as well as the unofficial shorter report that would go into details of what had happened in regards to Y/N’s vampirism, such as being able to hear the massacre and how far away they’d needed to move in order for her to stop hearing it.

He left out the near-loss of her humanity not to bury and hide it, but because that was a conversation Levi wanted to have in person with Erwin, where his displeasure and disapproval with the whole mess would be loud and clear and not as easily brushed off.

This, what had almost happened last night, at least in regards to Y/N, could not happen again.

There was a knock on his door, softer and familiar, which prompted him to call out without looking up from his report, though he did shift the vampire version under papers where it couldn’t be seen.  

“Yes?”

Petra slipped inside, a stack of the reports from his squad in her hand.  “I have almost everyone’s reports, Captain–except for Y/N’s.  I couldn’t find her, is she–?”

Petra had dark circles under her eyes.  A rough night for everyone, then.  However, he’d be more worried if someone wasn’t showing signs of some kind of stress or exhaustion after yesterday.

“L/N’s with Hange at the moment going over Titan capture plans again.  She knows to get it to me when she’s escaped,” Levi remarked, turning his gaze back to his work after confirming who was entering.  Petra approached to tentatively put the stack of the rest of the squad’s reports on the corner of his desk where they would be out of the way.

“Is…is she okay, Captain?  I know she wasn’t doing well before everything happened, and she wasn’t even responsive after–”

As easy as it was to simply say ‘she’ll be fine’ and end the conversation there, Levi decided against it.  He didn’t have to divulge the more private details, but he’d feel better knowing she had a decent support group to fall back on, not just him.

“She’s got her feet under her, and she’s doing her duties.  Doesn’t mean you can’t check on her when you see her next,” Levi said calmly.

Petra snapped a salute, sensing the dismissal in his response and probably picking up on the veiled suggestion to go check on Y/N for herself.  “Thank you, Sir,” she responded, before promptly taking her leave.

Petra was the only one he was going to send her way, though.  Hange could already be a handful, and Petra would likely drag the others into making sure Y/N had plenty of support from her squad after seeing the effects the day had on her yesterday.  Any more than that and it might start to get annoying hearing people ask her over and over again if she was okay and wanting to talk about something she needed to be trying to move forwards from.

That and it was probably best she keep lying low for a while longer, at least until the food shortage started to ease up from its currently more dire status.  He hadn’t forgotten the looks he’d caught some of the others giving her when they thought no one was watching, and he’d rather any unnecessary fights or conflicts be avoided if they could manage it.

They didn’t need dissention in the ranks, especially not right now.

Just another thing thing to add to the list of all the shit they currently had to shovel and deal with right now, though this one the best they could do at the moment was to try to keep it from getting worse.  There were other things they could focus on while they waited for that issue to take care of itself.

Some of which were also things Levi needed to bring up with Erwin as soon as he got the chance to.

He hoped the other man could afford to carve out enough time in his day to address it all.

It was much later than Levi would have liked before he finally got in to see Erwin when the man wasn’t caught up in meetings with other people.  If he was going to go through with his idea for Y/N today, Levi would be pushing it if he went to town today–maybe he could get to a store with what he was looking for if he went faster than was strictly necessary and didn’t dawdle, but if he ran into trouble while he was out amongst the civilian population, that could be an issue and he could miss his opening.

Not something for him to be thinking about right now.  It was looking like he wouldn’t be able to slip away today.  However, he’d worry about that after his meeting with Erwin, which needed his full attention considering everything that needed to be discussed.

When he entered Erwin’s office, he was unsurprised to find it more of a mess than usual.  Erwin looked like he hadn’t slept at all, or if he had, at best it had been quick naps at his desk between stacks of reports of yesterday on his desk, as well as papers scattered across the surface to assist in the record keeping and data sorting he was in the middle of, trying to identify deceased soldiers and give a death and survivor count for the brass from the collective perspectives and accounts of the Scouts, comparison of reports of individuals that had been in the same group or area to make sure casualties weren’t counted twice…

Erwin had the hardest paperwork job out of all of them, and Levi didn’t envy him it.  His contribution to easing Erwin’s work load had been in making sure his own report was as clear as possible, and including an extra report compilation that already did some of that work that Erwin was doing on a smaller scale–he had a workup of the collective casualties that his squad had witnessed as well as the individuals that they had rescued and the handful that they had been aware hadn’t survived long enough to even leave the top of the wall.  

There was even a small summary that spelled out some incidents of note from the collective experience of the squad, details of the behaviors of some of the abnormals, obstacles they had run into during the rescue attempts and suggestions for what kind of fixes could help such an endeavor run smoother in the future–

The short of it was, Levi did his best to make Erwin’s job a little easier with his contribution to the pile and tried to make it easier for the other man to work through.

And, of course, Y/N’s report was now included in the stack–she’d come by to drop it off before lunch, unable to linger due to an apparent promise in the hall to Petra to join the rest of the squad for their lunch.  So, the visit had been only in passing, nothing much to show for it besides a lingering touch and a soft, slight smile to show she was managing to get through the day so far.

They’d catch up again at the end of the day, he was sure.

After making sure the door was shut behind him and that no one was lurking in a corner once he was fully inside, Levi went right up to the desk and placed his squad’s reports at the top of the stack he had just watched Erwin pull another squad’s bundle of reports from.

“There’s shit that’s not in there we need to discuss,” Levi announced, pointing to the reports he’d just added to the pile.

Erwin didn’t seem phased, tired eyes scanning the papers in front of him.  If he didn’t know better, Levi would be tempted to think Erwin was just too tired to fully process what he’d said with how long the silence stretched before he answered.

“Normally you leave the vampire updates to the unofficial reports,” Erwin observed.  “Is this over what that lap around Trost was about?”

Even visibly tired, Erwin’s prying and analytical tone didn’t lose its edge.

“That’s in the unofficial report.  This is about after everything, and should this kind of shit happen again.”

Erwin’s gaze flickered up to Levi at the slightly sharper edge that had leaked into his voice near the end there, hinting that what Levi had to say was going to be a bit more charged than their normal discussions about Y/N.

“Miche will be here in–” Erwin glanced out the window to gauge the time by the sun's position in the sky.  “A half hour or so.”

“It’s straightforward,” Levi said bluntly, arms crossed over his chest as he stared unwaveringly at Erwin.  “If there’s ever bullshit like that we have to carry out again, don’t involve her in it.  Give her some other job as far from the massacre as we can get her.”

Erwin put down the pen he was writing with, leaning back in his seat to turn a sharp eye on Levi.  That sharp look and the frown on his face was only the start of Erwin’s displeasure with that not-a-request from Levi.

Levi’s tense tone made it clear enough that this wasn’t a request.

“You know why she can’t get special treatment like that, especially in situations like this,” Erwin said, studying Levi closely.  “I can’t leave just one soldier out of a mess that logically we would want present to help keep some semblance of control of what we can.  It would be noticed, and easily chalked up to favoritism.”

“That’s why I said give her some other job to do.  Even if you have to make something up, make her part of a relay for communication with the brass sitting comfortably in Sina because she’s known for how fast she can move.  I don’t care.  Just keep her out of it.  She can’t take being a part of a blatant civilian sacrifice like that again.”

Ideally, there wouldn’t be another massacre like this again where they were commanded to stand by and do nothing and make sure a massive swath of civilians died.  But he thought more realistically than that.  The situation they were in was a constant looming fatal threat with Titans capable of breaking through the walls, no current way to plug those walls, and no plan to reclaim territory in an efficient way that made the effort worth the endeavor instead of just an endless loop of a losing battle.  If the next wall was broken through, if Rose fell as well as Maria and civilians were let into Sina, another sacrifice would follow soon after–if they weren’t all killed in a civil war for what meager resources remained, first.

There was still a possibility of the Scouts being told to ensure the death of a large part of humanity again if Rose fell–and likely far more than the over twenty percent of humanity that they had carried out yesterday.

She didn’t need to suffer through an even worse nightmare of yesterday–with her heightened emotions, she might not be able to without shutting off her humanity.  Then she’d be lost to them.  To him.  And there was something worse about the thought of losing her while still technically having her.

“Levi,” Erwin started, tone admonishing in a way that made Levi bristle to hear.  “Everyone is dealing with yesterday’s events, some better than others, and some not at all.  I’ve already got resignation requests I have to go through after this.  If Rose falls, and this situation happens again, so long as she’s a Scout she will still be there.  I won’t give her special treatment because you want to spare her the pain the rest of us are dealing with.  You’ve already promised me the relationship happening between the two of you wouldn’t cloud your judgement–”

“This isn’t about my personal feelings,” Levi grit out, voice cutting Erwin’s lecture off like his blades through Titan flesh.  “This isn’t about wanting to spare her pain.  She’s a Scout–it’d be pointless and idiotic to want that.”

Even if he didn’t like seeing her in pain, that was just part of what they dealt with regularly as Scouts, she was going to be in pain far more times in the future, and there wasn’t anything he could do to prevent that–only things he could do to try and ease the pain afterwards and help her get through it.

Levi leaned forwards, one hand braced on the front of Erwin’s desk, the other pointing at the reports as if to emphasize that what he was saying was partially addressed in the reports he just turned over.

“I’m talking about the fact that we almost lost her last night.  If I hadn’t been there to catch what was happening, we probably wouldn’t have her at all anymore.  Even if we did, there would be an active threat lurking in our ranks waiting for something to set it off.”

The moment Levi called what Y/N would become if she shut out her humanity it and not her, Erwin set aside the reports he’d been ready to get into before Levi had claimed his undivided attention.

Once the reports were back in the pile he’d taken them from–Levi noticed Erwin also shifted Levi’s squad’s reports to the top in the process–Erwin leaned forwards, raising his hands that were now loosely interlaced together to his lips in contemplation.

“What happened last night?” he asked, voice measured, gaze fixed on Levi, choosing to withhold his reaction until he had Levi’s full statement.

Levi stood upright again, gaze scanning for every micro expression Erwin may give as he got into the messier details of what almost happened last night.

“She almost shut out her humanity by accident trying to cope with everything she had to witness yesterday.”

Confusion made Erwin’s eyes narrow slightly, eyebrows twitching closer together with the start of a furrowed brow, which reminded Levi that he hadn’t brought that vampire ability to Erwin’s attention before today.

“She once told me that vampires can shut out their humanity–take the things that make them more human–the emotions, conscious, morality–and push it all out so they don’t feel anything.  After having to hear everything yesterday,” Levi lifted his chin in the direction of the reports to indicate the details for that aspect of yesterday’s series of horrific events was in there, “she was trying to cope, and started accidentally shutting out her humanity.  I caught it before she could shut it out fully and managed to bring her back to herself, but it was close.”

The sight of her vanishing right in front of him, the light and warmth bleeding out of her eyes and leaving a cold and empty chasm behind where her soul had been mere moments before, still made his heart rate pick up and his breaths come sharper, cutting against the constriction of his throat as the echo of the fear he felt in that moment crawled beneath his skin again.

Displeasure was one way to describe the look that was now etched into Erwin’s face.  He certainly wasn’t happy about what he was hearing.

“Why wasn't this ability brought to my attention sooner?” Erwin asked, his tone terse, admonishing, and even with a sharp edge to it.

That was on Levi--he was the one who gave Erwin the updates on her vampirism.

“We didn’t know it was something that could happen accidentally, and she didn’t know how to do it,” Levi explained.  He only hesitated to speak for a beat, wary of the fact Erwin had called it an ability and not, say, a risk.  “She said it took something worse than what pushed a vampire to shut out their humanity to let it back in, and they’d get hit with all the shit at once.  It’s not worth it in her eyes, and the thought of who she’d be without her humanity or what it’d take to get her to let it back in scared her.  She’s not going to do it purposely.  If she’d shut out her humanity for this, what it took to snap her out of it would be a nightmare–if we even could.”

As he spoke and Erwin had time to turn over this new information in his mind, Levi could swear he saw that cool, calculating glimmer enter Erwin’s gaze.  It was that look in his eyes that told Levi he was gambling and contemplating dangerous moves that others may deem insane.

If Erwin was weighing the possibility of weaponizing that no-humanity version of Y/N, Levi was going to shut that shit down now before the idea could get too rooted into that big brain of his.

“Don’t even think about it–it’d be the worst idea you’d ever had.”  Levi’s tone was cutting, the words leaving no room for debate.

Erwin raised a brow at Levi's abrupt scolding.  “I didn’t say anything.”

Levi wasn’t going to buy that faux innocence, not for a second.

“Her whole reason for being here and any respect she has for command, us, and basic respect for human life is rooted in her humanity.  You think she’s going to give a shit about the Scouts and their mission, or even care about sticking around if she’s lacking her humanity?  Because what was staring back at me when she almost shut it out sure as hell won’t.”

Her guilt over all the people she’d killed to survive and her value of human life and desire to protect it had driven her here.  Her morality not to harm people if she could help it and to muffle the worst of her vampirism came from her horror at seeing how monstrous and destructive vampires could be.  

There was a respect for the people around her and the chain of command that caused her to ask and consider those involved or affected when making weightier decisions (and she had the time to do so).  All of that went out the window without her humanity, and he doubted she’d stay for the Scouts or give a damn about what they thought or said.

And he knew she wouldn’t give a damn about him without her humanity.  Well, not him as a person.  She’d sure as shit still want his blood, though she wouldn’t care for him or his safety and comfort, and things would get messy fast.

“That’s not the first time you haven’t referred to her as a person–in this scenario,” Erwin amended when he saw the sharp look on Levi’s face at the suggestion that Levi was calling her an it/that/thing.

No, his mind had already drawn up a clear and sharp distinction between Y/N and the thing she almost became last night.  Those weren’t just different people, they were different entities.

“I got a glimpse of what she’d be without her humanity, and it sure as shit wasn’t her,” Levi stressed.  “That was more like what I’d thought she was before she came clean.”

Erwin sighed, letting his hands drop back to the desk.  The other man almost looked…disappointed.

Levi seriously hoped the disappointment was because he’d accepted the risk wasn’t worth trying to weaponize a no-humanity Y/N.

“Well…I suppose hearing you speak so clearly about a threat she could pose and not pulling your punches on how you phrase it is some reassurance that you’re not letting your relationship with her cloud your judgement–though not mentioning this was something vampires could do earlier is still a concern.”

Levi blinked, taken aback not only by the nonchalance in Erwin’s tone as he said it, but by the fact that was the track that Erwin chose to take in this exact moment–another comment about the relationship between Levi and Y/N.

“Are you fucking serious?”

He wasn’t sure if Erwin was actually being an asshole or choosing right now of all times to test him again over their relationship.  He knew Erwin still wasn’t convinced that a relationship between the two of them wasn’t going to get in the way of their duties as Scouts, but now wasn’t exactly the time to be pressing that.

He hoped it wasn’t supposed to be a distraction to keep him from potentially seeing that Erwin hadn’t let go of whatever thought had been brewing in his mind about Y/N’s ability to shut out her humanity, because if it was, he’d hate that it was working.

Erwin ignored his exclamation and plowed right on ahead with the topic.

“And if you were with her through the night, that also answers why you weren’t in your quarters this morning when I came looking for you.  However, if you two are officially spending nights with one another, and not just to monitor recoveries, then it’s about time we had an official talk about this, yes?” Erwin asked, gaze fixated unabashedly on Levi as if he hadn’t just implied that Levi and Y/N were having sex.

He had to bite back a scathing remark about it being none of Erwin’s fucking business what happened in their bedrooms, because unfortunately, to a small degree, it was.  Not in the details, fuck no, but knowing where their relationship was, if it was at the point they needed to start filling out some pain in the ass paperwork about their relationship to clarify there wasn’t some kind of toxic abuse of power/power imbalance/career gain aspect in their relationship occurring, and that it wasn’t negatively impacting their ability to do their duties if anybody came asking.

The line had been blurry until recently, with neither of them knowing what to label their relationship besides the fact they were getting closer and more affectionate.  Now it was blatantly intimate, borderline sexual, more defined as clearly romantic, intensifying and deepening with no sign of letting up any time soon.

Which meant it was about time to be making that official statement of a relationship so that all necessary ass covering could be done and Erwin could prove proper channels had been taken and Scout Leadership–or rather, Erwin, as he was the only one above Levi in Scout Command structure–had been aware of and made sure there wasn’t anything untoward happening, especially since, currently, she was still technically his subordinate in public and on paper.

This wasn’t something he’d thought he’d need to worry about since joining the Scouts, and nobody in his care had started a relationship that he had to handle, so admittedly, he didn’t know the first thing about what, exactly, would be expected from him and Y/N, just that there was a protocol for these kinds of things, it involved paperwork, and the kinds of things they looked for.

Part of him may have been hoping that by the time their relationship developed into something more concretely romantic, she’d be his equal publicly and on paper as well so they wouldn’t have to worry about this shit, but here they were.

“What’s there to say?” Levi asked rhetorically, folding his arms across his chest and moving so that he was leaned against one of the sturdier seats in Erwin’s office, a frown on his face and gaze fixed on the bookshelf across from him instead of at Erwin.

The damn thing was just as much of a mess as the rest of the room, though doing something about it right now would be pointless, since this room was going to be in a constant state of utter disaster until Erwin was finished with handling the aftermath of yesterday’s operation.

Then he could straighten it up, and it would only go to the usual disaster afterwards.

Levi heard rustling paper, a drawer opening, the sound of a file dropping to the desk.  He was tempted to look, but didn’t, stubbornly keeping his gaze averted since he knew there were a bunch of questions about his relationship with Y/N incoming.

“This should go faster than it normally would–I’ve already had parts of the file for this prepared since you two started getting closer.  I’ll just need you and her to confirm and fill in certain details,”  Erwin said calmly, the sound of papers being spread across his desk confirming that he’d had fairly detailed paperwork already prepared and waiting for this conversation.

What the fuck.

“Now…have you entered into a romantic relationship with your subordinate, Y/N L/N?”

He fucking hated hearing Erwin call her his subordinate when they both knew she was his fucking equal–hearing Erwin phrase it that way made their relationship sound filthy.

“Yes,” Levi grit out, leaving out the complaint about the phrasing since, again, at the moment, they were superior and subordinate on paper and in public.

“How long ago?”

When did it become a romantic relationship?  How was he supposed to know that?  What were the qualifiers?  Was it when they had their first kiss?  The first time he’d gotten erect from more than just how good it felt for her to bite him?  The first time they’d been kissing and it got particularly heated?  The first time he’d felt sex might be on the table?  What was the point in his mind there was no denying the fact he was getting in deep with her and what was forming between the two of them wasn’t going to be anything other than romantic?

Most of those milestones happened in the same stretch of time, so his best guess would be…

“A couple months ago.”

He could feel Erwin’s gaze on him, already knew what he was thinking was about how it probably wouldn’t look good that they’d waited a couple months to inform command of their relationship–

“Luckily I already have it in here that I was aware that a relationship was developing between the two of you and you weren’t trying to hide it from me,” Erwin murmured.  “I already have it established that her advancements have been based on individual ability and merit and not on the relationship between the two of you, but I still have to confirm if you two are in a sexual relationship–”

“Fucking hell, Erwin, you don’t really need that shit, do you?”

“It establishes that you didn’t give or suggest her for any of her advancements for sexual favors because there was no sexual relationship at the time, or if there was, we’ll need to clarify that there was no discussion suggesting such an exchange or that it didn’t influence your thinking one way or another,” Erwin returned calmly.  “So, again, is your relationship sexual–”

“No! Fuck, Erwin.”

Not yet, a little voice whispered in the back of his mind, which he promptly attempted to smother the life out of as quickly as possible.  Tried not to think of her legs wrapped around his waist last night, arching against his body, pressed up against the bulge in his pants–

Fuck.

Not yet.

To make matters worse, Levi happened to glance over at Erwin in his exasperation and managed to catch a look on Erwin’s face that told him that Erwin didn’t entirely believe him.  It was true, and thankfully meant no more probing in that area and that her advancements wouldn’t be called into question, so it made this easier, and yet, Erwin didn’t seem convinced.

“We’re not fucking, so you can get that constipated look off your shitty face,” Levi snapped.

Erwin sighed, taking the time to write in the details Levi had just given him into his already partially completed report, the silence in the room giving Levi a few seconds to simmer back down.

“Are there plans to continue your relationship?”

“Yes.”

“Are you conscious of and taking steps to mitigate the risk of your relationship coming into conflict with the duties given to you?”

“You ask me about it all the fucking time.”

“Levi.”

“Yes.  We already fucking talked about it, and you ask me about it regularly, and I already asked you about seeing if we could make us equals an official thing and not just behind closed doors, you know this shit.”

“I still need to confirm it with you.  And if you two haven’t gotten physical, there’s not a risk of sexual favors yet, and there’s plans to move her out of the position of your subordinate, that solves the issue going forwards.”

That pulled Levi out of his sulking and made him look over at Erwin, who was organizing the papers for this file he’d been keeping and going back over what he’d already written to make corrections where he needed to.  Bastard had probably assumed the relationship was already sexual.

“You settled on something, then?”

Erwin hummed.  “An idea or two.  At the moment I don’t have any of it in front of me, but when this,” he gestured around him at the paperwork for yesterday’s operation that he was drowning in, “is finished, I’ll have you both in here to discuss the specifics.  In the meantime, ask her about her thoughts on holding a leadership position–in general.  No matter what’s decided, she’s going to be in a position of authority with this new position; and the sooner you do it and get back to me, the better.”

“What, you’ve got a deadline to make or something?”

“There’s an event coming up–far enough away to give time for the dust to settle from this operation, but still soon.  We need to start gathering support for the expeditions again, and I want to bring both of you with me.  Ideally, that will be when her new title–whatever we settle on–will be made public.”

It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since yesterday’s nightmare, he was still surrounded by the reports of overwhelming death, and Erwin was already thinking about the next operation, the next expedition, gathering money and support and how to sway the pigs in the upper class into forking over the funds and support they needed to get outside Rose.

Levi’s nose wrinkled slightly at the prospect of having to go to another one of those damn events, as if he could already smell the bullshit he was going to have to swallow and tolerate for a whole evening.

“How fancy?”

“Mitras.”

Shit.

He hated these things–those over-polished shitstains were so far detached from the reality of the world they were all living in, it made him sick.  And Mitras was the worst.  One of the outlying districts of Sina might have been more tolerable, like Stohess, but instead they were going straight to Mitras for the very first one.

Plus, clearly if Erwin was bringing Levi and Y/N, they were meant to be shown off, the best of the best, the reason why the Scouts were going to succeed and the ones responsible for their growing success–ideally, once they got out there again.  Y/N had already been improving the odds for the Scouts, but they hadn’t had the time to confirm it and get the numbers and the stats to back it up before the walls fell.  And, it would be just their luck for the issues to start cropping up after making a claim that their survivability and success rates were about to get drastically better.

Still, Erwin seemed to have decided that adding her to the flaunting to the swine of Mitras to get what they needed for their cause was a risk worth taking.  Either the potential benefits outweighed the risk in his mind, or Erwin had that much faith in her abilities, despite how long it had been since they’d been able to put them to work out beyond the walls.

“You’re really going to debut whatever this special position is that you have in mind for her at this shitty thing?”

“In part.  I’m going to inform our internal command, first, and explain the specifics before we make any larger public announcements.”

Levi’s eyes narrowed slightly.  “How much is this idea of yours going to shake up our command?”

Erwin hummed thoughtfully, though there was a small frown on his lips.  “We’ll know when the others hear.  I had to come up with something new, between needing to get her out from being your subordinate, needing to give her a position that allowed her to exercise her judgement with her vampire abilities but still respected the command structure–Promoting her to existing positions only created new problems about who would be put under her command that would involve drastic or pointless regrouping.  You already called her your right hand in public–yes, that made it back to me–but that would still put you two in the same position that has us filling out this paperwork to make sure you two don’t get in trouble for your relationship.  She’s more your counterpart than anything–”

“Get to the point, Erwin, I know you already have something specific in mind,” Levi cut in with annoyance.

He didn’t need the thought process behind it, Levi had been the one to suggest she get a position that put her in a proper position as his equal a while ago, he knew the reasoning already.

Erwin interlocked his fingers in front of him once more, elbows propped up on the desk on either side of the documents beneath him.  “I have a work in progress for an independent position that would allow her to act at her own discretion based on the knowledge of her vampire abilities the others don’t have, be attached to whichever squad she’s needed in such as with yours while acting as our point or with Hange’s during research focused expeditions, but still includes accountability and answering to higher command, with safeguards so that she can’t always undermine the other officers.  I’m still drafting the rules and protocol for such a position, but, it’s nearly finished.”

“How long before we’re dragged to this shitty thing?  We still have to deal with the Emery situation now that this bigger mess is behind us.”

If Erwin already almost had her new position figured out, it could be closer than they wanted it to be–there were still things that needed to be done sooner rather than later that were going to take some time, Emery being at the top of the list.

Erwin frowned at the reminder of the young vampire that had fallen into the background with everything happening on the Scout side of things.  “You have a few months–time for her to get the proper attire if she needs to, time for us to smooth out the details for her new position, time to finish dealing with the aftermath of yesterday.  Depending on what you two have in mind for how to handle the situation with the young vampire, you should be able to find the time to do so.  Do the two of you have an idea of how to handle it?  Once the Garrison is finished with their part in dealing with the aftermath and the public settles down again, they’re going to be on the hunt for him again with their full focus.  Though, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a faction hunting him now with less savory motives hoping to take advantage of the current chaos to get away with something more akin to retribution.”

Levi wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, either–all the more reason to be quick about handling the Emery situation.  The sooner the better.

“We do.  It’s going to take some digging to do it right, but we’ve talked about faking his death.  We’re going to need to scope out the area and figure out what kinds of people are in the squads hunting for him.”

The last thing either of them wanted was to accidentally throw Emery to a squad that would take their time and draw out his ‘death’, so they were going to make sure they put him in the path of a squad that would be quick to put him down if they were pushed the right way.

Erwin hummed, closing the file with the official ass covering details of Levi and Y/N’s relationship and leaning over to stuff the file back into one of his drawers–Levi tried not to think of how crammed full and desperately needing a purge that drawer was with the sound Levi could hear of folder edges rapidly smacking against the top of the drawer as Erwin opened and closed it.

“Keep me updated, and let me know when you have a more detailed plan before you go carrying anything out.  I’ll see if I can get any more details on the Military Police that were getting involved in the hunt.”

“They weren’t eager for you to be sniffing around their bullshit the last few times you tried.”

“Well, perhaps I can come away with a success this time,” Erwin remarked, reaching to continue with his pile of reports.

They were likely running out of time–Miche would be here at any moment, and Levi would be unable to talk about most of what they had been discussing any further.  That, and the fact that Erwin was reaching for the reports again meant that Erwin had every intention of wrapping this conversation up.

If there was one thing he wanted to stress the most before he had to leave–

“Erwin…I’m serious about not involving her if we’re in this kind of shitshow again.  We can’t risk her losing her humanity.”

Erwin didn’t immediately reply, didn’t even look at Levi, spreading the reports Levi had brought him one by one across his desk.  Before Levi could speak again to press the matter and demand an answer, there was a knock on the door that had Levi swearing under his breath.

He was out of time.

“Yes, Miche?” Erwin called, which prompted the Section Commander to step inside and stroll across the room, promptly keeping Levi from pressing the subject any more.  Levi started to turn, already knowing this meant he was dismissed, not even sparing Miche a glance as he stalked towards the door.

Erwin called out to him before he could leave the office.

“Levi.  I’ll let you know when there’s a complete list of the families of the scouts we lost that we need to notify.”

That wasn’t an answer, it wasn’t even in the realm of anything they’d been talking about–even if it was something Levi needed to know about since he’d be involved in the notifications as an officer.

And it sure as hell didn’t escape Levi’s notice that Erwin had been evasive about giving him any kind of opinion or statement about the matter throughout their whole conversation.

(Strikethroughs Couldn't Be Tagged)

Everything Tags:   @antistellxr 

Levi Tags:  @clary-quinn @ayatosmlktea @whalerus @sunny-flo @thirstyforsometea @hauntedhousecat @peaches-and-clouds @imaginationmess @wubbawubwub04 @lollobos @pasteldays @itsmeaudrieee @macaronnv @tokyo-banana @apuci-kis-szornye @momowantscats @yellowminb @ashikothedog @notgoodforlife @spnwinchestersd @xxdarkdarlingxx @joy-the-reader

*Levi’s POV*

Levi had no idea how deep into the night it was when she seemed to have finally spent the last of her tears and bled out the pain she’d been trying to suffocate.  He didn’t let go of her through the whole thing, making sure she didn’t lose that bit of human contact he needed to give her to let her have something to anchor to.  Even though he was stiff and sore by the end, he waited until she’d gone silent, and even then he waited several more long moments to make sure she really had gotten all of it out before he moved.

Her body had been heavy against his, enough so that for the first few seconds he thought she’d cried until she’d passed out.  However, when he pulled back her eyes were open, still shining and bloodshot from the harsh cry she’d just struggled through.

He’d take it.  It was much better than the look that had been in her eyes what felt like hours ago but may have only been a few painfully long minutes ago, and it meant he was doing something right that she still had a semblance of herself.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing while he was trying to comfort her.  He had comforted her before, but he’d never had this kind of relationship with someone on the bloodier days, had never tried to comfort someone he was this intimate with after one of the horrific operations that gave the Scouts such a bad reputation amongst the population.  He felt like more than his usual was needed, that he needed to put in more effort than normal, but he couldn’t quite decide what that was supposed to look like, unsure in his actions and what the right move would be.  

He knew what he’d do if they were just comrades, just friends, he knew the kind of silent support he would give, then.

This was different.  This was her, and she was suffering.

And he needed to try and make it better.  He knew he couldn’t fix it–there were enough broken shards in his own soul that was a testament to just how many things couldn’t be fixed–but here with her, unlike up on that damn wall, he could do something.

For now, he could start small; start with what she needed physically, and go from there.

Once he knew that she was awake, and the shuffling back to let him move let him know she was responsive, Levi carefully brushed the hair back from her face before reaching over to start working on getting her out of the excess layers of her uniform, undoing her ruined cloak and helping her slip free of the jacket beneath before he started in on the straps, loosening them from the back plate and shimmying them off her shoulders.

“You’re a filthy mess,” Levi muttered as his fingers worked blood and mud stained leather off her bit by bit.  “The gear can wait for tomorrow:  once we get this off you, I’ll draw a bath, and you clean yourself up, okay?”

The fact he said we seemed to clue her into the fact she could help undo her own gear, working on the straps of her inner thighs and waist, undoing the main unit, and pulling the bloody and possibly ruined wrap around her waist free to lie carelessly atop the growing pile.  Levi’s practiced hands had her free of the upper half of the harness in no time, and he had already started getting her out of the boots by the time she was ready to pull free of the straps around her legs and feet.

When all that was left were her socks, pants, and ruined white shirt, he got up and headed for the washroom, not saying a word about the haphazard mess the pieces of her uniform were lying in at the moment considering the miserable state she was still in.

He’d take care of it before he headed to his quarters to wash up.  She didn’t need to worry about anything else tonight, no matter how small a task it may be–she had enough to deal with.  They all did.

Once he had the bath filled with the appropriate amount of water and it was the right temperature, Levi came back to where she was still sitting on the bed, noting that she hadn’t moved an inch since they’d finished taking off most of her uniform, and he couldn’t help but take a moment to look her over, to make sure she wasn’t slipping back into that catatonic state.

Once again, he felt like he needed to do something more to help and comfort her right now, and he tried to think of what she might need, what she might do for him if she was the one trying to comfort him, what he knew of what had torn her up so much about this far beyond what had been eating at the rest of them.

He could think it over in his own bath–they both needed to get clean, first.

“Get yourself cleaned up,” Levi told her in a soft murmur, grasping her hand to pull her up to her feet and using his other hand to steady her and make sure she would stay on her feet before he gave her a little nudge towards the bathroom door.  “I’ll go clean up in my room.”

She suddenly turned at that, gaze locking onto him with a desperation that cut him deeper than he would have expected it to.  

“You’ll come back…yes?”

Levi swallowed at how raw and cracked her voice sounded, worse than his had been the last stretch of this day, gaze locked on hers–one last check to make sure she wasn’t going to shatter again while he tried to scrub the horrors of the day off his skin.  

“Of course.”

He’d make it a quick bath.  He didn’t want to leave her alone any longer than he absolutely had to.

Levi stayed where he was standing until she’d disappeared into the washroom, moving over to the bed once the door clicked shut.  He took the time to fold the clothes that were salvageable, debating placing them in a corner out of view where they could be gathered for cleaning in the morning–he knew it would be easier to clean the blood the sooner it was treated, but it had already been hours, and her wellbeing was more important than tackling stains that would take him some time to properly get out.  

Considering everything that had happened and how drained she looked, Levi changed his mind and instead started to carefully layer the folded clothes that could be salvaged, her gear that needed cleaned, and the clothes that were beyond repair and needed thrown out in an organized stack that he carried with him out of her room.

He’d take care of it.  It was probably wise not to leave the bloody reminder of what happened in her room while she was in a more precarious state–he’d take care of it all in the morning and get it back to her before anyone could notice he had two sets of gear in his quarters.

The halls were silent, and the trip went uninterrupted.  His room was unnervingly quiet after the constant noise of the day, between the trip to the wall, the long conversation with Y/N, the battle, and then her breakdown in her room.  Knowing she was in the silence of her own room struggling with her emotions that had been in a fever pitch all day probably made the silence seem wrong and dangerous, reminding him she was elsewhere and not in a good mental state while he was here.

Yes, it would definitely be a quick bath.

After preparing the bath water and making it a little hotter than he preferred to give it time to cool to the right temperature while he undressed, Levi made quick work of his gear, setting it atop his dresser to be tended to tomorrow beside Y/N’s, and then looking over his clothes to figure out what he could salvage with a good clean and what needed thrown out.  He put the carefully folded piles of salvageable clothes on either side of the corresponding gear, making it easy to tell which mechanical set was hers and which was his without having to look for distinct minor scrapes or scratches to tell them apart.

As Levi sank into the water filling the tub, his necklace laid carefully out on the washbasin table in wait for when he was finished, he finally felt the soreness and the tight strips of his taxed muscles, letting out a slow sigh and leaning his head back as he took a few seconds to let the heat loosen and soothe the worst of it.  The clean water was already starting to turn colors before he’d even started to scrub down, the smell of the soaps waiting just within reach by the bath for him to use a welcome contrast to the scent of blood, sweat, and shit he’d reeked of since the retreat.

His wrist twinged where it was resting against the rim of the tub, and Levi grimaced slightly, pulling his arm back in towards him with his fingers circling the skin just below where the mottled fingers shaped bruise on his wrist was.

Damn vampire strength…he knew she held back to avoid hurting people, but she had never used her strength on him like that before.  Not that he held it against her, she hadn’t exactly been thinking clearly when she did it, and it would only ache for a short while and be gone in a few days. 

Releasing his wrist and choosing to ignore the bruise entirely, Levi cupped the water in his hands, raising it up to his face to start cleaning up, beginning by wiping away any blood, mud, or salt crust from sweat he may have missed earlier when he was getting the worst of it out of his eyes, mouth, and nose.

185 people…

Levi felt his heart contort unnaturally in his chest, bringing another handful of water to his face and wiping it along places he’d felt crusted blood and sweat.

Out of 300,000…

He leaned forwards, putting his head firmly within the confines of the tub as he started to raise handfuls of water to wet his hair, letting his fingers seek out any crusted filth that may have made it down to the roots, hair eventually running rivulets of water back into the tub.

They’d never seen casualties like that.  Even during the fall of Maria, with how quickly the Scouts and Garrison had reacted, there weren’t nearly as many deaths as there could have been–a few thousands in comparison–and mostly made up of civilians in the initial areas impacted while the military was mobilizing, military that got caught in scuffles with the Titans or had fought to try and hold the Titans back long enough to give people time to evacuate, or people that hadn’t believed the warnings that the wall had fallen.

But of that three hundred thousand that had almost been entirely wiped out today, the vast majority of those casualties had been civilians.  Though the Scouts had suffered severe losses to their numbers as well, given how few of them had been on the return trip.

Once his hair was damp enough, Levi started lathering the soap into his hair, making sure his fingers threaded deep enough to rub along his scalp and make sure he was removing any trace of filth within until the soap was a thick foam between his fingers and clinging to his hair, dripping down onto his shoulders and down his back.

She had to hear it.  The rest of them just had to wait in that silence for something to happen, but she’d heard it happening.  Her senses had not allowed her to tune any of it out and had forced her to experience far more of it than anyone else on that wall.  And the way she’d looked at him, the way she’d pled for him to give her something else to listen to, to make it so she didn’t have to sit there and listen to the whole thing unfold–

He wished he could have done more.  He didn’t feel like what he’d done had been enough, given what just happened in her room.

Levi started in on washing the soap from his hair, cupping water back up to his head as he leaned it back to keep the soap out of his eyes, ran his fingers through over and over until he wasn’t coming away with any soap, and then one last pass to pull the hair back from his face and rub a fresh handful of water across his face, reaching for the body soap to lather up and wash his face, neck, and ears, careful not to miss any crevice dirt or blood may be hiding.

He’d seen enough people go into shock to know what was happening to her during the silent ride back to headquarters, but they hadn’t been in a position for him to do anything about it besides ride next to her and watch for if she was about to spiral into something dangerous.  She’d pulled through without any hesitation when she was needed to fight and to save people, to defend her comrades.  But when it was over and there was nothing but the quiet travel back…

Levi set the soap aside again while he rinsed his face and neck, waiting until he’d passed the water everywhere and he was certain there wasn’t any more soap before he rubbed a bit more vigorously at his eyes than he needed to.

Fuck, that look in her eyes.  Out of everything that had happened today, that had been the part to scare him the most.

He had seen dead eyes, flat eyes, empty eyes–the eyes of people who had shattered beyond repair in their soul and were simply a husk waiting to die, the eyes of people with nothing but malice and greed, the eyes of people that seemed to be trying to reflect the horrors they’d seen onto the people who dared try to meet their gaze.

The pain that filled her gaze had cut, had plunged into him like a serrated knife that sawed its way into his core.  The tears hadn’t stopped flowing, her whole body shaking from the force of all the emotions trying to spill out of her at once, struggling to breathe around her sobs and gasps for air to the point Levi had worried she’d pass out from the inability to get enough oxygen into her body.

What was worse was seeing her still, thinking she was going into shock again the first few moments before he realized she wasn’t calming, she wasn’t going numb, it was something else.  It had been like watching the emotions, the light and soul, bleeding out of her eyes, emptying until there was less and less of a person staring at nothing in particular and just this cold, unnatural thing filling the space instead. 

He’d seen the humanity start to drain out of her, seen the unfeeling otherness smother out any warmth and life in her eyes and replace it with this empty void.  She’d turned so still it was unnatural, had almost stopped breathing, started to go as blank outward as inward, and Levi saw, for a few moments, a peek at what she would be if she ever gave in and shut out her humanity.

Cold and death.  Completely devoid of what made her Y/N. 

Other, and not in a way to be praised or lauded as exceptional.

Dangerous.  Unfeeling.

Monstrous.  

He knew she was capable of immense violence, could be cold and calculating, could be lethal when she wanted to be–that was a part of her.  She was a vampire, but that wasn’t all she was.  There was more to her than the prowling beast beneath the surface that could tear a man to shreds without difficulty if pushed wrong.

That beast could still be playful, coy, affectionate, passionate, protective–he’d seen glimpses of it already, how in those moments where her vampire instincts took over, she was still herself, still mindful of him, still cared, protected him when he was in danger…

This had been different.  Dark.  Something that made a chill crawl underneath his skin even now despite the warm bathwater, something that hissed against the back of his neck secrets of nightmares and evil from the shadows.

A glimpse of the demon he’d thought he’d been up against before he’d confronted her in the warehouse when she first joined the Scouts.

She’d been right to be afraid of what would happen if she shut out her emotions.  What he glimpsed when she started to shut out all the things that made her who she was, tried to turn it all off and reduce herself to blood and instinct to avoid the pain…

He never wanted to see her so empty and broken, never wanted to see her pushed that far again.

Realizing he was staring at nothing in particular and that he’d come to a standstill in his cleaning, Levi straightened up suddenly, reaching for the soap and getting to his feet so he could finish up with the last full body lather, taking his time to wet down every crevice and make sure he scrubbed at any stubborn spot left on his skin until he was certain there was nothing left.

Thinking of that void, how close she’d come to shutting out her humanity, was enough to get him to put the urgency back in his movements.  He finished the rest of his bath in record time, climbed out to start drying, got his necklace back on–the cool metal was sharp against his skin after the warm bath–pulled his pants and a button up shirt on, socks, and he left his boots behind since they needed cleaned.  Instead, he slipped on the sole pair of dress shoes he owned for whenever Erwin dragged him along to show him off at those damnable high society events trying to drum up funding and support.

Something he was probably going to have to tolerate again, soon.

He needed to get back.  He didn’t know how long he’d be there, if it would be until she fell asleep or even for the whole night, so he needed to be decent enough he could slip out in the morning without drawing too much attention when he made his way back through the halls.

He’d worry about that in the morning.  First, he needed to get back to Y/N and make sure she was still holding on, make sure she stayed grounded to herself, made sure she was still her.

He just wanted her to still be her.

*Alternating POV*

She was waiting for him when he returned, pacing slowly back and forth in front of her bed, barefoot but otherwise similarly dressed as him, though there were a few more buttons undone on her shirt, and it was a different color than the white he was wearing–which was probably a good thing, given the way it stuck to her at certain curves and crevices that gave away her skin hadn’t been entirely dry when she’d put it on.

The fact she was moving around without a blatant necessity to move was progress in his eyes, and put another piece of his mind at ease to see she was getting better, even if it was slowly, even if he was still worried about what may be going on in her head and heart.

Once he entered the room, her attention shifted fully to him, a sliver of light entering her tired eyes once they landed on him–or maybe that was just the lamplight reflecting off them as she turned his way.  In a few steps, she had crossed the room, his name falling from her lips in a soft exhale that made his heart pound harder in his chest and his skin down his neck and shoulders tingle as she drew closer, her hands raising to gently cusp his cheeks in that tender gesture he was still working on adjusting to. 

It threw him every time she did it, only because the way it made him feel, the way the warmth seemed to seep into him from her hands and straight to his heart, the way his heart seemed to raise up into his throat and he instinctively wanted to tilt his head closer to her while sinking into the gesture itself…it was unfair how much power that tender gesture had, and he needed to figure out what he could do that would have a similar effect for her.

Once her hands found their place cradling his face, Levi stepped closer and leaned into her, letting her rest her forehead against his as his hands settled loosely on her wrists, thumbs idly stroking back and forth inside her palms or on the sensitive skin of her inner wrist.  Relief slowly eased the tension from his shoulders at her affection, relief that even if everything still wasn’t okay, she wasn’t falling apart at the seams anymore.  She was coming back to herself, she was still here with him.

You didn’t say anything–not yet.  You simply breathed him in, the fresh scent of his soaps wrapping around you like a balm while his warmth–slightly higher than normal given he just came from a bath–helped disperse the chill that had been hanging over you since getting out of your bath.  His presence chased away some of the shadows still trying to echo the dying screams of those people towards you, and him being here now gave you something so much warmer and comforting and bright to focus on.

You’d done enough thinking of all this hell today–for a lifetime.  You’d suffered through it on the wall, spiraled on the way here, internally thrashed through the rapids of emotions that had tried to drown you and gone from the numbness of being completely overwhelmed by your emotions, to almost empty, to drowning in the rapids again, until all the emotions had been bled out of you for the night.  Then you’d gotten to be haunted by those feelings all over again while you were alone in the tub trying to clean up, trying not to think of what was echoing over and over in your mind–

Enough of that.  It had been far too much tonight, you needed something else to ground you, to keep you sane–something else to focus on, something good, something calming and right, something that remained despite all this loss and hell–

You needed him.  No one else, nothing else, would do, because right now he was the only person in this nightmare of a world that knew and understood as much as he did about you.  You just wanted–needed–him now.  Needed to feel him solid and steady against you, to know he was here and with you, alive and close–you needed him.

And you wanted him to feel the same way in needing you.  Maybe he did, and he was just better at hiding it, maybe he was so focused on taking care of your needs he was hiding his own, maybe he’d want that comfort and closeness, too–maybe he needed to feel the good between the two of you to ease the pain of all this horror just for a little while, to create a respite for the both of you, just for the night, in this small room where no one would see…

She was shaking.  It was slight, but he caught it, could feel it in her arms beneath his hands, knew it wouldn’t be the only place, that he would feel it in more of her body if he pulled her closer, held her tighter. Despite the shake, the way she touched him was far more gentle, more tender and intimate than the desperation of earlier, though there were still some traces of that desperation lingering in the way she didn’t seem able to even lean away and could only weave further into him.

When she kissed him, every movement was drawn out, like she was savoring every second, memorizing the feel and how he moved, how he responded to her.  Her fingers curled and pressed slightly, dragging in a gentle pull along the shaved down edge of his undercut near the back of his neck and pulling him deeper into the kiss with her.

By the time she broke away, it felt abrupt; the fact he was mildly dizzy from the lack of oxygen was not even enough to stop him from thinking that she’d pulled back too soon.  She stayed right in that position, so close their noses still brushed against one another as she took a breath, a second, the little exhales as she tried to catch her breath puffing against his lips–

“Make me forget,” she whispered to him, one of her hands sliding up to tangle in the damp hair at the back of his head, giving her much better leverage to guide his head in whatever angle she wanted it while his heart skipped a beat in it’s quickened pace, wondering to himself what, exactly, she was proposing they do to ‘forget’.

“Just make me remember the good that’s still here,” she murmured, expanding upon her plea without him having to even ask for clarification.  “I just…I just need you.  Kiss me.  Hold me.  Drown out the rest for tonight.”

He’d wanted to know what he could do to help, to comfort her, to do more, to try and soothe the hurt.  Now here she was, giving him clear instructions, and what she was asking for was something he could do.  Holding her, kissing her, being close, being here for her and trying to focus on one another, giving her the pieces of himself he still had to spare–pieces that he’d been uncovering as they both fumbled through trying to understand their relationship and how it was supposed to work…

He could try to drown out the horrors of the world with her tonight.  If she was offering that…he wanted it.  He’d allow himself the escape just for a little while, to avoid thinking of everything that had happened just a few hours more, and find it here with her.

There were only a few moments of silence after your request where Levi seemed to consider your words, gaze locked on yours, body sturdy compared to you.  You felt like you would be knocked over by a passing breeze right now if you didn’t have anything to ground you, like your knees were weak and your strength was frayed, that you would collapse if someone pushed too hard.  You knew you were just exhausted and emotionally drained, completely depleted by the day, but the thought of sleep wasn’t enough–especially when you feared you’d be met with gruesome nightmares.  You wanted him and his steady presence here to comfort and stabilize you, to make you feel like it was okay you didn’t feel so strong in this moment, that you weren’t okay right now, and that he would make sure that you got through it.  He would, you knew he would, but you wanted to feel it, too–wanted to feel him.

He didn’t leave you to linger in uncertainty or overthink the moment.  He knew better by now, knew you sometimes needed to be pulled from your thoughts for your own good, that there was a difference between your deep thoughts and overthinking, and sometimes he needed to make you focus on the here and now.

And that was just what he did.

Levi leaned in for another kiss after your request, lips sealing over yours in a tenderness that still took your breath away every time.  His hands slipped up your arms, guiding them to wrap loosely around his shoulders while his arms pulled you tight against him, one of his hands curling around the top of the back of your neck to cradle your head, the other tucking under your arm with fingers curling over your shoulder. 

His embrace kept you pressed securely into him, and though you could feel that gentleness in his actions that came when he was trying something new and attempting to go at a slower pace with lighter motions just in case you didn’t agree, he was still firm enough to be a support, for you to melt into him in eager relief.  Your hand at the back of his head threaded deep into the damp tresses of his hair, feeling them slip a bit heavier than normal through your fingers as you started instinctually threading and unthreading to lazily play with his hair during your kiss, not missing that his grip tightened slightly and he pressed a bit closer in response.  Your other hand stayed against his jaw, your touch turning from a cradling gesture to now feel the warmth and the tremble of his throat, the flexion in his jaw while he kissed you, keeping him leaning into you–

He came in gently, his kiss soft and tender, but your kiss was more desperate now that you were getting what you craved, desiring more than the sweet gesture gave.  Levi didn’t need you to break away and ask him for more–your need seemed to seep into him in return with every kiss, the press of his body against yours becoming more of a solid embrace that wasn’t allowing retreat from either of you, soft gasps for air slipping between the more bruising lock of his lips around yours.  You could hear his heart pounding in your ears, the heady scent that made your head swim reminding you his blood was rushing just below the plush skin of his lips, the warm trembling skin of his throat–

Levi’s breath hitched in a sharp intake of breath when he felt one of her fangs nick his lower lip and draw blood.  It wasn’t the first time it had happened–their first kiss immediately jumped to mind–but her tongue swiped away the beads of blood before Levi could even instinctually lick at the cut.  Her lips locked around that tiny part of his kiss-swollen lips, pulling up in a slow break away of the more sensual kiss before she came back a third time with a small suck, trying to pull more blood from the small wound in the process of the kiss.

It seemed her need for him and her need for blood had momentarily bled together in her mind.  And she did need blood–he remembered the way she’d been healing slower near the end of the retreat, how exhausted she’s looked since they had started their way back, but he’d been far more focused on her emotional state than her hunger.

Letting the hand that had curled over her shoulder drop down to the small of her back, Levi turned them around a half step until his back was to the bed, keeping her held against him as she pressed hungrily into their kiss, clinging to him.  It wasn’t even a full step backwards before the back of his knee bumped into the edge of her bed, prompting him to let himself fall back into a sitting position on the end of her bed.  The motion pulled her free of the kiss briefly as they moved, but his hands didn’t fully let go of her, dropping to the side of her neck and her waist and pulling her down and in towards him with his movement.

Her knees planted on either side of his hips as she straddled him–a choice that made his throat clench from anxiety at the thought of what she might feel in a few moments if she stayed in this position–hands sliding up his chest and shoulders and lips having already found their way back to his, tongue running briefly over that cut that was no longer giving her beads of blood before she went back to a deep kiss, fangs occasionally grazing his lips without actually breaking skin.

Once she was situated and they were comfortable, Levi’s hand moved from the side of her neck up into her hair, fingers threading deep at the roots to gently tug her head back, breaking their kiss again.  He leaned his head back and tilted it slightly to the side, exposing his throat to her before the hand tangled deep in her hair pulled her back in until her lips were against his throat. 

He could feel her fingers slip under the collar of his shirt, pushing it back and to the side, try again to press it back further as she kissed the sensitive spot he was used to her drinking from and causing goosebumps to break out in the wake of her lips, her fangs grazing and pressing into his skin without biting yet as she restrained herself a few seconds more.  Apparently unsatisfied with her own efforts to simply push his collar aside, Levi felt her hands drop a bit lower and center, before her fingers slipped the first button free, then the next–

She was working on the third button when her fangs sank into his throat, the slight shift of his head and her own motion leaning into him causing her to bite higher than normal, turning what was about to be a question into a moan as he felt the familiar rush of his blood from him to her, felt more than heard the rumble of her own muffled groan in her chest.  The tension uncoiled instinctively from his body as he fell into the familiar relaxed acceptance of her feeding off him, felt his skin tingle and the flush of heat through his body starting the familiar build in his chest and gut, the hand that had been tangled in her hair sliding down to instead rest against a shoulder blade.  He wasn’t sure if it was just in his head because of the heat of the moment before she’d bitten him, but he swore her bite had felt smoother and gentler than before–

He didn’t have much time to think about it as her fingers slipped another two buttons free, her hand sliding under the fabric of the shirt and across his skin in a motion so light he shuddered beneath it and he held his breath for a few seconds.  The why she was opening his shirt was answered by the sudden feeling of blood trailing down his neck, her hand maneuvering his white shirt off his shoulder and out of its path a split second before the trail reached the hollow where his neck met shoulder.

Her fangs released from his throat far too soon–there was no way in hell she was already satisfied–head dipping to press her lips into the hollow of his throat with just enough pressure to make his back arch up into her and his head lean further back as her lips dragged up along that trail of blood that had escaped before it could deviate further down over his collarbone, eliciting a ragged gasp from him.

“What are you…ah…Y/N–”

His question about the shirt and the early release from his neck disappeared in the sounds she elicited from him–she was hardly above his collar when her fangs sank slowly into his throat a second time in another bite, the pace intentional, a hum vibrating from her to match his second, deeper moan at the unexpected feel of another bite.  

His hand that had been resting loosely in the small of her back fisted the fabric of her shirt to pull her tight against him–against his mostly bare chest.  While he’d been distracted by her lips and teeth and what she was doing with his throat, she’d almost finished opening all the buttons of his shirt, pushing the fabric off both shoulders and letting it hang off his elbows and at his sides.

What she was doing wasn’t just feeding.  It was far more sensual, the way her lips dragged along his skin and her teeth sank tenderly into his throat, the way her tongue now ran languidly along the inner edges of the wound where the blood was pooling, lingering and tasting more than just blood.  Hot, buzzing need and desire rushed through his whole body, breaths coming ragged and in pants and gasps, sweat easily beading across his hairline considering he was still a little flushed from the hot bath, head starting to feel slightly fuzzy with how distracting he was finding the tightness in his chest, his gut, his pants–

The rapid pounding of his heart no doubt made her feed easier as the intimacy of the whole exchange reached a new high.

Levi’s hand clenched tighter at the small of her back, the fabric of her shirt bundled up between his fingers as his head turned into hers, lips brushing her ear, other hand attempting to reach back up into her hair.  The pull of his shirt at his elbows reminded him he wasn’t entirely free of the garment and that its current position restricted his movement, even as her hands came back to rest against his chest and the unbitten side of his throat.  Reluctantly, Levi released his hold on her, just long enough to try and tug his arms free of his shirt as quickly as he could so he could get back to holding and feeling her against him while she drank from him, as if that would cool him off instead of raise his temperature.

While his arms were otherwise preoccupied, she retracted her fangs from his neck a second time, lips running quickly up the length of his throat to catch any stray blood.  Her hand that had been resting on the unbitten side of his throat came up to rest just below his jaw, gently tilting his head the other direction before her fangs sank into the side she had never bitten him on before.

The unexpected action caused a noticeable shudder through Levi that sent him arching into her with an unmistakable gasp of surprise and pleasure.  Cheeks immediately flushing from the overtly sexual and loud sound that had just escaped him, Levi buried his face in her shoulder, fingers clutching tightly into the fabric of her shirt as she drank indulgently from him. 

She didn’t seem to react much to the sound, not that he could tell, but he was quickly distracted from any reactions she may have been having due to the fact his body was responding to the multiple bites to his neck, the feel of her pressed against him, her hands burying themselves deep in his hair, the way she was straddling him which now also threatened to expose his hard kept secret about just how arousing he found her drinking from him, especially when it was like this–

You could certainly tell just how excited Levi was getting in the heat of the moment, the evidence hard to miss with how tightly your legs were locked around his waist, the sudden, solid press against your body in the middle of that last gasp was unmistakable even with the fact you weren’t that experienced in relationships.  Kissing was about as far as you ever got in your human years, but that was unmistakable.

You were fully ready to pretend you didn’t feel it, though, to play innocent and give him an out, considering the way the blood seemed to rush up to his cheeks and he hid his face to muffle his pants and the moan his gasp had turned into, the way his shoulders suddenly tensed and the blood came not quite so easily as it all started trying to rush to different places as he flushed and hardened–that thought sent a zap of a mix of excitement and nerves right down to your core, though you tried to ignore it and push past it before it could settle–prompting you to ease off the force of your drink instinctually so it wouldn’t hurt him.

The multiple bites thing had been an impromptu, spur of the moment idea, and motivated entirely by the fact that you knew how pleasurable you drinking from him seemed to feel to him.  In your mind, if you focused more on biting soft and slow and focused more on the pleasure of the bite than the utilitarian purpose of feeding off him, if you bit more than once to elicit that euphoric rush he seemed to get when you initially bit down, he might worry and stress less on the task at hand and get lost in the moment with you a bit more easily.  

It seemed your little plan may have worked a bit too well, though, given his reaction, the way he clung to you, and the ragged breathing against your shoulder.  At least you had been mindful enough of your actions that if he called for a break, if he asked you to back down, you could do that, too.  You had still gotten the blood you needed, still enjoyed every heady drop and weren’t about to let any of it go to waste, even if the shallower and more sensual bites meant it was a bit more messy and you had to remove his shirt just to make sure no accidental spills stained his white uniform.  You were mostly satiated now, anything more you got more out of desire and indulgence and a pleasant bonus in the pursuit of trying to elicit that blissful reaction out of Levi.

Levi tried to shift, tried to keep it subtle and move his hips away from the locked position he was in, but there wasn’t really anywhere for him to go, and after a few moments of squirming, you finally heard him gasp your name, heard the notes of discomfort, the starting tone of a request–

Your hands slipped back down to his chest, teeth letting go of his throat once more and, without hesitation–momentarily mourning your sheets and the fact you were going to have to discreetly clean blood off them when no one was looking, now–you pushed him back, easing up from the straddling position to allow him to fall back onto the bed.  Of course, you followed after him, though you were careful of where your legs and waist were positioned this time, knees planted into the bed just above his waist and keeping on all fours over him without laying atop him, hands planted above his shoulders, giving him that space without fully sacrificing the closeness you wanted–and needed to clean up some of that blood on his throat.

It was hard to focus on the blood, though, when his hair was falling and spilling across the bed underneath you, your mother's silver chain draped across the base of his throat with the medallion having fallen and momentarily disappeared in the sheets next to his neck, the shirt was long forgotten somewhere around the end of the bed and you could see every plane of his chest, every dip and curve, the recently agitated chafing where he wore the ODM especially tightly that was more of an irritated red tonight than was likely the usual given he’d been fighting only several hours ago, scars decorating his skin that were mostly unknown to you and a couple that were–all caught in a glimpse on your way up before your gaze was pulled to his neck where your three bite marks were still beading blood on one side, welling with more blood around the fresher mark…

Your gaze flickered up to his face, catching the flush in his cheeks and ears still, noticing the little cut on his lip that had stopped bleeding as he sucked in a steadying breath, the starting sheen of sweat on his brow, the way his eyes–trained on you, of course–seemed dark as the night when the moonlight was stifled behind a cloud, especially with your shadow cast across his face as you leaned over him–

Trying to salvage your sheets before he bled on them, you dipped your head low to seal your lips around the fresher bite–just your lips, you didn’t bite again, you’d done enough of that for tonight.  You let your lips catch the drops slipping down his neck towards the bed, let your tongue run along the bleeding wound to soothe it and swipe away the blood.  You felt Levi's hands come to rest at your side and in your hair, his fingers twisting idly along the strands, movements relaxing once more, going back to slow and tender as you both slowed down from the more feverish high you'd started.

Once you were certain the bleeding had slowed to droplets that would cling to the wound, you pulled away just enough to tilt your head back to the other side, lips grazing his Adam's apple along the way and earning a soft hum from Levi before you ran your lips along the shallow wounds on the other side of his neck, swiping away the beads of blood in the process.

After it was clear that you had cleaned the last of the blood–or at least that the blood wasn’t going to be running down his neck anymore–Levi suddenly pushed up and over, flipping the two of you over so that you were lying on your back staring up at him while he hovered over you, eyes still dark as night in the shadows of the room, pupils wider than normal and swallowing some of his steely blue gaze.

Once Levi had her turned over and on her back, he held her there for a moment, breaths still feeling heavy in his chest that his heart was beating against, that coiled, uncomfortable tightness from a solid erection that had prompted their position change so she wasn’t straddling him anymore still plaguing him–

He needed a moment–a couple moments–to breathe and get ahold of himself again.  His eyes were locked on hers, tracking the ebb and flow of that red glow within them, both to know where she was emotionally and to give him anything else to focus on.  They had likely been almost if not entirely crimson while feeding from him, but it was fading now, dulling to a gleam of red mixed into the usual color of her eyes as the two of them gazed at one another, catching their breaths, calming down…

When he trusted himself to have enough control of his own actions to not prematurely cross his own lines before he was truly ready, Levi leaned in, keeping himself hovering over her and ignoring the bump of the now warm metal of his necklace knocking against their chins as he kissed her, cautious with himself and keeping the pace slow and gentle.  He couldn’t feel her fangs pressing into their lips anymore, which assured him that she was calming back down as well.

Her fingers brushed against his chin, the touch light and barely there, making the skin she touched tingle in her wake as they traced further, under his jaw and over one of the two bites on the one side of his throat.

Levi pulled back from the kiss, just enough to speak.  “Indulgent tonight?” he asked, voice low as if he was taking care not to disturb the quiet in the room.

She tilted her head up to kiss the corner of his lips.  “You didn’t seem like you were complaining.”

Levi could feel his face heat up, unsure if she was talking about his usual gasping and moaning at the sensation of being bit and her drinking from him, or if she was referring to the erection they both knew he’d had by the third bite.

There was no more holding to the foolish hope she didn’t know just how excited he got, he knew she knew now, and he didn’t think he was entirely ready for that conversation.  If that was what she was referring to, that was not the conversation he wanted to have, words failing him utterly as nerves clawed their way from his stomach all the way up to a tightening in his throat as he pulled away with a mumbled, “Fuck off,” that had no bite to it.

Settling at the edge of the bed, Levi reached up to feel the bites for himself, feeling the marks and where they were and getting a few beads of blood on his fingers in the process.  Normally the bites were easy to hide, but they might have gotten a little carried away this time–he may not be able to hide this, at least not all of it.  And the two bites grouped so close together would be much more eye-catching than the usual low set single bite.

He felt the warmth of her fingers tentatively glide over his bare upper back, resting atop his shoulders as he felt a gentle kiss just in front of the hairline of his undercut where the back of his neck started to turn into the more sensitive flesh of his throat.  Her movements, the pressure and weight she put into it, were light and cautious, ready to pull back if he tried to give himself space or told her he didn’t like the new gesture.

“Sorry,” she murmured softly into his ear before her chin rested against his shoulder, settling between her thumb and pointer fingers.  “I got a little carried away this time, didn’t I?”

Levi sighed, leaning back into her as a silent way to let her know he didn’t mind and she could hold and touch him like this.  “I’m just thinking of how I’m going to hide this the next few days,” he admitted, turning his head just slightly so that his temple pressed against her forehead.

He liked having her close like this, liked how warm he felt when she was resting against him, liked feeling the steady rise and fall of her breathing or her breath against his skin, liked the way his skin seemed to prickle with awareness wherever her hands decided to rest against his bare skin, liked the feel of her head resting against and supported by his shoulder, liked how still and quiet the world would seem as they settled together…

He didn’t think she could touch or be close to him in a way he wouldn’t like, not at the rate they were going.  He was still ready to make it known if there ever was something he didn’t like, or if it went too fast, and he deeply appreciated that she took the extra effort to make sure he had time and space to adjust to the newer gestures of affection.

She hummed at his comment, her hands starting a gentle rub at his shoulders but never wandering too far down, allowing him the time to adjust to her touching his bare skin–he did feel her fingers ‘catch’ on a scar of his that slashed across the curve of his shoulder, breaking ranks from the rest of her fingers to trace the line of the scar instead.

“I know you’ve said no the last couple times I’ve brought it up, but a little of my blood would fix that easily.”

Levi let out a short sigh, and couldn’t help the quick, half eye roll before he turned his head to look at her out of the corner of his eye.  “That shit again?”

“I know it’s different for you, and not ideal–”

“It’s disgusting,” he cut in, nose wrinkling at the memories of the very, very few times he’d had to drink her blood.

“--but it does fix the dilemma at hand.”

Levi drew in a breath to speak, then held it as the words evaded him.  ‘It’s disgusting’ was really the only reason he had, and she blew right past it.  He’d had it before–entirely out of necessity–but it was still revolting.  She was a vampire, she was made to drink blood, for it to taste good to her.  He wasn’t.

Though she did have a point that a little of her blood would solve the need to hide that she was feeding off him, she’d always had that point.  But to his surprise, the thought of her bite marks disappearing entirely from his skin was…dissatisfying.  A part of him didn’t like the thought of not being able to see those marks like he normally could, which might have been a cause for some of the resistance.

She took his hesitation while he pondered as an opportunity and pressed a little further into the matter.  “I mean, there was that one time you kissed me before I could even get your blood off my lips–”

Levi’s heart skipped a beat or two at the reminder of that moment, a ghost of the desire he’d had coursing through him in that moment that had driven him to ignore the blood flashing through his body.  He shoved it back down as fast as he could before his erection returned full force at the intimate memory and the directions his mind wanted to go with it.

“That was–That was different.”

“Not really.”

“Yes, it was.  We were–things, feelings, got intense, and I, I got carried away–” Levi attempted to defend, stumbling over his words as he tried to explain on the spot the things he felt then and still felt now when she fed from him, things he’d never said aloud or discussed with her and he certainly still choked on now, not wanting to get into that mess of emotions he’d acknowledged but didn’t know how to communicate, at least verbally–he felt more comfortable showing how he felt than making a fool of himself trying to explain it.

She arched a brow at him, sensing that she had an advantage.  “Are you saying I shouldn’t have stopped to ask and just started to share while we were both caught up in the moment?”

Damn her for not giving him a way out and pressing the opening.

He probably would have been more agreeable in the heat of the moment if she’d been kissing him and a few drops dribbled past their lips here and there, probably wouldn’t have thought much if anything about it until later…but he did appreciate, again, that she took the time to make sure he was okay with something instead of just doing it when it was something a bit bigger, like this.

However, he also didn’t like how on the nose the comment was with something he was still working out for himself and struggling through his emotions and words for, the discomfort with the thought that maybe, if the circumstances and emotions were right, he was okay with it even if when he was calm and rational he balked at the thought.

Even if it was still disgusting.

So, he went from defensive to trying to squirm out of the conversation entirely.

“Now you’re just being a pain,” he complained in a low mumble, looking away.  She had this little quirk of his figured out, and he had the sense she would get him to cave to some agreement if she kept up with it.  He probably should agree if he didn’t think he could cover up her bites from tonight, but the rational part of him was still balking.

“I’m not meaning to be, promise, just…”  Her fingers reached out to gently trace along his jaw, getting him to turn his head to look at her again.  She leaned in to quickly kiss his cheek, attempting to placate the disgruntled part of him that didn’t like the conversation at hand.  “I think you’re getting into your own head about it.”

Overthinking it, like she tended to.  She wanted him to stop thinking about it so much and try it, see what happened.  Or at least not think about it so much and go along with it and solve one of the smaller risks of her feeding off him, the chance someone could see the marks.

He–apparently–liked the marks, though.  The small and subtle ones, at least, that he knew were there that no one else saw.

Levi eyed her, reading the look in her eyes, the focus, how close she was, turning over her words in his mind…

“You’re not going to let this go until I agree, are you?”

The small smile she gave him looked almost apologetic.  Almost.

“I promise, I’m not trying to manipulate or force you or anything like that, I just…it’s a solution.  It doesn’t have to be a lot, like when we’ve had to save your life.  And you’ve tasted blood in small quantities before, albeit in the heat of the moment, so…why don’t we try and figure out a way it works for you?” she proposed, her voice turning timid near the end, as if she was shyly asking for some tea brewing techniques instead of asking him to find a way to be okay with drinking her blood–just a little, maybe so little it couldn’t even be considered drinking, more like a small taste, but still–

She wasn’t going to let it go.  And as much as he hated it, she had a point, especially right now when he needed the night’s bite marks to disappear so they wouldn’t be noticed tomorrow.  At least she was willing to be flexible and find a tolerable way, which meant she wasn’t going to use something like the methods that flashed in his mind whenever she proposed this–mostly the wildly unpleasant images of the last two times he’d drank her blood.

Still–he didn’t want to lose the little marks on his neck entirely, and he had a couple ground rules to lay down before he was willing to try and see if they could make something work.

“This isn’t going to be a regular thing,” he warned, and of course, he saw her eyes light up in victory to hear him start negotiating instead of blatantly refusing.

“Agreed.  Only when asked or necessary.  That seems fair enough to me,” she promised, her fingers gently running in a soothing stroke down his throat on the opposite side from where she had her head resting.

“Not a lot, only a little.”

“Only enough to heal or however much you want to take, no more.”

He didn’t miss that word choice allowed for him to change his mind and take more if he wanted.

Not fucking likely, though.

“Don’t…spike my food or drinks with it, or try to offer it to me like it’s some kind of fucking cracker or some shit like that, just…” He struggled with how he wanted to phrase it.  He didn’t want it slipped into his food or drink, he would notice the taste difference, and he wasn’t going to drink it straight up with nothing else happening, that felt too strange, and all he’d be able to think about would be the fact he was going to consume blood.

She pulled him out of his thoughts by kissing the corner of his mouth that had turned down into a frown, making it a quick peck once, twice–the third she placed more properly on his lips in full, drawing it out slowly until he was leaning in and kissing her back in a way that had him sinking back into her…

“I’ll find a time it seems appropriate,” she promised, lips brushing against his as she whispered her assurance.

Well…he supposed that was that.  She wouldn’t do it right now, but it was going to get slipped in there sometime tonight while they were doing…whatever came next.

Apparently, what came next was more kissing, considering her lips were on his again once it was clear he didn’t have another verbal answer for her.  However, the kissing was less desperate and heated than earlier–earlier she’d been driven by multiple kinds of need, but now she’d fed and calmed, and he had a chance to calm down from how worked up she’d made him.  As a result, the kisses were slow, sensual–more of what he’d expected when she’d asked him to make her forget, to kiss and hold her.  It was the kind of kissing he enjoyed the most, where everything slowed and every touch seemed to have more to it.

One of his arms reached to hook around her back with his hand cupped at the base of her neck, while his other arm rested against her side, his hand planted in the bed behind her for stability and support as he leaned into the depth of the kiss.  She had one hand still lingering on his shoulder for the time being, though the other was slowly making its way up the back of his neck to twine into his hair once more, the gesture bringing even more of a sense of rightness and calm to the kiss.

After a few long moments of the two of them taking their time kissing one another, her hand that had been resting on his shoulder brushed lower, across the top of his pectoral.

Suddenly, the fact that he was still shirtless became one of the details at the forefront of his mind instead of being shoved aside as less important than everything else they were doing or saying.  If her hands were going to start to wander further down…

Levi’s breath hitched between your kissing, and you could hear his heartbeat pick up in speed as well from the calmer pace it had settled into while the two of you talked.  Beneath your fingers, you could feel the goosebumps rising, the quiver of his skin when you brushed against it, slight flinches from the gentle touch–though he didn’t pull away entirely.

He was jumpy like some of your earlier gestures of affection had made him, and you were quite aware of the fact tonight was the first time you’d seen him shirtless while you two were intimate and the situation wasn’t some kind of medical emergency.  Perhaps he was worried that you might try to press this a bit farther, like earlier–pursue the state of arousal you’d worked him into earlier.

No, that wasn’t what was on your mind–far from it, actually.  It might end up an unexpected side effect, but your goal was not arousal.  Your fingers had brushed along the scar on his shoulder while you’d talked, and you were…curious.  It felt strange, perhaps you were being silly and he’d tell you to knock it off and you’d go back to just regular kissing, but…you wanted to take the time to discover his scars–at least the ones you could find in his current state of undress.

Sex was not the kind of intimacy you had on the mind tonight.  It wasn't what you needed to soothe the pain in your soul and chase the shadows from your thoughts long enough to find stable footing again.  What you wanted was…deeper, an understanding and a closeness that you hadn’t had the chance to work up to, yet.  You wanted to be seen, and you wanted to see more of Levi, too–to dig past the officer and the support he'd had to be most of today and get him to take off the mantle of responsibility and meet you eye to eye as two people that just needed to be seen and understood tonight.

This was a good start.

Not breaking from your kiss, the hand that had come to rest atop his pectoral pushed him back until he was falling back onto the bed, with you following close after him.  Levi didn’t lay all the way back like he had the first time, still a little jumpy about where you were going with this, so he stayed propped up on his elbows, eyelids halfway open to watch your movements between kisses.

You didn’t try to climb over him like you’d been when you were feeding off him, not fully, anyway.  His positioning made crawling over him difficult, but it also left space for your hands to explore his back when you got to that point, so you didn’t complain.  Instead, you situated yourself side-lying beside him, propped up on one elbow so you could easily reach over and kiss him but your other hand was free to roam and explore.

Now that you were in a position that would work for what you wanted to do, your lips wandered from Levi’s at a steady and undaunted pace, working their way lower, past his jaw, down his throat, to his collarbone…

Your kisses slowed once you passed his collar–not stopping entirely, but you weren’t blazing a trail anymore.  Now you were observing, your head tilted to rest slightly on his shoulder, letting your hand trace that scar you had found earlier, feeling the curve, the slight raise that suggested the wound hadn't been too terribly deep when it had been fresh, noting how the paler skin of the scar stood out even in the lamplight.

This had to have been a gash from a blade of some kind–not like the ultrasteel, this had to have been smaller, a knife that someone had reached and brought back in, cutting into his shoulder.  It was older, too, the mark faded and long since healed over–likely from his time Underground.

“What’s so interesting?”

Levi’s voice broke the silence, quiet but curious.  He seemed to have calmed down from the jumpiness of a few moments ago, the skittishness giving way to curiosity to figure out what you were actually doing, since clearly this had not gone in the direction he had been nervous about.

“Did you get this Underground?”

There were a few moments of silence after your question, as if to give you a chance to answer his own question before he responded to yours.  When you didn’t clarify what you were doing, he spoke again, words slow and careful, his gaze still focused on you.

“...Yeah.  Lucky hit during a knife fight.”

He didn’t expound any further on the history of the scar, but you didn’t need him to.  The direction of the scar, the way it lay across his skin, the depth–you knew whoever it was had come at him from behind, and they hadn’t had contact long enough to dig in deeper or for it to be particularly long.  Levi had handled it almost as quickly as the knife had connected with his skin.

After the confirmation for the scar on his shoulder, you moved to press your lips lightly against the old knife scar, hearing his breath catch and hold at the action.  The tender gesture didn’t linger long before you pulled back and allowed your fingers to trace lower, trailing lightly across the freshly raw chafing marks from his gear straps.  You didn’t need any explanation about those, you knew exactly how he’d gotten them, they were self-explanatory.  You only placed a gentle kiss against some of the more presently agitated spots, and your fingers didn’t trace all of them, trying to keep your progress fairly linear as your focus dropped to a collection of various sized puncture scars.  

One was larger than the rest, a slight divot in his skin with jagged edges that were more noticeable than the others.  Marking it as an entry wound was easy when there was a smaller exit wound to be felt in his side, not quite as rough as its matching entry scar, but still testifying to what must have been a more serious wound.  It wasn’t another blade wound, the edges were too unevenly jagged and strangely shaped…he’d been impaled–shallowly, thankfully–by something rough and slender, something that went in at an angle and came out the side.  If you were to take a guess, you would say it was–

“Wood,” Levi murmured, having sat perfectly still while your fingers traced the edges of the old scar over and over, trying to discern its origin.  You’d almost gotten there–the how was a mystery, though.  “Titan launched itself at us near some trees, made splinters and shit fly everywhere–took a larger piece to the side, and some smaller ones that had to be dug out.”

That explained the loose cluster, the jagged edges…you knew what it was like to have splintered wood sticking out of your body, and it was a painful experience even with a healing factor…

…and it was not the only time he’d had a chunk of wooden debris pierced through him.  Your eyes shifted to the larger jagged scar near the center of his abdomen, one that had faded and healed unnaturally well to the point that it was hard to see, the slightest raise of a shade paler skin, hard to differentiate from the rest of the planes and dips of his muscles.  If he had been a vampire, or perhaps if you had given him blood during the scarring stage of his healing, there wouldn’t be any scars to testify of what he’d survived thanks to your blood.

Your fingers only brushed briefly across that barely visible scar, able to see the injury clear as day in your mind’s eye, the way he’d been impaled on that broken framework, the blood rapidly blossoming across his shirt, could feel the open wound beneath your hands that were trying to shove what didn’t feel like enough fabric into the gaping hole in his middle to stop the bleeding–

A wound you had caused because you hadn’t been careful, a wound that very nearly killed him, or could have turned him.

Gently, apologetically, your lips lowered to kiss the barely visible scar, lingering there a few moments longer than you had with the others.  “I’m sorry,” you whispered.

You never wanted to be a source for his pain or injury ever again.

You could feel a shiver go through Levi at the brief kiss, could see goosebumps breaking out across his skin at the touch and the brush of your breath against his skin as you started to pull back, and before you could sit all the way up, his fingers were curling around your chin to lift your eyes to look at him as he shifted into a side-lying position that mirrored your own and also kept you from moving on to the side of his torso you hadn’t explored for scars, yet. 

“No point in bringing up shit we’re long past,” he chastised, a gruff edge to his voice.  Still, his eyes were gentle as they searched yours, probing and curious.  “Why are you even asking about some stupid scars?”

You were quiet for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to put it to him.

“Scars are stories, witnesses to what we’ve seen and experienced, what we’ve survived.  I want to know yours.”

The grip on your chin tightened, just a hair, a knee jerk reaction from Levi as something vulnerable flashed in his eyes too quickly for you to fully process what the emotion was other than some pain and surprise before his guard was back up.

“Nobody wants to hear that.”

Carefully, you reached a hand up to brush just above his eye, where that cut had been when he’d been attacked by the vampire Underground–there was no scar, but you knew it had been there.  

“I do.  Whatever stories you have to tell, I want to hear them.”

“Why?”

The question hung in the air, and you gave it a moment to sink in so that you could make sure you answered what he really wanted to know.  The easy answer would be that you wanted to know more about him, wanted to understand him better–but he could probably easily deduce that part on his own.  He wanted to know why, of all the ways to come to understand him better, you were tracing and asking about his scars, why that was one of the paths you wanted to take to get to know him better.

Your eyes dropped to the bite marks on his neck, and the faint and faded ones from your repeated feeding off of him for some time now, marks that were part of his history now, a physical manifestation to the relationship between the two of you, that he trusted you enough to feed off him regularly, that he knew what you were and accepted it and believed in you enough to risk his life and put himself in such a vulnerable position.  You knew there was a scar on his back, the proof that he would put his life on the line for you, a reminder of how deeply he cared, as harrowing as the experience had been; and the scar on his abdomen, a reminder of just how far the two of you had come.

“The marks from all the hard work, the experience–experiences…I can’t have that,” you finally said, voice low and barely heard, as if it was some secret.

It felt like you were confessing something that was already well known, and doing so with a disproportionate amount of sorrow.  This wasn’t something you should feel sad about, it was a good thing not to scar, that you healed perfectly, that there would be no chronic pains or old aches in your long life–this was such a strange thing to complain about, wasn’t it?

Your eyes shifted again, towards the hand that had curled its fingers around your chin, down to the wrist you could see fresh bruising in the shape of the grip you’d subconsciously held him in earlier.  A reminder that the impaling back in the warehouse wasn’t the only time, and that you needed to be careful with him, even if he could keep up with you better than most.  The guilt rose back up in your chest again to see it, but you didn’t voice it this time considering how he hadn’t mentioned it so far and had shrugged off the apology for an accidental injury just a few moments ago.

Instead, you let your hand curl around his fingers, loath to remove his fingers from that tender gesture around your chin but wanting more to raise his hand towards your face.  You turned and dipped your head just enough to let your lips brush against the mottled bruises on the tender inside of his wrist, ignoring the steady thrum of his pulse below your lips with ease being freshly fed, careful and light in your gesture to avoid making the bruises ache from the pressure.

After the careful and apologetic kiss, you turned your face into his hand, leaning into it and feeling his fingers carefully uncurl to instead rest his hand lightly against your cheek with your hand cupped gingerly over his.

“It all gets wiped away on me like it never happened.  I don’t have that visual history, and…and I want to know yours.”

Levi’s gaze searched hers after the confession, even as her gaze flickered up to him and then looked away just as quickly, as if embarrassed by the admission she’d just made.

He never thought of his scars as anything special–they were just scars, some of them just normal wear and tear from being in the Scouts, a lot of them injuries from things he hadn’t been quick enough to stop, hard lessons learned, moments of foolishness that he didn’t repeat…some had more meaning, like the little scars on his neck from her feeding on him, or the one on his back from when he saved her life.

Now that she was bringing it up, she had a point.  There were some scars he’d rather not think about, some memories that he’d rather leave buried in the past, but…she was right, there was a story to almost every scar.

Maybe not all were stories that they wanted to be sharing tonight, though.  There had been enough loss and grief tonight.  They didn’t need to be revisiting older pains.

But the way she’d traced his scars, the way she eyed some of them even now while she avoided meeting his gaze, some of the scars he got from the Underground, scars he got in rougher fights–the look in her eyes, the understanding was more than just a recognition of what kind of weapon or injury had caused it.

How many scars, how many injuries, had her vampire healing covered up?  How many pains had she suffered that her body naturally hid from the world?  How many scars should she have for him to map and recognize that he could only wonder at?

More than he could likely imagine.  He knew that sometimes, especially with how faded the scars from his two near death experiences with her had become, it felt surreal that it had even happened, like perhaps he’d dreamed it all, yet there were scars to prove it, as unnaturally faint as they were for how recent they still were in comparison to the rest of his scars.  He doubted they would even still be there in another year or so, erased as if they had never been when he should have had them for life.

How strange must it be for her to have none, to have no proof of the things she’d been through, what she’d survived.

He knew some of the scars she should have, though–he knew where she’d been hurt while he’d been around her, some of the places there would be proof of her history, as she put it, if she hadn’t been a vampire.

Levi sat up and resituated so that he was kneeling on the bed, pulling her towards him and getting her to similarly position herself kneeling directly in front of him.  He had a thought, something to help soothe this feeling of hers, but part of it…part of it made his stomach clench and his throat tighten.

“They happened.  I remember them,” Levi told her, voice firm in purpose despite the nerves over what he wanted to ask.

Hesitantly, one of his hands dropped to the topmost button she’d done on her shirt, reminded in that moment she’d left a few buttons undone at the top and bottom of her shirt, whether for comfort or just because she hadn’t had the energy to button up all the way he wasn’t sure.  He didn’t immediately start unbuttoning, however, and let his fingers linger on the fabric and the small little metal button under his thumb–

“May I?”

She was taken aback, and he felt her tremble beneath his fingers before she gave the tiniest nod, holding her breath and looking down with him as he undid the buttons one after another.  

He was confident for the first two, but once he saw her bra underneath, his fingers slipped on the next button from the slight shake in his hands, causing him to inwardly curse the clumsy action before he pushed relentlessly on, now trying to undo the buttons as fast as possible and toss the shirt towards where his was still neglected on the floor.

Yes, he’d seen this before–yes they’d both seen each other shirtless before, but it had been a medical life saving necessity in the past.  This was…different.  His mouth felt dry, his heart was pounding so hard he couldn’t ignore it, and he was hyper aware of how warm and soft she felt under his hands as he removed her shirt, especially after their discussion about her inability to scar.  He was aware of the uneven skin on his own body, the dips and raises from old wounds, the layers of calluses his skin had developed from his lifetime fighting and work with the ODM gear…

She was right.  Her skin was smooth, unblemished, not so much as a faint discoloration from an old burn or a small cut–nothing to see visually to testify of the long life she’d already experienced.  But he knew…

He didn’t start at the top, like she did.  Self conscious about their similar states of half undress with neither of them planning on and both of them actively avoiding sex, he was finding it a touch difficult to look her in the eyes.  He found it easier to simply focus on the task at hand, on remembering and…

Trying his best to emulate the gentle way she’d touched his scars, Levi let his fingers ghost against the spot in her abdomen where the vampire had driven that piece of wood into her when she’d protected him in the Underground. 

He tried to imagine, based on his own scar from the wood shrapnel and being impaled, where the edges of the scar would be, where it would dip like a small gouge in her skin and where there would be jagged thin edges that jutted across her skin like the edges of broken glass.  His fingers did their best to map it out across her skin, the imagined edges of what should have been there, the missing scar.

His hand moved to the other side and a touch lower, recalling where his blade had cut her in their fight in the warehouse, finding the approximate spot he had made contact and tracing the slash across her body up to her other shoulder, fingers hovering over but not actually touching when he passed where her bra was still keeping her semi covered.  He kept the pangs of guilt for causing her that harm to himself, considering he’d been the one to brush off his own scar from the warehouse fight as ‘shit they didn’t need to dig back up’, so he didn’t need to bring it up himself a few minutes later.

Near where the scar from his blade would have ended, he knew there would have been a small arrow puncture scar from the hunter that had pierced her shoulder–perhaps it would have been worse with the burning poison of the sage, perhaps it would have had the small puncture scar with splotchy or spiderweb patterned burn scars, but however it would have turned out, he knew it would have been right here, in this sensitive hollow of her shoulder–

Considering these two scars were positioned just above her breast, while his fingers traced the imagined lines of her unseen scars against her skin, he could feel her chest rising and falling with faster, heavier breaths under his touch.  She was shaking beneath him, but she hadn’t yet moved–like he had, she was trying to stay still, to let him explore and find all the places her scars should be.

More than just a little self conscious about it, Levi let his hand move lower, just beneath the support of her bra and finding a very specific rib with the press of his thumb, a place his knife had unwillingly slipped over and over in their practice spars when they pretended it was a stake, a place he had once seen a stake protruding out of at thankfully the wrong angle to drive home where it needed to be to prove fatal.

The ribs that could lead a properly angled stake to drive deep into her heart.  A place that had been targeted and attacked and should have had a layering of scars from repeated wounds over it.

As his thumb brushed that sensitive spot with the utmost care and admittedly a bit of reverence, she made a sound that caused him to look up at her at last, despite his attempts to avoid looking at her eyes as he adjusted to seeing her shirtless in this entirely different context from before.  His eyes hadn’t even found hers before both of her hands found their way to cradling his face, pulling him in for a kiss that was purely raw emotion, feeling warm splashes and smears of water–tears, from her–across his cheeks.

The kiss was deep, slow, fervent, and the way she pulled him into her was filled with an unspoken need to have him as close to her as possible.  The tears continued–she wasn’t sobbing like earlier, but there were tears that occasionally dripped onto his skin–but it didn’t stop her from kissing him.  Her hands moved back, deep into his hair, angling his head so he was kissing more up into her, her legs shifting so that she straddled one of his thighs, mindful not to straddle his whole waist.

For those first few heartbeats, Levi’s hands stilled, his thumb still pressed lightly into the spot just under her bra, the other on her waist by where his blade scar would have started.  When the kiss broke long enough for her to take a staggered gasp, one of her hands slipped slowly down his neck, down his back, until her fingers found the more pronounced scar on his back, the one over his heart–the scar from when he’d taken the stake for her.

She was still feeling his scars, finding them with her fingers even if they were too caught up in the kiss to seek them out visually.  He could feel her fingers follow the curves, dips, and raises of old injuries from his environment Underground, old fights, beyond the wall–she wasn’t leaving any stone unturned.  If she could feel the scar, her fingers found it, and she was taking the time to familiarize herself with each one. 

Since she was still seeking his scars, he let his hands resume their wandering across her smooth skin, doing his best to map out the injuries he knew there should be a physical manifestation of, to recall her history to the best of his ability and substituting his hands for the proof she lacked.

And yet, even as he tried to recall the injuries he’d seen her sustain, the wounds he knew of from her stories of the past, he knew it wasn’t anywhere close to the real number of scars she should have had.  Her skin was smooth, soft, warm, unblemished thanks to her vampiric abilities.  And yet, he knew that the body so warm and gentle against his own was a body that had been broken down and battered more than his, that had suffered death more than once despite how flawless and invulnerable she seemed on the surface.

But he was learning the fissures, the weaknesses, the gaps in her armor that he wanted to cover and shield with his own body.  He was learning the way her emotions slipped like a knife between the cracks and cut right into her heart.  He knew the burns she’d sustained from the worst of all the Titan steam earlier had taken longer to heal by the stiff way she’d moved around, as if the skin was stinging, scalded, pulling painfully, slower to recover due to her weakness to burning and her more sluggish healing factor after all the energy she’d spent just in this one day. 

Never would he forget the black veins that spiderwebbed through her body when she was poisoned by the white sage, the way her skin charred, peeled, and bubbled, the sickly pallor.  Above all else, he was vigilant of that precious space where her heart was, how she was still oh so vulnerable if she was struck the right way or with the right material.

Following her example of what she’d been doing earlier with his scars, as Levi finished mapping the injuries he knew about for her torso–and unable to reach her arms for the many he knew about on them while they were wrapped around his body–he moved onto her neck not with his hands but his lips, his arms wrapping around her waist to hold her securely in place.

It required breaking the fervent kiss that they were locked in, but the small sound of bliss she made when he kissed the spot his blade had cut into her throat, when she leaned her head back with a soft exhale of his name as he placed slow, closely packed kisses around the spot that vampire Underground had ripped into her throat with his teeth–those sounds she made were more than enough to make breaking the kiss worth it.

While his lips made their way around her throat, her fingers brushed all the way down his spine, one of her hands trailing back up in a stroke that set his skin flush with sensation and made him struggle to resist shivering or arching into the touch.  It was distracting enough he didn’t even realize her other hand had dropped away, not until he felt something warm and wet smear across his collar and pulled back enough to see crimson flowing down her collarbone and smudged across his chest from their close embrace.

She’d cut herself while he’d been distracted so he could drink from her like he’d semi-agreed.

He didn’t give himself the time to second guess it–she’d heal up fast, and he’d rather she didn’t have to inflict the wound a second time because he hesitated.

Carefully, Levi switched his attention to the other side of her neck, leaning in and letting his lips circle the fresh wound.

As Levi gently kissed the spot you’d just cut deep enough to draw a decent amount of blood, you were reminded fleetingly of what felt like ages ago when he’d nipped at your jaw and throat, the spike of excitement that had flashed through you when he’d broken the pattern and had been the one to bite you–albeit lightly and not hard enough to leave even a faint mark–instead of the other way around.

Now, having him drink from you, from your neck, was…you weren’t sure.  There was the excitement, the pleasure from the way his lips brushed against your skin, the way he was still holding you pressed flush against him, the shivers that raced through your body to feel his tongue brush against the wound.  There was a touch of relief that he wouldn’t have to worry about covering up your indulgent bites from earlier, and a small sense of victory for having officially won the debate of whether or not he should partake in at least a little of your blood, just enough to heal and recover after the more serious or…overzealous biting.

But there was something else that was blooming in your chest, spreading like a rush of warm water through your body, outwards from your heart to your hands as if your whole circulatory system was aware that you weren’t the only one it was sustaining.

The other two times you’d shared your blood, you’d been overcome with fear and it had been out of dire necessity, it had even been forced to a degree, whether from Levi’s mistrust that first time or his struggle to respond the second.  During his recovery from the stake, you’d spared a few drops mixed into his food and drink, but it hadn’t been like this, hadn’t been voluntary, active, personal.

You’d never shared your blood, not since becoming a vampire, not like this.  To feel him drink from you in such an intimate and voluntary setting sparked something inside you, made the whole moment feel strangely precious, like some instinct had been roused.

Whatever that instinct was that had woken inside you, that was causing something to happen, was…strange.  Not a bad kind of strange, it was a lightness, like you would be carried away in some current that was about to sweep you away in its rapids.  It pulled at you to respond, and the urge to bite him suddenly reared its head again, a temptation to feel blood flowing from Levi to you and from you to Levi, linked in some strange way.

But you resisted the urge, well aware that you had bit him enough tonight.  Any more would be too much, so you buried the temptation.  Instead, you tilted your head back to the ceiling aglow with the flickering lamplight, closed your eyes, let your fingers anchor deep into the freshly washed threads of his soft hair, and focused on the raw feeling of the moment.  You focused on the way your body was curved into his with the way you arched into him, the feel of his hands sliding up your bare back, the feel of his lips pressed lightly to the curve of your throat while his teeth latched on around the still welling and occasionally spurting blood, his tongue running over the spot in a careful, languid motion that you thought might be purposely emulating you when you fed from him–meant to make you feel good while also keeping any extra blood from spilling free.

It didn’t last long–it was fleeting compared to when you fed from him, given your healing and the fact that you had just fed more than you needed to from Levi.  You’d made the wound deeper and messier in an attempt to make it last long enough he would get the amount he needed.  When you felt the blood flow coming to an end, Levi’s kiss had released from your neck, lips moving to try and clean up the rest, kissing the spots the wound was still healing just to make sure.  Lowering your head back to look down at him, your fingers ran along his throat, feeling only smooth skin and only the small, barely seen marks from your feeding in the past left behind.

You were fed, he was healed, you’d shared a moment where you felt seen and known as he traced your unseen scars and you had taken the time to start learning his, you had calmed and settled back into yourself, your emotions were more manageable and controlled, and you could feel warmth and light in and around you again, the world wasn’t all cold, dark suffering.

There were good things in this world that were worth it, things to be cherished and protected, things to keep living and feeling for.

When Levi pulled back, you didn’t hesitate to bring him back to kissing you, back to the slow kissing he would relish, not giving him time to really think over the fact that he’d just drank some of your blood–and in a manner that did not suggest disgust, unless he was just better at swallowing that down when it was in the heat of the moment.  Still, the kiss was a distraction, but it was also a desire to feel him, to keep him close, to bask in this warmth and light that was him.

Even as the quiet, the lack of a goal, the tenderness with no plans to do anything more, allowed your mind to wander, let the sorrow creep back into your heart for what had happened.  Having him, having his comfort and his presence, the care and affection, the way he touched you like something precious to be cared for and protected, made the sorrow bearable, made the weight not so crushing.

You’d endure.  You’d both find a way.  He’d grounded you when you were drowning, and now that you were on steady footing again, you wanted to make sure you did the same thing for him.  You’d promised, even if it hadn’t been verbally, that you would support him.  You were going to keep that promise.

You’d felt the tears that had escaped him earlier while you’d been having your breakdown.  You knew he needed it, even if he was so focused on your wellbeing he wasn’t going to voice it.

The kiss she had pulled him into slowed, lingering on the press and drawing out the parting of their lips for every kiss until they stopped entirely, until her forehead was pressed gently against his, her hands cupped around the back of his neck, his hands splayed along the center of her back, holding to each other in that moment with eyes closed, relishing the quiet, the closeness, the contact.

He didn’t want her to pull away, and he was glad that even though their kissing had ground to a halt, she didn’t try to back off, she stayed in his arms.

When he finally opened his eyes, it was to find her already gazing down at him, waiting patiently for him to finish relishing in the moment.  Once he was gazing back at her, one of her hands reached up to gently brush the backs of her fingers along his cheek, starting a feather-light, repetitive stroke that made his heart lighten.

And her eyes…they had glimmers of red speckling them like light reflecting off a gemstone.

It wasn’t just the red in her eyes that caught his attention, though.  He could read the emotions swimming amongst those flecks of red, probably causing some of them.  There was the tenderness she looked at him with, a knowing edge; but there was also the sadness, the grief creeping back in with the way her brow furrowed closer together, the bittersweet feel of the small smile she gave him, the sudden thickening of the atmosphere in the room.

She was thinking of the day again, of what they’d seen and experienced.  She wasn’t cracking this time, though.  She seemed steady against him, grounded in his arms.  If anything, that knowing look in her eyes seemed expectant, searching his expression.

She wanted to know how he was handling it.  Now that she was steady, she was checking on him.

And he…he had been compartmentalizing it.  With her spiraling, he didn’t have much time to process it, though he was allowed some time to feel it while she’d been trudging through the emotions crying in his arms earlier, and while he was in the bath.  He’d processed bits and pieces of it, but how he felt now, how he was handling it…?

Levi leaned into the gentle touch against his cheek, feeling his heart clench at the reminder of all the death, of the responsibility that sat on their shoulders as Scouts now, briefly wondered how Erwin was handling the larger portion of the responsibility as the Commander that had overseen the planning and been given the responsibility, even if Pyxis and the Garrison had helped in the execution of it all.  He thought of how it had broken her for a few hours, how close he’d come to losing her in the process of her shutting out her humanity.

He thought of all the horrors she must have heard having to stand on that wall, all the people dying bloody and excruciatingly, thought of the powerlessness in his inability to do much to help her and in knowing all those people were dying and he was supposed to let it happen.  He thought of the people they still couldn’t save even after they’d finally been given the go ahead to save people and not just stand by doing nothing.

His soul was laden with the knowledge and the loss of life, of the impact it was playing on the people around him–especially her.  His heartbeats were painful in his chest, as if the chamber for it to beat had been compressed into a too small space.

It hurt, and he doubted he would sleep tonight.  It would plague him for the foreseeable future.  He was still steady on his feet, though, stable enough to be a support, to keep pushing forwards–and far more determined than ever to eradicate the plague of the Titans tormenting humanity.

Levi’s gaze didn’t leave hers as he processed all of the emotions and the weight, felt the pain but didn’t buckle under it, and leaned against her to seek out the comfort of her touch as he came to his conclusion, letting his gentle shift into her and the soft though somber expression speak for him.  She seemed satisfied by what she saw, at least enough not to press, and she kissed his cheek, shifted to kiss his temple, and gently pushed him back down onto the bed.

There wasn’t more making out, no more steaming kisses or tempting positions.  She tucked herself into his side, the position much more comfortable than when they’d tried to cram together side by side on the couch, her legs lying loosely beside his.  One of her hands twined slowly into his, as if drawing out the contact to make sure she felt every moment of connection from fingertips to the base of her palm before their fingers were laced together, and she brought their intertwined hands to rest just over his heart, causing a soothing warmth to spread through him when he felt her hand resting tenderly over his heart and covered with his own, eyes closing when he felt her rest her head against his chest right by their hands, close enough he was certain she could effortlessly listen to his heart beating.  Levi’s other free arm shifted around her to hold her against him, hand resting on her side with fingers idly tracing a loose line up and down her waist and ribs.

The way she was nestled close to him suggested she was seeking refuge, so Levi let his voice briefly break the silence, keeping his words quiet so he wouldn’t disturb the gentle stillness between them with his question.

“You okay?”

He just wanted to make sure, before he settled in and relaxed, that she really was going to be okay, that she wouldn’t shatter when he wasn’t looking.  She didn’t have to be fine–no one was going to be fine tonight.  He just wanted to know that she was going to be okay.  

She was quiet for a while, long enough that Levi worried she had fallen asleep and might not have heard him, though he doubted she would have fallen asleep that quickly.

“...No,” she finally admitted.  He was grateful for the honesty, but his heart still ached to hear the slight crack in the whispered admission.  As his embrace tightened around her, she continued.  “But I’m still me, and I have you.”

That was all he could ask for tonight.  They weren’t fine, neither of them were doing great, but having this, having each other…

It was something good, something pure to hold onto, to help them keep anchored, to keep themselves.  Both of them had been and in a way still were soaked in blood, but this good thing still remained, was still a small light that could burn away the filth and darkness long enough to find each other again.

They weren’t okay.

But they were still here, and they weren’t going through it alone.

Next Chapter---->

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*Levi’s POV*

The ride back to headquarters was faster than the ride out, and much quieter.  Even though the cut at the back of her head had healed as soon as she'd been hit and she had come out of the crowd unscathed and without any major injuries sustained, she was still shaken by the experience, more than she was going to let on.  Her gaze was fixed in the direction of their destination and her eyes were glazed over with a faraway look, her hands gripping the reins tight enough Levi wondered a few times if she was going to warp the leather, her shoulders tense as if stiffening to hold up whatever thoughts she had circling in her head that continued to weigh on her.

As much as he wanted to give her words of comfort to help get her out of her own head, he didn’t exactly have any for her, and he had the feeling he needed to let her stew on what happened and think about the current food shortage crisis that was happening in the walls, how bad it was getting, and the roads they could take and outcomes stretching before them.

The situation they’d left behind was not a good one, and he wouldn’t be surprised to hear about a few casualties if a report crossed his desk about the outcome of the mob that had been whipped into action back there.  Outrage and conflicts like that were just going to keep happening, too, as long as the food shortage situation continued to decline, and the Scouts were an unfortunately easy target for people to direct some of their frustrations onto.  They especially were while the nobility and merchants and everyone else they needed to have support from in order to go outside the walls continued to withhold that support and kept the Scouts stagnant inside Rose.

Erwin had been trying to get enough people to shift support back to the Scouts to allow them back beyond the walls, but people were still too scared, the situation in the walls too tenuous, the government trying to keep all the military on hand just in case there was a revolt or Titans appeared to break into the walls again. That last one they were finally starting to uneasily give way on, since it had been some time now since Wall Maria fell.  Levi hadn’t relinquished the mentality that Rose could be breached and fall any day–it kept him alert and kept him prepared to leap back into action if he was needed, but they needed the nobility and government to stop holding the Scouts back out of fear and let them do their job or they were going to become obsolete, especially in the current climate inside the walls.  If the Scouts went, then all that would be left for humanity would be to wait for its eventual and in this situation imminent extinction.  The Scouts needed to persist if humanity stood a chance.  And yet, despite that bit of progress in the mentality of the upper class they needed to fund them–that they were starting to wind down from their initial panic that had kept the Scouts stagnant for so long–now Erwin had his hands full with this damn culling that was headed their way, one that would happen any day now if that riot that had broken out was anything to go by.

He had no good news or comforting words for her.  It was only going to get worse–much, much worse, and she knew that.  She didn’t know the details like he did, but she knew now just how bad it was getting and was smart enough to know where it was headed.  He could see it on her face that what they’d seen on that bullshit excuse of a trip to cover their actual intentions had opened her eyes to what was going on.  She wasn’t stupid, and he knew she knew the situation had been getting continuously worse, but she didn’t need to eat, and she’d been preoccupied with all of her recent vampire drama, as well as separated from the worst of it since she’d stopped her refugee visits while handling everything else.  She also wasn’t getting the reports that Levi and Erwin did.  So this had been a wake up call for just how bad things were getting.

Perhaps the official trip hadn’t been all bullshit, but an intentional maneuver on Erwin’s part, meant to prepare her to take the news they were undoubtedly going to have to deliver soon a bit better than if they dropped it on her without her seeing firsthand just how ugly the situation was becoming.  It was already a horrible shitshow, but knowing why, being able to see what was happening and how bad it was…didn’t make how horrible it was any better, but still brought some understanding of why it now had to happen.

He really wished Erwin would just leave him out of it.  He wanted no part in sending so many people to die on purpose and putting on a façade claiming it was to reclaim Maria when really it was just killing them all on purpose in a horrific way, just so those remaining wouldn’t starve to death.  He didn’t want to have to stand on the wall and do nothing while people were being devoured by Titans, didn’t want to have to stand by and do nothing if people ran back for the wall and they still had to stand there and wait because not enough had died–a scenario that was already starting to creep into his nightmares the few hours he managed to sleep.

But it would break the façade if the key members of the Scouts were missing from the operation, if the best weren’t taking part.  Then it would be all the more obvious that there was meant to be as few survivors in this insanity as possible.  Erwin was already pushing it by keeping Levi’s squad on the wall under the guise of protecting the returning force from Titans instead of having them on the front lines to help the faux efforts to retake the wall.  Levi already knew that the more seasoned Scouts were being kept far back in the plans Erwin had right now, that there was a difficult vetting process going on in Erwin’s office determining what Scouts were going to be on the ground leading the masses to certain death, who could they send that would have a chance to survive the hell they were marching to that also wouldn’t be a crippling loss if they didn’t make it out…

The only reason Levi and his squad weren’t going to be out there was because Erwin wasn’t going to risk losing them if things really went to hell, and he knew Levi hated this whole thing, and putting Levi into the middle of it would not have good outcomes.  This whole situation was worse than when fellow Scouts were dying–at least they were fighting for something, wanted to be out there, were given a chance to survive and one of the goals was to get back with as many people still breathing as possible.  This...this was just…

“Levi?”

Levi pulled himself out of his downward spiral into what was coming and focused back on the present, on the road in front of them and the look that Y/N was fixing him with, having slowed Zephyr’s pace down so that she could come even with Levi to fix him with that concerned look that had turned probing to try and puzzle out what dark thoughts were swirling around his head.

Nothing that he could tell her yet.  Erwin had meant it when he said this whole mess wasn’t supposed to leave his office, and Levi was going to continue to keep his mouth shut about it even with Y/N until Erwin was ready to start sharing that information.

Levi shook his head as if he was shrugging off the probing look she was fixing him with, turning his eyes back to the road.  She couldn’t know yet what was going on in his head, so he quickly seized control of the conversation to turn it to what was most likely going on in her head before she could try and press about his thoughts.  “There’s nothing we can do about the situation, not right now.  It’s only going to get worse, and the solutions won’t be clean.  Right now, just focus on what you can do.  And on staying prepared for when we’re back in the field.”

Levi urged his horse to pick his speed back up again, the stallion tossing its head slightly at the movement away from and ahead of Zephyr.  He didn’t have to look to know that she sighed as he pulled away, preventing her from asking about what was going on in his head.  He’d felt her eyes on him, watching and trying to discern what was going on that she didn’t know about ever since she’d picked up on it during that conversation in his office.

She knew whatever it was that was bothering him was bad and getting worse, and had to do with the current crisis at hand.  Now, Levi just wondered if she would manage to guess what was coming before it came time for Erwin to tell her.

*Reader’s POV*

Levi had certainly been right when he’d said that things were only going to get much worse before any solutions started being put forth.

It was starting to be difficult for you to be around the others for a multitude of reasons that included some you were certain Levi, Erwin, or Hange could deduce, and some that crept into your mind and you kept to yourself after your trip to see the refugees.

Predictably, the rations situation was continuing to worsen, portions getting smaller and more bland, focused more on basic bare bones nutrition supplied in less and less food.  Still, some of the soldiers around you were starting to show some of the early signs of malnutrition, and whenever you sat at the table with your squadmates, you couldn’t help how your gaze lingered on the darker shadows under their eyes, nor could you stop yourself from pulling back in training to go easier on them despite Levi’s long-standing gripe about you holding back on your comrades.  They were tiring faster, having a harder time focusing, their strikes were getting weaker, movements not as sharp–

It wasn’t sustainable.  And if the soldiers were starting to look like this, you didn’t want to see the state of the civilians, of the refugees, didn’t want to know how bad it was when there was nothing you could do about it–

But your time underground provided the images in your mind of how horrific starvation could get, how bad the civilians were likely starting to look.  You didn’t see the reports about the shortage, but you could hear people whispering about riots and fighting over food, murmuring about murders over scraps–

You didn’t see it for yourself.  You had made a decision not long after almost getting caught in that riot that you should stay at headquarters and avoid venturing outside its grounds after your mere presence almost–no, definitely–incited that riot.  Especially since the food shortage and the anger towards the military–even more so the public view of the Scouts as a waste of resources since their stagnation persisted–had only worsened since then.  Considering you showed no signs of malnutrition or starvation, seeing a perfectly healthy and well fed Scout walking around the suffering masses would likely only inflame that negative opinion.

There was enough guilt weighing down your shoulders walking around headquarters and seeing the other soldiers wearing down from the creeping in of malnutrition, all while you walked around looking perfectly healthy and untouched by the shortage.  You felt the gazes on you, knew people were wondering, maybe had started whispering, and it made you retreat even further, trying to reduce your visibility to the world as much as possible and avoid the questions.

The only thing that you left headquarters for now was Emery, and that was always in the dead of night, and only when it was getting about time for him to feed again.  You had both agreed the first time you’d seen him after the talk with Levi that it would be best if the two of you kept as low of a profile as possible with the tensions in the wall as high as they were.  Both of you looked suspiciously healthy compared to most of the residents of the walls right now, and you stood out like sore thumbs–less visibility was better.  Plus, Erwin’s insistence that the Scouts stay on hand and ready had spread to more than just the request Levi mentioned when the two of you had left to have the confrontation with Emery–nothing had happened yet, but you could feel it in the air that something was coming, everyone could, and the fact that you were all being asked to stay on hand and alert was…alarming.

As for Emery himself and his progress, he had kept his promise to try and step up and take responsibility for his own survival, messy as it was going to be.  He’d had his first intentional kill, and it…had not been pretty.

People were desperate right now–especially Underground.  That made it harder to sort those just trying to survive from those preying on the chaos to cause more harm, especially since some people were getting violent and falling in with horrible people preying on the desperate just trying to get by.  Still, you’d put in the extra work and time to make sure you found someone that–you hoped–would cause Emery the least guilt and that could be seen as helping people by taking care of them.  You’d gone down below several times to do your research and find the perfect target–more times than Levi was comfortable with, enough so he had actually come with you on the last one, uncomfortable with your frequent patterned trips and wanting to make sure someone was around to watch your back and make sure you weren’t going to get staked while you were busy evaluating your target…

You could feel Levi’s gaze keep straying to you from the other side of the rooftop, knew that even though he didn’t have the superhuman hearing that you had, he still could read your micro expressions enough to tell when something you were hearing was bad news, when it angered you, when it made you restless and want to launch into action.

When he’d stated–not asked, stated–that he was coming with you below ground for what was hopefully going to be your last reconnaissance just to make sure that you had picked a good target for Emery and there had been no mistakes or wrong assumptions made, you’d known he wasn’t pleased about going back to the Underground yet again.  However, his concern for your safety and his insistence that you were going to have someone to watch your back after you’d developed something of a pattern in your visits down below while hunters were probably crawling all over the place looking for the ripper that had killed all those people had won out.

Predictably.

You didn’t tell him that his presence had compromised a bit of your attention–now half of you was determined to keep an eye on him, to make sure no vampire caught a whiff of him and came sniffing around looking for the source of the gourmet meal that had appeared in the Underground.  You knew whatever attention you spared to keep track of his safety and where he was at all times was covered by his watchful eye making sure no trouble came looking for you while you were busy with your target assessment.  You were both semi distracted by the other person, but you were also both keeping an eye out for one another and making up for it.

Not that you had to worry about  him wandering too far away from you–you were both keeping fairly close together, always on the same roof or the same stretch of ally, never too far around the bend of a corner, keeping an even and measured pace away from one another to keep anyone that caught sight of the two of you from thinking that you were operating as a team.

Still, there was something about having him here while you finished marking someone for death that felt…strange.  No…wrong.  You knew how much he valued human life, how much he had pressed you on this very thing in the early days.  Having him here while you went through the steps you’d both taken steps to make sure you wouldn’t have to do for your own sustenance again felt…wrong, even if there was nothing actually happening, not tonight–nothing other than watching.  It was even worse because he was sitting here watching you sit by and do nothing when normally, any other day, you would have done something long before now.

But instead you were simply bearing witness to things you would rather not have to overhear.

The man you’d been following since you’d caught wind of his recent activities here in the Underground was the kind of person that, had he been who you were plotting to take for your own meal, probably would have been dead by now.  Since you were doing the research on Emery’s behalf and trying to make absolutely sure there was as little of a chance for something to increase Emery’s guilt for killing him, you were taking your time, as much as doing so set your teeth on edge and made your stomach churn.

There was nothing worse than having to sit by and do nothing, especially when you had the power to do something if it wouldn’t have been counterintuitive to the whole point of you being here.  You were powerless to do something without screwing over Emery.  If you had that compulsion ability, you could intervene and come back without any consequence, but you didn’t, so you had to stay out of sight and out of mind.

There was a particularly loud scream from the house below, a crash, and you could smell blood cut sharply through the air–not enough to be fatal, but it was certainly enough to not be a small matter.  The sound was loud enough to draw Levi’s attention, his head turning slightly in your direction once more to glance over at your perfectly still frame perched on the ledge of the house, watching and listening and nothing more.

“Is it always like this?” Levi murmured, voice quiet enough no passerby or resident of the building you two were standing on was going to hear, only you with that sharp hearing of yours that was listening to more of the brutal scene playing out in the house across from you.

This was the first time you’d heard the man’s dealings go this violent, and it had been the confirmation you’d still been seeking before you could fully commit to pointing Emery in his direction.  Having to listen to it, though, was sickening, and your skin itched with the need to move, to leap down below, to say fuck it and intervene anyway, even if that would defeat the whole purpose of finding Emery a first target like this.

“Not always.  Rarely, actually.  It doesn’t usually take this long, but I’m trying to make absolutely sure he’s what I’m looking for,” you answered, not daring to let your voice get too loud but still needing to raise your voice enough that he could hear on the other side of the roof.  The next scream was more bloodcurdling, and you caught yourself leaning forwards, coiling to drop to the street below and try barging into the house.  You stopped yourself by reaching down to the ledge beneath you, hand gripping to the crumbling stone like it could do something to physically restrain you.

Levi’s footsteps sounded across the rooftop, coming to a stop standing just behind you, out of view from the still street below–no one around here seemed to find these sounds out of the ordinary or worthy of investigating–or at least not worth risking their neck to know what their neighbor was doing.  They probably already knew.

“Why not bring the kid on these trips?” Levi asked.  His words were stiffer than normal, and it didn’t take much imagination to guess that he was thinking the same thing that had crossed your mind since you’d started hearing what was happening below you, and he had similar inclinations and restraint happening within himself of wanting to intervene but knowing it would defeat the whole point of the tracking you’d done the past few days.

If you’d had Emery here with you tonight, you could have sicced him on the man already, and probably could have intervened in what was happening right now.  Hell, hearing this, Emery might have actually been willing to do something even if it ended in death at his own hands.

“Teaching him can come later.  I doubt he could focus on anything I tried to tell him while he’s trying to get himself ready to take a life…” you murmured, voice turning soft and barely audible near the admission of the reality of what you were asking of Emery–even now, even in the face of just how horrible of a person you were going to have the kid feed on.  “I’m just focused on getting him to hunt at all, and I wanted to make sure the person I aimed him at was someone he’d feel less guilty about killing.  I certainly have my answer…”

Levi couldn’t hear what was happening now like you could, but the silence–for human ears–was telling, and you wanted no part of having to listen to what came next.  Standing up, you turned to head for the other side of the building with a stiff walk that gave away how badly you wanted to turn and head the other direction and force your way inside that house.

“How many times have you walked away?”

You hadn’t quite expected the question from him.  At first, you were surprised he asked it.  He’d lived down here, he knew you couldn’t always do something when shit was going down, that it was an uphill battle in a shitstorm that you were always moving backwards in to be trying to clean up all the problems in the Underground.  Then again, Levi had that hidden kindness in him, that strong moral compass–he probably intervened even when he knew there probably wasn’t much to be done, even if he knew it would be thankless.

However, you had a feeling this wasn’t about some kind of judgement for not helping–he knew why you were walking away.  This was him poking at you again, checking, looking for something out of you–he hadn’t done that in a while, and it made you uneasy.  He knew you cared, you were certain of that–he knew you too well, and had been watching you fight to keep yourself from intervening.  You weren’t sure what kind of answer he was looking for, exactly; whether or not he would be pleased with the answer you were about to give him, or if it would be a detriment to what he was looking for.  Considering the state of inside the walls and how much of a mess everything was, maybe he wanted to know you could walk away when you had to–and maybe your answer wasn’t what he was looking for, or at least it wouldn’t give him as much as he was hoping for.

“Since finding out how strong I really was?  This is the first.”

If that man had been your target, you would have intervened long before now, preyed on his twisted goal of gathering any pretty or beautiful person normally too strong or too far from his influence to acquire, would have played the damsel looking for a trade and offering anything in return for food and shelter, until he unwittingly invited you in–then it would be over before he could realize his mistake, with his victims not even hearing a sound or seeing any of the violence before you made him and his body simply disappear, and the way would be clear for their escape.

You wanted that to be the way it played out.  But you had to wait, had to knowingly turn and walk away, let it go today so Emery could have him tomorrow, so the kid had far less to be guilty about when he first took a life–intentionally, anyway.

Emery had still broken down into near hysteria when it was all over, when all that was left were the mangled corpse with its throat ripped apart and blood splashed across the walls and floor.

When he’d finally managed to trick the man into letting him inside, it had seemed like more of a mistake of good fortune on Emery’s part than intentional.  The kid had no acting skills, but his clearly scared and vulnerable demeanor had been exactly the kind of thing the creep was looking for, and Emery was healthier looking than most within the walls, and fairly handsome even with the clear baby fat he didn’t get to shed before being turned.  Perhaps that had been in the back of your mind when you picked this man for Emery’s target, as if pre-emptively preparing for if Emery wasn’t that great lying his way inside to get him in based on the fact he seemed like the kind of person this guy would prey on.  Once he did get in, though, Emery’s instincts had taken over before the man could even try anything, and you had been able to clearly hear the struggle from the roof of the neighboring house.  It had been a vicious and messy kill, your first glimpse at the ripper that Emery could be if you had left him to his own devices.

A small part of you had, admittedly, been satisfied to hear how brutal of a death it was–just for a few moments, thinking of the things you’d had to overhear while tracking the man and confirming his crimes and making sure he was what you’d pegged him for.

However, the death had also been a loud one, drawing unwanted attention in the form of the man’s co-conspirators that were out and about at this time of the day.  You’d barely had time to get inside–the fact you could walk right in was a clear giveaway the man was certainly dead–and haul Emery off the floor where the kid had started the beginning stages of a panic attack seeing the aftermath of his kill as he came down from the blood frenzy.  The kid looked like hell, covered in blood, shirt torn likely from the man fighting for his life in the initial scuffle, blood all over his face and hands–

You hated how callous you had to be, but with people bearing down on the house, you’d had to push him out of the way and promptly set the whole place on fire, letting it go up like a tinderbox with the hopes there wouldn’t be much left for anyone to investigate close enough to realize a vampire had gotten him.  There were too many vampire hunters crawling around looking for Emery most likely for them to risk hunters picking up on another very ripper-esque death.

Once the fire had caught and you’d dragged him out of there, however, you only went as far as Emery could go before the kid had been unable to stand on his own two feet.  You’d stopped in the middle of nowhere somewhere in Sina, and once you were certain there was nothing sentient and living around to overhear the two of you, you’d sat with him and held him as long as he’d needed it.  When his grief quieted enough for him to ask questions, you’d done your best to give him the truth and what he needed to hear in equal measure.  When he’d asked to be told again what kind of man he’d just killed and how certain you were about it, you had told him the unfiltered truth of just how certain you were.  When he’d asked about what kind of a person killing someone like that made him…you’d taken a page out of Levi’s book and had given him more of a brutal reality of the situation–how you saw it, how you dealt with it, how while the actions of the man could be used to soothe your conscious, it was still killing, it was still dealing out death and judgement, and not something to be taken lightly.  Nor did you shy away from the fact that the way Emery tore his victims apart was not normal, and that it was something he needed to work on.

What Emery lacked most was control.  But now that he was willing to hunt…you could teach him control, teach him how to restrain that monster inside him so it didn’t consume him.

Teach him how not to lose himself to his vampirism.

Levi didn’t need to ask how the hunt had gone when you’d returned, entering his office early in the morning with a look in your eyes that had apparently given it away, and had told him you’d come straight to him upon returning.  He’d made you both some tea, had made sure his door was locked so no one could bother you for a little while, and had sat with you in silence with your head on his shoulder.  When you did speak, he’d listened, let you get it off your chest–your concerns for Emery, your hope now that he’d taken the first step but also your grim acceptance that it was going to be extremely rough on the kid and your hopes that vampirism didn’t completely ruin him, that you pushing him on this path didn't ruin him, that there was something sick and wrong with your thinking that might infect him.  You even came clean about that little part of you that had been glad the man had died bloody and violent.

He’d listened to it all.  Never once did he shy away from your fears and admissions, but he didn’t interrupt to offer unsolicited advice, either.  You usually did a pretty good job at logicing out your own feelings and rationality if he just let you talk, anyway.  At the end, though, he had kissed your forehead with a tenderness that made your heart ache and a few simple words that had earned him a rather tearful but deep kiss.

“You have more humanity than a lot of the shits in these walls.  Don’t forget that.”

Now, however, with Emery getting to a place of self-sufficiency and starting to stumble through hunts on his own under your supervision, the people around you starting to clearly suffer from the food shortage, and the situation within the walls worsening, Emery, vampires, and vampire hunters were the last things on your mind or Levi’s.

When it came to the people you saw within headquarters, Levi was in the second best state next to you, since he was getting your rations on top of his own.  You’d caught his gaze lingering on the other members of the squad a few times when he hadn’t yet realized you were watching him, could see that underlying guilt in his own eyes that you were certain was mirrored in your gaze.  The two of you had already had the discussion about how to spread your rations, though, and even though it had crossed your mind to spread them through the whole squad, even though Levi had advocated for it, you had both reluctantly decided to keep with your current arrangement and keep giving all of your rations to Levi.  It had boiled down to the same reason that had gotten him to relent a while back when it came to you giving him your rations in the first place:  since you were feeding off him, he needed that extra bit of strength, or you feeding off him would become too harmful to him to be sustainable and you’d have to go out and start killing people to survive again.

He also let you hide from everyone else in his office most of the time, sitting down with him and helping him with his paperwork–only letting you see the reports that weren’t confidential or didn’t feed the guilt that was already eating at you–and helping keep the space clean.  You did all of your training and practice together, mostly so you could keep the fact that your strength hadn’t wavered at all hidden so it didn’t raise more questions–

You didn’t tell him, but once the rations started to shrink enough that even adding your own to his wasn’t making much of a difference, you could sometimes hear the hunger starting to sink its claws into him as well, hear the sounds of a growling stomach in the quiet of his office while you worked or made the tea or cleaned around the room to keep yourself busy between training.  He didn’t outwardly react, didn’t mention it, didn’t show any kind of outward discomfort, but you heard it, and knew that he felt it.  Thinking of how he’d pushed back when you’d first offered your rations to him, how he’d said he would manage and be fine with the cut backs, you couldn’t help but wonder if he’d felt true starvation before.

Growing up in the Underground, most likely.

And that thought only made your guilt for being the healthiest person in Scout Headquarters, of being untouched by this food crisis and watching the people around you starting to wither, grow.

Not only was there the hunger he was pretending he didn’t have, but you could also see the weight of the situation you were all mired in taking its toll on him, bunching his shoulders high and tight and turning his eyes dark and stormy as he poured over the reports he made sure he didn’t let you see.  His mood was worsening, irritable and far more short tempered than normal–which could have just been the hunger, but you were certain it was both the hunger and the stress of whatever was happening he was trying to shield you from by refusing to let you see the reports, or couldn’t tell you because he wasn’t allowed to.  More often than not you could see a faraway glaze over his eyes, a dark fog of dread and gloom seeming to press in around him.  If he snapped at you, you tried not to take it personally–you could usually see guilt lurking in his eyes afterwards if he’d snapped at you or was particularly and unnecessarily harsh.  You made sure to always ease that guilt–when he was in a better mood–by a gentle kiss or touch, something to reassure him that you understood and weren’t angry with him, and knew the situation and his mood and everything else around them was absolute shit right now.

You tried in whatever little ways you could to make it better.  Neither of you were in much the mood for anything particularly intimate or intense, so it was never anything heated or big, but you did what you could to lighten his burden and take some of the work off his plate while you were around.  There were the little gestures of affection and comfort you tried to give him to help reassure him when he was still in the middle of his work, small actions to get his brow to smooth for a few moments, to get his shoulders to relax and lower even an inch.  You would kiss the top of his head or his temple when you leaned over to pick up a stack of papers, take a moment to cover his hand with your own and give it a comforting squeeze when you set down a cup of tea and he relinquished his hold on his work for a few moments, or rest a hand on his shoulder as you passed by in your cleaning to have just a bit of contact to reconnect with each other even if it was only for a few heartbeats.

At night, when the work was done and you hadn’t yet returned to your room, in the moments you and Levi stole to try and have something of a break from the nightmare you were trapped in with everyone else, you and Levi managed to find some time to try and breathe–usually at your prodding, sometimes abruptly initiated by him–and just bask in the quiet with one another.  Your main goal in those moments was to relieve some of the burden and stress that you could see weighing down Levi in the day.  You doubted he was sleeping much if at all after you left–probably not helping his more agitated and short tempered mood–so whatever was plaguing him was keeping him up at night at least, giving him nightmares at worst.

Most of the time, the relaxing simply consisted of sitting side by side on the couch, Levi’s arm around you while you leaned up against him and dozed while he enjoyed a cup of tea or found something not report related to read to unwind.  Sometimes, in the rare moments when he was so tired there wasn’t any resistance and he accepted the chance to just rest, he’d cross his arms and lean against you, while you gently threaded your hands through his hair.  Sometimes there was kissing, sometimes it was just being close to one another and not thinking about everything that was happening outside his office, just for a few moments.  Intertwined hands and leaning into one another, resting your heads on one another’s shoulders, taking a moment to just…rest, and forget.

When it came to your own need to feed, you reverted back to the pattern the two of you had established while Levi was recovering–only taking a little here and there as needed.  With how bad the rationing was getting, you didn’t dare weaken him further by taking the full amount you needed all at once.  For a while, there was nothing intimate about it–not to the degree it had become, anyway.  Levi would make a comment, usually, about how you looked like you needed a bit more, or it had been a few days and it was about that time–it was never you who initiated it.  You couldn’t bring yourself to, with the state everyone was in.

He’d called you out once when you’d tried to turn him down and accused you of trying to inflict unnecessary starvation upon yourself as a self-inflicted punishment for being healthy, and you’d realized he’d been on the nose, and you hadn’t entirely realized you’d been doing it yourself.

You didn’t argue when he offered you a drink after that.

When you did feed off him, he was usually still at his desk, and it ended up being a little moment for him to breathe and relax.  He’d lean back in his chair as you came up from behind, and you’d drape your arms over his shoulders while he leaned his head to the side, giving you the perfect angle to gently sink your teeth into his neck.  You were never in that position long, just enough to get what you needed.  You could hear Levi’s breaths deepen and even out while you drank, and sometimes one of his hands would come up to rest on your forearm, your wrist, your hand–giving you a gentle squeeze of reassurance or letting his fingers idly stroke along your skin in reassurance.

It wasn’t the heated intimacy it had been before, but it was a moment to stop and relax and be close, just for a few moments before the two of you had to get back to focusing on the present.  Thankfully, it also meant Levi wasn’t further weakened by a loss of blood, and he continued to keep his strength.

As much as he could with the malnutrition and hunger starting to creep in.

Despite all the time you were spending in his quarters during the day, you made sure never to stay overnight–you didn’t want to encourage any rumors.  Now was not the time to be having them.  Tensions were too high, tempers too short, people too quick to assume and judge, and you both doubted anything good would come from whatever rumor might creep up if the two of you were known to be sleeping in the same private quarters.  Probably something ridiculous like hoarding food and sharing it between the two of you because of a sexual relationship, considering the two of you were the healthiest at headquarters right now.

Not something either of you wanted to deal with right now on top of everything else.  Your continued health was already drawing more attention than you were comfortable with whenever you dared to venture outside of Levi’s office or your quarters.

That was what your days had started to consist of, for what felt like far too long, especially while you watched the situation continue to deteriorate.  Trying to keep a low profile, trying to lighten Levi’s burden while also watching whatever was coming press heavier and heavier on his shoulders, hearing how bad things were getting and seeing the results in the people around you, imagining how much worse it was outside the walls of headquarters, all while able to feel the mounting dread in the air, the feeling that something that had been hanging over them unseen for some time was starting to press in, that something was about to happen, and nothing about it was going to be good.

*Levi’s POV*

The day finally came when the report he’d been anticipating finally crossed his desk.

It was much later than he’d anticipated, delayed by some disagreements in the how to and the selection, the logistics being hotly debated for how to carry everything out.  With the riots and killings and people starving to death in the poorer parts of the walls or the parts so packed with people they couldn’t manage to feed everyone, these decisions should have probably been made earlier.

Not that there was anything easy about choosing how many people needed to die and who it would be so the rest could survive.

Levi’s gaze scanned over the document, dread settling in his empty stomach like a lump of burning coal.  The only sound in the room was Y/N moving behind him, doing the last pass to clean the windows that she was leaving open behind her to let fresh air and a cool breeze into the room.  She’d been keeping his office immaculate while trying to give herself something to do that would spare her from having to be stared at by all the people wondering how the hell she looked so healthy while the rest of them were slowly starting to waste away.  He hadn’t argued when she’d started doing it because he knew she did literal perfect cleaning jobs, and she needed it right now.

And it gave her an excuse to stay close to him, which put his mind at ease about her safety considering all the reports he was receiving that mentioned civilians lashing out at soldiers that were better fed than the people, targeted attacks–

The civil unrest had reached the brink of explosive, and when it came to the announcement the government was about to make, it could go either way–either it would pacify those that weren’t sent out because it meant they all got to survive and the military would only have to focus on getting those that were going to go into Maria to comply, or there would be collective outrage that the best thing the government could do to solve the crisis was send such a large portion of the remainder of humanity to its certain death.

Y/N must have noticed the sudden lack of movement, or the way that his breath caught at the words he read in the report, because while he was trying to come to terms with the fact that the day had finally come, he suddenly heard her move behind him and felt her hand rest tentatively on his shoulder.  Her hand was a warm and gentle comfort, her thumb stroking slightly down along his shoulder blade, though he could also feel that she wasn’t standing where she could try to read the report over his shoulder, still allowing him that privacy and respect.

“What is it?” she asked cautiously.  She knew there was every chance he would tell her he couldn’t say, that the report would be slid aside and she wouldn’t know what had garnered an outward reaction from him even if it was slight, but she asked anyway, wanting to see if there was anything she could do to help, to try and make things easier on him like she’d been trying to do this whole time.

Attached to the document Levi held in a tighter grip than normal was a note from Erwin–a summons once Levi got around to seeing this, for Levi, but also for Y/N.  Which meant Erwin was going to talk to them about their roles in this, and she was about to be told what, exactly, was being planned in the background all this time that had been haunting him and that he hadn’t been able to share.

Levi put the document down, turning in his seat to look up at her, eyes grim and one hand reaching up to rest over the hand on his shoulder and squeeze it perhaps more tightly than he needed to as the dread started to seep deeper into his bones.

“Close the windows.  We need to go see Erwin…and this will take a while.”

*Reader’s POV*

The room was silent after Erwin finished speaking.  Levi was leaning against the wall behind Erwin’s desk, head bowed low and veiled in shadows, the hair falling in his face, darkness that did not hide from your sharper eyes his preemptive grief and grim acceptance of the horror you’d just been informed of.  You could see he was a bit paler after hearing it said aloud with all it’s dark details laid bare, his lips pressed into a tight, thin line, posture coiled tight, fingers digging into his arms until the tips were white with the pressure, and though his eyes were cast away from you while you processed it all, you could see enough to catch a glint of the pain swimming in his gaze.

“Three hundred thousand?”

The number you whispered hung heavy in the air between the three of you, as if the weight of all those lives was trying to press into the far too small space all at once and crush the three of you beneath it.

“With so much of Wall Maria having survived during its fall and trying to fit itself inside Rose, the drought that was already happening, and the inability to get enough food to feed everyone anywhere nearly as fast as the sheer number of people inside the walls is burning through what little there is, it’s the number that’s been calculated that will be needed to relieve the demand for food enough for those that remain in the walls to survive,” Erwin explained, and you had to admit that you wondered in that moment how the hell this man could speak so calmly about this without any of the signs of distress that you could read on Levi’s face. Sure, you understood and knew Levi better and therefore he was a bit easier for you to read when he wasn’t trying to mask all those emotions in front of other people, but Erwin, right now–if he’d been a vampire you would have said he’d shut out those pesky human emotions to be having this conversation this calmly.  The only reason you hadn’t started shouting was because you were still in shock.

“The government took more time trying to come to an agreement on how to handle it, which gave the situation time to deteriorate further and raised that number that needs to be sent even higher.  It won’t be an end to the hardship within the walls, food will still be rationed and supplies will still be low for a while, and we will need more time to recuperate from the point we’ve been pushed to now.  But after this, the situation will ease and won’t be so dire.”

Three hundred thousand people had already been chosen and would soon be told that they were going to take part in an effort to retake Wall Maria and sent outside of Wall Rose, with the real intention being for most if not all of them to die.  Volunteers would be allowed to take the place of someone whose name was on the list, but there was a very short window of opportunity to do so, and those that tried to dodge this duty would be treated as if they had committed treason and almost certainly killed anyway.  Three hundred thousand people were going to be sent to Maria without any actual plan to seal the holes in the walls and keep the Titans out, and without proper weapons, with the intent to feed them all to the Titans to alleviate the food shortage so everyone else didn’t die of starvation or war within the walls.

“Sending them out there was the best that they could come up with?” you asked in a whisper-thin voice that was somehow quieter than your first rhetorical question that had been more a shocked statement than an actual question.

Erwin’s lips thinned slightly, which was just enough of a sign that let your previous unnerved feeling at his lack of a reaction ease slightly–clearly, Erwin wasn’t pleased about this, either.  “It was unanimously agreed by those who made this decision that it would be best if this happened outside of and away from Wall Rose, where it wouldn’t have to be witnessed or carried out first hand.”

To ease consciences.  Having all these people die in such a horrific way for a farce…so that those inside the walls, and those that ordered it, wouldn’t have to directly take part in it even if they were complicit, even if they knew it was happening, that it was on purpose.  People who had never seen what the Titans did, how they would tear a person apart, never heard the screams and cries, had made this decision.  Even if it was horrific, at least the people wouldn’t see it happen, wouldn’t have to carry it out, wouldn’t have to see the resulting bodies.  Out of sight, out of mind.  It was sick.

…but, much to your silent horror, it also made a terrible sense.  They couldn’t produce food from nothing, and the only way to avoid a full on war that would cost far more lives than this would be to have less people to feed.  They didn’t want to go around executing people in the walls, especially on that scale.  No one wanted that job, no one wanted to witness that or take part in it.  But three hundred thousand people still needed to go.  So why not send them out there where something monstrous and something else would take care of them, so it didn’t have to be humanity in the walls that directly dirtied their hands?  Why not give them an impossible task so that at least they were still trying to do something that would help if it worked, even though everyone knew it wasn’t going to work.

In order for more people to survive, for this nightmare you’d all been living in recently to ease–not stop, just ease–three hundred thousand needed to die, and this sickening method was the least in everyone’s faces and least hands on horrific way to do it.

And, of course, it was the Scouts that were put in charge of carrying out this massacre, of making sure those three hundred thousand were fed to the Titans so the rest within the walls could live.  They had to send actual soldiers out to keep the guise of a real operation and attempt to retake the walls, to make sure those three hundred thousand truly left the walls and hopefully got a decent way away from Rose before the Titans descended upon them.  And, especially right now with how horrible public opinion was about the Scouts, they were the branch that to the upper class probably looked the most disposable at the moment, the best ones to send on a suicide mission where the vast majority wasn’t meant to make it out alive.

You’d already collapsed into the seat across from Erwin on the other side of his desk when he’d initially given you the news.  Now, you leaned forwards, hands steepled together with fingertips arched around your nose and palms cupped around your lips to hide most of your horror as you tried to breathe and process and understand.

This…This was not what you had joined the Scouts to do.  You had not joined to be a party to a massacre this size, to help facilitate this kind of a slaughter.  You’d joined to save life, to preserve it, to protect humanity–not to help condemn such a large number of people that made your body count just trying to survive the past forty years look like nothing in comparison.  Everything inside you railed against what Erwin was telling you that you were about to be a part of, telling you to refuse and dig in your heels and not give when it came to this moral stance, not in the slightest.

You didn’t care if he just wanted you on the wall to save lives when enough had died and it wouldn’t be counter-productive to do so.  You didn’t care if he didn’t want you out there in the middle of the slaughter–especially you with your vampiric bloodlust that could send you into a frenzy if you were in the middle of that many people getting brutally torn apart and eaten by Titans.  You didn’t care if the role that he wanted to assign you to had as little to do with the act itself as possible without having you absent from the ordeal entirely.  To be a part of this in any way, when your whole struggle to claw your way to where you were now was so you would not have to take part in any more killing of humans, so you could help save and protect humanity by fighting monsters and dedicating your innate abilities to making the fight something more sustainable, to help humanity progress–

The thought of having anything to do with this slaughter, even such a passive role that didn’t involve you in it except in the actual saving at the end, it still made you sick to your stomach to think about, to have to consider.

You wanted to say no.  To tell him you would not go, would not have any part in it, optics and orders be damned.

But you thought of Levi in that corner of the room at this exact moment, looking absolutely, silently horrified and stricken by the whole concept, but still grimly going along with it anyway because he knew, like you did, that it really was the best option out of an all shit hand of options in front of humanity for how this could play out.  You thought of that faraway and haunted look in his eyes that had been growing day by day with the knowledge of what was coming, shouldering it alone and unable to talk to you about it or share the burden to lighten the weight caving in his chest.  You thought of the hunger that you knew had started to claw at him even though you knew he wouldn’t utter a word of complaint about it, and thought of that weakness of malnutrition and starvation starting to sink its teeth into him.

You thought of Petra and Eld, Gunther and Oluo, Hange and Moblit, the scouts that you were slowly getting more of a relationship with, your comrades, already weakened and suffering from the shortage, the malnutrition, the fact that their chances of survival outside the walls were nosediving at frightening speeds as they became more and more physically incapable of the strength and condition they needed to have in order to stand a chance whenever they went into Titan territory.

You thought of that refugee site you’d been to what felt like ages ago, the bodies you’d had to help remove of people that had wasted away from hunger and sickness and malnutrition as things had started to take this swan dive into hellish waters.  You thought of the bodies you’d dragged away, and of some of the nightmarish scenes of starvation and people withering away you’d seen during your time in the Underground, imagined that’s how the people were starting to look like now, imagined the inside of the walls reaching a point that such horrific states started to be a normal sight amongst the citizens of the walls as much above ground as it was below ground.

You thought of all the people that were suffering now, who would continue to suffer, how much worse it could still get, both for the citizens and refugees you hadn’t seen in a while, and the people you knew more personally.  You thought of those children and shattered families you’d handed blankets and supplies to in the days after Maria fell and wondered how many of them had survived so far, how many were even still alive, how many would survive if this didn’t happen?  You thought of the comrades around you being unable to fight anymore, too weak to be of any use and suffering from the very extremes that there were citizens and refugees suffering from now.

You thought of Levi having to suffer like that, having to suffer that hunger and weakness.

You thought of how, if you ran from this now when you knew he was going to grimly do his duty and suffer through it, that weight that he’d been carrying this whole time that you’d been unable to ease, you would never be able to understand well enough to carry it with him.  You would leave him to carry this awful weight alone, for it to continue to bury him in all the dark emotions and feelings you’d been catching glimpses of him struggling with before he even had to carry out this horrible duty. You wouldn’t be able to help him through it the way you wanted to because you wouldn’t fully understand it, would not know what horrors were plaguing him when you could have.  You had a chance to not abandon him to suffer through this alone.  You could step up and shoulder this with him, face it and step into this spell of darkness with him, and afterwards, figure out how to survive the emotional aftermath of it all with him.

You did not want to see your comrades and the people inside the walls suffer the more gruesome fates that awaited all of you if this didn’t happen.  It would happen with or without you, but you still had a responsibility to those who remained.  And if the rest of your comrades were going to have to take part in this nightmare, you did not want to be known as the one who abandoned their sides when the tough decisions were being made, who left the line of defense when the support was most needed.

You didn’t want to leave Levi to have to face this alone.

You really were going to be sick…

Now did not at all feel like the time, but in the back of your mind you wondered if maybe this, calling you in to discuss this with you privately and see what you would say and do was less of a courtesy and more one of Erwin’s tests to see just how far you were willing to go for the good of humanity and your fellow scouts.  Would you bow out when the decision for survival was nightmarish and horrific, abandon your fellow scouts, the Captain you so dearly cared about, leave them all to face it without you because you refused to confront it with them, because you decided you couldn’t stomach it, because the order didn't align with your personal goals?  Or would you swallow down your apprehension and help hold the line when it was most difficult, would you be there to see through the order and support your fellow scouts through this nightmare?

Hell, Erwin’s decision to have you stay out of it and only have you involved in the plan itself when it involved rescue and saving people could even be considered a mercy and a blessing in the middle of all this hell, especially considering it seemed to be mindful of your reason for being in the Scouts.  He could have easily trusted your vampire skills to get you out of the worst of this alive and unscathed and sent you to the front to lead them as far from Rose as possible, farther than whatever poor soul had actually been put in charge of spearheading this suicide mission most likely would be able to.  But he kept in mind why you were here, and had the foresight to know you’d be just as upset about this as Levi seemed to be, and had chosen to keep you mostly out of it and only involve you in the actual saving that would come at the end.

If there was even anyone left to save.

“When?” you croaked, glad that Erwin had given you the time to think and process even though the silence felt crushing and foreboding, making it hard not to think of so many horrific things as your mind ran amuck with thoughts of what was coming.

“Two days time.  The government already has its list.  They’ll announce who is going out, give the chance for volunteers to be made official, and give us time to mobilize.  We need time to get our forces moving and ready to go, and they don’t want to give those on the list the time to run and try to avoid it, in the meantime,”  Erwin answered, still keeping that miraculously neutral expression and tone.

Your stomach seemed to clench and twist at the news.  Only two days.  You only had two days to come to terms with this and mentally prepare yourself for what was about to happen.  Those two days, however, also seemed like a lifetime to have to try and not spiral.  It was simultaneously too short and too long.  Only two days to cope, but two whole days you’d also have to hold it together.

Your hands shifted upwards, covering your face for a few moments, and then further up so that your hands could thread deeply through your hair, pulling it up and back from your face so the slight pain from the pull distracted you from the horror of the moment at hand and kept you grounded enough to hopefully keep the sickening imagines filling your mind away, just for a few seconds.  You just wanted the distraction to last to direct your mind away from the deeper nightmare of everything starting to unfold in front of you long enough to answer your commanding officer and get out.

“We’ll be waiting on the wall to see who makes it back and covering their retreat.”  You took a breath, trying to steady yourself as you tabled the truth and instead spoke the lie.  “Because they may be pursued in their retreat and elite soldiers will be needed to dispatch of any threats before they get too close to the wall, so the gate can be safely opened and as much life as possible preserved.”

Lie. The elite were going to be waiting on the wall because Erwin wasn’t going to risk losing them in the chaos of the bloodbath.  But you said it so that Erwin knew you understood what the official story would be, the excuse that would be the answer if anyone asked.

Your use of we instead of you seemed to be the signal they needed to know that you would go along with it, even though you very clearly weren’t happy about the way this was all playing out, that you were also in distress, trying to ride out the shock long enough to keep from spiraling while still inside Erwin’s office.

There were a few beats of silence.  “Yes,” Erwin confirmed, voice a touch softer with understanding and you thought a touch of sympathy, allowed to show through now that you’d complied.  He was relieved that you agreed, that you hadn’t railed and fought him on this, that you would go along with it, but even you could hear that the relief…rang hollow.  The relief was only in that you weren’t going to make what was already a stressful horrorshow of a situation any more difficult.  The hollowness almost seemed like the loss humanity was about to suffer manifesting in his voice.

Your hands dropped away from your hair, falling to instead wrap around your middle as if you could hold all the emotions in–could physically hide the emotions that wanted to escape.

You could hold it in long enough.  It hadn’t happened yet, and if you could keep yourself busy in the meantime, you could hold it together.

Finally, after taking a moment or two to steady yourself, you gave Erwin a small nod of acknowledgement and acceptance to clearly answer the unspoken question of if you would comply and carry out your part in all of this.

“Then I’ll be ready in two day’s time.”

You didn’t immediately approach Levi after the two of you left Erwin’s office.  You stayed right at his side as the two of you made your way back to his office, but you didn’t speak, didn’t brush against his hand or shoulder, you honestly didn’t even look at him.  Your gaze was cast downwards at the stone beneath your feet without really seeing it, headed towards his office on muscle memory rather than actual conscious movement, eyes far away and mind mired in the dark thoughts of what you’d been told and what was to come, what you still couldn’t believe was about to happen.

And all those moments the past few months you’d caught Levi with a grim expression, a sadness or darkness in his recently duller eyes, the times he’d pushed the reports your way so you could see for yourself when the rations got smaller or another attempt to cultivate a field had gone awry or food had been lost, the times he’d told you he couldn’t tell you what was on his mind when you’d asked him what was wrong, what was plaguing him.  This was what he’d been thinking about, the hidden burden that had been pressing in on him that you’d sensed but had not been able to truly perceive until now.

Once the two of you made it to his office, you shut and locked the door behind you as he walked ahead, making sure no one could interrupt before you used your vampiric speed to catch up to him, gently tugging on the arm of his jacket to get him to turn to face you, and then to bring him closer, the tips of his boots almost flush with yours.

Once he was in your space, you tentatively reached up to cup his face in your hands, the skin of his jaw and cheeks cool against your warmer hands, the gesture one you hadn’t done since the night you’d met Emery and he’d tried to talk you out of taking the risk of taking the kid under your wing.  Levi still tensed, but not as much as he had then–you two weren’t arguing right now, you had done this before, and he knew that it was meant to reassure, to comfort…

When you knew he wasn’t going to pull away, and while he waited to see what words you were struggling to get past your lips before he responded to your actions, you rested your forehead gently against his like you sometimes did after a kiss.  Your eyes were still cast down, thinking of all those times…

Finally, your gaze lifted to his, looking directly at him to see that his eyes were still guarded, wary of what your proper reaction was going to be now that you were behind a locked door and away from Erwin, maybe even trying to prepare himself to take whatever heavy emotions you were about to show him.

Later.  Not now.  You couldn’t handle the full weight of what was at the moment, so you were trying not to think of it.  All you wanted to focus on were the smaller things you could manage right now, the more personal and immediate things on your mind.

“This is what you’ve been carrying on your own these past few months?”

You were intentional in your word choice, taking care not to say I’m sorry, as much as the words lingered on your lips wanting to be spoken.  He would turn it down as unnecessary, point out that you had nothing to be sorry for, that you hadn’t known and didn’t have anything to do with the decision process and hadn’t had the clearance to be told.  You did feel pain that was close to remorse, but it was because he’d been carrying this alone this whole time, and only now as it was about to crescendo, as the worst was about to come, were you hearing about it.  However long he’d been aware this was coming, you had been unable to help him bear the burden.  Hell, all the running around with your vampire drama had probably done nothing to help with the stress he had to be under.

Levi’s gaze was searching yours, reading the expressions flickering across your face and in your eyes as if he was reading your mind.  He must have seen some of your guilt or pain at the thought, because despite your careful word choice, he seemed to be able to discern what you wanted to say, what you wanted to get at in this moment.

Again, much as he had that night you’d met Emery, his hands reached up for yours, fingers curling as if he was about to try and remove your hands from his face like he’d done that night.

“It’s not about me,” he started to say, voice low and quiet, but with an edge of weariness to it that made your heart sit a bit heavier in your chest and throb with a deep ache.

“No, it’s not,” you agreed.  This whole mess was about the people, survival of humanity in the walls, bigger than either of you.  But he was the one you were going to focus on today, in this moment, the one you could do the most for, and the most directly.  Your hands resisted the slight tug he’d given them at his dismissive words, keeping their place cradling his face towards yours.  “But you have been carrying it.”

You took half a step closer, just so you would be right there with him, standing in his space, cradling him to you, forehead against his, legs brushing against one another.  You didn’t move to kiss him, didn’t speak.  Instead, you simply held the close position, kept your eyes searching his, and let the quiet moment speak for you.

The room was silent except for the sounds of your heartbeats and breathing, and the sound of the birds outside.  As the moments stretched on, the two of you stood there with one another, present with each other, both leaning towards the other without fully closing that distance despite how close the two of you were already standing.  Levi’s hands shifted, gently sliding down from your hands to your wrists, then loosening and running lightly down your arms, his fingers brushing absentmindedly and soothingly up and down your forearms as he allowed you to continue to keep your hands cusped gently over his jaw and cheek, allowing the more intimate and caring gesture, and even leaning slightly into it like he tended to do when you cradled his cheek with one hand.  The eyes that had been probing and guarded a few moments ago gradually softened, allowing you to see more of the depth of the emotions he’d been keeping bottled up and hidden to the best of his ability the past few months.

You could see some of the emotions that you’d caught glimpses of in Erwin’s office when the plan was being discussed.  Flashes of pain and grief, trepidation, reluctance, disgust–and yet, there was also the resignation, the acceptance that this was the way it had to be, and even though it was bitter and had to be choked down, he was swallowing it and resolving himself to push forwards while hating every minute of it.

He felt the same way you did.  The pain and horror whose sharp edge cut down to the bone at the loss of so much life, of purposely feeding that many people to the Titans, but the realization that so many more were going to die if something wasn’t done, and this was the only option anyone had at a time where they couldn’t wait any longer for a miraculous alternative option to fall from the sky and into their laps.  It was horrific, but you were going to have to go through it anyway.  Now you just had to figure out how to steel yourselves and cope.

With how easily he could read you, you hoped that he could read the words you felt in this moment.

I’ll support you.  So let me be here for you.

You could see that knowledge that you were both on the same page reflected back to you in his eyes, the acknowledgement that you were in the exact same place with this now, that you understood–

When Levi slowly tilted his head and closed that meager space between the two of you to kiss you, you took it as his way of accepting the unspoken words in your gaze, and agreeing to let you be there with him and support him through this now that you knew.

And given the way his hands pulled your arms close to his chest so protectively, the care he put into the more tender and slow paced kiss, you knew without any doubt that he would do the same for you.

Next Chapter---->

AN: Side note...I know in canon the actual number was 250,000. The increase to 300,000 was intentional. More people saved=more resources burned through faster=more people needing to die to relieve the shortage and how dire it's gotten.

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