Wings in the Dark Chapter 34: Voices in the Silence
AN: Okay, not to panhandle for comments/feedback, but 34 and 35 has been a labor of love and frustration and pain that altogether turned out as 30,000 words before edits and was originally one chapter before I split it. Please, I love you all, please give feedback, I may actually cry if I hardly hear anything with how much time and effort, blood, sweat, and tears, has gone into these two chapters trying to get them JUST RIGHT.
And a side note/"Fun" fact for those who have seen Thunderbolts*, ah, I swear I wrote that last scene LONG before I went and watched Thunderbolts* O.o Pinky Promise. But the irony is not lost on me.
ACTUAL "Fun" Fact: Gasoline by Halsey and Far From Home by Five Finger Death Punch were my favorite songs to listen to writing this chapter <3 ;)
Characters: Levi, Fem!Vampire!Reader, Erwin, Hange; Briefly: Pyxis, Miche, Petra, Moblit, Eld, Gunther, Oluo, Various Unnamed Characters
Pairing: Levi x Fem!Vampire!Reader
Warnings: Language, Blood/Gore, Violence, Mentions/Descriptions of Violent Death, Intentional/Planned Mass Casualty Event, Disassociation, Mental/Emotional Breakdown, Panic/Anxiety Attack, Severe Trauma
Word Count: 13493
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*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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