Warnings: 18+—profanity, distress,1 spell of dry heaving, self-loating, injury, pain, blood, wound description/cleaning, low self-esteem, negative self-talk, beginning of homicide discussion: death of a family member revealed, idk canon-typical aot stuff
Word Count: 2578
Status: Ongoing
Masterlist // Previous Chapter // Next Chapter (coming soon!)
---
Chapter 22 - All Is Quiet Before Sunrise
Read To Bleed a Thorne on AO3
Mornings in the Underground never arrive with birdsong or warmth. There are no rays of sun streaming through windows, or gentle breezes that caress skin like the soft touch of a mother. Dew merely drips from the cavernous ceiling above, condensation slick against cool stone as it seeps through and saturates the Underground with rot. It festers in quieter places—in the seams of brick and the hollows of warped floorboards. In the folds of fabric left out too long to dry. In the lungs of drunks that have never known what it feels like to breathe clean air. The rot settles into everything with slow, patient persistence, until the entire world feels heavy. It’s mushy in all the wrong places, dry and cracked in the ones that matter the most.
And the chapel is no different.
When you wake this morning, the air is already choking you with it.
The flame of the lantern perched on your desk sways lazily, barely keeping the shadows away, and it dimly illuminates your room. Rot clings to your skin as you sit up, dries the back of your throat as you draw your first conscious breath, and saturates the bandage at your neck where your dried blood has stiffened the cloth into something rough and unforgiving against your skin. The ache in your ribs and wrist greet you before your first thought does, deepening the moment you straighten your spine.
You don’t pay any mind to the pain. There is nothing to gain from acknowledging something that will not leave.
You push your plush blanket from your body, swing your legs over the side of the bed, and rise, acclimating yourself to your old friend before crossing the room. The chill of the stone floor bites at the soles of your feet with immediate hostility. It reminds you that a new day has arrived, and the sunrise is nigh whether it welcomes the morning or not.
Your clothes await you in your dresser, folded seemingly more from habit than care. You reach for them and begin putting them on, still without thought. Your shirt is unpleasant as it brushes over the bruises scattered across your ribs and shoulder before settling tight against your skin. Then your pants—black cargos. The simple, routine act of dressing feels heavier this early morning, each motion slower, your body reluctant to forget what was done to it last night—or only a few hours ago.
The fresh pair of black boots Silas bought for you sit by the door—still pristine. You’ve been mindful to take care of them.
You stare at their polish for a moment.
Then you pull them on.
By the time you step into the corridor, you’re assembled as Silas’s Thorn enough to be seen. The chapel has already begun to stir to life around you. Sluggish boots drag heavily through the halls. Low voices echo off the walls, indistinguishable before they’re swallowed by the old spine of the building. Somewhere afar, wood groans beneath the drag of a crate being hauled into position—likely the goods from the shipment, you presume—followed by the sharp murmur of a man cursing under his breath. The building itself feels half-asleep still, swaying, but never fully resting. It never does.
It never can.
The washroom sits at the far end of the corridor, tucked between a storage closet and one of the narrower stairwells—one you frequently climb as you aimlessly wander around the halls like a caged farm animal. The washroom door hangs slightly crooked on its hinges, rusted with years of rot and damp, and groans softly when you lift it to shut the door fully.
The air inside is colder. And wetter.
It smells faintly of soap, but not enough to conceal the mildew that has long since made a home in the grout between the stone wall. A shallow porcelain basin sits on an old table beneath a mirror gone cloudy with age, condensation accumulating on the side of the mirror closest to the open window, reflection warped enough to make your face look slightly wrong.
You look at yourself only briefly, but it’s long enough to note the exhaustion in your eyes. To recognize the shape of your own face and feel no attachment to it—like the Thorne you once were has long since been stripped from to her bones, and the reflection before you now only recognizes the Thorn sharpened by Silas’s hand. But you feel no attachment to her. You don’t feel much of anything at all, for that matter.
Your mind has long since grown quiet. Obedient to Silas.
You reach for the bandage at your throat first.
The cloth peels away swiftly, stinging in places where dried blood has welded it to your wound. The cut beneath isn’t deep, but it’s angry—red and raised, bruising slightly in the skin that surrounds the open wound.
A reminder. A reminder left behind by a man who could have ended you, and very nearly did.
Doom grows in your chest.
You set the bloodied linen aside and dip your fingers into the basin. The cold water stings your knuckles. You drag your fingers carefully along the cut, cleaning away what dried blood frames it like a painting. The sting is immediate. And you welcome it, for pain that can be cleaned away is easier to tolerate.
You rewrap your wound with clean linen stored in the washroom and using your experienced hands, chin tippied up as you fasten it at the front of your neck. The fresh cloth is rougher than you wish.
Your wrist comes next.
The linen around it stiffly wrapped. You begin unwinding it slowly, careful not to jostle the joint. Even so, pain blooms deep in your wrist and climbs into your hand and up your forearm, hot and immediate, with each pass you make to remove the cloth.
You clench your jaw and exhale a sharp breath through your nose.
Your wrist looks worse under the washroom’s pathetic lantern light. Swollen at the joint, the skin is stretched taut and darkened into shades that resemble what you imagine would paint a cloudy sunset aboveground. Your fingers twitch and threaten to curl into a fist on instinct, then stop when the pain restrains them.
Sloppy. Too confident.
Nothing without the power of another…
You should have been better.
You dip the rag back in the basin and drape it carefully over the swelling. Cold shocks through the joint enough to force a quip inhale through your clenched teeth, and your fingers tense. Your hands find the lip of the basin and they tighten until the porcelain design imprints into your palm, grounding you while the pulse of the ache settles into something lower and quieter.
Morin walked away with mere bruises.
And Damon had to intervene.
Gods, you useless, weak girl.
Humiliation curls heavily in your gut, shame following close behind and coiling even tighter with every breath that strains against your bruised ribs. You feel guilty that you could not fulfil Silas’s mission—
Not alone.
Your jaw tightens. Bile stirs in your intestines, sour. The thought rots fast—faster than the half-spoiled fruit that makes it way into this Underground hellhole—turning rancid before it can even settle.
You can’t digest it.
Useless is too soft a word for what you were last night.
Sloppy. Predictable. Weak.
Weak enough to need saving.
Your tense fingers tremble at your side, itching to curl into a first, only stopped by the sharp protest of your wrist.
You find your cloudy reflection in the mirror again. You stare at the linen around your throat, the bruise blooming beneath the bandage, at the girl Morin nearly folded into the dirt and left there.
Shame overcomes you so fast it disorients you. It burns hotter than the pain of your wound and wrist. Hotter than the sting in your throat. Hotter than the pulse in your ribs and shoulder. It climbs your spine in a slow, nauseating crawl, leaving a wreckage of goosebumps in its chilling wake.
Bile stirs again, this time higher in your gut.
Your stomach lurches.
No.
Your good hand shoots to the basin just as your body folds forward.
The retch tears through you violently, sharp enough to light your ribs on fire. You brace yourself harder against the basin, shoulders tightening, wrist screaming as a dry heave wracks through your body and leaves you shivering over the bowl. You cough and bitter acid burns the back of your throat, humiliation following in wretched, ugly loops.
Your breathing runs ragged.
Thin.
Utterly pathetic.
A knock suddenly booms against the washroom door. You straighten so hard and fast your back cracks.
“Thorn,” a deep, groggy voice mutters through old wood. One of Silas’s men—of course.
Your stomach drops.
“Boss wants you. Now.”
You stare into the now discolored basin below, pulse pounding in your ears.
For one shameful second, you want to wither away.
Then training and instinct take over.
“Understood,” you call back.
Your voice comes out rougher than usual.
Silence greets you from the other side, followed by heavy retreating footsteps.
In less than a few moments, you snatch the rag from where it fell over the basin’s lip and wipe your mouth quickly. You dump the contents of the basin out the window to get rid of the evidence. Your hand trembles only once when you set it back down, but you force it still. You scrub the remaining chunks from the porcelain with urgency until the only thing left behind is the smell of soap and mildew.
Just as it was when you walked in.
You release a breath you didn’t realize you were holding, bracing yourself over the basin for only a second longer.
Then you straighten.
Carefully.
Your ribs protest anyways. Your wrist throbs. Your throat stings from more than just Morin’s blade now.
But none of that matters, because by the time you reach for the door, your face is empty again. Wiped clean like the basin. Composed. Stoic. Unreadable.
Silas’s Thorn does not let anyone see the cracks.
And she certainly does not break over a damn basin before sunrise.
—
By the time you arrive at The Confessional, you manage to push the nausea down far enough that it begins to feel like hunger.
The fire burns lively in the fireplace when you enter the room, but its heat does not travel far enough to reach you. It merely illuminates the room, casting orange hues over stone and smoke over dim lanternlight. But it warms nothing it touches.
SIlas sits broadly at the head of the table, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, arms loose in the way they tend to be when it’s just the two of you. His suit is immaculate as always. Dark. Pressed. Pristine. His hair is slicked back with what looks like a mixture between grease and gel—he must not have had time to bathe. Not a single element out of place to suggest he lives in a city built on filth, rot, and blood.
He looks up at you only after the door closes behind you.
You step further into the room.
Damon is not here. Your eyes register that fact immediately. Some small, instinctive part of you expected him to be stationed somewhere in the corner of the room, covered in shadows with his arms crossed and his expression unreadable, within an earshot of Silas’s conversation with you.
But it’s only Silas. And the crackle of the fire. And the heavy quiet that suffocates the remainder of the space.
Silas watches you take your final step toward the table, his gaze dropping briefly to the fresh linen at your throat, then to the wrap around your wrist.
He says nothing about either.
“Sit.”
You obey.
The chair groans softly beneath you as you lower yourself in it. Pain strikes at your ribs sharp enough to remind you of the state of your body before your mind can conjure what the hell this meeting could be about. You keep your face still. Posture straight, despite the ache in your lower back. Your hands sit politely in your lap despite the hot throb of pooling blood in your injured wrist.
Silas studies you for a moment longer than necessary, then reaches for the teacup beside him.
“You look awful,” he says at last. His words aren’t unkind; they’re objective, observant—which makes them worse.
You force your expression not to shift, and it’s not difficult because you barely have the energy to make an expression.
“I’m functional, Silas,” you tell him.
His mouth curves up faintly, but it’s not quite amusement. Not exactly approval, either.
“Well, I hope so.”
He finally takes a sip of his tea, and the room falls quiet again.
You can’t quite explain it, but something feels… wrong.
Silas has rarely been this patient when he has summoned you in the past, and you can’t imagine he would summon you for some small-talk. Or even for a check-up. He prefers his conversations to be of purpose. He values efficiency. Direction. He wastes no breaths speaking empty words, often cutting right to the core of his summons whenever he sends for you. He does not call you into The Confessional simply to let silence breathe between the two of you…
Which means this is not simple. Which means he has something to say, and he’s trying to say it carefully.
Your stomach tightens with the realization.
Silas sets the teacup down on the table with a soft clink, then folds his hands together atop the table.
“There’s been another development in the mission,” he says.
Your pulse spikes once against the cut at your throat, and it begins stinging.
“What development?” you ask.
Silas’s gaze stays on you, calm and unreadable. He looks at you in that way that always makes you feel as though he’s studying you from the inside out.
“It concerns someone tied to you,” he continues.
Something inside your chest draws tighter than Silas’s web ever has around your neck. It’s not quite fear… more like an activation of your nervous system. Your body seems to understand where this is going before your mind can process.
And Silas notices. Of course he does.
His eyes sharpen for a fraction of a moment—nearly imperceptible—as they track the quiet tension that begins to overtake your frame. He leans back in his chair, bringing his folded hands to his lap. He taps his index finger twice on the knuckle of his adjoined hand.
Then he sits as still and cold as stone.
And when he speaks again, his voice is low. A near whisper. Almost gentle.
“Your grandfather was murdered.”
---
a/n
i hope you're all enjoying! feedback is always welcome.
this story is about to get darker and psychologically heavier. shit is getting REAL folks. i also have a little more free time with summer and all, so hopefully i can update for frequently for yall :)
the colors continue to drain each time levi rises from slumber. he refuses to acknowledge the aches in his chest, preventing the inevitable. it’s the little things he’s noticed; soon it’ll be back to the way it was. no messes, no continuous chatter, and no attachment. he’ll tell himself this in hopes of alleviating the pain but it never comes. the last meal you ate, it’s cold to the touch, ironically coating his body with warmth, knowing it was your favorite.
“tch, damn brat..”
a pair of boots messily scattered next to his, a reminder of what could’ve been. it feels like a punishment, mission after mission, whoever gets close has to die. it never gets easier, his soul shattering into glass. it was supposed to be different, this was the change you both craved; a life without titans, a life without fear of burying the other. it’s too late, the life you so desperately wanted has sunk into the grave. levi hadn’t dared to move his partners belongings, the feeling dawned on him that you were never coming back.
all of the shared kisses in his office, staying up late together to finish paperwork, fleeting touches when you walked by that no matter how hard levi tried, redness would cover the tips of his ears. the small smiles he’d save but never admit they were reserved for your eyes only. it's a shame he got comfortable, the best part of waking up next to you. a part of his mind doubts if he ever deserved such sweet things. what was the point if all was lost? a relationship doomed to fail. a moment passes.
breathe my dear.
a small gasp falls from his lips. oh. right. you always joked you'd kill him for thinking like this. always whispering sweet nothings to soothe the burdens he carries. you felt so much for him, how was this any fair?
"only you could do something like this, huh?” levi held his head for a moment, his body betraying him and sunk to the floor.
continuing to push forward after losing everything, time and time again, begs the question if there is anything left to live for. he’s tired. tired of thinking that peace was ever an option. the cost dwindles the thought to nothing. silence oddly feels eerie since your passing, only then does levi truly allow himself to grieve.
Warnings: 18+—proofread and edited once, no beta reader chat, profanity, mentions of death, psychological tension, distress, self-loating, manipulation, power dynamics, injury, mentions to blood, blade, implied homicide, reader has very low self-esteem, negative self-talk, potential missed warnings idk, idk canon-typical aot stuff
Word Count: 3935
Status: Ongoing
Masterlist // Previous Chapter // Next Chapter
---
Chapter 21 - Hinge
Read To Bleed a Thorne on AO3
The Confessional is colder.
It’s late. Or early…
You aren’t sure.
The same fire burns, but it does not warm the room when you return. It merely illuminates it—casting sharp lines across the stone walls that have heard every order given, every confession dragged from trembling mouths.
No different than yours tonight, as Damon reports to Silas. You stand behind him, completely overtaken by his shadow, as he chronologically details the fight between you and Morin. Though you’re not touching him, you feel steadier with him at your front, creating space between you and Silas.
You don’t have it in you to sit—to look any smaller than you feel right now. Sitting implies comfort, and you are anything but.
You feel pathetic as you stand before him.
Your throat is bandaged. Not carefully. Not like the only other time you fell unconscious, after you were the victor of fifteen consecutive matches in The Pit. This time, it’s patched just enough to stop the blood from marking Silas’s floor, and the shirt he bought for you. Your wrist is also wrapped tight, bone set back into place with brutal efficiency. Your ribs ache in protest every time you breathe, but you don’t let your shoulders slouch before him.
You can't. Not after your failure. Not as disappointment and self-loathing creep into your mind and begin their relentless taunting.
And Silas?
He doesn’t even look at you. Rather, he studies the unlit cigar between his thick fingers instead, rolling it slowly as if the outcome of tonight will be any different if he wills to be. He lets out a heavy exhale, and Damon stops talking.
“That’s enough, Damon,” Silas says at last, eyes still fixated on the thick cigar between his index finger and thumb. “What of the shipment?”
“The shipment passed,” Damon answers.
Silas nods once, approving. His eyes look beyond Damon’s figure—without more than a few specks of dirt on it, notably—and settle on you. You’re filthy, mud splattered about your skin, Morin’s dirty bootprints littering your clothes, dirt littering your hair and the inside of your nose and ears. Dark bruises are noticeably blossoming across your visible skin.
“And what of Morin?”
You freeze, and draw a deep breath in through your nostrils. Your ribs wail.
His question drags the fight back up from where you’ve already begun trying to bury it. The taste of your own blood in your mouth. Morin’s possessive hand around your throat. Damon moving from behind your back to save your life.
Damon already laid your failure at Silas’s feet for inspection, and now Silas wants to hear you bleed it out yourself.
You scoff. “I believe Damon told you that part, Silas.”
He looks wicked. His eyes darken slowly, something cruel being brought to life behind them, his tongue dragging across his thin lips. You cannot decipher the look he gives you—whether your failure disgusts him, or if seeing you broken before him pleases something far more cynical.
Does he want to punish your failure… or consume it?
“I want to hear it from you,” he affirms.
The wound on your throat pulses beneath the bandages. This sick bastard already knows, and he wants to hear you say it anyway.
“Engaged, then withdrew,” you reply.
Silas’s eyes finally lift to you. They are not soft, and you watch them narrow into calculative, analytical, slits as they drag over your body. Over the wrap on your wrist. The bandage on your throat. Before they finally settle on your eyes, his piercing gaze slicing through the atmosphere and directly through you.
Is he looking at the damage, or something he finds beautiful?
“Withdrew…” he repeats slowly.
He reaches for the breast pocket of his tailored suit coat. He fishes in it for a moment, then pulls out a box of matches. He strikes the end of the match against the box and it ignites, the sound cutting through the silent room. The walls greedily swallow it.
He doesn’t move to light the end of his cigar, eyes instead fixated on the small, flickering flame. His lips curl into a slight smirk, amused.
“And why did he withdraw?”
Silence stretches.
Herein lies the fracture.
Because Damon moved. Because if he didn’t, I would have died.
…
Because I failed.
Your lungs fill slower this time—more shallow, carefully measured against the sear in your ribs.
“He overcommitted,” you respond, disconnected. It isn’t entirely a lie, but it isn’t the truth Silas is looking for. The one he senses you’re shielding from him.
His gaze doesn’t leave you.
The match flame flickers out between his fingers. He drops the charred stick into the tray beside him without his eyes so much as flickering away from you. You don’t think he’s blinked.
“Overcommitted,” he echoes.
The smoke from the fire is growing suffocating. Your nostrils begin to burn again.
“And?” he continues.
Your jaw tightens.
Damon doesn’t move from in front of you. But he doesn’t entirely shield you from your fate with Silas like he did with Morin.
“He underestimated me,” you state, feeling the need to defend yourself before Silas.
Another partial truth. One Silas doesn’t appreciate.
His smirk fades.
“And yet,” he murmurs, calmly, “you stand here wrapped like a casualty.”
His words don’t sound cruel, they’re merely observational, but they sting as they seep into you through your open wounds.
“I… miscalculated.”
His gaze drifts down the line of your bandaged throat, the tight wrap around your wrist, the faint way your breathing tests your ribs. He watches you sulk in the confession, your eyes showing the self-loathing you’ve been berating yourself with the moment you regained consciousness in the dirt, Damon’s rough hands and deep voice rattling you awake. His gaze is slow and unhurried, deliberately cataloguing every ounce of disappointment you have in yourself.
He’s never seen you this way before, never so hesitant, never so guarded, never so pathetic, and he intends to milk every last drop of it before swallowing it whole. It’s another part of you, one he intends to learn and memorize and control.
“I thought you were certain that you were ready,” he says. It is not a question.
Your spine straightens instinctively, pride yearning to defend itself in front of Silas.
“I was,” you affirm.
But it’s too late.
“Are you no longer?” he asks.
The trap he set is subtle.
Your pride flickers, but you swallow it before it can speak for you. You know Silas knows you feel it trying to claw its way out, and the only option you have is to not let it control you. It’s the only thing left you can do that proves you’re still worthy of his investment. That you can still be useful.
“I was ready for him to fight,” you answer slowly, carefully. “Not to end.”
Absolute silence.
Damon remains still as stone in front of you, his form hardening before your very eyes.
Silas’s eyes narrow slightly, seemingly a mix between annoyance, disbelief, and amusement.
“And why,” he begins, “did you prepare for a man like Morin to settle for anything less?”
The truth is that you believed he would measure you first. That he would savour the exchange. That Morin was a man who would like to carve his meals slowly, savoring the taste of the carnage he greedily absorbs. You thought he would enjoy the dance.
Instead, he chose execution the earliest chance he got.
“I thought he would want to make an example,” you explain. “Not a body.”
Silas studies you in the long, suffocating silence that follows. His gaze sharpens, and he clenches his jaw. His cigar is long forgotten between his fingers.
“Men like Morin do not need to make an example,” he replies. “Only erasure satiates them.”
Damon shifts before you—you feel it against your front. It’s not in movement, but in presence. A subtle flexion of his muscles that respond to the tightening in the air.
Silas rises from his chair. Damon steps back until he is at your spine in the same way he was mere hours ago, and Silas settles so close before you that you can feel the heat from his heavy exhales. He doesn’t touch you, but occupies your breaths. His shadow stretches across your boots, flames from the fire wildly flickering from behind his large, towering frame.
“You wanted to be seen as an opponent,” Silas says quietly. “Morin saw a threat. And threats are swiftly removed.”
Silas shifts slightly, his gaze peering over your left shoulder to Damon. His movement is small, but the gravity in the room responds dramatically. Your lungs grow tighter. Inhaling begins to feel like you’re breathing through a straw. Your heart accelerates. Your fingers vibrate in response to your weary hands. What is happening?
“And was that threshold real,” Silas asks Damon, sounding borderline accusatory, like he’s trying to evaluate something, “or imagined?”
Damon’s jaw has been set from the moment you both entered The Confessional, and it does not grow slack now. Not even in the face of Silas, who does not hide his evaluation.
“Real,” Damon replies.
He inhales a sharp breath before he continues.
“She would have died, Silas.”
Silas’s gaze does not waver. He stares intently at Damon, seemingly weighing the answer as carefully and methodically as he does with all the currency that passes through his hands.
“And you are certain?” he presses.
“Yes.” Damon’s answer is cold, detached, and blunt, as they usually are. There is no pride or heat, just undeniable, irrefutable, objective fact.
Silas watches a moment longer. His lips purse. Then, he nods. It’s curt, but decisive.
“You followed instruction. That’s good, Damon.”
Damon tilts his chin up to Silas.
“Useful as always,” Silas says. “I can rely on you.”
His gaze shifts back to you. His eyes are slightly lighter this time. Almost tender. Slightly concerned. Relieved.
“And I am glad that she remains alive,” he adds quietly, spoken like an afterthought he may not have intended to share. His statement sounds sincere.
Silas turns away and reclaims his seat at the head of the table with unhurried precision. The chair thuds as he sits in it. His eyes find Damon again.
“You intervened at just the correct moment. Precise as ever.”
The most praise you’ve ever witnessed Silas bestow upon Damon. And Damon accepts it the same way he accepts everything: without reaction. Nonetheless, you feel his presence behind you steady. It does not need pride or possession to operate, but it seems to value unambiguity.
Silas’s gaze returns to you, and whatever warmth existed in his voice evaporates before your very eyes.
“You got to command,” he begins, “and now you understand what commanding costs.”
His eyes hold yours long enough to ensure the lesson has carved itself deep enough in your skin to last a lifetime.
“Do not let it happen again,” he orders lowly, voice deep and steady. A warning, undoubtedly.
“I won’t,” you manage to exhale.
Silas studies you for one final, long moment. You feel watched by him. Like how you did when Morin had you on your knees, knife dragging down your body. He’s looking into you, exploring the depths of your darkness for an answer that matches the expression on your face you try so hard to conceal.
It’s not fear. Nor humiliation. Not even pain.
It’s something quieter. Unclear. Unresolved.
Silas’s eyes narrow slightly.
“What else?” he asks.
The image of forest green against stone flashes in your mind. That other feeling of also being watched… but in a different way. Measured. And what bothers you most of all—you don’t know why.
You hesitate enough for Silas to notice, though you don’t intend to.
“People were observing,” you say at last. “From a rooftop.”
Silas stills, and the temperature in the room drops once more. You expected him to have a reaction, and the fact that he says nothing—eyes locked onto yours, fingers still pinching the fat cigar—is chilling.
“I think they saw everything,” you continue.
Damon’s presence tightens into alertness behind you.
Silas finally blinks. “Did you recognize them?”
“No.”
He hums. “And yet you noticed them,” he murmurs. “What did they look like?”
“They were too far to see clearly,” you begin. “There were three. I could see only their top halves. They wore forest green cloaks."
Silas’s gaze rounds your hairline before it settles on your lips. He licks his, and smiles faintly.
“And you, Damon?” Silas asks, his gaze still not leaving you.
“I did not see anything, Boss,” he tentatively replies. “But it seems like you are not the only one who gathers data around here.”
Damon’s implication makes the air shift, and you suddenly feel strange.
Silas blinks again.
“You’re both dismissed.”
He turns away and waves his hand.
“Leave.”
And you do. You turn on your heel in sync with Damon, and wordlessly trail out behind him.
As the door to The Confessional closes, three certain truths clarify in your mind:
Another unknown, faceless, nameless ghost is on your trail,
Damon did not fail,
And Silas has not made it clear whether he decided you did.
—
An hour later, the street is quieter here than most places in the Underground.
It’s not the brittle quiet that settles over bars when a blade is drawn, nor the tense hush that crawls through alleyways cast in shadow when a deal turns sour. This quiet is softer—more apprehensive—worn tender by years of small, quiet lives trying very carefully not to be noticed.
A small house sits at the end of the rugged street, the framing long since surrendering its shape to time. The mortar of the brick stoop is crumbling in some places, rusted hinges barely keeping the ancient door upright. One of the front windows is patched with cloudy glass that softens the glow of the lanternlight inside into a dull haze, dark colored curtains framing the figure just beyond the window like a painting.
There’s a sort of cozy, homey energy that exudes from the house. It’s the sort of place that nurtures the last of the humanity in the Underground, keeping it safe from the criminality, drugs, prostitution, and boozing that has long since dimmed a once unique way of living.
A man stands across the narrow street for a moment that stretches longer than it needs to, his gaze lingering on the crooked doorframe, the weak light behind the glass, the quiet evidence of a life lived carefully in a place that does not reward care. There is no gang of men at his back, no blades flashing beneath the torchlight that cowers in his presence, no warning shouted from alleys before he spills blood into the dirt.
The street does not yet understand the weight of what has arrived. It continues to exist as it always has—slowly, cautiously, and small—the way it learned to in this place where survival depends on remaining small and insignificant.
The curtain stirs behind the cloudy glass, the soothing lanternlight shifting with it. The figure beyond it is a bit clearer now—the slow, frail old man sat comfortably in a chair reading literature.
Across the street, the other man watches. He chooses not to rush the moment—rather, he lets it bloom like a flower soaking in the warm rays of the sun upon the first warm spring day.
The faint ache in his ribs reminds him of the girl. The way she moved reminded him of a stubborn fire that refused to extinguish even as the breath was stolen from her lungs. The memory of her curls somewhere deeper in his chest—a darker place where the ache has not reached. It warms him like a small, amused flame.
So this is where she emerged from.
The man is sharp with focus.
His gaze is fixated on the house. The soft lantern glows, the fragile warmth spilling from its windows and onto the streets. It defies everything the Underground has spent decades becoming. Here, in this little house that looks more caved in than structured, that warmth seems to push back against the rot around it, however quietly. As if tenderness, when protected long enough, might begin to soften the harshness around it.
The man feels repulsion.
He crosses the street without hurry, the dirt of the stilled street stirring beneath his heavy boots. The torchlight nearest to the house flickers once in the draft of his passing, then settles. By the time he reaches the stoop, the whole street seems to have grown sparse, every caved pillar and darkened window holding its breath as it draws away from him.
The man stands before the door for a moment. He exhales. Then he lifts his hand and knocks softly.
Far too soft for what it intends.
Inside, a floorboard creaks. The blurred shape behind the window shifts, then disappears from the man’s view. A moment later, footsteps approach. They’re slow but not apprehensive—foolishly unguarded by the familiarity of someone who believes home is allowed to remain familiar once night has fallen.
A bolt slides free from the inside.
The door opens only a few inches at first, warm light spilling through the narrow seam and cutting across the dark, a small chain stretched tight between the frame and the door. An old man fills the small opening, boney shoulders barely filling out a worn sweater, age gathered into his features. There is caution and exhaustion in his eyes. The kind of someone who has lived long enough in the Underground to know that it does not manifest on your doorstep and knock without reason.
His gaze falls onto the man before him and his face tightens into a mix of disappointment and annoyance.
“It’s quite early. What is it you need?”
The man on the stoop does not answer immediately. His eyes move over the old man's face with patience that should not exist at this house, tracing the age in him, the strikingly mirrored features, the weariness, the flicker of something that had obviously been hope before the door opened and the Underground stole it.
The man’s mouth softens into something meant to be unthreatening. Neighborly. Faux tenderness laces his voice and conceals his intent.
“I have news about your girl,” he says.
The old man stills. Not fully—not in the way prey stills when it sees a starving predator—but in the smaller, sadder, more shocked way of a heart being struck with hope despite itself. Despite years of wisdom and experience trying to contain it. His fingers tighten softly around the frame of the door. He does not speak. His eyes search the stranger’s face on his doorstep, looking for a glimpse of something trustworthy.
The man effectively suppresses a smirk.
“What about her?”
The words landed exactly as intended.
The man lowers his voice, as if he speaks too loudly, the lie will reveal itself.
“She’s alive.”
A breath leaves the old man so quickly it is soundless, the only indication of the words escaping his lungs is the way his diaphragm caves in on itself. The relief that washes over him is fast and unguarded—a genuine response. One so intense it could not be contained, even as the old man’s logical suspicion follows close behind, slower but wiser.
The old man’s features draw tight once more.
“Who are you?”
The stranger’s gaze does not leave his.
“Someone who found her in bad shape. She told me where to bring word. She’s not in any shape to make it back tonight.”
The lie is smooth. Not because it’s pretty, but because this old man is practically milking it out of the stranger, seamlessly fabricating something out of nothing. It tastes sweet as honey on the man’s lips as it spills from them.
Something in the old man’s face shifts at that. It’s not trust—not yet. But enough yearning to wound the quiet enticement of sound judgment. And enough fear to squash it.
“She’s hurt?”
The man lets the question exist in the space between them for a beat too long before he performatively sighs.
“May I come in?”
The old man hesitates.
And in that hesitation lives the man he once was before fatherhood, grandfatherhood, when age hollowed his joints and softened the ferociousness of his hands. The smuggler who spent years slipping goods between the surface and the Underground does not vanish simply because his back aches now when he rises too fast, or because his mornings have grown quieter.
But his hope has been starved long enough.
It weakens him now in ways famine never could—after she left and never looked back.
The old man still remembers the rattle of the doorframe when she slammed it shut, his wife’s quiet gasp, the tremble in his own voice when he asked if they should call after her. The worry that it would be the last time he ever saw her—alive, anyway.
The old man’s shoulders grow slightly slack and his fingers loosen against the edge of the door. His eyes soften—just barely—as something unbearable pathetically crosses his face at the suggestion that his beloved granddaughter is near and breathing and wants to come home and is delayed merely by injury instead of absence.
And the stranger watches it happen. He watches love overtake the honed instinct of a now quiet old man who once was the Underground’s most skilled and tenured smuggler in his prime. He watches the judgement bend, then cave, then entirely reshape itself beneath the old man’s longing.
“If she’s hurt,” the old man says carefully, steadily, as if he’s doubting the resolve in his own words, “why did she not come herself?”
The stranger lowers his gaze just slightly, shaping his expression into something quiet. Respectful. The sort of face people wear when delivering news to a beloved they know will leave them wounded.
“She tried,” he begins, his voice quiet and low, faux sympathy soothing. “But she’s in no shape to be moving through the streets. ‘N’ you know it’s unwise for her to travel without being able to defend herself… not after the enemies she’s made, as you might’ve heard.”
Fear deepens the lines already carved into the old man’s face. It’s a helpless kind of fear—the kind reserved for the people one cannot protect anymore.
“Where is she?”
“Safe for the moment,” the stranger replies.
The man believes his words may be poorly chosen, too vague. He should have been more prepared to enter a verbal bargain with this old smuggler, but mindgames are a skill rendered underdeveloped in his criminal mind that has only needed to rely on brute force. He never needed to be smart. Only strong and fierce. Always the first to draw the blade and pierce the skin of his enemy.
But he sees something shift in the old smuggler’s bones, some instinct that has outlived his youth and bloodshed and the decades spent carrying contraband through roads where one wrong step meant lifelong imprisonment or death. It stirs now, faint but persistent, desperately warning the old smuggler to not open the door any wider.
But hope—now given the footing of a shape, a name, a face—is relentless.
And the love for his granddaughter—that kind of love makes fools of men who know better.
And so the old man closes the door a bit and reaches for the chain, metal softly scraping in the quiet of the Underground where noise rarely exists as the beast absorbs it.
He opens the door and steps aside.
The stranger walks in—
And the door shuts behind them.
Final.
---
a/n
hiiiii my lovely readers! i survived the semester and am back from my hiatus woohoo! i hope you all enjoy this chapter, i honestly think it's one of my better ones. feedback is welcome :)
i think time away from the story has cleared my head in the best way possible. coming back to this chapter with a fresh mind helped me a lot during the editing process, and i was able to make this chapter transform into something much better than the original draft. i won't yap about the details too much, but i will leave yall with this: a lot more is coming, and baby it's coming soon!
☆ Summary: For weeks, Levi refuses every confession you offer him. Then you stop asking, and he’s forced to face the wound he left behind.
☆ Pairing: Levi Ackerman x Female Reader
☆ Genre/Tags: Canon Compliant, Levi Ackerman is Bad At Feelings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Confessions, Jealous Levi, Angst With A Happy Ending
☆ Content Warnings: Minor blood and injury, references to death, alcohol use
☆ Word Count: 14.4k
☆ AO3 Link
☆ a/n: This was requested by Anonymous. THANK YOU to my beta reader @slaytherinthoughts for going through this long ass document and helping me! Much much love <3
[ I could not find the original artist. If anyone knows who the OC is, please tell me so I can credit them properly! ]
It was more of a slip of a tongue than anything.
It’s late in the night. The corridors have gone quiet. Everyone has finally surrendered to their sleep. Lanterns have either been snuffed or are running down to the end of the candle wicks. Branches of the trees drag across the glass, and somewhere beyond the courtyard, a horse whinnies, restless in the same way everyone seems restless these days, even where there’s nothing immediate to fear.
But you know as well as anyone, that there is always something to fear.
That’s the thing about the Scouts. You don’t carry fear with you. It follows you. It lives in your bones, beneath your fingernails, in your tight shoulders after a mission briefing, in silence that follows when someone says a name and no one answers because that person is already gone.
Maybe that’s why you’re so attracted to Levi. Because he never seems afraid. Not openly, anyway.
He sits at his desk with his sleeves rolled to his forearms, a stack of reports arranged neatly in front of him. His teacup is placed at the exact corner of the desk, where even one small shake of the desk could knock it over. His cravat is loosened slightly, but it’s not enough to make him look relaxed, because you believe Levi would rather be dragged through the streets tied by the hands than look relaxed where anyone can see him. But it’s enough that the sight catches you off guard every time you glance up from your own work.
You’re supposed to be copying casualty numbers into a ledger. You’re, instead, watching the flex of his fingers as he writes. It’s almost humiliating how attracted you are to them. It’s even worse because you realize that it’s humiliating, and yet you keep on doing it. You really should stop staring.
“You’re staring,” Levi says without looking up.
Your quill nearly slips from your fingers. Caught. “I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m thinking.”
“That must be new for you.”
Maybe you should be offended. Maybe you already are. Perhaps a part of you lifts its head, bares its teeth, and considers he’s awful and it’s about time you stop treating him like he’s royalty when all he’s done is insult your intelligence and correct your handwriting twice. But you simply smile over your ledger, because there’s obviously something wrong with you.
“I was thinking,” you say, dipping your quill again, “that you look nice like this.”
Levi’s hand stops. It’s tiny. So small. A momentary pause in gesture, a flicker of silence between one word and the next, and yet you notice it, as you always do. You always see the things you wish you didn’t, because your affection for him has made you perceptive to the point of self-injury.
Then he resumes writing. “Get your eyes checked.”
You laugh tiredly. “I mean it,” you say, because apparently your mouth has decided to ignore every remaining sensible instinct you possess. “You always look nice, but especially when you’re not threatening to make someone scrub the latrines with a toothbrush.”
“I can still threaten you, if that helps.”
“It might,” you say, and when he finally lifts his gaze to you, one brow faintly lifted, you press your lips together to keep yourself from smiling too much. “I think I might be falling in love with you, Captain.”
You definitely did not plan on saying that out loud.
The words are like a lit match dropped onto paper. You expect something to happen, though you’re not sure exactly what; maybe for Levi to look startled, maybe for your own heartbeat to become so loud that he hears it and tells you to quiet down, but there’s only the sound of his quill stopping and his eyes fixing on you with a disbelief that’s usually reserved for soldiers who have done something phenomenally stupid with live blades. You’ve seen Connie almost cut open his own hand at least a dozen times now.
“No, you’re not,” he says. It’s so blunt that, for a second, you almost laugh again.
“I think I know what I’m feeling.”
“You clearly don’t.”
“That’s a little presumptuous.”
“You’re exhausted. You’ve been copying death tolls for two hours, and your standards are slipping.”
You should probably retreat now, but the bruise of it is too new to hurt yet, and maybe you’re still brave because you haven’t learned your lesson on how this man can cut you without drawing steel.
“My standards are excellent,” you say. “That’s why I picked you.”
Levi stares at you. You stare back, fully aware of the heat gathering beneath your skin. You notice how he hasn’t looked back down yet.His face shifts—not much, because Levi’s expressions never move far enough to be generous, but enough that something flickers behind his eyes. You can’t tell what it is.
Then he presses his lips together and scoffs. “Finish the ledger. And don’t say stupid things just because it’s late.”
The match goes out. You look down. “Right,” you say, your smile feeling much more fragile than it was one minute ago. “Yes, sir.”
After that, you decide that confession didn’t count. It was late. You were tired. He was rude, but Levi is always rude, and somehow that makes the rejection easier to deal with.
Except it does count.
Because the next time you say it, you’re not tired enough to pretend you don’t mean it.
The next time you flirt with him is after training, when the sun is high and cruel and every inch of your uniform is clinging to your skin. The sound of the training grounds is always loud. Someone groans dramatically near the water barrels. Sasha is arguing that dinner time should be two hours earlier than it is, to which Jean tells her that she’s going to get kicked out of the Scouts with her behavior. Eren is insisting to Mikasa that he could take down one of the veterans in hand-to-hand combat, which is not true and everyone knows is not true.
You’re bent forward with your hands braced on your knees, sweat dripping from your chin into the dust, lungs burning, thighs trembling with the intensity of being thrown onto your back three times by a man who has the emotional warmth of a snail. Levi stands several feet away, not even breathing hard. You hate him a little for it. You love him more.
“You’re leaving your right side open,” he says, acting like that’s the main problem and not the fact that he’s driven your spine to the ground so many times that the two of them might as well get married.
You straighten your back, wincing when your shoulders throb in pain. “I noticed.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“I’m choosing to believe you’re only being this mean because you’re impressed.”
“I’m not.”
“Wounded,” you say, touching a hand to your chest. “And after I gave you such a good show.”
Levi’s eyes narrow as they fix on you. There’s dirt on your cheek, gritty beneath the sweat. Your hair is tousled, strands sticking to your face and neck. You know you probably look half-dead, which makes it even more ridiculous when you grin at him as though you’re the one with the upper hand.
“If I land a hit, you have to have tea with me,” you say, shifting your stance again, though your legs are already screaming in pain.
You feel the shift around you immediately, the tiny ripple of attention passing across the training grounds. People know by now. They know you admire him. They know you’re reckless enough to smile at him when most soldiers avert their eyes. They know Levi has never once softened for you in front of them. But they don’t know that you’ve already told him once. They don’t know that some small part of you is hoping the second time will land differently.
Levi looks at you for a long moment. “Good thing you won’t,” he finally says.
Then he attacks. It’s over quickly. You last longer than you did the first round, which you’ll cling to as a personal victory when your pride has stopped bleeding. But it’s not enough to make him sweat, and certainly not long enough to win yourself tea. He hooks your ankle and drops you onto the dirt with one hand gripping your sleeve and the other arm pressed against your throat.
He’s too close. Close enough that you can see the dark crescents beneath his eyes, the tiny nick near his jaw from shaving too quickly, the dust clinging to his hair. Close enough that his arm, still pressed against you, feels like the only solid point in the universe.
“You know,” you say breathlessly, “there are easier ways to get me on my back.”
Someone chokes in the distance. Jean, probably. Armin winces and covers his face. Levi’s expression doesn’t change, but his fingers clench your sleeve before he releases you and stands up.
“Get up,” he says.
You push yourself onto your elbows. “No tea, then?”
“No.”
“Dinner?”
“No.”
“A walk?”
“No.”
“An emotionally honest conversation?”
“Are you always this annoying?”
You laugh then. If you don’t laugh, you think you might cry a little. To anyone else, it would sound like he despises you, but you know deep down, he appreciates your presence. At least, you think he does. You hope.
Levi steps back, eyes already moving toward the others. “Again,” he says.
Your smile falters. “Again?”
“You wanted to land a hit.”
“I also want to retain the use of my spine.”
“Then move correctly.”
You groan, but you get up anyway. When he turns away to retrieve the training blade he had discarded near the fence, you miss how his gaze drops briefly to the place where his fingers had been on your sleeve. He didn’t mean to do that.
Levi hates this. Not you. This. This thing you keep doing. This reckless habit of saying what you feel for him as though feelings are not the most complex thing known to man, wanting someone has never been a mistake, and affection is something you can simply place in another person’s hands and expect them not to drop it. He has no use for it. He has no patience for it.
And yet, when you stand again with dirt on your uniform and that stubborn light in your eyes, Levi’s first though is not that you’re irritating like he says you are.
It’s that you’re still alive and with him.
His second thought is that he wants you to stay that way.
His third thought is so dangerous that he buries it before it finishes forming.
.
People start to make jokes about you and Levi. The Scouts have a talent for taking anything sensitive and turning it into humor. It begins—as it always does—in the mess hall. It’s loud. The long tables are crowded with soldiers leaning shoulder to shoulder, passing bread, stealing scraps, arguing over insignificant things (mostly Eren and Jean), laughing too loudly at stories that are shared between moments in the training yard.
You sit with your squad, eating your soup as you try not to stare at the officers’ table. You naturally fail. Levi sits apart even among the other officers, a cup of tea held lightly in one hand. Erwin is talking beside him, and Hange is gesturing enthusiastically enough—probably about their latest experiments—to nearly knock over their own bowl. Levi appears to be listening, though his eyes flick briefly toward the table with Connie and Sasha when both of them laugh too loud.
Then he looks at you.
“You’re doing it again,” Petra says beside you.
You look down at your soup immediately. “I’m eating.”
“You’re daydreaming.”
“I’m not!”
“You absolutely are,” Oluo says, leaning back with misplaced confidence. “It’s pathetic, really.”
“You bite your tongue every other sentence trying to imitate him. Don’t start throwing stones,” Eld says. Oluo sputters. You smile, grateful for the distraction and defense, but your eyes betray you by drifting toward Levi again; and this time Gunther catches it too.
“You could always confess again,” he says. You had told the squad about your confession a week or so ago, and naturally, they found it the funniest thing in the world. And then they called you the stupidest person in the world. “Maybe persistence will wear him down.”
“It works on doors,” Eld says.
“Levi isn’t a door,” Petra says.
“He’s got the personality of one,” you say. That earns a few laughs.
Across the room, Levi’s eyes lift again. You know immediately that he heard that last part. The man could probably hear dust drifting in the air. For a moment, you consider looking away. Instead, because your pride is a stubborn creature, you lift your cup and toast it in his direction. His eyes narrow, but you smile anyway. He looks back to Erwin.
That should have been the end of it, but it wasn’t. After dinner, when the mess hall begins to empty and soldiers drift toward their beds or their duties, you find yourself in the kitchen near the dedicated tea station—which you’re convinced was set up only for Levi—reaching for the kettle at the exact same time Levi does. Your fingers nearly brush, and it’s enough for your breath to hitch. Levi glances at your hand, then at you.
“Move,” he says.
“You could say please,” you mutter.
“I could also assign you stable duty.”
“You make romance very difficult, Captain.”
He frowns at the title, but you don’t really notice it too much since you’re trying to not pour hot water on yourself. You’re being ridiculous, you think. It’s only tea. He barely touched you. Levi is just standing this close—close enough that you can smell his soap—because he’s impatient and waiting for the kettle.
Behind you, someone snickers. You don’t turn, but Levi does. The snickering stops with impressive speed. “Problem?” he asks.
“No, sir,” several voices answer.
You press your lips together to stop yourself from laughing. Levi turns back to you. “You enjoy making yourself a spectacle?”
You don’t know why, but those words hit a tender spot in your nerves. Your smile falters. “I’m not trying to.”
“Aren’t you?”
That stings. Not badly, but enough for you to look down at the tea in your cup, watching the surface tremble with the tiny motion of your hand. “I just like you,” you say, quiet enough for only him to hear.
The silence that follows is almost deadly. Levi doesn’t move. You suddenly wish you’d said it louder, made it into a joke or dressed it up with such an unserious tone that he could brush it off as nothing. But it’s not nothing.
Levi’s face tenses. “Don’t,” he says.
One word. Not no. Not stop. Don’t. You’ve clearly reached for a wound without knowing it was there. Your throat tightens slightly. It’s stupid how much that single word hurts. The others have gone quiet behind you, though whether because they heard or because Levi’s silence has made things tense, you don’t know. You nod once.
“Sorry,” you say.
Levi’s jaw flexes. For the briefest moment, his eyes change, and a hint of regret moves through them, but then he reaches for his cup, turns away, and leaves you standing at the tea station with a teacup in your hand that suddenly feels too hot to hold.
You should probably stop. You tell yourself that while watching him disappear down the corridor. You tell yourself this while you stand there with the unbearable knowledge that you won’t.
.
Levi doesn’t sleep well that night, which isn’t unusual. Sleep has always been an issue for him. It’s something his body demands but his mind resents, a brief surrender that leaves too much room for memory to crawl in with its dirty hands. He’s accustomed to lying awake for hours. He’s accustomed to the silence of the night and his own thoughts circling until they get stripped down to their bones.
He’s not used to thinking about the way your voice sounded when you said, I just like you. Then he realizes that’s a lie. He is used to thinking about your voice. That’s the issue.
Levi lies on his back in the dark, one arm folded behind his head. His eyes are fixed on the ceiling. He knows this has gone on long enough. You’re careless with your affection. You throw it around like it costs nothing. Like you have so much of it that losing some wouldn’t hurt you.
Then he remembers your hand trembling around your cup. He realizes, no, you’re not careless. That would be easier. Careless people don’t look away so quickly when they’re hurt. Careless people don’t apologize for taking up too much space in someone else’s guarded life. Careless people don’t learn how someone takes their tea and remembers it without being asked. You’re not careless. You’re one of the few sincere people he knows. That’s worse to him.
Levi closes his eyes. Behind them, he sees you smiling at him across the training yard, flushed and breathless, daring him to be human for one second. He sees you in the mess hall, laughing because everyone else is laughing, even though your eyes keep searching for him. He sees you tonight, freezing around a single word.
Don’t.
He should have said something else. He should have said nothing. He should have made you stop sooner. If you stop, this ends. If this ends, no one gets hurt. Except he already hurt you.
Levi opens his eyes. The ceiling offers no answers, no matter how hard he stares.
“Damn brat,” he mutters.
.
The confessions become a routine, almost. They’re never spoken in the same way, but they become woven into the strange fabric of your days. It’s as familiar as the bitter taste of weak coffee when tea runs low and the scent of soap after Levi has ordered an entire hallway scrubbed because someone left a single muddy footprint in it.
You tell him in fractions. Sometimes lightly. Sometimes accidentally. Sometimes because the feeling rises up in you with nowhere else to go, and the alternative is swallowing it until you choke.
Levi rejects you every time. Sometimes you think he has a list of things to say prepared. Sometimes you think he makes them up on the spot. You’re not sure which scenario is worse.
The fourth time you confess comes in the stables, of all places. Rain has slicked the yard into a mess. The horses are restless tonight. You’re adjusting tack and cleaning hooves, your sleeves rolled up despite the cold because one of the mares keeps nudging your elbow and trying to chew the cuff.
Then Levi enters. “You’re doing that wrong,” he says.
You glance down at the stirrup strap in your hand. “I haven’t even done anything yet.”
“Exactly.”
You sigh and step aside, letting him take over, because while there are many hills you’re willing to die on, arguing with Levi about equipment care isn’t one of them. He checks and adjusts the straps that you already did. Then he lifts the tack onto the assigned mare to make sure everything looks good. The horse calms beneath his touch, which is unfair, because Levi is as soft as a sword, yet animals seem to understand him. You watch him stroke one hand down the mare’s neck, murmuring something too low for you to catch. You feel a strange flutter in your stomach.
“You’re gentle with them,” you say before you can stop yourself.
Levi looks at you. “With horses.”
“Horses. Animals. Things that scare easily.”
His expression goes blank, and it tells you instantly that you’ve stepped too close to something he’s not willing to reveal yet. You should retreat, and yet, you don’t.
“I like that about you.”
His hand stops on the strap. Rain thunders on the roof. The mare huffs, her warm breath ghosting into the air. Levi stares at you for a long moment, then says, “You’re reading too much into basic competence.”
“Maybe,” you say. “Or maybe you’re more careful than you want people to know.”
Levi looks away before you can follow up, tightening the girth. “Stop romanticizing me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“Maybe I’m just seeing you for who you are.”
He laughs humorlessly. “You should look somewhere else.”
You breathe in through your nose, the scent of hay and wet earth filling your nostrils. It should be comforting, but you feel foolish standing here with your heart spilling out of your chest like this.
“Maybe I don’t want to,” you say.
Levi hardens. “That’s your problem.”
You flinch. It’s tiny, but it’s there. You know it’s visible because Levi’s eyes move immediately to your face. You can tell he caught it. He seems to recoil, his brows drawing faintly together, but then he looks away.
“Finish checking the tack,” he says.
You nod. “Yes, sir.”
.
You don’t count the next time you confess because you’re half-delirious with exhaustion after an expedition that has left everyone hollow-eyed and covered with dirt and moving like ghosts through the building. You sit on a bench outside the infirmary with a bandage around your forearm and a bruise forming on your ribs, watching medics hurry past you. Levi is standing next to you with blood on his sleeve—blood that doesn’t belong to him—with a look in his eyes that tells you he’s not fully here.
You’re alive. He’s alive. Too many others are not. That kind of thing makes people act and speak recklessly. Which is why you think you say what you say.
Levi hasn’t spoken to you since returning through the gate except to ask if you were injured, and when you showed him your arm, he clicked his tongue and said, “Idiot,” with enough fury that you understood he had already been watching when that Titan came too close.
Now he stands in front of you, arms crossed, staring at the bandage. “You hesitated,” he says.
You look up at him. “What?”
“Out there. You hesitated.”
You’re far too tired to defend yourself quickly. You say, exhausted, “I was trying to pull Kessler back.”
“Kessler was already dead.”
You look away. You know that. You felt the moment that Kessler’s body relaxed and it started dragging you down. You felt the horrible slackness of his arm in your grip. You knew, even then, but knowing and letting go are not the same thing, and you’re too tired for Levi’s version of mercy.
“I know,” you say.
“Do you?”
Your head snaps back up, anger flaring. “Yes, Levi. I know.”
His eyes narrow at the use of his name. Good. Let him hate it. Let him feel something.
“I know he was dead,” you continue. “I know I almost got myself killed trying to save someone who was already gone. I know that was stupid. I know you’re going to tell me it was stupid. I know.”
Levi stares at you as you breathe too hard. Your ribs ache. Your eyes burn, though you refuse to let any tears fall, because crying in front of Levi after a mission feels like bleeding in front of a shark. His jaw works once.
“Then don’t do it again,” he says.
It’s still an order, but there’s a certain rawness underneath it that makes your anger falter. You look at him, at the dirt on his clothes, the blood on his sleeve, the exhausting plastered on his face. You look at the man everyone calls humanity’s strongest, standing there as though strength has ever saved him from grief.
The words come out before you can stop them. “I worry about you too, you know.” He tilts his head, expression hardening. You should probably stop, but you don’t. “I know you don’t want me to. I know you think it’s stupid, or useless, or whatever else you tell yourself when people care about you, but I do.” Your hands curl into fists against your thigh, nails biting into your palms. “I worry every time we leave the walls. I worry every time you go quiet after we come back. I worry because I—”
“Enough.”
You shut your mouth. Levi is no longer looking at you, but through you. You feel a shiver run down your spine. He can’t even look at you when turning you down?
“Don’t make this into something it isn’t.”
You swallow. “And what is it?”
“A bad habit.”
You feel the color drain from your face. The whole world closes around you. You can only focus on the mud on the soles of your boots, the muffled sounds of suffering through the infirmary doors, Levi standing there with his hands clenched so tightly beneath his crossed arms that his knuckles have blanched.
A bad habit. That’s what your affection has become. An inconvenience. Something to correct.
You nod once, though the movement feels fuzzy. “Right,” you say.
Levi eyes flick back to yours. You stand before you can fully lock your gazes. Pain flashes through your ribs, and you nearly sway, but you keep yourself upright because you can’t bear the thought of him seeing you so weak.
“I should get this checked again,” you say.
Levi’s gaze drops to your arm. “You already did.”
“I know.”
He understands then. You see it happen, the moment he realizes you’re leaving because of him, not because of the wound. He doesn’t stop you. You walk away.
Behind you, Levi remains still for a long time. Long after your footsteps disappear. Long after the rain begins again. Long after he realizes that the words he meant to use to keep you alive have found the most tender spot of your heart.
And still, you come back. You always come back. Even if it pains you to see him right now.
The next morning, you pass him in the corridor and give him a smile that’s smaller than usual. “Captain,” you say.
Levi nods once. He expects you to say something else. Some joke. Some reckless little comment. Some ridiculous remark about how he looks like he slept badly and should let you fix that by being charming towards him for ten minutes.
You say nothing, and you keep walking. Levi turns his head without thinking, watching you disappear around the corner. He has a strange feeling in his chest. Annoyance, he decides. That’s all it is.
That’s all it ever will be.
.
Days later, while you’re cleaning, you stand on a stool to reach for a stack of fresh rags on the highest shelf of the supply room. Shelves line the walls from floor to ceiling, packed with folded clothes, brushes, buckets, spare mopheads, bottles of polish, and enough cleaning solution to disinfect the entire world if Levi ever gets his way. The door opens behind you.
“Careful,” Levi says.
You glance down. He stands in the doorway, arms crossed, looking entirely unimpressed. With what, you’re not sure. He seems to be in a perpetual state of disappointment with the world. You can’t say you blame him.
“I am being careful,” you reply.
“Standing on that thing will make you crack your skull open.”
“It’s a stool. It’s meant to be stood on.”
“...It’s wobbling.”
“That’s because it fears you.”
“It should.”
You laugh. It surprises you. Maybe it surprises him too, because Levi’s eyes flick up to your face and stay there for half a second too long. There’s a dangerous pause, and both of you feel it. You ignore it and reach for the rags too quickly to escape it, your fingers brushing the edge of the stack. You can’t quite grab it. The stool shifts.
Your balance suddenly tips just enough for your stomach to drop. Before you can correct yourself or grab onto anything, one of Levi’s hands meets your waist, the other gripping your forearm. You feel your heart slam against your ribs.
“Idiot,” he snaps.
You can’t focus on anything except for his fingers on your waist, warm through the fabric of your shirt. He’s standing so close behind you that when you inhale, you catch his scent. It’s always smelled of clean soap with an undercurrent of something almost like cedar.
You look down at his hand. He does too. Then he releases you as if you’ve burned him. “Get down,” he says.
You quickly grab the rags and climb off the stool, holding the items to your chest. “Thank you,” you say.
“Don’t thank me. Stop doing stupid things.”
“I was just trying to reach the—”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I—I had it under control, Captain.”
“No, you didn’t.”
You pause, then you hesitantly say, “You worry about me.”
Levi’s eyes flash briefly before he restrains it. “No.”
You tilt your head. “No?”
“No.”
“Then what was that?”
“Reflex.”
“Your reflex was to grab my waist?”
His mouth tightens, which is how you know you’ve gotten under his skin. “My reflex was to stop a soldier from injuring themselves because they can’t manage basic balance.”
“That almost sounded affectionate.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
You smile then, because despite everything, despite the way he keeps pushing you away with both hands while somehow still catching you when you stumble, your heart keeps finding reasons to love him.
“I think you care about me more than you want to admit,” you say.
Levi steps closer. Your smile fades as his shadow falls over you. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
You hold his gaze, and for once, you don’t try to soften the moment with a joke or quip. There are moments you need to be serious, and this is one of them. “Maybe not, but I know what it feels like when you look at me.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
His answer comes far too fast. Levi seems to realize it at the same time you do, because he sighs and looks away toward the shelves.
“I wish you’d let me care about you,” you say quietly. Levi’s head turns back, and suddenly, the room feels smaller than it did a moment ago.
“I don’t need that from you.”
It’s not the cruelest thing he’s said, but it still breaks a piece of you inside. You inhale slowly, gripping the rags a bit tighter. “Sorry.”
Frustration flickers across his face, but you can tell it’s directed inward this time, at himself, at you, at the entire existence of this thing neither of you seems to be willing to label.
“Just do your job,” he says, harsher now.
“Yes, Captain.”
You don’t see the small flinch he gives when you turn back to the shelves.
.
By now, Levi has recognized that there are stages to this. First, you say something reckless and stupid. Second, he rejects it. Third, you smile. Fourth, he says something. Fifth, your smile falters. Sixth, he feels like the worst kind of bastard for doing that. Seventh, he tells himself you brought it on yourself. Eighth, he thinks about it all night.
It’s a miserable system. He wishes to dismantle it. He’d like, more than that, to understand why he keeps waiting for it to happen again, because that’s the part he can’t excuse. He can excuse rejection. Rejection is clean and sets boundaries where your affection keeps trying to cross them. He can excuse harshness. Harshness is useful. Soldiers listen better to shouts than soft pleas. He can even excuse the anger that rises in him whenever you come too close, because anger is familiar, and familiarity makes things easier to handle.
But he can’t excuse the waiting. He can’t excuse his attention shifting when you enter a room. He can’t excuse the fact that he knows your footsteps by sound now. He can’t excuse how he notices when you don’t look at him. He definitely can’t excuse how guarded he feels when your voice comes gently, as if he’s bracing for impact from a hand that’s never struck him.
He hates it. He hates the anticipation. He hates the feeling that lingers. He hates that some part of him, buried deep beneath the discipline and the loss and blood, wants to hear you say it again. He wants to know if you still mean it. He wants to know how many times he can refuse you before you finally decide he’s not worth the trouble.
Part of him hopes the answer is infinite.
.
You find Levi in the corridor outside of Erwin’s office, standing with a stack of documents in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. His expression is blank as always, lit by the dim afternoon light. The day has been mostly gray from morning onward. The entirety of headquarters feels submerged. You’re carrying reports from the supply division when you stop beside him.
He looks tired. Levi often looks tired, but there are different tiers to it, and you’ve learned them despite not trying to. This isn’t ordinary irritation or sleep deprivation. This is the kind that only comes after countless meetings and casualty estimates, after decisions that will ask other people to die in the name of maybe—someday—being free from the Titans.
“You should eat something,” you say.
His eyes slide to you. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I meant what I said. Leave me alone.”
“Not until you eat.”
He exhales through his nose. “Are you always this insistent?”
“With you? Usually.”
“Fantastic for me.”
You smile. “You make it very easy.” He looks away. Instead of walking away like you know you should, you shift the reports against your chest and say, “I brought extra bread.”
Levi’s gaze returns to you. “What?”
“For you.” You try to shrug it off, pretending like you haven’t been carrying it wrapped in cloth beneath the reports because you noticed he skipped lunch. “It’s in my pocket. Which sounds unsanitary, but I wrapped it. Mostly.”
He stares at you, then says, “You’re ridiculous.”
“Probably.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
You wish he wouldn’t ask. You wish, sometimes, that Levi would allow kindness to come to him without dragging it into the spotlight and demanding to know whether it has teeth or not. But he’s looking at you now with a challenge in his eyes, but something else lingers. Something that tells you he doesn’t understand why anyone would go out of their way for him unless obligated or expecting something in return. Your heart hurts for him.
“Because I care,” you say.
Levi grips his documents a little more. “Stop it.”
“I’m not asking you for anything.”
“You are.”
You frown. “No, I’m not.”
“You say things like that because you want me to say them back.”
There’s a bitter taste in your mouth, maybe because it’s partly true, and maybe because it’s not the whole truth, and he’s chosen the ugliest piece of it to hold up between you.
“I want you to eat something,” you say quietly. “That’s all this was.”
Levi says nothing. You reach into your pocket, pull out the wrapped bread, and place it carefully on top of the documents in his hand. His eyes drop to it, then lift to meet you.
“You don’t have to make everything a battle,” you say.
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“No, you didn’t,” you say, the words coming out a little sadder than you intend. You see him hear it, and you see the shift in his eyes. But you don’t wait for him to respond. You walk away, reports held tightly against your torso, and you tell yourself that caring about someone shouldn’t feel this much like holding your hand over an open flame and pretending the burn is proof of devotion.
Behind you, Levi looks down at the bread. He stands there and stares at it for a long time. Then, with a quiet curse, he takes it with him into the office. He eats it later. Every bite tastes like guilt.
.
“You know,” Hange says one afternoon, leaning casually against the doorway of Levi’s office while he tries to read a report and pretend they’re not there, “most people enjoy being adored.”
“Most people are idiots,” Levi says.
“True, true. But still. It’s good for morale.”
Levi doesn’t look up from his papers. “If you’re here to waste my time, find a better hobby.”
“I have several. You hate all of them.”
“Because they’re obnoxious.”
“Everything is obnoxious to you.”
Levi’s quill pauses, and that makes Hange grin a little more. He resumes writing, shaking his head. This isn’t exactly new business—Hange always comes to annoy him for the most miniscule problems and to talk about the most insignificant topics. He’s learned how to block it out over the years.
“I’m serious,” Hange says. The shift in their tone catches Levi’s attention. “She cares about you.”
“No shit.”
“And you care about her.”
The quill stops again, and this time, it doesn’t resume. Levi lifts his eyes slowly, sharpened to a point. “Careful.”
Hange, to their credit or possibly their doom, doesn’t turn around and leave like any sensible human would after the tone Levi just used against them. “That sounded like a threat.”
“It was.”
“Mm.” Hange tilts their head, studying him in such an invasive way that it makes Levi want to shove them into the nearest supply closet and lock the door. “You get nastier after she talks to you.”
“I get nastier after you talk to me too.”
“Yes, but that’s because I’m charming in a way that overwhelms you.”
“You’re exhausting in a way that makes murder understandable.”
Hange waves his remark away. “With her, it’s different.”
Levi’s face goes blank. Is it different with you? He realizes now that while he blocks out Hange’s antics, he doesn’t block out yours. He realizes that all the times he’s kicked Hange out for uttering a single stupid sentence, he’s let you stay after uttering a dozen. Hange sees the realization and smiles softly.
“I’m not saying you have to return anything,” they say. “No one can make you feel something you don’t. But if you don’t, you should stop letting her bleed herself dry trying to reach you.”
“I’m not letting her do anything.”
“No,” Hange says, “you’re just standing there while it happens.” The room goes dangerously quiet. Levi looks down at the report, but the words have rearranged into nonsense. Hange sighs deeply. “For what it’s worth, I think she knows you’re not as indifferent as you act.”
Levi’s grip tightens around the quill. “She’s wrong.”
“Maybe.” He looks up at that. Hange gives him a sad little smile, which is worse than their normal grin, worse than their teasing, worse than anything else they could have done. “But if she’s wrong, then you should make that clear before it hurts her even more.”
Levi says nothing. Hange leaves.
That evening, you bring Levi tea. You didn’t plan on doing so. It just sort of happened. You told yourself several times that day that you’d stop doing things like this, acting like your kindness is water and he’s a dying flower that you can bring back to life. You pass the kitchen, see the kettle, and think of the tension in his face that morning.
So you make the tea. Because you’re weak and hopeful, and you’re beginning to suspect those are sometimes the same thing.
When you arrive at his office, the door is slightly ajar. You knock anyway. He calls for you to come in, and you step inside. Levi sits behind his desk, eyes on a report, the candlelight casting shadows across his face. The room is painfully neat, which you should have expected. Your presence feels immediately disruptive. You carry the cup carefully, both hands around the saucer.
“I made too much,” you say.
Levi looks at the tea, then at you. “You made too much tea?”
“Yes.”
“For yourself?”
“Yes.”
“In one cup?”
You blink at him. He stares back at you. Your face warms slightly. Not your best attempt, but it was worth it. “Fine. That was a terrible lie.”
“Embarassing.”
“Deeply.”
He leans back slightly, crossing his arms. “You here for a reason?”
The question should be harmless, but it’s not. You think of all the times Levi has made you feel childish for just wanting a connection. You think of the fact that your hand is already starting to ache from holding the saucer too tightly.
“No,” you say. “Not really.” You step closer and set the cup on his desk, exactly where he usually keeps it, because you’ve grown to know the exact spot by now. “I just thought you’d want some.”
“I can make my own tea.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then stop.”
You look at him. His face is unreadable, but his eyes are clear as day. There’s a tension and conflict there, anger held down so hard that you see it shaking. But you’re tired too. Tired of reading hope into every almost-soft thing he does. Tired of standing at the edge of him, calling out, and hearing only your own voice come back.
“Stop bringing you tea?” you ask.
“Stop acting like this means something.”
Your heart drops. “This?”
Levi looks at you. For once, you wish he wouldn’t. At the same time, you want him to.
“All of it,” he says. “I’ve told you no multiple times. What part of that are you too stupid to understand?”
All of it. The tea. The bread. The jokes. The concern. The confessions. The look you give him after missions. You remembering his preferences. The way you keep offering pieces of yourself and pretending it doesn’t matter when he refuses to take them. All of it.
You nod, though it feels like something has finally broken inside you.
You’re too tired to keep doing this.
“I see,” you whisper.
Levi’s eyes gleam in the moonlight as he looks at you. He looks like he might say something else. Something better. Something worse. You don’t even give him the chance.
“I’m sorry,” you say, your voice calm enough to make yourself believe that you’re not hurt. “I didn’t realize I was making you uncomfortable.”
Levi makes a face, the most emotion you’ve seen from him in months. “That’s not—”
“I’ll stop.”
He goes silent. You give him a small smile because you can’t seem to help yourself. Even now, you’re trying to make things easier for him, because some habits are harder to kill than hope. Then you turn toward the door.
Behind you, Levi says your name. It stops you for a second, but only a second. You look back. His hand is resting near the cup, not touching it. He looks almost panicked, if Levi Ackerman were capable of such an honest expression.
“Yes?” you say. He says nothing, and there it is. The whole tragedy of him. You wait one second. Then two. Then you nod. “Goodnight, Captain.”
You leave. The door closes behind you. Levi sits very still. The tea cools untouched on his desk. And for the first time, the silence you leave behind feels less like peace and more like punishment.
.
You stop.
You don’t stop in a manner that would give him the satisfaction of calling it dramatic, because the stubborn, wounded part of you refuses to let Levi Ackerman look at the ruin he’s made of your heart.
You don’t avoid your duties. You don’t let your work slip. You don’t flinch when his name is mentioned, and you don’t turn your head too quickly when he speaks, and you don’t stand in the kitchen holding the kettle, telling yourself that tea is only tea and kindness is only kindness and that none of it has to mean anything unless he lets it.
You simply stop offering. That’s all.
Reports appear on his desk when they’re supposed to. Your handwriting is clean across the pages. Supplies are accounted for. Gear is cleaned, straps are checked, blades are sharpened, and when you pass him in the corridor, you step aside with the same respect you would give any superior officer.
“Captain.”
Nothing more. No little smile curling around the title. No teasing lift to your brow. No, you look terrible, did you sleep at all? No, I saved you bread before Sasha could inhale the entire basket. No, if you keep glaring like that, your face will get stuck and then what will we do?
Just Captain.
The first time it happens, Levi tells himself he’s relieved.
He has paperwork in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. You walk down the hall with a crate of medical linens balanced against your hip, your sleeves rolled to your elbows. You see him, shift the crate higher, and move out of the way.
“Captain,” you say. Levi nods once. You keep walking. That’s all there is to your interaction.
He should be relieved. Instead, he grips his teacup a little tighter. Idiot, he thinks, though he’s not entirely sure whether he means you or himself.
By the second day, the relief has turned into irritation.
You’re everywhere, because the universe apparently has something against him and is trying to force you into his everyday life when he’s trying his hardest not to notice you. In the training yard, helping one of the newer recruits correct their stance with a voice soft enough that the soldier actually listens instead of stiffening under correction. In the mess hall, laughing at something Petra says, your face finally turned away from him. In the corridor outside Erwin’s office, handing over a stack of documents to Miche with a polite nod before disappearing around the corner before Levi can decide whether he wants to speak to you.
Not that he does. He doesn’t. There’s nothing to say, after all. He told you to stop, and you stopped. That’s how orders are supposed to work.
Levi’s spent his life surrounded by people who either don’t listen or listen too late, by soldiers who break formation, by fools who mistake hope for strategy, by men who die because they can’t follow one simple command when terror has sunk its teeth into them. He should appreciate obedience. He should appreciate silence. He should appreciate how you gave him exactly what he asked for.
Instead, every “Captain” feels like a door slamming shut in his face. And the worst part, the most aggravating, unforgivable part, is that you’re not even punishing him. Punishment would be easier. Punishment would give him something to push against. If you snapped at him, he could snap back. If you glared, he could meet it with his own colder stare. If you cried, if you accused him, if you said, how dare you, Levi, after all the chances I gave you, then at least he would know what to do.
But you do none of them. You’re kind. Professionally kind. You answer when spoken to. You follow orders without hesitation. You still look after the youngest soldiers, still trade your last piece of bread to Sasha, still smile when Armin asks a question and still help Connie adjust his gear that he should know how to adjust by now. You haven’t become colder in all aspects—you’ve merely taken your warmth away from him.
And Levi, who has survived hunger, blood, filth, loss, and the Underground’s endless ruthlessness, finds himself undone by the absence of things he once pretended not to want.
By the third day, Hange notices. They appear beside him in the training yard while he’s watching you across the dirt, though he’d rather be disemboweled with his own blades than admit that he’s watching you. You’re speaking to Eld near the fence, head tilted as you listen, one hand braced on your hip, the other gesturing toward the Titan dummies. Eld says something that makes you laugh.
Hange hums. “Interesting.”
“Walk away,” Levi says.
“I didn’t even say anything—”
“You were about to.”
“I was going to say the weather’s nice.”
“It’s overcast.”
“Emotionally, then.”
Levi turns his head just enough to glare. Hange grins, but their expression softens too quickly, and that’s how he knows he’s in trouble. He can handle Hange’s manic curiosity, their teasing, their horrifying experiments, their complete lack of respect for personal space or peace. He can’t handle pity.
“She stopped,” Hange says.
Levi looks back toward the yard. “Good.”
Hange’s brows rise. “Very convincing.”
“Shut up.”
“You told her to?” Levi says nothing, and that’s answer enough. Hange exhales, not quite a sigh. “Well, congratulations. You won.”
Hange looks ahead at you. Across the yard, you take the training blade Eld offers you and shift into position. Levi looks back at you, and he sees how dirt has already lined your face. There’s no bright glance tossed in his direction, no grin, no silent invitation for him to notice you. It makes him furious. Not at you, though—that would be simpler. No, the fury coils inward, because there’s a place inside him that recognizes that this silence is something he made with his own hands.
“I did what needed to be done,” he says.
Hange tilts their head. “For who?”
Levi doesn’t answer, and instead, he watches you lunge, watches Eld parry, watches your foot slide back to correct your balance—something you learned from him. There are pieces of him in your movements now. Small ones. Things he taught you without meaning to leave any part of himself behind.
For who?
His mouth dries. For you, he wants to say, but even in his own head, the lie limps, because if this were for you, then why does your smile seem weaker when you think no one is looking?
.
That evening, you deliver papers to his office. You knock once.
“Come in,” he says, and he hates that he knows it’s you just by the sound of your footsteps approaching. You step inside with the papers held to your torso. For some stupid reason, Levi expects tea. There’s none, only papers. You cross the room, set the stack on the corner of his desk, and take a half step back.
“Commander Erwin asked that these be reviewed before morning,” you say.
Your voice is perfectly calm. It’s built for distance, polished until nothing tender can catch onto it. Levi’s eyes shift from the reports, then to you.
“You can leave them,” he says.
You nod. “Yes, Captain.”
Levi swears his eye twitches from the title. “You don’t have to call me that every time,” he says.
You look at him then, and he almost wishes you hadn’t. Your eyes are not angry or pleading, but they’ve been extinguished of that hope you’ve been carrying with you for months now.
“I thought you preferred professionalism,” you say.
Levi grips the arm of his chair slightly. “I prefer people not putting words in my mouth.”
A flicker of hurt passes over your face, but it’s gone as soon as it arrives. “Understood.”
He should stop. He knows he should stop, but the silence after your answer feels unbearable, and Levi is not built for handling unbearable things he can’t kill. “That all?”
“Yes.”
You turn toward the door. He feels a spike of panic, the kind he’s only ever felt when he was galloping in the rain to return to Isabel and Furlan. His stomach sinks. “Wait.”
You stop. Your hand rests on the doorknob. Levi stares at your back, at the tension in your shoulders. You’re holding yourself with a carefulness that implies you’re waiting for something to split you open at any moment.
What does he want to say? Don’t go? No, ridiculous. I didn’t mean it? He did mean it. At least, he meant part of it. The part that wanted safety. The part that believes every relationship eventually ends in the ultimate heartbreak of the other person’s name carved into stone. I miss you? Absolutely not. The words rise to his tongue anyway, but Levi crushes them beneath the heel of his pride.
You wait. He says nothing, so you glance back at him. “Yes?” you say.
His throat works. The candlelight looks so soft against your face, and only then does he see how tired you are. Not physically, though perhaps that too, but tired emotionally. Tired of holding your hands to someone who keeps treating them like weapons.
Levi looks away first. “Nothing,” he says. The word tastes bitter in his mouth.
Your expression doesn’t change, and somehow that makes him feel worse. “Goodnight, Captain.”
You leave. Levi sits there for a long moment, staring at the place where you stood. The reports remain untouched. His tea, made by his own hand and brewed exactly the way he likes it, has gone cold beside him. He lifts the cup anyway, takes one sip, and slams it back down so hard that the porcelain almost cracks.
It tastes wrong.
Everything is wrong.
.
Levi sees you laughing with Eld in the training yard, and the feeling that moves him makes him so nauseous that he can only stand there with his hand still on his harness and hate everything about himself.
It’s not like he feels betrayal. He doesn’t overhear any confession and there’s no obvious intimacy that any reasonable man could point to and say “that’s the reason my blood is boiling.” You’re simply standing near the fence, one shoulder leaned against the post, your arms crossed as Eld speaks to you. His hair is messy from training, and his expression is unmistakably fond. Fond.
Levi’s eye twitches.
Eld says something too low for Levi to hear from across the yard, and you laugh. Not that small, polite laugh you’ve been giving Levi lately (at least before you started ignoring him weeks ago), the one that feels like a closed door and leaves him standing outside of it like an idiot. You laugh properly. Your head tips back and your face eases in a way that Levi hasn’t seen directed at him in days. Eld smiles, knowing he’s the reason you look a little less tired now.
Levi’s grip on his harness worsens until it creaks. He should look away, but he doesn’t. Eld steps closer, enough to reach past you and grab his coat hanging from the side of the training dummy, but from where Levi stands, the movement brings him into your space. Your shoulder brushes his. You don’t even flinch or step back. You only look down at what he’s doing, say something that makes his smile widen, and then you lift your hand to shove lightly at his shoulder.
It’s the same kind of touch you used to give Levi without thinking. A hand on his sleeve when you wanted his attention. Fingers brushing his hand when you set tea beside him. Your shoulder bumping his when you walked too close in a corridor and pretended it was accidental. The touch he had rejected so many times that you finally learned to control it.
Levi doesn’t know what he feels, but he convinces himself it’s not jealousy. Jealousy is for men who think they have a claim. Levi is without a claim. He made sure of that. In fact, he was the one who caused the distance with each cold reply, each command, and the times when you were vulnerable with him and he pushed it back as if tenderness was a weapon aimed at his throat.
So no, he has no right to feel anything when Eld leans closer to you. He has no right to hate the way you seem calmer beside him. He has no right to remember your face when you once told him that you wish he’d let you care about him, and how he had answered how he didn’t need that from you.
Eld says something else. You smile. Levi moves before he decides to.
By the time he crosses the yard, his expression has gone sharp enough to send three nearby soldiers into immediately pretending to be very busy with their gear. Eld notices him approaching first, straightening his posture the way a subordinate does when they realize their superior is walking toward them.
“Captain,” Eld says.
You turn. The smile fades from your face. Not entirely—you’re too composed for that now, too determined not to let Levi see where the pain still lives, but he sees the change anyway, the armor coming up to shield you.
“Captain,” you say.
Levi looks from you to Eld, then back to you. “You done wasting time?” The words are even colder than he wants them to be. Or they might be just as cold as he means them to be, because quite often being cruel is more acceptable, in his mind, than standing there and confessing that he actually walked across the yard because another another man made you laugh and Levi wanted, with a sudden violence that disgusts him, to insert himself between you and that warmth.
Eld’s brows draw together. You freeze. “I’m not wasting time,” you say. “Eld was helping me with the new recruits’ drills.”
“Looked like a lot of laughing for drills.”
The silence that follows is thin and almost dangerous. Eld’s eyes move briefly between the two of you, and because he’s neither stupid nor cruel, he steps back. “I’ll go help Auvray’s squad. Captain.” He gives you one last look, almost protective, then leaves.
Levi hates that too. He hates that Eld looks at you as if your feelings are something he knows how to handle gently. He hates more the fact that Eld might be better at it than he is. When the space between you clears, you face Levi fully.
“That was unnecessary,” you say.
“Excuse me?” Levi scoffs.
“You heard me.”
A month ago, the challenge in your voice would have come wrapped in humor. You probably would have tilted your head at that moment and smiled, softened the tone for him so you could pretend you were just teasing. This time, there’s no smile, nor softness offered for his comfort. He should be glad. He isn’t.
“You’re still on duty,” he says.
“So is Eld.”
“Eld isn’t the one I’m talking to.”
Your lips part slightly, half in surprise, half in disbelief. “No. I suppose not.”
Levi’s hands ball into fists at his sides. He wants to ask what that means. He wants to ask if there’s something between you two. He wants to ask if Eld has touched your hand, if you’ve brought Eld tea, if you smiled at Eld the way you used to smile at him. He wants to ask if you’re happy now that you’ve stopped talking to him. But he knows he has no right to ask any of it.
“You should be more careful,” Levi says instead, because his mouth has always known how to be the worst possible weapon. “People get the wrong idea when you throw yourself at every man who gives you attention.”
He did not mean to say that.
Your face goes blank. Completely, utterly blank. You don’t even look hurt or angry. It’s just blank. His stomach drops. Your fingers twitch once at your side, but your voice, when it comes, is surprisingly—painfully—eased.
“I see.”
You step back. Levi says your name. It leaves him before he can stop it, stripped of rank and anger and all the useless armor he keeps trying to force between himself and whatever the hell you’re doing to him.
“Don’t, Captain.” You turn away and leave without looking back.
The title hits harder than if you had slapped him. He honestly would have preferred if you slapped him. Levi just stands there, frozen, watching you leave while the recruits pretend not to stare, pretending that they didn’t just overhear the most emotionally charged conversation they’ve heard in their entire time in the military.
He thinks of following you at first. Then he thinks of what he would say. Nothing comes. Nothing that would undo it. Nothing that would explain why he keeps turning fear into a knife and then acting surprised when you bleed. So he stays where he is until your figure disappears amongst the crowd. Only then does he realize Eld has stopped near the fence and is looking at him with disappointment. Levi looks away first.
By the time he reaches his office, the anger has returned, boiling hotter than shame. He shuts the door harder than necessary, and the sound breaks through the silence of the room before it rushes back in, deeper than before. He looks at the teacup waiting on the corner of the desk, empty, because he’s not yet made tea and you no longer do.
It’s better this way, he tells himself. No more pointless kindness. No more interruptions. No more break snuck to him because you noticed he skipped a meal. No more stupid confessions. No more of you looking at him like he could be anything other than what he is. A soldier. A killer. A survivor by habit, not by virtue. A man who has spent his life learning the names of the people he couldn’t save.
Levi grips the edge of the desk, his knuckles turning white. He remembers the exact words he said to you not two hours ago. The memory of your face after he said it hits him with such force that his breath hitches.
“Fuck,” he mutters.
He pushes away from the desk, pacing once toward the window, then back again, restless energy crawling beneath his skin. He wants to clean something. He wants to tear something apart. He wants to go back in time into the yard and rip the words out of the air before they can reach you. If he could, he would slap himself before he could even get the words out.
Instead, he does nothing. His thoughts circle you first. Your hand in his field of vision as it places tea on his desk. Your melodic voice. Your laugh across the mess hall. Your eyes, now careful, guarded because he taught you to guard them.
Then Eld. Eld standing too close. Eld making you laugh. Eld smiling at you. Eld looking at you like he wouldn’t punish you for wanting to be wanted.
Levi’s jaw clenches so hard it aches. This isn’t about Eld. That’s the truth, and he hates it. Eld is a good soldier. Loyal. Kind without making a spectacle of it. He’s the kind of man who probably knows how to accept affection. The kind of man who might say yes if you chose him instead.
The thought makes Levi’s stomach turn. He braces both hands on the desk and lowers his head. He realizes now what he’s been avoiding. It isn’t jealousy; it isn’t irritation or discipline or concern with professionalism. It’s fear. Raw fear.
It’s been there from the start, waiting beneath every rejection, every insult, every cold turn of his shoulder. He sees it now. You were never the danger. Wanting you was. Wanting you means imagining you outside the walls and worrying you won’t return. Wanting you means knowing the exact sound of your laugh and then imagining a world where he never hears it again. Wanting you means letting your existence become a part of his own, and losing you would nearly kill him. No, it would kill him.
And Levi knows loss.
His mother. Kuchel, pale and motionless in a bed that he’d seen too much of. Her hand no longer able to reach for him. Her voice gone before he was old enough to understand all the ways the world could take from him.
Then Isabel. Loud, passionate Isabel, with her recklessness and her impossible faith that the world above could be something other than a nightmare. Isabel, who had called him big brother with such devotion that he’d pretended to hate it because pretending was safer than letting himself feel vulnerable.
Furlan too. Furlan, who had trusted Levi’s judgement more than anyone had a right to, who followed him out of the Underground, who believed, who died because the world is merciless and Levi is never fast enough when it matters most.
His comrades. Countless comrades buried beneath banners and speeches and the rotten consolation that they died for humanity’s cause. Faces that once turned toward him in trust before the Titans took them.
Connection, to Levi, has never been safe. To him, it’s a door opening into a room that will one day be empty. A hand reaching for his that will one day go cold. A voice saying his name that will one day stop answering.
So he rejected you. Again and again and again. And some sick, righteous part of him had called it mercy. If he kept you away, you would be safer. If he made you stop loving him, you would stop standing too close to the blast radius of everything he loses. If he refused to want you, then losing you—if the world ever took you, when the world took you—would not destroy him.
Except you’re not gone. You’re alive. And he’s still managed to lose you.
Levi sits slowly in his chair, his legs suddenly feeling unsteady. He did this. Not titans. Not the Underground. Not fate, not duty, not the walls, not the endless bloody machinery of survival. Him. His fear. His hands pushing away the one person stubborn enough to keep reaching for him. To keep trusting him.
He doesn’t move for a while. The office grows darker around him, the last of the daylight fading behind the curtains. Somewhere outside, he hears footsteps. They’re not yours. He wishes he wasn’t so disappointed. He hears voices fall and rise. Life continues with an indifference that feels almost insulting.
Then comes a knock at the door. For a moment, he thinks foolishly that it’s you. Then the hope is snuffed by reality, and he doesn’t bother answering. The door opens anyway. Hange steps inside, takes one look at him sitting motionless behind his desk, and pauses. They already have a knowing look on their face.
“You know,” Hange says, closing the door behind them,” for someone so smart, you’re impressively stupid about feelings.”
Levi sighs deeply. “Fuck off, Four Eyes. Not in the mood.”
“No, I imagine you’re not.” Hange approaches without waiting for permission and leans against the edge of the desk. “I saw what happened. Eld looked like he wanted to hit you.”
“Eld knows better.”
“Mm. He does. That’s probably the only reason he didn’t.”
Levi looks away. The words should irritate him—and they do—but beneath the irritation is shame, and shame has sharper teeth. Hange studies him for a moment.
“What did you say to her?” they ask.
Levi’s eyelids flutter down briefly. It would be easy for him to lie. He could tell Hange to get out and leave him alone with the wreckage he caused. Instead, because some exhausted part of him is too tired to keep bleeding in secret, he says, “Something I shouldn’t have.”
“That bad?” Levi gives them a look, and it makes Hange wince. “Ouch. That bad.”
Silence settles between them. For once, Hange doesn’t rush to fill it. Levi stares at the teacup near his hand. He wonders if you still make tea for yourself. He hasn’t seen you near the tea station in a while—but then again, you could just be avoiding him that efficiently. Or perhaps you just avoid the places where he lingers.
“She stopped,” he says finally.
“You asked her to,” Hange says.
“I know.”
“Did you mean it?”
Levi’s throat tightens. That should be an easy question. He's built his entire life on making hard answers sound simple, but nothing about you has ever been simple, not from the first time you looked at him like he wasn’t nearly as scary as everyone was making him out to be.
“I thought I did,” he says.
“And now?” Hange asks.
Levi’s hand wraps around the teacup, though there’s nothing in it. He thinks of you laughing with Eld. He thinks of your face going blank. He thinks of how much easier it was when you loved him loudly enough that he could pretend your heart was the problem and not his own cowardice.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he says.
Hange doesn’t ask what this means—they know. “Start by not hurting her every time she gets close.”
Levi bitterly laughs once under his breath. “Brilliant advice.”
“You’re ever so welcome.” His eyes lift to meet them, and Hange’s expression is painfully serious now. He hates when they look like this—it means they’re impossible to escape. “You’re allowed to be scared, Levi.”
He looks away instantly. “No.”
“Yes,” they say, firmer. “You are. After everything you’ve lost, you’d be insane not to be. But being scared doesn’t give you the right to make her feel disposable.”
Levi’s stomach churns. “I know,” he says. It sounds like defeat. Maybe it is.
Hange’s voice gentles. “Do you love her?”
Levi freezes. His first instinct is to refuse. His second is anger. His third is to remember your face. Your smile. Your voice that softens only for him. Your absence now, filling his office more than your presence ever dared. Levi lowers his gaze. There’s nothing to hide behind anymore.
He nods.
Hange doesn’t smile like they normally would. They only nod once, confirming what they already knew and had been kind enough to let him reach on his own. “Then you’d better figure out how to say that to her before someone else does.” Levi glares at them, and they lift both hands in defense. “Just being real. She’s a catch.”
Real. Levi has always hated that word, but this reality sits in front of him now, unavoidable. He loves you. He hurt you. You might not wait for him to become brave. The idea ought to make him stand, should send him out of his office, down the corridor, to your door with an apology and every wall inside him burning down behind it. Instead, he stays seated, because despite his love being genuine, the fear that was born first is still the one to rule.
Hange pushes away from the desk. “For what it’s worth,” they say at the door, “I think she loved you enough to listen.”
Loved. Past tense. Levi flinches at that. Hange notices, but they leave anyway, the door clicking shut behind them. Levi sits alone in the dark with the word still lodged in his chest.
Loved.
.
Levi didn’t plan on drinking. He doesn’t drink. Not normally. He definitely doesn’t drink because he enjoys it. Enjoyment has always been something he doesn’t trust easily. He drinks because the bottle has been sitting untouched in the bottom drawer of his desk ever since Erwin left it there three months ago after some late night visit that had run past midnight and into the hours of the morning. He drinks because the office is silent now. He drinks because Hange’s question won’t stop replaying in his mind.
Do you love her?
He grabs the glass and pours the amber liquid into the cup with a hint of anger and almost spite. He doesn’t lift the glass for a toast to the empty room. There’s nothing worth celebrating or honoring in this moment. No winning, no relief, no opening up of himself that could be considered noble or brave. There’s only the fact that he loves you. And because Levi is a man who’s lived by the rule of cutting off weakness before the world can get its hands on it, that very fact feels like a wound in his gut, and he has no idea how to bandage it.
He drinks. The liquor burns down his throat and warms his chest. The heat gives him something physical to hate for a blessed second. He pours again. Outside his office, the headquarters eases into a slumber. Someone’s laughter echoes down the corridor before it’s hushed by another person. A door closes somewhere else. The fact that life continues is taunting him, acting like it doesn’t matter that his entire world has shifted because you finally stopped loving him.
Well, you didn’t stop. He doesn’t know if you stopped. He only knows you learned how to be silent about it. He taught it to you. The thought makes his heart skip a beat.
Levi leans back in his chair and closes his eyes, but the darkness behind them provides no mercy. It gives him the image of you instead, because his mind can’t go anywhere else. He imagines you in the supply room. You in the corridor, placing bread in his hand. You in the stables, admiring his connection to animals. You outside of the infirmary with both physical and emotional wounds. You in the courtyard today, your face going blank after he used your own affection against you.
“Damn it,” he mutters, pressing the heel of his hand against his brow ridge. He’d just meant to protect himself. He’d looked at the recklessness of your devotion and saw every grave he’s stood over. His mother’s body. Isabel’s smile turned slack. Furlan’s trust, wasted on the impossible idea that Levi could let them all out alive.
Levi drinks again and again. The room begins to spin slightly. His reflection waits in the dark window as he turns to face it. Pale, blurred, a man with too much blood on his hands. A man who has no idea what to do with love except ruin it. He’s a coward.
If rejecting you had been mercy, then why had it only hurt you? If pushing you away had been kindness, then why had your voice gone so careful around him? If he had been protecting you, then why does the memory of your face make him feel like the danger was never the world outside the walls, but him?
He pours again, his hand shaking this time, and a small amount spills onto the desk. Normally, he would reach immediately for a cloth. Tonight, he only stares at the dark stain spreading over the polished wood. His mouth twists in both disgust and irritation.
“Great,” he says to no one.
Every time he raises the cup, it feels heavier. So does the truth. He loves you. He loves the way you say his name. He loves the stubborn tilt of your chin when you refuse to let his cruelty be the only thing between you. He loves you for noticing when he doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, when he’s so angry that you know grief alone couldn’t cause it. He loves you, and it scares him so much that he’s tempted to seek refuge behind every locked door inside himself.
Instead, drunk and stripped bare by the quiet, Levi thinks of you. Your room is down the corridor, past the turn by the east stairwell, three doors from the end. He knows it by heart, despite not being there often.
For several long minutes, he sits motionless with the glass in his hand, raises to press against his forehead. He breathes deeply through the horrible desire of wanting to see you and the equally horrible knowledge that, deep down, he has no right to ask anything of you now.
Then he stands. His vision swims. Levi grips the desk, scowling at the fact that he can’t even balance himself. It’s pathetic, he thinks groggily, but he doesn’t sit back down. He leaves the bottle open on the desk. The spilled liquor dries beside his hand. He stumbles into the corridor.
You need to hear the truth from him. Even if you no longer want it.
.
You sit on the edge of your bed with a half-mended shirt in your lap, needle in your fingers. The motions are familiar after years of practice, though it has been a while since you’ve needed to mend something. You’re surprised, considering the less than gentle treatment your clothing constantly endures. You’re glad, however, that your mother taught you how to sew. You think briefly that you should send her a letter soon.
Then a knock comes. It’s so late in the night that you think you might have imagined it. You shake your head, dislodging the illusion, and return to your sewing. But then the knock comes again, more urgent. Your hands stop moving. Your stomach turns at the first thought that comes to your mind. But you know it’s not him. Why would it be? You sigh and set the shirt aside, then stand.
When you open the door, you’re immediately proven wrong. Levi is standing before you, one hand braced against the doorframe, his hair slightly messy, his cravat loose at the throat, his eyes too dazed. Levi is many things—controlled, scary enough to whip grown men into shape just by entering a room, but he’s never this. Never unsteady or vulnerable. Never looking at you like this as if he’s spent the entire night debating and fighting over the urge to go to your room, still not knowing whether he deserves to enter.
“Captain?” you say.
His face twists. He leans in slightly—not intentionally, but from a loss of balance. “Don’t call me that.”
Then you smell the liquor. You blink, taken aback. “Levi, are you drunk?”
His mouth pulls into a line that’s too bitter to be a smile. “Unfortunately.”
You don’t know what to do. You don’t know what to do with him at your door in the middle of the night, drunk enough that he’s tipping over but sober enough that his eyes are still full of pain. You don’t know if you should let him in or tell him to screw off, whether to be worried or angry, whether to protect yourself or reach for him before he walls. And the worst part is that deep down, you still want to care for him.
“Why are you here?” you ask.
Levi looks at you, and his face breaks in a way you’ve never seen before. “I fucked up.”
The words come rough and raw. They’re not even surprising to you, because you’ve known that for weeks now, but hearing him say it is different. You peer down the hall and step aside before you can convince yourself not to.
“Come in before someone sees you like this.” He enters slowly. You close the door behind him, and when you turn around, he’s just standing there, his shoulders and hands tensed, looking at everything except your face. “You should sit down.”
“No.”
“Levi—”
“I wanted you.” You freeze. His eyes finally lift to yours. “I wanted you. Every damn time. Every time you said it, every time you smiled at me, every time you made those stupid jokes. I wanted to say yes. And I didn’t, because I’m a coward.”
You swear all of the air in the room escapes at that moment. You stare at him, your heart pounding in your chest, shock and hurt and old longing colliding so violently that you almost feel sick. This is what you wanted once, isn’t it? This confession, this man standing in front of you and finally saying the thing you’ve been dying to hear. But it only came after he drank. After he’s made you feel stupid for offering what he now claims he wanted. You swallow hard.
“You’re drunk,” you say. “We shouldn’t talk about this now.”
“No,” Levi says, stepping closer, then stopping himself. “You’re going to hear it. You listened to every shitty thing I said. You can listen to this too.”
He’s not wrong. You did listen. Every time. You stood there and took every dismissal, every wound, and you kept making excuses for him because loving him was easier than admitting he had been hurting you on purpose.
Your eyes burn. “Fine,” you whisper. “Say it, then.”
“I’m sorry,” Levi says. He swallows, looks down, then forces himself to look at you again. “I’m sorry for all of it. For making you feel like you were stupid for caring. For treating you like dirt under my shoes. For taking every good thing you gave me and throwing it away because I didn’t know how to deal with it.”
Your throat closes. You want to hate him. You think hatred would be far easier than this—the fact that you still love him while still remembering why you learned to retreat. “You made me feel pathetic.” Levi flinches at that. For a second, you’re happy, and then you hate yourself for thinking that.
“I know,” he says, his voice smaller than you’ve ever heard it.
“You made me wish I hadn’t said any of it,” you continue. “I meant it every time, Levi. Even when I made it sound like a joke. Even when I smiled. Even when everyone laughed. I meant it, and you—” You pause. “You made me feel humiliated.”
Levi’s eyes close briefly. When he opens them again, they’re wet. “I know.”
“That doesn’t fix it.”
“I’m not trying to fix it.”
“Then what are you trying to do here?”
He looks at you so helplessly that it hurts you. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?”
His gaze drops to your hands, then returns to your face, and when he speaks, the words sound like they’ve been dragged out of the deepest, most guarded place in him. A place you have rarely, if ever, seen.
“Love someone.”
The room goes silent. The candle flickers across his face. Your heart twists. Levi takes a shaky breath. You match him.
“But I love you. I do. And I’m sorry it took me hurting you to stop lying about it.”
Part of you wants to reach for him. The other part of you wants to step back. You want to tell him you love him too, and you always have. You want to ask why love had to be dressed in apology. Instead, you look at the floor between you.
“Levi,” you say quietly. “I still love you. But I’m hurt.”
“I know,” he says.
“And I don’t forgive you yet.”
“Good.” That surprises you. You raise both eyebrows, and he gives a humorless little exhale. “You shouldn’t. Not just because I finally stopped lying to myself.”
“You need to sit down,” you say.
This time, he doesn’t argue. He lowers himself into the chair by your desk, elbows resting on his knees, head lowered. He looks so exhausted. You pour him some water from your pitcher and bring it to him. Both of you freeze momentarily when his fingers brush yours when he takes the cup. He withdraws first.
“I’ll say it again when I’m sober,” he says hoarsely. You look down at him. “If you’ll let me.”
Your fingers curl around the empty space where the cup had been. The answer should be simple, but it isn’t. You don’t know if you want to hear those words without the barrier of alcohol. They might just break your resolve.
After a moment, you nod. “Say it sober,” you whisper. “And then we’ll see.”
Levi nods and closes his eyes.
.
Morning breaks through the thin curtains, laying a strip of light across the floor and the half-mended shirt still folded at the end of your bed. Levi wakes in a chair—the same chair he was in last night. He’s no stranger to falling asleep in chairs. Where others would be aching, he feels fine, save for the headache pulsing behind his eyes.
He doesn’t remember where he is for a second. Then he looks around, and he remembers everything about last night. The drinking. Coming to your door. Your face when he said he wanted you. Him confessing his love.
Levi sighs. Across the room, you’re laying in bed, turned toward the wall, blanket pulled to your shoulder. You look peaceful, or close enough to peaceful that guilt moves through him with a force that nearly brings him to his feet to leave before you can wake up. Maybe that would be better. He could go back to his quarters and pretend this never happened.
He shifts carefully, trying not to make the chair creak, but the movement sends pain up his spine and a low sound leaves him before he can swallow it. You stir in your sleep and wake. Levi freezes. You open your eyes slowly and turn around to face him. Now that he looks at you, you don’t look like you’ve just woken up from sleep. You don’t have that grogginess most do, and your hair is neatly brushed.
He gets confirmation of this when you get out of bed and grab a teacup, filled with tea that you must have brewed before he woke up. You carry it over to him. He stares at it, then at you, and you hold it out.
“Well?” you say.
Levi takes the teacup, though his fingers shake around the porcelain. He doesn’t even bother to hide it this time. He looks at the caution in your eyes, the hurt still sitting behind it, the hope that lingers. His mouth dries and his throat closes up, but he forces the words out anyway.
“I love you,” he says.
Your lips part slightly. “You’re sure?”
Levi lets out a breath that almost becomes a laugh, though it’s not really a laugh, more like an exhale of exhaustion laced with a hint of relief. “I was sure before,” he says. “I was just an idiot.”
Your face crumples for a second. You never thought this day would come, that he could utter those words. You didn’t realize how badly you wanted this. How much it cost to hear it now.
He sets the tea aside and stands, keeping enough distance that you can choose whether to close it. You’re not sure if you want to yet, but the urge trembles between you.
“I’m sorry,” he says again.
You look down, blinking hard to force the tears back. “Please don’t hurt me every time you’re scared.”
Levi nods. “I won’t. I promise.”
The silence comes to rest between you. Then, carefully, you step forward and reach for his hand. Levi looks down as your fingers touch his, stunned by the gentleness of it, by the fact that after everything, you’re still willing to reach out. He grabs your hand and wraps his fingers around yours.
☆ Summary: You don’t mean to fall in love with Levi Ackerman. It just happens slowly. You keep waiting for the right moment, telling yourself you’ll say something eventually, when the timing is better, when things are calmer, when you’re braver. You tell yourself there will be a later. You just don’t realize how quickly later can disappear.
☆ Pairing: Levi Ackerman x Female Reader
☆ Genre/Tags: Canon Compliant, Angst, Tragedy, Hurt/No Comfort, Terminal Illness, Unrequited Love (kind of), Idiots In Love, Grief/Mourning
☆ Content Warnings: Terminal illness, blood, major character death
☆ Word Count: 19.9k
☆ AO3 Link
☆ a/n: lowkey I tortured myself with this one. no one asked for this lol i just got the idea and went with it and somehow I ended up with one of the longest one-shots (if not the longest) I've ever written. I recommend tissues.
[ Art by pigxhunter on Twitter ]
Morning comes slowly to the barracks with noise. You hear the distant scrape of shoes, the murmur of the early risers, the creak of old wood—all settling into another day that no one has asked for but everyone will endure anyway. You’re already awake before all of it, standing alone in the small kitchen with your sleeves rolled to your elbows and a kettle beginning to boil on the stove.
You’ve always liked this hour best, the hour before the Scouts fully wake, where even war seems far away and the world is reduced to small manageable things like steam and the smell of tea leaves. For a few minutes, you can pretend that life is nothing more complicated than boiling water and waiting.
You brace your hands on the edge of the table when the first cough hits, catching in your chest like a hook. You close your eyes immediately because you already know this one is going to hurt. It comes again, harder. Then again. Your shoulders shake with it, breath catching halfway in your lungs, the sound too loud in the quiet kitchen. You turn your head into your sleeve to muffle the sound.
It burns. It always burns now.
By the time it stops, your eyes are watering and your chest aches in a deep, bruised way. It’s wearing you down slowly from the inside. You stand there for a moment, counting each inhale. You tell yourself, not for the first time, that it’s nothing. You’re tired and run down. Everyone is tired. Everyone coughs. Everyone pushes too hard and sleeps too little and keeps going anyway. This is nothing unusual. Nothing worth worrying anyone about. You’ll deal with it later.
You straighten slowly, wiping your eyes with the back of your hand, and reach for the kettle just as the door opens behind you. You don’t turn immediately. You don’t need to. You know the sound of that door opening at this hour. You know the weight of the footsteps that follow. You know exactly who wakes this early without needing to see him.
Levi stops just inside the doorway, his eyes finding you in the half-light, taking in the kettle, the cups, and how you’re standing suspiciously still. He doesn’t say anything at first, but you feel his attention settle on you. He heard it. He hears everything.
“You sound like you’re dying,” he says finally, as if he’s commenting on the weather instead of the way your lungs still feel as if they’re lined with glass.
You pour the hot water into the cups carefully so your hands don’t shake, watching the steam rise between you. “I’m fine,” you say, and you hate how predictable that sounds even as you say it.
He doesn’t move closer, but his eyes narrow slightly, the way they always do when he thinks someone is lying to him, which unfortunately is often, and especially often when it’s you.
“That didn’t sound fine,” he says.
“It’s a cough,” you say.
“I’m aware.”
You allow yourself a small smile at that, because he’s so consistently himself that sometimes it feels relieving. At least one thing in this world is stable and predictable. You slide one of the cups toward him across the table.
“Tea,” you say. Tea has always been the answer to everything.
He walks the rest of the way into the room then and picks up the cup by the rim, but his eyes flick once more over your face, lingering for just a second too long. You look down quickly, pretending to adjust the kettle, pretending not to notice that he’s noticing.
“You should sleep more,” he says.
“You should sleep more,” you reply automatically.
“I sleep enough.”
“You sleep when you pass out from exhaustion. That’s not the same thing.”
He takes a sip of the tea, makes a faint, unimpressed sound. You watch the familiar sequence play out—the peculiar way he holds the cup, the way he stands slightly angled toward the door like he’s expecting someone to barge in and say the walls have been breached—and you realize, not for the first time, that this is one of your favorite parts of the day. This. Right here. The quiet. The tea. The way he shows up without asking, as if this small morning ritual is as inevitable as sunrise.
You fell in love with him so slowly you never noticed it happening.
It hadn’t been a single moment. It wasn’t a dramatic rescue, a sudden realization, or a grand shift in the world. It was this instead—cups of tea, shared silence, how he handed you things without looking because he trusted you to be there, the way he corrected your grip on your blades once without saying a single word, how he stood just a little closer to you in crowded rooms than he did to anyone else.
It was ordinary. Which was the most dangerous thing of all.
“You’re staring,” he says suddenly.
You blink and look away quickly. “You’re imagining things.”
“I don’t imagine things.”
You almost laugh at that, because if there’s one thing Levi does, it’s imagine a future where he gets to keep the people he cares about.
“I’m fine,” you say again, softer this time, and you’re not sure whether you’re trying to convince him or yourself.
He watches you for another long second, and you can practically see the thoughts moving behind his eyes—calculating, filing things away for later—and you wonder briefly what it would be like to tell him everything, to say I’m scared, to say I don’t think this is going away.
But you don’t say any of that. There’ll be time for that later.
“There’s a supply report I need you to look over,” he says finally, turning slightly toward the door. “After breakfast.”
“I’ll do it,” you nod.
“And eat something this time.”
“I always eat something.”
“You pick at food and call it eating.”
You roll your eyes. “You watch me eat now?”
“I watch everything. That’s why I’m still alive.” He says it so simply that you can’t argue with it. He finishes the tea in two more sips before setting the empty cup back on the table near your hand, close enough that your fingers almost touch the ceramic at the same time. “Don’t collapse before you finish the report.”
“I won’t.”
He pauses at the door, and for just a second he looks back at you, and there’s something in his expression you can’t quite decipher—something too unusual to be casual, too quiet to be anger, something that feels uncomfortably like concern—and then it’s gone as quickly as it appeared.
“Later,” he says. “After breakfast.”
“Later,” you agree.
The door closes behind him, and the room feels larger and quieter and colder than it did a moment ago. You stand there for a long time with your hand resting on the edge of the table, listening to the sound of your own breathing slowing down again.
You’ll rest later. You’ll see the medic later. You’ll tell him later. There’s still time, you tell yourself, picking up the empty cup he left behind and rinsing it carefully.
There’s still time.
.
By the time headquarters is fully awake, the quiet of the morning has been swallowed whole by noise. You hear footsteps, doors opening and closing, voices calling across the hallways, the metallic clatter of gear. You move through it all, slipping into the rhythm of the day the way you always do.
Routine has always been able to keep the world from shifting under your feet. If you keep moving, keep working, keep everything exactly the same as it’s always been, then nothing will change. Routine has always been your best defense against fear.
You carry a stack of reports under one arm and push open the office door with your shoulder, stepping inside without knocking because you haven’t needed to knock in a very long time. Levi doesn’t immediately look up when you enter. He already knows its you from the sound of your footsteps alone. He would never say that out loud, but it’s true. He knows the way everyone walks in this building. He knows who drags their heels, who stomps, who hesitates outside doors before entering, who walks like they’re afraid of being noticed. He knows yours because he’s been listening for them for longer than he would ever admit.
“You’re late,” he says, even though you’re not.
“You told me after breakfast,” you reply, setting the reports down on his desk. You slide them into a neat stack, aligning the corners without thinking.
He glances at the papers, then at you, eyes narrowing slightly. You look tired, he thinks. More tired than usual. Your eyes are a little dull around the edges, your movements just a little slower than they should be, and he doesn’t like it. Not at all. But he doesn’t know what to do with that information yet except store it away and watch more closely.
“You eat?” he asks.
You almost sigh. “Yes.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You hesitate when you lie.”
You cross your arms. “I hesitate when I’m deciding how much I want to argue with you.”
He stares at you for a long moment, and you stare right back because this is familiar territory, this quiet stand-off that’s less about authority and more about concern neither of you will acknowledge. After a few seconds, he exhales through his nose and picks up the top report.
“Sit,” he says, nodding toward the chair across from his desk.
You sit. You always sit there. You’ve sat in that chair so many times that it’s begun to feel like a place that belongs to you specifically, not a guest chair. Levi reads in silence for a while, flipping pages, occasionally making a small mark in the margins, and you watch his hands as he works without meaning to.
You’ve always noticed his hands. They’re not elegant hands, not soft, not ones that belong to someone who lives a gentle life. They’re scarred and strong, the hands of someone who survives by control and skill and refusal to make mistakes. You’ve seen those hands hold blades, reins, teacups, paperwork, and once, briefly, your wrist when you nearly slipped on wet stone during a supply run. You think that you would recognize his hands before you recognized his face.
“You’re staring again,” he says without looking up.
“I’m thinking,” you say.
“That usually means trouble.”
“For you or for me?”
“For whoever is closest.”
You smile a little at that, and he finally glances up from the papers. For a second, neither of you says anything. The silence between you feels safe in a way you can’t explain to anyone else.
This is what loving him has always felt like. Not fireworks or some sweeping obvious romance, but instead this: arguments about whether you ate breakfast and stacks of paperwork. It had never been a moment. It had been a thousand small things that added up to something you couldn’t undo even if you wanted to.
“You’re doing that thing again,” he says.
“What thing?”
“Going quiet.”
“I’m reading the report with my mind,” you say dryly.
He snorts softly and sets the papers down, leaning back slightly in his chair. His eyes linger on you again in that way that always makes you feel like he can see more than you want him to.
You look fine. A little tired, maybe. Everyone is tired. That cough this morning was probably nothing. Just overwork. You’re one of the strongest soldiers he has. You don’t get sick. You don’t slow down. You don’t break. Still. He watches you shift in the chair, you press a hand briefly against your ribs as if your chest hurts and you don’t want anyone to see. Something uncomfortable washes over him.
“You’re coming on the supply inventory this afternoon,” he says abruptly.
“That wasn’t on the schedule.”
“It is now.”
You raise an eyebrow. “You just want me to do your work for you.”
“I want the work done correctly.”
“So you admit it’s your work.”
He ignores that. “Be in the courtyard after lunch.”
You nod. “Fine.”
He hesitates, then adds, “And eat something before that.”
You stare at him. “You are unreasonably invested in my eating habits.”
“You’re unreasonably bad at taking care of yourself.”
You open your mouth to argue, then close it again because arguing with him about this always goes in circles. And because some small, traitorous part of you likes that he notices these things, that he notices you at all.
“Later,” you say instead, half-joking, half-serious. “I’ll eat later.”
His expression tightens slightly, though you are not sure why that word bothers him at this moment. “Don’t put everything off until later,” he says. “Later turns into never.”
You blink at him, surprised by the sudden bite in his voice. He looks away almost immediately as if he regrets saying it. As if the words came from somewhere he does not usually let himself look at. You want to ask him what he means by that, what later has taken from him already, but you don’t ask, because there are some questions Levi will never answer. You’ve learned not to push against walls that won’t move.
Instead, you stand and gather the reports again, stacking them neatly the way he likes. When you slide them toward him your fingers brush the back of his hand for just a second. The contact is so brief it almost feels imagined, but he freezes for a moment anyway. Neither of you comments on it. Neither of you ever does.
“Courtyard,” he says, voice back to normal now.
“Courtyard,” you repeat.
You turn to leave, and as you reach the door you feel that familiar sensation again, the sense that he is watching you even when he doesn't say anything. You glance back over your shoulder just in time to see him looking at you with an expression you can’t quite read. He looks away immediately when you catch him.
You step out into the hallway, the noise of the castle swallowing you up again, and you press your hand briefly against your chest as you walk, waiting for that tight, burning feeling to ease the way it always eventually does.
The medic will have to wait. For now, there’s work to do.
.
The afternoon is colder than the morning had been. The courtyard is busy with movement with soldiers crossing from one building to another, crates stacked near the supply doors, and horses shifting restlessly near the fence. You keep yourself moving because it’s easier than standing still long enough to notice the way your chest feels too tight and your breathing never quite fills your lungs the way it used to.
You tell yourself you’re fine. You’ve been telling yourself that for weeks now, maybe longer, and the word fine has begun to lose meaning, stretching thinner and thinner every time you use it until it barely covers anything at all.
You carry a small stack of inventory sheets in one hand and move toward the doors, already mentally organizing the rest of the afternoon—check the storage logs, update the supply count, bring Levi the corrected numbers, maybe steal five minutes to sit down somewhere quiet where no one will notice you closing your eyes for just a moment—and you’re so focused on staying upright, staying normal, staying useful, that you don’t notice how lightheaded you are until you reach the stairs.
The first step is fine. The second is fine. On the third, the world tilts.
It doesn’t tilt dramatically. It doesn’t spin or go black or do anything that would make for a crazy story later. It just shifts slightly to the side, like a painting that has slipped crooked on a wall, and suddenly the ground feels farther away than it should be and your foot misses the edge of the step by half an inch.
Your hand shoots out automatically and hits the stone wall to steady yourself, and you stand there for a second, breathing slowly, waiting for the dizziness to pass, hoping no one saw.
Of course someone saw.
You feel his hand on your wrist before you hear his voice. The grip is firm and immediate, fingers wrapping around your wrist. When you turn your head Levi is standing one step below you, looking up with an expression that is already halfway to anger.
“What was that?” he asks.
“Nothing,” you say automatically, because that’s what you always say.
His grip tightens slightly. Not enough to hurt. Enough to stop you from pulling away. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You missed a step.”
“I tripped.”
“You don’t trip.”
You try to pull your wrist free, but he doesn’t let go immediately. The contact sends a strange, unwelcome sensation up your arm. He’s holding you as if you’re something breakable, and you do not want him to think that about you.
“I’m fine,” you say again, and now the word sounds false even to your own ears.
He stares at you, eyes moving quickly over your face, your posture, your other hand still pressed lightly against the wall as if you aren’t entirely sure you can stand without it. You don’t look fine. You look pale. Too pale. There are dark circles under your eyes he doesn’t remember being there before. Your breathing is slightly uneven, as if you’re trying to control it instead of letting it happen naturally. He’s seen soldiers look like before, usually right before they collapse.
“You’re not fine,” he says quietly.
“I am.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
You finally manage to pull your wrist free, and you immediately regret it because the loss of that steadying grip makes the world shift slightly again. You have to shift your weight carefully to keep from swaying. He notices.
“I said I’m fine,” you repeat, more sharply now, because you can feel that dangerous pressure building behind your ribs again, the cough that wants to come, the weakness you can’t afford to show, not here, not in front of him, not when he’s looking at you like that.
“Don’t insult me,” he says. “I just watched you almost fall down a set of stairs.”
“I missed a step.”
“You don’t miss steps.”
“I did today.”
“Why?”
You open your mouth to answer and realize you don’t have an answer that he’ll accept, because the truth is I’m tired and I can’t breathe right and something is wrong and I’m scared, and you can’t say any of that without changing everything. So you shrug instead.
“Maybe I didn’t sleep well,” you say.
“That doesn’t make you forget how to walk.”
“I’m still walking, aren’t I?”
He looks like he wants to shake you. Instead, he steps closer, and suddenly he’s too close. Close enough that you can see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. His attention locks onto you so completely that it feels like the rest of the world disappears. “You’re going to the infirmary,” he says.
“No.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
“I’m not going to the infirmary because I tripped on a stair.”
“You didn’t trip.”
“I did.”
“You’re lying again.”
You hold the stack of papers to your chest, partly because you’re irritated and partly because pressing against your ribs helps ease the pain in your chest. “You worry too much,” you say.
He almost laughs at that, but there is no humor in it. “I’m not worrying. I’m observing a problem and fixing it.”
“I am not a problem.”
“You will be if you collapse in the middle of work.”
“I’m not going to collapse.”
“You almost did.”
“I caught myself.”
“That’s not the point.”
You look away from him then, because you can’t keep looking at his face when he’s looking at you like this, like you’re something important, like you’re something he can’t afford to lose, and that thought is so dangerous you push it away immediately.
He cares, you think. But he cares about all of his soldiers.
But he’s holding you differently. Looking at you differently. Talking to you like this is personal. “I’m fine,” you say again, softer now.
He studies your face for a long moment, and something in his expression shifts slightly, the anger cooling. You’re not fine, he thinks again. Something is wrong. You’re hiding something. You’re getting weaker. You’re not eating enough. You’re not sleeping enough. You’re coughing. You almost fell down a set of stairs. And the thought that follows is immediate, enough to make his heart stop.
What if you’re sick?
He doesn’t say that part out loud. Instead, he reaches past you and pushes the door open, stepping back slightly and nodding toward the hallway.
“Infirmary,” he says again.
You shake your head. “Later.” The word comes out automatically, and the moment it leaves your mouth you see his expression change again, frustration flickering across his face.
“You keep saying later,” he says. “Later for sleep, later for eating, later for everything.”
“I’ll go later,” you insist.
“You’ll go now.”
“I have work to finish.”
“I’ll finish it.”
You blink at him, surprised. “You hate inventory reports.”
“I hate idiots more.”
You almost smile at that, but the smile fades quickly because he’s still looking at you like that. As if this matters too much. As if you matter too much. You can’t afford to let yourself believe that.
“I’m not going now,” you say quietly. “I promise I’ll go later.”
He stares at you for a long moment, and you can see the argument forming behind his eyes, the list of reasons, the orders he could give, the authority he could use to force you to go. You hold his gaze because you know him well enough to know that if he orders you, you’ll go.
After a few seconds, he exhales slowly and steps back. “Fine,” he says. “Later.” But the way he says the word makes it sound like a threat.
You nod once and move past him into the building, aware of his eyes on your back the entire time, aware that he’s not convinced, that he’s watching you more closely now. As you walk away, you press your hand briefly against your chest again, waiting for the tightness to ease, and you tell yourself the same thing you have been telling yourself for weeks now.
Later. You’ll deal with it later.
You don’t see the way Levi watches you until you turn the corner and disappear from view, and you don’t hear the quiet curse he mutters under his breath when you’re gone. You don’t know that he stands there for a long moment after you leave, staring at the now closed door, replaying the way you swayed on the stairs, the way your hand trembled when he grabbed your wrist, the way you said later.
Something is wrong. Something is wrong, and you’re not telling him.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
It happens again a few days later in the middle of an ordinary task, which somehow makes things worse, because much later—when you think back on this moment—you'll remember that the world didn't end dramatically or with thunder, but with the sound of your own lungs refusing to cooperate with you anymore.
You’re in a storage room when it starts, checking inventory numbers against a clipboard. The air is dry and dusty. At first the cough is small, almost polite. Something you could ignore if you tried hard enough. And you do try, pressing your lips together and breathing slowly through your nose the way you’ve learned to do, waiting for the tickle in your throat to fade.
It doesn’t fade.
It scratches at you instead, deep in your chest, like someone is slowly pulling a cord tighter and tighter around your ribs. The next cough comes harder, forcing your shoulders forward, your hand flying up to cover your mouth automatically as the sound tears out of you before you can stop it.
You bend slightly at the waist, trying to breathe, trying to stop, but it comes again and again, each cough sharper than the last. Your lungs burn. Your vision blurs at the edges. You grip the edge of the table beside you because suddenly standing requires effort and concentration.
“Stop,” you whisper to yourself, as if your body might listen. “Stop, stop—”
It doesn’t stop.
The cough tears through you again, violent enough this time that something wet hits your palm, and you freeze for a second before slowly pulling your hand away from your mouth and looking down.
There’s blood on your palm.
You stare at your hand, breathing shallowly now, afraid to cough again, afraid of what else might come up if you do. A strange, cold realization knots in your stomach. This isn’t just a cold. It’s not exhaustion. You can’t make this go away if you rest for a few days. Something is wrong. Something has been wrong for a long time, and you’ve been pretending not to see it.
You hear the door open behind you, but you don’t turn right away, too focused on wiping your hand quickly on a cloth, too focused on breathing normally, too focused on pretending everything is fine again before anyone sees.
“You disappeared,” Hange says from the doorway, voice light at first, distracted, the way they sound when they’re thinking about something else entirely. “Levi sent me to find you because apparently you’re essential to the functioning of this entire place and—”
They stop mid-sentence.
You turn then, and whatever Hange sees on your face makes their expression change immediately, the easy curiosity replaced by something more serious.
“What happened?” they ask.
“Nothing,” you say automatically.
Hange walks closer, eyes narrowing slightly. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re really bad at saying that convincingly.”
You try to laugh, but the laugh turns into another cough before it fully leaves your throat, and this one hurts more than the last, forcing you to turn away again and cover your mouth, and when you pull your hand away this time, there’s more blood.
Hange sees it. They don’t say anything for a second, but the silence that follows is heavier than any reaction could have been. “We’re going to the infirmary,” they say finally, voice calm in that way people get when something is very wrong and they’re trying not to make it worse.
“I don’t need—”
“Yes, you do,” Hange interrupts gently, already taking a step closer, already reaching out like they’re afraid you might fall if they don’t. “You’re coughing up blood. That’s not a thing we ignore.”
“I just inhaled dust or something.”
Hange raises an eyebrow. “You inhaled dust that made you cough repeatedly over the last few weeks?”
You freeze slightly. “I haven’t been—”
“You have,” they say quietly. “I’ve heard you. You think no one notices, but I notice things.”
You look down at your hand again at the faint red smear that you couldn’t wipe away completely. The fight drains out of you all at once, replaced by a sudden, heavy exhaustion.
“Okay,” you say quietly. “Infirmary.”
.
You sit on the edge of one of the beds while the medic listens to your lungs with a stethoscope, their expression growing more serious with every breath you take.
“Deep breath,” they say.
You inhale slowly. It hurts.
“Again.” You do it again, and this time the cough comes with it. You turn your head into your sleeve as it passes. “How long has this been happening?” the medic asks.
“A few days,” you say.
Hange, standing nearby with their arms crossed, makes a quiet, disbelieving sound. “Try a few weeks,” they say. You glare at them slightly, but they don’t look apologetic.
The medic looks between the two of you, then back at you. “Have you had fevers?”
“Sometimes.”
“Fatigue?”
“Yes.”
“Chest pain?”
You hesitate, then nod once.
The medic’s mouth tightens slightly, and they place the stethoscope back on the table. “Wait here,” they say. “I need to look at something.”
They leave the room, and the silence that follows feels too large, too heavy, pressing down on your shoulders until you feel like you might sink into the mattress behind you. Hange doesn’t speak right away. They just watch you, their usual restless energy completely gone, replaced by a stillness that is somehow more unsettling than any of their usual behavior.
“You knew this wasn’t just a cough,” they say finally. You don’t answer. “You should have come sooner.”
“I didn’t want it to be something,” you admit quietly. “If I didn’t come here, then it could still be nothing.”
Hange exhales slowly and leans back against the wall. “It doesn't work like that.”
“I know.”
The medic comes back a few minutes later, carrying a small stack of notes, and they don’t sit down right away, which is somehow worse than if they had. They look at you, then at Hange, then back at you again, and there is a long moment where no one says anything, and in that moment you already know.
You don’t know exactly what they’re going to say, but you know it won’t be good.
“I’m going to be honest with you,” the medic says finally. “The damage in your lungs is severe. This didn’t start recently. It’s been progressing for a long time.”
You swallow. “Can you treat it?”
“We can ease the pain. We can slow the symptoms for a while.”
The way they say while makes your stomach drop.
“But we can’t cure it,” they continue quietly. “The lungs are too damaged. They’re scarred and infected in places we can’t reach. Even if you stopped working completely, even if you rested every day, it wouldn’t reverse what’s already happened.”
You stare at your hands in your lap, watching your fingers twist together slowly as if they belong to someone else. “How long?” you ask.
The medic hesitates. Hange shifts slightly beside you, and you can feel their attention snap fully onto the medic now.
“It’s difficult to say exactly,” the medic says. “Months, most likely. It depends on how quickly it progresses. If the coughing worsens, if the bleeding increases, if infection spreads further…”
They don’t finish the sentence. They don’t have to. You nod once, very slowly, and the room feels strangely distant, like you are watching this conversation happen to someone else. Months. You try to picture months and find that the word feels both too long and not long enough at the same time.
“Will I still be able to work?” you ask. Hange makes a quiet, frustrated sound, but you don’t look at them.
“You should reduce your workload,” the medic says. “Eventually, you won’t be able to fight at all. Even walking long distances will become difficult.” You nod again. “Does Captain Levi know?” the medic asks.
Your head snaps up immediately. “No.” Hange closes their eyes briefly, like they were expecting that answer and still didn’t want to hear it.
“He should,” the medic says gently.
“No,” you repeat. “He shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
Because he has buried too many people already, you think. Because I don’t want him to look at me like I’m already gone. Because I don’t want my last months to become everyone waiting for me to die. Because I don’t want pity. Because I don’t want him to be careful with me.
But you don’t say all of that out loud.
“I don’t want special treatment,” you say instead. “I don’t want everyone watching me all the time. I don’t want to be moved to some quiet room where people whisper about me in the hallway. I want to work as long as I can. I want things to stay normal.”
Hange steps closer then, their voice quieter than you’ve ever heard it. “He’s going to find out eventually.”
“Then let it be later,” you say softly.
Hange looks at you for a long moment, and there is something like sadness in their expression now, something heavy and resigned. “You’re asking me to lie to him,” they say.
“I’m asking you not to tell him,” you reply. “There’s a difference.”
“He’ll be angry.”
“He’s always angry.”
“He’ll be angry at me.”
“He’ll be angrier if he spends the next few months watching me die,” you say quietly. “I don’t want that. I don’t want his last memories of me to be in a bed, coughing and barely able to breathe. I want things to stay the way they are for as long as possible.”
Hange’s shoulders drop slightly, and they run a hand through their ponytail, looking suddenly very tired. “You’re not going to make this easy for anyone,” they mutter.
“I’m not trying to be difficult.”
They look at you again, and after a long moment they nod once, reluctantly. “I won’t tell him,” they say. “Not yet.”
“Thank you.”
“But you have to promise me something,” they add. “If it gets worse, if you start collapsing, if you can’t work anymore, you tell him yourself. I’m not letting him find out by accident.”
You nod. “I promise.”
It’s not a promise you know you can keep.
The medic leaves you alone after that, and Hange eventually excuses themself too, saying something about needing air, and you sit there on the edge of the infirmary bed with your hands resting in your lap, staring at nothing in particular.
Months.
You try to imagine telling Levi. You try to imagine the look on his face, the way his eyes would go still, the way he would immediately start trying to fix something that cannot be fixed, the way he would start watching you like you were already halfway gone.
You can’t do that to him. You can’t do that to yourself.
So you make a decision there, sitting alone in the quiet infirmary with the smell of medicine in the air and the sound of your own breathing too loud in your ears. You’ll keep working. You’ll keep drinking tea with him in the mornings. You’ll keep arguing with him about whether you ate breakfast. You’ll keep everything exactly the same. And when the time comes, when you find the right moment, when things are quiet and normal and not overshadowed by sickness and endings, you’ll tell him how you feel.
Not now. Not like this.
Later.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
You wake up the morning after the diagnosis feeling exactly the same as you did the morning before it, which is the strangest part of all, because you had half-expected something dramatic, some shift in the world, some visible sign that everything had changed, but instead the sun still rises, the Scouts still wake, and your lungs still hurt in the same way they did yesterday.
The world doesn’t change when you learn you are going to die. Only the way you look at it does.
You sit on the edge of your bed for a long time before standing, hands resting on your knees, breathing slowly and carefully the way the medic showed you. You tell yourself the same thing you decided in the infirmary: nothing is going to change yet. You'll keep working. You'll keep your routine. You'll keep everything normal for as long as you possibly can.
If you act normal, maybe everything will stay normal. If you keep moving, maybe you won’t have to think about the word months and what it actually means.
The mess hall is loud at breakfast, full of clattering dishes and conversations that overlap, and you sit at the long table with a piece of bread in front of you that you’ve been slowly breaking into smaller and smaller pieces without actually eating any of it.
You’re not hungry. Or maybe you are, but the idea of food feels like too much effort, like something your body has decided is optional now.
You don’t notice Levi sitting across from you until his hand slides your cup of tea closer, the ceramic scraping softly against the table.
“Eat,” he says.
“I am eating,” you reply, picking up one of the tiny pieces of bread and putting it in your mouth just to prove a point.
“You’re insulting the concept of food.”
You swallow slowly. “I’m not very hungry this morning.”
“You’re never very hungry anymore.”
You shrug one shoulder. “Maybe I’m evolving past the need for food.”
“If that were possible, I’d have done it already.”
You almost smile at that, but the smile fades quickly when he reaches across the table and pushes the rest of the bread closer to you with two fingers.
“Eat,” he repeats.
You look down at his hand near yours on the table, close enough that your fingers could touch his if you moved them just slightly, and you think that you would give anything for this to be your life forever—arguments about bread, tea in the mornings, the way he notices everything about you and pretends he doesn’t care.
“I will,” you say quietly.
He doesn’t move his hand right away, and for a moment both of you are just looking at the space between your fingers on the table, close but not touching, and then he pulls his hand back and picks up his tea as if nothing happened.
But you both noticed.
You always notice.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
A few days later, you’re in Levi’s office again, standing beside his desk while he reads through a report and you wait for him to finish so you can explain why the supply numbers don’t match the previous week’s inventory, and you feel the cough building in your chest before you can stop it.
You turn slightly away from him, bringing your sleeve up to your mouth as the cough hits, keeping the sound as quiet as possible, and when it passes you take a slow breath and turn back toward him as if nothing happened.
He’s not looking at the report anymore. He’s looking at you. Specifically, he’s looking at your sleeve. You follow his gaze and see it immediately—a faint smear of red on the fabric near your wrist where you must not have wiped your hand well enough earlier.
Your stomach drops. “It’s ink,” you say quickly.
“I didn’t ask,” he replies.
You reach down and try to rub the stain away with your thumb, but that only smears it slightly, making it worse, and you can feel his eyes on you the entire time.
“You’ve been coughing for weeks,” he says finally.
“It’s just a cough.”
“You’re tired all the time.”
“Everyone’s tired.”
“You barely eat.”
“I eat.”
“You almost fell down the stairs the other day.”
“I missed a step.”
He sets the report down slowly and leans back in his chair, still watching you in that way that makes it feel like he’s trying to solve a puzzle and you are the puzzle. “You’re getting worse,” he says.
The words land harder than you expect them to. “I’m not getting worse,” you say.
He doesn’t argue immediately, which is somehow worse than if he had. He just looks at you, eyes moving over your face.
You don’t hold his gaze for long. You can’t.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
A week later, you’re standing at the edge of the training yard, watching a group of younger soldiers practice maneuvering, when Levi walks up beside you without saying anything, hands behind his back, eyes on the trainees.
“You’re not scheduled for training anymore,” he says after a moment.
You glance at him. “Since when?”
“Since now.”
You frown slightly. “I can still train.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t. I said you’re not scheduled.”
“That sounds like the same thing.”
“You’re more useful with logistics and reports right now,” he says. “We need someone who can keep the supply numbers from turning into a disaster.”
You study his face, trying to decide whether this is really about logistics or if he’s quietly moving you away from anything physically demanding. He doesn’t look at you while he says it, which tells you more than if he had.
“You’re reassigning me to paperwork,” you say.
“I’m reassigning you to something you’re good at.”
“I’m good at other things too.”
“I’m aware.” There’s a pause, and then he adds, more quietly, “I need you where I can rely on you.”
He doesn’t want to admit the truth. He’s not doing this because he thinks you’re weak. He’s doing this because he’s worried.
He just doesn’t know why yet.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
A few days after that, you, Levi, and Hange are in the office going over supply routes for the next month, maps spread across the desk, Levi pointing at different locations while explaining what needs to change.
“Next month we’ll shift the supply route through here,” he says, tapping a spot on the map. “It’s longer, but safer.”
Next month.
You stare at the map, but you’re not really seeing it anymore. You’re thinking about months. You’re thinking about how many next months you actually have. Hange notices the way you go still, how your hand tightens slightly on the edge of the table. They look from you to Levi and back again, their expression briefly clouded with something like guilt.
Levi keeps talking, unaware. “We’ll need to stock more medical supplies before winter,” he continues. “And we should start planning for—” He stops when he realizes neither of you is responding. “What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” you say quickly.
Hange forces a small smile. “Just thinking.”
Levi looks between the two of you, suspicious, but he doesn’t push it this time. He just nods once and goes back to the map, and Hange looks at you again, their eyes soft and sad in a way that makes you look away almost immediately.
They know something Levi doesn’t.
And every time Levi talks about the future, you can see the guilt in Hange’s face, the way they’re silently counting time in a way Levi can’t yet.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
The mornings continue the way they always have.
You make tea. He shows up. You drink it in silence or argue about something small and unimportant. The routine stays intact.
But one morning, halfway through your tea, the cough hits suddenly and hard, and you turn away quickly, covering your mouth with your hand, trying to keep it quiet, trying to keep it contained.
When it passes, you lower your hand slowly and reach for the cloth on the table to wipe your fingers, but when you look up again Levi is already watching you, his tea untouched in his hand.
He doesn’t say anything. He just watches. And that silence is heavier than any argument you’ve had with him. He sets his cup down slowly and pushes yours a little closer to you like he always does when he thinks you’re not drinking enough, but his fingers linger on the edge of the cup for a second before he lets go, like he’s thinking about saying something and then deciding not to.
You want him to ask. You want him to demand the truth so you don’t have to decide when to tell him.
But he doesn’t.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
Over the next couple of weeks, Levi becomes sharper with you.
Not in the way he is with everyone else, not cold and dismissive, but irritated in a way that feels personal, like he’s angry at something he can’t see and somehow you’re involved in it.
“You’re late,” he says one morning when you arrive at his office exactly on time.
“I’m not late.”
“You’re slower.”
“I’m not slower.”
“You are.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“I told you I don’t imagine things,” he says again, and there’s a tension in his voice now that wasn’t there before.
Another day, he snaps at you for carrying too many files at once.
“Give me those.”
“I can carry my own files.”
“You’re going to drop them.”
“I’m not going to drop them.”
“You almost dropped them yesterday.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
He takes half the stack out of your hands before you can argue more. Your fingers brush as he pulls the files away. The contact is brief but it makes both of you go quiet for a second.
He’s scared, you realize suddenly. He doesn’t know why, but he’s scared. That realization hurts more than the illness does. Because you’re the reason he’s scared, and he doesn’t even know it yet. He watches you constantly now—when you walk, when you cough, when you sit down too slowly, when you forget to eat, when you stare at nothing for too long—and you can feel his attention on you even when you’re not looking at him, like a hand hovering just behind your shoulder.
You should tell him, you think sometimes when he’s looking at you like that. You should tell him before he figures it out himself. But every time you try to imagine the conversation, you see his face in your mind, the way his eyes would go still, the way his mouth would press into a straight line, the way he would immediately start trying to fix it even though it would be futile, and you can’t do it. Not yet.
So you keep acting normal.
You keep working, keep drinking tea, keep arguing with him about food and reports and schedules, keep pretending that the future he keeps planning includes you in it, even though you know it probably doesn’t.
And Levi keeps watching you, more and more closely every day, growing quieter, more easily irritated, because something about this situation feels wrong to him in a way he can’t explain, like he’s standing in a room where something important is missing but he can’t figure out what it is.
He just knows that every time he looks at you lately, he feels a strange, unwelcome thought in the back of his mind.
You look like you’re slipping away from something.
And he doesn’t know what it is, and he doesn’t know how to stop it, and he doesn’t like the feeling that whatever is happening to you is happening slowly, quietly, right in front of him, and he might not realize what it is until it’s already too late.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
It starts with you not showing up.
At first, Levi doesn’t notice immediately, because mornings are busy and people are always late for something, always running behind, always needing to be told twice to finish what they were assigned. He assumes you’re somewhere else in the building, already working, already fixing something that someone else messed up.
But when the reports that should already be on his desk aren’t there, and when the supply ledger is still sitting exactly where he left it the night before, and when he realizes he hasn’t heard your footsteps in the hallway once all morning, he knows something is wrong.
He asks someone where you are. No one knows.
He checks the offices, the mess hall, the courtyard, the storage rooms, each place with growing irritation that feels suspiciously like worry, and by the time he reaches the hallway near the private rooms he’s already angry in that very quiet way that means he’s not angry at all, not really.
He knocks once on your door and doesn’t wait for an answer before opening it. You’re sitting on the edge of your bed, bent slightly forward, one hand pressed against your chest and the other gripping the blanket, breathing like each inhale has to be dragged into your lungs manually. You look up when the door opens, and for a second neither of you says anything.
“You didn’t come to work,” he says finally.
You try to straighten up. “I overslept.”
“You never oversleep.”
“It happens.”
“You look like hell.”
You almost laugh at that, but the laugh turns into a cough, and this one is worse than most, forcing you to turn away from him and cover your mouth with your hand as it passes through you. By the time it stops, you’re shaking slightly, breath shallow, and when you look back at him his expression has changed completely.
He steps closer without saying anything and presses the back of his hand to your forehead. You flinch slightly at the contact, not because it hurts, but because his hand is cool and steady and the touch feels too gentle for the way he usually interacts with the world.
“You’re burning up,” he says.
“It’s just a fever.”
“You’re not working today.”
“I can work.”
“You can barely breathe.”
“I can still sit at a desk.”
“You’re not working,” he repeats, and this time there’s no room for argument in his voice. You don’t have the energy to argue anyway. He looks around your room for a moment, then moves to the small table near the wall and pours water into a cup, bringing it back to you and holding it out until you take it. “Drink,” he says.
You take the cup, your fingers brushing his briefly. He watches until you finish half the cup, then takes it back and sets it on the table again.
“Lie down,” he says.
“I’m fine sitting.”
“You’re not fine doing anything.” You almost argue again, but the room spins slightly when you try to stand. He reaches out immediately, his hand closing around your arm to steady you before you can fall forward. “Easy,” he says quietly. You lie down because it’s easier than fighting him, and he pulls the blanket up over you. “I’ll get the medic,” he says.
“No,” you say immediately, reaching out and catching his sleeve before he can turn away. “Don’t.”
He looks down at your hand on his sleeve, then back at your face. “You’re sick.”
“It’s just a fever. It’ll pass.”
“You’ve been sick for weeks.”
“I haven’t.”
“You have.”
You don’t answer that, because the truth is sitting dangerously between you. You don’t know how to move around it without knocking it over. He exhales slowly through his nose, then pulls the chair from your desk over to the side of the bed and sits down.
“I’m not leaving,” he says.
“You have work.”
“It can wait.”
“You hate when things don’t get done.”
“I hate the idea of you collapsing more.”
You close your eyes for a moment, because the fever is making everything feel too loud. When you open them again he’s still there, sitting in the chair beside your bed, arms resting on his knees. Watching you like he’s trying to make sure you don’t disappear when he looks away.
“You don’t have to stay,” you say quietly.
“I know,” he replies.
But he doesn’t leave.
.
You wake up later to the feeling of something cool against your forehead.
For a second you don’t know where you are, the fever pulling you in and out of sleep in uneven waves, and then you realize you’re still in your room and Levi is sitting beside the bed with a damp cloth in his hand.
“You’re awake,” he says.
“You’re still here.”
“Unfortunately.” You smile a little at that, and he sets the cloth aside and pours more water into the cup, handing it to you again. “Drink,” he says.
You drink slowly while he watches. When you hand the cup back your fingers brush his again. This time neither of you pulls away immediately. He sets the cup down without looking away from you.
“You should’ve told me you were this sick,” he says quietly.
“It’s just a fever.”
“Stop saying that.”
You look at him for a long moment, and there’s something in his expression you’ve never seen directed at you before, something worried and almost angry, as if he’s upset with you for something he doesn’t fully understand yet.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” you say softly.
“I’m not worried,” he says immediately. You raise an eyebrow. He hesitates, then looks away briefly, jaw tightening. “I just don’t like it when people under my command start falling apart,” he says.
“That sounds like worrying.”
“That’s not worrying. I’m being practical.”
You smile faintly. “If you say so.”
There’s a long silence after that, the kind that isn’t uncomfortable but isn’t exactly comfortable either, just full of things neither of you knows how to say.
“If this war ever ends,” you say quietly after a while, staring up at the ceiling, “what do you think you’ll do?”
He doesn’t answer right away. “I don’t think about things that aren’t guaranteed to happen,” he says finally. You think he's going to ignore the question when he suddenly adds, “I don't know what I’d do.”
You ponder for a moment. “I'll just live out in the forest. If I survive.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that,” he says quietly.
“Like what?”
“Like you only plan on being here for a short time.”
Your breath catches slightly at that, and you look away quickly so he doesn’t see the expression on your face. “I’m just talking,” you say.
“No, you’re not.” He reaches out then, almost without thinking, and brushes a piece of hair away from your face where it has stuck to your skin from the fever, his fingers light and careful. “You scare me sometimes,” he says quietly, almost like he doesn’t realize he’s saying it out loud.
You blink at him. “You’re not scared of anything.”
“I’m not scared of most things,” he corrects.
“Then what are you scared of?”
He doesn’t answer that. Instead, he leaves his hand resting on the edge of the bed near yours, close enough that you can see the small scars across his knuckles. You reach out slowly and touch his hand, just lightly, your fingers resting over his like you’re not entirely sure you’re allowed to do it. He goes very still.
“You mean a lot to me,” you say quietly.
He looks at you. “Where did that come from?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I,” he says. “Don’t say things like that like you’re saying goodbye.”
“I’m not saying goodbye.”
“Good.”
There’s another long silence, and you’re still holding his hand now, your fingers curled slightly around his, and he doesn’t pull away. Instead, after a moment, he shifts his chair closer to the bed and rests his forearms on the mattress, leaning forward slightly so he’s closer to you. The distance between your faces is suddenly very small. You can see the faint shadow under his eyes, the way his expression softens when he thinks you’re too tired to notice.
“If something’s wrong,” he says quietly, “you need to tell me.”
You swallow. You could tell him now. You could say the words: I’m dying. I don’t have long. I’ve loved you for years and I was too afraid to tell you. You look at his face, at the way he’s watching you like you’re the only thing in the room that matters, and the words rise in your throat before you can stop them.
“I—”
You stop. He waits. You can see him waiting. He leans slightly closer without realizing it. His hand tightens very slightly around yours like he’s bracing himself for something.
“I…” you try again, and the words are right there, right at the edge of your mouth, so close you can almost hear them.
I love you.
But you can’t say it like this. Not when you’re lying in bed with a fever and he’s looking at you like he’s already worried. Not when the words would sound like a confession and a goodbye at the same time.
So you swallow them.
“I appreciate you,” you say instead.
He stares at you for a second, like he knows that’s not what you were going to say. “You’re terrible at talking about feelings,” he says quietly.
“So are you.”
“I know.”
You’re both still holding hands, and after a while the fever starts to pull you back toward sleep again, your eyelids getting heavier, your grip on his hand loosening slightly as you drift.
“You should sleep,” he says softly.
“You should go back to work.”
“I’ll leave later.”
You don’t argue this time. You fall asleep still holding his hand, your fingers loosely curled around his. He stays there long after your breathing evens out, sitting in the chair beside your bed with one hand trapped under yours and the other resting on the mattress, watching your chest rise and fall slowly under the blanket.
He tells himself he’s staying because you’re sick. Because someone should be here in case the fever gets worse. Because he’s your captain.
But as the hours pass and the light outside your window shifts from afternoon to evening to night and then slowly toward morning, he realizes something he hasn’t let himself think about before.
He’s watching you breathe because he is afraid that if he looks away, you might stop. He’s staying because the idea of leaving you alone like this feels wrong in a way he can’t explain. He’s staying because something about this situation feels like standing on the edge of a cliff and not realizing how close you are to falling until the ground gives way under your feet.
He looks down at your hand where it’s still loosely wrapped around his, and he closes his fingers around yours carefully so he doesn’t wake you.
He realizes, sitting there in the quiet of your room while the rest of the Scouts sleep, that he’s afraid. Not of Titans. Not of battle. Not of dying.
He’s afraid of losing you.
Losing you, he realizes, would destroy him.
He stays until morning.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
You don’t go to the infirmary because you’re sick anymore; you go because you’re being monitored now, quietly, unofficially, the medic checking your lungs every few days under the pretense of routine evaluations.
You sit on the edge of the bed while the medic listens to your breathing again, their brow furrowing slightly in the way you’ve learned to dread.
“Try to breathe deeper,” they say.
You try, and the breath catches halfway in your chest before you can pull it all the way in, and you see their expression tighten just a little more. You don’t ask what that means. You already know.
They finish the examination and make a few notes, then leave you alone for a few minutes while they go to retrieve something from another room. You sit there swinging your feet slightly off the edge of the bed, staring at the floor and thinking about how strange it is that you can sit here knowing exactly how this ends and still feel like you’re living in the middle of something instead of at the end of it.
The door opens again, but it isn’t the medic this time. It’s Hange. They close the door behind them and lean back against it for a moment, arms crossed, watching you in that quiet, thoughtful way they’ve had ever since the day in the infirmary when everything changed.
“You’re worse,” they say.
You shrug slightly. “I’m fine.”
They give you a look. “You need a new word,” they say. “You’ve worn that one out.”
You smile faintly, but it doesn’t last long. Hange pushes away from the door and walks over, stopping a few feet in front of you, close enough that you can see the worry they’re not bothering to hide anymore.
“He’s getting suspicious,” they say.
Your stomach churns slightly. “I know.”
“He watches you constantly.”
“I know.”
“He asked me yesterday if I thought you were sick.”
You look up. “What did you say?”
“I said you were overworking yourself and being an idiot, which is technically true.” You let out a slow breath you didn’t realize you were holding. “He’s not going to stop asking,” Hange continues quietly. “And he’s not stupid. He’s going to figure out something’s wrong.”
You look down at your hands again, twisting your fingers together slowly. “I don’t want him to find out like that,” you say.
“Then tell him,” Hange replies immediately. “Tell him before he figures it out himself. Tell him before he has to corner a medic or interrogate someone. Tell him because he deserves to hear it from you.”
You shake your head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
You don’t answer right away, because the reasons are complicated and emotional and selfish in ways you don’t like admitting even to yourself. You don’t know how to explain them without sounding like you’re making excuses.
“I don’t want him to look at me like I’m already gone,” you say finally. “I don’t want him to start treating me differently,” you continue quietly. “I don’t want him to stop giving me work, or stop arguing with me, or start being careful with me like I’m going to break if someone breathes too hard in my direction.”
Hange’s expression softens slightly, but they still look unconvinced. “He’s going to treat you differently eventually,” they say gently.
“I know,” you reply. “But I don’t want that to start now. I want things to stay normal for as long as possible.”
Hange studies your face for a long moment, like they’re trying to see all the thoughts you’re not saying out loud. “That’s not the only reason,” they say.
You sigh quietly. “No.” They wait. You look down at your hands again. You swallow before speaking again. “I don’t want the first time I tell him how I feel to sound like a goodbye,” you say softly.
The room goes very quiet after that. Hange’s expression changes slowly, understanding settling into their face. You’ve never confided in them that you have feelings for Levi, but you’re starting to guess that Hange is a little too clever for their own good. “You’re going to tell him,” they say.
You nod once. “Yes.”
“When?”
You hesitate. “I don’t know yet.”
“You don’t have unlimited time,” they say quietly.
“I know.”
“Then you should tell him soon.”
“I will.”
Hange exhales slowly and runs a hand through their hair, looking frustrated and sad and tired all at the same time. “You’re both idiots,” they mutter.
You smile faintly. “That’s not new information.”
“He loves you, you know.”
The words hit you harder than you expect them to, and you look up sharply. “Don’t say things like that unless you’re sure,” you say quietly.
“I’m sure,” Hange replies immediately. “He watches you like the world might collapse if you trip over something. He rearranged half the duty assignments just so you’d be working closer to him. He hasn’t slept properly in weeks because he keeps checking if you’re still working too late. He came to the infirmary twice asking if anyone had seen you when you missed one morning. He just didn’t tell me why.”
You stare at them, heart beating faster now. “He just thinks I’m overworking myself,” you say.
Hange shakes their head slowly. “He’s not that stupid.”
You look away, your throat tight. “If he feels that way,” you say quietly, “then I want to hear it from him, not from you.”
“That’s fair,” Hange admits.
You sit in silence for a moment after that, the air between you heavy with everything that isn’t being said, and then Hange sighs and leans back against the wall again. “You need to pick a moment,” they say. “You’re waiting for the perfect time, but the perfect time doesn’t exist.”
“I know,” you reply.
“Then pick a good enough time.”
You nod slowly. You start thinking about it then—about where you would tell him, what you would say, whether you would say it all at once or in pieces, whether you would laugh first or be serious, whether he would understand immediately or stare at you like you’d just said something impossible.
You imagine telling him in his office. No, that feels too formal.
In the mess hall? No, too many people.
On a supply run? Too unprofessional.
Somewhere quiet, somewhere just the two of you, somewhere that feels like a moment instead of an accident. Somewhere that belongs to both of you.
“You’re thinking about it already,” Hange says, watching your face.
You nod. “Yes.”
“Good.” They push themselves away from the wall and head toward the door, then pause with their hand on the handle. “You don’t have to do this alone,” they say quietly.
“I know,” you reply. But you also know that some conversations have to be had alone, that some words only matter if they come directly from you and no one else.
Hange leaves the room, and you sit there for a long time after they’re gone, staring at nothing in particular and thinking about Levi, about the way he looks at you when he thinks you’re not paying attention, about the way he stayed beside your bed all night while you were sick, about the way he says your name when he’s frustrated and when he’s worried and when he’s trying not to sound like either of those things.
You think about what it would feel like to say the words out loud. You think about how his face might change when he hears them. You think about how afraid you are that he might not say them back.
And you think about how much more afraid you are that you might run out of time before you ever say them at all.
.
The afternoon is quiet in Levi’s office. This quiet only exists when most of the soldiers are outside training or on duty. You stand across from his desk with a stack of supply reports in your hands while he studies a map spread out over the surface in front of him.
“Winter’s going to be worse this year,” he says, tapping a spot along one of the outer supply routes. “We’ll need to stock more blankets, more preserved food, and double the medical supplies.”
You nod, setting the reports down beside the map. “We’ll need more storage space.”
“I know. We’ll clear out the old equipment room and convert it. You can reorganize the inventory when we move everything.”
You can reorganize the inventory.
The words sink into you. You nod anyway. “That makes sense.”
He continues talking, moving a marker along the map as he plans out routes and schedules and supply rotations, and you watch his hands as he works. He’s always looking ahead, always preparing for problems before they happen.
“Next spring we’ll need to expand the storage again,” he says. “If we’re still running supply lines this far out, we’ll need a second inventory system. I’ll have you train someone to help with it.”
Next spring.
You stare at the map, but you’re not really seeing it anymore.
Next spring.
You try to picture it—the weather warmer, the courtyard full of training recruits again, new supply routes, new reports, new schedules—and for a moment you almost see yourself there, standing beside this desk again, arguing with him about numbers and organization and whether he should actually read the reports before signing them.
And then the image disappears, because you remember something he doesn’t know.
You might not be here next spring. You might not be here in winter. You might not even be here in a few months.
He keeps talking. “We’ll also need to start training someone to take over the logistics records eventually,” he continues. “You’ve organized everything so specifically that no one else can understand it without help.”
You blink slowly. “Eventually?”
“Yes. You’re not going to do this forever.”
“I thought you said I was the only one who could do it correctly,” you say.
“You are,” he replies without looking up. “That’s why you’ll train someone.”
You swallow, your throat suddenly dry. He’s planning a future where you’re still here long enough to train someone else. He’s planning a future that includes you in it without even thinking about it.
You rest your hands lightly on the edge of the desk and look down at the map, at the places he’s marking, at the lines he’s drawing between one month and the next and the next, and you realize that Levi thinks about the future like it’s something guaranteed, something that can be controlled and organized and prepared for if he just works hard enough and plans carefully enough. He thinks he can outwork time.
He doesn’t know that time is the one thing no one wins against.
“You’re quiet,” he says suddenly.
You look up quickly. “I’m listening.”
“You’re thinking,” he corrects.
“I can do both.”
“Not at the same time.”
You almost smile at that, but the smile doesn’t quite form. He finally looks up from the map, his eyes moving immediately to your face, studying you in that way he has now.
“You look tired again,” he says.
“I’m always tired.”
“You’re more tired.”
“I’m fine.”
He stares at you for a long moment, and you can see the familiar frustration flicker across his expression, the irritation that’s really just worry wearing a different face.
“You say that too much,” he mutters.
“I say it because it’s true.”
He doesn’t answer right away, and the silence stretches between you for a few seconds before he looks back down at the map and taps another spot with the marker.
“We’ll need to review these routes again in a few months,” he says. “Things will change once winter hits.”
In a few months. You look at him then. The words are right there in your chest, pressing against your ribs, begging to be spoken. I might not be here in a few months.
But you don’t say it. Instead, you nod slowly. “We’ll review them.”
He continues marking the map, talking about supply timing and storage capacity and how many people will be needed for each route, and you listen and answer and make notes like you always do, but inside your head there’s a different conversation happening, one he can’t hear.
He’s planning a life that includes you. He talks about the future like you’re automatically part of it. He doesn’t even question it. He just assumes you’ll be there.
And the worst part is that you want that future too. You want winter supply routes and spring inventory and training new recruits and arguing with him about paperwork and drinking tea in the mornings and walking through the courtyard and growing older in a world that eventually you hope will become peaceful. You want all of it. But wanting something and having time for it are not the same thing.
“You’re doing it again,” he says.
You blink. “Doing what?”
“Going quiet and staring at nothing.”
“I’m looking at the map.”
“You’re looking through the map.”
You sigh quietly. “You’re very observant.”
"I have to be."
He sets the marker down and leans back slightly in his chair, still watching you, and there’s something in his expression now that makes your stomach twist slightly.
“You’re not telling me something,” he says.
You force yourself not to look away. “There’s nothing to tell,” you reply.
“You’re lying again.”
“I’m not lying.”
He studies your face for another long moment, and for a second you think he might push harder, might demand answers, might corner you into telling him everything right there in the middle of his office. But he doesn’t. Instead, he exhales slowly and looks back down at the map again, like he’s decided that whatever this is, he’ll figure it out later.
“We’ll finish this tomorrow,” he says.
You nod. “Alright.” You gather the reports from the edge of the desk and turn toward the door, but before you reach it he speaks again.
“You’ll be here tomorrow morning,” he says, not quite a question, not quite a statement.
You pause, your hand resting lightly on the door handle. “Yes,” you say quietly.
He nods once, like that’s the only answer he would have accepted, and looks back down at the map again, already thinking about winter and spring and months from now, already building a future in his head that he assumes you’ll be standing beside him in.
You open the door and step out into the hallway, closing it quietly behind you, and you stand there for a moment with your hand still resting on the wood, staring at nothing in particular.
Inside the office, Levi continues planning, unaware that every plan he makes goes farther into the future than you might be able to follow him.
And in the hallway, you press your hand lightly against your chest and close your eyes for a second, wishing, just for a moment, that you could step into the future he’s imagining and stay there with him.
.
You don’t go to the roof because you have somewhere to be. You go because it’s quiet there, because the wind is cold and clean and makes it easier to breathe than the dust and stone air inside the building, and because from the roof you can see far enough that the world almost looks peaceful, almost looks like a place where people live long, ordinary lives instead of short, violent ones.
You sit near the edge with your knees drawn slightly toward your chest, watching the sun sink slowly toward the horizon. The sky turns into soft shades of gold and orange. For a while you don’t think about anything at all. You just sit and watch the light change.
You hear the door behind you open, and you don’t turn right away, because you already know who it is. Levi’s footsteps are quieter than almost anyone else’s, but you’ve known him long enough to recognize the rhythm of the way he walks, never wasted movement, never uncertain.
“You disappeared again,” he says as he approaches. He stops a few feet away from you, looking out over the edge of the roof instead of directly at you, and for a moment neither of you says anything.
The silence between you is comfortable in a way that surprises most people who see the two of you together. With anyone else, silence is awkward, something that needs to be filled. With Levi, silence is just another form of conversation.
“You shouldn’t sit so close to the edge,” he says after a while.
“I’m not going to fall.”
“You trip over stairs.”
“That was one time.”
“It was enough.”
You smile slightly at that, and he finally sits down beside you, not too close at first, leaving a small space between your shoulders that feels both intentional and unnecessary at the same time. The wind lifts slightly, pushing a loose strand of hair across your face, and you brush it back absently while watching the sun sink lower.
“It’s quiet up here,” you say.
“That’s why I come up here,” he replies.
You glance at him. “You come up here a lot?”
“When I need to think.”
“You do a lot of thinking?”
“I do a lot of dealing with idiots. Thinking is necessary to survive that.”
You laugh softly. You sit there for a while, watching the sky change colors, the sun slipping lower and lower until the light softens.
“If this all ended tomorrow,” you say quietly, “what would you do?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. “That won’t happen,” he says finally.
“It might happen.”
“It might not.”
“You’re very optimistic.”
“I’m realistic.”
You tilt your head slightly, looking at him. “So realistically, what would you do if there were no more Titans, no more expeditions, no more fighting?”
He’s quiet for a long moment, staring out at the horizon like he’s trying to picture something he’s never really allowed himself to imagine before.
“I don’t know,” he says eventually. “Sleep, probably.”
You smile. “You’d sleep for a year.”
“At least.”
“What else?”
He shrugs slightly. “Find something useful to do.”
“You’d open a tea shop.”
He gives you a look. “I would not open a tea shop.”
“You drink enough tea to own one.”
“I drink tea because it’s hot and doesn’t taste like garbage.”
“That’s not a good business slogan.” He almost smiles at that, just a small shift at the corner of his mouth that most people would miss, but you don’t. “You could sit behind the counter and glare at customers until they leave,” you continue. “Very effective business model.”
“You’d be the only customer.”
“I’d come every day.”
“You already bother me every day.”
“That’s because you’d miss me if I stopped.”
He doesn’t answer that immediately. You look at him then, and he’s looking at you, and something in his expression makes your heart flutter slightly. “You’re important here,” he says quietly.
You blink. “That’s a very professional way to say you’d miss me.”
“I’m not saying I’d miss you.”
“You’re implying it.”
“I’m saying the supply system would collapse without you.”
“That’s very romantic.”
He snorts softly. “You’re impossible.”
“You tolerate me.”
“I tolerate a lot of things.”
“But you keep me around on purpose.”
He doesn’t deny that. Instead, he reaches over and adjusts the edge of your cloak where it’s slipped off your shoulder slightly, his fingers brushing the fabric and then your shoulder for just a second before he pulls his hand back again. The touch is brief, but it lingers in your mind.
“You work too hard,” he says quietly.
“So do you,” you say.
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“I’m in charge. I’m allowed to be miserable.”
“You’re not miserable.”
“I am most of the time.”
You shake your head slightly. “You’re just dramatic.”
“I’m not dramatic.”
“You just sit quietly and judge everyone.”
“They deserve it.”
You sit there in silence again after that, the sky turning darker now, the first faint stars beginning to appear overhead, and the wind has picked up slightly.
You realize suddenly that this is one of the moments you were talking about with Hange—a moment that feels like it belongs to just the two of you, separate from everything else in the world. You swallow, your heart beating a little faster now, and you turn slightly toward him.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” you say.
He looks at you immediately, his attention focused in a way that makes it impossible to pretend this is a casual conversation anymore. “Then tell me,” he says.
The words sit between you for a second. You look at his face, at the way he’s watching you like nothing else exists right now. The words rise in your throat again, the same ones that have been sitting there for weeks, for months, maybe longer.
I love you.
You open your mouth. Then you close it again. You’re afraid that if you say it, everything will change. You’re afraid that if you say it, you’ll see something in his face that you’re not ready for. You’re afraid that if you say it, you’ll want more time than you have.
“I’m glad I met you,” you say instead.
He stares at you for a second, and you can see immediately that he knows that’s not what you meant to say. “You’re the only person here who doesn’t annoy me,” he says after a moment.
You smile faintly. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“I trust you,” he adds, more quietly now. “More than anyone here.”
Your breath catches slightly at that, and you look down at your hands because you don’t know what expression is on your face right now and you’re afraid he might see too much if you look at him.
“You shouldn’t say things like that unless you mean them,” you say softly.
“I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
You look up then, and for a moment you’re both just looking at each other in the fading light, close enough now that you can see the exact color of his eyes in the dusk, close enough that if either of you leaned forward just a little bit more, everything would change.
He notices how pale you look in the fading light, how tired your eyes are, how thin your hands feel when he thinks about the way they felt the last time he held them. Something twists in him again, that same fear he’s been carrying around for weeks now without knowing exactly why.
“If something ever happened to you,” he says quietly, almost like he’s thinking out loud instead of talking to you directly, “it would be… difficult.”
You huff a small laugh. “Difficult?”
“I don’t like losing people.”
“That’s a very mild way of saying that.”
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he reaches over and adjusts your cloak again where the wind has pulled it loose, his hand brushing your neck. “You’re not allowed to die before me,” he says quietly.
You freeze slightly at that, your heart skipping a beat. “That sounds like an order,” you say softly.
“It is. So promise me.”
You look at him, and in that moment you realize that this is the closest you have ever been to him in every possible way—not physically, but emotionally, like the space between you has finally narrowed. You want to lean closer. You want to take his hand. You want to tell him everything. But instead, you both just sit there as the sky turns fully dark, the stars spreading slowly overhead.
“I promise,” you finally say, the words feeling heavy in your chest.
After a while, he stands and holds out a hand to help you up. You take it, your fingers wrapping around his. He doesn’t let go immediately after you’re standing. For a second, you’re both just standing there, hands still linked, neither of you moving.
Then he lets go. “We should go back,” he says.
You nod. You walk back to the door together, shoulders brushing once as you pass through the doorway. Neither of you comments on it.
At the bottom of the stairs, you pause for a moment, and he stops beside you. “I’m glad I met you too,” he says quietly, not looking at you when he says it.
Your heart stutters slightly. He walks away before you can respond, disappearing down the hallway. You stand there for a moment watching him go, your hand still warm where his had been a few minutes ago.
You realize then that if you had leaned forward just a little bit more on that rooftop, if you had said the words you almost said, if he had reached out just a little bit more, everything might have changed.
But you didn’t.
And neither did he.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
You’re running out of time.
The thought doesn’t scare you the way it did at first. It sits in you now heavily, something you carry around with you everywhere, something you’ve stopped trying to pretend isn’t there.
But the idea of leaving without telling him—that still terrifies you.
You close the report in front of you slowly and lean back in your chair, staring at the wall across from you. You think about the rooftop, about the way he looked at you when you said you were glad you met him, about the way he said you weren’t allowed to die before him like it was an order he expected the world to obey. You think about the fever night, about his hand in yours, about the way he stayed until morning. You think about every cup of tea, every argument about food, every report you’ve handed him, every time he’s said your name in that particular way that means he’s irritated but also worried.
You think about how much you love him.
And you realize that you cannot leave this world without telling him that.
“I’m going to tell him,” you say out loud to the empty room. You stand up slowly and walk over to your bed, sitting down on the edge of it and staring at the small desk across the room where your writing supplies are scattered in their usual messy arrangement.
You should write it down. Just in case.
The thought makes your stomach twist slightly, but you stand again anyway and walk to the desk, pulling a sheet of paper toward you and dipping the pen into the ink with hands that are only shaking a little. You sit there for a long moment, staring at the blank paper, trying to figure out how to start something that feels too big to fit into words.
Finally, you write his name.
You stop there for a second, staring at it, your chest tightening slightly just from seeing it written in your own handwriting.
You start again.
I don’t know how to say this out loud, so I’m writing it down in case I never find the courage to tell you properly.
You pause, tapping the end of the pen lightly against the paper, thinking. That sounds too serious, you think. Too much like goodbye. But you don’t know how else to start a letter where you’re pouring years of feelings out. You continue writing.
I think I’ve loved you for a long time.
You stare at the sentence for a long moment after writing it, your heart beating faster just from seeing the words written down, from seeing the truth of it sitting there in ink where you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist anymore.
You keep writing slowly, the words coming easier now.
I never told you because I didn’t think it mattered if you knew. Being beside you was already enough for me. The mornings, the tea, the reports, the arguments, those quiet moments when neither of us had anything to say but stayed anyway. That was already more than I expected to have in this life.
Your hand trembles slightly, and a small drop of ink smudges near the edge of the paper where your fingers rest. You continue anyway.
You matter to me more than anyone. I don’t expect you to say anything back. I just needed you to know.
You stop again, staring at the paper, and your vision blurs slightly before you realize you’re crying. You laugh quietly at yourself and wipe your eyes with the back of your hand. “This is stupid,” you mutter to yourself. “You’re writing like you’re already gone.”
You don’t cross the words out. Instead, you keep writing.
I’m glad I met you. I’m glad I got to work with you. I’m glad I got to drink tea with you in the mornings and argue with you about whether I ate enough and listen to you complain about paperwork. If I had more time, I think I would have spent most of it sitting in the same room as you, not saying much, just being there.
You stop writing then, because your hand is shaking too much now and the words are getting harder to see. You read the letter over once, twice, then fold the paper carefully, smoothing the crease with your fingers. You set it down on your bed beside you and sit there for a moment, staring at it.
“Just in case,” you say quietly. You don’t like the way those words sound. But they’re true. Just in case you chicken out. Just in case you want to tell him but you can’t say it out loud. Just in case you didn’t tell him before you ran out of time.
You stand up and walk to the small mirror on the wall, looking at your reflection critically. You look tired. You always look tired now. But today, you want to look normal. You want to look like someone who is about to confess something important, not like someone who is slowly disappearing. You smooth your hair back with your hands, adjusting the loose strands until they sit the way you like. You straighten your jacket, brush a bit of dust from the sleeve, adjust the collar slightly.
You look at yourself for a long moment. “You can do this,” you tell your reflection quietly. You take a deep breath, then another, practicing the words in your head before trying them out loud. “I think I’ve loved you for a long time,” you say softly. You make a face. “That sounds ridiculous.”
You try again.
“I think I’ve loved you for a long time,” you repeat, a little more firmly this time. You tilt your head slightly, considering it. “Maybe start with something else,” you mutter to yourself.
You try again.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” You pause. “That sounds like I’m about to confess to a crime.”
You try another version.
“You’re my home.” You wince slightly. “That sounds too cheesy.”
You pace a little in the small space of your room, running through different versions out loud like you’re practicing for a speech. Some versions make you laugh because they sound stupid. Some make your heart wrench because they sound too honest, too serious, too much like a goodbye.
Eventually, you stop pacing and lean against the wall, closing your eyes for a moment.
“You’re overthinking this,” you tell yourself. “Just say the truth.”
The truth is simple.
I’ve loved you for a long time. You matter more to me more than anyone else. You complete me.
You open your eyes and look at yourself in the mirror again. “Okay,” you say quietly. “That’s what I’ll say.”
You take one last look at your reflection, make a small adjustment to your hair, smooth your jacket again even though it doesn’t need it, and then you turn toward the door before you can change your mind. You open the door, step into the hallway, and close it behind you, your heart beating faster now, your hands slightly cold despite the warm air inside the building.
You don’t look back.
You don’t notice the folded letter still lying on your bed, exactly where you left it, the ink fully dry now, the paper carefully creased, waiting for someone who isn’t there yet to read the words you were finally brave enough to write down.
You walk down the hallway toward Levi’s office, rehearsing the words in your head one more time, your heart pounding like you’re about to step into battle instead of a conversation.
This is the most important conversation of your life.
You don’t know that it’s the last decision you will ever make.
You walk faster than usual, though you try not to make it obvious. Your heart beats loudly as you repeat the words over and over in your head so you don’t forget them when you finally see him. You mouth the words silently as you walk, testing how they feel, trying to make them sound natural in your head so they won’t come out strange or awkward when you finally say them out loud.
You pass a window and catch your reflection for just a second—hair fixed, jacket straight, face blanched but determined—and you almost laugh because you look like someone about to go into a battle, not someone about to confess something that feels bigger than anything you’ve ever done in your life.
Your hands are cold. Your heart is racing. You feel like you’re about to step into something that will change everything.
Just say it, you think. Just say the truth.
You turn the corner into the main hallway that leads toward Levi’s office. As you walk you pass the infirmary door on your right, the familiar smell drifts faintly into the hallway as someone opens it from inside. For a brief moment you think about how many times you’ve walked past this door pretending everything was fine.
After this, everything will be different.
You take another step. Then another.
Then suddenly the world spins.
At first it’s small, just a strange wave of dizziness that makes the hallway feel slightly longer than it should be. You stop walking for a second, pressing your hand lightly against the wall as you wait for the feeling to pass.
“Not now,” you whisper under your breath. “Please, not now.”
You push yourself away from the wall and take another step. Your chest wrenches. You try to breathe in, but the breath catches halfway painfully. The cough comes before you can stop it, tearing out of your lungs so violently that you double over slightly, one hand flying up to cover your mouth as the coughing fit takes hold of you completely.
It hurts.
It hurts more than usual, like something inside your chest is breaking apart instead of just struggling to breathe. You try to straighten up but another cough hits you immediately. Then another. You stumble sideways, your shoulder hitting the wall harder than you meant it to.
“Not now,” you whisper again, your voice hoarse and broken between coughs. “I just need a few more minutes.”
You try to walk again, but your legs don’t feel steady anymore. The hallway seems too long, the distance to Levi’s office suddenly impossible. You take two steps before the coughing comes back worse than before, forcing you to your knees as you try desperately to breathe.
Your hand comes away from your mouth wet. You look down. There’s blood on your fingers. More blood than you’ve ever seen before.
For a second, everything goes very quiet.
“Oh,” you whisper, staring at your hand. “Oh.”
The world spins again, harder this time, and you try to push yourself back up, try to stand, try to keep moving, because you were so close. You were almost there, you were going to tell him today, you were finally going to say the words out loud. But your legs give out before you can stand, and you fall sideways onto the stone floor, the impact distant and dull, like it’s happening to someone else instead of you.
The hallway ceiling swims above you, the light blurring, and you try to breathe but your chest won’t cooperate, each breath shallow and uneven and not nearly enough.
Footsteps run toward you. You hear voices. Someone saying your name.
And then Hange is there, dropping to their knees beside you so quickly it almost looks like they fell too, their hands immediately on your shoulders, their face pale and terrified in a way you’ve never seen before.
“Hey, hey, stay with me,” Hange says, their voice too loud and too tight. “Look at me.”
You try to focus on their face, but everything keeps drifting in and out, the edges of the world going soft and dark. “Hange,” you whisper, and even saying their name takes more effort than it should.
Hange turns their head sharply toward a cadet who’s frozen a few feet away, staring in shock. “Go get a medic!” Hange snaps. “Now! Run!” The cadet bolts immediately, footsteps echoing down the hallway. They turn to the other cadet and yell, “Get Captain Levi immediately!” He sprints down the other end of the hallway. Hange looks back at you, one hand gripping yours tightly now, the other pressing lightly against your shoulder. “You idiot,” they say, their voice breaking slightly. “You said you were fine.”
“I was,” you whisper weakly. “I was going to tell him.”
Hange’s grip tightens on your hand. “Tell him what?”
You try to breathe again, but the breath won’t come properly, and your chest hurts so much now you can barely think around it. “I was on my way to him,” you say, the words coming out slowly and unevenly. “I was going to tell him.”
Hange’s expression changes immediately, understanding and heartbreak and guilt all crashing across their face at the same time. “You can still tell him,” they say quickly. “He’s here. We’ll get him.”
“Is he coming?” you ask, your voice small and distant even to your own ears.
“Yes,” Hange says immediately, squeezing your hand tighter. “He’s coming.”
You nod slightly, relieved, your fingers curling weakly around Hange’s hand. “Good,” you whisper. “I didn’t want… I didn’t want to leave without telling him.”
“You won’t,” Hange says quickly. “You can tell him yourself. Just stay with me.”
You try to nod again, but the world is getting darker now, the light dimming like someone is slowly turning it down. Your body feels very heavy and very tired, like you’ve been running for a long time and can finally stop.
“I’ve loved him for a long time,” you whisper, the words barely louder than the sound of your breathing. “Can you tell him that? In case… in case I don’t…”
Hange shakes their head quickly, tears in their eyes now. “You’re going to tell him yourself. He’s on his way.”
You look at them, trying to focus on their face, trying to stay awake just a little longer. “You have to tell him I was on my way,” you say softly. “I was coming to tell him.”
“I’ll tell him,” Hange says, their voice breaking now. “I promise. I’ll tell him everything.”
You relax a little at that, your grip on their hand loosening slightly. “Is he close?” you ask quietly.
“Yes,” Hange says gently. “He’s very close.”
You nod slowly, your eyes starting to close even though you try to keep them open.
“Good,” you whisper. “I just… I wanted to see him one more time.”
Your breathing slows, each inhale shallower than the last, and Hange squeezes your hand tighter. “Stay with me,” they whisper. “Just a little longer.”
You try to answer, but you’re too tired now, too tired to keep fighting your own body, too tired to keep your eyes open, too tired to keep breathing when each breath feels like climbing a mountain.
The last thing you feel is Hange’s hand holding yours tightly.
The last thing you hear is Hange saying your name.
And the last thing you think, as the world finally goes quiet and dark around you, is that you were so close.
.
Levi is in the middle of reviewing reports when the door to his office slams open hard enough to hit the wall behind it. He looks up immediately, irritation already rising before he even sees who it is.
A cadet stands in the doorway, breathing hard like they’ve been running. “Captain, you’re needed immediately,” the cadet says.
Levi frowns. “If this is about missing inventory again, I swear—”
“It’s not that,” the cadet interrupts quickly. “It’s— you’re just needed. Right now.”
Something in the cadet’s voice makes Levi pause. He sets the pen down slowly, the irritation still there but shifting now into alertness.
“Where?” he asks.
“The main hallway. Near the infirmary.”
Levi stands immediately. He doesn’t run. He never runs unless there’s a Titan involved. But he walks quickly, the cadet hurrying ahead of him. As they move through the building Levi feels a strange, unpleasant churning in his stomach.
“Who’s hurt?” he asks. The cadet hesitates for half a second. Levi notices. “Who?" Levi repeats more sharply.
The cadet doesn’t answer. The feeling in Levi’s stomach gets worse.
They turn the corner into the main hallway, and he sees the small crowd first—soldiers gathered in a loose circle, whispering quietly, standing back, not wanting to get too close to whatever is happening in the middle of the floor.
And then he sees Hange.
And the medic.
And you.
You’re lying on the stone floor, too still, one arm at your side, the other slightly bent like you tried to reach for something and didn’t make it.
For a moment, Levi doesn’t understand what he’s looking at.
Then his lungs nearly stop working.
He walks straight toward the crowd, his voice cold. “Move.” No one argues. They step aside immediately, and he drops to one knee beside you, his hand already reaching for your wrist before anyone can say anything.
Your skin is still warm. Your hand is limp in his. He presses two fingers against your wrist, searching for a pulse. He waits. One second. Two seconds. Three. Nothing.
He slowly lowers your hand back to the floor, and for a moment he just stares at your face. Then he looks up at Hange. And the look on his face is something most people would never want directed at them. He looks like he’s going to kill Hange.
“What happened?” he says quietly.
Hange’s eyes are red, and there are tears on their face they clearly haven’t bothered to wipe away. “She collapsed,” Hange says, their voice shaking slightly. “She was walking down the hallway. She started coughing and then she just—”
“Why,” Levi interrupts, his voice still quiet but dangerous now, “did she collapse?”
Hange swallows. The medic looks at the floor. Levi’s eyes move between them slowly, and the silence stretches long enough to become unbearable.
“Someone,” Levi says, his voice dropping even lower, “is going to explain this to me.”
Hange exhales slowly, like they’ve been holding their breath for weeks. “She was sick,” Hange says.
The words land in the hallway like a stone dropped into still water. Levi doesn’t react immediately. He just stares at Hange, like he didn’t hear them correctly.
“What?” he says.
“She was diagnosed many weeks ago,” Hange continues, their voice breaking slightly now. “It was her lungs. There wasn’t anything the medic could do. She knew. I knew. The medic knew.”
Levi’s eyes sharpen. “And no one thought to tell me.”
“She made me promise not to,” Hange says quickly. “She didn’t want you to know. She didn’t want you to treat her differently. She wanted things to stay normal for as long as possible.”
Levi laughs once, a short sound that doesn’t sound like laughter at all. “She was dying,” he says slowly, “and she thought I’d treat her differently.”
“She didn’t want pity,” Hange whispers. “She didn’t want to become fragile in your eyes.”
Levi looks down at you again, at the way your hair falls across your forehead, at the way your face looks strangely peaceful, like you’re just sleeping in the middle of a hallway for no reason at all.
“She hid it,” he says quietly.
“Yes.”
“And you helped her hide it.”
Hange closes their eyes for a second. “Yes.”
Levi doesn’t say anything for a long time after that. Then he asks, very quietly, “Why was she in the hallway?”
Hange’s face crumples slightly at that. “She was on her way to your office,” they say.
Levi’s head snaps up slightly. “Why?”
Hange hesitates. “She said she needed to tell you something,” they say softly. “She told me she was on her way to you when she collapsed.”
Levi feels like a knife is being turned slowly behind his ribs. “What did she need to tell me?” he asks, though something deep down already knows the answer.
Hange leans in and lowers their voice so only he can hear. “She had last words for you,” Hange says quietly. Levi’s throat feels suddenly too tight. Hange leans closer and whispers in his ear. “She told me to tell you she loved you.”
The world stops.
Everything—every morning tea, every report, every second bickering, every moment spent together in silence, every time you said his name, every time you looked at him like you were about to say something and then didn’t—everything crashes into place all at once in his mind. The rooftop. The fever night. The way you looked at him when he talked about the future. When you said you were glad you met him. How you kept saying you were fine.
He realizes, all at once and far too late, that every moment he thought he still had time, you were already running out of it.
“You idiot,” he whispers, but his voice breaks halfway through the word.
He looks down at you again and reaches for your hand, lifting it carefully into his, holding it the way he did that night when you were sick. Maybe if he holds it carefully enough, you might still wake up.
“You should’ve told me,” he says quietly, his voice shaking now despite his best effort to control it.
He stops, swallowing hard, his grip tightening slightly around your hand. He feels anger rise in him, overwhelming—anger at Hange, at the medic, at you, at himself, at the entire world for continuing to exist like nothing just happened.
“You weren’t allowed to leave,” he mutters, his voice rough now. He leans forward slightly, his forehead almost touching the back of your hand, and his shoulders shake once before he can stop them. “You promised,” he whispers hoarsely. “You promised.”
His voice breaks completely then, and he closes his eyes tightly like if he doesn’t look at you, maybe this won’t be real. But your hand is still cold in his, and the hallway is still too quiet, and everyone around him is still standing far enough away to give him space.
And Levi sits there on the stone floor, holding your hand and realizing that the future he’s been planning for both of you no longer exists.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
A few days pass before Levi goes to your room.
He tells himself he’s busy. That there are reports to finish, papers to review, training schedules to approve, problems that still need solving because the world did not stop just because you did. He tells himself that there will be time to deal with your belongings later, that someone else could do it, that it isn’t urgent.
But every time he walks past the hallway where your room is, he slows down without meaning to. Every time he sees someone carrying a stack of reports, he looks up automatically, expecting to see you behind them. Every morning when he makes tea, he pours too much water into the kettle before remembering that there is no second cup anymore.
After a few days, Hange quietly places a small key on his desk.
“She didn’t have much,” they say gently. “But someone should go through her things.”
Levi doesn’t answer right away. He just looks at the key sitting on the desk with a blank stare.
“I’ll take care of it,” he says eventually.
He waits until evening.
He tells himself it’s because fewer people will be around, because he doesn’t want anyone watching him, because this is just a task that needs to be done and it will be easier when the building is quiet.
But when he finally stands in front of your door with the key in his hand, he realizes the real reason he waited is because opening this door will make everything final in a way he hasn’t fully allowed yet.
He unlocks the door slowly and pushes it open. The room is exactly the same. Your bed is made, though not perfectly. Your desk is still covered in papers and notes and a cup that probably held tea a few days ago. Your spare jacket is draped over the back of the chair. A book lies open on the desk with a small scrap of paper marking your place. Your other pair of boots are near the door like you just kicked them off and meant to put them away later. The room looks like someone still lives here.
Levi stands in the doorway for a long moment, not moving, not speaking, just looking at the space like if he stares long enough, you might walk in behind him and ask why he’s standing in your room.
He steps inside slowly and closes the door behind him. The room is quiet. He walks to the desk first, looking at the papers, recognizing your handwriting immediately, neat but slightly slanted, organized in a way only you seemed to understand. He picks up one of the pages and reads a few lines before setting it back down exactly where it was. He touches the back of the chair where your jacket hangs, running his fingers lightly over the fabric, half-expecting it to still be warm. He doesn’t take anything yet. He just walks slowly around the room, looking at everything like he’s trying to memorize it.
Then he turns toward the bed. And he sees the letter. It’s lying on top of the blanket, folded carefully, placed right in the center like you meant for someone to find it. Like you meant for him to find it.
His name is written on the front in your handwriting.
He stops walking. For a long moment, he just stands there staring at the letter. He walks to the bed and picks it up carefully. He recognizes your handwriting immediately, and something in his chest twists painfully because you wrote this knowing you might never say the words out loud.
He unfolds the letter slowly and begins to read.
I think I’ve loved you for a long time.
His breath catches immediately, and he stops reading for a second, staring at the words like they might change if he looks away and then back again.
He keeps reading.
I never told you because I didn’t think it mattered if you knew. Being beside you was already enough for me. The mornings, the tea, the reports, the arguments, the quiet moments when neither of us had anything to say but stayed anyway. That was already more than I expected to have in this life. You matter to me more than anyone. I don’t expect you to say anything back. I just needed you to know.
His hands start shaking slightly, and he has to sit down on the edge of your bed because suddenly he can’t feel his legs properly.
I’m glad I met you. I’m glad I got to work with you. I’m glad I got to drink tea with you in the mornings and argue with you about whether I ate enough and listen to you complain about paperwork. If I had more time, I think I would have spent most of it sitting in the same room as you, not saying much, just being there.
If I had more time.
The words blur on the page because his vision suddenly isn’t steady anymore, and he blinks hard but it doesn’t help. He reads the letter again from the beginning, slower this time, like if he reads it carefully enough, he might find some hidden sentence that says this isn’t real, that you’re still alive somewhere and this is just a misunderstanding.
But there is no hidden sentence. There’s only your handwriting and your confession and the devastating truth that you loved him and you were going to tell him and you died on the way to him and he never said the words back.
His chest tightens suddenly, painfully, like he can’t get enough air, and he sets the letter down beside him on the bed and presses his hands against his face, breathing unevenly.
He realizes then, that you died thinking he didn’t love you. That you wrote this letter because you didn’t think you would ever hear the words back. That you were going to tell him anyway. That you were on your way to him.
He can’t breathe properly.
He bends forward slightly, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands covering his face, and at first the grief is quiet, just a pain in his sternum and a shaking in his shoulders that he tries and fails to control.
Then the realization hits him fully, all at once, and something inside him breaks completely.
He reaches for the letter again, gripping it tightly in his hand like it’s the only thing holding him together, and he leans forward until his forehead is pressed against the bed beside him, and the sob that escapes him is quiet at first, then louder, then completely uncontrolled as everything he’s been holding in for days finally collapses all at once.
He cries until he can’t breathe, until his shoulders shake and his hands tremble and he presses the letter against himself like if he holds it close enough, he might somehow hold on to you too.
He doesn’t say anything out loud. There are no words for this. There is only grief and regret and love that arrived too late and the terrible, unbearable knowledge that he would have told you if he had known, that he would have said the words if he had realized there wasn’t going to be another chance.
Eventually, the crying slows, but he stays sitting on your bed, the letter still in his hand, staring at the wall across from him like he doesn’t know what to do with a world that still exists when you don’t.
The room is quiet. Your jacket is still on the chair. Your papers are still on the desk. Your boots are still by the door.
Levi sits there for a long time, holding your letter and staring at the space where your life used to be, and the silence in the room feels louder than anything he has ever heard.
The room still smells like you, and Levi realizes that this is the closest he will ever be to you again.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
It’s quiet where you’re buried.
Levi chose the place himself, though he never told anyone that. It’s on a small rise just beyond the edge of the training grounds, far enough away that the noise of the soldiers and the clatter of equipment fades but close enough that the headquarters is still visible in the distance if you stand in the right spot. From here, you can see the sky clearly, and when the sun sets, the light spreads across the grass.
He thought you would have liked that.
He comes in the late afternoon, when the light is starting to turn warm and gold, carrying a small bundle of flowers in one hand. He doesn’t remember picking them. He just remembers standing in a field outside the castle, staring at the ground until he realized he was pulling flowers from the grass without thinking. He kneels down in front of the grave and sets the flowers carefully against the stone marker.
Your name is carved into the stone. He still isn’t used to seeing it like that.
He sits down beside the grave after a moment, resting his forearms on his knees and staring out at the horizon instead of directly at the stone, because looking at your name too long is too painful.
For a while, he doesn’t say anything. He just sits there, listening to the wind moving through the grass, watching a few birds fly across the sky. The world continues to move in quiet, ordinary ways that feel strange now, like everything should have stopped for at least a little while when you did.
“You’d hate how disorganized everything is right now,” he says finally, his voice quiet and rough from not being used much for conversation anymore. “The supply reports are a mess. No one can find anything without asking three different people first. I had to reorganize the inventory myself last week, and it took twice as long as it used to when you did it.”
He pauses for a moment, watching a bird land on a fence post in the distance.
“Hange is still annoying,” he continues quietly. “They keep trying to get me to take days off. Like that’s going to fix anything.”
He reaches down and pulls a small blade of grass from the ground, rolling it slowly between his fingers as he talks.
“The tea tastes worse when I make it,” he says after a moment. “I don’t know what you were doing differently, but it was better when you made it.” He huffs a quiet breath that might almost be a laugh. “You were better at a lot of things than most people,” he says.
He goes quiet again after that, the silence stretching between his words and the wind and the distant sounds of training in the background.
“Everyone still talks about you,” he says eventually. “They still use your system for the reports. They still complain about it, but they still use it. The new recruits hear your name all the time, even though they never met you. You’d probably find that funny.”
He looks down at the grass for a moment, then back up at the horizon where the sun is starting to sink lower, turning the sky into soft shades of orange and pink. The sunset reminds him of the rooftop. He remembers the wind, the quiet, how you sat beside him like it was the most normal thing in the world, how you said you were glad you met him, how you looked like you were about to say something else and then didn’t.
He remembers thinking there would be time to have that conversation later. He remembers thinking there would be a lot of later.
“There wasn’t a later,” he says quietly, almost to himself.
The sun drops a little lower, and the light across the field softens, the shadows stretching longer, the birds flying back toward wherever they go at night. He leans back slightly on his hands, looking up at the sky for a moment before closing his eyes briefly and exhaling slowly.
“I knew,” he says quietly. “I think I knew for a long time.” He swallows, his throat tight. “I just didn’t say anything,” he continues. “I told myself it didn’t matter if I said it out loud. I told myself you already knew. I told myself there would be time later.”
He shakes his head slightly, a small, tired movement.
“I was an idiot,” he says softly. “I should’ve said it. I should’ve told you. I should’ve told you the first time I realized I didn’t like it when you were late in the morning. I should’ve told you the first time you fell asleep at your desk and I covered you with your jacket. I should’ve told you on the roof that night when you looked at me like you were about to say something important.”
He looks down at the stone now, at your name carved into it. That same feeling returns, the pain that never really goes away anymore.
“I thought we had more time,” he says quietly. “I thought there would always be another morning, another report, another cup of tea. I thought there would be a later.”
The sun dips lower, the sky growing darker now, the air cooler as evening settles over the field. He sits there for a long time without speaking, just watching the last of the light disappear behind the horizon, the world slowly growing quiet.
Then he leans forward slightly, resting his hand lightly against the top of the stone marker, his fingers tracing the carved letters of your name slowly.
“I knew how I felt,” he says quietly. “I just didn’t say it because I thought there would be time. I thought there would be a later.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he speaks again, his voice is softer than it’s ever been, almost like he’s afraid the wind might carry the words away before they reach you.
“I think I’ve loved you for a long time too.”
Thank you for reading. I hope you cried as much as I did while writing and editing this. Someone else needs to suffer with me. <3
Warnings: 18+—uhhh this chapter is pretty brutal ngl, profanity, blood and blood description, fighting, knife, reader is cut with said knife, reader’s wrist gets dislocated, the fight with Morin is pretty violent yall, taunting, power imbalance, restraint, asphyxiation, pain and pain description, unconsciousness, anxiety, hella negative self-talk, idk canon-typical aot stuff
Word Count: 3358
Status: Ongoing
Masterlist // Previous Chapter // Next Chapter
---
Chapter 20 - Sheath
Read To Bleed a Thorne on AO3
The route is quiet.
You notice before the others do—the way it holds its breath as you and your muscle venture deeper into it, as if you’re walking down the throat of a savage beast. You’ve walked this path a hundred times by now, and never once has it made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Your crew continues to trail behind you silently like apparitions, silent and senses sharp.
The air is stale, unmoving. You passed your last horde of drunks spilling out of alley mouths blocks ago. There aren’t children darting through corridors with stolen, half-rotten fruit. No echo of laughter from brothels that line the streets.
It's eerie. Feels like the Underground is on edge tonight. For what reason, you aren’t sure.
But you know it can be good.
You lift your hand slightly without looking back. Damon and the three muscles behind you halt immediately, boots silently planting into stone.
The shipment cart looks heavy as it rounds a corner and comes into view, wheels creaking faintly as one of Silas’s trusted smugglers tries to steady it to a halt. The canvas is taut against its wood frame, sealing everything inside. The crates are secure. Everything is accounted for.
You scan the street ahead, eyes glazing over the smuggler you’ve built a professional relationship with these last few years. He looks unharmed. Torches illuminating the street beyond him burn low. Apparitions disappear as soon as you notice them. Shadows flood the streets.
It looks like someone dimmed the flames—set the stage.
Your jaw tightens in anticipation.
You don’t look behind you at Damon, but you can feel his presence shift. A sixth sense you’ve unintentionally honed—one that connects your energy to his and allows you to feel his body even when your skins aren’t connected. Though he’s not close enough to touch, his weight is pressing against the back of your ribs and spine. Steadying. Supportive. Attentive and ready, shall anything go wrong.
He is tense and alert, like he can hear what the atmosphere whispers, too—you can feel that much from him.
The three men shift almost imperceptibly behind you, finally sensing something amiss. They feel it too—that the Underground is just wrong tonight.
You move forward again. The cart groans softly as it slows, wood complaining under the weight of wealth, weaponry, jewels, and supplies. The sound carries too far for your liking. Echoes off stone in ways it hasn’t the uncountable other times you’ve received it. The Underground never lets sounds travel this far.
You pass beneath a torch whose flame flickers weakly and sporadically, as if so starved it has become ravenous. The shadows stretch longer than they should. They pool in doorways and beneath broken archways, thick with the threat of what lurks within its darkness.
The cart rolls forward another few feet before it stops just in front of you.
And where there should now be silence, is a bootstep. Ahead.
It scrapes softly against the dirt road—careless enough to be heard, and confident enough to not care. You feel the sound ripple though the three men behind you. Damon does not move. He does not need to.
There’s another step.
Then another.
In a scuffle, bodies appear from pools of shadows and broken doorframes, emerging from the dark as if it was their birthplace. One drops down from a balcony above with the grace of a ballerina, or a man who has done so many times before. Another steps out from behind a crate you swore was clear of ghosts.
Eight. No weapons—none that you can see, anyway—and no words. Just presence. They arrange themselves in a loose crescent ahead, half their eyes on you, half on Damon. None care to look at the three muscles, as if they can already tell who the real threats are. Their bodies are angled just enough to suggest their obstruction without declaring it outright or sparking a fight, speaking the language of quiet threat and dominance the Underground has bred.
You let your gaze move across them slowly, cataloguing their stances, weight distribution, and breath. One favors his left leg over his right. Another keeps his chin too high for his build. The one who dropped from above has yet to take his eyes off your throat.
If you weren’t as familiar with Silas’s behaviors as you are, you just might think this is some test of his. But you know better.
You don’t blink. Adrenaline floods your veins. Your eyes narrow.
“Maintain the shipment,” you order evenly. Your voice is loud enough only for the three of your men and Damon to hear.
The cart creaks as one of the muscles approaches the smuggler who manned the cart here. The other two muscles position themselves between the cart and the crescent of soldiers. One tightens his posture, the other widens his stance. Damon remains still behind you. His presence presses against your spine like a sharp blade in its sheath.
The crescent ahead doesn’t tighten. They don’t need to. They know what they’re here for.
And you do too now.
Bootsteps echo again. They’re heavier now, slower, harsh confidence against dirty ground searing his signature into it. The crescent parts without being told, and a man steps into the dimmed torchlight as if this street has always belonged to him and you are the intruder.
Jax Morin.
It has to be.
He is leaner than rumor told, and than you imagined yourself. He’s thin through the chest, shoulders prominent with bone and lean but dense muscle that must have accumulated from something harsher than training. His boney hands hang at his sides, scarred and light, fingers flexing as if reacquainting themselves with their innate form of a fist. He doesn’t so much as glance at the shipment. He doesn’t even acknowledge the men Silas appointed to you.
Instead, he looks right at you. Right into you.
His gaze moves slowly, lazily—up the line of your shoulders, across your jaw, lingers at your eyes. You don’t sense any regard for human life in him, only hostility assembling itself piece by piece the longer he looks at you.
A faint crease forms between his brows and his eyes narrow. Amusement, you think.
Then his mouth curves into a smirk.
“I’ll be damned,” he says, his deep, hoarse voice worn down by smoke, alcohol, and years. “Kenny and his Thornes.”
A cog turns in your head. A flutter of arousal pierces through your heart. But you force your lungs to fill evenly. You do not grant him the satisfaction of reaction.
Morin steps closer in the weak torchlight, boots grinding faintly against dirt. You see him fully now. He’s not broad by any means. His ribs even faintly jut out beneath the worn fabric of his shirt, bony wrists pronounced, and neck tense with muscle that suggests endurance over heavy hitting. He looks like a man who embodies the weapon he has become—carefully crafted into the sharp, lethal, thin blade that carves out throats, leaves threats written in blood, and trails bodies behind him.
His eyes narrow, studying you more intently now. It feels like he’s turning over your bone and blood, searching for something familiar it seems like he once knew.
“I wonder—” he begins, circling you slowly, dust kicking up around his steps, “—what kind of blood Silas thinks he’s wielding.”
Your fingers twitch slightly at your sides. You don’t know his plan here, or his intentions with you, and you don’t like that. You can only assume he’s here to dismantle, but you don’t know what this game is that he’s playing. Discomfort begins to wind in your mind.
He notices.
“You fight for Silas? Or him?” Morin asks. “Or Kenny?”
You don’t respond right away, letting the hit of your silence bruise him.
“Move.”
And your command sounds like it was spoken directly from The Broker’s mouth. His slyness slithers from behind your words, his confidence seeping into your even tone.
A hum of energy passes through Morin’s men. One impatiently shifts his stance. Another lowers his eyes. It’s like they can’t believe you have the nerve to talk back to their kingpin.
Morin exhales through his nose.
“Same mouth,” he murmurs. “You keep your men back, and I will too.”
Before you have time to process his proposal, he suddenly moves without warning. Quieter than a whisper. No theatrics at all. He’s fast, and concise.
His hand cuts through the air toward your face, fingers uncurled and open. His move is meant to seize and disable—not merely strike.
You pivot slightly. His palm barely grazes your cheek instead of crushing your windpipe. The force of it still presses against your neck and sends nerves scrambling down your spine.
That was sloppy. Get it together.
You counter him immediately by driving your fist into his ribs. There is as little padding as you expect—straight bone beneath thin muscle—and the heel of your palm catches itself between two of his ribs. He exhales sharply, but it’s not out of pain—it’s surprise.
He adjusts faster than Damon does (or maybe you’ve just acclimated to your tango with him…?). There is no calculation in Morin’s movements, only pure instinct. His elbow crashes into your disobedient shoulder, and white hot pain sears through your body until it blinds you. Your arm numbs for half a moment, tingling as sensation returns in a hot, sharp wave.
That shouldn’t have landed. Do better, you weakling.
You shift your weight before your weakness anchors you down.
Your heel sweeps low. Morin hops it, and his fingers hook into your collar and drag you forward into him. His breath smells like a carcass, and his skin is cold. His knee drives into your thigh, hard enough to make the muscle spasm then partially limp for a moment. Heat blooms, and you force yourself to swallow it.
You stagger, then circle.
He closes in.
There is no wasted motion from him. No grand gestures meant to entertain an audience. He doesn’t fight like a man performing to obtain dominance. He fights like a man who intends to end things. And quickly.
His fingers catch your wrist before the spasming in your thigh stops and you can regain balance. He twists hard—not enough to break, but enough for your wrist to grind uncomfortably against its own cartilage, then pop. You hiss through gritted teeth, suppressing a wail of surprise as pain melts the inside of your arm.
Damon warned you about this.
Overexertion.
Sloppy recovery.
Your weakness.
And you still pushed it anyway.
Morin swiftly moves inside your guard with a familiarity that rattles you, as if he has known your body longer than you have. You stupidly gave him an opening, and he does not hesitate to use it to dismantle you.
His shoulder assaults your sternum and the world compresses as your vision spots black. You hear the impact before you feel it—the internal crack of air being ripped from your lungs triggering an ache that overwhelms you. Your feet leave the ground. The world tilts. Your spine meets dirt. You see dust rain down on you from your peripheral vision as you choke on your own breath.
Morin gives you no space to recover. His knee slots between yours and forces them apart, his weight settling over you. He’s not frantic, but quick enough to remind you of his precision. His hand shackles your free arm to the ground, his knee settling over your injured wrist and his lower legs pinning yours to the ground by your knees.
You try to wrench your wrist free from beneath his knee, but the angle is terrible. Your arm trembles uselessly as pain returns in cruel, hot pulses. He uses your weakness instantly—twisting you on your side, grabbing a fistful of your hair, and slamming your head into the ground hard enough that your vision fractures. Dirt fills your nose, and the taste of iron floods your mouth along with bitter resentment and embarrassment.
You don’t fail Silas. Not like this.
One of his knees pins your lower ribs, finding the exact place Damon once warned you to guard more carefully. It stings—more than just physically. The breath you manage to capture is shallow and thin, and not enough to steady your spinning head.
His hand closes around your throat. It claims—more than just your autonomy to breathe.
Your pulse thumps violently beneath his fingers.
“You’ve got his fire,” he murmurs against your ear, voice low enough that your men and Damon cannot hear, sounding almost sympathetic toward your pathetic, subdued frame beneath him. Close enough that his wretched breath ghosts across your lips.
His thumb presses into the dip at the base of your throat.
“But you’re not hot enough to withstand it, girl.”
The pressure increases.
Air thins as you thrash beneath him—not desperately—but measured, searching. Feeling for any movement you have. Anything you can try to use against him. Your vision is beginning to dim at the corners, and your heartbeat roars so loudly in your ears you can barely register anything else. Oxygen comes in shallow bursts.
Morin leans closer, studying your face as the consciousness drains from it.
“I’ve seen that look before,” he says quietly, disappointment lacing his words. “Never ends well after that.”
You feel it. Your weakness.
And you hate that you feel it.
Not under him. Stop being so fucking weak! You are not twelve anymore.
Move, damn it. Now!
You manage to wrangle your leg free and drive your knee upward with what little stability remains in your muscles. It connects, far from perfect, but enough to jolt Morin slightly off center. His grip falters for the smallest fraction of a second.
You take it.
You yank your good hand free and hook your fingers hard beneath his collarbone, digging into the nerve Uncle Ronan once pressed into your skin until you nearly blacked out, and angle upward. Morin inhales sharply above you—not necessarily from pain—but a combination of shock and discomfort. You writhe beneath him, shoulder screaming in protest, and shove him away with your freed arm and leg. He rocks backward a few inches, and it’s far enough for you to roll free and drag yourself to your knees.
But it’s still too soon for relief.
You wheeze and cough, and air scrapes down your throat like you’re swallowing broken glass. You try to rise to your feet, but your leg buckles.
Morin is already on his feet and coming at you again before your weight settles.
The bottom of his boot crashes into your side harshly, and something shifts wrongly in your diaphragm. Your body curls in on itself instinctively, ribs screaming as your lungs attempt to draw breath. They find nothing but resistance. You try to push up again, one hand sinking into the earth below you to push off from. Your injured wrist trembles violently.
No!
Morin grabs you. His fingers tangle in your hair and yank your head back, exposing your throat. You hiss before you realize, your hand on your uninjured arm catching his wrist while your other arm—with your already swelling wrist—dangles uselessly by your side.
Not here.
“Stubborn girl,” he mutters teasingly. There is no recognition in his words. Only faux pity.
His other hand disappears briefly behind his hip. Metal sings its familiar pitch as his hand returns to his front, and you see a glint of silver. Its song and presence are beautiful. Intimate. Comfortingly familiar, even—but only when you’re the musician.
Gods—
The flat end of his blade catches beneath your jaw first. Testing, teasing. He tilts it, the point kissing into your skin just beneath your tongue. A drop of warm blood trails slowly down your neck, the slight sting following shortly after.
—damn it!
Morin exhales against your ear, intimately close. “You don’t know what you are yet,” he says quietly. “That’s your problem.”
Not here—on his work.
The blade presses deeper. It’s not enough to gauge your throat, but enough to claim. Enough for more blood to trail down your neck and pool into the collar of your shirt. Your only working hand searches blindly for leverage again, but your strength and vision are faltering now. Each breath escapes thinner than the last, and your muscles are growing heavier with fatigue every passing second.
It can’t be like this!
Morin shifts his grip from your hair to the back of your throat, holding it steady, blade still poised against your skin. His thumb digs into the artery at the base of your jaw. His eyes intensely search through yours, a wicked smile growing on his face as he sees you losing consciousness between his blade and hand.
He presses the blade deeper and tightens his fingers against your veins.
Fuck… not in front of Damon…
You can feel him behind you. Unmoving. Just watching, measuring.
Waiting to see how badly you fail.
If he steps in…
Your jaw tightens.
No.
You can’t let him.
But your vision is spotting black. Torchlight in the background of your vision hazes into streaks. Your pulse grows weaker. And this time, your body doesn’t respond the way you command it to. In fact, it doesn’t respond at all. Not even as you order it to stop your bottom from sinking to your heels. Not as your torso threatens to flop over, limp.
Your fingers begin to slip from his wrist.
The Underground goes silent for a beat.
“You’re simply not him,” he murmurs, familiar disappointment appearing in his words again.
Then, the blade moves.
Down.
—
Three forest green cloaks flatten against cool, damp stone.
No one breathes.
Below them, the fight has simmered to a body on its knees and a blade intending death.
One of them swallows. “She’s finished,” she whispers, voice trembling, her voice traveling mere inches from her lips before the Underground silences it.
The youngest among the three shifts his weight, fingers tightening around the hilt of the sword at his hip. He waits for a command to arrive, one that orders him to save her life from the man who claimed so many bodies the military lost track. He prays for its arrival. The experience in him knows it will not come.
Just below, her head suddenly tilts, chin pointing to the ceiling, lifeless eyes clinging to what little consciousness remains to keep them open. Her vision flutters upward, over Morin’s shoulder.
Her glazed, hazy eyes lock onto theirs—their adrenaline-pumped figures pressed against the roofline, faces covered in shadows from their hoods.
Watching.
There is no plea for help in her eyes.
No panic.
Only awareness. And rage.
The youngest Scout inhales sharply through his teeth.
“Shit. She sees us.”
—
Morin’s hand steadies your weak frame from behind your neck as he drives the knife toward the soft hollow between your ribs—right over your heart. His blade is light, feeling almost like a feather being dragged across your skin as he seeks the hollow place between bones where steel impales the easiest. There are still no theatrics in his actions. He moves like a man who intends to end things. Strictly execution.
Damon never would’ve let it get this far.
Your oxygen-depraved brain registers it too late. Your body doesn’t respond, despite the flare in your nerves that try to ignite your muscles into movement. The world narrows into silver and simmering embers.
I don’t fail. And certainly not on this mission…
Behind you, something shifts. Something you cannot see. You don’t hear it. You don’t think Morin does either. But you feel it.
—Don’t.
Like a decision being made.
Don’t you dare touch this, you bastard!
Morin begins to press the blade into you; in the area between your left breast and collarbone—right above your heart—skin stinging as it threatens to separate.
Silas trusted you to handle this alone—
and you… made him …
w e a k …
And finally—and against your will—the blade behind your spine leaves its sheath as unconsciousness lulls your mind to rest.
---
a/n
hiii readers i hope youre all enjoying the story so far! feedback is welcome <3
i am very proud to announce that i have written up to the point juuuuuust before levi is reentered into the story. despite how much i have written, updates aren't going to be coming any faster than they have been (average 1/month or 2 if im lucky). writing the story is one thing for me, but editing is a whooooole other ballpark. i very much dislike editing which is why i tend to write more than i edit, and why i often only edit chapters once or twice before being like "fuck it, it is what it is" and publishing LOL yall dont come for me pls.
also life is so chaotic rn. this story is one of the few things keeping me grounded as it's the only predictable thing i have. holy shit. college is WHOOPING me and graduation is only 1 year away now. the threat of big girl employment is looming. like HOLY SHIT. IM SCARED GUYS. and exams??? are genuinely about to take me out??? and not on a date??? like pls a bitch JUST WANTS TO WRITE
ok that concludes my rambling. im just tired and am looking forward to summer break, which genuinely couldn't come soon enough. i hope youre all doing well.
Warnings: 18+—profanity, possession, power imbalances, smoking, fire (in a fireplace), anxiety, mention to Silas being large, tension, blood description, control, brief prostitution mention, mention to reader’s passed mom and uncle, idk canon-typical aot stuff
Word Count: 3113
Status: Ongoing
Masterlist // Previous Chapter // Next Chapter
—-
Chapter 19 - Chess
Read To Bleed a Thorne on AO3
The air in the Survey Corps Headquarters does not smell of tobacco, smoke, or wealth. It smells like sweat, cold iron, and fatigue worn thin by strategy. The air curls in response to furrowed brows, fingers cradling chins, and minds hard at work. Planning. Strategizing. Always trying to be one step ahead. For the better of humanity.
A window is open despite the frigid chill that dazes in. It slips in quietly, weaving through strands of polished blonde hair, teasing the edges of maps pinned along the far wall. Routes marked in delicate ink. Circles. Crosses. Arrows.
The man sits with his back against the window, hands clasped in his lap.
He is tired, but his senses are sharp. Sharper than the blades his soldiers carry and wield against the neck of Titans. And sharper than the strategy he has set in motion.
Measured bootsteps approach the office door. They’re disciplined and quiet.
A knock sounds, firm and respectful.
“Enter.”
Like everything in this office, the door opens pristinely and correctly. A Scout steps inside, dark cloak shifting softly around his shoulders. The window from the window catches the green fabric and lifts it briefly, the Wings of Freedom stitched upon it dancing in the light before settling again.
The Scout stops several paces from the desk.
“Commander.”
The title falls effortlessly from disciplined lips.
The man does not immediately respond. His crystal blue eyes gaze steadily through the scout before him—distant for a peaceful moment longer.
“We’ve received information, Sir,” the Scout continues. “As you know, the asset has initiated the disruption. He believes interception will occur tonight.”
A pause.
“Soon, Sir.”
The faintest shift occurs in the Commander’s posture. Though, it is not surprise, nor satisfaction. It is arousal. Initiation.
“And The Broker?”
“Unaware as far as we can tell, Sir.”
“Observation units?”
“In place the moment we got confirmation, Sir. Just as you ordered.”
“Any engagement?”
“No. We’re awaiting your orders now, Sir.”
Silence stretches between them, and the gravity in the room makes the weight of it feel heavier. The wind lifts the cloak the Scout adorns, and one of the maps flutters against the wall like the pulse of the wings of a bird.
The Commander finally rises.
“Maintain distance. I want eyes only.”
“Yes, Commander.”
The Scout does not move. He hesitates.
“And if escalation occurs, Sir…?”
The Commander steps toward the maps, his footsteps fluid and light as a feather, fingertips brushing lightly over the inked lines without smudging them. His gaze lowers to a circled mark—a location in the Underground.
“When it does,” he quietly clarifies, “do not interfere. Your wellbeing relies on it.”
The Scout inclines his head.
The implication of the Commander settles heavily in the chest of the Scout. This is not about the route. Or the cargo. It never was. Not truly.
“You’re dismissed.”
The Scout salutes, hand clenched firmly over his heart, posture straight, obedient, respectful to his commanding officer.
He exits, and the door closes behind him.
The wind’s chill continues its quiet assault against the Commander’s neck, but his skin does not respond. He remains standing alone before the maps, the ones he carefully drew out with the help of his scouts and a criminal, hands clasped behind his back.
Beneath the feet of the Commander, of the Walls, the Underground breathes as it usually does. Toxic waste is discharged from the cavernous ceiling and gets thrown out of bars and brothels, the lewdly enticing stench of alcohol and prostitution seducing the remaining drops of joy that drip from few. Wails of pleasure erupt from some houses, sorrow seeping into the streets from others. The Underground pulses as it usually does. Almost always categorical. Predictable as ever.
One path gets disturbed.
A response of blood and fang bites back, anticipated.
One chess piece advances exactly where it was meant to, guided by the delicate, calculative hand of the Commander.
And tonight, he will see exactly what she does under pressure.
—
Brittle wood replaces polished walls.
The Confessional is a room that effortlessly draws out your anxiety. You’ve only ever been summoned here to speak of serious business, your orders given in Silas’s quiet tones that trustfully get swallowed by the room, never escaping for unfit ears to hear. The air feels different here. Thicker. Heavier. As if the walls remember every hushed command whispered between them, and press the weight of desolation against your chest.
Silas is seated at the head of the table, his figure sitting comically large on the plush chair. His hands are folded on the table, posture the kind that suggests he could be the King of the Walls if he wanted to be. His eyes barely flicker to you when you enter. He doesn’t shift either; the room must adjust to him, not the other way around.
He does not greet you.
Three of Silas’s men are also seated at the table, filling in the chairs closest to Silas like pillars reinforcing a throne for royalty. You recognize them as trusted muscle Silas calls in for important jobs. You’ve seen their faces a few times over the years—blood on their fists, silence in their eyes. Never got their names.
You file into an empty seat next to one of the men. He’s broad, buff, and has eyebags so dark they protrude out of his face. He’s also barely well-groomed—his dark, greasy hair hanging over his eyes in light wisps. The cold wood prickles into you as you sit and goosebumps erupt across your skin.
Damon remains standing, leaning against the opposite end of the table across from Silas, posture theatrically loose. You know better than to mistake it for ease.
The door finally closes. The sound dies immediately. The fireplace loudly pops. The man beside you does not tense.
Silas lets the quiet stretch. He doesn’t so much as move a muscle.
And your eyes are trained to the delicately carved wood of the table in front of you.
“There’s been repeated interference,” he says at last. His voice is calm, almost neutral. Tight. Professional. That is how you know this matters.
“One of our quieter routes has been compromised.”
None of the trusted muscle at the table moves, but the atmosphere shifts. There is no fear, only acknowledgement of the situation at hand. Silas’s routes are like veins. They carry the cargo to the chapel—the heart—that keeps his business alive. Kenny’s empire alive. That keeps the beats running smoothly in the operations that Silas is in charge of.
“Our two most recent shipments—” Silas pauses, and raises his eyebrows in borderline disbelief “—Cleanly taken. Not so much as a drop of blood left behind to catalogue.”
The room catches its breath. You’re certain you feel the temperature drop. You know the value of those shipments—you’ve been intaking them for years. Cataloging them. You know what it means if they don’t arrive.
But what unsettles you more is the lack of blood. Blood at least speaks. Tells a tale. Blood is emotional. You can’t count how many masterpieces you’ve painted in the years you’ve been with Silas, but you recall that each of them told a story.
But no blood?
That is deliberate. SIlas is right.
Though you aren’t looking at him, you feel his eyes boring into the side of your head.
“This theft was deliberate obstruction.”
His voice becomes quiet, almost intimate. It grows lower. Darker. Colder.
“And I believe Jax Morin is responsible.”
Your stomach churns. You know that name.
Jax Morin is a whirlwind of violence and power—the kingpin of a criminal ring that rivals Kenny the Ripper’s in strength and brutality.
You haven’t heard his name in what feels like a lifetime. But everyone has at some point. Last you heard about him was a week ago once you returned to the chapel after a mission, when you overheard two mouthy guards gossiping about his sudden vanishing a few weeks prior. Like the man finally descended back into whatever hellhole he crawled out of.
You’ve heard what Morin leaves behind when he wants to make a point. Entire routes erased. Men vanished and never to be heard from again. Warnings written in blood—literally.
Which makes the cleanliness of these stoppages even more unsettling.
What does he want with Silas?
“His men are behind the disruptions,” Silas continues. “Morin himself hasn’t made any appearances. Hasn’t made any appearances anywhere lately, for that matter.”
Silas leans back in his chair, letting his folded hands fall into his lap. He reaches into the breast pocket of his exquisite suit and fishes out a cigar and matches. He pointedly places the cigar between his teeth, slobbering on it before he lights the other end, exhaling a deep sigh of content and seemingly the last of his arousal about the situation.
His eyes flick to Damon, assessing. Calculating. Silas doesn’t look like he usually does at this moment. Not like a master with a favored, honed weapon, or like a man who controls the flow of nearly all the money in the Underground—and much of the surface, for that matter. His eyes are distant, as if he’s looking into the past.
Then, he looks right at you. Your gaze doesn’t meet his, but you can feel his eyes trying to pull yours into them.
“You will lead this operation, Thorne.”
Your muscles tense. You feel colder suddenly. Your throat tightens. Your lungs feel too small. You can’t believe the words that just came out of his mouth. You… lead?
“You know the terrain better than anyone here,” Silas continues, stoic and monotone. “You will take the next shipment through it.”
The order feels heavy, the words simmer into you.
The man across from you shifts; his boot faintly brushes yours beneath the table.
The man beside you draws his breath in through his teeth.
The third remains stone.
And Damon—
Something sharp flashes behind his eyes. It’s too quick to be named, and too dangerous for him to let it linger. You think anger, perhaps. Or fear. Or maybe something worse.
His fingers curl against the table’s edge. The movement is small, almost invincible. Easy to miss. You would have it if you didn’t know the language of him by now. The one he tries so hard to subdue… and shield from you. If you weren’t his most familiar tango partner, always partnered in the intimate, silent dance that has become second nature to you over time, you would miss it. But you’re in step. Always matching. Always in sync.
You say nothing to Silas.
His gaze eventually drifts to Damon, slow and assessing. He gives a long look—one the strips, weighs, and measures. Coldly analytical. Damon does not flinch, but you feel the tension ripple through him like an acid that drips into a puddle of hazardous waste.
“You will not deviate from the route,” Silas says, seemingly more to him than you. “You will not so much as attempt to bait Morin into direct confrontation. Make this quick and clean.”
Silas’s gaze drifts to the three men seated around him. He looks at each of them with fleeting eyes.
“You are to accompany her,” he says evenly. “And you will not command. You are there to ensure the shipment passes through.”
A beat.
Silas lifts his head, chin high and head slightly tilted back.
You finally tilt your head to look at him.
His eyebrows are raised as a means to keep his eyes open, which are darkly lined with eyebags you’re only just now noticing. He must not have slept, too busy planning for this operation. His eyes are dreary and lifeless, but as sharp and analytical as ever. His gaze is that of a stone, his monotonous wording chilling. The only flicker of life from his figure is the glow from the end of his fat cigar that has smoke seductively hazing from the ash.
“If this shipment does not arrive, I will assume failure on all your parts.”
No one nods, but the agreement is uniform. You notice the three men slightly bow their heads upon Silas’s declaration, like a dog at their master’s command.
Silas inhales again from his cigar, then he turns his attention back to Damon.
“And you…”
Damon’s posture straightens. His expression smooths into something obedient and responsive. He truly looks like a subordinate responding to their commanding officer in the military.
But you don’t miss the way his jaw sets just slightly. The only expression of his intentional responsiveness, like a loaded weapon ready to cause casualty upon the word of the fatal Commander he is ever so loyal to.
Does he have some sort of military training…?
“... Are only to observe, Damon. If she succeeds, she succeeds on her own merit. If she fails—” Damon’s eyes flick briefly to you. Silas notices. The air thins. “—You will not intervene unless she is at death’s door.”
The fireplace cracks loudly in the slice that follows. Your hands grow tense and begin to perspire. You don’t feel your pulse anymore.
Don’t say anything.
Don’t find out what will follow if you do.
If Silas knows what Damon did…
You feel like you have the tip of a knife pointed against your throat.
Damon’s fingers press into the wood of the table hard enough that his knuckles pale. The only observable response he gives that alludes to whatever he could possibly be thinking.
“Do you understand?” Silas asks.
“Yes, Boss,” Damon answers.
His word is steady.
Too steady.
Unsettlingly steady.
Like it’s rehearsed. A filter the beast uses to keep himself in chains, entombed, rather than executed.
Silas holds Damon’s gaze a moment longer, measuring compliance. He hums in approval once he finds it, shifting his attention back to you.
“Need I remind you, my Thorn,” he says quietly. “This is not solely about cargo. This is also about presence.”
His eyes sharpen. Something cynical swims beneath their mucky color.
“Morin has decided to take action in my territory. Not only that, but he is also deliberately targeting me. That fact alone is irrefutable insolence.”
Smoke curls from his lips as he leans forward slightly, a slight smirk playing at his lips. His smirk isn’t amused—it’s cynical. A greasy sausage finger from his free hand presses into the table so hard his knuckles turn white.
“You will remind him whose veins he is trying to clot.”
The cigar glows brighter as Silas inhales. A glint of fire flashes behind his eyes. Smoke dances around his face like a crown of something unholy, but fitting for one of the most manipulative men bred behind these Walls.
He bores his eyes into yours, holding your attention intensely enough that it’s like he’s looking inside you. You want to shield away, but don’t.
“This is reconnaissance. Do not mistake this for permission to run wild”
He breathes.
And waits.
His gaze drops briefly to your hands resting on the table—unwavering, composed—before it rises again to meet your eyes fully. His gaze encapsulates you. He holds you.
Almost tenderly.
“You’re still mine,” he says quietly. “Nothing more.”
Beside you, one of the men shifts faintly. The chair legs scrape softly against the floor. No one speaks.
Silas stands.
His movement is slow, deliberate, and as calculated as ever. The fire pops as he straightens his back, the chair whimpering as it gets pushed back. The room seems to recalibrate around his force, as if gravity itself is sucking in all the energy in the room. Even it cowers. Into him.
His eyes briefly cut to Damon again, who does not move. Or respond. Or blink.
Silas straightens toward the three men seated at the table.
“If this route fails again,” he begins, evenly. “I will know exactly where to place the blame.”
The words fall without force, but they settle like stones in the stomach.
Silas does not raise his voice.
He never needs to.
“Go.”
The men rise at once. The soft scuffle of their chairs scraping and boots thudding do not echo in the room. Their heads bow, not deeply, but enough to signal hierarchy. To signal their subordination to their master. They file toward the door without looking back. Silas’s soldiers understand their role. They are instruments.
Silence trails after them like a shadow as the door shuts.
What remains is tenderly intimate. Thick with entrustment. With power. With something unspoken that festers faster than Silas can give commands.
You remain seated.
Damon remains leaning against the far end of the table, watchful.
Silas does not tell either of you to leave. The dismissal was never meant for you.
Silas turns toward the fire, his back to you. The illumination of the flames catches the sharp cut of his suit. The scent of his musk—leather, wealth, sweat, faint cologne—curls into the air, heavy and possessive. It overwhelms even the scent of the burning wood in the fireplace.
The room cowers to him.
Everything does.
He does not look at you when he speaks next.
“My Thorn…” he says at last, the title falling from his lips softly. “You have proven yourself capable.”
Heat blooms low in your stomach, like the flowers that have been rumored to do so on the surface. The ones that bloom in colors you’ve never seen. The ones you’ve always yearned to see. You swallow the twitch that threatens to betray you by pulling your lips in the smallest upward twitch. And the pooling of blood in your cheeks.
You force your face to remain smooth. To not respond for you.
And it doesn’t.
Because your pulse betrays you.
It quickens.
Silas turns, and his eyes are anything but as soft as his tone when he spoke to you last.
“You are still mine,” he says as quietly as he did the first time.
His tone is not possessive. Rather—it seems detached. Objective. Factual. Ownership codified into law.
“You will remember that.”
Not a threat.
A principle.
Your spine straightens instinctively. Your eyes grow alert. The muscles in your back tense and your arms warm with anticipation, as if bracing for something that never comes.
“Of course, Silas,” you answer evenly. Just as detached as he said it.
You don’t show him that the praise matters. Or that it fuels you with calm confidence. But something deep inside you settles—sharpens—at the sound of his approval.
Behind you, Damon remains silent. He doesn’t move.
The quiet between the three of you hums, feeling electrically charged now. This is a meeting no more.
More like a recalibration of ownership. Or power. Or possession.
Silas studies you one final moment.
Then he turns back to the fire.
“You’re both dismissed.”
And tonight, he will see exactly what she does under pressure.
Warnings: 18+—profanity, fighting (in a training context), fear, intimidation, power imbalance, anxiety, uncomfortableness, mention of death, reader feels powerless, reader feels trapped, mention to reader’s passed mom and uncle, idk canon-typical aot stuff
Word Count: 2185
Status: Ongoing
Masterlist // Previous Chapter // Next Chapter
---
Chapter 18 - Where the Line Blurs
Read To Bleed a Thorne on AO3
You’re twenty-one now. Silas bought you new boots to welcome in the new year and your new age. He fussed over how the soles on your old pair were falling off at their seams, and that a new, polished, pristine pair would better suit your current needs.
And of course, they’re nothing short of perfect. A deep black with solid soles that don’t emit noise. Optimal for destructive kicks and surprise attacks.
You agree that they’re more beneficial to you now than your old pair, and throw away the last anchor to your past life—then let Silas’s satisfaction envelop you in a warm hug.
Looking back, the years have passed in an endless cycle of fists, bruises, orders, and many sleepless nights. You’ve been here long enough that everything before this feels like a different life. An entirely different version of you.
One you barely remember anymore.
—
The training room hasn’t changed in all the time you’ve been housed in the chapel. The same dim light bleeds from the lanterns. The same musty smell fills the air. The same warped floorboards stick out in jagged pieces as you and Damon dance around them in your same coordinated spar.
Today, he’s standing in the center of the room when you enter, visibly awaiting your arrival. He is a man of particularity. He doesn’t meet your eyes right away, rather standing with his arms folded, impatiently tapping his foot like a man who expects your obedience without question.
When he finally looks into your eyes, his gaze is different. You feel it has been recently.
It’s not the old way. The way he used to look at you when he was pushing you into pain, bending you into the weapon he wanted you to become. He was hungry then. Predatory. Now, his eyes are more controlled. Measured. It’s more… careful. Delicate, almost.
Like he’s trying not to reveal himself to you.
It unsettles you. This is no longer the man you’ve grown familiar with over the years.
You step into the room, the chipped pieces of wood grinding under your new boots as you saunter over to him, your body submitting to its familiar routine you’ve executed over a thousand times. Your warm-up drills feel the same way—natural. Your muscles remember everything. You don’t have to think anymore. You just move.
You always move.
You have to move.
The drills start. The same as they are everyday. Punches. Blocks. Combinations. The rhythm of training you’ve tuned to the melody of a song, repeated so many times you always hear it—even when you’re not playing it.
You’ve learned to fight the way Damon wants you to: correct. And it really is better this way.
But Damon’s intensity is different now, even as you grow into the seasoned soldier he has molded you into in his vision.
He doesn’t push you to the point just before your demise like he used to. He doesn’t strike like he’s testing the sharpness of your blade anymore, as if he’s holding himself back. He keeps everything precise, paced, and restrained. He tests you, but he never lets the drills become brutal. Never crosses the line.
It’s like he’s walking along the edge of the Walls. One wrong step, and he will fall to his death.
You notice it. You can’t help it.
You’ve suddenly grown more aware of him than you’ve ever been before.
The drills blur together in a steady melody. You dance through the combinations you’ve repeated over a thousand times. It’s almost soothing, the way the momentum takes over your body and encourages you to respond without a thought. Without a feeling.
Damon keeps pace beside you, and his strikes are measured. Controlled. The way they should be.
Not the way they were that day.
The way that makes your skin crawl if you remember it.
But you never point it out. You never ask why. You don’t invite questions where they don’t belong.
You’re reluctant to find out what he’ll do if you ask the wrong one.
Your hands waver once when you throw a punch. It’s barely noticeable, but enough for you to feel it. Enough for Damon to notice. You swallow hard and force your breathing steady, adjusting your feet against the floorboards.
Damon pauses.
His expression shifts for a moment, turning into something that isn’t his usual hardness. It’s the smallest shift, but you see it.
Then, he tightens his face again, like he’s snapped back into control.
“Again,” he orders.
You obey.
You keep moving.
Despite the tight feeling in your chest.
The room grows quieter. The air thickens, dulling every breath you take until it feels like you’re inhaling through a cloth. The melody changes, and the rhythm of your dance follows—subtle at first, then unmistakable. Your punches tighten. Kicks become cautions. Your pivots lose their fluidity, becoming restrained instead of instinctive.
The dread that settles into you tells you that you’re not just adjusting to this new melody.
You’re adjusting to this new version of him.
Your hands feel weak and they start to tremble. They don’t shake from exhaustion—no, you could do this all day—but from the awareness that you’re being watched more closely now. By Damon. And not like a trainer. Like an Abnormal Titan that has set his sights on you, and will not relinquish until he has devoured you whole.
Your stomach tightens with the sensation you felt on that day. That old, quiet instinct that crawls through your veins like a spider, settling atop your spine and chilling your entire nervous system.
Fear.
You keep moving, because stopping feels like you’re admitting you can be frightened.
And no soldier of Silas would dare reveal something as human as the emotion of fear.
Damon doesn’t stop the dance. He keeps his pace, his strikes calculated and clean. This feels like a controlled waltz between two people who know all the steps in the routine, a polite amount of distance forced between the two of you.
You throw a punch. You can’t help it. One that breaks the routine. One you hope will land, and hurt. Aimed at his cheekbone. Your knuckles glide through the air, but don’t quite reach him.
He doesn’t retilate.
Doesn’t redirect it, put his hands on you, or throw you to the ground like he used to. Just watches you with that careful gaze, as if he’s measuring the exact distance between your fear and obedience.
His restraint is unnerving. Like he’s testing you without even touching the line.
He’s waiting for the moment you show him something he can use. So you don’t look into his eyes.
You can’t.
Your chest tightens more. Your breath grows ragged. Your heart pounds in your ears.
You force yourself to keep moving.
He steps in closer—just a fraction—closing the space between you without changing the pace of his swings. The proximity isn’t much, but it’s enough to make your skin prickle and nerves flare. Your skin grows hot, muscles coiled with anticipation.
But this isn’t an attack.
Just… presence.
He leans forward, almost imperceptibly. A hot exhale from his nose brushes across your face, and you can smell the underlying musk and sweat oozing off his frame.
“Again.”
You don’t want to repeat it.
You want to run—far away, into a place where his gaze cannot find you. Somewhere you can breathe without feeling the weight of him pressing against your ribs—your whole body. Where you can exist without the sense that he’s nearby.
The ache in your shoulder no longer feels like muscle pain—it’s the lingering weight of him, the way he made you feel like you belong to him, the way he made you feel like you are powerless against him.
You want to throw lethal combinations hard and fast enough to knock him down. To knock him down hard enough to make him understand he isn’t above you. Hard enough to force him into the dirt where he belongs, looking up at you from the perspective of the weakling he’s already decided you are.
You want to prove that you aren’t a weapon he can sharpen or shape. That you are still dangerous without him. You want to show him you dare not be defied. And that he holds power over you no more.
But the feelings pass before they can come to fruition—like they always do.
Because you’ve learned the cost of pushing back.
And you’ve learned that your fear of him doesn’t come from his strength.
It comes from how easily he can use it.
Damon leans in closer. Just to close the space between you enough to command the air to suffocate you.
You can’t breathe anymore. You’re inhaling his exhales. His waste. The room feels smaller. The light seems dimmer. The shadows are clawing at you. Your skin erupts in goosebumps, and you can’t tell if it’s from the sweat or the fear.
He doesn’t speak.
You don’t either.
He just looks at you, the intensity of his gaze pressing down on you like a weight.
You suddenly realize: he’s not waiting for you to surrender. He’s waiting for you to react. To move out of line. To prove you’re still human.
To give him a reason to break you again.
Your body stiffens and your heart beats too fast from the realization.
You feel like you’re going to faint.
And then—
The chapel door opens.
Damon immediately presses off of you.
You stumble back a step, catching yourself before your feet betray you and send you to the floor. The air returns in ragged, uneven draws, like you’re relearning how to breathe.
Where you’re expecting Silas, a young guard stands in the doorway—the same one who fetched you all those years ago and escorted you to The Confessional, where Silas informed you that you’d be returning to The Pit.
Feels like a lifetime ago.
Damon stands ridgid—seemingly also expecting Silas to be the one interrupting your training session. He relaxes his stance when he sees the familiar rounded cheeks of the guard whose eyes aren’t as bright as they were those years ago.
The guard stands in the doorway, boots planted firmly on the threshold, not daring to step an inch into your sacred training ground. His eyes flick between you and Damon, but he doesn’t seem surprised by the way you both are positioned. Not like he did the first time.
He doesn’t say anything for a moment.
Then, he speaks, voice low and controlled.
“Boss wants you in The Confessional.”
The room goes quiet again. You can feel Damon’s eyes on you, sharp and flat. The way he looks at you now is cold, threatening.
His jaw tightens briefly.
You’ve seen it enough times to recognize it by now.
Annoyance.
He gives the guard a small nod before his attention is back on you.
“You heard him. Go,” he orders.
You try to move, but your legs tremble so much that your knees begin to buckle. The floor swims below you. You just stand there, breathing, trying to push away the sensation of Damon’s eyes boring into your figure to the depths of your mind.
The guard shifts his weight, waiting.
And Damon just watches you like he’s taking notes on every tremor.
“She’s all yours,” he tells the guard. Then he faces you, an unimpressed look on his face. “Don’t make him wait.”
You feel nauseous from the way his words send a shiver down your spine and coil your stomach.
You wobble on your weak legs, slowly making your way to the guard. Damon says nothing as you pass him, but his eyes follow you. They ignite your nerves, and leave you with a message that suffocates you in the same way his hand would as it encloses around your throat:
Don’t say anything.
And his sharp, icy eyes say the rest for him—
The warning—the promise of what will follow if you do.
“The Boss wants you too, Sir,” the guard adds, words hitting like a knife to the chest.
Your stomach drops. The room tilts. For a second you’re not sure your legs will hold under the weight of your anxiety.
Damon’s face doesn’t change, but his eyes do. His gaze snaps to the guard, and something in the air shifts. The sharpness in his stare becomes frozen.
Before your mind can process, your body alerts you by way of your pulse that beats hard enough to burst through your skull: Silas has never summoned Damon. Not like this. Never in a way that includes you, too.
Damon’s jaw tightens even more and his posture stiffens, though he’s not annoyed anymore. He seems… alarmed. Because he understands the meaning of your summation together in a way that you don’t yet, because you’ve never experienced this before from Silas:
Silas won’t call you together unless the world you know is going to shift beneath your feet.
The guard clears his throat, uncomfortable now by Damon’s unmoving figure, but he doesn’t retract the words.
“The Boss wants you both, Sir. Please come with me.”
