#rivamikaevents

[rivamikaevents]

Rivamika Week: All-time Favorite Tropes

Day 1 | Dec. 29 Prompts: Fake/pretend couple | Cabin fever

[reikasart]

For @rivamikaevents​

Hi guys!! Here is my contribution for Rivamika Weekend. It's a short edit that takes place some time after Levi's arrival to the island. Prepare yourselves for a cliffhanger!!! (muahahahahaaa) Enjoy!!!

[anmoniart]

RIVAMIKA AU WEEKEND @rivamikaevents  — ZOMBIE AU 

Okay so...This is my first entry to a rm event... recently I became obssessed with a zombie au in my head and I started drawing the characters according to the au. At first, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to post this because I lost confidence and left it as a wip but then I saw the rm au weekend organised by @rivamikaevents​ and decided to finish it and share it with yall. As you can see, there are pieces of scenarios here and there but I’d like to tell a little more about that damn story in my head.

Mikasa (18) is a young parkour athlete part of a group of tracers formed by her childhoods friends: Eren and Armin. Before the apparition of walking dead people eating humans their daily life consisted into exploring cities, training and challenging themselves. 

One day Mikasa injury herself and is forced to stay at home while Eren and Armin were out exploring 

At some point Eren calls Mikasa on her phone and warns her about a certain virus affecting dead people

She receives one last message from Eren before never hearing about them again

She decides to pack up her stuff and search for them

On the other side here’s Levi story:

Levi (28) is a soldier from the military, he’s one of the elite soldier and the leader of a special unit.

He was sent with a very important mission but his helicopter crashed and even thought he miraculously survived he partially lost his memory so he doesn’t remember what the mission is about 

He discovers that dead people are walking and eating humans

He somehow manages to survive a week or smthg until he collapse one day in a grocery store

When he wokes up the first thing he sees is his own hun pointed at him

Mikasa is like “this man is sus” while Levi is like “wtf why handcuffs why is a f-cking teenager pointing a gun-my own gun at me why am I here in the first place...”

He meets Mikasa, who handcuffed him to a radiator (that one is insp by dw lol) because she thinks he’s bitten

Levi, very impressed by Mikasa’s skills because she’s like jumping around and killing some zombies and that’s cool ok 

Eventually, they team up (omg) and try to achieve their goals (finding Eren and Armin for Mikasa and recovering memory for Levi)

[oliviamika]

20210214

Bloom 🌸😘

[alienheartattack]

Rivamika Weekend: Canonverse

Happy Rivamika weekend, everyone! I wasn’t able to get anything new together so here are all of my canon-related Rivamika stories. (Shout out to @aickerman-s for the idea.) A huge thanks to @rivamikaevents for putting this event together!

To You, Twenty Years From Now (Tumblr | AO3) - My first Rivamika fic, so it’s based on what canon was waaaayyy back in 2014. Mikasa and Levi meet up twenty years after the war to catch up. 1920s post-canon. (Rated T)

Night Watch (Tumblr | AO3) - Levi tries to keep Mikasa from falling asleep during her assigned watch. (Rated G)

The Subtle Approach (AO3, Tumblr links to the individual parts are below) is one of my favorite series that I’ve written, because it combines my two great loves of tooth-rotting fluff and absolute filth.

The Subtle Approach, Part 1 - Mikasa can’t stay awake, and for some reason Levi is okay with this. (Rated G)

The Subtle Approach, Part 2 - New Year’s fic. Levi tries leaving a note for Mikasa. (Rated G)

The Subtle Approach, Part 3 - Valentine’s Day fic. By the time Levi thinks to try candy, Mikasa has already figured out who her secret admirer is. (Rated G/T)

No Time for Subtlety (Tumblr | AO3) - They don’t have much time to spend together, so they’re going to make the most of it. (Rated E)

Souvenirs (Tumblr | AO3) - Clean smut, if such a thing can exist. After an expedition, Levi and Mikasa catalog their injuries. (Rated T)

5:42 P.M. on a Wednesday in March (Tumblr | AO3) - Mikasa makes dinner for the squad and daydreams about a certain captain. Some nice pre-cottagecore cottagecore in here. (Rated G)

Grinding (Tumblr | AO3) - Mikasa and Levi are cornered and have to take refuge in a very small closet. (Rated M)

Scarf and Cravat (Tumblr | AO3) - A bit of canonverse BDSM PWP with top!Levi and bottom!Mikasa. (Rated E, obviously)

The Razor’s Edge (Tumblr | AO3) - Levi can’t shave his face with a broken arm. Big time married cottagecore vibes. (Rated G)

[sadaakirah]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Summary:

Levi and Mikasa, and all that they wanted to tell each other after those three years.

Set after c139, and I plan on giving them a happy-ending.

Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Canon-compliant

Rating:

M for the next chapter which I have yet to post.

------

This is an entry for Rivamika Weekend. I hope you like it 💕! I'm trying a new style of writing (crying).

@rivamikaevents

[helena-thessa]

fractured and faint

fractured and faint: For years, Levi has dismissed all the idle talk and enthusiastic chatter about how similar the two of them are, every parallel between them. A moment in the aftermath of the Liberio infiltration forces him to reconsider what he shares with Mikasa. Canon-compliant/divergent. By default of events and concept: heavy on the angst. Rated for General Audiences. On Ao3.

A very, very late, response to the parallels prompt by @rivamikaevents for A Year to Remember. 

Note: The author does not hold the same initial in denial, unreliable narrating opinion of the main character. (:

He doesn’t see it.

After hearing about it enough, from the conspiratorial whisper of cadets to off-hand remarks made by those in command, Levi started to look for it. These so-called parallels.

They talk about their similarities in strength, but while his is controlled force, hers is impulsive power. Him, the precise strike of lightning that effortlessly slices an ancient oak clean in half, but her, the sparked match lit on accident; she sets the entire forest on fire.

Of course, their genius-level skill, every unexplainable aptitude. But Levi has overheard enough from the Shiganshina trio; whatever skills she first gained from chasing bullies and picking up Eren’s slack, all while surrounded by a field of flowers, he learned from the stranger who collected his starving shell of a self from the bedside of his mother’s corpse, sticking a knife in his little, scrubby hands and shoving his shoeless feet onto the Underground streets.

Both are stern, it’s true, but her hard features will fracture and faint at the first sign of a loved one in peril, and Levi either can’t afford to falter or can’t afford to love. He isn’t certain which; after all, what came first, the goose or the egg?

Then the most obvious one, their shared family name. This is the one that makes him grimace. While she was born and raised an Ackerman, given not one family but two, he was always and only Levi, a pair of blunt syllables, orphaned not just once, but twice.

And last but not least, he is not One of the Strongest, but Humanity’s Strongest, and the weight he wears on his shoulders is a heavy yoke of responsibility binding him to all mankind. A weight that she does not wear— chooses not to wear— by harnessing her commitment onto that of a single man. She moves with lighter steps and sleeps for more hours each night than he ever could.

No, even once he’s looking for the parallels, he doesn’t find them.

It’s only once he’s stopped searching that he finds the first one, one that tugs at all the others, threatening to unravel the rest.

In the strangest of places, after the hardest of hours. On the evacuation aircraft, in the aftermath of a victory that feels worse than a loss, flying back to an island that used to be the edge of his world but no longer feels like home.

Levi has never seen her so undone, never thought he would hear her weep so openly, then the way she does right after Sasha’s death. The sound of her sobs echo through his mind even after they’ve sputtered to a stop, making him wish he had kicked Eren much harder, or at least more than once.

Unable to sleep, less able to entertain Hange’s grief-stricken chatter, he roams through the emptied halls of the odd aircraft. Surprise at seeing her shadow-steeped form causes him to halt his mindless steps. He thought she’d cry herself to sleep, and if not, curl herself into a ball against Armin’s side. Instead, she stands tall, arms crossed over her chest, staring out of one of the few glass windows and into a starless sky.

Whether she notices his approach or considers it an intrusion, there’s no sign of either. When he resumes his earlier steps, they lead to her.

Levi is accustomed to the prevalence of death. He is not accepting of it. The difference is what keeps him awake at night, what shapes the only stilted words he can offer her.

“Who’s with Sasha?” he asks, thinking of the cloth he reluctantly gave to Jean, who’s shaking hands betrayed what his masked face did not as he draped it over her lifeless body.

Mikasa swallows thickly, her throat muscles undoubtedly scratched and sore. “Connie. He asked— … he asked for a few minutes alone.”

Her words are hoarse, the sort of hurt a heaping spoonful of honey in hot tea won’t resolve. Not that it matters; there’s no sweetener on a warship.

Levi comes to her side, looking out the window even though there’s nothing to see. Dark skies, fitting for a dark night. He doesn’t bother to ask if she’s alright, and he knows better than to tell her that she will be. Together they stand in silence.

Several moments pass before Mikasa shifts, her crossed arms loosening, then falling limply to her sides. He senses the second she turns toward him, but he shifts his gaze to her only through his peripheral, allowing her some semblance of privacy, a chance to hide her tear-streaked face.

But she is not apologetic, nor shy, and waits for his full attention. Only once Levi turns fully toward her does it occur to him that it may have been him who didn’t want to be seen.

Not for the first time tonight, she surprises him; a shallow sort of surprise, one that twists and turns his stomach into lead. Through bloodshot orbs and swollen lids, she stares him down, as determined if not as lethal as the first time in the courtroom. For one full moment, he wonders if she’s going to blame him; but then her lids blink fast, withholding tears, and her lips tighten thinly, trying not to tremble.

Her chin dips, and she swallows again, striving for strength. Levi takes that sliver of a second to do the same.

“Why would Eren do this?” Mikasa asks, words gravelly from a different source of grief.

But she doesn’t wait for him to answer, eyes narrowing in frustration, fists clenching at her side. Despite the signs of strength he is used to associating with her fury, her words are hollow, so brittle that they break. “How- how could he?”

Levi grimaces. Her pain is a paradox, the willfulness of ignorance but the weight of understanding, too. She’s searching his face, yearning for him to affirm her confusion even as she seeks for him to validate this newfound knowledge, too.

Eren has done monstrous things. Eren is the monstrous thing.

And suddenly, Levi doesn’t just see her, he also sees himself. In a moment that's different but not dissimilar enough, realizing what Erwin would sacrifice just so he could get to the basement, so he himself could discover and glean the truth. Levi remembers with biting clarity the way the turmoil unfolded, how the epiphany evolved: Erwin was not the entirely selfless hero, not an incorruptible God.

A knowledge that gutted him then is shoveling all the faith out of her now. Levi sees the same sense of clarity, reflected back to him in a mirror that is Mikasa’s determined, despairing gaze.

Infallible loyalty and irrefutable love will inevitably come to their limit. A sickening limit that cannot be seen until some arrangement of cruelties makes it known. After that, the limit is obvious, even mocking.

The little fool who actually thought she could love.

The little fool who thought he finally found the one.

That’s what she’s really asking him, Levi knows. What do you do, when an unbreakable bond, breaks?

Levi sighs, too immersed in the imagery of her anguish and inner considerations of his own, to hear how he sounds.

“I don’t know,” Levi tells her, fractured and faint.

He’s given her no valid answer, admitted his own loss in discovering one, but she nods once, slowly but not unsurely, as if they're in agreement.

Perhaps they are, Levi is forced to conclude. It leaves a bitter tang on the tip of his tongue, one that he can’t spit out, so he swallows.

She looks out the window one last time, perhaps hoping to see the sky scattered with at least a few stars. Clouds continue to cover them, though; there aren’t any to see.

Mikasa exhales warily, a private admission of exhaustion, and then sinks down miserably onto the metal floor. Her legs start the effort of crossing over, but give up half-way through, laying limply before her. She falls forward some, too stubborn to lean back and rest. Or, more likely, too grieved to know how to.

On another day in another life, Levi stood behind her and Eren, the sunshine bright in his glass-gray eyes, the wind whipping the cloak on his back with what felt like purpose. A moment so pure of… of what he could not name, it spurred him to act, dropping both hands on their heads. Of all things, he ruffled their hair. They couldn’t have been more startled than him at the overt sign of affection.

Levi feels the same pull and tug of an impulse now, though the circumstances are markedly different. Not to mention the mood. Eren’s chaos and Sasha’s death not only hang heavier than a violent storm above them, but dig deep into the marrow of their bones. What little hope persists continues to be leached right out from them, a loss greater than just one fallen comrade and friend.

It’s a similar compulsion though, some ingrained instinct he's surprised to find he can possess, when he drops his hand onto the crown of her head. There’s no joy to jumpstart a tousling of hair, only dread and the burden of whatever may come next for them. This time, the weight of his palm glides down the base of her skull, scarred fingers threading through the thin strands of her short hair. It's more intimate than he intends, though little time was dedicated to understanding his own intentions, so he settles his calloused hand onto the nape of her neck instead. She tenses, protective of pain she likely also thought little about before barring it so openly to him, but Levi feels every incremental shift as her muscles loosen and relax beneath his touch.

Clutching onto her bare skin, not the threadbare material of an apparently absent scarf, Levi finds himself in reluctant wonder of what other parallels he'd adamantly shut down.

[hashire]

on a fragmented memory

I didn’t have any intention of writing today, but I saw the post from @rivamikaevents​ and got the Feels. I read something I wrote years ago and wanted to write something in the same style again, so here we are. (This makes references to incidents from chapter 138, but I don’t feel like it’s really spoilery. Maybe it is. I can’t read it objectively. Tread carefully with that in mind. Oh, and the “wakes up” part at the beginning is from Mikasa being lost in her thoughts, not asleep. But parallels, you know?)

-

The stream, she thinks, is louder this morning. It doesn’t flow past their house surrounded by trees; no, it’s a few minutes away. It roars in her ears but it didn’t rain and there’s no snow melting high up on the mountains and -

Mikasa hears the coo of the little girl in her arms and wakes up.

*

It’s simple but it isn’t. It’s easy but it’s not. She honors only one of the things Eren asked of her.

She lives. And lives and lives and lives. 

*

Kuchel started smiling a few days before. It’s wide and exuberant and infectious. Mikasa smiles back at her. She reaches to grab the chubby fist that escaped, rocking her back and forth.

The roar lessens.

*

It’s not that she regrets it. She knew what she had to do. She knew that she had to be the one to do it. 

It hurts sometimes. It hurts even more other times. It wanes into a dull ache many times. 

Kuchel makes a noise that resembles a laugh, stuffing her fist into her mouth when Mikasa lets her hand go.

*

She knows that this is real and here and now. It’s not a dream or a delusion or a place so far away she could never reach it again or…

The sun slants lower in the sky. She moves on the bench so she and Kuchel are well situated in the shadow of the house.

*

The scarf makes a good wrap. Kuchel always settles when swaddled in it. She looks sweet against the dark fabric, her hair just barely darker than the faded black. 

Kuchel’s hand - wet with saliva - smacks her cheek. 

*

Levi still walks with a limp. He uses a cane on bad days and resists offers of help on good days. He walks up the path at the same time every day. It’s warm outside, warmer than it’s been in a long time. Winter persisted that year, but it’s finally spring.

Mikasa shifts Kuchel in her arms and rises to meet him. She takes the bag off his shoulder and throws it over hers, keeping the baby steady the whole time. It’s a bad day; he can’t hold her and walk.

Before she can turn back toward the house, Levi reaches up and swipes a thumb over her cheek:  the right one, where the scar remains, where their daughter’s hand met her face.

“Kuchel -” she starts and then stops. The touch was higher on her cheek than where Kuchel could reach. She registers how her voice breaks, just a little, just a lot. She could go on; she could blame Kuchel’s spit for the wetness on her cheek. He’d know she wasn’t telling the truth. She’d know she wasn’t telling the truth. 

“Let’s go inside,” Levi says, because he knows what she’s feeling, knows how she’s feeling, knows why she’s feeling. Mikasa swallows and nods, turning away without saying anything else.

*

The roar will stop. The roar will start. The roar will leave for months at a time.

Levi takes Kuchel when they make it inside. He leans against the wall and adjusts the slowly loosening scarf. Kuchel smiles, and he smiles back at her. 

The roar is gone again, for now.