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Ral is shaking like a leaf as Shadis rants and wails, but her back is straight. She’s trying to make herself as small and invisible as possible.
“Tch.”
Levi clicks his tongue. Trying to avoid Shadis is to attempt the inevitable, and he’ll only go twice as hard on you because he’s been letting you off for so long.
He watches the new recruits go through the motions, and wonders who’ll be stupid or crazy enough to join the Scouting Legion.
When they graduate, somehow, Levi isn’t surprised to see Ral in the ranks. He nods to himself, but she sees, and glows.
She spreads her wings under the Scout’s guidance. Sometimes she still shakes and trembles, but she works hard, is becoming stronger and tougher every day. Levi watches her through lidded eyes, comparing her progress with the others’. He knows that she tries harder when his eyes are on her - the power behind her attack is more forceful and efficient, her spins and twists are neater and cleaner.
He wonders if she knows, too.
***
It’s a while before he notices the cracks she’s been hiding.
Ral is the naive one of the group - the one who thinks that one day, humanity will recover itself and the titans will be slain. Maybe not in her lifetime, but one day. Levi knows from experience that her naivety won’t last.
Ral desperately wants to be told that everything will be ok, but no one here can tell her what she wants to hear.
When a whole regiment is wiped out on a scouting mission, Ral takes down her first titan by herself. Levi can put his finger on the exact moment that he knew there was something breaking inside. He watches as she slices through the creature’s calves, curves around its abdomen and leaves a trail of steaming blood up its spine. He can hear steel scraping grotesquely on bone. When she’s done carving, she slices deep into the nape and lands heavily.
Her cape is steaming and billowing in the wind and he knows she regrets what she’s just done.
They return to the wall in silence with a cartload of the dead and dying. Ral’s eyes burn as they ride through the streets. Someone shouts a slur on the Scouts and Levi sees no change in her expression, and that’s when he knows.
Later, Gunther, Eld and Auruo are outside, drinking. Levi goes into the barracks and finds Petra running her hands under a cold tap.
“Hot water will work better”, he says, reaching to turn on the other tap.
“No”, she says sharply. She relaxes visibly when he takes his hand away from the sink, and he listens to her breathing. “I’m sorry.” Her voice could be a different person’s. “I didn’t mean-”
“It’s alright.”
She tries to stop herself from crying but can’t, and the tears leak over her lids as her breathing hiccups over her sobs. Levi gently takes her hands and holds them under the running water. It’s ice cold, and his fingers quickly become so numb that he can barely feel her hands in his. He meticulously massages out the stains of her comrades blood on her skin, lathers up a sliver of soap and carefully scrubs off every scrap of dried dirt and blood from around her cuticles and under her nails.
His hands are so cold that he can barely feel the callous on her hands from wielding her blades, never mind the soft fair skin surrounding them. He drags his thumb across her palm once, wondering if she’ll feel the touch that has no purpose other than his own impulsive curiosity. He glances at her face, but her eyes are closed.
***
They’re a real team now, his Special Operations Squad. They’ve been working together for so long, in so many dangerous situations, that a mere glance between them feels like a well-rehearsed battle plan. Still, Levi can’t help but worry over his team. Whenever Auruo flits too close to a titan’s mouth; when Gunther goes straight for the nape in a bullish rush; when Petra dodges a monster’s open palm - Levi knows his team are the best of the best, but he can’t lose any of them.
“Trust us!” Petra rolls her eyes at him. He’s just ‘stolen’ a kill, as Eld puts it. Eld and Auruo thinks he does it to show off, swooping in to slice through the nape while the others are still deciding on their plan of attack, upping his kill total. He doesn’t mind that they think that - he won’t tell them the real reason. He’s not sure they’d even believe him.
“I trust you”, he replies.
Petra doesn’t smile and he shouldn’t expect her too - there’s nothing in his voice or his manner that suggests he’s telling the truth, after all.
He’s close to telling her but doesn’t. Instead, he looks right at her, straight into her eyes, the colour of the woodland surrounding them. She holds his gaze, and he knows his is not an easy one to hold. Still, he doesn’t know if she understands.
***
“We can’t keep doing this.”
Only someone who knows her well would notice that tiny flicker of hurt and disappointment. His own voice rings in his ears, as detached as always, and he turns away to scowl at himself.
Petra stays still and quiet, waiting, but he doesn’t know how he can tell her.
Inevitably, they argue. She’s so fierce and passionate and beautiful, and he’s sure that no one else on this earth has eyes that snap like hers do. He’s distracted from the argument within minutes, and knows he’s an idiot.
Petra isn’t stupid, and she knows that their argument has only been postponed. She’s unhappy, he can tell, but he doesn’t know how he can communicate how he feels to her. How can he possibly put it into words - the vastness of what she makes him feel? She’s a storm raging over water, too powerful and magnificent to notice his little boat being tossed in the churning waves and sunk.
She will destroy him twice, he knows it deep in his bones.
She’s still the naive one.
***
Petra is near enough doting on Eren, and Levi can’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy, however misplaced. She’s acting like a mother figure, supporting the boy through his tantrums and angst. Levi tchs at them, but can see she’s found a new purpose - something other than killing titans anyway.
He wouldn’t want to join in even if he could, but Eren is a part of his team now, and he’s glad Petra’s taken charge and firmly tucked their little titan under the Legion’s wings.
“Why do you like him so much?” Levi asks her.
Petra rolls over languidly. “He’s so young”, she replies. “But he’s so determined. I like his passion.”
Levi waits.
“He can take a form stronger than any of us-”
“No.”
She shoots him an amused glare. “Alright, Captain” (Levi snakes an arm around her), “Stronger than me, or Auruo, or Eld or Gunther. Separately, anyway. But he’s so willful I worry about him. He’s naive, yet he doesn’t trust us.”
“He hasn’t seen you run a titan down yet.”
Petra shrugs in reply.
“He will trust you.” Levi says, his voice firm and low in her ear. “He will because he should. You are magnificent. And you inspire him.”
“Kind words.”
“True words”, he replies, and he kisses her temple reverently. “You must fight for his trust.”
***
Her death doesn’t truly hit him until later. It’s been days, and it feels like he should have been through the worst of it, but when he wakes up one morning and sits up to see sunlight streaming through the window he realizes - she’s not coming back.
Then everything hits him at once, and he thinks he’s tough but he’s never experienced a blow like this before. He’d rather be pummeled by a hundred titans than feel this - the weight of his guilt and grief and anger suffocating him. He physically crumples as he remembers what he did - he left her and the rest of his squad, he dumped her body, he didn’t even fucking avenge her. He remembers the trail of bodies he followed to reach her. First Gunther, swinging. Then Eld, broken in the grass, and Auruo, fallen with shattered blades. He knew who he was going to see next - he remembers the furious pace of his heartbeat, the painful tightening in his lungs; the pure dread, inevitable and inescapable.
He looks at her body for longer than he should. He memorizes everything about her - the exact shade of her hair where the sunlight touches it; the forest hazel green of her staring eyes, the soft features, the pale skin, the slightly upturned nose... the smears of blood running from her mouth and nose into her hair. He memorizes it all.
Levi remembers and imagines how she felt in her last moments, and knows that it’s because of him that she died. It’s his fault that she was killed brutally and mercilessly.
Others tell him he’s wrong - she died bravely and willingly chose to give her life for the scouts. Strangely, the only person Levi can stand to share company with is Eren. Maybe it’s because Petra saw so much in him, but it’s more likely because Eren suffers from the same guilt Levi does.
“She asked me to trust her”, Eren sobs one day. Eren is open with his emotions where Levi is stoic. “She asked me to trust all of them and I did. But I could’ve transformed and saved all of their lives.”
Levi closes his eyes and remembers Petra curled into him. He remembers pressing a kiss to her temple. Her hair tickled his nose. “You’re not to blame”, he says. His voice is cold and rough in his ears. Thunder rumbles in the distance and he can feel the waves beneath his feet, feels his insides lurch and thinks he can hear the creaking and groaning of old worn wood.
He looks skyward and sees grey clouds converging, crashing against each other.
She was always the naive one, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.