Chapter Text
To say that Hange was excited was a complete understatement. She was over the moon.
The Sina Aqautic Rehabilitation center was getting a new addition to their family and Hange was going to be in charge of their care.
She checked her wrist watch, twelve thirty. The patient should be arriving from transport at around one thirty, so that meant she had about an hour to prepare their file and enclosure.
They recived many types of patients like dolphins, whales, sea lions, sea turtles and etc. but this was the first time that Erwin had put her in charge of one of the more...rarer species.
Her assistant Moblit entered her office, a wetsuit in each hand.
“Transport is almost here, I brought your gear.” He tells her gesturing to the items in his hands.
Hange looks up from her desk and raises her eyebrows. “ they’re early.”
Moblit hands her a suit, “this one sounds urgent.”
After quickly changing Into their wet gear they make their way down to the loading dock just in time to see the transport boat pull up. Erwin and the others are already waiting for them.
“Nanaba and Mike will help you guys with the intake.” Erwin says to her and she nods firmly as the boat docks and a two mean haul a large casket sized container, she can hear the sound of sloshing water coming from inside. Frowns and approaches them as the set it down on the dock.
“Please tell me that my patient is not in there.” She said in an annoyed voice, the men just shrug and begin to help her open the container. A bald man walks up to Erwin who stands behind her, Nanaba and Mike are also helping to open the container.
“He’s sedated for now, we found him near the reef with his tail all bloodied. We decided this was the best place to bring him.” He says to Erwin in a gruff voice.
“Thank you Pixis.” Erwin thanks him and shakes his hand.
They finally remove the lid from the container and Hange’s eyes widen. Inside the container was no shark or dolphin but an actual living beastly breathing mermaid.
Err-Merman actually as she looked closer. His skin was pale and he had straight jet black hair that fell over his eyes. She examined his tail, his scales were a beautiful black and grey ombré color. One of the fins of his tail was torn and bleeding profusely.
Hange clears her throat, “ we need a stretcher.” That seemed to snap everybody to attention. Moblit runs to retrieve said stretcher and Nanaba hands her and aid kit and stethoscope. Hange places the stethoscope over where she would guess his heart would be.
“Pulse is thready.” She says firmly and notices a deep slash beneath his ribs and a deep bruise beginning to form around it. There were a few more shallow cut around his left shoulder, she grimaces.
“What the hell happened to you.” She whispers
They tranport him to the medbay via stretcher where they worked on his injuries and prepped him for his move in.
Hange was wrapping his his tail with waterproof bandages when he began to stir awake. Preparing for his reaction she worked quickly but tried not to apply too much pressure.
The mer hissed in pain as he tried to move away from her. It was then when she noticed eyes, they were a steely grey, filled with fear and anger towards her. She backed away from the medical table he lay on and raised hands, palms facing him.
“It’s okay I’m trying to help, try not to move to much okay?”
He only glared at her harder and struggled against his bindings, hissing and thrashing.
“Hey,hey,hey now calm down.” She says in a calm voice and places a gloved hand on his hip, right where his fishtail begins.
The halfling freezes and stares at with wide eyes, thin eyebrows squeezed towards each other as he bares his sharp teeth at her.
She made a move to loosen the straps so he wouldn’t hurt himself and Moblit tried to stop her.
“Miss Hange-”
But it was too late, her patient lurched forward and bit her on the arm hard. She attempted to pull away but be wouldn’t let go, he only sank his teeth deeper.
“Sedate him.” She says to Moblit, but contains eye contact with her patient.
The mer’s eyes widen when Moblit injects him with the syringe. The gills on his neck flutter slightly as he detaches from Hange’s arm and he slumps backwards. Hange ignores the blood that begins to bead and watches as his eyelids begin to droop.
“Hurts...” he whispers hoarsely before the drugs pull him under.
Hange and Moblit both stare at each other in surprise.
“He spoke..” Hange whispers, a big grin spreads across her face.
There were able to relocate him to his personal enclosure without hassle, due to him being sedated. His enclosure was fairly large, about the size of a regular lions enclosure. It was fitted with a man made beach that lead to an indoor observation tank underground. At the edge of the water was a resting spot made out of rocks and a hammock hanged bettween two fake trees, the cieling was also open to the outdoors.
Hange observed the merman who was resting in the hammock. She did countless for research on his species but never has examined one in real life until now. She knew that they were a very rare encounter and were hard to deal with both biologically and behaviorally. Apparently they found him entangled in a fishing net near a coral reef. She frowned at the thought of that poor creature bleeding out in the water, at the mercy of reef shark. This was definitely the work of some careless fishermen, hopefully he wasn’t traumatized enough to forget what had actually happened.
He had been beginning to stir awake for the past few minutes and she decided that he may be hungry when he fully comes too. Hange grabs an ice bucket full of fresh sardines and a first aid kit and heads down the observation deck and into his enclosure. She approaches the mer slowly, making sure he can hear her footsteps. As soon as he catches sight of her her recoils into the hammock and hisses.
“It’s alright, I’m not gonna hurt you.” She says softly and places the bucket on top of one of the rocks in front of him. He only glares at her, wary of her movements.
“I brought you some food.” She continues, gesturing to the bucket, and sits beside it placing the kit behind her and crisscrosses her legs.
At the mention of food he perked up a little, just a little. He narrowed his eyes into silver slits and watched her for a moment, she grinned back at him.
“.....that better not me mackerel.” He spoke in a deep voice.
It surprised her when he spoke, she didn’t expect him to even speak an entire sentence. She wanted to hear more.
“Sardines, they’re fresh,” she speaks up, “ the dolphins love them.”
He glares at her again, “ I’m not a dolphin.”
She laughs and he flinches, surprised at the sound.
“Oh I know, we call your kind merpeople, and I’m very excited to have you in my care.” She explains to him, eyes sparkling brightly.
He eyes her suspiciously, and once he decided she wasn’t going to move he slid off the hammock ,careful of his tail, and onto one of the rocks. Keeping his gaze on her her snatched the bucket and begins to rip the heads off the fish voilently. Hange smiles as she watches him eat, his glare lessened slightly.
“Do you...do you have a name?” She asks him as she wipes a smudge off of the lens of her glasses.
He pauses his chewing and narrows his eyes at her
“ I’m Hange Zoe, you can call me whichever.”
He hesitates, lowering the bucket and swallowing before speaking.
“...Levi..it’s just Levi.”
Hange tilts her head and smiles like a puppy. “Nice to meet you Levi, your English is good, where are you from.” She asks him and notices that he has already emptied the entire bucket of sardines. Levi shrugs, before clutching his bandaged shoulder and wincing. Hange moves closer, “careful with your wounds, you don’t want the to rip open again.”
Levi shrinks away from her and curls into himself, letting out low whine of pain. Hange leans back a bit and lifts her palms out to him, as if she was trying to tame a wild horse.
“ Levi, it okay you can trust me I’m hre to take care of you, I won’t hurt you I promise.” She reassures him softly. He looks up at her slowly and he shivers painfully, the meds were wearing off.
“Let me help you, okay?” She asks him again, not moving and inch. Levi stares at her and then his eyes drift to her bandaged arm, he blinks.
He hurt her, why wouldn’t she want to hurt him?
Hange notices this and places a hand on it. “Don’t worry it doesn’t hurt, I’m not angry.”
Levi blinks in surprise.
“You were scared, I understand,” she continues with a sympathetic smile. “ I’ve been bitten scratched and mawled plenty of times, it comes with the job.”
He relaxes a little, now that he knows she wasn’t angry about what he did to her.
“Can I check your injuries?” She asks him, taking a tiny step towards him. A few seconds pass before he finally nods, dark fringe falling in front of his face.
Hange kneels in front of him slot with the aid kit, letting him watch her movements carefully.
“I’m going to clean you wounds and replace the bandages okay?” She briefs him and he nods stiffly, not taking his eyes off of her. She gently unwraps the bandages off of his injured tail and grimaces at the sight. One of the fins of his tail was torn off, it wasn’t bleeding anymore but it looked painful.
“Do you remember what happened to you?” Hange asked him as she tends to it. He looks away from her and clenches his jaw. She looks back a him for a moment before continuing her work.
“It’s okay we don’t have to talk about it.”
After thourougly cleaning the tail she replaces the bandages with clean ones and moved to the large gash underneath his ribs. As soon as her fingertips brush the bandages he groans in pain and curls into himself.
“I’m sorry,” she apologizes and removes her hand, “ that one is pretty bad huh? You had some internal bleeding.”
Levi doesn’t understand but he nods anyway and allows her to continue. A few minutes go by as she works on him, his gaze seemed to be fixated on her face the whole time and when she would look at him he would glare and look away, she chuckled at this.
“What are those?” He asks gesturing at the frames that rested on her nose.
“Oh these?” She says as she removes them from her face so he can examine them. He nods, brushing his hair away from his face to look closer.
“They’re called glasses, they help me see better. I was born with poor eyesight you see.” She tells him while sliding the back on he nose.
“They’re shitty.” He responds blandly, making her snort loudly.
“I see you have an extensive vocabulary Mr. Grumpy” Hange chuckles as she finishes the last of his bandages.
“ Shut up shitty glasses,” He frowns. “That’s what I’ll call you, shitty glasses.” He says, pleased with himself and hange laughs, eyes crinkling in delight.
She’s gets up, still chuckling to herself, and grabs the empty bucket and kit.
“I’ll bring you something for the pain, grumpy.”