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Solid Ground
Petra is 18 when she joins. Levi is 21 at the time, not yet a captain but rising quickly through the ranks.
He notices her.
He observes all the new cadets during training and takes quiet mental notes. They work harder when they know he’s watching; of this he is distinctly aware.
Her balance on the 3D maneuvering device is impeccable, her movements quick, efficient and precise. She trains hard and focuses well.
But the reason he finds himself watching her more than any of the others is that she is bright. Not bright as in smart, though she’s that as well. Petra’s brightness is something he doesn’t often see or really value, to be frank, but somehow it’s more notable in her. When she finishes for the day she smiles and laughs, and once gave part of her dinner to a cadet that fell behind. She is hopeful. It pains him to know that this will change very quickly once she starts fighting.
“It’s a decent group,” he remarks to Erwin one night as they drink their tea. Erwin nods.
“How many do you think will make it through training?”
“I don’t know.” He takes a long sip. “No one knows how things are going to turn out.”
There’s a tiny spot on the ridge of his cup. He flicks it off, knowing that a speck of dirt really shouldn’t bother him as much as it does.
“They’re trying their best. Though I don’t recall any particular standouts. None caught my eye.”
The breeze is cold—someone’s left the window slightly ajar—but Levi ignores it; he has long trained himself to be unaffected. His cloak flutters behind him weakly. “I saw a few.”
---
There’s no ceremony when he’s made a captain. The military doesn’t do that anymore; it’s considered an impractical waste of time. In truth, he’s promoted because the position of captain was vacated abruptly shortly beforehand. The higher-ups appeared to think he was the best choice, and as a tall balding man shakes his hand, Levi is informed that he is to lead the new elite squad. His skills are, after all, unparalleled, he is told. He accepts graciously and thinks privately that there may be recruits adept enough to join the squad, but the larger task will be to find recruits who actually want to join.
At first, it feels odd to be called captain. He expects that to fade with time, but oddly enough, it never does. No matter how many Titans he is able to kill, no matter how well he is able to mask it with relentless apathy, he will always feel slightly unqualified, always have a split second where he thinks why are you asking me, I don’t know when cadets ask him what to do in dire situations. His reflexes and thinking are quick enough to make up for this, but it unnerves him on occasion.
He hates it. It makes him feel helpless, and he swore to himself years ago to never be helpless again.
---
A year after his promotion, Shiganshina falls and the wall is breached. The news comes by way of a messenger on horseback who rides up with half his face covered in blood. The elite squad becomes a far more urgent project after that, and Levi watches as the news takes its toll on every cadet and every soldier.
The change in Petra’s demeanor is subtle; she’s strong, and refuses to do anything but remain hopeful at all times. But he sees the way her eyes darken when she thinks no one’s looking. When there’s no one whose spirits she thinks she needs to buoy, her shoulders droop and her smile fades. The lightheartedness has drained from her as though someone’s pulled the plug. The realization of this makes Levi feel a sudden, unexpected pang somewhere in the pit of his stomach. Innocence lost.
It’s for the better. If she wants to survive, she can’t afford to be naïve.
---
It’s the middle of the night. He’s on the roof. Levi comes out here often when he can’t sleep, which is more often than not, unsurprisingly. He stopped waking himself up by screaming long ago, but the nightmares won’t go anywhere. He imagines most of the fleet has similar dreams. He hears them screaming sometimes too. How the roof is not packed with insomniacs by this point is honestly beyond him.
Quiet footsteps behind him. Perhaps he spoke too soon. He doesn’t turn around to see who it is, simply stares ahead at the moon—full and bright—in silence.
The footsteps stop about a foot behind him and a soft voice ventures hesitantly, “is this spot taken?”
He blinks, recognizing the voice, and mulls it over. “No. It’s all right, you can sit.”
A pause. She recognizes his voice as well, though she's heard it rarely. "Captain Levi?"
His fingers twitch. He doesn’t answer.
She sits beside him tentatively and they stare at the moon together. “You couldn’t sleep, sir?”
“No.”
Another pause while she glances at her lap. “Do you get nightmares, too?”
Levi’s eyes are cold, but he doesn’t shy away from personal questions the way Petra expected. He answers frankly and without emotion, much like he does everything else. “Yes. I prefer not to give them a chance, so I come up here.”
Petra nods understandingly, seemingly unfazed at his blatant honesty. Her gaze roves over his face pensively. He doesn’t return it. “It’s nice. Quiet.”
“Yes.” A beat. “Although you should try to sleep. You’re graduating this week, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
It’s odd that she keeps calling him sir, Levi thinks; it’s two in the morning and they’re sitting on the roof. Formalities and ranks don’t have much use up here. But perhaps she considers it a sign of respect.
“Any idea where you’re headed?”
The light behind her eyes intensifies somehow. “I’d like to join the Scout Regiment,” she states surely, as if daring him to shake his head.
“I’m glad to hear that, Ral,” he says quietly.
She blinks, surprised, but trying immediately to mask it. “And why’s that, sir?”
“Someone has to. Few want anything to do with it, but the Scout Regiment could certainly use your skills.”
She smiles proudly. “Thank you, sir.”
The two of them stare at the moon in silence for a few minutes before Levi stands abruptly and starts to walk away without saying a word. Then, a few paces back, he stops and looks back.
“And Ral?”
She turns to look at him, and their eyes meet for the first time. “Yes, sir?”
“Try not to get killed immediately. You’re valuable.”
Her eyes shine a little in the moonlight, and she nods gratefully, though he’s not sure what she has to be thanking him for. “Goodnight, sir.”
“Goodnight, Ral.”
---
Petra smiles at him. Consistently.
He keeps an eye on her in training. Levi seems to have taken an interest in her. He’s unsure of why, exactly, only that she’s different in some indefinable way from those around her. It’s nothing inappropriate or obsessive; it’s not like he spends disproportionate amounts of time staring at her. He is a soldier, he knows how to control himself. Better than most, in fact. He doesn’t let his interest get in the way of things or cloud his judgment. But he lets it remain there, and he watches her.
She sees him watching, and every time their eyes meet, hers light up a little bit, and she gives him the tiniest of smiles. Every time. That’s when he has to look away.
When the time comes to choose those who will be in the elite squad, hers is the first name that comes to mind. He pens it without hesitation and feels a sudden, surprising shard of ice lodge itself in his chest. Guilt and fear. Which is ridiculous; she’s certainly skilled enough to be on the squad, and what he told her on the roof was true: soldiers like her are valuable. This is where she’s needed.
It’s also where she’ll probably be dead in a week flat. And for some reason, a dangerously mysterious reason that seems to him like more than her skills or her value to the regiment, Levi doesn’t want to lose her, knows that her death would be a blow to him more than the death of any other current cadet.
But he has long since learned not to feel; his emotions never affect his decisions, that is why he’s so good at what he does. He has learned to be cold and uncaring, because his emotions are of no consequence in any valuable situation. So he takes the shard of ice from his chest and shatters it on the ground before moving on to the next name.
He trains his new squad hard. It’s likely that nearly 30% of them will die in the first year, but he’s hoping to beat those odds. They can use all the soldiers they can get, particularly elite ones. By the end of most days, they’re ready to collapse from exhaustion.
When they’re dismissed, most of the cadets immediately dash out of the room without a word so they can go sleep, shoulders sagging. But every single night, before she goes, Petra tells him quietly, “Goodnight, Captain.”
He nods stoically and watches her go, every time.
Once, he nearly says “Goodnight,” back. He doesn’t know why he would do that, but he almost does.
And then, once, he does say it. Without really meaning to, without thinking, the word slips out into the empty air and hangs there, suppressing all the air in the room. Petra stops walking and smiles sadly at him from the corner of her mouth.
“Captain?”
She has an odd look in her eyes. It unnerves him, and he wonders whether he should’ve stayed silent. “Yes, cadet?”
She turns to face him.
“What happened to you?”
Levi stares impassively. He knows, really, what she’s asking, but pretends not to. “What do you mean?”
Her eyes are desperately sad, like every time he looks away it wounds her a little. “I’ve never seen you smile. You always have bags under your eyes. You speak as though every word pains you.”
Even though Petra’s six feet away across the room, it feels like she’s right there, like her eyes are inches from his own. It’s too close, too much, and he should feel distant but he doesn’t, he feels the blood pumping hot in his veins. The warm, sure beat of his heart, usually so reliable, doesn’t feel quite so steady, as if trying to hold its ground while Petra bares her teeth and growls at it.
It takes a lot to make Levi’s heart change its sturdy pace. Even in battle, it doesn’t speed up all that much. Only when he’s really frightened does it start to lose its rhythm. And he has no reason to be frightened.
He should not have said anything.
When Levi makes no reply, she inches closer. “What happened?” she repeats quietly, unobtrusively.
He stares for a moment longer, heart betraying him, and then turns away. “Experience,” he says simply.
Neither one moves for several seconds. Then Petra, sensing she has pushed something she wasn’t sure was there, turns to leave. “Goodnight, Captain,” she repeats softly as she goes. Levi says nothing.
---
The first mission requires some preparation for the squad. For all but the captain, it’ll be their first day outside the walls and their first time fighting real Titans.
“You must be ready and alert at all times. You must keep a clear mind and a steady hand. I will not tell you not to be afraid. Fear is what will keep you alive,” he tells them dispassionately. The cadets stand in a perfect line in front of him. A few already look close to vomiting out of sheer terror. Hopefully they can clean it up quickly. “But you cannot let it overcome you. That will be your end. The moment you let your emotions cloud your judgment, you’re as good as dead.” His gaze lingers on Petra for a fraction too long. She notices, but does not react outwardly.
“And above all, do not break ranks when the first of you dies.”
Cadet Wells’ eyes widen to the size of tennis balls, Cadet Trenton stiffens and clenches his fists, Cadet Allin lets out a tiny yelp of despair and immediately claps a hand over her mouth, and Petra—Cadet Ral, he corrects himself mentally—stares back at him far too calmly. That’s the kind of calm he’s seen countless times before, the kind that barely conceals panic swirling just below the surface.
Her hands are shaking, he notices.
He shouldn’t—doesn’t have any right to, knows it’s impractical, wishes he didn’t—but he hopes she won’t die.
“Any questions?”
The only reply he gets is Cadet Wells bursting into tears. Levi turns to leave.
“We move out in five minutes.”
He walks away and the squad scatters behind him, breaking their perfect line. A few are chattering energetically; they actually sound excited. That’ll soon change. The rest are wringing their hands or trying desperately to keep their lunch down. He faces away from them coldly.
“Captain.” She’s right at his back. He turns.
“Ral. Did you have a question?”
For a moment he expects her to ask “what happened to you?” again, and some part of him cringes like he’s being struck a blow; something in his eyes recoils. Petra seems to sense this, though, so instead she just says, “How many died on your first?”
Levi stares at her, heart betraying him again, and swallows. In actuality, he’d been trying not to remember his own first mission while preparing his squad for theirs. Perhaps that was shortsighted of him, but even after all this time, he still shivers. The thing he hates about the memory is not the Titans or watching his comrades die in horrific ways he’d never seen before. What he hates about the memory is the fear.
Levi does not like feeling fear. He has no use for it. Despite all he might say about it being the thing keeping him alive in battle, he’s learned ways to sharpen his senses while snuffing out any emotion, any panic that might linger in his ultra-focused mind.
But before he taught himself all of this, he was just as much a mess as anyone else during his first journey beyond the walls. His hands shook and his teeth clacked together. He tried his best to remain calm as he’d trained, but—
The memory sets his teeth on edge. The chaotic, desperate race to destroy every living thing in the vicinity was pandemonium like he’d never known. When he saw the first one eaten—swallowed whole—and watched, helpless from the ground, the soldier shrieking and flailing as enormous smiling teeth devoured him—he screamed. All the others did as well, and everything slowed down.
All of this plays out like cinema in his eyes, and Petra watches their calm surface penetrated by distant ripples of something like terror. Levi closes them a brief moment. When he opens them again, they are deader than they have been in months.
“Eight,” he says tersely.
“Eight,” Petra repeats. “That’s not many, for a first mission.”
“No,” he replies, impassive, “it’s not.”
Then he turns and walks away, leaving Petra staring after him.
She doesn’t expect to speak to him for several weeks more. She is wrong.
During that first mission beyond the wall, Petra helps kill a Titan.
Levi sees it. He watches her shoot across the leg and slash skin with her sword as its nape is sliced open. He watches her come down from the air with a clumsy landing to contrast her usual controlled descent. He watches her stand there, panting, staring at the blood pooling from the body. He watches something change behind her eyes, something snap, something bend and break. He watches a little more of their light drain away, and knows it’s not going to return.
He knows in his heart that it’s a good thing, that’s she’s losing more of that dangerous innocence, but he can’t help feeling his heart sink at the blank emptiness on her face.
Petra sees him watching. When their eyes meet, she doesn’t smile. That’s when he knows she understands.
He knows she’ll soon be either dead like so many others or dead-eyed like himself, that brightness gone from her. He’s not sure which would hurt him more. He’s not sure why it would hurt him at all but he feels certain, somehow, that it would.
That it will.
---
In the subsequent weeks, Petra starts to get circles under her eyes. He knows she hasn’t been sleeping and wonders if she’s been going up to the roof. Part of him wants to check. Every movement that she makes has a little less of that spark he saw in her, just a little less of the light that drew him in like a moth to flame.
But she’s still brighter than most; she still trains hard enough to collapse at the end of the day, she still says “Goodnight, Captain,” every single night, and she still smiles at him—maybe not as bright as before, but it’s there, undeniable and luminescent. He’s still unsure why, but then, he finds it hard to be sure of most things these days.
He is, however, certain of one thing: he is human. Contrary to whatever impressions his stoicism might make, he is human. He wants, he needs, and, much to his own consternation, he feels.
Petra is human too. The weeks start to pass and he observes as she grows stronger, takes down Titans on her own, witnesses deaths of more of her comrades. He watches her learn the things he learned, to control herself in the midst of battle, to recoup afterwards. To shove back the horrors she now witnesses on a regular basis to some locked room in the back of her mind so she doesn’t go insane. And, as if from a distance, he watches himself watching her. The way his eyes follow her movements, the way he stops blinking when they speak, and the way he sees her watching back. This is how he knows they’re inching slowly towards that uncertain something that, in his quieter moments, makes him feel a little like he did before he was Captain, when he was younger and the bags under his eyes weren’t so dark.
It makes him feel the tiniest bit lighter.
---
Nearly five months after that first mission, Levi has to go out in the cold in the middle of the night. One of the cadets must’ve left some equipment out; Levi can see it through the window. It’s started to rain. In fact, it may have been raining relentlessly for several hours by this point, he’s not honestly sure. His mind tends to become misshapen at night, and time becomes more of a fluid, gelatinous glob than a straight line. Regardless, the equipment will rust. So, with a sigh, he gets out of bed and goes outside to fetch it. It’s nearly midnight.
He wasn’t sleeping anyways.
It is, in fact, pouring, and so dark out he almost misses her, but there she is. Slumped under a tree, hood pulled over her eyes. He knows almost immediately that it’s her; oddly enough, it’s by her hands that he can tell, folded clumsily in her lap. They’re elegant and long-fingered, but what tips him off is the very distinctive curved scar on her left thumb from one of her first kills. A squadmate accidentally nicked her with his sword. She didn’t hold him accountable for anything, but the man was a clumsy fool. He was eaten two weeks later.
Petra doesn’t seem to be awake. She’s just half-sitting, half-lying there, propped up against the tree trunk. Levi stops in his tracks and stares. She doesn’t move. A small voice in the back of his head urges him to keep walking, just leave her there and forget. After all, it isn’t his job to coddle members of his squad.
But he finds his feet already taking him to her. He stands over her sleeping form for a moment, hesitating awkwardly, and then shakes her shoulder. She doesn’t stir.
“Ral,” he says, and gets nothing. “Cadet.”
She is very much not moving, which is beginning to alert him. Something is wrong.
“Cad—Petra,” he says sharply, and shakes her again, flicking her hood up so he can see her face. She’s drenched. “Petra. Can you hear me?”
“Mmmm…” she mumbles vaguely, eyelids fluttering.
Swearing under his breath, he grasps her arm and pulls her up. “Petra. I need you to stand, can you do that?”
She lifts her head slightly, as if it’s suddenly made of lead, and looks him in the eyes. In lieu of their usual light, hers are glassy and vacant. That’s when Levi feels a jolt of genuine fear. He presses a hand to her forehead. She’s burning up.
“Petra?”
Swearing under his breath, he pulls her along, some stubborn part of him refusing to carry this woman like a child after he’s seen her take down ten-meter Titans with minimal assistance.
Unfortunately, that may be the only option. She’s not showing any signs of coherence, let alone coordination. Reluctantly, Levi picks her up and does, in fact, carry her like a child, with her legs dangling over his arms and head tipped back.
Something stirs in her glossy expression, and she manages a murmur—“Captain…?”
His heart thuds painfully, and years later he couldn’t say why that simple mutter was so impossibly painful to hear, but painful it is. Excruciating.
“Yes,” he replies softly, trying to remain emotionless but failing a little, “it’s me, Petra.”
That’s when she passes out.
He brings her inside and sets her down gently, then goes to get blankets. He is rational and calm, knowing she’s probably just sick from being out in the rain for however long. Then he goes to bring in the equipment and sets it down beside her. Her teeth are chattering.
She seems much better by three AM, considering she was in the vicinity of death when he brought her inside. Her eyes flutter open and Levi looks up.
“Captain…?” she mumbles again.
He stares at her a moment and says quietly, “Are you all right?”
She swallows.
“Are you all right?” he repeats.
She lets out a breath, not meeting his eyes. “Yes, sir.”
He examines her for another minute, not quite sure whether to believe her, and then sighs. “Why were you out in the rain?”
“I don’t remember, sir.”
If Levi was not already wearing a permanent scowl, he would’ve scowled then. “Cadet.”
“I don’t.”
“You are trying my patience, Ral.”
“Your patience?” Petra is indignant all of a sudden, which makes Levi a bit uneasy. “I’m trying your patience? The patience you seem to have endless amounts of, so much that you never need to show the slightest flicker of anything resembling a feeling? That patience? Sir?”
He waits, a bit stunned by the outburst but not altogether surprised. “Are you quite finished?”
She stares back at him, bright eyes blazing, and considers this for a moment before answering, “Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
She looks away, and there’s a silence in which Levi stares at her dispassionately, wondering how long she’d been waiting to say all of that, and whether it helped. “Would you like to tell me why you were sitting out in the rain, Petra?”
He says it without really meaning to; it isn’t something he’s ever done before this night, but it feels natural, like he’s been calling her this for years. The use of her first name aloud seems to jar Petra into honesty.
“I was sitting under the tree before it started raining. I fell asleep.”
“And you were out there why?”
“I needed somewhere to think.”
What about? he wants to ask. Do you think about this, you and I, as I do? Do you know what I felt when I saw you there? Because I do not. Instead, he just nods.
“Very well. You need to be more cautious in future. We cannot afford to be losing soldiers to hypothermia.”
“Noted, sir.”
He hates the sir tacked on at the end of every sentence. He can tell she’s forcing herself to put it there. They stare blatantly at each other for several tense seconds before Levi stands, muttering, “Get some more rest. No one ought to know about this.”
“Captain,” she says, and then stops. “You stayed,” she whispers, looking half-amazed, half-accusatory, and Levi’s heart feels like it’s been encased in cold iron.
“Yes,” he says in a stilted, unnatural voice, and for a split second she looks as though she’s holding back tears.
He feels the question, unspoken, hanging in the air between them. Why did you help me the way you did? Why did you carry me in, repeating my name, and stay with me until I woke? But she does not, cannot ask it, because in all honesty she already knows the answer. She isn’t certain, but her doubts about it are fading quickly because of the look in Levi’s eyes now, the way they rove her face, saying yes, I know. You don’t need to say it aloud. Do the math. He doesn’t mean to tell her this, but she can read the signs clearly there.
So instead she swallows and says quietly, “thank you.”
Levi nods, turns abruptly, and leaves without a backwards glance.
---
Neither of them mentions the incident for several days following, but things are distinctly stranger. His fists should not clench sharply when he thinks of what could’ve happened to Petra had he not found her. Petra feels a little like she’s gotten the raw end of the deal; it’s not quite fair when he looks at her that way while she’s in the middle of a sentence, and then she has to stop and forget whatever she was saying for a moment.
He’s sitting alone in the conference room four days after it happens. It’s time he should be going to bed, but the effects of tiredness are so constant to him it’s difficult to tell anymore.
There’s a knock on the door and Petra pokes her head in. “Sir?” she says to see if she can come in, and he nods once, rather warily. She steps inside cautiously and closes the door behind her. He doesn’t ask why she’s there.
“I’ve fixed the equipment that was left in the rain,” she says nonchalantly. He raises an eyebrow. “I thought it the best way to repay you,” she explains.
“Repay me?”
“For helping me. You may have saved my life.”
He turns away. “We’re soldiers. That’s what we do.”
“Even so,” she insists.
He stares at her a moment, then gets out of his chair and crosses the room, rather dismayed that she sees it as a favor. She looks back at him evenly and stands, her bright eyes almost glowing in the darkened room.
“You didn’t need to do that,” he says. “It wasn’t an act to put you in my debt.”
She runs a hand through her hair and walks over to him. “Maybe you can explain this to me, then.”
He waits for her to elaborate, the tips of his fingers tingling even though she’s standing a foot away.
“You stayed,” she says, and he doesn’t need to affirm it. It’s a question, but it isn’t spoken like one.
Of course I stayed, he cannot say. I couldn’t leave you then and I can’t leave you now, he cannot say. He can’t tell her any of it, can’t dig the words out or can’t make himself hear them, so he just says, “I felt responsible.”
She doesn’t reply, and he knows he’s wading through murky waters. “I wanted to make sure you were going to be all right. Do you understand?” he adds.
Petra just looks at him for a moment, and the corners of her mouth tilt up in a smile. “Yes, sir.”
He meets her gaze steadily and sighs a little. “You don’t have to call me ‘captain’ when we’re alone, you know.”
Her irises shine, and her lips part. She swallows, as though processing something she’d suspected, but not fully realized until now. Levi doesn’t know it, but he’s just given permission of sorts, a confirmation that when she looks at him this way, he really is looking back.
“Okay,” she says quietly, taking a step closer. They’re inches apart now, and Levi starts to speak but has to start over because he’s having slight trouble breathing.
“Petra,” he begins, “listen to me. You must be careful. You are a valuable soldier, and to lose you to something like hypothermia would be an extreme waste. You must be more cautious.”
He doesn’t think she’s listening. He has no idea what to say, so his brain is throwing things out randomly, which he can’t really blame her for ignoring.
“Levi,” she says, eyes blazing, and his heart jumps like a frightened bird, betraying him again. It’s the first time she’s spoken his name aloud. He likes the way she says it. She reaches up gently and places her hand on his cheek. Her palm is soft to the touch—she smells like rain, and Levi closes his eyes.
I may be in love with you, Levi thinks suddenly, and it floors him, nearly knocks him backwards a step and forces the air out of his chest, because he hadn’t thought it before now, and he feels like a fool—he feels paralyzed, and somehow he knows it would be so much wiser to back away now but he can’t, he can’t move.
Then she leans in and kisses him softly, sweet and solid. The room is cold but Levi feels warmer than he has in years, with Petra there and still and sure, holding his face between her hands like something precious. There’s a strange kind of ache deep in his chest, something he can’t quite explain to himself. His hands move of their own accord, one at her back and one in her hair, pulling her closer. He feels real and clear and right, and when their lips part, he rests his forehead against hers, wishing never to open his eyes.
But he does open them, and he does feel a pang of hesitance, of wrongness, and he does look at her and say “You should get some sleep. We have another mission in three days.”
She nods understandingly, but when she opens her eyes, for a moment her hands don’t leave his face, like she wants to be sure he’s really there, and she stares back at him like he’s made of stars. Then she nods definitively and walks away.
She stops at the door and looks back at him with a smile in her eyes. “Goodnight, Levi.”
---
He wonders if this was a bad idea.
It’s almost like they have some kind of psychic link; he waits for her in the conference room the next night, and somehow, he knows she’ll come. It’s late when she does. She enters slowly and closes the door.
Neither of them really knows what to say, so Petra crosses the room, avoiding his gaze, and clears her throat uncomfortably.
He watches her painfully. “Petra,” he says. “I…I don’t want to make any rash decisions—” he begins quite horribly, but thankfully she cuts him off before he can go any further.
“Hang on,” she interrupts. “I—I’m more or less to blame for this, so—just let me explain.”
“All right,” he replies, somewhat warily, since that sentence sounds rather ominous, also disliking the way she says to blame.
“It wasn’t a rash decision. That’s not to say I was planning anything, but…I understand the circumstances here.”
He nods slowly, aching a little, and tentatively touches her hair. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he says quietly. “Did you know that?”
She smiles a bit too slyly for his taste. “Yes.”
Well, that’s slightly alarming. “I wasn’t exactly obvious.”
“I can read you better than you think.”
He watches her smiling face and feels a stab of woe in his chest; he knows there are a million ways this could go and he only likes a few of them. “Petra, if we’re going to do this…”
He isn’t sure where he’s going with that, but before it gets anywhere, she leans in unexpectedly and kisses him again, soft and firm. She pulls away with the kind of light in her eyes that he sees when she’s laughing.
“I know,” she says. “I understand.”
He looks at her for a long moment. “All right.”
She pulls him in again, hands wrapped around his waist, and he feels the floodgates burst open, feels something break free that he didn’t know he was restraining, and Petra whispers his name between kisses.
“Levi,” she breathes (he shivers), and he knows this is the part where he should leave before someone gets hurt far beyond repair, knows that he should let this go before it gets too late but he can’t. Not now that something so sure and right is there in front of him. Not now that he loves her.
“Come upstairs with me,” he whispers in her ear, and takes her by the hand.
---
It takes him a moment to understand when he wakes up next to Petra. Then he remembers the previous night, and he watches her sleep with an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach, though not entirely a bad one. He’d thought that he might regret this, but he doesn’t.
She stirs, and when she opens her eyes, for a moment they’re so familiar, as though this is where she’s woken up for years.
“Good morning,” she says blithely.
“What?” he asks, because she’s smiling like he’s said something funny.
She shakes her head once. “You don’t look as though you’re holding up the world for once. You’re…pensive.”
She was right, he thinks, about how well she can read him. “I’m thinking, I suppose.”
“What about?”
He gives her a look that says plainly do you really need to ask? and she smiles again. “Er,” he begins, unsure, suddenly feeling awkward, which isn’t an emotion he’s experienced very often in his lifetime. “Is this…”
“Yes,” she says slyly, and he has to kiss her. Then he pulls back to look at her, feeling something powerful coarse through his veins.
“I…” I wish I didn’t feel this way for you, because I know, one way or another, sooner or later I’ll lose you, Levi does not say. I thought I had power over my emotions, I thought I’d found a way to block them off but I was wrong because I have no control over this, Levi does not say.
She seems to hear all of this anyways, but says nothing. He feels raw and exposed in ways that are new, because she sees everything. Maybe it’s because she’s younger, maybe she’s still naïve—she can do things he’ll never be able to do. She trusts him completely, lets herself be entirely visible, reachable to him, loves him with all of herself. Levi doesn’t know how to do that. He has slain far more Titans than she, but now she is the brave one.
She deserves bravery in return, so he swallows and says “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
And from then on, he wakes up at her side. Simple as that. And it’s…nice.
But he’s afraid.
When he wakes up every morning, he has to wonder if they’ll be able to do the same the following morning. It’s a near-crushing weight. She is more fierce and beautiful with every passing day, and the most frightening thing of all is that she makes him want to hope. He doesn’t want to lose that, but he knows, eventually, something will happen and all of this will be destroyed, because that’s how this world works. It chews you up and spits you out, it hollows you. Those are the effects of the Scout Regiment.
Only it feels as though, maybe, those effects are receding a little. Maybe he’s meeting her in the middle. Levi saw the others fall in battle, and he saw that those who ran were snuffed out almost instantly. He saw that those with blank eyes and steady hands were the ones who survived, so Levi became the same. He learned to switch off the capability to feel. He learned to keep the beat of his heart sturdy, constant, and unchanging. He learned numbness.
And then Petra, with her bright eyes and her wide smiles, walked in and made his loyal heart turn traitor.
Perhaps, as the same inevitably happens to her and her faith, her spirit, perhaps she’s doing something to him in return—forging a bridge, finding a midway point where they can stand on solid ground together.
Levi wants that solid ground. He’s tired of running while the floor crumbles beneath him.
A few years later, the walls cave in around him, and everything collapses.
And so he runs.