Chapter Text
Levi’d never really liked the water.
He wasn’t scared of it, mind you. In fact, he’d probably hold you at knifepoint for suggesting so, but he’ll admit that he didn’t trust anything he couldn’t properly see into. I mean, who knows what could be lurking beneath the surface? And, even worse, with water came sand, or mud, and he preferred to keep those as far away from him as possible.
This healthy level of distrust, however, was quickly growing as he approached one of the biggest lakes within what used to be Wall Maria.
“It’ll be fine Leviiiii, we just need Hange to test some things, it’s a quick little field trip,” he muttered to himself, keeping his senses alert in case a titan decided to show up out of the trees around him, “Fucking Erwin and his shitty planning. I’m going to steal his pens when I get back. Bastard.”
Eventually, his horse managed to get him to the glittering shore of what he thought would be a much bigger lake. It was actually almost disappointing to see. He looked around for a moment, squinting his eyes to barely make out the other shore. There was no sign of any other Scouts anywhere, or any human for that matter. Meaning, unfortunately, that he was alone.
“Well, fuck,” he groaned, “this is just fucking wonderful, now isn’t it?”
Sighing, he pulled out his map from Amelie’s saddlebags, and traced the path that he was supposed to be on, if it wasn’t for Erwin’s half-baked idea of a “solo mission”. Now, he had gone and been separated from everyone else, and the final meeting spot was marked as the wrong fucking lake.
Normally, he would just send off an emergency flare to let the others know his location and wait for them to come get him. If that was out of the question, then he would figure out the actual meeting spot and ride there overnight. Alas, he was absolutely exhausted from the stress of the expedition, not to mention the fact that he would be alone in a dark forest with potential titans everywhere if he chose to continue on.
Unfortunately, that left him with one option, and it was one that he absolutely hated.
“Guess we’re making camp, Amelie,” he sighed, idly stroking his horse’s neck.
She let out an unhappy whinny at that, and Levi wished he could speak horse to agree with her.
Seeing as the sunlight was already fading, he hurried to find a place that wouldn’t be easily accessible to a titan. Sure, he knew that they generally weren’t active at night, but in his line of work, people had been killed for assuming less.
With that in mind, he chose a spot relatively close to the water, hating the fact that the soil was less like dirt and more like loamy mud. His nose wrinkled at the thought of sleeping (or even resting) anywhere near ground with such a high water content. Still, the tight bundle of trees around it offered fairly good protection, from both the elements and possible attackers, so it would have to do.
Silently vowing to take the world’s longest bath when he returned to Headquarters, he set up a small shelter of sticks laid carefully around the little copse that was now his temporary camp. Some moss and somewhat soft leaves were mixed in for good measure, because there was no way that Levi would sleep on the bare ground, no matter the reason.
With everything all set up, he laid back in his makeshift bed (which was really more of an elaborate leaf pile) and stared up at the bits of sky that he could see through the tree branches. It was always a little bit fascinating to him that there were so many more stars visible outside the Walls, and if he wasn’t so pissed at his situation, he might have actually enjoyed it a bit.
The relative peace didn’t last long, and Levi blamed it on the fact that he had terrible luck in life. His senses kicked into high alert the second he heard the birdsong stop, and he silently shifted into a crouching position within his leaf pile— sorry, bed.
Peering out of his hastily made stick wall, he watched as an absolutely massive stag came out of the trees, at least a person and a half tall, and only about ten meters in front of him.
‘The fucking birds stopped for a deer?’ he thought, still watching the animal suspiciously.
It seemed rather wary of its surroundings, stepping with an eerie sense of caution towards the shore. To Levi, it was almost funny how such a big creature was so quiet and careful.
Unfortunately, Amelie started to knicker fearfully and stamp her hooves, a clear sense of anxiety emanating from the horse. This, of course, spooked the fuck out of the stag, and Levi almost jumped when it charged into the water, wading neck deep into the shallows of the lake.
The Scout captain continued to watch curiously as the deer stilled. It looked up, vaguely in the direction of the moon, before pausing again, looking like a statue bathed in moonlight.
Everything was silent for a moment, especially since Levi was holding his breath. His nearly pounding heartbeat would have been too loud in the eerily calm forest, if not for the small waves lapping at the shore, a rhythmic woosh-woosh-woooshhh that was almost deafening in contrast.
It was far too quiet and still for how a forest should be.
Then, for a brief second, a prickly energy filled the air, setting every nerve in Levi’s body on edge. A golden-ish light flashed, temporarily blinding him. With it came a short, almost overwhelming wave of warmth, which left the breeze feeling colder than ever.
Blinking, the captain regained his eyesight, only to see that the stag had disappeared without a trace. His eyes swept the shore for any trace of tracks, but there were none to be found.
“That,” he whispered to himself, letting out a slightly shaky breath, “was fucking weird.”
Mysterious encounter still in his mind, he decided that there was no way in hell that he was going to be able to even think about sleep. Instead, he tried to shift into a slightly less painful sitting position, but the leaves that he had so carefully collected had other ideas. When he moved one leg out from under him to reposition his weight, he had forgotten that he was by no means on stable ground.
Levi would not say he slipped. No, a captain of the Scout Regiment would never slip on a pile of leaves. Simply put, he made a tactical miscalculation of his center of gravity, and the traitorous floor gave out from under him. This…error…. led to him falling backwards at a high speed and hitting his head on the base of his makeshift shelter.
Truthfully, he fell on his ass and gave himself a concussion on a tree, then passed out because of it.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Oh, Levi was extremely fucking confused when he woke up, and he hated being confused.
For one thing, his head felt like Hange had tied him down and forced him to listen to a rant for over 6 hours. As much as that sucked, it got worse when he realized that he was draped over a tree branch, nearly 15 meters in the air. The latter was the much more concerning bit, especially because the last thing he remembered was a deer and a lake, but even that was hazy.
He sat up, swaying slightly, and had to grip the bark of the branch for support.
“Where the fuck am I?” he said out loud, forgoing the usual filter between his brain and mouth. Too tired for that. “How in the…… why the fuck…huh??”
For some reason, his first coherent thought that wasn’t sheer and utter confusion was ‘shit, where’s Amelie?’. He looked around frantically for his horse, which brought his attention to a bigger and much more immediate problem.
There was a group of titans heading in his general direction, and one of them was definitely tall enough to reach his branch.
Strangely though, they didn’t seem to have the mindless, glazed-eye, ‘oh wow a tasty human’, look about them. In fact, his slowly processing brain would say that they were almost…scared. Like they were running from something.
However, since logic wasn’t currently high on his list of priorities, instinct took over. His fingers reached for his ODM gear, only to realize that the gas tanks had been punctured by something. They’d leaked out completely by then, rendering him essentially helpless. A knot of fear wormed its way into the pit of his stomach, accompanied by a chilling wave of dread. He watched, mildly terrified, as the titans got closer and closer to the edge of the forest.
With his back to the tree, he waited for his coming attackers. There really wasn’t much for him to do about it. Sure, he might be able to kill the taller one with his blades, but that was only if he had the presence of mind to do it right. Also, even if he did manage to pull that off, the smaller titans would just wait until he inevitably passed out, then shake the tree to make him fall into one of their waiting mouths.
Levi then decided that this was not an ideal situation.
Suddenly, he saw something blur out of the corner of his eye, streaking towards the titans. The wind from the movement nearly knocked Levi out of the tree, and probably would have if not for his death-grip on the trunk behind him. He barely had time to mumble, “What in the everloving fuck…” before the blur was on the titans, attacking the largest with an animalistic and savage force. He couldn’t really tell what the fuck it was; all he saw was violence caused by something big, fast, and brownish in color.
The carnage was over in mere minutes, with steaming piles of remains left by what could now be clearly seen as a 15-meter titan. Levi’s eyebrows furrowed together. He wasn’t the most mentally fit for anything at that moment, but as far as he could figure, titans generally did not attack other titans. The bloodied 15-meter looked directly at Levi, and he could make out flashes of green eyes under the ragged mop of dark brown hair. His defensive instincts switched on as it started rushing towards him, and he grabbed his blades in anticipation.
This was, of course, a huge mistake.
Without his hands to hold on to the tree behind him, he was very, very, very off balance. Worse, when he hunched over in his instinctual defensive position, he forgot that the branch was in no way big enough to support his now spread apart feet.
So, for the second time in… however long it had been, Levi fell. He barely managed to let out a strangled gasp as the floor approached at an alarming rate.
The titan, however, was faster, so instead of his whole body going splat on the forest floor, his knee just popped out at an extremely sickening and painful angle as his body connected with unnaturally hot flesh.
Once again, in a pattern that he desperately hoped would not be repeating any time soon, Levi passed out.
This time, there wasn’t a sudden awakening. No terror to jolt him into action. No imminent death to loom over him as he laid meters from the ground. No instinct, no need to fight.
What there was, however, was pain. Lots of it. So much fucking pain.
Sure, Levi had grown accustomed to pain during his life. He would normally be able to handle something with a clean break, minor fracture, or even a sprain or three. Walls knew he’d dealt with them before. But now, it felt like everything under his waist was on fire, and a decent amount of his right side was unbearably warm. (If he had had the presence of mind to do so, he would have realized that it wasn’t actually hot, per se, but that his nerves had simply overloaded from the sheer pain he felt.)
There were a few moments where he seemed to wake up, but when he did, it was like a fever dream, in the sense that everything was agonizingly bright and loud. So, so loud. And windy. Why was it windy, of all things?
These snippets of consciousness were mostly brief, and the few longer ones that he did experience generally ended the moment his nerves managed to fully awaken and scream at him in a “what the fuck, fix this immediately” manner. Not pleasant in the slightest.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
It wasn’t until Levi felt a hand on his leg that he actually woke up. He was still in pain and very, very unclear about…well, wherever the fuck he was and how he got there. Regardless, he sat up, probably way too fast.
Eyes still partially closed, (because fuck the light that was trying to drill into his eyelids) his arms flew out and connected with something warm and human feeling, maybe someone’s chest. The potential person fell back and let out a high-pitched yelp, a sound that absolutely grated on Levi’s sensitive eardrums. He winced in annoyance, only to find that his throat was way too dry for speaking painlessly.
He stopped moving, not sure whether to fight whatever had touched him, or to cradle what was hurting, which was… pretty much everywhere. It occurred to him that it would probably be a lot easier to make the decision if he just opened his eyes, which he did. Slowly. And painfully.
As he could now see, there was a boy sitting across from him, one arm half-blocking his face, and the other gripping… something behind him. Levi’s eyes weren’t really adjusted enough to see much farther than a meter or so. He relaxed slightly, still looking at the strange person in front of him as he waited for his eyes to ease into the light. The boy (or were they a girl? Their hair was too long for Levi to try and make the call for himself. He’ll just default to “he”, then.) appeared to have… feathers, around his face and shoulders, brownish and soft looking, but they were gone a few blinks later. Levi chalked it up to his half delirious mental state.
“Who the fuck are you?” he rasped, but his voice gave out halfway through the sentence, so it sounded more like “Hhh the fussshhhaahuuu”.
The other person tilted his head to the side, before looking at the captain’s horribly bruised and swollen… everything. He leaned forward, putting his hand on his thigh with an almost hesitant touch. His hands were really warm, and Levi’s muscles involuntarily relaxed at the radiating heat. It felt almost heavenly to have the tissue around his evidently dislocated knee unstiffen and return slowly to a more normal size.
Unfortunately, the radiating bliss was replaced with a sharp pain as the warm hands popped his kneecap back into place. It was incredibly hard to keep down an agonized scream as sunspots danced around his vision, nearly blinding him again. His free leg kicked out reflexively, knocking the other person back.
The brown-haired boy glared at Levi, rubbing his lower stomach where he had been kicked. The pair stared at each other for a second, unsure of how to proceed.
Still pouting unhappily, the green-eyed person turned and pulled something from what the Scout now recognized as a carved-into tree. In fact, he was now noticing that he was sitting on an elaborately woven nest of living branches, high in the air. It would have been moderately amazing, under different circumstances, but seeing as his leg was throbbing and everything was sore, it was a lot less grandiose.
Levi turned his attention back to the boy, who was now turning back to face him, something shiny in his hand. He offered it to the injured scout, who eyed it suspiciously before taking it.
The ‘it’ in question turned out to be a metal container filled with water. Normally, Levi would have questioned if the water given to him by a random boy in the forest was even safe to drink, but he was extremely dehydrated and didn’t yet have the brain cells to spare. So, when his body said “drink”, he listened.
After draining half of the container, he paused for oxygen, inspecting the weirdly smooth and cylindrical cup-thing. He was fully aware of the other person watching him with an intense curiosity as he twisted and turned it, running mildly shaky fingers over the dents. His eyes stopped and his breath caught as he saw the inscription on the bottom edge. It was faded and barely noticeable, but he managed to make out what it said.
“SC dash H09 dash Q10,” he whispered, still not daring to use his vocal cords. His eyes snapped up to the boy who was still watching him with an unreadable expression. “That’s a Scout Registry number.”
The implications of that ran through Levi’s mind, finally activating the much more logical part of his fried brain. Was this… kid …a Scout that had been left outside Wall Rose? No, no, too young for that. Civilian? Did he somehow, miraculously, manage to survive the 5 years between the Fall of Maria and the present day? Had he killed a Scout and looted the body? Or had he just found one of the leftover depleted tanks that littered various parts of the forest? The last one seemed the most likely, but there was still the question of how this kid was even alive outside of the Walls in the first place. Surely someone trapped without ODM gear, or even any weapons for that matter, wouldn’t last more than a week.
A hand tapped the top of his head, causing him to flinch involuntarily. Looks like the throbbing in Levi’s skull wasn’t going away any time soon.
He looked up at the boy, who was now standing above him. Levi hadn’t even noticed the movement, seeing as he was too engrossed in his own thoughts. Miracle-boy gave him… was that a paper he was holding? With charcoal scribbles? The Scout accepted it, and read the loopy, messy scrawl, which spelled out ‘Found it. Found you, too. Sorry about your leg. Had to be put back.’
“Can’t you speak?” Levi whispered, meeting the silent eyes that watched him.
The boy grimaced slightly, then opened his mouth. Oddly enough, no words came out. Instead, he made some kind of sounds that most humans couldn’t even try to imitate. It was as if nature had a language, and this person had mastered it. He only ‘spoke’ for a few seconds, but the captain could hear distinct bird calls, horse whinnies, and a few of the larger predator sounds. Hell, there were some noises from things he didn’t even recognize, like whistling-whirring-clicking sounds and low hums that barely registered in his ears.
One of his hands went up to the bridge of his nose on reflex, pinching the pressure point there while sighing. It was an expression he often used when Hange was being intolerable. The other person just huffed in frustration before sitting down, clearly unhappy with both himself and the Scout.
After taking another swig of water, Levi finally managed to activate his vocal cords, and promptly began asking as many questions as he could think of, channeling the influence that Shitty Glasses had had on him over the years. The brunette wrote down replies on a worn notebook, but it was mostly ‘I don’t know’, ‘can’t remember’, or the one that Levi disliked the most, ‘I can’t tell you’.
He did find out, however, that the boy had lived outside the Walls for as long as he could remember, which wasn’t very long at all, and that his name was Eren. Actually, his exact words were ‘I think that I have some memory of the name Eren, and it might be mine. ’ Either way, it was better than calling him ‘Miracle-Boy’, so it would have to do.
Apparently, the boy, no, Eren, had found him passed out on the forest floor at night while wandering around, and brought him to the tree-nest thing. It had been about three days since then, so anywhere between four days and a week since Levi had lost the Scouts. He had also found Amelie, who was now roaming around under them, at the base of the trees, which was at least a mild relief for Levi. After all, she was a pretty good horse, and it would have been a shame if she had run off, especially since she had all of his supplies.
In fact, if not for his injury, he would have thought that the titan fight that he had witnessed was a concussion fever dream. Eren shook his head vehemently when Levi asked about any weird titan activity. The captain decided not to push the subject.
Eventually, after a page and a half of answered questions, Levi was satisfied, much to Eren’s visible relief. Said boy rubbed his hand, pouting slightly as he tried to get rid of the cramp building in his wrist. Halfway through flexing his fingers uncomfortably, he looked over at the captain, obviously thinking about something. The scout, of course, glared right back, and continued to watch as he grabbed the notebook and pencil again.
‘Aren’t you hungry? I feel like you should be, considering all the healing and stuff you’ve been doing. Also, you kind of look like shit.’
“Hey!” Levi scowled after reading the last sentence. Even with damaged vocal cords, his pride was still worth defending.
Eren’s face lit up in a shit-eating grin, which proved that although his human contact had been extremely limited, he could still show an impressive amount of emotion. (Well, it wasn’t like Levi could judge him, seeing as his own social skills were practically non-existent.)
The scout rolled his eyes dramatically as the smirking asshole stood up and walked over to the edge of the tree-shelter-woven-thingy. Whatever, “nest” was an easier and more accurate description anyways.
“Um, the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Levi asked, raising his eyebrows in concern as Eren stepped onto the top of the low wall.
Still grinning, the brunette turned so he was once again facing the captain. He then proceeded to fall backward with his arms out, eliciting a screech of “What the fuck!?!” from the newly terrified Levi.
Horrified, he waited for the sound that should have followed. It never came.
Instead, a bird flew up about 5 meters from the nest, a rather big, reddish-brown falcon with wicked sharp talons and an impressive wingspan. It let out a victorious trill before diving out of sight with nearly mind-boggling speed, leaving the Scout alone once more.
Levi sat in stunned shock as his brain attempted to process what in the fresh hell had just happened. It took him a solid two minutes to come up with three possibilities. Hange would be disappointed if they were there.
Option A was that Eren was somehow a fucking bird. Or maybe the bird was Eren. Whatever, it didn’t matter.
Option B was that Eren was some sort of God, or something like that. Levi had never been a religious man, nor did he plan to be, especially with his disdain for the Wall Cult, but he figured that if Humanity had made countless stories about higher powers, then at least one of them had to be partially right. Perhaps they were all correct. Hell, maybe none of them were true, but whatever the fuck Eren had just done was seriously convincing him otherwise.
The third and final option was that somehow Levi had imagined this whole thing. Maybe he would wake up in his bunk back at HQ. Maybe Eren had drugged his water somehow and was now laughing at his expense. Unfortunately, the fact that he still had a deep ache in his right leg pretty much cancelled that option out.
Levi felt a headache coming on, and this time it had nothing to do with concussions. He groaned loudly, now to no one in particular, and realized that he sort-of-kinda-almost missed Eren’s presence. Of course, a Captain of the Scouts, dubbed as Humanity’s Strongest, and the ex-King of the Underground didn’t get lonely, much less scared, but it was definitely… unsettling, to be this high up with no other life around him.
So, with his combined restlessness and inability to move without pain, he looked around, trying to memorize the place to describe to Hange and Erwin if he got back. Surely, they’d be just fascinated to know how the hell he survived in titan territory for however long he was out there. Or Hange would be, at least. Eyebrows would probably just complain that he hadn’t followed through with his mission, and probably make fun of him for getting lost in the first place.
“Not if I get back,” he reminded himself, muttering under his breath, “when.”