Chapter Text
It wasn’t like Levi to worry, but he found his thoughts continually shifting back to Hange that evening. She hardly spoke at all the last few days and had developed a new habit of withdrawing alone into her lab every chance she got. He was use to Hange’s vast range of hysterics and this sort of thing wouldn’t normally be a concern of his anyway. But this time felt especially off. He couldn’t help but think that the cost of reclaiming Wall Maria was taking its toll now that the shock had worn off.
With mounting concern, he also noticed the lack of her presence at dinner as well, realizing he hadn’t seen her even once that day. Perhaps that was why he wandered to her lab without thinking.
Levi stared at the solid oak door. After a long moment of inward debate, he decided it would be best to let Moblit take care of it. He stopped the second he turned to leave, a plummeting sensation in his chest. It was such a natural thing for him to think, always silently relying on him to take care of Hange instead of himself — but Moblit was gone. Everyone was. Hange was utterly alone in her grief, and that in itself was the problem.
Levi opened the door. The frail beam of light from the hallway behind cut a thin wedge through the maw of pitch black. Deafening silence beckoned, yet it didn’t feel empty. His entire body tensed.
“Hange, you in here?”
He squinted through the gloom, stepping in cautiously as he scanned his surroundings. Scattered papers crunched beneath his boots as the occasional book threatened to trip him. Goddamn pigsty. He felt around a table for a light, but the surface was uncharacteristically barren. Blindly scraping his hand across the grainy wood, his hand made contact with a cold metal base — a small lamp. He clicked it on and weary yellow light pooled the reading nook.
A low sound came from a corner just beyond the lamp’s pall, something similar to a wounded animal.
“Levi?”
Blood. Hange’s hands, her face — all slathered in the gleam of bright crimson. She was hunched in a ball, clutching over her missing eye while the other was wide with acute desperation.
“Hey! What the hell happened?”
He flew to her side, trying to get a better look at her face, but her bloody hands remained firmly clamped over her injured eye.
“Let me see it, Hange. It’s reopened — “
She jerked away from his touch. “N-no!”
This had to be an attack. Levi frantically glanced the room as he held Hange upright, but not a soul was there with them.
“Who did this to you?”
Silence broken only by pitiful whimpers followed. Kill them. He would kill whoever was responsible.
“Four-eyes,” he snapped, “tell me who the hell did this— “
“I did, Levi!” she cried, tears spilling over. “I pressed it too hard, n-now it won’t stop…”
Her free hand shook as it clutched the front of his shirt.
“The bandage started itching…I’m so sorry…”
Levi unclenched his jaw with a quiet sigh. All of it was starting to make him feel sick. He knew Hange was emotional, but this was far from the eccentric scientist he knew. This was grief beyond words, pain beyond bearing. It would swallow her whole if nothing was done.
“Hey now, stop apologizing. I’ll fix your bandages for you, but I need better light — hey!”
Hange had tried to get back on her feet with one push, but swayed dangerously from blood loss. Levi jumped up to keep her standing.
“You’ll knock yourself out doing shit like that. Slow down.”
“C-could you stand on my left side instead? I keep bumping into things. My eye and all…”
She hadn’t adjusted to the blindness yet. This added another weight to his chest. On top of everything else, he was amazed she hadn’t broken sooner.
Hange hung off him heavily as he guided her only a little ways to her desk. It was also surprisingly clear, but more books and papers were piled messily on the ground to one side, as if caught up in a single large sweep. He guessed it was somehow related to the current state of her still-healing eye.
With a steady hold around her waist, Levi sat her down in her desk’s chair. She kept a death grip on his shirt with a kind of despair that both startled him and broke his heart.
“Hey. I need to grab a few things. Ease up.”
It took an unusual amount of effort to keep his voice from shaking. Slowly, she pried herself off of him.
“I’m sorry, for all of this…”
“I said stop apologizing. Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”
As Levi turned to go, Hange caught him by the sleeve. She looked like she wanted to tell him something urgent.
“What is it?”
Her intense gaze clouded over with uncertainty, then she let go.
“I’ll…tell you later.”
Though unsatisfied with such a response, he gave a curt nod before departing.
Levi made it a point to return quickly. He brought with him damp rags and a first aid kit. Hange had one hand still holding fast over her eye, the other just as slick with blood as it hung limply passed her side. The whole of her was stooped over, the blood smearing her face beginning to dry.
“Wipe your hands with this,” he said, handing her one of the rags. Finally, she uncovered her eye and started cleaning herself.
Giving her hair a gentle ruffle of approval, he pulled up a chair in front of her. Sorting through the contents of the kit, he then took a closer look at the bandages hanging off her face. He started to understand why she initially didn’t want him to see it. A slash like this couldn’t have happened so casually.
“Hell of an itch to do this kinda damage,” he said, peeling away the blood soaked layers with tweezers. “Anything to do with why this place is trashed?”
She trembled.
“Stupid…I’m damn stupid…”
“Hange. Look at me.”
He lifted her chin. Face covered in blood, tears, and mucus, she truly was a sorry sight. The person he knew as Hange had crumbled entirely. Gather the pieces and put her back together — that was his duty.
“I’m not gonna ask what happened,” he said, taking a towel to wipe her lips. She gave a little shudder as it brushed beneath her nose.
“If you’re not in danger, I frankly don’t give a shit what you do or don’t tell me.”
He started wicking away the tears around her good eye with a clean side of the rag.
“That said, it won’t help anything if you hurt yourself. I don’t want to find you like this again.”
More tears leaked out for him to catch as she looked away. She was on the verge of spilling it all, he could feel it, but she ultimately kept silent.
He took care in not being too abrasive as he wiped the rest of the drying blood from her. Fortunately, the bleeding had stalled and it wouldn’t be difficult to re-bandage.
Hange suddenly squeezed his arms with a crushing grip as he patted around the edges of the wound. Her breathing became ragged.
“Easy, four-eyes,” he said softly, dabbing the area dry. “Almost done.”
He found himself intermittently hushing her, not unlike how he would soothe an anxious steed. The gentle voice that came from his mouth sounded foreign to him, but he wasn’t bothered by how it broke away from his normally unapproachable, no-nonsense demeanor. It seemed like it was helping her, at least.
The bandaging was wrapped around her head to keep a new cotton cushion in place over her eye. With that taken care of, Levi could relax. Hange had made it through the worst of it.
Hange’s face was pale and tired, but scrubbed clean. The wrap was holding well in place, fresh white bandages much different from the bloody tatters he found her with. Hange had stayed quiet the entire time. A little too quiet.
“Where does it hurt, Hange? Other than your eye.”
This was no time for her to try and hide another injury. Her initial hesitance to answer didn’t calm him either.
“My stomach,” she said quietly. “My stomach hurts.”
“Do you feel sick?”
“N-no, not sick. Just…achy.”
He started rubbing circles behind her ear with his thumb, a touch she leaned into heavily.
“I know a kind of tea that might help. Would you like that?”
She stared off somewhere passed his head. Whether she wasn’t sure if she wanted to accept his offer or was thinking of something else entirely, he could not say.
“Hey, stop thinking so damn much,” he told her, poking her forehead.
No response, just a blank look back. He sighed.
“I’m making tea. Get up.”
He pulled Hange’s arm across his shoulders and yanked her to her feet. All it took was a telltale wobble to know this was a mistake. Her knees buckled, but he managed to keep her from falling.
“I can’t walk,” she said, fear lacing her weak voice. “I’m too dizzy.”
It seemed Levi would have to accommodate for this. He turned around and carefully hoisted her onto his back. Tentative hands slid around his torso and held fast to the front of his shirt as her chin rested on his shoulder.
“Watch your eye,” he said. “I’ll be pissed if you tear it up again.”
He figured it would be best to get her out of the lab, to somewhere with better light and less claustrophobic clutter. A meeting room was just a few doors down and would be deserted this time of night.
“Just dump me on my bed,” Hange murmured.
“Hell no. You have a tendency to do dumb shit when you get like this. I’m not leaving you by yourself.”
Her arms tightened over Levi’s chest as if to hug him, sighing as if in relief.