Chapter Text
It was a normal day at Titan High and the students from class 10 had Chemistry with Dr. Hanji Zoe. Everyone loved the eccentric chem teacher because with her they experimented a lot. Everyone liked that because the class never got boring and the tests also weren't that hard, if you paid attention to the experiments. But among the students there was one in particular that didn't like the class at all because he wanted to do more dangerous experiments. Although Dr. Zoe's experiments were already not as harmless as the school and especially the English teacher Mister Ackerman next door would like them to be. But Floch decided to take measures into his hands today and had therefore prepared something that supposedly would cause a small explosion. Or so he read on the online forum he found. But he would soon experience that 'small explosion' was merely a matter of definition.
At 8.05 am Hanji got to the chemistry room like every week and greeted the students with a loud:
"Good morning everyone."
The students were still tired and just a few of them actually answered. One of those who did was Armin. He was one of the best students in class and Hanji liked to have someone as talented as him in their lessons. He could often help the others with the execution of the experiments so that Hanji didn't have to be everywhere in the classroom at once. Especially on days like today, when her TA Moblit wasn't around. He, unfortunately, called in sick today which he never really does no matter how sick he is because he always said he'd feel bad not knowing what Hanji did in class and if they followed all the safety instructions of the experiments. So today he must've felt very sick to feel forced to take such drastic measures.
In the room next to the chem lab Levi started his class as well. He taught class 12 in English and he didn't like to be interrupted, especially by some loud shenanigans from the lab next door. Every time he heard something like a mini explosion, his heart stopped. But a few students suspected that he wasn't scared for the students or himself but for Hanji who not always followed the safety instructions thoroughly enough and ended up singeing her hair quite a few times already.
Half an hour ago he saw them shortly in the teacher's room talking about Moblit and how sad they were that he called in sick. After hearing that he quickly got to her side and reminded her to be extra careful today and to not do something stupid while half their common sense was sick at home.
"Aw, don't worry Levi. I have a Ph.D., you don't get that if you lack common sense."
"Well, I wouldn't be so sure about that but I hope you take my words seriously. "
"I always do, you know that. Besides, today's experiment does not involve serious things, we are just going to burn magnesium tape. It's a cool exothermic reaction where the magnesium..."
"Yeah, yeah, I don't need to know."
Shortly after that Levi went to his classroom where he now was.
"Uhm, Mister Ackerman. Aren't we going to start sir?"
It was Petra who was the only one who dared to disturb him in his daydreams. Levi didn't even notice he drifted away for that long, thinking about the crazy scientist. But here he was 5 minutes into his class having said nothing to the students at all, just leaning against the teacher's desk, staring off into distance. After Petra brought him back to the present he looked into 30 confused-looking faces but he didn't let them put him off his stride and just started class as if the last 5 minutes never happened.
Back in Hanji's class, they all started the experiment after her instructions. Everyone was very motivated and excited to experiment. For one student though the hardest was that you weren't allowed to eat in the lab and so Sasha started to complain about how hungry she was. But other than that everyone was quietly doing their thing and trying to follow the instructions.
Floch was at the end of the classroom relatively out of Hanji's sight so he started preparing his 'mini' explosion. He got out a balloon which was filled up with a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen which he got from his older brother, who was studying chemistry at uni. Then he got out a fuse and attached it to the balloon to light it up and get the explosion going. Floch started lighting it up when Armin saw that he wasn't doing the magnesium experiment like everyone else, so he loudly asked to be sure
"Uhm, Dr. Zoe...What kind of experiment is Floch doing?"
"Huh?"
Being confused as to what he meant they quickly got up to Floch's table and looked at his experiment setup and read the short note that was on the desk. After taking everything in, that she witnessed in front of her, the gears in their head clicked and they recognized the danger that this experiment could cause. But the fuse was already lit up and in approximately a few seconds, according to her calculations, it would cause an explosion of unknown extent because they couldn't know how much of the mixture was inside the balloon. They needed to act quickly.
"EVERYONE TO THE FRONT!!"
She managed to shout, but Floch didn't seem to care so she had to push him out of the way to not get him caught in the explosion. They managed to do just that and not even a second later the balloon exploded.
---BOOM---
Startled by the loud sound the students in the next classroom and Levi winced briefly. The class broke out in murmurs everyone concerned about what had happened in the lab.
"Stay here!", he shouted briefly and started to sprint to the lab.
Inside the lab, Floch stood up from the ground to where he was pushed by Hanji. He looked at the others in the front of the classroom all being very concerned and shocked about what just happened. He had to say he was too. He didn't think it would be so big that it nearly exploded in a radius of 2m. After recognizing that everyone was still staring at the back of the class where he did his experiment he also turned around and was equally shocked by the sight. Hanji lay on the ground seemingly unconscious. Just as Armin and Jean were starting to head over to her the door opened with a crashing sound and in came a very concerned Levi.
As he stepped into the chaos his eyes were quickly searching for his shitty glasses but he was unable to locate her right away. But he soon followed the glances of the shocked students and saw Armin and Jean kneeling next to an unconscious figure on the floor.
"Hanji!"
He ran a few meters to them and dropped to his knees next to her, turning her from her side onto her back, shaking her shoulders a bit trying to wake her up.
"HEY, can you hear me? Come on four eyes"
Just then he noticed that they were bleeding on the right side of their face and it seemed to come out of the area of their eye and he could also guess why. Their glasses were broken and a bigger piece of broken glass was piercing their skin there. Not knowing what to do and slightly panicking he shouted at the kids
"Can someone call an ambulance? I don’t have my phone with me."
"On it, Mister Ackerman", Armin said.
Levi was shortly startled because he forgot that Armin and Jean were right next to him.
"Jean, you get the first aid kit. And someone come get principal Smith. I can’t handle that alone....", he silently added, more talking to himself.
Conny was the one who then went to get Mister Smith. Levi still had one hand on Hanji's shoulder and the other one moved to get her pulse at her neck. After finding it and feeling it going relatively normal he let go of a breath he didn't know he held in.
"Mister Ackerman, the medic on the phone wants to give you some instructions for the first aid."
"Thanks, Armin. Hello? Uhm, yes they're breathing and I also checked their pulse.....I don't, I don't know, wait, Armin can you tell them what chemicals were involved?"
"I don't know, the experiment that exploded here wasn't the one we were supposed to do..."
"What does that- wait you know what doesn't matter. Can you figure out what it was?"
"Floch, you tell us! What did you do?"
"Floch?", Levi asked, confused.
"I, uhm, I didn't want to, it wasn't my fault, I didn't intend on hurting someone."
"Don't shit yourself just tell them what was involved."
Levi held out the phone to him and Floch told them what he was doing. After that the medics on the phone instructed Levi to not touch the wound on her eye, as it was too dangerous to let a layperson do anything with that, so he was just told to elevate her feet to try and get her conscious again. For that, he told Jean to hold Hanji's legs up, as a chair would elevate them too high to be comfortable. Just as the call ended Levi sent Mikasa and Eren out to wait for the ambulance and guide them in when they would arrive.
As both of them went out Mr. Smith and Conny came into the lab
"What happened Levi?", he said and got to his side taking everything in.
"Floch did an experiment that wasn't supervised by Hanji and it went out of hand. But the ambulance is on it's way."
"Have they been unconscious the whole time?"
"Yes, but I'm trying to wake them up. "
"I see...Floch? I want you to come with me to my office"
Upon hearing that Floch made his way slowly out of the lab feeling somehow guilty and ashamed of what he did.
"Wait Erwin, don't go yet."
"Huh? How am I supposed to understand that?"
" I don’t... I can’t do this alone ok? I’m fucking scared..."
" I see ok... Floch, I’m coming when the ambulance gets here but you go ahead.''
Then they heard a faint groan from Hanji who seemed to come back to a conscious state again.
"Hanji!? Can you hear me?”
Levi cupped their left uninjured cheek and slowly turned their head in his direction trying to get eye contact with their uninjured eye.
"What ..argh..it..hurts."
"What hurts?", Erwin asked which earned him a scowl from Levi.
'What kind of a dumb question was that Erwin? Of course, they are hurting, their fucking eye was pierced and they were knocked out by an explosion. Supposedly everything hurt them now', he thought.
Hanji got frustrated about the fact that everything hurt and her ears were slightly ringing from the big explosion sound, so she tried to move and get up but she soon found out that something or better someone was preventing that by holding her down on their shoulders.
"Hey hey...easy four eyes, you shouldn't move too much."
Levi then just came to his senses again and noticed he completely forgot to tell his students what they were supposed to do now. And Hanjis students were still standing rooted to the spot at the front. He looked at Erwin who understood him immediately, so he stood up and said
"Ok now you can all quickly grab your bags and go out of the room and wait for your next class in the hallway or somewhere else but do not disturb the other classes", which was a bit dumb to say because everyone in that part of the building could hear the explosion and everyone was still unsure what happened.
Thinking about that and that this part of the building would supposedly also be evacuated soon by the police, because of investigations that needed to be done, he rethought his orders and changed it to
"You know what, you are free to go for today. I'm also going to make a school-wide announcement. Everyone can go home. Did anybody else get injured?"
The class turned silence so he understood that as a no. Usually everyone would be happy to go home early but today that wasn't possible. No one could be happy about the fact that they got the day free because what was the price for that? Their favourite teacher was still in a nearly unconscious state on the ground in pain and it was still unclear if their eye would recover or not. So everyone went out, still shocked and sad. After they got out the medics came in with Mikasa and Eren. Erwin stood up nodding shortly at Levi and laid a hand on his shoulder wanting to let him know he was there for him. Then Jean, Armin, Mikasa, and Eren went out as well and Erwin went to his office making the announcement for the school and trying to figure out how to proceed with Floch.
After the medics got in, they quickly started to hook her up to a monitor showing their pulse and oxygen saturation.
"Can you hear me?"
"..Yeah '', Hanji answered, her voice not more than a whisper.
"Ok, do you know where you are and what happened?"
Hanji briefly looked up at Levi with her good eye.
"...I am in the chem lab and something went wrong..."
Levi snorted shortly
"Yeah...something went fucking wrong with that Floch bastard who caused that explosion"
"We are going to get the stretcher, wait a minute", and with that 2 of the 3 medics went out getting the stretcher and the last one stayed with them asking Hanji various, in Levis eyes 'dumb' questions but he supposed it was to keep her conscious and it worked, so he didn’t interfere.
"On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad would you describe your pain in your eye and overall?"
" Uhm... I don't know...my eye...it does hurt.."
"Hanji he asked on a scale...so say it."
" I don't know, 7?"
"And overall? Any other severe pain?"
"I guess no...nothing I can't handle."
Right after they said that they bit down on their teeth because something else did hurt them as well.
"Don't be so stubborn! He can’t help you when you don't talk!"
"It's ok ...it was nothing."
Levi still looked very much unconvinced and concerned.
After some time, while the medic was giving her wounds first aid and stopping some still bleeding wounds, Hanji slightly started to look concerned about something.
"What's wrong four eyes?"
She started trying to sit up and hissed because it still hurt to move, for her. After realizing what they were trying to do, the medic tried to hold them back.
"You should lay back down."
She only struggled again and wanted to sit up again.
"Hold still Hanji. Lay down, you only make it worse."
"But.."
"What?"
"Is...is everyone else alright? I can't see them"
"They were already sent back home and they got the day off."
Still not having answered her question she struggled again but this time Levi blocked her with his arms on her shoulders and pressed her back to the ground while assuring her that everyone was alright, even Floch, that bastard. Then they finally stayed still again and looked a bit calmer.
After what felt like hours to Levi, the other medics finally returned with the stretcher and started to load Hanji onto it.
"On 3. Ready? 1...2..3"
When they were on it they secured them and gave Hanji some painkillers because no matter how much she tried to deny it or play it down, her eye wound was very painful. Just as they wanted to start rolling her with the stretcher to the ambulance she struggled again and grabbed Levi by his arm.
"Wait, you are coming with me....right? You are not leaving me alone..."
"Of course not shitty glasses."
Upon hearing that they smiled as much as their pain was letting them and their eyes began to flutter again. A few seconds after that she was unconscious again. Levi's eyes widened a bit and the fear in his heart grew again.
"Hurry up!", he shouted at the medics as they then began their way to the ambulance.