Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Levi has a headache. He presses two fingers between his eyes in exasperation, scrunching his nose at the smell of whatever’s in the foggy glass that the bartender slid over to him. It looks suspiciously like mud, so he ignores it altogether and tugs that ridiculous hood over his eyes. He turns his attention towards the table on the far left, the reason why he’s in the filthiest tavern of the Underground and the very cause of his headache.

A nervous young soldier with neat hair and hunched shoulders drinks his lager quietly. On his face is etched the wholehearted wish that the earth tears in half and swallows him whole, one that goes unnoticed by his companion, the lanky woman. She’s gesturing intensely and slurring nonsense in her half-drunk state, all flushed and grinning. Levi is certain the entire pub can hear her stumbling over her words in her rant about titans and “uncooperative, buzzkill Commanders.”

There’s no mistaking Hange Zoë. Her name tastes of blood.

It wasn’t difficult to locate her, nor to tail her as she ran her errands around the Underground. Levi has to tolerate another ten minutes of rambling before the other soldier –Moblit or something- pays the tab and drags her out the door mortified. At last, or Levi would have murdered her on the spot.

“People are staring, Squad Leader,” Moblit warns, but she doesn’t seem to mind one bit.

Levi counts to ten before he follows them outside. With the manoeuver gear, he hoists himself up the rooftops and quietly follows them from above as they walk down the dark narrow streets. He recoils when the stench of the lanes hits him, his fingers twitch against the triggers of his hilt, eager for the kill so that he can finally leave that dump.

Five thousand, he repeats in his mind like a mantra, and his grip relaxes. The reason why he even considered returning to the Underground, the price for Hange Zoë’s head. The job should be quick and easy. The two unwitting soldiers are leading themselves to a dead end without Levi needing to nudge them towards a trap. He has no idea why anyone would willingly gallivant around the most crime infested place in the walls, but if it saves him the trouble, he won’t complain.

Right now, his target is having an altercation with her subordinate and gestures animatedly. “Go on, Moblit! I’ll be fine, I told you! Find our squad and I’ll meet you where we agreed,” Hange insists. Moblit does have his concerns, but she cuts him off whenever he attempts to speak. “Hush! Have some faith in me!”

“But-”

“No buts! I’m your superior and you’ll do as I say!”

Eventually he leaves with his head lowered like a kicked dog, stealing glances towards his leader, while Hange keeps on walking by herself. She’s not completely dense to the potential danger around her, as the nervousness of her gait betrays. She makes a pathetic attempt to use the darkness as her cloak, but she’s the least stealthy person Levi has ever laid eyes upon; way too loud and her movements aren’t smooth at all. Hange right now resembles a child more than she does a trained soldier.

She’s amusing, in a fashion, but Levi won’t stick around to watch her. The billowing of his cloak announces his presence better than the quiet squelch of his boots on the damp soil when he lands behind her.

Hange turns towards him with a yelp. She unsheathes her own blade, stumbling over her feet in surprise. She wears her eyepatch crooked, her cheeks are flushed, her hair dishevelled and one functioning eye struggles to make out his face under his hood. Plainly put, she’s a drunk mess.

“I’m with the Survey Corps!” she warns. “I’ve got a sword as well! Besides, I spent all my money on cheap lager. There’s nothing left for you to take.”

Levi raises an eyebrow. “A Scout? No, I’m here because of your work in the Military Police.”

“Military Police?” If she’s surprised, she doesn’t let it show. Hange clutches the sword tighter and shifts into a fighting stance as if she would ever be a match for him, gangly, uncoordinated and wasted as she is. “I’m a Squad Leader, I don’t work for the-”

He flips his blade and lets it rest it on his shoulder. “You were recruited in secret by the Military Police a couple years ago to torture their prisoners. And from what I’ve heard, you’re the best they’ve had till now.” He walks towards her and Hange takes a step back. That’s how the dance with a target usually starts. He pushes and they pull. “I’ve been meaning to ask, how do you sleep at night? By counting the eyeballs you’ve gouged?”

She catches a glimpse of his face under the hood and her surprise shifts into awe. Something akin to recognition flickers in her eye. Her marvelled stare reminds Levi of the first time he gazed upon the night sky outside the Underground; she’s looking as if there’s anything in him worth admiring. She suddenly looks more sober, more put together, as if her system simply forgot to be drunk. Or if she just dropped a drunk façade.

“Oh,” she breathes. And then she runs off surprisingly fast.

Levi curses under his breath and follows her through the winding alleys. She’s so fast that he would worry if he didn’t know the Underground like the back of his hand. He loses Hange around a corner. She’s come to a halt before a stack of barrels, a dead end. As she turns around, Levi grabs and shoves her against the wall. Her back thuds on the bricks, she grunts and then yells when he draws his sword.

“Wait, wait!” Hange manages to blurt out. And then, there’s a sharp pain to his ribs. Warmth blossoms across his skin; he looks down to see her hands gripping a switchblade half-shoved in his side. That three-eyed freak stabbed him.

“Tsk. You piece of-”

She yanks it out. Levi throws her like a ragdoll towards the stack, it topples and clatters over her. In seconds, he’s in front of her, clutching his aching side. His shadow on the wall behind her looms over her head.

Hange looks almost funny, sprawled as she is onto the barrels with a pained expression. “I don’t sleep at night,” she admits as if it matters. The gleam of his blade reflects in her glasses, her face is all grim and pathetic. She’s more talking to herself than to Levi. “All those victims… I see their tortured faces every time I close my eyes…”

He hauls the sword over his head.

Hange flashes a bright grin, the change of her demeanour as abrupt as letting a mask slip off. “Maybe tonight I’ll see you too!” she adds cheerfully.

Levi sees the second shadow on the wall before he hears the rifle loading. He leaps out of the way just in time. A bullet whistles past his ear, it grazes his cheek. His feet have barely touched the ground before Levi is forced to dodge another row of gunfire. He rolls on the ground, teeth gritting in pain.

Moblit meets his eyes from the entrance of the alleyway. Seven more soldiers beside him fire repeatedly. Five more rifles load from the rooftops above. He’s surrounded. Levi presses the switch to launch himself towards a roof, but it only clicks in response. His blood runs cold, he looks at his belt and finds an entire component missing from the wire shafts. The gap stares at him right in the face.

Hange hops on a barrel like a performer on the stage and produces the component out of thin air. She must have ripped it off while he had her cornered. She doesn’t mind the bullets.

“Get him!” she orders her squad before Levi can even think of attacking her. They fire from the front and from above. He blocks them with his blade and fixes his eyes on his only way out. He charges towards Moblit, getting closer in seconds. Fear flickers in his eyes when he realises that the squad’s efforts aren’t enough to bring Levi down. Blade drawn, he tackles Moblit to the ground. Levi doesn’t stay to finish him off, he shoots past the soldiers and disappears.

Hange’s cheering and whooping chases him as he sprints through the alleys. He underestimated her and so she tricked him, wounded him and made him flee like a rat, like that weak gaunt boy he used to be. The one he promised on his mother’s grave that he’d never become again. Levi failed his mission; and he never fails. His lungs have run out of air, he leans against a wall, his vision blurry. He promises one thing to himself: Hange Zoe will die by his blade no matter what.

Hange stares at where he disappeared, chest heaving and eyes widened. Blood rolls down her chin and she brings her sleeve to wipe it absent-mindedly.

It worked.

Moblit rushes to her side. “Squad Leader Hange! Are you okay?”

For a few seconds, a haze spreads across her eyes and she seems deaf to his worry. When the fog starts to thin out, Hange chuckles weakly at first, then erupts into maniacal laughter. Her shaky hands card through her dishevelled hair, her cheeks turn even redder. “Death came so close to me tonight, Moblit!” she explains her outburst. But she realises that it came close to him as well. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

Moblit presses his palm on his shoulder and straightens his back to show that he's okay. “It doesn’t hurt, he only knocked me down. We were lucky that you stabbed him.”

Hange taps a finger to her lips, drifting to the space in her mind reserved for keeping mental notes. Death has grey eyes, hard like steel, she decides. And an iron grip, and hair black like it’s dripping pure darkness. Levi, the underground assassin himself, quieter, more effective and way crueller than the rumours gave him credit for.

“Huh,” she chuckles. “Looks like the weight of that reputation he drags behind him has made him slower. I really expected him to kill me tonight. I’m almost disappointed.”

Moblit can’t suppress a flinch at her words. “Hange-san!”

“I’m kidding, Moblit.” Half-kidding only. “I wouldn’t go down so easily.”

She subdues him with that. He trusts her strategic skill with his life. Sometimes she thinks that she doesn't deserve him. None of her squad know why exactly they, a bunch of Scouts, were just now after a dangerous assassin. Hange came up with a cheap excuse for them to help her capture Levi and left it up to Moblit to present it in a more appealing way. He agreed because he trusts her. Her heart sinks, heavy like an anchor. Moblit… if he knew what she does behind closed doors in the dungeons of Wall Sina, he would never look at her in the eye again.

“Squad Leader,” he continues hesitantly as he trudges behind her, “what was that he said about the Military Police?”

Hange whips her head towards him, halting so abruptly that he almost collides with her. He shouldn’t have heard that. “You were supposed to be here and wait for my signal, not back there! That was the plan!”

“I couldn’t leave you alone with him!” he protests. “The plan was horri- poorly thought out! Levi is nothing like anyone we’ve seen before and criminals like him are for the Military Police to handle! I don’t know how you convinced me to talk the squad into this! And, why… what did he say about… torture?”

Hange’s expression remains black for a split second. Then, she cracks a patronizing smile at her assistant. “He didn’t say anything like that, my poor-hearing Moblit. What do we, a bunch of humble Scouts have to do with the Military Police? Nothing!” Her hand lands relaxed and heavy on his shoulder, but her nervous blush belies her calmness. “Come on now, we failed,” she continues cheerfully. “Let’s return to the surface and find something better to drink, my treat.”

His shoulders tense. “No more drinking, Squad Leader! It’s not good for you!”

“Ah, nonsense! Come along, I’m paying!”

The truth is that Hange will throw up if she swallows a drop more of alcohol. However, it’s what keeps her head occupied. One thing she said to Levi was true, that the faces of all those people who passed from her chair never leave her, even if she forgets their names. Liquor is easier to swallow than their screams, despite the nonchalance she wears in the MP after she’s finished with their suspects.

She trudges behind her squad in deep thought. What she hadn’t even taken into consideration while planning was that Levi knew. Her plan had been to track him down, lure him in and trap him, but then he mentioned the Military Police, a secret few people are privy to. But at the end of the day she shouldn’t be surprised; in the Underground, information is valued more than pockets full of gold. It only takes one loose-tongued officer and the secret's out in the market.

The soldier by the lift greets them with a curt nod. She steps in the small claustrophobic space and the guard closes the iron doors firmly, trapping her in the cage. As they ascend, Hange notices a patch of the night sky through the cracked roof of the underground. Pale children have gathered below and point at the stars excited. For them, something as common as the sky is a wonder and the fissured stone is their one chance to catch a glimpse, even if they can’t fully have it. Just like Hange knows that she’ll never sleep soundly again, the ghosts are just too many, but she was offered the rare chance to avoid adding more faces to haunt her dreams. And that chance is the risky hunt she’s partaken in.

“Get rid of Levi,” he had said, “and you’ll never have to torture for the Military Police again.”

She might be heading back empty-handed, but being alive is enough for now. No, it’s more than enough; it’s exactly what she came for. Solid, unshakable proof that even Death is bound to slip.