Chapter Text
It was around midnight. A couple hours ago, it had gotten cold enough for the crickets to cease their chirping, leaving a lingering silence around the camp that was only punctuated by the deep, even breathing and occasional snores of the Special Operations Squad. Captain Levi was on watch, but it had been a rather uneventful night so far.
Earlier that day, Levi’s Squad had set off from HQ for a quick reconnaissance mission outside the walls. The plan had been to rout the titans that had begun to surround the smaller and usually unprepared villages northeast of the wall. However, titans had unexpectedly appeared at a steady rate only minutes after the squad exited the gate.
Still, they managed to reach the general area of the villages by the evening and effectively routed the titans in the surrounding area with no casualties. Consequently, that meant that there hadn’t been enough time to make a return trip before night fell, so the captain had instructed his squad to set up camp near a small grove of trees and wait out the night.
Since it was only for one night, their camp was quite rudimentary. There was a fire crackling at one end of the camp next to the captain’s tent. The other side of the camp hosted the rest of Levi’s Squad: Eren, Mikasa, Armin, Jean, Connie, Sasha, and Historia. Setting up their tents would have been too much of a hassle for such a quick stay, so the seven scouts simply wrapped themselves up in their cloaks and dozed off in their sleeping bags after dinner.
Most of them fell asleep with ease, but that wasn’t the case for Mikasa. She hadn’t thought much about sleeping in the open air as she had set up her makeshift “bed” for the night, but the cold air and the unknown titans she knew could be lurking in the darkness around her made it difficult to fall asleep that night. She couldn’t help but recall the night that they had scouted Shiganshina’s wall, where they hadn’t realized a titan was around them until they were mere feet from it. Still, she was tired, so she drifted off eventually, albeit an hour and a half later than her comrades. Only minutes later, she began to dream lucidly.
There was Mikasa’s father at the door. He spoke. “Hello, Dr, Jaeger! It’s been a-,” he suddenly crumpled to the ground, a bloodstain spreading on the floor. Mikasa’s mother screamed at the sight of the three men in the doorway, one holding a bloodstained knife.
“Mikasa! Run! Get away from here!” she cried, grasping a pair of nearby scissors in her hand like a weapon. She raced toward the intruders and began thrashing the scissors at one man’s throat. Mikasa heard a struggle, and then the sudden, dreadful thunk of an axe. She looked up in horror to see her mother fall to the ground too, red plumes of blood blossoming from her back. She gasped, and the dream shifted. Now, she was standing up. Eren was in front of her, wielding a knife.
“I’ll kill you if you come toward her,” Eren screamed angrily. A man snarled and grabbed Eren by his collar, shoving him up and onto the wall, choking him.
“No!” Mikasa felt her throat tear as she screamed. She had to do something. Eren was dying! She looked around for a knife. There was nothing she could use to fight.
“F-fight, Mikasa…” Eren said weakly, the man cutting off his air. Then, Eren went limp and Mikasa started to sob, screaming and weeping simultaneously. She felt the room rumble. Titans, she thought, horrified. Eyes wide, she shot up, her breathing ragged.
Captain Levi’s hand was on her shoulder, shaking her. “Whoa, it’s okay, Ackerman, you’re okay,” he said quietly, his voice calm.
The light of the moon reflected off of Levi’s face, and she realized that she had somehow gotten the attention of the captain. As she came to, she noticed that she had been grabbing his wrist with a vice-like grip and quickly let go, doing her best to steady her breathing. “S-sorry, sir,” Mikasa said apologetically, somewhat mortified that the terror of her nightmare had clearly distracted her captain from his duty.
“Shh, keep your voice down,” he whispered, somewhat sternly. He met her eyes, continuing in a softer tone. “It’s normal to have nightmares with the lives we lead. That’s just how it goes. Nothing to be sorry about. You see one of your comrades having a nightmare? You wake them up and help them relax.”
She nodded, her heart rate slowly returning to normal. What Levi had said made sense. It was logical, so she accepted it.
She looked around her, surveying her sleeping teammates, and whispered, “I guess it’s just something with sleeping out here. I feel like there are titans all around us that I just can’t see. Makes it a little difficult to sleep peacefully. Honestly, I don’t know if I really want to fall back asleep after that, anyway.”
Levi stood up. “Bring your sleeping bag and come with me,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of his tent.
Mikasa looked at him, confused at his abrupt command. “Why?”
He responded gruffly. “Don’t ask questions, brat. Just get your ass to my tent. I’ll make some tea.” He started walking over to the fire.
“Yes, sir,” she replied, glad to go somewhere that had some semblance of a roof over her head. Making as little noise as possible as to not wake her friends, Mikasa picked up her sleeping bag and walked to Levi’s tent, next to which he sat, boiling water over the fire.
He glanced at her and nodded toward her sleeping bag. “You can put that in the tent. Spend the rest of the night in there. There’s plenty of space.”
Mikasa was taken aback at this sudden gesture of kindness from the tough-as-nails captain. She replied hesitantly, “Oh, uh, thanks very much, sir.”
“Don’t mention it, Ackerman,” he said, meeting her surprised gaze with his neutral one. He went back to focusing on the water. “Once you’ve dropped off your bag, wait for me in there. Tea will be ready momentarily.”
“Yes, sir,” she responded.
Levi had been right, she thought to herself as she entered. It was quite spacious in there. She plopped her sleeping bag down to one side and sat in it, rubbing her shoulders vigorously in an attempt to warm herself.
As she took in the interior of the tent, she found that she was still somewhat shaken by the recent recollection of her parents’ deaths. She hadn’t thought about that topic in a while. And she certainly hadn’t had that nightmare in a while. It had recurred several times before she joined the training corps and while she was in the training corps, but this was her first time having it as a part of the Survey Corps. And as quickly as it had gone, it returned, the old guilt reasserting itself in her mind, eating away at her stoic front. I should’ve been able to save them. I’m an Ackerman. Why didn’t the goddamn powers activate after my dad was murdered? I could have at least saved my mom if I hadn’t been so incompetent…. She became aware of a headache pounding at her forehead. Rubbing her temple, she let out a long sigh strewn with sadness and exhaustion.
“Hey.” Mikasa was startled as a voice interrupted her thoughts. Levi had silently entered the tent, holding two cups of tea. “Drink this,” he told her, handing her the cup. “It’s peppermint tea. It should calm you down some more.”
She accepted the tea, nodding her thanks.
“Now, do you want to tell me what that sigh was about?” he asked her bluntly, sitting down across from her. He gazed at her expectantly.
She didn’t realize he had heard her. “Um, I’m just really tired after the nightmare, sir,” she replied, not quite meeting his eyes.
He raised an eyebrow. “Right,” he said, clearly not believing her. She didn’t respond. Nonetheless, he continued after a few seconds of silence. “I get the feeling it’s something more than that,” he said shrewdly. He leaned forward to look at her more closely. “You know, it usually helps to talk about it,” he said, surprisingly gently.
She sighed again. Other than Armin, she hadn’t told anyone this piece of information about her childhood. Still, she reasoned, perhaps it was time she told someone else about it. Might prevent me from having more of these nightmares, she thought ruefully.
“Spit it out, brat,” he said shortly. “And drink your damn tea,” he added.
That sounded more like the Captain Levi she was familiar with. She took a small sip of the tea, which seemed to warm her from the inside out. She came to a decision.
“Uh, yes, sir,” she said, readying herself to describe her dream.
“At ease. Cut the sir,” he interrupted curtly.
“Right.” She took a deep breath and started explaining. “I dreamed of the day my parents were killed. I saw it all happen again. And then, I saw Eren getting choked by one of the men who had tried to kidnap me. Except this time, I didn’t have a knife to use on them, so I just stood there and… watched him die,” she said rather quickly, wanting to get the explanation over with. Her voice shook slightly toward the end.
“Hm,” Levi responded. He hadn’t known that about her. He was vaguely aware that she had been adopted by the Jaegers as a girl, but he had never been told about the circumstances under which that had been necessary. He felt a weight on his heart as he once again contemplated the unfortunate childhoods many of the kids on his squad had faced. They never deserved that, he thought to himself. They were just kids.
Mikasa continued. “I just… wish I could have saved my parents. When Eren was about to die, I felt that inhuman surge of strength that you told me earlier is a result of my Ackerman genetics. I took a knife and stabbed the man through the heart,” she said quietly. “But, my parents…” she trailed off and buried her face in her knees. She didn’t want to look at Levi, concerned that he would be alarmed by the neuroticism she was displaying and no longer trust her to be a functional member of his squad. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Suddenly, she felt a hand rub her shoulder reassuringly. “Hey. Look at me,” he said firmly. She tilted her chin upward and met his eyes. “Don’t you dare try to apologize for being human. All of us soldiers are, even if we don’t show it most of the time. It isn’t good to hide it indefinitely, though.”
She took a deep breath, relieved that Levi wasn’t going to condemn her for her outpour of emotions. She sat up. “I wish my Ackerman powers would have come to me sooner. I could have at least saved my mom from the men,” she said bitterly.
“No,” Levi responded simply. “You probably didn’t even have enough time to react before those bastards murdered her. You can’t blame yourself for any of their deaths,” he said, looking at her seriously. “You understand me? You can’t regret your choices. The regret’ll eat you up and prevent you from making the right decisions in the future. Trust me,” he said, with such genuineness that Mikasa had no choice but to believe him.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Still, I think I should’ve been able to-” she began to continue defending her guilt.
“No,” Levi said again, this time more harshly. “I just told you. It was not your fault. Get it through your damn head. And you still haven’t finished your tea,” he said, glaring at her. “Drink it, you need to calm down.”
“Fine,” she grumbled, taking several larger sips of the tea as he watched her like a hawk.
When he was satisfied that she was drinking her tea, he figured he should explain his motive behind his insistence in the hope that she would heed his advice. “I had to watch plenty of loved ones die before my Ackerman powers activated as well. To this day, I still have to watch people die, even though I have full use of my powers.”
He gulped down some of his own tea. “And still, I know that those deaths are not my fault. They are the faults of the titans and the assholes working for the government. Or, if you ask Erwin, it’s the fault of the people he thinks live outside the wall. I don’t hold much to that theory, but that’s not the point. The point is that you simply cannot remain guilty about these types of things. Not only is it illogical, because of course everything you should have done is clear in retrospect. But it’s also going to tear down your confidence and your ability to make good calls when the times come to make split-second decisions,” he told her firmly.
His dark eyes met hers again. She gave a small nod and pulled her scarf over her mouth.
He continued, dropping a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Even with our Ackerman powers and our training, we simply cannot save everyone. Don’t burden yourself with that impossible task. Got it, Mikasa?”
She looked at him again, surprised at his usage of her first name. It made his words feel even more personal and genuine. He meant them as a fellow human, not just as her captain.
“Got it,” she replied, giving him a small smile. She paused. “Thanks, that makes me feel a lot better,” she added quietly.
“Of course,” he replied, his voice unusually kind. “Finish off the last of your tea and get to sleep. You’re going to need it for training tomorrow,” he added dryly.
At the mention of training tomorrow, Mikasa audibly groaned. It was well past midnight, and she knew that being tired was far from optimal when it came to physical exertion.
“Tch. Tough it out, brat,” he scoffed, ruffling her hair as he stood up and moved to his own sleeping bag.
Though his tone sounded annoyed, she was willing to bet that he was hiding a smile behind it. She heard him get into his sleeping bag a few feet away from her.
Following suit, she curled up in her sleeping bag, finally calm enough to drift off into dreamless sleep until morning.