Chapter Text
The air is the first thing that betrays the logic of the situation. It is too crisp, too sharp, devoid of the persistent, metallic hum of London’s lung-heavy smog.
You open your eyes and are immediately met by a celestial display that feels like a physical weight.
The sky is a vast, a dark blue, peppered with a density of stars that simply does not exist in the Northern Hemisphere, at least, not in the twenty-first century. It is a sky free of light pollution, free of jet trails, and utterly terrifying in its clarity.
It is magnetic how pretty it is.
I’m dreaming, you tell yourself, the thought acting as a desperate anchor. I’ve over-indexed on travel documentaries or perhaps that occasional joint before bed.
Because why am I outside, in a place devoid of noise ?
You try to sit up, your head swimming with a dull, rhythmic ache. Your hand brushes against the earth, catching on the gnarled roots of an ancient tree. You look down, and the panic begins to prickle at the back of your neck like a cold needle.
You aren’t wearing your normal clothes.
The fabric is coarse, unfamiliar, sturdy stuff meant for utility, not comfort. You are definitely not in England anymore.
Straining your eyes, you look toward the horizon. About forty metres ahead, the silhouettes of several trees loom, tall and imposing, but they are dwarfed by the monolithic shadow further back.
It is a wall. A vertical desert of stone that seems to touch the heavens, cutting the world in two.
So grey compared to the nature around you.
You know this architecture. You’ve seen this place before, framed by a screen or a page, but the sheer scale of it in person makes your vision go blurry.
This is a very realistic dream, and you are not sure you’ll enjoy it.
"No," you whisper, the sound of your own voice oddly small in the vast silence.
You squeeze your eyes shut, bracing for the familiar sensation of waking up, the jolt in the chest, the sight of a flat’s ceiling, the distant sound of a London bus. You focus on triggering sleep again, desperate to return to reality.
But you are a light sleeper, and the harder you try, the more the cold night air anchors you here. It makes you feel ridiculous.
You open your eyes. The stars are still there. The wall is still there.
You push yourself up, holding onto the rough bark of the tree to steady your trembling knees. It physically feels real. If this is a dream, it has morphed into a nightmare of the highest order, because you aren’t inside the safety of those walls.
You are outside, in the wild, where the things that hunt don't wait for an introduction.
Logic, cold and rational, takes the wheel. You aren't thinking about the "plot" or the characters right now, wich you would if anybody asked “what would you do if you ended up in your favorite anime ?” ; but right now, with the reality hitting you, you are thinking about survival.
If you die here, what happens to you back home? Is your body still there? Do you wake up if this is a dream ? Because it does not feel like one, and you keep repeating that in your head.
Your brain trying to convince you that you are in a real situation.
But you can’t afford to find out. It is night, which gives you a narrow window of safety. With one last look at the towering trees, you begin to run toward the wall.
You can’t even to begin to think about how you’ll get inside, but you need to run.
Every snap of a twig under your boots sounds like a dinner bell for the horrors lurking in the dark, and your only goal is to reach the stone before the sun brings the monsters to life.
The night was rarely quiet, even for someone who spent their life chasing silence.
For Levi, the stillness atop the Wall was a double-edged sword, a reprieve from the suffocating filth of the barracks, yet a reminder of the vast, titan, infested void that lay beyond the stones.
He leaned against the cold masonry, the wind tugging at his cravat. He’d come up here for air, escaping the stagnant smell of damp wood and unwashed recruits. In the dark, the world felt cleaner, though no less dangerous.
His eyes, honed by years of scanning horizons for the slightest shift in movement, tracked the undulating shadows of the treeline.
He also needed some time off from Hange and Eren.
He was Humanity’s Strongest, a title that felt more like a lead weight than an accolade. It meant his mind never truly switched off.
He was perpetually calculating: wind speed, gas levels, the structural integrity of the stone beneath his boots.
And for a moment he needed to be empty. But again, he’ll never rest.
A movement caught his periphery.
Levi didn't flinch; he stilled. His gaze locked onto a small, erratic shape moving through the grass several hundred metres out. It was too fast to be a titan, too small to be a stray horse, and its gait was distinctly... human.
Impossible.
The Scouts weren't out on expedition. No one should be out there, especially not at this hour. His mind immediately went to the Garrison’s incompetence, did some idiot fall over the side? Or was it something more sinister? A spy? A survivor from a fallen district that had somehow endured years in the wild?
He narrowed his eyes, his gloved fingers twitching near the hilts of his blades. The figure was running toward the Wall with a desperate, clumsy urgency.
It lacked the refined movement of a soldier. They were scared.
He stayed hidden in the shadows of the battlements, observing. Suspicion was his primary instinct; empathy came a distant second, usually reserved for those already bleeding out in his arms.
If this was an intruder, he needed to know how they’d survived the night. If it was a civilian, he needed to know how the hell they’d gotten past the gates.
He didn't call out. He didn't signal the Garrison guards further down the line. Levi Ackerman preferred to handle anomalies himself.
He unhooked a lantern, keeping the shutters nearly closed to emit only the thinnest sliver of light, the moon was doing most of the work. He watched the figure stumble, holding their side, gasping, he could almost hear the frantic thud of their heart from here.
"Tch," he clicked his tongue, the sound lost to the wind.
Whatever you were, you were a mess. But you were a human mess, and in this world, that was enough of a reason to interfere. He hooked his fingers into the triggers of his ODM gear, the familiar weight of the handles grounding him.
He wouldn't drop down yet. He’d wait until you were close enough to see the whites of your eyes, to see if you were a threat or just another soul the world was trying to crush.
The wall looms larger with every frantic step you take, a mountain of man-made stone that feels both like a sanctuary and a tomb. You don’t just run blindly; you weave between the sparse trees, using the trunks as temporary shields.
It’s a desperate strategy, a modern instinct to keep something solid between your back and the unknown.
Finally, your lungs begin to burn with the cold air, and you stumble to a halt under a particularly thick oak.
Let’s be honest, you’re athletic because you work out everyday and do some jjb, but you have zero cardio sadly. You lean against it, chest heaving, scanning the darkness.
Above you, there is no sound, only the faint, metallic hiss of shifting gear.
Wich you would recognise if you brain wasn’t this panicked.
Levi has been watching you for several minutes now. He descended the exterior of the wall with a ghost-like efficiency, unhooking his anchors to land silently on the thickest branch of the tree directly above your head.
He doesn't move. He simply observes.
Everything about you irritates his sense of order. Your skin is too clear, lacking the sun-beaten, wind-chapped texture of a commoner or the soot-stained grit of a soldier. Even your face seems "soft", the bone structure refined, lacking the subtle hollowing of malnutrition common in the lower districts.
You look like someone who has never known a day of true physical hardship, yet here you are, shivering in the middle of a titan-infested wasteland.
"If you're waiting for an invitation to get eaten, you're doing a grand job," a voice drawls from above.
It is a cold, disagreeable sound, bored almost.
You bolt upright, spinning around so fast the world tilts. Your eyes land on the figure perched on the branch.
The dark green cloak, the white cravat, the undercut, and those terrifyingly sharp, steel-grey eyes.
"I'm going to puke," you gasp, the blood draining from your face until you look like a ghost. "This can't be real”.
Levi’s brow twitches. He was expecting a scream, or perhaps a plea for mercy. He wasn't expecting a critique on the reality of his existence. He shifts his weight, the leather of his harness creaking. To him, you look like a lunatic.
"He can’t be in front of me," you mutter, pacing a small circle and gesturing wildly at the tree as if the bark were a witness. "I must be going crazy. This is a dream. It’s a very long, very vivid dream." Your mouth was dry from running and not talking for a while.
Levi stares at you with a look of pure, unadulterated disdain. He’s seen many types of madness in this world, but your brand, this strange, articulate hysteria. This is new. He thinks of Erwin. The Commander would want this anomaly brought in alive. A "civilian" found outside the walls during the height of the Titan crisis is a variable they cannot ignore.
"Are you quite finished talking to the tree?" Levi asks, his voice dropping an octave.
He drops from the branch, landing in a perfect, silent crouch before standing to his full (if diminutive) height. He stares at you, being the same size as him makes you feel odd, and he keeps staring, not with attraction, but with the clinical detachment of a man looking at a bug under a microscope.
"Do you want to die out here," he asks, his hand resting casually on his blade, "or should I bring you in?"
You stop pacing. The reality of the situation hits you, the cold, the smell of his clean laundry mixed with old blood, the sheer presence he radiates. This isn't a dream. If it were, your brain wouldn't be able to invent a feeling this intimidating.
"I... I don't want to die," you state clearly, your voice trembling but firm.
"Tch. Then shut up and hold on."
Before you can process the command, his arm hooks firmly around your waist. The grip is like iron, uncompromising and unyielding.
"Wait—"
The world disappears.
With a violent hiss of compressed gas, the ODM gear fires. You are jerked off the ground with a force that makes your stomach attempt to exit through your throat. The sensation of "flying" isn't the graceful, poetic experience it looks like on a screen; it is a violent, dizzying blur of wind and G-force. You don’t even like thrilling rides at Disneyland, so this is not doing it for you.
You squeeze your eyes shut, burying your face into the rough fabric of his cloak as the trees whip past. The nausea hits you in waves, the world spinning in a frantic dance of grey stone and dark sky. You’re holding on for dear life, afraid of falling.
Levi doesn't offer a word of comfort. He simply steers you toward the high, arched gate of the nearest district, the entrance that will eventually lead you to the Survey Corps Headquarters, and the beginning of a nightmare you can't wake up from.