Chapter Text
When they come back, everyone stares. At him.
Five, someone whispers.
Five at once.
All on his own.
Nothing about the new formation, or the failure, or the deaths. Just him.
Levi digs his nails into the palm of his hand and keeps his face closed-off as he swings down from his horse. Can’t let them see. Can’t let them affect him.
At least they’re clever enough to leave him alone.
As the rest of the squad dismounts, Levi slips away quietly to the sleeping quarters. Nobody is there, so nobody asks him awkward questions while he gathers his things and puts them back into the bag he took with him when he first came here.
That done, he sneaks out again. He finds a building near the walls of the HQ, grapples onto the roof, and lands lightly.
The stars are coming out. The rain has finally stopped. He tips his head back.
I pledge my strength to humanity.
Nice words, when you’re standing knee-deep in Titan corpse, blood staining your hands and the taste for revenge burning sour in your throat.
But bullshit, once that rage has cooled down.
He’ll go back. Find Lobov in prison and cut his throat, make him pay, and then… Well, he can just go back to what he did before, organizing and leading the heists and thefts, only without –
And without this fucking gear.
He struggles with the straps of the harness, fingers slick with blood and rain slipping on the buckles, until he loses patience and rips them off. If he hadn’t fucking stolen them in the first place, if he’d been content with staying in the dirt and mud like the rest of the Underground rats, if he hadn’t been so fucking ambitious –
“What are you doing?”
Levi whirls. Like before, Erwin has appeared out of nowhere without Levi even noticing. Fuck knows how he does it; Levi hasn’t had anyone sneak up on him like that in years, if not decades.
“I’m quitting,” Levi says, fighting to keep his voice cold and calm.
The blond fuckwit doesn’t move a muscle. “You can’t.”
“Why not?” Levi tears the harness off and throws it down. He’ll go down the old way, the hard way. No more fucking tricks for him.
“It’s desertion.”
Levi throws him a disgusted look. “I joined under false pretences. This whole damn thing was a fucking farce, and you know it. A clever little plan designed by the higher-ups. And it’s done now, so I can fuck off back to where I came from, can’t I?”
“No.”
“No?” Levi repeats, mocking.
“You joined up,” the captain continues. “There’s no way to quit the Corps, other than death. The reasons why you joined don’t matter anymore. You cannot leave.”
“Watch me.” Levi spits on the roof tiles. “You think I’ll let a fucking law stop me?”
“It’s not about a law. If you try to leave, we’ll hunt you down and drag you back. And we’ll find you, you know that. You’re good, Levi, but not that good.”
Levi turns away in disgust. He’s right, Erwin, he would be able to track Levi down again. Which means he’s fucking trapped, nowhere to go, nowhere to run to, and it’s – “I refuse.”
“You refuse what?”
“This. All of this.” Levi waves his hand over the barracks. “The fucking uniform, the fucking 3D gear, the fucking orders. You. Them.”
“You swore to me – ”
“I’m a thug,” he sneers. “No honor among thieves, Captain. Everyone knows that.”
“So you don’t want your revenge?”
Levi glares up at the captain’s fucking infuriating face. “Don’t.”
“Stay here and you can keep killing them, the monsters that took your friends. Can you really go back to being just an Underground thug, now you know about them? And what you can do?”
Levi locks his jaw and stares, stubbornly. Levi’s stare has been known to stop criminals in their paths, to make Military Police rethink their orders, but Erwin doesn’t even budge.
“You’ve seen the world for what it’s really like,” the captain continues. “I trust you won’t turn away from it again.” He reaches as if to touch and Levi flinches away, violently.
“Get the fuck off me,” he hisses.
Erwin takes a step back and raises his hand – still bandaged – in something that could be an apology, or a defense, or the first move of an attack. “Stay on, Levi,” he says, unperturbed. “You’re needed here.”
And then he leaves.
***
Of course Levi stays on. It’s not like he’s got a fucking choice, is it?
***
He might have joined up, but that doesn’t mean he’s suddenly fucking braindead. He survived in the Underground – no, he fucking thrived in the Underground by using his mind, by always planning and thinking up contingency plans and trusting his instincts, his gut feeling, and he’s not about to just let that slide. Especially not simply because some stupid shithead thinks they know better just because they've got an extra stripe on their sleeve.
Unfortunately, the shitheads don’t share his opinion. He gets punished pretty much constantly, for disobedience, disrespecting authority, endangering his squad, a whole slew of pretty words all meaning the same thing: not listening.
Not that the punishments are very effective. What’s a cut in rations to someone who still vividly remembers wolfing down a piece of moldy bread after weeks without food? Why would he be bothered by lack of sleep if night-long stakeouts are second nature to him? And pain, well, pain has been a companion since he was a born. It’s hardly going to stop him.
The only thing he really dislikes is shoveling shit in the stables. The stink hangs in his clothes and it’s impossible to get properly clean after that. But there’s only so much shit to shovel, and not even the collective dungheap of all the Survey Corps’ horses is enough to keep him busy for all his punishments.
Levi disobeys a lot.
Eventually they just seem to give up. After all, the only thing they could do to actually punish him would be to stop him going out, on expedition.
But even they aren’t stupid enough to do that.
***
“You must have a low center of gravity.”
“You calling me short?” Levi says, without even turning to look.
“Well, yeah,” Hange says cheerfully. “Because you are.” They fall into step beside him. “That has to be why you can spin in the air so quickly. You know, air resistance, that sort of thing. Or maybe you don’t know. Want me to explain some basic physics to you, Levi? Ooh, please say yes!”
Hange is… confusing. They don’t react like the others, don’t back off. They just keep up their cheerful personable manner even when he’s snarling at them.
“Anyway,” they continue cheerfully, “it’s not much use to us, unless we start recruiting only short people. Or cut off people’s legs. But about that reverse grip – ”
“No,” he says curtly.
“Oh, come on, it looks really interesting! I just want to – ”
He opens the door to the main building and glares at them. “I don’t care what you want. Fuck off.”
They bounce, grinning, undeterred. “Ooh, are you being hauled in front of the captain again?”
He closes the door onto their disturbingly eager face without replying, then goes up the stairs to the first floor. The soles of his boots squeak on the tiles. He’s leaving dirt traces, but the floor was already pretty dirty to start with. They don’t care much about cleanliness, the Corps as a whole.
The captain’s room is the second to last, the only one that clearly overlooks the courtyard beneath, offering a perfect vantage point. No doubt it was chosen for that exact reason. If it’d been Levi, he’d’ve chosen the same room.
He doesn’t bother knocking. He just shoves the door open, gets inside, and leans back against it. If he’s blocking the only exit to the room, well, yeah, he fucking is. You don’t just forget instincts that have been bred into you for several decades, and anyway, the good captain can use the reminder he’s not the only with power here.
“Well?” Levi says, raising his eyebrows.
Captain fuckhead calmly keeps writing his papers, completely ignoring Levi.
“No? Nothing? Latour told me you wanted to talk to me, but – ”
“Why,” the captain says, not looking up from his papers, “did I receive a report from Squad Leader Hanssen that you ignored her direct orders during the latest expedition, multiple times, and endangered the entire squad by going in exactly the opposite direction you were told to?”
“Oh, is that what she said happened?”
Finally, Captain high-and-mighty deigns to raise his arrogant fucking head, and whatever he was intending to say gets interrupted by a frown. “What happened to your face?”
Levi touches his cheek.
Without Farlan to hold him back, he has no reason to avoid fights. And fights are plenty. Many of the soldiers are of the opinion Levi’s punishments aren’t going far enough, and they’re more than happy to take matters into their own hands.
Military implicit code demands that he denies that, says something like cut myself shaving or fell down some stairs.
Levi calmly meets the Captain’s eyes and says, “Even I can’t fight off six people at once without a scratch.”
Erwin rubs his forehead, irritation showing through the unflappable mask for once. “Right. Never mind. You implied Squad Leader Hanssen isn’t telling the whole truth, so, what’s your version of the events?”
Levi shrugs. “I saw an opportunity. It’s not my fault Hanssen was too busy shitting her pants to see it as well.”
“This was a recon mission. Your objective was to avoid, not to engage.”
“I took initiative.” Levi gives him a tiny smile. “Three more dead Titans, that can only be a good thing in your book, right?”
The captain leans back. “You disobeyed your superior officer. Again.”
Levi stubbornly keeps eye contact. “And?”
“You are no longer in a criminal crew, Levi. This is the military, and you will obey rank.”
“Or what?” He curls his lip in disgust. “You’ll cut my rations? Take my bed away?”
The captain leans forward again and shuffles his papers, breaking eye contact. “You’ll obey, or I’m relegating you to training new recruits. Learn to be part of a team. That’s an order.”
“An order?” Levi asks softly.
The captain looks up.
“Like you ordered me to join the Corps?” Levi continues, tasting mud on the back of his tongue.
Erwin says nothing.
Fury is boiling inside of him again and his fingers twitch, aching to reach for the knife he still carries in his boot. “Well,” he sneers, “unfortunately for you, the leverage you had back then is no longer in the picture. So fuck off.” He turns on his heel and strides to the door.
“Levi.”
He stops, but pointedly doesn’t look back. “What?”
“You still did very well, all things considered.”
He looks over his shoulder. “Is that a fucking joke?” he asks, disbelievingly.
Erwin shakes his head, serious as death. “It isn’t. Go back to the barracks and think about what I’ve said.”
“Fuck you,” Levi snarls, then stalks out.
***
His life divides itself into two neat parts, almost completely unconnected. There’s the time he spends behind the walls – either those of the city or the ones of the outposts – which is the time when he feels empty, boiling over, where he growls and snaps at everyone daring to come close to him and which he spends either by training until he’s ready to drop, or by staring up at the sky and wrestling down his guilt, his anger, his grief.
That’s the part of his life where all he can do is hang on, survive, simply breathe until it’s over. ‘Cause it does end, eventually, and there’s the other part, where he goes outside and the world spreads out before him and the target is in sight and everything makes sense.
He’s aware that for most people in the Corps, it’s the opposite. He doesn’t particularly care.
Two months in, and his kill count is only topped by the most experienced veterans. People try to corner him and make him tell them his secrets, but he just ignores them, insults them, or finds some other way to make them go away.
There are no secrets to his skills. There’s nothing he can put in words. There’s just the blades in his hands and the target in focus and the way he flies, free in a way he’s never anywhere else.
Three months in, and they start talking about him in hushed voices, making superstitious gestures as he passes by.
He doesn’t care what they think, but at least the fights quiet down a little.
***
“You should be in bed.”
Levi doesn’t open his eyes. “I thought you were a captain, not a fucking nanny.”
“What would you know of nannies?”
Levi cracks one eye open. “I know rich people have ‘em instead of mothers, and that’s all I need to know. What the hell are you doing here?”
The captain sits down next to him, as if he has any right to, as if they’re fucking friends. “I had a nanny.”
Levi snorts. “Figures.”
“My mother died shortly after I was born, so it was a necessity.”
Levi gives Erwin a look. He’s still looking calm, peaceful, as if he has random chats like this all the time. “Seriously, what the fuck are you here for?”
“To check on you. Why are you here?”
“I like the stars.” He nods at the sky, clearly visible from this rooftop.
“Levi. Why aren’t you in the sleeping quarters?”
Levi closes his eyes again and folds his hands behind his head. “Horse shit.”
“Sorry?”
“Horse shit. On my mattress. They think it’s funny. Or justice, or some other stupid fucking nonsense.”
The captain stays silent. Well, he would: he likes presenting the Corps as some kind of noble, brave company of heroes, and six-to-one beatings and stupid fucking bullying doesn’t match that image.
“Who were they?” Erwin asks eventually.
“Why, are you going to punish them? Why bother?”
“Because they broke the rules,” the captain says. And he actually sounds earnest. Is it all just an elaborate act, or does he genuinely believe everything he says?
“It’ll just piss off the rest of 'em. I don’t care either way, but if you think punishing them is going to end it, you’re even more fucking naïve than I thought.”
Silence, again. Levi keeps his eyes closed. Erwin isn’t moving, but Levi can hear his breath, feel his body heat, that sense of nearness, Erwin’s knee somewhere close to Levi’s elbow.
And then the captain sighs and shifts. He leaves without another word, which might be good. Another one of his fucking speeches about nobility and duty and comradeship and Levi would’ve been seriously tempted to shove him off the rooftop.
But then there’s a soft thump and Levi rolls up, hand on the knife in his boot. Wasn’t the bed enough, are they looking for some more fun?
But it’s just Erwin again. He throws something at Levi and he catches it on reflex. Something heavy, soft – a blanket?
“We leave on expedition tomorrow,” the captain says. “You’re in Latour’s squad.”
Levi shakes off his confusion. “Fuck that. Forget the squad, just let me – ”
“No. You’re part of a squad, Levi, whether you want to be or not. So try and listen.”
“I won’t. You know I won’t.”
“Make sure you’re well rested,” Erwin says, ignoring his words. “We need you in top form.”
And he drops off the roof again.
Levi stares at the space he left behind, the blanket still in his arms. For a second he really considers just throwing it after Erwin ‘cause fuck him, and his fucking condescending paternal goodwill and that way he has of talking to Levi, like they’re equals, like Erwin is fucking proud of him.
But it’s a cold night, and Levi has learned to grab comfort wherever he can, so he sucks it up and rolls himself into the blanket.
***
He hits the ground rolling, clothes steaming with evaporating Titan blood.
That’s one thing Titans have on humans: no mess.
He straightens up and discards the blunt blades, then checks the environment. The last one of the Titans topples to the ground in the distance, five people jumping down from its corpse. They’re finished here, then.
In the distance, two green flares shoot up in quick succession. Reconvene. Wise, considering how grey the sky looks.
Levi finds his horse and rides into the direction of the flares, falling into pace with other soldiers on his way. As usual, they’re eyeing him with something that isn’t quite awe, isn’t quite disgust, and don’t make any attempts to interact with him. Which suits him just fine.
He reaches the makeshift camp and swings down from his horse, then stretches his calf. He might have pulled the muscle going down, there’s a sharp pain bothering him there. Not that he’s about to share that with anyone. Baring a weakness is tantamount to suicide, and that goes just as much here as it had Underground.
The other soldiers find a place to dismount somewhere away from him. A few yards away Latour – Levi’s superior officer, whose orders he ignored the second he spotted the eighteen-meter class in the horizon to go off after it on his own – is just done debriefing Captain Fuckface. As Levi watches, grimly amused, Erwin waves away Latour with obvious irritation. Suits him right, the incompetent bastard.
And then the captain’s eyes go to Levi. Erwin is good at hiding any outward signs of his anger, but Levi is willing to bet that current look means the old bastard is – quietly, discreetly – furious.
He strides over to Levi, frowning deeply. Another telling-off, then. Levi only barely resists rolling his eyes, but it’s just – he really has fucking better things to do than listening to stupid fucking speeches.
“Something up?” Levi asks when Erwin stops right in front of him, glowering.
“You disobeyed orders,” he says, voice low and clear.
“I took four of them down.” Levi curls his lip. “That’s what matters, isn’t it?”
“And in the process you nearly killed your squad.” Erwin grabs his arm, as if to shake sense into him. Levi pulls away.
“I told them to stay out of my way,” he says, irritated. “They were fine once they stopped interfering. And anyway, I saved someone’s life.”
“Ilse broke her arm when you pulled her away. She’ll be out of combat for weeks.”
“Not my responsibility,” Levi says blithely.
Erwin backhands him.
Levi bends double with the force of it, biting clean through his lip. He wipes the blood from his mouth and straightens up, furious.
He could do it, now. Take his knife, lunge, cut the bastard’s throat before anyone can react, then steal a horse. If he doesn’t run into any Titans, he can find somewhere to scale the wall, and then…
And then.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Erwin says, almost but not quite shouting. “You need to listen.”
“And I told you,” Levi says, fighting to keep control, “I don’t work with others. I said I wasn’t going to listen and you put me in their team anyway. Seems to me you’re the one responsible.”
“Levi – ”
“Fuck off.” He wipes his bloody hand on his tunic and turns his back to Erwin. Another thing he isn’t supposed to do, disrespecting a superior officer like that. But it’s not like Erwin can do anything about it, can he?
Levi pulls his cloak closer around him, the back of his neck prickling.
Fuck him.
***
He can’t sleep.
Part of it is just survival instincts: going to sleep in the Underground without someone to watch your back is the number one way to wake up with all your valuables missing, or not to wake up at all. And even though he’s fairly sure the worst he risks here are more stupid pranks, there still isn’t a single thing about this whole fucking situation that reads as safe to him.
He closes his eyes and leans back, tries again. He’s exhausted, the consequence of having to look over his shoulder all the time, be on his guard. Stupid trying to keep this up, maybe he should just…
Just drift off…
- a faint scream in the distance only mist and rain in front of his eyes hot blood spraying his face and it’s too late he has to run has to hide keep quiet don’t make a noise too late can't reach them can't -
He jolts awake.
And that’s the other reason why he can’t get any proper sleep.
He runs his hands over his face, then looks up. No one is looking in his direction. Good. He doesn’t want any of those fuckwits seeing him in a moment of weakness.
He gets up, cold sweat still clinging to him, and tries to walk the nightmare off.
Most of the camp is still up, and they’re… Over the last few months Levi has learned to read the group’s mood, and while often it’s just varying degrees of depressed, right now they seem almost cheerful. People are talking quietly, there’s occasional laughter, and no one is sitting alone, in isolation.
Apart from Levi. Heads turn and voices whisper when he passes them, of course, but no one actually talks to him.
He grits his teeth. He never really wanted to be part of a gang, a group, the way Farlan sometimes used to say he was, but it’s still annoying. All those happy friends, the companionship, all of it just reminds him that he doesn’t belong here, and that the only people he ever belonged with are dead.
He rubs his eyes in annoyance. He hasn’t got time to be sentimental. He’s only here because he’s got a job to do, and that’s all. They can keep their comradeship and shove it up their –
“Hey! Sewer rat!”
Levi doesn’t look up.
“Yeah, I’m talking to you. Have you apologized to Ilse yet?”
Levi is forced to a stop as the man in question blocks his path. He looks up through half-hooded eyes. “It’s her that should apologize to me.”
“What?” the guy says, scowling.
“If she had stayed put like I told her, she wouldn’t have interfered with my kill.”
The guy’s eyes narrow. “I don’t care how good you’re supposed to be, you’re taking that back now.”
Levi easily sidesteps the punch aimed at him, then rams his elbow into the man’s exposed back and knees him in the stomach for good measure. The guy goes down face-first into the mud.
Around him, people gasp, staring at him with undisguised hostility. He looks their faces over, then beyond them. Erwin is watching him from the sidelines, expression unreadable, but not intervening in any way.
And suddenly Levi is sick to his bones of all this.
He shoulders his way through the crowd, goes straight to the edge of the camp, and before anyone can stop him he’s on a horse and through the gate and out in the wide open outside.
Where things make sense.
***
He hasn’t been riding long before the sound of thundering hooves catches up with him. He glances over his shoulder – only one pursuer, blond hair clearly recognizable even in the dusty light of the full moon.
Levi turns back and urges his horse on, but Erwin is riding a fucking monster of a stallion, far stronger and faster than Levi’s little mare. Levi hasn’t got a chance of hell of outrunning him.
“Levi,” Erwin yells from behind him.
Levi executes a sharp turn and heads to the forest. Maybe there he can lose Erwin, if he can reach the trees, grapple on –
And suddenly he’s in the air, and then he’s landing hard on the ground. He rolls up to his feet, knife already out, before he even realizes what happened.
Erwin grappled the saddle straight from underneath his ass. Even Levi can appreciate the precision of that movement.
Erwin dismounts and steps closer, hands away from the blades at his sides. “Levi,” he says, and his usual mask is missing but Levi can’t read this new expression either.
Levi raises his knife. “Come closer and I’ll cut your fucking throat.”
“You won’t.”
“Won’t I?” he growls.
“No.” Erwin takes a step closer. “If you would, you would’ve done it any of the dozen opportunities that came before this one. You don’t want me dead.”
Levi narrows his eyes. “That’s where you’re fucking wrong.”
“Maybe,” Erwin says, calmly nodding as if he didn’t just agree with a death threat. “But at the very least you realize I need to stay alive.”
“What?” Levi tightens his grip on the knife.
“You’re smart enough to see that I’m the best chance we have against the Titans, right now. That no one else can take charge of the Survey Corps like I can, and that killing me would set us back like nothing else could.”
“Why should I care about that?”
“You can see that,” Erwin continues, ignoring Levi’s words. “But you don’t see your own role?”
Levi flips the knife. His heart is beating too quickly and he isn’t even sure why; certainly not because of the ride here, or because he’s wary of Erwin. He can take the bastard with one hand tied behind his back.
“You still ignore your responsibilities,” Erwin says. “Your team’s needs.”
“Fuck them.” Levi takes a step closer, knife still held out. “I’ve got nothing to do with those fucking shitheads. If they decide to risk their stupid fucking lives, then that’s their decision, but – ”
“Coward.”
Levi freezes. “What?”
“Coward,” the arrogant fucking cunt says again.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Levi says. His voice sounds calm. It’s the tone that people in the Underground quickly learned means danger, the sort of tone that used to send people running for cover.
Erwin doesn’t even blink. His eyes are fixed on Levi, and when he opens his mouth again Levi knows, he can taste it in the air – “Coward.”
Levi lunges. Erwin ducks just in time and catches Levi’s wrist. The pressure on his tendons forces him to drop the knife but he doesn’t need a weapon, not really. He drops and kicks out, and Erwin goes down. Levi immediately straddles him, grabs his shirtfront and punches him hard. Erwin doesn't even struggle.
Levi hauls Erwin up, one hand around his throat. “You have no fucking idea what I am,” he hisses.
“It doesn’t matter,” Erwin says, through the blood coating his mouth. “I only see what I see now, and that’s someone running away from their responsibility. If that’s not cowardice…”
Levi punches him again. “They’re not my responsibility,” he says, and his voice is too loud but he can’t stop, and underneath the tips of his fingers he feels the down of a lost bird and Isabel’s soft eyelids. “None of them are.”
“All of them are.” Erwin breaks Levi’s grip and grabs his throat, then throws him down. Levi only has a second to scrabble in the mud and then Erwin is on him. The bastard is more than a head taller than him, and half his weight again; he hasn’t got a chance in hell of throwing him off.
He still tries, bucking violently against Erwin’s hold. It doesn’t give an inch.
“Your abilities make you responsible,” Erwin says, and finally he seems affected, breath too quick, eyes sharp. “Not just for your squadmates, but for the entirety of the human race. Your refusal to be part of our Corps is already costing lives, and they’re on your head.”
“Fuck you,” Levi spits. “If they want to die because of stupid choices, fine, but it’s got nothing to do with me.”
“Like Isabel and Farlan had nothing to – ”
“Don’t,” Levi snaps, “say their names.” He tries to reach up, gouge the bastard’s eyes out, but Erwin pins him down before he can come anywhere close.
“Why not? They were members of the Corps, and therefore my responsibility as much as yours.”
“You don't – ”
“And your squad members are the same. Make the right decisions and they live; make the wrong decisions and – ”
“I never wanted this,” Levi yells.
Erwin leans back, releasing his grip on Levi’s arms. Levi immediately takes advantage and levers up, swinging them both around so he’s on top again and snatching the knife back from the mud. He puts the sharp edge underneath Erwin’s jaw.
“I’m responsible for no one,” Levi says. His voice is shaking. “Farlan and Isabel were the exceptions. And now they’re gone. There’s just me, and I’ll look after myself, and you and your entire fucking Corps can go fuck yourselves, for all I fucking care.”
Erwin slowly raises his hand to Levi’s wrist. “You know that’s not true.”
“Do I?”
Erwin gently pushes the blade away. For some reason, Levi lets him. “There is nothing more terrifying than being fully responsible for other people’s lives. It takes getting used to, the idea that – ”
“I’m not fucking scared,” Levi snarls.
“Then prove it.”
Levi gets up. Erwin stays on the ground, looking up at him.
Levi could kill him now, easily. Then run off with the two horses. He’d manage.
He slowly holds out his hand. Erwin watches it for a second, then takes Levi’s wrist. Levi pulls him up with ease.
“For a short guy, you’re pretty strong,” Erwin says, something that maybe, possibly, could be a smile on his torn bloodied lips.
“For a captain, you’re pretty stupid,” Levi shoots back.
Erwin whistles and the horses return.
They swing up without another word.