Chapter Text
[. . .]
"Piece by piece, you knead me."
[. . .]
Chapter 1
In Our Younger Years
[. . .]
Levi is first introduced to you when he's thirteen years old.
He holds a knife in his hands and is adorned in deep, sweltering smears of blood on his hollow cheeks, dripping in excess onto the dirty, feces-covered flooring of the Underground. His palms are tightly fisted, covered in the sin of his recent crimes, ready to strike just as you pass by holding a large basket of rarely fresh bread from a bakery that had just been raided a week ago.
Instead of running like Levi expects you to do as other kids his age, you remain stupidly in place. You stare down at him with no emotion in your eyes. Your matted hair shines with grease underneath the lantern hung above you on the brick wall. You stink of rot and just as he, you are riddled in sanguine.
The only thing pristine about you is the basket of food you hold.
Threateningly, he quickly points the knife at you, splattering the blood of another onto your torn dress that smells of days-old urine. "Give me the basket," He murmurs lowly. A flickering flame inside him churns with helpless remorse at what he's about to do, but the much larger, sickening infection of Kenny's teachings dominates it, whisking it away.
He hasn't eaten in two days. Kenny's gone, and Levi has a sinking feeling the man won't come back this time.
He's going to do what he must, whether he'll live with it or not.
You glance at his knife. "...You can ask for it nicely," You say decently, which hints to him that you must have had some form of teaching. Your wording also brings confusion because you're not cowering in fear like he needs you to.
But it makes it easier for him to lash out his knife as he promised, going for your fingers that leave streaks of grime and red on the ornate item. Except that you dodge and kick his shin hard.
It hurts, but he's taken down men three times your size.
The two of you tumble to the floor when he lunges in seething anger, successfully driving the knife into the edge of your pinkie finger—not enough to chop it off, but enough that he will if you don't let go.
Despite the pain, despite that he has the upper hand, you look into his eyes with null stagnancy. While one of his arms pins you down by the chest, his other is raised with both of your own straining to keep the basket from falling, the tip of the knife lodged in the flesh.
"Give me the basket," He repeats, unable to bask in the thought of twisting the knife and seeing what happens to you when you bleed out.
You're a kid, like him.
But he's hungry.
"Ask for it nicely and I will," You say with a tone of finality, motionless as your blood trickles down your arm.
Levi twists and the steel digs deeper. He doesn't slice like he's intended to.
You don't budge. You don't scream.
"Ask for it nicely," You repeat, "And I will give you some."
The two of you stare each other down.
Levi's glare is ferocious and focused, renewed with the weakness he feels eating at him from the lack of food and the warm smell of the fare in your hands. He can just take it. Right here. Right there. You won't be able to do anything about it, either. You're frail. Feeble. And that will save him from having to kill someone as pathetic as you.
Your gaze is apathetic. Empty. Your fixation is derived past him like some sort of idiot lost in the trails of drugs he's seen people consume to escape this hell. But your words are precise. Clear. Patient.
He's not sure if you're crazy like the sad people he's seen wandering around. Maybe you're deranged.
Maybe he's just desperate.
"Why?" He retorts because he doesn't know what you're trying to ask of him. He doesn't know what you mean by asking nicely when he can just take what he needs and leave you here.
The blood is gushing in earnest, now. He can see your arms wobble.
"Asking nicely is good," You tell him.
He remains silent, torn on whether taking your life will ultimately hurt him more rather than gain relief. He can take the food of other people. Unfortunately, you were the one who crossed him first after he took care of the man who turned out to be starving just as he was.
Levi is angry.
But he is also, scarily, aware that he's desperate.
So when he harshly pulls the knife away from your jaded finger and removes himself from you, he scrutinizes you as you struggle to stand with the newfound freedom. When you're upright, you uncover the fresh bread from the cloth and reach for one. "I can get you another basket," You tell him mutely, handing him the bread. There is blood where you hold it. "But I want to show you how to ask nicely."
He eyes the bread suspiciously, then at you.
"Being nice gets you killed," He sneers, echoing the words of Kenny. The pang of uncertainty returns and his palms sting with what he doesn't want to embrace in the future.
"Sometimes," You agree. Levi labels you as deranged as he selfishly snatches the bread from your hand and begins to eat in earnest.
"But you didn't kill me."
Levi stops eating to give you the harshest glare he's ever delivered. Are you challenging him to? He's just killed a man. What makes you think he won't kill you?
Goadingly, he shuffles the weapon and takes a vicious bite.
You still stare at him like he's not going to do anything. Like an idiot. "I'll kill you," He says after he swallows the chewed mouthful.
You decide to sit next to him, beside a pile of shit. Levi's gotten so used to the smell. He absolutely fucking hates it. He makes to stand so that he can eat the grand loaf of bread you've so foolishly given him in temporary peace but he's pulled back by the hand he injured.
He kicks it off. "Don't touch me," He snarls.
"To ask nicely," You begin, completely dismissing his behavior, "You have to use the words 'Please' and 'thank you'."
He's not stupid. He knows what they mean. Before he can retort and tell you how stupid you are, you render him silent when you hand him the basket.
"Hold this for me, please," You ask, monotone.
"Why? Are you stupid?" He spits immediately, bewildered. He bites his bread as he makes a plan to scamper off with yours. Either you're incredibly naive, or you're the living embodiment of stupid. Nobody just gives stuff over, down here. It's kill or be killed. Levi knows that better than you.
You shake your head. "I'm giving you an example," You explain.
He doesn't know why he's sticking around you. Perhaps it's because he hasn't had the time to interact with another kid his age. All of them either run away, get beaten up for being dumbass thieves, or are dead in a ditch he's scoured about somewhere. You're not the first who's spoken to him, but you are the first who's had a conversation. A real conversation.
And maybe Levi is lonely. Kenny is gone, still. Probably forever.
He can just take off with the bread. He can leave you here to starve on your own and live off another day with this rare commodity. Entertaining you is nonexistent on his list of priorities. He's sure you have an orphanage to get back to, or to abusive adults that'll give you a whooping for not bringing the bread you likely stole.
His stomach begins to hurt with guilt when he takes the basket.
He can do all of that.
He can.
"May I have some bread, please?" You ask him as he finishes the last bits of his.
He chews.
And chews.
And chews some more.
When he swallows, he slowly inches the basket toward you, indicating approval for your request.
You take the bread.
You bite it.
"Thank you," You state complacently, mouth full.
Levi stays still. Thinking. The knife is back in his hand, twirling and twitching with intent.
You're probably a psychopath. You're evidently on your last legs, living in a haze like everyone else in this miserable place. You can barely stand. You're bleeding out and letting yourself do so, like some rabid animal unable to lick its wounds clean. There is no fight to you, no fear. You're just some... hollow husk. Like the dead skin of a roach.
He now understands he cannot do anything to you because you just won't care.
He has what he needs, anyway. He'll leave you with the mercy of a piece of bread, but that's it.
That's it.
He grabs another loaf of bread without asking and bites. He gnaws on the piece until it's mush, and he consumes it, staring up at you with a dare to take what he now owns away.
You don't attack him.
You don't do anything.
But that can't mean you're useless, can it?
"You said you could get me another basket," Levi demands. If you're stupid enough to talk with a murderer like him, surely he can make you get him the things he won't have to fight for himself. Maybe you'll die that way, too. But something nips at the back of his head, nagging him to keep you around for just a little bit longer than he should ever consider. Kenny's voice is hissing derogatory terms in his head for thinking of keeping you around him, but Levi doesn't want to listen to that right now.
You can take the pain.
He's not... He'll take what he can get. And when you reveal where you get these hordes of food an adult wouldn't be caught dead with here, he'll discard you.
You nod. "I can. You're hungry. So I can get you another basket."
Levi narrows his eyes. "So go get it," He orders, gesturing at you with the knife.
Finally, finally, he gets a hint of emotion from you.
Your eyes squint, and he hates that you're taller than him because it makes him feel like you're looking down on him.
"Ask nicely," You reiterate. "I told you how."
Levi's not going to do that. He pokes your abdomen with the steel, aggressively. "Go. Get it."
You abruptly smack his hand and the knife goes flying.
The two of you are deathly still.
The one time he gauges the strength of a person and his knife is gone. One second, Kenny warns in his ear. It takes one second for the tables to change.
"Ask nicely," You demand.
Levi can just leave with the basket. You are in no position to make demands. He can take you in a fight, knife or not. In fact, he should beat you within an inch of your life for the stunt you just pulled.
But as he savors the aftertaste of bread that you have given him with no insulting words or aggressive solicitations, he realizes just how weirdly lucky he has gotten. In his entire life, the only person to give him food just like that is Kenny.
You aren't special.
But you also aren't unkind.
"...Find me another basket," Levi pauses, taking you in at a new light, assessing you further, and creating a new vision of you in his head. "Please." The word sounds foreign.
When he's rewarded with a fresh basket from across where they once were hours later, the two of you savor the winnings in heavy silence.
The knife is back in his hand and he, for once, recognizes that he didn't need to beat someone into a pulp to get what he needed. You did all the work for him and kept your word.
Either with that absurdity of asking nicely or by combat, you got what he asked for. Frankly, that's all that matters.
One of the baskets is empty, now. There aren't even crumbs. The other is stone-cold, but there is an assortment of over-ripened fruits that are not as moldy as Levi usually gets them. Ultimately, rather than kill you and leave you to die as he so intended to, he let you talk with him. And he gets to eat another day after this one with the first full stomach he's had in months.
"You smell like shit," He insults when the silence becomes uncomfortable. You're sitting next to him with that horrid stench coming off of you.
You say nothing.
So he takes you to where he cleans himself, a place that Kenny has told him to fight to keep, as it's his now.
It's on the edge of a desolate ground, where skeletons used to liter about. He had to clean it up on his own and wash the salvageable clothes, earning tons. An aftermath of a deadly plague will do that to a place like this.
His heart wants to ache when Kenny isn't sitting at the table smoking like he expects him to when he walks in, but he viciously stamps that down.
"Go wash," He throws a rag to your face that you carefully move to hold properly. "...I'll get a shirt." He leads you to a room and slides the smallest soap bar he's got. He'll soon run out. He'll have to get another. Somehow.
He leaves you there.
When he comes back with a worn, white shirt, you're naked, trembling, drenched in water, and looking like a person that's had worse days. You look significantly better. There's blood and all sorts of bodily fluids on the ground, though. "Clean this up after you change," He grumbles, handing you the shirt indifferently.
You grab it from him. "Okay. Thank you," You express with sincerity that Levi has no idea what to do with.
He replies with a grunt and walks to the kitchen to look at the available contents to ration for the next few days between two people.
When you come back in, you're holding the soap he thought you'd use all the way. "For next time," You tell him.
You sit in Kenny's chair.
Levi wonders if you've lived in the Underground all your life.
"...What's your name?" You ask him as he takes his treasured item.
He's kept it from you long enough, he supposes. "Levi," He states blandly.
You state your own.
What a hideous name. "...Go clean," He orders, tossing you a shitty, broken mop.
You catch it and stare at him.
Begrudgingly, he adds, "Please."
You clean.
[. . .]
Later that evening, while you slumber, Levi is awake.
He sits on Kenny's chair, evaluating his encounters for the day.
He still can't trust you.
He's only being courteous because you kept your word.
Nothing more.
Naive kid, he swears he hears Kenny accuse him of.
Levi turns slowly to the door to check if he'll bust in like he always does.
But nothing happens.
He slumps in his chair.
He shouldn't have expected much.
Though it's for the best, he thinks. If Kenny were here, he'd kill you. Or make Levi kill you. Or kick you out. He's not sure which option the damned adult would take. All he knows for sure is that one of them would happen and Levi would obey because that's what Kenny thinks is best. And he's probably right. Levi doesn't know why he's keeping you around. It's not like you're useful anymore. He knows where to get food from until it runs out.
But Levi is a little tired.
And he's a little lonely.
It's not a good idea. Far from it, to let you rest here. You could shank him in the throat at any moment, for all he knows.
Still. You helped him.
The least Levi could do after he almost took your finger and stole your goods, in his opinion, is let you stay.
Just for a day.
He closes his eyes.
Just one.
[. . .]
You end up staying with him longer than he liked.
Now twenty-four years old, Levi has to strain his neck to get a proper look at you. You're taller than Furlan who is a head or so loftier than him, and because of that, you have been nicknamed Super Sister by Isabel. Over the years, Levi had secretly hoped that he'd catch up to your height. He has not, at all, lucked out in that department.
"Did Isabel take my gun...?" You murmur as you endeavor to search for the missing item he holds in his hands. He's polished the gun for you because lately, you've been complaining about how dull it's looked.
He thought it'd be nice of him to do.
Since you've always insisted he needed to be. Tch.
"I have it," He announces, grabbing your attention.
The smile you send him is unreasonably sweet when you circle the table to walk to him.
It's a smile he didn't have the luxury of seeing until six years after he met you, and that's only because he had finally said thank you when you'd cleaned his room while he was away for a heist. You're the sole person who knows how to do so the way he likes it. You're not as uptight as he is, so he appreciates the effort you put in when it comes to his tastes in cleanliness.
It's not perfect every time you do it. But it's enough.
You grab hold of the handle and raise the gun to admire it. "This is better than how I do it," You praise, and internally, he preens.
Outwardly, he scoffs. "Your handling skills are shit. You don't use the sandpaper."
"There's sandpaper?" You inquire, soft-spoken as always.
It's a trait he's grown to like. You're not vexingly loud.
"I gave it to you months ago," He grumbles. You're not an idiot, either. However, sometimes he's reconsidered. Usually, it's when Furlan suggests something of a strategy and you go off without a word to do it yourself. When you come back with the goods, Levi reminds you of how stupid you are for impulsively acting without a basis. Since you're a silent smartass, the most you do is kick his leg in for scolding you when he's not looking.
The blows you exchange are harsh.
The meanings behind them are... less so.
Neither of you know how to show affection. You do, sometimes, when you pat his head like he's some little kid. Or hug him briefly when he finds that one soap you like. But other than that? Not much else.
Much to Levi's disappointment.
He avoids touch like the plague. Except for Isabel and Furlan. He tolerates their gestures.
You? He... likes yours. Maybe because you share a burden, together. Furlan and Isabel look up to both of you.
It's different when it comes to you.
Or probably because you're respectful and he's known you the longest.
Who the hell knows at this point? Certainly not Levi. Entertaining those thoughts results in unneeded stresses his brain can't process right without something going wrong in his body.
Your unoccupied hand is on his head, fluffing his hair and bringing him out of his thoughts. "Thank you, Levi. I'll make sure to use the sandpaper, next time," You promise and you let go of his head too soon for his liking.
He doesn't act on his impulse to pull your hand back. Instead, he smacks it away when it hovers. "Whatever. Are you done getting ready? We have shit to do."
You stick the gun into your trusted holster and run a thumb under the leather holding up the ODM gear. You nod silently and he harrumphs, content that your habit of being precise with time hasn't dwindled.
He turns to the door, hearing you follow.
Neither of you knows that's the last time you leave that place.