A/N: This was actually supposed to be a pretty short one-shot but it kind of got out of hand and kept going on and on oops. Anyway, this is probably the only fanfic I would ever write that is actually set in their universe because I don't really kill people whom my favourite characters care about very well. If I ever write more set in canon-verse, I assure you that the battle is over and that everyone is alive and well and (probably) happy. But without further ado, please enjoy (the disclaimer and the fic)

Disclaimer: I don't own SnK

The war against the Titans was finally over. It was a long and hard-fought battle; unlike Armin's books which told of glorious victories in sunrise, or a final stand in front of the city's capital, theirs was a long, slow-building one, finally climaxing towards the end then ending with not so much as a victorious cry, but rather a weary sigh of relief.

The Survey Corps had been in the forefront of battle, and through sheer skill and luck, had managed to survive the onslaught of Titans with numerous injuries but no deaths. It was more than could be said of the other troops, who either lay dead on the battlegrounds, trampled, or slumped over the bodies of their friends and allies, crying over their losses. In the aftermath of the fight, Captain Levi had rallied his company, and sent them over to base camps springing up all over the place to get their wounds treated and to have a good rest. He himself betrayed no signs of exhaustion or pain, though his clothes and gear showed extensive suffering and a layer of dust and grime had worked itself into his skin.

"I feel like death," Eren complained, lying on his bed, his skin still a pale ashen grey. "I need to get up and run, or do something,"

"Then you won't only feel like death, but you'll be in it too," Annie rolled her eyes, shifting uncomfortably on her own bed. "Shut it and let the rest of us sleep."

Mikasa and Armin sat by the edge of Eren's bed, with uncomfortable smiles hanging off their lips. They'd recovered from their own injuries a week before, and had vacated the sickbeds to allow for the never-ending stream of patients to take them up instead. Now, they were secured in one of the decrepit castles at the edge of the city, with the rest of the Survey Corps. They made a trip down to the medical centre every day; Mikasa out of concern for Eren more than anybody else, and Armin with the knowledge that if he didn't hold Mikasa back and defuse the situation, Eren could very well end up with fresh injuries with his constant attempts to get out of the bed.

Eren, Ymir, Annie, Reiner and Bertholdt were cooped up in the same room in the centre; the other soldiers had plainly refused to be warded in the same room as them, telling the nurses that they'd rather die than sleep with Titans. As far as Mikasa was concerned (and Annie as well; that was the first thing they'd ever agreed on) they could go ahead and die, but instead the five of them got a whole room to themselves which under normal circumstances would have housed ten soldiers instead.

The long periods of transformation had taken a toll on their bodies, and they had to be cut out of their Titan bodies after the battle. Though their physical bodies had managed to recover quickly enough, the doctors agreed that it would be better for them to rest up first before leaving. They'd complained, of course; they'd wanted to go back to the tower where the rest of their friends stayed, wanted to free up the room for more people to have their injuries tended to. But when Hanji had dropped by with Erwin and Levi, the former two about to leave for the city to start fixing up the mess, she had prescribed bed rest to each and every one of them as well, and thus were ordered not to leave their beds until they were deemed healthy enough. Levi had been unnaturally quiet throughout this exchange, but he had promised a beating to anyone who dared to go against her orders—Hanji had laughed it off, translating his words as concern for his troops, but no one really wanted to test that theory out.

"So apart from wanting to run around and destroying what's left of the city, how do you feel?" Armin asked. "I could bring you a couple of books to read if you want..."

"Armin, you volunteer your books every week and no one has expressed an interest in them yet; when are you going to give up?" Bertholdt mumbled from his bed, shifting a glass of water from hand to hand and occasionally taking a sip from it.

"You never know," Armin said, turning to grin at him. "How do you feel, anyway? The nurse told us you could be discharged tomorrow,"

"Yeah, but I think I'm going to stick around a bit more," he shifted uncomfortably, casting a surreptitious glance towards Annie. "You know, to make sure I'm really fine and all that. It's not like there's a pressing horde waiting to take this bed,"

"Yeah, you want to make sure you're all better before leaving this room," Reiner said, a laugh hidden in his voice.

"Where's Captain Levi, anyway?" Connie broke in, lounging on one of the empty beds next to Ymir who was sulking because Historia was stuck in the inner walls trying to sort everything out with Erwin's help, and she wasn't allowed to tag along. "Even if he doesn't really care, isn't it polite to just come by for a few minutes, at least?"

"No one has seen him at all ever since Erwin and Hanji left," Sasha reported, munching on a piece of dry toast that she had stolen from one of the food carts. "I bet he's helping out with the repairs,"

"Nah, I'll bet he's just slacking around and thinking of things to punish us for,"

"No, he's probably cleaning up the castle,"

They laughed, forgetting for a while the horror which still waited to be cleaned up outside.

Later that night, Mikasa found herself walking in a different part of the castle, fingers trailing along the grey stone in the section which was uninhabited by anyone except for one person. She raised her hand to knock on the door to what she had a dim memory of what was his room—then lowered her hand again. She didn't even know what she was doing here—she'd slipped away from everyone else right after dinner before anyone could ask her about her plans, and then found herself walking hurriedly to this past of the castle. She stared at the door for a while more, hoping for an answer to form through the grainy wood, before starting to turn away. Then she turned back, and before she could think some more, knocked resolutely on the wood, once, twice. Since she was here already, she might as well try to get a training session out of him, she reasoned, standing stock still in front of the door.

The result was more than a little anti-climatic; there was no answer to the door at all. She knocked again, a little harder this time. She was quite sure that this was his room; she remembered the little spot of blood on the doorknob where he had knocked some soldier into it for not cleaning up the place properly. Although—she leaned in closer to check that the blood was still there—he should have cleaned it up by now. Getting a little alarmed, she tried the door, and finding it unlocked, opened it and walked straight into the room.

The sour smell of infection hit her in the face as the door swung open. The room was in disarray; there were used and unused bandages strewn across the floor, and crusted blood on several knives littered on the bedside table. At the foot of the bed there was a mess of the Survey Corps uniform and gear, and on the same bed Levi was strewn messily across it.

She approached cautiously, fighting the urge the run and gag. There were large wounds over his torso, arms and legs; several were inflamed, but most of them were healing fine on their own. Looking at the messy sheets, she could guess what he had done; instead of going to the medical centre for treatment like a normal person would, he had chosen to return to his room and cut his wounds open to bleed the infection out—but clearly had passed out before he could finish his job.

She stood by his bed for a while, assessing the situation quickly. There probably wasn't any use running for help; all the doctors and nurses available were helping out at the medical centre, and it would be near impossible to get one of them here immediately, even if they knew that the patient would be Captain Levi, Humanity's Strongest Soldier. Actually, she thought sardonically, once they knew that he would be the patient, it was more likely that they would all refuse to come. The rest of the soldiers that had been discharged and were staying at the castle had even less medical knowledge than she did—at least she had been raised in a doctor's home, and had been in charge of taking care of Eren's scrapes and cuts since they were children.

With her decision in mind, she started to pull the sheets off him, which he had somehow managed to get tangled up into. She ran a quick glance down his legs—she wasn't going to look there if she could help it—and was relieved when she found that the wounds on his legs, while they looked bad and were going to scar over because of the lack of professional help, were clean. She covered him up then, and started to focus on the angry red lines on his torso and arms.

Cleaning all of his wounds took several hours; she had to reopen quite a few of them and allow the pus to drain out on some bandages she had gathered, then had checked the rest of them meticulously to make sure she didn't leave any out. Dimly, at the back of her mind, she noted that she still had to check his legs—the superficial glance she'd spared them wouldn't sufficed—but she pushed that thought to the back of her mind.

When she was finally done, she rummaged around his cupboards for extra sheets and a washcloth. Surely languishing in his own perspiration and bodily fluids couldn't be good for getting the fever out of his system. It might have felt strange, poking around his personal items, but he didn't seem to have many of those. The sparse furnishings of the room were barely used—except for a rather large collection of books and papers, the cupboards only held a stack of neatly folded white cravats, uniforms, sheets, towels, a few pieces of civilian clothes and buckets of cleaning supplies.

She pulled out the sheets and changed them around him, a neat trick she had picked up from her foster mother. She filled an empty bucket with water from his washroom and laid a cool towel on his forehead before allowing herself to sit back. Though he was running a high temperature, she was almost certain that he wouldn't be dying in the near future.

The moon was high in the inky darkness of the night, and her back was sore from the many hours she'd spent hunched over Levi. She allowed herself to sink into the chair at the table, and then, slumped over the table, fell asleep. She knew she was going to regret this decision tomorrow, but she was tired, and not even her usual discipline could force her to get up and change her position.

She woke up the next morning disoriented by the different layout of the room, as well as the sour smell of infection. She groaned slightly; she'd forgotten to clear everything up the night before.

"Good job, Ackerman," she murmured to herself, pushing herself up off the chair and replacing the now too-warm towel on Levi's head. She spent the rest of the morning cleaning up the room, folding and stacking all the unused bandages together and throwing the used ones out, and taking his old sheets down to the laundry room.

When she went down to the mess hall for lunch, only Sasha was still there, taking another bowl of soup.

"Everyone missed you at breakfast today," Sasha said, waving cheerfully at the other girl and beckoning her to sit. "They want to go down to see the others later, at two. You're coming with us, right?"

"Sure," Mikasa said automatically. She tried not to think of Levi in his too-sterile room (because if she'd seen him naked, and cut his wounds open and watched them bleed, then surely she deserved to think of him without that stupid honorific) and his fever. "I can't stay long, though; I've got... stuff to do," she added reluctantly.

Sasha looked at her, surprised, but just nodded anyway. She wasn't one to pry; that was what Mikasa liked the most about her friend.

Through the heat coursing through his flesh and the cold buffeting him from the outside, Levi could hear the deafening silence for the longest time. Before he lost consciousness, he thought about how fucking stupid it was that he had thought cutting himself open and draining his wounds was the best idea, that giving up the beds to the other (less competent) soldiers because he could tough it out was actually a viable solution. Then he realised, right before he let go of this reality, that in spite of all that had happened and all that he had lost, he still wanted to go outside the walls again, one last time—that he still wanted to live. Fuck.

It was such a long time later—hours, days, weeks? He didn't know—when he felt a detached pain running along his body. He didn't let it bother him, instead lying there passively watching the dull red sun pass through his closed eyelids. He'd tried to open them before, but realised that in spite of his sudden epiphany that he wanted to live, he hadn't quite the motivation to actually move just yet.

He must have fallen asleep sometime while tracking the sun through his eyelids, because the next thing he knew there was someone bustling about in his room and making a fucking lot of noise. A pounding slowly started in his head, slowly building up a steady drum beat that was going to kill him if his wounds didn't already do the job. Whoever it was—definitely a she, though it wasn't Hanji—kept muttering to themselves and banging things around. It was enough motivation for him to pry one eye open, and then the other, and wait for the blurry shapes in front of him to stop waving around and stabilise.

"What are you doing here, Ackerman?"

She froze by the desk, where she had been irritably shoving aside some of his reports on Eren (she was probably pissed off because of those—he vaguely remembered some of the more colourful terms he had used), then slowly stood and crossed over to him. "I came by to see if I could get some additional training; no one has seen you around at all the past few days so I thought I'd come straight here. Some of your wounds were inflamed, so I cleaned them. You were having a fever," she explained, trailing off into silence, feeling guilty for some reason she couldn't quite place her finger on. Silence. Then, "You know, you weren't supposed to be lying here half dead. You were supposed to be busy cleaning up the damn tower, or beating up some other poor innocent guy!"

He looked passively amused. "Sorry for disappointing you."

"Why didn't you just go down to the hospital to get fixed up?" She demanded, getting angry now that she was sure he would be fine. "Is your pride worth too much to you to allow others to see that the great Captain Levi can get banged up a little?"

"There isn't enough space in the hospital," he said dismissively. "You should know that."

"Oh, so you'd force the rest of us to the hospital but you wouldn't do the same for yourself? You're such a hypocrite," she shouted. "And you could have stayed in Eren's room; they have empty beds, as I'm sure you would have heard before cutting yourself open and passing out on the sheets."

"If you're done shouting at me for no discernible reason, Ackerman, I'm tired and have a headache." He finally said, staring at her with an unreadable expression.

Mikasa stood there, fuming and glaring at him, before she whirled around and slammed the door behind her. "Insufferable little asshole," she muttered under her breath as she swept away down the corridor. "See if I come back tomorrow,"

She was back there the next day, drawn there by that damn inescapable and unreasonable guilt that kept gnawing at her, as well as a morbid curiosity. She knocked on the door quietly, before letting herself in with a tray of soup and some bread which she had managed to save from Sasha.

Levi was still in bed, his blanket hanging off him and pillow thrown on the floor.

"What did you do?" She demanded, picking up his pillow and almost flinging it at his face, before rethinking it and shoving it roughly under his head.

"It was hot," he said, sounding annoyed. "And then it was cold. What the fuck kind of temperature do you call this?"

"The weather's fine," she said dismissively. "It's just your fever. And sit up; I brought you some food so you don't negate all my hard work and die on me anyway,"

"Just leave it on the table. I'll eat it later," he told her, closing his eyes.

She glared at him for a while, putting the tray down on his bedside table harshly, before a thought struck her. "You can barely even move your own pillow; how are you going to sit up and feed yourself?"

"I'll figure it out. Get out of my room."

She muttered a few choice obscenities in his direction (ironically, those obscenities were the very same ones that she had picked up from him), before pulling him up roughly and sitting him against his headboard.

"Fuck, Ackerman," he muttered, hands fluttering feebly by his side before they fell limply back down on the mattress.

"Sorry," she said, unrepentantly. "Maybe if you started acting a little more gratefully I'll pay more attention to your wounds,"

She sat at the edge of his bed, picked up the bowl of soup and started shoving spoonfuls of the soup into his mouth, alternating every spoonful of soup with a bit of shredded bread. After all the food was gone she left him sitting up, and took the bucket of water by the bed along with the washcloth and rinsed them both out, filling up the bucket with fresh water. When she came back out, Levi's head was resting against the headboard, eyes shut.

Unsure if he was awake, she approached with a lighter step, and gently tugged him back down to lie on the bed. Just as she was about to leave with the empty tray, he stopped her.

"Thank you for saving me, Ackerman,"

She paused in the doorway. "Why did you do it?"

There was no answer. He must have fallen asleep. She shut the door softly behind her as she left, her steps leaving no sound behind her.

Over the next few days she kept returning to his room, feeding him "fucking watery soup, what are the bloody cooks even doing?" and occasionally talking to him, rather than with him. He wasn't very talkative unless he was making snide remarks, and even those were few and far between, which surprised her. The Captain she was helping seemed like a dim echo of the one on the battlefield, and it unsettled her deeply.

On the fifth day since his regaining consciousness, she opened the door to his room to find the room sparkling (she had adamantly refused to clean his room for him; she'd thought the room was clean enough) and his uniform and gear missing from the floor. Then his bathroom door opened, and he stepped out, head held high and body stiffly held erect.

"Are you going to train?" She demanded, setting the food down on the table.

He turned cool eyes on her, his expression unreadable.

"You're still in pain," she told him. "You can't even stand comfortably. How do you expect yourself to go out there and train?"

"I do it because I have to,"

She looked at him, standing there stiffly in the doorway of his bathroom. "It's difficult being Humanity's Strongest, isn't it?" She asked softly. "At least don't overexert yourself. And eat something before you go," she muttered, shoving the bowl of soup and pieces of shredded bread over to him.

He gave her a short glance, expression almost curious. "Why, I didn't know you cared, Ackerman,"

"I don't." She told him shortly, dumping the food down on his recently meticulously cleared desk, then making herself comfortable on the chair and hitching her legs up on his bed, mussing his perfect corners and dirtying his pristine white sheets, earning a hiss from him. "But you're not leaving here until you finish the food,"

He glared at her. "Get your thrice-damned legs off my bed, Ackerman,"

"These thrice-damned legs have saved your sorry little ass on the battlefield more times than I could count, Corporal," she told him coolly, not bothering to remove her limbs from his bed.

"It works both ways, Ackerman," he returned, but picking up the bowl of soup and starting to drink it. "Why the fuck did you shred my bread anyway? How am I supposed to eat this?"

"Better your bread than your face," she smiled sweetly at him, the expression almost sinister on her face.

He rolled her eyes at her, but finished his soup quickly and placed the rest of the meal back onto the table. "I'm not eating that bread." He told her with finality. "Now get the hell off my bed and out of my room."

She swung her legs off his bed with practiced ease, picking up the tray as she went. "Any chance of some extra training for me, Corporal? For all that I've been doing the past few days, I think I deserve it,"

"You can wait until I'm done recovering," he told her firmly, the door held open for her by way of a pointed heel.

"I want to train, too," she insisted. "If you're well enough to be training at all, then you're well enough to be training with me,"

For all the difference in their ranks and his insistence that his subordinates all adhered strictly to it, she still refused to bow down to him and do whatever he said. There was respect—of course there was; no one could fight with him on a battlefield and not gain any for him. But there wasn't blind idolization, nor was there subservience simply because he was her superior. And he liked it. There weren't a lot of people he could talk to this openly—Erwin and Hanji completed the list of two, and no one else had survived the Titans.

"I'll meet you in the courtyard," he gave in.

"Don't start without me," she warned, walking down the hallway to the kitchens. "I'll be there in five minutes."

Training with Levi again was as easy as the way he had somehow worked himself into her daily routine without lifting a finger. Before the final battle, he and Mikasa had trained together on a daily basis, following Erwin's acknowledgement of them as their two best fighters, and their recognition of the way they worked so seamlessly together. Since their fighting style was so similar (aggressive, yet smart and cunning, as Armin put it) they knew what the other was doing split seconds before it was done; no signals were needed as they cut down Titan after Titan on the training grounds. On the day of the actual war itself, chaos ensued, and they'd lost track of each other shortly after, then opted to help out the rest of the soldiers as best as they could instead of stumbling around looking for each other. Still, in spite of their synchronisation in training, she was still slightly surprised at the ease in which they fell into the same routine.

She forced him to take it easy, choosing the easier courses and minimizing the physical exertion, instead opting for training routines which relied more on strategy and planning. He picked up on what she was doing almost immediately, causing him to scowl at her and a command to stop treating him like an invalid.

"I'm going to make sure you become one if you don't stop whining," she told him in what she thought was a reasonable tone. "Then I'm going to send you down to the medical centre so I don't have to keep running between Eren and you,"

He glared at her then, fiercely, muttering several explicit threats in her general direction. He didn't complain about the choice of training for the rest of the session.

In spite of her efforts to minimize physical exertion on the training grounds, his condition worsened, causing her to keep up a rambling, nagging scolding while replacing cool towels on his head and changing his sweaty sheets every so often.

"Ackerman, if you're going to keep going on about it, then at least drink some water. Your voice is getting hoarse, and it sounds like shit," he finally said.

"Well, it's true," she said, glaring at him then getting up from the chair by his bed to pour herself a glass of water.

"Don't drink from my cup—tch," his admonition came too late, as she took a large gulp of water. "Make sure you wash it."

"If you hadn't insisted on going out to train while you still had a fever, then you wouldn't be in this state now," she finished, talking on right over him.

"If I wasn't aware of it this morning when I woke up with a headache, I assure you that I'm acutely aware of it after hearing this phrased in 74 different ways."

"Well, there's isn't exactly anything else to do here, isn't it? And since you're basically an invalid, I can't exactly leave you alone for more than a few hours." She'd gone in to visit Eren that morning before stopping by Levi's room, saving her from having to choose between taking care of Levi the Invalid, and going down to see Eren.

"I have books in the cupboard," he told her. "You can read those."

She looked at him, assessing whether he was serious about it, before getting up to rummage around the cupboard. Unsurprisingly, there was a good selection of books about Titans; several books were notes taken by him about Titans and numerous fighting styles, with a number of surprisingly competent sketches. Most of his books, though, were works of fiction; his collection ranged from dystopian societies to the modern one, from those set even before the Titans came to those that started in the distant future with mankind reigning supreme. She picked out a moderately heavy tome, its cover worn and pages yellow and soft, and started reading.

There was silence in the room for a few minutes as she started to get engrossed in it, before she heard Levi shift in his bed.

"Don't be selfish, brat. Read it out loud," he commanded, somehow retaining his superior tone as he lay helpless before her. She sighed loudly, but turned back to the first page, starting the story all over again in a steady voice.

Over the past few days Levi gradually began to improve. He'd tried to start training again, but a look from Mikasa and a threat to start nagging at him again put a swift stop to his actions.

"If I'd known it was so easy to stop you, I'd have nagged you about Eren ages ago," she'd muttered.

"I wasn't wounded ages ago," he reminded her. "And he needed the discipline anyway. He was a fucking noisy brat with too much testosterone with too little brains. Always wanting to rush into everything without stopping to think."

She gave him a brief glare, but didn't rebut it, choosing instead to crack open another book and settle herself comfortably in her chair next to a pitcher of water. They'd covered quite a few books by now; he'd confessed that in spite of having such a large collection of fiction books, he'd barely read them at all. He bought them at street vendors as and when they caught his eye (many of them were hurried purchases on the tail-end of a mission), but hadn't had the time to properly peruse them. Most of his spare time was spent researching more on the various fighting techniques, and the Titans' anatomy. It turned out that he'd read the books on the Titans so many times that he could recite them all by heart, word for word with expletives thrown in on the side. She'd been suitably impressed, he'd been suitably smug, and she'd picked out another book and started to read it out loud.

By the week's end, he was mostly recovered, and discovered that he was well enough to walk around without any help when Mikasa was down at the medical centre in the mornings. She'd told him that the Titan shifters would be able to be discharged in two weeks or so, and that they were doing fine. He hadn't actually asked, but she'd volunteered the information when he'd presented her with a list of people who had died fighting with him on the battlefield. It was long, and the writing was small, but their lives hadn't been.

But every time she came in, with yet more inedible soup and bread (why didn't she bring him anything else, like rice or some meat?) he didn't allow it to show. He continued lounging in his bed whenever she came in, tolerating the fucking towel drip drip dripping its water off his forehead and soaking his sheets. It wasn't that he didn't want her to know; every day he made the conscious decision to get up and start walking around when she came in—but for some inexplicable reason, he found himself lying there on the bed like a fucking useless idiot until she got up and left for the day.

On the Monday after he found himself able to move around again, and fifteen chapters into Jane Eyre, Mikasa came in with soup, bread, and the news that Hanji and Erwin and Historia were all coming back the next day. "We just found out today," she said, her eyes bright. "Apparently they managed to get everything under control pretty quickly, no doubt thanks to the fact that the Titans didn't break into the inner walls. They're still pretty busy, actually, Erwin and Historia—still have loads to do—but they decided to come down for a short reprieve,"

"Good," Levi grunted, swinging himself off the bed and standing. "I'd like to know what's going on in there,"

"Are you sure you should be standing up again?" She asked, putting the food down and her hands on her hips.

"I'm fine," he said firmly. "You yourself said that my fever was gone yesterday,"

"Are you going to train?"

"No; if Erwin's coming back then I'll have to get reports from the rest of the soldiers,"

"Okay," she finally said, after thinking it over. "But you have to finish your food, first,"

"I don't need your permission, Ackerman," he said, sitting down at his table and pulling the tray towards him.

Erwin and Hanji broke into Levi's room at the crack of dawn, causing him to throw several knives in their direction, sticking them into the wall inches away from their necks.

"You're out of touch, Levi," Hanji teased, pulling a knife out of the wall, then suddenly leaning in closer to him. "Are you injured?"

"I was," he scowled. "But I'm fine now. Erwin—,"

"You're injured!" Hanji squawked next to him, cutting off his words. "Why didn't you go to the medical centre?"

"I'm fine. Shut up." He glared at her. "Erwin, the reports are on my table."

"That's fine," Erwin said, looking slightly amused as he crossed the room to the table, glancing through it by the light bleeding in from the hallways. "Hanji insisted on coming over to let you know we were here. We didn't expect you to be in bed still,"

"I wouldn't have thought you'd let a subordinate like Shitty Glasses convince you to do things you didn't want to do," Levi glared at Hanji, who was peering at the mending gashes on his arms like he was some sort of bloody science experiment.

"I guess the end of the war has made us all a little more comfortable," Erwin smiled slightly. "Thank you for the reports,"

"Mm." Levi grunted from his position on the bed, before moving to get up.

"Stay in bed until you're fully recovered," Erwin told him, moving toward the door. "You look like you need it,"

"I'm fine."

"Stay in bed. And that's a direct order, Levi," Erwin said, pausing in the doorway. "I have to go down to check on a few things, but I'll return later. And you'd better not have moved,"

"Don't worry," Hanji said cheerfully. "I'll stay here to make sure he stays exactly where he is!"

"Fuck you, shitty glasses," Levi muttered sourly from his bed as they watched Erwin walk away. "I'm perfectly capable of moving around. How do you think I got those reports?"

"Nevertheless," Hanji said, unperturbed. "Erwin's order is an order to be obeyed. Do you want to hear about what's going on in the inner walls?"

Erwin and Hanji spent the rest of the day in Levi's room, updating him on the political affairs within the inner walls (Erwin) and babbling on about the latest science experiments and what was to be done (Hanji). They brought food to his room (soup again—what the fuck was going on with perfectly rational people and shitty soup?) but thankfully didn't try to feed him, instead allowing him to balance the tray on the sheets and drink it like a civilised person.

In the evening, they both left, claiming to need sleep.

"We'll come see you again tomorrow, Shorty," Hanji called behind her as she left, yawning behind Erwin. "Stay in bed!"

When the door shut behind them, Levi let himself lie down on the bed, relaxing into the soft mattress. He was tired from his lack of exercise, and he knew his muscles had weakened over the past few weeks. Just as he was contemplating reaching over for Jane Eyre to pick up where Mikasa had left off the previous time, the door opened quietly.

"What are you doing here, Ackerman?" His voice betrayed none of the surprise which his slightly increased pulse gave him.

"To finish Jane Eyre," she told him, shutting the door behind her with a candle in her hand. "You don't mind, do you?"

"No." He said shortly. Then, "Rochester was just saved from getting roasted alive,"

She smiled slightly, then settled herself down in the chair with her usual pitcher of water, and picked up the book and started reading. Her voice continued on steady into the following hours, tone matching the text exactly and showing no signs of faltering. Levi could feel his eyelids slowly weighing down, further and further, and he couldn't do anything to stop them from shutting in the end. He let himself fall asleep to the roll and lilt of Mikasa's voice, still going on far into the night, not noticing when she finally stopped, voice hoarse, and pulled the comforter up to his chin to cover him before leaving the room with a soft click of the door.