She was soft.
This, he remembers.
He could drag his finger along the length of her body, and the supple cream would indent underneath the pressure of his thumbpad. She would writhe and churn beneath him, his hands swallowing up the nectar of her skin; molding, twisting, breathing. She was the affected; he, the affecter.
This, he remembers.
Mikasa's fingers are cold and hard when they touch his shoulder.
He tilts his chin towards her.
"Ackerman," Levi murmurs.
"What are you doing on the wall so late?" Her voice is muffled from behind a fading crimson scarf.
He gestures towards the setting sun.
She stands to his right, and he rests on the ground, legs outstretched. He can feel the coolness of the wall bite into his clothes, as well as his palms which prop him up.
"I wanted to apologize." Muffled, muffled, muffled. What would her voice sound like, clear, unafraid; whispered tendrils warm against his earlobe?
She is still standing.
Levi says nothing, his eyes fixated on the dying sun. His shoulders relax a little. The sun is a star. He read that somewhere, in a textbook. Perhaps one of the textbooks they had burned long ago.
The star laid molten gold so gently upon its murderers, the sloping hills greedy with their thirst for liquid lava. The last pleading rays outstretched to greet the land before her, kissing the land with firelight before the land itself devoured the last of the remaining star.
This was how Petra was taken, he decides. Shining, brilliant, liquid-soaked. A fighting star consumed by fate.
He glances up at Mikasa just as the tendrils of starlight glitter off her face to be replaced by shadow. He notices she carries ice wrapped in plastic. Mikasa kneels to where his extended legs are, examining his swollen ankle. He wants to flinch against her gentle, probing touch, but he doesn't move.
"Do you think it will get better?" she asks, after a few moments of silence. He glances back at her twilight drenched skin. She looks like she is made of marble.
He winces after a particularly hard poke. "Not if you keep prodding it like that, Ackerman."
Mikasa's left eyebrow twitches. She plops the bag of ice a little too hard against his bruised ankle, eliciting a soft hiss of anger. "No," she continues. "I wasn't talking about that."
She finally looks at him.
"No," Levi says quietly, in response to her question. The tea in his hand is cold, the scotch mixed in is bitter, the sun has fallen, and Petra is dead. "No, I don't think it will get better."
Mikasa's expression falters for a moment, crumbles beneath her bangs, before she molds back into stone and doesn't spare him another glance. She presses the ice pack a little too hard against the swell of his skin.
Levi winces under the pressure. "That's not the answer you want from me, is it?"
Moments pass before Levi questions whether she will answer at all.
"I don't know what I want anymore." She says it so softly that the words greet his ear the very moment they leave, a wave that stretches and recoils, something that so quickly becomes nothing. He notices the way her shaken voice gives away what her stony expression does not.
"Were you going to marry her?"
Levi's lips quirk upward in an involuntary response. "I don't think that's an appropriate question to ask your Heichou." The bitterness of the alcohol has translated into a sharper tongue. He hopes his words constrict her into obedience.
"I saw the way you looked at her."
He hopes wrong.
"Stop, Mikasa. I know you feel indebted to me. It happens with all new recruits. But you don't need to continue this." He reaches for her hand, the one around his ankle. Her skin feels warm, and Levi is half surprised she isn't made of stone. Mikasa grows a little too still before him, as if he is a wild animal and she is careful not to make any sudden movements.
"There is no debt. The ankle will heal. This is teamwork, not a goddamn tit for tat scoreboard.
You don't need to come up here and nurse me back to health," he grabs the ice pack from her clutches, shakes the melting contents for emphasis, "or play psychotherapist because I lost my team." He sharpens the last of his words against the cold air much like sharpened blades against rocks. Maybe I am an animal, Levi thinks.
Mikasa doesn't move. She allows the night wind to twist around them, settle comfortably against their awkward bodies. Levi can't hear her breath. Perhaps he has finally scared her into submission. Perhaps she will allow him to burrow back into his cocoon of unfeeling.
The glint of moonlight against her eyes reveals her sudden rage, but a moment too late.
Mikasa twists before him, clutching his cravat between steel hands. She is a single strained breath from his face, and the coolness of her gaze leaves him grasping for words that do not come.
"You listen here, Heichou," Mikasa whispers. "I didn't climb a wall to have you bitch about how I shouldn't give two shits about my corporal." She continues her glare, an invisible electricity skewering their irises. Her breath fans out against his face like the newborn moonlight, and her arm reaches to squeeze his plumped ankle. This woman, once so scared to touch the animals, now reaches freely for him, emboldened. Levi can't tell if she is the captor or the captive. He doesn't dare look away.
Her hands twist uncomfortably around the swelling. Levi winces a small "tch."
"My name is Mikasa, not tch. Listen, like it or not, you saved my life. You saved my family. I'm not leaving until this debt is paid." She loosens her grip on his ankle, undresses her eyes of their steely gaze. Levi doesn't look away. Not once.
He remembers a young girl, with streaming coarse hair, and eyes painted grey. She couldn't tear her eyes from this boy. The girl with the scarf. The rippling red scarf. She didn't dare leave his side.
"Eren," The name trails slowly from Levi's lips. "This is why you follow him around, isn't it?"
Mikasa's brow quirks in the same irritated fashion as before. She jerks back, eyes flickering to the left, instinctively reaching to cover her face with the mask of a red scarf.
"You feel like you owe him something. Don't you, Mikasa?"
Pink flits across her cheeks, ushering him to continue his interrogation. Her face is quick to heat. Metal reacting to molten. Levi wonders what her warm cheeks would feel like underneath the cup of his palm. Would they brighten further?
She, the affected, indeed.
"I could help you." Mikasa offers, skirting around his questions. "I could sweep, I could clean-"
"Distract." Levi says. Mikasa looks up from behind the cloth covering her lips.
"What?"
"I could use a distraction."
"How?" Mikasa finally mutters.
A flash of Petra's hips undulating up to meet his enters his mind; the same flash gifts him with the crunching of her hipbones against a tree trunk.
Mikasa's small fingers are eased around his inflamed ankle, massaging in tentative circles, awaking him from this reverie. Levi wonders how long her fingers have been dancing against his skin. He looks up. Her eyes are on his. In turn, the noises of his tortured memory stills.
"Mikasa, come here."
The soldier creeps towards her Corporal. He lifts his hand to cup her cheek. Mikasa's body doesn't stir, his palm whispering across the warm flush of her skin.
He waits for it, wondering if it will ever come.
Finally, the flush of pink deepens against his hand, the warmth pouring fourth; just as sweet as he had imagined. Levi's eyes tear from the flush to meet her's.
"I should've known this was the type of distraction you had in mind," Mikasa murmurs, but she is lost. Her head falls forward before she can train it to do anything different.
She is stone.
This, he remembers.
Mikasa doesn't churn or writhe beneath him. Her skin is pulled taut over seasoned muscles. Her skin doesn't mold and twist to meet his probing fingers. It is solid, unyielding, distinct. She pumps and undulates in a calculated fashion.
Levi doesn't know who is the affected or the affecter.
He does know that Mikasa smells nothing like her, and for this he is grateful. But most of all, she helps him forget.
This, he remembers.
Thanks for reading! I originally intended this story only for the eyes of my tumblr followers, but I reread it recently and decided I would love feedback from the ff community. Please review if you have the time :^)