A/N: This was actually the first SnK fic I planned to write, but . . . well. I got sidetracked. In any case, here it is! It's taken me so long to finally post my 20th fic haha.

I don't own SnK.

Crimson Skies

Levi fired his hooks into the Wall, feeling the straps of his harness tauten about his hips as he was pulled forward. He shifted his weight to either side as he made his way up, the familiar tightening and loosening of the straps around his legs falling into a steady rhythm. Once upon a time the gear had been uncomfortable, the way it dug into his flesh just another unpleasant experience to add to his long list of things to bear silently through grit teeth. Now it had become almost a part of him, a somewhat irritating yet inseparable ally that allowed him to move with impeccable control. He sailed through the air in a perfect arc, the monotonous grey slab before him giving way to a great expanse of sky and cotton clouds soaked in red, the rush of air whipping his hair back. He could see exactly where he would land, neatly and effortlessly between the two rails which lined the Wall's edges.

Suddenly his grip on the triggers slackened and he fetched up against the side of the structure, his boots skidding to a stop across the surface.

He had planned to come alone, as he always did. But today, someone was already here.

It was a girl with cropped auburn hair, sitting on the inner edge of the Wall, her legs dangling over the side. Hearing the noise of his gear, she had started and begun to turn around.

He sighed inwardly and hoisted himself over the edge. Clearly recognising him, the girl gasped and leapt to her feet.

"C-Captain Levi!" she stammered. Her voice was sweet, but high-pitched with fright. "I'm sorry – is this illegal? It is, isn't it?"

She wasn't wearing a uniform, but there was something familiar about her face. Levi was sure he had seen her before. Somewhere in a hazy memory, the singing of blades slicing into a titan's nape, not quite deep enough to be fatal . . . fear, frustration and determination flashing in quick succession across a pair of amber eyes . . . someone shouting a name . . .

"Petra," he said, remembering. The rest of it came in the next second. "Petra Ral."

The girl looked as though she wasn't sure whether to be pleased or scared out of her wits at the fact that he remembered her name. Perhaps she thought it was an incriminating sign. She nodded nervously.

"Well, don't piss yourself," he said unconcernedly. "I doubt the brass give a single damn about people climbing the Walls for no reason. It's more likely they hope we'll fall off and die." He walked up to the edge and looked down at the intricate jigsaw of buildings inside Wall Sina, all huddled together and stained red from the setting sun.

He heard Petra's tentative footsteps, and saw a flutter of auburn hair out of the corner of his eye. He glanced sideways at her, a little surprised, but at what he wasn't certain. Perhaps he had expected her to leave. People often did. Soldiers who delivered messages to him would stand there and fidget after doing so, their eyes darting about for a few moments, before bidding him an uncertain goodbye and making a beeline for the nearest person who wasn't him.

But here she was, twisting her small hands in front of her yet regarding him with a little smile, curious and a bit shy. "So . . . what brings you here? Sightseeing?"

The joke sent a jolt of surprise through him. "Something like that," he replied noncommittally.

"The wonders of human architecture?" She motioned at the stunted houses below them, flashing him a mischievous though slightly hesitant grin.

At that, he couldn't help himself. His next words oozed with sarcasm. "It's a miracle that people aren't killing each other to get a glimpse of it. Of course, there is the slight problem of the huge-arse wall blocking it off from the rest of our dwindling population."

Petra giggled, a short, surprised sound, but a genuine one nonetheless. "You know, Captain, you're really . . ." Her forehead dimpled as she tried to find a suitable word. He caught himself looking at her for a little too long, and pulled his gaze away.

"What?"

"Oh, I don't know." She bit her lip. He thought he knew what she was thinking. That he didn't live up to people's expectations, because he was supposed to be some sort of hero who swooped down in times of crisis to save everyone, who could always plant seeds of inspiration and hope in the minds of his men with graceful ease. Like Erwin did. It was what everyone thought, before their hopes were dashed, and often their bodies soon afterward, against hard dirt already sodden with the blood of fallen comrades.

He was used to it, but it still took some degree of effort to dislodge the sharp little pin that stuck inside him as he continued to look up at the flaming sky.

He watched her after that. She was always surrounded by a group of friends, talking and laughing in that endearing way of hers. She fought with them during expeditions, making up with exceptional teamwork what she lacked in skill. When he passed her in hallways she always smiled and greeted him with a jovial "Captain!" and a little bob of her head. He didn't understand how something so commonplace could make him happy, but it did.

On their days off, they continued to meet on Wall Sina. It was never arranged, but he would be standing alone when the clicking and squeaking of her gear would announce her arrival, or he would find her there as he had on that first day, swinging her legs and softly humming a tune. On some occasions she would chatter about this and that, and other times neither of them would speak much, content to quietly watch the sky darken from crimson to violet to a deep indigo, until its canvas was sprinkled with silver light.

"Everyone thinks you're intimidating, Captain," she said one night, tilting her head back so she could see where he stood, a few diagonal paces behind her as per his habit. The starlight glittered in her eyes. "I thought so too. But you're just . . . you." He didn't know what it meant, exactly, but it was something no one had ever said to him. He began to think he had been wrong about her.

But soon he wished he'd never realised, because every time he saw her after that a rush of something so strong it was painful blossomed within him.

He couldn't. He just couldn't.

The day of their next expedition arrived. The morning was clear and bright, and one could almost taste the hope that permeated the air. Humanity was to take another step forward – another step closer to defeating the titans. The Survey Corps rode out through the gate with the wings of freedom fluttering on their backs, past rows of abandoned buildings, the horses' hooves thundering across the cobblestones and the wheels of the supply wagons grinding into dirt. Formation was achieved swiftly, soldiers spreading out into their allocated positions across open land. A couple of relatively small titans were taken care of with barely any casualties. Things were going well.

But out here the landscape was harsh and unpredictable, and the odds could turn against you at any moment, with no sign, no warning whatsoever. The world did not show such mercy to the weak, insignificant beings that inhabited it.

Misfortune came in the form of a single deviant. For a titan it was tiny, barely two metres in height, its head disproportionately huge, with wide, bulging eyes and a lolling pink tongue. Black flares clouded the air from the right side of the formation, and green flares responded promptly, signalling for the group to swerve to the left. Levi, near the front of the team, frowned as the ground trembled with some unknown, foreboding force.

Red and black flares, one after the other. Distress signals, closer to the centre now. As though the threat was a mixture of normal and abnormal titans, as though it was unclear which –

Levi's eyes widened. No. Was it possible?

"There is only one deviant!" a messenger shouted, galloping in from the right. "But it seems to be consorting with the others. It's . . . speaking, we think. We're not sure. In any case, it's definitely succeeded in convincing its mates to pursue us."

Levi couldn't see Erwin's face from where he was, but the Commander's jaw was clenched tight. "We'll keep going left," he said. "Can it be killed?"

"It's right at the back behind all the others, so no one's been able to get to it!"

Levi was off before Erwin could so much as glance back at him. He dug his boots into his horse's side, leaning flat over the animal's back as it raced back in the direction of the flares. He could see the titans, great bulky, ugly things with gaping mouths. There were too many of them, all grouped in one dense mass, a stampede of enormous feet that shook the earth. Above the deafening thumping he could hear a horrible wailing cry from a mouth trying to form words that sounded like mangled gibberish. The ghastly sound was drawing titans from seemingly everywhere – from beyond a nearby hill up ahead, from between sparsely situated trees to the right, from the flat land to the left.

He made a sharp turn to the right, planning to circle around the pack of incoming titans to the source of the noise. He passed half-eaten bodies and detached limbs lying in pools of blood, gritting his teeth as red-hot anger buzzed through his veins, energy that he channelled into every inch of his being, coiled and ready to spring.

And then he saw it. It was ridiculously small, a hysterical creature leaping up and down, arms groping at the air in a grotesque dance. He charged forward at full speed, freeing his blades from his sides and holding himself taut above the saddle, his eyes narrowed, waiting. The grass around him rushed past in a blur, and he all he saw was the tiny titan that had caused so much death, so much destruction and grief. He launched himself into the air, blades at the ready – and was forced to dodge a larger titan's outstretched hand as it made a wild swipe at him. Hulking forms swarmed around him, guttural noises coming from their throats, their thick fingers batting at the air. A jet of gas propelled him upwards, out of their reach, and he brought his blades down on their napes, again and again, their steaming blood hitting his face with sticky splats.

He didn't know how long it took, but the space around him cleared, and he saw his target. It had rolled onto its back and was rocking to and fro, still wailing like a distressed infant. With a few well-placed slashes he incapacitated its flailing arms, and when it curled in on itself in pain he shot forward and struck the killing blow.

The air was filled with the bitter tang of blood and hot steam rising from the titans' decaying bodies. Levi felt disgusting – the blood clinging to his skin and clothes couldn't seem to evaporate fast enough – and he was slightly out of breath, his lungs forcing him to take unpleasant gulps of the sizzling, putrid air. But there was no time to stall. The remaining titans were still nearby, though they had reverted to their normal behaviour, lumbering about looking for food with no regard for the others.

Levi swung himself onto his black stallion and urged it forward, riding back the way he had come. Green flares wafted above the treetops in the distance.

Somewhere along the way he heard a shrill scream. A distinctly human scream. He pulled hard on the reins and jerked his head towards the sound. About fifty metres away were three titans, ranging from ten to twelve metres in height, and trapped in their midst, looking as pitifully small as fleas, were two soldiers, manoeuvring between the huge forms in an effort to free a comrade caught tight in the grip of a huge fist.

Even as Levi dashed towards them, the titan lifted its hand to its mouth and the soldier's limp body was promptly bitten in half. A horrible howl of anguish from one of the others split the air, before one of her wires caught between sausage-like fingers and she slammed to the ground, where a foot descended upon her petite frame. Levi swore under his breath.

The remaining soldier had managed to kill one of the titans, but the sight of her friend's death seemed to drive all sense out of her. She dropped to the ground, hunched over with her face in her hands, and Levi glimpsed a head of short auburn hair.

He would have known it anywhere. He realised, in that fraction of a second when time jolted to a stop, that he had committed its every shade to memory without even being aware of it – how brilliant sunlight dipped it in gold, how it framed her face in muted copper on foggy mornings, and how it merged with the night so that it rippled and vanished and reappeared again like a mirage as she turned her head.

He buried his hooks into the first titan's meaty shoulder and sliced its nape, swiftly and cleanly, but the second one had already closed its hand around her. As if in slow-motion his eyes followed her ascent through the air, before he was rocketing after her, hacking at muscles and tendons until the girl flew out of the titan's fist and landed face-first in the bloody dirt.

His supply of gas was dangerously low. His horse had strayed much further than usual and seemed to be spooked, trotting confusedly in circles and whinnying pathetically. The titan was moaning in agony, clutching its arm from which blood spurted freely, but there was no telling how fast it would heal.

"Petra." He dropped to a crouch beside her and hauled her up, but she sagged against him like a half-filled bag of sugar. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, her body shaking all over. Tears flowed down her cheeks and she gasped convulsively with the force of each sob. "We have to run," he said. "Look at me, Petra."

Slowly, her terrified eyes met his steady ones. "I . . . c-can't . . ." She tried to jerk towards the bloody pulp that had once been her friend, but he gripped her shoulders and yanked her back.

"Don't." His voice was grim. "Stand up. Now."

She nodded, numbly, and he pulled her to her feet.

"Come on. Follow me." They sprinted across the barren stretch of land, where there was nothing to hook onto with their gear except for the dozen or so titans still lurking in the vicinity. "Keep going," he said. "Keep running, Petra."

When they reached his horse and the agitated creature was calm again, they rode hard, away from the carnage behind them, away from the blood and the steam, and he felt her trembling silently against him.

She was there again at sunset that day, as he had known she would be. She stood with her back to him, her posture stiff and rigid, with no trace of the carefree vivacity she usually embodied. Her uniform was caked in dirt and blood, her cape ripped jaggedly down the middle so that the wings were torn in half. He knew she must have heard him arrive, but she didn't swing around with a delighted laugh as she normally would have, but remained standing there as though she had turned to stone.

The sky was overcast, great bulges of blue-grey shot through with veins of red. An ashy sky smeared with blood.

"What were their names?" he asked quietly, unsure if she would respond.

She did, after a while. "The girl was Faith. I never knew the boy's name, but he graduated in the same year as I did. He was from another division of the Training Corps." She turned to him at last, and she was beautiful even under all the dirt and grime, even with dried tear tracks running down her face, pale rivers that stood out against dark smudges of filth. "I'm sorry, Captain," she said, and the raw pain in her voice made something clench up inside him. "I could have gotten you killed too."

"But you didn't," he said firmly. "There's no use for guilt about the past here."

"They're just . . . dead." There was a terrible hollowness to the words, as if all feeling had been wrung out of her like water out of a towel. "I'm so stupid, Captain. I forced myself to think that it would be okay if we all stayed focused and worked together, that somehow we'd keep each other safe. I wanted to believe that what happened to other people wouldn't happen to us if we tried hard enough. Now I . . . I don't know what to do." Her face crumpled and she looked away from him.

He was silent. He remembered Isabel and Farlan and their glowing smiles and promises, and then their dismembered corpses in the mud. He remembered stumbling outside on the night after that disastrous first expedition in a feverish delirium and retching in the grass.

And yet. "But where would we be without people like you?" he said.

She turned back and blinked at him in confusion, her lips trembling minutely even though she was forcefully pressing them shut.

"There are people like me, who wake up every morning anticipating the worst that can possibly happen. And there are others like you, whose thoughts tend in the opposite direction, always hoping that things will turn out favourably. There's nothing wrong with optimism. In fact, with the revolting state of the world we live in, I would even say that it's something the Survey Corps needs." His mouth twisted with bitter amusement. "Of course, no matter how effectively you work in a team, there's no way to know if the people who fight alongside you will die in the next expedition. But how do you know there won't be lives you save by trying? Hope is what keeps us going."

He could see her struggling to believe him. She wanted to believe him, wanted it more than anything. But her eyes were beginning to shine with tears again. "What's the point of hoping?" she said, and her voice wobbled and broke.

Levi's feet had started to move of their own accord. He stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the bloodstained sky. He could feel a sort of thrumming in his being, and when he tried to think the thoughts sputtered and went out like a candle in a puff of wind. His heart beat loud and strong in his chest. There was only Petra, filling all the spaces in his vision, all the spaces in his mind and his heart, and he didn't care that she was coated in dirt from head to foot, or that a tiny part of him was resisting his desires, saying No, no, no in time with his pounding pulse. He reached out and lifted her pointed chin in his fingers, compelling her to look straight at him.

"This," he said simply – a single word uttered like a sigh, as tremulous and insubstantial as the wind – and brought his lips down on hers. A quiet, gentle kiss, a press of lips for a fragile moment that seemed to last a second and an age, before he pulled away.

A single tear rolled down her cheek. She seemed to be grappling with a million thoughts at once, a rainbow of emotions flashing across her eyes. At last her features settled into a look that brimmed with sadness and grief and joy all at the same time, and her lips parted and she whispered, "Okay."

He saw that she understood. She knew that what had just happened between them would never happen again as long as the titans were still a threat to humanity. That such a risk was one he could not allow himself to take because he was afraid. That perhaps even going this far had been a mistake.

But it was a promise. A bitterly conditional one, steeped in uncertainty, but a promise all the same. A promise that there was a future for them if they lived through this hell, that he would wait for her until the day it came. If it came.

And above all he wanted her to remember that between them was something precious and beautiful, something worth fighting for and worth protecting, not only for their sake but for the sake of all of humanity. In the end, was it not what they all lived for?

The next time they met, Petra was like someone reborn. The weeping, broken girl on the Wall that day was gone, and in her place was a soldier standing tall and looking straight ahead, strong and brave and confident and composed. He noticed it in the way she spoke and the way she held her blades. Slowly but steadily she learned to pinpoint her cuts and minimise unnecessary movements so that only a couple of precise strikes were enough to bring down even the largest of her targets.

When the time came, he selected her as a member of his squad without thinking twice about it.

On the night before they set out on the 57th expedition, they ran into each other on the stairs that descended into the kitchen of the old castle. She raised half-lidded eyes to meet his and smiled. "Make sure you get some rest, Captain," she said. "It's going to be a long day." Her arm brushed lightly against his as she passed him, and as her footsteps faded down the corridor he heard her call out sleepily, "You've been amazing, you know that?"

He wanted to tell her no, that she was the amazing one. But before he could figure out how, she was already gone.

"You've got to take better care of yourself, you know, Levi."

Everything in the dark room had a blurry, distorted quality. He was tired – so tired, and every time he blinked he had to struggle against the heavy black curtain that came down over his vision. The pain in his leg had dulled slightly, but an involuntary hiss still escaped through his teeth when Hanji pressed and prodded a little too hard.

She pulled back, wincing. "Sorry. I do forget sometimes that people aren't titans." When he didn't respond, she added quickly, "Look, I promise you I'm not enjoying this. I promise!"

A remark of that sort would usually have made him scoff and pretend to leave the room, but now it didn't even manage to generate the tiniest spark of amusement in him. He felt as though someone had ripped out his insides, all the parts of him that mattered, so that now there was just emptiness. Emptiness and death.

"Levi?" It took his sluggish brain a few moments to register that Hanji had stopped fussing over his injury and was peering across at him, eyes wide with concern. "Are you okay?"

With difficulty, he forced his eyes to focus on her face. Yes, it was all there. She knew as well as he did that from the day you were truly a part of the Survey Corps, there could only be one answer to such a question.

He was fine. Of course he was. He had to be. So all he said was, "Are you constipated?"

Hanji gave a small, dry chuckle and bent over his leg again. "Maybe."

Exhaustion was pulling at his eyelids more urgently than ever when he felt her arm drape around his shoulders. The mattress sagged as she sat on the edge of the bed beside him. His eyes shot open in astonishment.

Her gaze was cast forward, towards the window, white moonlight reflected in her spectacles. From somewhere deep inside him that still had the ability to feel, came a rush of gratitude. She had known him long enough. She knew when he wanted consolation, when he wanted space . . . and when he wanted both.

He was so tired. He had lost count of the number of times his world had been torn apart. It was as though everything he cherished was made of glass, and again and again the delicate cube enclosing it was shaken idly by the hand of a malignant god – and the pieces shattered, just like that, in a single instant. Nothing mattered now, least of all his pride. So he let the waves of sleep he had been fighting wash over his head at last, the darkness and the numbing of sensation a welcome relief from the agony that had gripped him relentlessly for the past few hours.

When he clawed his way back into consciousness with rasping breaths in the middle of the night, he found the room empty again. Hanji was gone. He forced himself upright, and with no one here to see, curled in on himself as he had done as a scared, cowering child in the Underground. But what had served to create an imaginary barrier between himself and external threats so long ago could not possibly shield him from the torment of his own mind.

There had been a time during an earlier expedition when he had grossly misjudged the position and number of titans in an area and had sent several teams to their deaths. It was not an uncommon occurrence, given the endless spectrum of unpredictable situations that arose in the field, but that particular tragedy had left him in one of his dark moods. It escaped most people, of course – to them, it wasn't much of a change from how he normally behaved. But not Petra. She came up to him eventually, her horse falling into step with his, and told him gently, "It's not your fault, Captain. You can't save everyone."

He heard those words again now, as he sat balled up in the twisted bedsheets, as tight as a coiled wire.

Oh yes, he knew. He always had. No matter how many times civilians in the streets boasted about him being as strong as an entire battalion, or how children's eyes lit up with adoration at the sight of him, he knew otherwise. His anger at himself grew with every failure he brought about, every misstep he took. So many lives and futures depended upon him, and on so many occasions he let them down.

He hadn't answered Petra on that day, had only met her eyes for a moment and looked away again. But she had been determined. "I don't think you understand how much you've already done for us – for everyone," she'd pressed on, leaning across and catching at his sleeve, the action somehow both bold and timid – that strange paradox that made him endlessly drawn to her. "Sometimes when I look at you . . . it makes me want to cry. It hurts, Captain."

He had recognised the implication behind the words. I love you so much that it hurts.

She had loved him when he'd hated himself, and in turn he had given her a reason to fight. They had tried their best, he and Petra. For humanity and for each other. That was all a person could dare to hope for.

Levi raised his head, seeing in his mind's eye the curved outline of Wall Sina silhouetted against the sky. To anyone else it was nothing but a cold, lifeless structure that both protected and incarcerated humanity within its borders. But a part of it was theirs, and theirs alone, even if the time they had spent there – so short it was cruel – was a time he could never go back to.

The sky just before dusk that day had been a soft mixture of pink and gold, swirled with white clouds. Unassuming but beautiful, just as she would have liked it.

I miss Petra :'( Why did I do this to myself?

Thanks for reading! :3

-TTC