Hi, everyone! Sorry, it really has been quite some time since last I uploaded anything. This chapter took a while-even though it's not significantly longer or more complicated than others. It just became rather a struggle. As a result, I really hope things aren't too disjointed.
Either way, here it is. I hope it continuation was worth the wait...and I'll try not to take so long on the next chapter, haha.
Enjoy!
Edit: Wow-I am so terribly sorry for the weird formatting issues! For anyone who read this in the first few hours it was up, I didn't realize the coding came out like that! Yikes...should all be fixed now (please let me know if there are any further errors, typos, etc.)
Sidenote-up over 1000 views now! Thanks SO very much to all who have read.
Three titans down; another two to go.
Levi landed nimbly atop a giant, steaming head. He clicked his tongue, wiped scalding blood from his hands and the hilts of his swords. His heart hammered, body flooded with adrenaline, though his face remained calm and sharp. With the familiar tug of the wires at his hips, he launched himself onto a nearby rooftop, comfortable with the constriction of the harness over his body and invigorated by the rush of wind against his face.
In times like these, he felt more beast than human, ruthlessly cutting through enemies, thriving on the fast-paced, instinctive tempo of battle. It wasn't that he felt nothing—quite the contrary, he felt everything. Every friend, comrade, innocent that had died was fuel that burned in his veins. But the sensation was distant, kept at bay along with his thoughts as he operated on auto pilot and allowed years of training to think for him.
It was only when he paused, between kills, that his mind caught up with his body.
His steel gaze raked over the surrounding area, passing the crushed architecture and searching only for things that moved. He had no time for the inanimate, be it object or dead. Through the buildings he could see the rushed movement of the corps' main body, wagons at the rear. Across the town, a smattering of slow-moving titan heads. Even as he watched, one disappeared below the horizon of crooked, red shingles. He caught the slight blur of green as its attacker returned to a rooftop.
Satisfied that all progressed as it should, he returned his gaze to the titans left from the "horde." He clicked his tongue. They've multiplied again. With the addition of a 10-meter blond, they were back up to three.
"Captain!" He spun on his heel to find Petra and Oluo both running toward him across the shingles, cloaks billowing and swords out. His eyes widened a fraction.
"What are you doing here?!" He demanded, voice harsh. His soldiers both drew up short and shared a confused glance.
"Holding off the horde, Captain," Oluo answered, his voice carrying a hint of hesitation. Levi locked eyes with Petra.
"I thought you had an assignment," he growled. The ginger frowned but nodded.
"Yes, sir," she confirmed. "But I was ordered to report here, along with the rest of the elite squad." Her amber gaze flashed, almost imperceptibly, to Oluo, leaving Levi to assume he had relayed the order.
"Who," he commanded of the ash-haired soldier, "gave you such a fucking stupid order?" Oluo gulped, but held Levi's strong gaze.
"Th-the messenger from Squad Seven," he stuttered. Squad seven? If he remembered correctly, that had been Ilse Langnar's squad…he couldn't remember a single person in it, now. No time…
"Where's the girl?" He turned to Petra. Her gaze grew serious, with just a touch of guilt.
"Ren and Akiko are with Squad Three," she answered. Mike's squad. "Riding with Jacki Finch and Rebecca Korelski. Hange has rejoined Squad Five." Levi nodded, unsurprised at Hange's antics. He could have guessed she couldn't keep herself out of the fight. The new arrangement would work just fine—better, even. What concerned him was the issue of the order. Who in their right mind would have sent Petra and Hange, each with a civilian passenger, into direct line of fire?
A question for later.
He let the issue drop and turned back to the three titans, each ambling forward. And a fourth…
Levi felt his blood boil as he caught sight of the newest addition to the group: a 15-meter with dark hair and a blond scout hanging from its mouth. As he and his soldiers looked on, the man plunged one blade into the creature's face…only to receive a hard chomp in retaliation.
Petra and Oluo didn't even have the chance to call after him as Levi shot one hook forward and rocketed toward the scene. He passed two houses in the blink of an eye, fury spurring him on as his grapple finally sped past the offending monstrosity to bury into a heavy stone tower.
He was on the adjacent rooftop before the body hit the ground, Petra and Oluo behind him only a moment later.
"I've called for reinforcements, Captain," Eld announced as he landed beside Petra. Levi nodded, unconcerned. This many titans was nothing for him, especially in the wake of another casualty.
"One on the right," he mumbled, eyes taking stock of the remaining three titans. "Two on the left." He turned. "Petra, assist on the ground," he commanded. "The rest of you, the titan on the right. I'll handle the ones on the left."
"But Captain!" Petra's words were swallowed by the wind as Levi took off. The redhead could do nothing but stare after him for a moment, jaw clenched. She knew he could handle himself…and yet, she couldn't help the choking worry that rose up, every time he launched himself into another outnumbered, impossible situation.
"Let's get these fuckers!" Oluo shouted from behind her as he took off, Eld on his heels. Petra sighed, wishing he'd stop trying to imitate the Captain, and easily guided herself onto the ground. She kicked into a run the moment her heels hit cobbled stone, and made a beeline for the mangled figure on the ground. Another one, she thought, numb. How many soldiers, just like this one, had she run up to on the battlefield? Too many; she couldn't remember faces anymore, just the squelch of intestines under her hands, the gurgle of lungs filled with blood and the rancid smell of the dying.
"Petra!" She had already knelt, blood seeping through her pants, beside the fallen soldier when the voice caught her attention. Her amber gaze snapped up, and a small gasp escaped her lips. She was so surprised she momentarily released pressure on the gaping wound in the soldier beneath her hands.
"Ren?!" The blond girl was racing toward her on foot. Her face was lined with stress, gray eyes wide and flickering in every direction. She limped a bit, feet no doubt chafing in the borrowed boots, and her shirt had come untucked from the too-long pants, white ends blood-stained and hanging to her mid-thighs.
"Oh my god…" Ren was so shocked by the sight of the dying soldier that she slipped into a language Petra had not yet heard her speak; slower and more open than what she spoke with Akiko. Petra watched color drain even further from her face as, gingerly, she kneeled on the bloody cobbles. "What happened?"
"Why are you here?" Petra's tone was sharp, and it jolted Ren a bit so that she looked up from the fading brown eyes into lively amber ones. It took a moment to formulate her thoughts, and she swallowed, breath coming fast and rough through her throat.
"She's dead…" she mumbled. "Jackie Finch. There were two titans…the rest of the squad went ahead. I don't—" she swallowed again, this time fighting tears, and looked at her hands, clenched in the ends of her shirt and shaking against her thighs. Petra watched a familiar glaze fall into place in Ren's eyes as she spoke. She'd seen the same expression on countless young soldiers after their first foray into the outside world. For some, it never faded. "I don't know where anyone else is…"
Petra opened her mouth, but could find no words. She didn't bother recognizing how remarkable it was that Ren had survived when her trained companion had not; didn't dwell on the girl's unscathed appearance, or wonder at how she had managed to make it here on foot amidst swarms of titans. If she let her mind dwell on those questions, she would lose focus…just what was this girl?
Petra looked into the wide, dove-gray eyes and hardened her expression.
"Hey!" she snapped, as much to draw Ren from her horrified stupor as get her attention. "Press here." She drew the girl's hand to where her own were pressed against the soldier's cloak, bunched against the spine-deep gash in his midsection. She knew there was no hope for him, and had known since she first knelt by his side. But it was important—for his sake, and even for Ren's—that she pretend otherwise for the moment.
Ren's eyes grew even rounder (something Petra would have assumed impossible), but she complied with a shaky nod of the head.
Blood seeped between her fingers, warm and thick. Ren stared at where it seemed to bloom from the green cloak and stain her pale hands. She had tunnel vision: her hands were all she could see. Pale skin, covered more in sticky red with every passing second. Like molasses, the red line slowly rose to cover her fingertips, then her first knuckle, then her second…
Her heart thudded so hard Ren wouldn't have been surprised if it was actually her own blood on her hands, flowing so vigorously in her panic that it had burst from her body. Well, but it would steam, I guess…she thought bitterly. Her hands shook, both from how hard she was pressing down and from the whirl of nameless emotions she tried to ignore.
The solid, sharp sound of boot heels against stone sounded behind her, but Ren was so focused on the bleeding soldier that she didn't even turn around. Instead her eyes flicked upward to his face…brown eyes dull with heavy lids, the skin already adopting a gray pallor and jaw slack. Blood trailed from the corners of his mouth. He's going to die…
"Captain," Petra voiced, across the body. Her voice shook a little, with more than a trace of sorrow in the hollow tones. The boots behind Ren shifted, took a few clicking steps forward. "I can't stop the bleeding." Ren finally looked up, into Petra's face. Paler than usual, but her amber gaze was steady, warm. Resigned. I can't stop the bleeding…So that was why the blood had covered her hands.
pSuddenly, the boots stopped beside Ren, at the soldier's shoulder.
"Captain…" Ren's attention snapped back to the man as he spoke in a weak voice, husky with pain and slight thickness of blood-filled lungs. Knees cracked lightly as they bent, one settling on the ground while the other steadied an elbow. She risked a glance at Levi's face, and blinked in mild shock. It was the most genuine, non-bored expression she'd seen on the stoic man. His steel eyes sparked, resting with an odd mixture of sobriety and intensity on the fallen man's face.
"What is it?" Levi answered with surprising gentleness. The soldier reached one hand upward, past Ren's face. Bloody fingers reached toward the sky, dull gaze anchored somewhere past the blue, as though he saw something they couldn't.
"Did…Did I help human kind?" he asked. Ren's heart clenched and she felt a burn in the back of her throat. "Am I going to die…without being of any service..?"
To both Ren and Petra's surprise, Levi reached forward to grasp the reaching hand with a soft smack and the squelch of blood. He gripped it firmly in his own, and a strong, almost desperate expression took over his face. Petra marveled at her Captain's dismissal of his own clean-freak tendencies as she watched the blood transferring to his hand, but Ren's eyes were glued to Levi's. She'd never seen such an expression…and it spoke to a story deeper and darker than Ren was sure she ever wanted to know.
"You served well," Levi assured in a voice that wavered with strength and emotion rather than weakness. "And from now on…your commitment will give me strength." Both Petra and Ren stared at the captain, eyes like molten steel boring into the gray-cast face. His voice was husky and low with emotion, and Ren frowned at the half-mad gleam in his eyes as he continued. "I promise you…I will destroy every last titan without fail!"
A line of blood trickled over the base of Levi's thumb, squeezed from between the clasped hands, the larger one gray and slack. Ren thought bleakly that people seemed to become two-dimensional in death, gray like a line sketch.
"Captain," Petra intoned softly when his expression remained vividly trained on his soldier. Ren caught the shimmer of tears leave her eyes to trail down milk-pale cheeks. "He's gone."
All at once the light left Levi's face and he turned to Petra with an almost childish expression of concern.
"Do you think he heard me till the end?" he asked. Ren frowned. She'd had such a clear image of this man, from the moment she met him: cold, bored, unrelenting. A bit of a thug…she'd thought of him as some kind of mafia man, almost.
And yet, in the short span of the past five minutes, he had completely debunked her assumptions, and her curiosity was piqued in spite of herself.
His expression, his emotion, had opened a window into his past that her mind couldn't close, and she found herself questioning this new world all over again. She'd been caught up in her own trial, her own fear and confusion…what had the people here really been through? How did characters like Levi and Hange arise from the bleak, hopeless existence of a timeline dominated by monsters?
Did she really want those answers?
"Yes…I'm sure he did." Petra spoke, voice still soft and cheeks still wet with tears. She directed her warm gaze to the soldier's face, eyes closed, mouth still open and bloody but relaxed. "Look at him. He looks peaceful in death."
For a long moment, all three simply stared at the dead man—Petra gently crying and Ren's mind buzzing with questions. Levi's eyes slowly hardened, and returned to what Ren had become familiar with.
"That's good," he said simply, then rose to his feet and turned to stare down the street, back the way they came. Petra reached forward and began slowly tearing the winged emblem from the soldier's right jacket shoulder. Ren, who had been staring, deep in thought, at Levi, cut her gaze toward the gentle tearing sound.
"What are you doing?" she asked, slightly aghast. Petra offered a thin smile.
"We can't bring all the bodies back with us," she explained, voice dark and sad. "So this is how we remember them." That truth hit harder than Ren cared to consider, and spoke volumes about the way people lived here, the horrors these soldiers had seen.
Somehow, she had convinced herself that things would get better once they were inside the mysterious wall Rose. But as she observed Petra and Levi, she had the sinking feeling that would not be the case.
I want to go home…The thought drifted through her mind, unbidden, and Ren had to bite back tears. Her heart clenched painfully, and she wondered how long she and Akiko could really survive in a world as harsh as this. Akiko! Upon remembering her companion, a thrill of panic ran through Ren's veins, and she hopped to her feet fast and suddenly enough that Petra threw her a look of alarm.
"I need to find Akiko." Petra nodded, unsurprised by the urgent tone, and made to stand up. The sharp rhythm of hooves against cobbled stone drew their attention past Levi, where Commander Erwin led a group of soldiers toward them.
"Levi!" he called, effectively gaining his captain's wandering attention. Ren saw tension return to the captain's shoulders as he turned, and even from the back his body radiated with the anticipation of battle. "We're pushing on. We need to get back to the wall." Erwin's voice was firm, his blue eyes gleaming down his nose at Levi. His expression left no room for argument…but Levi pushed the envelope, anyway.
"Pushing on.." he repeated. It only took a moment for his brows to knit heavily together, the metal in his gaze hard and glinting once again. "There's more we could do inside wall Maria," he growled. "Are you going to let my men die in vain?" The statement was weighted, all the more poignant with the dead man on the ground behind him, but Erwin didn't so much as bat an eyelash.
"The titans have begun moving north as a group," he said with the same firm, heavy tone. Ren frowned a little—was that significant? Apparently so, because Petra and Levi both tensed, the ginger even releasing a sharp sound of dismay.
"It's a repeat of five years ago…something's wrong in town." A heavy silence. Levi looked toward the wall so fast his onyx hair whipped across his brow. "The wall may have been destroyed." Destroyed?
Ren stared toward the towering wall in the distance—not Wall Maria behind them, but Wall Rose, on the other side of town. Could such a massive thing really be destroyed? Yes, the titans she'd seen had been large, terrifying…but surely even they couldn't breach such technology-defying architecture.
And yet…as she looked closer, Ren could detect the faint billow of smoke rise over its edge. No…it wasn't thick or dark enough to be smoke. Steam…Her eyes widened, and she felt nameless panic override her thought process. Beside her, Petra accepted the reigns of a spare horse from a soldier behind Erwin. Levi did the same, and Petra gestured for Ren to mount in front of her.
They were gearing up to run straight toward that wall…toward steam that could only have one source: titans. What kind of scene would they find there? From the bleak, colorless faces of the soldiers around her, Ren had a few good guesses.
Ren gripped the rounded horn of the saddle so hard the flesh beneath her fingernails blanched white, and Petra urged their steed forward with the rest of the corps, breaking into a fierce gallop that sent thunder through the broken town.
I have to find Akiko…Ren thought as she braced herself against their speed, the hurling wind and the steady onslaught of fear. When they got through that wall, Ren could only imagine the brutal, violent scene that awaited. There was no question in her mind that she and Akiko would be swallowed, lost to the turmoil. Whether they survived, she suspected, would depend entirely on her ability to get herself and her charge to whatever safety presented itself…regardless of who got trampled or abandoned in the process.
I guess that's just how people live, here, she pondered, grim. Staying alive—keeping loved ones safe—was difficult and unlikely enough. This island had been thrown back to the most basic laws of the living: survival of the fittest. With predators like titans, no one had time for much more than themselves.
"When we get to the wall, you'll have to join the civilian evacuation," Petra said into Ren's ear, interrupting her train of thought.
"What?" The ginger's voice was weak against the whistle of wind in the blond's ears, and Ren could hardly make out the words. But then, maybe she simply didn't want to make them out.
"If the wall has really been breached, there will be evacuation boats headed further in," Petra explained, voice stronger. "We're going to be too occupied to take care of you, so we'll leave you and Akiko with the civilians." Ren bit her tongue—it was obvious by the strain in Petra's voice that the decision was both mandatory and unpleasant, leaving Ren with the distinct impression that her odds of survival were even lower than she had previously considered.
She didn't voice her worries, merely nodded. This changed nothing—her determination to keep herself and Akiko alive was the same, and if she was honest, their chances didn't even change that much. At least this way they stood perhaps a better chance of running away.
The rest of the ride proceeded in silence. They were moving too fast, with too much urgency, and the palpable weight of trepidation silenced any words they might have shared. All too quickly, they were at the wall.
Looking forward, Ren forgot about the unsettling horse beneath her. She forgot about the troops, and evacuation, and even, for an instant, she forgot about Akiko. The wall that loomed before them blotted out everything—it completely monopolized her sight and her thoughts. What on earth could have done this…
The thought was numb, and her brain could hardly even consider the answer. It was still hung up on comprehending the cause: the massive, towering gate was edged, splintered, with spiderweb cracks that radiated out in a kind of grim halo. Chunks of stone had crumbled from the edges, and lay piled in the grass at the gate's mouth. These were all mere sideline details.
Blocking the opening with was rounded, darker stone. A boulder at least fifty feet in circumference—much too large for any titans she had seen, not that they would put it there, anyway.
And it was on the other side of the wall.
Again, hope that had a decent flow to it...I sort of ended up writing this in stages, and couldn't really decide on a place to end it. But that's how it goes, I guess.
Also, as I'm sure you readers are aware, this fic will eventually become full-blown LevixOC romance. I intend rather a slow burn-I want to keep this an adventure story, as well. But the details about how I hash out this romance are far from set in stone (I'm mostly just deciding things chapter by chapter).
So that being said, I would really love if you guys could let me know if there are any particular Levi romance scenes you're fond of! (A few I imagine including are training scenes, maybe some fluff with the squad, and at least one or two in which Ren is stupid and Levi yells at her). If you have anything you'd really like to see, don't hesitate to leave requests and suggestions!
Thanks-have a good Friday and a great weekend :)/strong/p