A/N: Look, it's another one of these types of fics.
Wishes
or: seven things levi wants from petra
1.
She's a pretty young thing, but that isn't what draws his attention to her—her blades do, the way she grips them as she makes precise, deadly cuts; her height does, the way she uses it to her advantage as she maneuvers through the air; her voice does, loud and confident and clear as she marches up to one of her comrades and tells him exactly what he just did wrong, and Levi thinks she would be an interesting soldier to work with.
When Erwin tells him to write up a list of Scouting Legion recruits for his own squad, her name is the first one he thinks of, but he also thinks of her fierce determination, her sharp eyes, her kaleidoscope of smiles, and before he can print her name he hesitates.
"Sooo, what do you think of Captain Levi?" Hanji asks her the next day, and when she only blinks, shrugs, and says, "I don't," Hanji has a hard time keeping in laughter.
A small girl whose face Levi does not recall brings a note to his office later that simply says: "She'd be delighted," so he adds the name to his list under three others and sends it off to Erwin.
2.
Petra is everything he expected she would be and more: she works well in a group, gets along with the others, rises early to brew them coffee and tea; she is incessantly cheerful, unerringly polite, and if he believed in angels, he would think she is one, if not for her quick temper and witty retorts when she gets into little spats with her comrades.
Every member of his squad is excellent, good at fighting, good at teamwork, responsible and relatively well-behaved for people their age, and when he is around them he feels unworthy because he is the oldest, he is the captain, he should be setting the example, yet he is the one with straying eyes and occasional inappropriate thoughts that make him want to punch himself, but even if he did he thinks his brain wouldn't listen to him anyway.
She does not seem to notice his wandering gaze, always acting pleasant and cheerful and just distant enough, and as she goes about her daily routine he observes. She parts her hair differently some days, he notices, sometimes she puts cream and sugar in her coffee and other times she doesn't; she eats a lot and sleeps late and wakes early and writes many letters.
"To your father?" he asks once, and she looks up at him, bites her lip, shakes her head, and he sees the faint pink in her cheeks, the shine in her eyes, and he thinks: oh.
Convincing himself to stay away from her becomes a lot easier after that.
3.
In the few years that the squad is together, they become a close-knit group, a cohesive unit that does not need communication to know exactly how to work together, and every time they return from an expedition, alive and all in one piece, he cannot help feeling a bit of pride.
They joke, they laugh, they lounge around and play cards and sing stupid songs around the holidays, and at some point Levi finds the term "captain" almost affectionate.
"You aren't going home this week, Petra?" he asks once, because they have three days off and Gunter, Erd, and Auruo have left already, taking their bags and their civilian clothes with them. Petra sits at a table in the dining hall, legs curled up on the seat and reading a book, and she shakes her head absentmindedly at his question.
"No, my father's busy this week. Do you ever go anywhere on break, Levi?"
"No," he says, as her eyes widen and she looks up, realizing her mistake, but he only sits down opposite her and adds, "I don't have anywhere to go."
There is a pause, and then: "Oh," she murmurs, nodding once and returning to her book, but he sees the small smile creep over her face and he hides one of his own behind the rim of his cup.
4.
He has long gotten over his ridiculous little infatuation with Petra Ral, or at least he tells himself he has, and over the years he's put the whole thing out of mind, so when he notices the way she starts to look at him, the way she chews her lower lip as she stares and grins too widely when he speaks and blinks too much when he looks at her, he immediately knows he must disabuse her of her notions before they become too real.
But he also doesn't fail to notice how he almost always seems to end up alone with her somewhere, whether it is at the breakfast table in the morning, at the training grounds after the others have left, in the stables before expeditions or outside his office at night, and no matter how much he tells himself to start avoiding her before she gets any ideas, he cannot seem to bring himself to do it.
So really, it is his own fault when one night, as he is about to leave her in the hallway on his way back to his room, he finds her hand fisted in his shirt, her mouth insistent on his, his back pressed into the wall, and he kisses her back for a good half minute before letting rationality take over again.
"We can't—" is all he manages to get out before she places a finger against his lips and says quietly, seriously, "Levi. Live for yourself for once."
The words freeze him, and when she kisses him again, he does not stop her.
5.
It is new, it is different, thinking of Petra as his lover, but at the same time everything is exactly the same: she still wakes early and sleeps late—though sometimes perhaps later than usual now—prepares coffee and laughs with her squad members, does well in training and pokes fun at Auruo and writes letters at night by the fire; though now her letters are all to her father and when she salutes him and calls him "captain," sometimes he cannot help feeling amused at the thought of all the other things she calls him under the cover of night.
They only drop the pretense when no one else is around and they are quiet most of the time, always careful, but Levi thinks the others figure it out quickly anyway; they aren't stupid and they all know each other too well. But they never say anything; they treat him with the same respect, Petra with the same friendliness, and he is grateful for their understanding.
The only real difference, he realizes, beyond the new activities they engage in, is that she likes to sleep over sometimes. He tells her she shouldn't, and sometimes she listens, but other times she doesn't and he can't really complain when he wakes to find her warm body pressed against his, hair fanned out across the pillow, arms snaked around his waist, and he takes to kissing her awake in the mornings, tickling her face and neck with his lips and tongue and teeth until she is conscious enough to push him away.
"You're so annoying," she says one such morning with a roll of her eyes as she climbs out of bed, searching the floor for her clothing, and he isn't hurt at all by her comment but she must have taken his silence as offense because she adds, "but I love you anyway."
He pulls her back to bed then, wraps his arms tightly around her and closes his eyes and just breathes in her scent; he hadn't known how much he wanted to hear those words until she said them.
6.
He knows she does not mind too much, always having to sneak around and be secretive, only being themselves behind closed doors, but occasionally he catches her wistful glances, directed at him, at couples they pass in the streets, at children playing and fathers lecturing and mothers holding babies, and he wishes he could give her more, give her what she really wants, what she deserves.
"They were so cute," she sighs one day, perched on the edge of his bed and smiling as she talks about her break in Sina, reminiscing about the food she ate and the clothing she bought and apparently, the children she saw.
"I've always wanted to be a mother," she admits, twisting a strand of hair around her finger, and suddenly a thought crosses his mind: why not?
They are soldiers, their lives dedicated to the fight for humanity, but they can take little steps, one at a time. He does not have to wonder if he really wants this because the answer is as plain as day, and the next time he is in Sina he stays a little longer, spends a lot more money, leaves with a little something extra in his pocket.
7.
This expedition is just like any other, he tells himself, despite the addition of the Titan-shifter boy, despite the mysterious female Titan, despite the box he has hidden in his bag, and he is able to convince himself of this all the way until he hears the roar in the forest.
He's never really thought she was beautiful before; she's just Petra and beauty seems to be a given, but when he sees her twisted form against the giant tree, looks down at her bloody nose and distressed mouth and blank eyes, he thinks she is an angel, gone from the world now that she has fulfilled every last one of his wishes.
But not at this price, no, not at this price, and he would trade it all for her to be walking and talking and breathing again: all of it, every single one of her smiles, her little laughs, her clever quips and secret smirks and sweet words, all the little corners of her body only he knows so well; he would have her hate him, have her be on someone else's squad, have her live in a small cottage within Wall Rose with a faceless man and someone else's babies in her arms, anything, so long as she is still in this world.
He has one last wish, but it will never be fulfilled, not by the corpse at his feet.