Rated M for language, explicit sex, and terrible writing.
Also, that summary may change. I don't know yet.
Maybe the title, too.
Regardless, I hope you enjoy.
"Maybe if I had some motivation," Mikasa tried to suggest with the ever-present gall lining her inflection. "I'd be more inclined to do this."
There was a sharp kick to her ribcage. It took everything—everything—in her power to not topple over at the blow. She was strong, and the strong never fell collapsed at anything. She did wonder if the force upon impact was enough to shatter bone. Shards of rib fragments would be perforating the porous tissue of her lungs right this minute and he would barely lift an eyebrow at that, heaving a disappointed sigh before forcing her to run another mile's worth of laps. He was a sick man and she relished in the imagery of his head bursting into flames, singing that stupid haircut of his to a crisp.
Captain Levi, said sick man, was not moved in the slightest. He knew she was fuming, and he knew all the unspeakable things she was having ideations about doing to him. So he kicked Mikasa again, but for the sake of mercy, he didn't apply as much force. However, it still felt like he was kicking a boulder. This girl was as solid as a rock.
"Would you stop kicking me?" She hissed through gritted teeth, muscles locked into position. "All I asked for was some motivation."
"Motivation," His voice was velvety, almost a purr. He spoke concisely and eloquently, which infuriated Mikasa that much more. "is bullshit. Motivation requires the outside reliance of material objects and people. What you need," When he kicked her for the third time, he may have actually gotten some twisted pleasure out of it. "is discipline."
Mikasa restrained from wailing out in agony. Over an hour ago, he had forced her to hold her thighs parallel to the ground, arms straight above her head, and she was still holding the position with unwavering endurance, quaking from her muscles begging to relax. Now it hurt to breathe and tears were converging, but she'd be damned if she let them fall.
"Discipline comes from within. It is the driving force that will never leave you," There was a pause. He was cold and calculating, selecting his words with great care. "Your motivation, from what I recall, derives from a certain Mr. Jaeger, does it not?"
Mikasa did not verbally respond, but her countenance lighting up at the sound of his name was plenty for Captain Levi to know the answer.
"And, let's say by freak accident, Mr. Jaeger dies," Mikasa's eyes lowered to the ground. She would never let that happen. "Something occurs and you're just simply not there in time, Miss Ackerman. Your beloved Eren Jaeger is dead, and thus, your motivation is gone."
He assumed that was plenty to get his point across, but with the defiance still painted all over her pretty face, he knew there was more to get through to her.
"Sources of motivation will always have an end," Captain Levi halted in his words. Mikasa hissed at another kick to her ribs. "But with discipline, you will never fail. It will always be there. You train for discipline, you suffer. It is something earned, never given."
He put so much force into this final kick. Mikasa toppled to the ground, gasping for the air that was knocked out of her. Captain Levi swore he saw blood in her teeth. "Earn it, Ackerman."
It was nine o'clock, on the dot, and Captain Levi was sitting where he could be found any day of the week at precisely nine o'clock. The dining hall was empty at this point, all soldiers already fed their dinner, the cooks and the dishwashers already finished with preparing the kitchens for breakfast. The large dining hall—far larger than what was necessary to fit the already skimpy numbers of Recon Corps troops—housed only Levi at this point, where he sat at the head of a table in the far corner.
The kitchen staff always left a metal kettle on the stove for him, already filled with just enough water for his cup of tea—they even would account for the amount of water that would dissipate into the atmosphere as steam. And on the counter beside the stove, there would be a clean mug, still warm from the dishwasher, with a chamomile tea bag waiting inside. And at nine o'clock every evening, he would come down from his quarters and enjoy his tea in silence, before showering and retiring for bed.
Sometimes Levi would have paperwork to fill out, none of which were relevant to his position as the captain of the special operations squad, but he usually helped with the already backed-up paperwork as a favor to Commander Erwin anyway. Other times, he would have a book to read, although the library that was discovered in the renovated castle didn't have much of a selection. They were mostly fiction novels, long-winded tales of titan slayers rescuing princesses, but he always found them to be ridiculous. There was no glamor in killing the titans, and there was certainly never a princess to rescue. So he opted for tactician guides instead, most of which he found boring and having no new strategies to offer.
So more often than not, he spent his evening drinking his chamomile tea in silence. Levi didn't mind it, he actually found it to be a precious slot of the day to reserve for reflection. This particular day, however, he didn't want to reflect. There was plenty that he should have been contemplating—his new recruitment of Mikasa Ackerman, the death of his squad mates that happened no less than a month ago, how to proceed forward after the disastrous 57th expedition outside the walls. But instead, he was relishing in the peace, and he sipped his tea until it scalded his tongue, falling into a zen that was hard to come by.
Then there were footsteps echoing in the distance, and the shadow of an oncoming body dancing on the wall. Then Eren Jaeger was the one to turn the corner into the dining hall.
"There you are, Captain Levi!"
"Congratulations, Eren. Your reconnaissance skills will be the titans' downfall."
He gave a glare that was not nearly threatening. Levi knew Eren had a subconscious fear of him, ever since the incident in the courtroom. Beating someone within an inch of their life was not good grounds to begin a camaraderie, Levi had come to conclude in retrospect.
"Very funny, Captain."
"I highly doubt you have come all this way to comment on my sense of humor. What is it that you want, Eren?"
Levi expected him to ask for a day off, or if he could switch chores with someone else. But the way that Eren had to take a seat, and especially the way his expression darkened into a sort of maturity that Levi was not accustomed to see in the boy's face, made him think that this would be a lot worse than some menial favor.
"Would you like me to brew you some tea?" Levi offered, which took Eren aback. Levi knew he wasn't one to be associated with generosity, but Levi feared they would be here a while, so he might as well make the boy comfortable.
Eren shook his head. "No thank you, Captain, I just want to make this quick."
So much for being here a while. Levi reclined in his seat, nodding for Eren to go further. "Out with it, Jaeger. At this point, I'm afraid you'll be asking me to help you with hiding the body."
"N-No, it's nothing like that," Eren heaved a sigh. "It's about Mikasa."
"Ackerman," Levi clarified, somewhat surprised. It was always the girl fretting over the boy, never the other way around. "What about her?"
"I saw the two of you training today," Another deep breath. "And I mean no offense to your whole leadership thing, but... I guess what I'm trying to say—what I'm trying to ask—is that I'd really appreciate it if you weren't so hard on her."
Levi was speechless. He had felt like he had gone to easy on the girl, frankly. After all, it was difficult to hurt such a pretty face.
Eren took Levi's silence as anger, and rapidly tried to explain. "It's just that she's my best friend, and the closest thing I have to family, aside from Armin. Armin Arlert, if you didn't know. But this is about Mikasa. I love her, and I don't want to see her hurting, and it's my job to protect her—"
"I would have assumed that you, of all people, understood that the art of war has only one rule," Levi interjected. It was touching that he cared for the girl, and that it wasn't a one-sided love on Ackerman's behalf that he had first suspected, but it wasn't some teenage brat's position to be telling him how to lead his troops. "And that rule is—"
"No pain, no gain. Yeah, I got that. It's seared into my frontal cortex. You made that notion exceptionally clear when I was the one training with you."
Levi had not expected the interruption, and he certainly didn't expect such sass. He always knew Eren spoke with bated breath around him, for fear of getting another knee to his jaw, but this was completely surprising. And Eren didn't leave Levi any time to adjust to such shock, because the boy kept going.
"It's great that you want to make her stronger. But you and me both know that she's a strong as a soldier can get, both physically and mentally. So I don't need you beating her the way you beat me, because unlike me, her body can't regenerate. And since I'm the only one left in the world to look out for her, I will not hesitate to hurt whoever hurts her."
Eren rose to his feet, then gave the solider's salute. Right fist against the heart, he bowed his head. "With all due respect, Captain Levi, she's been through hell, and I do not need you to add to it."
Levi sat on his bed, hair dripping beads of water down the surface of his forehead, towel still wrapped around his waist. He had been sitting there for minutes now, replaying what had happened with Eren in his head.
When Eren turned to leave after his little speech, Levi had let him go. He could have gotten him for threatening a superior, or just simply kicked his ass for the sake of it. Levi didn't, though. He let Eren go, he didn't even bother to say anything further to the boy. But Levi did mull over his speech about the girl, Mikasa Ackerman, and wondered what it was she went through, especially if it was hell.
It was certainly hard for Levi to admit, but he was plenty aware that he was very condescending in the aspect of personal struggles and dark pasts. Levi felt like not a single person's experiences could amount to what it was that he suffered through, and Eren Jaeger was always leaning on the theatrical side, such a drama queen for such a teenage boy, so he had to have been over-exaggerating what this hell that Mikasa Ackerman had been through was.
With that being said, he still sat in his towel, not even making any sort of attempt to dress into his sleeping attire. He was staring out the window, down into the vast field in the distance, right before the flat land turned into a sea of trees. That field operated as the running track, a dirt circle encompassing a an acre's worth of grass. And under the moonlight, he saw a figure running. From a distance, it looked like the figure was moving almost at a walker's pace, but he knew that this person was running at their full capacity.
He could not tell who it was that decided to run even more laps in the dead of night, but he was more than certain that the person was wearing a red scarf.
Levi eventually shut his window.
"Why is hand-to-hand necessary?" Mikasa stripped herself of her uniform jacket, folding it neatly before dropping it onto the grass beside her. "I'd like to think I'm not in the same weight class as a fifteen-meter."
Tightening the wraps around his hands, Levi rolled his eyes at the girl. "Yeah, but we're both middleweights and this is your shot at the title, so shut that mouth of yours and try to come at me."
Before Levi could even get into a readying stance and give the start signal, he was already dodging a fist that was hurdling for his head. "Whoa—"
Mikasa was fast, but Levi's primary advantage was speed, and he was able to capture her wrist. In one sweeping motion, he twisted her arm to throw off her center of gravity, shove the flat of his foot into her side, and send her toppling into to the ground.
He stood over her, where she refused to look anywhere but into his eyes. "Have you ever sparred a goddamned day in your life, Ackerman?"
She didn't say anything, she didn't look up. He felt like he was dealing with a child.
"Sparring is not an actual fight, so you're not actually trying to hurt your partner. It is about controlling your attacks and improving the accuracy of where you land those attacks. Now stand up, and let's start from the beginning."
Hastily, Mikasa rose to her feet, brushing off the dirt that clung to the sweat on the surface of her skin. This time, she waited for Levi to give the starting command. He nodded for her to begin, but she didn't learn a thing—her arm shot out like a bullet again, barely grazing Levi's ear. Well, she did learn a thing apparently, because when he grabbed her wrist again, she managed to anticipate the motion of his foot and rotated her hips in the perfect angle to avoid another kick that would've sent her back down to the ground.
Levi recalled Eren's demand to not hurt her. Of course, he wouldn't leave the girl unscratched, but he decided to at least slightly honor Eren's wishes by not destroying her entirely. So he avoided punching her directly. Then he saw stars on a field of black, falling to the ground with the taste of metal in his mouth.
Something was trickling at the corner of his mouth, and he raised his hand to solve the mystery of what it was exactly, and when he saw the redness of blood on his fingertips, he could only blink. She managed to kick him in the face, and she managed to draw blood. Some girl with not even a year's worth of experience outside of military training managed to both strike and injure the best soldier of the century. Levi was pissed, especially since he explicitly stated that sparring wasn't supposed to injure anybody.
Mikasa glowered, unapologetic. "Can't handle a little blood, Levi?"
The lack of a captain in conjunction with his name was what sent him overboard. Of course, this was Captain Levi, and it wasn't in his character to express how he felt for the whole world to see, but he was indeed fuming internally, and he was channeling this rage into a means of attack. There was no need to express on the outside, when he was capable of rerouting those emotions on the inside into a greater, and much better, outlet.
And this outlet was getting Mikasa Ackerman into a choke hold. Speed was on his side, and he knew she wasn't expecting an immediate counterattack due to the fact that his entire fucking mouth was soaked in blood, so she didn't have much of a chance to avoid his forearm wrapping around her throat. Her nails sunk into his skin, but he didn't apply enough force to restrict her breathing to the point of asphyxiation—he wasn't trying to kill her, after all.
He did release her after a moment, fixing his position so that he was pinning her to the ground rather than suffocating her. Levi rested his weight on her abdomen, holding her wrists just above her head. Mikasa stared at some ambiguous point in the distance, and Levi stared at her.
She wasn't in her most conventionally attractive state—she was sweating with her hair sticking to her forehead, chapped lips frustratedly gasping for air, spots of Levi's blood mixing with the dirt on her cheeks. It wasn't the most aesthetic situation, but he could still feel her beauty in the pit of his stomach. Such a pretty face allowed for Levi to notice that scar above her lip so harshly. It was thick and faintly pink, old enough to have faded as much it ever could. He stared at her scar as if it was the focus point of his entire life's calibration.
"Where did you get that scar, Ackerman?"
Mikasa ran her teeth along her lip, as if she were trying to pull the scar into her mouth, away from Levi's scrutiny. "That's none of your goddamned business, sir."
"We obviously have that tongue of yours to control," He narrowed his eyes down at her, mainly because her's were already narrowed up at him. "How's that discipline, though? I'm willing to push you way past your limits."
With a wave of strength that Levi could simply never have predicted, she managed to throw him off of her. Not enough to sending him flying, but enough for him to fall over beside her with a thud. She stood up, brushing herself off.
"Push me past my limits all you want. You know I'll only push back."
Levi only wanted a glass of water, not an interrogation.
But he knew Hanji ate her lunch during this time of the day, and he simply could not wait for her to finish stuffing that face of hers in order to rehydrate. So, not even bothering to dress out of his sparring clothes—or rather lack of clothes, since sparring only required a pair of shorts and not the entire soldier's uniform—he braced for the worst as he pushed past the herds of younger soldiers in line for their daily lunch ration.
Maybe he wouldn't have to deal with her nosiness, since he managed to fill his canteen with water without running into her, or her lackeys. But, of course, he spoke too soon and Hanji managed to spot him in the crowd. It wouldn't be too hard, considering he was the only shirtless man in the entire crowd.
He could have ignored her entirely, but due to the value of what he liked to consider some form a friendship with her, Levi detoured to her table.
"Why the long face, Levi?" Hanji frowned, motioning for him to sit beside her.
"It's noth—"
"Oh, who am I kidding? Your face always looks like that!"
Hanji was the type to laugh at her own jokes—as terrible as they may be—and while it was an overall annoying attribute, Levi did find mild endearment out of it. But not right now. Right now, he indeed had a long face, and he didn't want to talk about it, but he knew she would make him talk about it anyway.
"I saw that vicious fight between you and your newest special operations soldier," Hanji, omniscient in the most intimidating of ways, speared a leaf of lettuce with her fork, brandishing it just inches from Levi's face. "Would that be the fundamental root of your disposition?"
"It wasn't the fight," Levi admitted. He wanted to leave, and in all the years of knowing Hanji, he knew that the only way for that to happen would be to bare it all for her. Besides, she gave good advice from time to time. "It's just—her."
"It's only your second day with, what's her name, Mikasa? I can't imagine it was that bad, especially with all the good things I've heard about her."
"She's skilled. Extremely talented and has both the brains and the brawn to survive out there. But it's just," Levi was having a hard time putting his turmoil into words. This part was always difficult when talking to Hanji. He always felt what he felt, channeled it into some greater good, and moved past it. He never labeled it, or tried to make sense of it, unless he was talking to Hanji. Which, of course, he was. Levi sighed. "My reputation is known everywhere within the walls, and I've had soldiers from all walks of life trying to get a chance to serve under my command. But this girl, she's different. And she has so much audacity and gall that it's almost stupid. She doesn't respect me the way everyone before her has. She's a fighter, not a follower."
Hanji absorbed this, adjusting the glasses attached to her face. "It sounds like she's just like you."
"No, because I respect those ranked above me."
"I'm ranked above you," Hanji was grinning.
"You're in an entirely separate branch from me. It's like comparing apples to oranges."
"I was just teasing," She rolled her eyes, moving the lettuce into her mouth. Levi was brainstorming ways he could segway into a goodbye, so that he could move on with her life. "Anyway. You didn't respect authority in the beginning, remember?"
Levi looked away. "That's not the point."
"Eren told me about his confrontation with you last night," She stated out of nowhere.
"Why would he do such a thing?"
Hanji shrugged, smiling. "It was me who told him to go talk to you in the first place."
"Whatever. I won't kill his little girlfriend, so he can go ahead and sleep easy at night."
She hesitated with her next choice of words. "He said that the girl has been through a lot."
"'A lot' is a relative term," Levi rolled his eyes. He didn't get any special treatment because of his history, and he wasn't one to start doling it out now. "I just need to break her in order to get her in line."
"It's only my observation from an outside perspective, but I think she's already been broken," Hanji shrugged, setting her fork down entirely. She leaned forward. "Maybe you should extend yourself out to her as more than just her captain."
Levi didn't understand. "What, like try to be her friend?"
"That's exactly what I'm trying to say."
Levi would never die. He had come to that conclusion.
With all the deaths he had been faced with, with all the squads he had outlived, he just knew in his bones that he was going to live forever at this rate. The world would go down in flames, humans and titans alike going extinct, but Levi would be left. He would survive, because that was in his nature, but he would be alone, because that was also in his nature.
It was lonely at the top. In a pyramid, there was only one apex, only room for one at the pinnacle. He knew he would be the only one in existence to stand up there. It was statistically proven. And if Mikasa Ackerman was indeed anything like him, then she was at the apex of her own pyramid. That was a kind of looming pain that he wouldn't wish on anybody.
So maybe that was why he was walking through the hallways of the castle headquarters. Maybe that was why he was fully dressed, cape and everything, and in a part of the castle he had no business being in. As a superior in ranks, he was technically allowed access to all areas of the castle, but there were some places he would never find use in visiting. The girls' bedrooms were an example of such a place.
But here he was, keeping his steps light and his breathing unheard, looking for the specific room at the end of the hall. He got there at one point or another, and without ceremony, he raised his knuckles to tap on the heavy wooden door. There was no light seeping from underneath the crack of the door, so maybe he caught her while she was asleep. Or even worse, this may have not been her room at all. He waited for some sign of life on the other side of the door.
Would he breach all moral and gentlemanly codes of conduct and actually open the door without permission? He could just turn around and go back to his room and forget this stupid plan and never follow Hanji's stupid advice ever agai—
The door opened, hesitantly at first, then quickly swung all the way when she realized who was on the other side. She didn't seem angry, just genuinely confused. "Captain Levi? What are you doing here?"
He didn't want to look like a deer in the headlights. Levi knew what he was doing, he knew what he had planned, and he wasn't about to stutter now.
"Ackerman, get dressed. We're going out."
Okay, please forgive such a long author's note. I just have a thing or two to mention.
For one, the intro (the part where Mikasa is getting the shit kicked out of her) was written in Mikasa's point of view, and out of sheer laziness, I haven't gone back and rewritten it. Don't expect any more of Mikasa's perspective, sorry.
And secondly, I wrote this story with the completely singular intention to entertain. It's not of literary merit, which I'm disappointed about, but I'm writing this for you guys to enjoy, so it doesn't matter what I think. I do hope you like dramatic, angsty romance crap with so much unnecessary sex. 'Cause that's what you're gonna get from this stupid story.
Oh god this note is embarrassingly long.
Feel free to review.
Tell me what was kinda good, shit all over this entirely, or whatever else you want.
I can take it.
(denuit and tontita, I have not forgotten about you two)
