Unbroken
Disclaimer: Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan is not mine.
A/N: This coupling was a dare from G since I kept complaining about how young Mikasa was compared to Levi. I had actually plotted out a full multi-chapter story for this, but I knew I wouldn't have time to write such a behemoth when I'm still working on 2 major stories. So I made a one-shot out of a scene I liked the best out of the storyline. Obviously I had to make up a name for Mrs. Ackerman since it was never revealed, but if it ever is mentioned in cannon, I'll likely go back and edit this story to correct it. Lastly, it's hard to tell Mrs. Ackerman's age just by looks in the anime (honestly, same goes for Levi), but I'm assuming she's only a few years older than him.
Levi turned another page in his book, trying to drown out the sounds of the nightly ritual that went on in the single bedroom next door.
"But Mom, I can't go to bed yet! Mr. Levi wasn't finished telling me about crossbows!" wailed the young girl.
"Mikasa!" the woman's stern voice quickly followed. "You have to be up early tomorrow. We're going to search for a school for you."
The dark-haired man groaned to himself. He had been completely against the idea of a smart girl like Mikasa being stuck bored in a room all day with some snot-nosed, idiotic brats. But trying to argue with Yuriko Ackerman was futility itself.
"What if she brings home lice or some other foul disease?" he remembered snapping in the girl's defense as she took shelter behind him.
"Levi, do you honestly think any microbe can live for long in this place with how often you deep clean it?" was her instant reply, forcefully retrieving her daughter by the wrist.
The two females' banter continued to reach his ears. "Look," scolded the older one, "we're not going to die tomorrow because the 'great Mikasa' didn't learn how to master a crossbow by dawn."
"That's going a bit overboard, Mom."
"One more word and you won't be allowed to talk to Mr. Levi for a week. Now get your butt under the covers and go to sleep."
With a slam of the door, which shook the shabby little apartment, the ebony-haired woman appeared in his section of the household with an exasperated sigh.
"You keep that up, and this place is going to fall apart faster than it already is," Levi commented, not bothering to look up.
Without warning, the hardcover book was snatched from his grasp and thrown onto the coffee table. The short man on the couch merely closed his eyes in annoyance for a brief second before giving the woman before him his full attention.
"You need to stop teaching her about all these weapons," she demanded.
Levi didn't flinch, his gaze never wavering from her onyx eyes. "She has to learn how to defend herself to survive."
"With a crossbow, Levi? Honestly, when's the last time anyone in the city's used one of those?"
"Funny you should mention that. Just last week, Farlan had an encounter with a bastard of a weaponsmith who—"
The standing woman threw both her hands up in defeat. "Never mind. Just forget it." She stormed over to the small kitchenette and began yanking out tea-making supplies.
Levi knew better than to try to talk to her when she was in that state. So he simply retrieved his book and attempted to read a few more pages until she cooled down on her own.
But try as he might, he soon found himself rereading the same sentences ten times over. His thoughts were wandering again, to his unintentionally adopted family. He still wondered to this day what compelled him to rescue this woman in particular and her daughter from the auctioneer's block nine months ago.
Well, "rescue" was too romantic of a word for it. It was not like he made a dashing entrance and swept both of them up in his arms before making a daring escape. He had bought them, plain and simple. Granted, he had to kill one of the auctioneer's bodyguards and threaten the audience not to outbid him, but he ultimately paid a hefty sum for the pair. He winced a bit as he remembered how Isabel and Farlan hadn't spoken to him for weeks after he had confessed to spending all three shares of their latest heist on a whim like that.
But he couldn't call it a whim per se either. Something about the way this woman in his kitchen had looked on that stage so long ago had caught his eye. Whatever it was, it had completely overridden Levi's normally good sense, and the next thing he knew, he was walking home with her and her terrified little girl.
The sensation of someone softly sitting on the raggedy couch beside him stirred the dark-haired man from his thoughts. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see how the woman's mood had drastically changed from moments prior. She sipped her tea pensively, a somber aura surrounding her.
Levi visibly turned his head to get a better look at her. She never calmed down this fast. Something must have been on her mind this whole time, with the outburst earlier being a way to vent her anxiety. Levi didn't know why he hadn't seen the signs earlier, but somehow she always seemed to exude a cloud that hampered his judgment.
"Sorry," he mumbled. He didn't know what he was apologizing for, but it seemed like the right thing to say at the time.
She shook her head slowly in response, the shorter of her black tresses bouncing off her cheeks. "Don't be. I know you're just concerned about her well-being." She polished off the last of her tea and placed the cup gingerly on the table across from them. As she did so, he noticed her hands were trembling.
Yuriko was almost as hard as he was to read sometimes. She also tended to hold a lot of things in until they burst out all at once. Levi was afraid this might be one of those times, but he had no clue over what.
"It's not too late to back out of this whole school business if that's worrying you." He took a stab at what could possibly be the problem.
Another shake of the head came to indicate that wasn't it.
Levi sighed. "So…are you going to tell me what's wrong, or am I going to have to wait until you're a sobbing mess first?"
By now she'd grown used to his bluntness, so she barely batted an eye at the question. It took her a few minutes, though, before she was able to put her thoughts into words. "Do you remember the day we met?"
"It's…not something I can forget," he tentatively answered. What was with this all of a sudden?
"You never told me why." She raised pleading eyes to him. "Why choose us? Especially after it caused so much trouble with your friends afterward."
"Tch, they got over it. Isabel even lets Mikasa call her 'onee-san' now. So if you're worried about what they think of you—"
"I'm more concerned about what you think of us," she cut him short. "What were we to you then, Levi? What are we to you now?"
He had to lean back on the armrest of the couch for support. That was way too loaded of a question for him. Even he didn't really know the answers.
"I don't remember exactly what was running through my head at the time," he lied. Levi remembered all too well what he thought, how he felt. The way he'd been stricken by her exotic beauty, the rage when he found out she'd been raped multiple times before arriving there, the disgust at all the eyes he saw leering at Mikasa from the audience. He had resolved never to tell her, not that it would help him understand why either. "I just know I couldn't bear to see you and Mikasa being handed over to a bunch of perverted pigs." At least this part was truthful.
She looked down to stare at her fidgeting hands. "I see…"
Levi couldn't be sure, but he could have sworn she seemed disappointed in his answer. "As for now, I don't know. You're the closest thing to family besides Farlan and Isabel. I didn't exactly want to be responsible for more people, but…"
She rested her index finger on his lips to silence him. The mere touch made his heart suddenly race.
"I should thank you again for saving us." Her soft fingertip slid off and returned to her lap.
"Hmph. And I've told you before I don't need thanks. You and Mikasa have long earned your keep around here."
Levi gave a start as the older woman rested her head on his shoulder. The finger of her opposite hand reached up and traced a V on the area of his chest his partially unbuttoned shirt showed. "I know you won't accept a word of thanks, but maybe I can do something to show you my gratitude…"
His eyes narrowing, he grasped the wrist of her teasing hand immediately. In a low voice, he uttered, "I didn't pay for you all those months ago for this. I wanted you two to have your freedom, nothing more. Don't feel obligated to do anything for me." Levi none-too-gently threw her hand back at her.
Unfazed, she gave a short laugh. "And yet here we are, still staying with you."
"You certainly tried not to for the first week." He unconsciously rubbed a spot on his head where she'd hit him with a frying pan.
Yuriko sat up and gave a small smile at the memory. "We didn't understand at the time you were keeping us here to make sure we'd recovered. I'm still sorry about all the trouble."
"But you've been free to go ever since. I only gave you a place to stay until you could get on your own two feet."
The Asian woman sighed. "And I'm grateful and sorry about that too. No one in town seems to want to hire someone with…my looks."
Levi could feel anger building up inside of him at the sight of her pained face. "They're a bunch of bigoted idiots." He'd helped her look for jobs with all the shopkeepers and tailors in the city, but each time, she'd been turned down. At first he thought it'd been because he was with her, but even when she went out on her own, she was met with rejection. One even yelled at her to get out of his store, calling her a "damn foreigner."
So here they were, still. Levi didn't dare try to find her work in the Underground—the cesspool of conniving, backstabbing bastards. He knew she wouldn't approve of any job he could find for her here anyway.
Her soft touch found its way to his hand. She must have sensed his ire. "It's okay, Levi. People in this world are cruel."
"That doesn't make it right!" he exclaimed, squeezing the hand that was in his. "Why can't they just see what I see in you?"
Her onyx gaze fixated on his own stormy eyes. "And what exactly do you see in me?"
Levi stiffened. He hadn't meant to get himself into this trap. The short man released her and slowly stood up. As he paced the tiny living room, he tried to return his face to its usual stoicism, but sometimes he wondered if she figured out how to penetrate that by now. Finally stopping, he chose his words carefully, trying to suppress the feelings his heart wanted to scream at her. "I see a strong woman who's been through too much already. A hard-working, caring mother, who just wants to find some damn peace in her life." He couldn't bear to look at her throughout all this, least his eyes betray him.
"Is that all?" The question cut deep. No, that wasn't fucking all, but he couldn't tell her that.
"It's all any employer should care about," he stated flatly, turning away.
He could sense her stand up and make her way softly towards him. Soon, two pairs of slender arms wrapped around his torso from behind. "But what do you care about?"
"Yuriko…" His heart pounded achingly in his chest. He so badly wanted to turn around and take her in his arms, to lay gentle kisses across her porcelain neck. But he had sworn from day one not to take advantage of her like that. With heavy hands, he peeled her off him. "We shouldn't…"
"I'm not broken, Levi," she whispered, more to herself, "not anymore." She walked around him and took his face in both her hands, forcing him to look at her. "You and Mikasa put me back together, piece by piece, over these last months. In you, I found a completeness I thought I had lost." Her delicate face grimaced at the horrible memory.
Levi didn't care that she still thought about her murdered husband. He welcomed it as something that made her keep her distance. But lately he sensed that she had finally moved on. She no longer talked to Mikasa of wanting to return to their cottage, to go back to their previous life, like she had promised the 9-year-old girl the night they had arrived here.
"So please believe me when I tell you this is something I want. Not only as a gesture of gratitude," she murmured, bringing her face close to his. He could feel her warm breath on his cheeks now. "But as a show of love." With that, she closed the tiny distance between them, pressing her soft lips against his.
Levi hesitated for the briefest of moments before he succumbed and melted into her kiss. His own callused lips roughly returned the gesture, soon pouring all his previously restrained passion into the action. Her mouth parted, allowing his tongue to enter and explore that cavity, weaving around her own sensory organ. After a few minutes, they broke apart, both gasping for air. He found that in that time, one of his arms had traveled around her waist, the other to her long, jet black hair. Hers had wrapped themselves around the back of his neck.
A small blush powdered her cheeks. He raised a single hand to rub a thumb gently across it. She was the one to break the silence that lay over them like a warm blanket. "I want to make love to you," she sighed into his ear.
Levi visibly tensed. "Are you sure…?"
She nodded, her silky hair tickling his face. Ever so slowly, she backed away, taking the hand that caressed her visage and leading him to the couch.
All of Levi's protests, his reservations, were immediately silenced. He wordlessly followed, taking in the beauty he had forbade himself from for so long. They stopped before the worn piece of furniture, and he began gently undressing her, and she him. After evoking from her one more assurance that this was okay, they were once again in each other's arms. He planted long desired kisses all over her, and she moaned in pleasure at every token of affection.
It was then that Levi could finally answer her question, the same question he had been plagued by ever since. He saved them because he loved her.
Behind a flimsy door attached to the room, twin streams of hot tears silently fell down a little girl's pale face. She soon ran away from the thin barrier and dove crying onto the shabby bed she and her mother had slept in these last several months. A single pillow was crushed over her head, trying to drown out the sounds coming from next door.
In them, she couldn't hear the release her mother had sought this whole time, the happiness the man she looked up to was bringing her. Instead, she heard the shatter of a sacred promise—the pinky swear they had made their first night out of Hell to return home, to go back to their happy life.
She knew what this meant, and somehow knew all along it would come to this, but she had held out hope that she was wrong. Now the truth rang clear as her mother's screams from the living room.
Mikasa was never going home.