Merciless, the sky rumbled in torrents, struggling to surrender rain to the earth below. Relentlessly it roared. Yet neither the trembling window pane, nor the booming calls from above were cause for the restlessness of Hanji Zoe.
The past hour had been spent with her sitting upright in bed, feet hanging uselessly off the side, hands clenching the edge, twisting the sheets, and then releasing, then clenching again.
In cycles, clenching, unclenching.
The rattle of thunder faded for what must have only been a minuet, but enough for her breathing to echo within her head and collide with the swirling hurricane of thought inside her mind. Inside her head they spoke, the members of her squad- her closely chosen comrades, but their voices were drowned by her own beating heart, the rhythmic exchange of breath- the sound of the living. Inside her head she could not hear them speak. Dead. Silent. She would never hear them speak again.
Natural in the course of life, death was part of a cycle. Morbid and aberrant, the cycle for the Scouting Legion was often twisted backward, impending doom at the hands and jaws of Titans being the all too common and bitter end- before a life could even begin. Hanji had watched over and over this cycle take place, over and over living to be older than others once older than herself. And her squad, younger, dedicated to a world free from tyrants and giants, would never receive the same fate.
She released her grip, and let out an uneasy breath, trying to rid herself of hopeless thoughts. That second, a single vain of electricity shot down from the sky- sly lightning obliterated the dark, and unveiled the scene of carnage around her. Books lay torn and scattered across the room from when Hanji had shoved them off shelves in a brutal rage.
She hadn't been there. Her research couldn't bring them back.
The desk was overturned, its contents spilled out on the floor- broken glass encased her from her spot across from the window in a contrived halo. Her foot throbbed in memory of the wall she'd repeatedly bashed in, and the chairs she'd kicked over. Destruction embraced her.
Numb, Hanji clenched her knuckles white enough to nearly be visible in the frigid darkness as black clouds rumbled overhead. Then, just barely heard, another set of calloused, cut knuckles rapped against the shut door to her right. Hanji unclenched, clenched.
No one had been in to see her since she was told about the horror save Moblit who suffered as much as she did. He had been cursed too it seemed. Now in the cloaked midnight Hanji only reasoned it to be one person.
The door opened and creaked unconcealed by the storm, and Hanji turned her head to see Levi standing just inside, free from his uniform, dressed in the usual long sleeved shirt and dark pants, an undistinguishable expression on his face in the light spawning from the lantern he held.
"Hanji?"
His voice grumbled, synonymous with the tumbling sky outside, and gave away what the dark hid away. The expression was guilt.
"You don't usually knock." Hanji observed, her head turning back to the watch the mass of nothingness outside the window- a world unlit from an abducted moon.
Levi took her voice as an invitation, and closing the door behind him, upheld the lantern letting light fall onto the farthest reaches of the room. Levi took in the sight, then closed his eyes and reopened them- wishing the mess away. When he opened them back up to the chaos he sighed, and pushing the clutter out of the way with his foot, made his way to sit beside her.
"That's because you're usually the one barging in my room at ungodly hours." He shot back, although the tone of annoyance that frequently accompanied his speech was absent. He sat the light down at his feet, and looked up at her, the dark circles under her eyes highlighted in the spear of light illuminating from the ground.
A ruthless ache emitted in Levi's chest- the sight of her so dismantled was truly foreign, her usual high spirits seemed to be non-existent. Solidly a foot away, he could still feel the tension in her shoulders draped by her unkempt hair, and had it not been for the sudden chill that ran down her spine, he would have sworn she were stone.
Suddenly, she felt his rough hand slide over hers, and Levi pried her fingers from their grip on the sheets. He smoothed his coarse thumb over her strained fingers, and held her hand.
The contact re-fired her senses and she whipped around to stare at him- the sudden tinge of affection was uncanny.
"It's my fault." He whispered, the sound cut clean across the space, and even the sky withheld its roar.
Then Hanji understood- his downward glance, the way his hand curled around hers. He was a mirror of herself and her mangled thoughts.
She straightened her posture, "Levi-"
"I need you to understand."
He tightened his grip on her hand that had yet to respond, "It's my fault." He whispered. "I'm the reason that bastard was there." He snarled. "It's because of me that they're dead. Hanji I-" His voice faulted in fear- a rarity that hardly ever came to the surface but now it took over his entirety- fear- he could not lose her.
Now, he looked up at her, "But there's nothing I could have done."
The sky called in oppression outside, and grumbled a murmur of regret. She was so close- he ran a thumb over her tattered hand again- yet he'd never felt a more empty solitude than that moment when no words came back to him. It was true- he couldn't change the past, but this time he needed her forgiveness, because it was her. He needed her.
She was silently staring at him, her eyes wide, and he had to look away.
"It's all my-"
"No."
Hanji released the snarled sheets to lift her other hand to his face, and shifted his gaze to meet her own burning glare.
"No." she spoke again, softer, her brow un-creasing, and ran her hand up into his hair, her fingers trailing across his scalp to rest on the back of his neck in a soothing notion. Levi hadn't moved- with the blazing fury in her eyes boring into his- he froze.
"I won't allow them to be someone's fault." She began, feeling a familiar fervor well up inside her, "They knew the risks, and still sought solutions, and that's what we're going to do. We're going to search for the answers we need, and we're putting an end to this." She swallowed her throat suddenly tight, and in a futile attempt, fought back the tears that threatened to spill from behind her glasses- the tears she thought she had banished in fits of rage. "I won't let them go unheard." Now her voice subsided to a pained gasp, and her eyes squelched shut.
Levi slowly slid his arms around her, one hand slipping through her hair, and pulled her against him, her head falling just under his chin. Her arms retaliated and slipped under his own and around his waist, and she hugged herself closer to him. His heart beat feverishly in her ear, and she took deep breaths, the scent of his skin, a calming familiarity. A sudden sound erupted from her throat, one she bit back to keep long awaited tears from pouring out, overflowing, drowning.
In a fluid motion, Levi removed her glasses from her face, and swept at the hair stuck against her forehead. She shivered, and he pulled her closer, and moved his hand up and down her back while she fought the approaching flood. And then Levi angled his head, his lips at her ear, and everything aside from his hushed words evaporated from existence.
"Then I'm listening…"
Rain pelted against the window in defiance of the sky, and Hanji no longer resisted. She cried against Levi's chest, pausing only to intake air that just as quickly vanished in her convulsing sobs. Drowning. She gripped at his shirt with snow white knuckles, her breathing ragged, uncontrolled.
And he held her. He pressed his face into her hair and his hands shifted to dispel the unnerving shuddering the coursed through her. Everything was falling to pieces. She was falling to pieces.
"Levi!" She gasped, her voice so low, so distraught at her own unraveling, it was all he could hear even in the midst of the atmosphere breaking above them.
"I'm here." He hushed. "I'm right here." Her in his arms, he gently swayed.
The fierce roar of thunder sounded at a distance- a sign of time's inevitable passing. They had remained locked together, and steadily Hanji's lungs began to reconstruct, her mind easing back to composer, fatigue setting in, her eyes began to droop. Feeling her breathing return to an even cadence, Levi tenderly pressed his lips to her forehead and kissed her- a promise that he was still there, and she relaxed her arms, hands, her fingers, and Levi, sensing this, pulled her with him to a lying position on the bed. Hanji's head remained tucked under Levi's chin and she could feel each beat that resonated in his core.
They'd been there before, spending late nights mauling over the lives lost.
Isabelle.
Farlan.
Auruo, Petra, Gunther, Eld.
Now…now this.
How many times had they shared the proximity surrounded by rancid thoughts of dying friends, tied together by the poisonous relief that they still had one another?
How many times would this hideous cycle repeat?
As though he could understand her thoughts, the beat within him stalled. Hanji blinked away the delirium at the pause- a thought conjuring in her head. She moved her hand from around Levi's waist to bring it up to his slender shoulder and heaved herself up face to face with him. She noted the reflecting glimmer of light in his cool eyes, the way the light carved shadows along his face- a visible figment of the blame that plagued him.
"We're not to blame… Not for this." Her voice gruff from forced tears, the words fell out gracelessly, cracked and broken, but she had found them, and he knew she was not just speaking of this moment, but of every loss they had witnessed.
He tightened his hold on her unconsciously. He made to speak, but stopped at her hand's touch, cupping his cheek, thumb smoothing along the dark rings under his eye.
"The only thing we're allowed to do is to believe that we won't regret the choice we made." She whispered his words, stronger now than before.
Words could not escape him, nor could he use them to say what he felt that very second, so instead he took her face gently in his hands, the golden light in her eyes sizzling on contact with his cool blue ones, and he pulled her lips to his, and kissed her as though the storm fiercely ravaging outside would put an end to this world. And she kissed him back, running her hand up the back of his shirt, feeling the strong shoulder blades flex, and the heat of his skin as he deepened the kiss. He let his hand fall to the small of her back, pressing her close, ridding what space between them remained. His other hand remained threaded in her hair, securing them together as he moved his lips fluently against hers. A brief moan escaped Hanji's throat, and he kissed her harder, tilting his head to take more of her in, slipping his tongue to meet hers. He sighed through his nose, the slightest groan slipping out as he tightened his hold, knuckles blazing white. He had her, and always would.
Then slowly, in contrast to its swift beginning, he broke away to gaze at her breathing unevenly as he did. He gently kissed her again, and then again. Brushing through her hair with his fingers, he brought their foreheads together. Hanji pressed her fingers along his spine, sharp and hard, and let her eyes close, simply marveling at the blessed warmth in such a cold, lonely world.
Her breathing settled, she moved her head to his shoulder, and entwined their fingers together. He let his own head fall heavily against hers, wondering at the sudden stage in the cycle that had just developed. He couldn't lose her.
"This place is a filthy dump, four eyes." He muttered, relieving the silence between them, bringing back reality. Hanji felt her lips twitch to a subtle smile, and kissed the underside of his jaw before burying her face into the nook of his neck.
Peels of sound rippled through the sky, and they lulled her to a deep sleep. Levi kept her in his embrace, and watched the rain that continued to strike the waking world outside, wishing against all odds that the sun would forget its place and hinder tomorrow, least the cycle repeat.
A/N: This is the first fanfic I've ever written, so I hope it's not too terrible- but levihan is so dear to my heart, and I thought I'd improve my writing by writing about things I love! Review if you'd like- It would really help me out! Thanks for reading!
Also- I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin