Chapter One

Isabel's sobs had not yet fallen silent by the time Levi returned home. The atmosphere hung tight and heavy with tension, wound ever tighter by incremental sniffles from the other side of the door.

Farlan looked up, pained. "Levi… did you kill them…?" His voice was rough with prolonged distress.

This decaying hovel of a house had seen its fair share of misery since its construction, like any house in the underground city, but Levi had never imagined that it could seem this big, this dark, this cold. Ever since he'd fished first Isabel then Farlan out of the gutters and invited them in, Levi's home had seemed positively cramped and fairly bursting with life at all hours. Levi had all but forgotten what a cold, miserable night felt like until Isabel had stormed in with half of her hair hacked off, her clothes in disarray, and her skin covered in blood and bruises. The sight and smell of her blood had awakened an ancient rage in Levi that he'd also almost forgotten.

It had reminded him that he hadn't gone hunting in months.

In the time since he'd gone out to fix that, Farlan had moved from the table to a slumped position outside of her bedroom, staring dejectedly at the floor. His red-rimmed eyes roved over Levi's bloodied figure and lingered on the wrapped knives dangling from his hand.

Levi grunted in response, moving into the room to dump the knives on the table carelessly with one hand while the other tore off his cloak and the kerchief tied around his neck. The blades weren't just for show, though he didn't in the least need them to accomplish his bloody intentions. Knives were… less messy than the alternative. In many different ways. If Levi was ever caught for killing someone with a knife, he would only be arrested as a criminal, which was nothing new. And if anybody ever found the bodies of his victims, they'd look just like innumerable others that had fallen to the underground city's lower element, if these to a slightly more psychotic element than usual. Not many victims of gang violence were found with their internal organs removed and large sections of muscle flayed from their bodies, after all.

Levi's stomach sang with warm fullness as he collapsed next to Farlan against the wall.

"…You shouldn't do things like that," his friend said quietly.

"Why the fuck shouldn't I?" They were the lowest of scum. Nobody would miss them. There was no more perfect victim, in his opinion. Not that he made 'victims' very often. For what they'd done to Isabel, he'd made an exception.

The fuckers had still smelled of her when he'd caught up to them. He'd made sure to wipe out every trace of that warm, familiar scent with the putrid stink of their fear before he'd perfumed the night with their blood, too.

Farlan wasn't looking at him anymore. "You'll get caught."

Levi snorted. "The military police don't come down here."

"The gangs. They'll notice if you start taking out their members."

With the weekly death toll what it was in the slums, Levi doubted that. That very toll was the iron chain that kept him in this stinking cesspit, even more so than his birth or state of poverty. Nobody down here noticed when people vanished. Dozens fell to gangs and illness and starvation and plain suicide every month. Levi took full advantage of this when he hunted. Very often, all he had to do was wander the streets to find his next meal freshly dead and waiting for him. As he'd said before, though, the state he left his victims in was somewhat more noticeable than the usual gang violence and general illnesses. It was a blessing that he got hungry so infrequently; rumors were already spreading through the city about the organ-thief killer. Organ-stealing was old hat in the slums, but the flayed muscles were far more unique. Any more often than once a month or so and he might actually come to the attention of somebody with the means of tracking him down. (One of the few drawbacks to his living arrangement was that there weren't a whole lot of ways to dispose of the bodies afterwards; no rivers ran down here, and burying them wasn't possible when the whole cavern was near-solid rock.)

Cannibalizing corpses dead of illness and starvation was the stuff of nightmares for a human. For a people like Levi, it was more or less the highest moral ground attainable. Nobody got hurt that hadn't already been going to, and Levi got a steady supply of meat. He hadn't chosen to be born with this fucked-up digestive tract, but he'd chosen to make the best of it that he possibly could. He'd seen what it was like to choose otherwise.

"See, boy?" He could still hear the voice of the man who'd raised him, underlined by the wet, meaty sounds of a man's body being dismembered. "If you use your knives, like me, then even if the police find the bodies they won't know it was the work of your kind. Use your head, and you can stay safe forever. People vanish every day and nobody even cares!"

Kenny Ackerman. A demonstrable madman, but he hadn't been wrong about everything. People vanished, constantly, and all a smart man had to do to get a living was be in the right place to snatch them up. Ackerman's methods had been… wasteful. Depraved. The man hadn't even had the excuse of not being able to digest human food that Levi did. And yet, despite all of that, he had been smart enough to get away with it for years. His advice, sickening as it was, was sound.

Had Levi lost his head today? His comfortably full stomach didn't seem to think so. The dark satisfaction in his heart that increased with every one of Isabel's muffled sobs didn't seem to think so. Levi's control had lasted years, decades. Not once had he been caught. If he'd lost control tonight, it was a slip he could afford.

"I don't intend to make a habit of it," Levi finally answered, entirely truthful.

The conversation ended there, though Isabel continued to sniffle long into the night.

When he looked back on it, Levi should have taken Farlan's advice when he'd had the chance. It was only days after that conversation that they were tracked down by a squad of Survey Corps soldiers and given a choice that wasn't really a choice at all.

If those fuckers hadn't shown up holding Isabel and Farlan's arms behind their backs, the fight might have ended far worse than it did. For Erwin Smith and his cohort, that was.

The alleyway had been blessedly abandoned, up until that point. Of course, Levi had been aiming for an area that didn't see much habitual use aside from strung-out junkies, but it was still relieving to have gambled correctly on how crowded it would be. Times of day didn't mean a whole lot this far underground, and shady business was just as likely to be conducted while the sun was high as when it was low. There was hardly any way to tell when the entire city's primary light source was flickering, badly-kept lamps. For a moment, he'd thought the only thing he had gambled wrongly on was his pursuers' ability to keep up with him.

Then they'd caught up like lightning bolts out of nowhere, and Levi had reluctantly considered himself impressed. Not just anyone could keep up with him in flight. Even Isabel and Farlan fell behind when he really let loose. The rush and swoop of being airborne, the zip and zoom of casting out and retracting lines, the quick movements up, down, left, right around obstacles rushing at him at incredible speeds… It was second nature to him. It didn't even take thought to instantly recognize the best anchors to swing him where he wanted to go as he soared. Sometimes, he'd cease to feel the gear at his hips at all, and it felt as if he was propelling himself through the air like a bird. Sometimes, he'd go up as high and fast as he could and let gravity complete the illusion of total freedom in flight.

Nobody had ever thought to simply cut one of his lines before.

The bigger blond one, the one without a stupid moustache, sliced through the steel cable with a screeching twang that Levi felt all the way in the roots of his teeth. There wasn't any time to redirect or release his cable. His own momentum, once a sure ally, slammed him upside-down and backwards into the nearest brick wall. He crumpled.

Furious suspicion roared along with white static through his head as the world briefly flashed out of Levi's vision. He'd thought, for a single moment when the men had first appeared, that somehow they knew. That his nighttime activities had gotten back to the military and this was the law at last catching up with him. A moment later, he'd dismissed it as baseless panic. Obviously, they were there about the stolen 3DMGs, if anything. Seeing that they were Survey Corps and not Military Police banished all suspicion immediately. Nobody would call in the Survey Corps all the way from Wall Maria to chase shadows in the underground. That held true even if that shady man hadn't warned Levi's group that the Survey Corps would be coming to recruit them. But these fighting tactics…

No. It wasn't possible that they knew. Even if they knew what he was, they couldn't possibly be aware that blunt force hits like that hurt him far worse than any blade could. Nobody knew finicky details like that, even those familiar with the ancient bedtime story that Levi's kind had become.

Still. Best to take them out immediately, Farlan's plan be damned.

Levi surged upwards at the approach of the man who'd cut his line. The attack was obvious, telegraphed so broadly that Levi might as well have taken out an ad in the newspaper, but his speed was such that the man had no time to even flinch before Levi was disarming him with a powerful blow to the arm. His sword spun wildly away, and then the man flinched, but Levi was striking again, and again, and…

"Stop! Look around you!"

And then his attention was being pulled towards his friends, bound and being dragged into the alley by the soldiers who had gone after them. Levi froze in the act of pummeling his target, indecisive. Was he fast enough? Could he get both of the soldiers before one of them got a sword into one of his friends? Should he put a knife to their leader's throat instead?

He hesitated too long. A breath of cold steel tickled against the side of his neck, held by the Corpsman with the terrible moustache. Levi eyed it, unimpressed, still calculating his best move. He supposed that if any blade could cut him, a thrice-folded Titan blade might. He'd never had occasion to find out before. He slid his gaze sideways to meet Farlan's, questioning.

Fight back?

Farlan grimaced at him. Don't ruin the plan.

Of course. The stupid fucking plan. With bad grace, Levi held still and submitted to the manacles being fastened around his wrists by the Squad Leader—the one who'd cut his lines and whose face was beginning to darken with the bruises caused by Levi's fists. He had those marks as small consolation against the abject humiliation of being shoved to his knees in the filthy muck of the alleyway alongside of his friends. It was basically no comfort at all by the time his face was being shoved into that muck.

Farlan's plan had better be worth this shit.

The only silver lining to it Levi could see was that while he remained suspicious of Lobov's motives, one part of the deal was rapidly gaining allure. If completing this fool's errand meant getting to kill Erwin Smith, as the man who'd cut his line had just introduced himself, then Levi was all for it.

He agreed to join the Survey Corps with a mirthless, predator's smile.

I can't wait to chew your throat out.

The plan to join the Survey Corps had been stupid, Levi reflected, looking around at the crowded mess hall. It had been beyond stupid. He cursed himself daily for acquiescing to it, no matter what bullcrap Farlan had spouted about stealing documents, double-crossing their employer, and living full lives aboveground (and double no matter what threats those bastards had been spouting about sending them to jail—Levi wasn't some pathetic human who pissed all over himself when shown a blade). He'd given into temptation in the heat of the moment, imagining throttling that smug look right off of Erwin Smith's smug fucking face, and was now regretting it fully. The mess hall was loud, unbearably so to ears so used to the miserable stillness of the underground district. Everyone was chatting with each other, gesturing widely, eating with their mouths open… It was repulsive. Levi and Farlan huddled together at one end of the closest table to the door, put off by the liveliness of the Survey Corps as well as the nasty looks most of them were aiming in the criminals' direction. Those looks were all that kept Isabel nearby, though she bounced in her seat and was obviously, avidly eavesdropping on every conversation in earshot. She ate without attending to her food at all. Probably this was the reason she hadn't yet noticed that her dinner was twice as large as usual, after Levi had slipped his food off of his plate and onto hers.

He was going to get himself found out and killed within days. There was no getting around it. Hiding his true nature while living aboveground was even harder than he'd ever imagined it could be. For one thing, the military was strict with its recruits' schedules. Levi didn't have time to duck out and find food that he could actually eat unless he wanted to trade his already-limited sleep for it. For another, communal meals like this one were the norm. So far nobody had noticed his complete avoidance of food, but he couldn't slip by unnoticed forever. Sooner or later somebody would note that they'd never once observed him eating at mealtimes, and it would get around that something was unnatural about the new recruit beyond his shady past. Farlan and Isabel were thankfully used to his habit of slipping food to them when forced to eat in public, and conditioned not to ask questions. Presumably they thought he was a shy eater or some nonsense like that.

Isabel bounced hard on her hands and let out an excited whoop as a nearby soldier came to the moment of triumph in his recounted story of his first sortie with a Titan. The storyteller, who had not been aware of his extra audience, broke off mid-sentence at the sound to turn an offended eye on the innocently-grinning girl. Farlan and Levi shared a commiserating look across the table as Isabel proceeded to demand to know what happened next.

"At least she's adjusting," Farlan offered. "That's a good thing, since we might be here longer than we'd thought."

Levi hadn't imagined that this plan would take months. He'd thought that it would be days, weeks at best before he could murder that blond bastard and flee back to the safe haven of his filthy sewers. Farlan could do what he liked with those secret documents, Levi would help as far as he was able, and if everything went well maybe he could set his friends up with a semi-decent life afterwards. That had seemed worth the risk at the time, too, but every part of this plan so far was proving much more difficult than anticipated.

"Mmm," he hummed noncommittally. Purely for show, he lifted a nearby cup brimming with tea by gripping the rim with his fingertips and brought it to his mouth. The position of his hand hid his mouth as he tipped the cup. Specifically, it hid the way he tipped it just until the putrid liquid touched his lips and no further. The cup sloshed with fullness as he replaced it on the table. It was a trick he'd discovered long ago, and for once not one he'd learned at the feet of his adoptive father. Another odd quirk of his that Isabel and Farlan had long ago accepted and learned not to question.

This, too, wouldn't sustain him forever. Somebody would eventually notice that he always dumped out a full cup of liquid at the end of his meals. Alone, it wasn't much of a clue, but if he gave them enough little clues to build up a larger suspicion…

Of course, the biggest problem of all was one he'd been trying desperately to ignore throughout not only this meal, but every previous meal and day of training as well.

He was getting hungry.

He hadn't planned for this. Days or weeks without eating, he could handle. Months was pushing it, even for his kind. His stomach felt like it was caving in, like it was trying to pull in sustenance through sheer gravitational force. His mouth watered at the overwhelming stink of human sweat that permeated the barracks each day after training. This lively group of soldiers at their meals looked to him like a buffet, all packed in together in moving, squirming, fragrant bunches. All day long, he was distracted. A soldier shot across his path midair while training with 3DM gear, and Levi's instincts shrieked at him to give chase. A soldier pulled off his shirt for his turn in the showers, and Levi's eyes dropped immediately to his abdomen, calculating muscle mass and fat content and imagining how easily his teeth could pierce the skin and spill juicy intestines across the shower tiles. A soldier swallowed a bite of food and Levi felt the bob of their throat as a movement in his own, convulsive and needy. He was hungry.

"You're quieter than usual. Hate crowds that much?" Farlan broke into his thoughts.

Levi scowled, resisted the urge to snap back that of course he did. The hunger was making him more irritable than usual. "I was thinking about turning in early."

Farlan's eyebrows rose. "You feeling okay, man? That's not like you. I don't think I've ever seen you get sick before…"

"I'm not sick." Only in the head, maybe. For a brief, crazy moment, Levi considered telling Farlan. Asking for his help. Surely together, the two (or three, even) of them could come up with a way to keep Levi fed without anybody in the Corps finding out. Farlan's plans were reckless, more often than not, but he was chock full of them. He would have some idea what to do.

Except that Levi couldn't really picture a scenario where Farlan didn't jerk away from him while his face fell in horror. He couldn't picture Isabel helping him plan sneaking out to kill and eat a human being any more than he could picture her killing and eating a human being. They'd be horrified, terrified, and most of all furious. They might attack him. They might report him. They'd certainly never keep sitting together with him in this isolated bubble of camaraderie against the harsh opinions of the world.

That wasn't… something he was prepared to deal with. It wasn't that bad. He wasn't weak. He could take care of his own fucking self, even now.

"You're going to be alone your entire life," the man who'd raised him had said. "You'd better be able to take care of yourself."

"I'll be fine on my own. You two stay as long as you want." With that, Levi rose from the table and exited the mess hall. He could feel Farlan's eyes on his back the whole way out, until the door thumped shut behind him. Isabel hadn't appeared to notice his exit at all, which was just as well. He didn't need nosey, concerned friends coming around and ruining his plans.

Nobody had ever known Levi's true nature. Nobody aside from that one man. He supposed that his mother must have had some sort of fucking inkling, but she was dead now, and Captain Ackerman was the only person on the planet who knew what Levi truly was.

So no, going to Isabel and Farlan for help was not an option at all. If Levi had his way, they'd live and die without ever knowing what kinds of sins he was committing while their backs were turned.

Hours later found Levi prowling through the nighttime streets surrounding Survey Corps Headquarters. The night was clear and gorgeous, the sky ornamented with a thousand cheerful stars. A warm breeze blew through the air, embracing everyone it found with gentle comfort. Many people were out, crowding the streets, and the festival air of unseasonably good weather hung over every call and laugh to echo through the darkening city.

Levi's stomach was a black sucking void of hunger.

He'd lied in his bed for hours, awaiting the return of his bunkmates. The blanket had covered the fact that he still wore his daytime clothes—which was to say, his uniform. Farlan had slunk past him to his own bunk, casting the same scrutinizing look over Levi's prone form as he had cast across Levi's back in the mess hall. In the end, he hadn't disturbed Levi. He'd crawled into his bunk peacefully and eventually his breathing had evened out and joined the nighttime symphony of their bunkmates. When every body appeared submerged in slumber, Levi had at last arisen silently from his bed and slipped between the bunks out into the night.

It had been surprisingly easy to slip out of headquarters in the middle of the night. Levi got the impression that even a normal human might have managed easily, unaided by his extra boost in agility and speed. It probably shouldn't have been that surprising, all things considered. Military corruption ran bone-deep, and it wasn't like anyone expected soldiers to give up drinking or partying, even if they were training the next generation of recruits. It was convenient, if morally disgusting. It also meant that there were likely several bars within walking distance of the compound, which was also fairly convenient. Bars drew lowlifes like candles drew moths. Maybe, just maybe, there'd be some scum deserving of an encounter with a starving madman hanging around.

He hadn't been able to wrangle a cloak under his sheets, but more traditional methods of anonymity were a lot smaller. The legends said that his kind had once worn masks when they went out to hunt. Levi had never had the means nor inclination to make a proper one, but the kerchief he used when cleaning had always covered the lower half of his face well enough to serve. On such a warm night, it might have drawn attention, but his uniform easily deflected all concerns of any passerby. The Survey Corps was unpopular, but not generally accused of being burglars. In any case, he was visibly unarmed, and in full sight of dozens of people in the streets. His appearance didn't raise much alarm. His prey would never see him coming.

He held onto that thought well past midnight, when the first two bars had turned up nobody worse than a few rowdy drunkards and Wall Garrison troops who might or might not have been on duty. Nobody who deserved the end that Levi had to offer. It had been a slim hope, some part of him acknowledged. However pessimistic an outlook he had on life, it still hadn't seemed likely that he would meet somebody who truly deserved an ignoble, selfish death just by walking the streets for a few hours. The larger part of him was just getting desperate. The pangs of hunger in his stomach had turned to shooting starbursts of pain. He was starting not to care how deserving his victim was, and that more than anything was dangerous.

Luckily, just when he was about to call it a night, the third bar bore fruit. A few streets down, in an alley off of the street too narrow for a horse, the sounds of scuffling were loud above the distant noises of revelry. Cloth shifted, flesh slid against flesh, something hit the dirt with a solid thump, and a woman groaned. It was not a happy sound. Levi peered down the dim alley from around the corner, angling himself to remain hidden.

Struggling figures resolved themselves out of the twilight to make an unexpected tableau. From the sounds, Levi had been expecting some kind of drunken sexual assault. Instead, a woman in the uniform of the Wall Garrison stood bent over the limp body of another, smaller woman in civvies. The civilian woman was young and attractive with vibrantly red hair, and also tied hand and foot, sprawled unconscious on the ground. The soldier was attempting to manhandle her towards an empty wooden crate stamped 'FRAGILE' that stood atop a wheeled pallet nearby, and was apparently having trouble maintaining a grip on her insubstantial party clothes.

Human trafficker, Levi recognized instantly. Pretty young girls vanished from the slums sometimes, but more often the victims were middle-class citizens of Wall Maria or Wall Rose. Better-kempt, usually had all of their teeth, and rarely knew how to fight back the way girls who'd grown up like Isabel had did. They were sold to corrupt military and political officials in the capital more often than not.

The thought, the very fucking thought, had Levi's eyes bleeding black into the sclera and blood red into the iris until his eyes were discs of darkness and horror. His bloodlust rose like a roaring in his ears. The faint voice in the back of his head which was noting that female human traffickers were nearly always former victims themselves was drowned out entirely. He didn't care. He couldn't care. He couldn't remember the last time the hunger had been this painful. He wasn't going to find anybody better tonight, maybe ever.

"These scum deserve it," Ackerman had said. Levi couldn't remember why that thought had used to make him nauseous. Now it only made him hungry.

The woman was looking down at a scrap of torn cloth in her hands and cursing when a hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle bowled her backwards. Her head rebounded off of the cobblestone ground with a sickening crack that left a smear of red wetness behind. She didn't have time to make a sound before Levi's knife bisected her trachea, spilling more red wetness onto the cobbles.

Levi crouched atop of her dying body for a few moments, breathing heavily, staring at that redness. At last, he wrenched himself away long enough to saw through the unconscious girl's bonds and hoist her limp body into the crate that had been her intended prison. Shoving her out into the streets in this state was like not saving her at all; at least in there she'd be somewhat sheltered until she woke up and could make her way home. He placed the lid on the crate as neatly as he could.

Then, quick as thought, he was back atop the dead trafficker, all but drooling. Hunting for live prey wasn't something he did often, but this was a part he was infinitely familiar with. It took only a few expert slashes of his knives before Levi was triumphantly removing the slippery lump that was the woman's heart. In his eagerness, he didn't bother with rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. It was all he could do to shove his mask up before he was biting deeply into the muscular meat, blood spurting across his lower face and sleeves alike. It only took a few bites to devour the entire organ, capillaries crunching between his molars and blood dribbling down his chin. Another slash opened up her abdomen, revealing the wet glisten of her digestive tract. Heart and liver first, Levi knew instinctively, even lost as he was in the bloody ecstasy of a meal so long deferred. Those were the most nutritious, and also the best-tasting.

Her liver was extracted and halfway to his mouth when a nearby rustle caught his attention. Something cold and hard just barely kissed the nape of his neck above his collar.

"Don't move." A deep voice, guttural with fury, commanded. A familiar voice, for all he'd never heard it speak in that tone before.

Levi stiffened all over, the shell of bloodlust surrounding him cracking straight down the center at the sound of that voice. He obeyed more out of shock than any desire to submit. The liver slithered out of his stunned grip to hit the cobblestones with an obscene splat. Every fiber of his body was jumping with shock. He'd been caught. He'd been caught. This was first time he'd ever been caught in his entire life. He'd thought—he'd hoped… But he'd been caught, at last, just when he'd thought his cover was more secure than it had ever been.

He'd been caught by that fucking blond bastard Erwin Smith.

"Turn around. Slowly." Erwin's voice didn't waver. Well, he was an officer in the Survey Corps. He'd probably never stumbled across a man cannibalizing a corpse, but he'd likely seen much worse done by Titans in the field. The Survey Corps was difficult to shock. And damn them, they had quick reflexes. The coming fight was going to be pretty tough. Thank God he'd managed to get down at least part of his meal before the bastard had showed up.

Playing meek, Levi obeyed, lifting his bloodied hands into sight and slowly turning to face his erstwhile superior. As he'd thought, the man was at the ready, swords out and in position, as unwavering as a stone statue. Gleaming steel moved from his nape to hover threateningly beneath his chin. Levi stayed determinedly still as the tip flashed sharply upwards in the moonlight. His kerchief mask fluttered to the ground in two separate pieces.

Erwin's mask of cold determination slipped visibly as Levi's face was revealed beneath the makeshift mask. Aside from being one of the last people Erwin might have expected to find in this position, Levi imagined he looked a sight, blood all across his face, throat, shirt, and arms. He'd lost control over his usual fastidiousness, driven by the aching hunger. The spots of blood itched at him like ants on his skin now that he was more aware. He couldn't see them, but he knew that his eyes were flushed the deep, inhuman red of a ghoul's kakugan.

"Levi?" Erwin's hands still didn't waver. "Is that you?"

"Yeah. It's me." Levi grated out. His voice was low and full of gravel, only partly owing to his transformation. Most of it was frustration, and just a little dash of humiliation thrown in for good measure. He hadn't eaten in forever. He was still starving. That was still no balm to his pride, no excuse for this lapse in his vigilance. He'd never wanted to be caught crouched over a corpse like a mindless fucking beast, not by anyone, certainly not by the holier-than-thou Captain Smith. Even if it was just for a little while, even if he murdered the man right here to keep his secret, it was galling. Ackerman hadn't yet been caught, and he'd been doing this for decades.

"What… is this? What are you?" the man bit out, uncertainty warring with fury in his face. He was obviously shaken. Who wouldn't be? It was clear by the unnatural hue of Levi's eyes that this was something far more outlandish than the relatively simple scenario of stumbling across a psychopath at work. Levi was no Titan, but he obviously wasn't human, either. Ghouls were legends, Ackerman had told him. So humanity thought. Stories of them existed dating back to before the appearance of Titans, but in a hundred years nobody had ever seen one. As far as anyone on the street knew, they'd either always been myths or they'd vanished along with 90% of humanity in the onslaught of the Titans. Levi was living proof that at least a handful had made it into the walls, but even he had no idea where they were hiding or how many were left. His father was missing, his mother was dead, and the man who'd raised him only knew as much about ghouls as any other person who'd heard the myths. All he knew of his own kind was from stories. He was actually a little bit interested in whether Erwin would be able to connect what he was seeing to the childhood ghost stories.

Not interested enough to wait around and see, though.

Sorry, Farlan, looks like I can't keep that promise after all.

Levi launched himself backwards into a roll, scooping up his knives from the ground and avoiding the slash of swords that followed his descent. Armed once more, he braced and sprang forwards. His foot ground the woman's liver into a greasy smear beneath his sole.

The first rush was by necessity turned into a smooth dive beneath the second swipe of Erwin's swords. He lashed out in kind with his shorter blades, but his prey vanished beneath their arcs, and Levi was tossed away by a powerful booted blow to the ribs. There was no room in this damned alleyway! Levi hit the wall hard and instantly dropped to the ground, barely avoiding the sword that slammed home into the plaster wall. He rolled and sprang to his feet behind Erwin, but the man was already twisting. The second sword was caught with a screech against Levi's crossed knives for a bare moment before the smaller, weaker blades snapped apart.

Levi jerked away, but not quickly enough. The sword's tip drew a line of blood across his bicep, shredding his blood-splattered shirt.

So that was that answered. At least now he knew that there really hadn't been any way out of the deal that had led him to this point.

The cut felt like a red-hot wire being held continuously against his skin. Levi had never been cut before in his life.

He danced backwards to avoid Erwin's pressing attacks, fetching up against the opposite wall of the alley far too soon. There was no room…! With a frustrated snarl, Levi ducked a strike from Erwin's free fist—he had abandoned the stuck sword in the wall—and launched himself deliberately at the opposite wall. A few quick, zigzagging springs had him up to the rooftops in seconds, perched on the very edge of the shingled slope and whirling around bare instants before the familiar zip-thud of a 3DM line hit his ears. Then Erwin was on him, single remaining sword swinging for the neck, cloak flaring out behind him like wings against the night sky.

Levi didn't need wings, or a sword or 3DM. He had enough space to move now.

Erwin didn't have time to complete his swing before his arm was caught and used as a lever to slam him headfirst into the roof. Shingles exploded in all directions. The sword was wrenched from his grasp and tossed carelessly aside. The soldier struggled futilely. Though Levi was much smaller in every dimension, his strength was incredible, and his speed doubly so. Erwin hadn't stood a ghost of a chance once they'd reached the roof.

For a moment, in the wake of the brief fight's intensity, absolute silence fell. Both men gasped for breath and glared in silence.

It was broken by Erwin. "What are you?" he asked again, yanking against the grip on his arms. He didn't budge an inch.

Above him, Levi snarled wordlessly, mind racing. Shit, this wasn't good. Erwin was a soldier. A fucking officer, even. He'd be missed. Worse, he might even be avenged. Before tonight, he'd planned to make the man's death look accidental, or natural, or something that might at least confuse suspicion away from him long enough for him to vanish back into the underground. Now… there would be no doubt. Levi gone in the middle of the night, Erwin following, and then the man found gutted and half-eaten on a rooftop? There would be retribution. They might even discover the trail of his previous meals. This wasn't going to work.

Not killing him wasn't an option either. Levi had been caught, and he couldn't let that stand. Better to be hunted down as a human murderer than a ghoul. That, too, was a piece of childhood advice that had carried great weight, coming as it did from an actual human murderer. Ackerman was already one too many people who knew about Levi, though there wasn't much he could do about the old man as things stood.

Couldn't kill. Couldn't let live. What a steaming shitpile of a choice.

Beneath his racing mind, Levi could feel his mouth flooding with saliva, his stomach roaring with emptiness. He'd barely gotten to eat any of that woman. He was starving. He had a human pinned down right here, helpless, and it was making him so fucking hungry that he couldn't think straight. The delicious smells of human sweat and blood were all around him, seeping through him like water, and his gaze was locked on to the movement of the man's chest. That was where the heart beat behind the fragile ribs, juicy and meaty and full of salty blood that would just burst out of it when he bit down…

Focus. He had to focus. He had to decide if it was worth it, before all powers of deciding were beyond him and he became nothing more than a ravenous beast. A fucking Titan in human skin. The thoughts in his head disgusted him.

Still, he had to swallow before he could speak. "Who… does anyone know you're out here?"

Erwin, somehow, looked completely calm. "Even if nobody did, I could just lie to you, you realize."

"No you couldn't, dipshit, I can fucking smell lies," Levi bullshitted on the spot. "Answer the question before I rip your arms off." He flexed his grip, straining the man's shoulder joints painfully, demonstrating exactly how easy it would be for him. Like plucking flower petals. Erwin grimaced, but otherwise showed no signs of fear or submission.

"I'm not stupid, Levi. A recruit got up to use the bathroom and noticed that you were missing. As soon as he reported, I had my men secure your cohorts in an isolated room. If they don't hear from me by morning, they have their orders."

Isabel and Farlan. Levi froze in place, all thoughts of bloodlust fleeing his mind. He felt like he'd had a bucket of ice water dumped over him. Fuck. Fuck. This paranoid asshole—he was good. He was too good. Levi was so stupid! Of course he'd been out looking for the missing criminal. Of course this encounter hadn't been an accident. He should have stuffed something under the covers of his bunk. He should have hunted further afield, mindful that any local crime might be traced back to the resident criminal element. He should have… He should have…

God, it was too late. He was well and truly fucked this time, wasn't he?

"You'd let innocent people die, just to get revenge on me?" he demanded, emphasizing his rage by slamming the man against the shingles again. "They have nothing to do with this, you bastard! They're not like me!"

"I only have your word for that," Erwin pointed out, still infuriatingly calm. Infuriatingly superior. Unflappable fucking bastard, trying to sound so aloof when he was the one pinned to the shingles with a hungry ghoul salivating inches away from his fucking throat! Then, icing on the cake, he added, "You sacrificed yourself for them once before. I wonder if that still applies now."

Incandescent fury lit Levi's blood-red eyes. "I only have your word that you told anyone at all, much less gave any orders."

"I thought you could smell lies?"

With an inarticulate growl of rage, Levi's hands sprang away from his prisoner. He rose and backed away, tightly coiled to attack at any moment. He made an effort to breathe slowly, evenly, trying to control the rage and hunger that howled inside of him. "What the fuck do you want, then?"

Erwin levered himself upright slowly, not taking his eyes off of Levi even to look for his missing sword. "I want to know what you are."

Levi scoffed. "Just kill me if you're going to kill me, shitstain, don't pussyfoot around it."

"Answer the question first."

"A ghoul! I'm a fucking ghoul, okay?" Levi snapped, gesturing sharply at his eyes. "What, did the fucking kakugan not tip you off? Or do high society military brats not get told ghost stories like everybody else?"

"A ghoul." Erwin moved closer, movements deliberately slow. Levi didn't think he could stiffen any further, but somehow he managed. His face was twisted in what must have been a horrifying rictus. "Ghouls are a myth."

"As you can clearly see." Sarcasm oozed around the edges of a snarl.

Finally, Erwin took his eyes off of Levi to search for his lost sword. The 3DM lines, still embedded in the edge of the roof, retracted into their coils with a low whirr. Levi just stood there, frozen in place while the man fully turned his back to retrieve the blade. Fuck him. Fuck his smug assurance. Fuck him for humiliating Levi like this. Just… fuck him.

At last, Erwin turned back, holding up his sword to inspect it for cracks. As if that little bit of tossing around could put a nick in a thrice-folded steel Titan blade. The thing practically gleamed with lethality in the moonlight.

"So?"

Erwin glanced up. "So what?"

Levi's teeth clenched. "So are we going to do this here, or do you want to get back to street level first?"

Erwin blinked. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"You! Killing me!" Levi barked. "Do you really need me to spell it out? How the fuck do you find your asshole to take a shit in the morning, do you need a fucking map?!"

"I'm not going to kill you."

That brought him up sharply. "…What?"

"Not right now, at least. You're going to come to headquarters with me without making a scene, and I'll tell my men to let yours get back to their training. Then, you and I are going to talk. At length." A corner of his mouth turned up, dry and mirthless. "I know someone who's going to be dying to meet you."

The humiliation burned like swallowed bile throughout Levi's entire body. He itched and chafed where tacky blood was drying on his skin. His stomach ached sharply, and his kakugan did not want to go away no matter how much he tried to calm down.

What kind of fucking choice did he have?

Levi followed behind Erwin like an obedient dog as he leaped back into the alley to retrieve the sword embedded in the wall. He didn't protest when the green Survey Corps cloak was dropped over his head to hide the blood and red eyes. He stayed meek and silent as a shadow as the man informed the authorities of a murder two streets down from the local tavern. And he walked pretty as you please behind Erwin straight through headquarters into a small basement room, and didn't fight back when the barred door was shut behind him and locked with a scraping click.

He curled up once he was sure he was alone and hated hated hated Erwin Smith.