note one: okay, so this was a story i had originally posted under my previous account darkestlight33 and i don't know if some of you remember me or remember reading it, but i decided to repost it. and i know some of you might be wondering why i deleted my account in the first place. and it was because i was drowning in a pool of depression and indecision. and i took it out on my stories. I realize that it wasn't the wisest decision but hey? what can you do right?
GROUND STATE
by: darkestlight33 (now aero-breaking)
every jackass thinks he knows what war is.
especially those who've never been in one.
we like things nice and simple, good and evil, heroes and villains.
there's always plenty of both.
most of the time, they are not who we think they are.
—Flags of Our Fathers
There is something eerie about the room, Mikasa doesn't know if it's the markings that almost take up an entire wall or the endless stale white that taunts her. It is an ugly white, not like fluffy clouds, but like a worn out white, yellowish, ugly, and a torture for the eyes. They won't turn off the lights, not even when she sleeps, so her eyes have been tormented an infinite number of times since she stepped into the room. The only relief comes when she's given a new assignment, but then, when she's sleeping under the rain or on the cold ground, she closes her eyes and pretends she's in the room.
Because the ugly white is better than the red that awaits her outside. Red, red, red. Scarlet. Maroon. Red, like her precious scarf. Red, that stains her vision, her hands, her legs, her hair. Red that is sometimes in lumps, sometimes running like a river. It is terrifying and at the same time it is nothing more than a color. Silly little girl, getting scared of colors when the real monster is you.
The markings on the walls are lines, thousands of little lines, made by someone who had desperately tried to hold on to the concept of time. Mikasa thinks its stupid, because sometimes she feels like she has been in the room for months but in reality it's only been a few hours. But she continues this person's tradition, it's probably very inaccurate but she makes the lines too. There are exactly two thousand seven hundred seventy-three when she begins, she knows, she counted. She's added another three thousand two hundred forty-one, every time she thinks a day has passed she has added a new one. Three thousand two hundred forty-two. Three thousand two hundred forty-three. Three thousand two hundred forty-four. Three thousand two hundred forty-five.
The lines are all different, no two are the same. Some are smooth, almost invisible, others are stained with blotches of red, others are jagged and deep. They might look the same but every line represents a different kind of torture.
Mikasa likes to pretend sometimes that she's not alive. She is just a figment of someone's imagination and in a way, she really is. She is a ghost that lurks at the bottom of a building, no one but a select few knowing of her existence. But she knows that she is alive, because when they let her out, when they inject her with some type of drug, when she's holding the neck of lifeless man, pain settles in. A pain that tears apart her mind. A pain that doesn't permit her to sleep, to eat, or move. A parasite that renders her nothing more than a pile of bones and flesh.
It is at times like these that she remembers an innocent smile, a fleeting feeling, a shattered dream. Mikasa can barely remember his face, she clings to that faint memory with all she has. They don't allow visitors so she hasn't seen him since the day they took her away. But she doesn't know how long ago that was, all she knows is that it has been a long time, because when she first came she was eight and now she was considered an adult, or so they had told her.
When will it all end?
Levi finds out about the end of the war like every other person living outside of Maria: through the newspaper.
The headline is 'Victory' in bold letters that make his eyes a bit weary, and his heart a little heavy, and there is a picture of a smiling child whose face he does not care to remember. He doesn't bother reading it. He doesn't need to. He's more than a hundred percent sure that someone, either Erwin or Hanji or anyone else, will come to his home in the outskirts of Maria and tell him exactly what happened. The newspaper will never have the real story, it won't have the names of all the people that died, it won't have the details of all the men and women who lost an arm, a leg, or something more; the newspaper was just an accumulation of pretty words that told only the half-truth.
He's not interested in half-truths, not when he dedicated seven years to sector five. Not when they tore apart his humanity and all his sanity in that hellhole that was the laboratory. Not when he still couldn't go a day without making sure every surface of his home was cleaned until he could see his reflection, not when he still couldn't go a night without any nightmares. Not when he had spent the last ten years of his life trying to lick his scars closed and trying to find some sense of normalcy.
No. He would never, could never, settle for half-truths.
He wanted to hear it all. Hear who died, how they died, why they died. He wanted to know everything. From the planning to the preparations to the execution to the aftermath. Everything. Everything. And maybe, that way, he could fool himself into thinking that what they did to him was for the good of humanity. That being tested on, being stripped of his freedom and his self-worth had been good enough for something.
That his life had had some meaning. However small it might have been.
So patiently, he waits. Waits for someone, anyone, to come and tell him all the things he wants to hear.
And on a rainy night someone does come, or rather, some people come. It is not what he expects. It was not what he wanted.
Hanji nocks frantically at his door, and he half tumbles, half walks to the door and pulls it open. She comes in with frantic eyes and bloody clothes and asks for help he doesn't know he can give. He's confused, and there have only been a few times in his life were he has been confused, and just lets her have what she wants.
She smiles, a smile that seemed like she wanted to cry. Cry for herself, for him, for what she was about to do.
Hanji yells, to someone, he's not sure whom until he sees the large frame of Erwin in his doorway, and in his arms is a girl. Pretty, bloody little thing. Covered in dirt and grime and it reminds Levi of corpses and rotting bodies. It makes him want to throw up and it makes him want to retreat into his room and never come out.
Erwin looks at him with something similar to an apology, something similar to a broken man at his ends meet trying to find some way to redeem himself. For some reason, Levi doesn't understand it, can't associate himself with it. Can't seem the to find the familiarity and acceptance to that look.
It all goes too fast, the girl is dying, and Hanji is trying to stop the bleeding in her head and he is standing to the side, watching everything happen as if it were a movie. The rain outside pours harder, hitting the room in a comforting way, but he doesn't feel anything close to comfort, all he feels is dread, he feels it clawing at his heart, tearing it and letting it bleed in a way that only meant that something was going to happen. Anticipation, is what he felt, the girl, he realizes, it was the girl.
There was something about the girl, something terrifying, with her black as midnight hair and thin frame. She had something he did not want to remember, something that haunted him, creeped up his spine and into the smallest crevices of his mind.
When Hanji is done, when the girl is in a stable, but still dangerous, condition she tells him.
"She's your successor."
And he feels the air leave his body and every cell in his body stop and everything is falling around him and nothing makes sense.
"After we helped you escape, this is the girl they took in."
He doesn't want to hear it.
Doesn't want to listen.
"She's been there for the past ten years."
And he realizes, it had all been for nothing. His life was for nothing. Because he hadn't been enough, because they weren't satisfied with him. So they had found someone else. Tested on someone else. Broken someone else.
He has never hated the lab more. Never wanted to kill someone as much as then.
And so, when the girl gets better, when she is awake, he lets her stay at his home.
She doesn't talk much, doesn't eat much, doesn't do much of anything, but she scares him, terrifies him. Because she is the embodiment of everything he wanted to forget, everything he hated, everything he wanted to destroy.
The garden is Mikasa's favorite place to be. There is something comforting about it, the way the sun shines through the canopy of the trees, surrounded by various flowers, it is ethereal. That is why she likes it. The garden is nothing like the lab, nothing like a battlefield, nothing like the outside world. When she's there, she can almost pretend she's okay, she can almost forget. It is as close as she'll ever get to normalcy.
"It's getting late." Her companion states, "We should get going."
She turns to look at him, pristine as always, and not a hair out of place. Levi is holding a half-empty teacup, an annoyed look overtaking his usually apathetic features.
Mikasa only stands from her chair, trying not show her displeasure, and follows after him when he begins walking back home. Teacup dangling dangerously from one of his fingers.
The walk is silent, as it always is, with nothing but the sound of the wind and distant crickets. The sun is setting in the horizon, and in this place where there is open land and sky, she can see it clearly. Beautiful oranges, fiery reds, and deep purples that stir nostalgia in her heart.
She remembers the first time she saw a sunset after leaving the lab, it had been so beautiful she had almost cried. When she was given an assignment, the sky was never beautiful. It was dark, and no matter how much the sun was shinning, there was always a black cloud that obscured her vision. She had never been able to just stop and look at the beauty the world had to offer.
Mikasa wonders, as she looks at his back, if it had been the same for Levi. Had the world stopped looking like death after he left the lab? Had the beauty of it made him slowly fall in love with it, like she had?
Sometimes there are so many things she would like to ask, but she restrains herself, maybe there are things he does not wish to remember.
And even if ten years have passed since he was in the lab seeing her had probably opened scars that he had wished desperately to keep closed. Or maybe, they had never even been closed to begin with, and now they were just bleeding more profoundly.
It's been close to a year and a half since she first arrived at his home. She doesn't really remember how she arrived there, the last thing she remembers, before an endless sea of black ink overtook her memory, is being in the ugly white room. Her tired eyes drooping and the effects of some type of drug or the other wearing off.
And then rain and Hanji's face hovering over her.
She doesn't understand his kindness. If that's what it was.
Sometimes he's close and invades all of her senses; sometimes he's distant and the coldness he treats her with reminds her of the times she's had to fall asleep in the snow, no warmth or human contact for miles.
He is an enigma and she doesn't know what to do with him. But she knows, that he is hope and he is the ground she knows will not give under her feet. He holds her up, kindly, forcefully, desperately.
Levi doesn't let her fall to the monsters that plague her mind.
"I had a brother once," she tells him. "He had the most innocent smile."
They're in his room, both lying in the bed, him with a book in hand and she laying on her side, looking out the window, and the only source of light comes from the small lamp sitting in his nightstand. He realizes, a few weeks into her stay that her nightmares don't let her sleep. She wakes up screaming and tearing apart everything in her path. More than once she had almost cracked his head open when he had tried calming her down.
He knows her nightmares are more vivid than his; his nightmares are like a dull pain, uncomfortable but bearable. Not hers, hers are a river of flowing, running pain. They slowly tear apart her sanity and her hands tremble, desperately trying to hold on to what's left of her common sense.
So with reluctance he allows her to sleep with him.
It doesn't immediately get better, for the first weeks she wakes up with unfocused eyes and his neck becomes her one and only target. He doesn't understand it himself, but he can't, will not, let this woman break anymore than she already was. Maybe, he thinks secretly, the reason he wants her so desperately to be okay is because he feels guilty.
"Did you?"
"Yes," She answers, tapping the glass of the window, "I remember him. Sometimes. Not very clearly but I remember him. He—" she stops, stops talking; stops tapping the window, and suddenly she's in a far away place he can't follow, but she returns soon, "He was the one who was supposed to go to the lab."
This grabs his attention, since he's never heard of it. "And why did you go?"
"I took his place. I was little then, but I knew that if they took him, he wouldn't make it."
"How?"
"I just did."
Silence falls on them, like the majority of the time. Then, unexpectedly Mikasa, in one swift motion, rolls over, swings her leg over his, and effectively leaves her sitting on his lap. She pries the book from his hands.
"What are you doing?" He asks.
She throws the book behind her, and looks into his eyes, her endless black pools unnerving him.
"Levi," she begins, cupping his cheeks with her rough hands, "Do you hate me?"
He tries his best to stare blankly at her, it doesn't take much, "Why do you ask?"
She blinks, innocently, "Curiosity."
He sighs, "What do you think?" He rests his hands on her hips, squeezing them lightly.
"I think," she says, her fingers tracing the contours of his face, "that you hate me as much as you love me." She lowers her head and kisses his neck, "I think, you want to kill me as much as you want to protect me."
Levi slips his hands under her shirt, which isn't really hers, it's his. And slowly slides them upward, leaving a trail of goose bumps in their wake. "Why do you think that?"
"Because," she says, rolling of him, leaving him grasping at air, "that's how I feel about you."
"Why do you have to clean everything?"
"It's filthy."
"No, it's not. It's just you. Why?"
He's scrubbing the floors again; she helps him.
Mikasa knows that she is treading in dangerous ground, but she wants to know. She wants to understand the horrors he faced, and maybe, just maybe, hers wouldn't seem so terrifying then. It is a sick comfort she seeks.
For a long time he doesn't answer, they continue cleaning. When they're putting the supplies away he speaks, "Once, I had to get out of enemy territory. But the only way to do it was to pretend that I was dead. So I rode in a train, with feces and fifty rotting bodies. For five days."
She doesn't ever bring up the subject again.
She's not really far off the mark, Levi realizes.
They're two unstable people living under the same roof, with the same type of pain shredding them slowly. He hates her presence, he wants her to disappear, but at the same time her presence is everything he wishes for, and he'd kill again if he they took her away from him.
"Humanities Strongest Soldiers." What a fucking joke.
There was nothing strong about them, nothing about their worn out bodies and destroyed minds could be strong. They were two very broken people and that was all.
"Do people like us deserve to be happy?"
"I don't know."
"I've killed a lot. Innocent people, criminals; I've wiped out entire towns. I probably don't deserve to be happy."
"Do you want to be?"
Silence. And then a straggled, slightly breathless, "Yes."
He takes her in his arms. He knows they can't leave it all behind, can't rid themselves of nightmares and the monsters in their minds, but they can try.
And with his lips on hers, he seals his promise.
note two: again, this is supposed to be a vague kindda thing. i might (might being the key word) expand this into a chaptered story. if any of you would be interested.