Title: Melancholy
Rating: M (Just slight smut)
Pairing: Levi and Mikasa
POV: Mikasa
Summary: Eren is badly wounded and sent into a coma when under Levi's watch. Mikasa doesn't know how to handle her pain so she seeks the comfort of her Heichou.

(I'm re-uploading all my old stories so i'm sorry if you've read this before.)

I really hope you guys like this. This is angsty and depressing and I tried really really hard. I'm expanding my horizons. I hope you guys like it as much as I do and yeah. Let me know what you think okay. Enjoy!

I heard the trudging of a hundred horses echoing in my ear drums. The sound pounding to the rhythm of my unsteady heart and I took a deep, unsatisfying breath to calm myself down. My eyes shut as I listened, the galloping like the gentle brush on a canvas with a man who held too much strength behind the handle. It made me fear what I was going to find when I went to greet them, just like the pain of revealing a painting made by the same rough hand. Being a soldier myself, I am aware of how monsters tried to tame other beasts. A power hungry surge that goes through the heads of men, making them seem invincible to the human eye. That thrill of the fight caused reckless emotions and reckless emotions caused harm and fear and pain and death

And I, for one, know that nobody, not even those who claim invincibility, can escape death.

I sprung open my eyes as the sound stopped, the neigh of the horses made a chill creep up my spine, my nerves tingling with anticipation. Even the animals sounded broken. How could the people possibly be whole?

I shut the book I was glazing over to pass the time as it had clicked slowly away. I was almost sure time was standing still when all I wanted was for them to return so I could make sure they were okay. And now they were back and I was almost too nervous to go.

That didn't last long.

I sprung up from my chair when I heard a voice shout out for help as they needed extra hands to carry the bodies out.

The bodies.

The bodies.

There were casualties.

And suddenly, it was if I could feel every vein in my body rush the blood up to my ears and my heartbeat became the new silence and I didn't know how to breathe and then I was up and running at the speed of light.

I pushed anyone and everyone out of my way as I tried to make it to the gates where the squad had returned. My throat was raw and dry, much like my eyes but I paid no attention to either as my feet smashed through the ground, desperation seizing my frame.

I halted, as did my heart, when the group of tired, hurt soldiers came into my view. My eyes widening at the sight of the fractured and fragmented humans who had so much life stripped out of their souls. They were petrified and shaking and screaming and I didn't know how to stop it. I didn't know how to fix it. I didn't know anything, except that I had to find them.

I ran towards the crowd, my nails clenched into each hand leaving marks that didn't compare to the recent scars of these soldiers. I pressed harder, wanting to take the pain, wanting to ease their pain, wanting to feel some pain.

I didn't deserve to be kept out of this mission. Commander Erwin's reasons for keeping me at this stupid castle were his own, but I shouldn't have listened. I was skilled, I was a warrior. I could've prevented this.

My eyes scanned the crowd, looking for them, looking for hope. I was on the verge of breaking down right in the middle of these people, but I couldn't. This wasn't my place to sob and scream. Who was I? What misery did I have compared to these fighters? I didn't deserve to hurt.

And yet, I wanted to.

I was just about to give up; I could feel it in my bones. There was a shiver of melancholy that danced across my flesh and reached up to my chest, clawing at it and ripping it to shreds. And I was panicking and I couldn't see them and I thought-

But then, all at once like a sudden gust of wind, there he was. My eyes caught his and my scream stayed in my throat and all was okay for five whole seconds before…

I saw the look of defeat in his eyes.

His small black eyes pierced into mine and when he snapped out of his daze and recognized that it was me, they widened. I crinkled my eyebrows at the breaking of his walls and knew something was absolutely and horrifically wrong.

No. No. Why does he look like that? It was all okay, it had to be. He was right there, standing in front of me. Eren couldn't be far from him, right?

I broke away from his sorrow filled gaze to look around him, my eyes attacking anything I could look at it as long as it had brown hair and a will to live. I searched for his blue eyes, the ones filled with so much determination and I couldn't see anything. Not a damn thing.

There were too many people. To many screaming, wounded, butchered humans to count and I needed to know, I needed it so badly.

So I walked towards Levi, making my footsteps as slow as possible because when I finally reached him, I would have to know the truth. So I fantasized for the ten feet I had to walk that Eren had just gone ahead, that he was already in the castle, that I just missed him, that he was okay.

That he was breathing, god let him be breathing.

I made it there. I stood facing him. His eyes still wide and his lips kept parting open and closed, like he didn't know how to say it.

"Where is he?" I said simply, hoping my voice didn't cripple like my body was about too. It came out raspy, like I had been crying forever, when in reality I couldn't shed one damn tear. Not yet. He didn't answer me, just closed his eyes and clenched his jaw tight.

"Where. Is. He?" I growled, my voice getting louder with every word.

"Ackerman. Mikasa. Please just wait-"

"Screw you. Where is my brother?" And I could feel the tears now. My body was allowing my mind to face the reality that he was hurt or broken or dead…dead…dead.

Levi looked down towards the floor, no longer courageous enough to say anything while looking at my eyes. Humanity's strongest was frightened.

If he was frightened…

My body was shaking with anticipation and my stomach clenched with 17 years of pain.

"Tell me right now." I said, trying to sound like I was strong enough to hear it but executing it like I was too weak to understand it.

"We…We were surrounded by a massive amount of abnormal Titans. Nobody could have predicted the outcome, not even Erwin. He had no idea…The ambush…I…Eren…before he could turn into a titan he was picked up and thrown across the formation, wiping out half our men with his single body. The Titan had flung him so hard across the field that he hit his head, causing an excessive amount of damage to his brain. The doctor on hand could only tell us so much without a complete kit. Armin and Connie just brought him to the medical center but…he's just not with us. No matter how hard we tried to…he's…he's in a coma."

And all I heard was 'he's just not with us' and before I knew it my hands were on the cuff of Levi's neck and I was screaming and pushing him towards the cart and slamming him against it. I dropped his shirt and he looked at me, with such sadness and such pity, I couldn't take it. This was his fault. He promised he would protect him. He promised it would be okay. He promised, he promised, he promised.

I couldn't take the feeling in my head, like I was in a bubble that no one wanted to pop, afraid of what they would find inside. I clenched my fist and without a second thought, I punched him in the jaw, my hand snapping at the contact but I ignored the pain. These broken bones were nothing. His head turned back to me quickly and I punched him again, the broken bones crying out for help while I ignored the pleas.

His lip was already starting to bruise and blood trickled down his face but he said nothing, just let me punch him again and again and again until I was satisfied with my anger. When I moved on from his face, I began to pelt him on his chest, my hands pounding and clawing at his body. I screamed at the top of my lungs, not caring who heard me or saw what I was doing. They wouldn't dare stop me. Nobody would.

And he simply stood there, leaning his broken head against the wooden cart, his body like an animal and I, the butcher.

"How could you do this?" I cried to him. "How could you? You PROMISED." I yelled and called and pleaded and none of it was making me feel any better. The tears had started now and there was no way to turn them off. They clouded my vision until I wasn't even sure if I was punching anyone anymore. I could barely feel myself go weak enough for my hands to go limp, my body to shut down and my head to explode.

He caught me as I fell, his arms wrapping around my sobbing body and my face was in the crease of his neck. He clawed at me and held me and whispered how sorry he was and how everything was going to be okay.

But I was numb.

His words as empty as the future I now had.

I cried and cried and cried until I thought I'd run out of tears. And Levi stayed, holding me on his knees, squeezing me like I was the last good thing in this world and he didn't want to leave me. One hand wrapped around my black hair and the other around my waist and he pushed me into him, as if the pressure of his body on mine would make it better.

I had given up, it was over, I didn't know how to go on now. So I dropped everything and let him take over. I let him hug me as I sobbed into his neck and I let him pick me up like a child and carry me inside the castle. I buried my face in his neck and wrapped my legs around his torso and finally hugged him back. He carried me bear hug style into the stone walls, the soldiers around us staring as we left but I paid no attention.

It all hit me at once. Eren was in a coma. Eren was hurt. Eren might not wake up. And my body felt like somebody came in and turned off my life support and I was gasping for air, drowning in a world without him in it.

I clawed at Levi's shirt, pulling at it so I could push myself into him more. His skin was hot and sweaty but I didn't complain. His footsteps could barely be heard over my cries and he walked along the empty hallways towards his room. I didn't protest. His heat and smell comforted me and even though I was so so so angry at him, he was the only source of amenity I had. I needed it right now, I needed to be reassured and held and loved. I needed to be loved, because my own damn love had run out.

"I'm so sorry." He kept whispering in my ear and after the tenth or so time, my cries had started to die down. We arrived at his room, my face stained with tears of a broken heart and my throat raspy with the screams of a dead woman.

I'm not sure how he did it but he managed to open his door, kicking it gently behind him to close it with me still bundled in his arms. I hadn't budged an inch even though my broken hand was starting to rush pain and my head hurt from all the tears. He calmly walked me over to his bed and lightly dropped me down onto the softness, his hands reluctant to let me go but I could tell he was desperate to see my face.

I could feel my puffy eyes, the redness of my cheeks, my running nose, my dead eyes. He scanned my entire head, his face so un-Levi-like and I suddenly missed his arms around me. It was like he ripped a part of me and the only way to get it was for him to put it back in my heart.

"Mikasa," He said, realizing that was the second time he had said my first name that day. He never called me that. I was always 'Ackerman' to him, just another solider under his watchful eye. Once Erwin had told me I was forbidden from trailing along on this mission, I had made myself go up to Levi, even though we had barely spoken. I made him swear an oath that he would keep Eren safe, no matter what. Levi had agreed to it and had looked at me like I had three heads. He had been surprised I had spoken to him like that, demanding such a thing of such an authoritative figure. But I didn't care, at the moment, he was my only hope.

Like right now. He felt to be my only hope of getting fixed.

I looked at him in the eyes; mine wide with every emotion I could be feeling. He rubbed his finger underneath the sleepless bags under my eyes, slowly wiping away a tear that had escaped. His fingers were soft and warm and I shivered as they trailed down my cheek. His thumb caressed my skin and my eyes closed at the feeling.

"It's going to be okay." He whispered.

"How can you know that?" I asked, staring at my eyelids.

But he had no answer and I knew he wouldn't. Nobody could ever know how anything would turn out, the choices made today have a range of possible outcomes and the only one I wanted more than anything was for Eren to wake up.

"Levi, it hurts." I whispered, his name feeling foreign on my lips. I clutched at my chest, my hands squeezing what would be my heart and my eyes filling once again with water.

"I know." He said, pressing his forehead down to my own and grabbing the hand that was resting on my heart. He put it on his own chest and looked me in the eyes, desperate for me to say something or do something or be something. I just stayed there, with his forehead on mine, feeling the beat of a monster's heart.

It was the same beat as my own.

He's just like me.

I forced my tears to stop so I could inhale this man in front of me, desperate to find a cure to the poison that was my life. His eyes staring into mine, mirroring my own until I thought I was looking at my damn reflection. And then, I didn't want to just make myself feel better. I wanted the same for him. I wanted to wipe the pain I knew too well out of him and leave him with only pleasantness and happiness and joyfulness.

And suddenly, just like that, I was kissing him.

If he was as surprised as I was, he didn't show it. I closed my eyes, simply breathing him in and pressing my lips to his. It was simple. It made my heart flutter. It was filling my void.

I pulled back reluctantly, just to look at his face, but wasn't given the opportunity to do so. He closed the gap between us again, this time with a rougher yet more vulnerable kiss. I eagerly met his lips, crushing my soul into his. I'm aching for him, burning for him, crying for him. He pushes me down on the bed and hovers above me, keeping his chapped lips on mine. I clutch him with every inch of my being, putting my hands on any part of him that I can.

He's like the tide, dragging me in over and over, no matter how much pain you feel when being sucked in. You take the first bit of air and it's glorious only to have it crushed out of you again. He was the good and the bad, the tide and the air, the monster and the human. And I needed him.

His tongue set fires to my insides and I tried to hold back a scream when he nipped my bottom lip. I didn't think about anything. Not about the pain or Eren or anything. I just thought about him. He is where I would hide my pain, where I would make a shield behind it. Focusing on him didn't let me remember the other things that were so wrong in this fucked up world.

So I pushed do my feelings and created a wall that nobody would break.

I feverishly grabbed his back, not caring about any broken bone, and pushed him down, so he was lying right on top of me and no parts of our body were left free. I wrapped my legs around his waist and he had both this hands on either side of my head. His kissing didn't stop. There was no doubt I would die if it did. I nipped and licked and teased, never feeling so whole yet so empty all at once.

And then he moved his lips from mine and I got scared again. Fear that he was leaving me and I would have to face all this shit alone. But he moved down from my lips, leaving a hot trail of kisses down my jaw, down my neck, down my chest. He kissed anywhere he could find skin and I responded to each one. He was setting me ablaze and he didn't even know it.

He stopped on my collar bone, looking up at me with those damn eyes and I was so sure about what was going to happen next. The silence engulfed us as I reached up my shaky, broken hands and undid the first button on my blouse, slowly yet surely. His eyes didn't leave mine, even when I got down to the last button and he hissed when I pushed open my shirt.

I didn't care what he thought, I didn't care if he didn't want me or was repulsed or thought I was being too forward. I needed him to make me feel okay. I needed him like I needed the sun or the moon or people or comfort. He saw the look in my eyes and his own gaze softened.

Maybe I was using him, maybe it was hurting him and maybe everything was so fucked up that I couldn't tell the difference. It didn't matter. He knew I needed this comfort that only he could provide. He spread my legs slightly and put his right knee in between them so he could sit up and swiftly remove his shirt. I took the opportunity to sit up and take off the blouse, shrugging my arms out of it so I was lying there, vulnerable, in a black bra. I tossed it somewhere along the bed and he tossed his shirt with it. It landed silently, as quiet as the room that surrounded us was. We didn't say a word as I shimmied out of pants. I lifted my hips and he grabbed the hem of them, pulling them down for me and tossing them onto the pile of clothes.

In all my life, there was no moment I had where I didn't think. My brain was constantly working its way to safety. I needed the known, the comfortable, the things I could control. But lying underneath this man who I had despised for two years of my life, I had not one thought in my head except that I wanted him more than anything.

I tugged at his belt, going as fast as I could to rip it off of him, wanting him to be just as naked as me. I threw it on the floor and the metal hit with a clank, the sound echoing throughout the room. I pushed his pants off while he reached behind me and unclipped my bra, roughly throwing it on the floor. I could see the impatient emotion he was feeling and I wanted it to be done. I needed him now and there was no more waiting for either of us. Today was proof that life had no guarantees. There was nothing that was certain, except that I was here with this glorious man who I was giving my heart too.

Without another word, I pushed his body off of me, spinning so I was on the top of him. I quickly lifted up my legs from the straddle position I was in and whipped my underwear off as quickly as I could. He did the same, pushing his off until we lay there, naked.

I didn't feel embarrassed or scared or hurt. Not anymore. His kisses, his touched were burning me and setting fire to my bones.

He flipped me onto my back again, kissing me slowly and lovingly, his naked body pressed against mine. I could see the hesitation in his eyes and I wanted him to know it was okay. I was okay. For now. With him here, I would always be okay.

I spread my legs to prompt him in, to show him just what I wanted. He nestled between my thighs, my hair sprawled out on the bed and he kissed the tip of my nose.

"Are you sure?" He whispered hoarsely.

I simply nodded, too numb too feel anything else but him. He laid his head in the burrow of my neck and settled in as close as he could. I wrapped my legs around his waist and without another word, he pushed into me.

The pain skewered through my body, ripping me from the inside out and I hissed. He immediately stopped, pushing himself up to look at my face and whispering sweet nothings to calm me down. This is not what I wanted. This is not what was supposed to make me feel better. I was scared that not even giving myself to somebody like this would take away the pain of losing Eren.

But then, as quickly as it had come and made me doubt myself, the pain disappeared. I became hyper aware of the situation and of how his body molded in to mine and how well we felt together. His entire length filled me up and I kept thinking how impossible it was that I could ever be whole without him. I was drowning myself into him, letting him keep me under because I was too scared to breathe. And then he moved, pulling back out to slam into me again and I writhed beneath him. The feeling was too overwhelming, too much to bear. I thought I could never be apart from this person, never apart from him ever again. He was my missing piece, my soul, mine. He kept filling me and filling me and every time it was like a part of my heart was slammed back into me and I cried out, from ecstasy and love and meaning and life. He thrust against me and I welcome him in, letting him see me like a woman not a solider. My fingers wound up in his hair, clutching it like it was the meaning of life and I was just an adventurer. I wanted to know everything that made him tick and everything that made his blood pump and everything that made him Levi. I could feel the sweat on his body mixing with mine and the silence was no longer. He was grunting and I was moaning and our sounds mixed together like music. I was close, I was so close and I could his muscles tensing. He kept kissing my neck and telling me it was okay and whispering that he was ready and just like that, my stomach exploded into a million pieces.

My body shook beneath him as his convulsed above me and he spilled everything into me, every inch of his body and I accepted it. I had never felt so complete in my life and he put all his body weight on me, letting me take the pressure of him. My thighs quivered with him still inside me and as we both came down from our high, I held him. He put his head on my chest, exhausted and worn out and frightened at the situation at hand.

And I stroked his head, thanking him silently for it. I was distracted by him and so grateful for what he just did for me. How he made me forget. We lay there in silence; the only sound was the beating of our mixing hearts.

"Thank you." I whispered, my hands making my way to his back where I drew circles and other meaningless shapes. My nails scratched against it, making red lines wherever I moved. He kissed my stomach lightly, giving the little sign of affection that made me feel alright.

"You're welcome." He said, his voice low and his lips moved against my rough stomach and I know he meant it, he really did. Even if this was his way of saying he was sorry for getting Eren hurt or he really just wanted to be with me. It didn't really matter.

I was here, with this living, breathing human and that was all that mattered.