He tells me to 'stay put' and then he vanishes just as silently as he came.
With him gone, I start to feel lost again. It's cold underground since there's no sun to warm anything, and my bare skin is covered with goose bumps. My hands rub up and down my arms unconsciously. Why would anyone want to live in a city underground? I wonder, looking back up at the rocky ceiling. I wonder how thick it is, and what's up above it.
From the sliver of openness between the brick walls that I can see through, I notice two people walking by the alleyway on the main road, barely lit by the abundant candle light that seems to simulate daytime down here. There's a man in a tattered old coat and a girl tagging along behind him. When she turns her gaze on me, I instantly tense up and scuttle back into the corner, out of view.
I hope that he'll come back soon. Whether he's tiny and strange or not…somehow he still seems like Levi to me. He's something that I can latch onto when nothing else makes any sense.
Which—really—the weirdness of my current situation rivals even the circumstances from which I met Levi Heichou the first time. At least, at that time, I generally knew where I was and what had caused my immediate predicament, whereas now I can't remember where I am or how I got here or even what led up to my arrival.
When I try to remember, all I can picture is the oil and the cold and the throbbing pain assaulting my temples in the darkness. All of the memories that I assume occurred sequentially before that sensation are just blurry bits and pieces. I can recall my feet in the grass behind a large building, my hands—sweating, shaking—clutching onto tree bark, I see a flash of Levi's cold grey gaze from afar on horseback, and I feel my knees bruising against the hard floor of a room full of people. The first clear memories don't start until as far back as the cell in the basement where Levi leaned up against the bars saying, "I will take responsibility for him, you can tell that to the brass. I don't think anyone will complain. I'm the only one for the job, after all."
It's been awhile since he left, I think nervously once I come to accept that the damp underground chill has permanently absorbed into my skin. I find myself craning my neck to peer out of the sliver in the mouth of the alley, hoping to see him at any moment, but he doesn't come.
The thought comes cold and terrifying after at least two and a half hours in the corner: what if he doesn't come back at all?
Nah, don't think like that, Eren, I try to comfort myself. This is Levi we're talking about. He may be mean and cranky…and violent and rude…but still! He always pulls through when people need him.
It's at hour three that I lose faith in that kind of rational. The Levi I'm thinking of was Levi Heichou, a man who might exist only in my hazy memories, for all I know. The Levi I'm waiting on…well, he's the one who tried to cut the hair off of my corpse. So far, he's done nothing to make be believe that he'll actually come back for me.
If only I still had my clothes and my gear, then I wouldn't be stuck here waiting on his mercy like this. The more I think about it, the more helpless I feel. And that makes me angry. I hug my legs to me chest, tucking my chin against my knees and gritting my teeth against the frustration. I can't believe I let myself get into this kind of a position in the first place!
Time drags on at a torturous rate. There's nothing to do but drown in my own destructive thoughts. At some point I start to consider heading out on my own and just forgetting about Levi entirely, but the idea is quickly discarded. If even children have no problem stripping corpses, then I don't want to know what the adults down here are capable of.
And then all of a sudden I've lost track of time completely and I'm curled up staring at the cobblestone, thoughtless, emotionless. Just freezing and nothing else.
He's not coming back, I decide blankly, and my eyes close.
The toe of a boot pokes my cheek and wakes me up with a jolt. I cover my head defensively, still buried under a thick sleep, hoping that I won't have to fight for what little I have left on me that could be of value. I try to say something but nothing comes out. Instead, my darting, panicked eyes travel upward from the pair of worn out old boots and up the patchy, holey old pants to discover Levi. He is glaring down at me coldly. Once my wide eyes connect with his, he turns away, grunting,
"Couldn't wait for five minutes, you dumb shit?"
That's sparks something in me and I'm on my feet in a second, sleep forgotten. "Five minutes? Try five hours! What the hell took you so long?" And then, softer, as I remember who I'm talking to, "I thought you weren't coming back."
"Tch."
We don't say anything for a few moments. He stands with his side turned to me, not really moving, and in the silence I notice for the first time just how un-Heichou-like he looks. The boot that had prodded my face to wake me is a poor excuse for foot cover, especially when compared to my military boots. They're short, only going up to his ankles. The bottoms are so worn down that when he lifts his feet to move I can see the pale flesh of his heels, stained black by walking through the streets, and on the right foot I can see his big toe through a hole in the leather. His trousers had been a light brown color at one point, I notice, but now they're a patchwork of other materials where the fabric has worn through—especially on the knees and the seat of his pants—and the cloth is speckled with all kinds of unrecognizable stains from what I can only guess is years of wear and tear. And on top of it all, they're a bit big for him. They wrinkle where he's stuffed the extra-long pant legs into the boots. The shirt is as tattered as the rest of it.
It's just too strange to process—Levi, looking this disheveled. I think back to the neat, white cravat and the perfectly pressed Survey Corp jacket…the Levi in my head wouldn't be caught dead looking like this.
Suddenly he's turning back to face me, disrupting my thoughts by saying, "Here. Hurry up and get dressed. We gotta go." And then I'm fumbling to catch the bundle of clothes that he shoves against my chest without warning.
There's a pair of black pants that look about my size, a remarkably unstained white shirt, a tattered old cloak the color of pea soup—which could just have been a worn out old military cloak, if I stretched my imagination a little—and a pair of grey shoes without soles.
"Thanks," I mutter, slipping things on over awkwardly long limbs. I try not to glance over at him as I dress, just in case he's watching me. I don't know why I'm so embarrassed, but the feeling is overwhelming. Regardless of status or stature, this Levi is an absolute mind-fuck, just like Heichou.
As I put each item on, I can't help but notice the disjointed look of the outfit—not that it bothers me at all, I was never one to care about fashion. It's just that the disunity of the items joined with the fact that Levi's own clothes are to tattered and filthy makes me question where he could have found these things.
He stole them? I think, incredulously, as I fasten the last piece—the cloak—around my neck, tying a neat bow at the dip in the base of my throat. It's hard to believe—Heichou stealing things. But then again, the hair incident makes it pretty clear that this Levi is not beyond stooping to low levels, and that could be an explanation for what took him so long.
It's clear that he must have been watching me dress, because the exact second that I finish he says, "Ok come on. And keep up."
I follow him out of the alleyway and into the street, seeing the underground city in half-way decent lighting for the first time. It's hard to keep up with Levi's shockingly quick strides despite the fact that I'm so much taller, but from what I can make out while struggling to follow him through the small, winding streets, it seems like this isn't much of a city, after all. The buildings are all worn down and huddled together. The cobblestone and dirt paths are so twisted that sometimes they turn back around on themselves. There's a very short span of visibility at any point, considering that the only source of light are candles and lanterns hung from the less run down building fronts, and even with them lit—even if the sun was shining down on this place—you still couldn't see very far because of the convoluted lay out of things. It's like a maze. Clearly there had been no city plan. Instead, people just put up rickety old wooden buildings and lean-to's wherever they could lay claim to the ground, and from out of that the roads had built themselves.
Levi glances over his shoulder only once to make sure that I'm still following him, but I suppose he can hear me walking. Unlike his silent footsteps, I notice that mine are annoyingly loud, especially on the cobblestone.
After we have walked far enough that I'm certain I would be lost in this maze forever if he wasn't here to guide me, Levi suddenly stops at the end of a street, right in front of a particularly shady looking pawn shop. I open my mouth to ask what's going on, but he silences me with a finger to his lips.
"Look," he whispers, leaning up a bit to make sure that I'll hear him.
I follow his gaze with wide eyed interest when he looks around the corner of the street. The way he tilts his small body and cranes his neck backward to look without being seen by anyone on the other side makes my heart speed up a bit. That looks like Heichou.
"See that building?" he hisses once I've leaned forward far enough to get a glimpse of the shack just around the bend. It's half way into an alleyway in a very shady, dim lit, backstreet type of area.
"Mmhmm," I say softly. I'm close enough to him that I assume he can hear me. I had had to stretch over him a bit to get a good look and now my right foot is hovering awkwardly in mid-air, trying not to step on his toes.
"Take a good look," he says, turning back and slipping underneath my arm like a snake. Suddenly he's behind me, saying, "That's what we're doing tomorrow."
I'm not sure what he means by that, but I try my best to 'take a good look,' anyway. It's such a shady looking alleyway—significantly wider than the one I spent the night in but still cramped toward the back right hand corner where the shack was set up. It looked to be about twenty square feet of worn out of wooden planks precariously held together somehow. I couldn't see the interior from here and I had no guess as to what was inside, but I was rather proud of myself when I noticed that there was a very small alley passage leading out from the back left hand side of the shack to some other road way.
"Ok, let's go," he was saying from behind me, jabbing the back of my shoulder to make me follow him again. I pulled my gaze away from the scene around the corner a little reluctantly, hoping that I'd seen everything he wanted me to.
By the time we seem to be getting to our final destination, I guess that it's nearly nightfall above the surface again—either that or we're getting into even poorer, shadier areas of the city—because the amount of candles and lanterns lit slowly dwindle as we walk and becomes extremely difficult to see more than ten feet ahead.
"Where are we going now?" I ask in the long, long silence. I'm used to a lack of words from Heichou, but even he talks much more than this Levi does.
He hesitates so long that I think he might not answer me at all, but then he says, "…to sleep for the night."
"Where?" I ask, and by the way his shoulders stiffen I can tell that that was the reason for his initial reluctance to answer. He does not reply for a full minute. Not until we've rounded the corner into the dimmest, dampest area thus far: a little alcove off of a back road.
Finally, "Here."
"Here?" I half-gasp, staring open-mouthed at what little I can make out in the darkness. I stop dead in the mouth of the alcove while Levi goes on ahead not stopping to see if I'm coming or not.
There's piles of trash looming like black beasts in the shadows. I can make out an old wooden trunk so far decomposed by the moisture that it's crumbling and covered in mold on one side. There's old wooden planks scattered everywhere, like the ones the buildings are made of, only these are the throw-aways, too far gone to be of use to anyone anymore.
And that smell, that hideous stench that I saw as yellow tentacles bouncing off of my face in some unclear reality suddenly assaults me again. I try not to gag but it's so overwhelming here that tears spring into my eyes unwillingly.
"Holy shit, Hei—I mean, L-Levi," I choke out, gasping through the haze.
Apparently I've struck a raw nerve, because the tone of his next words is so biting that it can have no other purpose than covering up a wound. "Hilarious, dumbass. Now get in here, sit your ass down, and go the fuck to sleep before I take my clothes back and let you die again."
I gulp down my reservations and tiptoe into the alcove as if I'm following an order. I just barely manage to contain the habitual, "yes, sir."
It's about fifteen feet in back to the edge of the alcove and most of it is littered with garbage. I cannot believe Levi—Levi who made me clean the garden, the outdoors—lives in a dump like this. I soon discover where the nauseating smell is coming from. There are pipes coming out of the alley walls, like sewage pipes leaking out filthy water into puddles on the ground. I do my best to avoid them.
Finally, after what feels like another maze navigation, I settle on the ground in between a puddle and a pile of rotting wood against the wall. I twist my legs up and fold my hands neatly in my lap, trying to be smaller. That's a bit of an advantage for him here, I realize.
When I glance up from my folded hands to glance at him, unsure, I see him settled just a few feet away from me, laying down on his side, facing in my direction. That's when I see them.
They could almost have been shadows, but somehow I know better. He's been squirming around, turning away all day, so I haven't gotten any great looks at his face. But now they're clear even in the darkness, like polka-dots all over him, purple and black, some old, some green. The new ones are the worst and I know for a fact that they were not there when we met this morning. His left eye is swollen and tight on the top eyelid and it's blue in the corner by the bridge of his nose. There's a crusted over cut on his lip, and it doesn't stop on his face. There're all over his arms, too, the size of smeary fingerprints.
"Levi," I say, stunned and probably gawking.
"What?" he snaps, cold and unflinching as metal, challenging me, daring me to say another word about it. His eyes have orders in them. Don't say another word about it. Don't insult me again, they say. You think I want to live here? You think I like this? Shut the fuck up. I found you naked in an alley. Don't say another word, they order.
My gaze falls away. Shit, I think. How is this Levi?
People are blowing out their candles around the corners and it grows steadily darker as night descends on us. My stomach gives a shamefully loud rumble and I realize that I haven't eat at all since…well, I can't remember.
I want to ask if he has any food. Maybe he ate when he left to find clothes for me. No, to steal clothes, my subconscious reminds me pointedly, and I sneak another glance at his marked up body. Maybe things didn't go very smoothly.
"Did you eat?" I have to ask after it roars at me again.
"Tomorrow," he says. "That's what you have to do for me. I need a diversion."
This gets my heart going at once. "What do you mean?"
His eyes meet mine and they're a little less cold than before. Maybe he's already gotten over me gagging. "Remember that shack back there? Some assholes are gonna bring food there tomorrow, stuff they stole from the rations station."
"Rations station?" I question, but he keeps talking right over me, his small face moving quickly against the dirt he lays on, rubbing it into his skin.
"If you distract them from the front, I can get in from the back way and steel one of their crates."
I should have a lot of questions to ask him, like how does he know this? And how am I supposed to distract them when I know absolutely nothing about this area? But instead, all that's in my head is a sense of pride for having noticed the back entrance that he mentioned.
"When? Tomorrow morning?" I finally ask, once he's been quiet long enough for me to be certain he's done explaining. He nods instead of talking. "Okay," I say after a while, because I'm not really in a position to refuse, not to mention that I'm hungry. Somewhere in the back of my head I wonder if this is how he always has to get food: by planning raids on other criminals. I quickly push the thought away.
"What's your name?"
"Huh?"
He's always doing that—being quiet for so long that I get lost in my own thoughts, and then suddenly piping up again, shattering everything.
"You wanna tell me your name or should I keep calling you 'dumbass,' dumbass?"
"Oh." When I look to his face again, his eyes are closed. "It's Eren."
"Hmm."
I roll my legs out from under me and try to lie down without getting my feet in the puddle. I have to curl up quite a lot and it's not very comfortable, but I try to stop shifting around as quickly as possible, assuming that Levi is already trying to sleep.
We need our sleep after all, if there's any chance of this thing working out tomorrow. I try not to think about all of the possible outcomes. In fact, I try not to even think about what we're doing at all.
Gonna get some food, Eren, that's all, I assure myself, trying to leave the fact that we're going to be stealing from some potentially very dangerous people completely out of it. And if the bruises he's got are just from stealing clothes for me….
No, don't think about it. You need the food. You trust him. He's Levi Heichou…he is, somehow he is. It'll be fine.