Italics are flashbacks.

The Brazen

(A collection of Levimika one-shots)

"I'm old enough to be your father"

"That means you knocked up my mom when you were fifteen."

"That's not the point-"

"Whatever, I get it, so you die before me."

"What are you thinking about?"

Levi ran a hand through his perfectly groomed hair and frowned, "put that down, what if somebody comes in?"

The girl walked towards him, apple in hand, "what if somebody walks in?" She repeated, her voice sly.

He rolled his eyes as the apple slid through her hand and dropped to the floor.

"You're wasting-"

"Don't," she muttered, her mouth pressed into a thin line, and Levi smirked, however slightly.

He picked up the offending fruit, his almost expressionless face oozing with amusement.

"I'm still practicing," she said quietly, sliding her hand across his pristinely clean desk, "it's difficult, but I stopped dropping between floors."

He smiled, this time visibly, "Yes, it's good that I don't see your feet dangling on the ceiling when you get stuck between the floors."

With an ominous glare, which Levi wasn't quite affected by, she shrugged him off, "you know, it kind of sucks."

"What?" They had gotten comfortable with each other's presence.

"It's almost been ten years," she muttered, her voice lowering to almost a whisper, "am I going to be stuck like this forever?"

Suddenly, it was as though the temperature had dropped by a few degrees, and both felt the illusion that everything was still all right crack a little.

He didn't answer, it was not that he doesn't want to, it was more that he couldn't.

At that exact moment, Levi's door burst open, and in came Eren Jaeger, a determined expression on his face, Levi was glad for his interruption.

"I was told to come here," he saluted, his eyes hard.

Mikasa drifted across the room and hugged Eren, one hand in his hair, stroking it, and the other on his back.

Levi didn't say a word after glancing at the boy, but merely sat down and began reading a book after pulling on a pair of heavy looking glasses.

Eren raised an eyebrow. Every once in a while, he would be told to come to Levi's room, and yet, all he was ever told to do was to stand there for a good part of an hour and was then dismissed.

Mikasa's index finger traced the lining of his brows, nose, and lips, her eyes drifting ghostly across his features, taking in his confused green eyes and the scar near his ear. Slowly, she leaned in, pressing her lips against his cheeks.

The green-eyed boy allowed himself to relax; there was something comforting about the room. Something very familiar, yet he couldn't put his finger on what, so he simply allowed himself to treasure the moment of whatever it could be that made him so happy but so heart-wrenchingly pained.

Mikasa tried wiping a single tear away from Eren's face, though all her hand did was flick past it and back again. Giving up, she wrapped her arms around him once again, closing her coal-dark eyes.

"Heichou," Eren murmured, his voice dim, "you were… close to… Mikasa, weren't you?"

Mikasa paused, staring at her brothers face the same way Levi paused his reading to look up at the boy. No, man.

For a second, Levi's heart skipped a beat.

Had they been close?

"Yes."

He lowered his head, chewing his words slowly, "was it… that kind of relationship?"

Levi raised an eyebrow while Mikasa pushed herself away from Eren to look over her shoulder at Levi.

He glanced at her, though her blank expression betrayed nothing.

"Yes."

Eren threw his head back up, his clenched hands shaking on either side of him while Mikasa rested her own fingers over his, trying to soothe the muscles she could not feel.

"Don't be cruel, Eren," she whispered in his ear, "I love you the most."

"Then," he finally chocked out, voice strained, "in a week, would be a whole ten years since she died, would you…" His voice trembled near the end, and he hoped the Corporal would ignore the fact that his emotions overpowered his determination.

Levi watched them from behind his spectacles, and nodded solemnly.

"You are dismissed," he said, his eyes lingering on the way Mikasa clutched Eren's hand.

She looked so desperate.

Levi's door closed, and Mikasa fell back onto his bed, though she made no creases, and the bed looked as though no one was occupying it.

"I can't do this anymore…" she murmured into his bed covers, her black hair falling all around her in a pool.

He slid into his bed under the covers, lifting his glasses off his nose and leaving them on the bedside table without paying it much attention.

"When the day comes, that you all die…" taking out a hand, he tried to caress her, but only fell through the shadow that was her and landed on his bed.

"Are you going to leave me too?" And for a moment, she sounded so fragile that Levi felt his own heart break a little.

Yet, he couldn't bring any words to comfort her.

The first time he found her, glistening under the sun, he thought he had gone mad. With the surge of happiness that rushed from his head to his chest, he attempted to embrace this madness, even if it was only madness.

Nonetheless, he found himself sliding through her figure and tripping onto the floor, but her tinkling laughter that resounded through his ears took away the pain. For days, no, years after that, everyday felt like a dream.

Not only because she came back.

Not only because he could see her again.

Not only because the pain that came with her death seemed to kill him off everywhere except physically.

But because she was his.

Only his.

It wasn't long before she started, and he too, had wondered…

How long will she stay?

The problem was that it seemed that she could disappear any moment. And for her, it was the opposite…

What if she remained forever?

"I don't belong here, Levi." Her voice only shook slightly.

She was sinking deeper and deeper, and the torment was only beginning, because time continued, no matter how much she tried to stop the moment.

"I'm dead."

Death would have been painful; it should have been painful to let go of those most important to her.

And that exact moment, when she did die, she wished she was alive, she wished she just had more time to continue fighting alongside her friends and comrades. Despite the pain that would ensue, she wanted to stay alive.

No matter though, how much she tried to shut away the neurotic thoughts slowly overtaking her, they slithered through the cracks of windows and through the particles between the walls to grasp her.

"How long are you going to stay alive? How long is Eren? How long before I'm left here all by myself?" Her voice rose steadily, and as it did, it trembled harder than ever before.

It was wrenching her away, and all around her, everything was burning, and she wished everything would turn to ashes. That the fire would cease. She wanted to die, so badly.

"I can't…" she looked at him in the eye, coal-dark eyes filled with sorrow and hatred, "what have I done to deserve this?"

Levi wanted to talk, to say something, anything that could wear away the soft pain etched into Mikasa's ghostly presence.

He couldn't, because he felt just as helpless as she did.

Like watching Mikasa burn away into ashes while he stood on the other side of the mirror.

And he knew he couldn't do this anymore.

"I love you," he whispered, and Mikasa smiled softly, her eyes as dead as ever.

"Can I ask you a favour?"

Levi closed his eyes, he couldn't agree, and he felt his pride crumble completely. For being a man, for being humanity's strongest soldier, he could not bring himself to accept a single request from the woman whom he would do more than die for.

"Leave here, Levi."

She paused, shielding her eyes with the back of her hand, "everyday, seeing your face, hearing your voice… it used to give me hope. And it was good to see we were finally winning. Good to know you were safe. But now, I'm only a burden to you. You can have your own family now, find someone who loves you… someone who can give you a family."

But for all she's worth, for all he was, and they both knew she meant the words, and they both knew she had uttered them with resentment and fear.

So he stayed still, because he knew he would have to leave her one-day, but there is nobody out there who could give him a family.

She stuffed her other fist into her mouth, muffling a dry sob, "don't leave me…"

The light flickered, and the rain outside patted against the window.

"I don't want you to leave me…" she murmured again, this time louder.

And she sounded so much like a child, so alone. Her forlorn gaze that peeked out between her fingers tore through Levi like a bullet.

"You're all I have left."

And so it exploded, she exploded, and so did he.

He saw red, and his possessions started flinging across his room, smashing the window to bits and allowing the wet wispy wind to trespass on their moment of insanity.

For whatever reason, she had grasped whatever strength she had and threw herself across the bed, across his desk, and he had tried to follow her. A sudden, brief determination that allowed her hand to materialize around the heavy metal ball and fling it at the window before she dived out leaving only cold darkness in her wake.

That night, in her hazy vision, she could remember Levi's tormented screams after her, and she herself, blown through the air like forgotten wind, along with the rain and night, away from the only person who could still make out her shape. She couldn't feel, because she was no physical being, but that night, she could feel her very soul chill away her fire-burning emotions.

Whatever happened afterwards, she wasn't quite sure.

Somehow, people had cultivated the land, created battles and countries, created their own wars.

Mikasa watched them from afar, they were foolish, but it didn't quite matter to her.

Because Levi wasn't breathing anymore. Because Eren had already rotted away in the dirt. Because Armin had grown old and his blue eyes failed and his heart gave away to a sudden sickness.

So years flew past, and she realized that flowers weren't all that pretty, and she mastered the art of being 'solid' for periods of time.

And humans built ships and pretty houses, wove silk and beautiful dresses via giant factories that blew out gray smoke that tore through the azure sky and left their mark in the lungs of poor workers who saw no sunlight.

She had found a new house to stay in with a little boy with eyes too cold for his age and no parents.

Nevertheless, life was short and cold, she left the boy when he turned sixteen, attracted to a pretty black haired girl who seemed much too frail, who coughed too much, and who worried the boy whose heart she warmed so much.

By then, she couldn't remember her own name. Nobody had said it for too long, and Eren's appearance felt hazy in her memory. Though she still tried, once a day, to say his name.

There was also someone else, but her chest pained when she thought of him, so she stopped thinking about him.

Before she knew it, the world had morphed again. Large skyscrapers materialized from the ground upwards, covering away the sun whose rays seemed too weak for the people who carried umbrellas to shield themselves from being tanned. Everybody had their own little machine with them that they carried in hand. Animatedly chatting about things that they should but didn't really care about, and things that they did but really shouldn't care about.

She still wandered through walls, and looked over the shoulders of employees who were too busy raising a family but never went home to see how their children had grew, how many lines plagued their wives faces, and how broken the eyes of their beloved are knowing that their father had always gone into another's embrace after work.

This time, she stayed in the attic of a businessman who lives in a house far too neat, wearing outfits too impeccable, and a mouth foul enough to make even the juvenile teenager blush.

She didn't cry when he was run over by a truck.

It didn't really hurt anymore.

Nothing really mattered anymore.

And she finally reached it,

death.