As soon as we're back into the alcove where we slept, Levi shoves me down with an exasperated grunt. "Are you completely stupid?!" he half-yells at me. I'm clutching my right hand with my left, finally realizing that that the sharp, stinging pain is from a deep gash running across my palm from grabbing the blade. He has turned away and pushed the crates of food into the corner, as if trying to hide them behind the rotting trunk. He doesn't really sound angry. He's shocked and I think I even hear some fear in his voice as he goes on, "Are you seriously insane?"

"Hey, I just saved your life!" I argue, wincing at the applied pressure on my hand. The cut is deepest on my palm but my fingers have been wounded as well. I'm staring down at the wound so I don't notice him hurrying toward me, and a second later I land flat on my back—Levi on top of me.

"What the—?!" I squeak out, but he slaps his tiny hand over my mouth and bends to hiss directly in my ear.

"Shut. The Fuck. Up."

My heart is leaping wildly in my chest, any recovery that it may have had since the events of a few moments ago is now lost, completely unnerved by Levi's attack. I stare up at him through wide eyes, frightened and in pain. My whole body hurts terribly and the gash on my hand is burning enough to bring tears to my eyes.

His body is pressed so tightly against mine that I can feel just how skinny he actually is. His left hip bone is digging painfully into one of the already tenderized areas of my abdomen. I feel the first tears start to threaten escape and I mumble something into his hand.

"Shh," he says, much softer now that I'm being quiet. He is not looking at me, his neck is arched up a bit, looking out over a pile of trash near us. I don't want to cry, even though I can't possibly be faulted for it after the beating I just took, but still, my pride is getting the better of me. As I struggle to slow down my ragged breathing, I notice the way that Levi's own stomach is shuddering against mine. It's erratic and wild—just slightly out of his control.

He's terrified, I realize, eyes widening even farther. Now that I'm looking, I can even see his neck pulsating slightly as the blood beats furiously through his veins. I've never seen him scared like this before…

He slides off of me and flattens onto the ground on my left side so close that his shoulder pressed into the dirt is nudged up against mine. "Are you alright? Shit, what's wrong with you?" he whispers, and he's close enough that the breath makes a few strands of my hair move.

I'm in pain everywhere, but my hand seems to be the most immediate concern since it's bleeding a lot. I raise it up to show him but he grabs my wrist and shoves it back down onto my stomach. "Stay down, damn it," he orders over my hiss of pain. "They're probably after us."

Oh so that's it. He thinks we've been followed. He thinks that they're mad and they'll kill us, now. I turn my gaze on him again and confirm that to be true. He's even paler than before and his eyes keep darting around nervously.

"Do they know you live here?" I ask quietly.

"I don't live here," he hisses back, a little hurt seeping through the tone of fear.

"It seemed like they knew you."

And that makes him snap his silvery eyes onto mine, an angry glint replacing the scared one. "They don't fucking know me."

"They recognized you, didn't they?"

He makes and angry little noise and cranes his neck up to peer over the trash pile. When he lays down again he's on his back, staring up at the sky. His shoulder presses firmly against mine, now. I think I've made him more upset than he already was and a cold feeling of guilt pools in my stomach. I try to think of something comforting to say.

"I don't think they would have been able to follow us. I think I cut them pretty good."

"Tch. I think you killed the big guy."

"Just him?"

His head flops to face right and he rolls his eyes at me. "You're fucking nuts, you know that?"

I frown a little, although I'm not upset, and barely whisper, "You're welcome."

The blood from where he'd shoved my hand against my stomach has seeped through my shirt. It makes the skin underneath feel uncomfortably sticky and warm. I pick it up a little—though not enough to bother him—and examine it, opening and closing it before my eyes, watching the blood drip down. It's bleeding much less now than it was before. Surprisingly less. And the wounds look surprisingly smaller, too.

"You got a concussion?"

I look away from my hand and see that Levi is talking to me again. "I don't think so."

"Where'd they get you?"

I let out a low chuckle because it's such a ridiculous question. "Um, everywhere?"

"Shit." And then, a long time later, "Sorry."

"It's ok," I say, not really listening to him. I'm much too interested in the way that my hand has practically stopped bleeding and is closing up all around the edges—not scabbing, just closing up again with normal flesh.

Although I am mesmerized by it, Levi must not be paying any attention to my cuts at all, because he asks me, "Do you need a rag for it or something? To stop the bleeding? There's shit all over the place, you don't want an infection, trust me."

When I fail to answer him, he makes that annoyed sound again and rolls back up onto his right shoulder. "Eren?"

"Look."

He gives my hand an impatient look and snaps, "What?"

"Just keep looking."

The bleeding has completely stopped now and the cuts are only visible in the middle where they were sliced deepest. Bit by bit, cell by cell, we watch the new, pinkish flesh weave its way back into normalcy. I can feel him growing tenser beside me and I hear the way his breath hitches in his throat when he realizes what's happening.

"Holy…" he can't even finish, he's too shocked. I meet his eyes again and find him wide eyed, mouth agape. Is it horror or shock that I see in his expression? Maybe both. "What….the hell is wrong with you?" he stammers, still staring at my hand like he's in a trance.

I'm surprised by this, certainly, but not shocked like he is. Even though my heart is beating quickly with the excitement of this discovery, my brain is surprisingly calm, as if I already knew that this would happen somehow.

Levi drags quivering eyes away from my hand when it's done healing and brings his huge silver orbs to rest on my face. I can see it clearly in his expression when something new dawns on him. "Your nose…was broken yesterday, wasn't it?"

I try to think back to then. It feels like a long time ago.

"Did you set it?" I shake my head slightly. "Oh my god! You really are a fucking freak!" he cries a little too loudly considering our situation.

If it were anyone else saying that, I'm sure I would be very offended, but I'm used to Heichou saying things very negatively when he actually means them in a neutral way, so I'm un-phased. All of the blood that has stained my clothes and dripped down my arm doesn't seem scary any more. Now it just looks silly, almost like it was fake and never even threatening in the first place.

Levi is still trying to wrap his head around this. His jaw moves in silence for a long time before he finally decides which words to spit out. "Does it hurt?"

"Not anymore, really."

"How the hell—"

"I guess I've always been able to heal super fast," I say as if it's no big deal.

The tone of his next words and the look of genuine longing on his face makes it clear that this is, in fact, a very big deal. "Eren, I would give anything to have that ability," he says with more emotion than I've heard from him since the plea for my help this morning.

I see jealously in his face—his face that's polka-dotted with so many bruises that they blend together, his swollen eyes beaming genuine desire for my ability—and I wish that I could somehow give my power to him, to help him heal. I would do it without a second thought. I would do anything if it would just make those marks go away and that miserable, shameless look of neediness leave his eyes. I don't want to see Heichou like this. I want to see him strong and proud and unchanging—the world's strongest soldier. My hero. I don't want to see the pale speckled face of a starving boy who wishes that he could be me instead of being himself.

I close my eyes to make him disappear for a moment. I want to make him into who he's supposed to be right now so that the sick feeling in my stomach will go away. I just can't stand to see him like this. But before I can think about it much more, my stomach overrides the pity-nausea and gives a desperate growl.

"Can we eat the food?" I ask, hoping that we actually succeeded in getting food after all of that. What if Levi was wrong and there wasn't anything to eat in the crates that he'd grabbed?

"When it's darker," he says, finally slipping out of the trance that my healing abilities had put him in.

"It's always dark here," I practically whine.

"I don't want to risk it. What if they come by and see us?"

"We can fight them."

"No fucking way."

"They're injured."

"They're huge."

You're Humanity's Strongest, dammit! And I'm… I want to yell at him to get his act together and be Heichou again, but I realize how unrealistic and unfair I'm being. Just because I have a different image of this kid in my head does not necessarily mean that that's who he is or who he will turn out to be. The thought of him not becoming the Levi Heichou I know is almost unbearable, so I stop thinking and start talking again.

"I don't think they'll come this far, Levi."

"And if they do? Then we'd literally be backed into a corner."

That's true. If anyone did come for us here, the alcove's structure would make it almost impossible for us to escape. "Then why don't we leave? Go somewhere else?"

"We can't carry those crates around town, dumbass. Someone will notice." I almost suggest that we leave them behind but I quickly stop myself, realizing how stupid that would be. Still, he must have had a similar thought line because he goes on, saying, "And we can't leave them. I really need it."

I give a huge sigh and concede. "Fine. We'll just wait."

When the candles are almost all blown out and the darkness is overwhelming, we finally get up from the dirt and make our way over to where Levi hid the crates. He crawls all the way. I hope it's because he's still scared that they'll come and not because he's too weak to get up.

I break into them anyway, just in case he actually is almost out of strength. When's the last time he's eaten, I wonder? Days? A week? Yet his stomach hasn't made one single noise while mine is whining shamefully, like a noisy child.

It's mostly just shit food, like the military rations that I remember eating—as if in another life. While he greedily stuffs cold beans into his mouth, Levi explains that people can go to the 'Rations Station' to get one crate per month.

One of these per month? It's too hard to believe. There's hardly anything more than a few cans of beans and dried, salted, shitty old ham in here with some unleavened, practically moldy bread.

"You gotta have a whole family, gotta have a mom or dad or some adult or something," he's telling me—surprisingly talkative while eating. A speck of chewed bean comes out of his mouth and he quickly scoops it up on his little finger and sticks it back in his mouth. "That's why I can't get any."

I can't help but stare while he's chomping away like this. Heichou would never talk with food in his mouth…I'm tempted to eat, but seeing how starving he actually is I can't get myself to eat more than a few bites.

"How…how long have you been out here?" I mutter, watching him push another bean into his already puffy cheeks.

"Alone?" he swallows a little so he can speak more clearly. "A couple months." He chews with great pomp and swallows a lot at once. This time, though, when his mouth is empty, he pauses for a moment. "My mom was around before. Sometimes." His voice is more serious now. When he digs into the salt crusted ham, he's lost some of that vigor.

"Where is she now?"

I want to smack myself in the face the second that the words are out of my mouth. Geez, Eren, you're so stupid, I yell at myself internally. The look on his face, the annoyance just barely failing to cover the wound…it does more than a slap in the face ever could to make me regret my big mouth. I have to do something because the silence is crushing, so I do what I do best…dig myself a deeper hole by not shutting up.

"My mom died," I say softly. I wait for him to ask what happened, but he doesn't. He just picks at the meat and pops little bits onto his tongue. I can feel my throat closing a little, getting scratchy as I make myself go on. You hurt him, you know, I think. It's only fair that you bleed, too. "She got eaten by a Titan. I saw…everything. And I couldn't do anything to stop it from happening."

He doesn't look at me like a normal person might do. Somehow that makes me exceedingly thankful. I don't want to say anymore, but I feel like I should. "And my dad's gone. I have no idea where he went. He just sort of left after my mom died and never came back."

His voice stops me.

"Yeah, mine's gone too."

Then he's eating again, filling his mouth until he can't talk at all, and I know that he does it on purpose. "Your dad?" I ask.

"My mom."

"What about your dad," I ask. He just shrugs.

I don't know why I ask, but I can't help it. I want to know. I've always wanted to know everything about him—ever since I was younger than he is now, watching the Survey Corp come through the streets. "Did she…die?"

He doesn't choke on his food or stutter in his chewing. He doesn't look any place other than the crate, which he's been staring at for the past five minutes. But his voice is small and strained, gritting out, "She was always gone a lot—working. Sometimes I'd be alone on the street and she would tell me to stay put and sometimes I would but sometimes I wouldn't and then we'd be separated and she would have to go searching for me afterward. And then…we used to have a house—for awhile—a couple years ago. And they would come there and she would put me in the closet, instead."

I don't even know what he's talking about but I'm hanging on every word, every syllable that he's willing to give me.

"It was a shit situation. I fucking hated every single fucking second sitting in there trying not to…" he fades from a hiss to a whisper, "…listen. But it was better when we had the house. That way at least we could always find each other. I never had to wonder."

My stomach starts sinking as I start to formulate a guess.

"Then somehow, I dunno, we got kicked out somehow and we were back out here and she kept getting shit customers and she would come back…" he can't explain, he just waves his hand slowly over his face and the bruises jump out like firecrackers. "Then one time she just…didn't come back for a long time. I had stayed right there, right where she told me to." His bottom lip raises a little bit and he half-shrugs, his shoulders tensing and then remaining that way. "So I went looking. I went to the usual people. No one knew anything." He pauses to swallow. "When I finally found her, she…" I see his face darken a bit as his head lowers and long black strands cover up his eyes. He shakes his head, a small fist balling up the material of his oversized pant leg. "She was gone. They killed her."

I can't imagine what my face looks like. I can't even breathe. The words of the men from earlier today, the things I've seen from being with Levi for the past day…I can finally begin to piece it all together. I can't breathe. All I can do is stare at Levi's small form, crouched before the crate. I'm almost positive that my lungs have collapsed when he suddenly pops his head up and looks right at me, a manic, wry look twisting his expression into something horrifying.

"And you know what they said to me? When I got there? When I confronted them?" He glared into my eyes, a wrinkle in his mouth, frozen, waiting to go on. I know that my lungs have collapsed when I realize that he's waiting for me to say something.

I can barely choke out the whisper, "What?"

"When I confronted those bastards for murdering her, you know what they did?" He leans in closer and growls out almost sarcastically, "They gave me the money they owed her. Slapped it right in my hand and ruffled my hair and told me that I could come back when I run out, they'd find work for me."

I'm paler than he is and I'm shivering slightly. No matter how hard I try, I can't pull my eyes away from that miserable grey glare. Oh my god, I think over and over again. Levi…

"Um…"

He snaps his head away from me as fast as lighting and leaps up, brandishing the empty can of beans at whatever had made the little noise in the dark. A little squeak can be heard not far away, from the same place that the "um" came from. I'm shaking so hard that I can barely stand, but when I finally get to my feet and put a restraining hand on Levi's shoulder, the noise maker is stammering out,

"N—no please don't h—hurt me! I just want…I wanna…c—can I…"

I squeeze Levi's shoulder, realizing by the sound of the small voice that it must be a little girl talking to us. "Come here," I said shakily, "so we can see you." I feel Levi tense even more under my hand at my suggestion, but I don't take it back.

The small creature climbs over a fallen plank and into our field of vision. At the sight of her, even Levi's tense shoulder relaxes.

She's smaller than Levi is—maybe only four or five years old. Her hair is messy but we can tell that it was supposed to be in two pigtails on either side of her head, although it clearly hasn't been tended to in days. In the dark it looks brown, but it's different than my hair is, so I guess it's a reddish color. There's nothing on her body but a baggy white shirt, torn on one shoulder, only long enough to barely cover her bottom. Her legs are bare, revealing scraped up, scabby knees and bruised shin bones.

Suddenly, Levi ducks out from under my hand and stoops to kneel in front of the child. He reaches out a hand, not touching her, but rather allowing her to hesitate and look him over before deciding to reach back to him.

"You scared me, dumb brat," he says. His entire demeanor has changed. There is a softness in his voice, a tenderness that I have never heard from him before—in this life or another. I can't see his face but I imagine that he's smiling at her. "Are you hurt?"

She shakes her head very dramatically, like children do sometimes.

"What about these little knees, huh? They're all dirty."

She shakes her head again. "I smelled your food." Her chin tucks down against her childish chest and her face darkens with a guilty blush.

"Oh?" he asks, "You were spying?"

She nods ashamedly.

"Well…next time, if you're going to spy on bigger people, you have to have a better plan to get what you're after. No popping up asking for it. That's how the bad guys get you. Alright?" Her head bobs up and down, red pigtails shaking, and she meets his gaze again.

"So…can I have some?"

He chuckles lightly and it's such a pleasant sound that I almost forget about everything he just told me.

I wanted to know, didn't I? So why then—when he's smiling down at a little girl who must remind him very much of himself—why do I wish that I hadn't stayed here? And why—when he's piling cans of food in her arms that we just risked our lives to get—why do I wish that I'd never met this side of my hero?

By the time he sends her away with a pat on the head, I'm bent over, head on my knees, clutching my legs tightly against my chest.

"What's wrong with you?" he asks, back to his usual, biting self. I give a pathetic little sniffle. "Shit, Eren," he groans, coming to stand next to me. I can hear his feet come near and then stop only a few inches away from me. "Don't fucking cry about it, god. I don't anymore."

I keep my tears silent but they still won't stop flowing, and I can't bring myself to look up at him. He sighs softly and, to my surprise, he doesn't kick me or swear at me or anything like that. Instead he crouches down next to me. He puts his small hand on my shoulder, just like I did to him a few minutes ago.

"Eren," he says very quietly. I can feel his breath warm and soft against my sticky, sweaty temple. "Eren?"

Oh dammit all, I don't want to look at him but I can tell that he's waiting for me to do just that. Finally I force my head out of my knees and turn bleary eyes up to his face. I expect to find a sour, cold expression. But instead there is an infinitely wise, extremely caring glow practically emanating from his usually lifeless features, as if I'm the damaged one who needs his pity instead of the other way around. It takes my breath away.

"We're gonna be fine," is all he says. "Now don't be shy, dummy. Eat the food. You got your ass kicked for it, you're allowed to have some, alright?"