warning for the death of two people and an unborn child
Levi POV
"The most important thing is to always keep your senses open. Your eyes, your ears, your nose, and your touch are your greatest advantages." I crouched low in the forest greenery with Ymir beside me.
"Right. So where do you think he is?" She whispered to me. I saw her knuckles were white on her dagger.
"You already know where he is, Ymir." I crouched lower and put my hands on the ground below me. Still wet.
"What the fuck do you mean? No, I don't!" She looked all around. I sighed gently.
"You rely way too much on your eyes. You need to learn to use your other senses." I said. "Close your eyes and tell me what you can sense."
I already knew where the criminal we were hunting down was, but Ymir couldn't see it yes. She was smart and she would make a good hunter if she could just learn to use her full potential…and that meant using all her senses, something she wasn't used to.
"Fine." She grumbled. I peeked at her and saw her close her eyes. She was quiet for a minute.
"The only things I'm getting are the sound of our breathing."
"Ymir, what would Mike, second hunter, do?" I asked, trying to get her to smell the clue I had found as soon as I got close enough.
"He'd fucking sniff them out- oh!" She inhaled a couple times deeply. Then she twisted her face up in concentration. "Is that?"
She said quiet for a moment. She must be expecting me to just hand her the answer. Too bad.
"Smoke?" She asked quietly after a moment.
"Yes, it is. Good job. Now what does smoke mean?" I asked her.
"It means something is on fire." She said I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
"Alright use your sense of touch and tell me what you find." I prompted. She could do this. She could figure this out. I had faith in her.
"Touch what? All there is around us is ground and forest plants and all this god damn vegetation we have to hack through and fucking mud. God damn this mud. I fucking hate the rain." She snarked. I waited for her to realize what she had said.
"Oh! It rained! Whatever was on fire is not on fire anymore!" She looked at me, waiting for my approval.
"There's more to it than that. Come on, put what your nose tells you with what your touch tells you."
"There was a fire, and then the rain put it out and that's where the smoke came from?" She guessed. "Levi, that doesn't sound possible. The rain would have-"
"The fire was built after the rain. Animals don't make fire, so it has to be our criminal. It rained and he most likely got cold and wet and now he's trying to make a fire. The ground is still wet, though, so it keeps going out. That tells us what?"
She hummed. "He's desperate because he's trying to make fire on wet ground?"
"Exactly. Which means he really needs the fire. He's either scared of freezing to death when night falls, which is soon, or he's what?" I prompted.
"Cooking?" She guessed.
"Exactly. In his mind, he's cold and wet and hungry and a fire could solve all those problems for him. It's nearing dusk, so he's not counting on anyone seeing the smoke. He keeps trying and failing, obviously, so he must be getting frustrated. When his emotions run high, he's more likely to make a mistake. Also, the ground is muddy, and every step he takes will leave a very traceable footprint."
"And then we get him?" She looked excitedly at me.
"And then we get him." I motioned for her to follow me and started moving towards the smell of the smoke.
"Why are we going this way?"
"This is the way the wind is blowing. We walk in the wind and trail the smoke and find him." I kept light on my feet, as did Ymir. "Quiet now, Ymir. Hush until the action starts. I'll give you the signal when it is time to attack."
Our signal was three movements. When our hands were free, it was three fingers jerked three times toward the hunted party. When we used our foot, it was three jerks or taps in the same direction. When we could only use our eyes, it was three blinks then a head nod.
We moved as quietly and as quickly as we possibly could. We were silent lightning flashing in the woods. As we got closer to where he would surely be, I pointed a couple things out to Ymir. I slowed down and pointed all around us at the signs that something – or someone – human sized had been through here recently. She nodded at the crushed vegetation and the branches missing leaves at human height.
Soon, we came onto more obvious signs of his presence and even found a piece of torn fabric, which I sniffed and then held out for Ymir to sniff. She opened her mouth to ask why the hell we were sniffing the fabric, but I quickly put a finger to my lips to indicate she was still to be silent. I would explain to her later.
We reached a small clearing and I held up my hand that wasn't clutching my revolver and flashed her two fingers with two jerks. Three means go, and two means that we're close to going. She gave it back and crouched lower. We went around the edge of the clearing, until we saw the flickering of the fire. I looked back to Ymir and she nodded at me. Good, she saw it, too.
We watched the fire go out and heard a muffled string of curses in the distance. Ymir looked at me frantically with a smirk. I rolled my eyes. She was happy we found him, but was there any doubt that we would? I thought about her history as third hunter and remembered Erwin's many harsh addressing of Ymir after she didn't make a capture. I, however, had never lost a hunt until Eren. I guess in her mind, there was doubt as to whether we could get him. I would have to work on that with her.
We moved our angle just a bit and saw his bearded face light up in the fire he was trying to restart. I looked all around his campsite for signs of others, and didn't find anything of note. He had a little dark blue triangular tent set up and the flap was open. I used my free hand to take out my spy glass.
I held it up to my eye and looked in his tent to see if it was possible that there was another person in there. The last thing we needed was for someone to come out of the tent and come to the criminal's aid while we were taking him down. I saw he had a sleeping bag, a few books, and some food. I took note of the food he had and saw fresh perishables. The report on him said he had been missing for two weeks.
If he had been out here all this time, he should have already eaten all the food he had taken with him. If he, for some fucking reason, decided not to eat it, it should be rotten by now. Why keep rotten food in his tent? Because it wasn't rotten, which means someone had to have brought him fresh supplies. He had a partner in crime.
I glanced down at Ymir and saw her hand was steady and gripping her dagger. Good. I didn't know what I would do if she was shaking. We watched him for a few minutes and I could tell Ymir was getting was used to spotting her hunt and just taking them in, but we were doing things my way. This criminal had been out here for two weeks, and by the looks of his piss-poor attempts at building a fire, he wasn't exactly wilderness savvy. Someone was bringing him things like food and whatever else he had in his campsite. He had a partner, and I wanted both of them.
I shifted from a crouch to a kneeling position. I would still be ready for action when his partner, or partners, showed up, but my muscles wouldn't fatigue from crouching too long. Ymir looked at me like I had lost my mind before copying my movements. We kneeled there in silence for about thirty minutes before Ymir started getting fed up. She could see her target and wanted him. She was a rampage kind of hunter, and waiting around wasn't her style. However, if she wanted to improve, she would have to learn that the art of the hunt was as much a mental game as it was a physical one.
Ymir kept shooting me looks and raising her eyebrows at me. I just kept reassuring her by giving her a one finger signal. One finger meant that action would be not so soon, but stay alert. She kept returning it and by doing so, she was saying she was obeying my silent order to sit quietly. I had told her before we entered the woods to "shut her mouth and open her eyes". This was a perfect example of why that was important.
I started to think that maybe the partner(s) weren't going to show, but then it turned night. It was dark all around, and yet he (finally) kept a fire going and waited outside of his tent. Why would he not go into the tent were he could warm himself and get some rest? Simple. He was waiting for someone… and I was waiting for them, too.
He sat with his back to the section of woods were the person came from, so I saw the bobbing of the light coming closer and closer before he did. I noticed it was only one light, so it was at minimum one person and at maximum a very small group. Ymir and I could easily take down about six or so people, so I hoped it wasn't more than that. As the light got closer, I pointed it to Ymir. She stared at it with a start.
I nodded, giving her a pointed look and then a two finger signal. She set her face determinately and then returned it. It was almost show time. I noticed how low the light was to the ground and wondered how short the person was. I was short myself, so I felt a little bad judging someone on their height. The fact of the matter, though, was that I had a lot of experience against tall opponents, and I could take down a tall man easily.
The man we were hunting eventually heard the footsteps and turned around.
"Jasmine?" He called out hesitantly. I froze, as did Ymir beside me. Jasmine. Jasmine. Oh fuck, was this a girl?
"Paul!" A very feminine voice called out.
"Sweetie!" He called out to her as she stepped through the vegetation into the clearing. I took one glace at the way they kissed upon greeting to figure out this was his lover. I looked over at Ymir and saw her looking at the ground near her feet. She had figured it out as well, and I could see the guilt in her eyes when we looked at me.
I gave her a two finger signal and looked her pointedly in the eyes as I cocked my revolver. Her eyes widened, but she returned my signal and held her dagger in a ready position. Aiding a criminal made this woman a criminal, too.
I used their coos of love to cover our padding closer and closer. He put out the fire and put her lantern in the tent. We had the cover of darkness now, only seeing each other in the moonlight, and the lantern inside the tent made it almost too easy for us to see what was going on in there. He held her in his arms and then pulled her into the tent after stashing her pack in as well. I figured the pack must be full of his new supplies. I would take this woman's head to Erwin and use her pack as evidence of her crimes.
We watched their two shadows kiss and touch. Ymir kept giving me confused glances. She was confused as to why we just watching. I had to wait until he was more distracted by his lover before I made my move. If everything went well, I could take him in alive without a fight.
He undressed his lover and then took off his shirt himself. I gave Ymir a three finger signal and she looked at me wide eyed. She didn't understand, but she would soon. I aimed my weapon and shot through the tent. I hit near his shoulder and the bullet tore right through the tent into a tree behind the tent. The woman screamed and the man dove on top of her and they pressed low to the ground. I stood up quickly, and Ymir followed my lead.
I saw his shadow form reach out and grab something gun shaped before he reached out again and smashed the lantern. It was dark in the tent now. I frowned, he was smart.
"Paul!" I called out, keeping my revolver aimed at where his head was the last time I saw him. I could hear the woman sobbing inside the tent and he hissed at her to shut up.
"Paul, come out slowly with your hands up! Nobody's got to die tonight, Paul." I paused thinking about what he had called her. Jasmine? I think. I would try that.
"Think about Jasmine! If I open fire, she will die." I called to him, moving towards the left silently. Ymir followed behind me, which was good. Just as I had thought, Paul shot at where he had heard my voice before. I counted three shots before I called out again.
"You're rats in a barrel, Paul! Be smart!" I motioned to Ymir to move to my other side. I didn't want her getting hit.
"Fuck you!" He cried out and shot twice more at us and missing widely. That was five. If he had a six chamber revolver, which was the most common weapon around here, he had one more shot.
"You must really wish you and Jasmine were dead to fire at the first and third hunter!" I called louder. It was quiet for a moment before I heard Jasmine whisper harshly to Paul.
"First and third, babe! There's two out there!" She cried to him.
Ymir smiled beside me. "We're two of the best, too, bitches!"
It was silent for a minute, then he called out.
"She's innocent in this! Let her get dresses and leave! Send her back to town with third hunter! First hunter, you and I will settle this alone." He paused. "Like men."
"You think women are lower than you? I'll gut you like a fish!" Ymir sneered, stepping forward. I recognized her mistake just in time. I grabbed her arm and jerked her back just as a bullet whizzed past her.
"Fuck, Ymir, you okay?" I hissed at her, squeezing her wrist hard.
"Yeah, teach, I'm fine." She said shakily, realizing that he was trying to get her to yell so he could shoot her.
Her calling me 'teach' brought me back to exactly what I was doing. I was setting an example for her, leading her, and guiding her. I straightened my back.
"Paul, come out, or I'm coming in! I will bring both of your heads to the head hunter on a platter." I growled to him and fired through the upper corner of his tent. Erwin was head hunter, and sometimes I thought it was more a reference to the number of heads he wants and not a reference to his positon as head of the hunters. I fired again in the same spot and listened to her scream. I wasn't worried about bullets, Erwin made sure I had plenty of them.
I listened. I was pretty sure he was out of bullets, but pretty sure wasn't good enough. I motioned for Ymir to get behind me, and she obeyed. I was thankful for that; I would not have my student get hurt on the first day of training.
"She's innocent!" He called.
"Then get the fuck out." I said just loud enough for him to hear.
"Let us get dressed." He begged.
"One minute." I said. "I'm counting. So is Ymir."
"Tick tock, tick tock…" Ymir sneered.
"Alright!" He cried. I heard them shuffling around in the tent. I heard a sharp couple noises that were pathetically covered up by some fake coughs. God, the idiot was reloading. A moment later, the flap opened and he came out.
"Hands up!" I called, aiming at his head.
"Let her go!" He cried, putting his hands up.
"Jasmine!" I called to her. "Get out here!"
"Just let her go! Take me to head hunter! Let us live and let her go!"
"Jasmine! Now!" I would have told Ymir to go in there after her, but I didn't know if Jasmine had his weapon. When in doubt, I assumed that she did have it, it was loaded, and she could use it to hurt me and/or Ymir.
I heard some shuffling, and then Jasmine appeared fully dressed.
"Please, first hunter, third hunter… please, Paul is a good man-" She started.
"Jasmine, just hush!" He hissed at her. "Let me handle this!"
Jasmine looked at me and found no sympathy, so she turned to Ymir.
"Please, hunter, please…I'm with child!" She cried.
Ymir looked at me pleadingly. "The task is only to take in him. Can't we let the-"
I fired. Three things happened simultaneously. Jasmine screamed, Ymir jumped, and a bullet ripped through Paul's chest.
"Paul! God! Please, God!" Jasmine ran over to her lover's body.
"Jasmine, I suggest you step back." I cocked my revolver again. This wasn't over.
"Levi!" Ymir cried. She moved forward to grab me.
"Ymir. Do you really think he would allow his pregnant lover to be taken away from him? He's armed and he was planning on killing us." I shot her a glare. "Grab the woman."
Ymir hesitated before sheathing her unused dagger and moving toward the woman. I aimed at the woman's head, hoping she wouldn't do it.
"Bitch!" Jasmine cried, grabbing the reloaded revolver from his corpse and turning on Ymir. I shot her through the head without hesitation. Her body jerked as the bullet powered through her skull and her brains splattered behind her with a wet thunk.
Jasmine's corpse fell on top of Paul's, and their blood mixed together. At least they died together. I tried not to think about the baby, if there even was one. Jasmine - no, the woman criminal – was a threat to my partner and therefore had to be taken care of.
"Fuck." Ymir said as she fell on her knees. "Fuck, Levi."
"The woman criminal was a threat to you, and for that reason she was taken out."
"Jasmine had a baby-" She started.
"No. That's a criminal, not Jasmine. Don't use their names." I then added in a softer tone, placing my hand on her shoulder, "It makes it harder."
"She didn't do anything." Ymir whispered. She was staring wide eyed at the corpses in front of us.
"She was aiding a criminal, and she attacked a hunter. She's guilty."
"She was defending her lover and the father of her child!" Ymir jumped up. I put my gun away anticipating what was about to happen.
"Monster." She hissed and then she pushed me with both hands on my shoulders. I stepped back, not falling.
"Would you rather die? It was them or us, Ymir, and I chose us." I stepped back as she swung at me and ducked away from it easily. I swept my leg under hers and she fell.
She laid there for a moment.
"There's no use crying over criminal corpses. If you don't remember what this man did, I'll remind you." I walked over to him and kicked his shoe. "This sack of shit robbed and murdered five people"
Ymir sat up and looked at me. "The baby-"
"You wanna talk about babies? What about all the children that have to grow up without parents? All the grieving mothers and brothers and sisters and – look, Ymir, these two, maybe three, lives are worth avenging the five taken and protecting our town from losing anymore."
"You sound like Erwin," she spat, and my blood ran cold. "What are you going to say next? That the ends justify the means? You're a heartless monster, like Erwin."
I stalked over to her and grabbed the front of her shirt, pulling her up into a kneeling positon and glaring down at her.
"You wanted this. You wanted to see what it's like to e first hunter. You wanted to be trained. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. You never had to kill an 'innocent' when you were third because all those assignments went to me and Mike took the ones that I couldn't handle. I seem cold, but the difference between my reaction and yours is experience. We are hunters, and we must kill to protect. We take the burden. It is our duty."
I pushed her back harshly. "Now get up and hold your head high. You protected every person in our town tonight."
She didn't move, just looking down at the ground.
"Being first hunter means killing innocents?"
"When we absolutely must."
She eyed the corpses.
"When does it get better?" She asked, and I heard the emotion in her voice.
"I'll let you know," I said while brushing by her and rolling the woman off of the man. It hadn't got better for me, and I wasn't even sure it could get better.
I examined the contents of the pack and the tent while Ymir sat in thought. I put everything in the tent and closed the flap. I couldn't have anything or anyone getting into the tent before Erwin gets a chance at it if he needs evidence or something for the Military Police.
I walked over to Ymir and saw her just sitting there, pulling up grass from all around her.
"Now we need to deal with the bodies." I said gently, sitting down across from her. "Normally, I would try to make the load as light as possible-"
"You want to cut off their fucking heads, don't you? You have a reputation for that." She asked, obviously trying to disguise the pain in her voice.
"I don't always cut off their heads. Only when I'm deep in the woods and don't find it particularly fun to lug two hundred pounds of dead meat around with me." I said, knowing I sounded like a monster.
"I'll carry both if you can't carry them. Just, please, please, please, don't cut off their heads." She pleaded with me and I saw the pain all over her.
"Okay." I stood up, wiping my hands on my pants. "I'll carry the woman. I know you probably don't want to touch her-"
"I'll carry her." Ymir said suddenly, standing up.
"Okay." I said, picking up the man and throwing him over my shoulder. I felt his still hot blood slid down my back and ignored it. I always threw away my clothes after a messy hunt anyway.
Ymir picked up the woman bridal style and I let her walk in front of me on the way out of the forest. I didn't want her to have to look at the man on my back all the way back. It meant that I had to look at the woman's head at Ymir's side. It was lolled back at an unnatural angle and her blood and brains were slurping out of her head and spilling on the forest floor. We made it about halfway before Ymir asked the first question.
"Why did you have me sniff the fabric?" She asked. She was referring to the strip of fabric that we had found torn on that bush.
"I wanted to see if we could find the smell of smoke on it. If we could, then that meant that he was wearing that when he built the fire. Smoke tends to cling to fabric, you know."
Ymir hummed. "Why would he have traveled that far after trying to build the fire? The fabric wasn't exactly right next to the campsite."
"I knew we wouldn't have found the smoke on it, but I wanted to get you in the habit of using all your senses."
"Okay." She paused. "How did you know Jas- I mean the woman – would show up?"
"Our report said that he had been out here for two weeks. He had fresh food in his tent. Someone had to have been bringing it to him."
"Oh." She walked quietly after that. I was the next one to break the silence.
"Do you hate me?" I asked her, feeling strangely emotional. It was weird for me to care what someone thought of me. Maybe my feelings for Eren had given me a weak spot, or maybe it was because Ymir was my one and only student. Either way, I actually did care.
"I don't know." She said after a while. "I don't think I do… I'm kinda numb right now."
"Yeah. It's like that when you're new." I said to her, trying to comfort her.
"I've killed people before as third hunter, though." She whispered as we neared the forest line. "Why does this feel so different?"
"Because those were all people that you had decided deserved it. You don't think these two deserved it…Well, at least you don't think the woman deserved it."
"Yeah."
We exited the forest and set down the bodies. We both stretched and rolled our joints. They popped and cracked and relief flooded though me. No matter how strong you were, carrying two hundred pounds through the forest is carrying two hundred pounds through the forest. It didn't make it any easier that that two hundred pounds is dead criminal.
We grabbed our horses and threw the corpses on the back.
"You got tarps, right?" She asked. I looked at her and blinked.
"What?"
"Tarps, asshole, or blankets or something to cover up these bodies." She tapped her feet and I tried not to stare at the blood all over the front of her body.
"Oh, yeah, I have sheets." I pulled out the black sheets used specifically for this purpose and handed Ymir one. We covered up our corpses before riding back into town. We stopped just inside the gates and checked the bodies into the morgue.
Ymir and I rode back to the Survey Corps castle and parted ways there. I went right to the men's showers and she went left for the women's showers. She looked back at me before I opened the door to the shower and said just four words.
"I don't hate you."
I thought about a lot of things while I showered. I thought about Jasmine and Paul. I thought about what a cold hearted bastard I was.
"I'm a monster." I whispered to myself as I watched the blood swirl down the drain. But was that true? Ymir and Eren's faces went through my mind.
I was Ymir's teacher and Eren's savior. Teacher and savior didn't match the description of a monster to me. I thought about Eren's big green eyes and the way his wings looked when he was all healed up. I wanted to touch them. I thought about his soft lips and his first kiss.
How would he feel if I told him his first kiss went to a monster?