The air became continually more stale as I continued down the tunnel. I encountered a few rats and some caved in tunnels, but otherwise found nothing out of the ordinary. I was about to turn back and report when the small circle of my torchlight lit on a slight figure. They had an arm tight around their knees, pressing them against their chest. One hand was splayed out against the rock like it was a lifeline, the other pulled at the dark black hair on the back of their head, their arm concealing their face. When the light fell on them, they jerked their head up, steely gray eyes wide and unguarded.

I gasped and almost dropped my torch as recognition flooded me, "Captain? What are you doing here?"

Just like that, his mask was back in place. He set his jaw and stared me down, "This branch has already been inspected, Burrell, go report back."

I was so shocked, I spun on my heel without protesting and almost left, but something stopped me. I rocked on my heels and bit my lip. The image of his face when he had first seen me flitted through my mind. His face had been so unguarded, and for just a moment, I had seen a mixture of shock, dread, and relief, flash through his eyes. Relief. When he had seen my face, he had been relieved. Was he relieved it had been someone he could blackmail into keeping quiet about finding him here like this? Or had it possibly been because he was lonely, but too proud to say it?

I stood for a moment, indecisive. I had been so furious at him mere hours ago, but when I'd laid eyes on him, his frame curled up against the rock like a child hiding from his greatest fear, all of the rage had left me. Maybe it was because of the intimacy gained from sharing a bed with someone, or maybe it was for the same reason my hand had reached out to him that night. Either way, I found that I couldn't leave him there. My feet simply would not let me walk away.

I swallowed hard and turned, walking back towards him. He repeated his order, but his voice was devoid of his usual harshness; instead, there was a hint of desperation that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end and my heart pound faster. What could make Levi desperate? As I settled my back against his, tremors shook my frame. My eyes widened in shock. Levi was shaking. Levi - humanity's greatest hope - was practically shaking like a leaf. I wet my lips; whatever had him shaken up had to be something pretty big. I put the torch on the ground, letting the warm glow encompass us like a cocoon and leaned back, my head knocking against his. He stiffened, but didn't pull away. I chewed on the inside of my lip, thinking, flipping through the few facts I had learned about him over the past years I'd spent in the legion.

"You know," I murmured into the terse silence after a long moment of thought, "there's a rumor about you going around the legion."

"Damn brats. Gossip worse than a bunch of old hags," Levi said disdainfully.

I ignored him and continued, "They say you grew up in one of those underground towns," I paused to gauge his reaction, but he didn't budge. I continued, "I had to visit one on a mission to collect data for one of Hanji's crazy experiments, it was hell. The air was stale like it is down here, and the stench was worse than death itself, it practically choked you. I could barely keep from vomiting. That was the worst month of my life. People littered the streets, dead and alive, sometime you couldn't even tell the corpses from the living. And it was impossible to keep track of time. I missed the moon and the stars so much that by the end of my mission I slept outside for a week, just so that I could prove to myself that they were still there. I bet living in a place like that could scar someone so deep that they would seize up if they ever had to go to a place like that again."

I paused and waited for him to say something, to either deny or confirm the truth of the rumors, but he was quiet. I frowned; what was he so afraid of? I had the insatiable desire to know what it was, but first, I had to get him to talk. I made swirling patterns in the dirt for a moment while I thought, and then I tried a different approach, "I grew up in this little shack of a house inside Wall Maria. My mom was ridiculously strict and my dad was so lax, we always knew that when mom left him to watch us kids we would be able to get away with practically anything. And half of the time, we did."

Levi slowly began to relax as I talked of my home that had been built into the gentle slope of a hill and the quiet market space that was nestled in the valley. He stopped shaking when I talked about swimming in the creek with my brothers. He pushed out his legs and let his hands fall to the ground when I talked about working the fields. By the time I got to my story, his breathing was even and his head was leaned back against mine as we stared at the ceiling and thought back to simpler times.

"My younger brother," I chuckled at the thought of his unruly copper curls and devious grin, "he was a prick! One day, my mom went to gather some herbs and left my dad in charge. My little brother decided it would be ingenious for him to leave a spider in my bed to get back at me for I can't even remember what. But he never did anything halfway, so he went and he gathered a whole box full of spiders from the meadow and put them in my bed before I went to sleep that night.

"By the time I crawled into bed, they were so pissed off that I got covered from head to toe with spider bites. There was so much of the little monsters' venom inside me that I almost died. My mom spent all of her savings on doctors and spent weeks nursing me back to health. My brother couldn't sit for weeks, she made sure of that. But, because of that little bastard, I have this ridiculous fear of spiders. Even now I can't stand them." I paused, and sighed out a laugh before asking softly as I toyed with the frayed edge of my sleeve, "It's funny isn't it? How we can be terrified of something so small, so ridiculously small and childish, but no matter how hard we try to fight through it, we can't convince ourselves that it's nothing to be scared of."

The silence settled over us again, but it was a quiet comfortable silence that made me want to close my eyes and drift into sleep. Just wrap the thoughts of home around me and drift into a quiet slumber, but my incessant curiosity got the best of me and I broke the silence again.

"What are you afraid of, Captain?"

He stiffened and was quiet for so long that I almost thought he wasn't going to answer, but then the quiet timbre of his voice vibrated through me as he spoke a single name.

I was on my feet in an instant, my blood thundering through my veins as I stared down at him. How? How did he know that name? He met my gaze, unashamed, but in his eyes I saw a quiet regret and remorse for saying that one word. That one name. His name.

"Who is he, Burrell?" Levi asked softly, almost reluctantly.

I wet my lips and reached a trembling hand down to pick up the torch from where I had left it lying on the ground, "I-I should," my voice was hoarse and shook unreliably, I cleared my throat and tried again but still couldn't speak louder than a whisper. "I should probably go report back. They'll be wondering where I am."

With that, I stumbled away from him, back towards the camp. Instead of reporting in, I went to a separate branch that I had found earlier. The end had been sealed off by a cave in and only had the one entrance. I dropped the torch at the front of the tunnel, where it sputtered weakly before the darkness engulfed the flame. I fell to my knees and pounded my fists against the sharp rocks, not caring as they bit into my flesh and my blood colored the rocks. His name repeated over and over again in my head, and, for the first time in years, I let the images flood my mind. His tousled, curling blond hair. His gentle copper brown eyes. His wide generous smile and vivacious laughter. The way it felt to have his arms wrap around me and his lips kiss the top of my head. I remembered the quiet caress of his voice as he told me he loved me.

And then I made myself remember his screams as he had died, forced myself to remember that he was dead because of me. I sobbed, curling in on myself as the image of his torn, bloodied body filled my mind, blocking out all other thoughts. I clutched my chest at the heart wrenching pain and tried to breath as the loss of him came back to me. I pulled at my hair and screamed at the darkness until I stopped resisting and let it consume me.

A/N: Okay! Here is this week's chapter! Sorry that I was a couple of days late. It has been a crazy week. What did you think about this chapter? What do you think about what's going on? Anything specific you want to see happen in this fanfic? LEAVE ME A COMMENT! I live for those things!

And I have couple of questions for you, what do you think our mystery man's name should be? And again, more lovey moments or more action? Let me know!

As always, I don't own AOT or anything that I got from that story including plot, characters, or anything else. Thanks for reading, see you next week! XD