Never Speak First

by commissioner

"I am Instructor Raban, and from this moment forward, you are the Ninety-Ninth Training Corps." There is perfect silence. Erna can only hear the dirt being picked up by the breeze, blown into dust devils. She halts her pacing. "Forget everything you've been told..."

10. Dress

Knocking at her front door wakes Erna early in the morning, when, normally, she would have been up and dressed and straightening her hair already. She opens one eye and groans, fists the sheets in her fingers as she stretches, and slowly rolls her sore body out of bed.

The knocking outside pauses as she unhurriedly slides a pair of white panties up her legs in front of an elegantly carved, wooden-framed, full-length mirror and then stretches up on the balls of her feet to raise her arms above her head until her vertebrae pop. Still unrushed and not fully wakeful, she gets a white button-down shirt from the closet and stretches her shoulders and neck as she pulls it on before the knocking starts up again, quiet and hesitant at first, before the person on the other side of the door finds the courage to knock harder.

Erna's annoyance makes her scowl in the mirror. Dressed just enough—pants pulled on, shirt half buttoned, and feet bare—she tiptoes carefully over broken glass. A hand pushes through her messy bedhead of wavy black curls on her way to the bathroom so that she can wash her face, yelling toward the door on her way, "Leave it and fuck off," referring to her breakfast that the person on the other side is trying to deliver, the same as every morning.

She hears a confused, nervous, "Oh... Sorry..." from the other side. Then she pauses and changes course to rip the door open abruptly, terrifying the trainee sent from the kitchen and making him flinch and stumble backward, just as he was setting a covered plate outside the door. She glares at him at first, then rolls her eyes as he scurries to get his ass up from the dirt and stand and salute. Erna opens the door wider and gestures with a nod to the mess on the floor behind her, saying, "Go get someone to clean this up."

The trainee peers inside past her. His eyes are wide and his jaw slack. Erna adds, "Maybe get two or three people. I don't care. I want this cleaned up before I'm done brushing my teeth." She leaves the door open to let in some fresh air, turning away and taking a deep breath of it as the trainee hurriedly salutes again and stammers, "Y-yes, Sir…"

He trips as he runs off. Erna finally takes a moment to survey the damage, her torn clothes scattered on the floor, broken glass glittering in the sunlight filtering through the open door, a smattering of blood staining the floorboards. If she had more shame, she would clean up the whole mess herself, but, thankfully, that's not an emotion she has in her repertoire.

She feels bleary-eyed and drowsy until cold water shocks her awake. She gazes shrewdly at her reflection in the small mirror over the sink before her head tilts lazily to the side, and as she eyes the small piece of blood-soaked gauze taped to her neck, admiring it like a beautiful, crimson accessory, her eyes glaze over and her fingertips give a light touch to the edges of the white tape. Then her eyes burn and her lips twist and press into a thin, maniacal line as the tips of her fingers snatch at the tape and rip it from her skin. In a flash just as sudden, her face returns to a tranquil expression with eyes widened and calm. She centers a new square of gauze over the cut and scolds her reflection as if it's another person she's talking to. "You should have killed him."

It occurs to Erna often that she could commit murder somewhat easily, not that it's an obsession, but the ample opportunity of the large and isolated training camp makes it cross her mind more often than it otherwise should. The thing that stops her from pursuing the very satisfying feeling of snuffing the spark of life out of someone weak is her nagging pragmatism reining her in. The Military Police know her record and anything but a clear cut training accident with ample witnesses is going to have her ass transported back to an underground cell so fast her head would spin before they justifiably cut it off.

Fresh tape holds her gauze in place as a little circle of red blooms through its center. She rotates her neck and her eyes track to the side and back, travelling over her skin in the mirror, looking for bruises and scrapes. She pushes hair behind one ear and is distracted by a black bruise around her wrist. She looks down to the other one and its matching band of black.

She is mostly confident that the Military Police wouldn't care or notice if she killed any of the Underground trio that already belong to the Survey Corps. Erwin, of course, would care, which only makes her want to do it more.

Her lips open and let out an annoyed huff at her reflection because she didn't take her opportunity. There's a good possibility that she could have strangled Levi with that belt last night when she'd caught him off guard. Now she won't have another chance. He'll be too wary. She stands still and her heart sinks with disappointment.

She mutters, "Getting soft," to her reflection.

She doesn't like what her heart is doing when she thinks about him and being stuck with him alive, too hard to kill. She feels high and giddy when memories come unbidden of his crushing grip bruising fingerprints into her skin and the sting of his thighs hitting hers in an angry frenzy as he poured all his hatred into fucking her.

She has a crush. It started small, infinitesimal, only an ember, when he broke her nose. Now it's a roaring internal fire that makes her cheeks burn red.

She turns away from the mirror without bothering to do anything to cover up the cuts and bruises. Boots and gloves are pulled on and she dons her tan jacket with the crossed swords, then nearly trips over her breakfast on her way outside. Her lips twist into an angry grimace before she swiftly bends in half at the waist, snatches the cooling cup of tea up from the tray and swings her leg back to wind up and deliver a swift kick that sends the rest of it flying, flipping and making several little divots in the dusty ground.

She spins around and slams the door behind her, closing herself back in her one room cabin with her tea cup. Her shadow looms away from the rising sun shining through her window as she stalks back to her bedside table, simultaneously bringing the tea cup to her lips with one hand and picking up a nearly empty bottle of whiskey with the other. After a few hasty sips of tea, she tops the cup off with whiskey. She sips slowly and carefully as she makes her way to the training grounds.

….

Farlan, silver-tongued as he is, has never been able to persuade Levi in one direction or another. There were times where his friend, or business partner, whatever they actually were, would seem to be listening and considering suggestions or advice, but if he swayed in the direction Farlan was aiming for, he knew it was only because he'd already decided to long before the blond ever opened his mouth. Like a cat, he can't be encouraged to do anything unless it is already his idea. That's why, when he said that he was going to kill their head instructor with dead certainty, Farlan didn't say anything, even though he knew it was a catastrophic plan. He could only trust and hope that Levi would do it in such a way that wouldn't get them caught and sent back to the Underground… or worse… probably worse. He swallows, and his hand goes to his throat in a protective motion at the thought of other possible outcomes.

He's taut as a bowstring that night, anxious and stiff in his bunk. He tries to calm himself by listening to Isabel snoring peacefully, too naive to worry, too trusting that 'big bro' would never do anything to jeopardize their position.

For reasons he doesn't understand, he closes his eyes and holds his breath, feigning sleep when he hears Levi leave the top bunk. If he'd actually been sleeping, like the officers around them, he would have missed it completely, the quietest whisper of movement. Levi sneaks out into the night, unseen. Farlan opens his eyes and stares at the wood slats above him, waiting. He waits for hours, it feels like. Eventually, sheer nervousness puts him out and he sleeps until morning.

They wake up before sunrise. That's the routine. Normally, Levi would wake up even earlier than that to steal a shower before breakfast, and that's when Farlan thinks he's going to have time and privacy to ask him what happened, but Levi doesn't head for the showers. He sleeps in, gets out of bed when everyone else does, stretches, and gets dressed, like he's a normal person for once. Farlan watches him dully, exhausted from lack of sleep, but sharp and anxious enough to look at his friend closely for sloppy details like blood under fingernails, anything small that would give him up should a sudden murder investigation be underway. In the grey light of predawn he thinks he sees bruises.

He sits up as much as he can in his bunk, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, and he squints. Levi, as if he can feel him staring at the ring of dark bruising around his neck, reaches into his pocket, pulls out a white cravat, and covers it before putting his jacket on. When he turns to grab his boots, Farlan snaps out of his stupor and scrambles to get dressed and follow him and Isabel outside.

When he catches up, he walks close to Levi so that he can keep his voice low and ask, "So, did you…?"

"No."

That answer is unexpected and raises a lot more questions than the affirmative grunt Farlan had expected. He doesn't even know where to start.

"Is it… Are you…" he can't decide what he really wants to know first. He settles on, "Are we okay?"

"We're fine."

Farlan feels less than satisfied with the monosyllabic answers. If Levi didn't leave last night to do what he said he was going to, then what the hell was he doing? "What happened?"

"Oi, Isabel," Levi says, and the girl who had been dragging her feet still half asleep, perks up. "Run ahead and steal me some tea before all the good stuff is gone."

"Got it, big bro!"

When she's far enough away, Levi says, "I didn't kill her. Stop looking like you're about to shit yourself."

Farlan lets out an audible sigh of relief, then catches himself and nervously peers around to make sure no one heard. Still walking and looking straight ahead, he asks, "Then what happened? Where were you all night?"

"Out."

"Out doing what?"

"None of your business."

Farlan stops walking alongside him and calls out imploringly as his companion keeps walking, "Levi…"

He stops and rolls his neck, standing still for a second before turning around and closing the distance, getting close again so that they can continue the conversation in very hushed voices. Farlan tilts his chin down, searching Levi's smoldering eyes, and asks, concerned, "What happened?"

Levi's breath leaves him in a frustrated, inconvenienced sigh as he crosses his arms, but he looks apologetic about being so terse with his best (only) friend, so he answers, "I was going to kill her."

"Okay?" Farlan says, a little confused as to why Levi sounds regretful about not following through on what was at best a reckless impulse in the first place.

"I got…" he pauses uncharacteristically, as if diplomatically trying to decide on what to say, "sidetracked."

"Sidetracked?" Farlan repeats, incredulous. He's never seen Levi falter from anything he was fixated on, big or small, and the absolute murder in his eyes when he'd said he was going to kill the head instructor hadn't suggested that it was something he would just put aside.

Levi groans quietly. His fingers entangle in his hair, pushing it away from his forehead, and he says, "I… stayed with her for a while. That's where I was."

Farlan's eyebrows knit and form a big wrinkle between them. He can't make any sense of those words. "That would mean…" he starts to say.

That would mean that Levi snuck out after curfew, went to Instructor Raban's cabin, and for some reason he didn't get literally hung for the transgression by the woman who has on many occasions threatened worse than death for lesser offenses such as looking at her the wrong way. Just as it's dawning on Farlan, Levi shrugs his shoulders and says, as if he's baffled by it himself, "I ended up fucking her instead."

Farlan thinks this is a misguided attempt at humor. He's about to ask again why Levi was out for so long last night, but a clear, cold voice cuts him short. It comes snaking in from their right and asks, bemused, "Is that right, Snowflake?"

Involuntarily, Farlan's heels click together and his spine stiffens. His hand curls over his heart in a quick salute before Instructor Raban even enters their eyeline with her wry smile and aura of malicious discord.

"Walls, Church," she mutters, rolling her eyes at his stiffness, though his heightened nerves seem to make her smile a little less tight and sardonic. She takes a sip from the delicate tea cup hooked on her gloved finger, points to Levi with her other hand, "You. Come with me."

Levi shrugs at Farlan as their Instructor walks away. He smirks and follows her. He doesn't bristle or radiate with even a little rage or hatred, and Farlan knows in that moment that he must not have been lying, though he feels like he's only gotten the barest fragment of the whole story. He stands, utterly bewildered for what seems like minutes, and watches them walk away, then he shakes himself off and walks off toward breakfast, doubting he'll be able to get himself to eat.

Just as Levi's catching up to her brisk walk, Erna says coldly, "Don't walk next to me. We're not equals."

So he stays a step behind her.

And briefly thinks about cutting her pretty throat.

"Here's the thing," she says in a short, decisive clip, "I don't give a fuck if you tell anyone."

He tilts his head and stops walking as she stops and turns to face him. "You don't," he says skeptically.

She quirks her lips. "Doesn't make a bit of difference to me. I don't think many people would even be scandalized by it. They probably assume I'm abusing my authority in that way already."

"So you're not about to do something fucked up to me..." he says with incredulous sarcasm.

She doesn't confirm or deny, only asks, "Are you coming over tonight?"

He smirks to himself. "Do you want me to?"

Erna's shoulders slump and she mumbles a quick, petulant, "Maybe."

Levi stops, and, after a couple of steps, she senses he isn't with her and turns around, sees him standing there defiantly. Her shoulders jerk with an impatient gesture and she does a restless eye roll as she exhales a short annoyed huff. He asks her again, slowly, "Do you want me to?"

"Yes," she says, short and agitated, crossing her arms to try and contain her impatience.

"Tell me."

She squeaks a tiny hum, and her lips quirk to the side. Levi watches the conflict play over her face, and then her eyes scan quickly left and right, and he knows that he has her as she checks that no one is near enough to hear her say after a prim little pout, "I want you to."

"Want me to what?" he asks.

The last of her authoritative bearing flakes away as she blinks long with her inky eyelashes and looks around again, only more carefully. She turns to check over her shoulder, and, when she faces him again, it's with a saccharine smile, her cheekbones suddenly highlighted with a glow. She steps into him and her hand coils around the back of his neck, soft calfskin gloves rasp upward against the grain of his undercut and she purrs. "I want you to fuck me tonight, tomorrow, every night, for however long I have before Smith finally comes back to retrieve you and your friends."

He tilts his head and her glove slides away and rests at her side while he makes her wait. He acts like he needs to think about it before saying simply, "Good."

She smiles, tilts her head back and forth, and chirps, "Perfect," then lifts her tea cup to her lips and takes a sip before walking off toward the area where new trainees are tested for 3D maneuvering capability. She tells him, "So here's the thing about that: if people are going to find out, which I'll assume they will since you told Church within," she reaches for her jacket pocket and he hears a click; she tilts her eyes down and checks her watch quickly, "four hours... " She closes it with another metallic click. "Then I need to maintain the appearance of impartiality. I can't let it seem like I'm favoring you."

"It," he says, thinking over the many truly fucked up things she's done to him in the past month, "is never going to seem like that."

She stops between four tall posts with a pulley system that attaches two cables to the belt of the harness to test for vertical maneuver aptitude. Levi hasn't been subjected to it since he was already proficient with the ODM gear before agreeing to join the Survey Corps, so he raises an eyebrow when Erna wordlessly motions for him to stand in place. She notices his hesitation and flashes him that dry, cynical smirk. She is chaos and impassioned madness covered over with frost.

He moves for her, confident that she's mellowed. He fucked her breathless. Some of the cruelty and madness she used to direct at him has to have been released through that outlet. So he stands where she wants him, feet apart, hands behind his back. She kneels in front of him to rest her delicate porcelain teacup and saucer on the ground with careful precision. He stares down at the clear, warm tea, and he licks his lips as she rises, and her hands caress up his thighs. Her fingertips dart and flit over his harness, intermittently slowing to a drag to play and press against his muscles before she sighs and attaches the ropes that simulate the steel cables of the maneuver gear at his waist. She leans in, and he can smell the tea and whiskey on her breath as it trails over his neck, and she whispers, "There's something about you that I really like," as if it's an intriguing but disquieting conclusion. She raises her voice as she walks away and speculates, "I think it's that you're not afraid of me, despite, you know, everything."

He tells her, "You're not very frightening," and returns his attention to the whiskey-spiked tea she left at his feet. He leans and reaches for it, and suddenly he's jerked up and off of his feet, the tea out of his reach as the cables lift him into the air.

"Maybe not to you," she sing-songs. She circles back around into his view, picking up her tea and holding it just below her lips. "Anyway," she sighs, "despite how enamoured I am with the way you try to fuck the actual life out of me, I am required to maintain at least an appearance of objectivity."

His eyelids feel heavier as he watches her lips part to let the liquid soak her tongue, and he considers her choice of words. He likes the sound of fucking the life out of her. To him, it means making her eyes lose that lightning storm of manic frenzy, calming them to the dull contentment he saw last night. But the way she says it, he thinks she might mean it much more literally.

"So," she begins after her long sip, "if we're going to keep doing this, I'm going to have to make life here much harder for you." She smirks. "You know, in the interest of fairness."

"Because you weren't doing that already," he quips, maintaining precarious balance midair, watching her impassively sip her tea as if this is simple polite conversation. "In the interest of fairness," he tells her, leaning forward and looking down at her as far as he's able without tipping himself over, "the more shit you give me, the more I'm going to take it out on you later."

A small smile hides behind her tea cup. She tilts her head slightly as she shrugs one shoulder and says, "Sounds lovely."

"Or I could decide to catch up on sleep in my own fucking bed," he reminds her, figuring that's a more effective threat.

Her pale pink lips pout while she looks up at him from under her lashes. Her brows crease slightly, and she says with the sullen sound of a spoiled child, "You're being very unfair," and he finds it irresistible even as his heartbeat quickens naturally with a heightened sense of insecurity. Her erratic, manic mood swings and the way her voice changes from cold pragmatism to cloying sweetness sometimes without warning makes him uneasy in a way nothing ever has. The fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up and an involuntary release of adrenaline makes him feel alert and aroused.

He looks at the rig she has him strapped into and asks, "Is this supposed to be hard?"

"Oh, no," she murmurs, clearly delighted that he asked. "It's relatively easy. Most new trainees get the hang of it in a day, some in just an hour."

"Then how does this factor into your promise to make training harder on me?"

"It doesn't. This is just to satisfy my curiosity."

"Curiosity?" he quirks a brow while looking over the ropes he's attached to.

"It's just that I've never seen anyone able to recover from a fall in this," she says with a little wonder and awe.

"What makes you think I'm going to—" She steps forward, wraps her hand around his ankle, and doesn't even have to give him more than a light shove to topple him ass over head. "Nngh," he groans after swaying upside down. He tucks his cravat into his collar to keep it out of his face and says, "Fuck you," through gritted teeth.

Erna taps her finger against her lips as if in thought. "If I remember my cursory medical training, you can stay like that for something like three minutes before your brain starts to suffocate from all the blood rushing to your head… Three minutes or seven… Somewhere in between there…"

He reaches downward, trying to get his palms against the ground for something to push against so he can attempt to right himself. "You fucking cunt."

"If you have a complaint, you can take it up with me later." She turns on her heel and starts walking away, adding over her shoulder, "If you don't die."

His curses at her trail off and get quieter as she heads back to her cabin, calmly sipping the last of her spiked tea. Her blood warms in her veins, and she feels very content and self-satisfied as she runs into an officer, either rushing somewhere or trying to look like they are rushing and very busy in order to avoid catching her attention. She stops them, calmly orders them to keep an eye on Levi and cut him out of his harness if he passes out, and mentions that she's making herself scarce for the rest of the day. The officer nods their understanding, and, before she fucks off, she stresses that she isn't to be bothered with anything short of utter catastrophe.

Utter catastrophe knocks at her door a few hours later, waking her up from a very peaceful nap.

She recognizes the voice of one of her favorite officers, if she played favorites, which she does, telling her from the other side of the door, "Mail delivery, Sir. Do you want me to leave it out here?"

"Fuck me," Erna whispers to herself. She twists and turns in her bed, tightening the sheet around her body and burying her face deep into the pillow, then unburying it to shout, "Slip it under the door," and closing her eyes again.

"There's a package…"

On the other side of the door, Officer Terra hears a high-pitched snarl and some curses. Erna opens the door, and the officer graces her with a weak, apologetic smile and a "Sorry, Instructor Raban."

It's attention to detail like that—the carefulness and forethought to never address her by the same title twice in a row—that made Erna decide to make this one her favorite, though it's only an arbitrary thing. She has very few feelings regarding any of her officers. Playing favorites is a way to keep them on their toes and part of the way she trains. Erna exhales a long-suffering sigh and takes the package with a stack of envelopes on top of it. "Don't worry, Terra, you're an angel."

That blush that colors her neck when she's praised doesn't hurt.

"Anything else?" Erna cocks her hip and raises a black eyebrow.

"Nothing, Sir."

"Perfect, doll. Now remember that I don't exist until tomorrow morning." The door swings shut, and she locks it again with the swift twist of a bolt before flipping through letters, ticking off each official military memo with, "Boring… Garbage... Tedious..." tossing them onto the bed to open some other time. Only one at the bottom of the stack grabs her attention. She holds up the envelope, stamped with a seal from Military Police HQ, and she makes a sorrowful, tired sound. She shifts her eyes to the medium-sized package she'd tucked against her hip, then to the important letter, and back, finally setting the unexpected package on the bed and ripping at the twine around it, deciding to delay opening the letter.

She bypasses the note on top of the package's contents and first pulls out a long, red silk dress, simple and form-fitting, embroidered with exotic flowers in black thread. "Oh, hell," she says under her breath, noticing a pair of black heels hidden underneath it. Someone missed the mark. She has a thing for satin, silk, and lace, and she makes that known to everyone who could benefit from bribing her. However, she does not do dresses. Where would she wear one? She has two weeks of vacation time, but it's a formality. She can't go anywhere, especially not anywhere near Sina as per her agreement with the Military Police, which is the only place a dress this nice would be appropriate. Just as her fingers reach to snatch up the note that she discarded, she catches the glint of liquid amber in a glass bottle hidden underneath a pair of black stockings. She grips it tight around the neck, examines the label, and the corners of her lips slowly turn upward.

She looks over the blended malt scotch, checking the year on the label and raising her eyebrows. She's heard there are only two thousand bottles of the brand in existence. She talks sweetly to the bottle like it's her new best friend, asking, "And who found you for me?"

She picks up the note, obviously dictated to a secretary with perfect, flowery handwriting, and skips straight to the signature at the bottom, reading it and smirking. "Pixis… stupid lush."

She hasn't actually met the Garrison Commander of the southern districts, but, as the note mentions, word gets around, and word is that he has a problem with the bottle that remains a terribly kept secret so long as he remains functional. "Blah, blah, blah," she reads aloud to herself, "Forgive the forwardness… rumored to love fine things much more than other people, especially silks and whiskeys… blah, blah, blah…" She pauses in reading to wonder aloud, "Takes a long time to get to the point."

She assumes he was at least buzzed when this note was dictated, unless he's naturally a rambling, overly familiar, sentimental romantic, the thought of which makes her shudder. She gets a lot of graft. Bribes and intimidation have always been her specialty. But no bribery has ever come with a message so endearing, so she wonders what his game is.

She reads the last paragraph, which comes out like poetry, "The scotch is older than you, but it's sweet like honey and smooth, much like me." She cringes. "Oh my god…" Then she reaches the end, "I hope you'll save a finger of it for me."

Erna can't decide whether to laugh or shudder. She foregoes any reaction in favor of picking up a pen from her desk and writing her own message in her hasty, inelegant handwriting on the back of the note:

Pixis,

Returning the heels as I'll never wear them. They make it too difficult to run from creepy older men.

Keeping the dress.

If you'd like to share a drink, you'll have to come to me. I'm very busy.

Bring your own bottle.

I'm a terrible host, and I never share.

With sincere gratitude,

Instructor Raban, Training Corps

She folds it in half and shoves it back in the brown paper package with the heels, tying it back up, scribbling "Return to Sender" on it, and dropping it near the door to go out with the next messenger. If Pixis wants something from her, he'll need to be less obtuse. It never occurs to her that the gift could be a purely kind gesture. Those don't exist. He must have heard from someone that she's a useful person to keep on their good side, which is true, she muses to herself as she hides the expensive bottle of whiskey in the back of a desk drawer. She casts an ironic smile at the dress pooled at the foot of her bed. He probably meant for her to get some use out of it at the Military Ball in Sina, which she isn't permitted to attend, partially because the last time she attended a ball an aristocrat ended up dead and in a very compromising position.

Next to the dress, the letter from the Military Police headquarters waits for her, and she winces when she remembers it. "Unnhhh," she whines, before picking it up and tearing at the edge of it with her nail, not bothering to get the letter opener off her desk in her rush to get the unpleasant part over with.

The much less effusive and more formal letter heralds what she'd been afraid of: an audit. The hollow, bureaucratic assurance is that this is normal—infrequent, but normal—and that it's just to make sure that she is upholding the traditional standards of the military. She stifles a pained whimper in her throat and brings her thumb and forefinger to her temples, rubbing in circles.

After setting the opened letter at the center of her desk, she pulls a list from the center drawer and holds it up. It has two columns, "given" and "received." The list refers to bribes, but the word isn't written anywhere. She does what she can to maintain plausible deniability while keeping detailed records. She takes a pen and pauses, unsure if she should even add the dress, not convinced it should count as a bribe received since she doesn't want it and won't do anything in return. She grows anxious, and, worrying her lip, she picks up a sheaf of papers from the same drawer, and they rustle as she separates and organizes them. Two piles; real records and fake. For every entry keeping track of illicit or illegal deals, there is a corresponding fake entry that makes her practices look legitimate. She stares at her figures, creasing her brow, wondering if her fake record-keeping will suffer an audit. Money embezzled from one part of the budget and injected into another, checks and balances bypassed via corruption and extortion. If it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, it will probably countermand her deal with the Military Police who will have no reason to keep her alive. They'll dredge up their case against her and whatever evidence they have surrounding the one murder they got her for. They'll twist the story, make it into a marketable scandal, entertain the aristocracy for a solid month, and pat themselves on the backs ceaselessly.

More than her potential death, she's offended at the thought of being used as entertainment fodder for the rich and bored. She's only beginning to imagine what some wealthy, sheltered, scandalized matron will say regarding the whole thing when there's a loud bang and the door bursts open.

She nearly jumps out of her skin. Her steadily growing paranoia made her imagine that she'd been caught, but the door closes just as quickly, leaving only Levi inside with her.

She turns away from the desk to face him and breathes deeply to calm her racing heart.

"Leave the door unlocked next time," he deadpans emotionlessly.

She narrows her eyes at him and looks him up and down quickly, takes in the dried sweat and dirt crusting his uniform and the bored look on his face betrayed by clenched fists and tightly tensed shoulders. She gives him a quick eye roll and says sarcastically, "Hi, honey, how was your day?"

"You've got some fucking nerve."

He's just shy of shouting, and Erna looks away from him to hide how happy that makes her. "You're early, Snowflake." A quick glance at the window confirms that it's still daylight. "I'm busy," she sneers and turns her back on him, making herself appear as cold and aloof as possible. She looks back to what she was distracted with before he burst in, takes a stack of incriminating records, twists them in her hands, strikes a match from her pocket, lights the ends of them, and holds them while she watches the evidence of her petty crimes burn. She gazes at the flames and in a far-off, dreamy tone, she says, "Come back later," and she watches the small blaze dance, so enamoured with the fire that she's already all but forgotten about him until his hand is suddenly crushing her wrist, making her drop her little torch. He catches it in his other hand before it can hit the floor and he throws it into the wood stove.

He takes her chin in his fingers, forcing her to look him in the eye when he says, "You're not in a position to give orders."

She makes a high, frustrated little groan and attempts to pull her wrist out of his grip while complaining, "Why are you so early?"

"Because I could have died, you fucking lunatic," he shouts, voice filled with disbelief that she could be so dismissive of the actual torture she put him through only hours ago.

But she can be. It's easy. She rolls her eyes at what she sees as his overreaction. "You're obviously fine." She tugs again, hard, away from his hold around her wrist, and he lets go with a sneer. She says, "I wouldn't have let you die," (not entirely true) and, "I told an officer to get you down if you blacked out," (true).

"That's the fucking problem, Erna," he says, emphasis on her name."After you fucked off, I was able to swing myself upright," he hisses at her through clenched teeth.

"Impressive. Sorry I missed it."

"I held myself like that for two fucking hours," he pauses to let that sink in, "before finally passing out. Then they cut me down and dragged me to the infirmary."

She wants to laugh. It's quite a picture. She restrains herself and says, "It isn't my fault that they take me so literally."

He doesn't react at all. She searches his cold eyes for a spark of anger, a glimmer of lost temper, something to satisfy her. She isn't rewarded with anything but his low deadpan informing her without a hint of feeling, "This game isn't going to end well for you."

"What game?" she asks, defiant, offended at being called out.

"You know what game," he answers. He lets go of her wrist and walks past her in the direction of the bed. She watches, pouting about his calm self control denying her the violence and ruin she craves. She crosses her arms and decides not to play at all if he isn't going to be any fun. Her mouth opens to tell him to get the fuck out, but she pauses to watch as he opens the drawer of the bedside table. She tilts her head with curiosity and maybe a little excitement, assuming he's looking for a weapon.

Disappointingly, he takes out her glass dildo instead of a knife, and tosses it to her as he walks toward the bathroom, telling her, "My head is still pounding, and I'm sore as fuck. Get yourself ready with that by the time I'm out of the shower or I'm going to fuck you dry."

Erna's face burns with rage, and, as Levi peels off his jacket, she shouts at his turned back, "I'm not your fucking whore."

"Good," he says calmly without pausing or turning around. "I don't have any money to pay you."

She throws the glass piece at him with enough force to shatter it as she misses her target and it hits the wall beside the bathroom door. He doesn't even flinch. Six inches to the right and he'd be dead on the floor. She balls her fists and stamps her foot. From the bathroom, he says, as if bored by her histrionics, "You're going to regret that."

"You don't have the balls," she shouts after him. Though she doesn't believe his threat was an empty one, she just wants to get a rise out of him. All she gets is the sound of the water running. She mutters under her breath, "Fucker."

She's distracted by a knock at the door. Seething and eager to rip into someone, she answers it without even pausing to wonder what the fuck it might be about, and she roars at the three officers on the other side, "What the fuck did I say? As of this morning, I do not exist to you. How many officers do I need before you can collectively get off of my dick for a full day?"

They cower and cringe, and Erna raises an eyebrow because there are three of them, which means that something is up. Something that is going to piss her off enough that none of them wanted to be the sole bearer of bad news.

"We're sorry, Sir, it's just…"

"There's been, um…"

"It's… um…"

Erna rolls her eyes and snaps at them. "Stand up straight. Stop the fucking whining. Two of you shut up, and one of you say what you felt you needed moral support to tell me."

Her subordinates square up, look at each other with pressed lips and wrinkled foreheads, and one of them blurts out clearly, "The horses are loose."

Erna tilts her head back, pinches the bridge of her nose, and sighs for a beat, then says, "Elaborate."

"Um…they got out of the stable… no one knows how… they're running around and…"

"And you want me to do what about it?" she snaps.

"Um…"

"Can you predict what I'm going to tell you to do?" she asks, disgusted with them.

They freeze in terror and don't answer right away, instead staring back at her for a moment. She waits for an uncomfortably long time before finally one of them hazards a guess. "Go catch them?"

"Yes!" she shouts, "Go catch the fucking horses! Put them back in the stable! Do not come to update me on your progress, success, or failure, and thank your good fucking fortune that I am busy, you useless—" she slams the door suddenly, not even wasting her breath on any nouns for that adjective to modify. She goes to lock the door, but the steel bolt is hanging by a thread from Levi's entrance. Her exasperation comes out as a quick, high growl, and she stalks through the open bathroom door, saying, "Snowflake, you didn't by any chance stop by the stables on your way here?" knowing the answer already.

"I did," he answers evenly from behind the shower curtain. She can't see him, but she can clearly imagine his straight-faced expression.

She shakes her head in frustrated incredulity. "Why?"

"What you should really be asking yourself," he deadpans, "is why it took them twenty minutes to finally come and tell you."

"Are you trying to make me paranoid by getting me to question the loyalty of my officers?" she scoffs. "Loyalty is a weak trait. It doesn't hold up." She leans against the door frame and crosses her arms. "They waited because they're afraid, and fear is visceral. There's no bargaining or negotiating with fear."

"You're paranoid already if you think I'm trying to bluff you," he points out.

"Then what were you trying to do?"

"Keep them busy," he answers. "It isn't the middle of the night. Too many people around to hear you scream."

"Of course," Erna sneers. She overcomplicated his motivations, because his actions are making her feel like her control is slipping through her fingers, and he's right. She is paranoid.

"I'm gonna be in here two more minutes," he reminds her. "You sure you want to waste that time talking to me?"

"Why? Because of that empty threat to fuck me dry?" Erna squares her shoulders, lifts her chin, and turns around, going back out into the main room. "That's the least worrisome thing I've had to deal with today."

"Not an empty threat," he calls after her, but she just rolls her eyes and thinks that he doesn't understand what she considers foreplay. All she has to do is say the right thing to elicit a violent reaction from him and dryness won't be a concern, so she goes back to her desk, splays her palms along its edge and leans into it as she stares at scratchy notes and lists that she would be better off burning, and scanning her fake records and budgets for inconsistencies that she could have missed.

The more she tries to focus, the more she feels disorganized and dizzy. Her heart beats too aggressively, and, when she tries to focus, her head feels fuzzy like cotton. She closes her eyes and feels an overwhelming need to exert control over something. She shoots up from the desk like a whip and turns, heading for the bathroom door again to tell Levi to get the fuck out and go back to his bunk or wherever the fuck he's supposed to be unless he wants her to contrive some reason to put him in solitary confinement, because she can do that, and, at this, moment she needs to.

Only, she's stopped in her tracks when she sees him appear in the door frame, naked, mostly dry but for little pools of water at the edge of his collarbone and a droplet or two that he missed that are running down his thigh slowly while he rubs his damp hair with a towel. She forgets what she'd been ready to say, but a soft, "Fuck…" makes its way out of her parted lips. He looks up with the slightest smirk, and she collects herself, quickly adding an, "Off," to save face.

"Yeah?"

She tries to swallow with her dry mouth and turns around so that she won't have to look at him while she says, "Yeah, seriously. I'm too fucking busy for this. Hope you enjoyed the shower, now get the fuck out," and she turns back to the desk, looking down at the work that should really be her top priority. She can feel his gaze burning a hole in the back of her head, and she ignores it. He's going to leave, or he's going to fuck her up. He doesn't give her time to think on which she would prefer. He stalks her with fluid, purposeful strides, and she acts like she's unaware by turning a page over and picking up a pencil.

The struggle is short. She yelps at the sharp pain of her hip bones hitting the edge of the desk, but it's cut short and muffled when his hand grips the back of her neck and pushes her down, cheek pressed flat against the dark varnished wood. Her pencil clatters against the floor. The paper she'd been pretending to read tears under her palm when she tries to reach back and hit him, but he catches her hand and slams it back down, leaning over her, crushing her. A shrill noise of frustration cuts the air, and her body jerks as she fights to try to stand, but he holds her still with a cynical laugh.

He sneers at her, "Is this what you wanted when you left me hanging in the sun?"

Erna stops fighting and relaxes. His weight feels good crushing her. She answers with a demure, "Maybe."

It does nothing to lessen his anger, though he releases his hold on her head and wrist and places his hands around her waist instead, grunting, "You're a psychotic little bitch."

She leans forward and unravels, stretching her arms straight out in front of her, linking her fingers and melting against the wooden surface, letting her frenetic paranoia dissipate as her head clears, and she concentrates on the tight grip of his hands.

He reaches for one of the buckles of her harness. She moans contentedly and separates her hips from the desk's edge to help him get better access. When she leans back, he grunts slightly, rips at a buckle, and pins her to the desk again by shoving his hips against her, his cock pushing between her legs. She moans at the rough treatment, feeling very pleased with herself while she turns her face and presses her smile into the smooth desktop. He pulls her pants and white lace underwear down to her knees in one or two violent tugs. A hand curls around her waist, holding her still again, as if he needed to.

"You almost killed me just to get a rise out of me," he says quietly, with a deadly calm, dark edge to his observation, "so that I would be rough with you?"

She murmurs her affirmation. He's correct. And she's getting what she wanted. She whines, needy and restless when he draws his hips back, moving his cock away from her and giving her some literal wiggle room. Her hips rock back for him, and his hand tightens around her waist, squeezing so hard that it hurts. She hisses and smiles at the pain and says, "It worked before."

"I'm not," he says, taking his cock in hand and pressing against her, angling and searching for the opening in her closed thighs, "encouraging this." He drives forward hard past her dry lips, and her arms recoil from their relaxed position splayed over the desk, elbows shooting back, palms and splayed fingers pressing to the wood with a surprised, pained shout. She pushes herself up, automatically rises on her toes to escape the painful intrusion, and, just as quickly and automatically, he takes a fistful of her hair and pushes her back down so hard that even her lungs feel compressed.

It burns and stings like a razor, but, while the pain is real and acute, she sees it as an inconvenience secondary to the outrage because how fucking dare he? She makes a noise like a growling screech, a monstrous sound that he muffles by turning her face down with the fist tangled in her hair while he pushes into her thrust after thrust by half inches, grunting with the effort of pressing against her reflexively tight cunt until finally he's buried in her and, with one more brutal thrust, lifts her toes off the floor and jolts the desk against the wall. Erna breathes deep and fast, oxygen being a desperate anesthetic when nothing else is available.

"That fucking hurt?" he gloats because he wants it to, and he releases her hair. He opts instead to press his palm between her shoulder blades and pin her that way while her hip bones beat a steady, painful percussion against the edge of the desk while he fucks her, bruising her.

She'd wanted it to hurt, only, there are different kinds of hurt. This isn't one that she's fond of. He thinks he's making a point about the consequences of her actions when he says, "Be nice," in between thrusts, grunting, "and maybe next time... there'll be foreplay," thoroughly pleased with being the cause of the pain twisting her facial expression into a tight wince. He moans and slides his hand down to parallel the one at her waist, pulling her back in rhythm to meet his hips, pushing deep and grinding against her. His fingers dig into her skin. He looks down at her while she clamps down on him like a vise, hissing in awe at how tight and hot her resistant walls feel, stilling and enjoying the moment for a short pause before, in a sudden motion, her nails are swiping back at his abs, catching and clawing three bright red lines into his skin before he catches her wrist and holds it in the air.

Her shoulder makes a snapping, popping sound as he lifts her by that wrist onto her feet, and she can't feel the pain that should be shooting through her arm when he lets it go. He takes advantage of the shock to grab her around her middle, lift her off her feet, and walk her back to the bed while she dizzily wonders where the feeling through her shoulder went and how she got turned around.

"You wanted to get a reaction out of me," he growls, ripping her pants all the way off, wrenching her legs apart, and getting on his knees between them. "You got it."

She squeezes her thighs, trying to hold him at bay to no avail, but he pauses to let her speak when she opens her mouth and informs him, "Getting fucked dry isn't one of my kinks."

"Yeah?" he retorts, impassive and unmoved. He curls his hands under her and drags her closer by her hips before promising her, "Not mine either," spitefully, like she brought this on herself, and he's an innocent and impartial proxy of justice. He leans down over her, slides a hand between her and the mattress until his palm is between her shoulder blades. He lifts her torso with one hand and angles her hips with the other, then pushes again. When his cock meets with tense resistance, he growls, shoves past, and impales her.

She feels every drag and stab with burning acuity and hisses, "I'm going to fuck you up in training tomorrow."

"Fine," he breathes. "Then we can keep going back and forth like this." He lowers her to the mattress and fucks into her faster, smirking slightly, vaunting the power he thinks he has over her with a groan as he buries himself to the hilt inside her, and her fingers reflexively reach and dig at any part of him she can reach, as if holding something could ease the pain. He tells her with his low, sadistic deadpan, "This isn't as good as when you're wet and screaming my name, but," he pulls back and slams his hips into hers again, making her inhale sharply with a cringe, "not bad."

Just as he picks up a rough pace again and his thrusts start to stutter and get uneven instead of methodical and deliberate, like he's chasing release, Erna closes her eyes and wills her body into a mid-course correction. She can't ignore the pain. It's there, and she remains physically aware of it, but with practiced discipline she wills the tension out of her hands, her legs, her core, relaxing herself utterly, wiping any expression from her face, and opening her eyes again. It takes him a moment to notice, but when he does, he pauses, sneers at her glassy, dull eyes, and growls, livid at not being able to see the pain on her blank face. He thrusts hard, again, but even inside her there isn't any resistance and the jerk and slap of his hips only jolts her limp body like it's a soft inanimate object. She stares, her eyes as unfocused and empty as a doll's. He grabs her shoulders, shakes her, makes a couple more half-hearted stabs into her heat before pulling out, disgusted.

Erna hums back to life and sits up after he gets off the bed and stands. She cups her hand over her mons and winces. "You made your fucking point."

He sneers at her and asks, "Where did you learn that trick?" as if what she just did was any more disgusting than what he'd done.

"Don't worry about it. Just know that if you try that shit again, I'll kill you and make it look like a training accident," she says, clutching her right arm and squeezing it, making sure it isn't broken or dislocated anywhere.

"If you try to kill me again, I will fuck your actual corpse," he snaps back with far more calmness than those words should ever be said with.

"I'd believe you, but you could barely keep it up when I stopped moving." She coos with sarcastic sympathy while checking herself for blood. The skin between her legs feels sore but looks okay and unbruised. Nothing torn or broken.

"You get credit for figuring out that it's only fun when you struggle."

"You get the same for figuring out that coming out hot and flying into a rage gets me off."

He leans over and she moves back as he looms over her. "I wanted to," he says, kneeling to the bed again as she crawls backward away from him, slowly trapping her against the headboard and under him. "I thought a lot about choking you until your lips turned blue…"

He reaches for her neck. She shudders. He gives her a sardonic smile as his fingers tighten around her throat, and she murmurs, "I would have loved that."

"I know."

He locks eyes with her, applies only the smallest amount of pressure to her throat, and stills. She waits, then arches up, pressing her neck into his hands, and whispers, "Please."

He raises an eyebrow at her and smirks, but doesn't tighten his grip. He only says, "You're fucked up."

There's a flash of indignance across her face as she narrows her eyes and tells him, "You just tried to rape me, but I'm the fucked up one."

"I just tried to rape you," he confirms calmly, rubbing his thumb over her skin, still not choking her, "and you were very calm about it."

"Oh, that," she murmurs. "Well…" she trails off with a morbid, calamitous little smile and reaches up to link her hands loosely behind his neck. She purrs at him, "You gonna make it up to me?"

"Are you going to lay off me in training?"

"If I have to," she pouts, "but that's sincerely my only source of entertainment around here."

Levi rises up on his knees and tells her darkly, "I'll keep you fucking entertained." Before she can ask him how he plans to do that, he shifts downward, sliding his hands down her ribs and over her waist before settling to grip at her thighs and open her legs wide, cupping his palms under her ass, leaning down, and lifting her to his mouth. His face disappears between her thighs, and she gasps as his tongue circles her clit before hungrily lapping at her. His tongue delves inside her, and his hand caresses her leg, fingers curling over her skin when he hits a sweet spot and makes her muscles twitch. He rolls her clit carefully between two deft fingers, turns his head to suck a bruise onto her inner thigh, and she whispers, "Fuck, fuck fuck…"

He proves to have an incredibly good memory that notes and archives her reaction to every slight change in pace and position, and for minutes he uses it against her to get her to the edge of orgasm again and again. The fourth time that he slows down and eases her off of the brink she twists the sheets in her hands, tilts her head back, and sobs.

"Something wrong?" he asks from between her legs, the smug little shit.

"Ple-ease," she whines, the fluttering tightness in her abdomen becoming overwhelming and unbearable.

He doesn't say anything to torment her further, apparently satisfied at her level of says only, "I want to feel you," and he presses two fingers slowly, carefully inside her, filling her without dragging or burning or curling, not to fuck her with them, just to feel how she clenches when his lips and tongue find her clit again. He lets her move her hips and grind and chase her orgasm, pressing against his parted lips and shouting. He starts to get up, moving his knees underneath him and looming over her again, looking down at her while he presses his thumb over her clit and pumps his fingers slowly with every flex of her legs, working her through her orgasm until she's oversensitive and flinching like his touch is too hot and she's being burned.

She groans and nudges him weakly with her knee, begging him to ease off, and he obliges. The pressure of his fingers disappears, leaving her feeling empty and already restless. She wants more even though it would be impossible while she's still reeling from aftershocks, twitching and moaning. She turns her head and closes her eyes, closes her legs, and listens to the rustle of him moving. When she feels flesh press against her lips, she opens them and offers her tongue without a thought. She tastes herself. His fingers curl against her tongue. She closes her lips and sucks on them hard and hears a deep rumble hum through his throat.

He moves, the weight on the mattress shifts, there's a hand in her hair, and a pop as he pulls his fingers from her mouth. She whines again and writhes, reaching. Her hand finds his thigh, hard and rigid, and she curls her fingers to scratch just as something larger pushes past her lips and invades her mouth. Her tongue flicks against the head of his cock, lapping greedily, her cheeks hollow as she sucks him in, and her fingers uncurl and go slack, no longer filled with need for violence and consequence.

He hisses and curses softly, breathing deeply and loosening his hand from her hair as she eagerly bobs a quick rhythm, sucking him down further and further. When he catches his breath, he asks, "How long do you need?"

Her eyes snap open. She looks up at him and hums inquisitively while flicking her tongue against the underside of his head. His eyes close as he shudders and hisses before calming again and making himself clear, "How long do you need after you come? When can I fuck you?"

She curls her fingers around the base of his shaft and leans back. With a smile, she says, "A while," before licking a broad stripe up the side of his cock, eyes locked on his as she swirls her tongue around the head. She licks down the other side and pumps him with her hand.

He growls, obviously not pleased with that answer. Erna kisses and licks at the tip of his cock, slowly and reverently, whispering, "We have more than twelve hours."

"And I want to spend all of it fucking you."

"Shouldn't have made me come then," she teases and grabs for the backs of his thighs, pulling him into her mouth, and opening her throat for him.

Levi tilts his head back and hisses, sounding lustful and regretful at the same time, agreeing with her, "I shouldn't have."

She hums before taking him deeper, cutting off her air. He tells her, "You don't deserve it," and she digs her fingernails into his skin. He pushes his hips forward and rests his hands on her head, steadying it while he draws back and thrusts into her throat again, chastising her ironically, "I'm too good to you."

When he draws back and gives her air, she whines a needy little noise in agreement and quickly follows his hips with her mouth, choking herself again, pressing her nose to his pubic hair and feeling his hard cock block her airways again. He curses, loses the composure it took to speak, grips her hair tight, and finally starts fucking her face. Erna holds her breath, but for every stutter and opportunity she moans and inhales and quiets again as his cock presses past her tongue and deep into her throat.

One of his hands goes for her neck. It curls around and squeezes while the other still holds her hair by the roots, so that when she gets dizzy and her head lolls he can hold it in place and keep fucking her mouth. He comes deep in her throat, shuddering and grunting, thrusting and still trying to get deeper as he empties all the anger he'd been harboring into her. She sucks like she's grateful for it, and, when he suddenly pulls away, having come up to the edge of discomfort, she looks up at him and asks, "Now how long do you need?"

He shakes his head, brings his fingers to his temples, and closes his eyes. "My head is still killing me." He turns and sits, leaning against the headboard next to her and stretching his legs out in front of him.

Erna wipes her mouth and rises to her knees. She straddles his hips and looks down at him. "Poor baby."

He reaches for her, grabs her by the shirt, and pulls her closer, making her lose her balance and teeter. She steadies herself with a hand on the wall, and, before she can stop him, he rips her shirt down the middle, buttons popping and raining down onto the mattress and the floor. She squeals in anger, but he ignores her reaction. He hooks a finger under her bra and sneers at it, saying to himself, "Really?" and then muttering while he reaches under the pillow behind him with his other hand, "Where's that fucking knife?"

And before she can even register his intent and tell him to stop, he's slipped the dull edge of a knife against her skin and sliced her bra in half. Erna looks down at her ruined clothes in horror while he nonchalantly holds the knife in his teeth to free his hands and tug the torn and cut clothing off of her. She rips her arm out of the sleeve he's pulling at and, once freed, punches him in the shoulder and shouts, "The bra unclasps! That was un-fucking-necessary. I liked that bra!"

He pulls the shirt down and off her other arm and, with smirking satisfaction, takes the knife from his teeth while looking her up and down. "White doesn't suit you," he replies with a hint of cheek hidden under his deadpan tone.

"Yeah, well, it doesn't show through the uniform either, you fucking prick."

He smirks at her outrage and rests a hand around her waist, pressing and gliding his thumb over her abs, twirling the knife absently in his other hand. "I'm ready to go again, by the way."

"Fuck you," she says in disbelief. "It's been two minutes."

"I have a lot of stamina," he says matter of factly, "and I had a lot of time to think about fucking you to death while I was in the infirmary."

She slaps his hand away and mutters, "Literally going to kill me." She goes to get off the bed and stand, but his hand snatches at her wrist and holds. She pulls, and he pulls back, and it's about to be a struggle when there's a knock at the door, and they both freeze. Erna tilts her head back and groans. "Fuck me."

"You want to answer that first?"

"Shut up," she hisses a low whisper, looks down at her clothes on the bed and the floor, drops her shoulders and makes a frustrated little shriek when the knocking continues, and she accepts that she's going to have to get up. Levi lets her go, and she sits on the edge of the bed for a moment, then looks to him. He folds his hands behind his head nonchalantly. She scowls at him, annoyed that he can be so fucking calm. Then she hisses, "Give me that," and snatches the knife away from him, stands up, ignores her clothes, and walks to the door naked, leaning her forearm against it and then resting her head against her arm tiredly, steeling herself for a second before shouting, "If I have to open this door, it's only going to be so that I can slit your throat, and that isn't an exaggeration! I will bury you in a shallow grave out in the woods, tell your friends that you went back to your family, and tell your family that you fucking deserted."

There's silence, then a quiet, "Sorry," just audible from the other side of the door. "Leaving your dinner here, Sir."

Erna smirks at herself for forgetting that meals were a thing, and she turns around. On her way to her closet, she tosses the knife back to Levi because she likes when he holds it against her skin. He catches it and watches her slide the closet door open. While she looks for a robe to put on, she asks, "Did you eat?"

"When would I have?" he asks with dry irony.

"Oh," she says distractedly, remembering that she kept him from breakfast and left him hanging from the 3DMG training device all day, "right." Her fingertips linger over the sleeve of something silky and pink. She reaches for a hanger.

Levi stops her by saying, "Don't wear anything you don't want me to rip apart," and keeps twirling the knife in his fingers, bored with everything that doesn't presently involve fucking her.

She huffs to herself, thoroughly annoyed, but then she remembers she has something that she wouldn't mind ripping apart, and she turns around. He sits up when he sees her heading back for the bed, but she walks past, to the foot of it, and reaches down for the dress that got pushed to the floor at some point. It slips over her head easily and glides over her skin like oil, like it was made and measured specifically for her, except for the length. A few inches of excess fabric pool at her feet. If she meant to keep it then it would need to be hemmed.

As she tiptoes into view of the full length mirror, Levi tells her, "Red suits you better."

Erna frowns at her reflection. It's beautiful.

"I'll never get to wear it."

"Wearing it for me doesn't count for anything?" he asks with snide sarcasm.

She ignores him and pulls up the zipper at her back, moves to the door, and opens it enough to kneel down, pick up the tray with her dinner, and slam it shut again. She takes a roll and offers Levi the rest, explaining, "I'd be mildly disturbed if you passed out while fucking me."

"Not as disturbed as I was when you did your living dead girl act," he quips back, though he takes the food and eats in her bed while she opens a new bottle of whiskey from her stash underneath it. While she drinks from the bottle, he says, "I thought the food you got would be better than what I could get in the mess hall."

"Nope," she says simply.

He raises a thin brow at her. "Why not?"

"People with power forget that they are singular and those underneath them are many."

"So you eat the same shitty food as the rest of us, and you think that prevents a mutiny?" he asks with a derisive sneer.

"It helps."

Levi takes a big bite out of a baked potato, and, in between chews, he asks her with mild curiosity, "How long have you been doing this?"

"A couple years." She says quietly, thinking to herself how little and how much time that sounds and feels like.

"Which branch did you serve with before this?"

"I didn't," she says first, then raises her eyes, thinks, and corrects herself, "I did a few months with the Survey Corps."

He pauses and his head tilts slightly. "I thought Instructors had to put in their time before taking this cushy ass job. That's why they're all crusty old men… except you."

Her only response to him is a shrug, and he waits for her to elaborate on that, but she keeps her mouth shut and stares right back at him until he breaks the silence. "Then what were you before?"

The whiskey starts to go to Erna's head and warms her cheeks. She smiles and asks playfully, "What do you think I was?"

He says quickly, with a straight face, "You suck dick like a whore."

Her smile turns to a scowl. "Fuck you."

"Bet I'm not wrong."

Erna looks away from him, her lips twisting to the side in annoyance. He goes on, "But those scars tell a story." He points at her with his fork, at the scars raised here and there over the skin revealed by the dress, on her arms, her shoulders, across her chest, and, for the first time in a long while, she feels conscious of them and of being uncovered and exposed to someone else's scrutiny.

Erna doesn't confirm or deny his assertion. She just takes a bite from the hunk of bread in her hand so she won't get sick, and she tests him. "What story?"

"Don't know," he answers once he's finished chewing. He finishes the last of her dinner and sets the tray on the bedside table, then nods toward the glass bottle neck getting strangled in her hand. "You going to finish that whole thing on your own?"

She takes another swig before surrendering it. With her in reach, he takes the opportunity to hold the bottle in one hand and grab her with the other. She falls and sits next to him without any resistance, but he doesn't ease his grip on her arm until he takes a good long pull off the bottle and is ready to relinquish it to her. Before sucking on the bottle's mouth, she leans back and rests on her elbows. He stays sitting up on the edge of the bed. She has a good view of the back of his head and the muscles of his shoulders and back, and she broods over him and his frustratingly alluring darkness and masked brutality tucked away under an expressionless exterior, and she mutters, "You're right."

He cracks his neck and stretches. "About what?"

She kisses the bottle. "I was a whore."

He shrugs as if that isn't much of a revelation and says, "So was my mother."

Automatically Erna sneers, "So you were an accident."

He doesn't react at all for a beat. He stills. Then, just as her gut is starting to tighten with foreboding that she's gone too far, she sees his shoulders shrug, and he says, "Maybe. She died when I was a kid. I never got to ask."

Erna doesn't bother with 'sorry' because she isn't, and to pretend sympathy is beneath her. Instead, she reaches forward and nudges his elbow with the bottle, letting him take it from her again. She muses, "My pimp was more careful than that. The hysterectomy was a requirement post-interview."

"Interview," he scoffs darkly.

"That's what he called it," she sing-songs.

The liquid in the now half-empty bottle sloshes as he tips it back. "So you fucked your way to this job?" he asks bitterly.

"Oh, no," she says, rising up onto her palms with a little thrill, her eyes going wide, excited to correct him on that point. "I only worked for a few years. When I was fourteen, a regular client felt that I was in need of saving, and I let him be my hero and whisk me away to a cold, shitty basement apartment under a butcher's shop."

"Fourteen," he says, not so much a question as a repetition to clarify and be sure.

"I interviewed when I was eleven."

Levi's response is to tip his head back and drink, only coming up for air a few moments later to whisper, "Fuck," very much to himself in a haunted way.

He doesn't say 'sorry' either.

Erna relaxes again, lies back on her elbows, tilts her head back, and groans, "Don't get all depressed about it." She looks back up for a reaction, sees only his back, still tense, his shoulders hunched over slightly, his head shaking, and she rolls her eyes at him. "It's not like I was kidnapped or anything. It was a choice. I didn't need any rescuing. I'd told him that."

Levi wipes his mouth after another gulp of bitter whiskey, and asks, "Who?"

"The man," she answers, frustrated that he isn't keeping up. She sits up and takes the bottle from him, intending to keep it this time. "My first boyfriend. Well… only boyfriend…"

He gives her an incredulous look, the corners of his eyes wrinkling just slightly with a hint of a playful expression, his shock forgotten. He hooks the shoulder strap of her dress with a finger and seems to get distracted by the smoothness of the silk while he asks, "What happened with him then?"

"I killed him."

He stops. He lifts his chin and looks at her. She smiles, tilts her head, and says, "You remind me of him."

"Yeah, I feel like we have a lot in common already," he deadpans sarcastically as he lets go of her dress.

"Just the musculature," she sighs as she runs her hand up his arm and over his shoulder, and, when he doesn't withdraw, she pushes at him lightly, telling him, "He was a fighter…a boxer…" He lies back for her and lets her straddle his hips after she pauses to impatiently tug the long skirt of her dress up. She splays her fingers over his abs that she'll never get bored of touching and muses, "that's where the similarities begin and end. He was sentimental and not very bright."

"And," he adds, "you know, a pedophile."

"Well, they all were."

"Tch," he flashes his teeth. "Disgusting."

She reaches down between them, grips him and squeezes and draws her hand up lazily, slowly stroking him, getting him hard despite his disgust. He looks at odds with himself, like he doesn't think he should be getting hard while she talks about such abhorrent things. She says, "Nevermind. You don't want to hear about it."

Levi blinks long and slow and his lips part as she teases him. He lifts his neck like tipping his head back for water, and, when his eyes open again, they're free of any conflict. He's let the inner demon envelop him, and he says, "Tell me," in a husky breath while she strokes him. He is still a hard read, but she can tell that he's smart at least. Smart men get bored easily, and they love a good story to punctuate the monotony.

She circles her palm over his slick head and says, "I didn't need to be rescued."

His name was John, fitting. He'd had close-cut black hair and piercing, ice blue eyes that were never still. Good jaw, slightly crooked nose, dirty clothes. That was thirteen-year-old Erna's quick assessment when she caught sight of him beyond the curtains that separated the lounge from the reception area of her home/workplace. She saw him before he knew she existed. He looked fragile in the way that exceedingly strong men always do, so dangerous, so insecure, so easily threatened. She nuzzled into her soft floor cushion and lifted her chin to share a look with a girl splayed over the couch nearby, wanting someone to acknowledge the nod of her chin and roll of her eyes toward the the new guy she could see conversing with the concierge in the lobby, but the other girl was already passed out. She couldn't handle her opium. A thin line of drool hung from the corner of her lips. With a sigh, Erna picked the unfinished pipe from the girl's lax fingers and held it in her teeth while she made a reach for an oil lamp on a low table.

She turned back and peered past the flame flaring up eight inches in front of her with narrowed eyes. The scene, half-obscured by the curtain, was of the new man raising some kind of fuss at the desk. It took a lot of balls to argue about terms and price in this situation. Her curiosity was piqued before he settled with the concierge and was pointed in the direction of the fuschia curtain.

He surveyed his surroundings and the dozen or so other girls lounging, talking, smoking, and staring, before coming to loom over her. He told her to get up. She told him that she wasn't finished and craned her neck to suck on the long pipe she'd just stolen. Rather than move onto another girl, he waited, stock still, but not with patience, staring at her with a raging fire in his eyes until she finally stood, less than half his height but sizing him up with confidence. She told him directly, without much care one way or another, that she could refuse clients for any reason, and she looked past him to the man out front whose job it was to physically handle any problems.

He reacted almost not at all, kept his hands clasped in front of him, nodded slightly, and said that was fair in a solemn, respectful tone in direct contrast with his behavior in the lobby. While she made up her mind about whether or not she wanted to take him upstairs or motion for the security man outside to dispose of him so that she could be treated to the dry twig sound of snapping bone that she liked so much, she offered him the pipe in her hand, but he shook his head, said he had a fight later and needed to stay sharp. That made up her mind for her.

In her room she asked him if he wanted her innocent, slutty, or terrified. Every client's wants always fell into one of those three categories. He said a little of each would be fine.

Levi twitches under her palm, hisses through his teeth, and interrupts her, "That's horrible."

"That's life," she answers, "life is horrible, people are disgusting, and there's no point to any of it."

He closes his eyes, hums in agreement, and bucks up into her hand. She presses her thumb to the precum beading at his slit and swirls it around, listens to him moan deep and low, and she keeps pumping him in her hand while she leans over him and licks at the bruise encircling his neck. "I can stop," she breathes hot against him, shifting herself, bringing her hips forward so that she can rub the tip of his cock against her opening, and she mouths against his jawline, "if it's too dark."

She feels his jaw twitch under her lips and she thinks he just smiled, though she can't see with her eyes closed. He puts his hands around her waist, pulls the silk dress up, and reaches down to glide his hands over her thighs, guiding her slowly, gently forward and back, so that she slides over his shaft, and he whispers with mild fascination, "You're so fucking wet," and his fingers dig at the muscles of her legs while he lifts his hips, rubbing against her without penetrating. He goads her, "Keep going. I want to know why you killed him."

She stretches back upright, looking down at him, her shoulders back, hands pressing down against his chest and measuring his even breaths. Her hips follow his hands, and it's a game now to remain composed and coherent while his cock is so close to fucking into her. She takes a deep breath and shudders, then tries again, reciting as clearly as is manageable, "He came once a week."

She didn't have any repeat customers. Not after she learned how to get men deep into their darkest fantasies and desperate to finish, on the razor edge of orgasm, and then stop, stop whatever it was that was getting them off, cruelly and suddenly. If they liked her eager and whorish, she was suddenly a naif. If they were there to fuck an innocent little girl, she narrowed her eyes and became precocious. If they wanted her to scream and cry, she would cut out mid-howl and look bored. They would stutter, they would try to get there without her help, but the fantasy would be ruined, and they would beg on their fucking knees for her to go back to what was working, to finally finish. Men in the throes of ecstasy suddenly interrupted are beyond reason. She collected entire wallets as tips. Unfortunately, when lucidity returned, no one was foolish enough to ask for her again.

He was safe from her tricks in that he was stupid with money. He was younger—twenty-nine, she thinks she remembers—and, when he came, it was only with enough for her services and a shot of hard alcohol before his fight. He got more money after winning, and spent it on food and booze and rent, having just enough left for her at the end of the week.

She gave him more than the standard hour. It was her prerogative. Her pimp allowed whatever it took to keep girls happy. Opium, time off, freedom to socialize, making their own hours, and refusing specific clients on any grounds, so long as they earned enough for him to make a healthy profit and were appropriately grateful for the freedom and the roof over their heads—no moping about.

When John offered to save her from this place, she laughed. She couldn't stop laughing for minutes. He, of course, was wounded and left in a huff without allowing her to explain, slamming the door while she rolled on the bed, holding her sides. She was free to leave if she wanted. That's what she was told, anyway, anytime she was caught looking more depressed than was attractive.

Why would she want to leave? It was warm and safe. The work was horrible and disgusting, but she could smoke and drink and dull the sick feelings that crashed in all around her sometimes.

But he came back, and he learned slowly that she liked bruises and scars and stories and descriptions of violence. He had plenty of those things. He seduced her away with them. If she went with him, she could watch him fight. If she lived with him, he promised she would get to see more bloodshed and destruction than the occasional overstepping client getting tossed out onto the street.

The tradeoff, she learned afterward, was a change in quality of life. His apartment was in a cold, windowless cellar under a butcher's shop, suitable for him. He trained whenever he felt cold, doing pull ups in the doorway, hanging on by the white tips of his fingers, or suddenly throwing lightning-quick jabs at a sand-filled sack hanging from the ceiling by a chain. Erna wore hats and scarves and mittens to stave off hypothermia. His bed was a wooden pallet with thin, dirty blankets and no pillow and she let him fuck her on it more than she would have otherwise just to sap his body heat.

But his promise was good. Within the first twenty-four hours, she got to watch him beat two men to death. They were supposed to retrieve her. Apparently the freedom to leave was only meant to be a comforting illusion. She watched with wide-eyed excitement and noted how fragile the human skull actually is. Then, with both men laid out, their chests dead still, John turned and winked at her before setting to work dragging the bodies up the stairs. There was no follow-up attempt. She wasn't worth that much.

She attended every fight religiously, calm with hands folded in her lap and watching, awestruck with the ruthlessness and the noise and the cruelty. Violence and intensity followed John everywhere, so she clung to him, going to the bar with him after a fight, letting him wrench from her grasp when his temper flared, stoked by a look or a comment from someone, or anything. He was a savage drunk. It didn't take much. She didn't help. She looked only twelve at best, and their relationship drew sneers and expressions of pure disgust that Erna didn't hesitate to point out, and John never balked at the chance for a confrontation. He looked for it with his alert, ice blue eyes almost as much as she did.

When she couldn't keep up with the late nights and the noise and the drinking, and her eyes fought to stay open, he deposited her at home, tucked her in, and went back out. His affection for her remained ardent despite his cheating. She didn't mind, was even relieved. Her sexual appetite was nonexistent, and his was a large pyre that she was surrendered to when no one else was available.

His fondness of her waned as she got older. He got bored of her, wasn't attracted to her when she started to look more like a teenager. She didn't care, but he felt guilty, and he lashed out. He started arguments with her more and more, and often complained about the cost of keeping her.

"If you didn't care," Levi teases, lips brushing the hollow of her shoulder, "why kill him?"

She tilts her head and bends her neck away from his touch as he pushes the strap of her dress down and peels the silk clinging to her breasts away. His palm pushes flat against the valley between them, making her sit up straight again. When had she leaned into him? He grinds his hips up and bucks her lightly, teasingly, staring at her with a sharp hunger and a sarcastic smirk.

"If you're impatient," she says, trying to sound aloof even with her flushed cheeks and wet lips, "I can stop."

"Finish your story," he orders her. She gives him a sly, satisfied look. She's going to. Only, then he finds her clit, soaked and rubbing against his cock, and he presses it lightly, swirling the pad of a finger over it while his cock slides between her lips without entering, and as she closes her eyes and moans, all her words get blotted out by the greedy mantra in her head of more, more, more, until she hears him tease her with an added, "If you can."

"Not fair," she pouts.

"Finish," he insists, eyes bright as knives.

"I…" her hips stutter completely on their own, and she whimpers. This was supposed to be her game, not his. It was supposed to make him uncomfortable and disgusted and conflicted while she got him hard. Her lips pout while she bears down to grind against him because it feels so good, and she wants more.

She's broken out of her fog by a stinging slap to her ass. Her eyes open wide and she looks down at him, his muscular body shaded with more and more black and silver in the dying light.

He says calm and clear, "Now."

"Fine," she whines with gentle futility. Her mouth opens to start again, only no words come out. She pauses for a beat and her brow wrinkles as she thinks, undistracted by the roll of his hips. She looks at him and with slight wonder asks, "Where was I?"

"Did I make you forget?"

"No," she says quickly, petulant and offended and lying.

"It seemed like you were close to finishing."

She pushes her hips against him, rocks against the pressure of his fingers, and sighs, "I am."

"The story," he corrects her.

She makes a frustrated little groan and finally slaps his hand away from her, narrowing her eyes at him. He smirks and holds his hands up. She remembers where he sidetracked her and she says defensively, "I didn't care."

Cheating was fine. Arguing was fine. She never cared about him in the first place and only stayed because it was convenient, and she liked the excitement he provided. She could take him just as easily affectionate or cold. She didn't even care as much as she should have when one night he came home shitfaced, ripped her out of bed, and beat her before he raped her and then beat her again after.

Levi winces and Erna reminds him, "You wanted to hear it."

She'd experienced worse. Not all at once. But what John did to her didn't plunge her into as black depths as those kinds of offenses did in the past, the first few times they happened, when she was younger and less resilient. She wouldn't have killed him for it. The thought didn't cross her mind. He even cried after, and she comforted him as well as she could while holding a cold, wet cloth to her eye.

"You should have killed him for that," Levi deadpans.

"I didn't," she says. "I didn't kill him for anything he did."

"Then what?"

It was the next night, after he'd apologized. He was sweet and solicitous with her all day, and in the evening she tagged along to watch him fight again, because she never tired of it. A lot of things were boring to her, but never that. But, for the first time, it was different. It was the way people looked at her. She was familiar enough to the managers, fighters, gamblers, and various degenerate scum that most ignored her as a common piece of scenery. Only, they saw her with her black, swollen eye, and there was a quick flash of recognition that something was different, and then… something else.

"What?" Levi asks as she looks up, remembering and searching for the right words, interested again, rolling his hips against her and sliding the head of his cock over her wet lips in a slow, steady, unrushed rhythm.

"It was like," she pauses, thinks, sways in motion with him, "disdain… not even like they thought I deserved it, but just, like…" His hand slides up over the front of her dress, dragging at the fallen fabric, settling on her skin, cupping her breast as she speaks. "...Like I didn't matter. Like I was trash."

She looks down at him, and his eyes seem to flash with a sympathetic memory, and, just as quickly, the flitting light is gone. It's dark. She whispers, "I killed him for the way they looked at me." She tilts her head back and angles her hips so that his next stroke almost pushes the head of his cock inside her, but he stills.

"Not yet," he scolds, quietly, his voice a deep husk. He grips her shoulder and pulls her down. She hovers over him. It's harder to see in the dark, but she wants to. He cranes his neck up and nips at her collarbone with his teeth, close to her throat, and he bids with too much patience, "Tell me how."

"I waited for him to fall asleep, and I stabbed him."

"How many times?"

Quiet for a few seconds while she thinks, and then she decides, "At least thirty."

Levi hums. "Good." His hands squeeze her waist and push her back, pressing her opening against his cock, gently, a suggestion, permission.

She whispers against his neck, "And nobody ever looked at me like that again."

---

hmu on tumblr. i don't have a lot of time for writing anymore, but i bitch about it on there and i throw out random head canons and pieces of dialogue when i think of them. also it's a better place to get your questions answered. i don't check my inbox on ffnet.