Author's Note: 'Sup ~Dreamers! So I'm planning on asking for a bunch of days off this October. The 1st, because I'm turning 21! (in America that means you can then legally drink, which is a big deal. sadly, I'm not all that fond of alcohol) And then the 19th-21st to go to haunted house mazes/hayrides idk yet with my bf/friend (it's not really official yetàyet!) with his mom and dad, the 25th because my coworkers and I are having a bowling day (the last time I went bowling was when I was like 11 or 12, and I managed to only score 19 points… so yeah) and then the 31st cuz Halloween! (and essentially Samhain for all you fellow Wiccans/Pagans out there (yes, that is my religion/faith of choice, I don't mess with the dark stuff tho o.o ))
Other than that, not much has happened in the past few days since my last update, so this Author's Note will be happily brief for you guys xD
However, there are enough lemons in this chapter to supply a lemonade stand ; you're welcome ~Dreamers! -àthat ; was my winking sour face, cuz of all da lemons!
Enjoy!
A Reason to Survive Ch. 28
Levi had always known those of the Military Police to be spineless cowards, but for them to abandon the innocent people whom they were counted on to protect to save their own skins…no Earthly punishment he could fathom would return the thousands of lives they had forsaken. It made him sick, and Levi had long been able to stomach the heinous acts one human could inflict on another.
"Come with me. I have something I need you to see," Erwin announced, turning to lead Levi down to the basement.
After getting yet another patch up from Hanji, Petra changed into a fresh pair of clothes. It had been nearly an hour since she had come upstairs, and Petra was now battling the urge to sleep. The trek to Erwin's had been hard and stressful enough, and their fight with the soldiers had sapped the rest of her quickly dwindling stamina.
But Levi had not come to find her yet, and though it was cold upstairs, as the only burning fire place was a few floors below her, Petra remained upstairs, waiting for him in spite of her exhaustion.
Hoping to kill some time, Petra dug around in her backpack for her phone.
If she was lucky, maybe this Erwin guy had a portable charger or something, anything, that might bring her cell back to life. This building seemed too luxurious to not have at least something that might help her out.
But as Petra continued to dig, the only thing she was able to find was her flash drive. Her phone was nowhere to be found.
After double and triple checking her bag, even going as far as dumping out its entire contents onto the cold hardwood floors before her, Petra could not find her phone. She checked a fourth time, praying that she had simply overlooked it somehow. Nothing.
Now doubting she would ever find it, Petra slumped over, feeling defeated.
Though it had been long dead, the hope she had been holding on to one day charging the device and listening to music while scrolling through pictures of her friends and family was taken away. With her phone gone, a little piece of her life before the Titans slipped away forever.
Sure, she still had her flash drive, but Petra felt finding a working computer or tablet was even more unlikely than finding a way to charge her phone.
Before she knew it, Petra found herself crying, and the candle lit room around her suddenly felt even colder, and it was as if the very walls were staring to cave in.
Trying to calm down enough to properly breathe again, as the loss of her phone and a little of her sanity that came with it had triggered another panic attack, Petra fought to compose herself. She doubted she could sleep upstairs in this cold no matter how much she bundled up, so returning downstairs was inevitable, and the last thing Petra wanted at this point was to look like she was crying again-
At that moment, a knock had brought Petra back to reality, and she hoped it was just one of the girls.
"You descent, kid?" said the voice of the last person in the world she wanted to hear right now.
Wiping her face with her hands as quietly as possible, Petra fought to find an appropriate response, but she just couldn't seem to find her voice. Maybe he'd think she was asleep and just leave.
But then Petra remembered that time Levi had checked the bandages on her shoulder her first night back within the Walls, thinking she had been asleep.
"It's too cold to sleep upstairs, kid." Levi muttered through the door, not expecting a response and speaking more to himself.
Upon hearing the knob of the door begin to turn, Petra sprang up from where she had been sitting on the floor, and held the other side of the door knob tightly, keeping it closed.
"Oi!" Levi exclaimed, both in surprise and in annoyance, having heard her practically sprint across the room just to keep him out.
"~I'll be right down!" Petra finally said in answer, her voice cracking pathetically in betrayal, while her sore hands did everything they could to keep the door closed.
For a brief couple of seconds, the resistance on the other side of the door ceased completely. Falsely believing she had won, Petra loosened her grip on the door knob.
It was in this moment of hesitation that Levi burst into the room, and the pissed look on his face made Petra back away a good few steps in fear.
"Do that shit again and next time I'll break down the damn door," Levi threatened, before taking in her tear streaked face and puffy cheeks. "What's wrong?"
Unable to find her voice right away, Petra looked down at the floor, hiccupping. "~It..-happened…-again!" When it was obvious she must be having another panic attack, Levi's angry demeanor changed immediately.
"What would you have done if no one had come to check on you? Cry yourself to sleep?" Levi asked her angrily, the thought making something drop in the pit of his stomach.
Slowly, he approached her, before carefully taking her in his arms. He held her tightly.
"Alright," he began, his voice much softer now. "I want you to focus on your breathing, just like before. Once you've calmed down enough to talk again, I want you to tell me what set you off this time." Surely something had triggered this episode?
Doing as she was told, Petra closed her eyes, burying her face in Levi's neck and drinking in his scent with every deep breath she succeeded in taking. She clung to him desperately, like a lifeline, even as she began to speak.
"~I…can't find it!" Petra whimpered.
"Can't find what?" Levi encouraged, trying to be patient with her, knowing that yelling at and being rough with her would accomplish nothing.
"~My phone!" she cried. "I-it has pictures…of my family on it! I wanted to charge it and…and…!"
Levi went rigid, remembering the stand with electronics and chargers Petra had paused at during her first supply run into town.
"What does it look like?" he asked as he began rubbing her back to comfort her.
"~We won't find it! Earlier, during the fight…I probably lost it," Petra explained, getting worked up again.
"What does it look like?" Levi repeated sternly, and Petra knew better than to make him ask her a third time.
"~The cover has a galaxy pattern on the back of it…and I wrapped my headphones around it," Petra managed, still relishing the way he smelled and felt against her.
Wordlessly, Levi pulled away from her slightly, though he kept an arm around her waist to keep her close to him.
His free arm retreated into his left hip's pocket, and produced Petra's phone before her, headphones and all.
Petra's eyes widened in disbelief, and she looked up at him in shock.
"This it?" Levi asked rhetorically, and Petra nodded, before rounding on him.
"~How-When did you…?!"
"I saw you drop it during the fight, and picked it up after we took out those bastards," Levi explained, referring to the soldiers who had jumped them earlier. Petra hesitantly retrieved her phone, holding it up to her mouth as she continued to cry, but this time in tears of joy.
"~T-Thank you! Thank you!" she squeaked gratefully, throwing her arms around him, and again, he held her tightly.
"If it was that important to you, then take better care of it. I don't need you losing your shit over something like this again. Got me?" Levi told her sternly, yet he managed to keep his voice low enough to be called gentle, at least for him.
He could feel Petra nod against his shoulder in response.
They stayed like that long after Petra had stopped crying, and Levi could tell that she was starting to drift off.
"Clean up your face the best that you can," he pulled away to look her in the eyes. "Be down in five minutes or I'll drag your ass down there myself. Understand?"
Nodding through still teary eyes and a quivering lip, Petra blurted, "Only if I can sleep next to you tonight," before realizing exactly how bad her impromptu request sounded. "I-I meant near you, not in a bed or anything!-"
"Alright." Levi allowed, much to her surprise. "Wait here."
When he began to pull away to leave, Petra found herself clinging to him, almost instinctively.
"I'll be right back," he assured her.
"~Okay," Petra agreed, her mind racing.
Several moments later, Levi returned, a large amount of fire wood in tow. The room Petra had retreated to contained a fireplace, which Levi was currently trying to make more comfortable with a fire.
"What are you doing? What about everyone downstairs?" Petra asked, glad that her flaming red cheeks weren't blatantly obvious in the darkness. She was sitting on the room's sole mattress, which had only a thin sheet to cover it, holding her knees tightly against her.
"I'm staying with you tonight. I told the others you needed some space. I sleep where ever I pass out, and the twerps downstairs know better than to wake me up. They won't come looking for us up here," Levi grunted as he struck a match into a flame, and pausing to blow the embers it created into flame.
'I'm staying with you tonight.'
'They won't come looking for us up here."
Petra's head was spinning as Levi's words echoed in her mind over and over.
"Uh-um! I can't- uh, wait a second-! I'm not ready to just-uh-hang on!" Petra stammered, and the fire now burning before them both did nothing to hide the shade of red her face was turning now.
"Oi, take it down a few notches, kid. I'm not planning on having sex with you tonight," Levi assured her, secretly enjoying the deep flush of crimson that was adorably now tinting her cheeks and ears.
"B-but you made it sound like we were all isolated! And you can't blame me for thinking you were planning something with all those misleading lines! 'I'm staying with you tonight,' and 'They won't come looking for us up here." What the Hell did you want me to think?!" Petra exclaimed, more than a little embarrassed for having misread him.
But it was then that Petra thought about what the last word in his statement hinted.
He didn't plan on sleeping with her tonight, but any other night was a different story.
"That I had no intention of taking advantage of you after a moment of weakness," Levi stated simply, not sure if he should be insulted or glad that she had thought of him in that way.
Fervently looking around her for something to throw at him, Petra settled for an extra shirt she had found in her bag.
Levi dodged it easily, catching it and throwing it back to its place on the floor with an amused smirk. Good, this meant that she was already feeling better.
"You're…impossible," Petra blushed, unable to think of a better comeback.
"If you're done, can we please go to sleep already?" Levi asked, making his way over to where she sat across the room, and pulling a neatly folded blanket out of the closet behind her Petra hadn't noticed before.
Unfolding the blanket, which was actually more like a duvet, he covered Petra whole with it, and yanked both her and the mattress closer to the fire place. As she complained, and tried to free herself, Levi joined her beneath the comforter, choosing to let her be the one closest to the fire, knowing that she didn't seem to handle the cold very well.
"Hey, I thought you said-!"
"I said I wouldn't have sex with you. I never said I wouldn't sleep with you," he reminded her, making himself comfortable. When she remained quiet, Levi knew he had won, as Petra made no attempt to escape from him.
They used Petra's now half empty bag as a pillow, and before either of them knew what was happening, Levi and Petra were spooning, their bodies parallel to the fire.
"Are you warm enough?" Levi asked after a few moments, and Petra thought that he sounded more tired than she had ever heard him before.
"…Yeah. Thank you," Petra whispered, reveling in the feel of his strong body against her back.
"Good. Now stop thinking and go to sleep," he ordered, hating how tense she felt, but understanding why she couldn't relax.
A short while passed, and he wondered if she had fallen asleep, her body no longer as rigid and tense.
"Night, brat," Levi whispered, not expecting a reply.
He suddenly felt extremely tired, the stress of the day finally hitting him, and he subconsciously held Petra tighter. However, after everything Erwin had revealed to him in the basement, Levi doubted sleep would be claiming him soon.
Petra felt like something was off about the way he was holding her, and she could sense that he was worried about something. Something more than the firefight that had driven them from their home, or her needlessly jumping into danger to save him.
"…My name isn't 'brat'…you jerk," Petra whispered, so quietly Levi almost hadn't heard her. She took his hand in hers, which was draped protectively over her stomach.
In response to her actions, Levi brought his face up to rest against her hair, before correcting his previous statement.
"Night, Petra."
To his surprise, Petra brought his hand up to her face, and she tenderly kissed his hand. Levi suppressed a growl, hating how hard she was making it for him to not take her as a man would his woman.
But all of a sudden, Levi felt lighter. Thoughts of whatever dangers awaited them beyond the brick walls of their building and the even greater threat lurking just a few weeks away from them were all temporarily chased away.
At least long enough to let him drift off for a few hours.
