LEVI –

I wasn't sure if this was a good idea, but here I was anyway – wringing my hands in a stranger's house waiting to talk madness with him. I looked across to Hanji. Her eyes were sparkling brightly. I could tell that although initially this whole situation had shocked her, she was now well and truly inspired. She genuinely wriggled on the rocking chair she'd taken in the living room, the creaking of the chair irritating me with each rock. Eren Jager entered, closely followed by a dark-haired girl I didn't recognise. I assumed this was the infamous Mikasa, notorious friend of Eren. She clocked me with her gaze and didn't spare me even a single emotion in that glance. If anything, my instincts picked up on a bit of contempt for me. My nose crinkled slightly; it was like looking in a mirror at my younger self – self-assured and with little regard for what others thought of her. Eren set a cup of tea in front of me on the coffee table, then a black coffee for Hanji. Mikasa sat in the hard-backed wooden chair they'd pulled from the dining room table, taking a couple of seconds to eye Hanji, then myself. She still said nothing. Eren took a seat.

"Thanks for coming to see me, Hei-… Levi." The stutter made me wince. "I hope you're feeling better now."

"Temporary glitch," I shrugged. "Been happening more and more, recently."

"How long have you been having these visions?" Hanji asked, leaning forward in the chair only for it to rock back again.

"Roughly …" I thought back, and eventually pin-pointed the exact moment when things had taken a turn. "When I met Lena." Eren raised a curious eyebrow and Hanji hummed, thoughtfully.

"You said that you recognise her?"

"More than anyone else."

"Can you remember anything further from our last chat?"

"Quite a few things. The difficulty is piecing all the bits together. I see various images, but because I don't understand them it's quite hard to remember them."

"Just list them, tell me what you see." I hadn't realised that she had a notepad in her hand until now, who knows where she'd whipped that from. Her pen hovered, eagerly.

"Most recently, I said to Lena that my chest was scarred."

"Scarred from what?"

"I guess … fighting."

"Fighting the titans," Eren nodded enthusiastically.

"And sometimes humans." I admitted. Their faces flinched but I was prepared for that. The visions I'd seen in my sleep, well, I could never tell if they were dreams or visions. Enough times, I'd seen my hands around the hilt of a knife and even around necks … so I guessed that I used to kill people. I took a moment to wonder if my personality was the same in this other world; was I a completely different person? Had the experiences I'd had in this life changed me at all?

"Eren, you said you don't remember Lena?"

"So far I've only heard the name. I think I'd have to see her to know."

"I haven't told you two this yet," Hanji began, choosing her words carefully. It was never going to be good if Hanji was hiding something. I snapped her a look and her beaming smile twitched. "But I got in contact with someone recently who has the same visions as you." I couldn't hide the surprise that slackened my face and it seemed, neither could Eren.

"Who?" Eren said.
"He's called Kurt Ackerman." She replied. I jolted.
"Ackerman?"
"We talked before about it being an Ackerman thing, yes?" They discussed the heritage theory that Hanji had developed and tried to list Eren's family tree to discover some sort of link. Whilst they talked about the possibility of doing a DNA test, I racked my brain. Kurt Ackerman. Why did that name sound familiar? Was this another vision? I wasn't sure. It didn't feel like it. Where had I heard that name before? Kurt. It was Lena's voice I heard forming the words. Kurt Ackerman.

"What else do you see?" Hanji jammed herself into my thoughts. I frowned. Dead bodies. Thousand upon thousands of dead bodies, that's what I saw. Hardly anything I wanted to talk about. And there seemed to be a particular incident that flashed in my mind. I almost couldn't escape it. It kept coming back. I realised that I must have cared for these individuals, especially one strawberry-haired girl. The way they had died though. It was so peculiar. This is why none of the visions made sense. Huge giants that ate people. And then these contraptions always strung onto my hips. A towering giant in a thick forest with blonde hair and human-like eyes.

"Corporal Levi … he'll kill you all!"

I shook my head.

The discussion continued without me, and I faded in and out of the conversation. I felt myself harden against the stress. All those emotions that had battered me again and again, I felt myself close off from them. I was starting to accept all this madness. I was starting to accept that I had killed people and seen others killed, over and over. It was who I was then.

And nothing like who I was now.

"I've been keeping up phone conversations with Kurt and he has been revealing all his visions. He seems to be the same as you, Levi. The visions he has aren't so clear and he doesn't remember anyone in particular. I don't want you two to meet yet. I want to see where this goes and keep the two conditions separate."

"Conditions?" Eren frowned at Hanji. "We're not another one of your lab experiments, Hanji."

"None of this matters," a new voice spoke up, one I had forgotten was in the room. Her voice was low and controlled, slightly husky and impatient. "None of this matters at all. We need to know what this means for Eren. Will he start fainting like Levi?"

Eren rolled his eyes and looked like he wanted to chide her, but Hanji stepped in first. "Eren has much more control over his memories than Levi appears to. Especially since he's had these visions since he was a young child."

"So he won't be affected?"

"He hasn't so far, I can't see what will change that."

"I still think you two shouldn't be meeting," Mikasa continued, this time setting her cold stare upon me. My brow ticked. "It can only make things worse."

"But don't you want to know?" Hanji bounced out of her chair and across the room to Eren, grasping his face in her palms until his cheeks squished together. Her bright eyes bored into his. "I just want to be able to look inside your head and see what you see. It's so exciting." Mikasa was about ready to drop kick Hanji to the floor and just in time, Hanji bounded away again. She reminded me of Pepsi – damn it, I meant Kola. Lena's stupid name for the damn thing was sticking.

"In any case," Hanji continued. "Things are already pretty bad for Levi. We don't want you crashing your car again." I clicked my tongue. Mikasa and Eren both looked at me, surprised. I didn't bother to add any colour to the story. "Or running out into traffic. Or,"

"You can stop now."

"Alright, alright." She snapped her notepad shut. "I suggest we keep these meetings going, see if it triggers any more memories. I've started to look at more Freudian theories to tackle your issues, repressed subconscious etc. Not usually my area of expertise, or interest to be quite honest. I think the man was a lunatic. But then," she shrugged her shoulders, grinning, "happens to the best of us."

"I'm not reading any tea leaves," I warned.

"No, this is going to be the issue. Getting you on that chaise-longue talking about your feelings and such. I may have to delegate this task."

"To who?"

"To Lena, of course. When are you going to tell her?"

"You have got to be joking."

"Not at all?" She appeared confused, brows knitting together on her face. I wasn't so naïve as to buy that.

"Don't play with me, Hanji. I'm not telling her about this."

"I thought you said you'd already started saying weird things to her?" I felt my stomach churn, but I didn't let on. "If you're scared of losing her, not being honest is probably the worst thing to do."

"You're not manipulating me into your schemes."

"Well, it's your decision, Levi. But when you start sleep talking or fainting, or whatever else … try to think about how she's going to react."

Already I could feel my resolve wavering; I was set on not telling her, though. No matter what she said, I was not going to chance pushing her away on this lunacy. I would control it. I was already getting better at it, I could feel myself slipping into these visions and from time to time, I'd been able to drag myself back to the present. Eventually, I'd get it under control. I had to.

"Don't put her in danger, Levi." Hanji said, and I saw the brick wall in my subconscious crack a little more.

I regretted walking over to Eren's house almost immediately as I set off on the path back towards my apartment. At least, I decided, it gave me time to think before I faced Lena again – that is, if she was still home. I mused over the concept of a little tracker on her, so I always knew where she'd be. If I was to guess, then since it was a Friday evening she might be working. I hadn't really asked her about all of her part-time jobs – add it to the list of things I wanted to know. She didn't seem to have any sort of fixed hours, and on top of that she'd never mentioned looking for a full-time career. Again, something else I wanted to query. Someone as emotional as her would surely have aspirations. Then again, she wasn't exactly organised. I nearly broke every time I entered the bathroom and had to shuffle all her personal items around in the cupboard, putting grips back in their box and switching the shampoo from the side of the bath to the shelf. I doubted she had even an inkling of how many things she irritated me with. Letting her know about them would be the worst idea, too, since she'd start doing them on purpose. Like with how she enjoyed putting mixed fabrics into the washing machine instead of allowing me to sort them.

There were just so many things she did; I sighed.

At the same time, a car purred slowly beside me and steadily closed the gap. The window rolled down and Hanji waved.

"Get in! Let's go for a drink!" She beamed.

"Thought you'd never ask," I cut back, the familiarity of the situation causing a small smile to twist one side of my face. We used to do this all the time; it had been a while.

"It's been a while!" I could see her grin in the rear-view mirror as I hopped into the back seat.

"I had almost forgotten what Friday nights feel like."

"Me too. I called Erwin and he'll meet us there."

"Not too busy working then?"

"Not this week, apparently."

"Are you going to stop off home?"

"I won't be drinking tonight; I've got some papers to write over the weekend." We'd known each other for too long for me not to notice her unusual expression. A frown darkened my brow suspiciously.

"What papers?"

"Ehhhh," she deliberated, and I could tell she was covering for something.

"You weren't going to write about me, were you?"

"No!" She said, turning up the radio. "Not just you." The rock tunes over the speakers weren't loud enough to cover her words from my sharp ears.

"As long as you're not publishing this anywhere, Hanji. My misery is not your science experiment."

"Your misery is always my experiment," she laughed. "But no, don't worry. I won't be publishing it. Yet." For now, I decided that was enough. I didn't have the patience to argue with her today, not with a pint of strong lager beckoning me.

From the route she was taking, I surmised that we were heading to the usual pub; an absolute dive and one which I loved. It was one of the few places that remained as pubs had always been intended to be: grotty, loud, unhinged. Most places nowadays were centred around families and food – this one was simply a place to drink and get rowdy, which happened to be my favourite environment to socialise in. I could completely melt into the crowd and people watch. Myself and Erwin would battle at snooker, Hanji would bounce around the crowds of locals, chatting enthusiastically to the gamblers on the slots and the village drunk balanced on a stool in the corner. If the table was taken, we'd have a game of darts and Hanji would beat us almost every time with a level of skill I could never understand. And then, if you were having a bad day, you could always bump shoulders with one of the youngsters in front of his girlfriend and enjoy beating him into the ground outside … The name of the pub was The Shrew; I called it Therapy.

We pulled up and I immediately noticed it was busier than usual; excellent. There was probably a football game playing on the screens that I didn't care about. Erwin was already at the bar and greeted us with a pint each.

"Long time no see," I nodded, taking the pint and forcing my way through the crowd to our usual spot. The snooker table was taken, so we took one of the high tables in the corner of the room, chatting the usual rubbish. Erwin and Hanji got talking about recent changes in the science industry, to which I immediately switched off and sighed contentedly. I could feel the stress pouring away with each sip of a pint.

It had been a long while since I'd seen Erwin and I was glad to catch up. He was straight-talking, which made it easy for me to get along with him. We never bothered with small talk and a lot of the time we could share comfortable silences. Initially, we hadn't got on. Eight years later, I'd say we weren't too bad.

Elsewhere, the crowd gathered in front of the TV cheered as one and I saw alcohol spray into the air. Ugh, I'd be keeping my distance.

"Another one?" Hanji gestured to my near-empty glass. I nodded. "I'll be back!" She chimed, bobbing away into the crowd. She would be back, but she'd bounce from person to person in the meantime. Anyone she could corner for long enough to talk about her experiments. Usually, they'd have to be intoxicated enough to fade in and out of the conversation. I watched her go, feeling – though I hated to admit it – a little bit of affection for the stupid woman. She was absolutely bonkers, yet she'd helped me through a lot of shit.

"How's the drink?" Erwin asked. I wrinkled my nose.

"Tastes like shit. Luckily, I don't buy it for the taste." He chuckled.

"It's a shame the table isn't free to even up the scoreboard."

"Even up? You're three games behind me."

"We had to throw the last game because you started a fight with someone. I'm only two games behind."

"I never start fights," I swallowed the last of my drink and clinked the glass onto the table. "I just finish them."

"Hanji says you have too much pent-up energy. You should join a martial arts club."

"What and give me a legal excuse to knock someone's teeth out? Where's the fun in that?"

"Hanji talks about you a lot, recently." I looked up at him and I could tell he was heading for a serious conversation. Not good. "She's worried."

"She keeps poking her nose in, trying to solve all of my problems." I shrugged. I knew this wasn't a fair accusation but hopefully I could switch the conversation around. "Everything is going well right now. She doesn't need to worry."

Erwin hummed. "She did mention you had a new girlfriend."

"I'm glad she passed on the gossip."

"Not going to introduce us?"

"And let Hanji scare her away?" Speaking of whom, I could already hear the clatter of chaos as she leapt back over to us, drinks spilling in her hands.

"Levi!" She called, loudly. I rolled my eyes.

"What?"

"The girl at the bar has a name tag on. She's called Lena! Is it the same Lena?!"

AN:

Kiyuuni, BowlofCereal – Good to see both of your names again in my review box! It's been a while, hasn't it! Thanks for your continued support (cries).