It wasn't like he hated her as a person. Not that he could anyway, because he didn't even know her at all.
Rather, he hated the fact that she was going to be nothing more than dead weight.
Levi had already spent an hour arguing with Erwin over the placement of his new squad member, but he wasn't budging. Her name was Nila Hanson, a short, (shorter than Levi, even), tiny, fragile looking girl, with plain brown eyes and long brown hair, which she held in a single braid down her back. It was bad enough that she had no combat experience, but the worst part was she was almost in the bottom of her regiment, had barely even passed with awful marks, and Levi had seen her in motion with her ODM gear. It was less than impressive. Worse than that. It was horrendous. How did she even pass as a soldier at all? Granted, she wasn't technically a combat soldier. She was in fact, a medic, and apparently that was the only skill she had. Erwin's new orders had every team taking on a medic since so many people had fallen or been seriously injured during battle and no one on the teams had the skill or training to mend them. Many of the injuries that led to deaths were preventable, according to accounts, and this was Erwin's way of combating it. His proposal to add these team members had sound evidence in theory, but Levi believed it to be tactically insane. If they had a medic, that was great, but if they couldn't fight? Useless on the front lines. Particularly so in a squad.
"I have the most skilled and experienced members out of any squad. And you want to give me this?" Said Levi, motioning towards the young girl who was holding back tears as she looked at the floor, back against the wall in shame.
"Levi. I've already told you, these are the orders, there is no point in arguing against it. She will be on your squad and that's final." Erwin said with conviction. He was beginning to get quite frustrated with Levi's opposition.
"I just don't understand, Commander. How can you give me the worst fighter out of all of them for your stupid new plan? She's weak, has no special skills, no experience. Could you not give me one of the others? She's going to kill way more people than she can save by pulling us all down. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and now we have a damaged one." Levi continued to argue.
"That's enough. Stop insulting your new soldier. She will be a valuable asset to your team; maybe not in the way that you're expecting, but I believe that when the time comes, you will find her abilities to be irreplaceable." Erwin said. "If you think she needs improvement in other areas, then work with her. Train her. You do so with Eren, I expect the same out of you for every soldier you are in charge of."
Levi glared at him for a few minutes, his eyes darting to the frightened looking girl to his right.
"I sure as hell hope you know what you're doing." He said, and walked out, slamming the door behind him.
The room was silent for a moment and Erwin motioned for Nila to come forward. She obliged, her footsteps quiet as a whisper.
"Nila, please don't be discouraged. Levi seems rather unapproachable at first, but he eventually warms up. You will make a great addition to this team."
"Thank you, Commander." Nila said, trying not to let her uncertainty show through her voice.
"Go join your team." Erwin said, and Nila responded with a "Yes sir!" Before heading out.
Nila's heart was pounding as she retreated back to her quarters to gather herself before her new team's first meeting together. She was terrified, already having a captain that held nothing back in his hatred for her. She hadn't done a thing to make him hate her, but perhaps that was the problem. She hadn't done a thing. In a way, she truly agreed with Levi, that she was going to bring them all down. Nila was not made for combat and that was putting it mildly. Her abilities to mend wounds were excellent, but how was that going to help her if she couldn't even keep up? She tried to shake away the fear and be brave. She wasn't there to fight, she was there to support the team. You can do this, she told herself. Don't let the uncertainty get to you. With one last deep breath, Nila headed to the building where Levi's team resided for her first introductory meeting.
When she got to the large wooden door, it was cracked open just a bit and she could hear voices inside. Nila paused for a moment, trying to establish if it sounded hostile or friendly. She deduced that it sounded friendly, and carefully pushed the door open. She saw everyone's eyes dart to her at the doorway, analyzing their new team member. Nila sat down without a word, nerves getting the better of her, and stared at the table awkwardly next to a blond with big blue eyes. Should she say something? Or just wait? Levi wasn't here yet, so there was no one to introduce her. Was she going to have to do this herself? Just as she was about to lose her nerve with anxiety, the blonde leaned forward and peered up to catch her eye. Nila turned and looked at him. He had a curious expression on his face, a face of kindness, and the earnestness of his body language relaxed her.
"Hi, I'm Armin. Are you our new team member?" He asked.
"Yeah." Nila said, her high pitched voice almost piercing in the quiet.
"What's your name?"
"Uh, I'm Nila Hanson. It's…it's nice to meet you." She said, and Armin smiled sweetly. This opened everyone else at the table to greet her. Their names were Connie, Eren, Historia, Mikasa, Sasha, and Jean. They were quite friendly and tried including her in conversation. Before too long, Nila was laughing as Jean told a funny story, and she felt pretty comfortable. Maybe this was all going to be okay. Maybe Nila could become a part of this team. Just then, the door opened and Levi came in with Hange following behind him.
"Alright, let's get down to business." Levi said as he and Hange sat down, wasting no time. "We have a new team member, Nila, she's a medic. She's part of Erwin's new plan to have every team equipped with a skilled professional to treat injuries during battle. I want to make this clear. Nila has no combat experience, her battle skills are…rather lacking. We will be working with her to hopefully make some improvements. Any questions?"
Everyone shook their heads.
"Good. Let's get down to business."
The rest of the meeting was a recap of what had previously happened, information on Eren as the hope for humanity, about the missions ahead of them these next few weeks, and what kind of training was going to happen for Nila.
Nila left the meeting feeling somewhat reassured, as her team was nice enough. But she was still worried, and refused to let her guard down, trying to focus solely on the mission ahead.
The next few weeks were a blur of exhaustion and failure.
Every exercise they worked on had done little to improve Nila's combat skills, and it was, quite frankly, embarrassing. Armin, who was the weakest member on the squad and the least skilled in combat had now moved to the second worst, as Nila took his previous spot.
The past two missions had gone okay; Nila had some trouble keeping up with her horrible abilities to use ODM gear, but it didn't seem to hold them back too much. For the most part, she just followed them and waited nearby until their mission was complete. There'd only been one incident where she fell out of a tree and Historia barely managed to save her from breaking her neck. So far, no one had suffered any serious injuries, and Nila only had to slap a few bandages on her teammates.
It was the last day of training before their third mission, and once again, Nila had fallen victim to the false ambush staged by Sasha, Mikasa, and Jean. As she lay on the ground, pinned by the three of them, she could see Levi leaning against his tree from the corner of her eye, looking on with a piercing expression, as if he was picking her apart, trying to figure out why she just wasn't getting it. After all this training, day after day, she still couldn't even overtake one of them. That was even with her knowledge of their combat and strategies. Nila got up from the ground, brushing the dirt off of her, and went for round two.
"Since apparently aerial combat is out of the question here, let's try something simple." Jean said with an irritated sigh. He was leading today's training. "Armin and Sasha will go as fast as they can across the tree line and back. You'll have to overtake them."
"Okay." Nila said nervously.
"On the count of three! One, two, three!"
Armin and Sasha took off, and Nila was in hot pursuit. Yes! She thought to herself. I'm finally keeping up! As they darted through the trees, from one limb to the other, Nila felt like she was on a roll. Maybe she could actually do this! Having kept the same speed, she pushed on, trying to overtake. She willed herself to get it, to pretend that the ODM gear was a part of her. And for a brief moment, Nila was able to get ahead of them, triumph filling her to the core, right before almost knocking herself out on a tree limb. The impact left her momentarily dazed, and she found herself dangling from her last anchor, blinking hard to get the stars out of her vision as she tried orienting herself. Sasha and Armin had turned back and helped her to the ground, where Nila promptly sat down, holding her head.
"Are you okay?" Armin asked. Nila groaned.
"That really hurt. Did I crack my head open?" She asked.
"No, but you've got a pretty big lump on your forehead." Sasha said, and Nila felt it, wincing as her finger touched the goose egg she'd created.
"I think you've had enough for today." Mikasa's voice rang out from behind them. "It's time for lunch anyways."
"Lunch?" Shouted Sasha, and she took off out of the woods without even missing a beat.
Mikasa and Armin helped Nila to her feet.
"You did pretty well there for a bit." Armin said, trying to be nice.
"I guess so." Nila said and followed her teammates out of the woods, to the training field, and then past their captain to the mess hall for lunch. But as she was walking by, Levi reached out to stop her. Crap, here it goes. She was going to get another lecture of how if she didn't start to step up, she'd be really causing issues with her team's performance and lives. Hopefully this lecture would be quicker than last week's, she thought.
"Captain?" She said, waiting for him to say something.
"Do you feel ready for tomorrow?" Levi asked.
Nila's brown eyes met his blue, and she briefly searched them for a deeper meaning behind his question. Finding nothing, as usual, she gave her honest answer.
"No." She said quietly. "I don't think I'll ever be."
"We've been wasting a lot of our time and energy training you. While you've shown some improvements, it's not good enough. We need to focus on Eren. He is the most important thing we should be working on right now, and instead all of our time has been devoted to you, the one teammate that doesn't really have much to offer in the way of our goals." Levi said sternly.
"I'm sorry sir. I'll work harder." Nila said, shame creeping up into her face.
"We will be resuming training with Eren. You can practice on your own time."
"Yes sir."
Levi was silent for a moment.
"Do your best tomorrow. Stay out of combat, don't hold the others down. You've done decent on the missions so far. Remember what your true job is. And put some ice on that big ass lump on your face."
"Yes sir." She said, and went to go catch up to her team.
The next day was when the only thing Nila was good at finally came of some use. A titan had managed to get the upper hand briefly in combat, and Jean suffered a large wound on his thigh. As the other team members took him down, Nila swooped in, only slightly off balance this time, and scooped Jean off with the help of Armin, getting him to safety up on a large tree branch. The team was being swarmed below, so Nila resolved to make quick work in case something else happened.
"Agh!" Jean gasped, grabbing at his bloodied thigh. Nila swiftly opened her med kit as Armin kept a lookout.
"Hold still." Nila said sternly. "I need to examine the wound."
Jean moaned in pain, but listened and laid back, covering his eyes with his arm as he grimaced. Nila doused the wound with saline, trying to see how deep it was. And it was deep. She could see bone, the muscle tissue was separated, and blood was pouring from an artery into the wound. This was going to take way more than a few minutes if she did it the traditional way, and Jean was going to be out of combat for a while to heal. He may not ever get back to his normal abilities, the way his muscle was separated. Nila glanced up at Armin, who had looked down at the same time, and he seemed to read the seriousness in her face of Jean's injury. Armin quickly looked away, gritting his teeth, as he continued to look for threats while Nila worked. The sounds of the team fighting more titans below them echoed through the trees.
"Okay, Jean. This is what I'm going to need you to do." Nila's heart was pounding in her ears as she grabbed her focus. "Close your eyes, okay? And make sure your hands are where you can't grab me. Because this is going to hurt and you're going to want to fight."
Jean groaned loudly and obliged. Nila took a deep breath and thrust both of her hands into the wound, allowing her energy to condense at her fingertips. Dim blue light shone from the wound and she pulled her hands up, pulling the wound together like a zipper, her healing energy knitting everything together on the way up. But she knew she couldn't seal it completely.
See, this was Nila's secret.
She was more than just a medic. Nila was a healer, an actual healer. She was a descendant of a family of them, who possessed a mysterious ability to heal wounds. Nila's lineage had brought people back from the brink of death, sealed amputations and healed organs, cured sicknesses and chronic conditions. While this was something that was good and helpful, the persecution and exploitation of her family and their abilities was not. Most of them had been captured and forced to use their abilities as a slave, the person who had captured them charging large sums of money or other things in exchange to be healed. Some of her family had been overused to the point of death, because if the ability gets overused, it becomes taxing on the body. After generations of persecution, Nila's family finally went into hiding and Nila was able to avoid the fates that those before them had suffered. In fact, she'd lived a pretty normal childhood, unlike many of those before her. Nila knew Erwin was privy to this information, he had a history knowing about her family, but he wasn't going to tell unless necessary. She knew it was only a matter of time before her squad found out, but she vowed to keep it secret for as long as possible. Yet, here, on the third mission, she was already putting herself at risk.
As Nila brought her hands out of the wound, with everything but a shallow cut left of open flesh remaining, she looked back up to Armin one last time to see if he saw what she had done. He was still looking away, keeping an eye on the treetops around them. She sighed in relief. Jean was still gritting his teeth, his eyes squeezed shut, but he had relaxed some. The pain was likely decreasing quickly, as the wound finished healing where Nila had sent her energy. She purposely left a small, manageable laceration to help throw them off. Maybe they'd believe her lies, maybe not. She predictied Armin would be suspicious. He was on the intuitive side. Making quick work, Nila rinsed out the rest of the wound with antiseptic and numbing solution, slapped on a bandage, and wiped off her hands.
"You can open your eyes now." She said, and went to help Jean sit up.
"Damn." He said. "That feels so much better. What did you do?"
Armin had turned his focus back onto them and his face looked shocked.
"How did you fix it up so quickly? It was so…so deep!"
"It wasn't that deep, Armin." Nila smoothly lied. "Not any deeper than the tip of my pinky nail."
Jean frowned and looked at the bandage, then back at Nila.
"But the blood? There's so much blood. It was pouring out, it had to have hit an artery." Jean said in disbelief.
"Jean, you were in shock. You probably weren't seeing it correctly." Nila said firmly.
Jean's eyes darted around to the blood that was covering the tree limb and his clothing, and Nila's arms. Armin did the same.
"You shoved your hands inside of my leg. I felt it. It was deep." Jean continued.
"I…" Armin began, but they were cut short by the team hopping up onto the limb with them.
"Jean!" Eren said, running up to his side with Mikasa. "I saw you get hit, are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Nila made quick work on my leg." Jean said, still eyeing Nila suspiciously. Levi stepped forward then, observing the scene in front of him. Like Armin and Jean, he scrutinized the blood everywhere, and then his eyes fell on Nila.
"How long will he be out of commission?" Levi asked.
"He should be fine in a few days." She said. Nila watched as Levi looked again at the puddle of blood and then back to her.
"Days?" He asked. "With that amount of blood loss?"
"I'll give him some fluids when we get back. He shouldn't have any trouble." Nila started packing up her medical supplies to give her nervous hands something to do. She did it as casually as she could manage. When she healed the wound, she had forgotten to replenish his blood loss, which felt like a mistake. Would they figure out the wound should've been deeper from the amount of blood everywhere? She looked at Jean's rather pale face. He would definitely need fluids, a few days, and some iron pills, but it really wouldn't take much to get him back up to speed. Thankfully, at that moment, Levi turned back to the team and ordered them to head back. They'd completed their mission to destroy the titans occupying this area, and it was time to go. Jean was able to make the entire way back on foot with everyone else, albeit much slower.
When they arrived back to their quarters, Nila took Jean into the common room and sat him down at a table.
"Let me see your arm." She said, taking Jean's arm and readying her needle. She swiftly stuck his vein and hung up the bag, rolling the clamp to let it run at a medium speed.
"How long is this going to take?" He asked as he watched the medic fix everything up.
"Probably about an hour." Nila said. "I'm going to go get you some iron pills. You'll have to take them for a week."
Jean cocked his head to the side.
"I thought you said it wasn't that deep."
"Doesn't have to be deep to lose a lot of blood." She said with a shrug.
"But just the sheer amount I saw…" Jean continued. Nila gave him a stern look.
"Who's the medic here?"
Jean sighed and shook his head, and Armin entered with Levi and Eren behind him as Nila got up to head to her room where she held a large collection of medical supplies commissioned for her use. Iron pills were pretty standard, and she found them pretty quickly, making her way back to Jean. Right before she entered the doorway, she heard them talking and stopped for a moment to listen.
"It…it really isn't that deep Jean. We both must've been wrong. I could've sworn it was worse than this." Armin's voice floated out to where Nila was standing. They must've taken off the bandage for a look.
"That's what I thought too. Or maybe the amount of blood just threw us off?" Jean said.
"I can't say I've ever seen such a minor wound make that amount of blood, let alone knock a soldier down like that." Levi said. "But stranger things have happened I guess."
Nila heard him pull out a chair and sit down, the others doing the same. She took a deep breath and walked in with a smile.
"Found them!" She said, handing the bottle of pills to Jean. "Only need to take one daily."
"Thanks." Jean said. Nila checked the bag of fluids, smacking the tube a few times to get a bubble out.
"Nila." Levi said sternly, and Nila turned her eyes to him.
"Captain?"
"Go wash that damn blood off. You're a mess and it disgusts me." Levi said.
Nila looked down at herself and at her arms. She'd been so absorbed in what she was doing, she'd neglected to care about the blood still soaked into her pants, dried on her arms, her cape…
"Apologies sir, I'll take care of it right away." She said, having briefly forgotten about what a clean freak Levi was. She gathered her kit up and headed back to her room to wash off while Jean's IV finished.
Nila quickly washed herself, letting the warm water run through her hair for a few moments as she watched the water turn red, then fade back to a clear trickle. She dressed herself in a plain blue t shirt and some gray pants, and went to go check on Jean, her hair still damp but loose over her shoulders. The entire group was in there with Jean, all of them chit chatting and having a snack together. Nila entered wordlessly and, seeing that the fluids were done, swiftly removed the tube in Jean's arm and put a bandage on the small puncture wound.
"There! Good as new!" she said cheerfully, disposing of the bag and tubing.
"Thanks, Nila. You might suck when it comes to combat training, but you did come in handy." Jean said with a sideways smile.
"Just doing my job." Nila said, smiling back.
"Hey, are you hungry?" Connie asked, and Nila nodded as he tossed her some food, joining them in their snack and conversation.
Things all happened in a blur. There was a breach in wall rose. The scouts went to investigate, and it was found that Reiner and Bertoldt were the colossal and armored titans, Ymir uncovered as one, too. Eren and Historia made it back from being kidnapped, albeit barely. Ymir had gone off with the other titans. And there were so many casualties, so many injuries. Nila had managed to stay out of the way with the other commissioned medics assigned to the other groups, and after the battle, Erwin had ordered them all to tend to the injured while the scouts gathered the dead. Nila made quick work and healed wound after wound, replenishing blood, binding wounds, and bringing bones back together, but like she had with Jean, left just enough evidence to throw everyone off. In the time that she had healed about 50 injured, the other medics collectively had worked on roughly 40. No one questioned her, as they had been in her class and knew how adept she was at her job. Nila chuckled to herself. If only they knew why. She was absolutely spent at the end of the day, and was wrapping things up at the infirmary they had all been taken to.
"Good work today, Nila!" her former classmate, Alli said as she patted Nila on the shoulder. "I knew we would do fine out there when I saw you!"
"You did great yourself, Alli!" Nila said and the girl shook her head.
"Even so, I'll never be as fast as you are. See you later!" Alli headed out, her beautiful, smooth dark hair swishing behind her.
"Nila." Erwin's voice said from behind her. Nila turned around to face her commander.
"Yes, commander?" She asked.
"Good work out there." He said.
"Thank you, sir." She said.
"I want you to take a couple of days off. You've done well, but you don't need to overdo it. I know the toll your family's lineage can take."
"I'll be fine. By tomorrow it'll be like I didn't even do anything!" Nila insisted.
"I've already told Levi you're going to be out of commission. It's an order." Erwin said. Nila sighed. He was right, though, she was going to need the rest.
"Yes, sir." She said.
"Good night." Erwin said, and turned to leave. Nila gathered her things and left, the nurses bustling about behind her as she closed the door into the dark night.
When she arrived at the scout's building, it was quiet. Everyone must've gone to bed, exhausted from the events of the day. Nila was starting to feel it now, the lightheadedness, exhaustion, chills, and weakness in her body from overusing her ability. She was suddenly ridiculously tired and thirsty, and couldn't wait to lie down and sleep. Heading to the small kitchen in the building, she went straight to the sink and refilled her water bottle, downing almost the entire thing in just a few seconds. As she went to refill it for the night, she heard a noise behind her and jumped, startled, looking behind her with wide eyes and spilling water everywhere. She saw Levi, sitting at the small table, looking up at her with piercing, grumpy looking eyes, leaned over with his hands on his right leg, which he had extended out.
"Captain Levi! You startled me. I didn't see you there!" Nila said, turning off the water and trying to dry off her arm.
"Sorry. I see you've made it back in one piece." He said. "I was thinking they'd keep you all night as late as it is."
"No, we finished everything we could. The nurses were taking over anyway." She said.
"Hm." Levi said, and rubbed at a spot on his leg with a grimace. Nila looked at him questioningly.
"Did you hurt your leg today?" She asked. Levi shook his head.
"It's an older injury. Still hurts sometimes." He explained.
"Mind if I take a look?" Asked Nila, heading over to him with curiousity.
"Knock yourself out, I guess." He said.
Nila kneeled down and touched the spot Levi was rubbing and felt for an injury. She knew she'd found it when she felt the knot and the small flinch from him. It felt like a tendon had a tear in it, and wasn't quite healing right. Tendons were notoriously difficult to heal, as scar tissue doesn't work or stretch the same as other tissue. Just to be sure, she tuned in to her ability with the fingertip that was touching the spot, and confirmed that it was in fact, a badly healed tear.
"You tore a tendon and it never healed quite right." She said. "Let me just see this one spot here…" In the guise of trying to feel the injury, she sent her energy into the spot so that it would fix it. In a few hours, it should take complete effect, and it would be like nothing ever happened. Levi flinched in pain at the impulse that hit it, and Nila apologized.
"Sorry, didn't mean to press so hard. There's not much you can do for this since it's already healed over, but if you stretch it a bit every day it might help with the pain." She said, looking up at him and hoping he would actually do it, therefore contributing that to why it stopped hurting. He frowned as she met his eyes.
"What?" She said, her heart skipping a beat as she feared that he had possibly realized what she had done.
"You're bleeding." He said, and Nila looked down at herself, trying to find what he was talking about. When she looked down, she saw the drops of blood that had gotten on his leg, and she saw more dripping out onto him and the floor.
"Oh!" She said, and put her hands over her bleeding nose, standing up quickly so she wouldn't get any more blood on him. That last expenditure of energy must have been a little too much for her body after using her ability so much today. The lightheadedness that she was already experiencing got more intense as she stood up too quickly, and she took a deep breath, willing herself not to pass out. Levi had gotten up swiftly right after she had, grabbing a towel from the drawer by the sink and handing it to her.
"Thanks." She said, holding her nose tight with the towel to get the bleeding to stop. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get blood on you."
"Don't sweat it." Levi said.
After about a minute, Nila pulled the towel away to see if the bleeding had stopped, and another gush of blood started. Damn it, she thought as she pressed it back on, she really had overdone it.
"Sit down." Said Levi, motioning to the chair he had just been in. "You look like shit."
Nila obliged, and instantly felt a bit better being off her feet.
"Erwin told me you wouldn't be training for the next couple of days. He didn't tell me you were ill."
"I'm not…" Nila began, but decided against it when she realized Levi had come to the conclusion she was sick, having noticed how weak and rough she looked. "Yeah. I guess I should've had him clarify."
"Figures, he always tends to leave out the important details." Levi said, a frustrated edge to his voice.
They were quiet for a couple of minutes, Levi wiping the blood from his pants and the floor with a washcloth he found in another one of the kitchen drawers. When he decided everything was sufficiently clean, he turned back to Nila.
"How's the bleeding?" He asked. She carefully pulled the towel from her nose to find that her nose was no longer bleeding. She noticed the towel was soaked almost completely through.
"Looks like it's stopped." Nila said, and Levi motioned for her to hand him the bloody towel. He tossed it into the trash can.
"No use even trying to get that stain out." He explained. "You need to go to bed. Come on."
Nila stood up carefully, and she followed as Levi led her to her room. He stopped as they got to the door.
"Don't worry about making it to brief in the morning." He said, and walked off. Nila headed to her bed and fell asleep instantly.