Chapter 9: Behind the Horizon
Just like the rest of the world beyond Paradis, the city of Liberio was larger than anyone born inside the Walls could ever have imagined. Many of the buildings were connected, wall to wall without any space in-between, one after the next, and much taller than even most buildings in the heart of Mitras.
There wasn't much green, but a lot of stone and brick everywhere, grey or beige or something undefinable in-between.
And so much noise, from so many, different sources Nora couldn't nearly identify them all. And lots and lots of people.
The countless novel impressions were overwhelming, too much to take in all at once, keeping her heartbeat battering against her constricted chest at an elevated pace.
"Why are these people so obsessed with hats?" She straightened the offending object on her head, looking around the crowded promenade. Indeed, almost everyone over the age of twelve seemed to be wearing them, even though it wasn't sunny, today. "They're bloody obnoxious." The piece felt itchy and too warm on her forehead, and it restricted her field of vision.
"Well, I think they look smart. Don't I look smart?" Hange half-turned to face Nora while the group was walking at a leisurely pace, taking in their unfamiliar surroundings.
The hat-and-coat-and-various-layers-underneath look that seemed to be the all the rage here in Marley definitely suited Hange better than her, no doubt. Probably because the woman was taller and dressed in a suit; in the two years of knowing her, not once had Nora seen her in a skirt—like she, Mikasa and Sasha were currently wearing.
Nora's lips quirked into a small, involuntary smile at the excitement on her best friend's face, waiting for her verdict. "You look sharp, Hange."
She beamed. "It goes well with the eyepatch, right?" In the same breath, her uncovered eye went as round as the O-shape of her open mouth at whatever she had discovered over Nora's shoulder. "Ooh! Is that a car?" And she zipped over there, with half the squad hot on her heels.
Levi remained at Nora's side, hands in the pockets of his trousers. He looked quite smart, too, hat or no. His expression—blank and bored, with just a hint of suspicion in the slight crease between his brows—hadn't changed at all since they'd left the ship, but now he gave a minute shake of his head. "She can't for the life of her keep her voice down."
The first hour of their first overseas survey mission went on in that manner, and it got worse when they reached the enormous market square, full of stalls and booths and shops lining the broad street on each side, and children squealing and sellers shouting out their goods or haggling with potential buyers.
And people. So many people, chatting and laughing and strolling, or grumbling and hurrying past in purposeful, swift strides. Streaming around them, occasionally bumping Nora's shoulder passing by and making her flinch. She had to suppress the embarrassing urge to shrink into Levi's side. The crowd was only one part of the reason for the queasiness in her stomach; other than the dull sense of dread that had accompanied her ever since they'd boarded the cruiser, stemming from a far too reasonable fear of discovery, the onslaught of different smells almost made her gag, at first. Ever-present, the sharp tang of fish and ocean and harbour, far more prominent than back at their modest port in Paradis. A whiff of leather as they passed a man selling bags. And the smell of all sorts of food; some oily and rich, others sickly sweet.
Hange and the squad darted from one curiosity to the next, babbling and pointing and asking questions. It was a good thing Onyankopon accompanied them as their guide. Jean, Mikasa and Eren remained quiet for the most part, though even their expressions were somewhat wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Armin's clear blue eyes, on the other hand, had gone round as saucers, and the big smile on his face seemed glued on. But at least he kept his voice down and Hange occupied with all the novelties they were discussing. Which was more restraint than Connie and Sasha exhibited.
After a while of all this, Jean finally had enough. "Have you all forgotten what we talked about on the ship?" he chided them under his breath. "If you keep acting like every random crap you're seeing is something new and fascinating, we're gonna stand out like a sore thumb."
Nora had to hand it to him; while Jean could be a bit of a pompous ass, on occasion, he had more common sense than all of them put together—sans Levi, of course.
"Yeah yeah, killjoy. We get it." But Connie didn't sound like he was taking the warning to heart; the group had stopped in front of what could only be an ice cream booth, as the sign right next to it pointed out in clear letters. "Hey, Nora, does that say 'cream' or 'dream'?" he proceeded to ask, and not too quietly either, pointing at the word.
Sasha preempted her before Nora had any chance to shush him or answer. "It's obviously cream, you dork. Just look at it. It's just like Niccolo described it." Her warm brown eyes darted back and forth between the sign and the creamy, colourful contents of the booth with a single-minded focus she definitely hadn't displayed when Nora had taught them the writing. "But what is 'vanilla'?" Sasha mused, nibbling at her fingernails with her teeth. Then, she brightened, an excited grin spreading on her face. "Only one way to find out!" And she went on to order the desired delicacy from the clearly bemused vendor.
The moment her two squad mates stepped away from the booth, ice cream in hand, Nora grabbed them both by their jackets and hissed, "Would you two keep it down? You're drawing attention." Feeling entirely too exposed, she glanced over her shoulder, her insides churning with unease.
Sure enough, several people within hearing range were giving them weird looks. A mother shaking her head, pulling her child along, clearly eager to get away from them. A young, blond man who'd stopped in the middle of the street, frowning. Two teenaged girls, giggling and whispering, stealing repeated glances at Connie, who was trying to decipher which type of ice cream he had just ordered, and Sasha, who was dipping her fingertip into the pale-yellow heap sitting on top of a cone-shaped waffle, then stuck it in her mouth, her expression dissolving into undiluted bliss.
"Those people probably think we're a bunch of dimwits who've escaped from the nearest loony bin," Nora muttered, turning her back to the curious looks.
"Accurate enough," Levi said.
"Here! Have a taste!" And Sasha held the cone directly under Nora's nose.
Mildly impressed that the incorrigible glutton would share with her something she so clearly found delicious, Nora took her offer, hesitantly tasting the strange dessert with the tip of her tongue. She shuddered a little. It was… not bad, but a lot to handle. In a carefully lowered voice, she said, "It's really cold. And really sweet."
"So you're supposed to… lick it instead of using a spoon?" Levi said it as if the very thought personally offended him, nose wrinkling. "Looks messy."
When they stepped away from the booth, waiting for the others to finish with their orders, she told him under her breath, "I'd give a lot of my allowance to see you eating ice cream." While her tone remained perfectly innocent, she was quite sure the grin on her face wasn't.
"Forget it," he told her flat-out.
Before she could think up an answer, she got distracted; Mikasa was trying some ice cream herself. Looked like she had gone for strawberry. The stoic, notoriously cagey young woman was looking at the treat in her hand with child-like wonder, eyes wide and shining, the corners of her lips curving up. It was… kind of cute, really. Who knew that Mikasa could be cute?
She tugged at Eren's sleeve—urging him to taste the ice cream, by the looks of it. He did only after several seconds' hesitation, and awkwardly, looking at his childhood friend in a strange way. As if, at that moment, he didn't know what to make of her. Only when Armin said something, grinning at the pair, did Eren shake off his stupor. It was quickly replaced by that characteristic, indulgent indignation he usually reserved exclusively for his two oldest friends.
"Even Mikasa likes it," Nora said to Levi, nudging him with her elbow.
He'd also been watching the trio, his expression inscrutable. "Still a no from me."
"Such a shame." Alright, her tone had skipped suggestive and had jumped from innocent to straight-up lewd.
He gave her a sidelong look, shifting on his feet, hands in the pockets of his trousers. "Get your mind out of the gutter."
"Your fault, not mine. You started it, on the way here." Really, he was in no position to call her out. The things he said, sometimes, when it was just the two of them, were a whole different flavour of straightforward.
For once, he didn't argue her point; denial wasn't something he indulged in. "I'll make it up to you, brat." He leaned in for a brief moment, softly speaking into her ear, his warm breath brushing against her skin. "But without the ice cream."
A bolt of lust shot straight between her legs, quickly spreading warmth from there outward. Nora had to work very hard to keep herself from looking at him. But she knew the composed façade she had carefully maintained would slip the moment she gave in to the urge.
Fuck, this trip was killing her.
"I'm counting on it," she said, and went to catch up with the others.
#
After a while, near the end of the market where the crowd was thinning, they came across a small shop that sold—
"Chocolate!" Sasha beamed, making a beeline for the door. After the generally positive ice cream experience, her squad mates followed her lead without hesitation.
Nora went in to take a closer look, trying to make sense of the broad selection. At first glance, it didn't seem very enticing. All of it was… so brown. Different shades of brown, sorted so they got progressively darker. Not something she would necessarily connect to food.
What drew her in was the smell. Compared to the overbearing mixture of pungent scents that had assaulted her nose earlier outside, this one was pleasantly subtle. Kind of sweet, but not overly so. Not at all like the honey she knew from back home. So she bought a bar, too, ignoring those that said "milk chocolate"—she already knew how milk tasted—and went for a very dark one that said "bittersweet" on the small sign underneath. That sounded like it could be her thing.
She found a bench at the edge of the busy promenade, overlooking the pier. Nora heaved a sigh as she plonked down on the seat, welcoming the opportunity to rest her feet while the others finished their sightseeing-tour-turned-shopping-spree. Her nerves had finally settled a bit, and with that, her appetite was slowly returning. Probably partly because she had escaped the noisy, oppressive crowd, but mostly because their first day on the other side of the ocean was nearing its end, and nothing terrible had happened. So far. That was something, at least.
Only five more to go. Five more days to learn about their enemies and the rest of the world—and five more days to muck things up. She couldn't help picturing the consequences, were they exposed. If she focused on it, she could feel the knife in her boot. And in case there wouldn't be enough time, biting her lip would do. She stared at the passersby without really seeing them, the individuals she knew they were, and at all the high buildings that were doubtlessly chock-full of even more people. Imagined the devastation her transformation would cause, right at this spot.
This wasn't an anthill.
Still, it was better than picturing her friends getting bullets through their heads.
Levi joined her a minute or so into her contemplations, a welcome distraction from her overactive brain trying to ruin her appetite, once more. He sat down next to her, lounging exactly as he would back at the base: one arm slung over the backrest, one ankle crossed over his thigh. It was oddly comforting, in a place where nearly nothing felt familiar.
"Aren't you buying anything?" she asked, carefully unwrapping the chocolate bar.
"I'm not wasting my allowance on sweets," he grumbled. "But maybe I'll get a few different types of black tea, sometime over the next few days."
Never change, Levi. "Of course," she said with exaggerated seriousness. "I would have been worried, otherwise."
He tsked, half-turning on his seat to face her. "Don't act like you won't drink almost half of it."
"That's—" Nora paused, then thought about it, reconsidering her knee-jerk reaction to object. "Well, that's probably true. We can split the cost."
"Unnecessary. I don't really give a damn about the money. Besides, you're restocking half the time back at the base."
"So you won't let me pay for the tea, but you want to complain that I'm drinking it?"
"Precisely."
"Suit yourself." She shrugged, taking a bite of the chocolate.
A rich, sweet taste exploded in her mouth, mellowed by an underlying, earthy note. Pleasant, faint bitterness unfurled as the bite melted on her tongue.
She very nearly moaned. "Bloody hell. This might just be the most delicious thing I've ever eaten."
Levi's eyes drifted away from her face—he seemed to have been watching her closely as she tasted the novel food, as if he expected she might die from it—and narrowed at the treat in her hand, scepticism written all over his features. "It doesn't look like something to eat."
"Have a taste before judging, you grump." She broke off a square, held it out for him. Wary, but without protest, he took it gingerly between two fingers, put it in his mouth, and chewed. Nora waited for his verdict with patience she rarely possessed; the chocolate she was still eating—already her third mouthful—probably helped.
"It's not bad," he said eventually, which was basically Levi-speak for 'awesome'.
"Right?" Smiling, she wrapped up what was left of the bar und and stood, putting it in her bag.
"Where are you going?" he asked, making no move to rise from his lazy sprawl.
"I'm gonna buy some more."
The perpetual frown on his face deepened just a little. "If you end up getting sick from it, I'm not going to hold your hair and clean up the mess." Despite the preliminary warning, his tone remained as flat and unaffected as usual.
The thought of Levi, of all people, holding back her hair while she puked her guts out made her chuckle. "Fair enough."
###
Once she was gone, he slumped deeper into the wooden bench, rubbing at his eyes with the thumb and index finger of one hand. They felt dry as hell. Levi didn't need a mirror to know that his eyebags were likely as prominent and dark as they could get. The past fortnight, he was back down to two hours of sleep a night, at most, and it pissed him off that he knew exactly why. For over a year now, his new normal had been about four, maybe five hours on a good day.
The absence of Nora's warm body with him under the sheets and the steady rhythm of her breathing in her sleep—that was, when she wasn't tossing and turning—exacerbated his restlessness and only sped up his brain when he tried to get some shut-eye. It frayed his nerves to think of her alone in that shitty bunk, with no one to wake her when she had one of her nightmares. The others probably just slept through it.
That aside, he was direly missing the opportunity to get rid of his bottled-up energy in his favourite way. To really feel that they were alive. Together.
Fuck, but it had been too long. He wanted to be inside her so badly it bordered on physical pain, most notably below his belt. His libido had never been much of a problem in the past, but ever since she had happened to him, a ton of things came into mind that bothered him now even though they hadn't, once. Being used to having her regularly worsened things. And not just for his horny brain.
She really was like a drug, custom-made for him; his least favourite analogy he'd heard from Kenny checked out. We're all drunk on something.
During that pain in the ass of a journey, he'd had to adjust himself in his trousers more often than he cared to admit. Even today, amidst all those people, where he wouldn't let his guard down for a second. And he couldn't even blame her for it. Except maybe that last time just now, when he'd watched her eat that damned chocolate. It was probably a bit sick of him to be turned on by that, but ultimately unsurprising.
That aside, the expression on her face had also… made him all knotted up inside, given him that warm, unsettling tug in his chest he had become so familiar with. Those sensations that should be nothing but unpleasant but weren't. For the most part. They still set him on edge, triggered his fight response, with nowhere to direct it at, because fighting himself was impossible. Her mere existence in this world—his world—set him on edge, after years in which nothing ever surprised him, years of being in control and predominantly in a state that came as close to peace of mind as he could get.
Well, he was nothing if not a realist, so he'd bid farewell to his peace of mind for good, and quite a while ago at that. It wasn't even a choice, but if it were, it would be so goddamn worth it.
The dark, bittersweet treat she'd so obviously enjoyed was almost the same colour as her eyes.
He could only hope he hadn't had the same look on his face as Eren watching Mikasa eat ice cream. The brat was clearly smitten, just like his gloomy 'childhood friend', but he was likely too dense to notice.
When Nora returned—probably with a dozen or so bars of chocolate in her bag, the nutcase—she sat down next to him without another word, just a little bit too close. Just so that his left arm brushed her right and her scent invaded his nostrils. Lavender from her hair and that intoxicating, mildly sweet aroma of her skin. Stirring him up again, in every sense. When he gave a small sigh, both exasperated and resigned, she raised her brows at him, but didn't ask.
This close, the purplish circles beneath her eyes were more evident. She looked almost as tired as he felt.
To hell with it. He wasn't going to suffer through this for another three weeks.
After all, they both needed their sleep.
AN: I know a few of you were looking forward to the Marley trip, so I didn't want to keep these scenes from you. Or from myself and this story, for that matter.