A/N: Hi friends! As promised, here is the start of a longer string of chapters where I feel we really get to start seeing the development of Levi and Mikasa's relationship. Thse next two are a little dark, but I'm actually pretty happ with how they've turn out.

Disclaimer: I do not own AOT/SNK or any of the characters used in this fic.

CHAPTER 8: AFTERSHOCKS

It had been several weeks since the nine beaten and battered remainders of the Scout Regiment had returned to Trost, heralded as heroes for the damn near the first time. They called it Humanity's First Victory, but all Levi could see was the steep price they had paid for it.

Combined with the fact that he had lost perhaps the only person in the world he regarded as his equal and that Mikasa and Erin were sentenced to sit in the stockade for a month as punishment for insubordination, Levi was in a particularly foul mood. Not that Mikasa would have wanted anything to do with him even if she was free.

Long ago, Levi promised himself that he would never regret this decision for as long as he lived. He wouldn't regret joining the Scouts, or choosing to follow Erwin. But now that Erwin was gone, the Scouts were all but eliminated, and the event responsible for both of those things had also quite possibly pushed away the last person Levi could find it in himself to care about, regret was seeming more and more like an appropriate reaction.

Currently, he sat at his desk, head resting on his folded arms. There was a mountain of paperwork to his right and a cup of tea Levi had long let go cold to his left. Damn Erwin, leaving us to clean up after this whole mess.

Still, he knew he didn't have the right to complain as much as Zoë Hange, or Commander Hange as she was now officially. Even she was less manic and jovial than usual since stepping under the weight of Erwin's title.

"LEEEEEVIIIII!" But somehow she had become even more irritating. She burst into his office.

"What the fuck is it this time?"

"What am I supposed to write in this report?"

"You were a Section Commander," he sighed irritably. "This isn't your first time filling out a form. Figure it out!" Ever since assuming Erwin's duties, she'd been bugging Levi with questions non-stop, even though his workload had doubled, too.

"Ah, well, I guess it can wait until later. On another note, have you figured out what you're going to say in your speech tonight?"

"Who said I was giving a speech?" he asked flatly.

"Oh come on, Levi! It's our last hurrah to commemorate Commander Erwin as a Regiment and you're not going to say anything?"

"Correct."

"You're no fun," Hange pouted. "Speaking of, though, we should probably go get Eren and Mikasa so they have time to get cleaned up. Don't want them smelling like they've been in the stocks for three weeks. That just inverts the punishment on the rest of us!"

"What's this 'we' you speak of?"

"You're not coming with me?"

"Why would I?"

"So you can see Miiiikasa," Hange drawled.

Levi's eyes flashed dangerously and he had to physically resist the urge to slam his fist on the table. "What the hell are you getting at?"

"Oh come on, it's so obvious! You two haven't made nice since she tried to kill you and it's eating you alive. I can read you like a book," Hange finished smugly. He gazed at her hard, trying to see if that was really all this psycho thought it was, or if she knew more than she was letting on. "Now come on!"

"I thought the medal ceremony and fallen comrade commemoration wasn't for another week when Historia got here." Eren pondered as Levi slid the key into the lock on Eren's cell. "So why are you letting us out now?"

"That's true, but this is something a little more private.' Hange explained, "We felt Erwin deserved his own celebration. A send-off by just the Scouts and obviously you two are part of that."

"Tch, yeah it needs their numbers to make the gathering seem less pathetic," Levi scoffed.

"You're just a party pooper!" Hange cried.

Levi ignored Hange and unlocked Mikasa's. "Alright, Ackerman, go get cleaned up."

Mikasa stayed put on the floor, hugging her knees into her chest. "I don't deserve to go to Erwin's funeral."

"Mikasa…" Eren said worriedly.

"Go get cleaned up, Eren. I'll take care of this." Eren looked nervously between the captain and his best friend, unsure if this was the kind of emotional state in which he should leave her at his mercy. "Jaeger, get!" Levi snapped.

"It's fine, Eren," Mikasa said, but her voice sounded hollow. Lifeless. It twisted something inside Levi to hear her like that.

Levi waited until Eren's footsteps had disappeared up the stone stairwell. "You have to go. It's the least you can do for the commander." Considering you're part of the reason he's dead. The latter words weren't spoken aloud, but they echoed off the grimy stone walls of the stockade all the same. "Come on, Ackerman. Don't make me drag your ass out of this cell," Levi said, only to have her bury her face deeper into her kneecaps. He sighed then walked into the cell, put his hands around her midsection—had she always been so bony?—and threw her over his shoulder.

"What the—Captain! PUT ME DOWN!"

He paused on the second step, contemplating. "No. I don't trust you," then kept climbing the stairs. If she were being less of a pain in the ass, he might have been more in the mood to admire hers practically in his face. "I know you feel like Armin shouldn't be alive, but he is, and you need to start being a big girl about it instead of a child."

"FINE! I'll go to the funeral, just put me fucking down!"

Levi had reached the top of the stairs and set her down gently on her feet atop the landing. In better light, Mikasa looked even worse than she had in the stocks. Dark circles ringed her eyes, putting Levi's own to shame, and her sallow skin hung loosely from her gaunt face.

"You look like shit. Mind telling me why you haven't been eating?" He recalled seeing yet another tray of barely picked-at food on the floor of her cell. "If it's because of what happened in Shiganshina, you need up let it g—"

"It's not that. Well, not just that," she said quickly, but pursed her lips and refused to say more.

"It's fine. You don't have to explain yourself now. I just…wanted to make sure you were okay after everything."

"Are you?" she challenged back. Her retort surprised him, not only because he didn't have a good answer for her, but because it was filled with that old fire he so enjoyed but was afraid had gone out.

He gave her a half-smile. "Point taken."

"Let's just get this over with," she said and stalked down the hall toward the bathroom. "But I'm not wearing a dress!" she called back over her shoulder.

There she was. The old Mikasa was definitely still in there. He just had to pull her out.

"Jaeger. A word?" He framed it as a question, but everyone knew it was an order. Levi didn't make requests. Walking as a group back from where they had laid Erwin to rest in the soft, peaceful foothills just outside Wall Rose, Eren left the huddle of Jean and Armin and fell back in stride with his captain.

"Sir?"

"What's wrong with your crazy girlfriend? Why isn't she eating?"

"She's not my—"

"Way to miss the point entirely."

"I—didn't know she wasn't."

"Look at her, for fuck's sake!" Eren turned and glanced at Mikasa, trying her best to blend in with the stone walls.

"Yeah, I guess she's lost some weight."

"You guess, huh? How astute of you," Levi said flatly. "Any idea why? Besides her ridiculous guilt about having killed Erwin."

Eren was quiet for a few moments and Levi was not in a patient mood. Not that he ever was. "Well?"

"I'm thinking!" Eren cried.

"Thought I smelled something burning."

Eren scowled but then something seemed to dawn on him. "She started getting really weird and quiet after we started reading my dad's journals and found out that those who have inherited the power of the Nine–"

"–have thirteen years to live, of course." Levi felt the fool for not assuming that right away. "Figures that finding out you have, what, eight years to live would upset her considering her entire emotional wellbeing is wrapped up in you." Levi expected Eren to have a tantrum at that, but he stayed quiet, looking at the floor shamefully. Levi heaved an annoyed sigh, suddenly craving a very stiff drink and a cigarette. "Look, it's not your fault. It's something she's going to have to come to grips with."

"I don't know how to help her do that," Eren said miserably.

"Yeah, me neither, but I guess we have to start trying before she's so skinny, even the titans don't want her."

"Sir?" Levi raised an eyebrow at him, signaling for him to go on. "Thanks for caring about her. I know you two don't particularly get along, but…I just wanted to say thanks." He bowed awkwardly to Levi.

"Tch, stop that, you're embarrassing us." Levi gave Eren a kick in the shins. "I'm only doing it because she's the best soldier we have next to myself, and we can't afford to sacrifice killing power right."

"Well, whatever your reason, I'm grateful," Eren said before jogging to catch up to his friends.

If I keep this up, they're all going to think I've gone soft, he brooded silently. When it came to Mikasa, he had, but they didn't need to know that.

The night passed slowly, Mikasa just counting the hours until she could go back to steeping herself in misery in her cold cell. Everyone else was having a good time, at least. Especially Eren, who was now rosy-cheeked and trying to hold down hiccups as he tried to pour himself more sake.

Everyone was gathered around a single table in the dining hall after having laid Erwin's body to rest earlier that day. It was sad because it only cemented the image of how their numbers dwindled. Mikasa wasn't sure if the Scouts would ever see enough recruits to make up for the blow they'd taken. In any event, that at least ensured the event tonight was quiet and informal, for which Mikasa was thankful.

"Hey, Mikasa!" Jean shouted down the table, "It is nice to be up here getting fresh air? I can't imagine Jaeger smells very good down there!"

"Watchh your mouth, JJJean!" Eren slurred "If you wanna fight, jussst sssay the word!" He stood abruptly and punctuated the phrase by slamming his palm on the table.

Mikasa tugged at his wrist. "Eren," she hissed. "Sit back down this instant or so help me…"

Hange thankfully stepped in so Mikasa didn't have to make good on her threat. Tapping her glass with her spoon, she cleared her throat in a dramatic fashion and started off the speeches with a tribute that was equal parts touching and profound as it was psychotic. Just like Hange herself.

Next was a few short but sweet words by Dot Pixis and an overly sentimental ramble by Nile Dok, Erwin's childhood friend and commander of the MPs. They were the only non-Scouts in attendance.

And then, to everyone's surprise, Levi stood up. Levi wasn't exactly the speech-giving type: he was more the ass beating type. By the look on his face, Mikasa guessed he had surprised himself most of all.

"I joined the Scouts because of Erwin. Not because I wanted to, I assure you. While I didn't see it at the time, Erwin offered me a way out of the Hell I had been living. Not that escape he offered wasn't its own kind of Hell, but it was at least one where I could die fighting for something. If it weren't for him, I would still be rotting away under the boot heel of humanity." Levi paused and scanned the faces of his few remaining comrades.

"We can't always carry our fallen comrades home. But we carry their memory." Mikasa remembered when spoke those words to one of their distraught comrades who had just lost his best friend. Levi probably didn't know Mikasa was near enough to overhear him, to see him hand Ivan's Wings of Freedom crest back to his friends, even after they had pulled an incredibly stupid stunt trying to recover his body. She remembered thinking how uncharacteristically kind and thoughtful that was of the captain.

Now she realized how he carried the weight of all the fallen soldiers perhaps more than anyone. For someone who wielded death so effortlessly, it weighed on him more than anyone.

And she had asked him to bear even more. You stupid, selfish little girl, she chided, feeling a tide of emotion swell within her chest. She attempted to crush it by turning her attention back to Levi's speech.

"On our first outing outside the wall, two of my best friends, the only people who remained from my former life, were slaughtered. The first thing Erwen said when he rode up and found me the only survivor? Pathetic. I almost killed him at that moment, but then Erwin said something to me. He said, Look around you! In this wide open place, there are no walls, no matter how far you go! Here, there might be something to free us from despair. The clouded eyes of mankind, blocked for a hundred years by the walls…they can't see the other side.

"Then he asked if my eyes would remain clouded. I knew from that moment on I would follow Erwin to Hell, and I did, countless times. But I guess there was always bound to be a time when I couldn't follow. Erwin always believed there was something outside the walls, even when I didn't. And all along it turns out he was right. Whether that thing turns out to free us from our despair or throw us back head first, who knows? But I know which bet Erwin would have taken."

Levi stopped. If Mikasa didn't know better, it almost seemed like he was swallowing a lump in his throat. He raised his drink. "So here's to that crazy motherfucker. May he finally be at peace."

Levi stepped down and threw back his entire drink. He looked like she felt and witnessing that sudden vulnerability in her invincible captain scared her more than his most ferocious moments, moments like the one where he rended the flesh and muscle from Annie Leonhart's titan form so effectively that she could scarcely move. Or when, early in her Scout days, he had beaten her so severely she was out in the hospital for days with several broken ribs.

And now, here he was toasting a fallen comrade she had asked him to all but shoot himself.

That two such radically different Levis could exist within the same man…

Maybe that was what made him such a good soldier. He was compassionate, but not overly so. He could bury it down and do what was necessary.

"REINER!" Mikasa couldn't forget the animalistic scream as Levi shot like a bullet down the wall. Couldn't forget the ferocity with which he had so effortlessly stabbed one of their former comrades through the throat and chest.

He hadn't hesitated, not for one second.

A true soldier for humanity, unlike herself who fell apart anytime someone she cared about was in danger.

And she'd made him her accomplice this time, looked into his eyes, and pleaded with him to sacrifice his best friend for her. She could try to justify it all she wanted, with them needing Armin's mind, but it was all bullshit. The truth was, she had asked, no, threatened, Levi to save Armin for the purely selfish reason that she didn't want to say goodbye to yet another person she loved.

Now it turned out it didn't even matter. She would have to let go of them both anyway, and had probably already lost Levi.

"Eventually, you have to understand. You'll have to let go of everyone you've ever met." Hange's words echoed through her mind and she found she couldn't breathe, couldn't stop her eyes from welling with hot, shameful tears. Her heart slammed against the walls of her chest until she felt like she was going to pass out. She couldn't be here anymore, so as everyone continued raising their glasses to the fallen commander, Mikasa took the chance to slip out unnoticed.

Or so she thought. There was always one person she simply couldn't hide from.