Chapter 2: Curfew

Amelia was so excited from her experience earlier that day that she could barely sleep and found herself tossing and turning in her bunk before finally giving up and creeping out of the barracks. She knew that she wasn't supposed to be out after curfew but couldn't help it. She didn't think she'd get in too much trouble anyway. Curfew was a soft rule, during which junior officers were only supposed to be in residential areas. She'd broken curfew plenty of times before and never been yelled at. Amelia rarely slept very long to begin with, and the day's experiences left her with so much to process. Maybe a trip to the kitchens and a glass of tea would help her feel tired.

"Going somewhere, Private," asked a voice from behind her. Amelia jumped in surprise at how close the voice was and spun around, taking three steps back from Levi until her retreat was blocked by a wall.

"Ah, evening, Captain," she said, her cheeks flushing a bit at her overreaction. She was annoyed with herself for not hearing him approach. Amelia was normally extremely stealthy and usually had little trouble sneaking past night guards. Choosing her words carefully, Amelia gave Captain Levi a winning smile.

"I was just on my way to the bathroom, sir."

"You're a shit liar," Levi said, his gray eyes narrowing at her. Amelia swallowed uncomfortably.

"I'm not—"

His eyes flashing dangerously, and he stepped closer to her. Amelia could feel herself break out in a cold sweat. One of his hands hit the wall next to her face hard, and she tried not to flinch while he leaned towards her. The fact that he was a few inches shorter than her did nothing to make him less intimidating.

"The bathrooms are that way," he said, gesturing over his shoulder with his free hand—it was the opposite direction of where she'd been going.

"Right…. Shall I just head back to bed then?" Amelia attempted, hoping that this was as far as this was going to go.

It had to be Captain Levi who found her tonight, didn't it? After all this time hoping to catch his attention, she already wished she could go back to the time when he didn't know she existed.

"You're not getting off that easily."

Despite the ominous response, Amelia found herself sighing in relief when he stepped back, and she was able to have her own breathing space again. Turning his back on her he motioned for her to follow him which she did obediently, studying him. The last time she had been this close to him, she hadn't been in the appropriate state of mind to take much notice of who he was. He was wearing his uniform still without the 3DMG. The formality of the uniform suited him well, accentuating his slim but muscular frame and giving him authority.

Levi was annoyed that he now seemed to be constantly bumping into this girl. He wasn't someone who normally lorded his authority over other soldiers. But when he saw Amelia wandering through the halls after curfew, he knew he could use this to his advantage. He still couldn't get the sight of her from earlier out of his head. He needed to figure out if what he'd really seen her do in the field was a fluke or not.

Without so much as a knock, he threw open Hange's door, and the squad leader shot into a sitting position, their hair plastered to the drool on the side of their face and sleep still clouding their eyes as they reached for their knives. Levi clicked his tongue in disgust. He could tell the young Private behind him was trying not to die of embarrassment for the second time that day.

"Levi," Hange managed to get out, squinting their eyes at him. "It's a good thing you're so short, or I wouldn't have been able to tell who you were."

The combination of a snicker and cough that came from behind him made Levi level a glare over his shoulder at Amelia. She was obviously trying to cover up a laugh. She immediately took on an innocent expression, and he turned back to face Hange.

"Your Private was found outside of the barracks after curfew." He informed Hange.

"That is serious," Hange replied instead, trying to put on their most severe expression. "Shall we put her in the dungeon?"

"Tch. I expect her to do her training with my team tomorrow as a proper punishment," he told her stiffly.

Amelia's stomach fluttered excitedly at the idea. The idea of getting to train under humanity's strongest soldier filled her to bursting with excitement. It wasn't that Hange wasn't amazing, but Amelia's own passion always rested in the use of the 3DMG. It was like flying; it was freedom. And Levi was the undisputed best at it.

With a yawn, Hange nodded their agreement and pulled the covers over their head. Levi's eyebrow twitched in frustration with his fellow squad leader. Hange was always too lax with their subordinates and generally not serious enough. Closing the door behind him, Levi let Amelia shift uncomfortably for a few more seconds before addressing her.

"You're expected at 0700 hours sharp at the training grounds tomorrow," Levi told her. "Dismissed."

Amelia quickly turned and began scurrying away, but he quickly reprimanded her.

"Hey brat, your barracks are the other way."

"If you'll be punishing me for breaking curfew tomorrow sir, I might as well thoroughly earn it," she said with a shrug.

Levi could barely believe the words that had just come out of the Private's mouth. She had to be fucking joking. This was exactly what happened when your squad leader encouraged frilly things like creativity instead of discipline. He expected her to quail beneath the look he gave her, but she just met his eyes with a curious expression.

"Tch."

Levi brushed past her and continued on his way to his office—if she wanted to thoroughly earn her punishment, he'd put her through hell tomorrow. For now, he had some reports that needed finishing.

It was well after midnight when he was finished with his reports and wandered into the dining hall. He sighed in exasperation when he saw Amelia's sleeping form bent over the table by her lantern, a teapot sitting near her and a book clasped lightly in her other hand. He walked over to her, fully intending to shove her off of the bench and tell her to get to bed if she was sleeping there. But something about the way the lantern lit up her face, made him pause a moment. He racked his brain, trying to decide where he had seen this girl before. Her long chestnut hair was spread across the table, turned golden in the light. The tresses rolled over her shoulders in messy waves, and it was one mess he did not object to seeing. Levi averted his eyes.

Touching the teapot gingerly, Levi found it was still quite warm and about halfway full. He moved to the cupboard and pulled out a cup—no sense in wasting good tea. Sitting down across from her, he kicked one of the chairs out poured himself a cup. The blend was unfamiliar, but the aroma smelled inviting. He took a tentative sip and felt his body relax into the chair. It was some kind of herbal blend with a hint of ginger, and although he certainly preferred black tea, it was a perfect choice for the late night hours.

Pouring himself another cup, Levi's eyes traveled to the book Amelia was holding in her left hand. It was an extremely basic book, often used by teachers to help teach children how to read. His brow wrinkled as his gaze trailed back to her face. Was Amelia illiterate? It was nothing that he thought less of her for. Having grown up in the Underground, he didn't learn how to read more than very basic things until he had been serving with the Corps for a few years. In fact, he still owned a few children's books from when he'd first taught himself to read.

It made sense, he thought, as he finished off the last of the tea. Coming from a poor background might explain why she was only ever referred to by her first name. It was possible she did not know her family name and had chosen, like Levi, not to adopt one. Squinting at her face, he wondered if he could have known her from the Underground. It was certainly possible she was from there. Since the fall of Wall Maria, the military had been offering citizenship to those who completed military service for a certain number of years, making it more possible to get out of that damned hole. Although she wasn't as young as most new recruits these days—maybe nineteen or twenty—she was still well over ten years his junior and would have been a child when he left the Underground. Hesitantly, he dismissed the idea of remembering her from there. He wasn't recalling the face of a child. He remembered a woman. A woman whose face seemed to glow in the setting sun.

With a sigh, Levi ran a hand through his hair, cleaning up the teapot and dishes and debating whether to wake her up or not. Deciding that it was her own damn fault for falling asleep in the dining hall, Levi left abruptly to get a few more hours of sleep. He was ready to see whether Amelia's display in the field was really just a fluke or whether she was actually worth giving a shit about.

….

Amelia was dreaming of darkness, but not the dark that came from closing your eyes, the kind of dark that was all encompassing, suffocating: the darkness of the Underground. It was rare for her to have those dreams these days. There were far more recent horrors to have nightmares about. But one never forgot the depth and dismay of the Underground. She didn't have many memories of when she was there, but she remembered the feeling of starvation. Not just hunger—but actual starvation. She remembered stealing food and learning to pick-pocket early on in order to help herself and her mother survive.

Her mother… Amelia could hardly remember what she looked like, but she remembered the dismay when her mother began finding it harder and harder to stand up and how she became sicker every day. She remembered the day when her mother just didn't wake up, and Amelia was left alone, cursing the filth and the darkness she lived in. The darkness which had stolen her mother from her.

Amelia never would have made it out of the Underground if it weren't for them. The traveling freak show got many of its recruits from the Underground. When one of them had caught her pickpocketing, Amelia had been sure he was going to kill her. Instead, impressed by how much she had already managed to steal, they smuggled her and a few other young ones out of the Underground.

It was among the traveling freaks where she had truly grown up. It was a hard life, one that she could not leave or risk being sent back to the Underground because she lacked citizenship in the outside world. She was often hungry, and the work was difficult but at least she could see the stars and the sunrise. And she owed so much of her skill with the 3DMG to her time there. It hadn't been long before her skills as an acrobat had been discovered, and she had been trained in balancing upon the shoulders of other children or leaping into space with the trust that her partner would catch her. Amelia had loved tightrope walking and dancing on aeriel silks, swinging in lazy circles, suspended only by two straps hanging from the ceiling and the strength of her own body.

Her life with them had suddenly changed when the titans broke through the wall. Shaking her head, Amelia pulled herself out of bed, looking out of the barrack windows at the grey pre-dawn sky. Slipping into her clothes and gear, Amelia headed out early to the training field. She had woken up in the middle of the night and made her way back to her bunk. Despite the four hours of sleep she might have gotten, she felt well rested.

Amelia breathed in the crisp morning air, the chill seeping into her skin and the morning mist wrapping around her in a welcoming embrace. She knew she was well ahead of Levi's schedule but enjoyed walking through the woods towards the deserted training field. Amelia shot one of her grappling hooks into the heights of a tree well ahead of her and swung lazily across a clearing. She loved flying through the air on the 3DMG. It was the next best thing to being born with wings.

As her feet lighted on the ground again, Amelia shrugged off the heavy holsters for her blades and her restraining jacket and rocketed back into the trees. The 3DMG was very different from aerial silks, but she enjoyed it even more. Working up momentum, Amelia allowed herself to spin lazily around the clearing in circles, hanging from one line. Hooking the crook of one leg around the line, Amelia hung upside down and grasped the foot of the other leg with her hand, pulling it to meet the back of her head while she spun dizzyingly above the ground.

"Is that the shit they taught you in basic training?" Came a cold voice from below her. Amelia opened her eyes to see Levi standing below her with his typical deadpan expression. Releasing her hook, Amelia dropped quickly to the ground, rolling as she hit to lessen the impact and coming to her feet in a clumsy salute. Levi critically examined her now grass-stained uniform.

"Get your gear," he pointed to her abandoned equipment, "And next time don't leave your jacket on the ground, dumbass. It will get filthy."

Amelia blushed at her now dew-covered jacket, slipping it and her equipment back on, feeling the weight of the blades return to her body and anchor her firmly to the ground. Looking up, she was surprised to find Levi still watching her, but he quickly averted his eyes and they headed for the training ground.

Levi was already in a bad mood, and it was the damned rookie's fault. He had been walking to the training field, congratulating himself on the fact that she would certainly be late, when he heard the hiss of 3DMG gear being used off to the right of him. To his surprise and annoyance Amelia was swinging around as if she were some damned acrobat. When she flipped upside down, Levi realized with derision that this might actually be the case. His mind had gone blank at the sight of her body gracefully contorting in the air, every muscle powerfully utilized yet somehow absolutely effortless. Levi simply stood and stared while she spun through the trees as if she were born in the damned gear.

It pissed him off.

He couldn't put his finger on why exactly, but it probably had to do with how unprofessional her actions were or the way she'd just left her things laying in the wet grass. All he knew was that he was going to put this brat through the worst work-out of her life, and she didn't even know it yet. The rest of his team soon gathered around them at the training field. Not just his special operations unit, but the teams that were overseen by his senior team leaders as well. He had them start out running laps.

Amelia went to shrug off her equipment out of habit, but Levi quickly corrected her. "If you don't train with it on, you won't be able to do it outside the wall either."

Rebuckling her belt, Amelia took off, trying to stay up with the others but finding it difficult with the extra weight that she wasn't used to. Levi had to say he was less than impressed by her performance as a runner. She did marginally better in hurdles, obviously used to leaping into the air, but still looked bogged down by her gear. Amelia made a mental note to train with her gear on more often. Paired against Petra in hand-to-hand combat, it wasn't long before she was covered in bruises and dust, getting knocked to the ground every time. Levi clicked his tongue in disgust at her ineptitude.

But she must have gotten sick of losing because by the time she had been paired with Eld she bit down on his arm, hard. Eld who'd had her in a headlock dropped her in shock, and she rolled out of his grasp, grabbing a fistful of dirt from the ground and threw it into his eyes, effectively blinding him before kicking into the back of his knees hard and bringing him down. Watching this, Levi knew that the only place a person learned to fight like that was on the streets, where honor was useless and the only thing that mattered was staying alive. Levi expected it to stop then but Amelia pulled her fist back to slam it into his face and that's when he noticed the rage in her eyes.

It wasn't Eld she was fighting anymore.

Amelia was about to smash her elbow into her opponent's throat, a move which would certainly have killed him, when strong arms grabbed her from behind and pulled her away. Squirming, she was about to kick her heal against his shin when a familiar "tch" echoed near her ear.

"It's over." Levi said, dropped her on her ass. Gunther was already teasing Eld about being beat up by such a shorty. Levi attempted not to be offended at this since he was shorter than Amelia was.

Breathing heavily, Amelia tried to calm her racing heartbeat. Her face was flushed as she apologized to Eld for overreacting, but he brushed off the apology with an easy smile. When she glanced around for Captain Levi, she saw he'd already moved on to another group.

Amelia's core work was exceptional when he had them doing sit-ups, rivaling even some of the best of his male recruits, but her arms and back, though not weak for a woman of her size, were shit compared to where she needed to be. By the time the teams were done with the exercises Levi had put them through, there wasn't a person who wasn't coated in a thick layer of sweat and grime.

Dismissing everyone but his Special Operations Squad and Amelia, he had them switch to 3D maneuvers in the forest, racing to see who could bring down more of the mock titans. Levi had expected Amelia to groan at that, after such a hard work-out, using one's whole body to control the 3DMG was killer, but she almost seemed relieved.

As Levi expected, Oluo got to the mock titan first, shooting his line across the clearing in order to real himself in and slice through the titan's nape. To Levi's surprise and annoyance, Amelia came out of nowhere, flying in at breakneck speed perpendicular to Oluo's line. Levi could tell she was going to wildly miss since she was coming at the titan from the wrong angle. He snorted in derision as she flew past the front of the titan, her line connecting hard with Oluo's. Crossing lines was a danger that they stomped out of you in basic training, and he watched uninterestedly in the outcome to see how tangled in her own line she would become.

As expected, her momentum carried her in a quick circle around Oluo's line and that's where the surprise came in. Amelia released her line at the height of the circle, launching herself backwards at blinding speed straight at the titan's nape which she dug into viciously. The cut was not exceptionally deep, but it would certainly have killed the titan. Oluo stared at her, mouth open, and Levi's brow wrinkled in annoyance. Amelia had already rocketed off to find the next titan.

"Are you going to let that brat get all of them?" Levi deadpanned, and Oluo quickly shook himself and raced after her. Levi followed after them, replaying what had happened in his mind until he had broken it down piece by piece. He wondered if that move could be replicated in the field or if the line would be out too long and give the titan the opportunity to grab it. He dismissed the idea as impractical and worthless.

Levi gained ground on the other two quickly and decided to take out the next one himself. As he swung in, he felt a sharp tug on his gear to see that Amelia was attempting another stupid stunt, but this time with his line. The damned brat was whipping around him in a circle, her speed accelerated by the momentum of getting further tangled around him. Levi himself was unwillingly pulled into the spiral opposite her and he could immediately see that the cut she had made to the nape was too shallow and on his next pass smashed the board well past half-way, the head threatening to fall off. He only had a moment to brace himself before he and Amelia collided in the middle, her head smashing into his nose. He heard a sickening crack. Blinking back the tears in his eyes, he glared dangerously at Amelia who looked dazed and had a huge red splotch on her forehead. He could feel his blood dripping onto his cravat, ruining it.

"Fuck," he muttered angrily, his voice thick with blood.

"Are you okay, Captain," she asked, blinking the fog out of her head, not quite grasping what she had done until she lifted a hand to wipe the blood from her forehead. Her eyes widened in shock and flew to his nose.

They both dropped to the ground as his team gathered around him, Petra and Oluo looking mortified and Gunther and Eld obviously trying not to laugh. Levi was so angry that he was at a loss for words but quickly found them.

"What the fuck was that shit," Levi began in a dangerously low voice—his gray eyes glinting threateningly. "If you'd pulled that stunt in the field, we'd both be titan shit."

Resisting the urge to say that titans didn't shit, Amelia tried to compose her expression into one of contrition but couldn't quite pull it off. Sure, she'd broken his nose, but that had been an accident. After all this was training, not the field. This was the place to experiment and make mistakes.

"I didn't mean to hurt you, sir, I was just curious and wanted to try it. Major Hange always says we should—"

"I don't give a damn what Hange tells you to do, dumbass," Levi glowered at her, taking an intimidating step towards her. Much to his chagrin, she didn't step back this time but continued to meet his gaze impassively. "You are training with my team, and you listen to my orders, got it?"

"Yes sir," she answered, her left hand moving in what he thought was going to be a salute. In the fraction of a second that it took him to realize that wasn't what she was doing, she'd popped his nose back into place. Levi had to bite his tongue to keep from yelling in pain.

"The sooner it was corrected the better," she said sheepishly. The continued lack of an apology caused Levi to grind his teeth together in irritation.

"You're dismissed," he said to his team.

Amelia turned to scamper away, but Levi caught her by the back of her neck and dragged her back towards him. Pulling her head back by her braid, he hissed into her ear, "Not you, brat. Laps, now, and don't you dare stop until I say you can."

Amelia sprinted off as soon as he released her, obviously fearful of staying in arm's reach any longer. Lifting a hand to his already swollen nose, Levi swore loudly. He needed to get it checked out right away.