1 | The Aysmptotic Ticking of the House at the End of the Lane
asymptotic (adj.): coming into consideration as a variable approaches a limit, usually infinity.
It was always in the most inconvenient times that life decided to take a shit on you.
His gear could've given up on him a week ago. He would've had time to fill a requisition form and hand it over to maintenance, have it back two days before the expedition. It could've decided to break apart in the middle of practice, when he was actually using it and putting a strain on it, instead of breaking apart when he was only trying to clean it.
"Stupid piece of shit," Levi muttered underneath his breath, watching the cables spew from the bulk of the gear even more, his panic only rising when the cables refused to retract as he pressed the trigger on his handles. Then he noticed that the triggers were loose, flapping uselessly like they might as well not have been there. Shadis already had orders for them to move out on Monday – and most of maintenance had already gone and packed up for the weekend, as Shadis liked to give them time off if possible right before an expedition.
Of course, maintenance had also performed an inspection right before the weekend, and there was the unvoiced expectation that nobody else would be touching their gear when they were given time off – but he'd never liked the grubby state maintenance always left their greased gear in, and he'd always insisted on cleaning his own gear right before every expedition.
Now he had two loose triggers and a ton of unspooled cables in his lap.
His gear was clean at least.
Was this predicament, maybe, his fault?
Nonsense. He walked up to Erwin's office – bastard had been recently promoted to lieutenant – and dumped the gear on his desk.
"I need this fixed," Levi uttered.
"Hmm," because all Erwin liked to say was hmm, anyway, someone could take a shit on his head and all he'd say was hmm, "Why isn't it with maintenance?"
"Because those shitheads always get the grease everywhere but the places it needs to be, and someone needs to pick up after them."
"I can see that," Erwin said. Then, surprisingly, he got up and straightened the papers he'd been reading before Levi burst in. "Well, if you've nothing planned for today, you can come with me. I know someone who'll fix it."
"Off the books?"
"Seeing as we have no choice," Erwin gathered a folder in his hand. "This is rather unfortunate to happen right before the expedition, but perhaps you'd like to come with me today?"
"Fine," He acquiesced. "I'll go get my things. They better not fuck it up."
The sound of Erwin's musing voice hung in his ears as he strode to the door. "Ah, she won't."
Carriage rides had never been fun. Some of the civilian carriages that transported troops from Survey Corps HQ on weekends were absolute hell – but now that Erwin had been promoted to lieutenant, they used one of the more comfortable military carriages. It was 2 hours east to one of the villages that hugged Wall Sina. Mountains and pine trees made up the backdrop; a cold breeze, a stark comparison to the sticky summer airs of HQ, filled the carriage as soon as the mountains were in view.
"I grew up not too far from here," Erwin said, also looking out the carriage window, "I was four villages over. But I used to go here, every few months or so."
The streets were actually cobbled over and relatively smooth. A good number of the buildings were built from cut stone. There were houses, here and there, that were still made from soil and timber frames. People in clean, cotton clothes milled about.
But what solidified his impression of the village was the sight of a central structure in the village square – a stone town hall with a clock tower and a bell. The sound of a great, heavy swaying, a low, metronomic woosh, filled his ears the closer they got to the tower.
And when they left the village square – the tower began chiming a melodic tune that ended with Erwin smiling.
"I thought you grew up somewhere poorer than this," Levi commented.
"I did," was all his companion had to say. "Which was why I always visited here."
The carriage drove deeper into the village. Near the outskirts, where timber-framed houses grew more common and closer to each other, was a two-story house made of brick and stone.
The house sat at the end of the lane, where the road gave away to the open fields that made up the base of the mountains. Behind the house, clusters of trees were also scattered about, growing thicker as the elevation rose.
The house itself obviously belonged to some well-to-do prick. Levi gave it a once-over, noting the decorative white timber frame still plastered over the front, as if to give it the illusion that it still belonged here with the rest of the timber frame houses that were literally made of hardened dirt.
Erwin was already stuffing himself into the narrow entry way. Another bell chimed over Levi's head as he stepped in after Erwin – and his ears were assaulted by the sounds of dozens of clocks ticking at the same time.
Levi raised a brow. A clockmaker's shop – that would explain the assortment of time-telling devices laid out in front of him. There were shelves upon shelves of the machines – there were even a few tall ones, too outsized to sit on a shelf, with long weighted bars that swung to and fro beneath a glass case. The clocks varied in intricacy; or at least, as much intricacy as he could gleam from only looking at their clockfaces.
"Isn't this a surprise," A woman's voice called out. Levi looked to its source, finding a woman in a jumpsuit smirking at Erwin. Her eyes then slid over to Levi, but all she did was raise her own brow, "And who've you brought with you?"
Erwin was already approaching the desk she stood behind. He had a smile in place, but none of the uptight posture he had whenever he was wheedling something out of someone. Which was to say, Levi surmised this woman was one of Erwin's few friends. "Ah, this is the new recruit I spoke about before, Mrs. Leto."
Or was she one of Erwin's informants? Levi offered her a single nod. She looked him over.
"Levi, this is Iris Leto. She owns this shop."
"I repair clocks," Iris folded her arms, eyeing the bag Levi held in the crook of his. "A few other things, too. You bring it to me, I fix it."
"She built the clock tower in the village square," Erwin continued. "And the... carillon, was it?"
"Yes," The woman said simply. "Carillon. The thing that makes the bells below the clock go at every hour. As much of a student you are, Erwin, you still have a bad memory. You boys want to go in back? We've always got tea going."
"Please. Lead the way, Mrs. Leto."
All the while the clocks kept ticking. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tick-tick. Dust hadn't rushed into his lungs, which was surprising, because all these artisan's shops were always filled with some form of dust. The interior was also surprisingly well-lit, and it was a combination of these two encouraging things really that led him to following Erwin to the shop's backdoor.
It opened to another narrow hallway; on the left was a set of wooden stairs, which if he listened closely, led to more of the hypnotic tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tick-tick. But Iris led them to a drawing room on the right, where light and fresh air flooded the room through a sprawling set of windows.
"You seem shocked that I keep my shop so nice, Levi," Iris mocked as she ushered them both into chairs. The wooden table was polished gleaming – even a surreptitious finger swiped under it came away spotless. "Ought I be insulted?"
"Places like this are rarely clean," He muttered. "This is a good surprise."
"That's a glowing recommendation." Another woman in an apron toddled in – she was carrying a tray of tea and sandwiches. "Why thank you, Lotta. Go see if Camille's awake, will you?"
"The little lady's been up for a while now, ma'am."
Erwin straightened in his seat. "Camille's here?"
"Eager as a hound, aren't you? That's my daughter you're sniffing around." Iris teased as she passed behind them, setting down the aforementioned tray. Levi took one of the sandwiches, pleased that they were already partially wrapped in napkins and there were more napkins ready for them laid out against the cutlery.
He kept an ear open, eavesdropping on the rare details of Erwin's private life. Iris sat across them. "She's been home for the past two weeks; they graduate in autumn, so she's been up all hours."
To Erwin's credit, he accepted the news with a single smile before pouring them three cups of tea. Damn his composure. "I haven't seen her in a while."
"Speaking of," Iris's gray eyes darted toward him. "You, snooping on your superior's affairs. Take that bag of yours upstairs; my daughter will have a look at whatever it is you've brought me. We'll see how much of that time away has paid off. Lotta'll bring your tea and sandwiches up."
He snapped his mouth shut and put his sandwich down. When, exactly, had he agreed to being bossed around by some clock witch?
"Levi," And Erwin shot him one of those steely-eyed stares, the one that could melt a titan in its spot. "Go. I'll be up soon."
"Tch."
He scraped his chair back and took his bag. The reason he was here was to get his gear fixed anyway. But to save Lotta the effort, he also took his teacup and a sandwich with him.
The floorboards in the house were hard and polished underneath his feet. They barely made any noise at all as he climbed the steps; everything in the house seemed carefully crafted. From the floor boards to the sturdy furniture, even the carved banister on the narrow staircase. Were there any men in this house? Who kept it all clean?
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tick-tick.
The mechanical sounds rose as he climbed higher. Soon enough he reached the second floor – and it was another room flooded with air and light. The most valuable clocks, it seemed, were stored here: another couple of the big tall ones that could stand on their own, and a sizable clock (if that was what it was, anyway) that seemed to be entirely gilded in gold took up a whole shelf.
There were a few oddities, too: machines he couldn't name and were in varying states of completion, judging by how they didn't tick-tick-tick.
In the midst of it all was a bird in a cage. Hidden some ways from the windows, tucked into the corner. It was a little thing – it had blue and green feathers that shifted with the light as Levi approached.
It didn't even flinch as he inched closer; didn't move its tiny beak, didn't blink with its beady eyes.
"The crank's on the left," Another voice called out.
His gaze snapped towards the windows.
She sat on a stool before a desk. She was bathed in an almost blinding amount of light; he blinked against it. She must've taken it for puzzlement, because she then said, "It's a machine. It isn't real."
Feeling strangely tricked, he instead strode towards her. Before the windows was another long workbench. He had no qualms dumping his bag and then more carefully placing the tea and his sandwich next to it, staring her down the entire time.
She swiveled in her chair, facing her body to meet him. She was dressed in nothing more than a plain white shirt and a long matching skirt – but her hair gleamed golden in the sunlight, with a smile to match. "Mother must've sent you up here. I'm Camille. What can I do for you?"
As if on cue, the maid from downstairs came up. She had another tray with her, and her kind face split with a wrinkled smile. "Oh, Camille, this is one of your mother's guests – he came in with Mister Smith, the teacher's son."
And just as below, she visibly perked at the sound of Erwin's name. "Erwin's here?"
"Yes, yes, he came in with this mister," Lotta uttered. Levi was quickly tiring of this whole charade – but Camille swiveled towards him again, and he found himself stopped short by her eager smile. "Well, I'm Camille, Iris's daughter, and this is Lotta; what's your name?"
"Levi," He ground out. He'd always hated pleasantries and playing friendly – he'd always felt there was no point in pretending to be nice, when a few blunt words could get his point across faster. "I was told you can fix my gear. It's in there," He pointed at the bag.
"Straight to the point, I see," Camille murmured, before taking the tray from Lotta's hands. An entire pot of tea, and more sandwiches; she set it down beside his own teacup. She deftly unzipped his bag. Lotta disappeared again, and Camille lifted the vertical maneuvering gear to the light.
"Nice to meet you, Levi. But when you said gear," She commented, now inspecting the broken handles, "Did you mean an actual gear? Or you want me to fix this entire thing. I can tell something's dislodged inside."
She sniffed one of the holes the cables shot out from in the bulk of the gear.
"Any idiot with a brain can tell it's broken," He muttered, pulling another stool below the long bench and observing her get her hands all over the things he used to cut down titans with. "Can you fix it?"
A corner of her lips lifted upwards. "Of course I can. You can go downstairs while I fix it, if you want. Belcastle has a good weekend market, near the village square."
"No."
She trained her eyes on him. Green, he noticed; she smiled wider. "Good choice. I can explain to you how it works while I take it apart."
Then she apparently got to work: she lifted the gear, cables and all, to the leftmost part of the workbench. It was only then that he realized the bench was a sectional, wrapping around the walls in a C-shape. His gaze swept over the rest of the room: the shelves, the clocks, the machines, the eerie bird cage; he watched her curtain of blonde hair sway lightly as she went to lift a flat-headed tool off a board on one of the walls.
He sipped his tea. Black, with the faintest whiff of citrus. Just like the sandwich, it was better than anything the Corps had to offer; he wondered idly if he could actually trust this woman and her mother with his gear. Erwin's seeming trust in them said yes. But that didn't erase how strange it was to watch a civilian, and a civilian woman at that, so calmly get to work on it like she knew exactly what to do the moment it landed in her palms.
To say that all this was illegal was obvious. To say that there would be severe consequences if anyone knew where he and Erwin were and what these women seemed to do, would be an understatement.
But Levi knew more than anyone that Erwin didn't care about flouting the boundaries of what was deemed normal and safe. If anything it made him wonder how these two women, Iris and Camille, seemed to get mixed with Erwin's schemes.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
His eyes wandered again.
Tick-tick-tick.
There was another desk: a strange one, not attached to the C-sectional. It had its board angled upwards; the stool Camille had sat on was right before it, unoccupied while she milled about unhooking tools. There was a paper – a design? – sprawled across the board, with the faint outline of cogs and gears drawn on.
"You must be with the Survey Corps if you came in the shop with Erwin and this thing," She spoke. He looked back at her. A green eye glanced at him while she worked standing, the maneuver gear's bulk in her hands. Levi was more surprised by the fact that she hadn't recognized him – he seemed to get identified every time Erwin dragged him along for something. It was always about being humanity's strongest or something insipid like that.
"Do you even know what it is you've got there, brat?"
"Oh, I know," Camille replied without missing a beat. "Vertical maneuvering gear is a mouthful. Plus, you don't look much older than me." The bulk came apart in her hands – she put away the loose screws in an empty jar she'd magically produced while he wasn't looking. "You ever dunk the barrel of the gear in something? Regularly wipe it down?"
Levi felt a twinge of annoyance. He'd only ever wanted some clean gear to use every time he was asked to kill something. "I clean it every time I use it."
Her voice was curious. But her eyes were trained on the gear, and the rest of the metal wire that was still wound around the gear. "Using?"
"Water. And…"
She lifted the entire roll of coils off the opened barrel. "Some kind of acid?"
"What they sell in medical shops."
He watched her put away the wire; what was left was a stub of movable metal that the coils had wound over. She spun the stub with a finger. "I asked you if you ever dunked it in something. You said nothing, so I'm guessing no; the wear and tear around the winding mechanism here suggests you use this thing strenuously. You're part of the Survey Corps – you regularly bathe in titan blood out there or something to that effect? I can't imagine anything else causing a similar chemical reaction."
Levi blinked. He'd never thought of that, considering the blood tended to evaporate, but it always left a horrendous smell. "Yeah. It's titan blood."
At his affirmation, she smirked. Then she put down the gear again, facing him. "This is the first time I've ever heard of that kind of corrosion on this alloy. So you must be mowing titans down, which is also a first. I should be thanking you for what you've been doing, but I'm more curious about your hands since you use medical-grade acid. They look fine though."
"I always use gloves," He spat. "I'm not stupid."
"Good. Your triggers are loose because the coils weren't winding properly. There's a different mechanism that only lets you pull the triggers again when the coil has already been wound…" She spun the pathetic stub of metal that she'd uncovered. Then she fingered the opposite side, where an entire bar still resided. "…I can fix that by replacing the corroded metal rod. Lucky for you only one side was ruined, but we want an even wind on both sides, so I'm replacing both. Only the government manufactures this kind of metal alloy. It's hard to replicate, but I'm back from school, so I have a bunch of things that might even be better."
"I need it back this weekend," He growled.
She put down his gear and went to the desk with the upright board. She unfurled a smaller sheet of paper over it, which she secured with tape. She picked up a pencil before she sat on her stool and started sketching. "And? I never said it would take too long. I was working on my own project but you need the parts more."
Levi narrowed his eyes. He put down his cup of tea, coming to stand behind her. If she had any complaints about how he was literally breathing down her neck, she didn't say. He was too curious about her seeming knowledge of the gear and how she could so easily take it apart and proposed to put it back together again.
She drew with her right hand: circles and lines, occasionally aided with an L-shaped ruler that was attached to the board through a moving metal arm. It was a rendering of the ODM gear, he realized. The inside of the barrel, which she'd shown him just moments earlier. Was this what she did for a living? He didn't think repairing things took so much specialized equipment – but then again, what would he know. He'd been fooled by that fake bird.
Camille drew the bar of metal she intended to replace, circular arrows indicating the direction of the metal wire that were supposed to coil around it. "It's ingenious, really. That you can fly around and kill titans using a few lumps of metal and some compressed gas. No wonder the government keeps the design as secret as they can."
"Not secret enough," Levi folded his arms. He leaned against the workbench, tilting his head at her. She looked… young. Younger than him, anyway. Too young to know this much, he wanted to say. She had her mother's blonde hair, and most of her features. The effect was strange: she seemed nothing like the witch from downstairs. "You know how to fix it."
"I study these kinds of things in university," She said simply. Her green eyes darted towards him: she must've inherited them from someone else. But just as quickly they went back to her work. "Besides, mother figured it out first."
It was at that moment Erwin decided to show himself. "Everything alright?"
Camille dropped her arm. Levi couldn't describe it: it was as if she'd been washed over with joy. She swiveled to face his superior, but not before Levi noted how she tried to hide a grin behind a smirk. "He's even rougher on his gear than you are, Erwin."
Erwin seemed amused. How'd he fit that titan-sized body into that narrow staircase? "That was… five years ago? I was only out of the training corps."
"I was telling Levi about how I studied these things," Like she was reluctant, it took a long time before she could drag her eyes away from Erwin. She faced Levi, her lips quirking in the smallest of smiles. "I'm studying for an engineering degree."
"I hear congratulations are in order," Erwin went over to where Levi had stood only moments before, watching her draw.
Levi watched them interact, wondering if Erwin had kept a secret girlfriend that he'd somehow hidden from everyone, even him. He would have been impressed – she wasn't bad on the eyes at all – except he knew the bastard down to his rotten core, and knew Erwin simply didn't have time for one. A woman couldn't have slipped through the cracks of all those meetings and long nights. "You'll have your own title now. Engineer Camille Leto. It sounds nice. Well done."
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tick-tick.
"You have to take an exam for the title. I take it next spring; I'm also studying for it while I'm home, among other things."
Erwin reached over for the paper beneath the ODM sketch, the one Levi had also spied earlier. "I can see that. Is this a project?"
She laughed. "It's nothing you can use. It's just a clock."
"You'd be surprised," Levi found himself saying. University. Degree. Engineers. Two of those things he'd never heard of before, which was unsurprising. He'd lived his entire life in the Underground until he'd been dragged up by the Corps – it was the bottom of the barrel when it came to society. "Erwin can find a use for everything."
"I suppose you're right," Camille agreed. She got up, looking for something from the other end of the room, where that mechanical bird was. Erwin took it as an opportunity to review the sketch she'd apparently finished. Levi decided to do the same, but from his spot leaning against the bench. No way was he getting up and gawking the way Erwin was.
He didn't know what to expect: it was a sketch of the inside of his ODM gear, for fuck's sake.
But there was something vaguely fascinating about it: the way she'd rendered the cylindrical shapes and the interlocking metal cogs. His gear was something he'd staked his life and the lives of others on countless times, and she'd laid it all out using paper and pencil in minutes. There were levers and springs in places he didn't even know existed, but Camille had drawn it all as if it was in mid-use, and he could easily see how the entire thing – springs, cogs, levers, and all – moved as one while he sailed through the air.
Like this was nothing at all, Camille returned with two tiny bars in her palm. They looked identical to the one that still stood in his gear's barrel, except they shone brighter than his gear's already dull metal gleam. "Last time you were here, Erwin, you told me you'd found another use for the standard military flares they gave everyone. Two years ago, just as spring started."
Levi blinked. Erwin remained unmoving, however, eyes trained squarely on Camille's clock plans. "That I did."
Nonchalantly, Camille continued. "I also told you that their visibility decreased exponentially in any other weather condition than clear skies. I'm sure mother told you the same thing. How'd that work out?"
Tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tick-tick.
Levi felt himself exhale. Erwin spared him one glance, but that was it.
It was those eyes again: cold, incurious, staring at you but not really; more likely staring at what it was you really had to offer him, which parts of you he could strip and use for his own advantage. A part of him that hated Erwin – a part he fully knew still existed, no matter how much time passed, and it was only two years to that spring day when he'd been dragged out of the Underground and lost the two people he had left in the world – roared in the back of his mind.
But Levi kept his mouth shut.
Tick-tock.
No regrets.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tick-tick.
Levi instead transferred his gaze to Camille. She was measuring the metal bars with another tool. Bringing out a ruler she'd kept in her pocket, sliding some gauge on it back and forth. Scribbling things on a paper.
"It saved lives. But that first expedition we still lost good people."
Her hands stopped what they were doing for that one moment.
Levi gazed at the ceiling. The ceiling beams were made of the same dark wood as the rest of the inside of the house. Not a single cobweb in sight. He didn't want to have to think of Furlan and Isabel. He didn't. "When you asked me if there was something I could do about it, I told you I was a mechanic, not a chemist. But I'm still sorry to hear that."
"You tried anyway. Then we both had a timely realization that the government wouldn't issue a new set of reformulated signal flares just for the Corps."
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tick-tick.
"Oh! Look," She said. He dragged his eyes back down to her, and she was holding one of the new metal bars against his opened ODM barrel. Her smile was wide and happy, almost childlike in its openness. "It's exactly the size we need. Amazing, eh?"
He didn't even get a chance to spit out a caustic reply. She went back to work without another word – a wrench from earlier, loosening bolts in the barrel, dislodging the old rods, cleaning the inside of the barrel with a rag, installing the new rods, bolting the coiling mechanism back together, screwing the barrel's shell shut.
Camille pushed the handles into his hands, their fingers meeting briefly – her hands were rough and hot from the work, and it felt like one more brush of his fingertips against hers would spark an ember of flame – but then she quickly pulled away, holding the barrel against the workbench. "Pull the trigger."
Erwin looked alarmed at that. "Are you sure—?"
Levi decided he didn't give a shit about Erwin's feelings. He pulled the triggers. If Camille said so, he would.
And of course, the cables that had piled on top of the bench then began to wind themselves back into the barrel again, as quick and instantaneous as if he was in the middle of a fight with a titan. He then pulled lightly; true to her word, the triggers exerted an amount of pressure, now that the cables were wound back in place.
Camille clapped her hands with a grin. "Well, there it is." She glanced at one of the tall clocks, "And that took what? An hour, max?" When she reeled her gaze back to him, she winked. "Told you it wouldn't take too long."
"Tch," He wouldn't say it, wouldn't give voice to how deeply impressed or relieved he was. That was one less worry already off his list.
"You can pull them again if you want," Camille said, gathering his bag and sliding it over to him. "There isn't any compressed air, the hooks would just fall out because you released them." She glanced at Erwin. "The sketch, Erwin."
Without question, Erwin untaped the drawing she'd made earlier. She handed it to Levi; his eyes scanned the page. "It's just a pencil sketch, but I hope you understand it. I listed the dimensions of all the screws and bolts in case you wanted to deep clean your gear. As soon as the metal anywhere starts feeling thin or uneven in any spot, get your gear replaced, alright? Nothing to be done about the smell, unfortunately."
"I can still clean it with the acid?"
"With gloves like you said you do, yes. Clean off as much excess grease as you want, too. They're supposed to only be on the gears, anyway."
That's what he thought. Erwin just kept his amusement.
But Levi looked back at her, and Camille quirked another smile at him, already wiping her hands off into a clean rag. "Lastly, don't show that sketch to anyone or tell anyone I made it."
He scoffed. "You think I'm some brat who can't keep my own mouth shut?"
"Not unless it's to mouth off, apparently," She stuck her tongue out. "If whoever does your repairs asks who fixed it, say some fancy MP facility in Sina did it."
"You're making a poor show of our gratitude, Levi," Erwin said. "Thank you, Camille. We're moving out on Monday. We didn't have the opportunity to go somewhere else to get it repaired."
Tick-tock.
"You're headed out again?"
"On Monday, yes."
For once, she stopped completely, dropping her hands in her lap, ragged palms open to the ceiling.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tick-tick.
He watched the muscles in her jaw tighten. But all she did was nod at Levi. "Good luck, then. I hope this helps you, at least."
He felt his lips thin. He'd never needed luck.
But she didn't know that. She said it in as much good faith, if not twice as much, as the fawning assholes who called him humanity's strongest.
"It does. Thanks."
Her answering smile somehow felt like a reward for all this.
Notes:
other tags for this fic: OC-centric, slow start, slowburn, may include manga spoilers later on. the AU tag is for messing with the timeline, but i still try and make the fic canon compliant.
(1) the ODM barrel is different in the manga vs. the anime. it looks like an actual barrel in the manga, though it's later retconned to reflect the anime look.
(2) keeping with the anachronisms in snk, "engineering" in this universe would be a primitive jumble of the different engineering disciplines we have in modern times. what camille specializes in would likely most resemble mechanical engineering. (to all the mathematicians, horologists, and engineering students reading this, i'm so sorry for the terribleness this fic is about to inflict.)
(3) this is tagged levi/oc/erwin but it's more of an expansion of the AOT universe that happens to have a romance in it. it will have many, many OC's and canon side characters.
comments and constructive criticism are always welcome! see y'all in the next chapter.