Takes place in chapter 33 of OMWF and covers Levi's perspective of his and Nora's... reunion after the Battle. As usual, this is meant to be an introspective complement to the scene in the main story instead of a repetition.

Chapter 6: Of Surrender

Midnight came and went. His heavy lids grated over his dry eyes like sandpaper each time he blinked, and his head hurt like someone had bashed it in with… a rock. Now there was a pleasant thought. In the past three days or so, he must have slept maybe three hours, in total. That was pushing it, even for him.

The letters in front of him continued to blur into an illegible scrawl. Levi gave up, abandoning his desk and paperwork.

Suppose I was to show up at your doorstep, again, one of these nights. Obviously, she wouldn't be coming this night, already—and she shouldn't be, after the things he'd said and done. It wasn't like he'd been waiting for it, anyway, but the prospect of lying down with nothing but his shitty thoughts as company was about as enticing as a public toilet in an Underground tavern.

It couldn't be helped; even someone like him had to get some shut-eye, eventually. Levi got rid of his shoes, putting them in the rack designated to this purpose next to the bedroom door, and his socks, which he threw into the designated laundry basket in a corner of his bathroom—there were still some of her clothes, in there—and, undoing the two upmost buttons of his shirt, lay down on the bed.

The pillow smelled faintly of lavender. In the darkness behind his closed lids, a clear image of a badly burnt and mutilated body started to take shape. A necklace with a wings pendant, seared into bloody flesh.

"Shit," he murmured. Now that was a memory here to stay. He steered his thoughts away—anything else was preferable. Maybe he'd do some cleaning, come morning. The furniture needed dusting, and he could mop the floor, and change the damned sheets—

You're rather fond of her, right, Levi? Erwin's voice rang clearly through his head, but the version of the face he saw was more recent than the shrewd, provoking remark; gaunt, bloodless and slack with death.

Wonder what you'd think of my goddamned 'affections' now, Erwin. Didn't do either of you much good, wouldn't you say?

Levi opened his eyes, scowling at the ceiling. What a tremendous, fucking useless pain in the ass this was. How the hell did people go to bed, every night, and just fall asleep? Didn't they have a bunch of shitty thoughts spinning around in their shitty brains? Empty-headed bastards.

He got up, straightened the sheets he'd barely even put into disarray, and plopped down in the armchair. That wouldn't shut off his brain, but it made him feel less at his own mind's and body's mercy, and more in control. It made it a bit easier to breathe around the leaden weight bearing down on his lungs.

Like so many before him and many more that would follow, Erwin had died for the cause. Not a pointless death, but dead all the same, so what difference did it really make? He did not exist anymore. He was finished. They weren't, though, not yet; Nora certainly wasn't. She still existed. She was probably asleep in her bed, right now, alive and decidedly unburnt, and Levi concentrated on that mental image as he reclined back, bracing his temple on his fist. His heavy, heavy lids dropped shut.

Idly, he wondered if she was currently wearing that stupid necklace she'd somehow become so obsessed with. Probably not; whenever she'd spent the night here, she'd usually put it on the bedside table before going to sleep. Then, she'd crawl under the covers, and nestle against him—as if it was the obvious, logical thing to do—her bare skin soft and warm in his arms, and he'd watch and feel her slowly drift off, her breathing growing calm and steady…

A sound that could have only been produced by a footstep rose him from his shallow nap. Levi's eyes blinked open, and there she stood, in the doorframe to his bedroom, looking like he'd just caught her with her hands in his tea supply.

Nora probably hadn't meant to wake him up. Thanks to the less-than-ideal living situations in his youth and abnormally keen senses, however, it was virtually impossible to sneak up on him. Or sneak out, as she must have been about to.

Distracted—not every part of his brain quite awake, yet—he ignored her awkward, stammered greeting; she was, indeed, wearing the necklace, and a flimsy, sleeveless nightgown that didn't even reach to her knees. That was it.

Levi might have wondered if he was still asleep if not for the fact that in his fantasies, she wouldn't be wearing the gown.

No, he was definitely awake. And he couldn't decide if he was more pleased or irritated to see her, here, and in this getup to boot. He almost wanted to ask the nutty brat if she was doing it on purpose, but he knew better. For all the cleverness and quick wit she possessed, she barely had more than a vague idea what she was doing to him.

The things she said and the painfully obvious questions she asked only confirmed this. He gave some appropriately sarcastic answers; he wasn't paying close attention to what he was saying. Because Nora was in his goddamned bedroom, wearing almost nothing—did she even have underwear on beneath that cloth—and meeting his eyes with a defiant glare as he stood up and stepped towards her, and he was definitely still distracted.

If he made an advance, right now, without further discussion, she probably wouldn't turn him down, every inch of him was excruciatingly aware, so aware it heated the blood rushing through his veins at an accelerated pace. After all, she had come here, and was standing in front of him, waiting, her chest rising and falling just a bit too quickly beneath the thin cloth of her sleeping attire. Despite all his best efforts, yesterday, at making clear what he had done and why, leaving no room for misconceptions. And she seemed to have understood, but her reaction hadn't been what it should have been—apparently, she never learnt, when it came to him—and it had barely been three days since the Battle.

I could never hate you.

There was no way she could truly realise what his selfish decision meant for her, right? Taking advantage of this situation, on top of it all, might make him the worst kind of scum; who knew what Nora would think once everything sank in.

Trying to be sensible was a real drag when all he wanted to do was lift that stupid gown and fuck her until she forgot her own name and what he had made her.

So, she obviously shouldn't be here, for those exact reasons, and he thought the least he should do was tell her as much, and of course, she misunderstood. His body registered her intention of leaving and acted before Levi could think on it, snatching her wrist, keeping her with him. And once again, she demanded explanations, that oblivious, incorrigible brat, so he did not spare her the unadorned, cruel truth, expecting every additional sentence—because it got worse the longer he kept his mouth running—to be the one that would make her, finally, recoil from him. And he'd be done with it, and he would have done the decent thing at least this time, and she might never let him touch her again, but she would still be alive.

Everything Levi told her was so ridiculously obvious it was annoying to waste his breath on, so ridiculously obvious it was almost easy to spell it all out. Almost, if not for the cold, iron ring constricting his chest and the hard knot coiling in the pit of his stomach and the memory of their fallen comrades in the back of his head, lying scattered like discarded, broken dolls. He watched her eyes widen and a flush spread from the bare skin above her neckline to her face, and it irked him even more.

What the hell was wrong with her? Here he was, talking about past and future bloodshed and how he would be enjoying it, even admitting to her that at the moment, he somehow couldn't give much of a shit about anything else than the fact that he got her back—as if Nora had ever been his to begin with—and yet she remained rooted on the spot, her gaze as heated as the rest of her in the face of his ruthlessness.

There was only one thing left to say to sum all this shit up. "That's the kind of monster I am and have always been, and now I made you one, too. And despite all that, you are standing in front of me in my goddamn bedroom, when, if you had even a fraction of common sense, you'd realise that you really shouldn't."

When Levi was finished explaining, it left him numb and cold and hard as stone. All that was left to do was bracing himself for the moment she would withdraw from his grasp.

She did not. Instead, tears welled in Nora's eyes. They spilt, trickling down her cheeks. He stood, frozen with shock.

Shit. He had made her cry. The woman he'd only seen shed tears once, after she'd lost four close friends on a single day in one of the most brutal ways imaginable. Apparently, turning her titan hadn't been enough—no, better drive the point home and call her a monster, as well. Nicely done. What a fucking delight he was to be around.

He felt like a piece of shit, yet there was nothing he was willing to take back. That's what she got from always demanding the truth, and she knew he was an asshole, didn't she?

"I don't see it that way. I don't see you that way. I already told you that you can't convince me otherwise." Wiping away her tears with an unapologetic expression, displaying impatience even at her own sadness, Nora elaborated with sober, point-blank conviction he ought to have expected from her, no matter what had happened.

He knew she was strong, and stubborn, and resolute. That wasn't the issue. But he couldn't help being caught off guard when he confronted her like this, exactly as he was and without excuses, and she simply looked at him, looked right into him, and saw it all: what little there was good, and all that was bad and ugly. It seemed unfathomable, that she would stand her ground, even now, and clasp his wrist firmly with her delicate fingers—as if he would ever be going anywhere. Yet, deep down, he knew the reason, felt the truth pulling them towards each other.

"We are not that different," she said, giving voice to this truth, corroborating his defeat.

That was it, once and for all; Levi's self-discipline only went so far. Enough of punishing himself for something he would never regret, enough of trying to be considerate—he was doing a shit job at it, anyway. He had been nothing but relentlessly honest, had restrained himself—had barely even touched her ever since the Battle—and the nutcase still refused to see reason, insisted on… this. Insisted on wanting him; it was plain to see as he stepped into her space, spellbound, saw her breathing quicken, her lips part, her chin tilting upwards and that delicious flush deepening...

He had reached his goddamn breaking point. Just like everyone else, Nora was entitled to make her own shitty decisions, and she basically told him as much. Sometime, she might change her mind, but that time wasn't now, and with the way she was looking at him, he decided he no longer gave a shit.

There was nothing else to do other than making this count.

#

Nora kissed him back with reckless abandon, as if she had been the one starved, in that way that always threatened to make him forget everything but her; not only his surroundings, but himself, and how much stronger he was, and that he was supposed to keep at least that one brain cell working that would prevent him from crushing her. That core aspect and inherent monstrosity of his identity, practical for slaughtering an entire army of titans in one go and utterly unsuited for lovemaking, just vanishing from his awareness together with common sense that kept him from revealing all sorts of disturbing things better left unsaid.

Well, it was far too late to worry about that.

Her fingers were tearing into his shirt in a frantic search for the burning skin underneath.

This was unreal.

Every last one of his nerves sparked to life, his senses heightening, all attuned to the woman in his arms whose mouth he was ravishing with his. Before Levi could think on it, he complied to her wordless urging and discarded his shirt, pulling it off without bothering with the buttons.

The short reprieve from her searing touch, from her body melted to his, helped him recover enough of his wits to remind him of his previous, comparatively reasonable intention to make this count, and he was muttering something about patience as he gathered her back in a one-armed hold and skimmed his hand along her silky thigh and under the hem of that maddening gown—

"I thought I'd never get to have this, again," Nora said, almost making him laugh with incredulity and delirious joy, gasping and trembling under his touch; driving him out of his lust-hazed mind, once again.

And she touched and touched and touched him, so greedy and eager, trailing fire along the overly sensitive skin of his upper body, and it was fucking absurd she could want him this much, even more incomprehensible than ever before. Part of him refused to believe what was in front of him, and the rest went rabid, throwing all caution to the wind.

"You still have no idea…" Levi stopped himself just in time. What you have done to me. He'd barely finished the thought when he discovered that she was, in fact, not wearing anything beneath her nightgown.

This woman was truly going to be the death of him.

Levi contained the rising urgency of his boundless need, his goddamned impatience, by focusing on her tantalising reactions to the sweet torment he inflicted upon her. And urgent, it was, worsening by the second as he watched her growing increasingly desperate with desire. Still, he suddenly knew he needed to hear her say it, again, after everything—so he asked her if she wanted him, and when the question was, unsurprisingly, met with incredulous resistance, at first, he discovered something new about himself: He wasn't above begging.

Maybe he should try that more often, with her. The reward was the answer he'd been so desperate for spilling from Nora's pink, kiss-swollen lips together with his name; uttered ardently in a voice thick and sweet like honey. The delicious, throbbing ache of his arousal worsened to an almost unbearable degree.

Fuck, but he was going to make this count, and treat this like it was their last time, just in case; no matter what she was telling him to the contrary as he undressed her, while she was breathless and flushed and overcome with the heat of the moment and certainly not any more capable of cool-headed evaluation than him.

Rational decision-making was most definitely not what made Levi explore the delicate contours of her body right where they stood—so intimately familiar to him, by now, and therefore all the more irresistible; every single inch of her exactly as it should be—and taste her sweet, soft, creamy-white skin. Until his knees touched the wooden floor and his face was at a height with the part of her he wanted to taste the most.

The sight of her combined with the heady scent of her arousal was intoxicating.

Somewhere in an insignificant, still functioning corner of his brain he realised he had never done anything like this before, the position he found himself in being utterly unfamiliar. So what; nothing to do about it, might as well enjoy it while it lasted. He was done for, entirely at her mercy, belonging to her inside and out, with all he was and all he had to give. And if he rode far outside the Walls and crossed the sea, it wouldn't change a thing. Nora had brought him to his knees in every possible sense.

He just needed to bring her down with him.

And it did not take him long to do just that—at least in the literal sense. But it took a longer time before he could think of anything that wasn't this or her or sensation and pleasure and heat, and just as long to regain control over the things he was saying.

Even then, Levi did not let go of her, and Nora not of him.

And he wouldn't, until she told him to.