Part Five: Levi

When Levi was six years old, he saw a man standing in the street, back hunched under invisible weight, tears dripping from his chin, screaming at everyone who passed.

It's a war, he screamed.

It's a war.

Don't you understand?

It's a war.

Levi watched from an alleyway, transfixed. He'd never seen a man cry; Kenny certainly never did. When women cried, people rushed to help. But no one rushed to help this man. They skirted around him, lowered or raised their gazes, increased their pace to put him behind them as quickly as possible.

The military police arrived, stifled his screams, dragged the man away. Levi watched the crossed wings on the back of the man's uniform until they were out of sight.

"Part of the Survey Corps," Kenny said. He'd been sitting on a crate, supposedly dozing, but of course he was aware. He rose, stretched, and spat on the concrete.

"They're all mad," he declared.

Perhaps it was only fitting Levi joined the corps twenty years later. He told Poppy as much, and she smiled.

"Do you think you're mad?" she asked.

"We all are," he said. "Kenny wasn't wrong."

She finished bundling a dozen strips of dried meat in linen, secured it with a knot. Then she handed it off to him.

"For those madmen in your squad. Sorry it isn't more."

Had Poppy seen that man on the street twenty years past, she would have stopped to help. The Survey Corps motto was, "I give my heart," and she was the only person outside the corps Levi ever would have accepted the salute from.

He smirked. "You could send a whole deer and the trick would still be getting everyone else a bite before Sasha eats it all."

Poppy laughed. Her laughter was as gentle as her voice, more breath than sound, and it struck Levi once again how comforting the atmosphere with her was. Nothing sudden, nothing loud. But nothing lazy either. Visiting her little garden never failed to remind him why humanity was worth saving. He would have fought anyway, but she made it easier.

"Why do you think he was there?" Poppy stared out the window, eyes glazed. "The man in the street."

Levi knew why. He'd known since his first expedition. But he focused on fastening the button of his cape.

"Fly safe," she told him. She was always like that, never pressing him to answer questions he didn't want to, never asking the questions anyone else would have—about the war, about the world outside the walls.

So he took a deep breath, and he said, "I think he watched a titan eat someone he loved. It's enough to send anyone screaming in the street."

She turned to look at him, her mismatched eyes softening with all the sorrow she didn't say. She reached for his hand, squeezed it. Her touch sent goosebumps up his sleeve. It made no sense to him how he could throw himself fearlessly into the face of titans, yet tremble at the touch of a garden girl. He cleared his throat. But he didn't say anything; he just left.

Four years he'd been visiting that garden. Some of his squad members cast him sideways glances when he returned from an absence or when he wore his green sweater in the barracks, but only Erwin was bold enough to voice an assumption.

"You've given into the domestic," the commander said, feigning a wound. "I thought we both had eyes only for the horizon."

"I don't know what you mean," Levi said coolly.

"Your girlfriend. Is she—"

Levi gave him a hard stare. "I don't know what you mean."

Erwin laughed. "I'm happy for you, Levi. Make sure you're happy for you, too."

Levi wouldn't call Poppy his girlfriend, and he was intelligent enough to know why. He knew the fear, the internal superstition, the foolish certainty that if he put a word to things, if he gave in, so to speak, loss would immediately follow. It was the pattern. First Kenny. For years, Levi was wary of the man who'd taken him in. He learned, but he learned cautiously, and he missed the mother who was already gone. But eventually, there was a turning point, enough years and enough shared experiences to create a family. One slip was all it was. One word. One time.

"Dad."

Kenny looked back at him with an expression like he'd been shot. And the next morning, he vanished. Levi didn't see him again until the man was on his deathbed.

It only grew worse. After that came Isabel and Farlan, who slowly melted through Levi's ice until he thought of them as friends, then family. Isabel called him "big brother" for nearly a year, but it was only on their first expedition as Scouts that Levi returned the affection.

"Be careful, sis."

Within the hour, her decapitated head was at his feet, the rest of her body in the stomach of a titan along with Farlan. And no matter how Levi butchered the beast, he couldn't bring them back.

So he put up the only wall he could. To protect from the 60-meter titan of unbearable grief, he put up a 50-meter verbal wall, the resolution to love and lose from a distance. He had squad members, comrades, fellow soldiers, but never family. Even Erwin he never called friend, only commander. It was the weakest defense imaginable, but it kept him on his feet, it gave him enough safety to breathe even as he and the monster kept locked eyes above the wall, waiting to see who would blink first.

But even as he couldn't define his relationship with Poppy, he couldn't sever it either. When the war raged harder than ever, when it was discovered that there were intelligent titans, that there was a mind beyond the walls actively trying to break humanity down, Levi stood strong. He led his squad. He protected his soldiers. And whenever he could, he followed a winding road.

He taught Poppy to use her swords, set up a training target for her, told her how to blind and incapacitate a titan. Without ODM, she'd have to get its head on the ground to kill it, and that was a much harder task. He considered stealing a gear set for her, but the Scouts were dangerously undersupplied as it was, lacking encouragement and funds from a willfully blind government. Logically, he couldn't justify it, and Levi had trained all his life for logic to win over emotion.

So he taught her the harder way. She had good instincts (she'd proven that with the titan encounter), and she was deceptively strong for her short stature. The same was usually said of Levi. However, unlike Levi, she was not agile.

When he criticized her sluggishness, she huffed, "Quick movements startle the animals."

He scowled. "This isn't hunting."

"I'm aware. I wasn't so good at hunting the first time either, you know."

"I killed three titans on my first expedition."

"Good for you, Levi Ackerman."

He hadn't meant it to brag. He'd meant it to emphasize how close to death he'd come, how much it was kill or be killed, how much titans didn't care if someone was slow, or a civilian, or a mother, or a child. He'd meant it to say something about Isabel and Farlan, to say anything about the feelings he couldn't directly voice.

But he'd offended her. It wasn't an uncommon result on his part; the entire Survey Corps was convinced he was an unfeeling hard-ass. The second half was at least true. If only he could manage the first.

The next time he visited, he was certain she would have put the swords away, never touched them in his absence. Instead, he found three splintered training targets at different heights on the tree trunks just outside her garden. Her blades should have been dulled past usability, but she'd sharpened them herself.

"I paid a blacksmith in Trost to teach me," she said. "Who's sluggish now?"

And he saw the way she held one blade forward, one blade back, the way she struck with the same motion he did, throwing all her force into the final blade, more punch than slash. He hadn't taught her that. She'd just observed him.

She pursed her lips. "Isn't that how every Scout does it?"

She was still slow. But he didn't say it.

Erwin would have told her to enlist in the Scouts. But Levi didn't.

"Well done," he said quietly.

There should have been more comfort in her proficiency. He was meant to feel reassured that she could protect herself, that she could survive. But seeing her standing there with her swords, her dusty brown hair tied back and her face beaming pride, he just remembered Isabel. Isabel could hit every target. She'd helped Farlan kill a titan.

Isabel. Dead. How far had her proficiency gotten her?

Poppy set her swords against the fence. She reached for his hand, her skin warm against his clammy fingers.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Don't regret. Erwin had taught him that. There was no predicting how a decision would turn out, no sense in the endless debate of what could have been—because doing every good thing was no guarantee of a good outcome. When Levi's own squad members looked to him for guidance, he told them that same thing. Even if they trusted their own strength, even if they trusted the strength of the people around them, there was never a guarantee.

Poppy brought him a mug of water from the well. Levi accepted it without thinking, but he didn't drink, he just stared down at it.

"You've got me worried." When he finally looked at her, she smiled. Her cheeks flushed with color. "I, uh . . . I don't like to ask, because I know you've experienced so much, and I know I can't understand. But I'm here to listen, so whatever you need. Whatever worries you."

He swallowed. There was nothing to say, but before he could have tried, she added the worst thing imaginable:

"I love you, Levi."

His blood froze. Above his carefully constructed wall, the monster grinned.

Levi dropped the mug. Without a conscious thought, he was in the air, grappling hooks tearing the bark from trees as he ripped himself out of the forest. He didn't allow himself to think. Not back at the wall. Not back on his horse. Not back at the barracks.

"What's our next expedition?" he asked Erwin, but the commander was tied up in human affairs.

"You know what's next," Erwin said. "But before we can retake Wall Maria, we need government support, and Historia hasn't been coronated yet."

A Scout as the new queen was a nice idea, but Historia had been a weak recruit from the start. Royal blood or not, she'd almost killed a fellow recruit based on the word of her father, she'd unknowingly kept a spy at her side, and she'd hidden her bloodline from everyone until it was forced into the open, even when her leadership might have made all the difference. Levi didn't dislike the girl, but he also didn't put much faith in cowards.

As he was about to leave, he noticed Erwin massage his shoulder with a grimace. The commander's right sleeve hung limp and empty at his side. Eaten by a titan. It was a miracle he'd come back alive, but when the time did come to fight for Wall Maria, Erwin would be right back at the front lines, and there was no chance a one-armed man would survive.

"Stay here," Levi ordered. "When we retake the wall. Make Hange field commander."

But Erwin only smirked. "You don't give the orders. I do."

Levi could have stabbed the imbecile.

"Then I'll cut off your legs," he said coldly.

Erwin's blue eyes met his without fear. "If you were going to, you would have done it already."

"So all this work just to die. I thought you were chasing that dream of yours to uncover every secret. You'll never know the secret of the titans, never know who leads them or why they come after humans, never know how long ago we built the walls. You'll just be turning to liquid in the stomach of a monster. Or three."

"Since you're so bored"—Erwin held up a sealed roll of parchment—"deliver this to Hange. Tell her I didn't find much."

Levi made his way back to Erwin's desk. He lifted a letter opener, flipped it in his hand, and stabbed it straight through the parchment into the desk. Erwin finally pursed his lips.

Then he said, "I don't think you have much room to judge me, Levi. You're the one ass-over-teakettle in love and still not wearing a wedding ring. So it looks like we all do things against our own interests."

Levi's knuckles whitened around the letter opener. A garden reared into his mind.

"Everyone . . ." He couldn't even finish the thought. His throat closed.

Erwin sighed. "I've led a thousand soldiers to their deaths. I don't regret it, so I have to see it through, I have to be sure it means something. Either I end this war, or I die trying; that was always the path."

He pushed back his chair, came to his feet. The back of his left fist snapped to his heart.

As an automatic response, Levi rose to attention and returned the salute, the back of his right fist pressed to his heart.

"I give my heart." Erwin raised an eyebrow. "Will you?"


Poppy wasn't in her garden when he arrived. She was around the side of the house, kneeling before a small gravesite. When Levi approached, she ducked her head, swiping at her cheeks before she rose to face him.

It was his responsibility to speak first. He knew that. He saw the path of a titan through the forest, saw the broken garden fence. He saw Isabel. His heart twisted, caught between what it wanted and what it feared.

Finally, haltingly, he said, "I've lost everyone I've ever loved."

The moisture was still in her eyes. She cleared her throat. And she said, "Me too."

Levi had noticed the gravesite before, but for the first time, he truly looked at it. It wasn't only her mother's wooden marker in the ground. There were two others.

Poppy gestured at the smallest, most faded. "My brother, Flint. He had a fever, and he coughed blood. We don't know why. The doctor wouldn't come in the snow, and Flint didn't survive the ride to Trost." She drew a deep breath. "Papa was three years after that. He was in the garrison, and he told off one of the other soldiers for always coming on shift drunk. They got into a fight, and the other soldier . . . he pushed my father off the wall."

Levi flinched, all too able to imagine the impact.

"Then Mama. After all those refugees died trying to retake Wall Maria, there were riots in Trost. Everyone was so angry. Some of them had rifles. And some of them had never shot before. So. Accidents."

Nothing that had happened to her family was an accident. It was all the result of reckless, selfish humanity. At least with titans, it was easy to see the enemy.

The gravesite had been in view all along, but Levi had never truly seen it.

Blindly, he'd never imagined her smile hid the same fears he felt inside.

Poppy swiped at her eyes again. She smiled, so obviously forced. "I have a stew on, if you . . . That is to say, last time, what I said—I didn't mean to. I mean, we can forget it, if it's—"

Levi threaded an arm around her waist and pulled her close. His other hand moved to her jawline, tilted it up, but her arms were already around his neck, and she was already lifting to meet him. He was shaking, and everything inside him was screaming, but he kissed her anyway. And behind the terror, something else burst inside. Something bright, something certain. He couldn't guarantee this decision wouldn't turn to loss, just as he couldn't guarantee anything, but no matter the outcome, he wouldn't regret it.

After they broke for air, he wrapped his other arm around her waist, rested his chin on her shoulder, and breathed. She stroked his hair.

Until his stomach growled.

He pursed his lips at the interruption but said, "Stew, was it?"

Poppy laughed.


Note: Only one chapter left. I'll try to get it posted tomorrow. Thanks for reading this far.