Summary: The final Titan encounter. Levi gets hurt.
x
After what seemed like ages, you finally saw the Titan.
You stopped at the edge of a clearing and braced your palms against your knees. You were panting and sweating up a storm after having run such a far distance in a short period of time. You took a deep breath in and looked up towards the skyline. There. You could see the outline of the beast's head through the trees. You could also see the flitting movements of the Scouts as they swung and zipped around it. Their voices came back to you all at once and amongst them, you could hear Levi shouting orders. This reinvigorated you. You jogged closer and leaned against a new tree.
What you saw in the clearing made your eyes widen and your blood freeze.
It was a Titan, alright. It was almost as big as the Armored Titan but female and bulbous. Its arms were disproportionately small but its legs were large, each one as big as ten full-grown tree trunks put together. It was bald, surprisingly, and its facial proportions seemed warped: a pair of purple lips were set beneath two strikingly blue beady eyes. Around its neck was hung a sort of garland made of branches and vines, just thick enough to cover the entirety of the nape. But this all paled in comparison to its strangest feature. It had a tail - long, and tapered at the end - which it wielded with a purposeful sense of control. You watched it bend, spin around and swing its tail like a club at the airborne Scouts. All were quick to move out of its way except for one.
You gasped and clutched at the tree trunk in horror. "Levi!" You screamed but your voice was lost amongst the clamor. You sprung from your hiding place and set your gear into motion. But you weren't quick enough - it had all happened too fast. You watched as Levi's body was thrown through the air and then crashed into a tree trunk. A branch caught the back of his neck and his head snapped back before lurching forward again. You watched in helpless agony as he slid to the ground, his body pale and lifeless.
"No!" You cried. "Watch out!"
But there was nothing that the other Scouts could do for him. They were too high up and the heel of the Titan's foot was approaching Levi, fast. You stumbled as fast as you could, grabbed him around the waist, and then swung upwards into the trees, right as the Titan's foot crushed the ground where he had been lying. Your gear faltered and you were forced to crashland on a wide branch. His body slipped from your grasp and was thrown farther away from you.
"Hey," you said, crawling towards him. The Titan below you roared - it was more human than animal - and the Scouts cried out in response. Judging by the pitch of their voices, they were trying to get to the nape of its neck while at the same time avoiding its lashing tail. Your foot caught in a pit in the branch and you fell onto Levi. "Hey," you said again, gripping his cold face in your hands. "Hey, hey, hey. Look at me, baby. Please wake up."
Blood rolled from one of his nostrils and onto his lips. You leaned against his chest, listening for the sound of his breath. There was nothing, and then…
His chest dipped and he gave a hoarse exhale. You lifted your head and watched with a pounding heart as his eyebrows creased and his eyelids gave a twitch. His face drew itself into a frown and he turned his head.
"Y/N?" He said weakly and you quickly took his hands.
"It's me, Levi," you said. Tears were rolling down your face as you squeezed his limp hands. To your surprise, he squeezed back hard enough to almost break your fingers. His eyes opened slowly and then found you.
"Where am I?"
"In the eastern forest. There's...there's a Titan," you stuttered. "And it has a tail and-"
"Why weren't you in formation?" He rasped. "I thought I told you that you're supposed to be the Watchtower. Why do you never listen to me?"
You startled and leaned back. All traces of gentleness disappeared and you cast his hand aside. "I'll have you know that I was busy taking down eightTitans."
"Tsk. Eight," he pushed himself up and knelt on one knee. He surveyed the scene before him with distant eyes. You could tell that he wanted to join the fight, but his body must have been shocked by his sudden impact with the Titan's tail. He put his hand out and squeezed your shoulder. "Eight," he said again. He turned and looked at you with a gaze that betrayed his fatigue. "Let's make it nine."
"You could have just said that you missed me, Levi."
"What's the fun in tha-"
The Titan's face suddenly appeared in front of the branch. The two of you fell backward and were quick to back away. Its magnificently blue eye took up the entire space before you. It roved from you to Levi and then back to you again. Levi put a hand to his belt and clutched the hilt of his sword, animated now by anger and the thrill of an approaching kill.
"Die, you son of a bitch,"
But the Titan had spoken at the same time. Its single utterance caught you off-guard. Because, in the moment that it had looked at you, it seemed as if it had said-
You threw your hands over Levi and cast him back. He stumbled on weak legs before falling into a sitting position on the branch.
"Damnit," he hissed. "Have you lost your damn mind...again?"
"Wait…" was all that you said. The Titan turned and began to move away from you. Levi stood up and you thrust your arm in front of his heaving chest. "Wait…"
"You'd better have a good reason for this, Scout, or I might just-"
"My name's not Scout," you said absentmindedly. "And watch your damn mouth, will you?" You were staring hard at the Titan, taking in its every move. The other Scouts were still flying around it, trying desperately to land near enough to its nape. But something was different about the way that it reacted. It seemed as if it was trying its hardest to defend itself, not attack.
"You see that ring of branches around its neck," you said, pointing. Levi's gaze followed the direction of your finger. "It's...different. She's intelligent. She knows that her arms are too short to reach her nape. She can't protect herself, she knows that."
"So? Y/N, I can't stand here listening to you talk to yourself while the Scouts are putting themselves in danger-"
"They're not!" You turned upon him and fixed him with a desperate eye. "Just for once, will you listen to me?"
He stared at you in silence. For the sake of time, you went ahead and assumed that he was going to listen to you. You took a breath in, knowing that your next words would really make you seem crazy. "She doesn't want to fight."
"Eh?"
"The Titan, she...look at the way she's moving! She's trying to get away from the Scouts, not at them! She's protecting herself, and trying not to harm them at the same time. I'm willing to bet that she hadn't meant to throw you into the trunk - you had been coming at her."
"Are you unhinged-"
"Can't talk now," you suddenly grabbed his coat and pressed your lips against his, at the same slipping his sword from its holster. You pulled back and said with a wink, "you can punish me later."
With that, you jumped off of the branch and landed upon the wreath of debris bordering the Titan's neck. Levi's words to you were drowned out by the sound of your heavy breathing and pounding heart. The Titan lurched around and you caught Mikasa's eye as she swung past you. Her expression seemed alarmed, and whether she was surprised to see you alive or surprised to see you riding a Titan, you could not tell. She disappeared among the treetops and Eren swooped down in her place.
"Wait!" You said, holding out your hands. His expression hardened and he kicked off of the Titan's shoulder, no doubt realizing that you were blocking his shot. "Wait," you cried desperately again but the Scouts were still flitting around the Titan, searching for its weakness. You tested the strength of the wreath below you then, finding a solid spot, you dug your feet in and steadied yourself into a precarious standing position. You unsheathed Levi's sword and held it before you.
"HOLD," you cried out and your voice echoed in the forests surrounding you. The Scouts perched like birds in the trees surrounding you and the Titan, their gazes wary and disbelieving.
The stance that you held made the message all too clear: come any closer to this Titan and I will chop you down.
"What is [your pronoun] doing?" You heard someone say from up above you. You could feel the Titan's shoulders rising and falling beneath your feet. It had fallen still, just as you had. You could feel Levi's eyes boring holes in your shoulders from his place among the trees. You took a breath in and lowered his sword to your side. Then, as the others watched in mute surprise, you climbed along the wreath until you were next to the Titan's ear. It was a long-shot, based upon what you thought you had heard the Titan say when you were standing next to Levi, but by that point, you weren't scared to take risks.
You knelt in the array of knotted branches and braced your hand against the outer rim of the Titan's ear. Its body shifted beneath you and you heard it groan but it hadn't moved to hurt you, or anyone. You started - cleared your throat - and then tried again.
"Can you understand me," you said. The Titan did not respond. It remained still, its eyes fixed upon a point in the distance. Steam radiated from its body, no doubt created by the sweat that ran in rivulets down its skin. It opened its mouth and you could smell the fetidness leaking from between its teeth. You took a deep breath and tried again.
"There's a Titan further ahead that escaped me when I tried to attack the group that it was in. I think it's still roaming wild. I don't want it to hurt my crew. Can you…" you stopped and looked away, having suddenly realized how ridiculous it all sounded. Tears began to well in your eyes. To think you had come so far, killed eight monsters, just to lean into a Titan's ear and utter a desperate prayer like some hopeful lunatic. You hung your head in defeat, wondering if perhaps the smoke from your earlier battle had gotten to your head when suddenly the Titan did something that shocked you all.
It reached back, clasped its fingers around you gently, and carefully placed you on the ground. You looked up at it in wonder and saw that it was staring down at you, its eyes strangely focused and still. Then, soundlessly, it bent its knees and sprung over you. You fell backward as you watched its giant body soar through the air with a surreal sense of grace before it crashed to the ground and began to run in the direction of the other Titans.
All was silent as the Scouts slowly stared between you and the path that the Titan had taken. All of a sudden, Eren snapped a branch off of a tree and flung it to the ground.
"Awwww damn," he hissed, crossing his arms. "I had dibs on that one!"
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Ending Notes: So there's a bit of a story behind what the Titan said that made you act the way that you did towards it. But it's not super integral to the plot since I'll be ending this story in two chapters, and won't be exploring that part of the plot anymore. So I decided to just leave it out. If you're crazy curious you can ask, but I know we're all just trying to keep to the good stuff here.
But speaking of good stuff, I finished the smut chapter. Wanna taste? (If you don't read smut, I suggest skipping this part. I tend to get gratuitously blunt when I write my sex scenes.)
*ahem*
" "Damn," he hissed. He ran the tip of his nose along your chest, up your neck, over your jaw as he simply breathed you in. Your lips met briefly, tentatively, and then he pulled back. "Sorry I'm late," he said. His hands were heavy on their place over your hips. "I had to deal with a small matter of business back at the camp. But if I knew that I had this waiting for me-" he suddenly dug his nails into your skin and you whimpered in response. "-I would have dropped everything and come running."
"So what are you gonna do now that you're here," you asked as your fingers curled around the top of his pants. He leaned forward and whispered low in your ear.
"I'm going to do everything."
"Don't make promises that you can't keep," you said, using his own words against him. You yanked his pants downward. You could feel his erection pop out against your thighs and you smiled. So you were right.
The sight of you naked had turned him on immediately."