Chapter 10: Humanity's Hottest Does Housekeeping

"Humanity's Hottest: Scandal at Hartwood Grove Mansion

Yesterday, the sweet, youthful romance blooming between Humanity's Hottest burst into acrimonious flames as Miss Rafaella Hart, the beloved singer also known as 'Humanity's Hottest', walked into her bathroom to find erstwhile titleholder and suitor, Lance Corporal Levi Ackerman, in the closet with another woman. After their steamy interview the day before, Miss Hart had invited the corporal for afternoon tea at her home, Hartwood Grove Mansion, to become further acquainted. She should probably have clarified whom exactly he was thinking of getting acquainted with!

The 'other woman', Miss Mikasa Ackerman (of no known blood relation to the Lance Corporal) (1), is a member of the corporal's squad whose skill in battle has earned her the title of the 'Woman Worth One Hundred Soldiers'. With their exposed tryst, it has become clear that the corporal loves a value bargain more than anyone else and that Miss Ackerman is not above spreading her legs to attract her superior's attention. The military ought to pay more attention to the values it instils in its soldiers."

Picture: Levi and Mikasa standing together, dishevelled, at the main entrance of Rafaella Hart's mansion. The image is juxtaposed with a picture of the singer in tears.

Picture caption: (from left to right) – Lance Corporal Levi Ackerman, Miss Mikasa Ackerman, Miss Rafaella Hart

The news report was both cruel and damaging. In the devastating fallout that ensued, Erwin took swift action under Ezra's guidance. He gave a public address, apologising for the hurt caused to Rafaella Hart and announcing that the military would work hard to crack down on inappropriate behaviours and prevent them in the future.

Erwin also had Levi make a public and a personal apology to Rafaella Hart. In the latter, Levi emphasised the challenges of dating a soldier, with reasons ranging from demanding military schedules to the possibility of dying in action. In response, Rafaella burned Levi's proffered flowers in the fireplace and proceeded to throw an ugly temper tantrum, but she eventually came around and forgave the corporal, claiming that they were never serious and that she had known him to be a scoundrel from the start. The newspapers had another field day.

Afterwards, Levi was dealt a dozen lashes (2) and placed in solitary confinement for a week. Mikasa received the same punishment. The authorities suggested that Levi be demoted and Mikasa be dismissed to appease the public further, but Erwin successfully fought back on the grounds that they still required their unrivalled leadership and skill in battle. Eventually, public support rebounded, but even Ezra with all his experience and genius could not return the military's reputation to its previous record high.

Levi was released from solitary confinement a week later. Staggering out of the dungeons, he saw that it was late afternoon. He was hungry from the meagre food rations he had been given in confinement and sore from the lashings he had received. Nevertheless, he had matters to attend to. He went to his room to shower, shave, and change, then reported to Erwin. He entered his superior's office.

"Lance Corporal Levi Ackerman reporting." He saluted.

"At ease. Levi, despite all that has happened I still think of you as a friend, and I hope your punishment hasn't changed your opinion of me." Erwin said.

"Yeah. You're still the stoic bastard who roped me into all this military and publicity shit. If that's all you wanted to tell me, I'll be leaving now."

"No. Stay." One of Erwin's infamous silences followed. Levi crossed his arms and waited.

"Erwin, your mind is like one of those damned spinning wheels at the fair that takes ages to stop turning."

Erwin ignored the snide comment and finally drew a breath. "Levi, we have an important mission ahead of us. The plan to retake Wall Maria is almost finalised and I will hold a meeting to discuss the details soon." He turned to face the corporal. "However, we still need time to train the new recruits. We also need food and horses for our mission, and we cannot obtain it without the necessary funding."

"Doesn't the Premier allocate our budget?"

"The Premier's leadership will be called into question if we don't have public support. The government is still stabilising and I don't want to jeopardise Queen Historia's reign in these early days."

"So what does this have to do with me? People hate me."

"They hate you because you snubbed a beloved celebrity. However, we can still engineer the situation to our favour. You and Mikasa are the two strongest soldiers in the military, and with the right exposure we can market you both as Humanity's Strongest couple. The public will forget about Rafaella Hart soon enough."

Levi's eyes narrowed.

"You can turn me into a monkey and make me dance on your puppet strings, but I won't let you do the same to Mikasa," he ground out in a low but angry tone.

"My hands are full with sustaining the Scouts division and planning the mission to retake Wall Maria. I knew about Mikasa's childish newspaper plot early on, but I trusted you to discipline her while I mitigated the damage in the background. What I did not count on was you messing up. Now, I'm forced to clean up after you instead of planning for our upcoming mission."

"Without the series, we would never have increased our numbers as quickly as we did," Levi pushed back.

"We could have gathered the manpower and resources more efficiently without all the drama," Erwin countered. "The Scouts division needs public support and funding now more than ever, and your actions have left me with no choice. Ezra."

Levi's publicity manager entered the room. Clearly, he had been waiting outside listening for his cue.

"Work with the news outlets to publicise Levi's and Mikasa's relationship. They will be available for any interviews or public outreach activities you deem appropriate." Ezra nodded and left the office.

"What was the point of telling me all this if I didn't have a say?" Levi asked acidly.

"To give you a word of warning as your commander and your friend," Erwin said. "Even though we will now move to publicise your relationship, I need you to tone things down with Mikasa. I have not made a rule of it, but fraternisation is highly discouraged within the military. I am sure you know the reasons. The most obvious one is the high mortality rate, especially in our division. You and Mikasa joined the Scouts knowing this. But if you decide that the emotional burden is worth bearing, so be it." The commander rose from behind his desk and strode towards Levi slowly.

"However, what worries me more is that you are Mikasa's direct superior. Your relationship with her compromises the chain of command and puts you at risk of favouring her life above the lives of others. This could seriously jeopardise our strategy." Erwin stopped just before the corporal, and Levi found himself staring up into the commander's piercing blue eyes. "Can you assure me that in a moment of extreme danger, you could sacrifice her to save the lives of others or to fulfil a mission?"

Levi reflected. To anyone looking in from the outside, Mikasa had acted terribly. She had humiliated him in a petty attempt at revenge and leaked confidential information in the process, tempted him into a workplace relationship, and thrown herself into a compromising situation that exposed them both to public criticism and contempt. But he also realised that he was as much at fault as she, as he could have prevented these things from happening at each turn. He could have reported Mikasa's misconduct and let Erwin punish her; he could have pulled away after their first kiss and quietly transferred her from his squad, and he could have forced her to leave Rafaella Hart's house without confessing his true feelings for her.

Doing any or all these things would have killed all hope of a relationship between them. But he had not, and now he reaped the disasters of his inactions. From a professional standpoint he was disappointed with how he had handled things; yet in this chain of mistakes, he had learned that there was a certain strength and grace to recognising and embracing his feelings. This resonated with him especially because he had always prided himself on being honest with himself and with others. Then it had taken all Mikasa's love and steadfast devotion to make him realise he had failed even at that. Because of that, he now wanted nothing more than to thank her by returning her feelings with the same dedication and fervour. In the past two months, things had gone so horribly, beautifully wrong, that if given the chance, he would do it all over again.

Yet despite these revelations, he could not bring himself to lie to Erwin. Besides the obligatory sense of duty, Levi owed this man his life. Erwin had given him a chance to leave the Underground to earn a life and a death that was more honourable, if not more meaningful, than thieving, thuggery or killing. And as they worked together over the years, Levi had come to see that his commander was strong and steadfast, honest and unyielding, and capable of making difficult decisions to lead humanity to salvation. He admired all these qualities, modelled himself on them, and could not disgrace or disrespect Erwin by choosing Mikasa over the military.

Levi's mouth went dry as he came to his conclusion. He looked away. "Transfer her from my squad if you must," he muttered, resigned.

Erwin studied him for a while, then spoke.

"I tried. She wouldn't have it."

Levi's gaze flicked up in mute surprise.

"She threatened to leave the military if we transferred her," a flash of annoyance flickered in the commander's blue eyes, "and Eren and Armin threatened to leave if she left. Given how we can't afford to lose even one of them, I gave her twelve more lashes to earn her place on your squad."

With the twelve lashes from her original punishment, that made twenty-four lashes in 's eyes narrowed in cold fury. "You may as well have crippled her."

"Her punishment was administered in two separate sessions; she will heal in time for our next mission. I also dealt Armin and Eren ten lashes each for their threats to desert. Given that we don't have an official rule against fraternisation, I think I have been more than fair." Erwin paused. Levi could still sense anger simmering under the commander's cool exterior. "In exchange, therefore, I order you to not tell the public of the allowances I have made. I also order you to give me your word that you will never compromise the success of our missions or sacrifice others' lives unnecessarily out of partiality to Mikasa Ackerman."

"I will do my best," Levi said.

"Do I have your word or not?"

"…You do."

Erwin regarded him sternly for a moment. The commander did not usually care much for people's promises, for promises most often come from weak-minded people, and words based on weak wills always crumble eventually. However, he knew Levi, despite his imprudent actions, was still strong in character and in mind, and so he trusted his word. He relaxed. "Fine. Now that you're up to speed and know how much those kids suffered for you, I wash my hands of the matter and let you take over from here. Don't mess up again, Levi."

With that, the corporal was dismissed.

The next day, Levi summoned his squad to his office. The atmosphere was unusually sombre. Mikasa was absent, still in recovery from her punishment, Eren and Armin stood on unsteady feet looking sad and sore, and the others were quiet in solidarity with their hurting comrades. Levi spoke immediately, wanting to get his unpleasant speech over and done with.

"I assume you've been following the news and know what happened. You all trusted me to be a responsible squad leader and instead I acted inappropriately, courting a woman I didn't give a rat's ass about and getting involved with Mikasa at the same time. Even though we were both punished for our actions, some of you still took it on yourselves to keep the squad intact." With this sentence, he looked subtly at Eren and Armin. "I am sorry, and I will do my best to make up for my indiscretion."

The room fell silent, and Levi contemplated dismissing his squad so he could wallow in his shame and misery alone. Then Armin spoke.

"Heichou, I don't know all the details, but I'm sure that you only spent time with Miss Hart on orders, and you couldn't have foreseen Mikasa trailing you to her house. We all respect you still, no matter what." At this, there were noises of agreement around the group. Armin continued, smiling softly. "As for Mikasa, she has developed strong feelings for you in the last few weeks and she wouldn't have let anyone else lay claim to you without a fight. I'm glad you realised and returned them eventually."

Levi digested Armin's words slowly. Something did not add up. "Are you saying that you knew about us before?" The blue-eyed boy suddenly turned red and started stammering.

"W-Well you know, when the newspaper series ended, w-we noticed you started staring creepily at each other and exchanging cringey innuendos…"

"Yeah!" Connie jumped in, trying to save Armin. "And you kept molesting each other and making out in the corridors. We were all fleeing to give you space by the end of it!"

"Connie speaks for himself. I was hiding around the corner to get a good look at the two of you. I couldn't believe it when Armin first told me!" Sasha squealed. Eren thwacked them both on the head.

"Ow!" Connie, Sasha, and Eren all yelled.

"What are you yelling for? You hit us!" Connie glared at Eren.

"I'm still recovering from my injuries!" Eren said, annoyed. "Couldn't you just have kept your big fat mouths shut and let Armin do the talking?"

"You're a titan you wimp, just heal faster already and stop feeling sorry for yourself! Even Armin is putting up with it better than you are!" Jean glared.

"H-Hey that's not fair! I can deal with pain as well!" Armin protested.

"I am not a titan, I am a titan shifter! Hammer the difference into that thick skull of yours, horse face!" Eren yelled.

Levi stared as his squad devolved into a gaggle of squabbling geese. For the second time since meeting this unruly bunch, Levi felt a warm feeling welling up inside him. His eyes crinkled and his mouth melted into a wide and natural smile. He let out a small chuckle, and his next words caused everyone to look at him in utter surprise.

"Thank you, everyone."

A/N: Apologies as this chapter is a little dull compared to the last one, but after all the shenanigans some housekeeping had to be done to keep the story from flying off the rails (cue chapter title, badum). Finally, everything seems to be tying up, but there's one last thing to resolve: where does all this leave Levi and Mikasa? Find out in the next chapter! Thank you for reading, please do leave a review and let me know what you think. Many thanks to Hachibukai for the steady stream of feedback, it really means a lot to me to hear what my readers think and I've already had some good feedback that have improved the ideas/flow of the story!

Plot points:

(1) [MINI SPOILER ALERT FROM ROYAL GOVERNMENT ARC AHEAD!] There is speculation as to whether Levi and Mikasa are related. It's possible, since they both experience 'a surge of power' that could be explained by blood ties, in which case they would be distant cousins. But in terms of Japanese history, it was common for main families to adopt unrelated families who performed other tasks such as farming. In AOT, Levi belonged to the main branch of the Ackerman clan while Mikasa belonged to a 'branch family', so using this logic it's also possible that they are not related at all, but simply share ties by clan and ancestry. Anyway, I'm sure you AOT fans out there will have done more research into this and know more than I do! The point for the story is that the newspapers might have guessed at a relation because of circulating rumours about the Ackerman clan, but here they chose to be cautious about announcing that. Source: the-japanese-family-system/ (Thank you Hachibukai for pointing out the main/branch family distinction!)

(2) I spent a stupidly long amount of time researching how many lashes someone could survive and how long it would take them to heal. The best source I could get was from a website on naval history, where flogging with a cat o'nine tails whip was an extremely harsh punishment. In the 18th century, the law limited the number of lashes that could be dealt in one session to twelve, but in practice criminals could be sentenced to as many as 500 lashes as punishment, maybe even more. Today in some countries, floggings are still dealt as punishment and other sources I've read say that a person can take up to 50 lashes at once. I attribute that to a different whip and/or flogging method, and because I couldn't find a lot more information about that I stuck with the naval source ( /2012/06/29/this-is-gonna-hurt-military-punishment-throughout-the-ages/ ). My reasoning is that the punishment couldn't have been too harsh, given that the characters needed to recover in time for the next mission and that the crime was relatively small and also punished with solitary confinement. I think it's fairly realistic given the other punishments we've seen in the canon.