Disclaimer: I do not own SnK, neither the manga nor the anime. Any parts you recognize belong to their creator. All original content is my own. I also do not own the song that was used for inspiration for this chapter: "When the Day met the Night" from Panic! At The Disco's second studio album .
When the moon fell in love with the sun
All was golden in the sky
All was golden when the day met the night
Chapter Ten: When the Day met the Night
A few years prior, the year 844…
"Maia...Maia, please, you have to go! Go!"
"I can't leave you! I won't leave you!" Thundering footsteps sound from only a few meters away.
"Don't be stupid. Everyone else is dead! You're the only one left with a horse. You have to go and warn the others, Maia. I'll stay here and...you know...do my thing."
"Anya," sobs, full gut-wrenching sobs erupt, "Anya, you'll die."
"Well," the sound of new blades being snapped into place, "then I'll die knowing I saved at least one good person."
The footsteps are right around the copse of trees, closer, closer, closer, coming so much closer.
The footsteps are right there.
Its wide smile.
Its eyes. Hungry eyes.
It reaches out a hand and opens its mouth.
Maia bolts upright in bed, chest heaving, a hand to her heart. She feels the nausea boil up inside her throat, hot and bilious. The sweat on her neck rapidly cools and sends shivers down her spine. Every nerve in her body convulses once, twice. She flops back down onto her mattress, throws an arm over her face to cover her eyes. She is breathing heavily, nearly gasping for air.
It was just a dream.
No.
A memory.
She gathers herself — tries to, anyway — and looks down, peers over the side of her bunk. Hange's foot is visible, hanging off the side of her bed. All around their shared bunk are books scattered here and there, piled high and low. Hange's notebooks are on her bed, under the sheets, under her pillow, and stacked right by her head. Her glasses sit on top, like the books are a nightstand. They really need to give her a room of her own.
Rather than wake her friend who never gets enough sleep as it is, all wound up about Titans and their biology and the science of it all, Maia decides a cup of tea is in order. Slowly, so as not to wake Hange or step on one of her many tomes and go sliding across the floor, undoubtedly ending up on her rear, she climbs off the top bunk and tiptoes to their shared wardrobe, opening up the left side. Hange's possessions are on the other side, though it too seems to have more papers and pens and lab equipment (illegally?) stuffed inside of it rather than clothes and personal items. Maia gives a soft smile to her sleeping friend whose hair seems less wild, if that is believable, while she dreams. After slipping on her boots and donning her cloak, not even bothering to change out of her sleep clothes, she makes her way out of the barracks and towards the mess hall.
The air is chillier tonight than the past few nights have been. The nip on the breeze causes Maia to hurry her steps, nearly trip over herself in her haste to get to the warmth of the canteen. She begins to regret the decision to stay in her long but thin black sleep pants and plain white linen shirt. When at last she pushes the doors open, heaves the big wooden slab with her shoulder since her hands are occupied drawing her cloak tighter around her small frame, she pauses.
Levi is sitting at a far table, alone, with a cup of tea in front of him.
It has been a few weeks since their first training on Gilbert, the colossus of a horse with an unfitting name that she had deemed the best steed for the standoffish man. Since then the two had spent a few more riding sessions together, and Maia was wholly unsurprised to find that Levi's ability to learn a skill is exceptional. Very quickly he mastered how to handle Gilbert, expertly maneuvered him, as if he had been riding all his life. Maia knows this not to be the case for no horses live in the Underground. At least, Isabel told her as much.
The horse, too, seems smitten with Levi. Gilbert obeys his every command now and willingly comes to him whenever the man asks, calling to him either verbally or by adopting Maia's clicking technique with his tongue. She has to admit she is impressed. As unfriendly as Levi is, he truly connects with the midnight colored stallion.
Maia makes her way into the mess hall, pauses only briefly in the threshold to look at the only other person in the room. She doesn't notice Levi look up from his tea, lock his eyes onto her, but once she has breezed past him, she can feel his stare. The back of her neck prickles. It is unlike when she had awoken from her nightmarish memory, drenched in her own sweat. This time the light hairs along her neck stand up above her collar, and below her cloak her spine tingles. She can't understand why, doesn't recognize this feeling that wells up inside her. Perhaps she has never felt this before; it is all new and that's why the feeling is so profound.
She is prepared for him to stay silent, to not even acknowledge her existence in the room. Why should he? His only use for her was learning how to handle Gilbert, and now that he has certainly passed that with flying colors, Maia can't imagine Levi having any interest in her at all anymore. Isabel and Furlan are his friends, his only family above ground (and maybe at all?), and obviously they are all he really needs, especially with the way he presents himself: closed off and completely uninterested.
So she nearly jumps out of her skin when his voice breaks the silence of the room.
"Thought all Scouts slept like babies each night."
Maia gives a wry smile to herself, turned away from Levi still, and busies herself by grabbing a clean mug from the table of washed dinnerware.
"Not this Scout," she replies to him before disappearing back into the kitchens. The two-way door flaps open and then closed behind her as she makes her way to where the tea leaves are stored. There are only a few canisters left as supplies are running short this season, and Maia sighs knowing that her tea will just have to be made at half strength. She really needs the pick-me-up but cannot bring herself to use more than necessary. As she spoons a meager portion of leaves into a small strainer, the double hinged doors make another sound.
"You don't seem like the nightmare type."
He will never be able to explain why he got up and walked into the kitchen this night. Levi didn't have to follow her, didn't want to follow her, but another part of him...needed to.
Why was she awake? The woman with the golden hair and a smile that reminded him of the stars he could often see in that spot in the Underground where the ground had given way to reveal the night sky, high above, so far away and unattainable. He never dreamed he would ever see them any closer.
But here are the stars. Right here. In her smile. In her eyes. And he can't shake the need to understand what has them shimmering with unshed tears on this particular night.
Why did he care? He shouldn't. Has no reason to give a single damn about this woman or any of the Scouts in this suicide regiment. Yet, here he is. Standing just a few feet away from her, looking at her cloaked back and gazing at the curling tendrils of gold falling over her shoulders.
Why is he here?
"You don't seem like the curious type."
He watches her carefully pour hot water from a kettle over her tea leaves, held safely inside of the little mesh strainer. She makes her tea with a care that he can appreciate. Still, it doesn't explain this feeling inside of him. He doesn't like it.
But he doesn't hate it.
He shrugs, "Sometimes I make an exception."
Maia turns towards him then, cradles her mug in between her palms. She hugs the warmed ceramic close to her chest, feels the steam from her tea floating up along the underside of her chin. The feeling relaxes her tense shoulders. She takes a deep breath and the aromatic smells of the tea leaves calm her shot nerves.
"I had a dream about my first squad," she reveals to him. Doesn't know why she does, but feels compelled, for some reason, to share this with Levi, the dark, brooding, and intimidating man from the Underground.
He, too, seems shocked that she willingly offered up such an explanation, especially one that undoubtedly is deep seated in pain and grief. Sure, the two had spent time alone together, tending to their horses, with Maia showing Levi all there was to know about caring for Gilbert (that goddamn name still makes his eyes itch to roll upwards) and how to hone his riding skills to perfection. Other than those moments, however, he hadn't sought her out, nor she him. Why would they look for each other? They aren't friends. Levi doesn't do friends. At least, not anymore. He has Furlan and Isabel, and that is quite enough for him.
At least, that's what he tells himself.
"I assume that didn't end well."
She pauses and then looks up at him, ignores the bored tone of his voice, "It ended," another pause, "as most things here do."
"Badly?"
"Bloody."
It's just the two of them in the kitchens. The night is quiet around them, and only the wind dares to make noise, pushes against the wood of the mess hall's walls, fills the gaps of silence with creaks and whispers of moving air. Levi shifts his weight to lean against the wall and the floorboards underneath his booted feet call out his movement. He gives Maia a moment, maybe two, before asking his question.
"Why do you stay?"
She looks at him as if she can't possibly understand why he is asking such an absurd thing. Maybe that's the truth. But her eyes are still glistening and the shadows underneath them are still casting a tired glow across her pretty face and for the absolute life of him Levi can't understand why that turns his stomach. Perhaps it is because he has seen too many lights go out in his lifetime, too much darkness creep in and settle and never leave. Perhaps it is because he has gotten a glimpse of light now in his time above ground and he has become greedy, wants more, needs more. Or perhaps it is neither of those. Or both. Who is to say? It's too late in the night, or early in the morning, to wonder about such things, in his opinion.
"When everything ends like that," he clarifies, tries not to look at her eyes that remind him of stars, "why do you stay here? With them?"
"Because it's not a them," she replies immediately, "it's an us. And I can't give up, even when it ends bloody, because I am just as much a part of all of this as you three are now. If I give up," she blows a stream of air out from between her lips and shakes her head, "then their deaths mean nothing. I watched them die, all of them. My whole squad," she quickly wipes an errant tear away and Levi has to admire her resolve, "torn to pieces right in front of my eyes. I…"
There is a long stretch of silence again. By now Maia's tea has become lukewarm and Levi's has long gone cold.
"I don't know why I was the one who survived, Levi," she whispers the confession like she has never given voice to such an admittance. He doesn't know this now, but she has never said those words to anyone. Why she is saying this now? To him? It's anyone's guess. "But I am here. I made it out of that bloodbath, that slaughter — I keep making it out alive — and I cannot give up on them. Their deaths have to mean something, they have to, Levi. Or...or I don't know what the point of all this is."
The way she says his name sends a heat through him that he knows is not from his tea, sitting cold and forgotten in the mug he holds loosely in his hand.
"I stay because of them and because of all those who are still here. My father always told me 'your heart knows you better than your mind does,' and I just…my heart says I have to stay, to be here and hope to god or the gods or the damn walls or whoever is out there or up there that one day this will all work out. I don't know what is going on with you three, exactly, Levi, but you have to know, you're all a part of us now. And it's —" she stops herself, takes a deep breath, and falls back against the counter behind her.
"Have you ever seen a person being eaten, Levi?"
He blinks, shocked, stunned. No, no he hasn't seen someone physically being eaten.
"I've seen people consumed by bad things," his voice is deep, a dark whisper, "but no, I've never seen a Titan kill someone."
"Well, when you do," and he knows he will, isn't stupid enough to think he could avoid seeing something like that now that he's here above ground, "I think you'll know why I stay."
For a moment he forgets he plans to kill Erwin Smith. He forgets he and his friends from the Underground, the only family he has left on this rotting earth, are going to leave this place soon, win their freedom back and live the rest of their lives on the surface and away from all of this death and disaster. He forgets it all because there across from him is a whole universe of hope and possibility reflected in warm, honey colored eyes. They shine brilliantly against the golden backdrop of her hair as they stare right at him. For a moment it's just the two of them in that creaky kitchen with their abandoned mugs of tea, talking about being a part of something bigger than either of them could ever imagine. For a single moment he forgets his own nightmares and why he can never sleep for more than a few hours at a time.
For a moment, one small moment that seems to span both a lifetime and only a single second at the same time, he forgets.
"Have you ever watched the sunrise?" Her question and swift change of topic catches him off guard and he has to physically shake his head to break himself free from the previous moment.
"I've seen the sun come up, yeah." Where is she going with this?
"No. I asked if you've ever watched the sunrise, not seen one."
"Tch, there's a difference?"
A wide smile breaks across her face and he knows he is no longer looking at the stars.
He is looking at the Sun.
"Yes, of course there is! Come on, follow me!" She is entirely too giddy for someone who has just relived her squad's death in a nightmare and then talked about it with someone to whom she isn't particularly close, all the while standing in an empty, dimly lit little kitchen. Nevertheless, he follows her outside, watches her shiver once and then draw her cloak more tightly around herself.
Maia leads him to the pastures and when she turns towards him, the wind pushes her cloak open. Levi pauses, has to force himself to look away. Her shirt. Her shirt is white, a thin linen material. And the air...the air is cold; a chill drifts along the early morning breeze. And her shirt is open. And it's white. And the air is cold.
He clears his throat. If Maia notices anything, she doesn't say anything. Levi sighs in relief and simultaneous disappointment when she draws her cloak tightly around herself. He ignores the feeling rising in his gut and the other one rising even lower. There is no time for that shit. He may have forgotten, just for a second, what his and Isabel's and Furlan's plans are, but he remembers now. There is no room for frivolous things like...whatever the fuck this feeling is.
"Look," she says simply, turning from him and staring out into the open expanse of pasture before them.
The pair are standing on a small hill, a little crest of grass a few meters farther than the stables are from the barracks and mess hall. There is a small tree up on that hill, its leaves still clinging to old branches. Far across the pasture, on a deep blue backdrop, tones of gold, yellow, orange, burning flames paint the sky. The two of them stand there silently, watching the colors erupt across the blank, early morning canvas. Pinks and reds and blush tones and vibrant, bright splashes of sunrise fill their view.
Levi has to admit, it is beautiful. Even he can appreciate something as radiant as this.
It's hard to believe that there are man-eating monsters waking up to that same sunrise.
"Every time I think about the fact that I survived," she begins in a whisper, "and that all of my friends, my squadmates, my comrades didn't...I try to think of this." Maia extends a hand out and gestures to the rising sun and painted backsplash of sky behind it. "All of these colors, and this beauty," she sighs, a breathy noise, "wow." She shakes her head, her hair tumbles down her chest, " There are so many bad things that happen in this world, Levi. So many. But this? Right here? This happens every single day, no matter what. The sun always rises."
She turns to him then, and he feels a lump lodge itself firmly in his throat. His breath catches; he nearly chokes. Why the fuck did he follow her out here?
"So we must too."
The sun behind Maia, slowly creeping its way up in the sky, sets her hair aflame. Golden, shining tresses disheveled from sleep gently curl this way and that. Pure, spun gold flowing in tendrils down her shoulders, her back, her chest. The sun illuminates the air around her head, gives her an otherworldly glow. A halo of light frames her, glows around her like she is a celestial being to which all the light around her is desperate to cling.
He thinks of all the times he and Isabel and Furlan sat in their spot in the Underground. The place where the ground above had given way to the stars and the night sky way up high. How they would go there in the dead of night just to try to see those tiny white pinpricks glowing so far out of their reach. He thought of how Isabel always said how beautiful they were, how she would do anything just to be able to see them even a little bit closer.
Levi blinks. Stares at the radiance in front of him.
If he had known that this, that she was out here, above the ground, up on the surface? He would have clawed his way out of the Underground all on his own. Would have gripped the earth so hard with his fingers so that all of the dirt and grime and filth of the city below it would be forever embedded into his fingernails, not giving a single damn about cleanliness, if only he could climb out faster, faster, faster, just to see this. The sun rising behind her, throwing her face into a spectacle of warmth and splendor more beautiful than anything he had ever dreamed up on his own down in the dark. The feeling hits him out of nowhere. The desperation to be both closer and a thousand miles away all at the same time, and it slams into him as if the ground of their spot — his, Isabel's, and Furlan's little spot — had collapsed in on him and covered him with darkness and rot. Clogged his nostrils. Filled his lungs. Stole his breath.
If he got closer...just an inch...just a breath.
Suddenly, he gasps. The trance ends.
If he gets any closer, he will never go through with his plan.
Because how could he get to feel warmth, hold it in his hands, in his arms, and then willingly push it away?
He couldn't.
Levi has known only cold, only darkness, his entire life. Dim lights, muted colors. The sounds of screams and cries. The feeling of deceit, the ever present fear for his own safety. They were all he had in the Underground until those two showed up and became the family he needed.
And now he has seen the light, the radiance of a sunrise, and the warmth of the woman standing in front of him with the smile that used to look like the stars but now undeniably resembles the blazing sun, bold and firm and gleaming.
He's not stupid enough to think that he can have that too. Not after everything he has done. After everything he plans to do.
He takes a step back.
Maia watches him through her honey colored eyes. The sun has risen higher now, just a little, and its rays shoot over her head and beam down onto Levi. The angles of his face are softened by the beams of light. His edges, all of his striking, sharp edges are smoothed over. The brightness of the coming day starts to creep along his face, turning his normally grey eyes a startling blue. Crisp, cool, clear cobalt stares back at her. For a moment, she is left breathless as the morning wind blows his bangs gently across his forehead, rustles his cloak ever so slightly, causes him to wrinkle his nose a fraction.
She came out here to show him the sunrise, but now she finds herself drawn to the shadows. For that is what he is. A shadow, dark and mysterious, but strangely comforting. Always there when you think you're alone (or trying to get tea in the early morning after a nightmare). He moves in stealth and carries himself with such a liquid grace that Maia thinks maybe the fluid darkness of the Underground came up here with him, allows him to maneuver so effortlessly, fly through the air with such poise and perfection that one would think he wasn't corporeal. He is like the night. Calm, quiet, but deadly.
He is the night.
And she is the day.
She sees him take a step back, so subtle, so small, but she notices all the same. Levi may be as dark and mysterious as a shadow, but he is fleeting like one too, able to disappear whenever he chooses, whenever he needs. Something in him obviously wants him to run, to escape her presence. She can sense it the way she can sense when something has disturbed one of the horses. The nearly imperceptible step back, the slight widening of the eyes, the flare of the nostrils.
Perhaps the same thing that has spooked him is what has her heart racing in her chest.
"I usually watch this alone," she finds her voice, and when it filters into his ears, it is smooth and soft and gentle, "but it was nice to share it with someone."
She tries to keep him there for just a moment longer. She'll say anything to keep him there a little bit longer. Maybe she'll be able to commit every inch, every plane of his face in the relief of the sun into her memory. When will she see him like this again? Maybe never. Better to imprint this image in her mind, bottle up this feeling deep in her heart, than to let it slip away like the wispy silhouette of a shadow when it creeps around a corner and disappears forever.
In these few, precious moments on that little crest of a hill, on that grassy knoll a few meters farther from the stables and the barracks, Maia sees Levi, really sees Levi.
And he is breathtaking.
Levi clenches his fists, lets them go, clenches them again. His heart hammers in his chest. He has to get out of here. He has to escape these feelings because he doesn't want them. He needs to hate everybody in this doomed regiment. He has to abhor them, has to want to never see them again. He can't have any of their faces permanently ingrained in his brain until the end of time.
But he knows.
He already goddamn knows.
Every time he closes his eyes. As his mind sifts through gory images of his past, the Underground, starvation, Kenny, his crimes, his victims' faces, it will always land on her. He knows this now, and that knowledge settles into his bones like a vise grip. Maia. Standing there on that hill, the sun behind her, hair glowing like gold, eyes shining like liquid amber. Warmth personified.
He has seen the Sun.
And now he can never unsee it.
"If you watch this alone," he looks anywhere but at her, "why did you bring me here?"
His eyes dart all around the clearing.
He looks anywhere but at her.
Maia clears her throat. A sly smile passes across her lips.
She shrugs, "Sometimes I make an exception."
Levi makes the mistake then. He turns his head, hears his own words from earlier repeated back to him on a honey sweet voice. His eyes lock onto hers, those warm, inviting eyes that she has, and that feeling, that stupid fucking feeling wells up so quickly inside of him that it takes everything in him not to grab her and run. Run to Isabel and Furlan and take them all with him and say fuck it to the plan to kill Erwin, get those papers and murder their way to freedom. Fuck it to doing anybody else's dirty work ever again.
But Levi isn't an idiot.
People up here, those people who employed them, that man, they are no different than the people in the Underground. They're worse, even. They've seen the light, the warmth, the sun. And yet they still choose to do awful things, to contract out people from the slums under the earth to carry out their heinous acts. People like that? People like that man? They would never stop hunting them if they ran now. Levi knows this. He knows it with everything in him.
They would never be free.
And he would be damned if he dragged the whole fucking Sun down with him.
He couldn't do it. Snuff out her light, her warmth, her radiance.
"Yeah," he huffs out, takes everything left in him at that point and steels his face, his eyes, his body, "well," he clenches his jaw, unclenches it, breaks his own heart that he just realized can beat for something other than survival, "I'm not your exception."
He turns his back on the Sun, and the ball of fire rising in the sky behind him. Feels the cool morning air whip him in the face. He is the night. She is the day.
They meet for only a moment. Just a brief moment when the darkness of the night gives way to the brightness of the day.
And then they part.
He is halfway to the stables when he hears her voice float down to him.
"Yes, Levi," and she believes it, "you are."
And he believes it too.
When the moon fell in love with the sun
All was golden in the sky
All was golden when the day met the night
A/N: Hello! I am back. Thank you for being patient. I love this story and I love you all. I am truly grateful and indebted to everyone who has reviewed, favorited, and/or followed this story. You are all a dream.
Action is on its way for next chapter! As well as another dose of sexual and romantic tension obviouslyyyyy. All the feels. Thank you again for sticking around. I am so humbled and warmed by your support.
Stay tuned xx.