Author's Note: One year later and I finally update the chapter I wanted to. I guess this is a sign of hope for all my ongoing fics! Ah. It's already October 14 here, so.
This is Levi's counterpart, with more original content than the previous chapter.
Disclaimer: Do not own Shingeki no Kyojin
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Everything went how it was supposed to. He knew that being captured had its associated and inevitable annoyance, but Levi wasn't the slightest bit resigned or satisfied with the outcome.
Erwin Smith.
Son of a bitch. Levi would make him hurt. Lobov wanted the documents, and supposedly it would be but to do it "quickly and quietly, in some guise on the right opportunity". Farlan's words, as if he didn't know. They'd study routines, layouts, most likely places to hide the documents and find the best circumstances to finish the man.
Qiuckly and quiet or not, the blond bastard would hurt.
"Will you hurry up already?" the MP complained loudly. He had retorted everything: the order for them to be uncuffed; their escort being reduced just to five; Levi's demand to wash the sewer water over him that was making his skin crawl and reducing his breaths to short hisses.
He still had that disgusting taste in his mouth, but he knew he wouldn't be washing it down anytime soon. Levi splashed a last handful of water to his hair, feeling the drops fall over the cut on his forehead and the bruise throbbing on his cheek. He cleaned the cut as best as he could. It wasn't like it was too deep, but that wasn't the issue. His shoulders were stinging just as uncomfortably, thanks to all the awkward and forced pulls the mustache-fucker had graced upon him. He was ignoring the throbbing sting on his scalp by now.
A small list of annoyances.
He dried his face on a small portion of his shirt that wasn't muddy, twisting the fabric around his waist to find a clean spot. He just wished he had a towel he could throw at the complaining MP and see his stupid face bloat in offence.
Levi might as well have actually done it, because the glare he shot at the MP seemed to strike a nerve just the same, and the man snarled to defend his shitty honor, walking up to Levi.
Plan be damned, he just wanted to punch someone.
"Are you done?" The titan-sized fucker intervined instead, watching the scene unfold from his end and correctly guessing where this was going Levi shot him an even more poisonous glare, which met no reaction whatsoever.
"These thugs should be handcuffed. Chained and leashed," the MP complained for everyone to hear. "You people from above ground don't know how to deal with these gutter rats."
"Seeing as we're the ones that got them, I think we'll manage."
The MP might as well have been struck by the titan-sized fucker too. Levi raised an eyebrow slightly.
"They'd kill us given the smallest chance," the MP spat, and wasn't that far off the mark indeed. Levi was quickly scanning the man's equipment to find the smallest sharp object he could use as a weapon and assessing how fast he could get the giant with it. But yes, the plan. Opportunities and whatnot. Some targets were more pressing than others.
"They're Survey Corps. They're to be treated as such," the fucker replied simply. He had been the one to authorize Levi to wash, implying the smell was affecting him more than it was bothering Levi. But of course they weren't stupid. Farlan and Isabel were outside the MPs cabinet, with their own escorts from that Survey squad that cornered them earlier, and Levi had this titan fucker to keep him under his watch.
The MPs that hadn't witnessed the capture - which was all of them, but some were already gossiping like it was the greatest thing ever - felt more secure by seeing a man like that escorting a criminal like Levi. The sheer size difference assured them they wouldn't be met with some 'gutter rat' maneuver. It wasn't like an underfed thug that size could beat a soldier twice his built.
Levi snarled internally at the thought. The MPs hadn't seen the fight. Levi could have killed, or at the very least severely injured the titan-sized fucker, had not a second person intervened. Two against one at the end of the score. Says a lot about their methods and about their opinion on Levi's strength.
That fucker Smith.
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The three of them weren't allowed to speak to each other on their way up the stairs. Not that Isabel hadn't tried, but one of the Survey Corps soldiers threatened to separate the group and take Isabel on an escort later. That drove a few yells out of the girl before Farlan and Levi calmed her down and told her to obey.
The Smith fucker wasn't with them. Supposedly he had moved ahead to talk with the MPs or deal with some other military burocratic shit Levi wasn't interested in. Whatever it was, their group seemed to be clear in all the control checkpoints they passed by, all those barries to keep people locked underground now clearing up so effortlessly for them to pass.
He blocked all the snarls and barks the MPs threw at them, as he ignored most of the realization that this might be the last time he saw the Underground and everything he had known. Maybe Farlan had some of those thoughts. Isabel didn't seem one to wander on it too long.
Levi, he didn't bother to think. It was an accomplishment he had gained with too much hard work - he didn't really have to acknowledge something that was already there pretty much since he could remember. 'I'm never gonna return to this shithole. So there's no way Erwin Smith will stay alive.'
After the last control point, they turned on a couple of corridors and saw the familiar quivering light from the torches on the wall start to be replaced and washed by a stranger, lighter and whiter glow that pierced through an entrance further ahead. Levi turned his eyes to Isabel, who had paced a bit faster, recognizing the distinct type of light. She was the first to turn the corner to the last row of steps and he saw as she moved her hands in reflex to protect her eyes.
Levi was suddenly grateful they weren't handcuffed for a whole different number of reasons. He knew it would be bright, but it was different from when the three of them visited the crevice where the sky peeked to the Underground. He couldn't lift his eyes from the stairs more than a couple of seconds, even with his eyes squinted and his hand shielding his face. The top of the staircase was just a white blur, with some shapes of what he assumed would be buildings and houses being swallowed by the light. There should be blue up there, but he could hardly see it. There were no cavern walls to block the light there, it was just... open.
"Step to," one of the Survey Corps escorts said, clever enough to not shove him and put their arm within reach. "You'll get used to the light soon enough."
"Actually, it's pretty normal. And may take a while," the mustached fucker said, out of nowhere. Levi couldn't and didn't want to bother turn his head up to look at him, but he knew the man was now addressing him. "You. You've like what, turned 20? Even if you've seen sunlight before, it's definitely not like it'll be from now on."
After almost three decades, Levi was finally out of the Underground.
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It wasn't long before he saw the Wall. They were told they'd be moved to the HQ in Sina (So that was Wall Sina) and wait there. So although not immediately and not as literally as the Undeground walls, that Wall blocked the sun and sky in its own way.
Levi had never seen something so big - it was hard to try to see the top, with the sun blinding him. Those houses he could spot closer to the base of the Wall would probably have an almost similar experience to what it was to live with sunlight blocked. It was hard to imagine something bigger than that bigass wall. As tall as the titans might be, they couldn't surpass that. A breach, however, seemed somehow more plausible, even though he didn't know how thick that thing was supposed to be. If it was possible, then this whole place would just turn into an open-sky shithole of its own - people couldn't run anywhere, except underground.
He had enough time for another musing: what was beyond that? There were three Walls, yeah, but after that last one? Titan wasteland? What would that look like? The only thing he could guess, while in the process of seeing all the new things above ground, was that that wasteland would have no boundaries on the sky - no more walls.
Well, he'd find out soon enough.
All those thoughts, however, soon stopped to distract him when the straining increased. He tried to focus back on them, but it grew increasingly harder as the weight on his head turned into dizziness. Levi was fully aware of how his body wavered, the lightheadedness starting to claw nausea into him. It wasn't too hot, there was even a soft breeze that the damn dizziness wasn't allowing him to enjoy. But Levi felt warm and touching his scalp proved he was burning - it wasn't his hands that were hot, it was his skull. He didn't have a fever, that much he knew, or thought he did, but it was obvious he wasn't alright.
"We shouldn't be in the sun," he said simply. It had to be that.
"I'm glad you said it," Farlan's voice was dragged. Levi turned to him and immediately regretted it - the world just spinned sickly around him. "I was afraid to open my mouth and puke."
The possibility of being seen by a military doctor - or any doctor - didn't please him before, but even less so now. There wasn't that much of a shade on the courtyard they were told to wait in; the titan-sized fucker did warn them about it when he moved ahead of them. His escort wasn't as necessary when the three of them were unarmed in the middle of a fucking military HQ.
"Big brother... I'm not feeling well either," Isabel said quietly. "If we're all sick..."
"It's the sun," he repeated, but it didn't really solve anything. Moving would. "We need to get out of the sun."
Farlan wavered, covering his mouth and eyes shut tight in pain.
"Seriously, I'm gonna be sick."
"Is everything alright?"
Levi didn't turn this time, but he should have. The voice belonged to a newcomer, and he knew just whom. Why was he even there?
"Why are you standing in the sun? Are you feeling alright?"
Farlan tried to reply, but ended up deciding against it, too afraid to move and shake his head past a breaking point.
"We were told to wait," Isabel tried instead, and when Smith turned to her, a grimace grew on her face. That was when Levi saw she was bleeding, her face marbled by thick red trails coming from her nose, and his heart skipped a beat.
"Isabel," he stepped to her, and his body failed under him. Smith's huge hands held him up, forcing him to face the man.
"You're bleeding too."
"What?" By reflex, Levi raised his hand to his face. It returned red, and suddenly he realized he could feel the blood dripping over his lips.
"You need to go to a doctor."
"Get the fuck off me," he snarled at Smith, but was ignored. Trying to move his head up wavered the whole fucking courtyard around him, and the man tighened his grip around his arm to hold him straight before he could collapse to his knees.
Smith ended up doing as he was told when Isabel bent over and puked. The man picked her up like a ragdoll on his arms and shouted a command to someone neither of them could see, the sound of his voice making Levi shudder. He wasn't expecting the sun to literally make them sick. It was bad enough for him to not properly shove off the cadet shithead that clasped onto him and made him move.
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"Heat stroke?"
"Something of the sort. It's not nearly the temperature for it nor did they spend the normal amount of time under the typical conditions, but we're not talking about normal citizens here. Their bodies are reacting how they would under a long sun exposition."
"We were for a while..." Isabel tried before the doctor signaled the sickly sweet tea again and more or less raised the cup to her mouth to not allow room for question.
"Any while would be too much. Direct sunlight exposition under these conditions will raise your body temperature too much, specially on your head. Nausea, vertigo and dizziness, strong headaches, loss of conciousnesss. Nosebleed is already a bad sign, and in your case, it also resulted in vomiting."
"So what are we supposed to do?"
"I can't say this in other simpler words. Your bodies are not used to sunlight."
"Yeah, we got it already. Lack of sun doesn't make us deaf," Levi spat back, eyeing the two militarymen. The doctor was in his work place, but the Smith fucker was meddling. He was just standing there. Why the fuck would he be standing there like a giant stupid nurse? "You're not our escort here."
Smith looked at Levi without replying, and simply kept ignoring his words.
"Are they stable then?"
"Their temperature's normal already. The dizziness may remain for a while longer. When was the last time you've ate?"
Farlan was holding the cloth to his nose, stanching the mild bleeding and looking at both men with a desoriented expression. He exchanged looks with Levi.
"What the hell is that suppose to mean?" He knew very well, but his dizziness could excuse the stupid question.
"Weakness together with heat stroke is recipe for disaster. Here," the doctor didn't stall longer for an answer and just picked a supply of sugar bread he probably had for similar situations, stuffing one on each of their hands. "Eat. You, girl, can't eat the whole thing or your stomach will turn. You'll have a stabler diet here, and that will help. You need to keep in mind, you have to get used to sunlight boiling your brain."
The doctor at least was one to go straight to the point without stalling with stupid word play.
"While you're here, I best get all your vitals properly noted." He really didn't stall. Although all he did was pick a clipboard and turn in his direction, Levi took an immediate step back. Something that did catch both militarymen's attention. "This is normal procedure, and only for your benefit. You already dodged me checking for your damn nosebleed. It's in everyone's interest if you're properly attended rather than have you pass out from weakness and exhaustion midtraining."
"He fought both Mike and myself," the Smith fucker replied out of nowhere. The doctor now turned to him, eyebrows high. He didn't seem the type of man to be easily surprised, and yet those words had managed to do it.
"Fought?"
"Says a lot about his strength, seeing as it took the two of us together to halt him."
Levi glared at the man.
"I'm impressed," the doctor admitted. "You look malnourished. But all the more reason to write down your medical information. And how is your headache by now?"
"I'm fine. I don't want no doctor near me."
"That's a shame, because you are neither fine nor will I let you leave before you're completely stable. I won't know that if I don't examine you."
"We'll do it, okay?" Farlan intervened suddenly, reminding everyone that he was there as well. He was glaring at Levi, the sickly pale tone of his face enhancing the seriousness of it. "We know militarymen have to do this. But no one likes or trusts doctors where we come from."
Both men were focused on him again. It made his fucking skin crawl.
"I imagine so."
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Training would begin the next day. They had expected the soldiers (fuck he hated that word already. Military be damned) to push whatever procedures they had with new recruits after they went through that presentation earlier, but thanks to the incident in the courtyard, the doctor had apparently adviced - or prescribed in big bold letters - some adaptation time before they were to be put in the ranks like the rest.
Levi wasn't too pleased. After the day's events, he wanted little else than get 3DMG back on and slice something, even if it would make his head feel like it would roll off his shoulders.
"I'm getting better, at least," Farlan comment, stripping the brown jacket off. "Your head's better?"
"Yeah," Levi removed the jacket too and folded it tightly. His hands moved in reflex to his shirt collar and pulled them up like usual, only this time Farlan shot him a warning look.
"Don't wear them like that here. You've already made an impression at the presentation. The doctor's didn't help much either. You'll get even more eyes on us if you don't do as they say."
"My shirt collar will atract more attention than the fact we're criminals from the Underground? Sure," Levi snorted, readjusting the already perfectly-stiff collar just to make his point.
Farlan mimicked his snort and got hold of his shirt, lowering the collar to its normal place.
"Seriously, it's not that much, and it's one thing in our favor."
"I don't kiss anyone's ass, Farlan," Levi recalled, evading the other man's grasp swiftly.
"Yeah, but they're military. You have to compromise something. Like tomorrow, during the training."
That was pushing it almost as much as invading his personal space and arrange his shirt.
"If you really think I'm gonna let some prick tell me how to use 3DMG, you have another thing coming."
"We haven't fought titans yet."
"I don't plan to fight titans for long either way. "
"All the more reason to compromise and not go head to head with that Flagon guy if he-"
"They want to kill titans, they can try and learn how I do it. Otherwise they can get off my back."
"And stop eye-stabbing the Smith guy."
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In little more than 24 hours, they learned a fair bit of the upper world, or more precisely and fairly, about the Survey Crops' world. They seemed to have a dynamic of their own, and it was rather simple when you got down to it.
"While everyone else slacks off and tries to steal their share of profit, these guys just train to get themselves killed," Farlan summarized his thoughts over dinner the following night. The three of them were sitting on the further end of a table row, with enough privacy to talk and enough background noise to not be easily overheard.
"I think they aren't fully bad," Isabel said, slurping her bowl happily. "I know we've just got here, and some are stupid. And stupid using 3DMG. But most of them are cool. I was surprised with the doctor yesterday. He actually seemed to care, in a rough way, but he did. And look at all the food they gave us!"
The food part was one Levi couldn't argue with. He heard some casual complaints from the other recruits, which he guessed were commonplace regarding rations and military messroom, but he was satisfied. None of those bastards knew much about hunger.
"Yeah, but just one day in, and I can already tell these guys are deadset on their missions, and all their missions are ultimate suicides. I don't want to kill myself with a titan's help," Farlan whispered. "They probably don't have time to think on much else. I bet they don't even get laid."
"It's not like we have that much diversion Underground, Farlan," Isabel noted, frowning. "We have to worry about getting food and money every day. They focus on their missions to save humanity or whatever it is. It's not that different if you think about it."
"She's not wrong," Levi agreed before Farlan could argue, eating two spoonful of his soup. He hadn't tasted one so consistent in a long time.
"I... well, either way," Farlan continued, brushing the lack of support aside with a casual wave, but Isabel hadn't finish.
"Though I can't really imagine someone like that mustache giant getting laid."
Farlan choked on something, while Levi reacted a bit more gracefully for once.
"Isabel!"
"What? You're the one that brought it up!"
Again, she wasn't wrong.
The comment hadn't been as random as it appeared to. The guy in question was walking towards the tables holding a mess kit, passing by a parallel row and stopping at a table a few meters ahead from theirs. He was sniffing the air as he walked, like Levi caught him do several times when they were getting out of the Underground. These above ground fuckers had little else than height - they were all fucked up in the head.
"As I was saying," Farlan's voice brought him back. "What I really meant to say if that they are vastly unprepared and I wouldn't want to be here long if I chose to."
"In a week's time we start?"
"I'll start to know the layout," Farlan replied, his words muffled as he pretended to drink water. "I'll know the place soon."
"The routines seem rather simple too."
"One thing we just can't forget is to lay low and, like I said, be nice," Farlan added to Levi.
Isabel saved him from replying to Farlan, "We're better than many of the people they have here. We can do this, easy. And they'll take us out on their next expedition out the walls. I want to see it out there."
"I want to see the sky out there," Levi said, thinking back on the Wall and what he was trying to imagine before the sun had driven his head into sickening vertigo.
"Good evening."
Levi's thoughts got interrupted. He begrundgingly looked up, his face unable to mask his annoyance, even less so when he confirmed it was the Smith fucker.
"Good evening," Farlan replied, cautious. They hadn't been overheard, but they had no reason to act all friendly and happy for being here - not even Farlan, even if he elected to play a role.
"How are you all feeling?" Smith asked, looking at all of them, but like during the Underground heist, focused on Levi and taking him as the spokesman of the group: Levi, who had only told him his name after the two fuckers made their point in proving they were military and could do whatever the fuck they wanted to - smart one, that Smith.
Had the soup not been this good, Levi wouldn't have fought the urge to spit.
"You go ask every new guy here how they're feeling?"
Farlan shot him an immediate warning look, but the Smith fucker didn't seem fazed.
"Not every new guy here enters hyperthermia after thirty minutes under the sun."
The tone forced Levi to look up again, the glare too clear and enhanced to be mistaken as his normal expression.
"We're not weak," Isabel replied instead, before Levi could lose his inner battle and expressing the least amount of rage between the two.
"That was not my point. I'm sorry. That could not be more different from my opinion of you three." Again, he spoke to all of them before averting back to the same spokesperson. "It should have been common sense not to leave you under those conditions right after getting out of the Underground. But I imagine few even bother to think how it must be to live without direct sunlight for years, under the circumstances you have."
And he thought about it?
"It's impressive to say the least. You've started training this afternoon?"
"We're all feeling well. Better, at least. It's all a matter of adapting."
"Your physical resistence is praise worthy. I truly admire your skill. Adding to your background and the fact you have to adapt to sunlight at the same time, it's remarkable. Benefits of youth you really have to seize. If I may ask, you're in your twenties? Less, perhaps?"
Twice in two days was twice too fucking many. He was addressing the three of them again, and he might be right on Isabel's case, but the whole subject of conversation just made Levi scoff, and no glare from Farlan could stop that.
"Yeah, keep guessing."
Isabel looked at him too, joining that not-too-subtle group of stares. To anyone in the Underground, that reply was a very clear sign to back the fuck down. To Smith, he only seemed amused. Those questions would make one wonder how much Smith dued to intelligence, but Levi saw through him on the Underground - stupid was the last adjective to use on this man. Why act so interested, as if they had joined voluntarily, or at least under a normal recruitement? They were captured. Without knowing the whole picture, that much was enough for the blond fucker to know they didn't want to bothered.
Or if it was all a trick, and he just wanted to wind them up. Was the fucker playing with them?
"I'll take it you aren't as young as you seem, then."
"Appearances deceive."
"Not all of them."
Levi glared at the man, again. Smith wasn't smiling, but the tone was so joyful, he might as well be.
"Let's see if you don't get disappointed."
"I highly doubt it."
He'd see if he got disappointed when Levi ripped his fucking throat out. And they still had time for some inventive additions before that.
Before any of them could say the blond fucker was pestering (apparently Levi would have to be the one to state the fucking obvious), the man spoke:
"I apologize for interrupting your dinner. See you tomorrow." And this time the fucker was smiling.
He carried on without any other word, joining the other titan guy on the table some rows ahead. To his credit, the titan-guy's forehead was frowned with apprehension.
After he made sure the Smith fucker was fully installed on his table, Levi returned his gaze and attention back to his own table and to Farlan.
"Satisfied?"
Farlan barely gaped, just mumbled and let out an exasperated sigh.
"Can you just try to keep us all alive for like a month? Don't push our luck more than we already do and just try to make it so less damn obvious you want to rip the guy's throat!"
Well, apparently is was obvious. He'd work on that.
"There's a lot of ways to do it. I'll keep thinking then."
"That's not the issue, don't play coy with me."
"You'll have your chance, big brother," Isabel supported, her voice low. "But we've seen how he is. Try not to give him reason to suspect you. I don't want to see him hurt you again."
Levi stared at the man's back. No, indeed she wouldn't see it again.
"That won't happen."
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You deserved more, but at least you're finally resting. Is that what this is about?
Did you plan this decision too, or did you really leave this on my hands?
It was always a choice, choices we hoped we didn't regret later.
I'm not so sure who is the one I won't forgive.
Because it was our choice.
Goodbye, Erwin.
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the end
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Author's Note: I've been wanting to write something on the sun affecting Underground folks. I've gotten sick returning outside after 3 days without sunlight, and get affected too often, so I could never shake the thought of how people living without direct sunlight for decades would react.
Thank you for reading, comments/feedback and corrections to English are appreciated.