The World I Know
Chapter 3

Trust

Sawyer's room was…a contained mess, to say the least.

Levi was still searching to find the right words. The whole debacle in front of him left him ambivalent at best.

Books and papers littered the floor in piles. Some books were still open while others were closed and tossed aside like she'd completely forgotten they even existed in the first place. There was absolutely no order to her madness, it seemed. In one corner, there was an empirical atlas on titan anatomy that was issued to anyone who opted to join the military academy. Underneath that atlas was a research paper on the human genome. Nothing was associated with one another and out of the corner of his eye, Levi even found a children's novel with a poor pauper boy on the cover. The book caught his gaze for no more than a moment because a certain twinkling sitting on Sawyer's cabinets immediately distracted him from perusing thoroughly through her books.

There were all sorts of trinkets sitting atop her dresser. Some were poorly made paper cranes (truly awful attempts at origami), wrinkled in all the wrong corners; some other trinkets were more elaborate, like the crushed flowers pasted against a piece of pastel blue paper and frozen in a poorly made wooden picture frame, or the bracelet bedazzled with cheap stick-on jewels, or even a small wooden box with a carving of the Survey Corps' emblem on top.

All of the trinkets sat next to a picture, or more so a portrait of a young boy who looked like he was no more than eight years old. He had Sawyer's fine auburn-red hair, her gray eyes and two missing front teeth. He had on a pair of shoddy looking overalls, coupled with a paperboy's cap that looked like it came from the city. The overalls and the cap were two separate juxtapositions, which probably meant he was from Sawyer's village in the north—the hat was most likely a gift during Sawyer's visit, a little something she could bring back from the city for him.

From what Levi could surmise, the boy was probably Sawyer's younger brother; he was probably the one who made her all the trinkets sitting on her dresser.

All in all, it took Levi only a moment to finish looking over her room. Without saying much, he bent down and began picking up her books.

He had a slightly cartoony way of going about this. Sawyer couldn't tell if it was the alcohol talking or the simple fact that Levi managed to suddenly have a bandana tied around his head, and a pair of rubber cleaning gloves on his hands, items all pulled from thin air. Despite having just resigned from her job, she couldn't help but raise an eyebrow in mild confusion at him instead of remembering to be angry with him. There could've been an abundance of things for him to explain to her, but Levi decided to clean up instead. Sawyer was in disbelief.

"So you won't tell me anything," she began, unable to hide the hint of skepticism in her tone, "but you'll clean my room."

"You live in a pigsty," was Levi's curt reply, "it's an eyesore."

What he said wasn't a complete lie but it wasn't the truth either. Aside from the trinkets on Sawyer's dresser and aside from all the books and papers strewn on the floor, she didn't have many other belongings at her disposal. Unlike most people, it seemed Sawyer didn't want to make herself at home in the barracks. Ultimately, it made sense for a girl who was so adamant about living her life in the northern village. What I wouldn't give to go back—she'd said to him. Levi wanted to scoff at the very notion but he slowly came to the understanding that for her, a return back home was a familial matter, rather than a personal vendetta against the city.

He paused.

"Don't trust Suedaïyah," he stated suddenly.

It occurred to Sawyer that her resignation might have had something to do with the attending doctor in charge of her that wanted to keep Eren at his disposal for further monitoring. Although Docotr Suedaïyah was a reticent man, he also came off as indifferent and impassive. There wasn't much he ever said aloud, and there never seemed to be much to keep his interest at the hospital, not even with the abundance of open wounds that came in through the emergency room. Naturally, it came as a bit of a shock that she should be so cautious of a man who looked like he didn't give half a damn about any of the events taking place around him.

But even though Sawyer had been working under him for over a year, she knew almost nothing about him. It was a rather horrifying conclusion she was coming to.

She half-expected Levi to elaborate, but the brooding looking captain simply picked up another book off her floor.

"Seriously? That's all you're going to tell me?" Sawyer asked, still in disbelief, "Don't screw with me. If that's really all you have, then I'm going to march right back to the hospital and ask for my job back."

"Not that they would give it to you anyway," Levi replied indifferently, "more likely, you'll spend the rest of your year locked up in interrogated. And tortured."

Levi reached for the messy stacks of paper littered over her floor; there seemed to be a slight uncomfortable silence in the air. Sawyer stared at him with her eyes narrowed, trying to focus on the words that just came out of his mouth, unable to completely process the notion that she could be locked up and maybe even physically mutilated all for discharging Eren against medical advice.

"And after the year ends?" She asked.

"What?"

"You said I'll spend the rest of the year locked up. What happens after the year is over?" Sawyer felt like she already knew the answer to this.

"You'll probably be dead," was Levi's stoic reply.

She cocked her head to the side, her temple making contact with the wooden frame of the doorway with a hard clunk. She shut her eyes tightly and sighed, "Why do you men always ruin other people's lives? And why do you have to be so ambiguous about everything at the same time? Ugh."

"Use your brain for a moment," he commanded, ruffling the papers upright. He pushed himself up, using his knee as leverage to stand up, "up until five years ago, all of Suedaïyah's work was in research. On titans. Ask yourself why he would suddenly close up that practice with their reappearance. Wouldn't a researcher labor harder with more physical samples at his disposal?"

It was difficult for Sawyer to wrap her mind around this notion. Using her brain wasn't exactly an easy thing at the moment because she could still feel herself under the influence of a mild drunken haze. So she reached for a free wooden chair and steadied herself slowly down near her distressed looking dresser. She pressed her chin against the back of the chair and tried to edge out the dizziness and nausea that made it difficult for her to piece two and two together.

"Suedaïyah wasn't the only one who did research. I did research too—" Sawyer started, but was cut off abruptly.

"—this isn't some kind of a dick-measuring contest," Levi snapped, rolling his eyes at the sheer stupidity of the redhead sitting in front of him, "if Suedaïyah dedicated his life to titan research for thirty years, why would he stop the moment the titans broke through Wall Rose?"

"This is a stretch," said Sawyer, "try to give him the benefit of the doubt. You're ruling out the fact that he could've been traumatized by all the chaos in the city. Maybe he just didn't look at the titans in the same way. Maybe that's why he dropped his research. I don't know. I'd like to believe in the best of people."

"The best in people?" Levi scoffed, "Don't you have a brain? Aren't you a doctor?"

He slammed one of her books shut, "If he were so traumatized by the arrival of the titans, which I suspect he wasn't, why wouldn't he quit his research the year the titans broke through Wall Maria? Why Wall Rose? Why the second wall? Try to think about what happened that day."

Some silence filled the air. Slowly, and not all at once, the pieces began to click inside Sawyer's head.

When Wall Rose was breached, it was rumored that there was a titan who decided to take out a dozen or so other titans before collapsing from sheer exhaustion. It was a complete anomaly that a titan was defending human beings from its own kind. Some of the numbers were exaggerated to the hundreds but Sawyer surmised that it must have been a considerable amount of titans for the townspeople to talk about it for days on end. Most of the stories ended up being hearsay so even she didn't believe it for a while; too many things were lost in translation and part of Sawyer was convinced that the whole thing was a fable constructed from nothing, or at least a rumor that went too far.

But she was beginning to understand that it wasn't simply a fable. Everything seemed to lead back to one thing: Eren.

If he was the titan that famously blocked Wall Rose after it was breached, was he also the titan that killed the other titans?

It suddenly occurred to her that Suedaïyah wanted Eren. Needed Eren. Although she didn't have all the pieces, she surmised that he must've submitted a research request from the city council, only to be rejected at the last minute during the council meeting. It was common knowledge that Eren was taken in by the Survey Corps, away from the research laboratories. Without Eren, Suedaïyah probably quit his research altogether and waited in the hospital where he knew Eren would eventually be admitted into (one way or another).

Eren.

"Do you ever feel like you might not even be the main character of your own life?" Sawyer asked quietly.

Levi snapped another one of her books shut and placed it on her nightstand, "I'd tell you to reign in your own ego but," and here, he met her gaze; a look of understanding formed on his face that she'd almost missed completely, "I do."

Sawyer hesitated for briefly a moment and stared up at Levi blankly from where she was sitting in her chair. She was unsure if she registered what he said correctly. Although it would be strange to bring it up, this would probably be the first and last time the agreed on anything of personal significance. Levi seemed to also register this fact because he turned away from her almost immediately, picking up another one of her open books lying on the ground.

Seeing that this was the atlas on titan anatomy, Levi decided to dog-ear the corner of the page to save her the trouble of looking for her place later on.

Seeing this complete and utter atrocity take place in front of her, a tick mark formed on the side of Sawyer's head, "Don't. Do. That."

"I'm saving your page for you," was his nonchalant reply, unaware of the look on Sawyer's face that read pure irritation and anger, "be grateful I even bothered."

"You better drop that book right now," said Sawyer slowly, but adamantly, "unless you want to be in a world of pain."

"A world of pain? What a joke," Levi deadpanned right back without missing a beat.

A crackle of electricity shot between their eyes.

"Hm. You're still drunk," he stated, "it wouldn't be a fair fight either way."

"So what," was Sawyer's reply, without hesitating, "in the morning, I'll be sober but you'll still be…you."

"If you spent more time actually practicing medicine instead of working on your comebacks, maybe you'd be a better doctor," Levi stated calmly.

"Well, now I won't be able to. I'm jobless," her gaze sharpened angrily and she turned her attention to the trinkets sitting on her dresser.

There was a pause. Levi glazed over the quip about his personality because he generally took those kinds of insults with a grain of salt. Besides, it occurred to him somewhere that he was the reason why she lost her job. If he hadn't asked her to discharge Eren, then she would still be working in the hospital. She would still be in the comforts of making a stable living. In the end, she simply got caught in the line of crossfire. And he was the reason why she was even within range of being shot at all.

He hadn't even thought it through, really. He was ruining this girl's life; and she was just a single domino in the end.

"So why did you do it," his question came off as more of a statement, "why did you quit your job?"

She couldn't put the pieces together at the time—she didn't know about Suedaïyah's ulterior motives. And yet, she put the pride aside and decided to resign in the face of uncertainty despite everything Levi was forcing upon her.

Sometimes, beyond the rank and badge, Levi wondered what it was about people that held him to this mantel of leadership. Sometimes, he wondered what he did to earn their respect and trust beyond just being good at his job. Without the Survey Corps, he'd probably still be some punk ass loser living in the dumps, being angry at the world for giving him these circumstances beyond his control; he'd probably still be a reckless little shit trying to prove himself without ever really making pace with his bull-in-china-shop crap attitude.

"You told me to trust you," Sawyer half shrugged, shifting her gaze away, "whatever. It's…whatever. I don't know," she took a deep breath and looked like she wanted to say something more; but instead, she just sighed and finished with an uncertain, "I really don't know."

Levi watched her from the corner of his eye. He could've chalked it up to her lack of motor skills in her drunken state. He could've even chalked it up to her distaste for him after resigning from her job. She might've been simply stuck in a perpetual state of shock. When he asked her to leave the hospital, he was almost sure she would refuse. With all the deaths surrounding him and his squad recently, he was almost sure that following even an inkling of his plan was a step in the wrong direction.

Ultimately, Levi was lost—he'd been unsure of himself as of lately, even though he would never admit this aloud. There were almost too many circumstances he could've thought of, but in the end, he undid the dog-ear in the corner of the atlas, closed the book and left it on her bed.

"Do you still trust me?" He asked.

Sawyer looked at him and if he didn't know better, she could've been sobering herself up through the miraculous use of her brain to process the question he just asked. She shifted in her seat and stared at the floor, fidgeting here and there, "You know what? It's weird. But yeah. I do."

He walked towards her doorway and paused within the frame, nothing particularly readable from the indifferent expression on his face.

"Thanks," was his curt reply before leaving her room without another word.

Sawyer awakened the following morning to sound of loud bustling in the hallways of the barracks.

She was lying on the floor, a wad of saliva on her cheek. Although she would've liked nothing more than to mope around all day about losing her job, the loud reverberations in the hallway forced her to push herself up off the ground, wipe the saliva off her face and get ready for a new day.

It took no more than fifteen minutes for her to get ready with a quick, cold shower and a much needed brush of her teeth. She pulled her hair into a high ponytail, dripping water all over the floor while she walked back into the bathroom. It took her a moment to realize that she couldn't put on the uniform corporate black dress issued to her by the hospital; so without thinking too much about it, she grabbed a red tank top and a skinny pair of khakis before heading out the door.

The hallway was empty.

Slowly, Sawyer walked out, giving a sideways glance down each end of the hallway from the frame of her room. Then, she gave a look towards Levi's room, which was much farther down the east end. The barracks were suspiciously quiet and it was even more so suspiciously empty. Nobody seemed to be in their respective rooms, which was a complete anomaly. After a mission, the Survey Corps usually filled up the barracks; and with the recent attacks on the wall, there were more wounded casualties from the Garrison regiment, which meant there should be more soldiers spending their time in their rooms for bed rest.

Speaking of wounded casualties, Sawyer decided to head towards Levi's room, giving his door a knock. With no response, she wrapped her hand around the doorknob and pushed, only to realize that it was locked.

She lowered her head in disappointment. He was gone too.

Suddenly—an explosion.

The sound was loud and the vibrations reverberated through the floors of the barracks. Sawyer lifted her head and ran to the nearest window. She watched in horror as a building collapsed in the distance, dust billowing up like smoke in the sky.

Then—a shadow. It was a titan.

There wasn't so much Sawyer could see from her vantage point, but as the titan made its way away from the dust and crumble, she could surmise one certainty:

The titan was female.

note: thank you so much for the love in the last chapter! You guys are amazing.

So this chapter follows the final episode of AoT (anime, not manga). And following the female titan scene, I'll be following the manga. (: I have a lot of plans for you all!

CeCeAndrews: Thank you! I tried to make Sawyer relatable and likable, which was difficult without her coming off Sue-ish.
Sweet-sour-bipolar: I didn't know if the drunk scene would come off okay with people but I'm glad it hit the right notes! ^_^

Reviews = love = faster updates! Thank you so much all!