Author: late update; whoops...there was some veterinary drama.

He was sitting at his desk, the bridge of his nose pinched between two fingers, when someone knocked on the heavy wooden door.

Outside the wide lattice window behind him, it had been dark for several hours. The cobblestone streets were empty apart from the occasional stray cat that would slip in and out of long shadows cast by the capitol's great buildings. He leaned back in his chair, tipping it on its rear two legs—if he tipped back far enough, he could feel a draft coming in through the window.

The knock sounded again, echoing in the emptiness of the hall beyond, and Levi let his chair fall back onto all four legs with a thud. They are going to wake everyone in the whole damn building if I don't answer. "Who is it?" he called curtly.

"Petra Ral, sir—I made tea. Do you want any?"

It had been dark for so long; it had to be almost two o'clock in the morning. What was Petra Ral doing making tea at two o' clock on a Tuesday morning?

"Sir, are you alive in there?"

Levi's fingers had found the bridge of his nose again. Weren't girls supposed to be shy and soft? If so, nature had gone more than slightly awry with this one: there was nothing shy about Petra. She was wide-eyed and slight, but her childishness ended there. Everything about her presence was strong and confident and maybe just a bit stubborn, even with—maybe especially with—a solid oak door between it and him.

"Come in," Levi said, and he didn't know why he said it.

The door creaked open and Petra slipped sideways through it, somehow balancing a steaming kettle, a cup, and what looked like a creamer in the arm opposite the hand on the knob. A tiny cloth bag dangled from her teeth.

"Oh, good, you already have one," she said thickly through the material as her eyes fell upon Levi's desk (a chipped teacup held the dregs of his previous drink). "I didn't bring another; I didn't think that I'd be able to carry one more thing—"

"Here—" said Levi, rising to take the kettle from her and setting it down on the back of a hardcover book. He crossed back to his side of the desk. "What time is it, anyway?"

"It's half-past two in the morning, Captain."

"What the Hell are you doing in here at half-past two in the morning?" Levi queried, shaking his head but pouring some of the hot water into his cup in spite of himself.

"Here—" Petra fished a tea bag from a pocket stitched into the front of her nightgown and threw it across the desk; Levi snatched it from the air. "Sorry—I was awake and it's just that I know that you don't really sleep...oh, and I brought sugar. The military is apparently buying it in these little cube things now instead of normally; I've never seen anything like it before—"

She made to throw the cloth bag across the desk as well, but Levi recoiled from it. "I don't take sugar with my tea and definitely not from people who carry it in their mouths; that's disgust—wait." He broke off, raising an eyebrow. "You've never seen sugar cubes before...?"

"They're strange little things!" she said, pulling one out and examining it between her thumb and index finger before dropping it into her cup.

Levi tried to wrap his brain around this piece of information as their drinks seeped and Petra idly fingered the string of her tea bag. It was very quiet; still, he was having trouble focusing again for some reason—he kept reading the same line over and over.

It was as though she could read his thoughts. "Why are you still working, sir?" Petra asked.

Levi exhaled through his nose, his brow wrinkling. He wouldn't be if he'd had his way. "It takes me quite a bit of time to certain parts of my job," he responded, grinding his teeth a bit as he crossed something out with his pen. "On top of babysitting you lot, I also seem to be required to sign off on everything from what supplies are delivered to who is allowed to take a shit. I think that the higher-ups assume that I don't have anything to do when the Survey Corps isn't deployed...to them, I'm on holiday." He squinted down at the page in front of him—the cover letter of a forty-odd page report on the conditions of the bread supplier to the Survey Corps. From what he could gather (which was not very much), it was not a report that seemed to have a happy conclusion.

"Petra, what's 'deerth' mean?"

She frowned. "I'm not sure...I don't think that's a word."

"It is; look."

She rose and leaned across the desk, reading the cover letter upside-down. "...that says 'dearth', sir."

"...does it?"

"Yes, it does."

"Huh...that's a stupid word."

Petra laughed; the sound was unexpected and seemed to warm the drafty air. "Have you never seen the word 'dearth' before?"

"If you must know, I don't read particularly well," Levi said shortly, wincing at the verbalization of his own ineptitude; he immediately regretted admitting such a thing. Petra's wide amber eyes blinked once, betraying her surprise, and Levi snorted to save face. "Don't look at me like that; you've never seen a damn sugar cube."

"Okay, that's fair." Petra reached for the kettle again. "Um...okay, see, if you have a dearth of something, it means that you don't have enough of it...like people have a dearth of land to live off of or a poor person has a dearth of money..."

"...or the Survey Corps is going to be facing a dearth of bread if our supplier doesn't get his fucking act together...sorry," he apologized roughly as Petra blinked again, but she shook her head—he could see the corners of her mouth upturned in a small smile.

"No, really—it's kind of nice, you know, to hear someone say what it is that they mean," Petra said.

"Is it?" responded Levi, tipping his chair back again, and the window didn't seem quite as drafty. He credited the tea.