Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

8

You were the second person to find Miss Ackerman’s corpse.

You noticed the stench before anything else. As soon as the ripe odour hit your nose, smelling of something between rotting meat, shit, and cheap perfume, you knew. The bread and canned soup that you had worked so hard to steal for her fell to the ground, your attention fully on the figure in the bed. You couldn’t recognise her anymore: impossibly still, emaciated, and pallid. The body looked like Kuchel Ackerman, you thought, but it also didn’t look human. She had always been lively even her in fragility, all gentle smiles and porcelain skin. Staring at her sunken eyes and soiled sheets, all you could think about was the lovely smile she had given you when she first took you in, and how this corpse did not resemble her in the least.

In the corner of your eye, a shadow moved. You glanced back, and your breath stilled momentarily.

Levi was the first to speak.

“I don’t know what to do.” He looked at you, brows drawn back, dried tear stains tracking through the dirt on his face. Even though he was alive, his eyes looked as sunken as his mother’s.

Helplessly, you glanced back at the body one last time. You wanted badly for this to be a nightmare, to find yourself waking up into a world where Miss Ackerman was recovering from her illness and she and Levi were waiting patiently for you to bring back some food.

But even at your young age, you knew that you could not pretend: fantasies got you nowhere in the Underground.

Smoothly, you picked up the bread and canned soup, and then you set the two down before Levi. His fingers were thin and cold in your hands, and as you rubbed your thumb along his bony knuckles, his small body trembled.

“We survive.” You swallowed. “Even if we are alone.”

15

You had never trusted Kenny the way that Levi did. Not quite. Even though you were barely in your teens, you were practiced in reading the faces of men: a talent, the brothel owner often remarked, that you must have inherited from your mother and Miss Ackerman. Consequently, you knew the whole range of men that resided in the Underground, and you could spot a coward from a mile away.

When Kenny disappeared, you were not at all surprised.

This time, Levi did not devolve into a squalid mess, but instead seemed insistent on keeping silent and sticking to routine, behaving as though he did not miss the absence of his mentor. Each morning, he woke up, trained, and cleaned your shared room, complaining about how much of a slob you were. At night, the two of you calmly ate whatever you had managed to steal during the day. Before you went out to work, he gave you a cleanly laundered dress and made a fuss of straightening out your hair. He humoured, with clear disdain, your request for him to choose one of the cheap perfumes you owned.

“Must you make that face?” You mirrored his expression. “This is no way to treat a lady.”

He merely scowled, sniffing at you with visible disgust.

“I can’t help it. That shit is awful. I don’t understand why you insist on wearing it; you smell fine without it.”

“Ohh! So you admit to smelling me and liking it?”

“Don’t get so flattered. All I’m saying is that you smell better than a toilet.”

“Jesus, don’t you have a way with words? No wonder you’ve never dated.”

The banter was always cutthroat, but you could tell that it was also in good humour. Levi had, unsurprisingly, turned out to be quite prickly and nothing like the friendly and shy boy you had met as a child, but you could tell that he was fond of you. It showed in his actions, in the way he always made your bed crisply and meticulously, in the way that he carefully ironed your clothes, in how he always pushed whatever vegetables the two of you could afford onto your plate. When you came back in the early morning, he insisted on wiping down your switchblade and inspecting it for rust even if it had gone unused. He always made sure that you bathed before you went to sleep.

About a month after Kenny left, you came home earlier than usual. Even though it was in the dead of the night, Levi woke up immediately, throwing his sheets off and putting on his boots.

“I had hoped that I wouldn’t wake you up. Sorry.”

You winced as you walked inside, hoping that he wouldn’t notice your stilted gait.

No such luck.

He scoffed, and even though it was too dark to see his face, you knew the exact expression he was wearing. “It was impossible to sleep with you stumbling around in the dark like that. Come here. Are you bleeding anywhere?”

“Don’t bother.” You pushed away his hands, supporting yourself against the wall. “I’m fine. Don’t worry. I just need to sleep this off–”

“Not before I check out the damage. Anyway, you need to bathe first.”

“God! You’re such a clean freak. Can’t give me a break, can you?” You sighed, half-frustrated and half-endeared. This time, when his hand came to rest on your shoulder, you allowed yourself to lean into him, body relaxing into the support. You were tired, so tired, and your muscles ached against him. “I’m too tired to bathe. And you don’t need to worry about wounds. It’s only bruising, I promise. You should have seen the guy when I was through with him, actually. He was worse off than me. I don’t think he expected me to be armed.”

You had to will your body not to flinch when Levi began to undress you, reminding yourself that his touch was nothing like the one that had just maimed you. He was clean, his body somehow devoid of the stench of the slums and of the pigs you let between your legs, his fingers bereft of the dirt that other men rubbed all over your skin. When the washcloth began to rub soap into your skin, you sighed and melted into his hands. You reached up behind you, blindly seeking his free hand.

Even in the candlelight, with your arms wrapped around most of your torso, you knew that he’d be able to see the black marks spreading on your skin.

“A lot of bruising.”

“Yeah, but it’ll heal. I managed to get away pretty early on.”

“Tch. And you always complained when I insisted on teaching you self-defense.”

His fingers grasped yours, thumb rubbing your hand.

“Can you blame me? We can’t all be Ackermans, all right? Fighting is hardly my strength.”

“It’s not just Ackermans that become good in combat,” he argued. “Kenny’s not an Ackerman, but he’s the strongest man in the slums.”

The two of you paused. His fingers tightened around your hand.

Turning to meet his gaze, you tried to make out his expression in the darkness. For once, you couldn’t guess what it was.

Your teeth sank into your lips. “…how are you feeling? About that, I mean. Kenny.”

A long pause. You deflated, knowing that Levi rarely bothered answering such questions.

But then—

“I’m fine.”

“Really?” You couldn’t help the edge in your voice, somewhere between worried and frustrated. “Really? You’re fine?”

“I’m fine,” he insisted, voice hard and half a whisper. “Kenny isn’t coming back. There’s nothing we can do. All we can do is survive.” A long pause, and at his next words, your heart prickled and ached for him: “Even if we are alone."

16

Your mother had died long before Miss Ackerman, and you had only fleeting memories of her touch and her smile. Consequently, you didn’t know very much about her, although you were certain that she had been a kind woman: after all, she had kept you around rather throwing you out in a dumpster, which was not an uncommon practice in the slums. The older you got and the keener your business sense grew, however, the more often the brothel owner began to comment on how much you resembled her.

"Between her an’ Kuchel, your mother was definitely the mo’ practical one.” He nodded. “Always had money on the mind, that one did. Knew which customers to court an’ which ones to ignore. If she had been raised to do maths and reading proper, she coulda run this place herself.”

That made you pause. As a child, you had spent a fair amount of time lying awake in bed, thinking about what your mother must have been like, why she was dead, and reflecting on the general shittiness of being an orphan—all while trying to pry the sheets away from Levi, who was an insufferable blanket hog, and also while trying to ignore Kenny’s snoring from the other room. As with most Underground folk, the question that caused the most existential grief for you during these cold, uncomfortable moments was why the fuck you were born into this hellhole.

Hence, when the owner made the remark, you looked him dead in the eye and asked, “If she was so practical, why in God’s name did she have a kid?"

He swallowed and seemed unsure of what to say.

“Oh, hell, you don’t have to be worried about hurting me. I’m a prostitute myself. I know she probably she tried to get rid of me, and I don’t fault her for it. But I am curious. Did she ever say anything to you?”

The owner had the decency to look down as he said this, shaking his head.

“She wasn’t doin’ well when she was carrying you. Had one of the doctors come an’ look at her since she was one of my best ladies here, and he told her it would do well for her to keep ya. You’d have been ‘er sixth pregnancy, I think.”

You swore under your breath. “…good reason.”

“Right you are. But it wasn’t so bad, really. I hadn’t ever seen 'er really smile til the first day she held you. Made Kuchel realise she wanted to keep her kid, too.” He shook his head again. “That pair… the best mothers I’ve ever seen, I swear it.”

That made you fall into a deep silence, eyes boring into the ground. You wanted to run home to Levi and make a mess of his shirt by bawling all over it.

Of course, you ended up doing exactly that, and at first with no explanation whatsoever. He had balked at you for getting snot and tears all over his good shirt, but he ended up rubbing your back and holding you until you stopped anyway.

18

As was routine, Levi had ironed your dress and cleaned your shoes. He turned around as you changed clothes, and then zipped up the back, his hands polite and unassuming. He turned you around, clicked his tongue at the stray strands of your hair, and told you tidy it up, grabbing one of your ribbons. The silk lace ran through his fingers, fine and gleaming, the colour of pearls. Your gaze chased it, still mesmerised by its luxury.
“I still don’t know where on earth you got such a thing. I feel like some rich noblewoman from above ground.” You couldn’t help your giggle. “Does that make you my lord?”

He ignored your latter comment, so used to your flirting that he didn’t falter. “Hardly. I don’t know what the hell it is that nobles do, but it’s definitely not smuggling or theft. There was a silk trader stupid enough to cut across the Underground City last week, probably trying to cut down on transportation costs. What a moron. Easy job, easy souvenir.”

He was otherwise silent as he brushed through your hair, carefully gathering it up so that he could lace the ribbon into it. Briefly, you recalled a memory from your childhood: watching Levi play with his mother’s ebony hair, shining and gorgeous in his little fingers, waving one of her hair ties in his other hand and insisting on learning on how to tie a braid. Miss Ackerman smiled, and even after all these years, you could remember every detail of your adoptive mother’s peaceful expressions.

After he was finished, you turned around, lips sloping gently. You weren’t prepared for the nearly imperceptible widening of his eyes, the subtle slackening of his jaw. For a moment, he stared at you, and you almost turned red, wondering whether he found you beautiful. But then, his expression nosedived, and he appeared almost disturbed. His face gave you the impression of a man who had just seen a ghost.

“Huh? What is it?” You tilted your head, smile becoming playful. “Oh, wait! Let me guess: dirt on my face?”

That snapped him out of it.

“No.” He looked away. “For once, you’re properly put together.”

“Huh, thanks! That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in, like, a week. But only a week. Doesn’t quite top the time you said that my side of the room didn’t look like a dumpster.”

“Only barely,” he shot back. “Maybe there’s hope for you after all.”

“Uh huh. You know, you’re really just enabling me. Why would I ever clean up with such a diligent housewife?” You grinned at him, and he rolled his eyes, too used to your strange sense of humour to take the bait. “Anyway, what’s bothering you?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly, although he was obviously lying. You could tell from the way that his eyes kept flickering between your face and the floor that something was haunting him, something severe and most likely impossible to pry from his throat. “I just… remembered something.”

A long pause. You took the moment to assess his work, self-consciously touching the ribbon in your hair, feeling the soft ridges of your fairly elaborate braid.

The suggestion came suddenly, and even though you knew he had been thinking it for years, you had never expected him to voice it. You didn’t think he was sentimental enough to be (quite frankly) so foolish.

“You don’t have to do this anymore.”

You had been thinking of your answer for years as well, ever since the day you first decided to step into the brothel and peel your clothes off in front of a man more than twice your age, ever since the day you were quite literally hurt from the inside in a rather permanent way. You had shrugged it off your whole life, thinking of the whole matter as unpleasant rather than tragic, but you still thought about it every day and every night, and sometimes even while you were being fucked.

“Yes, I do. Don’t be absurd.” You closed your eyes, not waiting for his response. “You know how it is for a woman in these parts. If she isn’t an especially talented fighter or thief, there are very few options. And obviously, I’m not as small and cut out for theft as I used to be.”

You weren’t expecting it when a hand grabbed your shoulder, fingers digging painfully into the flesh. He forced you to look back at him, glowering.

“I know. I know how it is for a woman in these parts.” He swallowed, and you nearly cringed, mind flashing back to the sight of him in his room, nearly as filthy as his mother’s corpse. “You know that I know very damn well about the few options, and what this work is like.”

You couldn’t blame him for the animosity in his tone. In his shoes, you supposed that you would have been the same, and in the future, you would yell at yourself for righteous tone of your comment. Still, he rarely ever spoke to you this way, and without even realising it, you were getting defensive.

“Then you understand why I’m doing this,” you replied, voice hard.

“No, I don’t,” he replied flatly. “What I understand is that it’s an easy way to die.”

His grip tightened, and you suppressed a flinch.

“If I starve, I’ll also get sick and die.”

“You won’t starve,” he bit out, and his voice had a hard edge but also break that reminded you of the day he admitted that Kenny wouldn’t be coming back, that the two of you were alone again. And suddenly, his grip loosened, and all you could think about were gentle washcloths and the fragile hand of a lost child. “The jobs I’m getting aren’t half bad. I’m making decent money now, and in a few years—”

“Come on, Levi. The cash that I make is steady. People might not always want your hired muscle, but there will always be a market for fucking. The jobs that you take aren’t as stable.”

“That’s when I was younger,” he retorted. “I’m making a name for myself, and you know it. People will want to hire me for frequently—”

“Shit, Levi,” you sighed out, voice shaking with frustration. You’re not an idiot. You know it’s not secure work. What if your gang gets raided by the Military Police? What if you rub someone the wrong way and your boss decides that you shouldn’t get decent cuts anymore? What would we do then? Or worse: what if you get caught? What if you get killed? What the fuck would I do then?“

He stared at you, gaze inscrutable, dead silent for a moment.

"I wouldn’t die.”

You couldn’t help it. You slapped at the hand on your shoulder, voice breaking as you shot back, “Everyone dies! They die or they leave!”

You knew had made a mistake when his mouth thinned and his eyes hardened, but you also didn’t care. His fists retreated into his pockets, and he didn’t even look back as he made his way to the door.

“Don’t be stupid. I’m not leaving you.” The words were brusque, devoid of sentimentality and stated more like an obvious fact, as though he was saying that the two of you would never see the light of day, that your mothers were long dead, and that the two of you were alone, had always been alone. He had nothing more to say after that, instead making his point by slamming the door after his departure.

It was strange. The words had been curt and his voice had been cold, but your fingers lingered on your ribbon anyway, heart beating fast and eyes unbearably hot.

18

Sometimes, the men you saw—the sappier ones who tended to be from above ground and touring the poverty of the slums—would tell you that you were so young, that this life didn’t suit you. They would tell you you were too good to be a whore, and tell you that you were silly for being one. They would tell you to respect yourself. You would smile and tell them that they were sweet, and then in your head, you wondered how many other teenaged, destitute girls they had fucked, paid, and then flattered in this way.

For all that Levi often agreed that this life was no good for you, he never called you stupid, never said that prostitutes were necessarily bad. You could tell that, for all the tearful, heated arguments that the two of you got into, he wasn’t telling you to stop for petty reasons. He wasn’t jealous, wasn’t judging you, wasn’t looking down on you with the grating paternalism of your more well-to-do customers. Having been born in a brothel himself, he was better than all of that.

He was only worried.

But you didn’t realise just how much it ate at him until one night, after Levi had recently come home with shitty pay and a harrowing injury—from a fucking bullet of all things. After the initial shock of seeing of the red stain spreading across his shirt, you cleaned him up, lips thinned and eyes watering, while calmly resolving to increase the number of customers you’d be seeing in the coming weeks. After the two of you had figured, with the aid of a doctor, that his shoulder would heal up well enough, you stopped worrying. He would recover with time, and the both of you had enough saved up so that food wouldn’t be a problem in the meantime.

But he wasn’t able to work or do much else, and you supposed that you should have seen it coming when one morning, you came home to find him piss drunk.

“Oh, God, Levi, seriously?” You pinched your nose. “Once you sober up, you’re going to hate yourself for smelling like this.”

“I smell fine,” he shot back.

“You spilled beer down the front of your shirt. You smell horrible, and you’ll know it in about two hours.” You undid his buttons, trying to be gentle and avoid touching his shoulder as you took off his shirt. You couldn’t help but wince when the white cotton slid away to reveal gauze, thinking back to the bullet wound you had been forced to dress a few days ago. “…but it’s okay. I’ll do a good job washing up your shirt for you. You just relax and go to bed.”

“Can’t,” he breathed out. “Need to wash up.” He then grabbed one of your wrists, leaning in closely in order to study your features, close enough for you to feel his breath on your lips. You had seen him without a shirt before, but you couldn’t help but notice how close his bare skin was. You held your breath, unable to suss out his expression. Levi rarely ever got this drunk, and so you weren’t sure what was going to happen. You weren’t sure why, but something about the strange intensity of his gaze pulled at your heart strings in a painful-sweet way.

After several moments, he blinked, then finally said: “You need to wash up, too.”

“Oh.” Of course. “Yeah, don’t worry. I will.” You smiled, trying to lead him to bed, but he only grabbed your wrist again, stopping you.

“…is something wrong?”

“I need to check you.”

“What?”

“You’re hurt,” he pointed out, slurring a bit. “You can’t hide it from me. I can tell.”

You frowned, surprised that he was so fucking perceptive even when sloshed. “It’s only some bruising, and it’s not important. Nobody assaulted me. One of my customers just went a little rough today.”

“It’s still damage. Let me check.” He stumbled forwards, putting his hands on your shoulders as if to shake you or undress you, but he did neither. Instead, Levi only looked at your face. He glanced down at your hair, noticing that you were using the ribbon that he had given you. Clumsily, he touched it, feeling the silk between his thumb and index finger.

“…Levi?”

“I’m sorry.”

And Levi’s expression, normally so controlled and indifferent, entirely collapsed. He cast his eyes downward into your shoulder, his brow furrowed and teeth grinding together.

“I’m sorry. I’m so fucking useless.”

“Oh, God, what? No, Levi, don’t say that.” You dropped his shirt so that you could cup his face and make him look at you. “You’re always looking out for me. You’re not useless at all.”

“I’m making you work more,” he argued, drunkenly stumbling through this words. You could smell the alcohol on his breath, and you were so surprised by his behaviour that you didn’t even care. “I fucking… I fucking hate that you have to do that kind of work. Shit, I hate it so much, you have no fucking clue.”

“Levi, I’m the one doing that kind of work. Also, we argue about it every week. I have a clue.” You stroked a thumb across one of his cheek, and you tried to make him look at you. Your eyes softened once you caught a glimpse of his expression. “I know you’re drunk right now, but I really wish you would stop trying to make me quit.”

“It’s the worst job you could do,” he said, fully leaning down and putting his face into your shoulder. “You’re not bad with a knife. Once we get our hands on a gun, I’ll train you for that too. Could work with me. Shit, just do anything but this.”

“Come on, Levi. I can stab a drunk rapist, but that’s different from taking on an armed thug.”

“I’d train you.”

“Levi…” At the tone of your voice, impatient and exasperated, he paused.

“…the worst part is, I know why you do it.” He laughed, one of his hands shifting to touch his injured arm. “When I got shot, all I could hear was your voice asking me what the fuck you would do if I died.”

Your breath hitched.

“Then you cried the whole time you dug that fucking bullet out my shoulder. Shit, I’m so sorry.”

“…”

“It’s fucked up, isn’t it? We’re this old, but we still—we still don’t know things like are we going to have food on the table tomorrow? Are we going to have beds to sleep in tonight?” One of his hands sought out yours, squeezing desperately, as though you would disappear the moment he let go. “I’m probably strong enough to kill anyone in this shithole of a city, but what does it matter?” His torso and voice trembled, and you couldn’t tell whether he was laughing or crying. “I still go to bed wondering if you’ll make it back to me the next morning.”

Regret cut into your chest, and you suddenly wanted to take back every heated word you had ever thrown at him during all your arguments. It only hit you now that you had been selfish this whole time.

“…Levi.”

He whispered your name into your shoulder, voice ridden with guilt.

“I just don’t want you to leave me like she did.”

20

“I can’t believe I’ve found a gem like you in the Underground.”

“Oh, stop.” A giggle. “We’re already in bed; you don’t have to say those things.”

“I’m quite serious. I should be calling you my Diamond…” A hand came up in the darkness to brush at your hair. “You don’t belong in the Underground. You’re too lovely.”

“Are you going to take me upstairs, sir?” The sound of shifting blankets, a purposefully long moan as you stretched. “I’ve never been above ground, you know.”

The sappy types always loved this, you thought, and he reeked of sappy: even if he had quite a few years on you, he was still relatively young, liked to hold hands, even liked to talk after fucking. Men like him loved the idea of playing hero to a broken bird from the slums, fragile and beautiful. You’d hardly call yourself broken and you’d hardly call any customer of yours a hero, but if it meant a bigger tip, you’d shed all the crocodile tears you could. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like… I know the sky is supposedly endless, but I can’t even imagine something like that.

"God! I know I sound ludicrous, but I’ll take you. I’m not kidding.” A kiss to your hand. “You have me bewitched.”

You don’t sound ludicrous… just sort of cliche. You smiled, hoping that it didn’t look patronising. “Good. The truth is… I always hate it when I have to leave you.”

The man beside you laughed. “I’m glad the feeling’s mutual.” He pressed his lips against your collarbone, his hands at your waist. “You know, when I see you, I feel like my engagement was a mistake.”

“Oh…?”

He chuckled.

“It feels like the person I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with is you.”

20

“…hey, Levi?”

“What.”

He winced as you wrapped the gauze around his wrist, clearly biting his lip. “…sorry. Didn’t mean to snap. It just…”

“I know. I know it hurts. I’ll try to be more careful.” You smiled at him, hoping that it looked more reassuring and less sad. As soon as you were finished, you moved one of your hands to his shoulder, squeezing gently. “You didn’t have to take on such a risky job, you know. The pay’s not worth it if you get hurt like this.” At his look, you relented slightly. “…but I really appreciate it. Thanks.”

His gaze seemed to linger on your face momentarily, but he looked away soon enough, expression unreadable. “…it’s fine. Anyway, what were you going to say?”

“Have you ever thought about… y'know. Relationships?”

“What?” He grimaced as he inspected your work, checking his injured wrist. “Crap, I’m not going to be able to take any new jobs for a while…”

“That’s fine! We both know that I’m the breadwinner of this household,” you said, voice smug, and he rolled his eyes.

“Anyway, what the hell were you going on about? Relationships?” His voice was dry, although there was a perplexed and intrigued look in his eye.

“Yeah, you know! When two people really like each other, they start fucking exclusively, sometimes for the rest of their lives.”

He snorted. “I’ve never been in a relationship, but I’m fairly certain there’s more to it than that,” he pointed out dryly. “Anyway, why are you telling me this? Are you bringing someone home? Are they moving in?” His voice took on a weary tone. “Hey, they better not be a slob like you. I’m not cleaning up after their mess.”

You laughed, although you couldn’t help feeling disappointed. Levi hadn’t paused in the least before suggesting that you might be bringing someone home, nor did the idea of you wanting a relationship with him even occur to him. But the emotion passed soon enough. The two of you had known each other forever, had lived and scrounged and survived for more than half your lives, and nothing had ever happened between you. Levi was the only man in this shithole of a city to be wholly uninterested in you, and you knew that wasn’t likely to change.

You had known this for a long time, but it had never bothered you until now.

It feels like the person I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with is you.

“No, no. I’m not bringing anyone home. I’m hardly in a position to date.” You gestured to your heavy makeup and colourful dress, not having had the chance to peel either of them off since coming home. “But… I don’t know, I was talking with someone, and I guess I’ve always known that I’m not likely to marry anyone, but… it didn’t sink in until now. Most of the girls just don’t end up marrying, you know?”

That made him pause. The fingers on his wrist slackened, and he stared down between his feet.

“I know they don’t.” He went back to checking the wrappings on his wrist, although the both of you knew that you had done a good enough job with it. “It’s hard to manage that kind of job and raise a family.” Or live long enough to raise a family, but neither of you said that aloud. Seeming to collect himself after a moment, he looked up at you. “Is that what you want? Find someone, settle down, retire? You can save up for it. I don’t mind helping.”

“Wow, that’s quite the offer!” You grinned. “Does that mean you think I’d be a capable wife? Or mother?”

“Jesus, no. Your kids could maybe just cut it, if I were around to help.” His mouth twisted. “Whichever poor sod you’re marrying is on their own, though.”

“Fine, fine, I get the hint. Marriage is not in the cards for me.” You stuck your tongue out at him, and he shook his head. “But seriously, have you never thought about that before? You’re an adult now, you know.”

You expected to be met with one of his typical, acerbic responses: “What?” or “God, no,” or maybe, “What the hell are you going on about now?”

But instead, he nodded slowly and stared at something on the wall.

“Once or twice.”

“Really?!” You leaned forward, eyes wide and mouth open, momentarily too shocked to feel confused or even remotely jealous.

“Yeah.”

“…and?!”

“Then I stopped thinking about it.”

“…huh. Why?”

“There’s no point.” Levi was looking at you now, pokerfaced. “No chance in hell I’m having kids in this sewer, so a family is out of the question.”

“Yeah, but how about just having a partner?”

He scoffed, using his good hand to flick at your nose. “Are you kidding me? The minute I take my eyes off you, you always get into some kind of trouble. I’m hardly in a position to look for people either.”

“Hey! You’re the one who just came home with a banged up wrist! Don’t pretend that this is a one-way street!"

22

It was five in the morning, and he would slaughter you the moment he woke up and realised that you hadn’t bathed and changed into fresh clothing before sitting down on his bed, but you practically jumped on his sleeping form anyway, hands shaking his shoulders. "Levi!”

He shot up straight away, back stiff and muscles tense. Disoriented, one of his hands gripped you and shoved your body toward him, the other reaching for the gun beneath his pillow.

“What’s happened?!”

“Oh god, nothing’s wrong!” You grabbed his wrist, trying to wake him up and snap his body out of habit. “Levi, Levi! Relax. I have good news.”

He couldn’t look any less thrilled. He pushed you away, though the both of you were still sitting on his bed, and his hands still rested on your arms. Ignoring the proximity, he ran a hand through his hair and glowered.

“This better be good. You better have come across a mountain of gold, or else killed a rich client and stolen all his money.”

“Well, kind of. I am sort of using a client, and he might as well be giving us a mountain of gold.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah! So, I’ve been seeing an MP—”

He looked at your sharply, cutting you off immediately. “An MP? Why the hell would you do that? Did it never occur to you that prostituting yourself to an MP is a surefire way to get arrested?”

“I’m not stupid, Levi. He checked out with the other girls and with the brothel owner. You know I’m good at what I do.” You rolled your eyes, unyielding to the pressure of his glare. “Anyway, listen. This guy happens to deal in the illegal trade of 3DMG, and he also happens to be especially taken with me. I have him wrapped around my finger, oh boy, he calls me his Diamon—”

“Get to the point."

"Fine, fine! Wow, you’re cranky.”

“You woke me up in the middle of the night.”

Grinning, you remarked, “You can afford to miss some beauty sleep, Levi; you look handsome enough.” He rolled his eyes at your usual teasing, unfazed. “Anyway, I mentioned to him that I know some guys who would be real interested buyers, and that I’d love it if we could work out some kind of deal… Imagine that, Levi! Imagine what you could do with 3DMG! And I could get him to supply us gas, too, as long as I keep seeing him and stay on his good side… I know this sort of proposition sounds suspect, but I’ve been seeing him for a long time, and I think he’s interested in selling for real.”

He didn’t respond immediately, and you didn’t mind. You knew that the proposal was surprising, that there were many holes to consider: whether this was a trap, whether he would be even be able to learn to use 3DMG competently, whether it was worth attracting the attention of the military by parading around contraband gear. When he finally spoke, you didn’t expect that his thumb would be rubbing the cotton of your dress, nor did you expect the words that left his lips.

“Do you feel safe with him?”

“…huh?”

“You stay away for days when you see him. I expect you’ll have to stay even longer if you’re striking out this kind of deal with him. So, do you feel safe with him?”

“…well, I mean, I keep my guard up just as I would with any regular. Like I said, I’m good at my job, I wouldn’t get stupid.”

“Do you feel safe?”

Why even ask me this? “Of course not.”

“Then there’s no deal.”

“Seriously?” You scowled. “Who cares whether or not I feel safe? We live in a fucking sewer, Levi. Neither of our jobs are particularly safe.”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t want you doing this.”

“Why?! Every man who blows through that brothel is a shitty person! The only difference between fucking this MP and any other ashtray is that this one is useful for trade deals.” A wavering, frustrated sigh interrupted your words. “I’m just saying that you could really establish yourself with 3DMG! You wouldn’t need to work your way up in the ranks; you’d be able to run your own thing! You know it’s better for both of us, you know it, you aren’t stupid—”

He cut you off, your name hard on his tongue.

“No.”

“Please!”

You rarely ever grabbed him so violently, rarely ever pulled him toward you with the desperation that you were now. “Levi, this is our chance! We won’t be scraping by anymore if you take this deal. For the first time in our lives, we’ll be okay! We’d be able to thrive, not worrying about this or that like what if your next job is a bust, or what if we get robbed, or what if, what if—” Your voice cracks, stutters along a brief and painful pause. “—what if I get sick?”

The silence that followed was deafening.

Under the absolute darkness of the Underground night, you couldn’t see Levi’s expressions, but you fully understood his feelings through his body. You knew this: that his fingers were gingerly ghosting your spine, that they were easing you into his body, that he was resting his forehead against your shoulder. He had only held you like this a handful of times since moving past the death of his mother: the first time you had been assaulted by a customer, once when he had nearly died on a job, and once when you had run such a high fever that he had to scrape up every last cent in your tiny home to buy you medicine.

“I just don’t want us to have to leave each other,” you whispered into his ear, fingers gripping the cloth of his shirt. “I just want us to do more than survive.”

He shifted, holding you more tightly.

“…I know. I’ll think about it."

23

You looked at the foreign door uncertainly, shifting uncomfortably beneath your cloak. Levi glanced back at you, tilting his head and lowering the key in his hand. "What’s the matter?”

“Nothing… It’s just that I’ve never met the guys that you work with before.”

“Yeah. I don’t want you knowing shady people.”

“I’m a shady person,” you pointed out, voice dry, “and so are you.”

“That’s different. First of all, I’m cleaner and more respectable than them—”

“So am I!”

“—only because I live with you. Secondly, many of my 'associates’ throughout the years have had no sense of basic human decency.” He grimaced. “Can’t have you getting abducted or killed.”

You blinked. Levi’s rare declarations of his caring toward you were always frank and unceremonious, but they never failed to touch you. “Wow, that was… really sweet, actually. You get so murderous with me sometimes, I was starting to forget you don’t actually want me dead! Can you say things like that more often?”

He gave you a rather long-suffering look. “Not if you keep running your mouth like that.”

“Sorry.” You tried not to giggle. “Anyway, if your associates are so bad, why are we moving in with one of them?”

“Two reasons. One, Farlan’s not a bad guy. He doesn’t clean as thoroughly as I would like, but he has talent. With some training, he’ll surely—”

“Levi.”

“He’s also competent, and has good character. He’s the person who’s been using the second 3DMG set we procured.”

“Oh!”

“Secondly, it’ll be easier for Farlan and myself to operate out of a shared space. We work late together, and people often want to discuss things with the both of us present. In an ideal world, I could move in with him and leave you to your own devices, but I don’t trust you to live by yourself. I’d have nightmares about you ending up dead within the week.”

You smiled.

“You know, Levi, it’s fine to just say that you’d miss me."

24

The more that your MP customer began to lavish gifts upon you, the more complicated trips home were starting to become. You had to hide your outfits with the rattiest, dullest cloaks you could find and pray that you wouldn’t get mugged.

As with any other day, when you arrived home and shut the door behind you, you immediately peeled off your disguise and hung it up, knowing that Levi would scorn you if you stepped into his well-run establishment in something so dirty. You lived at the place, but it seemed that every time you returned home, Levi and Farlan were hosting someone new who would stare at your intrusion.

You couldn’t blame them, you supposed. The contrast between you and rest of the room was jarring: even though it was much more spacious and well-furnished than your last home, it was still humble and utilitarian, all muted colours of stone and wood. You stuck out like a sore thumb with your bright dresses, heels that weren’t fit for sewer water, and wide smiles.

The most shocking part for any onlooker, of course, was when you made a beeline for Levi and threw your arms around him, who frankly looked dour and only wore the type of expressions you’d expect from one of the most feared criminals in the Underground.

"I’m home!”

Entirely used to this, Levi let you drape yourself across your shoulders without batting an eye, continuing to count bills.

“Hey,” he greeted, voice nonchalant. He split the stack of bills and slid one of the sections to the boy sitting across the table from him. Turning his attention away from you, he looked at the younger male, who was trying his hardest not to stare at you. “This is your cut for today. Don’t waste it.”

“R-right!” He was failing at keeping his eyes off you, and you took the opportunity to smile at him, curious. You had never seen him before.

“Hey, you’re new! What’s your name?”

Levi glanced between the two of you, then rolled his eyes. “I was serious when I told you not to waste it, Jan. She’s not interested.”

“O-of course, sir! I would never think about, uh, treating your woman wrong. I’ll get going now… thank you for the generous pay!”

“Don’t worry about it. Take care of that bad leg of yours.”

As soon as Jan bid the two of you goodbye and backed out the door, still deeply perplexed, Levi gave you a severe look. “You really have to stop acting like that in front of others and giving them the impression that we’re together. I’m not exactly a two-bit criminal anymore, and you’re not exactly easy to miss. One of these days, someone will get the idea into their heads that they’d make more money from threatening you than by working for me.”

You frowned. “I can’t help it! I was gone for so long this time… I missed you!”

Another voice piped up from the back. “Yeah. And you don’t have to worry! I’d protect her, big bro!”

Grinning, you stepped away from Levi in order to greet the two others and hug Isabel. “Isabel! Farlan! How’ve you been?”

“Great! We just pulled in an amazing haul. The MPs tried to stop us, but they were no match for us!” Isabel pulled away to look at you, wide-eyed. “Wow, big sis! You look great. Did you see that rich police guy again?”

“You bet! Milking him for all he’s worth.” You glanced between Farlan and Levi. “How are you guys doing for gas? He and his guys are thinking of selling again soon.”

“We’re fine, but we should buy anyway. Chances seem to be far and few between these days,” Farlan commented.

“Yeah.” You sat down, frowning. “Apparently the higher-ups have been cracking down on smuggling of military resources lately. As it stands, it’s getting harder for bandits to steal, and the MPs who are selling need to be more careful.”

“That explains things. Damn, that’ll be a pain, they’ll probably jack up the prices.”

“It’s not so bad, actually. It’s also risky to look for new buyers at a time like this, and we have a pretty good relationship with these guys. They might just choose to make do with whatever we offer.”

“Huh.” Farlan tilted his head. “You know, you’re pretty good at brokering deals. Maybe you should just be our representative. What do you think, Levi?” He grinned. “I think she’d get on a lot better with our male associates than you.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Ohoh! Are you jealous?” Your voice was teasing, but inwardly, you couldn’t help but carefully gauge for his reaction. Your small feelings for him were a nuisance and embarrassing, but you had never been able to quite shake them off over the years.

“It’s simply far too dangerous for you to be openly involved with us.”

“Hey! I don’t keep a knife on me for fashion. And I’m a damn good shot. Anyway, Isabel’s younger than me, and you’re fine with her working with you!”

“Isabel didn’t fly straight into a wall the first time she tried to use 3DMG.”

You cringed.

“It’s okay, big sis.” She put a hand on your shoulder. “I can teach you!”

“Oh? Shouldn’t you be learning from her?” Levi raised a brow. “How are those maths lessons coming along, Isabel?”

Isabel coughed loudly, and you laughed, smiling at Levi’s mothering.

It was nice, you thought. You cherished the years you had spent alone with Levi, but they were undeniably hard: when you left for the night to work, or whenever Levi was absent for a job, the other person would be left at home, utterly alone. Since moving in with Farlan and then taking in Isabel, things had gotten more lively. You no longer wondered about how Levi was getting on without you at home whenever you were off seeing a customer, and Levi often commented that he was no longer concerned that you’d make a mess of the place while he was gone.

The three of them joked, and Levi even cracked a smile. You couldn’t help but mirror it.

For the first time in years, the two of you were no longer alone.

24

“Hey, Levi?” You finished up your mascara, then looked away from the mirror to glance at him.

“Hm?”

“Have you ever danced before?”

He looked at you like you had grown a second head. “What use would I have for something like that?” He sat up on his bed, raising an eyebrow at you. He inspected you briefly. “Come here.”

“Just a question,” you said, voice innocuous as you walked over to his half of the room. You sat down at the edge of his bed, and he resumed his old routine of cleaning up your hair and getting rid of the strays, grumbling about how you always did a crappy and messy job of it. He hadn’t done it in a while. The both of you had been so busy, and your respective jobs had finally started cutting brutally into your personal lives with each other. Indulging in the missed feeling, you closed your eyes.

He spoke as he worked.

“I’ve never danced before, no. I’ve watched people at pubs. Actually, I’ve watched you dance at pubs, on occasion.”

“Ooh, didn’t know you admired me! Did you enjoy it?”

“Who knows. I was mostly concerned that you might trip and fall.”

“Wow!” You made a face, and he smirked a little bit, although you were certain that part of it was coming from a place of misplaced but genuine concern. “Anyway, I learned how to dance the other day. Real dancing, I mean. Ballroom. I think it’s the sort of thing I’d really enjoy doing with someone I actually liked.”

“That MP is really buttering you up, huh?”

“Yeah. Honestly, he creeps me out. Either way, I thought it was fun. I’d like to do it with someone I like,” you said, shameless.

He paused.

“I don’t know why I put up with you sometimes, but… All right.”

“Really?!”

“Yeah. We have no music, but it’s just counting, right? One-two-three?”

“Yeah!” You stood up, holding out a hand.

“Right now?”

“Right now! I’m dressed for it.”

Rather than speaking, he only paused for a little bit before taking your hand.

“I’m going to do the man’s role to start,” you told him. “Leading and all, you know.”

It started off slowly, with jerky moments. It was a little comical, really: you had never seen his body so clumsy and lost before. Still, the two of you managed through your tripping feet and his stiff, unsure moments.

“We’re so awful,” you giggled between counting beats.

He scowled, clearly unused to struggling with physical tasks. “Just give me a second.”

“When we get better at this, we should get a record player or something. Or get Farlan to whistle a tune for us. I’d feel so fancy.” You smiled. “You know, you’d pull off the high class look really well. I think you’d look really good with a proper dress shirt, with a cravat and everything.” You played with his collar, tugging slightly at it and letting your fingers ghost over his collarbones. Most likely you were being wistful, but you swore that his breath hitched. “Yeah. You’d clean up well.”

Out of nowhere, he dipped you, smooth and confident, and you yelped. His sudden lead was strong, and his steps were now remarkably confident and on beat.

“What the hell? Is this your Ackerman control kicking in?”

“I suppose,” he drawled. “I guess it applies to dancing as much as it does to 3DMG.”

“Wow!” He spun you, and you giggled, your skirts flaring out. “I feel like a right lady!”

As you stepped back into his arms, looking up at him, you noticed that he was wearing one of his fleeting smiles.

All your life, ever since you found him in that brothel room, you’d be trying to get them out of him as much as possible. It had been hard throughout the years, the wall he had put up around him nearly impenetrable even to you, but it had been getting easier and easier as of late.

You couldn’t help but smile back.

24

“Hey, big sis?”

“Hmm?”

“This customer you have… the MP, the real rich one, does he actually like you?”

You hummed, looking up into the cavern ceiling. “No. Probably not. I think he fancies that I like him, and he loves that. But that’s all he enjoys. Well, I mean, that and the fucking.”

She went slightly pink, and you reminded yourself that she was still a bit of a kid, and that you should censor yourself around her.

“Okay! So you definitely don’t like him? I know he asks you to leave with him a lot… you don’t plan on leaving us, right?”

“God, no. I don’t trust a single pig who buys me.” You leaned in. “Let me tell you something: no man who buys women is a good one, even if they act it. They’re just looking for fantasy, and the minute that fantasy breaks and things get real—well, it gets ugly.”

“Huh…” She tilted her head, contemplating the idea. “I don’t think I’d ever do it, but I definitely thought about it once or twice, when I was on the streets.”

“Well, then, I’m glad that Levi found you.” You smiled.

“Me too!”

You smiled at her uncontrollabe affection for Levi. He had rescued her from the filth of the slums, and you knew that ever since then, she had been determined to take that chance and carve out a better life for all four of you.

“…some day, Isabel, we’re going to be at the top of the food chain in this dirt hole.”

She beamed, nodding vigorously. “Yeah! I like the sound of that. I’ll be real strong and rich. That’ll show those slum bastards.” She batted at her one remaining pigtail, the other one having just been cut off.

You laughed, ruffling her hair.

“Yeah! We’ll show all those bastards what we’re made of."

24

It hurt you. It elated you. The three of them had a chance at a better life above ground, at citizenship. You were glad that you had played a role in it, however small, in getting them to this point. That was enough for you, you told yourself.

But it hurt. It hurt that you hadn’t been offered that deal, and for the first time in your life, you regretted your line of work.

"Levi… I don’t care if you leave me behind. I want you to go above ground and leave this filthy place.” You smiled, and even though your heart ached, your face was carefully disciplined into excitement, joy, love. It wasn’t that difficult, as another, less selfish and damned part of you truly felt all of that. “I can take care of myself. And it’s not like it’d be goodbye forever, or something dramatic like that. We could split the stairway toll… I’d visit you. You could show me what the world is like up top.” You grabbed his hands, squeezing.

He had always been able to see through you.

“Stop.”

“Huh?”

“Stop.”

His grip firmed, and it was only then that you realised that your arms were shaking, that your lips were trembling.

Levi pulled you toward him, looking down at you, expression strange. You didn’t quite know when he had last looked at something so gently, eyes half-lidded and lips slightly parted. In fact, you didn’t quite know if he had ever looked at anyone this way.

“I’m taking you with me. You’ll be a citizen.”

The facade broke. Your eyebrows knotted up, and your mouth would not resume its smile. “Levi… you know that’s almost impossible.”

“There are options,” he argued. “I could work up there, build a life and save up to buy you citizenship.”

When you did finally smile, it was bitter.

“The amount of money it takes to buy someone citizenship is ludicrous. We’d both be so old by the time you managed it.” You’ll have moved on from me, and it would be for the better. “It’s not worth it.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Levi! Please… be realistic.”

“Fine. Then I’ll marry you.”

The words were so nonchalant, so flatly declared, that it took several moments to register. When they did, you weren’t sure that you had heard him right.

“…what?”

“I’ll marry you,” he repeated, once again sounding like he was making a remark about the weather, and he looked at you so steadily that you knew he wasn’t joking. “Once my citizenship has been processed, obviously. You’d automatically be considered a citizen after that.”

You pulled back, looking at him wide-eyed.

“You can’t be serious.”

He arched a brow. “Is the thought of getting married to me so unsettling that you’d give up a chance at citizenship? If you aren’t interested in me, it could just be a formality. A long-term transaction, if you will. You wouldn’t have to be with me in practice.”

“But you’re not interested in me!” you cried, and even you were surprised at your sudden outburst, at the way your voice shook and trembled. “Levi, I don’t want to marry you as a business transaction! It’d just make me a prostitute, and you’re the one person I don’t want to sell myself to! You wouldn’t be able to undo a marriage without sending me back into the Underground; you wouldn’t be able to find an actual wife! I’d, I'd—” You squeezed your eyes shut, and it was only then, when a wetness began to slide down your cheeks, that you realised that you were crying. “I’d rather live down here forever.”

His grip on your arms firmed, but not painfully. Instead, his thumb began to rub circles into one of your arms, and he bent down, trying to find the expressions on your lowered face.

“Who said,” he began, voice soft, “that I wasn’t interested in you?”

Your breathing calmed, and you blinked away your tears. A moment passed, your sniffing punctuating the silence.

“You wouldn’t be my prostitute. You’d be my wife, if you’d want it that way.” He paused. “That’s what I’d want.”

You looked at him, red-eyed and wiping at your nose, doubtful.

“You’ve never looked at me that way.”

“You’ve never seen me looking at you that way.”

“You’ve never said anything!”

“Neither have you.”

“You said you never cared for marriage!”

“Tch, you still remember that? I wasn’t going to propose to you on the spot.”

“Why would you like me?”

“Why would you like me?” He paused, looking away. “Actually, the question I should be asking is why wouldn’t I like you. We’ve always been together. We’ve always protected each other. And I told you,” he said, and you knew he was talking about that one argument the two of you had, years and years ago when he had put that beautiful silk into your hair and looked at you like he had seen the ghost of his mother, “that I don’t have the intention of ever leaving you.” He glanced back at you. “I couldn’t imagine marrying anyone else. It always made sense to me to suggest this at some point.”

Your brows furrowed, and you sniffed again. “Because it’s convenient?”

“Because I have feelings for you. Don’t be dense.”

Another long pause. You thought about it: a life with Levi on the surface, the sort of dream life that Undergrounders laughed at. He would no longer be a criminal, and you would no longer be a prostitute. You could have a domestic and small life beneath the sun, perhaps in a spacious house. The day-to-day wouldn’t change so much, you thought. He’d probably still train each morning, spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning, insist on doing the laundry so that the clothes would match his standards. You’d still cook and joke and try to get under his skin. Isabel and Farlan would be neighbours, and the four of you would still have dinners and drink together. You imagined kissing Levi on the cheek every morning before he left for work, awash in sunlight. You thought of kissing him on the lips at night before the two of you settled into bed together, starlight pouring in through the windows.

It was surreal, but you wanted it so badly.

“All right.” You straightened up, wiping tears from your face. “I never expected this to happen, but you’re right. This just makes sense.”

“Good. Then it’s settled.” He nodded, his voice matter-of-fact. “We’ll get married, and we’ll have a life above ground.”

“Together.”

“Yes.”

Levi’s smiles were small and rare, but they were always beautiful.

24

“Hey?”

“Hm?”

“Why did you never do anything? With me, I mean? It’s not like I wasn’t flirting with you every other minute.”

“Your shitty jokes hardly counted for flirting.”

"Wrong on both counts! They were good jokes, and they definitely did.” You flicked his shoulder while making a face, although you eventually rested your head atop it as well. “…anyway, why not?”

“I had my reasons.”

“You’re not allowed to say that! That’s a cop-out!” you whined into his ear.

“Tch, you’re insufferable.” Turning around, he grabbed you by the shoulders and slapped one of his hands over your mouth, leaving you giggling into his palm.

“Tell me!” you demanded, voice muffled by his hand.

Sighing, he relented, moving his hand from your mouth to brush your hair instead.

“…do you remember what it was like when you first started working? At the brothel? The one where we grew up, I mean.”

“Huh?” Your jaw went slack. You hadn’t expected him to lead with a question like that. “Well, it was ages ago and I definitely try not to think about it. If I really needed to, I could probably give you a detailed account after sitting on it.”

“Don’t.” His eyebrows knotted up, and he leaned down until your foreheads were touching. “I don’t think either of us need that. Jesus, I hated that place. I never wanted to go back.”

“…I know. I didn’t either.”

“…but we had to. Because there weren’t many other options for us, and on top of yourself, you had to worry about me. Shit, those first few years we were alone, I was so fucking useless…”

“Don’t say that, Levi. You know very well that I would have ended up back there with or without you.” You grimaced. “Not many options, remember? And we were just kids. I couldn’t have survived alone.”

“I don’t know if I could have either,” he admitted, putting his arms firmly around you. “But that first night you came back… you were so quiet, and so ill. All I could think about was how I wanted to give you a life where you’d never have to do that again. I know it makes no sense, but I just made up my mind right then that it wouldn’t be right to ask you until I could that for you.”

You leaned over him so that you could touch his face.

“So…” you began, voice almost sly despite the flush in your cheeks. “Does that mean you’ve actually liked me since we were kids?”

“Just about,” he said in his typical, matter-of-fact way. “I told you: it’s always made sense to me to ask you to marry me.”

“Huh. You stared into space. "I’ve liked you for a long time. You know you really didn’t have to do something like that for me before asking.”

“I didn’t,” he said, “but I wanted to. That’s just how I feel toward you.”

It took you several moments to understand your feelings in the wake of those words, to detangle your thoughts. You couldn’t process the painful and lovely swelling in your chest, didn’t know where to start between, I always knew you were a softie, but I never expected this, and I never thought anyone would ever want to give me something so big, and I love you so much, God I love you so much.

You settled for, “I’ve always wanted to give you better than this life, too.”

He put his lips next to your ear, smiling as he whispered.

“You already have.”

24

You were lying next to him, both of you on your sides, your faces nearly touching, one of his hands on your waist. It was comfortable. The two of you had, funnily enough, often slept together like this as kids, and then sometimes as teenagers during the nights when you had almost lost each other. His breath on your lips felt familiar, and his hand on your body felt right.

You had thought about this an embarrassing number of times during those moments: about closing the infinitesimally small distance between you, about touching his lips to yours, about what his body might feel like pressed against you.

“…I’ve never done this before.”

He snorted, ruining the moment a little bit. “That’s a lie.”

“I mean it!” You went red. “I mean, I’ve kissed and had sex a bunch—err, not that we have to have sex, if you don’t want to—”

“I want to,” he said flatly, looking at you like you were a little stupid. “You don’t know how many times I’ve thought about it.”

“Huh..?” You had figured this much since he declared his feelings, but that didn’t make you any less flustered right now. “Oh! But you were always so polite…”

His groan sounded absolutely tortured. “Shit, you have no idea how hard it was for me holding back. I never wanted to make you uncomfortable, but… holding you… and then giving you those baths… you were naked, for Chrissakes.” He closed his eyes, letting a strained breath out. “You have no fucking clue.”

You giggled. “Remember when we were 17, after you had started packing on muscle, and I walked in on you changing?”

His lip quirked. “Yeah, I do. You were so red.”

“Can you blame me? Never been so turned on in my life.”

He raised a brow, clearly disbelieving. “Really?”

“I swear.”

The two of you went silent. You gaze returned to his lips, then flickered to his eyes.

“I was serious, you know. I really haven’t done this before,” you whispered, eyes half-shut. “Kissed someone I liked, I mean.”

“…me neither.”

“Nervous?”

“No.”

He was the one to close the gap.

That night, you kissed him for the first time, let him touch you for the first time, felt him inside you for the first time. As you lay beneath him, naked and self-conscious and thoroughly flushed for the first time in your life, he had looked down at you, fingers on your jaw, gaze ridden with lust and affection and something deeper than both. The moment after he slid into you, his lips never left your body once, always on your neck or breast or mouth, like the moment would end if he stopped kissing you.

You had wondered, multiple times in the past, as soon as you realised that you would love him for the rest of your life no matter how hard to tried to push away your feelings, whether doing this with him might be awkward, might give you second thoughts. But it was perfect. It was a natural progression from all the hand-holding, the soft touches, the tight embraces that the two of you had always loved each other with, even before either of you had realised that you loved each other at all.

Your bodies made sense together.

You made sense together.

24

It had been weeks since the three of them left. For you, it was business as usual, although you had culled the number of customers that you were seeing, knowing that you would soon be leaving anyway. You only saw the ones that tipped well, and mostly that meant spending your nights with your MP client-suitor.

He had changed over the years. These days, he would openly patronise you, calling you simple-minded or a slum rat. He no longer bothered to hide the fact that he often hired girls on the nights that you were not with him, although he still reassured you that he didn’t love any of them the way that he loved you.

Part of you was surprised that he was still seeing you, but another part of you had almost expected his strange and unsettling obsession with you. You knew exactly what was happening. You understood what Wolff thought he had done to you. You had seen it happen with some of the other girls and their older boyfriends or pimps: men who practically raised them from girlhood to love them. You were lucky, you thought, not to have fallen victim to the con. Often, while lying beside Wolff in the darkness, still stiff as a board next to him even after all these years, you mused that you may have very well ended up one of those girls had it not been for Levi.

“You’re quite of age, now,” Wolff often said to you these days. “I’m quite serious about buying you citizenship. I’d marry you eventually, and keep you living somewhere separate from the family estate.” He leaned in, pecking you on the nose. “It would be a good life for you.”

Smiling, you replied, “Yes, I would very much like to be a citizen someday.”

Oblivious to the truth, Wolff laughed delightedly. “Then how much longer will you keep me waiting?”

“Mmm. Not too long, I promise. I plan to see the light of day soon.” Smiling, you thought about how Levi and the others were doing. “Say, speaking of being up top… did you hear about those three Underground thugs who were muscled into joining the military?”

Wolff raised his eyebrows.

“Huh! Yes, I heard about those poor bastards.” He looked at you, eyes cunning and curious. “They were rather skilled with 3DMG, and had been running about unchecked for quite some time. Were they your trade contacts? The timeline with their activity just about matched up to our deals.”

“They were. Steady business, weren’t they?” You hoped that you sounded nonchalant. “I wonder if they’ll come back again. Do you ever know what became of them..?”

He clicked his tongue. He said the next words unceremoniously, checking his teeth in the mirror on the nightstand, dirty nails picking at stuck food.

“I heard that they got killed. Titans got to them. Not surprising, really. They were untrained and didn’t stand a chance.”

24

You didn’t know how long you had spent crying and screaming into his pillow, trying to catch his lingering scent, unable to imagine a life without it. You didn’t care that you were hungry, or that you hadn’t washed up and changed into fresh clothes. Not taking care of yourself was strangely comforting: it felt as though he would walk through the door at any moment, sharply telling you to clean up and stop making a mess of his bed. It felt as though he would tell you off, and then hold you close, fingers stroking your back. The two of you would take a bath together with him wiping away your tears the whole time, and he’d hold you tight against him, stroking your hair and replying dryly that yes, he’d buy you a diamond fucking ring to make up for all the worrying he caused you.

24

It took you some time to come to your senses, but perhaps not as much as it would have for a regular person.

You and Levi had been together for so long that you had forgotten what it meant to be alone as an individual as opposed to a pair. Still, a part of you—the part of you that had always been convinced that everyone either leaves or dies, the part of you that was birthed the day that you found Miss Ackerman’s decaying body, the part of you that grew a little harder and colder every time Levi came home with a snapped wrist or a bullet in his shoulder—seemed to function well enough on your new definition of alone.

Your whole life, you had prioritised survival so strongly that you were now capable of making sound decisions without thinking. Even though your heart was still crying itself dry between Levi’s sheets, your body knew what the next logical choice should be, and it acted accordingly.

Later, you would hate yourself for it.

After days of not eating, you went out and nicked a can of soup and a loaf of bread. You ate them on the floor of your room, and then you went to see Wolff.

Knowing that he was lying through his teeth, you agreed to marry him.

We survive, you remember Levi telling you. Even if we are alone.

24

After returning from the nightmare outside the walls, Levi spent some time sitting in his room, trying to forget the bodies of his best friends. No matter how hard he tried, he could not forget the stare that Isabel’s head had given him, the painful goodbye that Farlan had bid him. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he could notice things outside his waking nightmare.

That very moment he snapped out of it, he went out and bought the fattest fucking diamond he could find. He took a regiment horse, and then he rode to Wall Sina at breakneck pace.

24

He had spent some time thinking about what to say to you, how to say it. He had to tell you that the plan had failed, that he had instead joined the Scouts. He had to tell you that Isabel and Farlan were gone and that you’d never see Isabel’s smile again or hear the two of them bickering. They’d never see the two of you married.

He had to tell you that he would never leave you, and that he needed to hear from your mouth that you would never leave him.

What he didn’t steel himself for was the emptiness of your shared room.

He waited for some time, clock taunting him into the early morning. He checked your closet, noted that all your belongings were still there besides one of your most colourful dresses. (He still did most of the laundry, and knew every single outfit you owned.) He noted that there was a layer of dust that had settled over the furniture, but then again, the Underground was full of dirt, and not much time had necessarily passed. He dusted everything off and prepared a bath for whenever you’d return home, certain that you’d be coming back. He had developed a certain, uncanny intuition about when you’d be returning over the years.

He polished the ring, and thought of ways to properly propose.

Come the next day, when the bath water had long since gone cold, he decided to look for you. He searched the markets that the two of you frequented. He looked at the spot where Isabel had released her sparrow into the sky. He asked the Stairway Guards about you. He went to that nightmare of a brothel, the one that haunted him in his dreams, and asked the manager about whether he’d seen you.

“She passed through some days ago, 'bout to see one of her ‘nonymous clients.”

He scowled. “No clue who it is? I need to find her. Damn girl loses track of time so easily.”

“Sorry, but I ‘aven’t got a clue.”

The brothel owner paused, looking uncertain.

“Son…”

He narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“S 'ard for a working girl. You never know with the customers. Some of them are quite… Temperamental. She wouldn’t be the first…”

“She knows how to defend herself,” Levi hissed, hating himself for the way that his blood ran cold.

He combed every street and alley of the Underground over the next week, going home at just about the time in the morning that you would typically return. He kept the place tidy.

When he realised that he was in the middle of washing your clean dress for the third time in a row, he knew he had to stop.

Before he left, he ran his finger across the night table, disturbing a thick layer of dust that temporarily clouded the candlelight, and then dispersed into the darkness.

For the first time since you had taken his hand and gently led him out of his deceased mother’s room, Levi was truly alone.

You had gone into the dust.