Chapter Text
‘Thief.’ The first word was an accusation. It burned hollow against the shell of his ear as a hand claimed his nape, forcing him down. Fingers pressed into the hollow where spine met skull. Heat seeped into his skin; mud streaking bitter lines, grit crystallizing between his teeth. His pulse rioted, a foul heat of rage in his veins. But something in the timbre of that voice stilled him.
'Cadet.' The second word found him in a storm's heart. The earth drank bloody beneath their boots as the titan's corpse sighed steam. His dagger bit into the palm that closed over it. Bone grated against steel. The grip tightened on his blade as if seeking salvation. His rage tasted of ash and retribution. Yet that voice promised choices, paths beyond the Walls. It eased his fury, scoured the red from his vision. When it asked him to follow, he listened.
A year of seasons bled into the next. ‘Private.’ The third word greeted him like a benediction. His fist struck his heart in immaculate devotion, knuckles a stark flare of white. The voice passed, its warmth a praise that seeped into his skin. His fingers clench. He turns, chasing whiskey and smoke, his hand pressed to a thundering heart.
'Captain.' Breathed against his nape, the fourth word electrified him. Fingers drifted along his skin with devastating tenderness, reading secrets in his stuttered breath. His spine curved in surrender, melting into the heat that claimed him. Blond strands coiled around his fingers, filaments of pale fire, soft and unyielding as the voice that carved him anew.
Eyes down. The first law of the Underground, carved into his vertebrae before memory took root.
Broken glass glittered in the perpetual dusk, shards poised to slice through worn leather and find the soft meat of a foot. Dark patches spread across stone where bodies had emptied themselves of blood or piss or both. The shadows breathed wrong, bulging where walls met floor, concealing bodies ready to grab whatever passed within reach: tarnished coins, moldy bread, warm flesh to sell or savage. Looking up invited death. To look up was to miss the knife sliding from a sleeve, the fist cocking back, the rope snaking from scaffolding to find a throat. It meant missing the stride of military police on collection day, their boots striking stone like a metronome for an execution.
The Underground offered no celestial navigation, no weather beyond the constant damp. Its sky wept constantly through carved stone and rotting timber, dripping moisture that tasted of rust and despair. Time frayed in that eternal twilight. What illumination existed filtered through iron grates, strained by garbage and boots and carriage wheels, arriving as weak and sickly as a dying man's skin.
The city above acknowledged them only through its effluence. Wheels would thunder overhead and unleash avalanches of waste through the gaps. Kitchen scraps, the contents of chamber pots, and the inevitable horse dung cascaded down, baptizing the forgotten in the excess of their betters. Levi learned to seal his lips at the first rumble, to turn his face aside without ever lifting his gaze skyward. The flavor lingered regardless, coating tongue and throat with reminders of his station.
Stone told stories to those who knew how to read them. This flagstone bore a chip where a skull had met it too hard. The gutter here ran red after market day when the butchers dumped their buckets. The ground became Levi’s almanac of survival. Disturbed earth warned of fresh-dug pits. Rust-brown stains chronicled yesterday's violence, tomorrow's precedent. Teeth littered corners like scattered dice, each one torn from a mouth that had ventured into claimed territory. A molar by the eastern tunnel. Three incisors near the water pipe. Each declaring what price was extracted for trespass.
His mother’s lesson came before language, before he understood the weeping of men in corners or the scars on the throats of children younger than him. Her fingers, bird bones in paper skin, pressed his chin down, forcing his gaze to the dirt. Never up. She’d hiss against his ear. Up is for people with walls between them and the wolves. Better to watch the shuffle of feet, to memorize the gaits that mean trouble, to count the coins scattered in gutters.
The angle became instinct. Five feet ahead. Always. Far enough to dodge but close enough to see the blade emerge from a coat sleeve, the boot draw back for a kick, the shadow shift before attack. Even with wings on his back and pristine silk at his throat, the instinct was a graft of old scar tissue. Old lessons carved into muscle memory by a mother whose love came wrapped in thorns.
At the Survey Corp headquarters, Levi navigated by the memory in his soles. This flagstone wobbled slightly. That threshold rose a quarter inch higher than expected. Ice would form there when winter came, black and treacherous. While other soldiers tilted their faces toward mountain vistas and endless blue, Levi counted hazards in the shadows.
Beauty belonged to those born under open skies, to those who had learned to walk with faces turned toward sunlight. For Levi, survival lived in the downward cast of his eyes. A lesson etched too deep to scour away, no matter how high he'd learned to fly.
Until those late patrols changed everything.
The first time his Commander halted without warning, Levi's reflexes fired before thought. He arrested his momentum inches from collision, his blade singing free of its sheath. Muscles coiled, his eyes dissecting the darkness, searching for the threat that had frozen his superior mid-stride. The wall stretched empty in both directions. Its length disappeared into dark corners where even moonlight failed to reach.
Below, fields of tall grass rippled beneath the moon's cold eye. Silver waves rolled across the landscape, an ocean of whispers that could hide leviathans of flesh. No shambling forms disturbed that deceptive peace. No grotesque silhouettes lurched through the silver tide. The horizon lay clean against the star-scattered sky, unmarred by steam rising from regenerating flesh.
Levi breathed deep through his nose, testing the air. Nothing. No reek of curdled blood. No sweet-rot stench that announced titans like a death knell. Just grass and wind and the faint mineral taste of approaching rain. The absence felt wrong. His muscles coiled tighter with each lungful of clean air, body rejecting the evidence of safety his senses provided.
Yet the Commander stood motionless. Face tilted toward the void above, he offered his throat to the night like a sacrifice. The position exposed every vital point. Jugular pulsing visible even from where Levi stood. Spine elongated, vertebrae pressing against skin. Arms loose at his sides instead of guarding his center. The pose was a flagrant invitation, a surrender to any predator that might wait in grass or shadow.
"Sir?" The word was a blade's edge. Stillness preceded slaughter. It was the first lesson after 'eyes down'.
"The 'Formation of Wings' spreads particularly bright tonight," his Commander said softly. "Do you see how they arc across the northern sky?"
Pretty words. Useless words. The kind that got people killed while they stood gaping at nothing, when death could scent them from miles away. Two figures silhouetted atop the wall made perfect targets. Levi's neck prickled. Motion meant survival. Stillness meant death. The wrongness of it settled deep in his bones.
"We should keep moving.”
"Do we?" The question held genuine curiosity. "And what waits for us at the end of this patrol that cannot hold for another moment longer?"
"Our lives. Standing here makes us titan bait."
“Titans cannot reach us at this height.”
Levi shifted his weight, leather creaking on stone. “That's what the last squad thought before an aberrant proved them wrong. And standing exposed like this goes against every protocol you wrote."
"I wrote those protocols for soldiers blind to all but the front." His Commander paused, and his gaze seemed to measure something in the darkness between them. "But you're different, aren't you, Captain? You see everything. So tell me what you really see when you look at those stars."
"Cold lights. Useless lights. Too far away to matter."
"And?"
Levi exhaled through his teeth. "And patterns. Repetition. The same arrangements every night, which means they're reliable. Fixed points."
"Exactly." Satisfaction warmed his Commander's tone. "Fixed points in a world where everything else shifts like sand. Don't you find that... reassuring?"
"I find it irrelevant."
"Do you? Then why did you notice the patterns?"
When his Commander glanced down at him, the moonlight rendered him otherworldly. The green stone at his throat caught celestial fire, pulsing with each breath like a heart carved from starlight. Wind lifted golden strands into a luminous crown while he studied Levi with the expression of someone encountering a particularly complex equation.
"Because you keep stopping to stare at them," Levi said flatly. "And keeping you alive means learning what captures your attention."
"Is that the only reason?"
Levi didn't answer. He couldn't. The truth was a shape for which he had no words, a concept that had no place in his vocabulary.
"And what do you see when you look down, Captain?"
The question caught Levi unprepared. "Threats. Exits. How many steps to cover if something goes wrong."
"And that keeps you alive."
"So far."
"But what kind of life is it, only seeing the ground?"
"The breathing kind."
Another near-laugh. "I grew up watching stars from windows. You grew up watching shadows in the deep. Perhaps between us we make one complete soldier."
"Pretty theory."
"Most theories are." His Commander's fingers trailed patterns in the air, following invisible connections between distant lights. "That cluster there? The Warrior's Belt. Those three stars have guided our soldiers home for centuries."
“Assuming they survived long enough to need it.”
"Always such optimism from you."
"Realism. Sir." The honorific was an afterthought. A knowing curve touched his Commander's lips, not quite a smile. He'd noticed.
"Tell me, Captain. When did you last look up?"
"I look up plenty. At walls. At titans. At things trying to kill us."
“But you don’t look at the sky.”
"No. Stars don't kill people."
"Neither do they save them," his Commander conceded. "Yet people have lived for them, named their children after them, and carved their shapes into stone that has outlasted empires."
“People are idiots.”
"Frequently." The agreement came easy. "But perhaps there's something to be said for beautiful idiocy. For choosing to see light when darkness presses close."
The cold sliced between them. Below, something howled in the distance. Titans, or the wind tearing through ruins—impossible to tell. Levi's every nerve demanded movement and the safety of completed routines.
But the man remained fixed in place, a statue carved from moonbeam and stubbornness.
"My father used to say the stars were humanity's first map. Before walls, before titans, we navigated by their light."
"Sounds like your father had too much time on his hands," Levi muttered.
Another laugh, little more than a breath. "Perhaps. But these patterns haven't changed in a thousand years. When these walls fall and humanity forgets its own name, the stars will remain, marking their paths across the dark."
"Assuming anyone's left to see them."
"Yes." The word was a quiet concession. "There is always that."
Levi thought that would be the end of it.
But this became their ritual, born without agreement or discussion. Night after night, his Commander would stop at random corners or pause on battlements where the wind carried the scent of distant decay. He pointed out patterns Levi had never cared to see, names drawn from ancient light: warriors and heroes marching across the darkness. His voice would soften when he spoke of them, filled with questions rather than orders.
Looking up was a betrayal at first. A violation. His every instinct screamed of exposed throats, of forgetting the knife-edge present for the distant, useless beautiful. But his Commander made the risk bearable. That solid presence beside him in the darkness—that rhythm of breathing that said alive, alive, still alive. Their shoulders would brush, a line of heat where wool met wool. His voice was a warm weight against Levi's ear, a low murmur explaining how to find true north.
“Stop." That voice cut through the rhythm of their footsteps one night. Not an order. Something else entirely.
Levi's boots scraped stone as he halted, hand finding the familiar weight of his blade. His Commander waited, while wind pulled at their cloaks.
"What is it?"
"No threat. Just... look up."
The request was nonsensical. Yet his Commander stood so still that for a moment Levi wondered if he breathed at all, if perhaps he'd become stone himself. His head tipped back, exposing the column of his throat to moonlight. Vulnerability offered without thought. He gazed skyward with an expression Levi had only seen on the faces of men who still believed in salvation.
One hand rose, pointing at nothing Levi could identify.
"Sir?"
"There." Wonder crept into that single word, softening its edges. "Do you see? The Seven Scouts. See how they march in formation across the sky?"
Levi forced his chin up. They looked like spilled salt against black cloth. Nothing more.
"I see lights." His voice came flat, skeptical. "Sir."
A soft laugh, little more than breath. "Not just lights. That's the First Expedition. The Seven Scouts who ventured beyond Wall Maria before it was built."
"The what?"
"Legend says seven Scouts left at dawn, before the walls were built. By nightfall, only their lights remained. Do you see how they curve? Like riders in formation. The brightest one leads, a perfect vanguard. They're still searching, still scouting ahead for the rest of us."
The words were just sounds, a fairy tale for a world that was never his. In the Underground, the only mythology involved which gang controlled what territory, or whose knife drew fastest. Stories were luxuries, stars were impossible. Levi squinted at the scattered points of light, trying to force them into horses, into riders, into anything that made sense. The sky sprawled endlessly above them—just another ceiling, Levi thought, albeit one too high to touch.
“Sir, the sky doesn't tell you where the next knife is coming from."
The man was quiet for a long moment. "You're right. The stars won't warn you about blades in the dark. They won't fill empty stomachs or warm cold bodies."
"Then why..."
"Because," his Commander said, moving to face him. Starlight caught on the green stone at his throat, an entire constellation contained within. “Sometimes we need to believe in something greater than the next threat, the next dawn we might not see."
"That's not how our world works."
"No?" That private smile returned. “Perhaps not. But I've seen you in the air, Captain. You don't move like someone who believes the sky is empty."
Levi had no answer; only the memory of mud pressed beneath his fingernails and his mother's voice hissing warnings about wolves.
"I still don't see the Seven Scouts," Levi admitted.
"Then I'll show you." The man moved behind him. "Start with the brightest. There, just above the eastern tower. That's the leader. Now follow my hand. See the six that trail behind? How they bend like riders taking a turn?"
His Commander’s finger traced the curve, slow and patient, his breath warming the shell of Levi's ear. It should have triggered every instinct, should have sent Levi spinning away with steel already drawn. Instead, he stood frozen by something other than fear.
"Still just lights," he managed.
"Close your eyes."
"That's stupid."
"Trust me."
Trust. An impossible currency in the dark.
Levi closed his eyes.
"Picture horses, and seven riders in formation. The thunder of hooves on earth that's never known walls. Wind in their faces, horizon endless ahead. They're riding still, waiting for us to remember how to follow."
Behind closed lids, Levi saw only darkness. But that voice painted pictures anyway, warm and certain as the hand still resting on his shoulder. For one moment, Levi almost believed in riders made of light.
"Open your eyes. Look again."
The stars hadn't changed. They remained stubbornly random, just cold points of ancient fire against endless black. But something shifted in how Levi saw them. Almost, almost, he could force them into formation.
"The sky is nothing," Levi said, the words flat. "Useless."
The man turned then, starlight catching in those eyes. "Is it? Since when was 'useful' our only measure of worth?"
Levi looked away. Worth. What was his worth to this man who spoke of stars like scripture, who dreamed in constellations?
He was nothing more than what his Commander had found in that Underground cell. Not born to wings and salutes, not raised on heroic myths whispered at bedsides. His gear never settled right, marking him as one thing while his skin remembered being something else. He could kill titans, yes but what was he, beneath it all? A curiosity, perhaps. A project. Something broken that clever hands had coaxed back to function, the way smiths reforged shattered blades until they could cut again. Still that creature from the Underground. Feral. Salvaged. Useful, but never whole.
No. Memory proved the thought a lie. His Commander had seen something more in him, had offered purpose beyond survival. Wings. A rank that meant something above ground. Authority backed by merit rather than violence. But that faith felt distant. On nights like this, with infinity sprawling above them, the chasm between them yawned as vast as the star-dusted dark.
"You really believe that? About the Scouts turned to stars?"
"My father did. He spent nights teaching me to read the seasons by their position, telling me they'd return when humanity was ready to follow. When we'd grown brave enough to reclaim what we lost."
"He studied the skies?"
A bitter laugh. "My father studied everything. Questions consumed him the way wine consumes drunkards. He was a teacher. Spent his nights over old texts, cross-referencing sanctioned maps, finding inconsistencies in what the crown told us about our history. He found references to ghost cities, to trade routes that led nowhere, to stars that guided travelers toward places the crown had excised from its records.”
"What happened to him?"
Silence stretched until Levi thought he wouldn't answer. When the words finally came, each one felt as if it had been quarried and weighed.
"He asked too many questions in front of the wrong people."
Violence had its own vocabulary, left its own grammar in the survivors. Levi recognized it in the ruin of his Commander's gaze, in the particular hollow that opened behind his eyes. Some deaths announced themselves in the damage they left behind.
"Is that why you look up?" Levi asked, softer than before. "Are you still searching for his answers?"
His Commander was silent for a moment, his gaze lost in the darkness.
"Perhaps." The admission was quiet, threaded with loss. "On nights like this, those old tales become promises. Proof that someone before us dared to want more than walls. That someone looked at the cage we've built and asked why we'd learned to love our chains."
He turned, and for a heartbeat, Levi saw it—a fissure of grief cracking the mask before it smoothed away
"What do you believe is out there, Captain? Beyond our walls?"
The question felt like a test, though Levi couldn't say what answer would pass.
"Death," he answered honestly. "Titans. Nothing worth dying for."
“Nothing?” His Commander's gaze held his, steady and unnervingly intent. “You’ve never wondered if we’re missing something...if the world is larger than what we’re told?”
"Wondering doesn't keep us alive."
"No." Agreement, soft and sad. "It doesn't." Those eyes lifted back to the endless void. "But what is the point of these wings we wear if we never learn to dream?"
They fell into new routines without naming them. After brutal days—and weren't they all brutal now?—they climbed worn stairs to the highest battlement. The fortress slept below while they stood suspended between earth and void. Moonlight performed its alchemy, silvering faces still marked with evidence of the day's butchery, washing them clean in its cold mercy.
His Commander leaned against the stone parapet, cigar glowing between his fingers like a captive ember. The ritual had become as familiar as sunrise: the silver case emerging from his breast pocket, the soft snick of the cutter, the flare of the match that painted his features gold before shadow reclaimed them. Smoke rose from his lips in lazy spirals, drifting across the battlements like incense for the dead.
Below, titans moved through the darkness. Sluggish shapes disturbed the middle distance, their movements dreamlike and wrong. Without sunlight to fuel their hunger, they wandered in slow circles, massive heads lolling. One dragged itself along the tree line, its gait a funeral march. Another stood motionless in the field, swaying slightly, waiting for dawn to restore its terrible purpose. In the darkness they became almost pitiable: monstrous children robbed of cruelty by the absence of the sun.
Words were unnecessary. The silence held more truth than any report delivered in the stark light of day. Up here, rank dissolved. They became two men seeking something clean and untouched by the blood that marked their days. The scent wove itself into these nights. Tobacco mixed with leather and a warmth that belonged to his Commander alone. It clung to Levi's uniform, nested in his hair, marked the air between them with possession. He found himself breathing deeper, drawing the smoke into his lungs as if it could answer the questions lodged beneath his ribs.
His Commander drew on his cigar, the ember flaring bright. For a moment, the glow illuminated his profile against the dark, and Levi was struck by the parallel: the Commander and the titans below were burning themselves hollow. One with tobacco and dreams, the others with flesh and hunger. Both eating themselves alive in different ways, both waiting for dawn to feed their appetites.
"Look at them." The man gestured with his cigar toward the titans. Ash fell like gray snow, dissolving into the darkness before it could touch the stone. "Almost peaceful at night. Almost like they're dreaming."
"Pretty theory for ugly things."
"Most truths are ugly. But we dress them up to make them bearable."
The cigar glowed between them, marking time in slow burns. A titan below had found a clearing and stood swaying in the moonlight, arms spread wide as if embracing the sky. From this height, wreathed in cigar smoke, it looked almost like worship. Almost like longing.
"What do you think they dream of?" His Commander's voice was soft, contemplative. "If they dream at all."
"Meat. Blood. The crunch of bones between their teeth."
“You have always been a romantic, Captain.”
"What else would they dream of? Poetry?" Levi watched smoke curl from his Commander's lips, each exhale dissipating into darkness. "This is dangerous thinking, Sir. They’re walking appetites, nothing more.”
"All the best thinking is dangerous. Sometimes I wonder if we're just titans with better manners. They devour our flesh. We feed on the corpses of our soldiers to climb a little higher. The walls keep them out but trap us with our own hunger."
"You're in a mood tonight."
"Observant as always." His Commander smiled, but it never reached his eyes. He took another draw, held the smoke in his lungs before releasing it into the night. "I suppose I am proving my own point. Even now, I'm consuming what's left of my father."
"What?"
"These cigars belonged to him. I smoke them on nights when the questions grow too loud. Each one brings me closer to the last. Each one burns away another piece of his memory."
"Then stop smoking them."
"I can't."
Levi watched his Commander draw another breath of smoke, as if trying to fill whatever hollow those words had carved. "You'll burn yourself to nothing chasing ghosts."
"Perhaps. But what else is there? Tell me, Captain. Would you rather live forever behind these walls, safe but ignorant? Or burn out seeking what lies beyond them?"
Levi watched the ash fall from the cigar, each flake a small death glowing orange before going dark. The titan below had ceased its swaying and now stood perfectly still, face turned upward as if listening to their conversation. As if waiting for answers to questions it could no longer form.
"You're thinking too loud," his Commander said softly.
"Didn't know that was possible."
"With you? Always possible." The words held a fondness, a knowing quality that Levi couldn't quite understand. "You carry your thoughts like weapons, even when you think you're hiding them."
Heat crept up Levi's neck. Even his silence was a betrayal. Another failure for a growing list. He would never fit the shape his Commander seemed determined to carve for him. Born wrong. Raised wrong. He wore dignity like an ill-fitting uniform.
"You're doing it again." The man took another draw. Smoke drifted between them, a gray veil that made everything dreamlike. "Building walls I can't see but can feel."
Levi fixed his gaze on the distant lights, wondering if his Commander saw patterns in him too. Some constellation of damage and deficiency only visible from the right angle. Perhaps that's what had drawn his eye, not potential, but a break interesting enough to fix.
"What walls?" The question came out rougher than intended.
"The ones that go up every time you decide you've disappointed me. That tell you that you don't deserve to stand here with me."
"Don't put words in my mouth." A pause. “Sir.”
"Then tell me what you're really thinking."
Levi's fingers found the wall's edge. Below, the world waited full of teeth and hunger. Above, stars remained indifferent to the human drama playing out beneath their light.
"I'm thinking you see things that aren't there."
"Do I? Or do I see the man you've trained yourself not to believe in?"
"Same thing."
They stood shoulders almost touching. The air between them thrummed with all the ways Levi couldn't reconcile with the man who trusted him and the boy who'd learned trust meant death.
"You found me," Levi said finally. "But sometimes..."
"Sometimes?"
"Sometimes I think you're still looking for whatever you thought you saw in that cell. And one day you'll realize it was…a mistake. That you'll regret your choice."
The silence that followed was deep, filled only with wind song and the distant sounds of a fortress settling. When the Commander finally spoke, he did it with absolute certainty.
"I saw a man who had survived impossible things. Who looked at me with eyes that had seen hell and still held the capacity for something more."
"Another nice story."
"Yet it is a true story, Captain. And do you want to know what constellation I see when I look at you?"
Levi shook his head, not trusting words.
"I see the Guardian. Not the pretty version from children's tales. The real one. Scarred and suspicious and unwilling to let harm come to what he's claimed as his." The moonlight carved the planes of his face as he turned toward Levi. "Do you know why that constellation matters?"
"Because it has a fairytale attached to it?"
"Because it never moves." The words were soft but certain. "Everything else wheels across the sky, following seasons and years. But the Guardian stays fixed. Always watching. Always there when you need to find your way."
Heat pressed behind Levi's eyes, unwelcome and undeniable. He blinked hard, attributed it to wind.
"Show me again," he heard himself say. "The formation."
His Commander turned, surprise sparking in blue eyes before melting into something warmer. He stepped closer, a radiating heat that defied the cold night air.
"There." One arm extended past Levi's shoulder, charting the sky. "Start with the brightest. Follow the line down and left. See how they bend? Like a wing in flight."
Levi followed the gesture and tried to see what his Commander saw. The nearness was a low fever in his blood, an awareness of breath stirring his hair. He forced his attention skyward to patterns that still eluded him despite weeks of watching.
"Still just stars," he muttered.
"For now." The words vibrated against his ear, too close, too warm. "But keep looking."
And so Levi kept looking.
The looking became its own ritual within the ritual. Night after night, until the shapes began to suggest themselves without prompting. Until he found himself searching for them during sleepless hours, neck craned at an angle that would have horrified his younger self. Until one evening, exhaustion and wine unspooled the words knotted in his chest.
"I see them now. The Seven Scouts."
His Commander's smile was slow, private, a genuine warmth he wore for no one else. His hand found Levi’s shoulder, a touch that could have meant anything. Levi didn't pull away, couldn't quite remember why he normally would.
"Show me."
“To the south-west,” Levi raised his hand, surprised by his own certainty. "The formation. The really bright one at the front. Six trailing behind."
"Correct. And there—" His Commander leaned in further, the warmth of his shoulder a firm pressure against Levi's. "The lead scout. See how it burns brighter? Different from the others?"
Levi did see. The star pulsed ruddy against the blue-white scatter, like a heart exposed. Almost violent in its brilliance compared to its companions.
"It's..." Levi searched for the word. "Angry. The bright one looks angry. Like it's burning itself up trying to go faster."
His Commander's breath caught, a soft, sharp sound. "Yes... That. I've never thought of it that way."
"Tch. Seems wasteful. All that light just to end in darkness."
"Or beautiful. To burn so bright your light outlives you by centuries."
"My mother would have hated this," Levi said without planning to. "Everything about it would have made her grab my chin and force it back down."
"But you're here anyway."
"Yeah." The admission felt like stepping off a ledge. "I'm here anyway."
"With me."
"With you."
They stood in comfortable silence, watching the red star pulse against the eternal dark. Levi thought of the Underground, of those who burned fast and fierce until they broke. Most died young, but a few blazed bright enough to be remembered.
"Do you know what I think when I see that star now?" His Commander’s thumb began to brush circles over the rough wool of Levi's shoulder, a subtle, almost unconscious motion. "I think of someone who survived by staying low, staying careful. Then chose to rise anyway. Chose to burn bright despite all the reasons not to."
Heat crawled up Levi's neck. "Still talking about stars, Sir?"
"Am I?"
The question hung between them like a blade balanced on its point. Around them, the fortress slept. Below, titans prowled in darkness. Above, that red star pulsed its dying light across impossible distances, reaching them long after its fire had consumed everything it had to give.
The next night, Levi looked for it first, and found it in its place, faithful despite its fury. His Commander noticed and that smile spread across his face again.
"Still angry?" he asked.
"Still burning," Levi replied.
Neither of them mentioned that it was beautiful.
"I was reading more about our star, Captain. Some texts claim it's dying as it burns through its last fuel. One day it will collapse, explode. Die spectacularly."
"When?"
"Could be tomorrow. Could be a thousand years." That private smile returned, meant only for Levi. "Even stars die. But they burn gloriously first."
The lessons changed after that. No longer simple instruction but something that pulled Levi from his quarters long after duty ended. What began as education became a ritual, then a necessity. His Commander's voice would find him in the mess hall: "Captain, when you have a moment."
After the last patrol staggered home and the mess hall emptied, after duty released its iron grip, Levi would find himself climbing the stone steps to his Commander's office. His feet knew the path by memory. The stairwell swallowed sound; worn grooves in ancient stone guided him through the evening. The ritual never varied. The heavy door would already be ajar, spilling candlelight into the corridor. Inside, his Commander bent over documents that covered every surface—ledgers reeking of dust and deception; maps annotated in red ink that looked black as dried blood. Correspondence bore seals that might be genuine or not—each one a potential noose if the wrong eyes saw them.
Levi never knocked. Some boundaries had dissolved between them during those nights of heresy. He would cross to the desk where a teapot waited, always full and always forgotten. The ritual of pouring became meditation. Watching amber liquid fill porcelain, steam rising to join cigar smoke. He would set the cup at his Commander's elbow, knowing it would cool untouched while they descended together into conspiracies written in careful script.
They worked this way now, breathing the same circle of lamplight that held back the dark. Questions begat questions as the candlelight caught on lies dressed as truth: dates that didn't align with known expeditions, signatures that curved wrong, forgeries so careful they revealed themselves only to eyes trained in suspicion. With each quiet discovery, his Commander listened like a man hearing prophecy.
These nights taught Levi a different kind of warfare. Not the clean violence of blades through napes, but the slow strangulation of truth by those who claimed to protect it. They would sit close enough that Levi could feel heat radiating from his Commander's skin, could smell ink and tobacco and the particular scent of obsession that clung to him.
"Captain, what did you make of this?" Three reports spread like tarot cards across mahogany, each claiming titans moved northeast during spring storms. "The previous expedition leader swore by these patterns."
"That one's dead now, isn't he?"
"Along with half his squad." A muscle jumped in his Commander's jaw. "So tell me what you see."
Levi lifted the nearest page, angling it toward the flame. Light passed through paper too fine for military issue, too smooth for hands that should be cramped with cold and fear. The watermark showed through like veins beneath skin.
"These were all written by the same person."
"They're signed by different scouts."
"Look." Levi held the page closer, until heat from the candle threatened to curl the paper at its edges. "It's the same ink batch. See how it pools here, in the letter loops? Whoever wrote this pressed too hard—the same way in all three. And this..." His finger found a smudge in the corner, whorls and ridges preserved in oil and ink. "Same thumb print. Right here on each one."
His Commander leaned closer, his breath stirring the air by Levi's cheek. "How can you possibly tell that?"
"In the Underground, you learned to spot forged ration cards or you starved. Guards would beat you bloody for carrying fakes, so you got good at reading the signs. Same principle here." Levi set the pages side by side, evidence laid out like bodies. "Someone wrote all three reports at once. Probably weeks after the expedition ended, sitting comfortable at a desk just like this one."
"Why falsify official records?" But his Commander's tone suggested he already knew, wanted only confirmation of his suspicions.
"Dead men can't contradict lies."
"Are you suggesting someone covered their losses with fiction?"
"I'm saying three scouts supposedly wrote detailed observations during a storm that killed half their unit." Levi tapped the pristine pages. "Ever try writing in rain? Paper turns to pulp. Ink bleeds. These are too clean. Too careful. Written by someone who never felt rain on their face that day."
"The Council accepted these reports for three years."
"The Council accepts whatever lets them sleep through the night."
His Commander's laugh was bitter. "You're not wrong.” He pulled another stack of documents. "What else can those Underground eyes see?"
"This here." Levi's finger found the damning line. "Claims they tracked titan movement at distance through heavy rain. Same paragraph says they lost visual on their own supply wagons ten meters away."
"Contradiction."
"Can't have it both ways. Either visibility was good enough to see titans at range, or it wasn't. Someone got sloppy with their story."
Levi reached for another ledger, their hands brushing. Neither pulled away. "This patrol schedule makes no sense," he said. "Same route six times. Like they wanted to be predictable."
"Or like someone wanted them to be found. What aren't you telling me?"
"Check the names. The squad leader on all six. He's the only survivor each time."
"He led them to slaughter."
"Six times. Different squads, same result. Someone should have noticed."
"Someone did. You." A beat of silence, then: "But why would he do it? What drives a man to feed his own squad to titans?"
Levi's jaw tightened. "Underground taught me this pattern. Seen it too many times. Someone gets leverage on you, something you can't live with coming to light. Maybe he's got family in the interior. Maybe debts to the wrong people. Maybe something worse."
"Blackmail?"
"Or payment. Underground lords used to run the same game. Find someone desperate enough, promise them their family's safety in exchange for... services. Make them lead rival gangs into ambushes. Six successful deliveries would buy a lifetime of protection."
His Commander's face went pale in the candlelight. "You're saying someone's using titans as execution squads?"
"Titans are cleaner than knives. No witnesses, no questions. Just missing scouts and grieving families." Levi shook his head. "In the Underground, we called them Judas runners. They'd earn trust, take leadership, then sell their people to the highest bidder. The smart ones made it look like bad luck. Wrong place, wrong time."
"But six times..."
"Gets harder to fake after the third. By the sixth, he's either desperate or protected by someone high enough that scrutiny doesn't matter." Levi pulled another report closer. "Look at the after-action reports. Who signed off on them?"
His Commander rifled through pages, ink-stained fingers moving with increasing urgency. "The same senior officer each time. A Squad Leader named Mak."
"There's your answer. Mak's running him. Probably has a stable of squad leaders, all compromised, all feeding the machine." Levi's laugh held no humor. "Perfect system. Thin out the ranks, blame the titans, pocket the wages of dead soldiers. Probably selling their gear on the side. The Underground gangs and runners pay very well for those."
"This is monstrous," his Commander breathed, the word a soft exhale.
"This is business. Seen variations of it everywhere power exists without oversight." Levi met his Commander's horrified gaze steadily. "The Underground taught me that monsters don't always have claws. Sometimes they have rank insignia and clean uniforms."
His Commander exhaled slowly. "How deep does this go?"
"Deeper than you want to know." Levi shifted in his chair, their knees bumping beneath the desk. "But we need to know anyway. Pull the supply records for those same expeditions."
His Commander leaned across him to reach another stack. The scent of him filled Levi's lungs—tobacco and ink, sweat and sleeplessness, the particular warmth of skin that had been too close to candle flame for too many hours. Papers rustled as he spread them across the desk's scarred surface.
"There." Levi bent forward, as they examined the columns. Levi felt his Commander's breath stir the hair at his nape, each exhale warm against his neck. "Look at the dates. Same expeditions where soldiers died, but the supply allocations don't match."
"They're still drawing supplies for dead soldiers."
"More than that." Levi pulled the ledger closer. "This supply record is all wrong. Someone was skimming rations before the soldiers even died."
"Walk me through it."
"The math doesn't lie. People do." Levi's finger followed columns of numbers. "Expedition logged for twenty soldiers, but supplies allocated for twenty-five. Then here, different date, fifteen soldiers with supplies for eighteen. Pattern repeats every time. Ghost mouths eating real food."
"Are you suggesting, Captain, that someone has been taking extra rations and inflating expedition sizes to cover the theft?"
"Or selling military rations to the highest bidder. Underground taught me to watch the food supply first. Control that, you control everything else. Empty bellies make men desperate. Desperate men do what they're told."
"How long has this been happening?"
"Years, probably. Look at the dates. Goes back further than these reports."
"Gods," he breathed. "The whole system is rotten from the inside."
"You're surprised? Men with power always take more than their share. Only difference here is they're stealing from the living and the dead both."
"I've been signing off on these reports for months. Every lie carries my seal. How much has been stolen on my watch?”
Levi ran the numbers quick as instinct. "Enough to feed a full squad for three months. Or enough to buy the kind of silence that keeps throats uncut."
"Names. I need names."
"Check who survived those expeditions. Cross-reference with who filed reports. The dead can't write, but someone's been speaking for them."
His Commander's pen moved swiftly across the page, each stroke a small declaration of war against the deception. The hour grew later, candles burning down to stubs, but neither moved to end their vigil.
"Your skepticism cuts through assumptions I didn't realize I held. I trusted the chain of command. Trusted that multiple sources meant accuracy."
"Multiple sources can still be the same lie told different ways."
"Yes." His Commander set the pen down, the click of metal on wood sharp in the silence. He turned to study Levi with something close to wonder, as if seeing him for the first time. "Where I see complexity, you see patterns. Where I see authority, you see people with agendas."
"Everyone has motives. Question is whether they align with keeping you alive."
His Commander was quiet for a long moment, his gaze never wavering. The candlelight reflected in his eyes until they seemed to burn from within.
"How many of these documents would you say are compromised?"
"All of them," Levi said without hesitation. "Until proven otherwise."
Another laugh, short and wondering. "God. You trust nothing."
"I trust what I can verify."
"And what have you verified about me?"
Levi felt heat burn up his throat. The shadows couldn't hide everything, and his Commander was watching too closely.
"You're still breathing," Levi said finally. "That's verification enough."
This became the shape of their nights. Candles burned down to stubs while they dug truth from beneath layers of deception. Wax tears gathered and fell, marking hours in white pools that hardened on the desk between them. His Commander brought problems; Levi tore them apart. Pulled the threads until the whole tapestry unraveled. Weather logs revealed impossible patterns. Expedition routes showed fatal repetitions. Supply chains hemorrhaged resources into phantom pockets.
Each revelation earned that particular look. His Commander leaning forward, eyes intent, as if Levi held the answers to questions he hadn't yet formed.
"You trust nothing without dissection," his Commander observed one night, with admiration. "That is very rare."
"That's just survival."
"Yes. And that's why I need you..." He paused, then clarified, "Your eyes on this."
Need. The word settled between them, warming the air more than any fire. Levi became aware of every small sound: wind rattling windows in their frames, the guards changing watch, boots on stone marking time in four-four rhythm, his own pulse loud as thunder in his ears.
"You have them." Levi kept his voice level, though something turned over in his chest. "Sir."
The honorific landed like a closed door. His Commander's jaw tightened, but he only nodded and returned to the documents.
They worked in silence for several minutes, but something fundamental had shifted. It started during the morning briefings. The conference room would fill with squad leaders and section commanders, voices overlapping as they argued logistics and losses. Hange would gesture wildly about titan theories; Mike would be a steady presence at the far end. Fifteen, sometimes twenty people crammed around the scarred table, all focused on maps and supply reports.
But his Commander had started angling his papers differently. Just enough so Levi, seated at his right, could see the margins. Questions appeared there, written in small, precise script while his Commander's face remained impassive, while he nodded at Hange's latest hypothesis: What do your instincts say about this supply route?
Levi would wait until attention shifted elsewhere, then write his response: Death trap. Too narrow. No escape routes.
His Commander's only acknowledgment was the barest tightening of his fingers on his pen before he wrote again: Alternative?
Southern pass. Longer but survivable.
All of this while maintaining perfect composure. While participating in discussions. While their knees pressed together beneath the table where no one could see.
During one particularly heated debate about resource allocation, his Commander slid a report to Levi. Ostensibly for review. But in the margin, almost hidden among official notations: You were right about Maks. Found three more discrepancies.
Levi kept his face neutral as he wrote back: Check his previous posting. Pattern will be there.
"Captain Levi." Hange's voice cut through. "Your thoughts on the eastern approach?"
Levi looked up smoothly. "Suicide. The terrain favors ambush. We'd lose half the formation before we could react."
As discussion erupted around his assessment, his Commander wrote: Your mind works like a weapon.
A flush crept along Levi's throat. Weapons require careful handling.
Yes, the response came back. They do.
The meetings became their secret language. In rooms full of people, they built private conversations in margins. When Zacharias droned about protocol, his Commander would slide over supply manifests covered in questions only Levi was meant to answer. When squad leaders argued themselves in circles, Levi would find notes appearing at his elbow: Trust this source?
No. Numbers too clean.
Thought so. Your verification?
Watch his hands when he talks. Liars fidget.
They'd both turn to observe the squad leader in question. His fingers drummed nervously on the table as he insisted his reports were accurate.
Sometimes the notes grew more personal, more dangerous. During a tedious meeting on wall maintenance, his Commander wrote: You haven't been sleeping.
Levi's pen hesitated before responding: Neither have you.
Different reasons, I suspect.
Are they?
His Commander's breathing changed, just slightly. His pen stilled for a moment. Anyone else would miss it. But Levi had learned to read him. He watched his Commander force his attention back to the discussion, watched him nod at appropriate moments, all while writing: We should talk. Privately.
Levi's response was immediate: Talking is dangerous.
Yes. Everything about this is dangerous.
The meetings ended as they always did, with assignments distributed and schedules confirmed. But now Levi would leave with pockets full of annotated papers, margins black with conversation no one else had witnessed. He would return to his quarters and spread them out like illicit love letters, reading the questions and observations meant only for him. In the solitude of his quarters, Levi answered them all. He traced the lines of each query and veiled request for connection, deciphering words that meant one thing on the surface and everything beneath.
Building their private language letter by letter. Line by line. Night by stolen night.
Your perspective changes everything.
Trust your instincts on this.
Your thoroughness is extraordinary.
And once, written so small Levi almost missed it, tucked beneath a supply calculation:
I think of our conversations when you're not there.
Levi burned that one. He had to. But the words were already seared into memory, impossible to forget.
The tension accumulated like debt between them.
His Commander's eyes began to linger when he thought Levi wasn't watching. Quick glances that caught on things they shouldn't: the pale curve of throat where the silk cravat had loosened, the dark sweep of lashes in lamplight. The wanting lived in the periphery, in the silence. In the careful pronunciation of Levi's name, shaped by a tongue that wanted to taste more than words.
Levi noticed. Of course he noticed. Those looks held assessment first, then something else, something heated that burned. That attention was a low fever beneath his skin. Made him conscious of every gesture, every breath drawn into suddenly tight lungs.
"You're not listening." The accusation came sharply when he caught his Commander staring again.
"I am."
But those blue eyes remained fixed on the hollow of Levi's throat, where pulse met skin. The weight of that gaze unmoored something deep in his chest. He forced his attention back to the documents, but awareness crawled along his spine like phantom fingers. His face warmed with the knowledge of being seen, of being desired by a man who had no right to want him this way.
Three in the morning transformed everything. The world outside ceased to exist, leaving only this bubble of warmth while winter pressed against windows. They sat in that silence, papers forgotten between them. The room felt smaller, the air thicker. His Commander's fingers drummed a restless rhythm against the mahogany. The whiskey bottle passed between them without ceremony, its rim still warm from the other's mouth. Each sip burned away another layer of protocol.
The distance between their chairs kept shrinking.
"Tell me something," his Commander said suddenly, not looking up from the report he was annotating. "When you first came here, what did you think of all this?" He gestured vaguely at the papers, the office, the life above ground.
"Thought it was another cage. Nicer bars, same prison."
"And now?"
Levi took another sip, letting the whiskey's burn fortify him before answering. "Now I think the bars were always there. You just helped me see past them."
The pen stilled. The man looked up, his eyes dark with an emotion Levi couldn't name. "That might be the finest thing anyone's ever said to me."
"It's just the truth."
"Yes." His Commander said softly. "It is."
They returned to the work, but the air between them had thickened. When Levi reached for a new document, his Commander was already sliding it toward him, anticipating his needs with uncanny precision.
"How do you do that?" Levi asked.
"Do what?"
"Know what I'm thinking."
The laugh was barely a breath. "I pay attention. You're worth paying attention to."
Neither acknowledged what had just been said. But Levi's hand trembled slightly as he wrote. His Commander noticed but said nothing.
"Perhaps we should take a break." The man finally leaned back in his chair, putting necessary distance between them, and reached for the silver case that never left his pocket. A ritual of control to reassemble walls that kept crumbling. The case opened with a soft click. He selected a cigar, but when he patted his pockets for matches, his expression shifted to mild annoyance.
"Allow me." The words left Levi's mouth before thought could stop them. “Sir.” The honorific fell between them like a blade. Necessary. Proper. Everything they were supposed to be to each other.
He rose, circled the desk. Each step brought him closer to that dangerous orbit where professional distance dissolved. His Commander went still, cigar held suspended between fingers that betrayed the barest tremor. Levi struck the match. Sulfur flared sharp and bright, before settling to steady flame. He cupped it in his palm and leaned in. Too close. Close enough to count the gold flecks in blue eyes, to see pupils dilate in the match light.
His Commander had become stone, barely breathing as Levi brought flame to tobacco. Their eyes met across that small fire. Blue locked with gray while the cigar tip glowed to life, ember blooming red between them. The study filled with wisps of smoke, a confessional hazed with secrets neither dared to speak. Levi could lean forward another inch and change everything. He could close that final distance and taste ruin on those lips that had shaped his name so carefully.
His Commander's gaze dropped to Levi's mouth. Lingered there. The match burned lower, eating itself toward Levi's fingers, but neither man moved. They were suspended in that moment, caught between what was proper and what was wanted, between rank and something rawer.
Flame met skin. Levi hissed, shook out the match. The spell cracked but didn't shatter.
"Thank you." The man's voice was rough, smoke-scarred. He lifted the cigar to his lips, cheeks hollowing as he drew deep. Smoke emerged in a slow stream, rising toward the ceiling in lazy spirals. Levi inhaled, let it burn down his throat, settle warm in his chest beside all the things he couldn't voice.
The familiar sting had become a comfort over these long nights. Proof that this moment was real, that his Commander sat before him solid and breathing, still impossibly present despite all the ways the world conspired to claim him. Tomorrow, he'd catch traces of tobacco and remember this moment. Remember how neither had moved, how they'd balanced on that knife's edge of wanting, each waiting for the other to tip them toward ruin.
Some nights, Levi would test those limits further. Would stand closer than necessary. Would let their fingers brush when passing documents, watch breath catch at the contact. Small cruelties born of his own confusion, his own growing awareness of how his Commander's presence set a mutiny to his blood.
"We should stop for tonight," his Commander said during one particularly tense evening, though he made no move to gather the papers.
"Should we?" Levi didn't move either.
They sat in the silence, the air between them humming with possibility. His Commander's fingers drummed an agitated rhythm against mahogany.
"These late nights," his Commander began, then stopped, the words catching in his throat. He started again. "They're becoming..."
He didn't finish. Didn't need to. The words hung there anyway: dangerous, inappropriate.
"Productive," Levi supplied, shifting so their knees touched under the desk.
The inhale was sharp, pained. "Captain."
Just his rank. But the way it emerged, rough with warning and barely contained want, made it sound like prayer and curse combined. It sent heat pooling low in Levi's belly.
This thing between them had grown teeth. Levi watched his Commander fray at the edges, lose by degrees. The seams of his careful propriety were straining, threatening to split. Those elegant hands skimmed across documents, and Levi found himself wondering how they'd feel moving across bare skin. Whether they'd be gentle or desperate. Whether they'd leave marks.
"I dream about them sometimes, Captain." The admission was soft during a clear night. "Dream I could follow those Seven Scouts. That I would find what they found."
"What do you think you'd find?"
A breeze carried the scent of distant rain across the battlements. Below them, titans wandered the killing fields like drunken mourners. Their noise rose from the darkness: a liturgy of low groans and wet breathing that vibrated through stone, the slow drag of feet that forgot how to lift. A smaller titan bumped against the base of the wall in endless, mindless repetition. The sound was a rhythmic, mindless heartbeat: flesh against stone, retreat, approach, flesh against stone.
Moonlight drenched his Commander in silver as he considered the question.
"Other settlements. Other survivors. Humans who never needed walls because they learned to master the world instead of hiding from it. Or maybe nothing. Maybe just titan territory stretching forever. But isn't the question worth something?"
Levi thought of the Underground, where mystery meant blades sliding between ribs in the dark. Where beauty was currency no one could afford and survival meant keeping your gaze fixed on packed earth, never daring to imagine sky.
"I don't know," he answered honestly.
"That's all right." His Commander's hand found his shoulder, brief but warm. "Neither do I. But I'd rather die asking questions than live with only certainties."
Below, the titan moaned again, a sound that could have been frustration if such creatures knew the word. Its companion answered from further out, its voice fading into the distance like a question without an answer.
In the nights that followed, returning to the office transformed from duty to compulsion. No longer summoned; Levi came by instinct alone. His Commander crossed to the bookshelf and pressed hidden latches behind mundane volumes, and a panel slid open with a whisper of dust. Books emerged like guilty secrets, leather covers worn soft by furtive handling, pages that whispered when they turned.
"My father's collection." He spread them across the desk with care. "I saved what I could before they burned the rest."
Oil lamps guttered low, sending shadows dancing across celestial diagrams dense with cramped notations. Star charts showed annotations tracked across weeks; some passages were underlined so forcefully the pen had torn the paper. Maps that showed impossible things: lands beyond the walls, trade routes to nowhere, cities that shouldn't exist.
"Look at this." His Commander's hands trembled as he bent over the contraband text. "What if," he read, his voice low, "'there are other worlds beyond our walls, beyond even what the crown admits exists?'" The firelight made his blue eyes gleam with a heretic's fever. "The church says we're all that remains. That beyond the walls lies only death and damnation." His laugh came bitter. "But how can they know? How can anyone know what burns that far beyond us?"
Dangerous questions. Heretical thoughts. Levi had seen that look before—in the eyes of Underground martyrs who preached revolution right up until the Military Police opened their throats. Men who burned too bright, who asked why instead of how, who died with truth on their lips and blood in their lungs.
But here, with only Levi as witness, the rigid set of his Commander's shoulders would soften, the uniform seeming to settle into the shape of the man beneath it. His fingers moved across constellation paths like a man reading love letters, voice softening around possibilities too large for their small, walled world. Theories and dreams spilled out of him uncensored, a torrent of words that could see them both hanged for sedition. He became someone else entirely, someone younger and hungrier for truth than glory.
"Look here." Papers rustled between his fingers, old ink bleeding across yellowed pages. His Commander pulled closer, bringing warmth and the scent of leather. "My father noted this same constellation in three different texts. All of them reference a city beyond the walls."
"Stop." Heat threaded through Levi's voice. "You're talking about children's tales again."
"Then why did they burn the books that mentioned it?" he demanded. "What truth is worth killing teachers for—"
He cut himself off, swallowing the rest. Even in this room, with only Levi as witness, some words were too dangerous. The green gem at his throat trembled with his breathing, catching and releasing the light in frantic bursts of color—like signal flares, like warnings.
"What do you think they are, Captain? The titans. Tell me."
"Does it matter? They eat us. We kill them. Simple."
"Nothing is simple. The walls themselves, their construction. Have you seen the architectural reports? The measurements? Too perfect, too precise. As if they appeared overnight rather than..."
His Commander stopped again, swallowing words that could loop a rope around his neck. The gem bobbed with the motion, green as poison bottles that passed between desperate hands in the Underground.
"Careful, sir." The warning was automatic. "They hang men for smaller thoughts than those."
"Yet here you are. Listening to my sedition."
"Someone has to make sure you don't talk yourself into a noose.”
"Is that all?" the man pressed. "Or do you hear it too? The lies beneath every approved truth?"
Levi said nothing. But he didn't leave. Instead, he watched the lamplight pour like gold through tousled hair, watched excitement animate features usually carved from stone. The memory of his Commander would smoke through Levi's dreams like the cigars that marked their midnight hours.
"What if we're meant for more than this?" The words would slip out, wine-loose and wondering, during one of these nights. "What if these walls are just a larger Underground? Prettier, perhaps, but a cage all the same?"
The questions tasted of treason, sending a frisson through Levi—something between fear and exhilaration.
“That kind of talk gets people disappeared."
"Only if the wrong ears hear it." His Commander's smile was all sharp edges, as intoxicating and dangerous as everything else about him. "Do I have the wrong audience, Captain?"
Warmth spread up Levi's neck. He could end this now. One word to the right authority and it would all be over. Instead, he reached for one of the papers. Their fingers brushed as he took it, skin against skin for one electric moment.
"Show me," he said. "These patterns your father found. Show me what got him killed."
His Commander’s smile transformed him. In that moment, he was at once young, fierce, and terribly beautiful. He bent over the documents, his shoulder pressing warmly against Levi's. The gem at his throat caught firelight and held it, pulsing like a second heart. He began to weave a new map from the connections between star maps and architectural measurements, between titan sightings and astronomical events, between his father's questions and the silence that answered them.
And so evening after evening, they met like this: conspirators in lamplight, sharing theories that could hang them both. Levi found himself drawn to this unguarded version of his Commander more than he cared to examine. And though he wouldn't admit it, something began to loosen in his own chest. The possibilities in that voice worked their way under Levi's skin like splinters of light.
All his life, ceilings meant safety. The Underground's stone overhead, then walls circling humanity's last territory. Limits were protection. Boundaries kept you alive.
But his Commander made infinity sound like homecoming.
And slowly, night by night, Levi learned to raise his eyes to the infinite dark above.
Night devours the world beyond the fortress walls. Only scattered stars remain, cold witnesses offering no comfort to those who still draw breath below their ancient light. Levi's fingertips drift along the wall, finding familiar notches — one, two, three, one, two, three — a ritual repeated countless times, yet never with such dread scoring his throat. Through ancient stone, wind keens a dirge, threading between cracks worn by soldier's boots and winter's teeth. This path knows him. His feet find each uneven flagstone without thought, memory guiding him through a darkness thick as poured tar.
But tonight is different. Tonight, each step is a judgment.
Three days. Three days have passed since his Commander's voice cut through the strategy room, final as execution orders. As if the empty sleeve at his side was a mere trifle against the fever burning in his eyes. He remembers the way his Commander looked right through him during that meeting when he spoke of answers worth any price in blood. Blue eyes distant as the winter sky, already seeing beyond tomorrow's carnage to whatever revelation waited in Shingashina.
The basement holds answers we need. Whatever the cost, we will retrieve what waits there. You understand the risks, Captain.
Not a question. A dismissal. As if Levi's objections were static, nothing more than noise to the grinding cadence of his Commander's purpose.
Yet those same words condemned half their forces to feed titan guts, their blood seeping into soil already drunk on generations of sacrifice. The earth would feast on what the titans left behind: viscera strung between grass stalks like garlands, skulls emptied of dreams and filled with rain. Some soldiers would weep while giants made banquets of their bones. Others would water the ground in pieces, creating a garden of carnage where wildflowers would bloom obscenely bright come spring, fed on all that rich, human rot.
Levi's fists clench until nails bite crescents into his palms. The pain helps when everything else threatens to splinter. Show nothing the enemy could exploit. Bury reaction beneath silence. But a tremor starts in his left hand, barely visible until he clenches it hard against his thigh. Control. Always be in control. Even as something tender tears beneath his ribs with each breath.
"Fuck." The curse is a shard of sound that dissolves into the wind, swallowed by the fortress's hungry throat.
His jaw locks tight enough to crack enamel—the only outward sign of the earthquake in his chest. Humanity's Strongest, reduced to this midnight supplication, this shameful pilgrimage toward a door he has no business approaching. Yet his feet held their course, drawn by something stronger than wisdom or pride.
Come dawn, they ride into titan-infested territory, and his Commander—brilliant, impossible fool—means to lead them. His empty sleeve marks him as a liability in the eyes of those cowardly pigs who hide behind the Walls. Logic dictates the missing limb should tether him to safety. Yet still his Commander bends over maps and routes as if flesh and bone were inconsequential against the sheer force of his crusade.
The memory burns behind Levi's eyes: That smile when the meeting ended. That serene, terrible expression of a man already at peace.
Try to understand, Captain. Some questions are worth more than the lives they cost to answer.
Worth more than life. Worth more than whatever fragile thing exists between them.
Levi's throat closes as he approaches the familiar door. Each step betrays something fundamental he can no longer name. Pride, perhaps. The old vows to need nothing, to bend for no one. The boy from the Underground who survived by becoming stone, by caring for nothing that could be taken away. But his Commander isn't his enemy, despite how he wields Levi's devotion like a weapon. Despite how he'll sacrifice everything for answers that might not even exist beneath Shiganshina. Including himself. Especially himself.
Time hemorrhages away with each heartbeat. Tomorrow looms like a titan's maw, ready to devour every word swallowed between them. If he fails tonight, nothing awaits but an eternity of cold beds and colder dawns. A half-life haunted by golden hair matted red, by brilliant dreams spilled across blood-soaked soil, by all the words Levi should have spoken when there was still time.
Levi falters before the door, hand suspended between decision and retreat. His pulse hammers against the stiff fabric of his collar. A draft hisses through the corridor, carrying the scent of coming rain and iron endings.
Tonight, in the quiet dark where barriers of rank dissolve, he has one last chance to reach not just his Commander, but the man beneath. The one who bleeds crimson instead of ideology, who may yet be swayed by something other than duty.
Beyond the door waits either salvation or ruin, and he no longer knows which of them is the greater terror.
One breath drawn deep into lungs that feel too small.
Then another. This one tasting of resolve filled with desperation.
Levi raises his fist and knocks.