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The world was cruel.
Levi knew it right when he was a mere child. He had tried thrashing his way out of his captors’ iron grips, screaming, crying, trying anything but to no avail. He could only watch as one of the cloaked men slit the throat of the only person he had ever loved: his mother. She had fallen over and her glazed, frozen eyes had trained right onto Levi.
He didn’t understand it then, but ten years later, he understood. Those bitterly cold, frozen eyes would never move again.
She was dead.
They killed her.
Something rushed over Levi’s head. It wasn’t fear anymore; it was something else entirely.
Levi’s vision burned. With newfound strength, he sunk his teeth straight down into his captor’s arms. The man howled in pain, blood seeping out of the wounds. The red against Levi’s red gaze was comforting, making him growl out of victory. But it wasn’t over yet. Using the newly injured arm, he flung himself out of the man’s clutch and landed on his back, hard. He winced and tried steadily standing up again, his captors yelling angrily around him.
He swiveled around to face the captors. He was going to kill them. He was going to-
Suddenly, a dark hand from the shadows swooped from behind and scooped up Levi, and for the second time in his eleven years of life, he saw nothing but utter blackness.
After that, he never had the chance to kill the captors that killed his mother again.
Levi was twenty-five years old when he met Eren.
“He has a nice face; he’ll make a good profit.”
Levi didn’t turn towards the voice seeping out of the alley next to him, didn’t bother. He had learned from that one time when he was eleven years old not to help or trust anyone. In this world, there were only two people: the loners and the manipulators. No matter what they said, everyone was selfish in their own way. It wouldn’t be long before the person who promised to help escape turns back to bite.
“But the real treasure is the girl. You don’t see much of that prettiness lately.”
Fumbling around in the pocket of his cloak, Levi took out a cigarette and a lighter. He stopped underneath the dim light overhead. The moon that was projected to be full that night was shrouded by bluish-black clouds. It was getting late, but never too late for a smoke. Leaning against the cool tiles of the nearby walls, he lit the cigarette and inhaled, letting the smoke weave through his lungs before exhaling. He should probably quit but never had a reason to.
“So if we sell them, we’ll get 20% of profit, yeah, Kenny?”
“Yeah.”
The cigarette almost fell out of Levi’s hand. His blood ran cold. If the name wasn’t any indication, the sandy yet deep voice that Levi had grown up to recognize was the dead giveaway.
Kenny Ackerman.
Levi stepped out of the dim light and back into the shadows crawling around the alley. He knew he shouldn’t have cared, but the word “Kenny” couldn’t be said by Levi without any lingering bitter distaste. But it had been ten years since then; Levi had thought Kenny had died.
That fucker.
Hating himself with every step, Levi dropped his cigarette bud onto the ground next to herds of other ones and neared the intersection connecting his alley with the alley where the voices came from. Leaning against the wall with his back facing it, he peeked around the corner.
There were two children and three men conversing amongst themselves underneath another dim streetlight. Sure enough, the tallest one of them all that had the distinct crinkling underneath those aged eyes was unmistakably Kenny.
Levi narrowed his eyes and tightened his grip around the hidden dagger he always carried around.
The two children they had captured were visibly scared. They were both tied up, their hands behind their backs, a rope tied around their mouths with only their eyes and nose free. The boy, who couldn’t be more than ten years old, had the widest, most greenish eyes Levi had ever seen. He was visibly confused yet fearful, his eyes darting towards the three men above him. The girl, who couldn’t be any older than the boy, was different. She was frozen still, her eyes trained onto the boy. She was probably completely overtaken by fear, Levi thought.
“Alright,” one of the men said. He crouched down to look eye-to-eye with the girl and smirked, tousling her hair a bit too roughly. The girl only looked back at him blankly. “You’re coming with me then.” When he stood back up and picked up the girl to leave, the boy finally snapped.
The boy growled against the rope muffling his mouth and thrashed against the ground until the rope loosened enough for him to scream, “Mikasa!”
The girl turned her head towards him, her eyes turning back into life with the boy’s voice. She widened her eyes and her eyebrows furrowed.
The boy spasmed, rolling across the floor. His eyes were crazed, burning with a different kind of fire that traveled right down Levi’s spine. “Fight! ” the boy cried. “You’ll never be able to do anything if you don’t fight! ”
Still in the clutch of the man who had stopped to watch the boy, the girl only stared back at the boy, her eyes still emitting fear.
The boy was the complete opposite of her, Levi realized. He screeched against the floor, full of pure pain and agony, and somehow managed to fumble out of the ropes that were tied around his arms by kicking his feet back and stepping out of the ropes.
He was almost part-way free, Levi thought, his eyes widening against his own will.
“U-uh, Kenny,” one of the other men said, holding out his arms to capture the boy all over again. “Should we-”
“Nah, it’s fine,” Kenny responded, a genuine smile creeping onto his wrinkled face. He chuckled and raised his fists as if preparing for a fistfight. “We’ll see what he has.”
“But, Kenny-”
The other man’s voice was drowned out by the boy’s roar. His deep green eyes were sparkling now, livelier than ever but equally as deadly as he scrunched his face in an utter scowl and punched Kenny’s leg.
“Felt like a fly swatted me! Is that all you got, boy?” With a maniacal laugh, Kenny kicked the boy right in the stomach like he weighed nothing, making him fly across the alley and splatter head first onto the wall. The loud impact should have knocked him out cold, but it made the boy even more fired up.
He hissed as he unsteadily stood up as something entirely new blazed in his eyes.
The look was startlingly familiar, Levi realized. It wasn’t a look of fear, horror, or shock.
It was pure rage: the same look Levi wore fourteen years ago when he was about to kill every single one of his captors.
The boy growled from the bottom of his lungs a cry that was probably louder than any dinosaur that ever roamed this damned world as he managed to charge right up to Kenny with a closed fist that would-
He would never be able to do it. Someone of his age would never have the strength to beat the strongest gangster of all of this dark life. And yet the boy didn’t care. All that was on his mind was the captor taking away someone important to him.
He reminded Levi of himself.
Levi stepped out of the shadows, charged at the nearest man, and stabbed straight through his back. The man let out an urk, blood spewing out in all directions before the man plopped face-down onto the ground, dead.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite nephew.”
Levi scowled and turned towards Kenny, who was standing with his arms crossed and a smirk that grew wider from several seconds ago. “You bastard,” he hissed, stalking straight up to Kenny and pointing his dagger at Kenny’s uncovered throat.
Kenny laughed easily and tilted the floppy hat he always wore towards the dead man on the ground next to him. “Oh, well, that was one of my best clients.” He uncrossed his arms and took out the sword he always kept on his right sheath. “But that just makes it more fun!” he yelled, grinning, as he launched himself at Levi.
Levi deflected the attack with the back of his dagger as he gritted his teeth and hissed to the boy, “Get back, brat.” The boy, who had stopped fighting and instead was watching Levi with wonder, snapped back to attention and stepped away, now struggling to undo the rest of his ropes.
“You know, you’ve grown quite a lot, Levi,” Kenny yelled gleefully as he slashed in the empty air only to find Levi, who had dodged underneath the attack to produce one of his own. Kenny had to struggle to retract his arm from being cut off. “Man, you’ve gotten quicker in only ten years. What happened to you?”
“I wish you’d die.” Levi took this chance to slash at Kenny’s waist, but Kenny was quicker, grabbing Levi’s wrist and swinging him to the side. Levi was swept off his feet and had to lean against the cool wall to regain balance.
However, this time, Kenny was prepared. Before Levi could stumble back onto his feet again, he came at Levi with full ground and swung, forcing Levi to turn on full-defense mode just to reflect Kenny’s sword. “Never take your eyes off your opponent,” Kenny quipped, the smirk never leaving his face.
Levi hissed, realizing he had nowhere to go. He was pressed against the wall, and Kenny’s sword was forced closer and closer to his throat, until-
“Mikasa! ” the boy screeched out of nowhere beside the two.
Kenny flinched at the sound, turning his head to glance at the boy.
Levi narrowed his eyes and used this opportunity to slip out of Kenny’s lock, slashing his dagger at Kenny’s waist in the process. Beautiful blood sprouted out of the wound as Kenny’s hand went straight to clutch at his waist.
Levi adeptly twirled his dagger, now fresh with double the amount of blood, as he turned to look back at Kenny, saying, “Never take your eyes off your opponent, Kenny.”
Kenny winced as he turned around, his eye twitching. “Good job.”
Scowl still etched deep onto his face, Levi charged again, but something whizzed in the corner of his eye, and then there was the boy, fully free from his ropes, rushing at Kenny and sinking a dagger of his own into Kenny’s leg.
Kenny sucked in a deep breath as he tried to escape, but the boy was quicker, taking back his dagger and stabbing it back in, over and over again until Kenny finally was able to shove him off. The moon must have come out because the fresh blood sprouting out of the wound glittered underneath the light. His face contorted with pain, Kenny half-limped half-ran away with his wounds on both sides of his body.
Levi was left panting, blood dripping off his dagger as he watched Kenny escape. He turned toward the boy. “Where is-”
The boy had fallen onto his back against the wall again, but his posture was frozen, his hand still firmly grasped around his own dagger.
He was crying.
Levi took out his handkerchief that he had just washed that morning and carefully wiped off the blood on his dagger. He made a disgusted face at it. Blood was disgusting. Plus, he had washed his handkerchief just a day ago. “What is it?” he asked as he kept on cleaning his weapon.
The boy continued to cry.
“Spit it out, brat.”
After a long moment, the cries started to soften before the boy finally wiped the tears off his face and clenched his fists. “They took my sister,” he said shakily.
Levi glanced at the hallway opposite of where Kenny had run off from. Only a certain eerie silence met him. One of Kenny’s men must have bolted with the girl.
“Why did you help me?”
Levi turned back to the boy, who had stood back up. The fire Levi had seen earlier in the boy’s eyes had faded into a muted, yet curious look. His eyes were red, but he had completely stopped crying.
“Nobody helped me before.”
“Do you trust me?” Levi asked instead.
The boy hesitated for a second before shaking his head. “No.”
“Good.” Levi knelt to look at the boy. “Name?”
“Eren,” the boy responded immediately.
Levi slapped the boy’s face. The impact of his hand rang across the empty street. “Fucking dimwit. Don’t say you don’t trust someone and then proceed to tell them your real name.”
Eren flinched but stayed planted on his feet. He stared back at Levi with a strange aura of rebellion yet submission. His hands were balled in fists. “I’m sorry, sir, I lied. I do trust you.”
Levi’s eyes narrowed. He was wrong; the kid was actually an idiot.
Eren blinked back at Levi and didn’t say anything further. His face was almost completely passive and revealed nothing.
Levi raised his hand to slap the kid again. Maybe he could beat some sense into the idiot. But before his hand could connect with Eren’s face, Eren reached up and snatched it from the air.
Eren’s eyes were sparkling, yet his mouth was tightened into a straight line. “Why?” he whispered. “Because you would’ve killed me back there. But you didn’t.”
“Who’s to say I won’t just kill you now?” Levi let his hand stay there, frozen in place by Eren’s tight grasp.
“You won’t.”
It was like he was taunting him to actually kill him. He could take out his dagger and sink it straight into Eren’s heart while Eren just stood there, staring back while a serial killer murdered him. Levi would relish as Eren's face would contort with pain, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he crumpled onto the ground. The beautiful blood that would come spewing out would drench all of his tattered clothing and start to pool out until nothing was left. Levi would stand up again, staring at the dead body of another person he had killed, and dutifully wipe down his dagger yet again.
He could do all of this. He had the ability to, and both of them knew it.
Eren was a suicidal bastard.
Levi stood up and held out his hand. “The name’s Levi. You’ll be living with me from now on.”
When Eren took Levi’s hand, a small smile twisted onto his face, and that subtle sign of happiness imprinted itself into Levi’s mind for the rest of his life.
After that, Eren never left Levi’s side. Levi wasn’t sure why. He preferred solitude and made it very clear. But everywhere he went, anyone he killed, everything he gambled, Eren was there, imitating Levi with every move. He had always reminded Levi of a puppy following around its master.
Eren learned quickly, which was to no surprise to Levi because he had only been ten years old when he had stolen a dagger from a dead man Levi had killed and sunk it into someone’s skin without hesitating. Soon he was able to turn anything into a weapon, a branch, a fork, a pole, and stab it into anyone’s heart in less than three seconds.
Levi would always have been sitting back, observing him and lighting another cigarette as he threw out criticisms now and then.
Eren had a certain fire in his eyes whenever he practiced fighting. It was beneficiary, Levi thought, to have that kind of spirit. With deadly people prowling everywhere in these streets, it was fatal to hesitate even for a split second.
Other days, they would be out in the fields, practicing special maneuvers. The days were hot, and they would have their sleeves rolled up, sweat glistening underneath the scorching sun. With anything else, including when he was fighting, Eren would always have a tight, brow-furrowed expression. But whenever Levi stepped into view, Eren would brighten up brighter than the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs millions of years ago. No matter what Levi would snap or insult, Eren would have that smile on his face that seared right into Levi’s chest.
Sometimes Levi would stand right behind Eren, both of his hands gently grasped around Eren’s as he showed him how to swing a particular weapon. These times, their bodies were pressed so closely together that Levi’s shirt felt abnormally thin. Levi would intentionally murmur instructions centimeters away from Eren’s ear, making Eren shiver, and they both knew it wasn’t because of the cold.
And sometimes Levi’s hands would linger on Eren’s before dropping away.
The only times Levi would see Eren with any other emotion was when Eren thought Levi wasn’t there. Eren would be crouched against a box of stolen goods, whispering to himself and stroking a torn, red scarf that he had worn on the day he met Levi.
But even those times lessened as Eren spent more and more time with Levi.
In a blink of Levi’s eye and a flurry of changing seasons, Eren had suddenly turned from a small, naive boy to a strong, mature eighteen-year-old.
“Your hair’s getting long again,” Levi noted as he tore open another bag of peanuts and sat back onto a run-down chair.
Eren smiled gently as he crouched next to Levi. That was something Levi only recently noticed: how Eren would choose to sit right next to Levi even when there was a chair only a few yards away. Sometimes Levi wondered if he was just too lazy to drag the chair over or if it was something else entirely. “Don’t you like it?”
Levi glanced down at him. Eren’s brown, fluffy hair drifted back and forth in the slight wind coming from the broken window, sometimes drifting into Eren’s normally bright green eyes. Levi had an urge to move Eren’s hair out of his face but ignored it. “If it grows any longer, I might not be able to recognize you.”
“Sure,” Eren said, holding Levi’s gaze when he suddenly shot up and stole a peanut. He popped it into his mouth, satisfied and smug.
“You piece of shit.” Levi frowned at his remaining peanuts before looking back up. He sighed and glanced at his watch that had stopped working years ago. “It’s almost five. Before the sun goes down, want to go for another run?”
Eren stood straight up, completely energized again. “Yes!”
Levi stood up from his seat, too, and complained inwardly to himself how Eren was gifted with a growth spurt and he was not. “Alright.” He turned to leave and realized Eren wasn’t following him. “Meet me in the fields, Eren.”
“Yeah!” came the reply. Eren was probably fumbling around for his choice weapon for today that he had lost along with all of his necessities that he lost in his messy way of life. It pissed off Levi when he first came to their hideout, but he had grown to accept it. There were just some things that Eren just couldn’t learn. Or that he was too stubborn to learn.
Levi stepped out of the warehouse. The sun was already starting to set, providing a hazy orange-yellow luminescence that almost blinded him. He cursed and tried to blink out the remaining light printed in his vision when he realized something was wrong.
“Fuck.”
He broke out into a sprint, rubbing his eyes, away from his potential stalker. His footsteps echoed across the empty hard until-
A strong, warm fist sailed across the air and connected with Levi’s jaw, producing a nasty smack. Levi gritted his teeth as he fell onto the hard ground, with only the dried-up grass cushioning him.
“Why hello again, my favorite nephew,” a man greeted above him, his words practically dripping with sarcasm. There were the same wrinkled eyes that had grown older since the last time Levi had seen him. A hunter’s rifle was pointed right at him.
“Kenny.”
The edges of Kenny’s mouth turned upwards into a smirk as Kenny knocked the tip of his rifle on Levi’s forehead. “You know how easy it was to find you?”
“What do you want.” Levi’s eyes were trained on Kenny’s. He knew that he wouldn’t shoot until Kenny got what he wanted; it was just how he worked.
Kenny dodged the question. “So you’re living with one of the children I kidnapped, huh? How did you tame him? After all, he’s the one who got me this.” He nodded to the scar etched across his right leg. Levi realized he was still wearing the same, torn pants he wore eight years ago. “I’d like to think this is one of my favorite features. What do you say, Levi? How about you hand him over? I could tame him, too.”
Levi narrowed his eyes. “You only came for me to steal back an already stolen kid out of all of the other hundreds of children you’ve stolen.”
Kenny shrugged. “You could say that. I dunno; maybe my pride was hurt a little when one of my dear children was stolen.”
“Pathetic.” In a blink of an eye, Levi reached up to tear Kenny’s rifle away from his grasp and turned it to point towards Kenny’s forehead.
Kenny smirked, unflinching even with the loss of his own weapon. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Levi frowned, realizing that armed men were surrounding the two in the middle of the yard. “What do you really want.”
“My men have suspiciously been decreasing exponentially ever since the day I last met you,” Kenny responded, his smile ever unwavering. “And with the evidence I have, I’d like to say that they have all been killed. By one person. You.”
“You’re doing devil’s work by selling children for prostitution,” Levi only said, his finger hovering over the trigger.
Kenny laughed, and his voice carried throughout the yard as the sun lowered farther into the distance. “Aren’t we all doing the devil's work by living in this twisted world? We’re just trying to save ourselves, aren’t we? We do this to live. I’m a kidnapper selling kids onto the black market, and you’re a serial killer claiming to be ‘helping humanity’, but are you really? You’re only doing this to protect him, aren’t you?” He pointed to his right.
Following Kenny’s finger, Levi saw Eren standing a few yards away, his eyes shocked as he watched the exchange between Levi and Kenny. “Eren!” Levi yelled as a warning, but it was too late.
“Men!” Kenny shouted, and more men appeared from behind stacked boxes and pounced on Eren.
"You -” Levi hissed, lowering his finger over the trigger.
Kenny raised his hands in fake surrender. “Woah, woah, there, listen to me. I had an elaborate plan that would both kill you and capture the kid, but where’s the fun in things going exactly the way you want it to? That’s why I let you take my gun. Out of everyone here with their swords and daggers, you have the deadliest weapon. You have two options. Shoot me, get killed by the people behind you, the kid gets captured; or shoot everyone behind you, get killed by me, the kid gets captured. Either way, the kid gets captured, so it’s a win-win for me, isn’t it?” He clasped his hands together, grinning wildly. “Isn’t this fun?”
“Shut the hell up.” Levi glared at Kenny, mentally considering his own options. It wasn’t looking good. Counting Kenny, about eight men were surrounding Levi, and four around Eren. Although they all wore determined expressions, Levi knew they were expendable. Inexperienced, probably. The only one who posed an extreme threat was Kenny. Even without a weapon, he was deadly. He might have run off last time, but Levi knew Kenny wasn’t going to back out this time.
So Levi tried a different tactic. “You know why I’ve always hated you?” Levi tightened his grip on the rifle. “Because that one night, twenty years ago, you took me away.”
Kenny seemed amused. “So you hate me because I saved you.”
“No,” Levi hissed, words dripping with bitterness. “Because you watched your own sister die.”
“My sister?”
“Your sister who was my mother. You watched your own sister die. And what do you do? You take me away when I could have killed everyone, but you can’t yourself because you’re a fucking coward.”
“I’d always wondered why you ran away from me that one day,” Kenny mused.
“Bastard,” Levi said, and with that distraction, he suddenly turned the rifle around to shoot exactly once at the man he had calculated was directly behind him.
There was a sound of gunpowder and a body dropping dead. With this sudden initiation, Levi sprinted towards the newly-formed hole in the men surrounding him, blindly shooting at anyone approaching him.
But he had miscalculated; the men around him weren’t inexperienced in the very least. They came upon Levi quickly. One man shoved Levi onto the ground and sunk his knife into Levi’s shoulder.
Levi cursed, rifle falling out of his grip. Blood splattered out of the wound. Fuck, that was his good shoulder. He tried launching himself off the ground by kicking the man in the face but was pushed back down by another man, who scraped his knife against Levi’s neck before Levi grabbed his wrist to stop him from cutting any deeper.
More men were coming now, all of them with gleaming knives that grew darker and deadlier with the sun threatening to vanish into the horizon. Levi cursed again, trying to struggle off both men’s tight grips, but to no avail. He felt an odd sensation of deja vu. The last time he had been in this situation was over twenty years ago when-
“Looks like your plan failed, didn’t it, Levi?” Kenny’s voice boomed over Levi’s hisses and curses. “I genuinely thought you were smarter than that. Oh, well. Men, kill him.”
With this new order, the men surrounding him tackled him further down, each with a knife forcing their way down all over Levi’s body. It was painful already to try to keep each of their collected weight off Levi, and he didn’t know how much longer he could withstand.
Maybe this was the end.
“ Don’t you dare fucking lay a finger on Levi! ” a new voice shrieked, piercing the air with its sound.
The men above Levi all flinched at the sudden noise, some turning their heads toward the sound.
Newfound strength surged through Levi as he shoved the man with his knife at Levi’s throat away and he kicked another man who was hovering around his legs.
Surprised by the sudden attack from Levi, the men stumbled back, but other men replaced them, one of them retracting their arm to stab Levi’s heart, when men crouching around Levi started jumping into the air, one by one. Levi had to blink before he realized that the men weren’t jumping, they were being thrown into the sky. The men were screaming until they landed with a loud gushing and popping of blood vessels, dead.
It was Eren, Levi realized.
Eren was standing in the middle of the chaos, his hair flowing wildly among the dust that had picked up swirling around him and blood splattering around like a deadly rain-filled tornado. Just like eight years ago, he stood his ground with absolute fury, but this time he looked absolutely powerful. He sunk his choice weapon, the mere dagger that he had stolen from the man Levi had killed years ago, into the back of men, and he swung them up into the air like mere spoons. They all sailed into the dimming sky, some convulsing in pain, others shrieking. But there was something different in Eren’s expression. There wasn’t just fury boiling in his piercing green eyes, there was hatred. Utter, unbashful hatred. “Levi is mine !” he screamed, louder than the men who were being brutally killed, never once slowing down.
Eren was scary.
Levi swung his gaze around the bloodstained yard and located the rifle he had lost. Flailing with his free hand, he tried reaching for it, but it was swatted away by someone’s hand.
“All of these other idiots may be fighting your kid, but I’m not,” a man Levi didn’t recognize hissed, raising his dagger over Levi’s chest. “If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.”
Levi cursed back. He had a shoulder wound that bled profusely and about a hundred other scratches of different depths all over his body. He was greatly overpowered, but if he could just-
Suddenly, a shadow shrouded all of Levi’s vision and he closed his eyes, knowing that this was the day he was going to die.
There was a scream, one that was louder and more crazed than anything before, and then-
“Urk! ”
A few seconds passed, and Levi waited for the incoming pain and death he knew he was about to feel.
Why couldn’t he feel anything?
Was it because he was too numb?
Was he already dead?
“How are you so sure you’ll win in a fight every single time?” Eren asked one day as they sat shoulder-to-shoulder, with their backs against the warehouse as they watched the sun melt into the horizon ahead of them.
“I don’t,” Levi had replied, feeling Eren’s gaze forever on his.
They stayed like that, side by side, and Levi could feel the warmth of Eren’s skin burn into Levi’s. “You never know what might happen in the end.”
He turned to his companion, whose eyes were watching Levi with utmost curiosity. “The only thing you can do is believe.”
“Levi!” someone that sounded suspiciously like Eren yelled from a distance.
Was Eren dead too?
“Levi!” Eren yelled, but it was closer now. “Levi! Are you okay? ...Levi?”
It took Levi way too long before he realized that the person who had gasped out in pain wasn’t him. His eyes flashed open.
Eren’s face was mere inches away from him.
“Wh-” Levi tried to say, surprised by Eren’s closeness, but winced from the pain.
Eren’s worried face completely dissolved into bliss, his deep, dark eyes turning gentle and lighter. Even Levi was shocked by the complete change in Eren’s face from just a few minutes ago.
“Eren…” Levi started, almost letting himself drown in Eren’s eyes before realizing where he was. He sat up immediately and almost collapsed back down from pain before Eren’s arm had looped around Levi’s back to hold him up.
The day turning into dusk was the first thing Levi noticed. The remnants of the sun lit the bodies scattered around the yard in an eerie yet magical light. The man who threatened to kill Levi earlier was lying face down with a dagger still protruding his back. When Levi squinted, he could make out Kenny, whose dead body was flung back onto the warehouse wall. His hat had flown off, falling neatly next to him. It was hard to tell that he used to be Levi’s only relative. Blood was splattered everywhere, staining the already dead grass and on the walls of the warehouse.
All twelve men were dead.
Levi turned to the man who had killed them all. Eren was smiling when he met Levi’s gaze. “Isn’t it exactly how you taught me to fight?” he murmured.
Levi pretended not to notice how Eren snuggled closer to Levi’s body, and he instead responded with, “Well. I sure hate being the damsel in distress.”
Eren arched back to laugh, a gentle, melodic laugh that felt like a song to Levi. “Wasn’t I a good prince then?”
“Cheeky bastard,” griped Levi with no actual heat behind his words, which only made Eren laugh again.
Sometime between their words, Eren had sneaked his hand into Levi’s and left it there. Levi’s shoulder still ached in pain, but it was a muted kind of pain as Levi practically let himself melt into Eren’s embrace.
Levi turned to look at Eren, whose eyes were gazing off into the distance. Sighing, Levi buried his face into Eren’s neck and hugged him back. He pressed a small kiss on Eren’s neck, which sprouted a faint line of blush that traveled down Eren’s back, and he murmured, “Thanks, Eren.”
And when Levi glanced up at Eren, who was smiling more beautifully than the brightest star in the sky, he wondered.
Maybe the world wasn’t as cruel as he thought it was.