With a Whimper - AU!Levi x Reader [Ch 3]

Sleeping was easier with Levi accompanying you; he not only gave you a source of warmth, but a sense of security.

What you could only assume had been hours passed and Levi found himself curled beside your sleeping form with his arm slung over your waist and the other nestled under your head. Once becoming aware of his position he quickly tore himself away from you and regained his composure. Did he seriously spoon you? In his sleep? How embarrassing.

He slowly, cautiously brought a knee up to his body and rested an arm overtop, rubbing the sleepiness from his eyes as he tried to prepare himself for the day ahead. He wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to continue.

The sudden jerk of Levi pulling his arm out from under your head had stirred you awake, much to your misfortune. You hated waking up. As troubling as your dreams were, the sweet embrace of sleep was always something you would welcome.

You tried to get back to sleep, thinking that if you closed your eyes and ignored the world hard enough you wouldn’t be stuck in a network of underground tunnels infested with zombies. But Levi had other plans. As weak as he was, he wanted to get back to the Walls in one piece. He roughly slapped your shoulder with the back of his hand, “Oi. Get up, we’re moving.” You simply responded with a groan.

“Do we have to? I’m comfy,” you whined.

He scowled at you. “If we stay here we’ll end up being some Titan’s shit.”

“I don’t even know what Titans are.”

“You’ll find out, now come on we have to—agh, fuck,” he cursed under his breath. You heard him rummaging around behind you; unmistakably he had been searching for something. “I can’t see where the damn flashlight is, it’s too dark.”

You mustered up all your strength to sit up in the bedroll and leave the warmth of the blanket to help him look. It took less than thirty seconds for you to pinpoint the torch over near the wall. “Hold on, I got it,” you told him, begrudgingly getting up from your place and making your way over to it. Levi would watch you – if he could see where the hell you were.

After picking up the torch you switched it on, purposely shining it directly in his face. The light was dim, but it had been bright enough to make him turn his head and shield his eyes with his forearm, “Cut that shit out, it’s annoying.”

“You’re annoying.”

Levi had no patience to argue with you and simply reached up to snatch the flashlight from your hand. “Tch, shitty brat. You remind me of those kids I have to babysit in the Scouts.” He stood upright and gathered his things, neatly packing them away in his bag as you impatiently tried to stuff the bedroll back into its cover. Levi looked at you and clicked his tongue in annoyance but said nothing.

You resumed your long and gruelling trek along the lengths of the underground, only ever speaking when you deemed it absolutely necessary. To plainly put, you spoke a lot. Well, not that you’d ever admit it, but those tunnels were terrifying you. The constant corpses you walked past looked like they had bites taken out of them. Big ones. You were scared, and so you talked as a way to assure yourself that Levi was still beside you.

“So what are the Scouts? Are you like, backpackers with little shorts, scavenging in the woods?” you asked, quietly snickering at your subtle jab to Levi. This had also marked your forty-third question in the past hour.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in, resisting the urge to kick the shit out of you and your endless interrogation. If he hadn’t been in the state he was, he would’ve gladly carried out the fantasies playing in his mind. Slowly opening them again, he exhaled and explained through gritted teeth, “The Scouts are members of the Scouting Legion. It’s our job to fight off the mutants, and look for a cure for the virus. The Military Police are another faction that keep justice in the Walls and the Garrison are the scavengers. Now will you please shut. The fuck. Up.”

“You’re not very friendly, are you?”

“Look, once we get somewhere safe, I’ll play Twenty Questions with you all day, but we—what was that?” Levi turned from you and quickly armed himself with his shotgun, darting his eyes around the area. You soon followed suit in the search – and then you saw it.

The most horrifying thing you’ve ever seen, staring right at you.

It wasn’t moving, it didn’t dare take a step, but it was well aware of your presence, and it was definitely a threat to both you and Levi. The creature easily stood ten feet tall, its muscles were unnaturally huge and swollen, as if they were ready to burst out of the thin layer of skin any moment. The macabre grin it wore on its face as it watched you had stretched so wide the corners of its mouth were torn, and you had a perfect view of its unsightly yellowed teeth and rotting gums.

Before you had the time to properly react it sprinted towards you, its loud and heavy footsteps reverberated throughout the tunnels as it ran. Levi spun his body to face the abnormality but was harshly shoved out of the way, causing him to drop both his torch and firearm in the process. After swiftly regaining himself he shouted, “Look out!” in an effort to warn you out of the Titan’s path before it reached you – but he was too late.

The Titan tackled you, smashing you into the concrete wall directly behind you. Levi squeezed his eyes shut out of reflex, cringing as he heard the sound of your pained cries. He immediately regretted that he couldn’t save you – as annoying as you were you were still like him, still a human – and now you were gone.

His breath got caught in his throat as he scrambled around in the dark to find his light, but in the back of his mind he knew he wouldn’t be making it out alive. The Titan had already turned its attention from you to him, and he was out of time. There was no way he could take on a Titan unarmed, by himself and in his current condition – the last flickering flame of hope that he had was snuffed out when your body cracked against the wall of the passage.

The sound of the Titan rapidly approaching boomed in his eardrums, and Levi braced himself for the end that was sure to come.

Only, the footsteps had come to an abrupt halt before they could reach him.

Instead of a giant mutant's weight crushing his own he was met with the sound of ugly sobbing – coming from the very creature that was going to kill him – but how?

“Levi! I’ve taken its eyes, get out of the way!”

It was you. How did she survive that? He thought. He heard your bones crunch and the wind get crushed out of you – how— what are you? In the far corners of his mind he almost thought that he shouldn't be surprised, after all, you were the woman who kicked a zombie's head from its shoulders when he first met you.

He didn’t know how you were still alive, and right now he didn’t care. He was just so relieved that he wasn’t going to die down here, alone and forgotten along with the rest of these unfortunates. Obeying your order he moved out of the way and got to a safe distance – getting the torch was too much of a risk right now.

You yanked one of your combat knives from the eye socket of the beast and attempted to dig it into its shoulder. Much to your confusion its skin never broke, and its frantic movements was making it hard to hold on. If you were going to kill this thing, you needed to do it now. Gripping tighter onto the mutant’s body with your powerful leg muscles you called out to Levi, “How do I kill this thing?! Its skin’s too tough!”

“Get the nape of the neck, and hurry up about it!”

You grunted and regained your balance the best you could before slashing the Titan across the back of the neck, just as Levi had instructed. Your blade smoothly ripped into the flesh like a hot knife through butter – and just like that, its crying had ceased, and the monster was slain.

Its now lifeless body crashed to the ground, allowing you to regain your breath and safely retrieve your weapons. The flashlight had – once again – been secure in Levi’s possession, along with the sawed-off shotgun that was ripped from his grasp just minutes before.

You stared down at the horrendous mutation of a being and wheezed, suddenly feeling dizzy, “Wh-what… what was that thing?!”

“A Titan. I mentioned them before, remember?”

“Where did it come from? How was it here?!”

“The virus from that damned vaccine did more than make zombies, you know,” he mumbled lowly as he took a quick gander at you. For once in his life, he had been dumbfounded. He could scarcely believe that he, Humanity’s Strongest Soldier, was on the receiving end of protection. You saved his life, something no one had ever done before, whether you knew it, whether he expressed it or not, he would be eternally indebted.

The fear that struck you when that Titan had attacked you, when it had been so close to killing Levi, it was overwhelming for you. And you couldn’t stop it when the tears fell. Your breaths became shallow and ragged as you tried to hold back your sobs, but the terror you experienced in these tunnels had been incomparable to near any other day in your life.

Levi had never been good with open expressions of emotion, so he stiffly placed a hand on your back in an awkward attempt for comfort. “Come on, we’re not there yet.”