The Experiment (Attack on Titan // LeviHan) (Part 1)

No Sleep for the Wicked

Forcing one foot in front of the other on legs shaking from fatigue, Zoë soon reached the floor where her new lab was located. When she rounded the last corner a little lost in thought, she almost bumped into Renzo... who was squeezing the life out of Oliver with his hands tightly clasped around the old man's throat. The weirdest thing about the rather unexpected scene wasn't the old man's tongue hanging out, his eyes that showed only white nor his arms and legs that twitched feebly. No... it was the utter silence of this violent act and the focused concentration of the one committing it.

"Holy fuck," Zoë exclaimed and slammed her fist into Renzo's face. Hard.

Renzo went down like all tall people do when suddenly deprived of balance and wits: ungracefully. Oliver, not tall, but stout, didn't fare much better. Collapsing when Renzo's grip around his throat slackened, he soon sprawled on the floor next to his assailant, weakly clutching his throat, gasping for air, and sobbing.

"Holy fuck," Zoë repeated in bafflement, "what is wrong with you people?"

Clearly, both men were currently unable to give her an answer. After considering her options - walk away? Kick them for good measure? Wait for Renzo to regain consciousness so she could hit him again? - she grabbed the elderly man's arms and hauled him upright. Her back protested with a series of loud cracks. Holy shit, she wanted to lie down. After a hot bath. And sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

"I kinda don't want you to die yet," she told the old man. Dragging him along with an arm slung around his middle, she entered the lab space and dropped him on a chair.

"Light, we need light," she murmured, searching for matches to ignite the oil lamps.

Oliver was still crying when she looked at him once more, with snot coming out of his nose and dribbling down his face, but at least his breathing was slowly returning back to normal. Clearly, nothing vital like a windpipe was crushed. He would live a while longer.

"What was that about?" she asked, absentmindedly shuffling through her notes on the work desk. How long until she could work this out? A few hours? Days? How long ago had she and Levi come down here? It felt like time held no real meaning anymore. And yet... if they were not back on time, and Erwin and the others returned, things could get nasty.

"Documents," Oliver wheezed, drying his eyes and noisily cleaning his nose on his sleeve.

Zoë lifted her eyebrows at him. His white hair was standing on end in all directions. He looked like a crazed chicken as a result.

"Levi had them tucked into his trousers," Oliver explained. "They fell out when I cut open his shirt."

"Huh. You are also a doctor?"

"The best down here," Oliver said proudly, straightening his spine. "I stitched him together carefully so our little firecracker wouldn't get an ugly scar. It's not the first time he ends up on my table, y'know. He doesn't know how to be careful, ever since he was a little boy."

Zoë tried to imagine Levi as a little boy. Awwww, probably super cute. Meanwhile, Oliver continued to reminisce and to heap self-praise upon himself: "... the amount of times I put bandages on his scraped knees! Always with such precision! I did not need any practice. You wouldn't believe how good..."

Enough. "And where are they now, these documents?"

"Here," Oliver patted his round belly. Zoë guessed he had not eaten them but meant to say that he was carrying them on his person. So he had figured out their worth too?

"You should have given them to Renzo instead of provoking him to violence," Zoë suggested.

"He needs to learn how to ask people politely," Oliver murmured. His hand went inside his jerkin and came back out holding a bundle of documents. They were crumpled, ripped and dark from dried blood.