Ackerman's Steppes / Levi x Reader

Chapter 10: Impulse

"Dear Ella,

I have read your letter. I took everything into consideration and I think it is urgent for you to leave that town. It seems to be a very serious matter. You can stay at our headquarters and work as medic until you figure everything out, after all, we are the ones to be blamed for everything that is happening to you. I have prepared everything.

Few hours after receiving this letter, a carriage should arrive by your barracks. Someone will be there to protect you too, just in case anything happens. I already paid for everything, so you shouldn't worry about anything. We will be waiting for your arrival. Safe travel.

Yours respectfully, commander of Survey Corps Erwin Smith"

You quickly pack all of your vital items into an old bag and sit on the chair waiting for the carriage. You keep glancing through the window. You know it's way too early, but you can't help but wait for it with your mind filled with angst.

You still can't believe you will be leaving everything behind and joining Survey Corps as a medic. It just makes rumors way more believable. Why would you leave, if you are not guilty?

You didn't want any of this. Lot of things happened in the past two months.

After Levi killed those guys, town's people started protesting against scouts. MPs are lying to people to turn them against scouts. You saw many articles named with false titles like "Scouts are humanities enemies", "Captain Levi killed 20 military police members when they tried to stop him from going outside without permission" and many more. You didn't read any of them. Mainly because you couldn't bother anymore. Even if Levi killed all of them, he didn't do it because of nothing. There are many things you know that you aren't aware of, but after MPs tried to shoot you too, there must be something sketchy going on. Especially after you received anonymous death threat letters.

Soon enough, someone recognized you as the woman, who was with Levi. It just made things worse. Town's people already had mixed opinions about scouts because they see their expeditions consequences beforehand anyone else, but after this they just started to despise them, especially Levi. It didn't help that you had some kind of connections with him particularly.

At first people just glared at you. Immediately after it was proven, that indeed, it was you who was with him that day, they started to talk behind your back. There were even incidents when someone tried to directly hurt you somehow.

People rioted against your return the hospital. You were left without work, frankly without anything. Even Lizzie turned against you. You don't think that she wanted to do that; she only acted like that to save herself from getting involved. Lizzie did enough to protect you. She doubted anyone who came to ask her if she saw something suspicious about you that day. You don't feel betrayed or sad. You just understand her.

Death threats were oddly specific. Cutting your legs or your head. Something you saw that day done to MPs by Levi. That is not a coincidence. You had no future in this town anymore, so you decided to write to Erwin. You explained everything that happened so far. You know that he knows. They haven't gone to an expedition in two months. That usually doesn't happen. Also, none of these things would have come to be if you didn't get dragged into it. You still can't grasp why would Levi risk with your life to simply walk around with you. Maybe he didn't expect them to target him in the middle of the town, but still, he knew that it will happen inevitably. From the way he talked and looked that day, you can only emphasize that there is a good chance that man just wanted to relax. At least he looked like that before everything happened. There is a slim chance that he wanted to keep you safe too. Why else would he stay with you until the attack happened.

It was a lot to take in. You admitted to yourself that you developed some kind of attraction towards Levi, but after seeing other side of him, you felt conflicted. All this time you knew that his job was to kill titans; you didn't expect him to kill people too. In some way, he opened your eyes. Now you see the bigger picture of everything. It is not only about titans killing people, it's about people killing themselves. No one is wrong and no one is right. World is just merciless. What you can do is just move on and continue living. That is all that is left to most people in a world like this.