Microcosmos || Rivamika

Ch10 Hope

Summary: On their way to the safety of the Strauss estate, Mikasa carefully tends to Levi's wounds dealt from the palace escape. Levi and Mikasa encounter a strange Marleyan soldier who can see through their front as they get closer to finding Eren.

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Captain Levi...

Please...

A faded voice rose in his ears. He felt a warm palm tapping against his cheek as his eyes peered open to the lights of a soft moon shining through a canopy of trees into his pupils, begging him to wake. He breathed in; a sharp agonizing pain stabbed at his back as he softly rolled against the hard forest ground.

Levi's eyes blinked open slowly. Mikasa's sobbing face streaked with a line of blood hovered above him; droplets from her closed eyes fell onto Levi's cold nose. He shot up, a wail of pain escaped his short breaths as he struggled to move at all. Leaves rustled beneath him as he painfully pushed himself off of the floor.. "...Am I fucking dead?"

Her gloomy eyes shot open as she gasped at the sound and sight of Levi's sudden awakening. "L-LEVI?!" A relieved Mikasa lunged forward to him in a sudden embrace, squeezing him tightly to herself and causing him to bellow in pain again.

"Ah—shit!"

Mikasa flew back from him, hands hovered in the air afraid to touch his injured body again. Levi gritted his teeth. "You trying to kill me now too, Ackerman?"

"I'm so sorry—Captain, you're finally awake!" A miserable attempt of a smile rose on her scrunched face as she wiped her tears with her wrists. Levi noticed her pale hands covered in dried blood and hoped none of it was her own. With another wince of pain, Levi propped himself up and tried to level himself to her. Mikasa carefully assisted him upwards. The back of his shoulder pulsated with pain; the bullet screamed at him from inside his pierced muscles.

Levi looked down at himself. The opening of his unbuttoned shirt revealed a torn red scarf wrapped around and over the site of the wound. Segments of it were soaked in a darker and deeper color than the already crimson hue of the fabric. He looked up at Mikasa and the surrounding forest that protected them. She must have carried me, he thought.

"Mikasa... Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

She wiped the leftover tears from her face before glaring at him; Levi couldn't tell if she was going to cry or yell at him. "Are you kidding? Levi, don't worry about me. I'm okay. Are you? I... You passed out after..." Mikasa's eyes shot down to the ground as she shook her head continuously. "They stopped chasing us but... I should've seen the guard... Levi, you shouldn't have gotten hurt in my place. Again." She covered her face with her arms.

It happened again.

From the day Mikasa met her Captain, it was like this. She was neglectful in the forest years ago, and it was her neglect and lack of skill that cost them humanity's strongest during a time they needed him most. And yet here they were again — she brought him to Marley, and he was bleeding in pain because of her.

"I'm weak. I haven't changed. I can't protect anyone." She gritted her teeth in mumbled frustration as she continued down the rabbit hole of self-deprecation.

"Hey." Levi's voice stopped her. For a fickle moment, the lack of pain on Levi's face took Mikasa by surprise. He looked at her with that permanent sureness that always begged to comfort her.

Mikasa knew exactly what he was going to say — the same shit again, that it was his choice that he didn't regret. "Levi... I just wanted to be the one to do something for you — to protect you for once."