The Wings of Truth

9.

The underground cities were shit holes that once were meant as a colonization idea for escaping the titans, but they quickly descended into a cavern that was were the worst of them flourished and people lived in filthy slums. "It wasn't a nice place, Eren," he explained and the boy nodded silently, taking in the new information. The outside and the Underground were forbidden topics by royal decree. Levi didn't care. A former citizen of the Underground and current Survey Corps member gave him immunity to that decree, as far as discussion among others in the corps went. The decree was more for common folk than anything. It gave them security to live thinking they were safe and to think that there wasn't a rotting city beneath them. "It was dark, damp, and filthy. Animals that found their way down there either rotted on the streets or were cooked for a meal by those able to kill it. The place was all dirt and water, the sound of droplets falling constant. I still hear it sometimes," he admitted and Eren cocked his head in question. The boy was being gentle and careful, and Levi was thankful for that.

"What do you mean?" Eren's attention was fully on him and it was nice, even if his heart clenched painfully and he hated how things looked on the back of his eyelids. Eren was comforting, but he unnerved and unraveled him all the same.

"You know how it sounds when water drips from a faucet into water in the sink?" The boy nodded, pictures of his mom and mikasa in the kitchen, the sound hardly audible over their chatter. "Imagine that with an echo every few seconds every day at all times. It was the lullaby I grew up with."

The idea that Levi had been trapped in such a impoverished place as that and he was still hearing the drops of water from the cave's ceiling hurt him a little. Armin had read in a book that some of the best warriors came from the worst of childhoods, and he was beginning to believe that may be true. "That's awful," he replied and Levi gave a slight nod. It was awful. It had been awful. They made it tolerable though.

"My dad left before I was born and my mom and uncle raised me." The words sat heavy on his tongue. He wished he could have helped his mom get out of there and Kenny was a maniac, so he never liked thinking about them. "It was just me and my mom," he spoke and the thought he never wanted to admit came to mind. His dad was a customer. He was an accident, but lots of kids in the Underground were. "I was a bastard child. My mom did some awful things to survive down there, and I was a result of it." He let that thought sink in and Eren's soft gasp told him that the boy had figure it out.

"Levi, was your mom..." He couldn't say it. They didn't have prostitutes in Wall Maria, and if they did then they were hidden away in brothels. The Underground and Wall Maria were not the same.

"She had to sell her body to eat, and then I came along and she sold her body so I could eat. A customer killed her the one night while I was at the neighbor's house. I came home... and she was dead," he explained and Eren's eyes were worried and shocked in equal parts. Levi turned his head to look at him and kissed Eren's cheek in reassurance. "It took several days for anyone to find me starving by her bedside. It was my uncle who found me. I'd never met him, and then he was my guardian. I still remember him sitting on the floor with my mom on the bed. We exchanged names and sat in silence before he sighed and stood up, telling me to follow him." Eren tried to picture it and he didn't know what to picture. Eren couldn't picture Levi as a child curled up on the floor starving to death. He couldn't imagine what Levi would have looked like back then, and Levi knew that no matter what Eren pictured, it would not match the depressed, boney, and shaggy kid he had been. "He wasn't a nice man, but he taught me how to defend myself and fight. They were skills that were necessary to survive in the Underground. I left when I was sixteen or so, and found an abandoned place, killed the rats there and had them for dinner, then made that place my home." Eren grimaced at the mention of killing and eating rats of all creatures.