Impossible Odds [Levi x OC]

TWO: FRIENDS, OLD AND NEW

When the dinner bell rang, the male and female cadets filed out of their respective barracks and into the mess hall. Asami waited for Armin on the mess hall porch, where she watched a brown-haired girl run laps around the courtyard. Apparently, this girl had been eating a potato during the orientation, which Asami assumed was the reason that she was running.

"Asami," Armin called from somewhere off to Asami's right. 

She turned to see Armin and a tall, brown-haired boy with big green eyes emerge from the boys' barracks, which was right next to the mess hall. They were joined by Mikasa, who Asami had reunited with in the girls' barracks.
For the second time that day, Asami forgot how to breathe. When she overcame her initial shock, she laughed breathily and her hands went up to her head. 
At first, Eren Jaeger only stared back at Asami with a similar expression of shock. Then he said, "No freaking way," and he started to laugh. He ran up the mess hall steps and to Asami, who stood with her arms extended outward to him. Eren picked her up off the floor and spun her around once. They both laughed so happily.

"Holy-- you've gotten stronger!" Asami exclaimed. She took a step back so she could look at him. "--And taller!"
Eren laughed at her. "Well, I wish I could say the same for you-- I think you managed to get even shorter."

Asami laughed again and punched Eren in the stomach-- not hard enough to hurt him, but hard enough to show him that she'd gotten stronger too.

Armin and Mikasa joined them on the porch, and Asami took another step back to admire her childhood friends, who all smiled at her. She couldn't believe that, after two years of nothing but loss, she'd gained so much in just one day. "I missed you guys so much," she told them.

"We missed you too, Asami," Armin said. 

Asami's eyes moved up to Eren, who wasn't smiling anymore; he looked concentrated. "Say, what happened to you? Mikasa and I found Armin when we got to Trost, before the labor camp, but... we never saw you after that day."
Asami shuddered. Of course, "that day" was the day Shiganshina fell. "The soldiers who worked Trost held us because my dad wanted to make a deal with them; he paid them a lot of money to let us out of Trost so we could freely go to Rose and eventually Sina, but... well, they took his money and forced him and my mom outside the Walls with everyone else. 
My mom actually made it back from the mission, so I went with her to the labor camp that's on the north side of Trost--"

Realization came onto Armin's face. "That's where those who'd managed to survive the mission went. We worked at the labor camp on the southern side mostly with other kids." 

Asami nodded in affirmation. 

On the day that Shiganshina fell, Asami had been with Eren and Mikasa up until they were boarding the boats that would take them into Trost; she'd witnessed Eren's mom, Carla, get eaten by a Titan while Mr. Hannes carried her and Eren away. When Hannes brought them to the boat dock, Asami's parents rushed up to her and literally pulled her away from Eren and Mikasa so they could board the first boat. She didn't see them again after that day.

Asami had assumed that the worst had happened to Armin. She'd struggled to cope with the loss of her home, her best friends, her dad, and shortly after, her mom. Asami didn't make a single friend during her two years at the labor camp, and after losing so much, she fell into a numb state because she didn't have anyone or anything to live for-- 

--until she remembered that when she became sixteen years old, she could join the Cadet Corp. just like she and Eren had dreamed of doing. 

Asami shook her head to stop the train of depressing thoughts. "We were just kids back then. Remember earlier that day, Eren—"