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

Debts Left Unpaid

It took Levi a considerable effort to keep himself from gawking at Annika, just like it took an effort to ignore the unsettling feeling in his stomach or to keep the unease off his face.

Her arm, demandingly interlinked with his, the locks of auburn hair clashing violently with the dull brown cloth of his vest, the pressure of her breasts against his side, her strangely familiar scent - clover, leather, and oil ... it was all too real and yet, it felt like an ominous dream.

Annika embodied a debauched life of sin, where there were no rules besides the scramble for survival: take what you can get, never give anything back. Dangerous, ruthless, destructive, where those living right on the edge managed to look like winners even though they were half a tottering step away from falling into the abyss.

It was the life he had lived before he had somehow managed to step away from it.

It was also a life he never ever wanted to go back to. Even being chewed slowly limb for limb by a Titan while screaming your lungs out was preferable to it.

Chattering away as if she had not burnt down half a neighborhood in her crazy rage two years ago, Annika drew him forward into the kind of neighborhood he had vowed to keep Hanji out of. But he could not even muster the fortitude to stop and question Annika about her intentions. That was her effect on him, as if she cast a kind of spell that made his brain malfunction. It should be all the warning he needed and reason enough to step away and yet... saying no to her had always come at a very high price.

At the very least, he should have warned Hanji about the kind of person Annika was, mercurial to the extreme, radiant and beautiful one minute, a merciless killer the next. But he had been completely blindsided by Annika's appearance and now that the wish to warn her became urgent, Hanji was trailing too far behind them, looking at their surroundings with that damn curiosity of hers, squinting at shadows in alleyways, broken windows and gaping doorways like she had never seen anything more exciting.

"She is Mitras-bred," Annika remarked with a disgusted wrinkle of her nose, noticing where his attention had wandered to.

Levi shrugged, like that observation didn't matter, but it did - how did Annika know? It made him acutely anxious. He wasn't sure who had sent Maria to him, nor had he been able to find out why, which put him at a disadvantage.

"She's ugly," Annika sneered. "Is it even female? Kinda hard to tell."

"Like I care," Levi grumbled. He did though. He cared, much too much actually and that made him even more anxious. No, Hanji wasn't ugly, not in the least. Everything else down here was though and that was why he didn't want her to get soiled by it. Good job he was doing.

"So you work with her?"

Levi nodded once.

"What are you up to? How come someone like you associates with the likes of her?" Annika's tone of voice had changed and Levi felt alertness flood his senses at the menace in it. Why did she make this about Hanji? They had wanted him to come down here, hadn't they?

"So why are we on speaking terms?" he asked back, careful not to act on impulse and fling her away even though he veritably ached to bring distance between her and him - a lot of distance. But if he escalated too soon, blood would be shed. Annika was his match with a knife, he couldn't forget that.

"I've forgiven you, that's why," Annika smiled, her eyes glittering dangerously. "How could I stay mad at you?"

"You once stalked a woman who sprayed a little dirt on a new dress of yours for two years."

"Pah," Annika made a dismissive gesture with her free hand. "That was someone who clearly deserved to be punished. You on the other hand..."

She smiled at him angelically, showing a row of teeth remarkably white for someone born and raised in the underground.