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

The Panther's Prey, Part 2

What do you remember, my poor child?

Pain.

What else?

Dead people. ... M... m... many of them.

Oh, Levi. I'm so sorry. So, so sorry.

Don't cry, Mamma. Those are only dreams... right? Don't cry!

###

He had been wrong. There was an afterlife - and it was extremely unpleasant.

In death, Levi got to know the kind of pain that demons concocted to torture humans. It laced through him at frequent intervals, always taking him by surprise however much he braced himself. He knew dreams that had him wake up from his own screams that were in fact memories and haunting memories that were just nightmares. There was a place whose emptiness frightened him beyond reason and a place with a straight path that called to him but he didn't dare walk on because it was forbidden. He knew how excruciatingly slow time could flow and how a single second could feel like eons, heavy with the death of entire species.

At times, he forgot who he was. Those were relatively good times. Then he remembered everything that he had lost and was going to lose. That was less good.

When he was not lost or dreaming, Levi tried to appease the demons but they were always angry with him. They demanded to know where "the serum" was hidden. He told them. In truth, he did not know about any serums, but he thought it was some kind of trick question, so his answers became ever more creative, which made the demons ever more angry.

They claimed he had not been taught properly and was worthless to them. The very next moment they claimed they would break the defenses of his bloodline for sure, they were mere seconds away. He begged them to hurry up, he really had nothing to hide from them - but they thought he was lying.

Strangely, Renzo Church was there too. His sneering face gave the suffering an extra touch, quite a strange one, actually: How was Renzo important enough to be part of his personal hell?

"So much fuss about you," Renzo laughed. "Yet so little use. So you're just someone who will do anything they ask of you like a puppet? Shame I didn't get to have you clean my toilet."

That was probably a dream because Levi was unable to reply, his tongue was too heavy in his mouth, like lead. I'll do anything you ask, I'll do anything you ask, I'll do anything for freedom, a voice in his head mocked him.

Often, the demon with Renzo's face tortured him by recounting in gruesome detail how the people he loved had died. His mother, his friends... yes, that was all true, he believed it, he remembered. Another time, Renzo claimed that he had a child, a little girl looking just like her mother, and that that child had died in an epidemic just a few days ago. That couldn't be true. He'd never have children because he... she... she had said that...

Fishing for specific memory-dreams gave him a tremendous headache, it was easier to forget altogether. But... but he remembered. He had said that this fucked up world of theirs was missing out because she could not have children. It made him incredibly sad but it was an emotion that felt clean and real nonetheless, so he grabbed it with both hands and hung on for dear life.

... until Renzo told him at length and in detail how Zoë Hange had died, ripped to pieces by gigantic Titans when she had tried to get close enough to cut off some of their hair. Things slipped from Levi again after that. There was a kind of reprieve in oblivion.

Then there was this other person he knew. Oliver. Who stabbed him with a syringe.

"It's not working anymore, we should stop," Oliver said and blinked stupidly like an owl. Levi realized that Oliver was blinking down at him who was lying on some hard surface and was looking up. More pain afterwards made him forget important details but a part of him continued to feel the hard surface at his back, anchoring him to a place where there was an up and a down and a time that flowed with the beating of his heart.