Silent Love, Silent Pain [Levi x OC]

67. Sea

AN: As you may noticed there are five noble families at this point that I explained in one of the previous chapters - Fritz/Reiss, Ackerman (in original story) and Burgess (made by Koulakoukoula), Roff  (made by Kikistarfire) and Leitz (made by me). You can read more about it more on my A03 account!
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All of the Scouts were sitting in the canteen and finishing their breakfast as they were about to go for an expedition. Levi and Sophie were sitting with their friends, talking about sweet nothings, similar to other tables. No one was really scared of expeditions at this point due to two reasons - they had Ackermans in their unit and they were also having a Leitz at this unit, already growing in strength. Of course, some things were still scary for them, but Erwin used his smooth words, reassuring soldiers that everything was going to be fine.

"We have a great advantage now," he said a few weeks earlier in the briefing room. It was the first general meeting that he called for after a long time of sitting in his office and planning. Finally, he was ready to face them as he achieved great success during his meeting with the government, Nile and Dot Pyxis. " We conquered our enemies in Shiganshina and they will undoubtedly need time to recover from their defeat. It's our chance to get rid of the titans from this island for good without interruption. The faster we'll do it, the faster we'll explore the whole Paradis and expand our territory," he reasoned.

"Yeah, they will rethink their tactics and attack us worse than ever," Levi grunted and Sophie sent him a glare which was saying that he should stop talking. She shared his fears, of course she did. Alas, they couldn't afford Scouts to panic and refuse obeying their commander's order. That would undoubtedly put them back on the suspect list of Erwin's. She didn't want to deal with that again. She needed peace, otherwise it would be harder to cooperate in experimenting with her powers.

"We have other advantages too," he continued.

"Such as?" Gelgar asked, raising his hand and some of the younger soldiers were relieved that a veteran asked that question for them.

"Well, our unit is no longer persecuted by the government. We have a great opinion, decent salary and patriotic feelings are increasing amongst the Eldians. I'm expecting more soldiers to join our force very soon," he smiled at them. It was one of those confident and genuine smiles that was making people feel safe with him, it was making them trust him. Clearly some of them more than others as Sophie looked at a few newbies sitting in the very first row, staring at Erwin with pure admiration and devotion. She recognized that one of them was Floch, a boy who was panicking back in Shiganshina. She remembered that he looked far more frightened back in time. Now fear was gone, it was only determination in his eyes and for some reason it didn't fill her with comfort. "And we're having Ackermans and Leitz in our unit! We all know at this point how skilled people of that name can be, one of them already proved it right and the two others will prove it too," this time he smiled at both Sophie and Mikasa who was sitting nearby.

All of the eyes focused on them and Sophie felt the urge to leave the place as she hated attention like this. She hated the fact that people were pointing at her as if she was some kind of freak or just a mere tool lacking feelings with the only purpose of existence to serve and fight. She gritted her teeth and so was Levi, instinctively moving closer to her as if he wanted to hide her from the attention. Almost as if he didn't know that they were also staring at him. "Creeps," he mumbled and noticed that Jean said something similar as he was sitting close to Mikasa.

"However," Erwin said, bringing the attention back to him. "There's something I need to share with you and that information is both good and bad, the reception depends entirely on your characters I think," he said, causing Scouts to raise their eyebrows in question as they were waiting in anticipation for him to say more. "We believe that all of the titans are now in the Wall Maria as they breached inside during the Colossal's attack. We plugged the wall, so there's a possibility for a few of them still wandering outside, but the majority of them will be waiting for us there,"