This is My Last War (Attack on Titan // LeviHan) - Part 3

The Monkey

Bloody shite, she had bound the cloth around her breasts too tightly.

Zoë flexed her muscles, drew in a half-assed breath, gingerly testing the restriction. It felt like an iron band around her chest. Great, just great. Hopefully it would loosen up during the day, she had no time to redo it right now. Slipping into her jacket and righting her tie, she turned to the left and the right to check her reflection in the spotless, high mirror.

"Ready to go?" Ernst von Bergmann, his apron dusted with flour from the bread dough he was making, handed her the black hat from the rack.

"How do I look?" Zoë asked with a grimace.

"You look very good," von Bergmann blinked, as if surprised by the question, and colored.

Hell, no, I have no time for shit like this.

"No, I meant: I look like a man, don't I?"

Objectively, nothing had changed, her disguise was what it had been two days ago. Subjectively, everything was different. All her confidence was gone. She had barely slept. Somehow, her brain had convinced itself that she would be arrested at the entrance to the Titan Research Facility because Willy Tybur had recognized her as the Eldian woman who worked there in a ridiculous disguise.

She ripped her expensive glasses off and began polishing them obsessively for the hundredth time this morning. It was going to be very hard to operate the microscopes due to her damaged eye. Tom Calvi had given her an introduction to the equipment on her first day, and today, she was meant to look at tissue samples and then harvest some cells. It was a standard, basic procedure to get her used to the lab, nothing more.

Nothing more and it should be easy for someone as skilled as she was on paper, but she knew she would struggle because the eye gave her a lot of pain today and she did not see well despite the special glasses. Earlier, she'd taken one of the painkillers Ernst had prescribed but it wasn't helping much so far. Should she have taken two? She feared the pills would mess with her head and her stomach, which already felt queasy enough.

"Yes," Ernst nodded, "for everyone who doesn't know you, for sure."

Not helping! Zoë groaned inwardly.

"Don't worry so much," he was obviously trying to sound cheerful for her sake, which made her anxiety spike even more, "you're just rattled, that's all."

Get your act together, shitty glasses, Levi would say with no sympathy at all. Because if you don't, you die. His snarling voice was the comfort she craved. The worry she felt for him and the others had settled like a stone in her stomach ever since their farewell. After the riots in lowtown, now halfway under control, the police were on extra alert everywhere. A description and hand-drawn picture of Levi had been posted on every wall and every lamp post: Wanted. For inciting a riot.

That was likely Bindella taking revenge for the death of his brother, Ernst had suspected. As a result, the kids had to enter the internment zone through the gates without Levi - who was completely unfazed by the complication. Someone who grew up in the Underground knew how to gain access to anything, he had told her, and surely had no problem entering an area no normal person went to voluntarily anyway.

"Take the ODM gear with you," she had suggested, expecting resistance - but there was none. Clearly, Levi loved his ODM gear, it was a reunion between old friends she watched once they had gotten it out of its hiding place. To be touched by him like this...

"Right," Zoë smiled at von Bergmann, "I'm just rattled."

Mikasa and Armin came out of the kitchen to see her off. They were worried too, it was written all over their faces.