You can't force love

Chapter 9 - Talk

Between the fear that something might happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.

- Ivo Andrić

"I can't wait to see more titans!" Hanji said exitedly. "Maybe we'll see an abnormal!"

"I already see one," Levi's bored tone disrupted her thoughts about human eating monsters.

"What? Where?" she asked and started turning her head left and right in hope to see one. Captain's hand rested on her head and turned it to him.

"Right here."

Hanji couldn't miss the way his eyes were dull. Something wasn't right. But before she could ask, Erwin's powerful voice echoed through the formation.

Captain Levi has never been feeling this way. Both weird and unusual, the ones one captain shouldn't be feeling, but there he was.

Why I had to walk in the fucking stable before going? he thought frustrated beyond boundaries.

He felt bad for seeing it. For seeing that scene that made him look like a man whose soul left the body. Sure thing Hanji noticed, because he saw the twich of her eyebrows when they were face-to-face.

Sighing, he opened the window, letting the warm, morning breeze fill his suffocating room. As he peeked outside, the first thing or better, a person he unconsciously lend his eyes onto was... well... quess who.

Levi immediately closed the window and sat on his chair.

He'll appear in my dreams to threaten me.

A faint srcibing of a pen was the only sound that followed afterwards. Headache didn't give up on hitting on his nerves. He didn't want to do paperwork, but he had to take his mind off of a picture he saw three days ago. Just the thought of Auruo and Petra muttually hugging-

Grip on his pen tightened and for a moment he thought he broke the lower half.

It became almost unbearable. He hated to see those stupid smiles on Auruo's face when Petra would appear. He hated the way he talked with her and when he'd call her his future wife, he thought he was going tu burst any moment. But he loved her more than himself. He'll bear this inside of his being and she'll be with someone who can offer love she deserves.

"Come in," he said when someone knocked. Door creaked open and an angelic voice made a way to his ears and heart.

"Captain? Do you have a minute?"

Levi paused and slowly raised his gaze. If someone told him you can feel warmth and coldness in the same time, he wouldn't believe them.

"Sure", he said and mentally slapped himself for not being formal.

Nodding, Petra closed the door behind.

"I wanted to ask you something."

"What is it?"

"I..." Petra said and squeezed her hands together thet were behind her back.

"You... have beaten Eren up and... I just want to know... was it because you wanted to..." she said and looked at her feet and back at him. His stoic face didn't give anything and it worried her.

"To act to make them believe in your words more so they would hand Eren to SC?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because... I can't believe words you've said in a courtroom."

"Why?"

Petra's eyes widened. She stared at Levi who sucessfully kept his mask on.