One place on Earth - Levi x Reader

One place on Earth - Levi x Reader - part 9

  A/N: This story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world.
This chapter contains bad language, violence and gore!

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Levi was gone. You fell on your knees. He was gone.

The two men had watched your break down with wide eyes, not knowing what to do or how to react. They saw Erwin climbing up the stairs. He looked at the men with frowned brows and then at you.

"We- We didn't do anything... She, she just came here and started crying." the men stuttered and pointed towards your collapsed form.

"It's alright, carry on." Erwin calmed down the two men and turned his head back to you.

You had stopped crying. You just stared blankly into nothing, leaning your head against a supporting pillar. You noticed from the corner of my eye that someone crouched next to you. You slowly turned your head to face of the person beside you. Realizing it was Erwin, you looked back forward with a sigh.

You didn't want him to see you like this. Levi was gone and there was nothing you could do about it. Get your shit together, you told yourself. You brushed the tears from your cheeks with a single wipe downwards and dried your palms against your thighs. You looked up towards the sky, taking another deep breath in order to get your head clear.

"He was gone when I woke up." you explained your behavior.

You turned your face back to Erwin. He was looking at you with the same steady look in his face that he always had.

"I see. Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I just freaked out a little." you said and turned around to rest your back against the pillar. "I just... didn't expect him to leave without saying goodbye. Sneak out like that while I was still asleep."

You crossed my arms and just stared at the distance, since you didn't know what to say or do. Erwin looked at you for a while, and then for your surprise, he sat next to you.

"I can see you care about him." he said, looking at the front yard.

"I do." you admitted quietly, not looking at him. "Did he tell you about how we got out the quarantine zone? The whole story?"

"He did."

You nodded. "I owe him so much from what we went through getting here. Suddenly we were on a run and everything went to hell, but he was there and he somehow made me feel like it will be okay." you looked into the woods and huffed an exhale. "He's a good person. I didn't want him to leave without giving me a change to tell him that. But he did, and now I don't know if he ever comes back."

You both just sat there in silence for a while.

"Yes, he is a good man. But, it took time for him to become the person you see today." Erwin broke the silence. "I've known him for almost three years. He's never been that kind of a person who lets people too close to him. He's always been a little... difficult, hard to approach."

"Are you saying he used to be a lot more... grumpier than he is today?" you asked, making him chuckle at the choice of word for describing his nature.

"You could say that."

You noticed that Erwin had frowned his brows as he was deeply in his thoughts, and your smile faded away.

"How was he like? Before, I mean." you asked after a while, growing more and more interested to find out the reason for his look.

Erwin turned his face towards you. "We all have our pasts. I don't want to worry you with something that doesn't matter anymore." he turned his head back forward.

"Did he do something?" you narrowed your eyes. "Please, tell me. I wanna know."

Erwin took a deep breath, before he looked back to you. You only stared at him, waiting for him to say something.

"He was... quite different when we first met. He was moving with a group back then, trying to survive like everybody else. One night, they attacked our small camp, planning to take whatever they could to help themselves." Erwin paused for a while, frowning as he went through the memory in his head."

You listened him in silence, already not liking where you thought he might go with the story.

"He was cold and ruthless. He didn't see any difference between the dead and living. Everyone was an enemy to him. They killed many people that night. I got face to face with him and he almost got me too." Erwin pulled down the collar of his shirt, revealing a slim scar on his neck.

"He..." you stared at the scar with wide eyes, completely shocked. "Levi did that?"

"Levi went after a couple of people trying to secure the little food we had. He probably would've killed them without a doubt, but I managed to get myself between them just in time. I underestimated his speed. I got a hold of his arm but within the next second the knife was already in my neck. He probably assumed the cut was deep enough to finish me, and he just left me bleeding on the ground and went after the food again. They took the supplies and disappeared back into the woods as quickly as they had appeared."

You looked at him in disbelief, goosebumps crawling in your skin. Horrible, just horrible, you thought.

You shook your head, closing your eyes, confused. "How the hell did you end up like... this, after something like that had happened?"

Erwin looked at the yard in front of him and his lips twitched into a small smile. "We met again after a couple of months. We were searching for a new place to settle in, when we came across with Levi in a small town. His group had been through some rough times and they had lost most of their people. Soon after our encounter, we were attacked by the infected and we ended up fighting them together. We lost some more people and we were cornered into this one building, where we stayed until the dead ones eventually left. During our time in the building, we just had to endure each other." Erwin kept another pause.

"This world changes people. After the virus had destroyed everything we knew, each of us had to find our own ways to deal with all the changes. Levi had adopted violence as his way to cope, but I knew that before the virus, he probably had a normal, good life. I wanted to believe he still had that humane side hidden inside. Levi was capable and strong, that was clear to me. He knew what it takes to survive, what needs to be done.

I wanted us to combine our groups in order to have better chances of survival. The people I was traveling with didn't want it to happen since they didn't trust them, and Levi's group no doubt felt the same way about us. It wasn't easy, but we both knew that it was the smartest thing to do... and eventually we had an agreement."

You had crossed your arms tightly around your chest, amazed by the fact that Erwin had the guts to make a companionship with someone who had tried to kill him. You looked at him in silence, trying to read his face, but you couldn't tell what he was thinking. Erwin was looking at the distance, calm, at peace with the past.

You knew that past belongs to past, and you can't change what you have done, but this revelation about Levi made you wonder. You had told him pretty much everything about yourself, and now that you thought about it, Levi had never told you anything from his past. No wonder, if it really used to be like what Erwin just told.

But truthfully, never in your head you would've thought that Levi's talent to survive comes from a past like that. You knew he never had a second thoughts or doubt when he had to attack an infected, neither did you when it comes to it. But people are another deal. Was it like that with him when it was about another person? Was it easy? Simple? Is it still?

"Has he killed people- after you went on together? After you came here?" you asked. "Is it still... does he feel bad of doing it?"

Erwin let you wait for his answer, probably because he was weighting whether you really want to know the answer. "Yes, he has. If it needs to be done, he'll do it." he looked at you. "I'm sure he regrets some things he's done. I know I do. But, in the end, we live in a world where it's either them or you."

You stared down at your feet, hearing what he says, understanding.

"I've killed many infected ones... but never another person." you admitted, quietly, as the mere thought of it felt unsettling to you.

"I hope you never have to." Erwin set his hand to rest on your shoulder.

You've seen people die by the hands of others, but never up to this point you'd believed to be able to kill a person. Or at least do it with a light heart. Not like them, not as easily, like it's simply something that has to be done. Or, perhaps you could, who knows. You live among killers, sitting next to one, hell, you're one yourself. And somehow, it's normal. What a fucked up world this is.