The day Wall Maria fell to the Titans, soldier Arden Keiser selfishly chose to save herself. She disobeyed direct orders and abandoned her role within the Garrison Regiment, taking the life of another as she did so. She made an attempt to escape fro...
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"Erwin."
The commander raised his head and blinked at the small man in his doorway. As usual, he hadn't knocked before entering, and Erwin didn't hear the door creak open or the man's light footsteps. Although, for once, Levi addressed him by his forename rather than by any mocking nickname. It was a pleasant surprise, but Levi wasn't one for niceties, and so Erwin began to wonder just what this meeting would be about.
"Levi," Erwin called. He set down his pen and awkwardly cleared his throat, quickly moving to adjust the various documents that lay scattered across his desk. "I can't apologize enough. I forgot that you had asked to meet with me."
Levi pursed his lips at the sight of his desk. Erwin was rarely flustered, but ever since the expedition, it seemed that he had been overloaded with paperwork. Somedays the commander seemed more rattled than his predecessor, Shadis, had ever been. "Too busy to talk?"
"Maybe I am, but it would be rude of me to cancel our meeting just because I forgot to plan ahead."
Levi nodded. Without asking, he approach the cluttered desk and took a seat. He grabbed a stack of documents and swiped through them. Out of instinct, he got to work on organizing them as he saw fit. "Maybe if you kept this shit together," he gestured towards the mess, "you'd have more time on your hands."
Erwin shook his head, but through the heavy motion, Levi could see a tired smile forming on his face. "If only I had your habits," he joked. "But besides that, you didn't come here to organize my papers, did you?"
"No," Levi replied, but he said nothing more. He was unsure of exactly how he was going to approach the subject of the Underground. One glance at Erwin's desk proved that the man had much more to worry about than allowing former criminals to run off unsupervised.
Levi finished dealing with the stack of documents and grabbed another, which he recognized to be a handful of files belonging to soldiers. Stamped in the corner in red ink was a familiar word—deceased. He straightened the papers and placed them aside, but not without Erwin catching sight of them. He gave a deep sigh and swiped a hand through his tousled hair. "Thankfully my formation strategy worked and a higher percentage of our soldiers lived, but that doesn't change anything about those we did lose."
Only a week had passed, but yet it felt like the expedition was so long ago. At its surface, life in the Scout Regiment had returned to normal, but underneath it all, Erwin was struggling with his new responsibilities along with the many repercussions of his first expedition. Levi, Hange, and Mike had been dealing with their own paperwork, and being illiterate, Levi was left depending on Hange and Mike for assistance, creating even more work for the two of them.
Levi dragged his calloused fingers along the arm of the chair. "Yeah," he muttered.
Erwin shook his head. "I'm sorry, I'm sure the expedition wasn't what you wanted to discuss. What is it?"
