Chapter 3: Aftermath
The shower was scalding, just like he’d promised. Aria stood under the blistering spray, letting it beat against her shoulders, trying to wash away the sweat, the travel grit, and the violent, clinging scent of him. It didn’t work. She felt branded. Her muscles ached in a way that was both familiar and terrifyingly new.
Wrapped in one of his stark white towels—it smelled faintly of unscented detergent—she padded back into the living area. The blue light was off. A single lamp on the steel side table cast a warm, low pool of illumination. He’d moved. He was sitting on the edge of the sofa, forearms resting on his knees, hands dangling between them. He’d put on a fresh black t-shirt and sweatpants. His hair was damp, too. He’d showered in the other bathroom, the one she hadn’t seen.
Two mugs sat on the low table. Steam rose from them. He’d made more tea.
He didn’t look at her as she entered. His gaze was fixed on a point on the polished concrete floor, but she could see the tension in the line of his shoulders, the rigid set of his jaw. The aftermath.
She sat on the far end of the sofa, tucking her legs beneath her, the towel securely wrapped. The silence was a living thing, thick and awkward, punctuated only by the distant hum of the refrigerator. The frantic energy of their collision had dissipated, leaving behind a cratered landscape.
She reached for her mug, just to have something to do with her hands. The tea was perfect. Not too hot.He remembered.
“Did you…” she started, then stopped, her voice small. She tried again. “Did you know? Everything from the past two years? About me?”
His eyes shifted toward her, then back to the floor. “What was public record,” he said, his voice flat. “Yes.”
She nodded slowly, sipping the tea. It was bitter.Good. “Social media. My work website. That stuff.”
“Yes.”
“So you saw the pictures.The trips. The friends.” She said it not as an accusation, but as a fact.
“I saw a constructed narrative,” he replied, a trace of his old sharpness returning. “People post what they want seen.”
“It wasn’t all a lie,” she whispered.
He didn’t contradict her. He just waited.
She took a shuddering breath. The confession lodged in her throat, barbed and ugly. This was the real vulnerability, far more naked than her physical body. “You’re going to notice some stuff,” she said, her words tripping over each other.“Um. That wasn’t public record. Like… my meds. In my bag. And I have to check in with a… a psychiatrist. Once a week. Phone call.”
His head turned fully toward her now. His expression was unreadable, carved from obsidian in the lamplight. “Why?”
The single word hung in the air. A demand for intel.An order.
Aria put the mug down.Her hands were trembling. She linked her fingers together in her lap, squeezing until her knuckles were white. She looked at the wall of maps, the red strings like veins connecting points of past failures. It was easier than looking at him.
“Um.So. About a year and a half ago…” Her voice cracked. She cleared it, forced it steady. “I uh. I shot myself.”
The air in the room vanished.
She didn’t hear him move. She didn’t hear him breathe. The silence became absolute, a vacuum. She risked a glance.
He hadn’t moved a muscle. He was statue-still. But his face… it had drained of all color. His eyes, fixed on her, were wide, the pupils blown black in the low light. It wasn’t shock.It was horror. A kind of hollow, gutted horror she had never seen on him before, not even in their worst moments in that other life.
He opened his mouth. Closed it.No sound came out.
“Lived,” she continued, the words rushing out now, mechanical. “Really only because Maya found me. She came over unannounced. Had a key. Heard the… the sound. Called 911. They got me to the hospital. I was in ICU for a while. Then inpatient psych for a month.Then outpatient. Hence the meds. Hence the check-ins. Hence… a lot of things.”
She chanced another look. A single, traitorous muscle was twitching in his clenched jaw. His hands, still dangling between his knees, were now fists, the tendons standing out like cables.
“Gun,” he finally said. The word was rough, shredded.
“I bought it. At a store. This world makes it… not easy, but possible. I had a clean record.” She gave a short, ugly laugh. “I had to wait three days. A ‘cooling-off period.’ I guess I wasn’t cooled off enough.”
“Where.” It wasn’t a question.
“My apartment.The bathroom. Easier to clean, they say.” She was dissociating, she could feel it, watching herself say these awful, factual things from a great distance.
“The round.”
“Nine millimeter. Hollow point. Through and through, left shoulder. Just… missed everything vital. Lucky, they said.” She touched the spot reflexively, through the towel. The scar was a ugly, puckered thing. She never wore sleeveless shirts anymore.
He surged to his feet so suddenly she flinched back. He didn’t look at her. He paced to the window, his back to her, a tense line of controlled fury and devastation. He braced his hands on the sill, his head dropping between his shoulders.
She could see the tremor in his arms.Minutes passed. The clock on the microwave ticked softly.
“You…” He stopped, his voice choked. He tried again, forcing it out. “You used a firearm. For that.”
“Yes.”
“You chose a method with a high rate of… completion.” He was analyzing it. Tactically. It was the only way his brain could process it.
“Yes.”
“Hollow point.” He said it like a curse. “Maximum tissue damage.”
“I wasn’t thinking about ballistics, Levi. I was thinking about silence. And finality.”
He turned around. His face was a mask, but his eyes were alive with a storm of pure agony. “Why.”
This ‘why’ was different. It wasn’t a demand for facts. It was a plea from a cliff’s edge.
All her practiced explanations—the therapy-speak about chemical imbalances, about the unbearable weight of loss and dislocation, about the gray fog that swallowed everything—they evaporated. She looked at this man who had just taken her against a refrigerator with a desperate, brutal passion, and she gave him the raw, unvarnished truth.
“Because you were gone,” she said, her voice hollow. “And the others were gone. And this world was so loud and so quiet at the same time. And I had a good job and nice friends and I was ‘adapting’ and every single day I wanted to scream. I felt like a ghost. At least if I was a real ghost, I could haunt you. Wherever you were.” A tear spilled over, tracing a hot path down her cheek. “I just wanted the noise to stop. The missing to stop.”
He walked back toward her, his movements stiff, robotic. He didn’t sit. He knelt. He went down on one knee in front of her, his eyes level with hers. The proximity was shocking. He reached out, his hand trembling minutely, and his fingers brushed the edge of the towel where it covered her left shoulder. A question.
She nodded, once.
Gently, he tugged the towel down, just an inch, baring the top of the scar. It was worse up close—a vicious, starburst pattern of ruined skin. His breath hitched. His fingertips, calloused and warm, traced the very edge of it, a feather-light touch. He didn’t speak. His head bowed, his forehead coming to rest gently against her knee, just beside the scar.
His shoulders shook.
It was a silent, violent tremor. No sound escaped him. But she felt the tremors through her skin. The great Levi Ackerman, brought to his knees not by a Titan, but by a scar on her shoulder.
Tentatively, she let her hand come to rest on his damp hair. The strands were soft. He didn’t pull away. He leaned into the touch, just slightly.
“I failed you,” he whispered into the fabric of the towel, the words muffled, broken.
“You didn’t.”
“I left. You broke.”
“I was already broken. You were just… the one piece that used to hold me together.”
He lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, dry, but burning.“The medications. What are they for?”
“Depression.Severe.Anxiety. PTSD.They help. They make the gray less… all-consuming.”
“Do you take them every day?”
“Yes. Morning and night.”
“Show me.”
She blinked. “What?”
“The bottles. In your bag. Show me.” It was his commander’s voice, stripped of all inflection. He needed a mission.An objective.
Slowly, she got up, holding the towel closed, and retrieved her duffel. She dug out the small, orange plastic bottles and handed them to him. He took them, studying each label with intense focus, reading the drug names, the dosages, the instructions.He committed them to memory. He noted the pharmacy info, the prescribing doctor.
“This psychiatrist,” he said, looking up. “The weekly call. When?”
“Tomorrow night. At seven.”
He gave a single, sharp nod. “You will take it here. In this room. I will be quiet.”
“Levi, you don’t have to—”
“Yes,” he cut her off, his voice leaving no room for argument. “I do.” He placed the bottles neatly on the table, lining them up with military precision. “You said inpatient. A facility. What was it like?”
The question surprised her. “It was… fine.Safe.Sterile. Group therapy.Bad art. It helped. Kept me alive.”
“Names,” he said. “Of the doctors there. The head of the facility.”
“Why?”
“I want to know who was responsible for you.” His gaze was icy. “I want to know if they were competent.”
She told him. He listened, absorbing the information, filing it away.
When she finished, he was silent for a long moment, still kneeling on the floor before her. He looked at the bottles.At the scar. At her face.
“It will not happen again,” he said. It wasn’t a hope. It was a statement of fact, a new law written into his personal code. “You are here now. I am here. That path is closed.”
“You can’t just order away mental illness, Levi.”
“I can secure the perimeter,” he said, his eyes deadly serious. “No firearms in this apartment. Your medication will be taken as prescribed. You will make your calls. I will learn about these conditions. I will…” He faltered, the clinical demeanor cracking for a second. “I will watch the signs.”
He was building a new set of maps. Not of old battles, but of her.Her triggers. Her medication schedule. Her check-ins. It was his language. His way of loving.
He stood up, his joints audibly protesting. He offered her his hand. She took it. He pulled her to her feet, his grip firm and warm.
“Sleep,” he said. “You can have the bed. I will take the couch.”
She expected to argue. To insist on sharing the space. But the emotional purge had left her exhausted down to her bones. She just nodded.
He led her to the bedroom. It was as stark as the rest of the apartment: a low platform bed with crisp white sheets, a single nightstand, a closet with sliding doors.No decorations. No color. She saw the hilt of a blade protruding from under his pillow.
He followed her gaze. Without a word, he walked to the bed, retrieved the sword, and carried it out of the room. He returned a moment later. “It will be in the living room,” he said.A concession.
He turned to go, pausing at the doorway. The blue LED strip from the other room backlit him, casting his profile in sharp relief.
“Aria,” he said, not turning around.
“Yeah?”
His voice was low, stripped raw. “The next time the noise gets too loud… you come and find me. You break down the damn door. You understand?”
It was an order.A plea. A vow.
“I understand,” she whispered.
He left, closing the door softly behind him. She stood in the center of his sterile room, in the towel, listening to the faint sounds of him moving in the living room—the clink of a mug being placed in the sink, the creak of the couch as he sat down.Then, silence.
She crawled into his bed. The sheets smelled like him—clean, with that faint, metallic undertone of effort. She pulled the blanket up to her chin. In the dark, her fingers found the scar on her shoulder, tracing its rough edges.
For the first time in two and a half years, the quiet didn’t feel like an enemy. It felt like a held breath. Like someone was standing guard.
In the living room, Levi sat on the couch, his own scarred hands resting on his knees. He stared at the wall, but he wasn’t seeing the maps of old wars. He was seeing a bathroom floor that didn’t exist, and a pool of blood that should have been his to spill, not hers. His jaw ached from being clenched.
He picked up his phone from the table. His thumbs moved over the screen, clumsy but determined. He opened a search browser. His first entry was not about missing persons or tactical history.
He typed: Serotonin reuptake inhibitors.Side effects. Monitoring protocols.
Monitoring protocols. He read until his eyes burned in the blue phone-light glow, absorbing dry medical language about half-lives and withdrawal symptoms and black box warnings. His own heart thudded a slow, sick rhythm against his ribs. Every clinical term translated into a fresh, visceral image: Aria alone, swallowing pills, Aria staring at a ceiling, Aria with a gun.
The phone dimmed. He set it down carefully on the table beside the neat line of her medication bottles. They looked alien there, a splash of imperfect color in his monochrome world. He leaned back on the couch, the leather creaking under his weight, and stared at the dark ceiling. Sleep was a foreign concept. His mind looped instead on tactical assessments: secure environment, remove hazards, establish routine. Observe.
A soft sound cut through his circling thoughts. A muffled cry, choked off.
He was on his feet instantly, silent, hand automatically reaching for a blade that wasn’t at his hip. It came from the bedroom. He moved to the door, listened. A ragged inhale. A hitched sob.
He pushed the door open slowly. The room was dark, lit only by the streetlight haze filtering through the blinds. She was a curled shape under the sheets, shaking. Not awake. Trapped in some private battlefield.
He stood there, a sentinel in the doorway, paralyzed. In their old life, he’d have shaken her awake, blunt and efficient. “Nightmare. It’s over.” But this was different. This was the damage he’d indirectly authored. He didn’t have the right to barge in.
Another whimper, this one laced with palpable fear. “Levi…”
His name, spoken in that terrified sleep-voice, decided it. He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. He didn’t touch her. “Aria.” He said it firm, low. “You’re dreaming.”
Her eyes flew open. They were wide, unfocused, glazed with terror. She stared at him without seeing him for a long second, breath coming in short, sharp gasps.
“Hey,” he said, the word gruff. “Look at me. You’re here. Unit 4B. Columbus.”
Recognition filtered in, slow and painful. The tension bled from her shoulders. She blinked, swallowing hard. “Shit,” she breathed, rubbing a hand over her face. “Sorry.”
“Don’t.” He remained perfectly still. “What was it?”
She shook her head, pulling the sheets up higher. “The usual. Falling. Being lost. That damn bathroom.” She wouldn’t look at him. “It’s fine. Go back to sleep.”
He didn’t move. “Do they happen often?”
“Often enough.”
He processed this. A new variable. A vulnerability during downtime. “Do you want water?”
She nodded, still looking away. He returned from the kitchen with a cold glass. She took it, her fingers brushing his. They were ice-cold. She drank, then handed it back.
“You should sleep,” she mumbled, lying back down, turning her back to him.
He should leave. Return to his post on the couch. Instead, he found himself lying down on top of the blankets, on his back, staring at the same patch of ceiling he could see from the living room. He kept a careful foot of space between them. The mattress dipped slightly under his weight.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was small in the dark.
“Securing the perimeter,” he said, his tone flat.
She didn’t reply. After a few minutes, her breathing evened out, deepened. He listened to it, matching his own breath to its rhythm, a guard keeping watch over the rise and fall of her chest. He didn’t sleep. He cataloged the night sounds: the furnace kicking on, a distant siren, the rustle of sheets as she turned. Dawn was a gray smear at the window edges when his own eyes finally closed.
Aria woke to the smell of coffee and the soft shush-shush of a knife on a cutting board. Morning light, pale and weak, cut through the blinds. For a blissful second, she was disoriented, the unfamiliar ceiling meaning nothing. Then memory crashed in.
She was in his bed. Alone. She could hear him moving in the kitchen.
She sat up, the sheets pooling around her waist. Her clothes from last night were folded neatly on the nightstand. A clean, dark gray t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants were placed beside them. His. She pulled them on. The t-shirt swam on her, the collar slipping off one shoulder. The pants she had to roll at the waist.
Padding out to the living area, she found him at the small counter. He was dicing an apple with precise, surgical strokes. Two plates sat ready, each with a single slice of dry toast and a small, perfect mound of scrambled eggs. No butter. No salt. The coffee steamed in a French press.
He glanced up as she approached. His eyes tracked over her, dressed in his clothes, and something unreadable flickered in their depths. “Food,” he said, nodding to a plate. “Eat. Then your meds.”
It was so quintessentially him. Care expressed as command. She slid onto a stool, pulling the plate toward her. “You cook now?”
“I fuel efficiently.” He brought his own plate around and sat beside her, not across. Close, but not touching. He ate with the same focused efficiency, chewing each bite exactly seven times before swallowing. She’d forgotten that.
She took a bite of egg. It was bland, textureless. Sustenance. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I did.” He sipped his black coffee. “Routine is important. You said your call is at seven tonight?”
“Yeah.”
He gave a single nod. “I’ll be here.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes. The ordinary sounds of the morning felt enormous. “I should… get my stuff from the bus station locker,” she said. “And call my boss. Tell her I’m… not coming back for a few days.”
“How will you explain it?”
“I won’t.” She pushed eggs around her plate. “I’ll say a family emergency. It’s not a lie.”
He absorbed this. “Your phone is charged. On the charger by the couch.”
“Thanks.” She hesitated. “What are you doing today?”
“Work,” he said. “The garage expects me at nine.”
A strange dislocation hit her. The mundane reality of his life here—a job, a routine—was somehow harder to grasp than the maps on the wall. “You’re just going to go? To work?”
He finally looked at her fully, his gaze steady. “The world doesn’t stop. Rent is due. Patterns must be maintained.” He paused. “You will stay here. Rest. The apartment is secure. I have a spare key for you on the ring by the door.”
“You’re locking me in?”
“I’m giving you the means to leave,” he corrected, his voice leaving no room for misunderstanding. “But I am asking you to stay.”
It was a request, not an order. It felt more significant. “Okay,” she said softly.
He finished his food, stood, and took both plates to the sink. He washed them immediately, drying and putting them away. He moved through the small kitchen like a protocol, each motion economical and sure.
He shrugged into a dark jacket, checking his pockets. Keys, wallet, a multi-tool. He didn’t carry a phone unless necessary.
At the door, he paused, his hand on the knob. He didn’t turn around. “The bookshelf,” he said, his voice slightly muffled. “Bottom left shelf. There’s a false panel behind the binders. There’s a pistol there. Do not touch it.”
Her breath caught. “Levi—”
“It’s not for you,” he said, finally turning. His expression was grim. “It’s for my peace of mind. Knowing you can’t… that it’s not an option here.” He met her eyes. “I am trusting you with a vulnerability. Do not exploit it.”
The weight of it settled on her. He was showing her his arsenal, his secrets, to keep her safe from herself. It was the most twisted, heartfelt thing anyone had ever done for her. “I won’t,” she whispered.
He gave a curt nod. “I’ll be back at five-forty.”
And then he was gone. The locks clicked decisively behind him. The apartment settled into a deep, profound quiet.
Aria sat on the couch for a long time, listening to the hum of the refrigerator. She was adrift in the epicenter of his controlled world. She looked at the maps. She looked at the locked window. She thought about the hidden gun.
Eventually, she got up. She found her phone and made the awkward call to Maya, her manager, spinning a vague story about a sick relative out of state. Maya was concerned, but accommodating. “Take the time you need, Aria.”
Next, she texted her roommate, saying she’d be away for a few days, not to worry. She stared at the screen after she sent it, feeling like a stranger to her own life.
Curiosity, restless and sharp, drove her to the bookshelf. It was mostly empty, a few bland manuals on automotive repair and local history. She crouched, moved a row of thick binders aside as he’d said. The panel behind was thin, barely noticeable. She pressed along its edge. It clicked open on a hidden hinge.
Inside, on a padded shelf, lay a sleek, black semi-automatic pistol and two full magazines. Beside it was a folded piece of paper. Her hands trembled as she picked it up. It was a printed map of Binghamton. Her neighborhood was circled in red. Her coffee shop was marked with a small ‘X’. Dated entries in his tight, precise script noted her comings and goings over the past six months: ”Aria – work, 06:45.” “Aria – returns home, 15:20. With Maya.” “Aria – park, Saturday, 14:00. Smiling.”
The last note was from the day before yesterday. It simply said: ”Decision point. End observation.”
He’d been preparing to vanish. To walk away for good. This hidden cache wasn’t just about her safety. It was his own fail-safe, his last resort in a world he found terminally grating.
She closed the panel, her heart hammering. She put the binders back exactly as they were.
The rest of the day stretched, empty and strange. She napped fitfully on his couch, the scent of him on the cushions. She explored the apartment with a visitor’s caution, touching nothing, seeing everything. It was a life pared down to its barest essentials, a monk’s cell with high-grade locks.
At 4:30, she took her evening dose from one of the orange bottles. The ritual felt different here, observed by the unblinking eye of his cleanliness.
At exactly 5:40, she heard the key in the lock. The door opened. Levi stepped inside, bringing with him the scent of motor oil, cold air, and a faint, familiar tension. He shrugged off his jacket, his eyes finding her immediately on the couch, assessing, scanning.
“You’re here,” he said. It wasn’t a question. It was an acknowledgment.
“I’m here,” she confirmed.
He gave a small, almost imperceptible nod of satisfaction. He walked past her to the bedroom and emerged a minute later in fresh clothes, having shed the grime of the day. He didn’t speak. He just began moving through the apartment, his evening rituals commencing: checking the window locks, adjusting the thermostat, filling the kettle.
At 6:55, he placed her phone on the table in front of her. “Privacy,” he said, and then went to the farthest corner of the room, opening a manual as if to read. He wouldn’t look at her. He wouldn’t listen. But he would be present.
The phone rang at seven exactly. She took a deep breath, answered it, and said, “Hello, Dr. Vance.”