Chapter 2: Levi pins Amiya face-first against the wall, tearing her trousers down with one sharp yank. His calloused fingers dig into her hips as he spreads her thighs with his knee, thrusting into her without preamble - the wet slap of skin on skin echoing off the storeroom walls as she gasps his name.
The rain stopped, but the mud remained. It caked every boot, stained every hem, and seeped into the very bones of the castle. Three days since he’d walked out of her room. Seventy-two hours of drills so brutal they left veterans vomiting by the fence line. Levi was a specter of relentless critique, his voice a lash that found every flaw.
He spoke to Amiya only to correct her. A fractional delay in her anchor release. A slight imbalance in her landing stance. His tone was ice, his eyes giving nothing away. The memory of her bare skin, her choked cries, the heat of her—it was a locked box in his mind. A dangerous indulgence. A mistake.
She, for her part, became a ghost of efficiency. She corrected every fault he noted, her movements growing sharper, more economical. She didn’t look at him in the mess hall. She didn’t linger after training. She was the perfect soldier, and it grated on him in ways he couldn’t name.
The equipment inspection was a quarterly tedium. Levi hated it. It meant paperwork, the stink of oil and old metal, and dealing with the dull-eyed clerks from the quartermaster’s office. He moved through the main arsenal quickly, signing off on bundles of hardened steel cables and stacks of gas canisters with a sharp flick of his pen.
“The secondary supply room needs a final check, Captain,” a clerk droned, barely looking up from his ledger. “Old gear, mostly. Scheduled for salvage. But protocol requires an officer’s sign-off.”
Levi took the manifest without a word. The secondary room was in the oldest part of the castle, a low-ceilinged vault forgotten by time. The air here was still and thick with the smell of rust and mildewed canvas. Dim light filtered from a single, grimy window high on the wall, illuminating drifting motes of dust.
He heard the soft scuff of a boot before he saw her.
Amiya was at the far end of the narrow aisle, between towering shelves of corroded buckles and cracked leather straps. She was running a cloth along the edge of a crate, her back to him. Inspecting, or cleaning, or hiding. He wasn’t sure.
“This area is off-limits for routine maintenance,” he said, his voice echoing slightly in the cavernous quiet.
She stiffened but didn’t turn. “The quartermaster said the salvage crew needed an inventory of reusable parts. He assigned me.”
“He assigned you to count rust.” Levi walked down the aisle, his boots silent on the stone. The space closed in around them, the shelves forming canyon walls of forgotten gear. “You should be running endurance drills.”
“I finished them before dawn.”
He stopped a few feet behind her. He could see the tension in the line of her shoulders beneath her uniform jacket. The careful braid of her hair. The faint, clean scent of her soap cutting through the dust. The locked box in his mind rattled.
“Turn around.”
Slowly, she obeyed. Her face was carefully neutral, but her green eyes were stormy. There was a smudge of tarnish on her cheek. “Sir.”
He looked at the manifest, then at the shelves. “This is a waste of your time.”
“It’s my assigned duty.”
“Your duty is to not get killed. This,” he gestured at the decaying equipment, “doesn’t help that.”
“What would help, Captain?” The question was quiet, but it held an edge. “More swings? More drills? I do them. I do everything you say. What else do you want?”
The air between them crackled. The professional distance was a thin veneer, and they both knew it. He took a step closer. Then another. She didn’t retreat, but her breath hitched.
“I want you to stop looking at me like I’m going to break,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“You might.”
“I didn’t break the other night.”
The mention of it was a spark in tinder-dry wood. Levi’s control, always so absolute, strained. He saw it again—the curve of her spine against his sheets, the sweat on her throat, the raw sound she made when she came. His fingers tightened on the clipboard.
“That was a mistake,” he said, the words ash in his mouth.
“Was it?” She held his gaze, defiant. “It didn’t feel like a mistake. It felt real. It’s the only thing in this damned place that has felt real in weeks.”
He closed the final distance, backing her into the cold stone wall between two shelves. The clipboard clattered to the floor. He caged her in, his hands flat against the wall on either side of her head. Their bodies weren’t touching, but the heat between them was palpable.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he growled, but the threat in his voice was hollow.
“I know that you’re here. I know you watched me for three days and didn’t say a word. I know you can’t stand that I’m not falling apart.” Her chest rose and fell rapidly. “So what do you want, Levi? To fuck me again to prove you can? To punish me for seeing you?”
He kissed her. It was nothing like the first time. There was no surprise, only a furious, consuming hunger. It was a clash of teeth and tongue, a battle for dominance she met with equal fire. Her hands flew to his hair, gripping hard, pulling him closer. The taste of her was rage and want and that faint, stubborn hope he wanted to extinguish.
He ripped his mouth from hers, breathing heavily. “Shut up.”
“Make me.”
His hands dropped from the wall. One went to the buckle of her belt, the other to the buttons of her trousers. His movements were swift, brutal. The fabric gave way. He shoved his hand down, past the waistband of her smallclothes, his fingers sliding through slick heat. She cried out, her head thumping back against the stone.
“You’re always so fucking ready,” he muttered, his fingers circling her clit, then pushing deep inside her. She was tight, clutching at him. “Is this what you think about during inspections? During drills?”
“Yes,” she gasped, her hips rocking against his hand. “God, yes.”
He withdrew his fingers, bringing them to his mouth, tasting her. Her eyes darkened with a feral look. He unfastened his own trousers, freeing his cock, already thick and hard. He hooked his hands under her thighs, lifting her, pressing her back against the wall. She locked her ankles behind his back.
There was no gentle penetration. He drove into her in one deep, claiming stroke, burying himself to the hilt. The feeling was devastating—the hot, velvet clench of her, the sheer wrongness and perfection of it here, amid the dust and decay. She let out a choked scream that echoed off the shelves.
He began to move, a hard, relentless rhythm that shook the shelves beside them. A cascade of rusted buckles rained down around them. He didn’t care.
“That’s it,” he rasped against her ear, his breath hot. “Take it. You wanted real? This is real. This is what’s left. Fucking in the dark because tomorrow we’re both probably dead.”
He slammed into her, again and again. The crude, wet sound of their coupling filled the silent room. Her nails scored his back through his shirt. Her moans were ragged, desperate things.
“Your form is perfect,” he growled, the words a dark parody of his training-yard critiques. “Your anchor points are solid. You’re holding the line.” He shifted his angle, hitting a spot that made her see stars. She shattered, a raw, broken cry tearing from her throat as her internal muscles spasmed around him. The intensity of her orgasm dragged him over the edge. He came with a grunt, pulsing deep inside her, his own release a hot flood of surrender.
For a long moment, they stayed like that, pinned together by sweat and spent passion, the only sound their labored breathing. Slowly, he let her slide down the wall until her feet touched the floor. She wobbled, and his arm shot out to steady her, a gesture that was almost gentle.
They dressed in heavy silence, not looking at each other. The reality of where they were, what they’d done, settled over them like the dust they’d disturbed. Levi fastened his belt, his movements precise. Amiya turned away, fumbling with her buttons, her face flushed.
He bent and picked up the fallen clipboard. The manifest was wrinkled. He smoothed it against his thigh.
“The inventory,” he said, his voice back to its normal, dispassionate timbre, though it felt like a lie. “It’s complete. Everything is accounted for.”
She finally looked at him, her expression unreadable. “Is it?”
Before he could answer, a distant, thunderous boom shook the very foundations of the castle. It wasn’t thunder. It was the distinct, earth-shattering concussion of the outer gate being breached.
The air changed instantly. The thick silence of the supply room was replaced by a rising tide of distant screams, shouting, and the frantic, discordant clang of the alarm bell.
Levi’s eyes met Amiya’s. All the heat, the confusion, the fury—it was gone, wiped clean by a colder, more familiar certainty.
“Gear up,” he said, already moving, his voice cutting through the din now pouring in from the world outside. “Now. They’re inside the walls.”
The sterile silence of the supply room was obliterated. The alarm bell’s metallic shriek drilled into the skull, a sound that bypassed thought and triggered a primal, gut-level surge of adrenaline. Levi was already moving, his personal turmoil vaporized, replaced by the cold, procedural clarity of survival.
“Gear room. Now. Sixty seconds.” His command was a bullet. He didn’t look back to see if she followed. He knew she would.
Amiya’s fingers, which had just been fastening her trousers with trembling hands, now moved with a different, lethal precision. She fell into step behind him, their earlier intimacy replaced by the synchronized rhythm of soldiers rushing to war. The dusty gloom of the old wing gave way to the chaotic, shouting brightness of the main courtyard. The sky was wrong—a clear, mocking blue torn by rising plumes of black smoke from the district below the wall.
They armed themselves in a storm of clattering metal and hissing gas. Levi watched her from the corner of his eye as she secured her straps, his voice cutting through the din around them. “Stay in formation. Watch your lateral clearance. Do not go hero. You freeze, you die.”
“Understood.” Her voice was steady, her green eyes fixed on the smoke. The girl who scrubbed floors and drew with charcoal was gone, folded away. What remained was a weapon he had helped sharpen.
The world became a blur of velocity and screaming wind. They launched from the battlements, cables snapping them into the chaotic air over Trost. The familiar training grounds were a nightmare tableau. Streets were rivers of panicked civilians. The stone-paved avenues were slick with things Levi didn’t allow himself to register. The Titans moved with that eerie, childish grace, their smiling faces belying the grotesque efficiency of their predation.
Levi’s squad carved through the sky like a scythe. He was a conductor of death, a blur of steel that left dismembered limbs and geysers of steam in his wake. He tracked Amiya in his periphery. She held her position, her swings economical, her strikes clean. She took down a seven-meter class with a flawless dual-anchor strike, slicing through its nape with a spray of hot vapor. Good. She was holding.
“Push forward! The east gate is a funnel!” he shouted, his voice raw from the caustic air.
They swung past a burning chapel, the heat blasting their faces. A pack of abnormals lurched from an alleyway. One, a spindly fifteen-meter, moved with a jerky, insectile speed. It fixated on Amiya.
“Ito, break right!” Levi barked.
She fired her anchors, veering. The Titan mimicked her, its massive hand swiping. She twisted mid-air, the miss so close it ruffled her uniform. She gained altitude, heading for the rooftops to regroup. Levi engaged two others, a whirlwind of blades, buying space.
He saw her line up her next swing, a clean arc between a water tower and a bell tower. She was calculating, competent. Then the spindly Titan, instead of pursuing, lunged sideways into her flight path. It was a feint. It had anticipated her.
Its hand, big as a cart, closed around her left boot and calf.
The impact wasn’t a slap. It was a brutal, snatching capture. The sound was a sickening crunch of metal and bone. Her momentum didn’t just stop; it reversed. The Titan whipped her downward, a contemptuous, violent motion as if shaking out a dirty rug. Her body went limp in its grasp, her gear shrieking in protest.
“AMIYA!” Levi’s roar was torn away by the wind.
The Titan swung her in a wide, terrible arc and released.
She became a projectile. She flew across the square, a tangle of limbs and cables, and hit an ancient oak tree with a wet, hollow thump that Levi felt in his own teeth. She crumpled at its base and did not move.
Levi’s world narrowed to a tunnel. He butchered the Titan in front of him with a frenzy that was pure, unadulterated savagery, not technique. He severed its limbs, blinded it, and finally drove his blades so deep into its nape he felt the steel scrape vertebra. He didn’t wait for it to fall.
He propelled himself across the square, landing hard beside her. Her breathing was a shallow, wet rasp. Her left leg was bent at a nauseating, impossible angle at the hip, the uniform already darkening with blood from deep internal trauma. The joint was clearly dislocated, the femur pushed up and back in a way that spoke of shattered socket and torn muscle. Her face was ashen, a trickle of blood from her hairline painting a red line down her temple.
He knelt, his hands hovering, the clean freak confronted with the ultimate, visceral mess. This was his fault. He’d been distracted. He’d let her get flanked. The memory of her body warm against the supply room wall flashed, then burned to ash, leaving only this terrible, broken reality.
The memory of her body warm against the supply room wall flashed, then burned to ash, leaving only this terrible, broken reality. His hands, usually so precise, felt clumsy. He shoved the heel of his palm hard against her forehead, checking her pupils. “Ito. Look at me.”
Her eyes flickered open, glassy with shock. “Leg… doesn’t… work.”
“I know. Don’t look at it.” His voice was a steel cable, taut and commanding. He had seen this injury before in the field. The ball of the femur was jammed up and back, a grotesque mound under the skin of her buttock. If he didn’t get it into the socket soon, the swelling would trap it, and she’d lose the leg. Or bleed out internally.
He positioned himself, his mind discarding everything but the mechanics. The screams of the district, the distant thunder of Titans, the smell of smoke and blood—it all receded into a muffled haze. He hooked his right arm under her knee, his left hand clamping down on the crest of her pelvis, his fingers digging into the ruined joint. Her breath hitched in a wet, terrified whimper.
“This will hurt,” he said, no softening in the words. “Bite down.” She had nothing to bite. He saw her jaw clench, her teeth grinding.
He took a sharp, controlled breath and pulled.
It wasn’t a gentle tug. He used his whole body, a steady, increasing traction, aligning the long bone of her thigh with the torn socket. Muscle and tendon fought him, locked in spasm. Amiya made a sound then, a high, animal shriek that was ripped from a place deeper than pain. Her back arched off the ground, her hands scrabbling at the mud.
“Almost,” he grunted, sweat beading on his own brow. He felt the bone head slide, then catch on the ragged lip of the acetabulum. He adjusted his grip by millimeters, his senses focused entirely on the feedback through his palms. He rotated her leg inward, a small, cruel twist.
There was a deep, muffled pop he felt more than heard. The distorted mound of her hip sank back into a more natural contour. He released the traction immediately.
Amiya went utterly limp, a choked sob escaping her. Tears streaked through the grime on her face. “Stop, stop, please…”
“It’s done.” His voice was low, almost rough. He kept his hands on her, assessing. The leg lay straighter, though the damage was extensive. He ripped a length of fabric from a discarded cloak nearby, folding it into a thick pad. “The joint is reduced. You’ll keep the leg.”
He pressed the pad firmly against the front of her hip, where he knew the bleeding would be worst, and used her own belt to cinch it tight around her pelvis. Her whimpers were continuous now, a soft, broken soundtrack to his work. He brushed a strand of bloody hair from her cheek, his thumb leaving a smear. The gesture was unsettling, foreign to him.
“Listen to me,” he said, his face close to hers. “The pain is just information. It means you’re still here. Now be quiet and hold on.”
He slid his arms under her—one behind her shoulders, the other beneath her knees, careful of the stabilized hip. He lifted her. She was heavier than he expected, or perhaps it was the dead weight of shock. She buried her face against his neck, her breath hot and ragged on his skin.
He couldn’t use his gear. Not with her like this. He ran.
His boots pounded the cobblestones, each jolting step surely agony for her, but she made no further complaint. He took the back alleys, moving like a shadow away from the main carnage. The journey back to headquarters was a blur of burning buildings and distant, echoing screams. He focused on the rhythm of his breathing, on the feel of her heart hammering against his chest.
A squad of his own soldiers appeared from a side street, their faces grim. “Captain! The southern sector is—”
“Clear a path!” he snarled, not breaking stride. They fell in around him, a protective escort, their confusion at his burden evident but unvoiced.
The gates of the old castle HQ loomed. He burst into the courtyard, his voice cutting across the chaotic triage unfolding there. “Medic! Now!”
He didn’t lay her on the ground. He carried her straight into the dim, antiseptic gloom of the infirmary, his arms locking around her as a young medic rushed over with a stretcher. Only then, as he transferred her weight onto the clean linen, did he feel the tremble in his own hands.
Her green eyes found his, clear for a moment through the pain and fear. Her fingers, cold and bloody, brushed his wrist. It was a fleeting touch.
He stepped back, his expression hardening into its usual impassive mask. “Her left hip. Traumatic posterior dislocation. I reduced it in the field. Possible acetabular fracture, major soft tissue damage. Control the bleeding.”
The medics swarmed her, cutting away her uniform. Levi turned and walked out, the smell of her blood still on his hands, the ghost of her whimper echoing in his ears. The battle for Trost was not over. He strode toward the armory, his mind already calculating routes, kill zones, resource allocation.
But beneath the cold calculus of survival, a single, useless thought repeated with every step: the supply room had been clean, and he had left her filthy and broken in the mud.
But beneath the cold calculus of survival, a single, useless thought repeated with every step: the supply room had been clean, and he had left her filthy and broken in the mud. He reached the armory, his hands automatically checking the mechanism of a fresh set of blades. The metallic snick of the triggers was a familiar prayer. Outside, the battle’s cacophony was a living entity, a beast made of screams and collapsing stone.
He could not go back out there.
The realization was a fault line in his discipline. His body was already turning from the racks of steel, his boots carrying him back down the corridor he had just marched up. He told himself it was about the report. A commander needed to know the status of his wounded. It was logical. Necessary.
The infirmary door was ajar. The sounds that escaped were not the orderly sounds of treatment.
It was her voice, but stripped of all its quiet control, frayed into something primal and ragged. “No, please, stop—it’s too much—” A wet, guttural sob was cut short by a sharp, medical sound: the crisp tear of bandage material.
Levi stopped in the shadowed hallway, his back against the cold stone. He didn’t enter. He simply listened.
“I know, soldier, I know. Almost done.” That was the medic, a man named Hergel, his voice strained but patient. “The bleeding in the joint cavity needs pressure. We have to pack it. On three.”
There was a muffled thump, a body straining against restraint. Then Amiya’s scream, high and unending, a sound of pure, unmediated agony. It scraped down Levi’s spine. He closed his eyes.
“You can’t sedate her?” A younger voice, an apprentice.
“Head injury. Pupils are sluggish. You put her under, she might not wake up.” Hergel’s explanation was clinical, a brutal arithmetic. “She feels it all. Hold her shoulders. Ito, listen to me. You have to breathe through it. Scream if you need to, but try to breathe.”
Levi could hear the rough, hitching gasps that followed, each one a knife-edge between consciousness and void. He could picture the scene with terrible clarity: the bright lamplight, the blood-soaked cotton, the brutal, necessary violence of hands forcing torn tissue back into place. He remembered the feel of her hip bone sliding home in his grip, the pop he’d caused. That had been his mercy. This was the consequence.
“Suture now. Deep layer first.” The medic’s voice was a low monotone of concentration.
Amiya’s cries broke into fragments, each puncture and pull of the needle eliciting a sharp, animal cry. “Stop, stop, please, I can’t—it’s inside, it hurts inside—” Her words dissolved into a stream of incoherent begging, pleas to her mother, to anyone, to make it stop.
Levi’s fingernails dug into his own palms. The pain was a clean point of focus. He deserved to hear this. He had allowed the distraction. He had kissed her in the dust and then led her into the sky where monsters waited. The connection was inexorable. His mind flashed to the impossible softness of her mouth under his, the secret warmth of her skin in the dark. Now that same skin was being pierced and sewn like torn canvas.
Her screaming shifted into a choked, rhythmic weeping. It was worse. It was the sound of hope leaving a body. “Just let me go,” she whispered, the words terribly clear. “Please, I can’t do any more.”
“You can.” Levi’s own voice, low and hard, surprised him. He hadn’t meant to speak. He pushed the door open.
The scene was a stark tableau of pain. She was on her side, modesty barely preserved by a stained sheet. Two orderlies held her, their faces grim. Hergel’s hands were bloody to the wrists, a curved needle pinched between his fingers. Amiya’s face was a mess of sweat, tears, and dried blood, her eyes wild and unseeing until they locked onto him.
A moment of pure recognition flashed through the agony. Shame, then a desperate, pleading need. “Levi.”
“You’re not done,” he said, walking to the head of the cot. He dismissed the orderly with a look and placed his own hands on her shoulders. His grip was firm, anchoring. “Look at me.”
She trembled violently under his hands. Her green eyes, glassy with pain, tried to focus on his. He saw the artist who drew geometry, the soldier who perfected her swing, the woman who had dared to say his name in the dark. All of them were present in this raw, shattered creature.
“Do it,” Levi said to Hergel, his eyes never leaving hers.
The medic nodded, bent back to his work. The needle bit deep. Amiya’s body jackknifed, a scream tearing from her throat, but Levi held her down. He didn’t soften his grip. He let her feel the unyielding strength of it, a wall she could break against.
“Every stitch is a thread back,” he said, his voice a ruthless, intimate murmur meant only for her. His face was close to hers. He could smell the fear-sweat, the iodine, the copper of her blood. “You feel that? That’s you healing. You take the pain, and you keep it. You don’t get to let go.”
She sobbed, a broken, ragged sound, but her eyes stayed open, fixed on his. She was breathing in sharp, searing hitches, but she was breathing. She was staying. The medic worked faster, his movements sure. The terrible, intimate sound of the suture pulling through flesh continued, but her screams muted into a low, continuous moan.
Levi didn’t blink. He absorbed every flinch, every tremor, as if by witnessing it he could somehow carve a portion of it from her. He thought of the mud, the cold clay of her family’s lost studio. This was a different kind of filth, a violation written directly into her body, and he was complicit. His thumbs moved unconsciously, a slight, rough stroke on the clammy skin of her shoulders. It wasn’t comfort. It was a reminder: I am here. This is real. Survive it.
“Last one,” Hergel said, his own breath exhaling in a rush. The final snip of the scissors was a merciful punctuation. He began to apply the bandage, the bulky dressing wrapping around her hip and thigh. Amiya shuddered, her eyes rolling back for a second before focusing on Levi again. The frantic terror was receding, leaving behind a vast, hollow exhaustion.
“It’s over?” she slurred.
“This part is,” Levi said. He didn’t release her shoulders.
Hergel wiped his hands on a towel, looking between the captain and the soldier. “The fracture is stable for now. The dislocation was clean, thanks to the early reduction. But the soft tissue damage… the pain will be severe. She needs absolute immobility.”
Levi gave a single, curt nod. His hands finally lifted from her. The absence of his weight seemed to make her sink deeper into the cot. Her eyes were closing, the adrenaline deserting her, pulling her toward a treacherous sleep her brain might not weather.
“Don’t,” he commanded.
Her eyelids fluttered open.
“You stay awake. You look at the ceiling and you count the cracks. You tell me how many when I get back.” He straightened, his posture shifting back into that of the Captain. The man who had held her down was gone, locked away. “Do you understand the order, Ito?”
A ghost of her old defiance flickered. “Count… the cracks.”
“Yes.” He turned to leave, his business apparently concluded. At the door, he paused without looking back. “The room is a mess. Clean it up when you can stand.”
He walked out into the hallway, the door swinging shut behind him, muting the smell of antiseptic and pain. He stood there for five full seconds, listening to the silence from within. Then he strode toward the armory again, his pace quickening with each step. The battle was still raging. His squad needed him. There were Titans to kill.
But a new thread had been spun, taut and strong, connecting the infirmary to the fury inside him. He would wield it on the battlefield, a sharper weapon than any blade. He would carve a path through the monsters, and when he returned, he would expect a full report on the ceiling.