Chapter 2: The Raw Desire
The chill of dawn did nothing to settle the heat in Amiya’s blood. Lying awake as Levi dressed silently in the graying light, every rustle of fabric, every quiet click of a buckle, felt amplified. He moved with his usual lethal grace, but his eyes, when they flicked to her, held a residual darkness, a possessiveness that hadn’t been there before. He said nothing about the night. No sweet nothings, no promises. Just a final, lingering look that seared her more than any touch before he slipped out the door, leaving her alone with the scent of him on her sheets and a profound, destabilizing ache in her chest.
The day was a test of endurance. In the strategy room, standing at his shoulder as he pointed to maps, she was hyper-aware of every inch between them. When he leaned over the table, his arm brushing hers, a jolt went straight to her core. She caught him watching her sometimes, not as his lieutenant, but as the woman he’d had naked and pleading beneath him hours before. The looks were fleeting, quickly masked by impatience or irritation, but she saw them. They were a secret language only the two of them understood, and it was terrifyingly exhilarating.
By afternoon, on the rain-softened training grounds, the tension had become a live wire. Levi was merciless, working the squad through close-combat drills until they were all caked in mud and gasping. He was harder on her than anyone, his critiques sharper, his expectations impossibly high. He corrected her stance with brutal, impersonal hands, his fingers digging into her hips to adjust her angle. Each touch was a brand.
“Your center of gravity is off,” he snapped, after she’d stumbled during a disarm maneuver. “You’re thinking too much. Out here, thinking gets you killed. Your body needs to know.”
“My body knows,” she shot back, wiping sweat and grime from her brow with a trembling forearm.
His eyes narrowed. “Prove it.”
He dismissed the rest of the squad, their relieved sighs fading as they trudged back toward the barracks. The training ground was empty now, just the two of them and the distant, ever-present hum of the wall’s generators. The sky was a bruised purple, and a cold, damp wind cut through their sweat-damp clothes.
“Again,” Levi commanded, assuming a loose fighting posture.
She attacked without hesitation. There was no technique this time, only the raw frustration and desire of the last twenty-four hours channeled into every swing, every block. He met her blow for blow, their practice knives clacking violently. Mud splattered their legs. She was tired, her muscles screaming, but a wild energy drove her. She wanted to crack that fucking composure of his wide open.
She feinted left, then dropped, sweeping her leg at his ankles. He jumped, but she was already surging up, using her shoulder to slam into his chest. They went down together in the cold, sucking mud with a heavy thud. She landed on top, her practice knife pressing against his throat.
They were both breathing heavily, clouds of vapor mingling in the air between them. Mud streaked his pale face, his dark hair plastered to his forehead. Her own heart was a frantic drum against her ribs.
For a second, triumph flared. Then his hand came up, not to disarm her, but to wrap around the back of her neck. His grip was firm, unyielding. He pulled her down, her muddy chest crushing against his, until their mouths were a breath apart.
“You’re still dead,” he whispered, his voice rough. “You left your flank open the second you committed to the tackle.”
She didn’t care. All she could feel was the heat of him through their filthy clothes, the hard ridge of his erection pressing against her thigh. The proof that he was just as far gone as she was. The careful distance of the day shattered.
She dropped the practice knife into the mud and crushed her mouth to his.
It was a clash of teeth and desperation, tasting of sweat and earth and something inherently Levi. He groaned into her mouth, his hands coming to her hips, grinding her down against him. The friction was maddening, insufficient. She tore at the straps of his harness, her fingers clumsy with cold and need.
“Here?” he growled against her lips, rolling them over so she was beneath him, the cold mud seeping through her clothes. His weight was glorious, pinning her to the earth. “You want it here, in the filth?”
“Yes.” It was a hiss, a plea. She arched up, seeking the hard line of him. “God, yes.”
He made a sound like something breaking. His hands shoved her jacket open, yanked her shirt up, and his mouth was on her breast, biting through the fabric of her sports wrap, his tongue hot and demanding. The sensation was brutal, exquisite. She cried out, her fingers clawing at his back.
He unbuttoned his trousers with one hand, the other fumbling with the fastenings of hers, pushing the rough fabric down her thighs. The cold air hit her skin, followed immediately by the scorching heat of his palm as he cupped her. She was soaked, her readiness shameless. He drove two fingers into her, and she screamed, the sound swallowed by the vast, empty field.
“Fuck, you’re dripping,” he muttered, his voice thick with awe and lust. “All fucking day, thinking about this. Watching you. Knowing you were sore from me and still wanting it.”
“Levi, please…”
He withdrew his fingers, and she whimpered at the loss. He positioned himself at her entrance, his eyes locking with hers. The last of the daylight caught in his gaze, turning it molten.
“Gentle or rough?” he asked, the question a guttural rasp. A final offering of control.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him closer, feeling the blunt head of him nudge against her. “I don’t care…just fuck me.”
A savage smile touched his lips. He slammed home.
The force stole her breath. It was a claiming, raw and without finesse, the mud cold beneath her, his body a furnace above. He set a punishing rhythm immediately, each thrust burying him to the hilt, the wet, filthy sound of their joining louder than the wind. The soreness from the night before was there, a bright edge of pain that only sharpened the blinding pleasure.
“Is this what you needed?” he grunted, pounding into her. “All that attitude today… you were begging for this. To get pinned down and used.”
“Yes!” she sobbed, meeting each thrust. Her nails scored his shoulders through his shirt. “Don’t stop. Fuck me harder.”
He obliged, his pace becoming erratic, animalistic. He hooked her legs over his arms, spreading her wider, driving deeper. The angle was devastating. Pleasure coiled, tighter and tighter, a spring about to snap. The world narrowed to the slap of skin, their ragged breaths, the primal scent of sex and earth.
“Who do you belong to?” he demanded, his voice breaking.
“You! Levi, I’m gonna—”
“Come. Come on my cock. Now.”
The command tipped her over. The orgasm ripped through her, violent and convulsing, her inner muscles clamping around him in rhythmic pulses. With a choked roar, he followed, surging into her, his own release hot and endless as he shuddered against her, his forehead dropping to her muddy shoulder.
Collapse. Weight. Heat. The slow, reluctant return of sensation: the chill of the ground, the ache in her muscles, the feel of him, still hard inside her, softening slowly. His breath was hot against her neck.
They lay there, tangled in the mud and their clothes, for a long time. Slowly, he pushed himself up on his elbows, looking down at her. She was a mess. He was a mess. He brushed a clump of mud from her cheek, his thumb lingering.
“We’re going to get fucking pneumonia,” he said, but there was no ire in it. Just a flat, exhausted statement of fact.
He pulled out of her, and she felt the immediate loss, a hollow chill. He stood, offering her a hand. She took it, her legs unsteady. They dressed in silence, their wet, muddy clothes clinging uncomfortably. The professional barrier did not magically reassemble. It was gone, perhaps for good.
As they walked back toward the barracks in the deepening twilight, he didn’t take her hand. But his shoulder brushed against hers. And when they reached the fork where their separate paths diverged, he stopped.
“My quarters. Twenty-three hundred. The southern wall schematics need a final review.”
It was the same kind of order. But his eyes held hers, and the meaning was clear. It wasn’t an end. It was a continuation.
She nodded, once. “Yes, sir.”
He turned and walked away, his silhouette sharp against the torchlight. Amiya stood for a moment, the mud drying on her skin, the deep, satisfied ache in her body a constant reminder. The training grounds were empty again, just churned earth and shadows. But she felt marked. Seen. His.
She walked to her own quarters, the cold air feeling new on her skin. The game had changed. It was no longer about proving her worth as a soldier. It was about surviving whatever this was becoming. And part of her, a part she was only beginning to understand, couldn’t wait for the fight.
And part of her, a part she was only beginning to understand, couldn’t wait for the fight. That unnamed thing between them, born on the training mats and sealed in the mud, did not fade. It hardened into a constant, private current over the following years, running parallel to their duties, to the escalating horrors beyond the walls. It was in the shared glance across a crowded strategy table, a silent conversation amidst the noise. It was in the way his hand would find the small of her back, briefly, when passing in a corridor. It was in the deep, wordless nights in his spartan quarters where the world outside ceased to exist, where he could be both the relentless captain and the man who whispered her name like a secret against her skin.
Their understanding was never spoken. It simply was. He was hers. She was his. In a world of shifting loyalties and colossal betrayals, this one truth felt like the only solid ground.
Now, that ground shattered.
Chaos erupted in the dim underground chamber. Kenny’s squad moved like ghosts, their gunfire deafening in the confined space. Levi was a blur of controlled violence, his blades carving arcs of light through gun smoke. Amiya fought at his flank, their years of synchronicity allowing them to move as a single organism. She ducked under a swinging rifle butt, driving her own blade into a man’s thigh. The air reeked of cordite and blood.
“On your left!” Levi barked, and she pivoted without thought, parrying a bayonet thrust.
Then, a figure detached from the shadows—too fast, too close. Kenny. He wasn’t aiming for a kill shot. His hand, clutching not a blade but a long, sinister syringe, shot forward in a practiced, predatory strike. The needle, cold and brutal, plunged deep into the side of Amiya’s neck.
A searing, electric cold flooded her veins, not pain at first but a terrifying nullification. Her muscles locked. Her ODM gear felt like a ton of lead on her body. She stumbled back, her hand flying to her neck, fingers meeting the hard plastic of the syringe cartridge now emptying its contents into her artery.
Levi saw it. He’d just finished slicing through one of Kenny’s men, and his head snapped toward her. The ever-present calculation in his eyes evaporated, replaced by a void of pure, uncomprehending horror. Time fractured. The roar of the battle muted into a dull buzz.
Amiya’s knees buckled. She looked at him, her vision already swimming with unnatural, crackling light. Her lips moved, a wet, choking sound escaping as the serum fired through her nervous system, a poison rewriting her from the inside out.
“Levi?”
It was a child’s question, full of confused betrayal. Then the transformation seized her. It was nothing like Eren’s controlled explosions of light and heat. This was a violent, sickening rupture. Bones snapped and elongated with audible crunches. Flesh ballooned outward, a grotesque inflation that tore her uniform into shreds. Steam, thick and acrid, billowed from her expanding form, filling the chamber with a meaty, organic stench.
Levi could only watch, paralyzed for a second that felt like a lifetime. His mind, usually racing through scenarios, went blank and white with rage.
A towering, muscular Titan erupted where Amiya had stood. It was not a mindless Pure Titan. Its eyes held a frantic, pained intelligence behind the feral glow. It threw its head back and let out a roar that shook dust from the ceiling, a sound of agony and boundless hunger. One of Kenny’s men, stunned by the sudden transformation, stood frozen too close, his rifle shaking in his hands.
The Amiya-Titan’s head snapped down. Its massive jaw unhinged. Before Levi could even scream a command, it lunged. Teeth like stone columns closed around the man’s torso. There was a horrific wet crunch, a brief, muffled scream, and then the Titan swallowed, the bulge of the man’s body sliding visibly down its thick neck.
Kenny, from across the chamber, let out a sharp, almost gleeful laugh. He was already retreating into a tunnel, his work done. He shouted over his shoulder, his voice cutting through the din.
“Hope you like your new pet, Levi! That one just ate the Guardian! Quite the upgrade!”
The words registered, but their meaning was secondary to the visceral reality before him. That was Amiya. Amiya had just consumed a man. The Guardian Titan? The knowledge was a secondary shock, a future problem. The immediate problem was the Titan now turning, its steaming eyes—her eyes, somehow—scanning the room.
Levi moved. Grief, terror, fury—they all compressed into a single, razor-sharp directive: Cut her out. His cables shot upward, anchoring into the ceiling. He propelled himself forward, a projectile aimed at the towering monstrosity that housed the woman he loved. He had done this for Eren. He could do it for her. He would do it for her.
The Titan swung a massive fist. He dodged, the wind of its passage whipping at his clothes. He landed on its broad shoulder, the heat from its skin blistering even through his boots. He could see the precise place, the vulnerable nape of the neck. Within it, he knew her body was curled, regenerating, trapped.
“Amiya!” he roared, not knowing if she could hear.
He raised his blades. The Titan thrashed, trying to dislodge him. He anchored himself, his movements a desperate ballet of precision and speed. With a cry that tore from his gut, he plunged the swords deep into the flesh at the base of the skull and carved, a furious and meticulous dissection. Steam erupted, scalding his hands and face. He ignored it, cutting through the thick, fibrous muscle, searching for the core.
His blades hit something solid and smooth. A human shape, curled in a fetal position, encased in a web of glowing tissue. He saw the curve of her spine, the familiar cut of her hair now matted with viscous fluid. He hooked his arms around her, and with a final, brutal yank, he ripped her free from the Titan’s body.
The massive form immediately began to disintegrate, collapsing into a roaring plume of steam that filled the chamber. Levi landed hard on the stone floor, Amiya’s naked, steaming body cradled against his chest. She was breathing, shallow and rapid. Burns and regenerating tissue covered her skin, but she was whole. She was human.
He collapsed to his knees, holding her. The heat from her body was immense. Her eyes fluttered open, dazed and full of a primordial terror. She stared up at him, confusion and recognition warring in her gaze.
Around them, the steam began to clear. The surviving members of the Survey Corps—Mikasa, Armin, Hange—rushed toward them, their faces masks of shock. Levi ignored them all. He pulled her tighter, his face buried in her damp hair, his own body trembling not from exertion but from a fear deeper than any he had ever known.
Kenny was gone. The chamber was a wreck. And in his arms, Amiya gasped, her fingers weakly clutching his cloak. She was alive. She was a Titan Shifter. And she had, in her first uncontrollable moment, devoured a man and inherited a power they didn't understand.
The fight was over. A much more terrifying one had just begun.
A much more terrifying one had just begun. Levi did not let go of her. He carried her through the winding tunnels, her naked body wrapped tightly in his cloak, her face buried against his throat. She didn’t speak. She only trembled, a fine, constant vibration that he felt in his own bones. The steam had stopped rising from her skin, but the heat remained, a furnace burning from within. He could smell the strange, metallic scent of the Titan’s vapor on her, mixed with the old, familiar scent of her sweat. It was wrong. It made his jaw ache.
He ignored the questions from the others. Mikasa’s silent stare, Armin’s frantic theorizing, Hange’s eager, horrified fascination. His world had narrowed to the weight in his arms and the singular objective: a secure room, a lock on the door, and a assessment of the damage. His quarters were the closest thing to a fortress he had. He kicked the door shut behind them, blocking out the world.
In the stark, clean space, the contrast was unbearable. He laid her on his bed. The white sheets were immediately stained with dirt, blood, and residual, oily dampness from the vapor. She curled onto her side, drawing her knees to her chest, her back to him. A defensive position. A silent scream.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice scraped raw.
She didn’t move. He sat on the edge of the mattress, his hands hovering over her. He was a strategist, a soldier, a killer. He was not a healer. But for her, he would try. His fingers began at the base of her skull, probing gently along her vertebrae, checking for spinal damage the rapid healing might have missed. He worked his way down, over the defined muscles of her shoulders, the curve of her ribs. His touch was clinical, impersonal. It had to be. If he let himself feel the reality of it—that this was Amiya, who he’d held just last night, who he’d fucked in the mud—he would shatter.
He found a patch of skin on her lower back that was still livid red, new and tender. A place where the Titan’s neural tissue had fused to her. He pressed his thumb against it, lightly.
A ragged gasp tore from her throat. She flinched away, finally rolling to look up at him. Her eyes were huge, the pupils dilated with shock. “It… itches. Inside. Like something’s… crawling.”
“Muscle memory from the transformation,” he stated, the words cold. He needed them to be. “Or from the other one. The Guardian.”
Her face crumpled. The first tears welled, spilling over and tracking through the grime on her temples. “I ate him. I felt… I felt his bones break. I tasted…”
“Stop.” The command was sharp, automatic. He couldn’t let her go down that path, not yet. He cupped her cheek, his thumb wiping at a tear. “That wasn’t you. That was the instinct. We’ll control it.”
“How?” The word was a broken whisper.
He had no answer. He stood, stripping off his own filthy, blood-stained jacket and shirt. “Shower. Now. We’re both covered in that fucking stink.”
He didn’t ask. He simply pulled her up, her legs unsteady, and guided her the few steps to the private washroom. He turned the taps. Cold water sprayed first, then steamed. He led her under the stream. The water hit her skin and she jerked, a full-body spasm, as if expecting pain. He moved in behind her, pulling her back against his chest, anchoring her.
“Breathe,” he muttered into her wet hair.
He took a rough bar of soap and began to scrub. He washed her arms, her shoulders, the slope of her back. He was thorough, relentless, scraping at every inch of her skin as if he could scour the memory of the transformation away. He slid his soapy hand between her thighs, washing away the physical evidence of their earlier coupling, of the mud, of everything. She was pliant, letting him move her, her head lolling back against his shoulder.
His own arousal, a traitorous, persistent thing, stirred as he touched her. It wasn’t about lust. It was a primal need to reaffirm that she was here, solid, human. His. That he could still touch her and she would feel like Amiya. His fingers lingered, circling her clit, slipping inside her. She was soft and wet, but unresponsive. A doll.
He turned her to face him, water sluicing between them. He framed her face. “Look at me. You’re in here. I know you are.”
He kissed her. It was hard, demanding, a claim staked in the wreckage. For a moment, she was limp. Then a shudder went through her, and her mouth opened under his. Her hands came up, not to push him away, but to clutch at his biceps, her fingers digging in like she was drowning. The kiss turned frantic, a battle for air, for connection. She bit his lip, and he growled, his hands dropping to her ass, lifting her.
He pinned her against the cold tile wall. Her legs wrapped around his waist. He was already hard, his cock pressing against her stomach. There was no patience, no gentleness. He needed to be inside her, to feel the living heat of her around him, to obliterate the image of the Titan’ maw.
“Tell me you want this,” he rasped, the head of his cock nudging at her entrance. “Tell me you’re here.”
“I’m here,” she choked out, her eyes wild. “Levi, please. I need to feel you. I need to not feel that.”
He drove into her in one brutal thrust. She cried out, her head thumping back against the tile. The water beat down on them. He fucked her with a punishing, rhythmic intensity, each snap of his hips a denial of the horror, an affirmation of their shared, fragile humanity. The slick, wet sounds of their joining mixed with the spray of the shower.
“This is you,” he grunted, pistoning into her. “This heat. This tight, perfect cunt. That thing out there wasn’t you.”
“Harder,” she begged, her nails raking down his back. “Make me forget. Make me feel nothing but you.”
He obliged, slamming into her with a force that shook the pipes in the wall. Her cries were sharp, fragmented things. He could feel her inner muscles beginning to flutter, a spasming tension coiling in his own gut. He shifted his angle, hitting a spot that made her scream, a raw, broken sound that was pure pleasure.
“Come for me,” he ordered, his own control fraying. “Come on my cock and remember who you belong to.”
The orgasm took her violently, a convulsive wave that clenched around him like a fist. He followed with a guttural shout, spilling deep inside her, his own release feeling like a surrender, a branding. He held her there, impaled, panting, as the water began to run cold.
Slowly, he let her down. Her legs barely held her. They finished washing in silence, the frantic energy spent. He toweled her dry with a rough, military efficiency, then did the same to himself. He dressed her in one of his own clean shirts. It swallowed her, hanging to her mid-thigh.
A knock came at the outer door. Erwin’s voice, calm and immutable. “Levi. The office. Now. Bring her.”
The real world, with its cold calculus, had been waiting just outside the steam.
Erwin’s office felt like a cage. The polished wood and neat stacks of reports were a grotesque parody of order after the chaotic, organic horror of the cavern. Amiya sat in a stiff-backed chair, pulled close to Levi’s. She had not let go of his hand since they entered. Her grip was bone-crushing, a silent anchor. She stared at the grain of Erwin’s desk, her eyes hollow. She was clean, dressed, and utterly absent.
Levi sat rigid beside her, every muscle taut. He met Erwin’s gaze across the desk and held it, a silent challenge. Hange vibrated with barely contained energy near the window, their glasses gleaming. Eren stood against the wall by the door, his own face pale, his jaw tight. He couldn’t look at Amiya. He saw his own nightmares reflected in her silence.
“Report,” Erwin said, his voice level. His single remaining hand rested atop a file.
“Kenny’s squad ambushed us in the lower caverns,” Levi stated, his tone flat. “They were armed with anti-personnel gear and a specialized syringe. They injected Lieutenant Ito with a Titan serum. She transformed. She consumed one of Kenny’s men in the process. Kenny claimed the man was the ‘Guardian.’ I extracted her. The Titan dissolved.”
Hange leaned forward. “The behavioral differentiation was immediate! Not a Pure Titan at all. A fully formed Shifter from the moment of transformation, with apparent instinctual targeting. And the consumption of another Shifter… Levi, this is unprecedented! The power transfer must have been instantaneous!”
“She is not an experiment,” Levi cut in, the words like chips of ice.
“She is now the holder of the Guardian Titan,” Erwin corrected, softly. His blue eyes moved to Amiya. “Lieutenant. Can you tell us anything about what you experienced? Any sensations, memories, that are not your own?”
Amiya’s fingers tightened around Levi’s. She didn’t lift her head. She gave the slightest, almost imperceptible shake.
“The shock is profound,” Erwin noted, not unkindly. He looked at Eren. “Your initial transformation was self-directed, born of a desire to protect. This was an act of violent imposition. The psychological trauma cannot be overstated.”
Eren finally looked at Amiya, a flicker of painful understanding in his eyes. He nodded once.
Hange was undeterred. “We need to test the parameters. The strength, the endurance, the ability to harden. The Guardian was noted for its incredible defensive capabilities and surprising agility for its mass. If Amiya has inherited those traits—”
“No tests.” Levi’s voice was deadly quiet. “Not until she’s stable.”
“Stability is a luxury we may not have,” Erwin countered, folding his hands. “The power is now within our walls. That makes her, and us, a target. We must understand what she can do. For her protection, and for humanity’s.”
Amiya’s breath hitched. A small, desperate sound. Levi moved his thumb over her knuckles, a minute gesture.
“Give her a week,” Levi said. It wasn’t a request.
Erwin considered him, then her. The clock on the wall ticked loudly in the silence. “Three days. Then, we begin preliminary assessment in a controlled environment. Hange, you will design the protocols with restraint. Eren, you will be present. Your experience may provide a bridge.”
Eren nodded again, grimly.
“Dismissed,” Erwin said.
Levi stood, pulling Amiya up with him. She moved like a sleepwalker. As they turned for the door, her steps faltered. She stopped, still clinging to Levi’s hand, and slowly turned her head back toward Erwin.
Her voice, when it came, was a dry, unused rasp, scratching its way into the quiet room.
“He tasted like garlic,” she whispered.
The room froze.
She stared at a point on the wall behind Erwin, her eyes seeing something else entirely. “The man I ate. He’d had garlic sausage for his midday ration. I could taste it. In the… in the blood.”
A profound, sickened silence filled the office. Hange’s scientific fervor drained from their face, replaced by a kind of horrified pity. Eren looked down at his own hands, his stomach churning. Erwin’s expression remained placid, but his eyes hardened.
Amiya finally looked at Levi, her gaze focusing on him for the first time since they’d sat down. The terror in her eyes was now mixed with a nauseating clarity.
“I remember his last thought,” she said, her voice a little stronger, laced with a rising horror. “It wasn’t about dying. It was about the stain on his jacket. His wife would be angry. He was thinking about a laundry stain.”
She swayed. Levi caught her, pulling her into his side, tucking her head against his shoulder. He looked over her head at Erwin, his own face a stone mask.
“Three days,” Erwin conceded, his voice softer now. “See to your soldier, Captain.”
Levi guided her out, away from their stares, from the unbearable weight of the future. The hallway stretched before them, long and dark. Her feet scuffed the stone. She was breathing in shallow, rapid pants.
“It’s in my head, Levi,” she mumbled into his shirt. “It’s not just power. It’s him. His memories are sitting next to mine. I can smell the garlic.”
He didn’t reply. He just held her tighter, walking faster. He had fought Titans, men, monsters. He didn’t know how to fight a memory, a taste haunting the woman he loved. His mind, already racing, clicked into a new, cold gear. This was the battlefield now. Not the cavern, not the field. The landscape of her mind.
And Kenny had done this. A final, twisted gift. The reckoning with him, Levi knew, would not be swift. It would be intimate. It would be a carving. But first, he had to keep Amiya from drowning in a dead man’s ghost.