Chapter 2: Rust and Redemption
The world narrowed to the space between his thumb and forefinger, to the pale, blood-slicked skin of her side. The smiling Titan was a thunderous reality ten meters away, but Levi’s mind shelved it. A problem for the next five seconds. This was the problem for now.
He tore the medical pack open wider. Vials of antiseptic and rolled gauze spilled out. His fingers closed around a cold, familiar shape—a scalpel. It was flecked with rust, but the edge caught the dull light. Next to it, a small glass bottle, half-full of a clear liquid. Morphine. Useless. He needed her awake.
“Levi…” Sage’s voice was a thread. Her eyes were losing their focus, the pupils wide and dark.
“Shut up.” He didn’t look at her face. He looked at the bandage, at the way her chest hitched on only one side. The telltale signs were all there: the asymmetric rise, the blue tinge to her lips. A tension pneumothorax. The rib fragment had punctured her lung, and every desperate breath was filling her chest cavity with air, collapsing the lung further, squeezing her heart. She was drowning in the open air.
The ground trembled. The smiling Titan took another step.
Levi’s hands moved. He ripped the soaked bandage away. He found the spot between the fourth and fifth ribs, just below her armpit. He poured the last of his flask’s alcohol over the scalpel and the patch of skin. It was a pathetic sterilisation. It would have to do.
“This will hurt,” he said, his voice devoid of all inflection. “Don’t move.”
He didn’t wait for permission. The rusted steel met her skin. He made a short, deep incision. Sage cried out, a raw, shattered sound that was worse than any scream. Her body jerked, but his left hand was already a vise on her shoulder, pinning her to the rough wood of the walkway.
Blood welled up, hot over his fingers. He probed with the tip of the scalpel, feeling for the separation between the ribs. The bone was there, hard and unyielding. He had to get through the muscle, the fascia. He applied more pressure, his own breath held.
The Titan’ shadow fell over them, blocking the filtered green light. A low, wet groan vibrated the air. It was leaning down.
Levi ignored it. He focused on the feel of the scalpel grating against rib. He twisted the blade, creating a channel. He needed something for a tube. His eyes scanned the spilled supplies. Nothing. Think.
Sage’s gasps were becoming weaker, more infrequent. Her hand fluttered against his wrist where he held her down. Her fingers were cold.
“Sage…stay with me. Ok?” The words left his mouth before he could stop them. They were quiet, almost lost under the Titan’s breath. “You have to stay with me. Do not fall asleep. Please.”
The ‘please’ hung in the air, a foreign, fragile thing.
His gaze snapped to her ODM gear. The gas canister connectors. He released her shoulder, yanking at the nearest canister on her hip. With a brutal wrench, he tore the small, curved metal intake valve free from its housing. It was a hollow tube about the width of his little finger, three inches long. It would have to work.
He turned back to the incision. He inserted the tip of the scalpel again, widening the path. Then, discarding the blade, he took the metal tube.
“This is it. Breathe.”
He pushed the tube into the incision, between the ribs, directing it inward and upward. He felt a faint pop, a release of pressure, and then a sudden, horrific hiss of escaping air. A pink, frothy mixture of air and blood sprayed from the makeshift tube, pattering against his cheek.
Sage’s entire body convulsed. Then, with a great, racking shudder, her lungs expanded. She drew in a deep, ragged, clear breath. The awful, choking sound was gone.
The world rushed back in.
The smiling Titan’s hand, large enough to crush them both, was descending.
Levi moved. He left the tube protruding from her side, a grotesque, life-giving stem. In one fluid motion, he grabbed two fresh blades from the depot’s scattered supplies, rolled to his feet, and launched himself not away, but directly up.
He fired an anchor into the Titan’s grinning chin, using the recoil to propel himself in a blinding vertical slash past its descending arm. He didn’t aim for the nape. He went for the eyes. The blade tip carved a deep gorge through both empty sockets. Steam erupted in a geyser.
The Titan recoiled, blinded, its hands flying to its face. It stumbled backwards, off balance.
Levi didn’t watch it fall. He was already dropping back to the walkway, landing in a crouch beside Sage. She was breathing, her chest rising and falling in shaky but functional rhythm. Her eyes were open, aware, glued to the metal tube in her side with a look of pure, unvarnished horror.
“Don’t touch it,” he ordered, already gathering supplies. He stuffed gauze and a roll of adhesive tape from the spilled kit into his pocket. He scooped her up, her protest a weak gasp. “Hold onto your insides. We’re leaving.”
He fired his anchors into the highest branches of a giant tree beyond the depot wall. With a burst of gas that strained his equipment, he shot into the canopy, Sage clutched tightly against him. He didn’t look back to see the smiling Titan crash through the palisade below.
He flew until the hiss of his gear turned into a sputter, until the last of the gas was spent. He landed on a thick, mossy branch wide as a road, high in the silent, sun-dappled layers of the forest. It was a different world up here, quieter, the forest floor a distant memory of blood and noise.
Gently, he laid Sage down against the massive trunk. Her face was the colour of old parchment, but her lips were no longer blue. The makeshift chest tube still hissed faintly with each exhale.
“Okay,” he said, more to himself than to her. “Okay.”
He worked with a focused, quiet precision. He taped gauze around the base of the tube to seal it as best he could, then secured the whole thing with long strips of adhesive. He cleaned the incision site with the last of the antiseptic, his touch clinical yet careful. He redid the bandages over her torn uniform, creating a bulky but stable package.
Throughout it all, she watched him. Her usual fire was gone, replaced by a deep, exhausted stillness. When he finished, she finally spoke, her voice a dry whisper.
“You put depot garbage in my lung.”
“It was that or let you suffocate. The garbage was closer.” He sat back, wiping his hands on a relatively clean piece of moss. They were still tacky with her blood. The feeling was everywhere, under his nails, in the lines of his palms. He wanted to scrub until his skin was raw.
“Thanks,” she said. The word was simple, heavy.
“Don’t.” He didn’t want her gratitude. It felt like a weight. “It was a standard field procedure.”
“Standard,” she repeated, a ghost of her old smirk touching her lips. “Right.”
Silence settled between them, filled only by the distant creak of branches and the wind in the leaves far above. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving a cold, hollow fatigue. Levi kept his eyes on the green depths below, watching for movement, for steam. His mind, however, kept circling back to the feel of her ribs under the scalpel, the sound of her struggling breath, the terrible, quiet ‘please’ he had uttered.
“You asked nicely,” she murmured, her eyes closing.
“What?”
“Back there. You said ‘please.’” She opened one eye to look at him. “I didn’t think you knew that word.”
He didn’t answer. He unclipped his canteen and held it to her lips. She drank, a little water trickling down her chin.
“We’ll rest here until nightfall,” he stated. “The lower light will make it harder for them to spot movement. We’ll move under canopy cover, low and slow, back to Wall Rose.”
“The tube…” she started, her hand hovering near the bandages.
“Comes out when we’re behind a wall with a real surgeon. Until then, you breathe, it stays in.” His tone brooked no argument. “Now sleep. That’s an order.”
She nodded, her defiance utterly spent. Her head leaned back against the tree, and within minutes, her breathing deepened into the rhythm of uneasy sleep, each exhale a faint, metallic whisper from the valve.
Levi did not sleep. He watched the shadows lengthen, the dappled light turning from emerald to gold, then to deep blue. He watched Sage’s face in the fading light, the lines of pain etched even in repose. He saw not the reckless soldier, the ‘liability,’ but a stubborn, human persistence. A resilience that mirrored his own in a way he was unwilling to examine.
As full dark embraced the forest, the first coherent thought emerged from the numbness: he had not left her. He had cut her open on a filthy battlement and shoved a piece of machinery into her chest to keep her alive. It was messy. It was visceral. It was the furthest thing from clean.
And for the first time in a very long time, the mess did not fill him with revulsion. It just was.
He gently touched her shoulder when the last light was gone. “Renn. Time to go.”
Her green eyes opened, clear and alert in the gloom. She nodded.
Together, in the silent, starless dark of the giant trees, they began the long, careful journey home.
The dark between the titan-sized trunks was absolute, a suffocating blanket that turned every rustle into a threat. Levi moved by memory and instinct, his hand on Sage’s back both a guide and a crutch. Each step she took was a controlled stumble, her breathing a tight, controlled rhythm around the foreign object in her side.
“Just keep the rhythm,” he murmured, his voice absorbed by the moss and shadow. “In. Out. Don’t think about it.”
“Easy for you to say,” she gritted out, but obeyed, matching her footsteps to her breaths. “Your lungs aren’t full of scrap metal.”
They didn’t speak again for an hour. The only sounds were their footsteps, the distant drip of moisture, and the faint, persistent hiss from her bandages. Levi’s world shrank to the points of contact: his arm around her, the tremble in her muscles, the slick feel of her blood still drying on his palm. He had stopped smelling it. That was worse.
Ahead, a massive root created a hollow against a trunk, a pocket of deeper darkness. He guided her towards it. “Here. Ten minutes.”
She didn’t argue, sliding down the rough bark into the natural alcove with a sharp gasp. He remained standing at the entrance, a silhouette against the slightly less-black forest. He listened, but his attention was split. He could hear the wet catch in her breath growing more pronounced.
“It’s filling up,” she said quietly, stating a fact. The makeshift tube would eventually clog, the bleeding inside never fully stopped.
“I know.” He finally turned, kneeling in front of her. In the dark, he worked by touch, checking the tape. His fingers came away warm and wet. He swore under his breath, a single, sharp syllable. He dug the last of the gauze from his pocket and packed it around the tube’s base, applying pressure. “We need to move faster.”
“I’m going as fast as I can.”
“It’s not fast enough.” The words weren’t a criticism, just a brutal assessment. He heard her swallow hard in the darkness. A different kind of tension tightened the air between them, thinner and more fragile than the threat of Titans.
He helped her up again. This time, her weight against him was heavier, a slow surrender to gravity and damage. They pushed on, the night bleeding into a deep, pre-dawn grey that made the trees into monstrous silhouettes. He found a stream, ice-cold and clear, cutting through the roots. He let her drink, then scrubbed his hands raw against the rocky bed, the water turning pink then clear again. The cleanliness was a fleeting comfort, but he needed it.
When the first true light began to filter down, painting the high canopy in dull silver, she faltered. Her knees buckled entirely. He caught her, lowering them both to sit against a broad, fungal-covered stump.
“Just a minute,” she breathed, her head lolling back. Her skin was clammy.
“We don’t have a minute.” But his voice lacked its usual edge. He checked the bandages again. Saturated. Her time was running out in a way no Titan could manage. A slow, internal leak. He pulled her canteen and forced her to drink more. “Stay awake, Sage.”
“I’m awake,” she whispered, but her eyes were half-mast, staring at nothing.
He made a decision. He wouldn’t carry her; the jostling could dislodge the tube. But he could support more of her weight. He shifted, pulling her arm more firmly across his shoulders, his own arm locking around her waist. “Up. Now. The wall is close. I can feel it.”
It was a lie. He had no idea. But she needed a finish line.
They moved like a single, wounded creature. The forest began to thin, the trees becoming marginally smaller, the undergrowth thicker. Hope was a dangerous lure. It made you careless. Levi’s eyes ached from scanning, his every nerve screaming for the sight of horizontal stone, for the impossible, hated safety of the wall.
They stumbled into a small, rocky clearing as the sun finally broke through, casting long, sharp fingers of light. In the center, a fallen tree created a natural shelter, a hollow beneath its trunk filled with dry leaves. It was hidden. It was defensible. It was all they would get.
“Here,” he said, his voice gravel. “We stop.”
He didn’t ask. He helped her under the trunk, into the dry, leaf-littered space. She collapsed onto her good side, curling instinctively around the injury. He gathered more leaves, piling them for insulation, then sat with his back to the opening, blade across his knees. The sun climbed, bringing weak warmth but no comfort.
She shivered violently, the shock and blood loss setting in deep. Without a word, Levi shrugged off his green scouts jacket. He draped it over her, tucking the edges around her shoulders with a stiff, practical motion.
“You’ll freeze,” she muttered, trying to push it off.
“Shut up.” He stopped her hand, his own lingering for a second too long on her chilled fingers. “I run hot.”
Silence stretched, filled with her shaky breaths and the distant morning calls of birds. The ordinary sounds felt alien. Levi watched the clearing, but his focus was drawn relentlessly to the sound of her breathing beside him. Each wet, ragged inhalation was a countdown he couldn’t stop.
LATER THAT NIGHT
The cold had seeped into the earth, into their bones. Sage’s shivering had finally subsided into a dangerous, deep stillness. Levi hadn’t moved from his post, his eyes open in the dark.
“Levi?” she whispers. The sound is so faint he almost thinks he imagined it.
“Yeah?” he asks, his own voice low.
A long pause. He can hear her working up to it, the words forming in the shared dark. “I don’t hate you.” She admits it like a secret, like it costs her something.
He turns his head. His eyes have adjusted. He can see the pale outline of her face, the dark sweep of her lashes against her cheek, the glint of her open eyes watching him. He looks at her for a long minute, the walls inside him crumbling under a fatigue so profound it feels like truth.
He leans forward slowly. His lips press against her forehead, a dry, deliberate touch. It is an anchor, a seal, a transfer of something he has no name for.
“I know.” He pulls back, settling against the wood again, his gaze returning to the night. “Go to sleep.”
This time, she does.