Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/10383954.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/F, F/M
  Fandom:
      Shingeki_no_Kyojin_|_Attack_on_Titan
  Relationship:
      Levi/Original_Female_Character(s)
  Character:
      Erwin_Smith, Mike_Zacharias, Nanaba_(Shingeki_no_Kyojin), Nile_Dok
  Additional Tags:
      Torture, Aftermath_of_Torture, dubcon, Daddy_Kink, Implied/Referenced
      Child_Abuse, Military_Training, erwin_might_be_a_sociopath,
      Deepthroating, Vaginismus, ACWNR, Biting, Scratching, Rough_Sex, Rough
      Oral_Sex, Rape
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-03-20 Updated: 2018-01-25 Chapters: 12/? Words: 81848
****** Never Speak First ******
by Commissioner
Summary
     "I am Instructor Raban, and from this moment forward, you are the
     Ninety-Ninth Training Corps." There is perfect silence. Erna can only
     hear the dirt being picked up by the breeze, blown into dust devils.
     She halts her pacing. "Forget everything you've been told..."
Notes
     OC Training Corps Instructor AU
     My friend/editor had this idea: What if the 104th wasn't trained by
     Shadis, but instead it was a female OC?
     And I ran with it.
     Then it got dark.
See the end of the work for more notes
***** Prologue *****
Erna adjusts herself on the cot chained against her cell wall. She digs her
fingers into the mattress to test its thickness. It's so thin it could barely
pass as a blanket. All in all, the prison cell that the Military Police have
set her up with is not so different from the room that she rents in the city.
The basement apartment that she rents from an unscrupulous loan shark is just
as damp and cold, though it affords more privacy. It's only one of her homes,
and not the one she'll be going back to when she's let go. The basement
apartment is a last resort for when shit falls apart. It's a good hideaway. Not
even the second in command of her operation knows where it is.
Erna won't be able to go there for days. When the MPs let her go they'll most
likely trail her for a while. She'll stay with her underlings, hopping to a new
place every night, laying low, being good. Until the MPs get bored and leave
her alone.
She frowns at what she knows she'll need to do. She doesn't mind being somewhat
on the run. It's that she's going to need to stay with people. The thought
tires her. She finds people draining. Not because she's an introvert. She's
certainly not that, but she can't be near people without watching and listening
closely, trying to manipulate them at every moment. It isn't a relaxing past
time. She views people as work, as a business. She's built a business off of
convincing others to do what she needs for her, which just so happens to be
breaking the law most of the time. Keeping people in line and loyal is tiring
work, so she prefers to be utterly alone whenever possible.
So the only things making her very uncomfortable in her cell at the moment are
her neighbors. She can hear them breathing, licking their lips, spitting.
Fucking disgusting. The one across the way is looking at her. That's the worst.
She can tolerate a lot of human filth, but not having control over when and how
she'll be seen irks her more than anything.
"You're Erna Raban…" the grimy prisoner in the cell across from hers hisses.
Erna can hear in his voice the amount of time he's been locked up. The cold,
damp air is slowly destroying his lungs, making the former gruffness of his
voice turn to a whiny, wheezing breathlessness.
"It's Miss Raban to you, worm."
He laughs to himself. "You're not so high and mighty in here, love. We're all
equal down here."
He draws out the last word, his voice turning gravelly and grating on her
nerves like mortar. She hears a few assenting murmurs from other prisoners who
have started to listen.
"Love…" she spits. "I'll wager you haven't felt a loving embrace in many years.
I don't expect anyone's touched you in a longer time than you've been locked in
here." She makes her voice softer, pitying, sympathetic. And there is quiet as
they all listen. She makes sure her volume is enough that most of the cellblock
will hear her. "You lonely, sad thing, taking what comfort you can in the
violent contact between your ribs and the guards' boots whenever they care
enough to remember that you're alive down here." She pauses to quietly swallow
the bile rising in her throat. "If you'll behave for me, love, I can restore
you to what you used to be. You know my name, so you must know the extent of my
organization?" She waits for an answer. The silence is penetrating. She won't
be the first to break it. That would be defeat.
Finally, quietly, her neighbor across the way answers "..Yes…"
"Yes, what?" she says through gritted teeth.
"Yes, Miss Raban."
"Very good, pet." she praises as if the filthy convict were her own offspring.
"Nobody," she says, "is ever equal."
Erna gets up and paces her cell a little. She listens to the silence, making
sure all dissent is quiet. Making sure that they're ready to hang off of her
every word.
"Right now," she says, "we're all beneath the swine who hold the keys to these
cells. An unfortunate predicament, but here we are." She listens to the
murmuring: people complaining and whining about the bloody guards, something to
unite them. "But," she continues, "when I get out, I'll still be in the same
position of power that I left. Can any of you wretched creatures say the same?"
She waits. More murmuring. Grunting. Nobody raises a voice to tell her that
she's wrong, because she is never wrong about people.
"I feel for you. I do." she says sweetly. "They keep you in here so long,
everyone forgets you. Nobody's loyalty lasts, not even family's. Have any of
you heard from your families in a dogs age?" she asks.
She hears sniffling in a cell on her side, somebody holding back tears. Good.
"Well I never forget. I value all who are loyal. If any of you want work when
you get out, you can ask around for me. Life is cruel, but I am fair. You need
only be good and I'll make sure you are always cared for. No more cells, no
more lonely nights." She looks directly across the dark separating their cell
doors at the man who had tried to shake her, now utterly entranced like a mouse
trapped in the coils of a cobra.
"Does that sound nice, pet? All I need is your loyalty and once you're released
to the city we'll put you back in a position where those lower than you will
have cause to fear your displeasure. You'll be so much better than you would do
on your own."
As if in a dream, the answer came slowly. "Yes, Miss—"
She stops him before he can finish. All she needed was the 'yes'. "You can call
me 'Sir'," she says. Then, louder, "You all can."
There's an inconsistent, broken chorus of "Yes, Sir," and other oaths. Erna
turns her back on the halls of the dank prison and faces the wall of her cell,
rubbing her temples and frowning. There was a time when turning a crowd of
hardened criminals to her side so quickly would have made her feel something.
Now it just gives her a headache. She lets them go on for a minute. She lets
them talk about what hell they'll raise for her. Only for a minute. Then, in a
stern, booming voice, she commands, "Quiet down."
Instantly there is silence. She rewards their obedience with her sympathetic,
honeyed voice again. "I'd like some rest."
All is silent for her. She swears they're even breathing more quietly. Nobody
dares to cough, spit, or moan. Every prisoner tries to be quieter than his
neighbor, hoping that she'll notice and reward him more greatly than the
others.
Erna sits down on the cot again. She rests her head against the cold, stone
wall behind her and she closes her eyes. She thinks of nothing. She only revels
in the silence.
Not even when the guard opens the heavy iron door to the cellblock does anyone
raise a voice. The only sounds to be heard are the clicking of his boots and
the hiss of the oil lamp he carries. His pace is normal at first, and then it
slows. He is unsettled by the quiet. Erna can picture him pausing to look into
cells, making sure the prisoners are still there, still alive. She can see in
her mind their eyes staring out at him, full of more fire than recent years can
recall, stoked by her and her promises, and their grim, unmoving mouths; as if
they were enchanted and their voices taken away.
The guard's steps hurry again. They sound panicked, almost. Then the rhythm
stops abruptly, squarely in front of Erna's cell. She doesn't turn to look. She
only keeps rubbing her temples and she says, "You may speak."
The guard, thinking she is daring to tell him what she will or will not permit
him to do, opens his mouth to threaten her, but he is drowned out by a
cacophony of prisoners suddenly shaking their bars, hissing, cursing him and
the king and anything else they can think of.
"Cunning witch," he mutters to himself as he fumbles with the keys, the racket
shaking his resolve. As he tries one in the lock, Erna stands up, her full
height only amounting to probably 5 feet and 3 inches, but her demeanor more
than making up for what intimidation her size cannot inspire.
She smirks at the guard as he tries another key and she raises her hands, palms
open, to show that she's hiding nothing and not resisting. When he gets the
lock open, the guard charges in and twists her wrists around roughly, trapping
them behind her back in a pair of cuffs. She acquiesces silently. She lets the
other prisoners make her threats for her as the guard pushes her out and
roughly steers her toward the cellblocks exit. She waits patiently as the guard
locks the door behind them. When he grabs her by the arm again, she asks, "Have
I worn out my welcome that quickly?" She makes it sound innocent and regretful
as if she's just been asked to leave a dinner party.
"Oh you're not going anywhere. Especially not after that stunt you just
pulled."
"Stunt?" She stumbles a little as he pulls and then pushes her arm. "What
stunt?" She asks when she has her footing.
"All that quiet and then all that racket."
"I didn't do a thing," she lies. "Are the prisoners not usually that expressive
when you pay them a visit?"
He grumbles something, but says no more to her.
He escorts her up some stairs, but at the top he steers her right instead of
left. Left would be where he'd take her to be processed if they hadn't found
any charges that would stick against her. To the left is where they'd give her
back her things and send her on her way. She doesn't know what happens to the
right.
"Where are we going?" she tries to sound demanding, but she can't hide the
apprehension in her voice.
The guard sneers. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
She would. Very much, in fact. She hates unexpected things. She likes to keep
her universe very much in order and under her control. She can tell she won't
be able to say anything to get him to tell her what's about to happen. He's
taking pleasure in this piece of knowledge he has over her. But if she keeps
her mouth shut, he'll tell her freely. She waits.
He marches her up a corridor, up another flight of stairs, and up to a large
oak door. Before yanking her to a stop in front of it, he says, "The commander
would like to have a word with you."
He makes a big show of pushing the door open forcefully, still trying to redeem
his injured masculinity. Erna wonders how many more things he'll need to shove
around before he can feel in control again. This is why she never promotes men
very highly in her organization. They are emasculated too easily and then act
like children trying to reprove themselves.
She gets pushed through the door and is nearly blinded by the sudden sunlight.
As she blinks and tries to adjust, her guard helpfully grabs her by the
shoulders and forces her forward, and throws her into a wooden chair.
She winces and makes a pained gasp though she isn't hurt. She's counting on one
thing or another. Either the satisfaction of having hurt her will please the
guard and make him soften a little, making him more open to suggestion, or it
will achieve something with the commander she supposes is in the room, though
she can't see anything yet. The title of commander suggests an older man who
will probably be more sympathetic toward women.
"For God's sake, take the cuffs off, you imbecile."
Check.
"But Commander—"
"What did you think she was going to do? She's less than half your size and
only a girl." He sounds more disgusted than sympathetic, but Erna will take it.
She leans over to give the guard space to unlock her handcuffs as the room
comes into focus. There is very little furniture. It doesn't look like an
office. There's only her chair and the empty one across from her. Maybe an
interrogation room.
The other man, the commander, is a middle-aged, sharp and unpleasant looking
man with dark hair and bony shoulders that look like they could tear through
his coat. She looks for something telling in the military decorations he wears.
Particularly, she looks to the patch on his left shoulder. As he turns she sees
the unicorn. -Commander Brown-, she thinks to herself. -Head of the Military
Police-.
She makes a show of rubbing her wrists as the guard takes the cuffs away.
"That will be all, Captain Dok."
There's sputtering behind her. Then indignation. "Sir, I know she doesn't look
it, but she is dangerous. I don't think—"
"I don't give a damn what you think, Nile!" the commander roars. "You are
dismissed."
Erna files the name Nile Dok away in her memory as the rat shuffles out of the
room.
When the door clicks shut she smiles at the commander.
"I'm not really dangerous," she says humbly, as if it were a compliment.
"I know what you are, Erna Raban." he says darkly.
She blinks. She makes her lips into a little o, so innocently. Then she says,
"I'm sorry, have we met? I don't remember you."
It's a ruse, a power move. She never admits when she remembers someone. She
does, of course, know exactly who he is. She knows where he works, where he
sleeps. She knows the names of his wife and all of his children.
"I am the commander of the Military Police, as I'm sure you well know," he
glares at her as he paces around the empty chair, "and you are only a minor
thorn in my side, a small time criminal, a petty gang leader barely worthy of
my time."
Erna's brows narrow and she scowls before catching herself and making her face
sweet again. "I do run a small organization," she admits. "I wouldn't call it a
gang. I'd never do anything illegal," she emphasizes.
"No," he agrees. "Your cronies do that for you. You have them well trained, I
have to admit. The rare times that we do catch them no amount of torture we put
them through can persuade them to give you up."
Brown keeps pacing as Erna watches him closely. He goes to the window and looks
at the street outside. He says quietly, wonderingly, "But you yourself never do
anything illegal…"
Erna relaxes. She feels sure that this is all theater. Brown has nothing. This
is all to scare her a little before they let her go again.
Brown turns on his heel abruptly and says triumphantly, "That is, until now."
He wears a snide, knowing grin and Erna's blood runs cold.
She swallows down any words that she has the urge to say. She might only
incriminate herself further. The Commander turns the empty chair around as if
it weighed nothing and smugly he tells her, "We know all about the nobleman,
Erna."
She snarls. She can't help it anymore. They should have left the cuffs on,
because if this over-familiar pig uses her first name one more time she'll make
him pay.
He straddles the chair across from her and goes on. "We have evidence, we have
witnesses, and we have enough to put you down with barely a trial."
Erna sneers. "Why are you telling me all this, then? Go ahead and do it," she
dares him.
He doesn't answer her question, which infuriates her. He continues to dance
around his intent, saying, "Murder is a very serious charge, you know, and a
nobleman no less. One of the king's inner circle." He clucks his tongue at her.
She wonders if maybe he's only trying to get a confession out of her. Trying to
scare her into pleading guilty for a lesser sentence. She'll die before he gets
that satisfaction. She spits onto the stone floor. "Fuck you, pig."
He seems to ignore the outburst, which only makes her more livid, but not
enough to make her do anything stupid, yet.
"Murder is very serious," he goes on, "but not so serious that I can't make it
go away if I want to." He stands up from his chair again and goes to the
window. "I want to offer you a deal," he says.
"Like what? I suck your dirty little cock and you let me go?"
He turns again and wrinkles his nose in disgust. "You have a filthy mouth."
"You have a filthy mind," she counters.
He shakes his head. "That's not what I had in mind. I'm not so shortsighted. I
look more towards the future."
"I'm more of an in-the-moment kind of girl," Erna answers seductively, because
if she can get away with no charges filed and her full freedom and all it costs
her is a moments worth of dignity and a bad taste in her mouth, then she'll
take it.
He ignores the way she licks her lips and lowers her eyelashes by turning away
from her again. "The offer I'm willing to make to you is military service, for
the rest of your life," he pauses to let it sink in, "in exchange for your
freedom."
"What kind of freedom is that?" Erna scoffs. "I'd rather suck you off…and
that's saying a lot."
"Unfortunately, that's not an option. Though I can see what your guards think
of the suggestion while you're waiting on death row."
She narrows her eyes and scrutinizes him and his body language as he looks out
the window.
"You're fucking serious."
He is silent. Erna's eyes dart around the room. She is confused. "Why?"
Finally he turns and looks at her again. "At the moment, we have a high rate of
enlistment. We don't need one more soldier," he muses proudly. "But we are
short on competent people to train them. Without good training, there's not
much use to the amount of soldiers we have. They're lazy, incompetent…not all
of them, mind you, but a good amount are just useless."
He looks to her to see if Erna has anything to say on that. She bites her
tongue.
"You, however," he says, "have been proven to inspire, to convince people to do
things they never would otherwise. You have an authority over people who have
never been swayed by all the authority of society. It's a new idea, but we
think that maybe if we could use you, we would end up with a higher quality of
service from our soldiers."
Erna grits her teeth until they hurt. "You would have me train sniveling
teenagers in the fucking dirt? To serve your impotent king?"
"Yes," he says. "Using any method you think best. You'd be given complete
creative freedom."
Erna stares into his eyes. They're so confident. He is so sure that she won't
refuse. He's a dumb cow. They all are. Anyone willing to forfeit freedom in
exchange for shelter and bread, no matter what rank they climb to be no better
than livestock. She is the only one with any intellect, any pride, any worth.
All the others, whether they're stupid enough to follow her or follow the king,
they're less than dirt. And she'll be skull-fucked before she accepts an
ultimatum from an imbecile.
"I choose death," she says very clearly. Her eyes smile as his face contorts in
rage.
"Nile!" he shouts and the guard barges in all too readily.
"Yes, Commander."
Erna rolls her eyes.
"Miss Raban needs some more time to think about my offer. See that you…" he
pauses for emphasis, "help her come to a wise decision."
Dok enjoys putting the cuffs back on her. She can tell. She struggles to stay
as he tries to drag her out of the room. She shouts at Brown as he turns his
back to her." You'll never break me, Brown! I only work for myself. I'll be
fucking dead before I take orders from you or your halfwit king!" She takes a
deep breath as Nile pulls her to the door and then she hooks the frame with her
leg, fighting, because she has more to say. "I'd rather let you piss on my
fucking grave! Scum! Sheep! I'll be freer in the ground than you'll ever be
above it, you weak little worm!"
(Ten Months Later, Year 836.)
Erna runs her fingers through the part in her hair one more time. It's still
warm from the flat iron. Her hair is tamed into a straight, jaw-length bob,
shaved up in the back and angled downward. She presses her fringe of bangs
through the flat iron one more time. Straight hair, she's decided, makes her
look more severe than her thick spring curls.
She runs the hot iron under some water and leaves it in the sink.
On the way out the door of her one-room cabin, she picks up a pair of black,
leather riding gloves. She hesitates before putting them on, standing directly
in front of the door, holding up her left hand and watching it as her fingers
flex and straighten three times. They shake slightly with a phantom pain. She's
been able to will her brain to forget a lot of things, but her fingers
stubbornly remember despite her. They remind her every day with their blackened
nail beds.
She puts the gloves on every morning. Not to hide what happened from others,
but to avoid the reminder to herself. To not catch a glance at the white
cuticles and the black underneath. It hurts her to look.
She crosses a leveled plain of dust.
A soft breeze blows through the box canyon. She breathes freely and deeply with
the satisfaction of being thoroughly herself.
Heels click together as she approaches. Fists cover chests where the heart is
thought to be.
Her officers, or assistants as she thinks of them, because they are merely an
extension of her will, stand at points around a perimeter that outlines four
hundred new, utterly green recruits that are split into neat rows of fifty.
They look so sincere. Some of them are even excited, with bright eyes and soft
smiles, so proud of themselves for serving their king and humanity.
They have no idea who they are about to be fucking with.
Nico, the assistant she's decided that she favors most at the moment, hands her
a clipboard that holds about twenty pages. Erna is a meticulous note-taker.
Those notes used to stay in her head, but now, with hundreds of people to keep
track of, she'll have to start getting used to writing things down.
"This is all of them?" she asks without looking up as she flips through the
pages, giving them a cursory check.
Nico grunts in the affirmative. Erna likes that. He doesn't waste her time with
words or, walls forbid, sentences.
"Dismissed," she tells him. It's his cue to go see to details, making sure
things are ready. Things that she is too important for.
Erna paces down the first line, silently for a while, just looking at the
young, fresh faces in their clean uniforms with the crossed swords of the
Training Corps sewn onto their shoulders. For now she holds her clipboard
behind her back. She lets their anticipation build. When she gets to the end,
she turns back around on her heel. Only then does she start speaking.
"I am Instructor Raban. And from this moment forward, you are the Ninety-Ninth
Training Corps."
There is perfect silence. Erna can only hear the dirt being picked up by the
breeze, blown into dust devils.
"You have the distinction of being the first class of trainees to undergo a
new, more comprehensive training regimen. I don't doubt that some of you have
family in the military. They probably sat you down before your trip here and
tried to tell you what to expect, to prepare you."
Erna halts her pacing. "Forget everything you've been told."
She smiles very slightly at the growing apprehension tangible in the air.
"The training that your elders finished has been deemed ineffective and their
service all but useless. I was invited, specially by the head of the Military
Police, to restructure the training regimen of the Corps in any way I see fit."
She raises her voice a little. "No longer will it be good enough for you to
simply want to offer your heart to humanity, to serve your country, and your
king. I have no use for your worthless hearts. I hate the monarchy with a
passion. If you're smart, you'll keep the simpleminded patriotism that brought
you here to yourself."
"What I want – what my job is to get out of you – is your blood, sweat, and
tears. Good soldiers are measured by their skills, not by their weak,
sentimental hearts. So I don't give two fucks about where your loyalty lies,
because while you're here, you are answerable only to me. Here, I am your
king."
"Unlike your predecessors, you cannot count on graduating in three years. I
will keep you here for as long as I think necessary. I will hold you miserable
little shits here until I deem you ready to put on your big boy pants and join
the real world."
She gives them about fifteen seconds of silence and watches them squirm
uncomfortably. She looks from face to face, daring any of them to make eye
contact or to challenge her.
"For a start, we're going to get to know each other. When I get to you, you
will give me your surname and you will tell me why you are here. Simple enough.
It is difficult beyond measure to fuck up. Don't try to impress me."
She reaches the first person in the first row exactly as she finishes her
sentence. He is grimacing, his face drawn with the pain of being first. Erna
turns and stands squarely in front of him. He is about six inches taller than
her. She tilts her chin upward to look directly at his face. He stares straight
ahead, stock still, silent, panicked.
Erna grinds her teeth. "Do not. Make me. Repeat myself."
He swallows hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Um, Bo Rousse—"
His voice gets cut off by a gasp and a pitiful whine when Erna punches him
swiftly in the throat. His hands fly up and he doubles over in a fit of
coughing. Now that his neck is lower, Erna can grab him by the scruff of it and
throw him face-first onto the hard ground.
As he rolls over and gasps for air, she tells him calmly, "We are not fucking
dating, trainee. I don't want hear about your childhood, I am never going to
meet your mother, and I sure as shit don't need to know your first name."
He still hasn't caught enough breath to apologize. She tells him, "We'll come
back to you," and she steps over him to face the next one.
This one thinks he has it figured out. He salutes her, fist over his heart, and
says loudly, "Faust. I am here to learn to be the best soldier I can be."
"What a pretty answer. You wanna talk sweet to me, trainee?"
The kid's face changes then from overconfident to unsure. He stammers, "Um,
yes—I mean, no, ma'am."
Erna lets an amused breath through her nose. Very nicely she holds her
clipboard out to him and says, "Be a good boy and hold my clipboard for me,
sugar."
A bead of sweat falls from his hairline and trails down his forehead as he
hesitantly takes the clipboard from her extended hand and brings it to his
chest as if it could be a shield. With both of her hands finally free, Erna
quickly grabs a fistful of hair on each side of his head, and forces his skull
down to meet her knee. He falls to the ground and groans.
Erna, as she looks down at him, notices the blood forming a bright red spot on
her white pants. Her knee must have ruptured his nose. She hears a few gasps
down the line, but they quiet themselves when she connects her foot with the
trainee's stomach hard enough to kick him onto his back, revealing his bloodied
face.
"Tch." She leans down and opens her gloved hand. It might look like she's going
to help him up, until she motions for him to hurry up by curling her fingers
and says, "Clipboard."
Even as he is squirming in pain, he wastes no time lifting his arm and holding
the clipboard out to her.
She holds it behind her back and again paces down the line, shouting loudly
enough for everyone to hear. "Let's get one thing straight: I'm more of a man
than you, you," she addresses the seventh and eighth trainees in the line, both
male. "Or," she says, gesturing with her thumb toward the largest, toughest
looking trainee, "This big fucker over here, who probably still breaks down in
tears whenever he thinks about the family dog back at home wondering where the
fuck his best friend went off to and why he abandoned him."
Under his breath, barely a whisper, she hears the trainee say, "No…Rosie…" and
out of the corner of her eye she sees him begin to tear up.
"You will address me as 'Sir,' when you feel the need to refer to me as
anything other than Instructor Raban. Is that clear?"
Silence.
She shouts louder, "I asked you all if that is fucking clear!"
There is a deep, unified chorus of "Yes, Sir!"
Her tone and demeanor change in an instant to an unsettling sweetness. "That's
better." She turns and returns to the third in line. "Now, let's move on…"
***** Nails *****
Chapter Notes
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Nile Dok drags Erna down the hallway as she shouts a multitude of threats and
obscenities, until she's out of Commander Brown's earshot anyway. Then her
demeanor changes entirely, at once becoming calm and collected, she picks her
feet up and walks quietly along with her escort.
After a moment, when he feels sure that her volatile tantrum is over, Nile
tells her candidly, "I'm glad that you refused the Commander's offer."
"You sound excited to watch me rot in that dingy cell," Erna says dryly.
"You're pretty easily entertained, huh?"
"Actually, I'm not," he says through his nose.
Erna begins to look forward to returning to her cell. It will be fun to play
with the other prisoners until her minions break her out – and they will break
her out – she thinks. She put a moderate amount of time and effort into
convincing them that they can't survive without her, so they should be
desperate to get her back right about now.
It may take time. She taught them and drilled them on all of the ins and outs
of stealthily breaking into places with all kinds of levels of security, but
still… the military police dungeons are a pretty tall order. They might decide
to wait until her trial, if they're as smart as she hopes.
In any case, Erna is pretty good at waiting. She can be incredibly patient.
Nile's grip around her upper arm tightens as he steers her past the entrance to
her cell block and toward another staircase.
"Where are we going?" she demands to know. He ignores the question and she says
a little louder, "Take me back to my cell."
He makes no sign that he's hearing her at all until she begins to struggle. She
tries to get out of his grip before they reach the stairs.
He stops her at the top step of the stairs and shakes her arm forward and back
as if dealing with a difficult child. He leans over her, his mouth close to her
ear, he says quietly, "You're never going back to your cell, Erna."
Erna struggles as hard as she can with her hands secured behind her back, but
Nile is bigger and stronger than she is. Still, she hisses and spits like a
cat. "Say my name again, filth," she snarls, "want to hear it die in your tight
throat when I choke the life out of you."
And with that, he shoves her headlong down the stairs.
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Everything is black for some time.
Upon regaining consciousness, Erna is hit with a sickening wave of nausea, a
sign of concussion. The next sensation she notices is a stinging pain in her
left eye and from the sticky, dry feeling of the skin around it she guesses
that she got some blood in it. Her head must have split open somewhere, but she
can't move her arms to find where. So the nausea, she thinks, could be either a
concussion, or just a symptom of too much blood lost… or both.
In any case, there's a metallic rattling and a resistance when she tries to
move, so she knows she's chained down.
She ascertains all of these things by feeling and hearing because wherever she
is, it's pitch black… or she's blind. She decides she'll find out. And the
easiest way to find out is for her to yell to the darkness, "Hey, I'm fucking
awake here, if anybody gives a shit!"
The acoustics make her think that she's in a small room with a high ceiling,
but without all of her senses she doesn't trust her judgment. She'll wait and
see if she can get some light to see if she's correct.
There's a sound like shuffling feet and then the sound is gone. Probably a
guard has gone to tell someone more important that she requires their
attention.
Erna sighs impatiently and starts counting in her head.
She counts out about four hundred and twenty seconds before she hears footsteps
coming back, maybe more. She nodded in and out of consciousness once or twice
while counting.
There's a high, squealing rusted iron scraping against stone sound that sets
her teeth on edge and makes her feel a stinging ache under her tongue that she
can only describe as a metallic feeling. Her fingers curl with their own
phantom pain as the sensation travels through her whole body like electricity.
She curls in on herself, closes her eyes and hisses in pain to which she hears
her new guest give a low chuckle.
She blinks hard at the light he's holding and says, "Lovely to see you again,
Nile," with a sarcasm that's honey-coated.
He closes the door to the room just as slowly as he opened it, setting off more
spasms of psychological pain through Erna's teeth. She cringes again, unable to
do anything or hold herself in any way that would lessen the reaction that
sound sets off.
Nile smirks, mildly amused by her pain, as he hangs his lamp on one of many
hooks set in the stone walls to cast its orange glow over the small stone-
walled room. He doesn't return her greeting. Instead he gets right down to
business, crossing the floor in three big strides with his long legs, and
lifting her by the chain that links her wrists while he says, "On your feet."
An involuntary pained noise escapes her throat as her shoulders nearly get
wrenched out of place. The dizziness she was feeling becomes more intense as he
moves her and she finds it impossible to get her feet under her. Nile thinks
that she's only being difficult. With an annoyed sigh, he drops her, the full
weight of her making only a light thud against the floor, followed by a much
louder thud as he drives his boot against her ribcage with a vicious kick. He
says more loudly this time, "On your feet."
"Nnhh." Erna rolls to her knees. "I'm concussed, not deaf, you prick." Slowly,
she drags her right knee up until she gains solid enough footing to push
herself to stand.
She's disappointed that Nile doesn't respond to the insult. She always feels a
little defeated if she can't get a reaction out of someone. But he ignores her
words and moves behind her. As he unlocks her handcuffs she thinks she could
kill him… but she'd be too weak to escape. And something else stops her,
something that has less to do with logic. It's the fact that Nile is now an
evil that she knows, which she likes much better than opening herself to
something unexpected like a new assigned guard after she kills this one. So
there's that, but there's also the unfortunate fact that she is endlessly
curious, sometimes to her own detriment. Part of her says not to kill him just
because she wants to see what he'll do next.
She wants to study Nile, play with him, find what makes him tick, and then
catch him in a moment of weakness and rip out his insides. That would be more
fun than just killing him right now.
When her hands are free she lets them fall to her sides.
Without a wasted second, Nile comes around to face her, cuffs still in hand. He
grabs the neck of her shirt and pulls. In her weakened state, she almost falls
to the floor again. Rather than knock her over and go through the hassle of
getting her back up again, Nile has a better idea and he lets her go so that he
can pull a small knife from the inner pocket of his jacket.
Erna watches him with narrowed eyes, not backing away or flinching from the
knife. Without emotion, Nile holds still the hem of her shirt and he cuts
upward. When the knife reaches her bra, he tugs at it and cuts that in half
too. After a couple more rough slashes he rips the rags off of her and lets
them fall to the floor.
Erna sets her jaw, wanting to show him that she isn't humiliated in the
slightest. She's been through too much. It would take more than one fumbling
Military Police guard trying to get a look at her tits to make her feel
violated. She rolls her shoulders and yawns before saying, "Is this your idea
of foreplay, Dok?"
His face twists with rage and Erna smiles because now she's got a reaction out
of him, but before she can truly enjoy it, he spins her around to face away
from him and pushes her face first into the wall.
The stone is damp against her cheek. It smells of grime and mildew and earth.
They have to be underground. She wonders if she was unconscious long enough for
them to move her from the prison or if this is just a lower-level dungeon that
she didn't know about.
Nile presses her body to the wall with his and pins her there while he reaches
for something above her. Erna snarls, "If you're going to fuck me, at least
have the balls to look at my face, you shit-eating little rat."
He grunts as he pulls down the chains he was reaching for and he takes her
wrists in one hand and lifts them. The cuffs go back on and he attaches them to
a chain that will hold them above her head.
Satisfied that she's secured, he then leans down to whisper, "I wouldn't stick
my dick within an inch of any of your diseased holes."
That's some small relief to her.
He grunts close to her ear as he tugs at the chains one more time, testing
their steadfastness, as if she weren't too weak to do anything but curse at him
anyway.
He backs away and gives himself a moment to recover. She hasn't offered any
physical resistance. She couldn't, half-concussed, bleeding, dehydrated, and
beat to hell, but her words rile him up and exhaust him pretty easily. She's
good with words. She hopes he'll go on being too stupid to gag her.
It's a minute until he calms down and his breathing is slow and even again. He
clears his throat a little self-consciously. Erna decides not to say anything
to get him riled up all over again, only because she wants to see what he plans
to do or say.
From behind her, there's a small sound, a little bit, she thinks, like a rope
unraveling. She tries to see what he's up to, but can only turn her head so
far, so she gives up on that and rests her forehead against the wall.
Nile doesn't leave her wondering long. The second she feels the fiery sting
across her spine and hears the sharp crack, she knows right away what it is.
She inhales a little sharply as the pain pricks at her back, but as she exhales
it turns into a soft laugh.
"If you're trying to torture me, Nile, a little signal whip isn't going to
work."
He punishes her insolence with another lash, this one crossing the opposite way
across her back.
As he keeps hitting her, the pain is easier and easier to ignore. She tells
herself that the burning feels cool, the sharp stinging inflamed flesh simply
isn't there. She wonders if maybe this works on other criminals. If it does,
then they must not have ever known what real pain is. Compared to some other
experiences she could remember if she cared to, Nile's braided leather whip is
less than a mosquito bite. And all pain is – she tells members of her gang when
she tests them – only a comparative experience. What you feel is only relative
to what you've felt in the past. So, the more intense pain you feel – she
usually says as if it's a favor when she's doing something horrid to them – the
less future experiences will feel so painful.
Nile persists in whipping her as hard as he can. She thinks she can feel the
wetness of blood in some places just before her skin goes numb.
She can feel his frustration. She assumes that he's done this before and gotten
quite a different reaction. Erna laughs at the situation and then, deciding to
have some fun with him, she moans and in as smooth a tone as she can manage she
begs him, "Harder, Nile." As the whip stings her again, she writhes as if in
pleasure and moans again, "Do it harder!"
She yelps and sighs like she would if he was fucking her and she wanted to put
on a show. When the barrage of whip cracks stops suddenly, she whines as if
she's terribly disappointed. She tries to turn her head around a little to
complain to him, "I was almost there."
"You little bitch," Nile mutters under his breath. He drops the whip and yanks
her cuffed wrists down from the chain holding them high above her head.
Her knees scrape the rough floor when he throws her down and though it hurts,
she smiles because she's gotten under his skin again. That's worth almost any
pain. He can hurt her, but that doesn't make him the one in control.
She lifts her head and talks at him as he walks toward the door. "There's no
point in torturing me, Nile. What do you need? A confession?"
He opens the door and speaks to someone outside. Erna can't hear what he says,
but she sees a couple of guards that had been outside scurry away.
"All you had to do is ask," she says cheerily. "You're going to kill me either
way. I'll confess to whatever you want."
"That's the problem, Erna," he responds, irritation filling his voice, "I'm not
going to kill you. I'd love to, but it's against my orders."
She doesn't believe him. "Do you need me to confess about the murder? I'm not
ashamed about it. I killed that nobleman in his bed while he was under me. I
wrapped my hands around his throat, held him down while he struggled, and I
watched the life flicker out of his panicked eyes. It was lovely. If you could
kill a person twice, I would have done it all over again."
That definitely draws Nile's attention away from the hallway. He sneers in
disgust. He doesn't even think to close the door to the cell before turning
around and coming back to her to deliver a vicious kick to her stomach that
throws her onto her back. She winces and her eyes shut as her skin comes alive
again with burning pain. She rolls as quickly as possible to her knees again,
hoping she can save the cuts on her back from getting dirty and infected – a
pointless goal if she's going to die anyway, but even as she resigns herself to
that fate the instinct for self-preservation persists.
"Filth," Nile growls at her. "You deserve death."
"Maybe," she hums carelessly. She's thought about her own death more than once,
always knowing that this was a possibility. She had, in her dealings, always
tried to keep a low profile, doing well enough for herself, but never going for
anything too showy, too big, too likely to draw enough attention to make her a
criminal with notoriety, knowing that too much fame would motivate the military
police to do something about her. Killing the nobleman was too far apparently.
But, she'd decided a long time ago, if she has to be executed, she won't mind
so much as long as she can manipulate her executioner, not necessarily to
convince him not to kill her, but to make them do it at her will, not theirs.
As long as she can keep Nile infuriated and control how much of his temper he's
losing, making him react exactly the way she expects, she still feels in
control and that's a comfort to her.
He glares at her like one would look at a parasite just before crushing it.
She is about to say something to really make him lose it. She doesn't know
what, but she feels it on the tip of her tongue. But before she can, a couple
of guards come in the open door with a little table on wheels, like a doctor's
table, and an assortment of tools. Another one comes in behind them with a
heavy wooden chair, and Nile is distracted from his hatred for a moment.
Erna is picked up by her arms and put in the chair, again setting fire to the
cuts and marks that the whip painted over her back. As they set to work
removing the handcuffs and tying her arms tightly to the chair, she arches her
back to minimize contact against the wood.
Nile picks up a very small, innocuous, triangular wedge of wood from the table
and holds it up contemplatively. As she struggles, he tells her, "I was going
to save this for much later, but…" he trails off.
"I don't understand," she admits. "Do you get off on this? I gave you a
confession. You could just kill me now."
"You talk a lot, but you don't listen well, do you?" he says condescendingly.
Then he says, "Brown only threatened the execution so that you'd comply with
his plan to… expand… the military's training practices. We could care less
about that nobleman you killed or the dozens of other crimes you've committed
through your proxies."
Nile picks up a pair of small pliers and hands them to one of the guards to
hold over an open flame and he keeps talking to Erna, and becomes more and more
pleased as the confusion grows in her eyes. "You were barely worth our
attention, Erna, which I'm sure was intentional on your part. But still the
military police are very observant and while your crimes aren't so impressive,
we did notice that your underlings are very well-trained," he picks up a small
hammer and holds it along with the little wooden wedge, "and they're incredibly
loyal, much more than you normally see among thieves and thugs. We don't know
how you achieved that, but we want you to now do it for us."
Erna clenches her teeth and glares at him.
"So I cankill you, but that's only after every other method to convince you to
accept Brown's proposal has been exhausted. He thinks that you'll be more
useful alive than dead."
He nods at the two guards standing on each side of her and says, "Left hand
first." On that cue they each put their hands around her left forearm and
wrist, holding it down with as much weight as they can leverage.
"You can confess whatever you'd like to me, Erna," he sneers. "But it won't
change your situation."
He doesn't explain what he's about to do. It's more fun for him to watch her
eyes widen with terrified recognition as he places the pointed part of the
little wooden wedge under the fingernail on her pinky finger.
Against all of her sense of pride, she pleads, "No no no no…"
Nile drives the wedge deeper and deeper under her nail with taps from the
hammer and slowly lifts it from the nail bed. Erna howls so loudly that the
guard holding the pliers drops them on the table to cover his ears. Nile gives
him a mildly annoyed look as he wiggles the small wedge until Erna's nail is
only hanging to some stubborn skin. Nile lifts the wedge, sets it on the table
and takes up the red-hot pliers. He pulls the nail from Erna's finger ever-so
carefully, but still the blood flows and covers Erna's nail bed in red as he
tears the skin.
Her vision blurs with black spots, but she fights to stay conscious, gulping
air and making pitiful whining noises.
Nile drops the tiny fingernail into a metal bowl. "So, what do you think about
that offer now, Miss Raban?" he asks, his voice full of arrogant sarcasm.
Erna keeps gasping for air, struggling to keep his face in focus.
"I'll give you a moment to think." He begins to turn toward the table, reaching
for the bowl of water there to clean his tools.
Erna arches her neck and spits, hitting him square in the side of his face
before he can fully turn away from her.
The guard who covered his ears earlier gasps. Nile's face contorts with rage,
but he says nothing. Slowly and methodically, he removes a handkerchief from
his pocket and wipes his face. When finished, he takes a deep breath, composes
himself, and says, "A simple 'no' would have been fine."
He doesn't give her anymore opportunities to surrender and stop her torture as
he takes his time removing the rest of her fingernails. She screams loud enough
to wake the dead the entire time. The pain is more than anything she's ever
felt.
When he's finished, he goes and leans against a wall of the cell. He crosses
his arms over his chest as he orders the guards to untie her. They take the
chair out from under her, leaving her half-naked on the floor. The handcuffs go
back on. The table is wheeled outside.
Nile tells her that maybe he'll be by to give her some water later. He makes no
promises. He is the last to leave when the guards have finished.
Left alone in the dark again, Erna wails and rages until shock overtakes her
and mercifully puts her to sleep.
***** Coal *****
Chapter Summary
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"Do you have a wife, Nile?"
She knows he won't answer either way, but she watches his eyes for the silent
answer they'll give her. They do not flicker with memory. The corners don't
wrinkle with worry for his mate's safety. He is unattached, but Erna will keep
acting like she doesn't know that.
"A girlfriend?"
Again he doesn't answer. He's become good at looking like he isn't listening to
her, but she knows he can't help but hear. He takes her hand and presses it
palm down against the arm of the chair that she's chained to. He turns back to
his worktable and stokes the brazier next to it.
"A boyfriend, maybe?"
She sees his shoulders tick with tension slightly. Which doesn't tell her a
lot. He could be gay or he could be homophobic or he could just be uptight.
Well, she knows he's uptight. She's gotten to know that much at least just from
being around him every day.
"I've always preferred women myself." She looks down at the hand that he turned
over. She looks at where her fingernails should be. Even looking hurts.
Nile still looks like he's ignoring her. Stubborn ass.
"Women are so much more intelligent, more resilient, I've found. Men are
supposed to be stronger, but psychologically speaking they break so much more
easily. You can do all manner of horrible abusive things to women and they just
keep living despite it all. They're more twisted and dark inside afterwards,
but they never show it outwardly. You can never tell how fucked they are unless
you know how to look."
Nile takes off his jacket and puts it on the edge of the table. The room is
getting hot on account of the brazier full of burning coals he has going. Or
Erna is making him sweat. Maybe a little of both. She's hesitant to take full
credit.
It's hard to watch him work, because then she can see it coming. She watches
him pick up a rod of iron with a pair of blacksmithing tongs. She keeps talking
so that she won't anticipate what he's going to do so much. The anticipation
makes the pain worse when it finally happens.
"That's why, I think, women have so much more potential for cruelty than men
do."
Nile stabs the end of the iron into the coals.
"Because you fuck them up and fuck them over so much and they just absorb all
of it. They never break. They get all black and cruel inside instead."
He pushes the iron deeper into the brazier, stabbing to the heart of the heat.
"Men are simple… insecure. They break easy. Women just bend and transform into
something new and quietly malicious."
The iron comes out of the brazier red-hot. Nile holds it up and looks at it for
a second.
"I think it makes them a better fuck, personally."
He takes a step toward her. She keeps her eyes on his face. She tries so hard
not to look at the molten iron, but as he lowers it she can't stop her eyes
from fixing on it. She watches her hand flinch away as far as the chains will
let it when the heat gets too close. She didn't tell it to do that. She hates
her body's instinctive reactions. They're so cowardly. A sick moan makes its
way past her lips as he grabs her wrist with his free hand, holding it still.
He presses his palm over the back of her hand, splaying her fingers.
She closes her eyes.
She concentrates on her breathing, then on the screaming.
There are parts of the body that are more sensitive than others. Parts of the
body that have nerve endings that are more hotwired directly to the brain.
Anyone who's ever had a toothache can appreciate that.
Erna doesn't know if fingernails grow back. She hopes that they do. She's
learned that they are very important things. That the skin underneath your
fingernails is especially sensitive, that it's one of those areas with the most
insistent nerve endings that send the strongest signals to your brain.
As the red-hot iron poker is finally moved from her index finger of her right
hand, her mind goes slightly numb. She can't take her eyes off the blackened
and bloody nail bed of her thumb. It feels like it's going to fall off. In
fact, she's sure it will. She's sure all of her fingers are going to fall off
when Nile is done. He's on the pinky of her left hand now. She didn't even
realize he'd continued to move on.
When he drops the rod into a bucket of water it hisses and sputters.
Erna's breathing stutters. Gasps. It comes too hard, then not at all. Her eyes
are wet when she opens them and she laughs haltingly.
"Look at that," she says with mad wonder. "You've made me cry."
Nile forgets to ignore her and he turns around to look. Quickly he checks
himself and turns back around. He's not supposed to listen to her. "I don't
think I've cried since…" she tries hard to remember, "Probably since I was six
years old." She sniffs and lets out a stuttering breath that would be a sob if
she'd let it. "I thought I couldn't anymore."
Nile leaves the poker to transfer its heat to the water. Meanwhile he begins
packing up his other tools.
"Have I ever told you about my parents, Nile?" Erna asks. She knows he won't
answer, but she pauses as if expecting him to. It's only polite to give people
a moment to contribute to the conversation. "My mother was a small thing. I
probably look like her. Except she was frail and quiet and anxious…and blonde."
Nile pretends not to hear. That doesn't stop Erna.
"I get my hair from my father. He had thick, black curls like me," she
explains. She leaves Nile room to respond again if he cares to, but he doesn't.
"My father cleaned chimneys. He always came home smelling of ash and soot. He
was a big man, and gruff, and loud. It was an odd pairing, because even the
suggestion of a loud noise would make my mother jump and flinch. She so often
reminded me of a scared little mouse, all meek and small and innocent."
Nile takes the rod out of the bucket of water and lays it on the table. He
empties the water onto the brazier to put out the coals, stepping back so that
the steam can't burn him.
"People thought my mother was so nice. I guess you tend to think that about
quiet people. But she was also very cold. She didn't have any passion. She
couldn't stand to touch me and after a while I didn't want her to anyway. On
the odd occasions when she did feel it necessary to hug me for whatever reason,
it felt awkward and sad."
Erna wills herself to not look down at her fingers, no matter how they hurt.
Looking would only make the pain seem worse.
"My father, on the other hand, had enough passion for both of them. He was
emotional, always…effusive. He could be so warm and loving when he wasn't
drunk. He was very human. My mother was more like a wraith… a shadow against
the walls, looking on silently while he beat me around the room at even the
slightest provocation from my smart mouth. If I even looked at him wrong, which
I did often, he would hit me until I started choking on my own blood. Oh, and
if I cried? That only made it worse. He hated when I cried. He'd hit me harder,
I'd cry more, and it would only make him angrier, and we'd go on like that
probably for hours."
Nile has stopped moving. He's still facing the dying coals as if there is
something interesting at the center of them.
"Eventually my eyes learned to stop their tears." Her voice becomes deeper with
a quiet evil. "Pain is such an effective conditioning tool."
Erna's heart twists inside her chest. She's often lied to people. It's as easy
as breathing. She wishes that she were lying, but no. She's going to burden
Nile Dok with the truth.
"I was her only child and she never said a word. Never came to my defense. I
don't know if she didn't love me or maybe she loved him too much… Maybe she
already knew that I was a monster and I deserved it. It was hard to tell what
she was ever feeling, if anything."
Erna watches Nile's shoulders move. One can tell so much from a person's
shoulders. It's hard to keep them still. Even if a person is turned away, one
can tell how they're breathing from the slight movement of their shoulders.
Nile is taking long, deep breaths.
"Maybe it's fucked up, but I loved him. I loved him, and I hated her."
The steam is all but gone. The coals are out completely. There's nothing left
to look at, but Nile doesn't turn his head. His eyes stay locked on the black
and the ash.
"She didn't have to throw herself in front of me like a shield, but she could
havesaid something, don't you think, Nile? She didn't have anything to be
afraid of. He never hit her. He never even thought about hitting her."
Nile raises a hand, makes a move as if he's going to reach for something on the
table. His hand shakes with a violent tremor. He puts it back down at his side.
"He died when I was eleven, black lung and all. The smell of coal still makes
me think of him."
She stops talking just to see what Nile will do if she gives him a moment to
breathe. The tears have dried on her face now. She can feel them. Especially
where they've washed over the still open cut on her cheek. A memento from days
ago when she passed out during one of their sessions and Nile let her fall face
first to the floor. The impact split her lip and her left cheek open. She
should cry more often, she thinks. The salt water might keep the cuts clean,
though it burns.
Nile recovers in the silence. He squares his shoulders and takes a step closer
to the table. He reaches to the farther end of it and picks up a tin cup by its
handle. Erna's stopped watching. She's tired. Then Nile's hand is in her hair,
tipping her head back.
"Open your mouth."
-Isn't that what I've been doing?- She thinks, but she complies and lets her
jaw go slack.
Nile tips the water past her lips and she wants to cry again, because it's
never enough. The water he gives her only makes her go mad wishing for more.
The inconsistent and paltry amounts of food she gets are fine. Her stomach has
shrunk enough that a bread crust seems filling, and after a certain amount of
starvation, the body stops sending hunger signals anyway. But she'll never stop
being thirsty. If they'd leave her unchained she would lick the walls and the
floor for the moisture on the stones.
He takes the cup away. Silently she swears to herself that if she lives, she'll
kill him. Not for the pain he's caused her, but because there was one more drop
of water in that cup she could have had.
"You're such a good listener, Nile," she says sweetly as he adds the tin cup to
his box of tools. "I think this time together has been really good for us. I
feel so much closer to you."
He turns swiftly and raises his hand to strike her. She doesn't flinch. She
would welcome a new pain to distract from what he's done to her fingers. But
something stops him and he retracts his hand. He has a look of disgust, either
at her or at himself, and he says, "You know nothing about me."
Erna laughs. It's full of madness, but still a pretty laugh, like a clear bell
that's just a little off.
"I know everything about you, Nile Dok."
He sneers and turns away.
"I know that you're not hard enough for this job. They should have chosen
someone less intelligent and more venal. Your boss is a shit judge of character
if he thought that you'd have the balls for this, because you, Nile Dok, are
nothing but a well-meaning man who wants to serve his king and country well.
That's why you joined the Military Police. Sure, you're a little fucked up, but
there isn't a person in this goddamn city who I can't say the same of."
Nile hurries to break down the folding table. He can't leave it in here with
her on the off chance that she could loosen her chains and break a leg off of
it to use as a weapon.
"And when this is over, if you can manage to convert me to the cause without
killing me, you're going to be rewarded with promotions, and you're going to
find a wife, and you're going to have two or three brats, and you're going to
be a passable father. Not the best, because you'll still be a responsible man
who spends too much time at work, but you'll love your family fiercely and
that'll be enough."
Her voice starts getting louder, more shrill. "But you better fucking kill me,
Nile, because if you don't, I'm going to find that family of yours and I'm
going to do things to them that you haven't even gotten creative enough to try
on me yet."
Nile scurries to gather his things and he pounds on the door that the guards
outside keep locked until he bids them to open it. He doesn't let them in here
with her ever. He doesn't want her to be able to talk to them. While he's
waiting for the door to open, she screams with what voice she has left, "I'm
going to rape your wife in front of you and bleed your children out like stuck
pigs for slaughter! But I'm going to let you live. I'm not going to fucking
touch you, Nile!"
He can't get out of there fast enough. The door slams closed again.
Erna smiles in the dark. Nile was in such a rush that he forgot to fasten the
steel collar that stabs into her sternum and the soft flesh of the underside of
her chin if her head tilts and nods while asleep. She hasn't slept in… Well,
she hasn't slept since she was locked in here. She doesn't know how long that's
been. She tries to keep track of the time by counting seconds, but that gets so
boring. What does it matter how long it's been?
She passes the time in other ways, just to keep her mind active. She doesn't
want to go too insane. She occupies herself mostly with facts and figures and
numbers, not memories, which are unreliable and distorted; and besides she has
few that matter to her anyway.
Silently, to herself, she recites snatches of conversation she's heard, the
names of guards that she's been able to catch when they aren't careful enough
to keep their stupid mouths shut. She takes stock of her injuries. Sometimes
she recites the moral code that she made for herself a long time ago, outside
these fucking walls, of which there are only three rules.
"Don't allow anyone to call you by any other name than that which you've given
them. No terms of endearment. No nicknames," she whispers to the dark.
"Take care of only yourself, at the expense of all others."
"Never speak first."
***** Recovery *****
Chapter Notes
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Erna no longer feels any excitement when light cuts the darkness, slowly
widening as the scraping of that metal door signals that something new is about
to happen.
For a while there, she would at least perk up with anticipation, wondering to
herself if she would get food or water, or, trying to guess what new torture
Nile had in store for her. That spark of curiosity is dampened in her and all
but snuffed out.
Every shallow breath she takes stings her chapped and bleeding lips as she
tries to put things straight in her head. Thinking is hard without light to go
by, she's found. In the dark, the brain wants to shut down and sleep.
But she needs a new plan.
The first plan had been: make them kill her. Which, to some, might sound like a
terrible plan, but it was a point of principle. To her, control comes first.
Survivability comes second. Not many people know that about her. It was
thought, among the city's criminal circles, that Erna's strength was in how she
stressed personal survival – not only for herself, but also for anyone she
recruited.
She would freely tell people who joined her that loyalty is only good up to a
point, but if they were in a situation where being disloyal would save their
skin, then by all means they should think of themselves first, because she damn
sure would be doing the same. She did very much believe that, but telling it to
people bluntly like that was for control. Telling them to be disloyal for
survival only made people want to be more loyal, and in the assurance that Erna
would do the same there was a tacit threat. Save yourself if you must, because
I'll also be trying to save myself, which means taking you out if you prove to
be a difficulty. The control is subtle, but it's always there in everything
that she does.
That is why she raged when the military police dared to tell her that she would
work for them. Death is preferable to living with her control taken away…if she
could control the way she died.
She doesn't think she's in a position to do that anymore. She tries to provoke
Nile, to take the decision out of his hands and force them, but he's grown
immune to her. He doesn't react, doesn't even flinch at the things she says.
When he does finally kill her, it will be because his Commander told him to,
not because of anything within her control.
That's not okay.
Every breath is fire against her lips and heavy in her lungs. The damp air has
by now wreaked havoc on her throat and lungs. Coughing in itself is a whole new
torture.
She's emaciated enough that she won't be surprised if one of the next bouts of
coughing breaks a rib. There is a trade-off, though. Something positive. Nile
doesn't bother to chain her anymore.
She tries not to dwell on how much she's been through or how long she's been
there. She tries to muster up some curiosity or anticipation for what might
happen next, after she follows through with the first step of her new plan.
Several times she thinks she feels, from where she's lying on the floor, the
knocking of footsteps reverberating from outside, but nobody comes in. It's the
knocking in her chest that keeps tricking her. She pushes herself and sits up
against the wall, her knees tucked into her chest.
Finally Nile ends her waiting and scrapes open that metal door as slowly as
possible because he knows the sound of it kills her.
Erna's voice comes out cracking like dry leaves. She doesn't waste words.
He's only two steps into the room when she says, "I'll do it."
Nile pauses in turning to close the door. This is the first time in a long time
that he's reacted at all to something she's said. He turns slightly to look at
her, raising his eyebrows in disbelief, and says, "What did you say?"
She clears her throat before repeating herself. Her voice is less dry this
time. "I'll do it. I give up. I'll do the training."
She hopes he won't ask her to repeat that, because that's about all the voice
she thinks she has left.
Nile does not react in the haughty, gloating way she expected. Instead he
nearly crumbles. He drops the keys, not even seeming to notice the tinny racket
they make when they hit the floor. His arm shoots out to the wall to balance
himself as he shakes with horrified relief, like somebody who just survived
something truly traumatic.
Erna tilts her head as she watches him. He looks like he might cry. She hadn't
guessed that his job took such a toll on him. It doesn't do anything to garner
any sympathy from her, in any case.
Nile doesn't speak to her again. He recovers himself and steps out the still
opened door. He says something that Erna can't hear to the guards outside and
he leaves.
If she could, she would scream and ask him where the fuck he thinks he's going.
Why should he get to leave now when they've been through so much together?
One guard puts a blanket around her shoulders, wrapping it around her twice.
The other picks her up like she weighs nothing – which, by now, she probably
doesn't – and carries her bridal style out to the corridor. She closes her
eyes. She doesn't remember ever having been carried before. It's a strange
feeling. It's not comforting like she thought it was supposed to be.
She's transferred to a hospital to recover. She gets her own room. The first
week is like a whole new torture where they swear they're helping her as they
swab cuts with alcohol and pierce open the ones that have abscessed. They give
her small things to eat and drink every few hours to acclimate her body to food
again.
There is at least one guard posted outside at all hours of day and night. They
still don't trust her. There's a rule that a guard needs to be present anytime
a doctor or nurse is in the room with her. They think that she'll manipulate
someone into helping her escape. The idea hadn't occurred to her until she
realized that was what they were protecting against. Escaping is no longer part
of the plan. She has grander plans now. They're nebulous, but there is one
component that she's sure of: she's not going back to what she did before.
Commander Brown doesn't come to see her until the sixth week, when she's filled
out some more and isn't so miserable to look at. He, she notes, looks exactly
the same as far as she can recollect the last time she saw him.
"Glad to see you've come to your senses and are recovering well," he says.
"They say it takes three months to recover from starvation," Erna responds
matter-of-factly. It was something that she noted when the nurse told her, only
because that meant that they knew the average recovery length from having done
this before.
"Yes, well," he says, "I'd like to talk about what you're to do when you are
fully recovered."
Erna's never had a job interview before, but she gets the feeling that this is
what one would sound like. It makes her want to laugh.
"To make this happen as quickly as possible, you'll have a tutor here to catch
you up on every aspect of military protocol and regulation. When you're well
enough, you'll get two weeks of private instruction with the maneuver gear."
"Is it that easy to learn?" she asks skeptically.
"Maybe not, but we take it that you catch onto things quickly."
She smirks at him.
"After that, you'll be officially enlisted and you'll serve six months with the
Survey Corps."
"That's not what I agreed to." This is where she would like to draw the line.
The Survey Corps is for the suicidal. The whole point of going along with any
of this was to not die.
"It's the fastest way to get you proficient and familiar with what will be
important to the people you train."
"If I fucking survive," she adds.
"If you survive," he agrees. He runs his fingers over his goatee. "We have
faith that you will."
It would have to be faith. There's not much logical reason to believe that she
would survive.
"And then," he rests his hands on his knees, "You'll take over as Instructor
for the Southern District Training Corps."
"And that's it?" she has to make sure. She has to try to get anything else he
might be hiding.
"That's it."
"What's the vacation pay like?" she asks sarcastically.
"You'll be able to take breaks whenever the trainees are given R&R time. The
only condition to that is that you're not going to be allowed inside Wall Sina
ever again."
Erna pouts. "I thought you trusted me."
"To an extent," he says. "Your communication will also be limited. You'll only
be able to write or talk to military personnel. You're cut off from your gang
or associates or whatever you like to call them."
"I'm done with that," she says.
"Good to hear." He doesn't sound like he believes her.
"So that's all?" she asks.
"That's all. You're going to live a relatively peaceful life with a steady
paycheck, shelter, and food."
Peaceful, she thinks.
She doesn't really do peaceful.
***** Dance *****
Chapter Summary
     Trigger WARNING: Vague mentions of past sexual abuse. DD/lg play in a
     very not healthy way. Not knocking safe, sane, and consensual age
     play…this just isn't that. Much dubcon. Do not read if these things
     are triggering for you or typically make you uncomfortable. If they
     do, you probably shouldn't read this story anyway.
Chapter Notes
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It is only her second day in and Erna has decided that the Survey Corps is not
for her.
It's not the nature of the job or the military structure itself, though she's
not a big fan of those aspects either.
They won't let her smoke.
The second Shadis caught her lighting up the first day, he chewed her out and
she had to stand there and take it silently. He had two squad leaders turn down
her bunk and throw out all of her cigarettes and matches. Apparently there is
no smoking in the Survey Corps.
Which is bullshit, she thinks. Death is an ever-present threat looming over her
for as long as she wears the wings of freedom. Even criminals about to face the
firing squad are offered a shot of vodka and a cigarette before their
execution.
What a joke.
She sits on an overturned crate against the outside of the stable. She's on
stall cleaning duty until further notice. Two days and she's already on
Shadis's shit list.
Her shoulders ache. Two weeks of training with the 3D maneuver gear did nothing
to prepare her for cleaning stables.
She rolls her neck as far as she can from one side to the other. There's a pain
that feels the way that knocking on tin sounds. Sharp. Metallic. It's a muscle
knot in her left trapezius. She needs to drink more water…and see if she can
manipulate someone into giving her a backrub.
Those are plans for later. For right now her concern is only making sure that
no one can see her. She checks, then listens. When she's sure that nobody can
see or hear her, she hops off of the crate, squatting down and lifting it up
just enough to reach under and feel around.
They found her cigarettes, but not the rolling papers and tobacco that she used
to make them.
She gets back up onto the large wooden crate, crossing her legs in front of her
she takes a rolling paper and props it gently between two fingers. She rolls a
cigarette that's much thicker than she normally would to compensate for the
fact that this will be the only one she'll get to enjoy today.
It isn't until she's licking it sealed and anticipating how good it's going to
feel that she realizes she doesn't have any matches.
A desperate whimper escapes her throat as she pats her pockets down just in
case. She might have one hidden that she forgot about. She opens the tin that
holds her tobacco and curses herself for not having the foresight to add
matches to the stash.
She knows in the back of her mind. The only matches she had got tossed with her
bunk.
Defeated, she places the cigarette between her lips anyway as a placeholder
while she tilts her head back against the side of the stable and tries to
figure out how the hell she's going to light it without a match.
She's so fucking tired. All she wanted was a cigarette. How unfair. She wonders
what she would need to fuck up to get placed on kitchen duty. There have to be
matches there.
While she's looking up at the clouds and feeling very sorry for herself, she
lets her guard slip. She should have heard the two sets of footsteps coming
around the corner before she heard a man's voice.
"Finished for the day?"
She flinches and reaches for her contraband, but then pulls back. She's caught
anyway. No point in hiding anything.
She narrows her eyes on the two intruders who have broken her relatively
peaceful moment of desperate and sorrowful contemplation. They're both fucking
huge compared to her. One is clean-shaven with blond hair and bright, curious
blue eyes. The other, taller man is a shaggy sandy blond with a bit of stubble
giving him a less clean cut look than his friend.
Instead of answering the question and stating the obvious, she cuts right to
the chase. "Are either of you officers?"
"No," the shorter man says. "Regular soldiers like you."
"Good."
"You shouldn't smoke," he says, gesturing to the cigarette between her lips.
"I'm not smoking," she points out.
He smirks. "Fair enough."
She eyes both of them up and down. She tries to decide if either of them looks
like they would be good at giving shoulder massages.
"I'm Erwin," the clean-cut blond says. "This is Mike."
Erna looks at the taller one again. "Does he talk?"
"Not much," Erwin says for him and smiles good-naturedly at her.
Erna looks Mike up and down. He's not one for words or facial expressions or
seemingly anything that would give away anything that he's thinking or feeling.
He's guarded. She can respect that.
"Erna."
"Nice to meet you."
Erwin's eyes are intense. She doesn't like the way they seem to try to be
looking past her mask.
"Were you looking for something? Or…?" she trails off.
Erwin brings his hand to the back of his neck shyly and smiles. "Just wanted to
get to know the new recruit. I'm naturally inquisitive. Some people consider it
a character flaw."
She can tell that he's faking. The shyness. This man's never felt shy about a
damn thing in his life. He's trying to be approachable and charming, trying to
disarm her. She wonders why.
He pauses, giving her space to respond. She won't. She sucks a little on the
unlit cigarette in her mouth. She waits and revels in the awkward silence. She
loves awkward silence. It makes a person uncomfortable, which causes them to
say more than they should.
He doesn't seem to get uncomfortable. He waits a polite, but not overeager
seven seconds before he says, "What brought you here?"
Her coaching and preparation for this assignment hadn't really gone over
whether she was expected to lie or even how to lie plausibly when people asked
her about herself. She doubts they would want her telling the truth, but, not
knowing what would make a good lie in this situation, she keeps her answer as
vague and dry as possible.
"Wanted a change of scenery."
"Where did you transfer from?"
She knew that this would be a problem. The timing. There shouldn't be any new
recruits this time of year. They aren't going to believe that she just
graduated the Training Corps and enlisted. The current corps of trainees won't
graduate until later this year.
"Ehrmich." That's where she grew up. That's where they caught her. That's where
she was tortured for months. It's as good an answer as any.
"Oh, so you were in the Military Police?"
She doesn't like how closely his eyes scrutinize her as he waits for her
answers. He is too curious.
"Yeah."
"We have a friend who joined the MPs. Maybe you've met him? Nile Dok."
She gets the feeling that he was only trying to get her guard down by speaking
more casually rather than continuing with the barrage of direct questions. He
doesn't know that he just tipped his hand too far.
"Nile and I were good friends," she says. "How do you know each other?"
"We grew up in the same district. Went to the same training camp and graduated
together. I haven't seen him in a long time. How is he?"
"I'd say life is treating him well." She doesn't really know that. It can't be
untrue, because she hasn't found him; therefore his life is still intact. She
hasn't been able to get any information on the fucker. The Military Police were
very careful about hiding him away somewhere once she was released.
She makes her voice warmer to let him think that he's got her. She acts like
her guard is down and that her suspicion is eased by the small talk. "What
district?"
"Inside Ehrmich."
"That's where I grew up."
"Oh?"
She looks at both of them a little skeptically now. "I doubt we were ever in
the same circles."
"What makes you think that?" he asks. She notes how charming he makes himself.
He's probably very popular with men and women alike. She's not sure, but she
thinks he may be faking his warmth. He may be calculating like her.
She takes the cigarette from her mouth finally, now that she's about to use her
lips for something longer than a terse sentence or two. "Your size. Those
muscles. You had enough to eat during your developmental years… more than
enough protein too. Your parents were well off."
Erwin looks a little surprised. Only for a moment. He gives her a sheepish grin
and says, "You're very smart."
She doesn't know about that. She's observant. She's had to be. She never could
have survived this long without being able to accurately read people.
So she shrugs the compliment off.
"Do either of you have any matches?"
In Erna's mind, there are three types of people. There are truly evil people –
cruel, venal, psychotic, fucked up. There are truly good people – she knows
them by their overall relaxed demeanor. They have almost no anxieties, very few
insecurities, and a moral compass so strong that they can decide when it is
okay to break the rules in order to do something right and good. Then,
somewhere in the middle are people who are trying very hard to be good because
they know that they have the potential for cruelty inside them. She's found
that these people follow authority a little more for the sake of it. They're
wary of breaking rules. They try so hard to do the right thing that sometimes
they end up doing more evil than they would if they'd just relax about it.
Erwin looks uncomfortable at the idea of helping her break the rule about
smoking.
He tenses up.
She thinks that he falls somewhere into the middle category of people.
Mike doesn't even blink, doesn't seem to care at all about breaking a rule that
doesn't make sense. He reaches into the inner pocket of his tan jacket and
comes closer to hand her a box of matches because her smoking hurts no one.
He falls into the category of truly good people.
As she strikes a match and lights her cigarette, she doesn't know how she's
going to use that information that she just gained, but she files it away
nonetheless.
Mike doesn't step back after giving her the matches. He towers over her, and
she thinks he leans in a little and inhales deeply. He only takes the smallest
step back when she exhales her first drag of sweet smoke.
He finally speaks to ask her in his deep, gruff voice, "What happened to your
fingers?"
He might actually be the sharper of the two. A disconcerting thought, as he's
also all but unreadable.
She holds out her hands, cigarette held between two fingers of the right one.
Her fingernails finished growing back completely only a month ago. The nails
themselves don't look any worse than the previous ones did before they were
brutally pulled out. They might even look better. The unfortunate thing is that
the nail beds underneath them are permanently burned black. It makes it look to
most people at a glance like she is wearing black nail polish.
Looking brings back the pain. She'll never forget the feeling. It floods her
mind and she can't come up with a good lie or even suppress the wince that
makes her eyes squint and her lips tighten into a thin line for only a moment.
"Nothing."
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
Erna adapts quickly. She never gets caught smoking again, though she's had to
cut down to one cigarette a day and sometimes not even that. She keeps her head
down. She prefers not to have to take the verbal lashings that Shadis gives
out, but if she has to, she does so with a straight face all while she imagines
gouging out his eyes.
The only way in which she stands out is in that she keeps to herself. That
seems to be an unusual trait among Survey Corps soldiers. In the beginning,
they could chalk that up to her being new, shy maybe. Lately she's had to be
more sociable in order to not attract unwanted attention or suspicion.
She is warm with her other squad members. She plays the part of being a little
unsure of her abilities, a little shy. They fucking eat it up. They think that
she's cute. That's an advantage her size and delicate bone structure has always
given her. She can easily be unassuming and non-threatening when she wants to
be.
She only needs to do this for a while. It's so that nobody will keep a guard up
with her while she's still assessing the people that surround her. Once she has
a good read on everyone, when she feels like she can predict their reactions
and knows their motivations inside and out, then she can go back to being more
herself.
Erwin and Mike are not part of her squad. They're assigned to a different squad
leader. It's just as well, because they make her slightly uncomfortable.
They're too smart…too observant…and too curious.
She likes to control when she will see them. She makes sure that neither of
them can ever find her when she doesn't want to be found.
She doesn't avoid them completely. In fact, she is more attentive to them than
they probably realize. She tries to keep an eye on Erwin. She wants to figure
out his routine. Wants to know when he showers, when he eats, how he trains.
He's curious about her…enough that he isn't going to let it go. His curiosity
could be a problem for her, depending on how much he's going to be able to
ascertain about the circumstances of her enlistment.
Mike, she is less worried about. He doesn't seem so inquisitive, though he is
naturally incredibly sharp and observant. If he pays her any attention, it's
only because his curiosity was piqued by his friend's unrelenting interest in
her.
She keeps a mental list of things that she needs to find out from Erwin and
Mike.
1) How long ago did they leave Ehrmich? This will give her an idea as to
whether or not they could recognize her name from any murmurings or gossip
about criminal activity in the district.
Brown had told her she should change her fucking name, but she'd told him that
he could have it over her cold, dead body. Her name is precious to her. That's
her stubbornness biting her in the ass. He was right. Her name may be
recognizable to anyone familiar with criminal organizations inside Wall Sina,
despite the low profile she always tried to keep.
2) What is their relationship with Nile? This is of paramount importance to
her. Getting an accurate location for the prick from these two would be much,
much easier than trying to do that research through military files.
If they're good friends with Nile, like Erwin said, then she wants to be
friends with them. She has plans for Nile. She might take years to act on them
– that sort of depends on how his life pans out. But if they have a connection
to him, then Mike and Erwin are people that she wants to keep in her back
pocket.
The rest of her list regarding them is not much different from the things she
wants to find out about everyone around her. What are their motivations? What
are their dreams? How can she bend them to her advantage? How could she break
them if necessary?
She's made it a habit to sit with them when they eat in the evening. The day-
to-day schedule isn't terribly strict under Shadis, though his other asinine
rules are held very strictly. People eat when they can, getting whatever is
available from the kitchen. They train when their squad leader tells them they
will. They socialize in between those moments.
Erna would change that if it were up to her.
The dining area is loosely defined as well. One can take their meal in the
kitchen, or in the dining hall, or in the courtyard outside of it in nice
weather. Everyone likes this arrangement but her. It makes Erwin and Mike more
difficult to find on any given day, and it makes it harder to make it look like
she wasn't seeking them out.
"Is that all you're having?" Erwin asks her as she sits on the bench across the
table from him, referring to the hard roll of bread in her hand.
"I don't need much," she says sweetly. She never got her appetite back after
months of starvation. The doctors said it might be like that. They mentioned
something about eating disorders commonly developing in people whose bodies
endure a starvation period.
She lets him make small talk. He's good at it. Better than she would be. And
she watches him closely.
She always sits next to Mike, across from Erwin. She doesn't need to watch
Mike. She knows that he will always be unreadable with his stubbornly stoic,
inscrutable expression. Smith she can read. Not as well as she can other
people, but she can at least see that, while she's scrutinizing him, trying to
look past that charming façade, he's doing the same to her.
One day he asks, "What made you want to leave the Military Police?"
"I realized it wasn't for me."
"It's certainly a safer assignment than this."
She makes an appeal to his altruism, to the part of him that wants so badly to
do good. "I wanted to do more for humanity."
What a fucking joke, but she delivered it well. He smiles, but it's the same
slight, warm, and possibly fake smile he makes anytime he's trying to charm
someone into dropping their guard, so she isn't sure if he bought the lie.
He's a difficult man to get to know. She never sees him fully let anyone
in…except for his friend, Zackarius. Nobody else thinks of him as difficult,
because he puts up a front of being friendly, helpful, excessively charming,
and he's handsome as hell.
People notice less when attractive people have odd traits. Nobody but her seems
to see his intense curiosity and slightly morbid need to know everything, to
pick apart anything that seems to be a puzzle.
The way he looks at her…she knows he sees her as a puzzle.
When a week or two of trying to form a friendship isn't getting anywhere, she
switches to trying to flirt with him. Romance or lust is easier for forming
quick attachment and trust than friendship. It's harder to fake friendship. She
can fake wanting to fuck him. She can fake infatuation pretty goddamn well.
Whenever she has time and privacy, she practices her smile in a hand mirror
that she borrowed from one of her squad members. Facial expressions are like
any other skill that requires physical coordination. You need to practice, get
the muscle memory down. Do it consciously and do it right until the brain maps
out the nerve signals to form a shy smile and can do it more automatically.
That's how it works for her anyway.
She has a nice laugh. She's lucky that way. That would be harder to learn. But
when she does decide to laugh, it's sweet sounding, like a little bell. It
sounds innocent. It makes people feel warmly toward her. She uses it sparingly,
only slightly, acting like she's trying not to snicker when he makes a
lighthearted joke with a wink and a smirk.
She makes her eyes bigger when he's around. She doesn't know why, but that's
what infatuated people do, she's noticed. She thinks it's fucking stupid, but
whatever.
Her body finds its way more and more into the edge of his personal space. She
sits next to him instead of across from him. She touches him just barely
sometimes, lightly. Sometimes her hand finds his bicep; sometimes her fingers
trail over his forearm.
She makes seemingly innocuous observations. She tells him that he smells good.
She asks him how he got so muscular. She says that she feels comforted around
him, that she feels safe with him.
She resorts to batting her long black eyelashes.
He infuriates her…sickens her…
Men are supposed to be easy. They are supposed to predictably think with the
head between their legs. He should have tried something by now. She's starting
to suspect that he might want actual romance, a slow build. She has the time
for that, but not the patience.
Or he could be gay. Normally she's good at reading sexual orientation in
people, but maybe she got this one wrong.
After two weeks of acting like a pathetic, lovesick little kitten, she's fed
the fuck up. Her patience for it is all gone. That night she clings to him
longer than usual, late into the night they talk. Long enough that at some
point, Zackarius, who she swears is something like Smith's bodyguard, leaves
them for the comfort of his bed.
She doesn't need to do any convincing. Erwin naturally offers to walk her back
to her room. He's a gentleman like that.
He doesn't tense up when she puts her hands around his bicep and clings to him
while they walk. That's not a good sign for her. People naturally tense up a
little when they're excited or nervous.
She wonders if he's like her…unable to feel nervousness.
Her hands release his arm when they reach her door. She trails her fingers down
to his hand instead and holds it. He only just starts to look a little
apprehensive. She looks up at him with her big, grey-blue eyes, and she goes
for broke. "You're terribly handsome, you know?" she hitches her voice just
half an octave deeper, just so that her intent is clear.
"Erna…" his lips frown slightly and his eyes tick away from hers. He looks
troubled.
It makes her nauseous when he says her name.
She raises a hand to his muscular chest, splays her fingers, touches him
comfortingly, and looks up at him with worry. "What's wrong? Is it me?" She
looks down at herself doubtfully, like he just told her that she's not pretty
or something equally stupid. She pouts and lowers her eyelids as if she cares
very much how he feels about her. She blinks rapidly, trying to force her eyes
to tear up.
"No, of course not." He squeezes her hand and flashes her that warm, charming
smile. "It's just… we can't… the rules…"
She takes her hands off of his chest and out of his grip. She wants to stomp on
his foot and tell him to stuff the fucking rules up his tight ass, the
difficult, stubborn, straight-edged prick. In her head she does just that.
Outwardly, she pouts and says quietly, "I see…"
"I'm sorry."
Still, she can't tell if he really is or not. After all this time she doesn't
know if he's ever being genuine, or if he is playing with people like she is.
She wonders if he practiced that smile in the mirror just like her.
"No, I'm sorry," she says. "I shouldn't have put you in that position." She
squares her shoulders a little like she's putting up a brave front despite a
broken heart. She turns away and grabs the doorknob like she's trying to get
away quickly so that she can go feel sorry for herself and lick her wounds.
"Good night."
Due to lack of space, Survey Corps soldiers are housed about four to a room,
two bunk beds each, so she tiptoes in quietly so as not to disturb any of her
sleeping roommates. Her bunk is the top one on the right side of the small
room. She barely ever sleeps in it anymore. She strips her clothes off in the
dark, hanging them over the foot of the bed and she creeps stealthily into the
lower bunk.
Her arms wrap around soft flesh. The woman sleeping there moans softly and Erna
shushes her, reminds her to be quiet so that they won't wake the others.
She chose this one because she has long, red, corkscrew-curly hair. She likes
redheads. They look wild and innocent at the same time, especially when they're
on top of you riding your fingers.
Her name is Aoife and she's good at purring like a kitten when Erna pulls her
hips towards her and slides her hand between her legs.
The nubile nineteen year old rolls over in the bed to face Erna and murmurs,
"Missed you…"
"I'm sorry baby…" Erna lies. She skims her fingers over the woman's milky white
thighs teasingly and flashes her an evil grin. "How should I make it up to
you?"
Aoife only hums sleepily in response as Erna lifts the covers and shifts down
to position herself between her legs.
Fuck rules, honestly…
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
Erna has to go on her first expedition her third month in.
She'd never seen a titan before. They are not what she expected. They move in
an unsettling way that is close, but not close enough to human.
Her squad congratulates her on racking up an assist and a solo kill for
herself. She is humble about it, because she doesn't want to let on how much
she enjoyed it. Killing titans may be her new favorite hobby. The rush is nice.
Maybe not as nice as killing a human being, but she has to take what she can
get.
She could get used to expeditions, she thinks, until night falls and she finds
out one key piece of information.
"What do you mean we sleep on the ground?" She asks Shadis in an outrage.
"I mean, unpack your tent, set it up, and go to sleep, Raban," he orders her,
his voice full of quiet rage. Warning her that if she doesn't comply he is
going to make her regret it.
She has had it with being ordered around by an idiot. This is the final straw.
"There are perfectly good trees right there!" She gestures to the forest close
by, as if he could miss the giant redwood trees.
"Titans don't move at night. You'll be fine on the ground."
"This is bullshit," she says to his back as he walks away.
"What was that, Raban?"
"…I said, I don't sleep on the ground, sir."
He turns back and gets very close to her and threatens her in a dull roar.
"I've had enough of your insubordination, Princess. One more outburst like that
and tomorrow morning we'll move out without you. You can stay here and be bait
for the titans."
She grits her teeth."...Yes, sir…"
She stares at him while he walks away. She imagines how she could kill him in
his sleep and make it look like an accident.
"You're right about the tents," a smooth voice says from behind her.
She turns around to face her personal inquisitor, investigator, antagonist,
who's always on her fucking heels, trying to figure her out. It feels like
they're always subtly chasing each other and trying to look friendly about it.
He is still unsatisfied with her weak explanation of her past and how she came
to be here. She still struggles to get scraps of personal information about
Nile out of him. Neither of them will ever let on about any of that, though.
They're both too cunning to ever be honest about why they're drawn together.
Erwin walks closer and elaborates, "The trees would be safer, and sleeping in
them would eliminate the need for tents which would be one less thing to carry,
and one more thing struck from the budget."
Erna hums disinterestedly. She doesn't care for the way he looks impressed with
her intelligence, because smart or not, there's nothing she can do about the
situation anyway. It makes her cranky. She tells him sarcastically, "I'll let
you steal that idea for when you're Commander then."
"Maybe I will."
She tosses her pack off of her shoulders and kicks it. "Is that your plan then?
Be the perfect soldier? Suck up to the higher ranks? Follow all the rules until
you're the one making them?"
She's been this way toward him for a week or two, more real. She let the nice
girl act drop when it started to become clear that it wasn't getting her
anywhere. It wasn't getting her closer into his confidence. It wasn't disarming
him. May as well relieve herself from the stress and the exhaustion that comes
of putting that mask on. Being more herself energizes her, to some extent. He
doesn't even seem to mind anyway. If anything, he's a little less guarded when
she's being real.
"You could say that's part of my goal, yes." He says it so self-seriously. This
is the most he's ever let Erna in.
That piques her interest. "What are you going to do after you're Commander?"
"I want to make humanity free again."
Erna could gag. Freedom is something you wrestle out of the hands of others and
hold onto with teeth and claws. It is not something to just give to people.
Besides, fuck humanity.
"How free?"
Erwin steps closer to her so that he can speak more quietly, because what he's
about to say is treason. "Free from a tyrannical government. Free from walls."
The look in his eyes is hungry. The spark that flickers there would look almost
maniacal if it weren't so hard and calculating.
She went back and forth often since their first meeting, trying to decide if he
is like her. She's never met another person incapable of empathy and she didn't
know what it would look like. It looks like the look in his eyes right now. He
is just as sure of his superiority over everyone as she is of hers.
She diagnoses him on the spot as a narcissistic sociopath with a god complex.
That's why he always seems so altruistic. He would save humanity. He would do
it only to prove that he is omniscient, infallible…god-like. He's in denial if
he thinks that he is being noble and good.
Erna has no such capacity for denial. She knows exactly what she is.
He can be a golden god if he wants. She'll leave him to it. Only so long as he
doesn't disrupt her way of life.
She tells him glibly as she bends down to begin setting up her tent, "When
you're in charge get rid of the rule about smoking as well."
He laughs softly and promises that he will.
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
Night is cold. It gets more and more so as the earth lets go of its sun-
drenched heat. The ground is damp. The smell of it makes Erna think of her
cell.
She made some promises to herself when she gave up and let the Military Police
win their little struggle. One of those promises was that she would never sleep
on the cold, hard ground again. It makes her bones ache with the psychological
pain of memory. It's the same way that stabbing pains shoot to her brain when
she looks at her fingernails. Her memories haunt her with burning, pricking,
throbbing pain associated with what came along with sleeping on the hard floor
of her cell.
She whips her blanket off and gets up and out of her tent before a panic attack
can overtake her.
Pacing quietly on the balls of her feet, weaving through a small sea of
identical green tents, she tries to think of a solution to this problem. She
explores her options. There are three basic paths to getting anything one
wants. Stealing is one. She could look for extra bed rolls or blankets in the
supply carts and fashion herself a softer mattress. Convincing is another. She
could simply coax others into giving her the soft pillows, bed rolls, blankets,
whatever she would need to be able to sleep. The third option is to get
creative.
She's always been a creative genius when it comes to the art of getting what
she wants.
She finds Zackarius' tent and pads softly over the grass until she is close
enough to say very softly, "Mike?"
There's no sleepiness in his voice when he knowingly says, "Erna."
She squats down and opens the tent flap a little. He's lying on his back, hands
behind his head. She asks, "How did you know it was me?"
"Could smell you moving around out there." He shifts a little, bringing his
head and neck up slightly to look at her. "Couldn't sleep?"
Mike's nose is something she's learned to be careful of. She never smokes at
times when she doesn't want him to find her. He can smell one of her cigarettes
from a mile away.
She finds herself feeling glad that it is so dark. She hasn't practiced her
vulnerable expression in a long time. She isn't confident that she could get it
right. She can, however, fake the feeling with her voice easily. She takes on a
soft tone, making herself sound small. "I, um…" she stammers intentionally. "I
don't do well in the dark."
She can see his face just a little in the moonlight that filters in behind her.
She can see that wolfish, condescending smirk. "You're afraid of the dark?"
Her lips pout. She makes it sound like she's trying to save her pride. "I'm
fine when I'm not alone…I just don't like being alone in the dark…"
He grunts in response, as if to say, 'What do you want me to do about that?'
She looks down shyly, lowering her eyelashes and playing nervously with the hem
of her shirt. "Could I… Do you think I could sleep with you?"
He hums low in his throat, like a warning growl.
She straightens up a little. He's not going to buy the shy thing. He probably
sees right through it, but it seems to have sparked his interest anyway. So he
likes her being coquettish. She can do that.
Her voice is lower and edged with lust when she says, "I feel safe with you."
She waits for him to say something. She doesn't move from her kneeling position
at the tent opening and she won't until he gives her a positive indication that
he wants her to. Monster that she is, she's never forced herself on anyone.
In the dark she has to narrow her eyes a little to catch every single minute
detail of his body language. The way he spreads his powerful legs just
slightly, adjusting himself before he says with a dark, rich voice, "There's
not much room," doesn't escape her notice.
"That's okay…" She crawls forward on hands and knees, slinking over him in the
small space. She straddles his hips and sits up tall on top of his large frame.
She splays her fingers over his chest. "I don't take up much room."
His big, rough hands find her hips and he digs his fingers into her soft flesh
as he growls and grinds his hips up into hers. She smiles down at him.
As his hands slide up, briefly stopping to squeeze her ass before caressing the
arch of her back and settling possessively around her waist, she wonders if he
gets approached for sex often, because he seemed to know her game from the very
beginning.
It would make sense. He looks like he would have a big cock, and he's certainly
sexy if heavy muscles and calloused hands are your thing. She wouldn't be
shocked if a quarter of the Survey Corps tried to use him for a good fuck.
"Will you be gentle with me?" She asks, coy and teasing. "I haven't been with a
man in a long time."
None of that is a lie. Her interest in men is rare. She hasn't had sex with a
man in about a year. Not since that quick fuck with that nobleman whom she
ended up strangling to death. She picks and chooses very carefully when she
will try to lie to Mike. He's too smart for most of her lies. He's quiet, but
she's seen enough to tell that he's sharp, keenly observant, and difficult to
fool.
He doesn't answer her, except by sliding a hand up between her shoulder blades
and pressing her down onto him, capturing her mouth in a long kiss. She plays
it up and forces his mouth open more with her tongue. When he parts his lips
for her, she gives the lower one a sudden nip with her canine.
He grips her waist harder and pushes her just slightly up and holds her there.
"I need to be gentle, but you don't?" He says teasingly as he licks over his
bitten lip.
"Yes," she says as she smiles mischievously, "You're bigger than me."
She says it because she thinks he may have a size kink. She seems to be right,
because the reminder makes him moan. She pushes her hands under his shirt,
sliding her fingers over the hard creases of his muscles, and she adds, "And
much stronger."
He hums and she ghosts her lips over his throat to feel the vibration. She has
a thing for his rich, deep baritone. She prefers women's bodies, but somehow
men's deep voices still get her off. She tongues at his pulse and earns another
deep moan.
"I'll be very gentle with you," he promises only a little sarcastically.
She keeps flicking teasing licks over his neck, his earlobe, his collarbone
while he busies himself with the buttons on the long-sleeved white shirt
underneath her jacket. She has so much fun testing his reactions, noting what
really makes him gasp and growl that she almost forgets something. Suddenly
when he has the last button undone and his rough hands are pushing at her
clothes, trying to peel the shirt and jacket away in one go, she remembers,
jolting up as if she were stung.
Her reaction is disconcerting to him. Immediately he holds his hands up, he
stops his breathing, and goes still, afraid that he did something wrong without
realizing. "Are you okay?"
She exhales a deep breath. This time the vulnerability in her voice is real.
"Sorry…" She casts her eyes down and fingers at the material of her jacket.
"Let me keep this… I have some scars. I'm shy about them."
There's a twinge of sympathy at the corners of his eyelids. She's worried that
she fucked up her plan. Oh well. It would have been fucked either way. He would
have seen the deep, jagged scars over her back from whips, steel-tipped
floggers, and the like, and he would have been too disturbed to continue. Or,
now, he'll feel too much pity for her admission and be too disturbed to
continue.
But, unexpectedly, the sympathy only covers his face for a split second. Then
it's gone and the lust-blown feral look creeps back over his features as he
slides a hand up her abdomen to hook a finger through her bra and pull her
down, bringing her face close to his again. "You…" he says, "have nothingto be
shy about."
Never underestimate the power of a healthy libido to stamp out any feelings of
sympathy or pity that might hold a person back from doing something debauched.
He doesn't try to remove her shirt or jacket, but he doesn't hesitate to push
her bra up and over her chest to expose her perky little breasts tipped with
light pink nipples that quickly come to attention once exposed. His hands
tighten around her waist and easily pull her up his body, like she weighs
nothing, until she's straddling his abs instead of his hips and her chest is
better positioned for him to cover one of those pink nipples with his mouth.
She decides he definitely has a size kink, because she would have thought he'd
be disappointed with only an A-cup. Her breasts used to be bigger, back when
she still had some body fat. It hasn't been long since the hospital and she is
still in the process of recovery. Contrary to her fear, he gets more excited by
the fact that he can fit one in the palm of his hand and cover most of the
other with his mouth.
He closes his eyes and tongues away at her, muffled groans and grunts
complementing the way she whimpers and sighs. He tweaks her other nipple
between two fingers and she can feel his lips curl into an evil smirk when she
yelps.
"Gentle," she scolds.
He laves his tongue over her, in apology for the rough treatment.
She arches her back in ecstasy and lets him caress and worship her. He's good
with his mouth and his hands…much better than she expected. She would have
thought he would be rough, unskilled, and lazy, getting by his whole life
without needing to compensate for any lack of size or good looks.
Her breathing gets harder because she's excited. She loves when people actually
manage to surprise her.
She turns to try to look behind her and see how hard he is, but it's too dark,
and he won't let her twist around too much, stubbornly holding her in place so
that he can keep lavishing his attention over her breasts. She's curious to see
what he's packing in those suffocating white pants, but she could also be just
as happy ignoring his cock. Either she'll get through this without even needing
to touch it, or his frustration and need will build up until he's a desperate,
feral, rutting mess who will be too far gone to be considerate when he's
fucking into her as hard as he can. And she is equally happy with either of
those options.
As long as she gets hers.
She undoes the button on the waist of her pants and unzips them just enough.
Gently, she takes the wrist of the hand kneading at the curve of her breast and
she guides it down. He takes the cue easily, sliding his fingers under the
white fabric, palming at her and probing at the silky panties she wears because
– Walls help her – she likes pretty, soft, smooth things sometimes.
He releases her nipple from his mouth with one last long, wet suck, and looks
up at her with dark eyes, blown black. His fingers apply a little more pressure
to her lips and curl upward, teasing her. "So wet…"
It feels a little like he might be mocking her. She wants to ask what he
expected. She's human. She's not made of stone.
And it shows when his thumb rubs over the fabric covering her clit and she
whimpers, pants, and can't stop a high-pitched keening sob from making its way
past her parted lips.
The powerfully defined muscles in his arm roll and flex as he adjusts. He
slides his hand under the silk that's covering her and he pushes the heel of
his palm against her clit, making her buck her hips to keep up the friction she
wants, ensuring that she needs to act like a wanton little slut if she really
wants to get off. She can't stop her hips from rolling frantically, desperately
rutting against his hand, trying so hard to hurry towards that release. She can
feel his condescending, crooked, knowing smirk against her neck. In stark
contrast to her impatient movements, he slides one finger past her lips,
filling her up with it, and sliding it in and out of her slowly and languidly.
"You're so tight," he says, almost like it's a bad thing.
She's past the point of being able to concentrate on his voice. She's deep
inside her head, picturing the awful, fucked up things that she needs to
imagine in order to push herself over the edge of her climax. She thinks of
innocent people being tortured and fucked, used and treated like objects, she
finally comes when she imagines their faces going listless with shock, finally
accepting what's happening to them. She shudders and convulses around Mike's
probing finger, gasping for air and then sighing at the intensity of it,
melting bonelessly against him.
He hums and supports her weight easily with one hand around her waist. His lips
kiss her neck softly over and over and he murmurs things as she comes down off
of her high, chiefly among those things being, "That was beautiful."
If only he knew what was in her head.
"Do you want to keep going?"
She thinks he must be a saint if he can still restrain himself enough to ask
that. She smirks evilly and tilts her chin up to look at him. She teases, "What
if I don't?"
He smirks back at her, his eyes twinkling with mischief. "Then I think I've a
right to kick you out so that I can finish myself off in peace."
A slight laugh gets exhaled out her nose. "Is that right, Zackarius? Are you
blackmailing me?"
"I might if I thought I needed to."
She wiggles further down him, squirming over his lap and pressing at the bulge
in his pants. "And what makes you so confident that you don't? I already got
mine."
He doesn't say anything. His answer is in the cocky smile he flashes her.
She gets busy adjusting herself. He spreads his legs for her and she gets on
her knees between his thighs. She likes his thigh muscles a lot. She shows her
appreciation for them by pressing her palms over them, splaying her fingers,
massaging them in upward circles. She keeps watching his eyes, only feeling
more and more encouraged by how desperate he begins to look with his panting
lips and dark pupils.
He doesn't say a word, but with his whole body he's fucking begging her to
touch his cock.
She forgot how much she liked being with men sometimes. It makes her feel so
powerful. She loves the look they get when they become absolutely undone, all
of that masculine strength and bravado turned to a whimpering, needy mess.
Determined to get Zackarius to that point, she lowers her mouth and ghosts her
lips over the growing bulge at the crotch of his pants.
He grunts, his abdomen rising and falling with deep, labored breaths. Not one
to be undone so easily, he warns her sternly, "Don't tease."
Erna makes a little indignant huff and mutters to herself, "No fun at all…" but
she complies with his demand and makes quick work of the button and zipper at
the front of his pants before hooking her fingers into the waist. He lifts his
hips for her and she tugs, both the pants and his briefs, down his thighs and
off. Then she registers with a little shock the extent of her new predicament.
Her eyes go wide and she clucks her tongue. "Tch…Are you fucking kidding me?"
He raises his eyebrows at her. "Something wrong?"
"Something wrong?" she mimics him mockingly. She points at his half-hard cock
and says, "You didn't really think that was going to fit inside me did you?"
She doesn't wait for him to answer; she doesn't want to know. "I mean…I
expected…I don't know what I expected…but this is not okay. You are not fucking
me with that."
He smirks at her and laughs low, like he thinks she's kidding or trying to
flatter him.
"Seriously," she says, "Look at how big I am and look at how big you are.
You're not even completely hard and that thing is as big as my forearm."
"We can work with it," he says, bringing his hands behind his head and
relaxing, like he's prepared to let her take all of the time she needs.
The smug bastard. "Don't even tell me that this has worked for anyone."
"You're the first to complain about it," he tells her with a very self-
satisfied smile. "It's worked for other women your size with a little
patience…and a little persistence… "
She raises an eyebrow at him and smirks. "So you like fucking little girls."
That does it. His eyelids lower and a dangerous growl rumbles in his chest.
Before he decides to get forceful and show her just how right she is, she wraps
both of her hands around the base of his big cock, testing the weight of it.
She angles it this way and that, eyeing it as if it's a puzzle to be solved.
Her experimental stroking sates him for now and he relaxes again, content to
let her play.
Her thumb rubs lazy, gentle circles over the skin at the underside of his shaft
and slowly, she gets him to his full size, heavy and hard and way too big for
her, she thinks. Her lips close around the tip of him gently in an imitation of
a chaste kiss and that changes his breathing, making him hitch and stutter and
moan differently. She looks up at him, her lips still only a hair's breadth
away from touching and sucking and licking, and she observes with a sinful
smile, "You like when I play innocent."
He can't answer her with speech. He's too far gone. The look in his eyes is
enough answer anyway.
She thinks she's proven enough already how not innocent she is, but this
newfound kink gives her ideas for another time. Originally, she hadn't planned
on more than one time for this, but Zackarius is more fun than she expected.
His cock twitches when she fists him more firmly with both hands. One hand
would be easier, but she likes using both as a subtle reminder of how big he
is. She can wrap both around him one on top of the other and still not
completely cover his length. That leaves the rest for her mouth. She sucks and
licks languidly, not in any kind of rush. She wants to test the extent of his
patience. Her tongue teases along the slit, probing softly before curling
around, flicking at the ridge under the head.
The way her mouth needs to stretch when she tries to take more of him in makes
her drool, slicking him up so that sliding her lips up and down becomes easier
with every half inch gained. Her cheeks hollow as she sucks at him and her eyes
turn upward for a reaction.
He's gone. His dark eyes are locked on her and his lips are parted as if he
forgot how to breathe. His chest rises and falls in labored breaths and when
she looks up at him, her eyes wide and framed by long, dark eyelashes, his
throat gets strangled by the most broken moan she's ever heard.
She sucks upward and releases his cock with a wet pop, just so that she can
tell him, "You're lucky I have a thing for being choked."
And she gets to work, her goal being to make him come as hard as is humanly
possible. She runs her hands over his head, swirling its coating of saliva and
precum down to wet the rest of his shaft before taking him back in her mouth.
She's done teasing him with sucks and licks; now she only focuses on safely
fitting his huge cock down her throat. She keeps herself relaxed, even as her
airways get blocked off. When she hits the back of her throat and can't go
further, he moans, but it's not good enough for her. She squirms and shifts,
trying to find an angle where she can fit more, but she's not successful before
her eyelashes start to flutter and the edges of her vision go grey, telling her
that she has to come up for air. She pulls up suddenly, gasping hard,
hyperventilating, and even through the haze of lust he manages to flash her a
smug look and praise her.
"Good girl."
Something about that fills her skin with fire and makes her clit throb. She
whines pitifully.
"You want more than that?"
She pouts and nods a little shyly, like a good girl. She wants to feel him deep
in her throat and doesn't want the psychological safety of being able to come
up for air so easily. She wants it to really choke her. She wants the knowledge
of the danger that she might not get any oxygen at all unless she fights for it
or he decides to give it to her.
He sits up suddenly and his hands are around her waist again, pulling her up,
turning her around, and then grabbing at her thighs, pulling them apart. He
handles her like a ball-jointed doll until she's straddling his broad chest,
facing away from him. His hand slides up her back and pushes her down until her
face meets the tip of his swollen cock again.
"Like that," he says.
He's right. It's easier. She can suck him down deep and the way her throat is
stretched out straight in this position she can wriggle down and force more of
it past her choking point. Her eyelids lower lazily as she deprives her body of
air and when she moans the vibration makes his hips buck and stutter.
When she can't take more without passing out, she slides back up, until it's
only the tip in her lips again. She sucks greedily at it while she fills her
lungs with air.
If they were anywhere near a similar height, Mike would be able to lick her
while she enjoys her exercise in masochism, but to get her hips close enough to
his mouth he would have to pull her off of his cock. And he's certainly not
doing that. He compromises and instead peels her pants down her thighs and
strokes her silky lips with his fingers while she bears down on him again,
pushing until his cock is enclosed tightly in her wet throat. He licks his
fingers to taste her, and then teases her with them again, smirking at how she
rocks back like a needy little whore, moaning and whining around his cock. He
only pushes one finger into her up to the first knuckle, not deep enough to
really satisfy how badly she wants it. He pumps in and out agonizingly slowly,
her pussy clamping down on him and pulsing as he only pushes in a centimeter
further each time.
"So tight," he murmurs. He thinks he'll content himself with taking her throat.
The wet little cunt he's playing with feels like a vise even around his finger.
He wouldn't be able to move if he did manage to fit.
He brings his finger back to his mouth and sucks at it, savoring the taste of
her on his tongue. It's clear, clean, almost flavorless, but his nose catches
notes that others wouldn't. Her taste has a hint of an acidic quality that's
unique.
She whines at him, her throat tightening and vibrating around his cock,
wordlessly begging him to keep fucking her with his finger. With a
condescending smile and lust-blown blackened eyes, he obliges her, this time
rolling the pad of his thumb over her clit as an extra reward for taking him so
nicely.
She goes up for air again, sucking at his head, tonguing his slit, getting him
wet with precum before forcing it back into her throat.
Mike feels the pressure building. He imagines pumping her full of burning heat.
His thick cock twitches in her, and he can only think about how tight and warm
she is as she presses back to sink deeper onto his finger.
He pumps his finger in and out of her as fast and as hard as he'd like to be
fucking into her with his cock, but it doesn't make her speed up her attentions
with her mouth. He's glad that she's having fun asphyxiating herself, but he's
losing patience. So he bucks his hips experimentally, pushing further. When she
moans instead of tensing up or choking, he tries asking, between grunts and
desperate breaths, "Do you want me to…fuck that tight…little…throat?"
He can't help snapping his hips up and actually fucking into her even as he
asks for permission. He's too far gone to be able to hold himself back from
wrecking her no matter how she felt about it. The way she whimpers, moans, and
whines, so pitiful and desperate, it's hard to tell if her noises mean she
wants him to keep going or wants him to stop. But the way her hand reaches down
carefully and massages his balls as he chokes her more and more tells him that
she's alright if he keeps going.
He goes ahead and keeps pushing in and withdrawing a little less every time.
She's only able to moan when he pulls out enough for her vocal chords to have
some room to vibrate. When he pushes back in the only sound is the wet, lewd
sound of her gagging around his length.
It registers in his foggy brain when she starts to struggle. Somewhere in the
back of his head he knows that she needs air, but that fact combined with the
consideration that he doesn't really want to hurt her do not combine to
override every instinct telling him to keep going and pump his release deep
inside her. So when her hands dart to his thighs, digging their nails into the
muscles, it does nothing to slow him down, doesn't even make him consider
pulling out. Instead, he curls both arms over her back, pushing her down and
holding her still for him.
Her struggle only seems to spur him on, exciting him further. Erna gets lost
somewhere between wanting to breathe and survive and wanting to be used and
hurt. Her eyelashes flutter, her head lolls, she starts to feel boneless like a
rag doll.
His arms crush her to him as he tips over the edge, his thick cock pulsing
inside her and filling her with heat, deep enough down her throat that she
can't do anything but swallow. It comes in thick spurts seemingly forever and
he makes her take it all before he finally pulls out and allows her to gasp and
cough and curl in on herself, cursing when she has enough breath to.
As Mike's head clears, his conscience comes to the forefront and makes him feel
quite guilty. His hands smooth over her back comfortingly even through body
wracking coughing spasms. She pushes herself up, he helps steady her when she
sways a little with dizziness, she turns around and he asks sheepishly if she's
okay.
Her breathing is even again, but her voice is so raw when she clucks her tongue
at him. "Tch. Of course I'm okay. I told you I have a thing for being choked."
She rolls off of him and to the side, shimmying out of her pants, she takes her
panties off and uses them as a rag to clean herself of all the wetness he
caused her, simply saying under her breath, "Gross," and tossing them to the
side.
Mike doesn't do anything to cover himself or clean up. He's far too fucked out
and sleepy for it. Erna pulls her pants back up her legs and buttons them
closed so that she'll be able to get up and go easily before morning.
She crawls back on top of him, resting her head on his deep broad chest and
nuzzling into him, curling up on him like a cat. He cranes his neck a little to
sniff her hair before drifting into a deep sleep.
Erna kneads her fingers against the big muscles and stretches out a little,
getting herself comfortable on top of him.
It might have been a bit of work, but she thinks it was definitely worth it.
Mike is a perfectly acceptable bed.
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
The first night of the expedition, she did it for strictly utilitarian
purposes. The second night, it's still so that she'll have a warm, soft thing
to sleep on, but maybe also it's for some fun. His size, his masculinity, and
his particular streak of kink have inspired her.
This time, when Erna sneaks to his tent in the dark, she doesn't ask permission
to come in. He's sitting up and ready for her, even though she never told him
she'd be coming back.
She waits until she's on her knees in front of him. She's holding his heavy,
thick cock in both hands, teasing it by softly brushing her lips over the head
while he makes deep growling sounds in his chest. She looks up at him with big,
innocent eyes and asks without a hint of hesitation or shame, "Can I call you
Daddy?"
It's honestly the most innocent and non-violent of any of her fantasies, but
still Mike's pupils suddenly blow wide, making his eyes look so much darker.
His mouth twists into an arrogant smile as he breathes a slight laugh out his
nose.
He nods. Then, his hand cards into her black curly locks, keeping her head
tilted up to hold eye contact with him as he brushes her hands away. He takes
himself in hand and lightly smears the head of his cock over her lips, wetting
them with precum, as he gets impossibly harder. His voice rumbles, "Such a good
girl."
Erna had some intuition that he'd already done this before, or at least had
thought about it. He plays the part perfectly. She wasn't aware that being made
to feel small and helpless was a kink she had until the night before, but it
made sense to her now. Getting off to the memory of being taken advantage of,
getting turned on to the thought of her innocence being destroyed…it was how
she learned to cope. What happened to her was ugly and damaging, but she
embraced it. She learned to make it her own and enjoy it.
And, fuck, did she enjoy it a lot.
She puts on her practiced shy, innocent face and she moans softly, "Mm… Can I
lick you, Daddy?" as she eyes his thick, leaking cock that he's holding just
out of her reach.
He twitches on that last word. A shudder runs through his body as he resists
the urge to start roughly fucking her face right there until tears stream down
her cheeks.
He watches her eyes glimmer as she hears a slight groan get caught in his
throat. He has to tilt his head back a little, look upward, and swallow hard.
He takes a couple of deep breaths. When he feels like he has the ravaging
animal inside him under control, he looks down at her with dark eyes again and
he taps his cock against her innocent, pouting lips. "Are you hungry, little
girl? You want a taste of your Daddy's cock?"
Erna nods eagerly, tapping into the childish side of her that is at most times
only a memory. The part of her that is still intact somewhere, separated from
all of the breaking that happened later, still innocent. She opens her mouth
for him, never taking her wide eyes off his half-lidded, lust-darkened ones.
He pushes past her perfect, glossy lips and angles his cock to push down on her
soft, pink tongue, watching it flatten beautifully under the weight of him. Her
lips close around him and she sucks on him like a lollipop, making sweet little
cooing noises.
"Oh, that's a good girl," he growls. Her eyes close as she continues to hollow
her cheeks out and suck on him like he's the best thing she's ever tasted, like
she was starving for him. When it gets to be too much and he feels pressure
building up in his abdomen, sinking down to his balls, he pulls out of her warm
mouth with a wet pop.
She makes her eyes bigger and pouts at him with reddened, wet lips. She whines
at him pitifully, "Daddy…"
There's a hint of an evil smile that plays across his lips before he tells her
with an authoritative but nurturing quality, "You have to ask nicely for it."
"Daddy, please." She draws out the last word in a long, desperate whine. He
watches her squirm at how hard the throbbing between her legs is getting. She
rubs her thighs together and looks conflicted about how wet she is. Her
frustration makes her voice high and tight. "Please just fuck my mouth with
your big cock, Daddy?"
Mike raises his eyebrow at her and fills his deep voice with condescension,
patronizing her. "Oh?" he says. "And when did Daddy's little girl get such a
filthy mouth?"
"Unhh," she whines. Her usual self is stripped away in this moment. In her
headspace she really is a helpless little girl, with the emotional maturity of
one, which means that she gets frustrated easily and wants what she wants right
away. Impulsively, she reaches for his cock, but he holds it and tilts it back
away from her in one hand, easily trapping her wrist with the other.
He squeezes her wrist tight and taunts her. "You're being a very naughty girl."
"But I want it," she whines. To her mind, that's all the justification she
needs.
She pouts and looks heartbroken when he releases her wrist and uses his hands
to tuck himself back into his pants, buttoning them closed again while giving
her a very stern look. She pays his displeasure with her behavior little mind
as her eyes turn to the way the tight white pants outline the giant cock
they're confining.
Promptly, with no warning, he gets down on the ground with her and pushes her
back, manhandling her like a toy. Her legs get pulled out from under her, and
grabbing her ankles tightly, he lifts her hips up off the ground to hook her
legs over his shoulders as he draws himself up from his knees. With her legs
draped over his broad shoulders, she can only look up at him helplessly as she
hangs against him, only her shoulders, head, and neck touching the ground. As
she squirms and makes little noises of protest, he runs his thumb over her
pants, her thighs now open like an offering to him, and he presses down right
over where the fabric covers her core. With a wicked, deep baritone that
rumbles dangerously through his chest, he says, "Let's see how naughty you
are."
He roughly pulls at her clothes, peeling them away only with enough patience to
uncover what he wants, leaving her looking wrecked, shirt unbuttoned to her
navel, bra pushed up, pants only pulled down to mid-thigh. It makes her look
more disheveled than she would if he took the time to strip away everything and
it lights a fire in him.
Her moan comes out broken, torn from being at odds with the shame she knows she
should feel. She cries out softly, "Daddy, no."
"What's this?" he stares at her in mocking wonder. "You're not wearing any
panties?" He runs a finger over her exposed cunt on display for him, making her
flinch and shudder. "When did you get so wet?"
Her teeth worry her lower lip. She can't keep her hips from bucking up to meet
his fingers, begging to be filled up by them. She looks away and pouts. "Just
wanted your cock…"
"Mmm," he rumbles. "But only good little girls get what they want."
"I am good!" she insists.
He raises his eyebrow at her skeptically. "Good girls don't talk back…" he
looks again to her puffy, pink lips and he teases them open with a rough,
calloused finger, then holding it up to show her, he says, "And they don't get
this wet."
Her eyes get big, her blown black pupils giving them a deep liquid look. She
turns them away and avoids looking at him.
He won't have that. His hand smacks the side of the rounded muscle of her ass
and a sharp crack resounds through the confines of the small tent. She yelps in
surprise and he locks his eyes on hers as he warns, "Look at me when I'm
talking to you, girl."
She nods with a newfound respect, eyes widened as if she's surprised that he
spanked her.
"This…" he says as he probes at her wet little entrance with his finger again,
pushing past her lips and pumping slowly, "…is very naughty."
Confusion and ecstasy are in conflict over her face. Her leg muscles tighten
and flex, pulling up to try and take his finger deeper even while he scolds her
for it.
He teases a second finger slowly inside her, pumping languidly. She hisses and
winces a little at the addition, but then he reprimands her for it. "Daddy
can't have his precious little girl behaving like a wanton slut."
And she goes boneless, sagging against him, her leg muscles giving out so that
he has to grip his free hand against a thigh to hold her up. She whines and he
can feel her just beginning to tighten up around his fingers, barely starting
to convulse. He pulls them out quickly. He isn't letting her come yet.
Her hips stutter unevenly as her orgasm gets interrupted. She frowns at the
unfairness of it and lets him know her feelings on what he just did by
delivering a sharp kick to his shoulder blade, which doesn't hurt him, but
makes him smile smugly before casually bringing the two wet fingers to his
mouth and inhaling deeply as he tastes them.
He takes his time enjoying her unique flavor, thinking that he'd like to plunge
his tongue deeply inside her to get more. Only she certainly doesn't deserve
that after her little tantrum.
When he's done, he looks down at her face, her nose scrunched up cutely as she
glares at him. He frowns back at her. He thinks his little girl needs some
discipline.
"Did you think you deserved to come, you spoiled little slut?"
The severity in his voice makes her falter and change her expression as she
realizes her error and feels a little intimidated. She looks up at him
apologetically and whines, "I'll be good, Daddy…"
"Oh we're going to make sure of that," he warns. "Daddy's going to have to
punish you."
She tenses up as he reaches up and unhooks her legs from his shoulders, swiftly
depositing her back down on the ground. He orders her to turn over onto her
hands and knees so that she can take her spanking.
She pouts and brings her knees up to her chest instead, circling her arms
around them and hugging her legs. She whines like a spoiled, precocious little
brat, "But, Daddy…"
"It's going to be worse if you keep sassing me, girl," he threatens.
"But I'll be good."
"I don't doubt that," he says as he easily grabs her delicate small frame and
turns her over, swiftly delivering a smack to her round little ass before she
can struggle and try to squirm away. "There, now," he says, caressing over the
red mark he just made. "Be good and take your punishment."
Her breath hitches in her throat, cutting off her pained gasp to moan, "Yes,
Daddy…"
He delivers three more quick, sharp smacks and watches her flesh shake after
each forceful blow. His cock twitches in his pants each time one of her cries
of pain morphs into a needy moan. He would love to spank her more…and much
harder…if they were somewhere more private with less chance of getting caught
at any moment. For now this has to be enough.
His hands smooth over her burning skin. Her back arches and she presses back
against his touch. He digs his thumbs in, denting her skin, leaving white
thumbprints behind. He inhales sharply with a hiss as his cock throbs harder,
demanding not to be ignored any longer. Giving one last squeeze, he slides his
hand up toward her shoulder blades and pushes her down until her face meets the
ground so that her lovely ass and thighs are better presented for him. With the
other hand he hurriedly unzips his pants again, releasing his straining cock,
taking himself in his fist and giving a few well-needed strokes to soothe the
monster.
When she hears his zipper, she tenses and tries to turn around to see what he's
doing, but he holds her down.
"Close your legs, naughty little girl."
She whines with trepidation as she does as he told her. Mike strokes his cock,
swirling the now steadily leaking precum over the head, down his shaft, and
pumping up again, tightening his grip toward the top of his stroke as he stares
at her pretty, pink little pussy, swollen and dripping for him like a ripe
peach. He presses and prods the tip of his cock experimentally against her lips
as he keeps stroking himself.
She gets tense as a bowstring and whines pitifully, "Daddy, don't," feeling
helpless and small as he keeps her pressed flat against the ground, his body
curling over hers.
He shushes her and slides his cock up and down her wet slit, coating the head
in more lubrication. "Don't worry. Daddy's not going to hurt you."
He pushes slowly, to little effect. He can barely get the tip of his head past
her opening. Something in her clamps down and makes her impossibly tight. He
grunts as he meets the resistance. He tries withdrawing and pushing again, but
it doesn't loosen her up. He can't fuck any further into her without probably
causing her a great deal of pain.
He considers trying anyway. He keeps pulling out to the tip and pushing forward
to the point of resistance until she whines at him again, her vocal chords raw,
"Daddy, please don't."
That time it gets through to him and he feels briefly ashamed of himself. He
murmurs at her, "Shh… Daddy was only playing with you," as he pulls out
completely, letting her up and giving her room to turn around and face him.
She gives him a very indignant look. "You're too big, Daddy."
His lips curve briefly into a smile before returning to their straight line. "I
know. Come here."
She snuggles onto his lap, into his outstretched arms and she scolds him for
being a bad daddy and trying to fuck her. He makes it up to her, finding her
clit and rolling it under his thumb, making her roll her hips and sigh.
"Do you want to taste yourself on Daddy's cock?"
She hums before crawling off of his lap to close her mouth around his cock
greedily. He pulls her hips to him so that he can still reach her wet cunt and
make her moan. He places a hand on the back of her bobbing head. He wants to
bury himself in her throat.
She cants her hips back and he offers her a finger to fuck herself on as he
pushes harder and more insistently into the wet heat of her mouth.
"That's a good girl…" He strokes her hair as she relaxes and swallows him down
as deep into her throat as she can. "Take it all…take all of Daddy's cock…so
good…going to fill your tight little throat…"
He lets her come this time when he feels her tighten around his finger and her
walls pulse around him. He inhales deeply and bucks his hips until he feels her
throat tighten in choking spasms. The hand in her hair holds her down while she
struggles for air and he tells her, "So close, baby girl. Take all of Daddy's
cum."
He grunts and pants as the pressure in him explodes and his release empties
into her. As soon as he takes his hand from the back of her head, she pops up,
swallowing, coughing, and gagging.
With the lust ebbing away and clarity filtering in, he suddenly feels guilty
for the second night in a row. He wonders if he was too rough.
Erna wipes her mouth, wipes the tears away from the corners of her eyes. He
opens his mouth, knowing that he should ask her if she's okay, maybe even
apologize. She doesn't let him say anything. She butts her forehead against the
large muscles of his chest and gently pushes him to lie down on his back. When
he's settled she curls up on top of him, burying her face into the crook of his
neck.
She murmurs "Thank you," before falling into a death-like sleep.
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
It's only after the expedition, when all the living that remain are safely back
inside the walls, that Erna finally finds a little more common ground with
Smith. They are the only two soldiers who do not mourn the dead.
They both carry on as usual, unaffected. Erwin is only stoically somber when
others lament. Erna sneers at such sentimentality.
Only a day after the completion of the expedition, Erwin finds her, smoking
around the stable again. He asks if she's all right and she snorts derisively.
"How many did you lose?" She says 'you,' and not 'we,' because she doesn't
consider herself part of the Survey Corps. She never will.
"Fifty-three," he replies.
He sounds nonchalant about it to her. She taps the ash off the end of her
cigarette and watches it float to the ground. She says, "You don't seem to
mind."
He nods solemnly. "Despite the loss, the mission was successful."
"Well," she takes another drag from her cigarette. "That's all that matters
then, isn't it?"
"Overall, it's good for humanity."
"No doubt," she says carelessly, looking away from his icy blue eyes toward the
horizon.
She would admire his single-minded determination and stoicism if it weren't for
such a stupid cause. Still, he's very selfish, very willing to sacrifice others
for his ambition. She can identify with that.
Shadis promotes him to an officer position. Apparently Smith has some new
strategy for cutting down on casualties during expeditions – a new formation or
something. Erna couldn't care less. She will probably be on her way before it's
implemented.
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Smith catches her three days later, around dusk again. He's caught onto when
and where she likes to enjoy her daily cigarette. He can find her easily. It
also helps that having fifty-three fewer people makes it a little easier to
find anyone around headquarters.
He skips any pleasantries this time. "Mike thinks you've been avoiding him."
She hums as she thinks about that. "I wouldn't say 'avoiding.' I treat him with
the same level of interest as I did before."
"Before what?" He stares at her with that grim expression, his voice full of
hidden meaning.
"Well," she sighs coyly, "Before we were on that expedition and I was expected
to sleep on the cold, hard ground." She ashes her cigarette carelessly.
"Zacharius makes a good mattress."
"He's worried that he did something wrong."
"Did he say that?" Erna asks, her voice icy cold.
Erwin stares at her silently. Of course he didn't say that. Erwin inferred it.
"Maybe he did do something wrong," Erna says with complete indifference. "I'm
good at getting people to do wrong things. Why tell me this anyway?"
"I don't want you to hurt him."
"Oh, I doubt I could do that," she hums nonchalantly. "You don't think it's
possible that he has feelings for me, do you?"
"Why not?"
"Because," she says, "I'd think that he would know a sociopath when he sees one
by now."
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That night, on Mike's way back from the men's showers, he smells something
familiar. He almost doesn't want to seek it out, but his better instincts fail
him and he gives into his curiosity. Following his nose brings him down the
hall to the large kitchen, normally closed down and out of use at this time of
night. Normally it would be quiet.
A girlish moan that he recognizes cuts softly through the air. He knows that he
shouldn't, that it's foolish, but he can't help the way his heart twinges with
the dull ache of jealousy.
Unconsciously, he makes his footsteps softer as he gets closer to the noise and
the scent. He can just make out her figure through the slightly open door.
She's sitting on one of the counters, silhouetted by a lonely candle set next
to her. The orange glow from the flame highlights the curve of her small waist
and flickers as she leans back onto her palms, arching her back and stretching
in lazy ecstasy under the ministrations of the taller, fully clothed figure
kneeling on the floor, head firmly between her open thighs.
She's completely unclothed, like she would never let him have her. She looks
different. Not just because of the nudity, but there's something else. She's
relaxed and truly enjoying herself in a way that she didn't with him. When they
were together it was like she was only concerned with power and the struggle to
give it up or take it away, to draw out the monster or keep it contained.
There's none of that in her posture now. She only looks languid, like some kind
of shameless nymph.
She leans forward, bringing her hands off of the counter. Her fingers reach for
the head of short, blonde hair attached to the person between her legs and she
drags her nails over their scalp softly. Mike can't quite hear. His ears aren't
as sharp as his nose. But she says something soft and sweet and he can barely
make out the other's chin tilting up to give some mischievous response. Erna
giggles. Her laugh is soft and musical. It's a dulcet, silvery tone that he's
never heard come from her before.
Despite his jealousy, blood rushes to his groin. He watches the man between her
legs get back to work, licking and sucking and biting softly at the junction of
her thighs. Her chest rises and falls faster as she revels in the sensation of
what he's doing to her.
Mike palms his now growing erection and stifles a groan in his throat. He
shifts his weight slightly and sidesteps to get a view from a better angle, for
what purpose he isn't sure. He hazards a soft push at the door, just to nudge
it open another inch as he watches carefully to make sure neither of them
notices.
He thinks he recognizes the other person, as they slide a hand over Erna's
ankle, cupping her calf muscle and then caressing her thigh. Erna writhes under
their touch. The hand disappears between her legs and soon thereafter she gasps
and her lips curl to form a wicked smile.
She arches her back and rolls her hips, making sighs and little moans to let
her partner know how much she's enjoying everything they're doing.
Then her head lolls slightly to the side as she rolls her neck and stretches
out her shoulders. She stops and looks straight at the door, directly at him.
She knew he was there the whole time. Mike feels frozen in place, turned to
stone by her eyes. She smirks at him and then she winks. The cheeky little
coquette.
She focuses back on her lover and cards her hand through their blonde hair,
tugging just slightly, not violently. She whispers something and the person
between her legs stands up, placing their hands on the counter on either side
of her, caging her and leaning in for a kiss.
They trap Erna's lower lip and suck on it before pushing their tongue past her
lips possessive and confidently. They smirk at how willingly she yields to them
and they slide one hand over her thigh, squeezing before reaching between her
legs again.
Mike was right. He does recognize the person so skillfully making Erna writhe
and moan. He was only wrong in his assumption that it was another man.
Nanaba places a hand on the small of Erna's beautifully arched back and nuzzles
at her neck, whispering something to her before nipping at her earlobe.
Mike stays rooted in place, unable or unwilling to look away. Erna yelps as if
she's surprised when Nanaba's fingers enter her and she butts her forehead
against the blonde's shoulder, arms encircling her and clutching and clawing at
the back of her shirt.
Mike wonders how much of the passion and ecstasy is real and how much of it is
a show for him.
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
When her six months are up, Erna gets official correspondence from the Military
Police. She survived this hell and her escort will pick her up in a week and
take her to the southern district training camp. The current class of trainees
will graduate a week after that and the next class will be all hers.
Most importantly, she'll be able to smoke whenever she damn well pleases and
she'll finally have her own room again. She hasn't had any real privacy since
her arrest, unless her hours in the dark silence of that cell count as privacy.
And, she supposes, it's okay to tell people why she'll be leaving. And it's
okay to tell them exactly what she thinks of the Survey Corps and the
altruistic fools that make up its ranks.
Though there's nobody she particularly cares to tell…Except for one man…
She goes straight to the dining hall, finds the table that Erwin and Mike are
eating at, and she flattens her letter from Sina to the dark wooden tabletop
right next to Erwin.
No shock registers across his face. He takes literally any and all news with
the same grim attitude. He scans the letter that she's pinned beneath her
fingers and simply says, "So you're going to be an Instructor."
"The takeaway is that I'm getting the fuck out of here," she corrects him. "So
let's finally be real with each other." She sits down next to him. "I'll tell
you everything you want to know, every answer to everything about me that's
been needling away at you."
That piques his interest. So he was still curious.
"But," she says, holding up a finger, "only if you finally tell me everything
about Nile Dok."
His big eyebrows crease. "Why?"
"You'll find that out if you simply tell me where I am most likely to find
him," she says through gritted teeth.
In the end, Smith decides that satiating his curiosity isn't worth it. There's
too much fire in her eyes. She wants information on Nile too badly.
She half-expected that. She doesn't mind so much. She has a lot of time to
learn what she wants.
"Well, boys, it's been fucking lovely." She gets up, folding her letter into
thirds and putting it into the pocket of her jacket. Smith she gives an
exaggerated slap on the back. Zackarius gets his hair ruffled as she kisses him
softly on the cheek.
Smith says, "Goodbye, Erna."
One more thing. She stiffens on her way out and turns on her heel. "Never use
my first name. It's Instructor Raban now."
***** Names *****
Chapter Notes
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(Year 839)
"Do you mind telling me just what in the fuck this is, Smith?"
Erwin cringes imperceptibly as the slight, raven-haired Instructor storms
angrily across the training field to the spot where one of her underlings had
told him to wait with his new charges. The three fresh recruits behind him are
unimpressed by her obvious anger. They don't know any better. Not yet. Erwin
doesn't think it will take them long to learn to fear their new instructor.
Erwin steels himself, squares his shoulders, and says with as much authority as
he actually possesses, "It's Squad Leader Smith, now."
"I'd heard," Erna answers with all of the disdain that comes from having a
history with someone.
Technically, he outranks her. If he didn't know any better, he would do
something stupid like demand that she refer to him by his proper rank and do as
he orders, but he's worked with Erna before. He knows how unsuccessful he'd be
with that approach.
"So what the fuck is all…this?" She points at the three standing behind him and
looks somewhat disgusted and annoyed as if he just tracked dog shit into her
house.
Erwin clears his throat. "These are new recruits that need training."
Erna adjusts her weight and cocks a hip as she hums and brings a finger to her
lip as if trying to remember something. "Nope, sorry, that's not how it works.
I know you're new at this Squad Leader thing, but the way we do this is: I
train them, and then you come take them from me. I won't have you fucking up
our neat little system."
One of the group behind him snickers. Erwin leans down, nearer to the short
Instructor's level, and says quietly, "Can we speak privately?"
"Absolutely not."
Erwin sighs heavily. His best bet is to be as candid as possible. He gestures
behind him and says, "These three are criminals we recruited from the
Underground. They're to join the Survey Corps in exchange for a clean criminal
record. I need their training expedited."
Erna smirks and raises an eyebrow. "Familiar story…" She keeps him waiting in
suspense while she gives the group a careful look. The blonde one shifts his
weight uncomfortably, the redheaded girl smiles, and the short one scowls and
refuses to acknowledge her. "I'm intrigued," she tells Erwin. "Keep going."
"They already know how to use the maneuver gear. They stole three sets of it
and have been using it in The Underground."
"We didn't st—" cries the little redhead before the blonde man next to her
claps a hand over her mouth to quiet her before she can say anything to get
herself in trouble.
"Hmm…" Erna has to admit that she finds them interesting. It's not easy to use
maneuver gear at all, much less in close quarters. "The average graduation time
is two to three years. How expedited were you thinking?"
Erwin swallows. He says carefully, "Three months…"
Erna's nostrils flare. "Three months?" she repeats in disbelief, angered at the
audacity of the request. She looks past Erwin to look over the Underground
brats he brought with him again. "It's going to take at least one month just to
potty train them."
"Please?" Erwin asks. He'll beg if he has to. "You're the only one who could do
it, if it can be done at all."
There is a long silence. Erwin knows that this is what she does. She stays
quiet to see if you'll do something to put your foot in your own mouth. He
waits silently. He won't fall into her trap.
Finally, she says, "And what if I refuse?"
Erwin is wary. She probably wants him to threaten her with consequences so that
she can chew him out. Instead he shrugs and says, "I guess I'd have to take
them to the Western District training grounds and ask Instructor Hess to—"
He doesn't get to finish.
"That bitch doesn't know his own hairy asshole from a fucking hole in the
ground," Erna growls. Then she stops herself, realizing that Smith is
successfully using her pride against her. "And your creepy reverse psychology
isn't going to work."
The little redhead snickers. Finally, the surly one speaks up and says in a
quiet monotone deadpan, "We don't need training."
"See, Erwin? They don't need training. You're wasting your time." Erna says
sarcastically and, without so much as a good bye, she starts walking away.
Erwin frowns. He should have brought Mike with him, if for nothing else than to
keep Levi quiet while he negotiated with Erna.
"Erna."
She stops in her tracks. She doesn't turn around for a second. Levi turns his
attention away from the ground as this has just become interesting. Smith had
told them only two things about joining the Southern District Training Corps:
Do everything your instructor says and never use her first name. He'd made the
second instruction sound much more important than the first and impressed it
upon them heavily as if it was the difference between life and death. Levi
wonders why the Survey Corps Squad Leader doesn't follow his own rule.
When she turns around, there's a scowl on her face that could make a grown man
cry in fear. Erwin stands his ground as she comes back, eating up the ground in
long strides.
But when she stops to stand in front of him, her face changes. Instantly the
angry scowl is replaced by a mad and unsettling sweetness, which if anything,
is scarier than when she actually looked angry.
She does not get upset at Erwin for using her name like Levi expects. She gives
Erwin a look up and down and asks, "What's in it for me?"
"Anything you want," Erwin says readily like he expected extortion from the
beginning.
Erna hums as if she's thinking and dramatically brings a finger to her lips,
"Well, maybe some fancy soap would be nice, oh and a lace duvet for my bed, and
a new dress, and—" Mid-sentence she cuts the sarcasm and crosses her arms over
her chest. "How long have you fucking known me, Smith?"
Erwin turns around and takes Farlan's bag out of his hands, surprising and
confusing the Underground thief. He'd had bags packed for the three this
morning, mostly with just necessities since he knew they didn't have any
possessions of their own. But he'd put something extra in Farlan's bag. He
rifles through it and removes a glass bottle. He offers it to Erna who snatches
it away.
"Bourbon," he says. "From the best—"
"Yeah whatever," Erna cuts him off. "What else?"
When Erwin doesn't move right away, Erna rolls her eyes. "You're a strategic
and tactical nerd, Smith. I know you don't go anywhere without a backup plan.
You brought something better to offer in case I didn't take this."
The large, imposing blond man sighs heavily and rolls his shoulders before he
opens the bag again. He takes out a sealed box made of thin wood and hands it
to her.
Erna breaks the seal and opens it hastily. She smiles slightly as soon as she
gets a look at the contents and she shuts it again. She holds it tight in her
gloved hand.
"I would have settled for your undying gratitude, but this will do," she says.
"Thank you, Erna," he says, mental and emotional exhaustion tingeing the edge
of his voice.
"Don't," she warns.
"I apologize," he says, though Levi can tell there's no sincerity to that
apology. Smith is doing it on purpose because he knows she hates it. And for
some reason she's letting him. That's interesting.
There's a dangerous glint in the Instructor's eye for a quick moment. She purrs
at Erwin, "You should bring Zackarius next time. Tell him to tag along when you
come for your recruitment drive. I'd take him over bourbon."
Erwin's face darkens and he turns and begins to walk back to his horse, leaving
the trio he plucked from the Underground in her care. Erna holds up the bottle
of bourbon, examining the label for a moment before seeming to remember
something. She yells at Erwin's back, "Hey, dumbass!"
Erwin turns around; the strain of having to deal with her politely beginning to
show in the lines of his face.
She tucks the bottle under her arm so that she can cup a hand to the side of
her mouth and make her voice carry to him. "Matches!"
Erwin nods. He walks the rest of the way to his horse and he opens one of the
bags strapped over its side. It takes him no time at all to find a small bundle
of matches. He begins to walk over with them, but instead of closing the
distance completely and handing them to her, he stops about halfway and tosses
them, not seeming to be able to stomach another second of closeness with the
severe and crude raven-haired woman.
She catches them overhand, snatching them out of the air. "Thank fuck," she
says to herself, removing a match from the strung together bundle. Then she
looks up again. She watches Erwin Smith mount up onto his horse in the distance
and says, "Good riddance asshole," looking about as relieved as he did to be
done with that.
The blond of the trio in front of her shifts uncomfortably and picks his pack
up off the ground. "Um—"
"One second, blondie," Erna cuts him off. Still holding the bottle of bourbon
under her arm, she opens the box that Erwin gave her and takes out a small,
perfectly rolled cylinder of white paper. She places one end of it between her
lips.
The little redhead also starts to squirm with the anticipation building up.
"Should we—"
"I swear to fucking god," Erna mumbles while still holding the cigarette in her
lips and carefully tucking the box back under her arm, trying to juggle it and
the bottle while pinching a match between her fingers. "If you brats don't let
me do this, you are going to find me a lot less pleasant to deal with."
Levi scowls. Nobody talks to his brats that way but him.
Erna pays him no mind as she balances on one foot to bring her other boot up.
She strikes the match against the tattered sole, worn to a gravel-like hardness
by the rough dirt at the floor of the box canyon, and it bursts into flame.
Carefully she raises it to her cigarette and puffs until the end is evenly
reddened.
Her cheeks pucker as she inhales long and deep. When she exhales it's with a
sigh of amazement and ecstasy. "Fuck, that's good," she says in a way that
reminds Levi of the lazy, contented tone women thank him with after he's fucked
their brains out.
He wonders how this woman became a Training Corps Instructor. He can't see how
she can command anyone's respect. Sure, she's coarse and vulgar, but she's also
small and fair, with a dainty little nose and delicate bone structure. She's
too small and pretty to intimidate anyone. Besides, she doesn't look a day over
seventeen.
She stands there in silence and takes a few long, deep drags off the cigarette
before finally gesturing for them to follow her as she says, "Let's go."
The training grounds are made up of acres and acres of flat, brown, open
spaces, dotted with clusters of buildings in places and broken up by huge
wooden structures used for different types of training. Erna points out
important things with her cigarette. "Those long buildings over there are the
barracks. They're numbered one through twenty. You eat, sleep, and train with
your bunkmates. Makes it easy to keep track of you." She pauses her steps and
turns around to give them a look like she's only just noticing something. "How
old are you?"
The three actually shrug. Erna rolls her eyes. "Do they not have birthdays in
the Underground?" She doesn't wait for an answer to her rhetorical question.
"Well, you don't look like teenagers."
She taps her foot against the hard ground, pausing to think.
Finally she comes to a decision. "We'll house you in the officers barracks.
It's co-ed – so you can stay together and hold each other's hands or whatever –
and one man to a bunk instead of two." She turns and looks at them to gauge
their feeling on that and is met with blank stares. "Unless you like the
prospect of being felt up by some sweaty, hormonal teenager while you're trying
to sleep?"
The blond and redhead shake their heads emphatically. The short one is stoic as
ever, not reacting to anything. Erna can tell that he's the leader of the
three.
She starts walking them toward the building far ahead of them and offset a
little to the left of the rest of the barracks. "You'll still have to train
with a team of recruits," she tells them. "The Survey Corps is big on that
teamwork bullshit, even though they're dying so often nobody gets a chance to
build up much team togetherness."
She says it so callously, like she's telling them that water is wet. Farlan
gulps down his fear. Isabel cringes.
She hums to herself and thinks. "Probably some space on team ten…cut a couple
of trainees' lifelines during 3dm training…probably not out of the infirmary
yet."
As they pass by a part of the camp where the trainees are practicing drills,
Erna stops the trio while she goes over to one of her officers. Levi keeps an
eye on her as she talks to the young man. Isabel and Farlan try to talk to Levi
while he's trying to read her lips.
"This'll be easy, right, big bro?"
"She's not so bad. What was that Smith guy going on about?" Farlan says
optimistically.
They keep chattering as Levi ignores them. He watches the way the officer
reacts to Erna. As soon as he registered her presence he'd squared his
shoulders back and seemed to brace himself. The guy has about twelve inches of
height on her and looks like two-hundred of pounds of muscle, but his eyes
wrinkle at the corners with apprehension and uncertainty, the way kids with an
insane or alcoholic parent look at them, loving but afraid and guarded, never
knowing if they're about to get hugged or hit.
Erna nods in their direction and says something. A second later she holds out
her hand and the officer gives her his clipboard and a pencil.
She walks back, still sucking on her cigarette, exhaling out the side of her
mouth now that her hands are full with the bourbon and cigarettes she extorted
from Erwin and the clipboard. When she reaches them she simply says, "Names."
"Farlan Church," the taller one says respectfully.
"Good. It's short," she says as she writes.
Isabel looks at Levi before speaking up, checking with him if it's okay. He
gives her a small nod and rolls his eyes at her constant need for approval.
"Isabel Magnolia," she says proudly.
"What a pretty name," Erna praises her. "Unfortunately, sweetheart, I don't
have time for a lot of syllables when I'm warning you to look out for the tree
you're about to smack into at thirty miles an hour during 3D-maneuver training.
How do you feel about letting me shorten that to Mags?" Her voice is sweet,
cloying, like she's trying to flirt with her.
The redhead is incredibly flattered by the sweet words and agrees without a
thought. "Sure!"
She waits for Levi's answer. He keeps his mouth shut until finally she says,
"And you?"
"Levi."
"Surnames only here." Erna looks at the clipboard and holds her pencil poised
to write his down when he tells it to her.
That's not going to happen.
"Everyone just calls him Levi," Isabel chirps.
Erna looks up and gives him an evil smirk. "If you don't tell me your surname,
I'm going to have to name you myself and you're not going to like it."
Levi crosses his arms and stares her down.
She keeps her eyes aggressively locked on his for a second or two. Then, just
as quickly, she shrugs, lets her clipboard and pen fall to her side, and says,
"Alright Snowflake, have it your way." She turns on her heel and continues
leading them toward the barracks.
Isabel doesn't dare giggle at Levi's new nickname. Farlan does a little, but
Levi glares at him and he puts on a straight face while Erna continues to walk
ahead of them.
She opens the door to the officer's barracks for them and waves them in ahead
of her. Pointing to a column of three bunks she says, "Those'll be yours. I'm
going to grab an officer to fill you in on the basic shit."
"Tch. This place is filthy." Levi scowls at the state of the small building.
Erna pauses in the doorway. Isabel and Farlan tense up, anticipating one of the
violent reactions Erwin told them they could expect from her, which they aren't
half as afraid of as they are fearful of how Levi will react to that. Slowly
and languidly, she takes her cigarette from her lips. In a smoky, rich voice,
she says, "Well then I guess I'll have to send the maid too," and she drops the
nearly finished cigarette, grinding it into the floor with the toe of her boot.
Farlan has to hold Levi back as Erna turns and casually walks out the door with
a sway of her hips.
Levi calms himself by ordering Farlan and Isabel to clean the place up. They
find a couple of brooms while Levi sits on the bottom bunk and rubs his
temples. Soon his companions have all of the dust on the floor swept into a
neat little pile. That is until an officer comes in and carelessly walks
through it.
Levi growls at the man and only then does he looks up from the papers he'd been
reading. He sees the scene before him and says, "Oh, sorry, were you guys
trying to clean?" sincerely apologetic.
"This place is a dump," Levi tells him.
"Well, we try to keep it tidy," the officer says. "Everyone keeps their stuff
put away, but there's always going to be dust everywhere. Cleaning it is a
never-ending job."
Defeated, Isabel and Farlan stop sweeping. They'd already had the feeling that
what the officer was saying was true, but neither of them were going to tell
Levi that.
"Tch."
The officer looks at the papers in his hand again and hums. "So, Church, Mags,
and… Levi?" He turns the page over and says half to himself, "Weird that she
wrote down your first name…oh well…" He looks up at the trio and says, "Since
the situation with your enlistment is pretty unusual, I'm supposed to just fill
you in on all the things you would have learned in a typical orientation."
The officer brings a hand to the back of his neck and squints shyly. "Um, I've
never had to do this before…"
He has a big smile, a square face, and dark grey hair. He's a little short, but
barrel-chested and very strong. He would look like military officer material,
except for the fact that he's obviously very kind and maybe not too bright.
Levi wonders how the hell he made it to this rank. He doesn't seem like the
type to be yelling orders.
"Your name…" Levi says.
"Huh?"
"That would be a good place to start," he deadpans at the hapless officer.
"Oh, right, okay…" The officer collects himself a little. "I'm Officer Vann.
There are nineteen other officers and we basically help train you guys and keep
this place together."
"Um," he continues, "You're expected to salute whenever an officer or
Instructor Raban is around. You guys know how to salute, right?"
Farlan puts his fist over his heart, in what he thinks passes as a military
salute.
"Close," Officer Vann tells him. "Just turn your hand around."
Isabel snickers at Farlan who blushes and elbows her in the ribs as he brings
his hand back to his side.
"There's a really strict schedule. You start with breakfast at 5am, but there's
PT right after, so you don't want to eat too much."
Farlan stops him. "What's PT?"
"Oh, that stands for physical training. Here, I wrote it down for you guys just
to make sure you remember, because you'll get in a lot of trouble if you're
caught out after curfew or anything like that." He hands a small piece of paper
to Farlan, and then says anxiously, "Just don't let anyone see it. I don't know
how Instructor Raban would feel about me doing this for you guys."
"She doesn't seem as scary as everybody's been telling us," Farlan points out.
The officer seems to lose his breath. "She's…um…yeah…sometimes she's not…I
guess…" Suddenly he's in a rush to move on. "So, that's basically it, you'll
learn a lot as you go. Do you have any questions?"
Isabel, who's pretty taken with the officer's kind, shy demeanor asks with that
childish wonder that only she can pull off, "What was your first day like?"
"Oh, well, Instructor Kahler was still in charge here when I was a trainee, so
it was different than what the recruits here experience. Instructor Raban took
over three years ago, so every trainee here started with her. You guys are
lucky you don't have to go through a real first day with her. At the
orientation day for the class that's about to graduate, she broke a kid's
nose."
Isabel makes a surprised sound. "How come?"
Officer Vann stops to think, looking upward while he searches his memory. "You
know, I don't even remember anymore… So much has happened since then, it kind
of doesn't seem like such a big deal now… I think he called her 'ma'am'? Oh
yeah, by the way, don't do that. The only things you want to call her are
Instructor Raban or Sir. And try as hard as you can to do everything she says,
even if you don't think it makes sense or you think you can't."
Vann shrugs nervously, seemingly uneasy about scaring them too much, but not
wanting to understate the situation. "But, you know, don't worry about it. Our
infirmary gets the best medical interns. And they've seen everything, so
whatever happens they'll fix you up right as rain."
"We're from the Underground," Isabel says proudly. "We don't break that easy.
Right, big bro?"
Levi gives her the smallest nod. He's not dumb enough to be as confident as she
sounds.
"Well, look, um, I have to get back to work, so…" he looks at his papers again,
"You guys can get settled for another fifteen minutes and then you should start
training. Sorry I can't give you more time." He flips a page over and finds
what he's looking for. "You're going to be training with Team Ten, so you're
doing…um…hand-to-hand combat training today."
"Neat!" Isabel shouts and jumps in excitement.
"What does that have to do with killing titans?" Levi asks skeptically.
"Er…well…um…"
Levi rolls his eyes. He almost feels bad for the guy. "Never mind. You can go,"
he says.
Vann reminds them again that they have fifteen minutes, smiles, and hurries
back outside. Farlan unfolds the schedule in his hand and squints at it. "We
have to go to classes?" his brows crease with incredulity.
Isabel stands on her toes to look over his arm and she shouts, "Curfew is at
9pm? What are we, eight?"
"Well, at least we get three meals a day. That's a step up," Farlan folds the
schedule up again and puts it in the pocket of his tan jacket.
Levi doesn't comment. If he did, it would only to be to remind them that they
should be glad they got out of the Underground at all, but now that he's out,
he never wants to think about that hellhole again. He stands up, eager to leave
the dusty building and get into the free air again. He walks out without a word
and his friends follow him.
They join their assigned team over where they saw the drill practice earlier. A
different officer greets them, this one more serious than Vann. He curtly
explains what they're supposed to do and pairs each of them up with a trainee
on their team.
The exercise involves a small, wooden knife. They're supposed to take turns
attacking and disarming.
Levi could not be less impressed with the whole thing. He lets his partner go
on the attack first, and disarms her so easily every time that it would almost
look like she is trying to take a dive on purpose. She's taller than him by
about six inches with tan skin, a thin face dotted with freckles, and a short
black ponytail. By the way she carries herself, Levi can tell that she is
surprised at not being the best at something for once. The third time he drops
her down on her shoulder into the dirt she starts to show her irritation.
She smacks his hand away when he offers to help her up. When she gets herself
onto her feet again, she throws the knife at him, saying bluntly with a snotty
attitude, "Your turn."
Levi turns the knife in his fingers and decides to give her a second to change
her stance and lower her center of balance, which she'll do if she's fucking
smart. Instead of getting ready, she just crosses her arms and smirks at him.
"You're holding it wrong. You don't even know how to hold a knife?"
Levi is about to show her how wrong she is, but then the girl very suddenly
switches to standing at attention. For a second it looks like she's saluting
him and Levi is confused until he smells tobacco and hears the velvet-smooth,
but still menacing voice of their instructor.
"Holy shit, Koh," she drawls. "I must have been in a coma. It looks like I was
out long enough for you to graduate, rise several ranks, and become an
Instructor. I'm sorry that I didn't get you a fucking congratulatory gift. It
looks like you're going to have to settle for a full year's supply of my boot
up your ass."
As Instructor Raban comes into view, Levi switches the "knife" to his left hand
and salutes, standing at attention like everyone else.
She drops what's left of her cigarette before saying, "Everyone at fucking
ease." As everyone relaxes a little, she adds, "Except for you, Koh." She gets
very close to Levi's sparring partner and says more quietly, "Are you trying to
fucking replace me, trainee?"
"Sir! No, Sir!" she yelps as she stares at a middle distance, not daring to
look down and make eye contact with her Instructor.
Erna looks over her shoulder to Levi and opens her hand. "Snowflake, knife."
He tosses it to her and she grabs Koh's right wrist, breaking her salute, and
putting the knife in her hand the way she had been holding it before. "What do
you think happens if you try to stab me in the heart like that, trainee?"
"Um…"
Erna doesn't wait for her to come up with an answer. "What happens, Koh, is
that maybe you hit my heart and maybe you don't. Maybe you miss and I just end
up with a deep puncture wound that doesn't disable me – something that I can
stanch and patch up so fast it'll make your pretty little head spin."
Erna then takes the girl's fingers, opens them, and turns the knife around so
that she's holding it the way Levi had been a moment ago.
"If you ever find the fucking balls to finally try and kill me, Koh, that's how
you hold your knife. Can you guess why?"
"No, Sir," she says only loudly enough to match Erna's volume.
Erna tilts her head back and rolls her eyes. "You really are as dumb as you
look." She rolls her neck and groans in exasperation. In one quick motion, she
tilts her chin back down, takes the knife out of Koh's hand, and spins it in
her fingers. As she demonstrates by stepping into her and driving the knife
towards the girl's heart in a stabbing motion, she says, "If you stab me and
miss, then I can keep fighting, which means you're fucked."
She steps back again, giving Koh room to breathe, though the girl doesn't seem
to take the opportunity to do so. She spins the knife again and changes her
grip. She steps forward, driving the knife to Koh's right hip and slashing
upwards diagonally all the way to her left shoulder. "If you slash this way,
you have enough pressure behind it to rip me open from stem to fucking stern.
Hell… Even if you don't slash very hard with those skinny arms, you're opening
enough veins to make me bleed out and lose consciousness in less than four
seconds."
She throws the knife carelessly over her shoulder and Levi catches it.
Koh continues to stand stiffly at attention, though all of her confidence is
now gone, replaced by fear and uncertainty. Erna takes a second to look her up
and down and then she asks, "You're trying to join the Military Police, aren't
you?"
"Sir! Yes, Sir!" her voice shakes a little despite her attempt at sounding
resolved.
"Then, you, especially, are going to need to know this shit. And you better
thank Snowflake for the favor of showing you how any real thug in Sina is going
to be holding their knife when they try to take your worthless life."
Koh swallows and then squeaks out a meek, "Yes, Sir."
Erna steps in close to her and lowers her voice to almost a whisper, "And stop
trying to take my fucking job, trainee."
Levi is a little impressed.
She steps back and bellows, "Get back to work!" Nobody wastes a second going
right back into the drill.
Levi keeps half of his attention on the drill and half on Isabel and Farlan…
especially Isabel. She loses her temper easily and does dumb things.
Erna continues to walk around and observe the team's hand-to-hand combat
training, stopping to talk to their officer and check out his notes. He starts
telling her who is doing well and who could improve on what, but she isn't
actually listening. She's only acting preoccupied with him so that the trainees
will relax a little more. When she is actively observing them, they tense up or
temporarily show more earnestness. It isn't all that useful for her to see them
like that. She prefers to get a feel for people when they think she isn't
looking, so a lot of the time it will look like she's absent when actually she
is just on the edge of earshot.
She nods at Officer Frey every so often until she hears something. She walks
away from him, leaving him hanging mid-sentence. As she comes toward them, the
trainees halt their action and salute again.
"At ease," she says while rolling her eyes. Sometimes she gets so sick of the
fucking saluting, the regulation of everything, and the meaningless signs of
obedience. She wishes that she could do away with all that and run things a
little more organically, a little more the way she ran her gang in Wall Sina.
But what's a military without meaningless shows of rank?
"Trainee Jung has just provided you worms with a teaching moment," she says as
she reaches the short, strawberry blonde girl who she'd overheard a second ago.
Erna smiles at her and says, "Sweetheart, you had a question?"
The poor girl looks ready to wet herself. "I…um…Sir…"
"Now don't lie to me, honey, that only makes it worse."
The girl swallows hard and places her hands behind her back. "Sir, I asked my
sparring partner how hand-to-hand combat would be useful to us if we enlist
with the Survey Corps."
Erna reaches up to the trainee's face and pinches her cheek affectionately.
"What a wonderful question, Jung. You're so fucking innocent I could cry." Then
she turns to address the whole team. "Can anyone tell Jung why hand to hand
combat training is important in the Survey Corps?"
There's an eerie silence. Levi crosses his arms and watches the scene closely.
He's learning more and more why everyone seems to hold their breath when their
Instructor is around. So far, even just her unpredictability is unsettling. He
wonders if there's more to it than that.
"No one?" Erna fakes the surprise in her voice. "Really?" she says, her tone
getting darker. She gives them another few seconds before turning to the
officer standing off to the side and shouting, "Frey, get me a set of 3dm
gear."
Officer Frey drops his notes and runs.
While he's playing fetch, Erna paces between the lines of recruits as she talks
to them. "Did you know that I served with the Survey Corps before coming here
to play goddamn babysitter for about four hundred weak, lazy brats?" As one
trainee opens his mouth to say either yes or no sir, she yells, "Do not answer
that, it was a fucking rhetorical question."
She paces a little more. Levi thinks that she moves like a cat sizing up prey.
"Instead of hand-feeding you an answer, recruits, let me paint you a fucking
picture. Let's say you do graduate from here by some miracle and finally
relieve me of responsibility for your fucking existence… You're on your first
expedition outside the walls, for which the expected casualty rate is almost
always well over fifty percent. Let's give you more credit than you deserve and
assume that by sheer luck you do not end up in a titan's mouth within the first
five minutes."
Erna stops around the edge of the team, turns, and stands still for a moment.
She pauses in her speech to let it sink in and to see if anybody will be stupid
enough to breathe or look at her wrong.
"So," she continues, "When a deviant type titan comes along and decimates your
ranks and everybody is out of formation and you see that blue smoke telling you
to get your ass the fuck out of there… When you're riding as hard as you can
back toward the rally point – alone, because your entire squad is already dead
– and another titan comes out of nowhere, missing its reach for you, but
knocking your horse out from under you and sending you fucking flying… What do
you think another soldier is going to do when they find you bloody and broken
in the fucking grass?"
Erna looks around at the recruits' faces. "This," she says, "is where I would
like a fucking answer."
Still they remain silent. Levi doesn't blame them. But then Erna yells, "This
one is not optional, fucksticks." She makes her way back over to the strawberry
blonde recruit who started this. "Maybe you have an imagination, sweetheart.
What do you think that soldier is going to do when they find you half-dead?"
"Um…I think, Sir…that they would…help me? Sir"
"That is so goddamn cute, trainee," Erna says quietly. Just then Officer Frey
comes back with the gear she asked for. He hands it to Erna who throws it at
the trainee and orders her to put it on.
While the girl fumbles with the straps, trying to get the 3dmg on as quickly as
possible, Erna addresses the whole team again. "What that soldier is going to
do, is look at your bloody face, then look around to see if anyone else is
within earshot, and he is going to either kill you if he's merciful, or leave
you alive if he's fucked up, but either way he's taking your fucking gas cans
and whatever blades you have left to replace his own and when he makes it back
to the wall, he'll tell his squad leader that he pulled them off of your corpse
and he'll be praised for his shrewd thinking.
"Now," she says, "Just to really drive this point home: This is a soldier who
you've worked with, who you've eaten meals with, hell maybe you even got drunk
and fucked once or twice. None of that matters. When everything is falling
apart around you and your death can ensure his survival, have no fucking doubt
that he's going to kill you or leave you for dead."
She looks over her shoulder to check if Jung is finished putting her gear on
yet. She's only almost there.
"The humanity that you innocent baby deer are offering your hearts to is ugly
and cruel," she says with finality.
Erna returns to Jung and looks her over, checking that she got the gear on
correctly. She nods in approval. Then she turns to the girl's sparring partner
and says, "Take her gas canister from her."
The two trainees stand still in shock at the new and unexpected orders until
Erna begins yelling at them, "You'd better try like your fucking life depends
on it, because it does!" and, like her voice was a pistol signaling to start,
they're suddenly at each other.
She doesn't need to keep yelling things to impress upon them how serious this
is. She walks away as Jung gets knocked onto her back and starts kicking at her
partner for her life.
Erna walks over to Levi and addresses him, Farlan, and Isabel. "I hope you
three are paying attention, because this concerns you the most," she says
quietly and maliciously before walking away.
Isabel and Farlan look on, horrified at the life-or-death struggle going on
fifteen feet away from them. The girl's sparring partner reaches for her gas
canister and gets a good grip on it. Instead of trying to push him away, the
girl is in such a frenzy that she grips his forearm in both hands and pulls it
closer. She curls up and sinks her teeth into his wrist.
Officer Frey bites his lip nervously. He clearly wants to stop them, but is
afraid of what Erna will do to him if he does. Erna makes her way back over to
him and stands next to him, watching. As casually as if she were watching a
harmless quarrel, she reaches up and brushes her straightened black hair away
from her right ear. Her fingers delicately take the cigarette that she'd tucked
there and she brings it to her mouth.
Levi sees her say something to the officer next to her and breaks his
transfixed stare from the two recruits fighting like rabid dogs in front of
him. He looks at Erna and automatically, even though his eyes are glazed with
shock, he lights her cigarette for her.
She smiles with satisfaction and she walks away. Levi watches her hips sway.
He thinks that humanity is, indeed, very ugly and very cruel.
***** Measure *****
Chapter Notes
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The way their schedule breaks down, the Underground trio's first day in the
Training Corps begins with training and ends with cleaning, dinner, and sleep.
Levi doesn't know what people who enter training have to gripe about. Seems
like heaven to him.
He's glad he decided not to skip this. He and Isabel and Farlan had the
discussion. He could have killed Smith, gotten the documents they needed, and
gone on their way, but no good opportunities seemed possible. They decided to
wait for a better opportunity to present itself rather than rush in. Levi will
be better able to get the man alone later, after he and his friends are more
trusted by the Survey Corps in general.
That trust is going to be difficult to gain. These stuck-up pigs are
distrustful of people from the Underground. They think that he and all who are
born into the same shitty circumstances are criminals.
For the most part they're right, but what bothers him is how much better they
think they are just because they were born up in the light of the sun.
He and his friends take a table to themselves at dinner. The rest of their team
is still wary of them, though they're not openly hostile. They have too much
else on their minds. Everyone on their team has been quiet, murmuring only in
careful, cowardly whispers since training that day. There's a credible rumor
that one trainee is still in the infirmary – the one who was ordered to attack
his partner. A girl at a table near theirs says to someone in a hushed tone
that the medical staff is treating his fever, that he may have a blood
infection from the deep bite wound on his wrist. There's a chance that he'll
die.
The girl that bit him is at another table. She's still in some state of shock.
Her friends pat her back and tell her it's not her fault, but she doesn't seem
comforted. It's hard to tell if she's even hearing any of it. And the others
around her still seem shaken, like they're unsettled at what potential for
cruelty can be found in friends they thought they knew, friends who seemed so
sweet and innocent.
Levi isn't surprised. He's seen worse than what happened today.
Isabel and Farlan don't seem too affected, either. Isabel is back to her cheery
self; Farlan falls back into his sarcastic and patronizing banter with her
easily. Mostly, they're happy about the food.
Levi had thought that the food wouldn't be anything impressive. He'd heard
about shortages aboveground and since the military is funded by taxes, he'd
expect the soldiers to be eating worse than the civilians. That clearly isn't
the case. For dinner they were rationed fresh bread with butter, potatoes, and
venison.
"If this is how the military feeds us, maybe we should forget the job and stay
on forever," Isabel says as she stuffs her face with the meat first.
"Keep your voice down," Farlan scolds her.
A man's shadow falls over their table as Officer Frey looms in the doorway,
blocking the light from the braziers outside. He smiles slightly and walks over
to sit with them. He is more relaxed now than the way Levi saw him during
training. As if he just heard Isabel, he says candidly, "You guys are lucky you
were sent here. This training camp gets better rations than the others, so if
you're hungry this is the best place to be."
"I've never had meat before!" Isabel squeals.
Officer Frey is a little taken aback for a second. He smiles at her
sympathetically. "Be careful then, or you might get sick."
She does not heed the advice. Instead she stuffs her mouth with bread and chews
like a caricature.
Farlan rolls his eyes, completely embarrassed by her. He changes the subject
and asks Frey, "You're not eating?" seeing that he doesn't have a tray of food
like everyone else.
"Already ate," he explains. "I normally take meals in a different building with
the other officers. I just wanted to come by and ask how you three are settling
in."
His demeanor now is drastically warmer than it had been when he was overseeing
the training of the team. He wasn't cruel during training, but he was
authoritative and grim. Levi had thought that was his personality, but now he
wonders if that has more to do with the watchful eye of Instructor Raban.
Levi asks shrewdly, "Why is the food better here?"
"Oh, um… I don't know for sure. Anything I could tell you would only be rumors
and hearsay."
Levi narrows his eyes. "Then tell us the rumors."
"People say it has something to do with Instructor Raban… I don't know…" he
says nervously.
He speaks more softly when it's about her. It's like he's afraid that she's
always just around the corner. As far as Levi could see, she's just a small
girl. She's obviously a little insane, but nothing to be as afraid of as people
seem to be. Maybe he just isn't frightened as easily as some.
"Well," Frey says as he gets up. "Try to get a lot of sleep. PT at six in the
morning can be pretty tough when you're new."
Physical training is nothing to Levi. It's too easy. He goes through the
exercises without breaking a sweat, in direct contrast to Isabel and Farlan,
who look like they might die.
After about ten minutes of their team being led through exercise drills outside
by Officer Frey, the short, delicate-looking Instructor whom everyone seems to
fear so much strolls over. She carries a cup of tea in her right hand, sipping
from it every so often. Levi feels like he hasn't smelled tea in forever.
She looks down her nose and corrects the form of different trainees as she
walks around. She does so with the most colorful language possible.
"Church, get your hips up. Are you trying to do a push-up or fuck a groundhog
hole?"
When Isabel snickers, the Instructor sneers at her, "You're no better, Mags.
Get down there and kiss the fucking ground."
She stops in front of Levi. He can't look up at her as he does push-ups with
the rest of the team, but he can see her boots and smell her tea.
She stands there for what feels like a long time, but Levi doesn't break his
concentration or stutter or stop. After a minute, she says, "What side do you
favor, Snowflake?"
He isn't sure if he should stop exercising to answer her or if she'd chew him
out for that. Since he can easily do both, he doesn't stop as he tells her,
"Ambidextrous." Then, he hopes she can't see him roll his eyes from her vantage
point as he adds, "Sir."
It sounds like she's rolling her eyes too as she says, "Nobody's really
ambidextrous."
He stays silent and doesn't argue with her, even though she's dead wrong. He's
just as good on his left side as his right. She tells him to switch to one-
handed push-ups and he puts his right hand behind his back. After ten of those,
she tells him to switch to the right.
He can feel her eyes scanning for any sign of weakness. He keeps going even as
she moves around to his left side. She circles him, looking for any
imperfection she could criticize.
She tells him quietly, "Don't let your shoulder drop."
He doesn't know what she thinks she sees, but his shoulder isn't dropping. He
could do this in his sleep.
The next time he pushes up, his arm extended straight, she tells him to hold
that position. Then he feels something light and warm being set down on his
back, in between his shoulder blades.
She steps back and says, "Keep going. Don't spill my tea."
He lowers himself slowly, careful not to lean toward his off hip. Pushing back
up is harder. Normally he would just explode up, but needing to control the
motion and do it slowly almost makes him shake.
After three excruciatingly slow one-handed push-ups finished without spilling
any burning hot tea on himself, she takes the teacup off of his shoulders and
commands, "Stand up."
She smirks at him a little when he gets up and locks his eyes on hers. Not many
people do that. Even her officers seem to avoid eye contact with her. She sips
her tea and then gives him a slight nod. "Take off your shirt."
Levi doesn't flinch. He doesn't ask her if he's right about what she just said,
he just does it, because if she's trying to intimidate him it's not going to
work. He shrugs off the tan jacket with its crossed swords on the shoulder and
holds it draped over his arm as he unbuttons his white shirt. She breaks eye
contact to look him up and down as he strips.
When the shirt comes off, Erna smirks. She doesn't try to hide how impressed
she is. The Underground thug is ripped like she's literally never seen before.
Every muscle is sharply defined without an ounce of body fat to soften them.
She would be questioning Smith's story about picking him up from the
Underground, because there's no way anyone scraping their existence out without
sunlight or enough food should be able to gain that much muscle, but the proof
is in how pale he is.
She tells him after a barely audible snicker, "Jesus fucking Christ… Okay,
Snowflake. You're exempt from PT." She turns on her heel and begins walking
away, curling a finger at him and telling him, "Come with me."
He follows her, and the whining Isabel and Farlan are doing as the team
switches to mountain climbers falls behind him. His instructor mutters to
herself in between sips of that hot black tea that, if they were in a different
setting, he might kill to get a taste of, "Put anymore muscles on you and
you'll be able to kill us all."
He smirks to himself. He could kill them all now, no more muscles needed.
That's more due to his quick reflexes… and practice. But there's the risk to
reward ratio to think about, always.
She gives him a look over her shoulder and tells him, "You can put your clothes
back on." Then, as she keeps leading him wherever they're going, she says, "I
wouldn't have thought you would follow orders so well…"
That makes him bristle. His fingers push especially forcefully at the buttons
of his shirt. He wants to beat that smug smile off of her. Taking orders isn't
something he's accustomed to. He gives orders.
He takes a deep breath. This whole job is going to be one big exercise in self-
restraint. He can't wait to kill that Survey Corps prick whose classified
documents are the whole reason for this.
Erna noticed the way his shoulders heaved when she teased him about following
orders. Out of the corner of her eye, she can spot the angry way he puts his
shirt back on. She smiles to herself and makes it a plan to keep pointing out
how well he falls in line if that's what pisses him off the most.
She's so bored sometimes. Not that she doesn't like how everyone fears and
respects her and is too afraid to speak up for themselves, but she's excited by
the prospect of this new trainee losing his temper and giving her a reason to
come up with new, more sadistic, more creative punishments. Not to mention the
fun she's going to have learning how to push his buttons. She's almost giddy at
the chance that he might push back and finally present her with a challenge.
She hasn't felt really challenged or pushed to use her wits since she and Smith
were trying to expose and manipulate each other, and that was years ago.
All of the recruits who come through her training facility are pretty much the
same to her because of a few key characteristics: they want to be there in some
measure, they want to do well, and they are afraid of her. Levi is different.
He's defiant. She hasn't seen 'defiant' in years.
They walk up on a couple of officers doing basic maintenance checks on a pile
of 3DM gear. She beckons for one of them and they run over to her with a set.
Erna shoves the gear at her new trainee and says, "Okay. Let's see why that
bushy-eyebrowed fuck took such an interest in you."
There's a portion of the training grounds with poles of giant tree trunks at
least ten meters tall that's for more advanced 3DMG training, after the
trainees start to get the hang of ascending and rappelling off the cliffside
but before they're ready to practice in the real forest. She takes him there
directly and tells him, "You can put that on now."
She checks the second hand of the pocket watch in her jacket as he buckles the
straps of the harness. She clocks him at about thirteen seconds, which is
around above average, but he hadn't looked to her like he was rushing. He could
probably be much faster if he wanted to. His fingers are deft and fast at the
buckles, never making a wrong movement or hesitating.
He waits for an order.
She puts her watch away.
"Show me what you can do, Snowflake."
His eyes narrow slightly at the nickname, but that's it. He's not the most
expressive. He turns around and he's gone suddenly, flying away from her.
Erna hates to admit to being impressed with anyone or anything ever, but as she
watches him, she can't deny it. He's very fucking impressive. She's never seen
anyone maneuver like him, not even when she was watching the veterans in the
Survey Corps.
On top of that, he makes it look effortless. Graceful, even. Of course, he's
tireless as well. She should have guessed from his physique that he'd have a
ridiculous amount of stamina. After six minutes she gets bored of watching,
brings her thumb and forefinger to her lips and lets out a long, high-pitched
whistle that he should be able to hear all the way up there.
He comes down easily, even doing a flip and sticking the landing flawlessly.
She rolls her eyes and then looks him up and down. His breathing is as easy as
ever. Not a bead of sweat on him.
Erna finds herself extremely interested in him. He's not like what she's used
to and it's intriguing in her overall monotonous, chained, and restricted life,
so she stares at him, very consciously, making aggressive eye contact as is her
habit, and he returns the glare equally which makes it feel like a silent power
struggle to her, even though she intrinsically will always have the upper hand.
She breaks the silence with, "How old are you, Snowflake?"
He makes a small 'hmph' sound before replying, "Probably older than you."
"You don't look it."
"You don't even look nineteen."
She laughs. Levi doesn't know how old she claims to be, but her laugh is
girlish. Still, there's something off about it. It's like a sardonic mockery of
an innocent little girl's musical laughter.
She steps closer to him and in a low voice, she paints a pretty picture, "I
have free reign here, you know. I could slit your throat for not giving me a
straight answer and nobody would question it. The military police would cover
it up and you would just be another forgotten cadaver."
He tilts his chin up slightly as if offering his throat for a fair shot. "You
could try," he answers back.
There isn't a trace of cockiness to his expressionless voice, but it's there in
his body language and it gives her a tingling feeling up her spine. He's
underestimating her, of course, but she's used to that. What she isn't used to
is being unsure about whether she could take him. After seeing his physique and
reflexes, she thinks her only viable mode of attack would probably be
psychological or emotional… but he doesn't have any tells of weaknesses in that
regard. He's unreadable. Even more so than Smith was. She has a strong feeling
that, underestimation or not, he's probably right to think that he would beat
her every time in a fair – or hell, even an unfair – fight.
And yet, somehow she has him here all but at her mercy. It's very exciting for
her. It's like Erwin brought her a very dangerous predator to put in a cage and
play with at her discretion.
Erna smirks and walks a slow circle around him, taking in everything slowly:
the outlines of his back muscles that show through his shirt, his straight but
relaxed posture, his square stance… When she returns to face him, she says with
no small amount of wonder in her voice, "How on earth did they bring you in,
Snowflake?"
As she was sizing him up, Levi's been able to do the same. She's different now,
without so much of the psychotic drill instructor demeanor, though he has no
doubt that aspect of her is genuine, too. She has a hard and alert quality to
her at all times. Even when her body language shows any signs of relaxation,
it's like a farce – an act to trick you into letting your guard down. He can
start to get a feel for the intimidation there that wasn't obvious at first
because he was looking for it wrong. When he saw how afraid everyone was of
her, he was looking for common affectations of people who try very hard to be
intimidating and he found none. She doesn't try; she simply is. Intimidation
comes off of her like a pheromone. She's the kind of woman who can make someone
say too much, or hold their breath at the wrong times… the kind of woman that,
if he wasn't careful, could get in his head and make him so conscious of
favoring his right side that he would overcompensate and fall to his left.
So instead of answering her question, he tightens his jaw. He won't risk
getting caught in a lie with her, and he can't have her know the truth, that
the only reason he was caught was because he wanted to be.
There are, of course, repercussions to his silence. She shrugs and rather
uncreatively orders him to get down and do push-ups until she gets tired. She
stands there and watches silently, boring holes into the back of his head with
her eyes. She doesn't count. She doesn't make him count. That would be
pointless, because there's no set number at which she would decide it was
enough. Instead of numbers, she decides limits on an individual basis. She
watches for muscle tremors, shortness of breath, tears… those are signs that
someone has done enough for her.
In her head she keeps a loose count to herself just out of curiosity. Somewhere
around one hundred and seventy-five or two hundred, she tells him that he's
done even though she hasn't seen the faintest hint of a muscle tremor.
He pauses mid-push up and holds himself there, looks up at her, and asks,
"You're tired?"
Him being a smart-ass earns him a hard and swift kick to his left ribs with
enough force to knock him to his side. She pushes him over onto his back with
the heel of her boot and then brings her foot down hard on his abdomen,
knocking the wind out of him. He has to suppress the instinct to fight back,
difficult as it is.
She narrows her eyes and watches him get his breath back. She gloats over him
and says with a biting and arrogant tone, "Now I am."
***** Gear *****
Chapter Summary
     Trigger warning for mentioning rape. Um, physical & psychological
     torture, graphic depictions of violence. These things are going to be
     the standard for this fic. Fair warning. You'll need a relatively
     strong stomach if you're going to stick with me on this one.
Chapter Notes
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     Please consider supporting me with A_Cup_of_Coffee
     Or just review. That's awesome, too. Thank you!
Erna smokes a hand-rolled cigarette and watches the sun slowly rise above the
horizon far behind over a hundred trainees going through early morning physical
training. Dawn has always been her favorite part of the day. It's full of
unanswered expectations and promises, that maybe today will be different.
She has to hope that something soon will be different, because she's so fucking
bored.
The underground brats that Erwin brought her gave her some hope at first, but
they've turned out to be exceptionally boring as well. They're ignorant of any
military protocol, which was expected. Erna can't blame them for that. Her
problem with the trio is that they seem to tow the line so fucking well. It's
annoying to her.
When Smith brought them, his body language and theirs suggested coercion to
her. They were conscripted more or less against their will. She was pretty sure
of that, so Erna expected some resistance, some defiance, and she was initially
excited at the prospect, because that would be something new for her.
Disappointingly, the three new trainees were terribly obedient and
unquestioning so far. Her only hold out for hope was in the short, quiet one.
Snowflake… What was his real name again? Levi. He looks more feral to her. He's
holding something back whenever an order is barked at him. If he doesn't beat
anyone senseless or slit someone's throat when they're challenging him, it's
because of some ulterior motivation. She wants to find out what that is.
She walks a line behind her subordinate drill instructors leading the trainees
through different grueling exercises until she gets to his squad and finds him.
Core and leg exercises that make normal people drop and vomit and cry are
fucking effortless for him. She would try to come up with something that would
be more physically strenuous, but there's a fear that she would try and fail to
present a challenge for him. She can't decide where his strength ends. It's
hard to get a read on, because he never looks like he needs to put much effort
into anything. She hasn't seen him look strained once, unless it's the look he
rarely gets, when she can tell he's holding back a sarcastic comment or a
punch.
Humans are so interesting, she thinks. Really, they're just animals, only, the
"lesser" animals are more authentic. Humans are the only ones that will submit
to something weaker than them, aside from the large prey animals like cattle.
Around here, that something weaker is Erna. She is strong through will alone,
but physically, she doesn't have much more muscle than an average soldier. At
least half of the trainees she bullies on a daily basis could probably take her
down easily, but they don't, and it feels like an affront to animal nature to
her. She's disgusted at the strong who don't use their strength for their own
benefit.
Whenever she finds a reason to chew out Levi or make some ridiculous demand of
him, and he doesn't lunge at her and break her in two like she knows he could,
she feels almost disappointed. What holds him back?
There's a deep resentment in her for the people who let her bully them
physically or psychologically. They don't truly have to take it, but they do
for reasons that she'll never personally understand. She thinks they would
fight back more if they had ever known what it's like to be exceptionally weak
and powerless, like her for much of her life.
She doesn't hide her disgust for the underground trio, regularly punishing all
three of them for no reason. She'd thought that the three new trainees from the
underground would resonate more with her than the complacent, milk-fed progeny
of the lower-middle and upper classes. She thought they would share her
cynicism more than the trainees who have never known what it's like to be
without food or love or shelter. Disappointingly, the blond one and the girl
are cheerful as fuck no matter how hard the training is. They must be happy
just to finally be together and above ground. Frustratingly enough, their
cheerfulness seems to keep Levi in check. She's caught them sharing looks with
him when it seems he might lose his patience or his temper, and it seems like
something between them reins him in. Ironically, if any of them were to fight
back, she would probably go easier on them.
Erna thinks she needs to separate them if she wants to have any fun.
She walks lightly in between rows of trainees on the ground doing push ups
until she gets to Levi. The heavy breaths and grunts of exertion are quieted as
she walks by. People seem to hold their breath, but nobody dares to get caught
slacking off, and they find it in them to move faster and with better form.
Levi, in contrast, changes nothing. He acts as if he doesn't even notice her
shadow looming over.
Erna presses her boot to his back. He doesn't stop moving, knowing that she
would berate him for that. She shifts her weight to lean on him and add about
half of her body weight to his back as he keeps doing pushups. He doesn't break
a sweat or struggle.
"Is this too easy for you, Snowflake?"
He doesn't answer, because there is no "safe" answer. There rarely are safe
answers to the questions Erna asks.
She places her boot back down on the ground and says, "Get up. Let's find
something else for you to do."
He follows her silently away from his team. She can feel heads turn, even in
the middle of straining to keep up with the drill instructor leading them
through physical training. It's unusual for her to separate someone from the
rest of their team. She has her reasons for that. She needs the brats to learn
to think and act as a group, not as individuals. They do everything together.
If she punishes one person, it's normally in a way that keeps them in sight of
the rest of the team, not as a warning, but so that they can sympathize. If she
takes someone away from the group, it's usually only for very serious
infractions, but it's almost unheard of for anyone to be stupid enough to
commit anything serious enough for that.
She walks him far away from the rest of the trainees, down the path toward
various outbuildings. She hasn't thought of exactly what she's going to do yet.
She likes the adrenaline rush of needing to improvise.
Cleaning is usually a pretty good punishment. People hate being made to mop or
do laundry. It's boring, tedious drudge work. She's tried that already. It
doesn't work with Levi. It might actually be the only thing he enjoys. He's
always complaining quietly about how filthy the training camp is when he thinks
she's out of earshot, and he would be grateful for more opportunities to
improve on the cleanliness of his surroundings.
She stops. He stops behind her. She almost wonders aloud to herself, 'What am I
going to do with you?'
What would be intensely frustrating to someone who likes to clean? Making him
get dirty is too obvious. She prides herself on being more creative than that.
Finally, after standing still in the path with him for a few seconds, she says,
"I have a very important job for you."
He only grunts slightly. That's the most she can ever get out of him.
Erna leads Levi to one of the vacated barracks and tells him to wait outside.
She goes in and retrieves a broom from the closet inside. Every barracks has a
few basic items for cleaning, like a broom, a mop, and a bucket, which aren't
enough for the Underground thug, apparently. She comes out and shoves the broom
at Levi. He takes it from her gloved hands, and his eyes almost seem to light
up. She was counting on that.
She crushes his hopes by pointing at the well-worn, hard-packed dirt path
they're standing on, and she says, "I want you to sweep the sunshine off of
these paths."
He barely tilts his head at her, but he doesn't question what she just said.
He's not that dumb or reckless.
"That's right, Snowflake." She lowers her eyelids at him and lowers her voice.
"You're going to sweep these dirt paths with that broom until every inch of
sunshine is gone."
His jaw clenches, and his grip on the broom tightens until his knuckles are
white. Erna smiles. As she walks away, she warns, "And if I see you taking a
break before you're done, I'll make your friends come help you."
As physically fit as Levi is, even he can't perform the same repetitive motion
for more than fourteen hours without suffering pain in his bones and joints. He
switches hands on the broom every so often, but that only makes his shoulders
get equally sore. By the time the sun finally begins to set, there are blisters
on his hands that have started to bleed.
It's only around 8:30pm, when the summer sun has just started to set, that the
Instructor finally comes back, looks at the path, and tells him, "Took you long
enough."
He wants to ask her why. What the fuck did he even do? Then, she rips the broom
from his hands that are almost arthritically frozen around the handle. Waves of
pain shoot from his fingers, up his arms, through his shoulders, and settle in
his mind, clouding it with black rage.
She looks at the setting sun and clucks her tongue. "Tch. You're almost out
past curfew. Not enough time to get dinner and get your hands bandaged. You're
going to have to choose one."
Levi can feel Erna's sadistic smile follow him as he stalks off toward the
infirmary. He's gone hungry before. Right now the ability to hold a blade again
is more valuable to him than food.
Farlan and Isabel murmur sympathetically at him when he finally gets back to
his bunk, making his way through the dark just a minute before curfew. Isabel
offers him a shoulder rub. He takes one from Farlan, instead. Isabel is too
weak to actually work out any of the knots in his neck and between his shoulder
blades. He hisses when his friend digs his thumb into a knotted muscle to the
right of the base of his neck, and he tells them both, quietly enough that the
surrounding officers won't hear, "Before we leave, I'm going to kill her."
They don't try to dissuade him.
Three days later, while ignoring a lecture from one of the drill instructors
about equipment maintenance, Levi is still curling and stretching his fingers,
staring at the palms of his hands and working through the stinging of skin
that's trying to repair itself. He needs to keep re-opening the blisters and
letting them bleed by stretching the skin out, or it will heal in a way that
keeps his hands curled and inflexible forever, like an old man's.
He's been lucky that training hasn't included anything that requires much grip
strength. If they had to spar hand to hand again or do anything that involved
holding a blade, he'd be fucked. He would be able to do it, albeit with a lot
of pain, but it would delay the healing of his hands.
He turns his attention back to the instructor as he demonstrates how to take
the 3DMG apart and put it back together. He and his friends never tried that.
It was hard enough to steal the equipment. They wouldn't risk fucking it up.
After a demonstration, it's the trainees' turn to each take a set of gear and
practice for themselves. Levi curses under his breath when his fingers struggle
with the smaller pieces of machinery. If that vindictive bitch hadn't fucked up
his hands, this would be easy.
As soon as he thinks it, she appears in the doorway as if he summoned her.
Small as she is, it's as if her shadow blocks any light from filtering through
the door opened to the hot summer air, and the whole room darkens, if not
physically, then spiritually. Any cheerful banter between friends stops. The
drill instructor overseeing their work holds his breath. Only Isabel, too naive
to pick up on the darkened mood, and more at ease for being favored by the Head
Instructor for some reason, chirps loudly, "Done!" when she's finished
assembling her disassembled gear before everyone else.
Levi watches the drill instructor start to move towards her and then quickly
pull himself up and stop as Erna does the same with a glint in her sharp, grey
eyes. It's like watching a wolf yield a kill to the more dangerous animal.
Isabel smiles up at her Instructor, too trusting of the sweet, amused smile
Raban graces her with. Levi and Farlan have tried to make sense of why she is
exceptionally nice to Isabel to no avail. Not much of what she does seems to
make sense on the surface. Levi can only figure that the preferential treatment
is an attempt to divide them.
Erna picks up the 3DMG and looks it over. She asks with almost sisterly
concern, "You're sure, Mags?"
"Yep!" Isabel grins from ear to ear.
Levi doubts she would have actually gotten it put together correctly that
quickly, but who knows. There aren't any extra pieces on her table, and
sometimes Isabel can be surprisingly competent.
Erna gently puts the gear back on the table in front of Isabel and then ruffles
her red pigtails affectionately.
"Good job, sweetheart."
In a split second, her demeanor changes back to its icy coldness to address the
entire team. "You better be very fucking confident in your gear. Don't half-ass
this like you do everything else."
She turns on her heel and leaves without any other warning. Once she's gone,
the drill instructor overseeing the exercise seems to let out a giant breath,
and he comes over to Isabel who is still beaming and proud of herself. He
warmly asks her to take her 3DMG apart and assemble it again until everyone
else has finished.
It's an interesting dynamic that Erna has with the way she affects the behavior
of her subordinate officers and drill instructors, and Levi thinks that she
knows it. When she's cruel, they are more compassionate in her absence. It
brings them closer to the trainees, like she is giving them a common enemy to
fear, and then the trainees seem to work harder with more fidelity toward their
officers and instructors. Levi could admire the brilliance and the manipulative
nature of it if he were sure that it were intentional, but he still can't
decide whether anything she does is done with a keen awareness or the accident
of insanity.
They assemble and disassemble 3DMG for two hours. The drill instructor goes
over other points of maintenance that are a review for everyone else, but new
to Levi and his friends. They repeat the action until it almost becomes muscle
memory. They're told that the gear they're working on now will be theirs for
the duration of their military service. They'll wear it every day and be solely
responsible for its maintenance. When they're finally dismissed, Erna is
waiting.
She stands outside in the blinding sun, flanked by a few officers, smoking a
cigarette. As the trainees file out, she says simply, "Come with me."
She takes them on a long walk that the trainees around Levi treat like a death
march. They go far past all the buildings, and the group's overall anxiety
begins to build with the uncertainty of what she's about to inflict on them.
She takes them all the way to the edge of camp, the cliffside, and then turns
around to face them with a bored expression.
"You're going to be scaling and then rappelling down the cliff…again. The only
way to see if you've done a good job putting your equipment together is to use
it."
The group relaxes. Levi takes it that this is something they do often.
"This time you won't have a life line."
Farlan asks someone next to him what that is. They tell him that it's a rope
harness that saves you if you fall.
"So I hope you're fucking confident in that gear you just put together."
There's some hesitation to proceed, everyone standing still, hoping that she
will say more and stall the dangerous exercise, but she only squints hatefully
at the group and then shouts, "Move!"
They fan out, giving each other safe distance. Levi looks up the vertical wall
of dusty, red rock and then to his right and left at Farlan and Isabel. They
nod to him that they're ready, and, even in this setting, they wait for him to
tell them to go. They don't do anything without his permission.
Using the 3DMG to go up vertically is more challenging than arcing back and
forth from one building to another. There's more of a leap of faith involved
when one pushes off the wall to get an angle at which one can see the point
above to aim the anchors. There's a moment every time where he's free-falling
in between retracting the anchors and shooting them again. Most people play it
safer and leave one anchor in where they are until they sink the other one into
the rock above them, but it's slower. Levi doesn't like to go slow if he
doesn't have to.
Erna watches him from the ground, taking a cigarette that was tucked behind her
ear. She brings it to her lips and mutters, "Cocky motherfucker…" as one of the
officers scurries to light it for her.
Levi gets to the top first and looks down. He estimates that the ground is
probably 150 feet away. As he's thinking about his descent and how few jumps he
can pull it off in, he notices how far behind everyone else is, even Isabel and
Farlan, though they're closer than most. He hangs there for a minute before
starting to descend. He lets his friends catch up more, though he still starts
on his way down before they get to the top. As he's passing her, Isabel chirps,
"This is so easy!"
She says that about most things, even when they're not, because of her
insecurity about always being the younger, less experienced one in any group of
people.
"Don't show off, brat."
Her "Aww, why not?" just barely catches his ear as he retracts the anchors
holding him and let's himself free fall about 20 feet down before shooting them
at the rock again and hitting the gas so that he won't get stopped up short.
One of Erna's officers hands her a small pair of binoculars, and, as she
watches the trainees, she makes silent bets with herself about who will fall by
sheer accident, nerves, or equipment failure. She would get the officers in on
it and put down money, but that would require talking to them as opposed to
just giving them orders. She doesn't do that. She doesn't allow anybody under
her (and very few above) to be social with her, so she keeps her predictions to
herself.
She watches those she expects to fail more closely, waiting for them to fuck
up, which means, for once, she isn't scrutinizing Levi. She does, however,
center her binoculars on his red-headed friend. Her bet is on equipment
failure, since the girl is too stupid to get nervous and too good at
omnidirectional maneuvers to slip up.
Erna starts to worry about her normally sharp ability to forecast incompetency
as the young girl reaches the top of the cliff, but after she starts the
descent, Mags doesn't let her down. The equipment failure Erna predicted is a
snagged cable, easy to prevent when you're careful, deadly if you're not. She
follows with her binoculars as the girl falls, and she starts to plan how she's
going to tell Erwin about it. In a letter? Probably not. She wants to see his
face when she tells him with graphic detail what happens when a body hits the
ground from 150 feet up.
She clucks her tongue with irritation when Levi pushes off the cliff wall and
swings himself to the side, grabbing his friend's hand and unlocking his cables
at the same time so that his arm won't get ripped out of it's socket by the
velocity of her falling body.
"Tch. Clever little shit," she mutters to herself as her officers look on in
awe.
She grinds her teeth as Levi locks his cables and braces his muscular legs
against the rock. He pulls Isabel up a bit higher so that she can grab his
waist and free his hands. Through her binoculars, Erna can see that the girl is
wide-eyed and sobbing. She doesn't see what there is to cry about. She's going
to live, after all. She's going to get away with a normally deadly oversight
without even a broken bone as a penalty. She should be overjoyed.
"Sir?"
The tremulous voice of a hesitant and wary officer breaks her concentration.
She looks over and follows their eyeline to see what's so concerning and sees
another of her picks for her personal bet falling from near the top of the
cliff.
"Save him, I guess," she says unable to hide her still fresh annoyance.
The officer is off, maneuvering up to grab the trainee before he can hit the
ground before Erna gets out the, 'I guess,' part. Her officers practice
complicated omnidirectional maneuvers forward and backwards just for shit like
this. It's one thing to be able to save yourself with your 3DMG. It's another,
much more difficult and complicated thing to be able to use it to save someone
else. It's not something Erna would ever try.
Levi bucks Isabel up onto his back so that she won't get shot through the leg
with an anchor as they maneuver down. She wets his neck and shoulders with
tears as he tells her, "Calm the fuck down. You're fine." She knows that, but
the shock of falling has her incoherent and emotional. With the added burden,
he loses his head start on the other trainees and is one of the last to make it
down, relieved to finally deposit his friend on the ground.
She crumples to her knees, still sobbing, but Farlan, who made it down before
them, picks her up and diffuses the intensity of her tears with a big hug and
admonitions of, "You dummy. When are we gonna stop needing to save you?" Then,
he ruffles her hair and pinches her cheek like she's a little kid until she
gets too annoyed with him to cry anymore.
"Sorry, big bro," she sniffles after shoving Farlan away.
Levi looks down at his palm. The hand he caught her with is bleeding again.
"Ripped the shit out of my hand," he mutters at her.
He's distracted from her tearful apology by a commotion off in the distance.
Not too far. He looks past Farlan who catches his glance and turns to look,
too.
Levi tilts his head curiously. He starts to walk closer to hear and see better.
Then he stops, barely wincing at the familiar, sickening sound of cracking bone
as Instructor Raban grabs one of his fellow trainees from the arms of an
officer, shoves him down, and breaks his jaw with a vicious kick to the face
before his head even hits the ground. Isabel and Farlan close their eyes at the
spray of blood that erupts from the trainee's mouth, but Levi can't look away.
He's entranced by the change in Raban's entire demeanor. Her movements are no
longer controlled and quietly, confidently graceful, but they're efficient and
powerful, putting every ounce of force she has into every kick aimed with
predatory accuracy at vital organs and bones. Her voice isn't low and calm like
he's always known it to be. There's none of the sarcastic indifference one
could normally identify her by. Instead, she is roaring with rage.
"You incompetent piece of shit!"
The trainee rolls onto his side, facing away from her. She kicks him in the
lower back, probably doing severe damage to his kidneys.
"What made you think your life is yours to be reckless with?!"
She lifts the heel of her boot and brings it down on his femur. The trainee
wails and curls in on himself, a low, wet sound forcing its way out through all
the blood in his mouth as he reaches for the leg. Erna leans over him,
narrowing her eyes at his sniveling, sobbing, broken face, and she says icily,
"Your life, as worthless as it is, belongs to me for as long as you're here."
She kicks him in the stomach. Anyone close enough can actually hear the air
leave his lungs. Fortunately, for those who have trouble watching, this means
he can't wail or sob anymore. He goes silent. Erna's voice rises again, "And if
I want to take it from you, I will!"
She places the sole of her boot on his throat just as he starts wheezing to get
air back into his shocked lungs as if she's considering it.
Levi has a good vantage point and can see it in her eyes. She is deadly
serious. He might be witness to a sloppy, bloody, impromptu execution. He looks
to his side for a second just to make sure that Isabel isn't watching, but her
eyes are tightly shut. She knows, too.
"You don't get to take that privilege from me."
Levi expects her to finish the poor soul off, but, instead, Instructor Raban
pushes at the trainee's shoulder with her toe to roll him over onto his back.
There's a gurgling sound as he starts fighting to not choke on his own blood.
Erna shouts to an officer, "Bring a gurney! Get this fucker out of here!"
One of them turns and breaks into a dead run toward the infirmary. While she
waits, she beckons another officer over and starts giving them notes, no longer
roaring, but loudly enough for most to hear.
"If his brain isn't bleeding, I want him learning how to take apart and put
together his 3DMG. If that femur is broken, have him do it sitting up in his
cot. I want him doing it, reading about it, fucking thinking about it, to the
exclusion of everything else. I want him to have fucking dreams about every
screw and pin in that gear. I want him to get so fucking intimate with that
gear that he won't be able to get hard without closing his eyes and thinking
about engineering blueprints of trigger mechanisms for the rest of his short,
miserable life. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, sir!"
She then leans over with the cigarette she'd been holding carefully between her
gloved fingers the whole time. She puts it out in the small puddle of blood and
sand right next to the trainee's face. As she stands up, she informs the
officer who saved the kid from falling only so that she could nearly kill him,
"I don't want to be bothered for the rest of the day."
"Yes, sir!"
Levi watches her carefully as she walks away from the bloody mess she created,
morphing with every step back into the quietly severe, terribly calm woman
she's been since Erwin introduced them. As she nears them, her eyes flash. She
seems to remember something and pauses for a split second. Levi sees her grey,
compassionless eyes lock on Isabel, and he instinctively grabs the younger
girl's arm and moves her behind him as Erna walks over without any sense of
urgency in her gait.
She stops in front of Levi. He squares his shoulders, ready to kill her if she
tries the same shit with his friend.
Erna smirks at him. She looks past his shoulder and addresses a cowering Isabel
and says almost sweetly, "You're fucking lucky," she looks Levi up and down,
then adds her usual pet name for Isabel, "sweetheart," though she's looking
right at Levi when she says it.
He holds her eyes for a second, and, in the moment, he can't tell if he's
feeling hatred or attraction. It could be both. He doesn't know that those
things need to be mutually exclusive. What he does know is that she's fucking
impressive.
As she sidesteps around him and continues on her way, he catches her scent,
something like soap and lemons and charcoal, somehow. Maybe she's a demon from
hell. He's never seen a human like her, even in the underground, where there's
no shortage of cruelty or psychopathy.
Everyone watches her walk away out of abject fear. Levi's head turns for a
different reason. It's been a long time since he found any woman interesting
enough to be alluring.
Once she's gone, the team's drill instructor, not knowing what else to do with
the traumatized group, takes them back to go over 3DMG maintenance again. It
would be pointless to try to teach them anything new while they're in
psychological shock, so he reviews, and he doesn't care much about whether or
not anyone is listening. He just has to keep them out of sight until the hour
they're free to go clean up and eat dinner.
Farlan helps Isabel figure out what she got wrong when she put her 3DMG back
together. Levi refuses to do anything with his hand open and bleeding again. He
sits there and watches them absently, wondering about Instructor Raban, and how
she came to be where she is. He wonders where they found her. She acts like a
criminal or a killer, like someone from the underground.
When dinner time comes around, Levi finds out that he isn't the only one who is
curious. Gossip flows freely from table to table.
"I heard she always wears gloves because she doesn't have any fingernails."
"Did you know she doesn't sleep? That's why she's insane. The people on watch
at night say her cabin is never dark."
Normally, no one even mentions her name as if the utterance of it might make
her appear, like they think her name is powerful enough to summon doom. It
seems that, after an especially traumatic event, people can't help themselves.
It's a way of coping, like gossipping about a serial killer with news of new
murders. Everything comes under speculation.
"I think she's a lesbian," one male trainee says, as if that adds to the
Instructor's cruelty and mental instability.
He immediately gets called out on his stupidity by a girl next to him. "Fuck
you. What would that have to do with anything? What even makes you think that?"
"She's a lot more harsh with men."
"She's more harsh with you because you fuck up more, dipshit. She isn't any
nicer to us. Remember when she broke Hope's nose because she 'didn't like her
name'?"
Levi smirks to himself at that.
A third trainee joins their conversation and says, "Would it matter if she were
straight or gay? Can you even imagine having sex with that?"
Others shudder, but Levi can imagine it. It would be violent and feral, and for
once he wouldn't have to be careful about being gentle and not breaking
someone. The idea appeals to him more and more, but he doesn't treat it with
seriousness. Realistically, he and his friends are just going to keep their
heads down and get through the next two months without incident. Then they'll
join the Survey Corps, and he'll never see Raban again.
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
Over the next week, Levi's idea about keeping his head down gets challenged
more and more. Instructor Raban has made it a point to stick with his team ever
since the cliffside incident and oversee every detail of their training, much
to the relief of literally every other drill instructor and trainee in the
entire camp.
She cites her reason for more involvement as their "gross incompetence", but,
contrary to that excuse, she concentrates on Levi, the most competent one on
the team. It doesn't make sense to him.
It doesn't have to. No one can question her methods. All he needs to know is
that nothing he can do will be good enough for her. He doesn't care. He doesn't
have the incentive to try harder like the regular trainees do. He isn't
competing for a rank, and he'll be out of there in less than two months whether
she thinks he's ready for the Survey Corps or not, so he takes the verbal
lashings with unshakeable stoicism, which annoys her, and he's pleased to see
her annoyed. Every day, she seems to grow more irritated as she realizes the
futility of it all, as it sinks in that she can't touch him.
By her reactions, he can tell that she isn't used to a challenge. He isn't,
either, but being presented with one in the form of a beautifully severe woman
whose preoccupation with him is turning into an angry obsession doesn't bother
him the way it should. When she's especially hard on him or tries to humiliate
him, Isabel and Farlan assume that he must be a saint to put up with it without
shouting back or losing it and choking her to death, but he rarely gets the
urge to push back. Maybe because he can tell that she wants him to.
She glares down at him from her horse, a twitchy, dark bay mare that looks as
unpredictable as its rider. As the team's drill instructor tells them that
they'll be running 15 miles down the forest trails and back, Levi stares back
at Erna. He watches her hands in their tight, black leather riding gloves. she
has a loose grip on the reins in her left and a tense, bone-crushing grip on
the three foot long dressage whip in her right. He feels sure that it isn't for
the horse.
A collective intake of breath is barely audible through the whole twenty person
team when, before they've even started, she informs them that anyone who
averages more than seven minutes a mile for the run will have another year of
training to look forward to.
One trainee asks the person next to them if she can do that.
As if she heard, Erna adds, "There's no rule set in stone that says I can't
keep you here for as long as I want. If you don't reach my standards, I don't
see how you have a right to go inflict your incompetent bullshit on whatever
branch of service you were thinking of joining. It's not as if the military is
suffering from a shortage of stupidity and laziness."
Levi wonders if the threat is serious. Not that it affects him. But they're in
full uniform, 3DMG and all, which isn't the most conducive to running, and
carrying packs of basic supplies on their backs. Seven minutes per mile is
unrealistic. He can do it, and maybe one or two others who are more fit than
the rest, but he would guess that the rest will vomit and pass out just trying
to get anywhere near that time.
Erna takes a watch out of the jacket underneath her green cloak embroidered
with the crossed swords of the Training Corps. Her shrewd eyes squint at it,
and, without looking away, she says, "Go."
Though much quieter, her voice has the effect of a starting pistol. Most people
sprint to start. Not a good idea.
Erna reins her horse to the side, not letting it follow yet. Watching people
run is about as fascinating as paint drying. She plans on cutting through the
woods, giving herself some quiet time to think, before coming out further down
the trail to check their progress.
She only has a little more than six weeks before Smith comes back and takes
away the most interesting thing in her life since before she lost her freedom.
She's a little depressed about it. Best to think of how she can have fun with
her toys before he takes them.
Levi has turned out to be like a puzzle, much the same way she viewed Erwin for
the duration of her six months with the Survey Corps. They are different, but
the same – stubborn and indecipherable.
She likes that. Levi is even more difficult than Erwin, who, from context
alone, she could at least safely assume a few basic things, like his background
and morals. All she knows about Levi is that the Military Police arrested him
and his friends in the Underground for stealing three sets of maneuver gear,
and then the Survey Corps, for some reason, offered them a chance to trade
service for prison. She doesn't even know his full name.
That's not enough for her and her morbid curiosity. Her best offense is her
ability to read people, and it eats away at her when she can't. She gets
incredibly frustrated trying to see past Levi's expressionless face and trying
to hear even a hint of subtext in his monotone deadpan.
She reaches above her head for a small, wild apple hanging from a branch to
give to her horse later. The few horses in the training camp are the only
animals she respects there, humans included. She's never seen any of them
suffer rough treatment or disrespect without bucking, kicking, and biting. The
rest of the brats around here could learn a lot from them.
When she makes it to her destination much further down the path, she dismounts
and waits. Her horse nudges at her jacket with its nose until she surrenders
the apple, and while she holds it out in her palm for the animal, she takes out
her watch, holds it down near her hip, and narrows her eyes at it.
When the first trainee runs past with small pairs and groups lagging behind,
all with limbs like lead and gasping lungs, she shouts, "I'm fucking flattered
that you brats want to spend another year with me, but the sentiment isn't
mutual, so move your asses, or I will make your extra time a blacker hell than
any of you can imagine!"
As more run past, she elaborates on her plans for them.
"Half rations! Earlier wake up calls! Marches in the sun until your fucking
brains boil in your skulls!"
It proves very motivating, with the exception of one group that does not see
the need to run any faster. Erna drops her reins when she sees them and she
shouts, "Stop right fucking there!" as she stalks over, her blood reaching its
boiling point.
She ignores the other two and only addresses Levi. "I know you can run faster
than this."
He doesn't answer her, but the blond one has his thumbs desperately hooked in
the shoulder straps of his pack as if that might help ease the weight and is
wincing like he developed a cramp in his side with the first half mile. She
gathers that running isn't his thing, and Levi is only slowing down for him.
Fucking loyalty. She hates it when it isn't for her.
"Church, Mags, drop your shit."
They look at her with confusion, so she clarifies with a roar. "Drop your
fucking packs!"
They hurry to get the forty-some odd pound packs off of their shoulders and
drop them on the path while other trainees veer around them, not daring to slow
down or rubberneck. Erna picks one up and then the other, tells Levi to hold
his arms out, and then adds one to each of his shoulders. Since she already
knows he won't ask why, she takes it on herself to make this a teaching moment
and moves back to face him again. She can't even begin to hide the disgust and
contempt in her voice as she tells him, "You're going to need to get used to
carrying your friends' dead weight."
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Things change minutely after that. Erna doesn't know if it was the comment
about his friends' dead weight or if it's the exhaustion and physical pain and
humiliation she takes a personal hand in making sure is a part of every aspect
of Levi's training, but he's different. He looks at her differently. He still
doesn't talk or disobey, but his eyes follow her every muscle twitch with an
intense focus. It makes her feel…unsafe.
Her heart drums slightly harder when he stalks her movements with his eyes. She
likes feeling unsafe. There was a time when she was more practical and more
risk averse, but boredom has made her less inhibited about fucking around with
danger, so she pushes Levi, hoping to see what it will look like when he snaps.
When it finally happens, it's so fast that she almost misses the fire in his
eyes before he extinguishes it under the cool damper of disciplined self
control. It comes in the form of a lightning quick hit to her face with a broom
handle while she's in the middle of berating him as he sweeps the officer's
barracks before dinner.
It's a quick crack, and then it's over, and he's looking at her as if nothing
just happened, his face expressionless and that sudden flame gone from his cold
eyes.
Of course, she has to match that. She can't let on that she finds the violence
shocking and thrilling. She can't tell him that the severe pain searing her
nerve endings feels so much better than complacency. She stares back at him,
equally expressionless as two of the quicker-thinking officers force him to his
knees as blood trickles down from her nose to stain the edge of her upper lip a
deep red.
Her eyes move to the broom now laying on the floor, and she thinks wistfully
that she wishes it had been his fist. Some physical contact would have been
nice. When they ask her if she wants him thrown in solitary confinement, she
laughs. Obviously that is what she should do. It's the most severe punishment
she has available to her, and this is the most severe infraction that has ever
happened at the camp. Solitary confinement is dreaded by everyone: officers,
drill instructors, trainees. No one is safe from the psychological torture that
comes from simply being isolated in the dark behind noiseless walls without
food or water for however long Erna deems necessary.
She doesn't want that for Levi. She would miss him for however long she kept
him in there, and, on the off chance that it did break him, she wouldn't be
able to catch a glimpse of that fire again.
Besides, there are better ways to make an example of someone.
Erna turns and goes over to the officer closest to the door and whispers
something to him. As he scurries out, the others ask her again about Levi's
punishment, and she responds this time with more annoyance at them than at Levi
or the situation, "No. Just don't let him fucking move for now."
They shut up. The two holding him grip a little tighter at his arms, though it
was obvious from the beginning he wasn't going anywhere anyway. Erna smirks
because it's obvious, to her, at least, that if he wanted to fight, two people
wouldn't be a problem, nor would the other five officers in the barracks
nervously watching and shifting their weight, afraid to move or speak.
She sighs wistfully and tilts her head back a little, pinching the bridge of
her nose to try and slow the blood flow. One of the female officers steps
forward hesitantly, and in a meek, scared little voice, squeaks, "Um, sir…maybe
you should go to the infirmary…"
"What the fuck for?" Erna asks.
"It…just…um… I think your nose might be broken…"
"My nose," Erna replies, "is definitely broken. Good catch." She rolls her eyes
and catches Levi smirking at her for only the shortest moment. It's a smug
twitch of the lip, and then it's gone.
He could have kept hitting her if he'd wanted. She wouldn't be able to fight
him off without a weapon. Maybe not even with a weapon. He could have hurt her
much worse before anyone might have been able to stop him. She can only assume
that, for some reason, he was satisfied with just that one hit.
She says to no one in particular, "Get me a towel," and finally there's a small
flurry of activity to break the dreadfully boring stagnation of fear and
hesitance that had settled over her officers. The one she sent out runs back in
while the others make themselves busy, and he carries out the instructions
she'd whispered in the doorway.
Levi allows him and the two others to wrench his arms behind his back, and he
holds still while they put the handcuffs on. Erna snatches the small, white
hand towel offered to her and wipes away as much blood as she can from her
face. She steps in front of Levi, now fully restrained by tight metal
handcuffs, tosses the bloody rag at his chest, and stares down at him as she
tents her fingers in a triangle over her broken nose and, with a quick
movement, snaps the bone back into its proper placement with an audible crack.
She isn't immune to pain. A wave of nausea and dizziness hits her the same way
it would anyone else, but it doesn't compare with the sheer agony of having
one's fingernails ripped out. It is comparative experience alone that makes it
so she's able to stifle any visible reaction and keep her expression cold and
calm.
The officers at Levi's sides lift him up by the arms as if they're expecting
her to tell them to take him somewhere. Erna tells them to let him go and then
ignores them. She only addresses Levi, glaring at him, giving him her undivided
attention.
"You're not going to solitary. I don't have the fucking time allotted to waste
on putting you in time-out. You're going to keep training the same as ever.
You're just going to do it without your hands." She walks to the door without
threats, without creative insults; she simply says over her shoulder, "Have
fun."
At first, Levi thinks he got off pretty fucking easy.
He soon begins to appreciate how brilliant Erna is when he realizes the
difficulty of trying to eat or take a piss without hands. It might not have
been so bad for anyone else, but Levi has too much pride to let himself be
dependent on anyone. He would rather starve than let Isabel feed him. He would
rather sleep in a filthy uniform than let Farlan help him undress.
He gets to enjoy some admiration from the other trainees who find out about
what happened through the grapevine. At first, it seems to everyone that,
rather than making a cautionary example of him, Erna's decision to keep Levi
visible has raised the morale of the trainees. It seems that way until the
passing of time makes it unsettling. The enthusiasm that they felt at finding
out their Instructor isn't invulnerable fades as dried blood cakes Levi's
wrists. There are no more pats on the back as he loses weight and his face
starts to look more gaunt. Nobody envies him when Erna supervises their team's
physical training, and against all reason kicks him brutally in the ribs for
not being able to do a push up.
The sight of Levi begins to make even the officers uncomfortable. They are
completely confused as to what to do with him. It hardly seems fair to punish a
trainee for things he is literally unable to do. When Erna checks in on his
team's training one day and tells the drill instructor to not treat Levi any
differently, they freeze, completely unsure as to what to do while she walks
away and too afraid to ask her. How can they make him participate in 3DMG
drills if he can't move his arms?
They fear her more than ever, not because she is violent and unpredictable,
which they already knew, but because she is merciless or insane or
sadistic—they can't tell which. Not being able to label something makes it that
much more terrifying.
After seven days, she stops his team early in the morning. Their drill
instructor chews his lip nervously as Erna walks past him like he's invisible,
and trainees nearly jump out of the path she makes to Levi.
Her eyes fucking burn into him as she says coldly, "Kneel."
Levi stares at her dispassionately. He gets down on his knees carefully, it
still being difficult to balance without the use of his arms, but he refuses to
look away.
There is expectant, gut-clenching silence as Erna walks around behind the
prostrate Levi and pulls a small key out of her jacket pocket, quickly bending
down to unlock the handcuffs and remove them. Once his hands are free, there's
a collective intake of breath, as if every surrounding person thinks he'll do
something violent again. Only Erna is calm and confident in her safety.
He stays on his knees until she walks around in front of him again and says,
"Up," like he's her fucking dog. He rolls his neck first, relieved to be able
to actually let his shoulders rest for the first time in seven days. Then, he
stands up.
He's an inch taller than her. It's not really enough to look down at her, but,
somehow, he does. She smirks at the defiance in his eyes like she's still sure
he won't do anything, and she pats her hip, telling him, "Heel."
Levi follows her away from the group, walking at her side like a pet. When
they're far enough away from anyone to not be heard, she finally says, mostly
to herself because he never responds, "You know, I don't know why you let me do
any of this, but I know it isn't out of some bullshit sense of submission to
authority or patriotism." When they're in between buildings, out of sight from
everyone participating in the hustle of early morning training, she suddenly
places a hand on his arm and a palm against his chest, spinning him and pushing
his back against the wooden exterior of the building at her side.
To him, it almost seems like she's angry that he doesn't fight back.
She gives him a feral look, stepping into him so that he can smell the soap
that she uses and the slightly burnt ends of her straight-ironed hair. He can
smell her morning cigarette and the bittersweet scent of tea on her tongue as
she asks him in a low voice, "Do you know why I call you Snowflake?"
Rhetorical question or not, she isn't getting an answer from him. She lets him
in on the secret anyway, squeezing his bicep and splaying the fingers against
his chest a little wider, letting them slide down over his muscles, too strong
to have suffered at all from a week of disuse. "It's because you're so pale,"
she says with a dark dreaminess. She inhales sharply. "And you look like you
would melt on my tongue."
Levi's eyelids lower, but he keeps his mouth set in its grim line. He tries not
to react in any way, because in that moment he isn't even sure how he wants to
handle himself. Arousal builds quickly into a growing, insistent need. He feels
even hungrier than she looks as her eyes travel down over his abs to settle on
his crotch. She makes him ache for the chase, the conquest, the domination, but
he also fucking hates her, and she wants it. He can tell. She's humiliated, and
she has tormented him too much for him to give her anything she wants.
Abruptly, she steps back again, taking her hands off of him and giving him back
his personal space. Her eyes return to normal, and she taps him on the shoulder
to follow as she guides him away and out into the open again.
As they continue their walk, and Levi wills his cock to stop instinctively
getting hard, she tells him offhandedly, as if they're only talking about the
weather, "You know, I had a dream last night. You'd had an accident in advanced
3D maneuver training. I forget how, but you hit the ground awkwardly from a
good height and broke your spine or severed a nerve a bit or something. Anyway,
you were somewhat paralyzed." She keeps talking without looking at him. "You
were still conscious, which was nice, because you could still give me that
look—kind of like the one you're giving me right now—while I raped you."
He's glad she isn't looking at his face. She would be too satisfied to see the
slight shock it's showing.
She reaches inside her jacket and pulls out the handcuffs she removed minutes
ago, twirling them around her finger. "Would have been easy to do while you
were still wearing these, but," she says, "you're fucking filthy. You smell
like shit, you know?"
Finally they get to the building he recognizes as the infirmary, and she shoves
him through the door. She follows on his heels and stops the nearest doctor,
telling them, "Get this one cleaned up and make sure his shoulders haven't
dislocated."
Without even giving him enough of a second thought to meet his eyes, she turns
on her heel and leaves. Off to torment some other unfortunate soul, he's sure.
After that, Erna feels better. The course of events of getting her nose broken,
punishing him horribly for it, and then confusing him with a candid confession
makes her feel rather cleansed and like she can finally get past the things he
makes her feel. She leaves him alone for days and is almost able to forget
about her obsession entirely.
Levi's obsession only grows. In two days, when he's strong again and the
soreness in his wrists and shoulders has begun to fade, he tells Isabel and
Farlan in a carefully hushed tone that he's going to kill her. This time they
argue, because this time they can see he's really going to do it, and they're
worried about how that's going to affect their whole plan, but he won't be
deterred. He tells them that it won't fuck anything up. He's going to do it at
night, and quickly, more like an assassination, rather than his usual way of
doing things. They look at him nervously. Isabel chews at her lip and Farlan
shoots her a look, but they give up on trying to talk Levi out of it.
He might not be thinking clearly. A full week of torture and humiliation will
do that to a person. Nonetheless, he has a need to make her writhe in pain and
wail with anguish. He won't be able to go back to thinking clearly until he
does.
***** Glass *****
Chapter Summary
     Warning: Rape(?) dubcon, violence, blood, vague references to past
     sexual abuse of a minor, etc. etc. etc.
Chapter Notes
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The candle flame flickers when Erna pulls it closer to supplement what little
light filters through her window. The moon is new tonight, which means it isn't
much help as she sits at her desk, answering letters and recording shipments
and payments. The Military Police had offered her an accountant for this. It
was standard. She declined and told them it was a waste, as she was perfectly
capable of keeping track of a few numbers on her own. She left out the part
about how a large part of her books would be extortion, blackmail, and bribes.
Really, they should have expected as much, and even if they did give her the
benefit of the doubt, they had to at least wonder how she always had a stock of
luxury items that other camps couldn't afford, like tea for herself and healthy
food for the brats, but she's an expert and she never leaves a trail of
evidence. Nothing wrong with accepting "favors".
She gives her eyes a break to look out the window over her desk and scan the
starry sky. She hates new moons. She needs more light than that. She clears her
desk and gets up to light a few more candles.
For obvious reasons, Erna has issues with darkness.
She has a few "quirks" thanks to her time with Nile. She appreciates certain
things that, before, she wouldn't have cared about or even noticed. There's the
aversion to small, dark spaces. That one makes sense, but there are also a few
she hasn't bothered to think about enough to try and make sense of, like the
reason that she has a thing now for soft beds and long showers and maybe a
preoccupation with caring for her skin. She has an inclination toward a lot of
things that, before, she thought were frivolous and pointless.
She moves to the closet and reaches for another preference that developed
shortly after her release: silky lingerie. It's almost an addiction. She'll
never wear coarse cotton again, unless it's her military uniform.
Maybe it's a way of reclaiming her broken and pieced-together body. Maybe it's
because of the scars. She doesn't care about the underlying psychological
motivation. She just knows it feels good against her skin, and she fucking
deserves some nice things after all the hell she's gone through.
She searches the hangers until she finds a pale pink pajama set, simple shorts
and a tank top. That could be enough, but she reaches for a pair of white lace
underwear and a short, silk robe, as well, and takes everything to the bathroom
to check whether her bath is ready or not.
Erna has the only bathtub onsite. Plumbing is mostly nonexistent in the
training camp she inherited. The barracks have group showers in each building,
with water that's collected in cisterns on the roofs and heated by the sun,
which means winter is fucking rough…and dirty. She's trying to extort enough
money or find out the right piece of blackmail she needs to get a very
expensive bathhouse for the camp so she won't have to look at so many dirty
little brats whenever the weather gets cold.
Her own tub sits above the floor, raised over a brazier that she can load with
hot coals for heat. It's inexact and it's work, but, once a week or so, it's
worth it to her.
She sets her clothes down on a table next to the wash basin and strips off her
uniform, carelessly letting the military issue garments pool on the wooden
floor. She tests the water—not hot enough for her. She could stoke the coals,
but that means waiting possibly up to half an hour. Instead, she takes a small
pair of tongs hanging on a nail near the brazier and picks up a red-hot coal.
She drops it directly into the water with a hiss.
Through her impatience, she's found that coal actually makes a very good
exfoliant. Her skin has gotten softer and smoother in the years she has taken
charge of the southern district training camp. Not that anyone gets the
opportunity to notice but her.
She likes it this way. She likes being alone. She never masturbated before. Any
ability to associate pleasure with sex was ripped away from her at a young age,
and, even before puberty, her body became only an object to her. When she used
it, she felt detached from what was happening, especially with men. Women could
sometimes pull her into the moment, but only if they were good enough at what
they were doing to make her mind go blank.
In a way, by torturing the shit out of it, Nile cleansed it with fire and gave
her back a feeling of possession of her body that she hadn't felt in decades.
She could finally look at it and see something that appealed to her. She liked
her curves, her lines, the slight shadows and indentations of lean muscles over
a delicate frame of bones. She fetishizes herself, a probable reason for the
obsession with pretty lingerie, and objectifies her body for herself in a full
length mirror.
Steam from the bath makes her skin blush a dusky red and undoes her hair from
the straightened bob she sets it into every morning, making it return halfway
to its natural curl, but it isn't the cause of the heat that pools in her
abdomen when her fingers reach for the silky folds between her legs. Her eyes
close, and she rocks against them, moaning for no one but herself.
She only teases herself. She doesn't want to make herself come until she can
watch herself in the mirror, and she needs to get clean first.
She has a thing for soap and oils and toiletries that she never cared about
before. Maybe because they would only have made her more appealing to other
people, and she didn't give a fuck about others. Now that she gets off on her
own skin, she enjoys actually taking good care of it with expensive soaps that
the merchants who have been blackmailed into accepting meager military
contracts have learned make her easy to negotiate with. Sometimes, they send
bars of soap and shampoo along with the shipment of whatever she's ordered for
the camp. Sometimes, if they need to beg, they send it to her personally in
discreet, brown paper packages. If they're especially desperate, they send
whiskey and cigarettes.
Higher ranking officers in the Military Police are the most devoted in sending
tributes, lately, since she made some offhand remarks about how easily she
could rank the trainees so that only the worst placed into the top ten, or she
could rank them fairly but use her sway over them to convince the top ten that
they would be better off joining the Wall Garrison. That way, the Military
Police wouldn't even get recruits from her camp at all. It was all
hypothetical, of course, but it still moved a few officials to keep her so
well-stocked with the things she liked that she might need to start sharing her
whiskey just to make room for more.
She smirks to herself as she gets out of the bath and dries herself with a
towel. Sharing.That would be the day. Instead, she's settled for decorating her
cabin with the pretty bottles, at least one in every room. Easy to take a nip
whenever she feels moved to.
After rubbing rose-scented oil on her pulse points and getting dressed, she
pours a generous portion of the amber-colored poison from a decanter on her
vanity into a small glass. A small sip makes her cheeks start to glow. She sets
the heavy-bottomed glass down and opens a drawer on the vanity. Her fingers
rifle past a hairbrush and find the smooth object she wants. It's another gift,
though from someone who knows her much more intimately—a thick, clear glass
facsimile of a six inch cock. She'd laughed when Nanaba gave it to her as a
parting gift "to remember her by." She'd asked how a glass cock was going to
help her remember her. Then, Nanaba showed her exactly how.
She morbidly wonders every time she picks it up if Nanaba is dead yet. She
should ask Erwin when he comes to fetch the brats. She doesn't know why she
still gets a sick satisfaction out of her lovers dying, even when it isn't by
her own hands.
She drags the short vanity chair over to the full length mirror, setting the
piece of smooth glass on the edge of the tub close by and retrieving her drink.
She takes another, longer sip, and, as she caresses her skin, she feels the
whiskey warm her blood and go straight to her clit. Her hand stays above the
silk shorts and rubs against the fabric covering her skin, which feels so much
nicer than skin on skin contact.
As her face heats up, she leaves the chair, instead kneeling on the floor so
that she can get a better view of the way her spine arches and creates a
beautiful line for her eyes to follow to her cute, round ass. She takes one
more small sip of whiskey before setting down the glass and grabbing her own
flesh more aggressively. Her fingers stray into her panties, pushing at the
waist of her shorts and disappearing. Her other hand slides up the curve of her
small waist to grope at her breasts and pinch lightly at her nipples, until
they poke slightly at the tight, silk tank top. The robe, with its pattern of
pink lotus flowers over an ivory background and black trim, falls off of her
shoulders with a soft whisper on its way to the floor. When her lips part
unconsciously to let out barely audible huffs of air as she pants for breath,
she finally pushes the shorts and lace panties down her thighs and reaches for
the smooth, glass cock on the edge of the tub. Just as the head is prodding at
her opening, there's a knock at the front door.
She closes her eyes at first and tries to ignore it.
In the pause between knocks she keeps running the smooth head over her wet
hole. On the second knock, her eyes fly open and she stands up, hissing to
herself, "Motherfucker."
She pulls her panties and shorts back up as the poor, misguided idiot outside
keeps knocking. The robe gets picked up and tied back around her waist again,
though not tightly enough to really cover her, because she's in a hurry to
murder whoever has the fucking gall to try to disturb her this late at night.
She sets her toy carefully on the vanity and picks her glass of whiskey up,
bringing it with her and taking another hasty sip as she yells on her way to
the answer the door, "Somebody better be dead and already in the ground!"
She rips the door open, expecting to see an officer. Instead, she is shocked to
see Levi, whom she'd almost forgotten about over the past few days. She wants
to ask him what the fuck he's doing out after curfew, but even before he pushes
his way in the door, she can see the flash of hate in his eyes, the familiar
look of a man who wants to kill her. Her pulse quickens while he swiftly closes
the door behind him without letting her out of his sight, and, just as quickly,
with no words, she breaks the glass in her hand against the small table by the
door, gripping tightly the largest shard that stays heavy enough in her hand to
not join the rain of glass falling to the floor. She slashes the air in an arc
toward his throat.
Levi is surprised by her speed. He's able to take a step back only just in time
to avoid getting his neck sliced open by a small fraction of an inch.
He can't help but be impressed by her quick thinking and reflexes. He would
have expected her to be paralyzed in fear, or to panic and do something stupid.
He had been expecting that. Most people didn't even have the intuitive sense to
know when their life was being threatened until it was too late. Even if they
did realize the need to defend themselves, they usually put too much effort
into it in a panic and quickly wore out the energy needed to fight off their
attacker. Erna looks almost calm in front of him, securely out of reach,
waiting for him to make a move rather than taking another lunge at him.
He waits patiently, too, because he knows he's not the one in danger here.
This hadn't been his plan. His plan was to push her inside and kill her
quickly, preferably with his hands. He'd fantasized for days about squeezing
her throat until the life died out of her terror-stricken eyes, but, in that
fantasy, she was wearing her uniform, not a very revealing set of light pink,
silk lingerie, barely covered by a robe that accentuated the curve of her
thighs. When he imagined killing her, he didn't picture her the way she is now,
with flushed skin, her hair in messy curls, and lips wet with whiskey. The look
alone would have started to make him change his mind. What clinched it was the
way she fought him.
He's still faster than her. Her reflexes aren't good enough to change her
stance or get out of the way before he sweeps her legs out from under her and
makes her fall to the floor. Once she's flat on her back, he straddles her,
dodging another slash from the piece of glass she hasn't dropped even though it
cut her hand from the beginning, spilling more of her own blood than his.
Levi catches her wrist and pinches it between his fingers until the pressure
cuts off the nerves, making it impossible for her to close her fist around the
improvised weapon. She cries with impotent rage as her fingers go limp and the
piece of glass falls to the floor. She tries to scratch at his eyes with her
other hand, but he grapples with her and pins both wrists to the floor.
With her defenses finally disabled, he takes the time to stare at her neck, so
temptingly vulnerable. An uncharacteristically violent idea flashes behind his
eyes of how it would feel to rip at it with his teeth like an animal while
holding her down and fucking into her. Before his humanity slips completely
away from him, she interrupts the thoughts that she draws out of the darkest
part of his mind and says, "If you're going to kill me, at least have the
decency to do it quickly."
"I did come here to kill you," he growls, "but maybe I changed my mind."
"Yeah?" she answers back with cool bitterness. She can read him all too well.
"You think you're going to rape me instead?"
He hadn't thought of it that way. "Is that what you think?" he asks.
She tells him with an aloof drawl, "I think if you wanted to see me cry, then
you're going to be very disappointed."
"No," he muses, though tears would be nice. He feels a slight attempt at
movement from her and pushes her wrists harder into the wood floor. "I think
you want it." He leans into her harder to better hold her down, but also to
nose at a warm spot behind her ear that smells intoxicatingly like roses and
tell her in a gravelly, low voice, "I think you've been starving for it."
He can hear her swallow, but, otherwise, she stubbornly gives him no physical
indication that he's right. He raises himself upright again and says frankly,
"I think that's why you've been pushing me."
She scoffs at him and narrows her eyes. "Men are so fucking simple. I push you
because I'm bored. You were supposed to be interesting, and I've been sorely
disappointed. Even this is fucking predictable."
"If it's so predictable, you could have stopped me."
"Maybe I'm suicidal," she counters with an obstinance that most suicidal people
wouldn't have. "Maybe I wanted to die."
"Yeah?" he asks, intrigued by the morbidity of her conjecture. "Let's see."
He leans into her and brings her wrists together above her head, easily holding
them in one hand and crushing them to the floor as he pushes his hips into
hers. Already, he can feel her breathing get faster and more shallow as the
claustrophobic panic of being trapped and helpless makes her heart race. He
revels in the satisfaction he feels at showing her how weak she is, but it
isn't enough. He wants her to feel how much stronger he is. He needs to make
her struggle.
He picks up the nearby shard of broken glass and brings it to the curve of her
fragile, delicate neck, right to where her pulse is pumping the hardest. She
can barely stop her body from reacting. He feels her muscles tense and coil
underneath him, but her eyes still stare at him defiantly, daring him to do it.
She doesn't believe him, he thinks. That's a mistake. He actually hasn't
decided yet whether or not he'll kill her. His decision is going to depend on
her reaction. If she isn't willing to fight for her life, then he'll gladly
take it from her. People who won't even fight aren't worthy of living. Besides,
if she's so willing to let him kill her, then what fun would fucking her be
anyway? And if she isn't going to be a good lay, then he doesn't really have
any use for her, obviously.
He tells her, "Don't worry. I'll make it fast," like it's the kindest favor
he's ever done someone, and when he draws blood, finally she believes him, and
her eyes go wide. Her legs suddenly kick furiously underneath him, and she
tries to twist away from the glass cutting into her. As she struggles against
him, her pulse races, only making her lose blood through the tiny cut faster.
Levi can't help but smile. If he still wanted to kill her, it would be so easy.
He lets her fight a few seconds longer and squeezes her delicate wrists that
fit in his one hand tighter, bruising them to emphasize how helpless she is.
He puts the weapon down on the floor, not far in case he needs it again. "See?"
he gloats as she realizes what he's done and starts to calm down. "You don't
want to die. You just want a fight. Like any feral, caged animal."
He drinks in all of the defiance returning to her eyes as the panic fades away.
She hates him now. He's humiliated her and exposed all of her weakness, but
hasn't shattered her pride. He can't touch that. He smiles slightly while he
decides that he likes that about her. She won't break easy.
Carefully, he lifts his hips and moves his leg, placing his right knee between
her thighs and roughly pushing them apart. She makes a small noise of protest
until he leans down and looms over her. Her fussing is cut short, sounds of
objection dying in her throat as he brings his mouth close to her ear and
promises, "I can give you the fight you've been wanting… Erna."
That spurs the violent reaction he was hoping for, her arms straining to break
free as her back arches off the floor, and she makes an animalistic sound that
gives way to hissing and spitting like an indignant cat. "You fucker!"
He ignores her threats to cut the tongue out of his mouth and calmly traces it
down the side of her neck that's free of blood as she bucks and writhes under
him. With the hand that isn't busy caging her wrists, he holds her waist and
squeezes before pushing the layers of silk out of the way and sliding his
fingers under her tank top to feel how smooth her skin is. Then, it slides down
and cups that round ass he's watched sway self-assuredly away from him so many
times after all the nonsensical punishments and humiliation she's inflicted on
him. He gives her a rough squeeze and lifts her hips, pressing her against his
thigh. He can feel her heat through both her thin, silk shorts and the white
fabric covering his leg. A low growl reverberates through his throat, before he
harnesses some patience and settles for biting at her clavicle and actually
feeling her collarbone in his teeth. A predatory lust to kill courses through
his veins, and he bites down harder until she lets out a moan that gives way to
an alarmed scream. He lets go and sits up to get a look at the deep, red tooth
marks. He has to tell himself that he's going to feel that heat that's against
his leg around his cock soon, but he really needs to do something about that
cut on her neck, or he is literally going to fuck the life out of her.
He looks down at her and takes in the way her eyelids have gotten heavy. Her
lips are slightly parted, and her breathing shallow. He would wonder if that's
all from blood loss if not for the way her thighs are clenching to rut needily
against his leg. Funny how the symptoms of slowly dying and wanting to get
fucked are so similar.
"You have a first aid kit?"
She nods and chokes out, "Under the bed."
"I'm going to let you go," he explains. "I think you're smart enough to not
move."
Just in case she isn't smart enough, he adds, "If you try to get up, you're
going to pass out." He can be certain of that based on the pint of crimson
staining the floor under the crook of her neck. "And that's not going to stop
me from taking you," he warns darkly as he lets go of her wrists and stands.
Before he bends down to check for the first aid kit, a bottle of whiskey on the
bedside table catches his eye. He reaches for that first, while listening
closely—especially for the sound of a large piece of glass being picked up off
the wood floor—as he bends over and reaches under the bed for the small, metal
box.
When he comes back to her, he stands over her prone body for a moment, silently
bragging and stressing their difference in position. She squints hatefully up
at him as she keeps firm pressure on her open vein with one hand.
He sets the first aid kit down next to her, but holds onto the whiskey bottle.
Then, just to really rub it in as he steps over her and straddles her again, he
says, "Good girl."
"Fuck you," she spits back.
He knows that's just bravado. He saw how much she liked it when he broke her
nose only a little over a week ago. He didn't know if it was the pain or the
violence or both, but he could see in her eyes that she got a charge out of it,
which hadn't been his intention, but it was still useful information.
He roughly removes her hand from the cut he gifted her, and, before she can
complain, he tips the neck of the bottle and pours whiskey over the clean slice
in her flesh.
She kicks and screams and calls him some very creative things. He calmly smirks
at her and concentrates on the way her chest heaves with her deep breaths. His
eyes travel down to take in the barely-visible rise in her tank top where her
nipples are pressing against the silk. He doesn't doubt how much the liquid
burns, but it's better than an infected cut, he thinks.
"Tch. Don't be so dramatic."
He takes a long drink straight from the bottle as he waits for the alcohol to
evaporate off of her skin. Judging by how it burns his throat, it's a high
enough proof that he won't need to be waiting long.
She holds still for him while he staunches the blood flow with some wound
powder made to get blood to coagulate faster and then tapes a piece of gauze
over it. He ties some around the palm of her cut hand as well, even though it's
barely bleeding anymore, but he doesn't want her smearing blood all over him
when she's clutching at his shoulders and begging for his cock.
Suddenly, just as soon as he's finished patching her up, she pushes herself to
sit up with one hand splayed against the floor underneath her, and Levi readies
himself to put her back down and teach her again how much stronger he is than
her. She snatches the bottle from his hand, and he thinks she's going to try to
smash it over his head. His arm coils to grapple with her again, but, contrary
to his prediction, she brings the mouth of the bottle to her lips and takes two
long, greedy, desperate gulps.
He smirks as he watches her throat bob and asks, "Did I interrupt your
nightcap?"
Instead of glaring at him again, her eyes soften, darkening under her long
eyelashes and taking on a liquid look. Slowly, carefully, she reaches for his
belt, slipping her fingers under it gingerly as she purrs in a smooth, whiskey-
soaked voice that almost lulls him out of his guarded alertness, "Thank you for
patching me up."
She shifts her hips, and he leans back slightly to allow her to sit up more. He
stares, entranced, as she wets her lips on the bottle again. Before he can lean
in and lick the excess moisture off her lips, she stops him by sliding her hand
down from his belt and palming at the bulge in his pants, rubbing with subdued
urgency at the fabric. He keeps watching her mouth as her tongue slowly licks
away any whiskey left behind on her lips, and she rubs a little harder,
searching and curious until she feels him and squeezes gently around the
outline of his cock. A primal moan rumbles in his chest, and he covers her hand
with his own, pressing it harder and wrapping her fingers to grip his length
through the cover of white fabric.
Her tongue darts out to lick at those pink, glossy lips again, but not to lick
up excess whiskey this time. She watches hungrily at the way his cock strains
against the confining pants, and then she looks up, searching his eyes as if to
ask if she has permission to touch him freely.
He lets go of her hand and lets his own fall to his side, giving her room to
play how she wants. His eyes get lazy as he rubs against her hand and watches
her take one more sip from the bottle before setting it gently down and out of
the way. His eyelids close when her fingers brush over him teasingly again,
before grasping at the end of his belt and pulling at the buckle.
He never should have trusted the sudden change in her demeanor. He should have
been more suspicious when she thanked him for bandaging cuts that he caused
himself. He let lust dull his wariness. He never saw or heard her swallow that
last sip of whiskey.
He doesn't see her raise her other hand, though when it swipes at him he feels
the sharp stinging of her black claws across his face. As soon as his eyes
open, she spits at him, and a fine mist of alcohol burns his eyes as well as
the fresh scratches. Before he can grab at her, she's already on her feet and
behind him with his own belt around his neck so tight that it's impossible to
breathe. He feels her foot press against the space between his shoulders for
more leverage, pulling the belt so his fingers would need to rip through the
skin of his own throat to get under it and release the pressure. His tongue
bulges with blood, and his mouth opens noiselessly.
"It's cute how you think this is the first time I've been hurt and helpless
underneath someone much stronger than me," she purrs.
When he tries to move, she pulls tighter, and his eyes bulge with a sickening
wave of dizziness.
"Now," she says, her voice straining audibly with the effort of keeping him
still, "I'm not going to kill you—though I could—because I like you." She jerks
on the belt again to discourage him from reaching for it. "This is the most fun
I've had in a very long time," she confesses evenly as he loses the strength to
struggle. His lungs ache with fire and his vision starts to go grey around the
edges. "SoI'm going to let you go, you're going to catch your breath," she
pauses and then finishes disdainfully, "and then you're going to stop treating
me like I'm made of fucking porcelain. I was more turned on when you were going
to cut my throat open."
When the belt finally loosens and falls, he gasps, and his lungs suck down air
with heaving breaths. While he's still weak, her fingers push against his hair
and rake over his scalp patronizingly, like he's her good pet, and he sees red.
His hand flies back for her wrist and crushes it in a violent grip. He twists
her around, bringing her to her knees, facing him. His other hand goes for her
throat, and he holds her still until he has enough air in his lungs to stand
without blacking out, at which point he lifts her with him. The muscles in his
arm barely strain to pick her small frame up by her neck until her toes are
hovering inches above the floor, weakly kicking at him as she struggles to
breathe.
Levi throws Erna onto the bed so hard that she bounces against the mattress,
and in that one bounce he flips her over and lifts her hips, quickly hooking
his fingers into the waist of her shorts and pulling them down. He smirks at
the white, lacy underwear as she tries to get up and turn around. It's cute. He
hopes she has more of it as he easily rips it down the seam and discards it to
expose that smooth, round ass he noticed even on his first day of training. He
reaches over her and pushes her shoulders down, flattening her face and chest
to the bed and keeping them there as his other arm lifts her hips a little
higher.
He takes his time, as if she isn't fighting him to try and get free. It's easy
to hold her down as he runs his hand over her ass and then lower, searching
between her thighs and finding her wet and hot. His fingers push and rub around
the outside of her lips so her curses turn into resentful moans bitten back and
always half-finished, because she hates that she loves what he's doing to her.
He coats his fingers in her wetness without even pushing them inside her, and
he smears them on her ass, before moving the hand between her shoulders into
her hair, tangling his fingers in it and twisting her head to face him with her
cheek pressed against the bed. The wet fingers of his other hand roughly push
into her mouth and force her to taste herself.
He smiles condescendingly at her as he feels her soft tongue lap at her own
wetness. Then, the little bitch bites him—should have seen that coming. He
retracts his fingers and gives her a quick slap against her face and moves
behind her again. He grunts as he digs his fingers into the soft flesh of her
ass and slaps it much harder than he did her face, feeling his cock jump when
he watches it shake. He bites her back, right where he smeared his fingers on
her, and then swipes over the mark with his tongue. She flinches and squirms,
but she can't do much with his fingers roughly digging into her thighs and
holding her hips up for him. He spreads her legs forcefully when she tries to
close them, and he palms at her shaved mound, spreading her lips with his
fingers, playing with them as he sucks a bruise on her ass. She calls him a
fucking prick even as she pushes against his hand, seeking more pressure, like
her mouth isn't even aware of how badly her cunt wants it.
He stretches up to stand with one hard, parting smack of his hand to the wet
bruise now marking her. As soon as he releases his hold on her, she moves to
get up, to what end he doesn't know, but he quickly grabs her by the hair and
throws her back against the wall that her bed is pushed up against. He growls
at her, "Don't fucking move."
She obeys, though she glares at him hatefully, drawing her knees up and
clamping her thighs tightly shut. Satisfied, he leaves her be for a second,
just to look at her. He drinks in the feral way her nostrils flare and how her
chest rises and falls with deep breaths. Her hair is mussed from being pulled
at, and a strap of her tank top is hanging loosely off her shoulder. The flimsy
robe fell somewhere in the struggle on the floor. Her shorts still sit loosely
around her ankles. His cock hardens at seeing how he's wrecked her.
He finally tears his eyes away and grabs her pillow, tossing it to the floor
and finding exactly what he was hoping for: a small knife. He'd be disappointed
if she weren't at least that smart. He tests the edge against a callused finger
and finds it razor sharp. He praises her admiringly, "Good girl."
This time she resists the urge to tell him to fuck himself, though he can still
see a flash of defiance in her eyes.
He holds the blade in his teeth for a moment as he strips off his clothes, not
stupid enough to let his guard down again and set it where she could reach. He
takes his time. To rush would make it seem like he didn't think he had her
under control, but he's secure in the feeling that he has her adequately
subjugated because of the way she looks at him with hunger. He stares at her as
he peels off each article of clothing, and only after he's folded each one and
set them on the bedside table neatly does he take the knife from his teeth,
gripping it tightly in his hand again to join her on the bed.
She doesn't move while he makes himself comfortable, but she tracks him with a
fire in her eyes. He sits up against the headboard and then suddenly, violently
reaches and takes her by the hair again, pulling her over to him and
positioning her between his legs. He tells her, "Now you're going to suck me
off. " He pauses to make sure his next warning sinks in. "And if you bite me
again," he holds up the knife, "I have no problem fucking you with this."
As she watches wide-eyed, he trails the blade gently down her neck. She closes
her eyes and bites her lip as he comes close to nicking her collarbone with it.
His hand reaches for one of her breasts and kneads at it through her top,
finally eliciting a moan that she doesn't stifle and bite back. From the way
her eyes close in ecstasy when the knife travels back up her neck and caresses
her cheek, he almost thinks she likes it better than his hands. For that, he
takes it away just before slapping hard at the curve of her tit and making her
cry out and flinch from him. Before she can even finish her cry of outrage,
he's fisting her hair again and pushing her face down as he tells her coldly,
"Get to work."
He sighs quietly when she flattens her tongue against his cock and laves over
the length of it. She licks another stripe up the side, but it only makes him
impatient. He isn't here for foreplay. He lets go of her hair, holds the knife
behind her ear, and growls, "Stop wasting my time and put it in your mouth
before I start cutting shit off." The cold blade presses against the skin
behind the appendage to show her how serious he is. Without further delay, he's
enveloped in the warm, wet heat of her mouth, and, automatically, his hand goes
back to her hair, desperate to not let her escape or come up for air and
deprive him of how good it feels. His eyelids flutter closed, and he groans as
she sucks him down to the base, her tongue curling and licking as she bobs her
mouth up and down like a starving whore.
He lifts his hips and pushes up until her nose is pressed against his pubic
bone, expecting her to cough and choke, but, instead of spasming and trying to
push him out, her throat relaxes and becomes more pliant against the abuse. She
moans with his cock deep in her warm throat and pushes down harder, rubbing her
nose against his trimmed patch of black hair. Her tongue darts out to lick at
his balls, her throat tightening around the head of his cock as she strains to
reach with her wet tongue.
"Oh, fuck," he moans, marvelling at her technique, though trying not to sound
too surprised or impressed. He hums and tightens his grip on her disheveled
curls, beginning to thrust in a shallow, easy rhythm. "Little slut likes
choking on cock," he notes, cruelly pushing in so that she can't breathe and
holding her down until her throat spasms and he feels her gagging. He still
holds her down, just because he can, and because the panicked constriction of
her throat feels so good around his thick cock. He ignores the pain when her
nails dig and scratch at his thighs, and he smiles callously at her as she
looks up at him with wild eyes, glaring at him through an involuntary veil of
tears. She can hate him all he wants. She's going to have to fight harder than
that for air.
He makes sure every inch of his cock stays buried in her while she starts to
struggle harder. Her muffled howls of exasperation and fury only make him
harder as her entire body starts to spasm with reflexive coughing and gagging.
Her black nails draw lines of blood on his thighs, but he doesn't care.
He smirks and only decides to let her up when the fight starts to die out of
her and her eyelids flutter over irises that are slowly starting to roll back.
Her head lolls as he lifts her by the hair, and she falls bonelessly onto her
side when he lets go. She lies there next to him with glazed-over eyes, gulping
down air hungrily, the way he was a few minutes ago when she almost choked the
life out of him. Turnabout is fair play. That's why he moves behind her and
flips her onto her stomach while she's helpless, and it's why he hooks an arm
under her waist to lift her hips up to the level of his achingly stiff cock
shining with her saliva. Without waiting for her to get her breath back, he
pushes into her shockingly tight cunt hard and fast, fucking her from behind
like an animal, digging his fingers into the soft flesh of her ass, his thighs
staining her skin with the blood she drew fighting him for her life and
failing. He wants to make her feel more worthless and more degraded with every
thrust for all of the hell she's put him through in the past six weeks.
There's barely enough breath in her to sigh and whimper with as he tears into
her, treating her like a weak little rag doll, watching her ass jiggle with
every vicious thrust of his hips. Her body sags, still weak from choking, and
he has to lift her falling hips with a grunt and pull them forcibly to him. For
all of her loose limbs, her cunt still feels like a tight fist around him
trying to push him out.
It's important to him that she gets her strength back before he finishes,
because he wants to break her more than this. Pressure starts to build under
his abdomen, and he has to stop moving altogether to keep himself from
teetering over the edge and coming before he can properly ruin her. He closes
his eyes and tilts his head back, trying to make his mind a blank, but the
animal inside him tells him to look down at that delicious ass and stare in awe
at the way his cock is stretching her pretty little cunt. Foolishly, he makes
an experimental push forward, rocking his hips into her, seeing if the building
pressure in him has faded away enough to keep going, but, immediately, he feels
himself on the brink again and pulls out until there's only a couple inches
unsatisfyingly buried inside her. He holds still and mutters under his breath,
mostly to himself, "Fuck… You're so tight."
It's been a long time for him. He's astonished that he's even lasted this long,
especially with how good it feels and how deep the need was in him. He wonders
how long it's been for her until she, unfortunately for him, recovers enough
strength to push back against him and whine lazily, "Harder."
He hisses and quickly digs his fingers into her to hold her still. She
struggles uselessly to move her hips and fuck herself on his cock for a moment,
but when it becomes clear that he isn't going to give in and let her move, she
instead quickly hooks her legs behind him and pulls him into her with her heels
against the backs of his thighs until he's buried in her tight heat again. The
overwhelming feeling of having his cock suddenly gripped tight inside her silky
walls makes him lose control for a second and his grip on her slackens while a
shaky moan escapes his throat. The little bitch grinds against him and
complains, "Give it to me."
The temptation to give in is killing him while he uses every ounce of willpower
to fight the raw want coursing through his veins. He's able to push her away
after an internal struggle and growl out, "Hold the fuck still."
She does not hold still. Instead, her pussy clenches around him, and she tries
to undulate her hips and fuck herself on him, so, even though it's the last
thing he wants to do, he pulls out.
Her hips stutter unevenly at the sudden empty feeling. She throws a little
tantrum and snaps impatiently, "Give me your fucking cock."
Levi growls as he grabs at her and flips her onto her back, one hand pushing
her shoulder straight down, as if to bury her into the mattress. "You're going
to have to ask much more nicely than that," he sneers.
Erna's keen eyes drill into him, and she smirks like she finds something about
all of this funny before saying, "I'm not in the habit of begging," and
reminding him, "but you've been very good at following orders until now,
Snowflake."
She opens her legs and tries to trap him between them again, but her action is
cut short when he suddenly slaps her across the face, making her head snap to
the side. She turns to face him as soon as the shock of the unexpected blow
fades, her lips curling up at the edges, her eyes black with thirst for more.
His fingers wrap around her throat, and he growls at her. "Say my name before I
crush your windpipe."
WIth a demure sarcasm she declines, "I'm not even sure I remember it after all
this time, Snowflake."
Through gritted teeth, he warns her, "You better remember it fucking quick." He
presses down on her throat. "And start begging."
WIthout breaking her eyes away from challenging his glare, her hand suddenly
reaches for the knife he'd discarded at the side of the bed when he'd started
fucking her. He silently curses himself again for letting his guard drop and
getting too confident.
Lev has never been in a fight that lasted more than a few seconds. He's never
even needed to be on the defensive side of things until his encounter with
Smith, and that was more for show. He was trying to get caught without making
it look like he was trying to get caught, so this is the only time he's had a
decent back and forth, he thinks, as he dodges the razor-sharp blade aimed at
the map of veins under the smooth skin of the inside of his forearm. She takes
the opportunity of his necessitated change in balance to buck him off of her
and sit up, slashing toward either his ribs or his heart. She doesn't get close
enough for him to find out which. She gets her knees under her and lunges at
him. Time slows down as he keeps dodging and defending and trying to get the
knife away from her, and, the whole time, she doesn't scream, doesn't flail.
She measures her movements and regards him coldly and calmly, trying again and
again for an opening until finally he catches her wrist and twists it just shy
of snapping a bone before she finally drops the knife.
He picks it up. He should kill her. Killing her would be the sensible thing to
do.
Instead, he grips her shoulder and throws her back down to the bed. Rather than
bleed her out, he uses the knife to slice her top in half before throwing it
far behind him to clatter onto the floor near the front door. He lines his cock
up with her wet folds and murmurs, "Keep fucking fighting me."
He drives himself into her harder than before and fucks her at a relentless
pace while she digs her nails into his chest. The slapping of his hips against
her is almost drowned out by her moans. She pulls him down by his shoulders and
bites his neck harshly. Without breaking his brutal pace, he grabs her hair and
pulls her head back, freeing his neck from her teeth and baring her throat. She
claws at his back instead, making stinging red lines over his skin.
He tugs hard at her hair and tells her in between her moans, "Say it."
"Hah, fuck! Levi!"
His teeth flash in a feral grin. He slaps his hips against hers especially hard
and makes her yelp in shock, only to hook an arm under one of her knees and
lift her leg up, trying to get more access, get her legs out of the way, get
deeper inside her.
She babbles as he keeps thrusting into her deep and hard, her growing wetness
doing nothing to lessen the friction. She says his name again and again until
her thighs are shaking. He grunts and groans as his cock rams into her, and her
walls convulse and contract around him. He hadn't even thought about making her
come. He wouldn't have cared less if she didn't have an orgasm at all, but
feeling it, watching her come undone underneath him while screaming his name,
just from getting fucked by his cock, makes him tip over the edge as he impales
her, spilling his cum inside her, desecrating her with it.
He curls over her and rests his forehead against hers while he struggles to
catch his breath. She sounds just as breathless as she says to herself in
disbelief, "Holy fuck…"
He agrees. He pushes himself up to sit next to her, not feeling like the kind
of sex they just had really calls for cuddling. He simply asks her, "Can I use
your shower?"
"Please," she sighs gratefully before draping her arm over her eyes and
murmuring, "Fucking earned it."
As he walks towards what he assumes is the bathroom, she calls after him, "Can
you grab me a towel?"
When he comes back with a hand towel from the bathroom, she takes it and sits
up. She looks down at her thighs and makes a disgusted face. She murmurs, "Cum
is so gross," and wrinkles her cute little nose as she wipes away anything
that's leaked down her legs.
It's disorienting to see her being…cute. Like she's human, or something. Levi
looks pointedly down at her thighs and asks, "Is that going to be a problem?"
"What?" she asks. "Coming inside me?" She tosses the towel carelessly onto the
floor and lies back down. "Nah."
Her fingers lightly trace over a raised, jagged line of white and light
lavender over her lower abdomen that he didn't notice before, and she says,
"Hysterectomy scar…"
He looks closer. The scar looks brutal, like her surgery was in a back alley,
not a hospital.
On his way back to the bathroom, he pauses and looks over toward where he threw
her knife. He finds it on the floor and thinks about grabbing it. She sees him
and can read what he's thinking even with one sleepy eye open. She tells him,
"Easy. I'm not going to try to kill you again."
He hears the lazy contentment in her voice as she says quietly, "You feel too
fucking good." She pulls the sheet over her hips and murmurs, "Never came with
a man's cock inside me before."
That might make his chest puff out a bit as he leaves the knife and goes to
take a shower. Once he's finished using up all the warm water and helping
himself to her soap, he takes a look in the mirror and assesses the damage.
Visible bite marks, bloody scratches, and a dark bruise all the way around his
neck. Then, he looks down at the vanity and notices something odd. He picks up
the small, glass dildo and smirks.
When he comes back out, Erna's just waking up from her fucked-out coma. She
starts to sit up in bed when he waves the smooth piece of glass at her and
says, "Really?"
"What?" she laughs, "It was a gift." She takes it from him with a playful pout.
She watches him as he takes his clothes from the bedside table and he says
casually, "I want to watch you fuck yourself with that next time."
"Oh," she says brightly. "There's going to be a next time?"
"If you don't have me court martialed and executed."
She doesn't confirm or deny any plans for that. She only stretches out on the
bed like a content cat, picking her pillow up off the floor and pressing her
cheek against it as her eyes start to close again. He looks down at her as he
gets dressed and starts noticing details he missed before in a frenzied haze of
lust, like the white scars painted all over her back in messy, jagged lines. He
reaches down tentatively and lightly runs his fingers over them. She flinches
and turns away.
"How did those happen," he asks while he puts his shirt on.
At first, she doesn't say anything, and he thinks she isn't going to answer
him. Then, she says bitterly, "Another gift."
Without a straight answer he can only imagine, and his mind goes straight to
someone else hurting her in similar ways to what he just did. He'd hated her
hours ago, but now that he sees her docile and vulnerable, adorable, even if
she's probably a little mad. A territorial feeling of possession makes his
blood boil at the idea of anyone else touching her in any way.
He pushes her hair away from her face and just looks at her, until she peeks an
eye open to see what he's up to. "I have to go," he says, as if she didn't
know. It's her own rules that make it so that he has to get his ass out of
there and sneak back to his bunk. "You okay?"
She snorts back a little laugh. "Okay? I feel better than I've felt in a long
time. You should be rougher next time." She turns over and away from him. "Fuck
off so I can sleep."
He starts to move to do just that until she sits up suddenly, saying, "Shit!
Wait." She gets out of bed and softly pads on bare feet over to him, avoiding
broken glass.
The sight of her uncovered and naked body stirs his cock to life all over
again, and he wraps his hands around her slim waist, ready to push her back
into bed. Her eyes twinkle, and she slaps one of his hands away, scolding him
teasingly, "I'm still sore, you fucking pig, so calm down. I think you sprained
my cervix."
Her fingers card into his black hair and she tilts his head back, clucking her
tongue at him. She wonders aloud, "How are you going to explain that bruise?"
He shrugs carelessly about the bruise from the belt on his neck that is only
going to get darker before it fades and answers with some cheek, "Nobody would
think it was strange if I told them you tried to choke me to death."
Her lips curl up skeptically to one side. She looks away and hums, biting at
her lower lip as she thinks to herself. Then, suddenly, she goes over to her
dresser. She opens a small upper drawer and digs around, seemingly searching
for something in the bottom of the drawer. Finally, she takes out a simple,
white strip of fabric. She tells him to hold still as she lifts the collar of
his shirt and ties it carefully around his neck.
He tries to look down without moving. "What's that?"
"A cravat," she says simply as she finishes folding it over in the front and
taking a half step back to make sure it covers the whole strip of bruising
around his neck.
His eyebrows crease and knit together as he looks down at it and asks
curiously, "Why do you have this?"
"I stole it from a nobleman in Sina," she says, leaving out the part about
taking it off the man's body as a trophy after she fucked him and killed him.
***** Dress *****
Chapter Summary
     trigger warnings: noncon, pedophilia, drugs, and sad stuff. all of
     the sad stuff.
Chapter Notes
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     Or just review. That's awesome, too. Thank you!
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Knocking at her front door wakes Erna early in the morning, when, normally, she
would have been up and dressed and straightening her hair already. She opens
one eye and groans, fists the sheets in her fingers as she stretches, and
slowly rolls her sore body out of bed.
 
The knocking outside pauses as she unhurriedly slides a pair of white panties
up her legs in front of an elegantly carved, wooden-framed, full-length mirror
and then stretches up on the balls of her feet to raise her arms above her head
until her vertebrae pop. Still unrushed and not fully wakeful, she gets a white
button-down shirt from the closet and stretches her shoulders and neck as she
pulls it on before the knocking starts up again, quiet and hesitant at first,
before the person on the other side of the door finds the courage to knock
harder.
 
Erna’s annoyance makes her scowl in the mirror. Dressed just enough—pants
pulled on, shirt half buttoned, and feet bare—she tiptoes carefully over broken
glass. A hand pushes through her messy bedhead of wavy black curls on her way
to the bathroom so that she can wash her face, yelling toward the door on her
way, “Leave it and fuck off,” referring to her breakfast that the person on the
other side is trying to deliver, the same as every morning.
 
She hears a confused, nervous, “Oh... Sorry...” from the other side. Then she
pauses and changes course to rip the door open abruptly, terrifying the trainee
sent from the kitchen and making him flinch and stumble backward, just as he
was setting a covered plate outside the door. She glares at him at first, then
rolls her eyes as he scurries to get his ass up from the dirt and stand and
salute. Erna opens the door wider and gestures with a nod to the mess on the
floor behind her, saying, “Go get someone to clean this up.”
 
The trainee peers inside past her. His eyes are wide and his jaw slack. Erna
adds, “Maybe get two or three people. I don't care. I want this cleaned up
before I’m done brushing my teeth.” She leaves the door open to let in some
fresh air, turning away and taking a deep breath of it as the trainee hurriedly
salutes again and stammers, “Y-yes, Sir…”
 
He trips as he runs off. Erna finally takes a moment to survey the damage, her
torn clothes scattered on the floor, broken glass glittering in the sunlight
filtering through the open door, a smattering of blood staining the
floorboards. If she had more shame, she would clean up the whole mess herself,
but, thankfully, that's not an emotion she has in her repertoire.
 
She feels bleary-eyed and drowsy until cold water shocks her awake. She gazes
shrewdly at her reflection in the small mirror over the sink before her head
tilts lazily to the side, and as she eyes the small piece of blood-soaked gauze
taped to her neck, admiring it like a beautiful, crimson accessory, her eyes
glaze over and her fingertips give a light touch to the edges of the white
tape. Then her eyes burn and her lips twist and press into a thin, maniacal
line as the tips of her fingers snatch at the tape and rip it from her skin. In
a flash just as sudden, her face returns to a tranquil expression with eyes
widened and calm. She centers a new square of gauze over the cut and scolds her
reflection as if it’s another person she’s talking to. “You should have killed
him.”
 
It occurs to Erna often that she could commit murder somewhat easily, not that
it's an obsession, but the ample opportunity of the large and isolated training
camp makes it cross her mind more often than it otherwise should. The thing
that stops her from pursuing the very satisfying feeling of snuffing the spark
of life out of someone weak is her nagging pragmatism reining her in. The
Military Police know her record and anything but a clear cut training accident
with ample witnesses is going to have her ass transported back to an
underground cell so fast her head would spin before they justifiably cut it
off.
 
Fresh tape holds her gauze in place as a little circle of red blooms through
its center. She rotates her neck and her eyes track to the side and back,
travelling over her skin in the mirror, looking for bruises and scrapes. She
pushes hair behind one ear and is distracted by a black bruise around her
wrist. She looks down to the other one and its matching band of black.
 
She is mostly confident that the Military Police wouldn’t care or notice if she
killed any of the Underground trio that already belong to the Survey Corps.
Erwin, of course, would care, which only makes her want to do it more.
 
Her lips open and let out an annoyed huff at her reflection because she didn’t
take her opportunity. There’s a good possibility that she could have strangled
Levi with that belt last night when she’d caught him off guard. Now she won’t
have another chance. He’ll be too wary. She stands still and her heart sinks
with disappointment.
 
She mutters, “Getting soft,” to her reflection.
 
She doesn't like what her heart is doing when she thinks about him and being
stuck with him alive, too hard to kill. She feels high and giddy when memories
come unbidden of his crushing grip bruising fingerprints into her skin and the
sting of his thighs hitting hers in an angry frenzy as he poured all his hatred
into fucking her.
 
She has a crush. It started small, infinitesimal, only an ember, when he broke
her nose. Now it's a roaring internal fire that makes her cheeks burn red.
 
She turns away from the mirror without bothering to do anything to cover up the
cuts and bruises. Boots and gloves are pulled on and she dons her tan jacket
with the crossed swords, then nearly trips over her breakfast on her way
outside. Her lips twist into an angry grimace before she swiftly bends in half
at the waist, snatches the cooling cup of tea up from the tray and swings her
leg back to wind up and deliver a swift kick that sends the rest of it flying,
flipping and making several little divots in the dusty ground.
 
She spins around and slams the door behind her, closing herself back in her one
room cabin with her tea cup. Her shadow looms away from the rising sun shining
through her window as she stalks back to her bedside table, simultaneously
bringing the tea cup to her lips with one hand and picking up a nearly empty
bottle of whiskey with the other. After a few hasty sips of tea, she tops the
cup off with whiskey. She sips slowly and carefully as she makes her way to the
training grounds.
 
………….


Farlan, silver-tongued as he is, has never been able to persuade Levi in one
direction or another. There were times where his friend, or business partner,
whatever they actually were, would seem to be listening and considering
suggestions or advice, but if he swayed in the direction Farlan was aiming for,
he knew it was only because he’d already decided to long before the blond ever
opened his mouth. Like a cat, he can’t be encouraged to do anything unless it
is already his idea. That’s why, when he said that he was going to kill their
head instructor with dead certainty, Farlan didn’t say anything, even though he
knew it was a catastrophic plan. He could only trust and hope that Levi would
do it in such a way that wouldn’t get them caught and sent back to the
Underground… or worse… probably worse. He swallows, and his hand goes to his
throat in a protective motion at the thought of other possible outcomes.
 
He’s taut as a bowstring that night, anxious and stiff in his bunk. He tries to
calm himself by listening to Isabel snoring peacefully, too naive to worry, too
trusting that ‘big bro’ would never do anything to jeopardize their position.
 
For reasons he doesn’t understand, he closes his eyes and holds his breath,
feigning sleep when he hears Levi leave the top bunk. If he’d actually been
sleeping, like the officers around them, he would have missed it completely,
the quietest whisper of movement. Levi sneaks out into the night, unseen.
Farlan opens his eyes and stares at the wood slats above him, waiting. He waits
for hours, it feels like. Eventually, sheer nervousness puts him out and he
sleeps until morning.
 
They wake up before sunrise. That’s the routine. Normally, Levi would wake up
even earlier than that to steal a shower before breakfast, and that’s when
Farlan thinks he’s going to have time and privacy to ask him what happened, but
Levi doesn’t head for the showers. He sleeps in, gets out of bed when everyone
else does, stretches, and gets dressed, like he’s a normal person for once.
Farlan watches him dully, exhausted from lack of sleep, but sharp and anxious
enough to look at his friend closely for sloppy details like blood under
fingernails, anything small that would give him up should a sudden murder
investigation be underway. In the grey light of predawn he thinks he sees
bruises.
 
He sits up as much as he can in his bunk, hunched over with his elbows on his
knees, and he squints. Levi, as if he can feel him staring at the ring of dark
bruising around his neck, reaches into his pocket, pulls out a white cravat,
and covers it before putting his jacket on. When he turns to grab his boots,
Farlan snaps out of his stupor and scrambles to get dressed and follow him and
Isabel outside.
 
When he catches up, he walks close to Levi so that he can keep his voice low
and ask, “So, did you…?”
 
“No.”
 
That answer is unexpected and raises a lot more questions than the affirmative
grunt Farlan had expected. He doesn’t even know where to start.
 
“Is it… Are you…” he can’t decide what he really wants to know first. He
settles on, “Are we okay?”
 
“We’re fine.”
 
Farlan feels less than satisfied with the monosyllabic answers. If Levi didn’t
leave last night to do what he said he was going to, then what the hell was he
doing? “What happened?”
 
“Oi, Isabel,” Levi says, and the girl who had been dragging her feet still half
asleep, perks up. “Run ahead and steal me some tea before all the good stuff is
gone.”
 
“Got it, big bro!”
 
When she’s far enough away, Levi says, “I didn’t kill her. Stop looking like
you’re about to shit yourself.”
 
Farlan lets out an audible sigh of relief, then catches himself and nervously
peers around to make sure no one heard. Still walking and looking straight
ahead, he asks, “Then what happened? Where were you all night?”
 
“Out.”
 
“Out doing what?”
 
“None of your business.”
 
Farlan stops walking alongside him and calls out imploringly as his companion
keeps walking, “Levi…”
 
He stops and rolls his neck, standing still for a second before turning around
and closing the distance, getting close again so that they can continue the
conversation in very hushed voices. Farlan tilts his chin down, searching
Levi’s smoldering eyes, and asks, concerned, “What happened?”
 
Levi’s breath leaves him in a frustrated, inconvenienced sigh as he crosses his
arms, but he looks apologetic about being so terse with his best (only) friend,
so he answers, “I was  going  to kill her.”
 
“Okay?” Farlan says, a little confused as to why Levi sounds regretful about
not following through on what was at best a reckless impulse in the first
place.
 
“I got…” he pauses uncharacteristically, as if diplomatically trying to decide
on what to say, “sidetracked.”
 
“Sidetracked?” Farlan repeats, incredulous. He’s never seen Levi falter from
anything he was fixated on, big or small, and the absolute murder in his eyes
when he’d said he was going to kill the head instructor hadn’t suggested that
it was something he would just put aside.
 
Levi groans quietly. His fingers entangle in his hair, pushing it away from his
forehead, and he says, “I… stayed with her for a while. That’s where I was.”
 
Farlan’s eyebrows knit and form a big wrinkle between them. He can’t make any
sense of those words. “That would mean…” he starts to say.
 
That would mean that Levi snuck out after curfew, went to Instructor Raban’s
cabin, and for some reason he didn’t get literally hung for the transgression
by the woman who has on many occasions threatened worse than death for lesser
offenses such as looking at her the wrong way. Just as it’s dawning on Farlan,
Levi shrugs his shoulders and says, as if he’s baffled by it himself, “I ended
up fucking her instead.”
 
Farlan thinks this is a misguided attempt at humor. He’s about to ask again why
Levi was out for so long last night, but a clear, cold voice cuts him short. It
comes snaking in from their right and asks, bemused, “Is that right,
Snowflake?”
 
Involuntarily, Farlan’s heels click together and his spine stiffens. His hand
curls over his heart in a quick salute before Instructor Raban even enters
their eyeline with her wry smile and aura of malicious discord.
 
“Walls, Church,” she mutters, rolling her eyes at his stiffness, though his
heightened nerves seem to make her smile a little less tight and sardonic. She
takes a sip from the delicate tea cup hooked on her gloved finger, points to
Levi with her other hand, “You. Come with me.”
 
Levi shrugs at Farlan as their Instructor walks away. He smirks and follows
her. He doesn’t bristle or radiate with even a little rage or hatred, and
Farlan knows in that moment that he must not have been lying, though he feels
like he’s only gotten the barest fragment of the whole story. He stands,
utterly bewildered for what seems like minutes, and watches them walk away,
then he shakes himself off and walks off toward breakfast, doubting he’ll be
able to get himself to eat.
 
Just as Levi’s catching up to her brisk walk, Erna says coldly, “Don’t walk
next to me. We’re not equals.”
 
So he stays a step behind her.
 
And briefly thinks about cutting her pretty throat.
 
“Here’s the thing,” she says in a short, decisive clip, “I don’t give a fuck if
you tell anyone.”
 
He tilts his head and stops walking as she stops and turns to face him. “You
don’t,” he says skeptically.
 
She quirks her lips. “Doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. I don’t think
many people would even be scandalized by it. They probably assume I’m abusing
my authority in that way already.”
 
“So you’re not about to do something fucked up to me...” he says with
incredulous sarcasm.
 
She doesn’t confirm or deny, only asks, “Are you coming over tonight?”
 
He smirks to himself. “Do you want me to?”
 
Erna’s shoulders slump and she mumbles a quick, petulant, “Maybe.”
 
Levi stops, and, after a couple of steps, she senses he isn’t with her and
turns around, sees him standing there defiantly. Her shoulders jerk with an
impatient gesture and she does a restless eye roll as she exhales a short
annoyed huff. He asks her again, slowly, “Do you want me to?”
 
“Yes,” she says, short and agitated, crossing her arms to try and contain her
impatience.
 
“Tell me.”
 
She squeaks a tiny hum, and her lips quirk to the side. Levi watches the
conflict play over her face, and then her eyes scan quickly left and right, and
he knows that he has her as she checks that no one is near enough to hear her
say after a prim little pout, “I want you to.”
 
“Want me to what?” he asks.
 
The last of her authoritative bearing flakes away as she blinks long with her
inky eyelashes and looks around again, only more carefully. She turns to check
over her shoulder, and, when she faces him again, it’s with a saccharine smile,
her cheekbones suddenly highlighted with a glow. She steps into him and her
hand coils around the back of his neck, soft calfskin gloves rasp upward
against the grain of his undercut and she purrs. “I want you to fuck me
tonight, tomorrow, every night, for however long I have before Smith finally
comes back to retrieve you and your friends.”
 
He tilts his head and her glove slides away and rests at her side while he
makes her wait. He acts like he needs to think about it before saying simply,
“Good.”
 
She smiles, tilts her head back and forth, and chirps, “Perfect,” then lifts
her tea cup to her lips and takes a sip before walking off toward the area
where new trainees are tested for 3D maneuvering capability. She tells him, “So
here’s the thing about that: if people are going to find out, which I’ll assume
they will since you told Church within,” she reaches for her jacket pocket and
he hears a click; she tilts her eyes down and checks her watch quickly, “four
hours... “ She closes it with another metallic click. “Then I need to maintain
the appearance of impartiality. I can’t let it seem like I’m favoring you.”
 
“It,” he says, thinking over the many truly fucked up things she’s done to him
in the past month, “is never going to seem like that.”
 
She stops between four tall posts with a pulley system that attaches two cables
to the belt of the harness to test for vertical maneuver aptitude. Levi hasn’t
been subjected to it since he was already proficient with the ODM gear before
agreeing to join the Survey Corps, so he raises an eyebrow when Erna wordlessly
motions for him to stand in place. She notices his hesitation and flashes him
that dry, cynical smirk. She is chaos and impassioned madness covered over with
frost.
 
He moves for her, confident that she’s mellowed. He fucked her breathless. Some
of the cruelty and madness she used to direct at him has to have been released
through that outlet. So he stands where she wants him, feet apart, hands behind
his back. She kneels in front of him to rest her delicate porcelain teacup and
saucer on the ground with careful precision. He stares down at the clear, warm
tea, and he licks his lips as she rises, and her hands caress up his thighs.
Her fingertips dart and flit over his harness, intermittently slowing to a drag
to play and press against his muscles before she sighs and attaches the ropes
that simulate the steel cables of the maneuver gear at his waist. She leans in,
and he can smell the tea and whiskey on her breath as it trails over his neck,
and she whispers, “There’s something about you that I really like,” as if it’s
an intriguing but disquieting conclusion. She raises her voice as she walks
away and speculates, “I think it’s that you’re not afraid of me, despite, you
know, everything.”
 
He tells her, “You’re not very frightening,” and returns his attention to the
whiskey-spiked tea she left at his feet. He leans and reaches for it, and
suddenly he’s jerked up and off of his feet, the tea out of his reach as the
cables lift him into the air.
 
“Maybe not to you,” she sing-songs. She circles back around into his view,
picking up her tea and holding it just below her lips. “Anyway,” she sighs,
“despite how enamoured I am with the way you try to fuck the actual life out of
me, I am required to maintain at least an appearance of objectivity.”
 
His eyelids feel heavier as he watches her lips part to let the liquid soak her
tongue, and he considers her choice of words. He likes the sound of fucking the
life out of her. To him, it means making her eyes lose that lightning storm of
manic frenzy, calming them to the dull contentment he saw last night. But the
way she says it, he thinks she might mean it much more literally.
 
“So,” she begins after her long sip, “if we’re going to keep doing this, I’m
going to have to make life here much harder for you.” She smirks. “You know, in
the interest of fairness.”
 
“Because you weren’t doing that already,” he quips, maintaining precarious
balance midair, watching her impassively sip her tea as if this is simple
polite conversation. “In the interest of fairness,” he tells her, leaning
forward and looking down at her as far as he’s able without tipping himself
over, “the more shit you give me, the more I’m going to take it out on you
later.”
 
A small smile hides behind her tea cup. She tilts her head slightly as she
shrugs one shoulder and says, “Sounds lovely.”
 
“Or I could decide to catch up on sleep in my own fucking bed,” he reminds her,
figuring that’s a more effective threat.
 
Her pale pink lips pout while she looks up at him from under her lashes. Her
brows crease slightly, and she says with the sullen sound of a spoiled child,
“You're being very unfair,” and he finds it irresistible even as his heartbeat
quickens naturally with a heightened sense of insecurity. Her erratic, manic
mood swings and the way her voice changes from cold pragmatism to cloying
sweetness sometimes without warning makes him uneasy in a way nothing ever has.
The fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up and an involuntary release of
adrenaline makes him feel alert and aroused.
 
He looks at the rig she has him strapped into and asks, “Is this supposed to be
hard?”
 
“Oh, no,” she murmurs, clearly delighted that he asked. “It’s relatively easy.
Most new trainees get the hang of it in a day, some in just an hour.”
 
“Then how does this factor into your promise to make training harder on me?”
 
“It doesn’t. This is just to satisfy my curiosity.”
 
“Curiosity?” he quirks a brow while looking over the ropes he’s attached to.
 
“It’s just that I’ve never seen anyone able to recover from a fall in this,”
she says with a little wonder and awe.
 
“What makes you think I’m going to—” She steps forward, wraps her hand around
his ankle, and doesn’t even have to give him more than a light shove to topple
him ass over head. “Nngh,” he groans after swaying upside down. He tucks his
cravat into his collar to keep it out of his face and says, “Fuck you,” through
gritted teeth.
 
Erna taps her finger against her lips as if in thought. “If I remember my
cursory medical training, you can stay like that for something like three
minutes before your brain starts to suffocate from all the blood rushing to
your head… Three minutes or seven… Somewhere in between there…”
 
He reaches downward, trying to get his palms against the ground for something
to push against so he can attempt to right himself. “You fucking cunt.”
 
“If you have a complaint, you can take it up with me later.” She turns on her
heel and starts walking away, adding over her shoulder, “If you don’t die.”
 
His curses at her trail off and get quieter as she heads back to her cabin,
calmly sipping the last of her spiked tea. Her blood warms in her veins, and
she feels very content and self-satisfied as she runs into an officer, either
rushing somewhere or trying to look like they are rushing and very busy in
order to avoid catching her attention. She stops them, calmly orders them to
keep an eye on Levi and cut him out of his harness if he passes out, and
mentions that she’s making herself scarce for the rest of the day. The officer
nods their understanding, and, before she fucks off, she stresses that she
isn’t to be bothered with anything short of utter catastrophe.
 
Utter catastrophe knocks at her door a few hours later, waking her up from a
very peaceful nap.
 
She recognizes the voice of one of her favorite officers, if she played
favorites, which she does, telling her from the other side of the door, “Mail
delivery, Sir. Do you want me to leave it out here?”
 
“Fuck me,” Erna whispers to herself. She twists and turns in her bed,
tightening the sheet around her body and burying her face deep into the pillow,
then unburying it to shout, “Slip it under the door,” and closing her eyes
again.
 
“There’s a package…”
 
On the other side of the door, Officer Terra hears a high-pitched snarl and
some curses. Erna opens the door, and the officer graces her with a weak,
apologetic smile and a “Sorry, Instructor Raban.”
 
It’s attention to detail like that—the carefulness and forethought to never
address her by the same title twice in a row—that made Erna decide to make this
one her favorite, though it’s only an arbitrary thing. She has very few
feelings regarding any of her officers. Playing favorites is a way to keep them
on their toes and part of the way she trains. Erna exhales a long-suffering
sigh and takes the package with a stack of envelopes on top of it. “Don’t
worry, Terra, you’re an angel.”
 
That blush that colors her neck when she’s praised doesn’t hurt.
 
“Anything else?” Erna cocks her hip and raises a black eyebrow.
 
“Nothing, Sir.”
 
“Perfect, doll. Now remember that I don’t exist until tomorrow morning.” The
door swings shut, and she locks it again with the swift twist of a bolt before
flipping through letters, ticking off each official military memo with,
“Boring… Garbage... Tedious...” tossing them onto the bed to open some other
time. Only one at the bottom of the stack grabs her attention. She holds up the
envelope, stamped with a seal from Military Police HQ, and she makes a
sorrowful, tired sound. She shifts her eyes to the medium-sized package she’d
tucked against her hip, then to the important letter, and back, finally setting
the unexpected package on the bed and ripping at the twine around it, deciding
to delay opening the letter.
 
She bypasses the note on top of the package’s contents and first pulls out a
long, red silk dress, simple and form-fitting, embroidered with exotic flowers
in black thread. “Oh, hell,” she says under her breath, noticing a pair of
black heels hidden underneath it. Someone missed the mark. She has a thing for
satin, silk, and lace, and she makes that known to everyone who could benefit
from bribing her. However, she does not do dresses. Where would she wear one?
She has two weeks of vacation time, but it’s a formality. She can’t go
anywhere, especially not anywhere near Sina as per her agreement with the
Military Police, which is the only place a dress this nice would be
appropriate. Just as her fingers reach to snatch up the note that she
discarded, she catches the glint of liquid amber in a glass bottle hidden
underneath a pair of black stockings. She grips it tight around the neck,
examines the label, and the corners of her lips slowly turn upward.
 
She looks over the blended malt scotch, checking the year on the label and
raising her eyebrows. She’s heard there are only two thousand bottles of the
brand in existence. She talks sweetly to the bottle like it’s her new best
friend, asking, “And who found you for me?”
 
She picks up the note, obviously dictated to a secretary with perfect, flowery
handwriting, and skips straight to the signature at the bottom, reading it and
smirking. “Pixis… stupid lush.”
 
She hasn’t actually met the Garrison Commander of the southern districts, but,
as the note mentions, word gets around, and word is that he has a problem with
the bottle that remains a terribly kept secret so long as he remains
functional.  “Blah, blah, blah,” she reads aloud to herself, “Forgive the
forwardness… rumored to love fine things much more than other people,
especially silks and whiskeys… blah, blah, blah…” She pauses in reading to
wonder aloud, “Takes a long time to get to the point.”
 
She assumes he was at least buzzed when this note was dictated, unless he’s
naturally a rambling, overly familiar, sentimental romantic, the thought of
which makes her shudder. She gets a lot of graft. Bribes and intimidation have
always been her specialty. But no bribery has ever come with a message so
endearing, so she wonders what his game is.
 
She reads the last paragraph, which comes out like poetry, “The scotch is older
than you, but it’s sweet like honey and smooth, much like me.” She cringes. “Oh
my god…” Then she reaches the end, “I hope you’ll save a finger of it for me.”
 
Erna can’t decide whether to laugh or shudder. She foregoes any reaction in
favor of picking up a pen from her desk and writing her own message in her
hasty, inelegant handwriting on the back of the note:
 
Pixis,
Returning the heels as I’ll never wear them. They make it too difficult to run
from creepy older men.
Keeping the dress.
If you’d like to share a drink, you’ll have to come to me. I’m very busy.
Bring your own bottle.
I’m a terrible host, and I never share.
 
With sincere gratitude,
Instructor Raban, Training Corps
 
She folds it in half and shoves it back in the brown paper package with the
heels, tying it back up, scribbling “Return to Sender” on it, and dropping it
near the door to go out with the next messenger. If Pixis wants something from
her, he’ll need to be less obtuse. It never occurs to her that the gift could
be a purely kind gesture. Those don’t exist. He must have heard from someone
that she’s a useful person to keep on their good side, which is true, she muses
to herself as she hides the expensive bottle of whiskey in the back of a desk
drawer. She casts an ironic smile at the dress pooled at the foot of her bed.
He probably meant for her to get some use out of it at the Military Ball in
Sina, which she isn’t permitted to attend, partially because the last time she
attended a ball an aristocrat ended up dead and in a very compromising
position.
 
Next to the dress, the letter from the Military Police headquarters waits for
her, and she winces when she remembers it. “Unnhhh,” she whines, before picking
it up and tearing at the edge of it with her nail, not bothering to get the
letter opener off her desk in her rush to get the unpleasant part over with.
 
The much less effusive and more formal letter heralds what she’d been afraid
of: an audit. The hollow, bureaucratic assurance is that this is
normal—infrequent, but normal—and that it’s just to make sure that she is
upholding the traditional standards of the military. She stifles a pained
whimper in her throat and brings her thumb and forefinger to her temples,
rubbing in circles.
 
After setting the opened letter at the center of her desk, she pulls a list
from the center drawer and holds it up. It has two columns, “given” and
“received.” The list refers to bribes, but the word isn’t written anywhere. She
does what she can to maintain plausible deniability while keeping detailed
records. She takes a pen and pauses, unsure if she should even add the dress,
not convinced it should count as a bribe received since she doesn’t want it and
won’t do anything in return. She grows anxious, and, worrying her lip, she
picks up a sheaf of papers from the same drawer, and they rustle as she
separates and organizes them. Two piles; real records and fake. For every entry
keeping track of illicit or illegal deals, there is a corresponding fake entry
that makes her practices look legitimate. She stares at her figures, creasing
her brow, wondering if her fake record-keeping will suffer an audit. Money
embezzled from one part of the budget and injected into another, checks and
balances bypassed via corruption and extortion. If it doesn’t stand up to
scrutiny, it will probably countermand her deal with the Military Police who
will have no reason to keep her alive. They’ll dredge up their case against her
and whatever evidence they have surrounding the one murder they got her for.
They’ll twist the story, make it into a marketable scandal, entertain the
aristocracy for a solid month, and pat themselves on the backs ceaselessly.
 
More than her potential death, she’s offended at the thought of being used as
entertainment fodder for the rich and bored. She’s only beginning to imagine
what some wealthy, sheltered, scandalized matron will say regarding the whole
thing when there’s a loud bang and the door bursts open.
 
She nearly jumps out of her skin. Her steadily growing paranoia made her
imagine that she’d been caught, but the door closes just as quickly, leaving
only Levi inside with her.
 
She turns away from the desk to face him and breathes deeply to calm her racing
heart.
 
“Leave the door unlocked next time,” he deadpans emotionlessly.
 
She narrows her eyes at him and looks him up and down quickly, takes in the
dried sweat and dirt crusting his uniform and the bored look on his face
betrayed by clenched fists and tightly tensed shoulders. She gives him a quick
eye roll and says sarcastically, “Hi, honey, how was your day?”
 
“You’ve got some fucking nerve.”
 
He’s just shy of shouting, and Erna looks away from him to hide how happy that
makes her. “You’re early, Snowflake.” A quick glance at the window confirms
that it’s still daylight. “I’m busy,” she sneers and turns her back on him,
making herself appear as cold and aloof as possible. She looks back to what she
was distracted with before he burst in, takes a stack of incriminating records,
twists them in her hands, strikes a match from her pocket, lights the ends of
them, and holds them while she watches the evidence of her petty crimes burn.
She gazes at the flames and in a far-off, dreamy tone, she says, “Come back
later,” and she watches the small blaze dance, so enamoured with the fire that
she’s already all but forgotten about him until his hand is suddenly crushing
her wrist, making her drop her little torch. He catches it in his other hand
before it can hit the floor and he throws it into the wood stove.
 
He takes her chin in his fingers, forcing her to look him in the eye when he
says, “You’re not in a position to give orders.”
 
She makes a high, frustrated little groan and attempts to pull her wrist out of
his grip while complaining, “Why are you so early?”
 
“Because I could have died, you fucking lunatic,” he shouts, voice filled with
disbelief that she could be so dismissive of the actual torture she put him
through only hours ago.
 
But she can be. It’s easy. She rolls her eyes at what she sees as his
overreaction. “You’re obviously fine.” She tugs again, hard, away from his hold
around her wrist, and he lets go with a sneer. She says, “I wouldn’t have let
you die,” (not entirely true) and, “I told an officer to get you down if you
blacked out,” (true).
 
“That’s the fucking problem,  Erna ,” he says, emphasis on her name.“After you
fucked off, I was able to swing myself upright,” he hisses at her through
clenched teeth.
 
“Impressive. Sorry I missed it.”
 
“I held myself like that for two fucking hours,” he pauses to let that sink in,
“before finally passing out. Then they cut me down and dragged me to the
infirmary.”
 
She wants to laugh. It’s quite a picture. She restrains herself and says, “It
isn’t my fault that they take me so  literally .”
 
He doesn’t react at all. She searches his cold eyes for a spark of anger, a
glimmer of lost temper, something to satisfy her. She isn’t rewarded with
anything but his low deadpan informing her without a hint of feeling, “This
game isn’t going to end well for you.”
 
“What game?” she asks, defiant, offended at being called out.
 
“You know what game,” he answers. He lets go of her wrist and walks past her in
the direction of the bed. She watches, pouting about his calm self control
denying her the violence and ruin she craves. She crosses her arms and decides
not to play at all if he isn’t going to be any fun. Her mouth opens to tell him
to get the fuck out, but she pauses to watch as he opens the drawer of the
bedside table. She tilts her head with curiosity and maybe a little excitement,
assuming he’s looking for a weapon.
 
Disappointingly, he takes out her glass dildo instead of a knife, and tosses it
to her as he walks toward the bathroom, telling her, “My head is still
pounding, and I’m sore as fuck. Get yourself ready with that by the time I’m
out of the shower or I’m going to fuck you dry.”
 
Erna’s face burns with rage, and, as Levi peels off his jacket, she shouts at
his turned back, “I’m not your fucking whore.”
 
“Good,” he says calmly without pausing or turning around. “I don’t have any
money to pay you.”
 
She throws the glass piece at him with enough force to shatter it as she misses
her target and it hits the wall beside the bathroom door. He doesn’t even
flinch. Six inches to the right and he’d be dead on the floor. She balls her
fists and stamps her foot. From the bathroom, he says, as if bored by her
histrionics, “You’re going to regret that.”
 
“You don’t have the balls,” she shouts after him. Though she doesn’t believe
his threat was an empty one, she just wants to get a rise out of him. All she
gets is the sound of the water running. She mutters under her breath, “Fucker.”
 
She’s distracted by a knock at the door. Seething and eager to rip into
someone, she answers it without even pausing to wonder what the fuck it might
be about, and she roars at the three officers on the other side, “What the fuck
did I say? As of this morning, I do not exist to you. How many officers do I
need before you can collectively get off of my dick for a full day?”
 
They cower and cringe, and Erna raises an eyebrow because there are three of
them, which means that something is up. Something that is going to piss her off
enough that none of them wanted to be the sole bearer of bad news.
 
“We’re sorry, Sir, it’s just…”
 
“There’s been, um…”
 
“It’s… um…”
 
Erna rolls her eyes and snaps at them. “Stand up straight. Stop the fucking
whining. Two of you shut up, and one of you say what you felt you needed moral
support to tell me.”
 
Her subordinates square up, look at each other with pressed lips and wrinkled
foreheads, and one of them blurts out clearly, “The horses are loose.”
 
Erna tilts her head back, pinches the bridge of her nose, and sighs for a beat,
then says, “Elaborate.”
 
“Um…they got out of the stable… no one knows how… they’re running around and…”
 
“And you want me to do what about it?” she snaps.
 
“Um…”
 
“Can you predict what I’m going to tell you to do?” she asks, disgusted with
them.
 
They freeze in terror and don’t answer right away, instead staring back at her
for a moment. She waits for an uncomfortably long time before finally one of
them hazards a guess. “Go catch them?”
 
“Yes!” she shouts, “Go catch the fucking horses! Put them back in the stable!
Do not come to update me on your progress, success, or failure, and thank your
good fucking fortune that I am busy, you useless—” she slams the door suddenly,
not even wasting her breath on any nouns for that adjective to modify. She goes
to lock the door, but the steel bolt is hanging by a thread from Levi’s
entrance. Her exasperation comes out as a quick, high growl, and she stalks
through the open bathroom door, saying, “Snowflake, you didn’t by any chance
stop by the stables on your way here?” knowing the answer already.
 
“I did,” he answers evenly from behind the shower curtain. She can’t see him,
but she can clearly imagine his straight-faced expression.
 
She shakes her head in frustrated incredulity. “Why?”
 
“What you should really be asking yourself,” he deadpans, “is why it took them
twenty minutes to finally come and tell you.”
 
“Are you trying to make me paranoid by getting me to question the loyalty of my
officers?” she scoffs. “Loyalty is a weak trait. It doesn’t hold up.” She leans
against the door frame and crosses her arms. “They waited because they’re
afraid, and fear is visceral. There’s no bargaining or negotiating with fear.”
 
“You’re paranoid already if you think I’m trying to bluff you,” he points out.
 
“Then what were you trying to do?”
 
“Keep them busy,” he answers. “It isn’t the middle of the night. Too many
people around to hear you scream.”
 
“Of course,” Erna sneers. She overcomplicated his motivations, because his
actions are making her feel like her control is slipping through her fingers,
and he’s right. She is paranoid.
 
“I’m gonna be in here two more minutes,” he reminds her. “You sure you want to
waste that time talking to me?”
 
“Why? Because of that empty threat to fuck me dry?” Erna squares her shoulders,
lifts her chin, and turns around, going back out into the main room. “That’s
the least worrisome thing I’ve had to deal with today.”
 
“Not an empty threat,” he calls after her, but she just rolls her eyes and
thinks that he doesn’t understand what she considers foreplay. All she has to
do is say the right thing to elicit a violent reaction from him and dryness
won’t be a concern, so she goes back to her desk, splays her palms along its
edge and leans into it as she stares at scratchy notes and lists that she would
be better off burning, and scanning her fake records and budgets for
inconsistencies that she could have missed.
 
The more she tries to focus, the more she feels disorganized and dizzy. Her
heart beats too aggressively, and, when she tries to focus, her head feels
fuzzy like cotton. She closes her eyes and feels an overwhelming need to exert
control over something. She shoots up from the desk like a whip and turns,
heading for the bathroom door again to tell Levi to get the fuck out and go
back to his bunk or wherever the fuck he’s supposed to be unless he wants her
to contrive some reason to put him in solitary confinement, because she can do
that, and, at this, moment she needs to.
 
Only, she’s stopped in her tracks when she sees him appear in the door frame,
naked, mostly dry but for little pools of water at the edge of his collarbone
and a droplet or two that he missed that are running down his thigh slowly
while he rubs his damp hair with a towel. She forgets what she’d been ready to
say, but a soft, “Fuck…” makes its way out of her parted lips. He looks up with
the slightest smirk, and she collects herself, quickly adding an, “Off,” to
save face.
 
“Yeah?”
 
She tries to swallow with her dry mouth and turns around so that she won’t have
to look at him while she says, “Yeah, seriously. I’m too fucking busy for this.
Hope you enjoyed the shower, now get the fuck out,” and she turns back to the
desk, looking down at the work that should really be her top priority. She can
feel his gaze burning a hole in the back of her head, and she ignores it. He’s
going to leave, or he’s going to fuck her up. He doesn’t give her time to think
on which she would prefer. He stalks her with fluid, purposeful strides, and
she acts like she’s unaware by turning a page over and picking up a pencil.
 
The struggle is short. She yelps at the sharp pain of her hip bones hitting the
edge of the desk, but it’s cut short and muffled when his hand grips the back
of her neck and pushes her down, cheek pressed flat against the dark varnished
wood. Her pencil clatters against the floor. The paper she’d been pretending to
read tears under her palm when she tries to reach back and hit him, but he
catches her hand and slams it back down, leaning over her, crushing her. A
shrill noise of frustration cuts the air, and her body jerks as she fights to
try to stand, but he holds her still with a cynical laugh.
 
He sneers at her, “Is this what you wanted when you left me hanging in the
sun?”
 
Erna stops fighting and relaxes. His weight feels good crushing her. She
answers with a demure, “Maybe.”
 
It does nothing to lessen his anger, though he releases his hold on her head
and wrist and places his hands around her waist instead, grunting, “You’re a
psychotic little bitch.”
 
She leans forward and unravels, stretching her arms straight out in front of
her, linking her fingers and melting against the wooden surface, letting her
frenetic paranoia dissipate as her head clears, and she concentrates on the
tight grip of his hands.
 
He reaches for one of the buckles of her harness. She moans contentedly and
separates her hips from the desk’s edge to help him get better access. When she
leans back, he grunts slightly, rips at a buckle, and pins her to the desk
again by shoving his hips against her, his cock pushing between her legs. She
moans at the rough treatment, feeling very pleased with herself while she turns
her face and presses her smile into the smooth desktop. He pulls her pants and
white lace underwear down to her knees in one or two violent tugs. A hand curls
around her waist, holding her still again, as if he needed to.
 
“You almost killed me just to get a rise out of me,” he says quietly, with a
deadly calm, dark edge to his observation, “so that I would be rough with you?”
 
She murmurs her affirmation. He’s correct. And she’s getting what she wanted.
She whines, needy and restless when he draws his hips back, moving his cock
away from her and giving her some literal wiggle room. Her hips rock back for
him, and his hand tightens around her waist, squeezing so hard that it hurts.
She hisses and smiles at the pain and says, “It worked before.”
 
 “I’m not,” he says, taking his cock in hand and pressing against her, angling
and searching for the opening in her closed thighs, “encouraging this.” He
drives forward hard past her dry lips, and her arms recoil from their relaxed
position splayed over the desk, elbows shooting back, palms and splayed fingers
pressing to the wood with a surprised, pained shout. She pushes herself up,
automatically rises on her toes to escape the painful intrusion, and, just as
quickly and automatically, he takes a fistful of her hair and pushes her back
down so hard that even her lungs feel compressed.
 
It burns and stings like a razor, but, while the pain is real and acute, she
sees it as an inconvenience secondary to the outrage because how fucking dare
he? She makes a noise like a growling screech, a monstrous sound that he
muffles by turning her face down with the fist tangled in her hair while he
pushes into her thrust after thrust by half inches, grunting with the effort of
pressing against her reflexively tight cunt until finally he’s buried in her
and, with one more brutal thrust, lifts her toes off the floor and jolts the
desk against the wall. Erna breathes deep and fast, oxygen being a desperate
anesthetic when nothing else is available.
 
“That fucking hurt?” he gloats because he wants it to, and he releases her
hair. He opts instead to press his palm between her shoulder blades and pin her
that way while her hip bones beat a steady, painful percussion against the edge
of the desk while he fucks her, bruising her.
 
She’d wanted it to hurt, only, there are different kinds of hurt. This isn’t
one that she’s fond of. He thinks he’s making a point about the consequences of
her actions when he says, “Be nice,” in between thrusts, grunting, “and maybe
next time... there’ll be foreplay,” thoroughly pleased with being the cause of
the pain twisting her facial expression into a tight wince. He moans and slides
his hand down to parallel the one at her waist, pulling her back in rhythm to
meet his hips, pushing deep and grinding against her. His fingers dig into her
skin. He looks down at her while she clamps down on him like a vise, hissing in
awe at how tight and hot her resistant walls feel, stilling and enjoying the
moment for a short pause before, in a sudden motion, her nails are swiping back
at his abs, catching and clawing three bright red lines into his skin before he
catches her wrist and holds it in the air.
 
Her shoulder makes a snapping, popping sound as he lifts her by that wrist onto
her feet, and she can’t feel the pain that should be shooting through her arm
when he lets it go. He takes advantage of the shock to grab her around her
middle, lift her off her feet, and walk her back to the bed while she dizzily
wonders where the feeling through her shoulder went and how she got turned
around.
 
“You wanted to get a reaction out of me,” he growls, ripping her pants all the
way off, wrenching her legs apart, and getting on his knees between them. “You
got it.”
 
She squeezes her thighs, trying to hold him at bay to no avail, but he pauses
to let her speak when she opens her mouth and informs him, “Getting fucked dry
isn’t one of my kinks.”
 
“Yeah?” he retorts, impassive and unmoved. He curls his hands under her and
drags her closer by her hips before promising her, “Not mine either,”
spitefully, like she brought this on herself, and he’s an innocent and
impartial proxy of justice. He leans down over her, slides a hand between her
and the mattress until his palm is between her shoulder blades. He lifts her
torso with one hand and angles her hips with the other, then pushes again. When
his cock meets with tense resistance, he growls, shoves past, and impales her.
 
She feels every drag and stab with burning acuity and hisses, “I’m going to
fuck you up in training tomorrow.”
 
“Fine,” he breathes. “Then we can keep going back and forth like this.” He
lowers her to the mattress and fucks into her faster, smirking slightly,
vaunting the power he thinks he has over her with a groan as he buries himself
to the hilt inside her, and her fingers reflexively reach and dig at any part
of him she can reach, as if holding something could ease the pain. He tells her
with his low, sadistic deadpan, “This isn’t as good as when you’re wet and
screaming my name, but,” he pulls back and slams his hips into hers again,
making her inhale sharply with a cringe, “not bad.”
 
Just as he picks up a rough pace again and his thrusts start to stutter and get
uneven instead of methodical and deliberate, like he’s chasing release, Erna
closes her eyes and wills her body into a mid-course correction. She can’t
ignore the pain. It’s there, and she remains physically aware of it, but with
practiced discipline she wills the tension out of her hands, her legs, her
core, relaxing herself utterly, wiping any expression from her face, and
opening her eyes again. It takes him a moment to notice, but when he does, he
pauses, sneers at her glassy, dull eyes, and growls, livid at not being able to
see the pain on her blank face. He thrusts hard, again, but even inside her
there isn’t any resistance and the jerk and slap of his hips only jolts her
limp body like it’s a soft inanimate object. She stares, her eyes as unfocused
and empty as a doll’s. He grabs her shoulders, shakes her, makes a couple more
half-hearted stabs into her heat before pulling out, disgusted.
 
Erna hums back to life and sits up after he gets off the bed and stands. She
cups her hand over her mons and winces. “You made your fucking point.”
 
He sneers at her and asks, “Where did you learn that trick?” as if what she
just did was any more disgusting than what he’d done.
 
“Don’t worry about it. Just know that if you try that shit again, I’ll kill you
and make it look like a training accident,” she says, clutching her right arm
and squeezing it, making sure it isn’t broken or dislocated anywhere.
 
“If you try to kill me again, I will fuck your actual corpse,” he snaps back
with far more calmness than those words should ever be said with.
 
“I’d believe you, but you could barely keep it up when I stopped moving.” She
coos with sarcastic sympathy while checking herself for blood. The skin between
her legs feels sore but looks okay and unbruised. Nothing torn or broken.
 
“You get credit for figuring out that it’s only fun when you struggle.”
 
“You get the same for figuring out that coming out hot and flying into a rage
gets me off.”
 
He leans over and she moves back as he looms over her. “I wanted to,” he says,
kneeling to the bed again as she crawls backward away from him, slowly trapping
her against the headboard and under him. “I thought a lot about choking you
until your lips turned blue…”
 
He reaches for her neck. She shudders. He gives her a sardonic smile as his
fingers tighten around her throat, and she murmurs, “I would have loved that.”
 
“I know.”
 
He locks eyes with her, applies only the smallest amount of pressure to her
throat, and stills. She waits, then arches up, pressing her neck into his
hands, and whispers, “Please.”
 
He raises an eyebrow at her and smirks, but doesn’t tighten his grip. He only
says, “You’re fucked up.”
 
There’s a flash of indignance across her face as she narrows her eyes and tells
him, “You just tried to rape me, but I’m the fucked up one.”
 
“I just tried to rape you,” he confirms calmly, rubbing his thumb over her
skin, still not choking her, “and you were very calm about it.”
 
“Oh, that,” she murmurs. “Well…” she trails off with a morbid, calamitous
little smile and reaches up to link her hands loosely behind his neck. She
purrs at him, “You gonna make it up to me?”
 
“Are you going to lay off me in training?”
 
“If I have to,” she pouts, “but that’s sincerely my only source of
entertainment around here.”
 
Levi rises up on his knees and tells her darkly, “I’ll keep you fucking
entertained.” Before she can ask him how he plans to do that, he shifts
downward, sliding his hands down her ribs and over her waist before settling to
grip at her thighs and open her legs wide, cupping his palms under her ass,
leaning down, and lifting her to his mouth. His face disappears between her
thighs, and she gasps as his tongue circles her clit before hungrily lapping at
her. His tongue delves inside her, and his hand caresses her leg, fingers
curling over her skin when he hits a sweet spot and makes her muscles twitch.
He rolls her clit carefully between two deft fingers, turns his head to suck a
bruise onto her inner thigh, and she whispers, “Fuck, fuck fuck…”
 
He proves to have an incredibly good memory that notes and archives her
reaction to every slight change in pace and position, and for minutes he uses
it against her to get her to the edge of orgasm again and again. The fourth
time that he slows down and eases her off of the brink she twists the sheets in
her hands, tilts her head back, and sobs.
 
“Something wrong?” he asks from between her legs, the smug little shit.
 
“Ple-ease,” she whines, the fluttering tightness in her abdomen becoming
overwhelming and unbearable.
 
He doesn’t say anything to torment her further, apparently satisfied at her
level of agony.He says only, “I want to feel you,” and he presses two fingers
slowly, carefully inside her, filling her without dragging or burning or
curling, not to fuck her with them, just to feel how she clenches when his lips
and tongue find her clit again. He lets her move her hips and grind and chase
her orgasm, pressing against his parted lips and shouting. He starts to get up,
moving his knees underneath him and looming over her again, looking down at her
while he presses his thumb over her clit and pumps his fingers slowly with
every flex of her legs, working her through her orgasm until she’s
oversensitive and flinching like his touch is too hot and she’s being burned.
 
She groans and nudges him weakly with her knee, begging him to ease off, and he
obliges. The pressure of his fingers disappears, leaving her feeling empty and
already restless. She wants more even though it would be impossible while she’s
still reeling from aftershocks, twitching and moaning. She turns her head and
closes her eyes, closes her legs, and listens to the rustle of him moving. When
she feels flesh press against her lips, she opens them and offers her tongue
without a thought. She tastes herself. His fingers curl against her tongue. She
closes her lips and sucks on them hard and hears a deep rumble hum through his
throat.
 
He moves, the weight on the mattress shifts, there’s a hand in her hair, and a
pop as he pulls his fingers from her mouth. She whines again and writhes,
reaching. Her hand finds his thigh, hard and rigid, and she curls her fingers
to scratch just as something larger pushes past her lips and invades her mouth.
Her tongue flicks against the head of his cock, lapping greedily, her cheeks
hollow as she sucks him in, and her fingers uncurl and go slack, no longer
filled with need for violence and consequence.
 
He hisses and curses softly, breathing deeply and loosening his hand from her
hair as she eagerly bobs a quick rhythm, sucking him down further and further.
When he catches his breath, he asks, “How long do you need?”
 
Her eyes snap open. She looks up at him and hums inquisitively while flicking
her tongue against the underside of his head. His eyes close as he shudders and
hisses before calming again and making himself clear, “How long do you need
after you come? When can I fuck you?”
 
She curls her fingers around the base of his shaft and leans back. With a
smile, she says, “A while,” before licking a broad stripe up the side of his
cock, eyes locked on his as she swirls her tongue around the head. She licks
down the other side and pumps him with her hand.
 
He growls, obviously not pleased with that answer. Erna kisses and licks at the
tip of his cock, slowly and reverently, whispering, “We have more than twelve
hours.”
 
“And I want to spend all of it fucking you.”
 
“Shouldn’t have made me come then,” she teases and grabs for the backs of his
thighs, pulling him into her mouth, and opening her throat for him.
 
Levi tilts his head back and hisses, sounding lustful and regretful at the same
time, agreeing with her, “I shouldn’t have.”
 
She hums before taking him deeper, cutting off her air. He tells her, “You
don’t deserve it,” and she digs her fingernails into his skin. He pushes his
hips forward and rests his hands on her head, steadying it while he draws back
and thrusts into her throat again, chastising her ironically, “I’m too good to
you.”
 
When he draws back and gives her air, she whines a needy little noise in
agreement and quickly follows his hips with her mouth, choking herself again,
pressing her nose to his pubic hair and feeling his hard cock block her airways
again. He curses, loses the composure it took to speak, grips her hair tight,
and finally starts fucking her face. Erna holds her breath, but for every
stutter and opportunity she moans and inhales and quiets again as his cock
presses past her tongue and deep into her throat.
 
One of his hands goes for her neck. It curls around and squeezes while the
other still holds her hair by the roots, so that when she gets dizzy and her
head lolls he can hold it in place and keep fucking her mouth. He comes deep in
her throat, shuddering and grunting, thrusting and still trying to get deeper
as he empties all the anger he’d been harboring into her. She sucks like she’s
grateful for it, and, when he suddenly pulls away, having come up to the edge
of discomfort, she looks up at him and asks, “Now how long do  you  need?”
 
He shakes his head, brings his fingers to his temples, and closes his eyes. “My
head is still killing me.” He turns and sits, leaning against the headboard
next to her and stretching his legs out in front of him.
 
Erna wipes her mouth and rises to her knees. She straddles his hips and looks
down at him. “Poor baby.”
 
He reaches for her, grabs her by the shirt, and pulls her closer, making her
lose her balance and teeter. She steadies herself with a hand on the wall, and,
before she can stop him, he rips her shirt down the middle, buttons popping and
raining down onto the mattress and the floor. She squeals in anger, but he
ignores her reaction. He hooks a finger under her bra and sneers at it, saying
to himself, “Really?” and then muttering while he reaches under the pillow
behind him with his other hand, “Where’s that fucking knife?”
 
And before she can even register his intent and tell him to stop, he’s slipped
the dull edge of a knife against her skin and sliced her bra in half. Erna
looks down at her ruined clothes in horror while he nonchalantly holds the
knife in his teeth to free his hands and tug the torn and cut clothing off of
her. She rips her arm out of the sleeve he’s pulling at and, once freed,
punches him in the shoulder and shouts, “The bra unclasps! That was un-fucking-
necessary. I liked that bra!”
 
He pulls the shirt down and off her other arm and, with smirking satisfaction,
takes the knife from his teeth while looking her up and down. “White doesn’t
suit you,” he replies with a hint of cheek hidden under his deadpan tone.
 
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t show through the uniform either, you fucking prick.”
 
He smirks at her outrage and rests a hand around her waist, pressing and
gliding his thumb over her abs, twirling the knife absently in his other hand.
“I’m ready to go again, by the way.”
 
“Fuck you,” she says in disbelief. “It’s been two minutes.”
 
“I have a lot of stamina,” he says matter of factly, “and I had a lot of time
to think about fucking you to death while I was in the infirmary.”
 
She slaps his hand away and mutters, “Literally going to kill me.” She goes to
get off the bed and stand, but his hand snatches at her wrist and holds. She
pulls, and he pulls back, and it’s about to be a struggle when there’s a knock
at the door, and they both freeze. Erna tilts her head back and groans. “Fuck
me.”
 
“You want to answer that first?”
 
“Shut up,” she hisses a low whisper, looks down at her clothes on the bed and
the floor, drops her shoulders and makes a frustrated little shriek when the
knocking continues, and she accepts that she’s going to have to get up. Levi
lets her go, and she sits on the edge of the bed for a moment, then looks to
him. He folds his hands behind his head nonchalantly. She scowls at him,
annoyed that he can be so fucking calm. Then she hisses, “Give me that,” and
snatches the knife away from him, stands up, ignores her clothes, and walks to
the door naked, leaning her forearm against it and then resting her head
against her arm tiredly, steeling herself for a second before shouting, “If I
have to open this door, it’s only going to be so that I can slit your throat,
and that isn’t an exaggeration! I will bury you in a shallow grave out in the
woods, tell your friends that you went back to your family, and tell your
family that you fucking deserted.”
 
There’s silence, then a quiet, “Sorry,” just audible from the other side of the
door. “Leaving your dinner here, Sir.”
 
Erna smirks at herself for forgetting that meals were a thing, and she turns
around. On her way to her closet, she tosses the knife back to Levi because she
likes when he holds it against her skin. He catches it and watches her slide
the closet door open. While she looks for a robe to put on, she asks, “Did you
eat?”
 
“When would I have?” he asks with dry irony.
 
“Oh,” she says distractedly, remembering that she kept him from breakfast and
left him hanging from the 3DMG training device all day, “right.” Her fingertips
linger over the sleeve of something silky and pink. She reaches for a hanger.
 
Levi stops her by saying, “Don’t wear anything you don’t want me to rip apart,”
and keeps twirling the knife in his fingers, bored with everything that doesn’t
presently involve fucking her.
 
She huffs to herself, thoroughly annoyed, but then she remembers she has
something that she wouldn’t mind ripping apart, and she turns around. He sits
up when he sees her heading back for the bed, but she walks past, to the foot
of it, and reaches down for the dress that got pushed to the floor at some
point. It slips over her head easily and glides over her skin like oil, like it
was made and measured specifically for her, except for the length. A few inches
of excess fabric pool at her feet. If she meant to keep it then it would need
to be hemmed.
 
As she tiptoes into view of the full length mirror, Levi tells her, “Red suits
you better.”
 
Erna frowns at her reflection. It’s beautiful.
 
“I’ll never get to wear it.”
 
“Wearing it for me doesn’t count for anything?” he asks with snide sarcasm.
 
She ignores him and pulls up the zipper at her back, moves to the door, and
opens it enough to kneel down, pick up the tray with her dinner, and slam it
shut again. She takes a roll and offers Levi the rest, explaining, “I’d be
mildly disturbed if you passed out while fucking me.”
 
“Not as disturbed as I was when you did your living dead girl act,” he quips
back, though he takes the food and eats in her bed while she opens a new bottle
of whiskey from her stash underneath it. While she drinks from the bottle, he
says, “I thought the food you got would be better than what I could get in the
mess hall.”
 
“Nope,” she says simply.
 
He raises a thin brow at her. “Why not?”
 
“People with power forget that they are singular and those underneath them are
many.”
 
“So you eat the same shitty food as the rest of us, and you think that prevents
a mutiny?” he asks with a derisive sneer.
 
“It helps.”
 
Levi takes a big bite out of a baked potato, and, in between chews, he asks her
with mild curiosity, “How long have you been doing this?”
 
“A couple years.” She says quietly, thinking to herself how little and how much
time that sounds and feels like.
 
“Which branch did you serve with before this?”
 
“I didn’t,” she says first, then raises her eyes, thinks, and corrects herself,
“I did a few months with the Survey Corps.”
 
He pauses and his head tilts slightly. “I thought Instructors had to put in
their time before taking this cushy ass job. That’s why they’re all crusty old
men… except you.”
 
Her only response to him is a shrug, and he waits for her to elaborate on that,
but she keeps her mouth shut and stares right back at him until he breaks the
silence. “Then what were you before?”
 
The whiskey starts to go to Erna’s head and warms her cheeks. She smiles and
asks playfully, “What do you  think  I was?”
 
He says quickly, with a straight face, “You suck dick like a whore.”
 
Her smile turns to a scowl. “Fuck you.”
 
“Bet I’m not wrong.”
 
Erna looks away from him, her lips twisting to the side in annoyance. He goes
on, “But those scars tell a story.” He points at her with his fork, at the
scars raised here and there over the skin revealed by the dress, on her arms,
her shoulders, across her chest, and, for the first time in a long while, she
feels conscious of them and of being uncovered and exposed to someone else’s
scrutiny.
 
Erna doesn’t confirm or deny his assertion. She just takes a bite from the hunk
of bread in her hand so she won’t get sick, and she tests him. “What story?”
 
“Don’t know,” he answers once he’s finished chewing. He finishes the last of
her dinner and sets the tray on the bedside table, then nods toward the glass
bottle neck getting strangled in her hand. “You going to finish that whole
thing on your own?”
 
She takes another swig before surrendering it. With her in reach, he takes the
opportunity to hold the bottle in one hand and grab her with the other. She
falls and sits next to him without any resistance, but he doesn’t ease his grip
on her arm until he takes a good long pull off the bottle and is ready to
relinquish it to her. Before sucking on the bottle’s mouth, she leans back and
rests on her elbows. He stays sitting up on the edge of the bed. She has a good
view of the back of his head and the muscles of his shoulders and back, and she
broods over him and his frustratingly alluring darkness and masked brutality
tucked away under an expressionless exterior, and she mutters, “You’re right.”
 
He cracks his neck and stretches. “About what?”
 
She kisses the bottle. “I  was  a whore.”
 
He shrugs as if that isn’t much of a revelation and says, “So was my mother.”
 
Automatically Erna sneers, “So you were an accident.”
 
He doesn’t react at all for a beat. He stills. Then, just as her gut is
starting to tighten with foreboding that she’s gone too far, she sees his
shoulders shrug, and he says, “Maybe. She died when I was a kid. I never got to
ask.”
 
Erna doesn’t bother with ‘sorry’ because she isn’t, and to pretend sympathy is
beneath her. Instead, she reaches forward and nudges his elbow with the bottle,
letting him take it from her again. She muses, “My pimp was more careful than
that. The hysterectomy was a requirement post-interview.”
 
“Interview,” he scoffs darkly.
 
“That’s what he called it,” she sing-songs.
 
The liquid in the now half-empty bottle sloshes as he tips it back. “So you
fucked your way to this job?” he asks bitterly.
 
“Oh, no,” she says, rising up onto her palms with a little thrill, her eyes
going wide, excited to correct him on that point. “I only worked for a few
years. When I was fourteen, a regular client felt that I was in need of saving,
and I let him be my hero and whisk me away to a cold, shitty basement apartment
under a butcher’s shop.”
 
“Fourteen,” he says, not so much a question as a repetition to clarify and be
sure.
 
“I interviewed when I was eleven.”
 
Levi’s response is to tip his head back and drink, only coming up for air a few
moments later to whisper, “Fuck,” very much to himself in a haunted way.
 
He doesn’t say ‘sorry’ either.
 
Erna relaxes again, lies back on her elbows, tilts her head back, and groans,
“Don’t get all depressed about it.” She looks back up for a reaction, sees only
his back, still tense, his shoulders hunched over slightly, his head shaking,
and she rolls her eyes at him. “It’s not like I was kidnapped or anything. It
was a choice. I didn’t need any rescuing. I’d  told  him that.”
 
Levi wipes his mouth after another gulp of bitter whiskey, and asks, “Who?”
 
“The man,” she answers, frustrated that he isn’t keeping up. She sits up and
takes the bottle from him, intending to keep it this time. “My first boyfriend.
Well… only boyfriend…”
 
He gives her an incredulous look, the corners of his eyes wrinkling just
slightly with a hint of a playful expression, his shock forgotten. He hooks the
shoulder strap of her dress with a finger and seems to get distracted by the
smoothness of the silk while he asks, “What happened with him then?”
 
“I killed him.”
 
He stops. He lifts his chin and looks at her. She smiles, tilts her head, and
says, “You remind me of him.”
 
“Yeah, I feel like we have a lot in common already,” he deadpans sarcastically
as he lets go of her dress.
 
“Just the musculature,” she sighs as she runs her hand up his arm and over his
shoulder, and, when he doesn’t withdraw, she pushes at him lightly, telling
him, “He was a fighter…a boxer…” He lies back for her and lets her straddle his
hips after she pauses to impatiently tug the long skirt of her dress up. She
splays her fingers over his abs that she’ll never get bored of touching and
muses, “that’s where the similarities begin and end. He was sentimental and not
very bright.”
 
“And,” he adds, “you know, a pedophile.”
 
“Well, they all were.”
 
“Tch,” he flashes his teeth. “Disgusting.”
 
She reaches down between them, grips him and squeezes and draws her hand up
lazily, slowly stroking him, getting him hard despite his disgust. He looks at
odds with himself, like he doesn’t think he should be getting hard while she
talks about such abhorrent things.  She says, “Nevermind. You don’t want to
hear about it.”
 
Levi blinks long and slow and his lips part as she teases him. He lifts his
neck like tipping his head back for water, and, when his eyes open again,
they’re free of any conflict. He’s let the inner demon envelop him, and he
says, “Tell me,” in a husky breath while she strokes him. He is still a hard
read, but she can tell that he’s smart at least. Smart men get bored easily,
and they love a good story to punctuate the monotony.
 
She circles her palm over his slick head and says, “I didn’t  need  to be
rescued.”
 
His name was John, fitting. He’d had close-cut black hair and piercing, ice
blue eyes that were never still. Good jaw, slightly crooked nose, dirty
clothes. That was thirteen-year-old Erna’s quick assessment when she caught
sight of him beyond the curtains that separated the lounge from the reception
area of her home/workplace. She saw him before he knew she existed. He looked
fragile in the way that exceedingly strong men always do, so dangerous, so
insecure, so easily threatened. She nuzzled into her soft floor cushion and
lifted her chin to share a look with a girl splayed over the couch nearby,
wanting someone to acknowledge the nod of her chin and roll of her eyes toward
the the new guy she could see conversing with the concierge in the lobby, but
the other girl was already passed out. She couldn’t handle her opium. A thin
line of drool hung from the corner of her lips. With a sigh, Erna picked the
unfinished pipe from the girl’s lax fingers and held it in her teeth while she
made a reach for an oil lamp on a low table.
 
She turned back and peered past the flame flaring up eight inches in front of
her with narrowed eyes. The scene, half-obscured by the curtain, was of the new
man raising some kind of fuss at the desk. It took a lot of balls to argue
about terms and price in this situation. Her curiosity was piqued before he
settled with the concierge and was pointed in the direction of the fuschia
curtain.
 
He surveyed his surroundings and the dozen or so other girls lounging, talking,
smoking, and staring, before coming to loom over her. He told her to get up.
She told him that she wasn’t finished and craned her neck to suck on the long
pipe she’d just stolen. Rather than move onto another girl, he waited, stock
still, but not with patience, staring at her with a raging fire in his eyes
until she finally stood, less than half his height but sizing him up with
confidence. She told him directly, without much care one way or another, that
she could refuse clients for any reason, and she looked past him to the man out
front whose job it was to physically handle any problems.
 
He reacted almost not at all, kept his hands clasped in front of him, nodded
slightly, and said that was fair in a solemn, respectful tone in direct
contrast with his behavior in the lobby. While she made up her mind about
whether or not she wanted to take him upstairs or motion for the security man
outside to dispose of him so that she could be treated to the dry twig sound of
snapping bone that she liked so much, she offered him the pipe in her hand, but
he shook his head, said he had a fight later and needed to stay sharp. That
made up her mind for her.
 
In her room she asked him if he wanted her innocent, slutty, or terrified.
Every client’s wants always fell into one of those three categories. He said a
little of each would be fine.


Levi twitches under her palm, hisses through his teeth, and interrupts her,
“That’s horrible.”
 
“That’s  life ,” she answers, “life  is  horrible, people are  disgusting , and
there’s no point to any of it.”
 
He closes his eyes, hums in agreement, and bucks up into her hand. She presses
her thumb to the precum beading at his slit and swirls it around, listens to
him moan deep and low, and she keeps pumping him in her hand while she leans
over him and licks at the bruise encircling his neck. “I can stop,” she
breathes hot against him, shifting herself, bringing her hips forward so that
she can rub the tip of his cock against her opening, and she mouths against his
jawline, “if it’s too dark.”
 
She feels his jaw twitch under her lips and she thinks he just smiled, though
she can’t see with her eyes closed. He puts his hands around her waist, pulls
the silk dress up, and reaches down to glide his hands over her thighs, guiding
her slowly, gently forward and back, so that she slides over his shaft, and he
whispers with mild fascination, “You’re so fucking wet,” and his fingers dig at
the muscles of her legs while he lifts his hips, rubbing against her without
penetrating. He goads her, “Keep going. I want to know why you killed him.”
 
She stretches back upright, looking down at him, her shoulders back, hands
pressing down against his chest and measuring his even breaths. Her hips follow
his hands, and it’s a game now to remain composed and coherent while his cock
is so close to fucking into her. She takes a deep breath and shudders, then
tries again, reciting as clearly as is manageable, “He came once a week.”


She didn’t have any repeat customers. Not after she learned how to get men deep
into their darkest fantasies and desperate to finish, on the razor edge of
orgasm, and then stop, stop whatever it was that was getting them off, cruelly
and suddenly. If they liked her eager and whorish, she was suddenly a naif. If
they were there to fuck an innocent little girl, she narrowed her eyes and
became precocious. If they wanted her to scream and cry, she would cut out mid-
howl and look bored. They would stutter, they would try to get there without
her help, but the fantasy would be ruined, and they would beg on their fucking
knees for her to go back to what was working, to finally finish. Men in the
throes of ecstasy suddenly interrupted are beyond reason. She collected entire
wallets as tips. Unfortunately, when lucidity returned, no one was foolish
enough to ask for her again.
 
He was safe from her tricks in that he was stupid with money. He was
younger—twenty-nine, she thinks she remembers—and, when he came, it was only
with enough for her services and a shot of hard alcohol before his fight. He
got more money after winning, and spent it on food and booze and rent, having
just enough left for her at the end of the week.
 
She gave him more than the standard hour. It was her prerogative. Her pimp
allowed whatever it took to keep girls happy. Opium, time off, freedom to
socialize, making their own hours, and refusing specific clients on any
grounds, so long as they earned enough for him to make a healthy profit and
were appropriately grateful for the freedom and the roof over their heads—no
moping about.
 
When John offered to save her from this place, she laughed. She couldn’t stop
laughing for minutes. He, of course, was wounded and left in a huff without
allowing her to explain, slamming the door while she rolled on the bed, holding
her sides. She was free to leave if she wanted. That’s what she was told,
anyway, anytime she was caught looking more depressed than was attractive.
 
Why would she want to leave? It was warm and safe. The work was horrible and
disgusting, but she could smoke and drink and dull the sick feelings that
crashed in all around her sometimes.
 
But he came back, and he learned slowly that she liked bruises and scars and
stories and descriptions of violence. He had plenty of those things. He seduced
her away with them. If she went with him, she could watch him fight. If she
lived with him, he promised she would get to see more bloodshed and destruction
than the occasional overstepping client getting tossed out onto the street.
 
The tradeoff, she learned afterward, was a change in quality of life. His
apartment was in a cold, windowless cellar under a butcher’s shop, suitable for
him. He trained whenever he felt cold, doing pull ups in the doorway, hanging
on by the white tips of his fingers, or suddenly throwing lightning-quick jabs
at a sand-filled sack hanging from the ceiling by a chain. Erna wore hats and
scarves and mittens to stave off hypothermia. His bed was a wooden pallet with
thin, dirty blankets and no pillow and she let him fuck her on it more than she
would have otherwise just to sap his body heat.
 
But his promise was good. Within the first twenty-four hours, she got to watch
him beat two men to death. They were supposed to retrieve her. Apparently the
freedom to leave was only meant to be a comforting illusion. She watched with
wide-eyed excitement and noted how fragile the human skull actually is. Then,
with both men laid out, their chests dead still, John turned and winked at her
before setting to work dragging the bodies up the stairs. There was no follow-
up attempt. She wasn’t worth that much.
 
She attended every fight religiously, calm with hands folded in her lap and
watching, awestruck with the ruthlessness and the noise and the cruelty.
Violence and intensity followed John everywhere, so she clung to him, going to
the bar with him after a fight, letting him wrench from her grasp when his
temper flared, stoked by a look or a comment from someone, or anything. He was
a savage drunk. It didn’t take much. She didn’t help. She looked only twelve at
best, and their relationship drew sneers and expressions of pure disgust that
Erna didn’t hesitate to point out, and John never balked at the chance for a
confrontation. He looked for it with his alert, ice blue eyes almost as much as
she did.
 
When she couldn’t keep up with the late nights and the noise and the drinking,
and her eyes fought to stay open, he deposited her at home, tucked her in, and
went back out. His affection for her remained ardent despite his cheating. She
didn’t mind, was even relieved. Her sexual appetite was nonexistent, and his
was a large pyre that she was surrendered to when no one else was available.
 
His fondness of her waned as she got older. He got bored of her, wasn’t
attracted to her when she started to look more like a teenager. She didn’t
care, but he felt guilty, and he lashed out. He started arguments with her more
and more, and often complained about the cost of keeping her.


“If you didn’t care,” Levi teases, lips brushing the hollow of her shoulder,
“why kill him?”
 
She tilts her head and bends her neck away from his touch as he pushes the
strap of her dress down and peels the silk clinging to her breasts away. His
palm pushes flat against the valley between them, making her sit up straight
again. When had she leaned into him? He grinds his hips up and bucks her
lightly, teasingly, staring at her with a sharp hunger and a sarcastic smirk.
 
“If you’re impatient,” she says, trying to sound aloof even with her flushed
cheeks and wet lips, “I can stop.”
 
“Finish your story,” he orders her. She gives him a sly, satisfied look. She’s
going to. Only, then he finds her clit, soaked and rubbing against his cock,
and he presses it lightly, swirling the pad of a finger over it while his cock
slides between her lips without entering, and as she closes her eyes and moans,
all her words get blotted out by the greedy mantra in her head of  more, more,
more,  until she hears him tease her with an added, “If you can.”
 
“Not fair,” she pouts.
 
“Finish,” he insists, eyes bright as knives.
 
“I…” her hips stutter completely on their own, and she whimpers. This was
supposed to be her game, not his. It was supposed to make him uncomfortable and
disgusted and conflicted while she got him hard. Her lips pout while she bears
down to grind against him because it feels so good, and she wants more.
 
She’s broken out of her fog by a stinging slap to her ass. Her eyes open wide
and she looks down at him, his muscular body shaded with more and more black
and silver in the dying light.
 
He says calm and clear, “Now.”
 
“Fine,” she whines with gentle futility. Her mouth opens to start again, only
no words come out. She pauses for a beat and her brow wrinkles as she thinks,
undistracted by the roll of his hips. She looks at him and with slight wonder
asks, “Where was I?”
 
“Did I make you forget?”
 
“No,” she says quickly, petulant and offended and lying.
 
“It seemed like you were close to finishing.”
 
She pushes her hips against him, rocks against the pressure of his fingers, and
sighs, “I am.”
 
“The story,” he corrects her.
 
She makes a frustrated little groan and finally slaps his hand away from her,
narrowing her eyes at him. He smirks and holds his hands up. She remembers
where he sidetracked her and she says defensively, “I  didn’t  care.”


Cheating was fine. Arguing was fine. She never cared about him in the first
place and only stayed because it was convenient, and she liked the excitement
he provided. She could take him just as easily affectionate or cold. She didn’t
even care as much as she should have when one night he came home shitfaced,
ripped her out of bed, and beat her before he raped her and then beat her again
after.


Levi winces and Erna reminds him, “You wanted to hear it.”


She’d experienced worse. Not all at once. But what John did to her didn’t
plunge her into as black depths as those kinds of offenses did in the past, the
first few times they happened, when she was younger and less resilient. She
wouldn’t have killed him for it. The thought didn’t cross her mind. He even
cried after, and she comforted him as well as she could while holding a cold,
wet cloth to her eye.


“You should have killed him for that,” Levi deadpans.
 
“I didn’t,” she says. “I didn’t kill him for anything  he  did.”
 
“Then  what ?”


It was the next night, after he’d apologized. He was sweet and solicitous with
her all day, and in the evening she tagged along to watch him fight again,
because she never tired of it. A lot of things were boring to her, but never
that. But, for the first time, it was different. It was the way people looked
at her. She was familiar enough to the managers, fighters, gamblers, and
various degenerate scum that most ignored her as a common piece of scenery.
Only, they saw her with her black, swollen eye, and there was a quick flash of
recognition that something was different, and then… something else.


“What?” Levi asks as she looks up, remembering and searching for the right
words, interested again, rolling his hips against her and sliding the head of
his cock over her wet lips in a slow, steady, unrushed rhythm.
 
“It was like,” she pauses, thinks, sways in motion with him, “disdain… not even
like they thought I deserved it, but just, like…” His hand slides up over the
front of her dress, dragging at the fallen fabric, settling on her skin,
cupping her breast as she speaks. “...Like I didn’t matter. Like I was trash.”
 
She looks down at him, and his eyes seem to flash with a sympathetic memory,
and, just as quickly, the flitting light is gone. It’s dark. She whispers, “I
killed him for the way they looked at me.” She tilts her head back and angles
her hips so that his next stroke almost pushes the head of his cock inside her,
but he stills.
 
“Not yet,” he scolds, quietly, his voice a deep husk. He grips her shoulder and
pulls her down. She hovers over him. It’s harder to see in the dark, but she
wants to. He cranes his neck up and nips at her collarbone with his teeth,
close to her throat, and he bids with too much patience, “Tell me how.”
 
“I waited for him to fall asleep, and I stabbed him.”
 
“How many times?”
 
Quiet for a few seconds while she thinks, and then she decides, “At least
thirty.”
 
Levi hums. “Good.” His hands squeeze her waist and push her back, pressing her
opening against his cock, gently, a suggestion, permission.
 
She whispers against his neck, “And nobody ever looked at me like that again.”



Chapter End Notes
     idk why i hc snk canonverse as so close to seedy victorian london,
     but here we are
     hmu on tumblr. i don't have as much time for writing as i used to,
     but i bitch about it on there and throw out random head canons and
     pieces of dialogue that i come up with.
***** Gas *****
Chapter Notes
     oddly enough, no trigger warnings for this chapter. enjoy this short,
     non-problematic smut.
     Commissionerfiction_on_Tumblr
     Please consider supporting me with A_Cup_of_Coffee
     Or just review. That's awesome, too. Thank you!
Erna's voice rings clear just as the hiss of gas cuts short, and Levi lets
gravity manage his descent to the ground.
 
“Do it  again ,” she says, loud and adamant, but also distracted because she’s
looking down at a letter from a stack placed in her hands moments ago by a
nervous recruit. She’s been severe about mail lately. It can’t get into her
hands fast enough. Her eyes dart back and forth, skimming for information she’s
been waiting on for a week and a half.
 
Levi narrows his eyes at her from a few yards away and he deadpans, “What do
you mean again?” There’s a collective intake of breath. Officers and cadets
alike wince and look down at their boots or the ground. He sheaths his blades.
“That was perfect.”
 
The people around them shift nervously, tension and discomfort growing with
every second of silence while he stares at her. She doesn’t lift her eyes from
the letter in her hand, finishes scanning it, folds it in half, moves it to the
bottom of the stack, and opens another envelope, swiftly ripping it across the
top with her fingernail. Fifteen strained and stressful seconds pass before she
finally speaks, still looking down and reading, “Sorry, I thought I was hearing
things because it sounded like you were questioning me.”
 
“You weren’t even looking,” he challenges and holds a defiant stance. Nearby,
Farlan cringes as if this exchange is causing him actual physical pain. Even
Isabel looks mildly worried.
 
“Well,” Erna sighs, folding the second letter and tearing open another, “good
to know my hearing isn’t failing me.”
 
“Do the exercise again, trainee,” the supervising officer growls.
 
Erna’s eyes finally dart upward and she glares. “Shut the fuck up, Frey. If I
wanted a mimic, I’d get a pet raven to do your job.”
 
Officer Frey, who would be an imposing man in any other context, muscular,
thick-necked, and with short, straight auburn hair, blanches white and shrinks
from her, eyebrows creasing like a kicked dog. Now that her full attention has
been engaged, Erna tucks her mail into her jacket pocket, meets Levi’s eyes,
and says, “You’re right, Snowflake. I wasn’t looking.”
 
The agreeable tone she’s using puts some onlookers a little more at ease, but
Levi knows better, and he waits steady and expressionless for the follow-up.
He’s familiar with her rhythm.
 
She narrows her eyes slightly and her voice shifts to low and dark. “I don’t
need to look to know what too much wasted gas sounds like. The point is to
maneuver efficiently, and you’re not doing it.”
 
“Bullshit.”
 
Despite herself, the corners of her lips turn upward in a quick, almost
imperceptible facial twitch. Her eyes brighten. “Goodness,” she sighs with a
sarcastic inflection of awe. She beckons with a curled finger, “Bring your
wounded pride over here then, Snowflake.”
 
If she didn’t know better, she would think he was just fucking around, pushing
to see what he could get away with now that he's been fucking her nightly for a
couple weeks, but it's definitely not that. He’s sincerely offended, not
fucking around, but emboldened to talk back to her because he's been fucking
her nightly for a couple of weeks. Last night, he made her ride his fingers for
a maddeningly long time while she  begged  him to replace them with his cock,
which, she'll grant, could blur the division of power and make it confusing as
to what tone is acceptable to take with her in this situation.
 
As he stalks over, he growls at her, “I taught myself on stolen gear. I don't
waste gas.”
 
She tilts her head. She has, maybe, been riding him hard lately. She's been
good about restraining herself and not inflicting unwarranted, insane,
reactionary punishments on him. Instead, she’s finally actually taken an
interest in his training, which might be even worse, because her standards and
expectations for him border on unreasonable, even for someone as talented as he
is. She can’t help it. She wants him to live through at least a few
expeditions.
 
She’d been standing a good distance away, not fascinated or bored enough with
the team’s maneuver training to hover closely. The only person near her is the
recruit who brought her the mail and is still waiting to be dismissed. She
turns to him now and says with a sweet tongue, “You’re going to want to fetch a
medic,” and he sprints off as Levi reaches her. Now, no one is close enough to
hear her tell him, “You’re pushing it.”
 
He doesn’t whisper back; he’s too livid. “There’s nothing to improve. This is
pointless.”
 
Erna’s black brows furrow, and her eyes narrow. She raises her volume. “I’m not
here to argue. I’m here to teach.” With a sharp movement, she takes his
handgrips from their holsters and twirls them in her fingers, then says calmly,
“If you want to waste gas...” trailing off, smiling as if it’s of no
consequence to her, she presses and holds each trigger and waits as the gas
hisses out of the tanks mounted on his blade sheaths. She keeps an eye on the
meters. When the needle is a hair away from empty, she takes her fingers off
the triggers.
 
“Do it,” she orders in a deep husk, “ again .”
 
“Easy,” he asserts, too cocky to turn down the challenge. He walks back to the
trees that mark the steps of the maneuver exercise.
 
Erna calls after him, “Don’t forget to tuck and roll when you fall,” and she
looks down again, takes a third unopened letter from her pocket, rips it open,
and skims it. It's another reply to the correspondence she sent last week,
asking her contacts for any information at all about her quickly approaching
audit, mainly hunting for answers to the question “why now?” and urging some of
the mildly more powerful people she’s acquainted with to get a read on whether
or not she should be very concerned, threatening to ruin them and take them
down with her if she must.
 
She reads and listens for the punch of anchors, the slice of air, the hiss of
expelled gas. He’s still using too much. She sniffs, rolls her eyes to herself,
folds another disappointingly uninformative letter, and looks up just as Levi’s
tank hits empty and he realizes that he isn’t going to be able to reel himself
in to the tree he’s got his cables in.
 
There’s routine, conventional use of the maneuver gear, and there are creative
methods to make it work in unintended ways, and Levi is good at both. He
maneuvers like it’s second nature. That isn’t her issue. Her issue, and what
she’s trying to show him, is that he’s trigger happy, using more gas than is
strictly necessary because his fingers aren’t gentle enough. She doesn’t care
how creative he gets. Any movement, aside from braking suddenly and snapping
his spine with the sudden whiplash, requires gas, so she hopes Levi remembers
her comment about tucking and rolling as she watches gravity overwhelm him.
 
Without the compressed gas to reel the cables back in, Levi falls like a
pendulum attached to a string in an arc down toward the large tree, gaining too
much momentum. He is steady, not flailing or making any drastic movement at all
as he seems to think. Erna already knows what he’s just now realizing in the
slow motion state that adrenaline causes whenever one is in danger. There are
two options. He can let himself hit the tree, or he can cut the cables and hit
the ground.
 
Eight meters is a long way to fall. In a rare occasion of empathy, Erna feels
her stomach rising to her throat as she watches him plummet. Regret pierces her
chest, and she wishes that she hadn’t provoked him into this. She inhales and
cringes but doesn’t look away as it seems inevitable that he’s going to hit the
tree. Then, there’s a flash of steel and, twirling his blades. He cuts the
cables attached at his hips and lets himself fall from the lowest point of his
arc, descending parallel to the tree trunk, down. He has time to twist in the
air, and, when he hits the ground, his curved shoulder takes most of it, and he
rolls.
 
Erna exhales. Her nose crinkles and her brows knit. She whispers angrily to
herself, “Fuck.”
 
When she gets to him, she has to lift Magnolia by her neck and stiff arm Church
out of the way and sneer like she doesn’t give a shit beyond gloating over him
while she says, “Let him breathe.”
 
She looks down and relief washes over her when she sees his eyes open.
 
She says, “Move your fingers.” It takes him a second, but he obeys, flexing
them out and curling them in. She says, “Move your toes,” and sees the toe of
his one boot move and then the other.
 
“Congratulations,” she tells him as if she’s indifferent, though she couldn’t
be more relieved. “Your spine isn’t broken.”
 
“I’m fine.” He pushes up onto an elbow and grits his teeth.
 
Erna tenses and warns him, “If you can get up then you can do it again,” hoping
he’ll take the hint and stay down.
 
He narrows his eyes at her and pushes himself up, brushing the dust off of his
jacket, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, and standing
with an expression of pure insolence.
 
“Fine,” she hisses through grinding teeth. The recruit from before comes
running up with a medic in tow, and Erna shouts at him, “Get him a new set of
maneuver gear,” and the poor brat, crestfallen, without getting a second to
catch his breath, sprints off again. The medic steps forward to check Levi, but
she growls at them to fuck off, and they immediately retract their hand and
step back dutifully.
 
She reaches, detaches one of his empty tanks, throws it at Officer Frey, who
doesn’t react quickly enough and takes the brunt of it in the chest. Then,
while he’s clasping his hands to hold it, he gets hit with the second one, and,
in her quiet roar, Erna orders him, “Fill those and have him repeat the
exercise until they’re empty again.”
 
“That will take hours,” he says in quiet disbelief.
 
“It will,” Erna affirms, her eyes still locked on Levi’s, “and you can stay
with him until he’s finished.” She turns on her heel and begins to walk away,
tossing one last order over her shoulder, “The rest of your team can have the
day off. Count your blessings, fuckwits.”
 
She busies herself with other teams, lashing out with her vindictiveness,
doling out physical and mental torment in equal measures among trainees who are
all but nameless, faceless drones whom she enjoys watching suffer. She
reacquaints herself forcefully with the side of herself that revels in a good
devastation and tries to forget whatever she just felt when she watched Levi
fall and her heart pounded at her ribs like a bird trying to escape a cage.
 
………..
 
Officer Frey yawns. He casts a glance up at the moon, a slightly brighter
smudge blended with the dimming silver sky, and, when Levi lands next, he says,
“I’m just saying, trainee, if your finger accidentally slipped on the trigger
and discharged the rest of that gas, I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
 
Levi is either ignoring him or he genuinely didn’t hear because, before his
heels even fully touch the dirt, he’s flying up again, repeating the tedious
exercise that became muscle memory hours ago. Isabel and Farlan look on, seated
on the ground and leaning on each other, waiting.
 
It’s luck when, another hour later, he finds out that his tanks are empty
because he can’t get off the ground and not because he’s falling to it. Frey
takes them and pauses, his jaw tense and the corners of his eyes wrinkled like
he wants to say something but isn’t sure what. He starts, “Just…” and trails
off. He sighs and tiredly he says, “You weren’t wrong, but… just keep your
mouth shut next time.” He pauses, as if giving Levi a chance to answer, but
when he only receives a cold, bored look from him, he gives up, slightly
slumping his shoulders as he walks off in the direction of the barracks.
 
Farlan’s voice pipes up behind him. “Stubborn ass.”
 
Levi turns around with a slight smirk in his eyes. He looks past Farlan’s
playful smile for Isabel and spots her meters away, gesturing and talking
excitedly with a group of three other trainees walking to dinner. He nods in
her direction and asks Farlan, “What’s she doing?”
 
“Making friends. I told her not to, but you know how that goes.”
 
“Keep an eye on her. She talks too much.”
 
He unfastens the tight strap over his chest and takes a deep breath, feeling
like it’s the first time his lungs have been able to fully expand in hours, and
walks away, eager to take off the harness that’s been digging into his flesh
and change into some clothes that aren’t soaked in sweat. Farlan jogs to catch
up to him after wavering for a moment, and he asks hesitantly, “You’re not
going tonight, right?”
 
“You keeping tabs on me instead of sleeping?”
 
“That’s…” Farlan falters, “not a no?”
 
“Mind your own business,” Levi growls.
 
Farlan shakes his head. “I don’t get it.”
 
“You don’t need to,” Levi bites back, though he understands the confusion. He
doesn’t fully get it either. He just knows that, despite how much he wants to
end Erna’s life sometimes, he can’t stop going back for more of her. She could
literally stab him, and he’d take the knife handle and twist and still want to
sink his teeth into her, taste her blood, choke the sweet breath out of her
pretty mouth, hold her tight and tear and rip and make her his prey and his
toy. It’s fucked up. He gets that. But it’s like their fractured minds just
happen to be on the same wavelength, and his thought structure is all tangled
with hers now, getting more and more twisted every time he sinks to her depths.
It’s beyond sense. It’s something primal that makes him sneak out of his bunk
in the middle of the night, something that he can’t fucking stop.
 
He doesn’t have to kick the door in anymore. He knows that broken bolt is still
hanging by a thread on the other side. He catches sight of it every morning
when he sneaks out, quiet so as not to disturb his exhausted, thoroughly
satisfied instructor.
 
He catches himself just in reaching for the handle, and he decides to do things
differently for once. He turns it silently and slips inside, closes the door
carefully, and presses his back to the wall as his eyes adjust to the
extravagant amount of light from over a dozen candles scattered around the
room, not that he would ever complain about the enhanced visibility of her
lithe body and the flickering shadows that dance in accompaniment to her
madness and make him feel like he’s being dragged into hell.
 
His pulse quickens despite his stillness, and his eyes focus on her scarred
shoulders while she sits at her desk naked but for a strappy, skimpy, poor
excuse for a nightgown made of midnight blue silk that he expressed a
preference for sometime last week. It’s hemmed with lace that falls just at the
crease of her ass. The color is a confusion, almost black in some levels of
light and definitely deep blue or violet when she turns a certain way. It
complements the pale pastels of her multitude of scars that he asks her about
every night when they’re finally still and satiated, and she, without fail,
changes the subject.
 
But she tells him a little more every night, about anything else, if and when
he asks her to. He’s always hungry for more detail now. He can’t learn enough
about her, curious as to how life shapes a person like that, and maybe
apprehensive that he would be even more like her if only one or two things had
turned out differently, wanting to ascertain just how lucky he is that they
didn’t, and he is where he is with his sanity relatively uninjured.
 
She leans over her desk, her back to the door, unaware and fidgeting over some
paper, worrying a corner of it between the restless tips of her fingers. She
writes, stops, bites the end of her pencil so hard that he can hear her teeth
champ the wood from where he stands, and then presses the tip to paper again.
 
He’s never had the chance to watch with her unaware. There’s something smaller
about her unguarded body language, and what he’s doing feels more transgressive
than he expected, catching her raw and metaphorically naked, but he figures
he’s earned some transgressions. He watches for a moment and enjoys her rare
vulnerability before clearing his throat and making her suddenly sit up
straight and whip her head around, her freshly-washed, wavy curls catch the
light and her eyes widen before she catches herself and applies her composed
mask.
 
She stands and almost runs to him, cooing, “Snowfla-”
 
“No,” he reminds her as he clutches her waist and pulls her in.
 
She presses a kiss to his throat, and he can feel her wicked lips curl into a
smile there before correcting herself. “Levi…” She clings to him, nuzzling like
she wants to get under his skin, unreservedly eager to extract the violence he
always claims her with, and she says soft and diffident, “I’m sorry.”
 
He pushes her away to where he can see her face. “What are you playing?”
 
She looks up at him, wounded, or faking a wounded look, he thinks. She pouts.
“I’m not.”
 
“You’re sorry,” he says in suspicious disbelief.
 
“I’m so sorry,” she affirms, and it sounds sincere, but he’s wary. She snakes
her hands under his arms and clutches his shoulders, pulling herself into him
and resting her head on his chest.
 
He smirks at this ardently affectionate version of her, so different from the
Erna he deals with during the day, and he plays into it, running his fingers
through her hair and murmuring against the top of her head, “About what?”
 
“You could have been hurt,” she says into the collar of his shirt, raising her
lips and mouthing at his collarbone, softly kissing his skin while he waits for
the teeth.
 
Only she doesn’t nip him… or scratch him… or punch him in the gut… and he
thinks she might actually be sincere. He can’t help but smile, and he can’t
help but point out, “I did get hurt...”
 
“Yeah, but not seriously…”
 
“Also,” he reaches down and squeezes her ass, “you threaten to kill me daily.”
 
“But I don’t  mean  it anymore.”
 
“Then…” he teases her, “stop trying to?”
 
“It’s a habit,” she whines. “It’s hard to break.” Her fingers claw at his clean
white shirt, and he feels her nails dig into the sides of his ribcage as she
clings on tighter.
 
“I think I can break you of it,” he promises in a low voice, and there’s
mischief in her eyes when she looks up at him with a demented little smile that
he catches just a flash of before he turns her around and switches places with
her, pushing her to the wall, his palm sliding up and pushing her hair out of
the way so that he can sink his teeth into the back of her neck like he’s
wanted to since he walked in and caught her unaware at her desk.
 
The noise she makes is half moan, half snarl as her body undulates under his
touch, moving to press against his hands everywhere they roam, begging them to
apply more pressure and bruise her, making his teeth drag and scrape when her
neck arches. He bites down harder until she yelps, then clamps his jaw down so
that she screams for him, and only while she’s howling does he let go and lean
down to run his hand from the inside of her knee up her inner thigh to see how
far her wetness has flowed already. Her howl subsides to a whimper, and she
spreads her legs wider for him.
 
He doesn’t rush. He slides his fingers over her slick thigh slowly and mouths
against the back of her shoulder, “Let’s see if you were listening.”
 
He’d told her the night before that the pretty, expensive, hip-hugging panties,
thongs, and all variation of silk, cotton, or lace separating him from her
dripping sex were only a fucking annoyance. When she protested that she liked
the feel of them, he stuffed the panties he’d just torn off of her into her
mouth and pushed his fingers deep inside her. First, she appreciated it, then,
after a few minutes, she was shaking and begging, aching to be fucked, and he
made her promise to stop wearing lace barriers for him to take down every time
he went to fuck her, because the half second it takes to rip them off is one
more half second he could be inside her, and she nodded frantically, but it’s
probable that she was past the point of comprehension and was agreeing blindly
to whatever would get him to finally fuck her.
 
“I am always,” she sighs as he reaches up and finds her bare and dripping. She
hisses into the back of her hand pressed against the wall, “attentive.”
 
His finger slips between her lips and presses and twists, and he presses his
forehead against the back of her shoulder while he reaches deep inside her warm
cunt. He can feel his mouth fucking salivating at the thought of eating her
right there, but he promised that if she was good he would fuck her up without
making her wait. He has a thing for making her wait lately, seeing how wet he
can get her, and feeling her muscles shake and spasm frantically with
frustration. He grunts, annoyed with himself for promising anything, and,
shortly after, when there’s more slip and less drag, when she’s arching her
back and crying out in anticipation of the fucking he promised her, he adds
another finger.
 
“You promised,” she manages to whimper, and he knows what she’s referring to.
She isn’t supposed to have to wait this time. She thinks he should be inside of
her as of a minute ago.
 
“You’re too fucking tight,” he hisses, breath hot against her ear.
 
“You always say that.” Her whining has the sound of an impending tantrum.
 
“Stop tensing up,” he says, “and I won’t have to.” Every time he drags his
fingers back, at the excruciatingly slow pace he’s keeping, her liquid hot cunt
contracts, and, when he goes to push forward again, he goes gently and by half
centimeters, trying to coax her into relaxing and letting him in.
 
“I just…” she stops to moan as he has both fingers in to the third knuckle,
“want…”
 
“Yeah?”
 
“Unhh,” she whines when the fingers start to withdraw again, arching her spine
and reaching back with her hips to follow them, rushing her plea out, “I just
want you to fuck me,” whining and drawing out the vowels of the last word, and
he finds he can’t wait anymore than she can. He takes his cock out quickly,
strokes it perfunctorily while shifting position, and pushes between her legs,
spearing inside her, not above hurting her and battering past her involuntary,
habitual resistance. He gives one long thrust until he can’t go any further,
and he stops and savors the way she pulses and contracts around every thick
inch of his cock.
 
Her noises are high-pitched and pained, and he briefly wonders why she does
this to herself, begging him to fuck her every night before she’s ready, never
letting him prep her long enough before another contraction squeezes all around
him, and the quick, spasmodic give and resistance triggers some undefinable
animal thing in him and erases any care he has about her comfort. Endorphins
buzz through him as he tangles his hand at the top of her hair and pulls her
head back, pinning it to his shoulder. He turns his head and trails his tongue
along her jawline, then forces it into her mouth, which is less like a kiss and
more like a contest for dominance, even though she's already given that up
willingly… He can never be too sure.
 
He can never feel reassured enough that she is his. Even just in this moment.
Even when she cries his name like it’s a vow.
 
He clamps down on the side of her neck. He sucks and bites and gnaws to give
her a bruise that will grow dark and purple and make his claim on her starkly
visible. She screams, and he bites down harder, but she doesn’t pull away. She
goads him on, reaching back and pulling him against her, leaning into the grip
of his teeth and letting him maul her. She grinds herself back against him with
her cunt pulsing and clenching around his deeply buried cock.
 
He loses himself, releases his hold on her neck so that he can put all his
concentration into thrusting. She doesn’t soften or let herself go, and it’s
like pushing into a tightly clenched fist. Her cries are turned into shallow,
panting breaths and yelps. He gives in fully to the evil urges she inspires in
him and thrusts harder, tugs sharply at her hair, and revels in the scream she
lets out. She’s in pain, and he loves it.
 
“You’re fucking mine,” he snarls at her.
 
And she can’t help smirking to herself, arrogant and mischievous even when
she’s physically completely at his mercy. She mocks him, “So possessive…”
 
“You know it’s true,” he grunts, picking up a faster, more savage rhythm and
finally feeling her relax for him, her cunt surrendering to the invasion and
blooming like a fresh blossom, making his repeated thrusts feel less like a
violation. His lips brush gentle gratitude over the bite mark.
 
“Yes, I’m fucking yours,” she affirms, trying to sound aloof as if it’s an
unfortunate, annoying fact, but failing.
 
Her eyelashes flutter, and he can feel the tremors that always precede her
orgasm, and he rushes to finish because he likes her best like this, alert and
taut and insatiably hungry, the way she is before she comes. His grunts come
out deep, husky and animalistic as his thrusts get erratic, and he fills every
last place she needs him, pushing into her as deeply as he can, exhaling a
groan from the depths of his lungs as his mind empties right along with his
balls, leaving his head a complete void. She drips down his shaft like molten
lead and her body melts in his arms so that he has to hold her up and keep her
from sliding down the wall.
 
He picks her up. He’s learned that if he doesn’t she’s apt to crumple to the
floor and stay there in a daze until he does or until the afterglow wears off,
whichever comes first. He puts her on the bed and takes his clothes off while
she peels back the sheets and a thick blanket. He lies down, more rested and
relieved of tension than he has ever felt in his life. She reminds him of a
cat, ecstatically arching into his touch, curling over his lap, acting like
it’s the most comfortable place in the world, like she’s home there, and she’s
his.
***** Pantheon *****
They have two weeks left.
 
Levi collides with Erna when he opens the door. All she’s wearing is a robe
that he doesn’t bother to take off of her, but it falls away at some point in
the motion, after he fell to his knees in front of her and buried his face
between her legs, but before he lifted her off the ground by her narrowed
waist, held her firm to the wall, and slammed his cock inside her tight, silky
cunt.
 
Only after he’s done fucking her does he have time to take off his clothes and
get in bed with her. There wasn’t time for stripping down when he let himself
in. He’d been locked in an internal struggle with his inner beast all day,
taming it when it told him to drag her away and ruin her every time it saw her
baring that blackberry bruise on her slender, pale neck. She flaunted it while
acting completely oblivious as to what anyone was staring at, tilting her head
to show more of the mark he’d left on the right side of her neck, daring
someone to say something in front of her.
 
 He teases her when she latches onto him, tucking into his arm and draping
herself half across his chest, “What would they think if I told them how much
you like to cuddle?”
 
“Who?”
 
“Anyone.”
 
“They’d sooner believe that this bruise on my neck came from falling into a
doorknob.” She hooks a leg over him.
 
“You didn’t stop me,” he says.
 
“I told you,” she says, “I don’t care if anyone knows. Tell everyone if you
want. Carve your name into the other side of my neck. No one will believe you
anyway.”
 
He tells her what he heard at dinner, when the other trainees felt safe enough
to talk about her very obvious hickey. “Rumor is you fuck with demons you
summon under the full moon.”
 
She hums and squeezes him. She says, “Half true.” Her eyes close and he lets
her trail her nails with their black nail beds over his skin. She says quietly,
almost as if to herself, “I only cuddle with  you ,” and he doesn’t respond. He
would hope that isn’t the only thing she only does with him. A beat later, she
says, “I think I might care about you. I don’t like it. It’s uncomfortable.”
 
It is, when she puts it like that. He doesn’t know what to say. He can’t deny
that the admission makes him smile inside, but also the way she says it makes
him wonder if he’s supposed to apologize when she rises up and straddles his
hips, sitting up tall, her back arched with a grace so pure it’s almost regal.
He doesn’t return the intensity of her gaze, because his eyes travel, following
her flawless form and flow of her lines.
 
The old man told him when he was young-ish and nearing the time when he would
be left to his own devices, alone, that the maiden wall goddesses were stuffy
and tame compared to what people used to worship. Levi never questioned how he
knew that, because the old man had a penchant for lying when he was talking
about anything but how to sharpen a knife or steal a wallet. Even he knew at
that young age that every story was to be taken for an entertaining myth.
 
It comes back to him now. Kenny told him that before the walls there was a host
of gods and goddesses, and they were a hell of a lot more fun than the wall
sisters, petty and jealous and imperfect and fickle, most of them. All they
demanded was sacrifice and attention, and if they got it then maybe they would
favor you and maybe they wouldn’t.
 
He thinks of it because sitting atop him, her penetrating eyes fastened to him,
with the light from the candles making her skin glow, he thinks she might be
one of them. A goddess of fire and ice and all things sharp, looking down on
him aloof and powerful, but desperately hungry to be respected and adored and
worshiped by him. He has a little of her, so little, and he craves so much. The
touch of her hands on his flesh makes his blood burn black. His arm reaches up
and snakes around her neck like a python. She closes her eyes as a sign of
sweet submission.
 
He doesn’t know if he’d say that he cares about her or if he believes that she
really knows what caring is. He cares about his friends. Whatever he feels for
her is more consumptive. He wants to own her mind and soul at deep primal
levels in all of her cold, destructive madness.
 
He thinks that this time he’s going to fuck her slow and long, but as soon as
their hips slide and lock and he’s inside her a darkness engulfs him. The demon
in him wakens to feast on her and his hand tangles in her hair, pulling her
down to tear at her neck and bite her tits. She hisses and gasps for breath
that he steals with his mouth, biting at her lips and her tongue. He grabs
handfuls of flesh and grips and lifts, slamming his cock inside her tight cunt
again and again to see her buck. When the primal ache to rend her subsides from
his jaw, he pushes her away, up again, so that he can get a good look at the
goddess perched on his cock.
 
Convulsions and tremors rock her delicate frame and he sees her as if in a
haze. The second time she comes is more violent than the first, her limbs going
taut like high tension wires and her mouth opening as if she’s in pain. Her
breath hitches in her throat and stays there. When it’s over and her entire
body starts to go slack he’s still slamming his hips into hers. He reaches and
puts a hand to her chest to center her and feels her heart thumping as if to
escape against the heel of his palm. Her head tilts back and lolls to the side
like her neck doesn’t have the power to support it anymore. His face twists
with the effort of holding her steady while chasing his own release. He grunts
and bares his teeth, but he can’t come when she’s relaxed like this. That’s why
it always feels like a race when he’s fucking her. He gives up and lets her
fall and she all but adheres to him, sliding her hands under his shoulders,
resting her face against his chest. She wiggles off of his cunt-slick cock and
laughs breathlessly, pressing her lips to his skin and teasing, “Beat you.”
 
“You usually give me at least ten minutes to recover,” he says. “I’m drained.”
 
“Sorry,” she purrs at him, “I’m stressed.”
 
“About what?” he asks, expecting an ambiguous answer, because from what he can
see, she has nothing to be stressed about. She goes around doing whatever she
wants, answering to no one, the queen of her little universe here, wearing her
power as if it’s tailored perfectly to her small frame.
 
She doesn’t answer. He settles and tries to ignore his swollen, aching cock
while her index finger trails lightly back and forth over the straight line of
bruise left imprinted on his chest after ten straight hours of maneuver
training.
 
“How’s your shoulder?”
 
“Hurts less than yesterday.”
 
She says, “I was right, you know,” as if she’s worried about him holding it
against her.
 
He remembers the personal insult of her questioning his abilities with the 3dm
device and it at least helps take his mind off the need to get back inside her.
“I don’t need training,” he says with certainty, not because he’s cocky, though
he is, but because he doesn’t intend to join the Survey Corps or fight any
titans.
 
“Expeditions are dangerous,” she murmurs thoughtfully, because she doesn’t know
that, and she grabs at his side, suddenly and violently pressing her face to
his chest like she just experienced a phantom fall.
 
He puts his fingers under her chin and tilts it up, forcing her to unplaster
her face from his cooling skin. He changes the subject so that he won’t be
tempted to tell her why he is completely certain he isn’t going on any
expeditions. “Tell me another story.”
 
“No,” she moans. “You’re going to make me run out of stories and then you’ll
get bored of me.”
 
“I already have ideas for new ways to entertain myself when that happens,” he
says, running his hand down her naked hourglass figure. She flinches away. He
retracts his hand and smirks down at her.
 
She suppresses the shudder of a yawn and whines. “I’m tired.”
 
“You’re lazy after you come,” he says, like that’s something entirely different
from being tired.
 
“Because you make me come so hard,” she purrs. “It’s like dying.”
 
“Then tell me another story and buy yourself some time before I make you get in
the shower.”
 
She smacks his chest lightly. Another time he’d been frustrated about how
difficult it was to get off after she passed into the afterglow without him,
he’d picked her up and put her in a cold shower. She shudders at the reminder
and smiles. “You’re a dick.” He hums his agreement. “What do you want to hear?”
 
“What puts you here.” She’s told him a lot about her past, but there’s an
obvious hole in the timeline. The longer it takes her to get around to stories
of anything more recent than a handful of years past, the more he wants to know
what it is that bridges the gap between self-made seedy underworld ingenue to…
this… whatever she is now…
 
“That’s boring,” is what she always says when he brings it up. She twists her
body, folds her hands over his chest, and rests her chin on them to look up at
him with her bright, cagey eyes. “Why are you so curious? Maybe I can put your
suspicion to rest without getting into the whole thing.”
 
“You hate it here,” he says, but without full certainty. It’s only something
he’s come to suspect. He can see that she’s deeply unhappy, sometimes, when she
drops the pretense of apathy, though he isn’t certain it’s because of the
setting.
 
“Oh?” she says, her mouth an innocent little ‘o’. “Do I?”
 
He ignores her attempt to sidetrack him into a circuitous, pointless debate.
“Why do you stay?” She gives him the dangerous look that she sometimes does,
that says  don’t think you can just demand things , but he’s had enough of
dancing around it. He wants to know how she’s here, why she stays, and whether
she could be dragged away kicking and screaming if necessary.
 
She huffs a discontented sigh out her nose and glares at him with pouting lips.
 
“Why’s it such a secret?”
 
“Because I’m not proud of being caged.” Her voice has a wet sound to it and,
seeming ashamed of this, she turns her head, rests her cheek on his chest and
looks away. He can feel her putting miles of distance between them already, in
less time than it takes him to blink.
 
“Did you get the same deal I did?”
 
“What’s your deal?”
 
“Join the Survey Corps or get a quick trial and sentencing.”
 
“Funny,” she says, “Wouldn’t have thought they would need to resort to threats
to get you to leave the sewer.”
 
“I’d rather live free in a sewer than be a hostage on the surface.”
 
“How’d they convince you?”
 
“They were going to hurt my friends.” He isn’t unaware of her stubborn spiral
outward away from the point, carefully dodging anything close to an answer
without plainly refusing to tell him what he wants to know. If she gets much
further from his original question he plans to put her in a cold shower again.
 
“I don’t keep friends,” she says, like they’re a hobby or a pet, “but sure,
same kind of deal, only I took a little more convincing.”
 
Levi’s fingers pause at a small, sunburst-like scar at her breastbone, brick
red around its edges like the skin will never stop remembering how many times
it bled, and it clicks. “So this -”
 
She hums. She guides his hand from there down to her ribs with pockmark scars
like she was ground into gravel, and she says, “And this,” over her abdomen
with some light lines like claw marks from a rabid animal, “And this.” She lets
go of his hand and wiggles her fingers, “And these.”
 
He catches her left hand, makes her fingers still, and squints. She explains,
“They ripped my fingernails out and burned the nail beds.”
 
“Why?” he growls.
 
“Because it hurts a lot,” she says flippantly.
 
“No, why wouldn’t you just do it?” he asks, fucking exasperated with her. “They
had to torture you for  this ?” He gestures at the room, but with a wide sweep,
encompassing the entire camp. “All those fucking scars because… Why? So that
you could have the Southern District Training Corps to yourself? Why would you
refuse that?”
 
Erna tilts her chin up and narrows her eyes at him, but doesn’t match his
growing frustrated anger. Instead she looks at him like he thinks an imperious
goddess  would  look down on a mortal and she takes his hand, turns it palm up,
and starts massaging it, working out muscle knots he didn’t feel until now. It
feels so good he closes his eyes. Her hands working his feel more intimate than
a kiss and it makes him feel less jilted about being rebuffed every time he’s
tried to get one out of her lately. She keeps massaging his hand, squeezing his
fingers and rubbing her thumbs in upward circles over his palm. He asks again,
because she hasn’t answered, “Why are you here?”
 
“Oh, well, you know, just passing time,” she answers with lyrical irony and a
sarcastic little smile.
 
“No, you know what I mean. The whole story.”
 
“It’s boring,” she says again, but this time it has the sound of a disclaimer.
Then, “I mean… same reason you got picked up by the Survey Corps. I was too
good at what I did.” Her voice has a prim, lecturing sound. “Never be too good
at anything. People notice and then they want to make you useful. It’s better
to be untalented or average at best.”
 
“What were you too good at?”
 
“Graft,” she says plainly. “Extortion. Bribery. Threats.” She tilts her head
back and forth in consideration. “More importantly, getting all manner of
people to keep their fucking mouths shut and do what I wanted.”
 
He knew that. After her first murder at fourteen, finding herself suddenly
alone and unprotected, little Erna cared for herself by setting out to find
just about every john she ever serviced to extort money from them in exchange
for her silence. Then that money grew through investment in the right gambling
rings, black market dealers, and drugs, but most importantly Erna traded in
people and information. Her dictum is that no one can steal information from
you. They can want you dead for it, but Erna was always careful to have a war
chest of people between her and her victims. She used so many go-betweens and
middle-men that most people preyed on by her never even knew her name or her
face.
 
“I barely ever committed a crime myself,” she points out with a little pride.
 
“Extortion is a crime,” he counters for the sake of argument.
 
“Literally, sure, but have you ever seen anyone get arrested for it? It’s the
perfect crime. And everything else I just convinced other people to do for me.
I had lackeys and goons to do the thievery and the threats and all.” She lets
go of his hand and reaches for the other. “I was smart about it. Never
extravagant. Low profile.”
 
“So?” Levi prods, curious about how that leads here. “Why would they want you?”
He means it genuinely, and less shitty than he realizes it sounds.
 
“The military has a corruption problem. Soldiers are apathetic… lazy…
incompetent...” she says, bending each of his fingers back gently until the
knuckles pop, “From the bottom through the top ranks. It’s too deep to fix with
an injection of the morally righteous, so they get me, the absolute worst, to
see if my methods, though questionable for this context, will work.”
 
“And do they work?”
 
“I guess we’ll see,” she sing-songs. “If they don’t, then I’m dead.”
 
He tells her that he won’t let anyone kill her, automatically, without thinking
about the feasibility of keeping that promise, only knowing in his gut that he
would never suffer anyone to kill her but him, and she laughs. She giggles, and
through her high-pitched ringing laughter, she tells him, “Shut the fuck up.
You’re leaving in two weeks.” She lets go of his hand and lets it fall to the
mattress beside him, swinging her leg over him and sitting up to straddle his
hips. “The long and short of it is, I’m supposed to make better soldiers and
that’s how we get military reform - the long way. Because reform the short way
would result in a fucking coup, but  I’m  fucked either way. I’m supposed to be
the pet project of the Military Police, but this wasn’t their idea and they
would rather I didn’t succeed. They benefit from things the way they are. I’m
not an idiot. They’re going to kill me eventually either way, and if that’s the
case, I’d rather have it done quickly and without the fucking pretense.”
 
“So that’s why you’re stressed?” he asks while he reaches for her hips.
 
Her eyes flutter closed when his hands grab at her. She leans back slightly and
rides the wave as he grinds up against her. She murmurs, “It’s pretty fucking
stressful.”
 
“I’m the only one who’s going to kill you,” he promises again and gets a smirk
from her like she thinks that’s cute. She still doesn’t believe him. Doesn’t
matter. He’s going to get those fucking documents and bribe the right people
for enough money to buy a peaceful life in the capital and he’s going to find a
way to make that life include her, because what even is a life without this.
 
Her eyelids lower. “How would you do it?”
 
A ghost of a smile creases the corners of his eyes. “Same way I originally
planned to. Choke you until you stop breathing.”
 
“I’d prefer the knife,” she sighs, her eyes covered in a dark liquid shine.
“Suffocation takes so loooong,” she complains, tilting her head and her eyes
back, noticeably baring her neck. “You pass out before you know you’re dying.”
 
Her voice comes out breathy, wanting, and he’s unsettled by how hard it makes
him, further unsettled still by how she smiles when he asks her, “So you want a
single severed artery?”

“Right here,” she hums, and slashes a finger slowly across where her femoral
artery is hiding under the skin of her inner thigh, but he’s more preoccupied
with the slick sheen her finger slides over, of her sweat, his cum, thin and
incandescent over her warm, pale skin. He licks his lips. She says, “If I have
to die, I want to find out what it feels like to lose that much blood that
quickly.”
 
He groans and bares his teeth while closing his eyes. Her hand is grabbing at
his cock now with ungentle interest. Lustful tunnel vision quiets the part of
him that feels wrong getting so hard while talking about the method of her
murder. One hand runs up her side, reaching for her throat. He growls, “I
thought you liked being choked.”
 
She leans down and fits her neck against his curled hand, presses with her eyes
shining, and says, “I do.”
 
His thumb curls and presses against the bruise he left on the side of her neck,
leaving a white imprint that lingers after he throws her to the floor next to
the bed. Sprawled at his feet, she makes a short indignant sound. He wraps a
hand in her hair and growls his warning that she should stay still. He adjusts
himself and when he’s sitting comfortably on the edge of the bed, he pulls her
to her knees, tilts her head back to look up at him and sees her narrowed eyes
pricked with hate-coated lust. He pulls her in toward his cock and she makes a
whiney noise, scrunches her face, curling her lip and pulling away.
 
The noise of the slap across her face cracks through the room. Her eyes close
and her mouth opens, her chest rising and falling quickly, needy and desperate
despite her pride. Her tongue slips out and he re-tangles his hand in her hair
to bring her hungry mouth to his cock. He fucks her throat, making her choke
again and again, pulling away to give her a break when her face is flushed and
her eyes tearing only to watch her push forward, wet eyes locked on his as she
continues to gag and choke herself on him. He takes some deep breaths to calm
himself, releases her hair, grabs the sheets, twists them in his fingers while
he watches her body jerk and convulse as it tries to fight against her
determined pursuit of cutting off its air.
 
They beat an inconsistent and clumsy rhythm, her trying take him deep as if air
is an afterthought, not a need, convulsing off of him when her body decides
she’s doing something impossible, and him bucking up and chasing her mouth just
as she’s coming back down and hitting the back of her throat, making her gag
again. He loses his patience with it and takes her head in his hands again,
fucks into her mouth without an ounce of sympathy for her, then pulls his cock
out and holds its base. He slaps her with it and rubs it against her, smearing
her cheek with her own saliva. He lets her catch it when she chases it with her
mouth, but slides his hand up the shaft so that she can only suckle on the
head. She whines at him, nudges her nose against his fingers, begging him to
let her swallow more. He pulls his cock out of her mouth, and, gripping his
shaft tight, he traces the curve of her lip with the tip. She follows it with
her tongue, cute and desperate to chase it when he pulls it away again.
 
He doesn’t want to come yet. He wants to wreck her. He wants to dull the black
glint in her eyes and tame her restless, feral nature, fuck and torture her
into a domesticated pet. He wants that more than he wants to come. Then, while
she’s trying to catch his cock in her mouth again, he sees her hand reach
between her thighs, and he growls. He lifts her by her shoulders and pulls her
back onto the bed, her body light and easy to toss around. He sprawls her over
the mattress and looms over her. When he reaches toward her face she winces
until his hand goes past her and finds the knife that’s always there under the
pillow, factoring more into foreplay lately than self defense. He takes her
wrist in one hand and she whimpers while he pins her hand to her side, and with
his other hand he rests the blade against her inner thigh and asks with an
impatient, hungry growl, “Here?”
 
She smiles at first, relaxed and ecstatic to have him entertain her sickness,
and she moans. Her thighs twitch, squeezing slightly while her back arches. He
slides the blade higher, closer to her wet, swollen lips.
 
He can almost hear her heart beating through her chest. His eyes stay locked on
the blade pressed carefully to the skin of her thigh. He can see a blue vein
showing through her paper white skin, tinted with a gilded glow by the
candlelight, and he thinks about the cathartic feeling of slicing flesh open.
His pupils expand for him to take in all the darkness.
 
He caresses her thigh with the blade, turning it over, pressing the flat of it
against her with his thumb. He shifts the weight along the bottom edge of it,
pressing hard enough to scratch and leave a faintly pink, puffy line along her
skin, carefully. She keeps this fucker sharp. His attention is ripped away from
her thigh to her mouth by a whine and he catches a sight of her biting down on
her lower lip, eager, maybe, or fearful. Both, he thinks. He lifts the knife
and trails the tip of it lightly up her leg. He locks eyes with hers, tilts his
head at her, and asks quizzically, “You scared?” because he doesn’t think he’s
noticed her breathing for about a minute.
 
She swallows, nods, and says, “I like it.”
 
He’s hearing, but not really listening, and certainly not pausing to wonder why
a woman who never seems to feel too much of anything would thrive on fear. The
tip of the knife glides up her belly, between her breasts, and settles at her
neck, goosebumps trailing its ascent. He studies every expression that flits
across her face from the thirsty lick of her lips to the way her teeth sink
into her bottom lip, the way she holds her breath when the knife reaches her
throat, and the gasp and wince when he pushes his cock inside her wet hole.  
 
The breath escapes her lungs in a long, relieved sigh like she’s been needing
this for an eternity, though not even an hour has passed since he was last
inside her. The tension of fear starts to leave her and she links her ankles
loosely at the base of his spine, but the thought of hurting her, the pantomime
of taking her fucking life, has already filled his head with sharp thoughts. He
holds himself still, feels her clench and bear down as she starts to move,
flexing her legs and lifting her hips to close the minute gap between them
until she feels him pressing the knife against the underside of her chin,
threatening to cut if she moves another inch, and her movement ceases and her
eyes snap open. He smirks at the way her expression falls, anxious eyes
searching for reassurance and not finding it. He caresses her skin with the
razor-sharp edge, drags it up behind her ear and slowly down her jawline,
following the hollow of her neck until the point is resting in the little well
between her clavicles.
 
Satisfied that she isn’t confident in her safety, he finally thrusts forward
with an abrupt snap of his hips and watches her teeth bite down on a whimper.
She finds a way to arch her back and undulate her hips without letting her
shoulders rise, without pressing against the knife that he isn’t drawing back.
 
She pants and swallows while he’s fucking her and the rise and roll of her
throat is too much and he sees her eyelids twitch when she feels it. A small
line of red appears on her skin. She seems to try to let her lungs deflate, to
sink further into the mattress, but he follows. He lays his forearm across her
chest, pinning her perfectly still with the knife aimed at the point of her
jaw.
 
She asks, breathless, “Have you ever killed anyone?”
 
“Yes,” he hisses without pausing his assault on her cunt, his bloodlust not
dissipating in the slightest, brutal images flashing intrusively through his
head. He sees scenes of her screaming noiselessly, bent face down on the floor,
tears streaking her face. He keeps the need to make her destruction a reality
on a tight leash, feeding on the energy without losing control.
 
“How many?” she asks with the tinge of a high, needy whine in her voice.
 
He can only say, “A lot.” He doesn’t remember the details of every kill like
she does, can’t recount them with glee the same way. “It’s been…” he sighs,
mesmerized by the sinful, ethereal glow of her skin, lulled to something like
peace by the steady rhythm of his cock pounding into her, “... a lot.”
 
He wonders about how observant she is with those keen, wary eyes, if she knows
how lucky she is for the amount of self control he has, and if she can see how
badly he wants her limp and broken, how much he wants to drag her outside and
whip at her skin with his belt until blood seeps from her. He wants her torn
and marked with bruises while she cries and pleads, her red eyes wide and full
of tears while she finally accepts a fucking kiss from him.
 
That’s what he’s thinking about when his heart starts to race and he feels a
rushing tightness in his abdomen. Then he feels her pulse and twitch, and he
rasps, “Don’t do it.” She makes a high, questioning sound, no words, and he
pushes the knife against the underside of her chin again. “Don’t come, don’t
fucking breathe, not until I tell you to.”
 
She blinks fast, bites her lip so hard the skin caught under her teeth turns
from pink to white, and tries to hold back. He fucks her coarse and frantic and
feels her pelvic muscles contract. She winces and whimpers, worried that he
means it, that he’ll really slice her throat if she can’t keep herself under
control. Just to be cruel and heighten the difficulty, he reaches down and rubs
his thumb lightly over her clit.
 
She grabs his wrist - the one attached to the hand rubbing her clit, not
holding the knife, which gets pressed harder against her jaw, warning her. She
retracts her claws and moans helplessly. He smirks and makes a show of slamming
his hips harder into hers, bottoming out, and sneering. “Don’t worry, I’m
close.”
 
Her body twitches on a climax plateau. He can see her getting swallowed by the
sweetest, blackest pain, moans muffled behind her clenched teeth. He brings his
face to hers. She doesn’t turn her head away this time, he wouldn’t let her
without a kiss from the knife, so she lets him press his lips to hers, achingly
sweet in contrast with how hard he’s fucking her. He comes deep inside her when
he feels her shudder around his cock. She pleads against his mouth, babbling
while he tries to lick her lower lip, begging him with, “Please,” and his name
over and over.
 
He tells her “Go ahead,” and convulsions rack her body so hard he has to drop
the knife to the floor to keep from accidentally letting it push too hard and
cut her burning skin. He hisses and pulls back from her lips while the intense
pressure of her tremors squeeze his cock. Her hips are still twitching when he
pulls out. Her mouth is still open in a silent gasp when he kisses the corner
of her lips and her cheek and her forehead and she starts to coo and hum and
turn her face away like it’s too much while she moves over and makes room for
him on the bed. This time he clings to her while she lies breathless, still
shocked by the magnitude of her orgasm.
 
While she catches her breath, he sucks another bruise onto the left side of her
neck this time close to her collarbone and she sobs the way she does when he’s
going down on her and refuses to stop just because she’s come. When she can
breathe again, she grabs at his arm and pulls at it as if he isn’t already
holding her as tightly as possible, and she says, “I’ve never let anyone fuck
me like that.”
 
And he says, “Why not? You seem to enjoy it,” with a devilish gleam in his
eyes. If he'd had to guess he would have assumed that was the only way she knew
how to fuck: violently, on a knife’s edge. He likes that about her.
 
“I don't,” she says, but quickly corrects, “I like it with you,” and searches
for clarity, “but I wouldn't…”
 
She doesn't make sense and he doesn't care.
 
“Once,” she says, “a woman I was fucking tried to put her hands around my neck,
so I put her head into the brick wall next to my bed.”
 
“Yeah?” he says lazily.
 
“And another tried to be cute and slap me before I got on my knees, so I
smothered her with a pillow.”
 
“I’m noticing a common thread.”
 
“I don’t let anyone get rough with me,” she says quietly, staring up at the
ceiling, “but I like it when you do.”
 
“Why?”
 
“I think because you mean it… and it’s a little frightening.”
 
He smiles slightly. “I wouldn’t kill you.”
 
“No?”
 
“I try to only kill in self defense.”
 
“Sounds awful,” she says. “I would never. Too difficult. Better to get the jump
on them before they attack you or kill them later, in their sleep.”
 
He cups her jaw in his hand and turns her face toward his. She smirks like she
was only kidding, but the thing is he knows what she just said was true. He
knows enough about the animal kingdom to know that physically weak things like
her fight dirty for survival. It’s fair. It isn’t ethical by any stretch, but
he’ll give it to her. He kisses her lips again, without the knife this time,
and she presses toward him and kisses back. His eyes are closed, but he can
feel her eyelashes brushing his face while she blinks wide-eyed. He pulls away,
smirks at her, and asks, “Why did it take so long to get a fucking kiss from
you?”
 
She hums, silvery sweet and melodic, sounding so happy and satisfied for once.
She says, “It just seems so… nice.” The word hisses like water hitting hot
iron. He squints and smiles at it, amused that nice things are to be avoided.
She continues, “And I didn’t want to get attached. You’ll be gone soon. I guess
it’s too late.”
 
“What are you going to do when I’m gone?” he asks, content to let her think
that she’ll never see him again, curious to see if she feels anything about it.
 
“Catch up on my sleep.”
 
She yawns.
 
He kisses her perfect jawline again.
 
“Then I’m not going to feel bad about keeping you up until sunrise.”
End Notes
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