Levi had never been one to feel weak.

Wounded, perhaps. Tired, on occasion, and exhausted more regularly. Spent. But never weak. Now, melting into a suffocating grey smog that pushed back at him and made him want nothing more than to ignore the pain that ran through his entire body and go back to sleep.

That was not an option, however. He was a corporal, first and foremost. He had responsibilities that could not be completed if he was so weak that he decided to sleep half his life away.

But god, did he feel weak.

It had never taken so much out of him to stop his head from swimming and figure out which direction was up, let alone open his burning eyes that throbbed at the faint candlelight in the room. The pain all culminated in his head with a pounding like hoofbeats of an army, bruising his skull from the inside. It was hard to think through this kind of disembodiment.

What had happened to him?

Levi blinked once, twice at the blurry ceiling. Nothing came to him. Venturing to sit up, every muscle and tendon and bone in him protested with an inferno, and he swallowed down a wave of nausea. His mouth was dry, and he was incredibly parched. It felt like his gums were bleeding.

One bandaged hand staggered to his nightstand and was blessed to find a full glass of water, which he drank deeply. Nothing had tasted so good. The well water had been fine, but this was—

The water splattered across his sheets as he balked. A deep rasp from his chest followed.

What time was it? How long had he been out? Most of him was mended in white strips of cloth and dressings in some way, his pale skin marred with huge yellowing bruises that were indigo at the core.

He wasn't dead. That was the important part. And since there was not a soul in his room, he assumed he wasn't dying, either.

Levi vigorously threw the covers off and hauled himself bodily from the warm bed with grit teeth, bared and hissing as he breathed roughly. Every movement was a promise of vast and sharp, crackling agony in all of him, but that didn't matter. His legs didn't give when his bare feet touched the cold stone floor. He still wasn't dying. He could walk. He could keep going.

He dragged himself to his door and thought of nothing else but her corpse.

She had to be okay.

Everything in Levi's body hurt and he felt vomit curdling too close to his tonsils, but he swallowed it down and grit his teeth and kept walking. Stumbling. His calloused hands dragged along the wall, and air puffed hard from his lungs, and he still he dragged. He felt where it seemed like a cannonball had hit the side of his face, and what felt like a wagon had run over his ribs, but he kept going.

Candles were lit in the hallway, and it was too quiet, signifying that it was probably the middle of the night. Levi passingly wondered how long he'd been out since he chucked his body onto the wall with Mikasa in tow, but the more potent thought was if the girl was still breathing.

A walk that should have only taken a few minutes dilated into about ten at his broken speed. His heart was choking itself to death in his chest as his gaze found her plain, wooden door, no different from any other's. He had not paused before opening his door, but at hers his hand froze in midair, shaking before the tarnished knob.

Levi exhaled harshly with his eyes screwed shut. This room would either be empty or occupied. Mikasa would be dead, or she would be sleeping. An empty room meant an unmoving girl, tucked away in the basement with the others, waiting for her turn to find peace in the earth. An occupied room... A room with a resting form inside, breathing, resting, waiting...

Hope sprung eternal, no matter how much he tried to not let it do so. Hope could cause more grief than even the gravest injury.

The knob turned, and the door opened silently and easily. Levi winces first, eyes hurting from the candles burning earnestly, before focusing on a form sitting in a plain chair. Its shoulders bob as it follows its rhythm, and as his vision clears fully, he realizes it is the Braus girl, steadily peeling an apple between her hands and humming a folk song.

His first step into the room echoes, and she halts.

"S-sir?" Braus stammers, wide-eyed at the sight of the battered corporal.

The next thing his eyes trail to is the bed that she sits beside. Her body shields the head, so he stumbles forward to get a better look, and he sees the swell of the sheets folding over a body, its weight sinking into the bed.

Mikasa's eyelashes are dark and rest on her cheeks, fluttering only faintly as she dreams. Her hair looks matted, and her skin a little damp from the stuffy room, but her chest rises and falls in time with his next breath.

Levi stares at her like he has never seen her before in his life.

"...Sir?"

He doesn't look away from Mikasa. Hoarsely, he commands, "Leave."

The apple is left forgotten on the nightstand and the door shuts behind her soundlessly. Corporal Levi takes three more steps, and then collapses at the bed. He smiles more openly than he ever believed he had the ability to. Relief makes his knees weak, and he welcomes it.

Everything comes crashing down on him.

Craving for the tangible promise of her skin, warm and alive and real, he reaches out and takes her hand in his, squeezing it too tightly, afraid that it will slip away. He chokes up at the thought, torn at the reality that he had almost lost her yet had not.

"I'm... I'm sorry," he manages to rasp out the most difficult words in his vocabulary. His eyes feel swollen and hot, burning as something drips from them. "I'm so sorry."

His forehead is pressed to the back of her hand as he trembles. He whispers his apology again. He cannot apologize enough.

And her fingers wrap around his.

Levi's head shoots up and his throat closes on itself. Mikasa is shifting, glassy-eyed and pale as she tries to sit up, and he blinks back the sudden tears as he tries to meet her. Shuffling up from his knees is difficult, but he makes his way to his feet, drawing closer to her, never sacrificing his vice-like grip on her hands.

"Mikasa." He speaks the name with reverence, and it follows with the one regret that has haunted him since he'd spoken the order to her in the trees: "I should have never... never, in a thousands years, told you to remain silent."

It's a long moment before Mikasa understands the implication of what he's saying to her, and remember the incident. And just like that, she is overwhelmed. Her lips part as she fumbles for words that she can't find.

He can't, he absolutely cannot be this far away from her much longer. A handful of inches is the world's greatest hell.

Against any reasonable judgment, Levi crawls closer to her and twines their fingers together. He hasn't been this close to anyone since... since a very long, unpleasant time ago, and the sensation of her holding his hand back is foreign, yet enthralling all the same. Even in her state, he feels weightless currents running through where their palms meet and straight up into his veins like poison or medicine or both. Funny, he thinks, how after all of this, here he is, recharging off of only her skin. Ridiculous. Absurd.

Something bordering on perfection.

"Corporal?" is the first word she settles on. Her voice is raspy and soft like dust, but holds all her fears and hopes and uncertainties.

"Levi," he corrects her. "It's Levi."

He lets her stare at her as that sinks in. And for possibly the first time, he watches as her eyes crescent and her lips curve and she melts into a sincere, heart breaking smile that leaves him breathless.

"Alright," she says, evenly this time. "Levi it is."

Levi feels his own mouth crooking upwards, but has the soundness of mind to keep it on a tight leash. It doesn't stop his heart from pounding, or his other desires from acting on his behalf.

"Is it alright if I kiss you?" Mikasa's eyes flutter and widen, and she swallows thickly, and the room is stifling. He already knows the answer before he leans in and captures her lips against his.

Neither of them are in a good state, but Ackermans are known for their relentlessness, if nothing else. Levi does everything in his power to keep it slow and gentle, but something in him claws to get out and it's all he can do to not let his hands go further than cradling her face featherlightly.

Mikasa isn't much better off. Her head feels like it's upside-down and that her insides are in knots upon knots upon knots, but it's all tinged with something downright intoxicating that she craves more of. So, she kisses him harder. Her hands ghost over his, trapping them against her, and suddenly there is no way out of this.

They barely have time to breathe in between kisses. Levi's mouth is insistent and firm while hers is searching and desperate, taking everything he has to offer. It burns and she feels alive. When his tongue rolls against the seam of her mouth, she gasps sharply and is overwhelmed once more by the newfound, heady sensation of it against her own. It should be wet and messy and far too intimate, but she finds herself losing herself willingly in it. And he tastes, mercilessly, like Levi.

She wants more.

Mikasa coaxes his tongue deeper and reaches out to let her hands rest naturally on his tense thighs. Discreetly, she drags her nails against the fabric of his trousers, and is rewarded with the rumble of Levi's throat. Her core throbs agonizingly and her heart is too swollen for her chest, and all of her body yearns for some sort of release from this cloud of pleasure. Just as she vaguely thinks to pull him closer, one of his hands slide down and drifts to the swell where her waist meets her hips.

It's a light touch, but it's electric none the less. Mikasa makes a noise unwillingly in response, and the same hand tightens automatically while his other fingers begin tangling in the strands of her hair.

He can be closer, she thinks. I want him closer. Closer and closer until she loses track of where he starts and she ends.

She tries to grab at his pants and tug, but the material is stretched too tight to hold. Frustrated, she grabs further upwards and catches the loops of his belt, and Levi's breath catches and the first bead of sweat rolls down her neck and she's dizzy, honestly, but then she's hollow and he's pried away from her to push her firmly but gently into her pillows.

"Why are you stopping?" she protests, thoroughly breathless and lips glistening and swollen red. "I'm fine. I'm really fine."

What she doesn't know is that he is dizzy as well and ready to make many mistakes, but he doesn't clue her in — instead, he cranes in and nips her ear, whispering, "Later."

A promise and a warning.

It's a lifetime of bedrest and questions — there are a myriad of internal injuries, but they heal more quickly than they should, and the report of the abandoned township reaches far into the depths of confoundment and unanswered questions — but remarkably, no one breathes a word of his possessed flight to her room. Levi is polite enough to call Sasha to his office and tell her a location where a package will be awaiting her, which she will find to be holding a fine cut of meat. She doesn't thank him so much as beam at him once from across the mess hall. He merely holds her gaze a second longer than usual before turning back to his tea.

He wondered, once or twice, if maybe the woods had just startled the chemistry between them, kindled it with their life-or-death emotions. Maybe he'll wake up in the morning and not immediately think of her. Maybe they'll pass each other in the hall, and all traces of attraction will be gone, leaving nothing but a thick, awkward weight in the air.

It didn't. He doesn't. They don't.

There is a wave of relief every time he sees her; she becomes increasingly radiant as her skin regains its color and her bruises fade, and when they converse, he speaks to her naturally, perfectly relaxed.

Partners in crime.

She, meanwhile, is still a little overwhelmed every time she sees his figure in the vicinity, hears the captivating timbre of his voice spitting out complaints and cruel remarks about whatever is pissing him off at the moment. It's strangely wonderful to be able to speak openly with someone who knows what her emotions are flickering to before she even can.

And the thin thread grows stronger all the time.

After all, there is no other way he would know exactly where she was wandering down the hall in the middle of the night. And there was certainly no other way she would have known he was wide awake as well.

There is no other way, when he turns the corner and has her to the wall before she can process any of it, that she would feel her heart twist and stutter and feel his own get too tight simultaneously.

"Mikasa," he says, perfectly calm.

"Levi," she breathes back.

He smiles, dark and satisfied, before deciding to give them both what they need.

"I think, little blackbird," he drawls, closing in and swallowing her whole, "you mean sir."

A/N: Hi! Thank you so much for coming this far with me ;_; I still can't believe that I finished this. I've only completed one multi-chaptered fic before this, and it was such a big leap of faith to attempt this one, but here we are and I really, truly, honestly cannot thank you enough for reading this and taking the time to review and everything. I had so much fun and hope you loved Levi and Mikasa as much as I did.

From the bottom of my heart: thank you, thank you, thank you.

- Kappy