A Promise (An Attack on Titan Fanfic: Erwin Smith)

Chaotic Babysitters

Rude. Did she not think of him as a decent human being?

...

Okay, maybe he wasn't. But neither was anyone in the Survey Corps.

Levi sighed with a deep frown as he focused his eyes on the toddler that was sitting on the table, facing him with her doe-like features. 

He clicked his tongue. Lauren flinched and her eyes immediately began to water. 

"Fu - " Levi paused, his mind going back to a certain memory when they first took her in. Number one rule: never swear in front of the kid.

Great, just great. No swearing. That was basically cutting his vocabulary by eighty percent. 

Levi held himself from sighing and raised a hand, about to pat Lauren by the head (Mike always did that to her, so he thought it was effective), the toddler visibly flinched from him, causing the raven man to return his hand to his side. 

"What do you want me to do, then?" he mumbled aggravatingly. So much for trying to pat her.

Lauren sniffed back the tears that had began to form at the corner of her eyes. Just before she could erupt into a crying session, however, a black cat leaped up on the table where she was sitting at and padded over towards her little form. 

Levi watched with bored eyes as Mhile nuzzled his furry face at Lauren's cheek, and she seemed to enjoy it since a smile was slowly forming on her lips. 

Mhile sat down beside the toddler and haughtily lifted his face at Levi, green slits staring at the man as if to say: "She likes me better than you."

Levi was offended.

"Ugly cat."

"Meow."

The raven bit his tongue to stop himself from yeeting the animal across the room, before he released a shaky sigh and ran a hand through his dark strands.

::

Fortunately for Levi, Lauren didn't cry when he had picked her up and headed to the library section. The reason was mainly because she was amused at how Mhile was comfortable on his head as they walked. 

After placing her on top of a table, Mhile quickly followed suit and jumped down from Levi's head, curling around the space next to the kid. 

The raven man rolled his eyes at the cat and walked in to a small storage room (it had been dusty as fuck before, but he made sure to maintain its cleanliness) that was connected to the library; retrieving the necessary cleaning supplies as well as suiting himself up in his usual cleaning attire (which had earned him the nickname 'maid dwarf' from Isanna and Hanji).

With his cleaning glove pulled over his hands and a feather duster in his grip, Levi exited out of the storage room and immediately froze when his grey eyes landed on the spot where he had supposedly placed Lauren and realized that the kid was nowhere in sight. 

"Meow!"

Levi darted his eyes towards the direction where the sound came from and saw that - for some fucking unknown reason - Lauren was now at the third shelf from the topmost of the nearest bookshelf from the table where he had placed her.