Lara (Long-Fic Levihan | Armin Arlert X OC)

Chapter 63 - No More Waiting

Hange was wide-eyed. After a period of silence, she was finally able to speak.

"You... Renovated the house?!" she covered her mouth.

"Why you're so surprised?" Levi raised an eyebrow. "You know I like to clean and organize stuff, and that for a long time, I lived all by myself, when I was in the Underground, before I met Furlan. Who do you think fixed the things where I used to live? I needed to make do with what I had..." he shrugged.

"But, you did everything alone?"

"Yeah."

"Gee, Levi..." Hange pouted, "Why didn't you hire a contractor?"

"Tks!" he clicked his tongue, frowning, "I like to do things myself, especially when it comes to my future house."

"But it must have been a lot of work!"

"Well..." Levi placed his hand on his chin, thoughtful, "It did give me a lot of work, indeed. But in the end, it turned out being pretty therapeutic," Levi looked down, "especially in the last few months..."

Hange smiled.

"But there's one thing, Levi... I'm still trying to figure out at what time of the day you did this renovation! You were always here when Lara and I would meet you for lunch."

"Oh..." he gave a mischievous smile, "I had Erwin's help for that."

"Erwin helped you with the renovation?!" Hange covered her mouth in disbelief.

"No!" replied Levi, indignantly. "That guy doesn't even know how to hold a hammer, or rather, he did not know..."

A light feeling of sadness invaded their hearts, and they sighed.

"Anyways..." continued Levi, "I told him that I had bought that house and that I'd need to renovate it on my own, which he also thought was absurd, just like you. But in the end, Erwin ended up finding the idea interesting and supported my project, saying that it would do me good. So, I arranged with him that, for about three times a week, in the morning, I would stay in the house, renovating it. Since you and Lara were holed up in that lab all morning and didn't go out of there for the world, I'm sure you didn't even notice my absence all this time. I was back before lunch..." Levi pressed his lips together and paused for a moment. "It's been just a little harder now in the last few months. Fortunately, everything was almost done before we went to Shiganshina, with just a few things to fix here and there. But, as our routine has changed a lot, because of all that happened, it ended up taking longer than I'd like. I finally finished everything last Friday, that's why I'm telling you just now." He gave her a sad smile, "Forgive me for making you wait so long..."

Hange shook her head in denial, while laughing.

"My my, Levi... I can't believe you did this... Why didn't you call Lara and me to help with the renovation? She would've liked it!"

"Huh?!" exclaimed Levi, "And let you both go in that mess?! It'd get much worse than it already was! You do know very well that Lara takes after you on cleaning. She's always pretty lazy when we need to clean here."

"That I cannot deny," laughed Hange, contemplative. "But on the other hand, she takes after you when it comes to fighting and killing Titans, doesn't she?"

"Yeah," chuckled Levi, looking at Hange, "She's an even smaller female version of myself in this department."

They both kept chuckling for a few seconds, until they slowly stopped.

"You know, Levi? Sometimes I forget that she's not our biological daughter..."

"Me too..." he was silent for a while and then, drummed his fingers on the mattress. "Hange, do you remember what our life was like before Lara?"