His Wounded Heart Beats For One (Levi x Reader Fanfiction)

27: Making Amends

Miche doesn't have anything to say about that. He eyes Levi, the two legends sharing some secret thoughts in their unrevealing expressions. "It's good to have you with us." 

Levi urges you along as Miche returns to his seat. Nobody else speaks to the supervisor, everyone immersed in their own opinions that they're not interested in sharing with you. 

In the hallway, you expel a sigh as you keep up with Levi's painstaking pace. "Are you just showing me off?"

"A little." He starts up a flight of stairs, his boots hard against the stone steps. "It'll make the regiment think twice, this little spectacle."

"About what?"

"About the importance of human lives." Levi slows just slightly for you to catch up. "You'd think they'd care, but the jackass leaders of this place are too quick to sacrifice humans. My friends were two of them, and you would've been if I didn't come."

You follow him down a thinner hallway, to the commander's office. "I can't imagine being a leader of the Scouts. I don't know what they go through."

He stops before the office, his fingers snatching the door handle. "Frankly, neither do I."

Throwing the door open, Levi storms into Keith's office with no regard for formality. "Keith," he calls, allowing you to step in with him.

Commander Keith is stationed behind his desk, his enormous fist gripping a quill that halts upon Levi's entrance. His frame is silhouetted as the massive window behind him engulfs him in a blanket of light. He lifts his head, his sunken eyes barely widened as he witnesses the unexpected ghost come back to life. 

"Tell me she's dead now," Levi snarls. "Fucking tell me."

Keith's silent, a sturdy dam against Levi's torrent. He's lost for words, and perhaps lost for emotions too. 

"So you live," he finally utters, his gravelly voice having lost its power.

"Damn straight she does." Levi stalks towards Keith's desk, a fierce opponent against the gigantic commander. "My efforts paid off. I actually got off my ass and looked for her. I found her. That's more than you—or any Scout—bothered to do." 

Keith stations his quill in its stand, his guilty eyes downcast on the table. "What were we expected to do, Levi? Risk more men's lives for the chance she might live?"

"I didn't want to endanger anyone else." Levi's thought about this, and he's ready to argue against the commander. "I was content going alone. You could've at least helped in that effort." 

Keith shakes his head. He's hardly struck with the truth of your survival, instead too preoccupied with quelling Levi's argument. "I have to agree with Erwin regarding your value to the regiment. I cannot run the risk of losing our best soldier."

"I'm no different than anyone else," Levi insists, to which you mentally disagree. "People shouldn't be left to die because I'm too precious to spare."

The commander looks down at the death certificates before him, the telltale symbol of his regiment's failure. "Would you have saved Arnel, then?"

Levi stiffens. "What?"

"Or Finn, or Laura, or Stefan?" Keith slides papers aside, reading more and more names of the deceased. "Would you risk your life to go beyond the Walls alone, just hoping they're alive?" 

Levi's frowning at the grim papers, uncertain of what to say. "I want to protect as many—"

"I do, too. I don't want soldiers to die." Keith clasps his hands together, bottling up his grief. "But they do. They die and they get left behind. There's only so much we can do." He finds your eyes, his dark irises digging into your soul. "You risked your life because she's important to you. I won't fault that, but I can't extend that dedication to every soldier in the regiment. We've accepted the fact that lives will be lost."