A Touch Of Hate

Chapter 17

Levi

It was torture.

And no matter how much time I spent dealing with it, it stayed the same. Boring. Annoying. Necessary.

Sighing and holding back my frustration, I shoved away the unfinished squad report. I hated paperwork. I would gladly prefer a face-off with a starving abnormal to this shit. Looking up at the clock on my desk, I tried to fight off the fatigue. It was way past midnight now, and I was not even close to being done.

Giving up on the idea of finishing paperwork tonight, I pushed off the desk and got to my feet. My eyelids felt heavy, and the exhaustion of the previous day weighed on me. Yet I knew I wouldn't fall asleep, no matter how much I tried or how tired I felt; no matter how comfortable my bed looked, or how much I needed that sweet oblivion.

I strolled to the adjacent room, and sat in the armchair, overlooking the neatly made bed. Relaxing into the backrest, I closed my eyes. Sleep was out of the question, yet some rest to my head was welcome reprieve. But the moment my eyelids shut, the images surged, lovingly served by my memory. Picture by picture, they flew through my head. One thought interrupted by another, one memory transforming into the next. One pain forming the other. All the death I'd witnessed, all the loss, and the blood on my hands. Faces of lost comrades and innocent civilians contorted and twisted in pain. High pitched buzzing sound played in my ears. It grew louder until all I could hear were screams of pain and the hungry roar of the titans. The memories that brought nothing but guilt and sorrow closely followed yells and wails in my head.

The sudden urge to scratch my fucking eyes out made my hands twitch on the armrests.

"Your touch has never burned me."

That memory made it to the forefront of my mind and my head went silent. I inhaled sharply as Verity's face popped up in my mind's eye. She was chewing on the inside of her cheek, as she often did when she had something heavy on her mind. Her hands looked unusually naked — gloves thrown away and forgotten somewhere at the edge of the fighting pit. The pale skin of her wrists — so at odds at the light tan she'd gotten in the past summer months — continued in the patchy scars up her arms. I knew the worst of it hid behind the white linen of her shirtsleeves. I saw it once. And it sparked a confusing mix of emotions inside of me.

What did she mean by that phrase of hers? She said that she didn't like to be touched. I could understand that. But her reactions to the physical contact were stronger than necessary. Like that time when Petra tried to hug her in the dining hall of the Scouts HQ and she stormed off. Or when she had her gloves ripped during the training. Yet the latter had been different, hadn't it? She stayed calm until noticing that our skins'd touched. Only then did she lose it. Was it because my touch didn't burn her? Whatever the fuck that meant.

And the way she said it... Like it was the scariest admission. The darkest secret she held close to her heart. Her lower lip trembled, and the blush rushed up her neck and spread through her cheeks. So innocent. So vulnerable.

Annoying brat.

I couldn't help wondering what had happened to her in the past that made her like this. Something had deeply wounded her heart and caused her to distrust everyone and be averted by touch. What could have brought this on her, though? According to her papers, she grew up in the capital with her uncle, who, prior to her parents' deaths, was a hunter and only moved to the city to take care of his orphaned niece. This background story didn't sound like the worst upbringing, neither did it seem as something that could break a person so much. This was where I would call bullshit on her past and call in some favors in the ranks. Except, I already did. Everything checked out. She was not lying.