Crippled Beyond Repair (Attack on Titan/Levi x Hanji)

Chapter 12

It was dark. The sun had long ago set. Nadja was asleep on one of the two beds in their hotel room that they had acquired. Hanji lay on the other bed, but he wasn't sure if she was asleep or not. He sat in a chair beside the one window in the room. The stars weren't as bright as they were at the barracks. That's part of the price that people pay for living in a district, but he was just glad to be able to see them at all. He had been too much of his life living in the Underground. Never again would he live like that. He would live wherever he could see the stars, no matter how dim they were.

He removed his shirt. On the way to the hotel, he had noticed that his wound had started to bleed through the bandages and onto his clothes. It had been over two weeks since he was wounded and now he had to deal with this. Maybe this was from that spinning move that he did that morning. He wouldn't know. Either way, he needed to change the bandages, before it became more noticeable. Because Hanji would be furious if she saw, he hoped that she was asleep.

Pulling off the bandages, he found that it wasn't as bad as he had expected. There was only one stitch that seemed to have popped. It was just dribbling blood. He could see that it was still dribbling a little bit, but much of it had congealed.

"I thought that you were being careful."

He jerked, looking up to see Hanji standing before him.

"I was..."

"Not enough, apparently." She knelt down, looking closer at the wound. "Not as bad as I thought." She stood up. "Let me get some water to clean it up." She was out of the room before he had said a word and in a minute she was back, with a bowl of water and some cloth. She put the cloth in the water and began to wipe up the blood.

"You sure like to push the limits of your abilities, don't you?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I do what I can do, nothing more."

"So you just think that you can do anything?"

He didn't answer.

"Give me the bandages."

He handed them over.

She started to wrap the bandages around and around his waist. "This time, don't pop any of the stitches."

"I can't promise anything."

Smiling, she didn't say another word as she wrapped the bandages around him. When she had finished he slipped back on his shirt.

Hanji didn't go back to bed. She opened the window and sat on the edge of it. A cool breeze blew in, ruffling her hair.

He continued to sit at the chair.

"You like to look at the stars, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Why? What's so unique about the stars?"

"I think it's because I lived in a place where you couldn't see stars for so long that the chance to see them is something more precious than others believe. They shouldn't be taken for granted."

"I suppose that you're right." She fell silent, for a few minutes. Just letting soft noise of the outdoors wash over them. "Ha. To think that is was only a day ago that everything was normal, or as normal as it can be for one in the Survey Corps. But now...now everything has gone to Hell." Hanji laughed, but it was a dry, unhappy life. My whole family is gone in one night. Why?"

He could see her struggling to keep her emotions out of her voice, but he knew how pointless it was.

She choked on her words. "My mother. Dead. My father. Dead. My brother. My brother. Probably soon to be dead. Why? Why did this happen to my family? They didn't deserve this. If anyone was to die in my family, it should have been me. The one who goes outside the walls and looks death in the face every time. I thought that my family was safe."