The Titan Queen - Levi X Reader

Chapter 8 - The Tears

But he knew that if he failed now, he'd be stuck in this endless hell forever; he was not going to give that future one inch of a possibility. With Mikasa silently creeping away from him and Armin watching him with almost predatory focus, Eren didn't let himself think about the agony in his unused legs as they were suddenly forced to move at a fast pace. Instead, he looked at Y/N's head, which dangled upside down due to her body being slung over Mikasa's shoulder.

One foot in front of the other. Over and over again.

Armin kept himself close, his arm never far from Eren's side. The blond boy's eyes were shimmering with rage and concern and love for the broken boy beside him, but at this moment he merely bottled up his rage behind his gaze. Rage came with noise and screams and yells. Those things simply could not exist at this time, where silence was needed at every moment.

Eren paled slowly as he realized that they were not heading towards the exit, high up on the stairs. Mikasa lead their party through a matrix of twisting corridors, bordered by empty cells. Then, in a heart-stopping moment, she began murmuring.

"Please... Why don't you just nod... Why do you just stand there?"

Eren could have sworn that his heart had stopped in his chest, and it was only Armin's hard-eyed gaze that kept him from stumbling. Mikasa twisted her voice in a strange way, making it echo on the walls over and over again even as they crept on with silent footing. Suddenly, he understood - if anyone heard the absence of sound, they'd come to investigate. Silence was as loud as a scream, sometimes. Mikasa knew this, and so she kept whispering broken sentences of a girl who missed her friend.

He had no idea where they were going, just that it was so far from his cell that he could probably never find his way back. This revelation only brought him into a stunned state, one that glimmered with relief around the edges of his doubts. But that cell had been his for weeks. It had been the only thing that had tethered him to this damned world, the only space that he'd been permitted to stay.

But now that safe space was gone.

There was a possibility for new connections - unstable, unreliable tethers - but connections none the less. Mikasa and Armin were leading him back to a world that would hurt, and scar, and bleed. He was going back to a land that was being ripped apart by war, a land that was confined in fear...

Eren didn't have a chance to finish his thoughts as Armin full on slapped him in the face, the sound only masked by Mikasa's growl, her voice doing a wickedly accurate version of Y/N's own voice. Anyone who had listened would think that Y/N had just slapped someone, not thinking that Armin had just slapped the boy that they'd kept prisoner in the dark for ages. Blue eyes met the dulled green with a silent order - to save panic for later.

Just as Eren was about to raise an eyebrow, asking for when later would be, Mikasa suddenly turned into a cell. Shoving down the instinctual panic that rose through Eren's gut at entering a cell willingly, he followed her into the surprisingly large space with Armin at his back. They stayed silent as Mikasa dumped Y/N on the floor slowly, every sound echoing slightly louder than what was normal. Eren knew that they were now on borrowed time - it was only so long until Y/N's guards figured out their princess was missing.

Armin kept his eyes on the corridor on the other side of the bars, watching for incomers, as Mikasa started prowling the length of the cell. Eren didn't ask anything, watching his siblings move in a harmony that was impossibly in sync, wondering what they were doing, until Mikasa blew out a breath sharply through her nose, attracting both boy's attention. She motioned above her head to where a large stone had a slightly different colouring to the rest of the ceiling stones that was surrounding that one.