Levi sadly watched Hange and Lara turn their back on him in the gallery, getting out of sight as they went down the stairs.
"If my daughter hates me for now on, Erwin," said Levi, as they followed the crowd to leave the courtroom, "you'll pay for this!"
"Ah... Stop overreacting!" replied Erwin. "Just tell her that it was an agreement between us, and that if we hadn't done it, we wouldn't have won."
"It's easy for you to say," said Levi, annoyed. "It wasn't your daughter who looked deep into your soul with the greatest disgust."
"Just give her a box of chocolates and everything will be solved. I myself do this all the time when I wanna ask her to deliver the reports on my behalf, when I'm feeling lazy. She asks me for a fair amount of chocolates, and when I delay her payment, she only charges me half chocolate of interest rate per day, which is a great deal, considering the delivery market nowadays."
"Have you been using my daughter as a carrier pigeon?"
"But Lara's an excellent carrier pigeon!"
"Does Hange know you've been giving candy to our daughter?"
"Yes, and she even encourages it. She says that the fact that Lara has to run to make the deliveries makes her legs stronger."
"But Hange never told me anything about it!"
"So, I think you'd better have a DTR, because we can clearly see that you both have a big problem with communication."
"Certainly we will, because if Lara gets tooth decay, I'm the one who has to pay for her treatment!"
"Stop being boring. Are you going to prevent your daughter from being happy just because she eats a few candies sometimes?"
"I'm not preventing my daughter from being happy. In fact, I do everything I can to make sure she's always smiling... For your information, she already told me I'm her hero."
"That's funny, because Lara also told me that..."
"WHAT?!" Levi suddenly turned very red, furious.
"I'm only kidding you," Erwin patted his friend on the back. "Look. There they are."
Levi watched the girls, still hugging each other, while Hange talked to Mike. Suddenly, he had a thought. As he watched Hange and Mike together, a huge feeling of anguish got into his heart. Hange turned her face and noticed Levi coming in her direction, still a little afar. She turned back to Mike, ignoring him completely. Levi kept watching them both, thinking about how Mike, unlike him, seemed to be a very gentle and calm man, not this violent freak that he showed at the court. Despite the fact that Lara really enjoys Mike's company. Would he have to compete with a fourth father?!
"That's great..." Levi snorted to Erwin, "In addition to my daughter, now my wife must also hate me."
"Your what?!" Erwin looked at him, surprised.
"I-I mean," stuttered Levi, turning redder than before, "My mom, no! I mean... My... The mom... Lara's mom."
"Hange's her name."
"Yes!"
"Easy there, champion," Erwin patted Levi on the back again. "You two haven't reached that level yet."
"But you know that I'm almost there..." sighed Levi, as he looked at Hange. "Just a little bit more..."
"Yes, I know," replied Erwin, smiling.
They approached Mike, Hange, and Lara. Erwin greeted everyone with a big smile and Levi just nodded, while squeezing his own hands at his sides. Quickly, Erwin signaled Mike to leave them alone, who promptly complied and they left into the hallway, with the rest of the few people who were still around.
Levi slowly raised his head and looked at Hange. She stared at him with a look of total disapproval, and when he looked at Lara, who now seemed smaller than she already was, Levi's heart hurt even more, because the girl had the most complete expression of disgust stamped on her face.
Levi closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
"Can we talk, please?"
Hange and Lara looked at each other, nodding in agreement. Levi had noticed a small door a few meters behind, where the court cleaning products and supplies were kept. He directed them to the small room and locked the door behind him.
It was a small, square room, with two shelves on each opposite wall and a tiny window in the wall opposite the door. Everything was incredibly gray and the smell of the cleaning products made Levi feel a little calmer.
But, he was still so distressed that, in a sudden movement, he pushed himself forward, stretching out one of his arms.
"Please, I can explai–"
He barely started to speak and stopped abruptly, because the scene he saw tightened his heart. In the scare of Levi's sudden movement, Hange and Lara ended up instinctively cringing, as if to protect themselves from something.
Levi shook his head negatively, not understanding why they did this. But then, the obvious fact came to his mind: a mother and a daughter were there, alone in a small locked room, in the presence of a man who, literally five minutes ago, had shown an aggressiveness never seen by either of them.
What hurt him the most was seeing that Hange and Lara thought he could do something to them. Levi felt his chin quiver and his eyes burn.
"Are you..." he began, trying to sound as soft as possible, "afraid of me?"
"Do we have reasons to be?!" asked Hange, with a daring look. "What was that?!"
Hange has lived with Levi for so long, she couldn't even remember for how many years exactly. Ever since she met him, she noticed that he was someone difficult to deal with, but over time, she was able to identify that this difficulty was because he didn't know how to express his feelings. He was a completely reserved person and it seemed that there was a great bitterness inside him. However, as they became closer and more intimate, she realized that in fact, Levi was simply a very emotionally needy and insecure person, and that he used his toughness to protect himself and especially, not to cling to anything, for fear of getting hurt.
Hange knew that his mother had died when he was very young and that he lived in an extremely horrible condition in the Underground, but she suspected that something else had happened to him, because Levi had a type of behavior of someone that had suffered some kind of abandonment, that's why he didn't like creating bonds with people, so that he himself wouldn't do it with them.
Hange was still amazed by the fact that Levi allowed himself to become so attached to Lara, and even to Hange herself, and she felt extremely grateful for this.
Hange also thought that Levi had low self-esteem issues, mainly because he was small compared to other men, who especially in the Survey Corps, were very tall. Erwin and Mike themselves were nearly two-meter tall. Therefore, she believed that Levi often played tough in order to command respect, because this was everything he could do, after all.
However, at no time during all these years, Levi had shown such horrible behavior as he did in the courtroom. Of course, he was a very strict and serious person, especially in training with his soldiers, where he would make them so tired until they dropped to the ground. But, being violent like that? No. That, he was not.
If she were to point out his most "violent" moment, Hange only remembered how Levi had sliced into pieces the Titan that would devour Lara, and also the one who killed Isabel and Furlan, many years ago. But in these cases, it's Titans that we are talking about.
Hange herself couldn't understand why she was afraid of Levi. She might not be humanity's strongest soldier, but she was one of the best in the Survey Corps. However, recently, especially after Lara came into their lives, Hange and Levi's relationship has become so close, that she was finally feeling that he was expressing himself better when he was in the presence of the girls, only holding back some emotions here and there, especially when it came to emotions about Hange.
And in none of these moments they all spent together, did Levi show this kind of aggressiveness. On the contrary. He was calm, patient (especially with Lara), kind, concerned with the well-being of the girls, and when he allowed himself, very loving.
In the past, Levi had extreme difficulties in asking for forgiveness, but as he matured, and now living with Lara, his daughter taught him a lot about humility. As a father, he always showed her when she was wrong about something, and Lara would always take the blame for her mistakes, apologizing.
Although Erwin thought Levi did nothing wrong, Erwin was not a father. He didn't have a child who based their whole life model on him. And, as a father, Levi had failed, for he had shown the worst kind of human that a man could be.
With that in mind, looking at Hange and Lara, the only thing Levi thought he could do - just as his daughter had taught him - was to be humble and apologize. Levi then knelt on the floor and looked deeply into the eyes of the girls in front of him.
"Please, forgive me... Let me explain what happened."
Lara and Hange looked at each other and slowly went to him. As Lara also ended up kneeling next to Levi, there was no reason for only Hange to be stood, so she also knelt on the floor, closing a circle.
Gently, Levi took both Lara and Hange's hands.
"What happened inside that courtroom," he began, looking deeply into their eyes, "was something that Erwin ordered me to do."
Quickly, Levi explained the whole situation and the plan that Erwin had come up with to make Eren Jäeger join the Survey Corps, and also why they could not tell anyone about it.
"So..." concluded Levi, "Just because I did that, it doesn't mean I actually enjoyed it."
Hange and Lara looked at each other, and together they heaved a sigh of relief. Hange placed her hand on her chest.
"Gee, Levi... But you could at least go easy on the boy."
"You know how Erwin's set in his ways. He asked me to leave Eren quite stunned," Levi then looked at Lara and said, softly, "do you forgive me, baby?"
"Of course I forgive you, daddy," replied Lara, and she kindly hugged Levi very tight. "I'm very happy you explained yourself. Thank you for that."
Hange smiled on seeing that scene between them, and before she knew it, she began to stroke Levi's hair, who looked at her, surprised. Hange realized what she was doing, but before she could pull her hand away, Levi grabbed her by her waist. They gave themselves a very tight triple hug.
Then, Levi looked deeply into Hange's eyes. In a delicate way, he placed his hand behind her head and gently pressed his lips against hers in a silent, long, and soft kiss. When Hange felt Levi's lips on hers, her eyes widened and she blushed a lot, but soon she gave in, feeling swept away by the kiss, even letting out an exclamation.
Lara watched them, her expressions alternating between admiration and gross, for she still found this adult stuff very strange.
"Ew, dad!" she exclaimed, sticking out her tongue. "Don't kiss mommy in front of me!"
"It's just that I can't hold myself together in the presence of the women of my life," explained Levi, smiling at the girls.
PS: Always remember:
"Humility is not weakness, it's strength."