shortcutter | [3] drei | the fertile fortress

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[3] drei | the fertile fortress

The journey wasn't a lengthy one. It was a bit longer than the estimated fifteen kilometers, but for a Survey Corps horse, such distance was akin to a sprint. There had been no cause to stop, and although they'd taken a few minor detours to avoid being harried by wandering titans, they still made good time; however, with the thick silence that held between Levi and Mikasa for the duration, it could have felt shorter. The weather also did them no favors. The sky was pale and overcast while the wind blew hard, threatening a storm.

Their path skirted them well wide of the forest, leaving less chance for a surprise attack. Levi was prepared to encounter a mass of titans as they drew nearer, and had warned Mikasa of the possibility, but the final leg of their trek proved to be uneventful. The lack of titans was almost unsettling, and as the fortress rose into view, Levi motioned for Mikasa to slow. He reigned his own horse to a trot and allowed her to catch up so that the two of them were riding side by side.

The fortress was a broad, hulking structure that sat on the crest of a hill with a shallow and steady incline. Its thick gate, visible from their position, was up and appeared to be fully intact. The crescent cut of a stream ran some twenty meters away from the north and west facing walls, appearing not unlike half a moat. The stream crawled further south only to disappear into the forest.

Still no sign of any titans. So far, this was seeming all too easy. When Levi spoke, he raised his voice to be heard over the light howl of the wind and the rattling of his cape.

"I'm going to give you my extra horse," he said. "Tie them near the gate, then scale the walls from the outside. Find the highest point up there and be my lookout. I'll circle the place and check for any breaches."

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"Maybe."

For now, that was all he could say. Levi suspected there was a good chance, but he'd prefer to be wrong, since it might pose a difficult choice: following such a passage could lead them to a number of important discoveries, or it could send them directly into a nest of titans. In any case, Levi had no intention of lingering. If the area turned out to be overly expansive, then they would need a full squad to investigate it thoroughly.

From dubious experience, Levi was quite good at keeping his bearings underground. Past the cells was a narrower passage that headed roughly southeast, toward the center of the courtyard. Levi lead the way. Initially, the dingy crypt was silent save for their muted footfalls, but then he heard something ahead. Breathing — there was no mistaking it. Levi stopped for a second. The breaths were fast, rattled and heavy. Once he was certain Mikasa heard them, too, he motioned forward with his chin.

They came upon a seated titan. It was stout and pear-shaped, neck crooked severely to one side so that its head could fit with one flabby cheek wedged against the ceiling. The breathing was constant and husky, like an excited dog's. It reached toward them with one bulky arm, but could do nothing else. Despite its overall girth, the titan's legs were grotesquely small, bent inward and seemingly useless. Levi stared at it. Sorry. Repulsive. If only he could gift wrap it to Hange instead of cutting it up.

Actually…

"Leave it," he said. "It isn't going anywhere, and if we come back with more men, it could be a specimen."

No. The thing was disgusting, completely. Somehow worse in its mutant disability. Its horrible leer pierced her; she wanted to put it down now, on the spot. She'd danced back a few steps at the sight of it and her knuckles were pale where she gripped her sword. Holding the torch high, she shot Levi a fierce and mistrustful look.

"Until it goes somewhere." She turned, scouring the darkness with eyes and ears. If there was one, there would be more.

A glimmer caught her eye. Something indistinct, and perhaps five meters away. She shut up at once, pointing at it so Levi would see. Within a few paces she could see the bars of a cell, black with oily patina, pinned in a grey stone arch. But this was not the thing which had gleamed. The gleaming thing had been the moist white sclera of a fat, child-faced titan which was packed into imprisonment. It was manifestly bigger than the cell door, so big that its fleshy pale arm was pinned against its side like a trussed turkey.

How?

Tracking back, close to Levi, she stated clinically, "Are we going to kill them, or are we going to leave." The horror of the situation was rapidly outstripping the bounds of her newly-formed trust in him. Something dark was happening here and control needed to be exerted against their surroundings. She would, if he didn't.

Levi's gaze followed the direction of her extended finger; in the torchlight, pale and red, her hand appeared almost to glow. So too did the wide eyes of the titan inside the cell. It was the most impossibly situated of them all. Either the bars had been built around it, or the thing had once been small enough to use the door. Neither idea seemed plausible.

Perhaps they'd seen enough. Despite her even voice, he could sense Mikasa's growing discomfort.

"You want to kill them?" he said. "Then do it. They're stuck down here, harmless basically, but they're titans. We could use them alive, but no one would complain. If you hate them that much, then go ahead."

He meant it. If she thought their options were limited to either kill or leave, then the choice was hers. They'd fought hard and had this discovery to show for it, and he knew Erwin's expectations were reasonable. Levi was neutral, and leaving the decision to Mikasa offered some potential insight on her temperament.

Listening to him, Mikasa passed from consideration to something like a flash of anger, then to expressionless silence. An internal calculus was adjusting to this new piece of information: that Levi had or appeared to have no insight into what the dungeon held. Why then was he so unafraid.

If they left now, what would they leave with. If they went deeper - she thought it would be suicidal to do that with an uncovered flank.

She took hold of her sword, shoved her torch in a sconce, and rounded the mutant titan on the floor before them. A rush, a run-up; the anchor she dropped in the wall threw a terrible cracking echo through the hall. The titan howled as its arms went limp and its jaw spilled open. The neck bent to the floor at a terrible angle. A cloud of stinking steam spewed into the corridor as the thing's grotesque tiny legs kicked with the last of its life.

Pulling another torch from her back, she lit it from the one at the sconce. It was clear she felt more certain now; her face was set and cold, no longer doubtful. She had three more torches, which, by line of sight, might have meant a few hundred more meters of exploration.

Mikasa neither knew nor thought about what had been awakened in the darkness by the sharp expulsion of gas. The caged titan was specimen enough for his darling Hange. Anything else would die. Giving Levi an impatient look, she canted her head to the right. That way next?

She worked quickly, as usual, and Levi's eyes lingered on the deformed titan all through its hideous death throes. There was a kind of ruthless logic to leaving just one of them alive, and it was the sort of thinking that typically earned his approval. Mikasa's apprehension seemed to have cleared, too, leaving Levi to wonder whether it was because she felt safer now, or if the act of killing itself had settled her down.

Venturing too deep would be unwise, yes, and Levi had no intention of going further than another couple hundred meters regardless of how many torches they had. He gave Mikasa a nod before leading them on.

They passed a few empty cages, but the stench — which Levi had only begun acclimating to — worsened with each step, and before Mikasa needed to light her last torch, they came to a dead end. A section of the passage had collapsed. Spread around the rubble were at least a dozen thin, faceless corpses, accounting for the smell. Still, like with the other body he'd seen, these had very little rotting left to do.

A rat skittered away from the torchlight. Levi put a hand to his face, as if to cover his mouth and nose, but instead he flexed his fingers and turned away for a second. When he looked back, his arm was at his side, his expression even and recognizably drab.

"We should look for anything that could identify them," he said. "Check the bodies."

And so, indicating to Mikasa that he wouldn't leave the grim duty to her alone, Levi approached the nearest corpse, stooping to get a better look.

Mikasa's pale face curdled in disgust. If Levi hadn't himself knelt to get to work, she would have refused. Even then, only on the premise that this was for Eren's sake could she bring herself, with a trembling hand, to reach for the shrivelled, stinking body. With frustration she realized her gloves were with the packs upstairs.

The body was still dressed, if it could still be called that. The fabric, too decayed to reveal what it was, crumbled at her touch. The dessicated skin beneath was pockmarked with holes (from what?) which revealed the bone and withered, blackened flesh beneath. Her gorge rose in her throat. Unhealthy, filmy threads clung to her fingers, yet she hesitated to brush them off on her own clothes. Not that it would help, anyway. When there were so many others still to search.

On this one, she found nothing except a bracelet still closed around one wrist. It was deeply tarnished or stained. The metal was indistinct. It told nothing about its bearer.

She tucked her chin and nose into her scarf and moved to the next corpse.

There was only so much of this Levi could take. He had spent plenty of time among corpses, but the experience never lost its morbidity. No matter how legendary or transcendent the man, his corpse stank no less than anyone else's — a thought that had given Levi grim pleasure years ago, but now only left him feeling weary.

Fortunately, many of the bodies were bare. Only a few of them needed more than a once-over, but these Levi did inspect. He found one clinging to a locket through a thin, ragged garment. It was broken at the hinge and too filthy for any sane man to touch. More relevantly, it gave him no useful information, and Levi did not try to pry it from the grip of its dead owner.

There was little to be said of the other dirty nicknacks Levi uncovered — until the last. One corpse lay partially crushed by the rubble, and near its foot was a thin object that barely shone under Levi's torch. He crouched and saw that it was the handle of a knife. Levi took out a handkerchief and wiped at its surface. The blade had been removed, somehow rather cleanly, and the handle revealed itself to be wood with a decorative bronze inlay.

Levi did not recognize the make, but he knew two things: one, that the grip belonged to a combat knife; and two, that it looked cheap and mass-produced, adding to the likelihood that it could have been military issue. He wrapped the find in his handkerchief and stood, wondering if Mikasa had fared better. She'd been keeping quiet, but that was no surprise.

"Find anything?"

There was no immediate reply. Mikasa was still searching a body - its arm had fallen out of the socket when she moved it, though it had been impossible to tell why. Maybe just a faster rot. Maybe it was dislocated before the person died. Whatever the event, she did not want to open her mouth near it, and she was determined to see the task through to the end.

Finally she stood up, stepped back a few meters, and answered through her scarf.

"Nothing. A bracelet."

She held out her hand to show him the band that lay in the palm of her hand. Her fingertips were smudged. Her level gaze met his, and without any indication of desperation or unease, there was nevertheless the over-calm, over-serious sign of someone who was at her limit. She noted his bundled handkerchief, but asked nothing. He would tell her whatever needed to be told.

Whether he could read her expression or not, Levi was holding himself much the same way. He glanced at the bracelet, noting that it was too tarnished to allow even a guess as to what it might have been worth. She could keep it she liked, though he wasn't sure why she would. Levi turned away from the bodies and stowed the wrapped up handle in his jacket.

"Let's go."

There were some things worse about the return journey. Without the tension of potential danger keeping a stranglehold on Levi's focus, his mind strayed unpleasantly — specific smells and sights he was unable to ignore. And there was no avoiding certain thoughts; for instance, if he'd been trapped down here himself, what would have kept him from going insane?

Levi spoke again only once they'd left the corpses and the caged titan behind.

"Even the Military Police wouldn't ignore so many missing people. I think they were among the droves sent to die after Wall Maria fell. For some reason they were rounded up and kept here."

What Levi had said stuck in her mind for a long time after they emerged from the dungeon. Even at the time, it had struck her strangely. Not that he was wrong, but that it was something that couldn't be solved with a fist. Not the droves, not whatever else happened here. She didn't know how to stop problems like those; she only knew about how to take care of her own. Someone like Erwin, though —

"Cruel," Was all she said. She never questioned whether it was possible or even likely. Worse had happened. Did the titans come here to eat the dead? The mutant titans in the dungeon.... maybe that's what happens when a titan eats a corpse. (???) She didn't know. Again, not her problem. A problem for someone like Hange.

She climbed the stairs, following him, and thought primarily of washing her hands. But after that, had they learned what they had come to learn? That was the kind of problem.... Levi solved. He knew what the others needed. He would get it, whatever it was. They trusted him to keep their work moving, that was why he'd been sent here. Was it why she had been sent here too? In that case, she'd failed.

Abruptly she asked, as they decanted themselves into the antechamber, "How do you know what to look for?"

Levi eye's widened, and there was no mistaking the incredulous look when he glanced back towards her. Of the few questions she'd asked, none of them had been of this flavor. Has it stopped raining yet? or Where do you think they're coming from? — these had definite answers related to their mission. Straightforward. Obvious.

Really, it was a step in the right direction. That she even bothered to ask could have been one, but if Mikasa didn't care at some deeper level, then she probably wouldn't have wasted her breath. She was looking to him for an answer that every captain or squad leader in the army would give differently.

He turned back and, for a moment, continued leading her in silence, heading outside to where the horses were waiting.

"You probably think it's different than fighting," he said at last. "It's not. Not much. You pick somewhere to be — the best available place. The spot with good vantage where you won't get fucking crushed. Then…" He paused again. "If some smart-ass tried to explain it like this to me, I'd want to break his teeth, but —" he made an irritated hum "— like chess. For every opening sequence, the best players know all of the moves. That's up to a point. The moves that win and lose games are the ones that shit all over what they knew.

"It doesn't always work. You can get lucky, or not. I lived underground for a long time; if I hadn't, maybe I wouldn't have thought to look there. It doesn't matter. Thinking rationally, or irrationally… what matters are the results, and nothing changes in this shitty world when all anyone does is play by the script. Go your whole life like that and you might as well be rotting under there with the rest of those stinking corpses."

The look she returned for his incredulous stare was serious, devoid of argument. She was unfazed and listening. This was something imperative.

It was funny, the way he explained it. She didn't laugh but there was something very Levi-like about it which made her want to laugh with recognition. She listened carefully regardless, and followed regardless, and when the open sky was overhead she dunked her hands into a nearby barrel filled with rainwater while thinking about what he said.

Her answer took a while to come out. It wasn't even really an answer; more like she was talking to herself, and he happened to be there as she scrubbed her hands dry on the saddle blanket of a horse.

"Prepare for the unpreparable."

She looked over his way and he seemed unaccountably more familiar in her eyes. Much subterranean thinking went into this. A lot of what he had said had missed her because she'd never thought of herself as limited by what she knew before. But it seemed apparent now: there were things she knew and things she didn't know. Other people knew things she didn't know.

"You make mistakes and you learn from them, then... You..."

Words failed her. Lacking formal education or even rigorous struggle, there was no way for her to discuss "categories" of mistakes, of generalizing, of abstracting from principles. She felt, but was unable to say, that there were categories of mistakes to learn from and orient one's self towards. Frustrating.

There was a flash of vulnerable inability in her dark eyes; then she turned back to her horse. For some reason she thought of the mutant titan in the dungeon, the one Levi meant to leave for Hange. She didn't know. She was starting to learn, now.

"We should go back," she finally said. As if it wasn't clearly what he'd already planned.

For once he didn't watch her while she considered his response. Close by there was a steady trickle of runoff dripping from a sloped section of the roof. Levi rolled up his sleeves and allowed it to pelt his hands before rubbing it slowly between his palms, then his fingers. The sky still had a murky color, but it looked no more ominous than the bad milk it resembled. They ought to have a dry ride home.

Levi shook the wetness from his hands before joining Mikasa with the horses. He listened to her speak, idly looking over their supplies, re-securing and tightening some of the ropes while making a few other adjustments. But she had his attention, even if she didn't want it, and once she was finished, he held her eye. A warmth stirred in him, somewhere low in his chest, and he walked to her side.

It was the natural direction; as it turned out, Mikasa had (likely at random) used the saddle blanket on the back of his horse to dry her hands. This afforded him the opportunity to pat her head, close to where her hair had been sticking up after she'd just awoken.

"All right. Saddle up."

This time he added an affectionate rumple before hoisting himself up and onto his horse.

She glanced up at him as he sat in the saddle. Him and those headpats. Sent a tickle up the back of her neck. A moment of hesitation; she patted his knee and turned away before he could respond. Mounting smoothly, she kicked into a canter to come up alongside Levi, and that was where she stayed throughout the long, quiet ride home.

When they returned there was the usual debrief, unpacking, seeing to the horses. Armin and Eren would not be back until after dark. She thought mostly about bathing and sleeping, though it brought to mind the pungent scent of mildew. After that - never again did she want to feel as lost as she had at the castle. She thought tomorrow she would talk to Hange and some of the older corps to get a better understanding of what they looked for. Probably there were some books, too. Maybe Armin could help. Levi might have some suggestions.

Tomorrow she would definitely have to talk to Levi about it.

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[3] drei | the fertile fortress

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pretty soon canon is gonna be updating faster than i am

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FIRST: TO DEAL WITH THE DAYWALKER also in the hand of her hand really. :|

you saw only a mirage

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WOW I SUCK