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Cause I'm scared?

That's ridiculous

I'm not scared, you're scared

[ tHIS WAS A MISTAKE ]

[ Levi just. Sits there, bombarded by the onslaught of messages, a new one coming in before he's finished reading the previous one. ]

[ ... ]

[ Okay, he is absolutely not fighting this battle over text. ]

Meet me outside
I'll buy you an ice cone

[ please. ]

okay

[Gabi is waiting outside the apartment. Shocker, she looks....pretty nervous. She's fiddling with her hands a lot.]

[ Levi will be there in a moment, decked in his now-usual knee orthese. He seems to be walking easily enough now, though a slight limp will probably always remain. He gestures at her to follow him and starts heading outside of the building. ]

What's that face for?

[ Rejoice, he actually didn't use a shit metaphor to describe it (yet). ]

Lookin' at stuff, what's your face for? What, are you saying something's wrong with my face? Nothin's wrong with my face, that's a really weird thing to say. I don't look nervous, why would you say that, you look nervous.

[She clears her throat and coughs into her hand.

This has started well.]

...

[ He sighs and just sort of... lets his hand drop on top of her head, which is a bit awkward since she's now a little taller than him. Not quite a proper headpat, but close enough. ]

Oi. You're not in trouble. I just want [ a momentary pause as he forces himself to go through the rest of his words, ] your help.

[ Appreciate the progress he's made, Gabi! She's probably spent a lot of time after the war getting him to be able to ask for anything like that. It hasn't been at a complete standstill here either, especially with how shitty his condition was during the first few months. He still didn't like it, but it got... a little easier. ]

... ...

[And in all of a couple seconds, a lot of Gabi's clear anxiety over this situation fades because it's been replaced by simple confusion. She blinks at Levi a couple times. She looks at his arm on her head. Then she looks at him.]

You're asking me for help?

...

You never ask anyone for help!

[ His expression sours a bit and he tugs on her ponytail scoldingly a couple times before pulling his hand back. ]

I'm not so old that I can't learn any new tricks.

[ He hasn't learned shit. As soon as whatever he needs the "help" for is only related to his own wellbeing, he'll be right back to not asking for it! ]

Anyway, I've met Reiner. I don't like the way he's acting. I thought you may be able to talk to him.

[ Unfortunately, any further details may need to be requested! ]

Waah! Not my head, that's where I keep my brains!

[Perhaps a little theatrically, she tugs back at her ponytail until Levi lets go. But the theatrics quickly go out the window once Reiner is mentioned. She lets out a breath. She looks around for a few seconds, seemingly to make sure Reiner isn't there....then gestures for Levi to follow her anyway.]

You said you were gonna get me an ice, right? C'mon.

[She doesn't stop from looping her arm around Levi's to support him, of course. Even if she seems to have gotten to the point where she's not demanding he be in a wheelchair at all times, she still seems to want to make sure she's helping him walk.]

[ So dramatic. It almost tears a smile from Levi -- maybe it will one day, once the memories of war and the pain of all the loss he endured becomes more distant. ]

[ He follows without complaint, because he did promise to get her one (just one, though, which he'll remind her of later if necessary). He tenses a little as she links their arms, still not entirely used to it, but doesn't shake her off. ]

[ He doesn't really need help nowadays -- the brace seems to be doing an excellent job so far -- but it's... kind of nice? It reminds him of warmth, of a bond he doesn't really know yet but has heard snippets about, that he also knows will be his sole solace for quite a while back home. ]

[ He'll let her know if it's too much for him, but while he can, he doesn't want to take it away from her. ]

[Gabi takes not being tossed off as a win in and of itself. Part of her is aware that 1) This isn't the Levi she spent three years building this rapport with and 2) Nightwake isn't their world and can medically support him in a way that their world couldn't. Still, she doesn't want him to exert himself anymore than necessary and if he's gonna let her do stuff like this, she's gonna do it.]

[It's a nice feeling, in a way. Which she lets herself indulge in for a moment...because she has a feeling the rest of this conversation (until they get ice cream, anyway) isn't gonna be that nice.]

So....what's wrong with Reiner?

[As if she didn't already know.]

[ He wonders if he should mention that he doesn't plan to go back, ever. She'd probably be fine without him. Right? Hell, maybe that version of him is still there anyway and he's worrying over nothing, but... Would she understand? ]

[ Once they're definitely out of earshot of the apartment building, they return to the business at hand. ]

He believes we're enemies. I don't want casualties. [ He frowns, searching over his words. ] First time I ran into him, I tried to talk him down. Hands in the air and everything. [ He lifts his hands a bit to mimic surrender to illustrate his point. ] He all but threatened to blow up the street.

[ No matter the timeline, Gabi should know he has strong opinions about that, right? ]

The next time, he kicked sand on me, so I threw him on his ass. I didn't stick around but Jean said he was losing his shit over it. Lots of people around. Kids, too. [ His frown darkens a little. ] He wants assurances. I get that. But he can't just hold citizens' lives over our head like that.

[ It leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Like it doesn't mean anything to him. ]

[ Maybe it doesn't. What's another thousand or two once the pile of corpses is high enough, right? But that's not the man he came to know when they were fighting to stop the world from ending. That man had so much guilt and regret it had devoured him whole. Perhaps it was all a bluff, then, but that doesn't mean Levi shouldn't take it seriously, coming from someone with that kind of power and, apparently, little mental stability. (Reminds him of someone else he's been babysitting...) ]

[ And he doesn't stand for blackmail, either. Not on the receiving end, at least. ]

[Oh, criminey. Okay, this has clearly gone much worse than Gabi had thought it would. She runs a hand down her face and groans -- when they were talking about stuff like a non-aggression pact, she figured that meant things would be okay-ish, at least, but from the way Levi is describing it, it sounds like they had two near-misses on violence breaking out in the middle of the city.]

Knew I shoulda gone to that beach thing...I just haaaad to spend all day at the Gacha Restaurant instead...

[She doesn't wanna believe that Reiner threatened civilians, but. Whether or not he actually intended to do anything, they were always taught as Warriors, it doesn't matter what you do to civilians, everything you do to serve Marley reduces your sin as Eldians, so it's all permissible and it was something that she at least deeply internalized. And, well, she saw Reiner's memory mere hours before he broke the wall. She can't exactly say "he wouldn't threaten civilians!" when that's hanging in the air.

She knows Reiner is scared and anxious and confused in a lot of pain, right now. Maybe she underestimated how badly this situation was affecting him.

....BUT ALSO.]

...why did you throw him, again?

It was... eventful.

[ Carting Hange off to the ER had honestly left a bigger impression on him than the little escapade with Reiner, but the latter ended up having worse implications. It's unsettling to think that in his attempt to be casual with him, Levi himself may have nearly caused a tragedy at the beach. ]

[ He tilts his head slightly to glance back at her as they walk, as if disbelieving that she even needs him to repeat such an offense. ]

He kicked sand on me. It got in my drink. [ Pause. She probably doesn't need the clarification, but somehow he feels compelled to add it just in case; ] I treated him the same as I would have anyone.

[ (Anyone except Hange, it seems...) ]

[ He really thought he was doing his part in that whole being friendly thing, but apparently that made things worse. ]

So by "treated him the same as I would have anyone", you mean "He got 4 particles of dust within 100 feet of me, so I threw him hard enough to dislocate his shoulder."

[That sounds like someone with experience.]

[ He glowers. ]

It was a handful. On me. And he didn't dislocate anything.

[ He thinks? It's not like he came back to check. Whatever, Reiner is a Titan Shifter, he would be fine. ]

Edited 2023-07-21 20:28 (UTC)

Hrrrrrmmm. [She fixes Levi with a discerning look.]

Did he even learn your rules about keeping stuff clean when he was, uh.

[Y'know. Pretending to be a soldier so he could steal the Founder.]

One of your soldiers?

[ Stares right back because is she trying to fucking trap him with some red tape shit? He's clearly in the right here! ]

I don't know. He was never part of my squad.

[ More like, he decided to out himself as a traitor before Levi had the chance to pick his new squad, and that whole kerfuffle certainly helped him make up his mind about them. ]

[ But Levi was pretty infamous all across the Corps, so if Reiner didn't pick up on it, that's on him. ~~Just how he somehow missed the extremely important peach customs, some spy he is,,~~ ]

Then I think he probably just had no idea that the sand bothered you and thought you attacked him without cause. [Huufffff.] That's fine. I'll talk to him about that stuff.

[She rubs her neck.]

....It's really complicated. He doesn't know about the alliance or anything, so he still thinks everybody from Paradis is an enemy combatant, but. I. Might've

[HUFFFFFF.]

I mighta let it slip that I consider you my best friend.

[She rubs her foot into the ground a bit. It's a mix of annoyance with her self for letting that slip and a little bit of embarrassment to actually say out loud to Levi that she feels that way about him.]

So I think he's...really freaked out and scared for my sake.

That's his problem. [ But. Dead civilians would definitely be Levi's problem, so he relents in a moment. ] ...Thank you.

[ And then she keeps talking, and then -- ]

[ Oh. ]

[ He's not sure how to react to that, or if he's supposed to say anything at all. If anybody asked who his best friend was, he-- okay, he probably wouldn't answer to begin with, but he would definitely think it was Hange. Maybe Hange and Erwin before that. And Furlan before that. He almost wants to ask her, what about Falco, but perhaps she counts him as... something else, now. ]

[ Aside from Ellipsa, Levi has only known Gabi for a few days. She'd told him some things about their life after, so it's not like he's completely blindsided, but he hasn't lived it. He thinks of her as -- little sibling, maybe, or another brat in his care that he's fond of enough to give his life for. Not necessarily less, but different. And yet, she thinks he's her best friend. ]

[ His friends are all dead back home, so eventually, it might be true to him, too. It probably is, in the future. It may one day be, here. But it's not right now. ]

[ That seems unfair to her. ]

[ ...She probably knows, though. Right? ]

...Right. [ He just says, awkwardly, and decides to change the subject to the more immediately concerning topic. ] It would be much easier if he knew, but right now he'd probably just accuse us of lying, wouldn't he?

[ Maybe they should formulate a plan of some sort. ]

[Falco is in a constant fluctuating superposition of "something else" and "no wait no something else we're just friends" and "yeah he's my best friend too of course he is" and "aauuuuuuUUGUGGGHHHH I DON'T KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW". It's been three years since he confessed that he loved her and wanted to marry her and in those three years, she honestly couldn't tell you what progress has been made between them. Part of her really wants to give him some kinda answer, but she also wants them to get to know each other outside of either being in war or training for war, plus she's still even three years later parsing through the small mountain of emotional burdens that were placed on her by, y'know, said war. At a certain point, she feels like she's just dragging her feet, but. She doesn't know what to do next. She's just lucky that Falco is such a patient guy.

Her relationship with Levi, even with Weird Timeline Stuff thrown into it, is pretty straightforward, relative to all of that.

This Levi isn't her Levi, but at the same time, Levi is Levi. It's why she feels okay being so open with him about this stuff, even with the three-year gap between them. Honestly, sometimes, she kinda forgets that this Levi and her Levi is even a distinction to be made.]

...hrrmmmnnn...

[She lets out a noise and looks away when he mentions Reiner accusing them of lying.]

I don't think he would accuse me of lying. I think if I told him everything that happened and how it happened...he would believe it.

That's what I'm worried about, honestly.

[She lets out a breath, and she looks down at the ground.]

If you didn't know about the Alliance beforehand, and I told you that you wound up allying with Warriors of Marley who tried to destroy Paradis Island multiple times...what would your first question be?

[ They're both basically kids. They can take their time figuring that shit out. ]

[ But consider this, Gabi: you can have someone be both your bestie and also your significant annoyance! Have you ever thought about that? ]

[ Levi frowns a little, at first not quite following what the problem is then. He gives her question a serious consideration, too, so he's quiet for a few moments before answering. ]

...Why. I'd want to know the reason.

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