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i-ivy-1 · 2 months ago

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Somewhere Only We Know Prologue

(Posting the prologue to my story here, to see if it interests people :3) Characters: Levi Ackerman, Original Female Character Tags (For the whole story): Slow Burn, Angst, Enemies to Lovers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Levi Ackerman is Bad at Feelings, Eventual Smut, Protective Levi Ackerman, Found Family, Trauma bond, Moral Ambiguity, Self-Destruction, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bad Decisions, MC has Issues, idiots to lovers (Most Accurate), Emotionally Repressed, he's trying okay??, Graphic Depictions of Pining, Yearning, Possessive Levi Ackerman, Young Levi Ackerman, Long talks in small rooms, Aggressive Tea Making, Sharing a Bed, and a braincell, Section Commander MC, MC is NOT an adoptive parent (She swears), He falls harder, Sexual Tension, Tension, why are they so tense → Read the rest on AO3

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"𝔇𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔶. 𝔒𝔫𝔢 𝔡𝔞𝔶, 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔰𝔴𝔢𝔯 𝔴𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔠𝔬𝔪𝔢. 𝔓𝔢𝔯𝔥𝔞𝔭𝔰 𝔱𝔬𝔬 𝔩𝔞𝔱𝔢, 𝔬𝔯 𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔥𝔞𝔭𝔰 𝔢𝔵𝔞𝔠𝔱𝔩𝔶 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔦𝔱 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔪𝔢𝔞𝔫𝔱 𝔱𝔬 𝔟𝔢."

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𝙿𝚛𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚐𝚞𝚎

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚆𝚎𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚂𝚞𝚛𝚟𝚒𝚟𝚊𝚕 ༺༻

"Mom, what does it mean to be strong?"

The boy's voice was barely above a whisper, his wide gray eyes reflecting the flicker of candlelight in their cramped underground dwelling. His mother—elegant despite their circumstances, with the kindest features he'd ever known—smoothed down his black hair with gentle fingers, carefully tucking away the strands she’d just finished trimming.

“Why are you asking that, honey?”

He shrugged, small shoulders bearing a weight no child should carry.

"I think being strong means being able to protect people," the boy said quietly, answering his own question. "But I'm not strong, am I, Mom? I can't... can't stop the bad men from coming. I can't keep you safe." His voice wavered, and he lowered his head. "And now you're sick... and I still don't know how to protect you."

That shattered her heart.

"Oh, my sweet boy," she whispered, pulling him close until his face was buried against her shoulder. "Strength isn't about stopping every bad thing from happening. Sometimes... the strongest thing you can do is keep going, keep loving, even when the world tries to take that from you."

She drew him in tighter, arms wrapped around his small frame, rocking him gently. Her lips pressed a tender kiss to the crown of his head, lingering there, as if love alone could shield him from the world.

Levi pulled back to look at her, those gray eyes already carrying flecks of the steel they would one day become.

"Like the brave boy you told me about yesterday?"

"Mhm." Kuchel caressed his cheek. "Exactly."

His small face tightened, trying to make sense of a thought that didn’t belong in a child’s world.

"Will I be strong enough someday, Mama? Strong enough to save people?"

Kuchel's smile was heartbreaking in its beauty.

"You already are, honey. You just don't know it yet. And someday..." Her voice grew distant, as if seeing something far beyond this room, "you’ll save someone who needs it most."

He nodded solemnly, tucking her words away in the deepest part of his heart, where they would remain long after her voice had been silenced forever.

ೱ

Year 845

The rusted gates of Wall Maria lamented as they creaked open, and their iron hinges wailed like ghosts, burdened with the weight of years marked by war and sacrifice. The mournful sound resonated through the remnants of the Survey Corps like a cruel fanfare for those who had made it back—and those who had not.

Levi sat astride his horse as he led what remained of his comrades through the narrow passage, his steel-gray eyes fixed forward, refusing to flinch even as the weight of failure threatened to crush him from within.

Behind them, a cart trundled forward as its wooden wheels carried a far heavier load than mere bodies.

Levi's face was impenetrable. No flicker of emotion crossed his features, and no tremor revealed the anguish locked inside. His jaw remained set in that perpetual hard line that his comrades had come to recognize as their most respectable fighter's trademark expression.

To the soldiers who followed, he was unshakable pillar—Humanity's Strongest. The soldier worth an entire brigade.

Unbreakable, unyielding, undefeated.

However, in this moment, he felt anything but.

With each expedition beyond the walls, that title carved itself deeper into his flesh like a curse.

He had watched too many die.

Had felt their blood spatter across his face as he severed Titan napes seconds too late.

Strongest? What a fucking joke that was.

Inside the walls, the air hung heavy with grief. Families lined the streets, eyes brimmed with unspoken prayers. Each time the weary soldiers passed, whispers flared and died, and hearts teetered between relief and despair. Children stood on tiptoes, scanning for parents who would never return. Wives clutched handkerchiefs to trembling lips, and fathers stared with hard eyes that couldn't quite hide their fear. Levi kept his gaze forward, unwilling to meet their eyes—unwilling to face the silent pleas he had no answers for.

"Look, it’s Humanity’s strongest," a child’s voice rang out above the hush, equal parts wonder and accusation.

"He made it back again," whispered another in awe.

As if surviving was any fucking achievement, he thought bitterly. Surviving while others died under your command.

The barracks beckoned with the hollow promise of reprieve. The journey there stretched like an endless plain, each hoofbeat marking another second that Levi had to maintain his facade of strength. By the time they reached headquarters, his muscles ached from the effort of simply remaining upright.

The moment the soldiers dispersed, Levi peeled away from the clamor of debriefings and medical reports. He slipped into a shadowed alcove near the training grounds, a narrow space between two crumbling walls, and let himself collapse against the cold stone. For a few minutes—no more—he gave himself permission to be human.

All his skill. All his so-called strength. None of it had been enough.

The Titans were a relentless tide of gnashing teeth and grasping hands, and he was but one blade cutting through flesh that regenerated as quickly as he could slice it.

Levi clenched his fists until his nails bit crescent moons into his palms.

What's the fucking point of all this strength if I can't protect the ones who trust me enough to follow?

"Sir," a soft voice broke through the haze of his thoughts. "The Commander requested your presence."

He exhaled slowly, dragging his grief and fury back down into the place where he kept them buried—chained and gagged deep inside.

"Yeah," he replied more quietly than he intended. "I'll be there in a minute."

He waited until the soldier's footsteps faded before allowing himself one more moment. Nothing filled him with more rage than the possibility that all these deaths might amount to nothing. That the Survey Corps' blood-soaked struggle might be a futile exercise in postponing humanity's inevitable extinction.

But amid this familiar bitter anger, another sensation had begun to gnaw at him. It was an ancient, buried feeling from his time in the Underground, before he'd been dragged into the sunlight by Erwin's unyielding vision. Back when survival meant something simpler and dirtier than humanity's continued existence.

He banished it—shoved it down into the darkest corner of his mind where it couldn't distract him.

That feeling... it was a luxury. One he couldn’t afford. Not now. Not when so many people depended on his clarity, his strength—his ability to kill what no one else could.

He pushed himself away from the wall and straightened his cravat, and his expression turned icy. His boots clicked against the stone floor as he made his way to Shadis's office, his stride purposeful, his shoulders squared beneath the weight of responsibility that never lightened.

Behind him, the shadows seemed to stretch and curl like fingers reaching for his back.

༺༻

Tea was his one indulgence, his sole comfort in a world that offered precious little of either. Levi sat at his desk, watching as steam rose from the delicate cup, curling and twisting into the still air of his quarters.

He sipped the scalding liquid, letting its bitter warmth wash down his throat. His hands, capable of such violence when wielding blades against Titan flesh, cradled the teacup with as much gentleness as he could muster. It was one of the few things he owned that wasn't stained with blood or tainted by death.

One of the only things he had known, owned, cherished before he was introduced to a life of violence.

His jaw clenched. Memory pressed in—Isabel’s bright, mischievous grin as she filched his tea leaves; Farlan’s amusement whenever he caught Levi in rare, unguarded moments. But their faces didn’t stay whole for long. They never did. Instead, he saw Isabel’s head, severed and wide-eyed, and Farlan’s broken body lying where no one should die.

He had sworn something that day, kneeling in rain-drenched mud beside what was left of them: that their deaths would not be meaningless. That he would forge purpose from their sacrifice and carry it, even if the weight broke him.

His thoughts turned to Erwin, the man whose vision had pulled Levi from the filth of the Underground and given him purpose beyond mere survival. Erwin, whose calculating eyes seemed to see through walls and into the hearts of men, who had recognized in Levi a weapon to be wielded against humanity's greatest enemy.

Sometimes Levi wondered if Erwin knew how close he came to breaking with each mission. Did he see the hairline fractures spreading through Levi's constructed armor? How he was still so stuck to the past? Or was Erwin too focused on the horizon, on the truth that lay beyond the walls, to notice the toll his ambition took on those who carried it forward?

Despite this, Erwin was someone Levi trusted and respected deeply.

They both understood this: The battlefield was no place for weakness.

But here, in the quiet of his quarters, Levi could admit the truth—if only to himself.

He was tired.

Tired of washing blood from his hands and finding it never really gone. Tired of penning letters to parents and lovers, hollow words to fill the silence left by the dead. Tired of hope that always ended in ash.

Tired of failing those that matter the most.

Yet, to reveal such prostration was a luxury Humanity's Strongest Soldier could not afford. His silence was more than self-preservation—it was armor for those who still believed he was unshakable.

"Damn it," he muttered to himself.

He wrested his focus from the past.

He sipped his tea again. It had gone lukewarm.

The warmth it once offered was already fading—like everything else.

There was no escape.

Not from the path he had chosen—or perhaps the path that had chosen him.

The ghosts of his past would always haunt him, whispering of choices made and unmade, of promises made and broken, reminding him of the family he once had.

"ℑ𝔱'𝔰 𝔫𝔬 𝔲𝔰𝔢 𝔤𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔟𝔞𝔠𝔨 𝔱𝔬 𝔶𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔡𝔞𝔶, 𝔟𝔢𝔠𝔞𝔲𝔰𝔢 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔞 𝔡𝔦𝔣𝔣𝔢𝔯𝔢𝔫𝔱 𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔰𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔫."

For some reason, the words surfaced in his mind—a quote from a book he had finished reading a while ago.

And maybe that was true. Maybe he was different now.

But he could still fight for what came next. For a future—even if that future seemed more distant as time passed.

With a slow breath, Levi set the teacup down. He leaned back in his chair, eyes on the ceiling as if searching for something to believe in.

Instead of sleeping, he picked up his box of savings, and started counting.

For now, he would endure. He had to.

Just a little longer.

────༺༻────

Night had draped its heavy cloak over the Underground City, the perpetual darkness deepening until even the meager light that filtered down from the surface world was extinguished. In the labyrinthine passages beneath Wall Sina, where the dregs of humanity scraped together an existence in the shadows, life slithered on.

Near one of the rare functioning street lamps, a cluster of merchants huddled together. Their faces were pale and drawn, their breath misting faintly in the stagnant air as they muttered the only currency worth anything down here: rumors.

"Swear it on my mother’s grave—last expedition, the Survey Corps came back thirty, maybe forty men short," said one, gaunt and wrapped in a patched leather coat.

"Hell of a price just to touch some trees outside the wall," scoffed the second, tugging a threadbare scarf higher over his mouth. "Madness, really."

The third merchant, a woman, leaned in. "Ah, but have you heard? There's one of 'em—some freak of a man—cutting down Titans like he's born for it. Word is, he’s not even from up top. Came outta here. The Underground."

The other two blinked. "From this pisshole?"

"Yeah. One of ours, if you can believe it."

"I've heard whispers," the first muttered. "Invincible, is what they call him. A hero. They say the death toll dropped since he joined. Almost like he’s dragging them back alive outta sheer spite."

“What’s his name?”

The three froze. That voice wasn’t one of theirs.

Eyes darted to the edge of the light, where the shadows swallowed the stone wall. A figure stood there—still, watching, silent until she’d decided to speak.

The scarfed man swallowed hard. “Didn’t see you there.”

"I said," The woman demanded again, "What's his name?"

The third merchant shifted uneasily. “They… uh, I think they called him Levi. That’s what people say, anyway.”

Something flashed in the woman's eyes—an intense hunger of something far more dangerous than mere curiosity.

Her lips curved into a smile that held no warmth, only calculation and a long-dormant purpose which had suddenly awakened.

Without another word, she melted back into the darkness, leaving the merchants to their gossip.

Levi, huh?

⚚

“…Wasn’t that—”

“Yeah,” the scarfed man muttered, not taking his eyes off the darkness she'd melted into. “That was her.”

“Alice.”

#levi ackerman #attack on titan #levi aot #attackontitan #levi fanfiction #levi x oc #fyp #shingeki no kyojin

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