«oi… why do you look so much like her…»

the entire expedition to Shiganshina was pure horror — a constant shock, full of revelations that turned the world upside down, impossible truths that shattered every illusion Levi had clung to. you can never be ready for everything — Levi knew that better than anyone. yet when he looked at you, knocked off his feet, utterly confused, his eyes went wide and he had no clue how to react. you were a mirror image of his mother — if his mother had ever had the chance to be a bit healthier than that scrawny, skin-and-bones girl for sale with translucent skin, so pale and resigned to her fate. if she’d ever worn anything besides that shabby white dress-blouse. in particular… foreign attire.

not just any attire. a dress uniform so grand it looked more regal than Historia’s gowns. standing over him, you might as well have been a divine being. and he, a peasant, a brute soldier, could only gawk, staring at those unsettlingly unfamiliar familiar features.

he didn’t know you. yet with sickening precision he recognized an Ackerman. and you weren’t hiding it, either, that you recognized him back on the same primal level he did. Levi tried to gather his wits — tried to summon the discipline that carried him through a thousand battles — but his heart pounded so fiercely he thought the world might tremble with its rhythm. your voice broke into his storm of thoughts, soft and resonant: «you must be one of the island Ackermans», you said. his family, from the other side of those walls. Levi would never have imagined such a thing.

the windy plain around them fell silent, as if all nature paused in disbelief. rustling leaves held their breath. a distant crow called once, a solitary chord in the hush. even the titans he took down effortlessly stopped emitting that hot smoke and finally evaporated completely, leaving only gigantic vertebrae behind.

you’d come to the island for one reason only. the wars your buddy Zeke had fought in barely interested you — though young Warriors adored you, since you’d never mistreated them despite your noble bloodline. no, you were here to find your relatives. and now one of them was sprawled on his ass right in front of you, smeared head to toe in Zeke’s blood, your ornate rifle pressed dead-center between his eyes — only because you’d had to wrench Jaeger from the hands of that tiny but fiercely tenacious Ackerman. Levi’s gaze flicked to the rifle in your hands — sleek wood, cold steel, home to countless whispered prayers before pulling the trigger. it was aimed at him, yet his fear melted into something more fractured: relief, longing, an ache that seared deeper than any wound.

he saw every fragment of his life in that moment: the lullabies he never heard, the orphan’s blanket he never owned, the nights when hunger licked at his bones. Levi remembered his mother’s ghostly arms around him, fragile and trembling. he’d trained his body to hate, to kill titans, to endure pain until nothing inside him felt. but your presence dismantled him. you were hope and reckoning intertwined.

Levi — Reiner and Bertholdt reported about him, and Pieck delivered you the news about finding an Ackerman. after catching up, you crossed a damn ocean just to see the remnants of your once-great dynasty with your own eyes.

he stared at you dumbly, utterly stunned. he knew almost nothing about his own family — Kuchel, his mother was gone, and Kenny had bailed the moment Levi learned to hold a knife. right now, all he could do was take you in and gag on his own heart pounding in his throat. stare at you with only one coherent thought in his head: «where have you been all my life…»

you took a cautious step forward, the rifle lowering in hesitant recognition. Levi’s knees unlocked, and he sank to one knee in instinctual reverence — military habit, pride, grief all tangled. the dirt pressed into his palms, squishing between his fingers. he tasted earth and dust, remembered every battlefield beneath him. he hated dirt — but right now he could not care less.