*Reader's POV*

It turned out that Levi's idea to have the two of you spar in front of the others, even if it had a scripted ending, had the desired effect. The other Scouts seeing for themselves that you were able to make Levi work for a win in the spar was proof enough for them to acknowledge that you did have the skill to be in his squad. Of course, it didn't make the rumors go away entirely, there were still a few bitter people who just didn't want you to have so much success so quickly, mainly people who'd known you in the Cadets and were still green enough to the Scouts to be worried about that kind of petty thing. For the rest, seeing your ability up front and confirmed in the close spar was enough to take the momentum out of the rumors, and threats of bringing it officially before Erwin turned hollow.

It had also served the dual purpose of the rest of Levi's squad seeing that you were, in fact, perfectly capable of sparring with Levi and most likely knocking the rest of them on their asses. If there was any lingering doubt that you were capable and that you deserved the one on one training with Levi that they'd been speculating about since it started, that doubt was now erased. Even Oluo couldn't come up with anything smart to say, considering you'd almost beaten Levi before, true to your deal, you'd given him the opening necessary to make sure he won.

To help disguise it as the discredit to the rumors it actually was, the two of you hadn't really shifted the training session as a whole to the training grounds. Instead, Levi had volunteered to give a demonstration, and you had been his sparring partner for said demonstration. Which meant the rest of that time, after the spar was finished, was spent with Levi using it for a teaching experience, walking back through parts of the spar to teach the others, or highlight moments where you'd done something smart or something wrong so the others could learn from it.

In other words, everyone had benefited from it, even though the motivation behind it had been to take the teeth from the rumor's bite.

Feeling a little relieved after you officially came to realize the rumors had died down, you were allowing yourself a lazy hour out in the field, the horses out and about with two of them, your horse and Levi's, lingering around you, one of them, Petra's horse, occasionally checking on you but otherwise doing its own thing. You'd found a nice, mostly undisturbed patch of long grass and had spent some time drawing before setting your sketchbook aside and laying back against the grass, eyes closed and simply soaking up the rays of the sun with a slight smile on your face.

Zephyr pawed at the grass next to your head, pausing long enough to lean over you and sniff at your face before giving a snort, hot horse breath puffing on your face, and causing your nose to wrinkle at the smell.

"Gross," you murmured, simply glad it hadn't been a wet snort. Levi's horse, meanwhile, had gotten down on the ground and rolled over, legs up in the air as they scratched their back, the ruckus enough to disturb the picture of peace but not enough to make you open your eyes or to irritate you.

Speaking of Levi...

His scent was on the breeze, growing gradually closer with his footsteps muffled by the grass until he came to a stop beside you, on the opposite side Zephyr. You cracked your eyes open to look up at him, the sunlight framed behind him making him a little difficult to look at, causing you to squint.

"You make a spectacle of yourself always around the horses," Levi said bluntly as Zephyr nudged at your arm with her nose, nickering softly.

"Pfft," You scoffed, closing your eyes again. Sure, you'd gone from the girl that none of the horses liked to the girl that key horses seemed to flock to, and you spent almost all of your free time out here, which hadn't gone unnoticed, but you wouldn't say you were a spectacle. "Maybe if I was naked I would be. Unfortunately, I'm still clothed, so I wouldn't say a spectacle."

"Unfortunately?"

"Don't think too hard about it, I realized how that sounded after it already came out," you let out a soft sigh, snuggling deeper into your grassy bed as Levi started to step away from you and towards his horse, which was no longer on its back but lying like a normal horse with its legs tucked underneath it.. "Besides, it's a great opportunity to just feel the sun on my skin..."

Idly, you wondered why Levi was over here in the first place. Was he retrieving his horse for some exercise or something?

He was quiet for a few moments, standing over by his horse and simply running his hand gently through it's mane or down its neck, keeping the horse perfectly content where it was in the field. For the wildest moment, you thought Levi was going to join you in the serenity of the field.

Levi clicked his tongue, and his horse got to their feet, shaking its head and snorting softly before Levi climbed up onto the horse, bareback.

Shit, and you missed it? Wait, how did he do that, his horse was so much taller than him–he had to lean onto his tiptoes to pet his horse's muzzle!

You cracked your eyes open to look up at him and sat up, noticing that he'd brought his horse astride you and was staring down at you almost expectantly.

"Are you going to lay there all day, or are you coming?" Levi asked, legs giving a bit of pressure to his horse's haunches to urge them forwards, already starting to leave you behind. Startled, you scrambled to your feet, Zephyr a little spooked by the sudden movement before settling down as you climbed onto her back with your sketchbook slipped into loosened straps on your uniform to keep it secure, unsure how this would work bareback and trying to observe what Levi was doing at a distance to copy and figure it out.

"I didn't know I was supposed to be following," you muttered under your breath, leaning forward and giving a little squeeze of your legs to get Zephyr to move forward and follow after Levi and his horse at a quick trot to at least catch up before matching the pace.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Levi's POV*

Admittedly, this was a little spur of the moment, having her follow after him like this. He'd only come for his horse to try and get some exercise in during a spare moment and find some peace and quiet. Finding her basking in the sun had been a mild surprise, but not an unwelcome one.

Her comment about the sun, though, had rekindled one of his many remaining questions about her, one of the ones that was more curiosity than a need to know matter. Having her come along meant they would have a bit of time to talk, and for Levi to ask a few of the questions that lingered in his mind as the conversation progressed naturally. And if he decided that his questions were satiated, he trusted her to be more of a silent companion so that he could still have his moment of peace away from the bustle at headquarters.

Leading them towards the forest that ODM training usually took place in, Levi was grateful that she didn't try to fill the air with needless chatter, instead choosing to guide her horse beside his, watching him closely but also focused on guiding her horse at the moment and adjusting to riding bareback.

Eventually, as the sunlight lessened and they started walking under the shade of the trees, she finally asked the question she must have had since his impromptu invitation.

"I don't usually see you out here, especially riding bareback. Why the sudden joyride?" she asked curiously. Levi rolled his eyes.

"You've been giving him so many treats, I have to find extra time to exercise him now," Levi said pointedly.

"And me?"

Levi was quiet for a moment, taking a few more beats to enjoy the silence in the trees and the general calm of a casual ride through the forest that wasn't part of any training or travel towards some mission. Just riding because he could, and his horse needed it.

His mind focused on the image he'd just seen of Y/N laying stretched out in the grass, her necklace visible thanks to the fact she was keeping her uniform loose and comfortable for her current moment of relaxation. She'd simply been soaking in the sun; a simple pleasure that wouldn't have been possible without that necklace. If she didn't have it, such a mundane and regular thing that so many people topside took advantage of and people in the Underground paid ridiculous amounts to experience for a short while, would end up killing her. She wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that necklace, simply put. Well, she'd still be alive, but she wouldn't be topside, wouldn't be in the Scouts, wouldn't have crossed paths with him.

Such a tiny and apparently mysterious thing, to do so much.

"It sounded like there was more to the story about that necklace of yours," Levi said conversationally, keeping his eyes forward on the path they were guiding the horses through in a casual stroll. "I know you don't know how it works, but how did you find it in the first place?"

She let out a long, slow sigh beside him, falling silent for a few moments. A few birds took off from the branches above as they passed under them, disappearing higher into the trees.

"What did I say before? I just said I got it off the body of another vampire, right?" she asked, clearly trying to regain a sense of how much of the story she needed to tell.

"Mhm. Was it someone you knew?"

"Yes," she answered carefully. Levi kept his leading questions brief, but he was a lot more tactful this time about his questioning than he'd been in the past.

At least in his opinion, by his standards.

"A friend?"

"Definitely not. An enemy, more like it."

"Did you kill her?"

"No. I got her killed, but it was vampire hunters that killed her."

Levi's gaze shifted to her. "Vampire hunters?"

"What? You really think you and Erwin are the only human beings to know about vampires? Think about how often I feed and then factor in the fact there are more out there. People are bound to find out, no matter how cautious a vampire may be about covering their trail. Some people, after crossing paths with a vampire, have decided that it's best just to hunt us down one by one and wipe us all out. That's usually what a vampire hunter is."

He'd been trying not to think about how many vampires might be lurking in the shadows of the Underground alone. There couldn't be too many, humanity was on the brink of extinction before getting confined to these walls, and if a swath of vampires had been feeding on them from the shadows, humanity would have died off a long time ago. But there were more out there. Far less...friendly ones.

"If there's enough people that know about your kind to hunt your kind, and there's more of your kind lurking about, how has word not gotten out in the past hundred years or so?"

She shrugged. "Again, no one's really explained things to me. But I would assume survival would make the community, no matter how isolated we all are, step in to stop someone who threatened to expose us. Especially the older, stronger vampires."

"Yet no one's stepped in to stop you from spilling all this information to me and Erwin. And why never bother to even ask if we'd keep your secret?"

"Well, I figured you'd both be smart enough to know if word got out about vampires, we'd either be wiped out because of the threat we pose, or the military would try to weaponize us en-mass, which would not...end well," she said uncomfortably. Levi didn't comment–it was a fair enough assumption, one that he noticed didn't have anything to do with whether or not Levi and Erwin would respect her privacy or the fact that it wasn't their secret to share. She went right for the cause of the good of humanity and whether it would be more advantageous for them to keep it a secret or share the knowledge.

She was actually on the nose with her observation. It probably would tip in those two directions, and considering vampires needed humanity as a food source, trying to come up with a vampire army wouldn't end well, but there would be idiots among the brass that would want to try it. And Levi almost shuddered at the thought of purposely turning people into blood drinking monsters to use them as weapons.

"As for why no one's stopped me...it could be they don't know. Or they're taking a calculated risk that either I'll be discovered and disposed of quietly to avoid a panic, or that if my secret got out it would only be individuals that could be trusted not to share the secret. There's no threat right now, so long as the wrong people don't find out what I am. But I think you're wandering away from your original question."

Levi nodded. He could ask more about vampire society and hierarchy another time. The mention of older vampires stepping in to bring younger vampires whose actions threatened to expose their kind caused a slight shiver down his spine, but he ignored it for now and focused back on the question about the vampire she'd gotten the necklace from.

"All right, so you...what, hired vampire hunters to kill an enemy vampire?" Levi asked, uncertain what would have even led to that situation. Had the other vampire encroached on her 'territory' or something.

"Definitely not that, either. It's a bit of a grim and complicated story. It happened fairly recently, a few years ago in the Underground–obviously, since I couldn't go above ground before getting the necklace. I don't know if you would have heard about it or not," she said with a frown.

"Well, considering I didn't know about vampires until just recently," Levi said dryly.

"No, I mean the Stonewood Hovels Massacres."

Stonewood Hovels. He knew exactly where Stonewood was in the Underground. It was a section of the city that was especially run down and dilapidated, and yet it had been one of the safest places you could live, one of the lower crime areas of the city. If it hadn't been literal hovels and shacks, the most run down of buildings and filthiest surroundings, he might have chosen to live there for safety, but had chosen a cleaner and more sturdy home considering he had the skills to defend it despite being in a riskier part of the Underground. A lot of the weak or vulnerable went there for shelter–he'd escorted a few people there so they would be safer.

He had not been aware of any massacre happening there, and hearing that there had been, knowing the kind of people that lived there...his heart sank.

"I know where it is. Didn't know there'd been a massacre there. It was a relatively safe place, last I knew."

"Because I lived there," she said quietly, and the silence in the forest momentarily turned gloomier. "Having a vampire that lived there that preyed on dangerous individuals kept the people there safe–I'd target anyone who came after the people seeking shelter there, and it worked. Until it didn't."

"The other vampire?"

"...Yeah. Madaline. She was much older than me–which also meant much stronger. I confronted her about feeding off the people in Stonewood. She'd strolled right in and made a meal of a couple families. It took me a while to find her, because at the time, I didn't know she was from the surface–I thought she was another vampire below ground. I was way in over my head–learned the hard way just how much stronger an older vampire can be. She would have killed me if she hadn't decided it would be more fun to toy with me."

There was a bitter edge in her voice as she spoke, digging into darker and apparently shockingly fresh bloody memories. Levi let her speak, staying silent and letting the parts of the story she was willing to share come at her own volition, at her own pace, and without interruption.

"Since I couldn't do anything, and it was her form of entertainment, she started preying specifically on Stonewood. I would follow her, try to prevent her from being able to get into people's homes, try to figure out where she was coming from or any information about who she was. I followed her to the stairs and found out she could walk in the sun when the sunlight didn't burn her on her way out. I didn't know how at first, I just thought maybe it was an older vampire ability. I noticed that she always had the necklace on, but I didn't have anything to confirm my theory. Eventually, all the death happening in a previously peaceful part of the Underground drew the attention of some vampire hunters. Madaline took the opportunity to start framing me for the murders, which started leading the hunters towards me and resulted in me having to move out of the area entirely. About two, three weeks into the cat and mouse game, I managed to figure out how to turn the tides, and started framing Madaline for my own kills, and trying to get to her newer kills before the hunters to get rid of evidence framing me and plant signs of her. It took a lot of work, more patience than I thought I was capable of given how many people were dying, but...I managed to do it in a way Madaline didn't catch on that the hunters were turning their attention to her instead of me."

Y/N heaved a tired sigh, running a hand through her hair and rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. "When they cornered her, they did so with my help–unknowingly, of course. They didn't know I distracted her whenever they might have given themselves away. So they had the advantage of surprise when they went for her. I let them kill her, and before they could torch the body–vampire hunters tend to do that just to make sure the vampire really is dead, in case they miss or botched the kill–I took the necklace, just in case. Just ran right by and snatched it off her body. I wasn't sure if it was how she walked in the sun, but if it was, I wanted it so I could get out of there. I laid low for a few days so I wouldn't draw the attention of the hunters, and tested out the necklace the first chance I had. When it worked, I only stayed Underground long enough to figure out what my plan was going to be once I was topside. The rest you probably read in my file–the apartment, the odd jobs before joining the Cadets, and so on."

Her hand dropped to the necklace at her neck, touching where Levi assumed the medallion was hidden beneath her shirt. "That's why I don't know how it works, just that it does. And I plan to put it to much better use than the vampire before me."

He had no idea something like that happened after he left. Sure, he didn't live down there anymore, he'd been plucked out of the Underground and hadn't looked back except the rare times he needed to go down there on Scout business, like when he was investigating Y/N. Hearing her say that Madaline went through entire families, that this happened for what must have been months...

Suddenly her diet didn't seem so bad, compared to what she could be doing. It still disconcerted him, but at least she wasn't slaughtering entire families in what was supposed to be a safe haven for the vulnerable–a place that gained that status because she'd been there to protect it, no less. He wouldn't have guessed.

That old worry about how she approached the death around her stirred again, how she felt about people dying so she could live still murky to him. Her tone suggested it bothered her, that she was uncomfortable, in this case that she had guilt. But she'd still taken her time to carefully frame Madaline and make sure she wouldn't catch on to what was happening, even though doing so resulted in more families and innocents dying. That took some cold blooded calculation, or at least an ability to set aside human emotions, even for a little while, to just ignore the cost like that in favor of playing it smart.

Of course, Erwin was perfectly capable of doing the same thing, though he was faced with different situations.

However, there was something else bothering him about the tale she'd just told him.

"How did Madaline get into their homes? I thought you said vampires couldn't enter the living space of a human being without an invitation?" Levi said with a worried frown, wondering what ploy the vampire had to get inside.

Y/N was quiet, and apparently she'd gone still, because Zephyr stopped walking, and Levi pulled his horse in front of hers and looked back at her to see a worried look on her face, her fingers clutching noticeably at the medallion under her shirt, a thousand thoughts flashing through her eyes before she finally looked at Levi.

"...I think this is something I need to be telling Commander Erwin, too. I wasn't thinking about it when you were interrogating me, because I was only thinking about what I could do and the threat I posed. Plus, I've had some time to reflect on a few things."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Obviously the three of them met in Levi's office for the important thing she wanted to tell them–Erwin still had that layer of protection having not invited her into his office yet, and Levi preferred to keep it that way for his own peace of mind.

Y/N was standing in front of them, Erwin having taken a seat facing her while Levi leaned against the back of said chair, his back to both of them, though his head turned slightly to show he was listening to what was being said.

"There were a couple things that didn't come up during the interrogation that I realize should have been said earlier. I wasn't thinking about one of them at the time, and the other it was just a theory, but they should have been mentioned earlier." She took a deep breath, the hands that had been fiddling in front of her dropping to her sides as she tried to halt the nervous tic. "You asked me what I was capable of, but I failed to warn you of a dangerous ability other vampires have that I don't. It's called compulsion. It's a sort of mind control power."

Levi's head turned a bit more fully to fix her with a hard stare for leaving this out–even Erwin looked concerned, despite his usually calm demeanor.

"What do you mean, sort of? Just how far does that control reach?" Levi asked sharply.

"Like, a vampire could compel you to fall on your own sword and you'd do it without physical hesitation even though you were mentally aware for some reason you were being made to do it. They could order you to stay calm and not scream and you'd sit there physically content to let them saw your arm off, calm even though you knew you shouldn't be and you were in pain. Making you do things against your will while you retain an awareness, without being able to stop yourself from following their orders. They could compel you to forget you've ever seen them before, erase entire memories, maybe even alter how you view someone if they spent enough time tampering with your psyche."

That was fucking terrifying. And he'd seen some messed up shit. To know there were people walking around with the ability to strip him of his free will and identity...

Yeah, it was a good thing she hadn't mentioned this during the interrogation. He wouldn't have been able to trust a word out of her mouth, unable to know if she was compelling him or not.

"Is it preventable?" Erwin asked softly.

"Well, a vampire needs to keep direct eye contact while giving the command. Also I think a strong willpower could delay it a bit, but an individual will, no matter what, have to follow the command given to them. And of course, the white sage. It's another thing that the herb protects you from. Even just wearing something with white sage in it would protect you from the compulsion, though I recommend ingestion, since a piece of jewelry can be ripped off but in your system it has to run its course."

"What about reversible?"

"That...I'm not entirely sure if there's a way to reverse it besides the vampire taking back the command, releasing you from it. I suppose there could be loopholes in the wording. As long as you fulfill the command, you should be released from it. Like...if you were told to jump off a cliff, you could jump off a small one and save yourself from death or injury because you technically fulfilled the command."

"But no other way to reverse it?"

"Not that I know of."

A heavy silence fell over the room, one that Levi eventually broke.

"You're still spiking my tea with that stuff, aren't you?" Levi asked, gaze boring into hers despite the immense unease he felt after what she'd told him.

"I am. But I can stop, if you'd rather do it yourself," she said softly. There were advantages to Levi doing it himself–he could keep track of when he had it and how soon after he would need more, so he didn't take it in excess. But it was also a good habit for both of them to have, making sure he had white sage in his system to protect him from these kinds of things.

Erwin needed to be taking it, too–Erwin especially should be adding white sage to his food or drinks to protect him from a threat like this. Levi would have to bring it up to him later.

"No, don't bother–it's probably a habit for you by now," Levi murmured dismissively in answer to her offer. "You said you can't compel people–why? Is it a personal choice or can you really not do it?"

"I can't–I think it's a strength thing. I'm not old enough, or at least not on a diet that gives me enough strength to do it. At the very least it's an ability that I'll eventually develop, given time. Right now I can't, though. And that's not a lie. Otherwise I could have simply told you to stop digging into my past when you first got suspicious of me," she said pointedly.

That was a good point, and it helped soothe any fears that she might have compelled him in the past. Whether he had a better sense of her personality or not by now, it was a legitimate concern with how easy it would be to lie and claim that she couldn't even though she could.

And once more he was being presented with a way she had protected him before he knew about all this. And once more, even though initially finding out she'd spiked his tea had pissed him off, he was discovering he couldn't even be mad about it because of what it had done for him and the levels of protection it gave him.

"And the theory you had?" Erwin prompted her, reminding everyone in the room there was more than one thing she'd wanted to mention.

"I don't know much about older vampires, my experience with my own kind is extremely limited. There's probably other abilities that I'm not even aware of, so...caution, if you ever are unfortunate enough to cross paths with a vampire besides myself. And the other thing was actually something I noticed on the last expedition that I've been chewing on for a while. I think Titans might be drawn to me, aggressively of course."

"It was rather noticeable after those abnormals charged you," Levi said dryly.

"Yes, well," she mumbled, looking abashed. "I thought about it for a while and the best theory I can come up with is they're drawn to me as a threat and an invasive predator in their...territory, I suppose. We...we share the same food source, but otherwise we normally would never cross paths. Titans are mostly active in the day, vampires normally can only come out at night. Titans are outside the walls, vampires inside them. They see me, a vampire, as a threat to what they want for themselves, so they go after me first to remove the threat, if possible. That's...just my theory, anyway."

"That could be a problem–it could put any scout you're with out in the field in danger," Erwin remarked, and each member of Levi's squad flashed through his mind. "On the other hand, I think I can come up with a few ways it could be twisted to our advantage. Though we'll have to be very mindful of who you're with and who is stationed near you," Erwin hummed, probably already sitting on four different plans for where to position her.

At least she was already assigned to the special ops squad. There weren't that many people Levi would consider capable of handling someone in the group that would attract Titans. Though, while he did trust his squad, and he knew they were capable, he also knew their limits, and he worried that the situations her presence could introduce might be beyond them.

Maybe. This was definitely something to be cautious of moving forward, and they were going to have to play it by ear. There wasn't really any other squad that she could go to, unless they were going to spontaneously develop a vampire squad, which he did not like the thought of at all.

She'd said it herself while they were riding, militarizing vampirism would not end well for anyone.

"Was there anything else?" Erwin asked.

"No, sir, that was it for now. If I think of anything else I'll just tell Captain Levi," she said respectfully, her gaze sliding towards him to gage his reaction to the news.

Honestly, if she thought of anything else, he would probably be around anyway. And this current information...the compulsion thing was disturbing, enough to make a person paranoid of the people around them. But thankfully they had the assurance of the white sage they'd already been ingesting for the biting deterrent.

Well, he got his wish, from before he discovered what she was–he was finding out all kinds of things about her now that the vampire part had been revealed.

He really needed to sit her down and ask the most important things on his mind. And it was something he should probably do soon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Reader's POV*

One of your favorite things about Levi's squad that you had come to discover was how they liked to spend time outside at the tables just talking and relaxing together, getting to know each other as people and keeping the non-work related bonds strong as well as the fighting trust.

You got to spend more time outside, and it gave you a better chance to form the much needed bonds with your squad.

And it gave you some of the companionship you had lacked and craved for such a long, long time.

Petra, predictably, was the one you were closest to. She'd been the first to start to welcome you and to make sure you were included, and the two of you got along wonderfully.

Eld had fallen into a place of mutual respect. After seeing your spar with Captain Levi, it seemed the second in command for the squad had decided it was a sight of honor or perhaps respect that you had sought him out as a teacher, and the two of you had developed a rapport for command and duty, as well as skill, with the training sessions. He was quieter, choosing to speak when he deemed it necessary instead of filling space. Sometimes when there were group tasks going on, he would partner with you so the two of you could do your jobs quickly and in comfortable silence.

Gunther was a bit too uptight with technicalities and protocol for you, but he was a bit more conversational than Eld, so you had more casual social interactions with him–namely when he was interested in something between you, Petra, and Oluo.

Oluo. That was a bit more of a difficult relationship. Oluo had been the last one to accept your place in the squad despite being a rookie, the last one to admit you had stunning skill and mind boggling potential, a few days after the public spar with Levi. His arrogance and attempts to mimic Levi–and falling terribly short–could be downright irritating. But he was a decent guy at heart. And despite how annoying his ego was, how he puffed himself out and tried to give himself an aloof haughtiness by pretending he knew everything and was superior, he was a decent guy at heart, and he did have skill to back up some of his ego. You didn't hate him, and you didn't avoid him, but if you were choosing whose presence to spend your time in, he was at the bottom of your list.

Currently, Oluo and Gunther were in a bit of a squabble about the best way to go about getting your horse ready as quickly as possible without taking risky shortcuts, you and Eld not really listening and minding your business at opposite ends of the table. Levi was a few paces away–and actually where your attention was at–giving his horse a bit more attention with gentle forehead pats before he put him back in the stables. You had the briefest urge to grab your supplies and start sketching the soft scene, but since your drawing hobby had largely remained your own quiet escape and getaway, your own private thing, you didn't want to pull out your sketchbook at the table and draw attention to it.

Petra arrived, a tray with a piping hot teapot and a collection of six cups on one hand, a tray with a few pilfered biscuits on the other as she approached the table. She laid the snacks down in the middle for everyone to reach, and then started handing out the cups one by one to everyone, placing Levi's at the head of the table for when he finished putting away his horse.

"Aha, she appears!" Oluo said happily as he took the cup from her that she offered him. "Maybe you can settle our little debate, since the other two refuse. I–"

"Whoever the other person is, they're right," Petra said bluntly, handing you an empty cup and going to the next person.

"You haven't even heard what we were talking about" Oluo said, looking a little put out as Gunther snickered slightly.

"I am not feeding that ego of yours. So I agree with whatever the opposite stance is over what's probably a trivial matter, on principle."

"What if I was right!"

"I wouldn't admit it."

"Now that, that's discrimination."

"Here's your cup, Captain," Petra said abruptly as Levi came over to the table, trying to use it as a way to end the conversation with Oluo before she ended up in some kind of vicious verbal cycle.

Once everyone had their cups, Petra started pouring, the tea still hot enough that steam billowed out of the spout and cups as she poured. Levi got his first, of course, before Petra started making her way around the table. After letting it cool own enough it wouldn't burn his tongue, he sipped on the drink, and then suddenly looked directly up at you, giving you a pointed stare.

What the hell was that look for? Did he not want you staring at him or something? You averted your gaze, because it was the only thing you could think of for why he would be staring at you like that.

As Petra poured your tea and you thanked her quietly, you heard Levi say, so softly that the others didn't hear it, "Sage."

Oh.

That was what the look was for.

You'd actually brought it up to Levi a while ago, how telling Petra about health benefits to white sage and her being there when you powdered Levi's teabags with it had apparently started a ripple effect of the other members of the squad also adding white sage to their tea. It wasn't like it was some kind of unaffordable luxury–you were growing some free by the Scout Headquarters. And since it was an aggressively growing plant, the amount of white sag back there had been steadily growing until you were working to keep it contained rather than helping it grow. The last thing you wanted was white sage all over the grounds to the point that you had to watch yourself everywhere you went outside.

You'd ended up bringing the growing white sage habit of the others up to Levi in passing on the way back from one of your training sessions, mentioning that you were mildly concerned one of these days Petra was going to make you tea and there would be white sage in it. He'd actually given you a simple solution that you were embarrassed to have not thought of yourself, especially considering he'd said it like it was the most obvious thing.

"Hey, Petra, is there white sage in this?" you asked her casually as she went to the other side of the table to pour Gunther and Eld's drinks.

"Yeah, why?" Petra asked, keeping her gaze down so she didn't accidentally overfill the cups she was currently pouring into.

"Ah...I know I was the one to tell you about the health benefits and everything, but I'm actually severely allergic to white sage, so...I can't drink this," you said almost apologetically, keeping your hands away from the cup just to be safe so you wouldn't end up touching even a drop that would burn you.

Petra's eyes widened, and she put down the teapot as she took the cup you'd had and handed it to Eld instead. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know!"

"It's fine, Petra," you told her with a small smile. "Go ahead and sit down, I'll just go make myself something," you assured her, standing from your seat. She tried to apologize again as you passed by, but you waved it off, insisting it really wasn't a problem as you left to go get yourself a fresh cup of tea.

Well, at least now you wouldn't have to worry about one of your squadmates accidentally poisoning you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was two days before the next expedition. You'd received orders for where in the formation you were supposed to be, Erwin testing one of this many ideas for where to put you astride the other plans for this expedition. Captain Levi was getting in some last minute paperwork that was needed before the Scouts headed beyond the walls, and you had come to pick up what he'd finished so far and to get it delivered to Erwin. Levi only acknowledged you when you knocked on the door to let you know that you could come in, bent over his work and focused only on the papers in front of him as you entered the room, took the papers in the pile he made specifically for you so you would know what he needed delivered. You turned back around without a sound, halfway across the room with no apparent change in the quiet scene besides your brief entrance.

"Will you be going out the night before, again?"

You blinked, turning back to see Levi still focused on the papers in front of him. He had clearly just spoken, though, so you turned all the way around to face him.

"I will, yes," you said simply, sensing that there were more questions that were going to follow that statement.

Levi carefully put down what he'd been writing with, looking up at you with a slight frown.

"Didn't you just go out last night?"

Someone was still paying sharp attention to your feeding schedule.

"I'd rather not risk it on an expedition," you said quietly, shifting the papers in your arms so none fell out while you were standing in the middle of the room addressing him. "It's an extra body or the week, but I want to make sure I at least don't have to worry about the needful thirst."

Levi's brows furrowed slightly. "Is there a difference?"

"In my thirst? Yes, actually. Just because I don't need it at the time, doesn't mean I won't still want it. Spilled blood is tempting either way, but it helps me stay in control if I'm well fed and don't particularly need it. It's the...I guess you could say the thirst of desire that I've spent my energy mastering, to a point. Being hungry to any degree just makes the desire part harder to control, more need based."

"Why not just wait until the night before, then, instead of going out twice in one week?"

"Because I go out when my thirst is starting to get dangerous for the people around me. I'm not going to risk the other's safety by making myself wait another few days. I go out when my thirst returns to a noticeable degree to make sure if something happens I won't lose control around people I don't want to hurt."

Levi looked back down, picking up the pen he'd been writing with again and pulling a new paper towards himself. "Some of those are meant for Hange–she's been pushing to capture Titans alive, again."

"Yes, sir," you said, unbothered by the impromptu mini-interrogation. You were growing used to Levi springing these random questions about you and your nature on you when you least expected it. It seemed he just looked for an opportune moment when it was just the two of you, and when he had a few minutes to spare for a brief explanation. And you didn't mind giving him answers. The fragile trust the two of you had started to develop was precious to you, considering where you two had started relationship-wise. You didn't want to do anything to jeopardize it, so you were ready and willing to answer any questions he still had, if only for his own peace of mind or attempts to understand your situation so he wouldn't mistakenly assume anything ever again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Levi's POV*

This time he was waiting for her when she returned from her 'night out.' After getting confirmation that she would be repeating the same ritual from last time where she went out late the night before in order to satiate her thirst for blood right before the next expedition, Levi had resolved to take the opportunity to finally talk to her about some of the things still weighing heavily on his mind. Especially because doing so directly after she went out on a hunt felt appropriate–most of what still bothered him had to do with the death and blood drinking part of her nature, if it weighed on her conscious at all or if she took life too casually. This was the part that still bothered him, and as such, he just had to test her humanity when it came to this part of her life. For his own peace of mind. Maybe it wouldn't bother him as much if he knew that she didn't approach it as flippantly as she'd talked about it in the cell.

He awaited her in the mess hall, going off the assumption that she would come to make herself a cup of tea before bed again. In front of him was a freshly brewed cup of black tea, meant to help keep him awake while he waited for her to go out and return. Usually he tried to tire himself out the night before so he could get a proper rest before the expedition, but for once, he was trying to stay awake the night before so he could have this conversation.

Levi took a slow sip from his cup, mind mulling over what he already knew and the conflicting accounts he'd already seen on what he still needed to ask about. It would be good to finally get a straight answer, and might help settle any lingering doubts he might have about her. For the most part, though, he was starting to see her as more of a companion, though he still kept some distance because of the more violent parts of her nature and his uncertainty about how she viewed it. His unresolved questions about her consciousness was the only thing that kept him from fully committing to seeing her as a comrade and equal. Right now, there was still a gap, no matter how small, that prevented that full acceptance. Each question so far, every moment spent with her, had been closing that gap little by little, until they were where they were now. He could sit with and talk to her comfortably, though her vampiric nature still brought unease if it came up in conversation.

The door to the mess hall opened, and Y/N entered, her black cloak still draped around her frame, hood down as her eyes glanced at him curiously, choosing to come over to him instead of heading straight for the kitchen.

It was about time he resolved that unease.

"Captain. I didn't expect to see you down here tonight," she remarked curiously as she approached where he was sitting.

"I assumed you always have a cup of tea after a night out," he said, not yet giving her his reason for being here in the first place.

She nodded, her curious expression only growing more apparent. "The chamomile helps me settle down and get some sleep," she said with half-interest. "Captain–"

"Go ahead and make your tea. We can talk when you're done in the kitchen," Levi said, cutting her off and watching as she silently complied to the order, moving on to the kitchen with a few glances back at him before she disappeared inside.

Levi waited patiently for her to return with her cup of chamomile, his tea long gone by the time she made her reappearance, coming to sit across from him at the table, her cup clasped in both hands.

"Was there something you wanted to talk about?" She asked warily, gazing at him intently for how mysterious he was being by his standards.

Levi's fingers rested lightly against the rim of his empty cup, gazing at her intently for several long moments as he tried to figure out the best way to word what he wanted to ask without being blatantly accusatory. He'd done that enough in the past, he didn't want to do it again, here.

"All the death, just to keep yourself alive. I've seen you show guilt but also speak so flippantly about it. It's unclear to me. Do you feel remorse for any of it?"

The fact that he couldn't tell such a simple but important thing with her had bothered him at length. But it was also a more sensitive question that drug into the light that thousands had died to feed her since she'd been turned, which was a thought he didn't want to dwell too much on, and maybe she didn't want to, either.

Y/N, who had been about to take a drink from her teacup, paused, then put it down without so much as a taste. She placed a hand on the tabletop next to her cup, one of her fingers tracing a groove in the wood as she stared down at the table, her mood noticeably darkening.

After a few long moments of silence, she spoke up. "Remember when I told you and Erwin that I have a lot of enhanced and heightened senses?" she said evenly. It was rhetorical, so Levi simply stayed quiet and waited for her to continue. "That enhancement extends to emotions. Everything that I feel is multiplied by a hundred, add some more. So...happiness becomes elation. Pain becomes agony. Anger becomes rage. Fear becomes terror. Grief becomes devastation. So on and so forth. Now, I've had a bit of time to adjust to the sudden mood enhancement. But I doubt I need to tell you that ordinary emotions can be...overwhelming. Some vampires try to shut out their humanity so they don't feel when they can't take the emotions anymore. Of course, it usually takes something just as drastic and devastating to snap them back into their humanity, because once it's off, they know what's waiting for them when they turn it back on, and they don't want to have to deal with that. I've never shut them off, so to speak, even though it's been very, very damn tempting at times. But I was afraid of losing my humanity in the process and never being able to turn it back on until something happened that would only make the pain worse when I let it all back in again."

Levi felt a coldness go through him. He tried to imagine it, though he knew he really shouldn't. Tried to imagine what she'd felt when she'd been buried alive–to know that the terror he'd imagined in his mind wasn't close enough to how she actually felt in those moments. Or remembering the pain in her voice when she'd mentioned the families Madaline killed just to toy with her, of the guilt and hatred that must have stirred up inside her. He thought of his own emotions, what it would be like to have those amplified. What he would have felt in place of the devastation and loss when he lost Isabel and Furlan, and how much more broken he would have been if he'd had the depth of emotions she was describing, to know that what he'd felt then would have been amplified so much further if he'd been what she was...that was a pain indescribable.

However...it wasn't what he asked.

Weighing his words carefully, Levi placed his hand on the table as well. "That doesn't answer my question," he said in a voice that was soft to show that he acknowledged and registered what she told him, and he wasn't trying to be dismissive. But she was beating around the bush again, and he'd rather she just gave him a straight answer.

"I'm getting there," she said, holding up a finger to signal him to be patient as she swallowed, gathering herself before she folded her arms around her middle and leaned forward, looking up to meet his eyes so he would be faced with every emotion she was about to project. "I need you to understand all that, so you'll understand the depth when I tell you that there is no language that I am aware of that could ever have a word to describe what I feel, knowing that, at least for now, people have to die so I can keep breathing comfortably another week or so. To not want to have to think of how many people I've killed for the sake of my sanity, or to wonder if I might have made the wrong choice and killed someone who didn't deserve it somewhere along the way–or to be afraid of what it says about me that I'm acting as judge and executioner on a weekly basis, that I think even for a moment that some part of me has any right to do that. I can't ever describe to you what that first stretch was like, the hell that I had to go through of self-loathing and hatred and guilt for my first few kills. I could admit that even though I try to forget, I don't, that they press in on me even as I try to tell myself I'll only have to kill a little longer until I won't have to take life to live anymore. Maybe I do act flippant about it sometimes, but that's because if I let myself go there every time, if I don't keep some distance between myself and the reality I am all too aware of, I'll drive myself mad. The...distance, you're worried about seeing from me, is just me trying not to get crushed by what I actually feel about my...situation. There is remorse, Captain. More than I could ever contain or describe. And even with forty years figuring out how best to deal with everything I feel, I'm still struggling with the cost of my existence. But it helps that there's actually a purpose to it now, something to tell myself when it gets too much to handle whenever I'm alone with my thoughts."

There was a lot to unpack in that monologue than even he could process right now. It shifted the last piece he'd been struggling with about her into focus, giving a clarity to the person in front of him that he'd been lacking. She didn't take death lightly–she could do it if it was necessary, that had been her whole existence, killing for her literal survival. But it was not something she did without a conscience, it wasn't something she took for granted. She felt the weight of every death more than the average person, and was working through the cost of her existence the best way she knew how.

She felt everything so deeply, that he worried about what her first loss of a comrade she'd grown close to would be like for her. He worried what it might do to her sanity. But this was also where she needed to be in order to help her with her situation. She'd said it herself when Levi was bleeding out in that warehouse, she joined the Scouts to give her life purpose, to do something with the existence that came with such a heavy price, so that maybe it wasn't all for nothing.

Emotionally, it could be argued that she was more human than all of them, with how deeply she felt everything.

However, there was a comment in her monologue that he was going to focus on for the conversation, his brows furrowing slightly.

"Only killing a little longer–I thought you said there wasn't an alternative to your diet right now?" Levi asked, withholding any judgmental thoughts and waiting for her to give him clarity on the comment.

"Well, since I found out about compulsion, with what happened with Madaline...I thought once I did get that power, I could use it to feed off people and make them forget. If I do it that way, I don't have to kill anyone, and I don't risk exposure leaving people alive," she said hesitantly. "Of course...I have to get it, first, so for now..."

Levi's gaze lowered to the empty cup in front of him. "There's really nothing that could be done about it right now?"

"Not with the position I'm in right now. Not unless I was to get a willing donor that wasn't going to out me. I'm doing the best that I can right now, between the blood quality and my own personal morals and not wanting to draw attention to the Scouts, but also needing good enough blood to make me strong enough to be an asset–"

"Right, you gave us a brief rundown on that before, but how exactly does it all...work? What's the best and worst kinds of blood you can have?" Levi said, the words feeling strange on his tongue. But it would help him understand her current position a little better. And, it would probably help resolve the fact that his blood was so appealing to her, or the way that he viewed it in his mind. It was strange, and made him feel extremely self-conscious around her whenever it was a quiet moment where he could hear his blood rushing in his ears or feel the thump of his heart in his chest. It made him wonder if she was just as aware of it in those moments, if she was always aware of it, and just how hard it was to resist when they were in the same room together.

"Think of it like this," she said, looking outwardly relieved to be shifting away from her emotions and more towards the technicalities of how this all worked for her. She leaned forward, drawing a rectangle with her finger on the table between them. "If I was to rank the types of blood I could drink, based on how appealing and how much stronger they make me, then at the very bottom would be a dead man's blood–blood that's been in a body far past death. Honestly revolting, and borderline poisonous instead of healthy. Above that, would be animal blood. It does the trick, it'll get me healthy again, but it's not very appealing, and it only makes my control worse, because it's not what my body actually wants."

"Human blood," Levi interjected, and she nodded. As she spoke, her finger moved up the imaginary box, as if she was filling in the lines on a meter chart.

"Human blood, which has such a wide range it could have its own chart. Personal preference or morality might play into tastes, or how you view the people you're feeding on, but I haven't really left my current diet enough to test it out–and I don't particularly want to. Not right now, anyway. At the very bottom of the list is blood that is tainted, as I call it. The people pollute their system with a plethora of drugs and/or alcohol, and usually they make poor life choices. Your doped up thugs on the street jumping someone to take their stuff so they can pay for their next fix and don't care who they have to hurt to get it. It gets better the less pollutants that there are in the blood. A standard criminal in a gang or such, one there because they want to be and not because its their way to get by, one that's taking care of themselves, would probably be just below average. The average being an everyday person, neither good nor bad, just a regular person trying to get by. What makes blood above average could be specific familial bloodlines, known to produce exceptional individuals–their blood will usually be above average. The individual could also further enhance it, though. Exceptional individuals, political pariah's, leaders, noteworthy, skilled, talented individuals, the lives they lead seems to somehow make the blood stronger, as well. And then, of course, personal views could affect it as well. Someone admired, or respected, or loved, or someone that's close, could have a further lean towards a better quality because of how they're viewed mentally by the vampire."

So he fell into the exceptional individuals category. That was why his blood was so alluring to her. By those standards, Erwin's should be just as alluring to her as well, though he hadn't yet heard her say anything about it.

Then again, maybe she thought it better not to claim anything like that for their ease of mind. She probably wouldn't tell them if she did find Erwin's blood appealing.

"And right now you're keeping yourself on the lower end of the spectrum–above animal blood, but below average," Levi clarified, finger lightly tapping at the section of their imaginary bar that section had been at.

She nodded. "It's where I find people that aren't particularly innocent, so I don't lose sleep over killing innocent people, and it's where I can find people that it won't be noticed if they go missing. However, since the blood is below average, sometimes more so than normal if I get someone with all kinds of pollutants in their system..."

"You have to go out to feed more often, which means more bodies."

"Mhm."

"And when you have your compulsion ability? What were you planning on doing then?"

"I haven't thought too much about the specifics, but I'll definitely be partaking in the average to above average section, because I won't have to kill anyone. It'll keep me satiated longer, and I'll just have to tell them to forget that specific encounter with me. I won't be targeting anyone in the Scouts, if that's what you're worried about."

"No, it was just..." Levi sighed, drawing his hand back and leaning back against the chair once more. He'd still managed to give her an impression that his questions were born out of mistrust, not curiosity or his own need to come to terms with things. "They were just questions that had been on my mind."

Y/N's hands returned to her tea, which was hardly steaming anymore after that lengthy discussion, and she finally took a long drink, attempting to get it down while there was still warmth to the drink.

"Tell me when you go out in the future?" Levi asked abruptly, watching her steadily drink the remaining chamomile.

She paused and gave him a curious look. "Why? Are you wanting to monitor my diet or something?"

"No, just...it'll be helpful if I know when you're out...hunting," Levi said haltingly, trying to find the right words. It would be helpful because he could cover for her if her absence was noticed and he knew what she was doing in those moments. It would be helpful if he knew, in case something ever happened. Between her reveal of vampire hunters, and how there were vampires out there strong enough she was helpless against them, it made the fact that there were actual threats to her out there. If one day he knew she went out hunting, but she didn't come back in time like she usually did, he would know that there was a chance she could be in trouble, and he could go looking. It wasn't like there was anyone else alert to her situation that could help in a tight spot.

"All right...I'll let you know, then," she said, getting up off the bench once her tea was finished, making her way back to the kitchen to clean up while Levi remained in his seat, one last question dancing on the tip of his tongue, wondering if perhaps he might tip his hand too much towards her if he said something.

As she was coming back through, heading for the door instead of the table, Levi spoke up.

"With your diet, and your standards and such about the people you go after...did you ever go after Kenny the Ripper?" Levi asked, looking at the cup instead of her since that meant his face would be shrouded in shadow and his back would be partially towards her, his expression mostly hidden.

She was silent for a moment, appraising him from where she stood just within the dimmest rays of light cast by the candle Levi had lit while he was down here, mostly shrouded in darkness herself.

"I did, once. He spent most of his time above ground, so I didn't run into him often, until he was Underground for an unusually long period of time. That was about the time I targeted him. He would have been above my usual in quality, though."

Levi was tense, though he hoped she didn't notice it. "What happened?"

"I followed him one day to get a sense for his schedule. He was dangerous and I knew I needed to be better about timing, so I was doing my research first. I found out he had a kid with him that he was looking after...and I wasn't going to do that to the kid. So I backed off. He disappeared not long after–probably went above ground."

Levi went still, his breath catching. All those years ago, their paths must have crossed and he didn't even know it. Did she? Did she know he'd been the kid? Were there other moments their paths had crossed that neither of them said anything about yet? Such a small choice, and she was part of the reason he survived in the Underground, since Kenny had been the one to save his life and teach him how to survive.

She didn't ask him why he'd asked, which led him to believe she might suspect. She didn't comment on his reaction, didn't prompt him to speak or even wait for his thoughts to process to see if there was anything he wanted to say to her.

Instead, she gave him a soft, respectful, "Good night, Captain. Please, get some rest tonight," and then left him alone in the room with his thoughts.