#Just down with the flu today so Im just gonna drop a backlog of fic chapters lel

[tundrainafrica]

Title: Passion Project (2/4)

Summary:

“Ignoring Hange Zoe had become a little passion project he allowed himself to indulge in, in between expeditions and quietly mourning unnecessary deaths in the battlefield.”

Levi tries to ignore Hange but it never seems to last. A ficlet detailing the development of Levi and Hange’s relationship before canon.

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Link to other chapters: 1 3 4

A fractured ankle, fractured ribs... for a month....

The important thing is he's alive. Fighting thirty titans… death for most soldiers.

It would be a shame to lose him… We don't get soldiers like that everyday.

The voices were distant but they were the first coherent sounds Levi made out as he adjusted to the waking world. His first instinct after making sense of it was to sit up, only to be greeted by a dull pain and a taut sensation around his chest.

He looked down to see bandages woven tightly around his chest, leaving him almost completely immobile on the bed. Even if he did get to sit up, his numb ankle would have made standing up a tall order.

"You're finally awake."

Levi settled for turning his head to his right. The lights in the room were dim and his vision relied on the faint light emitting from the room to make out the shape of the person by his bedside. "Hange…How long…"

"You were asleep for three days and you'll probably be here for a month." Hange was quick to answer his questions.

Levi was grateful for it. His throat was dry and just the first two questions had already left him burnt out.

"I’ll call Erwin and Commander Keith in.” Hange stood up and turned towards the door. “You woke up at a good time. They’ve been busy with preparations for the next expedition so they’ve only had time to visit for an hour a day.”

After engaging in conversations in hushed voices just outside his hospital room, Hange reentered the room, their two superiors following behind her. The conversation was short and formal and only served to repeat what Levi had overheard outside just a second ago.

One month in the hospital.

Forget about the next few expeditions.

You did a good job against 30 titans.

Levi had attempted a nod the first time, only for his head to protest that subtle movement.

The two were possibly being understanding or were just a little too busy that day. Regardless, as soon as they deemed Levi updated enough of the current events, they left and once again, it was just Hange and Levi in the room.

Hange spoke up. "I thought you were amazing out there."

Her praises were nothing new. Levi found himself more surprised by the fact that the young brunette's voice was much softer than usual as if it was her way of adjusting to the natural silence of the sick room.

Levi kept his eyes trained on Hange and the latter looked to be aware of it. She moved the stool by the bedside and sat on it.

"I managed to count them before their bodies dissolved. Thirty titans…" It was as if Hange had run out of air at those last two words. "You're really something else..." Her voice was definitely softer, but the tone was the same as it always was. It was that same tone that rang so painfully in his ears that first time they met. Oddly, it was starting to sound like music to his ears then.

"But you used too much gas. Maybe I should be giving you a lesson on that." And just like that, with one sentence and one smirk, Levi witnessed the return of that grating tone.

“And how often did you visit?” Levi asked, in an attempt to digress from that topic in particular. The last thing he wanted while stuck in bed was a lecture on carelessness. That ordeal was more than enough of a lesson.

Hange smiled. “I left a few times?”

“You left a few times? You mean you left this room a few times?”

“Yeah?”

“So you don’t visit. You just stay here and…” Levi let his eyes finish that sentence for him.

Hange made no attempt to deny it. She put one hand behind her head and sheepishly looked away. “The hospital room gets pretty quiet and it’s easier to focus here.” She explained.

Levi looked to the side table to see what looked to be books and documents, quickly shifting his attention elsewhere before she saw what could have been disappointment in his eyes. He shouldn’t have been disappointed though. He should have been relieved that her hanging out in his hospital room wasn’t at all motivated by some complex short of what one would see in a stalker. Despite that, he wished she had been there for him.

“Have you showered since then?” At that point, Levi was just looking for ways to take out his own frustrations. He was sure of her answer before she even said it.

Or chose to avoid saying it. “I didn’t have time…”

“You’re fucking disgusting. This is a hospital, you’re just gonna get everyone here sicker with your shitty hygiene habits.” Levi painfully turned to his side, biting back in the process. “Go home and shower,” he managed to say. “I’m going to sleep.”

“Hey! I’ve been waiting for you to wake up and now you’re going to kick me out like this….”

Somehow her annoying protests had made that painful movement all the more worth it. He managed to unearth some scraps of amusement from her momentary fit that fizzled out to a quiet disappointment that had her leaving the room grumbling.

A combination of foot stomping and whiny protests were enough to get Levi's lips curled up and into a subtle smile. She couldn't see that at least from where she stood.

Depriving Hange of those little things she visibly wanted turned out to still be as satisfying as it had been before. And with nothing much else to think then, surrounded by plain white walls, Levi couldn't help but remember the passion project he had started so many months ago.

And it still burned strong, strong enough for him to feel a glimmer of victory at having to hear hushed hissy monologues and footsteps too heavy and loud to have been anyone in a good mood.

The glimmer dissipated faster than Levi had expected and he was immediately reminded that he was alone with just his thoughts.

And he couldn't help but reflect on the fact that Hange's presence would have made his thoughts all the more interesting to engage in.

She'll be back. He told no one in particular. It was a difficult pull to swallow. Alone with not much to do but stare at the blank white ceiling, Levi reflected. And with that reflection came a begrudging realization.

He preferred her there.

                                    Passion Project

The recovery didn't take a month as the doctor said it would have. Within a few days Levi was sitting up. Within another week he was walking, if not limping out of the room. And within two weeks of waking up, Levi was back in the barracks, finding a way to make himself useful among the bustle of preparations for the next exhibition.

Erwin wasn't letting Levi near ODM gear any time soon though. Although Levi was sure he could have gone through a lot of the training on land with at least bearable pain, flying through the air, while keeping one's balance through only cables and gas was another story.

The prospect of exposing their best soldier at an injured state to the danger of titans seemed a little too excessive for Erwin and despite Levi's quick healing, he was still barred from joining the next expedition.

"Why don't you join the research and logistics team for now? I'm sure they'll need some extra hands since they've been working on new anti-titan weapons."

That meant spending all the more time with Hange.

Levi shouldn't have expected any different. Yet somehow he was surprised. The shock possibly only appended by the fact that while he was still in the process of accepting this new arrangement, he had encountered Hange in the lab in the wee hours of morning. No one really expects anyone in the lab at 2am.

He had gone there in particular to survey his new environment without having to exchange pleasantries with anyone from the research and logistics team. He had expected a thirty minute visit at the most to just see what experiments they have been working on and any records to make the process of a first meeting them a little more bearable.

The room wasn't empty. To make it all the better, the only person there at two in the morning wasn't someone he would have explained pleasantries with anyway. Her presence never implicitly demanded that level of politeness after all.

In fact, it tended to naturally elicit the opposite reaction from Levi. "Why the fuck are you doing here so early in the morning?"

He had said it too more roughly than he had intended. She had been a little too focused on mixing a colorful formula on a glass beaker and he had so quickly assumed he wouldn't have gotten her attention any other way. Or possibly, he had just been in the process of stifling a little frustration when he had said that which manifested in that rough tone he had called her out with.

It turned out, she didn't even notice that greeting he overthought.

"Hey four-eyes!" Levi hissed, as loudly as what would have been socially acceptable in the wee hours of morning

To only further add to his frustration, Hange's gradual shift to reality had been slow. When she looked up at him, Levi was sure she wasn't even looking directly at him.

"Oh… Levi!" She managed to say, a few long seconds after they first made eye contact, or at least the first time Levi initiated what should have been eye contact. "It's been a while."

It had been a while. Three days before he had been discharged, Hange had stopped visiting. He had only been discharged two days ago. Which put their last meeting to more than five days ago, a long time when compared to the fact that she had spent every day in the hospital with him.

WIth the sudden shift in Hange’s behavior, Levi put himself through unnecessary torture of attributing it to that one night he decided to ignore her so she could shower, despite the fact that she still had come back every day since then. Erwin had visited after that, even Commander Keith and even the squad he had saved in the last expedition. He had been tempted to ask where Hange was, ultimately deciding against it. His emotional investment in Hange seemed one secret he would rather have kept to himself.

But, by god it was torturous. Although at face value Hange seemed like an open book with the way she was constantly flitting between emotional extremes, Levi eventually realized she wasn't.

Surface level emotions were open for the world to see. With the amount of time he spent overthinking every action she had ever made back in the hospital room, from those long tirades about new experiments to the new black tea her parents would be sending over to the plans for the next expedition , Levi realized there was still a layer of Hange he hadn’t peeled back yet. Behind the heart she wore on her sleeve were emotions, motivations and desires she hadn’t shown anyone yet or possibly did not understand herself. He felt it in every single tirade of passion she threw at his face. The passion seemed true, the words seemed authentic but there was a nagging feeling inside him that he still had a lot to learn about the crazy brunette.

Because of that, Levi had found her to be incredibly unpredictable, only further supported by the fact that she had failed to visit him his last three days in the hospital, not bothering either to have greeted him after he had settled back in the barracks. It wasn’t like she was obligated either.

Either way, he found himself having to seek comfort in the predictability of watching Hange go through the motions of mixing chemical after chemical. After their too casual and maybe too brusque of an exchange, Levi had settled on a stool and quietly watched. She had been too focused to kick him out anyway.

"You know how signal flares have this tendency to malfunction in the rain?” It was Hange who spoke up first despite having been too focused on her little experiments.

“Yeah?” That was all Levi could say. Maybe if Hange had started with any other topic, he probably would have said anything more. That question had reopened old wounds, and it was constantly rubbing salt on them as he waited for Hange to continue. He had always suspected the malfunctioning of signal flares to have caused the death of Isabel and Farlan during their first mission outside the walls.

“I think I found a way to get the signal flares to show even during rainy days. Maybe, if we could get this working, we might be able to prevent unnecessary deaths in future missions.” Hange went for a beaker, mixed a few chemicals together which incited a mini green explosion in front of him. “This could save lives…”

Despite the water Hange had sprayed all over the green of the air, the green remained glowing and strong and the whole show had him speechless.

She shouldn't have known. The way she had so gracefully gone through all the procedure so methodically yet so deftly, in the way Levi never would have been able to replicate had him only staring, his mouth agape.

The color green had never looked so comforting until then. The whole time the green smoke stayed in the air before dissipating into anything, Levi felt like he could have been in a dream.

It had him forgetting whether or not she had eventually probed on the unfortunate deaths of his two best friends.

He ended up opening up about it anyway.

                                       Passion Project

Levi still wasn't allowed to do combat training but Hange was.

And Hange had enough enthusiasm about ODM gear for them both. In that one moment after long hours in the lab, an hour before the sun was to set, that enthusiasm was what had her pulling Levi back into the woods as if the day had just started.

There was less reason to hide behind the excuse of "I'm too tired" given that Levi couldn’t actually train and he never had much to contribute in the lab aside from odd jobs. It's not like he ever employed that excuse anyway.

With his lack of reason to be tired, Levi resigned himself to spending days after training watching Hange go through ODM drills.

"Your cables are everywhere. A titan can just grab onto that if you're not careful.” Levi said. “As soon as your up in the air, just use your gas. It gets you to your target faster than with the cables."

"Should you be telling this to me after you ran out of gas and almost died?"

That was enough once of a comment once again to silence Levi momentarily. Hange didn't stop to assess the effects of that one comment though, having busied herself trying to mimic Levi's ODM movements. Hange had taken for her own one of the larger oak trees in the forest where they practiced. The tree trunk was gnarled and branches stuck out so randomly, Levi had to agree it was a good way to practice.

Even unmoving, the tree was an unpredictable target. It had numerous branches surrounding it that only twisted and turned so wildly that Levi could feel the beginnings of a headache as he attempted to follow each one. If he squinted a little harder, he could even pretend it was a titan.

Hange probably did have a swell time pretending it was a titan. He could hear it in the loud and swift whizzing of chords, the characteristic explosion that came with the release of gas and of course, the excited screams.

You were amazing out there. Hange had said, while a little breathless only a few weeks ago. Levi was never one to take in compliments and had clocked that to a little bout of maybe asthma on her side. Or maybe she had forgotten to take in some oxygen before she said it.

At that moment though, he understood the breathlessness that accompanied amazement. The branches grew so close together that Hange only had the luxury of gaps small enough for maybe only one person to pass through. Hange had whizzed past each branch, dodging them so gracefully, while barely leaving an opening big enough for even an insect to squeeze through.

With the chaotic pattern ---or at least lack of pattern--- at which the gnarled branches spread out, Levi couldn't help but see an artistic dance in it all, and a rhythm to follow. The art, the spectacle that only he that late afternoon had the luxury of witnessing, had him forgetting to breathe.

And he only did breathe when Hange plopped back down on the ground and Levi was quick to notice the deafening absence of the familiar sound of the cables whizzing back into the gear.

Her face was flushed, her skin glistened with sweat. The sunset illuminated Levi’s view and he saw shades of orange and purple reflect on her. She approached him. She entered the shade and within a second, he had lost the view of her he had been so gingerly enjoying.

“I think I get it,” Hange said.

“Get what?” It would have been a ridiculous request for Levi to tell her to stay back so he could enjoy the reflection of the sunset on her eyes. So he kept his response brief, a little penalty for that part of him that even suggested that Hange had been a joy to watch.

“You might be right, I think I’ve been using my cables too much. It’s much easier to move when they aren’t constantly pulling at me.”

Levi stifled a smile. He wasn’t going to show her how sweet it had been to be proven right. Also, a part of him had been a little disappointed she hadn’t denied him that luxury of being correct. He was in the mood for a little argument after all.

“But it doesn’t change the fact that you still used too much gas.” The opening for an argument was introduced soon after Levi lamented that wasted fuel.

Levi opened his mouth ready to mouth off. He hadn’t decided what to say it, ready to leave it to his sharp experienced tongue to discern the best comeback at that moment. He had wanted to insult her movement, the little dance around the trees. Her performance was perfection though and despite being able to come up with shitty jokes within seconds, nothing in her performance had been worth poking fun at.

To his relief, she interrupted him. “You know what though, I figured out something which might be just as useful for you.” Hange unfastened her gas canisters. “Try carrying it.”

Levi held one of them to see that it was still much fuller than what he would have expected from watching her only a few seconds ago.

“I found a way to conserve gas. I notice you used to carry yourself, you’d let the gas pull you. What if you bend your body a bit and curve your back, to make yourself easier for the gas to carry you through? It helped a lot for me, I definitely felt lighter, like I wasn’t resisting as much as I used to. Probably won't be able to maneuver as well as you though."

Levi did not bring his gear then so it had been a little difficult to imagine. By what could have been a silent agreement, Hange unfastened her ODM gear from the cables to the canisters and dropped them in front of him. “ Why don’t you try it?” She offered.

It had only been a few weeks since he woke up to diagnoses of internal bleeding and broken ribs that would have taken months to heal. At Commander Keith’s orders, Levi had stayed in the sidelines, no intention on trying anything with ODM for a while, especially with ODM gear which wasn’t his. ODM gear was custom fit for every single soldier after all.

It had only been a week but as Levi stood there, trying on the gear that should have been a few pounds too heavy for him, his body did not protest the weight. Jumping onto the tree with the help of the cables had felt a little awkward but it could have been the unnatural weight of ODM gear a few sizes too big.

Regardless, it was enough to see the difference. Hange had suggested he curves his back as he bent over and that he moves with the ODM gear. Don’t let the gas pull you.

He kept focused on Hange as she repeated the tips from the foot of the tree. The change was almost instant. The breeze was stronger, the air colder and the rustle of the leaves around him only louder as he moved.

Hidden among the sounds of the blowing wind, the rustle of leaves and the explosion of gas, he heard it. He had been too high up in the air for it to be any louder but it was definitely there, distant cheers, gasps and avid screams. They were the only two there so it could have only been from her.

He never found out how long he had been up there zipping among the branches. He called it a day when the sun was dark and his ribs started to whimper a little, manifesting in the form of a stitch on his right side.

As he landed back down on the roots of the tree, Hange was already there waiting for him. The dim light made it difficult to see the smile on her face. But it was there. Levi found himself wishing for at least some natural light to make it all the more visible.

“You might just be humanity’s strongest soldier,” Hange said as she moved to unfasten the gear for him. “Maybe that’s why you recovered so fast?

                                         Passion Project

“Tea?” Hange asked.

“Tea,” Levi answered

Just like before the injury, they were back to drinking black tea.

Levi was grateful for their history. On his end, he did not need to verbalize any of that. It had slipped into their routine after training to seek comfort in the malty yet astringent taste of black tea.

Somehow, Levi was relieved to realize she hadn’t forgotten that. It had been months since their last tea date after all. They had been occupied by preparations for the expedition, the actual expedition and the recovery that followed, to have continued that mini routine between them.

With the rations of before completely consumed, they had to get their fix elsewhere. They had silently made their way to that specific hole-in-the-wall tea shop Levi would frequent along the corners of Trost district. The exhaustion at having practiced the ODM gear after a long days work finally did catch up to both of them. The only exchange they did comfortably manage while taking the almost one hour long detour to the shop being the mention of that one common luxury between them.

Only after they settled down on one of the benches in front of the shop, when Levi finally had the tea in front of him and the luxury to enjoy the illuminated streets in Trost did he realize one crucial thing.

“Did you know this was my favorite shop?”

Hange gave a light shrug, careful not to jostle and spill her own tea.

“There are bigger shops in Trost. This isn’t really anyone’s first destination” It suddenly felt weird that he was the one a little talkative at first.

Hange took a sip before answering. “I did my research.”

“What kind of research? For someone who forces me to listen to rambles about other research, you’re awfully quiet about this one.”

The brunette sighed. Not one of defeat, but seemingly one of comfort and maybe a little amusement. “I saw you here in Trost during a few days off and I kinda followed you.”

Levi didn’t reply and only waited for her to continue. Having to carry the conversation of a few minutes ago with the last two lines had him a little tired.

“I was a little curious, wanted to see what a strong yet quiet soldier did in his free time so maybe I could learn a bit. I thought that maybe I could actually get stronger if I followed some of your habits.”

Why didn’t you ask me? Levi couldn’t blame her for stalking though. As he recalled pretty quickly, he hadn’t been the friendliest person in the beginning either.

“When you enter the shop, you'd order the exact same thing every time and you had this sparkle in your eyes when they serve it to you… Just like now!”

Levi suddenly felt self conscious of that spark in his eyes. Instead of looking away though, he found himself looking at her eyes, searching for a reason to point out how pathetically her own eyes probably sparkled. As he locked eyes with Hange though as she said it, he saw the way her own eyes sparkled under the dim street lights, only complemented by that wide smile on her face and the music in her voice.

“I guess you really love tea huh? Even the most emotionless soldiers have to have some passion somewhere to keep living.”

A Passion for tea? The way Hange had said it, had Levi almost spitting out his tea at the outrageous claim. The strong passing thought of not wanting to waste that good cup of tea or destroy the mood that accompanied it was enough to hold it back in his mouth.

"Relax, Levi.” Hange said. Levi wondered what kind of face he was making for her to look at him in an almost patronizing manner. “I have my own passions too.” Hange continued. But it’s a relatively new one. Not as old as your obsession with tea probably.”

“What is it?”

“I wanna do lots of research on titans. I‘ve already prepared five project proposals to submit to Erwin already and I think I’m gonna end up writing ten more before this month ends."

Levi had to note that it was the third week of the month already.