Chapter Text
The weather was especially dreary for a late October night in Munich. Rainwater drowned the city's streets, and seeped down the alley gutters he trudged pass every day on his way home.
Man, what a day, he thought as he recollected the evening's events. That Milano guy had some nerve trying to put him in his place. But, it was only a matter of time before he would put that bastard out of business. It was a game of patience after all.
The wind swept past him and he pulled his cloak tighter around his neck.
As he turned the corner, he stopped in his tracks. In a dead end ahead of him, between two garbage containers, a rathere unpleasant view greeted him. There was a man lying on the ground. Well, to be more precise, it was the leftovers of something that used to be a man not long ago. Now it was a mere pair of lifeless legs and a huge mess of meat and blood that was spilt over the ground, some nearby containers and the buildings' walls that surrounded the narrow space. The biting smell of alcohol and gastric juices assaulted him although he was a good ten feet away. He clamped one of his gloved hand over his nose.
A boy about fifteen or sixteen years, panting and emaciated to his bones, was crouching over the pile of bones and flesh and he looked almost as dead as the corpse itself. His clothes were torn, muddy and dangled from his small figure. A warm smile crossed his observer's face when the boy turned his head and looked straight at him. The boy's eyes glowed in the dark, illuminating the street ahead of him and painting every inch an icy blue colour. He bared his teeth and a growl escaped his throat. Without breaking the contact, the blonde started to close the distance between them.
"Well, boy? Got yourself a bit in a pickle here, don't you?" He put his hands in front of himself, exposing his empty palms and hoping the boy wouldn't jump at him before he got the chance to start a conversation.
He stopped a few feet away and knelt down, his cloak getting soaked by the puddles mirroring the sky. The boy's eyes still gleamed, but he hadn't moved an inch yet. He merely kept watching his approacher.
Right in front of him, the man saw that the blood was also spread all over the boy's face. He slowly went for his pocket, but the boy shrank away.
"Relax, I'll just give you something to clean the mess on your face, alright?" He pulled out a pristine white handkerchief and offered it to the boy. Saying he looked sceptical would have been a massive understatement. He stared at the piece of white with such mistrust, the man had to chuckle.
"It's okay, seriously. I didn't poison it, nor did I do anything disgusting with it. I promise. Take it and wipe your face. And afterwards, I'd like you to come home with me. Get a proper shower, and tell me how you got in a place like this. Since you already ate, you should be fine for the night, but in the morning, I can get you whatever you want. What do you say?"
The boy kept staring for a few more moments, the light in his eyes gradually fading.
Finally, he spoke. "You some kind of fucking pervert? If so, you bet your ass, you're going to end like this cocksucking little shit down here."
The blonde chuckled. "Definitely not, kid. I can think of better ways to entertain myself than spending the night with a random lost child who likes killing time by slaughtering drunk men in dark alleys."
The boy took the handkerchief and wiped his face. Gazing down on the dirtied cloth, his face twisted in disgust. "Filth," he mumbled.
"Thus, my offer." The blond man rose to his full height, turned around and started walking down the alley while the boy gave his prey one last glance before he followed.
"Oi, what's your name, big boy?"
"Pardon me." The man turned around again, took off his right hand's glove and offered it, that smile still on his face. "The name's Erwin Smith."
Years later and 700 miles away, somewhere downtown London, a man in an elegant looking suit climbed up the steps of a large, hardwood staircase, embellished with a heavy royal blue carpet and golden brackets holding everything in place. He didn't even take a moment to glance at its beauty since he had seen it so many times before. The same applied to the expensive murals that covered every inch he passed. The only thing he needed to know was why the hell he had to come here during daylight. Worse, in the fucking morning.
At the stair's top, he stood in front of a huge wooden door, but didn't bother to knock. Pushing it open, his eyes attached to the ones of a very familiar face. Behind a massive desk, the kind that probably stood in all business rooms of every existing world leader, sat a tall man with blond hair neatly parted on the left side, his bright blue eyes being one of his most striking features besides his thick and bushy eyebrows. As usual, his expression collected.
"What the fuck am I doing in your office at eleven a.m., Erwin?"
"Bad mouthed as ever, aren't we, Levi?" Erwin leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk and his chin on top of his pleated hands. "As I told you on the phone, I have a job that needs to be done. Only this time it'll somewhat differ from the usual." One of Levi's eyebrows raised up.
"Cut the shit, Smith, and spit it out."
Erwin took a deep breath and continued: "A good friend of mine needs you to look after his daughter. It appears some complications will occur in the near future. Someone might try to kill her and given the circumstances, to are the best man to secure her safety-"
"What circumstances?" Levi interrupted.
Erwin closed his eyes. He knew he should've left that one out. But there was really no other way to play this, was there?
"Trust me, Levi. It's best if you don't know until things go down. Otherwise, it might endanger you as well as the safety of your client and his daughter."
He opened his eyes again, his face calm.
Levi went up to the huge wooden desk, never dropping his glare from Erwin. He halted in front of him, put his palms on the desk and stared down at Erwin, trying to read the other man's thoughts. But as always, he was solid as a rock. His smell didn't give away anything, either. Would it have been any other person despite Erwin, he would never even think of dropping a subject like such. If he was going to risk his ass, he had the damn right to know what he was getting into. But as a mater of fact, it was Erwin sitting in front of him. The one and only man on this cursed planet he trusted. Fully. The one he would follow blindly into any fucked up situation as he had so many times before. And Erwin earned his trust, for he was the reason Levi made it out alive when things became too hard for him to bear alone.
"Fine. Who's the client?"
Erwin's lips twitched up, relieved. "His name's Grisha Yeager. You might've met him since he's a member of the Bigs."
Levi tried to remember the faces he had seen on their meetings. The Bigs was a gathering of people Erwin did business with. Some mafia bosses, others in charge of oil or weapon companies, but all of which were important men and women who pulled the world's strings from the shadows. Some more, some less.
"He runs one of the three largest weapon rings and his residence happens to be close by as well. I've known him since he started business. Helped him turning it into an empire almost thirty years ago, and in exchange I take part in his research, so I get a hand on the latest technology. He used to be a scientist, which is why he still leads the research department alone, and his results never fail to impress me. Additionally, he's quite the strategist. As you can imagine, he and I got along pretty well from the start."
Levi crossed his arms in front of his chest as he listened to Erwin.
Yeah, he could see them being a good match.
Erwin wasn't the type to ever show his disliking openly, but there were only a few who truely hold his respect. And judged by the way he spoke about Yeager, he seemed to be one of them. Maybe working for him wouldn't be too bad after all.
Then again, he wasn't going to guard Grisha Yeager, was he? This was about his daughter. Just because her father might be a respectable person didn't mean that she was as well. Hell, he knew that the best men can have the worst kids. And vice versa.
"Nice to know, but I still know shit about her, why she's threatened and, more importantly, what I'm going to protect her from." Levi said, his expression bored as usual.
Erwin sighed heavily, evidently bored as well that he had to repeat himself.
"I told you, you don't need to know the details. And as for the daughter herself, I don't know much about her, either. Her name is Mikasa Ackerman, she seems to be a shy and silent girl, she's nineteen years old-"
"Are you fucking serious?" Levi interrupted him, losing his cool a little. "Are you out of your goddamn mind to put me in charge of a fucking teenager? What the hell am I, a babysitter? I assume, this'll be a 24/7 job, so do you really expect me to follow her to every fucking shopping tour, every stupid party at some dirty as fuck dance club, and play Mrs. Doubtfire while she hosts retarded pyjama parties? No, I'm out. Get some other moron to do this shit."
Levi turned on his heels, stomping out the room but before he reached the door, he heard Erwin shout: "Levi, I beg you. It has to be you, no one else can do this."
Levi flinched and stopped, still not looking back. It was rare that Erwin begged. Fuck, given his position, he rarely needed to. He could tell people to rip their legs off, and people would be tripping over themselves to fulfill his request. So there was really only one reason left as to why he did it nonetheless. He requested him as a friend.
He had to have some personal interest in Levi doing this job. Which Levi couldn't just shrug off and ignore, and Erwin fucking knew that. Son of a bitch.
"When do I start?" Levi spat out through clenched teeth.
He heard the blonde rise and could almost him smile behind his back. "Now. And to calm you down, as I said, she seems to be more on the silent side. As far as I know, she only has two friends, one being her brother and the other a similar silent young boy. So, she doesn't seem to be your typical teenage girl. Yeager's kids are lectured at home, and the other one's visiting during his semester break, so they rarely leave the house. Moreover, I will search for the suspect myself. Best case scenario, it'll only take me a few weeks to track him down, deal with the issue, and you'll earn yourself a nice amount of money for looking out for a couch potato girl."
Levi hoped he was right. Having her brother be one of her only friends was pretty paltry. "Wait, you said her surname is Ackerman. How's she the daughter of someone named Yeager?"
Erwin passed Levi, looking straight ahead out of his office when he was about to exit.
"She's adopted."