Chapter Text
Levi is, and always has been, unlucky in life. He had liked to joke that he had probably been born on the wrong side of the bed, so his whole life up to that point had probably been a work of misfortune on a cosmic scale, the stars and planets and, hell, probably the galaxies, too, aligning themselves to essentially fuck him over. His mishaps had followed him ever since he had been a child, trying to climb the plum tree in his backyard; he had shattered his arm in three places, and even now on particularly wet days, he found that he was unable to even pick up a camera because of the shooting pains that would stab through his wrist if he so much as tried to bend it.
It was a problematic condition, given that Levi was currently employed as a nature photographer for National Geographic. Perhaps the only good stroke of luck he'd had in his life was when he'd been scouted by one of the magazine's agents, a well-meaning giant of a man by the name of Mike Zacharius, who had just happened to be wandering aimlessly around the corridors of one of the exhibition halls on the campus of the university Levi had been attending at the time. He had seen one of Levi's photographs, a black and white picture of a hummingbird dipping its beak into the pitcher of a gloriously red hibiscus, the only colour that had been present in the picture. The hummingbird's wings had been caught with a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second so it had appeared frozen in mid-flight, its needle-thin beak dipping in between the petals with an energy that looked almost frenetically sexual.
Mike had, if he could be believed, smelled greatness on Levi when Levi had come in for the interview, albeit begrudgingly, two months later. He had walked out with a job, the makings of a career, and the promise of a steady salary and health insurance benefits. It had been as good a job as anything, and because Levi had at that time been in the awkward position of someone who has just graduated but who has as of yet no idea what they want to do with the rest of their lives, he accepted without thinking too closely about what the job might entail.
It hadn't been bad in the beginning, certainly not. He had been flown out to exotic places: Peru, the Amazon Jungle, Siberia, with a team of other nature photographers. He had had the opportunity to hold his breath, silent and still in the long sweeping grass of Southeast Asia, capturing the sleek, stalking movements of a tiger through his camera lens. He had watched, with amazement, flocks of brightly colored birds erupting from their nests overhead; he had been able to ignore the way his shirt had stuck to his back as he took photo after photo of the riotous color flitting through the canopies of jungles in South America. The world was beautiful, and Levi finally felt as though he'd found a place in it from behind the glass lens of his new Nikon D3300 camera.
And then she had come along.
Her name was Petra Ral, and at 5'2", she clocked in at the shortest person Levi had ever found himself attracted to. He had been smitten, almost instantly, when Mike knocked on his open office (well, cubicle, if he was being well and truly honest with himself) door and told him that he would be receiving a cubicle-mate. She had come in, face obscured by a towering heap of personal belongings that she had just barely managed to fit into a white cardboard box, which she plopped down heavily on the half of his desk that Levi had grudgingly allocated for her. The weight had toppled Levi's coffee over, and she had spent the rest of the morning rearranging her things and apologizing profusely and offering to buy Levi another latte.
At that point in his life, though he had had the opportunity to travel the world, to capture striking images of beauty in split seconds of perfection, Levi Ackerman found himself dazzled by the way he could find his reflection, clarity and lucidity, in the amber pools of Petra's eyes.
But his birthright caught up with him again, and he found that he was no longer being invited to assignments, his Nikon growing dusty from disuse. Granted, Mike had been bringing in new people steadily over the course of the last few years, a new crop of people who could stand to wade through leech-infested marshes for hours for the perfect shot, a new group of college graduates who still had stars in their eyes and who were not above carrying thirty pounds of camera equipment with them wherever they went. At first, Levi had been grateful, because these were parts of the job description that he didn't particularly care for.
And then he had gotten bored, tedium settling in. He was only twenty-seven, and he still hadn't managed to get rid of the wanderlust and world curiosity that infects us all, burrows deep into our skin at a young age, and can only be alleviated with the application of ponderous fantasy novels, semesters abroad, or heartfelt confessions that seem foolish in hindsight. Perhaps a combination of all three.
The morning of February 14th found Levi Ackerman standing in a florist's, elbow to elbow with several other desperate looking working professionals who had forgotten to set reminders on their smart phones for the momentous occasion. After managing to dig out enough loose change from the crevices of his leather messenger bag, succeeding in angering the queue of other impatient men behind him, Levi had exited the florist's, a violently pink bouquet of roses and chrysanthemums clutched in his hand, and he spent the three blocks' walk to the office nervously going over possible situations in his mind.
If all went well, Levi thought to himself, he and Petra would be an item by the evening; he would propose to her in a helicopter ride over Jakarta where they would be assigned to take photographs of the local wildlife, they would get married in Hawaii, barefoot on the sand, dolphins jumping in the background of the wedding portrait, happy to commemorate their union.
Misfortune had long legs, and had sprinted to catch up with Levi's shadow as if to compensate for lagging behind during the few glorious years he had had. Petra hadn't come into work that day, and when he'd popped his head into Mike's office to ask him where Petra was, Mike had informed him that Petra had taken the day off as personal time, "because her boyfriend is visiting from France or something like that." Levi had barely managed to get back to his desk, where he'd promptly swept the flowers, in a fit of anger, into his trash bin, scattering petals all over the cubicle.
Levi was, and is, unlucky in life. His career as a nature photographer is mediocre at best, he is currently two months behind on rent because of his lack of motivation to find someone to rent out the other match box bedroom in his cracker box apartment, and he has just been informed that the woman he loves has another, of course she does, because she is far too beautiful and too smart and too kind to not have someone to chart the constellations in her eyes.
Levi is twenty-seven years old, and it seems that the world stretches out before him, lonely and cold in its abandonment and general ignorance of his existence.
He had hopped into his car, a broken down Nissan whose engine wheezed whenever he tried to speed up past 30 miles an hour, and he made his slow puttering way to the sea to drown. It was violent, it was unprecedented, but drunk off cheap Franzia from a box he'd found in the hallway closet, fueled with desperate energy, Levi had thought that, at the very least, he'd be in the newspapers, probably on page 3 or 4, his death cast in dark ink over grey newsprint, to say "I was here, I was alive, I existed."
The night of February 14th finds Levi Ackerman staring out across the black expanse of the ocean, listening to the surf crashing against the hard packed sand of the shore. The world is mighty, cruel in its beauty, and as Levi takes his steps forward, shoes and knees and chest soaking through with cold and wet, sharp shooting pains jabbing up his wrist again, he thinks that perhaps he is unworthy of inhabiting such a place.
And then he wakes up, body rolling itself over and gagging up seawater that splatters sickly on the wet stone floor beneath his palms. Once he has finished heaving, and the world has stopped swaying madly around him, Levi slowly gets to his knees, to his feet, looking around cautiously. His wrist still aches something fierce, and he rubs it absentmindedly, the heel of his right hand skittering across the bare expanse of his thigh before he pauses in confusion. He remembers wearing denim, black skinny jeans in a throwback to his university days, a pair of trainers that he'd adored because they were soft and well-worn-in, a Nirvana T-shirt that had been washed to cotton silkiness through many loads of laundry. Surely he'd been wearing them when he waded into the sea, if only to die at the height of fashion.
He thinks that perhaps he is already dead, that this is just the standard way you enter the next world, as naked and vulnerable as you entered this one. But if this is Heaven, it is nothing like he's imagined from the knowledge given in books or fairy tales. If this is Hell, he thinks that perhaps it's a bit too cold and wet.
The only sounds are the small puffs of his lungs, still working despite his best efforts to disable them, the slick of water lapping up against stone, lonely drips of sea from stalactites whose shadows he can just make out, hanging precariously down from the ceiling, almost close enough to grasp.
And then, a voice.
It is deep, soothing, and Levi thinks that it is God, it is Satan, it is some divinity come to ask what exactly they should do about him.
"You tried to drown," it says. It is not a question, but the tone of the statement is far from accusatory. It is merely there, a statement of fact, perhaps the slightest hint of amusement at his human folly.
"I did," he agrees, cautiously, turning in the general direction of the voice. He can see nothing except the dimly lit darkness of the water in front of him.
"Humans cannot live without the air." Levi wants to laugh, hysterical, because now he is sure he is dead. The world is vast and beautiful, but nothing like this exists in its limited scope of creativity, of that Levi is sure.
"You say that like you're not human." He hates the knife edge of desperation and panic in his voice; he had wished to die with grace and effortlessness, sliding from one world to the next with a certain finesse that is severely lacking in this situation.
A splash. Two. A murky shadow drags itself out of the water, barely visible other than the gleam of moonlight on what look like scales, and Levi watches in horror and fascination as it drags itself with wet scraping sounds towards his feet. He backs away uncertainly, his footsteps loud, too loud in the silence, and he wants to cry in hopelessness when his shoulder blades come into contact with hard ridges of rock. Nothing even close to this has figured into his dreams for the future, and he finds a seed of anger growing in his heart at whoever is in control of his destiny, because Levi Ackerman, twenty-seven years old, feels that he should at least be able to control the method of his death.
"I was, once," the shadow says finally, as it stops at a point approximately two feet from Levi's legs. Levi tries to squirm back, tries to make himself disappear, and when all that fails, holds his breath and makes himself as still as possible in the futile hopes of avoiding detection. "But tell me, human, why do you want to drown?"
Levi has thought about this question for ages, has morbidly contemplated even in younger years about the best method of self-execution. He had decided that having his body rocked slowly and gently to a watery grave might be the most peaceful, his flesh and bone sinking to the sea to become dinner for fishes, and he shyly tells the shadow this. It laughs, and its rich sound sends tingles racing down Levi's spine that has nothing to do with his current state of nudity.
There is the soft chiming sound of bells, the clatter of wood and shells clicking together, and a soft light infuses the room with gold, corals blazing bioluminescent from their jutting positions in the rock walls around him. Levi gasps as it becomes revealed, fingers scrabbling at the unyielding rock wall behind him for purchase. It is a man, and it is not; it is a fish, a shark, a whale, and it is not.
It runs a hand through its wet blonde hair, long and curling over his forehead in slick strands, grins up at him with blue eyes the piercing color of the sky, and says simply, "My name is Erwin. It is a pleasure to meet you."
Levi wakes up two hours later, his bare limbs cradled in the smooth slick warmth of a massive blue tail, and a nasty bump on the back of his head from where he hit it in his fall as he fainted.