Harry Dresden (Wizard) (thewinterknight) wrote in elsewhere_rpg, @ 2017-12-20 23:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | attack on titan: captain levi, dresden files: harry dresden, sword art online: kirito, tags for admin: year 01 |
Who: Harry Dresden, Kirito & Levi
What: A cabin in the woods. pt. ii
When: December 19th, Afternoon into Evening
Where: The Woods
Rating: PG-13
Status: Log - Complete
When Harry demanded to see the wound, Levi didn’t need to ask what he meant. He knew. And he knew that Harry knew. Those dead eyes flinched away from the light at first, his head turning and ensuring he had a little more time to adjust before looking back, a hand coming up to help block some of the light. “Check the boy first.” He didn’t know the first thing about first aid, save that you wanted to try and stop the bleeding. But Kirito wasn’t bleeding. And, assuming the large man came over to look the darkest of them over, the half-Japanese man would untie that cloak and turn so Harry could take a proper look. The slice was deep, but not very long. Only five or six inches, just a nick, really. Considering it should have nearly cut him in half. Thanks to Harry, it hadn’t. “It’s not life threatening.” He was fine, it just hurt. But he’d been hurt before, it wasn’t anything new. His attention was mostly kept on the unmoving boy beside him. He didn’t know what the fuck had happened, but he didn’t like it. “I can feel it watching us.” The Captain said more quietly, turning his head just a bit to speak back to Harry. Could the wizard feel it? *** “I will,” Harry promised, “But not here.” if he woke Kirito in the same place he'd just experienced some weird trauma, it would make it worse. Even waking him outside would be a better option. The best one? Get him the hell home first. They had a damned long ride back. Unless Levi could carry an extra body with his nifty little propeller things. Then Harry could ride the stupid horse in. Whatever, they'd figure it out. First thing first, Harry scooted closer to Levi, bringing his light up higher to look at the cut. “Lucky you're a quick little asshole,” Harry said seriously. If he'd been a few seconds slower, he'd be in two pieces on the floor. Harry shivered. In the end, he also just pulled a simple kerchief from his duster--honestly what didn't Harry carry in that thing?--and used it to pad the wound. Not a very effective bandage, but then he retied the little man's cloak around it for extra pressure. They had nothing to clean it with. It would do for now. His eyes moved up to Levi’s face then back around to the music box. “Yeah, my guess is that he didn't let it out. It waited until we were isolated before picking its target. Kids are easier to get inside because they aren't as stubborn as we are. By the time we reach our age we pretty much know who we are.” Teenagers with identity problems were good open subjects though. “Whatever it is, someone designed the sigils to keep it here.” So here it would stay. Harry eyed it more. He could probably break them down and take the thing. Then do what with It? *** “Speak for yourself, old man.” Harry was most certainly older than he was.. And he guessed maybe a bit older than Erwin had been, or around the same age. His eyes lowered as he thought on Erwin. Shit. That asshole. While Harry added the kerchief to the wound and retied his cloak, the Captain didn’t so much as flinch, not even a shift of muscle. He just sat there like he was waiting in line for a shoe-shine. Bored. Disinterested. “I’m sorry your hot date with the Ghost in the Box is cancelled,” since the sigils were keeping it there, “But we should get going.” With that, he was pushing up to his feet. “I want to get him to York.” What if he didn’t wake up again? What if he did, and there was some sort of permanent damage? They needed to get home. *** Harry continued staring at the box, his stupid curiosity picking at him to take it with him.. and that ultimately was why he didn't. If something whispered at you to touch it, trust it, or help it, you didn't. So he exhaled, reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of chalk. He drew a circle around the box, reluctant to touch it again before he decided to take it, and imbued the circle with his will. He felt the snap of power, sighed softly as the presence was lessened dramatically. It took the pressure off of them. Harry smiled faintly. “Yeah, come on,” Then he pushed himself up and, because he was the only one not injured, scooped the boy up in his arms. “Take the sword, clean your blood off.” Harry said seriously. He cradled Kirito against his chest, then headed toward the door. *** Take the sword, clean your blood off. What a ridiculous request. He clicked his tongue in displeasure but took the sheath off of the boy and slung it over his own shoulder. Then he picked up the sword and wiped it off on his pants in a careless manner. Sword resheathed, he pushed to his own feet and took another glance at the music box, before heading to the door. This time, before he touched the handle, he looked back at Harry to ensure it was alright. Then, he gave the wizard a slow once-over, almost as if he expected the man would launch himself forward and try to attack, as Kirito had. When he didn’t, Levi gave the door a tug to try and open it. Nothing. He tried again. Still nothing. “Tch. Fucking door won’t open.” He drew Kirito’s sword in a fluid motion. If Harry didn’t tell him not to, he was going to use it on that damned door. He needed to get his damn boy to a fucking doctor. *** Uh huh. That was exactly the state of Harry's life. Of course it didn't open. Naturally. Thought you could get away that easy, Harry? And guess what, none of the three had technology they could use to reach out to others because whatever the thing had been fried them all. Harry scowled, and then his eyes widened, “Don't!” he said again, an eerie echo of the warning earlier. “Jesus fuck, you can't just hack your way through things. There's a contingency in place for breaches. It's probably on lock down.” Did any of that make sense? Sure, to Harry. Why? Harry had wards that, once activated, remained in place for 12 hours. As in, he literally couldn't take them down. He just had to wait for them to burn out, as designed. Magic was cool as hell and also frustrating. Harry sighed, lowering Kirito to the couch. He was breathing still, his expression was drawn up, and his lips were parted slightly. Like he was having a nightmare. Opting not to panic Levi, Harry placed a hand over the boy's head, mimicking the motion of brushing his hair from his face. Fuck. They needed to get him out of here. “Shit.” *** “You’re speaking another language.” The Captain told him calmly, but lowered the sword all the same and slipped it back into its sheath. “So, what, we just wait here? What are we going to do? Take a nice long shit while we wait? Tch. This is ridiculous.” He didn’t like the idea of being trapped. In fact, it was almost as bothersome as the idea of being touched by another man. He didn’t seem to have any issue with a female touching him.. But men? Well. He’d broken limbs for it. His eyes trailed back to the boy on the hacked-up couch. They worked their way over his prone body and up to his head, his face, and the hand that was brushing his hair away. Up that hand, along that arm to broad shoulders, and then up to Harry’s worn face. “So you can do more than fire. Does your work the way Mustang’s does?” Those dead eyes fell back to Harry’s hands. *** “Start a fire and sing kumbaya,” Harry retorted. “I’ll check it in a minute.” And at least figure out what they were working with, if it was something familiar or completely out of Harry’s realm of understanding. Either way, knowledge was power. His gaze remained on the boy’s face. Harry didn’t have any sand in his pockets today, he’d used a lot of it last week after the titan attack and hadn’t had time to replace it, otherwise he’d have used it to keep Kirito’s dreams away. The more Harry looked at him, the more he was convinced that the expression on the kid’s face was because he was screaming. A long, silent wail. It sent a chill down his spine and tapped into that raw, dark anger that lived inside his heart. You didn’t hurt kids. Ever. Levi spoke, and the wizard’s dark eyes tracked back to him. “I’m a wizard, Mustang’s an alchemist.” They could do more or less the same things, but the alchemists had forced the distinction between magic and science. “I can create fire, Mustang manipulates it. But he’s about a thousand times better at it than I’ll ever be. If you watch him one day, it’s impressive as hell. He’s redirecting energy and dealing with mass amounts of heat from every angle. He’s basically doing the same alchemy working a dozen times at once in successive layers. All the while stopping it dead from touching people he doesn’t want it to touch.” Harry didn’t know the finer details of what exactly Roy was doing when he worked his magic--science, sorry--but he understood the man was also tapping into the oxygen and nitrogen traces. Creepy. And like Harry said, impressive. “Ballsy and talented, he’s a good guy to have on our side. I’d hate to have him on the other team.” *** None of it made any sense to him. None of it. Alchemy. Manipulating fire. Redirecting energy and heat, doing the same alchemy a dozen times at once in successive layers. What did any of that mean? His brows bunched up in a mix of confusion and anger. He really did have only two settings. He looked annoyed. “Is that supposed to mean something?” He finally moved away from the door, pacing around the room as he looked at the things on the walls, the things that had fallen from the walls. The bloodstains. The damage done by himself and the boy. He peered out the window-- but with the light inside, it was impossible to see out. He knew Arturo was out there in the cold, alone. He didn’t like it. “I didn’t see the sun for the first time until I was nearly thirty.” He remarked out of the blue, staring out the window. Nearly thirty? Oh yes. There was only one kid in this house, Harry. *** Oh yeah, weird vanillas. They always had a look of blank incomprehension when Harry started on about magic, so he supposed annoyance was a good change of pace. This was why he liked talking to Lucretia Prewett so much, because she understood and loved magic about as much as Harry did. The wizard sighed and shook his head, “It’s the difference between walking through a small campfire,” Harry gestured at himself. “And walking through an inferno in the middle of a volcano.” Sure, Harry could make a volcanic output of fire, but he’d also burn everyone alive, himself included. “Sit down, before you aggravate the wound on your back. If you make it worse you’re part of the problem and not the solution,” Harry said, finally pulling his hand away from Kirito. He sat with his back against the couch, drawing his knees up so he could drap his arms over them, his head back on the cushions, looking up at the ceiling. “What was it like?” Harry asked. “Seeing the sun the first time?” *** It still didn’t make any sense to him. He didn’t know what a volcano was. The blank look might have told Harry that.. But then again, he often wore that look. Still, he eventually curled up his lip in displeasure and came over to sink down into the high backed chair, arms coming to lay along the arm rests, fingers curling over the end. He looked like a child in daddy’s chair. “It was painful.” Came his simple assessment. Not beautiful, not breathtaking.. It was painful and intrusive and he hadn’t liked it at all. It was far too bright, it made everything much brighter, and it was hot, and later that evening, once he was back home, his skin had felt a bit like it was burning and it’d turned red. It hadn’t been a nice feeling. It wasn’t until his third or fourth time seeing it that he decided it was beautiful. The first time he saw a sunset was breathtaking. “You all take so many things for granted here.” All manner of things that Harry had surely never considered. Such as the sun. The stars. The feeling of wind. *** It was painful. Harry laughed, a low sound, then rolled his head over to look at Levi. “Yeah, it is,” he agreed. If you’d spent your whole life in the dark, everything you didn’t know would be painful and weird. He supposed he couldn’t blame the little guy for it. Thirty the first time he’d seen the sun. That made him what? Thirty-two at best? Still looked like a twelve year old to Harry. Kids. Harry rubbed his face with a hand, eyes closing, his head hurt. He’d been able to put the images he’d seen out of mind almost immediately, but the residual effects were clinging to him. He’d even cloaked his mind from the presence of the music box, though it was only a few way away from him. “Can you blame us?” Harry asked, “We’re only human, man. And humanity is flawed. It’s what makes us, us.” *** Thirty two at best? Ha. If only. He really wasn’t that much younger than Harry. His thirty-sixth birthday was creeping up. Six days away. Could they be blamed? Really? Was being human the excuse for everything? They were only human, they couldn’t be perfect, they made mistakes. Levi clicked his tongue and leaned forward slightly in his chair. “Is being human really all it’s cracked up to be?” It was a strange question to ask and could mean multiple things, if there had been any inflection in his voice or a different cadence to his tone. But there wasn’t. It was hard to decipher meaning with Levi. He’d just watch Harry for a moment, looking for his reactions, the shift of muscles, the lines in his face. He wanted to know what was going on inside the wizard’s head as he thought of all the screwed up things humanity did. *** It was an odd question. And for the wizard, one he grappled with frequently. Harry had seen the dregs of humanity. He’d witnessed the very forces of creation be used by human hands for murder and destruction. He’d done it himself a time or two. Winter was slowly trying to change him. Who was he to judge? He looked at Levi, “I’d rather be human than not,” Harry said. “If you only look at the ugly things mankind does, of course you’ll hate it. But there’s beauty and creation, and good in the world too. It’s there in the sound of a child’s laugh and the love in a man’s heart. We just are, Levi. A wise man once said ‘All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us.’ So yeah, there’s horrible crap that makes me question humanity, but then people make choices that remind me why it’s good.” He peered at him a little harder. “Kinda like you,” he said. “I wondered briefly what happened in your life to make you such an asshole, then I watched you put yourself between this kid and the unknown without question. Human.” Harry smiled. *** That was a lot of words all strung together. Waxing poetic about humanity. “The only thing we’re allowed to do is to believe that we won’t regret the choices we’ve made.” The choices that put humans on the side of good or evil. The choices that shaped their future. The choices that made them heroes or villains, that made them love themselves or hate themselves. Roy had made his choices. Harry had made his. Levi had done the same. And Levi had decided long ago that he would no longer regret the choices he made. Though, as Harry remarked about Kirito, the dark man set those dead eyes onto him again. “I’m stronger than he is. I’m a more capable fighter. I’m more experienced. And he is my only option to be a viable replacement if something happens to me.” He was saying (or, trying to prove, really) that his choice to defend the boy had nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with logic and survival. “Don’t confuse my reactions with empathy, wizard.” *** “Our choices define who we are,” Harry replied quietly. He wasn’t a stranger to regret, and he wasn’t a stranger to believing the choices he made at the time were the only options he had. It changed the way he thought of himself, it was true. He regretted a lot of the things he’d done, but they’d been necessary. Or so he reasoned. The wizard quirked a brow, tilting his head slightly when Levi explained his reaction to Kirito. “Yeah, in English, we call that protecting them.” He replied, chuckling. “But sure, you can pretend to be a brick. I don’t mind.” There was a pause, then Harry grinned. “I knew a guy who referenced his girlfriend as ‘Kine’ for the first few years I knew them. Then he almost died for her, so I don’t believe you.” He straightened his long legs. *** The Captain made a displeased noise and turned his head violently to the side, causing his hair to swing. “I’m not saying I don’t care. I’m still a person.” He hadn’t said ‘human’, mind. “I just don’t make my choices based on things like that. He isn’t the first kid I’ve protected, he won’t be the last. When you’re the best at something, you have obligations that come along with it.” And it wasn’t hard to believe that he was the best at killing titans. Though, after sitting in silence for a few heartbeats, the little man spoke up again. “What is Kine?” They kept saying words he didn’t understand. Kirito with his ‘Hai’ and ‘Konichiwa’ and whatever other ridiculous words he was making up on the spot. And now Harry with his ‘Kine’ and ‘Volcano’. What was he supposed to do with these insane words? Levi was so unworldly that he actually was unaware there were other languages out there. They all spoke the same language where he was from. There were accents, of course, but it was all the same language, and no one had ever spoken anything different, as far as they knew. After all, reading about history, or trying to learn about things beyond the walls, in the past, was outlawed. Sometimes, these people made him feel like a fool. It grated on his nerves and made him angry. *** Harry nodded, still smiling slightly. “I know. With great power comes great responsibility. I had an apprentice, too. I put my neck on the line for her, but it was my job.” Literally, if she had messed up even the slightest degree the Doom would have come down on their heads and they'd both have been executed. Harry's world was ugly and unfair, too. When Levi asked his question, Harry debated answering it, considered how much it would disturb Levi. Eh, what the hell. He wasn't a child and he had seen worse in his line of work. “Kine is a word a group of vampires use to refer to us humans. It means food, or cattle. They eat us.” Something Levi was used to anyway. “Vampires are creatures that feed on others to sustain their own life. Except they look like us, they speak our language, they go places we go.” He shrugged. *** Vampires, huh? That was sort of a ridiculous word. They ate people? Levi was used to that. But the fact that they looked like normal people? That was surprising. How did they eat people? Did they just gnaw on them? Levi had seen small titans eat people before, it was horrifying. Worse than the big ones, to see them tearing off chunks of flesh in small bits. It was painful and long-lasting, they could munch on you for hours before you died. “It sounds like these vampires all need to die.” A calm statement from the slightly younger man, who let his eyes fall to Kirito. “How is it that you tell them apart from yourselves?” He wanted to ask about the language, he wanted to learn what Harry meant when he said that. He knew what language was, of course, but he’d never heard the word used like that before. “How do you fight something like that?” Did they need to remove the backs of their necks, too? Remove their heads? Was there a solution at all? Those dead eyes lifted backup, to lock onto Harry’s brown set. He found it odd that the man wouldn’t meet his eyes. It was an alarm to the Captain, who was well aware that dishonest people wouldn’t look you in the eye. *** Harry snorted softly. All vampires needed to die. It was a sentiment he could readily get behind, with the exception of Thomas. “Yeah,” Harry replied. “Only the really smart ones are still alive these days.” Harry had personally taken out the Reds, and Lara Raith had done her work to consolidate power among the Whites. It was chilling the more Harry thought about it, so he pushed it away. Nothing he could do. Yet. “In peacetime we respect territory,” Harry said, “We live by rules that everyone in the community acknowledges and violating them has some stupid consequences no one wants to deal with. We just ended a war with them, so everyone is doing their best to keep the peace.” Which, oddly, was being led by Lara Raith herself. He rubbed his head again. “We kill them with a lot of magic and gunfire. We lost a lot of people in the war..” kids. So many kids. All their veteran soldiers. It was a wasteland of bloodshed. Harry looked away from Levi, then glanced back. “Carlos, the man whose cloak you returned to me had been fighting them since he was younger than this kid.” He tipped his head toward Kirito. *** Carlos. He’d never met the man. But: “Ed Elric’s brother,” that was who Alphonse was, forever in his brother’s shadow, “He said Carlos was his friend, when he told me who that cloak belonged to.” He’d gotten all teary eyed and quiet. Levi had felt bad for him. “He said you’d want it back.” The cloak, that was. He might have said he was sorry for Harry’s loss, but he couldn’t. Long ago, he’d learned not to apologize, not to say he was sorry, not to mention the loss someone suffered. Everyone suffered. It meant nothing anymore. Other people still spoke the words, but not Levi. Some criticized him for it, but they soon learned it changed nothing. “I’ve heard of people here talk of war. I know what the word means in context, but I guess it’s hard for me to imagine.” They weren’t fighting a war against the titans, they were just holding onto land, trying not to die. Keeping their people safe behind the walls. He felt very out of place here, with all this freedom, with all this room, all these people, with their new words and their confusing worlds. “It all seems very imaginary.” Harry’s magic, Kirito’s words, North’s technology, Mustang’s Alchemy, Georgia’s politics.. It was so outlandish. How could people even imagine something like that? Where had it all come from? *** “They were close,” Harry said of Carlos and Alphonse. Carlos liked the kid a lot, but anyone younger than Carlos immediately became one of his little brothers or sisters. Harry guessed it was because Carlos had a ton of cousins or something, he was used to being the big brother with them. Harry should check on Alphonse.. Maybe he’d give him the Warden’s sword. It was virtually useless now, the magic in it had been tied to Carlos when it was made. Only Carlos could wield it. But the sword still worked as a sword. Huh. Harry turned his head more fully to look at Levi, brows furrowing slightly. He almost said Levi was lucky not to understand war, but those words came from a place of ignorance. In a rare display of thought, Harry opted to think about it first. Was it lucky? The man lived behind walls, in a place so remarkably sheltered, under siege by giants that fed on their people. What was lucky about that? At least in a world like Harry’s, though riddled by war, they had the ability for self determination. They could change things, accomplish things, explore the world at their feet. So no, Levi wasn’t lucky. Harry was. “It does,” Harry agreed. “I didn’t know I could do magic until I was ten years old, and by the time I was sixteen, I thought only me, my sister, and our father could do magic. I didn’t know there was a whole secret society out there with its own laws, hiding in plain sight. Trust me, if it weirds you out discovering all of this, that’s normal. And you’re perfectly sane. Most people aren’t aware things like magic exist. It’s easy to brush it off because our brains can only handle so much before freaking out.” Once you learned, it was enough to drive you insane. *** Carlos and the little Elric had been close. He supposed that made sense, with the way the boy had reacted to him finding that cloak amongst the items removed from the dead. Human relationships were something that Levi understood-- he wasn’t like Texas, who simply didn’t get it sometimes. He had relationships, he had people he could call friends, Levi was even in love. He (surprisingly) functioned like a normal human being, if you spent the time to observe him and get to know him. Most people didn’t. Most people couldn’t. He kept them at arm’s length for a reason. They were all going to die, anyway. Ninety percent by five years. It seemed like more than that.. There were only two left alive now. Just two. The next closest was three years in. Nowhere near close to being a veteran. And he’d never make it. He was too sloppy. Levi didn’t invest his time anymore, he’d realized it didn't make a difference. He could instruct them time and time ago, but they just didn’t have his skill. They just weren’t good enough. But he thought Kirito just might be. Which made him think.. “The words Kirito speaks sometimes,” if he was asking stupid questions, and Harry was answering, now was the time to keep asking, “They sound made up. What is that? Is it some sort of a code?” *** There was a lull in the conversation while the men considered their own thoughts. Harry was eventually pulled from his own by Levi, who kept asking questions. Questions were okay, Harry just wouldn’t answer if he thought that Levi didn’t need to know the information. Lucky he wasn’t asking anything off the walls. The words Kirito--oh. He looked at the kid, with his skin that was several shades lighter than Maggie’s, but darker than Harry’s, his angled eyes and ridiculously straight hair. He spoke with an accent. “He’s speaking a different language,” Harry said. “I’m pretty sure it’s Japanese, but I can’t tell the difference between that and Chinese. Not a code in… well, it’s just a different language. I speak English and Latin.” There was a pause. “Do you not have different languages at home?” *** Different languages? There was only one language. What was the giant man talking about? The confusion didn’t show on his face, but the lack of some sort of understanding did. He just watched. Stared. Then, Harry asked his own question. “There is only one language. It’s all everyone speaks. If they were different, we wouldn’t be able to understand one another.” Funny, that. If Castiel were here, he might reflect that the place Levi came from sounded very much like Eden. No different languages. No wars. So few fights between people that they could only be called disagreements. They were tucked away and safe from the dangers that surrounded them. It was a strange line to draw, but it was there. So secluded, so innocent. Forced to be that way because of the world outside their walls. “Why would anyone choose to speak something different, that other people wouldn’t be able to understand?” It sounded ridiculous to him. But Levi’s entire world was tucked into a hundred square miles. Could Harry even imagine it? *** One language. That was weird. Sure, English was widely popular but not so popular that other languages were dead. But Levi had a point about not being able to understand one another. “Languages vary depending on the place you come from. There’s a bunch of big ones that a vast majority of the world speaks and then dialects and shit like that. Plus, most places offer the opportunity to learn a second language. My daughter spoke Spanish--which is the primary language where she was born--before she spoke English. She didn’t start learning that until she came over to live with me.” Well, with the Carpenters, but Harry didn’t want to complicate the explanation. He had a feeling that would just frustrate Levi. Harry understood that, trying to explain intangible ideas was difficult, trying to grasp them was worse. What would Levi think of Bob though? The little Spirit was good at breaking things down for idiots, as he often reminded Harry. *** It was likely Levi would do well with Bob. He did fine with Theta and Delta, after all. What he likely wouldn’t deal well with, was being treated like an idiot. The skull was likely to find itself thrown into a toilet. “But why would anyone just want to change what they speak? How would you communicate with your neighbors? Even if the people in my world spoke different languages based on where they were from, when they passed through the next wall, they’d have to learn whatever language the next wall spoke.” There was no separation in Levi’s world. The entire place could be walked, twice, in an afternoon. Wall Maria to Wall Maria. Wall Sina to Wall Sina in an hour if you walked quickly. “It seems ridiculous.” Only because he didn’t understand separation. Being separated by hundreds of miles would make sense, since there was no real interaction there. But being all one community? Even the underground had too much contact. Though, the underground had a dialect all their own, they had rougher voices, they didn’t have as large of a vocabulary, they had a slight drawl to their words. They spoke slower. Time meant very little when there was no sun. *** “You don’t change it, you just learn a new vocabulary and a new grammar..” Man, Harry didn’t know the first thing how to explain that. He’d learned Latin on his own, but how did you explain language acquisition to someone who didn’t understand the idea of multiple languages? “It’s like having two or more words for titans,” Harry said. “Except for everything, not just titans. So you use the language with the other people who understand it, depending on where you’re at.” Did that make sense? Harry felt like an idiot. “I don’t know, I’m not a linguist or a historian, I can’t explain why it is that way but it’s been that way since mankind’s inception.” Evolution, yeah, whatever. Harry got his GED in the 80s and Levi wouldn’t understand anyway, so why bother going into that conversation at all. The wizard folded his arms across his chest. “I bet he’d teach you Japanese if you asked him though. Then you could understand what the hell he’s saying.” *** “I guess I just don’t understand why it would be necessary. In the Underground, we talk a little different than the people on the surface, but that’s because we don’t have regular contact with them.” His tiny little world. “I suppose if we had no contact, we could eventually end up speaking dramatically different, over time.” It was an impossibility, though. Maybe the people in Harry and Kirito’s world were very reclusive. “I’m not very good at learning.” He stretched his legs out slowly, letting out a breath. It was shit, of course. Levi was a smart guy-- very smart-- but he was well past his prime for learning and hadn’t done much learning when he’d been in the best years for it. Erwin kept telling him he was brilliant, that he’d learned very quickly. The Captain wasn’t sure he believed it, Erwin was known for blowing smoke up Royals and rich men’s asses to get something out of them. Though, what he’d gain by doing that to Levi, the short man was unsure. “He seems to expect me to know it already.” Which was frustrating for him. *** Harry blinked, considering it. “Yeah, that would make sense….” Did it? Neighborhoods were small enough that you could have pockets of languages that weren’t the primary ones, where you didn’t have to communicate with outsiders. But.. well, maybe he had real trouble envisioning just how small Levi’s world really was. The wizard looked from Levi back to Kirito then back at the Captain again. “Because you’re Japanese?” he said it like a question. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, but you look like him.” Which yeah, yeah, hold your panties--didn’t mean you were from the same place. But for Kirito, who had never seen anyone who looked really different, Levi was one like him. Of course it made sense Levi would speak Japanese. He was Japanese. Harry scratched his nose. “You wanna take a picture?” He asked him, “Side by side comparison.” Okay, maybe he was being an asshole now. *** Levi gave Harry a sharp, hateful look. Man, he was good at those. But then he jerked his head violently to the side. “Tch. No. It’s obvious to see we look alike. Where I’m from, we call it Asian.” There was no differentiating between types of Asians. “Georgia told me Japanese is a type of Asian.” Those dark, dead eyes dropped down to Kirito. “My mother was Asian.” He made no mention of her father, he didn’t know her. “Her brother was Asian.” Was, again. “Mikasa’s parents were Asian.” Not that it mattered, not really. “We’re the only two left.” Maybe that would help Harry understand the size of Levi’s world. They knew exactly how many Asians were left. They could pinpoint them. “I hadn’t ever seen another, except for my mother, until I saw Mikasa, and later my mother’s brother.” He shifted slightly again. His wound was clotting and it was sticking to the cloth and was starting to pull uncomfortably. “Asians have a history of not lasting long. People pay good money for them.” He knew. He knew first hand. No one dared touch him now. *** “Yeah, Asia is a continent,” Harry said dumbly. “It has like…. Four billion people in it.” His brows furrowed again and he tilted his head. How did you go from four billion people to.. Two. What year did he say he was from, again? Population sizes weren’t that big way back a damn long time ago. But still. Harry thought back--had he participated in that conversation with them… no. Huh. Whatever. “How many people live in your home?” he asked. Enough to live behind walls.. But then China built a wall and they still had millions of people there. Harry looked at Kirito. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “If he had been a girl, I bet even the people here would have scooped him up right away.” Everyone made jokes about Asians, even in the modern world. Like they were an exotic thing to try out, to mark a notch on your belt for having screwed one. One of those things men coveted. It was sick. Harry narrowed his eyes. *** Continent, what the Hell was a -- his eyes widened (he suddenly looked childish, that angry look having left his face for a moment), then narrowed down again, almost angrily. Four billion? It was an impossible number. Harry might as well have said four gazillion. It seemed ludacris. “Around three thousand in the Underground, about ten inside the walls.” Thirteen. Thirteen thousand people. That was it. Perhaps now Harry could imagine the size of the home Levi lived in. Well, he wouldn’t have to much longer. “We have about a hundred square miles, around thirty of them are designated for human habitation, the rest are farm lands.” To feed the people who lived there. “Four billion seems like a bit of a stretch. You must have a lot more territory to spread out on.” He had no idea. *** Harry’s turn to widen his eyes. Thirteen thousand. Thirteen thousand people, period. That was it. That was humanity failing. Community colleges in Chicago enrolled twice that many students in a year. Stadiums could pack that many people into them. It was smaller than the population of some small countries around the world. Holy shit. The wizard blinked. ‘You guys must not be having a ton of sex,” he joked. Because jokes made things easier to understand and because Harry was terminally incapable of shutting his mouth. He rubbed his face. “Yeah, we have a little bit more room than that.” Levi wouldn’t comprehend just how much. A whole planet’s worth of space. *** “We had more. We had close to twenty.. But when we lost the outer wall, they had to leave them behind.” More than one wall, then. No worries, Levi was about to explain. “There are three walls. The outer most wall, Wall Maria is the largest, it has the most territory and the most farm land. Inside that is another wall, Wall Rose. It has slightly less territory, but a slightly more dense population in its districts. Wall Sina is at the center and holds the castle, it has no farmland, it’s the safest and only the richest live there.” Of course. “The Underground resides directly beneath it. It’s.. an underground city, built before the walls, to try and keep the humans safe. It’s a slum now.” Of course it was. Who would want to live underground their entire lives? “The outer wall, Wall Maria, was breached and the titans got in. To keep them from breaching Wall Rose, they sealed all the entrances. Everyone within Wall Maria was killed.” Slaughtered. Almost half the population, gone in a single day. Levi had lived underground at the time. But he’d heard about it. At the time, he hadn’t really cared. The Underground was sort of a world unto itself. “We fuck like rabbits.” He remarked blandly. “It used to be that the only ones who died were the people in the Underground, and the idiots who went beyond the walls.” Like himself. “Lately it’s become more messy. But we’ve been able to keep up our population without trouble.” Of course, if they got too big, everyone would starve to death. They maintained their numbers. They couldn’t grow. There wasn’t enough land. Wasn’t enough food. *** Harry listened, drawing an imperfect image in his mind’s eye. 100 square miles, a population of less than fifteen thousand cramped into a space of 30 square miles. Doable, certainly. “Chicago, the city where I’m from is twice the size of your entire home. Farmland included. It’s a city. There’s no farms. That’s just one city, in one state, in a country. There are about two-hundred countries in the world.” Man. Harry leaned back, letting his head fall onto the cushion of the couch so that he was looking up at the ceiling. “You guys are so fucked.” What else could he say to that? Sorry about your luck? They already knew it. Levi already knew it. What was the point of being horrified or outraged for them. They lived in a bubble and when it collapsed, humanity would end. For them, at least. Humanity was thriving elsewhere. Still. It sucked. *** It definitely sucked. They were totally fucked. Levi knew it. It showed on his face daily. And as Harry described his home, Levi stared at him. It was easy to understand that a city was smaller than a state (what was a state?) and that a country was larger than a state (what was a country?), so trying to imagine two hundred of them? He let out a slow breath. “Do you know what an ocean is? Erwin told me about it once, he said it was endless water that you can’t drink.” Though he hadn’t known why. “He said there were fields of sand, and white powder-- snow--” he’d just learned its name, “And that there are.. Very large humps in the land.” He had no word for ‘Hill’. “And solid water, called ice, in large chunks.” Turning some, he let his legs drape over the arm of the chair, clearly getting comfortable there. Man, he looked so small like that. Why the fuck was he so small? Maybe growing up with no exposure to sunlight would do that. It wasn’t like they had vitamins, after all. *** Not only did he look small, but he sounded childlike too, and suddenly Harry wasn’t convinced he wasn’t one. But for the wizard, being a child had less to do with age and a lot more to do with experience. Ivy, the Archive, had five thousand years worth of human knowledge stored inside her mind but she was by all accounts a fifteen year old girl. Was she a teenager or something else? Was Levi an adult, or something else? Harry didn’t know. But he sounded young when he asked those questions. “The ocean covers most of the planet’s surface,” Harry said. “There’s sand on beaches and in deserts where vegetation doesn’t grow. There’s mountains and valleys.” He raised a hand, palm up, reaching for the winter that was inside him to produce a spear of ice. It wasn’t very long, he was trying to use it for a weapon--just a short, thick spike. “There are places made of this stuff--ice.” How sad to live in a world where you couldn’t experience any of that. Granted, Harry did live in a world where he knew it existed, but he so rarely left Chicago.. The only times he’d gone abroad was for Council meetings and then when he and the other wizards almost knocked down Chichen Itza. He’d never seen the Grand Canyon, but he knew it was there. Mount Everest. The Sahara. He’d never been to the ocean either, but he’d gone to Lake Michigan. But it was all out there. *** Was it fair, to judge whether a person was a child or not, based on experience? Perhaps. But not when they were from another world. For instance, Levi was experienced-- well experienced in his own world. He knew it like the back of his hand, he had been nearly everywhere. Everywhere he could, anyway. Everywhere inside his tiny world. And Harry, in his much bigger world, thought him childish and inexperienced. Levi wasn’t worldly, according to Harry’s world. But then again, by those definitions, Harry wasn’t worldly when it came to North, York and Tex’s world. Just a child there. He’d never been to other planets. Never traveled through space. Fought aliens. It was all relative. When the ice was produced, Levi sat forward some and leaned, reaching out for it. He let his fingers brush over the solid, cold water. “It feels like hard snow.” It was cold. It was a little damp. It was.. See through. Like glass. He’d never seen ice before. “Talking about these things is punishable by death, back home.” His fingers retracted slowly. “There are strict rules about the world outside the walls, we’re not allowed to discuss it.” Imagine that. How oppressive and suffocating. “But outside the walls is the only time you’re free.” He sunk back against the arm of the chair. “A freedom worth dying for. Even the idea of it.” A lot of people died outside the safety of the wall. Dark eyes turned to Kirito again. There were days he thought he’d just keep riding. Not turn back. Just ride on, to see how far he could get. Just ride and ride until Arturo gave out beneath him. Until he had to take off on foot. Until the titans came. Until his blades run out. He’d already made his decision. When it came his time, he wouldn’t die inside those walls. He was going to make it to the ocean, so when he met Erwin again, he could tell him all about it. *** Levi’s world was oppressive, but for Harry it made perfect sense. They had less than fifteen thousand people who lived behind the safety of walls for a reason. You’d punish discussion of an outside world to protect the people within, because encouraging exploration beyond would get you killed. It made sense. Even if it sucked. It was to keep humanity alive. Laws weren’t made without reason. The wizard didn’t say it though, he just watched Levi for a moment with an unreadable expression, then he slowly turned his head away and looked at his hands. Harry Dresden, a man who toppled nations, and Levi… a man who couldn’t comprehend the ocean. How different their lives were, and yet both were weary, battle hardened fighters. The wizard pushed himself to standing, exhaling a breath and reaching down to brush himself off. “Try to relax,” Harry told him, “I’m going to poke at whatever is keeping us here and see if I can’t convince it to let us go early.” *** Of course, as soon as Harry told him to relax, Levi was putting his feet back on the floor and standing. “Hurry up.” He wanted to get Kirito somewhere a doctor (the doctor) could look after him. Taking even steps over to the couch, he took up Harry’s spot so he could bring down a hand and check the boy for a temperature. It was really all he knew to do. “If you need me, just call.” Because he may have been injured, but he was still more than capable of helping. His attention, though, was settled onto the Japanese boy. Click to go back... |