Chapter Text
It’s so hot. You can feel the warmth on your skin and your eyes, as if it’s begging you to open them. But you don’t want to. It’s the type of warmth thats comforting, but also almost unbearable at the the same time. Smelling the sweet aroma of some type of flower, and you start to smile.
You wish you could stay here forever like this, but you realize you don’t even know where you are. Because of this, you open your eyes, and you’re immediately blinded by the sun. Surprised, you jolt up and start to take in your surroundings. You rub your eyes, confused and tired. You’re surrounded by a field of red roses that seemingly had no end.
Deciding that it would do no damage to walk around, you start exploring this odd place. There’s hills of these flowers, but no trees or... the walls. Where even are the walls? You take in a deep breath. You don’t know where the walls went, but now that they’re finally gone, you feel at peace. When you look down, you can see that you’re wearing a plain white dress, and it’s probably the nicest thing you’ve worn in a while. You feel the silky material of the dress and wonder where you got it from, but dismiss it for now.
As soon as you look back up, you’re surrounded by the same roses, except now, they were all dead. At the sudden change of mood, you wonder what you could’ve possibly done. You always seem to mess up like this. Why are they all dead? What did you do?
Overtaken by your emotions, you fall to the ground and start sobbing. You don’t even want to cry, but here you are, on the ground sobbing out of your control. You felt like you were going crazy. You feel the roses consuming you, it felt like they were laughing at you, mocking you.
Suddenly, you start hearing voices. “This is all your fault!” It’s a man. ‘I know,’ you think. “You have to work hard and pay us you asshole! Life doesn’t give you shit for free just because you have a hard life!” What the hell is going on? You take your head out of your hands, and start looking around frantically. No ones there. You stand up, and start running. Where are these voices coming from?
You continue running, but start feeling the ground dissipate below you, and you start falling....
Falling...
Falling...
As you shoot yourself awake, you come back to reality. Another nightmare. Now, you can hear the voices you heard in your dream. It sounds like two men and a girl arguing right outside of your door. It’s not like the walls are very thick down here in the Underground. Although this place is filthy, you’re relieved to be back here, and not stuck in your nightmare. Without even getting a chance to recollect your thoughts, you can hear the girl outside yelling. “Just let me go just this once! Please!” No wonder this sounded like complete nonsense in my dream.
You ignore it for now and focus on yourself first. Besides, you’re overheating and sweating from the nightmare you just had. What could that have even meant? White dress? Dead roses? You could barely even focus, the longer the people argued, the more annoyed you were getting. It seemed that they were just getting louder and louder. You’ve never wanted to punch someone so badly, it sounded like the two men were tormenting the poor girl. You conclude that you might as well see what the commotion is about, after all it is 6 in the morning and they woke you from your slumber.
“You little bitch, if you don’t want to pay using money you’ll pay in a diff-“ When you walk outside, there is two tall men, although the one talking was more muscular while the other was skinny. The skinner one, a brunette, was standing in a firm stance trying to hide the fact that he was scared shitless. The muscular one, a blond, was standing with his fist back, and directed his eyes towards you as soon as you stepped out of the door. You can see him loosen his fist and his eyes widen as soon as he saw you. It almost made you want to laugh.
Seeing who his fist was directed at, it’s a woman with her face scrunched up and eyes closed, ready to take the punch. She looks around your age and despite the tired look on her face, she’s very pretty. She has very long dark brown hair, almost a black color, and brown eyes. You predicted that she was around 5’4-5’6. She looked terrified, and her hands were in front of her face, as if it would protect her.
It makes you feel sick, seeing these two men taking advantage of a girl they knew couldn’t fight back. You take one step in front of the girl to protect her and put your hand over the mans fist, which he hasn’t moved out of shock. You then force it down to his side, and sarcastically smirk at him.
You start saying, “I’m assuming since you two woke me up from my beauty sleep at 6AM something must be really important. So, fess up. What’s going on here?” The skinny brunette man looks at you confused, and then scoffs. “You think we’d be scared of you? Threatening us won’t work, you know. She stole bread and now she has to pay for it. We’re not cowar-“ The blonde stops him by kicking him in the shin and the brunette gasped in pain, trying to hide his agony. “You dumbass this is Y/N L/N!” The blonde whispered, although it was more like he was yelling in a whispering form.
You chuckle, after all you are notorious in the Underground. “She stole bread?” You say, and look behind you at the girl. She looks close to tears but is holding her composure. You turn around and say, “I’ll pay, just leave her alone.” You barely even have enough money to buy your own food, but you just want to get this over with, without any further conflict. “No, Miss you don’t have to! I can just find a way to pay them back later-“
Oh, so she talks. It was surprising how she was still holding herself together, after everything she went through with these men. You turn around and respond, “It’s fine.” It was more of a strict tone, you were trying to imply to just be quiet for now.
Suddenly, the blond man catches you off guard and grabs you from the collar of your shirt, pushing you off to the side. “You think we’re just going to let her get away with this? She needs to be taught a lesson so she doesn’t do this again.”
Now you’re angry. Why does he care to this extent? Saying your thoughts out loud, you say, “Why do you care? If I’m giving you the damn money, shouldn’t you just except it?” You grab his hand and force it off of your shirt, and then twisted it behind his back as much as you could. As he fell onto his knees, you stick your leg to his free shoulder and pressed his face to the ground, making sure he couldn’t get out. When he grunts in pain, you continue. “You’re just picking on her at this point because you know you’re stronger than her, and that pisses me off.” You start twisting his arm further backwards, and now he’s yelling in pain. “Last time i checked, arms aren’t supposed to bend like this. Do you want me to break your arm right here? Or are you going to put a smile on that ugly face of yours and take the money?”
From the ground, he looks at you from the side with his piercing brown eyes, and says nothing. You start pulling his arm back in one last warning and see the look of terror on his face. “Okay! We’ll take the money!” The brunette squeals, and walks up next to you. “I apologize on his behalf, this went way too out of proportion! We’ll take the money and leave her alone!”
“Had to have your wimpy partner save you, huh?” After saying this, you decide to let him out of your grasp. You didn’t feel like fighting right now, it was too early, and you’re still in your pjs. Not to mention you have work in a couple hours.
You notice him starting to get back up on his feet, and kick him in the back, catching him off guard and throwing him back on the ground. You laugh and say, “not too fast, blondie.” Although you found this quite amusing, you seemed to be the only one laughing. “Okay then, tough crowd, huh? Here’s the money pricks” You shoved the money into the brunettes chest and turned back over to the girl. As they walk away, you can hear the blond talking about you. “What a bitch.”
“Yeah I’ve heard that insult here and there.” You two laugh as you talk to her. “So, what’s your name?” Might as well get to know her while you’re here. “Um- I’m Rose Brooks. Thank you so much for paying for me, you really didn’t have to do that. I feel terrible honestly. You can keep the bread, I’m not that hungry anyways.” You give her a confused look. “Are you serious? Of course not!” You say. “I work at the bakery down the corner.” You see her wince when you mentioned a bakery, and then reassure her. “Oh not the bakery they work at. They work at the best bakery down here. The one i work at is kind of run-down. Its called ‘Delicious Bakes.’ Of course, it’s not actually delicious, but it’s all we’ve got. You just go down this street and then take a right and then a left. If you ever need to stop by you can. I’m-”
“Y/N L/N, I know,” She interrupts. You chuckle and scratch the back of your head, embarrassed. “Well, I’ll see you around?” You ask. “Of course!!” She replied with the biggest smile on her face.
Yes it’s true, a lot of people know your name in the Underground. You’re notorious for being one of the best fighters here, and people know not to mess with you. Not like you exactly love to get in fights anyways, unless they deserve it of course. If someone asked you, you would say it’s not a big deal, but it seems like everyone else thinks so. You can tell by the way people talk about you, like you’re some type of celebrity.
“She’d definitely beat your ass”
“Only second best to ——-“
Second best to... who again? You couldn’t remember their name, but right now it wasn’t important. You just wanted to at least get a bit more sleep before your shift in a couple hours. Although you work all the way into the night, you don’t make much money. However, it’s enough to buy you food and water, while still being able to save up for your dream. And honestly, that’s all you could ask for. You set your alarm, and fall back to sleep as soon as your head hits the pillow.
When you wake up, it feels like you didn’t even sleep at all. Your alarm clock is practically pounding through your ears, and the last thing you want to do right now is go to work. Nonetheless, you sit upright and immediately feel the back pain. The things I would do to sleep on an actual bed.
You put your hair in a low bun and wear your usual uniform for work, a black t-shirt and black jeans. It wasn’t exactly a “uniform,” since you bought these clothes yourself years ago. The dress-code at your job wasn’t exactly strict. It was so painfully plain and dark, just like practically everything else in the Underground.
For the first few hours at work, it was the same as usual. Despite being a bakery, there wasn’t an assortment of different baked goods, it was just bread. Plain, stale, leftover bread from whatever was left in Wall Maria, Rose, and Sina. You argued with many costumers who complained that you didn’t have better quality bread for the day, no matter how many times you told them that there was nothing you could do about it. Occasionally, you would see someone steal bread, but you did nothing about it. It’s not like you can blame them anyways, that used to be you.
“Hey, #2!” You jolt awake and realize you were falling asleep behind the counter. As your eyes were adjusting to the light, you can see a male figure. Are you fucking kidding me. It’s the brunette from earlier. What does he want? Is he talking to you? You give him a perplexed look. “Yeah, you.” He scoffs and says, “Follow me.” Oh hell no, is he stupid? Why would you ever willingly follow him anywhere? “No way I’m following your scrawny ass.”
“Don’t you want to come and help your little partner in crime?”
What could he possibly mean by partner in crime? You were practically alone in the Underground. You glance at the clock. Hoping that it is actually correct this time, it’s around 8 P.M. No one has come in hours, and you don’t expect much to happen if you leave for 5 minutes.
“Fine.” You step out behind the counter and walk towards him. “5 minutes is all you’re getting.” He laughs and leads you out to the left, into a dark alley next to your building. As soon as you step into the light, you gasp in surprise.
The blond from earlier is holding a black-haired man in a back-chokehold, and he’s gasping for air. You can see he’s putting up a good fight, considering he hasn’t passed out yet. However, there’s not much he can do in this situation. He’s in a chokehold on the ground from a guy who looks to be much taller than him, and he’s pushing all of his weight onto him.
Quickly, your surprise turns into confusion. “I have no idea who this man is.” You turn to the brunette and start to walk away. Part of you wants to help him, but another part of you is worried that someone is stealing the entire supply of bread without your knowing. “Oh come on, don’t you at least know a little bit about him?” Your back is turned to the man stuck in a chokehold now, and you assume that this guy is the best fighter in the Underground. This would make sense, since the brunette called you “#2.” You thought that this was a reference to you being the second best fighter in the Underground. You turn back to the brunette and say, “If he’s really the best fighter down here, he can fight himself out of that chokehold. Have a good day.”
It physically pains you, every step you take makes you feel like you’re betraying him more and more. You don’t even know him, just leave it alone. But you couldn’t, the thoughts were getting worse and worse the more you heard him fight and struggle. Your hand reaches to the door, and you’re ready to step inside. However, suddenly the blond starts to talk.
“Oh come on, are you really this weak, Levi? I didn’t think it would be this easy to kill you”
Levi.