New Recruits - LevixRecruit!Reader

Steel grey eyes stared out over the members of the Survey Corps as they trudged into the mess hall. New recruits had just been accepted today. They were in for a rude awakening. Most of them had arrived a little scared and a little determined. All of their eyes had widened in horror when they saw the older cadets walking around with solemn expressions, the room nearly silent. So, the younger recruits tended to try to avoid the higher ranking members. Which was all well and good. Outsiders weren't exactly welcome here. New people meant new teams that the surviving soldiers would have to get used to. This also meant struggling all over again to kill the titans.

Erwin used to joke about how the new recruits had to have a certain smell with how much they were avoided and lectured.

Levi didn't think it was funny. He was sure that these cadets had been warned to stay away from the Survey Corps. He was sure that they had thought the noble thing was to join their ranks. And he was also sure that, by now, they were starting to regret their decision and wishing they could hide inside the walls like the true cowards they were.

Sure, a few of them would stand their ground and maybe even become admirable soldiers with too much experience.

'Too much', the raven haired man thought to himself as he watched a young recruit try to approach Jean Kirstein. The man flinched as soon as a hand tapped on his shoulder and he whirled around as if readying for a fight. Levi shook his head. Part of him wanted his soldiers to toughen up and stop flinching at the slightest movement. The other part of him wanted Erwin to start taking this seriously and tell the new recruits not to make any fast or sudden movements around the ranking officers and more experienced members BEFORE they arrived.

Experience came with trauma. Experience came with the sort of abuse that no doctor could mend in a fortnight. And these recruits didn't know the half of it.

The young recruit was trembling now, blue eyes wide as he clutched his tray and stammered an apology. Jean struggled to compose himself but wasn't one to make nice, so he just grunted and sat back down, continuing to eat his meal. Levi knew that the recruit would think that Jean hated him for some odd reason for a while. At least until his own first expedition behind the wall. Until he witnessed the brutality and bloodshed that Jean had seen so much of.

That Levi had seen so much of.

He sneered to himself and forced his eyes to stare into the potato soup that was dinner for the night. What did it matter anyways? Half of them would be dead within the month, a quarter of them will have tried to beg Erwin to let them rejoin the walls ranks and the remaining quarter will have either strengthened themselves and become decent fighters, or given up and just had too much pride to back out. It happened every time they received new recruits. Rinse and repeat.

His eyes flickered back upwards. He was almost tempted to make a game out of trying to guess which recruits would survive and which ones would perish. He scanned the room, Erwin and Hanji's chattering becoming a drone of sound in the back of his mind. His eyes landed on a short blonde girl, bright hazel eyes that studied the older members around the mess hall. Dead, Levi thought to himself.

A tall, slender boy with red hair and dark brown eyes. Survive.

A muscular girl with a scowl on her dark face, black hair pulled into a ponytail, her eyes nearly matching. Survive.

A short boy with brown hair and blue eyes, shit-eating-grin plastered on his face as he joked around with the other new recruits. Dead. Over confidence will get you killed.

A (short/tall) recruit, scanning the room with their (e/c) eyes just as Levi was. Their eyes locked. Neither of them blinked. Levi felt like he couldn't breathe for a minute. There was a strange fire in those eyes. The (boy/girl) was staring, like a refusal to back down and break eye contact first. Levi saw them raise their chin as if to further drive home the point that their eyes were making. Their (s/c) face was framed by (long/short) (h/c) hair. Levi raised an eyebrow and muttered to himself. "Survive. Looks like you might be one of us."

"What was that?" Erwin turned his head, blue eyes staring at him in confusion.

Levi grunted, reluctantly breaking eye contact with the odd recruit across the room. "Nothing. I'm finished, there's lots of paperwork to catch up on. I'll be in my office." He swung his legs over the bench of the table and took his empty dishes with him, dumping them onto the kitchen's counter before disappearing into the hall.

As soon as he got into his office, he shut the door and sat at his desk, rummaging through the files on the new recruits that Erwin had brought to him earlier that day. He scoured the files until he found one that matched the description of the (boy/girl) in the mess hall. (Y/n), the file read.

Levi leaned back and drummed his fingers on his desk. "You may surprise us all, (Mr/Miss) (L/n)."