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Erwin thought about it often.
It was afternoon (much like it was now, as he thought of it for the hundredth time), and he a man in possession of a razor-sharp memory could see in his mind the burgeoning evening, orange sky, the long shadows, and feel the warmth of the sun on his back. All of these details were inconsequential except to feed into the authenticity of the memory itself.
He didn't doubt it, but childhood memories had a tendency to be sifted through the years and banks of other information, rolled and sanded down like a pebble to become soft and idealistic when presented to the forefront of the mind. Erwin tried to keep such things distinctly in the realm of their own reality and didn't waste time duping himself that he was a content child or that his lack of contentment made it easy for him. Intelligence that begets self-awareness is never easy.
But he did remember it being a pleasant afternoon, until they found the coin. It had been sticking out of the bank of the stream, glinting in the light. Erwin had been with two of his cousins, a girl younger than he was and a boy his own age. They'd gone a bit too far, as the stream was past the two trees. The two large trees were like a gate, a marker of how far he ought to explore. Intelligence that begets self-awareness also engenders a need to broaden oneself and if Erwin could, he'd scale the walls, gaze upon the titans himself. He remembered very acutely that fantasy, to leave behind the little bubble of Sina and touch real dirt with his own hands, see real birds with his own eyes.
Especially before he was old enough to understand the implications of such, he considered this world inside the walls only a facsimile. He would not experience the real world until he was beyond the confines he was born into. He remembered this, calling everything outside “real.”
He liked the stream because it was far enough from his house and all other familiar homes that if he closed his eyes and drew in a lungful of air, he could almost imagine he was breathing in the world beyond. Almost. It was his form of make-believe.
The coin was such an interesting find to his cousins and the boy had been the first to unearth it, jabbing a stick into the mud and flicking it into the grass.
“It's money,” the girl said, squinting, in the harsh last rays of day. Erwin could tell she obviously didn't want to touch it.
“I got it out so it's mine to keep,” the boy said, reaching down and rubbing the mud off of it onto his pants. He squinted in the same way his sister had, scrutinizing.
Erwin wasn't interested in money. What was the point of arguing over a coin, if that's what it was to come down to?
“Hold on,” said the girl. “It's not real money.”
“Then what is it?”
They'd handed the coin to Erwin, since he was the better reader of the three of them. He didn't recognize the coin either; it felt heavy in his hand like a real coin but there wasn't nothing on it to suggest it was remotely domestic.
“I'm keeping it,” he said, dropping it into his shirt pocket. He could feel it heavy against his chest.
Neither of his cousins argued. What good was fake money? Children could be so greedy and pigheaded, he remembered thinking. They didn't understand anything.
He showed it to his father (stupidly) and his father confiscated it and told Erwin to not ask for it back or to even think about it anymore. The severe tone was at first surprising, given the nature of the situation. His father looked afraid.
It must've been something really good if he was that intent on keeping it away from Erwin but what could he do? Children, even intelligent, aware children were still just that. And even more so that he was shrewd and perceptive, he figured, that his father was so keen on making sure he did not have it in his possession.
Erwin was ten when he remembered the incident, and realized what he did not then: it was a coin of the society that was here before, an artifact of life before the walls.
No wonder his father had looked terrified; so suddenly he'd become in possession of a heretical piece of history.
Erwin thought about it often, that first layer upon which other layers had been built, many other thoughts, discoveries and realizations that led to him enlisting in the military as soon as he was old enough to be a soldier.
*
Levi set the first dish down on the table, a little roughly, considering a few crumbs of bread tilted off the plate onto the wooden surface.
Erwin could feel Levi's eyes on him, and he could imagine Levi was glaring. He didn't bother looking up, as he could picture his expression perfectly in his mind, and there were more important things than engaging Levi at this particular moment. His left hand curled around the pen, and the line it produced was crude, shaky. It looked like a word written by a child.
Behind him he could hear Levi pouring a glass of water. Given the amount of hours he'd spent here, he was comfortable with Erwin's private quarters and had prepared them a very simple dinner of potato soup and crusty bread. Erwin had remarked earlier he was pleasantly surprised at Levi's kindness, to which he'd scoffed.
“You make it sound like I never do anything for you.” Which was not true.
“I can't give you a compliment?” Erwin smiled. That smile produced the opposite effect on Levi, who placed his hand on his hip and scowled.
“There's nothing complimentary about the accusation that you're shocked I'm being kind to you.”
“The words I used were “pleasantly surprised.”
“All I heard was a damn ingrate,” Levi had muttered but Erwin imagined Levi of years ago, such an acerbic, bitter young man who would've thrown off the insinuation of kindness itself as merely a misunderstanding. The man who'd turned away and stalked off to begin washing dishes, announcing he had to wash his own or he couldn't eat from them, was a man who was offended by the idea that Erwin didn't think him kind enough.
Both of them had changed a vast amount in the past few years, and Levi's evolution had been one of the more rewarding parts of their relationship and Erwin found himself comparing how a younger Levi would've reacted to events sometimes. It brought an immediate feeling of gratefulness for Levi and the person he was now.
Levi set the glasses of water down pointedly now, and slid into the chair opposite Erwin.
“I'm not playing servant just for you to ignore what I'm doing.” He continued to glare at Erwin over the rim of the glass as he took a sip of water.
“I'm not ignoring you.” Erwin looked down at the page, where letters of the alphabet were scrawled with the shaky, barely legible sets of lines. Some drops of ink blossomed onto the page, spreading out like black veins into the abysmal attempts at writing with his left hand.
“Whatever. You're going to get more and more pissed off if you don't take a break.” His eyes moved sidelong to the balled up bits of paper littering the table and his expression softened a hair. He knew Levi didn't feel sorry for him; if anything it was empathy.
“You're right.”
It was almost like it didn't happen now, that the entire incident was a fever dream, something strange and fleeting. He remembered everything in snatches, which was odd, considering his precision in cataloging details of every incident as it pertained to him. Everything was snatches with large moments of black between but he did remember the fear.
It wasn't the fear of losing his life. He'd resigned himself long ago, back in his trainee days, that he would not have a peaceful death. People who were not content did not pass away gently, in old age.
There was a moment of adrenaline, which had nothing to do with the pain of a pair of very large teeth gripping his arm. It was this rush he couldn't describe now, even if he tried to. It felt like he did the first time he used maneuver gear, his stomach dropping out from under him, an incredible feeling of nerves firing at all once. He wondered if it was some reaction to the realization that he was finally going to die.
The fear came from the catastrophic loss before him. Eren Jaeger's safety, that boy who he'd bet everything on, and the sight of the mission going sour. If he died here, he'd never know if Eren had saved humanity, he'd never get to gaze upon the glory of humanity's triumph.
He thought a lot about what he'd said later, his arm bleeding out, his mind clouded from the loss of that blood. “I can be replaced.”
Was this even true?
The scouting legion could gain a new commander. There were many capable talents under him but what would they replace? They would replace his position, but then that called in such a feeling of egotism. Yes, anyone else could become commander, but did he truly believe he was the commander who would free humanity?
If he didn't, then what the hell was he doing? If he didn't believe it himself, what was the point?
The fact that he did not know how to answer that was troubling.
He was a man built upon layers, different experiences who made the core of who he was. He supposed most people were, but his foundations and resulting stories were solid and unwavering and lent themselves to every aspect of his decisions. He knew who he was, supposedly, and what he wanted to do.
Any doubt or questioning in his mind was another crack.
Erwin shoved the paper off the table and slid the food towards himself. Levi looked at him, saying nothing, just silently watching for a moment.
Every bit of doubt was another crack.
In the first few days after the accident, he'd been so weak that he couldn't lift a spoon and Levi had let him regain his strength after minimal help, looking away when he couldn't accomplish a task, giving him some dignity. As much as he hated the feeling of being physically weak, the feeling of being mentally weakened was all the more worse. He'd regain the strength in his arm, but the uncertainty might be lingering.
He knew if he didn't eat Levi would protest, but the bread he'd bit into felt chewy in his mouth, and he set the half-bitten piece back onto the dish, the slice stained slightly with the ink from his fingers.
“Erwin,” said Levi, after a moment of watching him, Levi's hand hovering over his own bowl of soup. “Are you all right?”
Erwin didn't know if the recounting of the incident had made him feel so physically ill now; he'd thought about it several times since then, discussed it, but now he felt a cold feeling in his gut, and noted with some shock his hand was shaking.
It was such a murky memory visually, but he could still smell the titan's breath, hot and dank, and feel the pain of the jaws crushing his bones, feel the warm blood running down his arm. And that strange, panicky excitement that he never could place.
Such a contrast to what he'd been thinking of as he practiced writing, which was the memory of the coin. He'd been thinking his penmanship looked like a child, then remembered his impeccable writing as a boy. Like a child, but not him as a child. Himself as a child was sharper than that.
He as a child had known that there was something more important beyond the walls; there was something terrifying in that coin and there was life outside where the titans roamed. It all said to him that there was proof people had lived outside the walls peacefully and that it was possible again.
The coin itself was a symbol for that proof.
“Levi,” he said, finally, “how did you feel when you first used maneuver gear?”
“Erwin, for fuck's sake,” Levi replied. Then he raised his eyebrows. “You're being serious.”
Erwin knew his look when he met Levi's eyes was piercing. Levi reflected it back.
Levi exhaled sharply. “I felt like I was flying. I mean, that's like the same thing everyone else will tell you, right? But flying to me felt like I could get free of something. I could escape.”
Erwin felt himself nod.
“When I first went outside the walls,” Erwin said, “I saw the same things I'd seen inside the walls, but out there they seemed more real. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah.” Levi said nothing, just stabbed his spoon at the barely touched soup in front of him. “It's like the air is the air we were meant to have.”
“I felt the same feeling of escape when I went on my first mission.” He paused.“Levi, I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with this thought,” he admitted, though he knew Levi knew what he was trying to say, as clouded as his mind seemed to be now.
“That's the air we were meant to have,” Levi repeated. “And it damn sure will be ours. Don't tell me you don't think it won't be.”
When Erwin did not reply, Levi shook his head, maintaining fierce eye contact. “Are you having doubts?”
How could he answer that truthfully?
“We're symbols for humanity's hope,” Erwin answered at last. “We can't show doubts.”
“Yeah, the commander says that, but what do you say?”
“Everyone needs a symbol for hope.”
“Don't talk in circles. Tell me what you fucking mean.”
Erwin smiled, and it was a real genuine smile. “I mean, I don't have any doubt we're going to reclaim our world. I don't doubt you, I don't doubt any of our soldiers. And to do so, I can't doubt myself can I?”
Levi smiled one of his strange smiles. He always seemed tired when he smiled, and resigned. It was the barest trace of a curving of his lips.
“I know all that with your injury has made you probably start thinking dumb shit lately.”
Erwin was grateful for Levi's perceptiveness as well.
“You're the same man you were before then.”
“No,” Erwin replied. “I'm not. But it's not a bad thing, really. If anything, I think I'm making myself more resolute.”
Every bit of doubt was a crack, but this would become yet another layer to build upon, he had to be sure of it.
Erwin knew people needed symbols in their lives, almost like a need for religion. They needed something to grasp towards and if being a part of a vessel for hope until his dying day was what he needed to do to be that symbol, to convince this surviving piece of humanity that their triumph was in reach, he knew he had no doubts. Or realistically, he couldn't. He would choose what to feed into, so to speak.
“After you eat,” Levi said, pointing to Erwin's untouched soup with his spoon, “if it won't make you feel weird or anything, I can help you with that.” He nodded towards the ink and papers. Then he snorted. “I know you didn't want to ask, because you never ask for anything.”
Erwin felt that gratefulness in every inch of his body. If ever there was a doubt, he would never let the other man know.
“Thank you, Levi.”
He picked up his ink-stained bread and at least began to eat.