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He grabs the mic. The sudden sensation of cool metal burns his palm. He’s sensitive. Too sensitive.
He doesn’t know why he is, why he can feel.
The numbness should be consuming him. He doesn’t want to feel. He can’t. It hurts too much.
The crowd is cheering. They want him; want his voice permeating their ears. They crave him, lust after him, but he doesn’t want them. Only him.
He, with the emerald eyes and the chocolate brown hair; the skin that the sun had kissed so tenderly. He, with the infectious laugh and the smile that could brighten any day
Urgh, his love for him was so cliché, such a whirlwind cliché romance, with all the unbelievable passion of a shitty chick flick.
His shitty chick flick.
He didn’t want to be up here, not without him in the crowd, cheering louder than any fan could, and drawing unnecessary attention to himself.
The crowd screams.
‘Levi! Levi! We love you Levi!’
Silver eyes narrow dangerously, and his fans –mostly the female ones – shriek excitedly. They mistake the annoyance in his eyes for flirtation, the bitter emotion for delinquent charm. They long for him, with his ‘bad boy’ looks, and seductive voice.
Hanji signals him. He nods as confirmation, and behind his back, he gestures for his band to start.
Oluo begins the beat, and Levi flinches, but it is minute, so only Hanji, who has been watching him for the whole evening notices.
Petra immediately enters, and it’s Levi’s cue to begin. It’s ‘his’ favourite song. By ‘his’ favourite band. They just had to choose that one.
Levi opens his mouth, and the words that mean so much spill out
‘This night, walk the dead
In a solitary style
And crash the cemetery gates
In the dress your husband hates’
This was ‘his’ song, the one that used to play on loop until Levi promised to sing it at one of his shows. He was so happy, going off in a stream of illegible German; his native language. Levi, a Frenchman himself, laughed and teasingly told him to stop hurting his ears with such an inferior language.
But Levi always thought German sounded exquisite when he spoke it.
‘Way down, mark the grave
When the searchlights find us
Drinking by the mausoleum door
And they found you on the bathroom floor’
He remembers finding him lying there, virtually floating in the pool of his blood. There was so much of it, but Levi justified it by saying his heart was too big, and it took on too much
‘I miss you; I miss you, so far
And the collision of your kiss that made it hurt so hard’
Levi’s own heart hurts as he sings the chorus. He so dreadfully missed the shitty brat.
Why couldn’t he have helped him? Why couldn’t he have taken his pain from him?
‘Back home, off the run
Singing songs that makes you slit your wrists
It isn’t that much fun, staring down a loaded gun’
He still sees the image of those jagged red lines on ‘his’ wrists, ‘his’ face so peaceful. Not like his friend Jean’s partner Marco, who went with a bullet in the mouth. Neither ‘he’ nor Jean never really recovered from that.
Levi sings the next part of the song, Hanji joining in as back up
‘So I won’t stop dying, won’t stop lying (Are you there at all?)’
Levi’s heart was dead, but he kept lying to people, to himself, that he was okay. That he was getting over losing him. That he was moving on.
‘If you want I’ll keep on crying (Do you care at all?)’
By himself, he cried his pain. He didn’t think that he could go on. He lost such a big part of himself, and the façade he put up was slowly crumbling away
‘Did you get what you deserve? (Are you there at all?)
Is this what you always want me for?’
A small part of Levi is angry at ‘him’ for leaving him like this. Levi gave ‘him’ his all. Wasn’t that enough? Didn’t his love count for anything?
‘I miss you; I miss you, so far
And the collision of your kiss that made it hurt so hard’
He recalls each of their moments spent together. Each moment they kissed. When it seemed like the world stopped and Levi finally knew what all those ridiculous love songs were going on about.
‘Way down, way down,’
He feels himself falling, trapped. He can’t get rid of the abyss he’s sinking into
‘Way down, way down,’
He is losing himself, on the precipice, so close to giving up, just so he can be with him, but knowing that’s the quitter’s option.
‘Way down, way down,’
He’s losing his composure, his mask. It’s letting emotion through. From the corner of his eye, he can see Erwin’s eyes widening. Levi’s never lost his cool on stage.
‘Way down, way down!’
He snarls this last line, his voice ragged and raw with emotion. The audience loves it, completely oblivious to the gaping hole where Levi’s heart is supposed to be.
‘I miss you, I miss you so far
And the collision of your kiss that made it hurt so hard.’
He grips the mic ever so tightly, the only obvious stable thing there. The world is coming apart in front of him, and reality is blurred.
‘When will I miss you, when will I miss you so far
And the collision of your kiss that made it so hard,’
The image of ‘him’ appears in front of Levi, and he reaches out with longing, but the image dissipates, and is gone.
‘Made it so hard...’
He’s so broken, and he can’t go on. His light was snuffed out so viciously.
‘Way down, way down,’
Levi closes his eyes, and the tears that were threatening to pour from the start of the song rains down like a torrent.
‘Way down, way down,’
Hanji’s gasp can be heard, and she tries to comfort him in some way, but she can’t move.
‘Way down, way down,’
The fans are so moved by Levi’s emotion, soaking in his anguish like a sponge. They keep cheering, as they believe it’s just a show. But it’s so much more than that.
It always was.
‘Way down, way down,’
Levi falls to his knees, cradling the mic in his hands, and he whispers the last line of the song.
‘Way down...’
It is finished, it is over. Levi is gone, lost to his grief. He can never hold him again; never whisper sweet nothings to him, his gorgeous shitty brat.
As the fans cheer, pleading for an encore, Levi’s body is wracked with sobs, and he whispers one word, so brokenly:
‘Eren...’