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Seven months after the decisive battle and Levi is living in a disgustingly adorable cottage just beyond the place where Wall Maria used to wrap around Shiganshina, doomed to a lifetime of cleaning up after Eren Jaeger’s shit, even in his retirement.
Not that Eren would ever let himself be left behind or forgotten in any way. Levi has dreamed of that final battle countless times, between the nightmares and regrets. He remembers Eren rising from the neck of his titan form like a king, wreathed in glistening tendons, nerves and muscle, his voice heralding the end of the world, washing over the grassy flatlands as the walls crumbled all around them, giving way to ancient giants who moved at his behest. Eren’s yells, his screams, ring in Levi’s head in tandem with his heartbeat, and he is buoyed up and up, flying through the trees as a silver streak, invincible and infallible with adrenaline and the lust to fight, the thrill running through his body as he watches the titans rip each other apart, as he hacks their necks to pieces, as he watches the air around him become hazy and indistinct from the sheer amount of evaporating titan blood.
“You’re not done yet, Levi,” Erwin tells him three and a half months down the line, when Levi is just about done overseeing the rebuilding efforts in Wall Maria, when Levi feels old and sore and damaged and unneeded in a world of peace, where matters regarding blood, corpses and knifework no longer have much place or point. There is a younger cohort of leaders now, more inspiring and genuine symbols to follow, and Levi is ready to fade into obscurity, to content himself with using the remainder of his measly life to finally allow himself to look back, to remember ghosts and demons, and to be forgotten.
“You know him,” Erwin says. “He’s been on your team for most of his military career. He trusts you.”
“Trust’s never kept anyone alive,” Levi says in response.
“Simple trust has never ensured survival, but Eren has never been a typical soldier either, has he?”
Eren is never as simple as he seems. Pried out of his titan body after the battle, he had barely been coherent, his hands and his legs from the knee down little more than stringy pulp. His skin had been scorching hot, almost untouchable. Courts had raised hell over him as he slept quietly in the infirmary—incarcerate? Execute? Eren doesn’t wake up until four months in, and when he wakes, he’s not completely in shape.
Atrophied muscles, the doctor said.
“You’re bigger than you think,” Erwin lectures Levi.
“Can’t even let me retire in peace, can you?” he grumbles in return.
Contractual military employee and soldier on probation, living in a house whose deed was donated by Commander Pixis in what must have been an extremely bad joke. Eren tries too hard and Levi still doesn’t know how to hold a conversation, and while they work together as seamlessly as ever, one washing the dishes, another drying, washing the laundry together, taking turns making meals, they are ghosts. Levi falls out of his bed more than once from nightmares, but when he bumps into Eren in the kitchen in the middle of the night, feeling tired and bruised, not a word is exchanged between them. Eren screams himself awake, curses and breaks things when his crutches slip on the stairs, sometimes spends entire days locked in his room, just reading the books Armin brings to him, too tired and too upset to even venture outside.
The first expedition to the outside world leaves five weeks after Eren moves in. He makes Armin and Mikasa promise to bring him souvenirs, interesting plants, sketches of strange animals, maybe even a small container of sea water, if they’re lucky enough to get that far. Levi watches him out of the corner of his eye for weeks before that, watches him as Hanji comes on their biweekly visits and updates them on the progress of the expeditions, watches Eren’s face come alive.
Levi goes out and buys supplies from the market, watches the bustling town around them grow day by day as more and more families move out to the promise of new land, no longer chained to the refugee camps and fields, seeking new chances. Eren nags him into buying a couple seeds, begins planting a garden next to some of the fruit trees in the backyard, cultivates flowerboxes full of herbs, talks to their ever-increasing neighbors. As far as they know, he and Levi are just another set of young men driven out of the backalleys of Wall Rose by the political riots, looking to improve their lot in life like anyone else.
That’s not entirely inaccurate. The house is quiet, and they are shades, spirits, breathing into the spaces their words won’t venture into. Levi had thought this would be a little like death, the fading, the forgetting, the comfort and tired acceptance of obscurity, of becoming obsolete. It’s not. Routine to keep him sane, to keep him on track, two cups of black tea in the morning, to market on Mondays and Thursdays to pick up groceries and also some of the items that Eren’s requested, and so long as it isn’t coming out of his savings Levi doesn’t care how the brat uses his money. Wood carving and knitting to keep his fingers dexterous, fixing a knife to his thigh and running out to explore the woods when he feels the restlessness of being grounded to the earth, no longer able to fly in maneuver gear. Eren mostly stays inside, though hardly anyone would recognize him out here. He reads mostly, all sorts of books, moving to sprawl in a different room each day, or does his best to reach Sasha’s level in cooking, sure to be sparing with the ingredients in his experiments.
Levi keeps watching Eren like he has always watched him, because it’s his job, and because he’s never quite gotten rid of that habit of needing to know where Eren is at all times. He thought living with Eren would be easy, after living with him in castles and cabins both. It isn’t. The house is quiet, every creak of wood sounding through the halls, and Eren’s feet, usually bare, make the smallest of whispers against the varnished wood flooring. His bad days are all the more deafening and upsetting for it, as if all the sound he squirrels away bursts out of him all out once to make up for what he held in. He does his best to walk without crutches, but he’s only ever able to make it for an hour or so. He still insists on taking out the laundry by himself—and Levi refuses to argue with him on it, because the only one who will ever change Eren’s mind is Eren. So again, Levi watches from inside, behind the windows, behind the curtains, feeling almost like a voyeur, watches Eren, standing motionless, hands loosely curled around the edges of a white bedsheet, staring, just staring, mouth slightly open, crutch fallen to the floor. He’s frozen there for one minute, two, three, until he seems to snap back into himself, legs crumpling beneath him.
“Eat,” Levi tells him simply, nudging open Eren’s door without knocking, tray in his hands. The only major furnishings in the room are books. In truth, the entire house is rather empty; lives like theirs don’t allow for many material possessions. “You’re a teenager, you’re always hungry.”
“I’m twenty,” Eren says, face in his pillow.
“Teenager,” Levi says again with a dead-eyed stare that he knows Eren can feel, if not see.
“You’re not my commanding officer, you don’t own me,” Eren grumbles, peering at him petulantly with one green eye.
“Obviously not, if you’re talking to me like that,” Levi growls, swatting the back of his head. “Like you’d ever let yourself be owned. Now eat, you child.”
Eren’s still sulking, but he takes the spoon anyways. He eats quietly under Levi’s scrutiny, doesn’t slurp or chew with his mouth open. For what it’s worth, Eren has always been a rather neat eater, though he’s able to eat as noisily as Hanji if he’s hungry enough.
“Captain,” he says, because he’s never been able to bring himself to call Levi anything else, “Why did you agree to this?”
“Babysitting you, you mean? I do get paid to do it, you know.”
Eren grimaces. “What, pension not enough for you?” He quails playfully under Levi’s stare. It’s been too long for it to have any sort of effect on Eren, or any of the former 104th training squad really, though Levi’s of the opinion that he’s worse off for it.
“Erwin asked me to,” Levi says, and Eren’s spoon scrapes against the bottom of the bowl, scratches against the texture of the clay tinnily. “The courts are fine with it, since I’ve been hounding your ass since you showed up.”
You’re routine, Levi doesn’t say, You’re habit. He thought he wanted to be forgotten, but he didn’t think it through. He isn’t ready to be cut away from what his life was for years, crazy coworkers, the thrill and fear of the fight, the quiet grief that made a nest for itself in the silent corners of his heart. Eren, to him, is safe territory, familiar, easy even when he isn’t, like now. Clink, clink, clink, the spoon must be scraped dull by now, and it’s clear that his answer didn’t satisfy Eren at all.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Levi sighs, running a hand through his hair, scratching idly. “You aren’t trouble. Not the way they think you are. Not the kind that bothers me. Not anymore.”
Strangely enough, this makes Eren smile, a small, tiny, sentimental thing.
“Okay,” Eren says. “Okay.”
It’s a little easier after that. Eren relents a little more, pushes himself a little less, and they sometimes talk a little in the mornings, enough that the silence stops being awkward, starts becoming comfortable. If he reaches an interesting part in his readings, Eren likes to track Levi down to read them out loud to him. Levi’s new project turns out to be a scarlet scarf, the color rich and bright, snagged during a bargain sale in the market. It makes him think of Mikasa, the scrap of red that still manages to cling around her neck. It was Eren’s, he remembered, the scarf had been Eren’s. Tiny wooden luck charms, statuettes, begin to line Eren’s end table, and Eren likes to leave them in unexpected places, arranged in small tableaux.
They get a letter one day, and strangely enough, Erwin is attached.
Levi slams the door in his face.
“Good evening, Levi,” Erwin says drily, voice filtering through thick wood. “Why, I’m doing very well, thank you.”
“Captain,” Eren complains from the kitchen, waving around hands covered in meat and flour. “Help.”
“You’re all useless motherfuckers,” Levi growls, yanking open the door. “No soliciting.”
“That’s no way to talk to your new military liaison,” Erwin says, raises a small sack with the distinctive neck of a bottle of Sina Vine poking out the top. What a smug fuck.
“Captain!” Eren shouts again, voice layered with irritation, “I can’t fucking walk and in ten seconds I’m gonna go ahead and smear my hands all over the counters you polished yesterday and I know it took you at least two hours—”
Levi makes an inarticulate snarling noise and leaves the door open in unspoken invitation, stomps into the kitchen to wet a cloth towel and throw it in Eren’s face with a slap.
“Wow, thanks,” Eren grumbles, “Not like I just sat here and folded dumplings for dinner for the last couple hours.”
“You did that on your own,” Levi says, arching an eyebrow.
“They look good,” Erwin offers, looking pleased at Eren’s double-take, outright chuckles as Eren fusses and tries to make as sharp a salute as he can in his condition. He ends up staying for dinner, likes his dumplings pan-fried instead of boiled, likes the ones with chives more than the ones with dill. He muses over the potato dumplings with gravy that Sasha made once in the kitchen, and Eren admits that he has no idea how to make those.
It’s the beginning of Erwin’s weekly visits. Fat off the satisfaction of duping former Sina nobles and manipulating politicians left and right, freed from the stress of being Commander, Erwin looks much more relaxed, a little happier.
“Dreams?” Levi asks.
“Yes,” Erwin says, as they dip into the Vine.
A couple glasses in, candles flickering in the living room and Eren curled up on a cushioned chair nearby quietly absorbed in his reading, Erwin says, “Out of all of us, I didn’t think you’d be the first to leave, Levi.”
“Why not?” Levi asks sharply. “You were the one who requited me. You know my circumstances were different from yours and Hanji’s.”
“I thought you’d outlive us all,” Erwin replies, laughs drily. “Tenacious. Like a cockroach.”
“I thought that too,” Eren murmurs, head bent down low. He doesn’t look at their faces when he speaks. “I didn’t think I’d actually survive. Thought I’d go down fighting.” He finally lifts his head to look at Levi, his gaze a little clouded. “Or that I’d be killed.”
The muscles in Levi’s shoulder tense. Eren wordlessly beckons for a glass of Vine, and Erwin gives it to him. He doesn’t toss it back, takes the draught long and slow.
“…what happened to exploring the outside world?” Levi asks, because he’s never been one to beat around the bush. As far as he’s concerned, this particular bush is more like an insidious weed. Weeks of tension, weeks of drifting, wondering what Eren is thinking in that big fat head of his, wondering where he goes when time freezes in the middle of his day and he stares so hard he doesn’t see anything at all.
“That’s what they’re doing now, aren’t they?” Eren replies, fingers tapping restlessly against the sides of his glass. Levi and Erwin glance at each other briefly. It doesn’t escape anyone’s notice that Eren clearly didn’t include himself. “And I did think that. But…I didn’t really think I would get to do it. I mean, after I go under…” Candlelight highlights the bob of his throat. “I can’t remember anything. I don’t even really know what happened, in the end. It’s like a dream. Or a nightmare. Like I never did those things at all.”
Erwin’s eyes are intent. “I’m not sure any of us expected to live,” he says, and Levi remembers the kind of subdued urgency Erwin always carried in his shoulders, along with his burdens. Always pressing forward, like he’d personally betray himself if he didn’t. That urgency is gone, Levi realizes, that’s why this Erwin sits in this chair with a little slouch to his back. No bolo tie rests on his chest now.
“And now,” Eren says, swirling the Vine in his glass a little, “I’m unneeded, and there’s this court sentence.” There’s a quiet clink as he places his glass on the coffee table.
Unneeded. Unwanted. Leftovers, like relics of an older age ready to be tossed on the garbage heap. Strange to think that Eren’s been feeling the same way Levi has all along. Levi is old, Eren is volatile, and neither of them have adaptable political or strategical skills like Armin, Erwin and Hanji do. They’re liabilities.
“I’m sure that’s not what Mikasa and Armin think,” Erwin responds coolly, because he’s an asshole like that. Eren flinches a little, body tight with his guilty cringe. “And it’s not what I think either.” The look he gives Levi is pointed.
Eren just sighs, draws his bare feet up onto the chair with him, resettles into reading. His loose clothing makes him look small and soft, and the curled ends of his toes seem vulnerable somehow. “I’m not healing,” he says. “I don’t know what’s going on. My hands are fine now, but my legs…”
“Muscular deterioration takes time to heal,” says Erwin.
Eren just scowls at him, clearly unsatisfied by the simplistic answer. “I’m not exactly normal, if you haven’t noticed,” he retorts, “I should have healed by now.”
Levi has a tiny theory, one that he has begun nursing after seeing the way Eren tries to wholly occupy himself in household matters, watching him weed the garden as if the hapless plantlife personally offends him, scrubbing the laundry with a viciousness usually reserved for titans and annoying politicians, always making small snacks with yeast so he can have an excuse to pummel something in peace every so once in a while. It’s not that Eren won’t heal, it’s that he’s not letting himself heal. Battles in the past have shown that Eren has limited control over his healing abilities, whether he’s conscious of it or not. Eren still has callouses, has the maneuver gear strap marks carved into his skin, even if just a little lighter, and sometimes even after an injury has healed he complains of soreness, usually with smaller cuts, sore or scrapes. Eren’s body seems to only heal what’s practical to heal, or injuries that Eren wants gone. His hands are fine. His legs are not.
Eren’s hesitating. He’s in the same place Levi was in several months ago, his primary purpose removed, the thing that kept him going throughout years of struggle. He’s unprepared to live, doesn’t know what to do, or where to go. All his time is spent waiting, waiting for the verdict from the courts, waiting for something new to motivate him. He isn’t moving forward.
“Dramatic brat,” Levi says. “You’ll be fine. You and your fucking lizard limbs.”
They’ve clearly been living together too long, because Eren just gives him this fondly exasperated look. “Why can’t you ever just say something nice?” he asks, taking a gulp of Vine.
“Insubordination,” Levi mutters into his own cup, and Erwin chuckles lowly, like a roll of thunder in the distance.
“If I remember correctly, you were the one who retired. Eren can speak to you however he wants now.”
“Fuck that shit,” says Levi, because he doesn’t care. “Fuck it with a rusty pipe.”
That is kind of what they do, in the end. Fuck it, Levi had said that evening, and silently, they started over. Greetings over morning, jabs about each other’s cooking, bitching at each other over their respective personal habits, like washing out a razor properly, or combing hair in the morning. Eren takes to his physical therapy more seriously than before, and the next check-up puts him in good spirits when the doctor tells him that he’s finally beginning to heal. He still stares into the distance, still can’t bring himself to leave his bedroom sometimes, but he tries to join Levi for at least one meal a day. Of all things, he also picks up embroidery from the wife two doors down, and it isn’t long until they’re talking all the time, their own little gossip club, trading tips and stories.
As for Levi, he talks more, tests out just saying random things about the spectacularly obnoxious merchant at market, even about the strangely striking black cat he’d seen at the entrance of an alleyway on the way home. When it’s Eren’s turn to make dinner, he elbows his way in to help, checks in on him a little more often, asks him what he’s reading that day or how his flowers are growing. When he invites Eren to go with him to the market for the first time, the smile he gets is blinding, and Eren is birdlike there, equal parts nostalgic and delighted with the smells of familiar spices and new fruits, pries into the small offshoots that string into alleyways, finds little trinkets and treasures to take home. He’s a vicious bargainer, and Levi grudgingly lets him handle most of the price negotiation.
One day, Levi drags a cabinet in through the front door. It’s lopsided and rough-hewn, but charming in its own right, with elaborate carvings winding up the sides and crawling over the faces of the drawers.
“Wow,” Eren says, traces his fingers over the wooden reliefs. “This is gorgeous. Where did you find it?”
Levi doesn’t answer, but he can’t explain the flush that spreads down from his cheeks to his neck, and Eren laughs at him, flops over the cabinet and refuses to be helpful in any way, shape or form, so Levi shoves him off.
“Lena wants one,” Eren tells him after the Two-Doors-Down Lady comes for a visit, squinting at delicate white cloth stretched over a thin, circular wooden frame, dotted with colorful threads. “She says it’s got character.”
“What are you coming to me for?” Levi asks, finishing off a row of his knitting.
“She’s willing to pay,” Eren says simply, completes another stitch, nonchalant.
“I can see why,” is Erwin’s response to the whole thing when he comes for another visit, looking over the cabinet in progress with a keen eye. “Your patterns are very good. Organic.”
“She’s really excited,” Eren calls from the other room, busy tucking away the Sina luxuries that Erwin had brought to share with them this time around. “And I think she might want to ask you for another piece. She won’t say what, though.” He grins shyly at Erwin when he hobbles back in, forgoing his crutch for an hour or two, as is his custom in the evenings. For years, Erwin Smith was “Commander”. But in this house, Erwin had requested that he be called by name.
“I don’t command anything anymore,” he’d said wryly, but with the way he could slip between the former districts so easily, or bargain his way into the favor and the satin-lined pockets of the wealthy, Eren was and is pretty sure that Erwin still commands plenty.
“You’re popular,” Erwin murmurs to Levi with a small smirk.
“More like Eren’s popular. I swear he knows everybody in this town.”
The small ponytail at the base of Eren’s skull bobs as he shakes his head. “No way. Just our neighbors, and the regulars at the market. Levi gets along with some of them pretty well, I think. At least, he plays chess with them occasionally. He always loses.”
“Does he now?” Erwin says, and Levi resists the urge to kick his shin, because he always lost to Erwin too.
“Shut up and sit down, the tea’s gonna get cold,” he grumbles.
It’s only when Eren continues regaling Erwin with tales of their growing town that Levi realizes how much he’s been talking to Eren lately. He can track all of these stories by the word, having heard them or been part of them at one time or another—one of the former refugee families that managed to stay together after the fall of Wall Maria just had their crop come in and are excited as all hell about them, the couple the next block over keeps a wolfish dog, grey and white with blue eyes, who likes to run over and leap around him and Eren for stomach rubs and head pats whenever they pass by, a single pregnant woman who lives near the market and spins wool and thread for a living, likes to stop Eren for gossip on the days they go for groceries and always keeps a discounted skein just for Levi because that little red bundle of wool he bought so many weeks ago must have been his favorite out of all the other stalls he’d seen at the bazaar, and of course, the assorted old men who like to gather at the small tavern at the edge of town, not to drink but to play cards and trade stories about what little remaining family they have, or whatever news happens to be going around the town at the time. Two of them are part of Levi’s chess-playing group, one of them a quiet, good-humored man who likes to sneak up on his friends and whack them with his cane, another a boisterous, white-haired, white-bearded mess with a penchant for lewd jokes that reminds Levi and Eren both of Hanji.
A lot can happen in a couple months, Levi supposes, raises the cup to his lips and sips quietly. The taste is light and soothing, fresh and savory with a touch of sweetness, a hint of spice at the end. One of Eren’s blends. Ever since some of the flowers, roots and herbs have come in, Eren’s been drying them, pressing them, making varied batches of herbal teas and trying them out on anyone he can get his hands on.
“Where did you learn this?” Levi had asked one morning, after a particularly satisfying cup.
“My father was a doctor and my mother was a midwife,” Eren had replied, with a lopsided grin that exposed one dimple. “They used herbs and plants a lot, since proper medicine wasn’t always available. We had a garden, a pretty large one, in our backyard, and whenever we needed something, I’d just be sent out back to get it.”
He had left the rest unsaid—there wasn’t time to think of herbs and plants, to recapture what knowledge he’d learned from his parents’ trade when he was busy fighting for his life.
They’re always running out of time.
“They’ve decided the court date,” Erwin says later that night, looking a little more like his old self under the candlelight, the flickering light revealing tired wrinkles, disheveled hair, the stiff, broad cast to his back as he leans over his knees and steeples his hands in front of him. “As soon as they heard that Eren was getting better, they refused to wait. Said that too much time had already been used up.”
“What’s the general opinion?”
“Public or private?”
“Both.”
“Public sentiment isn’t good or bad,” Erwin says. “The refugee camps don’t give a damn one way or another, since many see the fall of the walls as a way to improve their circumstances, and there’s still a large flow of people moving out to towns like this one. Then again, there are many more activist and guerilla groups now. The nobles and those who lived in inner Wall Rose are more hostile, since they tend to be attacked more often, but the middle-class citizens and the ones who have been living around the military encampments seem to feel a little more optimistic. In particular, since the campaign also eradicated the titans, much if the populace seems a little confused and hopeful, if anything. People are getting curious, now. There’s a lot of excitement about the return of Hanji’s tour.
“Privately…there’s a lot of fear in the nobles and the Military Police. Some of the higher officials want Eren dead. They’re scared of him and they think that now the scales are tipped in the Scouting Legion’s favor….”
“In other words, they want to execute him,” Levi murmurs darkly.
“Yes,” Erwin confirms. “They do. But it won’t go uncontested. While Eren’s always been a bit of a controversial figure in the eyes of the public, he’s got quite a lot of support from these new towns, and both the middle-class and lower-class in Wall Rose, not to mention the Garrison groups that would have been decimated in the battle without his intervention, who have worked with him before.”
“But can we count on support from them?”
“Pixis has already informed me of his intention to stand on our side,” Erwin says, leans back and drinks the tea Eren had set out immediately after dinner, long gone cold. “Says he’s always liked Eren’s spunk. Thinks it would be a waste of youth and resources.”
“Fucking Pixis,” Levi grumbles, because he can. Pixis and his jokes and his alcohol flasks and fucking cute-ass houses. “And if Eren were to die?”
“Planning on killing me in my sleep?”
Eren limps barefooted into the room on a single crutch, already in sleep clothes, but alert and mutinous. Sliding into his chair, he frowns.
“You’re always talking about me when you think I’m not around. When were you planning on telling me any of this?”
Erwin pins him with a familiar blue stare. “You were listening.”
“Of course,” Eren says, slowly rotating his ankles. Levi grasps a calf muscle suddenly without warning, raising a thin eyebrow. “Ow, stop that! I’ll get to it later!”
“You never do the cool downs or muscle massages properly,” Levi grumps. “I’m not doing it for you again so get your shit together.”
Eren sticks his tongue out like the mature young adult he is. Levi kicks his chair.
“Anyway,” Erwin says, flicking his gaze over the two of them like a disapproving grandparent looking over a pair of squabbling children, “It would be unwise to have Eren executed at this point. He’s a very potent symbol now, and his execution would cause an uproar and likely create a rallying point around which to increase guerilla and militant activity. The outside lands have not yet been fully explored, and there is a possibility that we may have to rely on powers like his and Ymir’s again.”
“In other words, things could go either way,” Eren mutters, brow furrowing. “Not like that hasn’t happened before.”
“Just focus on healing, Eren,” Erwin assures him. “This won’t be like the last two trials. You’ve already proven your worth.”
Eren grins widely, brashly, flyaway brown hair softening the contours of his face. “I better have, sir, seeing as you had to lose an arm for me to do it.”
“Rude,” Levi snorts, and nudges the teapot over to Eren .
Looking vaguely put-upon, Eren flips open the tops and peers inside. “You guys go through this stuff like it’s water,” he complains.
“It’s quite good,” Erwin says, lips stretching into a smile to soothe and pacaate.
Eren just scowls back at him. “No offense, Erwin, but what is it with you blondes and your shitty fake expressions? You, Historia, Armin….do you guys have a club? Don’t patronize me, just say what you want to say. We’ve all seen you do plenty worse than hurt feelings.”
Erwin recoils in his seat a little, face and body stiff, maybe even a little defensive. Levi, arms crossed, simply watches as Erwin shakes out his shoulders minutely, steadies and tenses them. He’s trying to look thick, to look big and manly, but it’s just an empty way to psyche himself up. In this house, he is Erwin. There is no bolo tie around his neck.
“Here,” Eren says, returning from the kitchen. He nudges the teapot onto the small cloth square protecting the wooden coffee table from the heat. The small purple designs spiraling and flowing about the edges were embroidered by Eren, who had copied the organic flourishes on Levi’s first, pathetic cabinet.
“They’ve set the date two weeks before the Scouts are due back,” Erwin tells him, squared jaw emphasizing the stern cheekbones that have been weathered by years of stress, exhaustion and sorrow.
“They want to put me in the ground that badly, huh,” Eren murmurs, his brows lowering over thunderous eyes. Levi thinks he can hear his teeth grinding together. Hobbling away again, Eren returns with an unmarked, clear bottle and a spare cup.
“Finish your tea,” he says, determined, with a nasty, spiteful little smirk on his face. The bottle is set down heavily onto the table. “We got a little gift here, from Unger. Gave it to us as part of the payment for that crib you made him and his wife,” he says, dips his head in Levi’s direction. “Homemade moonshine. I don’t know about you guys, but if I have to keep talking about my own court sentence, I’m gonna fucking drink.”
Draining his cup, Levi slams his own down next to Eren’s. “Hit me. Unger makes the good shit.”
“Been dipping into your chess partners’ flasks, Levi?” Erwin chuckles, strain still in the corners of his eyes. Even so, his cup is steadily emptied, until he also slides it forward.
They get totally, completely plastered. Well, Erwin does. Eren’s strongly tipsy, and Levi teeters on the line of buzzed and drunk.
“I envy you this,” slurs Erwin, tottering onto Eren’s bed on everyone’s unspoken agreement. Eren’s bed is the largest. “Having homes. Coming back to someone.”
“Can’t believe I respected you,” Eren moans irritably, curled into a ball around his favorite pillow. “I cannot believe—“
“Insubordination—“ Levi croaks, belly flops on top of Erwin. The former Commander makes a vaguely pained noise.
“Don’t care,” Eren says dismissively. “Do. Not. Care. Badmouthing us like that. This house is too good for you. ‘m not making shit for you again. Get your own tea. Fucker.”
“What about me?” Levi mutters, rolls off Erwin to pinch Eren’s side.
“Not your housewife!” Eren yelps.
“Your home,” Erwin murmurs to the ceiling dazedly, “Smells fantastic always, good stories, good people. ‘s bright.”
Unexpectedly, Eren leans over Levi to bite Erwin’s cheek, before brushing his lips over the same spot, nuzzling. “Old man Winwin, all alone,” he snorts, snickering. “Stupid. Just visit more if you’re lonely.”
A flying hand smacks Eren away. “Bad titan, no human bits for you,” Levi sniffs condescendingly. Then he smacks Erwin in the chest, making him cough. “Bad old man, being mopey, no going home for you. Sina sucks, so don’t live there, dumbshit.”
“Yeah, don’t live there,” Eren crows, squeals when Levi digs a wriggly hand into his side, bucking so hard Erwin almost falls out the other side of the bed.
“Go the fuck to sleep,” Levi demands.
When they wake in an awkward and undignified heap the next morning, blistering hangovers making themselves known, none of them bring up yesterday’s discussion. But Erwin doesn’t takes his travel pack with him when he leaves, and starts to stay over on the weekends, bringing groceries and information with him. Small knick-knacks begin to find places along the miniature wooden figures that Eren arranges on the coffee table, the gardening cabinet, even the kitchen window sill. New books join Eren’s collection on the shelves, and a spare set of dishes has appeared in the dishrack. Extra pillows, more razors, random pieces of clothing appearing in Eren or Levi’s closets, depending what bed they fall asleep in on weekends. They learn to pick out certain scents—the lingering musk of the cheap cologne Erwin dabs onto his wrists and throat, the hint of lavender from the sachets Levi likes to slip into his bureau drawers to keep things clean and pleasant, the odor of the sweet grassiness of the outdoors and the heat of warm sunshine clinging to Eren’s skin. The neighbors start talking about them as a unit, rarely mentioning one without the other two—“How are the boys today, Erwin?”, or “Your men are at market, Eren!”.
New life in the house and the neighborhood. Eren comes home splattered with blood, tears on his face, spends the afternoon babbling to Levi about the birth of Unger and Ulla’s new daughter.
“We’re alive, too,” he hums, as Levi forces him into his pajamas and into bed for a nap.
“Yeah, we are,” Levi says softly, draws the blanket around shoulders much broader than they were four years ago.
It makes it worse when they take Eren away, and hand Levi a paycheck in exchange. Eren’s ushered into a black carriage, hands chained, a well-loved, knitted red scarf around his neck. Their one source of comfort is Erwin, whose hand is gentle in the crook of Eren’s elbow, even though Eren no longer has a need for crutches.
“Look after him,” Levi tells Erwin.
“The plants,” Eren says hurriedly, as he’s ushered away. “I left instructions on the refrigerator.”
Instead, Levi finds a will, addressed to him and Erwin. He resists the urge to rip it to pieces, goes outside with Eren’s tools to hack at the weeds with shaking hands. Eren’s tea, Eren’s books, Erwin’s reports and the too-large sweaters he wears at home, there are signs of them everywhere and it is the longest week that Levi has ever suffered through, lonely where he had once wanted only his own company. The bed is empty and cold, begins to smell only of himself again, and the house is achingly quiet without their chatter.
But Eren walks free, rides on horseback with Erwin straight from the courthouse to their home, scarf streaming behind him, tugs Levi close when he comes in through the front door.
“I’m alive,” he says, stands tall and strong like an adult but cries like a child. “I’m alive. I can see the ocean. I can do anything I want.” His voice is fervent with unbridled relief, bold excitement for the future.
“Yes,” Levi says, thinking of all the things that he has, all the things that Eren left him with, all the things that Erwin has given him, shared with him. Levi plays chess with old men some afternoons, goes to the market, makes cabinets, knits scarves and hats, remembers the amounts of herbs for each of Eren’s tea blends, doesn’t know how to give inspiring speeches but knows how to reassure Erwin, doesn’t know what he’s doing or where he’s going from here but knows that he likes the place that he’s in.
“Yes,” he says, closes his eyes and clenches his fists in Eren’s shirt, where the smell of rusted iron and mildew still lingers. Leisurely, he lets his eyes slide open, and Erwin is there, just like Levi thought he would be, and even if they aren’t touching Erwin’s gaze is like a physical thing, heavy with purpose and meaning.
“We are alive,” Levi says, and roots himself here, the stupidly cute cottage outside where Wall Maria used to stand, living with the boy who tore down the walls and the man who knew to look beyond them. They are unlimited, and vast. Memorable. Human.