Work Text:
i.
He finds himself forgetting, more often than not.
“What was your mother like?” Isabel asks so innocently one day but, like few things manage, the question makes him wince. His lips freeze on the rim of his cup of tea and he looks up to find her perched on one of the stools, ankles crossed, unknowing.
He blinks, sets the cup on the table, and it dawns on him that the only thing he can remember is a bony, cold hand around his own. A pair of eyes that would not open for days. A corpse. The memories of his mother are clouded by those of hunger gnawing at his stomach, of filth crawling up his skin, of death looming at every corner. He lets go of the cup as if it has suddenly become laden with some invisible grime.
“Levi?”
There is something distraught about the way she says his name and he guesses that it must be showing plainly on his face; the bile rising up his throat, the memory of a dead hand being snatched from his own and replaced with a knife, the idea that he never had time for grief because he was urged into survival. He swallows and regains his composure before answering.
“I don’t really remember her.” Isabel nods understandingly, but he catches a certain pity in her eyes.
He doesn’t talk about his mother. He has no idea what he could even say.
ii.
He hasn’t slept since the expedition.
His attempts at getting some minimal rest have been so fruitless that he doesn’t bother to even lie down anymore. It’s some dead hour of the night and he’s already washed himself and pulled on his training uniform for the morning practice. He glances at his bed and at the sheets neatly tucked at the corners of the mattress; he can’t remember the last time he saw them undone. He exits the room and tries to push the thought of being strangled by them out of his mind.
The dark common room is undoubtedly deserted, and he settles in one of the armchairs without bothering to light a single candle. Moonlight wafts through the windows and shrouds the room in pale grey shafts that stretch across the walls. He rests his temple on his fist and stares at nothing in particular until two figures appear between the shadows.
It’s them.
They appear as silently as ghosts, and he doesn’t even know where they came from, but he’s sure it’s them. He’s so sure that he forgets why he missed them in the first place, why he thought they were gone, why he couldn’t close his eyes because he kept seeing their corpses behind his eyelids.
He’s so sure that he wants to stand up and run up to them. He wants to hold them against him and feel that they’re real. He wants to leave this godforsaken place and take them with him. He wants to tell them this was a mistake. And yet, he can’t move a single muscle.
There’s an apology in his throat but it never makes it through his lips. There’s something off (something empty and dead) about their eyes and not a second passes before blood starts gushing from Isabel’s neck as if it has been sliced through like a titan’s. He’s about to scream at Furlan to do something, but his face has been disfigured and splattered with crimson, too.
The liquid flows so freely, so candidly, that he’s not sure where it’s coming from anymore. It seeps through the cracks between the floorboards, it pools at the corners of the room, and the greys and blacks on the walls turn into scarlet. He looks down at his own hands and realizes he’s drenched in it, too.
The apology in his throat becomes a scream. But it doesn’t make it through, either.
iii.
He keeps expecting to see them, even though he’s signing their death certificates.
Schultz, Gunther / Casualty Report: Killed in battle.
Even though he’s assigning notification teams for each of their families.
Bozado, Oluo / Casualty Report: Killed in battle.
Even though he’s holding their files between his hands for probably the last time.
Jinn, Eld / Casualty Report: Killed in battle.
And he doesn’t understand why they feel too heavy to hold much longer, why they seem to sting his fingertips.
Ral, Petra / Casualty Report: Killed in battle.
Nonetheless, he keeps expecting to look up and find them barging through the door, bickering about something or other, asking him about their next practice, attempting to bargain some cleaning duty. He keeps foolishly hoping to see them walking, and breathing, and alive.
He doesn’t bother knocking before entering Erwin’s office. He walks briskly until he’s before his desk and holds out the files to him, but he doesn’t immediately take them. The Commander quietly glances up instead, and Levi realizes it’s the same look he gave him years ago, right after he had lunged at him with a blade to his throat. Erwin isn’t saying a single word but he can somehow hear the exact same ones he told him back then.
Levi doesn’t need (doesn’t want) to hear them again. I still don’t regret this, he almost says, but something is clenching the back of his throat. His arm is starting to feel the weight of the files in his hand as if he’s holding a brick over the desk, and he gestures with them toward Erwin, urging him to take them once and for all.
The sound of the door opening prompts Erwin to finally look away and take the damn files. Levi turns around to leave the office as quickly as his legs can take him and finds Hange hesitating at the door.
“Erwin, Levi…”
“Hange, come in,” he hears Erwin say as he walks past her and out of the room.
He catches Hange looking after him and he can imagine her asking him how he’s doing. He walks away before she has a chance to.
iv.
He’s spent years wishing to forget him. It’s almost funny how he accepts he will never manage to do so only after he’s gone.
He’s not sure how long he’s spent staring at the case containing Kenny Ackerman’s final bequest to him, as if expecting it to eventually do something on its own. It, of course, doesn't.
He finally reaches for it and opens the lid; the vial and syringe lie upon a smooth, red fabric that reminds him of blood and of a lifeless man propped against a tree. The case closes back again with a snap.
That day, why did you leave me? The question had followed him like a ghost, but he now finds himself haunted by its answer. He tries not to think about the other questions he could have (he should have) asked him. It seems rather foolish now, to have tried to forget someone so determinedly, only to keep finding him in the very things he regularly does. In every brush with death, in every enemy and ally he made in the Underground, in every slice through a titan’s nape. And now in this.
He secures the case under his jacket and prepares to leave. He tried to get rid of it, entrust it to Erwin, be done with it. However, Kenny came back to him one last time in the form of a grim responsibility.
v.
He doesn’t dwell on regret (he said he wouldn’t), but he constantly walks by the edge of it.
Hange dismisses the soldiers and they exit the meeting room as if guided by an invisible tension and quiet whispers fusing in the air. The last one at the door is Armin, who hesitates and looks back at the Commander. He opens his mouth to say something but seems to reconsider and promptly closes it back down; the gesture reminds Levi, almost with a pang, that he’s basically a child.
Hange holds the boy’s gaze and, instead of saying a word, she gives him one firm nod. This seems to reassure Armin, who returns the nod with the same determination. Before finally exiting the room, he exchanges the briefest of glances with Levi, and he recognizes something too familiar in his eyes; it’s almost as if he’s looking at an entirely different person than just mere seconds before.
The room empties except for Hange and himself. He stares after the closed door, almost sure he just saw a ghost walk through it.
“This is a huge gamble,” Hange’s voice makes him finally look away from the entrance. He finds her running her eyes one final time along the scrolls, and prints, and of course, Eren’s letters, all neatly spread over the table. Her arms are folded over her chest and she holds one index finger against the side of her chin. “It’s insane, but this might actually work.”
He merely grunts and leans back against his chair. There is a moment of silence before she speaks again.
“Do you think he would’ve…?” the question dies on its way out of her lips, but his own breath catches and he already knows. He wonders if she saw him, too.
“We will never know that,” he doesn’t mean to sound as chiding as he does, but something in her words felt like a hefty shove, a threat to push him off the edge. He sighs and adds more subduedly, “it’s pointless to waste time wondering about it. You’re the Commander of the Survey Corps now, Hange.”
For a second, her eyes widen as if she has just realized, for the first time, that this is the case. He notices her fingers digging into the sleeves of her jacket before they quickly loosen.
“Of course.”
He doesn’t tell her, though, that he wonders about the same things more often than he cares to admit. That he tries not to waste his time on these trivialities but he frequently fails to do so. That her question was just a bitter reflection of his own thoughts. He doesn’t tell her but she probably already knows this.
He keeps walking along the edge. He remembers Erwin Smith’s relief when he was freed from his dream (so evident, so unmistakable, on his face). And it’s enough to avoid falling off.
vi.
He knew it would eventually come to this. He knew Hange was more prepared to do it than anyone. So there shouldn’t be a sting at the back of his eyes or something twisting his gut.
The chaos that besieges them is so absolute that everything that has happened before seems almost silly. Yet he finds himself trying to find Hange among the turmoil, trying to catch one final glimpse of her swooping between the colossal titans, even though he knows it’s impossible now. He looks at one of the massive creatures as it collapses with a roar that makes the very air around them vibrate, and he can picture her satisfied (never, ever arrogant) expression.
He thinks he can see Armin bang his fists against the metallic wall of the aircraft but he can’t hear him scream. He thinks Mikasa is burying her face in her hands, and Jean is digging his fingers into his scalp, and Connie is trying to wipe the tears that are flowing freely down his face to no avail. He thinks he hears Onyankopon yelling something at them from the cockpit in a voice that breaks. But everything is a blur around him, almost like one of the clouds that have never felt so close before. Foggy. Dreamlike.
He takes a step back. Before he knows it, he has dropped to one of the seats behind him, as if he has momentarily lost control of his body, as if the lead setting inside his stomach has become too heavy to keep standing. The airship shakes, and struggles, and screeches, and it almost seems to swirl around him.
It then stops. There is a second of clarity in which he regains his senses. There is a brief moment stretching indefinitely in which the weight inside him is lifted. Hange is right there, right on the aircraft with them. Why are the rest of them screaming? Why are they crying and calling for her? She’s standing there, and she’s looking right at him, and she shrugs and there is a tiny, annoying grin tugging at her lips. Or perhaps, this is just a dream, too.
“How cool did I look doing that? Be honest.”
He lets out a snort. The flying boat seems to stabilize, solidify around him.
They’re climbing closer and closer to the clouds with each second, and the world is ending, but he can perfectly picture Hange marvelling at all of it.