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Everything is harder. Erwin tried, at first, to sort out his day-to-day tasks in his head, to mentally prepare himself for the challenges that would lie ahead and find comfort in the few things that wouldn’t change, that he wouldn’t have to relearn backwards. But it changed everything, and now everything is backwards. Brushing his teeth is uncomfortable, almost painful, as if he’s doing something to his body that he isn’t meant to do. Fixing his hair takes twice as long, and he hasn’t quite managed to dress himself, the buttons of his shirt slipping and fumbling under shaking fingers.
Erwin tries to keep in good spirits about it-- he has to. The commander can’t afford to crack, to break, to be weak, no matter how weak he feels, and it is only when he’s alone, safe behind a locked door, that he allows his frustration to show by flinging a pile of papers off his desk as ink drips onto the polished wood. His left hand is cramping, not used to the strain of being needed. His handwriting looks like a child’s. He feels like a child.
It’s only a moment, a short break from wearing the exhausting mask that has all but molded to his face. It nearly slips again when he fumbles to pick up the stray papers, finding it difficult to hold his balance while he gathers them, finding it even harder to stack them back up in a neat pile, to destroy the evidence. By the time Levi appears by his side, (hadn’t he locked that door?) he’s buried in his work again, as if nothing ever happened. He pretends not to notice the way Levi looks at him, as if he’d been there and seen it all, a thin brow raised and a thousand questions in his eyes that he will never ask.
Levi is something of a godsend bestowed to him in the form of a strange, irritable human. A lovely, brutal miracle. The thought has echoed again and again through his mind over the years, more times than he could count. It’s there when he watches Levi fly, blades drawn, slender body zipping through the sky on cable wires, every time Levi rides beside him as they return to the walls, somehow unharmed, somehow whole. It’s there when Levi pokes and prods at him late into the night, shoving food and water at him as he works endlessly, pulling him from his desk as the candles burn down into useless puddles with the words go to bed as if there’s no other option. When he woke from fevered dreams to find Levi by his side in the infirmary, somehow looking even more tired than Erwin had ever seen him but fussing and prodding all the same. When he returned to his office, still recovering and expecting to drown in a sea of unsigned documents, unfinished reports, only to find that Levi (how?) had gotten to them first.
Levi is something of a godsend and every time Erwin feels himself slipping, Levi is there waiting to catch him.
He’s drinking his morning tea when it happens, in a cup Levi brought for him with breakfast, a splash of milk with too much sugar, the way he likes it. Levi is perched in his usual chair across from Erwin’s desk, legs crossed over one another, chattering on about one of his soldiers (“that smug little asshole” he calls him. Erwin is half-listening as he works but can gather that Levi means Kirschstein), about yet another failed attempt at getting Hanji to bathe, the muddy footprints he found in the halls and his ongoing investigation to find the culprit and make them “scrub the fucking floors until their grubby fingers fall off”. Levi’s morning, as always, has been busy. Even as Erwin retains only half the information, it never ceases to amuse him to listen to the unending list of biting complaints. It’s a routine they’ve had for years, one he’s come to depend on. Like he’s come to depend, against his better judgement, on Levi simply being there. With him.
He’s still holding his tea when he rises to pull open the blinds from the window, to let a little light into the room. Levi has moved on into a lament of the two-hour meeting they’d sat through the day before, and Erwin moves to transfer the cup into his right hand.
When the glass shatters, warm liquid pooling around the tiny fragments, standing defiantly against the hardwood, all he can do is stare. He had forgotten, if only for a moment, one brief shining moment. He’d felt whole. But it’s practically spelled out now in the mess before him: one arm. He had forgotten.
Levi is crouched in the middle of it before he’s able to come back to himself, picking up the larger shards by hand before Erwin can react. All he can do is kneel beside him, his own hand smacked away by a much smaller one whenever he reaches out to help.
“I got it.”
“I’m sorry--”
Gray eyes flicker from the floor towards him, and Levi’s voice is soft when he speaks. “Don’t, Erwin.”
“I’d… for a moment, I thought…” He shakes his head, feeling foolish, embarrassed. Words have always been his best weapon but now he can’t force himself to choke out what they both already know.
“It’s fine. You’re fine.” Erwin hadn’t noticed that Levi had already dragged the waste basket over until he’s shaking the glass from his hands over it, tiny droplets of blood smearing across his fingers.
“Levi--”
“It’s fine. Don’t… make me kick you out of your own damn office.” It’s a threat without conviction, so harmless that Erwin almost laughs.
Like with everything else, he’s acting against his better judgement when he takes Levi’s hand in his own, when he presses the little cuts to his lips. Levi stiffens.
“That’s disgusting,” He protests, but his voice has gone softer still, almost a whisper, and when Erwin meets his gaze, his eyes are wide.
“You never left my side… through all of this-- this...” Erwin doesn’t know what to call whatever this is. He can only nod vaguely towards the space where his right arm used to be. “You never left me. Tell me why.” He knows the answer and perhaps he always has, but he can’t help asking. Not while he has already committed himself to ignoring that better judgement. Levi lets out a breath, a huff that might almost be some kind of nervous laugh.
“Don’t ask me stupid questions, you know why.” He mutters, giving a weak, half-hearted attempt to pull his hand back, still held gently against Erwin’s mouth. When it doesn’t budge, Levi looks around, almost frantically, at the shards glittering beneath them. “Erwin, let me finish cleaning this shi--”
“You love me.”
“Yeah. Yes.” Levi swallows, finally jerking away. He rises quickly, turning so Erwin can’t see his face going red. Erwin does, anyway. “I need to get a broom.”
He’s reaching for the door when Erwin stands, returning to his desk with a small smile tugging at his lips.
“I love you.”
He watches carefully as Levi’s hand freezes on the doorknob, and for a moment they’re both stone still.
“Good.” Levi says, and Erwin pretends to busy himself with paperwork once again, daring to peer over the desk as Levi steals a final bewildered glance back at him.
He feels, suddenly, quite calm. Almost whole.
They don’t talk about it, when Levi returns with the broom and cleans the rest of the mess. They don’t talk about it, but when Levi walks behind the desk to pull the blinds himself, Erwin can feel slender fingers dancing across his shoulders. It is all it takes to put him in a daze, one he can’t bring himself to snap out of until something settles gently onto his desk. A fresh cup of tea, steaming in the morning light, with milk and too much sugar.