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"And it's fine to fake it 'til you make it.
'Til you do, 'til it's true."
.
.
Hanji watched as Isabel left the kitchen; her silhouette a dark contrast to the warm traces of light coming from the dinning-hall.
They had been picked to do the dishes after the day's last meal along with Nifa and Moblit; both already sent off to rest. Now, hallways were empty and shadows were hidden and running water was the only sound filling in the spaces left by silence, like a whisper of the river-currents crossing over lonely fields.
They sighed, and let foam gather in between their fingers. There was still a small chunk of plates yet-left to wash, even after Isabel had lended a hand of her own in scrubbing off remaining food from the silverware.
"Here, in return for the candy you gave us the other day.", she'd offered, making her way across the tiled-floors to grab another sponge. And Hanji thought, then, if the same rules of science applied to the commonalities in life, then the Corps would have been more fairly welcoming to her.
"Equivalent exchange...", they told themselves, like they'd just made a brilliant discovery; their voice a low murmur drowned into the distance. It wasn't too long ago when they'd first read all about it, really: the natural laws of give and take. Action and consequential reaction.
Books defined the terms as a perfect balance, they recalled now, surely enough: a grand scheme of chemical formulas where everything was meticulously calculated and puzzled in order. Flowers blooming out of thunder-storm and ice melting off summer heat. Trees exhaling oxygen for the human, and the human planting sunflower seeds. The spreads of wildfire dying into flickers of ash, and Isabel helping them do the dishes on a chill December night.
"Can I ask you something?", she'd spoken, still scraping off left-over soup from a bowl in the pile. And Hanji knew, right that moment, there was something endearing about her smile; how her eyes sky-wide glinted with the million colors of the sunset.
"Anything.", they'd agreed.
Isabel looked over at them for a singular instant of vulnerability, and her cheeks flushed the same peach red of her hair.
"Would you take Levi to see the snow, one day...?", she'd said, almost like a plea. "For Furlan and I...?"
Hanji kept their words speechless. They weren't fully sure of why were they at the other end of Isabel's prayers. They weren't even sure if they'd live long enough to attest to the futility hidden in their promises, either.
They fixed up their glasses and returned the smile, then, if only in bittersweet response. They knew, her and Furlan and Levi had been treated with roughness right upon arrival, as if their mere presence was nothing but abnormal inconvenience. And they'd figured, almost immediately, that if life was any remotely graceful, the rules of equity would apply to them, too. That mercy would be conceded to those selflessly sent to farewell. That fear would perish in the face of bravery.
But life wasn't merciful, at last. And the laws of science didn't understand of the world's injustice.
So they nodded, regardless, and as they took another plate off the counter, their heart hoped, in credulous naivety, that an act of kindness would step humanity one dream closer to peace.
For everything equivalent exchanges were worth.
"Yes, I absolutely would."
.
.
"And it's like snow at the beach.
Weird but fucking beautiful.
Flying in a dream, stars by the pocketful.
You wanting me tonight feels impossible.
But it's coming down, no sound, it's all around."
.
.
White. Like sheets of linen clean on a warm spring-time morning. Like his favourite shirt washed spotless. Like unwritten stories on turning pages, absent of the chaos in color.
Everything around him was sunken in wonderstruck, shimmering white.
"Levi! Look!", he heard Hanji call; their voice drifting away in the winter breeze, like a lonely boat lost within the waves. "Isn't this marvellous!?"
He nodded and watched as his boots imprinted over the icy grounds; a strange mixture of sand and snow. Hanji had insisted on leaving the kids behind with Onyankopon to take him over the beach earlier that day. And he had agreed without much of a second thought.
"I have never seen anything quite like this before!", they spoke again; their arms wide open to the cold, as if trying to hug the horizon closer to their chest.
Levi hummed, and his breath spiraled into frozen clouds of fog. It was a beautiful thing to witness, indeed: how white stretched and covered the land of sprinkling flakes. How the limits between the sea and the skies seemed to blurr, merging into one winter daydream he'd never once hoped to touch.
He crouched near the ground, and scouped up snowballs between his hands; his bare skin aching of burning red, almost a stark contrast to the monochromatic rainfall. Hanji had told him all about how ice was formed many years back, when they were still young cadets trying to navigate the world: an equivalent exchange between water and winds so cold, it was enough to make freezing white drop from the clouds.
"Hey!", he exclaimed, and his words were painted into ephemeral drawings that vanished with the coastal-breeze. "Don't be so reckless out here, okay?"
Hanji smiled, as they run along the icy sea-shores, and threw themselves onto the ground, fluffed up soft and harmless. Levi couldn't quite remember, really, when had he last seen them oh so feverishly happy. When had he last been chosen accomplice to the lull of their laughter, wild and obnoxious and free.
"What are you doing?", he asked, staring down at them once he'd approached closer; his brows furrowed in question. Hanji giggled, camouflaged onto the winter landscape, and their glasses covered in frosted white.
"I'm making snow angels!", they stated, as though obvious. Their arms and legs waved and danced and carved funny shapes, spread onto the freezing sand. "Come join me, won't you?"
Levi huffed, but dropped his body weightless next to theirs, either way. He had seen snow in his life before, yet never quite this way. Never quite like it'd been plucked right out of a fairytale story.
He looked over at Hanji, and a small smile crept uninvited up the corners of his lips. They were flushed a pink sheen from the cold weather; their hair gently adorned by frozen raindrops, all placed together like a crystal crown.
"You never told me...", he whispered, tucking a thick strand of brown behind their ear. It was a gesture so soft, it made Hanji's cheeks grow warmer, even in the bristling chills. A ghosting caress that made time stop, forever frozen in the falling-snow.
"About what?", they frowned.
Levi cupped their face a moment too long, and breathed out a misty cloud of smoke. There were white dots in between his fingers and galaxies in Hanji's eyes, and his heart thumped an unsteady rhythm that mixed in with that of the ocean.
"Snowflakes.", he contemplated, plain and simple. And Hanji took his hand in theirs, tracing landscapes unknown into the lines of his palm.
"It is said that not two of them are the same.", they explained, like unraveling a long-lost legend. "That each and every snowflake is completely different to one another..."
Levi kept his silence as he stared at his hand, now tinted of white stardust. It occured to him, suddenly, that Hanji was maybe a snowflake, too: a one of a kind rarety, like an aurora boreal neon. A unique, once-in-a-life-time coinidence: wildly untamable, beautifully strange.
Like water freezing on a winter day. Like stars glistening over ocean waves. Like snow storms on the beach.
He sighed, and moved his arms and legs open into an angel of diamond ice, much quite similar to the one Hanji had made not too long before. It was a divine miracle, perhaps, that they had the entire coast-wide to themselves, like a blank canvas to start anew. That the universe had suddenly frozen and it could be just the two of them, invincible against the world.
"Thank you for bringing me over here, four eyes.", he smiled once more; his lips tugging upwards in joyful confession. "It was really... not bad at all."
They winked at him, playful as ever, and extended out a gloved-up hand to hold his face again; their touch trembling with a carefulness so loving, it was enough to make him come down, melted off like crystal-snow.
"Think about it as an equivalent exchange.", they concluded. And Levi scrunched his nose into a million wrinkles of confusion.
"What do you mean?"
Hanji rolled their eyes and got up from the ground, shaking off scraps of winter-time from their muted-green coat.
"It's a promise I made with someone many years ago...", they crossed their arms, looking out to the ocean, as if trying to find something hidden beyond the horizon. "I'd rather keep it a secret, for now..."
He stared at them, intently, and then followed as they ran across the infinite spaces of the beach, moments right after. Maybe, he figured, both laughing breathless, if only for that one magical instant, nothing else really mattered:
They could throw themselves onto the ground, dig angel-shapes into the snow. And he wouldn't care if windchills sipped from beneath his winter-coat, dampening his hair of ice-melted dreams.
They could run across frosted shores and scream free into the howling breeze and play catch like little kids. And he wouldn't dare war let him remember they were fighting much scarier battles outside, too.
For the world was a place too empty of tenderness already. And, if rules of science applied to the commonalities in life, even if just for a little while, they'd be able to forget about it:
They'd be no Captain, no Commander. Just Levi, just Hanji. Enjoying the beauty in what's uncommon. Catching wonders with their eyes.
Like snowflakes on his fingers. Like sand on December. Like snow on the beach.
.
.
"I can't speak afraid to jinx it
I don't even dare to wish it
But your eyes are flying saucers from another planet
Now I'm All For You like Janet
Can this be a real thing? Can it?"
.
.
White. Like spoonfulls of sugar laced with his tea. Like clouds of rain on chill autumn evenings. Like the wedding gown he wished Hanji could have worn for him to the altars, one long-lost September day.
Everything out his window was painted a blinding, cut-clean white.
"Levi...", Gabi entered his bedroom without knocking the door; a piece of lemon-pie cake in one hand. "What do you wanna do today?"
He sighed, and his breath fogged up a melancholy patch on the nearby glass. The streets were quiet and the skies were gloomy and the world seemed frozen, guarded into precatious hibernation.
"Equivalent exchange...", he whispered, watching out on the snow-fall; his voice crooked into a sound so low, it was barely audible. Hanji had told him all about it, what seemed a whole life-time ago: a perfect balance of the universe, how ice was formed.
He touched the window pane, and his hurt hand burned into the cold; fingers gliding over his misty exhale, melting it back into nothingness. If life was ever any remotely fair, he thought, then, they would still be with him, achingly and colorfully alive, as he had always remembered them to be.
If the laws of give and take could be used as an example for the mortal, nobody he'd ever loved would have been robbed from the Earth.
But he knew: life wasn't truly fair, at last. And so, he had no choice but to keep living in the name of the dead.
For all of what equivalent exchanges were worth.
"Would you take me to see snow on the beach...?"