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The Scouts and even the Marleyan Warriors look back at the incoming tide of Titans, horror and grief written in their faces. They're children, basically, and they weep for the Commander. One by one, though, they fall silent. Grim resolve settles into their frames. It's the attitude of veterans and Levi allows himself a moment of grief that these young soldiers had already seen a lifetime of war.
He doesn't look back. He sits on the airship that had cost them so dearly, knees drawn up, and doesn't look back.
He can't.
If he looks back he will break. The thoughts rise in his mind anyway - had Hange's cloak caught yet from the heat? Had the clever glint in their eyes and joyful smile faded from their lips yet? Were they falling like a shooting star even now, as Levi sits hunched and useless?
"Give your heart," he had said to them. It had seemed appropriate then, to make them laugh before the end. He was saying goodbye to his last living friend, after all.
The others' eyes watch him surreptitiously, taking solace from his deliberately relaxed posture. His face is sculpted into its customary scowl. They'll think him cold, and odd and callous. But it's what they need from him right now.
He has learned how to lead from Erwin, after all.
Erwin…
It's been a long time since Levi has allowed himself to think of his Commander. Armin will be a great one, for what remains of his Titan term. Hange had been a capable Commander as well, and her forward thinking nature had been a godsend for the Scouts and Paradis Island in recent years. But there was only one person Levi thought of as his Commander.
He closed his eyes. The sound of the rumbling reverberated through the metal hull of the airship, rattling his bones. He was so, so tired. If he let himself drift away for a moment, from the horrible noise, he could almost picture all his old comrades standing around the fallen Hange. Erwin would be there, whole and perfect. He would hold out his hand and help Hange to their feet. He would have a soft warm of praise and a clap on their back. He would turn his gaze outward, searching for Levi's and never finding it.
Because Levi was the best, and the strongest. He had been stabbed, beaten, and blown up. From the moment he was born he had struggled and struggled. He had never known anything else. And yet he was still standing, as around him everyone he knew died one by one.
How many of them had he been personally responsible for? All the people he had been too slow to save. His team surely, their names tasting like ash in his mouth, because he hadn't been good enough to realize what Erwin had realized too late. Hange, certainly, for pulling them back in when they had for a moment faltered and dreamed of something different. And Erwin, of course, for letting him go even when Levi could barely comprehend what he was about to do. If he had known then what a vast hole Erwin would leave in Levi when he died, would he still have been able to do it?
His last words to Erwin had been customarily brusque. Callous even, as he knelt in front of his Commander and told him to give up on his dreams and die for the sake of humanity. Erwin had smiled gently though, his whole frame softening for a moment as he looked at Levi.
And then he was gone, and Levi still hadn't fulfilled his oath of killing the Beast Titan. That was going to change very soon though.
And then, maybe, just maybe, he too could rest.