Chapter Text
The walls of the base felt wrong—too still, too silent. The hallways that once carried the murmurs of soldiers and the laughter of cadets now stretched empty, filled only with the ghost of what had been. Every step echoed, hollow and sharp, as you retreated to your room. Your body was heavy with exhaustion, your heart quivered still. From the anticipation, from the isolation.
You pushed open the door, but the small room now designated as only yours didn’t offer the reprieve you hoped for. Instead, the silence screamed at you—the silence of the dead, the silence of the friends who should’ve been here but weren’t.
The faces came unbidden—Eld, Petra, Oluo. Marco. The new recruits. Heck even Reiner and Bertholdt filtered into your head. Then Erwin. Erwin.
You bit down on your trembling lip, willing yourself not to cry. You didn’t know the man well enough, but he stood like a pillar for the Scouts; an insurmountable beacon guiding you all forward. Without him, you were all in the dark. No notion of which direction to turn, which friend was actually a foe. You squeezed your eyes closed. You weren’t sure how long you stood there, the ache in your chest growing sharper, louder, until it finally broke you. Your fist slammed against the wooden frame of the bed. Once, twice—until the sharp sting in your knuckles grounded you back to reality.
“Damn you…” you whispered hoarsely to no one, to everyone, your voice cracking under the weight of your grief. “Damn you all.”
You stormed back into the hallway without a destination, the empty silence making you restless. Your feet carried you without thought, the growing rage inside you matching the burning grief that tore through your ribs. And then, rounding a corner, you found him—Levi, standing near a window, arms crossed. His silhouette was still, a stark figure against the dull light creeping through the glass.
He turned slightly, his sharp gaze cutting through the gloom as he noticed you. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
“ Resting? ” The word shot out of your mouth like venom, brittle and trembling. You marched toward him, fists shaking at your sides. “How can you say that? How can you just stand there?!”
His expression didn’t change, though his eyes flickered—taking in your disheveled state, the way your shoulders heaved with each breath you took. He didn’t speak, but his silence was answer enough, and it only fueled the storm inside you.
“You knew what was happening out there,” you spat, your voice rising. “They died Levi. They all died, and I—” Your throat closed for a moment as you tried to choke back the tears. “I could have been out there with them! I could have fought! But you kept me at your side like some damn—damn back up plan,” you hiccuped, unable to corral the tears before they started pouring out of your eyes. Because that’s all you were good for, when put beside a man like him. A weapon like him.
“You couldn’t have done anything.” His voice was calm, cold, but you could hear the edge to it—controlled, measured. Why won’t he break like the rest of you? Where was his remorse? His fury?
“That’s not true!” you shouted, stepping closer, your anger blinding, seething. You’d never proclaimed to hide behind a mask. That wasn’t you. “You don’t know that! Maybe I could’ve saved someone. Maybe I could’ve helped!” For once. For one blazing moment, maybe you could have stepped in, circumvented the loss of Erwin. The loss of your comrades. Gods knows the times you were able to try and intervene had failed. Perhaps knowledge came at a cost, and storming in blind would have finally saved someone.
Levi’s gaze sharpened as he straightened, his posture unyielding. “And maybe you would’ve died. Like the rest of them.” His words were cutting.
Your breath hitched, but the burning sensation in your chest continued to spread.
“Is that what you wanted?” he continued, unknowing of your turmoil, your anger. His tone was quieter now, but no less pointed. “To be one of the bodies we burned? Another name on the list? Because that’s all that would’ve happened if you stayed behind.”
“That’s not fair,” you shot back, though your voice faltered.
He tilted his head slightly, his expression softening in a way you almost didn’t recognize. “No. It isn’t. None of this is fair.”
You shook your head, fists trembling as you tried to hold onto your anger, onto the beacon directed at him, blaming him—but it was slipping—crumbling beneath the weight of his words.
“You were selfish,” you finally said, your voice breaking. “You were selfish for keeping me with you.” You were grasping at threads, trying to find something to make the man in front of you unravel. But he was stolid, immoveable. A tightly wound weapon impervious to fault.
Levi stared at you for a long moment and you held his gaze unflinchingly. Then, to your surprise, he nodded, looking away. “Maybe I was.”
You blinked, taken aback.
“I’ve made my peace with that,” he added, his voice steadier. “See that you make yours.”
The silence that followed was unbearable. You wanted to scream, to throw your fists at him, to make him understand how much it hurt —that it wasn’t fair to be alive when so many others weren’t. But you couldn’t. Because deep down, you knew you couldn’t hate him. Not like the way you wanted to at least.
Levi watched you, his eyes softer now, but he didn’t reach out, didn’t try to comfort you. He simply let you be angry, let you stand there shaking with grief and fury.
“You can hate me,” he said at last. “I don’t care. As long as you’re alive to hate me.”
The tears you had been futilely trying to control finally spilled over. You turned away, pressing the heel of your palm against your eyes, your body trembling as the grief caught up to you.
The faint sound of boots against the floor told you he was walking away, but his voice lingered in the empty air.
“Get some rest. You’ll need it.”
You didn’t respond—couldn’t respond. The door at the end of the hall creaked as it opened, then clicked shut behind him.
And just like that, the silence returned.
It sat with you, crawled beneath your skin like something alive, something cruel. You stood there trembling, fists still clenched at your sides, though the anger had ebbed into something far more hollow. You weren’t sure when your knees finally gave out, but the coldness of the floor bit through your uniform as you sank down, back against the wall. The hallway stretched around you like a tomb.
You didn’t sob. The tears were too quiet for that—sliding down your cheeks without grace or sound. Your chest barely rose with each breath, as though your body feared the noise of your own mourning might wake the ghosts.
Gods. Erwin.
You tilted your head back until it bumped against the wall, your gaze catching on the ceiling. It was the same bland gray it had always been. You hated that. You hated that the world hadn’t changed while yours had cracked clean in two: the victims and the…who? You recalled Reiner’s words, his unforgivable confession. What were they?
You wrapped your arms around your knees, trying to make yourself smaller. Maybe if you folded in far enough, the pain wouldn’t find you anymore. Maybe it would bleed out of you, pool on the floor, and Levi would step over it like everything else he never talked about.
You weren’t even sure what had hurt more—his words, their betrayal, being left behind or the truth behind everything.
Because you had wanted to die. Somewhere in the chaos, in the ash and blood and screaming, some part of you had screamed to be taken too. To fall beside them, to make it mean something. But Levi hadn’t let you. And now you were here, alone in a hallway built for ghosts.
“Selfish,” you whispered again, the word catching on your tongue like barbed wire.
The worst part wasn’t even that he agreed. It was that he had made peace with it. That Levi—stoic, unshakable Levi—had chosen your life at the cost of others and didn’t flinch from that truth. Maybe he carried it differently. Maybe the weight that crushed you merely rested differently on his shoulders.
You didn’t know how long you sat like that. Time no longer moved in seconds or minutes. It dragged itself along your spine, lingered in the cracks between heartbeats. Somewhere distant, boots echoed again. Not his. Just a patrol, maybe. Someone else trying to walk a straight line through all this wreckage.
Eventually, you pushed yourself up, legs stiff, back aching. You wandered. Not toward your room—what was the point? The bed hadn’t comforted you earlier, and you doubted it would now. Instead, you found yourself back outside, your steps heavy and slow. The cold air slapped your cheeks, clearing away some of the fog in your mind.
The sky was cloudy. The kind of gray that stretched forever, colorless and oppressive.
Your fingers curled around the railing of the nearest balcony, knuckles white as you leaned forward. The wind bit at your skin. It felt honest, at least. It also hurt. You stood there until your hands went numb, until the wind felt like it might carve through bone. You wondered if Levi had stood here too. If he looked out at this same horizon and saw the people he couldn’t save. If he whispered names into the wind like a prayer no one would ever answer.
You’d never know. He’d never tell you.
You exhaled, slow and ragged, forcing your hands to release the railing. The sadness didn’t leave—it never would—but it sat quieter now, curled beneath your ribs like a sleeping animal. Always there. Always waiting.
A beat of silence.
Then—
“Wow. You look like shit.”
You didn’t even need to look. “Jean.”
“You expecting someone else?” His voice was a little too casual, a little too loud for the environment. You could practically hear the stupid grin he was wearing.
You snorted faintly, exhausted, and rubbed at the dried wet trails lying starkly against your cheeks. “I should’ve known. The smell always gets here before you do.”
“Oh, ouch. ” He let out an exaggerated sigh, and then his boots creaked as settled to stand beside you. “Here I was, coming to check on you out of the kindness of my dumb, heroic heart.”
You rolled your eyes without turning. “Didn’t know you had one.”
“You wound me,” he muttered. “Truly.”
The two of you stood there in silence for a while, your shoulder barely brushing his. He didn’t say anything else, didn’t push. Just existed beside you in the emptiness.
“You saw Levi,” Jean said after a while—not a question, but a statement.
“Yeah.”
“Let me guess. He said something cold and unfeeling that somehow made perfect sense and hurt like hell?”
You let out a weak laugh, more breath than sound. “Pretty much.”
Jean made a low noise in his throat, half amusement, half understanding. “He does think being emotionally constipated is a personality trait.”
You snorted again, this time a little louder. The sound startled you. It felt strange—light. “And you think being a horse is a personality trait.”
Jean clutched his chest like he’d been shot. “Okay, that’s uncalled for.”
“Not really,” you muttered, head finally tipping against the adjacent wall. “You were probably born neighing.”
He leaned in conspiratorially. “Between you and me, I was an exceptionally handsome foal.”
You huffed, surprised, and like a balloon popping, you felt the trickles of a heavy laugh burst past your lips. It hurt. To find enjoyment in the little things. To feel anything, really. But with Jean, it was easier—like the air had shifted just slightly, enough for your lungs to remember what breathing was.
Jean let you ride out your chortling in peace, letting it subside into something softer. Something heavier. Then he added, quieter, “...I miss them too, y’know.”
You stilled. The brief smile lines fell away like a curtain, and all that remained was the raw reality again.
Jean didn’t look at you when he said it. “Marco. Marlo. Erwin. Everyone. I keep thinking about the stupid things I said to them. Or didn’t say.” His hands were clasped loosely in his lap, his eyes on the far end of the hallway. “And I keep thinking—what if I’d been better? What if I’d been stronger?”
You turned your head slightly, just enough to see the profile of his face. There was no teasing in his voice now. No posturing.
“Does that ever go away?” you asked. “The guilt?”
He was quiet for a long time. Then he shrugged. “Dunno. But if it does, it probably means you’ve stopped caring. And I don’t think we’re built like that.”
The words settled in your chest, heavy but true.
Jean glanced at you then, his eyes softer than usual, but still tinged with that familiar stubbornness. “You don’t gotta keep it together all the time, you know. Not around me. I’ve seen you pick your nose, you’ve got no pride left.”
You laughed— actually laughed this time. It came out choked, maybe even a little ugly, but it was real.
He grinned. “See? There she is. My emotionally repressed disaster titan exterminator.”
You rolled your eyes, but you didn’t correct him.
Jean’s grin faded into something gentler as he reached over and ruffled your hair—less teasing this time, more comfort.
“You’re not alone, alright?” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “You never were.”
And somehow, that was enough to loosen something in your chest. You leaned your head on his shoulder, and to his credit, he didn’t make a dumb comment. He just sat there, warm and solid beside you, holding the silence with you.
This time, it didn’t feel so empty.