Work Text:
Erwin Smith has spent his life defending the walls. He has given everything he has and more, but not to keep the walls standing, Erwin has given every shred of his humanity, to ensure that one day the walls can be torn down. Despite all the lies and all the betrayals, he has never lost sight of his boyhood dream that one day mankind will live, free from fear, in a world without walls.
Such single-minded pursuit of this idealistic dream has come at a terrible cost and the toll weighs increasingly heavily on Erwin. The only way that he can bear the burden is to build more walls, to hide the doubt and the guilt, to block out the pain and the loss. Erwin has built his own walls; they are the façade that the Commander of the Survey Corps presents to the world, and with every death, every defeat, he builds the walls higher.
Levi is not a poetic man but even he can appreciate the irony. Sometimes he wonders if the walls that Erwin has built are the only thing holding him together and he wonders what, if anything, is left of the man inside. The thought terrifies him.
Levi sees little of Erwin now, more often than not they are fighting the war on different fronts; Erwin in the capital, Levi wherever he is needed. He resents the way the war has pulled them apart. He knows that Erwin is gambling and he know that the stakes are high, but Levi never questions his judgement, never doubts him; that is one betrayal Erwin will never have to face.
On the rare occasions they come together and are able to snatch a moment of peace, Levi finds the walls have grown higher, higher by far than Maria, Rose and Sina, and often he can not tell if he is on the inside or the outside. But, walls have never held Levi back. Even in the underground he always knew he would get beyond the walls. He always finds a way through.
Of course Erwin is just a man, he cannot harden his walls like a titan. Levi can see where the cracks and fissures run and sometimes, just sometimes, the whole edifice crumbles and the result is catastrophic. Levi holds him as he cries, shuddering and helpless, drowning in grief, mired in guilt and regret. On the rare occasions Erwin lets his defences down, it’s Levi who is there to shore up the breach.
It makes him angry; it makes him so fucking angry. Erwin’s grief fills him with a blinding white rage. He is so consumed with anger he fears it will consume him from the inside out. He is angry at the lies and the corruption, angry at the countless, senseless deaths, but most of all he is angry at what this war has done to Erwin. And he’s is angry that the only way Erwin Smith can continue in this world is to shore himself up with walls and barricades.
Erwin has given so many lives to defend the walls. Not just the lives of his men, his comrades, and his friends, but the life of a boy growing up with his father, sure of his place in the world, the life of a man with a wife and a family. Sometimes Levi wonders, if things had been different, whether they might have had a life together. He wonders what it might have been like to grow old together, but he knows he’ll never see that day, not while there are still walls to defend.
And now here they are, back atop the wall, still battling for the fate of humanity. Erwin rallies his troop and entreats them to offer up their hearts for mankind, but Levi gave his up long ago, not for mankind, but for the man defending the walls.