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One thousand and ninety-five days later, and still, it seems like it had just happened yesterday. Perhaps that's why the majority of people at the festival on this island celebrate the anniversary of the rumbling as if it were their last night alive. They'd made it. They'd won. And so maybe for those people, the impressions of titan feet that have become an ugly memory in the flesh of the earth are an everyday reminder of that victory. Levi wouldn't know. His world had ended long before the rumbling. What reason, then, did he have to celebrate the world he was no longer a part of?
Painted in the multicolored light of lanterns above, he watches some brats run around with fistfulls of candy, weaving through the knees of the people surrounding them in the crowd. In a different world, they'd be weaving through trees. They'd be weaving through the limbs of giants. They'd be weaving through the bodies of their comrades. But that was his world, and it is not this world. That's what they'd fought for. Yes? This scene, before him now, that's what they'd fought for. What he'd fought for.
Overhead, fireworks explode like cannons. Like giant, gnashing teeth. Like unforgiving boulders against the bloodied dirt.
Levi moves from his spot on the post he'd been leaning against, a few sets of eyes follow him as he does. He does not bother to meet their glances, he knows what he'll find: people looking through him, as if he were a ghost - some an awe-inspiring and haunted relic. It's how most everyone looks at him these days. Humanity's Strongest, they'd called him. But there are no more titans, and he is not as strong as he once was. There is a hidden freedom that comes with that; knowing he will never have to pick up a blade for the rest of his life. If he did, he might not be as good at it anymore, and there is even more freedom that comes along with that thought. He will never have to fight again. He'd never enjoyed it, never wanted it. But what was he ever good for besides fighting? It's written across his face, across his eyes. Violence carved into his very being. He is the living, breathing memory of a war. Of titans. He is the next closest thing to them, now. Maybe that's why everyone eyes him with that distant, reverent fear.
As Levi descends the knobbled hill, away from the festival, the chatter and singing and banging in his ears is gradually replaced by the soft crunching of leaves beneath his feet. These celebrations he is often talked into attending - or days of remembrance, or commemoration, or whatever the hell else - are never to his liking. He is surrounded by seas of unfamiliar faces who all act as if they had been there, when they look at him. People who act as if they understood, but still want to hear it from him anyways, for the novelty of it. It makes him angry in a way that he rarely feels, nowadays. Nowadays. If he was being honest with himself, it wasn't that bad - this living. This life. These days of quiet that feel like one. He drinks tea every morning and afternoon, and he is visited by Gabbie and Falco often. He's become quite fond of them, really, and he's allowed to show it now, because he knows they will be there tomorrow. He uses his hands to hold pencils and flowers and books. He stares at the stars in the night sky until they disappear with the sun, but it is okay, because he is allowed to sleep in. His house - he has a house, now - is small, but it is tidy and more than he could ever have dreamed of having. Everything is more than he could ever have dreamed of having. It is only the days like these where he is taken back, more so than normal. Where he feels as if, despite everything he has now, there is still something missing. Something irreplaceable, and something worth more than everything else put together. It is a thing that smells of smoke and pine and shines like the sun. And so he walks, to be alone with the memory of it. Lets it pull him along, and he follows, as he always would. As he always will, even now.
He lets his feet guide him down a forested trail he has walked over a dozen times. It's not far from where he lives. Where he lives. How indulgent. How pampered he's become. How accustomed he's gotten to things aside from breathing and eating. Things he doesn't deserve. That's why, now, he feels this old pain more than he did in all the years before. That's what he tells himself, at least. That he has gotten soft, and that is why he cannot move on from it. That is why he will never be able to move on from it. That is why he doesn't want to move on from it.
The warm breeze that tousles his hair carries the salt of the sea. He can hear it, just beyond the trees, an everlasting storm. Waves that had been crashing against the sand long before he knew of them, and that would continue crashing long after he was forgotten. Levi finds comfort in that thought, that there exists a thing so constant, and so beyond anyone's control - but not in the way that death is.
The shore comes into view - or what he thinks is the shore. It is difficult to tell, at night. The ocean melds into the sky, and the stars into the tides, so that in the place where they meet, they are indistinguishable from each other. It looks like it goes on forever. That is what he had thought once, when he'd seen for the first time a land of lush green grass spread out before him, to a place where he knew there was a wall on the other side. But it had no longer been above him. And now, it was no longer there at all.
He stands at the water's edge and lets it reach his shoes. He hates to be in the water, normally, but right now it is nice. He doesn't even mind that his socks are a little wet, too consumed with the sound that comes with the promise of another wave. The air smells like mist, and makes his lungs sigh. He turns to look down the length of the coast, so that he might see where it bends out of view. But there is something else. A patch of dark in the white sand, a ways away, but not far enough that he can't make out what it is.
He still gets pain in his leg. It has been flaring on and off all this week, and so he approaches slowly, even a little noisily, but he would have wanted to approach in this way regardless. She does not turn to look at him when he stops a couple of feet from her - she was likely aware of his presence far before he was of hers. She does tuck her legs a little tighter to her chest, though. Buries her chin a little deeper into her scarf. He does not look at her longer than to notice these things, returning his gaze to the ocean. To the place where the sky dances beneath itself.
"Don't tell me," Mikasa's quiet voice is almost deafening against the otherwise uniform melody surrounding them, "that you know what this feels like."
Levi glances at her, out of the corner of his good eye. It could still make things out exceptionally well in the dark. She is not looking at him, so he looks outwards again before he responds.
"I'm just here to listen, actually." He thinks he means it about the waves. Mikasa sniffs.
"Why?"
"It's easier…" he starts, but does not know how he was planning on continuing. Easier than being at that damn party. Easier than talking, easier than thinking, easier than remembering. "It's easier." He just decides to restate, lamely.
"Yeah." She agrees like she heard everything he did not say.
Levi's leg is starting to feel itchy, so he slowly lowers himself down on the cold sand, to sit off to her side. She turns to narrow her eyes at him as he does. Looking at her face all smooth in the moonlight, he remembers how young she is, even after everything. How young they all were.
"I came here to be alone." She says curtly, glancing away again. Her black hair billows behind her like a tree in a storm. It's long now, there's no risk of it getting tangled in ODM gear.
"Me, too."
"Then why are you talking to me?" She challenges.
"You started asking me questions." It comes out snippier than he'd meant it to be. He'd never fully gotten the hang of voicing his thoughts in a kindly manner. Most of his life, he'd needed his words to be intimidating, to give a glimpse of the violence that was seething behind them. But now, he did not need to make threats to be safe. Now, it was more likely than not that an interaction wouldn't end with him having to slit someone's throat. So now, what is he hiding behind his words, if not violence? He does not know the answer, so he just tries again, and tries to speak softly, like it's something his voice can do. "Or maybe because I didn't want it for you." There. That wasn't so hard. There used to be only one person he could talk to, openly, like this. But there have been a couple of others in the years since. He would like there to be more. He thinks, that maybe, Mikasa feels the same.
"Didn't… want it for me?" She blinks at him, steely eyes sharp, like knives. Or swords.
"To be alone."
She blinks again, and he might have imagined it, but it seems like those blades are duller. Tired, worn down things.
"Captain," Suddenly, Levi is on horseback, and some fresh recruit is screaming in anguish, "the last thing I need right now is for you to tell me what I want."
"You're right." He says, easily, not wanting to fight. He does not want to fight anymore. "And I told you not to call me that."
"Sorry - you only spent four years drilling it into our heads."
"Tch. Feels like I've spent longer than that trying to drill it out."
He'd meant it as a joke, but it makes her go quiet, a glassy look in her eye. He knows it all too well - from the faces of beggars on the streets in the underground, to those of soldiers in the weeks following their first outing beyond the wall: a body with a mind in a different place.
"It's been a long time then, huh?" She says at last, almost observationally. "Since - " She stops, strokes her scarf as if it were a wounded animal.
"Yeah." He saves her, but does not like the way his throat has gone dry, all of a sudden. "Yeah, it has."
It doesn't feel like it. Did those days - those days we lost - ever pass? Maybe that's where our minds are, our hearts are - with them, someplace we can't follow. He does not need to say any of it out loud, there is no point in doing so.
"Levi." She says his name like she's telling a secret, with the slight trepidation that comes with taking a risk. "Does it ever get better?"
She is staring at him with a spark of something nearly extinguished behind her eyes. He wants to fuel it, he does, but it would be cruel.
Yes, because now we are free, and how could that not be better? Yes, because eventually you will start to forget. No - because you will not want to forget. No, because you were never really free in the first place.
"No." He tells her because she has suffered enough cruelty, and deserves the truth. A wave crashes against the sand before them, dragging itself back into the depths afterwards, before it will inevitably return.
"Good." Mikasa says without a spark of anything.
He does not know what to say, now. He wishes he were wiser. Someone else would know what to say to her, but that someone is gone, and so they sit without saying anything at all: two bleeding wounds in the skin of the earth, the salt from the sea cleanses them and it burns. They might never heal. If they're lucky, they'll scar over, become twice as hardened with time.
"Did you love him?" Mikasa's question - completely unprovoked - makes Levi sit up a little straighter, like the words had pulled on some chord strung through his body. "The commander." He stares at the side of her porcelain face, which does not even glance in his direction.
Did you love him? The commander. His commander.
His hands - hand - had been rough and calloused, but had somehow always touched Levi with an impossible tenderness, something strong and safe, and it had fit over the top of Levi's own as if they were made for each other. His eyes had been the sort of blue that you might take for granted until you really stopped to look at them, and if you were Levi, only if you were Levi, they would melt into something soft when you did. His laugh, like his voice, had been thunderous, and it had annoyed Levi for some time, until the sound had become rarer and rarer. When he'd smiled - really smiled - he'd had a dimple in his left cheek that, by the end, it seemed only Levi could get to show itself. His hair had been like the sun, and had always gotten a little cowlick at the back that never fully went away despite the amount of pommade it was constantly smothered in, but it was alright, because Levi was the only one who had ever noticed it. Everyday they'd known each other he would work himself to the bone, and when Levi would find him asleep at his desk, the way he'd looked so peaceful when he'd slept had always tugged at Levi's chest in a strange way that made it impossible to want to wake him, so he'd drape a blanket over his shoulders instead, because Levi would have been damned if he was getting sick. But no matter how busy he'd been, he'd never missed a single Sunday morning tea with Levi. They would talk about everything and nothing together, and Levi would make him a warm cup of his favorite - earl grey - and when they kissed goodbye, he'd sometimes brush Levi's bangs aside to press a second one on his forehead for good luck.
Blankets and earl grey, cowlicks and dimples - were these things love? They had never said it. Levi had not known how to love, and then they had run out of time.
Erwin. His Erwin.
"Yes." Levi finally says, and it is suddenly easy to say it.
Yes, he had loved him. He had loved him so very much - until exhaustion. In a thousand different ways, they'd said it without saying it. He knew this, he'd always known this, he will never forget this. This blinding pain - this love - it had almost hurt Levi worse than losing Erwin. He had not known what to do with such love, he'd never had it before Erwin. Levi had come to this realization on his own before, but he does not think he has ever said it out loud, and it is as if doing so has pulled something loose from deep within his chest because he feels himself deflate, sigh, air escaping his lips. He is too tired for grief - he is too tired to do anything but sigh at it.
"Yes." He says again, a beat later, to solidify it to himself, and to Mikasa, and to the sea. Mikasa's grip tightens around her scarf, knuckles white with the force of it, and though she will still not look at him, Levi can see her face tighten.
"It's not fair." Her voice is a barely-controlled whisper: a hiss, a warning, to some unknown enemy. "Not fair." Her chin wobbles, and Levi hears her all too well. "Why? Why is it us who has to - who must - " Her shoulders hunch, as if she were about to defend herself from a blow, " - must lose? Again and again. Why must we always lose?" She turns to look at Levi then, and he almost wishes she had not, because at her crestfallen expression, he feels over a decade younger - feels the rain at his back, sees an auburn head of hair in the mud before him. And then he sees them all: a spritely orange-haired girl, and then a pair of excited eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses, and then there are too many faces to count. A blond head of cowlicked hair on a bloodied roof. And then it is Mikasa, and in her eyes that have begun softly weeping, she is all at once more grown than she should have to be, and also just a child. She has lost more than anyone should ever have to, and yet it is only just her beginning.
Why must we always lose?
He wants to tell her that she will never have to lose again, he wants to give her a solution, he wants to lie to her profusely and unapologetically. He wants to give her something. Anything. But there is nothing. He wants to cry with her, but there is nothing behind his eyes. He is without words and without sympathy. But - he is not without love. It is there after everything, still trapped inside of him, and still painfully trying to claw its way out. And, for once, he is not without time. Perhaps that's why he's able to do it - there isn't anything else demanding his attention, and his hands are free now that they are not holding weapons. Perhaps that's why, then, his hand moves. It crosses the space between them like the creeping tide. Mikasa slightly startles when it reaches her shoulder, and for a second, Levi thinks she might push him away. That would have been alright, he would have understood. But she does nothing. She might have looked like a statue, if not for the tears that continue to spill from her eyes. And so he grips her shoulder as reassuringly as he can with his bad hand, and it must be enough, because before either of them seem to know what's happening, she is concaving in on herself - a wilting flower - she curls up on to the ground below, onto Levi's lap, unable to keep her tears silent anymore. He lets her. It is easy to let her.
He puts a grounding hand on her back that has begun to shudder, and his other one finds her hair, thick and dark and not unlike his own. And they stay like that. The waves crash against the sand, in the distance a firework erupts, and somewhere else there is a bird welcoming the sunrise.