Work Text:
He wished he could’ve said they were just scars of war.
Reminders of strength. Bravery. Loyalty to the memory of him…
Truthfully they were self-inflicted— as much as he wanted to pretend like they weren’t, out of deep shame.
In a way there was not a need to worry about others seeing them. To the untrained eye, no one would think twice about veterans bearing such scars everywhere.
Well most wouldn’t…
God, just imagine how his uncle Kenny would react if he ever saw those scars— he’d laugh his fucking head off.
Look at how pathetic Levi had become.
Why the fuck would anyone ever do something so stupid?
And Levi knew, he knew it was stupid.
He knew what wounds were which. Which ones were earned from steel in battle, which ones were imprinted by shame.
But he couldn’t stop.
The regret arrived simultaneous to the sting— half an hour later when the red raised scarring whispered upon his calloused skin. Still, the rush he felt whilst doing it was far more memorable. The flooding feeling of relief as blood seeped out, escaping the prison that was his body. The momentary comfort. Peace. It kept him coming back for more every time. Like a blood-sniffing shark.
Was it to punish himself? Because it felt like salvation.
A way to silence the voices in his head? The voices that screamed guilt?
It felt as though a fragment of his tortured soul was released at each swipe of the blade, each burn of the stick.
Just a way to cope. To soothe the nightmares and numb the heartache.
Thats what he kept telling himself it was.
It would be on nights like these after he undressed, he’d just.. stare. Lost in a trance for hours at a time as he gripped the bottle of anti-septic.
Sometimes they were as neat as plough field lines in the soil. Other times, they were jagged, frantic. Making his anger visible. He could trace his ghostly fingers on each wound and remember exactly what emotion had driven it. Grief. Frustration. Self-hatred. Loneliness.
Guilt.
The more he looked, the more he loathed.
He loathed the pathetic shell of who he once was.
Days dragged into weeks, weeks trudged into months… the months rolled into a year…
It had been exactly a year since the war ended.
Leaving him wilting in his loneliness.
His stitched-up battle injuries may have faded with time as the flesh knitted itself closed, but his guilt didn’t. Like the scars, it lingered. Welded into him.
Carved by his own hands.