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“Give me a break, Levi.” Erwin’s voice was dry and raspy after a week of post-op unconsciousness. “Don’t you feel sorry for me at all, after I got one of my arms eaten?” His phantom hand reached out for Levi for affirmation. Affection.
“Heh.” Levi retorted as he leaned his back against the windowsill of Erwin’s bedroom. “Perhaps.” He offered his heart through the smirk on his face.
---
Thunk. A grunt of frustration. Another thunk. Cursing and grunting again.
“Levi.”
They had to be somewhere. In one of these trunks there were fresh shirts and pants. This one had pots. That one had gas canisters. What the fuck was with this sewing kit? Garbage. All of it--absolute garbage.
“ Levi .”
Levi kicked a chest off of the cart, growling out a near scream as he did so. A clammer of steel on steel, a spray of 3D gears and scabbards fanned out against the dirt roadway. The dust was settling, but it had been settling for an hour. The aftermath of the fight with the Armor and Colossal Titan still weighed heavily in the air, filling Levi’s body with its radioactive isotopes that would never half-life. He adjusted the cloth over his nose before moving onto the next chest.
“Oi, Levi .”
“Shut the fuck up, Shitty Glasses.” Levi spat, pushing another dead end off the side of the cart.
Hange lifted themself up onto the cart, one arm wrapped around the wooden railing. “I’m saying this as a friend, not as your superior,” they started, watching intently and quietly as Levi moved to shove the last remaining chest off the cart. “You need to calm down.”
Levi jumped off the cart, ignoring Hange as he marched his way to the next one. This was the last one. They had to be there. Hange followed quietly, first in morbid curious, then out of genuine concern. Levi sprung up and started rifling through more supplies, and a new wave of materials were flung in the air to litter the ground.
“You need to set an exam--”
“If you aren’t going to help then just get out of here.”
Hange stood firmly as Levi continued to disgruntledly and frantically tear through their supplies. Hange understood, truly, what Levi was feeling. Through their years together, they had seen what kind of man Levi was. He was tough and callous and quiet. A man with biting humor and little patience. But he had morals despite his upbringing, and a deep sense of honor and chivalry. They would even dare to call him kind behind his back. So under the tough exterior, he had some bastardized versions of emotions. And they knew one thing more than anything: Levi valued the lives of his comrades possibly more than himself. He may have been able to fool others at time, but the pain and disappointment on his face was always evident--always heartbreaking in its own way. It was like watching each soldier die all over again across his expression of muted grief.
Levi couldn’t contain this one. He couldn’t contain the death of Commander Erwin Smith on his face alone.
No, the world had to know; this was not all right.
---
They had laid Erwin down in a surviving building close to the former Yaeger household. The upstairs was dusty and muggy and smelled like mildew and dirt. It made Levi’s nose crinkle. He laid down the fresh set of clothing next to the basin of water and washcloth on the bedside table. Hange hovered near the bed, their fingers twisting within each other, the finality of it all having sunk after feeling the dead weight of Erwin’s body in their arms. They made no sound as a tear rolled down their cheek.
“I can help you...” Hange began.
Levi shook his head, slowly and solemnly, as if it took all his composure to keep from folding out from under his own weight. “No.” Abruptly at first, softer the second time. “No. You need to be there for the brats.”
They both stood in the silence, Hange letting a sniffle pass until they motioned into a salute. Back straight, chin up, rigid and stoic and still so silent. They held the position for seconds, minutes, wanting to hold onto the moment, to always have Erwin as their commander. But the dismissal never came, and the realization eased them out salute. Hange offered one more remorseful gaze at Levi, knowing that what they were feeling must have been a fraction of what Levi was feeling. They said nothing as they turned for the door, and they didn’t look back once they reached the door frame. This moment was a time capsule, and looking back would only mean that things could have been different.
“Hange.”
Hange stopped. They ran a finger under their good eye with a slight head shake. They looked back over their shoulder, glancing at Levi who had taken residence on a stool next to the bed. Levi looked at them--his eyes so tired, his posture so beaten, his face so pale. Their name was an apology; a cry for forgiveness. Levi was going to have to burden this, whatever it was. Guilt, regret, duty, loss, grief, pain, hopelessness... Even if Hange tried to help, it was his to carry.
Levi had been Erwin’s right arm, and it’d be foolish to say a part of him didn’t die out there with him.
Hange nodded and left the house, and their hope for humanity, behind.
---
By the time they had gotten Erwin into bed, most of his blood had been extenuated. His skin was white as paper and cold as ink, and Levi pressed his knuckles delicately into it, as if hoping to write his final vows along the stiff muscles underneath. He removed Erwin’s bolo and placed it on the side table before he continued to unstrap buckles and undo buttons that he had helped clasp together before the sun had risen that morning. Levi shouldered Erwin’s great mass as he, with much difficulty, removed his uniform jacket and shirt. This weight was different from what he felt the other times they had shared a bed. No compassion or warmth or soft touches that followed hot kisses and purple bruises. There were no gentle whispers of “Are you ready?” or “Are you all right?”
No. He wasn’t ready for this, and he sure as hell wasn’t all right.
Levi wrung out the washcloth in the basin and began wiping the blood from Erwin’s abdomen. Hange had helped replace the soaked through turnacate that Flocke had administered, but the new one had already bled through with the last of Erwin’s lifeblood. It took several dozen washes before all that was left was a gash of red along white. He tried not to think of Erwin’s intestines and how it was a flimsy piece of cloth that had kept them inside him for the past couple of hours.
He moved to the opposite side of the bed and sat on the edge, his knee pressing against the wall and holding him in place as he worked on cleaning the rest of Erwin’s body. The stub for an arm, heavily calloused with thick scars, did more than make him titan bait. Without two arms, Levi was always worried. And he didn’t like worrying . It made the commander unbalanced, sluggish, and only half as useful. All he could do was lead a charge, not slice the nape of a titan. He was fucking useless, and the bastard should have listened to him.
He should have broken those damn legs of his.
And selfishly, Levi realized it was more than that… That he hadn’t realized how much he would miss two hands on his hips, and the feeling of Erwin bending down to whisper a small quip that would make Levi’s elbow twitch into Erwin’s gut. Or the feeling of two hands on his face, wiping the sweat from his temples as he breathed ecstasy into his partner’s face. Or even being offered tea, with one hand on the cup handle and the other on the saucer.
Levi’s hands and pants were stained with Erwin by the time he was done. He dropped the washcloth into the basin and began inspecting the soiled clothing he had removed. The white dress shirt was gashed open and sticky with blood. The bottoms of the jacket was graded from tan to red, heavy with the weight and smell of blood. So much blood. His grip tightened around the shoulders of the jacket and his mouth went straight under furrowed eyebrows. The bastard. The fucking bastard .
Levi didn’t know when he had started to collect wings, but it made the lives he lost more tangible. His fingers moved automatically, as he had done hundreds of times before, dipping into the breast pocket in order to rip the Wings of Freedom from the garment. But it caught on something within, an occurrence that wasn’t so infrequent. Men and women often kept letters packed tightly in their pockets, whether it be letters they meant to send to their loved ones, or letters loved ones had sent to them. Whenever he found one, he always did his best to forward them along with the other personal effects. Levi frowned slightly, frustrated to be thinking of Marie at this time, that she could be the one that Erwin held close to his heart during his last battle.
With a bit of shameful curiosity, he pulled the letter from the pocket. His eyes growing wide as he read the name on the envelope. The script was large, shaky, and ugly--clearly written by Erwin and his non-dominant hand.
Levi
Levi’s lips parted, and his eyes darted over to Erwin as if expecting an answer. He dropped the jacket to the floor and collapsed onto the stool. He turned the envelope in his hand. It was thick parchment, the lip having been sealed with green wax and the Commander’s insignia. Levi’s finger peeled under the edge of the envelope, trepidatious of the contents, wondering why it was addressed to him .
The wax peeled off with a bit of protest, and he carefully pulled the letter out of the envelope. The script inside matched the outside, nearly illegible at times, but clearly effort was made to make it not so. Levi had not given Erwin much time to learn how to write with his left hand, having taken to being his secretary since the arm loss. He insisted that Erwin was wasting his and everybody else’s time by pretending that he was still a whole person.
Levi had seen shit. He’d been through shit. No one would disagree that he had the cards stacked against him. However, he fought. Fighting allowed him to survive. Sometimes for food, sometimes for money. The goal was always to survive.
He had seen so many people die--his mother, Furlan, Isabel, Petra, Ouro, Gunther, Uld… He allowed himself to be their friends. He allowed himself to feel things for them while they were alive. But he always imagined them as memories first and foremost. He knew the danger of emotions on the battlefield, and he hesitated to feel them anywhere else lest he wanted to lose his will to survive.
Hundreds, thousand, ten thousand. Levi had followed a man that could justify numbers to advance his cause. They told themselves they fought for humanity, but in the process they had lost their own. Erwin was a demon, and Levi was his pawn. They couldn’t regret what they had done, because it would mean that all their men’s deaths were in vain. But they hated writing those letters, and seeing all those ghostly belongings at camp. All those people that had names... People they played cards with; people they drank with; people they fucked.
Levi’s hand clutched tightly around the edges of the letter. A swelling in his throat caused him to croak out a noise he had heard other soldiers make in grief. His mouth dropped open, his breath staggering as the tightness gripped his chest harder than any titan could. He tried to gasp for air, his eyes welling with tears until the breached and trailed down his cheeks. Hot and unfamiliar and he didn’t know what to do. What should he do? What could he do?
At one point, he swore Erwin’s death at the tip of his sword. But somewhere, somehow, he had made Levi see what it meant to fight for humanity’s survival. He learned that wings could make him fly--out of the underground, out of the walls, and into freedom. That someday, he too could grant those wings to humanity. Erwin had made him. And although Erwin’s wings were black and glossy with blood of thousands, he had given hope to those that believed. And Levi believed.
He brought the letter up to his face, crumpled and ugly like him, and cried for the man that he was afraid to make into a memory.
---
After he had dressed Erwin in clean clothing, Levi had stepped out of the house to gather a makeshift bouquet of daisies from around the yard. Placing them into a vase he found on the first floor, he set the glass container down on the bed side table. They were simple, a little withered, some not fully grown, but they had never been ones to leave flowers on gravestones. Levi imagined that Erwin would be laughing at him now for being so traditional. He grinned lethargically.
Absently, he ran his fingers along the emerald of the bolo. He had felt the weight in his hand before, but it usually accompanied hot breath in his face and a firm hand on his thigh. He clutched it in his palm, until the coolness of the metal matched his body heat, before placing it into his left breast pocket. He picked up his cloak between two hands and walked over to the bed. He tried to tell himself that this ghost of a man was not the Erwin he knew. That the one he knew was still alive, at least in his memories, and that someday they would both meet in hell, regardless of any goddess that got in their way. He carefully draped the cloak over Erwin’s head and torso and stood back.
Clicking his heels together, he gave a salute, one that had his breathing rampant and his jaw locked tight. It took several minutes for Levi to move again. It wasn’t until he felt the pain in his knees that he broke his salute and motioned to grab Erwin’s cape and wrap it around his neck. With a deep sigh, he headed toward the door, determined to leave without looking back, hoping that his will was strong enough to do it the one time it was most important to forget.
His hand caught the wood of the doorframe, and he paused for several seconds, his mouth moving over invisible words. Levi shook his head slightly and turned his head back toward Erwin. Quietly, his voice sounding foreign to him as it came out, using words he was sure he had never muttered before.
“I love you, too.”
---
Armin wasn’t Erwin, but he could live up to him someday if he survived long enough. Levi had told him not to regret his choice to save him. He told him not to regret Eren and Mikasa’s choice to fight for him. They were counting on him.
But he would never be Erwin.
Levi had almost succumbed to his selfish needs. He saw a world where if he had the choice, that if he could play god for a single minute, he had the will to think only for himself. It was for humanity’s sake, he could tell himself. It’s what he would tell others. It’s what Hange would believe. But he knew in his gut it was so he wouldn’t have to say good bye.
He didn’t regret his choice. Erwin trusted the serum to him because he knew Hange would make the wrong choice. Erwin trusted him with the serum, because he knew no matter what, his dream would end that day. Armin had dreams. Dreams that wouldn’t end until the titans were gone. Armin had killed a man. Armin had killed Bertholdt. Armin could learn to sacrifice himself to lead.
But he would never be Erwin.
They had seen what was in the basement. They knew the kind of threat that loomed ahead. It didn’t make the weight of Erwin’s things easier to carry out of his office. Hange stood behind their desk, because it was theirs now, their finger on the edge of Erwin’s death certificate. Levi sat on the windowsill, one leg dangling to the floor, his gaze focused out on the soldiers training in the courtyard.
“I will never ask you why you did it, Levi.” Hange said, softly.
“Then what are you doing now?”
Hange chuckled, “I didn’t.” They came to the window to look out at their soldiers. They nodded toward the sparring pair of titan shifters: Armin and Eren. “He’s weak as hell, but I see the Commander’s spirit in him.”
Levi grunted.
Hange nudged Levi’s arm until he glared back at them, only to be greeted with a wide toothy grin. “I found this in one of his drawers.” They held up the tin canister embellished with golden paisley and silver stars. Opening up the lid, a sweetly bitter smell of tea leaves wafted up to meet Levi’s nose. “I think he was saving these.”
Levi’s face softened. It was the tea he and Erwin shared when they returned from expeditions. He knew the taste well: on the rim of tea cups and on the tip of tongues. The tea was celebration. It tasted of victory. Survival. He hesitated before offering a shallow nod. “I’ll go get the water ready.”