[To Eren, there is no one stronger than Captain Levi. He has a reputation, back home - Humanity's Strongest Soldier. That was enough, once, when Eren was young enough to be impressed by things like titles.
[He met him. Captain Levi, the definition of tough love, if you could call it that. He kicked the shit out of Eren to save his life. He asked if he resented him.
[No. No. He never did.
[They spent...less than two months together, back home? Eren was surprised by Levi's adherence to orders, his height, his penchant for cleanliness. He wasn't the person Eren pictured. He was better. He talked to Eren like a subordinate, but not like a weapon, or a tool, or a monster - not...the way others did.
[Levi looked for him. He tried to understand. But Eren is impossible to understand. They've spent more time together here, trying to break down the walls of their hierarchy and start to adapt to a world where they could be something aside from soldiers, but with every new thing Eren learns about his future, the distance between them only seems to yawn open wider, wider, wider...
[Eren lies awake at night. He thinks of so much. His own memories, the memories of others, or memories he shouldn't have yet.
[Captain Levi, barely stitched back into one piece.
[Eren was lucky enough to be taken under the wing of his greatest hero, and what did he do with that honor?
[Levi hasn't lived that future yet, but he's made Eren feel forgiven all the same; something in Eren trusts that he'd never hate him.
[God. He never wants him to. But he doesn't know how to look him in the eye anymore. There's so much shame, so much hatred, so much rage that's still unresolved, that will continue to burn him, burn Levi, burn everyone he touches because that is what loving Eren means.
[Captain Levi doesn't deserve that.
[But Eren is held. There is no safer place in this world. Levi couldn't save Eren, couldn't save the world - it still feels impossible to believe. Eren knows now that the simple answer is that he couldn't be saved; there's no one else to blame...
[But he isn't asking to be saved. Levi rocks him as he sobs, more a child than he's ever been, clinging and choking and swaying and howling because no matter what he does, or what he says, or how violently he grieves, or how miserable he is, has been, always will be, no matter how hopeless--
[Levi will protect him. He always has, hasn't he?]
[ But even with this monstrous strength, he still loses the people he loves most. Farlan and Isabel. Petra, Oluo, Eld, Gunther.
Hange, one day.
...Erwin.
Levi's saved many others, but apparently most will still perish. What good is it to be Humanity's Strongest if he can't really keep anyone but himself alive? If his choices are always death now or death later?
If what the others say is true (and why wouldn't it be?) Eren will still be a large cause for even more terrible loss. There is a future waiting that Levi can't envision, a vast emptiness at the edge of that last great, terrible act. A smattering of surviving humanity, a place that had been all he knew now entirely lost to him. And what next?
It would be easy to hate him for it. Easy enough to succumb to his own wounded heart. Except that he simply can't; for all that Eren is and all that he does, the one trembling in his arms didn't want for their squad to die. He isn't responsible for what will happen in Shiganshina. Beyond that, things feel inscrutable. But beyond that...blame seems pointless, in the end.
Levi can try to protect Eren. He's been trying, hoping that if things are different enough in this place, maybe Eren wont succumb to whatever is in him that hungers for such indifferent annihilation. Maybe. Maybe...
How can he protect Eren from himself? For months he's felt as such a fucking loss, unsure what to do, how to reach him, how to convince him that it doesn't have to be inevitable. Things didn't have to be perfect - pain is a fact of life, but it didn't have to be this. But he doesn't know what to say, what to fucking do.
All of this strength, and yet the threat is intangible.
All he can do is try to hold on. Even if it burns him. Because if he lets a little pain get in the way, then what's the point? If he lets Eren go because it's too much, then what's left?
So he does. Through all of Eren's screams and wails, as though he is pulling agony from the very earth. Levi feels pieces of his own grief pulled in, spun together and spooled out in gut-wrenching cries. He holds on, embrace tight, feet grounded to the earth as he continues that soft motion. His shirt is getting drenched with tears and snot, but it doesn't fucking matter. Never once does he try to hush or encourage Eren to stop. Better for as much of it to come out, like drawing poison from a wound.
But he knows better than most that grief is more like a stain on the soul that will never truly fade. It can be rinsed with tears, for a time, but eventually it will bleed fresh anew. ]
've got you...[ A soft mumble, check pressed to hair. ]
[Eren's always been prone to tears, but tears like these feel different; how badly he needs relief. People fret that Eren never stops moving - wake up, train, train more, work, work more, train, fail to rest, train more - on and on and on and on...
[But he's always had something to move toward - and never any choice but to move toward it! He's still here; trapped, caged. Occasional bouts of enemies allow him to vent some of that range, but there's still no escape from the void leftover.
[Eren keenly recalls what it felt like to be empty, but how he longs for it when he feels so much well up inside of it that he knows he'll drown, choking on saltwater until his lungs are filled with that terrible sea.
[It has to come out somehow. The wretched, wrenching grief lasts and lasts, Levi's shirt a mess, Eren's face a worse one. Even once the sobbing shifts into quiet, jerking whimpers, Eren doesn't let go; once those subside into soft, silent nothing, Eren doesn't let go.
[If he could stay here, like this, forever, in this exhausted safety, he would, wouldn't he? But that's never been the case...
[Eren leans away from Levi, hands still balling up the fabric of his Captain's shirt. He has trouble releasing.]
Captain...
[Does Levi ever cry like this? He's held, isn't he?]
[ The awful, terrible truth is that Levi both can and can't imagine that frenetic need. The fear that if you stop everything catches up, and then it's just rage or pain or a void or all three at once, all cancelling each other out in terrible paralysis. At least with movement there can be the sensation of going forward, even if you're just spinning your wheels.
But Levi has more experience, is better at shoving things into their boxes to be handled when the time comes. He also doesn't have the jumbled mess of memories, the confusion of what is truth and what is real constantly at war in his brain. There's so much about Eren he simply doesn't and never will be able to understand.
His hands stay in place until Eren decides to pull away, and even then, Levi doesn't quite let him go. Not until Eren does first.
...and then that hole in his chest opens up even deeper.
For a few seconds, he isn't even sure what Eren is asking; the emptiness? The harrowing sorrow? The frenzied anger? It oddly feels dangerous, as though if he answers ambiguously that he risks encouraging the wrong thing.
But to deny any of them would just be a lie.
Levi just looks at Eren, with sadness that seems older than the world. ]
...Yeah.
[ A simple, soft answer, thumbing a tear away from his cheek. ]
[It's impossible. Levi murmurs a confirmation of his sorrow, then wipes a tear away from Eren's cheek, and it's impossible. There is an image of Levi that haunts Eren from the back of his mind, and it feels like it's every aching, waking moment; a stitched together face, a hand that has trouble gripping, a broken body.
[Hange has returned to their death. Eren killed them. Eren. Killed them.
[And Levi dries his tears. Impossible. Impossible.]
Captain.
[It's a pained sound. Eren's head drops into a hang, fists squeezing tighter around the fabric of his Captain's shirt.]
[ Of all the things Eren could have said then, out of all the things he could have tried to apologize for, has apologized for, probably nothing else could have been so unexpected and yet an arrow straight to the deepest, most raw part of his heart.
His expression shifts, wide-eyed and blatantly caught-off guard, breath seizing in his chest as he just stares at Eren.
Hange.
What more can it do to me, Levi? I'm already dead.
They're dead, and one day he'll have to let them go to their death, just as he'll have to let go of Erwin. To step aside and let them both go, for reasons he does and doesn't understand. All of the things he doesn't know, everything that leads up to those moments; what went wrong, what truths he will have to accept - a hopeless situation, a mangled body.
They were here, and despite the years that separated them, he had still been able to love them in a way they could never have done before. Or ever. Is this the only place such a thing is possible? What happens after?
Levi can't even fall back on his usual philosophy in absolution of guilt in the way that he could when Petra and the others perished. Eren's decision might have led them to that route, but that didn't make him responsible for their deaths. From what he knows, he can't say that about Hange, fighting to bide them time to escape from a near world-ending catastrophe that Eren not only caused, but orchestrated.
A sharp pain in his chest forces him to take a breath, slow and heavy. Every subsequent one is harder now, his hands rigidly curled in place. It's easier to guide someone else through their grief, to pack his own away and save to look at later. His own grieving is constant, a piece of him that only seems to grow with him as the distance from those he loses also grows with time. A shredded soul, held together by threads.
His eyes drift away from Eren then, before closing against a wave that looms higher than he'd realized. No words come to him, because he can't offer any words of comfort; there is no absolution here, even if hate and blame feel useless as they so often do. Eren already knows his fate, and surely that is torture enough.
It clearly is. For both of them.
There's a familiar, cold knot of ice in his stomach. Rage. Anger that spikes through his veins. But unleashing it at Eren will do no good, doesn't make fucking sense in this moment. Instead it just paralyzes him, caught once again in that loop of uncertainty, barbed by all of the pain that Eren has caused him, will cause.
He packs sorrow and hurt around it, containing all three. It's just enough to stave off the stinging in his eyes, to relieve a little of the pressure in his chest, even though his breathing is still faster, his pulse thick with adrenaline. It keeps his heart from ripping in two.
But words won't come. His forgiveness is too thin for that, yet.
Instead, Levi just brings Eren in closer again, hands hard enough to hurt, and only then lets his expression crumple into abject grief, where it can't be seen. ]
[Eren receives no forgiveness, and it's a relief; he doesn't want it, and he wouldn't believe Levi if that's what he tried to give.
[Quick breathing - that's all; for Levi, it speaks volumes. Eren hears it, head still hung. Levi is quiet. Eren thinks he might walk away, and his grip tightens on the man's shirt.
[He can't let him go...
[Eren is brought in, head hitting Levi's chest; there's a muffled bark of grief. He wraps his arms around Levi, shameless, young, desperate. He clutches the back of the man's head, buzzed short - hands hard enough to hurt.]
You have to know...[The words are squeezed out, high-pitched and breaking.] Captain...you have to know...
Despite everything...[He's never dared to even think of saying it out loud.
[Levi is his hero, but that's not all. Back home, Eren never got a chance to know Levi, the famed, feared champion of humanity, like he has in this reality. Levi got to know Eren; he's gotten to know this one, too.
[He's been there. He's cared. He's protected. He's loved.
[Eren doesn't want forgiveness. If Levi truly does come to hate him, it will be deserved; but it doesn't make this any less true:]
I love you. I love you all. Please...believe me...
[ If Eren had spoken the word reality then, it's possible something irrevocable might have happened. ]
[ Instead, Eren finds the one last thing that capable of fraying that last little thread; the fine, thin line holding two halves together. Eren grasps onto him tightly and it feels as much of a threat as it does the desperate, pleading hands of a small child, lost. He could easily break free, and it would be a lie to deny the part of him that wants to - cold, clear rage, revenge for all his pain that's yet to come.
But it's drowned in despair. Disbelief and relief and grief at once. What is he supposed to do with this? With Eren's love, or his own? More than anyone else, Eren is a double edged sword. There have been so many people in his life by now who've depended on him, on his strength and his willingness to do what's necessary, on his experience and guidance. Farlan and Isabel; Erwin and Hange; subordinates in his care. Perhaps no small number of Survey Corps soldiers felt a spike of hope when they saw him fighting alongside them.
In the end, there's never anything he can do. Bad choices, bad circumstances. Things out of his control. No matter how hard he tries, and that's even with things Levi can fight, against Titans or humans or whatever else he can cut with a blade or tear apart with his bare hands.
But this?
I love you...please believe me.
A sharp, hissing inhale is the last breath before his throat closes, choking tight. Levi feels as though he mourns Eren while holding him, the realization that perhaps they couldn't save Eren because he simply isn't meant to be saved slowly comping upon him like frost covering over glass. Yet all his anger and despair and hope and love are spun and plied together, binding them now in a different way.
He feels the tears, hot and wet, trickle over the bridge of his nose to dampen Eren's hair. He holds Eren tightly, anger and sorrow broken loose at once, but there are no sobs. No desperate gasps for air, just tears and gritted teeth and lungs that burn with every breath.
What happens, with both strength and love fail?
Love anyway. ]
...
[ Levi manages strength, and words come in a harsh breath: ]
[After everything that's happened, that will happen - things they've lived but haven't - will, but not with this knowledge that's shared between them now - all Eren could ever ask is for Levi to know what he knows he'll never say once they're standing back in the place where they started.
[Levi is loved. Eren can feel hot tears on his scalp. Eren is believed. It's enough.
[The grip is loosened, but Eren dare not move away first. He never dreamed of, not seeing, but hearing - knowing - Captain Levi in a state like this; he'll let him have it. He'll sit there all night, all week, for the rest of his life - he doesn't care.]
[ It doesn't last long - his sharpest grief rarely does. It's the quick stab of a knife, blade into his chest, acute, horrid pain. The rest will linger, forever a wound, rarely a scar.
Levi lifts his head, sniffing hard, because he's not about to get snot in Eren's hair (truly he has no problem with crying as a show of emotion, but the physical act of it is so often messy and gross). He shifts one arm to find the handkerchief in his pocket, but doesn't pull away from Eren yet. A word or two of fuck and gross gets muttered under his breath as he cleans up his own face carefully, then exhales.
When he finally does start to shift backward, raw around the edges, Levi drags a few fingertips through Eren's hair, combing it back into place. He sighs, looking down at the teen where he sits, corners of his eyes tinted red. Perhaps moreso than ever before now, he looks...tired. Worn.
So many hours and moments spent wrapped up in anxiety and worry, he finally just asks: ]
[Captain Levi, ever concerned with cleanliness, mutters at the physical consequences of crying, wiping it all away with a handkerchief; just like that, he's strong again. Eren feels so grateful, and so ashamed. His Captain-- No, something else - family, maybe - asks him what he needs, and Eren knows that he doesn't have an answer.
[He has to give him some kind of answer.
[His jaw clenches with emotion, but not anger, this time.]
[ It's such a simple answer. The only thing that keeps it from being as painful and sharp as everything else before it is the disbelief that his mere existence on its own is all that matters; it's certainly never been enough, but to an extent, Levi is usually well aware enough of his place in the order of things. He isn't so self-important as to believe he could prevent any one thing from happening, to convince anyone so determined on their own paths to change their mind. Most of the time, he's never wanted that. Erwin...Eren...Hange...they could all make their own choices.
All of this strength...all of this power, and they all manage to make him feel powerless in the face of their convictions. It's still true, now.
But at the same time, it means so much more than anything else Eren could have said. Levi understands what a family is; he's seen what they're meant to look like, and oh so briefly, preciously, felt the joy of his mother's love. Part of him has to wonder if this isn't something like that, maybe, if this is all that Eren wants from him.
It won't be enough. It was never meant to be. They may yet find themselves at odds with one another, if their future is anything to go by.
That doesn't mean it isn't worth giving. ]
[ Levi settles a hand on Eren's shoulder, looking down at the top of his head. ]
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GOD ME TOO HERE HAVE A NOVEL I'M NORMAL (DO...LMK IF U NEED MORE THAN CRYING)
[He met him. Captain Levi, the definition of tough love, if you could call it that. He kicked the shit out of Eren to save his life. He asked if he resented him.
[No. No. He never did.
[They spent...less than two months together, back home? Eren was surprised by Levi's adherence to orders, his height, his penchant for cleanliness. He wasn't the person Eren pictured. He was better. He talked to Eren like a subordinate, but not like a weapon, or a tool, or a monster - not...the way others did.
[Levi looked for him. He tried to understand. But Eren is impossible to understand. They've spent more time together here, trying to break down the walls of their hierarchy and start to adapt to a world where they could be something aside from soldiers, but with every new thing Eren learns about his future, the distance between them only seems to yawn open wider, wider, wider...
[Eren lies awake at night. He thinks of so much. His own memories, the memories of others, or memories he shouldn't have yet.
[Captain Levi, barely stitched back into one piece.
[Eren was lucky enough to be taken under the wing of his greatest hero, and what did he do with that honor?
[Levi hasn't lived that future yet, but he's made Eren feel forgiven all the same; something in Eren trusts that he'd never hate him.
[God. He never wants him to. But he doesn't know how to look him in the eye anymore. There's so much shame, so much hatred, so much rage that's still unresolved, that will continue to burn him, burn Levi, burn everyone he touches because that is what loving Eren means.
[Captain Levi doesn't deserve that.
[But Eren is held. There is no safer place in this world. Levi couldn't save Eren, couldn't save the world - it still feels impossible to believe. Eren knows now that the simple answer is that he couldn't be saved; there's no one else to blame...
[But he isn't asking to be saved. Levi rocks him as he sobs, more a child than he's ever been, clinging and choking and swaying and howling because no matter what he does, or what he says, or how violently he grieves, or how miserable he is, has been, always will be, no matter how hopeless--
[Levi will protect him. He always has, hasn't he?]
EATS THIS UP
[ But even with this monstrous strength, he still loses the people he loves most. Farlan and Isabel. Petra, Oluo, Eld, Gunther.
Hange, one day.
...Erwin.
Levi's saved many others, but apparently most will still perish. What good is it to be Humanity's Strongest if he can't really keep anyone but himself alive? If his choices are always death now or death later?
If what the others say is true (and why wouldn't it be?) Eren will still be a large cause for even more terrible loss. There is a future waiting that Levi can't envision, a vast emptiness at the edge of that last great, terrible act. A smattering of surviving humanity, a place that had been all he knew now entirely lost to him. And what next?
It would be easy to hate him for it. Easy enough to succumb to his own wounded heart. Except that he simply can't; for all that Eren is and all that he does, the one trembling in his arms didn't want for their squad to die. He isn't responsible for what will happen in Shiganshina. Beyond that, things feel inscrutable. But beyond that...blame seems pointless, in the end.
Levi can try to protect Eren. He's been trying, hoping that if things are different enough in this place, maybe Eren wont succumb to whatever is in him that hungers for such indifferent annihilation. Maybe. Maybe...
How can he protect Eren from himself? For months he's felt as such a fucking loss, unsure what to do, how to reach him, how to convince him that it doesn't have to be inevitable. Things didn't have to be perfect - pain is a fact of life, but it didn't have to be this. But he doesn't know what to say, what to fucking do.
All of this strength, and yet the threat is intangible.
All he can do is try to hold on. Even if it burns him. Because if he lets a little pain get in the way, then what's the point? If he lets Eren go because it's too much, then what's left?
So he does. Through all of Eren's screams and wails, as though he is pulling agony from the very earth. Levi feels pieces of his own grief pulled in, spun together and spooled out in gut-wrenching cries. He holds on, embrace tight, feet grounded to the earth as he continues that soft motion. His shirt is getting drenched with tears and snot, but it doesn't fucking matter. Never once does he try to hush or encourage Eren to stop. Better for as much of it to come out, like drawing poison from a wound.
But he knows better than most that grief is more like a stain on the soul that will never truly fade. It can be rinsed with tears, for a time, but eventually it will bleed fresh anew. ]
've got you...[ A soft mumble, check pressed to hair. ]
THREE TAGS IN A ROW - TEARS - jail.
[But he's always had something to move toward - and never any choice but to move toward it! He's still here; trapped, caged. Occasional bouts of enemies allow him to vent some of that range, but there's still no escape from the void leftover.
[Eren keenly recalls what it felt like to be empty, but how he longs for it when he feels so much well up inside of it that he knows he'll drown, choking on saltwater until his lungs are filled with that terrible sea.
[It has to come out somehow. The wretched, wrenching grief lasts and lasts, Levi's shirt a mess, Eren's face a worse one. Even once the sobbing shifts into quiet, jerking whimpers, Eren doesn't let go; once those subside into soft, silent nothing, Eren doesn't let go.
[If he could stay here, like this, forever, in this exhausted safety, he would, wouldn't he? But that's never been the case...
[Eren leans away from Levi, hands still balling up the fabric of his Captain's shirt. He has trouble releasing.]
Captain...
[Does Levi ever cry like this? He's held, isn't he?]
You feel it too...don't you?
TY FOR YOUR PATIENCE
But Levi has more experience, is better at shoving things into their boxes to be handled when the time comes. He also doesn't have the jumbled mess of memories, the confusion of what is truth and what is real constantly at war in his brain. There's so much about Eren he simply doesn't and never will be able to understand.
His hands stay in place until Eren decides to pull away, and even then, Levi doesn't quite let him go. Not until Eren does first.
...and then that hole in his chest opens up even deeper.
For a few seconds, he isn't even sure what Eren is asking; the emptiness? The harrowing sorrow? The frenzied anger? It oddly feels dangerous, as though if he answers ambiguously that he risks encouraging the wrong thing.
But to deny any of them would just be a lie.
Levi just looks at Eren, with sadness that seems older than the world. ]
...Yeah.
[ A simple, soft answer, thumbing a tear away from his cheek. ]
no subject
[Hange has returned to their death. Eren killed them. Eren. Killed them.
[And Levi dries his tears. Impossible. Impossible.]
Captain.
[It's a pained sound. Eren's head drops into a hang, fists squeezing tighter around the fabric of his Captain's shirt.]
I'm sorry...Hange...I'm sorry...
no subject
His expression shifts, wide-eyed and blatantly caught-off guard, breath seizing in his chest as he just stares at Eren.
Hange.
What more can it do to me, Levi? I'm already dead.
They're dead, and one day he'll have to let them go to their death, just as he'll have to let go of Erwin. To step aside and let them both go, for reasons he does and doesn't understand. All of the things he doesn't know, everything that leads up to those moments; what went wrong, what truths he will have to accept - a hopeless situation, a mangled body.
They were here, and despite the years that separated them, he had still been able to love them in a way they could never have done before. Or ever. Is this the only place such a thing is possible? What happens after?
Levi can't even fall back on his usual philosophy in absolution of guilt in the way that he could when Petra and the others perished. Eren's decision might have led them to that route, but that didn't make him responsible for their deaths. From what he knows, he can't say that about Hange, fighting to bide them time to escape from a near world-ending catastrophe that Eren not only caused, but orchestrated.
A sharp pain in his chest forces him to take a breath, slow and heavy. Every subsequent one is harder now, his hands rigidly curled in place. It's easier to guide someone else through their grief, to pack his own away and save to look at later. His own grieving is constant, a piece of him that only seems to grow with him as the distance from those he loses also grows with time. A shredded soul, held together by threads.
His eyes drift away from Eren then, before closing against a wave that looms higher than he'd realized. No words come to him, because he can't offer any words of comfort; there is no absolution here, even if hate and blame feel useless as they so often do. Eren already knows his fate, and surely that is torture enough.
It clearly is. For both of them.
There's a familiar, cold knot of ice in his stomach. Rage. Anger that spikes through his veins. But unleashing it at Eren will do no good, doesn't make fucking sense in this moment. Instead it just paralyzes him, caught once again in that loop of uncertainty, barbed by all of the pain that Eren has caused him, will cause.
He packs sorrow and hurt around it, containing all three. It's just enough to stave off the stinging in his eyes, to relieve a little of the pressure in his chest, even though his breathing is still faster, his pulse thick with adrenaline. It keeps his heart from ripping in two.
But words won't come. His forgiveness is too thin for that, yet.
Instead, Levi just brings Eren in closer again, hands hard enough to hurt, and only then lets his expression crumple into abject grief, where it can't be seen. ]
no subject
[Quick breathing - that's all; for Levi, it speaks volumes. Eren hears it, head still hung. Levi is quiet. Eren thinks he might walk away, and his grip tightens on the man's shirt.
[He can't let him go...
[Eren is brought in, head hitting Levi's chest; there's a muffled bark of grief. He wraps his arms around Levi, shameless, young, desperate. He clutches the back of the man's head, buzzed short - hands hard enough to hurt.]
You have to know...[The words are squeezed out, high-pitched and breaking.] Captain...you have to know...
Despite everything...[He's never dared to even think of saying it out loud.
[Levi is his hero, but that's not all. Back home, Eren never got a chance to know Levi, the famed, feared champion of humanity, like he has in this reality. Levi got to know Eren; he's gotten to know this one, too.
[He's been there. He's cared. He's protected. He's loved.
[Eren doesn't want forgiveness. If Levi truly does come to hate him, it will be deserved; but it doesn't make this any less true:]
I love you. I love you all. Please...believe me...
no subject
[ Instead, Eren finds the one last thing that capable of fraying that last little thread; the fine, thin line holding two halves together. Eren grasps onto him tightly and it feels as much of a threat as it does the desperate, pleading hands of a small child, lost. He could easily break free, and it would be a lie to deny the part of him that wants to - cold, clear rage, revenge for all his pain that's yet to come.
But it's drowned in despair. Disbelief and relief and grief at once. What is he supposed to do with this? With Eren's love, or his own? More than anyone else, Eren is a double edged sword. There have been so many people in his life by now who've depended on him, on his strength and his willingness to do what's necessary, on his experience and guidance. Farlan and Isabel; Erwin and Hange; subordinates in his care. Perhaps no small number of Survey Corps soldiers felt a spike of hope when they saw him fighting alongside them.
In the end, there's never anything he can do. Bad choices, bad circumstances. Things out of his control. No matter how hard he tries, and that's even with things Levi can fight, against Titans or humans or whatever else he can cut with a blade or tear apart with his bare hands.
But this?
I love you...please believe me.
A sharp, hissing inhale is the last breath before his throat closes, choking tight. Levi feels as though he mourns Eren while holding him, the realization that perhaps they couldn't save Eren because he simply isn't meant to be saved slowly comping upon him like frost covering over glass. Yet all his anger and despair and hope and love are spun and plied together, binding them now in a different way.
He feels the tears, hot and wet, trickle over the bridge of his nose to dampen Eren's hair. He holds Eren tightly, anger and sorrow broken loose at once, but there are no sobs. No desperate gasps for air, just tears and gritted teeth and lungs that burn with every breath.
What happens, with both strength and love fail?
Love anyway. ]
...
[ Levi manages strength, and words come in a harsh breath: ]
I believe you.
read it again and started crying UGH
[After everything that's happened, that will happen - things they've lived but haven't - will, but not with this knowledge that's shared between them now - all Eren could ever ask is for Levi to know what he knows he'll never say once they're standing back in the place where they started.
[Levi is loved. Eren can feel hot tears on his scalp. Eren is believed. It's enough.
[The grip is loosened, but Eren dare not move away first. He never dreamed of, not seeing, but hearing - knowing - Captain Levi in a state like this; he'll let him have it. He'll sit there all night, all week, for the rest of his life - he doesn't care.]
SOBS WITH U
Levi lifts his head, sniffing hard, because he's not about to get snot in Eren's hair (truly he has no problem with crying as a show of emotion, but the physical act of it is so often messy and gross). He shifts one arm to find the handkerchief in his pocket, but doesn't pull away from Eren yet. A word or two of fuck and gross gets muttered under his breath as he cleans up his own face carefully, then exhales.
When he finally does start to shift backward, raw around the edges, Levi drags a few fingertips through Eren's hair, combing it back into place. He sighs, looking down at the teen where he sits, corners of his eyes tinted red. Perhaps moreso than ever before now, he looks...tired. Worn.
So many hours and moments spent wrapped up in anxiety and worry, he finally just asks: ]
What do you need from me, Eren?
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[He has to give him some kind of answer.
[His jaw clenches with emotion, but not anger, this time.]
You. You're important to me.
If I lost you...I don't know what I'd do, so...
Just...you. That's all...
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[ It's such a simple answer. The only thing that keeps it from being as painful and sharp as everything else before it is the disbelief that his mere existence on its own is all that matters; it's certainly never been enough, but to an extent, Levi is usually well aware enough of his place in the order of things. He isn't so self-important as to believe he could prevent any one thing from happening, to convince anyone so determined on their own paths to change their mind. Most of the time, he's never wanted that. Erwin...Eren...Hange...they could all make their own choices.
All of this strength...all of this power, and they all manage to make him feel powerless in the face of their convictions. It's still true, now.
But at the same time, it means so much more than anything else Eren could have said. Levi understands what a family is; he's seen what they're meant to look like, and oh so briefly, preciously, felt the joy of his mother's love. Part of him has to wonder if this isn't something like that, maybe, if this is all that Eren wants from him.
It won't be enough. It was never meant to be. They may yet find themselves at odds with one another, if their future is anything to go by.
That doesn't mean it isn't worth giving. ]
[ Levi settles a hand on Eren's shoulder, looking down at the top of his head. ]
...you have me.