Levi looks up at Erwin and tilts his head. His eyes immediately jerk to the pile of files stacked on his arms. Eyebrows raise.
“It’s not that much,” Levi says but already lifts his hands to take part of them and help Erwin. He twitches to the side however and shakes his head. That’s not what he meant but he doesn’t say it. Instead Levi’s led to believe Erwin doesn’t want his help.
They fall silent.
What Levi doesn’t know is that Erwin will look at himself this very evening. He will see the bolo tie centered on his chest with its glaringly vibrant, green stone. He will see it and wonder how event lead to event and thus to him as the commander of the Scouting Legion.
Erwin questions himself like that a lot of times. In the safety of a half-darkness created by few candles he’ll light to soften the surroundings. When his feather scratches over parchment in an almost mechanical way.
The stone feels unusually heavy once he’s aware. There so much more to it than just being a pendant representing a status. Responsibility and guilt stick onto it in all the red he had to wipe off already. Weirdly enough the green hasn’t lost any of its vibrancy along the way.
Sometimes there’s something else underneath all the heaviness. Erwin feels this little shadow slither behind him and slowly up his spine until it buries itself deeply into his heart.
“Your bolo tie is flipped.” Levi says. He walks up to him and leans over to fix it. Index and thumb and the glaring green is back where it belongs.
“Thank you,” Erwin says and continues his work.
The feeling he’ll sometimes have comes close to the one underneath sweet self-destruction when a titan faces him. It’s devoid of any of the adrenaline rushing through his veins in that situation but filled with heavy fluids weighing down his heart in despair.
Sometimes Erwin doesn’t want to wear the bolo tie.
“It’s heavy,” Erwin says again. A faint glint of hope Levi will read into those words and understand them.
“What is?” He says and looks at Erwin from across the table. There’s a piece of bread between his fingers hanging mid-air. Eyes scan for something that could be considered too heavy and then return to Erwin’s face in question.
His lips open but close again. Words don’t come easily when it concerns himself. This feeling Erwin can’t get used to is some sort of confusion about how to tactically arrange the upcoming conversation to his best advantages. He doesn’t quite realize that tactics don’t always apply to emotions.
“Nothing.”
“Erwin, you’re weird. What the hell is up with you?”
Erwin wonders.
It’s when Levi sees him in front of the mirror for the first time. Sees how Erwin looks at himself and how darkness washes over his features once blue eyes catch the green glint as fingers lift it.
Erwin isn’t aware Levi stands there at the door and watches him. Doesn’t realize how terrifying it is for him to see so much self-loathing in a person’s eyes. So much disgust.
Erwin doesn’t even realize that’s what he paints onto his face.
“It’s heavy,” Levi suddenly says and makes Erwin jerk around.
“Is that what you meant all this time? That damn bolo tie?”
His heart beats unusually fast as if caught in an especially despicable act. Levi’s not supposed to see him like this.
“Fuck, Erwin,” Levi hisses and pulls on the cords once he’s reaches him. His eyes are mere slits, his lips a tight, fine line.
“Stop.”
Erwin stands there halfway bent towards Levi, eyes wide searching for something other than Levi’s face to get stuck on. He can’t take what he sees once he dares glancing into his eyes. Disappointment? Confusion? Agitation? He can’t tell and it’s making him uncomfortable.
Words elude him completely in this moment he has never dared thinking of.
Levi tugs one more time and then strips it off. Takes the heavy stone and its threatening nature and pulls it off Erwin’s chest. Something comes with it. Something black and sticky.
He knows it too. Levi knows what the bolo tie represents for Erwin. Has seen it in blue eyes staring back at a person that’s become a stranger.
“This thing is what makes you feel this way? Are you scared?”
“Levi…”
“Answer me.”
“No.”
“Liar.”
Suddenly Levi puts it around his neck and wears it. With features, Erwin came to love and adore, it lacks the vicious association he usually catches himself making.
It doesn’t fit him. Erwin thinks and grabs for it, however.
“I’ve tried it. Wearing this thing,” Levi says now after taking a step back. Erwin’s surprise comes unmasked.
“When you weren’t watching.” Something moves in his face as if he’s making an especially intimate confession.
“I thought it would feel more terrifying. I wanted to know how it feels like to carry the weight of so many dead soldiers, but it’s not the stone.” He shrugs and attempts to strip it off again but Erwin stops him. He does it without even realizing.
Slowly hands move to loosen the first button of Levi’s shirt, hesitant to await refusal and agitation about such audacity, but Levi doesn’t say anything. He waits.
“It’s not the stone...?”
The words are simple but weigh down so heavily that Erwin feels his voice crack. Countless nights without sleep and pictures in his mind go into them with all the moments he’s looked at the green and learned to hate it.
More buttons come loose before cloth slides down Levi’s skin and lands on the floor with a thud. With the stone on naked white, Erwin never tires of, he feels the weight lifting, feels some of it shifting onto Levi. He starts to feel guilty.
His hand threads through black hair and feels the undercut as countless but tangible times before. Levi looks up at Erwin slightly insecure but still determined.
LEVI LIKED TO BE tricky sometimes…and though years upon years had passed since they had known one another, there were times even Erwin couldn’t figure out what was going through the other’s head. There was just a moment’s hesitation before he lifted his hand, touching his forehead in search of this mysterious wrinkle. ❝….Levi.❞
He most probably wasn’t one to talk about wrinkles and frowns but for some reason Levi took some tiny joy in catching Erwin off guard like that. When he was all serious until it would dawn on him that Levi was trying to pull his leg.
[AU] Where Death Doesn’t Matter || charismatic-commander
When Levi last touched a cold hand to fold it over a stiff body, he was certain that would be the last time he’d look into the face of a person he’d not only trusted unconditionally but also admired beyond anyone else.
He was certain none of this would happen to him again. Orders, Erwin’s voice, his doubts displayed with vulnerability that was strangely contagious.
And then the nightmares began. Shallow at first. Nothing more than a brief figment of a scene that wouldn’t make sense to Levi for such a long time. Faces flashing in front of him, vicious speed and wind whipping into his face as he felt his muscles tense for something. The scene would repeat over and over again. Night for night Levi would wake up drenched in sweat, distressed without a reason.
They grew, those dreams. Blurred faces became friends and acquaintances. Faint noises became the known screams of dying soldiers. One night Levi woke up and knew that he hadn’t managed to escape that life. For some reason he had been reborn and doomed to remember everything that had happened in his previous life.
At first it was fairly easy to convince himself that this all was just a simple coincidence. That he believed this was part of his being because his mind made him with eerily crisp memories and particular moments he couldn’t relate to anything else. Levi would wake up, breathing heavily, shaking and torn by what he had to live through the lens of a tortured sub-consciousness. After a while he’d find himself denying any truth and forcing himself to close his eyes again.
But then he saw him sitting next to his bed. Clothes torn by battle, stained by the evaporating blood of titans and that leaving his own body. He’d simply sit there staring at Levi as if he was about to give his next order. Silently judging the situation around him, bleeding.
Erwin.
After the third night, Levi couldn’t find sleep anymore. He found himself snapping more often, losing his concentration and dreading those visions.
“They aren’t real,” he tried to convince himself, but Erwin wouldn’t grant him such peace.
Soon enough he found himself in a mental hospital. A consideration he never had dared to make until the visions became something too close to reality. At times he found himself hearing people calling out for him. People he was supposed to know but could only “remember” as faint shadows. Fleeting but always there. The only clear figure had been Erwin.
They’d seep into his daily life and confuse him. Make him answer even though no one was there.
“Your new psychiatrist will meet you in about five minutes,” a nurse said.
The other hadn’t managed to bring any closure into Levi’s case. Medication didn’t help much either with the visions he kept seeing; the voices he kept hearing.
It was as if something had doomed him to live in pain.
His room had proven to be surprisingly clean. What else had he expected from a hospital, though?
The bed was decent to sleep in; a simple table had been placed right across from it for use whenever he desired. Levi had thought about writing down what he saw in his dreams and the moment he’d wake up and see Erwin sitting there in his full attire.
There was no reason as to why he remembered his name. No one had mentioned it in his dream. No one had told him anything and yet he knew. He knew this was a past life.
❝REALLY?❞ ERWIN MADE TO reach up and touch his forehead, though hesitated for a moment. If there really was something there, he knew for a fact Levi would have already attempted to remove it. ❝You’re trying to trick me again, are you? It wouldn’t be the first time.❞
Erwin has so much emotion that it’s difficult for people to see it. The amplitude of his emotions is so great that to those around him it looks as if the needle isn’t moving at all.
Ono Daisuke, Japanese VA of Erwin Smith, about Erwin (via trashyeruri)
Your Levi is so perfect. Manly yet true to his small frame and somewhat feminine facial features ( 눈 ▽ 눈 ) ✧ if you could ever draw him in his cleaning outfit I'd diee~
Ah wow thank you (ノ*°▽°*)
It’s kinda difficult for me to draw Levi because I tend to portray him more muscular than he actually is (at least that’s the feedback i usually get haha).
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