#100. smith

[pontevoix]

we'll see what else i'll write tonight, but before i go pet sit real quick:

modern erwin watches most sports but he doesn't care about them that much. he just definitely was in a frat & he definitely makes bets but it's passive entertainment. he watches the world cup & ragebaits gently

modern leorio also watches the international games & sports bets, but he gets too impulsive to actually make strategic bets that aren't just gut feelings. he's very loyal to select players, but he can never remember who has retired & not. he is an irregular watcher, but enthusiastic.

near has never watched a sport in their life. they always know the scores, though, & they think it might be the most tedious thing that's happened to them. modern near might try to make bets if they need cash though

modern colt loves being at the sports bar for a game. he's broke though, so he starts sipping at water after one drink & tries to hang out there as long as possible. he makes some friends along the way!

rin & ness both watch the world cup, but they do it in the privacy of their own homes. ness usually bites his thumb nail when he's focused on watching it.

modern uri doesn't actually watch sports, but if someone else has the game on, he usually roots for who he thinks is the underdog. he's usually wrong about it, tbh. then he gets tipsy on wine & accidentally cheers for the wrong team

modern armin doesn't understand why people are hyped about the world cup but won't watch weird award-winning indie films with him. he has ecclectic movie taste.

modern h*soka accidentally got a free ticket to a world cup match but didn't know it was a big deal. genuinely thought the game was dull.

l has purchased world cup tickets but did not go to watch. no comment.

what about your muses!!

[pontevoix]

they’ve been trying on a new version of themselves recently – a version where they laugh in one another’s faces, where they smile with too much teeth. they’ve proven enough to one another that they’re each capable of clenching down on a bite, but they are too soft to relish in the taste of blood. 

granted, erwin doubts that zeke ever relished in the taste of blood - the way it left the stain of metal on the tongue & bits of death on the teeth. he watches zeke sometimes in the teacher’s workroom or in the hallway.

zeke carries himself strangely, sauntering & a little crooked. he treats himself abstractly, as though he were looking at a shadow of himself & were amused that it were larger than life. he chortles as a caricature when he’s uncomfortable, grows irritable when he hasn’t smoked recently enough. a man like that makes a face at unpleasantness, even if he were never an optimist.

still, erwin knows that he was some kind of enemy. he knows that he was always capable of some kind brutality. so he does not take all of zeke’s frivolities for granted – 

in fairness, too, erwin had never relished in the taste of blood himself. it’s true that sometimes he forgot the taste of blood because victory was a much more potent spice, but cruelty was never meant to be seared against his name. of course, he ended up being cruel anyway, but it was to be expected. there is a price to all things. 

erwin had paid it for the sake of curiosity, one time around. so far, he has been subject to the same sin in this life – & it has not come without consequence, but at least the consequences have not been as dire. 

though erwin & zeke bare their teeth at one another, they have not spoken recently. 

conversation had stopped abruptly, when it was apparent that they each recognized one another for what they had been.

before that had been a sweeter commiseration between them. zeke had been insufferable, & so too had erwin. they pretended to listen to each other & managed to hear one another by coincidence – they had been fascinating together, rather than human. & it had been clear to them through shared cigarettes, morning coffee, the way that zeke’s eyes fluttered shut when erwin’s fingers crept up the back of his neck to settle in his hair. 

it had been an accident that acknowledged recognition of the past. erwin had said something, passing & fleeting, about something he had ‘dreamed’ once – zeke had never been a part of the things he had remembered, & so he had never felt the need to disguise it too deeply.

zeke had answered cryptically, vaguely as he always does — he speaks without mentioning himself at all, & he speaks with fascination of his own shadow. but something in his conversation had hit the sun just so, & erwin understood that they had seen pieces of the same world.

he does not remember zeke, & so it is telling that zeke must stand for a mystery.

zeke does not want to speak to it.

they spend weeks like this, pretending to be the men they were.

it breaks only in the aftermath of a meeting they were meant to co-sponsor. zeke keeps coughing as though it were a formality, as they tidy their books & repack their bags, & erwin is anxious to be a catalyst.

erwin is sure that zeke is eager for a smoke, so zeke looks at him with weary eyes. he takes the offering, though, & they step outside. erwin hums his praise, & zeke refuses to relax.

once they’re private, erwin watches zeke take a drag. ‘ won’t you tell me what you know ? ‘ he asks, a casual thing & charming. 

zeke does not flinch, but he does shutter into something else.

erwin understands the point. he thinks he might be possessed right now too. ‘ shall i tell you what i know ? i think that we have spoken little – & that you are familiar enough with the things that i dreamed, that you had seen them too. not all of them. i was never familiar with your name – you knew more of me than just a name. i assume that we were shared prominence, & that you have mattered. i think it is likely that you were  from the outside, beyond the recorded history. so tell me – as if it were just we two, ‘ he says.

zeke closes his eyes, imagines too much or too little. he recites something half from muscle memory, half something true : don’t make me choose between my duty and you. [ sent by @warche1f ]

erwin retracts. he steals the cigarette, takes a drag. even if there is grey area between the versions of themselves that were & the ones that are – it doesn’t feel right infiltrate the space where it is grey, where two identities are blurred. 

of course, it makes him curious – enough so that something cruel is incinerated again at the pit of his stomach. 

‘ no choice to be made, ‘ he finally says & speaks to common ground. ‘ we were both duty bound, then. ‘ 

sweetness, just like that.

erwin casts his gaze sideways. 

‘ i would say you were not the man you were before – but i worry that i could be the same man. i share same vices, and i’m not sure about the virtues. but that said - even if we are not positioned kindly, i have the instinct that we might have been positioned equally. is that true? there is no betrayal to say. we are here. ‘ he hums & passes the cigarette back. ‘ & we might be terrible. ‘

[pontevoix]

headcanon | erwin smith + finances

erwin in canon (& modern) is lower-/mid- middle class. so far, there is never a world in which a teacher has the idea salary -- & he comes from a single parent household. of course, he also dressed like he was going to sunday school daily, so he was never lacking for resources. he didn't have to think much about finances.

when his father was executed, however, that would change. effectively orphaned, erwin would have some inheritance but no steady income. the inheritance would go to his housing & welfare.

what his housing looked like at that point is subject to personal headcanon, of course. for my own interpretation, erwin was briefly housed by a maternal aunt who had her own batch of children & the expenses to go with it. the arrangement was not personal.

eventually, he would join training regiment. within paradis, the military as a resource for lower income families & orphans in need of job opportunity, education, & shelter.

later, upon completing training, he would join the survey corps. this would guarantee a steady income, but not a sizable one. the corps were government funded, & muh of the funds went to the lodging/feeding of its members.

of course, with survival & promotion comes a raise. eventually, it would be enough to rent rooms in the city when he had to travel.

erwin utilized a combination of savings, inheritance, and donation to establish himself. most of his spending were investments for more monetary gains for his later missions. he does not mind fraudulent activity when it comes to organizing finances with purpose. he is familiar with luxury, but he is not indulgent. he donates a fair part of his commander's salary back to the corps.

he does set a will with set beneficiaries.

** modern : similar to canon, erwin never grew up wanting - but he did not ever have his finances guaranteed. he would later run himself like a politician, & so he believes in contumacious consumption. his purchases are of good quality & they allow him to project an image of himself that is classy, charismatic, etc.

he is not immune to pride though, so sometimes he can get roped into pissing contests about material goods & the presentation that comes with them.

[pontevoix]

there are moments that they run into one another in the teachers’ work room & crowd each other ‘accidentally‘ into a corner. they retrieve their coffee – then they smile too tersely & roll their shoulders back so that they might turn themselves into giants. 

sometimes, they can see it, too – the visioned versions of themselves standing too tall. 

there was a world once,  where zeke had made himself into a god & made others into ants. there was a world, too, where erwin had climbed mountains only meant for the damned.

that world is not this one. 

here they study each other, settling into their mid-thirties without crows feet wrinkling their eyes. 

erwin had never been good at smiling naturally, even as a child – & zeke has never spoken enough of himself for erwin to be able to speak on his behalf. 

it makes the pair of them cold & reptilian. erwin drinks his coffee black. zeke stirs in a packet of sweetener, though he says that he doesn’t care for artificial things. 

they roll their shoulders again & bluster more with polite laughter & then fade into nothing. 

the two of them . . . they don’t talk to one another like people. they speak like politicians, & they want to enjoy the process more than they do. 

& then time twists into its natural turn. 

though they look at each other as though they had once been to war, they are still modern men with hair that strays from its style by the end of the day. they spend too many hours trying to wheedle teenagers into topical interests – & then pretending not to notice when the youth subsequently fell asleep in class or else balanced their phones on the cushion of their thighs beneath vandalized desks. 

so sometimes, there is commiseration at the end of the day when they leave the school parking lots with papers to-be-graded tucked into their shoulder bags. their eyes narrow at each other, & they nod at one another – saving debate for a time when they aren’t quite so dishevelled. 

they work like this for years, & each sequential semester comes like an accident. 

it comes like resignation that works like a finger trap, when they’re eventually forced to shake hands under the shared agreement to co-sponsor the debate team. erwin had previously sponsored the team with an english teacher eager for retirement – &  she has made her departure to the south, leaving zeke in her stead.

they still look at each other coldly or else too warmly.

they shake hands & never promise to trust one another.

still, shared work breeds familiarity. 

erwin comes closer to being able to list zeke’s behaviors, being able to predict the inconsequential ways in which zeke will try to fill conversational spaces without saying anything of himself. he starts to anticipate the way the ways the way that zeke will reuse teabags, will slip into german just to show off, will leave his glasses smudged & scandalous until the last given moment.

none of this knowledge is particularly personal.

they become personal anyway. 

first, it happens through a shared cigarette after hours. then, it escalates to a shared meal to discuss shared duties.

then it escalates more, because they refuse to talk to one another like people. they refuse to be friends in full, & they refuse to be enemies. 

the only remaining option is that they remain close.

so they do, & they look for evidence against one another all the while. 

erwin remembers pacing once in zeke’s apartment with his hands clasped behind his back, pursuing for signals of life. there had been no family photos on open display – though zeke had mentioned his mother a few times before.

so erwin had been intrusive. as though the question, he asked ‘ are you close with your family, at all? ‘

then they carried on & kept becoming personal. 

proximity interrupts itself & crosses no man’s land until the pair of them grow familiar with the weight of the other’s legs in their lap, as they work together in the evening & pretend to be relaxed. 

without invitation & without permission, zeke has since learned much of erwin – he knows that erwin hums when zeke squeezes his calf in his lap, knows that erwin smiles when he’s about to disagree, knows that erwin checks his email when watching television & resents it. 

zeke has learned that erwin is prone to headaches sometimes, & that he’s prone to ignoring them. it amuses zeke enough that the sound trickles into his voice when he asks erwin now : shall i lie with you for a while?  [ sent by @warche1f : shall i lie with you for a while? ]

it’s a fair question, because they’ve laid together before. erwin’s arm had fallen across zeke’s chest like the bracket of an accusation, & it had been alien enough that they had chosen to lay together again.

for now, erwin pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers. everything feels like the brink of battle, & it makes him want to laugh. 

‘ feel free, ‘ he says with an armed invitation. he waves a hand to the space beside him & his pile of paper on the bed. he pretends that he had kicked off his shoes before ever laying flat. but his head does ache, & so he has been put on display.

he hums to dispel the ways he has been exposed and hums a joke he thinks zeke will agree with. ‘ you might make my head ache worse, ‘ he concedes. 

a joke is only well-made if its audience does not feel as though it were made at their expense. 

erwin has acquainted himself with charisma, so he cushions it all & makes for confusing warfare. ‘ still, you do make it restful. ‘ 

it could be a lie. 

but they’ve never spoken to one another like people do. they don’t quite see one another as people do. 

& it is a simple thing, because they do not see themselves as people do either.

they can shake hands in that, too, & move paperwork aside.

[pontevoix]

musing | erwin smith + silence

herein lies the problem. all things considered, erwin smith is too good at time spent in silence. he is adequate company for himself, even if he's terrible.

in adolescence, his peers would regard him more as a nuisance than they ever did a threat. sometimes, there would be opportunity for mockery - but there's not a lot of use for jokes & ridicule that fall flat. erwin smith made a habit of making jokes fall flat. consequently, he made himself an unrewarding victim to schoolyard degradation, & so he was often understood as a local oddity . . . & a teacher's pet. his strength seemed to land solely in his curiosity. he would ask questions when silence cast a damning spell, & then & then & then.

curiosity kills the cat nine times.

erwin smith had yet to die one time, & he attributes his survival to some deal with the devil.

at some point, his curiosity must have disgfigured into something malignant - something with teeth omnivorous enough that it didn't matter what moral quandaries he had to cast away.

smith chews right through himself.

curiosity is loud enough to persist, chattering with the volume of a party at a noisy dinner table.

he chews through himself more.

by the time he has hit his twenties, he is a veteran. he has lived enough, survived enough as a soldier that that there are an eccentric few who genuinely claim to love him - even when they don't like him all of the time.

zacharias is the closest to him, & he thinks that he's never met someone more uptight in his life than smith. they drink together & talk over bonfires.

zacharias thinks that he might not have ever met someone more contagious in conversation than smith, either. smith could get him to agree to almost everything. smith could get most people to agree to almost everything. it wasn't even a matter of persuasion.

still, smith ventures into his late twenties & his thirties. zacharias looks at him & thinks that parts of him must be calcifying.

pieces of him are petrified that used to be alive.

smith alienates himself in work.

he is surrounded by people still. there are always people who intrude, who try to poke for bruises - they find sore spots sometimes & prove that he is alive.

but he is calcified, & he knows that he must have made a devil deal at cross roads.

otherwise, he would have died already. in battle, or by association. otherwise, he wouldn't be willing to push as far as he does.

if he hadn't made a devil deal, surely he would be a little more broken.

sometimes, his survival feels like a sin. sometimes, it feels like a lottery ticket win.

the price pays means resolution to victory (as a strategist, as a leader, as whatever else).

it means self-detestation, too, because the cost is high.

but even if he never makes peace with circumstances that he hates, he can converse with it & ask it another question.

curiosity killed the cat.

until then, erwin smith can spend too much time with himself. he refuses to seek distractions. he makes eye contact with everything that he regrets.

few know of his personal habits, possessions, or memories. those who do paid a steep toll.

[pontevoix]

( recovered from drafts) : drabble

personhood is too small at the shoulders, too mundane in its posture — its tag sticks out the back & guarantees that it will always be an itchy thing for all the ways that it can be done wrong. most of the time, it had been an odd fit because he never cared that he was doing it wrong.

& it had been a nuisance when he was young, & everyone seemed to hold opinions about the ways that personhood should be done right. he learned someone else's prayers, & he didn’t care to hold their weight. so erwin came to understand belief didn't mean community.

he existed in that space anyway —-he had been a child watching children learn morality & the types of people they should aspire to be.

& personhood's poor fit in youth had been a nuisance because he had been a nuisance, too, full of all the wrong questions that sounded too much like he was trying to make doubt contagious --

curiosity is like that, sometimes. childishly genuine & still barbed around the edges.there are some answers that don't need rationality behind them as their largest backer. meaning is a self-concocted thing, after all, & it doesn’t really matter that much if there is such thing as truth.

he didn’t understand that as a child — though it's hard to remember himself as a child, even if he had childish pursuits: stealing crosswords & comics from his father's newspapers -- giving up after finding the puzzle to be too easy or too hard & doodling instead, from pictures that he found in an dated set of world books.

his father always had enjoyed telling him -- back then, that there were days when door-to- doors salesmen who would sell encyclopedias annually, because that was the closest way of a person could try to know everything.

a part of erwin wanted to know everything, probably. even if it made him lonely. omniscience & personhood are incompatible.

but it’s fate's choice ( & his choice ) like a noose around his neck : curiosity is his fatal flaw in one life, in two lives.

& besides that —- part of him has never known how to let his head bow, how to bend at the knee —- his laugh an ugly thing that comes when his victory is a tragedy, & his smile has been meant for horror.

it is decided, then, that personhood is an odd fit on him, scratching at the back of his neck.

but even if personhood is an odd fit, it always comes with shoes that need filling.

need is a harder thing to critique than want. if the shoes are filled, then what else matters ?

in the first life, he had been curious & disliked as a child. it had ruined him & made demands of him. but he still understood personhood in its normalcy & then became a soldier & thought much of the same.

if he had been any other person, his life would look mundane -- it would look like family. that would be the demand. but he stated that he would not leave a widow, & that made personhood itch against his skin just a little less.

it was a faulty effort. it changed nothing. he left levi behind anyway.

in this life, he had been curious & disliked as a child. it had ruined him, but not enough. there’s bryn anyway, & they are not an impossible task, & it doesn’t make erwin any better suited to the task.

even before the memories, erwin had been certain he wasn't suited to be a father because he wasn't suited to be a person.

a child who cannot see himself as a child is still a child. a man who wants for omniscience & hangs on curiosity’s rope is still a man.

there is no reason why he can’t try to answer a child’s gentle questions —- bryn is a demand that tailors personhood into things to which he is not suited. an odd fit is not the end.

sitting beside him, levi has clammy skin & his skin is sensitive to the sun.

sunscreen & sweat invites sand to stick to their legs. it’s an inconvenience that brings them down from legacy & still leaves parts of them unchanged.

they have always been men.

erwin will always want to know everything, & even if it is incompatible with personhood —- levi ( @ch0kinghalos ) holds onto a piece of erwin anyway, preserves humanity where it should be dead.

give up your dream & die had once been the kindest thing he could say to keep a heart still alive.

there are some dreams that are impossible for a reason.

he left levi behind once, is glad that levi lived. he is glad that levi lives now —- he argues a useless argument ( ‘ just because you're not present at times doesn't mean you aren't suited to be a father ‘ ) just so he can point at the piece of erwin that belongs to him.

still, levi casts the easy summary: all you cared about was the war —- that was the steady pulse of life in you, even if you never lived long enough to see it bare its teeth.

erwin considers it.

in the first life, as a commander, he had knocked on the doors of children, pretending to be an encyclopedia sales man. he told them that there was more to know about the world.

they believed him, because he was not lying.

in his speeches at least, he had never told as much of a lie as he could have. he never turned into a used cars' sales man, trying to make gold of broken parts & inevitable decline. there was more to know about the world, & the majority would die alongside curiosity.

it's a funny thing - to remember & to recall. because he never thought of himself as ever been a child, & still he had made the same decision that children did & knew that maybe he would die. he had been with peers before he had climbed the hierarchy & made a lonely child into a lonely adult.

because he was unsuited to fatherhood, he was well-suited to turning children into war. into making encyclopedias a tempting thing to have & shaping legacies that guaranteed cages could only exist so long as they could be broken.

children needed hope, so he sold it & made sure it was sour enough that it could not be forgotten in its context.

levi had needed hope, so he had sold that too -- because hope only is possible if there is an something to be defeated. something ugly that leaves something sweeter on the other side.

& it had been gamble piled on gamble piled on gamble. fortune on his tongue & silver blades lining his language -- he made himself unrecognizable that way, & he had been great because of it.

really, he had been great. levi had been great even if they had not been heroes.

even if erwin sold hope, a falsehood can’t live forever. so hope frayed until they kissed on a rooftop once before — it tasted like vinegar because wine does not always age well, because children are not meant to find omniscience by reading encyclopedias, because erwin wore personhood poorly & acted as the catalyst for an inevitable war.

even now, he finds it hard to imagine apologizing for the war. as great as erwin had been, the war would have happened without him — his legacy is a coincidence that levi had preserved because levi has always been sentimental like that.

but he had not been suited to personhood, to fatherhood, because he had always been the type of man who could send children to slaughter.

who else could do it, & who else was primed to die?

levi kisses him again now anyway, & chooses an end to a moment’s uncertainty.

who else could do it? who else could decide that personhood doesn’t always have to be a good fit —-

they are still men, regardless.

they are compelled by sea waves & by choices they never chanced to make the first time.

this is the second time.