levi is tired, levi is tired, levi is tired.
years ago - six years ago, an eternity - he had lost everything, and he had lashed out at the world with a rage that would have torn the earth to ribbons if he’d had the power. they’d whispered about him afterwards in awed voices, did you see -- five titans on his own -- but all he remembered was the blinding rage and grief, the blood and rain on his face, the slick grip of his blades as the titans fell, the awful filthy weight of farlan’s broken body in his arms --
years ago, he had lost everything, and he screamed his rage to the torrential skies. today he sits in erwin’s office with a bound ankle, his insides hollow.
oh, the anger is there. he can sense it, hidden away inside him: the desire to rage, to rent the world apart, to seek out the female titan, to tear down the fucking walls to find her and kill her for what she did to his squad. but he won’t. it’s familiar now, the way he tucked it all away, all the shock-hurt-grief, the way he shunted it aside so he could do his duty, retrieve eren, protect the return expedition, report to erwin. he feels the rage, and the grief, but over it all is exhaustion, a weary sense that this is his life, of course, of course he was going to lose them, it was only a matter of time --
his whole squad, all at once. should it frighten him, the hardness in him that holds the hurt at bay? he isn’t sure he would know how to let it go anymore, even if he could. should it frighten him, the way six years of fighting and loss have left him with only this, this dull pragmatism, this hard, empty exterior? perhaps, but he has little choice; he is who he is, and he moves forward. it’s all he can do.
he stares at erwin flatly, sitting across from him in his office, jacket and cravat discarded. erwin’s in a mood. levi supposes it’s his own form of grief, this self-condemnation, but levi isn’t fond of it; it only makes him feel more tired, more hard. erwin’s reminder that he, levi, will die someday, another victim of erwin’s orders -- that doesn’t faze levi. his own death holds little weight over him. he accepted long ago that he would carry out his duty to humanity until his own end or the end of the titans, and he doesn’t really believe he’ll be lucky enough to see the latter, if it ever comes. the path to that door will be paved in blood, and levi is well aware of his own mortality; he can only flirt with death for so long before it claims him. if it’s on erwin’s orders, so what? he would hardly die for anyone else.
so he just snorts his dismissal of that remark. as for going beyond what’s human -- well, maybe they have a different definition of what qualifies as human. levi was raised in the dregs of what people termed human, grew up learning just what depravity humanity can sink to. if humanity is a virtue, then the people levi saw gave it up for no other reason than to serve the addiction to their own vices. erwin is different; erwin is selfless in his ruthlessness. levi knows the difference. if he abandons his humanity, he abandons it for humanity, and is a monster a monster when they fight only to protect?
he crosses his arms, leaning back to watch erwin. “if i didn’t trust you, i wouldn’t be here,” he says tiredly, an edge to his voice. “you think i didn’t know what you were capable of the day i met you? i know you’re damn ruthless. that’s why i follow you. you know that. this doesn’t change anything.”
and besides. besides. there’s something wrong with erwin’s arguments here, and it prickles at levi’s skin, a leftover protectiveness rising to the surface. he doesn’t like the way erwin claims their deaths, as though they belong to him, as though they’re his doing alone. it was levi’s squad, wasn’t it? not just a set of erwin’s pawns, sacrificed on a chessboard. levi’s people, the most capable in the whole damn corps, who knew every day what they risked. and levi’s responsibility just as much as erwin’s.
“and,” he adds, leaning forward. “they didn’t die because you told them to. you think they were blindly following orders? you think you’re the only one in charge of their fate? you know better than that, erwin. they chose to follow you. they knew what they were doing every damn second.” he looks away, down at some unseen point in the distance. he feels unclean, as if petra’s blood is his own, and auruo’s and gunther’s and eld’s, too, splashed out upon the forest floor. “besides.” there’s a roughness lurking in his voice, a slight wavering. “i chose, too. i agreed to keep our objective from them. and i agreed to refill my gas instead of joining them.”
he doesn’t say it, but the implication is there, in the way his fingers tremble ever so slightly where they fist on his knees. they were my responsibility, and my fault as much as yours, erwin. had erwin failed them? no, erwin had done his job, looking out for the whole, protecting their future. but levi -- they were his, and their blood will be on his hands. add it to his collection, add it to the tab he’ll pay off when he’s finally ripped apart.
