Eruriren Weekend ~ Past Title: Until The Bombs Drop Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Choose Archive Warnings Relationship: Erwin Smith/Eren Jeager/Levi Word Count: 9045 Summary: It's Leningrad 1942 and Levi, perishing on the wounded streets, finally follows the path he had never wish he had taken. The army. But, along the way, a few people make it all that more bearalbe. Suddenly, war doesn't seem to matter as much. Extract: Levi had never found a reason to stay in the house, now more so than ever. It was just cold in there, anyway, he thought as he sat on the stairs- thawed with cruel ice. Inside was frozen, outside was frozen and the streets of Leningrad were bare. People were gone, dead or fighting. Starved to death or shot. A bullet only took one hit to kill, infections were spreading like wildfire and even a small cut could cause the severest of illnesses. That was if the cold didn't get to you first. Hunger or cold battled for the deaths of millions, picking off each one by one yet so rapidly that it looked like they were dropping in unison. Dying so quickly you could mistake it for bombs if not for the distant crashes. The bombs were still far, obliterating the outskirts of the city. But they were approaching. Quickly. Levi was starving but he didn't want food. He didn't have the energy. His hunger-riddled brain was muddling needs with wants until the lethargy dragged him into the state of unconsciousness. Sleeping with his eyes open. Sleeping whilst walking. Sleeping when you couldn't bear the cold any longer. Dead when you couldn't bear the hunger any longer. Levi shivered, his woollen coat doing little to protect him from the biting Leningrad winds. They were always like this in winter but with a warm home, the fire blazing, he had never found it much of a problem- that was until he caught a cold, at least. But, now, with his fingertips blue and his nose such a violent red you could mistake it for food. People thought anything was food now. Animals were food. Plants were food. Pets were food. Leather was food. Clothes were food. Everything. Was. Food. The rest of the slum had scurried off to the defenses but Levi hadn't budged. If he was going to die, he was going to do it here, not on a lonely battlefield under a foreign sky. He had never left his home, never walking further than three streets down where the furthest shop, the grocers, was. The one that was now empty, out of stock and ransacked. The store owner had passed whilst still at the till, he had been giving any spares to his family- not enough for himself. The slum was dead anyway, literally and metaphorically. The people were gone, the ones that stayed barely alive, maybe not even. His apartment block, which used to hold dozens of people, now contained just him. As did the next. Families didn't live here. Families were some of the only people who bothered to stay behind. That and cowards. And Levi certainly didn't have family. He had been searching for food, he remembered suddenly. His energy had been lost on him and he had sat down to rest. They all knew that a rest meant nothing of the sort. He saw the woman on the set of steps next to him, frozen over- her rotten corpse portraying the shards of ice like an art piece. With food on his mind and nothing available, he set for wallowing in his hunger, feeling the tearing of his stomach as it searched for food that wasn't there. That wouldn't be there. Not for another couple days, anyway, when one of the supply trucks finally made it over the icy stretch of the river and rations were given out again. Most people had saved their rations. Most people were living off what was few but there. Levi, he was living with nothing. Nothing at all. No bread stuffed in his pockets, no hidden honey jar for emergencies. Nothing. The grips of death clutched on him like a vice, the shadowy figure blocking his vision- black spots gradually filling his vision. He was dying, he realised. And, it didn't feel too bad. Except, he was a coward and cowards don't die. Cowards live for fear of death. The brave ones accept it. Levi wasn't brave. Levi was afraid. He was a strong coward, a contradiction that made too much sense in a time of confusion. Everything was contradictory now. A whole city was living off nothing, corpses walked and the fed still danced. The people were scared but they didn't give in. They lived. They lived with nothing to let them live. He wants to pity himself for being stuck in this state of starvation but he can't, the only ones who have food are the rich and even then, they hardly have anything either. Some of them still don't have anything at all. The clever ones are the ones living the best. The ones that know how to steal, how to con and how to persuade. They are the ones who live. That was not Levi. That was not brash, crude Levi whose aim before this was to at least get a job, for his country. For Stalin. It still hadn't happened. He didn't fit in right. He didn't try hard enough. He fought for what he believed in. At the moment, he couldn't think of anything that fits into that. Levi doesn't know how he manages to stand after that, how he managed to blink the black from his eyes. He pries his hands away from the ice and into the whipping wind, not an improvement- at least the ice had numbed his frail fingers. He looked down at himself, concentrating on his legs. They were barely there anymore. He looked like a skeleton, a living skeleton. He looked ill. He wasn't self-conscious, though, he fits in perfectly alongside everyone else. Stumbling on the ice, he gained his balanced and trudged along the abandoned streets. It was desolate, the wind his only accomplice as it whipped him from head to toe. It scratched at his dry skin like sandpaper and burned his eyes like fire. The wind was cruel, battling hunger in its want for death. What draws Levi eye, though, is no longer his own living corpse but the flyer fluttering around, barely remaining pinned to the crooked-stone wall. On it, in huge letters, wrote 'JOIN THE ARMY' and underneath, in letters hardly legible to his weak eyes, it continued to explain why he, just he, was needed. This was for him, he thought, some self-obsessed part of his mind taking over. He was no longer in control of himself. His mind or body. He leaned forward, squinting to read the print that would have been so clear only a year before. They told him of his fighting comrades, the wicked enemy, and the saviour that he would be if he were to enlist. He almost forgot of the death he had heard of. Forgot this was a lie. He didn't understand why the propaganda posters were still around. Everyone who wanted to go had gone. Or so Levi thought. 'Mikasa, why won't you just let me enlist! See this! They need me!' Levi wasn't the only self-obsessed person, it seemed. The boy, a combination of shaggy, brown hair and undefinable eyes, raved on to the girl who stared at him with a heavy gaze, one word exuding from her: no. They both looked starved, faces like skulls and muscles reduced to bone. But, they looked far more alive than many. They were some of the well-off. He could see it, in both of them, they were clever ones. He watched them, following the story in his mind. The boy was the basis of the operation, stealing and conning as if his life depended on it- in fact, it did- and then, the girl, she reigned him back before anything could go wrong. She was just as strong but far more subdued, she would do anything for him. That much, at least, was clear to Levi. This girl would put the boy above her, she would die for him. She was dying for him, Levi realised. Where she keeled over, he stood straight. Where her eyes were dim, his shone. She was feeding him her own food. She had just enough to live, just enough to be able to protect him. But, the rest went to him. He used to fight it, Levi imagined, and then he had begun to give in. All from a still image, Levi had gained so much information. His mind was so muddled that it was seeing the impossible. It was seeing a false reality. He didn't realise they were looking at him until he moved his eyes back down the where the poster now lying in his hands. 'You joining too?!' The boy shouted with far too much excitement. Levi resisted holding his hands over his ears to block out the noise, it hurt so much. His ears were fragile, only adjusted to the distant booms. Everything was distant now. Why did this boy sound so jovial about something as grim as the army? Levi didn't question, though, as he shrugged. He wasn't ready to speak, not yet. He wasn't even sure if his lips could move. He hadn't moved them in days and the ice had probably frozen them together. There was no need to move them, he didn't eat, he didn't speak. He just survived. Not lived. Survived. 'Look, Mikasa! I'm not the only one! I need to go, I need to help them!' The boy argued to the girl whose name must have been Mikasa. The boy was delusional, it seemed. Even Levi realised that even if the poster was persuading him, he wasn't needed. He would become canon-fodder. Useful, he guessed. But not important. This kid's sense of self-righteousness was a little too much. 'I can go with you...' He trailed off awkwardly, the eyes of indefinable colour staring straight into his, dull upon bright, a contrast that fit together so perfectly. 'Levi.'
