hi son
@earthwept || this isn’t what u wanted but when do we ever get what we want
at first he thinks he’s dreaming.
most of his dreams are chaotic, desolate things, a scramble of memories and fears and the lashing of storms. most of his dreams are rain and blood and the scream of a snapped line, of a body torn in half, of people he couldn’t save, of smashed porcelain and streets full of breathing corpses underneath the earth, of knives in his hands and the prickle on his neck of someone watching and death is only a heartbeat away and her head rolls in the wet grass and he’s falling--
but sometimes. sometimes he dreams of her, her gentle hands, her tired smiles. sometimes he is a child and she washes his face, runs her hands through his hair, kisses his forehead and promises him safety and light. sometimes he is an adult, tired and worn and bloodstained, and they sit together in silence; she doesn’t ask what has become of him, and he doesn’t ask for her forgiveness for the blood on his hands. those nights are the saddest, and the most desperate, and the most peaceful.
so he thinks he’s dreaming, when he sees her sitting beneath the tree, hands held out towards him. she is thin but not death-pale, and the lines around her eyes might come from laughter and not exhaustion. he has her narrow grey eyes, but there is a warmth in hers, a gentleness that his could never manage. the sun is warm on his skin, bathing both of them in a gentle glow. the air is clean. somewhere beyond the two of them there is birdsong.
he looks down at his hands, which are empty and unblemished. he’s wearing his uniform, cloak just a little too heavy to move in the breeze. the old uniform, the familiar one, not the new, black version that always felt too close to his skin. his blades are gone, though, which is strange, because he’s sure that he was just holding--
he was just--
he stops, looking up at his mother, something breaking through the drifting, peaceful haze of the field they’re in. there had been shouting, fighting, the sounds of battle -- someone had been screaming his name --
his hand drifts to his side and comes away clean, but that’s wrong, because he remembers it drenched in blood, remembers a terrible yawning pain where his body should have been. he remembers falling, being dragged across the ground -- remembers hands holding his head, people clustered around, levi. levi, stay.
levi.
levi--
it’s funny. it’s so close, and yet it already feels like a dream, or some distant memory. it had been in battle. at least there’s that. it was overdue, anyway. he’d gotten lucky too many damn times, and the past few years had always been borrowed time. his whole life had been borrowed time. again and again he’d lived, digging his nails in while everyone else was torn apart. it had gone wrong in the end, anyway. that bastard erwin--
he takes a step forward, and the grass is springy underneath his boots. nothing hurts. the tension winding in his nerves is gone, the dragging at his bones, the storm in his head that never let him sleep. the instinct is still there, telling him that this is too easy, that he should be afraid, that a person like him does not end up in a place like this, warm and gentle and painless. the instinct is there, but he can ignore it. what does he know? when did he ever know a damn thing?
if this is what he gets after a lifetime of endless battle, he’ll take it. he has fought for so long. he has walked for so long through the dark tunnel, through dirt and through rain and through blood, seeking light. his mother sits under a tree and smiles at him.
he walks towards her, and she does not disappear, and he does not wake up. levi, thank you, erwin had said, and he had looked at levi with peace in his eyes. nobody had ever been so happy to be told to give up. to let go. something settles in levi, now: he’d made the right choice after all, on that rooftop.
he kneels in front of his mother and takes her hands, soft and warm and smaller than his own, now -- last time they had grasped hands, his had been so small. “hello, mama,” he says.
