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Every moment of every day, they craved it. Freedom. Flight. Open sky.
Isabel pirouetted through the air like a dancer. Levi could never truly separate her from the little bird she’d held in her hands on that fateful night when she appeared on his doorstep.
But Levi knew if they were anything, they were vultures. They suspended themselves above the squalor of the Underground for a few moments. But they always returned to scavenge.
The custom is three days of leave after each expedition; to rest, and inevitably, to mourn. One day remains before training resumes. Levi cannot sleep. He cannot close his eyes without seeing the pained faces of his lost friends. A million questions surge through him, a fire in his mind, blazing above the empty cavity of his heart. He drinks the finest tea he has ever had, and finds it tasteless in their absence. There is nothing left to clean. The barrack, the baths, the kitchen, the common rooms—all immaculate. So he goes to the woods and sits among the trees that Isabel adored.
Levi lifts his face to the sky and lets the rain pelt his skin. He lets the wet, dense fabric of his cloak suck the heat from his body until he shivers. He will sit in the rain, then wash his muddy clothes, then sit in the baths.
Now what?
“What am I going to do without you,” he whispers to the trees.
Levi bristled at military life; he hates the hierarchy, the rigidity, the protocols. Yet neither he, nor Farlan, nor Isabel could deny the euphoria of flying in the sun. Or the grace of regular meals. Or being warm.
A red squirrel pokes her head out furtively from a bush, and Levi can’t help but smile, remembering Farlan and Isabel’s childlike glee around animals.
Now what?
All they wanted was freedom.
What does any of it mean without them?
Levi played a little game during training. When he saw the chiseled features of Erwin’s face, he pretended they were a literal sculpture: an alabaster statue standing at the head of the man’s tomb. If he turned him to stone in his mind, Levi thought, he could kill him off in reality. Kill off the self-consciousness welling up in him every time they made eye contact. Kill off the flickers of forbidden curiosity. The terror of Erwin’s allure. Crush it like a spider under the heel of his boot.
Night begins to fall and he walks rain-soaked back to the barrack. The image of his mother’s face flashes through his mind and he remembers.
This isn’t the first time you’ve lost everything.
This isn’t the first time someone you loved was taken from you.
This isn’t the first time you’ve had to start over, in a bitter, empty world.
The trees seem to creak with her voice.
“You’ve come so far,” she says.
*
Levi leans against the counter, sips his tea, and stares out the kitchen window. In the reflection, he sees the profile of Erwin reading at the table, and it hits him—what he can’t stand about Erwin. On the battlefield, he's a ruthless, stone-faced stoic; at the barracks, a pensive, guilt-ridden philosopher. The schism doesn't bother Levi. He's hardly met a person in his life who wasn’t at least a little two-faced.
No. It’s his face. His actual face. It’s bad enough to take orders from the most beautiful man he’s ever laid eyes on. But in all his life, Levi’s been able to bullshit his way out of anything, poker-face his way through the worst altercations. If thrashing an enemy gets the same reaction as swatting a fly, then it reduces the enemy to the status of a fly. He’s been in enough fights with sloppy, meat-headed brutes to know that, in the right context, silence can be far more intimidating.
That’s the rub. How dare you out-silence me, you gorgeous, stoic motherfucker. It’s one thing for Erwin to be a brilliant soldier. It’s another for him to challenge Levi at his own game. Where Levi is all sass and sardonicism, Erwin is all noble determination. It doesn’t matter. One thing is clear. This man must go down. One way or another. Levi will have his revenge.
In the reflection he sees Petra and Oulo walk into the kitchen. Petra rummages for glasses while Oulo unlocks a cabinet and withdraws a gleaming green bottle of wine.
"Don't spoil your tea," he says to Levi and Erwin as he turns into the long, adjoining common room. "But you're welcome to join us if you want to."
Levi simply nods, noncommittal.
He hears the clink of glasses, the clatter of dice, little ripples of laughter from the other room. It disgusts him.
“How can they celebrate at a time like this,” Levi says.
“Well,” Erwin says, “It’s not wrong to mourn…they all do, in their own way.” He sighs heavily. “One way of honoring the dead is to go on living.”
Levi scowls. The man has a point.
“Besides,” Erwin says, "most of them are toasting their comrades. And morale is important for what we do."
Oh, you talk far too casually, Levi thinks. For what we do. Please.
"You don't join them?" Levi asks.
Erwin looks surprised at the question.
“I do, sometimes,” he says. “Mostly…I prefer not to drink very much.”
Interesting, Levi thinks.
"Likewise," he says.
It's a lie, of sorts. He prefers not to drink, but it doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t. Kenny started him early, building up a tolerance to all kinds of foul substances (a relatively easy undertaking compared to dealing with Kenny himself). Levi could drink any beast from the Underground under the table, and the best source of replacement parts for their maneuvering gear had always been piss-drunk MPs gone 'a-whoring.
"Not much to drink where you come from?” Erwin asks.
"Oh, quite the opposite. But it's firewater." Levi shakes his head. "Those people will ferment anything they can get their hands on. That stuff will just about make you go blind.”
Erwin sputters a laugh and nods knowingly. “I can assure you, it’s not quite so bad up here.”
Levi laughs dryly. “Can you now?”
Erwin smiles. It is beautiful. He hates it.
Erwin opens the locked cabinet and draws out a cut crystal bottle and two small glasses. “Pixis usually sends us a consolation gift after each expedition.”
"Tch. What a bastard. Is that his way of saying you should have stayed behind the walls?”
“Maybe. But at very least, he always sends the good stuff,” Erwin says, decanting two small glasses of whiskey. He holds one up to the lantern above them and admires the color.
“If I go blind from that, it’s gonna be your fault.”
Erwin rolls his eyes and gives Levi a wry grin. Levi would be charmed, then disgusted, except he’s too distracted by the sudden feeling of pride at coaxing Erwin out of his previously glum demeanor.
“I can’t risk that,” Erwin says. “Besides, if this is what we get when we fail, what are they going to give us when we start gaining territory, now that we have you?”
Levi feels his cheeks flush. Now he really does need a drink. And to put this man in his place.
Erwin hands Levi a glass. Levi raises it to meet Erwin’s.
“To finding out.”
Levi takes a sip and raises a bemused eyebrow. The complexity of a fine tea, with a delayed fire of alcohol. He didn’t realize anything with alcohol in it could taste this good.
Suddenly, a spectacled head pokes out from the door to the common room. Hange implores that the two join the brewing chaos.
*
“You’ve got to try this,” Petra says, handing them another bottle. “It’s from Jinae.”
Now the jackets have come off, uniform straps have loosened, and clusters of soldiers are draped across the furniture while the fireplace blazes. More bottles and glasses have appeared, circulating their way through the enormous room.
"Tch," Levi spits. "Don't be so stingy."
Erwin looks alarmed. "Oh, no, I was pouring this glass for myself."
"That's what I mean," Levi says. "For fuck's sake, be a bit more generous with yourself." Levi grabs the bottle and tips more of the unusual bourbon into the glass.
"Here." He shoves the glass at Erwin. "Come on," he says with a scowl. Then, more softly, "it's not like you didn't lose any friends this expedition yourself."
Erwin lowers his eyes and takes the glass from Levi.
*
Now all their voices meld together in an impassioned caterwaul. Hange and Moblit's fingers are on fire as they pluck their guitar and mandolin, sound filling the night, all jangly-wangly. Levi doesn't know most of the words to the folk songs, but no one seems to notice, and he'll be damned if he doesn't at least pretend. Erwin wraps a thick arm around his shoulders, the other around Nanaba's, and the whole group sways as they launch into another chorus of "Beyond the Silver Mountains" (an old Survey Corps favorite).
Good, Levi thinks. All according to plan. Erwin is beginning to slur his words, and it's not clear whether he clasped onto two shorter comrades out of solidarity, or to maintain his balance. Perhaps both.
It’s not too bad, really, Erwin’s arm draped around him.
No, Levi reminds himself. Stick to the plan. This is no time to relax. No time to relax and relish the heat from Erwin’s body, the weight of his arm, his singing voice—
Stick to the plan, Levi.
Mike reappears with another clear glass bottle and refills any glass that looks empty. Levi laughs wistfully, and Erwin is confused.
“You remember the one time Isabel tried whiskey?” Mike asks Levi.
“Oh yes,” he says, still laughing, fighting back tears.
The others look curiously at Mike.
“She thought it was so gross, she spat it right back into my face.”
Laughter erupts in the room, followed by some heavy sighs.
“You know what this means,” Levi says, taking a fresh glass for himself and handing one to Erwin.
“To Isabel!” Mike bellows, as the soldiers raise their glasses. “And all the whiskey she couldn’t drink.”
“And Farlan,” Levi adds, “and all the whiskey he could.”
More laughter, more sighs. Petra and Nanaba wipe their eyes with their sleeves. Erwin has since released Nan from his friendly embrace, but still has one arm around Levi, and this is how Levi knows: it’s working.
Drink up, motherfucker. You have to toast to Isabel and Farlan. You have to. He checks his mental tally of Erwin’s glasses downed and grins. Just a matter of time.
Moblit plucks out the opening chords to “Free Like the Birds,” and oh, here we go again. The singing. The swaying. More toasts.
“I see what you mean about going on living,” Levi says to Erwin.
Erwin nods, claps Levi on the back, and nearly loses his balance.
Finally, the fire dies down. The soldiers make their retreat for the night. A graveyard of empty bottles lies strewn about the room. It irks Levi, but he has other matters to attend to.
*
Levi disappears into the barrack. He does not sleep. He waits.
When the moon has drawn its arc halfway across the sky, Levi knows it's time. He draws the razor carefully against the whetstone and admires the flicker of light on its edge.
The wind through the trees muffles his footsteps in the empty stone hallway. He grips the door handle tentatively, and finding it unlocked, eases it open, his other palm sweating on the handle of the razor concealed in his pocket.
Erwin lies in a drunken mound on his bed, still in his uniform, a faint flush visible on his cheeks in the cold moonlight. Levi approaches, light as a cat.
Even in his alcohol-induced stupor, Erwin’s face has an aura of authority and nobility. No serenity, simply quiet. The light from the window draws faint silver lines along the angles of his cheekbones and his jaw. And Levi hates it. All of it. The cold, proud, selfish man lying before him, and his own burgeoning admiration for that man. Nothing so beautiful can last, he sighs to himself, silently flicking open the razor. He feels his pulse in his hand, his throat tightening. He prays for the man not to move, not to resist.
In three short strokes, it is over.
Levi smiles cruelly at his work, and flees.
*
Erwin lifts his body painfully from the bed. His hangover pounds his skull, the morning light amplified to blinding. He struggles to the washbasin. When his gaze meets the looking glass, he freezes.
His left eyebrow has been shaved off.