Chapter Text
The next time The Ral docked at his own little island, it was bare of the queen's colors. Levi acted the cool, demanding captain, but Erwin knew the stiffness in his spine, the barely-there tremor in his hands. When the business of recruiting fellow adventurers began to wind down, Erwin showed him the brook behind the cabin. Erwin mentioned something about lost years as they lay against a fallen trunk. Levi wondered aloud, eyelashes feathering collarbones, what constituted lost at all.
Final preparations would take several weeks. Nuisances like ample cargo, course corrections and crew employment contracts were doubly difficult without the support of the queen's naval advisers, but Levi wanted it done on his terms, and he wanted it done right.
Levi's affection for the children grew beyond what even Erwin had imagined. He played with them, swam with them, tussled with them, read with them. There was a desperate energy to him that Erwin knew, that he wished he didn't understand. This would be the first journey of its kind since humanity left the walls. The safest soldiers had not been at the tip of the formation's spear, but in its very middle. Erwin buried the thought as soon as it rose.
No one, Erwin thought, not even himself, commanded Levi's attention more often than the nameless girl, who still oscillated between Amys and Alexandras and Victorias. She resembled Levi more than Erwin had ever dared to acknowledge. Reserved but demanding. Severe but kind. Dark hair spilled past her waist, always a leaf or withered flower lost in its folds. Levi read to her most of all.
On a brisk morning, Levi led him to the docks. Erwin stepped onto The Ral and traced the webs of rigging as he passed.
“She does the job,” Levi said as Erwin passed every immaculate inch, “but the damn thing lists like a drunk in high winds. Less than The Zakarius or The Jaeger, but...”
“I can't think of anyone more suited to right her,” Erwin said.
Company was unnatural for Erwin, at first. He'd been alone too long. He lashed out. Levi expected it, had seen plenty of it before, and it was something like a relief that the man was, for once, predictable. Every cross word or slammed palm on wood was followed, just as expectedly, by mountains of apologies Levi neither asked for nor wanted.
It took some experimenting before they found the right rhythm. The admiral visited every five days at first, then, citing some fabricated naval responsibility, once a week. Erwin came into town himself, soon, unable to wait even another moment, unable even to stay himself from asking for just another hour, another day, another lifetime.
He'd overheated when they first tried. Buttons yet remained clasped when his too-hot hand met long-healed burns, when Levi couldn't hide a hiss. Erwin wouldn't touch him even casually afterward. It occurred to Levi, too, that the man who'd shaken with eagerness at their first wanted, deliberate encounter hadn't been intimate with anyone at all in decades.
Erwin didn't grasp why Levi wanted an evening swim until the utterly frigid waters snaked through his toes. A quiet terror flickered on his face so terrible that Levi lay on a soft wave and closed his eyes so as not to watch as he walked away.
It was a genuine fright, then, when arms surrounded him and the sea all but boiled.
Levi swore as he turned in Erwin's arms and tried his best to look furious at being taken by surprise even as desperation ignited in his chest. The act lasted until he saw his small, careful smile, the never-deepening lines in his eternal face.
Levi sank into him. Arms around broad shoulders. Legs around his waist. He embraced him in waters warmed by the monstrous heat pooling off his skin. Erwin's arms circled him, branded him like softened, molten iron. Levi lost his lips on the curve of his jaw, his tongue to the sweep of his neck.
He moved slowly, felt Erwin's hands slow, too, on the bow of his hips. He never imagined this, never allowed himself the luxury, the cruelty. The hand, born again, in his hair. The lips, still too tentative, too careful, at his own neck.
His eyes swam. The heat wrestled feeling back into his skin but made honey out of his mind and cast his eyelids in lead.
He was too late, then, to notice how he'd been suddenly hoisted much too far above the water before being thrown backward. When he surfaced, ready for war, Erwin had moved farther into the sea, nothing careful now about his smile. All honeyed thoughts froze in the renewed chill of the evening waters so Levi chased him down and landed indignant blows on his chest and pulled hard at his hair until their lips met, until he tasted salt.
But Levi's roaming, appreciative eyes may as well have been iron brands. And because Levi could read him just short of his mind, he demanded to know why Erwin turned every mirror, why he insisted on keeping his beard, and why he covered his hands and feet and as much of his own body as often as he could, why he so deeply hated his own skin.
“I'm not aging,” Erwin said. He heard Levi shut the door to the inn. He seated himself beside him on the front steps.
“Some would kill for that,” Levi said after a while, because there was no point in pretending, not anymore.
“I'm beginning to wonder if I'd kill for the opposite. Do you remember if...”
“No. Jaeger grew. So did the others. Must be the cocktail.”
Erwin's head fell into his hands, and blood rushed in his ears. The poison mocked him even now.
“Must be.”
Levi moved closer. His lined, weathered hands took Erwin's own, Erwin's too-smooth, too-youthful hands. His hair, more silver than black, caught in Erwin's beard, one as rich and deep an ocher as autumn's first fallen leaf.
“I could do it before I leave,” Levi whispered into his chest. “You don't have to wait. There's no guarantee that I'll-”
“No.”
“Don't be stupid-”
“No, Levi,” Erwin said into his hair, because he'd made a promise he intended to keep.
The Ral made frequent stops at the island. Erwin took to waiting by the docks to watch the sun rise even when the ship wasn't scheduled to land. Sometimes, the nameless girl followed him, and together, they asked every passerby their name.
The day came when every calculation was made, when every crewman was ready and every anchor and every last inch of rigging was where it should be and, knowing the girl to still be without a name, Levi repeated his offer, and repeated it again, and Erwin reaffirmed his promise, and reaffirmed it again, and again.
Erwin knelt to let the girl on his shoulders say goodbye. As Levi complained playfully that she hugged far too hard, as she whispered Goodbye, Papa, the green stone she wore dangled before Erwin's eyes. She didn't go a day without it. When the crowd dispersed, when the ship entered the horizon, and when the only sound that remained was the gentle burbling of the sea, the girl laid her cheek on Erwin's head and said that she'd decided on a name.
Every day, Erwin remained a moment longer at the docks. He whittled things for the children. He argued with the dock hands. No religion, no politics, nothing bruising. One day, they wagered whether the cloud that looked like a horse would pass above or below the one shaped like a bird. On another, they wondered what treasures the Ral would bring home. Erwin didn't have to wonder.
Occasionally, he got an odd look from a passing sailor. Occasionally, they glanced his way with sad eyes.
The sky was an aching bruise when an old woman approached him, when Erwin stood and cleared a seat for her on old crates lining the lamp-lit boardwalk.
“You missed Clara's birthday,” she tutted as waves of sweet chamomile enveloped him.
“I know,” he lamented, and warmed her parchment-thin hands in his. “I'm sorry, Kuchel.”
She followed his eyes to the weeping horizon. “Pa-”
“I know,” he said softly. “It'll only be a little longer.”
The wind played with his shirt. It swept across his back like the wayward brush of calloused hands.