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Erwin doesn’t think it is love. He’s already been in love and he knows what it feels like: the heart flying in the space between lungs, the breath short like after a long race, the mind stopping at night and chasing golden dreams that will become impossible again in the daylight. He know what being in love is like, and it has nothing to do with this. Nothing to do with the hardness of Levi’s fingers gripping his wrist after an expedition ended and they find themselves alive in spite of everything, standing in front of each other in the darkness of a room; nothing to do with lips crashing on him, devouring his face, his jaw, his mouth, seeking the beat of the jugular, running after a warmth that doesn’t belong to blood and death. Levi doesn’t speak, during these moments, and Erwin doesn’t ask him to; when your head is full of screams, silence can be a welcome gift. Erwin doesn’t think it is love, but it is something; and, he tells himself sometimes, always something more than what he deserves.
***
Their first time was strange and angry and confused, like the start of their story, like Levi usually is; the first time was Levi throwing himself on Erwin’s mouth as he hoped to choke the breath in his throat, Erwin holding Levi tight enough to break him, knowing he wouldn’t. The first time was the one when they realized the ground had disappeared beneath their feet and the only way to slow the fall was holding on to each other, the time when Erwin thought he saw Levi’s wings quiver in the shadow and he wondered how it would have been like to be able to fly so high, without chains made of corpses to keep you on the ground. (The first time was the one they could have forgotten, hadn’t there been a second and a third and a hundredth- the time when Erwin held out his hand and Levi took it and they both stopped asking if there was something right in all of this).
***
From the moment they met, Levi was an enigma. Erwin watched him soar above the floor in the the Underground’s poisonous air, grace and lightness and bones as sharp as blades, and decided he wanted him, like he had long resigned himself to want a life of blood and question, chasing after a truth that could exist only in his head. The things I could do, if I had him by my side, he thought. The things I could reach, if I had that strength.
He won him, but not the way he had imagined: he brought him on his side with lies made of air, with a sword against his throat, with the corpses of two children who had counted on that strength before he did. Erwin thinks back on that day, sometimes, and wonders: would it end another way, if Isabel and Farland didn’t die then? Would he and Levi ever forged the first ring of the chain that binds them, if not for the blood of that children?
(It’s a stupid question, he knows it. Everything he ever gained in his life came through someone else’s death. Why should Levi be the exception?)
***
They could die any moment: this is the one, bitter certainty that stained their every meeting from the first, and maybe that’s why Erwin didn’t stop him when Levi clung to him like he was afraid to see him disappear the next second, when the whole world melted, for the space of an instant, in the soap’s scent and the unexpected sweetness of a mouth used to insults and rebukes. And Erwin remembers thinking (before the first time, when there had been nothing between them but lingering gazes and orders followed by silent agreements): I cannot take even this from him. I already got his strength, his loyalty, everything that’s left of his life. I cannot have this. I have nothing to give him in return.
But he’s a selfish man, always has been- so he takes what Levi offers, every time like it was the first because they could die any moment and he needs someone to stay, someone to understand, someone to know him: someone who looks at him and doesn’t see ghosts moaning under his feet and rivers of blood rusting in the feathers of his wings.
He never knew what Levi saw in him. Whatever it is, it had to be big enough, strong enough, to hold more weight than the rest- more than crazy planes, more than dead bodies forming a mountain higher than three circles of walls, more than the whispers that haunt them both and stick on their back, growling demons, monsters, madmen, murderers.
“If there’s someone who can defeat the Titans, it’s you” Levi told him once and Erwin felt something cold stab him, halfway between rage and shame, for what did he ever do to deserve such a total, unshakeable loyalty?
He swallows back the words burning on the tip of his tongue; he locks in a dark corner of his mind everything he should say and never will. And oh, there are so many things he could say.
“I don’t think I am so irreplaceable” it’s what he says, like it didn’t matter, as if every part of him wasn’t writhing thinking of everything Levi gave him, everything Erwin took without having the right to.
“You are” Levi replies in a matter-of-fact voice. Erwin swamps blood and bile behind a mask of marble, and thinks: Don’t hope I can save you all. I don’t think I can even save myself.
I’m not even half of the man you believe.
***
Sometimes, when the gaze in Levi’s eyes becomes too much to bear, he wants to tell him the truth. Take him by the shoulders, looking him in the eye, drop every mask and reveal to him that it’s not humanity he’s fighting for, that victory and peace are not the dreams moving his steps, that since he joined the Survey Corps he lied and lied and lied: so well that Levi believed him, so well that sometimes Erwin believed it too.
(Levi wouldn’t understand. Even if Erwin ever decided to explain, Levi wouldn’t understand- and how could he, when sometimes even Erwin doesn’t understand himself? Understand how you can live your life clinging to a vision, to a dream, to the only embrace that ever made you feel safe and loved; understand how you can give up everything for a path of blood and damned choices; and if he’s not capable of understanding, or forgiving, himself, how can he expect Levi to do it?)
Erwin watched Levi break into pieces more times than he can count. He watched him swallow Isabel and Farlan’s name among tears every night, write the shards and the laments of every dead soldier in his memory, spend silent hours trying to run faster than his squad’s ghosts- and failing.
None of this was enough to shatter him. Every time Erwin feared he’d reach the breaking point, Levi stood up again: the world bit his flesh away from him but could never stop his heart. Year after year, death after death, Levi fought to keep his humanity with teeth and nails- it’s a kind of courage Erwin lost long ago, if he ever had it, and he knows he didn’t do anything to deserve such a heart in his hands.
***
He’s standing in front of the window in his room, his hands clasped behind his back, the world a wall of dark beyond the glass. If this was a normal night, Erwin’s mind would be a restless succession of planes, theories, dreams- but tonight all he can see are the broken remains of the soldiers butchered at Castle Utgard and when he finally opens his mouth to speak, he hears himself saying “I believe Mike is dead.”
The instant the words have left his lips, he wishes he could take them back, deny them, throw them away. I believe Mike is dead. Mike, who was the closest thing to a brother Erwin ever had, one of the few to have known him when there wasn’t any death to turn his gaze in stone, who now looks at him from under his feet, on the top of a tower of slaughtered corpses, and Erwin wants to look away and say I didn’t do this.
Behind him, Levi moves lightly, maybe to say something, but Erwin doesn’t let him too. There are days when Levi’s ability to lessen his burden is the only thing that keeps him standing. Tonight, it would be only salt on an open wound.
“If he was alive, he would have come back” he doesn’t now why he’s talking, he only knows he can’t stop. “If he was alive…”
But he’s not. Mike is dead, like Nanaba, like his men, like his father, like anyone who ever trusted and loved him- and if not even that can stop him, what will?
He doesn’t realize Levi’s presence until he puts his forehead between Erwin’s shoulder blades. Part of Erwin wants to push him away, but Levi’s hand grip his arm and keeps him there. He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t need to; all the words he could say are in the silence surrounding them.
You at least, Erwin thinks. You at least, try and die after me.
***
For Levi, it’s all so simple. If you ask me, I will do it. If you say it, I will trust you. It’s the only thing about him that Erwin can never understand, the riddle he will never solve, but maybe this is a question he doesn’t want to answer: in an hidden, dark part of his mind, one Erwin never stares into, he remembers what it was to like to trust, to believe, to lean on someone who could keep the universe in balance. He spent his life trying to wash his father’s blood on his hand, the one he loved more than anyone, the one he betrayed more than anyone, and he swore to himself he would never need someone like that, ever again.
(But he does need Levi; a need that doesn’t have anything to do with desire, that sometimes turns to ice between his heart and lungs until it chokes him, that makes him feel vulnerable and weak and selfish, oh so selfish. He needs Levi and the man Levi believes in, he needs the faith burning in his eyes like liquid silver, that faith he doesn’t deserve, that refuses to drown in lakes of shed blood. He needs Levi, and he stopped long ago to try and find a way back from this.)
***
Their last time is strange and confused and angry like the first; there’s the empty space of Erwin’s arm to remind them that they’re both made of flesh and blood, that a bite is enough to kill them, that there’s no way to be sure they’ll come out of it alive. It’s Levi’s eyes never straying far from his face like he was trying to memorize it, his hands moving on Erwin’s body with a desperate, unusual tenderness, a choked sparkle closing Erwin’s throat in a burning knot. It’s the words they said to each other in the office, Levi’s request and Erwin’s refusal, that Yes standing between them like a wall too tall to be climbed. After, they stay silent like they do every time, the beating of their hearts a murmur of unspoken words in the darkness around them.
In the end, it’s Levi the first to break the silence, his hand holding Erwin’s wrist as if he was trying to absorb the heartbeat hidden in the veins. “Are you afraid?” he asks, and they both know what he really wants to hear, just as they know the question will never find the way of words.
In the shadow, Erwin shakes his head. “No” he replies calmly. It’ll become a lie only hours later, when he will ride towards his death with a smoke signal in his hand and the rest of his broken dreams behind his back. “One way or another, tomorrow it ends.”
Levi’s lips tighten, in his eyes a flicker he’s not quick enough to hide, his fingers sinking in Erwin’s flesh with a desperate urgency that screams more then any cry or plea- and the pain bursting in Erwin’s chest at that sight is stronger than the one he felt under the Military Police’s punches, stronger than his bones crumbling under a Titan’s teeth. Not for the first time, he wishes he'd broken the chain binding them before it made them the same thing. He frees his hand from Levi’s hold and brushes his fingers in his hair. “I’m sorry” he says, and it’s all he can ever offer. I’m sorry I dragged you here with me, I’m sorry you have to risk grieving again after losing so much, I’m sorry I was never selfless enough to let you go, I’m sorry I never was the man you see. “I’m sorry, Levi.”
Levi doesn’t ask him what he means.
***
(He sees Levi, before the rock hits him; before everything collapses in pain and darkness, in the horror of soil dripping with blood, he sees Levi reaching the Beast Titan, as graceful and unstoppable as that first day in the Underground, and if he had ever learned to have faith in something, now he would pray for him.)
(You will live. It’s his last wish, his last request, his last vision; the last fragment of a dream never born. You at least will live, and you will do the right thing. You will for me.)