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Levi lives a relatively long life. He is in good health, as good as can be, and fights no more battles. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, he has two fingers, one eye and no working legs left. Once humanity’s strongest soldier, now has to manually exercise his unmoving legs so they don’t have to be chopped off.
When he feels melancholic, he thinks to himself what even the point of walking and having a battle ready body would be. These people don’t even fight their own wars anymore. They send mechanical birds controlled from afar as they lounge in comfortable chairs, filling up on red meat and drinking aged wine. He got to witness the riches this world could provide. All the luxuries people of Paradis wasted away without knowing.
In closed gatherings they drink dark spirits smoked with cherry wood and call it whiskey. Levi hates the taste of it but still drinks it. He thinks Erwin would have liked it. In another life he would be content with a boring existence, Levi thinks. Erwin sipping the whiskey leisurely and filling out paperwork in his dim lit office while Levi nurses a cup of black tea and watches him across a mahogany desk.
Across the years, from whatever is left of Marley and Eldia and Paradis, he receives multiple offers for an advisory position in the military. He rejects them all. No nation trusts one another and the people of Paradis don’t even trust each other. Besides, he was never meant for the underhanded tactics they use in wars nowadays. The diplomacy and backstabbing. He has had enough of not knowing who the enemy is to last him multiple lifetimes. Hanji and Erwin were both smarter than him, they probably wouldn’t like the position either but they could both succeed in it, in a way Levi is not capable of.
Mikasa writes sometimes. They share loneliness and bitter solitude like the old friends they never once were. She doesn’t see the rest of her friends half as much as they see each other. She lives in a cottage overlooking the sea. A few years down the line she picked up a pen and paper, wrote a wildly successful memoir on the war where she somehow never mentioned Eren once. She wrote in a letter to Levi that she didn’t want to taint those memories, they would never see him as I did, she said, he saved me from titans and men alike when we were only nine, how could they understand the love he held in his heart till the end.
Armin and Annie both separately send an invitation to their wedding, friends and family only, the invitation said, Levi doesn’t see himself as either so he doesn’t go. He sends a congratulatory letter and a bottle of wine. He jokes on drinking responsibly but thinks it falls short. They send him a photograph from the day with well wishes signed on the back of the paper. It has many signatures, each with a distinct handwriting, so he knows they all individually signed it. Jean, Connie, Armin, Annie, Mikasa, all of them, even Reiner. Levi never meant to stay away from them for so long, he just never knew when to go back.
One winter, years after the first grays show up in his hair, as he rolls his chair through the open bazaar with more fruit and vegetable and spiced wine stands than he count, he sees a young woman crouched down, consoling a small child. She looks so much like Petra that it steals the breath out of his lungs. She gets up, ruffles the kid’s hair and notices Levi staring. Even though Levi knows he makes a gruesome sight with the scars across his face, she doesn’t flinch, just waves at him with a small smile that reaches her ears once he waves back. She sends the kid over with a bright red apple before they go about their way.
In his free time, which he has plenty of, he tends to a small garden behind his one bedroom house and reads books from the library a couple streets down. He reads about animals and plants he has no interest in that didn’t exist back home and soaks up the new information like he will have to dutifully relay it to Hanji later on. He pays attention to the details, to the ‘how’ and the ‘why’. She would be better at this than he is, more interested too but Levi tries his best anyway.
He goes to the park once a week and plays cards with the old men and women there. It feels nostalgic in a way nothing and everything does nowadays but he will never get to do this with Mike and Erwin again and someone has to keep their memories alive. After asking about the checkered board on a small table, they teach him how to play chess. It’s new and the adjustment period takes longer than he would like but he approaches the game with the same determination he had for everything in his youth. He makes small talk and goes on strolls with the regulars there. They are older than he is but more mobile. They make do.
Gradually and then all at once, he notices the wrinkles on his face, taunting him from his reflection in the mirror. He looks older than any of his friends ever did. That’s also when he notices his breathlessness even at rest and the trembling of his hands. After all these years, he is still attuned to the limitations of his body. He knows he won’t get much older than this. Maybe it’s selfish, maybe it’s selfless but he wants someone to know. He doesn’t want people to send letters and wedding invitations and wonder why he’s not replying anymore.
He sends a letter to Mikasa and she gets on the next ship leaving Paradis. She understands, probably more than anybody else, the compulsion to not have your dead body be found by strangers. She buried Eren all those years ago.
When the day comes and Levi draws his last breath, she’s there to close his eyes one last time.
When Levi next opens them, he finds himself standing on a cobblestone street with small coffee tables lining the walkway. He touches his unblemished face with all his fingers and looks at his legs with both eyes. He takes a couple of dazed steps and tugs on the cravat wrapped around his neck. The black suit jacket across his shoulders still smells like Erwin.
He walks past the old friends sitting around the tables, talking and laughing more than he has ever seen them do before they died. Despite never having been there before, he walks with the surety of someone who has taken these steps a thousand times. He comes to a stop in front of a table with three chairs, one empty and the other two occupied by the people dearest to his heart, people he never thought he’d see again holding a well-loved set of playing cards. Hanji scolds him for taking his sweet time and Erwin pulls the chair for him.
They shuffle the cards and start a game anew.