The Boy With No Last Name
It had been years since Levi had heard his full name. Decades, even. As he heard him kill the pig Reeves, Levi's mask remained. It didn't crack. He didn't speak as he ordered his group to move. The plan's foiled then, he thought sourly. Even still, he felt the emotions locked inside him begin to seep, and they overwhelmed him before he got a chance to crush them beneath his feet. He heard those words again. "That runt is my pride." Levi's fingers turned white from how hard he crushed them into his palm. He felt his composure slowly melting away as he unburied the scarred memories of a boy named Levi Ackerman.
Levi had been born out of bastardy in the year 820. As a newborn, Levi and his mother were placed in a relatively unknown and sparsely populated district to protect them from his father's enemies. There were many of them. As a very young child, Levi had witnessed his father murder people with his own two eyes when the man came to visit. The blood spraying across his forehead was one of his oldest memoires. Why then, couldn't he remember his mother's death, who had been murdered by his father when he was the tender age of three? He apparently witnessed it, but he couldn't remember the incident. He knew nothing of her, not even her name. He only vaguely remembered the song that she had sung to him, which had been passed down from generations to generations before the Titans came.
That was when his father took him under his wing. Levi did remember the house burning – the modest house he and his mother had lived for the first three years of his life. He taught the child how to kill. Although Historia Reiss and he had shared similarities regarding their upbringing, that was where the similarities ended. Levi hadn't just lived in isolation for most of his childhood; he had been used and abused as well. Within the empty estate that his father lived in, Levi had been beaten many times. Senselessly, without any reason at all. "I'll kill you like your mother if you do that again," his father had whispered to him after he failed to kill one of his father's prepared prisoners. The boy had been beaten later anyway.
Levi had grown stronger from the abuse and the tutelage under his father, however. He had barely felt any pain inflicted on him anymore. It was at that time that his father thought he was ready. Although relatively young for such a task, Levi was given a mission to kill an enemy – a young woman, with a small son. Seeing the woman reminded Levi of his mother although he had no memory of her. He balked, and ran away to the Underground District. He was ten years old. Levi remembered of how desperate his situation had been when he had first arrived to the Underground District.
He had no knowledge of how to live where unlawfulness was a way of life. He slept wherever he could find space, found food whenever he could, drank sewage water, and lived. At night, he dreamed of his father and of the blood-stained life he left behind. He dreamed of his mother, who forever remained a mirage that he could never reach. Try as he might, he couldn't remember her face. He could only remember the soft French lullaby that she had sung to him long ago. In time, Levi grew tough on the outside as well on the inside. After the beatings, he always cried – quietly of course. He had been deathly afraid of his father, afraid of the harsh words or of the silences, and of the blood that always stained the walls. That was why Levi hated uncleanliness. He hated anything to do with something unclean…because it reminded him of the blood. And matter what he did, it never did seem to wash out. He grew unresponsive to the insults to the insults that followed him – somehow they knew he was from Sina. At twelve years old, Levi was well known in the district as being a monster – unflinching, cold, and ruthless. He did everything to survive. At thirteen years old, he had met Isabelle. He had taken pity on the dying child surrounded by garbage, and had taken nursed her back to health. When she had asked him if he had a last name, Levi replied, "No." He had shed that name long ago. For some reason the girl was insistent about following him everywhere, calling him niichan. And he had let her stay for some reason. They both had met Farlan sometime later. He and the blond had fought over a piece of bread until both of them were bruised and had various lacerations. Isabelle had somehow eaten the bread while they weren't looking, so the three of them had decided to gang up and finish what they started.
Levi didn't know why they stayed with him. His father's agents could be looking for him for all he knew, and Farlan was older than him. He didn't depend on him at all. But both of them had stayed. "Why are you with some ducebag like me?" Farlan didn't answer, but his small smile at Isabelle's words told him everything. "Because we love you, niichan!"
The words still echoed in his head when he had lost them. He would never forget that expedition. It hadn't been their first – they had survived all their lives in the Underground district for a reason. He had watched as the fellow soldiers who scorned him for his criminal past get eaten, and he had watched as Isabelle and Farlan had been executed for their "crimes" by the Military Police. For surviving when no one else had survived. Levi had no goddamned idea how he had been spared, but he had. Perhaps it had been Erwin's influence, or maybe even his father's, whose shadow always remained behind him. At that point, Levi had thought he had forsaken his humanity long ago, but it was the opposite. He had lost the only family he had in an instant. As he had washed off the gore from his uniform and 3-D maneuver gear, Levi mind cracked when he heard the lullaby – which had remained dormant for many years – in his mind.
"Chanson juste pour toi,
Chanson un peu triste je crois,
Trois temps de mots froissées,
Quelques notes et tous mes regrets,
Tous mes regrets de nous deux,
Sont au bout de mes doigts,
Comme do, ré, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do.
C'est une chanson d'amour fané."
In first time in his life, he had cried without shame. After a number of minutes, Levi felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned.
"Are you okay?" The face of a cadet who he would know as Petra Ral whispered. Their love affair didn't begin until years later. It had started just as it had ended – passionate, devoted, loving, and everything else Levi had lacked during his petty life. Petra had been his entire world, and when she had died, it felt as if the entire world had disappeared into ashes. Levi was grateful now that she had died, for he knew that his father would have used her, his weakness, against him. He would have destroyed her to destroy him, and Levi could not experience another hell again. He doesn't know yet, Levi thought as his father retreated from the forest. He doesn't know…about my son.
Levi forced himself to stay calm and think. The rest of his team would not be prepared for this. Eren and Historia were kidnapped, and their only alliance would likely crumble. I will not fail. Levi looked up at the sky, aware that it could be his last time to look at the sun and the clouds. I will not fail you. He whispered those same words as he walked to his fate.
Translation of lullaby
"Song just for you
Song, a little sad, I think
Three times of crumpled words
Some notes and all my regrets
All my regrets of both of us
Are at my fingertips
Like do, ré, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do.
It's a song of a faded love."