The amorous subject does not wonder whether he should declare his love to the beloved object. He wonders, rather, to what magnitude he should suppress the madness of his passions: his longings, his griefs, his will to self-obliterate. This is not a question of romantic surrender. This is a question of insanity.
—Anatomy of the Amorous Subject
Levi can still feel it in his palm. The hot gush of blood that ran from Eren's face. He can feel it, still hot, still red, pooling in the middle of his hand. He closes his fingers around it. Dark, deep color seeps between his fingers. He can still feel it.
"He's insensible," Hanji says. "We've reached the threshold of his stamina . . ."
Hanji, Levi, Moblit, and the special operations squad stand together at the top of the ravine. Meters below them, Eren's titan, a stunted and inanimate vessel, has prostrated itself in the pebbled bed. His burning flesh hisses against the residue of a long-expired river, producing a shroud of steam. Skeins of hot vapor eddy in a cold, ceaseless wind whipping through the rift. The discharged vapor rises, cooling as it does, and washes over the squad's faces. Their skin grows damp. Levi's hair flattens to his temples.
"At this rate, how many guillotines do you think we can manufacture in a week?" Hanji says.
"Who knows?" Levi says. His right hand is closed around the hot gush of blood in his palm as he looks down at Eren's pathetic, impotent titan. The vapor condenses on his face, distilling into cold dew that clings to his pores.
"Well aren't you Mr. Helpful today?" Hanji says wryly. "Moblit, can you perform the arithmetic and provide an estimate that we can deliver to Erwin?"
"Yes sir." Moblit has a sketch pad in his hand, filled by several anatomical diagrams of Eren's titan. There's a drawing, Levi notices, of Eren's human face, supplemented by a lengthy annotation. Moblit closes the sketchbook but not before Levi glimpses three words: SPECULATED EMOTIONAL DERANGEMENTS . . .
He doesn't have time to contemplate the meaning behind those words for Hanji has started speaking again.
"Good, good. See how helpful Moblit is?" she says. "You could learn a thing or two, Levi." Her goggles are pushed back to the top of her head. She puts a hand on her hip. "We should help free Eren now. He looks exhausted."
No sooner are the words out of her mouth than Mikasa, a dark savage blur, descends the slope and comes up beside the insensible titan. Hanji darts after her, then Armin, then the squad, and then Moblit takes up the rear. Levi stays where he is, at the top of the ravine, overseeing the others below him.
It's been three days since they first tested the titan guillotine weaponry.
Three days since hope ran like a scarlet ribbon through the hearts of the Survey Corps.
Three days since Eren Jaeger collapsed to his knees with anemia.
Three days ago, as the success lifted and galvanized the morale of the Survey Corps, Levi had watched Eren, Humanity's Last Hope, the soaring emblem flag of everybody's future, crumble to half-mast, a hand flying to his face to stifle the free-flowing scarlet ribbon that had run through the hearts of the Survey Corps, then had begun to spin out of Eren's nostrils, unbridled. Blood had streamed between Eren's fingers and down his chin, marbling the ground with scarlet teardrops. Levi had bent down too.
He hadn't touched Eren, simply given him a rag to sponge up the bloody nose. A few stray drops might have landed on Levi's fingers. Or they might not have. He feels it, though. He feels a blooming wet warmth as if he had cupped his hands beneath Eren's chin to catch the bloodstream that fell from his face and let it pool in his palms until it ran thickly through his fingers.
Eren had dabbed at the nosebleed, muttering faintly behind the rag about their success. He'd been looking at the ground, and Levi had felt the compulsion to put a hand under Eren's chin and lift his face. He hadn't. Without touching Eren, watching him dab at the bloody nose, Levi had said to Hanji, or to anyone nearby, or to himself perhaps, a reminder: His power is not infinite—and neither is his body.
At that, Eren had finally lifted his chin, and the full weight of his eyes came upon Levi, arresting him in place so that they looked at one another long beyond what was innocuous and impinging on something that was cataclysmic. In that moment, Eren's gaze had become a palpable thing which impressed upon the surface of Levi's face.
Eren had said, I'm just a little tired, is all . . . as the color was taken from his skin and emptied out before the Survey Corps in a long, fluttering, scarlet ribbon.
Now, three days later, although he hadn't touched Eren, Levi can still feel in his palm an open wound which Eren's blood, red and hot, is pouring through.
Down at the bottom of the ravine, Hanji has approached Eren's disabled titan. The squad arcs around her. "Don't worry, kids," she says. "Stand back. I'll get him." Her eyes are wide with hysteria as she ascends the bungled, halfway-formed titan arm. Levi watches, silent, crouched on a knee at the top of the ravine. He stays where he is, feeling his muscles tense as if they know something that his mind doesn't. A stone of uneasiness rolls around in the pit of his stomach.
Hanji opens the nape of the titan's neck. Moblit says, "Wait, Squad Leader, you shouldn't—"
She reaches down for Eren anyway. He's now accessible inside the freshly made gash, the knobs of his spine and the plates of his shoulders surfacing from out of the titan's flesh. She wraps her arms securely beneath his armpits. Bending her knees, gaining a purchase on the titan's shoulder, she pushes off with her legs and pulls with her arms, her body bowed over and strained like elastic. Eren doesn't budge. She grunts with exertion, teeth bared, and refines her foothold by digging her heels into the titan's bone. Again she pulls and strains her body. Her body winds increasingly tighter—she sustains a groan that rises in pitch and volume—and then the strain abruptly releases as Eren's top half finally comes loose. Hanji, taken by surprise, loses hold of Eren and nearly tumbles backward.
"Put him back, Put him back!" Sasha shrieks. She flings her hands out in front of her, her face stretched away. Connie goes down on all fours, retching up his breakfast with an impressive abdominal vigor. Jean staggers back a step, his skin taking on a transparent pallor. But Mikasa—
Mikasa is paralyzed where she stands, staring, horrified, the irises of her eyes glittering like two black beetle shells. "Eren," she says, in a failing whisper.
From where Levi watches, Eren's broad back, freshly emerged from the lifeless titan, is arched severely, bringing forth the dimensions of the taut musculature strapped beneath his skin. His arms are strained back. His head has fallen back too. His scalp is gone.
The blood is running now, overflowing, in Levi's fist.
With a strange, startling clarity, Levi can see, from where he's standing at the top of the ravine, each muscle in Mikasa's body glide under her skin, her calves and shoulders poising for flight. Her lips come open on the crux of a name, and the shout that rises from her lungs seems to propel her long legs forward, into a swift blurring sprint, breaking her out of the horrified paralysis. Her black hair lifts around her face, momentum overtaking gravity, and blowing her hair free behind her. Her black eyes are gaping and glittering. She is shouting for Eren.
It seems that in an instantaneous movement, Levi has traveled the distance from the top of the ravine to the bottom, and has grappled an arm around Mikasa's waist. For a moment, Mikasa's momentum and Levi's strength match the other, held in brief equipoise, suspending Mikasa in near-motionlessness. Her feet go out from under her with Levi's forearm wrapped around her gut, and her gut wrapped around his forearm. Then the forearm surpasses the gut, absorbing her motion and thrusting it back like a mirror throwing a reflection.
She ricochets and touches the ground to find balance. Her chest heaves with emotion. Her hair ripples against her cheek. Half folded at the waist, she raises her face to look up at Levi. The veil of her hair blows in black strips across her glittering, gaping eyes. Levi looks back at her, silently, down the bridge of his nose. A thick wall of titan heat radiates behind him. His clothing starts to sag on his shoulders.
As Levi looks down on her, Mikasa's mouth retains the shape of Eren's name. His expression remains neutral and unyielding, though Eren's blood runs hot and ceaselessly in his fist. The imaginary wound in his palm is gushing. Neither Mikasa nor Levi looks away from the other. Levi stares down from a point of vantage, imposing on Mikasa the weight of his emotionless, implacable glare. She seems to shrink into the distance, growing small and faded, the scarlet muffler around her throat reduced to a dull and distant fluttering ribbon. She lowers her eyes. Levi turns over his shoulder—
And sees Hanji gripping her wrist, the palm of her hand enflamed and her fingers twitching spasmodically. "GODDAMN SON OF A BITCH." Her eyes bulge like fish eyes, and her mouth becomes wet with projected spittle as she shouts, "IT'S GODDAMN HOT. GOD. DAMN." In front of her, halfway caught in the ropes of titan flesh, is Eren's body from the waist up, steaming and bare-chested, sprouting up from the nape of his dumb, lifeless titan.
Levi's fingers come open, slack and powerless to stop the blood flow.
The flesh of Eren's face has been stripped away, revealing the savage skull face beneath, the empty eye sockets smoking like two hot gun barrels, the grimacing white bone teeth gaped open. Eren's throat, too, has been shredded, the mechanisms of his breathing and swallowing visibly working the cartilage and tendons and tissues. And finally the chest and belly, flayed through and through, exposes the ribcage; the two pouches of his lungs inflating and deflating like thick plastic bags; and between them, the bloody heart muscle furiously palpitating.
I'm just a little tired, is all . . .
"Oh oh. Incredible," Hanji says, coming around from Eren's back side to observe his mutilated front side. "Moblit, record this. Come closer. Here, here, get every detail."
"Squad Leader Hanji!" Mikasa says. She takes a step forward. Levi puts an arm out in front of her. They lock eyes again.
"The heart, make sure you get the heart."
"Hanji," Mikasa says emphatically. Her hands have closed into fists, but she doesn't pass the barrier of Levi's arm.
Hanji waves a dismissing hand at her. "Understand, Mikasa, it's for the sake of science. Moblit—" He's already at her side, his hand hurrying over the sketchbook's page— "Amazing, Moblit, you're amazing." Sweat melts down her face, plastering her hair to her forehead, and although her eyes maintain their hysteria, her mouth is grimacing with the internal conflict. But only Levi knows her well enough to identify the kernel of her hidden conscience. "That's good. You've done spectacularly."
"Thank you, sir." Moblit takes a step back, his hand stilling on the page.
"You damn four-eyes," Levi says, his arm held steady and still in front of Mikasa, "you've wasted enough time."
"Right, I'll get him out now." Hanji pushes the wet hair off her forehead and bends over Eren. She mutters to him, dropping her voice too low for the others to hear. "Thank you for your patience, Eren. I know it's painful. But I must unravel the mysteries that your body holds. Please bear it a little longer. Now, then, here we go—!"
Holding him around the arms, avoiding the fleshless chest and face, she pulls and keeps pulling, her whole body and strength weighted under the pulling. Then, with a final sound of ripping and snapping, Eren's bottom half smoothly slides free. Hanji sets Eren down a moment to find breath. Sprawled out in front of him, Eren's long legs and his long feet remain intact. Perhaps a little raw and fresh, flushed and hairless like newborn skin. Like his chest, his legs and feet, too, are stripped naked, his pants, boots, and undergarments having burned away inside the titan. Mikasa stiffens next to Levi.
"The lot of you," Levi says, "turn away. He's indecent."
Jean appears immediately behind Mikasa, his hands flying over her eyes. Her lip bends back from her teeth. "Take your hands away, Jean."
"A girl shouldn't see that."
"Take your hands away."
"Mikasa," Armin says. "The captain will take care of him. Allow Eren to preserve some pride." As he says this, Captain Levi spins the dark green mantle off his shoulders and guides it down, with a billowy flourish, over Eren's abdomen. The captain's face is unlined and clear of expression, his dark hair limp on his forehead. He slides to one knee and looks into Eren's face. His right hand is drawn into a fist.
"Do you really think he cares about pride?" Jean says. Armin turns his head, staring at Jean across his shoulder. "How can somebody preserve pride while servicing out their body?"
"He's not a prostitute, Jean." Armin has turned a little further, almost squaring to Jean.
"He's a vessel for humanity to use till he's all spent up." Jean makes a sound of disdain, but his hands are soft against Mikasa's eyes. "Doesn't look like he's getting much pleasure out of it, though. Unless he's some kind of deviant."
"Going by that logic, then the whole military branch is made up of disposable vessels," Armin says. "Including you and me."
"Don't you get it, Armin? We're just pawns. Pawns for the commander to order to our deaths."
"I suppose that's one way to look at it. But if I were to think of myself as an insignificant chess piece, unable to change anything, I wouldn't put my whole heart into the task entrusted to me. And humanity can't afford halfhearted efforts. That's why I see it differently." Armin leaves then to join the captain and help transport Eren to the horses.
Jean makes another disdainful sound.
"We're not disposable," Mikasa says, gently blinded by Jean's palms. "Not me. Not you. And not Eren."
Jean sighs, resigning himself. He turns Mikasa around so that she faces away from the fleshless disaster that's become of Eren Jaeger. He's always been a disaster, though. Even as a fully fleshed trainee, fresh out of the country.
Still looking small and vulnerable, reduced to size that moment in which the captain had looked her down, Mikasa tugs her muffler high over her mouth, her eyes still covered by Jean's palms. Her black hair falls over his knuckles. Jean imagines closing his arms around her from behind and pulling her tight to his chest and whispering in her ear, saying . . .
What would he say—what could he say—to comfort her? He could fake optimism and say, Eren's a lucky sonofabitch, He'll make it out okay.
Except Eren won't. Because the bastard's falling to pieces right in front of them. A skinless, should-be-dead but somehow-living corpse. And Jean hates Eren for that.
Rather than lie to her, Jean says, "Out of the three people you listed, one of them is indisposable, I'll give you that." Mikasa doesn't say anything in return, reduced and distant under the captain's heavy, implacable glare.
The rubber treads of Levi's boots absorb and soften the rocky, inclining ground as he walks steadily in reverse up the slope. His hands are wrapped around Eren's biceps, carrying him up the ravine with Hanji and Armin toting his legs.
"You had to make this difficult, didn't you?" Levi says low, just above Eren's fleshless skull face. "Making your close friends worry." The steam coming from the empty sockets warms the underside of Levi's jaw.
"I won't touch him," Sasha says, climbing alongside Hanji. She stays far removed from Eren and avoids looking in his direction. "Please don't make me touch him."
"You don't have to touch him, Sasha." Hanji's voice is thin, a bit out of breath. "We have it under control. But if you could please prepare the extra blankets we've packed, we'll use those to cover him up. We don't want to arouse any unnecessary alarm on our way back to headquarters."
"Yes! Good idea." She hurries up the slope, toward the cart and horses.
Still looking gray from his aggressive vomiting episode, Connie lags behind Armin. He stumbles on some loose grit. Touching ground, he reasserts his footing and goes on. "How can a guy's organs be fully visible," he says, "and he still be alive?"
Hanji stretches her head around to look at him. She smiles. "Fascinating, isn't it?"
"Uh, well. That's not the exact word I was grasping for. But it might be in proximity. Like a near synonym, almost."
"What were you thinking?" Armin says.
"Nauseating."
On the way back to headquarters, Levi and Hanji ride on horseback side by side, a generous distance ahead of the others. Hanji has the imprecise quality of somebody absorbed in their own thoughts. Her eyebrows have drawn down over her eyes. She sits erect on her horse.
"You went too far," Levi says.
"Ah, yes. You're right." She glances briefly at him, still a little vague with thought, and then puts her eyes ahead of them, onto the horizon. "I'll apologize to Eren once he's regenerated."
"Next time I won't stop Mikasa." His eyes fix on the road; he speaks with an inflectionless dispassion. "I wonder how she'll slice you up. Drive her blade up and through your gut so that your insides spill all over the ground and—"
"That's how you would kill me, Levi. Mikasa would end me swiftly and painlessly. She lacks your predisposition for showmanship and extravagance." Hanji swivels her head around. Levi sees in his peripheral that she's waiting for him to turn his attention on her. He doesn't. She says, "Hey Levi—"
"No."
"I haven't said anything yet."
"I don't care."
Levi squints against the horizon. The sun is low, a half-opened eye, and strikes the sky into a red, wavering blaze. The road, made of finely packed dust, pocked with footprints, hooves, and wheel tracks, unspools before them. It approaches steadily closer, then moves on past. Levi feels, strangely, like a cold, isolated bead running dully along a worn, endless string.
Hanji starts to speak again. "For fifteen years old, he's of decent size. I have questions, though I don't know how comfortable he'd feel answering them. I wonder—"
Upon realization of what Hanji is referring to, Levi cuts her off. "Enough." He calls for Moblit and once Moblit appears, Levi takes the sketchbook from his possession and flips to the last filled page where he finds the portrait of Eren's human body. It's an impressionistic drawing of Eren's comatose body splayed vulnerable and broken, his chest open, his knees bare. The details of the image start to flesh out the longer Levi examines it, his memory compensating where the illustration ends. And the instant Levi realizes his mind's eye is staring at a stripped Eren Jaeger, his jaw turns white and he tears out the page.
Hanji reaches her arm across her chest, fumbling toward Levi's hands. "Levi? What are you doing? No, wait, don't—"
He shreds the paper and lets the pieces float on the wind.
"Ohhh." Her hand hangs frozen, empty and fruitless, in the air. She replaces it on the horn of the saddle. "Why would you do that? His anatomy is essential to understanding the titan shifting power. Even his male biology could—"
"I don't care."
"Now you're just repeating yourself. 'I don't care, I don't care,' that's all you've got to say? You should've at least shown Moblit's hard work some respect. You destroyed a very nice drawing of his."
"It's fine," Moblit says. "I think I understand why."
"Don't get me wrong." Levi extends the sketchbook toward him. "You've got talent."
"Thank you, Captain." Moblit takes the book and puts it away in a worn, brown satchel. He holds back, allowing some distance to come between himself and the two commanding officers. Levi and Hanji resume talking once they're out of hearing range.
Hanji is sitting high on her horse, and her chin is lifted. Levi maintains a casual aloofness. Their faces are burnished by the dying day's light, and they don't look at one another.
"There was nothing undignified about that sketch," she begins.
"I don't remember you asking for Eren's permission," he says.
"I have no doubt that Eren would be okay with it. It was for my research."
"That's not the point."
"Aren't you being kinder than usual?"
"No."
"I suppose not. Despite your callous exterior, you're actually a caring person by nature. I admit I got carried away. It wasn't my intention to cause damage. But Eren is aware of the responsibilities that fall on him. It's only expected that he makes these sacrifices."
"Aren't you also a caring person by nature?"
For a moment, her face is dull and blank. She doesn't smile and appears tired. Ignoring his comment, she finally says, "From this point forward, I won't cause any unnecessary damage. Now that I know Eren's limits, I can avoid violating them." She cuts her horse away from Levi's. He looks at her, but her head is turned across the opposite shoulder as she slows to adopt the gait of Moblit's horse.
Then Levi looks at his own hands. They're inattentively grasping the leather reins, clean and unbloodied.