Levi is not one to tolerate filth.
He is also not one to tolerate sentiment. Having decided that a limbic system was extraneous in the aftermath of Farlan and Isabel's deaths, Levi speculates that the emotional energy he is able to conserve contributes in a nontrivial manner to his combat prowess. The explosive burst of speed that allows him to drill through muscle and sinew like an industrial drill belies the transcendental calm that gives his somatic nerves complete cerebral rein. Simplifies combat - no remorse, no hesitation, just a maelstrom of muscle memory, aerodynamic calculations and unadulterated will to destroy.
Drenched by enough blood to compromise both his vision and grip on his blades, possessed by a rage that has rendered him deaf to the howls of butchered titans in his grisly pursuit after Zeke, Levi is violating both principles.
When he swung by the decimated remains of his squad after the female titan's rampage, their blood not yet congealed, he had experienced a similar blip in his limbic flatline. No, more accurately what he experienced was more akin to a cruel edge to his will to kill - he wanted the female titan to suffer. Hence, rather than executing the singular canonical nape cut, he had taken grim satisfaction in carving down the female titan with gross gratuity. The goal was no longer to immobilize but to inflict pain.
As Levi chased the mule titan, a different beast was ravaging inside - an banshee that, in a single shriek, shattered the internal sanctum of ice and frost that has preserved his sanity and fragile faith in mankind.
Levi has never denied taking pride in strength. He did not mind being the underground menace that sank a room into a petrified silence whenever he crossed the threshold. He did not mind operating in a domain comprised only of subordinates but no equal. Yet in this moment, he loathes his physical exceptionality - he had wanted to be one of the soldiers who had, at Erwin's rallying cry, charged to their certain deaths. Compared to the guilt of surviving - a barbed dagger in his side that renders every breath agony - a quick death seems merciful.
Levi is no stranger to shouldering others' legacies. Being the Survey Corp's biological manifestation of indefatigability was his duty. His existence gave courage to the living and purpose to the dead. But as his squad and commander shredded into primordial pieces of viscera, Levi feels the vertiginous tremors before the collapse of one's internal will.
It's unfair.
He chuckles. Of course not. It is unfair that senseless monstrosities preys on intelligent prey. It is unfair that hundreds die, anonymous, without purpose, for laughably minuscule progress in their "pursuit of truth," or whatever bullshit Erwin is actually after. His disproportionate strength is unfair. When others are granted so little no one man deserves power of his magnitude. Yet in a world ruled by serendipity, of course there is no guarantee of justice.
Hopping over the bellowing and freshly de-naped head of his newest victim, Levi is already aiming for the next. ODM cables latching into nape with a explosion of gas, he leaps, spins and relinquishes synaptic control to reflexes and instincts. Upon impact, he inflicts an economic wound, precisely sufficient to de-nape. Despite the storm of blood, his operations resemble that of a surgeon more than a butcher - when gas and sharpened blades are limited, efficiency is key, and he never carves any more than strictly necessary. He has lost track of how many titans he has downed in his pursuit of Zeke. Ten? No, judging by the progressive dulling of his last pair of blades, at least fifteen.
He has also long given up trying to stifle the stream of blood dripping down his brow - what was the point? Visual-input-wise, all he need to determine lethal strike points are the beasts' silhouettes.
Digging his dulling blades with increasing force into nape after nape, flesh yielding like molasses, warm sprays of blood compromising his grip on his weapon, Levi transforms from green to crimson. Although titan blood evaporates quickly, his destructive trajectory has outpaced the laws of thermodynamic.
A year ago, Levi set a personal record of downing eleven consecutive titans in a single episode of combat. Today he was confronted with almost twice as many. Although strong however, he is not delusional - with only the capacity to carry eight blades and one liter of gas, Levi understands that once his weapon dulls and fuel depletes, he would be helpless. His current mission is as heroic as it is suicidal.
Yet he made a promise to a man who, at that moment, was practically entombed. It is no longer a matter of option but necessity.
Springing over the head of another falling titan, Levi sinks his ODM cables into the scapula of the next, the trajectory of his attack already etched into the coil of his muscles and optic dashboard. Releasing his trigger, the roar of wind that greets his acceleration drowns out his curtailed grunt of effort as he carves out the nape in a single strike. The titan drops. The escalating lactic burn permeating his exhausted muscle might as well belong to a parallel being - among the many combat techniques he have mastered, blithely ignoring his neurotransmitters shrieking crisis was one of his crowning.
The mule titan pauses at the top of the wall to consider the slaughter - Levi is able to perceive this, he realizes, because he is sufficiently close to his target. A surge of hope curbs the uncontrollable tremor that is starting to wreak his exhausted frame. In the middle of a swing, Levi glimpses a snapshot of his blades insert into bone in the final titan's neck and realizes that the mechanical resistance would jerk him off balance. Re-shooting his ODM cable, this time into the now-within-reach Wall Rose, he angles his blades and, with an anguished grunt, lobs off the titan's head with an adjusted upward slice. The titan falls as he soars onto the wall.
Becoming conscious of his ragged breathing, blood streaming liberally from hair and brow, Levi struggles to pinpoint Zeke over the haze of evaporating steam.
A stirring in his periphery snags his attention. Urging his body back into motion, he is plunging earthward toward his target before his mind is able to articulate a verdict - refuel and finish the job.
Another appraisal tells him that they are not alone - Zeke has stopped to talk to... Jaeger? Faintly, his subconscious breathes a sigh of relief - his fuel problems would be solved if the squad is nearby.
With a clatter, his ODM cables catch on another roof, and Levi calculates three-swings worth of distance until he reaches the bastard. Before he can shout at his young titan-shifting cadet to arrest the man, the mule titan pivots and springs off the building, no doubt resuming his escape.
Shit.
"Give me your fuel and blades, now!" He orders, landing on the roof heavily, dislodging several shingles. The vociferous protest of his nociceptors to pause and appraise damage would have to wait. Exhaustion weighs on him; the very gravitational field feels amplified. His hands are leaden as he struggles to detach his fuel tank.
"Armin just breathed!" A dim voice penetrates his mental fugue.
"Keep it up! Breathe Armin!" Jaeger's anguished call becomes louder. From Levi's mental snapshot of the scene, the youth has been singed, incinerated - the cut of pork that a domestically-inept Petra had once served was not more charred than him. How is that possible?
"Captain! The injection!"
The injection? But Erwin entrusted it to him, he can't part with it yet...
"Turn Armin into a titan, and let him eat Bertholdt!" Jaeger is screaming. "Hurry and give me the injection!"
It feels wrong, but Levi can't muster the cerebral steam to identify a reason to refuse. Dimly, he reaches for the box and extends it to Eren. In the background, a flare gun sounds.
"Captain... Levi," a strained murmur interrupts the transaction. Over the roof's shingled edge, a soldier appears and begins to clamber with great labor to the top. Someone appears to be strapped on his back...
"Finally... I caught up," the soldier supplies, tilting his balance over the top, just as the iron-knuckled punch of revelation strikes with Levi's recognition of the blonde figure on the soldier's back.
"Erwin is in danger," the soldier manages. "His intestines are damaged. He doesn't have enough blood."
"I think the injection should help..." he pauses to pant.
"What... should I do?"
Time halts as Levi's vision enhances into a panorama - Armin's singed body and Jaeger's crazed glare juxtaposed against Erwin's shredded frame.
Apt question indeed, what should I do?
He met Erwin at knife-point. Having been unequalled in combat, Levi despised the man - whose blonde-hair-blue-eyed perfection could only be explained by an eugenics experiment - not for forcing him to his knee and dunking his head in filth, not for besmirching his faultless record, but for forcing Levi to recognize the triviality of his existence. He had been complacent in securing the queen's throne of the underground ant hive until Erwin's interloping foot shattered his illusion of grandeur. While Erwin's world-weary smirk is not dissimilar to his own, the former had power to substantiate his disdain. His hatred had been deep-seated and all-consuming, into which was concentrated his hatred for a world that was staked against him since the beginning, for his helplessness against the status quo despite his delusion of strength.
Yet a few weeks later, finding himself in almost an identical position - kneeling, filthy and defeated before Erwin's towering silhouette like a pilgrim paying homage - Levi found himself appreciating the man's impervious resolve. Although "authority" has never been adopted into either his linguistic or philosophical repertoire, for once he appreciated a higher order giving him a sense of direction as Isabel and Farlan's disassembled remains flickered in and out of focus in his mental reel. Perhaps it was the man's courage to not so much as flinch before gripping Levi's blade with bare hands, or perhaps it was his utterly unrepentant forward momentum over a field
littered with mutilated bodies of fallen comrades, it suddenly dawned on Levi that Erwin Smith genuinely operated on a higher wavelength. Though he is reluctant to admit, the man was an astronomer hellbent on mapping out the heavens; Levi, at that moment, was a trivial understudy whose only obsession was to pilfer the telescope's gold eyepiece.
"If you regret, it would dull your future decisions and you would start allowing others to make choices for you. All that remains is to die. Each decision you make holds meaning only by affecting your next decision." Erwin had pronounced bluntly, but with the solemn sum of humanity's conviction.
"We are continuing the expeditions. I expect you to come with me."
Erwin's command had been final and unrepentant. He had lost half his squadron in one afternoon, yet the man's gaze never wavered. As his horse strode away over the severed body of Flagon, Levi saw unflinching purpose. His callousness over the fallen was not due to a lack of humanity, but to a transcendental resolution that has become ideological, impervious to mortal vicissitudes. It was strength he has never imagined possible. His silhouette already receding on the back of his horse, Erwin provided the swordsmith's hammer that would refine his coarse metal ore into humanity's most formidable weapon.
It was comforting to find someone to whom he could entrust the mental acrobatics of decision-making. Erwin have proven himself not only the wiser strategist but also the irreproachable visionary. For Farlan and Isabel alone, he could make no other decision.
Back to the present predicament, the choice was instinctual.
"Erwin will receive the injection," Levi pronounces flatly. Jeager pounced on him immediately, although Levi was too far gone to be perturbed by his outrage. The youngsters would suffer at the loss of Armin, only because fortune has spoiled them from experiencing a true loss on the battlefield. In the end, the choice between mourning and survival inevitably accelerates the stages of grief. His attempt to shake free of Eren's grip on the injections is met with insistence.
"Jeager, don't let your personal feelings get in the way." His even-tempered order at this juncture is more attributable to fatigue rather than restraint.
The boy responds with an incoherent, rambling attempt to negotiate. Levi finds it incomprehensible how he could fail to understand so obvious an reality.
"Now that Erwin is here, we are going to use it on him." He pronounces. The latter displayed no signs of loosening his grip.
His ensuing violence is explosive and inexplicable. Clocking Jeager across the face, Levi dislodges at least two molars as his knuckles made contact. If the boy refuses to listen to reason, then pain is what he deserves. As Jeager stumbles across the roof, it occurs to Levi that he had neglected a pertinent alternative presence on the roof. He whips his head around just as Mikasa knocks him to the ground. He has a fractional second to regret his underestimation of both his fatigue and Mikasa's resolve. Finding himself clamped beneath her straddle, blade and UV-caliber fury, Levi found himself too weak to shake away. Concentrating his remaining energy on clamping his grip on the syringe, Levi prepares for a war of attrition. The girl may have the upper hand, but it would cost her to wrestle the box from him. He was prepared to die for Erwin, whose life has now become synonymous with the injection.
When Hanji finally interjects and subdues Mikasa, Levi was experiencing an haze of enervation that has transcended into a spiritual dimension. Eren's despair, Mikasa's heart-rending howl, Erwin's bio-degradation with the passing of every second, and the memory of his entire squadron shredded on the battlefield. He have lost countless comrades, but death carries a blissful simplicity. The current circumstance was all the more agonizing because, although he lacks the power to avert death, he has the cruel responsibility to choose to whom the sentence would be delivered.
"I... really... just wish I could go to that basement..." Erwin had remarked with a heaviness that bespoke the sum of humanity's despair over evolution's tired trajectory. The ferocity of his purpose - a fire sufficient to compel the Survey Corps to not march but race to their deaths - was extinguished. For once, Erwin's age was manifest.
It would be cruel to deny Erwin his wish when the wish is so assuredly within grasp. The youngsters would have to learn the meaning of authority the difficult way, just as he had a few years ago. Taking Erwin's arm, Levi begins to feel for a artery.
Erwin swings his arm overhead, knocking the injection out of Levi's hand. In the back of his mind, Levi is not surprised.
"Let me make the decision for you. Go and lead those recruits into hell. I will take down the beast titan," Levi had promised, his conviction grim but steadfast. Erwin had smiled wistfully - his first and only relegation of decision to another would also constitute his last.
"Levi, thank you."
Although one is never completely desensitized to death, almost a decade at the forefront of the titan war trains one to postpone an emotional response to ghastly stimulus until the luxury to mourn presents itself later, preferably behind a titan-defying blockade.
Bertholdt's screams for mercy had blended easily into war's perpetual ambient noise.
Someone was demanding justification. It took enormous mental effort to concentrate on his words. Levi is so drained.
"Why did you..." the soldier trailed off, uncertain. Levi knew that his silence was intimidating, but surmised that his slack-faced dejection was even more so.
But it was not the soldier's fault, and his loyalty deserved a justification. With effort, Levi forces air out of his parched throat, words materializing instinctively, wholly inadequate at conveying the ravaged spirit within.
"Forgive him..." he began, grappling for a satisfactory response. "He had no choice but to become a demon."
The success of single missions was Levi's responsibility; humanity's overarching progress toward liberation was Erwin's. There is no question of who bore the heavier burden.
"And we were the ones that wished that upon him..." he swallows with difficulty, but his decision was finally making more sense.
"And just when he was finally freed from this hell of a world, we tried to drag him right back into it." The hissing of smoke behind him indicates that Armin has finished his grisly task.
"We must let him rest now." Indeed, oblivion that is interminable and imperturbable. A luxury that the commander likely has not known. He could not bring himself to extract the man from his newfound haven; like every man, Erwin too deserved reprieve.
"Erwin... I promised you that I would take out the beast titan, but it seems that it will take a while longer." Levi hears himself muttering. Somehow it has become very important to disrupt the silence. The longer he can spare himself from contemplating his choice, the longer he can deflect the haunting thought that he was wrong.
Even amidst the vast diversity of disturbed underground childhoods, Levi's would have easily deserved an honorable mention. His earliest memories consisted of a sickly mother - a faceless figure who vegetated by day in a mildewed bed and vanished at night - and an eternal fixation on the source of his next meal. He spent his early years as a scavenging animal, his daily purpose as simple as it is dogged, no different from the large rodents that roamed the underground back alleys. The infinite complexity of a human mind reduced to a singular obsession by a need for survival.
When Kenny took him in after his mother's death, his purpose expanded into the physical domination of every soul who dared laid their eyes on him aslant. Although Kenny never praised him, the affectionate lilt of his voice after Levi's conquests motivated Levi to be merciless. Farlan's appearance introduced camaraderie into his life, Isabel's intrusion, a protective instinct. Yet despite the increasing variegation of his purpose, Levi could never escape the primal instinct that shaped his early life - regardless of how he came to be esteemed for his strength, he was at heart a savage, driven by no more than a petty, crazed intuition to perpetuate the breath and heartbeat that his mother has carelessly bequeathed him.
Yet Erwin's vision gave Levi a purpose that is, for once, transcendental. While a soldier's willingness to die, anonymous and unappreciated, for a cause they would never see, baffled him in the past, Erwin's unflinching bare hand on his blade gave him understanding. A purpose so noble, so idealistic, that it could unite a creature defined, behind the superfluous facade of civilization, by its primal drive for survival into a singular indomitable force, gave him an understanding of the much-abstracted concept of "hope."
"He's gone."
So many have come and gone in his decade-long tenure in the Survey Corps. Once the legend of his strength disseminated, the world had parted cleanly into admirers and enemies, subordinates and superior, but no equal. Although camaraderie can be cultivated by proximity alone, Levi has largely eschewed the third tier of Maslow's pyramid of needs. Immunity from the woe of loss was well worth the price of solitude.
Yet how cathartic it would be, if he was more familiar with sublimating rather than suppressing grief, to weep. To crumple and be consoled like a child, to turn an emotional valve and relieve the nauseating bloat of sorrow on his chest. While the Survey Corp's rigid hierarchy imposed order on the transience of Levi's world (the Survey Corp's turnover rate is quantified not in weeks or months, but days), Erwin had defied definition. Not friend - which entailed reciprocity - nor strictly superior - Levi's emotional investment in the man exceeded the objectivity inherent to authority - Erwin was an ideological emblem who curbed at bay Levi's haunting suspicion that, perhaps, extinction is the rightful fate of as meek and narrow-minded a race as mankind. He was the final ideological pillar onto which Levi's mental gaze could latch onto and remain afloat amidst the brutality of their guerilla warfare. Now, Levi peers out into the boundless future and sees only a barren void.
But if he breaks, who would be left standing? Humanity cannot afford to lose both its protectors simultaneously.
No. Levi tells himself. As Humanity's Strongest, he does not have the luxury for self-pity. He decided to follow Erwin and has no right to regret. The only option that remains, then, is to doggedly march onward. With Erwin's beacon extinguished, Levi himself would fill the void. At whatever the cost, he intend to fulfill his promise of taking down the beast titan.
Extricating himself from the mental abyss of grief as he has too many times, Levi resurfaces with cold, renewed conviction. The warmth of sunlight on his skin finally starting to register, Levi looks up with a wistful smile.
"I see."