Sometimes, when it is just dark enough in Levi's cramped, spotless little office, and when the silence has just begun to tear at him in his bed, he can hear them still. The laughter, the gossip. All of it reaches him, and yet...it could not possibly be real. Could it? They were dead. Each of them had met their bloody end and he had been away from them when they passed.
He would never again hear their voices.
He would never again see their faces.
Their voice begin to ring throughout the castle as the sun goes down, leaving a kind of air in the place. One of reminiscence, almost as if the old building mourns their loss along with him. Sometimes, if the dreadful quiet starts overwhelming, Levi would start walking the halls of the castle. Silence would follow him. With silence came all consuming darkness. In the literal sense, even, as the blackness had been so heavy that the Lance Corporal had stubbed his toes rounding a bend in a corridor, and simply slumped down to the ground. A bevy of emotions would wash over Levi, and he simply couldn't. He wouldn't dare show them to anyone. But if he didn't, he would implode under their weight.
Other nights, he would go out onto the brick rooftop and sit. They used to sit up there. The five of them could occupy the space for hours and not even need to talk. They could just sit. They'd laugh, they'd yell, they'd talk and whisper and cry. The sun would be shining, and just for a second, a second, he didn't have to be a fortress. He didn't have to be Humanity's strongest.
He could just be Levi.
Now though...The sun wasn't shining. The moon was. It played upon him a distant, cold light. It was taunting him, like a hole between him and them that showed his final destination. That was the flower he had to pick.
But if he did, wouldn't the thorns just drive him away? Hadn't he learned his lesson?
The wind blew unexpectedly forcefully. It hit him full on, and qualified that they weren't coming back.
The wind would have blown into them if they were.