A/N:
Disclaimer – I'm not part of the copyright that concerns the anime/manga Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin. Therefore, I know that this fanfiction exists only by the grace and mercy of the real copyright holders. Neither am I going to receive any form of monetary profit from writing this.
Levi and Erwin forbid him to recover his friend Ivan's body.
"Don't the two of you have any human feelings?" he screams as they walk away.
. . .
He goes back anyway. He gets the body, but he drops it in shock when his other friend is eaten by the Titans they attracted.
Later, Levi hands him a Corps patch and tells him it's Ivan's. (It's really Petra's.)
The man can't help but cry.
. . .
Levi listens to Petra's father ramble on as they walk down the street.
"Thank you for looking after my daughter..."
"She sent me a letter..."
"I know it's too soon to be thinking about marriage, but..."
He's also half-distracted by everyone demanding answers from Commander Erwin, asking if the losses actually produced something of worth.
. . .
They're also asking if he feels sorry for all of the dead soldiers.
. . .
Levi watches as the corpses are burned.
He always does. It's a grim reminder to him of what's at stake.
Oluo, Eld, and Gunther aren't in the pyre. Like plenty of other bodies, they were claimed by their families to be buried with a proper funeral.
Petra isn't there either. Her body, just like her life, was sacrificed for a noble cause – to save other, more numerous lives.
Levi remembers that man again.
He supposes he gave the man that patch to prove something to him. All the same, it's hard to stop himself from hating him. Thanks to his thoughtlessness, another man was added to the head count and Petra's body was now abandoned somewhere outside the walls, probably lying in a Titan's belly at that very moment.
Numerous faces around him gleam with silent tears. Somewhere behind him, a not-so-silent sob racks a mourner's shoulders.
Levi contemplates why it's so easy for him to keep the tears away. There's a deep sadness in him, but his eyes don't burn in the slightest. He's not even trying.
He doesn't think he's been numbed to it. The pain inside is almost as sharp as it was when Isabel and Farlan died.
(At least, he thinks it is.)
Literary freedoms don't give him the answer either. He's fairly certain that his tear ducts aren't dried up from previous overuse, primarily because he'd never been much of a crier in the first place, secondly because the last time he'd been hit in the nose with force (about a couple of months ago), the usual involuntary tears had leaked out.
And to be honest, he doesn't give much of a fuck about his image. Those people, burning in the fire, they deserve any tears he has to give. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any.
Levi watches the smoky flame roar into the sky for a while longer before turning away. He reminds himself of another lesson that that man from earlier hadn't learned yet; death is death. When a person dies, they're gone, and nothing you do with their leftover meat-sack is going to help them anymore. Funerals are for the living, not for the dead.
He walks away with an impassive face, ignoring the stares.
Besides. He can't deal with the terrible roasting-meat smell anymore. It reminds him that he hasn't eaten in almost a day.