Still Falling
Captain Levi
THAT very second I found your mutilated body trembling against a bloodstained tree with your eyes dulled in the darkest way, your hair so thick with perspiration and blood that it stuck to your face like wire, your skin tainted by a haunting shade of white, and your lips caked with running blood, I knew what was to come. In my years as a part of the Survey Corps., death was an inevitable visitor that quite often overstayed its welcome. I had thought I would be prepared for it—to remain stoic at gruesome sights—the day I hand-picked the soldiers for the Special Ops Squad.
But…I cried.
The strict professionalism of my employment as a captain evaded me as if it were a prisoner awaiting release. For me to break down in tears, especially before a subordinate, was shameful. But I did not care; I knew what made you different than the other female soldiers I've trained was that I loved you. I loved you because you were kind and beautiful in the cruelest, ugliest world; I loved you because you swore your allegiance to me and served without hesitation; I loved you because you were Petra Ral; a name untarnished by ill faith, a hymn capable of rejuvenating the will I had let rust for years—the surviving will of fallen comrades, a seemingly boundless cry of reminiscent sorrow that now is merely a whisper of the past. You filled the gray parts of my cold heart I had left to rot with gold and warmth like the cowering orange sun rays that spilled in from the windows during the evening.
Death was the demon inside you, and I had realized that it showed mercy to no one, not even the squad captain's fiancée.
No one was ever completely safe. We were not untouchable. Not us.
When you spoke, the melody of your voice was distorted with bloody coughs that shook us both. Each gasp for air eroded the barriers protecting my heart. You barely managed to say my name—when you called me 'Captain', I swore I'd never heard such a horrible title. We spoke of our future plans together as if our dream could outweigh our unsightly reality.
"We'll move out to the Walls," I had said. "I'll find work or—" No, I had thought, as if any wanderer outside the walls was any better off than all of us inside. "Out West," I tried, hopefully, "I'll build your dream house with a white picket fence and good soil for your garden. I'll plant you that strawberry shrub you've wished for, and a maple tree with a tire swing and—"
"Captain," you gasped. "You can't." Those two words—those two simple words—were what made the tears fall before I could hold them. I stole your hand and held your limp palm to my damp cheek for no other reason than to make sure you were still warm, even a little. You watched me for a moment, and by then, I had predicted the intangible despair your death would bring upon me. You spoke only five more words with your dying breath, wiping my tears with your soft finger: "I love you, Levi." With a long, jagged gasp, the very last: "Always." Your hand fell limp down my chest; I clutched you to me with my mind devoid of any intention of releasing you. Those wasted minutes cursed my soul. I could have said more, could have gotten the help you needed to sustain your weakened heart. Transfixed in the vacancy of the empty shell that lay to rest, I remained silent—hoping, praying, clasping onto the futile idea that my silence would gift me with your silvery voice just one second more. Your velvety hair spread like shadows in waves along my shoulder. Your childish laugh reverberating like hums in my head. All that, yet your skin was frigid. The forest was stripped of the orange light and struck with the rawness and forlorn of nightfall; you had taken the light along with you.
Abandoning my dignity as a soldier, abandoning my sanity, and abandoning the composure aligned with the very stigma of a man, I held you still closer and wept harder, screamed louder than I ever thought I could.
That is what real love does to a person. It robs you of what you are, who you think you are, and shows you the truth - all your faults, all your values, everything.
I slid your engagement ring from your lifeless hand and slipped it on my trembling, bloodied finger, just above my silver ring to signify our eternal love. A love that could never be dulled by separation.
When I laid you against the tree, I bundled you up in the uniform green, holed-up cape that draped over your still shoulders. A makeshift resting place that sufficed the burial I could never bring myself to organize. Prayer came in a brief stupor that left me vulnerable to the onslaught of loneliness. It was at the moment as I watched the wind lift and drop the makeshift blanket that just barely hid your unmoving fingers that I felt my broken heart shatter into the smallest pieces, too fragile and microscopic to be repaired. Those pieces corroded into speckles, blowing in a torrent of numbness, as the voices of our brothers and sisters drew nearer. The retrieval team…coming to bring you home to your family.
The time came when I made the decision to decrease the weight of the carriage in an attempt to evade a Titan. I saw you once more… I watched the numerous corpses tumbling away, some crushed under the weight of a 45 meter monster, knowing exactly which one you were. I cringed, despising myself for benefitting the survivors by casting away your body, even if it was the necessary decision. But I rode on. It was then—that moment in my own seclusion—that I finally whispered, "I love you, too." I was the one who led you to your death. I acted as a captain rather than a lover. I forced you to the middle of No Man's Land, and I failed to insure your safety. Where I had prioritized the mission, I should have kept you above all the rest. All of you. As a result, you're all gone. This was my decision. Make a choice and stick to it without any regrets… It's Erwin's mantra; the choice I made to leave my team to themselves, even as I acted under command, was my grave mistake.
My weeping stopped in hours. But the agony remains even to this day.
"I love you." The reason I continue on this arduous lifestyle is because I love you. I will always love you, even now at this very second as I'm still falling through pits of despair in the realization that you truly are out of reach. Death had stolen you from me; it snatched you away the way the Titans ringed us free of our loved ones, of everything. Clutching so hard on Chel's reigns as to draw crescent moons of blood in my palms, I muttered one final word, gazing upon our joined rings: "Always."
(June 2015)