Mikasa was standing in front of me, fixing my uniform. I hadn't been able to do anything except cry the past few days. She was the one who forced me to eat every day. I heard military boots pounding up the stairs and Commander Smith popped into the room. He leaned against the doorframe, looking at us.
"We're starting soon. Eren," I looked up at him. He was staring at me like one might stare at a kicked puppy. "You don't have to go if you don't want to. No one is forcing you and I would understand if you stayed away."
"No, I'll come."
We walked together. Mikasa kept a tight grip on my hand the whole time. Maybe she thought I would try to leave. I was too dazed to do that right now.
There was music. An organ playing slow sadness. I wanted comfort. Needed it, really. But I couldn't find a way to show anyone. I couldn't cry in front of everyone, though some of them were crying.
Erwin wad decided that Levi would be buried, not burned like normal. "He would have preferred it. Ashes were like dirt in his mind. He wouldn't want to become the mess he always cleaned up." Erwin had remarked.
So there we were, standing in front of Corporal Levi's grave. It seemed colder to me, colder than I remember it ever feeling as we stood looking at the closed casket bearing the Wings of Freedom over it. I wanted to cry, but I knew that if I started, the tears wouldn't stop.
Armin had done some research on military funerals and found out that guns were fired when soldiers died. Erwin had made some arrangements to make it happen. I didn't see any point in guns, we didn't even use them. I watched as the guns were shot off into the air, then as Erwin, Hanji, and a few others took the banner off of the casket and folded it neatly. That was when I started to cry again. Realizing again that I would never see Levi bear the symbol on his back or fight as 'Humanity's Strongest' broke me. I felt more than one pairs of arms wrap themselves around me, but it didn't matter. None of those arms belonged to Levi. I wasn't going to wake up and have him tell me it was a nightmare, that he was still right there. I cried even harder.
Levi wasn't the easiest man to be around. No, he was stubborn and rude and very blunt. But I had grown to love him. He had been my hero ever since I was a child and my admiration had only grown to be love. Then I saw that Levi was no longer "Humanity's Strongest'. What he had done three days ago was out of weakness. He had always pushed me away, held me arms distance from himself. Marco had died fighting, he was a hero. Levi had taken his own life, he wasn't a hero, he wasn't my hero. I thought I had broken when Erwin said Levi had hung himself, but I had become stronger. I could move on knowing that it wasn't my hero lying in the ground. It was Lance Corporal Levi, a soldier of the Scouting Legion, whom I had once loved, that had committed suicide.
After everyone had left, I stood in front of his grave and said my final words to him before going on with my life.
"You're not my hero, anymore."