title: stripped of stardust
prompt: petra is the only survivor from squad levi.
pairing: levi ო petra.
summary: "what do i do, now?" she's the only survivor, but it does not make her any more alive.
disclaimer: own nothing
they find her crawling by the elbows. her face is draped in red and her spine is swan-angled as she moves, legs trailing uselessly behind her.
levi doesn't even blink. in a moment he is beside her, hands quaking as he moves in—to touch her? to hold her? to make sure she is real, alive? to break her away from the blood and dirt and grime of the forest-grounds—but she stops him with the weak, white crane of her palm.
she gestures towards auruo—or what's left of him. levi feels his vision go blurry, his chest constrict, when she whispers, "his eyes are open." she swallows what sounds like a sob. "i need to... i need to close them. it's all i can do..."
"shh," levi says, more awkwardly than gently, because he does not know how to do this. he is not used to this porcelain-petra, this woman of pieces, with her blood-stained skin and her shivering eyes. "let me help you."
"it's all i can do," she whispers, again. silently, levi tries to help her up, and holds her as she falters, as her doll-legs fall bonelessly beneath her. "captain, it's all i can do."
she barely winces as he angles her into his arms, she does not register the crowd of people behind them as the images—gunter, erd, auruo, blood and bones and screams—cloud her mind, and she does not feel his hold on her tighten as she cries into his neck.
x
her legs are shattered.
they took most of the impact; had she fallen any differently, hanji tells her, she might not have made it.
"it's a miracle," erwin says, not unkindly. "that you are alive."
levi watches as she raises her andromeda-eyes, the emotion boiling beneath the gold of them.
"it would have been more of a miracle," she says, woodenly, with petra's voice, with petra's lips, but without any other sign of petra at all. "if that meant something."
she does not have to gesture towards her sickbed for anyone to understand.
x
in three days, she will return to her hometown, to live with her father.
when levi enters her room, she looks like she has been waiting.
"levi," she says, brokenly. not heichou, not captain, but just the naked shape of his name. "levi."
he is silent as she asks: "what do i do, now?"
he does not realize how close he is until she blinks up at him, a scattered breath away. and when he looks at her, ever radiant, it is almost as if nothing has changed, from the jupiter of her hair to the soprano of her voice.
her stare is bone-dry, tearless, and everything shifts back into place. he says, "you fight. like always."
he does not turn to leave, but does not move any closer until she catches him by the sleeve, pulling him in. face-to-face, skin-to-skin, breath-to-breath: he has imagined this moment a thousand times, and from the look in her eyes, so has she, but not like this, never like this, with her eyes searching him, to the soul, when she asks, "for what?"
levi has a million answers and none of them are the right one to give, because the walls in her eyes fall and her hold on him rattles and she repeats, over and over, "for what? for what? for what?", punctuating each and every question with her lips dipping infinitely closer as the space between them grows wider and wider until he breaks, until he juts forward and kisses her, and she opens her mouth and kisses back. his mind only whispers not like this, not like this, once, twice, before he lets her pull him onto the bed.
x
"i'll write you," she tells him, eyes dead.
x
it is the first time she lies to him, and the last time he sees her smile.