Prompt: The world has changed; I feel it in the waters, I feel it in the earth, I smell it in the air.
It starts; presumably, with a ripple.
This is not a normal funeral, they are not throwing bodies into raging flames on a pitch-black night. There are no indistinguishable ashes floating in the smoky air – no. This is a funeral outside the walls.
They push the commander onto a raft and off over the lake. It weighs like stones, and like the tense, weeping quiet; he sinks to the bottom slowly, vanishing from sight below the still sapphire surface.
Incredible. He's gone.
After Erwin's death, everyone is subdued. Even Levi, who is usually so calm and unaffected by his comrade's deaths, wakes up in the early hours, sweat trickling down his back, hands gripping at the sheets. He makes sure to bring himself back to reality afterwards, but he can't shake Erwin's face from his mind, his quiet funeral, the raft slowly sinking onto the riverbed.
Levi can't understand it, but he feels shattered. He breaks a wineglass at the mess hall, just to check, and everybody stares at him, because if the sky is blue then Levi Ackerman never loses himself.
Moblit pats him on the back, his eyes rimmed red. This, they expect. They also expect Hange to disappear into her room for the next few days, consumed by insatiable hunger for knowledge and vengeance. They expect Mike and Nanaba to drown themselves in jugs of liquor, but if there is one thing they do not expect, it is Levi.
Levi didn't expect this to happen, either. He walks around the HQ like a zombie, eyes wide, breathing shallow, as if he still can't believe the scene in front of his eyes, which is a world without Erwin. He can't help it – everywhere he goes, he sees their commander. But Erwin is dead.
He guesses that he should have prepared for a scenario like this. Levi knew that the faces around him were the faces of doomed people, it was sooner or later when they would meet their demise. But Erwin – the man who brought him to the Survey Corps, brought him above ground, the man who took over every mission with rousing success?
After all, even if their commander was nothing less than genius, he was nothing more than human.
It starts with a ripple.
Levi sees it when he enters the bathroom the day after, vulnerable and naked, and immediately he thinks of Erwin and shudders.
Come on, shithead, he thinks. This is nothing.
It's supposed to be nothing. Levi pulled it off when his squad was eliminated, his most trusted comrades killed in a gruesome, one sided battle. Life returned to normal, it wasn't like … this.
He didn't skip past their bedrooms with a queer, pained hop. He didn't talk to Hange with an edge in his voice – the constant feeling that he wanted to scream and tear through his calm façade. There were not any whispers that shrouded him as he passed, probing, Levi, are you okay? Levi? Levi? Has Humanity's strongest warrior fallen?
Come on, Levi repeats. He takes a hesitant step forward, but there it is. A ripple of water, the tub looks terribly familiar.
"You have to take a bath," Levi tells himself, resorting to verbal commands. There he goes again, talking to himself like the freak Hange.
"Come on!"he growls. The water looks so enticing, but the moment it moves, something deep inside him stirs and pulls at his heart, weighs his stomach like stones, makes him feel so nauseous he might puke.
"Come on," he says, quietly, but all resolve is gone. He stays at the entrance to the bathroom, watching the rippling water, disgusted at his weakness. He can't help it. It reminds him of that raft, of Erwin, and that memory is so unbearably painful he dares not to step further.
Levi gives up. His body is sticky with sweat, his hair is greasy, and he's too uncomfortable to sleep in this state of uncleanliness. He shifts uneasily in bed, in a dazed consciousness, and all positions are dissatisfactory.
When he finally sleeps, he dreams of Erwin.
It is not a good dream. Once again, Levi wakes to drenched blankets and a thundering heartbeat. He was haunted by the heady scent of leaves and water, the blood that spattered onto the untouched ground and his gradual descent into the lake.
It's like he's relieving the moment all over again.
Levi sheds his clothes and tries the bathroom once more, but the flashbacks seem to be getting worse. The tub actually resembles the lake now in it's eerie stillness, and Levi abandons any attempt to shower, and instead deals with the torturously slow drip drip drip of the tap. He scoops the water up drop by drop, splashes whatever pathetic amount he has left onto the dirtiest parts of his body. He really needs someone to fix his sink for him.
Finally, he is satisfied. He dries himself furiously, for even the water feels slimy and alien, before going to the mess hall for breakfast. Hange is of course waiting for him.
"Levi," she nods, her head buried in a tediously thick book.
"Hange," he responds, pulling the chair out carefully before setting it down and sitting.
There is no friendly banter between them today. Hange is too caught up in whatever she's reading, and Levi sits silently, staring at her but not at her, just letting his eyes unfocus as his thoughts drift uneasily off to somewhere else. The whole HQ seems lacking without Erwin's imposing presence, empty, like a person without a skeleton.
The whole mess hall is quieter than usual. No one dares to make to much noise, to laugh, to smile. It's as if they're afraid of offending Erwin, which is ridiculous. He's dead.
"Who do you think is going to be the commander of the survey corps now?" Levi asks, and he has to ask twice before Hange hears.
"Nanaba? You? I think they might have to elect you as the next commander," Hange says. She sounds awfully disinterested in the conversation, like she usually is when she's caught up in her work.
Levi shudders. He can't imagine taking Erwin's place, sitting in the same chair and at the same desk. He can't.
"And you'll be in charge of everything- that's got to be spiffing," she teases.
He shivers internally. In his head, Levi is staring at the shiny surface of the desk, looking at his distorted reflection, sitting on that grand magohany chair, the table at an uncomfortable height. And as he stares and stares, Erwin's face looks right back at him, his expression distant and still, just like it had been under a thousand layers of glassy water.
"Levi?" Hange says, looking up as he stands up, chair screeching noisily across floorboards.
"I've got to go," he says, before running off back to his room, only to puke all over the sink.
It's disgusting.
Levi is disgusted.
He dedicates the whole day to methodically cleaning up the sink, wiping and washing and drying until the smell of puke no longer lingers. After that, he mops the floor, gets Eren to drain his bathtub (to Eren's utmost confusion), dusts the ceiling, and repeats the process with his room. It's a way to take his mind of Erwin, take his mind of the possibility of being elected as commander. All he has to do is dust, wipe, dry – simple and monotonous.
By evening, his room is sparkling clean.
He still can't will himself to take a bath, so he tries the showers, but once the water hits his skin and fogs the glass he immediately freaks out and kicks open the door, slipping and nearly twisting his ankle. The water droplets seemed to shroud him, drown him, surround him endlessly – Levi shivers at the thought, grabs his clothes, and deals with the torture of spending yet another night smelly and grimy.
What's wrong with me? He thinks. Not bathing is the worse possible torture he can imagine. He might even end up like Hange – smelling like shit after not taking a bath for a week or two.
It doesn't get any better as the hours past. At around eight p.m, when the sky is flaming orange and gold and everyone is milling around, sharing friendly conversations before bedtime, Levi opens the toilet door and tries again.
He fails. It seems to be getting worse – this time, merely the sight of the tub filling up with water instills a fear so deep that he shuts the door tightly.
"Hange Zoe!" He shouts – his voice is twice as loud as usual when he's shouting – no, he doesn't even shout, usually. He hardly shouts at all. Not to get someone to stop the bath from filling up.
Hange appears at his door seconds later, not bothering to knock.
"What?"
"Help me switch off the tap," Levi tells her. His voice is still loud – why is he talking so loudly? His heart is thudding fast in his chest, his legs are locked in position against the doorframe. He does everything to prevent himself from taking off.
Hange stares at Levi quizzically. "You're not commander yet, you know.." she mummers, a tired smile forming, but Levi grabs her roughly and shoves her towards the bathroom door. Hange turns, annoyed now, but she catches the wide-eyed look on Levi's pale face and stops short.
"Levi?" she asks. She opens the door, sees the tub filling up from the tap. Levi winces.
"Are you alright?"
Of course he's not, is his answer, as Hange switches off that damned tap for good and drags him to the lab. Apparently, this is what is needed for her to "analyze" his "feelings".
"What?" she asks first, then "why?"
There are so many "why this?" and "why that?"s that Levi groans in frustration and answers "I don't fucking know" to every one of them. But Hange shakes her head, smiling painfully, proclaiming that there is always a reason for everything.
Shamefully, Levi tells her.
"It's a pain in the ass, I can't even take a bath. In a few days' time I'll be smelling like you," Levi tells her, but Hange doesn't even reply with a insult or two. She
just dutifully takes down notes, looking worried and sorry all at once.
"What about the lake thing you mentioned?"
"I don't know, shithead. I said already – I just fucking see him everytime I see the water – in that damned raft, sinking slowly to the bottom – "
Hange nods.
"This sounds awfully like PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, you know. More to add on to your neat freakishness."
Post traumatic stress?
Levi can't believe it. He has been through too many deaths and battles and failures to suddenly have an issue with someone dying. An overreaction, he tells himself. That's all it is.
"I'm not like you, four eyes," Levi says harshly. "There's no way I have that."
"But you have all the symptoms," Hange retorts, all too eagerly diagnosing him. And then her face falls. "You're feeling guilty, aren't you?"
"No! Why would I? . Just - I didn't expect the fucker to die. He was going to be Humanity's savior."
But she was there. Hange was there, the moment it happened. The seconds of bare silence they would come to regret, watching, waiting. The moment when believing in someone was the worst, most fatal choice.
"I feel the same way too, you know," Hange adds, and her words slip out softly into the quiet.
She stares at him expectantly. Levi catches himself wondering if what she said was true. If all that pent up confusion and suppressed feelings inside him were, of all feelings, guilt.
Hange reaches for him, her fingers skimming the fabric on his shoulder, but Levi tears away harshly and walks off, disgusted by his weakness.
The next morning, Mike and Moblit drag the unobliging Levi for a walk .
"You need fresh air," Moblit insists, and as Levi is about to pull away from Mike's iron grip Eren and Hange come up from behind him, all singing a chorus of "you need to get out, Levi," and "It'll be good for you, Levi."
It's so coordinated that there's no doubt in his mind that this was planned. Levi wants to argue, but strangely enough he willingly follows. After all, they may be right.
Levi is desperately hoping they are. He realizes that he hasn't gone out of the HQ ever since they arrived, and maybe he just needs a breathe of fresh air to clear his mind.
They are all too cheerful for his taste. As they walk through the corridor, the 104 trainees casting strange looks, at him they chatter and laugh. It doesn't look like a scene where someone has just died, but it's always like this after a few days. After all, the survey corps isn't a place to mourn – everyone's a veteran and know to drown their feelings in one thing or another. Regardless, they all have to move on quickly. There's nothing else they can do.
Except – Levi winces. Erwin. Just last night, he spent an hour or so tossing and turning, and his sleep was fretful. Levi can remember fragments of his dream : a titan here, dead corpses there, horses galloping frantically towards the walls with no riders (the dead were returning) and lastly Erwin. He seemed to be everywhere in his dreams. It wasn't like they were some absurd lovers that met only during the strange hours of twilight. It was- it just – he –he was just – just there.
Everywhere. Levi has no explanation for it – he cannot shake Erwin from his mind. It's some cruel trick that he catches Erwin in the subtle change of sunlight, in the golden crown of leaves, in the sudden shadows on the floor. It's downright cruel, that during those bare seconds he sees an alternate universe where somehow, Erwin is alive.
He's dead. Levi seems to need that constant reminder.
They reach the grounds. There's a distinct change in the air as they step out, and Levi is starting to think that maybe it's the HQ's stuffy air, maybe it's the too-solid floor, maybe this is all he needs to shake free from his vivid flashbacks and nightmares.
Of course, he's wrong. Immediately, his gut shifts, he starts sweating.
Is this familiar? He thinks. The sparsely spread out trees, the loose soil beneath feet. Of course. This is the wilderness outside the HQ, not near any part of the town. The ground is not neat and cobbled – his mind reels, reels all the way back to the moment when the titan's hand swooped down, picked Erwin up like a toy in his hand, lifted it to his mouth. The moment when he bulleted towards the titan, despair and fury raging in his veins, and moment before he reached – crunch.
It's not the same soil, Levi tells himself, but already his heart is beating rapidly, out of his control. He can't logic with himself once the panic sets in.
"Let's go back in," He mutters.
"What? We've just come out – there's quite a breeze today –"
"Let's go back in," Levi repeats tersely. His eyes are painful, his vision – it's all red, everything, everything spattered with Erwin's blood – too late, too late, too late – and even his hands are now sticky with blood and guilt and -
"Levi?"
"Hurry up, you shits," Levi growls, choking on the rising bile in his throat, "I'm going to puke all over you."
Everything's red. They reach for him, but he stumbles, crumpling to the floor in an undignified heap, and upchucks the remainder of this morning's breakfast.
They bring him in quickly, supporting him all the way to the bathroom, where he dry-heaves over the sink.
"Corporal!" Eren keeps saying, as if it's doing anything to relieve the painful ache in his chest, the nausea in his throat. Hange pats his back firmly, Moblit dabs at his chin with a damp cloth, Mike leans against the door, his nose crinkled.
Its disgusting. There is nothing Levi detest more than puking, and here he is. Two days in a row. Not only that, he is surrounded by people. How shameful.
"Are you alright?" Eren asks.
"I don't think so," Levi replies scornfully. "Tch."
Levi feels sick in his mind. Hange must be right about this PTSD, because even right now, surrounded by people, he feels strangely threatened by that empty tub lying across him.
He can't get into the proximity of it, nor can he bear to approach any large source of water. And now he can't even step out of the castle without seeing Erwin's blood all over the soil. Even the horses – they make him sick. Everything about the survey corps makes him want to quail and hide in a corner.
Humanity's strongest warrior has fallen, they seem to say, sharing worried glances.
Levi looks at his hands, stained with puke, and grimaces.
Humanity's strongest warrior has fallen.
Hange decides to let Levi stay in his room for a while to recuperate. Never has Levi felt so scared and vulnerable by things that can't kill him: water, soil, trees.
Under confidential orders, a doctor arrives at Levi's door. Hange has already told the doctor about Levi, to his annoyance. "Scared of water and grass" is what she conveyed. The doctor nods, nods at everything Levi repeats, diagnosing him with PTSD, exactly like Hange did.
He is handed pills for the insomnia, for the "hyperactivity".
Levi looks at them in his hand. He might go crazy. He sees Erwin's magnificent eyebrows in the V shape they form, and he curses at his wild imagination. Erwin is dead, he has to tell himself over and over and over. And it's my fault.
Levi swallows them in one gulp, and they slide sickly down his throat. Already he feels strange – what are these pills doing to him, exactly?
He can't argue though, because as Mike forces him into the tub and scrubs him clean, he simply sits there in a panicked daze, unable to puke or scream or do anything, wondering if he took one pill too many.
As Levi lies in bed the night after, he is kept awake by the possibility of nightmares.
His back is clean. This is a relief. But he feels strangely content, yet strangely empty.
As he thinks this, Hange is snoring beside him contentedly. It's her shift today – she has to make sure he goes to sleep, to bring him back to reality when he wakes up shaking, and craftily dab a damp towel over him when he's unconscious.
But she's asleep – that idiot. Levi can hardly drift off now, so he puts two fingers to her forehead and pushes.
"Wake up."
"Wha-?"
"Do your job, stupid. Or get out and let me sleep. I'm fine."
"You're not fine, Levi, what if you puke again?"
"I won't. That's what the pills are for."
"I have a theory that eating the pills results in a decrease in height –"
"Preposterous –"
"Is that why you're heavy for someone so shor-"
"Yeah, yeah," Levi grunts, rolling onto his side, facing away. He hates this arrangement, because being watched is hardly comforting. But he, who is susceptible to sleeptalking and waking up at inconvenient times, has no choice but to bear with it.
Levi definitely can't sleep like this, but his eyelids are heavy.
I'm being drugged, he thinks helplessly to himself, but he's too tired to do anything about it.
"Levi?"
"I'm going to sleep, shithead."
"Do you remember?"
Remember? His heart starts thumping loudly, and he turns to face her.
"That moment," Hange prompts. Levi thought she was half asleep, but her eyes glint brightly in the dark room. He wonders to himself why her eyes are so shiny, so bright.
"The one where Erwin died."
"Yeah."
"You're not supposed to aggravate my condition," he teases half-heartedly. "And who the hell wants to remember a scene like that?"
"Me," she whispers. "Did I imagine it or did we- did we really just stand and wait?"
The flashback is just as vivid as the nightmares. Levi can almost see, fragmented bits and pieces of that twisted hell, where Erwin was twisting and turning like a trapped worm in the titan's hand, and Levi was frozen, his hand reaching for his blades but not grabbing them, his feet tense and ready to spring – but he was simply waiting for Erwin to save himself once again like he always did…
"Yeah," Levi says, his voice muted. "We did."
"I thought he would save himself," Hange's voice breaks. And this is when Levi realizes that she's crying.
Levi doesn't know what to do with her tears, so he simply waits, her hiccups resounding throughout the room, while he lies paralyzed with irrational fear.
The scenes are playing like a movie reel, and Levi can almost feel himself there, with the wind in his hair and the smell of blood lingering on the grounds. He expected too much of Erwin.
I don't expect anything of anyone, Levi thinks to himself, and realizes his vision is blurry with tears. He wipes them off the back of his hand, gaze locked on Hange's face yet not seeing anything at all…
But he expected too much of Erwin. If only Erwin was a puny trainee, Levi would have immediately leapt in to save him, but in Erwin, of all people, Levi found unshakable, fatal respect.
"Why are you crying?" Levi asks harshly. "I'm the sick one here."
Hange doesn't reply, just hiccups, her fingers wrapped like a vice around Levi's forearm.
"Save it," Levi adds. "I can't sleep with this noise." He touches her cheek, she stiffens, but falls into his embrace like a paper doll. Awkwardly, he pats her back, comforts her as she holds in her tears.
It occurs to Levi that she has nightmares, too.
The days go on uneventfully. Levi isn't too sure if he's getting better or worse, because as the dosage increases the hallucinations fade in color like a old painting, but he starts to feel empty, dazed, far off and more detached than ever.
There are bare moments when Levi feels like himself. It is when Hange sneaks into his room in the middle of the night, which becomes a regular occurrence, and sneaks her arms around him like he's a life buoy. It is when Eren laughs, because his laugh, so rare like his smiles, chimes like church bells. It is when he passes by Erwin's study, catches a glimpse of golden hair, freezes in his tracks and stares, only to realize it is Nanaba. It is when he is huddled up in his room, rocking the pills back and forth in the palm of his hand, hearing Erwin's voice (it gets softer every day), savoring his last sense of anything before he slips the damned pills down his throat.
Hange doesn't know if he can go out into the field again, but Levi disagrees. He gets Nanaba to let him accompany the wagon. He is no longer so sure of his abilities, but he needs to go out there. After all, if he is no longer Humanity's strongest warrior, he might as well make himself useful. That's what the pills are for. They suppress everything.
They suppress Erwin. Some days, Levi sits in his room and sees how long he can't last taking them. Sometimes he waits for hours, waits until the feeling of drowning takes over, until the tub suddenly transforms back into Erwin's grave, before he slips them down his throat and goes to sleep. But those are the only times he can remember Erwin, because no one can really remember anymore.
Mikasa takes his position, takes charge of Eren. No one trusts Levi, not even himself. My weakness, he thinks, is in here. The pills are my killer and my salvation.
"You shit," he says. And those are always his final words before he takes them.
People whisper around him for the rest of the time, cautious and flittering, as if he might have another fanatic episode. He doesn't feel sick, to be frank. He just feels… shattered.
After all, he broke a wineglass in the mess hall just to be sure.