Thank you all so much for reviewing, and one very special thanks to Tea's for pointing out quite an embarrassing mistake last chapter and being very nice about it. Is fixed now. Anyway, I didn't ever expect the second chapter to take this long; there's really no excuse for me keeping you waiting. I actually wanted to write from Levi's POV and talk a little more about the original battle (what he did after Eren lost it), but originally it was taking longer than I wanted, so I started this instead. Then.. it took a LOT longer. I should come out with that other chapter eventually, but I'm making no promises after this horrible delay. Well, I hope you enjoy!

The ticking of a clock.

The gentle gust of a wind.

Leaves rustling.

The sounds of peace.

They drifted into Eren's consciousness languidly, taking their time, easing his way from nothingness to the world of the living. There was only sweet darkness at first, a place where he could rest, and he laid there for a while, taking it the sounds of the world and idyllic feel they left him with.

Why am I... here?

Where is here?

He furrowed his brow, grimacing. His mind felt fuzzy, sluggish; it felt like reaching through yards of mud to even touch the hazy memories of what had happened before he ended up here. Something was wrong. He hadn't just woken up from a natural sleep, that couldn't be it, his mind just felt too hazy...

I was... outside the walls. Yeah. Outside the walls.

Recon mission. With Corporal Levi-

LEVI!

The very name felt like a bolt of lightning. His heart almost stopped and it became hard to breathe, his world frozen around the corporal, the man suddenly the only thing he could remember.

Levi. He'd been with Levi. They'd been trapped up in the trees; Levi had somewhere pulled him up there despite a hole having been chewed out of his chest, saving them both from the murderous, ravenous hordes, but there'd been no hope, had there? He'd been too badly injured... bleeding so much... they'd both seen men succumb to far less on the battlefield, and trapped as they were, away from doctors and medicines, civilization of any kind- Levi was dying. They'd both known it.

I transformed to try and get him back. It was all I could do. I shifted and then...

His mind was a blank.

Eren realized, with a terrible, cold jolt, that he had no idea what had happened after he'd shifted into Titan form.

Is Levi..

Did I save him?! Or-...

Oh, god, is he dead?!

When I broke orders... did I kill him?

Is he dead?!

The faint sounds of a bird's call reached his ears, and it was all he needed to put a sharp stop to his terrible circling thoughts, suck him out of the nightmare outside the walls and make him remember he was back in the present again. If he was alive, he had to be inside the walls... an unconscious human outside was equivalent to a dead human.

But had he made it back with Levi? Had he made it back in time?

Or... had he not made it at all? He'd never shifted into Titan form that badly injured before- had no idea how long he could hold it in that state. Had he shifted back into human form before ever making it back- been found by a Recon squad?

If so, Levi was dead. There was no chance the corporal had been able to hang on long enough to be found.

There was barely any chance Levi could've hung on long enough for him to reach the walls, period- even if Eren had made it back, there was no guarantee that he had survived.

There was only one way to find out.

Breathing carefully, Eren focused all his efforts on the outside world. He felt sore and exhausted, his eyes like they were weighed down by leaden weights. It took all his concentration to keep himself from slipping away again, instead to wake up even more, but did so only with Levi in mind.

Corporal... please be alive...

At last, the heavy waves of exhaustion and fatigue receded enough to the point that he could master them. And Eren opened his eyes.

It was bright, rays of what could only be sunlight cast across the cracked ceiling above him. He recognized the stones as the castle, but this wasn't his room in the basement- no windows down there for sunlight to ever get in. Frowning slightly, Eren let his gaze roam around the room as much as he could without turning his head, because the very thought of moving spelled torture.

"Can you not see?"

He froze.

Oh... my god...

Is that-

Is that...?!

With a short, involuntary gasp, Eren twisted his head after the source of the question, the sudden infusion of energy clearing everything up sharply and leaving no more room for confusion or uncertainty. The blur of colors became sharp and clear and shapes turned defined and constant- and the owner of the voice was answered.

Levi.

Levi.

Levi. Is. Alive.

His heart started beating again, and then, Eren's world once more began to turn.

The elite corporal was sitting back in a chair, his long legs crossed, head cocked to the side. His black eyes were flat and and uncaring, analytical, but the tired rings under them betrayed a vulnerability to what Eren had once thought to be an invincible persona. His apathetic expression didn't reveal an ounce of anything but his usual intelligent examination, but his appearance was still- almost haggard. Not something that Eren had ever seen from Levi before.

In his hands was one of his dual blades- it looked like he'd just been interrupted in cleaning it. Spots of blood marred the otherwise stainless steel, the cloth in one of Levi's pale hands worn and frayed from the scrubbing he was working out of it- somehow, the sight didn't even surprise him, or even look out of the ordinary, at that, and Eren found his eyes searching elsewhere.

He couldn't see Levi's injury.

Where it should have been, the forest green mark of the Recon corps draped over his side. The only evidence that a wound even existed was a peculiar way he sat, slouched to the left, very carefully avoiding but any strain or stress on his right side, and the bloodless cast to his features, complexion bleached from Levi-pale to deathly white.

Somehow, Levi was alive and well.

"C- Corporal..."

And Levi just frowned.

"I asked you a question. Can you not see?"

Shaken, Eren blinked, then managed to stammer, "Y-yes- I mean, no- I- yes, I can see. It... was just blurry when I woke up..." He coughed, trying to clear his dry throat, and the corporal just kept on watching him through hooded eyes. If he was relieved at the answer, he didn't show it- just kept on looking at him like he was expecting something more. Pausing, Eren stretched his fingers before trying to push himself upright into a sitting position- but nothing happened. He didn't even rise a centimeter off the bed. Frowning, Eren tried to do it again, but with less success than before.

Levi's blank gaze narrowed a bit, and the corporal's eyes moved from Eren's to what he was trying to do, and then, he just sighed. Raising the unclean sword in his hand, without saying a word, Levi delicately reached forward, poking the blanket for just a moment before the weapon found a loose thread. Levi lifted the blanket up and and pulled it down with nothing more than a silent look.

Eren's heart, just recently recovered from the shock Levi's voice had given him, almost stopped again.

His arms hadn't grown back.

The skeletal structure he very clearly remembered from before remained, but that was all that remained. His skin and muscles grew on to a little past his forearms but then very abruptly stopped to reveal nothing but bone. Just where his humanity cut off and the look of a monster began, there were dark rings drawn around his arm in what looked like permanent marker- seven or eight of them, going back a couple of inches. Some were a clear, vibrant black while the ones farther back were faded, as if several days old. After a moment of shock, Eren glanced at his other arm to find the same thing, then, swallowing, tried to flex his feet.

Same story.

Nothing but bone.

"Oh... oh my god..."

"It's not permanent," Levi said flatly, and he deftly twitched the blade from the loose thread to touch the black circles drawn around his right arm. The cold metal came to rest at the oldest mark, the one highest up, just barely pinpricking into his still healing skin, and the corporal said, "This is where the flesh stopped nine days ago. It has grown, at a slightly accelerated pace, 2.54 inches since then- not counting today's progress. If this continues, Hanji estimated everything will have grown back in another two weeks. Function and strength will still have to be tested, though."

Levi's words did nothing to ease the terrible knot of sickening unease growing in his stomach. Eren just stared, transfixed, at the sight of his malformed limbs, horror rising and rising until, with just as much dexterity as before, the corporal had flicked the blanket back over them, hiding them from view.

Swallowing dryly, Eren coughed again and blinked, trying to focus, looking back Levi- who had returned to cleaning the sword. "Why is it taking so long?" he managed weakly, the picture of bones for hands sticking in his mind, the idea that, no matter what Levi said, he would be stuck like this, giving birth to so much panic that he was proud for what little steadiness his voice contained. "And- and you said nine days- have we really been here nine days?!"

Levi nodded slightly. "Yes, nine days. Yes, you have been unconscious this whole time. And it is taking so long because you defied orders. Again."

And with the dark, furious glare Levi focused on him then, the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees, and Eren had to hold back a shiver.

"S... sir?"

Levi's eyes narrowed dangerously. "How healed were you, exactly, when you shifted, shit for brains? Did you not realize it was dangerous or are you just fucking clueless? And, so help me, if your only reasoning was to save me, then I don't care what happened out there, I will kick the shit out of you."

Eren blinked in surprise. He opened his mouth to reply, then slowly shut it again- fighting to process the elite corporal's sudden shift. After a short moment passed in utter silence, he managed to reply with a slow, "I still don't know what order I defied, sir."

Levi did not look amused.

At all.

"If you, as humanity's best hope, needs a direct order to not risk suicide, then you're even more brainless than I thought."

The accusation, the typically brazen insults- just the elite corporal being himself- somehow, Levi's anger sparked a chord in him, and Eren remembered back to when he'd been just as furious at Levi as the corporal was now at him- and that anger all came rushing back in an instant, and Eren recovered himself enough immediately to give a real retort. "Except I wasn't risking suicide, Corporal- I was trying to save you!"

"Haven't you learned by now that no soldier's life is worth risking yours for, Eren?"

"But I wasn't trying to save a soldier's life! I was trying to save your life!"

Levi's cold hearted reply was cut off before it began. The corporal blinked, his eyes widening briefly at the reply, a faint surprise coming to touch his features- before they were wiped clean again in an icy show of blankness. Not apathy; jus an unreadable shield.

"...Eren," he spoke carefully, and there was a certain unhappiness weighing heavily on his voice, "you still don't understand- do you? Just how important you are?"

Eren looked steadily back at him, meeting his gaze, the hot anger pulsing inside him a powerful inspiration for a challenge when the soldier who sat before him was colder than ever. He was pretty sure he knew where this was going, but the fuck did his worth to the squad have to do with this. He wasn't going to say he understood, because even if he did know just what Levi was thinking- he also didn't understood.

And he wasn't fucking going to agree to something he did not agree with.

Levi sighed deeply.

"I am humanity's strongest soldier," he said matter of factly, in the manner only Levi could- that wasn't bragging, gloating, or arrogant, just a blatant stating of facts. Facts that happened to be that he was the strongest soldier humanity had ever seen. "If I died, then it would be a serious loss to humanity. But you are still more important. Your mere existence allowed us to retake Trost- before you, we had never been able to retake territory, even with me. You are humanity's greatest hope- you. No soldier is worth you risking everything- not even me. Do you even realize that by trying to save me, you risked humanity? Humanity, Eren!"

And Levi still didn't understand.

Fuming, Eren wrapped skeletal hands tight around the blanket, fighting to reign in his anger until he could think of something comprehensible to say. How to beat it into the corporal's head that this had nothing to do with soldiers, Titans, or humanity- that everything he'd said was worthless because that wasn't what this was about.

The elite corporal was upset with him, too- not that Eren was looking for gratitude, but saving someone's life was usually grounds for thanks, not fury. But Levi was angry with him because Levi thought he'd valued humanity's strongest soldier over his own life- he didn't even realize that Eren had been trying to save a friend- not a soldier, damn it!

Eren couldn't even begin to think of a way to explain his actions to the man who he was half certain was being intentionally dense. He couldn't even start to force into Levi's skull how dammed enraged it had made him that the corporal's only goal with his dying breath had been assessing Mikasa, and how dammed enraged it had made him to watch his corporal die- with a smile on his face. Glad that he could be replaced.

"You asshole! You don't understand anything!"

Levi quirked an eyebrow, as always, taking whatever Eren threw at him in stride and keeping his cool demeanor about him. The corporal just kept on staring at him unblinkingly, then opened his mouth and spoke again- and just as before, there wasn't a single flicker of anything in his voice that made Eren think he was getting through to Levi. "There aren't many people who dare to insult me. You're either incredibly sure of yourself, or incredibly stupid. Given your actions outside the wall, I am leaning towards stupid."

"Can't- can't you ever do anything but insult people?!" Eren yelled- anger boiling over until, suddenly, all he wanted to do was punch Levi in his stupid face. "I'm trying to talk to you and you're not even listening!"

"You are the one who brought insults into this, shit for brains."

"Agh!" Groaning, Eren resisted the urge to just scream in face of the infuriating man's calm retort. "Le- sir, fucking listen to me! I don't care how good you are, I don't care how many Titans you've killed! I didn't try to save you because you're important to humanity! I saved you because you're important to me!"

And finally, Levi's expression was wiped clean.

Righteous anger turned into shock. Cold fury at his misdeeds shifted into blank incomprehension. The corporal's usual impressive, intimidating state had been shattered with that last sentence, making it one of the only things that could render their squad leader speechless that Eren had seen- the only one, in fact, that wasn't a Titan chewing a comrade alive.

But Levi was still Levi, and he recovered himself faster than Eren wanted to admit, the shock transforming into a more understanding, but no less judgmental mask. The corporal shifted his position slightly with a frown, as if deliberating on how best to answer, before he spoke again- a low anger lurking in his voice, a sinister parallel to the rage Eren felt himself right now.

"That doesn't change the situation at all, Eren. And I should hope, by now, you don't need me to explain why."

Eren knew exactly what he was getting at, all right; had gotten the lecture more than once since joining Recon and more than a hundred times in training. Shadis, Levi's old squad, Levi himself, just a few of the line of characters that preached it like it was their doctrine.

And he could concede the validity of it. Haltingly, reluctantly, god damn furiously, he could announce defeat and say Levi and the others were right. Because they were, in a way.

But he hadn't bathed in blood for the decades that they had. He hadn't become so dammed desensitized to the endless macabre violence that he could look at such a situation objectively and not subjectively. And he was still in a place where he could look at a soldier who could turn his back on a friend and leave him to be eaten alive, just because it was easier, or safer, and feel revulsion.

And Eren looked back at Levi, glaring in a silent challenge, telling him without saying a word that yes, he would have to say it again, because there were some things he would just refuse to accept.

Levi did not look happy. In fact, he seethed.

A long moment of silence passed, a silent staring contest that Eren refused to lose. Levi may be able to pull rank, scare the hell out of them all, and even beat them if it was it took to make a point, but this was one point Eren was not willing to budge on.

Levi's glare intensified to a scathing stare, and when that still did not do it, the corporal sighed, lowering his gaze to his lap. When he at last answered, his voice started off as a low monotone, but it quickly grew to one seething with the same kind of rage that beat inside of Eren now.

"Feelings and personal affections don't mean anything to us. What matters in this squad is the effectiveness of a soldier. Sacrificing yourself to save another is only the valid choice if you are less powerful than him; otherwise, you are risking civilians dying and more Titans surviving. Your goal is to bring death to them and keep them as far away from the walls as possible; nowhere in that is saving your friends. We exist for the good of the people, of those who can't, or even won't, protect themselves- we do not the good of ourselves. You know this, Eren. Mikasa, Armin- me- we signed up to give our lives for the safety of others. You doing what you did is turning your back on that and saying yeah, we'll die for the people- but only if we're okay with it, otherwise, no, they're fucked."

Eren knew that. Levi had known he knew that.

And it didn't make a dammed difference.

That disgusting hierarchy of who deserved to live, and who deserved to die, where they were lined up in order of increasing physical skill and the less monstrous man eating creatures from hell you could kill, the less you deserved life.

"Yeah, maybe it is. And maybe you're okay with being devoured because you're maybe not as important to this fucking war effort as I am. But maybe I'm not fucking okay with that! If that's what we start acting like, then what the hell makes us different from the Titans?! All they do is single-mindedly walk towards their goal, no matter what it costs them, without any kind of kinship or bonds between them! That's why they're so fucking scary! It doesn't matter how many of them we kill, they don't care, even if we beat them down so low there was only one left it would still try to eat us because it doesn't care about what it has to sacrifice to get what it wants! It- it's like some kind of fucking instinct! Isn't that what makes us different, better?! The Titans don't give a shit! We actually care about each other, and this is more than just an instinct to us- even you! You cared about making sure there was someone who- who could take your place- you- you fucking prick! That's proof; you still care about us, this, beyond death, because we're not just heartless soldiers! I- I'd rather be a flawed human than a- a perfect Titan soldier, anyway, sir! What kind of victory would it be if we won, but had to resort to being like them, those soulless bastards that exist only for the mission?!"

Eren's frayed emotions had snapped somewhere in the middle of Levi's explanation, and just poured out the second he opened his mouth, but he didn't give a shit. Levi wasn't the cool headed emotionless soldier he'd idolized as a child; for some reason his visage and status gave off that impression when it couldn't be further from the truth. He wasn't losing face by having an emotion, and even if he was, it didn't matter. They spent their time risking life and limb, jumping away from huge devouring mouths snapping at their heels, and slaughtering senseless beasts. They'd seen each other at their worst and and then some.

And that, there, was the heart of the matter.

Levi's worst was not fear for himself. It was fear of what would happen to humanity if he died.

Fucking selfless, arrogant prick!

If that was all their lives were worth, as weapons against the Titans, Eren wasn't so sure he wanted that life.

By the look on Levi's face, Eren guessed that if he were capable of walking, he would've left. As it was, probably trapped in that chair, the corporal had to respond- and Eren waited, angry, breathless, and still, for an answer.

The cold corporal sat silently, stony as a statue with an expression carved from marble. He looked down at his lap, unreadable but not unfeeling, his dark, silky hair hanging over his eyes, shielding the only part of his emotions that he couldn't disguise. Whatever he was thinking was not something Eren could see.

Levi was quiet for a long time. He didn't move save for breath, slow, barely noticeable movements as each breath expanded in his chest. His long fingers still gripped the hilt of his sword, gently, the weapon fitting into his hand as naturally as if it were an extension of his arm, but the faded cloth he'd been cleaning it with had slipped out of slack fingers into his lap.

As minor as the gesture was, the evidence of shock was still there.

At last, Levi's flat voice was heard again.

"Our humanity is worth little, in the end. If we try to salvage it, and start making rules of how we can and can't fight to satisfy some ridiculous definition of morality, or ethics, then we will lose and we will die. War has no rules. Would you rather humanity be moral and dead, Eren? Or besmirched, a history darker than we would like, but alive? Because if you die, we're finished."

He looked away, eyes visible now but gaze distant, focused on some brick in the wall rather than Eren. Distant and detached, cold, a soldier to passion's end, and Eren watched him.

They were more alike than he'd thought.

Not it terms of raw skill, but personality. Eren could see that Levi, perhaps, had been a lot like him, once. Long ago, in his earliest days as a soldier, before he'd become a blade so sharp a simple touch drew blood. Hot-headed, stubborn, unwilling to accept a rule just because it was a rule.

He wondered what he'd seen, done, and lived to transform into the powerful creature he knew now, then decided to just be glad he hadn't gone that far. Yet.

"I won't subscribe to that, you know. I won't let someone die just because it's safer for me."

Levi didn't look surprised. He just nodded, his gaze still focused away from him, his features still calm. "I know," he said.

Levi was capable to viewing this all in the grand scheme of things. Of stepping back from the little picture to see the big, then acting accordingly. Eren couldn't do that, not when the 'little' picture was a single life, a human being, a flame of existence in dire danger of being snuffed out. Nor did he want to.

"I don't even think I could," he continued on, pressing his point., for some reason he did not know. "When I- shifted..." He paused, thinking back to the darkness in the trees, a man eating army grinning up at them from below. "I didn't even think about any of this. I only- saw you," he cut off harshly and swallowed, remembering then the terrible sight of teeth marks buried deep in his chest. "I...I think of you as a friend. And all I thought about was saving you. Not... none of this humanity or war stuff. I only wanted to get back here with you."

"Yes," Levi said vaguely. He looked back at him for a moment, his grey eyes piercing in a way that wasn't entirely uncomfortable, the staredown something no soldier of Levi's could be unused to. The corporal watched him unblinkingly for a moment, still and unflappable.

"You will see as I do, someday," Levi continued easily. His tone was not urgent. "When you have done more. You will be able to understand."

"I hope I never do."

Levi watched him for a long few moments after that. His eyes were flat but not unkind, expression guarded but not cold. Eren met his gaze, looking back into the storm of grey for as long as the man would hold it.

At last, the corporal returned all his attention to the simple, mundane task of cleaning his blade.

"You should rest more. The faster you recover, the faster you may enter the field again."

Eren nodded slowly. "...Yes, sir." He obediently shut his eyes. Sleep felt a long way off, at least, a restful one, but the argument had exhausted him more than he wanted to admit. His wrists and ankles ached, his head was starting to pound, and his eyes felt tired indeed.

Outside, the birds chirped again.

It was a long time before the sounds crafted by the outside the world and the ancient, creaking castle were joined by Levi's soft, powerful voice once more. It felt as natural as the rest of what he could hear, and left him on sleep's banks instead of drawing him back.

"May humanity someday learn from you, and be like you, Eren. They no longer need me, or Mikasa, as their model and hero."

He grinned weakly.

Erwin approached the quiet scene from the door, the only noise in the room the chirping of the birds outside. Eren slept soundly still, his green eye closed, his dark hair limp on the pillow, a sharp contrast to his sallow skin. He had the look of a wraith about him, thin and drained, a skeleton that had perished many years past that they had merely set up here to craft the misconception of life. The stubborn stumps of arms lay atop the blankets now, his skeletal fingers now for the world to see.

Humanity's savior, huh?

Erwin looked to the other man in the room, the one that he had once believed would be humanity's defender until his death. Levi was no hero, no godsend; he would never have driven off the Titan threat or been their savior- but he would've fought to his death to stop a single Titan from breaching their walls. He still would- but Eren's existence now gave Levi the possibility of a death that didn't involve a Titan's jaws.

The creak of the door had alerted the man to his presence without him once turning around; Erwin saw it in the slight tilt of his head, the nearly imperceptible stiffening of his posture. He remained silent, waiting for Levi to speak.

"This generation's different."

Erwin glanced down at him without saying a word.

The young man rubbed the cloth down the already shining blade one final time before it disappeared into his fist, and he lay the weapon across his lap. "They're fucking insane, Erwin. Not just this one. Mikasa, Armin, the whole batch. Clingy to their morals in a way that's dangerous."

"One would argue that this is not a bad thing. Moral to a fault, you know."

Levi, still turned away from him, slowly shook his head. He let out a bitter chuckle, and said no more.

"Come on." Erwin moved forward, reaching out to grip Levi's left arm, as firm and steady as he could, leaning down. But Levi did not move.

His expression was unreadable, cloudy eyes narrow in some undefinable emotion yet undeniably focused on Eren. He watched the impulsive soldier, mouth again set in a perpetual frown, his haggard features drawn and dark. "...We were right about his motivation. Fucking brat."

"You could be grateful. He saved your life, after all."

"No one asked him to."

"I would argue that he deserves even more gratitude, then."

Levi didn't retort, and that spoke more than any words could.

Erwin carefully tugged again, and this time Levi responded, spreading his legs and planting his left foot firmly on the stones. He struggled for a second, breathing slow but hard, before he managed to lift himself up off the chair, and Erwin helped bring him up the rest of the way until he was standing on shaking knees. The cloak that had hidden his side fell away, revealing the depression in his shirt where there should've been his chest. Erwin would've called it grotesque, but doing so would've made him a hypocrite.

He took advantage of Levi's inability to speak, his struggles too great, and got in a parting remark. He wasn't able to help it, nor could he stop the smirk that grew. "Don't worry. I know you're thankful- and Eren probably does, too. You're not as stone cold as you tried to make him think, and he knows it."

Levi's glare darkened.

The two cripples made their way to the door, painfully, oh so carefully, their backs turned to the room. They didn't see Eren's smile widen.