Late
Something was very, very wrong.
The captain was late.
And the captain was never late.
Dinner was already long over, the dishes cleared away, the table empty except for the lone plate of food they had saved for the captain.
"What if something's happened to the captain?" Fretted Eren.
"Stop worrying, Eren," Mikasa reassured him "I'm sure he's fine."
"Still," muttered Eren, trying to shake off the worry that was nagging at the edge of his brain, unable to forget the heavy shadows on Levi's face "I'll go look for him."
Ignoring Mikasa protests about "leaving the shorty to sulk on his own", he walked off to find his captain.
Where could he be? wondered Eren.
He had already searched the whole castle twice, from top to bottom, from the captain's room to the cleaning cupboard to the tiny shelf under the sink. And still the captain was nowhere to be found.
"It's so stuffy in here," he muttered to himself "maybe outside would be cooler."
Of course! The roof. The captain must be at the roof.
Eren set off towards the staircase.
Before stopping dead as realisation struck him like a bolt of lightning.
He remembered the dark look on Levi's face when Petra's father had come babbling about marriage.
His whole squad had just died.
He remembered Gunther's seriousness, Erd's teasing, Oulo's endless attempts to imitate Levi and Petra's cheerfulness.
Petra who had been about to propose to Levi.
He wouldn't. The captain couldn't be thinking of... that, could he.
But he knew deep down how much the squad had meant to Levi.
And that they were gone...
He wouldn't, he reassured himself, he would never do something like that.
But he couldn't help thinking that...
jumping from the roof...would be the perfect way to die...