I can't, I can't, I can't . . .
On the roof of MP HQ, with a starlit sky blinking down on them, Levi drinks from a tall bottle of booze, steadily, his head bent back, throat open and lurching. The air doesn't move where they are; the roof of the taller, adjacent building cuts into the wind so that it shears off around them and prevents the sounds of voices and movements from carrying to where they are. Inside a silent pocket of solitude, they sit on the edge of the roof, their legs hanging under them, and look on at the quieting district. Kerosene lamps throb in the night, as mothers put their children to bed; and husbands make love to their wives; and the bravest soldiers clasp their lovers to their hearts; and the smartest soldiers lie in the dark, listening to their own breath. The bottle lowers from Levi's face, the liquid splashing against the glass. He thrusts it, half-empty, toward Eren.
"I'm underage," Eren says, not taking the bottle.
"I speculate, Eren, at the rate you're going, you'll be dead long before me. What did the other trainees call you—the suicidal bastard?" Eren nods, Yes, that's what they called him. "I believe every soldier should experience intoxication at least once in their lifetime." Eren takes the bottle, sips modestly, sets it down.
"Chocolate and alcohol in one day," he says. "Aren't you spoiling me?"
"You're one to talk."
"What do you mean?" Eren says.
Levi withdraws the box of tea from his mantle. "This." He sets it down.
"I thought it was shitty?"
The wash of moonlight illuminates Levi in profile. His mouth has relaxed some. "The tea wasn't shitty. The price was shitty."
"I'm sorry. You weren't supposed to pay for it."
"That's not what I'm talking about," Levi says. He pauses, then clears his throat. "In any case, it wasn't worth the cost."
"How much was the chocolate?"
"It doesn't matter. The reward was enough."
"It was really good," Eren says. "I'd pay an arm and a leg for it, but I guess that's not saying much." He looks at Levi meaningfully.
"Yeah, I get it," Levi says.
"Since you know—"
"Yes, Eren. I get it."
"They'd just grow back."
". . ."
"Like a disgusting lizard's tail."
"Are you an idiot?" Levi says.
The corner of Eren's lip smiles, a weary, isolated movement, his face unchanged apart from his mouth. "I didn't eat all of your chocolate, did I?"
"There's some left." Levi picks up the bag, passing it to Eren. Eren lifts a hand.
"No, no. I've had too much already," he says. "But I'm not opposed to having more of the booze." Levi passes him the bottle. The bottom slants from Eren's face, the liquid burning down his throat until not a drop clings to the glass. The alcohol sits like a hot stone in his belly, heavy and solid. A faint glow starts to shine through his skin as if he's smoldering from the inside, and his movements acquire a sluggish uselessness.
"Drink in moderation, you little shit," Levi says. "What if titans attack and I've got Humanity's Miracle plastered?"
"I'm all right."
"How selfish. I'll have to do all the work myself."
"I said I'm all right."
"You won't be."
Endless vertiginous darkness swells up around Eren and up his throat, and he tastes on his breath the heady particles of the booze. Warmer than blood, Eren's skin seems to soften on his skeleton and melt away. For a moment, he hangs his head, asleep, and then he wakes, raising his head, upright and open-eyed; all of it happening, sleep and wake, in a matter of seconds. He squints at Levi, watching his thin pale lips blur with movement. He hears a voice with a flat tin quality boil up from some place very deep. The voice ceases—and almost simultaneously Levi's lips cease to move.
"What did you say?" Eren says.
"I said don't tell your girlfriend I got you drunk," Levi repeats, in his flat tin voice that seems to boil up from someplace very deep.
"Girlfriend? What girlfriend?"
"You think I haven't seen you holding hands with the queen every day?"
"The queen? Our queen? Queen Historia? Oh, oh, I see. We hold hands because it helps bring back my memories. It's not my choice."
"That's right. If you didn't have the memory of a senile old man, you wouldn't have to."
"How's she my girlfriend if it's not my choice?"
"It seems to me your grip's a little too firm."
Eren snorts and his head swims. "I wouldn't want to interfere with Ymir's love life. She said she'll make Historia her wife one day, though I don't know how that will happen if she's not around. I've never understood Ymir. I don't know what side she's on. To be honest, I think she's on her own side. She doesn't care about anyone but herself. No, well, she cares about Christa—Historia—whichever." Eren feels his face with his fingers, the heat under his skin, the oil coming from his pores. "I feel terrible. I think I'm drunk."
"Aren't they both women? How would they procreate?"
"Who? What? Is that important?"
"Most likely."
Eren looks at Levi. "Then maybe you should procreate." A cold distaste comes over Levi's expression. "What?" Eren says. His head is still swimming. "Choose a woman. Any one will do. Or is it the thicker ones who are better at childbearing?"
Levi removes his eyes from Eren, putting them on the night's horizon instead. "This conversation's over."
"Well you started it."
"Survey Corps can't have kids for obvious reasons."
Eren looks at the ground, his hands loose at his sides, and nods. "But they can have intercourse. I saw it in the barracks, men sleeping with women. Sometimes I saw men doing it with other men. And back when I lived in the country, I even saw some guys doing it with cattle."
Levi says, "Something tells me that's not the way it's supposed to be done."
"That sort of thing seems meaningless," Eren says.
"We're not talking about cattle still, are we?"
"No, I meant kissing. Having intercourse too, I guess, if you don't intend to have a family. None of it will help us survive."
"Why won't it?"
"Well. It's." Eren looks at Levi. "You think it might?"
"Don't be stupid."
"You've never?"
"No."
"Why?" Eren says. "If you don't mind me asking."
"You're asking me why I haven't had a woman?"
"Or anyone at all." Eren points at the scroll painting. "You're Humanity's Strongest. It's not as though no one's interested."
"I'm the one who's not interested."
"Oh."
They fall quiet, and the air is still, and the throbbing glow of the kerosene lamps has been extinguished. Eren sits, motionless, on the edge of the roof. On the inside he swims in alcoholic confusion. He thinks that he could fall. He thinks that it'd be okay if he fell. He imagines the accidental slip and the feeling of weightlessness, the final impact—the pain. The splattering of red, the perfume of rust. The rip of his bones as they fuse and mend and crack back together, and he becomes good and new and pure again. His stomach is empty and hot. The moon washes over Levi. His mouth is relaxed and soft but unsmiling. Levi has kept the rose and is rotating the stem in his hand.
"It's dying," he says.
"You do realize what you're holding in your hand," Eren says. "What happened because of it?"
Levi puts his nose against the petals. "It smells too sweet. It won't last much longer."
"Throw it out," Eren says.
"Why?"
"It's dying, isn't it?"
"I just said that." Levi turns the stem slowly in his fingers, breathing in the sweet smell of dying petals.
"Throw it out," Eren says again.
"No."
"How can you keep it?"
Levi looks closely at the moribund blossom. The petals curl away from the stem, sagging in mortal inevitability. Eren reaches out. "Give it here. I'll do it." Levi keeps the rose in his possession. "Captain Levi."
"What?" Levi says.
"Give me the rose."
"You're ordering me?"
"Just give it here."
"Hmm?" Levi looks at him coldly. "You're drunker than I thought."
"Captain," Eren says. "I don't mean any disrespect. Just give me the rose, please." Levi doesn't move. "Captain." Levi moves his hand deliberately away. Eren glares at Levi with hot, blazing eyes; and Levi looks at Eren, cold and calculating. They watch each other in silence.
The night surges on, and the alcohol has disrupted Eren's homeostasis, hindering his judgment and equilibrium. His head is swimming, and his emotions are unbound and floundering. And again he thinks that he could fall—and become good and new and pure. And everything would be okay again.
And as Eren swims in the turbulence of his own emotions, Levi's iron body is held immobile, movement poised, however, in his muscles, ready to spring. He's coiled up like a whip, waiting on edge. Waiting for something to snap . . . There's a pause, a portent. A standstill as if a pendulum has reached its highest point, held in existential uncertainty, suspended in the air just before the backswing.
Eren plunges forward. "Give it—" Levi holds him back, a hand rigid against Eren's chest, reaching the rose away from him. "Give it to me, Captain."
Levi shoves him aside, the rose held away. Eren flings out a hand, scrabbling, thrusting bodily with his shoulder in an act of drunken ferocity and passion, struggling against Levi, who jerks and stretches his arm back. "GIVE IT TO ME."
Levi shoves him off and switches the rose to his weak hand. Holding the rose away, he seizes Eren by the chin with the strong hand, his fingertips digging into Eren's cheek with such force that Eren's mouth puckers and bulges open. Controlled, calm, and detached, Levi holds Eren's jaws apart, curling his fingers hard, pushing them deep into Eren's cheek such that his mouth bulges out further, a quivering enflamed protuberance, and Eren stops groping for the rose to grope at Levi's hand instead, saying, Ah-ah-ah, thin glistening drool running down his chin.
"What's the matter with you?" Levi says, his lip lifting on his teeth.
"YOU SHOULD HAVE KILLED HIM," Eren says, gasping, the words slurred and thick and incomprehensible if not for the irrepressible voice that doesn't seem to be a voice at all, but a bodiless and ubiquitous roar. He sobs breath. "YOU SHOULD HAVE FUCKING TORN HIM APART. WHY DIDN'T YOU—" Levi grips Eren's mouth into silence. Choking, Eren claws at Levi's one hand with both of his, saliva pouring down his chin and running hotly into Levi's palm.
Levi speaks without volume or violence, but without gentleness either. "Listen to me and listen well. Killing that man and throwing out this rose can't change what happened. Nod your head that you understand." Eren nods his head and Levi releases him. The imprint of Levi's fingers manifests on Eren's skin, savage and distinct. Eren wipes his chin with the back of his hand.
Levi continues, "We were in a crowd, and we have a public image to uphold. You can't act on emotion alone." Watching the five fingerprints bruise across Eren's face, Levi rotates the rose slowly and gently by the stem. "I understand it's upsetting. But you need to use that modest mind of yours to think, Eren."
Eren's irises whirl with a passionate and personal unforgiveness. "Why keep it?"
"She liked the color. And so do I."
"The color? The color? The natural thing to do is get rid of it."
With an expression heatless and inscrutable, Levi extends the rose slowly at Eren. As Eren goes to take it, Levi says, "Would you destroy the world too?"
"What?"
"You'll destroy a fragile thing because a person used it to do something cruel. Does that make this rose responsible?"
"No, that . . . demon was responsible."
"But you'll destroy this rose because it was used by a demon? It wasn't given a choice, was it?" Eren's outstretched hand shrinks back. "Of course not, what a stupid question to ask. This is only a flower." Levi holds the rose, red and withering, between their two bodies. "You want to throw it out? Well, go on, take it. I won't stop you." Eren doesn't take it, staring at Levi with those five fingerprints still hot on his face. Levi goes on, "It's cruel, what happened because of this rose. Still . . ."
Levi plucks a petal from the flower and releases it over the edge of the roof. They watch it float and catch the wind current. It swirls and sails into the black night.
"She liked it." Levi extends the flower to Eren again, this time his eyes steadying upon Eren with a quality softer but unyielding all the same. "To her it meant something special." Eren takes it.
The rose is limp and soft on his fingertips. Closing his eyes, his heart beating steady and slow, he lifts the flower to his face, feeling it against his lips and then against his eyelids. When he breathes in, he smells a motley of sweetness and death and blood and tears. "She said it meant passion and desire," Eren says, opening his eyes. "But when I look at it, I see thorns."
"What's the difference?" Levi says.
"What do you mean?"
"Doing it is only another version of pain and violence."
"Doing it?" Eren sets down the flower, turning at the waist. "Captain Levi. Violence and sex aren't supposed to be the same thing. It's not right. Doing it with cattle seems less wrong, even." Eren puts his hands on the back of his neck and pushes them up into his hair. "Traffickers were going to sell Mikasa, and so I killed them. Nobody asks why I did it. People take one look at me and call me a monster."
"You did what you thought necessary. You weren't wrong," Levi says. "But can you really blame people for thinking that way? This is only my opinion, Eren, but you don't look like much of a hero."
"Yes, I know."
"Good, then," Levi says. "You say they're different, but I've understood violence and sex as the same since I can remember."
Stay out there No no Leave it shut darling Hush now Everything's all right He'll be done soon Shhh stay quiet for me You always listen to your mother so well
beyond the fatal shut door the bed was thudding and there was a clap of hand on cheekbone and Levi seized the doorknob and said Mom and she said Hush now Listen to your mother and so he hushed and listened to his mother as an implacable voice beyond the door said whore and slut and you little bitch and if you don't shut your mouth right now I'll make your bastard son watch and teach him young how to be a man
After that night she grew ill, her flesh rotting from her wounded thighs outward, and Levi wouldn't understand why she'd been alive one day and dead the next until he was a soldier and saw it happen again to the prostitutes that the higher-ups purchased. Their desiccated corpses were disposed of, treated with indifference—disgust, even—as pious men stuck their noses in the air and said, God will cleanse these holy walls of every last filthy whore. And Levi looked at them coldly and said, It seems more reasonable to eliminate the demand, Gut every last filthy pig who buys women. They ignored him. Levi drew out his switchblade, wiping it with a cloth to a hot silver glare: And castrate the filthy ministers who buy little boys.
Eren touches Levi's hand and Levi flinches on the inside. On the outside, he holds stock-still and erect.
"If you've misunderstood all this time," Eren says, "I'm guessing you haven't kissed anyone." Levi turns his face full on Eren, blinking. "I hadn't either before today."
"Before the tea shop hag?" Levi says.
"Yeah."
"Did you enjoy it?"
"I don't know. But I'd like to try it again."
Eren's hand comes off of Levi's hand to take the mantle. With a light pull, the material slides off of Levi's shoulders, hissing, and puddling on the ground like a pool of black blood. Underneath he's wearing a plain black shirt. Eren puts his hand against Levi's exposed throat, feeling the pulse point jumping steadily under the skin.
"It's not that difficult," Eren says quietly. "You just—feel your way through it and listen to your gut."
Searching Levi's face, Eren leans in and waits, still searching, his eyes focusing slowly on Levi's mouth like two turning dials. His eyes are old and weary, and Levi sees an image: a metal bit jammed between Eren's jaws, chains suspending his arms out from his body, his posture bowed in a subservient kneel, defeated. That flame in Eren's heart, so fragile, so unreliable, sometimes a roaring blaze and sometimes a thin flicker, has been ultimately extinguished.
Is it really meaningless . . .? Levi wonders. After losing everything, he'll descend into infinite emptiness . . .? Humans put his will in chains . . . and now that flame is gone.
Levi lets Eren close the distance, holding his body still and keeping his eyes open, even as Eren brings his face down—and even as his mouth slants firmly across Levi's.
Long eyelashes and a straight nose stretch to each corner of Levi's sight. And although he awaits the kiss knowingly—watching the distance slowly diminish, Eren's eyelashes becoming longer and blacker and more distinct, the smell of Eren's skin and clothing surging closer; a mix of chocolate and blood and booze— Although all of this happens within Levi's knowledge, he's nevertheless surprised by the contact as if Levi has, up until now, only been a spectator, separate from what was happening. That what was happening—Eren coming closer, closer, You haven't kissed anyone . . .—was happening to somebody else. Not Levi. Not until now. Levi feels as though he has just arrived. Been delivered here, suddenly, into this moment. Eren's mouth is soft, warm.
Now awakened fully to Eren's touch, Levi trembles and his heart begins to seize with a hard, painful arrhythmia. Levi's blood surges, pulsing wildly against Eren's hand. An emotion and a thought boil up from an underground vault of his consciousness where he's kept them suppressed and unrealized by pure mechanical instinct. The thought, the emotion, the admiration: I am captivated by him. But now Levi knows, the mechanics of his instinct abruptly and irreparably disassembled. The shield and the iron armor crack apart. His eyes close. I am captivated by him. Another piece of armor crumbles away. Behind his eyelids the image continues: Eren defeated, raw and naked, on his knees, the flame in his heart cold and dead. Now Levi removes the metal bit, slick with drool and blood, from Eren's mouth; then he unlocks the chains from his arms, lifting Eren from his knees to his feet. Eren won't look at Levi, head hung, ashamed of himself: It's all right, Levi would say. You can lose again and again, as long as you get up and keep fighting . . .
Eren has his hand on Levi's throat, and both of Levi's arms remain at his sides. Neither of them has moved to touch the other, only kissing with a restrained curiosity.
Still restrained and still curious, Eren's lips come open and so do Levi's, and when he feels Eren's tongue, thick and wide, push hesitantly forward, Levi pulls it in between his lips and into his mouth, reaching out with both hands to drag Eren's face down and deepen the kiss. He can taste on Eren's tongue the metallic memory of the bloodstained bit. Eren holds back, exhaling on a low, feeble sound that Levi can feel on his mouth. And then Eren turns his face away.
Levi watches Eren's lips retreat, growing smaller and distant, as if he can will Eren's tongue back where it was behind his teeth. His blood continues to pound, beating rapidly against Eren's hand. Levi expels a hard breath through his nose. Eren wipes Levi's mouth dry with his thumb. They say nothing, Eren feeling Levi's heartbeat in the artery going through his throat, their lips damp and gleaming. They look at each other. Eren's face is shut and depthless.
He releases Levi and then lies down on his back, flat and rigid like a recumbent effigy. The wells of his eyes catch silver beams of moonlight.
"Have you ever felt guilty for being alive?" Eren says, lifting his hand at the sky, palm out and flat. The pearlescent moon pulls the shadows of Eren's fingers across his face like slashes.
"No," Levi says and draws up a leg, resting an elbow on his knee. "Is that why you let that streetfighter beat the shit out of you?"
"What?"
"I saw it. You got your ass handed to you. It was embarrassing to watch." Levi stares at Eren and when he speaks, his voice is calm and uncritical. "Did you want to feel sorry for yourself?"
Eren lets his hand fall to his chest. "I wanted my mind to go quiet. That's all."
"I know of simpler ways to do that."
Eren turns his face toward Levi, dispassionate and blank, his eyes landing accidentally on the leather sheath strapped to his calf. An interest gradually overcomes Eren's idle facial muscles, the expression taking shape with a slow, arduous movement like a face afflicted by neural impairment. The interest that finally emerges is of a quality similar to that of sexual hunger. Before Levi understands what the change in Eren's face means, Eren surges over and whips the knife out of the sheath. His eyes are all pupils.
"Hey," Levi says.
"Do you always carry a blade with you?" Eren says.
"No."
Levi watches Eren gauge the knife's sharpness by lightly scraping the threshold across his knuckles. Under the blade, the bite's pressure pushes the color from Eren's skin, raising patches of bloodless yellow-white. Eren's eyes have darkened the way the shopkeeper's eyes had darkened when she looked at Eren. Levi stretches out a hand.
"Give it back to me, Eren," he says. "That's an order."
"Why?"
"You'll disobey me?"
"No sir."
"Give it here, then."
Eren holds on to the knife. "Want to hear something funny? During training I saw two of the other recruits watching the sunset. One girl asked her friend if she knew what the sunset looked like. And her friend said No, what does it look like? And the girl said it looked like the sun had slit its wrists and let its blood run into the sky. Ha ha ha."
"I'm not laughing," Levi says.
"You never laugh."
"What are you saying? I'm giggly as hell."
Eren is startled into laughter—and comes up short in a kind of dumb amazement. He stares at Levi. "Your sense of humor is . . . unexpected."
"I don't know what you mean." Levi closes his fingers around Eren's forearm and slowly, very carefully extracts the knife from his grasp. "Have you been eating?"
"Yes."
"Mikasa reported you've been skipping meals."
"I don't remember skipping any meals."
Levi sheathes the knife. "Hanji is going to keep a closer eye on you. Make sure you're not doing anything to compromise the titan experiments."
"I wouldn't compromise them on purpose."
"I know."
"I can't remember things very well," Eren says. "I don't know if I ate this morning. I remember thinking about eating this morning. But I don't know if I did."
"Eren." Levi claps his leg twice and stretches out an open hand, summoning Eren closer. At first Eren raises his head from where he's lying on the ground and stares, dull and uncomprehending, at the beckoning gesture. Then he drags himself weightily over to Levi and lays his temple on Levi's thigh.
Levi says, "Tell me what's making your mind so loud that you can't remember things—and that you want to be beaten bloody."
"I see them," Eren says. "All the time. Everyone who's died because of me. I feel responsible."
"Don't flatter yourself. You're not the reason they died. It was—"
"Titans. I know, I know. But they died thinking that I was something special, that I'd be their trump card. If humanity is betting on trash like me—"
"Humanity IS betting on trash like you. I know that's a demanding burden to place on a kid. And I don't expect you to accept it willingly. But that is your role. Do you understand?"
"I know, I know. But what if I can't?"
"You don't have that choice, you little shit."
Squeezing his eyes shut, Eren turns his cheek into Levi's leg and opens his mouth to breathe in the crisp air, taking it down his throat and into his chest, pulling it deep inside his belly. The hot wave of emotion inside his skull recedes. He closes his mouth and begins to fade. He becomes very still.
Reaching over, Levi seizes the furled scroll painting that's been sitting, forgotten, by Eren's knee. "Want to know what I think? I think the guy who painted this piece of shit had an agonizing bowel blockage that fucked with his aesthetic eye." Eren shakes with voiceless laughter. "Erwin's wasn't bad. Apart from his face, of course. But that couldn't be helped." Eren laughs again, harder, soundless, and then flings an arm over his eyes and starts to cry. Levi puts down the scroll and lays his hand palm up on the ground.
In the full moon's light, the rose throws a small shadow jagged with thorns.
"I can understand your feelings," Levi says, looking at the solitary scroll painting, perfect and unwrinkled, neatly tied closed with string. "However, if you possess the power to change things, you bear the responsibility to do so. You say you want freedom. But how can you realize that dream when it's your power that enslaves you?"
Eren sobs into his elbow, loud and uncontrollable now, his abdominal muscles retching up a warning of the hot booze in his belly. His throat burns as the acid rises from his stomach and then ebbs away to his chest, sitting there as solid and sharp as a rock. Still Levi's hand lays limp, palm up on the ground.
"I don't have an answer for you, and I can only speak from my own experience," Levi says. "I perform the role expected of me and abandon everything else, including my dreams. Are you prepared to do that?"
Eren's head disappears under both of his arms. He disappears entirely—receding into two phantom eyes and an unbodied stream of consciousness. "I don't have a dream. I'm going to fail and I'm going to die. It's my fate. I don't even know what's right or wrong anymore."
"After everything that's happened, you still believe there's such a thing as right and wrong?"
Levi brings his limp, upturned hand off the ground to take Eren's wrists and remove them from his phantom eyes. "There's no such thing as right and wrong; it's not that simple. Only a child believes in good and evil."
In each of Eren's wrists, two delicate cords and a fine blue pulse run beneath the skin. The cords glide and pull into taut cables, as Eren makes his hands into fists. He wrests his arms from Levi's grasp.
"If there's no such thing as right and wrong, then how do we know who to fight?" Eren says.
"You're still looking for someone who deserves to lose, Eren. Haven't you considered that perhaps you're the one who's wrong?"
Levi swings back and feels on his face a displacement of air in the wake of Eren's fist, the aftermath of a motion that has missed contact by a small margin. Before Eren can find his wits and recuperate and try again, Levi's hand is wrapping Eren's jaw, once again holding his teeth apart. Eren glares up at him, his mouth glistening and puckered open, from where he's still lying, belly up, in Levi's lap.
"You tried to hit me," Levi says, almost surprised. Eren glares, silent, furious, his lips strained and gaping like a fish's. Moisture stands bright in his eyes. "It must be infuriating to have your illusions shattered—and so tactlessly, too. You can cry about it if you want."
"I'm not crying," Eren says between Levi's fingers, the consonants nonexistent without the use of his teeth.
"That's good, then. It doesn't matter whether or not you have a dream because a guy like you can't have dreams. Your place is here in the blackest pit of hell. You're a titan— No . . . you're worse. You're a monster."
Still holding Eren's teeth apart, Levi bends his head and slides his tongue inside Eren's swollen, puckered mouth. Eren goes slack, eyes shut, both of his arms folding into his chest. He clutches reflexively at his shirt in fists. The hand around Eren's jaw softens—and then Levi is caressing Eren's face, as if he's subdued the violent mechanical instinct that he learned in the underground and now his hands communicate to Eren's skin nothing but gentleness and compassion. He draws back and watches Eren's eyes slowly come open. They open halfway as though an onset of drowsiness has suddenly stricken him.
Through a dark, thickness in his throat, Eren says, "If I choose to fight you, I'll lose. And it's not because I deserve to lose. And it's not because you were right and I was wrong, and you deserve to win. It's because you're stronger than me. And the strong always win." Levi looks back at Eren tenderly.
"Which means if I'm enslaved by my power"—Eren reaches up to touch Levi's face—"then you're enslaved by yours."
Levi leans his head into Eren's palm and closes his eyes, and he could be grieving, with that calm melancholic expression on his face.
"That makes you a monster too," Eren says in undertone.
Levi exhales what may be a low, humorless laugh, and when he speaks again, his voice comes up from a deep, quiet, placid place. "I'm nothing like you. I'm not nearly as scary."
Eren snorts. "That's what you think."
Levi puts his lips to the delicate, blue pulse in Eren's wrist and closes his eyes. "Well . . . Someone's got to keep that monster in you in line."
"Captain . . ." Eren's voice is soft. "I think I'm beginning to understand you."
"Am I really so esoteric? Or is it that you're exceptionally dense?"
"Both, probably."
"How unlucky of us."
Levi opens his eyes and wraps his arms under Eren, bringing him near. Eren's face lays open and unguarded at Levi. "What if it's not meaningless?" Levi says. "I can't say I know for certain. I haven't the experience to make that call." He leans his forehead against Eren's forehead, his chest expanding with a substantial indrawn breath. He closes his eyes again. "You said it doesn't have to be violence, and I'll trust your judgment. So tell me one last time, Eren, and I'll believe in your answer: Is it meaningless?"
The answer comes out unsteady and weak, the warmth of Eren's forehead sliding against Levi's, as he turns his head from side to side and side to side: I don't know I don't know I don't know—