Rating: T
Characters: Levi, Petra
Genre: Angst, 'Character study'

Apathy

There's something that happens when you've lost before and go through the same loss again. The first loss lodges in you and over time hollows you out, if you're not careful, so that when the second loss happens, instead of something else being taken from you you're actually being filled up.

I wasn't careful. I'd been hollow ever since Farlan and Isobel were killed. I'd tried not to be – I let myself be loyal, poured my energy into our work, even gained a new squad in time – but there was still that space inside me, I think. Waiting for the second loss. You don't think it'll happen to you but it has to, in a way. I wish I knew why.

Somehow, I never expected it to be Petra. I knew losing members of my squad was a possibility. Hell, even losing all of them at once was something I entertained in the darker nights. But she had never been in my mental image of who I could lose and I don't know what exactly made her an exception – yet she was. And to see her lying there…I remember feeling apathetic to it. I remember thinking to myself, Here it is, here's the second loss. And it filled me. I'm not sure how apathy can be a full feeling but there it was. My head felt stuffed with cotton. I couldn't think straight. My throat felt choked and every organ I have was bloated with this strange feeling of being proved right. If you know something's bound to happen, however bad it is, what else can you feel but a sort of grim satisfaction when it does happen? And I'd been so used to being empty for so long that I couldn't stand it – what else could I do but try to empty myself, try to get rid of the apathy and force myself into feeling some kind of rage? But rage, ultimately, is too easy. For me at least.

Their death…her death…didn't feel like unfair treatment to me, either, and I suppose that's the worst of it. I can't claim to have not deserved it. But I don't want to be pitied for thinking I'm doomed to lose everyone I'm close to. While in a way I do think that, pity is a waste of everyone's time.

Petra was the one to teach me that, now that I think about it. We argued about it not long after she enlisted. What was funny is that initially, we both thought we were of opposite opinions but by the time we debated it to death it turned out we believed the same thing all along. There were a couple of occasions where she could have pitied me but she refused to and I loved that about her. I knew she was honest in that. To not have her in my life anymore…I'd be lying if I knew how to describe how it feels, but I know that I am not the same.

I suppose as the months and years go on – if I have many of them left – I'll move past this. I'll learn to buoy myself up without her, though I don't know what will take her place – I don't think anything can. Even when I make the tea the exact same way she did, with the citrus zest in the bottom, it's not the same. It's hard to contemplate how I can ever be the same again if even the tea tastes different because it – like me – hasn't touched her hand.

And the worst of it is: I truly believe things come in threes.

A Note from the Author: Forgive my rustiness - I've not written from Levi's POV before and nor do I write in first-person usually!