A/N: This is the last chapter of this fic...wow, it was so much fun writing it and reading all the reviews! Thank you so much for your support throughout this, although you'll probably hate me for the ending... heheh...

Sarah Gore Blackplage: Yes, I have watched the anime, and I have read some of the manga, how else would I be writing a fanfic for it? Of course this isn't canon, it's an AU and a fanfiction, none of this actually happened in the show...just sayin', in case you couldn't tell...

Disclaimer: Don't own SNK or the characters

~Chapter Ten~

Levi should've known that happily-ever-afters didn't exist in the real world.

They waited long, agonizing hours in the waiting room for information on Eren, similarly to what they'd done while waiting for him to come out of surgery. Armin threw up several times from the coffee (seriously, what with him being the genius, you'd think he'd have learned already) and Mikasa cried a couple more times, but Levi tried to remain emotionless throughout it all, and he lured himself to sleep with thoughts of Eren's smiling eyes and passionate kisses.

He made sure he remembered every detail of their time together, even the stupid ones, like when Levi fell out of a window while he was trying to reach the dirty spot on the very top, or when Eren brought home a stray cat and it almost clawed his face off when it saw Levi.

Every moment was frozen in his mind, like the details he'd never forget from just before the car crash. He wanted to remember everything.

It was two and a half days before Erwin came out with the news, his eyes unnaturally solemn. He walked out with Hanji, who went over to Petra, who was standing at the nurse's station. Whatever Hanji said to her, she suddenly burst into tears, and a sick, dreadful feeling stirred in Levi's stomach.

"I'm sorry," Erwin said, and those two words conveyed everything he meant to say after that, all the things that remained unspoken between them, the words that no one wanted to say because they were too painful.

Mikasa and Armin burst into tears, holding each other. Levi didn't do anything. He could feel the tears lurking at the edges of his vision but he didn't let them go. He remained detached from the situation because if he let himself cry, the pain and agony that would come flooding in would be too much.

He'd lost everything. He'd promised Eren they'd be together forever, but then it'd slipped away. He was alone again, and it had never felt more painful.

"He's dead," he whispered to himself, and Erwin nodded, looking sick.

"How could you?!" Levi shouted, grabbing a fistful of Erwin's shirt and shoving him up against the wall. "You were supposed to save him and you let him die!"

"Levi, calm down," Erwin said in an irritatingly unfazed way. "There was nothing we could do."

"How can you be so calm?" Levi felt himself breaking down and a few tears slipped down his cheeks. "He's dead! He's fucking dead and he's never coming back!"

He broke down, sobs forcing their way up his throat and tears flowing endlessly from his eyes. Erwin pulled him to a hug, the man's strong arms encircling Levi, but it didn't make him feel any better because he'd lost everything. Eren was gone, forever.

~o)0(o~

Levi didn't go to the funeral. He couldn't handle seeing Eren pale and dead, looking like he was asleep only he was never going to wake back up. Mikasa had chosen an open-casket funeral, and Levi didn't understand why she would do something so cruel to herself and to all of Eren's loved ones.

Instead, he stayed at home in their shared room and looked through Eren's belongings; the love notes from Levi that he'd saved, his messy clothes, the books he'd always loved, and finally, his sketchbook. Another sob built in Levi's throat when he saw the book. It was worn and old, but cared for lovingly. He flipped through the drawings. Some were of Mikasa and Armin and his mother, there were a few of Marco and Jean holding hands and looking into each other's eyes lovingly, but most were of him. Eren's sketchbook was filled with drawings of Levi, sometimes smiling, sometimes scowling, drawn from all different angles with painstaking detail. Then Levi saw the one Eren had made when they'd been in the hospital together, the one of Levi sleeping that was definitely the best of all his works.

Levi looked at the drawing and cried, tears dripping onto the paper and smudging Eren's careful lines. He cried out in anger when he saw the blemishes on the page and ripped it out of the sketch pad, tearing it in anger and ripping it again and again until only small pieces remained. He then went through most of the notebook, destroying almost all the drawings except for one. It was one of him and Eren together, kissing, drawn from a photo that Armin had taken of them a while back. He wanted to rip it out, destroy it, but he couldn't bring himself to. Instead, he turned to his old, beaten-up laptop and opened the story he'd been writing for Eren. The younger boy had read through it all, sometimes adding in details here and there were he thought it could be improved. Levi's eyes filled with tears and his finger hovered over the delete button, the one that would erase all traces of the story.

But he couldn't do it. This story had been Eren's just as much as it had been his, and it seemed so wrong for it to just be gone. Levi opened up the document and scrolled to the last page. He'd been almost finished with it and wanted to present it to Eren as a present on the anniversary of his mom's death, but then Eren had had his attack and all previous plans had been forgotten. He hesitated for a moment, then started typing.

~o)0(o~

Eren stood on top of Wall Maria next to Levi, Mikasa, Armin, and the rest of the Survey Corps. The Titans were gone. They'd defeated them all, even the Colossal Titan and the Armored Titan. Those betrayals had been hard on everyone, but they'd done it. And now they were all free. They could go to the outside world, see the oceans, the lands of ice and fire and sand.

"We're finally free, Heichou," Eren said happily, gazing out into the world, the new one that they were about to explore. Their mission was complete. They could finally be happy together.

"It's funny, I thought this would feel more complete," Eren frowned, "but there's something missing."

Levi looked over to him. "I think so too."

Eren glanced at him and his eyes widened at the expression on his superior's face, and with only a second's hesitation, he leaned in and kissed Levi.

The corporal was so shocked for a moment he almost didn't kiss back, but when Eren began to pull away, disappointed and embarrassed, he grabbed the younger boy and kissed him back hungrily. Eren's eyes lit up and he dissolved into the passionate kiss.

"I think that was what's missing," Levi said, a small smile gracing his lips as they turned to look out over the unexplored territory, lit on fire by the setting sun's rays.

"Are you ready?" Eren asked him. Levi nodded, and together they jumped off the wall, activating their 3DMG and heading out into the unknown.

A/N: Hope y'all liked it...sorry about the ending, but it could not be avoided (well, it probably could have, I just like causing a lot of pain. And angst. Whatever).