{Chapter Fifty-Three: Pep Talking Ghoul}
When Levi woke up, the first thing he noticed was that he couldn't open his eyes. He peeled his hand away from the ground and rubbed over his closed eyes. It came away wet, and when he opened his eyes, drops of water clung to his eyelashes.
And it was cold. Really cold. His breath wasn't quite visible, but it was close. As he sat up, his clothes crunched softly, covered with frost. His fingertips were almost completely numb. Adding all this up, Levi guessed that frost had formed on his eyelashes and frozen his eyes shut. It made sense, considering Eren next to him. The brunette's eyelashes, instead of a line of fine dark brown, looked like ridges of glittering crystals.
The angry and depressing reds and blacks from the night before were gone. Now the world seemed white, gray and blue, oddly at ease. The sky was overcast, blue-gray with heavy rolls of dark off-white clouds threatening rain, or quite possibly snow. The sun was just a blurb of light distorted and muted by the thick clouds. The resulting lighting was sleepy and tranquil. The leaves that remained were browned with autumn and cold, but frost coated them and turned them silver. The grass was hardly considered green anymore, and was decorated similarly. The tiny ice-crystals swirled and danced about the dirt and created childish patterns in it. It filled up the grooves in tree-bark, taking on a bluish tinge and giving the trees a ghostly, scaly look. The remnants of the previous night's pyre were still faintly smoking, but no embers or red cinders were visible. Frost daringly came close to the charred black branches and gray ashes, like the faint warmth was struggling to hold on and hissing furiously at the ice as it advanced. Sleeping bodies glittered with cold, clothes, hair and eyelashes almost completely frozen. The horses looked almost like ice-sculptures, only the heaving of their sides, the fluttering of their manes, and the flicking of their tails giving them away as living. Everything was quiet. The only noises were everyone breathing and sighing in their sleep and the burble of the icy river nearby. As if to break the mildly depressing air, a lone chickadee began to sing somewhere. His song seemed... reassuring, in a way.
Blinking, Levi realized Ghoul was already up, washing his face in the river. The dark colors of the teen in general blended into the scenery so well that it'd taken him a moment to spot the boy. Groaning a bit as he stood up— Levi didn't think he'd ever felt so stiff in his life!— he moved over to greet the wounded cadet. Ghoul looked up as he approached, face dripping.
"Morning." the outsider greeted softly.
"Mm. How's your leg?" the captain replied, kneeling next to the younger ravenette.
"...I don't think... bad as before... still not... gear..."
It seemed like huge portions of the reply were missing. But Levi was fairly certain he knew what'd been said. That is, Ghoul didn't think it was as bad as it was previously, but it was still enough of an injury that he wouldn't be able to use his gear for a while once they got back inside and replaced it. That meant if they encountered any Titans between Walls Maria and Rose, Ghoul was essentially dead weight.
Levi wanted to say something, but didn't know what. Ghoul seemed to accept this, cupping his hands in the rushing water and splashing it into his face. The water dripping down his skin and causing his hair to cling to his face made his eyes seem bigger and more childlike. What it also did, Levi noticed at length, was hide the tears that were certainly blurring Ghoul's vision. The only reason he'd noticed was the rims of red around the tired orbs. He wanted to grimace, since his attention was now drawn to the boy's overall appearance. There were bags under his eyes and a sticky glisten on his throat that Levi identified as bile. There were long scratch-marks down his forearms, and a few places had broken skin that seeped little crimson beads. His sides heaved and he seemed to sway the tiniest bit.
"... Nightmare...?" Levi guessed. Ghoul flinched, gagged, and nodded slowly. This made Levi frown, saying, "Are you alright?"
"... Yeah... Just... I don't know. I'm just... just..." A shuddering sigh escaped the teen. "I'm not okay. I'm scared and tired of running and watching the people close to me die. I..."
Levi surprised both of them by putting a hand on the younger's shoulder.
Neither spoke, just listening to the ambience of the semi-frozen world around them. They didn't exactly take comfort in each other's presence, but it was soothing to have another person nearby after the night before. Everyone who'd thought they'd be unable to sleep had wound up asleep soon enough, and it looked almost like everyone was frozen and unable to ever wake up again. But Ghoul and Levi, crouched by the river, had defied that and broken the cold spell.
"... Have you ever seen what animals do in winter?" Ghoul asked, changing the subject to a less depressing one.
"What're you talking about?"
"In winter, animals change their coats so that they blend in with the snow. Rabbits, foxes and other animals turn white. That way, predators can't see them. They blend into the snow so well that it's almost impossible to tell the animal from their surroundings." Ghoul explained.
"Really?"
"Mm-hmm. It's almost scary how much better it seems animals are adapted to the world when we humans struggle to get by."
Levi blinked thoughtfully. If animals deceived their predators so easily by just blending in, why couldn't they?
After that thought crossed him mind, he had to repress a shudder— He was starting to think like Zoë! Nothing could possibly be worse than that!
"... Captain?"
Levi hummed in response, watching the cold-darkened water rush past. The flicker of a fish briefly caught his eye, but it was gone almost instantly.
"... Is it my fault...?"
Levi's head snapped up, and he glared furiously at the cadet. Ghoul couldn't help but flinch. "I haven't the foggiest what you're referring to, but no. It's not. Now shut up."
A heavy sigh escaped the younger ravenette.
Levi was forced to do similar, saying, "Look. If it's about everyone dying, it's not your fault. We all have to die sometime, right?"
"Yeah, but I shouldn't just be standing idly by while it happens. What does that make me?" Ghoul whimpered, trembling a bit. "All these people... I could've helped... What happens when she joins them...? I wouldn't be able to... Dammit, I know this happens and I've lived through hell, so why am I all shook up?!"
The captain tilted his head back, staring at the lazily crawling sky and the fizzy sun hidden behind the thick clouds. "Alright, you want it straight? Here you go," he announced, "You hide too many things, you jump at shadows and cringe at the stupidest things, you don't speak your mind or leave a firm impression on people, and no one has time for your pity-party. You need to get your act together so you can make up for lost time and stop holding us down. You're a soldier and an outsider, so your timidness is so absurd even Shitty-Glasses's Titan-fetish makes sense. You drive me insane with your 'poor me' shit and nobody lets me do anything about it because they're coddling you when you just need to fucking suck it up and get over yourself. We're fighting a war and don't have time for useless morons who mope about over the tiniest tragedy when they could potentially prevent many more."
There was quiet between the two as Ghoul looked at him with his mouth hanging slightly ajar. He looked almost completely childlike, elbows resting on his knees as he perched on the balls of his toes, fingers a mere inch above the rushing water. His hair hung about him in a curtain, but was parted enough to reveal his wide, shining liquid eyes. His mouth was stunningly pink compared to his cold-touched pale skin. His expression was the rapt one of a child who jut finished listening to his father telling him a good story. The chickadee had stopped his song, leaving only the river's chilly burble to fill the space between them.
Eventually, Levi pushed Ghoul's head down a bit, ordering, "Quit looking at me like that, brat!" with a faint blush on his cheeks.
Ghoul giggled, slowly building up into a quiet chuckle, and then full-blown laughter bubbled past his lips.
"What the hell is so funny, you shitty brat?!"
"It's just... ha-ha... Everyone does coddle me, like they think I'm going to break and I can't take the truth. Even Reaper, though she doesn't really know it. And then there's you, who pushes me and beats me up, dragging me around... Ha-ha-ha! Thank you, captain," the outsider smiled, dabbing at the tears of mirth clinging to his eyelashes, "I really needed that. I feel a lot better now."
Levi was silent for a moment, face shocked. Recovering himself, he turned his head with a huff. "Just don't expect it to be a regular thing, got it?" he snapped. Ghoul just laughed, and he was glad the teen couldn't see the faint blush darkening on his cheeks as he stood up. "Whatever. Help me wake everyone up, I don't wanna have to explain to Zackly why half the best soldiers available to humanity are frozen solid in the middle of nowhere."
OOOOooooOOOOooooOOOO
A/N: Y-o!
I had a lot of trouble with— not this scene— this idea. I wanted to have this sort of scene since the beginning, but I couldn't figure out where to place it. The original idea was to have Levi smack Ghoul around some after Theresa is killed in combat, but she's too important for that. This scene itself almost became a side-story, but Ghoul's going to undergo a bit of a personality-change after this, making it relevant to the plot. I also felt like our story needed a bit of a comforting scene after what I did to you all.
On a more serious note...
I mentioned the plan to kill Ghoul before. I have the scene all plotted out. But I know you guys love him, and it'll break my heart to break everyone else's heart, both in the story and you guys. So I've been looking at my reviews a lot lately, and here's your chance to save Ghoul.
A lot of you seem to want me to put Ghoul in a pairing. If I do that, I'm not gonna kill him. I might hack his leg off or something, but he won't die. So I'm going to say this:
Review and tell me if you want me to put Ghoul in a pairing. This will save his life. If I can get enough votes to pair him up, he'll survive this story, but otherwise he's going to die.
Thank you for following us thus far and giving us your support!
