Questions

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It had never occurred to Eren that Levi, too, had a shocking past. In the simplicity of his mind, Levi had always been a soldier in the Survey Corps. Yet that was foolish of him. Of course, everyone was a kid once – including Levi.

Eren glanced up at the man talking to the one-eyed guard on top of the stairs thoughtfully. What was Levi like as a child? Had he always been silent and cold? Did he ever laugh and run and play like the other kids he knew?

"…You're certain?" The man was saying.

"For shore." Nodded the guard, "Ain't no one go up withou' a pass. Ain't no one want to neither – not with the war goin' on above."

"And there are no other openings?"

The guard shook his head slowly, "Just de one. Change every month, too."

"And the old ones?"

"Nailed shut. Concrete an' all. Ain't no one getting out through dose."

Eren scrutinized the side of Levi's face in concentration, wondering what he would look like as a kid. It almost seemed wrong to imagine the hard, expressionless face on a child. As curious as he was, the boy wouldn't dare wonder what it was like for Levi to grow up here. He had been here less than a day, and his skin was already crawling with discomfort. He couldn't wait to go back to the dungeons inside the Survey Corps headquarters. Something about the Underground was sucking out all the hope he had inside, and it felt as bad as the prison cells he had been forced to live in.

Imagine growing up here… Eren looked around at the scene again. There were no fields to run in. No markets or bazaars. No bright sun to hurt his eyes. No funny clouds in the sky. No chirping of birds or squeaking of squirrels.

Nothing.

There were just people, and gloom, and the desperate yearning of crawling out of this hole. How could Levi have had anything close to a childhood down here? How could anyone?

Eren remembered his parents taking him into the fields when he was younger. He remembered running barefoot on the crisp grass. He remembered there was a particularly large butterfly that day, and it had perched briefly on the tip of his nose, making him squeal with delight. It was hard for the boy to accept that Levi never had any of that.

A few steps up from Eren, Levi had finished his conversation with the guard. He handed him another wad of money before heading down to where the boy stood. As they walked down the many stairs once more, a new thought buzzed into the boy's mind and Eren snapped his head up to look at the man.

"Levi?"

"…Yes?" Asked Levi distractedly, still contemplating the information given by the guard.

"How did you leave then?"

Levi stopped walking. A small part of him regretted ever telling Eren about his past – it was obvious that was all the boy had been thinking about for the past few hours. He should have known revealing one section of his life would only lead to a thirst for more.

As private as he was, he did not want to lie to the boy. Any lie would taint the innocence he had strived so hard to protect.

"…Erwin." Replied the man simply.

Instead of looking confused, however, Eren's eyes lit up at the single word. "Erwin saved you." Said the boy childishly, "Erwin saved you like you saved me."

Those were two incomparable events; and thinking about it made Levi feel incredibly uncomfortable. But the boy had obviously made up his mind and actually looked quite proud of himself for coming up with the analogy.

Levi turned away, unable to carry out the conversation any longer. Instead, he focused on the task at hand. No one had seen a woman with this child anywhere in all the hostels, lodgings, or temporary shelters. The guard has confirmed no one was able to sneak out above ground, let along smuggle out a child. This meant the woman and the kid was still somewhere in the Underground…yet where? They'd need a place to stay, and no one in the Underground would dare harbor someone trying to escape Springer. He was a powerful presence in the Underground, all-knowing and ruthless – no one would cross him, not when everyone was just trying to stay alive.

"Does your family still live here?" Piped Eren, trailing behind Levi.

Levi froze, and the boy walked into the back of Levi's legs. Rubbing his forehead, Eren looked up at the man in daze, not understanding why they had stopped. Yet when the man turned around, the pure fury in his dead eyes terrified every fiber of the boy's being. Suddenly he wasn't the reticent yet gentle man anymore. Suddenly he was the grim reaper himself.

"I…I…" Stammered the boy, attempting to apologize, but the shudders got worse and he shrunk back more and more, hoping the shadows would conceal him.

"No more questions." Said Levi in a dangerously low voice that was barely audible, yet every syllable pierced the boy.

For the rest of the afternoon, Levi did not speak to Eren again. The boy followed him sheepishly as the man continued with the investigation, regretting his invasive questions. Eren remembered how angry Levi was when he ruined the Wings of Freedom piece of cloth with ink, and he connected the dots in his mind: he must have said something that hurt Levi as much as losing his friends did.

What if the man didn't have any family anymore?

Eren's stomach seemed to twist into tiny knots. What if the man, like him, had lost all his family? And here the boy was, prying into that pain he bottled up inside. Guilt filled the poor child up and he balled his tiny hands into round fists.

The next time Levi addressed Eren was after the entire day of asking around. The investigation had led nowhere, and he had no choice but to get them a very shabby room in the residential quarters of the Underground.

As Levi cut up the blob of greyish food he bought off the streets, the boy had already wobbled over the uneven floors to the battered table. Levi watched from the corner of his eye as Eren carefully laid the man's jacket over the back of the chair – just as he had done every single day in the small cabin at the training camp while he waited for the man to come home, and every single day in the dungeons of the Survey Corps Headquarters.

Some of the tension left Levi's shoulders as he watched Eren smooth over the crinkles tentatively.

Finally breaking the silence, Levi pushed over the food on a cracked plate he found in the room.

"Come and eat."

Eren climbed up the chair opposite of him docilely like a little animal. But as the boy stared down at the greyish guck, he wrinkled his nose.

Levi didn't blame him. There were very few commodities down in the Underground, and the gap between the poor and the poorer is so severe that disparities in food distributions were more than normal. For residents that didn't have a distributed amount of food, the only available edibles on the market were "blocks".

Blocks were a disgusting mixture of food scraps all chopped up and cooked together before being sold in units. Most of them contained what fodder would: cow intestines, chicken bones, and pig blood. It had been years since Levi ever ate a bite, yet now here he was again.

"Eat." Threatened the man again as Eren played with his half-block with his spoon.

Eren's small mouth turned downwards into a tiny pout as he unwillingly ate a spoonful of the blob. As soon as he swallowed it down, his nose wrinkled up even more, and he refused to eat another bite.

Levi narrowed his eyes.

"Finish your food, Eren."

Eren sniffed and ate another bite reluctantly before putting down his spoon again.

The man did not have the patience to play House. He reached over, picked up the spoon, and scooped up a huge spoonful of the goo. It was disgusting, but beggars couldn't be choosers and the boy was already malnourished. If Eren wasn't going to eat, he was going to force feed him.

Eren yelped as the spoon pried over his teeth and pushed a huge portion of the block inside his small mouth, almost choking him. Coughing, the boy swallowed with all his might to free his airway.

"Can you eat by yourself or do you need me to keep feeding you?" Asked Levi darkly.

"…Eat by myself." The boy murmured fretfully.

"Good." Said the man as he sat back. He surveyed Eren as the boy bit back tears and ate in silence, making tiny gagging sounds along the way. Finally, Eren managed to finish the half block and put down his spoon, looking very much grossed out.

As Levi cleared the plates, however, Eren chewed on his lower lip the way he did whenever he was thinking hard about something. The man had obviously noticed this trait and stopped what he was doing to acknowledge the boy.

"What is it?" Levi snapped sharply.

Eren looked up almost guiltily, caught off guard by the man's insightfulness into his emotions.

Levi had thought Eren was going to complain about being forced to eat the block when the boy reached out and grabbed his large hand with his tiny ones. His fingers were so small that they only closed upon one knuckled finger.

For a second, the pair froze in action.

Then, Eren's round jaded eyes stared deeply into Levi's.

"I can be your family." Said the boy clearly and hurriedly.

Levi glared at the youth face filled with hope; the widened green eyes filled with yearning; and remained speechless as the innocence of a child came dangerously close to seeping in his sheath. How? How could this unknowing kid be his Achilles' heel?

A soft and distant tune blurted out of the silence, reaching their residence through the walls. A harmony like no other floated in the air, paired with a velvet throat.

Eren's lips parted slightly as he whipped his head towards to sound.

"What…What's that?" Asked the boy. He had never heard anything like it.

Using his distraction, Levi snatched his hand out of the boy's grasp.

"Music."

"Music." Repeated Eren softly. He climbed down his chair and peered through the tiny window on his tiptoes, trying to pinpoint the origin of the wondrous melody. As he watched doe-eyed, another soft tune carried out, completely different from the first one, and clashing with it horribly.

Eren raced across the room to the other side to listen to the second melody, eyes glistening incredulously. He had never heard anything so beautiful.

"It's wonderful!" Gushed the boy as he looked back at Levi.

Levi closed his eyes and tried to take it in. He had lived here for so long that the "wonders" of this place had long worn off on him. In fact, he had never stopped to appreciate to music of the Underground.

"…Yes." Agreed Levi somewhat half-heartedly as to not disappoint the boy.

"Does it happen every night?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Levi's slanted eyes snapped open, and they were clear as the skyless ceilings of the Underground. The kid did not understand. The kid did not know that music was an outlet for desperation; a means of venting. He only saw what was good, he did not witness the drugs, the gambling, and the endless prostitution.

"…It's hopeless down here." Replied Levi softly, his voice monotonous, "People need something to believe in."

The smile slid off Eren's youth face inch by inch as the sentence sunk in. The excitement disappeared as quickly as it came.

"…Did you also sing?" Asked Eren in a small voice. "When you lived here?"

"No."

"Then how did you believe?"

"I didn't."

Eren blinked, caught off guard. In his mind's eye, the man was the veneer of faith. How could he, out of all people, not have beliefs?

The thick brows furrowed together as the boy bit his lower lip, looking like he was trying to solve a hard problem.

"Then…" Murmured the boy, tilting his head to the side, "How do you believe now?"

Levi's chin tensed to make his jawline more prominent. It was a question he never wanted to acknowledge, not because the answer to it was negative, but because the boy himself – with his incomprehensible emotions and his naive stupidity – was why.

For once, his life had meaning.

For once, there was a future.

Levi had lived numbly. He never planned more than one expedition ahead. If he did, it was impersonal, theoretical strategy. He'd heard Petra talking about going home to her father after the war; and he'd heard Hanji gush on and on about what experiments she'd do on actual titans, yet they all seemed intangible to him.

His future, for as long as he could remember, remained a grey dullness, much like static noise. He did not have expectations, nor did he care for them. It did not matter to him when or how it would end, as long as he had done his duty beforehand.

Yet, it mattered now.

He understood perfectly that the boy's entire life depended upon him. Whether the boy lived or died, was based on how the man would play out his actions.

How did he believe now?

A shooting star had glazed through the dullness, splitting the noise apart by its streams of blinding light. And at the end of it, stood a shadow of a small figure, blurry from being so far away, yet undeniable existent.

That was how.

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