in the stillness
also posted in AO3
Rated T because of Levi's potty mouth
It was a truth Levi had long acknowledged.
People came and went, lived and died.
He'd gone through the same cycle of losses for almost his whole life. Maybe, he had long given up looking for a change in the cycle, his heartbeat stagnant the same second his mother's stilled.
A puppet to the whims of this shitty world.
"You're not a puppet," Hange once said, one night he was a little too drunk to keep his thoughts inside. She scooted closer on the bench they both sat on. Her fingers brushed the lapels of his jacket, her palm resting on his chest. "Feel this?" she said. "Puppets don't have a beating heart."
Levi scowled. "Get your filthy hands off of me."
She laughed, leaning back. "And puppets don't get embarrassed."
He had ignored her then, reaching for another bottle and gazing instead at the other soldiers in the dim mess hall. Hange had also remained silent for the rest of that night, staring at her glass. Sometimes, he glanced at her, trying to read her thoughts. The way her eyes seemed to dim made him think she was reliving another messy expedition, her mind running through pointless what-ifs and should-haves, and it made him want to talk, to bring her out from the pit of self-blame he'd been in countless times.
But he stayed silent.
Not because he didn't know what to say – though that may be one truth – nor because there was little comfort in saying "It wasn't your fucking fault, Four-Eyes."
It was because comfort invited attachment. And Levi had rather stick his torso into Sawney's stinky mouth than get into that hole again.
In that morning his mother failed to open her eyes, that afternoon Kenny walked out of his life, and that rainy morning he knelt with the corpses of an Aberrant and his first two friends, he told himself one thing:
Attachment was the deepest fucking grave this world had to offer.
And so, trudging forward, he made sure to keep his eyes level, to not get attached.
.
.
Yet he did, anyway.
.
.
Levi had no time to foster attachment in a world where most days brought the noise of corrupt politicians and chattering brats. Work, death, foolishness. Silence only offered company during the aftermath of expeditions, broken only by shouts of ridicule from the crowd that always found time to shit on their homecoming parade.
The silence returned in the trek from the village. In headquarters, most didn't dare whisper, while those that did whispered in quiet corners.
Such were the silences in his life. Still, strangely, there were times when Levi glimpsed a strange brand of silence.
A brief stillness that came sometimes during the few slow days before and after the Fall – in his squad's idle chatter over breakfast, the laughter of recruits and banter of veterans, the way the sun lit his path as he scoured headquarters with a broom and duster. And then other times, it came at dusk or at dawn as he listened to Hange's steady breaths over the high-pitched songs of morning birds, staring out his window at the orange and purple skies soaring above the trees. He glimpsed it in the cabin before their uprising, in his short time rising and living with the kids and Hange and her squad.
Even in the few days where the Survey Corps was less busy in the mess of preparing for their war against the world, in the preciously rare times they had breathing room – it's just there, in the air.
An unusual quiet. For a while, time seemed to slow; noble duties, forgotten.
But then it was nothing but a glimpse.
Something so easily put aside in place of duty and the fate of humanity because, somehow, it only made their losses shittier - more piercing, more lasting, more crippling.
And so, Levi made a conscious effort to shrug off these… "vague useless silences". Whatever they were.
.
.
And then the war came and went. There were a lot of losses again. Reunions – bloody, messed up, cruel – and with them a lot of parting. Parting from the past, from dreams, from burdens.
There was a lot of letting go, even for him.
.
.
Onyankopon had been the one to suggest it first. A simple trip, he said.
At his words, excitement filled the cabin as Levi and Hange watched from the side. Ideas and plans were thrown from one end of the room to the other, filling up the silence of the night. Gradually, their discussion escalated from random ideas to ambitious plans (mostly from Armin). They had seen the ocean, seen the vastness of it firsthand already, and yet Armin said there still was more than that.
Fields of flames, frozen lands, land of only sand, rocks rising far, far higher than the walls.
He talked and talked and Levi watched the light in the boy young man's eyes rekindle. It had disappeared these past several years, but now it returned, as if it had been waiting for the right words to coax it out.
Levi listened. And then, there it was again - a stillness, a quietness hanging in the air. He glimpsed it. It was stronger, lasting longer this time.
.
.
They took their time planning. As they waited for Onyankopon to come back from whatever affairs he had to settle in his hometown, they took almost a month to prepare, arranging documents and other formalities with the higher-ups and handing over the Survey Corps to people they can trust. After another week, Onyankopon came back with an itinerary, complete with plans of destinations, accommodations, transportation, tours, and a lot of free time to stay wherever, however long they want.
"Think of it as a retirement trip," he said, his eyes bright as the light of the lamp shone on his and everyone's faces gathered around the table.
Armin full-on cried, or very nearly so. (Levi knew Hange did too, though she hid it better than the kid did.) The relief and joy in Eren and Mikasa's eyes were subtle, but there. Jean and Connie shouted so fucking loudly, their arms around the other, that he almost grimaced. Almost. He was busy trying not to smile because he didn't do smiles.
Hange, standing beside him, leaned closer. He could feel the elation emanating from her like a damn gas lamp. "I know we already filed our leaves, but I never thought… Never actually believed we're getting a vacation, Levi," she said, her eyes filled with wonder and excitement. "An actual vacation."
Levi found it hard to believe, found it hard to accept that they were getting so much time for themselves. But he could see it in their smiles and hear it in their voices. Most especially, he felt it in the way she grasped his hand tightly, as if she was afraid this was just a shitty dream – or wary that he was dreaming the shitty dream.
The strange, quiet stillness, so much different from the one that plagued him almost all his life, returned. More than a glimpse this time. It was faintly holding on, to him and their little group of survivors.
He didn't shrug it away. The hand in his grasp assured him that, this time, there were no more overarching duties, no more worrying about the fate of humanity.
It's okay now. Maybe, it wouldn't be so bad.
.
.
Onyankopon brought them to vast blue shores and open sky, on an island Levi knew was far, far away from Paradis.
"It's a private beach," the man supplied when Hange asked him about it with awe in her eyes. The brats had gone ahead to the water, just as Levi expected. "I had friends help reserve it for us."
Levi had no idea what processes that entailed, nor did he care. Still, as Hange quickly rambled about her thankfulness and how much Onyankopon has helped them so far and how they would ever be able to repay him—Levi tuned her out, carrying their camping equipment and searching for a place to set the tent up.
After the tent had been set up, Hange and Onyankopon joined him, helping him set up the chairs and table. Jean and Armin came by every now and then to help, but the three of them gently sent them away to enjoy their time by the sea. Or, Hange and Onyankopon did while Levi only scowled at them and said, "Get your filthy feet and hands off the tables. It's not yet fucking time to stuff your big ass stomachs."
They complied, though not as quickly as he would've preferred.
Hange laughed as she patted—no, smacked—his back. "Loosen up, Levi, we're out here on a vacation."
"Yes, and we're gonna be clean about it."
She smiled, shaking her head with a fond grin. Her eyes, free of the somber weight of Commander, shone with the sparkle she always had, whether it was working on her long-ass experiments, going over ideas and discoveries over tea with him through the night, or, just, those times she brazenly invited herself within his personal space. With a frown, Levi realized how he longed to see that again.
He looked away, hoping neither Hange nor Onyankopon would see the slightest tug on his lips.
.
.
Levi hated the stuffy silence that punctuated most of his childhood, the putrid silence of funerals and mass burials. The brief glimpses of the strange silences throughout his time in the Corps, he couldn't decide whether he loved or hated.
He never had the time to ponder. Nor was he ever the type to.
Yet now, he felt it again in the cool breeze blowing past his hair and the smell of salt mingling in the air; as he watched Hange frolic in the clear, vast ocean (he still couldn't grasp the truth that all that was salt); and as he watched the kids laugh and play in the water like the kids they were supposed to be. (No, like the kids they were, like their childhood wasn't fucking ripped off their hands.)
He watched, and it washed over him.
The quiet. The silence.
Not the one that suffocates. Not the one that rings in the night. Not the one that grips in nightmares.
It's the one that lulls. The one that whispers ever so slightly and helps you forget. The one that lets you breathe.
Peace. So this was peace.
He could hear no thundering footsteps breaking every illusion of safety. No cries of despair and pain. No stench of death mixing in his every breath. No threats. No nightmares. No dying.
It was unreal. Everything was just so fucking clean. And bright. And it stung his eyes.
Or was that something else? He blinked. Shit. No way. Shitty glasses and her sappy happiness bullshit rubbing off on him.
He raised his arm to wipe it when a splash of water cut him off. Laughter chimed over his disgruntled curses.
"Levi! Stop standing there and come here already!"
Grimacing, he rubbed his face with his sleeve, water dripping down his face and soaking his shirt. "The fuck, four-eyes." At least whatever was in his eyes was gone.
"There's something I just have to show you." Hange made her way to him and grabbed his hand. "Come on."
He looked up and glared. He wished he didn't though, because he noticed the way her good eye sparkled and her grin widened.
Of course, she saw.
He looked away and tried digging his heels into the sand, ignoring the dread creeping up in his stomach about having to rid his feet of offending particles. "No."
She persisted, pulling him towards the ocean. "Levi," she sang his name, her voice rising and lowering in pitch.
"Hands off, shitty glasses. Like hell I'd want to see whatever abomination you dug up in that water."
She pulled. He resisted.
Then she stopped pulling, and damn it he shouldn't have relaxed for even the smallest second. That brief gap was all she needed before she pulled again, pulling him into her arms, and—
Fucking falling back into the water.
With him.
Hange fell on her bum into shallow water, laughing, Levi falling on her chest and his knees sinking into sand. Water sloshed up to his waist. He held her arms and raised his head to tell her off – because what the fuck Hange? – but a wave crashed past Hange's back, splashing onto his face, and cut him off.
He felt her laugh before he heard it. And with that – he would deny this – he relaxed. Whatever. He was already soaked anyway. It's not like anything more of her antics would hurt.
Hange clutched his back, shifted, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Sighing, she rested her cheek near the crook of his neck. He felt her inhale, then exhale.
She was soaked too - to the bone, it seemed - but he didn't care now. He hugged her back.
The ocean murmured as it moved around them, lapping against their bodies. The waves cradled them, gently pulling back and pushing them forward on its own rhythm. Levi's eyes wandered to the brats, who had wandered off into a sandbar several meters away. Oranges and blues filled his eyes, and not once did he think he would see this much color in one place at the same time. Gold sky and blue waters held them close. Stillness saturated the air, punctuated by the ocean's rise and fall and the sound of their breathing.
Levi let out a slow sigh as he rested his head on Hange's shoulder. She shifted, and her voice, near his ear, softly spoke within the silence.
"It's over now," she whispered, awed, almost incredulous. The way her shoulders shook told him she was holding back tears. Trying to.
"Yeah."
She sniffed, a soft sound near his ear. "We can explore wherever we want to," her breath hitched, "whenever we want to."
He patted small circles on her back. "Yeah."
Hange snuggled closer, muffling her sobs. The waves splashed past them, and upon reaching broke apart into clear white-blue froth that tickled his waist and legs. "…would've loved to…" she murmured.
"Mm?"
Her hands gripped his shirt. "They would've loved to come here too. To see this."
He looked past her shoulder, past the silhouettes of the kids playing who-knows-what, past the sun hovering near where sky met water and the infinite span of blue and gold and white.
In the calmness of it all he saw their friends and comrades long gone, their faces, their smiles; heard their laughter, their voices.
Isabel. Farlan. His squad. Her squad. Mike. Nanaba.
Moblit. Sasha.
Erwin.
Untainted. Blissful. Happy.
Maybe, she was seeing it too.
Maybe, like him, she was feeling a strange swell in her chest about to push itself up her throat.
Closing his eyes, he tightened his hold on her and sighed.
Not once did Levi think he could call something beautiful in his lifetime. What was there to call so? In the Underground, in the Walls, in the everyday life of struggling against death, nothing was "beautiful" in the truest sense of the word.
But this.
He felt it in the silence of the light over lapping waves, in the peaceful image already painted behind his eyes – the laughter, the sun, the ocean, the kids, the woman he held in his arms.
All of it was beautiful.
He opened his eyes. "Yeah."
author's notes:
I wrote this 3 years ago, hence how supremely canon divergent this is. I think it was around the time the attack on Marley had just ended? Not sure. I was coping for a happy ending at the time, even though it was getting more impossible by the chapter hahaha
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it! Reviews would be very much appreciated. Thanks for reading.
