CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A few days elapsed without anything really happening. Most of the time Levi was down in the gym, occupying his minds with training. It was also convenient that it was the place he most likely was alone. The girl was the only one down there on a daily basis, except for some cleansing staff, and they found a way of silent agreement to work together and apart from another at the same time. At the beginning, Levi caught her irritation from time to time when she was secretly eyeing him. He assumed that she was wondering about the extents of weights he was lifting. She had made it very clear the first time they met that she thought him to be a weakling due to his height, but now she witnessed otherwise.

And he was watching her as well. The way she trained and moved. She had something graceful to her that made him remember another female he tried to avoid thinking about. Not that there was much to remember. It were only fractions of habits and manners left somewhere deep inside his mind. The sound of a voice. The feeling of a hand brushing alongside his back, soothing.

At some point, he was tempted to go over to her and give her some advice about how to improve in whatever she was doing. But he never did. Erwin often had told him that he was a natural teacher, and maybe hearing it time after time it had gotten to his head. Nevertheless, he stuck to watching her, and after a while he found himself relaxing in her presence. He could tell that she was feeling the same way. Although they hadn't talked once, they glided into their common routine easier every day with nothing more than a nod of acknowledgement. It didn't feel foreign anymore.

If only the same could be said about the other two kids. The blonde boy still shied away every time Levi looked at him although he tried to hide his fear behind a polite smile. And the brunette… Well, the brat didn't talk to him anymore. Didn't even look at him. Levi did his best to ignore it, distracting himself with training, reading or getting into another round of feed'n'jerk. It kept him in check although this particular topic became less a problem since the brat stopped being near him. At least in reality. In his mind, especially during his little sessions, he always was present. The thoughts of him didn't leave Levi's mind once. He couldn't stop pondering about what made him act so differently all of a sudden. First, he thought that maybe it was just a fleeting change of mind, caused by something stupid like a dump that wouldn't come out or whatever else. But even after some more days passed, it didn't stop. And while it shouldn't be of interest to him, he had to admit that it was. It bothered him. When late at night Levi was alone in his room, lying on the king-size bed, his senses reached out to the room next door to search for the kid's emotional corset. And every time, he cursed himself for doing so, but even more when he felt him being unchanged. The scent and the hollowness didn't suit the brat. Something must have happened, and not knowing what was started to bug him. He even acted the same around his sister and his little friend, so it had to be something serious.

There only had been one time, that corset was briefly broken when Hanji had come around to check on his gunshot wound. After she finished her inspection and checked for his vitals, she slipped some little information about his body acting on its own when he was on her table with her hands inside him. While Levi caught her by the neck and pushed her up some random wall that was close to him, the mixed smell of embarrassment and slight arousal mingled in his nose, steaming off from the boy. Levi was almost glad to smell it again, but when he looked at the brat, he quickly reverted his eyes, and the moment was gone before he felt Hanji's assistants trying to pull him away from their chef.

Now that he was down in the basement once again, he was just about to finish his workout for the day. He was alone since the girl was up and probably still eating dinner with her family. Pushing the barbell back on its stand, he breathed out the air he had been holding. Grabbing his water bottle and taking a huge swallow, he made his way up the stairs and through the entrance hall.

To his right, he heard the sounds of a full dining room; the soft clinking of silver on china, indistinct words from Maria, a chuckle from the girl… then Mr. Yeager's deep voice cutting in. There was a pause, probably because the blond boy made a face, and then everyone's laughter mingled, spilling out like gleaming marbles across a clean floor. Everyone's except for one.

Levi wasn't interested in tangling with them, much less eating with them. Would he have heard the green-eyed boy laughing, he maybe would have stopped to listen to the sound, but he didn't. So, Levi hit the grand staircase, taking two steps at a time. The faster he went the more muted the meal's noises became, and the quiet suited him. In front of his door he saw a serving tray with tableware with a cup of tea and some meal covered by a dinner bell lying on the floor. It had become a habit of Maria to not serve him his meals personally since he once again was eating alone in his room, almost as if the maid noticed the boy's changed behaviour as well, and instinctively blamed him for it. She probably was right.

Levi picked up the tray, and headed inside to eat his dinner at the little table next to the window. It was placed in here after he moved in because Maria couldn't bear the thought of a guest having to eat on his bed due to the lack of other possibilities. When he finished, he grabbed a handful of cleansing stuff and went for the second round this day. He dusted the furniture's surfaces, scrubbed the toilet and shower cabin as well as the bathroom's tiles before returning to the bedroom to wipe the floor. When he wanted to get to the mirrors and windows, he noticed that the spray bottle with window cleanser nearly was empty. It wouldn't be enough to get everything done, so Levi went out the door to ask Maria for some more, tracking her scent.

Eren was in his room, walking aimlessly from one corner into another. He was trying to keep his mind as blank as possibly, and he got better at it with each passing day. It was the same as back then when he finally decided to stop the crying and mourning. Although those therapists and his father and basically everyone else who talked to him said that he had to process those feeling, it wasn't getting him anywhere. There seemed to be no end to it. And his mother wanted him to keep living happily. It took him weeks to realize that the only way working for him was shutting the hurting memories and feelings out. To pretend that they've never been there. He tried to do the same now.

He walked into his bathroom and glanced at his reflection. The man in the mirror didn't look at him. He looked right past him, through to him indeed. Somewhere back in his mind, Eren didn't believe that he was looking at himself. He felt like a stranger in his own skin. As he turned around to go, not willing to think about that as well, not willing to think at all, he slammed right into someone's chest. The impact was like getting hit with a car and a hand reached out to steady him. The scent of soap and spices drifted into his nose.

Oh, no. No touching.

Eren stepped back quickly and stared out into the bedroom. "Sorry."

There was an odd pause. "She's not here."

Duh. No one's here. "Who are you talking about?"

"Maria. She's been in here. Do you know where she is?"

Eren blinked at his words. Had there been someone in his room. He hadn't left since he went up after dinner. Well, now that he said it, it was possible. Eren didn't recall what he'd been doing since then, so it was possibly that he didn't recognize anything else either. He tried to remember. "I guess, she was here gathering some laundry to shove it down the chute," he said, mentioning to the hole in the wall. "Maybe she went to the washing room."

Levi leaned to the side and put his face, that beautiful face, in the line of Eren's vision. When the guy straightened, Eren's eyes followed because they simply had to.

"You don't look at me anymore."

No, he didn't. "Yes, I do."

Desperate to get away from that stare, Eren cut himself some slack and went over to one towel hanging next the sink. Wadding it up, he shoved the thing down the laundry chute although it was perfectly clean, and damn if the cramming didn't help a little. Especially as he imagined it was his own head he was forcing into the hole.

Eren was calmer when he turned around. Even met those piercing grey eyes. "I'm going to the living room." He was feeling quite proud of himself as he walked by-

Levi's hand snapped out and latched onto his forearm, stopping him dead. "We have a problem. You and me."

"Do we." Not a question. Because this was one conversation he had no interest in encouraging.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" Levi asked him.

Eren blinked again. What was wrong with him? He wasn't the one slaughtering people for fun. No, he was the pathetic idiot who pined for a such a man. Which put him into wee-wee-wee-all-the-way-home territory. Any closer to chicking out and he'd have to carry Kleenex tucked into his sleeve to catch his tears.

Unfortunately, the flash of anger deflated fast and left him hollow.

"Nothing. There's nothing wrong."

"Bullshit," the other man spat.

Right. Okay. This way unfair. Levi might be an emotionless killer who didn't care for people's lives, but the guy's memory was perfectly functional. And Eren did act differently around him. Differently all together.

"Levi…" Eren shoved a hand into his hair. On cue, that fucking Bonnie Raitt song shot into his brain, her rich voice singing… I can't make you love me if you don't… You can't make your heart feel something it won't…

Eren had to laugh. Here he was standing after days of trying to forget the memories the man in front of him and his stupid career choice digged up, confident that he was over his naive little crush on him, when his mind teached him otherwise. He felt like the little weakling he was, and nothing like the strong and proud man he so yearned to be.

"What's so funny, brat?"

"Is it possible to be castrated without being aware of it?"

Now Levi was doing the blink before narrowing his eyes. "Not unless you're really fucking drunk."

The next day's evening, Levi was back under the earth. He and Eren parted after their little encounter without another word, and Levi knew that there was nothing he could do to change his mind. The brat didn't want to be around him, didn't even want to talk to him, and Levi was still busy convincing himself that it was for the better. The moment, the brat ran into him, the scent of his grief intensified and Levi didn't want to cause the brat this kind of pain. He knew it well enough himself.

When he finished with the weights, he got on the treadmill and started running. The first five miles fly by. By six miles, he'd polished off his water. When mile nine arrived, the ass-kicking started.

He increased the incline and fell back into his stride. His thighs were screaming, clenching, burning. His lungs were on fire. His feet and knees were aching.

Grabbing the shirt he'd taken off and hung on the console, he used the thing to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. He figured he was dehydrated as shit by now, but he wasn't getting off for water. He had every intention of going until he fell over.

To keep the bruising pace, he lost himself in the music pounding through the speakers. Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana. The stuff was loud enough to drown out the hum of the treadmill, the songs screeching through the weight room, vile, aggressive, deranged. Same as his frame of mind.

When the sound got cut off, he didn't bother looking around. He figured the stereo had kicked it or someone wanted to talk to him, and he wasn't interested in dealing with either.

The girl stepped in front of the machine, her pretty dark eyes narrowed in a way resembling his own.

"He watched our mother die," she suddenly said, softly as if her anger was replaced by something deeper and almost too quiet for him to hear. The meaning of her words slowly sank in his understanding, but he stayed silent, sensing that she wasn't done yet.

"It was awful. Seeing her lose her faculties and be in such pain. By the end she didn't look like herself, she didn't act like herself. She was gone except for her body that refused to quit its basic functions. And he was always at her side, until the very end, experiencing what it feels like to lose someone dear first hand."

Levi wanted to ask what caused her to die, but him knowing didn't really made much of a difference. Death was death, no matter the circumstances. A fact he often came by due to his job. And his nature.

The girl turned to leave, when the words slipped his lips. "What about you? She was your mother as well, wasn't she?"

Dark eyes looked back at him over her shoulder. "Of course, she was. I lost part of my family the second time she went into darkness that day. And that is the reason I never will allow you to hurt my brother, no matter who you are or what is going on between the two of you. You hurt him, I kill you."

Her eyes left his and Levi watched her walking out of the basement. He'd never admit it out loud, but he really started to like the girl. He felt related to her.

A moment later, he decided to follow her and go back to his room again. He assumed that Maria's cooking would be waiting for him in front of his door, and his stomach made itself noticeable because of his hardcore calorie burning.

He was right. Balancing the tray on one hand, he opened his door with the other and retreated to his usual spot by the window before quickly going to work with his fork.

After neatly cleaning the tableware, he sat down on the windowsill to watch the skies getting darker. Behind the walls and down the cliffs the mansion's back was facing, he saw the clouds gathering above the silent sea. It was almost March, but the wintery weather had yet to be gone, so it still was freezing cold outside.

Levi thought about what the girl had revealed to him. So she knew, she was adopted. And furthermore, she let him in on why the boy was acting so unlike himself. Then again, maybe the happy naive behaviour was just a facade to hide his true feelings. From others, and maybe even from himself. Pretending was a technique many used to deal with their problems.

He remembered his own family. Well, his mother, to be more accurate, since she was all of a family he ever had. He never knew his father or any other family members. And his mother had left him when he was still a child.

To be without family was a strange, unseeable prison, he thought, the bars of loneliness and rootlessness enclosing even more tightly as years and experience accumulated, isolating a male such that he touched naught and naught touched him.

After he was abandoned, life had beaten the shit out of him, but instead of folding, each strike and blow had forged him harder and stronger and tougher. Now he was straight steel, nothing lingering of the boy he'd once been. But that was growing up for you. Not only your body changed; your head did, too.

The reality of his own demise made him think of the many faces he'd stared down into as lives lad leached out of bodies and souls went soaring free. As an assassin, death had been his job. As a halfblood, it had been a kind of calling.

The process had always fascinated him. Every one of the people he'd killed had fought the tide, even though they knew, as he'd stood over them with whatever weapon he'd palmed up still in his hand, that if they managed to pull themselves out of the spiral he was just going to strike again. Hadn't seemed to matter, though. The horror and the pain had acted as an energy source, food for their fight, and he knew what it felt like. How you struggle to breath even though you couldn't get air down your throat. How the cold sweat formed on top of your overheated skin, and how your muscles became weak, but you still called in them to move, move, move, damn it.

Personally, he didn't buy the whole holy-deity bullshit, the outcome was the same. Death was lights-out, end of story. For fuck's sake, he'd seen it up close so many times - after the great struggle came… nothing. His victims had just stopped moving, frozen in whatever position they'd been in when their hearts had halted. And maybe some people died with a smile on their face, but in his experience, that was a grimace, not a grin.

You'd think if they were getting a boatload of bright white light and kingdom-of-heaven crap they'd be beaming like they had won the lottery.

Except maybe the reason they looked so bitched was less about where they were going and more about where they'd been.

The regrets… you did think about your regrets.

Aside from the fact that he wished he'd been born under different circumstances, there was only one thing among the many that weighed more than all the others.

That he never got a chance to ask his mother why she left him. Maybe she knew what he was and had despised him for it. Maybe she was the same as him. But he remembered her treating him with care and affection. Cutting his hair, singing him to sleep. Cooking for him. And if not some kind of freaking self-defense mechanism altered his memories about their time together, her leaving all of a sudden made even less sense.

He had searched for her, but even with Erwin's help, he hadn't find her. So, chances for her being dead were high.

If only she could see him now. Her little boy had turned into a righteous, cold killer.

It's probably better that she is dead, he thought. She surely wouldn't have approved of what he'd become. Then again, if she'd been allowed to live into old age, maybe he would've been different.

Having led a violent life, it was guaranteed that he was going to meet a violent end. And with no family mourning his death, there would be no one who have to feel the same pain like he did. It also made him less vulnerable. But true to form, he was sure as fuck going to take out a pound or two of flesh with him on his to the exit.

In his peripheral vision Levi saw someone walking through the gardens.

Eren wandered through the cold night within the wall's grounds. Stepped over the frost-laden grass, he headed for the outside pool.

Tonight, his concept of consequent denial didn't work for him. His thoughts kept spinning inside his head, and he decided to go outside, hoping that the cool air would clear his mind. Maybe he was lucky enough to go numb. He had talked to Armin about the conversation with Levi that started his whole inner muddle, and his friend had tried to encourage him to assume that Levi wasn't doing what he did for the money. His choice of words when he told Eren that his reasons for killing the man was that he was going against Ms. Smith, and because the man had killed a valuable companion, made Armin assume that it hadn't been about business itself, but more about avenging someone dear to them. And Eren couldn't deny when Armin asked him if he would act any different if someone would mistreat Mikasa, for example.

He arrived his designated location on the backside of the mansion and stopped at its rim. Earlier that day, Eren saw that it had been freed from its cover to get cleaned.

The swimming pool was no more than a big hot tub, and its water, thickened and slowed by the cold, looked like black oil in the moonlight. Eren sat down, took off his boots and socks, and dangled his feet in the icy depths. He kept them submerged even when they numbed.

Not only he failed not thinking about Levi today, but about his mother as well. It was all present as if it had only been a few days ago. After the doctors started to treat her with chemo, she'd quickly sunk into the fragile underclass of the sick, the dying, becoming nothing more than a pitiful, scary reminder of other people's mortality, a poster child for the terminal nature of life.

He remembered his mother lying in her bed. Everything about that bedroom was still so clear: the way the light had come through the lace curtains and landed on things in a snowflake pattern. The pale blue walls and the white wall-to-wall rug. That comforter his mother had loved so much, the one with the little pink roses on a cream background. The smell of nutmeg and ginger from a dish of potpourri. The crucifix above the curving headboard and the big Madonna icon on the floor in the corner.

He saw his mom rolling a rosary through her fingers, murmuring words of devotion while lying in bed. The combination of the rubbing and the whispering had helped her find an ease beyond that which the morphine was able to give her. Because somehow, even in the midst of her curse, even at the apex of the pain and fear, his mother had believed in miracles.

Eren had wanted to ask his mom if she actually thought she'd be saved, and not in the metaphorical sense, but in a practical way. Had Carla truly believed that if she said the right words and had the right objects around her that she would be cured, that she would walk again, live again?

The questions were never posed. That kind of inquiry would have been cruel, and Eren had known the answer anyway, no matter his age.

The memories burned, and Eren forced himself to see the room as it had been after everything was over, the illness, the dying, the cleaning up. He saw it right before his eyes. Neat. Tidy. His mother's Catholic crutches packed away by the maids, the faint shadow left by the cross on the wall covered by a framed Andrew Wyeth print.

The tears wouldn't stay put. They came slowly, relentlessly, falling into the water. He watched them hit the surface and disappear.

When he looked up again, he saw the moon rising just above the tree line on the west side of the wall. It was full, a flat, luminescent disk in the cold, cloudy night. He extended his arm toward it and squeezed one eye shut. Angling his line of sight, he positioned the lunar glow in the cradle of his palm and held the apparition with care.

He wasn't alone anymore.

As Levi walked up behind the boy, his steps deliberately loud enough to be heard so that he wouldn't startle, he saw him reaching for something in the air. Levi concentrated his eyes to see if he'd missed something, but there was nothing to grab for.

"What are you doing there?" he asked.

The boy's arms fell back to into his lap. He didn't turn around. "My mother used to do this with me a long time ago. I am trying to hold the moon in my hands."

Levi sat down next to him crossed-legged, and absently recognized that the boy was wearing only a light long-sleeve and a pair of thin trousers. And the temperature out here was nearly hitting freezing point. He was about to drag the brat back inside to avoid him catching a cold, eventually spreading his viruses all over the place, when he continued speaking.

"She died when I was ten." He stopped as if he hadn't intended to talk, before seemingly giving up. "That is why I don't want to be with you. After you told me that you kill people for money, I realized that you don't value life. I can't stand such people. My mother was taken from me and it had been the worst thing ever happening to me. When I saw how that disease sucked out the life from her still breathing body, I knew how worthy it is. How easily it is taken away. And then there are people like you who do the same on purpose."

Eren finally look at him again, not hiding his face, but still hiding his emotions behind a blank facade.

Not trusting that face, Levi inhaled surreptitiously.

Sure enough, he was tinged with the scent of grief that smelled like the grey skies above them and like dying trees. It made him ache a little to draw it in. Eren was hiding, as if erasing it from his face would erase it from his mind as well.

Levi knew the value of hiding.

Eren did not want to be seen, and he was not going to force him to unmask herself.

"I don't care for things like money. I have my own reasons to why I am doing this job. And probably none of them would change the way you think of me right now, so I won't tell. Also, I don't to it because I am being told to, it is because I want to do it," Levi said, seeing horror creeping in those huge green orbs, "but know that the people I kill aren't worth mourning over. I choose for myself who I kill. And the world is better off without them, whether you'll believe me or not. Those were the killers and monsters you despise, the ones that get off on causing pain for others or those who aim for power and money. Ruthless drug dealers, kidnappers, child abusers. And I know that most of them have family and others who cared for them. I inflicted the same pain, you are feeling over your mother's death. So, in the end, I sure am no better than them. But, I don't do it for some base motives."

Just as Eren probably hadn't meant to let him in on his past's dark side, Levi hadn't intended to explain himself to the boy, but he also didn't want him thinking badly of him. What was laughable since he thought nothing good about his own person either. Maybe he was a tad better then the people he went after, but he still was part of society's suds. He was too weak to come over this bodily needs, too weak to not take what wasn't his. Talk about base motives. But after Erwin took him in and put him in his profession, Levi found it convenient, almost appropriate to only drink from those who are also as black-souled as he was, before ultimately killing them anyway. Those whose blood was stained as their personalities. That was were he fit in.

Levi realized that he had been staring into the boy's eyes for some time without neither of them saying another word. The moon had hid behind a massive wall of heavy grey clouds, and the gardens, previously lit by its silvery light, were now dark and shadowy. If they stayed out any longer, the boy sure would caught a flu, so Levi stood up and offered his hand.

"Let's get inside," he said, his grey eyes tearing at emerald ones. He saw that there was still a lot going on inside the other's mind, whatever exactly it might have been.

"Look, everyone is broken, kid," he suddenly heard himself saying, his voice a different place than their bodies. Where this was coming from, he didn't know himself, but he continued: "They just like to pretend that they're not. It's a mask that no one is willing to take off."