It rained.
The thunder shook the ground outside of my lonely little window. I sat in near darkness, nothing but a candle to light my way. The once tall and elegant candlestick now had wax dripping down the sides and collecting on a small tray. But the flame burned, proud and sure.
If only.
The old piano sat in a corner. A window rested to the side. The blinds were open to the world outside. A world where the storm raged, making it impossible to see. Even if the rain ceased and the lightning faded, the light from the candle would create a reflection. I stared at that reflection.
Angry.
Broken.
Lost.
The sudden urge to leave it all behind coursed through my veins and beat with my heart. With a gentle breath from my rough lips I blew out the flame that had held so much pride just a moment ago. The tamed fire must go. It was beautiful. It danced and sang, twisted and turned. Filled with meaning, with something greater.
Fate must have its way.
Petra.
Olou.
Isabel.
Gunther.
So many.
Names, pages and pages of names.
It was too much. The darkness enveloped me, held me. My fingers knew the routine. They played a mournful lullaby to my mind. Numbing my mind and holding me in a different world, a beautiful one. The piano keys were no longer black and white, they were every color and no color all at once. My eyelids slid shut. There was nothing to be seen.
The lullaby ended, but my movement did not. Slowly, gracefully, I glided across the floor of the empty room. The door stood on the wall opposite of the piano. Nothing dared to claim the dark space in the middle as it's home. Nothing, except the one thing that hurt the most. Below the direct center of the room lay the box. It was an elegant box, with a dark aura. On the twenty fifth of every month something came over me and I watched my narrow fingers pry the trapdoor up and drag my destiny from the space underneath.
It was past midnight. Fumbling down the hallway outside of the room a pen and some slightly crumpled paper was retrieved from a dusty desk. I laughed, a bittersweet sound. Years and years ago this house would be pristine. Every surface dusted, every window scrubbed. I could've done it alone, but I wouldn't have had to.
But I had failed.
When I returned to the piano room my body fell to the floor. Sobs wracked my chest. Tears stained the floor. It rained on, but now it rained inside of the glass. The whole world shook.
Months.
Years.
Decades.
Lifetimes.
The letter never left me.
Steel gray eyes, known not for their emotion, but for their lack thereof. But now. Now emotion was all they knew.
Pain.
Loss.
Misery.
And now I reread the lifetime's worth of words. Every letter in this dark box was reviewed and set aside. At the bottom was an envelope. Sealed with wings. Wings of Freedom. Wings that took my freedom away. These were not my words, they were his.
He had risen. He had lost everything, because of me. I had failed. And at the end of my life, I received the letter. I knew the eloquent voice that lived inside. A voice hardened by years of work and stress. A voice that had lost its life, it's curiosity.
His voice.
A voice that would live in this envelope until... Until the time. My heart stubbornly refused to admit that the day wouldn't come. Inside this box were thousands of letters. None like the envelope with the seal. The envelope that has never been opened. The envelope that would never leave me.
I reread the words. My words. So many of them. The emotions that had flowed from my mind down my hand and into the ink.
Twenty five lifetimes worth.
And today there would be another one. This lifetime I had been born on the twenty fifth. Celebrating my demise on a day of joy. A twenty fifth birthday, something to be proud of. A golden birthday, they called it.
Golden.
The sobs found their ways into words. Familiar words. Words of loss, of regret, words of a dying hope.
We had been soldiers together.
Students.
We had worked together.
We had been equals, we had been higher and lower in the ranks.
We had been everything. But it felt like nothing. Nothing like the days as soldiers.
In every life I had known. The truth of lives that had passed. In every life a letter had been written, the twenty fifth of the month. How, that was a mystery beyond human comprehension. Until the age of thirteen in every life the letter appeared, my muscles didn't have to stretch and bend to put my words onto paper.
In every life he had been there.
In every life they had not.
I had failed.
I had failed them.
And worse, I had failed him.
Hanji.
Erwin.
Mikasa.
Armin.
The rain poured on, steadily dripping down the windows, and an eerie calmness fell over the world. The winds howled, and blew away the despair. For a fleeting second, I felt peace. He had not yet haunted me in this life, his enchanting eyes had not yet held the confused light of his obliviousness to his past.
Our past.
My hand shook as I addressed the letter. Like it had so many times before, the words poured out along with the rain. My heart raced with the thunder, my eyes flashing like lighting with brief moments of raw emotion.
Ink washed over the pages, blurred by tears in places, lacking it's fluid motion because of hesitation in others. My simple handwriting signed my name with a flourish.
Pages and pages and pages.
The numbness gave way to pain. Indescribable pain. Waves and waves of it crashed over my defeated form. The cold was seeping into my bones.
Come back.
Remember.
Forgive me.
Please.
I broke. It was over. I could no longer handle living and waiting and dying. The Wings that stole my freedom were detached from the ancient envelope. Chicken scratch, what handwriting had I expected from the brat.
His words. His pain. He knew it too. He didn't blame me, but it was too soon, lifetimes too soon. I read and reread, every detail, every quirk, so familiar. He hadn't been broken, burdened by work. He hid. Hid behind his duties, and on this day, the day he sat and rained out his heart, he had seen me for the last time. Lifetimes later he would no longer know me as he had in those days.
Days spent in sun, in storms. Nights in abandoned castles and in forests brimming with humanities natural enemy. Sunsets over the Walls, sunrises over the unknown. Days when we had been a team, the only way humanity carried on. Now it was like he no longer knew me.
The door flew open. Light covered my cowering body. The lock on the front door must not have been turned. It no longer mattered. Nothing mattered. It had been too long. Everything about him was engraved in my mind. It would go with me wherever I went.
"Levi."
A voice.
His voice.
I was dillusional.
Very carefully I raised my head up. The pages I had written scattered around me. In my desperate grip was his one page. A page that meant just as much as the ones surrounding me.
A figure stood, a silhouette. Candles had been lit up and down the hallway, for the light was too soft to be from the doorway. It was a familiar silhouette. One I had seen so many times.
It couldn't be.
It couldn't be.
It was.
My legs shook as I pulled myself up. As it was twenty five lives ago, he towered over me. Tall brat.
"Twenty five years into the twenty fifth life. It's become such a meaningful number..." he trailed off.
I still felt the rivers of tears carving canyons as they raced down my cheeks. No, this wasn't real. I was hallucinating, going crazy.
But I stared up anyway. And somehow I stood. I was about to collapse when I felt myself get wrapped in an embrace I had longed for.
"... Eren?" I croaked.
"Shh... Don't even ask. I forgive you. I never held it against you in the first place."
All of them.
I had failed.
Humanity's Strongest wasn't able to save the people who meant the most to him.
This was what I lived with. The failure. The loss of my comrades. My friends.
But maybe I hadn't failed. Humanity lived on. Maybe I had just succeeded from a different perspective than the one I often looked through.
I didn't remember falling asleep, but when I woke up the next morning I realized I had slept better than I had in lifetimes. It had stopped raining and the world had once again revived itself. The letters had been moved. Eren was slumped against the while snoring, a letter in his grip.
I dragged myself off the floor. This was how it was supposed to end. This was right. Would it be perfect? No. But it would be fine. They weren't here, but Eren was. I was. And two was enough. Maybe we would find them again someday. I wasn't sure. Eren rolled over and grunted as his head lightly hit the floor.
I gazed out the window, the trees were drying their tears and the grass was reaching out for the light once more. The sun had come out from hiding, and the clouds had left their mournful darks behind. Right now everything was just as it should be.
As it would be.
I wasn't sure if I was going to put this out but then I thought "heck why not?" It's not the best, and as I improve my writing I'll be able to produce a higher quality of writing. I'm leaving it as "not completed" because, well, I don't know if it is. I guess if some people say "continue it" I will. If they don't then... Maybe I still will. Idk. Please leave a comment, let me know what you think, I love seeing feedback.
Attack on Titan isn't mine.