FOREWORD: I like Levi, and I hope this does him justice.
Cover; Emblem by Pixiv ID 1080147.
I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin, or any of its characters.
The world in his eyes.
.
He has eyes of glass that used to catch and reflect light carved into a face set in a concrete mask. The still depths of their blue smother his feelings but let through his unwavering ego. His thin lips anchored in a phlegmatic line open mostly to curse and to disparage. What he lacks in height and diplomacy, he makes up for in the grandeur of his achievements, in the lithe brawn of his powerful body.
He is superhuman. He is legend. He is hope.
In all his renowned unequalled skills and lesser-known firm apathy, one single thing betrays his humanity: the shadowed lines underneath his heavy lidded steel blue orbs. They had not always been there, but only those who had lived long enough could discern that fact. They grow darker and deeper after every expedition outside the walls, after each attack on humanity—a testimony to the nights he spends unblinking and unable to fall asleep.
Levi-heichou knows grief. He had seen it, many times on the faces of lucky survivors. He had felt it, many times in the dead of the night. It's a pain that starts in the coils of his stomach and works its way to his heart. It's a voice that wonders over and over again—why him? Why is he alive and they are dead when they had been trained as equals? And it never quells, even after outliving thousands of soldiers over the years.
There is no cure for it, no remedy. He just lies in his bed, staring at the psychedelic lines his tired eyes create on his dark ceiling, and focuses to the steady beating of his heart and the air his lungs suck in and blow out. He does not cry, for his wells had run dry some time after he grasped that nothing ever really goes according to plan—even if he trusts his comrades abilities and choices—and he could not always save everyone.
He has been dubbed humanity's most powerful soldier and that comes with a sole responsibility—saving mankind. And sometimes, his team, his friends, do not lend this onus.
So he lets them rob him of his sleep at night; lets them dig hollows and smear pasty black beneath his eyes. He agrees to carry the weight of their deaths in their darkening abysses. He does it for them, who had tried their best to share the burden that is being humanity's saviour in a world where titans prevail.
A burden he now knows he was always meant to carry alone.
AFTERWORD: (in order to avoid the deaths of his comrades-in-arms...).
Thank you for reading!