He can't see Levi very well. He'd probe on the side of his face that seems to have gone blind if he could, but he can barely muster the strength to slide his hand from the ground to his knee. Or to lift his head. It's a strange feeling for Kenny, complete and utter, soul-deep exhaustion. Ackermans don't often get to this point, least of all him, if only because he's done with all his killing long before it starts to wear him out. There's only one person who's been able to totally put him through the ringer this way. With whatever's happened to his right eye and the sapping of his strength, it's all he can do to lift his gaze to that man's shining boots.
That's just like him, isn't it? Always doing his best to hide his origins. He'd always wanted boots like that, the kind that were so immaculate, their wearer had to have someone at home whose job it was to polish them by hand.
"How does it feel?"
"Wha . . . ?" Kenny's eye stings suddenly. It's not like he'd been wanting for irritants today; rock dust, blood, sparks from his Anti-Personnel gear's reel, chips of hardened Titan-flesh. There's a layer of all of these things that coats him like a second skin of all the day's dirty work. You got used to that in the Underground, though. Anyone could tell you it was the place dirty work got done in the open.
"C'mon," Levi repeats. "Did Reiss blow out your eardrums too, old man?" Another soldier approaches, or at least his boots single him out as one, and Levi seems to wave him off. He keeps a respectful distance, but there's a subtle glint at the upper edge of Kenny's vision that tells him he's got a weapon pointed at him. Probably one of those standard-issue Scout Regiment muskets. It's good to know someone still cares enough to pretend to be afraid of him. "I asked you how it feels. You never used to shut up about that last King, Uri. About wanting what he had. You used to get drunk and say he was some kind of Titan god. I was just curious what it was like to know you'll never have that power. Even after all that struggle, you're still just a washed-up rat of a man from the biggest shithole in the world." Levi kneels down then, and Kenny wishes he hadn't. He's got this calm baked into his face, more serene than the glow that the sunset's drenching over the whole world. He's in total control. Kenny'd seen in a lot over the last few weeks, in the ambush in Trost when they'd clashed back and forth in the skies, spying on the Scouts as they hid in the woods, and in the cavern . . . oh, the cavern. Levi had been totally unreadable. And it pisses him off, turns Kenny's fucking vision red, because he'd seen the difference between the kind of calm that Ackermans were bred with and true peace that day at the river with Uri.
Levi gets to be satisfied. With nothing more than the stuff he's made of already.
That goddamned kid.
"Good thing Caven had me covered back there, runt," he rasps. "That would've been some gut-shot you'd got on me. I might just be walkin' away from this here mess." He lifts his head, able to at least look the other man in the eye. "Look at you. What an acid tongue ya got. You think you're really all that different? Maybe I can't see fine print anymore, but I buy a paper now and then. Humanity's Strongest. That's what they call you. Yer an attack dog, runt. Me? I'm old, and a rat, but sew your mouth shut if you ever call me 'washed-up'. 'Least I had something before the end."
A flourish of the emerald Scout Regiment cloak fastened about his shoulders. Even here, probably staring down the barrel of his own demise, Kenny has to admit that Levi knows how to strike a pose. "I have purpose. You've got half a face."
Kenny laughs. Loud. Stupidly. He's earned that much, hasn't he? The right to give-no-fucks glee. He pops open the front pocket of his shirt with a sudden burst of strength, and waves a frayed Military Police patch in Levi's face. "I guess we know what that's worth, don't we!" Twitches. A minor tremor in the corner of Levi's mouth, the slightest hint of a smile that Kenny can only detect because he raised the kid. It's gone as soon as it comes.
"And yet, I can't help but feel one of us is more fulfilled than the other," Levi says, a distant look in his eye, like he's looking right through Kenny's skull.
"Truth is, kid, I ain't been fulfilled a day of my goddamn life." The laugh's just petering out, and he sighs, the fatigue already coming back just from the motion of lifting his arm. "You gonna kill me yet or not?"
"Why would I do that?"
"Why else wouldya be here? You came for the vial." And then his fingers creep through the grass and pop the clasp on the ornate box. Glass glints and opaque, grey-purple fluid splashes silently. "Figured whatever was left a' that cavern would've been searched high and low. Inventories and such. Ya'll didn't . . ." Levi's mouth is parted, eyes normally so narrow and shrunken now bloated with shock.
"Reiss dropped it?"
"Right out of his pocket and into my open hand. You remember how I taught ya."
"Why not use it, your eye . . ."
"Hell, boy, can you picture me fifteen meters tall with stick legs and chompers the size of your head? The courtesans would wither and die from here to Shiganshina. I couldn't be a Titan." Immediately, Kenny kicks himself. The lie itself has another lie in it, a whole nasty house of deceit. Levi knows he doesn't seek out prostitutes. And Levi, probably better than any man alive, including Kenny, knows why.
Kuchel stinks. And that's saying something. The Underground stinks and whorehouses stink, so an Underground whorehouse should be able to smother anything in a wall of filthy human odor. Except it can't do that to her. Kenny's sister had always smelt so good in spite of the shithole they'd grown up in.
That's why it's so sour to find her rotting in a bed under a storm of flies.
"What's the point in lying now?" Levi's eyes contract again, peeling another bark of laughter from Kenny.
"Ah, I suppose you're right. I'd be lyin' again if I said I wasn't hopin' my wound had gone to rot and I could just . . . fade away, right here. Ain't exactly much for me to stick around for, 'cept a visit in the night by you and your Scout buddies."
"You've been running from MPs your whole life."
"You Scouts are not MPs, boy. Remember that. I killed about a dozen of ya'll when all was said and done, and let me tell you, I ain't ever sweat harder than when I had someone wearing the Wings coming for me."
"Funny how that works."
"All of it's a wheel, every one of us a spoke. My gramps used to say that. I'd call it karma, but . . ." Kenny's not sure what to say, and for a long moment the silence stretches between them, pregnant with something important that he couldn't capture. But Ackerman senses and a lifetime of waiting for a knife in the back taught him to recognize this kind of shit. The way the world . . . holds its breath. Waiting for the important folk to lay down the new laws of life. "You really wanna know what it was like?"
Levi nods.
"I think really, I ended up bein' relieved. Oh, sure, I was angry. I had a righteous fuckin' fury about me like you wouldn't believe. But in some part of my heart, I think I knew. Whatever he had . . . whatever Uri and Frieda Reiss had . . . I mean, they were Kings, runt. They held the Power a' the Titans like it was a flintlock and saw memories from before our grandfather's grandfathers were twinkles in some dumb shit's eye. Does that sound like me?" The other man doesn't say anything, but for some reason beyond him, Kenny lowers his eye. "That's what makes you good. Ours ain't to even try. And when I finally knew it was the truth . . . damn if it didn't bring me a lick of comfort. It was the world back to the way I'd always known it."
Prickles of warmth around the black borders of his vision. Oh, that's why he's lowering his eye. He's passing out. Or he's dying? Shit, he thinks, Hades better be getting his horns ready for me. It's hard to say, Kenny's never died before. Only because there's never really been anything inside him to kill.
"Except you're wrong. I've seen it in my very own squad every day. We're good because we hold each other accountable. We're good when we're together. You don't need a Titan inside your or the blood of kings to figure that out."
"Solid walls, boy, just do what ya came here to do and cap me already. If I'da known torture was in the Scout's playbook . . ."
"Best way to find out is joining us painlessly."
Fuck. Now he's definitely on his way to the fucking Pearly Gates. Only a trans-dimensional journey through the farthest, darkest reaches of time and conscious thought could've distorted Levi's words so hilariously. Maybe that's what living above ground does to you. But then, Kenny himself isn't a nutjob. At least, not that kind of nutjob. Military experience? Kenny's got that now, too. It's Titans. Has to be Titans.
A knife. A bow. Two luminous disks of white-purple. Shit. He's seen Titans too.
"What in the . . . What in the fuck didya just say to me?" His voice is strained a bit now, from answering all the runt's questions as much as from all of the smoke and order-yelling. Hopefully it disguises his fading consciousness.
"You're alive. You're a talented fighter. Enough that you and your Anti-Personnel Squad killed a few good friends of mine. We need everyone we can in the fight that's coming. Nevermind that you're an Ackerman and have a vial of Titan serum that we can use."
"Never took you for a joker, runt."
"I'm not joking." Kenny'd never thought Levi was a liar, either, and yet here they are.
"I personally blew the brains outta–"
"Nobody said I was doing it out of the kindness of my heart. We need you for your strength in battle. Either you agree to lend it in fashionable Scout Regiment green, under my command, or we haul you back to Mitras and cut your head off in front of a crowd."
"You've gotta be kddin' me . . ."
"Your choice."
His chuckle sound like grinding stone, and in spite of the increasingly-shrunken border of darkness around his last good eye, Kenny looks up. Sky's looking wonderful, the dusk painting it purple and gold and a welted blue. It's too beautiful, saccharine, so gorgeous it's almost blinding. That's how he knows he was meant to live and die down there. It's closest to Hell, after all. Only makes sense.
His sister's face swims in the heavens, full of life. Or maybe it's Uri's. The purple is almost the right, lurid shade.
"Ah, Kuchel . . . I think I finished your boy off alright . . . look at who we helped him get to be."
"What? Why did you say her name?"
. . .
" . . . Kenny? Kenny?!"