Disclaimer: I do not own Attack on Titan. Spoilers for the manga, with a scene taken from the spin-off.

Cerulean Telamon

He was a thief who stole from the heavens, his mother always praised.

"You have the sky in your eyes and sunshine in your hair"—or some variation along the likes—was a brooch she'd pin lovingly on his chest every morning, wedged between the routine of smoothening his clothes and kissing his creaseless forehead as though it was an amulet for the day. "Alright, off you go. But if you're not home before dark, the titans will climb the walls, catch you, and eat you. Do you understand, Erwin?"

Her words were absurd, but in all juvenile innocence, he believed them. As his tiny back wafted further away from the comfortably unremarkable house and closer to open, crisp-smelling fields, the vast cerulean above called for the missing chips he supposedly took in his birth.

While sprouting God's golden rays from his head was nothing impressive given the fact that a third of the Walls' population was blonde (it sounded girlish and embarrassing, anyway), owning a part of the sky, he felt, was something special and precious. After all, the sky was free and fearless, and nobody was free and fearless. Perhaps if people could just see how endlessly it stretched beyond the fences of Maria and how indefinitely it knew of the mystery in the outside lands, they could learn to live a little better and happier.

A dog-eared book laid open on the grass before his calves, neglected as he faced the inquiring panel of white-swirled azure.

Until everybody sees the world as you do, he promised with egg-like fists, I'll be keeping your blue in my eyes.

"Hey, wild aberrant spotted."

"What?! Wher— Oh."

"Seriously, all he does during breaks is read."

"Breaks? Pfft, he reads even after the lights are off. I mean, dude, if he doesn't want his sleep after a whole day of flog-fest training, then let me have it!"

"Never mind the reading. Have you spoken to him before?"

"With that amount of baloney about Humanity's downfall within the Walls, he could feed the whole of Rose."

"Don't forget his nonsense about studying titans."

"I heard he even preached it to the Instructor!"

"Ahem. 'The Walls won't protect us forever'— No, I can't do it!"

"Never! You'll never get his eyes. I mean, they bring freak to a whole new level."

"No, Mike the Sniffer brings freak to a whole new level. No wonder they're best buddies."

"Definitely Survey Corps-material. Can't deny their skills though. I heard Smith floored Nile in a spar!"

"No worries, we can take their spots in the Brigade while they have tea with the titans."

"What idiots. They'll definitely regret it when they're out there."

The conversation ended coincident with Erwin pressing the covers of his book together, and as with every night for the past three years, he left the dining hall unswaying for he went only skywards.

He had thought of indigo a soothing hue of the empyrean colour, but now as it tented the wild plains and the chaos within, he has never seen a shade so frightening.

"The biggest! Kill the biggest one! Ignore the rest!"

Wind sliced at his skin as his seniors soared up like eagles to swivel about their 10-meter-tall prey, their winged insignias waving bravely on their backs. In response to the onslaught, the titan clapped about the flying specks in the manner a beggar would to the flies that surrounded him, and within minutes, crushed wings took turns to twitch all over the grassy soil.

"SMITH!"

A roar forced him out of limbo and the path of a boat-like foot, and Erwin himself adopted the launching route of his fallen comrades. However, his body catapulted towards the space above the titan's head instead of that between its wanting palms, and recalling a technical strategy to facilitate the speed of his 3DMG, he took the fatal gamble of deforming balance by forcing all of his weight to a side so that he barrelled down like a scythe.

The strategy was created for smaller, lighter soldiers since their bodies were easier to control, and Erwin would have gotten his face lacerated in the bladed hurricane if Mike hadn't swung by the moment he was a meter above the ground while risking his own.

"A Ten for your first kill in your first expedition?" Squad leader Keith Shadis observed as he threw the blondes their horses' reigns, "Smith, you're reaching heights."

The felling of the steaming carcass provided a second's barrier between the survivors and the pack of three-meters, and the chance was bountiful enough for the former to make a successful retreat, or as successful as the remaining corpses let.

Peering over a dislocated shoulder at the fresh red that seeped into the ground and into the hems of the sky they chased, Erwin realised that indigo was the worst shade because it painted reality.

"Guys! Guess who's attending the ball too!"

Erwin calmly held his plate in place as it trembled from the impact of a crashing colleague, who had rocketed his way into the lunch table fuelled by undiluted excitement. Donning the kind of grin that only men could don, the gangly brunette answered: 'Miss Anna Driscoll', and relished the thundering rolls of approval that followed.

"That rumoured unparalleled beauty?! Can we really, really see her?!"

"If you survive the next expedition before the ball, which I sure as hell would now!"

"Damn, them titans better beware 'cos nothing's gonna stop me from meeting her! Do you think I stand a chance?"

"Forget it, she'll run away like you're a 17-meter. I heard that she's even more beautiful than the Queen, and best of all, she's unengaged and real young. A few years younger than Mike and Erwin, if I'm not wrong."

"Even Erwin won't be able to resist an angel, won't ya, son?"

Quite uncertain in such talks and not exactly sharing their sentiments, the blonde kept his reply diplomatic with a smile.

"Neh, forget it," the impish sneer of a standing soldier drew eyes up, "the only angel for Smith is that Elsa girl from Team 10, ain't that right?"

"He fancies her," Mike supplied with a twitch and whiff of his nose, though still stony-faced. "I can smell it."

Accepting the mischievous leers and questioning just who the senior member was, Erwin conceded a soft sigh. "I must admit that I admire her."

Which was true; Elsa of Team 10 was a young woman brimming with unquenchable energy which should be the envy of many. She was probably pleasant-looking at best, and they never spoke about anything outside the relay of orders, but Erwin always found himself in quiet admiration for her sincere self-conduct, quirky wits and uncanny ability to lighten any situation even without doing much. It definitely wasn't love, though, because he was smarter than that, but there was a cerulean-tinted quality in her eyes that magnetized him like the sky on a clear day.

"Ask her to the ball, man."

He faced the colleague who offered the suggestion, his lips subconsciously bending like warm water.

"Maybe."

He didn't in the end, considering how they left her behind in the following expedition.

Life was an hourglass dwindling on sand, and it was feared that Madam Smith was down to her final few grains. But upon embracing the smile she presented him, he believed they would never fall.

"I'll have a week off after today's expedition," he told her after a month of absence, studying the soup-flecks on her apron for a memory to recall should he land himself in the hands of a titan. She started padding towards him, and he advanced to the countless lines on her face, particularly the one on her papery lips. In a reversal of positions from years before, he stooped down to level with her shrinking frame.

"You still have the sky in your eyes and sunshine in your hair." Her hands roamed his shoulders, chest and face, and Erwin ignored the ache he had for the masked, quivering weakness in them. She then blessed a kiss on his creasing forehead and pulled back indecisively, a sad twinkle in her smile. "Alright, off you go. But if you're not home before dark, the titans will climb the walls, catch you, and eat you. Do you understand, Erwin?"

Her words were absurd, but in all adult disillusionment, he relished them.

He returned to the aged, comfortably unremarkable house in a state that was sure to break her heart, only to find out that it was already attacked when she collapsed in the middle of the marketing street in full view of helpless passers-by and the all-knowing blue above.

For a full minute as he limped through the unusually empty doorway, Erwin wondered if there was a point to him avoiding the gnashing teeth of that titan.

It was a shade closest to the one they sought, but it pricked too bitingly, too indifferently. Too coldly.

And Erwin could be much colder.

"Your willpower is admirable," he praised emptily to the bruised, sopping, kneeling thug, "at this rate I will have to turn to your friends."

"If you're going to do it, do it quickly!"

"You bastard!"

The proximity between blades and struggling lives was dangerous and always grated on something, somewhere inside him, but Erwin remained unswaying for his eyes only looked skywards. "What is your name?"

The wiry figure below gasped with unadulterated fury he could not act on.

"...It's Levi."

The ultramarine spikes were rounder now, blunt enough to touch, blunt enough to use, and Erwin was appeased.

"Levi."

Muddy water dirtied his knee-guards when he took a step closer towards the hope-promising blue.

"Won't you make a deal with me?"

The sky had concocted a new shade of terror.

And painted it behind the globe-sized eyes of the colossal titan.

It never took so long for his 3DMG to pull him towards the next roof-top before.

And skywards was never a direction that led to a moment's desolation.

"Hey, Eyebrows."

Erwin halted to make a slight turn. "Yes, Commander Dok?"

He could see the reluctance in the scrutiny of his scowl. Several seconds later, Nile shoved past his rival so roughly it felt as if he aimed to dislocate his shoulder.

"Green isn't your colour," he spat in the sandpaper-voice of his and disappeared round a corner of the royal court.

The blonde decided that it was his own way of congratulating him, and thus allowed a tug on his hitherto taut lips. A hand rose irresistibly to his throat, where he caressed the cool stone of his newly-received bolo tie.

It was really just a chunk of artificial emerald, but to him it felt like the finest grade of lapis lazuli.

There was a reason why Keith Shadis had wilted so much during his reign as Commander.

The gravestone gate of Trost was a sight he was terribly accustomed to, but now as he and his horse assumed the position nearest to it, he experienced what he did the first time before the rising gate of Shiganshina.

"Ten seconds till the opening of the Gate!"

'For Humanity, sacrifices will be made. As Commander, move only forwards with that in mind and never look anywhere else' was what Keith had advised his successor, albeit redundantly. The Commander pulls and pushes his soldiers simultaneously, and only towards the blue, not red. 'Indulge in your present self now, because after the expedition, you'll be battling a new one.'

"Five seconds till the opening of the Gate!"

The gemstone on his neck was as heavy as the lives of three hundred men.

Not including his own.

For Humanity, sacrifices will be made. For Humanity.

"All hands! At the ready!" He was aware and yet unaware of the blatant envy the people behind him had for his composure.

"Three!"

For Humanity. For Humanity. For Humanity.

"Two!"

—For Humanity, for Humanity, for Humanity.—

"One!"

—HumanityHumanityHumanity—

"ONWARDS!"

The barrage of hooves on trampled soil was silent under the screams of men, both outside and inside his head.

—Sacrificessacrificessacrificessacrifices—

His blade led three hundred soldiers out, and his heart dragged a hundred back in.

"Nothing good comes from you."

"My son, give me back my son!"

"You've killed more men than the titans."

"Soulless devil!"

"My daughter trusted you!"

"Monster."

...

For Humanity.

Eren Yeager had not a speck of blue on him save for the Wings of Freedom on his back, but Erwin thought him a shade of blue even more hopeful than Levi and the empyrean vault of cerulean has never felt so close within their grasp.

During a rare occasion in which he could afford to recline in his chair and sip vine, a question irrevocably slipped out of his lips, and he briefly wondered if he should regret it or not.

"How do you think sky blue feels like?"

The lightest question he has asked since time immemorial, and Mike took a whiff, Hanji formulated scientifically-correct answers and Levi as usual beat her to it.

"You're drunk," he said as he downed his tea, "...but it'd probably feel pretty fucking amazing."

Crude, but Erwin accepted it.

"And pretty fucking sad too."

He accepted that as well.

Mike Zacharius. Leader. Soldier. Friend.

"They left out 'Dog'," was all Levi could say as his ice-spike eyes scanned every slipshod tomb in the cemetery for people who belonged to air, which despite counting by the thousands, was barely difficult since every slab of stone were exact replicas save for the names. His fingers clawed tightly at his biceps. He didn't like it, especially not when Mike was one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable.

"Sorry, Levi," Erwin said, and he knew what it was for.

"I'll be standing by the gates."

The black-suede back of Humanity's Strongest disappeared soon enough.

Although it was healing perfectly, the bandaged stump below Erwin's shoulder ached more blindingly than it did when the titan bit it off.

"Mike... I'm sorry." He paused, breath shaky for the first time in his life, "I cannot even give you a proper salute."

Erwin didn't lose a right arm. He lost two of them.

Still unused to the imbalance of a missing limb, the moment's fracture crippled his form and he fell to the dust on his knees, where he remained, unmoving, until the horizon was soaked in that shade of indigo he had hated then and hated now.

"We'll meet each other again," he assured on a grounded guess. "Maybe in Hell. Maybe in Heaven."

The crunch of dried leaves signalled Levi's return, and Erwin was quietly surprised that he had been willing to wait so long.

"Maybe tomorrow. Maybe later."

Skywards.

Even if everything else crumbled, his eyes will only look skywards.

It took quite a while, but Erwin Smith was finally ready to keep the promise he made. And so, greeting his old friend up close for the first time ever, he announced that he'd come to return what he had taken a lifetime of death ago.

Fin.

A/N: Um, so this is my first time writing in a style like this, gambling with the Man of men, Erwin Smith. I think that beneath everything, he's still a human like everyone else, and even more so before he became the composed, responsibility-saddled Commander everyone loves, so this came out. I hope it isn't narmy and I hope that I managed to capture his character appropriately, and not just in actions alone, but also his emotions and state of mind!

Thoughts? :)

P/S: Thranduil from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is totally Erwin Smith. Totally, I swear.