Breathe your smoke in me.

They didn't touch.

They didn't look at each other.

They didn't speak.

Each stood on a different side of an abyss and looked forward, eyes glazed over and not seeing anything in front of them. There had been a time when Eren had tried to break the glass between them, had tried to melt the ice surrounding the captain.

But who was he to try and prove that it was worth loving this world? He was a monster. A cursed being, an unwanted thing. Eren only had the power that people feared. He was neither human nor titan – how could someone whose existence was unnatural and whose purpose was still covered in mist teach someone else that it was worth it, that living was worth it.

Perhaps Levi saw him as he was; a human child who was lost and confused, but that was all there was to it. Eren was his mission, his responsibility. He would not learn from a child who had yet to see the world for what it was – a dirty place that was slowly descending into chaos and destruction. Titans or no titans, they were doomed anyway.

But even in this dying world Eren was still alive and so was Levi. There was still hope in the monster that they feared and the human that could do more than the rest. Two heroes, if only in name only, that had to bear the weight of humanity on their shoulders. Two heroes that were to put their all on the game and keep their complaints pushed down and forgotten.

Their price meant nothing. Their pain meant even less.

And yet the child that was to carry most of the weight in his young and frail shoulders stands tall. He looks forward, sometimes glancing back to make sure that his decisions have been right and the wrong paths haven't mixed together and marches on. A little toy soldier on his way to the battle field, a sword in hand and blood dripping down a fresh wound on his palm. Teeth bites mark it. His bites.

They may not talk, they may not look at each other, nor touch, but Levi can recognize courage when he sees it. He sees more than the rest. He sees the fear as Eren grips his blades tighter, the fear every time he raises his hand to break the skin and spill his own blood. It's human. Eren is so human that Levi sometimes wonders why they are doing this. Why are they forcing a child carry the sins of mankind when he was just another victim?

And perhaps that is why they don't talk.

Levi doesn't want to add more to that weight. He doesn't want to let Eren know just what he is forced to pull behind himself, just what his childish self is supposed to achieve and do for the sake of another day lived and survived. He doesn't want that naïve trust in what Eren believed to be good and right and correct to muddle up and seep away from those bright eyes.

But Eren is a force that can't be predicted and locked inside four walls. He's a storm. A force that can't be stopped once it starts to move. Eren is unpredictable, he's stubborn, and he's still nothing but a child that doesn't think before he acts. But he trusts, he believes and he also listens when it is needed. He watches when he is being taught, taking in the information and then trying to repeat it the best he can.

Still a child. A child that carries both a curse and hope with him, inside of him.

There was something reassuring about knowing that Eren was the hope, not Levi. They both were aware of this feeling, since Levi made sure to whispers those words into Eren's dreams from time to time as a sort of a prayer. Perhaps Levi didn't believe in something as foolish and useless as God, but he believed in Eren. In the boy who had to grow up too quickly and pretended that words didn't cut him deep.

They didn't touch.

They didn't speak.

They didn't look at each other, not directly.

But perhaps it was time to change that? Perhaps this child, humanity's hope, was worth it after all? Perhaps Levi's touch won't taint Eren. Maybe Levi wasn't as dirty as he thought he was.

There were the little things that Eren did daily, small reminders that they both were still painfully human. Still weak and breathing and struggling. That death will come for them in one way or another, especially since they were both the humanity's something. Two crosses atop a hill of expectations and beliefs. In the middle of the battlefield painted in the red of blood Levi was grateful that there was someone there to pull him back from the black void that took over. These things would never be said in words, but he had a feeling that Eren already knew.

Nothing was perfect, of course. Nothing would ever be but there was something that felt close to it whenever Levi felt the heat of Eren spreading slowly though him, starting from the tips of his fingers. The body heat of someone that was still not yet a man could so much for someone that had lived his whole life getting used to the cold living deep inside of him.

And there was something inside of Levi whispering that Eren needed the cold just as much as he needed the warmth. A fair exchange.

And there was blood on both of their hands. They had both killed titans and humans alike. In a way both knew the weight of the world, the stench of guilt and blood mixed together and the nightmares that came after you've taken a life. They were both wild animals, both fighting for survival and their place under the scorching sun.

Wild beasts. Monsters. Humanity's something.

But Eren still held on to his humanity. He still struggled to be seen as a human, rather than something unknown and feared. Levi saw and approved of that. Eren still shed salty tears, just like any other man and woman out there; he still bled red crimson out of his wounds and still breathed the same air as every other damned human. He struggled, yelled, and clawed his way out of the dirt.

Maybe that's why it felt as if they were pulled together, yet held back by an abyss of reasons. But what if that abyss was there only because Levi thought it was? What if there were no reasons that held him back in the first place, no petty excuses that were like shackles around his neck and arms and legs. Because if Eren was old enough to go and die out in the battle field, the he was also old enough to be treated like someone who held more worth than that of a monster forced to slave for humanity. For the seemingly right reasons and goals.

And they touch each other for the first time. They truly touch, fingertip against fingertip and then pushing their whole palm together. Eren's eyes shine bright and soften, he laughs and it sounds like he's crying instead, but Levi guesses that it's only normal. He feels like doing the same.

The softness and warmth of another hand makes them both feel a little less like dolls, puppets controlled with metal strings. There are calluses made by the leather handles of the swords, scars that touch. But it's a part of their struggle, a sign that they had done everything possible to survive, to live on. So fingers entwine and hold on tighter to each other, pull just a tad bit closer and slide over rough skin to prove it's real and not a dream or a hallucination of a night spent in delirious fever.

Perhaps it was worth to be humanity's strongest if Levi was able to hold humanity's hope so close and be the only one to know the softness of Eren's skin.