Summary: Mistakes happen. A slip of the tongue, a broken glass in the dishwasher, or an embarrassing typo in the middle of a text message. They're small hindrances to everyday life, yet they can all be fixed by either an apology, a dust pan, or an asterisk. There is one thing - and only one - however, that Levi has never considered to be a mistake, and that is a tattoo. It's not because he's been a tattoo artist for over a decade, and it's not because he's owned his own tattoo shop for half of that. It's because he's a man who lives by the past and believes in its importance. So, why? Why erase something that, at one point in time, you wanted to be a part of your body forever?

Temporary Mistake, Perfect Fix

If there's one thing I dislike more than cold coffee or car taxes, it's mornings. I have never been, and never will be, a morning person.

And I'm not gonna lie, people have argued with me on this. "Oh, but isn't the way the sun filters in through the window blinds so pretty?" No. The sun doesn't filter. A fish tank filters. The sun forces its way into your humble abode and tickles your eyeballs whether you want it to or not. "But, Levi! You're an artist! How can you possibly deny the beauty of a sunrise?" Correction: I'm a tattoo artist - still an artist, but of a different breed - and the answer is simple, really.

I find beauty in sunsets.

Have you ever taken a minute to Google the words "sunrise" and "sunset"? If not, I guarantee you there's a difference. Sunrises are bright, too bright, to the point of nearly blinding - but, hey, if that's what you're into first thing in the morning, then I'm not one to judge. Onto the the overall appearance of a sunrise, it's okay, but if you ask me, the colors and the clouds are actually pretty weak. I'm going to go all out and call them dull.

And then there's sunsets. Deep, rich hues of reds and oranges and purples. Soft tones of smooth and murky shadows. It's the perfect triumph of the day, but it's also the sweet surrender to the night. But the best part is that it's like a gift from the world, after putting up with all of the crap that it's made you face throughout the day. It's like the sky is saying, "Here you go. You did good today. Take a minute to sit back and relax."

And relaxing is what I would have been doing if the morning sun wasn't scraping against my eyelids.

Ever since I moved into this small, studio apartment, I've never had to keep an alarm. Why be awoken by the power ballad of an electronic nightmare, when your pupils can be poked and pierced by a medium-sized star? Hey, it's not a secret that I find sunrises unpleasant, but alarm clocks are even worse.

That's when, as I do every Godforsaken morning, I curse my existence and roll out of bed. I barely have to take a step before I'm in the den, and with a turn of my right heel, I'm already in the bathroom. Yeah, when I said my apartment was small, I wasn't kidding.

Because I'm usually running about five minutes late, it's a rare occurrence for me to actually stop and think like most people do when they're in the shower. I hardly have time to run shampoo through my hair, let alone make a detailed schedule for the next twelve hours of my day. But for whatever reason, this morning, I was actually five minutes early.

So, I took my time - time that I was legitimately grateful to have - as I slid my soapy fingers along the dips and curves of my arms and legs. It had been a while since I'd had the chance to enjoy what it felt like to touch myself, and not in self-pleasuring way. Just smoothing my hands up and down my dampened limbs, tracing the curls and the definition of my ink, it made me feel oddly at ease.

But five minutes was five minutes, and although it was good to have extra seconds on the clock, I had to use them wisely.

After my brief shower, I dried off and threw the towel into the hamper. I'd probably have to do a load of laundry later, but that was "future" me's problem. What "present" me needed to focus on was getting dressed and getting out the front door before my neighbors took their three kids off to their range of sporting events. I mean, God bless those kiddies for taking an interest in my inked-up skin rather than making a break for the hills, but now wasn't the time for all of the open-ended questions that came with having as many tattoos as I did. I was already running late again. Oops.

Just as I was about to peel out of my parking spot and push the limits of legality, I remembered that I'd left the credit card that I used exclusively for my morning coffee back on the kitchen counter. Why I'd taken it out of my wallet in the first place, I really didn't know. That was a question for "past" me. Groaning irritably, I shifted the gear shaft into reverse and comprised that I'd just have to tough it out and use the rusty, old coffee pot that the last shop owner had left behind, the same pot that Hanji uses for her own coffee fix every three hours. With how often she uses it, and the fact that she hasn't died from an incurable disease by now, I'd have to say that it's probably safe, but not recommended.

Because I'm late, but not as late as I usually am, I get caught up in all of the red lights. Literally all of them. Just when I think I'm about to make it through a stale green light - nope. Yellow. Red. Of course it's annoying, but it also allows me to pick up from where I left off in the shower. And no, I don't mean touching myself, but thinking.

I've been a tattoo artist for almost eleven years now, and I've owned a shop of my own for about five. I didn't always want to become a tattoo artist, per say, but art itself has always been a fascination of mine for as long as I can remember. Drawing, painting, the sheer freedom of creating something that wasn't there before. In an egotistical sense, being an artist is like being a god.

When the light turned green, my thoughts began to dissipate. My brain was focused on only my commute until, shockingly, another stale green became a stagnant red. Tapping my thumb against the steering wheel, I sighed through my lips and figured I'd do some more thinking.

In grade school, when I told people that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up, I was praised for my creativity and applauded for my individuality. In high school, when people discovered that art was my passion and I planned on pursuing it, I was belittled for my lack of maturity and mocked for my negligence to reality. That's when I began to doubt myself. Art was everything I had known since the day I'd stuck my hand in a jar of finger paint and began doing what felt right to me. Was I going to have to relearn my life? Could I reinvent myself into something that society would deem suitable? I didn't know, and I didn't want to know. I didn't know what to do.

In college, I met Hanji.

She was annoying from the second she opened her big, fat mouth and spat in my face, because she was blathering too excitably. She wouldn't shut up about her life experiences and how she was so happy to make a new friend on campus - I wasn't her friend. Also, I'd never asked for her to share her whole life's story with me. That is, of course, until she said something that piqued my intrigue.

She was an art major.

As someone who had still labeled themselves as "undecided" at the time, I instantly switched from tuning her out to listening to her irritating voice with the volume turned all the way up.

She spoke wildly about art and how much it had done for her throughout the years. She told me that when she was little, her parents never lectured her for drawing on the walls or getting paint stains on the carpets. In a split second, she had gone from a person that I had wanted to distance myself from entirely to a someone I wanted everything to do with.

If it hadn't have been for Hanji, I probably wouldn't have given art a second, much needed chance. And looking back on it, she was also the person who coaxed me into getting my very first tattoo. I owed a lot to Hanji, a lot more than I'd originally thought. She may have been the most exasperating woman I have ever met, but it's our common outlook on life that makes her the only person I have ever comfortably called a friend.

I can still remember that conversation we'd had the week before we'd graduated. We were sitting in Hanji's dorm room, just shooting the breeze and sipping our energy drinks, when she asked me something kind of unexpected.

"Levi, what's your biggest dream? What's something that you've always dreamed of doing?"

For some, it might have taken them a good, long while to come up with something remotely cliche to such a vast question, but for me, this was something that I'd put a lot of thought into, and I'd had my answer clear in my mind and on the tip of my tongue.

"I want to paint the town."

At first, Hanji was confused by what I'd meant by that statement. She was under the assumption that I wanted to paint where we lived on a display for all to see, not that I secretly wanted to bathe the entire city in rich tones of reds and golds - just as a sunset bathes the daylight sky. It wasn't until I'd explained myself that she seemed genuinely determined to make my dream come true, and after a minor run-in with the law for using an abandoned bank building as our first canvas, she proposed an idea that had never even occurred to me before. Why focus on painting the buildings of the town, when you can paint the people of the town?

So, I guess that's how I decided to become a tattoo artist.

By some unknown deity, the last light on my way to the shop ended up turning green the moment my foot began to hover over the brake, which forced me to take back what I'd said about literally all of the lights being red. Most - definitely most - but not all. And so, pulling into thick gravel of the unfinished parking lot had never felt so good. The day hadn't even begun yet, and I was already exhausted. Just great.

When I stepped out of my car, I suddenly realized that I had no idea what I was even wearing. I remembered getting dressed, but I couldn't remember the outfit I'd chosen for the life of me. When I looked down, I could see that I'd thrown on something totally basic - just a grey v-neck and some dark-wash jeans. I had to work, after all. I wasn't going to be wearing my favourite cardigan and a brand name tee when the threat of getting them stained with ink was always there. I'm clean and cautious with my skill, but accidents happen.

It soon dawned on me that I'd parked myself right next to Hanji's car. If she was already here, that must have meant that she'd already opened up the shop, so I don't even bother looking for my keys. The door had been unlocked and I wandered right on in.

Hearing what sounded like a lot of fumbling and fiddling around, I had half a mind to ask Hanji what the Hell she was doing, but the other half was telling me to get some coffee down my esophagus and pronto. Before I could even make it to the back room where the coffee pot was, though, I saw Hanji's head pop up from behind the counter like she had turned into a whack-a-mole of some sort. "Oh, hey! You're finally h-"

"Don't talk to me yet."

I'm a harsh man. Subtract caffeine and I become your worst nightmare. By telling Hanji that I didn't want her to open her mouth for the next ten minutes was legitimately the only way I could spare her from my sleep deprived wrath and she knew that, so she happily obliged.

With that, I hobbled sluggishly into the back room and made a direct stride for the coffee maker. It took three attempts of trial and error, but once I finally figured out how to work the untrustworthy thing, I had a cup of coffee in my hands and a somewhat satisfied palette. "Okay, hi."

"Hi!" Hanji giggled, leaving me baffled by how she could be in such a good mood this early in the morning. Maybe she was an alien. To be honest, I've thought about it before. "You're late, you know."

"I'm always late." Did she really need me to remind her of that?

"Yeah, you've got a point. Anyway, while you were in the back, we received a call from that girl who had an appointment today."

"Oh, yeah?" Well, that could have only meant one of two things. Either they were going to be late (which would make me a hypocrite to hold against them), or they wanted to cancel, and something told me that it was the second one.

"Yeah, she sounded like she wasn't sure she wanted to go through it with. She said that she was afraid that getting a tattoo might be a mistake."

Nothing ground my nerves more than when people referred to their tattoos as a mistake. I could rant for hours on end about how people should appreciate the decisions of their past rather than feeling resentment toward them, but to save Hanji the burden of hearing me say all of the things that I've vented about to her before, I stalked back into the back room and brewed up another cup of coffee. This day was off to a wonderful start.

That girl had been the only client scheduled for today, and unless we tended to any walk-ins, it was going to be a very long and agonizing wait until lock up. And so, Hanji and I tried to remain hopeful, but who were we kidding? Walk-in customers were rarer than having an extra five minutes in the morning.

By the time our lunch break had rolled around, our hopeful attitude had turned sour. By the late afternoon, we'd grown so stricken with boredom that we began offering to give each other new tattoos. And by the time we put away all of our tools and sanitized our work stations (even though they didn't need to be sanitized), we were reluctant to realize that we hadn't received an ounce of revenue for the entire day, and that...wasn't good. Owning a business isn't cheap, and when said business goes a whole day without raking in some form of income, it's scary.

"I'm going home." I was the first to say it, but I knew that Hanji was the first to think it. Today had sucked and we were probably going to go into debt because of it, so why stick around to watch it happen? It wasn't like anyone was going to...

Like a symphony created by the miracle of angels, the sound of gravel crunching beneath tires had Hanji and I snapping our heads up at each other, before quickly turning our attention toward the door. Just moments after we'd been staring intently at the knob that hadn't been budged all day long, it twisted open.

"Hey, are you guys already closed?"

If I could have used one word to describe the young man that just walked into my shop, I would describe him as the freaking sunrise.

His clothes were drab and pastel, probably the least attractive thing I'd seen in a while. By no means a stranger to bearing tattoos, he appeared to have a neck and an wrist tattoo that had both been inked in so delicately that they were hardly even noticeable. But that wasn't even the worst part. For the love of God, it was his eyes. They were the strongest shade of amber I had ever seen that I nearly felt like I was being violated by the sun itself. He was, by every angle of his being, the sunrise, and if Hanji hadn't been the one to answer him first, I probably would have told him to get out.

"Yes, yes!" she beamed, and before I knew it, I had witnessed a double sunrise. Wonderful. "We close in about fifteen minutes, but if you'd like, we can schedule an appointment for you for tomorrow or maybe even the next day. Also, do you have an idea of what you want? For your tattoo, that is. After we lock up, we can sketch out a few samples and show them to you the next time you come in!"

If I didn't know any better, I would have said that this kid looked absolutely thrilled by Hanji's enthusiasm and willingness to help. But I did know better, and I could tell that he was obviously overwhelmed. Why would he be, though? He's the one who came into my shop looking for a new tattoo, right? Was he intimidated by the fact that there were only two people working here? Did it bother him that he was the only other person in the shop besides its owner and its sole employee? Was he going to turn out to be like that girl who canceled on us this morning? All of these thoughts crossed my mind, but none of them seemed to fit. What was with this kid? Just what exactly did he want?

And then, he finally spoke up. Even his lips were the softest of pinks that it reminded me again of the damn sunrise. But that was way beside the point by now. What he'd ended up saying had left me feeling more insulted than I have ever felt for the entirety of my career as a tattoo artist. It left me feeling so utterly and completely disgusted to the point nausea...or maybe that was just the coffee from the rusty, old pot.

"I'm actually not looking for a new tattoo. What I want is to get one of my tattoos removed."

Hi there! Chappy here! :D

And I am back from my short break! It was both eventful and restful, but now I'm ready to get back into writing again! (:

It feels both refreshing and scary to start something new, so do hope that you'll enjoy this story! If you've come over to this fanfic from "Feathers and Follies" (thank you very much, if you have!), you must have realized pretty quickly that this story is quite different already! Instead of having a story that's written through Eren's point of view, this fanfic is going to be written in Levi's!

I don't have very much else to say for now other than I hope that you've enjoyed the very first chapter to this new fanfic, and that I'm really excited to be back on track with my writing! Again, if you've started reading this fanfic because you've read "Feathers and Follies", thank you so much for your continued support! (:

And of course, thank you very much for taking the time to read!

- Chappy