I

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Levi had always been the type to burn bridges. He didn't know how— with these hands that only know how to slice, strike and cut down— to build them. He's lonely, he decides. Ultimately though, he doesn't feel it. He doesn't feel the gaping hole or the empty petrifying hollowness that's supposed to fester and grow somewhere in between his ribcage.

Instead, he feels nothing. When one would think he was glaring at everything, silently hating the world— or rather, hell— that they live in, actually he feels nothing. There is no irritation when Hanji is particularly too playful, calling him out on his height (rather, lack thereof). There is no grief or shattering sadness that enters his bones at night when he thinks of soldiers lost under his command. There is no haunting remorse as he watches others die for the cause of humanity.

Humanity, he thinks. He's heard the word so many times, heard Erwin talk valiant and grand speeches and heard people claim that humanity can be saved, but Levi wonders what that even is anymore.

People must think he's the most human of them all, considering the cause he fights for, but even Levi is at a loss for what he fights for. It isn't that he doesn't believe in the cause or in humanity's plight, their struggle for survival— no. It's just that, he's been fighting so long, his whole life, outside and within the walls, but he doesn't see any humanity anywhere.

Humanity, he hears the word so often that he can't quite understand what it is anymore. Like smoke in the sky, dissipating into nothingness, the word feels more like a stranger—something he can't touch or grasp or see— than a familiar friend like it's supposed to. So much talk of humanity and he can't even see a single shred of it anywhere.

They call him humanity's greatest soldier. He's supposed to be a beacon of hope, but Levi wonders how you can be that when the very specification is hope and he most certainly does not have that.

Instead, there is nothing. There is only fighting and bloodshed. There isn't even any loss because there is nothing Levi holds dear— he does not know how to anymore. He only fights and kills and people only fight and die. To him, living or dying— there's no difference between the two except for the state his physical body will be in.

He supposes that that is what makes him strong. He isn't afraid to die. But he knows that it's just a misplaced sense of courage people pin on him so that they have something to hope for. Because after all, without anything to hope for, humanity is surely doomed— Levi knows that he is.

He isn't afraid to die and he isn't quite ecstatic to be alive either. Mainly, he's mostly caught in between because what it really is, is that, he doesn't quite mind dying or living. He doesn't mind anything at all. That's how he figures he's lonely. He doesn't feel lonely, but he figures he is because he simply doesn't care. He does what he wants, fights however he pleases and lives however he pleases. It's because there's nothing that he knows something is missing.

Whatever is missing though, he knows he will not find in the auburn haired girl with golden amber eyes. It doesn't stop him though, because it's her existence that really wakes him up. It's not the death of a thousand soldiers or fear of his own— no— it's this one girl who smiles too widely, talks too brightly and is too kind that makes him really think about just what the fuck is missing. He claims in his head that there isn't anything; he doesn't feel the hollowness, and yet, the mere fact that he is searching is contradictory enough on its own and he can't quite understand what to make of it all.

It's when he learns her name that he knows he's gotten too attached. But for fuck's-sake the name Petra Ral rolls just too well off of his tongue that he can't stop thinking about the name and repeating it over and over, and over, and over and over again in his head.

That's when he knows. He's no different from anybody else; just like everyone for within the walls that had pegged him for some messiah, savior of a human race that was damned with or without him— he knows he's done the same to her.

He has selfishly turned her into his own beacon of hope. But then he thinks, how could I not? When she smiles like there are no titans outside the walls, laughs like her comrades are not going to die tomorrow, and lives so freely, so innocently that sometimes, she can make even him believe that they have fighting chance. They must have a fighting chance because otherwise, she would not be able to live as she does, right?

When she smiles and laughs and greets him warmly asking if he'd like a cup of coffee to start his day, he thinks, this must be what humanity looks like. When she fights fiercely and kills more titans than he can remember, he thinks, this must be it means to live— to be alive— for something.

And when he touches her hand for the first time, as she's handing him his fifth cup of coffee for the night as he does paper work, something erupts in him. It comes from so deep within him that he swears he feels his bones shift and align as if they'd been set wrong this whole time and he's just now realizing it. The feeling is so overwhelming that he realizes what ribcages and skulls are for. It's so that feelings like these that come in tsunami waves, and thoughts like, oh god this is what it must feel like to be so shatteringly lonely, don't pour out of him.

Levi doesn't think he can save anyone, but he thinks that this girl can maybe save him; not from titans, the plague or death, but from his loneliness and the nothingness that seems to be a black-hole residing in his chest where his heart should be. It's not so much as a change in the world, but rather it's a tiny shift in his world. A change to his perspective and she does that to him— she changes him and the way he thinks.

He thinks that as long as she's there, with him, by his side, fighting by his side, then there is no way they can lose— there is no way there is no hope.

Levi, though, learns quickly and all too painfully that hope is just as easily crushed as humans beneath a titan's foot. And it's when he sees her there, her corpse staring up at the sky from the bottom of the giant trees that he realizes just how small she is.

It's when her eyes stare at him and he looks for the usual gleam in them— because surely not even death can take light that away, can it? — That he thinks, this is what it must be to have something to live for, because the loss weighs so heavily on him that he almost stops and stays routed where he stands. He almost stops fighting and he almost, almost thinks that he doesn't want to live in a world where he will call Petra Ral's name and she will not come running over with the same wide smile and bright disposition, saying 'Yes, Heichou?'.

Almost.

But then he thinks of how, right now, he has once again defied what even he thought impossible. In that moment, he was standing, breathing, feeling and living in a world where Petra Ral no longer exists. It's a desperate thought, but it propels him forward; forces him to shoot through the trees using his 3DMG and leave her body there.