Chapter Text
Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
Is never to feel the burning light.
Oscar Wilde
☆
Levi has a headache.
Titan blood lifts from his skin in tendrils of putrid steam—fucking filthy—and his socks squelch in his boots, and his hair drips into his eyes and his ribs clench when he breathes and he can still feel the tickle of Izzy’s eyelashes on his palm, the slide of her eyelids under his fingertips.
His sternum aches so acutely that he presses a hand to the middle of his chest to feel for the wound there, to staunch the bleeding, blossoming hot and dismal and poppy-red between his trembling fingers.
But beneath his hand his traitorous heart beats on, harder than ever.
“Levi!”
The Captain is dismounting his horse, boots slapping against the mud in his haste. “What happened? Are you the only one left?”
The kindling in Levi’s chest roars to a bonfire in one breathtaking instant, and his body moves before he tells it to.
He makes contact with a meaty thunk, and Erwin topples ass over teakettle to the ground. Levi’s blade touches his neck just as Erwin gets one knee underneath him.
A shame, Levi thinks, to decapitate a man so handsome. A shame, he thinks as Erwin speaks, to silence a voice so resonant. He will relish the snick-snack of vocal chords tearing under his blade.
And then, Erwin’s words reach him at last, delayed by the headache and the wet socks and the bloodlust and such, and pain blossoms in his sternum once more, twofold, tenfold.
All for nothing.
No more, he thinks. His vision goes fuzzy around the edges. No more.
His sword reels back and, as if magnetized, snaps back in—
Only to meet resistance.
Levi stares at the blood blossoming poppy-red between Erwin’s fingers and forgets how to breathe.
“Who’s the one that killed my subordinates? Your friends?” Erwin’s voice rumbles an octave lower than normal, felled by the pain. Levi blinks rainwater out of his eyes.
“Was it me? Was it you?”
Levi jolts back into himself.
“That’s right,” he says slowly, salt searing the hole in his chest. “It was me. My arrogance. If I’d—if—”
“No!” Erwin cuts through the roar building in Levi’s ears. “It was the titans!”
His eyes blaze blue-hot, burning into Levi, cauterizing the wound shut. He pushes the blade aside, and Levi is too stunned to react. His eyes are so blue.
“As long as we stay ignorant,” Erwin pants—why is he so out of breath? Ah yes, the blade— “they’ll keep eating us. Look around you!”
Levi doesn’t. He stares at Erwin, frozen.
“Out here, beyond those damn Walls, there might be something to free us from our despair.” Erwin’s voice breaks at the end, and the way he says it resonates deep in Levi’s gut. Levi’s hands shake to the tune of the tremor in his voice.
Erwin takes a deep breath, and his voice steadies. “But there are people, blinded by greed, and complacency, and arrogance—” Levi inhales sharply— “who would keep us from it. Blinded. They cannot see the other side.”
They do not want to see, Levi finishes for him. The words don’t make it to his mouth.
Erwin pushes the blade down to stand, and Levi’s eyes follow him up, and up, and up. He wonders madly if Erwin will continue his ascent, leaving the ground behind.
“And what about you, Levi?” His name on Erwin’s tongue buzzes at the base of his skull. “Will you kill me? Return to the Underground?”
The rain has stopped. A breeze ruffles Levi’s hair, dissipating the last of the steam from the tips of his ears. It carries the scent of ozone, dew-dropped grass, the mineral tang of the mud. Levi’s tongue is too big in his mouth. He watches Erwin loom over him and is suddenly seized by the sense that he is teetering over the precipice, gazing over the expanse of something indescribable, enormous, unfathomable. There is a hand lovingly placed in between his shoulder blades, and deft fingers are weaving wire through his sternum, knitting the wound shut.
The clouds part, and sunshine unfurls from behind Erwin’s broad shoulders.
“Fight with us, Levi.” His voice shakes with conviction. “We need you.”
The hand at Levi’s back gives a gentle push, the wire pulls taut, and Levi soars.