Archive of Our Own

Another heart aches, another heart breaks, and I am so much older than I can take.

1.

There is a grand, world-famous museum somewhere between Germany and Poland. It’s built around part of the ruins of what once were the edges of Wall Rose- all rocky pseudo-debris and pretty scenery, and a gift shop that sells surprisingly accurate replicas of Survey Corps uniforms and the like.

It’s called the Museum of History and Anthropology: A Look Into Humanity’s Wonders. Eren has visited one hundred and twenty-five times since its grand opening back in the 1950s; he likes to sit on the benches inside the reconstructed buildings and listen to the re-tellings of their lives within the familiarity of a place he once called home. And even if it’s mostly unrecognizable with its well-lit chambers and clean-smelling air, he feels at home all the same.

If you think about it, it is really quite sad.

(Jean likes to say he’s already a sad, old man living in the body of a twenty-seven year old. Eren likes to say that Jean is a fucking idiot).

(some things, it appears, never change).

Eren thinks that it’s funny, how there can be whole museums of such magnitude and grandeur as this one dedicated to a history that has been lost for almost as long as he has been alive. Its towering imitations of the Walls and lines of information on nameless soldiers who led the war against what is believed to be mythological man-eating giants make him feel small in a way he doesn't, anywhere else. 

Mythological. Eren wants to laugh. And cry, too, maybe.

There’s one particular attraction that never fails to leave Eren short of breath and with bile clinging to his throat;  it is one of the only buildings to stand almost intact, save for new wood floor panels and old cracks on the stone walls and weird, shapeless stains on the high ceilings.

The common dining room was a place that, regardless of the time or date, was always bustling with activity. When they were trainees- Eren remembers his friends running around, acting like the silly children they all were; when things were much… easier than what they are, nowadays.

Eren does not with for those days. He is not sadistic enough to wish am unwinnable war upon seven billion unsuspecting people. But he does want his life back, sometimes.

The room is now an echo-y space filled with prop benches and tables, off-limits to the visitors. A steady stream of people pass in front of him, from entrance to entrance, and some of them stare at him oddly.

It’s weird for Eren to see this place like this. Here, where he practically grew up- full of casual strangers, the strongest smell coming from a flask of alcohol a sneaky teenager snuck in through a water bottle. It’s still odd, even so long after, not to hear Marco’s hearty laugh or Sasha and Connie’s arguing.

This particular attraction was just recently opened to the public, but Eren can’t help but wish it hadn’t ever been. This feels surprisingly- and perhaps righteously- like an invasion of his privacy.

It is eerie, still, after three thousand and odd years. Not only the common room- the entire training grounds. The museum is large, spanning kilometres between exhibits, and every single centimetre feels wrong.

2.

Eren walks down the street, alone, sad, and generally sulk-y. It is not anybody’s fault; this is just how he likes to spend his nights- wandering in the dark, wallowing in thoughts of self-pity and maybe destruction.

Jean pops into his head at that moment. Broody old man, his annoying voice tells him- and Eren can just see it, his hands in front of him in that gay way of his, eyes hooded, mouth set at an unattractive angle. The mental image disgusts him so much that he inadvertently scoffs to himself and looks up, trying to wash it away. A black, starless sky looks back at him.

He sighs, long-suffering, and when he looks back in front of him there is an old-fashioned wooden bridge and a shadowed figure standing a few metres away from him.

Eren considers turning back- his person obviously thought they were alone, judging by the relaxed set of their shoulders and almost tranquil waves coming off of them- but something stops him.

A small sliver of longing sparks in his chest and stomach. Hope makes his fingers shake and a sudden, almost aggressive surprise takes him from the back, making him stop in his tracks rather loudly.

A moment hangs between him and the stranger before they slowly turn around. Their eyes are silver, and their nose is narrow, their hair pulled back from a pretty, pale face with the blankest stare Eren has been on the receiving end of for almost three thousand years.

“What are you doing here?”

Eren swallows. He takes a second to right himself- get all his bearings and scattered emotions back in control and his voice to stop shaking before he can give anything akin to an answer. “I could ask you the same thing.”

The stranger cocks their head to the side, loose strands of inky black hair falling out of their elegant, small braid. “You look… familiar,” they say, and walk a step closer, their boots heavy against the wooden panels separating them from the rushing water below.

“Uh…”

They are too young, his brain tells him. Eren knows this; he knows He died a long time after Eren himself did, and the stone beside his marked it true, and Eren is forever frozen at twenty-seven. This person looks to be a barely legal adult.

“Aren’t you too … famous for this?”

Eren snaps out of his thoughts by the weird question. Their eyes meet just for a second, and Eren forces himself to look away- I’m sorry, a distant voice calls from inside his head, pleading and blood-stained, heartbreaking.

“I don’t think so,” he answers. He frowns, thinking of a way he can fuck off right back the way he came from.

(his heart is hammering against his ribcage in a frantic melody of don’t don’t don’t, and he doesn’t want to leave, but He doesn’t yet remember and Eren can’t bear to know only the carcass of he who once was his-)

“....Aren’t you too pretty for this?”

Eren smiles beside himself. “Probably,” he replies in good nature. They chuckle, and open their mouth to say something else, and so Eren makes a split second decision and drags his feet into cooperating- one after the other, one after the other- and he turns away from them after he has memorised every single detail. “Well, see ya,” he calls back, just for closure.

“I’m Levi!” the stranger yells at Eren’s retreating back, a beat too late.

“Eren,” he answers, and raises his hand in farewell, surprised that it doesn’t shake noticeably. “Goodbye, Levi.”

Levi stares until Eren’s back disappears, and then turns back to the water with a heavy heart. “Goodbye, Eren,” he whispers, and after a moment, pushes away from the edge and walks away- from Eren, the bridge, his thoughts. and as he walks down the stone steps and onto a narrow street, he feels confused and oddly melancholic.

3.

Walking down the street is something Eren will always enjoy; It is a way to get away for a while- concentrate on your footsteps, your breathing, your way. Look at the people walking alongside you; fading, rushing, not taking the time to just walk to walk. They all walk with a purpose, whether that is to go home or to get away; Eren, though, he has nothing to run from and nowhere to go, and so he watches the retreating backs of the people who walk alongside him. He walks their footsteps, one at a time, as he goes through countless cigarettes and the soles of his shoes wear away.

These people, he thinks, these people all deserve so much. He hears people in the alleyways screaming, he feels his shoulders tense and his fingers ache- he knows his pain alright, and he knows his regret in the same intimate way he knows the bottom of a bottle of cherry flavoured vodka. But he isn’t strong enough, he isn’t good enough, and so he is deaf and he is blind and his stomach is made of steel against various liqueurs and and alcohols. He cannot bear the weight of a world he has the ability to carry but not the stability.

He knows he could have given it to them. His friends, he could have.

But he didn’t. He was too weak. He does not deserve the forgiveness he's begging for beneath stranger flesh.

He at least hopes that God, or whoever is out there- if anyone at all- have mercy on his soul and punish his sins in the way they must be, once the time comes. If the time comes.

He shakes his head and opens the doors to a small shop as rain starts to fall. He looks down for a moment, as a reflex, and in the next second his chest is burning and his hands are steadying a pair of narrow, painfully familiar shoulders.

“I’m so sorry!”

Eren chuckles. “No, it’s okay,” he says. “It was my fault.”

“No, I- Oh, it’s you. From last night.”

Eren chuckles, and smiles a small, incoherent smile. “It appears so,” he answers. “Fancy meeting you like this.”

Levi suddenly goes red all over, and he moves away from the door, dragging Eren along inside the quiet shop. “I’m really sorry,” he repeats, and Eren shakes his head, shrugging his shoulders in what he hopes in a nonchalant manner.

“It happens. It was my fault, anyway- Sorry about your coffee, by the way.”

Levi stares at him with wide, expressive eyes, so unlike the ones Eren is familiar with but at the same time so identical . It’s weird.

“Well, you can just buy me another one and we’ll call it even,” Levi says. He means it as a joke; Eren knows he means it as a joke, but his heart is pulling and he’s feeling pretty bold, nevermind all those warning signs going off in his head- don’t don’t don’t is back, more intense, but Eren pushes it all away and zips off his hoodie. He won’t get cold , either way.

“Alright,” he says, regret already pooling like the coffee and water at his feet. “What’s your order?”

4.

Everybody’s eyes tell a story.

Marco’s voice is a whisper under his hair; it recites tales of heroes and villains, about forgiveness and hate, about severed heads and eyes that spoke truths of horror and unspeakable pain. It reminds Eren of the stories the actual Marco told him some weeks back over coffee and biscuits, before they’d found Jean and Eren was left alone once more.

Don’t get him wrong; it’s not like if he minds it, the whole being alone thing. It has been like that since he woke up six feet under and unable to put himself down again, and he has gotten used to it.

His grave lies in the middle of a flowerbed, surprisingly lush and beautiful; beyond the unknown trees was what he had always longed to see, but only with his best friends by his side. Blue as the sky and cold as his toes, the ocean was graceful and calm in the turbulence of his mind. He was not buried alone; there were another three graves in the same vicinity, marked with the names of all he loved, and Eren couldn’t help but think that he was the punchline to some terrible cosmic joke.

He watched civilisation grow, little by little, from his spot beside the sea; he changed his name and his appearance- let his skin go as pale as the sands below him and hair long and tied back, his body functioning even when he was unconscious (because dead does not, and never will be, fitting for him). As people forgot him and he became no more than a legend of hope to comfort children at night, Eren became an active member of society, leaving his grave behind along with all that has ever been important to him.

He didn’t go back to the coast. Not to live, at least; it felt wrong to be without the others by his side. He visits his grave, sure, and even bought the place after hotels started popping up all over the country, but he never really had the heart to come back aside to commemorate the day he woke up and the entire world had moved on from him.

Eren snorts, letting his mind fall out of the weird reverie he’d been stuck in for who knows how long. There’s someone to his right talking to him, their voice drowned out, and Eren, confused, looks over.

It’s Levi. He’s jogging beside him, his short legs trying to match Eren’s hurried pace, and it’s such a hilariously familiar sight that it almost makes Eren do a double-take.

“You know, you can’t keep ignoring me like this,” he says, once he realises he has Eren’s attention back. His voice is casual but there’s an undertone of... something- calculation, maybe wonder. “I thought we had something special.”

Eren huffs and slows down a little, in a subtle show of mercy from a god. “I don’t remember you being so enthusiastic,” he says, and it’s true; not only was Levi pretty quiet and generally uninterested before, he was so two weeks ago in the coffee shop as well. Eren would even go as far as to call him awkward. (Which, no surprise there; he always has been. But to see it again, not quite as intense as it was before- his terrible poop jokes, for starters, were apparently a thing of the past and the past only- was quite a shake, actually).

“Special?” Eren asks, his heart in his throat. He snorts. “The only thing special between us was your shitty taste in coffee.”

“That’s rude!” Levi says. “Plus, yours was specialer . Who even orders decaf espresso?”

Eren frowns. He opens his mouth, a protest ready on his lips- tea makes me want to vomit but caffeine is not good for me- and then closes it again. “You- you make a good point.”

“See?” Levi says, and in a series of bold moves Eren would have never associated with Levi Ackerman, he smiles and joins their arms at the elbows. “I knew we had a bond.”

Eren sighs and shakes his head, refrains from pushing away. “Sure thing,” he says. “What do you want?”

“Oh, y’know. Discuss life. Experience the world. Maybe even become friends.”

Eren looks at him over the corner of his eye, ignoring a couple of old people who sneer at their joint arms.

“Friends?” Eren asks, noting how Levi tries to pull away when he, too, notices the other couple.

He, for a reason he does not wish to dwell in, tightens his grip on Levi’s arm. Ignore them.

“Y-yeah,” Levi says after a second, his façade of petty confidence broken and a glimmer of familiarity shining through the cracks. “So,” he seems to shake himself and continue, “You’re immortal.”

Eren halts so suddenly that Levi bumps into his side, and they fumble against gravity to the background of snorts and disgusted whispers for a few seconds.

“I’m what?” Eren asks after his feet are back under him and he is able to continue walking, nonchalant, as if unaffected.

“Don’t play dumb, Eren,” Levi sing-songs, a smirk appearing at the corner of his mouth. “You know, it wasn’t so hard to figure it out.”

Eren scowls, deep in thought, and tries to think, think, think. “How?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be very mysterious if I revealed all my secrets on the first date, would I, now?”

Eren huffs. “First date?” he asks.

“Just keep on walking, Eren.”

[txt]: Levi, 22:35: apparently that was rude

[txt]: Levi, 22:35: im sorry if i offended u

[txt]: Levi, 22:35: still wanna be friends tho

[txt]: Me, 22:50: How did you even get my number

[txt]: Me, 22:51: You know what dont answer that

[txt]: Levi, 22:51: a wise man

6.

Levi is... a weird person.

Okay, okay. Let’s rephrase: Levi is an even weirder person than he was before. See, he drinks tea with milk but no sugar,  wears jackets when it’s fifty degrees outside, eats grapes complete with the seeds, and sometimes forgets to wear socks with his boots.

He’s just  weird, and not the same kind of weird he was before, where it was hard to like him but they did, either way. Now it’s- almost charming, actually. But mostly annoying.

He likes to take Eren out on dates that aren’t really dates, because it doesn’t count if we aren’t actually dating, duh. Eren is tempted to ask so many things but he refrains- it is infinitely frustrating how this new Levi can be oh so different but familiar, as well.

Their (technically) second ‘date’ was to a bookshop- weird, but Levi likes books, and Eren appreciates the quiet. Plus, being surrounded by books has always been comforting; he spent a good part of his infinity just reading , going bookshop after bookshop and library after library, consuming every book he found that he hadn’t read yet, even if it was too boring; he stopped after he realised there was nothing left. He learnt new languages this way, read several theses, acquired knowledge he never would’ve even dreamt of. There even was a time where he read through all the YA bullshit that became popular in the start of the century- fifty shades of whatever, poorly-written novelas about vampires. He knows things- a lot of them, in fact- but he really is just way too lazy to spread his wisdom to others.

He knows he should. But, well.

“You know, I always think about how old some of these books are,”   Levi says, making Eren chuckle.

“Some are almost as old as me,” he says, grabbing a copy of The Odyssey from a stack. Levi gives him a look . “I still got a few centuries on this one, for example.”

Levi chuckles, kinda weirded out, but also awed. “Homer?” he says, “I read that thing back in high school. Did you?”

Eren laughs. “The original draft, actually,” he says, feeling suddenly bashful. “We were good friends. I was staying at Greece for a while. I was running from the French, I think.”

“Running from the French? What did you do?” Levi asks, incredulous, his curiosity peaked in the same way a car accident would.

“Oh,I, ah, I had already spent a while in France. Around… a hundred years, I think? Eh, what gives,” Eren shrugs his shoulders and shifts in his chair, looking thoughtful, as if he hadn’t thought about this for a while. And how weird is that, Levi thinks, to have lived long enough to not care to think about your past adventures as a criminal, or whatever Eren had been in his past life. Throughout his life. “The point is, they were starting to think I was some kind of vampire of something; came onto me in my house and everything. So I up and left as far away as possible, and so I made it to what is now… Turkey, and then Greece,” Eren keeps talking, and Levi lets himself imagine Eren as he knows him, running all over the world and hiding from caricature people armed with torches and pitchforks. “It was fun, kinda. I was there for the birth of democracy and everything.”

Levi gives him a breathy laugh, then, after his words register. It is almost disbelieving. “Holy shit,” He says. “What other stuff were you around for?”

“Well, I left for Austria after Homer died, and then I went to Spain. I stayed there for like, fifty years, and then I went to Portugal, just ‘cause it’s nearby. Before that, though, I was in Italy- before France, even, cause I was around when Rome fell,” Eren says, smiling, almost bittersweet. “I stayed in Asia for a while after- visited Korea and Vietnam and Japan, even China, even did a few years in the Tibet; I don’t even know where I went, I wandered so much. But I returned to Europe, eventually, and I stayed in the United Kingdom during the fourteenth century, but wasn’t there for long because the plague was just starting and it was really gross. Then I went to America and stayed there for a while, until the Revolution, and after came back to France but there was another revolution, so I went to Mexico and there was another fucking revolution- so I came to Germany, until the World Wars- I fought on the first one, but then the second was total bullshit so I stayed in Peru,” Eren finishes, making a weird face, kind of like he understood but didn’t want to get involved in something long in the past.

Levi would say he can relate, but then that would be lying.

“You’ve been busy,” he says instead, surprised. “Tell me more! Fuck, you can help me with my thesis, right?” he thinks so, at least. He still doesn’t know what he wants to do. But he’s sure that Eren could be of help somehow .

Eren smiles softly, and studies Levi’s face for a long moment. “I guess so,” he finally says, “That’s stuff for later, though. Let’s just read, now, yeah?”

--

When they get out of the library it is late, dark, and pouring rain.

“Oh shit,” Levi says, his voice a downright tone of disgust. “I don’t know how I’m even gonna get to my hotel.”

Eren glances over at him and sighs, long-suffering, and starts walking forward towards his car. “What do you mean?” he asks. He’s making a funny, pissed-off face, with water running in rivulets down the wet locks of his hair and into his eyes and mouth; he looks like something out of a book, where the water would make him even more handsome and ethereal, somehow, but right now he just looks soaked and angry. Like a cat. A very, very wet cat.

What the fuck?, Levi asks himself.

Levi, in a similar predicament (but much better at hiding his displeasure) frowns towards him. He doesn’t even bother with covering his face with his arm, or something; he’s just resigned himself to being soaked to the bone. “Well, it’s pretty far away… and it’s late.”

He lets his words hang in the air between them for a few seconds before Eren sighs, long-suffering, and gestures towards the passenger door of his car. “Come on, then. You can stay over.”

Levi smiles at him, grateful and wide. “Ah, if you insist…”

--

“So uh, you can just stay here,” Eren says, fumbling with the hem of his shirt- miraculously dry, although his sweater and jacket were not.

“Thank you, Eren,” Levi says, his voice quiet and his eyes avoiding Eren’s; he takes a few squelching steps towards the inside of the room, cursing his one hour ago self. They stand in awkward silence for a few seconds, Eren’s eyes locked onto Levi’s back, Levi’s eyes on the puddles his dripping… everything create on the carpet beneath his feet.

Eren hears the tick of five seconds on the clock in the kitchen before he snaps out of it.

“I’ll uh- I’ll go get you some clothes...” he fumbles out, the room suddenly feeling unbearably stuffy.

Levi turns around, blushing, and the piercing intensity of Eren’s gaze makes him shiver. “Alright!” he says hurriedly, hating the vulnerability of his voice. “I’ll just go shower, then.”

“Yeah,” Eren says, eyes unfocused. “Goodnight, Levi.”

Levi tilts his head, a sliver of a memory poking at the edges of his mind, not quite sharp enough to become an actual thought. “Goodnight, Eren.”

7.

Eren wakes up  early, as he usually does.

He goes through his weekend morning routine- put on some pants, wash his face, walk to the kitchen for some coffee- and finds Levi already awake, making pancakes in one of Eren’s old band shirts.

“Huh,” he says. “You’re- uh, you’re up early.” it’s a Sex Pistols tour shirt, exclusive, and Eren doesn’t remember it being the one he gave to Levi last night.

Levi turns around, the vulnerable expressions from before long gone, the reflection of the Levi Eren knew in their place. “I’m a creature of habit,” he says, and it makes Eren snort to hide sound his stomach makes when it drops like a rock.

Over breakfast, as he watches Levi move around the kitchen, he allows himself a moment of pretend privacy to think about the many years he spent in solitude and dreaming about the day he would get to see Levi again, if ever at all; he now wants to go into the past and tell himself to stop thinking about giving up on everything, because it may, perhaps, come to be be worth it sometime in the future. He wants to tell his past self about the odd new version of a man he once loved, like a reflexion in turbulent waters- recognisable, but not the same.

For the first time, Eren thinks that this may be a good thing, after all.

Eren’s technically been alone all this time- didn’t even have his sister or any of his friends to spend all of eternity with, just himself. Of course, there’s Reiner and Annie and Bert, but they are more friends of circumstance rather than actual friends. They always got along better amongst themselves than with him, anyway, and Ymir is the same; she only saw him all those years ago- Chicago , he thinks. They’d bumped each other on the street, and he helped her gather her things before she whispered a fond, “Shitty-ass bastard,” and carried on with the then-reincarnated version of Historia.

Fate is weird like that; it gives you a path with a lot of people to accompany you through, and of them are temporary. He just recently found Marco, and then Jean, and he talks to them sometimes, but Jean lives in France and Marco’s from a  small Italian town, so they don’t really see much of each other even if Eren and Jean do business often. It’s sad but it’s something, at least. As much as Eren hates to admit it, Jean really did bring some kind of light into Eren’s miserable existence, so Eren tries to show his thanks in the grandest ways possible without coming off as if he cares too much (which he does, but that’s whatever. You learn to at least pretend you don’t).

It’s not like he’s alone all the time, anyways. He has lived with different versions of Jean and Marco and Armin and Mikasa, but none of them ever remembered him for long; he never managed to make a dent in their existence further than, he was. He will always be.

Perhaps he is turning into that sad, old man Jean was talking about.

That thought really is what scares him, but not because of the reasons one may think; if he is a gross old man, how can he expect to be able to look good in pink still? He isn’t going to be pathetic like the people he so often knows and so often die. He talks about death because it is his friends and worst enemies, and mostly all that he knows, to some weird degree. It’s morbid, sure, but the concept of being unable to die just seems to go perfectly hand-in hand with the fascination with death; after all, the only tastes he will ever have of it are through countless versions of people that mattered.

He feels like an alien, sometimes, talking about all those weak, mortal souls that wander the grounds he knows by heart. He maybe the owner of the world, but only in his dreams; he really doesn’t want to hold the key to the cage that has kept him forever and he has helped build.

“Eren,” Levi tells him. Eren looks up from staring at the granite table in front of him, dazed, as if waking up from a long-lived dream.

“You okay?” He asks, and Eren wants to laugh until his sides hurt.

“Yeah,” He answers instead. Levi doesn’t look like he believes him, but that’s okay; Eren did not expect it.

8.

Eren’s apartment is big and spacious, luxurious in ways he would never have thought a home could be, when he still was fifteen and suffered illusions of grandeur.

He has worked odd jobs over the years- made a fortune under the names of many different people, has bathed in money since around five hundred years ago, when he realised that living just for the sake of it was not, and will never be, enough- and so he stays in a penthouse overlooking the Berlin skyline; the ocean sits on his walls in various media, taunting, a reminder.

Levi likes it. He sleeps in the impossibly soft mattress of Eren’s sole guest room, since the night at the library a week ago- he’d insisted, saying that Eren was lonely and he didn’t really like hotels, anyway, and it had been so surprising that Eren didn’t even think to say no-  and he watches the giant plasma television hung in Eren’s living room, and he makes fun of Eren over the marble counters in his kitchen. They laugh together underneath the stars and pour over their lives as it was without the other, and the situation is- quite domestic, actually. It’s weird to live like this with someone he isn’t with romantically. Or sexually, for that matter. Or at all.

It’s nice, in a way, but Eren feels yearning all the way to the tips of his hair, and he hates it, too.

Eren feels confident in asking Levi about the world he never learnt to love, how it works, why it is the way it is; Levi is always there to answer every single one of Eren’s doubts without hesitation, correctly most of the time. It’s a kind of symbiotic relationship that has budded into something wonderful in the span of a few days.

But the one question he hasn’t been able to answer yet is, probably, the one that bugs Eren the most.

“Why is everyone so angry?” Eren asks, again and again, day after day, his eyes unbelieving as he watches cops shooting innocent children because of their skin colour and powerful people bragging about building walls, and how it would be a reminder of the power that was held in Europe oh so long ago. “Their issues are so small, compared to what was before, their differences beneath what was faced in- before. Why do they do this? Why are people so violent and hateful, Levi? Why?”

Levi can only shake his head and say, day after day, resigned and ashamed for reasons he does not care to explain- “I don’t know, Eren, I don’t know, and I'm sorry you have to see any of it.”

Eren isn’t consoled by this, but he still finds peace in Levi’s person, in the way he hasn’t been able to for so long- in his smile, his laugh, the way he walks, his horrendous fashion sense. He feels ridiculous asking these questions, and even more so when he gets the answers, but he just wants to understand.

Years, even months ago, Eren was ready to give up.

But oh, isn’t the universe wonderful, giving him a reason to keep fighting, to keep trying to make this world as good as Levi deserves?

Eren thinks back to the Levi he used to know. How calm and stoic he always seemed, and his burning passion towards setting humanity free- perhaps not as pronounced as Eren’s once was, but still there. He wonders, illogically, if Levi’s answers would be different if he remembered anything at all.

He doesn’t know if he wants the answer.

9.

There’s this thing about being immortal that never fails to make Eren feel downright annoyed : he is always too… Behind on everything. No matter how hard he tries to talk about stuff and act like people now do- he can't. He always comes off as if he was trying too hard or not enough.

He finds himself trailing off in conversations more often than not; not because he’s socially inept- immortality is a surprisingly social affair, and if there is anything good that has come out of it is Eren’s abilities to read people- but because he has no idea of what to even talk about. Conversations with him, when they aren’t business-related, usually don’t go beyond small talk. It's frustrating, and Eren fucking hates it most out of everything (even loneliness, because if there's something worse than having to distance yourself from everyone out of fear of heartbreak it’s being unable to communicate normally because you're too old or too young or simply not good enough for a [not] business related conversation).

This is one of the few things that Levi doesn't notice about Eren, even with his knowing eyes and so-called ‘timeless wisdom’. The other things that Levi hasn't noticed about Eren include: Eren being lactose intolerant; his intense hatred towards History books; his insomnia; his extra-long middle finger, and the special place in his heart for Broadway musicals (amongst others, of course).

It’s not like he minds. Really.

The worst part is that, probably- Levi not knowing about Eren's frustrations, and Eren being completely unable to tell Levi about them. It makes Eren's skin crawl, just knowing that he isn't being completely honest with Levi, regardless of the reason or situation; Eren feels uncomfortable and just plain wrong. He wants to say something, make every bad feeling just go away, but he can't, he can't he can't he can't because he feels unable to speak his feelings without hurting Levi's own.

Eren knows that Levi thinks he's helping- and he is- but this Levi just doesn't know how to provide the help Eren truly needs.

Not while not knowing everything (anything?), yet, at least.

10.

“I'm kinda jealous of you, you know,” Levi says, with his back turned to Eren. he stands in a familiar picture, his feet lazily spread apart in the middle of Eren’s kitchen, right beside Eren himself.

“What?” he answers, absent-minded. He doesn't look up from the onions he’s chopping, concentrating not on the conversation but on the fast, calculated cuts of his knife.

“Yeah, you know, with the whole immortality thing. I mean, it must be so cool, you know, to know how things turned out in the end and not die with such crushing doubt that you'll be reincarnated to find answers,” Levi says, all in one rushed breath.

Eren chuckles. “Is that why you’re here? For answers?”

Levi frowns. “Well, yeah. Why else would we be?”

Eren shrugs, putting the chopped onions in a bowl and starting on the mushrooms. Some would feel offended at Levi’s words, but the thing is, he gets it. He really does. “A second chance, maybe.”

“A second chance? Since when do we get ‘second chances’, huh?” Levi says, his tone turning sardonic, his stirring more erratic.

“You never know, Levi. I mean, from what I've gathered, you- you die and- or, well, you know what I mean. The point is- you don't know what happened after, and you probably will never know,” Eren explains, his voice soft and cautious.

“And that's exactly what I mean. We will never know how history came out to be, unless you decide to fucking tell us,” Levi says, his tone going darker by the second. Eren can’t really understand why he’s so angry, but he will at least try to make Levi see his point.

“You know I can't do that, Levi,” Eren replies, trying to keep the conversation as light-hearted as possible. “I would love to, I really would, but it's just not possible.”

”Why, though? Why, Eren? Why is it so bad that you can't tell me?” Levi says, slamming the spoon he was using down onto the kitchen table suddenly, making Eren jump.

“Levi, we’ve talked about this-”

“Like hell we have, Eren, you always avoid the fucking topic whenever I bring it up!”

“That's because you always get so worked up about it! I can't help that I don’t have the answers you expected!” Eren says, trying his best at not getting angry as well.

“It's just because you don't want to tell me, you motherfucker.”

“Levi, I would never-”

“Save it, asshole,” Levi says, his voice strained. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes for a second. “We need cheese. I’m going to go buy cheese.”

Eren watches Levi go silently, his heart hammering.

“Be safe,” he calls as the door closes, and he feels heavy all over.

Well, shit.

--

Levi does come back, despite what Eren had originally thought; of course he would, since he really has nowhere else to go in this big, stranger city- or country, for the matter. Still, Levi is the kind of person to leave if he's angry and not come back until his ire simmers down, which usually- if Eren remembers correctly, that is- takes at least a few hours.

But no, Levi is back barely half an hour later with a few plastic bags on his hands and water in his hair. “It’s raining,” is all he says to Eren, who hadn't moved from his spot on one of his kitchen chairs.

“Did you bring the cheese you needed?” Eren asks, his voice small and hesitant.

“I did,” Levi answers. “Plus some stuff for dessert and breakfast tomorrow.”

Eren nods, and smiles faintly when Levi turns to look at him.

“I'm sorry,” Levi says then, looking down. “I shouldn't have yelled. I... overreacted.”

Eren shakes his head, sighing. “No, no, I'm sorry. I know how frustrating this must be for you, and I'm really not doing much to help. I just, I don't know, I want to follow the rules this time, I guess.”

“I would understand better if I knew what these rules are,” Levi says, walking over to stand in front of Eren. he wants to ask about the this time, but… “That way I would also know not to break them, if you're so afraid.”

Eren laughs. “It's more complicated than that, sadly,” he starts, “but I guess I could tell you some.”

“Go ahead, then,” Levi says, sitting on the chair beside Eren. “I just want to understand.”

“Well… Basically, I can't tell you anything from after I came out of my grave like a zombie because you don’t… know anything yet,” Eren explains. “Like, most of it you do, or at least small things that you don’t know are memories and- well. But there are many other things- like, say, your past, or where - who- we were, or anything else- that you don't yet, and if I told you what happened it would throw you off? You most likely will know eventually, so don't worry, but that day won't come in a long, long time, i think, so until then all we can do is sit around and wait for it.”

“So you can't say anything until I know everything?” Levi asks, his brows knitting together.

“Yeah,” Eren answers. “I'm really sorry, Levi.”

Levi sighs. “It's okay,” he says, leaning over Eren and kissing him silently on the cheek, smiling a little sadly. “I’m sorry, too.”

It’s not really okay, and he’s not set into letting Eren not tell him shit, but he will stay quiet for the time being, for both their sakes.

Eren laughs. “It's okay,” he says.

11.

Eren's lived for a long, long time. This has been known for a long, long time, as well, to all the people who may care to know.

Immortality may seem amazing, with all the knowledge and things you can obtain over the course of your endless existence; the idea of having all the time of the universe to explore and be and to see things nobody from the time you were born would ever dream of seeing is incredible at best.

And although it’s common knowledge that immortality is a sad and lonely path, there's so many that wish for it.

Eren would like to kindly come and punch them in the face, really hard, because he has seen hell and it comes in the shape of seeing everyone and everything around you wither and die while you yourself remain young and beautiful. Immortality gets boring after a while, as well, after senseless attempts at suicide and waking up days afterward, unharmed, and saving thousands of lives in the name of that which you were unable to be in fear of the intense emotional strain living normally brings.

His life became meaningless after five hundred years or so, when he realised that speaking French and Korean and Ancient Latin and Swahili means nothing when you can't communicate with anyone who speaks those same languages and shares your knowledge.

Except for Annie. But she’s- she’s complicated.

He tried teaching for a while, and he loved it, but after being on the losing side for too long Eren became tired of hearing the incomplete stories told from the winning side. He taught Maths, and Science, and History, all from the theories and wars he watched develop, but in the end they were all too modified for Eren to be able to understand them anymore.

And so he quit, and led on a meaningless existence just because he couldn't really do much else. He doesn't need money, so he donates most of it and pays his employees well, since he has so much to spare and everything to give.

But then Levi came. And even if he isn’t the same as Eren knew, he still is . And that may finally be his reason to live, Eren thinks. To see Levi smile in a way that he never did, back then. It's pathetic, maybe, but Eren clings to it for dear life because really, his own has no meaning anymore.

Before, it was about finding him; now, it is about keeping him. As a friend or as a lover keep him he will, until Levi desires to leave him and his torn, pathetic soul behind.

12.

Levi goes back to England a week before summer break ends; Eren takes him to the airport and misses him already, like the corny idiot he is.

“You’ll visit, right?” Levi asks, standing with a hand on Eren’s arm and the other one holding his luggage.

“Of course,” Eren says. He smiles, all lopsided and beautiful, and goes to ruffle Levi’s hair. “See ya, Levi.”

Levi pulls away, annoyed but still grinning. “Stop! Stop! Alright, alright. Bye, Eren.”

13. Levi Interlude.

When Eren starts ignoring Levi’s calls a few weeks before finals, Levi really wishes he could duplicate himself and go knock some sense into him.

He can't, obviously, because this isn't a book or a movie where he is gifted with incredible supernatural powers, but that definitely doesn't stop him from wishing. Eren can be an asshole, sometimes, after all.

Levi really is just too busy with studying and final projects to actively try and get in contact with Eren, even as much as he may want to. Eren doesn't even seem to try , and that truly damages their communication bridge; with nobody to walk through it, it quickly disintegrates into a grey, stoney, sad thing, much like their- relationship? friendship? partnership?- or, well, whatever it may be.

Eren is odd in many ways, and as much as Levi may be drawn to all that odd-ness, there's something he doesn’t seem to be able to shake off- he knows that Eren is hiding something important, even if he is an almost perfect liar. Time did its work perhaps a tad too well; it shaped Eren like a stream would shape a stone, but instead of softening him, it sharpened his edges and made him almost completely unapproachable (unless one is persistent and holds threats-that-are-not-threats against him, of course). The only times he seems truly at ease are when he's around Levi, and even then his leg still jitters and his fingers still shake in anxiety and curiosity towards a future he will, sadly, be able to see.

Levi hates ignoring all of this- he knows the signs, he knows that Eren needs some serious help and maybe to get laid- but he doesn't exactly have the cash to go to Berlin again just to talk to Eren, although he doesn't have much of a choice, either. But it’s starting to boil down to either Eren or his career, and as selfish as it may sound- well, his career comes first, always. He ‘s so close to graduating and as much as he may care about Eren, he has worked way too hard to leave it all in the name of some dumb immortal with an inferiority complex he’s known for less than two months.

Levi used to think that that bothered Eren, and when he finally built up the courage to ask- before Eren decided to turn off his phone indefinitely, apparently- he answered with words that made Levi’s chest ache and his blood boil, because somebody treated Eren so wrong that they made him think like this: they made him feel like less when in reality he is everything and more. (Levi, of course, refuses to consider the person that may be the most obvious of all; Eren himself).

“Don't waste your time on me, Levi,” Eren had told Levi, his lips moving ahead of his words through a shitty internet connection and slightly less shitty computer screen. “I am not worth your future, as much as you may think so now.”

Levi pretends that he didn't see Eren cringe when he’d said, “But Eren, you are my future.”

And they aren’t even dating.

--

In between finals and projects and the stress of knowing Eren is alive (and unable to not be) but not being able to contact him (because Eren is ‘too busy’ and international calls are something Levi simply can't afford) Levi kind of… breaks.

The tears come out of nowhere- and he’s surprised at first, because as emotional as The Wrath Of Khan may make him, he hasn’t cried like this for years- but then his hands start shaking so much he can’t hold popcorn up to his mouth anymore and he's having a complete mental meltdown, unable to think or breathe or speak. This is when he, along with Erwin and Mike- his roommates- realise something.

Levi is not okay. In fact, he hasn't been for a while. It should have been obvious to him, on the bridge all those weeks ago, but then he was so blissfully confused over whatever it is that Eren confuses him about, he ignored it- and now he’s suffering the consequences.

There may be many reasons for this- his father, for example, or the thesis he is writing about the very things he probably is trying to escape, or Eren (not necessarily because of him as a person , but their relationship, so full of secrets and lies and pure, unadulterated confusion).

His nightmares get worse every night, his curiosity becomes stronger against his will, and Eren still doesn't talk.

He probably just hasn’t realised how much Levi is hurting, albeit silently. (Levi knows this is an assole thing to think, but he has the right, okay?)

Levi’s just really tired about all of this. He tries to bury himself in school, and DIY projects, and combat training- hell, he even signs up for yoga classes after Erwin’s lectures get too frustrating. But nothing helps and nothing is good enough. Even if Erwin insists that it's okay not to be okay (with his whole psychology major bullshit ) Levi feels so much more less than reassured.

He feels wrong- he's missing something, he knows, because the hole in the back of his brain is too present to ignore- and he’s suddenly uncomfortable in his own skin. It burns and it itches from underneath, as if his blood’s blistering and trying to spill out of every orifice possible, red, red, red, and hot; and it’s fucking horrible, really, even if it has been like this for most of his life. But Levi can't really help but wish for calm and blue, if not for a few seconds at most- especially since it seems to come worse every time.

As if everyone’s moving, and he’s stuck standing still, watching a film he can’t understand because he started paying attention in the middle and it’s in a language he doesn’t speak, understand, or recognise.

It will all be over soon, he tells himself one Thursday morning, after his third breakdown that week. You graduate in a few weeks, and then you can talk to Eren more calmly, and everything will be alright. Hopefully.

Yeah, hopefully.

--

Levi understands when Eren, after three weeks of radio silence, sends him a text that reads People are too fast. It makes him feel old and melancholic, but it’s something- a moment of stability in the increasingly messy floor that has become of his life, maybe.

Levi knows that it’s worse for Eren, though. His case is a greater magnitude for greater years- he tries to imagine himself, suddenly standing on a world that doesn’t know him or perhaps does, much too familiar to be comfortable, and he gets a pounding migraine during the rest of the day, just for that. And then he thinks of Eren, who once felt at peace with his place in the world- he had a purpose, he knew what he was going to do, what he was meant to do- but  now that is, quite literally, less than history. And now Eren sticks out like a sore thumb (while not actually being seen by anyone), and has five and a half living friends around the world.  

He was supposed to die centuries ago; time is probably just too much for him. And even if he does change along with the people around him- he told Levi, about how he dressed in purple and got drunk at countless parties, wore cheap armour and battled lions, bought a leather jacket and took off his shirt for music, went to war as a soldier under an evil leader against the world, saved hopeless people from cruel bombs, killed helpless people in the name of others. He’s lived his life and many more, never ending, never forgiving.

He's just tired, now, and he sounds as old as he is.

Levi likes to think he makes everything feel better, at least a little- he knows he came into Eren’s life in a flurry of pretty pastel colours and flowers, cold tea and homemade cupcakes, and with this knowledge he tries his best to show Eren the beauty of this brave new world.

Eren joins him, not being one to disappoint, and Levi cherishes the little things, like his smile and laugh and difficulty to express himself, even after so long. Levi drags him to parades, to uprisings, and he encourages Eren to continue fighting to make the world they’ve lived in for so long a better place for everyone.

He’s probably making Eren do all the things Levi had the courage to do alone.

(And Eren tries, he really does; but he's just too old , and he’s been around for too fucking long and he knows the horrors of war in the same way he once knew the lines of Levi’s body).

He hates it, all of it. Gunfire and blood are etched to the back of his eyelids forevermore- it’s attached to him like the plague, deadly and black and cold.

Levi is no fool to this.

He knows that Eren has unintentionally underestimated his abilities to observe people, and for that and many other things, he’s set out to help and make Eren realise just how good life can be, at least for as long as Levi may live (and even after, if possible, if Eren agrees to be happy once Levi is happily rotting away in a wooden box and Eren remains young and beautiful, as he has).

He will try, at least, and that is a promise he intends to keep.  

14.

A few years before meeting Levi, Eren spent some time doing business in Japan.

He wasn’t living there, per se- he was renting a flat, yes, but that was because it’s just cheaper and more practical than a hotel room for a stay longer than a week.

As many people Eren had had available to drive him around, he’d opted for trains; the high life was never really Eren’s favourite thing, even if he’s been living comfortably for hundreds of years after inheriting an old, wealthy company from an old friend on their deathbed. Eren just likes the anonymity that riding the subway gives him.

He doesn’t keep the company because he wants to, or needs to. More like he wants something to do.

It was on one of his trips to the main corporate building that he found one particular schoolgirl, with shoulder-length, inky black hair, porcelain skin, and steel eyes.

“Mikasa,” he whispered to himself- the girl had turned towards him as her stop came, and she blinked at him a few times with a confused tilt to her head before stepping off the train along with a crowd of commuters. She almost disappears into the crowd, but her red scarf is bright and stark on a sea of grey.

I’ll say hi and ask if she remembers anything- no, better see if she recognises me, or maybe I’ll ask if she’s had weird dreams like Jean said he had. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

He had no time to think- time slowed down as the doors closed, and Eren moved his feet to follow, rushing by as time came back and he disappeared momentarily among people- Mikasa was wearing a school uniform, and Eren didn’t want to look weird- but he still walked some steps behind the top of her head all the way to the street before she turned around and shot him a faux tough glare.

She’s as young as when they met. Eren feels bile rise in his throat.

“What do you want?” She asked, her voice soft and wavering and so unlike what Eren was used to.

“I…” Eren feels awestruck, and his mouth is probably hanging open. “Hello,” he said. He bowed as a second thought, quick and curt, and waits for… something.

He’s good at making plans. No, really.

Mikasa didn’t say anything, and people were staring to look over at them, worried and cautious. “I’m Eren Jaeger, sorry,” Eren continued, after too many seconds of awkward, silent staring. Eren offered his hand, looking at Mikasa with soft, innocent eyes. “I must have seemed so creepy following you out of the train, I'm sorry- I mean you no harm,” he continued.

Mikasa shook Eren’s hand hesitantly, with a surprisingly tight grip for such small hands. “I’m Mikasa Akimoto. It’s nice to meet you,” She said, bowing.

“Yeah,” Eren answered. I know. He didn’t say much after, opting to look at her more, and he felt really, really creepy.

Idiot idiot idiot.

“Do you... need something? Because I really need to get to school…” Mikasa said, gesturing behind her, her face a messy mask of uncomfortable apology.

Eren shook his head. “No, I'm sorry, you just… remind me of someone who used to be very dear to me,” he said quietly.

Mikasa nods. Her face softens an inch, but she still takes a step back, ready to depart. “I’ll be going, then. It has been a pleasure,” She bowed, again, and turned to leave before Eren grabbed her wrist.

“Wait! Here, uh, have my business card- please call me if you need anything!” Eren said, realising too late that he’s probably going to be convicted as a pedophile or something. “It was nice meeting you!”

Mikasa nodded, taking the card hesitantly, probably eager to get away from Eren. Eren would want to get away from his awkward ass, too. “Bye,” she said after, walking away and leaving Eren in the middle of a busy street, people blurring behind unshed tears.

“Mikasa,” Eren whispered to her back, shaking, blinking water out of his eyes. “You’re alive.”

15.

Eren doesn’t text or Levi for a while after Levi leaves for London. He doesn’t answer Levi’s, either, nor his messages on Skype or Facebook.

This probably makes Levi worry, obviously- what about, fuck knows, but he does and it’s horrible. Eren wants to care more than he actually does. Levi, on the other hand, wants to care less than what he is.

Levi knows that Eren went through hard times while alone, even if he didn’t say anything explicitly, or even mention it.

He tells his mum about it when she visits, on one of his better days. He’d told her about Eren before, through text messages and letters, but when he tells her about his growing concern for his well-being, she just shrugs and says “He’s pulling your hair, dear. The oldest person ever died two years ago.”

She’d laughed at him when he insisted, so he left it be; but then he realised he was left with almost nothing, so he decided to do something.

Eren had business in london, and he’d stay in the city for a few days. Levi, of course, was completely set in monopolising Eren’s time.

When Eren came to his and Erwin’s shared flat to help with Levi’s thesis, Levi made sure that Erwin wasn’t around and cornered Eren first thing.

“So. you’ve been ignoring me.”

Eren looks away. “Yeah,” he answers, seeing no meaning in beating around the bush.   

“Why?” Levi asks, crossing his arms and shifting on his feet.

“It’s better that way,” Eren whispers, not making eye contact. He goes to sit down, feeling like some character from a shitty YA novel.

“The fuck do you mean with that?”

“I don’t grow old. It’s not fair for you or me, for that matter.”

“Not fair? Eren, look at me. Why is it not fair?” Levi asks, coming close and grabbing Eren’s face gently and turning it towards Levi.

Eren sighs and his eyes glisten. “I don’t want to have to see you die,” he chokes out, and Levi’s heart breaks into a million tiny pieces, all over his and Erwin’s couch. But he collects them all quickly with his bleeding palms, and hits Eren upside the head, just because he’s a complete moron- and he tells Eren so, with tears and snot clinging to his throat.

Levi is quick to wrap his arms around Eren’s neck when the tears start to fall, and they both cry in silence- Levi sits on Eren’s lap, never mind the awkward position or moment.

Eren falls asleep as Levi whispers quiet promises to figure something out- he has no answers, nothing to say to Eren, but he damn sure isn’t going to let this asshole push him away just because he’s afraid of Levi’s mortality. Even if Levi is afraid himself.

To hell with that, Levi thinks. I’ll kill you before dying myself, it that’s what it takes. Just please don’t leave me like that again.

16.

During the time at which Eren stays in London, Levi takes him many places.

They walk around the city without a set route- they visit thousands of hole in the wall cafés, restaurants, bookshops. They take the back roads- Levi knows the city like the back his hand, having lived there his whole present life, and Eren has a vague idea of it. But if there is something that Eren enjoys doing the most, it is taking pictures.

He photographs Levi in different places (talking to a stranger in line, drinking tea at some coffee shop, smiling brightly on the docks at Brighton, eating gelato somewhere in west London), situations (with his back pressed against the opening doors of the underground, his face when he stepped on dog shit, a selfie of the two with Eren making weird faces and Levi being Unimpressed) and positions (lying down, sitting, falling). He takes pictures of birds and squirrels and other animals, of houses and things he vaguely remembers from his time here.

He also takes pictures of the still-under-construction London Bridge, the London Eye, Big Ben, and all other cheesy tourist things there can be in and around London, making Levi laugh at him.

“Why do you take your own pictures? There’s a thousand better ones in the internet, you know,” Levi tells him, and Eren does know, but he still has the urge to do it, to be able to look at the images and say these are mine and mine alone, because I took them with my own camera .

Eren tells Levi so, and Levi laughs more, agreeing. “I guess that it must be part of human behaviour, eh?”

But Eren gets all serious- Levi really doesn’t know what he did wrong, and he hates himself for being insensible when Eren replies, “I am not human, Levi.”

--

Eren goes back to Berlin after promising not to be a dick, anymore. He has a business to run and pretending to be working in front of a TV in his hotel room is not really, well, working.

Levi knows it’s probably impossible for him, but he hopes that Eren will at least make an effort.

When Eren gets home, late at night, he prints the pictures and hangs them in pretty frames alongside drawings and paintings of the exact same landscapes ten, twenty, a hundred years ago.
Underneath, in black marker, he writes May, 2016 . The pictures of Levi he puts inside a blue box upholstered with mail stamps from all over the world in the very back of his closet.

17.

Eren does not find comfort in many things.

(In fact, he only does in three; books, art, and the almost crushing knowledge that he is merely a being made out of earth and blood, almost insignificant to the universe and life around him).

His mind and personal intentions and crooked thoughts do not affect anyone in large, even if he decides to act out on them, and Eren feels like he can breathe a little easier knowing that his eternal stay in this damned planet has really no effect to bring with it (and if it did, it was delivered a long, long time ago).

He tells Levi this, and explains the concept to the best of his abilities without revealing the protruding, horrible truth behind it. It’s good that you can find yourself comfortable with something, Levi says, no matter on what it is- a word, a thing, or a person, even. The important part is that you’re happy, at least a little.

Eren notices the sad tilt to Levi’s otherwise bright grin, and the glassy blue his irises turn, but he doesn’t say anything. His Levi wouldn’t have wanted him to say anything.

Bertholdt once told Eren that he feels the same way, sometimes, knowing that the universe would not give less of a shit about what he has done in the past, present, and will do in the future, Reiner nodding along with a proud grin on his face.

“It’s just nice to know that even if we will not be granted forgiveness, we will not be punished either,” Reiner had added, picking at Bert’s hair with a nonchalant air motion that screams domesticity, their drinks getting cold on a coffee table, partially forgotten. “It’s almost too good to be true, honestly; but then again, we may be living our punishment right now, too.”

And it’s true, Eren realises, as he walks around aimlessly later that night. There is no better torture to a person other than having them live forever and crush all their hopes for everything they have ever believed in right in front of their eyes. This makes Eren come to the conclusion that of course , God is merciless against monster souls such as Eren’s and Annie’s and Reiner’s and Bertholdt’s. They deserve it.

It’s nothing if not a small comfort.

18.

“What if I don’t finish on time, though?”

Eren sighs and coughs, smiling. “You will, though,” he says into the phone. He fiddles with the paper on his desk absent-mindedly, staring at the words but not reading them.

“I don’t know, Eren. There’s still so much to do and I have no idea of what I’m doing! I’m going to fail, Eren, I’m going to fail and I’m not going to graduate because the professors will hate it-”

Eren frowns. He lies back on his chair, turns around to see out the window, crosses and uncrosses his feet.

He lets Levi vent for a few minutes- poor thing’s brain is fried from re-reading and re-doing his thesis over the last weeks- before he starts to babble about coffee prices and shitty Tesco employees, and it becomes too much.

“Levi,” Eren says, interrupting Levi mid-word.  “Levi, listen to me, okay? You’ll do fine. They will love it, and they will give you a good grade, and you’ll graduate, and no, you won’t forget your trousers, okay? You’ll be fine. You will be. Don’t worry, yeah?”

Levi’s silent, for a while, and there’s the noise of rustling clothes and running water before he talks again.

“...Yeah.”

Eren nods. He’s not dumb- he knows Levi doesn’t believe him- but he knows he will , at some point.

“Good.”

19.

Eren wakes to the sound of thunder and raindrops hitting his windows; he can’t see but a white light and then it’s gone in a second, and the next his phone is ringing with the sound of a new text message.

He groggily sits up on the bed, rubs at his eyes, and reaches for his phone.

Levi (2m ago): r u awake???

Eren smiles to himself, a little, blinking the last strands of exhaustion from his eyes.

Me: I am now. Do you need anything?

Levi: is it raining????

Me: yes, it’s raining

Me: why?

Levi: its raining here too

Levi: it’s a thunderstorm with lightening and shit

Levi: it looks cool

Levi: kinda reminded me of u so I decided to see if it was raining there too

Levi: and if we shared the feel of peace c:

Eren smiles a little to himself, looking out his bedroom window and wondering if Levi was doing the same. It seems- weird, almost, for Levi to do something like this, but not completely out of character. Eren doesn’t want to think about it too much.

Me: I think it’s a thunderstorm here, too. There’s lightening

Me: and your feelings are definitely repriocated

Me: replicated*

Levi: thats good

Levi: you should feel at peace, always

Eren chuckles, shaking his head. Easier said than done , he types and then sends it, closing his eyes and focusing on the sounds the rain makes.

I will make sure it is easier done , came Levi’s answer just a few seconds later. Eren’s eyes widen and he feels completely speechless, unable to explain the effect that small, eight-word message has on him. His chest is tight with a memory- something said off-handed, in a different context, after what may have been a petty fight or a hundred-year fight- and he doesn’t want to think about it anymore.

So he changes the topic.

Me: it’s not raining anymore.

It’s kind of true- the water still falls, but not with enough force to be called more than a shower. The pitter-pat, pitter-pat of raindrops is steady on his window, but now it’s more of a comfort rather than a source of fear.

He is not lying to himself.

Levi: really??? hmph, here it looks ike if its not going to stop anytime soon

Levi: like*

Eren smiles. I wish you luck, then, he sends, and then leaves to take a shower.

Levi (10m ago): thanks, eren. <3

20.

Days came when Eren felt trapped, with gas in his lungs and overwhelming tiredness on his shoulders, all caused by Levi's presence.

Don't get him wrong; he enjoys being with Levi- loves his presence, even. But after being alone for so long, even the best company can be overwhelming. Eren needs time to settle and breathe on his own once in awhile, but he really can't when Levi is all over his walls and bedsheets, on his skin and hair.

Being unable to take a break from it in his own home (even just for a little while) is terribly infuriating, because of the level of attachment they have acquired over these past few weeks. Eren feels ridiculous when he still feels Levi's presence all over his flat even when he has been back in London for around three weeks, now. The lingering feeling of his breath all over Eren's skin makes him burn slowly, and his phantom scent in Eren's lungs feels like heavy, burning smoke, making his blood become lead and for his mind to haze.

So Eren does what he has perfected over the past years; he runs.

--

Reiner and Bertolt greet Eren like the old friend he is; both of them know the pain of lingering death, they can taste the blood and ash in the same way that Eren does. They found each other early on- maybe two or three years after Eren's supposed death- and Eren had loathed them, then. He was spiteful and rightfully so, even went as far as to try and kill both of them just to realise that they were immune to death, just like himself.

That's when he left, and didn’t come back until centuries after, his anger having long since died out and replaced with a deep, cutting sorrow and with wilting words on his lips: lonely, lonely, lonely, and oh so very sad.

Forgiveness didn't come easy at first, but as Eren grew, he came to realise how necessary their actions were. How necessary it all was. He learnt, time and time again, that the wages of war are only consequences that precede the least evil. And so, over the years and one or two rightful punches, he learns to forgive and, later, love.

They talk for the first time in what could only have been around five years, insignificant in all of their dragging existence; Reiner tells Eren about weddings and Annie, and Eren in return tells them both about his company and Levi.

He stays over for a few days, and they all bask in the comfortable atmosphere that only centuries of friendship could bring; Eren feels like he's intruding, maybe, but he still refuses to leave until they actually kick him out.

Only monsters understand monsters, after all.

21.

He doesn’t visit Reiner and Bert again (not even to say goodbye, because that's not how their friendship works; not really), although he does stay in Russia for a few more days, on business. He’s never stayed here for longer than a week, not really, and he has no desire to break that tradition- not because he despises the country or has bad memories of it (He has not been here nearly enough for him to make any real memories, at all) but because it’s cold and hard and hazy, like a dream.

Eren likes things to be solid and true, with almost mathematical precision. He likes to be sure that the reason why things fall is gravity and the reason why there is rain is condensation, and Russia seems to break all these rules of nature with its frigid air and even more frigid people. He doesn’t know how the other two do it- he has no idea how they can stay on the same place for so long and not get tired- It’s not about the way the world behaves, exactly, but such a cold country had been at arm’s length before, that he tries to steer clear of anything too unreal. It’s about the way he thinks the world spins, and if that isn’t some kind of parody of his selfishness, then he doesn’t know what it may be.

Russia, as it comes, is like part of a fairy tale; beautiful, proud, and unrealistic.

But still, Eren stays and he drinks tea and eats delicious food. He thinks of Reiner and Bert, of how they have had each other since forever (literally) and will do forevermore (because petty couple fights mean nothing when you’ve lived for millennia, or at least that’s what Eren’s gathered). He allows himself a moment of jealousy before he sighs, and pays, and leaves for his last meeting here for the next four years.

He still leaves for Berlin with a lighter heart.

22.

“Are you ready, Eren?” Levi’s eyes aren’t focused on his, but rather at the bottom of the page he’s looking at, a line of intense concentration on his face.

“When you are, Levi,” He replies, humour dancing behind his irises. Levi’s grainy image  nods in front of him, and he takes a deep breath, words of self-reassurance making way across his lips without permission.

“Well, here goes all my hard work,” he says, and clicks submit.

He sits in faux received silence for a second before he looks up at Eren, a wide smile on his face, all the tension from the past months melted off his face.

“I did it,” he says, his hands coming up to cover his face. “I did it!”

Eren laughs, then, a jolly sound that echoes off his empty office walls, and says, “Yeah, you did, Levi.”

“Holy shit,” Levi continues, and his head disappears from the screen as he throws his body back on his chair. “Ah, finally. ”

“I told you you’d make it,” Eren agrees, and they laugh together for some time, afterwards.

23.

“Business is just thriving!”

Levi stares at Eren, stark unfamiliar and new in the backdrop of the hall in Levi’s apartment building.

In which Levi lives. In London. Where Levi goes (went?) to uni.

Something isn’t quite right.

“Alright, yeah, but- what?”

Eren tilts his head. “I had a business trip,” he starts, slowly, as if Levi were a child that didn’t understand the concept of surprise visits (which, shit, he may as well be). “And I left work early, so decided to drop by and say hi.”

“Why didn’t you- say anything?” Levi knows he sounds angry, but he’s not. He’s just really confused. He hasn’t seen his face in over six weeks- their interactions dwindled to odd texts at three a.m. and such, Eren too busy with the closing of the year and Levi too busy with his own thing- and now it feels like it should be different. It isn’t- there’s still the same green-and-gold eyes Levi likes so much, pretty brown skin stretched over a broad jaw and long-ish hair falling over a not-quite-straight nose- and its owner, it appears, isn’t either.

“I, uh, forgot?” Eren says, shrugging his shoulders and hunching over. “Sorry. Should I go?”

Levi stares some more, and then he shakes his head and smiles, a breathy chuckle escaping him against the urge of rushing forward and hugging Eren. “Nah, you’re fine. Uh- come in?”

Eren nods, and comes in, closing the door behind him.

--

“You know,” Levi says, mouth full of ice-cream and cookies, eyes glued to Ryan Reynold’s face on the TV screen of Eren’s hotel room. “I’d totally fake-date you if we were in a situation like that.”

Eren chuckles and frowns, looks over at Levi and points with his spoon. “You mean, if my visa was going to be revoked unless I married someone ASAP?” he chuckles, and rolls eyes eyes as an excuse not to meet Levi’s.

“Sure,” Levi answers, entranced by Ryan’s beautiful naked chest and Sandra Bullock’s excessive screaming. “Or like, if it were necessary.”

“Fake-dating?” Eren asks. He glances at the bedside table on Levi’s side, counts one, two, three wine bottles, and hums. He then looks down at his half-full third or fourth glass and hums again.

“Sure. also real-dating. Marrying. That would be cool, too.”

Eren chuckles, not really drunk and nowhere near there. “Alright, Levi.”

“You’ll marry me, Eren?” Levi says, looking up at him through his eyelashes, and Eren smiles. “Maybe,” he says.

He sees more than feels Levi’s lips on his, and it’s breezy and light, not quite real against feathery pillows.

“You’re drunk,” Eren says with a sad smile. Levi giggles.

“Yeah,” he says, and settles against Eren’s shoulder.

--

(Levi doesn’t seem remember anything, after, and so Eren pretends he doesn’t, either. He also pretends it doesn’t hurt).

24.

“Oh my god.”

Eren turns at the sudden and unusual outburst, pining Levi with a curious stare. “Levi?”

Levi doesn’t offer any coherent answer, instead opting to repeat his previous statement, this time with more vigour. “Oh my god!”

“Levi, what?” Eren says, again, and Levi just turns to him with a huge, silly grin on his face. “Eren, oh my god, oh my god oh my god oh my god!” Levi exclaims, jumping up and down on his seat in what appears to be excitement- Eren’s still confused, and he’s also amazed that he can jump so high from such a flat surface.

“Levi, tell me what’s going on,” Eren says, his voice rising in confusion. “Please?” he adds after, not wanting to sound like he's giving an order to Levi , of all people.

His childish hero worship and respect towards the man has not faded away, it seems. Even if this isn’t actually the same person.

He finds it disturbingly comforting.

“I passed,” he says, his voice suddenly quiet, as if he’s trying to not speak too loudly and break the moment. “Eren, I passed, I graduated university, I did it!” his voice cracks when it suddenly rises, his eyes exited and glazed with happy tears.

“Oh, congratulations,” Eren says, smiling now.

“Yes, congratulations to me! I made it, bitches!” Levi says, jumping to stand in front of the couch and putting his fists up in celebration, head tilted back towards the ceiling. “I made it,” he whispers again, letting himself fall ungracefully onto the couch and partly on top of Eren. “I’m so happy,” he says.

Eren smiles down at Levi, stroking his hair. “You should be, it’s such a great feat.”

“Yeah,” Levi says, smiling into the crook on Eren’s neck. “When did you graduate?”  he asks Eren, tilting his head up to stare at the other’s jaw. It’s a pretty unflattering angle.

“It was actually not long ago,” Eren says. “I graduated from Harvard in 1992.”

Levi’s eyes widen. “Seriously?! What did you do before?!”

Eren laughs breathily. “Well, believe it or not, I just barely got my shit together around four decades ago. The company was inherited from a good friend, and all my money from before that was made in… unconventional ways.”

Levi frowns. “Such as?”

Eren shakes his head. “That’s a story for some other time. Why don’t you go get ready instead? I say we go out for dinner to celebrate.”

“Really?” Levi asks, disbelieving (Eren never asks to go out, since he's such a public figure and has a reputation to uphold).

“Yeah, really. How does France sound? We can go to my favourite restaurant.”

Levi grins, looking at Eren through his eyelashes. “France sounds perfect,” he says.

25.

Eren wakes up… content, for the first time in a while.

France, as it turned out, had been a wonderful (if not expensive) decision; it was a sweet and short trip, which included a waiter asking if they were married and getting a discount for being gay, or something, and Levi being so surprised he actually played along. They’d come back to Eren’s apartment after a dinner of waffles and icecream, and at three-thirty in the morning they fell asleep on the couch, too tired to even take off their shoes.

Eren had awoken to Levi’s snoring and the most terrible crick on his neck; Levi came to a few minutes after him, during which Eren busied himself with his phone and definitely did not stare. Definitely did not. He makes them breakfast at two in the afternoon, and they watch Star Trek for the twelfth time on Netflix, just because they can.

And the day is good. Or, at least, it was for a while.

“So… are you gonna tell me..?”

Eren turns to Levi, feigning ignorance. “Hmm? Tell you what?”

Levi gives him a look, like he can see straight through Eren’s complete bullshit.

So he sighs.

“Levi, I’ve already told you before,” Eren says, his voice levelled and careful, fake in its cheery intonations.

“Told me what, Eren? You never tell me fucking jack shit.”

Eren sighs. It was good, he reminds himself. “No, Levi.”

“Why, Eren? Why?” Levi asks, his voice straining in frustration.

“I can’t, I’ve told you this countless of times-”

“Eren, tell the fucking truth for once. You can’t, or you simply don’t want to?” Levi’s voice breaks, then, and the fragile illusion of calm they’d held on their hands is shattered with a closed iron fist.

Erne sighs again, looking up. “I can’t,” he says, and his voice is tired, heavy with the weight of a million other identical conversations. He already knows how this ends, and at this point, he just wants to get it over with.

“Why?” Levi asks him, again.

“I just can’t, please understand.”

Levi sighs, annoyed, and it really does sound like if he’s trying not to spit fire all over Eren right then and there. “Oh, come on, don’t be a fucking ass, Jaeger.”

“But I really can’t! Listen to me for once, Ackerman !”

“What the fuck did you just call me?”

Eren blanches. There’s a moment where he considers just getting up and walking out, running as he has his whole life, but Levi’s intense gaze holds him down.

“Levi, please-”

“ Who is Ackerman, Eren?”

Eren panics. He thinks for a second too long and his cue to continue the conversation flies away, leaving him defenceless and exposed to the cutting winds.

That was the wrong thing to do and Eren knows- it’s just confirmed when Levi seethes. “Why don’t you want to tell me anything, you piece of flaming shit, I mean- what the fuck, aren’t we supposed to trust each other or something?”

Eren looks up at Levi, pleading with his eyes. “Please, let’s not do this again, Levi.”

“Oh fuck yes we’re going to do this again! And we will continue to until you tell me the fucking truth.”

“I can’t, Levi, why won’t you understand that? Why can’t you accept that?”

“Why not?! What the fuck happened that was so terrible you can’t speak the fucking truth?!” Levi moves onto flat-out screaming at him and really, Eren is starting to lose it. His blood steams and his eyes water and he’s clenching his fist hard enough to almost break the skin, and it would be so easy to just let it go after so long-

But he can’t, for everyone’s safety, so he relaxes his fists settles to yelling alongside Levi.

“Because you’re not supposed to know!”

“What the fuck?!”

Eren finally decides to just- fuck it, drop a fucking missile and make Levi think he’s gone nuclear. He knows lying is probably- eventually- going to blow up in his face, but he’s a fucking coward he just can’t bring himself to break everything he’s built around this illusion` of perfection. “I'm not supposed to tell you, Levi, you’re- you’re supposed to find out on your own!”

Silence. It feels deafening over the echoes of suddenly halted yelling.

“What? What ?” Levi asks quietly, settling down onto the balls of his feet.

“You just aren’t- if I tell you, the consequences will be horrible at best. I’m doing this for your own good.”

“What?”

“Levi, please trust me. Please.”

Levi’s quiet, and then he breaks Eren’s heart; “Why should I? You don’t trust me .”

Eren laughs at how incoherent that is, his stomach twisting and churning, a small voice from the back of his head laughing at him- he’s right, he’s right, because this isn’t him. “Levi please, don’t be dumb-”

“No, Eren, I'm not. I’m tired of being kept in the dark about all this shit and being lied to by you, all the time, like if we were fucking strangers and held no fucking respect for the other.”

“Levi-”

“No, no, I- you know what, I need some time. I’m going to go- I don’t know, go get some coffee. I just need to get out of here.”

“Levi please, we can talk this through, don’t be a child.”

Levi smiles at him, and it looks wrong and sad. “I’ll call you later, okay?”

Eren watches him leave quietly; he doesn’t try to stop what he knows will be impossible. He looks down to the floor, and tries to imagine it cracking under him, like thin ice- he stumbles a little at the image it makes, beautiful splinters and fingers reaching out and breaking up his fragile, wishful dreams.

He wants to reach out and stop Levi from walking out the door. He really does. but the thing is, he cannot force a hurricane to become light rain any more than he can make Levi change his mind on what Eren knows is the beginning to a harrowing end.

26.

Levi doesn't come back. He doesn’t call, either.

Or, well, okay, he does , but it’s curt and to the point and barely thirty seconds: “I’m sorry,” he’d said, voice drowned by background noise. “I’m going back to england tomorrow. I, uh, I’m graduating and then I’ll- i don’t know. I need time to think.” he sighed, and went silent for a few seconds, before he whispered, “I love you, Eren. Take care. Please. Uh, Goodbye,” and hung up.

That really was the last Eren heard from Levi, and as much as he may hate it, he knows and understands that Levi needs the time away from him- from someone who knows and thus brings more questions than answers to previous ones. He goes back home with a heavy everything , seeing no reason within staying in London if not for Levi.

(His excuses were as transparent as he never will be).

Eren feels sad and hollow inside. He shouldn’t be, not really, but he can’t help it; he wanders the Berlin streets aimlessly and spends nights sleeping on benches in Paris; he leaves his business to his CFO and leaves for Mexico City on a whim, claiming a family emergency, and goes live with Annie for a while.

He runs, again, since it is what he knows to do best. But this time it feels much more permanent.

He takes his time to visit every single one of the many museums there and let himself become familiar with the art once again, reciting names and dates and artists off the top of his head to his non-existent audience. He walks along the sidewalks among ordinary people, once again memorising  the streets he himself helped build. He feels the passing of time more strongly here than anywhere else- it’s changed so much, he thinks, overlooking the skyline of a city he feels oddly attached to, yet stayed the same. It makes all the years he has been alive feel like blackberries chained to his ankles.

He doesn’t want to go back home. He wants to stay here, where the people are kind and familiar, where he lives as humbly as anyone else and doesn’t see ghosts on his walls every single night. He considers calling Levi- telling him everything, apologising, breaking the ‘rules’- but one look from Annie gets him into place.

“He will come along when he is meant to,” She tells him, sipping from her mug, her spanish flowing and natural after so long. “Meanwhile, you cannot do anything but wait. And it’ll hurt, but it will be worth it in the end- if he doesn’t end up hating you, that is.”

Eren stares at her pink walls for hours on end after, remembering Levi in forlorn ways, wishing to go and just say one more thing, at least to make his pain official; I told you, he wants to say. It would have been better to do this from the beginning.

27.

Eren stays with Annie for a long time.

It’s relaxing to be in the presence of someone he’s familiar with, someone he’s learnt to love and accept after years and years of remorseful loathing and senseless arguing; he now finds himself waking up early every morning in her bed, getting ready to go out and walk her four dogs- all strays but one German Shepherd she saved from the dog fights five years ago. He gets back to her place to the smell of coffee and pan dulce from the bakery a block down, and he enjoys the silence in her company, along with the company in her silence.

Annie still doesn’t talk much, but she asks about the call he got from Marco a week ago, and about her boys, if they’re doing well in her absence. “I was scared that leaving them to fend off for themselves was a mistake,” She says, a sardonic smile on her lips. Eren has to remind her (in his much more rusty Spanish) that they are technically as old as herself, and just as guilty. He jokingly tells her that she sounds like the old lady who runs the bakery and won’t stop talking about her Precioso, hermosísimo Manolo, ay mi querido hijo…

Annie laughs for a while at his comment, unusual but welcome and beautiful all the same. “Remember this about them, Eren,” she says, little snorts still making their way out of her open mouth. “They never really got to be children, those two. And they compensate on it even now, millennia after, and you never know what may happen. Oh, not even I do.”

She keeps on laughing for a while after, and still lets out a chuckle or two when they decide to go out for groceries to the small market in the centre of the delegation. Their silence drags on as usual and aside from some necessary words- ¿ este está bien? ¿Traes más dinero? ¿Dónde está la frutería buena?- , it stays comfortable and familiar.

Eren tries not to think of Levi when he looks at Annie, or anyone that may resemble him in any way, but it doesn’t work very well for him. Annie looks at him with soft, knowing eyes, and he pretends to it to the best of his ability.

28.

Eren gets drunk on Ronpope and Tequila. It starts out as a bad week, when Annie is gone and he is left with nothing but his thoughts, and at first he thinks he can handle it. He goes out more, takes a lot of walks, but it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work and it makes his soul break bit by bit, splintering and cracking like glass in an old and abandoned church- much like he feels, at the moment, he thinks. (It’s mostly the alcohol talking, he’s sure. He hopes). But come friday, he just can’t take it any more, and well. He gets drunk on ronpope and tequila, in a way he hadn’t since at least 1965, right at the moment he thought he would be fine, fine. It took longer than he thought it would, really, and he takes a deep breath before every sip or shot to remember that he made it through more than six months without actually getting blackout drunk. You know, so he doesn’t have to think of himself as miserable as he is (and feels).

It’s really hard for him to get drunk, actually- fast metabolism and Titan anatomy and all. Annie was away for a few days- something to do with unfinished business and a shady phone call-and with nobody around to stop  him (Annie being 90% of his impulse control these days, good God ) Eren took the opportunity to be able to throw himself a pity party without anyone there to judge him.  And with a resolve that then seemed worthy of a warrior he went to the corner store, and bought… a lot. Of bottles. And Gansitos Marinela. (He’s had a rough couple of months, okay?)

He was set to become the sad old man that Jean predicted, but he really didn’t give much of a shit at this point.

He probably should have put his phone on airplane mode, though. Or turned it off altogether.

“Levi, por favor regresa,” he mumbles into the speaker, his voice slurred and his mind hazy, the words warm on his throat and bitter on his lips.  “Te quiero demasiado, lo lamento, no puedo estar sin ti, tu eres mi todo, no me había sentido tan feliz hasta que te vi por primera vez en ese pinche puente, y luego cuando nos encontramos de nuevo en Berlín y  yo supe que el destino finalmente decidió ser bueno conmigo,”  Eren sobs, and he can hear Levi breathing on the other side of the line.

“Eren, I can’t understand what you’re saying,” Levi answers, annoyed. “I asked you not to call.”

“Lo hiciste, de veras,” Eren says, laughing at his idiocy, the words not quite registering in the swimmy gaze of his brain. “Si cierto, cierto. Lo sé, y me rompió el corazón, Pero no puedo evitarlo, Levi.”

He pronounces Levi’s name as Leh-vee. Eren mulls it over, repeats it once and once again, and giggles as it stops sounding like a word and begins to sound like- a prayer, maybe.

Levi huffs at him, and Eren can feel his anger and disappointment through the phone, but he doesn’t care . “Eren, go to sleep. Shut up. Don’t call me again.”

Levi hangs up, and leaves Eren crying into his Gansito like the fucking loser he is.

“Ay Dios,” he says. “A la chingada con éste hijo de su reputísima madre, que me necesita más que yo a él…” he continues babbling to himself, cursing his existence and Levi’s and everyone else he can think of.

Annie finds him still half-drunk but kind of hungover, crying, his phone dead and in the fountain in the backyard.

“Eren, you fool,” is all she says, but still picks him up and tucks him into bed, gets him a new phone and dries the broken pieces of his heart.

29.

Levi’s phone feels heavy in his hands. His heart races, his palms sweat, his eyes cloud over with the threat of tears, but he still doesn’t let himself cry. He still doesn't let himself feel anything.

It’s been a long time since he’s had to build up courage to make a phone call. He sits alone in his apartment- two months after graduation (Eren sent him a blue box covered with many different postal stickers from many different parts of the world, reading Congratulations! in a variety of languages, which lies unopened and collecting dust in the back of his wardrobe) and six since he last talked to Eren (‘talked’, meaning a weird phone call in foreign languages which left him crying for hours on end afterwards).

And so, Levi stares down at his phone, and Eren’s contact stares right back at him, blinding him with the brightness of the screen.

He takes a deep breath and, before he can begin to doubt his own sanity, he dials.

Eren answers him on the last ring, when the call is about to go to voicemail and Levi is about to hang up, his breath already pitched and ragged, ugly just like his feelings.

“Hola?”  he says, voice rough and heavy with sleep- one that makes Levi’s stomach drop with words like was and could have and had been.

“Eren,” Levi greets, making his voice sound nonchalant and indifferent (which isn’t too hard, and also breaks Eren’s heart a little bit, once he realises who).

“Levi- oh, hello, I- how are you?” Eren sounds much more awake now, and there’s a lot of background noise as he (apparently) leaves the room he was in, a woman’s voice asking and Eren responding, muffled.

His English sounds accented, and broken, as if he hadn't spoken it for a long time. His vowels curve and his r s are too strong, in a way that Levi knows but can’t quite put his finger on.

“I’m fine. I didn’t call for that.”

“…oh. Okay. What... did you call for, then? Is everything okay?”

Levi doesn’t know what he called for, not really. Everything hasn’t been okay since I left, he wants to say.  But that would hurt more than what he needs to do.

Eren, on the other side of the line, holds his breath against what he already knows. He can hear Levi’s words like rain, but he didn’t want to listen, not really; he waits for an ultimatum and it comes, in the form of Atlas shrugging the world off his shoulders and letting it crash down, down down, into an endless void- dark, cold, and broken, misshapen like his soul.

“To end this, I guess,” Levi says, in lack of anything else. He just tells the blatant, hesitant truth.

“End this? Levi, what are you talking about?” Eren sounds genuinely confused, and scared, and Levi hates everything.

“End this… whatever is between us. Was. We’ve been fighting for months, Eren, we haven’t talked for, like, half a year. I don’t know. I don’t- I don’t want to be with you anymore.”

“We aren’t- we aren’t dating, Levi. We never... were.” You never wanted us to be.

“I… I know. I know I just- I want to confirm. I never want to see you again.” I can’t live with knowing I will never be who you want me to.

Eren takes in a sharp breath. He sounds oddly calm and cold when he replies- he sounds the way that Levi feels, the way he knows he sounds.

“Okay, then.” Please don’t go.

Levi sighs, and his throat is dry. “I guess. This is officially goodbye, yeah?” Stop me. Show me. Tell me.

Eren nods, not really paying attention anymore, and then replies, “Yeah.” I’m sorry.

“Good. See you, then.” Levi says, in farewell, one last time. “Goodbye. Take care, I guess.” I’m sorry.

“Yes, you too, Levi. I lo-” I love you.

Levi hangs up before Eren can finish his sentence.

Eren, with his heart as cold as the air around him, is not very surprised.

  Epilogue .

A year passes and Eren, miserable and ashamed, leaves Mexico City and Annie.

“I need to get back to my life, I can’t fuck it up like before,” he tells Annie at the airport, as a farewell.
Annie agrees. “You better come visit more often, dickhead. I’ll wait for your call.”

Eren smiles at her from behind a doughnut, cleans sugary dust off the corner of her mouth with a trembling thumb.

“Of course, stoneface.”

--
Three years go by, and Eren is as good as he ever was.

“I don’t know how you’re getting on, Eren,” Jean says over coffee, after Eren calls him to say he’s in France for a weekend. “I wouldn’t be able to function should Marco ever leave like that, I really wouldn’t. I admire you, almost.”

“It wasn’t like that, between us,” he says with a small chuckle. He smiles at Jean over the rim of his cup, his eyes clouding over with immense loss and sadness he knows too well.

“I knew this would happen, though,” he continues, stares down at the swirling liquid and frothy milk in his cup. “I simply prepared myself for the inevitable consequences.”

--

Four years after, Eren meets Armin again for the first and last time; he is a poor child living in a hospital, hooked up to countless machines that become the dictating force between life and death.

Eren is listed as his only living relative.

“You’re still so smart, even in a different life.”

Armin smiles at him whenever Eren comments on that. He doesn’t talk much- his breath is ragged and strained, dusty, hopeless.

Eren stays with him for a week. He doesn’t leave the hospital or the room he’s in- Armin tells him he’s about to die, and Eren sighs sadly and says, “I know.” he knew from the moment he walked into the room.

He pays Armin’s bills, anyways.

“You changed a lot,” Armin says one day.

“A lot how?” Eren asks, distracted. He’d taken it upon himself to read all of Armin’s papers so his legacy doesn’t go unnoticed, and it was becoming a slow, slow process.

“You’re different, now. You're not the same boy I remember from… Before. I mean, you still kind of look the same, and your voice is the one from my dreams, but… I don't know. You changed.”

His voice is weak. Eren wants to ask him to stop, but also knows these are probably his last words, and he doesn’t have the heart to cut him off.

“Is that bad?”

Armin frowns. It takes him a while to gather the strength to keep talking, or perhaps he has to take a moment to cultivate words. “Not necessarily. You're more- mature, now, or at least compared to back then. But you also lost something, and gained so much more, and I just, I don't know,” he says, tripping over his own words, breathing heavy, lost.

“Did I? I don't think I noticed,” Eren answers, his brows furrowing. He looks away from Black Holes and The Relativity Of Space-Time , thinking hard about his next answer. There is nothing to hide, he decides, as it is considered rude to keep a secret from a man on his deathbed. “If I lost myself somewhere between then and now, I guess I just forgot how it was before… Or maybe you're holding me a bit too high up in the stars, eh?”

Armin’s frown deepens. “No, no, no, that's not it, Eren. I'm serious. You don't act the same way- you're not as set on things as you were before. You’ve lost... intensity.”

Eren freezes, and then his expression goes neutral. So much for telling the truth, he decides. There’s some things dying men do not need to hear. “If you think so, Armin. I feel the same as back then, though.”

Armin’s eyes do that thing where they get shiny and his lips go downwards and he looks so much older, and suddenly Eren is not sitting on a hard hospital chair but sand, three thousand years in the past. “Of course you do, Eren,” he chokes out, smiling sadly.

“Of course you do. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

--

After six years, Eren is as good as new.

He finds Connie, and Sasha, and he honestly couldn’t feel happier- Erwin pays him a visit, and the only thing he hears about Levi is, “We haven’t talked since graduation. I think he went off to Austria, or something.”

--

Seven years, and Mikasa calls Eren- scared, fumbling. “Eren Jaeger, Eren, you’re alive,” she says in tears and broken English and curved vowels, like if she never learnt to speak the language.

“I am,” he tells her, stuttering in unpractised Japanese and not much better off than her. “And so is everyone else. When is the earliest we can meet?” Eren learns that she is homeless, now. He pays for her plane ticket and three days later, she is living in his flat overlooking the Berlin skyline, and it starts to feel a little bit more like home again.

--

Nine years later, Levi makes a name out of himself.

“ Doctor Levi Shirogane, 31, may be the first person to uncover the complete history of the Walls Of Humanity that surround parts Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, and Poland with the discovery of a collapsed library in the southern edges of it, in northern Austria. The texts found are currently in the process of restoration. More on this, as it develops ,” the lady on the newscast says, images of Levi and his team of historians working as a backdrop.

“That motherfucker,” Jean says, and that’s all the commentary that comes from any of them.

--

In the middle of the tenth year, the first recovered and translated text is released to the public. It is titled, On Titans And Shifters, Part VI.

Levi goes down in history for the history of something he doesn’t yet know.

--

Eleven years pass, and Eren receives a call.

“Eren?” The caller says, desperate, breathless, scared. “Eren, I know. I remember. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

And Eren replies in the only way he ever could, ever will be able to, to such a familiar voice as his.

“I will be there as soon as possible.”

--

Once upon a time, when Eren was much younger, he dreamt of the sea.

He would sit beside Armin in the barracks and hear him tell stories of impossible waters filled with salt and strange new life, endless and blue, like the sky above them. he‘d lie back on a bed, his head on Mikasa’s lap, and imagine salt on his lips and a gentle breeze on his hair, sweet-smelling, fresh, metaphorically free.

He didn’t quite imagine how sticky it was, but then again, he was only fifteen year old kid with wide eyes and great dreams and even greater tragedies.

And once upon a time, when Eren was not quite as young but also not nearly as old, he dreamt of his friends.

He would sit on a boulder near the shore and stare blankly at their names, written on marble and steel. He would pretend he’d heard Armin’s laugh or smelt Mikasa’s pretty perfume, the rough callous of Levi’s hand within his own, and he would let himself be happy for a second in his tiny, infinite stream of life.

Now, in the time upon, he does not seat and he does not dream. He only imagines and he only cries, melancholic for a life he stopped living when the lower half of his body was bitten clean off and he whispered his last prayers onto Levi’s fingers.

The last time he was here, he imagined Levi- this new Levi, with his silly man-bun and ridiculous sweaters and neon jeans- by his side, a warm presence in the chill seaside breeze. He imagined things would be better and they would walk with their hands intertwined and their shoes nowhere to be found.

That’s how Eren finds him, somewhat; alone, bare-footed and sitting on what once was his grave.

Eren smiles, for what feels like the first time in eons, and maybe it was .

“I always knew I’d see you again,” Levi says, fingers fiddling with the hem of his sweater. He doesn’t say hello, but Eren knows why; he, too, feels like it doesn’t fit into the narrative of what may be the silliest tragedy or the most frustrating love story. “I couldn’t bear not to, I guess. I would’ve gone mad.”

He looks old and worn, but also, strangely, just like Eren remembers him. Not just in this life; his mouth is set in the same hard line and his fingers have the same crookedness that comes from breaking them one too many times, just like the first time Eren fell in love.

“What, to know that I’d finally passed?” Eren answers, not daring to walk and meet his eyes. He’s told himself he wouldn’t cry for millennia, and he isn’t about to break the last string of dignity he has.

“To know that you lived,” Levi corrects his voice full of uncontainable emotion, and Eren’s efforts become meaningless when Levi takes the first step and their eyes meet, grey on green, tense and taut like an elastic band.

“Well, you hit jackpot,” Eren says, a sardonic smile playing at his lips. “I never died.”

Levi frowns and reaches out slowly, with more than enough time for Eren pull away, and strokes his cheek when he doesn’t. “I can see that,” Levi says. “I know that. You’ve been through so much, haven’t you?”

Eren laughs, and leans onto Levi’s hand, relishing on the warmth and how comfortably unfamiliar it feels. “You’re taller.”

Levi feels familiar and cautious. He talks as if it is the first time they have seen each other- and it may as well be.

“My mother had an actual job,” Levi answers. “Food does wonders to growing bones.”

“I can see that,” Eren echoes.

Levi laughs. “You’re darker.”

Eren quirks an eyebrow, tilts his head in wonder. “Darker?”

“Your skin,” Levi answers, looking at Eren’s cheek instead of his eyes.

Eren laughs. “I guess so,” he says, “aren't you going to comment on my hair, too? how it’s longer or something?”

“I don't- I don't think I remember your hair,” Levi says. “Petra would, though. You’ll have to meet her sometime,” he says, making Eren smile.

“Sometime,” he says, and then he leans down, slowly, tentative, and kisses Levi for the first time in over three thousand years.

--

fin.