Erwin X Levi X Eren One Shots ※ Eruriren

Until The Bombs Drop

Eruriren Weekend ~ Past

Levi had never found a reason to stay in the house, now more so than ever. It was just cold in there, anyway, he thought as he sat on the stairs- thawed with cruel ice. Inside was frozen, outside was frozen and the streets of Leningrad were bare. People were gone, dead or fighting. Starved to death or shot. A bullet only took one hit to kill, infections were spreading like wildfire and even a small cut could cause the severest of illnesses. That was if the cold didn't get to you first.

Hunger or cold battled for the deaths of millions, picking off each one by one yet so rapidly that it looked like they were dropping in unison. Dying so quickly you could mistake it for bombs if not for the distant crashes. The bombs were still far, obliterating the outskirts of the city.

But they were approaching. Quickly.

Levi was starving but he didn't want food. He didn't have the energy. His hunger-riddled brain was muddling needs with wants until the lethargy dragged him into the state of unconsciousness. Sleeping with his eyes open. Sleeping whilst walking. Sleeping when you couldn't bear the cold any longer. Dead when you couldn't bear the hunger any longer.

Levi shivered, his woollen coat doing little to protect him from the biting Leningrad winds. They were always like this in winter but with a warm home, the fire blazing, he had never found it much of a problem- that was until he caught a cold, at least. But, now, with his fingertips blue and his nose such a violent red you could mistake it for food. People thought anything was food now.

Animals were food.

Plants were food.

Pets were food.

Leather was food.

Clothes were food.

Everything. Was. Food.

The rest of the slum had scurried off to the defenses but Levi hadn't budged. If he was going to die, he was going to do it here, not on a lonely battlefield under a foreign sky. He had never left his home, never walking further than three streets down where the furthest shop, the grocers, was. The one that was now empty, out of stock and ransacked. The store owner had passed whilst still at the till, he had been giving any spares to his family- not enough for himself.

The slum was dead anyway, literally and metaphorically. The people were gone, the ones that stayed barely alive, maybe not even. His apartment block, which used to hold dozens of people, now contained just him. As did the next.

Families didn't live here.

Families were some of the only people who bothered to stay behind.

That and cowards. And Levi certainly didn't have family.

He had been searching for food, he remembered suddenly. His energy had been lost on him and he had sat down to rest. They all knew that a rest meant nothing of the sort. He saw the woman on the set of steps next to him, frozen over- her rotten corpse portraying the shards of ice like an art piece.

With food on his mind and nothing available, he set for wallowing in his hunger, feeling the tearing of his stomach as it searched for food that wasn't there. That wouldn't be there. Not for another couple days, anyway, when one of the supply trucks finally made it over the icy stretch of the river and rations were given out again.

Most people had saved their rations. Most people were living off what was few but there. Levi, he was living with nothing. Nothing at all. No bread stuffed in his pockets, no hidden honey jar for emergencies. Nothing. The grips of death clutched on him like a vice, the shadowy figure blocking his vision- black spots gradually filling his vision.