Erwin X Levi X Eren One Shots ※ Eruriren

Until The Bombs Drop

He was dying, he realised.

And, it didn't feel too bad.

Except, he was a coward and cowards don't die. Cowards live for fear of death. The brave ones accept it. Levi wasn't brave. Levi was afraid. He was a strong coward, a contradiction that made too much sense in a time of confusion.

Everything was contradictory now. A whole city was living off nothing, corpses walked and the fed still danced. The people were scared but they didn't give in. They lived. They lived with nothing to let them live.

He wants to pity himself for being stuck in this state of starvation but he can't, the only ones who have food are the rich and even then, they hardly have anything either. Some of them still don't have anything at all.

The clever ones are the ones living the best. The ones that know how to steal, how to con and how to persuade. They are the ones who live.

That was not Levi. That was not brash, crude Levi whose aim before this was to at least get a job, for his country. For Stalin. It still hadn't happened. He didn't fit in right. He didn't try hard enough. He fought for what he believed in.

At the moment, he couldn't think of anything that fits into that.

Levi doesn't know how he manages to stand after that, how he managed to blink the black from his eyes. He pries his hands away from the ice and into the whipping wind, not an improvement- at least the ice had numbed his frail fingers. He looked down at himself, concentrating on his legs. They were barely there anymore. He looked like a skeleton, a living skeleton. He looked ill. He wasn't self-conscious, though, he fits in perfectly alongside everyone else.

Stumbling on the ice, he gained his balanced and trudged along the abandoned streets. It was desolate, the wind his only accomplice as it whipped him from head to toe. It scratched at his dry skin like sandpaper and burned his eyes like fire. The wind was cruel, battling hunger in its want for death.

What draws Levi eye, though, is no longer his own living corpse but the flyer fluttering around, barely remaining pinned to the crooked-stone wall. On it, in huge letters, wrote 'JOIN THE ARMY' and underneath, in letters hardly legible to his weak eyes, it continued to explain why he, just he, was needed. This was for him, he thought, some self-obsessed part of his mind taking over. He was no longer in control of himself. His mind or body.

He leaned forward, squinting to read the print that would have been so clear only a year before. They told him of his fighting comrades, the wicked enemy, and the saviour that he would be if he were to enlist. He almost forgot of the death he had heard of. Forgot this was a lie.

He didn't understand why the propaganda posters were still around. Everyone who wanted to go had gone. Or so Levi thought. 'Mikasa, why won't you just let me enlist! See this! They need me!' Levi wasn't the only self-obsessed person, it seemed. The boy, a combination of shaggy, brown hair and undefinable eyes, raved on to the girl who stared at him with a heavy gaze, one word exuding from her: no.

They both looked starved, faces like skulls and muscles reduced to bone. But, they looked far more alive than many. They were some of the well-off. He could see it, in both of them, they were clever ones.

He watched them, following the story in his mind. The boy was the basis of the operation, stealing and conning as if his life depended on it- in fact, it did- and then, the girl, she reigned him back before anything could go wrong. She was just as strong but far more subdued, she would do anything for him. That much, at least, was clear to Levi. This girl would put the boy above her, she would die for him.

She was dying for him, Levi realised. Where she keeled over, he stood straight. Where her eyes were dim, his shone. She was feeding him her own food. She had just enough to live, just enough to be able to protect him. But, the rest went to him. He used to fight it, Levi imagined, and then he had begun to give in.