Levi's Recollections

It was one of the hardest decisions in my life.

My clarity didn’t come from Eren like I planned or from Erwin. It came from the most unlikely source.

I’m not even sure if it’s my own clarity, but I finally-

Finally

Understood Erwin. Too bad it only happened when he was gone. Then again, what could I have done if I understood it when he was alive?

Like Kenny said, everyone is drunk off something that keeps them going.

Erwin was drunk off his vision. Proving his father right. That basement.

The ultimate mission had arrived. We were prepared. We were almost there. We were ready.

He was ready.

Those tired blue eyes were blazing with a fierceness I had never seen before since I first met him.  That’s when I knew, within my core, that that mission would be the last I would ever see him alive. I practically begged him not to go on that mission. I was absolutely ready to chop off both his legs to keep him there, and I wouldn’t feel any remorse. Yet he was adamant like a child.

He revealed his dream to me. This guilty school boy trying to atone for his father’s death by proving him right. It was kinda laughable. Pitiful. All of this. All of those deaths of the scouts, just to prove that his father was right.

It was ridiculously incredible.

This one man did all this just for that. The truth. That’s all he wanted. His purpose was to find the truth.

When all that was done, what would keep him going?

I don’t think I was important enough to keep him going. What would he had done after that mission? What if he found what he was looking for or it wasn’t what he was looking for? How would he have been now?

What would he have done after finding it?

Part of me was scared to find out.

It was one of the hardest decisions in my life.

But I wanted to give him the serum more than anything in the world. He sacrificed everything including his desire to witness the moment when the smoke would finally clear and the darkness dissipate, but this kid-

Armin Artlet

Also had a dream. A dream far bigger than some ambiguous concept in a basement.

His dream was tangible.

He wanted to see the ocean, I heard him say once. What even was that?

Feel the water. So much salt.

So do I give it to the flame that was about to fizzle out or to the roaring fire that could cross this so called ‘ocean’ and reach to those ‘snowy mountains’ across the world.

Is that where I’ll find myself? Was that why all this was up to me?

It was one of the hardest choices in my life.

I couldn’t even call what I felt a sense of loss. It hurt unlike anything I had ever felt to release him, but he was tired all the time. Never stopping for anything.

He didn’t even look like he was in pain when he was lying there. Just sleeping. I wanted him to stay sleeping peacefully. No more hard sacrifices. No more guilt for his father. No more Devil Commander Erwin Smith.

Just go to sleep.

Erwin you big dumb….you said I couldn’t die before you, but what about me? Are you what I must sacrifice in order to have my own clarity?

I couldn’t find an answer then and I still don’t have one now.

But I knew what I had to do, make one of the hardest choices of my life, and keep on going.