The burial ground's scent of soil did not hush the slough of despond, conversely, preached on the inevitability of death. She was vague on whether her soiled hands were caressing or crushing the bedewed ground, her dry mouth sloped past the fistful of nerves infecting her throat into the sweltering cavity of her gut. Her crimson pupils branched out into the white of her eyeballs, she was a saint and starved an eagle at her liver. The darkness in her unseeing eye envisioned the hypothetical realm of death to feel his presence. Her lungs overflowed with lamenting, the clouds resembled faces that she could idolise rather than breath. Her eyelid hasped upon her rusting eye, rainwater from the stormy sky had slivered into the carved lines in her calloused palms. Her cold face was warmed by freshly tears that blurred her vision far from the way the rainwater had.
The gravestone was engraved with the name of the soldier that sacrificed his life for hers; 'Moblit Berner'. The lethal scent of human ashes, the thriving blackened smoke, the fragments of bone and her unworthy survival. "Why?... You... idiot..." Hanji sunk her teeth into her lips, the raw wound of her dead eye began to burn. She inhaled before she found her feet. Pocketing, her hands, the 14th Commander corrected the positioning of the white roses placed upon the bed of soil. Dusting off the specks of mud upon the gravestone, she sniffled up her last tears and coughed to clear up her throat.
"Oi." His coarse voice had never sounded so kind, she noticed. "...What is it?" She desired to harbour feelings of betrayal toward the man but could not bear contempt and not toward him. "How... were you able to survive that blast, Hanji?" The sound of his voice captured beholden solace, she pivoted her head to study his appearance. He was dead on his feet, defeated yet seemed heartened, "It's thanks to him... he sacrificed his life for mine. Sent me down a well before the blast reached us... would you believe it?" Hanji admired the name upon the stone. "What gave you the courage?" She decided to question rather than interrogate him. Their gazes fixed upon the name, he beheld her. "Berner..." He said.
The wind disturbed them but her eyes found him. "Hm?" Their hands were pocketed, her widened eyes were fixed on his endearing ones. "I'm glad... you survived... Hanji." Levi kneeled to place a white lily upon his grave. "Your words... gave me courage to see." Hanji held him in her arms after he found his feet. She held her head to her chest, "Don't die on me, Levi..." She loosened her hold on him and trudged away.
