Endlessly - Eren x Reader

Chapter 6.5 - Levi

"I recall you mentioning you once loved someone more than I'd ever be able to imagine. Was that true?"

"I suppose so."

"You also mentioned that they had passed away right?"

"Indeed."

"How did you manage?"

Levi ponders for a moment before replying—

"I didn't. I still love that person, it's just a love with no place to go."

You raise your head to listen more intently.

"A love with no place to go?" You ask.

"Love is only something that exists because of something else, without something to love, it simply does not exist." He stands up from his desk and begins writing on the chalk board.

"For example, you walk down the street and meet a puppy, it's adorable and it's wagging its tail towards you, you reach down to pet it and in that moment your heart flutters and you feel love, but in an alternate universe where you are walking down that same street at that same time except there is no puppy, you would never feel that emotion inside you, you wouldn't even know what it was. It just wouldn't exist."

"One can't exist without the other." You say in understanding.

"Sure you could put it that way, now let's introduce a variable in which those two universes existed at once, you meet the puppy on your walk, you pet the puppy and feel that emotion, but the next day you make that same walk, except that puppy is no longer there. Where does the love that you felt go?" He asks as he draws diagrams on the board.

"It doesn't."

"It doesn't what?" He asks, giving you a sly look.

"It doesn't go anywhere, I still felt it, and it existed."

"Now you understand. Love doesn't just go away when the thing you loved is no longer there. It stays with you."

"And what about when the puppy comes back?" You ask.

"Well you'd probably love it more the next time you saw it." He smirks. "But that's psychology and I'm not a professor of psychology."

"I'm sorry about your partner." You say.

"My partner passed away a long time ago, there's no need to be sorry about it. It was a tragic accident I don't bring up all that often, but I still love him everyday." He sits back down in his chair.

"I know it's not the same but... what if for instance, the thing that you love does exist, but only from a distance. When you know you could walk up to it and touch it, but you don't because for some reason you can't?" You ask innocently. "Is it still love with no place to go?"

"Is this in regards to a person yn?"

Professor Levi can read anyone like a book.

"Let's say hypothetically it is, do you think that person is struggling?"

"Definitely." He responds flat. "Loving something but not being able to act on it... that is a different type of love with no place to go, because you know that it exists but it still doesn't feel real."

Your heart sinks at his words, you look down at your laptop, the screen still flashing an empty word document.

"I don't think I can continue the project you asked me to write."

"Why not?"

You don't have a response, there's no excuse you can make.

"I thought we made a deal." Levi flashes you his own laptop and you briefly see the screen, it was full of paragraphs but you didn't have time to focus on a single word before he flips the laptop back around. "If you quit now I'll permanently delete everything I've written." He stares at you with such an intense look.