Crack of Sunlight (Ereri/Riren)

•~Chapter Twenty Four~•

*hands out band-aids and tissues in advance*

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Eren hummed softly, absently to himself as he carted two handfuls of groceries up the stairs to the apartment. He fumbled to unlock and open the door and shuffled over to the table and dumped the bags on top of it. He began sorting through them and putting things away, mostly oblivious to the silence filling the rest of the apartment. When the bags were empty, he bundled them all up inside of one, tied it, and tossed it in a bucket near the wall for later recycling. He then ventured down the hall in search of his raven-haired companion, humming since ceased. Levi had declined joining him in grocery shopping, saying he had commissions he desperately needed to work on. He found the living room, bathroom, and bedroom void of any life. With the beginnings of worry building up in his chest, he checked the last place there was - Alex's old room/the extra room/the room they planned to turn into a study but not yet had the means to do so. The door was shut as normal, but upon peeking his head in, found the raven to be sitting in the dead center of Alex's old bed. His sketchbook was abandoned to lay in front of him, the pencil laying in the center. His arms were wrapped around himself and he stared down at the deep purple duvet cover, rocking back and forth in the tiniest of motions.

"Levi?" murmured Eren, stepping into the room.

Levi met his eyes very unsteadily. "Oh, you're back," he mumbled.

"Yeah..." Eren moved further into the room, closer to the man who suddenly looked so broken it was almost like they'd been thrust back in time to his withdrawals, to when his demons dug further in and nestled themselves comfortably in the deepest recesses of his mind. "What's wrong?" he asked cautiously, making it to the end of the bed.

"Just about everything at this point," came the raven's hushed answer.

"What do you-" His words were cut short when he caught sight of the unfinished drawing. "Isabel."

Levi visibly flinched at the sound of the name. He'd started drawing her, though hadn't meant to. It started out as another face for a commission he was supposed to tattoo the next day, but his hand had just started seemingly moving on its own and when he looked again, it was Isabel's face he saw instead of the one in the description, now lying on the floor across the room from a gust of wind when he'd tossed the sketchbook down. Seeing that face on the page in front of him done by his own hand had broken something of an emotional dam inside of him, one that had been building up for the entire past decade. It was being pushed on from behind - recounting some of the stories from which his tattoos came, particularly the quote on his back; looking at all those pictures featuring so many of the memories he thought he wanted to forget by poisoning his blood that in the end would destroy him in worse ways. The dam completely burst, and Isabel herself was the first one through.

Eren could see this, plain as day. He knew what it was like all too well, so he sunk down onto the mattress in front of the man and gently rubbed his knees.

"Will you tell me about her, Levi? Tell me what she was like, who she was? Please?" He knew if he could get Levi to let it all out, he'd feel lighter. Freer. Less burdened.

"Everything I've done to keep those painful memories out has been in vain," Levi muttered, squeezing his eyes shut. "The guilt is heavier now than ever."

"Guilt?"

"I was too stupid to take my damned mother seriously when she said she'd get her petty revenge for some asshole she valued more than her own family. I was petty because I cared about drugs more than my own damn family. She's to blame, but so am I. And if I wasn't such an idiot, my sister might still be alive...or at least would have experienced a less violent death."