Remembering You

Me without You

Sighing as the brat's annoying-as-fuck sister finally left, Levi leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. It was difficult to remember the last time he had a proper night's rest. Most likely, it had been before hell broke loose and forced Eren to use the Coordinate. Over the years, Levi had certainly considered what might happen if he were to bump into the titan shifter somewhere, but he never gave it any serious thought. The chances were of the shifter engaging him in conversation, given how he hated it, was abysmal, and the dark-haired man had taken great care to avoid Eren whenever possible. He certainly wasn't prepared for their chance meeting. Naturally, it was the damned brat's fault for not watching where he was going, but seeing that cheeky grin and sparking eyes once more had resurrected things Levi hadn't thought about in a long time.

Hopes and desires he had wiped clean, attempting to forget, since they only highlighted how bleak life was without the brat.

Dreams he had ruthlessly torn apart, thinking them futile.

Wishes for a future that would never come.

The feelings which had always been there, merely buried behind walls and frozen over with endless layers of frost, came rushing back. Levi could almost hear the cracks in the sheet of ice encasing his heart and their shared memories. The more he remembered, the faster the ice was chipped away. It shone a light on all those things he had hidden away. At least only a few pebbles had been dislodged from this encounter; anymore and he did not know how he would bear it.

It had been painful watching Eren play with their son. He kept longing and almost expecting the brunet to act and behave as he had five years ago. Sometimes when Levi managed to fall asleep, he would dream of what life might have been like if Eren was never a shifter and they visited whatever the fuck an 'ocean' was, but then waking up and finding that it was all an illusion, made him even hollower inside. Traces of the brat he knew remained, yet it wasn't the same hardheaded brat from five years ago given how Eren treated him like a stranger.

The brat always had a way of disrupting the status quo in the dark-haired man's life. The former Captain's life had been simple before he met Eren – wake up, train, clean, and the shitty paperwork Erwin forced on him – but the moment he was charged with monitoring the brat, things were never the same. Even though years had passed since they had exchanged any words, Levi had never been able to completely wipe Eren's existence. He had been able to accept the state of affairs, but it had been temporary. The moment Eren asked who he was, all the pain came back.

If Levi had been twenty or so years younger, spending time with a five-year-old boy whose father was a dark-haired short midget with horrible rings around his eyes and a penchant for foul language would be dead last on his list of things to do. If not for Eirian's presence, he would have ignored the brat altogether and avoided spending the afternoon with Eren. Even then, they had barely talked.

After all this time, Levi did not know what to say. There were so many things he wanted to say, to ask, and to know about his former subordinate, but many of those things would not be appropriate. In Eren's mind, today had been their first-time meeting. Levi would be lucky if the brat considered him an acquaintance. In reality, they were nothing but strangers. Merely two people whose paths bisected one another for a moment, whose existence was nothing special. They lived in different timelines and had different pasts. Although Levi's brain understood why what they had shared in the past might never happen again, his heart refused to keep up with reality. Every day it beat in tandem with the clock's ticking, waiting for something that would not happen.

Even if the current Eren was physically the same person, in Levi's eyes it was not the same bright-eyed titan shifter he had known. The brat he had known was rash, always impatient and overly eager to kill titans, while young man standing in front him was anything but. He was taller, older, and his face had matured over time. What Levi found most striking, however, was how the shadows and bloodlust in those blue-green eyes had faded. The person standing in front of him was an attractive young man in the prime of his youth who radiated maturity. Eren had grown up and now fit the role of a Scouting Legion squad leader, not the shitty brat who chased after and idolized his Captain – a Captain who no longer existed in his memory.