The Titan Queen - Levi X Reader

Chapter 35 - Ending Darkness

Softly, gently, snow fell down from the endless silver sky to land on the already white ground. The trees had long since bid a temporary farewell to their leaves, their lovingly empty fingers caressing the sky with no colours other than a bouquet of silvers and whites and greys. The lake that had once been bursting with fish and plants had frozen, the glazed mirror distorting each of the man's fine features to the extent that he hummed a soft laugh, looking down with eyes that held such delight at the sky above him.

This man didn't seem to feel the cold as it danced around him, the wind playfully rushing around his body and coaxing his hair into an untamed ballet of endless movement. He was dressed in white trousers and a brown jacket, the emblem of two wings embroidered on the back of it seeming too small for the man who bore them, the man who seemed to already be part of the sky without needing flight to aid him. He wore it with ease; the numerous leather straps that decorated his thighs and chest were bound loosely, the picture of relaxed simplicity doing nothing to hide his frame and muscular figure.

Levi Ackerman did not mind being alone.

If anything, he revelled in being one with the wind that seemed all too pleased for his presence, with the cold that was steadily turning his nose bright red. He did not mind being alone when it was his birthday, on this particularly cold Christmas day. It gave him a chance to enjoy just having his thoughts to occupy him for a few minutes. He did not mind that he was alone whilst the people in the city he'd just left were surely celebrating together. He was glad, if anything, that the people – those valiant souls who had endured everything beyond all odds – had repaired so much about themselves and the city and the world that they lived in that they could feel such happiness on this day.

The true reason to why Levi Ackerman did not mind being alone, however, was because he did not feel lonely.

Loneliness had once whispered to him using the wails of the wind, had once caused him to cry on this very spot. Loneliness had drawn out his sobs, clamouring to hear the sounds he'd locked within himself when he was alone and lonely on the cold hillside just one year ago. Loneliness had been a haunting and empty feeling to the extent that he'd hugged himself whilst craving another set of arms instead of his own, that he'd crouched down into a tiny ball so that his legs were close to his chest. Despite the sobs that loneliness had tortured him into releasing, he hadn't lost his balance, no matter the sobs that had punched his chest with sickening force and had been thrown into the silence of the snowy world around him.

But that had been one year ago.

And although Levi Ackerman was alone now, he was not lonely.

"Waiting for something?"

Levi amended his thoughts; he was now neither alone nor lonely, and he was content. He turned to Erwin, blinking slowly at the larger man. Erwin smiled a small smile, looking down at his second with a fond shine in his eyes.

"I was just remembering something," Levi said, even though he didn't have to explain himself. Erwin would have understood his silence; they'd known each other long enough for silence to be something that each cherished in each other's company, knowing that it was truly a peaceful thing to have between the two of them. "How I felt – here. A year ago."

"It's not like you to be nostalgic," Erwin said, amused. He was right – as Erwin Smith often was. "Did you really miss this place in the two weeks that you've been with me?" Levi suppressed a smile this time, offering a grumpy frown instead – to which Erwin laughed and began walking down a sand path that was now covered in snow.

Many things had changed since that battle in the wide, gaping field. Even longer since the other battle, where Y/N L/N had given herself up to save so many people of the army.