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At any point before the war ended, if anyone told Levi that one use of his time would be going on nature hikes with Erwin, he’d beat some sense into them.
But the towering spruce and fir trees hugging the shaved path are certainly real. The dry, cold air seems determined to make Levi sniffle, but it feels clean to his lungs. The pine smell and sounds of birds scrapes an itch somewhere deep in his soul that used to be in hiding. The winter sun makes the patches of snow seem to glitter. It’s beautiful here.
But the best part of all is crouching down in front of a leafy plant with a bulbous stem, just about as tall as his knees. Erwin.
“Do you see this sparkling texture on the leaves?”
Pine needles and snow quietly snap and crunch under Levi’s boots as he limps off the path, keeping Erwin to his left so he can see what he’s seeing. He’s completely blind in his right eye, so he doesn’t need a ridiculous eyepatch like Hange does. He’d never hear the end of it if he did.
Levi plants his hand in Erwin’s hair leans over a little more than what’s necessary. “Yup.”
Erwin chuckles, beaming openly in a way that still feels new to Levi. “It’s said ancient peoples used these for toilet paper. Or the uneducated did. The leaves appear to sparkle to the naked eye, but they’re actually millions of tiny barbs.”
“Shit,” he says. “What do these leaves have against assholes?”
“Ha. They’re to ward off potential predators like insects. Just as onions and peppers have their own defense mechanisms against being consumed.”
Levi listens with rapt attention as Erwin explains. He knew that Erwin was a genius while they were soldiers, but he has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything now it seems, including things Levi has never heard of, like this plant. He envies Erwin’s almost innocent passion about these things. Without Erwin, he would be too jaded to care about a damn thing.
They got close, a few times. But he doesn’t have to worry anymore. Being with Erwin is just about everything he could’ve asked for, next to their mutual continued living.
“Why don’t people eat these then?” Levi asks.
Erwin appears to intently consider this. Levi pins down a small smile. “Perhaps it’s too much hassle, or impossible to remove the barbs.”
When they’re finished with this side-mission, Levi expects they’ll reach the lake before Erwin gets distracted again. They’re both going to relearn how to skip rocks, if the ice isn’t too thick. Erwin isn’t left-handed after all, and Levi’s depth perception isn’t what it used to be.
Erwin looks up at him with a coy look so cute that he bites his lip, both mostly hiding another smile, and to overcome the urge to kiss that look off him.
“Notebook, please?”
“Mhm.”
Their arrangement works nicely. Erwin could write if he had to, but he says that Levi was blessed to be good with both his hands, so he can write while Erwin talks. When Levi’s tinnitus acts up, Erwin fills the silence, and when Erwin’s stomach acts up (which is almost always), Levi makes the meal accordingly. When memories attack, they have each other.
Despite their separate weaknesses, they complete each other. Even in a trivial moments such as this, Levi finds himself feeling so grateful that it dizzies him.
When they’re done, Levi tucks the thick notebook back in his coat pocket, adjusts his backpack and follows Erwin down the path. It straightens out where it opens up into a clearing with the decently sized lake in the center. It’s nothing spectacular, but somehow, that’s what Levi likes about it. Erwin looks as happy as he feels to reach their destination.
This time of year, there are no bugs to wave away. Yellow flowers nod in the chilly breeze.
They notice the problem with the scene at eerily the same time. The smile leaves Erwin’s face at the sight of the small deer—rather, a spindly little fawn—skittering on the ice near the lake’s center in efforts to stand. It keeps slipping and falling over itself.
It becomes much more frantic when it notices them.
Levi knows about this from Erwin. On deer, their hooves don’t give them much traction on surfaces like ice.
“It’s trapped,” Erwin remarks tonelessly.
In timeless fashion, Levi bristles, feeling a grave and hopeless situation like this to be familiar. It’s just a deer, but still, he finds himself side-eyeing Erwin in wait for an order of what to do. He’s saying nothing.
Levi inwardly shakes himself and breaks away from Erwin, toward the rocky shore.
“Levi. What’re you doing?”
But they both know. By his tone, Erwin disapproves.
Years of facing up against giant, feral man-eating monsters and Erwin won’t let him help a fawn off an icy lake.
“This is not like taking down a Titan,” he states smartly.
Levi stares down the panicking fawn. “No shit.”
His nostrils flare when he sighs. “This isn’t as simple as picking you up with maneuvering gear if you fall in. Plus the shallow end’s bottom is visible, which means the ice is thin. What if you lose your footing?”
They both know Erwin’s referring to Levi’s knee. The biggest reason they’ve hiked out this far from their cabin is that it’s been a good day for his knee. His cane is strapped to his backpack.
“I can walk today, and you’re too massive to go out there yourself,” Levi reasons, and drops his backpack on a patch of stone so it doesn’t get muddy.
“I’ll be fine.”
Erwin’s scowl bores a hole in the back of Levi’s head, but they don’t do orders anymore. Besides the fact that Levi’s as stubborn as a mule… but if he didn’t think he could handle this, he wouldn’t do it.
Erwin’s never been known to be over-protective, though. That’s always been Levi’s agenda, so this is a little out of character for him.
Levi steps onto the brittle, gravely shore. The fawn is rapidly getting weak again, which means it’s been like this for a while. Thanks to its size, the thin ice hasn’t broken to begin with, so he might as well try.
“Don’t piss yourself; this’ll just take a second.”
“Just be careful.”
Those words and tone makes Levi glance back, giving him pause. He looks terribly grave.
He wants to scoff at first. But back then, they never acted afraid for each other’s lives because they didn’t have the privilege to. What those years were, were life and death. Now that being killed by Titans or stomped on by colossals or gunned down by foreign countries is an impossibility, it makes sense to be scared here. If he were in Erwin’s shoes, he’d volunteer or kick his ass, depending on how stubborn Erwin planned on being.
It’s not like humanity’s future depends on saving this deer—but, he won’t watch something suffer if there’s something he can do about it.
“I will,” Levi promises.
He toes at the ice at first to feel what he’s working with, and, satisfied with with a starting point, he spreads his arms to balance himself as he takes those first steps. Balance is one of those skills especially needed if you wanted to work the ODM gear correctly, and though he doesn’t fly anymore, at least it comes naturally.
In fact this is the easy part. The closer he gets to the panicking fawn, the more it panics, but it can’t run away very far, and Levi never let himself get out of shape. With a single swift movement, he grabs it by its scruff and rips it back the way he came. Sharply so that it slides on its side kicking and squawking to the shore.
It doesn’t get all the way, but it gets close enough for Erwin to reach it and help it the rest of the way onto solid land. It’s so fast that Levi sees barely a glimpse of it before it’s gone.
He’s too busy fending off the pain festering in his knee. Any weight on it at all scathes and saps at his strength. Subtly, he takes deep breaths to steady himself and recover so that he doesn’t collapse on his first step. He’s very aware he stands in the middle of a freezing death trap with the equivalent of thin glass between life and a deadly accident.
It’ll be suspicious if he doesn’t get moving now that the deer is fine. He didn’t plan on giving Erwin a heart attack today.
“Take your time!” Erwin calls. So he knows.
Of course he figured that out. Levi inwardly rolls his eyes at his own old hubris and, balancing just as before, takes it much slower than when he set out. He can’t favor one leg if that means putting too much weight on one spot.
At any rate he won’t look at Erwin. He doesn’t need to. He’ll be on the shore with him in a minute.
The pain by the halfway point has seized his entire leg and lower back, leaving each step stiff and unsteady. Fuck, it hurts.
When he was younger, he could hide even this effortlessly. He could endure. He’s limping now. Pathetic, the part of himself that could fight—and whose scathing tone sounds suspiciously like Kenny—whispers.
He grits his teeth. He’s near the end now—he can do this much, he can make it. He’s weaker than he used to be, but he’s always been a survivor. Up against a little pain, he doesn’t simply crumble to pieces.
Just about a yard from shore his knee gives out on him, the ice underfoot making a vicious cracking noise as it fractures.
So focused on staying standing and blinded by pain, he didn’t notice Erwin had been ready to catch him around the waist. He’s only got one damn arm, but the strength with which he hoists Levi to land is supernatural.
“Shit.” Levi now can’t keep the wince from twisting his expression or the exasperation out of his voice. He grapples on and keeps his leg raised, else the torture would continue. He realizes he’s sweating.
Erwin throws his arm around him, like Levi might dissolve into ash if he doesn’t hold on. They’re both out of breath.
“You’re… Good. Good job,” Erwin breathes. “That could’ve gone much worse.”
“Ugh. Don’t patronize me. Shitty—stupid, piece of shit…”
He mumbles more curses at his body into Erwin’s fur lapels.
Unsurprisingly, Erwin’s patience with him is endless. “You were so brave. I was not.”
“…And I paid the price,” he mumbles. His back hurts, his knee hurts, and he’s developing a headache. It’s much nicer in Erwin’s coat. His resting place while they both catch their breath back.
“You’re hurting. Let’s come back another day,” he says earnestly. “Don’t be angry at yourself. I was the one who was too much of a coward to support your idea.”
Levi peers up at him through his thick lashes. “A coward would’ve made us turn back. So now what?”
“Get your things.”
He grunts, knows what he means. If he wasn’t in so much pain, and this wasn’t Erwin, he’d say no.
They hobble a step or two so Levi can hoist up his bag.
“The older I get, the more I turn into a toddler.”
“I’ll be your knight,” Erwin soothes as he turns around.
With the combined strength of Levi’s one leg and Erwin’s one arm, he successfully leaps up onto his back and locks his arms across Erwin’s chest. “Tch… I guess you do have one sword arm left. Except we don’t have any swords.”
“What about your cane?”
“We’d have to visit Hizuru and get you to learn martial arts.”
They begin walking. “Ha… That’s a good idea. This spring. Then we can enjoy all your favorite teas through the summer.”
Levi lets a lazy smirk turn up his lip. “My joke is a good idea, huh. Fine then.”
Levi never thought he’d see the day when so many limitations would lead to nothing stopping him. Becoming tourists, even. It’s a strange feeling to allow himself to want that. Just as strange as his disabilities, or how often and easily they make each other smile now.
Alongside Erwin, he regrets nothing.