Chapter Text
At first, they were almost incomprehensible. A flash of discomfort, pain in his jaw from gritting his teeth, a bleary memory of waking up in the dead of night, cold sweat on his brow, white knuckles gripping the sheets. All forgotten within a few minutes after reveille as responsibilities and adrenaline jolted him awake and glued his eyes open. It wasn’t worth recounting or analyzing the nightmares, after all there was plenty of source material, and it didn’t really matter if the face he saw at night was one soldier or another. The important thing was that they didn’t affect his performance as Commander. He could wake up, massage his sore jaw, and scrub his face of sleep and his brain of whatever poor soul he had dreamt about.
Gradually he found himself spending the majority of the night staring into the empty darkness of his room, frantically searching for familiar pieces of furniture amongst ominous shadows that could just as easily have been a misshapen body or a chair. Slowly his fists would relax and he would drift back into a fitful sleep among his tangled blankets, pillow forgotten on the floor, only to repeat the process twice more before sunrise.
Eventually it doesn’t seem productive to even attempt sleep. The nightmares leave him somehow more exhausted than before. He feels like shit. He nods off at meetings, snaps at recruits, mixes up his files. The files he’s carrying now, for example are supposed to be in the infirmary, but somehow ended up in his office. And the infirmary isn’t supposed to be this dark, not even in the middle of the night, there’s always supposed to be a doctor on duty. He’ll have to take it up with the medic. He can make a note after he puts these files away.
“Erwin?”
He looks up from the files. He is, evidentially, not in the infirmary.
“Hello, Levi.” He replies, trying to hide his confusion. This dark room is the mess hall. Infirmary is on the opposite side of headquarters. He turns to leave, giving Levi a nod.
“What are you doing up?”
“I’m just on my way to the infirmary.”
“Are you hurt?” There’s a tinge of alarm in his voice, and Erwin remembers that most people do not file medical records at 3 in the morning.
“I’m fine” He smiles, holding up the offending files. “I’m just putting these away, they ended up in my office somehow.”
“And this couldn’t wait till morning?” The alarm is gone, replaced with a mix of amusement and annoyance. Now that Erwin’s eyes have adjusted, he can make out the Captain in full uniform sitting at one of the long dining tables with a half empty mug of tea. His hair obscures his eyes, dark gray in the dim lighting, as he reaches over to pick up the mug by the rim.
“I suppose not.” He looks back down at the papers he’s holding. Summaries from general physical examinations conducted over 7 months ago. They're probably useless, now that he thinks about it. It’s safe to assume the patients are long dead. One of the names catches his eye and suddenly there’s a memory of blood, the hot copper scent of it filling his nose and pores. A severed arm with a tattoo of a woman’s face in the grass by his dirtied boots, her features are speckled with dark. The same woman sobbing, clutching his cloak, the sound guttural and desperate. He knows she’s being loud but she sounds far away and the ringing in his ears is almost louder. He holds his face in that stoic expression of his and tries to lead his horse forward, but she won’t let go. Please, please just let go. A hand on his shoulder, they need you up front, Smith, the desperate relief and guilt as Levi gently removes the woman’s arm from his cloak and takes the reigns from his hands, don’t keep Hange waiting, you know how they get.
Erwin’s hands clench into fists and the paper crumples slightly. He’s breathing heavily. The single lamp above the only occupied table casts strange shadows that make the room seem small and oppressive. Levi’s face is well lit, looking up at him over his mug, eyebrows raised. The air smells of dust and tea leaves.
“Goodnight, Levi” he says abruptly, and turns down the hall, back toward his office.
He had made his way to the front of the parade of dazed soldiers, but Hange looked confused to see him. He had tried to return to his horse but stopped a few feet away when he saw Levi handing the crying woman a torn piece of fabric, an unreadable expression on his face. Levi’s jaw had tensed as she threw her arms around him. He said something, but Erwin had been too far away to hear what it was.
He throws the files into the fireplace in his office and sits on the floor before it, absorbed by the flames. Watches as the fire swallows the papers and reduces them to ash, and continues watching as the flame itself begins to die, shrinking into faintly glowing embers. Before he knows it it is reveille again.
“What’s wrong with you?”
He’s in his bathroom, shaving, when Levi appears suddenly behind him in the mirror. His private bathroom in his private quarters, if he may add, but it wasn’t out of the ordinary for Levi to enter unannounced. He saw locks as more of a suggestion than a rule.
Erwin resists the urge to greet him sarcastically. The combination of his haggard, half shaved face and Levi’s judgmental expression in the mirror makes him feel like he’s finally been caught in the act.
“You look like shit, you haven’t been eating and I keep seeing you awake at weird hours. Are you constipated or what?” Levi says.
He finishes shaving the rest of his jaw, trying to think of an excuse that will keep Levi satisfied for at least a little while, give him time to take care of this on his own.
“Erwin.” His tone is angrier now, more serious. Erwin puts the razor down just in time for Levi to grasp him by the shoulder and pull so they’re facing each other. The sink is still running, and Erwin makes a move to shut it, but Levi tightens his grip. Erwin’s face is still messy with shaving cream, his shirt half buttoned. Levi glares up at him, jaw set and brows low, his hand a warm and just barely painful weight on his shoulder. Up close he can smell him too, cedar and clean laundry.
“The recruits are getting antsy. If you’re like this during the next expedition even I’m not likely to survive. Put your fucking ego aside and tell me what’s wrong with you.”
Budget cuts? A secret affair? Midlife crisis?
“And don’t try to give me any bullshit excuses Erwin. If my commander’s going crazy I deserve to know at least, don’t you think?”
Well.
“Nightmares.” He barely gets out. A stuttered whisper.
“What was that?”
“Nightmares.”
The grip on his shoulder loosens as Levi leans back and crosses his arms. He turns the water off. He doesn’t look surprised, he has no reason to be. Nightmares are a common affliction among the survey corps, it’s almost stranger not to have them. The strangeness of the situation comes from the fact that Erwin, Commander of the survey corps, who’s managed to survive much longer than the average recruit, is having trouble dealing with them.
“That’s it? The great Erwin Smith is falling apart because of some bad dreams?”
He says, very sarcastically. He’s obviously waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Erwin to reveal the master plan or drug habit. There is no other, bigger reason.
The thing about seeing a person you know, any person in fact, get eaten alive is that it looks unreal. It’s nearly impossible to wrap your head around. The first time you hear the crunch, snap and pull of muscle and bone, the smell of urine and fear and sweat and the screams. It still doesn’t register when you come back to the empty barracks, all the beds made with the sheets so tight you could bounce a quarter off of them, the only remains of your comrades in your boot tracks on the spotless floor behind you. And it still doesn’t register when you lay down in your bed in the empty room and you don’t understand why you just can’t fall asleep, and maybe suddenly you see that one of the sheets on one of the beds isn’t tucked in properly, and you are suddenly reminded of the soldier who won’t be there to fix it, of the squad leader who won’t be there to reprimand him for it, and then, finally, you realize the reason you can’t fall asleep is the all consuming, dead and utter silence. You’re used to their breathing.
And so he’d seen the horrible sights and hidden them away in the back of his mind. It was just... getting harder to compartmentalize as more soldiers died and every death was his fault. He called the shots, but there was still nothing he could (or would) do to save them. Because they had to die didn’t they? The only thing that really mattered was finding the truth of the titans, proving his father right, proving there was any reason for Erwin to still be alive while his father lay dead because of his actions. Anything to relieve him of this heavy guilt, even if it meant replacing it with a different kind.
And now both of those demons had come together to finally kill him. Staring at the ceiling, seeing nothing, haunted by the actions he’d taken to redeem himself while inadvertently turning himself into a monster who could never be redeemed. His father was a terrible accident on his part, but none of those soldier’s deaths had been accidental, had they? He mourned and stood with the rest of them at the funeral pyres but in the end it was he who had eagerly drawn up riskier plans, sent out younger and younger recruits with every expedition. Hopeful and ignorant, like he’d never been in the field before, like he didn’t know exactly how it’d go every single time.
“I’m dealing with it, Levi.” Erwin says. It comes out weaker than he would have liked. He sounds uncertain, not like the Commander should. “I’ll see you at breakfast.” He suddenly has the strangest urge to let himself slide down the wall he’s leaning on and sit on the floor. His knees feel weak and when he grabs the bathroom counter to steady himself, he accidentally places his hand right on the razor, which opens up a cut across his palm. Erwin holds his hand up, looking the blood but not really seeing it. The cut isn’t deep, but bleeds a fair amount and blood begins to drip down to his wrist and on to the cuff of his wrinkled shirt. He looks at his bleeding hand, then back at Levi, who openly gapes at him.
“Are you fucking serious?” Levi snarls. He grabs Erwin by the wrist and holds his hand under the running water. “Stay here, you idiot.”
He comes back with bandages and sits Erwin down on his bed to tend to his hand. Levi is good with his hands. His fingers are calloused, but still graceful, slender and sure as they place a piece of gauze on his palm and apply pressure.
“Erwin. If you can’t get this under control, I’ll drug you myself.” Levi says quietly. He won’t make eye contact, putting unnecessary pressure on the scratch, which has already stopped bleeding. “You’re supposed to die by titan, dumbass. Not fucking- fucking insomnia.” He starts wrapping the bandages around his hand.
“Maybe I’m not supposed to get it under control.” Erwin says. He focuses on Levi’s face as he works on his hand, wrapping the bandages over and over, his long lashes and his straight nose. “Maybe after everything I’ve done, this is my punishment.” Levi finishes tying the bandage, but he continues holding Erwin’s hand between his own, gently tracing over the knuckles. He looks up to meet Erwin’s gaze.
“You don’t really believe in that shit do you?” His voice is gravelly. He is almost painfully close, their thighs pressing together, and the room is so painfully quiet that he can hear the ever-present, faint ringing in his ears, the sound of the sheets as Levi shifts slightly, his own breathing. “Divine punishment? We’re far too unlucky for that. However you go, it’ll be much more violent than quietly dying in your office over some papers.” There’s a small smile on his face.