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—you start shaking at the thought
The nightmares didn’t start until long after the end of the war, or at least that is what Levi claims. Now, he refuses to sleep and instead paces across the length of the bedroom until Mikasa is so disrupted she throws pillows at him in a poor attempt for him to stop for just a moment: sometimes he needs to be reminded to breathe. Just a floor above them, she hears feet padding along the floor and groans aloud. Both of the men she loves more than anything in the whole, entire world are losing their minds, and all Mikasa has to offer is her presence which they both push away. Levi’s diagnosed with PTSD, which causes his hands to shake mostly, but sometimes he wakes up only an hour after of sleep and just sits in the dark in a catatonic state, and sometimes he’s personified anger and self-loathing as he wishes he had died.
Eren wakes up in a cold sweat, screaming as if he’s being murdered; in mere seconds, Mikasa is stumbling out of bed. She hits the floor hard, but her feet carry her up the stairs until she’s holding Eren in her arms and reassuring him that everything’s alright. “Eren, shh, stop,” she soothes him as she runs her fingers through his hair, but angry, scared tears just spill down his face as he grits his teeth, grinding them through the pain.
“They are all dead.” He says, then repeats it under his breath before slapping Mikasa’s hands away from him and pulling at his hair. Whenever they push her away, she retracts so far within herself that she feels like a lost little girl instead of a savior. No one ever mentions that the aftereffects of war are just as fucked up as the war itself. Eren is still muttering his mantra across the room as he pulls his blankets tightly against his chest before letting another scream rip through the night: tearing the backdrop into shreds as he rakes his anger through it. He’s always been an unstoppable force. In the dead silence after his scream subsides, he looks at Mikasa with a heartbreaking gaze as tears just keep pouring from his eyes. “I want Armin.” He sounds so small that Mikasa chokes back her own tears as she rises to hug Eren tightly, and this time he accepts it as he pulls her in close. Me too, Eren, her heart lays broken in her chest. No part of her is truly functioning anymore; everything about her feels robotic andexhausted.
She holds Eren until he’s snoring peacefully.
Levi does not sleep; no matter how much coaxing she attempts, or if she holds him closely to her throughout the entire night, he just doesn’t sleep. The rings underneath his eyes grow darker, until they make an appointment and get their hands on sleeping pills. He forgets to take them often, because they bring a darkness that he doesn’t prefer. He’d rather be left with the dangerous thoughts that his mind produces as his company than stumble through the darkness with no anchor to bring him back to light.
One night he manages to fall asleep, but only to wake in a cold sweat with his hands around Mikasa’s throat. “D-Do it,” she whimpers, her hands resting atop his. “Do it, Levi, since this is the only time you’ll touch me.” Immediately, he removes his hands from their vice grip, then he climbs off of the bed only to promptly send a fist through the wall. He had been so close in hurting the person he’s in love with without even realizing his actions, and she was going to be so accepting of it. I need a shower, he thinks blatantly as the world falls out from under him; he doesn’t understand what games his mind is playing anymore.
When Mikasa’s feet touch the ground, Levi flinches and presses his back against the wall. “Do you miss her?” she whispers, knowing that this isn’t the pressing matter currently, but she just keeps playing the scene in her head as she remembers how his hands felt around her neck; his sightless eyes staring deep inside of her while his lips just utter that fucking name. “Petra? She was a sad loss. A very good soldier.” Tears are flooding to her eyes as she realizes that both of these men just keep building walls in order to hide from her.
I’m done forcing these manufactured walls down.
“I’m here, Levi. I’m yours – completely. The war’s over, and we are safe. People died, so many of our friends are dead, but I’m right fucking in front of you, Levi. Why can’t you see me?!” Suddenly, she’s left exposed as her walls all fall down to leave her open for attack; Levi can see her now, fully. Instead of harsh winter, she’s springtime; so shatteringly vulnerable as she tries to rebuild lives even though she’s not invested with that power. Her hands and mouth work gently, urge both Levi and Eren back to life, instead of the lifeless shells that they are currently occupying.
Slowly, Levi makes his way across the room and presses his lips against Mikasa’s forehead, then pulls her into his arms as he holds her close to him. “Petra – no, she’s dead, Mikasa. The dead stay dead, and we have to let feelings rest alongside them. We can miss the dead, but that isn’t going to bring them back, and it isn’t going to change the fact that I’ve found you.” His words are surprisingly gentle as he presses urgent kisses to her temple, then works down to the space where her neck meets her jaw; he presses his nose against her skin, and then, Levi does a peculiar thing, he begins to openly weep.
The other softly passionate girl who is long gone aside from the patch of her uniform, had once been a simple consideration in Levi’s mind as he realized that it could be quite easy to fall in love with her, but falling in love with Mikasa had been a troublesome affair that had left him blighted at times. It had been a challenge, and Levi doesn’t want to be handed anything; he wants to fight for it, and he wants to love passionately and complicatedly. Mikasa might have been a harsh winter when he first saw her, but now all the snow has melted; there is no ice to slip on, and instead he can see this woman for all her worth (and she’s worth so much to him).
While he weeps, Mikasa can only hold him close to her and whisper sweet words into his ear as she tries to calm him down. Seeing Levi so derailed is so unusual, but she supposes that once she broke, everyone else would too; she’s both of their pillars of strength, and just what they need to get back on the right path. After minutes turn to hours, Mikasa pulls away from Levi to envelope his lips with his as she pulls him close, wrapping her legs around his waist and placing her hands on the sides of his face.
Springtime did tend to have tons of rain some years.
“Bath,” she whispers. Her body feels incredibly heavy and she wonders how Eren and Levi can go so long without sleeping because all she wants to do is drop into bed and sleep forever. Her body screams for rest, but there are streaks of tears on Levi’s cheeks that match her own, and she needs to care for him. When he nods, she climbs off the bed (her legs protest as they threaten to collapse), leading Levi from the bedroom into the adjoining bathroom as she starts the water so it fills up the tub. While it is filling up, both of them turn to face the mirror; it reflects their haggard expressions that mark them as traumatic patients of some travesty. All of her dead friends weigh heavy on her shoulders as she looks at herself, remembers the feeling of blades in her hands and the sensation of slicing through flesh.
Nothing about her looks youthful or glowing, and Levi looks ageless as his bored eyes appraise his appearance for less than a full minute as he frowns at the person in the mirror; Mikasa wishes she hadn’t recognized herself at first, but her eyes still have the glimmer of compassion and strength. The rest of her features sag from her lack of mental and physical rest; everything about her looks tired, and she just wants to go curl up in the comforts of their bed and doze off. Levi needs me, she thinks, and that is usually how every night goes; if Levi doesn’t need her, then Eren does.
When the tub is full, Mikasa lets Levi undress and watches him step in before she leaves for the kitchen; in there, she preps coffee before letting the hot liquid sit in two cups on the counter, leaving them to cool. He’d probably want tea, but she hasn’t left to restock the kitchen in a while, so he’ll have to drink coffee tonight. After, she strips in the bedroom and nudges Levi from behind as she settles into the tub behind him. Her hands rub across his scarred skin as the lukewarm water stirs around them while Mikasa’s rests her legs on either side of Levi. Gently, she scatters kisses across the plain of Levi’s back, running her lips across valleys in his skin; her fingers run up his sides until she is kneading the muscles of his shoulders. “Start taking your sleeping pills,” she commands with a tone that offers no room for him to refute with something incredibly stupid as the men in her life tend to do when she makes a stand, “Or.. I’ll shove them down your throat.”
Her emotional release has left her even more tired than she was to begin with, but she can’t help but to want to be near Levi so she can tend to him; she wants to shoulder all the pain under this roof. Upstairs, Eren fumbles around in his bed, but sleeps soundly for once. A sigh is forcibly pulled out of Mikasa as she leans her forehead against Levi’s back. “You’re spent,” he says quietly, staring down at his hands. “You keep stretching yourself thin for us and you are going to be in no better condition.” Even now, his hands are shaking erratically from beneath the water’s surface.
Mikasa takes the soap into her hands and scrubs away all the impurities from Levi that she can manage; there is no way that she’s just going to stop helping them through this; everyone else they would have had is dead, and while she’s living, she’s going to make sure that her family is safe: that they are alright (just for another night, at least). As she drags her fingers through his hair, she hums underneath her breath softly, a melody that she’s not even sure she truly knows or if she’s just pieced together over the years. Levi listens in silence as he’s calmed by her presence alone.
After they are cleansed, she helps him out of the tub, allows it to drain before draping a towel over her body and heading out into the kitchen where she retrieves the cups of black coffee. From there, she takes them into the bedroom, and the two of them sip on cold coffee as they listen to Eren toss and turn in his sleep. “Sleep,” Levi coaxes Mikasa as he rubs his hand along her arm soothingly; she looks at him from over the rim of her mug before shoving two pills beneath his nose. Take them first, her gaze challenges, so he swallows the pills. As he watches her, Mikasa’s smile seems to grow and they sit there in a comfortable silence together as they wait for Levi’s pills to kick in.
“Somehow,” Mikasa drags in a shaky breath that disturbs the surface of her coffee, “I always saw your fragility.” It is an open confession, but not a condescending one; Levi had seemed unable to be a fragile thing, instead he had been a pillar of strength that everyone depended on. Now she had claimed that title.
Levi snorts in response as he sets the mug down on the bedside table, a yawn slips out into the air between them and the look on Mikasa’s face is almost smug. “And somehow, I always saw your strength,” he comments before settling down into the sheets and tugging on her arm. “Lay with me, because I’m a coward who can’t tell you how much I think I need you.”
Suddenly, Mikasa feels quite timid as she follows suit, but she buries her face into the crook of his neck as they tangle their legs together. No words form, but she has so much to say to this man, but she supposes that it could wait until morning (even though she needs eternities to say everything she wants him to hear, to understand). She is patient, because she sees how Levi looks at her as though she’s the sun, and that makes her feels important and beautiful all in one. Lazily, they drape their arms around each other, and he presses a kiss or two against the top of her head as they drift off to deserved rest.
When Eren comes to climb into their bed late in the morning, neither of them complain, and just welcome him with warm touches and soft smiles; this is what home feels like, Mikasa thinks fleetingly before sleep pulls her under.