He Told Me to Live

32 | Perspective

"So that's it, huh?" I looked down at my hands. "Then, why did you not think that I was too young to be whipped, to kill, to be stolen from my parents?" I clasped my hands together, holding them tightly. "Why was I only too young for that, and not anything else?"

Blade sighed. "You know why you were taken from my parents. They couldn't pay some money they owed so instead they sold you to me. I kept you in the Underground Faction for a while, then brought you up."

"And everything else?"

"No one's too young for pain. Only for the truth. When you said that she wasn't in the records, at first, I was furious that you even looked. Then, all I could tell you was that she was dead."

"How did you-"

"I told you that our organization is everywhere. You can't see us, but we're there."

I stood up and tapped Levi's shoulder. "I think I'm done. If you want to ask him anything..." I shook my head. "You probably don't."

I left the room but didn't hear Levi's footsteps behind me. He was silent the entire time, which is uncharacteristic since he's normally the one talking and I am silent behind him.

Behind him. Never in front of him, beside him, not if I wasn't protecting him.

I leaned on the wall, waiting for Levi to leave the room and join me so we could leave at the same time. It took him longer than I had anticipated, perhaps an extra 15 minutes of waiting.

When he finally left, he took my hand and pulled me down the hall as if he knew the way after one trip down here. "I want to set this place on fire."

"You'll be on the hit list of another faction."

"I know." He clicked his tongue. "How annoying."

I couldn't look at him. He didn't need to know everything that I was told. I didn't need to know everything I was told. Then I stopped, planting myself in my spot well enough for me to yank Levi back.

"What's the matter?"

There was this irrational thought in my mind to go back and to question Blade one more thing: Where are my parents? Even more vaguely, where is my family? Are they still underground? Are they still alive?

I shook my head.

Levi raised a brow but didn't question me. He wasn't a prodding type.

•••

"Y/N," Levi opened the door to my quarters, finding me lying in my bed, still wide awake. "Geez, that's creepy."

"I apologize. I couldn't sleep."

He sat at the foot of my bed. "Are you okay? You've seemed off since we visited your old boss."

I nodded and turned over instead of sitting up. "Do you ever wonder if titans had a dying thought? Like humans do?"

He shifted his position. The question made him uncomfortable, but most questions that actually have thought behind them cause such a reaction. "I don't like to think about it... but I hope not."

"Humans do." I'm sure he didn't need me to confirm it, but I could feel his eyes on my back the moment I said it. "Some say them out loud."

My mind has been weighed down by thoughts of death for the past few days. No one is too young for pain, Blade had said. Is that the case for death? Is no one ever truly too young for anything other than truth?

The youngest person I had ever killed was 19 years old: a boy who had assaulted a girl and caused her pregnancy. The father wanted him dead. He had a child of his own, and he still didn't believe that he was too young for death.