Within Wall Rose, Survey Corps Headquarters
Time has passed. Time has waned. Time is something precious that is often taken for granted. What seemed like several days was actually several weeks. The value of time is truly recognized only when the long awaited day approaches.
On the night before this day, a lone child weeps as the hands of nocturnal darkness reach for her. Her cries are swallowed by the dark mass, making them inaudible to her peers. None will know of her isolation and this only nourishes the affliction that tightens her chest, pulling her tears to the floor.
Little does she know that a string of her pain has escaped through an opening. A warm light attracts the thread, leading it to the quiet sleeping quarters of a particular woman. The string finds the woman sleeping in the comfort of her cotton bedsheets and insiduously wraps around her arm. It dissolves through her skin, slithers underneath her flesh, and finds its way to the source of the attraction that has guided it thus far. When its destination is met, she wakes up to an excruciating sensation in her chest.
The thread of the weeping girl's pain reels the weary woman to the spool. Yet the light emanating from the woman causes the constricting darkness to cower in fear, clearing a path to the girl crushed by this mass of chaos. The woman pulls the girl in a tight embrace, using her bright aura to protect her. The hands of the mass flinch in their attempts to further touch the vulnerable girl, and instead flees to feed on another poor soul.
"Lissa, please don't cry," The woman says as she strokes the back of the girl's head.
The young soldier trembles in this woman's arms as she murmurs, "I'm scared, Squad Leader Renata."
Even with no utterance of the reason for her fear, Renata knows right away. She has absorbed Lissa's pain and has felt its intensity. "There is nothing to be afraid of," She repeats once more, "There is nothing to be afraid of."
"I've had nightmares about them," Lissa cries like a child. "They'll come and grab me out of my horse and tear my limbs off and-"
Renata shushes her like a mother and sings,"None of that will happen. I swear, I will do everything in my power to protect you. Each and every one of you."
She tautens her grip around the girl's shaking body as a lone tear trails down her face. Renata cries silently; her crying remains unnoticed by her subordinate who sobs on her shoulder. However, these tears do not fall because of Lissa. They fall from her own pain. She is hurt by the uncertainty of her ability to mark her promise of their protection. She wishes with all the muscles in her heart that she could have said so with full-guarantee. Because just as her own superior had told her, she cannot affirm expected conditions tomorrow.
She knew. Anything could happen outside the walls.
On the other side of the grand castle, one man shares her same uncertainty.
Overlooking the moonlit heads of trees below, a balcony holds this man who cannot bring himself to sleep on this night of wary souls. He sits on the very edge with his one leg dangling over the side and elbow on the plateau of his bent knee. He droops his eyes to the ground, reflecting on his thoughts.
Another expedition awaits him tomorrow, and he can easily see death trying to sneak its way into his troops' paths.
What unexpected turn of events will he face this time? Will he be restricted yet again by another spontaneous illness? Will his equipment malfunction? Will an aberrant Titan finally be able to defeat him?
These questions are what others would expect him to be thinking about. However, they would be terribly wrong. This man will deal with these divergences when they come. He does not linger on planning what he would do if they happen to become reality.
Slowly and steadily, he raises his head up to the sky. There, in the blanket of glowing diamonds and brushstrokes of wispy clouds, a waning moon showers the land with its white shine. The man darts his eyes in every direction, in attempt to piece together a full panorama of the sky.
He suddenly freezes. He had done something foreign to himself. Something completely unlike him; the man had observed every detail of the view that lies before him. Every twinkle of the stars, every shade of grey in the moon, even how the dark spaces between the small lights seem to shy away from their glow. Before, the sky was just a sky. A space that turns blue during the day and black during the night. However, the sky is now a masterpiece of light and darkness; a blue background blotted with the white of clouds which alternates to a black backdrop splattered with the white of stars.
Levi, look at the stars! Levi, the moon is so pretty tonight! Levi, don't you see that red star over there? Levi, don't you think the air smells good after the rain? Her voice resonates in his head.
She has been forcing him to see the world in her eyes. She makes him notice the parts of the world he blatantly ignores. Nevertheless, he always reverts to his own view after she does so.
Sometimes he forgets to take off these spectacles that seem to scrutinize everything. He looks at trees and focuses on the way the branches spread like tiny tributaries. He looks at random flowers and studies the way their petals sway in the wind as if to greet passersby. He looks at his tea and examines the individual ripples that come about at the slightest touch on the table surface.
Ripples. Just like the ones he had felt after hearing her deny his overpowering title of humanity's strongest soldier. You're not a weapon. Or an emotionless killing machine. You're a person like me and everyone else. He memorized every word, reciting it in his head whenever she came to mind.
The people he has come across in his life had the common tendency to place him on a high pedestal of incredible strength where no one could reach him. To them, insurmountable strength makes one as stiff and unwavering as a wall; receiving compassion and empathy is something unnecessary for a wall. Nothing can hurt a wall, for it has no feelings whatsoever. Built with nothing but brick and cement, a wall cannot sense emotion and cannot love.
She stomped on this idea with her own two feet. A person can never be a wall. A person will always be a person; they will never be this inanimate. He seemed to think of her saying this with her eloquent little mouth. She gracefully held out her hand to this man placed on a pedestal too high for anyone to reach. Her eyes beckoned for him to trust that she safely bring him down, where true human nature lies : deep emotion, feelings, compassion, empathy, and love.
An intimidating world indeed. Where emotions can crush him, where compassion can betray him, and where love can end up paining him in the end.
He flinches. An emotionless, dispassionate, loveless, desolate pedestal may be better than the overwhelming waters that lurk below his feet.
Levi takes in a deep breath and expels these murky thoughts with his slow exhalation; they are irrelevant to the expedition he embarks on the next day.
He must clear his mind.
Nothing shall cloud his decisions.
Nothing.
--------------------------
Whoops, I wrote in third person. :p
Just to give it a more dramatic feel, I might be writing in third person for this expedition. Because something will happen that needs some dramatic feel to it.
Anyyyyyywayyyyyssss
As always, thank you for your support and love!! I love you to Pluto and back!!
Leave a vote or comment if you enjoyed this chapter!
Thankchuthankchuthankchu
-Kamisama961
YOU ARE READING
Perennial Rose | {Levi x OC} | Shingeki no Kyojin |
FanfictionRenata Mendelssohn has been confined inside her master's home as a slave for the majority of her life. Along with her older brother named Engel and a young boy named Kilian, she has lived a life filled with harsh labor and limited freedom, for they...
