a blog with several regrets

(or: i haven’t written anything since like 2005, don’t @ me)

The first time Erwin tells him he loves him, Levi freezes.

It’s a chilly night in late autumn, and they’re tangled together in the remnants of afterglow. It comes out of nowhere. He isn’t prepared. He makes a non-committal noise of acknowledgement.

The last person who told him she loved him was his mother.

She told him every day. One night, she’d reached out to him, and it came out in a hoarse whisper. It had been that way for weeks now. Her hand was cold. He crawled into bed and curled up at her side anyway.

The next morning, the rest of her was cold, too.

Everything else was exactly the same. The air was stale—not that he’d ever breathed fresh air—and it was dark, though the morning had come. Or had it?  It was hard to tell when you never saw the sun. It didn’t matter. He was still hungry. It didn’t seem right that nothing else had changed. Her death was meaningless. He knew that much, even back then. He was never much of a crier (it got her in trouble), so he just sat quietly in their room, not sure if he’d be around much longer, either. He wasn’t sure he cared. The only person who ever loved him was gone.

That was more than 25 years ago.

Now, against all odds, he’s found someone else who loves him. Whom he loves. Shit, is he in love? How long has he been fooling himself that he isn’t? Like this is some casual thing, even though he’s never let anyone else come anywhere near this close to him? Even though, somewhere underneath the surprise, there’s something far more profound, and he’s devoted his heart to this man in more ways than one?

God damn it.

Erwin knows him well enough not to take offense when Levi doesn’t echo his sentiments verbally. This is different, though. He doesn’t want to leave something with so much weight hanging between them. He’s been caught in his own memories for awhile now, though, and Erwin’s breathing has since evened out. He’s asleep. It’s too late.

For some reason, that doesn’t stop him. He heaves a sigh of defeat.

“I love you, too.”

He freezes again when Erwin reaches over and squeezes his hand.

There’s been a lot of discourse about the Ackermans, their power and their bond to their lieges since chapter 130 came out, so here’s a list of all the canonical information we have about the Ackermans to date. This includes information from the manga, the Answers book, and the Character Encyclopedia, but not from interviews, Smartpass and other supplementary materials. Let me know if I’ve missed anything. 

I’ve got so many thoughts about Levi’s internal monologue in chapter 136 that I’m not even sure where to start.   The first thing to say is that it surprised me. Not because of what Levi said, he has been entirely consistent about his goal since chapter 84, but because I honestly didn’t think we’d get Levi’s pov again this late in the day.  I thought chapter 112 was the last time we would hear Levi reiterating his vow.  However this chapter really emphasized just how important that vow is to him; his promise to Erwin is the one thing that is still driving him forward.  

I really appreciate the fact that this chapter blows several misconceptions out of the water, including that Levi either doesn’t care about stopping Eren because his only goal is killing Zeke, or that he doesn’t want to kill Eren, out of a sense of affection of loyalty.  Even though there’s a “whole lot” Levi wanted to say to Eren, (I’ll bet there is), he is unequivocal that saving his life has never been their primary concern.  And to be honest, if I was Eren I’d be mighty glad that Levi is unlikely to have an opportunity to give him a piece of his mind.  

Another misconception is that Erwin would have supported the rumbling, which is such an incredibly bad take that I can’t even put it into words.  Levi makes it crystal clear that if Erwin, Hanji and their comrades gave their life for a future that involved trampling humanity into the dust, then their sacrifice would not have been worth it.  The only way to honour that sacrifice is to prevent the destruction of humanity. It doesn’t get much more unequivocal than that.

I also think it’s worth drawing a comparison between Levi and Eren’s reaction to discovering the existence of the world outside the walls.  Both of them had a naive vision of an “innocent idealized world” but their reaction to discovering the flawed reality of the world could not have been more different.  Eren has expressed his disappointment by unleashing whole scale genocide, while Levi is more determined than ever to fight to his dying breath to save humanity and prove his comrades sacrifice hadn’t been in vain.

I’ve written elsewhere that I dislike the trope of passing over the baton to the next generation so that the kids can save the world, but at the same time I can absolutely understand Levi’s perspective.  We already know that he didn’t want to drag Erwin back to the hell of the world, and we also know that he’s been fighting his entire life; he’s clearly not ready to give up the fight but I think he can be forgiven for wanting to entrust the future to the next generation.

I also think it’s interesting that Levi regards his vow as Erwin’s final order.  In actual fact it wasn’t an order, it was a mutual decision.  Erwin told him that he had a plan that would enable Levi to take down the Beast Titan, but it was Levi himself that volunteered to take on the task.  This isn’t the only time that Erwin gave Levi the opportunity to make his own decision, rather than issuing him with a direct order, which serves to emphasise the equality of their relationship, despite the power differential of their ranks.

The fact that Levi’s monologue is addressed to Erwin, highlights yet again the importance of their relationship.  In the words of the Character Guide, “To Levi, Erwin is an irreplaceable existence”.  That was true four years ago, and it’s still true today. Erwin is still Levi’s point of reference, his polestar, everything goes back to him.  That doesn’t mean that Levi doesn’t care about anyone else though, while Levi swore his vow to Erwin, he swore it on behalf of all his comrades who died fighting to save humanity, and we can see just how fondly he remembers them in his memories.

As to where Levi goes from here, well, that remains to be seen.  This heartfelt monologue feels very much like Levi’s swansong, so I strongly suspect he’s going to die within the next couple of chapters.  If he is going to kill Zeke, then he is either going to have to get into the Paths realm, which doesn’t seem like a possibility, or Armin is going to have to get Zeke out of Paths and into the mortal world, which seems more likely.  Zeke currently appears to have very little free will of his own, but I wonder if Armin is able to get him out of Paths, would he sacrifice his own life in order to stop Eren?  I think it’s certainly a possibility and it would also give Levi a chance to fulfil his vow.  However we also have Gabi sitting there beside Levi with Chekov’s loaded gun, and we already know she’s a good shot, so who knows?

What ever happens, this chapter feels like the beginning of the end for Levi.  I used to joke that I wanted Levi to go out fighting with one last vision of smiling shoujo Erwin.  We’ve pretty much had that now, so please Isayama, let him fulfil his vow, and then let him rest.

Four years ago, when Erwin died, after I reluctantly started to come to terms with the devastating shock and disbelief, the thing that hurt me the most was the knowledge that Levi would have to go on living and breathing in a world without Erwin in it.  It just seemed so Impossible, so unfathomably sad that Levi would have to go on fighting, desperately trying to fulfil his vow to Erwin and their fallen comrades, after loosing almost everyone he ever cared about.

The Answers book, which was published in Japan the same day that chapter 84 came out, provided a small crumb of comfort, by reiterating what an important presence Erwin was in Levi’s life.  And later the Character Guide clarified unambiguously that Levi chose to save Erwin by allowing him to die, however it also twisted the knife cruelly by confirming that Levi had lost someone irreplaceable to him.  And that’s what really hurt; knowing that Erwin was gone, the relentless irrevocability of his death.  Because despite the fantastical nature of the SnK world, death for everyone but the Titans and the Shifters was visceral, permanent and very, very real.  Once a person died that was it, they were gone in all but memory.  The only glimmer of hope was Isayama’s love of flashbacks and his hint that, even though Erwin was dead, he might draw him again.  And bless Yams, he turned out to be as good as his word.  Erwin might have been dead and gone, but he lived on in his comrades’ memories as an inspiration and a vow.  But he was never more than a memory, an absence at the heart of the story.