#featuring some

And so this is where Levi finds himself, curled up underneath meagre scraps of fabric that barely count as blankets, pressed up against Isabel’s shivering form. Her nose is tucked into the crook of his neck—it’s ice-cold. Furlan spoons Isabel from behind; the two have an unspoken agreement that every winter, she sleeps in the middle. She’s always been the worst at dealing with the cold. Even now, she shivers the hardest, small groans and curses escaping from pale, chapped lips.

It’s some time past midnight. The fire is dying, but the golden light is just strong enough for Levi to make out the hands of the small clock resting near the make-shift hearth. Shadows dance as the flames dwindle to embers, which, one by one, begin to fizzle out and leave dull lumps of coal in its wake. He’ll have to feed the fire a few more lumps soon.

“I’ll do it,” Furlan offers before Levi can curl his half-frozen fingers around the edge of the blanket and leave their little cocoon. In the rays of dying light, he can see Furlan’s hands. Reddened knuckles that lead to drying, flaking skin. He doubts his own hands look any better, but there’s nothing to be done about it. To buy a tin of soothing salve for their skin would cost Levi a kidney and then some. “She’ll throw a fit if her favourite human furnace gets up and leaves.”

“You’re my second favourite human furnace, though, so don’t get up, please,” Izzy mumbles over her shoulder.

“Second favourite? Not exactly high praise when there’s only two to choose from.” Furlan quips, and doesn’t hesitate in lifting up a portion of the blankets so he can get up. Izzy’s reaction is almost instinctual; Levi’s sure he’s going to have bruises all over himself in the morning with how hard she’s clinging onto him, flinching away from the cold. The blankets aren’t much, but in winters like these, they make all the difference.

“Jeez,” Isabel gasps, though she dares not lift her face out of the blankets, “c’mon, give a warning before you do that. It’s cold!”

“Sorry!”

Levi reaches over and rearranges the blankets around her, as Furlan shuffles across the room and feeds the dying fire with a few fresh lumps of coal. There isn’t much left in the bag, Levi realises. He’ll have to go out and get some soon.

“Merchants should be back down here in two days,” Furlan says, evidently thinking of the same thing. “We can get more coal then.”

With a sigh, Levi beckons Furlan back with a wave of his hand. He’s already started to shiver, curling in on himself. Paired with a significantly thinner frame (for food has been scarce; the winters have been harsh on the harvests up above, or so the merchants say) and darker shadows underneath Furlan’s eyes, it’s difficult to reconcile the man in front of him with the ambitious gang leader that had reached out to him in the first place. Something twists in Levi’s chest at the sight of Furlan looking so worn.

He doubts he looks any better, though. He’s been sneaking as much of his rations as he could possibly afford onto either of their plates when neither one is looking, and taking on longer and longer watch shifts. Having something as simple as four walls and a roof around you makes all the difference. In a lawless place like this, a house could belong to you one day and a complete stranger could raid you and make themselves at home the next, and nobody would bat an eye.

“I’ll go buy the coal when they get here,” Levi grumbles, lifting the blankets for Furlan to get back onto the shitty mattress that hardly fits the three of them. Whenever the merchants come, there always comes the risk of a fight breaking out, starving, freezing people clamouring for even the slightest of necessities. The last thing he wants is to drag them into it, even if Furlan’s bartering skills come in handy. Though he lacks his partner’s talent with words, Levi can barter perfectly well on his own. (Well, Kenny’s old pocket knife does come in handy whenever the merchants fancy themselves shrewd businessmen.)

“No. It’s okay, you went last time.” Furlan settles in the same position from the last time, and loops a lanky arm around both Isabel and Levi’s small frames. His hand grazes Levi’s side, and Levi tries not to think about it too much. It’s unsuccessful. He’s always been hyperaware of Furlan’s touch in a way that he isn’t with Isabel, and he’s not sure why.

Throat dry, Levi swallows. His voice sounds hoarse when he speaks up again. “The last time you went, people tried to shank you when they saw you walking home with the bag of coal. I’ll go. You’re not doing it again, and hell will freeze over before the day I ask Izzy to do it.” The words come out stonier than he’d intended. He can’t help it—Levi remembers it vividly. He remembers the panic clawing at his chest and throat as he paced the room, growing more and more restless with every extra minute the front door remained closed. He remembers the overwhelming flood of relief the moment Furlan returned—only for it to turn into white hot anger upon seeing his bruised jaw and the the tears in his clothes that could only be produced by the blade of a knife.

He remembers sneaking out of their shelter later that night armed with rage and his trusted blade, thinking the others had been asleep, only to feel Furlan’s larger, smoother hand curl around his wrist. Oh, how he remembers the way he’d stopped in his tracks upon hearing the soundless plea in Furlan’s gentle touch. In the end, Furlan hadn’t managed to persuade him to let it pass, but he sure had gotten close.

Kenny would piss himself laughing, if he could see how weak Levi has grown.

Furlan sighs. Something familiar gleams in his eyes, something soft, sad. Levi’s chest, once again, aches just looking at him. “Stop sneaking your food onto my plate when you think I’m not looking, then.” Furlan looks away before he finishes speaking, directing his gaze towards the barely patched-up ceiling. Isabel gasps at the revelation. “I won’t even ask how long you’ve been doing that. I only figured it out the other day.”

Gritting his teeth, Levi internally curses, and refuses to address the food dilemma. “I wasn’t asking your permission to go.”

“If you were, I wouldn’t grant it. You need rest too, you know.”

“Furlan, I’m going, and that is final.”

Before Furlan can retort, Isabel cuts the disagreement short. “Guys. Please… Now isn’t the time to fight.” A finger pokes at Levi’s chest. “Furlan’s right, y’know. You’ve gotta eat too. And you…” Isabel lifts her head ever-so-slightly to fix Furlan with a watery glare. “He also has a point. Seeing you come home like that was terrifying.” She sniffs. “You can always both go, if you can’t decide. I can hold down the fort here. Just quit arguing about it now, please?”

Levi’s hands twitch at the idea of leaving Isabel alone, and one quick look at Furlan’s clenched fists tells him he feels the same. Even with her ability to defend herself, people are desperate for a roof and four walls, and he knows all too well how dangerous desperation can make a person. It’s why they’d set up the system in the first place of having two people at home whenever possible in the first place.

But Isabel’s quaking in his arms, and it isn’t entirely from the cold anymore. So he keeps his mouth shut, and nods.

“Okay,” Furlan says, reaching over to squeeze her hand. “Okay, we’ll stop. We’re really sorry. We can talk about something else, yeah?” His voice drops quieter as he adds, “I don’t think any of us can sleep right now.”

“Hm.” Levi feels Isabel nod against his neck as she hums. “Like what?”

The room lapses into comfortable silence for a moment as Furlan contemplates the question. “The Surface,” he gets out, eventually. “What we’d do when we get to the Surface.”

You mean ‘if’, Levi adds silently. It takes some restraint to not say it out loud. He’s always never been particularly optimistic in the way his two dearest friends are. Instead, he offers, “we’d get a house that stops the draught from coming in.”

“That goes without saying, though.” Furlan smiles sheepishly. “I meant what we’d do, or want to do, that we can’t do down here. Y’know?”

Her face lights up. “Perhaps… working with the wildlife as a vet. Or flowers! Florists are a thing up there, right?”

“Oh?”

“I hear that the gardens they have are beautiful,” Isabel whispers, awestruck. Flowers had always been fascinating to her. The merchants bring them down all the time, and it hadn’t taken much for both him and Furlan to notice her longing looks at the bright petals that positively glow in the dark, dreary shadows of the Underground. They’d had saved up and brought her a singular flower once; the merchant had called it a magnolia. She’d adopted the flower as a surname the very next day, and bore it proudly as if it had been the family name she had been born with. “Imagine an entire stretch of land filled with them!”

Levi tries. He comes up empty. All he can think of is the one and only time his mother ever bought flowers, the only gift she could afford for his sixth birthday, and even then, he only remembers having to throw the wilted forms out when the water pumps in the area stopped working. (Sometimes, he dreams of those flowers. He’d mournfully held onto the last flower, hesitant to part with the gift. They must’ve been a pure, glowing white once, because he remembers dulled white petals falling loose into his palm, remembers saving the final withering flower and pressing it between the pages of a diary Kuchel was growing too sick to write in.)

Furlan must be seeing something he can’t, because he’s quick to respond. “If we save up, we could buy a cottage. One with a little bit of land outside that you could turn into a garden for the flowers you sell.”

Beaming, Isabel nods, more enthusiastic than she’s been in days. It is as if she no longer feels the cold. “And you?”

“As a job, I’d probably go for something simple. Maybe the town we pick might need a mechanic of some sort, I could do that. Granted, it wouldn’t pay me much, but it’s about the most useful thing I could do. But really, I think I’d like to study the stars,” the blond boy responds quietly. “Wouldn’t that be something?” Furlan turns his head to stare at the ceiling again, and this time, he smiles wistfully. As if he’s done this before, replacing a mouldy wooden roof with a limitless sky that Levi couldn’t even begin to comprehend. “To live under a limitless, ever-changing sky, to watch the sun rise and fall every day… wouldn’t that be a sight?”

Across the room, the fire burns bright, bathing Furlan’s handsome profile in warm orange. Levi has to turn away from the sight to catch his breath.

A sight indeed.

He feels Furlan’s eyes settle on him. Isabel shuffles backwards a little so that she can look at his face, too, and he finds himself a little warm under their expectant gazes. “What about you, Levi?” Furlan asks. “What do you dream of doing, when we get up there?”

Dream? No, he hasn’t done such a thing in a long, long time. All this time, it’s been one foot in front of the other, never looking further ahead. He can’t afford to do much more than simply survive; doesn’t deserve to do much more.

“I’ve never given it much thought.”

Isabel’s breath hitches in her throat. “Not even once? Not even when you were a kid?”

“Did you enjoy the tea, Sunbeam?”

He nods, giggling. “It was really good, Mama! Nice ’n warm.”

Kuchel beams, and presses her lips to his forehead. “A little bit of warmth goes a long way, sweetheart.”

Levi swallows. It’s hard to breathe all of a sudden. If he puts it into words, it becomes more than just a silly childhood dream. He’s faced many a daunting task, but to bare himself like this might just be the scariest of them all. To truly desire something pure in a world like this seems futile, and yet, there’s a spark kindling in his chest that Furlan and Isabel have managed to revive from charred embers that his mother’s death had put out years before.

“Isabel,” he croaks, “d’you think there’d be room for some tea plants in your garden?”

The smiles both of them give him are brighter than the sun could ever be.

------

Every night after Furlan and Isabel’s deaths, Levi sits up on the rooftop the way they did before that expedition, and stares up at the night sky.

It’s beautiful. Dazzlingly so, in a way that evokes both awe and dread. It makes him feel so small, so useless, so insignificant in the face of it all.

The night sky leaves a bitter taste in his mouth at first, but it doesn’t stop him from sitting up and stargazing every night. He starts taking a notebook and pen up with him, starts sketching the constellations each night. He starts to write what the sky looks like, how the wind blows and the flowers bloom. Driven by a strange force, Levi tries day and night to see the world the way they would’ve.

He’ll be their eyes, he decides. He’ll see for them, live for them. He owes them that much at the very least, after everything they have done for him.  

After he’s officially discharged from both the military and the hospital, the first thing Levi does is write a letter to Historia.

Due the complications with Jaegerists heavily controlling communications between Paradis Island and the rest of the world, the Queen’s response arrives a month later. Levi finds a thick envelope on his doormat after getting lunch with Gabi and Falco, and for a moment, forgets of his own injuries in his haste to pick it up and open it.

Dear Captain,

The documents you have requested are in the envelope. The papers have undergone some damage, but the team I sent to the Underground recovered the majority of your friend’s designs. I hope it is enough to build your teahouse to your liking. The diary you requested could not be found, unfortunately. The establishment that you directed us to seems to have been abandoned and demolished.

I am pleased to hear that you and the others are doing well and that you are recovering from your injuries. Perhaps it is optimistic to say, but I do hope that one day, the situation will settle and we can communicate freely. You are the godfather of my daughter, after all, I hope she grows up with you in her life in whatever way possible.

Wishing you all the best,

HRM Queen Historia

The second thing he does when he moves into his new house, is ask Onyankopon to drive him out to the nearest garden centre. They come home with a magnolia tree sapling, and Levi plants it in his back garden alone, cheeks damp and hands shaking. A bed of snowdrops—the type of flower he’d pressed in his mother’s diary all those years ago—follows soon after. The clear memory of the flowers had come to him in a fever dream. Over the year, Levi fills his back garden with tea plants and almost every type of flower imaginable, painting the empty area with explosions of vibrant reds and purples and blues all around the tree in the centre.

It takes almost a year and much of his financial reimbursements to turn Furlan’s rough designs for his shop into a reality. His eyes burn when he looks upon the finished building; it is almost an exact copy of the sketches born from his friend’s hand.

The teashop takes off wonderfully. It’s a home away from home, but something still doesn’t feel right. All he’d ever wanted was to walk under the moonlight with them with no other worries in the world, and living out their dreams for them in a desperate attempt to keep their memories alive won’t ever come close. Kneeling in his garden and watering his plants only makes him wish he could hear Isabel’s laugh. Staring up at the night sky, sketching the constellations, he only wishes he could see Furlan’s smile one more time. Sometimes, when he drinks his tea alone at night, he thinks of wilting snowdrops and the chipped teacups that his mother couldn’t ever earn enough to replace.

Because the world, for all its natural beauty, is cold without them. 

Masterlist