Chapter Text
Levi came to consciousness like breathing through mud. He couldn’t quite think—the air felt like grit in his lungs and his body felt dull with what he quickly realized was pain. Everywhere. He couldn’t quite remember what had happened—anger, then fire, then cold, but he remembered Hange's voice as they cried over him, and he slid into wakefulness enough to feel as Hange took his hand, something dull and grating scraping over his fingers as Hange murmured “You’re okay, Levi; this will be okay,” over and over again, haltingly and choked with tears. With great effort, he tried to open his eyes and was hit with a sharp pain through the right side of his face, sharp enough that he gasped—and he felt the air hindered beneath fabric and a warm wetness in his lips as a scab cracked. He forced his eyes—eye—open. The world looked strange, hazy and flat, and for a moment he didn’t understand, but as he tried again to breathe through his mouth, he understood. Bandages. He reached up to touch his face and was startled by the shock of pain through his arm. When he managed to hold his hand to his face, though, he almost laughed. Three fingers. So that was what that feeling was—his fingers getting cut off. What was left of them, by the looks of it. He took his other hand, thankfully unmangled, and touched his face. Bandages everywhere but for his left eye. There was a sharpness any time he tried to move his mouth, there must be stitches, but the pain radiating through the entire right side of his face made it difficult to tell what was damaged. He turned his eye back up to the canopy of trees they were under, thankful that they had growing a bit clearer, and tried to look around. He didn’t quite recognize them. He did, however, recognize the sound of breathing beside him, and he recognized the voice of it, too. With effort, he turned his head.
Hange’s head rested on the makeshift pillow beside his own, smeared rust red with what Levi knew was his own blood across their chest and arms, some smeared on their cheek. They must have carried him to wherever they were now. But Levi could see, even beneath their glasses, how dark and puffy their eyes were from crying. It shot something like anguish through him, seeing the insufferable person that he’d never admit he loved like a sibling with dark circles beneath their eyes. They used to be so happy. Walls, it hurt to see them slumped beside him like the dead, empty of the light that had driven them for as long as he had known them. What kind of people were they now? Both of them empty and lost, only going through the motions, barely keeping it together but for the habit of surviving. Without thinking, Levi reached up with his bandaged, ruined hand and slid his fingers under Hange's loose glasses, unhooked and fallen over their nose, and gently tugged them free. He didn’t want them to roll over them and break their last pair. He carefully folded them and sat them on the blanket at his left side, settling back onto his back and nearly closing his eye until he heard a hitch in the breath beside him. He turned his head and watched in silence as tears welled over their eye, spilling down the side of their face. Hange didn’t open their eye as they reached up, their hand clasping around Levi's arm. They were shaking. He reached over with his left hand and took theirs. He said nothing. There was nothing to say.