Sorry for the shitty chapter title. ._.

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-Levi's POV-

"When's the last time you visited Mikasa?" I ask him a few days later. We're walking slowly along the top of Wall Rose headed toward the east. His fingers are wrapped securely through mine; they're tight, like he's afraid to let go of me. It's early afternoon, the sun hanging over in the cloudless sky, beaming right down on us. My feathers are growing hot and I find myself tucking my wings closer and closer to my back to keep them out of the sun as much as possible.

"I don't know..." Eren mumbles, his eyes glued to the top of the wall in front of us as we stroll by. "A couple months, maybe? I'm surprised you have to ask..."

I don't, really. I know it's been a while since he took the initiative to make the journey to her house. I ignore the remark.

"You should go see her," I suggest. "She probably misses you."

"Hmph. If she missed me, why can't she come visit me?"

Such a brat. "She's busy, idiot. She has a kid and a whole other life now. It's not like she can just pack up and hike over to HQ whenever she wants."

I feel Eren flinch and immediately regret what I've said. I know things like that tend to strike a nerve with him, what with, in his mind's eye, his lack of purpose within anything anymore.

"I know," he finally says in a quiet voice.

I stop and let my hand fall from his. He turns, brows furrowing. "What is it?"

"Let's go," I say. "You need to see her, and we're not very far from her place anyway."

His face relaxes. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why...do I need to see her?"

"What kind of question is that?" I cross my arms, shift my weight to my left foot.

"It's just...if she's so busy, wouldn't I just be getting in the way?"

'He's broken.' His voice is so small and timid, so weary; he suddenly appears a decade younger than he is, yet bearing smoldering pain in his eyes. Before I know what I'm doing, I stride toward him and pull him against me, hooking my arms around his shoulders and tangling my fingers through the soft hair where his scalp meets his neck.

"You're so naïve," I mutter in his ear, feeling his arms wrap themselves around me, too. "She's your family, Eren. You're crazy if you think you'd be in her way."

I feel him relax into me. "What if I don't want to go?" he asks. "What's wrong with just staying here with you like this?"

"Humor me. Don't let me jeopardize your relationship with her."

His fingers gently pull through a few of my feathers, hesitating. I sigh and move back, though keeping my arms around him, and stare him straight in the eye. "Just go. For a while. Stop acting like a brat."

Somehow that pulls a small smile from his lips, but only minutely does it touch his eyes. Better, but far from what I want to see.

"Okay," he says. "As long as you go with me."

I quirk a brow. "I thought you didn't want me around in the presence of other people."

"This time I don't care. As long as you don't say anything."

I roll my eyes. "Whatever it takes to get you to go."

So we set off hand in hand again toward Mikasa's place. She, Jean, and Rory live in a small, one-story house in the suburbs of Trost. It's painted a simple white with light blue trim, complete with a brick chimney and a grassy front yard, a sapling growing near the corner. Eren and I saunter quietly down the stone path in its direction, our hands having ceased contact so it doesn't appear as if he's clutching at nothing. Still, I keep a tender hand on his arm, having noted contact between us keeps him calmer somehow.

A lip trapped between his teeth, Eren knocks on the door and steps back, fidgeting as his eyes find the ground again. It only takes a second before the door is being pulled open to reveal the dark-haired woman standing on the other side, appropriately holding an equally as dark-haired toddler on her hip. She smiles as soon as she sees him.

"Eren!" she says, taking a step out and throwing an arm around him before he can protest.

"H-hey, Mikasa," he mumbles, patting her back in such a way they don't smush the toddler.

"Come in," she says, pulling him along by the wrist. I make sure to step soundlessly in before the door swings shut again.

"It's been so long," breathes the woman, her eyes sparkling as she looks him over.

"Yeah," Eren says, scratching the back of his neck. "I hope you weren't busy or anything."

"Not really." She angles the child toward him. "Look, Rory. Remember Eren?"

The brown-eyed child gazes up at him, his mouth hanging open a bit in curiosity before he's suddenly smiling to reveal little square baby teeth, his dimpled hands reaching out for Eren.

"Do you want to hold him?" Mikasa asks.

Before Eren can automatically shoot her down, I gently nudge him between the shoulder blades with two fingers, urging him to.

"Uhm...sure," he says.

After being passed the kid and a little adjusting, he's positioned comfortably on Eren's hip, and I swear if my heart could stutter it would - the sight of him with a child is breathtaking, especially with the small smile manifesting because of it. And I want that for him. So dearly, I want him to be happy in such a way.

Rory's hand comes up to touch his face, his own little smile never so much as faltering a bit with little dimples in his chubby cheeks.

"You can sit," Mikasa says, moving to take a seat on the couch herself. Eren follows her lead and maneuvers Rory into his lap without taking his eyes off of him.

"So where's Jean?"

"Running some errands. He should be back soon, I think." She leans down and picks up one of the many toys strewn about the floor and offers it to her son. He ignores her and continues patting away at Eren's face, reaching up to touch his hair, tugging curiously at the collar of his shirt.

Eren and Mikasa fall into a fairly easy conversation with, to no one's surprise, Mikasa doing the majority of the talking. Eventually, Eren sets Rory back on the floor and watches his little feet patter away across the shiny wood floor only to return seconds later with a toy to show him, saying the words he knew associated with each item and doing this several times, each time retrieving a different plaything. He's all dimples and smiles, his hair beginning to stick up the more he plays like it's attracted by some sort of static from the ceiling. After a while of this, he selects only one of the toys from the rows Eren organized on the coffee table and climbs on the couch between them, quietly playing with it as they speak.

Jean does eventually make his appearance, forcing me away from my hovering near the doorway, the space I'd always selected when Eren visited. With a physical form, though, I'm forced to move as to prevent the door from, to them unexplainably, stopping. I'm more attentive with my surroundings as well, as to not needlessly knock something over. As I'm moving out of the doorway, Eren mistakenly glances up at me, and I try a small smile with the corner of my mouth. It feels more like a grimace; he quickly looks away.

Jean, after putting groceries and such away in the kitchen, joins in the conversation. All of the pointless angsty tension I remember from their adolescence has vanished and it's nice to see how much they've grown up since then.

"I'm a little jealous of you guys," Eren says quietly somewhere in the midst of their conversation. His focus is on Rory, who'd fallen asleep in his lap a while ago. "Settling down like this after all the hell from back then. I wish...I could..." He lets out a breathy laugh. "Never mind."

Mikasa unexpectedly smacks him across the shoulder; his head snaps up, frowning. "You can," she says. "Get the hell away from that castle. Make a different life for yourself."

And just like that, he shuts down again. He isn't blanking out, but that little bit of happiness he caught from Rory swirls right down the drain. From my seat on the floor, I move closer and place a light hand on his leg. He jerks slightly, a bit of air drawing quickly in through his nose.

Mikasa's unfazed by this, and she follows up with a question Eren clearly wasn't anticipating.

"Have you been going to your therapy sessions?"

His gaze travels up to her face. I hear him swallow, suddenly uneasy. He's looking for a way to avoid the question and change the subject. I squeeze his knee, urging him to answer. I won't let him out of this, even if he's the only one who notices me in the room.

"No," he mumbles. A frown makes itself known on Mikasa's face. Just as she's opening her mouth to ask why, he shakes his head. "I don't know, Mikasa. I don't know why. I just haven't. It's pointless. Alright? Thomas can't fix my head."

Mikasa starts on the same speech he's heard from her a hundred times, about how it can help him and if he'd at least put effort into it, he might be able to get better someday. It's all gibberish to Eren now, and he simply sits there looking at the ground like a child being scolded by an adult until she's done.

We leave not long after that, and it's just starting to rain when we step outside the house. Mikasa calls after, asking if he wants to borrow an umbrella, but he declines and waves one last farewell.

Neither of us says a word for a long while as we walk. He doesn't hold my hand, and I don't reach for his. He stays a few strides ahead of me. The rain begins to pick up; fortunately it isn't very cold, or I'd be worried he'll get sick. (I am, anyway.) I hear him sniff a few times, but whether or not he's crying I can't tell.

"You need to go to therapy," I finally say.

As expected, he doesn't respond. We continue walking; while I contemplate ways to convince him to go. Several threats come to mind, but I know they'd probably only make things worse. An ultimatum might work, but I'd have to think of a plausible one. But there's nothing else I can say to get him to go without telling him the same shit he's heard from other people thousands of times...

It's difficult to tell if he ever sheds a tear due to all the moisture hailing down from the sky. Somehow I don't think he does, but he's gotten exceptionally talented at hiding his feelings.

Must have been something he learned from me.

I sigh inwardly. On we walk.

"She's right, Eren," I say after we've eaten up several more miles.

He stops, and when he turns around I see his face to be completely neutral. No tears. No happiness. Just calm.

"You can make a different life for yourself," I continue. "And you deserve it."

He reaches for me, simply taking my hand. We continue walking but he veers us from the path we'd been on to head back to headquarters.

"Maybe I can," he says. "But I...I don't want to."

"Why?"

His hand twitches; we seek mild shelter under the large canopy of an ash tree. "Because I'm okay being here." We sink to the wet grass, crossing our legs but never letting go of one another. "I'm...okay just staying like this."

It's so easy to see what he means, and so easy to want it, too. I feel myself melting into those bright eyes of his, letting them devour me until any rational thought has been swallowed up and I can't think about anything other than this, other than him, other than wanting to stay with him as long as I possibly can.

Our lips crash together and I'm maneuvering into his lap without breaking contact. His hands, rough and almost demanding, seize my waist as my own fingers tangle themselves through his damp hair. Heat surges through me - down to my fingertips, my toes, the tips of every one of my feathers. I capture every whimper, every moan eliciting from his throat with my lips, drinking him and moving closer until I feel his clothed chest against my bare one, straddling his hips with my knees, until we can't possibly get any closer to each other. I slip my tongue past his lips, testing, and he allows me in to taste him, to feel him flick his own against mine, to nibble and suck.

His heart is pounding. His hands are unyielding on my back, scratching gently where my wings meet my shoulder blades. They come up and shield us from the wind and rain. And eventually he has to come up for air, panting for it whereas I'm fine; I no longer feel that need for oxygen after kissing him like that, but I have no mind to think about why that might be strange.

"Stay with me," he breathes, his forehead coming together with mine.

And how can I deny him? Even with that nagging instinct in the back of my mind telling me that this can't work, I selfishly want to stay by his side. If it means he'll be happier, if it means sparing him from as much pain and guilt and loneliness as I can and from having to watch it myself, how can I possibly say no? Even if we said it before, even if I told him I'd be here as long as he was holding on, I have to say it again. Just to ease his mind, because he's afraid of being left alone again. As virtually impossible as I know it is, I stay.

And that's when I realize that between then and now, nothing ever really changed.

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I'm gonna try and have another chapter up pretty quickly to make up for this short, kinda boring one. ._. But thanks for reading, loves! ♥