#zanderuri

[zanderskyward]

Could you maybe write something about Levi experiencing terrifying night terrors that transform into waking nightmares. He ends up in the psycho ward and believing that he was going insane. This, was until he meets a patient that visits during the groups visits, Erwin.

Levi thought that was the end of him.

After trying to jump from the balcony ofFarlan’s flat and scaring the life out of him, his friend had finally broughthim to the hospital to get help.

It had always been like that. Levi had alwayshad those dreams, the kind of nightmares a child should never have, but if theyhad been few and sporadic during his childhood, they had grown stronger andattacked him more often than not in his adulthood. Since turning 30, hismonsters had transformed into hallucinations and every time he woke from adream, panting and drenched in sweat, the demons followed him until he couldremember enough to turn on the lights. Sometimes he gets violent, and other timeshe’s so terrified he just lays on the bed for hours until the noises fade awayand his vision clears from the red-blood layer.

He’s mad at Farlan for making him do this, andthe feeling of betrayal tastes so familiar he thinks he’s not insane but amnesic.It doesn’t relieve him. But he’s still in a mild state of panic from lastnight, and at the sight of white robes and the few cries he hears from time totime from the other rooms, he truly thinks that this, and not his strangesuicide attempt, is the end of him. They’re going to lock him up, to say he’s athreat to himself and others, to keep him away from everything he loves.

It isn’t over.

The questions and tests are never-ending, andFarlan doesn’t visit him since he left him there. Levi understands. Farlan hasto take care of his little sister, Isabel, too, and it still hurts, but thedoctors told him he got violent with him that night. He knew it would happensomeday, but he isn’t ready to be all alone in the psychiatric ward of ahospital. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be.

“It’s as if I’m remembering somebodyelse’s life,” he tells his therapy group one day after weeks of having thepsychiatrist insisting him in participating. “Or I’m a little kid livingin a very bad horror film. I’m scared as fuck to sleep because I fear I end upgetting a gun and shooting myself with it one night if I’m not able to killthem.”

It’s the first time he talks and everybody issilent, like he just opened the gates to the world’s horrors. While the rest ofthem had confessed his fears and problems in pitiful, repetitive metaphors, hejust blurted out the awful truth he believes in: that their minds suck andthere’s no positive way to look at them.

There’s one man that smiles at him. He remindshim of someone else.

When the session ends, the man introduceshimself as Erwin. He has a magnetic aura surrounding him, and he looks at Leviwith fiery, blue eyes that sparkle as if they knew all of his secrets.

He only sees Erwin at the group sessions, andthe dread and excitement every time he meets him is overwhelming. His namesounds exactly like the one he finds himself yelling in his dreams withdesperate, raw cries, but he never can quite catch the echo of the answer.Finding a strange comfort in him, Levi starts to go out of his way to talk tohim more and more. He invites him to coffee, for a walk, to watch TV, and theyquickly become quite close with each other’s presence. Erwin never startsanything, but he doesn’t reject Levi either.

“You say you have horrible night terrors too,”Levi questions him one morning, his eye bags as dark as his coffee. “But younever talk about them. So then why do you keep coming to the group sessions?”

“I don’t want you to hear them,” Erwin replieswithout missing one beat.

“What?”

Levi thinks he has misheard, but his friend –he’s started to think more of Erwin as a confident, and maybe even as somethingmore – shakes his head and falls silent.

Usually, Erwin is quiet in such a relaxed,collected way that most people would believe he’s a doctor and not a patient ifnot for his clothes. But this time he’s frowning and frustrated because ofsomething, and Levi feels a stabbing pain in his chest.

“What the fuck, Erwin, you can tell me,” Leviwhispers, although they’re all alone sitting on the bed of his room. Hesuddenly feels afraid. “I’ve told you everything about me, haven’t I?”

Erwin keeps staring at the silent TV with asilent frown, and when he finally gives him an answer, he doesn’t sound likehimself. He sounds exactly like someone who has kept quiet far too long.

“Do you want to keep thinking you’re insane, ordo you want to have horrible memories in your head from the rest of your life,and not only when you’re sleeping?”

Levi watches him break apart. His calm façadegives way to a frightened grimace, and he hides his face in his hands,breathing in.

“I’ve been looking for you for as long as Ihave these nightmares. I only came here to make sure you were okay. You keepsuffering despite all you’ve done and I can never protect you, not even whenthe titans aren’t real. Forgive me, Levi.”

The apology is what it takes to the pang in hisheart to reach his head. It’s one painful and timeless moment, and then everydream he’s had connects so suddenly he feels numb for a moment.

He remembers the titans.

He remembers the soldiers.

He remembers the impenetrable walls.

He remembers the blood, the bad choices and thebetrayals.

He feels the grief of Erwin’s death in secondsand his own existence being reduced to a walking corpse.

Levi finds himself leaning to the body next tohim in an attempt to regain his bearings, terrified and relieved all at once.It still takes him a few minutes to comprehend that this isn’t another dream.His eyes are shut because of the brutal headache, and Erwin just looks at himwith his hands in fists, like he’s afraid to touch him and break him in moreways than the memories have.

“Thank you,” Levi whispers, a thousand feelingsburning in his chest below his laboured breathing. There has always been fear,but now he finds something warmer. “I never got to thank you back.”

Erwin lets out a small, sad laugh that’s more asuppressed sob than anything else.

“I’m sorry for giving up.”

Before gripping Erwin’s arms and before theywrap him in a safe embrace, he briefly wonders if he would have preferred to beinsane – he still is, in a way, because he prefers not to leave Erwin alone inthe shadows.

[zanderskyward]

There’s a raw taste on the tip of his tongue.

Levi doesn’t feel anything too deeply these days, not even resentment. His colleagues - a word too close to “friends” to even sound real - are surprised by him showing more compassion than ever, while nobody mistakes it for forgiveness. He’s just tired of being angry. Rage has been accompanying him all his life and he feels sort of naked without it, but it doesn’t serve any purpose now.

Exhaustion sticks his bones to the ground and his skin burns every time someone touches him. His body is not a trophy, nor a weapon. Not anymore, at least. Not when his stomach sinks with the smell of blood or when the feeling he can’t name keeps him from eating or sleeping without feeling sick. And the nightmares aren’t the worst part.

For the first time in his life, he fears oblivion. Everything he has left of Erwin is a cold stone, an old jacket, a bolo tie and memories, and his worn-out mind keeps erasing them as if more destruction would lessen the hole in his chest. Knowledge is something hurtful.

“I wanted your death to mean more than this,” Levi says to the stone.

“I don’t blame you,” Erwin would say. But not even the wind stills.

The war hasn’t ended, and he regrets it all.