Chapter 32 - Obscure Truths

                                    

                                          




                          
854
                          



                          
[Naomi]




                          
"Daddy, when people sleep forever... Do they dream of us?"
                          
The wondering question, uttered out by a sparkly-eyed Lilian, induced the shade of subtle surprise in her somnolent father's weary face. Levi's ashen eyes lifted from the window of the carriage to his daughter, who was looking up at him in all her inquiry sparked up by a dismal event she had to experience so early on in her childhood- a funeral. My explanation of the occurence earlier had not sufficed her curiosity. I think she would forever be like that- curious. I knew it was going to be both her strength and her weakness. 
                          
It was hard to realize that the same girl who once yelled, "It's raining sugar!" on her first winter was now asking her parents about a colder, more sorrowful phenomenon. 
                          
Levi took his time to answer. The long ride back home from the Scout Regiment Memorial had been awfully quiet, just the two of us letting all the horrors of last night sink in. The empty silence had only just now been pierced by Lily's question, and it wrenched my heart to know that it was about death. After seeing her favorite aunt descend into the ground like that; never to see, or meet, or smile at or laugh with her again. 
                          
"I think..." Levi said, looking down at her considerately, "If people do get to sleep after they die, they will dream of us." 
                          
He was trying his very best not to terminate her imagination by avoiding to utter his agnosticism towards the afterlife. I knew that well. He always told me how he wanted to believe there was life after death, but he was still doubtful that there really was. He believed that when people die, they only leave fragments of them to the people they once cared about. That's how we still sometimes feel their presence long after they ceased to be around. 
                          
"Oh." Lily answered. "You're not sure, Dad?" 
                          
"Nobody's ever really sure about anything, moonbeam." He replied flatly, as if he was exhausted of that very fact he just uttered. 
                          
"But I wanna be sure..." Our baby girl whined softly, "That Auntie Sasha dreams of me." 
                          
My heart shattered, and the sound of its pieces crashing inside me made me flinch, my eyes slightly burning as I watched them talk silently. Cole was in my arms, sleeping, his head laying over my shoulder and his gentle breathing touching my neck. It was such a tranquil, quiet day for my family, when we all used to be full of laughter and stories when the four of us were together. 
                          
"The only promise I can give you, Lily, is that she loved you very much." Levi said, putting a hand over his daughter's tiny head. She sidled next to him, burrowing under his raven wing arm. "If she's sleeping, then she'll surely be dreaming of you."
                          
I don't know what it was about Levi talking about Sasha that made me recoil in ache. Perhaps it was because I was there while he treated her and the rest of the Spec Ops so especially different from other soldiers. They were not just a squad to him, but they were not like his children either; for of course he knows what having children feels like now. It was also not a relationship like siblings, nor was it like casual friends. But he valued his squad in a way that was more than just comrades, that I know for a fact. I guess there were really relationships you get to build in your life that you can't put a label on. You just know that they're dear to you in a way that no other connection was similar to. 
                          
That's how it was with Levi and Sasha, the first of his officers at the list of 'Who Annoys the Captain Most'. That's how it was with Levi and all the members of his squad; maybe even including Eren, who had grown so distant and indifferent of us. He'd suffered losses time and time again, but he never denied anyone of his concern, no matter how subtle. I could remember the first day at the Castle when I realized that, during the budding times that I wasn't even aware that I was falling in love with him.