zacharias { p e a c e k e e p e r }

Letting go.

It's never been that easy huh. Younger boys, matching hands and so so desperate, sweaty things -- flustered souls. He felt snow between them, every second ticking unbearable with just a lover's sigh away

"Miche,"

Liquor's hard to swallow.

He would hold his breath, career bodies can only keep up so much though. Like the water he would drown himself in he sat intoxicated, Sidney kissed his knuckles at two am. Breathless, seamless; it flooded his senses, like wine in bread. The salt in the ocean in every tender kiss down his torso and it was everything down to the knock on the door he needed -- a vow, a kiss. The funeral, his name on his lips. 

And they swung their legs over sea bridges, teenage breezes through their hair as Sidney placed his hand in his, "when you're a victor, just imagine,"

"This whole ocean'll be your's."

"Our's, Miche, don't be so selfless."

Salt brine in his thoughts as he placed his kisses on his neck, laughing with his lips under his jaw -- "why bother, all I'd need is you," they were always stupid boys. Zacharias bit it now, liquor hitting the back of his throat like a bullet that could never quite kill him as he smelled his lover's skin, but all there is now is silver. A rowdy capitolite bar, Hanji's arm around his neck, "come onnnnnnnnnnnnnn," taking the kiss of metal and fruit through nostrils to a cloud around his brain -- they drank dreams together, drowned nightmares. It's therapeutic in a sort. Just the veterans and him, it's just easier that way. Less work. Less mistakes. 

Hanji grips his neck, they're the most interesting one. Every scent different: vanilla, fruit, blood, metal, burns, wood, sweat, he can never pinpoint them. Not in a way of a concrete thought -- they just smell like home, Zoe punching his arm and they get him to smile every time, "whatddyaaa need, mutt-" slurred speech in day time dreams, Hanji's never forgotten him. Never lets him slip into the background in a way he's always hated them for, but he smiles. 

He turns nineteen. A toss and turn, crying through nightmares as Sidney holds his by the waist, there were no words to be said. No apologies, no I love you's, just a finish as they realized more so than hushed tones and his eyes trailed the midnight wall. The moon outside whines, "Miche, look at me," as he gripped at sheets, "Miche,"

"Don't say my name," under false pretenses. 
He ruins.

Some ghosts you can't drown. 

Teenage love, but it expires so -- his mother spitting on Sidney's cheek before solemn goodbyes; "you ruined yourself with that one," he took a drink, a golden ring cold on his hand. Zacharias was never a name meant to carry upon eternal shoulders -- he kissed his husband for the last time, holding his hand over external waters, I love you. Forever, so so so so much and he twisted the promise ring like a reminder that it'd be a name he'd never have to say again; survival is a weak thing. 

("Peacekeepers can't marry." Packing a single box: once nice coat, good pants, 

"You don't have to leave, Miche, I'm here,
I'm right here-"

 

Grabbing from behind, delicate hands reaching for something, for the man he would marry, for that still beating heart that slept next to him for five years, "you don't have to leave."

"You don't have to stay.")

They shared an apartment, every word beckoned down his back through the name Zacharias, a murder to drink to. The man he killed: Miche. For one last week they shared breaths, they shared no kisses, nothing more than embraces as he prepared to kill the man he married and the man he was, a peacekeeper cannot marry. His mother reminded him of that -- he knew prices as they came as he knew the bottom of every empty vino; he was meant to volunteer. He was a dead soul since birth and in every way he could counter-act it, there was no faith to follow. If he failed, he would be shipped off as a peacekeeper, and Zacharias fulfilled this head on. 

Humans can only lose once they stop fighting.

Sidney smelled the same their last day, his arms strapped around Zacharias as he swallowed every emotion, sniffing fruit like a haunting in his husband's hair -- he kept the ring. He kept every kiss and embrace, every dark night and ocean meeting they held somewhere else, but in a real sense it was there. Twisting it with his thumb as the other veterans laughed and hiccuped, he swallowed one more glass. Another shot, another fight. 

Hanji's grip on his shoulder lessens as they focus on words from another, he twists the gold around his finger. Humanity's strongest, up until Levi's ascent a year after him but Zacharias had his own. He smiled and wrote to nobody but the clouds in his head as he joined the survey corps, Levi smelled like gunpowder. 

He trusted him. 

And Zacharias cried through his nightmares, attending the funeral and swallowing bullets as he hugged Sidney's mother in all black. Humanity's strongest, a dead husband, he couldn't look his own mother in the face. District four smelled like ash on his return, like too strong wine and he hid from it, shuddered in his sleep and for being a symbol of justice he felt none of it in the world. Midnight kissing his skin alone as he pulled his jacket close to his chest, slipping to the side of that goodnight bridge-

Miche.

A dead name. 

This whole ocean, Zacharias held his forehead to the railing and smelled the iodine. For him -- he bit his tongue, Sidney's waters below him and how do I prove I lived. 

How do I show that I tried? That I lived and loved; if all that outlives him and them is water then in what way does the humanity's strongest bite anything more than liquor. He twists the ring on his finger, Hanji laughs in the distance, Erwin smiles with them. 

(I guess I have to fight until then to know.)