Together, we heal | Levi Ackerman

༅ 24. Coming Home

Under the Light, Part 7: Coming Home

Year 844

Vanya remembered someone screaming.

It must have been a maid or her sister -- she couldn't tell. But all she knew through her foggy memory that someone had entered her room the next morning, tried to nudge her awake, and screamed loud enough to rattle the walls when she barely moved.

When Vanya tried to peel her eyes open despite the merciless pounding in her head, she saw her maid scurrying out of the door, probably shouting for help.

What's happening?

She tried to sit up, only to feel her whole back sticky with her sweat. The insides of her mouth were dry, and her vision had her seeing blurry silhouettes. When Vanya turned to her side, she saw a small glass bottle without a cork at her nightstand.

And then, like a slap to the face, all the memory from last night came hurling at her.

What have I done?

She quickly scampered towards the nightstand, snatched the bottle, put the cork right in, and pushed it under her pillow right before the door flew open to make way for the maid and Alice's entrance.

"Thank goodness, you're awake!" Alice shrieked, kneeling by the bed and taking Vanya's clammy hands. "The maid thought you were unconscious! Oh dear, you look so terrible," she frowned as she took in the sight of Vanya's pale, disheveled, and decrepit state.

"I'm fine," Vanya replied, panting. She didn't know why she was losing her breath.

Alice shook her head. "I don't think so. Perhaps you ought to stay in bed all day --"

"I can't!" the younger sister suddenly cried out, making Alice flinch. "I'm finally seeing them again, Alice, I have to go!"

"Seeing who?"

"My family..." Vanya buried her head in her hands. "Furlan... Isabel... Levi..."

Alice made a face of realization and sympathy. "They're your friends who are in the Survey Corps right now, right?"

Vanya nodded weakly. "I must see them, it's their first expedition tomorrow and I... I don't know what will happen to them."

The blonde woman felt her heart being twisted raw as she felt her sister's trepidation through her shaking hands.

It was precisely why Alice has always expressed her hate towards the Scouts regiment ever since the dawn of her time. The whole arrangement of sending out soldiers out of the walls, only to end up having their limbs torn apart by grubby and bloated Titan fingers, was a concept she found it to be so futile and repugnant. And now, with the possibility of Vanya's best friends ending up in the same terrifying predicament, Alice couldn't help but feel even more heartbroken for her sister, and more angry for the said regiment.

"But you're sick, perhaps you're still withdrawing," Alice reasoned out, planting a firm hand on Vanya's forehead that was already practically burning, and besmeared with so much sweat.

Vanya bit her lips. She couldn't dare tell her sister that she had a bottle of laudanum hiding under her pillow.

"I can manage, I promise," she begged, though she knew well enough that any given moment she could collapse.

But she didn't have a choice. It was now or never.

Alice sighed. "Vanya, if you are to travel for a hundred kilometers in that state, I need some sort of reassurance that you will be taken great care of."