Broken Hearts, Severed Limbs (Levi x OC x Erwin)

|19| Seeking Consolation When There's None

14 Years Ago.

He was shaking. She had offered to help however she could, even though she didn’t really know how. She had read books she had stolen from the only physician that would visit the Underground. She never knew how she had learned to read. It almost felt like she always knew how to do it. Books were the only toys that her long gone parents would toss at her to spend her time with. That physician’s book talked about a frequent condition, called, fever.

People would shake from fever sometimes, only because they were feeling cold, even though their bodies would get warmer than usual. Nathalie was fifteen, and Levi was sixteen. It was the first time she had ever seen the symptoms of fever into someone else. They had just finished another job that involved diving right into the river of the Underground Caverns in order to chase their targets.

It was another job that had gotten smoothly, and it had still added to their experience, but it wasn’t until a few minutes after they got home, when Levi would act crankier than usual. Nathalie did all that she had read in that pretty interesting book. She pressed her palm on his forehead after lots of convincing him to stand still.

Levi shot her a look. “What the fuck are you doing?!”

She didn’t respond right away. She looked deep in thought, but she still wasn’t taking her hand off his forehead and he tried his best not to shout at her for it. “You’re hot,”

Levi held back a smirk. “Try telling me something I don’t kno-”

She pulled her hand away from his forehead and smacked his shoulder. “That’s not what I mean, dumbass! You’re having a fever!”

“I’m fine!” Levi growled. “Get off my ass and go read your books or something,”

Nathalie frowned. “My books might actually tell us how to deal with it,”

“There’s nothing to deal with!” Levi cried out as he vanished in his room shutting the door behind him.

Stubborn bastard, she remembered thinking, right before she set off to search for a blanket. They didn’t have many blankets apart from his and her own. He must’ve been freezing way more than he was letting out to be. She had very well warned him about jumping in that river. However, she knew they didn’t really have much of a choice. She had tried jumping in herself, but he did not let her. 

She grabbed her blanket and barged in his room anyway. She was expecting him to shout at her for it, but he didn’t. He was shaking head to toe, nuzzling deeper and deeper beneath his one blanket that of course wasn’t enough to keep him warm. She covered him in the second blanket and the shaking slightly ceased.

He still had his back turned at her, but she knew he wasn’t asleep. He was probably trying to admit that she had most possibly wounded his ego, even for just a little bit. She left the room and returned with something that he didn’t pay much attention at.

“You know it’s alright to ask for a little bit of help when you need it,” She said. He heard as she placed a chair beside his bed and it was no long after when she placed a cool, drenched cloth over his forehead. It brought relief right away and he sighed. She really knew what she was doing, wasn’t she?

“Nat?”

“Hm?”

“You need to rest,”

A small smile spread across her lips. He turned and looked at her. She was sitting on that chair that she had settled beside his bed. Was she really going to stay there the entire night?!

“I’m fine here,”

“Nat-”

“I’ve slept in worse places than a chair. You know that,”