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

|28| Terror

His horse was going fast. One hand was tight around her, pressing her body protectively against his own, and the other hand was holding the reins of his horse. Both of Levi’s hands were still holding his swords. He had already wiped out a couple of titans on his way back to Trost, but he didn’t let those bastards take any more than a few seconds of his time. Nathalie’s time.

Her back was pressed against his chest. Her head had rolled back tiredly against his shoulder. He had wrapped his green cloak around her that should be enough to keep her warm. He did not mind the violent wind as it crushed against his body while riding fast on horseback. She needed it more than him.

Her eyes were closed. He had tried his best not to let her fall asleep. If she’d lose consciousness, then she wasn’t going to come back. How could he let this happen? Watching her wounded like that felt like a dagger stabbing mercilessly through his flesh. Her eyelids were barely open. Her hands were shaking and her breathing, heavy. It was getting slower and slower by the time. She was mumbling incomprehensible words as if she was having hallucinations. She was warm. She was probably having a fever.  

“Don’t die on me,” Levi growled in her ear. “You will not die on me, Nat,” His hand tightened around her, and in the end, he realised, he was just trying to convince himself that he wasn’t going to lose her.

He couldn’t lose her. Not like he had lost all the others. People in his life would just keep dying and leaving him alone in his misery. But he found out he was never alone and miserable because she was there. Nathalie had always been there and she had never left. It was funny to think of how many times those past years he had tried to get rid of her, just to give it his all now to keep her with him. He could not imagine life without her.

Not without those hugs that she’d give him whenever he’d need them the most -and he never even had to ask. She just knew. Not without those terrible biology jokes of hers -that no one could understand but her and Hange- and those sassy remarks that always aimed to get on his nerves. Most times he’d only act annoyed just to give her what she wanted. And even those times that he’d pass out by his office from the exhaustion and the pressure, he’d wake up the other day covered in a blanket that she had undoubtedly brought for him.

All those years she had been there. He couldn’t lose her now. If he lost her, he’d never be able to tell her… He’d never be able to hold her in the nights. Nor listen to her stupid jokes, and her sweet laughter, and look upon that reassuring, comforting smile that she’d give him whenever he’d cup her face. He couldn’t even begin to think of what she had gone through that entire night. How many people she had watched die, and in how much pain she must have been right now.

She would be having nightmares for tonight, and for all the nights to come, but he’d hold her. He’d hold her every single night if it meant he’d be able to make her feel better. But please…

Levi buried his face briefly at the back of her shoulder and breathed her in. “Don’t leave me, Nat… not you,”

•═❉═•⊱◄◊۞◊►⊰•═❉═•

He reached the hospital by dusk. She was still breathing when the doctors took her in and vanished behind the closed doors of a room. Levi was left alone in that hospital’s empty halls of utter despair. He just sat down on a chair outside the room they had taken her in and he waited. He didn’t even know how many hours he waited, he only knew it was late in the night and only a few candles and oil lamps were bringing light in the building. Most people had left, and the hospital was almost empty. He didn’t care though. He only glanced at the closed door of her room for the hundredth time, and he knew that any moment the doctor would walk out and either tell him that she was dead, or that she had miraculously survived.