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

|43| An Apology

A table came flying and crushing on the stone floor. Nathalie and Levi were just walking downstairs to check out what the hell had broken and made a sound like that. Hange and Moblit had taken care of locking the soldiers up, but something must have happened that had infuriated Hange enough to kick on that table.

“I’m sorry, seems I made a mess,” Hange said.

“Are you okay?” Nathalie asked turning at Hange, but Hange just put her goggles back in place and Moblit shook his head no from behind. Nathalie got the message.

“I encountered a large cockroach,” Hange said, it was obvious she was lying, but Nathalie’s eyes widened anyway.

“COCKROACH?!” Nathalie cried out, and before Levi even knew it, he was holding her bridal style.

Her body, shaking in terror. Levi sighed. He could never understand how Nathalie could approach ten-metre titans and experiment on them and even smile at them, whilst she could never approach a goddamn cockroach. He wouldn’t complain though. She was so cute when scared of insects. Levi had always been around to deal with them. Nathalie’s hands tightened around his shoulders and she scanned wide-eyed the floor, trying to find the small insect. Even though, a more logical part of her told her that there was no cockroach at all.

“A large one too?!?! HOW BIG?!”

“Relax,” Levi said. “I bet she kicked it hard enough to learn its lesson,” He let go of her, and Nathalie’s feet found the floor again, even though, she still cowered behind him. Hands slipped around him and she was still searching for something on the floor. “Nat,” Levi caught her attention. “It’s time you filled them in,”

Nathalie sighed in relief. There’s no cockroach. “Oh! Right,”

The four adults walked into the other room, where they found Mikasa, Armin, Sasha, Jean, and Connie sitting around a table and waiting. Nathalie and Hange had taken a moment to talk about the things that Hange had figured out about the titan spinal fluids, and the serum, and about Eren being devoured. Nathalie had theories about all these, and Hange was just providing her the evidence.

“So, they plan to eat Eren?!” Armin said, wide-eyed when Nathalie finished explaining.

“I’m afraid so. My previous theory was, that when an unintelligent titan consumes an intelligent titan, then the intelligence -or else- the ability to change back into human form, is passed down to the unintelligent titan along with the specific power,” Nathalie said.

“It’s been proven by a conversation that Eren remembered between Berthold and Ymir,” Hange added.

“B- But how did you know this, Nathalie?” Armin asked.

“It’s simple, really. Eren has a protein in his body that deactivates the genes that turn people into titans. If an unintelligent titan was to consume that protein, then they’d too turn back into a human. That’s what I’ve been meaning to try on Connie’s mom,” Nathalie explained and Connie tensed up. Nathalie turned at the kid. “With your permission, of course,”

Connie nodded, but Armin continued with the questions. “Yeah, but how did you know about Eren having that protein?”

Nathalie parted her lips to answer, but she realised, she didn’t. At least, when she first started working on her theories, she wasn’t sure about Eren and that particular protein and how it worked. She just knew.

“W- We found out from the samples that we got the other day during the experiments!” Hange saved her. “But the thing is, if the government has a titan of their own, they’ll use it to eat Eren,”