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

|124| Awakening

Headache. Her throat felt unbelievably dry, and her forehead just radiated with pain. So did the rest of her body. She had read well the consequences of the hardening and its toll on the human body. Dammit. Annie opened her eyes. The light felt blinding at first. Too blinding. She blinked several times, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the morning light that she hadn’t gazed upon in four years. Four entire years. Has it already been that long?

She looked around her. She was in a white room. It looked like the infirmary of the Survey Corps HQ in Trost. Her eyes landed on a familiar person. Armin was sitting on a chair, legs and arms crossed. His head had rolled on the side. His eyes closed. He had cut his hair. Annie found they suited him better this way. He had grown. He wasn’t the fifteen-year-old boy she remembered. Now, he was a man. He was wearing black trousers and a light blue shirt buttoned up and stuffed within.

Why was he sitting there? Why was he beside her? Why did he visit her every day for four years? Why? Annie shut her eyes and she shook her head. No. There was nothing behind this. There was no answer to those questions. She had done things. Terrible things. Honestly, she hoped nobody would break her out of that crystal. But then it was her. Annie remembered her blood running cold and her eyes widening when she learned about the Burgess that roamed around the halls of the Survey Corps HQ.

That Burgess was a major obstacle in their plans four years ago. But now? That woman had been visiting her almost every day with Armin and they’d keep her company, and she had absolutely no reason to. Heck, Annie remembered clearly wiping out her entire squad, her friends.

“That little brat in there is going to make me become a goddamn physics professor,”

“She’s putting you through much trouble, isn’t she?” Armin raised an eyebrow and she shook her head.

“It’s nothing a Burgess can’t handle. I’m just relieved that it has been four years and all charges against her have been lifted. Which means she’s going to be a free woman when we take her out of there. It was you the one who convinced them to lift the charges, wasn’t it?”

“I- I- I just thought, t- that it actually really wasn’t her fault everything that happened-”

“It wasn’t. Annie just followed orders. I didn’t understand at first, but I do now. Like all of us, Annie was just a kid tossed into this cruel war to fight on her own. It’s no one’s fault that this world is just cruel,”

Yeah. This world was cruel. Annie was just glad someone was understanding about the burdens that she had pushed on her shoulders. A tear ran down her cheek. The guilt, feeling heavy beneath her chest. How the hell was she supposed to face those people now? She had killed so many of them. What were they going to do to her now that she was out of her protective little cage.

“Annie?” Armin’s voice came.

A small whimper snapped him out of his sleep right away. He hadn’t left her side, not once, those two days that she had been passed out. He hadn’t even realised he had slept right there on that uncomfortable chair. But there was no way he was leaving her alone, even though he knew she was safe and no one would dare harm her. He had made sure of that himself.

Still, he noticed the tears running down her cheeks. She was keeping her eyes shut. Fingers clenched in painful fists. She had to get out of here. She had to run. She had to save herself. She had to go back and fulfil her promise to her father. Was he even alive? Did she even have someone to go back to?

Armin stood up and approached her right away. She felt the weight of his body sitting beside her by the edge of the bed. Warm hands found her face. Rough thumbs wiped away the tears from her cheeks and she opened her eyes finally looking up at that utterly worried look on his face.