𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐲 | 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐢 𝐀𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐱 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

✥𝙱𝙰𝙲𝙺 𝙰𝙵𝚃𝙴𝚁 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚆𝙰𝚁✥

≫ ──── ≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫ ──── ≪

There was a knock on the door.
Violet stood behind Levi, who sat on a chair, while Dot Pixis sat on the opposite side from them. They were back on Trost District and Erwin had received the care he desperately needed, the man now laying on the bed in front of them. Violet had also gotten herself check, after Julian more like forced her to it.
Her injuries got taken care of and she even took a nap after the nurse demanded it. She didn't know how long she had slept for, but when she woke she'd felt better.
It was safe to say she did not feel that much like shit anymore, but some of her burns still ached; the ones she hadn't shown to nurse out of sheer stubbornness and her own little way of resistance. She was fine, didn't need that much care. Her only goal after getting back inside the wall was seeing Levi, to show him that she had kept her promise. And showing the nurse the full extent of her injuries would only delay that.
"It's Hanji." Levi said, "Come in."

The door opened and in came Hanji followed by Connie Springer and Julian. "Pardon for the interruption Erwin," They called, saluting their Commander. "I'm glad you're here, Commander Pixis. This is..."
"A scout from the 104th, Connie Springer." The boy said, saluting everyone in the room.
"Julian Holt. Member of Captain Grey's squad."
"Connie comes from Ragako Village."
"The village the recent titan invasion originated from?" Violet asked.
"Yes. I confirmed with him the findings of our investigation on the village. He's come to report." Hanji said, turning to look at the boy.
And at the same time, Julian turned to look at her, his eyes flashing with a warning. His brows came together in a frown, the sight making the pit in Violet's stomach churn. His eyes and brows were warning her about something, preparing her for something almost, but she did not understand. So she frowned back, a confused look on her face. The message behind the warning got lost in translation between the two. But as she turned to look back at Connie Springer, the look on his young face told her this was not about to be good.

✥

Her head was spinning.
And the room, too, spun just as much as her head. Those news, what they had just said...holy fucking gods. No, no, no, no.
Everything around her spun so violently that she felt that she was about to collapse, her legs weakening with every passing moment. She could not believe what they had said. What Connie had just said. The weight of her body was too much mixed with her spinning vision that she had to lean back against the wall to support herself up.
Levi saw her crumble against the wall and he got up, rushing to help her get gravity back on her feet. He wrapped his arm around her waist, arms securing her tightly against his warm body. Violet could not bother to meet his concerned eyes when she was seeing double, when she could not see straight.
"The titans responsible for this incident...were the citizens of Ragako?" Oh, she was going to be sick. So terribly sick.
"In other words, the true identity of titans...is humans?" Stop, stop, stop. The room was getting smaller, so terribly small that she felt the walls caving in, felt them trap her and suffocate her that the air around her was not enough. She was going to throw up.
"We don't have...proof yet," Hanji said tightly.
"So...you're telling me..." Levi started, still holding tight to Violet, "I've spent all this time and energy running around killing people." His demeanour did a complete one-eighty, turning all dark and sombre. His eyes turned cold and his fingers around her waist slightly squeezed her skin; his attempt of not losing his cool. The look she managed to see on his face and eyes was something Violet had never seen before on the man. He looked sorrowful yet thoughtful as if he couldn't believe the information they had just been told. But Violet could not focus on it right now, could not read his expression, not when she had just figured out what was happening all along back in the Underground. What had happened to Leah and Seth, to all those people who had paid their debts to Austin and had mysteriously disappeared.
She had to get out of that room, had to leave before she came crashing down.

"I said we don't have proof yet," Hanji repeated themselves. And that was the last straw for Violet, who could not handle being there anymore.
She thrashed away from Levi and burst out of the room. Her legs barely got her out of the room before she kneeled on the floor and her guts started spilling out. Gods, oh, gods.
She felt someone grab the back of her hair and how they patted her back, proceeding to rub small circles as she continued to throw up. She couldn't look up to see who it was, not as the world kept on shaking and her guts kept on spilling.
Once she spilt out all the contents in her stomach, she grabbed onto the railing and pulled herself up, legs still weak and trembling like jelly. How she had managed to get away was beyond her because her legs barely felt like functioning.
The same person who had held her hair placed their calloused hand on her waist and helped her up, and she recognized those hands as Levi's. He guided her to sit on the railing while he pulled out a handkerchief with his free hand. She grabbed the thing with shaking hands and cleaned her face, trying to calm once again her startled breathing.

Julian and Levi turned to look at each other, both men concerned as they saw Violet Grey in the state that she was in. Julian had also taken the news badly when he first heard them before they came to the room from where they had just left. But Violet...It hit the girl like a merciless storm. And as Julian looked at his best friend with concern in his icy-blue eyes, Levi had enough. Wanted to know what had the two in such miserable conditions. "What happened, Holt?"
But it was not Julian who answered. "Before we left, we found out something we shouldn't have known. At first, we didn't know what it meant. We thought it meant that people were being fed to titans--so we left. That's the reason we left. People who were paying their debts were being fed to titans and we were next because we both started paying our debts to Austin." She took a long breath, "We never knew that what they meant, what they actually did, was turn them into titans. We thought--it just never crossed our minds." She looked down, her hands playing with each other. Now that she knew the truth, everything was much worse. Everything felt more real, more painful. And it ached in her beating heart. "Our friends...they met those fates. They paid their debts sooner than we did and not before long, they were gone. Nowhere to be found. We thought that they left to the above, that they had managed to gather the sufficient amount of money and made the journey to better their lives. But then-- now this, I just--"
Levi rubbed her lower back with his hand, thumb gently rubbing small shapes and words to calm her down. To let her know that he understood, that it was enough.
As she told him what had happened, in some part of it, he had sat down beside her, his arm never leaving her body.
She laid her head against his shoulder, her mind calming down with his soothing touch. And there the two sat, Levi calming the girl with a soothing touch as she tried to process what they had just found out.