After I died

29

Anastasia

I woke up in the middle of the night by a noise like a chainsaw, until I remembered.... there's no chainsaws here. I sat up, looking around to see if Hanji was okay. She was sleeping soundly as the noise was coming from her direction... was she snorring? Of course, she had also broken her nose in this whole fiasco and was now snorring. Loudly. Very loudly. I tried sleeping for a bit, but the noise was just too loud and since I didn't want to wake Hanji, I took my blanket and left the room.

after thinking for a bit of where to go, I looked over at the door across the corridor 10 meters down. Levi's room. There was light shining out below the door, so he was awake. With a sigh, I decided to give it a shot and knocked on the door. The small noise from inside the room died down. It was completely silent for a bit until slow steps got away from the door and the towards it.

when opening the door, Levi paused for a second, putting a knife he'd been holding onto a cupboard next to the door. "Ana, the hell are you doing here?", he asked, looking me up and down as I stood there, wrapped in my blanket. "Hanji broke her nose, and now she's snorring like a chain saw." "What's a chainsaw?" "Doesn't matter, the point is, I can't sleep when she's being so loud, so I thought I could sleep on the couch in your office here."

He looked at me before stepping aside and letting me into the room. "As long as you don't get anything dirty and don't annoy me." I walked over the couch standing a little to the side from his desk. He had a cloth, some kind of cleaning liquid, and a few blades on the table. "You're cleaning your gear... no wait. That's my gear." "Couldn't sleep.", he replied. "And I already cleaned my own gear twice, so I thought, why not do something else."

I nodded slowly. "And what was the knife for?", I asked,laying down on the couch, my head resting on my hand. "Well, someone knocked at me door at what? 3 in the morning. You could've been, god knows who." "Touché." I put my head down onto the couch pillow while Levi went back over to his desk, continuing to clean my stuff. "I'll try to be quiet.", he promised. "Thanks." I had just closed my eyes when he spoke up again.

"How do you sleep?", he asked. "What?" "I mean... I don't sleep because of nightmares.... and from what you told us, I thought you'd had 'em too.", he admitted, not looking at me like he was embarrassed by it. "I do have nightmares... when I was younger... around 10, I'd say, I wouldn't sleep for nights because I was terrified of bad dreams. Once I had one, I'd not sleep for the rest of the night." "How did you defeat it?"

I laid on my back, looking at the ceiling. "I sometimes pinch my skin during the day to teach my body the difference between being awake and asleep. It's called lucid dreaming. When you notice it's just a dream, you can redirect it. Concentrating on something you'd rather dream about than this." "And it works?", he asked, now looking over at me. He seemed interested. "Yes, it works well. Most of the time, sometimes I get caught up in memories and lose control over the dream, but at least I can sleep again."

"I'll let you sleep now. Sorry for bothering.", Levi said, taking the next blade. I closed my eyes, trying to sleep. Half an hour later, I was slowly dozing off when I felt a weight next to me. Levi had sat down on the couch next to me on hand resting on my blanket. He just sat there for a bit before lifting his hand again and stroking the side of my face where I'd gotten a few small scratches on the mission. "You should really be more careful.", hemumbled to himself, probably not aware that I wasn't fully asleep.

"You better keep that promise of surviving.... don't know what I'd do if you died. Please don't leave me... ever." He sat there for a bit longer before finally getting up and walking over to his bedroom. The office hand a door on the right wall, which he had now on his way to. It was quiet again until I fell asleep, still thinkig about what Levi had said to me earlier.

I was woken up the next morning by the front door opening. "Levi. Ana is gone. You have to help me find her.", she exclaimed, looking at Levi who was sitting at his desk, looking through some paperwork. "She's right here.", he mumbled annoyed, not even looking up as he nodded over towards me. "Ana?! What are you doing here.", Hanji asked, coming over to the couc that I was laying on.

"I, well I uhm..." "You were snorring, four eyes. Ana couldn't sleep so she came here.", Levi explained calmly. "Oh...I am deeply sorry, Ana. Must be my broken nose." I nodded, getting up from the couch to go with Hanji back to our room. "I'll see you at breakfast.", I said, looking at Levi over my shoulder. "Yeah."

Hanji and I walked down the corridor to our room, passing Erwin on the way who gave us a weird side glance as he saw me leaving Levi's office in my sleep clothes while carrying my blanket. Gladly he didn't ask tho, that would've gotten quite weird. Back at our room, I changed my clothes, brushed my teeth and then tied my hair  up, so we could go to breakfast.