Left Behind (Erwin Smith X Reader)

Chapter 19

A silent hush had fallen over the room. The only thing I could hear was the sound of my own heart. It pumping. Taking my blood and oxygenating it. Starting in my superior vena cava and pumping out through my aorta. Each thumping sound caused by the contracting and flowing of blood through my slowly shattering organ. My lungs no longer wanted to take in air and I had to put thought into breathing. Each breath becoming agonizing.

Did this really happen? 

Holding onto his desk for support I sit down. Still thinking about how to breathe and not how to grieve a broken heart. I felt nothing except for a heavyweight on my chest. My brain was empty and nothing else mattered in that moment as all of my energy was spent staying upright.

Then it all hit me. A wave of sadness flushed through my eyes, opening the floodgate of tears. Anger coursed through my veins until it eventually hit my brain. I had to let this feeling go. It was weighing down my shoulders, pushing me down onto the desk, and trying to spit in my face. It was screaming at me, laughing at me, making fun of me. I tried kicking it. Punching it. Grabbing at it. But the only way I could fight this anger was screaming back at it.

An unimaginable noise squeaked out of my mouth. One that was laced with pain and sadness. One that flew out with it, years of romance. In between a scream and a sob, like a child getting lost, without a parent. Salty tears stained my face as I tried to compose myself. I was able to wipe them away in between silent sobs. The warmth wetness still remaining on my hands as I try to wipe them off onto my shirt. Now the only evidence of my sorrow remained around my eyes. They were puffy and irritated. The anger I tried so hard to fight back against swelled into my chest again. Instead of screaming, my hand flew into the desk that sat in the middle of this room. My panic room. Erwin's room. My hand collided with the desk resulting in a huge thud and slight pain. It quickly went away though as the release of hatred had also crashed into the desk at the same time.

I collected myself finally. My hand had started to bruise while my eyes continue to display sadness. Instead of dashing out the door in a hurried state, I opened it and closed it painfully slow. Nothing I could do at this moment could take me out of my head. Time had stopped and not in a good way. I found myself floating down the halls of the scout headquarters. My body automatically making me turn down a hallway left. Or right. Or left again. Not an ounce of me cared to understand where I was going or what I was doing. But I found myself outside, saddling up a horse, and eventually riding it towards a dark and open field.

I didn't know where I was going. Truthfully. Part of me hoped that if I approached the walls and flashed the guard a grin they would let me out. Another small, tiny part of me hoped that if I stayed away long enough he would come after me.

But his voice still lingered, between my ears, behind my eyes, down my spine "You will probably be alive longer then I ever could." The dried salt on my cheeks moistened again as more tears rolled down this time. Not the frantic angry tears from before. Just the silent calm of sorrow. 

He was right.

This realization sat in my chest, my horse slowing down like she too felt that I had started to weigh her down. 

Him being hot and cold was strictly business. Professional. At the end of the day he knew the statistics, knew the numbers, percentages, probabilities. Something as trivial as love was not destined to last in a place such as this. He knew that and yet after all these damn years, the coy looks, the warm smiles, the concerned gazes that flashed in his eyes after a mission, it was all the want of a man. 

But this man knew better, its the reason why he flew through the ranks, why the scout regiment had become the most successful under his leadership. He had to stay professional, indifferent. His want for me was merely a dream. Something that was pushed down to the deepest parts of his heart, locked away, and did not stir. But, there is something stirring in him. The attention to Eren, his nose deep in a book every night, eyes wild with excitement as he discusses new expeditions and theories about Eren's titan.

He had a want, one he justified as being for humanity. It sure as hell was not me. 

This thought floated through my head, numbingly, hauntingly. A spectral that danced through the halls of my brain, touching every memory of him and I together. Numbing it with a searing white hot pain while dissolving all color, all emotion, that charged them. 

A hand ran over my face, trying to clean my exterior and put together the remnants of what was inside. If it was my hand I couldn't tell. Nothing felt real like my limbs were not attached but rather strung together with strings like a puppet. 

Every ounce of strength I had left was burned on steering my horse back towards the HQ. Tonight's not the night to run away from feelings, demons, stuck crying on a scout regiment horse like the world was ending over a boy not loving a girl. It was the night to make peace. Make peace with the fact, that there may never be a brushing of hands again, that the warmth in my cheeks and chest from looking at him was simply a sickness, everything that came out of that pretty mouth of his was simply and strictly professional. 

Simply and strictly professional. Emotionless. I can do that too.

A/N: Hi all lol. Surprise? This is a mix of a draft that was working before college and now. Yes... I am about to graduate college now. I no longer have any idea about my plans for this work, but hopefully will update it until you have a completed story. I wanted to get back into writing as a senior thesis is not an easy task and I need some of my writing juices to flow better. I have moved over to AO3 (toysrsus) but I will try to update this story still. I also have another fanfiction in the works over on AO3.