Crumbling Walls | Erwin Smith x Reader 18+

Chapter 27

Wrath of Hell

You're aware, very much aware, of your whole existence. Your body. Your senses. You can feel everything around you. The world so tangible, you can never mistake this moment for a dream.

Lightning flashes, then thunder strikes, the sound rattling the walls all around your tense body. Then comes the tapping of rain, pounding harsher against the window. You can hear the noise, the sound of the wind outside. Howling and raging, so loud and furious, as if mimicking another storm within you. One that's slowly but surely approaching. And, most importantly, you can smell. The smoke. Still rising and ascending into thick clouds as dark as the ones outside. Filling the whole hallway behind her shaken body.

"I win..." She says, her eyes staring at you as you stare down at the body of the man you love. Stretched over the floor between you and her. Blood is still seeping out of the wound she made into him. Even from this angle, you could tell, she was aiming for his heart. But she was shorter, and Erwin was bigger. So her hit had missed.

This feeling again...

This scene is so familiar. As you stand there and watch his frozen stiff body over the floor, soaked in blood. Almost... lifeless. It shakes you. On the inside, terror was vibrating in every cell within you as you feel it coming. A wave from the past. A moment you blocked out, never to return to. An old reality that does not exist anymore. An old life you had given away, erased and demolished by the one you started in here. Since the first day you signed into his force, a new life you were born into. Now it's being disturbed. And shaken. And small tears are happening in your reality. As if there're claws ripping through your view. And all you can feel, all you can see, is the dead and lifeless body of your brother laying down the same way Erwin is.

It's happening again...

Loss. Your chest tightens, as if those claws are now wrapping and fisting around your heart. Squeezing so tight, so hard, you can't even drag your breaths like normal. And it's a feeling you know so well. A feeling that festered and spread, all these years, growing into something beyond controlable. A feeling that consumed you so fully, it blinded you. For so many years. In so many ways. You ended up only losing because of that one loss.

I vow... I promise...

There is a raspy itch at the back of your throat from the scream you made, the cry you let out in that second, and there are stains of tears over your cheeks. You'd think you would be still crying. Screaming more. But you're not. Your hands are loose and limp by your sides. Your eyes unblinking. Even your breath is slow and shallow as you lose all senses through your body. Despite how alerted your mind is. A numbness you've never felt before takes ahold of you physically. As if your body had decided to shut down, and disconnect from your brain. Saving you from the impact this new reality had slammed you into.

As long as my heart beats... My lungs breathe...

"I told you, loving him isn't for the weak." She says, and her voice forces you to blink, then your eyes move up to her. Slowly dragging and moving past her bloody hand. "And if I can't have him, no one will." Then she backs away, her feet taking a step backward.

I promise...

"I. Will. Kill. You." Someone said, the voice so hoarse, so gruff and deep, it didn't register to you at first. You didn't fathom it was your own mouth moving and speaking, until you saw her eyes widening and her lips smiling wickedly in response.