Levi x Reader Oneshots.

Welcome Back

i'm back, real recession indicator moment! finished uni, worked multiple music teaching jobs, developed chronic dissociation for the second time so that's where this fic came from. i wrote it two years ago. just revamping all my old shit now! (and deleted most of the stuff i wrote when i was 14, good god what a load of nonsense.)

content warning: 2nd person narration, GN!reader. feelings of grief, graphic descriptions of dissociation, reader feels disconnected and needs ground. post-expedition hurt-comfort is my weakness.

word count: ~1447

-- 

Arms up. Arms down.

Grief anchors and weighs you down like a ball and chain. It's heavy, cumbersome and you are left to just bear the brunt of it. It has a way of removing you from the world, leaving you unable (even unwilling) to reconnect. The most recent expedition and the deaths that came with it weigh down on your shoulders. You lean over, back hunched. Neck tense.

Distantly, you recognise what it is you are feeling (or lack of.) Distantly, you recognise the expedition has probably sent you into this state.

Your vision is 'stretched', or distorted, and everything has a dull fuzz to it. You're sure if you reached to grab the book on your bedside locker, it would slip through your fingers and melt away.

And that you'd wake up from this.

You form a fist and relax it, stretching your fingers. Lines on your fingers; oh, five fingers, all with fingernails. Five sets of knuckles. These are your hands, right? 

You form a fist and this time you squeeze, and you almost feel your nails sink in. Just slightly but it's enough for you to shudder. In realization? In pain?

It's not unusual for your mind to be stuck out in the plains beyond the Walls. The boom and echo of flares rattle in your ears, the screams of your comrades leaves your head spinning. The idea of being back in your bedroom is just something you haven't registered yet, too busy stuck somewhere between a nightmare and reality.

A fake, shadowy middle of unreality.

It's nauseating, harrowing. If not for your feet pressed to the floor and your calves backed to the edge of the bed frame, you'd have a hard time trusting gravity in keeping you down.

There's a voice in the foreground, but you're not quite there yet. Their speech is fragmented.

You cling to reason; to routine and actions. You try to cling to dialogue and even though you understand the words, they don't get processed. You try to attune to the conversation, however one-way it is.

"Your shoulders tense up when you get like this. Relax."

Shoulders... ah, your shoulders? So you roll them. You don't really know what else to do. Tense? Why are you tense and what–

...

What are you...?

Where...?

Levi senses he's losing you further here, so he gives you an order. A command; you can latch onto that. It'll give your brain something to do, long enough to take you away from the plains.

"Legs out. I'll undo your buckles," he says as he kneels between your legs.

Leg up, straighten, leg down.

Same idea again for your left.

The frigid air against your now bare skin makes you shiver. Your clothes are being taken off, piece by piece.