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The force of impact made you fold in on yourself, bringing you to your knees. One moment you were standing, the next you were not. There was no pain.
You sat there in silent shock, unable to comprehend why you were kneeling when moments before you had been standing, fighting, killing.
Jean was crying your name, and you still didn't understand. You tried to get up, only for your knees to buckle and give out from under you.
Bewildered, you stared down at yourself. It was so dark, you couldn't see anything, still couldn't understand. Why couldn't you get up? You needed to get up. There was no time. If you stood still, they would get you. You had to move.
Panic was clutching your stomach in an icy grip, infinitely cold and yet somehow burning you from the inside, frigid flames flaring up and up and up as you pressed down on your stomach with your hands, trying to make the feeling go away, but there was no escaping it, and you still didn't understand.
There was something warm running down your fingers, and when you pulled your hands away they were stained red, and suddenly Jean was by your side, and now it was his fingers which were pressing down instead, growing red, and that was when you finally understood. You were hit.
"Stop," you said, but it was a stranger's voice that came out of your mouth, strangled and weak.
Jean didn't react, still pushing down on your wound, trying to stop the bleeding.
"Just hold out a little longer," he murmured. "We'll get you out of here."
"No. Don't." You grabbed his hands, pushing them away. "I'll just... be dead weight. If you take me with you... you won't make it."
He shook his head. "Like hell I am going to leave you behind."
"It's already... too late for me," you said in a strained voice. "Leave… me. That's an order."
Jean's eyes widened at your words. He opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment, another bullet hit the ground next to him, bringing him back to reality.
They were in the enemy's territory. He needed to proceed with the plan. Sasha and Connie had already gone ahead to where Eren was fighting, and he had to join them if any of them wanted to make it out alive.
He turned to you, his face a mask of grim determination, bringing his right fist up to his chest in a last salute.
"Dedicate your heart."
Then he was gone.
You needed to get off the main road. The bullet had hit you as you and the rest of the scouts had been on your way to the Plaza after completing the first phase of the plan, which had consisted of clearing the roofs of any troops and placing lights for the airship along the way.
Everything had gone so smoothly. You had let your guard down. Now you had to pay for it, but that didn't mean you would go down without a fight.
You needed to find the shooter before they tried again. It was either you or them. You chose yourself, knowing that you were no different from the soldier who shot you. They, too, were just trying to protect what they loved.
Scanning the area around you for the source of the bullet, you made out a silhouette in one of the windows. There was no way you would be able to get a good aim in this condition and with the bad lighting.
"Fuck it," you murmured and reached up behind you for one of the thunder spears. You wouldn't be able to join in on the fight with the Titans anyway. Might as well make use of what you had.
Groaning with pain, you hoisted yourself up and pressed the trigger, launching the projectile in the direction of the window, the connecting string pulled taut by the distance. You snapped it, activating the explosion.
Flames burst out from the building as the detonation blew a hole into the wall. The sound rang in your ears, continuing to echo within you long after the night had fallen silent again.
"I'm sorry," you whispered, knowing that this house had been someone's home.
You fell back to your hands and knees and slowly dragged yourself towards one of the alleyways leading away from the Plaza, crawling over the bodies of the civilians who had been trampled to death by other people fleeing the festival.
Now that the initial shock had worn off, the pain inside your gut was steadily growing stronger. With trembling fingers you tried to undo the buckles of your uniform. You needed to get rid of these clothes, this gear. If anyone saw you in it, they would immediately kill you.
Your eyes fell to the body of a woman next to you. She had roughly your size. You brought a shaking hand up to her neck, looking for a pulse, finding none. She was dead.
"I'm sorry," you whispered again, then you took her clothes and changed into them, wincing in pain as you touched your wound in the process.
"Let me bear that sin from now on," you muttered as you put on the white armband with the nine-pointed star, slipping it onto your left upper arm with bloodstained fingers.
The sin of being born as an Eldian into this cruel world, of wanting to keep on breathing even when they told you to choke on the past deeds of people you had never known. You were guilty of that, too.
Even as the blood was seeping through your fingers, soiling the white blouse that wasn't your own, you wanted to live. You wanted to breathe, to smile, to see him again, if only for one last time. You never even got to tell him how you felt.
So you crawled on, towards the dark alleyway.
Onward, ever onward, stopping only to take another dead man's shirt to press to your wound.
If wanting to live meant you had to become a thief, you would become a thief. You were already far worse things than this.
As you pulled yourself into the alleyway, your mind dazed from the blood loss, only one word remained in your thoughts. Levi.
Then you collapsed on the ground.
– –
Jean was the last of the group of scouts to pull himself onto the airship that was gliding above Liberio.
"We are complete. Only Eren and Mikasa are missing now," he informed Captain Levi, who was leaning against the wooden wall of the zeppelin, intently watching the scouts mounting the airship.
The captain narrowed his eyes at Jean's words.
"The hell we are. Y/n's still missing."
Jean flinched and averted his gaze.
"She didn't make it," he murmured.
His eyes were still trained on the ground, so he didn't see Levi's eyes widen at his words, nor the way his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
"Did you see her die?" Levi asked, his voice cold.
"I saw her get shot. I couldn't take her with me. She—"
"I said, did you see her die?" he interrupted him harshly.
"...No. But she was bleeding heavily when I last saw her, and—"
"Then you should have saved her."
Jean's eyes snapped up at this, meeting Levi's steely glare and making him wince.
"She ordered me to leave her behind," was all he could manage to get out. You were his superior officer, after all. Or had been.
Levi clicked his tongue in annoyance.
"I never would have recommended her for that position if I had known she would use it for that..." he muttered, almost inaudibly, but Jean heard him anyway. He saw something flash across Levi's face then, an expression had never seen on him before.
For a moment, there was silence between them.
"I'm sorry," Jean said finally. "I'll tell the others."
You had been at the tail end of the troop, and no one besides him had even noticed that you had been hit.
"Do that," Levi said flatly, his face back to showing no emotions yet again.
– –
"Another child," the man muttered as he lifted the small body onto the wagon. "Such a damn shame."
He was one of many Eldian volunteers who were passing through the streets of Liberio, collecting the dead.
It had only been a few hours since the attack, but crows were already picking at the bodies.
"Go away!" he yelled, shooing the birds away with his hands. One of them lingered, staring up at him with a black, unblinking eye, before it finally fluttered away, disappearing between the houses.
If it hadn't been for the crow, he probably would have missed the small alleyway leading off the main road.
He would've missed her.
When he crouched down next to the woman who laid there curled up, unmoving, hands on a bloody rag pressed to her stomach, his first instinct was to shake his head and mumble, "Another one taken before their time…"
But he checked her pulse anyway, the way he did with everyone he found.
Then he checked it again. And again.
"Well I'll be damned..."
There it was, fluttering underneath his fingertips like a bird with broken wings. Lightly, almost not noticeable, but it was there. A heartbeat.
"Hey, Leonhart, get over here!" he shouted for the fellow man helping him collect the bodies.
"This one's still alive!"
– –
"Were you watching? Seems this was the resolution that you gave your hearts for..."
Levi brought his fist to his heart for one last time, fingers curled around all the other words he would never be able to tell them, trapping the feelings inside.
They broke free anyway, much too great to be held, and he let them, for there was no point in holding back anymore.
As a single tear made its way down his face, he watched the figures of his fallen comrades fade into the fog. By the time it hit the dusty ground at his feet, they were gone.
Instead, he could see another figure making his way to him through the lifting fog.
It was you.
His heart stopped for a moment and then started again, wildly, irregularly, beating against its cage like it, too, was trying to break free, attempting to get even closer to you.
Because you had come to see him again, for one last time. Even if he had left you behind. Even if he didn't deserve it.
In his head, it made sense that you would appear separately. You had always been special to him, after all, though he had never let it show.
You came to a stop in front of him, much closer than the others had been. He watched the way you were gazing at him intently, your brows knitted in worry.
"What happened to you? You look terrible."
Your voice sounded like it always had, solid and substantial, alive, even when it shouldn't. It made something in him quiver with the wrongness of it, and he swallowed hard.
"Still better off… than you. At least I'm not dead," he said, his voice coming out a strained, raspy whisper.
"Oh Levi. I'm not dead. Could a dead person do this?"
You slipped down next to him and took his hand.
His eyes widened at the sudden touch.
"Or this?" you murmured, as your cold fingers traced his jawline, lightly brushing over the skin of his face, softly inspecting the new scars that were visible beyond the bandages.
The sensation made a shiver run down his spine, and he reached up to grasp your wrist.
"Tch, this doesn't convince me. Your hands certainly feel like they should belong to a corpse."
You rolled your eyes at his snappy remark, but you couldn't stop your gaze from wandering to where his hand was closed around your arm.
"They've always been like this. You've just never touched them before," you muttered, your voice trailing off at the last part.
"Besides, I lost a lot of blood."
Levi looked you up and down, a frown on his face, searching for signs of injuries.
"Where did you get hurt?"
"Here," you said, gesturing to your abdomen, lightly lifting your shirt to reveal the bandages underneath. "I was lucky, no major artery or organs were hit. The doctor called it a miracle. I—"
"We shouldn't have left you behind," Levi interrupted you.
"That was my call."
"I know. And that was fucking stupid. I'm demoting you," he said with a scowl on his face, his grip on your wrist growing tighter.
You huffed out a laugh.
"That's fine by me. I don't think I want to be a soldier anymore, anyway."
"Me neither," Levi said quietly, after a moment of consideration.
"It's nice, isn't it? Not being needed anymore. Though I have to admit, it also scares the shit out of me."
Levi hummed in agreement, then gave you a sideways glance. Your eyes were still fixed on his hand on your wrist which he hadn't even realized he'd still been holding.
He quickly let go of it, letting his hand fall to his lap, but it left him feeling restless.
"How did you get here, anyway?" he asked, still finding it hard to believe that you were really here, with him, when back home there was a tombstone with your name on it.
"Ah, that. Not my proudest moment. I pretended to be one of the Eldians in Liberio and received care in their hospital...alongside people that got hurt by us. And I fled along with them when they stole a train. That's how I got here, by being a shit person."
You stared at the ground in front of you.
"I'd rather you were a living and breathing sack of shit than a bag of bones rotting away in a grave somewhere," Levi said dryly, making you chuckle.
You turned to face him, a soft smile playing on your lips.
"Besides, I just had to come. No matter what it took. I needed to make sure that you were alright."
"I'm fine," Levi grumbled. "Worry about yourself."
"Yeah, right. Just look at you. As soon as I let you out of my sight, this happens!" You pointed an accusatory finger at his injuries.
"Says the dead person," Levi scoffed.
"You know I'm not dead," you whined. "I already proved it to you."
"I'm still not convinced," Levi said, his eyes flicking to yours. "You're pale as hell, you look like a fucking ghost. I'll need more evidence."
"Well," you said, closing the distance between you two. "Could a ghost do this?"
And when you kissed him, your lips were warm and infinitely alive.