Broken Hearts, Severed Limbs (Levi x OC x Erwin)

|108| It's not You

Pain. She should have gotten used to it by now. Nathalie barely knew how she was able to stand on her feet and made her way up to her office. She barely knew how she was able to keep that indifference on her face when her uncle would dig his lancets in her belly, tear out her flesh. He didn’t even drug her this time. He didn’t even do something to keep her distracted from the excessive pain. Nathalie stood there, and she took it. She took it all without resisting because she simply had no choice.

And now, she was finally in her office. The lights were out. She needed no lights at all. She hated lights. They were bright and blinding to her eyes in those god-forsaken labs. Into that goddamned hell that she was trapped in. But now, there was the comforting silence, the beautiful darkness that she used to hide in. If someone was to walk into her office, it would have to take them a moment to spot her sitting on the floor like this.

It was night. Maybe too late in the night. But the moon and the city lights found their way through her windows. That light was more than enough. Her back met the wall and she slipped down on the cold marble floor. She had learned to find comfort in the cold, and the warmth in the darkness. She had no one. No one to save her from this. No one to pick her up off the floor. No one and nothing. Yeah.

Nathalie buried her face in her forearms as she gathered her knees against her chest and she shut her tired eyes and tried her best not to focus on how painful were the things that they had done to her for yet another day. She wanted to revel in her loneliness. She wanted to enjoy this moment while it lasted. The only moments she was really herself, were those small little nights that she’d crash onto her walls and crash onto the floors, and rip her hair out, and allow herself to have the breakdowns that she had previously denied herself in her uncle’s labs.

Her hands were shaking before she knew it and her fingers were digging deep within her hair, clenching into them painfully. She was trapped. Trapped and suffering. Two more years. She reminded herself. Two more years and this will all be over. It was funny how death sounded like their greatest little escape from this hell.

The door of her office creaked open and she recognised the footsteps, she recognised that hand that reached for the lever on the wall to switch the lights on, but she stopped him just in time. “Don’t you fucking dare,” She growled, even though her voice cracked, and the hurt was more than visible to it.

And he did. Zeke was obedient. He never did things that she didn’t want to. He knew that everyone else did things she didn’t want to, and he knew everyone else hurt her. He was trying not to be one of those people. He knew she had been through a lot, and watching her curled up like this on the floor, was admittedly not a sight that he could grow used to.

“I just saw that they brought you,” Zeke said as he approached her, but her face was still buried in her forearms and she and she gritted her teeth to keep herself from breaking in front of the man that she so much hated. He approached her though, and he dropped on one knee beside her. “How are you feeling?” He asked and he almost sounded worried. He almost sounded like he cared.

“If you think that pretending you care will make me feel better, then you’re a fucking idiot,” She spat, trying her best to be as rude as she had always been, but she was failing. She was failing miserably. She didn’t look strong now. She looked weak. Incredibly weak, and she hated herself for that.

“I’m not pretending,”

She chuckled bitterly. Of course, she was doubting that. “Yeah right,”

Arms slipped around her before she knew it. One behind her back, the other beneath her knees, and he picked her up. She was as light as a feather. Her whole body was trembling like a scared little child, and her arms reached around his neck right away. She buried her face in the crook of his shoulders and a sob erupted from her throat. She shut her eyes and clutched so damn needily onto the man that she so greatly hated.