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

|115| Mother and Son

The sky was grey. The streets of Liberio weren’t particularly busy at this hour. It was afternoon. Nathalie had insisted she go there to meet him on her own. Levi had objected of course. The Levi Squad was undercover all around the streets to protect her should anything go wrong. Nathalie’s looks were different, and the glasses, the short brown hair, the blue eyes, it all protected her from being recognised as Marley’s most ruthless General. And most of all, she was wearing an A-line dark green dress with a small v for a neckline. It reached just below her knees, but a dagger was perfectly settled on the inside of her thighs beneath. Levi had insisted. Just in case.

But she had a counterfeit new identification card, made just for her by her family, who had the technology to make counterfeit documentation with a kind of fake-ness that was unrecognisable by the authorities. Nathalie walked down the street that led to the hospital. So many memories came back to her, but they didn’t affect her somehow.

Maybe it was the thought of having an amazing family to support her. The thought of having her husband and her kids at close range, undercover all around her, ready to jump in and protect her should anything happen. For the first time, she walked in the streets of Marley without shaking in terror. Nathalie sighed contently as she sat down on a bench beside the familiar man. No. Eren was still a boy for her. He was still that fifteen-year-old boy that she’d tuck to bed, and treat his fever after every transformation. The fifteen-year-old boy that she’d make him tea and soups and everything he needed.

Eren had called her mom once in his sleep, and Nathalie could never forget how much it had touched her. That was her Eren. And there he was, his hair oily and loose, and long, almost making him unrecognisable. He had let a few facial hair grace his jawline. He must have been so tall if he stood up. He was missing a leg, but he wasn’t growing it back and she just knew it was just the act that he put up to stay in this hospital, and make his strike in Liberio whenever William Tybur’s speech would take place. He had a bandage around his head, missing an eye as well.  

Eren only sighed when she sat beside him. “General Burgess,” He said. “People call you a devil,” He had almost grown tired of Falco talking about how much everybody looked up to her. A ruthless woman serving as a General. The only woman with such a rank.

“What are you talking about, Eren Kruger?” Nathalie asked. She grinned. “My name is Devona Kruger,” Eren turned and looked at her and he didn’t try to choke back his surprise. She didn’t have red eyes. She didn’t have black, piercing nails. She didn’t have long black hair. She wasn’t the woman he had merely caught a glimpse of a while back. It was her.

It wasn’t the ruthless General Nathalie Burgess that everybody had been talking about. It wasn’t the scary woman that made grown men tremble in fear whenever she happened to pass in front of them. It wasn’t her. It was Nathalie. It was the one he had known. The one he had set out to look for, but he ended up losing track of the time. He lost track of the days that went by, and the hours and the months. He didn’t know how many years had passed. The past, the future and the present were one little blended mess in his mind and he couldn’t tell whether he was going insane or whether he still had some plan in his mind to follow.

But now that she was there, it felt like he was brought back to reality. He was brought back to the present and Eren gritted his teeth and shut his eyes and gripped onto the crutch that he had been using to walk for so many months now. She was back. They had saved her. She’s back. And now he knew he didn’t have to stain his hands in the blood of innocent billions. At least, not before he talked it through with her.   

Nathalie’s hand found his face and she cupped his bandaged cheek, pushing a strand of hair away from his face. There was that expression of absolute struggle on his features. She knew he had been struggling. She knew he had no one to drag him back to reality. She couldn’t tell how she was the only one who could do it.