The Masks We Wear (Rewrite)

Ch.1: Survivor

"Survival is ugly. Healing is messy."

~Nikita Gill

"EMMRYN!!" a familiar voice shouted me awake, my eyes fluttering open to reveal a pair of light blue eyes that matched my own. I felt the corners of my chapped lips twitch into a small smile as I tried to speak, my throat tight as tears welled in my eyes.

"Hey, big brother. Long time, no see," I greeted weakly, my voice scratchy and my words slurred, the adrenaline in my system clearly gone as I started to feel the scrapes and bruises I no doubt had sustained from my fall. A minute smile appeared on Erwin's face as he pulled me closer to him and gently lifted me up from the ground, helping me to my feet and using him for support, causing pain to shoot across my body as all the aches and pains from my time in captivity were heightened as my body shifted out of survival mode as I tried to use my ridiculously tall older brother as a crutch. As soon as I winced ever so slightly, Erwin's smile disappeared, a stern frown replacing it as he turned and started barking orders at the soldiers with him.

"Where's the bastard who did this?" he asked them only to see the soldiers shake their heads solemnly as they held two residents of the underground, one male with blonde hair and one female with red hair, with their hands behind their backs and one raven-haired male pinned to the ground with his face pressed into a shallow puddle. Why were they being held? If the gun smoking a couple of feet from the one pressed into the ground was any indication, it could have been an assassination attempt, but if it was, why would Erwin come to the underground? Was he their target?

"He got away, Section Commander. We weren't expecting to be on a rescue mission while we were here," the female soldier stated with a slight sneer of disdain tossed in my direction. I was much too tired to waste energy rolling my eyes at her, and my voice too weak to snap back.

"Sounds like you need more training then, soldier, if your ability to adapt to a situation is that poor," was all Erwin responded with, and a breathy laugh escaped me. There was so much relief flooding my body as I started to understand that this was really happening. I was getting out of this hell hole.

"Section Commander, are you sure this prostitute is safe to take back with us? She seems a bit unhinged," the female soldier responded, not even trying to hide her displeasure with my closeness to such a high-ranking military official.

"I'm quite sure, considering this is my younger sister," Erwin responded bluntly, and Walls was it nice to watch the color drain from the uppity bitch's face. By now, my energy was quickly draining as Erwin guided me to a covered carriage that was approaching us. Erwin, a male soldier, along with the three Underground criminals, and I were all loaded into the carriage where Erwin wasted no time talking with the three about what would be happening from here on out.

"You three will join the Survey Corps under my recommendation. Each of you will be trained formally by a squad leader before taking part in our upcoming expedition outside the walls," he informed them. That piqued my interest. They were being recruited? Were they the so-called thugs in the underground that had gotten their hands on ODM gear?

"Why would he help you?" the dark-haired man spoke, his tone bored.

"Simple. Because otherwise, you three will rot in a prison in Mitras till you inevitably die of starvation or disease," Erwin answered bluntly. From there, I tuned out the conversation, choosing instead to enjoy the ride and resting my head on Erwin's shoulder before I was nudged slightly catching my attention.

"Emmryn, I'd like to introduce you to Mike Zacharias, one of the most trusted squad leaders we have in the Survey Corps," Erwin said, motioning to a brown-haired male sitting next to the trio from the underground. I nodded in greeting, and the man leaned over and... sniffed me? The fuck? In response to the weird behavior, I lifted a weak leg and kicked him as hard as I could in the shin, earning a slight grunt of pain from the man; however, to his credit, he didn't try to retaliate. Though, I was sure that was entirely because of the protective aura my brother had taken on in my presence.

"Fucking creep," I croaked, earning a laugh from the red-haired girl from earlier.

"Levi bro, I like her!" she nudged the raven-haired male before turning to me with a friendly grin, "I'm Isabel! Nice to meet you, Emmryn!" Still not wanting to speak more than I had to with the pain in my throat, I nodded in greeting. From there, the conversation lulled to near-constant silence aside from the sound of the carriage making its way through the underground, eventually reaching an incline, causing me to snap awake from my half-asleep state.

The first rays of sunlight burst through the window of the carriage, blinding me in the best possible way, and I couldn't help but give a huge smile despite the pain of my cracked lips the harsh light hitting my eyes. I had made it... I didn't know how long I'd been in the underground, but I had made it out alive. My captors had lost, and I was ready to continue with the life that had been taken from me.

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"Ms. Smith!! What have you done?!" the shrill shriek of the nurse when they saw my current state was irritating to my already sensitive ears.

My captors had not lost. The withdrawal symptoms had begun to hit full force, and everything felt like too much.

My matted waist-length hair that pulled on my scalp every time someone tried to so much as touch it with a comb was too much. The light streaming through the window in my recovery room was too much. The heat from the water they used to try and wipe down my body was too much. Seeing my reflection in the mirror was too much. Why did I look so... fragile? I wasn't fragile. No. I refused to be. How could I appear less fragile? Less...feminine? One thing was for sure, I could definitely kill two birds with stone as I glared at my long hair and grabbed some scissors that were left in my room from the medical staff changing my bandages and chopped frantically through the matted hair, nicking my fingers a couple of times before I felt the weight of it all fall to the ground. The relief was temporary since as soon as I had finished, the nurse had walked in and started her shrieking.

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. Frustrated, I threw the hair at the woman before throwing the scissors on the floor. The last thing I wanted was for them to think I had lost it. Sure, I couldn't seem to make myself speak, but I wasn't crazy. I was tired. I couldn't fucking sleep, and I was constantly shaking from the lack of drugs in my system. From what I'd heard the nurses saying, it had been nearly 2 years since I was kidnapped and taken to the Underground, which meant I had been addicted to opiates for about that long. My body needed it. They wouldn't give me even a little bit of it even when I had cried. Didn't they understand? That was the only thing that could alleviate these damn symptoms.

"Pathetic," a bored voice said, earning a glare from me as I met the steely gaze of the Underground thug, I'd come to learn was Levi. He seemed unphased as his eyes narrowed at my heated gaze.

"Getting your ass handed to you by drug withdrawals that badly when you're supposedly a trained soldier? Pathetic," he repeated, a challenge in his eyes, and his words halted me for a second as they were a reminder that I'd forgotten in my withdrawal-induced panic. I was a soldier. That much hadn't changed. In my hesitation, I hadn't noticed the shrieking nurse go silent and use this opportunity to sneak up behind me with a syringe which I grabbed and twisted behind her back, wrenching it out of her hand. I still couldn't speak, but I was livid. I wasn't crazy!

Once I had the annoying nurse pinned to the ground, she kept shrieking. In response, I simply injected her with the syringe which she'd tried to use on me, no doubt a sedative of some sort if the way she quickly went limp on the floor was any indication. As soon as she went limp, I got off the nurse, not wanting to actually injure her, and smirked at Levi, who merely nodded in acknowledgment before going on his way as several male nurses flooded the room, no doubt brought here by the screams of the female nurse.

Within seconds, I was pinned on the ground by several men, causing me to panic as the memories from my time in the Underground were much more traumatizing without the opium to dull my sensibilities. The panic brought tears to my eyes as my breath got more erratic up until the point that there was a pinch in my back, and the sedative took effect, causing my vision to, once again, go dark.

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