The Titan Queen - Levi X Reader

Chapter 32 - The Regrets

You had been weightless, and it had felt clean.

But now the weight of being pressed on you, thickly, and you gasped for air.

Isabel was already there, kneeling on the other side of your body to where Petra was still ordering her team of medics around your limbs. "Your heart stopped," Isabel sobbed, clutching her hands together in the middle of her chest as if she was afraid her own heart would leap from her chest. You sent her a thin, wavering smile as you contemplated the roaring ache in your shoulder, the tiredness that had settled itself into your bones and further still. "You were dead."

You couldn't move from your position in the dirt. Breathing sent flares of pain through to your very fingers, sent your eyes clenching closed. Distantly, you were aware of someone rubbing your toes and feet, struggling to bring back the warmth that had fled from your body the moment that you hadn't been there anymore.

You didn't want to tell Isabel that death had hurt far less than life had. Didn't want to beg her to send you back into that clean, endless pool of soaring stars and eternal night. Didn't want to make her see that you wanted more than anything to go back, to leave her living in this painful, terrible state whilst you were left with a sleep that would last forever.

Didn't want to, but as you opened your eyes to see her red, puffy eyes, you found that you were opening your mouth to say the words that would make her understand.

But then Petra's face swam into your vision, from above your head, as she roared orders to the people that must have been working that warmth back into your flesh.

"Keep working! She'll slip back away from us if we're lenient here!" You must have whimpered then – in longing, in pain – because she glared right down into your eyes and snarled. "Don't you dare let go," she snarled, her hands like molten gold as they worked near your shoulder. "I've been given an order, damn it – to bring you back. Don't you dare go and force me to disobey, do you hear me?"

Selfish. Cruel. Torturer.

Petra must have seen the words in your eyes, because she suddenly bared her teeth and hissed through them. "Call me whatever you want, just get yourself back. Stay. If your hatred of me is the cost, I'll pay it ten times over. Just stay – stay with me."

Sadist. Evil. Punishing.

"Don't let go," Petra whispered, your shoulder barking in pain as she tightened a bandage with enough conviction that you knew there was a heightening chance you'd pull through this. "Don't leave me." Your eyes snagged on the bracelet that was still, beyond all odds, around her wrist. Her gold eyes followed that movement, tears starting to leak from them.

"Don't leave me," another voice mimicked, and your heart – so recently restarted – froze solid.

Annie Leonhardt didn't even look away from your eyes as she stood behind Petra and stabbed her through the heart.

***

Isabel didn't even have the chance to scream as blood sprayed in a wide arc from Petra's body, splattering on the ground, her face, on the clean bandages at Petra's knees. The girl had been kneeling at Y/N's head, her sword sheathed – no chance of fighting back.

Isabel snarled, even as she scrambled back to get away from them. Coward – coward, to sneak up on a harmless girl healing the wounded. She opened her mouth to hurl it at the blond monster, who now looked down at Y/N and smiled.

Y/N.

The girl who had been dead just five minutes ago, who was barely hanging onto life as it was, roared at Annie Leonhardt with the eternal hatred of a battle cry as Petra's body just fell to lie next to hers. Isabel watched in stunned disbelief as Y/N tried to move – to sit up, her hands inching towards the sword that had been in Petra's belt.