Broken Bodies, Severed Feelings (Erwin x OC)

|64| The Lab Beneath the Palace

Nathalie brought those books to her office back in her quarters and she started reading them right away. Erwin didn't see her for the rest of the day. Neither the night. Neither the next day. At all. He was starting to get worried. She had only walked out to get food, and then she disappeared again. He knew she was alright. She was just reading those huge books, maniacally. He knew he didn't have to worry.

But he'd be a liar if he said he hadn't missed her.

The engineers had been trying their best, but it looked like it would take a while. The generator was using a different power source that they had never before seen, and Erwin didn't expect anything less. Whoever worked in that lab were now long gone, but they certainly did not want anybody on the island to find out how the lights worked, or how to use the equipment in it, or to figure out how to manifest electricity. Their enemy had left them in the dark, and Erwin expected as much.

They were going to try and figure out how the generator worked. Maybe they could create a similar machine that would work on iceburst stone gas. But that was a process that needed time. Years even. And they didn't have time. Erwin knew what Nathalie was planning to do. She was planning to mass-produce a serum with instant healing effects. It was something she had been working on for such a long time and it would be the key to minimising the Scouts' losses.

But the generator had only twelve hours of power left to generate. Could she really do months of work in just twelve hours? Erwin knew she was a Burgess, and he knew she was capable of achieving the impossible, but twelve hours weren't enough. She could try for a single syringe, and that wouldn't even be promising because she'd have to test it and record side-effects and symptoms and trials and a million other things. Creating such medicine wasn't easy.

Not to mention that she needed to create that vaccine. The vaccine that would rid all Eldians from the genes that they inherited from Ymir the Founder. A vaccine that would make it impossible for an Eldian to turn into a titan. The world would then accept them, and this war would bloodlessly be over.

But they couldn't make the lab useful before the mission to reclaim Wall Maria. They needed time and the reclamation of Wall Maria couldn't wait any more.

Erwin knew she was going to hate it, but he had to let her know.

It was night when he abandoned his paperwork and headed for her quarters. She had passed out on an open book. Her lamp was about to light off and her hair was a mess falling all over her face. She was smashing her poor glasses between her head and the book. He smiled and he cupped her tender cheek. She hummed upon contact as he stroked her cheek and took off her glasses for her to make sure she wouldn't break them.

"Nathalie,"

She hummed.

"You need to go to bed,"

She hummed again.

He frowned. "I could try and carry you, but it won't be pleasant,"

Guess what? She hummed again. He still couldn't tell whether that was a yes or a no. She acknowledged his presence, but she was just in a lighter version of sleep. He leaned closer to bring her stomach to his shoulder, and he wrapped an arm around her waist, picking her up, propped on his shoulder, head hanging to his back. She finally snapped out of her sleep, and she let out a yelp from being hang upside down.

"ARGH! LEMME, DOWN, I'M TRYNA SLEEP HERE!" Nathalie smacked his back and he just chuckled, taking her out of her quarters and back to his quarters. He only let her down when he reached his bed. Her landing on the bed was a lot more unceremonious than he was planning, but yet again, he couldn't do much with just one arm. She bounced on his bed. "OW!"