Perennial Rose | {Levi x OC} | Shingeki no Kyojin |

Chapter 39: Efflorescence

Renata kneels next to him, inserts her hands under his arms and lightly places them over his back. She hides her face over his beating heart and silently cries his name once more, "Levi..."

What cursed nightmare made him tremble and cry like this? The darkness that she had sworn to protect him from had creeped into his dreams and made him suffer.

Enough suffering.

Enough pain.

Renata prays for the world to have mercy on him.

The man is petrified. He cannot move as she grips the back of his shirt and cries over his chest. His shirt is so sodden that he can feel her own skin through the thin material.

The scene is all too familiar.

This woman cries for him. After he had trusted her with his memories, he knows that she cries for what he has been through. A weight is being lifted off his shoulders as it no longer becomes a burden to himself alone. Renata becomes heavier and sinks into him, almost as if her back is being pushed down by something.

Fear settles in him, as he is reminded of the woman who had horrendously drowned in his blood. He grabs her shoulders and pushes her away from him. While holding the sides of her arms, he tells her sternly, "Stop, Renata."

She clenches her chest with a tight fist and all her thoughts and emotions go on a rampage, "I can't. I feel so frustrated. I want to go back and take your place. I want to be the one to feel the pain you have experienced...so that you don't have to. Because I know how much it must have hurt you, Levi...watching everyone go away...and not being able to do anything about it..."

At last, he feels the true fullness of her empathy. It grows from her soul and wraps around him like silvery vines, pulling him into her warm heart and illuminating the space around him. Never has he met anyone who truly understands him like she does. Never has anyone cared for him to this great extent. Never had he thought that she would be empathizing him. Him. Of all people.

However, he does not like it.

He watches her as she lowers her head down, concealing her eyes under her dark hair. Like the rain she depended on to disguise her tears as she looked over her brother's grave, her tears drop to her lap, forming miniature puddles below.

The weight of the pain and sorrow that she carries is undoubtedly becoming more burdensome. She not only carries Levi's weight, but even her brother's, the entire legion's, and the oppressions of all the people she has felt for. A person cannot possibly handle the immensity of this. Slowly but surely, her empathy was drenching her wings. Despite its blissful effects on her subjects, it rebounds on her with an opposite aftermath. Levi knows that she will eventually reach her limit and be crushed under it all.

This woman who had cried for him, softened him, enlightened him, and showered him with her compassion, is so close to falling under the pain of others which she has acquired as her own.

In no way, shape, or form, does he think this is fair.

"Renata, stop."

The puddles continue to grow.

"Oi, just look at me for crying out loud!"

She gradually raises her head, revealing her reddened eyes and nose. Levi's sharp gaze slices through the space between them as he forcefully says, "We can't change our past. You just have to accept it as it is. Clinging onto it will only make you go insane."

The raindrops continue to fall. Each one builds up the frustration that makes his veins pop out of his temples.

He grits his teeth furiously, straining the muscles in his neck as he does so. Levi finally spits out in a fury, "Stop crying about the things you can't change, Renata!"

She continues to brace her quivering self. "I can't," She responds feebly. "This is just the way I am."

No matter how hard he tries, it seems that there is nothing he can do.

He relaxes his shoulders and sighs in defeat. Levi slowly brings her shaking body into his arms. "You're a pain in the ass, Renata," he mumbles while cautiously embracing her. No matter how strange it is for him, he will do whatever it takes to lift this load off her shoulders for he knows that the oppressing albatrosses would eventually swallow her into insanity; and another slap on her face would not help.

As Levi stiffly confines her in his brawny yet clumsy arms, he feels the frayed edges of the bandages on her back and is shortly reminded of the moment when she had almost been whisked away by his lifelong enemy: the wind of unpredictable death. He suddenly ponders on how the great play of his life would continue on if such a vital character were to be taken away by this wind. He would spend endless nights alone in his office and balcony, looking at the new world she had given him with no narrator to enhance the details. With no bridge to lead him to where he was considered a human, he would return back to the high pedestal of humanity's strongest stone wall. Without the glowing furnace which holds an crackles and burns with passion, he would freeze and never feel the same comforting warmth again.

What a life that would be. And to think that it was the same life he had lived in before he confronted her in that fateful procession through Trost.

This will only prove how great of a wave she had made in the vast sea of his life.

Levi unknowingly sinks his head into the valley of her shoulder blade. He continues to savor and hate every drop of her tears on his bare shirt. Each drop takes away the long-lasting pain of his past, but makes him fear that her burdens will become even more.

Renata lets his warmth dissolve into every tense bone and muscle in her body as she absorbs this unprecedented gentleness. She can feel every beat of his heart against her chest. It is alive. It is strong. It surpasses any mother's soothing lullaby. It is something she has vowed to protect.

These two are not aware that the flower has finally opened its petals, blossoming under the light shining from their hearts.

A drop of its nectar on one's tongue can slur their speech and make them mutter words foreign to one's mouths.

A whiff of its scent can blind people with a euphoric mist.

One touch of its velvety petals can make the strong meeker, and the meek stronger.

Such a potent flower has bloomed among the chaos of the mourning and anguishing souls of soldiers.

Love.

It is a powerful and rare flower.

They have yet to recognize its glory.

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I changed the ending a bit. Actually... A LOT. Please feel free to send me some feedback!!!

I also changed a few things in Chapter 37: Point of No Return, but just a small part. I mentioned how Levi brought out his selfish side when he left the formation to help Renata, but I felt uneasy about the "selfish" part. I felt his act wasn't really "selfish." So please, be my guest, and reread that part to see how I changed it ^_^

Thank you again for all your love and support! I will forever keep you in my heart for as long as I live!!! ♡♡♡

-Kamisama961