Paper Airplanes (Ereri - SNK)

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What's this, an update so soon?! Yes, yes indeed it is. It's a shorter chapter, but has...slight plot development to it, and I felt bad about making you guys wait a month for the last update. So enjoy!

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The wooden paneling of the ceiling gradually comes back into focus as the memories of those two long years fades out. I still feel the warmth of Levi's wing beneath my back, still feel the sting as his fingers trace gently over my scars, yet the rest of my entire body feels cold. Cold like the days when I ran 104 degree fevers for days on end after being cut out of a malfunctioning titan...

I can feel it coming. My chest grows tight, constricting my lungs. Tears prick at my eyes and my muscles feel almost like rubber. I have to go. I have to get out of there and away from Levi before he sees the worst of what's coming.

I sit up. "I'm gonna go get some dinner," I say.

It throws him off guard; usually he's the one to push me into going to get a meal, but of course he doesn't protest. He watches me through narrow eyes; I manage a small smile, knowing somewhere deep down that he doesn't for a second buy it but hoping he does anyway, before retreating from the cell.

* * *

I sit up after Eren leaves in haste. He threw me a half-assed smile that better resembled a grimace before disappearing up the stairs. I decide it's best to leave him be for the time being - let him eat and give him time for himself - so I decide to stretch my wings. They've been twitchy for the last several days without being used, and I'm anxious to get to the air again.

Flying - seemingly the only good thing that came from my death. Though I don't know where my wings came from, I stopped wondering only moments after discovering them and used them. Flying is liberating, and since I've been able to do it, I've wanted to be able to bring Eren along, to show him how the world looks from the air, but my wings aren't strong enough to carry us both...

As I leap from one of the upper window sills and snap them out, I have to roll my eyes at myself. Such a lame, unfortunate metaphor.

But the thought quickly vanishes as I feel the warm evening air brushing across my bare skin and whipping through my hair, tangling itself in my feathers and weaving its way beneath my wings as they carry me higher. The gray stone of headquarters grows smaller as I get farther away, and before I know it I'm thirty meters up, forty, fifty, sixty. I can see everything.

I have no destination in mind, so I let the air currents carry me, banking and dipping only to let a gust catch my wings and carry me back up. It's natural as breathing, as natural as it feels to be with Eren. That damn maneuver gear was a joke compared to this.

If only that brat could see this, I can't help but think. If only he could experience this, too, maybe he wouldn't be...

And that's when I feel it. The pain in my stomach, the sudden weakness in my joints, the absolutely pounding rhythm in my chest. It causes me to drop right out of the sky from forty meters up and through the tangled, leafy branches of an ash tree before I have just enough sense to brace my muscles and land hard, but safely. It's suddenly difficult to breathe; it nearly feels like sobs are breaking from my chest and contracting my lungs, though I'm not actually weeping.

Eren!!

I don't know where he is, but I'm on my feet in a split second, headed across the grass in the next headed directly for HQ. Fortunately I didn't fall too far from it, and it takes maybe a minute to make it back. The thudding in my chest does not relent the closer I get.

Somehow I just know the building itself is void of the kid, so I completely disregard the front doors and head to the west side of it, toward the training grounds. With no regard to whether anyone sees, I yank the doors to the first supply shed open. Nothing. The next, nothing. Nothing, nothing. But I know I'm getting closer.