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↱"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love."↲
- Sophocles.
✺
a few days later/a visit to the capital
THE NIGHTMARES HADN'T COME LAST NIGHT.
Katerina woke up, stretching her sore arms over her head as she looked around the room. The memories of last night lingered in the air like smoke in the rain.
Levi's not there, but that's not surprising to her, seeing as though Erwin probably had a hundred and one things for him to do after the expedition. As she sat up and tossed the tangled blankets off her bare legs, she could still feel his fingers dancing through her hair, the pressure of his lips on her head, the smell of lemon invading her senses, clinging to the sheets and blanketing the room.
The ever-present weight that had been on her chest for the last five years was gone, replaced with something else entirely.
Bliss. That's what she felt. Blissful.
She allowed herself to giggle like an inner-waller as she preceded throughout her day, groaning when the doctor tells her she needed at least one more week of bed rest, scowling when she was given a horribly distasteful meal, and smiling when the kids came and visited her at night. All throughout, she wondered when she'll see Levi again, or when he'll decide to pay her another late-night visit.
She decided that she was ready to put her pride aside. She had been clinging to the idea that she couldn't have him or the feelings that have been brewing since they'd met, but that was a lie. She was tired of pretending she didn't care, of acting like she's rock-solid, of chasing away anything that gives her a sense of relief.
She had made herself into a monster, and she was ready to lay it to rest.
Her smile, however, faded slowly as the hours and days ticked by without any sign of him. He had been here at her weakest, but now he was nowhere to be found.
The part of her that's full of self-preservation wanted to believe that their entire encounter had all just been in her head, but she knew it wasn't true. She had sustained a massive injury to the head- a concussion the doctors told her- but she couldn't deny that the sense of him still clung to her. She could never have dreamt something like that when all her nights had always been full of nightmares.
On the third night, she left the infirmary to recover in her own room. She was impatient as she dresses in the casual clothes the doctors leave for her, and ignored them when they insisted she stay a few more days. She departed before they could give her any more crap and headed to her room. When she arrived, she saw that the kids were all huddled around her door, accompanied by Reiner and Jean.
