To Love a Criminal ((MIKE ZACHARIAS X OC))

Chapter 22

Silica came to surrounded by silence.

Her eyes opened slowly, and what she saw was a blurred image of her hand loosely gripping her ODM controller. The blade was missing and her knuckles were scraped. A dull ache beat against her skull, and her limbs felt heavy as she forced herself to sit up. A groan she couldn't help forced itself out of her lungs, and she made her head tilt to the side; where she saw several steaming Titan bodies and what looked to be severed human remains littering the once vibrant grass she crouched on.

She squinted and blinked a few times to completely regain her vision, and upon opening her eyes one last time, the familiar head of ashy blond hair attached to a severed head leveled with her gaze.

The nausea she once felt the previous day resurfaced in her gut, and as she surveyed the grounds, she could see where a chunk of her body was discarded. Garrett was bitten clean in half. His eyes were wide and open, staring dead up at the sky with blood strewn across his face. There was so much crimson painting the grass that she didn't know who it belonged to. One remaining Titan stood a few feet away from Garrett's remains, its hands in front of its mouth as it presumably finished off his lower half.

The longer she looked, the lower her heart sunk in her chest. She turned her head stiffly to the left, and upon doing so saw the grinning Titan making a clean get away in the direction of the Scouts.

She looked at ground level with bile rising in her throat, and felt tears well in her eyes at the sight of Brutus' body.

However her eyes didn't water at the prospect of his death.

But at the rise and fall of his chest.

The air caught tightly in her lungs as she stumbled to her feet, gaze flicking toward the distracted Titan for only a second before she began her quick scramble to Brutus' side.

A quiet, dry sob filtered out from between her lips as she fell to her knees at his side, hand gently falling to his cheek as his pain-filled eyes flew in her direction. His teeth were clenched as he clutched his right hand to his left shoulder, where he bled profusely all the way down to his torso. Blood spilled down his chin and stained his neck. His once pale skin looked ghostly.

"What the hell were you thinking?" She reprimanded him, tearing off his waist jacket and unbuckling his chest belt to get a look at his gushing wounds.

"S-Silica —"

Brutus was cut off by a fit of bloody coughing, to which Silica shushed him shortly as she ripped apart the fabric of his dark green shirt.

"Shut up," she demanded, looking over her shoulder at the Titan. It appeared to be too busy feasting on the top half of Garrett as it knelt down to the ground. "You'll attract that ugly bastard."

"Get out of here," Brutus managed, tone strained as he squeezed his eyes shut. "N-now, Sil —"

"Not a chance in hell," Silica snapped, not looking at his face as she tore her medical pack off her hip; snatching the morphine shot into her hand and injecting it into Brutus' arm. "I'm not leaving you. It's bad enough Garrett and Avery are dead."

"S-Silica," Brutus pled as she surveyed his wounds. She needed to stop the bleeding before she could do anything else. "Please, I'm a g-goner, you have to g-go."

"No," she denied stubbornly, taking out the hemostatic pads and pressing them firmly against the bite marks imprinted in his left side. He let out a tamed groan of pain. "There's no way you're going to convince me, so I suggest you shut up and let me work."

"Silica —"

She cut him off by pressing harder against his gashes, of which sufficed in quieting his begging up until she controlled the rate at which he bled. With steady hands, she reached into her pack for her curved needle and thread.