Well, it's officially been over a year since I started writing this piece of shit.
Now a year and almost a month and still under 800 ao3 hits later, I'm still not feeling any better about having created this monstrosity in the first place.
TRIGGER WARNING: Just like the rest of this story, this chapter involves allusions to terminal disease and character death. Just thought you people should know. But I've been saying that sort of thing from the beginning, so if you didn't know what kind of mess you'd be getting yourself into... well, sorry you're only finding out about this now.
I thought it would be a good time to point this out, now that it's been so long since I started writing this ghastly stain of a fanfiction. I started writing this fanfiction because, well... the plot upset me so much that I had to. I couldn't keep it in my head. And for that, I'm sorry.
Now the worst part of everything is knowing exactly where this story is going to go and having no idea if the few people who have read it are reciprocating or not.
I probably just gave myself unrealistic expectations for this whole escapade. Nothing I've ever written had gathered a following before, and just because I got too enthusiastic about one singular piece doesn't mean that anyone else is going to. All this time I've been spamming the author notes with self-promoting bullshit and trying to get people to leave reviews and make fanposts on tumblr and follow my blog just so i could get a ton of affirmation that I probably shouldn't have been fishing for in the first place.
I'm sorry for writing all of that.
In other news, I'm going to be getting rid of my author blog. If any of you have bothered following it, you are probably fully aware of how shitty it is and how little maintenance I gave it. The reason was that I've been deathly busy with school over the past year and have had literally next to no time to keep up a blog in addition to homework and writing my actual content and all the other bullshit that gets involved in trying to become internet famous.
Also, more importantly, I'm going to be changing my pen name. I don't know what to, but I've decided that much, and I can't keep up with my art and writing tags if my blog is under a new name.
I'm still following "fic:tmiu" and "fic: the monsters inside us" if it matters to anyone, though. So... that's still something.
Now let's just pretend I didn't waste half an hour writing all of that and move on.
Story time.
After the official meetings ended, my life fell straight back into the pit that it had been in at the beginning of the summer.
Before I knew it, I was back in my routine of spending almost all of my time at home. My days were long, lonely and boring. I didn't see anyone but Mikasa, my homeschooling tutor every other day or so, and, on a rare occasion (more rare than is probably healthy), my dad.
That wasn't to say that seeing my dad so little was anything new. He usually tried to pitch into our lives a little more over the summer than during the rest of the year. My guess was that he assumed we wouldn't have nearly as many other things to keep us busy. More accurately, when Mikasa wouldn't have other things to keep her busy. Because (how many fucking times have I said this already?) I am literally never busy.
So in all this time of not being busy, I had a lot of time to think. And a majority of all that time that I spent thinking was devoted to one thing.
That thing, as you could probably guess by now, was Levi.
I had left the last meeting in a state of total confusion. I didn't know when I would be seeing him next. It could have been at the first unofficial meeting, which was supposed to be scheduled a week and a half after the last of the official season in Trost. Or it might have been at the first official meeting at the beginning of the next summer, a whole ten months away from the place in the time-space continuum where I currently was. Or it could be never.
My opinion of never landed somewhere between "this is probably the best option possible" and "holy shit why is that even a possibility I can't fucking handle this."
The term hot mess didn't even come close to describing my feelings for Levi. On one end of the spectrum, he was probably the most amazing person I had ever met. He was smart, funny, dedicated, responsible, supportive, had about as much enthusiasm about life as I did and the sexiest resting bitch face that I would ever lay eyes on. And that didn't even take into account the fact that he had the body of a 90s anime love interest hidden behind his generic mint green scrubs. Or the number of dreams I'd had about him that had resulted in an awkward morning boner. And the fact that they were sometimes accompanied by a small puddle of cum that forced me to wake up early to sneak my sheets into the laundry before anyone noticed.
No, that one I had after Jean's party was not the only one. It was also far from the worst.
But no matter how many good things I picked out about Levi (and trust me, there were a lot), there were always things that got in the way. The disillusionment that Levi and I put so much effort into maintaining might have been something we could connect over, but it also set us apart. He didn't seem to be the kind of person who cared much about anything. Or anyone. And that included me. The fact that he was stuck dealing with basket cases like me for a living probably didn't help much either.
No matter how many angles I looked at it from, Levi had no reason to want to be with me. He was a healthy, functioning young adult who had a steady, relatively well-paying job and was receiving a high education from a popular state university. I was a wilted, faulty-at-best teenager with a depressing home life who spent his entire life in the house, including my homeschooling sessions, which as far as I knew were nothing out of the ordinary. Not like his accelerated pre-med program. Add to that the fact that my body was bony and scarred while his was the closest to perfect that I would probably ever see, that he had a promising future and I was stuck on the road to basically nowhere, that he was twenty fucking years old and I was still just a kid. I didn't care that he was four years older than me. It wasn't that big of a gap. But that didn't mean that he would have any interest in dating a sniveling brat like myself.
A sniveling male brat.
And there was another layer to add to the already-impenetrable walls that separated us. I didn't know if Levi was even into guys. Even if he were able to look past all the other crap that was wrong with me, something as stupid as which reproductive organs I was born with might have been where he drew the line. For all I knew, I could have been crushing on someone who wasn't even interested in my gender. How fucking pathetic is that?
And then there was that other little issue.
The one that had to do with why I had joined the Youth Cancer Support Group in the first place.
The reason why I had met Levi at Trost the summer before.
The one that had been buried deep in my bones for over four years.
But I tried not to think about that one too much. It just made me sad when I did. And as far as I was concerned, I was sad enough as it was.
Long story short, I couldn't decide how to define the way I felt about Levi, or what I wanted to do about it. I wanted him more than I had ever wanted anything. But at the same time, I didn't. I wanted him to get out of my life and let me forget about him, just like I had the summer before. It would sure make things a hell of a lot easier. Anything would be, as long as it meant I wouldn't have to be beating myself up over this until I was reduced to a cancerous pulp.
As much as I didn't want it to happen, I would have been saving myself a lot of wasted energy if I just never saw Levi again.
After what felt like an eternity of staying home and overthinking, the first unofficial meeting of the Youth Cancer Support Group finally arrived.
It was 2:47 in the afternoon. I was lying on the floor of my bedroom, surrounded by a flipped-open textbook and scattered notebook pages from the physics lesson that my tutor had just taught me (correction: attempted to teach me) via Skype a few hours earlier. I had been home so long that I had pretty much forgotten what day it was. Mikasa had started school a week earlier, and for me, it was back to staying home alone all day, every day.
I wasn't able to focus on the homework that my tutor had left me right at that moment. Levi was swimming through my head again. You know, just like he had been for the past two weeks. I had collapsed after half an hour of staring hopelessly at my notes and resorted to waiting for Mikasa to come home.
In the middle of it all, my phone went off for what seemed like no reason.
I rolled over onto my side and crawled across my carpet, over to the outlet where my phone was plugged into the wall to charge. I slapped a hand over it and pressed the green phone icon on the right side of the screen. The thing stopped ringing and I pressed it to my ear. "Hnnnnnggggghello?" I mumbled.
"Eren? Are you still at home?" Mikasa's voice demanded from the other end.
I pushed myself upright and sighed. "Um, yes," I said flatly. "Is there anywhere else that I should be?"
I heard shuffling around on the other end and something that sounded like an aggravated groan. A second later, Mikasa was back. "Eren, you can not tell me that you actually forgot."
"Forgot what?"
"Oh my god, you are not fucking-" More noise that I didn't understand. "Eren, the support group is meeting at the library today. I'm already halfway there. You said you would meet me before the meeting started!"
A feeling hit me that was similar to the one you'd get after punching yourself in the face. "Wait... that's today?!"
Static filled my ear to signify Mikasa sighing heavily through her nose. "Yes, Eren. It's today. Now get your ass out here."
"Okay, okay. I'm on my way."
Mikasa hung up before I could say another word. I jumped up from my spot on the floor, kicking my physics into an even more disordered pile as I raced to the bathroom to get a good look at myself. After running through a full outfit change and combing my hair twelve times trying to get it to flatten out, I finally decided that I looked sort of okay and ran out the door. Of course, the running stopped right then and there. Like I have said so many times before, my body kind of sucks at doing what it's supposed to. I had to slow down to a relatively brisk walk the rest of the way to the library, which still left me panting and sweating by the time I reached the front steps. I had wasted around five minutes fixing myself up. I didn't know why I thought it was necessary. It wasn't like Levi would be there waiting for me.
And, sure enough, he wasn't.
When I stepped through the doors and into the blessedly air-conditioned front lobby inside, everyone who would be showing up was already there. I made my way as quickly as my already exhausted legs would allow to the reading room in the back of the first floor, where the support group had gathered on a collection of beanbags thrown together between two old donated couches. The first unofficial meeting had already commenced. I glanced around at the group before me. There were eleven people in total. I found Armin, Reiner, Marco, Bertolt, Krista, Connie, Sasha, Annie, Jean, Mikasa already situated in his lap, Hanji sitting at the head of the circle with the same plastic clipboard she'd been tapping all summer...
And no Levi.
I blinked and did a double-take of the circle, as if this were actually a surprise to me. Yep. I had been seeing straight the first time. There was no Levi Ackerman to be seen anywhere.
For some reason, that disappointed me a lot.
I dashed into the circle and quietly snagged a spot next to Armin. My best friend looked over at me and a smile lit up his face.
"Hey," I whispered, letting whoever-happened-to-be-speaking's voice rise above mine. "Sorry I'm late."
Armin gave me a little shrug. "It's okay. We just got started. You didn't miss much."
We'd only just started. And Levi wasn't here. This was almost exactly what had happened at the last meeting, minus the little incidence of me showing up late. I glanced toward the doorway that I had just walked through. There were people outside, but none of them came in. I sighed, feeling my shoulders loosen just a little bit. Maybe Levi just wasn't here yet. Maybe all I had to do was wait.
And I did wait. All I did was wait. I sat through the meeting, quiet as Armin in a room full of strangers and kept my eyes glued to the door. I didn't pay much attention to what anyone said. From the bits and pieces that I caught throughout the meeting, most of it all sounded the same anyway. People were so glad that the group was back together again. Medications sucked but were still working. Nobody was dead yet. So I guess that meant life was okay so far.
Too bad Levi wasn't around to see it.
Just under an hour of sitting and staring later, I heard Hanji's voice ring out above the rest.
"Well, that's it for today, kids. We don't have anyone to kick us out of here, though. So... you guys can hang around for as long as you want, I guess."
My head whipped back around to face the circle. Wait, the meeting is over? Has it really been that long?
Hanji stood up from her beanbag and clutched her clipboard to her chest. "Well, it's been fun, but I have to get back to work. Got some research to do," she said.
"You're still coming to Thursday, though, right?" Krista prodded.
Hanji beamed at her. "Of course. We changed the hours to fit that one in, after all."
I stayed put in my beanbag and watched as Hanji exchanged a round of hugs with the group before walking out of the room, her faithful little clipboard at her side. The rest of the group came to life and started talking, laughing and doing whatever, trying to make up for the almost-two-week hiatus that had split us all up. I wasn't feeling up to any of it. All I could think about was the doorway, how I'd spent an entire hour staring at it and yet not even one person had come through. The first unofficial meeting was over, and Levi hadn't shown up for even the last few seconds. I guessed this meant he wouldn't be staying with us in the off season after all.
Well, at least that took care of one problem.
"Hey, Eren. Is something wrong?"
I jumped in my seat and I jerked my head up. Armin was sitting on the nearest couch and leaning over me, a touch of concern on his face.
"No," I answered as fast as I could. "I just... I'm feeling a little off today, I guess."
"Oh." Armin seemed relieved. "You're not the only one. Two weeks was kind of hard on everyone."
"Really? That's good to-"
"Hey! Did you think that sitting like a lump for the entire meeting was going to keep us from noticing that you walked in late?"
By the time I heard the loud, boisterous voice, it was already too late. A huge pair of warm, callused hands grabbed me by the shoulders and hauled me to my feet. Reiner stood in front of me, grinning like a cheshire cat on Prozac. He screwed up his face in fake disapproval. "How dare you show up late to the first meeting of the off season? Doesn't this support group mean anything to you?"
"I- I really didn't... I just forgot, it's been so long, I..." I spluttered.
Reiner laughed and gave my shoulders a strong, friendly squeeze. "I'm just messing with you. It's great to have you back, Eren." He pulled me in for one of his rib-cracking bear hugs that I felt like I hadn't gotten in years. I wrapped my arms around his massive body as far as they would go, ignoring the lumpy feeling of his melanoma skin under the thin fabric of his shirt. Despite the fact that my lungs were being squeezed flat, it felt kind of nice.
I was released by Reiner only to get wrapped up in Betolt's long, lanky spidermonkey arms. Once he let go of me, I got tacklehugged by Connie and Sasha, punched in the shoulder by Annie... basically everyone in the group showed me some kind of affection in their own way. Except for Ymir. But then, I wasn't really expecting to get anything from her.
It was only then that I finally noticed.
I did another quick once-over of the support group. As it turned out, Levi wasn't the only one who hadn't shown up at the first unofficial meeting of the off-season.
"Hey... where's Ymir?"
Armin glanced sideways at me from his face-to-face text conversation with Annie. "Ymir? I don't know. You could probably ask Krista about it, if you want to know."
I took another quick look around the gaggle of cancer victims and found Krista sitting on the arm of one of the couches, looking perfect as usual and having a friendly conversation with Marco. I approached them, my hands stuffed nervously in my pockets. "Hey, Krista, um, I was wondering... do you know where Ymir is?"
Krista turned to me, a slightly surprised look in her clear blue eyes before she gave me a sweet smile. "Hi, Eren."
"H-hi," I said, for some reason finding it necessary to greet her twice. "I just wanted to ask about Ymir."
"Ymir?" Krista echoed, tilting her head to the side. "She's staying home for today. Why do you ask?"
"No reason, really. I just noticed that she wasn't here today, and I was kind of... I just wanted to know if she's okay."
Krista gave me another small smile. This time it didn't seem to reach all the way to her eyes. "She's fine. I was visiting earlier today. Her muscle aches were just bothering her more than usual, so she wasn't really feeling up to coming in. She'd woken up with them, then had to sit through school all day, so I didn't want to push her..." Krista trailed off and shrugged, kicking her dainty little legs against the side of the couch.
"Oh," I said numbly. "Well... just let her know I hope she gets better soon."
Krista smiled again. She did it the same way as before. "Okay. I will."
"I feel so bad for her. I mean, you know better than anyone, I have MMA four nights a week, and I know what muscle aches are like. But how can they be so painful that you can't even go out to sit in a circle for an hour?"
I gave Mikasa a noncommittal shrug as I straggled along next to her on the sidewalk. I wasn't sure whether or not Krista would have wanted me telling other people about Ymir's unfortunate medical issues, but cancer talk wasn't exactly something that I was used to keeping to myself. Besides, if there was anything that I could trust Mikasa with, it was keeping things quiet as long as they needed to be that way. "It's a cancer thing, I guess. Rhabdomyosarcomas attacks skeletal muscle. Maybe it's a different kind of pain than what you get from exercising."
"Like you would even know what either of those are like," Mikasa said, turning away from me to stare at the sidewalk ahead of us. The library wasn't too far from home, but I still felt like I'd run a marathon after the fifteen-minute walk from point A to B.
"Hey. Don't judge me. I'm a special snowflake," I shot back, my breath starting to feel heavy.
"Yeah, I guess you are," Mikasa conceded, slowing her pace a little to let me catch up. "I wonder what part of a snowflake would get cancer."
"Probably all of it. Since, you know, they're basically made entirely of the same stuff."
"What was keeping you before you showed up today?"
"Physics," I grumbled. Mikasa hummed in agreement. Even after spending only a single week at school, we could both tell pretty clearly that physics was not going to be a favorite subject for either of us.
"Understandable," she said, turning back to the sidewalk. "But the next meeting was basically all I heard from you right after the ending of the last one. How did you forget that it was today?"
I walked on in silence for a while, my hands digging into my pockets and my brain not sure how to answer. "I...um..."
I was thinking about him. I was thinking about seeing him again, and never seeing him again, and him liking me back and him getting scared off by me and my problems, and losing him, and...
"I was just distracted, I guess."
"Oh," Mikasa murmured. Her strong, healthy legs had once more carried her slightly ahead of me, and she had to drop back again to let me and my cancer-filled toothpicks catch up.
"He wasn't there today."
"Who wasn't?"
My head whipped around to see that Mikasa was looking at me again. I hadn't even realized I'd said the words out loud. I was just thinking them, and then suddenly my sister was staring at me and my cheeks were turning red.
"I-I..." I stuttered, trying to save myself the embarrassment. I couldn't. "Levi."
She was quiet for a second, as if she needed to stop and remember. Like she hadn't even noticed that he was gone. "Oh. Right, he wasn't."
The two of us kept walking, the empty silence stretching between us. Mikasa kept looking at me, as if she expected me to fill it. Eventually I gave up and turned to her. "What?"
"Nothing. I was just wondering why you care so much."
I quickly turned away and stared at the sidewalk. "What makes you think that?"
"The way you said it," she answered. "You sounded upset about it."
"I did?"
"Yeah."
I couldn't tell her. It wasn't time for her to find out yet. In fact, if it were up to me, it probably never would be.
I would keep my feelings for Levi to myself. Just long enough for them to go away.
The second unofficial meeting took place that Thursday, seven PM, in the living room of Reiner's house in Karanese. It was a pretty nice place, not excessively big, but still with enough space for him, his parents, his high-school-freshman brother and his little sister who probably could have been cast in a Justice commercial. The girl kept poking her head in and bothering Reiner while we were talking in the therapy circle, and his brother had to keep catching her and ushering her back upstairs. I couldn't help feeling a little embarrassed for him. Having a family that close and smothery had to be exhausting. I couldn't even begin to imagine-
Okay, fine. I'll admit it. Reiner's family made me a little jealous.
Levi didn't show up to that meeting, either. But judging by what had happened at the first meeting, I didn't think he would be showing up at any of the meetings anymore. Ymir wasn't there either. Or Krista. But I don't think we're ready to get into detail about the reasons for that just yet.
Nobody had much to talk about. There were some worries about slowly building school stress and keeping up with everything now that summer vacation had ended, but there was nothing serious. So after about half an hour, the conversation ended up drifting around on a sea of whatever the hell we felt like talking about. Reiner's mom brought out nachos for everyone, and we all tried to get some before Sasha pounced on the tray and finished off everything that was left. I couldn't help feeling like there was some huge dark cloud hanging over the group. Like there was something we all knew, but no one was willing to acknowledge.
It was Armin who finally broke the monotony.
"Hey, does anyone know where Krista and Ymir are?"
The entire group turned to stare at him. My friend's face turned pink.
"Um... well, things have gotten a little rough for Ymir, so she couldn't make it today. Krista wanted to be there for moral support," Hanji hesitantly explained.
"Oh. That's nice of her," Marco put in shyly.
The invisible cloud was hanging over our heads so heavily that I felt like if I looked up I would see it instead of the ceiling. The group was quiet for a little bit longer, until Jean, being the blunt instrument that he was, decided to speak up. "So what's going on with Ymir?"
Bertolt shifted a little on the couch, forcing Reiner to do the same. "Her cancer started acting up again."
Jean's face paled as if he had just realized he'd made an unintentional racist comment. "Oh."
"Well, to be honest, it's sort of always been active," Reiner added. "Her doctor was never able to get her symptoms into total remission, and she already has mets in a few spots along her spine and arms from the original site in her shoulder. They've started her chemo back up again, and supposedly it's hell on her muscles. I wouldn't feel like going anywhere if I were her, either."
The cloud hanging over us had dumped its rainshower onto our heads, then dissipated and let the figurative sun shine through. The room was quiet for a little while, no one sure what anyone should say next. Then Connie somehow magically steered the conversation somewhere else, and everyone managed to forget the ditch that we'd driven ourselves into for a bit. Then everyone started talking again (except for Annie). It was as if the dark little epiphany we'd all had never happened.
Well, it was like that until Reiner's phone went off.
He glanced over at Bertolt, who he was still squished up against in order not to take up the whole couch. Or just because they wanted to sit that way. It could have been either one when it came to them. "Was that your phone?"
Bertolt wriggled his arm out from behind his boyfriend's back and tugged his phone out of his pocket. "No," he said, glancing down at the screen. "Must've been yours."
Reiner shifted around a little as he worked his phone free of his pocket. He settled back down and unlocked the screen. "Hey. It's from Krista," he said with a smile. That was gone as soon as he opened the message. "Oh, god."
"What is it?" Bertolt asked, leaning over to look at his boyfriend's phone. The same dark expression appeared on his face. "Oh... Is that seriously what it looks like?"
Reiner nodded. "Yeah."
"What is it? What did she send you?" Connie asked, leaning over from his place on the next cushion of the couch as if that would help him see the screen.
"It's a picture," Reiner said flatly. "Of Ymir."
"Seriously? Let me see."
"I guess so."
Reiner tossed his phone to Connie as if we were playing a weird modernized version of Hot Potato. He caught it and tapped the screen to keep it from going dim. His face screwed up as soon as it was lit up again and he could see the picture that Krista had sent. "Oh my god. That looks like it hurts."
Sasha got distracted from the nachos just long enough to say, "Seriously? What does she look like?"
So Connie handed the phone over to her. Then it was passed around the entire circle, the picture eliciting some kind of reaction from every single person who laid eyes on it. I felt a knot of dread forming in the pit of my stomach as the phone was made its way steadily closer to me. Eventually it was in my hands. And I finally saw exactly what all the others were getting so worked up about.
It was a picture of Ymir, just like Reiner had said. It had been taken from behind, her face turned on a three-quarter angle and a little blurry, as if she had heard the phone's shutter clicking and turned around at the noise. She probably hadn't known her picture was being taken. She must not have wanted Krista to take a picture of her. I wouldn't have, if I were her. Not if my shoulder looked even half as bad as hers did.
Connie had been right. It did look like it hurt. A lot. In fact, it was scary. Ymir's entire shoulder was swollen to nearly three times its normal size, as if someone had stabbed her with a bicycle pump and decided to have a little fun. The whole thing was crisscrossed with pressurized veins, some of them burst open under her skin and leaving nasty purple and yellowing bruises. Ymir looked a lot paler than when I had seen her last. The slightly darker blur of her freckles stood out as if someone had drawn them on with eyeliner, and her already-choppy hair looked like it was starting to thin out even more. Krista had added a little caption underneath. Still staying strong! So proud of her, it said, with a little heart emoticon added to the end. It felt so wrong seeing it next to such a depressing picture.
As soon as the full impact of the picture set in, I wished that Krista had never sent it. Just by looking at it, I could tell what was happening in Ymir's muscles. The original colony had started growing again. Her satellite colonies would be next, and then they would start to spread. And if the chemo didn't kick in soon, they would keep spreading. And there was no predicting where they'd be headed next.
"Whoa."
I glanced over my shoulder to see Armin leaning in and looking at the image in my hand. I quickly chucked the phone at him and pulled my knees up against my chest. I didn't know why I had even bothered looking at that picture in the first place. I probably could have guessed what it was. I hadn't needed to see that. Now all I could think of was Ymir a second after the picture was taken, yelling Krista to delete it, swiping madly at her girlfriend and straining her already damaged shoulder as she tried to take her phone away, eventually giving up as the pain became too much to power through, then the two of them calming down and Krista soothing her while she pressed send...
I had to stop myself there. Otherwise I would have made myself sick.
Eventually the phone and its cancerous picture message came back to Reiner. He promptly locked it and slipped it back into his pocket.
"Well, at least we know why she couldn't come any of the meetings," Connie said in a desperate attempt to break the silence in the room.
Nobody felt like responding. And then...
"Reiner, is your meeting over yet?"
The entire circle turned around to face the doorway between us and the dining room. The pretty little face framed in soft blonde curls that we'd already seen a thousand times before was peeking in.
"Mindy! I told you to leave them alone!" A boy who looked like a younger, lankier and green-eyed version of Reiner appeared just behind her and grabbed her by the shoulder. He glanced at his brother, and exasperated look on his face. "I swear to god, she's a glutton for punishment or something."
"It really isn't a big deal, Isaac," Reiner said, a smile dissolving the pallor on his face. "She can come in if she wants."
Isaac knitted his eyebrows and glanced down at the little girl he was just barely managing to hold back. "Are you sure?"
Mindy, on the other hand, had no need for extra affirmations. She shook Isaac's hand off and dashed into the room, beelining for the spot on the couch right between her big brother and his even bigger boyfriend. Reiner let out a soft laugh and situated his baby sister between the two of them. "So, do you have anything you want to share with the group, Mindy?"
And that was how the subject of that day's meeting switched over to how scary and exciting it was to start fourth grade was instead of how close the group was to its first casualty of the year.
Next to nothing happened in the four-day stretch between that meeting and the next. The third meeting of the unofficial season wasn't too far out of the ordinary either. Krista came back, and that was about the most interesting thing that happened. By then, a lot had changed about her.
The version of Krista Lenz who walked into the third unofficial meeting seemed less... I don't know, less Krista than she had before. She looked like she'd been getting considerably less sleep than she was supposed to and was a lot quieter than usual. A little listless. Depressed, even. She didn't say much during the meeting, and only talked to a few people, none of them being me. I figured she had come to the support group for what had earned it its name; she needed support.
Her girlfriend was dying, after all.
The fourth unofficial meeting was another four days later. Mikasa had to train for an upcoming tournament that weekend and wouldn't be able to show until half an hour into the meeting, meaning that I'd have to figure out a way to get there on my own. Which meant walking, because I didn't have any senior friends to ask for a ride and I wasn't about to go asking my dad to do any special favors for me.
I was lucky enough to have gotten stuck walking to the meeting that would be hosted at Armin's house, which a normal person could have gotten to in about twenty minutes. I, on the other hand, took just under an hour to drag my weak, pitiful, cancer-ridden carcass over the mile between my house and the mid-size ranch house by Shiganshina Elementary where he lived.
I stumbled up the three concrete steps in front of his house and rang the doorbell before toppling over against the wall and gasping for air. I'd nearly hyperventilated twice on my way there. I made a quick decision to ask his grandpa if he could take me home after the meeting that afternoon shortly before I heard someone inside shuffling up to the door.
The door clicked open and a short, slightly overweight man with hair stuck somewhere between pale grey and dirty blonde opened the door. He regarded me with his watery blue eyes and gave me a forced (but still somehow pleasant) smile. "Oh, hello, Eren. You're a bit early, aren't you?"
I choked down my panting just long enough to speak out a coherent sentence. "I-I had to walk. I..." and a pause for heavy breathing, "I didn't know how long it would take."
"Alright, then," Grandpa Arlert said. He looked over his shoulder and shouted into the house. "Armin! One of your friends is here!"
"Which one?" a normally-quiet-and-mousy voice shouted back.
"Eren! The one who always has... damn, what's her name... I can't remember, but you know, the Chinese girl who's always with him!"
"You mean Mikasa isn't here?!" I looked a little ways past the door and saw Armin standing in the doorway at the opposite end, where the midsize living room with its slightly-outdated everything was situated. He spied me and a bright smile lit up his face.
"Oh, that's her name," his grandpa said to himself.
"And... um... she's Japanese, actually," I quietly added.
Armin scampered out of the living room and appeared at the doorway. "Hey Eren! Where's Mikasa?"
"Training. She's got a tournament next weekend. She's been asking me to go watch her. You want to come?"
"That sounds pretty cool. I guess I-"
"He'd love to go," his grandpa interjected. He looked pointedly at his grandson.
Armin sighed and grabbed me by the arm. "Come on, everything's set up in here." And with that, he pulled me away from his grandpa and into the living room. Once we were out of earshot he collapsed onto the straight-out-of-the-80s couch and groaned, raking his fingers into his hair. "So sorry about that. He's like that all the time."
If I could pick as many words as I wanted to describe Armin's grandpa, pushy would definitely be one of them. I couldn't even be sure how many times Armin had complained to me about his grandpa's constant and sometimes excessive efforts to get his quiet, awkward grandson out of the house and socially independent. But there was only so much he could do. It wasn't really anything either of them could help. Grandpa Arlert just happened to have a grandson who was afflicted with social awkwardness and borderline anxiety as well as lymphoma at a young age.
I'll just go ahead and say this. I probably liked Armin's grandpa more than Armin did. Most of that was probably because I would have traded families with just about any of my friends. And although Armin's was ridiculously small (thanks, lymphoma), it was still more of a family than I had. Grandpa Arlert might have been overbearing at times, but he was always there for Armin when he needed him. It was like losing so many people had the exact opposite effect on him than it did on my dad. And that was really saying something. My dad might have lost his wife, but so did Grandpa Arlert. He also happened to have lost his son. And daughter-in-law. And other assorted members of his extended family. The man was only in his late sixties, and yet he'd been dealt just about the same number of emotional losses as someone twenty years older. I'd thought once or twice that maybe he was depressed himself and at constant risk of becoming a shut-in like I had. But then, he had a good gathering of friends in town to go fishing or play bingo with or whatever it is that old people do with each other. Maybe that was what helped him most to deal with what life had done to him. It certainly explained why he pushed Armin to be social as much as he did.
I dropped down onto the couch next to Armin. "Today was scheduled for four, right?"
He straightened up and wriggled around to face me. "Yeah. Did your phone die on the way here?"
"I forgot to charge it last night," I said shamefully, tugging my shut-down cell out of my pocket to show him. "I checked the time a little while after I left and saw that I had only twenty percent battery."
"And you're normally so prepared," Armin said with a laugh. He leaned over to pick a tortilla chip from one of the bowls on the coffee table. "The others probably won't be here for another ten minutes or so, just so you know."
"So," I mused, folding my legs up on the couch.
"So," Armin echoed. He took a bite off the edge of his tortilla chip. "You never told me Mikasa is Chinese."
"Well, excuse your politically incorrect grandpa."
"He calls pretty much any Asian person he sees Chinese. It's either that or Oriental. I think it's just an old people thing."
A few minutes less than ten later, the doorbell rang again. Armin and I raced down the main hallway to see who it was. It turned out to be Hanji, with Mrs. Springer's car pulling up to the curb behind her. People started piling in then, everyone cramming into the living room, which suddenly felt inexplicably smaller. A quick once-over of the crowd we'd gathered told me that, once again, Ymir had failed to show up. So had Krista. And so had...
I didn't even know why I still bothered looking for Levi. It was obvious he had no intention of coming back.
The meeting started off in a pretty regular fashion. Hanji had forgotten her clipboard, which spared everyone else from sitting through an hour of repetitive clicking. Sasha attacked the chips that Armin had put out, people complained about how much they hated school already and how we were only halfway through September and they were supposed to put up with this until next June, Marco put in a comment about a short hospital visit he'd had a few days before for some pain he'd been having somewhere in his cancer-ridden body (thanks, late diagnosis), Jean talked about how he'd come in to visit his best friend every day after school...
And the doorbell rang.
Armin shot up from his spot next to me, looking like he'd just been caught sleeping in the middle of class. "I've got it!" he shouted out to no one in particular. He scampered out of the living room with no further explanation.
The group stared after him for a second, then started talking again as if nothing had happened. I wasn't listening to them, though. I was far more interested in the faint voices echoing in from the other end of the hallway.
And the fact that I thought I recognized one of them.
"Hey. Sorry I'm late, Coconut. Classes were a bitch and I had to talk to my professor in the last one."
"It's okay. It's fine, really." Armin's reassurance was quick and sincere, as if he were the one who needed to be apologizing. "Come on in. Everybody's in the living room."
A second later, Armin scooted back into the room and plunked into the spot next to me where he'd been situated for almost the entire meeting. Then someone walked in behind him. Someone who I hadn't seen in nearly a month and was sure (and almost hoping) that I would never see again.
"Nobody panic. I'm here," Levi said as he stepped into the room and took his place on the loveseat next to Hanji.
For a second, the entire world seemed to slow down. I didn't know what to do. A part of me wanted to scream. It wanted me to stand up and shout at him, "You can't be here! You're not supposed to care about us, remember?!" It made me wish I could close my eyes, open them again and find myself waking up in bed, the entire scenario nothing but a dream. But something else in me was urging my to throw myself across the room and hug him like a soldier returning from war. It made me want to hold him close and cry and tell him over and over again how much I'd missed him.
Obviously, I couldn't bring myself to listen to either of those parts. I just stuck to the one that I usually did.
I stayed where I was and stared at him.
Levi didn't even seem to notice. He just relaxed into his spot next to Hanji and listened indifferently as everyone in the room directed all of their attention towards him.
"Levi! Where have you been this whole time?!"
"It's been ages, man!"
"Did you forget about us or something?!"
"What have you been doing? Tell us! We haven't seen you in so long!"
Hanji covered her mouth with one hand and stifled a giggle. Levi glanced sideways at her, then turned back to the support-group-turned-question-riot. "Okay, okay. Slow down, guys. One at a time."
Everyone backed off and stopped asking questions the moment the words were out of his mouth. Except for me, since I hadn't even been on him in the first place. And Annie, since, you know, she couldn't ask things at all. I always found it a little astonishing, how easily Levi could command people.
Hanji looked over at him. "So?"
"I've been pretty much drowning in work from my classes at Sina for the past few weeks," he said matter-of-factly. "So I've been balancing that with my hours at Trost on the weekends, and it basically left me with barely enough time to sleep. So... yeah. I'm sorry I haven't been able to see you guys in a while. But that's just the way it's been." He shrugged and looked around at the support group. They'd all fixated on him as if they were a bunch of seals and Levi was holding a bucket of fresh herring.
Reiner was the first to speak up. "Have you heard about what happened to Ymir?"
Well, someone certainly doesn't like beating around the bush.
"Yeah," Levi said solemnly. "Hanji told me everything."
The room was quiet for a second. It seemed that the group's intention for that meeting had magically turned to telling Levi all the gory details about Ymir and her not-so-sudden relapse. Now that that plan had (thankfully) been shot down, everyone was stuck.
"So," Marco prompted. "Um... You've started your second year of pre-med, right?"
"I have," Levi confirmed with a slight nod.
"How's that going for you?"
"I'm four weeks in and it's stressful as fuck."
Marco turned and looked pointedly at Connie. "And you were complaining earlier about what, again?"
That day's meeting turned into a competition for the Most Stressful Life in the Support Group award. I'd stayed out of it, since I had literally nothing in my life to be stressed about. Well, other than the whole leukemia thing. But what was having a lifelong terminal disease compared to having to write two term papers on different subjects in the same span of two weeks?
Anyway, Levi won that contest so easily it was kind of depressing.
Nobody wanted to stick to the one-hour timeframe that the meetings always had to adhere to anymore. Mikasa came in so late that the scheduled hour of meeting time was almost over. Nobody cared. The group was just happy that she was able to make it at all. When the clock struck five, everyone ignored it and went straight on talking. I tried to pitch in, but I kept finding myself holding back. I spent most of the time watching Levi instead. He wasn't saying much, either. He had never exactly been talkative at meetings. But he still said more than I did. Mainly because I was afraid that if I so much as opened my mouth something regrettably stupid would come out.
Levi, I haven't been able to stop thinking about you for an entire month and I have missed you so much but I also was hoping I would never see your face again because I have this massive fucking crush on you and it's so bad it kind of makes me want to scream. And you see, I kind of had a heart attack when I saw you walk in, because I really like you but I also know you will never like me back because I am a fucking pathetic excuse for a human being and I just thought you should know. You're okay, with that, right?
Yeah. That would go over just fucking great.
The meeting didn't end until Levi mentioned something about an essay he had to finish and Hanji realized that she hadn't even started writing the exact same one. Things wrapped up pretty quickly after that.
The support group cleared out of Armin's house, save for Sasha, who stayed behind for a minute to clean up whatever was left in the chip bowls. Hanji dashed to her car and peeled out of the driveway, Reiner and Bertolt hung around leaning up against the Neon, sucking each others' faces and whispering sweet Always to each other while they waited for Annie to finish up talking (texting) to Armin, Mikasa was off somewhere and probably making out with Jean, and just about everyone else was contacting their ride home. That left me with nothing else to do but sit on Armin's front steps and watch.
It didn't take long for Levi to join me.
"Hey, brat."
I had been almost sure that those would be the first words he'd say to me if I ever saw him again.
I looked over at him, and suddenly it was as if the people milling around in the driveway disappeared. It was just me and him. A smile broke out on my face and I felt a blush come crawling up my spine and set fire to my face.
"Hi, Levi," I said weakly.
"It's been a while, hasn't it?" he said. He came closer and sat down next to me.
"Yeah, it has," I replied. I tried to will the redness on my face to calm down. Talking to him would be pretty difficult if I turned into a strawberry every time I tried. The two of us stayed quiet for a while, staring out at the rest of the support group scattered in front of Armin's house. My heart was pulsing wildly. I told it to shut up and glanced over at Levi. He seemed as calm and collected as ever. I took a deep breath and finally let out the words that had been trapped in my head ever since I saw him walk in. "I thought you weren't going to be staying with us."
"You did?" Levi glanced coolly over at me, his face still looking impassive and remotely bored. "Why would you think that?"
I shrugged. "Just some things some of the other people in the group said to me. And that you weren't at the first three off-season meetings. But I guess those sources aren't really all that reliable."
"No, they're not," Levi agreed, keeping his gaze vacantly locked on the house across the street. "Besides, people can change their minds. Even if I hadn't wanted to stick with the group at first, that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to later."
A drop of disappointment fell into my thoughts. "So... you didn't want to before?"
"What? No. That's not what I meant at all," Levi said insistently. "I just didn't have the time. I'm in accelerated pre-med program to catch up with what I missed while I was getting my nursing license, and that's almost thirty hours of class time a week, plus the fuckton of homework I have to do on my own time. And I'm still working hours at Trost on the weekends."
"Wow, I..." I mused, a bewildered look on my face. "I didn't know you were so busy."
Levi scoffed. "Busy doesn't even cut it. My schedule is so fucking packed I'm surprised I even find time to eat and sleep anymore." He looked over his shoulder and shot me a mischievous smirk. "But I knew I'd eventually find a place to squeeze you idiots in."
I felt that stupid smile creeping onto my face again. "So... You actually did want to come to all those meetings you missed?"
"Would it shut you up if I said I did?"
Okay, my smile was officially dead now. "It wouldn't surprise me all that much if you didn't."
Levi sighed and stared back out into the distance. "Well, I did. Because believe it or not, brat, I actually sort of think of you guys as my friends."
"But... don't you have other friends?" I asked shyly. "Like, from your classes, or maybe people you work with at Trost-"
"If it hasn't occurred to you yet, I'm not exactly the most sociable person on the face of the earth," Levi said flatly, cutting my words short.
"Oh," was all I could say in response.
The two of us stayed there for the longest time. Neither of us said a word. We just stared out across Armin's front yard and watched as people's cars started to appear at the end of the street. Then they were pulling into the driveway, and people were saying to say their goodbyes.
"I guess I should probably get going."
I started at the sound of Levi's voice and spun around to face him. "Huh?"
"Hanji's not the only one who has a ten-page paper to write," he continued. "I'm almost finished with it, but it's still due in two days." He stood up from his place on the steps and stretched his arms over his head. I tried not to imagine what they'd look like without his flannel to cover them up, his muscles rippling under his skin... Obviously, I failed at avoiding the imagery there.
"Well... I'll see you next time, I guess," I said. I stood up, one step below Levi. When he put his arms back down, we were seeing each other almost eye to eye. It was weird. I was so used to looking at him on an angle.
"Whenever that happens to be," Levi added, a semblance of amusement on his face.
I smiled, a quiet laugh slipping out of me. "See you whenever, then."
A transient smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. "See you whenever."
And then Levi came down from the steps, went over to his car, and climbed in. I watched him as he started it up and maneuvered it around to pull out of Armin's driveway. He caught me staring for a second and gave me a death stare through the passenger side window. I plastered a guilty smile onto my face and gave him a sarcastic little wave in return.
"Hey, Eren. Mrs. Bodt is a few minutes away, and Marco said that she can give us a ride home if..."
I shuddered and spun around as soon as my ears started to register words. Mikasa was standing behind me, the front door swinging shut behind her. Jean was close behind, the remains of a bag of tortilla chips under one arm. I felt the color drain from my face and whirled back around just in time to see Levi's bright green Soul pulling out of the driveway and disappearing down the street. I sighed and turned around as slowly as I could, knowing that as soon as I did a shiteating grin would have wound its way onto Mikasa's face.
And there it was.
"What was that about?" she asked deviously.
"What?"
"That little parade girl wave," she clarified. She flicked her hand around in the air in an epileptic-fish version of what I'd just done. "You giving nurseman the queen's fondest regards or something?"
I rolled my eyes at her and turned away to get off the stairs. "You're kind of a bitch sometimes, you know that?"
"It takes one to know one, Eren."
"You should know. You're dating one."
"Hey, I heard that!" Jean said defensively.
"I know. You were supposed to."
We got a ride home from Marco's mom that day. If there was anything positive that came out of my sister playing girlfriend for the douchebag of the year, it was that I got to sit in close proximity to his best friend, who happened to be the nicest best friend on the planet. Marco also happened to have one of the nicest parents on the planet.
Julia Bodt was the genuinely sweetest, non-Stepford mom that I had ever met. She had been the one to suggest taking us home in the first place, since Marco had told her about the way I had nearly died walking there earlier that afternoon. She was pretty involved in the conversation we all had on the way back to my house, while somehow avoiding running into the honey-how-was-your-first-day-of-kindergarten cliché that I have known some parents to do. And by we, I mean me and Marco, since Jean and Mikasa were pretty much in their own little lovey-dovey world in the backseat. It was all I could do not to gag all the way through the ride back. I'd never seen my sister act like that before, and now that she was, it was absolutely sickening.
Once Julia dropped us back in our driveway, we both headed inside to start "cooking" our "dinner" for that night. Mikasa tried repeatedly to ask me about what had happened with Levi right before she came outside. But, of course, I wasn't about to tell her anything.
After all, it was still just a crush. It would wear off eventually.
Right?
The hiatus between the fourth and fifth meetings was longer than any of the others before, save for the gap between the last official and first un. Nine days. Nine days I had to stay home, sit around and wait. It wasn't as if I was doing nothing in all that time. Five days out of it were dedicated to homeschooling, and a good percentage of the hours that weren't got taken up by online class work. But it still wasn't enough to stop me from overthinking again. Overthinking had sort of become my new addiction over the past few weeks.
And of course, when I overthought, it was almost always about Levi. Levi and his perfect face. Levi and his razor-sharp attitude. Levi and his sarcasm, his apathy, his everything about him that normal people were supposed to hate but for some strange, twisted reason I couldn't get enough of. Levi and those perverted dreams I had about him at least twice a week and usually more. Although I really would rather have forgotten about that last bit.
"Eren! Eren, get up!"
My eyes flew open and I sat bolt upright in bed, my covers sliding off of me and pooling around my legs. Well, except for the edge of my sheet that got stuck on my morning wood. Again.
"Eren!"
I reached a hand up and raked my fingers through my hair, letting a long, heavy sigh rush out of my lungs. That was Mikasa. What was she yelling at me about?
What day was it?
As if to answer my question, my bedroom door swung open and Mikasa leaned in. "You're still in bed? It's almost noon. The meeting is in an hour!"
Saturday. So that's what day it was.
Fifth unofficial meeting. At the library in Shiganshina. One in the afternoon.
I scrambled to pull my blankets up and cover up my raging boner. "Holy crap. That's what we're doing today?"
Mikasa rolled her eyes. "Yes. Now get your leukemic ass dressed and meet me downstairs. It's gonna be a long walk there."
She shut the door again and I sat still, listening as her footsteps receded down the hallway. I dropped my gaze back into my lap and groaned. I lifted the blankets up and peered underneath. My pants looked like I had tried to sneak a granola bar into bed with me and I'd forgotten it was there. I kicked my covers off and stood up, trying to work the blood that had built up in my dick into some other part of my body. I forced myself to think of the grossest things I possibly could as I wandered around in my room and tried to dig up something decent to wear, since I now knew there was a possibility that I might have been seeing Levi again that day.
Wait, no. Don't think of Levi. Think of gross things. Um... Your fifth grade math teacher? No, grosser. Think of Reiner's back skin. No, that's the wrong kind of gross... Susan Boyle. In a miniskirt. With no underwear. And a crop top.
By the time I finally calmed my crotch down, I had already gotten dressed in the old Star Wars shirt and slouchy black jeans that I had picked for the day. I left my room and headed to the bathroom down the hall to fix my hair into something that didn't look like a cat had been playing with it all night.
Or like Levi had actually been digging his fingers into it while I sucked him off.
Like I said. The dreams were happening a lot more often than I would have liked to admit.
I went downstairs as soon as I looked presentable. Mikasa was waiting for me at the kitchen table, her messenger bag already slung over her shoulder and ready to walk out of the house at a moment's notice. I grabbed a granola bar (that I hadn't been hiding in my pants all night) to eat on the way there, since I knew that we had a long walk ahead of us. Leukemia legs aren't very good for fast travel on foot.
"Hey, Eren, were you okay last night?" Mikasa asked once we were outside.
I glanced over at her, my legs still carrying me at a relatively normal pace. "Yeah. I was fine. Why are you asking?"
She shrugged and stared down at the sidewalk ahead of us. "I don't know. I was up late last night, and I heard weird noises coming from your room. Then you slept in so much today. I thought maybe you had a nightmare and couldn't sleep or something."
A searing heat surged up in my face that had nothing to do with the bright afternoon sun beating down on us. "N-no, of course not. I was fine last night. Totally okay."
"Are you sure?" Mikasa persisted, looking back up at me. "You went to bed at, like, eleven last night. You can't honestly tell me you slept for all thirteen hours."
Well, she was right about one thing. I'd been streaming Netflix until around one. But I had gone to sleep once I'd finished up the fifth season of Supernatural. And then... Well, the state of my pants when I had woken up did enough to explain what had happened after that.
"What can I say?" I said, giving her a small smile and noncommittal shrug. "Sleep fights cancer."
Mikasa rolled her eyes. "Fine. I'll believe you. But if it happens again, I won't. Got it?"
"Roger that, chief," I replied, laughter behind the words.
We didn't talk about much else on the rest of the way to the library. Hanji, Jean and Marco had were already there by the time we arrived. I hung around Hell-PN and freckled Jesus while Seabiscuit swept my sister off to some distant corner of the room to make out with her or whatever else it was they did together. Reiner showed up with Annie not too much later, and Armin had hitched a ride with the two of them. Bertolt had a class at Rose Community that day since, as Armin had told me, they had no consideration for weekends there and hadn't been able to show. But Connie and Sasha had. And Levi hadn't. Which, in all honesty, was kind of a relief.
We had already gotten into the circle and started talking by the time Krista showed up.
At first, I had hardly even recognized her. I'd thought it was just another small, blonde stranger who happened to wander into the room while we were in the middle of a session. Then I heard Reiner say, "Oh. Hi, Krista. Didn't think we'd be seeing you today."
I stared, my mouth falling slightly open as she limped over to the circle and dropped down onto a beanbag that nobody had claimed yet. She looked so different. I'd hardly been able to tell it was her at first. The Disney princess that I had met in June was gone. In her place was a tired, broken-down wisp of a girl who just happened to have the same name. Krista was tired. I could see it in the dark insomnia shadows under her eyes and the way her normally perfect posture slumped over when she sat down. Her clear blue eyes stared straight ahead, blank and glassy like a china doll's. Her hair had been left messy and unstyled, and she hadn't bothered to put any makeup on before going to the meeting that day. The state of disorder didn't make her look any less pretty. But that was beside the point.
Krista blinked, as if she was surprised that Reiner had even noticed her presence. "H-hi, Reiner."
Something was wrong. I knew that much. I couldn't be sure what, and I wasn't about to go dragging it out of her anytime soon. So I just stuck to my usual, sitting and staring.
Passive gawking, however, was never the course that Reiner took. "Is something wrong?" he asked straightforwardly, concern softening up his narrow brown eyes.
"Y-yes, but..." Krista stammered, as if speaking were suddenly the hardest thing for her to do. "Can it wait until later?"
"Um... Yes. Of course," Reiner replied. He backed away from her a few inches and turned his attention back to the rest of us.
No one tried to push her any more after that. The group just sat in their circle and talked, trying to act as if everything was normal and there wasn't a deadened version of one of our members sitting right there with us. The hour slowly passed by. Then, about five minutes from the meeting's scheduled end, Krista finally spoke up again.
"I... um, there's something I need to tell everyone."
The entire group turned their attention towards her. Krista hardly seemed to notice. She just reached into the pocket of her cardigan and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. I watched as she unfolded it carefully in her hands. Apparently this something she had to tell us was so important she'd had to write a script for it.
Krista had to stop and take a deep breath before she could keep going. "I have some bad news," she said in a voice so soft and broken that I could barely hear it.
Everything inside me turned into a solid block of ice. I knew it. She hadn't even said a word yet, and I already knew what was coming.
Krista looked down at her paper and took another breath before continuing. "As all of you know, Ymir's symptoms had a relapse just a little less than a month ago. She hadn't been doing so well before that, either, since she'd never gone into a real remission. But... but she had always pulled through," she said. "She could only do that for so long, though. Things had been getting worse for a while, and her cancer had always been so aggressive. So when she started relapsing again, she was sent in to her doctor for a few tests, and..."
Krista broke off. Her voice was struggling to remain steady. She was having a hard time even reading from the paper now. "When the results came back in... they had found new colonies in her kidneys. And... they were starting to fail... So she was put on a transplant list... and... and then all we could do was wait."
Krista stopped again, one hand clutching tightly at the paper and the other coming up to push a strand of hair behind her ear. Her eyes were tearing up, and I could see her hands starting to shake. But she still forced herself to continue. "Ymir fought as hard as she could for seventeen days," she read on. "And... on the morning September nineteenth, Ymir lost her battle with her rhabdomyosarcomas. She... passed away peacefully. In... in her sleep."
Krista's words were replaced by the soft noise of printer paper crumpling between white, shaking fingers and the choked, stifled whimper of someone who was suffocating themselves trying to fight back tears. She dropped the paper ball that used to be her speech on the floor and brought both hands up to cover her mouth as she failed to hold back another agonized squeak. The tears that had been welling up in her eyes finally started to spill over and run down her cheeks. She tried to sit up for a while longer, but it didn't take long for her trembling body to give out and collapse over her knees.
Reiner was on her in a second. He all but teleported to the place next to where she was sitting and wrapped his huge arms around her small, shuddering frame. Krista did the same to him, burying her face into his chest and clinging to him for dear life as the sobbing grew stronger.
"I'm so sorry," he said softly as he held her close and petted her hair with one huge hand. "I'm so, so sorry."
They were the only ones in the room who were even moving anymore. Everyone else seemed to have stopped functioning. They had all turned into statues, their wide, shocked-filled eyes still stuck to Krista as she broke down and sobbed into the front of Reiner's shirt. No one could find the words to speak. Jean turned to look at Marco for a second. I saw the glassiness in his eyes for just a second before his best friend got up and moved to join the sympathy party on the loveseat. I heard a small, stifled gasp come from the chair next to mine. I turned to see Hanji staring at the ground, her face pale and her fingers pressed to her lips.
"Oh, god..." she whispered. Then she got up and moved towards Krista as well.
The meeting ended then. There was nothing more that anyone could say. Krista had unraveled anything that any of us could have complained about or discussed the minute she pulled that sheet of paper out of her pocket. And now it was on the floor. And the entire support group knew what had happened to Ymir.
Whoever hadn't gone to the couch to comfort Krista was stuck in their seat and staring at her with the blank, disbelieving look on their face that people always seem to get when they receive news they don't want to hear. Even Annie.
Even me.
And this was what I had known would happen ever since I walked into conference room 4A on that first day in June.
Levi had already warned me that this happens every year. He'd told me that no one could predict the future. But we all knew that one of us was going to go terminal sooner or later. The only thing that no one was able to guess was who. And now they had their answer.
Ymir was dead.
It was Schroedinger's Support Group, and the vial had finally broken.