The Monsters Inside Us

by angstwithtea

Rule number one: Never fall in love with someone who has a terminal disease.

16. November Relapse

Once again, I've started doing the final edit of my latest chapter way later than I should have and I am now struggling to ride out this shitstorm and get it published by the date that I had hoped to publish it by. I also have to get up early tomorrow, so doing this now is probably a really poor decision.

But who cares? New chapter.

I want to thank volatileSoloiste and frozenheart23 for beta-testing this chapter for me and pointing out all the things that I fucked up. I already mentioned that there might be a few inaccuracies, and I'm glad one of my betas has a nurse sister who can correct me whenever I accidentally put my characters in an unrealistic situation. Which happens a lot, probably.

Eh. This is a fanfiction. Realism isn't the point.

Also, frozenheart23 is kind of irate at the lack of progress in this story's gayness department. Well, I put Slow Build in the tags for a reason.

I've told you losers once, I've told you 16 times before. Follow my author blog. It is now the-angstiest-author on Tumblr. It would also be great if you could post about this story under the tags "fic: tmiu" and "fic: the monsters inside us," both of which I am tracking. I've got a grand total of like, five posts, and I'm pretty sure that at three of them are mine.

Help.

If you want to, anyway.

Story time.

---

Inevitably, things got better after I rejoined the support group.

It all started with leaving the house more often. Even though the unofficial meetings were always sporadic, I was still seeing the other members- my friends, since I finally felt sane enough to call them that- more often than not. My phone would alert me to a new message at least once every day, more if a single text turned into an actual conversation. After weeks of screwing myself over, things were finally starting to look up again.

My dad went back to spending the majority of his time anywhere but at home within two days of the accidental coming-out incident. The fuzziness that had somehow swayed me into confessing certain things to him left me along with his presence, and before long we were back into our normal routine. The separation was, however, just the slightest bit less intentional (because, no matter how much I liked to tell myself it wasn't, it always was sort of intentional). Every time I told him that I was too tired to stay up and spend more time with him and Mikasa, I was actually telling the truth. Social lives keep people busy, and busy was not something I was used to being.

October went by like an exceptionally long dream. Spending time out of the house gave me the chance to see the rest of the season change in an entirely new way. Instead of watching it happen through my bedroom window, I was living it. I spent the month going out to the Ehrmich Mall with Armin, going over to Sasha's to bake batches of things that would always end up getting eaten before the end of the day, more parties at Jean's superhouse and Bad Movie Nights in Trost, and even one time fourth-wheeling with Marco on one of Jean and Mikasa's dates. (Definitely something I regretter later on. Watching them make out was more sickening than any chemotherapy I had ever been through.) I watched as the leaves changed from their September yellowish-green to the deeper fall shades of orange, red and brown. Mikasa, Armin and I even made it our goal to taste every single "limited-time fall specialty" that Beans had to offer.

Of course, the actual support group meetings weren't too shabby in comparison to everything else. Two at the Shiganshina library, another at Beans, one improvised gathering at the Ehrmich Mall, courtesy of Connie. The best one by far was the one held at Atlas Park in Trost. I didn't care that it was cold that day. It only meant that I got to experience October at its finest. The smell of fallen leaves, the colors all around us and the wind snapping against my face made me feel alive, even if all we were doing was sitting in the grass and talking about our problems. The fact that Levi had decided to take a solitary walk with me after the meeting and talked to me one on one again might have had a little something to do with it as well. But I won't bother getting into detail about that right now.

Jean had a Halloween party on the thirty-first, probably since the entire group had been waiting for him to do so. Nicole was back at Sina and stayed out of it, so needless to say it was the probably best Kirschtein party I had ever been to. Even without the alcohol or people their own age, the admins still showed up. Levi and I caught each other alone more than once, and I wish I could say more about it than just that. And even though nothing like what had happened back in July took place and Levi left at the end of the night, it still meant something to me. Almost everything that had to do with him did.

I tried as hard as I could to make myself believe that nothing but a slightly difficult friendship existed between the two of us. But that, obviously, was a lie. September's frenzy had left me with expectations that were just a tad higher than what I could achieve on my own. I still convinced myself that I was getting somewhere with repressing my feelings, regardless of how long it was actually taking. Feelings shmeelings. Who even winds up getting into a relationship with their one-time male nurse who looks like a god when he takes his shirt off, anyway?

Not me, that was for fucking sure.

Long story short, things were going pretty well.

And then this happened.

---

It all started out as a little cold.

The temperature started falling faster than ever after Halloween, and, as I probably should have expected, my weak-ass immune system was not ready for it. Before long, being outside started to make me feel more miserable than alive. The time with friends didn't stop though, and I wouldn't let it. It was way too good. But, looking back on it, I probably should have started cutting down after the initial month of breakthroughs.

In the first week of November, I suddenly lost the ability to breathe through my nose. Then, as was his habit whenever something was out of sorts with me, my dad became an intensified version of concerned. After playing the medical version of 20 Questions with me, he chalked up my congestion, slight headache and consistent fever of 99.8 degrees to a common cold. Nothing too serious. Nothing to get too worried about.

However, for someone like me, "nothing too serious" means "you're going to have to stay home and get medicated until this goes away."

After three days of being stuck inside, I was starting to suffer from abandonment issues. The practice that had seemed almost instinctive to me not long before was suddenly starting to feel wrong. I got restless before long, and after spending a long time trying to avoid thinking that joining the support group might have given me a serious interdependency problem, I asked Armin to come over. He was standing at my front door, freshly showered, holding takeout from Panera and a bottle of PocketBac before even thirty minutes had gone by.

"Is this your grandpa making you socialize again or are you just that concerned?" I asked as soon as I opened the door.

"A little of both," Armin replied. His eyebrows knitted together. "You sound terrible."

"Yeah, well that pretty much sums up how I feel." I pulled the door closed to shut out the cold-as-shit wind.

"Sorry to hear about that. I brought you some soup, if you want it." He removed the paper Panera bag he was carrying from under his arm and held it out toward me.

"What kind is it?"

"Turkey chili. I would have gone for cheddar broccoli, but I thought it would probably be better to go for something that didn't have milk in it so your congestion wouldn't get worse. Besides, the spices will probably help clear your sinuses out."

"Oh. Okay," I said, although I didn't really follow his train of thought. "So... you in the mood for a movie? Games?"

"It doesn't really matter. Anything is fine with me, really. You just asked me to come over, so I did."

"And you brought soup."

"And hand sanitizer. I showered before I came here, too. You know, so I don't make anything worse." Armin gave me one of his shy little smiles. As if he had even needed to remind me why we were friends.

The soup went pretty fast, then it was back to the basement with Netflix at our service. After wasting time searching out the weirdest movies either of us could find, we finally gave up on trying to discover something new and opted for The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which Armin mentioned was one of his favorite books. I, on the other hand, hadn't even known that it was a book.

We started out the movie on opposite sides of the couch out of fear of spreading illnesses to one another, but, as any decent friends would, we gradually gravitated towards one another until we were cuddling in the middle, despite my warnings that I was probably going to sneeze all over him. Then, as the story drew closer to the end, I heard sniffling that didn't happen to be mine. I looked briefly away from the TV to see Armin leaning on my shoulder, staring misty-eyed at the screen.

"Hey," I said, giving him a gentle nudge. "You okay?"

"Hn? Y-yeah, I'm fine, I just... this movie... agh," he said disorientedly as he straightened up and rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "The whole last scene was really touching in the book, but the music just... soundtracks freaking kill me."

I sighed and looped my arm over his tiny shoulders to press him against my side. He shuddered as Sam leaned out the back window of Patrick's pickup to kiss Charlie, and the music began to pick up as he stood up on the truck bed. Logan Lerman's voice echoed through the room as the last lines of the movie were said.

And in this moment, I swear we are infinite.

Then the city lights faded out to black and the credits began to roll.

I adjusted my hold on Armin and let slip a soft laugh. "Wow. I didn't know you cry so easily."

Armin swiped at his face again. "Sh-shut up, Eren."

I couldn't help laughing, and I looped my other arm around my friend and squashed him against my chest to make up for it. "It's okay," I said as I pushed his head gently onto my shoulder. "I know how it is. I've watched The Reichenbach Fall at least ten times, and it never hurts any less."

"Really?" Armin mumbled weakly into my shirt.

"As embarrassing as it is, yes. Really."

Armin slid his arms around me and gave me a tight squeeze to let me know that I had done enough. Almost reluctantly, I let him go. Never before had I realized exactly how nice his hugs were.

"But seriously," I continued once we were marginally separated again. "What is it about this movie that gets to you so much?"

"Don't know," Armin replied. His face gleamed blue in the dim TV light, the shine of his tear streaks smeared all over his face. "It's just... god, the ending is so..."

He sniffed, and I feared for a second that he would start crying again. I didn't want to force him to finish. "I know it's supposed to be emotional and all, but to me it seems kind of like it's just another sappy love story."

"I know. And I get that. The theme is a little overused. But... just the way it's executed, and how the writer put it all together." Armin blinked a few times and sighed, his breath heavy and shaky. "It's almost too perfect. Charlie and Sam just fit so well. It's almost like... like they save each other from themselves in the end."

I stared for a while at the rolling credits and thought his words over. "It is," I said. "I can kinda see it, now that you mentioned it." Eventually the last strains of the beautiful David Bowie song from the closing scene came to an end, and a round of generic instrumentals took their place. Neither of us were in any mood to listen to it, so Armin got up to turn the lights on while I went for my laptop where it sat next to the TV. With the credits gone, we went back to the couch and collapsed side by side again.

"Annie's been texting me lately," Armin said.

"I thought she texted you all the time," I responded drowsily.

"No, not really. From what the others have told me, she's not that social."

"I know. I'm just saying, there really isn't much else she can do."

I could feel Armin glaring at the side of my head. "I really wish you wouldn't make fun of her so much."

The viciousness in his voice was a little startling, especially since it was coming from him. I sat up all of a sudden and looked down at him, eyebrows knitted. Armin stared back up at me, something sensitive seeping into his sky-blue gaze. "Why not?" I asked gently.

"She doesn't deserve it," he tossed back at me. He rolled over onto his side and stared at the now-dark TV across the room. "Look, maybe you just got off on the wrong foot back in June. But that doesn't mean she's a bad person. You never really bothered to get to know her." He was quiet for a second before he added something else, almost as an afterthought. "She's really cool, actually."

"She is?"

Armin blinked for a second, as if he hadn't realized the words had just come out of his mouth. "Yeah," he said quietly. "She is."

"Why?"

"Um... well, she listens to a lot of the same music as the two of us," Armin began. "She's also into Sherlock. She watches a lot of anime, too, and she's offered to show me a few. She's pretty smart. She's taking two AP classes this year at Karanese High. She's also a photographer. And she draws. She's really good. She has this whole philosophy that she's stuck to since she first lost her vocal cords... a picture is worth a thousand words, something like that."

"Does she have friends at Karanese?"

Armin slowed down for a while. "Not many," he said softly. "She told me that no one really likes to talk to her, since she can't respond without her phone or a piece of paper or something else to write with. She told me..." he stopped for a second, as if he were having a hard time getting the words out. "She said that a lot of the time people talk about her as if she's not there. It's like they think that just because she can't talk, she can't hear them either."

The information was like a cheese grater in the back of my mind, steadily shredding away at everything I had ever believed about Annie Leonhart.

I wanted to say something to fill in the gaps, but nothing would come to mind. There was no way to respond to that. The girl who I had automatically assumed was a stone-cold bitch turned out to actually be just another poor, damaged cancer kid with yet another tragic backstory. My brain was straining to bounce back from my preconceived notion, and my mouth just couldn't keep up. So, like the eloquent motherfucker that I am, I responded, "Wow, that sucks."

"It's not that bad. At least not that she's told me. She doesn't like most of the people she goes to school with anyway. She thinks they're all a bunch of shallow flakes who all secretly hate each other." Armin finally conceded to roll onto his back and look at me again. "She's not really cold or asocial. She's just selective about who she decides to be friends with. And everyone think she's quiet, but she's really got a lot to say. A lot of people just aren't patient enough to let her type it out first."

"Hm," I hummed in agreement, even though I wasn't sure the assent was complete. "Either that or she just doesn't want to talk to them."

"Or that," Armin admitted. "But usually if you bother putting in the effort she will."

"And now she's started texting you?"

"Yeah. Not just to talk while we're at support group meetings anymore. Actually texting me. Like, taking time out of her day to type into her phone and carry out a conversation when not even normal people would just talk."

It took a second for the gravity of his words sink in. As of now, Annie was actually taking time out of her day to communicate with him over the dozens of miles between them. It had taken way less time for him to do the same thing to me. But then again, I didn't really have any excuses. Annie was an actual student who went to an actual school and had an actual schedule that she had to stick to. As for me, I did next to nothing with my life. So if I wasn't texting a friend, there were only so many other things that I could be doing, most likely just being too lazy to bother with human interaction. Annie, on the other hand, had a life to live. And now my best friend had somehow been assimilated into it.

"How selective is she, again?" I settled on asking.

"I don't actually know. I don't think there's a way to gauge it," Armin replied. "All I know is that it's taken months for her to let me get this far."

I sighed and sank back into the couch. "Do you like her?"

"Yeah, I do," Armin said absently. "I know how she seems when you first get to know her... shit, I know how she still seems to you. But if you try, you can get past all of that, and then a whole realm of possibilities open up. There's a lot more to her than just the missing vocal cords and the oversized sweatshirt. The whole stoicism thing is really just the front she puts on to keep people away. She's kind of like a geode with a really thick shell. There are gems behind it. You just have to dig a lot deeper than you do with most people to get to them."

I lifted my eyes away from Armin and stared at the blank, darkened screen of the TV, not sure at all what sorts of emotions were seeping into my facial expression. Whatever they were, I didn't want him to see them. His words kept echoing in my head. Stoicism front. Thick shell. Dig a lot deeper. The phrases were striking a chord and resonating somewhere in me. I happened to know someone else who was exactly like that.

Is that what I have to do to get to you, Levi? Dig deeper?

Shut up, Eren. You're supposed to be getting over him, remember?

"What are you thinking about?"

"Huh?" I started a little at the sudden sound of Armin's voice and glanced back down at him. "Oh. Just... some stuff. Nothing, really."

"Oh. Okay." In all the time that we had been friends, it had only taken Armin a few weeks to learn that nothing usually meant I don't want to talk about it.

Somewhere above our heads, tires scraped over the curb as a car pulled into the driveway and sent faint vibrations traveling through the framework of the house. I glanced at the glowing time display on the cable box. Just gone eight.

"Is that your dad?" Armin asked suddenly.

"I think so."

"He's a little earlier than usual, isn't he?"

I looked up at the ceiling. The faint shuffle of the front door swinging open filtered down from the hallway upstairs.

"Yeah, he is."

---

At approximately two in the morning, I woke up suffocating.

My eyes flew open to stare at the dark grey expanse of the ceiling. I was lying on my back. I didn't know what the hell I was doing on my back. I never slept on my back. I had no idea how I had rolled over that way, but I didn't have the time or priority to try and figure it out.

My nose felt as if it were sealed with tile caulk, my mouth held shut with cold-grime. I tried to inhale a little, but that only forced the snot back further, running into my throat and making the congestion worse. The sensation itched my throat and I reflexively coughed. A sharp, searing pain shot up through my ribcage, as if someone hiding inside my mattress had ripped through my sheets and stabbed me. I gasped at the feeling, and in seconds I was completely awake. Then everything began caving in on me all at once.

I was shivering uncontrollably, shuddering under my covers, struggling to breathe even though nothing would come through my airways. I wrenched my mouth open to get some more air in, but the feeling triggered something in my lungs and I began coughing like a drowning man. My breaths were wet and haggard, a thick and strange-tasting fluid coming up with the rapid bursts of air. Each pulse of my ribs fired another stab of pain through my nerves. The room was freezing cold. I didn't remember it being like this when I fell asleep. Just a few hours ago everything had been fine, and all of a sudden I felt as if someone had submerged me in ice water before laying me in bed. The cold sweat that drenched my pajamas and sheets was only making it worse.

I couldn't breathe. My chest was on fire, my throat was raw, and my nose still wouldn't cooperate. I was starting to lose feeling in my fingertips. Even in the dark, I could make out faint grey spots floating in front of my eyes. The room felt like a freezer, airtight and cold and slowly leeching the life out of me.

I screamed.

I didn't know what else to do. I felt like I couldn't move, couldn't do anything, could only scream out the one name that I knew would respond to me, the one I knew would be there without question. I cried out for Mikasa. At first there was no response, but the second time I screamed for her my door flew open and the light flicked on. But my sister wasn't the one who had come in first.

My dad hovered over me as I stared helplessly up at the ceiling and thrashed weakly under my covers, trying to get enough air into my lungs to tell him what was happening.

Dad, I can't breathe.

The door smacked against the wall again as Mikasa staggered into the room. I saw her from the corner of my eye, just barely caught sight of the terrified look on her face.

It's so cold. I can't breathe.

My dad was shouting something, but I couldn't understand him. I thought I heard my name once or twice, but there wasn't any hope of me responding.

Help me.

He turned away for a second, yelled something at Mikasa, then disappeared. I watched him leave, watched as he rushed out of the room and into the darkened hallway outside. Then my sister was at next to me, murmuring something or other, propping me up on the pillows to get me into a better position to breathe. But I didn't pay attention to her. I was too fixated on the door, on the fact that he had gone through it and left me here. It might have only been a few seconds, but I still didn't see him anywhere.

Of course. Of course you're leaving. Now that I finally need you, you're leaving.

The spots in my vision blew up like fireworks. Everything went grey after that. My eyes were open, but I didn't see a thing. Someone lifted me out of the bed and carried me downstairs. I was shoved in the backseat of the Highlander, and someone climbed in alongside me.

I passed out on the way to the hospital.

---

By the time I finally woke up again, I wasn't in my room anymore. I wasn't even anywhere near my house.

I was lying on my side in an overnight bed in Trost Regional Hospital. Again.

With a considerable amount of effort, I propped myself up on my arms. My nose still wasn't functioning the way it was supposed to. I glanced around for a tissue box, spied one on the rolling side table, and greatly appreciated finally being able to clear about a pint of mucus out of my nostrils. However, the relief didn't last, and less than a minute later I went into a short but fairly violent coughing fit. The same strange taste from the night before rose up in the back of my throat, along with a dull, aching feeling that dug into my chest like a billion small, blunt allergy-test needles. A fine layer of slime had appeared on my tongue when it ended. I scraped it off with my teeth and spat it out into another tissue.

The door swung open and someone came sprinting through.

"Eren! Oh my god, you're awake!"

Mikasa rushed over to my bed and almost collapsed on top of me. She probably would have if it weren't for... whatever the hell was going on with me. Instead, she stumbled at the edge of the bed, a slight hesitation running through her limbs, then decided to stand, leaning a considerable amount of her weight onto the edge of the bed.

"M-Mikasa," I croaked. My throat felt as if it were covered in dried glue. "Wh-what... happened?"

"Your fever spiked last night," she gently explained. She reached a hand out and placed it gently on the top of my head, running her fingers through my hair. "It was really bad. Dad heard you screaming, and when we came in you were gasping for air and you were absolutely burning up, then Dad had to carry you out to the car..."

"D-dad carried me to the car?"

"Yes," Mikasa said, seemingly unable to stop speaking. "What, did you think you walked out yourself? You could barely keep your eyes open."

"Do they know what's wrong?"

"They think it's pneumonia," she replied. "Nobody is really sure what happened. Your fever was insanely high, and you weren't breathing right. Dr. Erwin said you probably picked up something else while your immune system was already down and fighting that cold you had. They've got you on antibiotics right now, and there was all this fluid in your lungs that they had to pump out-"

I didn't even have the warning of the door swinging open before someone else walked in and asked, "Mikasa, why did you run off ahead of me? He hasn't woken up yet, and I don't think he'll appreciate if you-"

And just like that, my dad had appeared in the doorway. He was pulling the door closed behind him, I looked past Mikasa at the sound of his voice, and our eyes met across the room. He was surprised to see me sitting up and speaking, probably surprised to see me even awake at all. Even with all the energy of shock there, he still seemed so tired, so worn out, like me and my dysfunctional immune system had kept him up all night. And, knowing him, that was probably the case.

When I said that he only ever cared about me when I was sick, I probably should have mentioned what it meant when my dad cared about something. When he was concerned or fascinated or some other all-consuming emotion by something, anything at all, that thing would priority over pretty much anything else in his life. And by that, I mean he didn't put anything above it. Not food, not sleep, nothing. It would only make sense that he'd be willing to lose the little sleep he consistently got in order to keep his only biological child alive.

"Eren," he said, almost breathed. "Y-you're awake."

"Yeah," I said numbly, giving him a small nod.

You carried me to the car?

"How are you feeling?" he asked straight away, making a beeline for the open spot by the bed beside my sister. "Is anything wrong? Anything you need?"

"N-no, I don't think so. Maybe a little water, but nothing urgent or anything."

"Right. We should probably ask your nurse when she gets back."

So my nurse was a woman this time. I wondered who.

You carried me to the car.

I lamely tried to pull my legs into a more comfortable position, since they had gone numb from being stretched out for so long. There was a dull ache in my arm, and I reluctantly noticed an IV tube that was plugged into the same place that ones like it had been so many times before in my life. "What did they put me on?" I asked.

"Mostly Rapivab, with a few different antibiotics mixed in," he replied, glancing over the collection of small plastic bags hanging on the metal rack above the IV dispenser. "I figured right away that you had somehow contracted pneumonia, and that was the same conclusion that the other doctors came to. Most of them were fairly sure that it came from that cold you had, but you were displaying bacterial symptoms as well, so they decided to go ahead and cover all their bases before they tried anything else on you."

"Oh. Alright."

You carried me.

"Did Dr. Erwin say anything else?"

"Not much. He and the staff are going to keep looking you over, since you're no longer in critical condition." In between looking him in the face and dropping my gaze back to the sheets, I noticed a minor twitch in his fingers. I thought about what Mikasa had done only a minute earlier, the way she had carded her fingers lovingly into my hair, and that funny dad-like thing he used to do all the time, when I was shorter and it wasn't awkward when we got close to one another. He probably wanted to ruffle my hair right then, that clichéd little dad-gesture that was somehow supposed let the kids know things were going to be alright. And I would have let him, if only he had been willing to try.

Mikasa picked up the conversation after that, then my current nurse walked in not long afterward. I wasn't sure that I had ever seen her before. She seemed young, even younger than Levi, though I couldn't be entirely sure. Her warm ambery eyes landed on me, brightened with the notification that I was sitting up with my eyes open, and she smiled sweetly in my direction.

"Well, look who's finally awake," she chimed. "You were out for almost ten hours." Her voice sounded the same as that of someone who voice-acted for Disney princess movies. She had a cute pixie-face framed with strawberry-blonde hair that was cropped neatly at her chin. I wasn't going to try to get around the fact that she was really pretty.

"Ten?" I mused, rubbing my fingers over my forehead and into my hair since Mikasa's were now absent. "Wait... what time is it?"

"Almost noon," she replied cordially as she went about adjusting my IV settings. "There's a clock on the wall, if you want to make sure."

"R-right. Thanks." I glanced across the room, and just as there was in every other time I had been here, it was right there in front of me. My new nurse had certainly been nicer about pointing it out than Levi was.

"There. That's settled..." She turned away from the flow controls and smiled at me again. "My name is Petra, by the way. I don't think I introduced myself."

"Okay. I'm-" I started, but I dropped it almost instantly. "Wait. Never mind. You probably already know who I am. Patient files and all that..." I flushed awkwardly and rubbed at the back of my neck, once again shamed by my own social ineptitude. But Petra just laughed in response.

"It's alright. Sometimes it just helps people get more comfortable," she said. She took a thermometer down from its charging dock on the wall, clicked a cover onto the end and held it in front of my face. "Open your mouth for me?"

I did as I was told, she stuck the metal probe under my tongue, and the device went off a second later. Petra looked at the reading, frowned and scribbled something down onto the clipboard that every nurse ever seemed to need on hand at all times. She was back to being all smiles less than a second later. "Is there anything else you need?"

"If you could get him some water, that would be great," my dad cut in before I could make the request myself. Someone was certainly feeling proactive.

"Water. Okay. Anything else?" Petra asked like an eager waitress.

"No, that's it for now," I said definitively. I didn't want to be making too much of a scene right after I woke up from probably the most demanding coma that I had ever been in.

"Remember, I'll be coming back to check on you every two hours. And if there's anything you need, you've got me on call right there," she said, pointing out the green button on the TV remote that I knew all too well. Then she walked out of the room, leaving the door ajar behind her.

"Your temperature is a hundred and one point three, if you were wondering," Mikasa said for no apparent reason.

"Great. Now I know exactly how well-cooked my organs will be when they do the autopsy."

My sister sighed and sat down on the side of the bed, shoving me carelessly to the side. "Don't talk to me about freaking autopsies," she said flatly. "How are you feeling? Are you breathing any easier?"

"My nose still feels like someone filled it with glue and left it to dry, if that's what you're asking." I sniffed in between sentences to reinforce my point. "But as far as I can tell, I'm not suffocating anymore."

"They'll probably be monitoring you to make sure you don't fall asleep on your back again," my dad contributed. "That was what happened last night. Mucus was running down your throat. To put it in a way you'd understand, you were inhaling it and choking on it. That combined with the fluid that was building up in your lungs left your breathing pretty seriously compromised. There was all sorts of stuff that they had to suction out of your airways when you came in last night. You should have seen it."

I cringed internally. "Thanks for that lovely visual, Dad."

"Hey, it's just medical information. I would think you were used to it by now."

I quickly brushed the comment off and kept talking with Mikasa. He was right, though. I was completely accustomed to my dad's medical talk. His stupid jokes, too. I had been living with them for as long as I could remember, and probably would be for the rest of either his life or mine.

Him being with me for more than a few hours at a time, though, was something that would take some getting used to.

---

Dr. Erwin came in to talk to us not much later.

Contrary to what I had been expecting, my dad didn't walk out of the hospital once he was reassured that I wouldn't choke to death on my own snot while he was gone. He stuck around for the whole day, and so did Mikasa. It made sense for my sister to be there, since we only had one car and she had no other way of getting out of there. But my dad could have left any time he wanted. He never did.

His presence was seriously starting to make me wonder what was going through his head. He was no Levi when it came to maintaining a constant blank expression, but our communication skills still weren't at the level that they probably should have been. Maybe he had been diagnosed with cancer too and hadn't found a way to tell me yet. It would only make sense that he wanted to spend a decent proportion of the time he had left with his son who would understand how having malfunctioning cells felt.

Life is just big one cancerous party after the other, isn't it?

Dr. Erwin came in to talk to us not much later.

Contrary to what I had been expecting, my dad didn't walk out of the hospital once he was reassured that I wouldn't choke to death on my own snot while he was gone. He stuck around for the whole day, and so did Mikasa. It made sense for my sister to be there, since we only had one car and she had no other way of getting out of there. But my dad could have left any time he wanted/ He never did.

His presence was seriously starting to make me wonder what was going through his head. He was no Levi when it came to maintaining a constant blank expression, but our communication skills still weren't at the level that they probably should have been. Maybe he had been diagnosed with cancer too and hadn't found a way to tell me yet. It would only make sense that he wanted to spend a decent proportion of the time he had left with his son who would understand how having malfunctioning cells felt.

Life is just big one cancerous party after the other, isn't it?

The first few minutes were spent on a discussion of minutia details between my dad and Dr. Erwin. They went over emergency room costs, my board payments if I wanted to stay in the single room I had ended up in, how much treatment would be if something else went wrong while I was in their care, and a lot of other medical crap that I didn't really bother paying much attention to. Then the important part began.

"We extracted some blood from you last night while you were unconscious," he began. "Probably for the best, since you might not have been able to hold still if you had still been awake." He smirked charmingly at me, raising one eyebrow while he waited for me to laugh at his joke. I was swayed into giving him a little snicker. I honestly had to wonder why someone like him had chosen to go into the medical field instead of show business. "We found a small concentration of rhinovirus antibodies, which we had been expecting. Then, in addition to that, we came across a fairly ample population of streptococcus bacteria in the samples, as well as quite a lot of dead cell material. Long story short, you've managed to contract something else in addition to your cold, and judging by the symptoms it has definitely turned into bacterial pneumonia."

"Not viral? So the cold didn't cause anything?" my dad inquired.

"Not that we can tell, since the bacterial symptoms are far more prominent than anything else, but we'll keep looking into it. From this point onward, we're going to be keeping him on an Azithromycin drip, and we'll be keeping a close eye on him to see if anything more develops."

"Ah, I see. Any idea what might have prompted it to get this far?"

Well, isn't that nice. Looks like I'm going to be your next field research subject, Dad.

"It was probably an immune problem," Dr. Erwin elaborated. "As you know, with his cancer, most of the blood cells he produces are abnormal and can't function as healthy cells would. Most likely what happened was the little immune strength that he had was being geared towards fighting the first infection, such that when the second one occurred, his entire system was overwhelmed. Without any ability to fight it, the disease would naturally progress at an unprecedented rate."

My dad nodded. "Alright. But Eren hasn't been out in the open in nearly a week." Wow, Dad, way to tell the world how proud you are of your shut-in son. "How could he have caught something this serious?"

"I think that's something we should have Eren explain for himself," Dr. Erwin said, glancing his clear blue eyes pointedly at me.

"I-I'm not sure," I stammered, scrambling for an explanation. "My dad's right, I haven't been anywhere." I took a second to think, hoping that it was time that everyone else in the room was willing to give me. "I had a friend over yesterday, but I don't think it could have been him. He went nuts with keeping himself clean while he was visiting. He must have washed his hands at least ten times while he was there. He did bring me some soup from Panera, though, so-"

"You think the soup might have gotten you sick?" my dad cut in and asked as if he wanted to know where on the doll a sex offender had touched me.

"I don't know. You never have any idea what goes on behind the counter in those places. Someone might have decided to come into work sick or something."

"With pneumonia?" Mikasa asked.

"It might not have turned into pneumonia in someone with a healthy immune system. It is possible that one of the employees could have been a carrier without knowing it," Erwin corrected her. "However, in Eren's case-"

"Well, at least we've got a source for the illness now," my dad cut in.

"Right," my doctor continued, trying to pick up where he left off. "Anyways, with the condition he came here in, we're going to have to keep him on for at least another ten days. If things improve, we could prescribe him something and send him home for his own immune system to do the rest. If not, we'll just have to keep him on longer. As of now, we'll just keep dosing him with the antibiotics and see if things get better."

My dad nodded and finished off the conversation with a "Well, let's hope that they do."

After a polite goodbye from Dr. Erwin, my last two remaining companions in the room turned to face me. "So you got infected by soup, huh?" Mikasa asked.

"I said I don't actually know," I protested. "I might have been."

"Do you want to look into it?" my dad put in. "I could probably track the purchase down and see who was working that day. They might be out sick by now."

I knitted my eyebrows in confusion. "Why would we need to do that?"

"To see if that's where the infection actually came from. If you really want to know, it's worth a shot."

"You could probably sue them if you wanted to," Mikasa added.

I stared deadenedly at my sister. "Seriously?"

"She's right, actually," my dad confirmed. "Eren, you could have died last night if you had gotten any worse."

I redirected my death stare to him. "Dad, I am not suing Panera."

"Hear me out for a second here-"

"No. Dad, listen. This person might not have even known they were a carrier. I don't want to go after someone for doing something they might not even know they were guilty of. If it were anyone other than me, probably nothing would have happened. Besides, coming into work sick is a pretty lame thing to drag someone to court for."

My dad inhaled to respond when the door clicked open again and someone new walked in. "Hey, brat,"a familiar voice said. "Didn't think you would be back here so soon."

My eyes flicked straight to the door, and there was Levi, once again dressed in his mint scrubs in all his full nursely glory. He observed the small gathering in the room, then his eyes brightened as he noticed my dad. "Dr. Jaeger. This is a pleasant surprise."

A slight proud smile crossed my dad's face. "It shouldn't be a surprise. Why wouldn't I be here after my son had a fever spike?"

Really, Dad? Because I'm pretty sure I'm more surprised to see that you're here than he is.

"So dedicated of you," Levi said before he deliberately ignored Mikasa's existence and made his way toward me. "So. How have you been feeling?"

"Like my face is constipated," I deadpanned in response.

The corner of his mouth twitched, and if I wasn't possibly having some sort of delirious fever dream I would have said he had actually laughed a little at my joke.

"He almost suffocated last night," Mikasa said, edging her way into the conversation. "It was really serious."

"Yeah, but I didn't, and that's the important part," I tossed back at her. Damn. She clearly had no intention to make light of the situation.

"And now he's here so we can make sure it doesn't happen again," Levi finished for the both of us, shooting Mikasa a quick, flippant glare that probably not even my dad failed to notice. "You threw the ER into a bit of a frenzy last night. They had to call me just to get your IV in. Apparently your brain was set to panic mode and your veins were so constricted no one could hit them."

My first thought was something along the lines of Well, that explains the excessive dull stabbing around the IV site. Then my brain quickly switched to Holy shit, Levi was handling me while I was unconscious, which was promptly cut off by a Christ, Eren, this is not how normal people react to this sort of thing.

"Well, thanks for consenting to that," I said, glancing at the tubes sticking out of my skin. "I don't think I would be able to move my arm if they had stabbed me any more times."

Levi offered me a little smirk and shrugged. "It's what they pay me for, but you're welcome anyway."

Levi could only stay for a few minutes before he got called out to do something else that his job demanded of him. Shortly after, Mikasa left for the bathroom in the corner, presumably to clean herself of any Levi-residue that had been transferred through the air. My dad took the opportunity to point out to me that Levi "seemed like a nice guy" even though "he still wasn't quite what he expected me to go for." Dying of embarrassment seemed like a likely prospect for me right then, despite the fact that there was no one else in the room. Aside from that, I wasn't sure whether my dad actually approved of Levi or just enjoyed knowing that the nurse admired him so much. Thankfully, that conversation ended when Mikasa re-entered the room and it never made a comeback for the rest of the visit.

Neither of them left until visiting hours ran out. My dad made a few quick trips out of the room to pick me up some things to eat in order to stave off the necessity for hospital food as long as he could. Petra came back in every once in a while, just as she had promised, and we made a bit of small talk while my dad and sister were out. She worked under Dr. Erwin's supervision, just like Levi. She and four other nurses in the staff worked under him, nearly all of them freshly qualified. Although Erwin was their official supervisor, they had pretty much adopted Levi as their leader. He was still just an LPN, but the whole hospital knew he was skilled enough to take on just about any nursing job that was required of him. That, at least, explained why they had asked him to place my IV out of every other higher-titled nurse in the hospital that they could have asked for.

Once I was alone in my room again, Levi came back for a slightly longer visit than before. Things were exponentially more comfortable without my dad there to humiliate me or Mikasa to breathe down our necks. We talked for almost half an hour, then Levi had to get called back out onto the floor for some medical emergency or another.

Despite the fact that I can't stand overnight stays in hospitals, I slept relatively well after he left.

---

The first day in Trost wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, it was the only day that wasn't too bad.

I spent my time lounging around in my room for the most part, watching reruns on TV and feeling generally too exhausted to do much else. Nights were infinitely worse after the first one, since I had two alternating night nurses, one of whom was deftly quiet and took every precaution not to wake me up, and another who was ungainly as fuck and apparently blind unless the lights were switched on. He woke me up at least four times the second night, and after that I was never able to sleep properly again, since I would spend the whole night dreading the revelation of which nurse would be tending to me next.

Mikasa's visits were cut shorter and shorter as the weekend ran out and she was forced to return to spending seven hours a day in school, actually having a life. On the other hand, my dad stopped in surprisingly often to catch the last few dregs of visiting hours after work. Most of the time he brought Mikasa with him. Armin came in to see me a few times as well, and apologized profusely during every single visit for giving me diseased soup, even though I had told him repeatedly that I didn't blame him for what happened.

My visitors brought me a few books and movies to keep myself busy with, as well as my laptop, just in case my tutor decided that it was a good idea to continue my homeschooling while my respiratory system healed up. (Spoiler alert: he did.) Petra gave me the hospital wifi password, and that certainly remedied some of the misery that the hospital stay was subjecting me to.

Dr. Erwin had said I might be able to go home after ten days, as long as my symptoms remained under control. However, once I was off the IV antibiotics and spending one last day at the hospital to confirm that I wouldn't die, my fever started spiking again within a few hours. So, naturally, I was plugged back in and it was decided that I was nowhere near ready to go yet.

The stay extended from ten days into twelve, then fourteen, then sixteen. Once again, I was trapped inside and stuck watching the seasons change through a window glass. I was itching to go outside and relive my October, to taste the air as it slowly turned frosty and the crunch of fallen leaves gave way to frost and ice. I wanted to feel the autumn fade into winter the way I had felt it reach its greatest colorful potential. I couldn't complain to anyone about it, though. As far as the hospital staff was concerned, I was just another sick patient. I had to be kept inside, where everything was safe and sterile, until they were unanimously sure I was healthy enough to go outside again. It wasn't their job to care about people's selfish desires or opinions.

But Levi made an effort to understand me anyway.

He wasn't my nurse for that particular stay, since he had his classes to deal with five out of seven days a week. But that minor setback sure as hell didn't stop him from trying to come in and bother me at every opportunity. I didn't know how much free time he had when he was on the job. Probably not much, since from what he told me his abilities had left him in the highest demand out of everyone on Dr. Erwin's nursing staff. Somehow he still managed to come in and bother me for a few minutes every day that he happened to be there. Most of the time we joked around with each other, tossing a few casual insults back and forth, him asking me if I felt like throwing up anytime soon and me responding with some poop-related comment that would always get a rise out of him. I had finally figured out how to get Levi to break his composure. I forgot to mention that, didn't I?

Poop jokes. The answer was poop jokes.

It was pretty ironic, for someone who seemed as serious and professional as he did all the time. But when I thought it over, he was unprofessional with me already. It wasn't professional for a nurse like him to be fraternizing with one of his patients. However, Dr. Handsome hadn't fired him from the staff yet, so his abilities as a nurse probably outweighed whatever personal problems he had with him. That was the answer he gave me when I asked him about it, anyway.

Literally. That was what he said. The conversation went something like this.

"Hey, Levi, aren't there supposed to be restrictions for patient-caretaker interaction or something like that?"

"Yeah. Relationships are supposed to be strictly professional."

"Do you think might tie into why Erwin didn't assign you as my nurse this time?"

"Listen, brat. What that guy knows about my personal life is kept completely confidential. He only knows as much as I tell him. He knows I'm friends with a few kids from group therapy, and that's it. Besides, he hasn't fired me yet, so my abilities as a nurse probably outweigh whatever personal problems Dr. Handsome has with me."

That was the way most of our conversations went, actually. Short, to the point, and always punctuated by some smart-ass comment from his end, ending with him leaving the room to wherever else on the floor he was needed.

And he called my oncologist Dr. Handsome too. What a small world.

Over the seemingly endless onslaught of days that I spent under IV drips and fluorescent lights, I tried to teach myself to stay in control around him. Every time he walked into the room, I forced my pulse to stop picking up, hoping that eventually my circulatory system would learn to stay steady on its own. I made myself ignore my skipping heart and fluttering stomach so maybe, eventually, it would feel like there was no reaction to his presence at all. It was harder for me to keep my cover in a hospital, after all. With monitors on me at all times, he would probably see if something changed. I didn't know what the hell any of those colored lines meant, but Levi Ackerman the Licensed Practical Nurse definitely knew a thing or two about EKG reading. It took days of practice and dozens of encounters to get it right, but I never stopped trying. I figured that I only needed to try and fail at it at least a thousand times in order to make it stick.

I wouldn't do it to myself anymore. I had decided long ago that I had to stop. I had to get my feelings under control before something slipped out and I dragged Levi into my dull, depressing world of disease and loneliness and impending death.

He didn't deserve someone like me. He didn't need to be subjected to something like a relationship with me.

He was too good for that.

---

Finally, on day eighteen of the longest fucking November in my recent memory, my fever broke.

My sinuses had been gradually draining out over the days I spent in Trost. The cement clog in my nostrils softened into silicone, then loosened enough for me to breathe through at least one side of my nose at a time. I stopped hacking up fluid every time I coughed, it no longer hurt to fill my lungs with air and I finally felt like I was in an acceptable state of living again. I still coughed and sneezed and couldn't do much more physical activity beyond walking around the floor when my room started to feel a little cagey, but it was a far cry from the critical state I had been admitted in.

When Petra finally read a normal temperature after she took the metal thermometer probe out of my mouth, it was like seeing a lighthouse beacon after drifting out at sea for as long as I had been sitting in the hospital. The end was in sight.

Levi was the one to give me the good news when it was finally time to give it.

"Afternoon, brat. I just had a talk with Erwin," he said as he walked through my door without permission for the countless-eth time. "I've got some news I think you're gonna want to hear."

I sat up in bed from where I was slumped into the pillows with my laptop on my legs. News. That was definitely something I hadn't heard in a long time. "What is it?"

"Since your fever's stayed down for a full twenty-four hours and you're breathing considerably easier, he thinks you might be going free soon." He glanced at my IV flow controls which Petra had fixed up only a few minutes earlier and hovered his fingers over the buttons for a second before pulling them away and turning to me. "Thought that with the amount of complaining you've been doing lately, you would probably want to know as soon as you could. It's pretty fantastic, right?"

Sometimes I thought he missed being my nurse.

"Are you serious?" I asked, unable to hide my excitement.

"Am I ever not?"

"This is great. Is he going to tell me himself?"

"Don't know. Probably."

A grin spread across my face as I pushed my laptop off of my legs and flicked the lid shut. I would be getting out soon. If Levi was telling me the truth, then the one thing that I had been wanting consistently for the past almost-three weeks would finally be coming my way. "When? Is he busy? How much does he have to do before he can come in and talk to me?"

"Hey. Slow down, eager-pants," he said, holding up his hands in a back-the-fuck-up gesture. "You think I have the guy's schedule memorized or something?"

"I-I don't know, you work for him, I thought maybe you might... I don't know, know a thing or two about how much he does in a day?"

"Well, the doctor is a busy guy, and he only ever lets me in on what he'll need my participation for. That's how most people are with their work schedules. It's grown-up stuff. You'll understand it when you get a job."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You're not that much older than me, Levi."

"I'm older-than-you enough to have a job cleaning bedpans for people your age, so I'm still gonna have to call myself an adult around you."

"And still give yourself permission to refer to me as brat all the time, I'm guessing."

"Bingo."

I sighed and picked at the peeling edge of the paper wristband that I'd had on for longer than I cared to remember. "Even though you guys haven't discussed it, about how long do you think it'll be until I get out?"

"Not sure. Another day, maybe two. It all depends on how your immune system decides to behave when we take you off the IV drip."

"Oh. Okay," I said, a little disappointedly. I didn't know what I had been expecting. It wasn't like the staff would just be letting me walk out the doors. In fact, if I actually did that I would probably be back in there sooner than I would ever have planned to be.

"Besides, we're going to have to get your strength back up a little bit before you go out and face the world again."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"Well, it shouldn't be all that much of a surprise to you, but you haven't been very in all your time here," he replied matter-of-factly. "For the entire first week you were barely able to get out of bed without choking on your own fluids, and even once all of that was over and done with you still didn't do a lot of moving around. Chances are you've experienced some minor atrophy while you were waiting for your sinuses to unclog."

"So what am I supposed to do now? Am I going into physical therapy or something?"

"No. Nothing that intensive, I don't think. Dr. Handsome will probably just have you get a little exercise in your last few days to get your body used to moving again."

Once again, I couldn't help smiling a little at his use of the mutual nickname. "What sort of things do you think he has in mind?"

"Probably just having you walk laps around the floor, maybe take the stairs and get yourself something from the cafe. Just normal, everyday stuff." He paused for a second before adding, "He might have you take a jog around the track or use the pool for a bit."

"The pool?" I asked, not sure that I had heard him correctly.

"Yeah, if he thinks you're well enough." Levi cocked his head and looked quizzically at me. "Did you not know that we had one here?"

"No, I did, I've just never seen it before."

I had been through Trost Regional Hospital far too many times to have never smelled the chlorine in one concentrated area of the first floor, or to have missed the scattered signs hung by the elevators that had the word pool spelled out in bolded plastic letters. Of course I knew there was a pool. I had just never actually seen it, swam in it, or been shown any concrete proof that it existed other than occasionally smelling the chemicals. That was probably because I hadn't needed much water-based rehabilitation for most of my stays in Trost. Floating in the water after a chemo treatment would have put me at an increased risk for dizzy spells and vomiting. The stitches I was left with after my liver surgery couldn't be soaked or submerged for at least two weeks, and I had to avoid strenuous activity for even longer to keep from screwing with my muscle tissue's healing process, according to Dr. Erwin's instructions. Since the opportunity to see the pool had never arisen for me, I had sort of forgotten its existence.

"Really? With the amount of time you claim to have been going here, I thought you might have been down there at least once." He paused for a second, then said, "You've never been rehabilitated before, have you?"

"No," I replied, sounding more disappointed than I felt. "The last extended stay I had here was because of my surgery, and Dr. Erwin never mentioned anything about it. You know, because of the stitches and everything else."

"Right," Levi said with a small nod. "He might recommend it now, since you weren't cut open this time around. It might be good to keep your fever down, too. Most of it depends on whether or not he thinks your body will react to the drop in temperature, but they spend a lot on the heating bills to keep it warm in there."

"So, have you ever been..." I started, but an image of him soaking wet and shirtless clawed its way into my mind from the deep recesses where I had hidden my memories of the first party at Jean's place. I had to stop, force it back and start over again. "Have you ever been swimming there?"

"Yeah, once or twice," he responded disinterestedly. "The staff will sometimes go in before or after their shifts. The hospital also employs specially trained people who take care of aquatic rehabilitation. Some of the nursing staff is qualified, and sometimes they need extra people on hand in case anything happens. I've been in both situations." He laughed a little to himself. "This job can get pretty interesting sometimes."

"Hey, Levi-" I was going to say more, but at the same time Levi glanced at the clock and cut my words short.

"Sorry to cut you off, Eren, but I have other patients to tend to right now. I've got to get going." He turned towards the door and reached for the handle.

"Can I just ask you something before you go?"

He stopped halfway through the door and glanced back at me. "Can you make it quick?"

I nodded vigorously. "If I do end up going to the pool, would I be by myself or would someone be there with me to... I don't know, instruct me or make sure I don't drown or something?"

Levi shrugged. "Not sure, brat. I'll talk to Erwin about it when I get the chance. I'll see you later, okay?"

"Okay," I said quietly. Levi disappeared into the hallway and the door swung shut behind him.

---

Just as he had predicted, Dr. Erwin came in to visit me later that evening. My dad had stopped by to catch the end of visiting hours again, and he showed up just in time to join the conversation. Dr. Erwin gave us the good news that I was almost healthy enough to be discharged. I still needed to spend another day or two in the Trost Regional staff's care, if only to make sure I wouldn't die of a fever spike the day I walked out the door.

Then, seemingly following a script that Levi had given him, the doctor went into the method of things, informing my dad that my inactivity over the past almost-three weeks might have resulted in some slight muscular atrophy, and it would be a good idea for me to get a little exercise and re-accustom my body to physical activity before they released me back into the wild. He told me that I could talk to Petra about a few physical therapy practices that I could use to rebuild my strength, I could take a walk around the jogging track they had in the courtyard in the middle of the complex, and, of course, the pool was always open if I was interested. I told him that I was.

The conversation didn't last much longer than that. Just a few details about the release procedure, slowly weaning me off the antibiotics to make sure my immune system could manage on its own, going over insurance payments, that sort of thing. My dad said he'd stop by the next day to drop off my swim trunks, then visiting hours were just about up and he had to leave before the staff came around to kick him out.

I stared up at my ceiling late into the night, lost in the hum of the IV flow control and my own thoughts. In all honesty, swimming might not have been the best idea in my current state. As weak as I was, it was entirely possible that I could drown the second my feet could no longer touch the bottom. The last time I had even been in water over my ankles was at Jean's party back in July. And even then, I never did much actual swimming. Dr. Erwin never mentioned whether I would be going on my own or have one of those specialized personal trainers that Levi had been talking about to walk me through the rehabilitation.

Then my stupid, sleep-foggy brain suddenly decided to say I wouldn't mind having Levi swimming around with me. Especially if he doesn't wear a shirt.

Thankfully, my night nurse came in, adjusted my flow, and told me that if I was having a hard time falling asleep he could give me something for it. I decided it was time for my brain to shut up for the night and accepted the offer.

---

I woke up the next morning to find a Trader Joe's bag sitting on the chair next to my bed with a note in my dad's scribbly doctor handwriting stapled to it. When I dragged it over to my bed to look at the contents, I found my swim trunks, along with a small assortment of snack foods that I immediately knew would be my saving grace from hospital fodder for whatever was left of my stay. With a slight smile on my face, I tugged my dad's note off of the bag and went about deciphering his handwriting.

I would have said hi when I came in, but you were out like a light! Hope you find these in good spirits when you wake up. I'll have to work late tonight, so sorry I can't come and visit you. I'll be seeing you tomorrow afternoon to take you home (hopefully!). Say hi to Levi for me.

Dad

I heaved an attitude-heavy sigh as soon as my eyes crossed the last line. The piece of paper wound up folded up into what could have been a shitty origami lotus and tossed back into the bag along with my contraband snacks. I appreciate the thought Dad, but no. Just... no.

Petra came in after not too long, and I recounted yesterday's conversation with Dr. Erwin for her. Her first move was to explain a few pilates-style moves that I could use to re-strengthen my muscles without having to get out of my bed. I let her go on for a while, but then cut in after a bit and mentioned the jogging track. After a few minutes of bartering, she agreed to let me go out later in the afternoon when my IV would be cut down from its current already-lowered rate. The pool would be an entirely different issue. She told me that she would have to go to Dr. Erwin about that one. I had already talked with him about it, and I knew that she would most likely be getting the exact same answer as I had.

The rest of the day passed by in pretty much the same way as the other ones had. I had my laptop in front of me for most of it. First it was to read and annotate a chapter for history, then to work on an essay for English, then to finish up an Algebra assignment that had been two-thirds done for almost a day. I got bored with homeschool work after a few hours and moved on to the black hole that is Tumblr. Late in the afternoon, once my IV flow rate had been next to nothing for nearly three hours, Petra came in to disconnect me (though she left the PICC line in my arm just in case) and lead me out to the courtyard. I spent a while wandering around there, but it didn't take very much time standing out in the cold for me to get tired and want to go back inside. Petra came after me with a sweet, sympathetic smile on her face and led me back in, as if she had been expecting it to happen all along. Once we were back, she let me know that Dr. Erwin had agreed to the whole pool proposal, so long as I had someone to supervise and instruct me. He would send someone my way as soon as he could.

After a few more hours passed by in the same way that the preceding ones had, I decided it was time to do something else. I wished desperately that I had brought my writing journal with me. Then again, I hadn't exactly had a lot of time to pack my bags before I had been swiftly escorted out of the house while struggling to get my lungs to expand. I probably should have been thankful that Mikasa hadn't exposed my hiding place behind the dresser (since at this point I was pretty sure she knew where it was). But I still felt bad about leaving the pages untouched for so long. My breakdown in October was the last time I had even looked at the sorry little thing. And before that point, I could only begin to guess how long it had been in between entries.

I closed out of my browser and opened a word document. If my usual medium wasn't available, I could improvise. And if I really wanted that badly to have this in my notebook, I could copy it down later. But for now, my computer would have to suffice.

It took a while for the ideas to come, but eventually they started flowing. Levi. My last entry. Hanji's last writing assignment about what each kid in the support group looked forward to most while held captive in the hospital.

Living in a white plaster box was never what Levi had wanted from his life. But that was what people said was good for him, and in their opinion, he was in no position to complain. There was a certain sense of safety that he gained from him being in that closed space, with the wide plates of glass that let him see what the outside world was like. The vistas that he saw through the window were all he knew of it. Those and the books and movies that he used to bide his time while he waited for the doctors to tell him it was safe for him to go outside. But until that day, Levi would simply have to live with his challenges.

The disorder had taken his mother, then his father not long afterwards. The doctors who had taken him in after their departure from the living world said that it was because they had used themselves up too recklessly. If he fooled with the outside world in the same way they had, one day his white blood cells would start combusting. Then his days would be numbered, and there would be no going back. So the doctors had closed him into a clean little space, sealed off from the outside with not a single pathogen to be seen.

It had been- I took a second to find a suitable age for Levi to have been shut up in his fictional confinement. -twelve years since he had been locked away. In all that time, he had grown up, had begun yearning to leave the little space he had been forced to call home for so long. At twenty, he was more than old enough to tell the doctors that he didn't want to continue with this cruel method of treatment. He wanted to live his life for all it was worth, and if it cost him that very commodity in the end, then so be it. At least he would have used everything he had while it was available. But this wasn't a possible thing for Levi. It wasn't what his parents would have wanted. It wasn't something that the doctors would encourage. He had a responsibility to keep himself alive.

He had a responsibility to do as he was told, no matter what he lost in the process.

Levi had a responsibility-

The click of the door latch harmonized with the small percussion orchestra coming from my keyboard.

I ripped my gaze away from my laptop screen and turned toward the door. It was pushed open to the bare minimum that a person needed to fit themselves through, and Levi slipped into my room. My brain skipped a little at his sudden appearance. I was just writing about him. Or someone with his name, anyway. It was an odd coincidence.

"Hey, brat," he said. "How are you feeling?"

"Okay," I said instinctively. "No different from this morning, really."

"That's good. You're not getting any worse, at least."

I shrugged. "I've been completely off the antibiotics for almost six hours. There's no way I could be getting any better."

"That's not always the case. But I suppose you never really know much about anything until you try it." Levi made his way to the end of my bed and leaned against the footboard.

"What are you doing here so late?" I asked. "Aren't you normally ending your shift right about now?"

"Dr. Handsome's letting me take a few hours of overtime tonight," Levi replied. "He mentioned that you might need a bit of company."

There was context there that I was definitely missing. At least, I hoped that the context I was missing wasn't what it sounded like. "What does that mean?"

Levi looked at me and cocked his head. "Did he not tell you or something? I really thought you would have been the first to know."

"Know about what?"

"I guess you don't, then," Levi said. "He's letting you go to the pool tonight for rehabilitation."

"Oh. Yeah." I remembered the conversation I'd had with the man literally a day earlier. "He told me about that. I just didn't understand what you said about..."

"It's alright. Far from the first time it's happened," Levi said casually. "He would have let you go sometime sooner, but there were a lot of variables he had to deal with. First of all, you weren't taken off of your drip until today. Then he had to worry about how your lungs would hold up, whether or not you might pick something up from the water and who he would be able to send with you. He just waited it out until the time was right. It just so happened that today I was willing to take overtime, you're still breathing and the pool was just cleaned this afternoon."

"Hm. Good thinking," I said.

"Well, that's Erwin for you. If there's anything the man's good for, it's planning." Levi paused, then added, "And, of course, treating cancer and everything else."

"So, how is this going to work? Don't I need an escort or a physical therapist or something like that?"

"I'll be going with you. So, where'd you put your trunks?"

For the briefest of seconds, my brain lost all its ability to function.

"W-what?"

Levi turned to me, his face looking even more deadened than usual. "I'm going to be swimming with you to make sure your body doesn't give out and you don't drown," he said. "Now, about those swim trunks."

He'd said it twice already, but I was still having a hard time processing his words. He was going with me? As in, he was going to be in the pool, swimming with me?

Without a shirt?

With that, I went into the bathroom and locked the door between us. I took only a minute or so to actually get changed into my trunks, but for some reason I felt it necessary to stop for a moment and stare at myself in the mirror. I looked the same as always, pale, dark circles under my eyes, brown hair messy because I hadn't felt up to combing it into a presentable appearance just to spend another day in the hospital. My nose was a little red, but other than that, there wasn't much color to my face. If I laid still in the middle of a street, people could have probably mistaken me for a dead body. I could only imagine how much worse it must have been when I didn't have my shirt on to cover up my prominent ribs and spine. After about thirty seconds of staring, I finally forced myself to forget about it and go back out into my room.

The pool was pretty far away from my room. I was staying up on the fifth floor of the hospital, a section of the residential units that was dedicated almost solely to adolescent patients. If Trost Regional Hospital was good for anything, it was setting up the overnight patients so they didn't feel awkward around the others who were staying on the same floor as them. The pool was down on the lowest level of the hospital, save for the basement. It was the only place where something like it could be placed without seriously intruding on the floor below it.

The room that housed it was huge and smelled of hot chlorinated mist. Levi was right when he said that I wouldn't have to worry about exposure if I decided to go swimming. It had to be at least seventy degrees in there. Massive fluorescent lamps hung from the ceiling, probably bright enough to light it up to look like midday if enough of them were on. But it was late, and we were the first to be using the pool after it was cleaned. Levi only turned on enough of the lights to have reasonable visibility. The lights set into the walls of the pool glowed brighter than the few lit ones in the ceiling, casting the white cinderblock walls in a flickering blue glow. The pool itself was pretty decently sized. It wasn't anything exceptional, not olympic-sized like a YMCA. The thing was only a little bigger than Jean's.

"The entire place has been sanitized, so we shouldn't have to worry about you picking up anything else from the area," Levi said as he walked along the stainless-steel bleachers on the far side of the pool, searching for a suitable spot. "It would suck if you got sick again just as you were starting to get better, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah. I'm already going insane from being here as long as I have," I replied, following closely behind. I picked out a spot that seemed to have dried off a little better than the others after the janitors' power-washing. "Here. This spot looks alright."

Levi crossed over to give his approval. "Looks like I've been teaching you well, brat."

We dropped the towels we had brought with us on the bleachers, and I had to take a breath before reaching for the hem of my shirt. A little thrill of insecurity ran through my nerves. I didn't want to do this in front of him, but we had already come so far. Besides, he had seen me in situations far more compromising than this one. I still had to turn away from him and pretend he wasn't there to be able to get my clothes off. I steeled myself, kicked my sneakers off and pulled my shirt over my head.

I turned back around to place my clothes and shoes next to my towel, then proceeded to nearly die of a heart attack when I looked up from the bleachers. With little to no warning, Levi had ditched his slip-on vans and started peeling off his mint-green scrubs shirt. Hot damn. How long had it been since Jean's party... four months since I had seen him like this? I couldn't have gotten the image out of my head if I had tried, but watching him take his shirt off here was like seeing him for the first time all over again. The smooth skin, taut muscles, the gentle curve of his torso between his hips and ribcage- fuck I wanted to touch him so badly.

No. No. Stop it. You are not going to do this right now.

The little black wing on his shoulder seemed to flutter a little as he moved his arm to toss his shirt onto the bleachers next to the towels. He went for his pants next, and I panicked for a brief second about him being into skinny dipping.

"What are you doing?" I impulsively asked.

"Going swimming," he replied. "We're standing by a pool, if you haven't noticed." His mint green pants had joined his shirt, and to my serious relief he had been wearing his plain black swim trunks underneath them. I stood there, shivering in spite of the warm mist floating in the air as I watched him travel around the edge of the pool to the deepest end, then extend his hands above his head and launch himself off of the concrete edge. His body went into a graceful arc before slicing the water and disappearing with barely even a splash. I ran to the edge and watched his rippling shadow as it traveled below the surface, gliding towards the shallow end where I stood. His head breached the surface of the water, and he flicked his hair out of his face and ran his fingers back through it to push it away from his forehead. He fixed me with a curious look. "You gonna just stand there, or are you coming in, brat?"

"I-I am, I just..." I stuttered, scrambling for an excuse.

"The water's perfectly fine, if that's what you're worried about."

I took the opportunity and ran with it. "You sure?"

"Have I ever lied to you before, Eren?"

My name drifted through the mist around us, and that was all the reassurance I needed. I drew closer to the ladder at the side of the pool and carefully lowered myself down into the water. The temperature was more than fine. It was like dipping my legs into May. I let go of the ladder to turn myself around and immediately slipped below the surface. In a second, Levi was there. His hands had fixed around my forearms and he was pulling me into the shallows. My feet brushed the tiles at the bottom of the pool, and I quickly regained my footing.

"Right," he said as soon as I was upright again. "I had a few exercises in mind that would probably be helpful in undoing some of your muscular atrophy. Granted, they are a little ridiculous and you're probably going to get sick of them after a while. It's nothing essential, though. We can stop whenever you want, okay?"

"Okay," I replied automatically.

The exercises were no different in my own opinion from the way that Levi had described them; they were stupid and I wanted to stop almost as soon as I had started. But, of course, it was for my own good. I put up with the lunges and one-leg balancing and feeling like an old lady practicing her aquacise moves for as long as I could. After about half an hour, I told him that I was finished, and he didn't protest. We spent the rest of the time paddling around,both of us left to our own devices and ignoring each other's existence.

I lasted a little longer swimming than I did when I was out on the track. It was probably the difference in temperature that kept my body from giving out so quickly. All the same, I felt too tired to keep going after about an hour in the water. Levi climbed out along with me, and we sat next to each other on the bleachers while we dried off, neither of us saying much. He told me to wrap myself up in my towel so I wouldn't get cold, even though the temperature in the room was nowhere near low enough for that to even be a concern. He had his own towel thrown over his shoulders, drops of water still glistening on his skin. I thought about wrapping him up in his towel, too, just to piss him off, but I figured he wasn't in the mood for it right then.

I sat a row behind Levi in the bleachers and watched him while he ruffled his hair with his towel to dry it off and took out his phone to flick through his messages from that day. I didn't see much in regard to what kind of social life he had, since I had once again placed all my focus on the tiny wing on his shoulder blade. The feathers fluttered delicately with every movement of his arm. I noticed that the ink was still clear and black, as if the tattoo were still fresh after being ingrained into his skin for... I wasn't entirely sure how long. He had said he had gotten it back when he had graduated high school. My closest guess was that he was seventeen or eighteen. But he had become a qualified nurse between then and now, and as far as I knew, there was no way around the schooling for that. As the thoughts ran steadily through my mind, I was tempted to reach out and run my fingers along the edge of that beautiful little wing. Maybe if I touched it I could find out its secrets that Levi couldn't tell me with his voice.

But of course, I couldn't do that. So I was left with the next best thing.

"What's the story behind your tattoo?"

"Hm?" Levi looked up from his phone and turned around to face me.

"The wing," I said as calmly as I could. "I've mentioned it before, but... you never really told me anything about it."

Levi let out a small, breathy noise that might have been a laugh if it were coming from anyone else. "Why are you so interested?"

"Don't know. It just makes me wonder."

"It's not an interesting story. You'll probably lose interest after a while."

It was about then that I realized that Levi wasn't the only one that was good at seeing through the people around him. I might not have had any skills when it came to anyone else, but he was different. In all the time I had spent watching his every move, I had learned a thing or two about reading him. It was the only reason why I suspected that he was dodging me.

"You don't really know until you try, Levi."

Yeah, it was kind of a low blow, throwing his own philosophy back at him. But I didn't know how else to go about it. He was hard to get through to as it was.

He turned back to me again, and I eased myself one level lower onto the same bench as him. "Go ahead and tell me. I'll be interested," I insisted. "I promise."

Levi sighed. "Okay, fine," he conceded. "I was... I was in a bit of a bad place around the time. I was seventeen years old, things were messy with my life, and I was involved in a lot of things that I probably shouldn't have been getting into."

Three years, I silently noted as I nodded my encouragement for him to continue. I wondered when his birthday was, since he had graduated so early. Maybe he fell short of the cutoff date or something like that.

And what was that supposed to mean, his life was messy? Levi seemed like one of the most put-together people that I knew. It was impossible to imagine him like that; feeling disordered, lost and confused, not old enough to understand life yet but too old for anyone to bother explaining it to him.

And what did he mean, things he shouldn't have been getting into?

"I happened to have a bit of cash to blow, and I had been thinking about getting a tattoo for a few years. Mainly it was just a 'fuck you' my dad, to spite him or some stupid shit like that..."

He sounded like there was more that he wanted to say, but he cut himself short and redirected his sentence. "I was feeling trapped by everything that was going on in my life, and after I got out of high school, I felt like it was a new beginning for me. There were so many directions that I could go, and no one would be able to stop me if I didn't let them. I felt like I would finally have a chance to set myself free. So when I showed up at the tattoo shop, and I saw this design... I wasn't even thinking, I just..."

"You wanted to get it because of what it meant to you," I put in when his words started to stagger. "I get it. You were finally making a life for yourself with no restrictions. You were free. Wings are supposed to be a symbol of freedom, right?"

"Yeah. Wings are a symbol of freedom," he finished. Then the conversation ended and we were sitting in silence all over again.

I pulled my towel tighter around my shoulders and hunched over my legs. The quiet was starting to get uncomfortable. Words floated in my head and welled up in the back of my throat, but none of them were eloquent enough to make it out of my mouth. I wanted to say something more. There was something wrong with the empty, emotionless way Levi stared across the pool at the wall on the other side. I wanted to ask him what, but I knew he wouldn't tell me. All that he had said about his tattoo only served to confuse me more. Confusion was the last thing I needed then. I wanted to help him. He seemed like he needed it. The only problem was that I could never be sure how willing he would be to accept it.

Then, just like that devastating moment with the call button, I did the only thing that I knew how to. I improvised. I stopped thinking.

I reached out and gently pressed my fingertips to Levi's tattoo.

He didn't give me very much of a reaction. He glanced back at me for a second, and I felt his muscles pull under his skin, but that was it. I became mesmerized by the tiny black stencilled wing stretched across his shoulder blade. I ran my fingers delicately over the tips of the sharp, extended feathers. I felt like if I imagined hard enough, it might spring up off of his skin and start fluttering, like he was some kind of half-angel brought down from heaven to take a part in my sad little life.

"We should probably be getting you back to your room," Levi said without warning.

"Okay," I replied.

And that was it. That was where the night ended. After that, we finished drying off, put our clothes and shoes back on and left. Levi escorted me to my room, wished me well since I wouldn't be seeing him again until the next support group meeting, and then he was gone.

I had a hard time sleeping that night, and not just because my clumsier night nurse was the one on call. It was mostly because of the hollow, unfulfilled chasm that had opened up in my chest. I didn't have a name for the feeling it gave me, but I knew well enough what it meant.

Once again, I had come close to doing something important, but had failed before I even found out what that something was.

---

I left Trost Regional Hospital the next day.

It was the biggest relief that I had ever experienced in my short, cancerous lifetime, overtaking the last time that I had been released from the hospital. My dad had volunteered to take the morning off from work (which I assumed meant he would be taking overtime in exchange) to pick me up, sign me out and take me to lunch before taking me home again. Mikasa had decided to take off from her Sunday practice to spend the time with me as well. The situation left me feeling both warm and guilty. I appreciated the time I spent with them (most of it, anyway), but at the same time it felt wrong. I felt like I was taking something from them. Like they were cutting something out of their lives in order to give it to me.

It was a feeling I had gotten before, and I had brought it up to both of them several times, but every time I did, whoever I happened to be speaking to usually put the sentiments aside and ignored them. It only made sense for me to do the same.

My dad had originally wanted me to pick out the place we would be going for lunch, since I was the one who had been subjected to the bland, mass-produced taste of Trost's inpatient food for the last twenty days, but I told him that I was willing to go for anything that wasn't prepackaged and heated in a microwave. Mikasa decided on going to a teriyaki place in Karanese that Jean had taken to her once, way back when in their three-month-long relationship. It was a few weeks more than that, even, but despite the impressiveness of Jean's ability to hang onto my sister as long as he had, I wasn't going to give him any special credit.

Staying with Jean for so long wasn't the only shocking thing that Mikasa had done, though.

"Mikasa, what happened to your hair?" was the first thing I said when I climbed into the backseat with her.

"Do you like it?" she asked casually.

I did, actually. It wasn't a bad look for her. It was just... short.

Really short.

"Yeah, I do. It's great. It's just... surprising, that's all."

"Thanks." She smiled at me and pushed a strand behind her ear. It fell right back into place, because it was no longer long enough to stay where it was. The last time I had seen her, her hair had extended a few inches past her shoulders. As far as I knew, she hadn't cut anything significant off since the surgery summer. She had been growing it out for more than a year. Now she had everything bobbed again, her hair falling in cropped, fluffy layers around her chin. It wasn't quite a pixie cut, but it wasn't all that far from one. The style was a little messy, a little rebellious, but in an orchestrated, intentional sort of way. I couldn't have picked out a look more perfect for her.

I wasn't sure why she had done it. The last few times she had cut her hair off, she had done it to sympathize with me when I lost my hair to some treatment or another. I hadn't been subjected to the horrors of chemotherapy this time around, but I suppose that didn't have any effect on her devotional practices. She could have had worse habits than lopping inches of her hair off every time I had a relapse.

Jean's probably had his hands all over it already, I thought distastefully.

"Has anything interesting happened since we last saw you, Eren?" my dad asked as he pulled the Highlander out of the parking lot.

A surprising amount had. Or at least it came very close to happening. Most of it had to do with introspection, observation, and a whole lot of staring at a shirtless guy. The entire experience had gone in so many directions, and it was all a little difficult to explain.

"Not really."

"Hmph," my dad replied. "That seems a little disappointing. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, though. I mean, how much can happen when you're sitting in a hospital room, anyways?"

A lot more than you could ever imagine, Dad, I silently told him as he stepped on the gas to catch up with traffic. A few minutes short of an hour later, we were sitting in the appointed Teriyaki restaurant, and I was practically inhaling the sauce-drenched shrimp and steak combo that I had ordered.

I took a break from stuffing food into my mouth to ask Mikasa, "So when did the hair thing happen?"

"Just yesterday, actually," she said in a non-rushed, understandable manner, unlike the way in which my words had come out. "I'd been planning on it for almost a week. I mean, I'd been thinking about getting a haircut for a while anyway, and you were in the hospital, so I figured I might as well."

"But I didn't lose my hair this time around," I pointed out. "They didn't even give me any chemo. My cells weren't the problem. It was my immune system, remember?"

Mikasa shrugged and squashed a chunk of raw salmon between her chopsticks. "I know, but I wanted to do it anyway."

"Why?"

"Eren."

"Mikasa, I know why you did it every other time before this one, so why this time?"

She sighed and gave up trying to pass off the haircut as her own idea. "I've been really busy, okay?" she said. "I was having a hard time keeping up with everything going on at Trost. I hardly ever came into visit you last week, and I wasn't sure if they had picked something else up, or if they decided to give you a new treatment, or-"

"Hey, it's okay. I get it," I said, cutting her short before she made me feel any worse about prying.

"You do keep a pretty packed schedule, honey," my dad said to her. "Maybe you should spend a few days in the hospital, too. You could catch up on your sleep."

I couldn't even help it that time. I laughed, a quiet, throaty giggle that I had just narrowly failed to restrain. I didn't miss the proud smile that tugged at my dad's face before I quickly recomposed myself by asking, "You haven't been sleeping?"

"Not to a problematic degree," Mikasa said quickly. "I've just been doing research for a history project and I've been staying up a little extra the past few nights."

"A little? I came home at eleven-thirty on Thursday, and you hadn't even showered yet," my dad mentioned.

"Even if it is bad, it's just for now. It'll be back to normal once I finish."

I shook my head and swallowed the wad of shrimp in my mouth. "Mikasa, how do you even manage your life?"

"Very skillfully," she said. Then her phone lit up on the tabletop and started vibrating its way toward the edge. Jean's smiling face glowed on the screen, right next to Mikasa's with his fingers tangled in her hair in a picture they had taken together at one of Marco's Bad Movie Nights. My sister glanced down and quickly picked it up. "Sorry. I've got to get this."

"What does he want?" I asked with more hostility than I intended to give off.

"I sent him a picture of my new hair this morning," she replied as she scooted out of the booth.

"You mean he hasn't seen it yet?"

"Nope." She started away from the table, talking to me over he shoulder. "I should probably see what he wants." Then she wandered off with her phone held to her ear.

My dad and I were both pretty well-matched in being unsure how to act in a social situation. We tried to carry on the conversation without her. That didn't work out all that well, so the table gradually descended into awkward silence. Both of us made an occasional effort to break it, but we failed over and over again until finally, Mikasa came back to the table.

The first thing she did was shove her phone savagely into her pocket. Then she sank limply into the seat next to my dad.

"What happened?" he said right away. Concern overrode every single emotion written into his face. Dad mode had been activated.

"Nothing important," Mikasa said listlessly, grabbing another chunk of fish and biting into it as if it were the throat of the entire male race.

"Did Jean get you upset?" my dad continued. When Mikasa didn't answer, he kept on trying. "Did he say something to you? Come on. Tell me, sweetie. What did he say?"

Mikasa never did tell either of us exactly what Jean said. But she did give us the gist of it.

"He didn't like my haircut."

It didn't sound like that bad of a situation. But let's face it. This was Jean we were talking about. So I got Mikasa to elaborate and vilify her boyfriend as much as she wanted to.

The explanation ended up a lot lengthier than the one she had initially given.

"He's mad at me because I didn't tell him I was planning on cutting my hair. Which is a total lie, because I've mentioned it to him at least twice before. Then that turned into a whole other argument about me needing his approval to make stupid decisions like this. Which I don't, because I am perfectly capable of using my own judgement. And now he's pissed off because I allegedly decided to change something major about myself without giving him any kind of warning, and because my hair was one of the things about me that he liked best... and that on its own pisses me off, because if he was just with me because of my looks, then this is not a relationship that I want to be in anyway..."

Then Mikasa jammed her straw into her mouth and fell silent. Neither my dad nor I tried to re-initiate the conversation flow. There was really no easy way to respond to that. The awkwardness was probably the only thing that spurred my sister to keep going.

"Anyway, I hung up on him, because I wasn't up for listening to him bitch about how I'm not pretty enough for him anymore. He's probably going to ask me out later today, anyway. We'll work it out then."

And, strangely enough, Jean texted Mikasa that night.

It happened at some point between my dad dropping us back off at home and the sun going down. My sister ignored the novel coincidence of her prediction coming true and begrudgingly picked up her phone to reply to her boyfriend, who hopefully wouldn't be her boyfriend for much longer. He was texting her to ask if they could meet sometime soon, so they could talk things over. She agreed to spend some time with him after the next Youth Cancer Support Group meeting, which was scheduled for the following Friday.

It was a little disappointing to know that I would have to wait another five days before I got to see Jean have his heart broken.

---

The meeting was set for three-thirty in the afternoon at Shiganshina Library. The temperature had started consistently hovering around freezing, and Mikasa and I had to walk thanks to our dad's inconvenient-as-hell work hours, but I didn't mind. Just like October, all of it was an experience. After being shut into a sterile, white-walled prison cell for three weeks, I was happy to feel anything, even if it was below-thirty almost-winter air stinging my face and hands until they lost feeling. Only part of the group had made it to that meeting. Marco wasn't there, and neither were Annie, Krista (again) or Levi (insert oh, Eren here), but just like the irritatingly cold weather, it was something I didn't mind. I was just happy to be spending time with people in a non-medical setting.

That didn't mean that the meeting was the comfortable gathering it usually was.

When we walked into the building and came face to face with the rest of the group, Mikasa didn't scamper up to Jean and kiss him in the chaste, cutesy way she usually did when they got together. Once we started talking, they avoided making eye contact for the better part of the hour that the support group spent together. In the middle of the meeting, it came out that Marco was missing because he had some sort of relapse over the past week and was in too much pain to take a field trip from his hospital to come to the meeting. The thought was kind of ironic, considering that was just the place I had just escaped from a few days earlier. It also made me sick to my stomach. I hadn't been in that serious of a condition. Sure, I felt shitty, and I might have been at risk for choking on mucus, but I was far from being that bad. And according to Jean, Marco was bad. Bad enough not to be able to get up from his bed without a pint of morphine in his veins. The doctors had said it was only a side effect from one of his multiple surgeries, something that could be easily fixed, but I hadn't been listening closely enough to know what it actually was.

As the hour began dragging down to its last few minutes and Hanji gave out her latest writing assignment (What part of your personality do you think your cancer has affected the most?), Jean and Mikasa snuck out of the room. I noticed that they didn't link their hands together while they walked like I had always seen them do before. I couldn't help feeling a little triumphant when I saw Mikasa holding out on him like that. But at the same time, it only took me a second to realize exactly how fucked up that was.

When Mikasa came back, she looked a lot more upset than she had when she left. Jean wasn't with her. I tried to ask why, but she wouldn't let me get the whole question out.

Instead she pulled me aside from the group and said, "I want to leave. Let's go."

There were a few slight problems with that idea which I desperately wanted to point out to her, mainly the fact that the hour still hadn't run completely out and I wasn't ready to leave yet. But I wasn't about to argue with her in her volatile state, so I let her take my arm and tow me all the way to the front door. About six feet away from walking clear out of the building, I started to drag my feet and pulled her to a stop.

"What happened?" I asked. Mikasa stared at me for what felt like forever before she finally gave me her answer.

"Jean and I broke up."

Well, then. I couldn't say that it was unexpected.

I wanted so badly to pump my fist into the air and scream "YES YOU FINALLY DUMPED THAT HORSE-FACED DOUCHEBAG," but I realized that there were a few reasons why I couldn't do that. One, we were in a library and would probably get lynched if we made any sort of noise that was louder than quiet conversation. Two, I saw the look on her face. She seemed shut down, staring at nothing in particular on the other side of the room. The charcoal in her eyes had been mashed into soot. Something told me that what had just gone down in the room a short hallway away from the support group wasn't worth celebrating just yet.

"What happened?" I asked again, only because my brain couldn't conjure up anything better to say.

"Too much," she murmured, the words coming out like the sigh that rushes out of a person's lungs when they collapse on the couch after a hard day at the office.

"That sucks." I quickly looped my arm over her shoulders and pulled her close to me. "But you're gonna be okay, Mikasa. He didn't deserve you. You're way too good for him."

"Apparently that wasn't what he thought," she mumbled over my shoulder.

"How did it happen?"

"First it was the hair thing. Honestly, his response pissed me off more than the haircut did for him. He admitted that it was a really stupid thing to get into a fight over. Anyway, when he pulled me out of the room, he was all weepy and apologetic and begging me not to still be mad at him. He was giving me all sorts of excuses, saying that he was just surprised, that he was already under a lot of stress because of what was going on with Marco, and I told him I understood. Because... I do." She gently ruffled the hair on the back of my head. "But I'm just done. I'm done with him, and knowing that I'm not the kind of girl he really wants, but also knowing that he's going to keep trying to stay with me for some reason that I can't even figure out..." She sighed again and nuzzled her head into my shoulder. "I'm just really tired and I want to go home."

"Then go ahead," I said, gently stroking her new silky dark cap of hair. It was a little surprising when her hair disappeared and my fingers were running over the back of her neck before I was expecting it. But it was nothing I couldn't get used to. "But is it alright if I stay here? Will you be okay if you walk back home on your own?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine. Will you be okay?" she responded straightaway. "It's really cold. I don't want you getting pneumonia all over again."

"I can get a ride from Armin. I'll work something out." It was kind of funny. Even when she was in pain, my sister was still more concerned about me than anything else.

"You sure?"

"I'm positive. Just go home, eat some ice cream, watch some shitty Netflix movies... do whatever you have to do. I won't be out much longer."

"Alright," she conceded. Leaving it at that, Mikasa walked out the door.

I ran back to the room where the support group had situated, but by the time I came back, the meeting had already been adjourned. People had started leaving, and the discussion had changed into scattered bits and pieces of conversation. Jean was nowhere to be seen, Connie and Sasha were sitting together on the couch and seemingly off in their own little world, and the remaining four attendees were still gathered together and carrying on some unidentifiable conversation. I ran over and tried to join in, but I showed up just in time to hear the very end.

"My grandpa's book club meeting just ended. He's probably going to be stopping by soon," Armin said.

I broke in just in time to comment, "Hey, Armin, you think I could catch a ride from you?"

My best friend spun around to face me and smiled. "Sure. I don't think my grandpa will mind." He turned back to the group. "I should probably get going. I wouldn't want to miss him."

"Alright," Hanji said fondly. "It was so nice seeing you guys again. You especially, Eren. You gotta stop getting sick! We were starting to miss having you around here." She stepped forward to pull me into a tight hug, laughing as if my absence were a joke or something I had a choice about.

"I'll see you at the next meeting, Hanji. I promise," I said. I stepped back from her and immediately got pulled into another hug from Reiner. Then, just as I escaped and started towards the door, I caught one last word from Bertolt.

"Hey, Reiner, can I talk to you about something for a minute?"

I glanced over my shoulder for one last look at the support group. They were still all smiles. Bertolt's face betrayed nothing, and Reiner pulled his boyfriend's lanky arm over his shoulder as I had seen him do a million times before. He turned and stepped back a bit, as if he needed to make it a little clearer to his boyfriend that he needed to get him alone. And, if I wasn't mistaken, his subtle limp seemed a little... less subtle than usual.

"Sure, babe. Always," Reiner said. I turned away and started walking before I saw anything else.

Armin was standing by the front door when I showed up, glancing back and forth between the window and his phone. He looked up to notice me approaching and shrugged his shoulders to signify that his grandpa was still nowhere to be seen.

"Did he say anything?" I asked as soon as I was within earshot, nodding towards his phone.

"He got a little held up at the meeting," he said. "He probably won't be here for another few minutes." He glanced at the window one more time before he stuffed his phone into his pocket. "I have to go to the mind keeping watch while I'm gone?"

"Okay," I said, taking up the spot where he had just been standing.

"I won't be long. Let me know if you see anything." With that, he turned away and scurried off towards one of painted wooden doors next to the check-out desk.

I wasn't sure exactly how long I was standing there. It couldn't have been much more than a minute or two, since Armin didn't come back, his grandpa didn't show up, and no one else from the support group came out into the lobby. If it weren't for the pervasive silence of the library, I might not have heard it at all.

Somewhere in the building, someone let out a short, pained gasp.

It was an all too familiar noise to me. It was a distress call, something that over the years had become unmistakable to me. It was a cry for help, a cry of pain, the noise someone makes right before they break down in tears. I tensed up at the sound, though I wasn't sure where it came from. I glanced around the room, as if that would make the culprit come straight out and say that the sound was their fault. Nothing like that happened. But I did hear sharp, distressed whispers drifting across the quiet from one corner of the lobby.

My curiosity got the better of me. There might have been a bit of empathy mixed in with it, too, but I couldn't be sure until I saw who the source had been. Forgetting my promise to Armin, I left my post by the door and wandered over. The muffled conversation grew louder and more emotional the closer I got. Then, as soon as I was close enough, I saw them.

It was Reiner and Bertolt. They were standing together in the hallway that I had just come through. I couldn't see whether or not the room behind them was empty, but it didn't seem to matter to them. Bertolt had his back pressed against the wall, and Reiner was standing in front of him, his hands resting on his boyfriend's chest and clinging to his shirt. He had his back to me and I couldn't see his face, but his hands were shaking.

Something was definitely wrong. I didn't need to hear his next words to know that much, but I did anyway.

"Bertolt, please... don't do this."

His voice was choked, shaking, so strange and unsteady. It sounded wrong coming from him. He didn't sound like Reiner anymore.

"I need to hear you say it," Bertolt pleaded. He had a worried, desperate look on his face, and his hands were draped over Reiner's shoulders. One rose up to cup the side of his face. "Please, say it for me. Just once."

"This isn't the time for that," his boyfriend replied insistently. "W-why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"I'll explain everything. Just... please, say it for me." His eyes were starting to water. "Always?"

Reiner's back shuddered. The word came out in a dying whisper. "Always."

"I know how you get sometimes. I didn't want you to start worrying."

"And you thought that waiting until now was going to make it any better?" Reiner shot back, sounding more hurt than I could have ever imagined he could.

"No one was sure, and there needed to be more tests, but we are now. I- I didn't want to say anything until I could be sure that you'd have a reason..."

"How did this even happen?"

"No one knows. The last time they checked, everything was clear, but there might have been something that they missed, or the mutations just spontaneously started over again..."

"How long did they say you have?"

Bertolt stared at him, his eyes wide, almost frightened by the words. Reiner kept pressing him anyway. "Bertolt, how long?"

Slowly, so slowly that it was painful to watch, he shook his head. "They don't know," he murmured. "They'll do everything they can, but..."

He trailed off, and Reiner snapped. I watched as his shoulders shuddered again, and again, and in a second his body was shaking uncontrollably. He collapsed against Bertolt's chest, and a strangled sob escaped that his shirt wasn't enough to cover up. Tears were starting to stream over Bertolt's face as well, and he pulled his boyfriend close, leaning his head on top of Reiner's, winding his arms around his broad back and holding him as close as he could.

"I love you," he choked out.

"I love you, too."

"Always."

Reiner had to sob a few seconds more before he could give his reply. "Always."

I couldn't take any more after that. I turned away and ran back to the door, fully aware that I had probably just seen something I shouldn't have.