The infirmary was cold. White sheets. Pale walls. The kind of sterile silence that made the strongest men fold in half.
Beatrice lay on the bed closest to the window, and she looked like a ghost already halfway gone. Her body was wrapped in gauze and agony. Bruises painted her skin in cruel colours—deep, oil-slick violets blooming over ribs and shoulders, yellows leeching through to the surface of her throat. Tubes ran across her arms, into her veins. Machines whispered beside her like they knew a secret Levi couldn't bear to ask.
Her breathing was shallow.
Her hands lay limp at her sides.
She hadn't moved in seven days.
Levi hadn't moved either.
He sat, same chair, same posture—knees drawn up, elbows resting on them, spine curled inward like he was caving in from the inside out. His coat had been discarded on the back of the chair days ago. His shirt was still soaked through with blood—her blood. He hadn't changed. Hadn't eaten. Hadn't slept.
One hand remained in her hair. What was left of it.
The once-lustrous white was now matted, uneven, crusted with blood. Still, he brushed it gently, tenderly, over and over again—like the motion might stir her, might bring her back.
"Come back," He whispered. Again. And again.
"Come back to me."
He said it like a prayer. Like a curse. Like something broken and desperate.
And not once did she respond.
They had tried to make him leave.
The nurses, on the first day, were firm—"Captain, you need rest," "Captain, you're compromising her care."
By the second day, one of them reached to adjust her IV with too much force, and Levi had a blade to her throat in less than a breath. It didn't matter that his hand was shaking. It didn't matter that his eyes were hollow.
He would have killed her.
On the third day, he stopped speaking to anyone else. Just her. Just her name. Just the same two words:
"Stay with me."
On the fourth, a medic tried to sedate him "for his own health." Levi broke the man's nose and cracked two ribs.
No one came after that.
Now the room was his.
And hers.
A quiet grave they hadn't quite finished digging yet.
Far from the infirmary, behind clean desks and crisper uniforms, murmurs stirred.
"…He's still in there?" a soldier muttered, half-disbelieving, as he passed a clipboard to the next.
"Seven days," came the reply. "Hasn't stepped more than twenty feet from her bed."
"He's gone feral."
"He hasn't reported to Erwin."
One man scoffed. "He's turned the medical ward into his damn den. Let him rot there if he wants."
A chuckle.
"Strongest soldier in the world. Undone by a girl."
Then silence. Because Erwin had entered the room. His eyes were hard. Sharper than steel. Still, he spoke softly.
"That girl has saved your lives more times than you know."
The room froze.
"Without her, there is no Levi. And without Levi... there is no humanity. Show some respect."
Back in the infirmary, Levi sat slumped beside her.
He was pale now. Dark circles like bruises under his eyes. His cravat was still knotted, his boots still on, but his body was sagging.
The only thing upright—Was his hand. Still resting on her hair. Still combing through it slowly.
"Bea," he murmured. "You're stronger than this. You always have been."
Nothing.
No twitch.
No breath deeper than the one before.
A knock broke the silence.
"Go away," Levi snapped.
It opened anyway.
Erwin. He stepped in, closed the door behind him.
"Levi."
"Get out."
"You haven't eaten."
"I'm not leaving."
"You're going to collapse."
"I don't care."
Erwin paused at the edge of the bed.
"Levi. You won't help her by dying beside her."
Levi turned his head slowly. There was no fury. Just something worse.
Grief.
Defeat.
Love that had nowhere left to go.
"Erwin," he said softly, voice a dry rasp. "If she dies… I'm going with her."
Erwin didn't argue. Didn't speak.
He just sat down across from him—and kept silent vigil, shoulder to shoulder with the broken man who refused to let go.