Chapter Text
Levi blinked, once, twice, three times, but the world around him remained pale and unfocused. Nothing around him seemed to make a lot of sense, as if seen through a warped mirror. His entire body ached fiercely, a deep throbbing pain radiating from his core making him feel like he was being crushed. But as far as he could tell, there were no titans around, and although sluggishly, he could still move his limbs -- or, at least, he thought he could. Unfeeling fingers grasped through endless white, and his body was impossibly heavy. He felt so tired. So, so tired -- and so, so incredibly warm. His entire body radiated as if engulfed in flames. He wanted to close his eyes and go back to sleep, but his instincts told him that he shouldn’t, told him that he had to keep moving, get inside. He scrambled to get his legs underneath himself, one shaky limb managing to gain purchase before he tilted face first as an explosion of unpleasantry shrouded his left side.
Tossing his head, whipping his frosted bangs back, Levi forced his eyes to fixate on what was actually going on beneath him. His leg looked weird, but he couldn’t quite grasp what was wrong -- it hurt, and he didn’t want to deal with it right now. He wanted to go home and melt into the covers and go to sleep -- didn’t want all this weirdness to happen because it made his brain all frazzled -- made him feel stupid like he did when he first came to the surface; like someone small, insignificant and always in the way. Someone trapped and dumb that didn’t know words and letters and had panicked the first time he had experienced snow because he felt like he couldn’t breathe. The flakes had fallen from the sky so densely, and he couldn’t get away from them, and he had sucked in air so desperately he had started to feel lightheaded. Hanji had been there then, and she had laughed, told him to stick his tongue out, and asked him how he was going to choke on something that melted the moment it hit a surface warmer than it.
That was how Levi would melt against her when they spent their first nights together. They had both deluded themselves into believing that it was simply a way to keep warm in the frigid winters beyond the walls, and for a long time, they stubbornly kept the naïve arrangement as just that. However, an accidental brush against bare skin gradually turned into a more deliberate caress against sore muscles, warm breaths against freezing skin, and burning kisses feathering across lesions and blistered skin. Hanji’s warmth was addicting, her body like a furnace, and Levi was a snowflake, melting against it. These days, Levi rarely slept anywhere else if he had the choice.
Hanji. Right. Where was she? And Erwin, Mike? Where was everybody? He needed… he needed to check on that brat -- that showoff, that -- what’s-his-face. Ugh.
The kid would be titan food before he could grow hair on his chest if he didn’t get rid of that obnoxious hero complex. Idiot going off like that...
Unless he had gotten eaten already. Who the fuck knew?
Levi realized faintly that he was crawling -- why the hell wasn’t he walking? This seemed like a highly ineffective way of getting around. He didn’t have the energy to care. And why the fuck was it so warm? His cloak felt heavy -- it was draped soggily over his shoulders, and, eventually, he decided to get rid of it altogether, a button popping off in the effort of shrugging the heavy piece of fabric off with clumsy, stiff fingers and letting the wind snatch it away and carry it wherever it wanted to take it. It was just getting in the way, and he didn’t need it.
So he kept moving, without knowing exactly why. It was pitch black when he looked up, blindingly white if he looked down. Where was he going?
Why was he crawling? It seemed like a highly ineffective… way...
He was so tired.
Maybe he should close his eyes -- just for a few moments. He could count to ten. Close his eyes and count to ten, and then he could get back to... to... whatever he was doing.
He was sweating -- so warm. Something told him that he shouldn’t be warm, but he was, and it felt nice. He wanted to cradle his head on his cloak, close his eyes, and rest on it just for a moment, but he couldn’t find it… must’ve lost it somewhere. That was dumb.
He wanted to close his eyes, so he did. It was just for a few seconds.
Just… just a few.
A heavy air rivaled only by the strong wind accompanying them lingered over the rescue team as their horses slipped haltingly through the frozen terrain. After nearly two hours of searching and finding partially covered areas of heavy bleeding and Levi’s cloak and gloves scattered along a path that made no sense for someone trying to be found, the question of turning back was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Any longer, and they might be in serious danger themselves. The faint light from the moon was rapidly dimming behind bold gray clouds, and the crimson spotted trail they had been following had vanished beneath the acres of snow dunes. If the blizzard kept rising, they were in danger of losing their way back.
The tension was tearing on all of them. At some point they had stopped talking and kept up the search in a ruinous silence only disturbed by howling winds and the low crackling beneath the horses’ hooves as the snow compressed beneath them. Hanji was riding in the lead, resolutely trotting ahead and ignoring the unvoiced concerns about trivial things like finding their way back to the base or freezing to death.
Petra was riding closely behind Mike, doing her best to hide the fact that she was seeking shelter from the wind behind his enormous silhouette when Hanji loudly declared that the rest of them could do whatever the hell they liked -- in fact, she would prefer it if the younger scouts retreated. But Petra, despite being the youngest of the group and only six months into her recruitment, boldly objected, regardless of the disappointed slump of Nifa’s shoulders. She hated crushing her bunkmate’s hope like that, but this was important.
Levi
was important.
As a little girl, Petra would always join her grandfather to see off the masses of cocky, fresh-faced soldiers as they stormed out the gates, and then again when the battered remains returned. In her naïve, childish mind, she would dream about going with them someday. To protect everyone, and fight the beasts that had left her and her grandpa all on their own.
Those dreams died together with those young scouts. It soon became clear to her that no one would survive out there, and she couldn’t abandon her grandfather for a fate that meant certain death. If she died out there beyond the walls, it would defeat the purpose of why she wanted to join. She was no good to anyone dead, least of all her ailing grandfather. After this realization had hit her, punched her, squeezed out the last meager drop of hope still residing inside her young heart, the grimness of the funeral wagons accompanying the troops, containing whatever body parts they had been able to retrieve, had gone from bad to unbearable.
Every time it all appared bleaker and bleaker and Petra had all but lost hope in her childish dreams of freedom up until that day when the delegation had ridden out of Wall Maria with their heads raised so high it had spiked major uproar amongst the townsfolk. They had been sure that Commander Shadis had finally lost the last of his marbles and had dragged the rest of his council with him into some kind of shared psychosis. For the next three weeks, they were sure they had seen the Survey Corps off for the very last time. But then, twenty-three days later, they returned and all rumors about the commander’s mental state were laid to rest (well; at least for a little while) .
For years they had seen hundreds of soldiers leave for missions and anywhere between ten to forty percent return. This time, the people who crowded the streets to mock and chide the survivors were dumbstruck as they moved aside to make way for the thick formations riding through the cobbled streets. Petra herself had stood wide-eyed, clutching her grandfather’s hand, when she saw him .
He was a new face that she couldn’t remember having seen before, though she never bothered to notice any of the new ones these days. Years ago, Petra and her friends would group up and giggle about which of the new recruits they were going to marry when they grew up, but usually, it would be the first and last time they ever saw them. But this man stood out; small, lean, and gloomy, a hard gaze glaring menacingly at second commander Erwin Smith’s back. She’d be wondering several times since then, what made him stand out so much. Perhaps it was a coincidence that she had noticed him, or perhaps it was how close to the leaders he was riding instead of in the back with the other low-ranked scouts. It might have been the venomous scowl solidified on his features despite the celebratory cheers that accompanied them as they moved through the crowd, so very opposite of the shell-shocked expressions of the other rookies who had been lucky, or unlucky enough to survive.
It didn’t matter what had made him stand out because the next day all the tabloids were writing about the underground hooligan the military had rescued from the merciless sewerage below Mitras, who single handedly had killed tens of titans and saved hundreds of his comrades on his first excursion. Humanity’s strongest: Levi. Just Levi.
He had given them all something new to believe in, something humanity desperately needed to reignite the spirit that had been long lost to the empty seats at their dinner tables and the grueling nightmares of grotesque giants at night, and Petra had finally dared to start dreaming again.
There was no way she could abandon Levi out here to suffer such a pitiful and undignified death after everything he had done for them, and for anyone to suggest that they should head back without him made her blood boil hot.
“Hanji --” Mike began meekly and tapped his heels against the horse when he was ignored. His stallion sped up, leaving Petra to once again fight the merciless winds. He stepped right in front of Hanji, forcing Miletus to halt with a dissatisfied squeal.
“Don’t,” Hanji barked warningly, gesturing wildly for him to get out of her way. Petra cringed inwardly. She had never heard her sound so strict.
“You know as well as I do that this whole rescue mission is becoming redundant,” Mike muttered tensely. “I don’t want to end the search, but--”
“Then don’t even bring it up! He can’t be far away!” Hanji pulled Miletus out of the way. “He’s bleeding like a stuck pig for goodness' sake!”
She visibly shuddered at the memory of the crimson that had still been visible through the rapidly accumulating snow no more than fifteen minutes ago, and Petra felt a bolt of sympathy in her stomach. At this point, he was probably as much at risk of bleeding out as he was succumbing to the cold.
“I’m sorry, Hanji, but we’re nearly at the edge of the woods. Our field of vision is shit and the torches burn up quickly with these winds--”
"-- Don't you dare, Zacharias! Don’t fucking dare say what you were about to say --"
“Pretty soon it’s gonna be us returning,” Mike motioned between their small formation, “or none of us.”
Petra had heard enough. She tightened her reins and squeezed her legs, hovering slightly above her seat as her lithe mare sprang into galopp. She could hear Hanji calling after her as she governed her horse between trees and shrubs, holding her breath when the icy air began hurting her lungs. She did feel the time constraint -- they were all tired and if they were unable to get back before daylight the risk of encountering titans would increase significantly. Which was why they didn’t have time to stand around and argue; they needed to move.
Olive eyes squinted intently, scrutinizing her surroundings as she rushed through the snowy woodlands. There was no way, no chance that they weren’t going to find him. He had to be here somewhere. He couldn’t just vanish into thin air, and there wouldn't be enough snow to have buried him completely yet -- could it?
She heard hooves following her, but she didn’t slow down. Instead, she commanded her horse to go faster, and stopped caring about the pits that made her horse stumble and the branches that whipped across her face. A sort of panic gripped her, or a realization, something that made her feel nauseous and dizzy. They may not find him. They might actually have to go back without him, go back and face the masses of people that expected them to return alongside him; that one person who had brought back their faith those years ago and now she was a part of the group that had been unable to protect him after he had saved them, over and over and over again.
They would go back to… hopelessness. They would disappoint everyone. Everything would go back to being as pointless as before and she had signed her life away to a certain death sentence after all and had taken her grandad with her by association.
Nanaba called her name, but she refused to slow down. She could not make herself return to the base without having every inch of these woods covered. There was no way she could live with herself not knowing… not knowing if they might have been able to save him.
“Petra, we’ve found him!”
She froze the moment Nanaba’s words registered, nearly tipping off her horse’s back when it sensed her tension and halted their pace. She calmed her with a firm pat on the neck.
Hanji sat frozen on her horse for a moment. She couldn’t quite believe her eyes, was unable to truly dare to believe it, scared that the freezing cold and fatigue might be playing tricks on her mind.
“Mike—”
He had already jumped off his horse and was stomping through the knee-deep snow.
“Is it Levi? Mike,” she demanded with growing urgency, but he kept walking towards the half-buried bundle on the ground. Hanji had no idea what was wrong with her. She was terrified that it wasn’t Levi, while also being petrified to see him injured. It was evident that they wouldn’t find him irritated and grumpy but otherwise okay, wandering around in the snow. They had known for a while that he was bleeding, that he was delirious with hypothermia and for the past two hours she had wanted nothing but to find him, but now… she was just scared.
“It’s Levi.” There was no urgency in Mike’s voice, just cool assertiveness. Hanji could see him kneeling on the ground and his broad back was hiding Levi’s entire form.
“Please,” she begged as she slid off her horse. She needed him to talk. Just once in his muted, collected life — she needed him to show some emotion. All she could see was his shoulder’s shifting as he shuffled through the snow, probably digging up the parts of Levi that were concealed. Images of their deceased comrade's detached limbs conjured up in her mind.
“Get over here,” he finally uttered, but it didn’t give Hanji any more information than what his words revealed.
Her knees shook as she tried to follow the indents he had made in the snow, his long strides tugging at her overworked hamstrings until she paused a short distance away.
“Mike, I really need you to tell me what’s going on. I really, really need you to—”
“He’s alive.” Mike turned toward her, the shift of his body revealing Levi on the ground.
Levi’s hair and eyebrows were covered in frost, his fluttering eyelids seemingly being glued shut by ice. His lips had taken on a sickly tinge of blue and if it hadn’t been for the occasional puffs of white fog emitting from between them, it would be difficult to know that he was still alive.
The evidence of life was what it took for Hanji to leap into action. She tore off her right glove with her teeth and pressed it against Levi’s neck.
“His pulse is very slow. We need to get him back to the base right away.” She then rested her ungloved hand against his chest and noted that his breathing was severely shallow. There was a faint howl rattling in his chest from each inhale he took. A sickly gleam covered his deathly pale skin, and she noticed that he wasn't shaking. That wasn't good. They needed to get his body fighting again.
“Should we do something with this before moving him?” Mike asked, prompting Hanji to look further down Levi’s form. Her eyes grew wide when she finally saw what he was pointing to. Levi’s leg looked like a broken branch, curved unnaturally to the side of his body. It was bare, the pant leg being mostly cut off. Beneath a tightly knotted tourniquet, the broken bone stuck out of the leg at an odd angle, blood still sluggishly seeping at the bottom of the gruesome wound. The flesh around it was swollen and had taken on an unnatural yellow color. Hanji felt her stomach coil as she heard horses approaching. Soon, Nanaba stood behind them with all of their blankets in her arms, and Petra carrying a medkit. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Nifa standing back holding their horses, jogging in place to keep herself warm.
Nanaba looked unfazed by the horrid injury, while Petra looked airly away. Hanji couldn’t blame her.
Her eyes fixed back on the mangled leg. Levi’s trademark stiletto knife nearly slipped out of the tight bundle which would render the torturous knot useless if it had fallen all the way out. He must have been in an enormous amount of pain. He’d done an excellent job on the tourniquet, of course. Only Levi could possibly stay lucid for long enough to do something like that to himself. However, they needed to get him back right away to treat it, or they would risk having to choose between letting him bleed out or lose the entire leg when the tourniquet had caused too much muscle damage.
Hanji bit her lip. It felt idiotic to worry about Levi’s leg when he probably was hanging on by an inch of his life. It seemed so unlikely that he would die though. He was like the cockroach they had found in the women’s barracks during her first year as a recruit. One of the fierce, older girls had trampled on the little creature, tried to crush it beneath the heel of her boot and tossed a bucket of water over it without being able to kill it. While she had gone to fetch a paper box to catch it in, swearing she would set it on fire outside in pure rage from its stubborn resilience, Hanji had caught it on her own and kept it as a pet in the lab. She named it Steve.
Shit. She had totally forgotten she had him. She wondered if it was still alive in that box. She should probably check on him when they returned. It probably was fine though -- stubborn little bastard.
That was just it though. As little as Levi would share about his past, she was sure he had survived a hell of a lot more than being stomped on and threatened to be set on fire, and that was without the salvation of her adopting him and forgetting him in a cardboard box on a shelf in the research lab. He had his life and the scars to prove that he would persevere. And now, he had crashed to the ground and made his way through several feet of snow with bones poking out of his leg, and he had still had the mind to tie an adequate tourniquet to staunch the bleeding, which probably had saved his life.
He didn’t need Hanji to save him -- the little guy was probably even stronger than Steve.
What Hanji could do for him was make sure that his leg wouldn’t die. This was probably the only thing she would ever do for him that he wasn’t able to do for himself, so she better not fuck it up.
Her hands moved tentatively to the broken limb to examine its color. Any sign of purple and they would have to remove the band, which again would leave them with even less time to get him back.
Over the open break above his knee were a couple of terrible scratches, and Hanji brushed the tips of her fingers over the smeared crimson covering the nearly blue leg. When she looked back down on the streaks she'd painted, she nearly barked out a laugh. Petra moved back, watching her as if she had lost her mind.
"Levi, you brilliant little moron," she bellowed keenly, using her cloak to wipe away the crusted crimson to find the digits embedded in his thigh. "Mike, what time is it?"
Mike paused, puzzled, the blanket spread between his giant wingspan, ready to wrap the small body. "Uh, about 19:00 hours," he huffed impatiently.
"Awesome. That means we have about one hour and fifteen minutes to get back before the muscle damage will most likely be completely irreversible.” She beamed with misplaced credence, finally getting out of the way for Nanaba to quickly and raggedly splint the leg to the best of her ability before Mike gathered the still figure in the blanket.
Petra struggled to keep up with Hanji’s long strides towards the horses. “Wha-what was that? Is he okay? What did you see?” She rambled anxiously, looking to the older woman for reassurance. The young recruit obviously looked up to Levi, always lingering close to him during mealtimes, stealing swift glances his way in training to make sure he was watching her maneuvering. The girl was smitten; Hanji knew.
“He carved the time he tied the tourniquet into his leg so we wouldn’t keep it on for too long when we found him,” Hanji hummed fondly, something like pride radiating through her words, accepting Miletus’ reins back from Nifa. Nanaba had taken Mike’s horse and led the enormous steed a few feet back to meet the two males, accepting the bundle from his arms as Mike climbed onto it and carefully handed Levi back over when Mike was properly seated. They secured Levi to Mike’s chest with ropes, but the shaggy man still held Levi tightly to his chest with an arm across his back.
The journey back went by quickly, and Hanji's heart raced the whole way. She had painted on her trademark careless grin, unyielding optimistic attitude, because, what else was there to do? Should she collapse and sob and pray? Maybe that was what she wanted to do, but that was not how she did things. She didn't consider herself a leader -- she was more like a pulse. Something steady and reassuring, constant, and that was her job right now: to be sturdy. As much as she wanted to envelop Levi and hold him as close to her body as humanly possible -- keep him safe and warm and keep his body fighting by pure will -- that was not something she could do for him.
She watched Mike cradle Levi, his black head of hair lolling limply back and forth, draped sideways on the enormous sand-colored horse with Mike's large paws safeguarding him. She wanted to ask him how he was doing, but she knew Mike was keeping him safe, that he was paying attention and would let them know if something seemed off.
No news was good news. And that was what she had to keep telling herself even after they came back. Erwin met them outside. Mike handed him the bundled up Levi and the second in command disappeared hastily into the stone structure. Shadis stopped them once inside, asking questions, demanding answers while Hanji’s gaze lingered through the hallway, watching Erwin’s retreating back until he vanished behind the door to the room they used as a sickbay.
She kept standing in the same place for however long it took before Erwin was ushered out of the room. He eventually convinced her to change out of her wet clothes and sit by the fireplace. They already had one very important asset to the Corps nearly dying from hypothermia today; they didn’t need another one. He assured her that there was nothing more she could do for Levi right now, that the doctors had everything under control.
Once she came back from changing, he wrapped a thick woolen quilt over her shoulders and gave her a steaming hot bowl of soup, sitting with her through the evening until he fell asleep there on the floor, still sitting up, head leaning back against the wall.
Hanji couldn’t sleep. Every time the house creaked under the force of the howling winds outside she would bolt upright and watch for movement by the San. But nothing happened.
No news was good news.
Hanji woke up snapping for air- her entire chest felt constricted as if something had grabbed a hold of it and was squeezing it impossibly tight. Her hands bunched up by her throat as she heaved. She could breathe easily enough, but still, it was as if something was blocking her airways. She recognized an anxiety attack almost immediately, even though it felt strangely foreign. Her eyes fixed on the dark hallway where Erwin had ushered Levi inside what must have been several hours ago at this point.
Erwin’s head had slouched onto her shoulder during the night, and she carefully shrugged him off. One part of her hoped she didn’t wake him up, while a different part hoped that he at least perked long enough to lay down flat so they wouldn’t have to listen to his complaints about having a stiff neck the whole ride back. The blonde mumbled incoherently, seemingly searching for the missing heat before finding relief on the fur felts on the floor. Hanji adjusted the blanket they had previously shared back over his shoulders, smiling fondly.
“You can’t fool me, you dingus. You’re just a big baby at the core, aren’t you?”
Hanji stretched her legs, rubbed a palm across her chest, and wished the tension there would disappear quicker. Then, she stepped over several resting soldiers, careful not to rile anyone, and moved silently through the dim corridor leading to Levi. Her woolen socks were still wet, marking her steps until she stood outside the door. For a brief moment, she wondered if she should knock but then decided against it. Everyone was sleeping, as they should be. She was just going to make sure he was okay, and there was no need to announce it to everyone.
The door let out an agonizing squeak when she opened it. Hanji felt a pang of anger tickle down her spine by the sound, as if the door could help that its hinges hadn’t been oiled in a long time. The hallway behind her was illuminated by the burning fire inside the sickroom, and the heat from it hit her like a tidal wave.
She swiftly slipped inside and closed the door behind her back to not let the suffocating heat out. There was a reason for it, after all. There was only one bed in the room, the other injured soldiers residing in the room across the hallway. They were all chilled when getting back from missions in winter, but the heat radiating from this room was way beyond what it normally took to reduce the frost from their bodies.
Yet, beneath layers of blankets, clattering teeth were still audible from the bed. The anxiety in her own chest found a newfound hold around her heart.
“Levi?” Her voice was hushed, merely above a whisper. She didn’t expect him to reply, and he didn’t, only faint whimpers begging through the flickering light of the fireplace.
She sauntered towards the bed on damp socks, scooting a stool left by the foot of the bed closer, and got seated. Despite her better judgment, she lowered the blankets to Levi’s chin to get a better look at his face.
His skin was still grayish, lips pale but no longer blue. That was good, at least. The gash on his forehead had been bandaged, and a bruise was blooming beneath the dressing, forming what would become a magnificent deep purple mark down the side of his right eye. She rested her hand against his temple and felt a bolt of dread curling in her stomach at how cold his skin still felt despite the heated room.
Levi responded with a breathless, pained sob, unconsciously cowering away from her hand. Hanji snapped it away as if she had been burned.
"I'm sorry Levi, I didn't mean to hurt you," she offered silently, but the apology didn't seem to reach him as he kept twitching, raspy breaths heaving brokenly in his chest. Hanji felt her own anxiety spike again, the small comfort at just seeing him quickly fading away from his heightened distress. Levi shook his head, damp bangs flicking across his forehead. His arms squirmed beneath the piles of blankets, struggling to break free.
"H-hey," she tried again, willing her lips into a half-smile, hoping it would disguise her own increasing heartache. She hated seeing him like this. It was all wrong. Falling apart was her job, and he was supposed to be the strong one. Levi was always the one with his feet rooted firmly in the ground, reliable and unyielding like an old oak tree. But right now, half-conscious in bed fighting invisible demons, he seemed small and fragile, like a crumbling leaf, quaking and struggling. Shattering.
Hanji began peeling off the sheets, finally catching his hands as they frantically broke free from their imprisonment. They were both fully bandaged, not an inch of skin visible because of the horrid frostbite. The soft gauze felt strange, yet comforting against her fingers as she led his grasping digits to her cheeks, letting him claw and feel and familiarize himself against her friendly features.
His agitated fidgeting gradually slowed down once they found her glasses, then, he carefully lowered his hands and felt her hooked nose, broken fingertips carefully caressing the slight bump before traveling down to her lips and resting there for a moment. She responded by kissing them gently. A chuckle lingered in her throat as Levi’s breathing evened out. His hands ran up her face and settled in her hair, carting through her tangled locks, scratching at her scalp.
Suddenly, Hanji’s vision went blurry. She blinked in confusion, wetness trailing down her face. A mix between a scoff of disbelief and a sigh of relief tore through her chest and all welled up into something resembling a sob. The moment the sound escaped her, Levi’s flickering eyes shot open. Heavy lids, not yet seeing clearly, blinked at her in surprise for a moment, before Hanji flopped onto his chest, tangling her arms around his neck and crying freely.
Hesitant hands were soon awkwardly patting her back and she recognized her Levi; fully and completely overwhelmed by her overbearing outburst of emotions while simultaneously doing whatever he could to offer her comfort, and that made her cry even more.
“H-Hanji,” he whispered questioningly, rubbing her shoulder stiffly. His voice sounded weak, strained as if in pain and Hanji suddenly realized that she was crushing him under her weight. She quickly broke free of their clumsy hug, brushing feebly at her eyes causing her glasses to fall off her nose and onto the mattress.
“I’m sorry,” she blubbered thickly, fruitlessly trying to hide her tears as if it wasn’t obvious that she was full-on bawling. When she finally dared to look back up, she found Levi diligently cleaning the tears off her spectacles, using the bandages on his hands. Once he noticed her inspecting him, he clicked his tongue and held out the steel-rimmed glasses.
“How can you see anything out of them? They’re always so filthy,” he scolded hoarsely as Hanji accepted the glasses, grateful that he didn’t comment about the chunky droplets that had covered the lenses.
“And still I see more with them than without them,” Hanji croaked, finding her voice strangled by tears. Yet, she managed a broken smile, looking down at the exhausted man who still, despite being more dead than alive merely hours ago, had found the strength to take care of her, just like he always did. He looked back at her, the crease of his lip curving slightly – the closest thing he usually came to a smile.