Chapter 37 - Trauma

                                    

                                          
The events that followed in the next days were enough to cause Lara a series of problems, mainly psychological. Because, it all happened so quickly, she didn't have much time to process and digest the information.
	In a period of just a few days, Lara discovered that at least four of her friends she made in Winter Training were Titans, with three of them with the goal to destroy humanity, which made Lara feel extremely betrayed.
	First, they found out that the Female Titan was Annie, a girl who had taught Lara some incredibly good fighting techniques in Winter Training and that she used to play fightings with Levi. Her capture was a catastrophic event, leaving much of the Stohess District pretty destroyed.
	Besides the fact that at one point during this capture, Hange played the smarty-pants at the Female Titan, who kicked everything around, destroying many buildings, and if Moblit hadn't pushed Lara, a rock would have crushed her completely. When Hange found out what had almost happened to her daughter, she became so desperate that she couldn't sleep for at least three days, where she would stare at the ceiling, wide-eyed.
	Although they managed to capture the Female Titan, they ended up discovering something that visited Lara's nightmares almost every night: that there were Titans inside the Walls. The horrifying sight of a Titan's face appearing in a hole that Annie had made in the Wall caused Lara to wake up screaming in the middle of many nights for longer than acceptable. At least Eren Jäeger would remain in the Survey Corps for now.
	Then, in a period of just two days, Lara discovered that Ymir, Reiner, and Bertholdt or Burrito (whatever!) were also Titans. To make things worse, they discovered that Reiner and Bartholomew were actually the Armored Titan and the Colossal Titan, who destroyed the Walls of Shiganshina years ago, for example.
	The revelation of their true identities caused an epic battle, where Lara and Hange both ended up with some severe burns from the steam the Colossal Titan spewed out when they fought it. If things weren't good, they got even worse when they discovered that Eren had been kidnapped by Reiner and Boruto, accompanied by Ymir, which caused such a bloody chase, that Commander Erwin returned from the rescue mission without one of his arms.
	It all ended with everyone discovering that the King who ruled them was actually just a puppet and that the true heir to the throne was a girl who had been very nice to Lara in Winter Training, named Krista Lenz, or rather, Historia Reiss, her real name.
	Lara's friends also told her that they discovered a new Titan "race", which they named "Beast Titan", an extremely grotesque creature with huge arms and which had the bad habit of throwing rocks at people.
	To Levi's great unhappiness, extensive studies were done by Hange and Lara, and they came up with a theory that the Titans were, in fact, transformed humans. He was actually very shaken by the information, for he realized that he had spent his life killing people. To try to comfort him, the girls prepared a special breakfast for Levi, but in the end, it didn't help much.
	All these events caused Lara to start having bad nights of sleep, where she would wake up screaming or crying, having to make Hange even sleep in her bed, for she wasn't able to be alone anymore. Sometimes, Lara also found herself staring off into space with scary thoughts and was sweating more than usual, leaving her clothes drenched in sweat.
	But, of all these things that happened, nothing shook her more than knowing that Mike had been killed by Titans. Nobody really knew how it really was, because apparently, he was alone at the place of his death.
	One day, when Levi was heading to his room late afternoon, he found Lara lying in a fetal position in front of Mike's bedroom door. Levi ran over there and when he noticed, he saw that Lara was sleeping, with many tear marks on her face, while holding her stuffed horse and a paper in her hand.
	Levi took the paper and saw that it was actually a drawing that she had done, of Lara on Mike's piggyback, as he always did to play with her, because she loved the fact that he was so tall, his head sometimes touched the top of the door jamb. Looking at the drawing, Levi felt great sorrow within his heart, for Mike had also been a great friend of his.
	Gently, he picked Lara up to place her on her bed.
	"Daddy?" she called, in a choked, sleepy voice.
"Yes?"
	"I think I'll change the name of my horsey... It won't be Jean anymore..."
"And which one will it be?"
"Mike..."
Levi pressed his lips together, feeling a lump in his throat.
"Why, baby?"
"Because when I was on Mike's piggyback, he made me feel like I could touch the skies."