Chapter 256: sobbing knight

Eren froze, his hand hovering in the air as he stared at the shattered girl in front of him.

"What do you mean, captain?" Eren asked, his voice shaking with genuine, helpless confusion. "How could you possibly think that? I care about you. You’re my girlfriend, Emma."

"Whose girlfriend?!"

The words tore out of her throat like a raw scream. Emma looked at him through a blinding flood of tears, her face completely ruined with snot, grief, and uncontrollable weeping.

Eren’s breath hitched in his throat. He had never once seen Emma cry like this. She hadn’t wept when the original Eren bullied her. She hadn’t cried when the entire knightly order treated her like an unwanted commoner freak, forcing her to swing her wooden sword alone in the freezing rain until her palms bled.

In the original storyline of the game, even when the old Duke met his gruesome end, she had simply bitten her lip till it bled and raised her steel in silent, stoic vengeance.

Yet here she was, weeping like an abandoned child, shaking so violently the mattress rattled beneath them.

Emma lunged forward, her trembling hands latching onto his bathrobe with desperation.

"Who’s your damn girlfriend, Eren?! Me?!" she sobbed, dragging him inches from her tear-streaked eyes. "I’m not! A girl isn’t your girlfriend when you decide to dump her and sneak off into the underworld to do suicidal, illegal shit without her!"

"Emma, listen to me," Eren pleaded, his hands gently closing over her wrists. "I didn’t purposely leave you out. It was never about excluding you. It was an insane situation—"

"Fuck your situation!" Emma screamed, hot tears splashing directly onto his collarbone. "Fuck every single excuse out of your lying, pretty mouth! You told Norelia! You included Aria, but where the hell am I?!"

Her grip tightened.

"Am I not worth it, Eren?! Am I not good enough to stand in the dark with you?!"

She glared straight into his blue eyes, her teeth grinding in sheer, wild fury. She wanted to beat him bloody. She wanted to crack his ribs, shatter his jaw, lock him in a dungeon where no one could ever touch him again.

Emma ripped her right hand off his collar, coiling her fingers into an iron fist to punch him.

She raised it high above his cheek.

Eren didn’t flinch. He didn’t raise his guard. He just looked up at her, his blue eyes dark, steady, and achingly tender, offering his face entirely to her judgment.

Her fist trembled in the air. For two seconds, the Swordmaster hung suspended in her fury.

She couldn’t do it. No matter how much his reckless arrogance tore her to pieces, she loved the suicidal idiot far too damn much to leave another bruise on his scarred face.

Thump.

Instead of shattering his cheek, Emma’s fist pathetically tapped her knuckles against his chest. With a broken, suffocating wail, she dropped her forehead straight into his chest, burying her weeping, embarrassed face against his warm skin.

"Am I useless to you, Eren?" she whimpered, her voice muffled against him. "Tell me the truth... am I just dead weight in your eyes?"

"Never," Eren whispered instantly, wrapping his arms around her broad, muscular shoulders and pulling her tightly against him. "Never in a million lifetimes, Emma."

"Did you... did you stop loving me?" she choked out, her fingers weakly clutching his robe.

"Not until my heart stops beating," Eren answered, his voice thick with a raw, fierce certainty that made his own throat ache. "Not until the day I take my last breath, and even then, I’ll find a way to annoy you from the afterlife."

"Then why...?" Emma sobbed, her fingernails digging deep into his back as if anchoring herself against a hurricane. "Do you have any idea how terrifying it was?! When Norelia broke down... when she finally confessed where you had gone... my entire world went completely black, Eren."

Eren tightened his embrace, burying his nose into the wild tangle of her bubblegum-pink hair.

"And then that ring..." Emma wept openly, the words pouring out in a frantic, unhinged torrent of a week of suppressed dread. "When that thing ignited on my finger... I thought you were gone. I felt my chest cave in, Eren. I swear to you, right there on that muddy mountain pass... if my bond had told me your heart stopped... I have died right there in the dirt. I can’t do this world without you."

"I’m sorry," Eren breathed, resting his cheek against her temple, his own eyes burning with quiet, stinging moisture. "Emma, I’m so damn sorry."

"Stop saying that!" she yelled, slamming her forehead against his shoulder in agonized frustration. "You always end every disaster with a pretty apology, and then you turn around and sprint straight back toward the same thing!"

She clamped onto him with terrifying, bone-crushing strength, wrapping her arms and legs around him on the mattress, clinging to him.

"Please don’t leave me behind again," Emma begged, all her warrior pride stripped completely bare, her voice cracking into pathetic, desperate whimpers. "I can’t imagine a life without you, Eren. I won’t survive it. I want to spend my entire life with you. Every single damn day of it. Please."

"That was always my dream too, captain," Eren whispered, his hands tracing soothing circles across her trembling, tanned back. "Every reckless thing I do... is just to make sure we actually get to have that life."

Emma sniffled, pulling her face back just enough to look at him, her grey eyes swollen, red, and burning with fierce, desperate resolve.

"Then use me, damn it!" she demanded, sniffling through her tears. "I trained until my bones broke! I am the youngest Swordmaster on this continent! I am your girlfriend, Eren! Rely on me! Even if you have to march straight into hell, you take me with you! Don’t you dare keep me in the dark ever again!"

She pressed her forehead against his brow, breathing heavily against his lips.

"I love you, you bastard. I love you so much it makes me feel like I’m losing my mind."

Eren looked into her ruined, beautiful face, his lips curving into a gentle smile.

"I love you too, Emma. More than my own foolish neck."

At those words, the dam broke entirely.

She just collapsed back into his chest, crying loudly and ugly, clutching him like a lifeline while Eren held her through the silence of the room, letting her wash away every ounce of terror she had carried.

***

A few minutes later, the storm had finally subsided into ragged, hitching sniffles.

Emma had rolled over onto her side, facing away from him with the white linen sheet pulled up to her chin, curled into a rigid, defensive little ball of pink-haired stubbornness.

Eren lay propped up on one elbow beside her, head resting casually against his palm, looking at the back of her head with fond, amused eyes.

"So," Eren drawled softly, reaching out with his free hand to playfully poke her shoulder through the blanket. "Are we still doing the silent treatment? Why is my terrifying Swordmaster still sulking?"