So this is my second Attack on Titan fic. This is a drabble, I think it's kind of... bittersweet. No pairings. Sorry for the possible mistakes. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Attack on Titan belongs to Hajime Isayama, not me.
It was like he had always imagined but completely different at the same time. The vast blue stretch in front of his eyes seemed to be alive. Even when the waters stayed calm they bobbed like some primitive god breathed life into them. He wondered what kind of creatures would harbor that huge sea or how many secrets it would keep under that dark waters. They were not crystalline as he had always believed, like the river flowing beside his house in Shiganshina. An eternity had spent since then. They had gone through many years, pain and deaths to be where they were.
Besides him, Jean was about to cry. He blinked in an attempt to repress the tears of emotion that burnt in his eyes. The ocean was too beautiful not by itself but because of all the things they had to sacrifice to contemplate it. He put a hand on his chest clenching his fist; it was not the characteristic military movement but it seemed like he was trying to keep what he was feeling in that moment.
"It's... It's..." he said, his voice was hoarse.
"I know" Armin answered. There were no words to describe it.
It was so hard to believe the war was over. They had come to think that they wouldn't live to see it. So there where then, facing the sea. There were much less people than before. The amount due had been high, very high. They had paid it in blood, in lives, in suffering.
His soul shrank thinking about those that should be sharing that moment with them, those that had stayed behind. They were friends, family, and mates. No, they were more than that. They were brothers. Their names were more than a memory.
"Armin?"
"Huh?"
"That's all? It's over?" asked Jean, like if he couldn't believe it. It was not possible to blame him for it.
"Yes. It's over, Jean" he could still feel the lump in his throat. "No more war. No more titans"
Armin sat on the sand. He could spend the whole eternity staring at the sea and he wouldn't get tired. It meant so many things. So many... He wondered again why him and not others. Why better soldiers, better fighters than him had fallen. Armin enclosed his knees with his arms and rested his forehead on his knees, biting his lips to avoid sobbing.
When he raised his head again he saw Jean a few meters distance; he was busy doing something. When he realized what it was his heart knocked over. He had found a stick and he was writing something on the sand. They were names. Their mates' names, these ones that had dropped dead in battle.
Connie. Christa. Eren. Hanji. Levi. Erwin.
He turned his back to Jean and looked up. He could discern a feminine figure in a close crag that had her hair swinging in the wind. Mikasa. He saw how she grasped that red scarf she always wore and knelt on the cliff. She was probably having one of her chats with Eren. It had been her habit since he died. Some people said she went crazy but Armin knew that part of her soul was gone, like Eren. He was astonished when he saw Mikasa took her scarf off and let it fly with the wind till it reached the sea. So she was showing Eren how the sea looks like...
Armin let the sand slide between his fingers. It was soft and warm. He hadn't had such bittersweet feelings since the war's end. Victory had been so bitter. He felt an immense joy inside him: the titans' menace had been eradicated forever and there he was, sitting in front of the ocean and fulfilling his youth wish. But it was also unacceptable that only a few of them had reached that target.
Jean had finished writing. A considerable part of the beach was taken up with the former trainee unit 104 and the Survey Corps names. Armin knew that they would be erased by waves just like war had erased them of existence.
Laughing and his eyes full of tears, he went to meet those who still remained. He hugged Mikasa as he would hug his sister, sharing the pain of the loss with her. It was not recent but it would always been like an open wound. He exchanged a glance with Jean, who had been the first suffering that pain when Marco died so he was the most experienced. He thought that nobody should be familiarized with that even when they were soldiers.
He stayed at the beach till it got dark so he couldn't differentiate sea from sky because both had united in the same darkness.
"What are we going to do from now on?" Jean's voice expressed everybody's uncertainty.
In that moment, Armin saw everything clearly. There was just one thing they could do. There was just one way to honor their mates' memory.
"We're going to live, Jean. We're going to live."
That was sad... I hope you liked it. I would appreciate a lot if you leave a comment! :)
See ya!~