They burned the bodies today. In the huge inferno, I couldn't tell who's bones were who's, and to be honest, that was the worst part. I think Jean realized it too. Knowing that out of all of those remains, I couldn't even tell who my best friend was. Even after all he did for humanity, they still weren't even decent enough to give him a proper burial. They just threw him on the pile.
As I looked at the flames, all I could think about how the same searing feeling had branded Eren's last words into my brain.
"Tell me, Eren! What did you want to see the outside world for?!"
"It's because...this is the world I was born into!"
Funny thing is, I don't even remember what his voice sounded like. This realization had struck me so suddenly that I just started crying in the middle of a conversation with Mikasa. Suddenly, I realized that I would never know what his voice sounded like anymore. I will never hear his voice again. I will never here him declare vengeance against the Titans again, and I won't get to hear one of his famous inspirational monologues about joining the Survey Corps ever again, even if it did make everyone else a little annoyed. I've been trying to dig up memories and remember what Eren sounded like, but the only memories I have of him are now plagued by images of him in his last moments.
In my mind, it's like one moment we're talking about the outside world in Zhiganshina, and suddenly Eren starts screaming and legs are being eaten off by a Titan. His eyes fly open from being closed after he emerged from his Titan form, and they're bloodshot and pleading for help and watery with agony. He had screamed and Corporal Levi had killed the Titan the moment after. Just a few more seconds and Eren would have lived. It's so cruel.
Mikasa told me that the world is both cruel and beautiful. The world - a two sided coin. It has occurred to me that she had this knowledge long before Eren's death, and I'm just now starting to see it.
Eren saw it in the way that everyone came together during our training after disliking and even hating each other. The way that hardship ground our damaged souls into dust and reshaped them into new bonds that held us all together during life and death. The beauty in the way that meant nothing was ever truly over and done, no matter how hard or sad things may get or seem.
Mikasa saw it in the way that people sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. The way a spider captures and butterfly so that the spider may live though the butterfly dies. The cruelty and beauty of sacrifice that allowed others to live and avenge and remember someone's life. The beauty in how someones life was a lot more than just a thing to be remembered.
"It says here that the whole world is covered in a giant body of salty water
And me? I can finally see it too. These memories, it is cruel how they leave me with words that cannot be spoken in the same voice ever again, and I can only let the salty water over take my eyes when I realize that his voice is lost from the world forever. But at the same time, it's beautiful, because these tears...
called the sea."
They're pooling in the dirt, and the salty water fills the minuscule cracks between dirt and sand grains and pools above it once overflowing. It's beautiful really, because these tears look an awful lot like little pools of the sea.