Yesterday was the day that it was finally over.
Yesterday was the day Armin had first seen Eren cry not out of frustration, or guilt, or grief; yesterday was the day he had first seen Eren cry out of happiness, and Mikasa had held both of them tightly and he felt his shirt dampen with her tears of relief and then his own, before the rest had swept all sentimental feelings away and the deafening roar of tens of soldiers crying in joy had consumed his ears.
Yesterday was the day that humanity won, and there was no more to truly fear and the walls did not have to protect them from anything anymore and it felt like a truly horrible burden had lifted itself from his shoulders.
They are free.
And now he is sitting in a carriage, no longer in his uniform but in normal clothes, and so is everybody, and the cacophony of excited muttering and whispering is loud over the sound of the horses' hooves on the road. The trees are decreasing and the fields are turning less green, and this is where Hanji pulls the curtains back over the window and Armin deflates immediately.
"Don't you want to be surprised?" she asks, a bright, giddy grin distorting her face, and when she bounces in her seat, Levi mumbles an incoherent curse. Armin doesn't know if he does want to be surprised. He only wants to see it. The ocean, the sea, one of the many, many, many things he has been chasing for since they day he could read.
"I can't believe it," Eren whispers from beside him, and when Armin looks he sees his eyes are wide and bright, brighter than he had ever seen and a silence of mutual understanding settles over the carriage. Because yesterday, it was the repulsive stench of blood that filled their nostrils and the image of corpses was what branded into their eyes; and now it would be the scent of the salt of the sea and nothing but white and blue and green to please their eyes, because now is today, and today is brighter than yesterday.
Today is brighter than yesterday.
When the carriage slows to a halt, Hanji bursts out, with Armin closely behind her, and when she jumps and whoops delightedly and her arm hits Armin on the shoulder he doesn't mind because it's such a simple, insignificant thing and he doesn't quite know if his mind is going overdrive or going blank, because what lies before him is everything he has ever dreamed of, and it is wonderful and it is magnificent and amazing.
He pushes past Hanji, a strangled cry erupting from his throat and out his mouth and it dissolves into a wild gale of laughter that he has never let out before — and he hopes that now there will be so much more reasons for him to do it again — he throws his hands up and runs, stumbling, sand kicking up, burning his soles, when he stops right in front of the edge of the water.
The sand is damp here, and the sand was hot and it itches in between his toes still, but he stares. Bubbles. White. Blue. One thousand shades of blue and white. Jean would love to paint this. He can't tell where the sea and the sky meet, because blues melted into blues and there was no in between.
A hand pushes him from behind, and he screeches — though it is drowned out by a loud laugh — and falls into the water.
It is less graceful than he imagined his first time to go into the sea would be.
But still. He is in it now. He is in the sea. And it stings his eyes and the still-healing cuts on his body but oh, no, he's had worse and right now, as he looks up to see Sasha and Connie grinning down at him, he doesn't tell them to quiet down or try to be serious because that was only for before and there was no more reasons to do so now. So he reaches up, tugs Connie down as hard as he can, and almost snorts laughing when the other hits the water with a splash and the squelch of wet sand.
"Holy hell."
He turns around and he doesn't know if Jean is talking about the lovely, lovely sea or the fact that Connie is now standing up with dark, wet sand plastered to his face and shirt and pants, but he grins and beckons him over, not wanting to leave. He will never leave, he wants to stay in this moment and live in it. Forever.
Late afternoon, sunset, Jean finally, finally gets him to come out to just sit on the shore and watch as the sun sinks into the sea, and Armin sits open-mouthed as the water turns gold and orange and peach and dissolves into shades of violet and pink; one thousand shades of color. Vibrant, surreal, and beautiful.
He doesn't know if he likes the red or not, though, but still.
"You're going to paint this someday," he says, quietly, and Eren plops down beside him. Jean nods, just nods, and doesn't say a word. Armin wonders if he will be able to do it. Maybe he will. He has, already, a few times, and Armin thinks back to the cabins and the few scraps of paper and the fewer colored pictures underneath Jean's pillow.
Nobody is going back there anytime soon.
He doesn't go back, surprisingly, even after the awe of sunset on the beach has receded to a feeling of contentment that settles in his mind soothingly. He just watches as Connie and Sasha and Hanji and Eren play along with the waves, their outlines dark against the orange sky, and realizes that it will always be like this from now on.
They will be safe now, maybe.
There isn't a going back, they can't go back to when there was Reiner and Bertholdt and Annie and Christa and Ymir and he doesn't know where they are now or what they are doing now, but for now he can push that away from his mind and sink into this moment as easily as he did in the clear, clear water, because this is today and not yesterday.
There are more days, as many as the colors of the sea and the grains of sand on the shore alone, and he can use those. But not today. Not yet, because they are only just free and he cannot allow his thoughts to cage him in once more. The pain will recede, and someday they will be able to talk about it again because it will be nothing more than an old life that existed in the past.
Tomorrow will come, and maybe it will be as bright as today.