Word Count: 1,584
Seven years later…
Prince Armin Arlert walked through a forest. It was a little bit unusual, with blue sprites singing as they softly illuminated the evening air, flowers that remained forever in the stage between a blossom and a bud, and water that sang in sweet harmony to any passing bard. But he loved it all the same.
Something dropped out of a nearby tree, falling to the ground with a soft thud. Armin paused.
"Did ya find her yet?" The voice belonged to Sasha, a dryad whom he had become friends with due to a series of one-off meetings with mutual friends.
Armin leaned on a tree. "Nope," he replied, none too worried. "But you don't have to keep helping. I have a hunch as to where she is."
"Cool," Sasha replied, and there was a slight pause. "You came from the coronation thing, right?"
"Ymir and Historia's coronation anniversary, yeah."
"Tell Connie I said hi? I can't go to the celebration this year. I was already kind of stretching my time thin with helping you."
He nodded. "I understand. It's starting to wind down now, but if I see him again then sure."
"Thanks!" called the brunette as she melted into the forest.
Armin ceased leaning on the tree and began to walk in the direction of the castle. It was nice being alone. One was able to think without pressure and was free to be as quiet as they pleased.
He came out the other side of the woods to find one of the side gardens. There, he found a black-haired midget (not that he should be talking: he was hardly taller anyway) listening rather begrudgingly with a remarkably cleaned-up, but no less excitable, brunette with glasses.
He decided to creep silently away before Hange spotted him and launched into another one of her long rambles about her pet frog, Moblit, or whatever. She'd gotten him a number of years back and was convinced he was a prince in disguise because of his astonishing lifespan. As much as Armin enjoyed a good intellectual conversation with her, he had other things to do. Like find his wife.
He found a servant's entrance into the kitchen and, having no faster way of getting inside, used it. The actual servants flinched from his sudden entrance and began to work just the slightest bit faster, but otherwise, they paid him no heed.
He escaped into the ballroom itself through another servant's corridor and paused, having to wait for his eyes to adjust to the bright light of the combined torches and chandeliers. He scanned the room for a familiar face, of which there were many, but there was one in particular he was looking for.
He spotted it: the only voluntarily bald head in the room, marked by the stubble that made it impossible to shine. He hurried over.
"Hey, Connie!" he said.
The bald man turned and saw Armin. "Your hair," was all he said in reply.
"I could say the same about you," the blond dryly returned.
"You need a haircut."
"Now that I can't say about you."
"Armin!" a third voice called above the chatter. The man in question jerked his head in the direction it had come from and saw his friends Eren and Mikasa running toward them. Their three-year-old son, Hunter, was snuggled close to Mikasa's chest, sound asleep.
"Sasha says hi– sorry I can't talk longer!" Armin said to Connie, then ran to meet the Jaegers.
"We've been looking all over for you! I can't believe we lost you right after–"
"We found her," Mikasa breathlessly told him, completing what Eren had just begun and careful not to be too loud so as not to wake their child. "Marco told us she's in the back garden by the fountain, watching the swans out by the lake."
Armin nodded. He'd had a hunch. "Thanks a lot," he said. He flashed them both a grin before hurrying out the back door.
He nearly tripped over a horse's bum first thing outside.
"Ack!" he choked out, just barely able to catch himself on the rail before he fell off the deck. He looked over his shoulder and saw Jean and Marco staring at him with looks of mild horror.
"Crap, I'm so sorry, Armin," Jean apologized, getting up and readjusting his sitting position so that he no longer blocked the doorway.
"I told you we should have just sat somewhere else!" Marco chided.
"But all the good spots that weren't just the grass were taken! I'm clean, Marco; I don't want to have to walk through the castle again with dirt in my coat!"
"It's fine, thanks, but thanks for your concern," Armin hastily told them, then mentally cursed himself for thanking them twice in a row.
"We saw Annie over by the fountain, by the way," Marco said. "She didn't really look like she wanted to be bothered, so we just figured we'd just let someone tell you."
"Yeah, Eren and Mikasa told me you guys found her," Armin absently replied, then grinned at them. "Thanks so much!" he chirruped.
"See you later," Jean said to him. Marco waved goodbye, and Armin gave them both a another smile and a wave before darting off again.
The evening had turned to dusk by the time he reached the fountain, softly gurgling away underneath the dying light. Armin slowed to a walk and walked around the fountain to find Annie sitting on its edge and watching the swans swimming on the lake before her.
"Found you."
She turned to look at him, but she wasn't surprised at all. She made room for him to sit next to her and returned her gaze to the birds on the water.
Armin sat. "They say swans mate for life. That they'll find a partner and stay with them until death do them part."
"Sounds scary," Annie commented.
"Mhm."
They silently watched the moon rise up from the lake horizon. It wasn't a cold silence, nor was it awkward. Being together for so long just meant they spent a lot of time in comfortable silence, both knowing that the other enjoyed their company.
"Would you ever want to return to Shiganshina with me and rule the kingdom?" asked Armin after a spell.
"It depends."
"On what?"
"How will everyone respond to what they're probably going to think are two long dead people just waltzing into the castle and asking for the throne."
"An excellent point. So you'd rather we live on Levi's lands forever, never to return to the world of man again?"
"I, for one, never really liked it there in the first place. Too conservative."
"No more prince and princess?"
"Just regular old Armin and Annie would be fine by me. Titles remind me of Utopia. My memories of there are bitter now."
"You did live there a hundred years ago. Maybe times have changed."
"I doubt it." She sighed and leaned her head against Armin's shoulder. "I don't want the times to change. Everything's perfect the way it is right now."
"That's what you said a few years ago," he reminded her, giving her a slight nudge so that she wouldn't fall asleep quite yet. "And look what's happened since."
"Mhm. Ymir and Historia are the first lesbian queens in the country's history, Eren and Mikasa had Hunter, and Bertholt and Reiner are running a shop far, far away where they can't bother us." She yawned. "But Jean and Marco are still married-but-not-married, Moblit still hasn't died of old age somehow, and Sasha still has the appetite of three armies." Her eyelids drooped. "I can still kick your ass."
"Thanks."
Annie's breathing steadied and slowed. She had fallen asleep.
Armin smiled wryly to himself. He picked her up as gently as he could and began carrying her back to the castle.
When he got to the deck, he got help from Jean, and at the spiral stairwell leading to their room for the night, he picked her up once more and carried her himself.
He whispered goodnight to Eren and Mikasa as they passed one another in the hall. They were returning to the party, having finally gotten Hunter to fall asleep without them there. They whispered their goodnights to him as well, opening his door so that he wouldn't have to and then escaping downstairs looking far less mature than they liked to usually pretend to be.
Armin laid Annie down on the bed, removed her shoes, and kissed his sleeping beauty good night.
Once upon a time, there were four teenagers. Their names were Eren, Mikasa, Armin, and Annie.
All but one had been Cursed in some way, but at the end of their adventures through field and forest, moor and mountain, all had been set free out of their own willpower and ability.
At the end of it all, Eren and Mikasa got married; together they had three kids and lived out their days breaking enchantments cast upon others. Armin and Annie married some time later, and they settled down not too far from Eren and Mikasa's home base of Levi's castle.
And they all lived happily ever after.
The End.
Author's Note xxxv. *closes hilariously large storybook* Well, guys, that was it, the end of Enchanted. I tried to not make is just a list of things that happened afterward, but I guess some things were kinda just shoehorned in. Snuck in a random jeanmarco moment. That just came out.
For a long while, I was pretty unsatisfied with this epilogue. I don't know why. I rewrote it a couple times and finally settled on this. Edited it like, three times, and it's still not really how I imagined for some reason, despite it containing all the things I had imagined. I'm not sure, but I've decided I like it after a while of letting it sit.
Anyway. Thank you Vhosek, thank you Hamliet, and thank you Scattershot98 for reviewing every chapter after catching up. Thank you guests who reviewed despite not having accounts, and thank you to all those who left words just once. Your words of encouragement really helped me through, and I couldn't have written it without all the feedback I received from you all. Thank you to everyone who followed or favorited and just lurked without saying anything. Your silent numbers mean a lot to me as well.
Any last bits of feedback would be great too, but I think I'm just dragging on now. I'd like to highly encourage you all to check out my profile and check out my other works if you liked any of the ships or characters portrayed in this one. For now I'll be switching back to my other work called Lovechild,and I don't really have plans for a new multi-chapter anytime soon. But anyway that fic has p much all the same ships it's just canonverse things happen slower blah blah blah there's a kid I'm dragging again.
Anyway, obscenely long author's note aside, this is LunaBloom, saying goodbye for the final time in this fic. Have a greaaaat daaaaay~~~~~~