Part Six: Open Sea
Six years. It was six years of brutal warfare with the titans from the day Wall Maria fell to the day the monsters were finally eradicated. Captain Levi Ackerman led his squad through all of it, through the madness of reclaiming and sealing Wall Maria; through the madness of overthrowing the royal government and establishing a military rule, not because it was what was best for the population but because it was the only option for survival; through the madness of defeating the largest, fastest, most intelligent titans ever encountered—the colossal titan, the armored titan, the beast titan.
Only nine Scouts survived the final conflict. Levi had no business being one of them, but the greatest madness of all was that he'd never entered the titan war with a death wish; in fact, the longer it dragged on, the more intensely he vowed to see it through to the end.
After all, there was a garden waiting for his return.
Erwin didn't live to see the secrets of the titans, but Levi did. Far outside Wall Maria, on the other side of the redwood forest, there was a desert. Home of the titans. And in an underground cave of crystals clear as ice, the leader, the founding titan, Ymir. Few titans were capable of speech, but she was fluent. And like a queen in a hive, her intelligence united the rest of them. So when Levi severed her jaw and Mikasa shot a thunder spear down her throat, her death signaled the end of the titans—without direction, the rest of them wandered aimlessly until a military squad came to cut them down.
For Levi, the true end of the war came on the other side of the desert, in the form of a glittering expanse of water stretching all the way to the horizon. He stared in a way he'd never stared since the first time he left the walls.
Ocean, Armin called it. He'd spoken of it often through the war, a rolling desert not of sand but of water that marked the edge of the world, so salty nothing could survive it, so beautiful nothing could resist the meaning of it.
Levi knew exactly what "ocean"meant to him. He realized as he stood at the water's foaming edge and it washed over the worn leather of his boots; he realized this was the next wall, except there was nothing beyond it. They'd killed every titan on the path to this spot, and there was nothing left.
End. That was the meaning.
So after six years of unbearable loss and bloodshed, Levi Ackerman, humanity's strongest, turned in his cloak. They wanted to give him a medal; he told them to bury it with the rest of the Survey Corps.
With unsteady steps from a permanent limp, Levi walked the winding road to a small house and its carefully kept garden, where a patient, hawk-eyed girl spotted him on the path and came running. He pressed a smooth blue beach stone into her hand and told her the meaning of ocean. And he told her one other thing, one statement that carried all the meaning in the world:
"I'm home."
She kissed the newest scar along his jawline, smiled through her tears, and said, "Welcome home, blackbird."
Note: A huge thank you to KelekiahShadya and Swiggs for the reviews! This little story is over, but I'm considering writing a follow-up. Let me know if that would be interesting. Thank you for reading!
