Chapter Text
Right before her very eyes stands the horizon. A vastitude ever changing, a beauty beyond compare. A promise, too, of something greater, of a new life she deeply desires. A landscape of a million suns, getting golden by the hours, melting under her very eyes. A beautiful painting made from the most skilled and careful hands, artist without a name, yet their reputation is endless, whispers of their art passed from one to another, all through the most curious of eyes and the most attentive of ears. The horizon, almost like the human’s mind, is eternal and temporary, yet so mesmerizing in all its unique beauty. An enigma, too, ready to be analyzed, full of wonders waiting to be discovered, even if out of reach, even if simply too fantastic. The horizon is a promise, always, an endless one, giving life to the most imaginative of beings.
Right under her very feet is the sand. The sand that swallows her feet, the sand that tickles her toes, the sand that scrapes at her skin. The sand that moves her without any strength, nothing but patience, itself moved by the sea. The sea and its waves, as endless as the horizon, coming one after the other to swallow the sand, to change the course of life itself. The sea, too, is a beauty. The perfect creation of the most ingenious of minds, driven by the constant of the moon, by the repetitive flow of time. The sand, the sea, they are the elegance of beauty, the epitome of everything calm and quiet, as the shores change yet remain the same, an unfamiliar familiarity, the ephemeral in the permanent. And the sand, then the sea, are drawn to the horizon like a vein to the heart. Essential, finalizing the perfect painting, accentuating the beauty of the world, of everything she has ever seen.
Mikasa dreams of a life by the sea, where the horizon is endless, where the blue that is painted right in front of her varies endlessly, its many hues quieting her mind and soothing her eyes. Mikasa dreams of settling right here, right there, where, she is sure, she would have no other worry.
And yet her heart lies elsewhere already, and so she will leave. That is what she’s told Armin. That is what she thinks is the right answer to his heavy question.
"Stay, please."
She ignores the pang of her heart, the way her veins seem to bristle under her skin. She ignores his sigh full of meaning because maybe, in him, she sees herself, back when she had nothing but a wooden cabin and a dead horse, forced to live a life she had chosen for herself. He, too, has chosen this life he leads and yet, satisfied but unhappy, she wonders if he truly better off than she was, in the end.
At least he is satisfied, she tells herself. She was not, back then, and would surely have let herself decay in the somber woods, maggots eating her bones after the wolves would have devoured her flesh.
The sand moves not around her feet, but behind her. She feels the sand rolling to her feet, hitting the back of her heels, and hears the sound of crushed sand, the repetitive sound of feet walking on the beach. A specific sound she cannot describe, yet a sound she loves nonetheless.
The steps stop behind her, a hand settle on her lower back, hesitant at first, fingers curling against her spine, before fully spreading across her skin. The hand doesn’t move. Neither does she.
“We’ll leave tomorrow,” Levi says. It’s simple, words brought by the wind, taken away far into the sea, surely floating to the horizon where no one has ever gone before. The wind picks up her hair, too, short but still long enough to tickle her eyes. She blinks, the sun lowers. Time passes by as calmness takes over. Her thoughts directed by the sea like a maestro would to the music.
“How is Armin?” She says in a sigh and as the wind picks up again, stronger as the sun lowers, she wonders if Levi has heard her. Only silence answers her. Maybe she doesn’t need the answer, she knows Armin well enough. Alone in a village of hundreds, the focus of those people and yet never close enough to be truly seen. Solitude has never looked good on him.
When she reminds herself of the conversation they had just hours ago, it seems to be the dialogue of a cheap tragic book. Tragic enough to be seen as tragic, not tragic enough to truly make someone’s thoughts go wild in despair and disarray. She sees herself fully, strangely, dissociating, from someone else’s curious eyes. She sees herself hesitating, she sees herself blinking, she sees herself frowning. She sees herself sighing heavily, shaking her head, looking away at the sea, right through the sole window of the room they suffocate in.
“The world is new, Armin.”
She had simply said, yet the message was as clear as the early sun’s reflection on the awake sea. Armin had smiled, a smiled full of heaviness, heaviness too present for the corners of his lips to truly move. He had smiled, nodded, always so understanding. Then he had sat down, head so heavy he had to put it in the hollow of his palms, crushed by the weight of a simple rejection. She can see, remembers clearly, the loneliness that had taken over his whole body, a cage he couldn’t escape from. His eyes tired, exhausted beyond repair, the bright blue stones of his irises dulled by something she couldn’t even begin to comprehend. But he had smiled, though with difficulty, and that had rendered her speechless. Levi, too, had seemed too quiet behind her.
“I understand, Mikasa. We have the same dream, I guess. Like Eren and I dreamed of seeing the sea, we both dream of traveling the world. I get it, I really do. And I won’t stop you from doing that.”
She blinks, the sun has moved, lowered so much the sea goes right through. Its light dimmed to just a firefly’s buzz, full of reds and blacks, hues melting one into the other, drawing fire on the quiet sea. The orb, cut in half, would seem as tired as Armin. Mikasa looks down, then, the image of the drowning sun imprinted on her retina, travelling along the movement of her eyes. On the sand the shadow of the sun reflects. She blinks, the image slowly disappears, and instead she sees her toes engulfed by the sand, her skin ashen by the dimmed light, the last of its golden tint swallowed whole by the coming night.
The hand on her back travels up to her neck then to her shoulder, settling on the smooth skin right between her neck and shoulder, right between both, where the muscles curve. Levi’s fingers stay still on her collarbone. Against her skin, she can feel his pulse, relaxed, so relaxed, as calm as the sea, as slow as the drowning sun.
“Did I make the right decision?” She finds herself asking. The stillness of her voice reminds her of the soldier she used to be yet the doubt in her words tells her she has changed, has maybe become the woman her mother would have wanted her to be. It’s strange, really, how her own existence can be so contradictory yet seemingly harmonized. In her new self she sees almost no flaw. No fear, no regret, no anger, no coldness, just doubt and hesitation, emotions she cannot get rid off despite everything she tries to tell herself.
“There’s no way of knowing, Mikasa. You know that as much as I do,” Levi answers. He, too, has the same kind of voice, the same stillness, the same doubts. He, too, has changed drastically, has become almost someone else while remaining the same. He, too, is someone that shouldn’t be. That should have been swallowed by the monsters they fought like the sun swallowed by the sea. And yet here they are, wandering of their future, something they had never truly done before. Not when their lives were endangered just by existing. “But whatever we do, I’ve brought you here, so I’ll follow.”
“Really?” She slightly turns her head up, faces him just a little. His skin has a more of a honey glow than hers, and Mikasa wonders how much more she will have to travel in order for her skin to take on the same lively shade. And he used to be so pale.
“Really. I have nowhere else to go, except maybe Hanji, and you know I won’t ever do that,” he sighs dramatically and Mikasa huffs, the shadow of a smile creeping on her face, stretching her tired lips. She fully turns around then, feeling the sand cascade down her feet, tickling her toes, digging the skin. Behind her now resonates the coming and going of the waves. Behind her now stands the vastitude of the horizon. Behind her, the sun has finally drowned, its last rays peeking above the highest level of the sea.
“You’ve become soft, Levi,” she says through a smile. Levi simply shakes his head, lets his hand travel down from her neck to her hand, sliding down her shoulder, her elbow, the muscles tingling under the warmth of his fingers.
“Peace has made me so,” he simply whispers, a shadow of the man he used to be. He grasps her hand fully. “Now let’s go, tomorrow will be a long journey,” he says. He turns around, leads her away. She throws one last glance at the sea.
There is no sun to see, and the sea is washed away, waves retreating slowly but surely. The sky is dark but her feet are light, now, as she follows him to house they have been given for the night. Tomorrow they will leave, and Mikasa hopes there will be no goodbyes needed.
The sand is replaced by the grass, soon replaced by the wood. Her skin tingles as, even sooner, the wood gets replaced by the softness of fresh sheets. Her hot skin melts against the fresh cloth, and the cloth gets wrinkled as they move around.
It isn’t slow compared to the night. It is soft caresses, light touches, careful fingers tracing the most of the scars marking their skins, but it isn’t slow. No, instead, it’s deliberate movements, it’s knowing where to look, where to touch, where to apply the perfect amount of sweet, sweet pressure. It’s the thrill of discovery, it’s the new-found pleasure of adventure, all together in a simple bed, sheets wrinkled, body heat warming the room. The windows are open, there’s no real privacy, only procured by the night and the extinguished fires, but their voices are muffled by their lips and their tongues, their moans swallowed whole, so there’s no real sound to be mindful of. They’ve always known how to be quiet and so, only the sheets moving, only their limbs lacing, make a single sound in the dead of night.
Intimacy, she used to think, is a strange idea, one she was never really familiar with. Being close to someone, so close, in fact, that losing this very same person could hurt more than any wound you could suffer from. Intimacy, in its very definition, is giving to someone your heart and more. Everything you have, be it material or not, is given to the one holding your heart, fragile as it is, in the palms of their shaking hands. It’s risking your very existence for someone. Close, closer than ever, closer to the point that where one ends, the other begins, a circle of limbs, a continuous creation of flesh and matter, the meeting of molecules, romantic rendez-vous of your deepest thoughts, your darker secrets all laid out for your new world to see without an ounce of shadow to hide anything else. Intimacy, in its very existence, is a term Mikasa never thought she would familiarize herself with, let alone turn to like.
Yet as her limbs caress his, as her heart falls for his, as her skin melts against his, as her lips trace his, as her eyes follow his, she turns to love it, more than anything else, setting her whole body ablaze, a different kind of pain, one she turns to desire, to ask for more, more.
In the dead of night their bodies meet, and so she knows where her future lays. Out in the world where she will never settle, with him by his side. At the end they fall asleep, not tangled, never, their bodies never letting go of their fear of the unknown and their darkest nightmares, but their thoughts united, their hearts beating to the same wavelength.
In the morning they leave right when dawn wakes, right when the run rises back from the bottomless abyss of the sea, and never turn back, leaving behind nothing but the air of their absence.
“The world, it is vast, and maybe one day I’ll travel it like I want. But you’ll do that for me, for now, okay? You’ll write me letters, you do it so beautifully,” Armin smiles, eyes drawn to the letter. Folded in three equal parts, neatly so, right in the middle of the wooden table. “Describe to me what I’ll missing. Tell me of more than the sea. Tell me of the deserts, the mountains, the frozen lakes, the burning mounts. Everything I can’t visit right now. And when I finally do visit,” he smiles wider, finally, the weight of the world leaving his frail lips, “maybe it will have changed, and I’ll see what you couldn’t, too. I’ll write to you, wherever you are, even if my words aren’t as beautiful as yours.”
The horizon is vast, bigger than the sea, she knows, and far away there is a world to discover, people to listen to. In their sadness, in their joy, in their sorrow, in their satisfaction, she will listen and she will write everything down, send the letters they wish to send, keep the letters they wish to keep as a secret. And Mikasa, with Levi by her side, kissing her when she tires, thinks of something else.
She thinks of her own letters she will, one day, send.
My dear Armin,
The world is big. Bigger than I am, and as you know, bigger than anything we’ve ever seen. I’ve walked distances I never thought I would walk before, and my eyes have seen the beautiful landscape you’ve talked about, when we were all younger. I understand -I’ve understood for a while now- your hopes and dreams, and everything I could say could never tell you the magnificence of such an existence. Truly, never before I have seen such creations. However I will try, if only for you, to describe to the best of my abilities everything I have seen.
First of all you were right: the lakes, when cold, turn into ice. Throw a pebble on it and a melody you have never heard before shall answer you. Always so unique yet so harmonious, you would surely dance to it from joy and wonder. It cracks, also, under the weight of your feet. Then the moldy changes and becomes one sinister yet so musically pleasing, a tragedy waiting for its final act. A movement wrongfully time and finally, the climax, a cacophony of reverberation. Mesmerizing to the hear and yet so terrifying. The horse has fallen into the lake. It hasn’t drowned, Levi keeps it close to him. He loves the beast.
After the frozen lakes come the burning mounts, as you have said. There I have met a colony, smaller than yours yet so loud and so present. Their excuse was the growling of the mounts, its inside burning so hot it boils when enraged and destroys everything in its path. I haven’t witnessed any of it and I wonder if it isn’t a tale, but they are sure, and they have proven it well, the fire it spits is one from hell. Once cold, the red becomes black, as hard as a titan’s grip, they would say. The burning mounts is sleeping, they’ve told me so. Levi doesn’t believe them and would scoff at each of their sinister words. I simply shrug. There is not much to believe in to begin with, only a sleeping giant and some cold stone.
More interesting than that are the mountains. In a chain like children would hold hands, so gigantic they have their own clouds. There we met a couple, old as time, aging by the edge of the mountains. They told us of the mountains and of all the discoveries they’ve made. I’ve written dozens of letters for them, all linking back to the mountains. They wish for them to be their graves. Once their time comes they will climb the highest of them, the one hidden by the darkest of clouds, and reach for the sky. The old lady imagines her body ascending beyond the unknown. The old man, less senile, imagines his body cascading like the snow does on stormy days. Nevertheless, they both wish to die alone in the mountains. I wonder how many cadavers there are already, covered by the snow, their bones frozen in time. For the first time Levi was moved. Maybe he dreams of ending up there, too.
The fields follow the mountains. Full of unknown plants and animals, they seem dry, drier than anything I’ve ever seen before. It might be the deserts you’ve praised so many times. They are truly majestic, incredibly so. And there are people there, living among the desert. They walk with such a fiery determination, it reminds me of Eren. Yet their eyes are innocent, so much so Eren disappears from my mind. I’ve written letters for them too, though there is no one on the other side of the mountains to receive them. Their language was different, complicated to understand, but we’ve learned and adapted. It sounds majestic, the syllables rolling off the tongue in such a unique and distinct way you would think no man capable of speaking it. I wish you would hear it, it is a marvelous as the frozen lakes’ song. Levi speaks it worse than I do and I find myself more and more these days.
I wonder what is left for us to discover. I have hundreds of letters in my bag that I need to send or that I will keep. Maybe I will write a book, just like you. One made of all the enigmas the world has, seen from the views of such fragile beings the humans are. And this book, I will keep it, hidden away in my bag. Only Levi and you will know of it. But for now I will travel away and write even more letters. Then I will send them and then only then, will I settle somewhere. Maybe by the sea right where you are. We will take your place and you will travel, see with your own eyes what we have witnessed and observed. Or maybe we will settle where everything began, deep in the woods where no one would live but Levi and I, and then maybe more.
In the end I only wish for you to see the beauty of such a world, I only wish you the best.
From your sister,
Mikasa