Chapter Text
and death — it is either the slice of a blade or the bite of a Titan.
“Captain!”
The familiar call permeates through the fog like a lighthouse remaining steadfast in the swirling storms of the sea, and when he blinks his eyes open there’s no suffering, or loss, or disdain; there is only Petra, untouched and unbroken, smiling at him with a mouth whose jaw wasn’t dislodged and clinging to him with a hand whose skin wasn’t laced with a bite mark.
Behind her he can see the faces of the people he’s known and the people he’s loved, but it’s her at the forefront, and he recognizes the look on her face as the one of peace that she’s told him time and time again graced the faces of his soldiers as he held their hands and vowed his vengeance.
“You did it,” she whispers softly, the fulfillment of a promise. “You can rest now.”
Something within him that’s always longed to shatter finally breaks, and it is with a grateful sigh that he pulls Petra close, burying himself in her smell, the scent of soap.
His fingers thread through her hair and for the first time he feels like he’s thoroughly cleansed.
An exuberant laugh bursts behind his ear and then Isabel is in his arms, too. A patient huff brushes against his hair and he knows it’s Farlan’s hand on his shoulder. There’s his mother’s touch, light and warm, and there is Erwin’s smile, childlike and grateful. There’s Erd and Gunther and Oluo, bickering like the little shits they were over who should greet their captain first.
But he’s no longer a captain, he thinks. He is just a man, a pissy, laughable, horrible excuse for a man, and he is surrounded by all the people he’s lost, and while he can’t feel their heartbeats any longer he thinks he can find music in the way Petra fits against him, like an anchor against the seabed, like gravity.
He closes his eyes, allows the ghost of a smile to settle over his lips.
Petra was right, as always.