Chapter Text
I rest under a large tree with long branches that shield my closed eyes from the sun’s spring rays as they beam down from behind scattered clouds. My hands rest in my lap, and my legs are crossed over each other, as I lean against the solid bark. I can feel the tickle of the free strands of my hair that are not tucked into an untidy bun at the crown of my head as a cool breeze rolls through.
I am completely at peace.
I wish I could count the amount of time that had passed since I had been laid to rest in my favorite napping place, but time moves differently in hell. It is as though it does not exist, and I am only watching the world I left behind unfold.
I know, it is contradictory to state that I am in hell but also at peace, but I have long since accepted the fate bestowed upon me. I’ve had nearly a hundred lifetimes to think about the decision I was to make, to try and change the outcome. But I ultimately failed to find a solution that would allow me to live on the earth with my friends. My survival always meant their death; it was not the ending I wanted for them. So, I followed through with the ending that brought peace and longevity to the lives of those I love.
I brought the suffering down upon the earth with the Rumbling. I shattered the walls that locked humanity in a cage and set loose nearly hundreds of thousands of Colossal Titans on the earth. With the endless waves of heated flesh, I killed eighty percent of the world’s population.
I knew, even before the blade sliced through my neck and ended everything, that I would be thrust into a world where I was forced to watch from afar my friends growing old and living their own lives, while my name dwindled into memory and became nothing more than a villainous stain upon the lives that survived the Rumbling’s destruction.
Only Armin, Mikasa, Jean, and Connie knew the truth. Only they would know what I had endured to save them from strife, what I had done to save them from an early death.
Thus, I sit idly by, waiting for the day they come to say hello. I watch as their hair changes color, skin wrinkles, the children they bring, the new technology that waits at the end of the hill, and finally, the dwindling numbers as they disappear.
I live and relive the date for now and always return to Mikasa. Until the day she joined me here in the afterlife, I would replay this memory.
Before freezing time with her, I watched the sun and the moon dance across the sky and knew that Mikasa hadn’t missed a day since she first buried my head in the dirt and placed a gravestone next to the large tree's roots.
On this day, that I allow myself to relive painfully, she isn’t worn by age or time. It has to be several years after my burial since her hair is long and pulled up in a ponytail that trails the length of her back. I always loved her beautiful long black hair; I had instructed her when we were young to cut it for her safety, not expecting her to take it so seriously, but the longer length always suited her. Today, A few stay strands fall around her face and drape before her eyes, framing her pale face perfectly.
I crawl to my feet as excitement bubbles in my chest, and I can feel the tug of pure happiness as she slowly walks up the hill. I raced toward her and wished I could wrap my arms around her, but after the first few times I had attempted to hold her, I stopped. I would not let my disappointment take over.
I could not touch her, and I would never be able to again.
It did not stop the motion of my body from creating a rippling wind that blew through her pink cardigan or through her long gray skirt that dragged along her ankles. A familiar maroon scarf wrapped loosely around her neck. She holds four white flowers in her fingertips and smiles as if she knew it was me.
“Hello, Eren,” Her soft voice cradles me as we unknowingly walk together.
“Hello, Mikasa,” I whisper, noticing the breeze of my words disrupt her hair. I shove my hands deeper into the pockets of my grey sweater to prevent myself from reaching out to her.
I tilt my head, knowing what would come next, but eagerly await the news as if I had never heard it before. “Annie is pregnant. Armin is excited and nervous, but his reaction is to be expected.”
Every time I hear it, I still smile and wish I was capable of leaving this hill to see Armin and Annie as they raise their child, but it is another downfall of my curse.
Mikasa places her hand upon my grave and grazes her fingertips along the words across the front: Here forever, resting peacefully, my most beloved, my dear. They linger a bit longer upon the word beloved before falling to the stems of the four flowers she placed in front of my grave.
As if she had touched me, a shiver rolls through my spine, and all the loneliness and desperation to see her fade.
“He told me about how he wished you could be there to meet his child. He knew that child would be so loved by you and everyone else now that there is a world that it can grow in,” She smiles, turning toward Zhinganshina, which has been nearly rebuilt since the Rumbling.
“Her,” I said to the wind, knowing she could not hear me. “She’ll grow up to be happy and healthy. I’ve been watching and always will.”
“Armin wants me to go to tea with Annie sometime next week to keep her company. She’s become more warm recently with the expecting news of a child, and well, Armin has changed her. She smiles now,” Mikasa laughs and my body floods with warmth. “I never believed I would see the day where Annie Leonheart smiled out of genuine happiness.”
The smile lingers for a long time before it falters.
“Jean and Connie are doing well. They have kept up relations with the other sections of the world to continue the lifelong peace you wanted for us,” Mikasa’s fingers sit in her lap. The confident woman I knew so long ago is still there, but there is a new nervousness to her actions, as though all the pain and suffering caused by a lifetime of war caught up to her. “They are doing their best, and I do not see anyone fighting in the near future. We are too busy trying to rebuild…”
She trails off.
“The others plan to come visit you soon. Isn’t that nice?” She asks, indirectly turning to face me. I want to believe our eyes connected for at least a moment, but I know that would be a lie.
“Armin says he is going to come tomorrow with Annie. He misses you…” She sighs in a whisper. “Especially when we are in the market square, he comments on how you always favored picking fights there because secretly you knew that Hannes would always be there to back you up.”
She giggles again.
“He always was bad at fighting,” I comment, leaning my head back against the tree.
She stares into the grassy fields and whispers after a momentary silence. “Does that make you happy?”
“It does,” I say simply, sadness coils in my ribs, and I feel the threat of tears in my eyes. It does not matter how many times I see it; pain envelops me as if this were the first. “Thank you, Mikasa.”
Mikasa’s face shifts into shock as if she sees something, and I know what it is. for a split second, our realities become one, and we visualize the same moment.
It’s me on the ground, resting my head down as my eyes are closed. A younger version of herself steps up with a similar pink cardigan. She is carrying the large bundle of sticks my mother had asked us to collect for firewood what seemed like a lifetime ago.
There is a glisten of tears in her eyes as she stares in shock, but she lets them spill over her cheeks. The subtle sobbing that erupts from her lips, even as she tries to cover them with her hand, breaks me in two.
“Don’t cry, Mikasa. Please,” I whisper, moving quickly across the ground and reaching my hand to her cheek. My thumb trailed across the would-be dampness of her cheeks in a vain attempt to wipe her tears away. “I’m so sorry…”
She sucks in a breath and reaches her hand up to the cheek I had my fingers pressed against. They slide through my form and drag away her tears that I was incapable of wiping away for her. Her jaw clenches as she continues to let the tears fall. I release my hand from her face and scan her eyes. They fixate upon the ground through me, likely staring at one of the dancing daisies that had grown over time between the long blades of grass.
“I want…” She sniffs and liberates her eyes from a few stray tears. Her eyes closed, and her breath steadies. “To see you again…”
“You will…” I promise, but my words are not enough. She can not hear me; she must know I am here.
In a panic, I glance around and feel for things I know that can help me break the barrier between my world and hers. I can feel the presence of several birds in the area. They had always been my form of communication and my ability to see into the past without being there. I would use one of them to aid me. I called to a white bird resting in the tree above us. It flew to my hand and became me .
I noticed her scarf had come undone and now rested along her chest. Despite all the times I wanted to touch her and let her know I was there, I needed this memory to be different.
I made her a promise. To always be here. To always wrap that scarf around her. She had to know.
Using the bird’s will, I dipped my fingers to her scarf, picking it up in my hands as the bird lifted it by its beak. Time slowed down and nearly paused as she lifted her head. Her bright gray eyes widened in shock as she stared at the bird as it flapped its wings before her, tossing a series of white feathers into the air. Another second ticked by, and the bird mixed with my hand tossed the scarf over her shoulder.
I then released the bird and let it fly away before falling to my knees in front of her again, breaking down.
“I miss you so much…” I sob into my hands.
“Eren…” She whispered, her voice cracking. My head tilted up to hers, and I noticed she was smiling as she looked up at the white bird that flew away. That damn smile that I destroyed the world for. It shook me to my core and forced a surge of suffocating pain through my chest as I was helpless to her cries.
“Thank you for wrapping this scarf around me…”
I released a strangled sob, running my hands through my hair and clenching it tightly between my fingers. This was the worst part of my hell-sentence where I could not do anything, and somehow, I had reached her.
“I will wrap the scarf around you-” I sniff and swallow my breath sharply. “-even as we are worlds apart, I will wrap that scarf around you now and forever, as many times as you want.”
I repeat my promise to her.
The same one I gave her so many years ago.
A lush field of flowers of whites, yellows and pinks decorate a clearing along the outskirts of a forest that borders a small river in a world that no longer exists but was created from my memories. It is the place I go when I need just a moment away from the pain of watching my friends live their lives without me. I take a deep breath, give myself to the fresh spring air, and tilt my head to the sun. To keep myself from doing anything stupid within my beautiful cage, I bury my hands deep within my pockets.
“Eren?”
The voice is angelic, soft and breathy. It is not like the same tone of voice I had relived nearly a hundred times as I watched from afar, helpless and tormented. This one was directed at me.
It’s not time yet. Is it?
I open my eyes, slowly turn my head around, and land on the beautiful woman I had fallen in love with repeatedly. Her glossy black hair wove in the wind, her shimmering grey eyes filled with what I could only hope were happy tears. The maroon scarf wrapped around her neck while she wore a long white dress that draped loosely around her body.
“Mikasa?” I breathe, feeling the sting of tears in my own eyes as I convince myself that this is no dream and that she is here with me.
“Is this real?” She breathed, climbing to her feet with ease as time that had consumed her physical form had faded into youthful beauty, how she perceived herself and how I always imagined her.
We were forever nineteen.
I raced toward her without answering her question, and she did the same. She held her arms out, but my hands cupped her cheeks as I pulled her into a kiss I had longed for. Her warm tears mixed with mine as our mirrored longing for one another was satisfied. She tasted of sweet tea and honey as I glided my tongue along her lip and hungrily pulled her as close as I could. But no amount of space would ever satisfy the years that tormented me as I watched her suffer in solitary sorrow, never loving, never moving on.
Mikasa also takes this opportunity to explore me, her fingers trailing through my long hair that remains the same as it did when I first left her. Her fingernails dig into my skin and drag down my neck until she is gripping my jacket and pulling me closer to her with unimaginable need.
I am the one to break the kiss, but my forehead rests upon hers.
“You did not forget me,” I croak, my voice a bag of gravel dragging across the ground as I let my emotions claim me. I had been vulnerable all my life around Mikasa; I felt little shame in letting her see me .
“I could never forget about you,” She whispers, leaning into my hands that still cling to her cheeks.
“I told you to be happy,” I murmur, rubbing my nose against hers and pressing a softer kiss against her lips. “I wanted you to be happy, Mikasa.”
“I was. I had you,” She licks her lips and tilts her gaze to mine. I trail my thumb along her jaw.
“I never left you.”
“I know,” She whispers. Her laugh melted my heart and nearly brought me to my knees. I waited so damn long to hear her laugh. “You made it obvious when I came to visit. The birds. The wind when there was none. When I would nap, I always dreamt of you in a place like this.”
I laugh through the lump in my throat and pull her into a hug. “I am so sorry, Mikasa. For everything, I’ve done. For abandoning you. For saying I hated you. For not taking a chance on us so many years ago.”
“Eren…” Mikasa tightens her grip on my back and pulls me closer. Her cheek dug into the side of my shoulder as though she was trying to determine if this was real or not. I don’t blame her; the afterlife was not exactly something I believed in until I was stuck in an endless loop of torture.
Until now.
“I love you,” She whispers.
Everything in my life shatters into oblivion as these three words eliminate the cycle of my destruction and torment. I pull away and look into her eyes; they flick between the two grey irises. I am no longer searching for security or confirming her feelings for me; it is me locking in this moment and clinging to the belief that if I were to imprint it in my mind, this would be the moment I would replay.
But it is real.
She has freed me, and I can feel time and hell release me from its grip as if I have paid my penance.
“I love you,” I respond, smiling and allowing the tears that had pricked my eyes to blind my vision and spill over my eyes and down my cheeks.
“You always did cry,” She laughs, touching my cheek and wiping the tears away. I force a laugh and lean into her palm.
“Not as much as Armin.”
“You’re lucky he’s not here yet to fight you,” Mikasa chuckles, leaning in again.
“He would lose,” I tease but feel a pang within my chest as memories that once held me captive fluttered in my mind.
“I forgive you, Eren,” My eyes flick up to hers again.
“Thank you, Mikasa…” I sigh against her palm, taking it in my hand and kissing the inner portion before weaving my fingers between hers. “Would you… like to see what the afterlife holds for you?”
“If it means spending more time with you? I will go where you go, Eren,” She squeezes my hand, never taking her eyes off me.
I couldn’t help the endless bliss that manifested in my chest. It was the end that I always wanted. It just took this long to get it.