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The war was coming to an end.
Her entire life had revolved around these titans, to keep her people safe from the monsters who ate everyone, anything with a pulse.
Honestly, it was a miracle there was any birds left when they flew over the wall.
Krysta leans against Ymir, staring off into the setting sun, the last one she'd likely ever see.
"Remember when we left?" Ymir questions, glancing down at her girlfriend, smiling as the sun seemed to illuminate her, as if sensing her beauty, her purpose in life.
Historia Reiss, the princess of their kingdom, leaving in hopes of saving her people, more than her father who clearly only loved the rich.
The royal guard had turned on the royal family.
Ymir was among them, but being Historia's personal body guard meant seeing the princess break down when there were reports of the Scout's returning from missions, fewer and fewer as the years went on, her father turning a blind eye.
She hated that her father sat back, stuffing his face with cake and ale, indulging in his wildest fantasies with the courtesans of the city.
She needed to do something.
When the guard had attacked the capital, Historia ran, taking Ymir with her and assumed a new identity.
She went by the name Krysta and from then on, that's what she was known as.
She joined the corps in a desperate attempt to help save the world in the only way she could think of left.
Hunting the titans.
Years of running, hiding, and fighting and here they were, the end of the war, leaning against a tree with a bomb rigged to go off at the press of a simple button.
They had done it.
There were only a few titans left and they were prepared to get rid of them.
"Yeah," Krysta says, smiling with tears in her eyes as she pulls Ymir closer, the titans' footsteps shaking the world around them "That feels like so long ago."
Ymir laughed, a tear tracing her face as she pulls Krysta into one last, desperate kiss, finger pressing the button, the world exploding around them.
~~~
"Momma, who's that?" a child, no older than 4 asks as they come across the glade.
A statue, glimmering in the sunlight, stands before them, two girls huddled together in their final moments.
The statue shows them in their proudest moment, the finale of their lives as they saved the world.
"That-" the raven says, tugging her scarf tighter around her neck, a memory long gone. "That is Krysta and Ymir, saving the world from the titans, their true selves not the nobility they pretended to be at the start."
"Momma? What are titans?"
"Nothing you have to worry about my love," the woman answers, leaning down to brush the hair from his eyes, a sorrowful smile gracing her features as she leads her kid away from the monument.
She pauses, only a moment, to remember her friends, all the work they'd gone through together.
Mikasa pulls the scarf up over her nose, like she used to, and laughs when her son pulls her towards her wife, an ending she can have thanks to her friends.