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“We don’t deserve this.”
At least someone broke the silence, which was becoming deafening at that point. Hange didn’t even realize it was herself until she saw the short man next to her look up at her face.
“Not like this,” she murmured. “Anything but like this.”
This was reality, though. This wasn’t the fairy tale ending they had all hoped and dreamed to see one day, where they reached the ocean with everyone and had an unburdened sense of happiness. No, reality was sharp as a razor. There was no ocean for thousands of miles. Titans still managed to surprise settlers of the new lands beyond the walls, inducing havoc wherever they existed. Their comrades were long dead, buried somewhere else than home in strange places in strange conditions.
No, this wasn’t the fairy tale ending they had hoped for at all.
Neither of them protested the creation of the statue, although neither of them approved of it either. The smoothed faces of their comrades were different from what they remembered, their faces different in marble. The statue itself was actually quite accurate, down to the hairs on Mike Zacharias’s chin and the furrowed brows of Erwin Smith. It was missing the determined look in Erwin’s face, the almost peaceful neutral state of Mike’s face at all given times. It was missing the way Hange’s eyes glinted when she was truly angry, the way Levi’s face looked pained every time he watched another one of his friends die. These ghosts sat carved to pose in midair, their feet barely touching the marble, their capes billowing and swords held wide. Eren. Mikasa. Armin. Sasha. Connie. Jean. Levi. Hange. Erwin.
They were the only two remaining from the veterans. Their faces were different now, too.
Under the statue rested a plaque, the emblem that they wore for every waking moment of their youth proudly displayed in shining gold, their names carved around the border of the plaque.
In appreciation for every member of the Survey Corps who gave their life in the fight for humanity, and for those who still remain today.
They didn’t feel like they deserved it at all. They had just been fighting for their lives, not doing some heroic act like Erwin always tried to preach. It was them against the world, with some blood in between.
Levi tch’ed at her side after reading the plaque, turning his head away. He said nothing, for there was nothing to say.
She linked her arm with his and they walked back into the cooling night, the colors of the sun still vaguely visible over the wall, two wanderers in a bittersweet world.