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“It’s a sea.”
“Yes, Eren, it’s the sea.”
Armin watches the high waves — an unrestrained force; warmth from the scorching sun above and coldness from below, on the ground (on bones, on ribs, in the heart); glints of angular, equal, and fragmentary rays; the stability of the rhythm of the staccato level, under which the blood pulses in the temples — and his fingers tighten around Eren’s hand. Warmth. Coldness. Warmth.
Contrast.
c o n t r a s t
Is this the end they dreamed of as children?
It seems more like a joke.
Armin closes his eyes.
“Are you satisfied, Eren?”
Can you live with this, Eren?
For the first minute, Eren remains silent, just staring at the waves and drawing something on the sand with his finger. Armin counts to three and looks at him again — and he, the unyielding Eren of dreams and memories, seems remarkably tired. Physically. Mentally. In every way.
“Yes. No. Not entirely,” he says quietly.
“Not entirely,” Armin echoes. “It doesn’t sound good, don’t you think?”
Eren gives him a half-hearted smile.
“Exactly.”
Exactly. Armin squints as the sun’s glints hop around his arms and eyelids like rabbits, and the light dances on the other side of his eyes like flames. Everything is not so— it’s not the same. Not as it should be. Not as planned, dreamed of, and desired.
This is not what they died for.
Or maybe it was, wasn’t it?
Armin no longer knows what he existed and suffered for. Probably for freedom. Probably for people, for loved ones, for Eren.
For the boy with the book in his hands.
It’s not fair, he wants to say.
I didn’t want this.
I didn’t fight for this.
I have never wanted to die.
Armin is not holding Eren’s hand now; Armin is a contradiction upon contradiction, but without a struggle — not physical, but mental, the kind that cannot be finished by raw strength. He wasn’t taught that. No one said it would be like this: broken, hopeless, and disgusted with himself for going for something that was supposed to be a greater good — and was instead a war against loved ones, the ones he planned to protect, the ones who he betrayed and who betrayed him.
But he is free.
Armin can’t help but note that he is freer now than he has ever been in his life.
Perhaps this is the goal? The desired outcome?
And the sun is scorching, the waves are rising, the sea is alive; millions of unhappy people are not. They, his friends his family, are not; acquaintances with whom he exchanged smiles and bitter promises — are not. Everything they knew, loved, and built no longer exists, but there is something else: new people, forests, this sand under their fingers, eternal sun and that damned sea. Cities. Countries. States.
New wars and deaths.
The line is closed — it’s a circle.
“We didn’t succeed,” Eren finally speaks, looking at him, Armin, eye to eye, “but someone else would. Will you watch this with me?”
Eren extends his hand. Eren is ten, his eyes are burning, his lips are cut with a broad smile, and he promises that they will see the sea. Eren is ten, Eren is crying in pain, Eren is fifteen, and he promises again, but not to give life — to destroy it. Eren is sixteen, and his eyes no longer burn.
Eren is nineteen. Eren is dead.
But Eren is here. Close.
And Armin is with him.
He can’t take his eyes off him. Armin can’t breathe in or out; he is not suffocating, but he is not breathing. He does not live. He does not exist. Everything Armin hears is Eren’s voice; everything he sees is Eren’s face, green eyes, pale lips, a smile reflected from the sun, but somehow in the opposite — failed — way, and he wants to cry. Laugh. Grin.
Hit him.
Kiss him.
“Yes, Eren,” Armin whispers. “I will watch this with you.”
And he takes Eren’s hand again.
(The cycle ends.
The cycle starts again.)