Blue. || Eremin

Part Two - Epilogue

How long has it been, he wonders, not for the first time. It's been a very, very long time. He tightens the cloak around his aching body and tries to block the flood of memories that come with it, but to no avail. Countless friends, slain by the dozens. A boy bleeding out his life in the shelter of a crumbling building. A girl screaming his name and hurtling toward him, shoving him out of the way of the huge, meaty hand reaching down from behind of the Titan he hadn't even noticed in his shock. She moved with impossible speed and agility, black hair flying behind her. The girl dodged in and out of reach of the beast, somehow finding a way to slay it. As the Titan fell, a flailing hand batted her tired body, just half a second too slow, out of the sky. She was dead before she hit the ground. During the fight, her scarf, now bloodstained and torn, had fluttered to the ground and he picked it up, turning the familiar material over in his hands before tucking it around the girl's broken neck. The bleeding boy and the broken girl he misses the most now. He fades a little every day.

This lonely survivor had found a horse, but after a while and many miles, the horse had tired and died. Since then, he has traveled by himself. Years passed, and he started seeing the Titans less and less. Eventually, he stopped seeing them at all. He remembers the shock he had had when he realized that, that perhaps even the Titans had their limits. The terrain has changed over time, and now he feels something different in the air. The wind carries with it a different smell, fresh and pure, and the sound of birds cawing and a distant rushing and crashing. Now fascinated, he walks a little quicker, arriving at a crest of a hill. What he sees brings tears to his eyes.

Blue. Endless, shining blue water, rising into foaming white waves and pounding relentlessly onto the sandy shore. White birds strut across the beach or otherwise soar over the heaving masses of water, dipping low and calling to their cohorts. The wind pushes his unkept brown hair away from his face, and he gazes down at the beautiful scenery in awe. It's the ocean, that place he and his blonde friend had read about in books and dreamed of someday seeing. Finally. It's everything he had imagined it would be, and so much more. He has made it, but everyone he has ever loved is dead. The thought gnaws at his heart. He unties his cloak, letting go of it and watching it float down away and out of sight, taking a piece of his grief with it. The sun dances on the water, and the ghost of a smile appears on his chapped and bleeding lips as he thinks of the sunny days at the river with his friend, poring over the old and fragile books describing this place. "There," his friend had breathed, pointing at the pictures, "We're going to go there, Eren, right? No matter what we do, we have to see the ocean." And Eren had nodded enthusiastically and promised that someday, they would.

"We're here," Eren rasps, voice full of rust and cobwebs from misuse, "It's the ocean. We made it, Armin."

A/N: the end! i know there's probably some typos in there, but ah well. i hope this wasn't too terrible. shoutout to OceanicBlueHues for all your comments, which were initially my inspiration to end Blue. thanks for reading! let me know what you think!