Blue and White - Levi Fanfiction

Ch. 109 - Epilogue: The Wings of Freedom

It was a cold, dreary kind of day when Amaya Ackerman passed away.

It was a fall afternoon, unusually wet for the season in these parts when she left this world. Her death brought a weird sensation of change to the air, one that Emi hadn't accounted for.

It made the world seem... heavier and lined with more shadows, somehow. It was strange. She knew of the mental fatigue that grief brought. She didn't realize that there would be physical difficulties as well. She had no way of knowing that the death of a single person would make the entire world that framed her existence seem darker.

But the day had not started the moment her mother had died. The day had been long. Emi had known from the first second that she realized she was even awake that it would be a long, grueling day. She only hadn't known just how hard and grueling it would be until she slipped into her bed, her energy drained and her emotions having already run dry hours before.

Emiko had known that something was wrong when she woke up that morning because she could feel it. It was a deeply unsettling feeling, one that made you feel sick as a dog even if you were in peak physical health.

A lot of people often felt something like that. It was a foreboding feeling that felt like a physical weight that bore down on your shoulders until you figured out what was wrong. Fortunately, Emi figured out what was wrong quickly because she'd felt this feeling before. She hadn't felt it in a while, sure, but it was distinct and her natural intuition had clued her into what was wrong rather quickly.

The last time she felt it would have been the day her father died. He'd been the strongest man she'd ever known. Was it strange to think that he couldn't die? She supposed she'd been naïve in that regard. He was human. That meant that one day, he would die. And he had.

That'd been a pretty bleak day too, from what she remembered of it. But she couldn't really remember much other than the sorrow that had encapsulated her entire being for that entire day. Not because it was long ago, no. It was more so because it'd been such a sad day, only the feeling of grief remained when she thought of it.

The details of what had happened had blurred and she honestly couldn't differentiate between what happened on the day of his death and the days that followed in which she and her mother held each other for what felt like weeks as they lamented his loss.

Emi had cried more on that day than any other day so far in her life. Once again, she'd been naïve, because she thought that her mother would have been stronger, that she would hold in her tears. That she would hold in her feelings as she always had so people wouldn't worry about her. But the truth of the matter was that her mother had been no better than herself. She'd cried right alongside her daughter.

Levi didn't have too many people in his life since the war, the two most important being his two girls. Emi had always been close with her father. It was a dark day for the both of his girls when Levi passed, peaceful though it was. But she was still living with that grief, even now. It'd only been a few months, sure, but it'd been quite a taxing few months. One that was easier to shoulder with her mother's help.

But now her mother was gone, too.

Both had lived long lives, longer than either of them had thought possible. The two of them had joked about it, lots of times, about how they were on borrowed time and were sure to die as soon as karma caught up to them. The frequency of the jokes only increased as they got older and they got more and more suspicious as to why they were able to steal so much time.

Her parents both knew that they could've died in battle on so many occasions but by luck and skill and assuredly the grace of Ymir, they'd managed to get through it. They'd had their scars, their nightmares, their fears. But they'd endured, and managed to live long, healthy lives.