IMMORTALS • Levi Ackerman

chapter fifty eight

058: beautiful

Life is a beautiful thing.

When winter came, the sound of TItans being crushed by Trost's giant sledge went silent and snow began to stick. 

When the piles of snow began to melt, the military announced that Wall Maria had been cleansed of Titans. By the the time we began retiring the elevators of Trost and started working to pave the main road, the flowers were budding and the butterflies were dancing. 

Refugees were finally permitted to return to their hometowns roughly a year following the attack on Trost District. 

And so, six years after the Colossal Titan's first attack, the Scouts once again resumed expeditions past Wall Maria. 

"It's just like you thought, Hange. The Titans inside Wall Maria were pretty much all of them. We thinned out the majority in just a single year." 

Hange nods at Levi's words. I gripped my hold on my horse tighter, the action digging the leather gloves further against my palms. There's a lingering tension in the air, it's muted but it's present. It's been a long while since the last we've set outside the walls. The truth surfacing only pushing the regiment in realigning goals and prior plans. We didn't know much, it was apparent, and so, when the truth came to be, we were still configuring were to stand above everything.

"In that case, let's head straight to our target as planned." Hange orders.

I fell silent the whole time, continuing beside Levi. There have been many changes through time. 

When I was young, I felt the life inside the walls were too small for me. Just like how my father felt, hence why I sought out what was beyond that tiny village of Sonne. As it came to be, life was beyond the discrepancy of what I had expected and what the truth was. It hurt when I had realized that, but still, life went on.

Sometimes, I wished I knew nothing at all, maybe that would make me feel better. Would it? How do the elders call it? Blessed are the ignorant.

Oh, but I craved the hurt. I starved the truth like a madman, I followed Erwin until his end after all. 

When I had lost both of my parents, it only furthered the wound. I thought everything would stop for me then, but it didn't. Life didn't stop for me when I was ten, nor when I was eleven, nor when I was eighteen. It was harsh, but the scraps I collected from straying built my character to what it is now. I never played to be the good guy, not once, but I tried to be honest - to remain honest.

So when I had joined the Scouts, I carried that honesty with me. That strive. To stand atop the walls was groundbreaking, like I had conquered a long run journey. The view from outside the walls was gravely different. But it was vast - it was nothing short of it. The curious mind I held exploded in joy and the child inside me that sought out the greater expanse celebrated. It was still tough, losing lives, comrades, friends. Pushing one another to the point of dying, but at the very least, it had a purpose. A purpose we all believed in. 

And just when we believed we were treading near towards the light at the end of the tunnel, it kept running away from us. Almost as if it was refusing me the solace of the sun, like we were meant to be placed in the dark.

As the truth of the world came upon, and as I learned how large the world is beyond the walls, beyond the expanse of a gaping pool of liquid, reflecting the blue sky, somehow I felt disoriented.

What is it that we found in that basement of Eren's childhood home?

Was it freedom? Was it the truth?