When Erwin had said they'd ride the next day 'early,' Levi thought he meant early. Barely-sunup early. Learned behavior from the Corps. Levi was awake first, like always. Only, it wasn't with that jolting, uncomfortable gasping back to life he'd been so use to before. Instead, he stirred slowly, curled against Erwin's side. Erwin's good arm was flung across the man's handsome face, muffling his soft snoring. The prototype lying off to the side.

The heat of their shared breathing had collected dewdrops on the inside of the canvas tent during the night, the cool morning sharp and crisp. Outside, the sliver of forest he could see was cast in pale blue tule fog.

Levi rubbed the sleep from his eyes, sitting up, trying to stretch his body without waking the man beside him. He winced. Erwin was right; he was damn sore from that fall…

He pressed his fingertips against a small, purple bruise that had blossomed on his collarbone. That one… wasn't from the fall. More like from Erwin's mouth. He'd been coerced into abandoning his spot at the opposite end of the tent, and then, well…

He reddened at the thought, gripping his forehead with a hand, shaking his head slowly.

Unreal…

Not that they'd— well… just a bit of rolling around, the same as before. But still…

Levi indulged in a giddy little grin. He'd think they were being rather impatient with each other if it hadn't already been years…

There was movement beside himl Erwin rolling toward him in search of lost heat. "Mmm..." He blinked languidly, gaze gradually coming into focus. "S'mthing wrong?"

Levi glanced over, knees drawn up under the coarse blanket. "It's nothing," he said softly, allowing a small smile of reassurance. "Just thinking, that's all."

Erwin traced a lazy pattern on the jut of Levi's hip. Levi swatted him away after a few permissive moments.

"If you get started now, we'll never break camp."

The fingers continued their flirting search over the swell of Levi's thigh.

"Remind me again why we want to break camp?"

Levi leaned over to hover above where Erin lay, the other man's hand already moving dangerously up his inner thigh. "Don't play thick. I'm the one who can see through all your bullshit, remember?"

Erwin closed his eyes, smiling with such contentment Levi thought it infectious, and even though he knew it was coming, he drew a sharp, surprised breath when Erwin's fingers finally reached their desired destination.

"Pervert," Levi tutted, even as he leaned back, chin tilting up. "I—ah— thought you wanted to—"

"The day will wait for us," Erwin mumbled, tugging Levi back down under the blanket again.

The ocean.

He could smell it before he could see it. Crisp, with that slightly briny tang. Familiar, although he hadn't been in its presence for a very long time, and as they rode, the horses' hooves sunk deeper as the soil became damp underfoot.

It reminded him of the first time he'd ever seen the ocean. Back when Erwin's death was still seeping fresh and raw into the flesh of his joints— in his daydreams, and in his nightmares.

It felt like so long ago…

Him, Hanji, and the three brats...

They'd set up camp not far from the surf, where the canopy of trees hollowed out a level patch of dry earth to spread out their bedrolls. The others were already resting, their horses hitched and grazing a few feet away, but Levi had lingered on the beach by himself.

There was a certain serenity to it all, he thought, even if it smelled funny and was much too bright. He watched the waves crest and dash themselves before him, slithering back into the water with a hiss of foam.

He stood there long enough, concentrated long enough, that the sun reflecting off the water blinded him to the rest of the world. Levi had to blink to get his bearings back, shielding his eyes from the glare as he strained to see just how far out the water reached.

Perhaps till the end of the world and right off the edge.

Without much ceremony, he removed his boots, one at a time, turning his back to the water only briefly in order to prop them up far enough from the tide's reach. His stockings went with them.

"Uh, what's the Captain doing?"

Hanji looked up to see her three young companions all looking back out towards the beach. She followed their gaze, watching too as Levi stripped himself from his jacket, folding it neatly before laying it upon a rock.

"Let him be," she said, although a cold trickle of unease slid its way down the back of her neck and into the pit of her stomach. He'd been acting wistful ever since that day up on the roof. Focused, of course, diligent, but oddly detached. Maybe he needed this, she thought, as they all watched him make his way back towards the water's edge.

Some sort of closure, if it were possible.

Hanji had the sneaky suspicion that nothing was going to wash away what that man was feeling.

Levi stood close enough to the water that the next wave slid high enough on the sand to lick against his toes. Inwardly, he winced. He hadn't been expecting the ocean's chill to be so cold, like corpse flesh.

With each fresh lash of water, it felt as if the waves themselves were trying to pull him forward down into the surf. Oddly hypnotic.

He obliged, one foot in front of the other.

The water was at his ankles now. Next his knees.

Back on shore, Mikasa jumped to her feet, but moved no further. The group watched in silence as a flock of shorebirds wailed in the distance.

Levi let out a strained breath, the cold water soaking up the hem of his shirt, prickling at the skin underneath. A voice in the back of his mind told him to stop, to go no further, but it was a bare hum over which the crash of waves seemed to drown. There was no other course of action for him to take other than to keep moving. He had to. To be still was to die, wasn't it?

Besides that damn basement, this what Erwin wanted to see, wasn't it? What he had dreamed of? Or was it all becoming tangled now: the damn brats' dream and Erwin's dream and humanity's dream and—

and what the hell did Levi even dream of anymore.

A gripping need for restitution and revenge? That was not so sweet as the promise of knowledge or the fulfillment of a childhood wish. Yet it was the only thing he had to go on.

It was becoming difficult to walk through the tide, but he pressed on, feet sinking down into the shifting sand and silt underfoot, until he was tilting his chin up to breath as the water closed its hand around his neck.

Beyond the waves, the sun glittered bright and painful on the horizon.

He took a breath.

The next wave closed over his head.

Mikasa went to bolt after him, but Armin stayed her with a hand upon her wrist.

"What are you doing?" Incensed, still she made no move, as if the touch had immobilized her. "He can't swim!"

"He'll be back," Eren muttered, turning his attention back to the seashells cradled in his hand. "He's not stupid enough to drown himself. Hanji's right. Let him be."

As the wave took him under, the sounds of the shoreline were snuffed out immediately. The water stung his eyes, so he shut them tight, letting the ocean sink him lower still. The stone upon its cord, always so heavy against his breast, bobbed lightly against his clavicle.

For the first time since that day, everything was quiet, even the swirling accusations and railings of his own mind. They were no match for the oppressive weight of the ocean all around him. In their place, as he floated there in the dark, was a spiraling nothingness he hadn't felt in a long time; as deathly silent as a corpse in a one room shack deep beneath the earth.

Maybe the ocean was as close to death as a living man could reach, he thought.

There was a peculiar burn began deep in his chest.

Maybe down here he was closer to hell.

Maybe down here all those people he'd killed over the years could see him from that place beyond.

Maybe down here he could hear them. Hear him.

Levi waited, ebbing there under the waves, but there was nothing. No memories to come slithering out from the blackness. No words of encouragement or wails of anger from beyond the grave.

There was nothing for him here either.

The burning in his lungs made his chest heave until he could stand it no longer.

Kicking out, he broke the surface of the water, gasping in a lungful of air and slinging wet hair back from his eyes. He sputtered and coughed, the bolo tie with its inset green stone bobbing on the water's surface like a taunt.

Up on the beach, the others breathed a collective sigh of relief as he reappeared from below the waves.

"What a lunatic," Hanji muttered to herself, running a hand through her hair.

Levi began to drag himself back to shore, jaw set tighter than normal.

He'd been too naive to think reaching the ocean would have changed anything. There was nothing magical about it, was there? An extra large puddle of water, that's all it was.

Then why was he so disappointed? Why had he convinced himself that seeing it, feeling the water all around him, would have given him some kind of relief?

Struggling out of the surf, dripping and prickled with gooseflesh, he sat down heavily upon one of the driftwood logs half buried in the sand, ocean water soaking the dried wood around him.

"Thanks for nothing," he muttered to himself, looking out over the ocean.

Nothing would change his circumstance. Not the ocean, not wiping out all the Titans; nothing. Nothing save for Zeke's death and then his own, Levi realized.

He licked his lips and tasted salt.

Until then, his life would be as unending as the horizon before him. Marching on like some deathless creature.

"Does it look any different? Levi?"

He was shaken from his memory like a daze, like a dream that took an extra second to let go. He shook his head, reins of his horse clutched tight in his hands.

Erwin twisted in his own saddle. "Are you alright?"

Levi snorted, pressing a finger to his temple. "Still trying to figure out what's real, I suppose. Memories from here and there; mixing…"

"It happens for a while, until your body can reorient itself." Erwin paused, brows knit together. "Do you want to stop?"

"Stop? Here? Don't be a fool. I can see the damn waves through the trees."

A smile quirked at the other man's mouth. "Alright, if you say so." Erwin dismounted, slinging his reins over a low hanging branch. Levi watched for a long moment before doing the same, boots thudding softly in the mossy dirt.

"I always regretted not seeing this for the first time with you, you know."

"Don't be fucking sentimental, old man." Levi followed as Erwin left the horses to wade through the undergrowth of rubbery shore plants.

"I have time now, to be sentimental."

Levi watched his boots. "It's disgusting."

"Never change, Levi. I mean that."

They broke through the shrubs, Levi kicking up sand as it sunk him down at an odd angle, tweaking his ankle to the side.

"Fucking…"

"What was that?" A few feet away, Erwin stood staring out across the beach.

"Nothing," Levi grumbled, straightening up and fixing his jacket. An oddly painful weight settled deep in his chest as he eyed the way Erwin's tall, broad form looked against the rocky shoreline.

This was what it was supposed to have looked like, years ago, when they all finally reached this destination together. Erwin, formidable and solid against the ephemeral light reflecting off the water, drinking in the sheer freedom of it all.

He must have been gawking silently for too long; Erwin turned his head to look back at him, mid-morning light breaking over one side of his face. "Still with me?"

"Yes," Levi answered, frowning at the huff of breath he'd let out with that word. Now who was the one being sentimental? He cleared his throat, walking the few steps it took to stand fully at Erwin's side. He squinted out against the sunlight and rippling waves. "Looks the same as it did on the other side."

"Does it? I always imagined it would look a bit different."

"That so…" Levi pondered the scene before them; waves cresting to fall upon the sand, breaking against rocks dotting the surf. Perhaps Erwin was as right as ever. It did feel different, although not because the waves had changed or because the sun reflected off the water's surface any less brilliantly than it had before. "Feels like I've seen it before and yet for the first time," he admitted. "Kind of like everything else in this fucked-up, upside-down world. Thinking about the whole damn thing gives me a major headache."

"I'm sure we can find some answers if we keep searching, don't you think?"

Levi allowed a barely-there smile. "Even death can't seem to shake you, Erwin."

"Isn't that a comforting sort of thing?"

"Creepy, more like."

They both chuckled.

Levi shifted his weight a fraction to stand more comfortably, the movement causing his shoulder to brush against Erwin's arm. Neither moved to pull away.

The warmth radiating from the man beside him was a start contrast to the cool, sea salt breeze of the ocean.

A funny twist of fate, he thought. Death really had been his release after all. Or maybe this was a dream, his mind playing tricks on him as he lay bleeding out somewhere. Guess it didn't matter anymore, Levi thought. He couldn't recall a time when he'd felt so content.

Erwin's hands clapping together made him jump. The man turned to give him a soft smile.

"What do you say we build a little fire? We'll put on some tea."

"What," Levi pulled a face, "right here? On some beach?"

"You've got somewhere more important to be, I take it."

Fuck the maneuver gear, this felt like flying.

"No, Erwin. No, I really don't. I'll go unpack the kettle."

s-surprise! XD

Thank you for enjoying this little fic of mine.
Love to all!