Paper Airplanes (Ereri - SNK)

Epilogue - Freiheit.

Eren stares down at his hands, worn from use and slightly wrinkled from age. The scars made by his own teeth have faded over the years, but they'll never go away completely. They remind him of big black wings and stormy gray eyes - things missed but never forgotten.

Between his palms he holds a sketchbook, it's pages slightly yellowed and its cover worn and faded, the spiral holding it together slightly bent. He calculates in his head how old it must be, and decides it's held up pretty well over the course of forty years. It, along with a dozen or so others, had been stashed away in the closet of his room in a box, safe and sound. It wasn't the first, but if he remembered correctly, it was one of his favorites.

Gently, he lifts the cover to reveal the first drawing - simply the design of his first thought on how he wanted the sign for the tea shop to look. It's scratchy and messy, but it brings back fond memories of getting the place into the works. The second drawing is a general floor plan he'd mapped out in his head, and the rest of the pages contain similar things - plans, plans, plans. Some that had stuck and still remained in that small wooden building inside Wall Rose, over a thousand miles from where he lived now, run by Lilly Arlert and her soon to be husband whose name Eren can never seem to remember. She'd volunteered to continue its business, even said she might try and expand if it was okay with Eren and her father, and they'd left it totally up to her, so long as she kept the legacy alive.

Eren had remained close to the tea shop as long as he could, just as he traveled to the top of the wall as long as it was physically possible for him. After sustaining surgery and being told he needed to take it easy, he retired and moved outside the walls with Armin in the guest house. After Armin's wife had died, he allowed Eren to move into the main house with him where there was nothing to block the spectacular view of the ocean, and if not for their age, it would've started to feel like the days they lived together when the shop was just getting started, and Eren's content with it. They both are.

On the last page of the book is simply the sketch of a wing, somehow bringing forth more nostalgia than any of the other sloppy sketches.

Levi.

Eren can still feel the tightening of his throat at the thought of the name - one he hasn't spoken in decades. He can still feel the ache of emptiness in his chest where his raven-haired companion is supposed to be - physically, right there next to him.

And yet he can still smile at the memory of him. At the fact that somehow, whenever he speaks with the intention of Levi being able to perceive his words, he knows the man can in fact hear him.

Eren glances up. In the window sill still sits the glass bottle, sealed with a cork, containing that jet black feather. It's a reminder to Eren - whose head is still foggy from PTSD and simply old age - that he really had come back and given Eren another little piece of hope and peace. And a reminder that Levi loved him, at least back then.

The saddest of smiles gracing his lips, Eren replaces the sketchbook back on top of the others and pushed the box aside, deciding it was late and he'd look through them another day. After readying himself for bed, he crawls in and let himself relax into the mattress, feeling the pacemaker keep a steady rhythm for his heart and counting the beats as he always does until he drifts into a quiet, peaceful sleep from which he would never wake.

* * *

"You're just in time."

"Did you expect me to be here any later?"

"No. Not with the way things have been going for you. But I hoped you'd stick around at least a little longer."

Eren's eyes are on his feet, bare in the white sand as the tide washes gently over his toes. The water is calmer than he's ever seen it, even with the air free of wind and the sun sinking towards the horizon.