Sempiternal
adjective
eternal and unchanging; everlasting

"If you look down, you can see Titans crawling to get in," Hanji explains, sitting down next to him. "And if you look straight ahead, you can see it's not so small a world after all."

Levi is looking straight ahead. He'd never been on top of the Wall before. He hadn't expected this.

The idea of there being a whole big world outside the walls had always been hard for him to swallow. Even after he'd joined the Legion and began to leave on expeditions, there'd never been enough time to appreciate the outside when there were people dying around him.

But here is is, looking at it. And it's so different like this. The air smells clean, like the outside, and he can actually see and appreciate the beauty of it, and stare at it for as long as he wants. He can stare at the mountains in the distance and the fields and forests that seem to stretch on forever, and it doesn't matter. No one is going to die.

There's a whole world out there. If Humanity was exterminated, the world would still be there. And if they were ever liberated instead, by some bizarre miracle in the distant future, the world would be theirs once again. The world of oceans and mountains and lands of ice and burning sand. The world would be there forever. The world would last forever.

He's not in the Walls, and he's not outside them either. It's like an in-between. He feels safe here. Almost happy. Calm. But mostly in awe of it all. It's something to fight for. Now that winter's over, expeditions are starting up again. When he leaves the Walls, he'll know there's something out there to fight for.

"So what do you think?" Hanji asks.

He'd almost forgotten she was sitting there next to him.

He only means to glance at her, but when he notices the warmth in her eyes, it gives him pause. He'd never seen her look at anyone like that, least of all him. No one has ever looked at him like that either, not for a long time.

"Oh," he says finally, turning back. The sun is starting to set. "Yeah, it's nice."

Her fingers find his, not to hold but just to touch, and he doesn't pull his hand away.