A/N: Another imagined scenario that I could see eventually occurring in canon. Similar to Reste, I request that you listen to a particular piece of music as the background theme as you read. This time it's "The Cottage on the Beach" from the Atonement soundtrack by Dario Marianelli.

"Umi" is Japanese for "ocean."

Umi

Rating: PG-13

"We're here, Mikasa."

The infinite waves surge towards them, spiraling into swells of foamy aquamarine that then gradient into the sands' temperate umber. She shuts her eyes to thoroughly absorb the resonances of liquid crashing against liquid, of a combat that's no less violent but far less consequential than her past battles. An aroma of untainted nature invades her nostrils, completely foreign yet nostalgic, as if she had always dreamed of being immersed in it.

Through Levi's temporary silence, she knows that he is just as spellbound as her.

"Armin mentioned long ago that the three of you always wanted to see the ocean the most." His eyes are wholly trained upon the distance as he recalls.

"Yes," She turns her head to follow his focal point, taking his lead as per her usual practice. "They were always so beautifully illustrated in his books."

"I feel that no drawing could do this sight justice."

She allows a faint smile to reflect her immense feelings of veneration. "No, no drawings could possibly capture all this."

Abruptly their eyes convene, as if fulfilling a predestined meeting, and rather than wonder she detects only solemnity.

"Why are you looking at me like that, corporal?"

Blue irises suddenly turn as gray as hers, overflowing with grief more tremendous than the skies looming above.

"Don't you know?"

She attempts to speak again, but the rush of coppery fluid from her throat only allows for struggled croaks against the serene echoes of the water. She finally gathers that she is looking up at him rather than from an adjacent standpoint, that his arms encircle her back and thighs with tenderness she had thought impossible, that the ivory cravat floating just above her in the wind is sodden with blood from the mortal wounds that mutilate her torso.

She wants to run into the water and sink her toes into the sands, but she cannot.

The final opponent after civilization's decades of battle comes in the form of a seemingly simple-minded Aberrant. Eren is alive but incapacitated, and thus this last charge naturally falls on one of them, humanity's two strongest fighters who have both survived to the end. She pursues his airborne silhouette with restraint, conveying her own degree of respect by not denying him the honor of the concluding kill. And as they glide through the air in the same manner as their first-ever battle as a duo, her eyes cannot help but admire his faultless flight as she had been doing so often – perhaps too much - in the recent months.

The ambush from their right throws both of them utterly off-course, taking full advantage of their reduced sense of caution just prior to this ultimate skirmish. Before she knows it she is soaring to his side, knocking him out of the path of the previously unseen 7-meter-class' feral, menacing hands.

What follows is dreadful pain, trailed by an almost disturbing numbness and turbulent fluctuations in and out of her consciousness. As she surrenders to gravity she takes solace in the familiar noise of his blades cleaving Titan flesh, accompanied by yells that sound more desperate than she had ever heard them.

A resounding thud, and the excruciating cracking of bones. Then voices, voices so familiar, calling for her as if she were already completely astray in the darkness that threatened to consume everything.

"Mikasa! MIKASA!"

"Give her to me, Arlert. I'm the only one who still has a little gas left."

"Sir…even…even I know she is beyond saving…"

"No, I realize that as well."

For once, there is a detectable tremor in the corporal's otherwise unfaltering diction.

"I can smell the shores from here. Let me take her to see it before it's too late."

His grip tightens around her as torrents of crimson swarm from her dried lips, staining her scarf with an even deeper shade of the foreboding hue.

"You idiot…why the fuck did you save me back there…"

He attempts to make sense of the cruel card fate has dealt him, heart utterly enveloped in what will soon be the dust of her bones and rendering the staggering view in front of him monotonous. He wants to recite countless verses of gratitude, respect, and the recent emergence of something more to her, but he suspends every thought, for he knows it is better to release her with no burdens.

As her breaths slow to an agonizing pace, he detects the glittering of the water mirrored in her grey depths, now ironically infused with more life than ever before.

"Even through the worst of times, Eren taught me how to live." Reminisce permeates each of her grappled words. "And years later I was given yet another chance…by you."

His left thigh senses the touch of her dangling arm, the faint clutching of her fingers against fatigued muscle that only just made its full recovery. "Consider this my gratitude, corporal, and an invitation for you…to live."

The weight of her request douses what remains of his scorns and anger, as if she had shoved him into an ocean of insight he had always refused to enter on his own. He dwells briefly in the gift that is her baptism, and a part of him wishes that the relentless passage of time had never become their worst enemy.

"Thank you, Mikasa."

"No, thank you, Le…"

His tearducts remain as dry as the most emaciated of deserts, yet he feels a critical shard of his soul also depart the instant her universe comes to a tranquil, fateful end. The retreating tides carry that fragment as companion to the final traces of her breath, venturing into the boundless horizon that now contain all their unattainable reveries.

[Fin]