headcanon | armin & the ocean as requested by @deiikara
when he used to peruse the pages of a contraband book, the ocean was exciting because it was a legend. there was no proof of its existence, there was no perceived possible harm in imagining bigger worlds than the world that he lived in. his parents ( though negligent ) were contagious in their enthusiasm for excitement; they were high energy. through the influence of their curiosity & contraband literature, armin associated the ocean with freedom.
he preached about the ocean as though it were freedom. armin was nearly spiritual in his language of how he spoke of the world at large. it was a time of type of escapism, maybe. this was something that eren latched onto - it encouraged armin to believe in his rhetoric even more.
armin needed it, anyway. the ocean became the dream & excitement of a boy who felt uncomfortable in his skin, felt determination to be a better person ( the better person — a prideful thing ), felt inadequate to hold attention, & felt small. generally, he knew that he was perceived as weak. he perceived himself as weak too, & so he stood on a high moral ground to compensate.
dreams go interrupted when his grandfather was drafted to march against the titans. the man’s life was punctuated by a policy for population reduction. it was a a clear move by the nation to try to reduce overpopulation in the cities following the fall of maria.
so his grandfather died. when he held his grandfather's hat in hand ( later, he lost the hat; at that time he, mikasa & eren were refugees in between shelters. they found it difficult to keep material goods that were not necessary items ) - he could not help but feel a lot of anger. at the government's decision, at his loss. he was not yet fifteen. although he trusts eren & mikasa, his grandfather had represented a type of security that armin felt was knitted to obligation. he was not yet fifteen, he knew that eren & mikasa trusted him. but they were not obligated to him.
so his grandfather died. armin felt very strongly that he had been wronged, & he was correct in this.
the contraband book that had started his religion had come from his grandfather. his past spirituality or feelings of the ocean as a type of freedom start to mix with his grief & the injustice of his grandfather's death. reaching the ocean & the potential of bigger worlds becomes a type of spite against the filtered censorship of the government.
he wants the ocean as a type of reward or proof that they who have been wronged can still reach beautiful things, expansive things, natural forces that are not contained or controlled in the same capacity that the nation of paradis has been.
it's a sullied version of freedom that he believes. he never voices it aloud. he can’t ever bring himself to talk about the things he feels angry about.
so he preaches the ocean like a religious man. as he joins the scouts, as they encounter more loss, as the monarchy continues to turn against them - he gains more respect for the sacrifices to humanity that erwin smith has made.
in the woods of the expedition against the crystalizing titan, he observes that smith has likely sacrificed his own humanity to meet his aims.
at this stage, he does not want to become this himself . . . but he understands that it could be necessary.
he thinks continually about how he was wronged. it makes him feel very righteous about a lot of things, & it's a continued version of his feeling as though he were taking the moral higher ground - the same way he did when he was young & refusing to fight for himself.
this need for moral superiority blends well with the colossal, a god in its own right. it vies for wasteland & apathy. armin acknowledges its power & fits its destruction into his own worldview of injustice rather than the arbitrary world on which bertolt settled.
he is colossal when he reaches the ocean for the first time with eren & mikasa. they are all obligated one another now.
reaching the ocean is the end of his rhetoric since childhood. it’s the end of a journey that wasn’t supposed to have an end. reaching the ocean is a question mark on every time he spoke about freedom & continued living & justifying the cause to which he had dedicated his heart.
it feels like relief. when he sees salt water for the first time & watches mikasa flummoxed by the tide, it makes him feel old for the first time -- & it makes him feel indulgent in his youth, in the decisions that he made.
the world feels untouched at the coastline. it feels fresh & untampered by censorship in a way that he had never felt before. for a second, it feels as though he were at the center of the world - as though he were seeing an untouched world, as though when the world finds peace, it would feel like this.
he cries a little when he sees the ocean. he stays out by the water for too long. his skin wrinkles into prunes. sand sticks to his skin & finds a home in his pockets &
he knows that eren hadn't been able to smile properly. he knows that there's another nation across the sea.
but he feels as though the sea itself is untampered with.
as though being by the water like this is seeing truth.
it's difficult to know , though, how his spirituality will continue after seeing its end point. religion isn’t supposed to stop. & he can’t ever bring himself to talk about the things about which he feels angry. maybe seeing the ocean then becomes self-righteous hurt ?
