Chapter One: Once Upon a Time
How does one begin with a story such as mine? Ah, no need to get lippy, mi hijo. However you are correct, for stories such as this one, it is best to start at the beginning. A beginning that happened long before I met your father, and even longer before I was blessed with you. This, mi hijo, is a story like no other, for it has truths and lies, parts that I never knew about until years later. It has love, anger, sadness, happiness, death, and life. It has so many things, that I doubt you will understand them at this moment, but I hope you will in the future, when you have your own family, and tell your children this story, so it does not die with me.
Oh…? You want me to start the story already? Fine, just for you mi amor. Once upon a time, just like any story begins…
[-][-][-]
The dark haired child laid, curled up, on a large bed, with a book propped open on their dainty legs. It was a history book, written in a language most thought dead, and was illegal to have in ones possession inside the animal cage they called home. After all, knowledge was power inside the cage. The silence was broken, though, as the child's mother stormed into her precious daughter's room in a panic, her dark chocolate eyes darting about like hummingbirds as she pulled a heavy chest in front of the wooden door.
"Mami?" the child asked, holding the book close to their person as the older woman dashed to the window close to the bed, and threw it open, only to slide a thick wooden plank out of it to connect to a neighboring rooftop.
"Mi hija, que tiene que irse!" the woman shouted, pulling her daughter up and pushing her towards the window. Banging could be heard from downstairs, just as the flame from the single candle went out from the night breeze. "¡Rápida!" her child's eyes dilated as she nodded, climbing up onto the windowsill and started walking out, her arms spread wide like a birds as she kept her balance walking across the plank, before relaxing once her tiny bare feet touched the tiles of the roof. Alondra followed closely behind her daughter, quietly dragging the plank until it fell down into the alley.
Without looking back towards her home, Alondra grabbed her daughter's hand a ran to the next roof, and jumped before dropping down into an empty alleyway, and running full sprint towards the home of the Jaeger family. As they ran, Adelita looked over her shoulder, wondering if her father was okay or not. "Carla! Grisha!" her mother shouted, banging on their front door in the middle of the night.
The door opened, showing a little boy with groggy, sleep filled, sea green eyes. "Auntie? Lita? Why are you here so early?" the four-year-old boy questioned, allowing both female's into his home.
"Eren! Please get your father! Es importante!" Alondra stated, getting down to the young boy's height. He simply nodded and did as told, running up the stairs towards his parents' room. Adelita sat her book down on the table, eyeing the glittering knife that rested there. Turning to make sure her mother wasn't watching, the dainty child slid the kitchen knife up the sleeve of her gown, being careful to not cut her inner forearm with the sharp blade.
"Alondra, what seems to be the matter?" yawned an older man as he came down the stairs, following his son as he pulled his robe closed over his night clothes.
"Grisha!" Adelita's mother threw herself at the taller gentleman. "It is happening, just as I foresaw! Ernesto, mi amor, stayed behind to deal with them himself… However I am afraid for my husband, Grisha!" fat tears trailed down her brown sugar toned face as she clutched his front. Eren had took to sitting at the kitchen table, skimming over the book that Adelita brought with her, just as he caught sight of his older friend disappearing around a corner and decided to follow after her.
"Where are you going?" he questioned, tugging at the long black scarf that always seemed to be wrapped around her neck.
Adelita dragged her honeyed, heavy-lidded, gaze down and stared at his tiny hand that still grasped the end of her scarf. Noticing that look, Eren immediately let go. "I'm going to get Papa. The cerdos are untrustworthy…" she pressed a thin finger against her lips, telling him to keep his silence. He nodded in understanding and allowed her to disappear out the back door.
The streets were silent, as it was still night, except for the sound of the young girl's feet slapping against the cobbled street, heading straight for her house with the full moon being her only source of light as she swayed, like one would while intoxicated. A few twists and turns later, the child of Hispanic origin pushed the front door to her home open, her gaze half masted as she checked to make sure it was all clear for her to enter. Once sure, she slid her small frame through the tiny crack she created, walking silently on the balls of her small feet, listening for anything.
A groan came from her left, towards the kitchen, making Adelita halt her movements as she held her breath, pressing her back against a dark wall, and edged her way into the kitchen entrance. Leaning against the bottom cabinets, just perpendicular from her hiding spot in the shadows, was her father. The normally lazed look morphed into one of worry as the girl took in her father's prone form. "Papa!" she sobbed, running over and dropping to her knees.
Groaning again, the man weakly opened his near-black eyes, and grabbed her slender shoulders firmly in his large hands. "Mi hija, why are you here? Where's your mother?" he asked, just as coughs racked his body, forcing thick swells of blood up from his esophagus. "Ade, leave, before they come back and take you!" he forced, his voice thick and raspy as he struggled to breath.
The man's stubborn daughter shook her head, refusing to do as he demanded. The floorboards from the above floor squeaked, alerting them both to the people upstairs getting ready to come back down. Adelita's dead eyes froze her father, fearing whatever was running through her mind. She stood, swaying a bit, as she turned away from Ernesto, and scaled the walls so she could sit in the rafters of the joint dinning room. "Dammit, both of them are fucking gone!" shouted a portly man, waddling into the room, just passing under one of their targets. "Tell me, you dark skinned fucker, where your wife and daughter are!" the fatass' answer was a wad of blood and mucus in his eye. "Shit! You're not worth the effort. Kill this stupid fuck, Ernie." The large of the two just huffed as he stomped over and produced a blade from his pocket, and swiftly slit open the dying man's throat like a hot knife through butter.
"Tsk. He should've just saved himself and told us what we wanted. Mick, Jasper, hurry your sorry asses up. We're done he—" the stout man did not have time to finish as a sharp kitchen knife came down, stabbing him right in the collar, too close for comfort to his jugular. However, before he could process anything, tiny fingers pressed against the underside of his jaw, forcing his head back as the blade was ripped from his body. A youthful face filled his vision, sending tickles of ice deep into his spine at the dead look they wore.
Getting it free, Adelita swung her left arm down, towards the man's chest, repeatedly with the knife she took from the Jaeger's home. By the fifth stab did she strike his heart, forcing the dead body to fall forward with the extra weight and the force of her removing the weapon. Ernie, having stood quietly to the side, brandished his own weapon, eyeing the child warily. It was the same little girl they had been hired to kidnap. "Vas a pagar por lo que hiciste…" Ernie hadn't a clue to what she said, as he was more focused on her body language, dodging to the side as she lunged at him, and slashed at her right arm. More of the warm crimson substance coated the floor, making it sticky and slick.
Ernie stabbed, making Adelita shift her weight, only for her right arm to get sliced again. From her shoulder to mid-upper arm did the first cut run, while the second went across the width a few inches short from the top of the first one. Spinning the knife around in her left hand, Adelita spun and stabbed her attacker right in the back, only for it to get yanked out of her grasp as Ernie backhanded her across the face. The blow was hard enough to knock her down on her bad arm, right in front of her papa's corpse. Honey hues darkened as they stayed fixated at the bloodied face of the man she cherished, as Ernie pulled her back up to her feet by the scruff of her neck. Her dark eyes looked into Ernie's as he delivered blow after blow to her midsection, nearly breaking a few ribs in his attempts to get her to scream in pain.
Adelita said nothing as he dropped her, just mere feet from his forgotten blade. When he turned his back, with the false sense of security of beating the child, the young Hispanic girl grabbed the black and silver butterfly-knife and got to her feet quickly, her toes curling into the tarnished wood as she spun, her knees bunching up under her and her muscles tensing, before launching herself up at his shoulder, much like a frog would, and brought the blade down against his neck. Ernie thrashed about, trying to dislodge the girl from his back, feeling the prickling feeling of the blade's tip scraping away at his neck, trying to lodge it into the large man's upper vertebrate.
"What's with all—" Jasper, a fair skinned man covered in freckles and a mop of dusty blond hair, stopped speaking as he walked into the kitchen/dining room, just as Ernie fell dead on the floor with a small figure sitting on his broad back, the man's prized knife sticking out of his neck. Jasper stood, his mouth agape, as the figure looked his way, wrenching the blade out with their left hand, and looked him right in the eye. He just knew, for a fact, that he was looking death right in the face.
[-][-][-]
"E-Eren… W-Wh-Where's Adelita? Where is my daughter?!" a frantic Alondra asked the sea-green eyed boy as he flipped through the old book.
"Lita would be upset if I told you, Auntie…" he replied, frowning as he was put on the spot. Eren did not want to break the silent promise he made with the older girl, nor did he want to disappoint her, either. The older woman sobbed into her hands, understanding what the boy meant, as she prayed to whatever Gods that would listen to her words for her only child's safe return.
Eren's mother came over and wrapped an arm around her friend's shoulders, allowing her to cry into her shoulder.
[-][-][-]
The butterfly-knife was well hidden up Adelita's remaining sleeve of her ruined nightdress as Grisha Jaeger silently carried her down the streets, her head leaning against his left shoulder, just listening to his heart beat while looking at the passing houses, her body curled up against his side. After what seemed like hours, the Military Police finally arrived at her home, only to witness the child cleaning the blood off of Ernesto Ventura's paling face and slit neck after closing his eyes. With them was the Doctor himself, who hurried inside and treated her cuts as soon as his eyes laid on them.
Words were not needed between the two, as the elder man noted the reddish tint to her dulled eyes, and it was not his place to scold the girl as she was not his child. After quick words with the Police about what possibly happened, and how an eight-year-old girl could have killed 4 grown men on her own, did the man and child leave. Everything had happened as Alondra foresaw, including the part her own child played… That mere thought weighed heavily on the Doctor's mind as they walked down the dark streets, with only the full moon above to provide any source of light.
Such a heartbreaking beginning to such a story as this…
Translations (note, my Spanish is VERY, VERY rusty and I'm using a translator, so there might be some errors on words I'm not familiar with personally):
mi hijo/hija - my son/daughter
mi amor - my love
Mami - Mom
Papa - Dad
Mi hija, que tiene que irse! - My daughter, we must leave!
¡Rápida! - Fast/hurry
Es importante - It is important
cerdos - hogs/pigs (a reference to the slang term for "police")
Vas a pagar por lo que hiciste… - You'll pay for what you did…
Attack on Titan © Hajime Isayama
Story © Me
See my Polyvore (bvb666him) for Adelita's uniform.