This is based on the No Regrets OVA/book. Read/watch it to better understand the story- Isabel and Furlan are not OCs, they are canon characters.
SIX YEARS AGO- UNDERGROUND CITY- 845
"Nii-san, what are you doing?"
Levi let go of the man's collar. He dropped to the floor, thoroughly beaten.
Serves him right, Levi thought. Pedophile.
He glanced over at the girls- his sister and the girl with the bird, Isabel.
"Nothing."
"OHMYGOD."
Isabel, a teenager with red hair and wide green eyes, picked up a young girl, hooking her arms under the small girl's armpits.
"SHE'S SO CUUUTTEEE I CAN'T BREATHE-"
"What a nightmare," the girl muttered in a moment if uncharacteristic sarcasm.
Furlan choked. "Alexandria, what have I told you about throwing shade in this house?" Levi chided.
"Only if it's Furlan."
"Hold on, what?"
His attention turned to Isabel.
"Can you put my little sister down, please?"
"Sorry."
The young girl-about nine and much too small for that age-looked up at her.
"I'm Isabel."
"Alex," said the girl softly. She had wide grey eyes and black hair that was surprisingly long. It spilled over her shoulders in a smooth black wave-she kept it well, as it was all but her pride and joy. She wore a simple loose white dress that was more of a faded grey than white.
Levi walked over to her and scooped her up, wearing an expression that said If you even contemplate hurting her I will kill you, resurrect you, and kill you again.
"Is that girl really his sister? She's young enough to be his daughter..."
"Oh, they're siblings," Furlan muttered. He didn't want Levi hearing him talk about them behind his back. "I think she's the one person he would willingly take a bullet for. He's kind of protective."
"Really? You don't ever get concerned that he'll... hurt her?"
He scoffed. "Please. Levi's more likely to dump gasoline on himself and light a match."
"How did he get her, anyway?"
Furlan fell silent. "I've already said too much. If you want to know, you should probably ask Levi."
Alexandria stumbled and fell, dress muddy.
She turned and her eyes widened fearfully as the man continued for her.
Then he was open-mouthed, blood spurting from his neck. A silvery knife blade ripped out of his neck and suddenly she was hyperventilating. Her older brother knelt in front of her, white sleeves stained with red.
He tipped her head up smoothly.
"Breathe."
The words seemed to clear her throat as she slowed down, breathing smoothing out.
She clung to him again, tears and blood mixing on her face.
"Onii-san..." The words came out like a plea. She cried as he gently picked her up, face in his shoulder, hiding her gaze from the corpses littering the ground around them and the bloodstained knife gripped in Levi's right hand.
"You're safe now."
Levi quietly walked into the room, noticing immediately the corpse of his mother, up in bed, face shrunken.
His chest ached slightly before he heard a cry- small, weak. He moved over to her and saw the bundle. A dirty sheet wrapped around a small child- very small, as she was only about the size of a loaf of bread. She was as weak as the cry he had heard, with rough black hair and grey eyes.
A baby. His mother had left her behind. Those eyes, grey, marked her. A sister.
Levi had a sister.
Furlan often wondered why Levi was so attached to his sister- he knew it was more than brotherly protection. He never cursed around her. He had taken care of her when she was a baby, taken her back with him. He cared, he really did, but why?
Isabel knew the girl. Knew her well, she'd say, because she really felt a compulsion to care for her, to keep her safe. She had met her when she had met Levi and Furlan. She had been small and fragile. Maybe that was why. Isabel had always wanted a sister.
Levi always viewed her as fragile. A small, young girl with some sort of odd breathing disorder that sometimes flared up and made her hyperventilate, throat constricting, making it hard to inhale. That was why he protected her.
She was nine, still innocent, still pure, a light in the blackness of the Underground.
A reason to keep living, a reason to keep going, a reason to keep fighting. Because she needed him.
He loved her because he barely knew his mother. He didn't know his father. And then, suddenly, he realized that he had a sister. A child.
He loved her because nobody had loved him, because maybe he could keep her from becoming what he was, a stone-faced emotionless man who killed without a second thought.
"I just don't know!" Levi paced through the room.
"We can't take her with us, but she's nine! It's not like we can leave her either."
"I don't know either, Levi," said Furlan quietly. He looked exhausted.
Isabel was uncharacteristically silent, head bowed. "I don't want to leave her. But... do we really have a choice?"
Levi sat again. "So what do we do?"
"Onii-san?" A whisper came from the doorway, Alexandria peeking out from behind it. She looked tired, too, and Levi moved over to her. "What's wrong?"
"I couldn't sleep," she muttered. "I just got up."
"Okay, well, we'll see what we can do about that." Over his shoulder, he threw a glace to Isabel and Furlan. The discussion was over for the night.
Furlan stood quietly. "We'll have to leave her. I..." He trailed off. Isabel put a hand on his arm.
"I don't want to either, but we know. Levi does too, I think. He's... trying to put it off, for her sake."
He shook his head softly.
"I'm sorry, Alex."
Next to him, Isabel bowed her head.
Alexandria watched the Survey Corps haul away her brother, her friends, and desperately tried not to tremble.
Her eyes sought her brother's as she stood in the gathering crowd, almost unable to fully compute what was going on in the moment.
Her eyes met his. An emotion she couldn't read flashed within, something painful.
Levi looked away.
She stepped out of the crowd, one dirty, small hand reaching for him, for any of them. Later, when she was calm and thought through the problem, she would think that maybe if she had been strong, if she hadn't been a burden, she could have changed things.
Those questions would leave her with an unhealthy dose of self-hated, monophobia, and a crushing, overwhelming determination to get stronger, and would stay with her for the rest of her life.
This is a dream, she thought dully. "I'll wake up and they'll be with me because this is just a dream just a dream justadream-
"Hey, little girl."
She glanced up at the tall MP who seemed to loom overhead, gun clutched in a sweaty, too-tight grip.
He poked her with it and she flinched, stepping back.
"Rossi, don't bully the poor girl."
The man- Rossi- leered down at her. He had brown hair and eyes and a potbelly. It stretched his uniform in the front.
"You're dead, little girl, you know that? You're just a dead man walking." His words were laced with venom.
"Rossi-"
"What?" He demanded, gesturing wildly. At that moment, two things happened.
Alexandria noticed that the safety on his gun was off. In that same second, the gun fired.
Levi froze.
The gunshot was loud, echoing through the tunnels. Erwin glanced back, looking a bit confused, but shook his head and continued on.
Levi forced himself to move, to push away the guilt and the pain. His fingernails bit into his palms. Isabel, next to him, bowed her head slightly. Furlan's expression was unreadable, but he looked more than a bit pained.
When Erwin passed by Levi again, he noticed his hands were bleeding.
The bullet slammed into Alexandria's shoulder, knocking her back onto the ground. She hit shoulder-first and couldn't contain the cry of agony as she hit.
I will not scream, she thought. I will not scream. She repeated the words like a mantra. I will not scream.
God, it hurt- like flames searing at her shoulder but a hundred times worse.
The sleeve of her loose dress was soaked in an instant and she could no longer contain the tears at the physical and mental pain. They were fat tears, the tears of a child and in the back of her mind, she hated them.
She pressed a hand to her shoulder as the stunned MP backed away. Blood-scarlet, the most vibrant color she had ever seen in the Underground- stained her pale skin as she put pressure on the wound. Her hand was covered with it soon, slick and metallic-smelling.
She raised dull, numb eyes to stare at the MP who shot her. Hand falling from her shoulder, she reached up, still so numb, not even feeling the pain anymore. With two blood-soaked hands, she wiped away the tears, streaking crimson blood on her face like some kind of cursed war paint.
Quietly, Alexandria turned and disappeared, white dress covered in dirt and blood.
She had lost something that day-not just a lot of blood or her family. Six years later, contemplating that day, she saw the irony. She had never been able to get the stains out of that dress- just like she had never been able to get the stains out of any wrecked purity she had left.