{royal hardt; district one; fin}

She wears her apron like a bulletproof vest, already soaked through with blood that isn't hers.

The cleaver in her hand — well balanced, hollow ground, with a partial bolster and a full tang — is her favorite. Her baby. In Royal's practiced fingers, it hacks through tendon, through sinew, through muscle and bone just as easily as it would butter or cake. But this is no butterknife, and she would never dishonor it with such blatant misuse.

The counter is hers on weekday afternoons, when her mother has taken leave of her butcher shop in favor of errands and naps. Business is slow until work lets out, so really, she doesn't do much beyond babysit the bloody animals — her little sister included. Mil sweeps sometimes, dusts sometimes, when the willful girl can't be coerced to go out and play or something. Ripred, I swear, watching me hack up a cow is not that interesting.

Her sister is willful and apparently outside is a hard sell when inside is painted with Royal's colorful swears as she pulls the tiny bones from rabbits and pigeons and doves.

The bell on the door chimes, light and pleasant, even as the room darkens and resolves itself to be anything but.

She wears her scowl like a shield, though she isn't sure which of them it's protecting.

The peacekeeper is out of uniform, but his face is burned into her memory. Her brain fills in the gaps — the white uniform, the petals and thorns poking out of his collar, the blackened eye, the bloody nose —

His eyes and his presence suggest that he has no idea what he's done — yet the smirk behind his beard says he knows he's done something awful, that he delights in it, that he's come back four, five, however many years later to gloat. He has no reason to, but in her memory, he's never seemed the type to need reasons.

But why should he remember her when she was just a face in a doorframe? When she was just part of the scenery? A young girl frozen to the entryway, trapped behind a pane of nonexistent glass, watching the episode in front of her unfold as though it was happening on television, as though it was happening a thousand miles away, as though it was happening to someone else's big brother.

He may have willed himself into the lions' den, but maybe if he doesn't do any other stupid things she can still save him—

The peacekeeper draws but her brother's back is turned. Royal wills him to turn around. Her voice catches in her throat but her eyes are wide, screaming red alert!, screaming warning!, screaming dan — (bang.) — ger! too late.

— He orders a ribeye, some ground chuck, and a pound of bacon.

She sends her sister into the back to fetch the bacon while she busies herself preparing the steak. With each swing, her favorite cleaver hits the block so hard she knows she'll need to sharpen it later. The vibrations carry down through the counter, across the floor, up her legs and spine and jar her gritted teeth. When she wraps his cut in paper, she catches her fingers in the twine once, twice, three times and pulls so tight she thinks she might have given herself a bruise. But she sets the parcels on the counter and takes his money all the same.

He turns to leave, reaches the door —

"Wait."

Her voice stops him dead in his tracks. He turns —

— so she can hurl her butcher's knife at his head, to cleave his skull in two, to spill his brains onto the floor her sister has just swept, to take for herself a retribution he doesn't even know is owed —

— so she can lure him in close, then prune the rose from his neck with one measured draw and watch him crumple to the ground — but that's too clean, too easy —

— so she can bury her blade in his stomach, to force him to his knees, to his back, to put a boot on his windpipe and watch his face redden then purple, eyes bulging until she scoops them out with the skinning knife she's got in her pocket and stuffs them in his gasping mouth —

"You forgot your bacon."

He trades an apologetic smile for the pork.

The bell on the door chimes, light and pleasant.

Her favorite knife buries itself in the wooden frame, the heavy wood chopping block is swept from the counter and onto the floor, blood and trimmings splattering the tile, the wall, the girl.

She slumps to the floor, covers her eyes with her red-stained hands — blood is a braver sight than tears, after all — struggles for breath.

Mil locks the door, flips the sign in the window, pries the cleaver from the wood. She dutifully trots the blade back over to her sister, sets it on the counter with a gentle thud.

Minutes — hours? days? — pass and she rights herself, rights the chopping block and the tile and the wall. She wipes the blood from her face, tucks her cleaver into her back pocket.

She hangs her apron, relaxes her scowl into a confident smirk, and pushes through the door. She doesn't need her bullet proof vest, doesn't need her dark eyes drawn into a scowling shield.

Because out here, nothing can fucking touch her.