margaret young / d1 / (fin)

Ever since she was little, Margaret knew what she craved for — and how to seize it. Indecisiveness did not lurk within her bones; she would get it if she wanted it. And, this want shouldn't be confused with a spoiled, pig-tailed girl's. No, Margaret's wants tended to be her needs also and were as realistic as the blood she bled and the lilac her knuckles wore. Her wants boiled down to the necessities such as a hot meal every two days, home rent, taking care of her mother's health, and sparring.

She stared ahead at what a battlefield always leave behind on the floor : a still pond of blood that tasted copper on her tongue, footprints in the sand, and a handful of bruised egos.

“Good one, Red.” A face she didn't recognize told her. “Hope that heals.” Another chimed in, peering down at the knuckles that were torn open, bleeding rubies. Margaret simply made the ghost of a smile: ephemeral, arrived as briskly as it was gone.

She did not come here for praise, but to fight.

Yet, she was not hostile either and knew how to receive praise. Let it rest on the surface like lily-pads in a pond — and make sure it doesn't sink down to the innards and branch out into hauteur. A vain person was no person in her eyes.

Pouring antiseptic over wounds always burned, but her eyes watched the liquid dribble down with a stoic expression, indifference in that ashen gaze. Margaret learnt how to mask her agony when she was eight, through several punching bags and brawls picked with her equally irascible peers. In between class time and extracurriculars, she was the bully, pulling strands of hair, pushing their shoulders down like handlebars.

Somewhere amid nine and eleven, a realization dawned upon over that senseless violence with those weaker was not noble. She wanted to be no saint, but not a sinner either. Margaret Young existed in the middle ground, wearing neutrality like a cloak, perfectly standing astride the two, vague lines that separated good and bad.

Justice, for her, meant fairness. It was a grayscaled term that had no further definitions.  She was a fighter at heart and a fighter at hands. Not a bully. Bullies cowered but Margaret had no reason to. Bullies did what they wanted to. Her reasons were always a need.

She fought to fill a need — the gaping hole left between her two ribs, asking to be whole all the time. Her blood completed the space, but it was temporary and always fleeted. Fluids evaporated and after several weeks of hiatus, her footsteps would lead her down the District's darkest alleys in search of a fighting ring, in search of the bones that would crunch under a fist and bodies that writhed and bled.

This was her last day here.

Eyes took their final look at the bloodshed, and nostrils flared in the musk and the coppery air. She would not miss it, but there was some nostalgia in the way her gaze washed over the empty racks and the fleeting crowd. 

She'd stumbled upon a much nobler cause, and was gravitating towards it — like a lost moon to a planet brimmed with life. The Sublinos, no matter the trade they lived on and the affairs they partook in, Margaret discovered, were worth her protection. And, if a noble job offered to pay her to be a protector, she'd be a fool to refuse.