You were never meant to see her like this.

Everest had always been.. protective of you. As your bodyguard, it was her job, after all, to ensure your safety. But she'd always wait for your signal to determine who was friend and foe. You were the judge and jury, she was the executioner. That's how this always worked. For a while, she didn't really follow through with her duties… she had been trained in her bodyguard trainings to leave lethal force for emergencies. And she followed those trainings.

Until she started noticing certain things. Like how sometimes the ‘foes’ you designated would sometimes avoid her and wait for a chance to corner you. To ‘apologize’, or to harass you further, it rarely mattered. She'd end up catching them and dragging them off of you either way. Your judgement had been decreed, and she followed it blindly. You never said anything, so she assumed she had done what you wanted.

Then there was this one… Irritating beta boy. It seemed like nothing would get through to him. He approached you, you rejected him, she dragged him off. He approached you again while she was with your parents, she dragged him off again. By the fifth or sixth time, she had enough. She'd beaten him until his eyes were black and he was begging for mercy. By the 10th time, he had disappeared.

She didn't give anyone else nearly as many chances as she did him. Three strikes, maximum. It became easier, over time. She adjusted her techniques, changed her patterns, found new hiding places for the bodies. By the third time, she'd developed a completely bloodless technique, so that the iron scent and the copper taste that lingered never surfaced and gave away her location. And people learned, eventually, slowly, to stop harassing you. But there was always the chance…

Her black hair shown in the moonlight, body stiff as she held the body of some irritant in her arms, a mask covering her face and thick coat her body shape. But you knew it was her. She could tell from your eyes.

“... You… weren't supposed to see this."