A cold room. The damp scent of mildew clung to the walls, thick and suffocating. Her father stood with arms crossed, her mother held her wrist too tightly, and across from them, a man with ink-stained fingers flipped through a ledger.
“She’s strong,” her mother insisted.
“She’ll last,” her father said.
“She’s sold,” the man corrected, snapping the ledger shut.
The pressure around her wrist tightened for a moment, then disappeared. Her mother let go.
The door opened.
She was pulled forward.
She didn’t look back.
The first week of training had been worse than she expected. Worse than the bruises, worse than the hunger, worse than the exhaustion grinding into her bones.
She hit the ground hard. The dirt was sharp with shattered rocks, scraping her palms as she tried to push herself up.
Her instructor watched, expression impassive. Then came the kick—a brutal snap against her ribs that knocked the breath clean from her lungs.
“Pain means nothing,” he said.
Another strike. Harder this time.
“Hesitate, and you die.”
She never hesitated again.
War smelled like smoke and metal and blood.
She didn’t remember when the rifle had started to feel like an extension of herself. When the weight of it became familiar, when the recoil no longer jarred her, when pulling the trigger felt more like instinct than choice.
She was twelve.
She shouldn’t have been good at this.
But she was.
The first time she killed someone, she didn’t look at their face. The second time, she didn’t either.
By the third, she didn’t need to remind herself not to.
The village had been silent. The kind of silence that meant something was wrong.
The gas had clung to the air, thick and oily, sinking into lungs, poisoning blood.
They were already dead.
Men. Women. Children.
Bodies crumpled in the streets, slumped against doorways, collapsed where they’d run.
Her boots crushed shattered glass as she walked forward. No other sound. No movement.
Just open eyes staring at a sky that had never pitied them.
She didn’t stop walking.
Pain was an old friend.
The ropes cut into her wrists, frayed against skin rubbed raw. The knife was slow, deliberate, pressing hard enough to scrape bone.
They wanted her to break.
They wanted information.
She gave them nothing.
Another slice. Deeper this time.
She didn’t flinch.
Didn’t scream.
Didn’t beg.
Even when the pain ate through her nerves, even when her own blood slicked her palms, even when her vision blurred and the world narrowed down to agony.
She survived.
She always did.
Her breath was sharp, fast, uneven. The battlefield around her came rushing back, but the memories still clawed at her ribs, still pressed behind her eyes.
The demon grinned.
“Interesting mind you’ve got there,” it mused, tilting its head. “Let’s see how long you last inside it.”
Fire lit up her veins. Anger, sharpened by the years, by the blood, by the survival that had never been a choice. She did not hesitate.
Her blade cut through the demon’s throat in a clean arc.
It wasn’t enough to kill it outright—but it was enough to stop its voice.
Enough to stop the memories.
She drove the blade deeper, twisting until the creature screamed. It wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t getting back up. Not yet.
Boots slammed against dirt behind her—heavy, hurried.
A familiar voice, rough-edged. “Move.”
{{user}} barely stepped aside before Wynonna fired.
Peacemaker’s glow flared, the bullet hitting home.
The demon crumpled, disintegrating into nothing.
Wynonna blew out a breath, lowering the gun. “Not gonna lie, you looked like you were having a moment with that one.”
{{user}} flexed her fingers around the hilt of her blade. It was still slick with black blood, but the tremor had already faded.