Of all the ways that her father could have died, it wasn’t a fire, stray artillery or a bullet that did it. If anything, the options above may have been kinder than the death he had suffered.

Suzanne could remember how his body was wracked with coughs, the wheezing in his breathing. His skin started to pale, tight around his frame as his strength gradually drained from his body. Red-rimmed and sunken eyes, looking as if both were deeply bruised. The ugly purple and red; she couldn’t remember what his eyes looked like before. His stare still haunted her, as much as he tried to hold his head up. Her father was a strong man who came from a long line of farmers and people who knew how to live off the land.

His family had lived through various revolutions, through Napoleon, and Suzanne couldn’t help but feel like her father deserved a better death than to spend his last days bedridden with consumption. He had always seemed like the man who wanted to die standing on his feet, to see the fruits of his labor and know he had lived through his hardships with determination.

He didn’t deserve to die looking like a ghost, reduced to half his weight and could barely talk with how bad his lungs were.

Suzanne had wanted a cure, but she would settle for something that might give him a few more years to get his affairs in order. To see what he wanted–to go to Paris, see his daughter married, and see who won the war. She wanted to give that chance to him.

For a couple of hours, she thought she did.

The tonic was expensive, but she would spend any expense on this. The town had a local doctor, run by a family. The Arno family, all men when the matron of the family had passed the previous summer. Suzanne had come to them with all her pretense down, she was there for her father and would take anything that might help. Suzanne could remember the sombre, sympathetic look Leon Arno had levelled her with as she explained her situation.

For all the time she had known Leon, his calm and soft voice brought her some sense of comfort when she had to come to him for some sort of issue. At that moment, as she had stood there at her lowest, it was no different.

In hindsight, it made her sick to her stomach.

All Suzanne wanted to do was give her father some relief, to buy him some more time so he could die on his own terms. When she helped him take the tonic in the exact measurements Leon had instructed, she really believed she had done that. The relief, the hope that tonic had given her and her father, had lasted a total of an hour.

The moments of his death still sat heavily on Suzanne’s mind. Her father had groaned in pain, barely having the energy to get out of bed to deal with the pain his gut was giving him. She had tried to help him to the best of her ability, gently grasping his thin shoulders so she could sit him up on the bed. He let out a horrible, wet sound as she did so, sounding like he was choking on a cough before he started to gag on the blood that gathered in his throat. It was a horrible, messy death. A slow one, too. Much too slow for the suffering he had to endure.

The blank, lifeless stare he gave her as he passed, his mouth parted with his lips and chin covered in blood and bile, haunted her for days after.

Shock and confusion had led her by the hand through the events that followed. The way the elderly woman next door slept downstairs while some of her father’s friends helped clean up and prepare for the burial. It took a day for the events to really register in her mind, a day of sympathetic words, teas, and some wildflowers left on the wooden marker that made up her father’s grave. It wasn’t until night had settled around her in the empty house, where echoes of her father remained everywhere, that the rage surfaced.

A reasonable part of her told her that she should seek out some sort of authority, someone who could properly investigate. Yet, upon seeing some light in Leon’s shop at the current hour, Suzanne found herself grabbing the cleaver from the kitchen before she could really stop herself.

The skirts of her dress brushed against her legs as she made long strides to cross the dirt road, gaze locked on the front door of that shop as her father’s death repeated over and over in her head. The strained groans, the blood. His stare.

As she approached the front of the shop, she watched as the light from inside flickered out. Someone stepped outside, her mind not really registering just who it was. Though, if she had thought for a moment, she would have caught the pang of warning that the figure in front of her was too short to be Leon. At the moment, however, it felt like she wasn’t in control of her body. She continued to approach, the person turning to glance toward her.

She brought the knife down with a short yell, cleaving the side of the person’s neck. He reached out, gripping at the sleeves of her dress feebly as he kept opening and closing his mouth in silent screams. That, or the blood rushing in Suzanne’s ears was drowning out the noise. Though, at his closeness, she could see the shocked green eyes weren’t the blue ones she had been searching for. Nor did the boy in front of her wear glasses, his hair curled somewhat on his creased forehead instead of swept back like Leon’s.

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Finally, she pulled the knife back with a short gasp, watching as the youngest Arno collapsed on the ground, hands uselessly trying to cover the blood gushing from the deep wound that she had left in his neck. Joseph had just turned eighteen, likely to be sent off to help with the war effort soon enough, yet he was dying at her feet.

Suddenly, something hard slammed into her, sending Suzanne sprawling out onto the ground. The knife was knocked from her grasp from the impact, laying just within arm’s reach as she heard Henri, the eldest Arno, yelling in her ear. Leon brushed by them in a hurry, collapsing to the ground next to Joseph as he clasped his hands down around his wound. Henri kept shouting at her–Suzanne still couldn’t make it out through the rushing in her ears as she watched the life leave Joseph’s eyes, his father’s hands still trying to keep him from bleeding out.

It was then that the world seemed to come rushing back into her.

“What have you done?” Leon shouted as he turned his head to look at her, still not removing his hands from over the wound on his son’s neck, as much as Joseph was gone.

Suzanne could feel Henri’s arm tighten around her neck, restraining her head as she sat almost limply on the ground. The shouting didn’t affect her in the slightest, it seemed.

“I thought it was you,” she replied, voice starting to raise as she continued, “You murdered my father. Fed him poison and used my own hand to do it!”

“Your father was sick!” Leon shouted in return, “Nothing was going to save him! I gave you some comfort, I didn’t poison him! You–you butchered my son!”

“I wanted it to be you!” Suzanne shouted in return, grasping angrily at Henri’s arms, “You let my father choke on his own lungs! You are as much a murderer as I am, Leon!”

As much as it seemed like he would say more, the current commotion drew nearby attention. Just as Suzanne should have expected, yet she couldn’t help the way her heart picked up pace in her chest as she heard some indistinct shouts. Henri’s arm tightened around her neck, making her gasp somewhat, arching her back in a poor attempt at trying to get him off. In doing so, however, she caught sight of her momentarily forgotten knife as it lay in the dirt just nearby.

In the shock and panic, it didn’t seem like Henri or Leon made sure she couldn’t reach it.

Suzanne could hear Leon shouting something, her hands coming up to grip at Henri’s arm as she cried out. She pushed back against him, making Henri have to twist her around somewhat. Exactly what she hoped for. In her struggle, she hooked the heel of her boot against the handle of the knife and kicked it somewhat toward herself. She let go of Henri’s arm with a hand, reaching out with her fingertips just brushing the handle. She curled them, inching the knife toward her grasp.

Her actions didn’t go unnoticed, however.

“Henri!” Leon barked as Suzanne managed to curl her fingers around the handle of the knife, “Henri! Pay att–”

Suzanne swung down, the knife cutting deep into Henri’s leg–the only limb that happened to be within her eyeshot. The pain caused Henri to yell in agony, her hand still digging the knife into his leg until she felt his arm loosen around her neck.

Yanking the knife from his leg, she pushed back against him and managed to escape his hold somewhat. She gathered herself to an unsteady stand, panic starting to grip at her mind as the area and the people in front of her seemed to blur as the seconds ticked by. Finally, she charged forward, trying to make it toward an opening between the buildings. Suzanne managed a few steps before she felt someone grip at the back of her jacket.

The force of the pull turned her around somewhat, her gaze meeting Leon’s for a moment before she swung out with the knife almost blindly. He jumped back to avoid getting cut, but it gave her enough leverage to twist herself out of his grip and she took off in a sprint for the opening she was looking for.

Nearly throwing herself into the space, she took off down toward a fence near the back as her focus snapped on the treeline just behind the building. She picked up her pace, muscles aching from the struggle and strain she was putting on them in her run, but Suzanne didn’t care as she flung herself over the fence. Once the area opened up around her, she made a mad dash for the treeline with no time to check if anybody was following.

Underbrush and some trees scraped against her arms and legs as she ran, but she couldn’t stop for nothing. Not while still close to town and the remaining Arnos. She threw herself between gaps in trees, looking for any thicker coverage so she could have a chance to lose anybody following. She couldn’t see well through the trees and the darkness that the falling night was settling around her, but she just focused on running. She could feel her lungs strain, knowing she was covering her arms and legs with scratches and cuts.

Eventually, her legs wobbled, causing her to stumble. Suzanne reached out for the nearest tree, pulling herself behind the truck before falling to the ground. She gasped and gagged, knife still in her grip as she tried to catch her breath and calm her turning stomach.

…Oh, what have I done?

With heavy breaths, she glanced down at her shaking hands as she sat up on her knees. The front of her dress was covered in blood, her fingers red and the knife was still wet.

She really thought something might change. All those stories she had read, the numbness that had settled in her that only left that angry voice in the back of her head saying that this was what she should do. An eye for an eye.

Now, Joseph Arno was dead, Henri was injured and their bastard father was still alive. She had utterly failed in her moments of pure bloodlust, and now she had to live with what had happened.

She stood up on shaking legs and glanced around herself. In her panic, Suzanne had taken off in random directions to escape, the area now unfamiliar in the dark. Still, she couldn’t stay.

With a short, angry yell, she threw the knife into the bush before slipping further into the trees.