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Rouge always returns bruised.
It's been this way for a while, and it will be this way for long.
Her mother has bruises too, but those come from home, unlike hers. Well, most of hers come from outside, anyway.
Her mother no longer brings it up. She's a lost cause; they both know this. She can't meet her mother's gaze as her arm gets bandaged. Can't look up when it's finished.
She murmurs a thank you and shuts herself in her room until the next morning.
---
Breakfast is uneventful. It's best this way.
"Take care," Heart Barnham says softly as her children ready to leave for school.
"I will," Zacharias says. His sister makes no response. She cannot make a promise she will not keep.
---
Her palm connects with the upperclassman's torso. Right in the solar plexus. Daze, then strike. The air is forcefully taken from his lungs.
He stumbles, vision failing for a brief moment, but that is all it takes.
A brief moment.
She slams her elbow right in his face, the force knocking him back onto his sorry ass. He curses loudly, clutching his face.
"You bitch!" he spits. He scrambles to his feet. "You'll regret this!"
"Is that all you have to say?" Rouge tilts her head, makes her raised hand into a fist and watches him blanch. "That's boring. You're boring me. Don't pick a fight if you won't fucking fight."
He turns and bolts, slipping on the ground once before he's out of sight after he turns the corner to the street.
Rouge sighs irritably, runs a hand through her hair, nails scratching her scalp. She tightens the knot keeping her jacket around her waist.
She's suddenly very tired, despite that little scuffle being honestly boring. She's just done for the day. She's fed up with pricks like him picking on others in school who aren't likely to fight back.
But that's not why she fought him. She's got no interest in playing hero. No real interest in helping them. He just incited her on purpose, despite her reputation as a delinquent.
Another sigh. She doesn't look forward to the lecture that surely awaits her the next day at school.
---
Her brother starts to have bruises too. Rouge sees red whenever she sees the mottled skin on his cheek. Zack says he tripped.
That's what mum says too.
It's just their default response. They say it like a recording. Broken records. Their mother especially; mum's the most 'broken'.
She's the only one who doesn't use that excuse.
She's a delinquent, after all. It's only expected. She's fulfilling her role.
Heart's soothing voice interrupts her thoughts. "Want to help make supper?"
Rouge finds a way to smile. It's a tired one, and she seldom finds reasons to smile anymore, but she still finds a way to. For the only two that matter. "Of course,"
Her brother perks up visibly, and he's attentively waiting for further instructions.
Their mother beams brightly, and Rouge feels significantly less exhausted. "Let's see then..."
In forty minutes they're done with cooking. In approximately twenty-six more, that man comes home, and the brief cheer in the house dies immediately as he walks through the main door. Snuffed out like a match blown at.
Their mother still greets him, gives him a smile he doesn't deserve, welcomes him home and tells him supper's ready. Acts like the perfect housewife.
It sickens her to watch. Sickens her more that he acts like nothing's wrong.
Supper is quiet as usual. No one dares speak. Rouge's finished her meal already, but refuses to leave. She waits for both of them to finish too. She won't leave them behind. Not with him.
The man takes his sweet time, because unlike them he has nothing to worry about. His face is bruise free. The only bruises he has are on the knuckles of his fists.
Some father he is.
---
Heart is on the floor, carefully picking up shattered glass. Rouge's with her, squatting and gathering the pieces, throwing them into the trashcan.
Zacharias isn't home, he's where he should be: school. Because he's not a disappointment like his big sister.
"It'll be okay," her mother says, like all the other times this has happened. She bites back the remark she wants to make. "It'll be okay." Heart repeats, firmly this time, and Rouge looks at her. "This time, it really will be."
"What do you mean?" She asks.
With all the bigger fragments taken care of, they both move to sweep the floor and ensure that not a single shard was left. It's only after they've put everything away that her mother speaks again.
"We're going away now, somewhere he can't find us. That's a promise."
---
Rouge remembers some things. Most of it she kind of wished she didn't, but at the same time she acknowledges they're important to who she was.
She slides the chalice across the bar - it hits a dagger and changes direction. A series of clink-clink-clink, and then it falls off the counter. Barnham winces as it hits the floor.
"Shame," she laughs easily, putting her feet up on the bar and expertly spinning a dagger with one hand. "and you were so sure of it this time too."
"Oh shut it," he grumbles, getting off his seat and surveying the dagger placement for the fourth time that evening. "I'm not leaving until I've solved this accursed puzzle."
"There's only so much I can change from the previous version, Zack. This should be easy."
"Don't interrupt me, I'm trying to solve it!" She complies, leaning back in her chair and letting him concentrate on the puzzle before him.
Even now this stirs up memories, some hazy pieces of their past. He doesn't bring it up with her yet--he knows she'd be the one to speak about it first.
For now, she focuses on the present.
"Feel free to ask for hints and big sis will answer them," she says and he scoffs.
"Psh! As if! Don't patronise me, a knight like me needs not such things!"
He ended up asking for them anyway.