Mercedes knows that they will lose this war. She has known for a long time, since before the doctor's death. Before everything that passed last month. Before Ofelia.
Ofelia, who never understood the horrors that were murdering her world. Ofelia, who never understood so many things. Brave Ofelia, foolish Ofelia. So young and innocent. Her almost-daughter, her friend. Ofelia possesses the loneliness, the peace, the silence of the grave now. Too soon, for a baby girl who loved life as she did. But Mercedes does not love her life and will not know the grave's sleep for possibly a century, it feels. Because she knows—in the same way she understands that they will lose this war—that when her brother quits breathing, when her world explodes, when the war no longer exists, she will live still. Because there must always be a witness to history.
Sometimes she loves Ofelia always, happy to remember nothing but the baby girl who believed fairytales. And sometimes—watching her brother speaking with the son of their enemy and the woman too weak and good for this world—envy eats her and she never loves Ofelia; Mercedes would give anything to forget her.