She learns the hard way that blood never truly washes off.
She learns the hard way that blood is more than just cells and oxygen – it's life, it's death, it's Pure and dirty, and free. She learns that blood was the cause of destruction, and killing, and murder, and she learns the hard way that there is a difference between murder and killing, and she learns the hard way exactly when those lines blur. She learns the hard way that the copper of dried blood is no worse than the darkness of the fresh kind, and that it is just as hard to clean.
She learns the hard way. She learns the hard way exactly what her limits are, and she learns the hard way that those limits do not end with forced march for twenty-four kilometres no food, no sleep and no water. She learns the hard way that is possible to fight when your friends are lying dead beside you, and when you are battered beyond repair, and when you are outnumbered three to one. She learns the hard way that the most indestructible of all human instincts, the most primal, the most primitive, the most basic, the most import, is the will to survive. And she learns the hard way just how far humans are willing to go before they fall.
She learns the hard way that you never forget. She learns the hard way what fear is, and just how powerful a motivator it is. She learns the hard way that you first kill is never the last, and that your last kill should have been your first. She learns the hard way the paradox of that statement, and she learns the hard way exactly how true it is. She learns why black is the colour of Death, and why red is the colour of Good, and she learns exactly why nobody ever told her before.
She fought for five long, gruelling years; a year on the front, a year in the mines, a year as a spy, a year in Russia, and a year just fighting. Five years and in all that time, she never learned why she fought, why she had given up her life for the cause, this meaningless cause that was lost in the blood and obscurity of war.
When she looks at her hands, dark skin cracked from cold and use, nails broken and bitten, fingers gnarled from holding her wand, but most of all, red around the edges, copper on her nails, pink in the creases, she thinks, "this is why I fight." She fights blood that is indistinguishable from her own, she fights blood that is red, blood that bleeds, blood that never washes off.
And when she finally falls, she hopes that neither time, nor water, will ever wash the blood of her hands.