The butcher's daughter was waiting.
She was very good at that, at waiting. She had waited for many things in her life. It was her duty, what she was meant to do. As others went out to fulfill their own duties, she would stay behind, then welcome them home when they returned.
With this skill for waiting came other skills; she knew how to assess a situation before reacting to it. Knew to hold her tongue until words were truly necessary. Knew how to be patient until she had all the details. Waiting had taught her many things, it was certain.
She ambled along the edge of the electrified fence, in no particular hurry. It was not the first time in her life that she found herself waiting for footsteps that would not arrive. But today, she realized, it mattered very much to her that they did arrive. She sat down in the tall, overgrown grass, running her fingers through it carefully, so as to not break a single blade of greenery.
Five minutes passed, with only the gentle breeze tugging playfully at her hair to keep her company. She sat there idly, watching for an oncoming figure in the distance. She pushed down her anxieties, smothering the nagging knowledge that this man had never been late a day in his life. She would still wait. It was only five minutes. Five minutes was nothing. She dug her fingers carefully into the soil.
Ten minutes.
Ten minutes, she could ignore. She carelessly lifted a twig up from the ground, swished it about a few times, then tossed it towards the electric fence. It made contact with a flash of light, then returned to her, charred and blackened. She waited a few moments before picking it up; ash stained her fingers as she flung it away again. She could look past ten minutes, ignore the seconds that ticked away in the world, wasting her life away in a symphony of time.
Five minutes later, and fifteen minutes had gone by. Now, she began to grow nervous. It was a mild worry, a quiet apprehension that caused her to do little more than gnaw on her cheek. She wished that she could have brought her knives with her, could rearrange them carefully in her jacket, as she always did when worried. But, unfortunately, she had left them in the shop where they belonged; where she belonged. She could not remove the tools of her trade from the butcher's shop, no matter what comfort they brought to her.
So, in their place, she turned to comfort by running her fingers along a black ribbon that encircled her throat. The action slowed her pounding heart somewhat, and she tugged at the decoration around her neck gently. It was, perhaps, a bit too tight, but it was nothing she could not live with.
Twenty minutes. The butcher's daughter, for all of the skill at waiting, was now pacing. She could understand five and ten and fifteen minutes. But twenty was pushing it.
Little did the butcher's daughter realize the importance of this day. As she saw a figure emerging in the distance, saw it ambling towards her, she sighed in relief. A grin spread across her face and her heartbeat quickened; she did not know how this day would change her life forever.
She ran towards the silhouetted figure, arms outstretched. She almost laughed aloud, almost giggled like the child she was meant to be as she ran towards him.
But then he stumbled into the light, and her pace slowed. She staggered forwards, finally pulling herself to a halt as she caught sight of his entirety. The figure was not walking with his typical purposeful stride, but rather lurching with an unsightly gait. It was not a healthy color on his cheeks as he came into the sunlight, but a sickly, deathly white.
And, of course, there was the bloodied knife in his chest.
The butcher's daughter stared onwards, unable to speak in her horror, unable to understand the sight before her. Her head shook slightly back and forth. Her mouth closed, never to say its friendly greeting. Her hands returned to her chest, never to give the hug they had been desperate to give.
The shadowed figure of her father stumbled forwards a final time, then fell into the grass at her feet, sprawled out in an undignified manner. The butcher's daughter knelt down next to him, her hands hesitating above his lifeless form, then purposefully rolling him onto his back. She held her ear next to his lips, so that she could hear any final words he had to say, any last parting that would somehow soften the blow. But there was nothing; he was already gone.
Never speaking, never making a sound, she buried her face in his chest and allowed herself a moment to cry, to mourn, to wish that things were different. But it was only a moment, and no more. It couldn't be any more, as she knew it was only a matter of time before those who did this would follow quickly.
The butcher's daughter frantically dried her eyes and stepped away from the body, plastering a look of shock and devastation on her face. This was not difficult. As the white uniforms of Peacekeepers swarmed around her, bundling her away from the body, she kept her silence. She was unable to form the questions she knew they would be expecting from her, but they didn't seem to notice. She was, after all, just a young girl. She couldn't possibly be involved in her father's plan to overthrow the Capitol, couldn't possibly have even known about it.
She was swept off, away from her father's body, away for further questioning. Her eyes stayed locked on the corpse, and a few tears streaked down her face; but it was not for her own sake that she cried. These tears had a purpose, as everything did in her life; she had an image to maintain, and now she was maintaining it.
As his body faded from her sight, she still knew very little of how this day would affect her. But she knew it would. She knew that this day was now very, very important.
For this was the day that the butcher's daughter became the butcher's orphan.