A/N: I love writing minor characters.
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Smellerbee thought back to the day she had died.
It was cold – she remembered that much. A tiny girl with soft, brown hair was whining, snuggling up next to a rather plain woman dressed in green, with eyes the color of drying grass. The girl scowled and cursed the sky for making it snow (albeit lightly; this was the Earth Kingdom, after all), causing the woman to scold the girl, telling her to "never use that word again".
Yes, there was a woman and a child, but no man. The man (devoted husband, loving father) had died two years previous. From what, she doesn't remember. She had been too young to understand.
The girl (who she now remembers as herself) had wanted so desperately to play outside with the village boys, but the woman would not allow it. "Girls are to sit inside and tend to the house, not become muddy in a game of tag."
This made the little girl very angry, and she cursed the woman, too.
But before she could be punished, a noise had slipped in with the air through a crack in the door (that the man promised he'd fix).
People were screaming.
One, two, three, four. The girl would have counted higher, but she had forgotten her numbers for a moment. Not that it mattered, anyway. The screams were countless.
The door was slammed open roughly, and three soldiers bathed in red (savages) stomped into the small room. The leader of the pack smirked as he saw them, a silver-capped tooth glinting like the sword in his hand.
The girl's scream didn't have time to leave and join the others.
She was held down by burning hands and forced to watch the woman (mother) collapse onto the wood floor, the green tunic she had been wearing painting itself as red as the soldiers' armor.
The girl was discarded much later – a broken doll, worn after too much use – and lay on the floor in silence, staring blankly at the door (that would never be fixed) as it swung diagonally on its broken hinge.
She vaguely remembers being found by two boys; one who never spoke, and one who never stopped talking.
Her hair was cut, her clothes were traded, and her childhood was locked away forever.
That was the day that the little girl died, and Smellerbee shed not a tear.
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It was warm the day her heart stopped beating – she remembered, because she had been sweating in the prison underneath that lake.
Shadows slithered all around her, hissing whenever she got too close.
So she kept Longshot – her personal light – with her at all times.
Dai Li agents ("protectors of the city") had attacked the band of misfit heroes, and Smellerbee fought to the best of her ability, just the way Jet had taught her all those years ago.
Jet.
He was her mentor, her guide, the father she never had. He had scared her, scared them when he had been arrested, and they were so afraid that he was gone. And they had finally gotten him back –
Jet. He wasn't moving. Why wasn't he moving!?
Shadows writhed about him, coiling like snakes around the boy's (father's) body. They pulsated with each beat of his slowing heart, steadily squeezing the life out of him until the darkness clouded his eyes.
Her light had spoken, but it was not enough. He was gone. Really, truly, absolutely. Gone.
She had no pulse anymore. It was gone (just like Jet), but she kept crying. She cried for the woman, she cried for the man. She cried for the little girl and the childhood she never got to have. But most of all, she cried for Jet.
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Smellerbee doesn't exist anymore. She isn't dead, but she isn't alive either. Longshot tries to get her to respond; to open up in any way. But his light is fading fast, and there isn't enough for the both of them.
So she sits and counts the countless screams, all the while wishing someone would finally fix the crack in the door.