A/N: Surprisingly, I was drawn more towards this (under-appreciated) character during "Pan's Labyrinth" than to any other of the main characters. After seeing a lack of pieces about her, here is my attempt to gain a little insight into Mercedes. Please tell me what you think! Constructive comments are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: The following is a piece of fanfiction. No money is made off this. There is no copyright infringement intended; all characters, concepts and backgrounds originate from "Pan's Labyrinth" and belongs to Guillermo del Toro.

Mercedes works in the kitchen. In summer the squat room wavers with muggy humidity; in winter, the cold is soul-chilling, so much that she can see her breath freeze on the air. She breathes out. Her breath hangs in the air, waiting, like a wispy sigh of tobacco smoke. The kitchen's where she clings to the precious little bit of control she needs to keep her head up (to keep her mask on). Move on, she tells herself, move on. There's work to be done. But she doesn't believe in what she's doing.

Breakfast for the captain? Yes, sir. A six-course meal in the captain's mess? Yes, sir, no problem. She'll make sure your meal's ready, even if she really only has one or two ration card to work with. But this is the captain's dinner, so when a pig or two (or three) disappears from a farm no one will dare to ask where it went (she's the captain's housekeeper, after all. No one questions her except him. No one will know that one pig never made it onto the captain's fork). No matter what, she'll see a job done until the end. That's her way. She may be subservient to him, but she's not servile.

Even so she'll be frantically keeping her head above the water, desperately above the chaos, and when the coffee boils over she won't even notice. The smell of smoke in the air is too thick. With an acidic hiss, a black syrup drips into the flames. Actually, she doesn't really care. There's too much smoke, anyway. Who can tell? She can't see a thing, anyway. The coffee burns. The heat is oppressing. It's much too hot. She feels sweat running down her back. In one moment of heart-leaping apprehension, she wishes she had watched the coffee more carefully. There's so much she has to do, she can't keep them straight in her head, she can't lose her wits now.

See, the kitchen's only part of her domain. The men can't be bothered with soft fiddly jobs like laundry and cooking. That's a woman's work. Just as long there's a nice hot bowl of stew and fresh uniforms for them at the end of the day, they don't care what she does, just as long as she does her duty. So they give her the keys. What can one woman do? They laugh tightly at the absurd thought, and then they fall back into obedient silence.

(Those who think that way often forget there are knives in a kitchen, knives with blades so sharp that they can slice the head off a hard turnip with a single swift chop. Then the vegetable goes into their stew, and they eat it, without thought, without questions. They forget.)

They shouldn't forget so easily, so dismissively, but they do. And they forget Mercedes, lingering in the background, quiet and efficient, unassuming and withdrawn. Mercedes never forgets. She knows each officer with a brutal clarity. She remembers who likes his coffee plain, and who likes his beer warmed over the fire. She also remembers, with a slow deep anger, who shot Frenchie's leg, and who was seen pinning a shrieking young village girl to the wall.

Mercedes thinks about what she knows when she's sharpening her knife on a whetstone. Ssniiinngg. Ssnaakktt. She's seething inside that still face, but who can tell? The sound of the knife against stone is like a spoon scraping the bottom of a glass medicine bottle. She's heard that sound once too often, when a dipper scrapes the bottom of a barrel. (There's not enough. She'll have to make do.)

With a sudden shudder, she remembers Frenchie's screams. Ssniiinngg. Ssnaakktt. The sound grates on her fraying mind. She puts the whetstone down. She reaches for another turnip. With one quick stroke of the knife the head falls off. She stares at the dismembered root. She thinks of Pedro. (Wouldn't it be easy, with a knife this sharp?) But instead all she does is worry about burning the coffee. What a coward, she thinks again. She shakes her head with finality. Mercy was insignificant at this point. (There's not enough of that to go around, either. Mercedes is saddened to realize this. She can't even see herself anymore; she's lost.) Her nose flares; she smells smoke.

Her hand tightens on her knife.