@ruthlessluck sent 05. — broken
The thread broke.
Cindy didn’t want to think about it in metaphors, it didn’t have to be that deep. The thread broke, that was all. Sometimes they got frail, when she’d done too much, when she was stretching herself too thin. Her uniform was covered in varying levels of dust, there was sweat beaded across her brow, and the webs coming from her fingers frayed and ran thin. Four in the morning had rolled over into five in the morning, and she’d been going all night. The thread broke.
And she tumbled through a boarded window into a roll across debris-laden wood floors. Her thin layer of dust turned to a full layer of dust, and she coughed, never more thankful for the red mask pulled over her nose. It took her a moment before she looked up to take in her surroundings, directly into too-familiar blue eyes framed by a black mask.
The thread broke.
And there was a metaphor in there, but Cindy didn’t think it was a perfect fit. Because simply saying the thread broke implied it was a natural cause, an act of God, an unavoidable disaster. It didn’t take into account there was a knife involved, and Cindy had wrapped her fingers around it, moved it slowly, clearly, deliberately. The thread broke, and Cindy broke it.
“Black Cat.” All the time in the world to consider what she might say to her if Cindy ever saw her again, and all she managed was her name on a disbelieving breath. It should be ‘I’m sorry,’ or ‘you didn’t deserve what I did to you,’ or a treacherous ‘I’ve missed you,’ but Cindy didn’t want to be left bleeding on a rooftop with wounds that never quite healed. “You’re back.”