"... And I keep coming back to that word, 'Hopeless'. Just keep thinkin' about it." Her words poured out slowly.
"I figure, if I was actually hopeless... If I really ha-" she paused her thought to cough violently, a splatter of blood spraying against the pavement she sat on.
She took a deep breath and continued, "If I really had no hope, it'd be so much easier, you know? I'd have nothing pushing me forward. I'd have no fight in me. It'd all just be up an over. No pain. No failure. No getting fuckin'... Slammed around for trying to make something better."
"They say there's always hope, and that you have to believe that. Like... Hope's why you think there's a better future. That if you don't start there, then nothing else is possible. You gotta have that just to lay the foundation, right?"
She interrupted herself with another bout of pointed, painful coughing. This one made her keel to the side, clutching her torso for a moment. Eventually she righted herself.
"So if you got hope, you're gonna take action. You're gonna fight. Gonna go down swinging."
"But... You're still gonna go down, yeah?"
"And it'll suck that much more when you do."
Her breathing was labored at this point, eyes glassy as they looked out at the detritus under the overpass. The fog was thick on either side, obscuring the road as it stretched out into the haze.
"All that pain between here and there. That's Hope's fault. Wouldn't land so hard if you didn't climb so high. That's you buying into the ruse, yeah? You wouldn't struggle, you wouldn't take the risks, you wouldn't push your luck if hope didn't make you think it was necessary - think that it was possible."
"Hope was always a goddamned liar."
The disheveled rat looked visibly uncomfortable. His gaze darted both ways along the sidewalk, and then down at the mink where she huffed raggedly on the curb.
"Lady, you got a cig or what?"
Vect very slowly turned her head, bloodied eye and all, up to look at him. She stared for a lingering, dazed moment.
"Nah. Some asshole stole 'em."
"You need an ambulance or something?"
"Nah," Vect let out another bloody cough, "I heal up quick."
"Okay, well. Good luck."
"Yeah... luck."
She laid back against the concrete, looking up at the cement sky above.
"Luck's a fuckin' liar, too."
