Chapter 4: The Library's Confession
The “suite” was a museum of solitude. A four-poster bed big enough for a family stood on an island of silk rug. A fireplace sat cold and clean. The attached bathroom was marble and steam, with towels thicker than her childhood mattress. Selina stood under the scalding spray until her skin was raw and pink, but the smell of him—sweat, rain, and something cleanly metallic—wouldn’t leave her. It was in her sinuses, on her tongue.
She found the clothes, not on the bed, but laid out on a velvet chaise. Black tactical trousers, a dark gray long-sleeved shirt, soft-soled boots. All her size. All expensive, subtle, and weaponless. Of course. She dressed, the fabric whisper-soft against her sensitized skin.
Sleep was a ridiculous idea. The silence of the manor was a living thing, pressing in on her ears. She padded back downstairs, following the faint, residual heat of the fire.
He was still in the library, but transformed.
The armor was gone. He wore dark trousers and a simple black sweater, the sleeves pushed to his elbows. He stood before a large, digital map display that had risen silently from a section of the bookshelf, its blue light bleaching the color from his face. The Zurich data was parsed into schematics, financial trails, and security layouts. He was muttering to himself, one hand tracing a route on the screen, the other holding a ceramic mug of steaming liquid that smelled of bitter herbs.
He didn’t turn. “The water was hot enough?”
“It was fine.” She moved to the sideboard where a crystal decanter of amber liquid glinted. She poured two fingers, drank it neat. The burn was a welcome anchor. “You don’t sleep, do you?”
“Not when there’s work.”
“The work is done for tonight. The jet leaves in the morning. You said it yourself.”
“The work is never done.” His voice was flat. “Planning is work. Contingencies are work.” He finally glanced at her, his gaze flickering over her clothes. “They fit.”
“Like you didn’t already know my measurements.” She came to stand beside him, looking at the maze of a Swiss bank’s sub-levels. “Heavy biometrics. Time-locked vaults within vaults. This isn’t a burglary. It’s a siege.”
“It’s an extraction. The data here,” he pointed to a node deep in the schematic, “is the master ledger. Names, accounts, shipments. The whole network. We get it, we burn them all.”
“We.” She sipped her drink. “You keep using that word.”
“You’re a known variable now. Your skills are applicable. Your motivation is aligned.” It was a clinical assessment, devoid of the man who had shuddered against her hours before.
“My motivation.” She set the glass down with a sharp click. “You mean because I’m a loose end you’ve decided to tie to your belt.”
He turned from the screen, his full attention a physical weight. “Is that what you think this is?”
“I think you don’t know what this is. I think you’re trying to turn it into another mission parameter. Something you can control.” She stepped closer, within his space. “It’s not working.”
His jaw tightened. A muscle flickered in his temple. “What do you want me to say, Selina? That bringing you here was a strategic error? It was. That wanting you is a catastrophic distraction? It is.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “I can still taste you. I can still feel you clenching around me. It’s in my head, and it’s louder than any plan. So yes, I’m trying to control it. Because if I don’t, it will consume what’s left of me.”
The raw confession hung between them, more intimate than the sex. She saw it then, the true fear in his eyes. Not of death, or pain, or failure. Of her. Of what she provoked in him.
She closed the last inch between them. Her hand rose, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw, rough with stubble. He didn’t flinch. He leaned into the touch, his eyes closing for a brief, vulnerable second.
“Then let it,” she whispered.
A low sound, like a beast wounded, escaped his throat. His control snapped.
He kissed her, and it was nothing like before. It was a surrender. A supplication. His lips were soft, searching, his tongue gently seeking entrance. She opened for him, and the kiss deepened into something slow, devastatingly tender. His hands came up to cradle her face, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones.
He broke away, breathing raggedly. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Show me,” she breathed against his lips. “Show me what you want when you’re not trying to exorcise a demon.”
He took her hand and led her away from the cold light of the screens, back to the rug before the hearth where the embers still pulsed with a deep, orange heart. He didn’t push her down. He lowered himself first, sitting with his back against the side of the heavy sofa, and pulled her into his lap, straddling him.
He looked up at her, his face open, unguarded. “I want this,” he said, his voice rough. “Just this.”
He kissed her again, slow and deep, as his hands slid under her shirt. His palms were warm, calloused, mapping the ridges of her spine, the flare of her ribs. He broke the kiss to pull the shirt over her head, tossing it aside. His eyes drank her in, not with hunger, but with a reverent awe that made her breath catch.
He bent his head and took one nipple into his mouth. He didn’t suck hard, he worshipped it. Soft flicks of his tongue, gentle nips of his teeth, until it was a tight, aching peak and she was arching into him with a soft cry. He gave the same devoted attention to the other, his hands cupping and kneading her breasts, his thumbs brushing over the sensitized tips.
“Bruce,” she moaned, her hands fisting in his hair.
His mouth left a wet trail down her sternum, over her quivering stomach. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her trousers and the underwear beneath, and she lifted her hips to help him. He peeled them down her legs, discarding them, leaving her naked and spread open over him.
He leaned back, his gaze traveling over her body, flushed in the firelight. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” The words sounded torn from him, rusty with disuse.
He didn’t move to enter her. Instead, he held her hips and guided her downward, until her wet, open sex was poised over the hard ridge of his erection, still confined by his trousers. He rocked her against him, the rough fabric a maddening friction over her clit.
“Feel what you do to me,” he grunted, his head falling back against the sofa. “Feel how hard I am for you. Just for you.”
She ground down, a moan tearing from her throat. The pressure was exquisite, torturous. She reached between them, frantic, and tore at his belt and zipper. He helped, shoving his trousers and briefs down just enough to free himself. His cock sprang up, thick and veined, the head gleaming.
She didn’t wait. She positioned herself and sank down onto him in one slow, inexorable slide.
They groaned in unison, a deep, shuddering duet. He filled her completely, a perfect, stretching fit. She stayed there, impaled, feeling him throb inside her. His eyes were squeezed shut, his expression one of pained ecstasy.
“Move,” he begged, his voice shattered. “Please, Selina.”
She began to ride him. Not with frenzied passion, but with a slow, grinding rhythm that emphasized every inch, every ridge. She rolled her hips, circling, taking him deeper on each downward stroke. His hands gripped her ass, guiding her, helping her find the angle that made her cry out.
“That’s it,” he whispered, his eyes open now, locked on hers. “Take what you need. Take all of me.”
She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his shoulders, and increased the pace. The slap of skin grew quicker, wetter. His thrusts met hers, driving up into her as she plunged down. The world narrowed to this point of connection, this fierce, quiet joining. The fire crackled. His breath hitched.
“I’m close,” she gasped, the coil in her belly winding tighter, spurred by the intense intimacy in his gaze. “Bruce, I’m…”
“Look at me,” he demanded, his voice raw. “I want to see you. I want to see you come.”
His words pushed her over. The orgasm broke over her not as a crashing wave, but as a deep, spreading warmth that radiated from her core, melting her bones. She convulsed around him, a silent scream on her lips, her eyes locked on his as she shattered.
The feel of her pulsing around him was his undoing. His own control vanished. With three deep, frantic thrusts, he buried himself to the hilt and came. A hoarse, broken cry was ripped from his chest as he emptied himself into her, his hips jerking helplessly, his eyes never leaving hers.
The spasms seemed to go on forever. Slowly, they subsided. She collapsed forward against his chest, spent. His arms came around her, holding her tightly, his face buried in her hair. They sat there, joined, in the silent, breathing dark of the library, as the embers faded to gray ash.
A long time later, he stirred. He brushed a damp curl from her forehead. “The jet leaves at six.”
She nodded against his chest, listening to the frantic beat of his heart gradually slow. “I’ll be ready.”
He didn’t let her go.
The jet was a ghost in the dawn, a sleek, black needle slicing through cloud. Inside, it was all muted grays and cold, recycled air. Selina sat in a plush leather seat, watching the world disappear below. Bruce was across the aisle, his face illuminated by the glow of a tablet, reviewing the bank schematics again. He had said maybe ten words since the car ride to his private airfield.
The memory of the library was a physical imprint. Her muscles were pleasantly sore, her skin still humming. But in the sterile cabin light, it felt like a dream. Or a mistake.
A flight attendant—silent, efficient, invisible—brought coffee. Bruce took his black. Selina doctored hers with cream from a small silver pitcher. The normality of the gesture was absurd.
“You’re quiet,” she said, not looking at him.
“I’m working.”
“You’ve been working for eight hours straight. Your eyes are going to bleed on the screen.”
He didn’t respond. He zoomed in on a ventilation shaft on the schematic.
She unbuckled her seatbelt and crossed the aisle, sinking into the seat next to him. He stiffened, but didn’t pull away. She reached out and turned the tablet off. The screen went dark, reflecting his tense, surprised face.
“Stop,” she said softly.
“We need a perfect ingress.”
“We have one. You planned it. I vetted it. It’s as perfect as it’s going to get.” She turned in her seat to face him. “What are you really looking for in there?”
He stared at the blank tablet. “A flaw. A variable I haven’t accounted for.”
“You mean me.”
His eyes cut to hers, sharp. “You are the primary variable. Yes.”
“And that scares you.”
“It should scare you, too.” He shifted, turning his body toward her, his knee brushing hers. “In that bank, I can’t afford to be distracted. I can’t be thinking about your safety above the mission. I can’t be… feeling what I feel when I look at you. It makes me slow. It makes me weak.”
“What do you feel?” she pressed, her voice a whisper meant for him alone in the hushed cabin.
He looked away, out the window at the endless blue. His throat worked. “Like the ground is gone. Like I’m falling and I don’t want to grab a rope.” He looked back, his gaze stark. “I watched my parents die on the ground. I built myself on that ground. You… you make it disappear.”
It was the most honest thing he’d ever said to her. She understood. For someone like him, control was the foundation. She was an earthquake.
She leaned in, closing the distance. She didn’t kiss him. She pressed her forehead to his, her eyes open, looking into his. “Then fall. I’ll catch you.”
He made a pained sound. His hand came up, tangling in her hair, holding her there. “You can’t.”
“Try me.”
He kissed her. It was desperate, grateful, furious. It tasted of coffee and fear. He unbuckled her belt and his own, and pushed her back into the wide, deep seat. He climbed over her, his body caging hers. There was no slow tenderness here, back in the metal shell hurtling through the sky. This was a reclaiming, a reaffirmation of the chaos they created in each other.
He yanked her trousers and underwear down roughly. He freed himself, shoved his own clothing out of the way. He didn’t enter her. He rubbed the broad head of his cock through her slick folds, coating himself in her wetness, grunting with each pass over her clit.
“Tell me you want it,” he growled, his breath hot against her ear. “Tell me you want this fucking mess.”
“I want it,” she gasped, arching up against him. “I want your mess, Bruce. Give it to me.”
He slammed into her. The force drove the air from her lungs. The seat creaked under their weight. He set a punishing, rhythmic pace, each thrust a jolt that pushed her into the leather. It was raw, stripped of pretense. This was fucking, pure and simple. A physical scream into the void.
“You feel that?” he panted, driving deep. “You feel how deep I am in you? That’s where you are. In here. In my head. In my fucking blood.”
“Yes,” she hissed, clawing at his back. “And you’re in mine. Now fuck me harder.”
He obliged. His hips became a piston, the slap of skin echoing in the cabin. She wrapped her legs high around his waist, taking him deeper, meeting every brutal stroke. The pressure built, coiling from the base of her spine. She could see the wild, unhinged look in his eyes, the look of a man who had finally stopped fighting the fall.
“Come with me,” he demanded, his rhythm fracturing. “I need to feel you come on my cock. Now.”
The command, the sheer vulgar need in his voice, tipped her over. She cried out, her body seizing, her inner walls clenching around him in violent, rhythmic pulses. The orgasm was blinding, a white-hot detonation that erased the jet, the mission, everything but the feel of him pounding into her milking depths.
Her climax triggered his. With a final, guttural roar, he buried himself to the root and came. Hot jets of cum flooded her, pulse after pulse, marking her, claiming her in the most primitive way. He collapsed on top of her, his body heavy and spent, his face buried in her neck.
They lay there, tangled in the wide seat, sticky and breathless, as the jet hummed around them. The intercom chimed softly.
A calm, automated voice filled the cabin. “Beginning descent into Zürich. Local time is 14:07. Temperature is nine degrees Celsius. Please secure all belongings and return to your seats.”
Bruce slowly pushed himself up. He looked down at her, his expression unreadable, his eyes dark pools. He smoothed her hair back from her damp forehead.
He didn’t speak. He simply helped her right her clothing, his hands strangely gentle. Then he buckled himself back into his own seat across the aisle. He powered the tablet back on, the blue light washing over his face once more, the schematics of the bank reappearing.
The vulnerability was gone, sealed away. The mission was back.
Selina fastened her belt, the phantom ache of him between her thighs a lingering promise and a threat. Out the window, the snow-capped Alps rose like jagged teeth. The ground was coming up fast.
He didn’t look at her as he spoke, his voice once more cool, analytical. “We land in twenty minutes. The safe house is prepared. We move on the bank at 0200.”
She nodded, staring at the approaching earth. The fall was over. The hard landing was ahead.
The hard landing was ahead.
Zurich was a postcard of sterile precision. The safe house was a minimalist apartment overlooking the Limmat, all cold glass and muted tones. It smelled of lemon disinfectant and emptiness. Bruce moved through it like a phantom, unpacking gear from nondescript luggage with a quiet, focused fury. He laid out tools on a felt cloth: lock picks, fiber-optic cameras, slim electronic bypass units.
"Your suit," he said, not looking at her. He nodded to a garment bag laid across a chrome chair.
Selina unzipped it. Not armor. A tailored, matte black cat-suit, reinforced at the joints but sleek, designed for silence and agility. Beside it rested her own tools, meticulously replicated. He’d even included a set of custom claws. She ran a finger along their sharp, polymer edge. "Nostalgic?"
"You work better with familiar weight distribution." He finally glanced up. "The claws are non-conductive. The vault doors have ambient charge sensors."
"You think of everything."
"I have to." He turned back to the schematic now projected onto the blank white wall. "The approach is through the old sewer access. It's been sealed since 1972. Their scans won't reach that deep."
"And the six feet of reinforced concrete?"
"Thermite putty." He pointed to a series of red dots along a tunnel. "We set the charges here, here, and here. It won't be quiet, but by the time the vibration registers as more than glacial shift, we'll already be at the sub-basement elevator shaft."
He spoke in a low, continuous monotone. It was a chant. A prayer to preparation. Selina dressed, the suit sliding on like a second skin. She watched him in the reflection of the dark window. He was sheathed in his own suit now, the familiar armor stripped of its cape and cowl, a tactical shadow. He checked the seal of his gauntlets three times.
"You're scared," she said, clipping her tools to her belt.
"I'm operational."
"You're sweating. Your right pupil is dilated half a millimeter more than the left. You’re scared it won’t work. Or scared it will." She came to stand beside him at the wall. "Which is it?"
He was silent for a long moment, staring at the pulsing red dot marking their target. "I'm scared the variable becomes a constant." He looked at her. "I'm scared this doesn't end when the data is gone."
"It won't," she said simply. She adjusted the fit of a claw. "Let's go steal a ledger."
The sewers were a timeless, arterial freeze. Icy water, thick with the ghost of old waste, soaked through their boots immediately. The air was a solid thing, smelling of wet stone and profound decay. They moved in perfect, wordless synchronicity, their headlamps cutting thin beams through the absolute dark. His larger form broke the water ahead; she flowed in his wake, silent as the rats that skittered away from their light.
He placed the charges with a surgeon's care. The thermite putty was cool, pliant. He molded it into seams only his enhanced scans could detect.
"Clear back," he murmured, his voice barely a breath. She retreated thirty feet. He joined her, sheltering behind a bulkhead of crumbling brick.
A flash, not of light, but of pure, blinding white heat. It ate the darkness, the stone, the concrete. The sound was a deep, shuddering crunch, like the earth itself groaning. Melted slag hissed as it met the black water, sending up plumes of acrid steam.
The hole was perfect. A melted maw leading into a darker, drier darkness. The elevator shaft. They grappled up, their lines singing in the quiet. The elevator car was frozen forty stories above. They climbed the maintenance ladder set into the sheer wall, the void below a swallowing throat.
The sub-basement door was a two-foot thick alloy monster. Bruce attached a small, silver device to its locking mechanism. It whirred, clicking through a thousand combinations per second. A green light bloomed.
"Go."
The vault room was a cathedral of greed. Cold white light illuminated rows of safe deposit boxes that stretched into the distance. In the center sat a single, monolithic server tower, its status lights a rhythmic, silent blink. A digital lock required a twelve-figure code and a retinal scan.
"On me," Bruce said, his voice tight. He approached a terminal beside the server. His fingers flew across the keys, deploying a cascade of decryption algorithms from the data they’d taken from Ace. Lines of code scrolled, too fast to read.
Selina watched the door. The silence was heavier than the stone around them. It was a held breath.
A soft chime. The server tower hissed. A tray slid out, holding a single, rectangular data brick of opaque black crystal.
Bruce reached for it.
A different light activated. Not green. Red. A horizontal laser beam, thin as a hair, swept across the room at ankle height. It had been invisible, triggered by the server's access.
"Tripwire!" Selina’s warning was a slash in the quiet.
Bruce snatched the brick. The laser touched the leg of the server console.
Nothing happened for a heartbeat. Then, a series of deep, metallic clunks echoed from within the walls. The main vault door began to cycle, grinding shut on its own.
"Secondary purge protocol!" Bruce barked. "They brick the whole room if the data is removed!"
"Charming." Selina was already moving, not toward the closing door, but along the wall where the plumbing and electrical conduits vanished into the rock. "Service conduit.Here!"
It was a tight squeeze, a vertical pipe chase barely twenty inches wide. She went first, wriggling up into the darkness, her claws scraping on metal. He followed, the data brick shoved into his chest compartment. The sound of the vault door sealing with a final, definitive boom echoed up the shaft beneath them.
They climbed through a nest of wires and cold, sweating pipes. The air grew thicker, hotter. Selina pushed open an access grate into a utility closet. They spilled out into a stark, fluorescent-lit hallway. An alarm began a low, insistent warble.
"Stairwell. Up. Now." Bruce took point.
They took the steps three at a time. The alarm grew louder, joined by the sharp, authoritative blare of security sirens. From three floors below, the sound of booted feet pounding on metal echoed upwards.
Selina reached the door to the lobby level first. She peered through the wire-reinforced glass. Clear. She pushed it open.
The shot came from a blind spot. A security guard, panicked, firing a standard sidearm from behind a massive marble pillar. It wasn't aimed. It was fear.
The bullet didn't hit her center mass. It grazed her left side, just above the hip. It was a burn, a white-hot line of fire scoring across her flesh. The impact spun her, not off her feet, but into the doorframe. She gasped, more shock than pain, her hand flying to the wound. Her fingers came away slick and red.
Bruce was a blur. He crossed the lobby space before the guard could blink. There was no fight. A sharp, precise strike to the brachial plexus. The man crumpled, unconscious.
Bruce was back at her side in an instant. His hands were on her, pulling hers away, assessing the damage. The suit was torn, the skin beneath opened in a shallow, three-inch furrow. It bled freely, a bright, shocking red against the black matte.
"Fuck," she hissed, the pain arriving in a nauseating wave.
"Deep?"
"No. Just messy." She pressed her palm back against it. "It's a scratch. Move."
He didn't argue. The mission was the constant. He wrapped an arm around her, taking half her weight, and half-dragged, half-ran her towards the bank's grand, revolving front doors. Dawn was a gray smear behind the Alps. The street was empty, sterile.
Their vehicle, a common gray sedan, was parked two blocks away. Every step sent a fresh jolt through her side. The blood was warm, soaking into the waistband of her suit.
He shoved her into the passenger seat, slammed the door, and got behind the wheel. The engine roared to life. He drove not like a fugitive, but like a force of nature, blending into early morning traffic before the first police car screamed into the square behind them.
Back in the antiseptic safe house, he locked the door and engaged three separate electronic countermeasures. Only then did he turn to her.
"On the table. Now."
She obeyed, lying back on the cold glass surface. He fetched a medical kit. He cut away the black fabric around the wound with a pair of surgical shears, his movements brisk, impersonal.
"It needs cleaning. Sutures."
"Do it."
He did. He swabbed the burning gash with antiseptic that made her vision whiten at the edges. She didn't make a sound. He worked with the same focused precision he used on the thermite charges, stitching the parted skin together with neat, efficient knots. His fingers, inside his gloves, were steady. But she saw the tension in the line of his jaw, the faint tremor in the muscle there.
When he was done, he taped a sterile pad over it. He didn't move away. He stood between her splayed legs, his hands braced on the glass table on either side of her hips, his head bowed. He was breathing hard.
"Variable contained," she whispered, a weak smirk pulling at her lips.
His head snapped up. His eyes were wild, unhinged. The cool professionalism was gone, vaporized by the sight of her blood on his gloves. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't joke. Don't pretend that wasn't..." He trailed off, his gaze dropping to the white bandage stark against her pale skin. "A few inches to the right. A different angle. It would have gone through your spleen. You'd be bleeding out on that marble floor."
"But it didn't." She reached up, touching his cheek. He flinched. "We got the brick. The mission is a success. I got a scratch. It's part of the job."
"It's not part of your job!" The roar was sudden, raw, shocking in the quiet room. "Your job was to follow, to cover, to extract! Not to take a bullet meant for a console!"
"It was a graze. And it was meant for me." She pushed herself up on her elbows, wincing at the pull in her side. "You got what you wanted. The data. The win. Why are you so angry?"
"Because you're bleeding!" He shoved away from the table, pacing like a caged animal. "Because I saw the fabric tear. I saw the blood. And for one second, one fraction of a second, the data didn't matter. The mission didn't exist. All that existed was the hole in your skin." He stopped, staring at her, chest heaving. "That can't happen. I cannot afford that second."
She understood now. The fear wasn't for her. It was for himself. For the flaw she’d carved into his perfect, brutal calculus. She slid off the table. The sutures pulled. She ignored it.
She walked to him. He stood rigid, a statue of conflict. She placed her hands on the hard plate of his chest.
"Your second is my inch," she said quietly. "Your distraction is my graze. We're even." She leaned in, her lips a breath from his. "Now stop thinking, and fuck me before the adrenaline wears off and this actually starts to hurt."
A brutal sound escaped him. He didn't kiss her. He turned her around, bending her over the cold glass table. He shoved her legs apart with his knee. He tore open his own suit, freeing his cock, already hard and angry.
He didn't prep her. He spat into his hand, slicked himself roughly, and drove into her from behind in one brutal, deep thrust.
She cried out, her hands slapping against the glass. The pain in her side flared, a bright counterpoint to the sudden, exquisite fullness. He was huge inside her, stretching her, a violent invasion that felt like truth.
"Tell me you feel it," he growled, pulling almost all the way out before slamming back in. The table skidded an inch on the floor. "Tell me you feel how fucked this is."
"Yes," she gasped, pushing back against him, taking him deeper. "It's fucked. It's so fucked. Harder."
He obeyed. His hips pistoned, each impact jolting her wounded side, sending sparks of pain-pleasure through her nervous system. He gripped her hip, his fingers perilously close to the bandage, a possessive, angry hold. The other hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back.
"This is what you wanted," he snarled, his rhythm brutal, untamed. "This chaos. This poison. You want inside the machine? Here it is. Here's the fucking broken gear-work."
She was close already, the raw, grinding friction, the humiliation of being bent over, the sheer animal force of him short-circuiting her higher functions. "I'm there," she choked. "I'm in it. Now come inside me, you bastard. Mark your fucking variable."
With a final, seismic drive, he buried himself and roared. His orgasm was a violence, a hot, pulsing flood that filled her, a physical claim in the heart of her body. She came a second later, her own climax a silent, shuddering quake that milked his spurting cock.
He collapsed over her, his weight heavy, his face against her back. They stayed there, joined, panting, the smell of sex and antiseptic and blood thick in the air.
Slowly, he softened. He pulled out. He turned her, gently now, his anger spent. He looked at the bandage. It was pristine, the sutures holding. He brushed a sweaty strand of hair from her forehead.
"The data brick is secure," he said, his voice hollow. "We succeeded."
She nodded, her body humming, her side a dull, persistent ache. She traced the edge of his cowl where it met his jaw. "Now what?"
He didn't answer. He gathered her into his arms, carried her to the stark bedroom, and laid her on the bed. He fetched water, painkillers. He sat on the edge, watching her.
The sun was fully up now, glaring off the Zurich rooftops. The mission was over. The ledger was theirs. The wound on her side would heal into a thin, pale line.
The wound they were inflicting on each other was just beginning to bleed.