the ripple effect - tmnt (1) [edited ✔]

xx. a moment in time

twenty. a moment in time

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FLORENCE'S SHOWER WAS long and time-consuming. 

After she had scrubbed away the grime on her entire body and peeled away the crusted blood on her forehead, she just sat under the pouring water. 

All of her thoughts had flooded her like a blocked sink. She forgot about her shower, about the stinging cuts and stitches, about nearly everything that hurt her body... Florence's mind was glued to the memories of what happened at TCRI.

She thought that raising the temperature of the water would ground her down to the present and pull her away from the memories, but now she simply sat in scalding hot water and was lost. She was so, so lost.  

The memories of her mother's frozen face and her father's slumped body remained seared into her mind like a brand on cattle. She couldn't forget it; no matter how hard she tried. 

She couldn't picture anything else but the smell of iron in her cell. She couldn't see anything but the white snow turning red when her father first touched the floor after the loud crack of Tigerclaw's pistol. She couldn't see anything but the fear in the eyes of the humans that she had forced out of the lab. 

It was like the pictures haunted her. Each one was burned into her conscious, reminding her that her parents were dead and she, undeniably, was a monster. 

Florence hardly realized that her tears were blending with the water until she wiped at her eyes and pushed herself off of the ground. Around her wrists, the skin was pink and raw from the harsh ropes that were tight for nearly five days. She no longer smelled like blood, but roses and vanilla. 

Yet in her mind, Florence could only seem to smell blood. 

When she walked in front of the mirror in the brick bathroom, her heart stopped. 

The damage on Florence's face was now clear to her; a scar above her thick eyebrow, a bruise on her left cheekbone, dark bags under both yellow eyes, a cut on her bottom lip, and a scar across the bridge of her nose, cutting through some of her freckles. 

And on her throat, as though it was mocking her, were the long and defined fingers of the man that attempted to choke her to death. 

She shut her eyes and placed her palms against the sink in front of her. She put her weight on her palms and let her head fall, causing the poofy brown hair to bunch up on both sides of her head like curtains hiding the grief that tore through her face. 

She looked up at the mirror and before she could stop herself, cracked the mirror just enough for it to look like spiderwebs without it breaking apart. She jumped back at the noise, a faint yelp leaving her lips.