No one is here to drag her broken body from the ground and carry her off in a too-late attempt at escape, this time. Connie can only kneel there, arms shaking and every breath a painful ordeal, and wait. That's okay. It's no worse than lying in that escape pod, alone, bleeding out drop by drop until she was cold and numb, drowning in grief and crimson alike.

It's familiar. It could never have ended any other way.

The lights cut out. Darkness consumes the stage, the shadow swallowed up once more in the black tapestry from which it was cut and freeing CT from the strings that hold her in place. She collapses to the stage with a muted clatter, the costume too lacking to match the cacophony that of the real thing colliding against itself.

She can't find the strength to push herself back up.