Val hasn't seen Kurt in a few weeks. She’s given up trying to meet up and figure he’ll come around when he wants to, whenever that may be.

He’s been acting strange lately. Cagey. More so than normal. It’s made it slightly easier for Val to stay away, because when she is with him, she's still not really with him. Whatever he’s preoccupied with has made it almost impossible to keep his attention for long. Something’s definitely troubling him, but Val has no idea what could have crawled up his ass. And no matter how much she tries to pry it out of him, he finds some sort of excuse to dart out the door before she can ever get a clear answer.

As of recently, she’s been letting Kurt keep his distance even more so. There's no real way to explain it, maybe intuition, a tingling at the back of her skull. It feels like it grows everyday, like a malignant tumor, gradually shifting her reactivity and hypervigilance into full throttle. Her fuse is a lot shorter, her thoughts are a lot louder and her willpower is running on empty.

She has begun locking herself away some days, an underlying sense of dread flashing in her mind like a bright red alarm. Her new found confidence feels unnatural and god-like. A feral urge for violence has started whispering sweet nothings in her ear. It's revolving, coming and going as it pleases, unpredictable enough that having Kurt around would just complicate things.

Eventually she’ll figure out what it is and then maybe she can gain some sense of normalcy. But until then, it's probably best Kurt has almost entirely ghosted her outside of the occasional text good morning. His radio silence feels like a cat clawing at an open wound—the wound growing and festering with each passing day—as she tiptoes across a tightrope between hope and disappointment. Hope that maybe this is all nothing and things will go back to normal in a couple days when they’ve both found some free time, but disappointment in anticipation of the exact opposite to be true.

In the meantime, the bounty provides a distraction. She spends more and more time tracking and documenting the mark's movements. Once she’s established a bit of a pattern in his routine, she’ll see if she can get an introduction and maybe manipulate her way close enough to kill him. Trying to kill a cop any other way feels a bit futile. Val would rather not have the whole NCPD on a manhunt for her. So she’ll turn on the charm, flash him her prettiest smile and then slit his throat when they get a private moment together.

Goosebumps spread across her skin at the thought of it, the way her knife would feel against his skin...