Garret held a hand up before his face, two fingers extended skyward, the others tucked to his palm alongside his thumb…
Slowly, he moved his hand across his face, trailing his fingers with his eye until it slipped out of sight behind the arch of his nose…
The bandages covering his other eye prevented him from seeing anything, though he could open and blink with his bandaged eye… He dared not remove the bandages…
He wasn't sure what he would do if the same darkness caused by the bandages remained even if they fell away…
"You fear your eye is truly ruined." The Queen of Beggars said one day from just behind Garrett, he hadn't heard her approach, nor did he know how she had managed to climb up the decrepit spire he had claimed as his own… It wasn't his clocktower which he gazed at longingly… It wasn't as tall, or as sheltered…
But it was just as quiet, just as difficult to get to and just as lonely…
"Yet you are living with what you fear." The old woman continued.
"Blinding yourself willingly, so you don't have to face the reality of being blinded unwillingly."
Garrett said nothing, he didn't need to… They both knew she was right, she was always right…
"I'm not ready…" Garrett insisted softly.
"No one ever is." The Queen of Beggars sighed as she moved to stand just beside the thief atop her tower, looking down upon her many beggars.
"But you will survive." She hummed.
"Many of my beggars come to me maimed and broken, and while many may never be able to walk or write again… They survive just fine…"
Garrett merely grunted in reply… Again, he knew she was right, he would survive, he would adapt, he was too stubborn not to...
But he was still afraid to face the reality where he would be forced to adapt.
"The Sneak Thief survived." The Queen mused, a little further away from Garrett as she began to retreat down a stairwell Garrett knew led nowhere.
"I'm not the Sneak Thief!" Garrett called after her, suddenly… Anxious, upset, furious even…
Ever since he saw that damn portrait down in the vaults… Ever since he had heard those legends, those stories, those histories…
Garrett had been terrified of following in the Sneak Thief's footsteps…
And yet there he was…
"No." The Queen agreed without so much as glancing over her shoulder.
"But you are a thief… And if a thief from so long could survive, then you Garrett, absolutely can."