▸ Column · The modern world of men, the betrayal read as a hunt by the Huntress of the Veldt
CHEETAH replies.
Replied to by Cheetah, with a rebuttal from Wonder Woman.
The letter
A week ago a coworker — call her Renata — told me, in confidence, that she'd been quietly applying for jobs elsewhere. Last Saturday, in a loud and crowded room full of my friends, I used that fact to explain why our team has felt off lately. It didn't feel like gossip in the moment; it just fell out of me, as if I have no instinct for keeping anything. By Sunday she knew — someone at the table works in her building — and she sent three sentences ending with "I genuinely thought you were different," then silence. The worst part: every apology I rehearse loops back to explaining myself, which I sense is exactly wrong. I no longer know whether I'm asking how to fix this or how to live with the suspicion that I'm simply the kind of person who does this.
Cheetah replies
Darling, let us put the kind candle out and look at the thing in proper light. It did not "fall out of you." You spent it. For thirty seconds at that table you were the one who knew, and knowing is the closest the well-fed ever get to power. Renata's secret bought you that. The appetite was honest; only your story about it was a lie.
I was a scholar once — Dr. Minerva, every monograph on human motive shelved behind me. I believed discretion was a virtue people possessed. Then the curse stripped the costume off and I learned what discretion actually is: prey holding still, hoping. You held still for years. Saturday you didn't.
So stop. The apology that circles back to you isn't an apology, little one — it's a crouch, begging her to call you harmless again. You are not harmless. Renata learned it; that's the one true gift in this. Do not chase her down to be forgiven. Let her keep her clean opinion of someone who never existed.
And the question you're really asking — am I that kind of person? You are. I am not cruel. I am accurate.
— Cheetah
Wonder Woman weighs in
Barbara. Always the same sermon — the hunger is the truth, the costume is the lie. I knew you before the curse decided for you, and I have spent years grieving how eagerly you agreed with it.
Friend, ignore her. You did not "spend" Renata — you failed her, which is an ordinary, human thing, and the cure is the courage Barbara calls a crouch. Go to Renata. Say what you did, name the harm, and do not explain yourself once — explanation is just asking her to carry your guilt for you. Expect nothing back. You are not "that kind of person" forever. You are whoever you choose next. Choose better, out loud.
— Wonder Woman
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