"If you keep grimacing your face might get stuck that way."
Rebecca shot Shaun an annoyed look. "I'm just thinking, is all."
"To little avail, it would seem," he jeered.
"Ass," Rebecca said. She was silent for a minute before she sighed and then turned to face Shaun. When he looked at her he immediately noticed the look in her baby blues. That look a dog gets when staring expectantly at its master for a treat.
Shaun rolled his eyes. "Okay, I'll bite," he said. "I mean, it's not as though there's anything important we should be doing right now."
Despite his obvious sardonic tone, Rebecca smiled. "Good. I knew you'd understand."
"Well, go on, then," Shaun said. "What is it?"
"I don't know," she admitted.
Shaun resisted the urge to bury his head in his hands. He just did not understand this woman, if that was even the right word. Oftentimes she seemed more like a child.
"That's the problem," Rebecca continued. "But I know something's off; I just can't tell what it is. Something here isn't normal."
"I know exactly what you mean," Shaun replied. "The long abandoned, Italian mansions I hide in when running for my life tend to be a lot nicer."
"I'm serious!" Rebecca said defensively. "Something here isn't right. It makes me feel, I don't know... nervous."
"I'd be highly concerned for your mental health if you weren't unnerved with all this going on," Shaun said.
"It's more than this," Rebecca said, standing up and opening her arms to gesture to the large room of the once magnificent mansion. "It's like, I can feel it, like it's right under our noses, you know what I mean?"
"I never do," Shaun replied. "Your thought process is a modern mystery."
"Like Lucy," Rebecca said, choosing to ignore Shaun's wry remark. "Doesn't it seem like she's acting strange?"
"Can you blame her?" Shaun countered. "She was working undercover for all that time."
"It's not like she's never gone undercover before," Rebecca pointed out.
"She's never had to deal with anything like that undercover, though," Shaun said, turning to point at Desmond, who was currently in the Animus. "Between being undercover and dealing with Abstergo agents and that moron, she had a lot to deal with. If it was me, I would've blown my brains out a while ago.
"What's worse is that we have to put all of our hope into Desmond, who hasn't even accepted all of this. Lucy's willing to do it, though; she honestly believes in that incompetent fool."
Rebecca was about to argue, but she stopped when she saw some truth in Shaun's words.
"You're not saying that Lucy," Rebecca trailed off.
"She's a smart woman," Shaun said, seeming to ignore Rebecca's query. "You would think she'd have better taste."
"He's not all that bad," Rebecca said, crossing her arms and grinning.
"He's a selfish, annoying ignoramus who reads our emails when he thinks we're not looking," Shaun stated. "I can't fathom what's appealing about that."
Rebecca laughed. "I think it's cute. Good for Lucy." Her amusement faded just as quickly as it had come. "But that's not it either. That's not why Lucy has been acting strange. You have to have noticed it, too."
"I have," Shaun admitted, "and if you listened half as much as you babbled you'd know I just said why."
"I know what you said," Rebecca assured him, "and I'm sticking to what I said: that's not it. At least, not completely. There's more going on here. I can feel it in my gut."
"Are you sure that's not just all the food you wolfed down five minutes ago?"
Rebecca was childish and naïve. She was overthinking things. That's what Shaun had thought, but now, as he watched Desmond pull his blade out of Lucy's abdomen, Shaun knew that Rebecca had been right. Although she stood next to him in horror, having no idea what was going on, she'd been on the right track.
Shaun knew now why Lucy had been acting strangely; it was what he had thought, but more than that. When he saw the mournful look which Desmond bore, when he saw the painful expression on Lucy's face that was clearly from more than the stab wound that dyed her white shirt red with blood, he knew that Lucy had lied. He knew that she had been using Desmond, her obvious feelings for him getting in the way and consequently blowing her cover.
When Lucy stopped breathing and Desmond closed her eyes and began to silently cry, Shaun knew that Lucy had been playing them all for a long time. He knew that, even when Lucy wasn't off undercover in another city or state, sometimes even country, that she was still far off. He knew now, and so did Desmond. They knew that, despite how close she had been with them—with Desmond Miles—Lucy had always been far from their reach.