17. Man hunt, part 2.
" Did you love him?" The engineer heard a chocolaty voice say on his left. He turned and saw the female medic walking next to him.
" What?"
" You medic, did you love him?" A long silence, where there was nothing but the sounds of footsteps splashing through thin puddles of sewage. This tunnel was somewhat emptier than the first few they came across, fluids only sometimes getting deeper than their heels.
" I… I don't think so." The engineer managed. " He was a good friend, and Lucy's going to have hell to pay when I find her, but I never- maybe in time I could have- I"
" It's okay." She cut him off. The engineer was grateful. The whole thing, the betrayal, death, all of it had left him shaken. He wasn't even sure how he felt after angry, all he could picture was the blood seeping into his clothes and feeling the medic's final shuddering breaths.
He bit his lip to keep from crying. It didn't quite work; a single, hot, angry tear spilled down his chin.
" He loved you, you know." The engineer wiped his face.
" I pieced that together." The final comment about his eyes, that had been enough to let him know. Medic never would have said that without intentions. That fact, that medic had somehow been in love, it bubbled in his stomach and made him want to vomit out of… confusion? Abhorrence? Guilt? As if reading his thoughts Saanvi spoke again,
" You don't need to feel guilty about it."
" Look, do you have a point with all of this or are you just trying to hurt me more for some sick reason?"
" No." Her voice was quieter now. " I just wanted to say that, sometimes we don't love people back. And at first it hurts and you feel guilty, or angry, but I'm telling you now that it's okay that you didn't love him when he was alive. Him being dead won't change that you didn't love him, and you shouldn't fool yourself into thinking you did." She told it to him straight, that was good. No beating around the bush, or meaningless banter in between.
" You seem like you've had work this out yourself." Saanvi grimaced.
" I have a lifetime of disappointing people romantically on my back. I've finally pieced together that it's okay to not love them back, but maybe you hadn't yet."
" Thanks."
" My words won't change how you feel at all, right?"
" Yeah." Words helped, but not with feelings. Feelings were beyond reasoning with, like small children demanding to be noticed.
" Good." Saanvi smiled, a grim smile where her mouth pressed into a small line. "Nothing anybody ever told me changed it. Means you're human."
More silence. Their team was a few paces ahead, made up of the male sniper, Miss Pauling, the remaining heavy, female soldier, and male? pyro. Giulia was also there, forging ahead of the others.
" Your spy's pretty nonplussed about this whole thing."
" To be expected. Giulia's pretty secretive about herself, but I get the feeling she's on the far end of the psychopathic spectrum. I once… I walked in on her torturing rats, in really gruesome ways too. She just sat there laughing to herself. I didn't know what to do so I just backed out of the room."
" You didn't tell anyone?"
" I told everyone! Of course they believed me, but what's the big deal? So long as she was using her skills against the BLU team and not us we were fine. I might have thought she was the one targeting us all in a fit of boredom, if…"
" Lucy didn't kill the medic." The words caught a little in his throat, but Del forced them out.
" Yes. Although… that still doesn't make a whole lot of sense."
The team rounded a bend in the pipe, turned left and found themselves at a dead end. Giulia was grinning from ear to ear, sidling her way back into the pack.
" Aw, what the hell?" The male sniper groaned. " We're goin' to have to backtrack for ages to figure out another path."
" Precisely." Giulia chuckled.
" Precisely what?" A suspicious Miss Pauling said, moving toward her.
" You would alla have to run for ages to geta back to your oser friends. You haven't beena paying attention to where we've beena going, justa following me blindly through the tunnels. And now-" She pulled a revolver from a holster around her leg. " We're going to hava some fun."
The events following took place almost too fast for the engineer to process. Giulia pulled the trigger, a thunderclap of sound and Miss Pauling sunk to her knees. He saw blood blossoming from Miss Pauling's chest, soaking down her shirt front as her jaw practically unhinged and she let loose a terrifying scream.