Null
Null sighed for a second, not looking at her as she pressed herself around him, dutifully wrapping an arm around her slender form; he just gazed up at the red-brown sky, clouded out by crimson dust, and he exhaled, letting his body relax, the tension escaping it. That was a lot - too much, almost. He was still feeling the post-GRX impact, and it would be a few minutes yet until he was ready to keep moving. No matter - for now, he'd earned a moment's rest. She and he were alive. Better than expected under the circumstances.
She wrapped a handkerchief around both of their heads, keeping the sand from clawing at his eyes; he gave her a slight nod of thanks. She kept his shoulder down; he decided not to move it for the minute. Once the sandstorm subsided, he could take a closer look at the injury.
Her face was but millimetres from his, her warm breath over his face; the slightest twinge of comfort, an emotion he'd thought long lost to him, sparked within him; he paid it little notice. He didn't need it. He repeated that to himself a few times, just to make sure.
He stared into her blue eyes; the colour of the ocean on a sunny day. Her hand cupped his jaw as she thanked him; he kept his right arm wrapped tightly around her, comfortingly. There was fear in those eyes, horror at what she had witnessed. The brutality of that death had struck even him; he could not imagine what she would be feeling at this moment. What something like that could do to a human soul.
He pulled her a little closer, into something resembling - a hug? Was that what he'd heard it called? - his mouth right over her ear, his thick, muscular right arm holding her tightly. "It's okay," he whispered. "You're going to be okay."
Where did he learn that?! The question shot into his mind like a high-velocity round. Sigma operatives were not issued psychological training; the feelings were beaten out of them, and counselling was of no use to those who were already so thoroughly broken as to be able to kill and die without blinking. So where had he learnt to do this, to hold someone close and whisper comfort into their ear?
There was only one explanation. His heart constricted violently.
How would she feel? Would she care? Could she care? He'd entertained the idea of a second life often. Even if there was one, though, he wasn't going there. He'd heard a discussion of religion between a couple of Sigma scientists as a child, on his second or third year of training - discussing the next life. He'd asked them if, when he died, he was going to heaven, not knowing what that word meant until many years later, when he'd asked Anna about it.
Monster's don't go to heaven.
That was how they'd answered him, looking down at him with all the contempt in the world.
She deserved to enter the next life, no question of that - she had always been good, always been kind and pure. He was nothing more than a killing machine. He knew that he was doing the right thing - no question of that - but equally, he knew that on the inside, he was still a monster. This did not trouble him much.
But still, would she care, if she saw this? To take another this close? What did the girl - Bandit - think this was? What was going through her head at this moment? But he just kept talking, kept whispering comforts into her ear, promising that it was over and that the two of them were both okay. If nothing else, she was going to be more use to him alive than dead.
That was how he rationalised it to himself.