Work Text:
Of all the teammates to hallucinate when murdering a man, she really didn't expect to see Robin of all fucking people. She also didn't expect to be a murdering a man tonight, but whatever. That bastard stole her car, and the minivan is a horrid representation of it all anyway - this life Shauna lives now, surgical-scalpel-pristine, this cardboard lifeless life - but it's still hers. It's her vessel. It's hers.
He tried to take it away from her. And she's - tired. Shauna Shipman-Sadecki-whatever feels exhaustion spread over her bones like muscle tissue, like a drowning. The difference this time is that this is some criminal who won't be missed, who won't have family or friends peering in. She checks his phone - stupid fingerprint locks, these days, so easy to circumvent if you have a lifeless arm in your hand - and the contact list is basically empty. She probably should have done that before killing the guy, but… it's fine. She got lucky this time.
Lucky.
That's what you call this?
"Well," Shauna says, retrieving her own phone from her pocket. Ugh, she'll have to call Misty again. "This one is… new."
She first saw Robin in the reflection of a metal sheet on the wall—a close flash, gone in a single blink of dead eyes—before she pulled the trigger. Robin's sclera was entirely blood red until she disappeared, her face a ghastly overlay around the chop shop. Shauna had wanted to kill so, so badly, and she did.
She did.
Now Robin stands in front of her, expression blank. Actually: Robin floats in front of her. She glances down at the corpse, the sad pitiful mass of red on the concrete.
"You should get this taken care of soon," she says. "Someone probably heard. The cops might be on their way."
"And you care because…?"
The unspoken: I killed you, and I didn't even—
The unspoken: I should be seeing Jackie—
The unspoken: your meat wasn't even filling; you were skeletal by the time you died, you cried yourself into bones—
"I almost made it out with you guys," Robin replies. "You know? I watched you all get rescued, after I died. I was actually happy for you, despite…"
"We did…. what we had…" Shauna sighs. "I'm calling Misty."
"You might want to move the body first. It… probably will be harder to carry than mine was."
"I think I can manage."
Robin shrugs as Shauna takes the keys to her minivan. She sighs, loud, then quiets herself—she should know better than to make noise when hunted. She takes the man's corpse with one arm underneath each shoulder and starts dragging.
"I wish I was alive," Robin says, appearing behind her again, causing her to almost drop the body, "so I could help you."
Shauna drops the body.
"Help me? You didn't do anything out there besides—shit." She reaches down, her pants drenched and red, picks the body up again, her hands shaking just like they had when she killed him, when she wanted to, when she was still hungry, when she wasn't in denial about being hungry.
"I always wanted you to notice me," Robin continues, shifting into reality in front of Shauna now, "before the crash."
"Stop doing that."
Robin smiles. It's the first time Shauna has seen Robin smile in the entire time they haven't known each other. She's not even alive, she's not even real, she'll never smile again. Robin's entire body was used after she was killed, the bones used for construction, the molars sharpened into arrows. She didn't go to waste.
She was more useful dead than alive.
"So why didn't you say anything?"
"I was scared."
"You were always scared."
Shauna hoists the body up into the trunk, pants as she struggles. Robin looks eternally young, eternally innocent, too untainted to be watching Shauna's justified mistakes uncensored. Shauna can still recreate the sound of Robin's cries in her mind, forming an audio stream of agony playing picture-perfect inside of her. She's almost jealous of it, or she would be if she was a lesser person.
"I know," Robin says. "I wish it didn't have to be like that, I wish… you hadn't ended up like this."
Shauna closes the trunk door with gentle care -- no noise, no sound, no breathing. When she turns to argue, Robin is gone. Dead again, lost again, bones again, gone. Shauna feels her stomach sour, then sink, then flutter in a twist. Dead again, lost again, worse.