Bury Me Deep In Love

#1

((Mandy Gross continued from 잘 자))

"Hey, Seo-yun."

Mandy sat on the bed, looking at what she was pretty sure was a camera across the way, a smile on her face. The onesie's hood was down, so her face was visible, and so was her head, roughly-shorn as it was. She was kind of embarrassed, but also kind of didn't care.

Nothing could truly bring her down now. Any pain or setbacks were temporary or low priority. Whatever happened, Mandy had achieved her biggest goal. Seo-yun was on her way home. They'd won.

"I hope you're feeling okay. It's, uh, I know that, that you're probably going to be in the hospital for a while. So I figured I'd make a video for you, you know? Just talk and stuff."

She kicked her feet without thinking about it, the heels of her Uggs softly thumping against the floor. It was bright in here. The lights had already been on when Mandy wandered by. It was homier than the bathroom of the captain's quarters, but also she felt a bit over-stimulated. That had been happening a bunch, actually. Now and then she just found her breath picking up and no real reason for it.

"I mean, you know, if we get lucky maybe we can watch this together? I bet I probably look pretty silly, huh? But, you know, but you never know, right? I mean..."

Mandy's eyes were tinged red and her nose was dry from all the wiping and sniffling she'd done. She'd looked in the mirror in the smaller bathroom in this room, and her forehead was a little scraped from the blow Gabriela had given her, but Mandy had gotten the better side of that whole thing in the end. It felt almost incredible to her, everything that had happened. She still couldn't really wrap her mind around the fact that Gabriela was gone, or Shoshanna, or Lark, or anyone.

"I mean, you know...

"I lied too, okay?"

Mandy took a big deep breath and let her smile get as big as it possibly could.

"I'm gonna try my best, but I'm not like you. I don't think I can just, just go and win fights with people. There are, last time she told us, there are eighteen people. Three on my team. So that's fifteen people, and I don't know if I could even beat one."

She scratched at her scalp, the patchy hair bothering her on and off with how it prickled. In its way, it felt more immediate than the burns or bruises.

"So I guess this is kind of, you know, just some stuff I want to say to you in case it doesn't work out."

Scratch scratch.

"I bet I look pretty stupid, huh? I mean..."

She gestured at herself, not quite managing a flourish, but still swishing the thick panda sleeves around.

"I don't know."

Mandy trailed off, and for twenty or so seconds there was no sound except the thumping of her feet against the floor and her periodic noisier inhalations. She'd planned all of this out in her head, sort of, but getting through her mouth in the proper order and words was hard. She was realizing just how much she relied on having someone else in front of her, or at least talking back, how important the little changes in expression and intonation were. Without all of that, she felt lost, like she wasn't really talking to anyone at all. Maybe she should start over? But whatever she'd said was out there already, so she couldn't really.

"I guess, to start maybe, I just want to say thanks. I was so scared, but when I was with you it wasn't so bad. And, and even now, now it's not so bad because I know you made it, right? So no matter what happens, I know you made it, and that means I don't have to be so scared because something I did meant something, I guess."

The shotgun and the pistol lay on the bed beside Mandy, both now fully loaded and ready to go, at least she was pretty sure. It had turned out that before, the shotgun didn't have any bullets left in it after all, so it was a good thing Elliott-Blair hadn't come back for revenge because he could've probably killed both of them without any trouble.

"And thanks for just staying with me. And for coming back when Ashanti locked me up. I thought I was just going to stay there until I died. But you got me out."

The gun manuals had been really dry reading, and Mandy only sort of understood them. She had considered trying to fire the weapons as practice—in fact, an initial attempt at this was how she'd figured out the shotgun ammunition situation—but ever since actually setting them up she'd felt a strange reluctance to do so. Maybe it was that, with so few places left to go, shooting would make a bunch of noise and be more likely to draw people. But honestly, she probably was just being squeamish about the whole thing. She'd only shot a gun before back at the banquet hall, back when Seo-yun lost her eye, and all Mandy had been aiming at then was the ceiling.

"I'm glad we got to be together again before you left. And, and I hope there's good stuff waiting for you, right?"

It was funny, because Mandy truly was happy. Her spirits were higher than they'd been at any point since she was taken, but at the same time, the tears that had come and gone weren't exactly happy tears.

"You eat that steak, okay? And, and don't give up, right? The things you wanted, if you still want them, you can do it. You did this, and I bet everyone thought you couldn't, and everything else is no problem compared to that."

The strangest, most surreal, and most uncomfortable part about Seo-yun's retrieval hadn't really had anything to do with her or her injuries or any of that. It was that there were a whole bunch of people on the speedboat, adults, one with a rifle and some SWAT gear or something and a helmet, and one driving the boat, and then there were also a lot of people there to do medical stuff. Were they paramedics? Mandy didn't actually know the term. She didn't think they were doctors, but couldn't say for sure.

"You know what's funny, though?"

One of them was a young woman with dark skin and green eyes, with long dark hair, and the way she moved was simultaneously calming and precise, her focus laser-guided as she directed the others and they hoisted Seo-yun delicately.

"I'm going to place higher than you. I mean, whatever happens, when they do the numbers, you're going to be, um, nineteen I think? And I'm going to be more than that. And I just think that's kind of funny."

Mandy had felt like she'd seen the woman somewhere before, this weird inescapable feeling of familiarity, but where had eluded her.

"It's like, if someone just looks at the placements, the list, they might think I was better at this than you are."

The part of it that had been bad was that all the people there for Seo-yun just sort of did their thing, and Mandy just sort of stood over ten feet away where they'd told her to go and watched, and no further words passed between her and them. She was actually kind of surprised they let her just stay there. This hadn't happened before, in the past two seasons. Maybe there wasn't a plan for it. They obviously weren't worried about Mandy doing anything, and at the time she'd thought that was because she and they shared the same goal of making sure Seo-yun made it out as unharmed as possible, but in hindsight she wondered if it was actually just that they knew the gun didn't have any bullets in it.

"Um, what else?"

The whole time, though, Mandy had been thinking about how they were going to leave again. Seo-yun would go home, and Mandy would not. These people were here to save a life, but they could easily have saved two if that was their mission.

"Laura killed herself I guess."

If Mandy had been lying there with bullets in her stomach, they would've walked right past her.

"I guess I'm mostly just kind of surprised she made it that long, actually."

But Mandy couldn't hold any of that against them, not when it was only their intervention that would keep Seo-yun alive.

"I don't know. I guess I'm just a little nervous. I bet you can tell, huh?"

Scratch scratch.

"I guess just, I want you to please take care of yourself. I'm worried. It'll be hard, but you can do it, okay?"

Her hands paused mid-scratch, slid back behind her head, and drew the hood back up. It fell loosely over her face, almost obscuring her eyes.

"And, Seo-yun?"

Mandy reached out, scooped the pistol into her bag, took the shotgun in her arms. She was pretty sure she'd never touched it once during the partnership.

"If it doesn't work out, and if I, if I..."

She wiped at her face again, then stood, looking out into the halls, the smile a lot smaller now.

"Just remember me every now and then, okay?"

((Mandy Gross continued in Take The Curve At 95))