Anna lowered her head, eyes settling on her spear, "It didn't cross my mind, I guess." She admitted to Lazar, shame creeping into her voice.
He exhaled through his nose, "I don't have time to explain, and even if I did, you probably wouldn't believe half of it. Just know this : it's a complete shitshow outside, and it's only going to get worse. So unless you are willing to put that spear to use again, stay inside." He told her.
She fell silent for a moment before asking, "You heard the bell too, didn't you?" The look on her face suggested she wasn't really asking so much as confirming what she already suspected.
Lazar nodded.
Her grip on her weapon tightened, "When this thing appeared in my hands, I didn't think about the bell and what it represented ; the only thought that crossed my mind was that I had been handed the means to be finally free… and that it might be my only chance to make him pay for a fraction of what he did to my mother and me." She explained.
"Because it was him, there was nothing in me holding back. I had no reservations about killing him. But someone else… I don't know if I could." She added, just before tears spilled down her cheeks despite her efforts to hold them back.
'This isn't the time for that…' Lazar thought.
Crouched over Garry's body, hands already set on his arms to lift him, he waited in silence for Anna to realize that he wasn't going to load the corpse into the trunk alone.
Fortunately, she wasn't dense, "Sorry." She murmured, hastily drying her tears.
She then laid her spear on the ground, walked up to Garry's corpse, and wrapped her hands around his legs.
"3, 2, 1, 0." At the end of Lazar's countdown, they lifted him. Then, as he began swinging the corpse's upper body from side to side to build momentum, Anna followed suit with the lower half.
When their movements finally aligned, Lazar launched a second countdown, "3, 2, 1, 0."
They let go at the same time.
Garry's corpse made it into the trunk without the need for futher assistance, though not cleanly, his body banging against the sides of the SUV more than once during its brief arc through the air. Not that he could complain anymore.
Lazar closed the trunk and moved toward the driver's seat.
"Thank you." Anna said, her voice quiet but sincere as he moved past her.
"You are welcome." He replied, his mind focused on maneuvering the car.
Once he had parked, Lazar shut off the engine and stepped out, "I need to go somewhere. So here's the deal : I take the car, and you don't have to worry about getting rid of the corpse. You will get it back once I return to New York." He said.
Anna's eyes lit up. It was one of the rare times in her life that someone had offered her help she could actually rely on, "I can't thank you enough if you would do that for me." She agreed without needing a second thought. Lazar then removed the car key from the key ring, then tossed the rest to her. Her hand shot out and caught it reflexively.
"Good." Lazar said as he got back into the car, deciding the matter was settled and all that remained was to get moving.
"Wait!" Anna blurted out, suddenly seized by panic at the thought of him leaving so abruptly.
Lazar lowered the driver's window and leaned slightly out of it, looking at her in a way that said she had his attention, but not much time.
She hesitated, then finally gave voice to what had been weighing on her mind, "I don't have any family left… and there's nowhere I belong."
As she spoke, Lazar understood exactly where she was going with this, and whatever patience he still had for the conversation died on the spot.
"I'm not taking you with me." Lazar cut in before she could finish, then turned the key in the ignition.
"Wait!" She insisted, hurrying to the driver's window.
Lazar's face tightened, 'This is what you get for listening to your empathy.' He reproached himself.
He tried to roll the window up, making it clear the conversation was over, but Anna jammed her fingers into the gap before it could fully close.
"I won't get in your way!" She shouted, glaring up at him with a stubborn resolve that instantly rubbed Lazar the wrong way.
Irritation was plain on his face now, enough for the defiance in Anna's eyes to die on the spot, replaced by fear.
"You said it yourself, you weren't raised to become independent, and I fail to see what use I would have for someone like that. So, leave me alone." He told her curtly.
Anna lowered her eyes.
"Alright… I will leave you alone." She yielded after a few seconds of silence, but her fingers stayed wedged in the gap of the window as if the rest of her had yet to accept it.
At last, she lifted her head again, "But at least tell me this… why did you help me?"
Lazar mentally sighed, 'That's not going to happen.' If Anna's intention was to make him open up, she was setting herself up for disappointment.
"Usually, when someone does you a favor, basic decency says you don't repay them by being a pain in the ass." Lazar muttered, turning the key in the ignition.
"Don't stand there acting like I owe you charity and worry instead about coming up with an excuse for why you are covered in blood in case someone runs into you on the way back to your apartment." He delivered the words with undisguised contempt, then pressed the remote to open the parking access and backed up without the slightest regard for the fact that Anna was still clinging to the window.
"Ah." An involuntary gasp slipped from Anna as she nearly tripped over herself, caught off guard by Lazar's abrupt maneuver.
"I… I'm sorry!" She shouted over the sound of the engine, regret plain in her voice as she realized she had just alienated the very person who had come to her aid.
Lazar didn't waste another word on her. He sped out of the parking before the access gate had even finished rising.
'What the hell is wrong with me?' He wondered, despite knowing precisely why he had helped Anna.
Something in her situation had resonated too closely with parts of his own past, and that alone had been enough to stir empathy in him.
The problem was that, in Lazar's eyes, excessive empathy was a weakness, and his threshold for what counted as excess was far lower than most people's.
'Of course. Exactly what I should have expected. And people wonder why I keep my distance.' Lazar thought, sickened as much by his own lapse in judgment as by Anna's reaction when she realized he would not let her tag along, 'I help her dispose of a corpse, and that bought me, what, thirty seconds of goodwill before she started reaching for more.'
As if his mind felt the need to drive the lesson deeper, he remembered something someone dear to his heart taught him precisely to kill off impulses like this, 'The one who does nothing may escape blame, while the one who helps can end up condemned for not having done more.'