Super Jaded (21/23)

Chapter 21: Moon

Compared to the bustling nature of the Earth’s big cities, space was hauntingly quiet. I had been beyond the stratosphere only once before, but it was by myself. Having Nina’s violent screams vanish from earshot just felt… off. She was going to die and it wouldn’t be with a bang. Instead, it would be almost oppressively silent.

The nearest hard surface that I could pin Nina down to was a mere minute of flying away. The only significantly sized rock that dared to circle such an insignificant planet. The moon.

Being the only one of its kind meant it and I had a lot in common. Well, we were about to have a lot in common.

I pinned Nina to the rocky, colorless surface with a chokehold only using a single hand. She kicked and punched at me with her legs and one good arm, but it was too late. I had her exactly where I wanted her and she no longer had a nuke to distract me with.

She screamed a visceral, wide-eyed scream, particles of blood floating out from her teeth in accordance with the moon’s altered gravity. But she was wasting her breath. Nothing she would say going forward was going to change my mind, if she even could say anything.

All I had to do was wait a few more moments and it would all be over.

But as the deafening silence of space prolonged itself, as my overworked mind was finally granted peace from the overwhelming hustle and bustle of the sounds that pounded my ears from the cities, I heard something I had never heard before. Nina’s thoughts.

“Just do it, just kill me. What the fuck are you waiting for?” Was but an excerpt of the thoughts that ran through her head.

Hearing my girlfriend’s voice relay such a bitter acceptance for death snapped me out of my berserker mode instantly. I wasn’t sure what to do. All it would take was one punch to finish her off, but I was back in the Netherlands all over again. I couldn’t do it. All I could do was cowardly let the cold grip of space make the decision for me.

“She’s just going to suffocate me until I die a slow, painful death. Jesus, how brutal is she? Do I even recognize who she is anymore? …Does she even recognize me?”

I couldn’t take it. I quickly relayed a message into her mind with my telekinetic prowess.

“I’m sorry, Nina. I just… I really don’t want it to end this way.”

Nina’s initial shock took a bit to fully wear off, her brain becoming cluttered with a word mass of questions.

“...OhmygodwhatwastheatwasthatFernhowdidshedothatIcan’tdothatshecanreadmythoughtsohgodohgod…” Once again, a brief excerpt.

Eventually, she found the mental fortitude to direct a thought directly at me, punctuating her postulation with a raise of a sculpted eyebrow.

“I don’t get it. I’m worthless to you. I’m everything you hate. Why don’t you just kill me and move on? Why extend my misery? I don’t want to live like this anymore.”

I clenched my trembling lip with my front teeth as a wave of emotion overcame me.

“Y-you’re not everything I hate. You never were. You may do things I don’t approve of, but I can’t just give up on you. The truth is, I’m just as scared and confused as you are.”

Her face turned despondent and she looked away.

“But these things you don’t approve of… They’re all I am now. I’m off the deep end, Fern. There’s no going back for me. My past… doesn’t excuse my present anymore.”

Even though I was the only one who could read minds, my expression of anguish gave away everything that I was thinking to her.

“Please, just kill me, Fern. Don’t make this hard on yourself. I’m nothing anymore. Nothing without you. And I know I can never get you back after what I’ve done so just please fucking end it.”

Tears fell from my eyes, the droplets slowly falling until they became the first water on the moon, becoming diluted within the splotches of Nina’s blood that stained the rocks.

“I can’t end it Nina. Not when I still love you.”

With that, her lifeless eyes birthed the spark of hope once more.

“Fern… you-”

Another thought of mine breached her mind before she could properly respond.

“I hate what you’ve become, but I can’t say it’s your fault. I was supposed to be there for you and I failed. But you never left me until I beat you within an inch of your life. Even as the government used me as a bartering chip against you, or I was attacked and put into a coma, you never gave in. You never gave up.”

And then, I thrust another thought into her mind.

“But it wasn’t just that. Those heartwarming first dates. Those times you’d come home emotionally stressed and I’d nurse you back to health with a loving bath or a sexual experience. Nina, you saved my life before I even knew who you were. You gave a lifetime of servitude to people who didn’t deserve it—”

I caught myself there. O-of course the people of earth deserved her assistance, right? Most of them were victims too… right? But then my mind shifted to the religious masses. The corrupt politicians. The unjust wars. The obsessions with capital over humanity. All things I absolutely despised. Things I’d gladly kill over just to see resolved.

“Maybe we see eye-to-eye on more things than you think.”

I wasn’t sure if that was too much to dump on Nina at once or simply just a mindblower, but she just stared at me with those beautiful puppy-dog eyes.

“Fern, what are you saying?”

Her face looked almost crazed with pent up joy and retreating sadness.

“I’m saying what I’ve always been saying. That the world is fucked up. But this time, I don’t want to fix it alone. Are you with me?”

A drawn out “yeeeeeeeeeesssssssssss” was the only thought that flew through her mind. Her blackened eyelids stuttered and threatened to close, her body fell limp in my grasp. Shit, she was running out of oxygen! She was losing consciousness!

Thinking fast, I locked lips with Nina for the first time in months. I didn’t think I was ready to return to the girlfriend phase so soon, but fuck I missed her perfect lips. They cupped mine like fresh pillows.

My massive form still containing a hearty amount of unconverted oxygen, I breathed a steady stream down Nina’s throat and into her lungs.

She awoke with a startle, her mind running on overtime as “COLD COLD COLD” were the only primal thoughts that permeated her brain. Clearly, I had used some ice breath on accident. That, or my breath was just naturally almost too cold at this point without conscious regulation.

But once Nina fully realized the lips that were pressed up against hers, I could see all the hostility within her mind vanish.

“F-Fern…”

“Yes, Nina, it’s me. I never should have left you.”

“And I should have never hit you with that cheap shot.”

I giggled, my hyper-powerful voice almost seeming to defy science itself and be heard within the confines of space.

Now was the time for some real change on earth.