Final Space Oneshots

In The Alternate Universes

The drink was bitter on his tongue and burnt his throat, but he took another long swig before dropping it to the ground. It's brown contents spilt over the grey gravel and splattered on his boot, but it was already too stained to be a problem.

"What are we gonna do to them?" The man on his left said. He couldn't remember the man's name, nor did he need to: after this he would be dead on the ground along with the kids in front of him.

Because they were kids, and reminded him of himself in a simpler time. Their faces stared up at them with wide eyes filled with sorrow. He watched them cower from underneath his helmet, glad for the blacked out screen.

It had been too long since he was able to breathe air fully without the aid of a mask – Earth was long gone, swallowed seemingly into thin air. He didn't even see it happen – his home coordinates suddenly disappeared from the map, erased from history.

It has also been to long to ask what happened that day. It had been six years since the final day of his sentence came to an end, and he wasn't sure how he hadn't ended up in that ship again.

He could still see it now; the white walls, the bright lights, the empty corridors – not an ounce of company (real company that was, he didn't count the AI) for five years. Actually, it was a bit longer after he tried to escape during his last days. He had had enough.

"Hey. Blackout!" He almost didn't recognise the name, even after all of these years. It felt foreign to him. Someone somewhere had given him that name after he finished an assassination, and it had stuck ever since.

"You know the drill." He answered roughly, staring into the frightened eyes of the teens. Heck, they were only kids.

He knew all they saw was the black visor of a helmet, so he let himself close his eyes when the gunshots rang out. He always did if he could help it. Even now he couldn't face the death of someone innocent. Unfortunately that always seemed to happen when he was around.

When he opened his eyes, they were dead. Eyes still open, blood running from their mouths, they lay still. Wordlessly, he walked up to them and uncurled their hands. There lay what he needed. What they wanted.

"Nice job dude! Maybe next time –" the poor man didn't have time to finish before Blackout shot him, a bullet wedged in between his skull. He was a pawn until the end.

"All clear. Got the items you requested." He spoke into his earpiece. His helmet lit up around him as his employer spoke back.

"Good. They weren't kidding when they said Blackout got the job done."

It's Gary, he wanted to scream back, My name is Gary. But the words died on his throat almost immediately.

Gary was someone else. Gary Goodspeed was sentenced to isolated prison for five years all to impress a girl which he never saw again. Gary was the man that spent the years in solitude, only living with himself and his own thoughts. Gary didn't kill for revenge or in cold blood.

But Gary also burnt his house down as a teen, watching the flames swallow the only safety he had.

Far into the future he did the same, but rather it was his own mother he watched burn to ash this time.

("You left me." Gary had told her that day. She was barely conscious, so she didn't notice that it wasn't water he was pouring onto her. "And now I will leave you." )

He doesn't think back to the past, because each day is only another mistake that he will not learn from. These kids, for example, were really in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they were dead on the floor.