Decisions

The blade was sharp, gleaming in the moonlight.

Kim knew what to do- not a sliced wrist, a drive into her heart, destroying the muscle. She was well experienced at such things, even if she hadn't used them. Then she'd be beyond the Circles of the World- to whatever awaited her and those who had gone before.

If her parents died, would they even come? Or had MCUltra ended their souls?

She held the blade out, looking up into the sky one last time.

The stars were there, in their diamond array, quite untroubled by mankind. It was a hope, of a kind, Kim thought.

No matter how much Drakken might trumpet and bellow, the universe would defeat him.

Kim looked down at the Blade. Shining, perfect, a gateway beyond this world.

A way to suicide.

Kim burst into laughter at the realization that she was one of three people left on the world who could conceive of suicide.

All alone, she thought the mirth bubbling up in her, and then realizing that her laughter was scaling up, stomped on her incipiant hysteria.

She took the knife, and brought it up, shining point aimed at her heart.

Now. The time was now.

But the blade didn't move. For a long moment, Kim knelt there and then spun around, to look at the graveyard.

"What else do you want?" Kim said in frustration, "I've lost. Game over! I can't make it better."

There was silence, a deeper silence then she'd ever heard and a feeling of regard...of something, or someone, or perhaps Someone looking down, the pressure of that regard growing. Kim bit her lip so hard she could feel the blood trickling down her chin.

"I...Can't." She hissed out. "I refuse!"

The silence didn't break.

Finally, Kim couldn't bear it anymore and shrieked out.

"Don't you understand? There's nobody left to save!"

Save them? Kim thought, Save them so they could recall what they did, what they had been made into? Just how little their will, their hopes and dreams, their deepest held beliefs were actually worth?

In the silence, though Kim looked up and suddenly her face, already working, turned dead white.

The stars might not be dreamed of by mankind anymore. But they could still see them. What if their god-Kim's face twisted at the word- commanded they spread his gospel? The Kepler and others like it, no longer carrying knowledge, or dreams, but nightmare. Maybe the Lowardians were vulnerable to MC Ultra, or other species.

Kim was a genius. Because she didn't have the same interests as her family, some doubted that, but those who had (before they lost interest in such things) had no such doubts.

Her mind didn't need much in the way of prompting. A wave front of mindless devotion. The world would die, eventually, Kim knew that, since before too long most of the people who had once maintained the complex systems keeping six billion people alive would be gone, and "building statues" was a poor alternative to building farms. She doubted Drakken realized it- or would care, because the world would starve to keep him and Shego fed. Long before that became impossible, they'd be dead.

But beyond that dead world, you'd have ships. Every ship landing, and if the population was vulnerable to MCultra, carrying on the pattern- the infection.

Kimmie, virus's aren't alive- at least not as we understand it. They can only function with healthy hosts to carry them- and permit their spread. Eventually of course a lethal virus kills the host, leaving nothing in its wake save the dead- but it's spread before that point.

Her mother, back when she had been her mother, and little Kim had experienced hurt as much a that memory.

"But it wouldn't last forever." She said, hoping for a response, but there was none. Desperately, she continued, "I mean, sooner or later we'd run into something that could stop us..."

Another memory, equally painful.

Well Kimmie, it's possible that in towards the core of the galaxy, there are old, really powerful species. The Lowardians are more advanced then us, but think about what a species that has been around since the age of the dinosaurs would be like!

Her father-Kim closed her eyes, -her father had been like that, always dreaming, looking out beyond. No more.

But he was right, one day mankind or what passed for it, would meet one of those mighty powers and would be put down.

By someone who doesnt' know us. Never mind all the horror we'd inflict before that...but someone who would see man as only a virus, cancer with space ships, who would feel no regret or sorrow over what had been lost.

Kim had always loved to help people. Yes, she also liked the praise, but far more of what she did was quiet, out of the limelight, than the things that got onto the news.

In that, Shego's torture had been marvelous in its evil- depriving her of the ability to help. No one wanted her help, after all she was the one who stood against Shego and Drakken.

But now she realized there was one last avenue left to her. At the thought, Kim blanked out for a moment, and found herself sprawled out before the graves, the rich smell of the loam and the scent of ashes in her nostrils.

"Please. No. Please not that. No, please..." She said in a whisper robbed of all strength, begging...something as she had never begged before. "You can do it...you don't need me... please, please, oh God, not that. Anything but that."

There was no response. And Kim thought of all the people, all the mindless people who had once had dreams of their own, and the uncounted trillions beyond the sky who might one day come to curse this species. If they were lucky. If they were unlucky they might join the mindless chorus and spread the poison to other worlds, in the name of Gods who were likely long dead by that point.

The one way to stop that.

When you had a dying animal, or a dangerous animal, you didn't call someone to do the job for you. You took it on yourself. You held it while it died, or in the old days fired the shot yourself.

You didn't let it endanger others, but equally, in memory of old love, and out of duty, you dealt with it.

Kim went berserk for a few minutes, screaming, wailing, hammering the ground and the grave marker with her hands until they were bloody.

But the stone and the earth said nothing, and finally she found herself on her back looking up at the sky.

She could stop here. None would make her continue, but...

But she'd once, long ago, asked to help. She'd kept doing that, and if she'd sometimes been arrogant, well, she wasn't an angel, just a teenager who tried to make the world a better place.

And she hadn't put a "Except for," on her request.

Now, it came back, at the End, with one last service, one last thing she could do to help.

To end mankind. Maybe free them, so they could chose their ending for themselves, but Kim knew, somehow, that it would be an ending. No parades, no going back to cheerleading, no day when people laughed at what had happened. Freed from Drakken or not, mankind's epitaphwas in the writing, and it would be her hands on the chisel.

Which was also Shego's failing- she would never believe that Kim might do something. She would assume- because Shego would never dream of it, that Kim would prefer life over everything else. That even the mockery of her family would be better than the alternative.

Well. The Darkness and Silence was coming anyway. Kim just had a choice of how to bring it, or to let time, or aliens, or some other factor bring it after that last bit of Joy had been leached from the organic robots that had once dreamed of the stars.

Kim got up, looking out onto the graveyard, and felt the spirits of all who had gone before, who had fought terrible dictators, or just lived their lives full of pain and joy, bearing the Choice that had made mankind what he had been, and which had been taken.

She felt no resistance- if anything a sense of sad affirmation.

Do it. Make an ending of it.

Kim had lost weight over the last several months, but now her face looked like it had been carved from pale marble. Despair was leached out of it- as was hope, leaving only determination.

She knew what she needed to do now. Shego assumed that she wanted to win, but at this point, "winning" was a goal that Shego would never conceive of, until it was too late.

She knelt one more time, and swore.

To her family, that did not know her anymore.

To Ron, who had once loved her.

To the others, Hope, Monique, even Bonnie, who for all her snark had a will and fire that had been extinguished as blasphemously as everyone else.

Then she swore one more time, calling on witness the Name that had been borne on the scroll. She swore no matter what cost or price, to achieve the last goal.

At that, as the last human who could swear such an oath swore it, for a moment, the graveyard seemed to fall into absolute silence, shocked that someone would make such an Oath. Kim said nothing else, nothing else could be said, and nothing could now be unsaid.

Turning, she walked from the graveyard. She had no spring in her step. But there was something implacable about the way she walked.

They swore an oath which none shall break, and none should take, by the name even of Ilúvatar, calling the Everlasting Dark upon them if they kept it not...

TBC.