Memoriam

He flies in and lands on the empty plain. There's nothing but this wasteland as far as the eye can see. The only difference seeing it from space had made was that there's water in other places. Even the Event hadn't gotten rid of those, even though it had wiped out all life on the planet, except for a few of the more robust microbes and a small percentage of the metas and aliens who had called Earth home. None of them had even tried to pick up the pieces and rebuild civilization on this planet, even those who were most attached to it. There was too much pain and too little life here to even think of trying.

His boots crunch on the gravel. They're the same boots, or at least the same design (if it had been the same exact costume it would have long since crumbled into dust), he's worn for a long time. The whole costume is the same; he can't be bothered to keep up with the rapid change of fashions anymore, not when the years, the decades, blur together like the days had used to when he was younger. The centuries haven't yet lost their slowness in his perception, but he can tell it's only a matter of time. He fears he's lost touch with humanity (or whatever, since there aren't any humans any more unless you count a few immortals; other languages have words which are more encompassing, but he still thinks in English, even after all this time since he last heard it spoken even by himself); their lives seem so ephemeral to him now that he doesn't even try to connect any more. Not that it matters; he doesn't do the heroing thing any more, hasn't since the Event no matter how often he'd been asked. It just didn't seem right to try to save somebody else's world when he'd failed so miserably at saving his. And it had been his (perhaps it still is), no matter how little he'd fit in while it had still been alive.

There had once been a city here, but it's impossible to tell from just looking at it. Enough time has passed that even the buildings have been eroded to rubble. The Event had been so thorough that it had taken a long time; there had been no plants to cover the walls and tear them down, no animals to break the windows. For years after the Event the city had been a still life. Cold corpses had laid where they'd fallen in a grotesque parody of life, children playing, mothers in the process of preparing dinner, crime stopped in its tracks. With few bacteria left to decay the corpses, he'd had ample time to see everything before it had faded with what had seemed cruel slowness: every person he should have been able to save. His friends. His loved ones. People he'd known only vaguely. People he'd never met and never would meet. But eventually they were unrecognizable even to him. And then they were gone, and he almost wished they weren't because even seeing their bodies everywhere was better than seeing the city so empty, so devoid of anything that even resembled life out of the corner of the eye. He'd left Earth then, and only returned at intervals to remember, as one of the few who could, one of the few who still can.

The spot isn't marked. It never had been, but for anyone but him it would have been easier to find with the aid of streets and of buildings to use as landmarks. He's made the journey so many times that he never has even a moment of doubt about the location. He doesn't even step over the invisible lines delineating where the sidewalk ends and the buildings begin. He reaches his destination and closes his eyes at the rush of memory of years past, of the distant past, of those who'd died.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, his voice harsh from only rare use. It sounds overly loud to his ears, even over the strong wind which had always been blocked by the buildings before they'd been eroded to rubble so that it could only be felt on the rooftops. He feels tears stinging his eyes, as he does when he comes here every year. "I'm sorry."

He pulls two flowers from where he'd secured them under his belt. They aren't roses; all the roses were destroyed at the same time everything else that mattered to him was destroyed. But they're the closest he can get. Gently he places them on the ground and walks back to the sleek black ship.