The mistakes you can't fix 12

John, on his knees, panted heavily. He was struggling to get up, covered in scratch. His spatial ship had been destroyed, and when he had managed to enter the pirate spaceship, he had had no idea of what was awaiting him.

'Ah... just why... this sht only happen to me...'

After the mysterious ice manipulator from the Paradise Council, he had came across yet another man that had power defying the logic, that weren't mutant or cyborg powers. Worse, this one seemed even more monstruous. How unlucky one had to be for something like this to happen?

'I guess the world gave me the ending I deserve' John thought.

He just closed his eyes, and waited for the end to come, defeated. He waited for what felt like an eternity, with each second passing by adding to his anguish, and making him sweat more and more. He didn't want to die. But he also wanted to finally stop feeling like this.

"You know, if you really want to die, you should at least make sure not to put your blood on someone else's hands"

John weakly looked up, at the person who had just destroyed his ship and put him down without the slightest effort. It was a man below the average 1m93 in the galaxy, probably 1m88 or 1m89. He had a fit stature, not overly muscular but still really athletic, the kind that was trained for combat. He had a mid-long beard and strong facial features, but the whole somehow gave a soft face as a result, and made him look really handsome along with his light-brown hair and piercing blue eyes.

"What do you mean?" John asked on a dry tone.

"You threw yourself at an unknown spaceship, even knowing that in the cosmos, spatial ships like yours are at a natural disadvantage in this situation" the man said. "Then, when you see your ship is about to be destroyed, instead of trying to escape or negociate your live, you throw yourself in with a few grenades and firearms. You don't really look mentally-ill, so it's obvious you didn't get near with the main goal to survive. I'm pretty sure we don't have enemity with you, so that leaves the option that you just want to die"

"I... you know what, find, let's just assume I came here to die" John said, rolling his eyes. "Now if you don't want to have my blood on your hands, you can just throw me out of the ship, space will have my blood on its hands... whatever is the equivalent of hands for space"

"Haha, okay, that was funny" the man said with a scottish accent, not even paying attention to the proposal. "My name's Ethan, and you?"

"..."

"Not really talkative, are you?"

"You just destroyed my spatial ship"

"And you were the one to just go and throw yourself at us"

"...

Just tell me what you want from me already"

Ethan looked at him, scratching the back of his head, and sighed:

"Honestly, what am I even supposed to want? None of us were hurt, our ship didn't suffer much, and even if you made us lose some time, it doesn't really matter since the person we were chasing already managed to escape" he said. "On the other side, I don't see us just take you in, nor you accepting. Aaaand, considering that from what I understood you're from Cifer, I don't really see us just drop you on a random planet, especially considering we're in the Council's territory. So, I return the question: what do you want us to do with you?"

John looked at Ethan. Then he looked at the other men and women behindhim, all having a cybernetic arm or hand. He finally stopped, laying on the floor and looking at the ceiling, thoughtful:

"I... I don't know" he said. "I'm not even sure you people are not from the Council, or another galactic governement"

"If we were from the Council, I garantee you we wouldn't be staying in the backwater part of their territory like this, and I also garantee you that most of the Stellar Fields governements, not talking about the SGO Republic and the Andromeus-Silveren Empire, hate the Council enough to actually give assitance to Cifer, same for other terrorist organizations" Ethan retorted. "Fine, here is the deal I propose you: you lead us to one of Cifer's bases so we can get contact and trade information, and in exchange we drop you there and make sure nothing happen. Of course, if you're still worried, you can just indicate us a planet that doesn't belong to Cifer and where there's just a base, and then set up an encounter"

"And if I still refuse?"

"Weeeeeeell..."

Ethan grimaced, and pointed to one of the crewmate, who was 'innocently' playing with pliers while looking at John. The latter coughed.

Obviously, the deal was accepted slightly after, and they flew toward a certain touristic planet where Cifer had a base.

Upon arrival, despite never going there in person before, John did his best to lead himself and Ethan to the base. Eventually, they arrived in front of a relatively lame building, considering the fancy look of the ones around, and John gave out the secret code he remembered. Eventually, the door opened but nobody came. When suddenly...

... a papermache zombie fell from the ceiling in front of them, hanging by thread tied to his limbs. Seeing this, neither John nor Ethank react and kept a blank expression:

"..."

"..."

Realizing that they weren't reacting at all, a generic-looking woman finally showed herself:

"Happy halloween" she said. "But, I'm confused, there wasn't supposed to be any more meeting today. Haha, we could almost believe that someone leaked the base's location, haha"

"Ehm..." John coughed, indicating Ethan with his eyes.

"Oh..."

The woman looked at the two of them. Then at the cutting scars all over John's arms, that seemed recent, then back at Ethan. And then, she tried to quickly shut the door close, but Ethan put his foot in the way, blocking the door open, and covered the woman's mouth when she atttempted to scream:

"Now calm down, please, I really don't want to hurt anybody, just talk with your superiors for a moment" he said. "I'll take off my hand and peacefully explain the situation, so don't scream"

He slowly took his hand off, and the woman didn't scream. The two entered the building and, dragged by the situation, John ended up following them inside. A few minutes later, he had the 'good' surprise to see that Ethan and the woman, Amanda, had already sympathised, and he could even see the latter starting to blush slightly, making John sigh internally.

Finally, after Amanda made her report about the situation to the higher-ups, they first asked for a talk in private with Ethan and her, and would listen to what John would say later on.

'Welp, at least now I'm sure he's part of some powerful governement or organization, since they wouldn't give that level of attention to some space pirate' John thought.

Well, it was pretty obvious that he wasn't a normal person... considering that he had cut his spatial ship in two halves by himself.

"Ahh... so many questions, and so few answers" John sighed out loud.

Well, at least, while his head was infested by all these questions, it didn't leave him the opportunity to feel bored. The downside was that being left alone with only these truly made him feel bored to death.

"Yeah, many questions and few answers are pretty much what you get when you come across big names while yourself being at the bottom of the ladder in the hierarchy. You'll have to get over it"

John turned his head. In the opposite corner of the cozy room, a woman with black hair and eyes was leaning against the thin wall, looking straight at him.

She had a smile on her delicate and beautiful pale face, wasn't wearing any weapon and didn't seem to have any bad intent toward him, but he couldn't help feeling wary, especially considering she seemed to have just appeared out of nowhere.

"Uh... hello?" John said hesitantly.

"Hello, big guy, my name is Erica, happy to meet you" she said. "And if you wonder, I was here for twenty minutes, it's actually pretty amazing that you didn't notice me when I wasn't even trying to hide with my mutant powers"

"...

Ok, I guess?"

What was the thing with this girl anyway? John knew her since less than three minutes and his boredom had already shifted to perplexity with a touch of annoyance. Meanwhile, Erica pouted:

"Huh? You meet a mutant, and you don't even have anything particular to say about it?" she asked. "That's kinda disappointing"

"Well I'm sorry to disappoint you but these days, I've met more people that make mutant look average than guys I could date, so I've pretty much become insensitive to this kind of thing"

"That sounds like a cry for help... wait so you're a gay ass?"

Somehow, even if John wasn't drinking anything on the moment, he still managed to choke upon hearing it.

"Don't react like this, I wasn't saying this in a mean way, every girl wants to have this one gay friend they know won't try to date them" she chuckled.

Because this degenerate thought anyone, straight or not, would date her seriously after they heard her talking for more than five minutes? John kept this thought to himself, and decided to keep entertaining the discussion. At the very least, it kept his mind away from his dark thoughts away until Ethan and Amanda returned.

"Hey Erica, you're here!" Amanda said as she quickly walked to her to hug her.

"Yes, I have a little break until my next mission, and I was near Londris, so I thought I could go visit my favorite cute little nerd" she replied.

"Hey, just because I'm passionated in horror things and work in support doesn't mean you can call me a nerd"

"Sure, sure. It won't change the fact that out of every nerdy person I met, you're by far the most adorable"

"Oh, you little-"

As the two kept heckling, Ethan approched John:

"Well, I plus or less said everything I wanted to say to the higher-ups of Cifer and it went pretty well, so I'll be going now" he said before adding, on a lower tone: "As for our encounter, I told them that we accidentally raided your ship because we thought it was the ship of the Paradise Council we were chasing after, you're not obligated but I'd advise you to stick to this version"

John couldn't help but raise his eyebrows. It made no doubt that if the true reason of their encounter had transpired, he would've been in a lot of trouble. And Ethan had lied like this, without any plausible motive, just to help him?

"Why are you helping me?" he asked. "There's no reason at all, and I've litteraly tried to kill you, so why?"

Ethan smiled at him:

"Because I've been where you are now" he replied. "I made mistakes, terrible mistakes, probably as bad as the ones you made to arrive to the point you don't cherish your life anymore. And I quickly got to realize that once you start making mistake, you can't stop by yourself. The realization that sometimes, and so often, you can't correct your failures is something that can eat a person, chunk by chunk, and push them to commit more mistakes without ever being able to stop. So much people have fallen to this kind of tragedy, spiraling into the abyss, without being able to ever climb back up... I was lucky enough to be saved from this fate, but I've seen so many people less fortunate than me over the decades that I lost the count"

"Decades? How old really are you?" John asked, as his interlocutor barely seemed to be in his thirties.

"Honestly? That too, I stopped counting after a while. Maybe a century? I've went through a lot, and I think I can say I already pretty much determined what my life would be. But you, you're still at the point where you can still make choices. That's what I wanted to give you a hand, even if it's just once, like 'she' did for me decades before"

"And... if I don't want this help?"

"I know that's not the case: no matter what they say or think, deep inside, everyone want someone to extend a hand to them" Ethan retorted. "Remember, it's true that your past, and all the errors you made are all part of you. And will influence your future no matter how hard you try to avoid it. But even then, it doesn't set what your life will be. We're humans, John, there's mistakes we can fix, and there the mistakes we can't fix but, in the end, there's always a chance to keep advancing forward. I just hope that, whenever you feel like life isn't worth living again, you'll remember what I just told you and force yourself to move forward"

John looked at him, emotions clashing inside of him. Clark's image stuck in his mind, both pulling him down and pushing forward... Deep inside, he knew that his lover would have wanted him to countinue, but it was just so hard... Yet, he knew he had to get back up. His world was gone, and he was the only one left. At the very least, he owed them to keep on living:

"Thank you Ethan" he said honestly. "I promise you I'll try and, if I ever meet you again, I'll make sure to thank you one more time"

Ethan smiled as he walked toward the exit door:

"If we meet again like you say, let's just hope it's as allies, I really don't want to have to hurt you" he said. "And as for these 'supernatural powers' you were so confused about, it's not something that can really be discussed, but..."

He threw an old digital watch at John, who catched it:

"I guess that if you just happen to get the answers you seek from some old thing that 'accidentally' fell off my pocket, it doesn't count as a discussion" he said, smirking.

"I... thank you, Ethan"

"You already said it. If you want to thank me, make sure to follow my advice. Farewell"

With this last goodbye, Ethan leaved the building, and it was the last sight John would have of him for a very long time.

However, now, he had something else to look at, something that promised to contain the answers to his unanswered question. After finding an excuse to isolate himself from Erica and Amanda, pretending he needed to prepare before meeting the higher-ups, he opened the small digital board of the watch with equal apprehension and expectation,and started reading the document that appeared in front of him.