pathetic
He stroked his fingers through her soft hair slowly. She had laid her head down upon his lap, and she had not yet moved from that position.
It seemed to him she scarcely breathed, scarcely even lived except to experience the sensation of his fingers in her hair. A little smile played across her lips, her face relaxed and content.
It was amazing that the simplest, most mundane thing silenced the vitriol and doused her fireball of an attitude, rendering her as complacent and pliable as a regular girl.
Perhaps moreso, even.
Too easy.
"Feels...nice," she murmured.
"I know." His voice was hollow and empty. She didn't notice.
He repeated the motion, joylessly, for a time. Soon enough she was asleep.
He moved his hand away from her, stretched his arm out for a bit. Then he reached down and brushed a few stray locks of her out of her face. She was pretty.
He'd seen prettier.
"You're pathetic," he whispered to her sleeping form. "Do you feel that inside of you yet?" He leaned down closer to her. "I promise you will."
He placed a hand beneath her head and gently lifted it up slightly, enough for him to slip out from beneath her. He grabbed a pillow off the bed and set her head on it. She made a little noise but did not wake.
He walked across the room and undid the lock on the window. He slid it up and set it in place before walking without a sound into another room.
A short time later he returned to the window, leaning upon the sill and taking in the night air. He raised a glass of a dark red wine to his lips and took a slow sip, breathing in the scent of it, savoring it.
The room was high, higher than what had once been possible. It afforded a spectacular view of the entire city that stretched out below him and all of its glimmering lights. Low-atmo craft skirted the tops of buildings in a puzzle of intersecting paths. The city was a gem, a glittery monument of human achievement on this world.
It didn't impress him.
He thought about all the other places he would rather be at the moment. Some exotic planet, perhaps, half-inhabited by savages, the other half dominated by some seedy gambling company. Jobs were always plentiful on those worlds.
Or perhaps on a capital planet, mixing in with the Federation brass, talking to a superior, getting a new assignment, a new in-road to the core of the government.
Of course, the last time he had wished for that, he had gotten this.
He turned around and leaned back, still holding his glass. His eyes roved over the sleeping girl.
"Pathetic," he said again, and took another sip of wine.
It was a Tiantesh vintage, one of the last of its kind. It was rich, heady, a wine for the ages. Shame the planet hadn't been like that.
Tiantesh - that had been a worthwhile endeavour. A planet full of rebellious dissidents consumed by their artifact of a religion, who wished for nothing greater than the destruction of the government that held the galaxy together.
He had thoroughly enjoyed helping to teach them a very violent lesson.
And months later, when the job was finally done, when his accounts were overflowing, he had sat in a comfortable room aboard a Federation ship, sipped a wine much like this one, and reflected on a job well done.
The baby nebula had been a very pretty thing to look at. A damn sight better than what it'd been before.
He drained the glass and went and poured himself another before returning to the window.
"Oh, God..."
The soft murmur reached his ears and he turned around to face the bed again. She had curled up now, her hands held close to her chest and her eyes shut more tightly.
"Who are they...?"
He watched her with an air of utter indifference, silently sipping at his wine. A short yelp escaped her throat and she jerked away from the edge of the bed.
Nightmares again. Always with the nightmares.
He was growing tired of them, and in the time he spent by himself he wondered if he ought to drug her and pass her off to an official Research division on a hospital moon somewhere, and tell them to deal with her. Ah, that would give him some time to disappear into the shadows and enjoy himself. He would pick her up again, of course, she was his assignment, but if she was a little worse for wear afterwards, well... that couldn't be helped, now could it?
It would certainly make his life a little easier.
'Turn her into a tool we can use,' the Lady had told him. What the hell was that supposed to mean? He turned the words over in his mind, his thoughts made sharper by the delicate wine.
She was a murderer, a psychotic, and God knew what else; what did they see in her? Yes, certainly, her... abilities were intriguing, but they seemed to him more of a reason to put her down than anything else. What use did the Federation, or even the Lady personally, have for such a flawed thing? The girl, as far as he was concerned, had been ruined from the moment he had gotten the case, and probably had been that way for time untold.
"Stop--no--why am I...?"
He glanced at her again before returning to the cool breeze of the window.
Flawed as she was, Zero had to admit to himself that he was interested in her in one way or another. She had a pretty face, and a decent form to her body, and that was enough to keep his interest in the assignment alive. Too, she was much harder to manipulate than anyone he had met previously, and it thrilled him much more to achieve control over her when she broke.
"Zero... Zero!" she sobbed. Tears that had escaped from beneath her closed eyes wet her face.
He sighed into his wine and stepped over to the bed, reaching down and threading fingers into her hair, stroking it. He looked at the clock on the wall while he did, musing about the passage of time when one is lost in thought. Slowly her body stilled again, and the murmurings stopped, and her breathing returned to the rhythm of sleep.
He finished his glass again and withdrew his hand from her hair, reaching now to lightly trace the scar on her cheek. Her lips twitched into a little smile at the sensation. He let his eyes linger on it for a few moments after he had taken his hand away before he turned and walked into the other room. He approached the door that connected their rooms and keyed in the unlock code.
The scar was looking rather faded these days, he thought to himself as the door hissed open for him.
He would have to remember to refresh it soon, and remind her of what it meant. Zero smiled and shook his head at the thought of how the girl would try to suppress her fear when he did it, to be brave for him.