Holy shit, it's been a while. To those of you who read the update, I've decided to give this whole thing a fresh start - so here we go!

It couldn't end this way.

All that they'd worked for, everything they'd sacrificed - Danik had torn that to bits as soon as he unleashed the Moon.

It towered over them, hungry, eager to wreak its havoc upon the planet and the small group of people still left standing. The sky around it was colored a murky, bloody orange, and the disgusting tentacles protruding from its center reached for them as though preparing to tear open their bodies.

She ducked as the roof far above their heads shattered into even more fragments, her body telling her to flee even though she knew it was useless. There was no escape from a creature that big. She could probably run across the universe and it would still find her somehow.

Danik's rambling about the beginning of Convergence was cut off by a shard of stone piercing him nearly in half, and it was that of all things that made her realize they were in imminent danger. Time sped up until it became almost too fast. Her adrenaline coursed through her veins and she instinctively reached for Isaac.

He wasn't by her side. Where was he?

She spun, looking for him. The ground shifted violently under her feet and she nearly crashed into him, gripping his arms hard as she tried to regain her footing. She looked into his eyes, desperation written all across her face.

But in his gentle blue eyes there was something quite incongruous to the situation: acceptance.

What...?

"Ellie," Isaac said, holding tight, "when I finish this, it's all going down. Everything. You have to go."

She shook her head, anguished at the realization that he intended to stay. Why did he always have to play the goddamn hero?

Carver roughly broke in, "No! You two get outta here. Get back to Earth Space, tell them what we found. I'm staying - it's all I've got left."

"You can't stop it, Carver. Not without me. I'm the Marker killer, remember?"

So that was it, then. He felt the need to save everyone from this horror, to stop it from taking any more lives.

Ellie tried, "Isaac-"

"I turned my back on the world because I was afraid of what needed to be done," he explained. As if finally reaching some sort of peace with himself, he added, "Ellie, I'm not afraid anymore."

The ground again shook violently, but Ellie fought for her death grip on Isaac until she could stand properly, her eyes locked on his face. She watched in disbelief as he pressed a picture of himself, the one she'd torn in a fit of anger, into her hand, and her heart broke.

"There's a shuttle over there," he said, his voice barely reaching her ears through her shocked daze. "I want you to take it and head for home."

She was torn between doing the right thing and leaving them. Someone had to warn Earth of the new threat, the fact that their problems had reached the planet-sized scale, but this had been her mission, the goal she'd given up so much for. She couldn't leave it unfinished.

She couldn't leave Isaac and Carver to die, either.

But she had to.

She threw herself at him, unable to bear the prospect of him being gone from her life permanently, and kissed him full on the mouth like her life depended on it. The contact lasted three, four seconds - and then they separated. She gazed at him desperately, trying to memorize every last detail of the man she loved.

He pushed her to the shuttle, calling, "Don't come back for me. We both know I'm not going home!"

Why?

Her heart was screaming at her to stay, but she forced herself to move, away to the shuttle, climbing inside and buckling in as her throat clogged with tears impossible to shed.

She finally stopped the shuttle a safe distance away from the Moon, watching as the gigantic Necromorph crashed into the planet.

There was no way either of them could have survived, but she had to know. For sure.

Quietly, she pushed the comms button. "Isaac?" she whispered. "Isaac, are you there?"

There was nothing but despairing silence. Her head bowed under the weight of her grief. "Carver? Isaac? You're gone, aren't you?"

The words were painful to get out. Each syllable was like admitting defeat, and her own failure to realize what she had risked and lost pursuing the mission. Why hadn't she seen it before?

She rested her chin in her hand, trying not to look at the picture on the dashboard and all the baggage it carried. Not a single one of the instruments displayed gave any data, as though silently mourning with her.

Wait.

She glanced at one of the readings again. "The Marker signal," she realized aloud. "It's gone too!" It truly was - there were no waves coming across the scanner, nothing to show. Nothing but dead silence, something she was actually grateful for.

A smile broke across her face. "You did it, Isaac! You really did it."

He had saved numerous lives by destroying the Moon. He had been a hero, yet again, but lost his life in the process.

The smile faded at the thought, and she looked away, into the cold void of space, sitting back in her chair.

She had to get home.

The computerized voice chirped away as she confirmed the coordinates to Earth, and choking back a sob, she waited for the ship to take her there. Warning Earth was her priority now. Isaac wasn't with her to do it, like he had been for the majority of their time together, but she would do it. For him.

Even if she could start over and find a new life somehow, she would never forget what had transpired on Tau Volantis. The price had been too high, but then again, what were two people compared with the entire human race?

The world is ending, and all you can think about is us?

He had been right to think that. The world didn't give a shit and never had, while he had been her life.

And now he was gone.

She bitterly regretted every vicious fight they had ever had. The end didn't justify the means at all - it wasn't even worth the smallest bit. If only she could tell the future, this whole thing could have been avoided.

But of course, it's impossible to reverse the apocalypse.

Yay, first chapter! I'm glad to get back to this. It actually... feels good. Almost like I was missing something.

I sincerely hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for reading.