I always watched her while she slept. She looked quite beautiful. The way her straight-yet-ragged hair seemed to dance and pulse in the firelight, the subtle smile she wore as she dreamed endless dreams, the way her pure black shirt molded to her thin body. I hadn't noticed how tan she was before but now I could see it clearly.

That was my night on watch. I volunteered every night, which she accepted with a nodding, blank face before she lay down next the campfire. I would always pretend to examine my gun as she slowly fell to sleep watching the fire. It was the same routine every night. She lay down, put her hands under her head, watched the fire for a few minutes, closed her eyes, and soon enough her body would flow evenly with her breath, signaling she had finally fallen to sleep. And every night without fail I would put my gun in my lap and watch her for a few hours. The only thing I could think of as I watched her was how easily I could kill her.
It wouldn't be that hard, nor time consuming, nor wasteful. In fact it would benefit me mentally and physically. Less food to share, one less emotional tie, and a large weight off of my shoulders. All I had to do was pick my gun off of my lap, pump it, aim the sights straight onto her forehead, and pull the trigger. I always wondered if I would have wept silently at the sight of her brains spilling out onto the sandstone behind her. Because of this, my eyes always wandered to her forehead.
The only question in my head is, why did I never do it? She slept right there next to the fire every night, a sitting duck, just waiting for a bullet to the head. The only answer I can come up with is that this route wouldn't have been satisfying enough.
There would have been no conclusion. No "Goodbye Lars, have a good way, please don't die." There would have just been a gunshot, a dead corpse, and a bigger hole inside of myself. A hole that has no real feeling or name, it's just there. A black hole that more resembles than feels of death.
So I sat there for nights watching her move in her blanket, slowly rising and falling to her own breath. A shell of a person that had once been my girlfriend, who was now reduced to rare exaggerated smiles and silence.
Which was why I left her there.
On a nameless day, after waking up from a dreamless sleep, I looked over to her depressed, sunken, lifeless face. I looked for hours, thinking about our last date before the world had gone. We had went to the mall. We hadn't bought anything. We hadn't even said much. We had just held hands and walked around in comfortable silence.
After the memory had gone through my head, I soundlessly gathered up my things and left the sandstone cave I had dragged us to. As I walked along the shady side of the sandstone hills in the Red Desert, the hole in my heart grew bigger. But I kept going, and am still going.
Was any of it worth anything?