“I’m sorry, Julienne,” he cried, and collapsed on the roadside.

It should have been me. It should have been me.

He had no one to blame. He was a despicable person.

And then he saw the face of Julienne, unmarred and angelic but lifeless just the same, and Merwin hated himself all the more. Oh, but he had meant it at the time. The words just came out. He didn’t mean it, surely. Like a stab in the heart, he recalled what he had said to Dallas. Those bodies, his friends’ bodies, charred and broken in the debris. He couldn’t shake the images from his mind.

His mind was a blur as he sprinted, staggered, pulled his unwilling legs forward with what little strength he could muster. Away from here. The road was long but headed in the only direction Merwin could think to go.

Only memories. But there are no second chances. If he could only go back in time, things would be different! Merwin was a man he never thought he could become, seized by a panic that turned him inside out. That flash had undone everything.