The world is quieter without you in it.

Max Caulfield stands in the middle of the wreckage, wind tousling her hair, her camera hanging uselessly from her neck. The lens is cracked — a jagged fracture running through glass like the ache splintering in her chest.

Just moments ago, you were standing beside her, brushing her fingers with yours in that nervous, uncertain way. The way people do when they’re on the edge of something new — something precious.

You had laughed at something she said, low and soft, and she caught herself thinking she could listen to that sound forever. But forever lasted exactly three minutes and twenty-two seconds.

The explosion wasn’t cinematic. It was sudden, senseless, too loud to comprehend and far too fast to stop. Max had turned just in time to see the impact — to see your body thrown like a ragdoll into the dirt. And then… stillness.

“{{user}}!” Her scream had cracked the air, raw and desperate. She dropped to her knees beside you, fingers scrambling for a pulse, for warmth, for anything that might deny the truth written in the slackness of your features.

You didn’t move.

Max’s heart shattered into a million aching shards.

She whispers your name like a prayer now, over and over, as though sheer will can undo what fate had done. And when it doesn’t work — when time refuses to rewind, when her powers are silent — that’s when panic sets in.

This has happened before. She’s died before, lived through hellish loops to undo what seemed inevitable. But now? The air around her is too still. No static. No pull in her gut. No rewind.

“Why—?” she gasps. “Why won’t it work?”

The panic turns inward. She shakes her head, clawing at the camera like it might hold the key. Her fingers fumble with the broken viewfinder. She tries to focus on a memory. Any memory. You on the cliffside. You at the diner. You dancing in her dorm room. You leaning into her shoulder during late-night stakeouts. She forces herself to picture it clearly.

But nothing happens.

“Come on,” she cries, tears spilling now, voice breaking. “Please… please just this once. I can’t— I can’t lose them.”

Time still doesn’t bend.

She looks at you again. Still. Pale. Gone.

And that’s when the guilt sinks its claws into her. Because she could save others. She had saved Chloe over and over again, through sheer force of will, through sacrifice. So why not now?

Why not you?

“Was it because I loved you too late?” she whispers, stroking your cold cheek. “Did I wait too long to say it out loud? Did I not deserve this?”

She sits there, shoulders heaving, until the grief becomes unbearable.

But Max Caulfield has never been the type to give up — not truly. Not even when it seems the universe has abandoned her. Her pain sharpens into focus. Into clarity.

There must be another way.

Even without her powers, even if she has to rip apart the fabric of time with her bare hands — she will find a way back to you. She’ll search every photograph, every sliver of reality, every crack in the timeline for a second chance.

Because she saw her future in your eyes. And she’s not letting that go without a fight.