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I suppose if you want to get all technical about it, we’re all time travelers of a sort. Going in one direction at a uniform pace still counts as movement after all. Though that’s not really my point. It’s my roundabout way of getting to the point, which is that it’s...not quite the same for me.
I can go back if I want to badly enough, if I know when exactly I want to go, for just four seconds at a time. It’s not a lot, I know—I’ve got nothing on the TARDIS, that’s for sure—but it can be enough, if you know how to use it. I am fully aware that this is strange enough that you won’t believe me, not without proof.
No worries there. I’ll be happy to demonstrate. But later. It’ll have to be later, okay?
What else is important? I can’t take anyone or anything with me, that seems to be a rule. And I can only do over bits that I’ve been through myself. I can’t go back in time and stop Archduke Ferdinand from being killed is what I’m getting at, but I can nip back to Tesco last Wednesday and decide not to pick up the damn lettuce that won’t scan at the chip and PIN machine.
And there’s always a cost.
That’s true of anything we do, isn’t it, though possibly more so with time travel. So I could decide not to take the Tesco lettuce, but that would leave it for someone’s single mum to pick it up, and if she gets held up at checkout, it makes her late picking up her kids, and her bastard of an ex-husband uses that as one more reason why she shouldn’t have custody, and it’s all my fault because I couldn’t handle a minor inconvenience.
Yes, I know it sounds paranoid, but I refuse to be the damn butterfly that flaps its wings and brings about the Apocalypse. I’ve learned to be careful.
I used my four seconds recklessly in Afghanistan. I thought I was saving lives, redoing all the little decisions like who to treat first, where and when to seek shelter, whether to take a half step to the right or the left to shove the soldier in front of me out of harm’s way. I thought I was helping until I wasn’t. It’s still hard to talk about what happened when I stopped Bill Murray from getting blown up. It’s harder to think about what happened when I saved my own life.
Four seconds was enough for that too, yes. By rights, I should be dead. I did that without thinking. I didn’t mean to, but I was scared and hurt and...that's something else for later.
Another important thing is that I’ve only got one shot at changing any specific four seconds. Once I do them over, they’re done for true.
The first time I used it since being invalided home was for you. I’m sure you can tell, if you put your mind to it: a little extra time to aim made all the difference with Jeff Hope. You know that wasn’t an easy shot. And I tried like mad after you jumped. None of that worked at all, but you used some trickery of your own there, didn’t you? You can tell me later.
You’ll want to know why this matters now, of course.
I’m about to take back saying I love you.
There. I thought you might appreciate the bluntness.
I’m not taking back the sentiment. Not that. Never that. I’ve lived my life wrapped up in you since the day we met, and I loved you before I had the words for it.
What I’m going to do over is the way I said it. You deserve better than me shouting it at you, all angry from across a dark room because you were about to do something idiotically dangerous and I wanted to stop you. You deserve...I don’t know, candlelight and rose petals and specimens of questionable legality and anything that isn’t being distracted at the worst possible time. How’s that for poetry?
You looked so happy before you fell over. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. I had hoped, but I didn’t think...
But I told you I loved you, and now you’re hurt, and it’s my fault.
You’ll want to know exactly how, of course, because that’s how your funny little mind works, and I am unfortunately qualified to tell you precisely what was broken and how, but I won’t. I don’t want to make it any more real than it already is by putting it on paper.
I’ve tried doing over the rest of the night, all of it in four-second slices. Nothing’s worked so far, and that’s the only part I haven’t touched yet. Because I told you I loved you and you looked happy, and I can be a selfish bastard when it comes right down to it. But it’s all right. I know what I saw, and I’ll tell you again. Every day for the rest of your natural life, I’ll tell you, but the important thing is that you have to be here to hear it.
(I thought of going back and stopping you from taking that client at all, but that was two weeks ago and the further back you go the more...metaphysical...it gets. And Alice Presbury needed help.)
I don’t know why I’m writing this. Logically, I know that if I go back and change things and it works, there won’t be any reason for me to write this and therefore I won’t ever have written. And if I go back and it doesn’t work - same difference, I guess. But just in case, for whatever reason, if I’m not able to tell you myself, I’m leaving this here for you to find.
I love you, Sherlock. And I’ll be seeing you soon.
J.W.