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You sit on the edge of the motel bed and stare at your hand in the dark.
It’s a perfectly normal human hand, with perfectly normal human tendons that flex under perfectly normal human skin when you move your perfectly normal human fingers.
Except it’s far from normal. It's extraordinary and powerful and you're half tempted to take the knife in the glove box of Chloe’s truck and cut it off. You might have tried already, if you thought it would do any good.
But it isn't just your hand. It’s all of you. That much is evident from the shadow of a migraine in your temples and the dried blood beneath your nails. The Rewind lives inside your head and tries to tear you apart every time you use it.
You take a shaky breath and run your hands carefully through your hair, tracing the roundness of your skull. You don’t know what you’re looking for, and you feel a bit silly for looking at all, especially when you discover no mysterious new lump or crack or scar. You’re just you. You’ve always been just you.
You just happen to have the power to destroy entire towns by fucking around with time.
Pins and needles prickle your fingers and you hunch forward, forcing yourself to take even breaths. You’re not going to have a panic attack. You’re not. What’s done is done and you can’t change it. Not this time.
The bedsprings screech. A thin arm loops around your hips and a pointed chin digs into your shoulder. You try to relax. By the way she squeezes you reassuringly, you don’t think you had much success.
“Did you know,” she starts sleepily, her warm breath ghosting over the shell of your ear. “That there's this law in Connecticut that says a pickle is only a pickle if it bounces?”
You startle yourself with a laugh: a short, high bark, like a pistol going off. Chloe buries her face in your shoulderblade and squeezes your hips again. The pins and needles spread to your wrists, and you’re not entirely in control of your breathing anymore.
“Max,” she whispers into your shirt. She hesitates, and you feel her jaw move like she’s trying to think of the right words. “Max, I’m here. I’m right here, with you. You’re not alone, okay?”
You work to get enough air into your lungs, feeling your knuckles creak with how hard you’re hanging onto the edge of the bed. “O-okay.”
“Say you’re not alone, Max.”
It comes out with your exhale, running together into one word: “I’mnotalone.”
“Again,” she says softly, snaking her free arm around you and capturing your hand—your extraordinary, terrible hand—in hers.
“I’m not alone.”