Mikael Blomkvist was completely shaken. He was vomiting horrifically and endlessly. More was coming out then was coming in, causing him to retch painfully.

He looked wearily ahead, but even still, he could see her blasted face, burned on his eyes. He wanted to scream, overwhelmed and shaken by everything that had happened that night.

In the back of his mind, Blomkvist cradled a sinister thought that was slowly easing its way to the forefront of his mind. Before he knew it, it was all he could think about, for days, plaguing everything else in his mind.

What if he had just gotten there a little sooner? What if he hadn't argued so much? Maybe if they were just a little sooner, just a little. Maybe, maybe, just maybe.

Maybe he could have saved them. At the least, he could have saved Mia.

That was the only thought in his mind for days after he found them, as he sat alone and emotionally empty, while his brain was trying to drown him in thoughts. He sat in silence, even though he could hear screams ringing in his ears from the inside out.

It made him sick.

He vomited a total of 3 times that week.

Blomkvist rarely became like this. With a Swedish upbringing and mindset, it took a lot to upset him emotionally to the point where it became difficult to function.

It became exceedingly difficult to function.

The plague that was taking over his mind filtered out everything that was about Svensson or Mia. They appeared in his dreams, screaming at him for not helping, crying that he didn't make it to them sooner. Sometimes, he had to stand by frozen, watching their lives dry from their bodies and go limp with the occasional twitching.

Still, he could do nothing.

He couldn't close his eyes for sleep. Behind them, he saw all the blood, over and over and over again. When he shut them tighter, he could see their faces when he spoke to them not long before he found them, a cheery dinner over work.

They say there are five stages of grief.

Blomkvist was still in denial.

At the top of the list still, in his last contacts he spoke to, was Svensson's name, when he deleted the hundreds of calls he had ignored from Berger and the rest of people he knew were concerned about his lack of communication.

He didn't want communication.

He wanted peace.

He wanted quiet.

He wanted to know what is was like for them, to be silenced so young and so quickly and, perhaps worse, so insignificantly, their lives snuffed out like mere candles in the wind.

For the first time in his life, Mikael Blomkvist didn't want to be a reporter. He wanted to be a normal civilian, fed the bullshit of the media like the typical citizen and slave of society.

He wanted to go away.