The bare branches shake in the breeze. There is a promise of spring lingering in the lapses of warmth—pollen heavy with life, soil drenched from earlier rainfalls. Everything is stumbling from its slumber with wide eyes, reborn, and Max hates it all. She keeps her blinds closed tightly against the sunlight, throws shoes at her window when the birds chirp their morning songs. She sleeps with her earbuds in, drowning the sound of her dorm as it settles into sleep at night, drowning Chloe's voice that still murmurs at the back of her mind. There are other voices, too—her own shrieks, hard and raw against the taunts of a man swallowed in white light, and slips of memories from previous timelines, skipping like a broken record in her recent memories. Sometimes, she can't keep track of it all.

She will reach for Warren's face, thumb brushing against soft unmarked skin, and wonder when the black eye healed. He tenses at her touch, as if he is too afraid to pull away but too afraid to let her. She can't tell him the difference, though she has tried. The words stick against the roof of her mouth and she is almost positive he thinks she's hallucinating. She wants to tell him to run, even wonders why he hasn't already and she screams at him inside her head.

But his eyes are gentle and he tugs her outside for a walk in the warming sunshine. The sun against her back feels much too hot and she's afraid that if she stands too still, she will burst into flames. She walks in tight circles around him; he turns absently to face her as she moves, revolving. He rattles on about some new movie playing and how it is rich with metaphors about nonlinear time travel.

She stops and stares at him, the sudden change causing him to trip. "Yes," she says, grabbing hold of his hands and stares wildly into his eyes and he shuffles backwards again.

She doesn't know if it will give her answers or if she can give him answers, but it is something, an ignition buried deep within her.

He pauses and she can practically see him mentally backtrack for whatever question she is answering.

"The movie. Let's go," she urges and the light-bulb finally goes off.

"Oh," he says and squeezes her hands a little too tightly. She has not felt physical pain for months. She almost welcomes it. The world around her has been laced with eggshells and careful words and she is tired of feeling as if she might splinter into fragments. If only she could break, then she could begin to find the fissures that needed mending.

He drops her hands, realizing his mistake and stutters apology after apology. She is glass, after all, glass and bones and muddy words that slip around her mind.

She punches him lightly on the shoulder, startles him into silence. It is so reminiscent of their older days that he cracks a smile.

"All right, Maximus. Can't deny a woman who knows what she wants," he says but there is a wariness to his eyes.

She turns from him and basks in the harsh sunlight, dropping to the grass below her. He follows her, exhaling with a hrumph as his body hits the ground beside her. She plucks a blade of grass and drops it on to his face, smiling as he sputters and tries to wave it aside. Above them tree branches shake like fists against a cage. Soon they will blossom, fill with fruit, grow, change. They will never stay.