I never choose the cage for her. It wouldn't feel right.

Despite my ability to change small, insignificant choices, I don't. I always pick the bird.

Maybe her smile would be different, maybe the new angle of her grin would give me new life, would help me get through this with renewed determination.

But I never choose the cage for her. Comstock has done that too many times.

I never draw my weapon.

Although my mouth screams and I can perceive the pain even before the knife touches me, I look with some strange sense of pride.

Because for her, I try, I just try to not resort to violence first, try to not scare her. She's still so innocent. Soon she won't. I must protect this pureness as long as I can.

The ripped fabric of her skirt around my hand, covering Anna's initials, gives me strength. I can have them both at the same time.

Sometimes I, or more like the owner of the eyes I see through, fiddle with the cloth, just like she plays with her thimble. I wonder, did she get that from me or did I get it from her?

For this, losing blood is worth it.

I always throw the ball at that Fink son of a bitch.

Or try to.

I have realized the things I can change, where I can intervene, they happen right after a moment my mind, his mind, went blank, goes blank. A moment before an insignificant choice.

There's never enough time, though.

Daisy always kills him, and that blood is hers to spill… Heaven, if there is one, knows her wrath is more justified than mine.

But I would like to sink his face in with that ball at least once.

I never spare Slate.

I know it's in that moment that she understands not everything is black and white. It's this moment when she understands sometimes death is a mercy.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I let him live.

But when it comes down to it, I always stretch my hand, it's my hand now, take the gun, and pull the trigger.

This is the moment everything ends.

I recognize the tears blurring my vision.

I cannot recall if I also wept the first time I saw Songbird take her, saw her sacrifice.

Maybe I did.

Maybe I have more influence on this body than I suspect.

I know both me and him want to rip every universe to pieces for taking her away.

When I see through his eyes the frail, aged form of Elizabeth, the world on fire behind her, I try… I try so damn hard to beg. To beg her to let me go back to the moment before I crossed the tear. To let it be as long for her as it was for me.

Don't make her go through the torture, please.

She sees me, sees the body and beyond, my existence, echoing through all lives, walking the same road over and over again.

She sees me, the same way Elizabeth sees me after the destruction of the siphon.

She sees me and I understand. Elizabeth needs to be hardened by the torture, needs the pain.

Else, she wouldn't be able to kill me. She couldn't.

Simultaneously, it makes me feel ice cold and warm in the deepest part of my soul. Or what's left of it.

To know she came to love me as much as I love her.

But I still beg.

Beg to be on time at least once.

I think I dream sometimes. When the body I see through is solely under his control, when he is focused on the smell of gunpowder and the recoil of the weapon and the itch the Vigors leave in his hands, I am gone.

When his mind isn't blank I can't decide.

When his focus is complete I can't even see.

So I dream.

Mostly, I dream of Paris.

I try to hold him back, at least for a fraction of a second, to see her dance on the beach.

Just a moment.

Give us just one more moment, please.

Stay. Let me spend eternity watching her smile, or just one more instant.

Have mercy.

I always pick tails.

Sometimes I picked heads, before, just to make sure I still had the ability to pick here at all. It doesn't matter that I know how the coin will fall.

But I always choose tails now.

Because if the coin can fall on its other side…

Maybe things can be different this time.