"Enough Time" - A Short Snippet (Patreon)

It is on the fifth loop when you realize that maybe you aren’t meant to save them.

At first, it’s a fleeting thought. After all, you have to save them. There has to be a way. There’s no way the universe would trap you in a time loop with no out…right?

But, as the deaths add up, as you learn—or, worse, see—that MC has died yet again, it really makes a person wonder what kind of cosmic joke this is, what kind of lesson you’re supposed to be learning, if there’s even a lesson at all besides that losing someone you love (and, yes, you can’t deny it now, you love them, you love them so much that every time they die it’s like your heart gets ripped out of your chest again, the carnage fresh and new and raw, the breath punched out of you, the grief consuming)—it’s a savagery you wouldn’t wish on anyone.

So, you keep trying. What else is there to do? Give up? You can’t do that. There’s some trick you’re not seeing, some fallacy that you just have to recognize. (The trick is that you can’t save them. The fallacy is that death has always been inescapable—you, as a doctor, know this—but you can’t accept it, not in this case—)

“Eli,” they say, and yes, that’s right—you’re here again, you don’t know how long it’s been, you don’t know which time this is, you just know for now they’re alive, looking at you in concern because you’re going mad with grief, exhaustion, pain—and you can’t tell them any of this, because you’ve tried telling them and tried not telling them, and it’s the same either way.

“Sorry,” you say, forcing your mouth into a smile. “I spaced out.”

“I noticed.” They laugh, push a coffee mug over to you. Your fingers graze theirs, and normally you’d pull away. But this time, you fold your hand over theirs, the heat of their skin the only thing that feels real in this unhinged place.

You feel them startle beneath you, and they look at you—confused, concerned.

“Eli?” they say, and you hear the uncertainty in your name.

You’ve been so stupid. So fucking stupid. Wasting so much time. Thinking that time was infinite. Thinking that you’d always be lucky.

“MC,” you murmur, and you wonder if they can hear it in your voice—that you love them, that you’ve loved them for so long, that you’re unbelievably angry and unbelievably sad, but always at the center of all that, love.

“I’m sorry,” you say.

And you squeeze their hand once.

And you let them go.