JOLT.
Ethan snapped awake in the familiar bed, the phantom sensation of cold metal pressing against his cheek and the distant echo of tearing steel fading from his consciousness like smoke. Loop Seven. The train derailment. The impossible physics of the flying debris. The horrifying confirmation that distance meant nothing. He lay there for a long moment, staring up at the ceiling, the early morning light filtering through the curtains feeling less like a new beginning and more like the reopening of an unhealable wound.
Seven loops. Seven deaths. He felt a profound, soul-deep exhaustion and self-loathing for not being able to save her settling over him, heavier than any physical fatigue. What was the point of even getting out of bed? Every strategy he'd conceived, every desperate gambit – locking them away, direct intervention, random relocation, systematic escape – had failed. Fate, or whatever this entity was, simply recalibrated, finding a new path to the same inexorable end: Clara, dead at 5:17 PM.
He couldn't protect her. He couldn't control the environment. He couldn't outrun the deadline. The knowledge left him feeling hollowed out, stripped bare of hope and agency. He was merely a passenger, forced to watch the same horror movie unfold day after day, powerless to change the ending, burdened only by the agonizing foreknowledge of the coming tragedy.
The scent of coffee began to permeate the apartment. Clara. Alive. Oblivious. Making breakfast. The sheer normality of it felt like a deliberate cruelty. He finally forced himself to sit up, then stand, moving towards the kitchen with the slow, shambling gait of a man carrying an invisible, crushing weight.
When he appeared in the doorway, Clara turned from the counter, coffee pot in hand. Her smile faltered instantly as she took in his appearance. He knew, without needing a mirror, that the accumulating trauma was etched onto his face – the haunted eyes, the unnatural pallor, the slump of his shoulders.
"Ethan," she said softly, concern radiating from her voice, replacing the usual cheerful greeting. "Honey, you look… broken. Please, talk to me. What's going on?"
He leaned against the doorframe, unable to muster the energy to pretend, to fabricate another flimsy excuse. He just stared at her, this woman he loved more than life itself, this woman doomed to die in just over eight hours, again, and felt an overwhelming, suffocating wave of isolation. He was utterly alone in this knowledge, trapped behind a wall of impossibility that separated his reality from hers.
Maybe… maybe he couldn't save her. The thought landed with the cold finality of a tombstone. Maybe all his frantic efforts were just variations on a theme of failure. But if he couldn't save her, could he at least… connect with her? Could he somehow breach that wall, share even a fraction of this burden, so he wasn't completely alone in this temporal hell?
He knew the risks. The disbelief, the fear for him rather than with him. But the alternative – suffering this in absolute silence, watching her walk blithely towards her doom day after day, pretending everything was normal while his soul screamed – felt increasingly unbearable.
He needed to try. Not a full, frantic explanation. That wouldn't work. But maybe… hints? Gentle nudges? Frame it as something she could potentially understand, even if she misinterpreted the source? Extreme stress? Déjà vu? A premonition?
"Clara," he began, his voice low, raspy. He pushed himself away from the doorframe and walked slowly towards her, stopping a few feet away. "It's… it's more than just bad dreams. It's… this feeling. Like… like I'm stuck."
She put the coffee pot down carefully, giving him her full attention, her eyes searching his face, full of worry. "Stuck? How do you mean? Stuck with what? With work?"
"No," Ethan shook his head slowly. "Not like that. Stuck… in time. Does that sound crazy?" He watched her expression intently, searching for any flicker of recognition beyond concern for his sanity.
She frowned slightly, tilting her head. "Stuck in time? Like… feeling like things are repetitive? Groundhog Day?" She offered a small, hesitant smile, clearly trying to relate his strange words to something understandable. "I feel like that with the Finch account sometimes. Same stupid arguments over and over."
He closed his eyes briefly. She was trying to normalize it, to fit his existential dread into the familiar box of workplace frustration. "Sort of," he conceded, trying a different tack. "But… more intense. Like… have you ever had really strong déjà vu? So strong it feels like you've literally lived through a moment exactly before?"
"Sure," she nodded slowly. "Everyone gets that sometimes. It's weird, like your brain hiccups."
"But what if it wasn't just a moment?" Ethan pressed gently, leaning forward slightly, his voice dropping lower. "What if it felt like… the whole day? What if you woke up knowing, with absolute certainty, things that were going to happen later? Small things, big things… terrible things?" He kept his gaze locked on hers, pleading silently for her to grasp the undertone, the genuine terror beneath the hypotheticals.
Clara's expression shifted. The slight attempt at a reassuring smile faded, replaced by deepening concern. She reached out, placing a gentle hand on his arm. "Ethan… honey, that doesn't sound like déjà vu. That sounds like… like extreme anxiety. Like maybe the stress is getting to you more than you realize. Are you sleeping properly? Eating okay?" She was shifting into caretaker mode, her focus entirely on his perceived mental state.
Frustration pricked at him, but he pushed it down. Anger wouldn't help. Panic wouldn't help. "I'm sleeping," he lied, "but it doesn't help. It's this feeling, Clara… this sense of… impending doom. Like something awful is supposed to happen today. Something specific." He hesitated, wondering how much further he could push it. "Around… late afternoon."
Her grip tightened on his arm. "Something awful? Ethan, you're scaring me now. Is this because of a nightmare? Did something specific happen in the dream that's spooking you?"
He nodded slowly, seizing the plausible explanation she offered. "Yes. The dream… it felt incredibly real. There was an accident. Terrible. And it felt like… like it was meant to happen. Like it couldn't be avoided."
"Oh, honey," she murmured, pulling him into a gentle hug. He stiffened for a moment, then allowed himself to be held, though it offered little comfort against the chilling knowledge he possessed. "No wonder you're so shaken up. Dreams like that can feel real, they can mess with your head all day. But that's all it was, Ethan. A dream. A nightmare. It doesn't mean anything bad is actually going to happen." She pulled back, looking firmly into his eyes. "It was just your subconscious working through stress."
He wanted to scream, It wasn't a dream! It happened! It keeps happening! But he saw the conviction in her eyes, the loving concern entirely focused on helping him through a psychological rough patch. She wasn't hearing the impossible truth he was hinting at; she was hearing the ramblings of a man overwrought with stress, translating his veiled warnings into symptoms.
"Maybe," he said tonelessly, the fight draining out of him again. "Maybe you're right."
"I know I am," she said softly but firmly. "So, how about this? Forget Thompson, forget Finch. Forget leaving town. Let's just have a quiet day, here. Really quiet. We can watch movies, order takeout, maybe build that massive jigsaw puzzle that's been mocking us from the closet shelf? Whatever helps you feel grounded, okay? We stay inside, stay together, and prove that stupid nightmare wrong."
He looked at her, seeing the love and worry in her eyes, the complete lack of understanding of the true horror. She was offering him exactly what he'd tried on Loop Two – the illusion of safety within their apartment walls – based on the mistaken belief that his fear stemmed from a dream about an external event. He knew it wouldn't work. He knew the walls offered no protection. But looking into her earnest, loving face, how could he argue? How could he tell her that her very presence, her normalcy, felt like a countdown clock?
He couldn't. The attempt to communicate, even obliquely, had failed. She hadn't bridged the gap; she had simply reinforced the wall, plastering it over with concern and misinterpretation. He was still utterly alone with the knowledge.
"Okay, Clara," he sighed, the weariness settling back into his bones. "Okay. A quiet day inside. Sounds… safe." He echoed the word, tasting the bitter irony on his tongue. There was no safe. But maybe, just maybe, there was slightly less pain in pretending, just for a few hours, until the inevitable arrived once more. He followed her to the breakfast table, the conversation shifting to mundane plans for their 'quiet day', leaving the unspeakable truth unspoken, locked tightly away in the solitary confinement of his looping consciousness.