“I was beginning to worry we’d never get out of there…” Jake said, voice trailing off as he studied the new landscape around him. There was a chill in the air, bitter and unforgiving that sent tingles down his spine. Around them he could see trees laid bare, their leaves long fallen and brushed away by the blowing wind. Still, the trees themselves seemed lively enough, their bark full of life. A small chitter reached his ears from some sort of creature, a squirrel or raccoon perhaps. Maybe a hare. It was a ways off anyway.


    The two of them stood at the precipice of this frosted forest, one-half of their view dominated by bareback trees blowing softly in the wind. Behind a sharp jagged cliff rose up, small caves and crevices clear. The wind rustled through these openings creating a hunting melody and even colder fronts of breeze that forced Jake to bring his arms inward, bundle his chest tight for warmth.


    “Yeah… what a relief, huh…” Alice muttered next to him. Her voice sounded dead, devoid of any real emotion. Turning towards her he saw her sinking low to the floor not bothering to study the new world around them. Simply sinking low to the dirt, collapsing back with a sigh her gaze thrust low to the hardpacked frozen dirt.


    “You feeling ok? Arm still hurting?” Jake asked, moving to stand in front of her.


    “No, it''s fine…” She lied. Her arm still burned with pain, uncomfortably numb now in some places while burning shots of pain tortured her nerves in others. She paid it little mind though. The horrid pains of her arm, the feeling of the fractured strings in her veins. They meant nothing to her right now. Her mind to distracted to focus on them.


    “Hey…” she began, still not looking toward Jake fearful of what expression he might wear facing her now, “Is it alright for me to still be here?”


    “What do you mean?” Jake asked slowly, some worry clear in his tone.


    “I mean… just…” It was hard for her to explain properly, hard to give voice to the torturous feelings and thoughts that had run rampant in her mind for what felt like days now. “It’s just, we were arrested, right? For the crash and that was… that was my fault so…”


    “No, it wasn’t,” Jake said, sounding serious now as he sat down across from her, “Last I checked you weren’t the one driving, were you? If it''s anyone’s fault it’s mine so…”


    “You warned me!” Her voice raised, unexpected even to her as her head rose to face him with clear frustration, “Told me you couldn’t drive a flying car!”


    “How about this…” Jake said, seeing her clear determination not to let this issue die in her eyes, “Were both at fault, ok? Does it really matter anymore? It happened so there’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s just agree that from now on we won’t try and pilot any more flying cars, ok? At least not till I learn how to drive one…” Jake offered a hopeful little smile, hoping his idiotic joke would help to cheer her up. It didn’t seem to work though. Her face found the floor again, as downtrodden as he’d ever seen it.


    “It does matter, alright! How can I just… leave like that after it''s my fault so many people got hurt? So many people died?”


    “We don’t know anyone died.”


    “We don’t know they didn’t! It’s not right I’m here, galivanting free as a bird. It’s just… it''s not fair.”


    “So, what, you wanted to stay there? With Creepo the intern?”


    “No… not at all. I hated it there. Hated that lab, hated those two. All the pocking the prodding… the ''samples'' they kept insisting on…” Her hand reflexively rubbed across her pained arm, wincing slightly at the painful sensation the motion brought, “But why does it matter what I want? Maybe it would have been better... stuck in that hellish lab tortured by their tests. Maybe it could have let me redeem myself, make up for my mistake. I don’t know I just…” She trailed off, her voice leaving her.


    Jake sat across from her in silence, unsure how to respond. Unsure how he could help her. He’d felt it before, a few days back, how he was changing. Adapting to this journey. Growing used to the horrors around him. It had scared him at first to become so indifferent to the bizarre, so used to being strange. But now… now he thought it might be a blessing.


    Already he could feel himself bottling the concern he’d felt over their accident; the worries he’d felt over the truth of the destruction they’d caused. He’d found something akin to acceptance in himself. Come to acknowledge there was nothing to be done, nothing they could do to fix their mistake. Some accidents simply were too massive to be undone, too destructive to be fixed. All they could do now was keep moving forward.


    He''d come to realize this still sitting in the lab, skin crawling with a desire to leave. Realized it after the words whispered to him by the intern, the anger he felt at the suggestion to leave Alice behind. Realized then and there that in truth, he no longer traveled to return home. That was a fantasy, a pipe dream he’d told himself to keep from going insane. An impossibility, no matter what the lab of horror promised him. He knew deep inside he’d likely die before ever seeing his family again. It scared him, broke something inside him, but it was the truth.


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    It was a truth that likely would have driven him mad if he’d accepted it a few… weeks… months… however long ago back. However long before her. She was why he traveled now. Traveled to help her, help her survive, help her thrive, and help her find a home. He barely knew the past she’d lived; only saw the scars it left behind and knew she didn’t deserve them. He wanted to help her have a future.


    She was the only reason he’d managed to keep going this long, she always pushed him forward or pulled him up. Always kept him striving forward with a taunting comment or sly laugh. He’d begun to realize this as he paced the lab across the smug visage of Simon, lost in thought. Began to realize how hard it would be for him to part ways with her.


    Now, sitting apart and watching her glum visage sag under the unknown ramifications of a single mistake, he didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to express himself, or explain the whirlwind of thoughts and feelings that plagued his body. The regret he felt for dragging her along, forcing these hellish experiences on her. The joy he felt at having been allowed to meet her, allowed to travel with her. It all pressed in on him, left him mute.


    The snow began to fall as the two sat in silence. Small flakes of white, that slowly settled the earth. The first few lone flakes of frost seemed to melt away, fading into the vast landscape around the two. Then around the pair, more and more bits of snow would fall to form clumps of white chill. Yet miraculously, not a single flake landed upon the pair. At least, not till a single flake landed atop the head of the boy, sat mute ignoring the cold.


    “It’s snowing…” He said, glancing away from Alice finally noticing the snow around them.


    “Snow?” Alice said, her curiosity betraying her momentarily allowing her to escape the all-consuming regret. Allowing her to raise her eyes to the winter wonderland that was slowly taking shape around the two.


    “This your first time seeing snow?” Jake asked, glancing away from the snow toward Alice who now sat staring at the white peaked woods. She only nodded in response. He couldn’t see her face but could imagine it, the look of wonder he’d seen her wear before. The wonder she carried whether they encountered something as plain as grass or horrid as the desert.


    “Beautiful, isn’t it?”


    “Yeah…”


    “Tell you the truth, it’s my first time seeing it in person too,” Jake said, allowing a few of the falling flakes to coalesce in his hands. As the frozen particulate began to melt against the fading warmth of his skin he could feel Alice turn to face him with a look of shocked confusion. “Where I grew up winters got cold, sure, but never enough to snow. Actually, that’s not true. It did snow once apparently but I was a baby. I don’t have any memories of it. It’s nice though isn’t it, getting to enjoy the snow…”


    Alice could only nod again, surprised he’d willingly brought up the past without her having to pry. Jake sat for a moment staring at the cold water puddled in his hand, watching as more and more flakes of snow began to land on his hand. With a sigh, he closed his fist and turned to face her.


    “…I think sometimes it’s ok to be selfish. Like you, if you had stayed stuck in that lab, you’d never have gotten to enjoy this right? Never got to see the snow. Maybe never have gotten to go outside again.”


    “But still! That’s exactly my point, why should I…”


    “Another thing you can be selfish about is what you choose to believe. We were told two stories, vastly different about how are crash went. Really though, we have no idea what the truth of the matter is. Personally, I don’t take stock in either of them, and I doubt we’ll ever really know what happened. We can’t change the past; we can’t change the mistakes we made. All we can do is move forward, and change what we choose to believe. I believe the crash was bad. It probably did a lot of damage and hurt a few people. But I doubt anyone was killed.”


    “How can you just… decide like that? Decide that’s how it went?”


    “Because that accident I just described, vague as it was, is one I can live with. One I can accept inside and move on from. If you can’t accept that’s how the accident went then change the details, move things around till it sits well enough inside you.” Alice sat for a moment in silence, face set in a particularly hard-to-read expression.


    “I… I don’t know if I can…” she said after a while, voice faltering slightly. Jake didn’t respond for a moment, glancing upward towards the snow as if lost in thought. Struggling with what to say next, what could possibly help her.


    “You’re not a monster, you know that? I remember you asked that. I think… I think one destructive mistake doesn’t make you a monster, it makes you human. How you react to it, that’s what defines you. This regret you feel, this empathy? What sort of monster has that?”


    “So, what, I just have to live with this?”


    “What else can you do?” Jake let his gaze fall from the sky back towards her. “What else but carry on, learn from the mistake, and try to be better? That’s what it means to be human. At least you get to see the snow, so it’s not all bad is it?”


    She smiled slightly, a shiver running down her spine. It felt like, for the first time, she could feel the cold around her. Moving to stand, she found herself suddenly supported as Jake, lightning fast, sprang up and offered her his hand to help her. Stood beneath the falling snow from above, Alice could still feel the hollow sting of regret in her body. Yet now, as the snow cascaded from above, its gentle falling arc slowly beginning to build in intensity, the despair she felt seemed lessened.


    Beside her, Jake felt relief at seeing her stand tall, seeing her smile return even if only slightly. Selfish as it may be, he didn’t care about the truth of the accident. He didn’t care about whether it was right or wrong for the two of them to stay together as he fell through reality after reality. He just felt relief she was still standing beside him, felt relief they could continue traveling together. Even if he knew deep inside the clock was ticking on their time together.