"You know what memories," he hisses through his teeth. Because she does. Of course she does. She's the only person he told. He remembers that so clearly now, the moment in the grass under the stars burning like a dagger in his hand. Paralyzing him with an overwhelming sense of fear and betrayal, which coalesces into a familiar anger.

(There's no voice for the thing he feels in the shadows behind him. Doesn't need one. All it has to do is stand there and wait for the moment that anger turns to fury, for his fury to metastasize into something more hateful than himself. It's scratching at his temples, now, scraping against the bone so loudly he thinks they should be able to hear it, if they were half as mad as he is.)

And he barks out a laugh. It isn't a happy one. "I cannot believe this. You think the captain is capable of replicating me when he can't even create a convincing tree?!"

He moves abruptly, pressing his hands over his face as if he could simply push it all back to its appropriate place on the timeline, far away from him. "I wasn't supposed to go back," he gasps, "Ava, please, just shoot me."