Rose cradles Samuel in her arms. She clutches him close, rocking as she sobs his name again and again, words hoarse. In this state, John barely recognizes her. She seems so… fragile, nearly broken beyond repair. Nothing like the vibrant woman he knows and loves. 

The Travelers awkwardly stand around them. Dakkar leans on Ahlaam’s shoulders, Sia paces. They watch on in silence as Rose grieves. John wishes Margaret-

Oh god, Margaret. Someone is going to have to tell Margaret.

“Sia,” Rose pleads, voice thick with tears, “Please, you have to take us back, we have to try again. Before Kal knocked him out. We can do it again, we can fix it-” Her voice cracks and another round of sobs overtakes her. John thinks he should do something. He and Rose are… Are something now. Something real. They… They hadn’t determined a name for it. But Margaret had laughed behind her hand and Samuel had said he was happy for them and-

John feels a spasm of grief rattle through him.

Sia looks at Rose, seemingly helpless. “Rose… It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?” Rose snaps. “We just go back and do it all over again and-”

“We can't travel back in time. The orrery was our one chance to-”

“Well, you wasted it!” Rose snarls, and Sia has no response for that.

They stand in silence for a moment, only the beeping of the Nautilus and Rose's sniffles breaking it. There are a million things John should be thinking about. Margaret’s growing power and the strange words she’d mumbled, the wonder of the Nautilus traveling through the sky, what on earth they were going to do about Samuel… But John can’t seem to focus on a single one. Instead, he spins the phrase We can't travel back in time over and over and over in his head. 

Because that can’t be right. John knows that can’t be true, that Sia must have misspoke. Because, if that were true, that would mean…

“Sia,” he says, dread heavy as lead in his veins. “How did you check on Anna?”

Sis freezes and turns to him with calculating eyes, like he is an enemy she can outmatch. “What do you mean?”

John's hands feel clammy. His pulse races.

“If you can't go back in time,” John says hesitantly, hoping, praying, begging for her to correct him, “How were you able to check on Anna? You told her you'd help her.”

Sia's hands tighten into fists at her side and that is when John knows for sure. 

She never intended to go back. 

Anna.

“Oh god. She- She's all alone up there, we have to go get her-” Sia gives him a look of pure pity, and John feels like he is on the Satellite launch all over again. The world tumbles and shakes around him, as he loses all connection with gravity. “No. Please, no.”

“I…” Sia swallows. Her hand has jumped to her necklace, rapidly dancing along the edge.  “I checked on her when I arrived. It was the first thing I did, I swear. She… She’s gone, John. She's been gone for a while.”

John feels weak. His legs struggle to stay upright. He leans against the wall of the Nautilus, letting the cold metal ground him. “That’s… how could that happen?”

“It’s been thirty-nine years, John,” Sia says. Each word is careful and precise, like it’s obvious, and she is explaining death to a particularly dense child, “She was-”

“How could you let that happen?” John corrects, pushing himself off the wall and striding up to her. He has never felt rage like this, so hot and all-consuming that John almost doesn’t feel anything at all. “Anna trusted you. Samuel trusted you. We all trusted you!”

Glowing tears well in Sia’s eyes. "John, I'm so sorry. I thought, with the vision-"

"How many of my friends is your vision going to kill!"

John never had many friends. He hadn't been well-liked in school, too bookish to get on with the other boys at his boarding school. By the time he reached university, he'd grown used to being tolerated. The stars had been all the company he'd needed and he had resigned himself to a life of solitude with them.

That was before he met Anna. Before Great Astronomical Discoveries, before Rose, Samuel, and Margaret. Before he had known something more, something like-

Samuel, eyes warm in the false sun of the Traveler’s jungle. We travel together.

The Brick Satellite, Anna's new home, high in the sky over the town that holds her name. We will reunite.

It wasn't true, any of it.

Sia seems upset by his words. Her hand has flown to cover her mouth and she shakes her head, as though trying to think through a nightmare.

“I… I never wanted any of this,” she whispers. The words are so quiet, John can barely hear him. Perhaps he wasn't supposed to.

John distantly thinks that maybe he should feel bad. But there is no room inside him for anything but that blazing, numbing anger. He opens his mouth to tell her that none of them had asked to be a key or a pawn in some magic war, when Dakkar interrupts.

“This isn't helping.”

John isn't sure he cares about helping right now. He thinks Dakkar can tell, because his eyes narrow and he straightens to his full height.

“This isn't helping Rose.”

John feels himself pale, and it feels like he has fallen overboard into the icy depths. The frigid realization douses the raging bonfire inside him.

Damn his temper. Damn him, for losing track of what is actually important. 

John looks back to where Rose is still seated. She is still now, her sobbing entirely ceased. She just holds Samuel tightly to her chest, silent tears streaming down her cheeks.

He kneels down beside her and tentatively rests a hand on her shoulder. At the first touch, she nearly falls into him. She tucks her head into his shoulder and wails. She pulls Samuel with her and his arm brushes against John's. He is cool to the touch.

Samuel’s eyes are open. They stare unseeing at the ceiling, with none of the creativity and cleverness John has gotten to know so well. His glasses are askew, and nonsensically, John reaches down with his free hand and straightens them. One of the lenses is cracked. John feels a lump well in his throat. Samuel never would have let anything happen to his glasses.

He's dead. He's actually dead.

Samuel's dead. Anna's dead. And there is nothing John can do about it.

Finally, the tears fall.

“C-could we have some privacy?” John stutters, as he reaches up his hand to cradle the back of Rose's head. The Travelers shuffle out of the room without protest, and John is grateful. He doesn't think he could bear their attention, not after the scene he just made. Not after they killed-

It doesn't matter. None of it matters, honestly. For the first time since they arrived in Hanover, John really feels the weight of those thirty-nine years. His father, his observatory, Anna, they are long gone. And despite traveling with them, Samuel is gone as well. 

There is no getting them back.

Margaret and Rose are all he has left.

John pulls Rose closer, resting his chin on the top of her head. He holds her tightly, as though the world may rip her away at any moment.