"Fuck." It's soft and quiet and so very sad, but it's also followed by: "I can't do that to you." Alex means it, because she can't, not when he puts it that way. She wants too, and if it weren't for the end of that sentence she might have pressed on it more. She might have made him promised anyway. But she can't, not now.

Instead, Alex just sniffles, and she rests her forehead against his own, her eyes closed. She's crying again, because her heart is breaking, and it's been breaking since he'd told her that Simon was there and that the two of them should leave the boy to his fate.

It's breaking even more, because he's still dead and Richard has still lost his humanity, and Thomas Warren is still threatening the world. "I don't know how to fix it," Alex just whimpers. "I don't know how to fix any of it."