What had he been doing here? Funny how he wasn't sure anymore when he's been asked. There'd been some sort of reason. He's relatively sure of it, but grasping for that logic was like trying to prevent sand from falling through his hands in the middle of a desert. The thought's there, somewhere, indistinguishable from thousands of other, similar ones.

"Not supposed to be anywhere," he said at last. "Should have died. Didn't. Looks like the record's changing now."

He rubbed at his face again, not even noticing when his wrist went like something insubstantial where it became exposed between the end of his glove and the start of his sleeve. Two garments rubbed against his face without anything stringing them together.

He felt numb and addled. "Stanley?" Right, that was what the kid had said. "I think... I went too far. We all did, before, your stupid lot too. Oh, let's rail against the Initiative, they said, let's never -- think it through, a whole world of people, a whole world that doesn't give a shit, doesn't know they're real -- they'd fuck it up again!" He was breathing too fast, blinking rapidly to clear the water from his eyes. It didn't clear the blurriness. "March in, light a match under the lion's tail, wonder why the whole damn pack came down to gnaw on them!"

Everything he has and hasn't done, and he knows, in that moment, that none of it has ever mattered.