Glitching to Fix Time {Poor Execution, Rewrite occurring in diff book}

Ch 8: Rip the mission highjacker

"Time paradox." Clarity denied lifting her head thinking about how she could explain rubbing her eye wishing she hadn't stayed up all night to have this conversation with a fresher head. "If you pull your family from the timeline, you'd never get arrested by Argus, the water witch wouldn't go after you, we wouldn't show up and you wouldn't have the means to go back and save them in the first place. Maybe there's a chance at saving your parents without breaking time, as long as my future self still tells your past self that they're dead so you come with us, and you think they're dead while they're actually alive but...your brother....there wouldn't be any saving him that I can think of. Not without disrupting the timeline."

"How could I go back and save my parents and not save my brother?" Zari asked. "Force them through losing him again? I have to save all of them, my brother especially, Behrad deserves a second chance more than anyone. They're my family, how can I just leave them to die when I can save them?"

"Look, ZT time is already broken, it's cracked and torn and if it alters who knows what it could do to one of those tears. It could worsen it. Immeasurably. We can't just go around changing the timeline to benefit ourselves. No matter how much we may want to. Even if....Even if it could save someone we truly love."

"It's not fair." Zari protested. "We have the means to do it."

"I know it's not. There are things that I'd change about my life too you know, if we could. If there weren't consequences. If there wasn't any danger of potentially screwing up someone else's life. I don't know much about my future, and um no spoilers there please like I said if things happen I want them to happen the right way, but Uh," Clarity slid her cooked heart shaped strawberry, chocolate chip pancakes onto a plate walking over to sit at the table. Sitting across from Zari. "If I could go back, I'd stop myself from getting my powers."

"What? Why would you do that?" Zari asked. "You use them to help so many people in 2042."

"That doesn't matter, I'm sure some other hero would step in and get the job done better than I ever could." Clarity denied with a small shake of her head.

"Clarity-" Zari went to protest that statement but Clarity kept talking.

"No matter how many people I save... I'm never going to make up for the ones that I took. Accidental as they may have been," Clarity thought back to when she first got her powers, bringing down the plane, killing her neighbor, causing power outages, birds electrocuted when they'd landed on a power line she was near, so many people robbed of their lives because of her. Her own mother put into a coma that she showed no signs of ever waking from. "As necessary as they may have been," Clarity continued thinking about her time being time scattered. Those she had to drain of electricity just to keep herself alive, the war that she waged on invaders who'd threatened to enslave the islands people, and about all the times she'd lose control of her powers. "lives were taken. Men, women, children, two babies I don't think they ever got their names. Saving more people doesn't just make up for their deaths. Nothing will and I'm so sorry my future self couldn't save your family. I promise I'll try everything I can to save them one day but I think we both already know how that promise is going to end. If it makes you feel any better Sara, lost her sister. Stein lost his firestorm partner, there was one before Jax, Ronnie. Nate lost his grandfather, Rip you don't know him but he was the captain before Sara and he lost his wife. Jax lost his dad. Ray lost his fiancée and I-I um, I had a daughter, well a version of me had a daughter, there was this whole thing where reality got changed, first time I set eyes on her she didn't even die. She erased from existence which is so much worse. One second she was in my arms and the next she was gone. Point is your not alone. Your not the only one on this ship whose lost people and wants them back."