Gazing back at the abyss behind him, Lowe counted on himself as a strong swimmer.

And if it was by the ocean he came, he might surely make the jump and leave his fate again to the sea.

Yet the nagging question kept his feet stubbornly fixed on dry land.

What would really become of Ms. Amberflaw after tonight?

Could he truly trust that she'd be ok in the end?

Would she be made to suffer for his own doing?

And what man would he be to allow it?

Lowe turned back in Kora's direction.

His strong brow bending against the tug-o-war of his integrity caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

To stay or quit?

An unwinnable dilemma of two unknowable fates.

Return to Titanic or surrender to imprisonment here?

Without any time to properly weigh the outcome of both, Lowe went with his gut feeling.

Turning his back away from the sea and hurrying instead after Ms. Amberflaw.

"I got a visual on the suspect!" a police officer shouted, ducking back behind his car door to take cover as he held Kora at gunpoint. "Hands in the air! Get on the ground now!"

And witnessing Ms. Amberflaw being threatened in such a barbaric manner, Lowe instinctively drew his own revolver.

"Lower your weapons," he ordered the police brigade, utterly disturbed by their callous brutality toward an innocent woman who had done nothing to deserve it. "It's me you want."

"He's got a gun on him!"

The police officers quickly followed suit, ducking again behind the doors of their own cars as they drew their Glocks.

"Drop your weapon now!"

Stepping between their guns and Ms. Amberflaw, Lowe scanned them with his own pistol.

He was outnumbered and his hand trembled slightly, but he refused to back down.

"Lowe, what are you doing?" Kora demanded of him. "Are you crazy?"

"Forgive me, Ms. Amberflaw," he said to her. "But the rules have changed."

"Drop the gun and put your hands behind your head!" another cop ordered.

This was getting out of hand, more quickly than Kora expected.

And Lowe needed to put a stop to it before innocent people were hurt in the crossfire.

"If you allow her to go free," Lowe made his conditions known to the police. "I'll do as you ask."

"I said drop the fucking gun now! I'm not gonna tell you again!"

"There's been a misunderstanding. I'm not a nuisance," Lowe tried to reason with them. "I only wish to return home."

"He's not complying! You're gonna have to take him out!"

"No, wait!" Kora cried, brushing pass Lowe to step between him and the police. Desperate to explain the situation.

And Lowe barely had any time to pull her back out of the way.

Three gunshots fired off in rapid succession.

It only took one.

Lowe caught Kora against him, her breath taken by the pain of the bullet ripping into her side, tearing through her white apron, and shredding a path of devastation into her lungs.

Guarding her fall against his own weight, Lowe hung onto Kora to keep her from hitting the ground. Pulling her in securely against him, as he watched the life dimming in her summerly green eyes.

And being no stranger to death, Lowe saw it clearly in her face.

The wound was fatal.

The girl was not long for this world.

And knowing it shouldn't have ever happened, Lowe was inconsolable and sick to his stomach for the cutthroat brutality that ruled this draconian world.

Turning his gaze up to the officers, who still held him at gunpoint, Lowe's words were subdued by incredulity, "What have you done?"

"Get on the ground now! Hands behind your head!" a police officer screamed at him. "That's the last time I'm gonna tell you!"

"This is murder," Lowe swore heatedly. "Save her, damn you! You cannot allow her to die like this!"

"Back the fuck away now! Don't force me to put you down, buddy! I don't wanna have to do that!"

Lowe glanced back down at Kora, as her breathing turned into silent choking against his chest. Her color passing into a ghostly gray as her natural instinct to breathe met a stalemate with the pooling of blood in her collapsed lungs.

An excruciating and cruel death for anyone to endure.

Had Titanic been much the same as this?

Death all around him, but being powerless to stop it.

Hadn't he and his fellow officers been entrusted to guide passengers through a safe journey across the Atlantic?

How many more like her tormented him to the point that his mind decided he couldn't bear the recollection of it?

Until his memories fully returned to him, Lowe couldn't say what he had to regret of Titanic.

But what lay in his arms now was unmistakably his to answer for.

Ms. Amberflaw's life was over, and whether he remained trapped in this troubled reality or returned to his own, he would never outlive the haunting memory of watching her die in this disturbing manner.

He'd always wish there was a way to undo time for her.

To alter history so that the sinking of Titanic, his ill-fated meeting with Kora Amberflaw, and his failure to stop her untimely death had never happened.

Could crossing through time also happen in reverse?

If he had found a way to cross into the future, then who was to say it wasn't possible to retreat an hour or so back into the past, when Ms. Amberflaw was still alive, tormenting him with her quirky clocks and daffy spectacles in her shop?

What if it wasn't just his own past he could transpose, but hers mutually?

And glancing to his right, Lowe counted a short distance of 3-5 paces off the cliff's edge into the ocean, as the moon tide pummeled its wrathful surf into the rocky shore.

God in heaven...

It was damn preposterous.

Surrender his own life again to an insufferably painful death by sea?

All for a theory that had no sound evidence from the beginning?

Not even a madman would fancy such an idea!

But damn it to hell, it was all Lowe had left to try.

The girl in his arms was good as dead.

She'd nothing to lose by him taking the gamble.

"Whatever happens," Lowe murmured to her. "Do not let go of me."

And surrendering all rationality, Lowe stole her away with him and jumped the edge.

Falling over the rocky precipice into the chilling sea air, until death violently ripped him again from this world.