DEREK.
I stood in a doorway and watched a man kill my mother as she screamed at my eleven year old self to run away so I wouldn't get hurt. I was right there. And I told myself not to do it. And I listened.
Maybe that's how it happens where you're from, but not where I'm from. I've seen my own future. I've watched my own past, I've gone to worlds where I was happily married with a job and a wife, but I'm not that person. Everything I touch falls apart, I've had my chances and they slipped through my fingers because I let them. Nothing chose for me. I chose. Believe me, I was there. I watched her die after I let it happen and the entire time it did I knew that it was happening because I let it.
And there's nothing stopping this place from doing that again. To Caitlin. Cisco. All of the people I care about. I can try, but trying is never enough, Derek. Sometimes you just have to get really fucking lucky. And really fucking lucky doesn't happen in places like this.