"Your life belongs to your friends," Anton said simply. "It belongs to the people you wronged. It belongs to the people who care about you. No one exists in a vacuum, Gene. When you make a choice, you change the lives of those around you, and if you make a choice that harms them, then yes, you give over some of your right to decide your future, just as you stole that choice from them. That is part of the nature of responsibility."

Anton wasn't thinking of comics, though. He was thinking of his brothers, the things they done and the ways they'd tried to change the future.

"But you wouldn't remember it," Anton pointed out. "Keeliai wouldn't get erased either, Gene. The things you do here will last also, even if you don't remember them. What you do will always matter, whether you know it or not. We are beholden to each other. We define each other's worlds."