...I've got one.

[There's a long, silent pause.]

I know it happened during everything that fucked me up. I don't need to hear it from anyone because I don't care.

...I was building a trap I'd designed. This was way back, just after John had taught me the basics. He wanted to see how I applied them.

It was called the "Addict's Chair," the thing I was making. A two-person trap, with one chair saved for a drug addict. It involved two different poisons, and antidotes for each being mixed mechanically--whatever, it's not like anybody cares about the details. We never got a chance to use it, anyway.

I was constructing the inner workings of the distributor machine, and I was getting frustrated because no matter what I did, I couldn't get one piece to socket into the other. I was on the verge of crying. I didn't want to disappoint him. Just when I was about to break down, he came up right behind me, placed his hands over mine, and turned the right one so, so slightly. The pieces fit into place. I'd just been holding one of them at the wrong angle. Only four fuckin' degrees off, can you believe that?

He must have known what I was thinking from my body language or something. He said I had natural talent, and if I stopped worrying about letting him down, it would emerge. His hands on mine, and those words--I just felt so...

I felt loved.

I know it's small, and probably insignificant to people who didn't lead the kind of life I did before I joined him, but it was so important to me. Still is, in some ways.

You're precisely correct.

That people aren't frequently told that they have talent or ability. That they don't receive that guiding hand when they need it, and because of that so many people turn to any other sense of support they can find.

I do hope that once you have your deal, his hands will guide to a better resolution for someone.

He'd still be a civil engineer giving a shitload of his time and money to nonprofits and cheap housing for people under the poverty line if the...if the accident hadn't happened. Or he would have been until the cancer took him.

Once I erase that night from history, and eliminate his cancer, he'll have his life back.

Sometimes it doesn't take much to damage a good soul. I'm glad he was able to retain what he had to remind you of what it was like to be cared for.

[Hoffman listens to that story as quietly as he can and then.]

Why didn't you two use it?

I didn't know you built that thing.

The perfect opportunity never presented itself.

...You build traps like that all the time? [his voice is quiet. Not angry or anything else.] Just the two of you?

I didn't know that.

Not all the time, but we did build a lot. Some were only partially completed by the time...

[Most weren't used, even though they were good, because they weren't designed with specific test subjects in mind. It was really a teaching and bonding thing.]

...the time he became too weak to concentrate on them.

[And she hadn't wanted to finish them on her own, as they had SHARED them and she felt that would cheapen them.]

Even though he was fucking crazy he really did care about you.

[Hoffman is thinking of things. Not angry at all, just...quiet.]

...I envy that.

Yeah. He did.

[She has a thoughtful moment of her own.]

It's still for the best that he and Jill won't remember any of it when I get my deal.

[Hoffman studies her for a moment over the communicator.]

...That's your deal? Fix everything?

Yes. The night Jill lost Gideon, and John's cancer.

[Basically her deal requires erasing John's and Jill's memories of being with and loving her. She looks pained.]

[Hoffman's doing some calculation. Effectively...she erases that moment John doesn't kill Cecil. He doesn't give him an opportunity to disguise his crimes against Baxter.

He looks incredibly conflicted for a moment before a knowing look sets into his expression.]

...Erasing Everything.

I'm fixing their lives. They'll get their "happily ever after."

[As far as she's concerned, right now, that means she won't.]

...And everyone else's.

[He keeps going back to erasing Jigsaw's crimes. Which means that if history continued-he was a lone nut. A monster.

Unless he does something about it-but that's far off. So he's just quiet.]

Everyone. Easton. Simone maybe. All the Victims.

My squad.

The victims will come back. For better or worse.

[Her tone suggests that in many cases--like Matthews, Xavier, Easton, and even more--it will be for the worse. But that's a result she can't avoid.]

None of their endings will be happy. Their lives and their crimes will continue as if they were never tested. That includes your squad--they'll keep hurting people.

[Some of his peers were criminals too, whether he wants to accept it or not. She sounds on the verge of tears, her voice thick.]

I can only right so many wrongs with one deal, and I had to choose. I couldn't rehabilitate them. I couldn't even change Matthews and fix my past if I wanted to do right by John and Jill.

...The whole reason Matthews was so fucked up is my fault in the first place.

[It's all his fault but whatever. He really screwed with his guys.]

So you couldn't have fixed him even if you wanted to. [There is a brief flash of a nasty look] At least you didn't erase me.

Fuck you, Hoffman. I didn't graduate just to go around eliminating people again! And I could have fixed him, if I wanted! Just gone back in time and changed something in him so that you couldn't have corrupted him, once I graduated an inmate. I could have even fixed my parents, but I didn't.

I chose John, Jill and Gideon, and I don't regret that.

[This is seriously the first time she's been able to say that name to Hoffman.]

[He takes note of the difference and just-his face contorts. So she gets to play the martyr? Gets to be the hero?

He made a lot of progress in his post but not enough to see that what she's doing is the same thing his friends-his friend Rigg-his friend Tapp-the same thing they were doing. Their lives for another. Their honor for another.]

...What will you do?

I don't know.

[And that's the complete truth.]

...You would have saved Eric? you actually thought about that?

I would have saved everyone he destroyed.

[That was her motivation. Not for Eric's sake at all.]

...

you should go to Tibet and start a new religion or something .

Fuck off.