As the defense pointed out during the trial, there was a four minute period of time during which time Martin would have had to travel some 400 feet to make it back to his father's girlfriend's house. Martin could have "de-escalated" the situation -- the "situation," as he apparently saw it, since he allegedly complained of having been watched by a "creepy ass cracker" -- had he wanted to. He evidently didn't want to. He evidently decided he wanted to teach the "cracker" a lesson.
Martin brought his fists to what turned out to be a gunfight. More fool him, and all on him.
Had those distances been reversed, a credible claim could be made that GZ had followed TM. That wouldn’t necessarily have been true but the claim would have been more credible. With the distances as they were, TM came back after GZ.