Page 35 of Evermore
The transcranial magnetic stimulation began as a rhythmic tapping sensation against Finn's skull, like someone gently knocking on bone to get his attention. The magnetic coils positioned around his head hummed with electronic energy, creating fields that he could feel but couldn't see.
“How are you feeling?” Dr. Voss asked, her attention focused on monitors that were tracking his brain's response to the treatment.
“Like there's a woodpecker inside my skull,” Finn replied, his voice coming out slightly distorted. “Is it supposed to feel this intense?”
“Some sensation is normal. Your brain is adjusting to the magnetic fields.” Dr. Voss made adjustments to her equipment, increasing the intensity despite Finn's obvious discomfort. “We need to reach the threshold where your neurological patterns begin to stabilize.”
But instead of stabilizing, Finn felt his consciousness becoming increasingly unstable, like someone had loosened the moorings that kept his mind anchored to the present moment.
The laboratory around him began to shimmer and shift, reality becoming unreliable in ways that went beyond his usual episodes.
“Something's wrong,” Finn said, his voice sounding distant even to himself. “This doesn't feel like stabilizing. This feels like everything's coming apart.”
River moved closer, his presence becoming the only solid thing in a world that was rapidly becoming fluid. “Dr. Voss, maybe we should reduce the intensity?—”
“The treatment needs to reach therapeutic levels to be effective,” Dr. Voss interrupted, but her attention was focused entirely on her monitoring equipment rather than Finn's obvious distress.
“His brain activity is showing extraordinary patterns.
We're getting unprecedented data about TPD neurological responses.”
Data. That's what she cared about—not Finn's wellbeing, not his comfort, not whether the treatment was actually helping his condition. She was using him to collect research data, and his safety was secondary to her scientific goals.
But Finn couldn't focus on Dr. Voss's betrayal because his consciousness was fracturing, scattering across different moments and possibilities like leaves in a hurricane.
Instead of anchoring him to the present, the magnetic stimulation was throwing him violently between different versions of his life with River.
Flash: River in their cottage kitchen, older and more weathered, arguing with someone Finn couldn't see about the dangers of experimental treatment.
Flash: River holding him while he cried about losing himself, both of them decades older, their love deepened by years of navigating his condition together.
Flash: River alone in the cottage, staring out at the lighthouse beam, mourning someone who was gone.
“Stop,” Finn gasped, though he wasn't sure if he was speaking to Dr. Voss or to whatever force was pulling him through these impossible experiences. “Please stop, this is too much.”
“The intensity needs to increase for the anchoring effect to take hold,” Dr. Voss said, adjusting her equipment despite Finn's obvious distress. “His neurological responses indicate we're approaching a critical data collection threshold.”
River's voice cut through the chaos, sharp with alarm and protective fury. “He's in pain. Look at him—this isn't working.”
Finn tried to focus on River's face, using his voice as an anchor, but the magnetic fields were intensifying and his consciousness was fracturing further.
He could feel his body in the laboratory chair, could hear Dr. Voss's equipment humming with increasing intensity, but his mind was experiencing multiple versions of his relationship with River simultaneously.
The most disturbing part wasn't the chaos—it was how real each version felt, how completely convincing every possibility seemed while he was experiencing it.
These weren't fantasies or dreams or false memories.
They felt like actual lived experiences, different choices and outcomes bleeding together until Finn couldn't distinguish between what had happened and what might happen.
“River,” Finn called out, his voice carrying across what felt like vast distances of time and space. “I can see you. All the different versions of you. Some of them are trying to warn me about something.”
“Warn you about what?” River's voice was getting harder to hear as the magnetic stimulation reached levels that made Finn's entire nervous system feel like it was vibrating out of sync with reality.
But before Finn could answer, his consciousness scattered completely, experiencing multiple timelines simultaneously with overwhelming intensity that made coherent thought impossible.
In the temporal storm that followed, Finn lived through years of different possibilities in minutes that felt like decades. He saw versions of his life with River that spanned every conceivable outcome—some beautiful, some devastating, all feeling absolutely real while he experienced them.
In one version, they grew old together peacefully, Finn's condition stabilizing through love and patience rather than medical intervention.
River's hair went gray, his face lined with years of laughter, and they spent quiet evenings in the lighthouse cottage reading books and watching the beam rotate through their windows.
In another, River became obsessed with curing Finn's condition, descending into research madness that consumed their relationship until River was more doctor than partner, more researcher than lover.
Finn watched himself deteriorate while River documented every symptom, every episode, every sign of progression with scientific detachment that replaced emotional connection.
The most vivid version showed River seventeen years older, broken by loss and desperate with accumulated grief. This older River moved through the temporal storm with purpose, manipulating events from outside normal time, trying to prevent something catastrophic from happening.
“Stop fighting me,” the older River said, his voice carrying across impossible distances. “I'm trying to save us both from making the same mistakes I made.”
“What mistakes?” Finn called back, struggling to understand what he was seeing.
“Trusting her. Believing that love could be fixed through science. Thinking that experimental treatment would give us back our normal life.” The older River's voice was thick with years of accumulated regret.
“The treatment doesn't anchor you to linear time, Finn.
It breaks down the barriers completely. That's how I'm here—seventeen years too late to save the person I loved most.”
The revelation hit Finn with devastating clarity.
Dr. Voss's treatment wasn't designed to cure his condition—it was designed to make it worse, to break down his consciousness completely so she could study the results.
And this older River had been trying to prevent that outcome by triggering episodes that would drive them apart before they reached this moment.
“You've been manipulating us,” Finn said, understanding flooding through him despite the chaos. “The interference, the episodes getting worse, the emotional triggers—that was you trying to break us up.”
“I was trying to save you from this,” the older River replied, his voice breaking with emotion. “I watched you disappear completely when the treatment broke down every barrier in your mind. I lived seventeen years knowing I could have prevented it if I'd just convinced myself to let you go.”
But Finn felt anger rise through his terror, fury at being manipulated by someone who claimed to love him while actively sabotaging their relationship. “You don't get to decide what's best for us. You don't get to destroy our love to prevent a future that might not happen.”
“It will happen. The treatment will shatter your consciousness completely, and I'll spend the rest of my life mourning someone who's still alive but no longer accessible to anyone who loves him.”
“Then I'll take that risk,” Finn said, his decision crystallizing despite the chaos surrounding him. “I'd rather risk everything for love than accept safety without it.”
In the laboratory, alarms were beginning to sound as the magnetic stimulation equipment surged beyond normal parameters.
Through the temporal storm, Finn could hear River's voice demanding that Dr. Voss reduce the intensity, his terror cutting through all the noise and chaos to reach Finn's scattered consciousness.
“I'm here,” Finn called back, using River's voice as a guide through the temporal chaos. “I'm coming back.”
The magnetic fields reached peak intensity, and Finn felt his body convulsing in the laboratory chair while his consciousness fought to reassemble itself around the anchor of River's voice.
Equipment alarms began screaming warnings about dangerous exposure levels, but Dr. Voss ignored them, her attention focused entirely on the unprecedented brain activity patterns showing on her monitors.
“Shut it down!” River was shouting, his voice raw with desperation. “You're hurting him!”
“The data collection is at a critical stage,” Dr. Voss replied, her excitement overriding concern for Finn's physical state. “His neurological responses are showing complete temporal displacement integration. This is exactly what we hoped to document.”
But Finn wasn't achieving integration. He was experiencing complete fracture, his consciousness scattered across multiple possibilities while his body went into distress from magnetic exposure beyond therapeutic levels.
Only River's voice kept him tethered to any version of reality, calling him back from the temporal storm with love and terror and absolute refusal to let him disappear.
Through the chaos, Finn suddenly saw him clearly—the older River, seventeen years damaged by grief, standing in the corner of the laboratory watching the scene unfold with heartbreak and bitter satisfaction.
This was the moment he'd been trying to prevent, the treatment that would destroy everything they'd built together.
“I can see you,” Finn managed to say, his voice barely audible over the alarms and equipment noise. “I can see what you've been doing, trying to save us from ourselves.”
The older River's expression shifted from manipulation to desperate pleading. “It's not too late. You can still choose to walk away, choose to let him go before this destroys you both.”
“No,” Finn said, his decision final despite the chaos. “I choose love. I choose the risk. I choose him.”
The older River's face crumpled with defeat and understanding. “Then you choose to create me—seventeen years older and broken by loss that could have been prevented.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I choose to prove that love is stronger than your fear.” Finn forced his consciousness to focus, to gather itself around the anchor of River's voice calling him home. “Either way, it's my choice to make.”
The magnetic stimulation equipment began malfunctioning at exactly that moment, systems failing in ways that had nothing to do with Dr. Voss's settings or the apparatus reaching its limits.
Warning lights flashed in patterns that seemed almost deliberate, alarms screamed about impossible system errors, and the basement laboratory filled with electrical disturbances that defied explanation.
Something was interfering with the equipment from outside normal causation—the same force that had been manipulating Finn's episodes, creating temporal disturbances, trying to prevent this exact moment from occurring.
“Finn!” River's voice cut through everything, terror and love and absolute determination to reach him regardless of the chaos.
Finn felt himself falling back into his own body as the equipment shut down in emergency protocol, his consciousness finally anchoring to the present moment through sheer force of will and the gravitational pull of River's love.
The last thing he saw before exhaustion claimed him was River diving toward him through flashing warning lights, risking everything to reach him as the laboratory descended into emergency shutdown.
And in that moment, as consciousness fled and everything went quiet, Finn felt peace for the first time in months.
He'd seen the truth about their manipulation, understood the forces working against their love, and chosen to fight for what they had despite all the risks and fears and warnings from futures that might never come to pass.
Whatever happened next, they would face it together, without manipulation from broken versions of themselves or experimental treatments designed more for research than healing.
They would find their own way through love and patience and the simple faith that some things were worth risking everything to protect.
Even if that faith led them into the same darkness that had claimed the older River's hope seventeen years too late to change anything.
Even if choosing love meant choosing to become broken by it.
Even then.