Page 41 of Evermore

The Other Timeline

Finn

T he cottage air still shimmered with residual energy from Future River's presence, charged with electricity that made Finn's teeth ache.

Future River stood in their doorway—not quite solid, not quite translucent—carrying grief like a second skin.

The weight of his sorrow pressed against Finn's chest until breathing became work.

Finn's hand found River's without thought, fingers threading together in the automatic way of people who'd learned to anchor each other through storms. River's palm was warm, real, present in ways that made Future River's flickering form seem even more heartbreaking.

“You want the whole story?” Future River's voice carried the particular exhaustion of someone who'd been telling himself the same lie for years. “Fine. But I should warn you—watching love turn to obsession is like watching someone drown in slow motion.”

The lighthouse beam stuttered overhead, its usual steady rhythm broken by whatever temporal chaos Future River brought with him. In the fractured light, Finn could see how the years had hollowed out his face, carved lines of regret so deep they looked permanent.

Future River's gaze fixed on their joined hands, and something cold slithered down Finn's spine. The parallel felt too precise, too deliberate—like looking into a mirror that showed not your reflection but your future grave.

“We sat on this same couch,” Future River continued, moving closer.

The temperature dropped with each step, turning their breath to mist. “Finn had just come home from the hospital, trying to piece together what was happening to his mind. I was already making plans. Charts. Research protocols. A systematic approach to saving him from himself.”

River's fingers tightened around Finn's. “I'm not?—”

“You're not me yet,” Future River said, almost gently. “But you're walking the same path I walked, making the same choices for the same reasons. I can see it in your eyes—that desperate certainty that love should be enough to fix anything.”

Finn felt his stomach drop as recognition hit. “How did it start? The obsession?”

Future River settled into their reading chair like he belonged there, like this conversation was a reunion instead of a warning.

“With patterns. Your episodes clustered around our happiest moments—after we made love, after we talked about the future, after we found that particular peace that comes from being completely known by someone.”

“At first, I told myself I was being observant. Protective.” Future River's laugh held no humor. “Then I started taking notes.”

River went very still beside him. “Notes about what?”

“Everything. What you ate before episodes.

How long you'd slept. What we'd talked about.

The barometric pressure, for Christ's sake.” Future River's form flickered as emotion destabilized whatever kept him tethered to their timeline.

“I convinced myself that if I could just identify the triggers, I could prevent them. Control them.”

Finn's mouth went dry. He remembered River's notebooks, filled with careful handwriting documenting his episodes like weather patterns. At the time, it had felt like love expressed through science. Now it felt like the first step toward something darker.

“I want to understand what we're choosing,” Finn said, squeezing River's hand. “Not just the warning—the reality.”

The cottage around them began to shimmer, walls becoming translucent as Future River's memories bled through. Finn felt the familiar tug of temporal displacement, but gentler this time, like being invited into a story instead of swept away by one.

The scene that materialized around them was their cottage, but different. Older. The walls were covered with charts and graphs, turning their home into something that looked more like a research facility than a place where people lived and loved.

A younger version of River—though still older than their current River—sat hunched over a desk covered in medical journals and printouts. His hair was streaked with premature gray, his shoulders carrying the particular tension of someone fighting a war he couldn't win.

“Finn's episodes are increasing in frequency,” this other River muttered to himself, making notes with hands that shook slightly. “Seventeen this month versus twelve last month. Need to identify the variable that's changed.”

The cottage door opened, and Finn watched himself enter—or rather, watched a version of himself that moved with the careful deliberation of someone never quite sure where they were in time. This other Finn looked fragile, uncertain, like a person constantly questioning their own perceptions.

“How was the bookshop?” the other River asked, looking up from his research with eyes that assessed rather than welcomed.

“I...” Other Finn paused, confusion flickering across his features. “I think it was good? Mrs. Patterson was there, or maybe that was yesterday. Time feels slippery today.”

Other River was already writing this down, documenting the confusion like a symptom to be tracked rather than an experience to be supported.

Finn felt his heart breaking as he watched this other version of their love—still present, still real, but filtered through fear until it became clinical observation instead of human connection.

“This is three years in,” Future River said, his voice barely audible over the scene playing out around them. “I'd already turned our relationship into a case study. You stopped being my partner and became my patient.”

The scene shifted, showing them the cottage bedroom where monitoring equipment beeped softly beside the bed. Other River sat watching other Finn sleep, clipboard in hand, timing the intervals between peaceful rest and episodes that pulled him away from linear time.

“I told myself I was protecting you,” Future River whispered. “But I was really trying to control you. To manage you like a condition instead of love you like a person.”

Other Finn stirred in the bed, eyes opening with the cloudy confusion that had become his normal state. “River? Are you documenting my sleep patterns again?”

“Just making sure you're safe,” other River replied, but his tone was weary, defeated. The love was still there, but buried under layers of medical necessity and systematic observation.

“I'm not a lab rat,” other Finn said quietly, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. “I'm the person you fell in love with. At least, I used to be.”

He could hear his own voice in that plea, could feel the slow erosion of dignity that came from being treated like a problem requiring solution instead of a person deserving love.

The scene shifted again, showing them a final, devastating argument that played out with the terrible inevitability of Greek tragedy.

“I found another treatment,” other River was saying, his voice bright with desperate hope. “Experimental electromagnetic therapy. It could anchor your consciousness permanently, stop the episodes completely.”

Other Finn stood by the window, his reflection ghostly in the glass. “What if I don't want to be anchored? What if my episodes aren't something to cure but something to accept?”

“Accept?” Other River's voice cracked. “Accept watching you disappear piece by piece? Accept that the person I love is being erased by their own brain?”

“The person you love is standing right here,” other Finn said, turning from the window with a sadness that looked bone-deep. “But you can't see me anymore because you're too busy trying to fix me.”

Finn felt tears streaming down his face as he watched this other version of himself speak truths he'd been afraid to voice in their own timeline.

The recognition was devastating—he could see exactly how easily they could have ended up in the same place, love poisoned by the desperate need to control what couldn't be controlled.

But something else nagged at him as he watched the scene unfold. The timeline still felt wrong somehow, the pieces not quite fitting together.

“Wait,” Finn said, his voice cutting through the memory. “You said you're seventeen years older than River. If this scene is three years into your obsession, and you lost me after the final treatment...”

Future River's form flickered, becoming less stable. “I... yes.”

“You lost me fourteen years ago, not seventeen,” Finn said, understanding dawning with horrible clarity. “Which means you've been interfering with our timeline for fourteen years, not just trying to prevent your own past.”

River's arm tightened around Finn as they both realized the scope of what Future River had done. “You've been actively creating the very problems you claim to be preventing.”

The memory dissolved around them, leaving them back in their real cottage with Future River's form becoming more unstable as the truth destabilized his presence.

“It's a paradox,” River whispered. “You've been causing your own past by trying to prevent it.”

Future River's expression crumbled as the full scope of his temporal loop became clear. “Fourteen years. Fourteen years of trying to prevent a future I was actively creating.”

“Every episode you triggered,” Finn said, anger building in his chest. “Every moment of doubt you created, every time you made us question our relationship—you were writing the very story you were trying to prevent.”

“The experimental treatment,” Future River whispered, his form flickering but somehow managing to maintain coherence. “You only agreed to it because the episodes had become so severe, so frequent...”

“Because you made them severe and frequent,” River finished. “You created the crisis that led to the obsession that destroyed your timeline.”

Future River stood frozen in their cottage, the weight of his revelation settling around him like chains. His form stabilized, grief and horror warring across his features as the full scope of what he'd done became undeniable.

“I can't... I can't undo fourteen years of interference,” he said, his voice hollow. “The temporal fractures are too deep. But knowing what I've done...”

“Changes everything,” Finn said firmly. “Stop trying to control our story. Stop creating the problems you're trying to prevent.”

“But if I stop, if I let events unfold naturally...” Future River's voice carried the desperation of a man watching his last hope crumble. “You might still make the same choices. You might still lose each other.”

“Or we might not,” River said, something hardening in his voice as he looked at this broken version of himself. “Or we might make different choices. Or we might find ways to love each other that you never discovered because you were too busy trying to control outcomes.”

Finn felt clarity settling in his chest like sunlight breaking through clouds. “You've been so afraid of your story repeating that you've been forcing it to repeat. But we're not you. Our love doesn't have to become your tragedy.”

Future River's form shuddered, temporal energy crackling around him as the contradiction of his existence—preventing a future he'd spent years creating—threatened to tear him apart. “Then write your own story,” he said, his voice breaking. “Don't let fear—mine or yours—dictate your choices.”

“We will,” Finn said, anger building as the scope of Future River's manipulation became clear. “But only if you stop writing it for us.”

Future River remained standing there, solid enough to cast shadows, his presence a constant reminder of what their love could become if fear drove their choices. The cottage air still thrummed with temporal energy, charged with the weight of revelations that had changed everything.

River's arm tightened around Finn as they both stared at this broken echo of their future, understanding now that their real battle wasn't against Finn's condition or their own fears—it was against the man who'd been orchestrating their struggles from the shadows.

The lighthouse beam continued its stuttering, erratic rhythm, and Future River made no move to leave. He stood in their cottage like a specter of their potential doom, grief-worn and desperate, the living embodiment of love poisoned by the need to control what couldn't be controlled.

The confrontation that had been building for months was finally here.