Page 42 of Evermore
All is Lost
River
F ury coursed through River's veins like molten metal, burning away years of Future River's manipulative bullshit in one white-hot moment of clarity. The cottage still held the supernatural chill of temporal interference, but River's rage could have melted steel.
“You don't get to rewrite our story because you were too much of a coward to love someone whose mind works differently,” River said, his voice cutting through the cottage's charged air.
He kept his arm around Finn, needing the solid reality of his partner's warmth against the ghostly presence still haunting their space.
Future River's form snapped into sharper focus, grief-worn features hardening with defensive pride. “Coward? You think I wanted to spend fourteen years in a world where the only person I ever loved had been erased from existence?”
“I think you're so terrified of uncertainty that you'd rather destroy our present than risk our future. You couldn't handle loving someone without guarantees, so you've been sabotaging us from the shadows like some twisted guardian angel.” River said.
“I've been trying to save you from the kind of loss that fractures reality itself.” Future River stepped closer, and the temperature plummeted until their breath misted in the suddenly arctic air.
“I watched love become obsession, watched care become control, watched myself destroy the very thing I was desperate to preserve.”
River felt the accusation land because it carried the weight of truth. They had walked that same path—the research charts, the desperate treatments, the slow transformation of love into medical mission. But seeing the warning signs meant they could choose differently.
“You're right,” River said, and watched Future River's weathered face cycle through surprise. “I have been trying to fix Finn instead of loving him. I turned our relationship into a cure-seeking mission, just like you did. But here's the difference—I can see it now. I can choose to stop.”
“Can you?” Future River's laugh was like glass breaking in an empty room. “When his episodes stretch into days? When you wake up beside someone whose mind is living decades in the past? When you realize that accepting his condition means accepting that you might lose him to it completely?”
River's hand found Finn's automatically, their fingers threading together with the practiced ease of people who'd learned to anchor each other through storms. “I don't know,” River admitted, his honesty clearly shocking his future self.
“But I'd rather risk making your mistakes than guarantee our loneliness by giving up before we've even tried.”
“You’re still trying to control outcomes, still treating love like a problem requiring management. You haven't learned anything—you've just changed tactics.”
Future River's form began to flicker, temporal energy destabilizing under emotional pressure. “I'm trying to prevent you from becoming me.”
“By becoming exactly what destroyed your relationship in the first place.” River's voice rose with each word. “Manipulation. Control. Treating us like we're too stupid to make our own choices about our own lives.”
The argument was escalating beyond rational discourse, both versions of River fighting over fundamental questions about love and fear, protection and possession.
River could feel years of accumulated desperation pouring out of his future self—all that grief and regret crystallized into the desperate need to prevent anyone else from experiencing the same loss.
“Stop.”
Finn's voice cut through their battle like a blade through silk, quiet but carrying absolute authority. Both Rivers turned toward him as he stepped slightly forward, brown eyes blazing with something that looked like controlled fury.
“Both of you stop fighting about me like I'm some prize to be won instead of a person with my own fucking agency.”
River felt shame burn through his anger as he realized they'd been debating Finn's future without including him in the conversation—treating him like an object of concern rather than an equal partner in his own life.
“I'm not some helpless victim who needs protecting from his own choices,” Finn continued, his voice carrying the particular steel that came from years of being underestimated.
“I know exactly what I'm risking. I know my condition might get worse.
I know loving me means accepting uncertainty that most people couldn't handle.”
Future River opened his mouth to protest, but Finn held up a hand that somehow commanded silence from a man who'd spent years manipulating time itself.
“I'd rather have five years of imperfect, messy, complicated love than fifty years of safety without connection,” Finn said, his words carrying the weight of absolute conviction.
“I'd rather risk everything for the chance to build something real than accept protection that comes at the cost of never truly living.”
River felt his heart crack open with pride and love and desperate admiration for this man who faced impossible circumstances with such fierce courage.
This was why he'd fallen for Finn—not despite his condition, but because of the strength it had taught him, the wisdom that came from accepting uncertainty as life's only constant.
“You don't understand what you're choosing,” Future River said, his voice breaking with years of accumulated pain. “You don't know what it's like to watch someone disappear piece by piece while you convince yourself that love should be enough to save them.”
“And you don't understand what it's like to be treated like a condition instead of a person,” Finn shot back, moving closer to River until they stood united against the specter of their potential future.
“To have your humanity reduced to symptoms and triggers, to be loved for who you might become rather than who you are.”
Finn's voice grew stronger, more certain. “Every episode you triggered, every moment of doubt you manufactured, every time you made me question whether River loved me or just wanted to cure me—you created the exact dynamic that destroyed your timeline.”
The full scope of his interference, the way his attempts to prevent tragedy had created the very instability he'd been trying to avoid.
“You've been so focused on preventing the ending that you forgot love isn't about guarantees,” Finn continued. “It's about showing up completely for whatever time you have, choosing each other every day even when that choice terrifies you.”
Future River went very still, his temporal form stabilizing as the weight of Finn's words settled into the space where his heart used to be.
“I never learned to love your condition as part of you,” he whispered, voice breaking entirely.
“I spent fourteen years trying to save you from yourself instead of learning to love you as you were.”
The admission hung in the cottage air like smoke from a pyre, carrying all the weight of choices that had led to ultimate loss. River could see his potential future clearly now—the man he could become if fear drove his decisions, if he turned love into medical necessity.
“I became exactly what you feared most,” Future River continued, his form growing more transparent as emotional energy drained from maintaining his presence. “Someone who saw your TPD as a problem to solve rather than part of the extraordinary person I loved.”
River felt tears burning behind his eyes as he watched this broken version of himself confront the full scope of his failures. Future River had convinced himself that grief and regret had given him wisdom, when really they'd just created another form of the same controlling obsession.
“You could have had a lifetime together if you'd just accepted that love doesn't require curing the person you love,” River said gently, his anger transformed into overwhelming sadness for this shattered echo of himself.
“I know that now,” Future River replied. “But knowing doesn't undo fourteen years of living with consequences I created through my own inability to?—”
The cottage suddenly convulsed like a living thing in pain, walls shimmering as competing temporal fields began tearing at the fabric of reality. The lighthouse beam outside strobed erratically, its steady rhythm shattered by the chaos building around them.
“What's happening?” Finn asked, pressing closer to River as their home became a battleground of conflicting time streams.
Future River's form was destabilizing rapidly, flickering between solid and translucent as his emotional breakdown triggered massive temporal disturbance.
“My abilities are collapsing,” he said, his voice distorting as chaos consumed his presence.
“Confronting the futility of everything I've done is breaking down the grief that gave me temporal access.”
The lighthouse beam blazed so bright it turned their windows into sheets of fire, then plunged them into absolute darkness. River felt Finn jerk beside him, body going rigid with the telltale signs of violent displacement.
“Finn,” River said urgently, turning to see his partner's eyes rolling back, consciousness being torn away by forces beyond their control. “Stay with me. Don't let the interference pull you under.”
But Finn was already convulsing, his mind caught between competing temporal fields like a ship in a hurricane. This wasn't the gentle drift of his usual episodes—this was violent, catastrophic displacement, his consciousness being shredded by the storm Future River's breakdown had unleashed.
“Stop this!” River shouted at his future self while supporting Finn's weight. “Whatever's happening, stop it before you kill him!”
“I can't control it!” Future River's form was barely visible now, flickering like a broken transmission. “The emotional collapse is creating a temporal storm! All three timelines are colliding!”
Reality bent around them as past, present, and future bled together in patches of impossible confusion.
River caught glimpses of other versions of their lives—moments of joy that had never happened, conversations in futures that might never come to pass, all bleeding through the cracks in linear time.
Finn was caught in the center of it all, his consciousness being pulled in multiple directions by forces far beyond human endurance.
River watched helplessly as his partner's body went completely limp, mind apparently scattered across so many realities that his physical form could no longer maintain basic function.
“Finn!” River called, but Finn's eyes stared at nothing, seeing realities River couldn't access, experiencing timelines where their love had never existed.
The cottage shuddered like it might collapse, furniture sliding across buckling floors as the temporal storm reached critical intensity. The lighthouse beam outside was strobing like an emergency beacon, its century-old rhythm destroyed by the chaos consuming their reality.
“I have to get him out of here,” River said, trying to lift Finn's unconscious form while their world disintegrated around them. “The interference is too strong—it's going to tear his mind apart.”
“There's nowhere to go,” Future River replied, his voice barely audible over the sound of reality breaking. “The storm is centered on the lighthouse. The entire area is compromised.”
River felt panic clawing at his chest as he realized they were trapped in a supernatural catastrophe of their own making.
Future River's grief-driven abilities, Finn's natural temporal sensitivity, and the lighthouse's mysterious properties had created a perfect storm that none of them could control.
“This is what you wanted, isn't it?” River screamed over the chaos. “You wanted to separate us, to prove that loving him was impossible. Congratulations—you're about to get your wish.”
“This isn't what I wanted!” Future River's voice cracked with desperate horror. “I never wanted to hurt him! I just wanted to spare you both from?—”
The cottage gave one final, violent convulsion, and then Finn was simply gone.
Not unconscious. Not displaced. Gone.
River's arms held nothing but air where the love of his life had been standing moments before. The absence was so complete it felt like a physical wound, like part of his own soul had been torn away and scattered across impossible timelines.
“Where is he?” River demanded, turning toward Future River's fading form. “What happened to him?”
Future River stared at the empty space with the expression of a man watching his worst nightmare come true. “He's been pulled too far back,” he whispered, his voice hollow with devastating understanding. “The temporal storm sent him spiraling backward through your entire relationship history.”
“How far back?” River's voice came out strangled, barely human.
“I don't know. Maybe to your first meeting. Maybe before you ever met.” Future River's form was barely visible now, his temporal abilities exhausted by the catastrophe he'd created. “My interference combined with the emotional intensity... I've caused exactly what I was trying to prevent.”
The cottage fell silent except for the lighthouse beam resuming its steady rotation, as if nothing had happened, as if the most important person in River's world hadn't just been erased from existence.
River stood alone in the devastating quiet, his arms still extended where Finn had been, staring at empty air while Future River's final words echoed in the space between heartbeats:
“I'm sorry. God, I'm so fucking sorry.”
Then Future River was gone too, leaving River completely alone in a cottage that felt like a mausoleum.
The furniture they'd chosen together, the books Finn had left scattered around, the lingering scent of old paper and lemon oil—all of it remained, but without Finn's presence, it felt like a museum display of a life that no longer existed.
River sank to his knees on the cottage floor, staring at the space where Finn had vanished, finally understanding what Future River had been trying to save him from. Not the gradual pain of watching someone slip away, but the instantaneous agony of losing them completely, irrevocably.
The lighthouse beam swept through the windows in its eternal rhythm, no longer comforting but mocking in its constancy—a reminder that time moved forward even when the person you loved had been lost to it entirely.
River knelt there in the silence, surrounded by the wreckage of good intentions and the unbearable weight of absolute loss, and learned what it meant to have your heart stop beating while your body continued the pointless work of staying alive.
The silence stretched on, broken only by the sound of his own ragged breathing and the terrible knowledge that love, despite everything he'd believed, hadn't been enough to save them after all.