Page 64 of Evermore

“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 emotiondestabilized 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?”

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