Maya paced the cottage like a caged animal, her hands clenched into fists. “That's my brother lost somewhere in time,” she said, tears making her voice thick. “He could be gone forever, and you want to just... wait?”
Her professional training in psychology was at war with her personal terror of losing Finn the way they'd lost their mother. But as she looked around the cottage—at the research equipment scattered everywhere, at River's notebooksdocumenting Finn's every breath—something shifted in her expression.
“Every intervention has made things worse,” she said slowly, as if the realization was surprising her. “Every treatment, every attempt to control his episodes. Fighting his condition hasn't helped him—it's hurt him.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Maybe fighting is what's been hurting him all along.”
Jake stepped forward, his hand finding River's shoulder with the steady pressure of someone who understood the difference between giving up and letting go. “Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is step back and trust the people you love,” he said quietly.
His military background had taught him when retreat was strategy rather than cowardice, when supporting someone meant believing in their strength rather than trying to rescue them from their own battles.
“You've been trying to save Finn from his TPD for months,” Jake continued. “But what if he doesn't need saving? What if he needs someone who believes he can handle whatever comes?”
River's hands shook as he began gathering the research materials scattered throughout the cottage—charts tracking Finn's episode patterns, medical journals about temporal displacement, notebooks filled with his own desperate theories about triggers and treatments. Months of obsessive documentation that had turned their love into a case study.
Maya gasped as she recognized some of her own research among the papers River was feeding to the fireplace, but he continued steadily, watching months of work curl and blacken in the flames. The smoke smelled like burning dreams, like the death of the illusion that love could be managed through scientific method.
“I'm not giving up on Finn,” River said as the last chart crumbled to ash, though his voice cracked with the effort of convincing himself. “I'm giving up on trying to change him.”
Removing the medical equipment felt like performing surgery on himself. River dismantled every monitor, every tracking device, every piece of apparatus he'd used to quantify and control Finn's condition. Heart rate monitors that had tracked his stress levels during episodes. EEG equipment that had measured his brain activity during displacement. Electromagnetic field detectors that had never found anything useful but had made River feel like he was doing something.
Each device represented a way of watching rather than seeing, measuring rather than accepting, controlling rather than loving. As he carried them outside, River felt physical relief, like he was removing weights from his chest that had been crushing him without him realizing it.
The cottage immediately felt different—lighter, more breathable, more like the home they'd started building together before fear turned it into a research facility. Sunlight streamed through windows no longer blocked by monitoring screens, illuminating dust motes that danced like liberated spirits.
But the real work was harder than clearing space—it was filling it with faith instead of fear.
River began creating what he could only think of as a love letter written in objects and arrangements. Books Finn had mentioned wanting to read, positioned where morning light would fall across their pages. Art supplies for the creativity that his TPD seemed to enhance rather than diminish. Comfortable chairs arranged to catch the lighthouse beam's warmth.
He placed fresh flowers by the window where Finn liked to watch the tide pools, their colors bright against the glass. Set up a tea service with the Earl Grey blend Finn favored, complete with the honey he stirred in when he thought no one waswatching. Created small domestic altars throughout the space—not shrines to what was lost, but welcome mats for what might return.
Every object was chosen not to control or monitor, but to say “you are loved as you are” rather than “you need to be fixed.” River was creating a space that celebrated Finn's TPD as part of what made him extraordinary, rather than treating it as a flaw requiring correction.
River looked around the transformed cottage with something that surprised him—compassion rather than anger toward his own past behavior. “I was trying to save us the only way I knew how,” he said quietly. “But love isn't about prevention. It's about presence.”
As evening fell, River completed his work by lighting the lighthouse beacon to its full brightness and propping open the cottage door. The beam swept across the darkening ocean in steady rhythm, neither urgent nor demanding, simply present and constant.
River understood that he couldn't call Finn back—that would be another form of control, another attempt to manage what couldn't be managed. Instead, he was creating a beacon of unconditional love, a signal that said “when you're ready, you have a home here that accepts all of you.”
The open door was an invitation, not a demand. A welcome mat, not a trap.
River settled into the reading chair by the window, prepared to wait with whatever patience love required. He had no timeline, no expectations, no research protocols to follow. Just faith that Finn was strong enough to find his way home when he was ready.
In the days that followed, River established routines that felt like prayers made flesh. He woke with the sunrise and made coffee for two—not out of delusion, but out of hope. He tendedthe cottage with meditative care, cooking meals that filled the house with welcoming scents, maintaining the small garden Finn had started behind the cottage.
Each task became an act of faith, a way of staying present with his love for Finn rather than trying to control its expression. He was learning that the act of loving could exist independently of being loved in return, that presence could be its own form of prayer.
Maya visited daily, her own healing intertwined with River's patient waiting. At first she came bristling with barely contained anxiety, checking every corner as if Finn might materialize from his temporal displacement like a magic trick. But gradually, she began to understand what River was creating—not a museum of loss, but a living space of faith.
“You're different,” she observed one afternoon, watching River arrange wildflowers with the same careful attention he'd once devoted to episode documentation. “More... grounded. Like you've found some kind of center I didn't know you had.”
During these visits, River shared stories about Finn that celebrated his gifts rather than lamenting his condition. He told Maya about Finn's ability to sense a book's emotional history through touch, his uncanny intuition about which restoration projects would bring him joy, his gift for making customers feel truly seen and valued.
River spoke of Finn's TPD not as a medical condition but as part of his unique way of experiencing the world. “He doesn't see time the way we do,” River explained, his voice warm with affection rather than clinical assessment. “And that's not a limitation. It's a different kind of sight.”
Dr. Voss struggled more deeply with River's approach, her scientific training at war with what she was witnessing. She arrived periodically with new theories and experimental treatments, offering to fund search and rescue missions intotemporal displacement that sounded more like science fiction than medicine.
“You're not fighting for him,” she accused during one particularly heated visit. “You're giving up when he needs you most.”
