River met her anger with steady calm that had taken him weeks to develop. “I'm not giving up on Finn,” he explained. “I'm giving up on trying to make him something he's not. There's a difference between supporting someone and trying to fix them.”
Dr. Voss left frustrated, but her visits became less frequent as she began to question her own need to turn every mystery into a problem requiring solution.
Weeks passed with no sign of Finn's return, but River maintained his commitment to acceptance over action. Well-meaning friends suggested he should “do something,” that his patience was really abandonment disguised as love. But River had found something deeper than the need to act—he'd found peace in uncertainty itself.
Some evenings, especially when the lighthouse beam swept through the cottage at just the right angle, River swore he could feel Finn's presence. Not as a ghost or temporal echo, but as the warmth of being truly loved by someone who was learning to love without conditions. He was creating space for a love that existed beyond linear time, beyond the need for guarantees or control.
After three weeks of patient waiting, River discovered a bottle among the rocks near his old research station during his dawn walk. His heart leaped, but he approached with careful calm, understanding that desperation would be a return to his old patterns of grasping and controlling.
This bottle was different from the mysterious messages that had started their relationship—clearly fresh, containing a single sheet of paper covered in Finn's careful handwriting. River'shands trembled as he broke the seal, but his breathing remained steady. He'd learned to receive gifts without demanding more, to hope without demanding guarantees.
Finn's letter described his experience in temporal displacement with vivid detail—how he'd been visiting every moment of their relationship but experiencing it in perfect chronological reverse, seeing their love story from ending to beginning.
I started with our fight and worked backward to our first meeting. I'm seeing our love story from the ending to the beginning, understanding how we got to where we are.
River's eyes filled with tears as he read Finn's account of witnessing their relationship's deterioration in reverse, seeing how love had gradually transformed into fear and control. But Finn's words carried no blame, only growing understanding of the forces that had driven them apart.
I'm not broken. I'm different. And that difference is what let me find you in the first place.
River sobbed as he read these words, recognizing the acceptance he'd been struggling to achieve reflected back in Finn's growing self-love.
My TPD isn't a barrier to our love—it's the reason our love transcends ordinary limitations. I'm learning to see it as a gift rather than a curse.
The letter expressed deep gratitude for River's willingness to wait rather than chase, to accept rather than fix.
I can feel your peace from here. I can sense that you've stopped trying to rescue me and started trusting me to find my own way home. That changes everything.
River understood that his acceptance had created a different kind of anchor—not one that held Finn in place, but one that gave him a reason to choose return.
You're not trying to change me anymore. You're just loving me. And that love is what's guiding me back to you.
River responded immediately, writing with steady hands and clear heart about his journey toward acceptance, about learning to love Finn's TPD as part of who he was rather than despite it.
I'm not waiting for you to be cured. I'm waiting for you to come home as yourself—all of yourself, including the parts that experience time differently than I do.
He sealed the letter in a bottle and placed it gently in the tide pool during high tide, no longer trying to control the timing or guarantee a response. He'd learned to trust the ocean, time, and love to carry his words wherever they needed to go.
Walking back to the cottage, River felt something he hadn't experienced in months—genuine peace. Not the peace of certainty, but the peace of trust. Not the peace of control, but the peace of love that asked for nothing in return except the chance to exist.
The lighthouse beam swept across the water behind him, steady and constant, neither demanding nor pursuing. Just present. Just loving. Just waiting for whatever came next with infinite patience and faith.
Chapter 23
Parallel Healing
Finn
Finn existed somewhere between drowning and flying, suspended in a temporal current that felt like warm honey mixed with starlight. The usual terror of his TPD episodes had evaporated, replaced by something that made his soul feel weightless. He was traveling backward through time, but not as a victim dragged by forces beyond his control—more like a swimmer who'd finally stopped fighting the tide and learned to let it carry him home.
Their love story unspooled around him in reverse, each memory sharp as cut crystal, revealing patterns he'd been too close to see while living them forward. The sensation was disorienting as hell, but also revelatory in ways that made his chest ache with recognition.
He wasn't lost in time anymore. He was excavating it like an archaeologist uncovering buried treasure.
The first scene hit him with devastating clarity—their confrontation with Future River, the moment when River had stood with Finn against the broken echo of their potential future.But experiencing it backward, Finn saw what he'd missed in the chaos: how River's desperate need for control had finally been broken by understanding rather than fear.
“You don't get to rewrite our story because you were too much of a coward to love someone whose mind works differently,” River had said, pulling Finn closer.
But watching it in reverse, Finn caught what he'd been too overwhelmed to notice—the way River's voice had gained strength from their unity, how their joined hands had anchored them both against Future River's manipulation.
