3.3 Be Very Persuasive

Reve knows he needs a plan. 

It's too risky to stay an unemployed thief with no identity, no matter how much he fantasized about it back when he was safe and comfortable with a family to care about him and scold him.

He could turn himself over to child services and trick them into believing he's a helpless amnesiac, so he wouldn't have to come up with a fake backstory, but that would mean hospitals and eventually a foster care placement and he's not ready to deal with that.

He's not ready to deal with anything. 

He spends the first few days laying in that bed at the lodge, turning the situation over and over in his mind.

He died. He remembers dying. 

He was murdered by a schoolmate—the daughter of his mother's longtime friend Accalia. 

Then he was brought back to life by distant cousins—who want to end the world.

Now he's stuck in a version of reality where he was never born, and he cannot find his family—not that they'd know him.

The O'Dourkes were ordinary humans, but the Archers have always had some claim to weird. Unfortunately, Mab was an only child, Mab's father Harcourt was an only child, Harcourt's father Acheron was an only child, and Acheron's mother Ceth was an only child. Reve has to look pretty far back on the Archer family tree to find any branches out, and the cousins had long since lost touch. Reve has no idea who to look for or where to look for them, and the chances they'd believe his story are almost as slim as the chances they could send him back to where he belongs.

If Loki was truthful, it is not possible to send Reve there. There doesn't exist anymore.

Reve gazes out the windows for hours, thinking about how he's lost everything he took for granted. 

There's a thrift store near the lodge, on a plot of land that Reve remembers as having nothing but picnic tables and a scenic overlook. 




It seems like an easy place to steal from.




As luck would have it, it does have what he's after: a selection of used cameras.

He was able to make a tiny bit of money before by submitting pictures to The Daily Springs. His mother wanted him to turn it into a steady gig. He doesn't have Finley or her connections anymore, but he can be very persuasive.




Reve had been inside his mother's workplace before, a few times, and many of the faces here are the same. 

He knew no one would greet him with any familiarity, but it's still unsettling to not see any warmth of recognition in their minds. It used it irritate him, when people saw him and thought about that time he almost died as a toddler—what is it with people trying to drown him, anyway?!—but at least they saw him as one of their own community, someone to be protected. Now he is a stranger, and no one feels anything for him.

Sarah Winterly, Dierdre's mother, was a political cartoonist in Reve's native iteration... but in this one, she's pretty high up on the executive chain. Reve finds himself shaking as he approaches her desk. He's used to greeting the world with confidence, but that was a different world. 

He wills himself to be still. "You were thinking about hiring a photographer, and you're impressed with my work," he tells Sarah.

Her eyes narrow in slight confusion before she gives one sharp nod. The Daily Springs doesn't have a full time photographer because that's always been considered out of the budget, but Sarah is in charge of that decision, and with a strong enough mental nudge she fully believes the lie Reve is feeding her. "Yes, it's about time we had a professional on staff. I'm clearing the paperwork now. I just need a few more details from you..."

He gives her his real name, and a fake address, and she wants him to come back on Saturday at 8 sharp. 

"You'll be shadowing our reporters, mostly, but several of our departments are going to want to talk to you about some side projects they've had in the works."

"Okay."

"You'll have limited hours while you're still in school, of course."

"Of course," Reve says, having no intention whatsoever of going back to school.

"And you're all set," she says, with a loud click of the mouse. "Welcome aboard."

"Didn't Lewis Colby used to do this?" Reve can't help but to wonder aloud. He was so certain this was Lewis's desk before.

"My predecessor moved to Starlight Shores," Sarah says, without saying that this happened so Lewis's twin daughters could pursue careers as child actresses and singers. She doesn't say because she doesn't approve, and it's not professional to grouse about such things at work.

Reve hadn't been looking for them, but he realizes now he hasn't sensed Sonia or Parley as part of the town's background noise since he got 'here'. He hasn't been itching to interact with them or anything, but their absence makes him uneasy now.

"Archer, huh?" Sarah suddenly gives him a warm smile. "You look just like her."

Reve knows who she means, because he sees it in her mind, but his mouth is faster than his reasoning skills. "You knew my grandmother?" he blurts.

"Everyone knows your grandmother. Why don't you take a look at the town square?"





Mab Archer was the town hero of Hidden Springs. 

She was in Reve's native reality, too, but they didn't build a statue of her or spell out her life's work in sciency gobbledygook terms on monuments. 

In fact, by the time Reve was born, the townsfolk were doubting the spirits had ever existed. Many thought Mab was some kind of fraudster who preyed on the fears of those foolish enough to believe in the paranormal.

Here, Mab's legacy is one of untarnished heroism, carved in stone rather than fading from collective memory.

Newton didn't put two and two together, but sims of Reve's parents generation are old enough to have known Mab in person and by sight, not just by name... and Reve does look like her, from his button nose to his pink hair to his freckled cheeks.

In this iteration, Mab Archer was not a homeless girl who stumbled upon an ad in the papers looking for a spirit medium. She was "recruited" by Landgraab Sciences and sent here by the government to deal with the undead problem caused by, allegedly, a vampire.

Reve is pretty certain the plaque is talking about his grandfather—who was not a vampire, but labeling him as such certainly would have made his existence more digestible to the general public.

According to the words on the stone, Mab defeated the vampire with science, and saved the town from the ghosts. 

Reve has more questions than answers. His grandmother's face smiles brightly down at him, answering nothing. He misses her terribly. Even though he will never meet this version of her, he hopes she was not too different from the grandmother he loved so much.

"I wish you were still here," he says, fighting tears.

If Mab could just see him, wouldn't she know who he was? Just like Sarah did?




"She was a lovely person. Ever the philanthropist. The statue was constructed after her passing, of course... she would have protested it."

The green skin should scare him, but Star Shue is a thoroughly harmless presence as always.

"I don't understand," Reve sniffles. "The colony is gone, but you dryad-human hybrids had to come from somewhere."

"Hmm. There's more to you than meets the eye, isn't there, little one?"

His lower lip quivers. "I'm from another... timeline. A mage brought me here. Can you help?"

"No one knows any magic here, I am afraid. Not since Mab put an end to the... vampire."

"You know he wasn't a vampire," Reve accuses, gently.

Star nods. "Granny told me what he really was. A human mage."

Reve peers into Star's thoughts and memories, and can see many of the green skinned ancestors of current families living here came to Hidden Springs searching for the secrets of their ancestry, only to fail to live anything but normal lives. Even if Jasmine Shawkti's parents hadn't moved away from here before she was born, she wouldn't have become a threat in this reality. She would never have had the opportunity to learn magic.

Still, Reve is glad he won't have to see her.

"Do you know what happened to Mab's son and daughter?" he asks.

Star shakes her head. "No. She sent them away."

Star suspects the twins were taken, actually. 

Just as Mab herself didn't come here by choice.

Mab was identified as a medium when she was only a child and later forced to come here as an adult, to solve the rampaging spirits issue.

Loki and Alex insinuated that some events would always find a way to happen. Perhaps Mab coming to Hidden Springs is one of those events, Reve reasons. Or maybe it's worse than that—maybe she and Oliver are fated to have the universe's most uncomfortable romance. Over and over and over and—

Reve shudders.

But whatever happened here between Mab and Oliver had to have happened differently, with the circumstances being so different. Again, he has questions, and no answers.

"Are you alright?" Star asks.

"How could I be alright, lady? I don't belong here."

Star wonders about his claim to be from another timeline, and wonders how to comfort him, but he simplifies things for her with a dramatic and unnecessary wave of his hand, as he telepathically forces all memory of this conversation from her mind.

At one point, such a thing would have been difficult and dangerous to attempt, but now that he's a more practiced telepath, it's all disturbingly easy. 

Are there others like him, he wonders? Telepaths wandering the world, doing what they please to the minds of others with no one able to stop them? Or are they all inevitably caught by murder faeries?

Is that what has happened to the Finley and Junpei who are not here?

Reve doesn't sleep well. He dreams of the ocean, of being pulled underwater and never surfacing again.







On Saturday at 8 AM sharp Reve is told to go into the meeting room to see "Chesterfield". He was steeled to see his mother's bestie, Reisa Chesterfield... but instead there's his estranged father, Timmothy, offering a laidback smile and cheerful greetings.

"So you're our new photographer! Good! Bring me pictures of Spider-Man!" Timmothy's sense of humor is as questionable as ever. "I've always wanted to say that."





Reve doesn't remember sitting down, or remember even a quarter of what Timmothy Chesterfield tells him about work things. 

In this reality where Reve was never born, Timmothy is mentally well. 

It's a gut punch Reve doesn't know how to process.




"It's so awesome to have an Archer here again!" Timmothy gushes, in a way that makes Reve wonder if somehow nepotism will take care of him even when nobody in this close-knit town remembers who he is. For a moment, he lets it make him feel safer. Part of the community.

And then he finally senses a hint of trauma from Timmothy, when Timmothy asks him in a more nervous tone, "You're Finley's, right? Not Junpei's?"

"Yes," Reve says, his voice almost cracking.

"How is she?"

"Great," he says quickly. He hopes it's the truth.

"Is she here? My wife would love to see her. She and Finley were so close growing up."

In this reality, the worst thing that ever happened to Timmothy was that his first love, the girl he dated in high school, vanished without a trace along with her twin brother. All of Finley's schoolmates came to believe a rumor that Mab had sent the twins to boarding school. Timmothy and Reisa were both deeply affected by Finley's sudden departure; they consoled each other with an on-again off-again romance, and Timmothy never joined the military because Reisa's father got him a job at the paper. Reisa married Dennis Chesterfield, but when Dennis passed away, she settled down with Timmothy, and they both took the Chesterfield name because Reisa would never in any reality become Reisa O'Dourke.

"I'm... here with my father, actually," Reve mumbles.

Timmothy nods, too polite to question further even though he wants to know what happened. He isn't carrying a torch for his old flame anymore, but he is overjoyed to think she's alright. 

Reve doesn't know what happened to Finley, but he cannot believe any version of his grandmother would send her kids away in the middle of the night to boarding school, without even allowing them to say goodbye to their friends...




One of Reve's first assignments is to help reporter Reisa Chesterfield cover a hot dog eating contest. Reisa's questions about Finley are more persistent and difficult to dodge.

She wants to know where her childhood friend is now, and she wants to meet Reve's father.

Reve does his best to say very little. He doesn't want to have to keep track of a web of lies.

"I take it your parents are divorced," Reisa muses. Why else would Finley be apart from her son and his father?

"I don't think it's appropriate to talk about this," Reve fiddles with his camera distractedly and plays up being a kid with fragile feelings, to get her to back off. 





Hidden Springs is in full summer bloom, and this is the first time Reve is experiencing this season, apart from what he has seen in the prior generation's memories.

Reve remembers how much his uncle Junpei loved flowers, and tears up a little bit.




Reve doesn't want to go back to the lodge, so he wanders. Muscle memory takes him to the familiar dirt road of Bristlecone Way. He visits his grandmother's grave at the cemetery, finding it underneath the spookiest tree on the lot. She'd have probably enjoyed that.

A far cry from the statue and plaque in her honor at the town square, Mab's actual grave is a simple thing, identical in style to most graves of modern times. She died of old age, after a long life.

According to the dates, her death occurred on the same day in both iterations. 

That was a long time ago, now.




Reve wonders who left these fresh flowers for her. They can't be more than a day old.