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Chapter Text

Mara was a smart child. Brave, a little wild, usually up to something that would have gotten her in trouble if her parents hadn’t been so adoring. For her entire life, she believed that she could do no wrong. That no matter what, her parents would find a way to get her out of whatever mess she’d gotten into.

Then she got sick. At first, she barely noticed it. She was tired more, laughed less, started aching even when she hadn’t done anything to warrant it. Soon she hated to leave her bed, because even the slightest breeze was agony on her skin. She screamed, she cried, she demanded that someone fix this.

Her parents were researchers. They knew more about aether, more about everything, than anyone she had ever met. She was sure they could fix her, and furious when the doctors said they couldn’t.

“We’re sorry,” They said, like they’d accidentally broken a vase. “But there’s nothing we can do. No one survives this.”

After that, in conjunction with her body falling apart, her family began to fall apart. Her parents stopped spending time with her. Mara assumed that her mother was pulling away so she could get used to the idea of not having a daughter anymore. Her father was a different story.

While her mother jumped right to acceptance, her father was drowning in denial. He waded deeper and deeper into his research, searching for something, anything, that could save her. Late at night, Mara could hear them arguing.

“Aether can heal her!” He insisted. “There’s a way, I know there is. There are ways of putting Aether into the blood, blending the two so that they’re one and the same. It will fix her, make her strong.”

“If it’s even possible,” Her mother said, tone level, “It will change her. That’s what Aether does. It changes what it comes in contact with, twists it.”

“She’ll be alive!”

“But what will she be?” Her mother demanded.

Mara pressed her ear to the crack in her door, listening and wondering if they would ask her what she wanted.

“She will be our daughter. She will be alive.”

Her mother took a breath so forcefully that Mara could hear it from her bedroom. “But she might not be Mara. Aether can turn people bad. There are—”

“Those are old stories, fairy tales to scare children from playing with fire.”

“Fairy tales come from truth; they’re real warnings to keep us from screwing up in the same way our ancestors did. I’m telling you—”

“Aether can—”

“Aether is power! Power can do things to people, can change them and twist them in ways you can’t understand until it’s too late.”

Mara pulled the door open, risking the pain just so she could hear the rest of this argument.

“Don’t you understand?” Her mother said, her voice low and pleading. “I already see it happening to you. What you know, what you’re trying to do, it’s changing you.”

She didn’t hear whatever her father replied with, and the effort of getting up to listen had exhausted her, so Mara went back to bed, where she dreamt of large monsters made of black goo, chasing her and trying to make her one of them.

In the end, all her mother’s arguments were for naught. Her father snuck into her room late one night and sat next to her. Mara awoke, surprised and pleased to see him. He rarely visited, and she was rarely awake when he did.

“Hi, Dove,” He whispered. “It’s going to be okay.”

The light in his eyes scared her. There was something not right about it, like fire was burning behind them, so hot she didn’t want to get close.

“Dad?”

“It’s all going to be okay, Dove,” He repeated. “I’ve found a way to help you.”

He put his hand on her, which hurt so bad she yelped, pulling away from him. “No!”

“Shh,” He whispered. “This is going to hurt, but then it will be over. You’ll be better.”

“But dad,” She said, her face twisting in confusion. “They said I wouldn’t get better. They told me—”

“They weren’t as smart as your dad. I found a way to save you. They’ll be mad,” He warned her. “They’ll come for me, but that’s fine. All that matters is that you get better.”

She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but he started whatever he was doing, and her words were smothered with a wordless scream.

The agony of her illness was nothing compared to this. Her blood was burning, racing through her veins like lava and she was sure she would die.

For a while, the pain was all she could think about, all she could remember or imagine, but slowly she started to hear the words being exchanged over her head.

“What have you done?” That was her mother, Mara realized slowly. She was mad. “How could you—”

“I’ve saved her!” Her father’s voice was lit with awful energy, something like joy but too much, so much that it scared her. “She’ll be better now.”

“Do you have any idea what they’ll do to you for this? No one is supposed to have the power that she’ll have! The things she’ll be able to do.”

Mara didn’t know what her mother meant. She didn’t think she had power, though she did believe that she could do anything. The pain was passing, and in its place, Mara could feel energy like she’d never had. She could run, climb, dance, scream and none of it would hurt. Nothing could hurt her anymore.

“I’m better!” She shouted, thinking that would stop her parents from fighting. They had never fought before she got sick, now that she was better surely they would stop fighting.

But when her mother looked at her, Mara saw pain and fear, not happiness. The lines that had become etched on her mother’s face since Mara had started to get sick were still there, and maybe even deeper.

It was a few days later that Mara came to understand why her mother was so upset. Men came to arrest her father and he went willingly, only struggling so that he could kiss Mara goodbye. The trial was swift. All the evidence anyone needed was sitting behind her father, healthy as could be.

When they took him away, Mara screamed, and everyone flinched away like they were scared. That made her feel good. They should be scared of her, if they were trying to take her dad away, when all he had done was make her feel better. In their moment of hesitation, she ran forward, stealing one final hug from her father.

Whatever anyone felt when she screamed and tried to fight them, they still managed to push her dad through the thinny and into the void.

Mara screamed and fought as she was dragged away from the trial room, but when she and her mother finally made it to the street, she fell silent and turned to look back at the building.

“I’ll get him back,” She vowed.

Her mother wouldn’t meet her eyes, but she nodded and reached into her pocket, and pressed something into Mara’s cold, shaking hand. Her father’s ring. The one that had been taken from him so he couldn’t return to her.

It was hers now.

Years went by and she and her mother grew apart. William was the final nail in the coffin of their relationship. Of course her mother didn’t like him. He was bold, daring, and he didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything.

Except for Mara, and she quite liked that.

Like her, William didn’t much care for the established order of their world, so when she told him that she wanted to leave, to go through a thinny on purpose, into the void where they could collect as much Aether as they wanted, he was the first person who didn’t laugh. The lava in her veins had never calmed. She had learned to live with the burning, to survive on it, knowing it would drive her to greater things than anyone before her had managed.

“What will we do with it?” William asked, about her Aether and her energy, interested rather than skeptical.

She just smiled. “I’m not sure yet, but I hear there’s another world, one that doesn’t have Aether. I was thinking maybe we could introduce them?”

William returned her smile, like he always did. “Well then, would you like to cause some trouble?”  

Chapter Text

Veronica was too smart for her own good, a woman ahead of her time and more than willing to take risks for her work. She was also a woman on the run, fleeing a marriage she hadn’t wanted. Her funds had run out in a town called Haven, and she had decided that meant she ought to stay.

It didn’t take much time to realize that Haven wasn’t an ordinary place. People could do strange things here, and Veronica found that she liked that. She wasn’t so unusual here, amongst people who could breathe underwater, control their shadows, or create weather with their emotions.

That was what Helene could do, but it wasn’t the only thing that made her special. Veronica wasn’t the type of woman who believed in love at first sight, but there was something utterly irresistible about a woman who became so furious that the wind would pick up, whipping her hair around like she was some earthbound goddess.

Helene introduced her to the guard.

“They’re my friends,” She told them. “They help people like me, and in turn, I help them.”

“How?” Veronica had asked, fascinated.

Helene had smiled enigmatically. “Meet me at the docks at midnight and I’ll show you.”

She couldn’t resist an adventure like that, straight out of a novel, so she had wrapped herself in an old coat and made her way to the docks, picking carefully through the dark, empty streets.

When she got there, a ship was in the harbor, large enough to command attention.

Guards were leading a man out of the hold. His head hung down and he shuffled his steps, accustomed to the chains on them.

“He’s troubled,” Helene explained, startling Veronica with her sudden appearance. “We’re not sure what his curse is yet, but he did something with it, hurt some people. They’re delivering him to Crocker to be killed.”

“The warden?” Veronica asked. She had only heard of him, and what she’d heard hadn’t been good, but it didn’t suggest he was wrapped up in all this intrigue. “What does he have to do with any of this?”

“He’s troubled too, but he’s not like us,” Helene explained. “He can kill curses when he kills a troubled person. Every time a troubled person is brought to his jail, he kills them and claims it was illness or an accident. The selectmen know about it, and they let him get away with it. That’s what the guard is for. Wait here.”

Helene stood, leaving Veronica crouching where she was, hidden in the shadows. The men were approaching, but as they drew nearer, Veronica felt a chill in the air, colder than what it ought to have been.

She didn’t realize what was happening, what Helene was doing, until the fog rolled between the buildings, filling the streets. There were a couple moments of confusion, and then the fog cleared, blown away by the breeze off the ocean.

The men who had been leading the prisoner were unconscious on the ground, and the prisoner was nowhere to be found.

Helene was still standing in the street, but she looked back at Veronica, who could have sworn she saw the other woman smile.

They didn’t speak again until they had made it to Helene’s little apartment behind the schoolhouse.

“So, that’s what the guard does?” Veronica asked. “Frees prisoners?”

“That’s some of what we do. Mostly we cover for the troubles and try to help people control their curses until they go away.”

“They go away?” Veronica asked. She had known they had come back not long before Veronica had arrived, but she hadn’t realized this was something that had happened before, that people were expecting.

“Yes. They come and go. When they’re gone, they stay away for nearly three decades.”

“What makes them go?”

Helene shrugged. “No one knows. Some people think the troubles come from the stars, which is why they disappear when the stars begin to fall, but other people have… different theories. It’s one of many mysteries of Haven.”

Veronica moved closer to the fire, suddenly more chilled than she had been standing in Helene’s fog. “What an odd place I’ve stumbled upon.”

She had been trying to lighten the mood, but Helene’s face creased into a frown. “That’s just it. I don’t think you just stumbled upon us. I think you were meant to come here.”

“Excuse me?” Veronica asked. “No, I was… well truth be told, I was running away and I just—”

“You just happened to end up here, yes, that’s what you told me, but I don’t think it was an accident.” She stood, crossing the room and opening a trunk with a key she kept around her neck.

She moved several things around until she found what she was looking for, what looked like an old frame wrapped in muslin. She handed it to Veronica. “See for yourself.”

Carefully, as though she was looking at a sacred relic, Veronica pulled the fabric away from the frame.

If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought the little sketch was her, though the hair was too light. But the corner was neatly signed and dated ‘Elizabeth Richards, 1875’.

“But… but she looks just like me.” The similarities were too significant, even Veronica’s own mother didn’t look so much like her as this portrait. The upward quirk of her nose, the color of her eyes, the way her lips pressed together when she smiled. All of it was a perfect capture.

“That’s what we all thought too, until we realized you had no memory of ever coming here. This woman was named Harriet. She helped the guard for a while last time the troubles came, until one day she vanished. Everyone always thought Warden Crocker’s uncle got to her, but then…”

“Then I came back,” Veronica finished.

“Exactly,” Helene said. “There are some men in the guard who knew Harriet, and who thought you were her. Aside from your hair color they claim that you’re quite alike.”

“But that was years ago! It’s not possible for me to be here now, barely older than I look in this portrait. She must be… a relation or some such.”

“Or she’s you,” Helene said. “And you’re troubled.”

“But…”

“I know how confusing this must be,” Helene said gently, and though Veronica doubted her words, she appreciated the sincerity of them. “But the guard may have answers for you. Join us in the fight against Crocker and the others who want to destroy us, and we’ll find a way to answer your questions.”

It was a lot to consider, and a very large promise to make, but Helene had long felt out of sorts. Her life before coming to Haven, her socially striving parents, the man they’d found for her to marry, the days she’d spent agonizing over the decision to run, the journey to haven, all of it felt false, distant. Only the cool Haven air, the people she’d met since coming here, the man on the train who had told her about this place felt truly real, like things she’d actually experienced.

To Veronica, this room, this little stove fire, and especially Helene herself were more real than any of the normal, sensible things she’d believed to be true for most of her life.

So she met her eyes easily and took her hand in hers. “I’ll help you.”

“You’ll stay in Haven?” Helene affirmed.

Veronica nodded solemnly. “I promise.”

They sealed the promise with a kiss.

Chapter Text

Sarah Vernon was a woman forged in battle, she was a fighter, a survivor, and often the only one with a clear head amidst panic and chaos.

The world was supposed to get better after the war. Everyone said that, not that they needed to. It just made sense. War was bad, so when one was over the whole world got better. Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked out that way for Sarah.

She, as it turned out, had been quite good at war, and wasn’t at all sure what to do with peace. She tried to stay busy, tried to work with the vets who needed her most, usually sad, lost men who had empty—or worse, terrified—eyes that followed her wherever she went. It was slower than what she was used to, and as stressful as being under fire or assisting a surgery could be, it was always clear what she had to do in those situations. Here, in a peaceful little hospital, she felt out of sorts, useless even, just because what little comfort she could offer wasn’t changing the world for these men.

Stuart Mosley was the first case that got to her. He was so young, and so sad. His eyes were empty, but she got the sense that he listened to her, that he liked hearing her speak so she did. She told him about her childhood in Virginia, and how both her parents had died serving the country, and that she had rather thought she would too.

“I understand, you see,” She told him quietly one night. “What it feels like to be sure of your own death, but then to have to deal with survival.”

When she had looked at him, she thought that perhaps Stuart’s eyes were shining just a little too bright. It was the most reaction she—or anyone else, for that matter—had gotten out of him since he had returned home. She felt bad that it was tears, but getting a reaction at all felt like an accomplishment.

Of course, the very next day Howard told her that it was time to take Stuart home, so he was being relocated to a VA hospital in Haven, Maine, just one town over from where Stuart had been born.

“Go with him and make him comfortable,” Howard said in that not unfriendly, but also certainly not a suggestion way that he had. “And be sure to report back regularly on his progress.”

“How long will I be there?” Sarah asked in surprise. She had assumed she’d just be dropping him off.

Howard smiled enigmatically. “As long as you need to.”

The whole time she spent packing—something that didn’t take much time at all—she went over the strange interaction, not sure why the usually practical Howard would suddenly start being cryptic. Not that it mattered, really. She was going to do as she was ordered, and she would stay if she needed to, or come back to DC if she was told to.

At first, Haven was ordinary. Prettier than many of the towns she had visited on relocations, but not more remarkable than that, until she saw the stranger in Stuart’s room.

She noticed that he was handsome immediately, but in her experience handsome men were even more of a nuisance than ordinary ones, so she wasn’t much moved. She grabbed him by the ear like a misbehaving toddler and hauled him unceremoniously out of her hospital.

“If you’ve damaged him,” She scolded with her nose in the air, “I’ll to the same to you ten times over, do you understand me?”

He nodded, as expected, but he was smiling, practically beaming at her, which she certainly had not been expecting.

And then he called her incredible.

Now, Sarah would not have said that she was lonely in any way. She had acquaintances through her work, and she would have had no shortage of male companions if she’d taken a second to seek them out, but the way he said it, the fact that that was the compliment he selected for her and the utter sincerity with which he spoke it went straight to her heart.

So she told him when her lunch break was, and told him in no uncertain terms that he would be spending it with her.

He was sweet, if a little strange. He seemed to flinch every time she touched him, like she had static shocked him, or—no matter how telegraphed her movements were—he wasn’t expecting it. There was something endearing about that, and the fact that he listened to her, stared at her like all he wanted was to hear her keep talking, something she rarely experienced on her already rare dates.

So she liked him, and honestly, what was the harm in having sex with a man she liked, just because she could, because they were both alive here, in this lovely little moment? Of course, she would later see the potential harm, but it would be too late to change anything by then.

Honestly, she should have asked him when he was born before she slept with him, certainly her more prudish friends would have said that a birthdate was something you needed to know before you went to bed with a man. Though, technically, they’d never made it to a bed.

Even when her world went mad, she would look back on that moment and smile. After he told her where he was really from—or technically, when—she found herself ready and willing to believe just about anything in Haven, so it was not so much of a shock when she found that she had been here before, that she was some kind of time traveler as well.

But of course it still hurt. She had prided herself on her strength in chaos, her ability to get her job done even amidst a battle. As it turned out, she had never been in battle. No, only the real Sarah Vernon had done that. She had simply come to exist the moment she met Stuart Mosely, just days before she arrived in Haven, Maine. That was hard to cope with, and she found herself isolating, pushing the Teagues brothers away and wishing she could speak to her stranger from the beach. He would have listened, she thought, he would have had something to say that wasn’t trite or ridiculous.

It was right around when she made this discovery that she made another. At that point, she could no longer ignore Vince and Dave, who really were her friends and almost certainly would want to help her. At the very least, they could give advice.

She went to their office, where she’d been working more or less officially since she had quit the VA. Reporting for the newspaper gave her a good excuse to be places where weird things had happened and to ask questions, which helped her find the troubled person who could stop whatever was happening. After that, she let Vince or Dave fabricate some story about what had happened, covering up Haven’s oddities as neatly as an angry cat under a blanket. Eventually it would emerge, and cause utter havoc when it did, but it was secure for now.  

“Sarah!” Dave called, a smile that was far too wide stretching over his face. They must have agreed to try to act normal when she came back, which is why they were both acting so strange. “Good to have you back—”

“Is anyone else here?” She asked, not wanting to waste time with chat.

Vince shook his head. “No, nothing happening at the moment.”

“Good. Lock the door.” She waited until Dave had done so and returned to his seat. After a long breath, she said it. “I’m pregnant.”

There was a single beat of silence before Vince and Dave turned to each other with accusatory glances, both apparently ready to defend her honor from the other.

“You said you hadn’t—”

“I trusted—”

Sarah indulged in an eyeroll before correcting them. “You aren’t the father. Either of you. You don’t know him and he’s not here, so it doesn’t matter. What’s important is what this means for everything else we know: the barn, the meteor shower, the woman who was me before, the woman I might be after.”

“There’s no way to know if there’s a precedent for this,” Dave pointed out. “It’s not something that would make the papers.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Sarah said, “But we have to find out. Just put it on our list.”

Dave nodded and stood to flip the chalkboard over, revealing their list of questions and the fragmented answers they’d found. He added Have any of the Sarahs been pregnant? And What did they do? To the list.

“There’s another problem,” Vince said. “What will people think?”

Sarah arched one eyebrow up. “Excuse me?”

“All due respect, Sarah,” He said, “But Haven is a small town. People will notice and they will talk. Your reputation—”

“Doesn’t matter to me at all.” She glared back at him. “Why should it?”

“It matters if you want to help the troubled,” He insisted. “People may not talk to you to avoid the scandal—”

“This is ridiculous—”

“It’s reality!” His tone softened and he reached for her hand. “Sarah, please, think about this.”

She hated that she knew he was right. “There’s nothing to be done about it though, I’ll have to—”

“Marry me,” Vince said. It was simple, unromantic but sincere. “That will lessen the scandal and—”

“Vince, I—”

“Now, why should you get to marry her?” Dave interceded. “I could do it just as well!”

“Oh for christ’s sake,” Sarah muttered. She knew, of course, that they were both in love with her—on the good days it was only an inconvenience, on the bad it made them unbearable—but she simply could not cater to their feelings at a time like this. “I’ll marry one of you,” She agreed. “Flip a coin.”

She refused to allow them to think this was anything other than something she had to do in order to best help the troubled. Vince one the coin toss and she gave him the ring that she’d always seemed to have, though she didn’t know exactly how she’d acquired it. The townspeople thought it was quaint that he got a ring too.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter because she missed what was supposed to have been her wedding, having gone into labor two days prior, and then opting to fly to Colorado to hand her baby to June Cogan, a woman who had helped her help troubled people on their way to Haven. She was far away, she was safe, and she desperately wanted a child. James would be happy with her, and maybe, just maybe, she might get to see him again one day.

Chapter Text

Lucy Ripley was an artist who had always known that there was something missing from her life. For as long as she could remember, she had walked through the world thinking that there was something she should have, something she should be looking for, just something that she should go after. She chased it in every corner of the world she could get to, following instinct and friends, and whoever else to get to different places, hoping one day she might make it somewhere worth staying.

Some rich guy named Howard hired her to draw a town, claimed that he’d spent time there as a child and he wanted her work to decorate his halls. It was as good of a reason to travel as any of the other reasons she’d ever had, so she went.

She was used to men acting odd around her, but the men who ran the town newspaper won for ‘Strangest First Impression Ever’ and hardly even had to try. She worked on Howard’s sketches, but she also staked out those men, which led her to a photograph of Sarah Vernon, which made all the pieces fit together better than anything Lucy had ever found.

She believed in past lives, believed in the cyclical nature of the world, and so she didn’t find it hard to believe that she had once been a woman named Sarah Vernon, that she had left Vince Teagues at the altar, and that people in this town had supernatural troubles, which she had a gift for solving.

It was in Haven that Lucy found the purpose for which she’d been striving for so long. But she didn’t fill the other emptiness that haunted her.

She met Garland because he had a habit of being wherever strange things were happening, and eventually she got him to trust her enough that she ‘supported’ his investigations; in reality, she was doing most of the work. Garland was a good cop, but troubles were too often about feelings, which Garland was utterly hopeless at discussing.

She helped Garland, and helped the Teagues brothers, and helped all the troubled people, but she had to draw a line somewhere, and hers came when she finally got them to tell her what her fate in this town was.

“I’m supposed to… die?” She asked, feeling ill and slow and angry and sad all at once.

“No!” Dave said, too quickly. “It’s not dying, not really.”

“But I won’t be me, will I?”

“No. You’ll have another name, and—”

“And new hair, and a new identity.” The words came out with more venom than she realized she’d felt. “And there you’ll be to freak her out—whoever she is, because she won’t be me—tell me, do you think you’ll lie to her too?”

“We didn’t lie,” Vince said, but no one believed him. She didn’t even think he did. “We just had to wait until you were ready.”

“You don’t get to decide that.” Her voice was ice.

“Lucy, this is your role in the story. It’s your—”

“Well I won’t do it! Your Sarah may have been happy to go quietly when her very first attempt to get out of this didn’t go according to plan, but I refuse. I’m leaving.”

“Lucy—” Garland had wisely kept his mouth shut through all this, but when he spoke, she turned her glare on him.

“Shut up.” She backed away from the three of them, feeling like a cornered animal. “You can’t stop me from leaving, and what’s this barn going to do? Chase me down? I’d like to see it try.”

She left that night, jumping on the first bus that would take her away from Haven, not caring where it was going.

She found the real Lucy Ripley, just a couple hours away, and wished she could have stayed, but she knew that people would come after her, knew that Crocker, at least, would want her in the barn. She was a faster and easier way to stop the troubles than he was.

Colorado was an accident. She wasn’t intentionally following in Sarah’s footprints, but found that, since she was nearby, she might as well go wherever Sarah had chosen to go in her last days, and that was how she found James.

June Cogan didn’t realize what had happened, not at first. She saw Lucy and thought she was Sarah, and she wept, thrilled to see her old friend again. “Have you come for James?” She asked, when all the tears were spent.

Lucy didn’t want to correct her, didn’t want to tell her that she didn’t remember being Sarah, so she let June believe she had some kind of un-aging trouble and left it at that. She was more interested in that question. “James?”

“That’s what you wanted us to name him, right?”

“Um…”

“Mom?” A mid-twenties man, taller than her with brown hair and striking blue eyes appeared behind June, staring at them, puzzled. “Who’s—”

His eyes met Lucy’s and they stared at each other. She knew him. She didn’t know how, or why, but she knew with absolute certainty that this was the person she’d been looking for, the one who had been missing from her life.

“You’re her,” He whispered. “Sarah?” He pronounced the name like it tasted strange, turning it over on his tongue.

She shook her head. “I’m Lucy now, but…” June’s words fell into place. “But I think I’m your birth mother.”

He smiled, a little, half-hearted quirked thing. “I’m James.”

Despite his mother’s evident upset, they went for a walk, and she told him about Haven. It was the only background she could really give him, but she told him about everything.

I won’t be like Vince and Dave, and Garland, and Crocker, She thought viciously. I won’t keep things that he needs to know a secret. I’ll deserve his trust.

“Wow,” He said, when she had finished. “You can really save all those people?”

She had never thought of it like that, not really. Saving people was what she did when she was in the world, talking to troubled people, helping them overcome their afflictions. But just with that sentence, James made her sound like a superhero.

“If I die,” She pointed out. “But can’t I save people and live?”

He shrugged. “Is it really dying, though? I mean, you found me, even though you don’t remember having me. You came here and you found me. Maybe the next you will find me too.” His smile opened wider. “Or maybe I can find you!”

Lucy paused, frowning. “What?”

“You said that all these people knew, but didn’t tell you what you needed to know, what if I told you? You can go into the barn, and when you come out, come back to Haven, I’ll find you and tell you everything.”

“Jamie…” She whispered, “But that’s twenty-seven years that I don’t get to spend with you. Twenty-seven more years.”

He smiled. “So? I’ll wait. I’ll only be a bit older than you by then, and you’ll have stopped the troubles for all those years.”

“I can’t believe you know so much about the troubles,” She said. He hadn’t hesitated to believe her, having met troubled people who were staying with June on their way to Haven. “I can’t believe—”

You’re so much like me, She was going to say, but stopped herself. He had a mother already; he didn’t need her.

He shrugged. “I like hearing about them. I’ve never really helped someone with one, just met them, let them pass through. I’ve always wanted to see where they go.”

Not right now, Lucy thought. In her absence, with only Garland, Vince and Dave to take care of things, it was sure to be a mess.

“And they don’t seem to affect me that much,” James went on.

Lucy paused. “You’re immune?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Sometimes my mom would act really weird, and it was because of whoever was staying with us, but their trouble never got to me.”

He was so much like her. She found herself feeling choked up and had to look away before James saw a tear escape her eye.

He was like her. He was a mark she’d left on the world, even if Sarah had disappeared, even if she would disappear, James existed which meant that she existed, underneath whatever that barn wrote over her.

“Mom,” He said carefully, reaching for her hand, “You’re a hero. You help people who need it. I wish I was like that.”

She hadn’t been acting much like a hero lately. She had run away, scared of the barn, scared of being forced to give up her identity, scared of being killed if she didn’t. And she had left all those people, good people with troubles who needed her.

“You could be like that,” She said, turning back to him, trying to shove all that guilt aside. “Come back with me. You’re immune like I am, you’ll be able to help me. We’ll solve some troubles together and then…”

“And then you’ll go?” He said, looking both sad and a little hopeful.

“Yes.”

He smiled. “I’ll go back to Haven in twenty-six years. I’ll help the troubled until you show up. I’ll be waiting for you, I promise.”

It was not a perfect solution, but it was the best one she had. Haven needed her.

She called Garland that night while she packed. “I’m coming home.”

“Oh, thank god,” Garland said, perhaps the most honest she’d ever heard him. “Holloway’s gone missing; we’re worried about his family.”

“Is he troubled?”

“Think so.”

“I’ll be there. And I’m bringing a… friend with me.”

She could picture his nod, and the confusion on his face, but he didn’t offer any arguments. He didn’t mention the barn, or her sacred, cosmic duty or whatever it was. “I’m glad you’re coming home, Lucy.”

She didn’t answer, hanging up on him without saying goodbye, which she would later blame on the crappy hotel phone.

When they arrived in Haven, she and James didn’t bother to go to the police station. It was already late, and Lucy knew where the Holloway house was; she could conduct her own investigation. She helped James check into the Altair Bay Inn, and then they made their way to the house.

“What if I don’t know what to do?” He asked quietly, staring at the house’s foreboding façade.

She squeezed his hand. “You will,” She said. “I know you will.” Just like she knew, in the moment when the words were most needed, she would find the right ones. She was Lucy Ripley; she helped the troubled.

They found Holloway—such as he was—and even worse, found his family. Guilt ripped at her insides, making her sick and furious. If she had been here, she might have been able to stop it. She might have been able to save them. This was her fault.

She took her fury out on Holloway, trapping him in the house and leaving him there, taking James with her back out to the darkened Haven streets.

“Mom,” He said, very quietly. “It wasn’t—”

“I know,” She said. “But I think… I think you’re right, Jamie. I think I need to go.”

He didn’t say anything, choosing instead to wrap her in a very tight hug. She was grateful; it was easy to hide her face from him this way. He wouldn’t see how scared she was, how sad. She didn’t want to do this. But Haven deserved to be saved, and she could save it, at least for a few years. Two little girls and an innocent woman had died because of a trouble, because she wasn’t there to help. No more, She thought furiously, No more. If there’s a way to stop them forever, I’ll do it.

Chapter Text

Paige Cogan was tired and down on her luck, but she hated that phrase. “Down on her luck” what luck? When was the last time she had felt lucky?

A glance in the backseat reminded her of that. Jamie was the best thing that had ever happened, and the string of miserable luck and bad choices that had led her to him were things she would never trade, not if it meant sacrificing him.

Sure, single motherhood hadn’t been her plan in life, but she loved James, and she had managed, thus far at least, to keep herself together. She’d had many jobs, mostly the easy type stuff that you could get with no experience. Her favorite was working as a barista, because of an only slightly unhealthy obsession with coffee.

When she arrived in Haven, after a brief interlude where she ate a mid-afternoon breakfast with a cute cop, she rented a stroller from the hotel and took James for a walk around town, eyeing the shops and looking for “Help Wanted” signs that appealed. She would need to pick up some kind of job if she was going to get her car fixed and keep moving, though looking around, seeing people smile and wave at her, she wondered why, exactly, she had to keep going. What was wrong with spending a few months, hell, even a couple years, in a pleasant little town?

She stopped in the coffee shop, and a surprising number of people quieted, staring up at her from their seats. Forcing an awkward smile, she made her way to the counter, ordered an Americano and tried to pretend she couldn’t hear the whispers that had started up.

She couldn’t make sense of what they were saying, but the prickling feeling on her neck told her they were talking about her. Maybe it wasn’t such a friendly town after all.

Still, she needed money to fix the car, and she wanted to do something amusing until then. “Are you hiring, by any chance?”

The woman behind the counter started, then her eyebrows folded inwards. “You want to work… here?”

Odd reaction. “Um…”

“Course she wants to work here,” A voice behind her said, “You heard her.”

Paige turned to look at the woman who had spoken. She was a short, tough-looking old lady, with eyes that were somehow both steely and soft. Winking, the woman held out a hand. “Gloria Verano.”

“Paige Cogan,” She replied, shaking it. “Nice to meet you.”

“How are you liking Haven so far?”

“You can tell I’m new?” Paige flushed, wondering what gaffe had given her away.

“Small town.” Gloria shrugged. “That idiot won’t respond to you, but they are hiring. Had a couple folks move out of town recently. The, uh, weather was too much for them.”

Paige nodded. “The fog,” She said, then couldn’t for the life of her figure out why she’d said it.

But Gloria nodded with a very strange smile on her face. “Fog was a problem for a while. There was a storm too.”

She had a sudden vision of this, oil-black clouds rolling over the town, though the sun was out today, and it was perfectly pleasant. Shaking her head in an attempt to clear it, she smiled. “Well, their loss is my gain, I’m sure.”

“All of our gain,” Gloria said kindly. “Will you be looking for childcare for the little one?”

“James,” Paige said. “And yes. Why, do you know of anywhere?”

Gloria’s lips twisted up in a smile that was strangely sad. “I run a bit of a daycare out of the town morgue. My grandson and a couple other kids whose parents were impacted by the… weather, recently.”

“The morgue?” It seemed a strange place to have a daycare, even a makeshift one.

“I was a coroner,” Gloria explained, though that still left many gaps. “Used to take baby Aaron to work with me and he got used to it. His Nanny takes him there and some other folks who needed extra help started bringing theirs. Little James would be welcome too, if you wanted.”

As strange as it was, Paige couldn’t pass up free childcare. “That’s very kind of you; it would be a huge help.” She laughed a little.

“Heard you had some car trouble,” Gloria said, taking her tea from the counter and moving aside to add sugar.

Paige tilted her head. “Really? I mean, it’s true but—”

“Small towns, kiddo, you’ll have to get used to it. Besides, Nathan and I work together. He told me about you.”

Her cheeks flushed in surprised pleasure that he had brought her up. He was thinking about her. “Oh, well… good things, I hope.” She laughed awkwardly, not sure how to make this conversation normal.

Gloria nodded. “Very good things.”

“He seemed sad,” She said abruptly, not sure why she was confiding in a perfect stranger, except that somehow, instinctively, she trusted her.

Another nod, this one slower and sadder. “He lost someone he loved a couple months ago. Lots of people did.”

Paige could tell that Gloria had too and wasn’t sure what to say. “Something… something bad happened here, didn’t it?” A prickling feeling crawled up her spine, like she was taking a test, and she knew she knew the answer to a question, but it wasn’t quite coming to her.  

“Yes.” Gloria didn’t opt to tell her what it was, and Paige didn’t push. The feeling passed; she had no idea what this town was like, and they certainly wouldn’t want to share their suffering with an outsider.

“I’m sorry,” She said and meant it, not just in the way that people said sorry whenever they were talking to said people. She truly did feel sorry for this town, for Gloria and for Nathan and whoever else had lost someone.

She wished she could help them.

“You, of all people,” Gloria said seriously, “Do not need to be sorry.” She cleared her throat and nodded once more, sternly. “Anyway, I ought to get back to work. You have a nice day.”

Paige nodded and watched her go. A manager came out and smiled at her, asked a couple questions and handed her a job application. She took it gratefully, glad to have a normal interaction after the strangely intense one.

“You can bring that by whenever you’re done with it,” He said with a broad smile. “We’d be thrilled—honored!—to have you.”

They really must be desperate, Paige thought, If he’s that happy I’m applying.

Having had enough unusual conversations for one day, Paige decided to walk back to her hotel. Just like the coffee shop, she felt people’s stares as she went, heard whispers. A young kid stared at her wide-eyed.

“That’s her,” He said in a very audible child-whisper. “She stopped the troubles.”

Troubles. That word…

She shook her head again and continued on her way.

The desk receptionist smiled when she walked into the lobby. “Welcome back! How do you like Haven so far?”

Paige tilted her head. “It’s kind of a strange town,” She said honestly. “But I like that.”

“It is a strange place,” She answered, smiling a little wider than she needed to. “But it’s a good place, with good people.”

She thought of Gloria, and Nathan, and, unbidden, the images of other faces—whose names she didn’t know, but they brought up feelings of warmth and friendship—appeared along with the ones she’d met. “Yeah, there are good people here.”

“I forgot to ask when you checked in,” The receptionist said. “How long do you think you’ll be staying?”

She looked down at James and smiled. “I think we’ll be here for a while.”