Identity Crisis (the third one)
Finch went through a lot of trouble, setting up their entrance into the group.
This was written on the 12th of December, 2020, but the dates of this doesn’t really matter. Time was fluid, after all, just as the knowledge of all story.
“Dude, do you even have any unexpired milk in your fridge? How do you live with yourself -- no coffee, no cereal, no milk?? Not even the last dredges of milo that you’ve ignored so long that it’s all consolidated together into a solid piece?”
“What are you doing in my house.”
Finch kicks the door to the fridge shut, arms full of all kinds of food stuff they could scrounge from various half-empty cupboards. “Hm, is there even anything to eat?” They mutter to themselves, brows twisted in such an extreme emotion it looked comical.
“Finch.”
“At least you have ketchup,” the duck god says, opening the cap and just about to squirt it directly into their mouth before Erin grabs their arm, fed up.
Finch gives him a full-bodied roll of their eyes. “Oh come on, you invited me over for the night!” They push with their power, an invisible pulse of quacky energy rippling forth, but it gets completely rebuffed by the other rift.
“No way,” Erin growls, and it's becoming apparent that he has little patience left to give. “Get out, I would never invite you here.”
“What? why -- oooh. this isn’t even your house,” Finch tilts their head in understanding, spying a head of hair that’s peering from a corner. “Hi Jag!”
“Finch, out, now.” Erin interrupts before the other figure could even respond.
They allow themselves to be pushed, suddenly a little too caught up in their thoughts, looking past things, as if they weren’t really there. “No wait, yeah, this isn’t how it happened…”
A grimace, and a sigh. “Nope, this isn’t how it happened at all.”
Finch waves their hand, and the world dissolves into white.
Their mindscape was incredibly simple. A field of nothing, pure whiteness that would hurt the eyes if you stared out too long.
A single, half-solid figure, with blurred features and a clothesless undefined body. Wavy hair and round eyeglasses sitting on its face.
That was really all Finch could pull together; that was the extent of what was left.
“Ugh, why is this so difficult!!” Finch yells out into the nothingness. It’s loud in their ears, deafening against the white noise of the atmosphere. They whirl around and pin the other figure with a harsh glare.
“You didn’t say it would be this difficult!! I thought they’d just be more… receptive, you know? And at the very least, this power should’ve made them so!”
No matter how much Finch yells, the figure has never, and will never react. It stays motionless, upright with its hands out on either side. It wasn’t real, after all -- the real thing was all the way on the other side of the planes. It was just a figment, a remnant of how they remembered things.
But sometimes, Finch likes to imagine how it would possibly respond.
What, not up to the challenge?
“Of course I am!” Finch shoots back immediately, voice guttural in mock contempt.
“Just, fuck, you’d imagine people that need help would be more accepting of help when they get offered it!”
It’s an ironic statement, Finch is so aware of that. But dammit, being on the other end just ended up being… so frustrating!
The sound of the figure laughing in response echoes in their ears.
“Okay, okay what about this -- “ Finch starts, only to be pinned by sharp wolven eyes.
“What about what?” Roan asks, not stopping as she swiftly handles all the bells and whistles and mugs and cups that a barista has to handle behind the counter. Her voice is flat, not truly interested in what Finch has to say, but being a listening ear regardless.
“Oh, uh… well. This?" Finch flounders for a moment, hands scrambling in thin air, then something poofs, something quacks, and a rubber duck appears with a flourish.
Roan's gaze is transfixed on the duck, and Finch can practically imagine the wolf ears that have just perked completely upright on top of her head.
They don't expect the voice.
"COMRADE, HOW DID YOU ACCOMPLISH THAT??" the very familiar voice pours out of her mouth, and Finch yelps.
"What??? The FUCK are you doing here??" Finch fucking jumps in surprise as Roan launches herself across the counter to grab the rubber duck.
"You're not even like this yet!! Fucking story!" Finch spits the word like a swear. Someone certainly didn't even want them to try this route, if time was getting scrambled.
(Time isn't linear, after all, not in this context.)
"Fuck this, this DEFINITELY didn't happen!!"
Skolvitri Krakowski continues his rampage, and Finch makes their escape through a hole in the world.
“Nope, nope nope nope nope,” Finch rattles, over and over again. “God, nope.”
They throw themselves back onto the ground. It feels like nothing -- not particularly hard or soft, simply just a physical thing for them to lie back against. They’re back in the white space of their mind, back to brainstorming yet another way to fit the pieces together.
“God, who am I??” They groan. “Who am I supposed to be??”
Oh no, did you inherit the identity crises of your predecessor? The figure with the round glasses pretends to say.
Finch sits back bolt upright, shocked. They turn over their hands, as if there would be a mark of some kind signalling it. “No, no nono, I had better NOT.”
They bury their face in their hands. “Aw fuck, do you think I have?? I didn’t have any issues of this sort Before! Goddammit.
“Come on, I know these people! I know these people so well -- so is it me that’s the problem?? Is it just because I haven’t figured myself out??”
“AAAaarrggHH!!” Finch groans again, throwing themselves back on the ground of nothing and tearing their hair out. The figure stays silent out of commiseration.
Okay, Allan. Allan was EASY! He was such a simple person. He was practically Ellan. Actually, they were literally the same person.
He was slutty, he was in a gang, he had a penchant for playing the damsel and LOVED to get in trouble.
… he was slutty, he was in a gang, he had a penchant for playing the damsel and loved to get in trouble….
… maybe Finch would be better holding off on this one…
"Look," they try anyway, stalwart. "I know you, you know me -- can we maybe.. try to figure something out?" Finch waves their hands in the air, a very vague motion that Allan simply blinks at.
"Maybe not talk to me like a prostitute and we can try something," the shorter man says, brushing Finch off to go sit on the bench in the bus stop. He holds a cup of boba tea in one hand, fiddling with the straw with the other hand, trying to get the last of the sweet, sweet pearls.
"Aren't you a --" Finch starts, but gets cut off as Allan starts slurping on his straw, obnoxiously loud.
Finch waits, impatiently, for him to finish. Then Allan looks up, and says: "I don't know who you think I am, but I'm not bringing you home with me."
"That's not what I -- !"
"I dunno, maybe you should just. Go home?"
"That's what I'm -- "
"Feels kind of uncool to stalk me like this, you know."
Finch is just pumping out their power like a music beat, at this point, trying to get any sort of traction. But WOW, Allan, was he just like immune??
"This isn't right either," Finch groans. With a mighty, heaving facepalm, Finch uses their other hand to wave the world away.
Maybe you’re looking at this the wrong way, the figure with the glasses says.
“What, you think that I should be looking at my origins more rather than trying to pull stuff out of my ass, because even if I can be a better fit by coming up with a new story, my original story is always going to be more prominent and I should be working with it, not against it?”
Yeah.
“Stop saying what I’m thinking.”
I’m not saying anything, you’re just thinking what I’m saying.
Finch throws a shoe at the figure, It fizzles out a little when the shoe makes contact, but the object goes through without any resistance. The figure starts to reform, wispy strands joining together once again, before standing in the same position completely unchanged.
They’re not really trying, on this one. Blake’s too complicated a person for Finch to complicate things up more.
Doesn’t mean this isn’t going to be useful, though.
“So how do you know all these things about us?” Blake asks, twirling in the office chair. He’s leaned back, head tilted upwards and staring at the ceiling.
“I mean, whatever that’s transpired in story, I just know. I can’t close my ears to these sorts of things. Unless, well, the storyteller intentionally keeps us in the dark. That’s been happening lately, but He doesn’t do it too often. I imagine it makes things complicated.”
Complicated, just like Blake!
Finch lounges on Blake’s dresser, legs swinging idly. The kid’s dorm wasn’t the worst place in the world -- he actually kept it quite neat and tidy, typical. The only odd thing about it was the entire fucking armory of guns he kept under his bed, but he hadn’t actually shown Finch that yet.
Actually, that’d be fun.
“Like, I know you have like enough guns for an entire platoon under your bed.”
Blake’s still spinning in the chair, but the next time his face is visible, there’s a look of utter fear/embarrassment/oh no did I get caught visible for a few seconds before he spins away.
Another spin, and then a look of realisation.
Blake steadies his feet on the ground, stopping the spin of the chair just as he’s facing Finch.
“This didn’t happen, did it?”
“Nope,” Finch pops the ‘p’ in the word, a playful sound despite the utter boredom on their face. They fiddle their fingers, as if trying to push two things together. “I’m still trying to make things… click right. And they’re just,” a suuuper dramatic sigh. “Not.”
“Well…” Blake starts to say, now more alert since there was a direction this conversation could possibly go. “Do you… need help?”
A shrug. “I’m all ears, buddy.”
The kid has a very stupid look on his face. Eyes wide and lips pursed as he looks at nowhere in particular, trying to not make eye contact as he thinks.
“Perhaps… you need to be more happy?”
Finch pins Blake with a look, and the other rift quickly scrambles to explain. "Like, I've always seen you quite cheerful? And your power seems to work best when you're more yourself. There's this," he snaps his fingers several times, trying to find the right word. "... charisma, that you have, that seems to make your powers more effective."
The next part is more muttered under his breath, but Finch picks it up fine. It was written in story, after all, and they can see it plain as day. "I don't think I've ever seen you this… flustered."
"I'm not flustered!!" Finch exclaims, and Blake jumps in surprise, the look of panic back on his face. He holds up his hands in surrender.
"Sorry!! But you really are!! On edge and everything!!"
Scowling, Finch drives their hand into the fabric of this reality yet again, waving it away.
Finch worked with endings, not beginnings.
‘They waddled away, till the very next day’, after all. That’s the part they worked with. The ‘The duck walked up to the lemonade stand’ part was immutable, unchangeable.
This part was immutable, unchangeable.
“Hey,” the other person said. They were tall, towering over Finch that they had to look upwards just to make eye contact. But their voice had a hesitance, constantly clearing their throat, as if they just didn’t know how to present themselves, didn’t know how to be.
This was also true for Finch, because they weren’t Finch yet -- this was before Finch.
It was Viho Varue who met this person named Variss, and only from that did Finch come to be.
They knew each other online, funnily enough. The age of technology bringing all the supernaturals together. Tinder, but for rifts! Now there was a thought.
They’re kidding of course. Viho met Variss for business.
"Thank you, again," Variss says quietly. It's raining, and they're both in plastic coats to keep the dampness out. Viho's is a muddied yellow-green, while Variss' is a navy blue. Finch remembers this clearly, as they watch this scene play out just as it had in memory. The figure with the round glasses stands beside them, both of them wispy and ethereal as they watch the memory play out.
Memory was different than story. Both held meaning, but the former held truth.
The latter was simply ideals.
"I think it's time for me to make a new start, anyways," Viho says, voice holding back a slight waver to it.
They were idealistic. They will always be idealistic.
"You're still new to this, right?" Variss asks. "All this.. rift stuff. You said you only became aware a couple months ago?"
"A month and a half, to be exact," Viho confirms, to which Variss gives them a wry smile, and a hand on the shoulder.
"... thank you," she says, again.
Viho was 25, with a face that still had baby fat that made them look a decade younger. They had long hair tied in a ponytail, stark brown eyes that stood out against their brown skin, makeup covering the vitiligo marks that patched across their face. They were quiet, a person that spent more time on the internet than outside. And quality time that was -- they spent their days hacking large organizations to funnel their money into charity; helping victims by getting scandalous information on their abusers and blackmailing them to guarantee the victims safety; deleting social security numbers and making new ones from scratch.
If they had to pick the mythoi they represented before all this, they'd think a modern day Robin Hood would probably work fine. Nothing really interesting to that, but they didn't mind all too much.
Story worked out in a different way, of course.
"... I can't be a part of this anymore," Variss confesses. She brushes her hair out of her face, wet strands sticking to the smooth skin of her cheek. "And I know, this isn't supposed to be how things work --"
"No, this is right," Viho cuts her off, unintentionally taking a brazen step forwards. "It can't exist without you, but I think it's supposed to be that way. And it's telling me to step in to fill that void. I'm your successor, not directly, but maybe… in spirit."
Variss startles a little, staring at them for a beat before breaking out into a softer, more genuine smile. "This… wasn't part of the plan, but I hope things end better for you than it did for me." She extends her hand.
They shake it.
(Something clicks, in story.)
"Of course," Finch says, taking Viho's place. "I'm the guardian of ----------, after all."
Finch worked with happy endings.
That’s the problem, they were trying to force happy endings on things that were neither happy nor endings. They had to work towards that, not force the beginning to conform to what their standards were.
It would take time, but that’s fine since time was fluid in the storyteller’s world. The storyteller could tell things out of order, the beginning didn’t need to be the beginning until it was. Only the end was uncertain, but that’s fine, that gave Finch time to mess around with it.
They still needed an entrance. A way to get their way into this story, that wasn’t theirs but would be, once they got in.
Things are so complicated, you, just get on with it!
“Shut up,” Finch bites to their imaginary friend, but it’s with a grin. “I got it. I got it this time.”
Erin, Blake, Roan, Allan… they were in progress. They were great, they were the people Finch were meant to be with, but their endings were not theirs to mess with. Not yet.
So -- outside. Outside this bubble, and someone happy.
Joy, companionship, investment -- there was a person that met all three of these criteria, and one that Finch's power could finally, properly latch onto.
Dakota-fucking-Tarlosa, who wouldve guessed?
“Hi, Dakota’s my brother! Think you could let me in?” Finch stands at the entrance to the gang’s warehouse, pestering the folk at the door with just the mildest flare of their power.
And somehow, easily, without resistance -- they get in.
(The door of the warehouse closes with a resounding click.)