fatealteration | Last Train to London

Reigen told himself that he'd celebrate every good thing that came his way from now on--no matter how small. He wouldn't celebrate it in want of something but for it's own sake. After all, there was no higher power to bargain with. It was just him.

Him and two kids.

Him and two kids and a giant VW Bus he was 60% comfortable handling. And a magical piece of paper that kept their entire lives packed neatly and lightly.

He kept reminding himself of how far he'd come in just a few weeks whenever he started really missing a nice matcha. He had Doppio on a strict assignment to look out for even the instant stuff. Every day was a new lesson in unpredictability but they'd found that there were clusters of stability. Some towns had mostly escaped the rupture unscathed and others were like patchwork from a monkey's hands. You just took what you got, hustled, and hoped for the best.

Today--today wasn't bad. They'd lucked out with a highway cutting through a sprawling plain with small patches of life in the distance. There was no telling how long the road would last, but word had spread across the town they'd just left that it went on for awhile. The street signs weren't in a language he recognized but it's not like they'd serve their purpose even if they did. Reigen spared a thought for all the taxpayer dollars gone to waste.

"Quartermaster," he snapped his fingers and adjusted the thick technicolor shades on his nose, "coffee me."

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~~

It was past midnight and the moon had disappeared from the sky. The kids were bundled up in the back of the van and Reigen--he had set up camp around their unfortunate new passenger. He had been hesitant to move her too much (she'd showed up out of nowhere after disappearing and then promptly collapsed), so he'd summon the last of his coordination to set up cover and keep the fire going while he took first watch.

When Max groaned around began stirring Reigen might have cried a little. Just from the smoke, of course. "Oh, thank god. Hey. Can you hear me?"

"Yeah," Max said groggily as she sat up. "But I've got a killer headache. Do you have any aspirin?"

Reigen immediately handed her a bottle of bufferin (something he never left home without in his old age) and a bottle of water. “Here. The good stuff.”

"Thanks." Max took the meds. "Is everyone okay?"

“Everyone’s fine. They’ll be even better when they see you up and at ‘em. I had to beg them to turn in for the night.” He had almost thrown the bottle at them to do it. His own nerves were hard enough to manage without having two stressed out and exhausted teens to deal with at the moment.

“…So, uh, you were gone for awhile. What happened?”

"Trust me, you wouldn't believe me if I told you." This... was definitely awkward. The only person who knew about her powers was Chloe and she still kinda had to prove it to her. She didn't know Reigen nearly as long.

“I got into a showdown with a pack of greaser ghosts in a tunnel with my student just last week. Try me.”

"I can travel between timelines." She let the answer hang in the air before she continued. "I used to be able to turn back time, but the last time I tried to... it didn't work anymore. But what just happened wasn't normal. It didn't happen the way it normally does."

Reigen whistled. “Sounds…complicated.” More complicated than using telekinesis to toss things around or exorcise ghosts.

“Were you born with those powers? Or did they just…” Reigen squinted, trying to find the words in his already-hungover brain, and settled for gesturing to mimic something plopping down unexpectedly from the sky.

Max shook her head. Things still felt foggy. "I didn't have powers until I was a teenager."

Reigen could sense a story or a dozen.

“So…is that what happened here? You just…hopped to a different timeline?” His tone wasn’t at all skeptical as much as it was one that was bogged down by his currently-plodding ability to wrap his head around it.

"Yeah, except it wasn't anywhere near here. When I shift into a different reality, I've always ended up in the same place. Wherever I ended up before... it definitely wasn't."

Ominous…

“So…what kind of place was it?”

"Like a cafe or something. And someone who looked just like Donatella was there, except they were a boy."

Reigen’s lips were so tight they could have compressed steel between them. “You don’t say.”

"Yeah, he said he didn't have a sister, either."

“And, uh, was he anything like our Donna outside appearances?”

"Not really. He was a lot more intense."

That was hard for Reigen to picture. Doppio was second only to Mob in how passive he was. Reigen murmured thoughtfully to buy himself a little time to think about his response but—

Click. The van’s back door unlatched. It was quiet but impossible to miss with how still their snowy patch of woods was.

“…Oh! Donna.” He waved. “Hey, second watch hasn’t started yet…”

Silently, Doppio joined them in the covered space. His expression was hard to read in the hard shadows the fire created. He slowly sat to kneel—and then threw his upper body forward in a deep bow.

“I’m sorry! I couldn’t sleep and I heard you were up, Miss Caulfield, and I was going to check on you but…I eavesdropped instead.”

‘Dogeza!?’ Reigen barely remembered teaching him that.

Max shook her head. "It's fine," she said. "If I wound up traveling with you long term... it probably would have come up eventually."

Doppio slowly lifted his head. His hair was loose and messy from his failed attempts to sleep and he brushed some behind his ear. "...You said you saw someone who looked like just me when you disappeared. Right?"

"Yeah."

“I see.” He thought for a moment and then nodded towards the van. “If it’s okay, I’d like to ask more about it…in the morning. For now, you should try to rest up inside. Um…you can have my bunk.”

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