Chapter Text
fata viam invenient
(the fates will find a way)
Some things— some phenomena— don't allow for escape, they don't provide room for disregard. Sometimes people find themselves tethered to a place, a thing, an idea, a person with something indestructible, a reinforced rope one cannot saw through nor ignore. Let this be a warning or a promise, perhaps both, as oftentimes the two come intertwined.
__________
Din Djarin died fifty years ago, in the mid-seventies, amidst one of the most controversial wars of the modern era. Nixon was president, tumbling through the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and the endless protests led by rich, white hippies, while Din was overseas, trudging through jungles with a target on his back and a faded photograph in his pocket.
When he was shot, it was from behind, he did not see the man who took him down, and even if he had it wouldn't have mattered, he died instantly, the bullet piercing through his skull and exiting through his cheek, brain matter and floppy flesh raining down on the forest floor. The man who shot him— dressed in a matching olive-green uniform— rolled Din's lifeless body over to dig out that faded photograph from his pocket before he cried for help.
And Din— for a moment— found himself watching from above, boring witness to his own brain matter spattered on the leaves, watching as the man riffled through his pockets to steal his photograph. There was no pain while he floated there, unbound from his physical form, but there was anger, fury, something black and viscous that coated the air around him, and there was agony— of the non-physical kind as he stared down at the photograph held in his murderer's hand. And perhaps it was that agony, that wrath, that sent Din to the black abyss he soon found himself in, or perhaps it was something else, something knotted and unbreakable, something of myths and legends. But whatever it was, Din found himself trapped somewhere dark and limitless, a place between one realm and the next. It was cold there, and time did not move in a normal, consecutive fashion, instead it rolled around him like a typhoon, constantly warping and tumbling, speeding up and slowing down. He lived in that dark abyss for what felt like centuries, lifetimes, most memories of his last life fading until they were but a speck in whatever remained of his consciousness. Only one thing endured, only one echo, one chorus, one mantra. A name that called to him while he floated between realms.
Annabelle Larson.
And because that was all he had, he clung to that name like a lifeline in the dark, a glowing string that connected him to something outside of the abyss he was trapped inside of.
Until one day there was light, so blinding after a lifetime in the dark that Din screamed in pain, the first tangible feeling in ages and it was agony. But even outside of that dark abyss the name still called to him, like a siren, like a demand.
And Din was not tangible, he was still trapped— though no longer in the dark— but stuck within the veil that separated the living and the dead, but she was.
She was alive.
__________
Annabelle Larson pulled into the steep driveway of the small Craftsman style house she was trying to wrap her mind around calling home, cutting the engine of her trembling '05 4Runner and letting out a deep breath. It was cute— the house— a little green one-story surrounded by fir and maple— nestled about a half mile away from her closest neighbors. She'd fallen in love with the newly renovated kitchen— marble countertops and a large island she pictured herself prepping dinners at. The floors were original hardwood, but most everything else had been gutted and rebuilt over the last couple years. The house was old— built sometime in the late 19th century, but you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at it. She'd gotten it for a steal, just under $500,000, which was unheard of back in the Bay Area, unless you wanted to buy a tiny plot of land that wouldn't be able to fit a shed let alone a two-bedroom house.
Fog Haven was a tiny fishing town about 200 miles west of Seattle, with a population of 876 according to the sign on the drive in, or perhaps 877 now that she had moved there. Annabelle knew nothing of Fog Haven, hadn't even known it existed before she saw the Zillow listing while absently scrolling through houses near Seattle one night a few months back. She'd always felt drawn to Washington, for no particular reason, and after Tony had dumped her back in August, she found herself— not so unseriously— browsing homes near Seattle while trying to convince herself she wasn't running away, but instead orchestrating a much needed change in her life.
She'd flown up to meet with a few realtors just as August faded into September, digging her dusty raincoat out of the back of her closet before she called a car to take her to SFO. It was raining when she landed in Seattle, sheets of it pouring down and making everything a little gray and a lot wet. She saw one apartment in Capitol Hill, a house in Bellevue, two more near Port Angeles, but the one that stuck in her mind, the one house she couldn't seem to shake, was that little Craftsman in the unknown town of Fog Haven.
And so here she was. Mid-October now, the maple trees barely clinging to their last remaining browning leaves, all her belongings in boxes that littered the floors inside her new house. The final thing she'd need to do was bring her car, which had somehow made it the nearly 900 miles from San Francisco despite it shaking and huffing the entire way there.
She wasn't running away, she told herself again as she jumped out of her car, quickly pulling her hood over her head to combat the ever-present mist that seemed to hover over the town, she was starting a new chapter, she was taking control of her life.
Annabelle ran up the three steps that led to the covered porch, nearly slipping on the last one, her heart picking up to race frantically in her chest as she righted herself before she could faceplant onto the cement, then dug the key out of her jacket pocket, wiping it off on her jeans before she pushed it into the lock. It opened with a click and she felt a wide grin materialize on her lips as she stepped inside her new house. That grin quickly morphed into a grimace as the frigid air inside nipped at the exposed skin of her cheeks and hands. It was colder inside than it was outside and she shivered, rubbing her arms as she quickly walked over to the thermostat in the living room, stepping over boxes as she did, to crank the heat to a comfortable sixty-eight. She let out a breath as the heater clicked on and the pipes rumbled, beginning to blow warm air through the vents.
"Much better," she said, aloud, to herself or to the house, then she surveyed the boxes that littered her living room floor, piled around the island in the adjoining kitchen as well.
It would take at least a few weeks to entirely unpack, probably more since she still had to juggle work. She'd wanted to take at least a week of PTO, to get settled, to set up her office at the very least, but her company was launching a new app next month, which meant the marketing team was working overtime, which meant that she would probably take her Monday all hands call surrounded by boxes.
Annabelle let out a heavy sigh, then tugged her phone out of her back pocket, queuing up an upbeat playlist that she'd carefully curated to include absolutely no songs that reminded her of Tony. Then she got to work, placing her phone down on her coffee table that was cluttered with boxes and beginning to unpack the ones in the kitchen.
She hated packing and unpacking, but she liked organizing, liked finding the perfect place for all her silverware and her teas and her mugs. She hummed along to the Arctic Monkeys song that was crooning from her phone in the adjacent room, unwrapping silverware and placing them into a cute wooden tray she'd picked up at The Container Store before she moved. There was no Container Store in Fog Haven, there were no chain restaurants or big-box stores. All the restaurants and markets and stores in town were congregated on one winding road called Central Street. It spilled out onto the beach, where there still existed a small dock from Fog Haven's humble beginning as a fishing town. People still fished, still made their money that way, but with all the commercial fisherman up in Seattle it wasn't the booming business it had once been. Fog Haven was a small, sleepy town aptly named after the rolling fog that came in off the Pacific. Annabelle was no stranger to fog, San Francisco was known for it, in fact, about a decade back transplants had started calling it Karl, someone made a twitter account and everything. But Karl was no match for the fog up here in the Pacific Northwest. The fog here seemed thicker somehow, it took longer to burn off— if it ever did— and when it rolled through the towering trees it seemed almost sinister, like it carried a presence, something far more ominous than the lovingly named Karl.
Annabelle felt a shiver crawl up her spine, shaking it away as she unwrapped a bundle of spoons. It felt like someone was watching her, that strange weight you feel at the back of your head when someone is staring at you. She turned around, her heart stammering in her chest as she took in the cluttered expanse of her unpacked living room. There was no one there, of course, but still she couldn't seem to shake the feeling that someone was watching her.
"You're losing it, Anna," she muttered to herself, shaking her head as she pulled out a wrapped bundle of forks from the box she was working to unpack. It was a new house, in a new town, she was living alone for the first time in four years, it was just going to take some getting used to, that was all.
Dancing Shoes by the Arctic Monkeys was just reaching her favorite part toward the middle of the song and she continued to push down the feeling that she was being watched as she hummed along, bobbing her head. She'd begun singing along, when all of a sudden, the song cut out and the urgent intro to Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin began pouring from her phone's speakers.
"What the fuck," Annabelle breathed out, dropping the forks she was unwrapping into the drawer, turning around and staring at her phone— where it was still perched on top of one of the boxes on her coffee table.
She hadn't added any Led Zeppelin to this playlist, at least not that she could remember.
Her eyebrows furled together as she walked over to her phone, picking it up and staring at the screen as Plant's vocals crooned through the room. She clicked away from the song and back to her playlist, scrolling through it and sure enough, there wasn't a single Zeppelin song listed.
She shook her head, tried to formulate some reasoning as she put Dancing Shoes back on. The service here was spotty, she still hadn't set up her Wi-Fi, maybe that was it. She set her phone back down and turned to go back to the kitchen, but before she could take a single step, the song changed again, back to the heavy guitar intro of Immigrant Song.
Annabelle whirled around, her heart hammering in her head, half expecting someone to be standing there, holding her phone. But of course, there was no one there, just that heavy feeling of someone watching her as she grumbled under her breath and changed the song again.
This time, she made it all the way back to the kitchen before her phone switched to Led Zeppelin.
"Whatever," she mumbled, shaking her head as she unwrapped another set of forks, "Zeppelin it is."
After she was done unpacking the kitchen, she should set up the Wi-Fi, see if that would help. Besides, It would be in her best interest to get it set up and working before Monday. The last thing she needed was her boss reprimanding her for moving 900 miles away from their headquarters and having unreliable Internet.
She broke down the box the silverware had been inside of and hauled another one from the floor onto the counter, gritting her teeth as she did, the muscles in her arms quivering. The heavy, buzzing feeling of being watched was growing more intense, but Annabelle worked to ignore it as she ripped the tape from the box and began taking out her newspaper-wrapped mugs. There was no one here. She was alone. She was just getting used to this place, to this strange sleepy town with no Container Store or Taco Bell or Gin bar.
She was in the process of unwrapping her favorite mug— white ceramic with little ladybugs painted on it that her mom had gifted her— when the air in the kitchen turned arctic, almost like a window had been pushed open and a draft was rolling through the room. But there was no open window, and the heater was still rumbling, and though Annabelle could see the fog rolling through the trees outside from the window above her sink, there was no way a breeze that cold could've rolled in without her pushing the thing open.
She shivered, then froze, her heart stammering wildly against her ribs as she felt something brush against the back of her neck. It was freezing, but solid, enough that she felt her hair move against her skin like someone was pushing it over her shoulder. Goosebumps rose, migrating down her spine as her breathing picked up to something frantic.
The feeling of being watched was still there, but it was more pressurized, like someone was standing right behind her, close enough that she could feel their breath— freezing and fluttering against the top of her head.
She was imagining this surely, that was the only reasonable explanation... Perhaps one of the windows in the back of the house was open, maybe the movers had gotten hot and opened it last week, forgotten to close it before they left.
Annabelle mustered the courage to slowly turn around, but she kept her eyes squeezed shut, her heart pounding in her head, her hands trembling at her sides.
The Led Zeppelin song cut out, replaced by a piercing ringing that forced a scream out of her throat, her eyes flying open to find her living room still cluttered, but void of any company that wasn't all her boxes, her phone ringing loudly on the coffee table.
"Jesus Christ," Annabelle breathed out, placing her hand over her heart as she quickly cleared the space between the kitchen and her phone, picking it up to find her best friend's name on the screen, a photo of the two of them a few summers ago, laughing together on a blanket spread over the plush grass of Golden Gate Park.
Her heart pinched in her chest as she pressed the accept button, still trying to fully catch her breath when she uttered a small hey.
"Hey!" Maggie chimed, her familiar voice dousing some of the anxiety Annabelle had been holding, "how's unpacking going? You wanna move back yet?"
She scoffed, "I just got here. It's going fine," she exhaled, pushing her fingers through her hair as she collapsed onto the cluttered expanse of her couch.
"Just checking," Maggie sang, "How's the house? Still just as obsessed with it?"
Annabelle glanced around at the room, at the boxes that cluttered the floor and the other side of the couch and the entire expanse of the coffee table. It was still cold, and she could still feel the strange weight of eyes on her, but she pushed it aside, letting out a slow breath.
"It's great, I love it!" she said, cringing internally at how unnatural her voice sounded.
"Right," Maggie stretched the word out into a drone.
"This was a good change for me, Mags," Annabelle continued, unsure if she was trying to convince herself or her friend. "I've never lived outside the Bay Area, and I've always loved Washington, and—"
"And you're nine-hundred miles away from Tony," Maggie interrupted.
Annabelle felt her stomach twist into a knot.
"That's not why I moved," she said, hoping it was true.
"Whatever you say," Maggie crooned.
Annabelle scoffed.
"I talked to my boss about taking that week off in November, so I should be all set to come stay with you then," Maggie said, switching the topic to something more agreeable.
"I can't wait!" she chimed, mentally counting how many weeks separated now from the last week in November. Too many weeks. But this was good for her, Annabelle silently reasoned, she wasn't running away, she'd lived in the Bay Area her entire life, she'd been best friends with Maggie since kindergarten, this was her chance to meet new people, see new things, start fresh.
It had nothing to do with Tony.
"Hopefully you'll be fully unpacked by then, but if not, I can help you finish."
"If I'm not fully unpacked by then I give you permission to kill me, that's seven weeks from now. I can't live out of boxes for that long, that's—"
Annabelle's words were cut off by a door in the back of the house slamming shut, followed by a harrowing gust of freezing cold wind whipping through the living room, rustling her hair and stinging her cheeks.
She screamed, her heart picking up to pound again in her chest as her spine snapped straight from where she was still sitting on the couch.
"What is it?!" Maggie spat out, her voice high and concerned, "if some weird Washington forest dweller broke in to murder you, Anna I swear to god—"
"It's nothing," Annabelle managed, though her heart was still pounding and her breath was short and fast. "I think— one of the windows in the back of the house must be open. It's freezing in here and one of the doors down the hall just slammed shut."
"Or maybe your new house is haunted," Maggie said provocatively.
"Shut up," she muttered with a roll of her eyes, "you watch too much Travel Channel."
"I'm just saying! There's gotta be a reason the place was so cheap."
"It was so cheap because it's in a tiny town in Washington, not because it's haunted," she said the word like it was bogus.
"You're no fun," her friend groaned.
"Well, I'd appreciate it if you didn't suggest that my new house— where I will be sleeping alone— is haunted, whether or not I believe in that shit, I do actually want to get some rest tonight."
"Get some sage, I always cleanse a new place after I move in."
Annabelle shook her head, "I'm not into your weird witchy shit."
"Alright," Maggie droned.
"Look, I gotta keep unpacking, Mags, I'll call you tomorrow, alright?" Annabelle said, reaching up to rub the back of her neck, where she could still feel the ghost of that strange sensation that had happened in the kitchen.
"Good luck, babe! Talk to you tomorrow!"
"Bye," Annabelle breathed out, hanging up and pressing pause on the Zeppelin song before it could drone through her speakers again.
She sat there for a moment, staring down the dark hall that led to the back of the house. She tried to push down the fluttering, anxious feeling in her gut as she stood. This house wasn't haunted, there was no one here watching her, she didn't believe in that stuff, it was all a bunch of bullshit perpetrated by entertainment companies to make money on shows and movies and sage.
Annabelle walked down the hall, cursing herself as her heart continued to pound as she checked the bathroom, the master bedroom, the room that would eventually be her office.
None of the windows were open.
And that strange chill still seemed to cling to the air in the house.
__________
Annabelle crawled into bed that night defeated, using one of her unpacked boxes as a nightstand.
She'd only managed to get her kitchen unpacked, after that she'd collapsed onto her cluttered couch with a glass of wine and watched multiple episodes of Hell's Kitchen on the tiny screen of her phone since she still hadn't managed to get her television or Wi-Fi hooked up.
The chill in the house had never gone away, and she'd piled an extra couple blankets on her bed before crawling into it. She would have to call someone next week to look at the windows and the doors, maybe some of the weatherstrips needed to be replaced.
She fell asleep almost immediately, exhausted from the last two days of driving and the afternoon spent unpacking, but it was a strange, liminal type sleep, the kind of sleep where it's hard to tell if you're still awake or not. But she dreamt, she dreamt in strange, fleeting clips— like a warped home movie that kept bouncing to new frames. First, she was in a field— tall grass and wildflowers rolling in the wind— and she was running, running toward a man who was standing in the distance. He was too far away for her to make out his features, but in the dream, she knew who he was, and she was giddy, racing toward him while she laughed, her head thrown back on her neck. The dream warped before she could make it to him, fuzzy and grainy, and then she was in a house— a house that looked much like this one, but there was something off about it, like everything was backwards. A man was there— and somehow, she knew it was the same man— but this time she could see his face as he stood next to her in the kitchen. He looked familiar, so familiar it made her heart ache, like perhaps she knew this man, like perhaps she'd been dreaming of him her entire life. Before she could reach out and touch him the dream warped again, and she was standing on a crowded street, holding a sign she couldn't read, shouting with a swarm of people words she couldn't hear. But she knew she was angry, knew that she was upset, knew that she was terrified. In her other hand— the one that wasn't holding the sign— was a photo. A photo of the man. The dream warped again and she was staring up at her ceiling, in her bed, in her unpacked room, but she couldn't move, it felt like there was a heavy weight on the center of her chest, but she wasn't afraid, she was calm, she was at peace, like she was floating in a serene pool of warm water.
And then she heard her name, in a whisper, a man's voice— low and rumbling.
Annabelle.
She snapped awake at that, her heart pounding, a shiver shuddering down her spine as she catapulted upright in bed. The room was dark and freezing cold and for a split second she saw something move— the shadowed shape of a large person catching her attention from the corner of the room.
A gasp caught in her throat as she whipped her head toward the motion, her hands trembling as they took a tight hold of the duvet.
But there was no one there.