Chapter Text
Victoria Moore
“Whole wheat bread, check. Romaine Lettuce, check. Carrots, check. Parmesan Cheese, tomato sauce, pasta, check,” Victoria Moore muttered as she made sure she had everything on her grocery list before she left the store. “Wine, check. Crackers, cheddar cheese, grapes, ham, eggs, lemonade, frozen berries… good.” She went to the checkout line, raised an eyebrow at all the Twinkies the man in front of her in line was buying - was he trying to give himself diabetes or something - and as she waited her turn, she added a pack of gum to her cart and looked at the magazines on display with the latest celebrity scandal.
She paid, went to the parking lot, and put her groceries in the trunk, not noticing the device that had been attached to one of the wheels of her car while she had been shopping.
Blissfully unaware, she drove the next ten minutes, shouting at the car in front of her that was hesitating to turn left - she had frozens, damnit - but once she finally made that left turn, she felt and heard a noise that boded ill. She pulled over, frowning at the mangled mess of her tire, which almost looked like something had exploded - only to look up as a man stood in front of her.
“Need a ride? You can call someone for your car and I can take you wherever you need to go. You’re lucky it's Saturday and I’m not at work so I can help you.”
She breathed out in relief that the man was willing to lend his grey Honda to her use. “Really? Thanks. I have some groceries; could I put them in your trunk?”
“My trunk’s full, but you can put them in the backseat,” the man said. “I’m Nick, by the way.”
“Vicky, nice to meet you,” she said as he helped her transfer the bags to his car then opened the passenger seat door for her. “Thanks so much.”
“No problem,” Nick said, closing the door for her and getting into the passenger side. “Glad I could help.” He pressed a button on his side and the sound of a lock clicked. “Which way is your house?”
“Keep going and take a right in three lights,” she said, leaning back into the seat as he turned the knob on the radio and music started to play. “No - a right!” she said. “Sorry for snapping at you - there’s another road that should connect, we can still get there.”
“Oh, I know exactly where I’m going,” Nick said. “It’s just not where you wanted to go.”
Alarm bells started blaring in her head and she tried to unbuckle her seatbelt, only to find it was stuck. Shit, shit, shit, she was in such deep shit.
“You’re not going anywhere, I’m afraid,” Nick told her in a mock-sweet tone. Vicky resumed trying to get away, more frantically. “Ah, the sweet sounds of a struggle,” Nick sighed as he turned off the music. “Panic! In the car is much better than Panic! At the Disco, don’t you think?”
She frantically looked around, then tried to break the window. “It’s reinforced glass,” Nick told her. “I modified this car myself.” She opened her mouth to scream and Nick turned the radio back on at full volume. She was absolutely fucked, she thought, and resumed trying to unfasten the seat belt.
It was to no avail, and soon enough Nick had pulled into a garage, then went to the trunk of his car and came back with a gag and a ziptie, both of which he forced her into before undoing the seatbelt and grabbing her ponytail and dragging her to a cellar that looked like it came straight out of a horror film - chains and what could be used as torture instruments and all.
She was going to die, she thought, terrified, and as he released the ziptie she tried to fight back, only to be halted by a firm grip as he chained her to the ceiling by the wrists.
“Have you ever wondered what a power tool does to the human body, Vicky?” he asked.
No, she hadn’t, because unlike him, she wasn’t a sicko. She was going to die. She was going to die and she would never see her family again, oh God.
She’d never had the dubious pleasure of getting a filling, but as Nick turned the drill on Vicky thought she understood the visceral reaction so many people had to the drill when they were at the dentist’s office. Nick smiled at her visible fear and licked his lips.
“Oh Vicky, we’re going to have so much fun together.”
George Hart | George Washington
“-after all, I’m the fool who got his Revelation while blackout drunk!” Charles finished, to the laughter of the rest of his lesson group. George wasn’t quite sure how that was even possible, considering Revelations were sparked by remembering similar scenarios and it was rather hard to form memories when blackout drunk.
“Makes for a better story than my Revelation,” Isaiah snorted. “I was a Continental Soldier at Valley Forge, see, and when I was fifteen my family and I got snowed in, which wouldn’t have been a problem if it hadn’t been a freak snowstorm that hit right before we were going to stock back up on groceries. It knocked out our power, and therefore our heating, and the cold and hunger - although not starvation hunger at least, thank Providence - well, that triggered a few things.” That got winces from the rest of the group.
One day, George was going to figure out how Isaiah managed to say all of that with a smile on his face. By virtue of his position he’d been the one least affected by the cold and hunger and he still had nightmares about the situation; Isaiah had died there and by all rights should have been traumatized but was still upbeat and cheerful. George had learned a new term from one of the teenager classes the other day: copium. Whatever copium Isaiah was on, George wanted some of it.
“Back straight, don’t hunch over,” George told Lynne Johnson. “Copy my posture - see?”
“What about you, Hart?” Charles asked.
“Got my Revelation the first time I rode a horse this time around,” George replied, grateful that he had gotten his Revelation in a manner that would in no way lead to clues about his previous identity. “And yes, I’ve already heard all the jokes about how this is the perfect job for me considering that, no need to repeat them.”
Charles laughed. “You sure? I’m sure I could come up with several new ones if you gave me time.”
“Trust me, he’s heard them all,” Isaiah said with a grin. “Mostly from us. But really, how did you manage to get your Revelation from a lack of memories?”
“Not telling,” Charles laughed.
“That’s not the craziest Revelation story I’ve heard of,” said Parker, another one of their students. “I’m not a Reincarnate but my college roommate got his Revelation after kicking me out of the dorm to bang his girlfriend!”
George grimaced, still lamenting the different standards of decorum. Oh, he was sure that there had been similar crude talk throughout the Continental Army, but the difference there was that nobody had done it in front of the Commander-in-Chief.
“You’re kidding,” Lynne said.
“Dead serious. When he let me back into the room his eyes were different, and apparently he got his Revelation mid-climax.”
“I think I just lost the title of wildest Revelation and I don’t even mind,” Charles said, having a hard time keeping the correct posture due to how hard he was laughing. “That is priceless.”
“Back straight!” George reminded him - posture was important.
“How are you keeping a straight face?” Parker demanded. “Nobody hears that story and doesn’t break out in laughter!”
“Practice,” George said simply, not mentioning the fact that in addition to wanting to maintain his taciturn and severe reputation, smiling had hurt for a good portion of his life, so he’d gotten in the habit of never really smiling, as pulling out the one-dollar bill would prove. Bad teeth - the curse that kept on giving.
“No, but seriously, how does being blackout drunk lead to a Revelation?” demanded Isaiah.
“I’m just assuming it was from the blackout - it may have been the hangover, but saying it was the blackout is a better story,” admitted Charles, which made slightly more sense.
“Did you hear the recent news?” Ursula - the final student in their group - asked.
“About what?”
“Speaking of wild Revelation stories, Amelia Earhart,” Ursula elaborated.
George had seen the news - apparently her love for flying was soul-deep, as she was getting piloting lessons when the plane she was learning in had engine trouble. She got down safely but the midair crisis had triggered her Revelation. She had led investigators to the site of her doomed Lockheed Electra 10E, and the photo had made front-page headlines a week earlier.
“Being incapacitated by a Revelation when you’re flying a plane is quite possibly one of the worst times to get one,” Lynne agreed. “Aside from the numerous Revelation-induced car crashes, of course.” The distraction caused by the influx of memories was definitely enough to lose control of a car, but considering there was no way to tell who would get a Revelation behind the wheel, it was mostly viewed the same as getting a heart attack while driving - unfortunate, but hard to prevent.
Car crashes could also cause Revelations, he knew - Gouverneur Morris had been t-boned in an intersection by a car running a red light and the crash was apparently close enough to his carriage accident to trigger a Revelation. George was keeping an eye on Morris - the man’s antics were sure to be entertaining now that it wasn’t his circus or his monkeys.
The lesson wrapped up, everyone else leaving, except for George, who stayed to work on bookkeeping. Anne was in the hospital after an emergency appendectomy and seeing as she was usually the one who helped him with the bookkeeping, it had all fallen on him, which meant it had taken more time than usual, hence his later end to the week. Saturday afternoons were for making sure all the finances were in order, and he knew from experience that putting it off would only lead to greater hassle down the road.
Once he was finally finished with the finances, George pulled out onto the main road, passing a grey Honda as he did so; odd, this was usually a fairly quiet street, all considered. He dismissed it; there were all sorts of reasons the car could have been driving there, and just because the road was usually nearly empty didn’t mean it was always so. He firmly put it out of his mind, seeing as it was much later than he usually returned home: it was nearly dusk, and he needed to get home to feed his dogs, who were no doubt hungry by now.
***
The next morning, before church, George got up early to walk his three dogs. “Totter, Bacchus, Lovely Mouth! Sit!” George called as he tugged on their leashes; they had gotten overly excited when they saw - or smelled, probably - the golden retriever on the other side of the street. Totter and Lovely Mouth were American Foxhounds, in all probability descended from his original dogs, and Bacchus an Italian Greyhound.
The man walking the golden retriever, an older gentleman, gave George a weird look. George was, by now, well familiar with the judgmental stare that said “what the hell did you name your dogs?”
Really, his names weren’t that bad. He ignored the laughter in the back of his head that sounded suspiciously like Martha. In the early days of their marriage, back when he hadn’t yet resigned himself to the fact he would never have biological children of his own, she had bitten her lips to hold in her laughter when he introduced his dogs to her and promptly decided that he would have to run any and all names of their future children through her.
Which. Naming children and naming dogs were two completely different things; George wouldn’t have named their children like he named their dogs. He probably would have named a son Lawrence, after his brother, or Augustine, after his father. A daughter would have been harder to name; he had a contentious relationship with his own mother, Mary, and Martha had already had a child named after her from her last marriage. Maybe Elizabeth after his sister Betty?
Despite Bacchus being distracted by a squirrel, Totter pausing to sniff something every ten yards, and Lovely Mouth barking her head off, George eventually made it home, filling the food and water bowls for the three menaces before grabbing the library book he had checked out on postmodern architecture. He had just finished it and needed to return it. He was very diligent about making sure he turned in his library books on time. He tried not to repeat his mistakes, although at this point he figured his overdue library books from the 1700s were never getting returned. His bad.
He pulled out of his driveway to head to the library before intending to head up to Vine and Fig Tree so he could go riding on his own - there were no classes on Sundays, leaving him free to do what he wanted in the afternoons, after walking his dogs and going to church. As well as return his library books.
He really did try to learn from his mistakes - case in point, after the first disaster, he had never again signed a treaty in any language he didn’t know. He’d seen the joke online about how accidentally starting the French and Indian War had all been part of his master plan - that war led to taxes, which led to the Revolution, which led to his appointment as commander in chief and later as president. He understood that it was a joke. If he hadn’t been the butt of the joke it probably would have even been slightly funny. It still seemed in bad taste to him.
History had its eyes on him, he thought wryly. Miranda hadn’t been wrong. Which was why he was determined to keep his former identity secret, even if Isaiah, at least, would understand some of his thoughts - such as the wonders of indoor plumbing, or never wearing red.
He saw how much Madison was harassed by the press. George didn’t exactly like Madison all that much after all the political schemes he had pulled with Jefferson, but he was still grateful to the man for enshrining in law his right to remain hidden. George couldn’t help but feel a twinge of empathy every time Madison was hounded by the media. If George revealed his own identity it would be ten times worse.
Some of the reporters, at the very least, had legitimate questions about “what the Founding Fathers would think about this or that,” which always made George snort. Everyone talked about them as if they were a monolith, like they had actually managed to agree on things, and would have the same opinion on everything today, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. George had presided over the Constitutional Convention and then had still been masochistic enough to reluctantly accept the position of President.
Put three Founding Fathers in the same room and you’d get five different opinions. Well, or you’d get a backroom dinner deal that traded away the capital for assumption of debt. Or a disastrous fishing trip.
Basically, if you want peace and quiet, don’t put Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in the same room together. It didn’t help that Jefferson’s social anxiety seemed to have an inverse relationship to how angry he was at Hamilton. And if you’re the only other person with them, prepare to get a headache. His past self would have probably welcomed Advil, is all he was saying.
His doctor had told him to get some rest, and like a fool, he’d invited Jefferson and Alexander to go fishing with him. He had not gotten that rest, and Martha had not been sympathetic at all, openly wondering why he had expected anything different. To be fair to George, the relationship between the two men hadn’t been as acrimonious at the time as it would later become.
***
Every so often, George made a point to go riding alone on Sunday afternoons. Horseback riding was a much less common skill than it had been in George’s first life, and he found it fulfilling to teach both the child and adult riding classes, to keep the skill alive. Still, riding on his own, only himself and his horse, was fulfilling in a different way. If it weren’t for the airplanes flying overhead, or his modern-day apparel, he could almost imagine himself back in the 1700s when he was alone.
“Easy there, Willow,” he soothed as his horse spooked. But as he looked around, he could tell something wasn’t right. He dismounted, tying her to a tree and looking around. He felt uneasy and wished he had a pistol to defend himself, but there was no war, and he hadn’t thought he would need it.
Something wasn’t right. He looked around, spotting a snapped stick on the ground, some crunched fallen leaves, and knew someone had been in the woods. It was off the path, which made him frown - people generally stayed on the path. He stepped closer to the disturbed groundcover, going around to the opposite side of a large tree on the path.
Rocks, dead leaves and dirt were in an unnatural clump, obviously concealing something that was leaning against the tree. He frowned, then brushed a boot across the pile, revealing a blue jacket.
A blue jacket that was being worn by a dead body. He jerked his foot away, years of seeing the grisly sights of war the only reason he had not stumbled back a few steps. The body belonged to a young woman, and she had not had a pretty death - Willow must have smelled the blood.
“Heavenly Father,” he murmured, “let her find eternal rest in Your presence, where there is no sorrow or pain, only joy. Wash away every burden and welcome her into the peace that surpasses all understanding.”
He turned around, orders half formed in his mind before remembering when he was. There was no war. He commanded no troops. Whatever had happened here, it was not his responsibility.
He pulled out his phone and called the police.