Work Text:
Despite her deep care for the man, Rachel was now ready to go and murder Abed Nadir at the first sight of his person.
Rachel loved Abed, she truly did. Even if, at the end, they had ended up just as friends due to, quoting the man, a society that has wired both our brains so we are not ready at any level to have more than one romantic partner. In a less binary world this wouldn’t be like that. And he had chosen Troy.
Actually, she always knew he was going to choose the nicest man-child ever to be born over her (or anyone else, probably even himself).
However, these mixed signals he had been sending her for the last couple of weeks…they made no sense. One day, he was looking at her with the closest thing to longing eyes he was capable of and muttering half-romantic sentences before making dramatic exists…
…And, the next one, he was again her best pal, working hand on hand in a small Off-Broadway theatre since they had discovered that half-Pakistani neurodivergent bisexual men and bisexual women with their own agenda (and recently acquired muscles that could knock down half of L.A. producers) didn’t have it exactly easy (or, in general, anything ) in Hollywood.
It has been a huge change but, when your returned-from-the-seas former boyfriend turned into best friend’s one-true-love comes back with money for three life times of excesses, things get quite easier.
It had hurt to work with his final ‘no’ to be together; she wasn’t going to even try to deny it (she was way far above all that stupid self-denial), but it was better than…whatever the fuck he was playing at now.
And the cryptic messages with weird orders that, for some goddamn reason she kept following?
He could either stop it, or she would stop him.
This main priority of her life was quickly changed, though. As she realised someone was following her around. Wherever she went, there was a shadow lurking near her; doing an only semi-decent work at staying hidden, since she always managed to notice said individual, but never their identity.
The only distinguished feature she had been able to make out was a Darth Vader-y kind of breathing but, again, with the nervousness and paranoia the whole situation was creating her, recurring to her favourite fictional multiverse to try to make sense of what was going on was a quite common coping mechanism.
Also, since she had been so pissed with Abed lately (that, just cherry on top, refused to admit it had been him the one acting oddly around her; showing even excitement over the possibility of a doppelgänger), focusing on that prequel movies she liked just fine (well, Revenge of the Sith a bit more than just fine ) when he loaded them so much gave her a special kind of petty rush.
However, the uneven half-artificial breathing of her stalker wasn’t what really worried her; what worried her was the undeniable feeling of danger that she felt in her bones every single time she spotted the figure (or even just sensed them near her). They wanted to hurt her, they wanted to hurt her badly and she was afraid that, if she didn’t do something sooner rather than later, they were going to succeed.
Therefore, she did something.
A blonde wig and an outfit that reminded her to Tommy Wiseau’s The Room lead actress outfit were all she needed to get out of her house through her neighbour fire staircase (bless Philip for his infinite patience) without being ever so slightly recognisable.
She took five alternative routes she had never taken before, thanking Google Maps (and its mute option) at every step of the way, before finally arriving at the back entrance of the theatre where they were preparing their play.
She gave a quick look to the bag she had taken with her; she just hoped her little trap didn’t ruin any expensive equipment.
Or the hand-painted planets, those were hard to make.
The traps was so well-set and brilliantly designed that no word could possibly be used to properly describe it; so it will be better just to say that, after falling completely for the fake hologram (completely illegal, theoretically didn’t exist yet; Rachel would never confess how she had gotten access to it) of herself singing along to Celebrity Skin into an also holographic radio (that detail hadn’t been necessary, but she was pretty sure it gave the whole plan a new pleasantly aesthetic style), the stalker found themselves completely tied-up and entangled in what was basically composed of jump ropes and extremely thick macramé threats.
The figure, wearing an extremely overdramatic black outfit, grunted and tried get free while emitting the loudest, most annoying high-speech sounds Rachel had ever had the miss-pleasure of hearing (and, always to be taken into account, she went to GREENDALE of all community colleges).
Trying to be as brave as any male character would have pretended to be in any 80s bad (or good) action movie, she approached the stranger and, just as her main door was opening, let a scream of surprise leave her lips.
“TROY?!”
Troy Barnes was in front of her, though it wasn’t the Troy Barnes she had grown accustomed to. The goofiness of his eyes (later joined by some sadness that only someone who had sailed the seas of our messed-up world and gave enough shits to actually look at the people they found along the way could have) was replaced by a twisted, yet almost cartoonish, mockery, border-lining evilness.
“YOU!” he hissed. Not metaphorically; he almost, literary, hissed his words; a small light in the middle of his neck going on and off as he spoke. “He likes you; he is mine and he likessss you.”
There were two wolves in Rachel in that moment: the one that wanted to believe this all to be some silly stunt pulled by her actual Troy and Abed (with whom, if this was proven right, she was going to have more than a few words) or, as crazy as it sounded, this being another Troy Barnes.
Yes, Troy happened to be a quite talented actor but this…this felt too natural; Daniel Day-Lewis in In The Name of the Father kind of natural.
Before either her could start her not-so-well-planned-interrogation or he could continue speaking like a Bond secondary villain from the Roger Moore Era; someone (indeed, the same someone who had managed the door without anyone noticing due to the bizarre of the context) stepped forward until positioning himself next to Rachel and…shot Troy.
Just fucking shot him in the head; “Abed?!”
“Yes, but also, not exactly” a voice called from the doorframe, where the ones she assumed to be her Troy and Abed were standing.
“What happened?”
“I guess Abed told you about the Darkest Timeline.”
“Only a quintillion times” not that she actually cared; she find it pretty interesting, to be honest.
“It is real and I used to be bad…until I wasn’t. You know, character evolution and such, you are quite an expert and I don’t want to bother you with a cliché subplot a thousand times already heard. However, Troy didn’t and he…he couldn’t let me go. You know? It is The Darkest Timeline, in all the senses; including the treatment of PoC and potentially queer characters. Being both, we were doomed from the beginning to either become a toxic pair, die, be use for laughs, be forgotten at some point or split out in some silly way never to be fully explained.
Whoever is writing our plot managed to do the three of them, I’ll let you guess them in your free time. The point is…I had to leave that world, it wasn’t my place anymore and Troy…Troy just didn’t get it. And when he came after me…he saw me speaking to Regular-Abed about…This is uncomfortable and kind of low-key problematic, sorry, but, about you after he realised those times you were speaking to him but not really you were speaking to his version of The Darkest Timeline and...he offered to help me. He thought we might like each other and then Dark-Troy heard and…I’ve been trying to keep you safe form him since then. This is my mess to clean up. Apparently, I didn’t have to worry that much.”
Rachel blinked multiple times, at a speed worthy of an immortal speedster.
Then, she decided to be practical up to that very point that had earned her certain degree of animosity with her whole biological family, and just directly address Other-Abed, completely leaving out of the conversation Dark-Troy (that, with what she had just heard, felt like a pretty badly, clichéd in the worst possible way, written character).
“So…you wanted to meet me?”
“Yes.”
She extended her hand.
“Hello, I am Rachel. Next time, don’t be a creep and just speak to me as yourself ” then, she turned for a second to her actual friends. “And you two, if you so blatantly hide the truth from me again…”
“Death and buried” both said at unison.
Keep it together, Rachel, they don’t deserve kindness just because they can be kind of adorable.
“You wish there would be something left to burn.”
“Sometimes, you are scarier than Annie, Chang and Shirley combined” Troy conveyed.
She smirked.
“Good.”
Weeks passed and Other-Abed’s company was…more than good. Actually, as weird as it sounded (since they were, almost literally, the very same person), she felt she got this Abed better than the regular one.
One day, as they met for some creative brainstorming with Story Cubes, she asked a question that had been bugging her almost since they first met.
“How was the Other-Me?”
“There was no other you.”
“Oh, did we never meet or…?”
“No, you just didn’t exist. Your parents got a dog instead. I looked it up the moment I first crossed paths with you.”
She laughed, but use the moment to remind him about the whole concept of barriers and stalking is bad they had stablished (being Abed in an evil world was a synonym of urgent need of severe social re-education).
“Maybe this would have been better if there had been a you.”
She smiled and, hating but loving how clichéd what she was about to say was, whispered, really close to him.
“Maybe they can be better in here.”