Lanterns
Chapter IIIn the Black Lantern, Haven Springs mourns Gabriel Chen.
Almost everyone - Jed, Riley, Pike, Duckie, Steph - tells their stories of Gabe, each one showing just how beloved Gabe had been among every resident of the town. Gabe's closest adult family, Charlotte and Alex, watch quietly throughout as everyone talks of better times with the man who had become like family to them all.
Sorrow, unfortunately, is not the only emotion running high during the wake. Ryan, silent throughout so far, dismisses Jed's suggestion of Gabe's death being an accident, informing the visitors to the wake about the call Gabe made to the mine which was seemingly ignored. Mac, however, denies it - it was his shift that night, and he hadn't received any calls. Seeing Mac essentially dismiss any kind of culpability for Gabe's death on Typhon enrages Ryan, and he insinuates that Mac may have ignored Gabe's call because of his previous animosity with the man over Riley. As the two men get into a shouting match when Mac calls Ryan Gabe's killer because he cut the rope tying Alex and Gabe together, Alex (possibly having enough trouble controlling her emotion even without considering supernatural empathy) storms out, up into the apartment. As she tries to calm herself and Jed dismisses the wake, there is a knock on the door.
It's Steph. "Fuck those guys." Reassuring Alex that "it's not [her] job to keep it together", she asks to come in, and Alex accepts. Roaming around the apartment, Steph remarks on the siblings' possessions before suddenly noticing a bottle marked "Foosball Champion" on the mantlepiece, causing her enough sorrow that a strong aura of sadness, visible to Alex, surrounds her. Seeing her desolate, Alex decides to help Steph like she helped Ethan at the ravine. Tapping into her sorrow, she experiences the memories Steph associated with the bottle: Steph had planned to leave Haven Springs, and Gabe bet her that if she lost to him at foosball, she'd stay; his victory had led to the town becoming her home. Realising this, Alex challenges Steph to a game of foosball. Three games and a lot of back-and-forth (including some sneaky flirting) later, Steph does seem to feel better; remarking on the strangeness of how Alex knew exactly what would help her, she leaves. Alex can then roam around the apartment a bit, potentially cleaning up for the first time in days, before trying to go after Mac.
While leaving, Alex meets Jed, who apologises for the fight, tells Alex she can stay at the apartment as long as she likes (even giving her a key), and informs her that Charlotte wants to talk to her; when Alex asks for Mac's potential whereabouts, he tells her that he was helping Eleanor at the flower shop, but asks her to not hope for too much from him.
Leaving the Black Lantern allows Alex to (mostly) freely roam around the city to carry out her tasks. The next few events can happen in any order and, barring going to the flower shop and talking to Riley, are all optional, but they must be completed before confronting Mac (which, for the purposes of this recap, will be placed at the end). For brevity, this does not include most events on the street, such as Alex running into Pike and Ethan.
Following Jed's advice, Alex meets Charlotte at the Silver Dragon dispensary, entering as Diane is leaving. The women discuss the difficulties of moving on, with Charlotte worried about how Ethan is taking Gabe's loss (if Alex explores the park beforehand, she can run into him, and sensing his emotions can help her advise Charlotte on how to help him). Then, Charlotte brings up the letter on her table - Typhon are offering a settlement in exchange for her not pressing charges against them. She is conflicted on whether to accept it or not - Typhon making the offer if they haven't done anything wrong seems shady, but the payment is "send-Ethan-to-college big". Alex can advise her to either take or refuse the money.
Alex can meet Steph at the record store, who has a plan to cheer Ethan up - a LARP based around Thaynor, right here in Haven Springs! She asks Alex to choose the right villain and also serve as a bard companion to Thaynor, allowing Alex to look through and fill out a character sheet.
Alex meets Riley, sitting in an alley near the dispensary. When Alex senses her fear, she deduces that Riley is skeptical of Mac's innocence, and echoing her fear makes her reveal that Mac asked her to leave town with him regardless of whether or not they broke up.
Alex enters the flower shop, seeing Eleanor behind the counter. She asks after Mac, who Eleanor reveals just left and shouldn't be far. As Alex is about to leave, she suddenly senses a visible aura of fear from Eleanor, who seems to have forgotten what she was doing. Tapping into Eleanor's fear, Alex learns the cause: Eleanor has been recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and is afraid of losing all her memories (and also of Riley finding out). To help her, Alex gently reminds her of the order of the steps she was taking: she had flipped the store sign open before receiving a call from Riley to attend to an order from Jed for lilies. As Eleanor remembers what she was doing beforehand, the fog of her terror lifts, and she feels much better. As she gets back to her work, she wonders why Jed would want lilies, traditionally for funerals - making Alex realise she had forgotten about Gabe's death. Alex can choose to remind her, in which case she will be horrified and lock herself in her office, or spare her the pain.
Alex finds Mac on the bridge heading into town. She confronts him, wanting to know why an innocent man would want to skip town and demanding that he stop lying. As Mac splutters and runs away, a massive aura of fear is visible, which Alex taps into, making her realise the cause: Mac feels like he is being watched all the time, both by Typhon and by the other residents of Haven Springs (especially Riley), who believe that he killed Gabe. Following Mac, Alex finds him cowering near the river, having realised the root cause of his fear: Typhon is pressuring him to stay silent about Gabe's call. Mac confirms this, saying he had asked for the detonation to be stopped in vain, and then was told to deny there having been a call. Convinced that the whole town considers him a murderer, Mac has a full-blown panic attack, and Alex can decide whether to help him calm down or let him suffer. Regardless of her choice, she asks and plans to meet someone.
"Someone" is Ryan, standing near the ravine where he cut the rope tying Alex and Gabe, thereby letting his best friend die. Ryan is consumed by guilt and anger, barely caring when Alex tells him about Mac being pressured by Typhon to ignore the call - as far as he's concerned, he did kill Gabe. Tapping into his emotions, Alex reassures him that he is not responsible for Gabe's death and that he deserves forgiveness, whereupon Ryan breaks down in her arms.
Some time later, the two are lying down besides each other, laughing as they discuss stories about Gabe. Ryan is curious, though - how did she know about Mac? Alex, believing that showing is better than telling, asks Ryan to think of a thought (notably, all negative emotions - sad, scary or infuriating). Ryan's mind, though, immediately moves to a different memory of Gabe, one that is...
...happy?
A golden aura surrounds Ryan as he laughs, representing an emotion Alex is clearly unfamiliar with. As she taps into it, it is revealed to be Ryan's joy, with him reminiscing about a time he and Gabe ran over a goose and he convinced Gabe that he needed to bury it to hide his "violation of international law". Astonished, Ryan asks how she knew, and Alex reveals her powers, also confirming that this was the first time she had ever sensed pure joy. Realising that Alex is going to go after Typhon, Ryan volunteers his help, and Alex accepts with either a buddy-cop-style handshake or a hug.
At night, the residents of Haven Springs venture to the Bridge of Flowers; this includes Mac if Alex helped him with his panic attack, and Eleanor if Alex told her the truth about Gabe's death. Alex speaks to everyone, having not spoken at the wake earlier, saying that though she had barely known her brother before he had been cruelly snatched from her, he had taught her that home isn't something you find - but something you build. She, Ryan and Steph release a Chinese sky lantern into the sky, and, as it flies away, Alex senses an aura of joy from everyone present, happy that Gabe is at peace.
Everyone, that is, except Diane, who glows not gold but purple - the aura of fear.
