Warning: this post contains spoilers for the first two Watchbearers books, and I recommend reading those before this. Also be warned that this shows the ‘sausage-making’ aspect of writing, which some of you may not want to know about.
Like Verity and Turner, Matt and Page are both highly intelligent, independent, and capable on their own. Unlike the newlyweds, they need each other, and more than they’re willing to admit. Their stories would be closely bound together – they would, in fact, be one story, about how they came to be reunited as a couple more closely joined as partners than previously. It would also be my first time to write from Page’s point-of-view and show her perspective. And I expected that would make her more sympathetic a character.
With Matt and Page determined to fix the professor’s master travel device, I knew they’d eventually have to try it to see if it worked right. It was also obvious neither of them understood enough about what they were doing to avoid disaster. And so, four travelers, two couples, would become separated in time and space. Unlike the honeymooners, Matt and Page wouldn’t land in dire straits – just some relatively minor difficulties – and they would have more resources at their command to take care of their most immediate problems.
Their central challenge would be being apart from each other and not knowing how to reunite. With no idea where or when Matt might be, Page would have limited options. There would be little she could do but take the slow path back to the future and trust that he’d be able to find her. The professor’s watch would tell Matt where and when Page was (or, more accurately, where she had been and where she would be in the future) but after the botched trip, he wouldn’t trust it to take him to her. So he’d have to find another way. As it happened, they landed close to each other in time and space, but they would keep missing each other and actually get farther apart as they tried to get back together.
Meanwhile, both Matt and Page have a tendency to tumble into trouble without looking for it, and (at least to start with) they wouldn’t have each other to help when that happened. (Sending them back to 1912 gave me an excuse to study some more about that period to see what difficulties they might encounter. Since I love history, that was fun in and of itself, even if most of my research never got used.) It would be Page who eventually saved Matt’s bacon, though he wouldn’t know it, and she wouldn’t be enlightening him anytime soon under the circumstances.
At the end they’ve become more tightly bound in this relationship they’ve somehow managed to fall into. They’re both too proud to openly acknowledge their feelings for each other, but they’ve got almost a century of dating ‘research’ to help them deal with their issues. Although they’ll be fast-forwarding through history, hopefully it will give them enough time. And they’re certain to have some wacky adventures along the way.
Speaking of wacky adventures, the next character’s story I needed to get a handle on would be Nye’s.