Yeah so I'm just very Not Okay after that finale.

She gets through the introduction fine. She can be impersonal when she wants to be. Or when she has to be. Whatever. Shut up.

She has no first hand knowledge of the other versions of this crazy game she plays after death, but according to Michael, things are proceeding as they usually did before. The new people are, by and large, filling their roles. She's not sure which one is the her yet, the one who doesn't think they're supposed to be there.

Chidi believes he's earned The Good Place. She knows this from all the times before, but also from when she shows up at the center of town, knowing he'd be there and wanting to…

Well.

Be.

Just be near him. That will be enough.

"I was a professor of moral philosophy," he tells her. "I devoted my life to being good. It's…really reassuring to know that there's something after to reflect that. Now tell me. When can I meet Aristotle?"

"A – A – Aristotle," she stammers, "is actually in the Bad Place. You have to be, like, super good to get into the Good Place."

"I'm a better person than Aristotle?"

"Okay, don't let your head get too big there, b…" she catches herself. They just met. She can't call him Bud. Actually, she can't even really joke with him, either.

"Can you turn this off?" she asks Janet later, after her fourth or fifth near slip up. Why did they acknowledge that Chidi might accidentally give something away to Simone, and just assume that Eleanor would be able to keep this up? Hell, even Janet is terrible at this, and she's used to it.

"Turn off…your feelings for Chidi?"

"Yes."

"I cannot," Janet said. "If I could do that, I would have stopped myself from wasting hundreds of years fantasizing about Jason."

Eleanor cocked her head. "You're not a…person. So like, when you fantasize, can you…like…do anything about it?"

"Ah. You're asking if I'm capable of pleasuring myself." Janet gives a comprehending nod. "Not in the conventional human sense. But well, I can take these magnets and – "

Eleanor puts her hands up. "Okay, this sounds like the kind of thing I would want all the details on, but I am…surprisingly not interested."

"Probably for the better," Janet says. "It involves colors and concepts you can't see or comprehend."

"…ah."

Eleanor spends probably a week in Afterlife time trying to get all the guesses she has for what that means out of her head. Or rather, put them into the back of her mind. Because she's definitely not interested now but she's also sure she will be coming back to that later.

Michael, bless him, hasn't introduced the soul mate concept in this version, which means Chidi hasn't been psychologically influenced to pair off with anyone. Eleanor is pleased about this. This means he's almost always available when she initiates spending time together.

He turns to her while she's showing him 'archival footage' of former Good Place introduction videos. It's all made up. But she had known that it's exactly the kind of thing he's interested in. "You're an architect," he says. "You're…the architect of this neighborhood. Why…don't you have architect – y things to do, instead of hanging out with me?"

"Oh." She's unprepared for this question, but Michael has given her enough to run with. "Architects don't usually live in their neighborhoods. Because I've gotten this opportunity, I thought hey, why not try to make some friends? And I…" Something is squeezing her heart. She almost forgets to finish, lost in her memories. "And I like you. So I thought 'hey, why not try out the friendship thing with this one'?"

"Well, that's very sweet, Eleanor," he says. "I like you, too."

She spends her nights on a cot in Michael's office. Her office. Chidi gets the clown house. The one she wanted. The one that only existed because just once she'd dared to dream that maybe they were finally getting a future.

They've been robbed of one over eight hundred times.

Some nights, Eleanor doesn't sleep. She just cries. And because this is the motherforking fake Good Place, her tears don't taste like cheese.

She takes Chidi out on the lake. "This was always a fantasy of yours, wasn't it?" She asks.

"How did you know that?"

"I know everything," she says.

"That must be nice," he replies thoughtfully. "I spent my time on Earth in pursuit of answers. To know so much…"

"It's not all it's cracked up to be," she says. "Sometimes it really sucks."

"That's deep, Eleanor."

He's looking at her in that way. Okay, maybe not that way but enough in the ballpark of that way that makes her want to pull him aside, throw her trust in him like she had way back in Version Two, when all she'd known was that he was somehow the answer. I had thrown so much at you, Michael had told her, and yet in those few precious seconds, you knew that "find Chidi" would be enough.

She clears her throat, realizing she hasn't responded. "Oh, I don't know if I'd say deep. Just…knowing everything means you know of things that others don't. Memories, experiences…" She shrugs. She hopes it's casual. "This is the afterlife. Here, we literally carry the weight of the world. Janet is probably worse, though. She knows everything anyone has ever done. I just know…other stuff, I guess."

Chidi is staring at her again. "Wow," he says. They float in silence as the sun moves overhead. Chidi looks up at it. Squints. "You know," he begins, making eye contact, "you say you're interested in learning about humans, right? Making friends? Having those experiences?"

Yes. The experiences. Michael had told her about his overalls bit. She'd trotted that one at a party one night, a month or so back. "Oh, yes. It's fascinating to me. Because I'm definitely not a human. Never been to Earth. Nothing."

"I have a…probably weird proposition for you," he says, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees. "Why don't you come to my place a couple times a week? I kinda miss teaching. I can show you the basics of Aristotle, Kant, we can go through the Trolley Problem, kinda like a classroom setting."

Her heart lurches. She stares at him. She realizes when his expression changes to a perplexed one that she hasn't answered.

"I would love that."

"I love this," Michael says, excitedly moving around the room. "It's perfect. This is how it always happens. Always. He offers to help you, and you two grow closer. We're going to fix this, Eleanor. You and Chidi are going to fix this."

"But it's different this time," she says. "We've always fallen in love when both of us are up to date, like in Australia, or when we're both in the dark, like in all the reboots. This time I know, and he doesn't, and it's different, and even I know that changing variables in experiments can skew the results. What if it goes wrong this time? What if he ends up hating me?" She feels the tears coming. "I can't do that, Michael. Even if we make it to the Good Place…I would rather have the Bad Place with him loving me than him hating me in Heaven."

"Eleanor," he says, putting his hands on her shoulders, "you had more information last time. Remember? I showed you the memories. You walked into that bar in Canada knowing you guys had been in love, and he had no idea. And you still happened, almost right away. Trust me. It will work out."

"I guess," she says, wiping her nose, then looking up and him and offering a small smile. "Maybe it will."

"No. Wrong." Michael shakes his head. "Not maybe. Always. You and Chidi are an always situation."

She bites her lip. "I just…I keep wondering if maybe we've run out of good luck."

Michael shakes his head again. She knows he's in a human suit. She wonders if, if he keeps doing that, his head might pop off. "You two defined the odds even becoming better people once, and you did it every time. Ditto for you two finding each other. If this was about luck, you would have run out a long time ago. I don't know what it is, but whatever is between you transcends anything we can manipulate. It's…I've existed since the birth of existence, and I don't even understand it. But I trust it. I trust it completely."

She smiles. "Thanks," she says quietly, her voice barely a whisper.

"Okay, Teach," Eleanor says, bounding across the floor to settle on the couch. She whips out a notebook and pen. "Hit me with it."

Chidi stands in front of a chalkboard. "We're really doing this," he says with a smile.

There's something in that smile that makes her wonder. Not if he knows – he doesn't know – but if maybe something about his reset didn't go exactly as it had all those times before. If maybe something deep in his consciousness understands that what they're about to do is important beyond passing time, amusement, or casual interaction.

Or maybe it's just the faith she has, bleeding through to him the way it had come to her through Michael and Janet.

She returns his smile. "We're really doing this."

"Okay," he said, opening a book he'd had tucked under his arm. "Here we go."