FIC: [Haven] Eurydice's Adventures in the Underworld - (3/4) R, Audrey/Nathan, Mara/Nathan/William
3.
Audrey swings her handcuffs around her index finger, head ducked, watching them spin. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you get tied up so much it's almost as if you like it," she comments.
Nathan chained to a wall, grunts, "I don't like it."
They have found William, and much good may it do them or him. They walked into the mess he made when he came to this world. Nathan glares at the unconscious, long body slumped on the other side of Mara and wonders if he enjoyed wreaking the carnage outside. Maybe it's not fun for him without Mara there. William's mischief hasn't achieved anything except to get him and them chained to a wall. The way Nathan is feeling at the moment, he might just let them all stay there.
He still hasn't stopped shuddering with the disastrous aftermath of what Mara did to him last. "I don't mind it right now," he amends to Audrey.
None of them can hurt anyone if they stay where they are.
Audrey casts her eyes over the three of them, critically. She leans down and peers into William's hanging face. "He looks like you, a little bit," she says, then pulls a face, possibly in response to the look on Nathan's. "I mean... he has a similar physique and facial shape, more than his actual features. I remember that his eyes are blue." They're shut now. She stands and shuffles. "I guess I have a type. It's so hard to believe that he's what I was looking for. That this is the answer."
"You're not Mara," Nathan says, quickly. "You're her jailer."
Audrey snorts softly, but apparently enjoys that thought, on some level. A little smile plays on her lips.
Nathan doesn't feel like smiling. His mind is stuck on horrible repeating images. "That--" He looked at people and they burned. "You said William told you Troubles are linked to the person. Mara keeps saying the same." Usually she says it while complaining how limited her options are with him. "What she just made me do--"
Audrey nods. "She used your anger. You have a temper and then some, Nathan. You really need to work on that."
He wants to, but the fact he could gladly throttle Mara right now is a little defeating where that objective is concerned.
The animal-heads were not unduly vehement taking him in. Nathan assumes they saw he was just as much a victim of William and Mara's trickery as the other poor sap who wrought so much unwitting destruction. But he was left in no doubt they'd have killed him if he hadn't surrendered, hadn't been crouched on his knees, offering his hands up to them.
The other Troubled had burned up with the rest. They must have seen Mara take Nathan's away, or surely they'd have covered his eyes. They spoke to him, but he couldn't understand what they said. He got the impression that they aren't sure whether he's Mara's victim or ally, but aren't willing to take any risks.
Audrey looks around. "Mara's waking up." A moment later, she's faded into the air again. Was she ever there? It's notable that his hallucination never seems to co-exist with Mara being around, or at least awake, but Nathan is afraid to read anything into that. Hope could destroy him more cruelly than anything else. He's afraid, too, to contemplate the real Audrey bearing witness to all of this, from leaving the Lighthouse up to his current predicament.
Mara wakes, quiet at first -- hurting, and making the same soft sounds of Audrey in pain that tug at Nathan's heart -- before she sees him and remembers. She flies into a rage which lasts about ten seconds, until she lays her eyes on William. Her whole demeanour changes in an instant. She draws in a gasp -- breathy anguish and pure fear. Her face grows drawn and her eyes sheen over. She starts wrenching at her chains. "William..."
Now that he looks closer, Nathan can see William isn't doing so well. He's very pale and there's old blood and white bandaging peeping out under his jacket. The tight lines of his neck and jaw speak of pain even in his unconsciousness.
"Nathan, get us out of these chains," Mara orders, forgetting so soon that he's a treacherous and useless minion. "I need to go to him."
Nathan jangles his wrists and coughs a wry, "How?"
"Insert a forcefield into the mechanism of the cuffs," she states, as matter of fact as though it's obvious. "Do it! ...Do try not to break your wrists."
Even if he can use the forcefields to open his cuffs, it's not going to be possible to work his Trouble close enough to Mara to do the same for her. Half of his compliance is pure curiosity whether it'll work. It does. Chains burst and Mara averts her face. Nathan scrambles loose, his limbs fighting him after the hour or so spent in that position.
"I can check his pulse," he says to Mara, with something close to wonder as he realises. Pressing his fingers against William's neck, he feels the thrum of blood and life.
"Hush," she says. Her eyes are closed, her expression focused. "I'm going to try to accelerate his healing. I haven't done this for a very long time."
Nathan checks William over silently. There's a big lump on his head at the back, to explain the unconsciousness. He could have been drifting in and out for several days, which would explain Mara's inability to sense him. His skin is hot and feverish.
"There," Mara says after about a minute. "I've done what I can. I think he should wake up soon... if I've done it right. Nathan, get me loose, now."
"I don't owe you anything," he points out sourly. "Besides, it's not going to work."
"Not the forcefields," she scolds. "Make a skeleton key. A saw. A lever to hack the chain fixings from the wall!"
Annoyed, Nathan says, "I can't pick a lock, you need a sense of touch for that. I don't know how to forge metal."
She proceeds to tell him how, in intricate detail. He wonders which of her past, Barn-inflicted selves knew all that, but it matters little. He sits back and tries to shape her description of lifeless fact into creative thought. He makes an axe.
Mara sighs. "It will do. Try it."
"I'm not your serf." But he can't just leave her here, either, and now he's calmed down, he doesn't particularly want to stay. They need to get out of here as quickly and quietly as possible, with no-one seeing them and no-one making the mistake of trying to stop them.
William starts to wake up when Mara's left wrist is already free, albeit trailing a length of chain, and Nathan's trying to hack her right wrist from the wall. Mara gasps William's name, repeating it, asking if he's all right, her litany desperate and filled with emotion. The monster in love, Nathan thinks sourly, and thinks it's quite something. Then she goes quiet and the changing responsive light in her eyes tells him she's communicating with William on a level Nathan can't touch.
That infuriates Nathan, without him quite being able to pin down why. He seethes as he goes to William, leaning down and checking him over again while the other man blinks back to something approaching normal consciousness.
"Nathan!" William croaks, still somehow as annoyingly cheerful and overly familiar as ever. "Buddy! I knew you wouldn't leave me..." His eyes slide slyly across to Mara. "Then again, maybe it wasn't your choice... Honey, it's been such a long time."
Since he's already been talking to Mara in his head, that part is a show for Nathan; William rubbing it in. With William's uncertain health and Mara's changeable emotional state, it's probably not a good idea to punch him in the face, however much Nathan wants to.
She used your anger...
He flinches at the memory of Audrey's words.
You really need to work on that...
Mara yanks at her remaining captive arm, turning a brief glare on Nathan, who mechanically gets up to finish the job. He stands a few moments later, axe hanging from his hand, eying William's restraints as Mara rubs her freed wrists and tells William, "They have the box."
"Yeah..." he drawls slowly. His eyes are already spaced out, but they space out more. Mental communication. "It'll come to you. Just think back to how it felt. Let me help you."
Mara shuts her eyes and holds out her hand. She gives a little noise of shocked delight as the box appears in it. She opens it to spill out countless numbers of the black spheres; they attack William's chains, forming black daggers in the air, sinking almost imperceptibly into the larger shape as they did when becoming the rougarou. The daggers smash through the chains without touching William's wrists, then head onward to the cell door. It falls, crashing outwards, completely detached from lock and hinges.
"Hot damn!" exclaims William happily. "You've still got it." His eyes slide past her. "Maybe best not to encourage Nathan to get too close to me with that axe, huh?" He waggles his finger. "Don't forget -- hurt me, hurt her."
"I don't know if I care too much about that anymore," Nathan says, and gets some satisfaction out of their wariness in response to that. At least they know they can only push him so far.
Mara dismisses his show of rebellion without acknowledgement, going quickly to the door. She moves like Audrey, a trained police officer.
"No more killing!" Nathan snaps, diving after her. It's disconcerting how the black spheres cloud in the air around them, but they slide away from him like they're repelled. Not one of them seems to touch him.
"They took our guns," Mara replies, covertly low, for all the din she just made trashing the door. "I want them back. Find, Nathan!" After checking the corridor, she goes back to help William stand, silently gesturing for Nathan to take point at the door, just like Audrey would do.
The thought of using a Trouble to fight now is anathema, but his axe won't help against a throwing spear. The forcefields are harder to control even than usual. The incinerating-gaze Trouble knocked him off-centre. It's a struggle to keep a shield level, and just in front of him, rather than curling around and behind to where William and Mara are, where it will shatter against their resistant presence.
He has incentive to hang on. He sees the fate of the people that get past him, or that come from behind, courtesy of William's black spheres.
It's not the most dashing escape ever. After all, they're hiding behind a wall.
Mara tells him, "find," like she'd order a dog, but that's nothing new. She can't command his concentration, taxed as it is already, and the ability to find anything shifts in and out, difficult to use at the same time as the forcefield. He gets a vague directional cue, and if he'd rather focus on one Trouble or the other, it's not that one. He makes do with spotty flares of hints rather than the usual bright thread leading him to his target. They find their guns and supplies anyway, along with a few more useful objects on the way. Now they need an exit.
The nearest soft spot is in a courtyard with an elaborate fountain, at the centre of whatever compound they've ended up in. Maybe it's holy. Nathan imagines that it would give off some weird effects. It isn't locked down like the lighthouse, closed off by trapdoor and rituals.
The familiar fear slides through him at what they're about to do. Mara's smile is triumphant. William looks... like a desperate, beat-up guy who's desperately relieved. He looks disturbingly normal. The void beckons.
Despite all his efforts, Nathan is still incapacitated by the void. He ends up clinging to Mara on one side and William on the other, two people whose touch he can feel, but a situation he is acutely uncomfortable with. The world is too bright and too loud and no matter how hard he fights not to, he still needs their help to proceed.
"The void is instinctual," Mara's voice says, echoing strangely in his ear, but only because the noise that deafened him is suddenly absent. "You feel your way through. That's my best guess."
Nathan is on the ground. Her legs and William's are next to him. There are black and white rocks and two pale suns in the sky, and he has to shield his eyes against both of them as he rolls over.
"Sure it's not just because he's normal?" William's voice is teasing, gentle. His fingers play in Mara's hair, but Nathan can see he's holding back, a shaky, excited tension in his body. Almost as though after all this time, he's afraid to move in closer and really touch, or he's savouring every moment of the anticipation. "Regular people in the void... It's not something that happens."
"He has five Troubles, William. He's a long way from normal."
"Ah!" William's face opens with delight. His wide smile stretches his tired face. "You've been practising."
Nathan makes it as far as his knees. "Get away from her."
"Now, Nathan." An odd softness in William's face as he rolls his eyes. Maybe it's something akin to sympathy, since he's been where Nathan is now, but Nathan doesn't like to think of them as having anything in common. "You know the deal. Audrey Parker comes back... hey, she's all yours. She's not Audrey Parker now."
When he turns back to Mara, things flit across both their faces, telling Nathan they're communicating without words, forgetting he's there at all.
"Damn it..." Nathan drags himself to his feet. He always had a sick anticipation of this inevitable moment, of being alone with William and Mara; their reunion... and what the hell was he ever going to do about it?
They aren't interested in him. Their focus is for each other. Nathan's stomach turns as William's hands finally find Mara's face. It's her who pulls him in, the look in her eyes adoring. Their kiss is bordering on x-rated territory from the start. Nathan turns his face, clenching his fists, fighting fury that might not be wholly rational. It's Mara, not Audrey, in charge of that body now...
What claim does he have to dictate Mara's choices?
But he can't let this happen. Even if it's not going to get him anywhere. He can't fight them both, and what the hell would he do later, even if he managed it? They're his only companions.
That's Audrey's body. She wouldn't choose this. How can he face her if he stands by and allows this to happen?
He swings around and takes a step toward them. William pulls back from Mara and pins judging eyes on him. "Walk away, Nathan."
Mara's eyes contain more danger. But it's a quality in William's voice that makes Nathan obey. The clown that William plays is no longer in evidence. Nathan won't win this.
He doesn't know this monochrome world. Black rock, white rock -- which on closer inspection might actually be a macabre field of bone fragments -- grey-tinged sky, white-hot suns. There are trees in the distance, but even those look black and silver. Maybe it's a trick of the light. He keeps placing one foot in front of the other toward the horizon until he can't see William and Mara if he turns and looks behind him.
But he can see them in his thoughts. Reunited, lost lovers across worlds and centuries, making love on the rocky ground but only feeling each other, bodies intertwined. There isn't any chance they're doing anything else.
He looks around for his dream Audrey, but she isn't there.
Nathan sits down on a rock, finally, and buries his face in his hands.
***
William...! Mara's soul sings his name. She loses herself in him as their bodies and spirits meld.
Part of her was afraid of this moment. She has changed so much, unwilling, unwitting. So many pieces forced upon her, fragments of other lives, other people. They could not control her in the end, but there isn't a hope they haven't changed her. She isn't the woman she was. She has been the lover of other men since the last time she held William, too many of them. Borne the children of more than Nathan Wuornos. Seen some of them die. Lived and loved and birthed and lost while William was in exile. The Barn burned out a lot of it, used up the passion, left the memories cool and dry, but they're still there.
William has changed, too, she sees now. Still the trickster, the joker, the one with the power to make her smile. Still with the care and gallantry to make her feel like a queen, behind the buffoon. But there's a darkness in him that never used to be. He has suffered in equal measure to her, though the method differed. She would hunt them and tear them down for the punishments they inflicted, but Howard is dead already -- chalk up one favour to Nathan -- and who knows what is left of the rest of them after all this time. Centuries enough for worlds to fall.
"It has been too long," William's soul whispers inside her, and he accepts her, takes her as she has become, proving her fears groundless. He cares not a whit about those other men; she would not have chosen to be with them had she been in true command of herself. They mean nothing. Even the latest, the looming, desolate shadow of Nathan Wuornos, does not damage her in his eyes.
How could she do anything but accept him back in return? "My love."
William is battered and tired, exhausted by the time spent back in the void and by his longer imprisonment, healed but still drained by the process of healing. Their minds entangle much more energetically than their bodies are able. The last of her worries are soothed away. William has none such to soothe in return: she finds that the thought of rescuing her has kept him going all these years.
She remembers, now, snapshots of stolen instances inside the Barn, in the waiting years of her cycle, when they were able to reach each other as the old lives and memories were wearing down. Before other memories wiped her clean. Such meagre contact was enough to keep him hoping. She does not know if she could have kept the faith for so long, had their positions been reversed, had she been the one out there, knowing.
Instead she tries to chase back some of the darkness of those lonely years. The memories of them burn and make her shudder, but how can she shy away from them when he endured them for her?
It will all be different now.
There is no Howard, no Barn, and the rest of them, even if they are not long gone... She will never allow them to catch William or herself again. Now she knows the depths they'll sink to, she will mine her own depths to keep their freedom at any cost.
They have no idea how far she will go.
Objection stirs from the pieces of her that remember Audrey Parker, but she pushes them back down.
An unprepared and ignorant world awaits them on the other side of the gate. All they have to do is find it again.
"I like how you think." William nuzzles her neck and speaks aloud.
Mara shifts position. She didn't feel them at first, but she's starting to grow aware of how the rocks are hard, cold and sharp. She rolls up to crouch above him and places her hand on William's face, lovingly. "Nathan isn't going to help us find our way back, no matter what I do to him," she says. She pouts a little.
"No, I imagine he isn't." William's eyes are full of light and energy again, like her nearness has revitalized him. "He wants to keep us a long, long way from home." He smirks. "I didn't expect him riding to the rescue, honey."
"The irony is quite amusing," she admits. She doesn't want to talk about Nathan, but her unwillingness on the subject is the worst thing she could think about. William's face grows serious and he nods.
"Audrey Parker?" He leans up to kiss her breasts, burying his face between the sides of her open shirt. "Is she going to be a problem?"
The Barn didn't have chance to burn Audrey out of her, like it did the rest.
"I... don't think so." It's hard to tell where her mind is compromised. It is, after all, her mind. "Nathan is... difficult for me, William. I would have brought one of the others, but I had no choice."
"I know." He works his way back up to her face, catches her chin. "Don't worry about the geek. He's wandered off somewhere. Maybe he'll get eaten by a dragon."
She flinches; can't help it, even though that was a joke.
William mends the error with a wry laugh. "Hey, five Troubles, he can look after himself. But he's not here, and I'm guessing he'll stay clear for a while, so you don't have to think about him. It's just you and me, babe." He tips her chin and kisses her again. "Think about you and me."
It isn't difficult. William holds her and she feels safe, and whole, and that has been a long, long time coming, too.
Maybe there's just the slightest twinge of something missing.
They will have to adjust, of course they will. Both of them changed, and they will not fit together in quite the same ways they once did. They will need to work on that.
Right now is belonging, and it's the most powerful thing Mara has felt in long years, up to and including Nathan. How could it be otherwise?
Damn Audrey Parker for making her doubt this.
***
Nathan doesn't come back for long enough that she starts to wonder if he will. Part of her feels relief. He threatened to walk away before. Now that she has William, she doesn't need him. There is nothing she and William cannot overcome together. Nathan's leaving would be a solution to her problems.
Except the worst of her problems is that she doesn't want the solution. She wants to go and find him, drag him back with them if necessary.
It isn't necessary and she's saved the decision because Nathan does come back, eventually, though William's thoughts brush hers and his eyes watch her, knowing. It's he who nudges her lightly and says, "The life of the party is coming back." When she looks up to see the skinny figure heading towards them in a foot-dragging march, her little gasp would have given her away even without the connection between them.
She wants to tell William, "It's Audrey Parker, it's not me." Except that isn't how it works. Her actions might have been shaped by Audrey's memories and personality, but there has only ever been one soul inside her.
A delightful solution hits her suddenly. She has always shared everything with William. He picks the idea from her mind and gives her a skewed smile, full of irony and a certain softening amusement. It brightens and spreads across his face by increments.
"It doesn't matter to me that you were with him," William tells her, giving his pants a few tugs for more respectability but not fastening them all the way. "After all, you didn't know you were missing me when you fell for our boy Mr Interesting."
"After this, it won't matter," Mara promises. "Share this with me, too."
William's grin is gently mischievous. "You know he won't like it."
"But he will." Mara shares that, too, whispering from her mind to William's. "He's desperate for touch. Helpless against it."
William's smirk squashes a little and he looks down at his hand, flexing it into a fist and opening it again. He remembers for her his fist impacting Nathan's face.
Mara nods slowly. "He won't be able to help himself."
Nathan comes toward them, his face growing blanker and bleaker, steps slowing as he nears. He visibly steels himself to keep walking.
Mara disengages from William and stands to pin Nathan with the full force of her gaze. He has become adept at resisting her, stubborn enough that even she must credit him for it. "Nathan, come here," she says, projecting all her will and sexuality into the command. She lifts her chin, slides her hands down her throat to scrape aside loose cloth at her breast, exposing bare skin -- it's inescapable that the promise of feeling is what works on him the best. "Come here, I said."
Nathan's jaw works soundlessly. His feet have rooted into the ground. Stark suspicion and vulnerable need line his face. William sits upon a rock next to Mara, his bended legs sprawled and wide. He laughs. "I hear she got you on a leash, Golden Boy. But maybe that's not so different to Audrey?"
"Shut--" Nathan begins, his hands curling into fists at his sides. But it seems he can't divert his attention from Mara for long enough to finish even so short a growled return. His eyes fix again. There's sweat on his face. He fights her harder than he's ever fought, struggling not to be brought down in front of William. He says, "Mara, no."
The note in his voice isn't quite begging, though it wouldn't be the first time he begged her. It's more like he's trying to appeal to her -- to some better nature inside of her. To Audrey, or perhaps to the time they've spent in each other's company thus far.
None of that matters now.
Audrey and William war within her. This is the best way she has to mollify them both. Nathan will have to adjust.
"You need me," she reminds him. "I want you to touch me, Nathan. You can touch anywhere you like, this time."
His foot jerks forward. A moment later, his other foot matches it. Moving stiffly, he doesn't manage to catch himself until he's within reach of her. When he does catch himself, he jerks his head to one side, screwing his eyes shut. He folds his arms and clamps his hands beneath his armpits, squashing the temptation to reach out and touch. He says to William, "What does it mean, if she has you back and she still wants me?"
"All relationships are compromise." William shrugs and pulls a so-so face. He gets up and pats Nathan on the chest a few times insistently, and when that cranks his eye open sets a hand over his own heart. "I know it was a shocker, but... I'm sure the better man won." William sidles aside, behind Nathan, who shifts nervously, caught between them. He casts a glance over his shoulder, then in his confused anxiety makes the mistake of looking back at Mara.
"Good boy." Mara plants her hand over Nathan's mesmerised face and pushes him down in front of her. His face yearns into her palm. If he could burrow under her skin, she's sure he would. Mara drops her clothes.
Nathan licks his lips and manages to slide his eyes down to the pile of garments around her ankles and lock them there for longer than she'd expect, so close. He has become too adept at resistance. Seconds tick by while his eyes move up from her knees to feast on the expanse of her skin.
Abruptly, he loses the battle. His hands are curled over her hips, his mouth is on her body. She gasps and arches herself, pushing against him, as he tastes her, and no doubt tastes William still lingering on her, but is incapable of complaint. She puts her hands over his and reclines back, lowering herself to the ground, pulling him on top of her. "No, Nathan," she says, making her voice a smooth purr, "here." She guides his head up from the wet heat between her legs to her breasts, and works her fingers on his clothes, unfastening his belt.
Nathan's head is down. She looks over his shoulder to William's raised eyebrows.
This is what's left of Audrey Parker, she tells him. This is what Audrey Parker left her with.
But it can be something else they share.
Nathan knows she unzips him; the shock goes through him when she reaches inside his jeans. She is going to welcome him into her body as she has not done during their days of searching. That would have been too much to give away, before now. The sheen of moisture over the despair on his face speaks of his helplessness and desire. Mara pulls to the forefront of her mind Audrey, and the things they have done while she was Audrey, and the ways she touched him back then. She lets her face soften and whispers his name with an intonation no longer her own, and feels his surrender become willing, complete.
If she could have played this role from the start, she wouldn't have needed a Trouble to control him. But that, too, she dared not risk before now. Until she had William back, the potential cost was too high.
She refuses to be Audrey and can't afford to channel her for more than a moment.
Nathan is too preoccupied, his hands joining hers at disrobing them both, yanking his jeans down with a new fervour, his heat like a furnace against her thigh. He doesn't register William's chuckle. He's speaking her name, over and -- no, not her name; a nagging reminder from William's psyche pulls her back from the brink.
Mara scatters kisses against Nathan's throat, opens her legs and takes him in, sweet and familiar. She abandons Audrey for herself and slides her eyes beyond Nathan to William, who bounces a few times on his heels and reaches for the fastenings on his pants.
Nathan is oblivious until William crouches over them both and sets his hand to Nathan's naked shoulder.
***
"He won't forgive us." William's face is unusually serious and pensive as they walk side-by-side through the silvery trees. The forest is pretty, but Nathan's anguish and fury was far prettier on him, when they left him fuming and debauched at their camp. Mara feels jubilation, satiation, an eradication of guilt. Now that Nathan belongs to both of them, they can belong equally to each other again. She knows if she holds onto that long enough, it will infect William through their link, and drag him up out of these boring doldrums.
"He will," Mara insists. "He has to forgive me. He needs me."
"Mmm." The noise William makes is long and unconvinced. He cracks a grin and nudges her arm with his knuckles, but it's a serious gesture, underneath. "Babe, you don't have anything to prove. We don't have to--"
Mara blinks at him. "You don't want Nathan?" Disappointment cuts her. She wanted to lay him out for William like a gift -- see, this can be his, too, this thing so precious to the part of her that was Audrey.
"...Nah. Wuornos is a peach." William shakes it off briskly and kisses her on the forehead. "It's been a long time, with the guys. Thank you, honey."
Mara lets her shoulders slump with relief, and tries to ignore the unsettled something still churning in her stomach.
"I am a bit concerned that we go back and he shoots me," William adds, his voice breaking on the frank admission and accompanying attempt at a laugh. "Our boy was still armed, and he's not as harmless as... past pets."
"He would not dare," Mara declares. "He could not forget again that to shoot you is to shoot me."
"Yeah? We might just have pushed him past the point where he's thinking about dear 'Audrey'..."
Mara rolls her eyes. There is a part of William that has always been bashful and endearingly timid. But after years apart have stripped their souls and remade them, she is relieved that it is still there.
"I watched you," he says, holding her hands beneath the silver trees. "I watched the world change, in your dreams while you waited in the Barn. The years they let you out to fix Troubles were the longest and loneliest. You were too far away, and I couldn't reach you at all. But then when you came back after each time, I got new stories, new people, new Troubles; I got to find out how our gifts had evolved, and how much you'd enjoyed playing with them again, even if you didn't know the real story..."
Mara nods slowly. "It was oddly satisfying from the other side. A murder scene can also be a pleasing puzzle. All our riddles, laid out to unpick. Maybe it was what I sensed of you in them."
"Or your original self." He leans down and kisses her. "Dear heart, I still love you. You have all my thoughts. How can you doubt it? Don't worry about Wuornos, one way or the other... Unless, of course, he's waiting back at camp cleaning his service pistol and planning to sink one in me."
Mara laughs and looks up at the sky. The suns may be setting soon, although with two of them a stretched-out hand's width apart in the sky, it's hard to tell what that will do to the light levels. They wasted an hour or so dozing on a bed of the odd, purplish-black grass that grows beneath the trees' sheltering canopy, after first leaving Nathan to chill. He has had more than enough time for his initial outrage to wear off.
"Do you want to go back and find out?" William asks, nervously.
She tips a shoulder and says, "Why not?"
The thought of Nathan's helpless arousal and warring fury thrills her.
***
Nathan stands up as they approach. His stance... the only apt description for it would be painfully stiff, therein lying all the irony in the world. His fists are clenched at his sides. He doesn't wait for William and Mara to get in range. Mara, as Audrey, shouldn't have forgotten that he can move so fast.
She should not have ruled out the possibility of violent retaliation from Nathan. He has done worse before. It is Audrey in her who wants to see him as kind, and good, and essentially harmless.
She sees him lunge at William and his arm swing back. She doesn't see the blow connect, her mouth opening and her lips on the edge of a startled, urgent order, but she feels the pain, a flare of agony across her jaw, and a corresponding crunch even though there's been no direct pressure to her face.
It blanks out her senses and she falls.
***
Audrey swings her handcuffs around her index finger, head ducked, watching them spin. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you get tied up so much it's almost as if you like it," she comments.
Nathan chained to a wall, grunts, "I don't like it."
They have found William, and much good may it do them or him. They walked into the mess he made when he came to this world. Nathan glares at the unconscious, long body slumped on the other side of Mara and wonders if he enjoyed wreaking the carnage outside. Maybe it's not fun for him without Mara there. William's mischief hasn't achieved anything except to get him and them chained to a wall. The way Nathan is feeling at the moment, he might just let them all stay there.
He still hasn't stopped shuddering with the disastrous aftermath of what Mara did to him last. "I don't mind it right now," he amends to Audrey.
None of them can hurt anyone if they stay where they are.
Audrey casts her eyes over the three of them, critically. She leans down and peers into William's hanging face. "He looks like you, a little bit," she says, then pulls a face, possibly in response to the look on Nathan's. "I mean... he has a similar physique and facial shape, more than his actual features. I remember that his eyes are blue." They're shut now. She stands and shuffles. "I guess I have a type. It's so hard to believe that he's what I was looking for. That this is the answer."
"You're not Mara," Nathan says, quickly. "You're her jailer."
Audrey snorts softly, but apparently enjoys that thought, on some level. A little smile plays on her lips.
Nathan doesn't feel like smiling. His mind is stuck on horrible repeating images. "That--" He looked at people and they burned. "You said William told you Troubles are linked to the person. Mara keeps saying the same." Usually she says it while complaining how limited her options are with him. "What she just made me do--"
Audrey nods. "She used your anger. You have a temper and then some, Nathan. You really need to work on that."
He wants to, but the fact he could gladly throttle Mara right now is a little defeating where that objective is concerned.
The animal-heads were not unduly vehement taking him in. Nathan assumes they saw he was just as much a victim of William and Mara's trickery as the other poor sap who wrought so much unwitting destruction. But he was left in no doubt they'd have killed him if he hadn't surrendered, hadn't been crouched on his knees, offering his hands up to them.
The other Troubled had burned up with the rest. They must have seen Mara take Nathan's away, or surely they'd have covered his eyes. They spoke to him, but he couldn't understand what they said. He got the impression that they aren't sure whether he's Mara's victim or ally, but aren't willing to take any risks.
Audrey looks around. "Mara's waking up." A moment later, she's faded into the air again. Was she ever there? It's notable that his hallucination never seems to co-exist with Mara being around, or at least awake, but Nathan is afraid to read anything into that. Hope could destroy him more cruelly than anything else. He's afraid, too, to contemplate the real Audrey bearing witness to all of this, from leaving the Lighthouse up to his current predicament.
Mara wakes, quiet at first -- hurting, and making the same soft sounds of Audrey in pain that tug at Nathan's heart -- before she sees him and remembers. She flies into a rage which lasts about ten seconds, until she lays her eyes on William. Her whole demeanour changes in an instant. She draws in a gasp -- breathy anguish and pure fear. Her face grows drawn and her eyes sheen over. She starts wrenching at her chains. "William..."
Now that he looks closer, Nathan can see William isn't doing so well. He's very pale and there's old blood and white bandaging peeping out under his jacket. The tight lines of his neck and jaw speak of pain even in his unconsciousness.
"Nathan, get us out of these chains," Mara orders, forgetting so soon that he's a treacherous and useless minion. "I need to go to him."
Nathan jangles his wrists and coughs a wry, "How?"
"Insert a forcefield into the mechanism of the cuffs," she states, as matter of fact as though it's obvious. "Do it! ...Do try not to break your wrists."
Even if he can use the forcefields to open his cuffs, it's not going to be possible to work his Trouble close enough to Mara to do the same for her. Half of his compliance is pure curiosity whether it'll work. It does. Chains burst and Mara averts her face. Nathan scrambles loose, his limbs fighting him after the hour or so spent in that position.
"I can check his pulse," he says to Mara, with something close to wonder as he realises. Pressing his fingers against William's neck, he feels the thrum of blood and life.
"Hush," she says. Her eyes are closed, her expression focused. "I'm going to try to accelerate his healing. I haven't done this for a very long time."
Nathan checks William over silently. There's a big lump on his head at the back, to explain the unconsciousness. He could have been drifting in and out for several days, which would explain Mara's inability to sense him. His skin is hot and feverish.
"There," Mara says after about a minute. "I've done what I can. I think he should wake up soon... if I've done it right. Nathan, get me loose, now."
"I don't owe you anything," he points out sourly. "Besides, it's not going to work."
"Not the forcefields," she scolds. "Make a skeleton key. A saw. A lever to hack the chain fixings from the wall!"
Annoyed, Nathan says, "I can't pick a lock, you need a sense of touch for that. I don't know how to forge metal."
She proceeds to tell him how, in intricate detail. He wonders which of her past, Barn-inflicted selves knew all that, but it matters little. He sits back and tries to shape her description of lifeless fact into creative thought. He makes an axe.
Mara sighs. "It will do. Try it."
"I'm not your serf." But he can't just leave her here, either, and now he's calmed down, he doesn't particularly want to stay. They need to get out of here as quickly and quietly as possible, with no-one seeing them and no-one making the mistake of trying to stop them.
William starts to wake up when Mara's left wrist is already free, albeit trailing a length of chain, and Nathan's trying to hack her right wrist from the wall. Mara gasps William's name, repeating it, asking if he's all right, her litany desperate and filled with emotion. The monster in love, Nathan thinks sourly, and thinks it's quite something. Then she goes quiet and the changing responsive light in her eyes tells him she's communicating with William on a level Nathan can't touch.
That infuriates Nathan, without him quite being able to pin down why. He seethes as he goes to William, leaning down and checking him over again while the other man blinks back to something approaching normal consciousness.
"Nathan!" William croaks, still somehow as annoyingly cheerful and overly familiar as ever. "Buddy! I knew you wouldn't leave me..." His eyes slide slyly across to Mara. "Then again, maybe it wasn't your choice... Honey, it's been such a long time."
Since he's already been talking to Mara in his head, that part is a show for Nathan; William rubbing it in. With William's uncertain health and Mara's changeable emotional state, it's probably not a good idea to punch him in the face, however much Nathan wants to.
She used your anger...
He flinches at the memory of Audrey's words.
You really need to work on that...
Mara yanks at her remaining captive arm, turning a brief glare on Nathan, who mechanically gets up to finish the job. He stands a few moments later, axe hanging from his hand, eying William's restraints as Mara rubs her freed wrists and tells William, "They have the box."
"Yeah..." he drawls slowly. His eyes are already spaced out, but they space out more. Mental communication. "It'll come to you. Just think back to how it felt. Let me help you."
Mara shuts her eyes and holds out her hand. She gives a little noise of shocked delight as the box appears in it. She opens it to spill out countless numbers of the black spheres; they attack William's chains, forming black daggers in the air, sinking almost imperceptibly into the larger shape as they did when becoming the rougarou. The daggers smash through the chains without touching William's wrists, then head onward to the cell door. It falls, crashing outwards, completely detached from lock and hinges.
"Hot damn!" exclaims William happily. "You've still got it." His eyes slide past her. "Maybe best not to encourage Nathan to get too close to me with that axe, huh?" He waggles his finger. "Don't forget -- hurt me, hurt her."
"I don't know if I care too much about that anymore," Nathan says, and gets some satisfaction out of their wariness in response to that. At least they know they can only push him so far.
Mara dismisses his show of rebellion without acknowledgement, going quickly to the door. She moves like Audrey, a trained police officer.
"No more killing!" Nathan snaps, diving after her. It's disconcerting how the black spheres cloud in the air around them, but they slide away from him like they're repelled. Not one of them seems to touch him.
"They took our guns," Mara replies, covertly low, for all the din she just made trashing the door. "I want them back. Find, Nathan!" After checking the corridor, she goes back to help William stand, silently gesturing for Nathan to take point at the door, just like Audrey would do.
The thought of using a Trouble to fight now is anathema, but his axe won't help against a throwing spear. The forcefields are harder to control even than usual. The incinerating-gaze Trouble knocked him off-centre. It's a struggle to keep a shield level, and just in front of him, rather than curling around and behind to where William and Mara are, where it will shatter against their resistant presence.
He has incentive to hang on. He sees the fate of the people that get past him, or that come from behind, courtesy of William's black spheres.
It's not the most dashing escape ever. After all, they're hiding behind a wall.
Mara tells him, "find," like she'd order a dog, but that's nothing new. She can't command his concentration, taxed as it is already, and the ability to find anything shifts in and out, difficult to use at the same time as the forcefield. He gets a vague directional cue, and if he'd rather focus on one Trouble or the other, it's not that one. He makes do with spotty flares of hints rather than the usual bright thread leading him to his target. They find their guns and supplies anyway, along with a few more useful objects on the way. Now they need an exit.
The nearest soft spot is in a courtyard with an elaborate fountain, at the centre of whatever compound they've ended up in. Maybe it's holy. Nathan imagines that it would give off some weird effects. It isn't locked down like the lighthouse, closed off by trapdoor and rituals.
The familiar fear slides through him at what they're about to do. Mara's smile is triumphant. William looks... like a desperate, beat-up guy who's desperately relieved. He looks disturbingly normal. The void beckons.
Despite all his efforts, Nathan is still incapacitated by the void. He ends up clinging to Mara on one side and William on the other, two people whose touch he can feel, but a situation he is acutely uncomfortable with. The world is too bright and too loud and no matter how hard he fights not to, he still needs their help to proceed.
"The void is instinctual," Mara's voice says, echoing strangely in his ear, but only because the noise that deafened him is suddenly absent. "You feel your way through. That's my best guess."
Nathan is on the ground. Her legs and William's are next to him. There are black and white rocks and two pale suns in the sky, and he has to shield his eyes against both of them as he rolls over.
"Sure it's not just because he's normal?" William's voice is teasing, gentle. His fingers play in Mara's hair, but Nathan can see he's holding back, a shaky, excited tension in his body. Almost as though after all this time, he's afraid to move in closer and really touch, or he's savouring every moment of the anticipation. "Regular people in the void... It's not something that happens."
"He has five Troubles, William. He's a long way from normal."
"Ah!" William's face opens with delight. His wide smile stretches his tired face. "You've been practising."
Nathan makes it as far as his knees. "Get away from her."
"Now, Nathan." An odd softness in William's face as he rolls his eyes. Maybe it's something akin to sympathy, since he's been where Nathan is now, but Nathan doesn't like to think of them as having anything in common. "You know the deal. Audrey Parker comes back... hey, she's all yours. She's not Audrey Parker now."
When he turns back to Mara, things flit across both their faces, telling Nathan they're communicating without words, forgetting he's there at all.
"Damn it..." Nathan drags himself to his feet. He always had a sick anticipation of this inevitable moment, of being alone with William and Mara; their reunion... and what the hell was he ever going to do about it?
They aren't interested in him. Their focus is for each other. Nathan's stomach turns as William's hands finally find Mara's face. It's her who pulls him in, the look in her eyes adoring. Their kiss is bordering on x-rated territory from the start. Nathan turns his face, clenching his fists, fighting fury that might not be wholly rational. It's Mara, not Audrey, in charge of that body now...
What claim does he have to dictate Mara's choices?
But he can't let this happen. Even if it's not going to get him anywhere. He can't fight them both, and what the hell would he do later, even if he managed it? They're his only companions.
That's Audrey's body. She wouldn't choose this. How can he face her if he stands by and allows this to happen?
He swings around and takes a step toward them. William pulls back from Mara and pins judging eyes on him. "Walk away, Nathan."
Mara's eyes contain more danger. But it's a quality in William's voice that makes Nathan obey. The clown that William plays is no longer in evidence. Nathan won't win this.
He doesn't know this monochrome world. Black rock, white rock -- which on closer inspection might actually be a macabre field of bone fragments -- grey-tinged sky, white-hot suns. There are trees in the distance, but even those look black and silver. Maybe it's a trick of the light. He keeps placing one foot in front of the other toward the horizon until he can't see William and Mara if he turns and looks behind him.
But he can see them in his thoughts. Reunited, lost lovers across worlds and centuries, making love on the rocky ground but only feeling each other, bodies intertwined. There isn't any chance they're doing anything else.
He looks around for his dream Audrey, but she isn't there.
Nathan sits down on a rock, finally, and buries his face in his hands.
***
William...! Mara's soul sings his name. She loses herself in him as their bodies and spirits meld.
Part of her was afraid of this moment. She has changed so much, unwilling, unwitting. So many pieces forced upon her, fragments of other lives, other people. They could not control her in the end, but there isn't a hope they haven't changed her. She isn't the woman she was. She has been the lover of other men since the last time she held William, too many of them. Borne the children of more than Nathan Wuornos. Seen some of them die. Lived and loved and birthed and lost while William was in exile. The Barn burned out a lot of it, used up the passion, left the memories cool and dry, but they're still there.
William has changed, too, she sees now. Still the trickster, the joker, the one with the power to make her smile. Still with the care and gallantry to make her feel like a queen, behind the buffoon. But there's a darkness in him that never used to be. He has suffered in equal measure to her, though the method differed. She would hunt them and tear them down for the punishments they inflicted, but Howard is dead already -- chalk up one favour to Nathan -- and who knows what is left of the rest of them after all this time. Centuries enough for worlds to fall.
"It has been too long," William's soul whispers inside her, and he accepts her, takes her as she has become, proving her fears groundless. He cares not a whit about those other men; she would not have chosen to be with them had she been in true command of herself. They mean nothing. Even the latest, the looming, desolate shadow of Nathan Wuornos, does not damage her in his eyes.
How could she do anything but accept him back in return? "My love."
William is battered and tired, exhausted by the time spent back in the void and by his longer imprisonment, healed but still drained by the process of healing. Their minds entangle much more energetically than their bodies are able. The last of her worries are soothed away. William has none such to soothe in return: she finds that the thought of rescuing her has kept him going all these years.
She remembers, now, snapshots of stolen instances inside the Barn, in the waiting years of her cycle, when they were able to reach each other as the old lives and memories were wearing down. Before other memories wiped her clean. Such meagre contact was enough to keep him hoping. She does not know if she could have kept the faith for so long, had their positions been reversed, had she been the one out there, knowing.
Instead she tries to chase back some of the darkness of those lonely years. The memories of them burn and make her shudder, but how can she shy away from them when he endured them for her?
It will all be different now.
There is no Howard, no Barn, and the rest of them, even if they are not long gone... She will never allow them to catch William or herself again. Now she knows the depths they'll sink to, she will mine her own depths to keep their freedom at any cost.
They have no idea how far she will go.
Objection stirs from the pieces of her that remember Audrey Parker, but she pushes them back down.
An unprepared and ignorant world awaits them on the other side of the gate. All they have to do is find it again.
"I like how you think." William nuzzles her neck and speaks aloud.
Mara shifts position. She didn't feel them at first, but she's starting to grow aware of how the rocks are hard, cold and sharp. She rolls up to crouch above him and places her hand on William's face, lovingly. "Nathan isn't going to help us find our way back, no matter what I do to him," she says. She pouts a little.
"No, I imagine he isn't." William's eyes are full of light and energy again, like her nearness has revitalized him. "He wants to keep us a long, long way from home." He smirks. "I didn't expect him riding to the rescue, honey."
"The irony is quite amusing," she admits. She doesn't want to talk about Nathan, but her unwillingness on the subject is the worst thing she could think about. William's face grows serious and he nods.
"Audrey Parker?" He leans up to kiss her breasts, burying his face between the sides of her open shirt. "Is she going to be a problem?"
The Barn didn't have chance to burn Audrey out of her, like it did the rest.
"I... don't think so." It's hard to tell where her mind is compromised. It is, after all, her mind. "Nathan is... difficult for me, William. I would have brought one of the others, but I had no choice."
"I know." He works his way back up to her face, catches her chin. "Don't worry about the geek. He's wandered off somewhere. Maybe he'll get eaten by a dragon."
She flinches; can't help it, even though that was a joke.
William mends the error with a wry laugh. "Hey, five Troubles, he can look after himself. But he's not here, and I'm guessing he'll stay clear for a while, so you don't have to think about him. It's just you and me, babe." He tips her chin and kisses her again. "Think about you and me."
It isn't difficult. William holds her and she feels safe, and whole, and that has been a long, long time coming, too.
Maybe there's just the slightest twinge of something missing.
They will have to adjust, of course they will. Both of them changed, and they will not fit together in quite the same ways they once did. They will need to work on that.
Right now is belonging, and it's the most powerful thing Mara has felt in long years, up to and including Nathan. How could it be otherwise?
Damn Audrey Parker for making her doubt this.
***
Nathan doesn't come back for long enough that she starts to wonder if he will. Part of her feels relief. He threatened to walk away before. Now that she has William, she doesn't need him. There is nothing she and William cannot overcome together. Nathan's leaving would be a solution to her problems.
Except the worst of her problems is that she doesn't want the solution. She wants to go and find him, drag him back with them if necessary.
It isn't necessary and she's saved the decision because Nathan does come back, eventually, though William's thoughts brush hers and his eyes watch her, knowing. It's he who nudges her lightly and says, "The life of the party is coming back." When she looks up to see the skinny figure heading towards them in a foot-dragging march, her little gasp would have given her away even without the connection between them.
She wants to tell William, "It's Audrey Parker, it's not me." Except that isn't how it works. Her actions might have been shaped by Audrey's memories and personality, but there has only ever been one soul inside her.
A delightful solution hits her suddenly. She has always shared everything with William. He picks the idea from her mind and gives her a skewed smile, full of irony and a certain softening amusement. It brightens and spreads across his face by increments.
"It doesn't matter to me that you were with him," William tells her, giving his pants a few tugs for more respectability but not fastening them all the way. "After all, you didn't know you were missing me when you fell for our boy Mr Interesting."
"After this, it won't matter," Mara promises. "Share this with me, too."
William's grin is gently mischievous. "You know he won't like it."
"But he will." Mara shares that, too, whispering from her mind to William's. "He's desperate for touch. Helpless against it."
William's smirk squashes a little and he looks down at his hand, flexing it into a fist and opening it again. He remembers for her his fist impacting Nathan's face.
Mara nods slowly. "He won't be able to help himself."
Nathan comes toward them, his face growing blanker and bleaker, steps slowing as he nears. He visibly steels himself to keep walking.
Mara disengages from William and stands to pin Nathan with the full force of her gaze. He has become adept at resisting her, stubborn enough that even she must credit him for it. "Nathan, come here," she says, projecting all her will and sexuality into the command. She lifts her chin, slides her hands down her throat to scrape aside loose cloth at her breast, exposing bare skin -- it's inescapable that the promise of feeling is what works on him the best. "Come here, I said."
Nathan's jaw works soundlessly. His feet have rooted into the ground. Stark suspicion and vulnerable need line his face. William sits upon a rock next to Mara, his bended legs sprawled and wide. He laughs. "I hear she got you on a leash, Golden Boy. But maybe that's not so different to Audrey?"
"Shut--" Nathan begins, his hands curling into fists at his sides. But it seems he can't divert his attention from Mara for long enough to finish even so short a growled return. His eyes fix again. There's sweat on his face. He fights her harder than he's ever fought, struggling not to be brought down in front of William. He says, "Mara, no."
The note in his voice isn't quite begging, though it wouldn't be the first time he begged her. It's more like he's trying to appeal to her -- to some better nature inside of her. To Audrey, or perhaps to the time they've spent in each other's company thus far.
None of that matters now.
Audrey and William war within her. This is the best way she has to mollify them both. Nathan will have to adjust.
"You need me," she reminds him. "I want you to touch me, Nathan. You can touch anywhere you like, this time."
His foot jerks forward. A moment later, his other foot matches it. Moving stiffly, he doesn't manage to catch himself until he's within reach of her. When he does catch himself, he jerks his head to one side, screwing his eyes shut. He folds his arms and clamps his hands beneath his armpits, squashing the temptation to reach out and touch. He says to William, "What does it mean, if she has you back and she still wants me?"
"All relationships are compromise." William shrugs and pulls a so-so face. He gets up and pats Nathan on the chest a few times insistently, and when that cranks his eye open sets a hand over his own heart. "I know it was a shocker, but... I'm sure the better man won." William sidles aside, behind Nathan, who shifts nervously, caught between them. He casts a glance over his shoulder, then in his confused anxiety makes the mistake of looking back at Mara.
"Good boy." Mara plants her hand over Nathan's mesmerised face and pushes him down in front of her. His face yearns into her palm. If he could burrow under her skin, she's sure he would. Mara drops her clothes.
Nathan licks his lips and manages to slide his eyes down to the pile of garments around her ankles and lock them there for longer than she'd expect, so close. He has become too adept at resistance. Seconds tick by while his eyes move up from her knees to feast on the expanse of her skin.
Abruptly, he loses the battle. His hands are curled over her hips, his mouth is on her body. She gasps and arches herself, pushing against him, as he tastes her, and no doubt tastes William still lingering on her, but is incapable of complaint. She puts her hands over his and reclines back, lowering herself to the ground, pulling him on top of her. "No, Nathan," she says, making her voice a smooth purr, "here." She guides his head up from the wet heat between her legs to her breasts, and works her fingers on his clothes, unfastening his belt.
Nathan's head is down. She looks over his shoulder to William's raised eyebrows.
This is what's left of Audrey Parker, she tells him. This is what Audrey Parker left her with.
But it can be something else they share.
Nathan knows she unzips him; the shock goes through him when she reaches inside his jeans. She is going to welcome him into her body as she has not done during their days of searching. That would have been too much to give away, before now. The sheen of moisture over the despair on his face speaks of his helplessness and desire. Mara pulls to the forefront of her mind Audrey, and the things they have done while she was Audrey, and the ways she touched him back then. She lets her face soften and whispers his name with an intonation no longer her own, and feels his surrender become willing, complete.
If she could have played this role from the start, she wouldn't have needed a Trouble to control him. But that, too, she dared not risk before now. Until she had William back, the potential cost was too high.
She refuses to be Audrey and can't afford to channel her for more than a moment.
Nathan is too preoccupied, his hands joining hers at disrobing them both, yanking his jeans down with a new fervour, his heat like a furnace against her thigh. He doesn't register William's chuckle. He's speaking her name, over and -- no, not her name; a nagging reminder from William's psyche pulls her back from the brink.
Mara scatters kisses against Nathan's throat, opens her legs and takes him in, sweet and familiar. She abandons Audrey for herself and slides her eyes beyond Nathan to William, who bounces a few times on his heels and reaches for the fastenings on his pants.
Nathan is oblivious until William crouches over them both and sets his hand to Nathan's naked shoulder.
***
"He won't forgive us." William's face is unusually serious and pensive as they walk side-by-side through the silvery trees. The forest is pretty, but Nathan's anguish and fury was far prettier on him, when they left him fuming and debauched at their camp. Mara feels jubilation, satiation, an eradication of guilt. Now that Nathan belongs to both of them, they can belong equally to each other again. She knows if she holds onto that long enough, it will infect William through their link, and drag him up out of these boring doldrums.
"He will," Mara insists. "He has to forgive me. He needs me."
"Mmm." The noise William makes is long and unconvinced. He cracks a grin and nudges her arm with his knuckles, but it's a serious gesture, underneath. "Babe, you don't have anything to prove. We don't have to--"
Mara blinks at him. "You don't want Nathan?" Disappointment cuts her. She wanted to lay him out for William like a gift -- see, this can be his, too, this thing so precious to the part of her that was Audrey.
"...Nah. Wuornos is a peach." William shakes it off briskly and kisses her on the forehead. "It's been a long time, with the guys. Thank you, honey."
Mara lets her shoulders slump with relief, and tries to ignore the unsettled something still churning in her stomach.
"I am a bit concerned that we go back and he shoots me," William adds, his voice breaking on the frank admission and accompanying attempt at a laugh. "Our boy was still armed, and he's not as harmless as... past pets."
"He would not dare," Mara declares. "He could not forget again that to shoot you is to shoot me."
"Yeah? We might just have pushed him past the point where he's thinking about dear 'Audrey'..."
Mara rolls her eyes. There is a part of William that has always been bashful and endearingly timid. But after years apart have stripped their souls and remade them, she is relieved that it is still there.
"I watched you," he says, holding her hands beneath the silver trees. "I watched the world change, in your dreams while you waited in the Barn. The years they let you out to fix Troubles were the longest and loneliest. You were too far away, and I couldn't reach you at all. But then when you came back after each time, I got new stories, new people, new Troubles; I got to find out how our gifts had evolved, and how much you'd enjoyed playing with them again, even if you didn't know the real story..."
Mara nods slowly. "It was oddly satisfying from the other side. A murder scene can also be a pleasing puzzle. All our riddles, laid out to unpick. Maybe it was what I sensed of you in them."
"Or your original self." He leans down and kisses her. "Dear heart, I still love you. You have all my thoughts. How can you doubt it? Don't worry about Wuornos, one way or the other... Unless, of course, he's waiting back at camp cleaning his service pistol and planning to sink one in me."
Mara laughs and looks up at the sky. The suns may be setting soon, although with two of them a stretched-out hand's width apart in the sky, it's hard to tell what that will do to the light levels. They wasted an hour or so dozing on a bed of the odd, purplish-black grass that grows beneath the trees' sheltering canopy, after first leaving Nathan to chill. He has had more than enough time for his initial outrage to wear off.
"Do you want to go back and find out?" William asks, nervously.
She tips a shoulder and says, "Why not?"
The thought of Nathan's helpless arousal and warring fury thrills her.
***
Nathan stands up as they approach. His stance... the only apt description for it would be painfully stiff, therein lying all the irony in the world. His fists are clenched at his sides. He doesn't wait for William and Mara to get in range. Mara, as Audrey, shouldn't have forgotten that he can move so fast.
She should not have ruled out the possibility of violent retaliation from Nathan. He has done worse before. It is Audrey in her who wants to see him as kind, and good, and essentially harmless.
She sees him lunge at William and his arm swing back. She doesn't see the blow connect, her mouth opening and her lips on the edge of a startled, urgent order, but she feels the pain, a flare of agony across her jaw, and a corresponding crunch even though there's been no direct pressure to her face.
It blanks out her senses and she falls.
***