FIC: [Haven] House Divided - Mara/Nathan/William, Explicit (8/10)

[roseveare]

Chapter 7

Duke walks back into the cabin feeling positively haggard after the return to the battlefield -- fucking fruitless trip that it was. The whole area is nothing but a sea of police, rescue effort and injuries. Mara and William are nowhere in sight. He can't find them. HPD are managing the scene -- digging people out from under debris -- while the Guard went after William. Reports say Mara fell, and the Guard seem to have written her off as dead, but she can't be, else there wouldn't still be a William problem.

He came back in his truck, the thought of squeezing more of Nathan's blood from that rag making him queasy after the sights and smells of the aftermath. The weird weather on the way had him going for a few minutes, wondering who the hell had pissed off Marion again on top of everything else, but it cleared up almost as soon as it begun, so hell, maybe she just burned dinner.

What greets him when he slams through the cabin door doesn't improve his mood. "Shit, Dwight! What happened? We agreed we were going to talk to him!"

He gets shushed with a gesture and a sour face. Dwight is on the phone, or at least, has a phone to his ear. He brings it away briefly and pushes a button, then Duke can hear it ringing. "Mara," Dwight mouths.

"The fuck?" Duke mouths back. Dwight is on the phone to Mara?

Nathan is on the bed, sprawled out on his side, so his weight's not on his tied hands; his tied knees are pulled up to balance his form, pillows placed to support his head and neck. He looks like he was arranged like that by somebody who gave a crap about not damaging him, but it's still really obvious that he's really out of it, even with the blindfold.

Duke goes over and, shooting a glare back at Dwight with the phone, clicks his fingers in front of Nathan's nose a few times.

"Mara," says Dwight sharply, as the ringing stops. "Where are you and how did you get Bernard Rickles' phone?"

Duke feels a chill as he hears Audrey answer, and it's so, so convincing for a moment... Well, he's convinced: Nathan was right, she's still there... Then she pulls the switch, her voice changes, and of course it was only Mara, messing with them.

Messing with Nathan, too, Duke thinks. He'd almost... They'd both had him going. Had him thinking there was some hope.

Dwight swallows, just as devastated, but the expression on his face doesn't slip into his voice. "Where's Bernard?"

"I didn't call to talk about dull little details, Dwight," Mara responds, hard as nails. "You know what I want. Where is he? Now." Duke can see Dwight's shoulders trembling with anger and he's having to put in effort not to close his hand hard enough to crush the phone.

"I don't think telling you that is something I want to do," he says, calmer than Duke can believe.

"You don't want to find out what I do if you don't give me Nathan back."

Dwight's face pinches. "Maybe I consider he's the more dangerous one, after the reports I've had back from my people this morning."

"He's a boyscout," Mara snaps. "But I made of him an excellent tool. The difference is, I can make more. Keeping him will gain you nothing but my anger."

Duke shakes his head and mouths words at Dwight, gesturing and trying to communicate in mime. Dwight stares at him, then says slowly, "You know Nathan pretty well, don't you? All that time Audrey spent working at his side. Better than you know anyone else, here, I should think. I'd guess that's why the things you've done work so well. How you manage to fine-tune them so he can control them."

She huffs. "Really, Dwight? He's like painting in oil colours on copier paper. I can find better materials in a heartbeat."

"...Ones that will follow you, like he does? Even when he doesn't want to?"

"True," Mara allows. "There are other people I know passingly well, of course. Tell Duke I said hi. I should think once I had his little girlfriend he'd also be quite amenable to doing everything I asked."

Duke mouths, "Bitch," as Dwight grimaces and returns, "But you don't have Duke, and you don't have Jennifer, and you've put such a lot of work into Nathan."

"I want him back," Mara snaps. "Fact established. What will you do with him, Dwight? Kill him? Threaten to kill him, with Duke standing right there? I don't think so. I should think that after what I've done, he's rather difficult to hold against his will. You can't keep him, you can't use him to threaten or bribe me. I can, however, teach you whole new levels of regret if you don't give him back!"

Dwight rolls his eyes. "Maybe I got regrets bigger than you know."

Duke's tired of this. "Give, give, give--" He reaches out for the phone, waggling his fingers. Dwight shakes his head and mouths reluctance to allow it, but after a moment sighs and relinquishes the phone to Duke. "Hey, Mara. Nathan's out of the equation. Get used to it. He's your... your fucking chess queen, and if you think we're stupid enough to give him back, you have to be out of your mind."

Dwight's nodding in approval, but honestly the real reason Duke will never, ever hand Nathan over to Mara is for Nathan.

"If you think I'd roll over and work for you the way he does, you're also out of your mind. Forget about going near Jen."

"You're so much less fun than you used to be." Duke can hear the pout in Mara's voice. "How would that Duke even still be involved in this? He'd have left in his boat while the going was good."

"We're not on my boat, Mara." And, fuck, obvious much? Still, it's almost funny that they're both playing the same game, listening for clues to locate the other.

"I may not know where you are," she spits, and Duke can hear the gnashing of teeth, "but don't think I can't find you. I told you, Nathan's mine. You don't even comprehend how much so, or what that means."

"Goodbye, Mara." Before Duke can blink, Dwight follows up the firm words by reaching over and folding his hand around the phone and Duke's fingers both. He hears the call cut off.

"What--?" Duke starts. "Do you think it's true, that she knows where we are somehow? Where Nathan is," he corrects, and it feels like he has a boulder in his stomach, a cold fucking rock just sitting in there, weighing him down. Nathan, what the fuck have you let her do to you?

"She thinks she can. She's rattled enough to tell us that," Dwight says levelly. "She's also a manipulator. We don't let her get that wedge in."

"We need to move. Shit, maybe -- you know, she's right. I should take him, not just to the Rouge, but out to sea, the opposite direction from their island. As far away from Haven and as fast as possible. Mara won't be able to find him if he's in, in Burma. She won't be able to even get to us in the middle of the ocean. Unless she wants to take up piracy, which yeah, I can see that wouldn't be completely out of character."

It's a great plan. But wait-- "Wait, wait-- You don't think that's what she's aiming for, putting that suggestion out there?" Mara waiting at the Rouge for him to bring Nathan right to her... or else walk in himself and get snatched. She's declared an interest, after all.

Dwight's expression darkens. "Impossible to say for sure, but the idea's out there now. Better to move the Rouge out of its berth or else, hell, hire another boat entirely, maybe out of Camden, bring Nathan across land to it."

Duke's nodding, his thoughts tracking Dwight's perfectly.

"But we can't. We need him here to control Mara."

"You--!" Duke consciously makes himself bring the volume down. "You weren't going to bargain with her."

"No," Dwight swings away and goes to Nathan on the bed, to check on his pulse and breathing, all of which gives him a great excuse not to meet Duke's eyes. "But I'm not naive enough to think she's incapable of creating a situation where we might have to."

"And if she finds this cabin, we lose him for nothing! That -- that fiasco back there has to mean something, Dwight!"

Dwight turns, then, his eyes like brooding stormclouds. "I know."

"She can't get him back. Now, with us, he has a chance. If she gets him back, he's toast. He's barely functional as a human being any more as it is."

Haven has a long history of human sacrifice -- the noble act of screwing over the one to save the many. Duke shouldn't be surprised when Dwight's eyes only go harder and sadder. He sighs.

"Nathan is... appallingly dangerous. Duke, your Trouble... Can we -- if we took him to Gloria, or -- I have Guard allies in the hospital. We could arrange a room. You stop his heart. We have the equipment there on hand to do our damnedest to revive him."

"You're kidding. We might kill him! It's not like pressing a switch! Besides, once Mara gets hold of him all she does is put it all back. Like happened to me."

"It would make him easier to hide and handle," Dwight says, unmoved by the protest. "You want to save him."

"And on the subject of what happened to me," Duke carries on, his stomach seeming to revolve like a washing machine, "we have no idea what happens if I kill him and absorb nine fucking Troubles -- or whatever he has now -- all at once."

"It's seven."

"Seven! Nine! Who cares?" Duke clicks his hand in Dwight's face. "Seven Troubles! You saw what happened last time. It's really going to help us if my thing goes crazy again."

Dwight doesn't say anything, and in the silence Duke loses all his fury as he realises just what it is Dwight's thinking behind that apprehensive, assessing look in his eyes. Realises he's right. It is far from just the possibility of killing Nathan that's scaring him. Duke sits down in the chair in the centre of the cabin, the one Nathan was tied to earlier. All his energy just drained out through his boots.

Eventually, he offers, "I haven't killed anyone, taken any Troubles, since... Harker. Since my Trouble went haywire. I don't know what happens. I know I'm still Troubled, since the blood still makes me a... a fucking high as a kite superhero. I don't know if she changed it or just took out all the... excess. Could be that I end up with Nathan's seven Troubles instead of Nathan." He swallows. "I'm betting he can control them better."

"But we don't control him."

Duke glowers. "You control me in your dreams, Sasquatch."

Dwight breathes out. Irritation rolls off the noise. "You're not going to use them for Mara."

"He's Nathan. We talk to him." Duke glares at Dwight, meeting him ire for ire. "You knew I wanted to do that." He pries himself up off the chair to go slap Nathan in the face, though he knows that's useless. "When does he come out of this?" He demands, straightening up from the bed.

"He's been down for over an hour. Could be another hour if I don't dose him again, could be he'll drift straight into sleep. He's exhausted. You can see it in his skin, in his eyes. I haven't seen that kind of exhaustion since Afghanistan."

Duke mutters a curse. "Man. He's a bastard to wake up at the best of times."

"We need to make sure we have him under control," Dwight says. "He said he could take us all out and free himself, that the only reason he hadn't was because he couldn't be sure to do it without casualties."

"Meaning you," Duke points out flatly. "And you respond to that by knocking him out and shredding whatever fucking trust he has left!"

"You mean while we had him tied up and blindfolded already?! Anyway, I figured I'd be happier with him awake while you're here."

Duke swears and leans over Nathan again. Dwight stomps over to the small kitchen area to put the water boiler on and gets cups out without asking. Duke has to concede that it's probably a good idea, before they come to blows. "Nathan," he says loudly, leaning over to yell it in Nathan's ear. It seems to him that it's worth trying. "Nathan! Wake up!" He unfastens his collar again and a few more buttons, gets a look at the new scar as well as a closer look at the old burns. He sighs and sits down next to Nathan, placing an unfelt hand on his shoulder while he sleeps almost without sound or movement, totally out.

"Mara's gone," he speaks up, realising he never delivered any report about what he went out for, though he's willing to bet Dwight's already had all the reports that he needs. "Which you know. William's gone. Vince's people said they were separated, both wounded. They're searching for William along the coast, beating the coves and inlets. Mara... well, I guess she was heading to town."

"Bernard's place is between the ambush site and town." Dwight picks up his phone again with a curse and makes a call to get people on that clue, check out the guy, who knowing Mara is probably dead or a danger to other people by now. Whoever's on the other end tells him something that he does not like. Duke listens to the worried grunts and expulsions that are Dwight's half of the conversation with alarm. After he comes off the phone, Dwight turns his back and ignores any questions until he's poured himself a large black coffee and taken a long gulp. After that, he comes over and pushes another coffee into Duke's hand. "Vince is in the hospital. Collapsed. Heart attack or stroke, they're trying to figure it out now."

"Shit." But given his age and what he was just in the middle of, who could be surprised? "Oh, man, this is a mess, this is such a freakin' mess..."

"I'm going to need to talk to the Guard," Dwight says, gulping from his coffee. There's a lot of intent in that voice.

"Better you than anyone else," Duke concedes.

"I need to know you won't do anything rash if I leave you with him." He jerks his head at Nathan, on the bed.

"Mara--" Duke starts.

"She's injured. She's in town. She's heading the other way. You have a weapon, and besides which, if we could draw her here, we want her." He considers. "I'll radio for Stan and a few guys to come stand guard outside."

"No--" Duke suddenly has a horrible feeling. "Mara... He's, any of them, they'd be cannon fodder for her. I'm not. It's better if it's me." Same reasoning he used when he decided he should be the one to take down Nathan. The fucking circus didn't help there.

"You think she won't kill you?"

"I think she kept Nathan alive because Audrey loved him. I think she's already saved my life once." Agreed to do it as part of the bargain for Nathan, but he's pretty sure she didn't have to. He thinks... He'd rather face Mara without anyone else to get in her way. "I've got this. If she comes here, if she doesn't. I swear."

"I don't believe she'll come," Dwight says. "The Guard and the police are hunting her. If she has some kind of sixth sense about where Nathan is, it's still going to take time to track him down. She'll need a pretty hefty four wheel drive to get up here." Duke's truck had bounced along the road up to this place like a hyperactive marsupial. "Audrey wasn't superhuman, Mara's still in the same body. They're saying she was shot twice. Or William was, same difference. She's going to have to bide her time to make a play for Nathan."

"They heal," Duke warns him balefully. "Don't forget. It can take them several hours."

"I'll be back before then," Dwight promises. "Then we'll move him. Camden, or elsewhere out of town, maybe." He drains the rest of his coffee, grabs his coat, and says, "Good luck," as he heads for the door.

"No, you, man," Duke rebuffs. "Out there was crazy. That clean-up is-- you have no idea." An idiot decided to use a giant building as a weapon. He's pretty sure that even Dwight the Cleaner has never seen anything like the mess, even though he leaves with a noncommittal grunt.

The door shuts and locks softly. Duke gets up to draw the bolts from the inside. Then it's just him and Nathan, who isn't particularly contributing right now.

He wants to be on the Rouge, out at sea. That's the best idea yet, even if it came from Mara. Him and Nathan... Jen, maybe, if she's not too busy, if she's not too freaked (he hopes that whatever she's doing at the hospital pays off)... Load up with fishing gear and supplies to last a month. He can put Nathan back together, in the calm and the stillness, the salt air and the rhythm of the waves.

Instead, he sits and waits in the cabin, and tries to keep in mind all the reasons he should sit quiet and trust Dwight.

The gun he's packing didn't see much use in the battle, but he draws it out and keeps it in his hand now, and listens hard for anything like the sounds of an engine.

***

She reels as she comes off the phone and the world seems to kick her sideways. Mara's fury at being cut off lingers, but it's Audrey who catches herself and staggers in the street. Mara sinks low in her awareness, exhausted after the effort expended to throw herself into the conversation and turn Dwight against them, so soon after she lost control of the body before; now she has nothing left.

But what she did, she's done effectively. There seems little point calling Dwight back now. He won't believe that she's real, herself, and nor will Duke. Audrey clutches the silent phone and fights against tears. Those won't do any good. She has to take action.

Now, while Mara's quiet and cannot stop her, has to be the time to do it. Fast and bold, no hesitation. She came here with a task to do. They have Nathan: that much is already accomplished.

She needs to put Mara in a cell. She also needs to stay alive -- she only just got this body back. But she's beginning to see that she may have to fight all of Haven as well as Mara, to keep it. The Guard are out to kill her. Even the police, after earlier -- even fellow officers who knew her as Audrey may now shoot on sight.

She needs to put Mara in a cell, but if she shows up and tries to surrender herself to them, she doubts she'll have the chance to get that far.

With Mara in a cell, knowing she's safe from doing harm to others, worse to Nathan, maybe she can work on establishing her own personality again. Maybe Mara will dwindle, in time. Audrey wants to live. Nathan gave up too much, of himself and Haven, to give her the chance.

She puts the phone away with shaking fingers. Given the state of HPD's resources, she's not worried about being tracked by it. She gets back into the stolen car and turns the engine on.

The world moves.

Or... it's something inside her, and for a moment she thinks Mara is taking over again, though it didn't seem possible minutes ago. Then the change in the light level makes her look up, through the stolen car's windshield, in time to see the sky change.

It's like a tinted shade on the sky starts to collapse from the centre out to the horizon in every direction, peeling back to reveal the world with different, brighter hues. The feeling inside her is that of one of Mara's largest works coming undone. She feels the barrier between Haven and the outside world collapse like it was a part of herself.

She's got so used to accepting the light as natural that it's strange when the real, unfiltered day rushes in. The difference is subtle, and the death of the Trouble should be a joy -- another of Mara's creations come undone -- but it feels like an ache.

Mara's too spent to react. Audrey makes herself put the car into gear and drive. She needs to get to the police station. She needs to do it without being seen. She doesn't know what's happened here, but if somehow other people are undoing Mara's works, Mara's schemes are unravelling, then that's no bad thing. Hope flares inside her, stronger than before.

A patrol car causes her to pull up and duck down to allow it to pass. Rafferty, she sees in the driver's seat. Rafferty won't hesitate to shoot.

Audrey wonders who was there, earlier, who was hurt and who saw. Who among all the people she's worked with, friends and colleagues, think they've seen absolute proof that she's a monster now.

It's going to be hard to get into the station, but she has the advantage that she knows it well. Around the back, she abandons the car illegally parked, and leaves it in pretty much a sprint for a storeroom window where she knows the catch is broken and has been for months. It yields reluctantly when she gets her fingernails in and hauls it open from outside.

The physical act of getting inside is less easy. Even without the bullet wounds in her flesh, one thing HPD don't do a lot of is assault courses and athletic feats. The window is high and it's a squeeze, forcing her to twist, catching her injuries and making her bite down on cries of pain. She's kicking her legs, squirming and sliding to get through, when she hears a shout. She moves too abruptly and falls inside uncontrollably, gracelessly, hits the top of a table and then rolls off to hit the floor, hard. Pain whites out her thoughts for an instant. The window slams shut behind her.

Whoever shouted outside didn't see her face. Maybe it was someone greeting a neighbour, or calling their dog. She huddles underneath the table, waiting for the door to open, clutching a stack of files in front of her. But no-one enters. She makes herself get up. Her heart is pounding so hard it feels like its rocking her whole body.

From the store room, it's easier to make it to her and Nathan's office than anywhere else. She needs to get to the cells, and that's not going to be easy, but she also can't leave Mara with ammunition, just as she can't risk arming herself with a regular weapon... She needs to find all the goo-balls that stowed on her person and shut them securely away.

Aether, Mara calls it, but that's Mara, and she'll take Duke's name any day.

Their office feels like a heartbreaking piece of history: a museum piece, preserved. Like it's somewhere she'll never get to inhabit for real again. Nathan's desk, his photographs. Her piles of books on folklore. The stupid little trinkets they both kept.

Nathan has an old coffee jar where he stores some candies, for calming down kids who've been witness to crime scenes, or otherwise end up in the station. Audrey opens it and starts dropping the black spheres inside with the candies, searching her pockets and shaking out her clothes. They move, squirming and rattling as if they know they're being abandoned, but she tightens the lid on the jar and for good measure, shoves it into a locker as she heads outside into the corridor and passes the bay where the lockers stand. She hides the key on top of the locker unit, stretching on her toes to reach.

Mara's diminished. But how much longer will she be quiet? Audrey's actions are agitating her evil half already. The contradictory thoughts scratch at the underside of her brain. Discerning the boundaries between them, when Mara's voice is hers, is tenuous. A matter of a certain flavour to the thoughts.

Haven police station isn't the kind of place where she can grab a uniform and sneak in, hat pulled forward to obscure her face like some TV spy. Everyone here is known. She decides her best option, therefore, is to use that. She'll walk calmly and briskly as if it's any normal working day. After all, Audrey Parker reported in for duty here for the best part of last year, and also recently, even if her hair is changed again. Recognition and force of habit may work in her favour, placing her as a natural part of the surroundings upon casual, unthinking glance.

Retrieving the keys to the cells, it works better than she'd even expected. Officer Conyers goes so far as to look up and vaguely say, "Hi, Audrey," and doesn't realise what he's done. Her heart pounds even louder after that, though, and it's an effort not to break into a run.

The cell keys dig hard into the damp palm of her hand. She feels Mara shift inside her, still buried but ever more restless. It's like she's aware in there. Audrey almost remembers hearing the world like distant echoes, louder on the last occasion. She'd hoped the changing experience was a sign she was getting stronger... She almost doesn't want to think about the possibility that Mara is having the same experience, and what that might mean.

She doesn't know if it's Conyers who eventually realised his mistake and raised the alarm, or someone else, but she hears the cry go up from behind her when she's only a corridor's distance from the cells, and she starts running then.

***

Duke doesn't see Mara's goldfish-bowl-of doom around the town come down. He's inside the cabin, watching an unconscious Nathan who's being adamantly uninteresting about it. But he notices the light levels change and goes to look out of the window, confused, then pushes open the door and steps outside, first checking around with his gun drawn and held low in his hand, then looking up.

It's a moment before he registers what's different.

Fuck. What?

His heart skips a beat and his phone starts ringing. The barrier was Jennifer's self-assigned quest... Sure enough, he fumbles his phone from his pocket and it's her name on the incoming call. He raises it to his head and before he can say anything her voice fills his ear, excitable and victorious. "Duke -- Duke, I did it! We did it," she corrects, as though there's someone else there, but Duke can't hear anyone in the background. "Duke, this is Albert Hutton. Albert, this is Duke. Say hello."

"Hello, Mr. Hutton," Duke intones obediently, still thinking, what? Nobody says 'hello' back to him.

"There's -- he's in the hospital," Jennifer says. "I can talk to him. It broke his Trouble, Duke..." She sounds angry, the emotion creeping into her voice of a sudden. "He's unconscious, he's in a coma, and Mara Troubled him anyway, to build her wall."

Duke takes a breath. He thinks he understands now. The Trouble to form a barrier around Haven was based upon being locked in. Jennifer pierced the patient's bubble with her ability to, to communicate across barriers, across dimensions and worlds, and--

"I have to come back tomorrow," Jen says. "I have to keep coming back, but... Where are you? I'm leaving the hospital now. I can come and join--"

There's a whump from behind Duke, like air displacement, things shifting. A moment later, before he's even fully turned to catch what the hell that was, it hits him, propelling him forward, a broad and even blow across the back of his body.

He flies into a tree that's four feet away, but the tree's hit, too, moving at the same time he does, creaking and cracking as it bends away from him and that lessens the blow. But when the force dissipates and the tree snaps back, then he gets it full in his face, and ends up on the ground, groaning, phone no longer in his hand, trying to figure out what just happened? Broken branches rain down from the tree. One hits his outstretched leg hard, and he swears and rolls to protect his groin, because that came pretty close. He raises an arm to protect his head.

Nathan, he thinks.

He also thinks, Jennifer!, but has no idea where his phone went, and right now--

His body doesn't want to obey but he makes it move, first crawling for the cabin, then using the door to hang onto to regain his feet. The wood groans and moves under his hand, more rickety than it was. The door itself is half hanging off. Nathan's damn forcefield, which hit him, was losing energy by the time it hit him, or he'd be feeling a lot worse.

Nathan hasn't made it off the bed yet. He's tugging at the blindfold -- at least he had the sense not to try and use the Trouble to remove that. His jeans are torn and his wrists are bleeding from somewhere. There are fragments of rope literally all over the cabin, embedded in the planks of the walls, and the furniture. The cabin is trashed.

"...Holy fuck, Nathan," Duke says.

Nathan gives him a feral look, eyes spilling contradictory emotions, and leaves the blindfold askew on his head like a bandana as he squirms to the edge of the bed, keeping the bulk of the bed between them.

"Nathan, Nathan," Duke says quickly, holding his hands down in full view. "Dwight put you out all on his own. It was not me. Not my plan. I just want to talk. I mean, hell, we need to talk, right? Audrey. Mara. Don't tell me that we hashed out everything there was to be said about that the other day."

Nathan looks blank and surprised, and he's... watching Duke's body language, the way he's approaching Nathan as something that's -- hell, like Nathan is something that's going to hurt him, Duke realises, and stops.

He breathes, counting off for the breaths. They look at each other. And Duke tries to put fear aside. Because it's Nathan, still, and they punch each other and argue, but at the end of the day that's -- that's them. And Nathan had to cope with Duke having the advantage of the Crocker Legacy -- badly, mostly -- and now there's this. This fucking nightmare powerhouse that Mara's made of him. He said, a few days ago, that he was dangerous, but he seems almost oblivious of it in himself now. Like he expects on some level to be taken as the same old Nathan despite everything.

The surprise on his face says to Duke, I'm not going to hurt you... Putting aside the fact he already did. Then again, he hurt himself worse, judging from the drip-drip-drip sliding down his wrists and hitting the floor.

They stand a moment longer before Duke says, "Let me get something for that." He moves, Nathan doesn't, except for shifting in place and curling a hand over the worst of the wounds, pressing down to curb the blood flow.

"I need to find her," Nathan says.

"You and everyone else," says Duke. He swallows. Okay, okay... Nathan isn't pissed about being knocked out, tied up, blindfold... He's standing here, just looking at Duke, like he's not dangerous enough that they had to do that to control him. But he's not doing anything now. "Guard seem to be on the trail of William. No-one knows where Mara is. Well, somewhere within the town boundaries. But in the wind."

"If they kill William--"

"Yeah, yeah," Duke cuts him off. He knows. "You think they'll manage to kill William?"

He watches Nathan pause to think, purse his lips and consider, then shake his head. Every line of him is severe. "He's not going to like being chased around. They're in Trouble."

God, thinks Duke. Not just at Nathan's chilling conclusion but the thought he knows William well enough to make it. At least the conclusion causes Nathan to relax... somewhat. "I need to get back to them before they do more harm."

"Like you weren't the one doing--!" Duke explodes, because Nathan, back there, Nathan--

"You attacked me!" he returns, more exasperated than anything else; weary and fed-up and fucked-up and just all over done, like this argument's not worth his time.

It lands on Duke suddenly that he hates how Nathan doesn't seem to mind the treatment at the hands of himself and Dwight, now he's escaped the drugs and the bonds. Like he's so accustomed to so much worse liberties taken on his person that it's easy to dismiss.

"I need to keep her alive," Nathan says. "You don't understand. I've seen her take Troubles away. Audrey or Mara. We need her."

Mara's not interested in taking Troubles away, only in making more. Duke tries to focus upon getting the stuff to deal with Nathan's injury, even if most of what's in the cabin is in bits, but once he has the (broken) green box in his hand, he remembers his phone, and Jennifer, and swears. He flings the box down on the bed toward Nathan and swings away.

He stops halfway to the door, looking back. "You're not going to go anywhere? Do anything? Right?"

"I'll talk." Nathan gives him a cagey look and a puzzled from, unsure what Duke's doing as he resumes his charge out of the hanging-off door.

Duke finds his phone almost at once, but it's broken. "Jennifer's going to be freaking out," he tells Nathan, waving the plastic wreckage in accusation as he stomps back into the cabin. He supposes it's not really odd at all how the friction seems to put Nathan more at ease.

"Sorry." Nathan casts his eyes around the mess he made, then back at Duke's battered state. "You were out of the cabin. I'd waited. I--"

"I know," Duke says. "I don't supposed you have a phone?"

Nathan spreads his empty hands. No. The cabin doesn't have one, either. Jennifer's going to call Dwight, and Dwight will shoot back here, probably with a bunch of the Guard in tow, and then all of them are going to fucking freak out because Nathan is standing awake and unrestrained, and they're screwed. Duke sighs.

"It helps to have my fucking eyes to use that Trouble," Nathan says sourly. He's picked up the first aid kit and is wrapping bandages around his wrist. Duke supposes it doesn't need cleaning -- nothing to put infection in the wound. He ripped himself up with his own damn invisible forcefields. Duke edges around him to join the effort in time to secure the bandage. It's a mess of bloody fingerprints, and actually, Duke is pretty glad to avoid further contact with Nathan's seven times Troubled blood.

Nathan becomes conscious of the same thing and moves his hands back as soon as Duke's fixed the bit that was giving him problems. He backs off to the faucet to rinse his hands.

"So how's things? Mara? William?"

"Mara was Audrey." And they're back to that again. "She was."

"She ran to help you."

But Nathan contradicts Duke's attempt at supporting Nathan's claim. "No. That was Mara. Before that, before the attack! Mara was Audrey. The attack made her revert. We were coming to town because she wanted to surrender."

The way Nathan's eyes are looking at him is angrily pleading him to understand. Duke wants to believe it, but he can't. He wants it to be true too much, and Nathan might not be evil, might be sufficiently himself to stand here and gripe at Duke like old times, but he isn't well.

"Yesterday was -- Mara did something bad. Crossed a line. I think that's what... They're vacillating. Audrey for a while and then Mara. I'm not always sure what triggers it."

Duke listens incredulously. He wonders, after what he's already seen, what would have to constitute Mara crossing the line. "A trick," he chokes, inserting the words into a gap between Nathan's dogged insistence. "How do you know it's not a trick?"

"Because I know." And that's impatient, pissy Nathan from way back. "Even if you figured out about Lexie before me." Nathan sits down abruptly on the edge of the bed, his anger seeming to have worn him out. Or... maybe it's more than that. All the colour's drained out of him along with his anger. "Have you got anything to eat?" he rasps, sounding tired to the bone.

Luckily, Dwight prepared for the long haul, and the tins of soup and beans and the like he brought up are crumpled but only a few are actually burst, and the stove seems to have bounced rather than broken and works when Duke puts it on. He hands Nathan an unopened bottle of soda that survived. Caffeine doesn't seem like a great idea even if all the mugs weren't in pieces. "Give me a moment."

"You know it doesn't have to be hot, right?" Nathan says, sarcastically.

Duke finds a packet of crackers -- crumbs -- to hand him to shut him up, and feels faintly sickened as he watches Nathan fall on them. He feels intensely weird as he spends the next ten minutes mothering Haven's Most Dangerous. Nathan is Mara's prisoner as much as if he were physically chained to her, he thinks. He doesn't have to understand all the intricacies of those links to know they're there. Nathan's got his own agenda; he's trying to do... whatever it is he's doing. But he's still their victim, too.

"She feed you?" Duke asks slowly, when Nathan's just about done with the soup and the crackers, drinking the soup out of a metal bowl that survived the forcefield.

Nathan grunts. "Generally I feed them, but... yesterday I didn't really eat. It's been--" He looks away. "Ask Dwight. I'm not telling it again."

"Wow, thanks," Duke starts, bristling, but Nathan means it and ignores him. He's wiping his mouth with the back of his arm, looking carefully at his arm to ascertain whether there was anything to wipe off in the first place, whether there might be more. Duke sighs, catching the flush of Nathan's cheeks, and he doesn't say, I know about Mara; I know about WILLIAM. He lets Nathan keep that. Maybe it was easier to tell Dwight, who's more a colleague than a friend, who's certainly not a friend the way Duke is, the way that down the years they've almost loved each other as much as they've hated each other. "Fine," he says. "Be the silent type. What else is new?"

He's turning away, intending to show his back to Nathan and give him that privacy, when sudden, fast movement stirs behind him and hands land hard on his shoulder and his arm. "There's a car approaching outside," Nathan says next to his ear.

"Oh," breathes Duke. "Oh, damn." That's... laughably understated, but he doesn't have the thought capacity in the moment to muster more.

"It's not Mara," Nathan says, killing the worst of his fears.

"How--?"

"I'd know, Duke."

Fuck. "Get under the fucking bed," Duke tells him. He can hear the approaching engine now -- no, it's cutting out, drawing to a halt outside.

"Whoever they are, I can deal with them."

See, he says things like that and then expects that Duke and anybody else will still treat him like harmless old Nathan Wuornos, who just can't feel anything. "Maybe I don't want you to deal with them! Have you thought of that? Maybe I'm pretty damn sure I'd rather be the one who deals with them!"

Nathan gives him a look like he's the one who's lost it and gets on the floor. And Duke -- Duke isn't sure why he's protecting him. Maybe he has lost it. But it's him and Nathan, it's the old groove, it's them. He'd thought that was gone for good, and it's like a compulsion, being back in Nathan's company. He can't break that fragile trust.

"Just stay quiet and stay under there," Duke hisses, and even the back of Nathan's head and shoulders seem to be judging him as they squirm, last, under the uneven frame of the wrecked bed.

Duke draws his gun anew and goes outside, wondering if it is Dwight and how many Guard he'll have brought. Wondering if Nathan lied to him and it's Mara after all.

It's Jennifer.

She's tripping out of the car door with a taser already in hand and gives a sharp, surprised cry when she sees him. "Duke! Oh my God, thank goodness!" Then his arms are full of her and he's feeling really confused. "The phone cut off, I -- I was so worried!"

"I know." Duke's still looking for Dwight, but his attention gets pulled back to Jen, her hands on his face, her soft voice whispering questions.

"What happened? How's Nathan? Did he do this?" She can't really miss the trees divested of branches and leaves, the door of the cabin hanging off.

Dwight's not coming. Jennifer's car is -- well, it's mud-splashed and scratched up and he's going to hazard she's wrecked the suspension. But it's empty, no-one else getting out of it. No further vehicle sounds coming after her. He's confused and, okay, annoyed. Slightly annoyed. But Jennifer's exclaiming about the scratches on his face, and losing his shit because she rushed up here alone armed with just a taser probably isn't the correct reaction here. "It's okay. I broke my phone. But we're okay, I just couldn't contact you to tell you."

The cabin door creaks on its uneven hinges. Nathan stands in the doorway. Jennifer gapes at him, surprise and awe on her face, but Nathan is looking up at the sky. He barely seems to notice as Jennifer tows Duke up close to him and grabs one of his hands from where they hang bonelessly at his sides.

Duke realises he's seeing Nathan register for the first time that Mara's wall is gone. That they still had him blindfolded when that occurred. Neither of them comment on it, so he doesn't get an in-depth report on what Nathan thinks of that. After a moment, Nathan looks down at Jennifer holding his hand with a soft look on her face, and gets all embarrassed and bemused about it but... doesn't seem totally unhappy. He squirms a bit more as Jennifer lets go of Duke for a moment to hug him, though.

"I'm glad you're all right," she says, as she pulls Nathan's head down to her shoulder.

Duke is glad she wasn't here when they had him trussed like a turkey. He's abruptly pretty sure he and Dwight would have been seriously chewed-over had Jennifer seen that.

Jennifer has never particularly got Nathan. But she cares. She always cares.

"I'm okay," Nathan mumbles, trying to disengage. It restores more of his humanity in Duke's watching eyes than anything else so far. Nathan's eyes return to the sky, then back to Jen. "You...? Albert Hutton? He's awake?"

She shakes her head with a touch of regret. "He can hear me, though. Visiting him is just the decent thing to do. The poor man has been trapped in that living death for months."

Duke watches Nathan absorb the news that Mara's hold on Haven broke because somebody initiated conversation. There's something there as Nathan looks at the sky, some strange thought brooding at the back of his eyes that Duke isn't sure he'd like.

"So we're okay..." Duke finally manages to help Nathan wriggle free of Jennifer, pulling her back to ask what he needs to hear to her face. "Where's Dwight, Jen? Don't tell me that oversized jerk just let you come up here on your own? In an insufficient vehicle, with no protection, no back-up."

Oh. Duke sees the reaction in her face. "Dwight's -- busy. Duke, Mara..." Jen's eyes flicker to Nathan, uncertain if it's really safe to continue. But after an intense moment of hesitation, she guiltily does. "Mara came to the police station."

***

She runs headlong into Stan. "Aud--" His eyes widen and his hand reaches for his gun before he's even finished voicing the instinctive impression.

Audrey hurts inside, and Mara -- Mara wants her to tear and wound in reprisal, so much so it's a distracting effort to hold back the urge to excess violence. The struggle takes place over a split second, but she is surprised to feel Mara deliberately surrender and sink down, not having energy enough to overcome her yet, leaving Audrey total control of the reins.

Mara may have her pride, but she also knows a thing or two about survival and opts not to screw around when they're under threat from an armed enemy.

Audrey, left to her own devices, moves to clutch, spins Stan into an arm lock, and draws his gun herself from his hip. She turns them both so she can point it at the oncoming officers down the corridor. "Don't do it! I'm not here to hurt anyone."

She starts to walk them backwards toward the cells. So close, she's so close.

"Mara..." There's no-one left to take charge of a situation like this; only a skeleton staff here at all. Laverne is the one leaning out of the dispatch office to try and negotiate.

"I'm not Mara. Please!"

"If you're not Mara, let him go," Laverne says, reasonably.

Which might be reasonable, except -- Audrey thinks Mara has done too much. She can see it in the eyes of the oncoming officers, who for now are held back by the threat. Maria Gerty and Sam Withers haven't been on the force long; joined as a part of Dwight's push to get more personnel after he took over, and Audrey kind of figures he fudged the expenses to do that given Nathan's constant bemoaning of the budget. The upshot of that is, though, that they don't really know Audrey. Not as herself. They were only on board for the Lexie return.

They've also seen the consequences of not taking that shot. They've seen the results of the things Mara created. Maybe Stan won't, Laverne won't, but these new recruits barely know Audrey, and they're afraid enough to kill. No-one is looking to have to figure out how to keep Mara a prisoner, an ever-present, ongoing threat, a tornado in a cage. Best case scenario for everyone here is a clean kill. End of Mara, end of William... The Troubles continue forever; but Haven knows the Troubles, by now. They'll take that option.

"You know I can't do that," Audrey tells Laverne, tightly. "I'm sorry, Stan. I'm heading for the cells, and if you know what's good for you, you'll all let me get there. You want Mara locked up. That's what I'm going to do!"

She can see, out of the high-up windows at the end of the corridor, that the light outside is starting to dim into evening. The police station smells of old wood and bad coffee, and the people she knew and worked with are ranged around her, unable to see her for who she is, ready to kill her if she gives her an opening. Blood from her shoulder daubs Stan's shirt, painting the pale blue purplish, almost black.

"Stan, please..." she finds herself saying. He stops struggling against her grip. Laverne is looking at her, too, eyes narrowed and intent. "There's nothing I can tell you to convince you I'm Audrey! Mara knows everything that I know!"

"Give... Give her a chance," Stan says, muffled and his voice slightly choked. "If she's telling the truth, what can it hurt?"

They don't shoot, though the reasons for that could be multiple, and Stan moves, walking back with her toward the cells instead of struggling and opening her up to a bullet from a chanced shot. It even seems like Stan's trying to pose his body to block them more effectively. Audrey feels her breath come quicker--

As they turn the corner into the cells, the officers don't come after them immediately. "I'll lock... the door," Stan breathes. They're within paces of her goal.

If she locks herself in, and throws the gun away, surely that has to be proof enough for them that she's still alive in here.

So, too, is Mara. As Audrey starts to loosen her grip on Stan, she feels Mara surge for control. On the threshold of the cell, with the gun in her hand, it's Mara's last opportunity, and she's left it as late as she can, conserving strength for the effort. It's desperate, almost as much so as her seizure of the phone conversation earlier. Fear for Stan gives Audrey strength enough to hold on. The gun is still pointing to his head. She makes herself push her arm out far as it will go and force her fingers open. The gun drops. She staggers back as Mara seethes insults in the back of her mind. She's losing, losing... Then Stan's elbow rushes at her face, and she goes down, pain sparking in her head as it strikes the hard floor. She's half inside the cell already, but the keys are in her pocket.

Hitting the ground didn't hurt so much as it should, she realises dimly. It didn't hurt because... because her wounds are healed.

Stan doesn't go for the gun but for her, his boot on her shoulder keeping her down, hands dragging at her jacket. He knows she had the keys in her hand when she first approached him.

Audrey helps him hold down Mara for the vital seconds it takes to get the keys out, push the rest of her body through the doorway, and shut and lock the cell.

...Hello, dearest. The voice reverberates in her head, and brings a rush of power and energy to Mara with it. Sorry it took me so long.

The door clangs loudly and the turn of the key sings sharply, and Mara rises, flings herself at the bars fiercely enough that Stan jumps backward like he's faced with a caged tiger. Her hands clang louder still on the next impact. Indignation pours through her. She pulls up from her resources what best improvisation she can, outraged at what the damned memory-ghost in her head has done now.

"Dwight!" she demands. "I want to see that big lug. William and I are branching into cryptozoology! Go fetch, police dog, bring me your master!"