FIC: [Haven] Conversations With Ghosts - Nuke, OT3, post-finale [2/2]
The interior of the Armoury resolved around Nathan again. He wasn't expecting to see two figures standing beside him. One dressed ominously in black, as though Duke had discovered a vaguely goth fashion aesthetic a few decades too late. The other, smaller, wore an ugly sweater-vest much like the ones he'd worn in life, and rumpled pants.
"Dave?!" It hadn't been what Nathan intended to say, with Duke there, but he'd been half expecting Duke.
"Yeah." Duke jerked his thumb, and oddly, looked almost as shocky and nervous as Nathan felt as their eyes met over the smaller man. His eyes glittered as though with moisture (the tears of the dead?) and were strangely pleading, even as his words rose, glib. "Look who decided to tag along."
"You're here." No doubts about the tears in Audrey's eyes. "You're both here." She anticipated Nathan's impulse to throw himself at Duke and cling on, turning it into a messy three-way hug. In the background, Dave pounded on Vince's shoulder as the big old man's lower lip trembled, wordless, hanging more than a head-height over his brother's bowed shoulders and curled arms.
"Dave... Dave!" burbled Croatoan's voice with uncanny delight. "Oh, I do declare! You made it!" Nathan wrenched away from Audrey and Duke, an old sense of panic resurfacing.
He sounded so wretchedly cheerful, like Dave was an old friend, but the expression on Dave's face... perhaps everyone else's, too... caused Mara's father to back off, holding up his hands in a parody of surrender. "Okay, I get the picture... I'll go make myself scarce."
Nathan didn't realise just how tense he'd been until he was sagging after Croatoan was gone.
"Sorry," Audrey said, putting her hand on Duke's face, cupping his chin gently to turn away his fixed stare. Nathan hadn't seen the full force of it until he turned, but there was as much horror there as in Dave's. Audrey stood up on her toes to kiss Duke on the mouth. "I'm so sorry. Nathan had asked to see him, as proof he was still contained, so we managed to drag him out of his projects... I didn't think it through." She added, "He's trying to change, I promise."
"I... don't know that I care," Duke said, his voice almost a wheeze.
"Nor do I," Nathan added gruffly. He reached for Duke. He realised anew that he'd been able to feel since he arrived in the Armoury as his hand contacted Duke's arm through his clothes and encountered solidity, stability, proof. If Duke was some kind of aether-ghost, then right here and now at least, he was solid and real. Nathan froze and stared.
"Breathe," Duke suggested. Smartass, as always.
"Were you in the station?"
"Yeah, I was in the station," Duke said with heavy sarcasm. "Do you know that it's almost like... like the opposite of a sixth sense, that you have there, Nate? When every single time you talk to the air you manage to look in the complete opposite direction from me?"
Nathan blinked.
"Stop it," Audrey chided, her voice aiming for lightness, though one of the tears brimming in her eyes fell, trailing a glittering reflection of white light down her cheek. "No arguing here."
"You wanted us here together," Duke pointed out.
"The killings..." Nathan almost choked on remembered duty, but he managed to get the words out. It was what he'd come back for. "Do you know anything about the killings?"
Duke frowned in a very particular way, long-familiar to Nathan, and shook his head. "Not me."
"Dave." Nathan said it with more of an edge. It had been Dave who had killed like this before.
The old man spread his arms, his face anguished. "To the best of my knowledge, Nathan, it wasn't me... But you know we've been on this road before."
Nathan's eyes flickered unintentionally between Dave and Duke. Unintentionally suspicious.
"I did not do this," Duke said, jabbing hand gestures flying. "I don't think he did this, either, even though he's been playing hide-and-seek with me this whole time we've been dead and discontent together."
Dave nervously blurted, "What can I say? You were pretty daunting at the end, Duke. And I've always been... guess I'm still a coward, at heart."
"Not that." Vince spoke up, sharp and unexpected. "Never that. No... not that, Dave." The taller Teagues brother mustered a grim humour and bolstered himself with, "I know what you have been doing all this time. Who was it always wished they had themselves an invisibility Trouble, hm?" His eyes bulged as he nodded his head manically.
Dave's mouth ticked and he gave a filthy chuckle. "Oh, you only wish you'd gotten to hang around ladies' bedrooms instead of in this white box!"
"You--" Duke broke off the exclamation, looking disgusted. Nathan processed the implication Duke hadn't done that. "You gutter minded old coot!"
Dave waved a hand. "Whereas you've been hanging around in... let me guess... Nathan's house?"
"That's different. We're--"
Dave's gleefully mocking, contrary expression was a reminder how irrepressibly annoying the old man had been capable of being while alive, and in some way that wormed into Nathan's soul and soothed the manner of his death. He watched the soft smile collapse Vince's face into all its many wrinkles and knew he wasn't the only one.
Audrey was smiling, too. "We're all together again..." A feeling of warmth and joy seemed to radiate out from her. In the middle of all the white, it was like she was made from gold. It lasted a few seconds before Vince's face fell, and hers followed his like a reflection.
"We must figure out what's happening in Haven!" Vince exclaimed, even as Duke's hand closed around Nathan's hand and he said, very intently, "Nathan."
Nathan felt the contact like fire upon his skin, senses brought back from vaccuum state, and the intensity of the touch... The expression Duke wore was unreadable, but it changed as he felt Nathan's flinch of reaction and he released his grip with a spasmodic unclenching. Nathan hadn't meant to let go. But, well, didn't that sum up so much?
"We do need to focus," Audrey said, reluctantly picking up Vince's thread. "You can't stay here for long, and we can't keep the Armoury here for long. It affects the world around it... and the Troubles did damage enough already."
"What if... if you took us away in the Armoury? Return us later?" Nathan rasped. Stay here for good, his thoughts whispered fiercely, but duty resisted.
It had been a thin hope. Vince said gruffly, "It's hardly an exact science. You should try driving a transdimensional building! Every exercise risks dumping a multitude of Troubles -- or worse, raw aether! -- back into the world."
"And there's you to consider," Audrey said, her words saturated with pain. "You've already been in the void, you've already been touched by aether, and it's too much risk..." She looked at Duke and Dave and managed a smile to go with the offer: "Both of you could stay, though. Given you're no longer really mortal, and the aether that makes up your forms... It really should be in here and not out there, anyway."
Duke glanced at Nathan and turned away from them both. "I need to stay in Haven."
In the face of Vince's joy, and irritable pantomime-prompting for a likewise reaction, Dave responded, "But, naked ladies! And, Vince, Croatoan is in here...!" He shuddered.
"He can't do anything now. Audrey's here, too, and I can do things. Remember that! Dave, do not tell me you're choosing to ogle jugs over the prospect of spending the rest of eternity with your own brother!"
Dave broke out a genuine smile. "I'm joking, you asshole."
Nathan averted his eyes in abrupt pain as the reunited brothers embraced again.
"Nathan," Duke said, but Nathan's thoughts were full of phantom killers and corpses with aether-smudged eyes. He rubbed his hand where Duke's touch echoed, as if he could remove a lingering itch, though that wasn't quite what assailed it, and said, "I guess we will know it's not Dave if this stops. Maybe you should stay here, too. Better for you, I'd think." Nathan didn't know what Duke felt he had to stay behind in Haven for.
"Seriously, it's not me," Duke said. "Can we put a lid on that theory? How is it that after everything we've been through, we're still back to this?"
His face fell the instant he'd finished the protest. Remembering, perhaps, that he'd gone mad for aether under Croatoan's influence and murdered... But Nathan hadn't meant that. "I just want you to be safe." Duke could be with Audrey, even if Nathan couldn't be with them, and perhaps together they'd be able to make something resembling happiness here, while Nathan had to go back alone.
Duke shook his head. "I'm not leaving. Not this time." When Nathan turned back to Audrey, he noticed Duke had edged closer again and was touching his arm very lightly.
Duke, he thought bleakly. Duke, who he'd killed.
Nathan shut his eyes a moment. He had to focus, he told himself harshly. Focus as he had before, with Audrey, though both of them were here to turn his head now. He still had a job to do. He'd made his choices -- to stop fighting for them, to choose Haven, this time. He had to let them both go. He was Chief of Police again and, having taken up that badge, he had to make himself worthy of it, this time.
"If it's not either of them, we're still no closer to what it is," he said.
"Ruling them out is still progress," Audrey ventured. "We will work on it... separately, as we must." Her eyes didn't leave Nathan. The gaze lingered between them for a long time. He could see the lines of her body yearning toward him.
The white interior was replaced by the gap on the hilltop in an instant. Nathan swore and looked around for Duke, but he still couldn't see him, nor any trace of him.
"You should have stayed there!" he snapped at the air. What was Duke thinking? "What exactly are you gonna do, huh, in a world where no-one can see or hear you?"
Duke didn't answer, not even those subtle senses of an echo inside Nathan's own head. But perhaps Nathan's thoughts were racing and his heartbeat pounding too loudly to hear him.
***
After the Armoury, and in the absence of any perceptible Duke, Nathan stumbled home. Feeling was a removed sort of concept, but he felt like gravity wasn't working properly, like the world was sliding sideways when he tried to place his feet on the ground. At home, he opened the bottle of scotch that had been sitting untouched since the first day he walked back alone from the absence left by the departing Armoury.
He didn't drink very often, and the bottle did not last very long, but at least he wouldn't feel it in the morning.
In his nightmares, the aether in him crawled up into his eyes and nose, mouth and ears, until he was bleeding it out just like Duke. He could feel it in the same way he could feel Audrey, when all else was numb. It hurt like nothing he'd ever felt, but it filled his mouth and he couldn't scream.
Did it hurt like this for Duke? some hazy awareness wondered. Did Duke want to scream inside all the time, behind those black eyes? Did he tell Nathan to kill him because he'd just come out from that terrible immersion, with the knowledge of what he'd done beneath it, and thought he couldn't face living and there was nothing left to live for?
Nathan was returned to familiar ground, then, murdering Duke over and over in his dreams.
"Wake up, man!" Duke's voice rapped in his ear, filled with a desperate anguish. "Nathan, wake up!"
"--Ugh--" Nathan rolled over and off the edge of the bed, sitting up hunched over his knees. Gripping his knees, he watched his fingertips indent the flesh. He stared at the floor between his legs until his breath evened out, then shook his head. He couldn't catch hold of the memory of what was responsible for the harsh awakening.
He could make his guesses, though: just like he could make his guesses what the nightmares were about.
"Duke?" His voice was rough from sleep. "If you're here--"
Now he knew for sure that Duke could be there, even if Nathan couldn't see him, that didn't necessarily mean that he was.
"Duke, I... You have to know, I..." His voice shook. He had not had time, nor the right moment, in the Armoury, to say all the things he needed to, with Duke made visible and real anew. But there was no reason he couldn't say them now... None except for his closing throat choking him and the hiss of blood coursing through his head. He could say his piece now, for all it would be a one-sided conversation. "I shouldn't have done it. There was another way, there's always another way. I should have stood my ground..."
A strong impression of shut up kissed the back of his mind... The sense of anger flooding through him was strong, and he didn't think it was his. If Duke's ghost was in the room, he was swearing up a storm at Nathan right now.
He was fairly sure it was only his own misery that rolled over him next. Nathan crouched in the centre of his too-large bed, the expanse of the sheets an empty ache, covers pooling around him, and watched the shadows seem to crawl around the walls.
"I am sorry, Duke," he tried again, trying to make the words gentler, more like he meant them. "I would have fought for you, the same way I always did for Audrey."
He just... hadn't realised it until too late. After that, already having given in once, it hadn't seemed to matter any more when the world called for him to give up both of them. At least Audrey was still alive.
He scrubbed a hand over his face and told himself again that he had chosen Haven, and it was the responsible choice, the decent choice, the good of the many...
He had the impression of a sigh, of resignation, and he thought he might have made progress, gotten something through.
His arms on Duke's neck; tight-held grip through unfelt death throes...
It was light outside the drapes: he'd slept through, carrying his nightmares with him past dawn. Nathan switched off the alarm before it could sound. His brain was just catching up to the current state of affairs in Haven -- he had a string of deaths to deal with, all their efforts to establish supernatural assistance hadn't helped, and Audrey had done the next best thing to throw him out -- when his cellphone rang and he realised what was missing from the morning.
***
Nathan had talked to Cat Anderson in the police station, briefly, on the evening before the first death. A cold fear gathered, wrapping his insides in layers of smothering dread. This was starting to settle too close.
"Gloria," he greeted cautiously, stepping through the door under a scaffold-covered frontage; boards over windows, tarps patching the roof above. There were other people in the room, but no Vicki and no baby. Nathan focused on his Medical Examiner.
She squinted at him and judged caustically, "Yeah, this crap gets me like that, too. So much for it being 'over'..." Nathan glanced sideways to their company in quiet alarm, but she hadn't been too brazen... and besides, these people had to have already seen Cat Anderson's eyes.
He took her remark to mean that the signs of his hangover were visible on him even if he couldn't feel it. He shook his head warily, not wanting to discuss either matter in public. "He's the only one today?"
Gloria nodded. "The idea of this spreading exponentially was looming pretty large for me, too, kid. But--" She spread her hands and qualified, "So far."
Nathan pressed his lips against the back of his knuckles, hiding the expression he couldn't feel in his uncertainty of what it would reveal. "Let's do this."
They processed the scene together, Nathan's movements weary and sluggish. He shouldn't have drank last night. Then again, Gloria of all people wasn't going to castigate him for it. He'd known she topped up on gin at breakfast any number of times when the Troubles were at their worst.
He was heading out again when someone caught his arm. He 'felt' it only when he was moving away and the other person dug in so hard it jerked him back, making him misstep. He turned to the tune of the other person's pissed off demand, "What the hell is wrong with you, Wuornos? Gerald said he even went so far as to grab your arm at the opening, but you walked right on past him anyway."
Damn it. Nathan didn't want to admit to his Trouble, and cause more fear and panic. He squinted at his accuser. Kev Jarvey was the name his brain supplied, its gears working slowly. "Sorry. I've been..."
...Preoccupied, he didn't finish, as the implications landed on him.
"Gerald? Gerald... Johnson?" He could see in Jarvey's face that he was right.
He'd seen Carla Jenkins a few days before she died.
He'd seen Merle and Gerald the day after, even if he hadn't known he'd seen Gerald.
He'd seen Cat Anderson, too, a few days ago. He remembered shaking Cat's hand, feeling nothing.
Duke... his flailing thoughts grasped, and latched onto. How long has Duke been hanging around me, going where I go?
All his instincts rebelled. It wasn't Duke.
Nathan groaned and fell back, staggered by the revelation. These people hadn't touched Duke, they'd touched him. He remembered Carla's playful pat on his face, smiling at a memory of their schooldays, creating a bright moment in the first day he'd woken up to no sensation. He'd shaken Merle's hand as well as Cat's, a casual matter of rote and formality. Gerald must have caught skin, when he'd touched him and tried to speak to him without him knowing, when Nathan had been buzzed and tense and focused obliviously on the opening and never realised the other man was there at all.
His legs gave out entirely, and Jarvey grabbed this time to keep him on his feet. Maybe too late for him, now, and who else had he condemned in the last few days, unknowing?
Dwight. He clearly remembered fingers trailing the abused palm of his hand, in friendship and concern. The next person to touch him after Cat had been Dwight.
No...
He grabbed for his phone, tuning out exclamations around him. Dwight picked up on the second ring, his voice muzzy from the hour. Nathan could hear the clicking of plates and Lizzie's bright voice in the background, a burr of a sleepy question from McHugh. "You're all right." The relief was almost a physical blow.
"Why wouldn't I be... Nathan, what's wrong?" Dwight asked, going from puzzled to sharp in an instant.
"I need you to come to the station. As soon as possible. I don't... I don't understand it, but I think you're in danger."
"I'll -- I'll be there." Dwight sounded uncertain. This was too much to throw at people who had already been through too much, who had thought they'd gained a return to a safer, normal life. But Dwight was still alive, for now.
Nathan lowered the phone and his stomach rebelled. He tasted vomit in the back of his mouth in time to hold it in until he could get to the Andersons' kitchen sink. Heard Gloria shouting: "Nathan! Nathan! What's the matter?"
Him. He was the matter. He'd killed them all. Probably killed Dwight yet. Somehow the aether inside him... It was too big a coincidence for any other explanation. Everyone he'd touched since his Trouble had slipped back on full-throttle, that touch apparently marking them for death. Four people were dead because he'd touched them.
He clung to the edge of the sink, though its metal rim gave no grounding or comfort to the dead nerves of his fingers. The edges of the world frayed and filled with a creeping darkness that he had to fight back. While I sleep... Nathan urgently pulled the facts together. It kills them while I sleep... So no matter what, he could not pass out. He forced himself to straighten, his head to lift.
Gloria skittered away from him as he turned, a curse hissing from her lips. "No...! You--"
Nathan didn't dare to ask what she'd seen. If his eyes had been as black as Duke's had gone for just a moment or if it was only his expression she reacted to. He looked at the sink, and there was no aether stain like tar among the mess there. "I--I need to go." He lunged for the latest man who'd touched him, dragging him to the door by the back of his jacket. "You need to come with me. Your life could depend on it!" Whatever protest Jarvey had been about to offer died in an instant.
Nathan had to save Dwight, save the others. His head spun and he couldn't think. He needed to, though. He needed to be very, very clear on this: who had touched him, in the last few days?
There had been at least one person who'd touched him within the same time frame who'd survived the others, he realised. The young girl at the opening of the community hall who'd given him an improbable spontaneous hug. He hadn't seen her since, but he'd have heard if a child had died. She was a newcomer to Haven, adopted by a woman who'd lost all her own family to the Troubles.
So... then they had to have been Troubled before, too.
He should have realised sooner, he thought, but he hadn't even shared necessary information with Audrey and Vince. He'd been so stupid. His Trouble had come back, in defiance of what should have been. He'd seen all the signs of it. He'd been contaminated by aether, the way Duke had been contaminated, and when had it not had an effect? They weren't like Mara and William's people, who could take it and control and manipulate it -- though it had still got to Croatoan, in the end.
Dwight. Dwight, of all of them, still had a chance of a normal life. The thought thundered in his head, rushing through his bloodstream as he staggered out to the Bronco, moving too fast, numb, while dragging another person, for any kind of grace. Nathan had thought he'd had that opportunity for a normal life, had tried to believe it and live up to Audrey's request that he should live.
He'd tried to make amends and protect Haven, to be the one who put the town back together.
This was too much. This, there was no coming back from. (This, was how Duke felt at the end, pounded the straining beat of Nathan's heart.) Four people dead from some demon crouched within him...
All he had left was to try and save the ones who were not yet dead, before they joined the victims he had killed.
He searched around him for some solace from the ghost, but couldn't detect anything of Duke's subtle reactions amid the noise of his panicked body.
***
It was for the third time in twenty four hours that he stood in the place where the Armoury had stood, with Dwight and Jarvey and Mrs Henson, who had touched his hand in the coffee shop while exchanging loose coins the day before -- and he could only hope that was everyone who had been tainted by this new, unexplained curse.
"Nathan," Dwight said heavily, hand on his shoulder when Nathan turned his way, despite everything. There was a shrug in his eyes with the sorry truth: not like it matters now. Aloud, Dwight said, "This isn't your fault. Unless you mean to start blaming Duke for what Croatoan forced him to do, too. This is something Croatoan did. Maybe he even did it on purpose."
Nathan nodded, not feeling the consolation, but it was easier to pretend.
"Though you could've discussed things with someone before you started playing with the new Barn again," Dwight grunted, rather more judging.
"I didn't expect it to work. Not the first time." And after that, there had been Duke and the overwhelming experience of seeing Audrey again, and Nathan had not thought about talking to anyone else at all.
"We'll fix it." Pushing forward, Dwight seemed to have dismissed the complaint overly fast, and he quieted the protests of Jarvey and Mrs Henson alongside him. Nathan didn't feel that he deserved such support.
"We need Audrey for that," he said. Uncertainly, he stepped clear of Dwight to call out to her again, petitioning for a third and final time. He thought his legs were trembling, or at least they seemed unsteady underneath him. He realised he'd forgotten to eat last night, and he certainly hadn't eaten this morning. Had thrown up everything left in his stomach. There was a mundane explanation for his weakness. "Audrey, I need you!"
He waited, but she didn't come. Audrey had thrown him out last time -- the abruptness, he allowed, might have been due to her own hurt and inability to approach another long goodbye -- and she'd been adamant about not lightly doing this again. But the lives of others were on the line, and he could not let her turn him away.
"Audrey!" Nathan howled, choking on the end of the cry, his vision blurring with the smear patterns of moisture as he let the anguish loose. He hoped she'd respond to his despair. "Help me! It's me-- It was... It was me all along."
He fell to one knee on a white floor. Heard a grunt of surprise from Dwight and less dignified noises from the other two, less used to the convoluted craziness of directly dealing with Troubles. Nathan lifted his head to see them looking around, agitated and freaked out... by Duke's appearance among them as much as anything. Duke looked almost as panicked as they did, though.
Audrey ran to Nathan's side and fell to her knees. "Nathan..." Her hands clutched his shoulder, his face. "You..." Her eyes turned distant, as though she was seeing straight through him, and she gave a startled little hiccup as they returned to focus, and shock overtook her expression. "Nathan! Croatoan happened to 'casually mention' that he'd seen aether still in you," she said bitterly, "But I wasn't expecting anything like this. Why didn't you tell me?"
"After all you'd done...?" he mumbled, staring enrapt at her face. She was so much more adept with the aether, he thought dazedly, distantly. She must have been learning from Vince and Croatoan. "Wasn't going to tell you my Trouble had come back anyway."
He couldn't meet her eyes. He hadn't begun to imagine the rest of the problems his Trouble had brought with it.
"He's struggling," Dwight said. Dwight was looking at Duke with his mouth partially open, as though he wanted to say something more.
"I know," Duke said. "I've been treated to my own zero-participation experience of watching it."
"...Vince," Dwight acknowledged the looming presence of the taller Teagues brother, and then with a touch more startlement, the smaller beside him, "Dave." It was almost funny how Dwight managed to remain so collectedly calm and polite. Nathan repressed a laugh that would likely have come out rather hysterical.
"I killed them. It must have happened in the night. Don't know how. The aether... must've taken control of me, and I--"
"Not that," Duke said. "It didn't happen that way." Considering he was a ghost of sorts and, well, Duke, it was remarkable how his face flushed as the others looked at him.
"Because you've been watching over me, like some guardian... Duke?" Nathan's voice flattened on that last word as he realised no substitution he put in there would ever fit.
"Yeah, okay." Duke shuffled. "But I can positively tell you that you have not been getting up and killing people by tearing the aether out of them, Nate." A trace of anger crept back into his tone.
"Then how..."
"How do they have aether?" Audrey asked, standing up from Nathan to extend her hand to Dwight. "Because they shouldn't have aether to begin with. Are we so very sure that...?" She paused to ask permission with her eyes before placing her hands on the big man's chest, between the opened buttons of his shirt, on revealed skin that could never have been on display in the days he'd spent imprisoned within a bullet proof vest.
Audrey breathed in sharply.
"Aether?" Vince asked quickly, his focus crawling worriedly over Dwight.
"Yes! It's there. It hasn't been there long. It's... trying to reform into his Trouble. Loose, raw, unrefined, unshaped by will or thought... only the existing scars left by the aether that was there before. How could it possibly get there?"
"Because I touched Nathan?" Dwight asked, his brow curling. "I touched Nathan's hand, the day before yesterday."
"Oh..." Audrey spun back to Nathan, sharp as she rapped out, "You're not killing them." Her voice was shaky, distress and alarm raising the pitch. "It's the Armoury that's killing them."
Vince made a choked noise.
"It's not exerting its full power, because it already did its job, but the pull is still there. It's just... passively trying to take their Troubles again. Once their will turns off, once they're quiet and sleeping and not moving... it must come out like a tidal surge..."
Vince nodded, loosing a harsh breath. "You're quite right. The amounts were too tiny for me to notice, but now I examine the past few days in detail..."
"But then the stuff in Nathan--" Duke started urgently.
Vince wafted a hand and sighed. "Like to like... Nathan's aether is keeping him alive, just like yours is. It should have been pulled in by the Armoury, too, just as yours should. That was supposed to have been my function. But... Audrey and I are also part of the Armoury's function, and neither Audrey or I would ever wish to destroy you, or Nathan... or my brother." His expression turned misty. "I had wondered before, and can only surmise that our unconscious desires spared you... and left this disaster waiting to happen!" He frowned. "Now that the Barn is largely in its dormant state, passive will is certainly enough to control such strongly bonded aether, and for our purposes I should think the human will to survive goes a long way. Nathan might experience the same pull as the others in his sleep, but the aether in his body is likely to be mending the damage even while it's exacted. But if Nathan is going to start leaking aether out, willy-nilly, recontaminating others--! Well, that's another matter!"
Vince sounded like Nathan had conspired to do it on purpose. Though he felt numbed anew from the revelation of exactly how he'd contributed to the deaths, Nathan managed a token scowl.
"Hush, Vince." Dave punched his brother in the side, frowning. "Stop freaking people out. I swear, this Barn brain-patch is making you even more of an ass. Will they be all right, that's what matters!"
Duke sidled in to help Audrey pick Nathan up from the floor and dust him off. Duke's hands were kind, and touched him as tenderly as Audrey's did, and Nathan could detect no malice in his touches for the fact of Nathan having killed him.
Vince looked contrite. "Yes... Well, we can turn on the Armoury back to full power, extract the aether from these three." He acknowledged Dwight with a grim smile of apology as a vague wave encompassed the others. "They can go back."
"And Nathan?" Duke pressed.
"Nathan, I'm less sure of. If there's so much aether in him that it's seeping out..."
"It might need Croatoan's expertise," Audrey said. "And he's in a huff right now."
"But Nathan's alright here," Duke said. "Here in the... Barnmory."
"Yes, temporarily," Audrey snipped. "Nathan would theoretically be all right here."
A light glimmered through the darkness, both a promise and a curse. Nathan had been cursed all his life anyway. He struck out for it, half-blindly, fumbling. "...Here... I'll stay here..."
"Nathan, no!" Audrey denied, full of quick, defiant anguish.
"Audrey, yes!" Duke rounded on her, still clutching Nathan's shoulders, making him feel like a bone dragged between the two of them. "He doesn't want or need a normal life, Audrey! How could any of us really be normal, after everything--?"
"Tell me..." Tears sparkled on her cheeks, a host of silver tears in the light of the Armoury as she faced off to Duke and refused to back down. "Tell me that this isn't just giving up--"
"Like I did, is that what you mean?" Duke shot back, and Audrey's breath hissed. "I know that now, and I know what it did to him. You think I don't regret that moment? There was... there seemed... no other way." Duke's complexion had gone pale, but the way he panted and struggled, physically, to frame the words was wholly un-ghostlike.
"I don't want to die." Nathan grit the words out, barely believing the implications of what he'd heard. Duke blaming himself for Nathan killing him. Absurd-- "I want to be with you both."
He scrabbled at his jacket, searching for a definitive gesture to seal his commitment. His fingers and jacket both seemed uncooperative even though he could feel, here. But he curled his hand around the hard edges of his badge after a brief struggle, and he thrust the palmful of duty toward Dwight. "I'm sorry..." Too much has happened. I can't do this job. Can't protect Haven. All I do is destroy it.
"No problem." Dwight took the badge like it was a nothing, an easy burden, the smile on his lips casual. A kind smile. "I was getting bored of retirement."
"Is that enough?" Duke challenged, fierce.
"Goodbye, Dwight." Audrey's smile for him at least was full of real warmth, though Nathan wasn't sure if he himself was going to be forgiven anytime soon. She had wanted the best for him. Vince slapped Dwight on the back, and Nathan opened his mouth to speak--
--Before he could, Dwight and the others were gone. He'd managed to catch Dwight's eyes, one last time. Understanding had been there. That would have to be enough.
"When we leave here now," Audrey said, "it will be with the Armoury switched fully 'on'. We'll take the aether from them safely."
"I'll... go and see to that," Vince said slowly, and pushed Dave ahead of him, away. They disappeared, swallowed up in the white haze. Dave's backward glance at Duke hung on the air an extra moment like the Cheshire Cat's grin.
"Well," Audrey said, a trace of sting in her voice. She sighed heavily and her hand travelled up Nathan's chest to his shoulder as she stepped in close, and her tone softened. "You got what you wanted, I suppose. But did you have to get yourself contaminated by aether to do it?"
"I'd have traded staying in Haven for their lives in a heartbeat," Nathan rasped. "But I'm not going to regret being with you." Wasn't going to pretend he didn't want this. Wasn't glad that more people had died to achieve it, after the carnage they'd already endured in Haven. Wasn't... happy, though that might come later. But he felt being there with them both as a great relief.
"I know." Duke folded him in his arms. "And for me, I won't have to listen to any more of those horrendous apologies without being able to tell you to shut the fuck up. You're an idiot, Nathan."
"I heard you," Nathan mumbled into his shoulder. "Heard you tell me to shut up. Thought you were still mad."
Duke's snort was expressive, though he quieted and allowed, "Perhaps I was a little bit, at the beginning. But I do not blame you." He dragged Nathan's face up between both his hands and moved to kiss him.
Audrey sighed. "Now we're all stuck with each other in this dimension-straddling box, I hope you've some idea what you're planning to do with eternity."
"I've got some..." Duke's voice curled low and seductive before truncating in a distressed squawk. "...Teagues and Croatoan have got their own separate bunkspace, check?" The wild flail of panic wasn't entirely pitched for humour.
Audrey huffed laughter that was only half a sob and relented, leaning in to wrap her arms around them both. "We have the aether to make whole universes inside this thing, once I learn to use it."
She smelled of electrostatic and tears. Nathan buried his face in her hair, his cheek rasped upon Duke's beard, and he thought of being in a place so alien, and yet so uncontestably coming home.
END
"Dave?!" It hadn't been what Nathan intended to say, with Duke there, but he'd been half expecting Duke.
"Yeah." Duke jerked his thumb, and oddly, looked almost as shocky and nervous as Nathan felt as their eyes met over the smaller man. His eyes glittered as though with moisture (the tears of the dead?) and were strangely pleading, even as his words rose, glib. "Look who decided to tag along."
"You're here." No doubts about the tears in Audrey's eyes. "You're both here." She anticipated Nathan's impulse to throw himself at Duke and cling on, turning it into a messy three-way hug. In the background, Dave pounded on Vince's shoulder as the big old man's lower lip trembled, wordless, hanging more than a head-height over his brother's bowed shoulders and curled arms.
"Dave... Dave!" burbled Croatoan's voice with uncanny delight. "Oh, I do declare! You made it!" Nathan wrenched away from Audrey and Duke, an old sense of panic resurfacing.
He sounded so wretchedly cheerful, like Dave was an old friend, but the expression on Dave's face... perhaps everyone else's, too... caused Mara's father to back off, holding up his hands in a parody of surrender. "Okay, I get the picture... I'll go make myself scarce."
Nathan didn't realise just how tense he'd been until he was sagging after Croatoan was gone.
"Sorry," Audrey said, putting her hand on Duke's face, cupping his chin gently to turn away his fixed stare. Nathan hadn't seen the full force of it until he turned, but there was as much horror there as in Dave's. Audrey stood up on her toes to kiss Duke on the mouth. "I'm so sorry. Nathan had asked to see him, as proof he was still contained, so we managed to drag him out of his projects... I didn't think it through." She added, "He's trying to change, I promise."
"I... don't know that I care," Duke said, his voice almost a wheeze.
"Nor do I," Nathan added gruffly. He reached for Duke. He realised anew that he'd been able to feel since he arrived in the Armoury as his hand contacted Duke's arm through his clothes and encountered solidity, stability, proof. If Duke was some kind of aether-ghost, then right here and now at least, he was solid and real. Nathan froze and stared.
"Breathe," Duke suggested. Smartass, as always.
"Were you in the station?"
"Yeah, I was in the station," Duke said with heavy sarcasm. "Do you know that it's almost like... like the opposite of a sixth sense, that you have there, Nate? When every single time you talk to the air you manage to look in the complete opposite direction from me?"
Nathan blinked.
"Stop it," Audrey chided, her voice aiming for lightness, though one of the tears brimming in her eyes fell, trailing a glittering reflection of white light down her cheek. "No arguing here."
"You wanted us here together," Duke pointed out.
"The killings..." Nathan almost choked on remembered duty, but he managed to get the words out. It was what he'd come back for. "Do you know anything about the killings?"
Duke frowned in a very particular way, long-familiar to Nathan, and shook his head. "Not me."
"Dave." Nathan said it with more of an edge. It had been Dave who had killed like this before.
The old man spread his arms, his face anguished. "To the best of my knowledge, Nathan, it wasn't me... But you know we've been on this road before."
Nathan's eyes flickered unintentionally between Dave and Duke. Unintentionally suspicious.
"I did not do this," Duke said, jabbing hand gestures flying. "I don't think he did this, either, even though he's been playing hide-and-seek with me this whole time we've been dead and discontent together."
Dave nervously blurted, "What can I say? You were pretty daunting at the end, Duke. And I've always been... guess I'm still a coward, at heart."
"Not that." Vince spoke up, sharp and unexpected. "Never that. No... not that, Dave." The taller Teagues brother mustered a grim humour and bolstered himself with, "I know what you have been doing all this time. Who was it always wished they had themselves an invisibility Trouble, hm?" His eyes bulged as he nodded his head manically.
Dave's mouth ticked and he gave a filthy chuckle. "Oh, you only wish you'd gotten to hang around ladies' bedrooms instead of in this white box!"
"You--" Duke broke off the exclamation, looking disgusted. Nathan processed the implication Duke hadn't done that. "You gutter minded old coot!"
Dave waved a hand. "Whereas you've been hanging around in... let me guess... Nathan's house?"
"That's different. We're--"
Dave's gleefully mocking, contrary expression was a reminder how irrepressibly annoying the old man had been capable of being while alive, and in some way that wormed into Nathan's soul and soothed the manner of his death. He watched the soft smile collapse Vince's face into all its many wrinkles and knew he wasn't the only one.
Audrey was smiling, too. "We're all together again..." A feeling of warmth and joy seemed to radiate out from her. In the middle of all the white, it was like she was made from gold. It lasted a few seconds before Vince's face fell, and hers followed his like a reflection.
"We must figure out what's happening in Haven!" Vince exclaimed, even as Duke's hand closed around Nathan's hand and he said, very intently, "Nathan."
Nathan felt the contact like fire upon his skin, senses brought back from vaccuum state, and the intensity of the touch... The expression Duke wore was unreadable, but it changed as he felt Nathan's flinch of reaction and he released his grip with a spasmodic unclenching. Nathan hadn't meant to let go. But, well, didn't that sum up so much?
"We do need to focus," Audrey said, reluctantly picking up Vince's thread. "You can't stay here for long, and we can't keep the Armoury here for long. It affects the world around it... and the Troubles did damage enough already."
"What if... if you took us away in the Armoury? Return us later?" Nathan rasped. Stay here for good, his thoughts whispered fiercely, but duty resisted.
It had been a thin hope. Vince said gruffly, "It's hardly an exact science. You should try driving a transdimensional building! Every exercise risks dumping a multitude of Troubles -- or worse, raw aether! -- back into the world."
"And there's you to consider," Audrey said, her words saturated with pain. "You've already been in the void, you've already been touched by aether, and it's too much risk..." She looked at Duke and Dave and managed a smile to go with the offer: "Both of you could stay, though. Given you're no longer really mortal, and the aether that makes up your forms... It really should be in here and not out there, anyway."
Duke glanced at Nathan and turned away from them both. "I need to stay in Haven."
In the face of Vince's joy, and irritable pantomime-prompting for a likewise reaction, Dave responded, "But, naked ladies! And, Vince, Croatoan is in here...!" He shuddered.
"He can't do anything now. Audrey's here, too, and I can do things. Remember that! Dave, do not tell me you're choosing to ogle jugs over the prospect of spending the rest of eternity with your own brother!"
Dave broke out a genuine smile. "I'm joking, you asshole."
Nathan averted his eyes in abrupt pain as the reunited brothers embraced again.
"Nathan," Duke said, but Nathan's thoughts were full of phantom killers and corpses with aether-smudged eyes. He rubbed his hand where Duke's touch echoed, as if he could remove a lingering itch, though that wasn't quite what assailed it, and said, "I guess we will know it's not Dave if this stops. Maybe you should stay here, too. Better for you, I'd think." Nathan didn't know what Duke felt he had to stay behind in Haven for.
"Seriously, it's not me," Duke said. "Can we put a lid on that theory? How is it that after everything we've been through, we're still back to this?"
His face fell the instant he'd finished the protest. Remembering, perhaps, that he'd gone mad for aether under Croatoan's influence and murdered... But Nathan hadn't meant that. "I just want you to be safe." Duke could be with Audrey, even if Nathan couldn't be with them, and perhaps together they'd be able to make something resembling happiness here, while Nathan had to go back alone.
Duke shook his head. "I'm not leaving. Not this time." When Nathan turned back to Audrey, he noticed Duke had edged closer again and was touching his arm very lightly.
Duke, he thought bleakly. Duke, who he'd killed.
Nathan shut his eyes a moment. He had to focus, he told himself harshly. Focus as he had before, with Audrey, though both of them were here to turn his head now. He still had a job to do. He'd made his choices -- to stop fighting for them, to choose Haven, this time. He had to let them both go. He was Chief of Police again and, having taken up that badge, he had to make himself worthy of it, this time.
"If it's not either of them, we're still no closer to what it is," he said.
"Ruling them out is still progress," Audrey ventured. "We will work on it... separately, as we must." Her eyes didn't leave Nathan. The gaze lingered between them for a long time. He could see the lines of her body yearning toward him.
The white interior was replaced by the gap on the hilltop in an instant. Nathan swore and looked around for Duke, but he still couldn't see him, nor any trace of him.
"You should have stayed there!" he snapped at the air. What was Duke thinking? "What exactly are you gonna do, huh, in a world where no-one can see or hear you?"
Duke didn't answer, not even those subtle senses of an echo inside Nathan's own head. But perhaps Nathan's thoughts were racing and his heartbeat pounding too loudly to hear him.
***
After the Armoury, and in the absence of any perceptible Duke, Nathan stumbled home. Feeling was a removed sort of concept, but he felt like gravity wasn't working properly, like the world was sliding sideways when he tried to place his feet on the ground. At home, he opened the bottle of scotch that had been sitting untouched since the first day he walked back alone from the absence left by the departing Armoury.
He didn't drink very often, and the bottle did not last very long, but at least he wouldn't feel it in the morning.
In his nightmares, the aether in him crawled up into his eyes and nose, mouth and ears, until he was bleeding it out just like Duke. He could feel it in the same way he could feel Audrey, when all else was numb. It hurt like nothing he'd ever felt, but it filled his mouth and he couldn't scream.
Did it hurt like this for Duke? some hazy awareness wondered. Did Duke want to scream inside all the time, behind those black eyes? Did he tell Nathan to kill him because he'd just come out from that terrible immersion, with the knowledge of what he'd done beneath it, and thought he couldn't face living and there was nothing left to live for?
Nathan was returned to familiar ground, then, murdering Duke over and over in his dreams.
"Wake up, man!" Duke's voice rapped in his ear, filled with a desperate anguish. "Nathan, wake up!"
"--Ugh--" Nathan rolled over and off the edge of the bed, sitting up hunched over his knees. Gripping his knees, he watched his fingertips indent the flesh. He stared at the floor between his legs until his breath evened out, then shook his head. He couldn't catch hold of the memory of what was responsible for the harsh awakening.
He could make his guesses, though: just like he could make his guesses what the nightmares were about.
"Duke?" His voice was rough from sleep. "If you're here--"
Now he knew for sure that Duke could be there, even if Nathan couldn't see him, that didn't necessarily mean that he was.
"Duke, I... You have to know, I..." His voice shook. He had not had time, nor the right moment, in the Armoury, to say all the things he needed to, with Duke made visible and real anew. But there was no reason he couldn't say them now... None except for his closing throat choking him and the hiss of blood coursing through his head. He could say his piece now, for all it would be a one-sided conversation. "I shouldn't have done it. There was another way, there's always another way. I should have stood my ground..."
A strong impression of shut up kissed the back of his mind... The sense of anger flooding through him was strong, and he didn't think it was his. If Duke's ghost was in the room, he was swearing up a storm at Nathan right now.
He was fairly sure it was only his own misery that rolled over him next. Nathan crouched in the centre of his too-large bed, the expanse of the sheets an empty ache, covers pooling around him, and watched the shadows seem to crawl around the walls.
"I am sorry, Duke," he tried again, trying to make the words gentler, more like he meant them. "I would have fought for you, the same way I always did for Audrey."
He just... hadn't realised it until too late. After that, already having given in once, it hadn't seemed to matter any more when the world called for him to give up both of them. At least Audrey was still alive.
He scrubbed a hand over his face and told himself again that he had chosen Haven, and it was the responsible choice, the decent choice, the good of the many...
He had the impression of a sigh, of resignation, and he thought he might have made progress, gotten something through.
His arms on Duke's neck; tight-held grip through unfelt death throes...
It was light outside the drapes: he'd slept through, carrying his nightmares with him past dawn. Nathan switched off the alarm before it could sound. His brain was just catching up to the current state of affairs in Haven -- he had a string of deaths to deal with, all their efforts to establish supernatural assistance hadn't helped, and Audrey had done the next best thing to throw him out -- when his cellphone rang and he realised what was missing from the morning.
***
Nathan had talked to Cat Anderson in the police station, briefly, on the evening before the first death. A cold fear gathered, wrapping his insides in layers of smothering dread. This was starting to settle too close.
"Gloria," he greeted cautiously, stepping through the door under a scaffold-covered frontage; boards over windows, tarps patching the roof above. There were other people in the room, but no Vicki and no baby. Nathan focused on his Medical Examiner.
She squinted at him and judged caustically, "Yeah, this crap gets me like that, too. So much for it being 'over'..." Nathan glanced sideways to their company in quiet alarm, but she hadn't been too brazen... and besides, these people had to have already seen Cat Anderson's eyes.
He took her remark to mean that the signs of his hangover were visible on him even if he couldn't feel it. He shook his head warily, not wanting to discuss either matter in public. "He's the only one today?"
Gloria nodded. "The idea of this spreading exponentially was looming pretty large for me, too, kid. But--" She spread her hands and qualified, "So far."
Nathan pressed his lips against the back of his knuckles, hiding the expression he couldn't feel in his uncertainty of what it would reveal. "Let's do this."
They processed the scene together, Nathan's movements weary and sluggish. He shouldn't have drank last night. Then again, Gloria of all people wasn't going to castigate him for it. He'd known she topped up on gin at breakfast any number of times when the Troubles were at their worst.
He was heading out again when someone caught his arm. He 'felt' it only when he was moving away and the other person dug in so hard it jerked him back, making him misstep. He turned to the tune of the other person's pissed off demand, "What the hell is wrong with you, Wuornos? Gerald said he even went so far as to grab your arm at the opening, but you walked right on past him anyway."
Damn it. Nathan didn't want to admit to his Trouble, and cause more fear and panic. He squinted at his accuser. Kev Jarvey was the name his brain supplied, its gears working slowly. "Sorry. I've been..."
...Preoccupied, he didn't finish, as the implications landed on him.
"Gerald? Gerald... Johnson?" He could see in Jarvey's face that he was right.
He'd seen Carla Jenkins a few days before she died.
He'd seen Merle and Gerald the day after, even if he hadn't known he'd seen Gerald.
He'd seen Cat Anderson, too, a few days ago. He remembered shaking Cat's hand, feeling nothing.
Duke... his flailing thoughts grasped, and latched onto. How long has Duke been hanging around me, going where I go?
All his instincts rebelled. It wasn't Duke.
Nathan groaned and fell back, staggered by the revelation. These people hadn't touched Duke, they'd touched him. He remembered Carla's playful pat on his face, smiling at a memory of their schooldays, creating a bright moment in the first day he'd woken up to no sensation. He'd shaken Merle's hand as well as Cat's, a casual matter of rote and formality. Gerald must have caught skin, when he'd touched him and tried to speak to him without him knowing, when Nathan had been buzzed and tense and focused obliviously on the opening and never realised the other man was there at all.
His legs gave out entirely, and Jarvey grabbed this time to keep him on his feet. Maybe too late for him, now, and who else had he condemned in the last few days, unknowing?
Dwight. He clearly remembered fingers trailing the abused palm of his hand, in friendship and concern. The next person to touch him after Cat had been Dwight.
No...
He grabbed for his phone, tuning out exclamations around him. Dwight picked up on the second ring, his voice muzzy from the hour. Nathan could hear the clicking of plates and Lizzie's bright voice in the background, a burr of a sleepy question from McHugh. "You're all right." The relief was almost a physical blow.
"Why wouldn't I be... Nathan, what's wrong?" Dwight asked, going from puzzled to sharp in an instant.
"I need you to come to the station. As soon as possible. I don't... I don't understand it, but I think you're in danger."
"I'll -- I'll be there." Dwight sounded uncertain. This was too much to throw at people who had already been through too much, who had thought they'd gained a return to a safer, normal life. But Dwight was still alive, for now.
Nathan lowered the phone and his stomach rebelled. He tasted vomit in the back of his mouth in time to hold it in until he could get to the Andersons' kitchen sink. Heard Gloria shouting: "Nathan! Nathan! What's the matter?"
Him. He was the matter. He'd killed them all. Probably killed Dwight yet. Somehow the aether inside him... It was too big a coincidence for any other explanation. Everyone he'd touched since his Trouble had slipped back on full-throttle, that touch apparently marking them for death. Four people were dead because he'd touched them.
He clung to the edge of the sink, though its metal rim gave no grounding or comfort to the dead nerves of his fingers. The edges of the world frayed and filled with a creeping darkness that he had to fight back. While I sleep... Nathan urgently pulled the facts together. It kills them while I sleep... So no matter what, he could not pass out. He forced himself to straighten, his head to lift.
Gloria skittered away from him as he turned, a curse hissing from her lips. "No...! You--"
Nathan didn't dare to ask what she'd seen. If his eyes had been as black as Duke's had gone for just a moment or if it was only his expression she reacted to. He looked at the sink, and there was no aether stain like tar among the mess there. "I--I need to go." He lunged for the latest man who'd touched him, dragging him to the door by the back of his jacket. "You need to come with me. Your life could depend on it!" Whatever protest Jarvey had been about to offer died in an instant.
Nathan had to save Dwight, save the others. His head spun and he couldn't think. He needed to, though. He needed to be very, very clear on this: who had touched him, in the last few days?
There had been at least one person who'd touched him within the same time frame who'd survived the others, he realised. The young girl at the opening of the community hall who'd given him an improbable spontaneous hug. He hadn't seen her since, but he'd have heard if a child had died. She was a newcomer to Haven, adopted by a woman who'd lost all her own family to the Troubles.
So... then they had to have been Troubled before, too.
He should have realised sooner, he thought, but he hadn't even shared necessary information with Audrey and Vince. He'd been so stupid. His Trouble had come back, in defiance of what should have been. He'd seen all the signs of it. He'd been contaminated by aether, the way Duke had been contaminated, and when had it not had an effect? They weren't like Mara and William's people, who could take it and control and manipulate it -- though it had still got to Croatoan, in the end.
Dwight. Dwight, of all of them, still had a chance of a normal life. The thought thundered in his head, rushing through his bloodstream as he staggered out to the Bronco, moving too fast, numb, while dragging another person, for any kind of grace. Nathan had thought he'd had that opportunity for a normal life, had tried to believe it and live up to Audrey's request that he should live.
He'd tried to make amends and protect Haven, to be the one who put the town back together.
This was too much. This, there was no coming back from. (This, was how Duke felt at the end, pounded the straining beat of Nathan's heart.) Four people dead from some demon crouched within him...
All he had left was to try and save the ones who were not yet dead, before they joined the victims he had killed.
He searched around him for some solace from the ghost, but couldn't detect anything of Duke's subtle reactions amid the noise of his panicked body.
***
It was for the third time in twenty four hours that he stood in the place where the Armoury had stood, with Dwight and Jarvey and Mrs Henson, who had touched his hand in the coffee shop while exchanging loose coins the day before -- and he could only hope that was everyone who had been tainted by this new, unexplained curse.
"Nathan," Dwight said heavily, hand on his shoulder when Nathan turned his way, despite everything. There was a shrug in his eyes with the sorry truth: not like it matters now. Aloud, Dwight said, "This isn't your fault. Unless you mean to start blaming Duke for what Croatoan forced him to do, too. This is something Croatoan did. Maybe he even did it on purpose."
Nathan nodded, not feeling the consolation, but it was easier to pretend.
"Though you could've discussed things with someone before you started playing with the new Barn again," Dwight grunted, rather more judging.
"I didn't expect it to work. Not the first time." And after that, there had been Duke and the overwhelming experience of seeing Audrey again, and Nathan had not thought about talking to anyone else at all.
"We'll fix it." Pushing forward, Dwight seemed to have dismissed the complaint overly fast, and he quieted the protests of Jarvey and Mrs Henson alongside him. Nathan didn't feel that he deserved such support.
"We need Audrey for that," he said. Uncertainly, he stepped clear of Dwight to call out to her again, petitioning for a third and final time. He thought his legs were trembling, or at least they seemed unsteady underneath him. He realised he'd forgotten to eat last night, and he certainly hadn't eaten this morning. Had thrown up everything left in his stomach. There was a mundane explanation for his weakness. "Audrey, I need you!"
He waited, but she didn't come. Audrey had thrown him out last time -- the abruptness, he allowed, might have been due to her own hurt and inability to approach another long goodbye -- and she'd been adamant about not lightly doing this again. But the lives of others were on the line, and he could not let her turn him away.
"Audrey!" Nathan howled, choking on the end of the cry, his vision blurring with the smear patterns of moisture as he let the anguish loose. He hoped she'd respond to his despair. "Help me! It's me-- It was... It was me all along."
He fell to one knee on a white floor. Heard a grunt of surprise from Dwight and less dignified noises from the other two, less used to the convoluted craziness of directly dealing with Troubles. Nathan lifted his head to see them looking around, agitated and freaked out... by Duke's appearance among them as much as anything. Duke looked almost as panicked as they did, though.
Audrey ran to Nathan's side and fell to her knees. "Nathan..." Her hands clutched his shoulder, his face. "You..." Her eyes turned distant, as though she was seeing straight through him, and she gave a startled little hiccup as they returned to focus, and shock overtook her expression. "Nathan! Croatoan happened to 'casually mention' that he'd seen aether still in you," she said bitterly, "But I wasn't expecting anything like this. Why didn't you tell me?"
"After all you'd done...?" he mumbled, staring enrapt at her face. She was so much more adept with the aether, he thought dazedly, distantly. She must have been learning from Vince and Croatoan. "Wasn't going to tell you my Trouble had come back anyway."
He couldn't meet her eyes. He hadn't begun to imagine the rest of the problems his Trouble had brought with it.
"He's struggling," Dwight said. Dwight was looking at Duke with his mouth partially open, as though he wanted to say something more.
"I know," Duke said. "I've been treated to my own zero-participation experience of watching it."
"...Vince," Dwight acknowledged the looming presence of the taller Teagues brother, and then with a touch more startlement, the smaller beside him, "Dave." It was almost funny how Dwight managed to remain so collectedly calm and polite. Nathan repressed a laugh that would likely have come out rather hysterical.
"I killed them. It must have happened in the night. Don't know how. The aether... must've taken control of me, and I--"
"Not that," Duke said. "It didn't happen that way." Considering he was a ghost of sorts and, well, Duke, it was remarkable how his face flushed as the others looked at him.
"Because you've been watching over me, like some guardian... Duke?" Nathan's voice flattened on that last word as he realised no substitution he put in there would ever fit.
"Yeah, okay." Duke shuffled. "But I can positively tell you that you have not been getting up and killing people by tearing the aether out of them, Nate." A trace of anger crept back into his tone.
"Then how..."
"How do they have aether?" Audrey asked, standing up from Nathan to extend her hand to Dwight. "Because they shouldn't have aether to begin with. Are we so very sure that...?" She paused to ask permission with her eyes before placing her hands on the big man's chest, between the opened buttons of his shirt, on revealed skin that could never have been on display in the days he'd spent imprisoned within a bullet proof vest.
Audrey breathed in sharply.
"Aether?" Vince asked quickly, his focus crawling worriedly over Dwight.
"Yes! It's there. It hasn't been there long. It's... trying to reform into his Trouble. Loose, raw, unrefined, unshaped by will or thought... only the existing scars left by the aether that was there before. How could it possibly get there?"
"Because I touched Nathan?" Dwight asked, his brow curling. "I touched Nathan's hand, the day before yesterday."
"Oh..." Audrey spun back to Nathan, sharp as she rapped out, "You're not killing them." Her voice was shaky, distress and alarm raising the pitch. "It's the Armoury that's killing them."
Vince made a choked noise.
"It's not exerting its full power, because it already did its job, but the pull is still there. It's just... passively trying to take their Troubles again. Once their will turns off, once they're quiet and sleeping and not moving... it must come out like a tidal surge..."
Vince nodded, loosing a harsh breath. "You're quite right. The amounts were too tiny for me to notice, but now I examine the past few days in detail..."
"But then the stuff in Nathan--" Duke started urgently.
Vince wafted a hand and sighed. "Like to like... Nathan's aether is keeping him alive, just like yours is. It should have been pulled in by the Armoury, too, just as yours should. That was supposed to have been my function. But... Audrey and I are also part of the Armoury's function, and neither Audrey or I would ever wish to destroy you, or Nathan... or my brother." His expression turned misty. "I had wondered before, and can only surmise that our unconscious desires spared you... and left this disaster waiting to happen!" He frowned. "Now that the Barn is largely in its dormant state, passive will is certainly enough to control such strongly bonded aether, and for our purposes I should think the human will to survive goes a long way. Nathan might experience the same pull as the others in his sleep, but the aether in his body is likely to be mending the damage even while it's exacted. But if Nathan is going to start leaking aether out, willy-nilly, recontaminating others--! Well, that's another matter!"
Vince sounded like Nathan had conspired to do it on purpose. Though he felt numbed anew from the revelation of exactly how he'd contributed to the deaths, Nathan managed a token scowl.
"Hush, Vince." Dave punched his brother in the side, frowning. "Stop freaking people out. I swear, this Barn brain-patch is making you even more of an ass. Will they be all right, that's what matters!"
Duke sidled in to help Audrey pick Nathan up from the floor and dust him off. Duke's hands were kind, and touched him as tenderly as Audrey's did, and Nathan could detect no malice in his touches for the fact of Nathan having killed him.
Vince looked contrite. "Yes... Well, we can turn on the Armoury back to full power, extract the aether from these three." He acknowledged Dwight with a grim smile of apology as a vague wave encompassed the others. "They can go back."
"And Nathan?" Duke pressed.
"Nathan, I'm less sure of. If there's so much aether in him that it's seeping out..."
"It might need Croatoan's expertise," Audrey said. "And he's in a huff right now."
"But Nathan's alright here," Duke said. "Here in the... Barnmory."
"Yes, temporarily," Audrey snipped. "Nathan would theoretically be all right here."
A light glimmered through the darkness, both a promise and a curse. Nathan had been cursed all his life anyway. He struck out for it, half-blindly, fumbling. "...Here... I'll stay here..."
"Nathan, no!" Audrey denied, full of quick, defiant anguish.
"Audrey, yes!" Duke rounded on her, still clutching Nathan's shoulders, making him feel like a bone dragged between the two of them. "He doesn't want or need a normal life, Audrey! How could any of us really be normal, after everything--?"
"Tell me..." Tears sparkled on her cheeks, a host of silver tears in the light of the Armoury as she faced off to Duke and refused to back down. "Tell me that this isn't just giving up--"
"Like I did, is that what you mean?" Duke shot back, and Audrey's breath hissed. "I know that now, and I know what it did to him. You think I don't regret that moment? There was... there seemed... no other way." Duke's complexion had gone pale, but the way he panted and struggled, physically, to frame the words was wholly un-ghostlike.
"I don't want to die." Nathan grit the words out, barely believing the implications of what he'd heard. Duke blaming himself for Nathan killing him. Absurd-- "I want to be with you both."
He scrabbled at his jacket, searching for a definitive gesture to seal his commitment. His fingers and jacket both seemed uncooperative even though he could feel, here. But he curled his hand around the hard edges of his badge after a brief struggle, and he thrust the palmful of duty toward Dwight. "I'm sorry..." Too much has happened. I can't do this job. Can't protect Haven. All I do is destroy it.
"No problem." Dwight took the badge like it was a nothing, an easy burden, the smile on his lips casual. A kind smile. "I was getting bored of retirement."
"Is that enough?" Duke challenged, fierce.
"Goodbye, Dwight." Audrey's smile for him at least was full of real warmth, though Nathan wasn't sure if he himself was going to be forgiven anytime soon. She had wanted the best for him. Vince slapped Dwight on the back, and Nathan opened his mouth to speak--
--Before he could, Dwight and the others were gone. He'd managed to catch Dwight's eyes, one last time. Understanding had been there. That would have to be enough.
"When we leave here now," Audrey said, "it will be with the Armoury switched fully 'on'. We'll take the aether from them safely."
"I'll... go and see to that," Vince said slowly, and pushed Dave ahead of him, away. They disappeared, swallowed up in the white haze. Dave's backward glance at Duke hung on the air an extra moment like the Cheshire Cat's grin.
"Well," Audrey said, a trace of sting in her voice. She sighed heavily and her hand travelled up Nathan's chest to his shoulder as she stepped in close, and her tone softened. "You got what you wanted, I suppose. But did you have to get yourself contaminated by aether to do it?"
"I'd have traded staying in Haven for their lives in a heartbeat," Nathan rasped. "But I'm not going to regret being with you." Wasn't going to pretend he didn't want this. Wasn't glad that more people had died to achieve it, after the carnage they'd already endured in Haven. Wasn't... happy, though that might come later. But he felt being there with them both as a great relief.
"I know." Duke folded him in his arms. "And for me, I won't have to listen to any more of those horrendous apologies without being able to tell you to shut the fuck up. You're an idiot, Nathan."
"I heard you," Nathan mumbled into his shoulder. "Heard you tell me to shut up. Thought you were still mad."
Duke's snort was expressive, though he quieted and allowed, "Perhaps I was a little bit, at the beginning. But I do not blame you." He dragged Nathan's face up between both his hands and moved to kiss him.
Audrey sighed. "Now we're all stuck with each other in this dimension-straddling box, I hope you've some idea what you're planning to do with eternity."
"I've got some..." Duke's voice curled low and seductive before truncating in a distressed squawk. "...Teagues and Croatoan have got their own separate bunkspace, check?" The wild flail of panic wasn't entirely pitched for humour.
Audrey huffed laughter that was only half a sob and relented, leaning in to wrap her arms around them both. "We have the aether to make whole universes inside this thing, once I learn to use it."
She smelled of electrostatic and tears. Nathan buried his face in her hair, his cheek rasped upon Duke's beard, and he thought of being in a place so alien, and yet so uncontestably coming home.
END