FIC: [Haven] House Divided - Mara/Nathan/William, Explicit (9/10)

[roseveare]

Chapter 8

"Earth to Nathan," Duke says. "Hey! WMD sitting next to me."

Nathan looks up at him, well and truly snapped out of his thoughts, shaken -- a little -- by Duke's implications, and bemused that somehow it's okay that Duke just made a joke about it.

"You zoning out on me, here? Don't do that. Stay with us, Nathan."

He wasn't -- he was just wrapped up in his thoughts, and apparently plenty has happened, so he has a lot to think about. Audrey made it to the police station. He's... not a prisoner, not really, and that's more than he expected, that's weird, and he doesn't know what to do with it, this knowledge that if he decided to go, Duke couldn't hold him. The idea that he could walk away doesn't feel like freedom, more like some kind of limbo.

And Mara's barrier is down. It's -- He's not sure why, with everything else, he keeps thinking about that. Maybe because the light level has been subtly less ever since the barrier was in place, and it's something so fundamental to living. Still, it's not as if every change in weather doesn't effect the colour of the sky, and that's changing now, too, as the day heads ever nearer to night.

But there seems little point in arguing with Duke, who takes a hand from the wheel to pat his arm as Nathan agrees, "All right."

They're heading for the police station in Duke's truck. Dwight called, and from what Nathan understands, Dwight wasn't at the station yet, but they're all meeting there. Jennifer, squashed next to him in the front passenger seat, keeps shooting shy, encouraging smiles his way, and has a hand tucked around his wrist. That's weird, too, because he thought Jennifer never liked him much, but maybe she was mostly confused by him. He's getting a vibe off both her and Duke like they want to protect him, now. Even though they know what he can do and the last thing he needs is protection. Duke just called him a goddamn WMD.

"How did you do it?" Nathan asks. He can't feel Jennifer's hand, not where its weight rests over his covered wrist, nor where her fingertips nestle in the base of his palm, but he can almost imagine the warmth coming down his shoulder, where her body is leaned. "Albert Hutton. How did you do it, really?"

"I told you, I talked to him, and the wall came down." They care. Everything they do is motivated by the fact that they care. "He was locked in like that for so long. He needed someone to talk to him."

Nathan loves Audrey, loves her, and he tried to protect Sophie, tries to protect Haven, but he doesn't think he cares like Duke and Jennifer do. He knows his duty, knows he should be a good man. Knows driven passion -- knows it like nothing else. But he thinks that maybe they have something he doesn't, that there's a lack in him that goes deep. Maybe he belongs with Mara and William, after all.

Jennifer broke Mara's power with words and compassion.

Nathan barely knows what he's thinking, but it seems to him the barrier's important. "Mara wants Haven isolated. Like she's keeping the whole town captive."

"Yeah," Duke says, patting Nathan's knee before pulling his hands and focus back to driving. "I'm betting she can't do the most of what she wants to do without Haven being cut off from the outside world. Sure, she can run rings around a small town police force, but if the government, the army got involved, she'd be facing a hell of a lot more firepower."

"That's not really what we want, either." Jennifer shudders. "I don't much like the idea of the CIA or someone getting hold of... people who hear voices, and go super-strong and silver-eyed at the touch of blood."

"She won't risk bringing that kind of attention down," Duke says. "Whatever happens, we delayed her big move. You. You did. Right?" He's looking at Nathan for confirmation of Jennifer's deed.

"She'll need a new barrier," Nathan says, not expanding more on that because while he doesn't want to belittle Jen's efforts, he's not so certain it will take Mara long to replace Albert Hutton and his Trouble. Of course, she's in a cell right now. Maybe she's Audrey right now. He hopes that will last. But it feels hard to invest much in hope. He tries and drifts for a moment, dreaming of Mara in a cell, Audrey able to lift Troubles. Can he allow himself to wish that one day they'll both be free of Mara, and they can be normal, together?

He thinks normal was a lost cause a while back, but maybe they can be together.

"Nathan," Duke prompts, an edge to his voice, and Nathan can't be sure what Duke thinks he's going to do, but he sits up straighter and lifts his head anyway, to make Duke happy.

He wonders if Mara's barrier will end up with him, next time. He has forcefields already, after all. He's given to understand that the reason she didn't attach the barrier to him in the first place is because she's pleased with that existing Trouble -- and his efficacy with it -- and doesn't want to fiddle around with it.

Nathan has to remind himself, Audrey made it to the police station. Mara is in a cell. It could all be over.

He's numb already. Seems he's numb to the idea it could be over, too. Like he can't rewrite his expectations, his thought patterns about the future: Mara will do this, William will want this.

He's free.

Limbo hasn't got any walls, it's just grey, it's just waiting.

"How..." He feels like he should say something, tucked between Duke and Jennifer in the front of Duke's truck, and not really knowing anything about what happened to them, personally, after he took off to the island. "How are you? Are you both doing okay?"

Duke turns and gives him such a freaked look, and he's not sure if that's just a product of Nathan Wuornos attempting smalltalk, and an indication he's lousy at it, before Duke turns back to the road and says, "We're good. Generally."

"Other than the part about living in a town under the rule of the Evil Ice Queen, anyway," Jennifer adds, bobbing her head with snark. It's not meant cruelly.

"Mara's not ice," Nathan mumbles. She couldn't be further from it. She's fiery and vicious, and anything she does is from the love of it. Maybe it's no wonder that Nathan always seems to end up burning.

"Okay, wrong cliché," Duke says. "Fucking psycho bitch, though. Come on, Nathan. Whoops--" His neck does a quick snap manoeuvre back to the road, because they're in town, now, and negotiating an intersection. He really shouldn't be taking his attention from the road. He deals with the intersection then resumes: "You're loyal to Audrey. You love Audrey. Remember?"

"I do," Nathan says. "I love Audrey." They're getting closer now to him seeing her again.

"Nate, you're freaking me out--" Duke's voice dies as they round the corner. The police station is up ahead. The street in front of it is a mess of ambulances, squad cars, and Guard muscle trucks, all blocking the way through. Blue and red lights flickering in the near-dark. "This is--" Duke stops.

Jennifer picks it up fearfully. "It's because they've got Mara, finally, right? Isn't it?"

Nathan's got no more answers than they do, but all the instincts he had as a cop, as the cop who damn ran this place, those instincts are screaming -- and there's too much inside his head that isn't surprised, anyway.

***

Mara struts back and forth inside the cell and taunts the cops who stare at her. They are ridiculous children, and they don't even know Audrey, which would make things -- well, perhaps a fraction disconcerting but certainly more fun. She's aware of the uneasiness of the cipher within her, but also of its smug self-satisfaction, because Audrey carried her here and locked her up, stole her aether and her freedom, and no matter what else Mara can do, she cannot materialise herself out through solid bars.

It's the least she could offer in return, to humiliate Audrey in front of her old colleagues. But Stan -- dear Stan, it's been such a long time -- walked away when she tried to come on to him, and now she's left with the two rookies who are... Well, maybe they're fun in their own way.

Well. William is coming. She won't have to keep herself occupied for long.

She hasn't heard anything more from him after his initial greeting, that loaned her strength enough to take back her self. But she presumes he's busy. Most of the police and the Guard aren't here. Even with her in a cell, and she should be the most interesting show in town by far, they're slow at trickling in -- a few heads have poked around the door, then disappeared again at her greeting wave or grin, almost like they're embarrassed. Does that means the rest of them are playing with William right now? She'll have to chide him, when she sees him, for hogging all of the cops.

It seems she can still have fun with Audrey hitching a ride in her head, who knew? And when they get home, she has gleefully decided, she intends to design a host of fun scenarios fit to drive Audrey into hiding once and for all. She's getting more of a feel for when the bitch takes over inside her head. They're going to have to lock her up, those times Mara loses control, to prevent Audrey from doing anything so stupid again, and Mara is prepared to suffer a little to see her alter humiliated. Torture? Nothing new to her. Audrey's memories should try it. So she doesn't like being in bed with William? Mara will teach her everything William can do, along with a multitude of things he never yet has. She will fuck that bitch up. Nathan, for his efforts, gets to watch.

"Hey, I'm bored," she tells Wilkins. "Where's your boss, the Yeti? I thought he'd be all hot to talk to me."

"He's busy." Wilkins' eyes flicker uneasily. Whatever Dwight is doing, he's not comfortable with it.

"Oh, oh, oh!" It hits Mara. "There's not something wrong with Vince, is there? I thought that old bastard looked ready to croak! But wait, wouldn't that be a... a... let me think, what's the word here...? Conflict of interest? You know, the Chief of Police running an underground militia? Then again, I suppose they weren't going to ask Duke to do it." She lets her laughter roll, and widens her eyes, mocking. "I suppose, if I hadn't got to him first, him having the tattoo ready and all, they might have asked Nathan!"

Mara thinks that's hilarious, but Officer Dibble doesn't get it.

"Shut up," he tells her, shifting on his feet. He casts a somewhat help-me glance at his female colleague, Gerty, over by the door to the cell area.

The sound of screams from elsewhere in the building make Mara jerk her head up and smile.

Withers and Gerty swap uncertain glances. Gerty goes to the door, and looks around the corner, starting to unclip her gun. The sounds of footsteps approaching are still distant when she makes a sort of choked exclamation. Then she makes another sound, rather more choked. Mara's smile widens as something inexplicably splashes through the air, as red drops daub the floor and ceiling, as Gerty's body hits the ground.

Withers has barely started forming the word, "What--?"

"Oh, Officer Dibble, you're so dumb you don't even know you're dead," Mara croons, folding her hands around the bars and leaning forward. Black shapes detach themselves from Gerty's corpse and swarm upward.

William's black spheres aren't bothering to look like anything as they drive through Officer Withers and leave him, too, bloody and falling.

Footsteps ring on the shiny floors, just beyond sight, and William arrives striding and closed-faced. Mara hasn't failed to notice the small scrapes and bruises that formed on her hands, and underneath her clothing, in the last hour... since the larger injuries healed, which were overwhelming everything else before. Their duplicates pattern William's skin. She can see the rips in his clothing. He's blood-spattered from killing and tense with fear and anger.

William is her truest love, but he does lack Nathan's warrior soul. Being forced to fight irritates him so.

"You took your time," Mara observes, and steps back as the aether swarms again and smashes the lock on her cell.

He stares at her, breathing heavily. "I've been running from their tattooed loons half the day."

Mara reaches out and pushes the door back with one hand. “Nathan.” She rasps the word like a promise as she steps out.

“Later,” William answers, his desperation almost as palpable as his viciousness. “We have to go now.”

"Not right now," Mara corrects. They can spare enough time for her to start the eradication of Audrey Parker right here. William gives a huff of laughter as he catches her intent, though his body language stays skittish.

Officer Withers is still alive, albeit probably not for long, gulping for breath on the floor. Ignoring William's urgency, Mara squats and leans over the dying man. Reaching down, she dips her fingers in the wound, pressing them hard until parted flesh parts further to admit them. The noise he makes is pathetic, so tortured, yet quiet, for he lacks the capacity to scream as the pain deserves. Mara chuckles at him, smiling into the agony on his face. Then she pulls her fingers out and wipes them down her own cheeks. She takes up the gun that he didn’t have time to use.

"Did they not tell you that I am death?" she asks as she strokes his shuddering face with the gun, and offers, “You may pray, if you’re quick." Then she lifts the gun to his head and, slowly, gently, savouring the moment, squeezes her sticky finger on the trigger.

She closes her eyes and her mouth an instant before the splatter hits her face, then lifts her head and laughs. She throws the gun aside and says, aloud even though she intends it for Audrey-- “Do you want control of this body? Then take it.” She intentionally surrenders, diving back down, pushing the ragged shreds of Audrey up in her stead as she extends to William both her hands.

Audrey wakes to the scent of blood and William's hands clamped tight on her wrists. Black goo-balls hover threateningly on the air all around them. Two Haven PD officers lie dead on the floor, and there's blood and death all over her, clinging to her, worn like a red glove on her right hand.

“Did you really imagine I wouldn’t know you came here?" William asks, grin lurid and gloating now that Nathan isn't around and she's unarmed, weakened and helpless in his grip. Mara giggles beneath the surface, staying within a whisper of snatching back control, making sure Audrey knows it. "I wouldn’t follow you to get you back? Everything that’s happened here is your fault, Detective Parker.”

He pulls her around, dragging her so that her feet trip over the body, and she tries not to step on him, but William yanks her so she loses balance and can't not. "My beloved wishes you to see what I did. Who could argue with such a request?" William looks beat up and exhausted, but his voice is smooth silk.

She feels Mara stir and then smirk and settle back down. Audrey can feel more than enough strength is there in Mara to take over, while Audrey's weak and worn from her earlier fight. Mara, devious and cruel, wants Audrey to see this. She slows her down, refuses to allow her to avert her face, trips her and shoves her, making her clumsy. Mara stays below the surface out of spite, and there’s nothing Audrey can do. Mara doesn’t want her to witness this in mere memory. She wants her to see what William has done with her own eyes.

Seeing it shouldn't matter when she knows in abstract that he did it, but it makes a difference, it does.

"Come and let me show you!" His tone like a manic kindergarten teacher, William drags her along by the wrists. Whenever Audrey tries to fight him, Mara rears up and squashes her down. Out in the corridor... The place is like a morgue. Immediately she can see three bodies on the floor. The stink of blood is overpowering. There's so much of it.

Laverne... Her brain blanks. She wants oblivion, but Mara won't let her seek that, either. She wonders -- if she holds her breath for long enough, can she make herself pass out? She almost feels like she's going to do that anyway.

This is her fault. She brought them here. She thought that she could deliver Mara into their control. Do the right thing. Mostly she thought that she could do those things and still keep a slither of a chance back for herself.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, says the massacre in front of her. William hauls her, stumbling, over corpses whose names she knows, whose spouses and children's names she knows, down into the bullpen, where more dead await.

She can see Stan’s body lying halfway across the room, face-up, dark stains across the front of his shirt. And the thing is – the thing is, she can’t see enough from here to be sure. Can’t check his pulse or breathing. Can’t absolutely ascertain proof of death. So she tells herself it’s okay, it’s just her blood, from before. It’s just hers. Except she knows that it isn’t.

Deciding at last that she's seen enough, Mara rears up and swallows her whole.

William looks at her and for a moment uncertainty crosses his expression. Mara realises with amusement that he wonders if he has gone further than she'd have preferred; wonders if these vermin still held any value for her.

Mara shrugs. "I let Nathan live. How much more sentimental am I supposed to be?"

***

There's a horror painted on Dwight's face the like of which Nathan has never seen. Dwight, the soldier, has always seen worse, and Nathan has never seen him looking so lost.

It doesn't improve when he sights Nathan. Caught stark in the flickering lights from the emergency vehicles, his eyes widen with a flash of surprise-panic-anger that darts from Nathan to Duke, and seems like it wants to settle there, except that Dwight doesn't want to leave his eyes too long away from Nathan.

Doesn't help, either, that the other members of the Guard and HPD that are around -- all of them armed and angry beyond reason -- start to spot him a moment later, and a murmur goes up, carrying the atmosphere of violence. Nathan walks from Duke's truck with his arms held out and up. He's aware of Duke and Jennifer clinging to each other behind him. Nathan makes a conscious effort to extend the forcefield that responded automatically to the sight of the weaponry to cover them. The last thing he wants is for an ill aimed shot or ricochet to cause that kind of tragedy. Dwight being there doesn't guarantee not being hit. Depending on the shooter's position and the weapon, the bullets will happily go through them to get to Dwight.

Fear thrums through him despite the protection. It's not just the physical threat of the bystanders moving to hem him in a circle of guns. Being the target of hate and fear in mass proportion is terrifying all on its own.

He predicts Dwight's reaction to his first question being Where's Audrey?, and so even though that's the question he most desperately wants to ask, he restricts himself to a tight, "What happened here?"

"Wuornos," growls one of the Guard.

"Hold fire," Dwight orders, in a bitter bark. "The only person you're going to hit is me. Even if he didn't have his own protection." He glares at Nathan, who stops and keeps his feet still, and the men around him hold. A number of them exchange guns for knives, or mere fists. "Mara happened," Dwight says eventually. "Mara and William. At least, William was seen with her when she made good her escape."

Nathan goes short of breath; a panic attack of the type he hasn't had since the forcefields were new. Feels like they're shrinking in on him. Feels like they're blocking out all the oxygen he needs. But he's still covering Jennifer and Duke, and he can see that they're fine, so he pushes through. "What... what did they...?"

He looks toward the police station. He sees paramedics bringing out a stretcher, but the body's covered. A dark skinned hand is visible hanging down one side. Dark skin, generously overweight, fingers decorated with a woman's rings...

"Laverne... No..." His head spins. This is -- it's not possible.

"Oh, man. No, no, no..." He glances behind him. Duke has a hand clamped over his mouth, his face as pale as Nathan's ever seen it, Jennifer hangs onto his arm with her own mouth agape, her eyes wide, no attempt on her part to hide her shock and distress.

"How many? Who--?" This was Nathan's station, Nathan's responsibility, first, and even before that -- he basically grew up here. His single father was a cop. He spent hours hanging around those halls. Half the personnel have known him since he was a kid. "What did she do?" Audrey was going to put Mara in a cell. How did that go wrong?

Feet crunch on tarmac as someone moves. "You're as much to blame as them. You protected her--" The knife jars out of the Guard man's hand as his lunge encounters the forcefield. Maybe he breaks his wrist. He howls like he does.

"Fuck! Keep off him!" Duke yelps. "You just said it, you genius, he's Mara and William's fucking protector, and you've seen what they can do on their own! And he's here to help!"

That's definitely a piece of creative extrapolation on Duke's part. Nathan didn't come here to... He has no idea, now, why he is here. He needs to be with them, no matter what they did. It's the only way he can save Audrey and ultimately undo his mistakes. But now-- "What did they do?" His voice is shaking, he's shaking, he barely trusts himself to speak.

"Everyone that was in the station," Dwight says. "They're gone, Nathan. Cranmer, Withers, Gerty, Alison Treadman -- she'd only come in to deliver a sandwich order. Conyers. Laverne. Stan. Some kind of projectile. Tore them up, didn't leave any traces like a bullet. Wilkins was shot in the head. I was coming back." Dwight's shaking, too. Nathan can see his anger building, and how enormous and unstoppable it's going to be when all of that shock turns into rage. He feels sick, in that deep, unpleasant psychosomatic way he still can feel sick. "I was told Mara had walked straight into the station and surrendered. I should have known, damn it..."

Nathan can see it overtake him. He thinks it's best if he says nothing at all. Besides, at the moment, he doesn't deserve a defence if he could think of one.

"Damn you," Dwight hisses. "If you hadn't protected her... It's always got to be about Audrey... No, you brought this on us..."

"That's not fair," Duke speaks up. "Mara used him, too."

"I'm sorry," Nathan mumbles. It's not heard past Duke and Dwight shouting at each other. Accusations, condemnations, defences, excuses, all about him. He feels like he should be listening better, but he's not. He's looking past Dwight, past the Guard, the shell-shocked cops, the ambulances, to the police station.

He needs to see.

He's striding out through their lines, Duke's voice and Jennifer's babbling behind him, variations on: "Nathan, no!" The Guard, the cops, all yell and swear their complaints. It all slides off the forcefield. No-one can really touch Nathan anymore.

Some minutes later, he's sitting on the long line of steps outside the building's main entrance, and barely avoided discovering what happens to vomit inside a forcefield. He didn't need to see after all. Duke and Jennifer are still around, but they're keeping their distance now. Though that could be due to the throwing up.

Nathan's always had a strong stomach, but it's different this time.

Mara and William did that. He knows they're monsters, but maybe it got to be more an abstract knowledge, living with them, his perceptions skewed by knowing that William likes pizza or how Mara likes to walk barefoot on the tiled or stone surfaces of the castle floor.

Duke and Jennifer approach him, steps tentative but their faces determined. They climb the steps and sit down either side of him, the same as they were in the truck. Nathan leans his elbows onto his knees and plants his face in his hands so he doesn't have to look at them.

After a moment, Duke says, "Take the forcefield down, Nathan. The Guard can't shoot, not with Dwight here, and anyone who gets close enough to do anything else, I'll take care of."

It takes a few moments' concentration to do it -- he's at the point where he didn't register it being up. Oxygen abruptly becomes easier to access. Thought becomes clearer. He straightens, a bit.

"Yeah," Duke observes. "I thought that was a downside of that Trouble. You're not so Mr. Invincible after all." He manages a hint of wry humour. Duke's hand is on Nathan's back. On his other side, Jennifer curls up with her head upon his shoulder and wraps her arm through his elbow and over his bended-up knee.

It's a little alarming. She's so bright and gentle, and he's -- not. He wonders if Duke feels that way sometimes, too, with his curse forged of blood and death.

Nathan hears Duke's hand rubbing his back.

"I'm all right," Nathan says. It's a station full of his people who aren't.

His? Where did 'his' come from? They're Dwight's now, and he's Mara's. Mara who is out there again. Maybe she'll always be out there, even if Audrey is back. If Mara can do this, there's no way to contain her.

"You're not," Duke tells him, that way Duke has of deciding he knows your mood better than you do, that's always annoyed Nathan, his voice a song of exasperation. "But it isn't too late, Nathan. You can come back. She didn't do anything to you that you can't come back from, but you've got to believe that, if you believe that... Stay with us, this time."

"Stay," echoes Jennifer. "We know she hurts you, too."

Nathan wonders what they know.

"I can't." His powers don't work on them. He can't fight them from a distance. He has to be up close to take Mara and William down. "I need to go back to her."

Duke's really quiet a moment. Both of them, so quiet and so still. "Are you--" Duke pauses, the words seeming to strangle in his throat "--her conscience?"

Nathan doesn't think that's a position he can claim. "I hold them back," he settles for. He told Duke that much before.

"This--" Duke struggles, but can't find a way to name it. "It wouldn't have happened if you were here?"

Nathan does believe that.

Duke makes a muffled noise.

"It's not your fault," Nathan snaps, uncurling and turning, even as Jennifer moves to go to Duke instead of him. "You were just, just trying to help! I don't really know if they're... less... around me." But they haven't deliberately committed mass murder for shits and giggles in front of him either, since the void. Though he can't say they haven't created Troubles that could do it second-hand, out of his sight.

Nathan rests his hand between Duke's bowed shoulders, perhaps echoing what Duke did for him minutes ago, toying with the ends of hair he can't feel, situation reversed. He realises he didn't tell Duke the whole story, a minute ago. "I need to go back if I'm going to stop them."

Duke raises his head.

"I can't do it from here."

"What will you do?" Duke asks, quietly.

"I don't know." He hasn't had chance to think about that part yet. "Something."

Duke's hand clamps around his, covering the heel of the palm and lower wrist. Nathan takes in the telltale signs of the tightness of the grip. "Don't go. She has no power without you."

But it sounds like a prepared line, rehearsed, and after this, Nathan can't see how anyone can seriously argue that. Duke knows it too, hanging his head again. He corrects himself. "She'll destroy you."

Impossible to argue the ring of truth in that.

Nathan sits and thinks about Audrey, and the possibility of not going back.

***

Duke has... has freakin' whiplash from how fast this situation screwed up. He's been covertly watching them remove the bodies from the police station, to take them across to the morgue. The only part of this that's still salvageable is Nathan, sitting next to him and not running, not heading back to Mara despite his expressed desire to do so, even though nobody is now keeping him here. Nobody now could.

Duke started all this out of some misbegotten desire to save Nathan. Who is trying to dissuade him of the fact, but Duke doesn't see how this is not his fault.

They've played variations on this game before, it's just a brand new angle. Nathan wants to save Audrey, Duke wants to save Nathan, and the whole of Haven gets screwed in the process.

Dwight is walking back across the street to them. Dwight looks like a thundercloud, ready to explode. God of Thunder, only needs the hammer, and Duke's willing to lay money on it that he's out to smite something now. He turns back, mid-argument with a couple of guys from the Guard, and Duke hears, "He'll do what he wants. I can't restrain him. You can't restrain him." He sounds pissed off as hell about that. When he marches up, it's to continue that general thread with the demand, "Nathan, are you going to help?"

Nathan's thin shoulders adjust like a bag of rocks as he rolls to move upright. There are a few crunches. He says, "Yes," but Duke suspects he's probably not thinking in the same way Dwight is thinking, and knows he's perfectly capable of being a passive-aggressive smartass.

"You sure about that, because the reports I have from this morning suggest that would be quite the U-turn. You made a few new corpses of your own." Dwight speaks with barely-buried rage, his general's objectivity a memory.

"Shit, Dwight," Duke groans, because Nathan's colour wasn't great before, and it's nearly nonexistent now. "They dropped a building on him. They sure as fuck weren't fighting with safety-wheels on." Nathan doesn't have perfect control and every time Duke thinks back to that battle, more and more, he thinks Nathan was fighting defensively. Those fucking forcefields -- they could be used as more of an attack weapon than that, and Duke knows pretty well that when you're fighting for your life against people who are trying to kill you, you strike out.

"They killed Laverne. They killed Stan." Nathan chooses to ignore the accusation and opts not to chime in on his own defence. Still hedging, Duke notes.

Still, he thinks Dwight's swallowing more just standing here talking to Nathan. Dwight would rather that Nathan was tied up and drugged up, out of the way in that remote cabin. But he's not. The walking powerhouse is back in their midst, and since nobody can make him do anything, in the sense that everyone but Duke and Jen are absolutely freaking-out shit-scared of him, and Duke's not even sure about the exception... Soft steps and diplomatic words -- or words as diplomatic as possible under the circumstances -- are about the only sane recourse.

"We're going after them," Dwight says. There's white around his eyes, red veins inside them, and puffy pink discolouration outside that Duke can just about make out in the spotlights and flashing emergency lights illuminating the night. "Chances are they're not seafarers enough to put out back for the island before dawn starts to provide some more light. They're holed up somewhere in town or on the coast. Please, if you've only been acting so far for all the reasons you said, fight for us, Nathan."

They can't stop him going. They can't stop him interfering. They can't stop him flattening the whole party if he feels like it. Duke's gut churns. Nathan stands up. "You can't go after them like this. More people are going to die."

Dwight gives him a long look. "You can help with that."

This time Nathan doesn't say anything at all, not even about Audrey, which is more diplomatic than Duke would have credited him capable of anymore, but he can't say he doesn't appreciate it. A lot.

Dwight says, "Then you're with me," and reaches out and grips Nathan's shoulder. "You can do this."

Dwight's such a practical guy. He's angry, angry, angry, and some of that's with Nathan and his dumb-ass choices. But he's not going to let that lose him a resource, or worse, turn one against him. Sweet-talking doesn't work against Nathan at the best of times and right now Duke figures that Nate can't not know where Dwight's at.

"That means you're coming, too," Dwight says darkly to Duke. The sweep of his gaze covers Jen almost incidentally. Duke figures Nathan isn't the only one in the shit.

"Yeah, yeah, fine." He sighs. Of course, Dwight wants him, them, there to watch Nathan.

"No guns, no bullets, in my crew," Dwight reminds them. It's another reason, probably, why Dwight's putting Nathan with him, since there's fuck all point people taking pot-shots around the forcefield anyway, but hell, why not have the reminder?

Dwight stalks off to get ready and shouts around more orders, the set of his back a mass of tension. Duke isn't completely surprised when the big guy engineers things a few minutes later to come catch him alone. Jen's still watching Nathan, and... Duke doesn't even know what that's about; she seems to have latched onto the sexual assault thing in a weird way since the island. Started talking nineteen to the dozen, one evening, about the time she wrote a series of articles about it, that included rape statistics for men, how guys don't report it. It's probably just as well Nathan doesn't have a clue how much they know.

Dwight says to Duke in a low, dangerous voice, "We're going to find them and we're going to kill them, and that's the end. If you need to put Nathan down hard, remember that the forcefields don't work properly close to William and Mara."

So someone else noticed that in the crazy-ass battle, enough to report it to Dwight.

Duke has to ask himself, does Nathan hold William and Mara back? He'd seen Nathan with them on the island and figured it impossible. Yet what they've done after Nathan was taken from them far outstrips anything they did while he was their major weapon. Duke is starting to think that a weapon of epic proportions with a conscience is far better placed in the hands of a psychopath than a depleted arsenal lacking any restraint. Nathan, at least, is never not going to be the weapon that talks back.

Duke can't make Nathan's choices for him and he can't fix this. But it's going to break his heart if it turns out Nathan had the right idea all along.

Hours later, they haven't found Mara yet, though the Guard have killed a lot of bushes. Nathan moves like a machine at his side, and Jennifer gets stuck with driving Dwight's truck through the night-time forest track -- which it turns out she has a knack for; who knew? Reports say Mara and William were spotted coming up this way. That they're close.

Duke looks across again and sees Nathan's face, blank like a wall, limned by moonlight, and hasn't the faintest idea how this is all going to fall out when they find them.

***

Mara has slept in trees before; climbed up them in a gown much less practical than she is wearing now, that provided room aplenty for spiders to make homes in its folds as well as her back-then longer hair. William grumbles, but he's slept in far worse places. Audrey has also slept in a tree before, on a stakeout, but is silent, a small, wrecked core of desolation inside Mara's head. Which feels decidedly uncomfortable, and less satisfying than she was expecting. But hours into the search, into the night, Audrey has yet to show any signs of wanting to take back control, so maybe Mara's methods have got rid of her parasite problem for the time being.

Around three in the morning, William falls asleep and maybe she does, too, despite everything. She blinks her eyes open to the echo of distant noise.

She's pretty sure she's Mara when she wakes, but HPD voices slide into her awareness, familiar voices she can put names to, and her stomach does a somersault and she almost loses balance on her supporting branches.

"Oh." Audrey quashes the sound to a whimper, staring up at a snoring William tied by his jacket sleeves slightly above her in the tree, hands and arms huddled up against the cold. His mouth is open and his face oddly slack. Like that, he doesn't look like a monster, just kind of goofy and cute, like he was at the beginning.

The purely physical cold of the night isn't a match for the cold inside her as Audrey remembers what he did. There's still a gun in her belt. She draws it quietly, such careful, silent movements. She has it to his head before she remembers that firing this shot kills both of them.

It doesn't matter. The only difference is the pause and preparing herself to say her final farewells to the world. She wonders if, whatever spiritual beliefs prove true, Audrey Parker gets any sort of hereafter, or if that's only a privilege that goes to the real Audrey, the real Mara. If she only fades to nothing, like she never existed at all.

Did she exist?

She tries to pull the trigger and discovers she can't. It's not Mara -- at least, not consciously; Mara's slipped low and she can't feel that internal struggle right now. It's--

William. She can't bring herself to kill William. Not even when she reminds herself of all the things that he's done.

She tries again, turning the gun on herself. But her hand judders, self destruction doesn't come easy. Mara has no reason to die.

Or Audrey's just a coward.

With a grunt and a jerk, William awakens, his eyes suddenly open and staring at her with a gun pointed at herself. He chokes and snatches for it, shouting a desperate negation. Audrey rolls sideways and lets herself fall out of the tree.

Thick undergrowth catches her. Scratches assail her bare skin, unknown things tug at her as she moves. William hisses, "No. No! Come back! Mara!"

He's keeping his voice low because the searchers can still be heard, beating through the woods in the distance. They're armed with guns and fury and can only be coming to kill them.

Audrey thinks of the bodies in the police station. There's nothing left but this, and if she can't do it, someone else can do the honours. There will be no shortage of people burning to do her that service, out there in the darkness.

"No! No, they'll kill you!" Panic in William's voice and she hears him crash down out of the tree to follow as she starts running headlong through the undergrowth towards the searchers.

She'll save Nathan. Save Haven. There's nothing she can do about the Troubles already out there, but at least if she takes William and Mara out of the equation, everyone has a chance.

Sacrificing herself to the Barn for twenty-seven Trouble-free years was a more satisfying way to go.

Mara declared herself to be death, but Audrey will see that promise out.

She's such a straight line of purpose it even takes a moment to register the particular familiarity of two of the voices, out there in the woods--

"You awake, Nathan? C'mon, man, focus. Tell me you're still in the game." And after a pause, "I want to hear words, man."

"--fine--" comes the reluctant reply a moment later. Audrey's breath catches and her heart thuds painfully. Nathan, that was Nathan...! He sounds distant, further away than Duke as they cover separate search paths through the woods, and oddly preoccupied, but he adds an edge of impatience to, "Look out for yourself, Duke."

Nathan won't help her, he'll stop her. The thought slices into Audrey, and she adapts her first instinct to run towards his voice, heads instead for Duke, Duke, of all the people she could have hoped to see right now, and rekindled hope of a different kind rises in her.

There was something she thought of, back in the cell, back when hope seemed available in much more abundance, where she entertained and allowed herself to think in terms of positive solutions. Maybe she can do more than just die to save them, after all.

"Who is that? Is someone there?" Duke's shadow is all she can see through the trees. To her right, a flashlight beam bounces, missing her, but making it harder to pick out the details of where she's headed. "Goddamn it, I'm probably talking to moose."

"Duke! Over here!" calls Nathan, and Audrey hears his trail of noise through the undergrowth diverge behind her, heading back toward where William is coming on her tail. William is moving slower than she despite his desperate concern because he's already been hunted up and down Haven's coastline by the Guard for most of the afternoon.

"Nathan!" Duke yelps, and also starts wading through the undergrowth in that direction. Audrey presses herself behind a tree as the flashlight beam bears around again. Other bouncing flashlight beams trailing noise and voices materialise out of the dark woods, taking off after Nathan, drawn more by Duke's concern than Nathan's initial shout. There's at least one vehicle in there somewhere, engine rumbling in the dark.

Maybe they'll shoot William for her. But this -- she'll do this first, if she can.

She doesn't know what Nathan's doing here, among them. How they could possibly trust and accept him, how he could have been persuaded to stay. But she can't think about that, except that maybe it's a sign of hope for him after all.

When Duke comes level with the tree she's hiding behind, she reaches out and catches his hand -- the one with the gun in it. She's not intending to fight Duke but she can't let him shoot her yet, either. "Duke." His right arm comes around to brain her with the flashlight, and her free hand shoots out to muffle his cry. She tries to duck her head from the blow. She would rather take the hit than risk drawing Nathan. "Duke!"

"--Mara--" he mumbles under her hand, eyes going wide, flashlight perfectly poised to catch both their faces in its beam where he stalled it on their air; the blow still waiting to fall.

"No," Audrey says, keeping her voice quiet and urgent. "No, it's not Mara."

His eyes seem to go impossibly wide, and they search her, and he... sees, she thinks. He knew who she was when she was pretending to be Lexie, knew Mara was coming back when she re-Troubled him before, and he sees her now. She risks taking her hand from his mouth and her name is a drawn-out gasp on his lips. "Audrey--?"

"Yes!"

"...Nathan... Nathan wasn't..." He shakes his head, dismissing what he'd been about to say. From somewhere behind her, there's starting to be a lot of noise. William. Nathan. The Guard. But she can't think about that.

They step closer together, and suddenly Duke just slings his arms around her shoulders and holds her tightly, muffling his words in her shoulder. "I thought you were gone."

"So did I, for a while." But this isn't a reunion. "Duke. Duke." She clings to him, but she transfers her grip so she can step back to where she can see him. They might not have much time. "I need something from you. I need to... to fix your Trouble."

"What? Mara fixed it -- at least I think so, and -- Do you know what she did? You turned evil for weeks and Nathan charged down that slippery slope right after, and now... this is the thing that you come to me and say?"

"It's important," Audrey tells him. "It's really, really important. I've been thinking about this. The way I changed your Trouble, before. I didn't mean to, almost killed you." She tightens her fingers on his arms. "Sorry about that."

"A lot's happened since then." He looks beyond her, agitation animating his frame. "Audrey, we need to go after Nathan and the rest. If they kill William..."

"It's okay." If they kill him, she'll die, and that's okay. There's just one thing she wants to do first. "I don't want Nathan to see me. Just you."

"They fucked him up," Duke says, grimly, agreeing.

She sobs a little laugh. It's the most hopeless sound. But somehow Duke knows, and that's good. Nathan will need his help, when it's all over, to get through what's happened, to survive. And she wants him to survive, if she can't. "I know what to do now... with your Trouble. Mara's skills, her memories... I can make it so just the blood would be enough. No more killing, Duke. No more killing the Troubled, ever. You could save Haven. But I need to do it now, while I'm strong and Mara's quiet."

He puts the flashlight beam full on her face and leaves her blinking, and she supposes she's earned the intense, cynical scrutiny he gives her, searching again for Mara, and a trick. Doubting the instincts that told him she was Audrey. Doubting how well he knows her.

Then he lowers the flashlight and puts the gun away in a pocket, and yanks the layers of his jacket, shirt and T-shirt aside from his breast in one quick movement, exposing the shifting handprint mark already there. "You do this," he breathes, still sounding scared. "Just don't screw it up this time, okay?"

"...I'll try." She is grateful beyond measure for his faith in her. She doesn't deserve it. Where did it come from? His, Nathan's... How could she inspire them so when she was always Mara underneath?

And that's not a concern that's over yet. "I want your gun back in your hand," she says, pulling at him. "When I do this, I might turn back into Mara. Making Troubles is her domain, not mine. Please, Duke, please, if she shows, kill Mara. One more death for Haven..." Two, including William. "Please do that for me. She won't let you live with a Trouble like this, and I couldn't bear it if she killed you, or worse, and I had to come back to memories of doing that."

Duke draws a harsh breath.

"Look after Nathan." She can't see his eyes in the dark, only shadows, but she meets them anyway as she pleads with him for this last, last favour. "Make him learn to live and love without me. He listens to you. Please. I have to go, but I need to know he'll continue..."

Duke makes a choked noise and mumbles, "He listens to me sometimes. But, yeah, you know I'd do that."

Audrey curls her hands in the loose front of his clothes. "And you live, Duke. Have children, and be happy. You... carry this curse on, you hear me? You and Jennifer. Your family can fix the strays that are left. This... this way we can fix the Troubles for good, all of us together, and all of this means something real. Nathan paved the route by bringing me back. I learned enough from Mara to make this change. You and Jennifer... You bring me a future where the Troubles are gone."

She searches again for his eyes and with a bob of the flashlight, this time she finds them. She sees the glitter of moisture there... Her plan laid out, and she can see he understands her logic, how determined she is to make it happen.

"Do it," he whispers, and like once before, willingly bows his head and bares his chest to let her lay her palm upon him. She checks to make sure there is a gun in his hand.

Mara took more aether from William, but she doesn't need it for this. Not to reach in and reshuffle, adjust, rearrange. The void-stuff of the aether wriggles into a new shape for her as if eager to do so.

She feels Mara surge inside her, so indignant and offended by this act that Audrey can't hold her off, can only throw herself back from Duke, staggering over the obstacles of the busy woodland floor, stumbling, falling.

Mara twists and scrambles to her feet, snarling curses. She looks up at the click.

Looks up into Duke Crocker's gun, then a flashlight beam that blinds her.

His face in that flash was drawn and twisted, tortured and more. His shirt was askew and the handprint on his chest glowed differently than ever it has before, with the distinctive characteristics of someone else's interference. Mara doesn't need to scramble through her recent memories for what that bitch did.

More, she asked him to kill her. Now he's holding a gun in her face.

But the moment extends, and extends, and nothing. Mara draws in breath, and lets it out as laughter, at first weak and shaky, but by increments it turns louder, raucous and real. "You can't do it!" she jeers, delighted, as she steps backward. Like Nathan before him, he can't put the final nails in Audrey Parker's coffin when it comes to the crunch, even when she's a willing sacrifice.

"I'm sorry..." he whispers.

She laughs in his face and turns to flee. "I won't let you destroy all of my gifts!" She leaves a promise, voice shrill and coarse on the air: "I'll be back for you, Duke!"

She thinks he might yet pull the trigger -- she keeps herself moving -- but still he doesn't shoot.

--William-- The concern inserts itself unpleasantly into Mara's consciousness. He's protected, but he's tired, and it seems Nathan has gone turncoat again.

She dismisses Duke from her thoughts as a problem to deal with later, and she chases off into the night.

***

Nathan feels more removed from what they're doing than his original Trouble would ever justify. It's a bunch of rage-fuelled townsfolk and cops going up against Mara and William, and their Troubles, those of them who have Troubles, won't help them... just like Nathan's won't.

Then again, he understands why, after the police station, they have to do something. But Dwight's supposed to be the strategist. Nathan doesn't know what he's thinking, or if he is thinking.

They were Dwight's people, and not Nathan's any more. It happened on Dwight's watch. Nathan can't imagine how he would feel if it had happened on his.

Tiredness or pain can't hold his steps. He doesn't know if being here can prevent another massacre. Mostly so far it's just making people nervous, and he appreciates Dwight assigning him to this party, where he doesn't have to always focus on keeping a forcefield raised against his allies' bullets.

Nathan senses William before he sees or hears him, and that creeps him the fuck out. It's like the presence of the other man slides into place at the back of his mind and it's familiar, it's known, it belongs there, and what the hell did Mara and William do to him in that bed?

It comes with an unwillingness to reveal him to the searchers, but Nathan's memory of Laverne and Stan dead in the police station is stronger. There are too many other people here he gives a damn about. Duke, Jennifer, Dwight... He's not going to watch another massacre, and he almost chokes on the reluctant words, "Duke! Over here!" as he starts running toward William's presence.

He hears Duke shout onward, and others pick up and start following him.

Nathan doesn't know if he can take William. He's not sure if he can so much as raise a hand against William, for certain, and none of his Troubles are such that they'll work directly. Even in a physical fight, a punch from William will hurt. But William won't kill him, and that can't be said about anyone else here trying to take the bastard on. So Nathan increases his pace, feet battering the ground, pushing a forcefield through the undergrowth ahead of him to clear a path for his wild sprint. The speed won't buy him a lot of time to try and get this done before the bystanders show up.

Nathan's not great in the dark, but the forcefields help him keep from tripping over everything but the most solid of obstacles. Trees cast bulky enough shadows to avoid, but he's moving fast and can't see very far ahead of him. That sense of presence calling to his soul is converging with a concentration of sound and movement ahead--

He feels his forcefield collapse the instant before he all but runs straight into William.

"Nathan! I thought that was you!" William gasps. He breathes in agonised gulps, but launches straight into words. "Mara... Audrey! We have to find her! She--"

Nathan damns the hesitation that cost him his momentum and launches off again, charging into William and knocking him flat before he can finish.

"You bastard...!" He lashes out with hands that can feel when they connect. Scores William's cheekbone with a short, fierce punch. "The police station! You think I don't know your work?! Wouldn't see it?!"

William growls at him and does something Nathan doesn't feel, out of sight in the dark. He thinks perhaps he just got kneed in the balls. Then William digs his fingers into his wrist, hard enough to make him feel the flare of pain from the cuts there, then make his hand go... well, numb. All pins and needles, at least, and he can still feel that while William's holding it. "Mara!" William yells in his face. "Audrey! She's out there. She's out there and she wants them to kill her!"

"What?"

"I said get off of me, idiot! Mara needs our help!" William comes damned close to throwing him off, relinquishing his wrist in the process, and panic sets in. Nathan can hear others approaching behind, Dwight's voice among them. Can see the sweep of headlights that signals the arrival of the truck Jennifer's driving, which had to come a different way around to negotiate the trees. He's lost track of Duke, but he must be somewhere, in amongst the confusion. What Nathan cannot do is let William loose among all these people, when he's already in a killer mood today. Damn it...! Could Nathan even spot those black balls of crap, flying free ready to do something else terrible, in the dark? Nathan grabs William's arms and hauls them over his head, pins him down by them. "Fuck you, William! You're not killing anyone else today!"

"You're such a goody-two-shoes," William growls. Something makes Nathan look down, to discover William's pushing up his crotch, grinding against Nathan where he's straddling him. "You sanctimonious prick." He breaks the grip on his arms, and squirms, upsetting Nathan's balance. In a fast move, he grabs the back of Nathan's neck and pulls his head down, pressing their lips together. "You prick. Nathan, Nathan, Nathan..." He chants in a mumble, tongue moving inside Nathan's lips, trying to invoke all the unwanted ties he and Mara wrapped around Nathan yesterday, as Nathan struggles but can't get loose, and his body begs surrender. He hears an exclamation from someone in the oncoming Guard and HPD search party, hears Dwight curse, and his face burns. With William holding him so close and tight, he even feels the heat. He almost imagines he can feel it go straight down to his groin.

He bites William's tongue and uses a forcefield to scrape the ground around him, tearing up dirt and vegetable matter and propelling it all across the backs of his shoulders into William's face, as the forcefield predictably gives out under his immunity, but the regular matter keeps its momentum. He uses another forcefield to smash up a tree at the side of them, showering them with debris that manages to hit William about as much as it does himself.

Nathan doesn't take the chance to pull back from the kiss. He clamps a hand on the back of William's neck, his turn to keep him there now, and scrapes his free hand over the ground next to him. The make Trouble spits out a reluctant batch of sharp-edged iron caltrops. He hopes it does, anyway. It's too dark to see if it worked, and he can't feel them.

This time, he uses his grip on William's neck to help him pull back from the kiss. Then he jerks his head forward again, slamming his forehead into William's mouth. He feels teeth slice his skin, which is distracting, but he's pretty sure William is hurting more.

--Mara's going to kill him--

William's hurting more still when Nathan clamps a hand around his shoulders and throws a knee around his legs and rolls them both in a full circle, slamming William's back on the collection of sharp metal shapes.

Which apparently are there, from the way William howls.

"Bastard," Nathan hisses into William's face, close enough to kiss him again, and there's a pull to do just that, but he loathes himself for it enough to resist.

People are around them, waving tasers, and Dwight's voice asks, "Nathan?" uncertainly, but it sounds far away. A taser goes into William's side, jolting his body on the caltrops and making him gurgle. Someone jabs a taser into Nathan, somewhere, and the world short-circuits a moment, but on the other side of it someone's being yelled at by Dwight. Nathan lifts his head and can see the headlights of the parked truck, and Jennifer in her dress too thin for the night's temperatures glowing in the haze, with her arms wrapped around herself, but he can't see Duke anywhere.

William's still underneath him. His hand reaches up to paw Nathan's face. "You're still mine," he whispers harshly, just loud enough for Nathan to catch. "She gave you to me. You think you can escape--? Urk!"

Someone shocks him again, which Nathan appreciates. He scrabbles through William's clothes, looking for the box; the black goo-balls. "There's a...a weapon," he grates, trying to make himself heard by Dwight and the search party above the other noises. "A box. Those black spheres. We have to find it." He can't conduct a fucking body search in the fucking dark without a sense of touch. Even the flashlight beams just throw shadows where his hands go. His fingers light up with life where they come into contact with William's skin, but that doesn't necessarily help him. "Dwight--"

He tries to move aside enough for Dwight to shove in and search, without getting so far from William he can't grab him again if there's any sign of his deadly weapons emerging.

"Mara," William mumbles. "Save her..."

"Worry about yourself," Dwight growls. "Kill one, kill both, check?"

Dwight has a knife.

Nathan sees the glint of it in the beams of flashlights and headlights. Jennifer gives a high cry of startled horror, but most of the other noises from the crowd around them are of approval. Nathan still doesn't know where Duke is, because if he were here he'd be stopping them. As it is, Nathan's the only one here who can stop this. He grabs for the wrist of Dwight's hand that holds the knife and pushes his own body in the way, straddling William again, albeit for protection this time.

"...Knew you cared..." William mutters, and groans because he's being mashed against the sharp edges underneath him again.

Dwight curses and says, "Where the fuck is Duke? Nathan, get off, damn you. They need to die. They need to die now."

Other people are moving in. Nathan's forcefield stutters and fails because he's too close to William. He gets tased again. Probably a more than once, but he can't tell. It's a wonder he doesn't get knifed. When he can think again, he's being pulled off William by many hands and Dwight is raising the knife again. He kicks out, but misses. A forcefield is too weak to push Dwight's arm back, when it has to get so close to William to do it. And Nathan is going to get a knife in him, unless he looks to himself. Perhaps not by HPD, they know he wasn't there for the massacre, know him, but some of the people holding him are Guard.

They rebound abruptly off a tight three-hundred-sixty degree forcefield, but that leaves Nathan in a heap on the ground, and Dwight is still poised over William.

Then Nathan finally sees them -- clouds of darkness resolving from the shadows, moving toward Dwight like swarms of angry bees, melding together in clumps and turning the shapes of arrows on the way.

Jennifer screams, "DWIGHT!"

Nathan uses a forcefield to provide the momentum. The only thing he has to throw is himself. The impact of his body knocks Dwight sideways off William before the knife blow lands, before the goo-balls strike. Nathan has no idea if his forcefields are proof against William's creations, but his body's plastered over Dwight's and in the way, and William desperately dispels the cloud of hovering death.

"Get up, get away from him," Nathan begs, pulling at Dwight, who is not going to be fucking moved by Nathan this time unless Dwight wants to be, apparently. At least if they're away from William, he can use the forcefields. His voice sounds thin and ineffectual as he raises it to shout. "Everyone to me! That stuff's still out there, waiting in the shadows to kill."

Of course, if he puts a forcefield around everyone, he can't protect himself from the people inside it.

"Nathan!" a voice of fury rises out of the trees as someone runs, oncoming fast. "Forcefields UP. NOW!"

He looks in time to see Mara slap her hand into a Guard man's face, and then the world explodes.

Forcefields can't cover William. Jennifer's on the other side of him. Nathan lunges toward Mara and tries like hell to throw the largest wall he can up between all of them and her and whatever she just unleashed. It's almost like the clouds have come down to ground level, and there's grey billowing everywhere, but it stops at Nathan's forcefield like its encountering a pane of glass.

William drags himself upright while everyone else is ducking. Nathan sees him tase Dwight and kick him while he's down, but the goo-balls have clumped together to form William's henchmen, who help to keep him on his feet as he swears and kicks and lurches.

The grey clouds subside enough to see the trees complete their last moments of collapse, just crumbling vertically in place where they stood. Beyond Nathan's forcefield now lies an area of the woods maybe sixty feet across that's completely bare, empty ground covered by a sediment layer of white-grey that reflects the meagre light there is to almost glow. Mara and the grey man-shape with her hand over its face are the only things still standing. The only living one is Mara.

Mara has her other hand over her mouth. When she takes it away, her lips are bloody. "We're going home." She spits blood and ashes when she speaks. The corpse of the man she just Troubled finishes crumbling to dust when she takes her hand back. "None of you are going to stop us. Nathan..."

She holds out her arm, imperiously.

"No," Duke says, and Nathan isn't sure how or when he got there, but he's at Nathan's side and gripping his arm like a vise. "You don't get him, you bitch."

William's at Mara's side, now, both of them looking the worse for wear. She's going to be so angry, thinks Nathan, thinking of wounds on her mouth and on her back, inflicted by his hand. The henchmen take positions of protection slightly in front of them, although of course, this time no-one can fire a gun.

Mara looks directly at Nathan. "You can't even imagine what we're going to do to her if you aren't there to stop us."

"What's she talking about?" Dwight chokes, with difficulty.

"Audrey," says Duke, his breath sounding almost as constricted, and he hasn't just been tasered and kicked. "I saw Audrey."

Duke saw--? Nathan looks at him, but there's no time to ask, no time to process.

"Nathan!" Mara crooks her finger, moving it through the air where dust still hovers that might've been trees, might've been a man. "I expect you to follow."

"He's not your dog," Duke says.

"I beg to differ." Her eyes sweep the remainder of the party nastily. "The rest of you feel free to follow, too... if you feel tired of your pathetic lives."

Someone tries to shoot her -- Guard or HPD, Nathan isn't sure -- and Dwight grunts as the bullet impacts. Mara laughs. A few people lunge forward with tasers or even just bare fists, and the henchmen don't hold back from snapping bones.

Mara and William behind them are turning to go.

"Stop them," Dwight grunts, and Nathan realises he's saying it to him.

"I can't--" His voice vanishes. He tries to rally. Duke's hand slaps his shoulder or back, somewhere, but he only hears it, sounding so very far away. He's thinking... He's useless here. It's no more than he's said all along, but now it's tested truth.

He can't do it this way.

***

When they go, it's like Nathan's limbs turn to liquid and he flops, before Duke can make a grab for him. He heaves for breath on his knees and his shoulders shake. Duke puts a hand on him, on his shaking shoulders, and upon discovering he can, thinks that it isn't a good sign.

"Breathe, man, breathe!" It comes out shot through with alarm.

"Thought they were going to kill everyone," Nathan mumbles to the ground. Duke only just catches the blurred words.

"Yeah, well they didn't." Duke fists his hand between Nathan's shoulder blades. "We're still here." He's kind of amazed that Nathan's still here. They just watched Nathan defy William and Mara. It's proof of what Nathan claimed all along, but all any of them have seen is him playing at being her shadow, stuck to her side, doggedly defending her. "Are you all right?" He puts his efforts into trying to get Nathan back on his feet.

Dwight isn't looking good either, but there are a bunch of people to help him, whereas Duke wouldn't trust anyone else here to touch Nathan except Jennifer, even if they weren't still too terrified to lay a hand on him.

"I have to go," Nathan groans as his head comes up. He rolls it back, staring at the sky. There's just enough grey light beginning to crack the horizon now to see his face, grainy in the gloom. That grey complexion might not be entirely down to dust and the pre-dawn light. "They have Audrey. I have to go back."

Duke's body feels bathed in chills. He did not think of that when Audrey presented her plan to him. Mara's final words make his stomach roll.

"You don't have to go back," he asserts, but the words feel stale, drained and used up.

"I can't fight them from here. Duke, please." Nathan begs him with his hoarse, cracked voice. "Let me go back. On the island, I'll -- I have ideas. I'll stop them, somehow." Nathan's unsteady on his feet, knees trying to fold. Duke grabs him under the arms to keep him up. Duke thinks about what Dwight said before, and he could stop Nathan now, test his newly refurbished Trouble to make Nathan a normal man and take all of this from his shoulders.

But he can't.

The only reason Nathan's not running, powering after Mara and William like he has every other time, and resisting a bunch of people who honestly couldn't keep him there if he decided to go... It's because Duke told him he could stay, and be safe. Convinced him there was still a place for him. Duke reaches an unpleasant realisation. Nathan's asking for permission, and on one level it's plain ridiculous and on another it's heartbreaking. He's terrified to go back, now he's had this glimpse of other possibilities, let out from Mara's influence long enough to breathe. Duke can stop this; he can keep Nathan here with a few words, and right now Nathan will let him.

As his eyes sting and liquid blurs the face in front of him, looking so earnestly back, Duke clamps his hands on Nathan's arms above the elbows and leans in, close enough he can feel Nathan's puffed breaths on his face. Nathan chokes brokenly. "Audrey wants to die, William said. I have to stop them hurting her even worse."

Goddamn it, thinks Duke. I could have ended this... It could all be over if he'd been able to shoot Mara. Nathan probably wouldn't be talking to him, but they'd all be safe, Nathan would be safe. It's just some fucked up irony that he tried to save them both, and in so doing, saves neither.

Once he had Nathan safe, he'd never had any intention of letting him go again.

But the police station was too much, all of this is too much, and Nathan... Maybe his plans will work, maybe they won't. Duke believes him when he says he means to try. But even aside from that, it seems the only thing to put any kind of a limit on the excesses of William and Mara may well be Nathan, because for whatever crazy, fucking unfathomable reason, they want to keep some modicum of his affection.

Duke calls himself a coward, that he can't kill Mara for Audrey but he can send them both back, knowing their mission to destroy Mara and William will kill them both slowly and tortuously.

He clings to Nathan because it feels like the last time. He and Audrey, they're not dead yet, but he's lost them both. Maybe he should never have gone to the island, never have allowed himself to believe -- spared himself and Haven that last brush with hope. It isn't as though it did anyone any good, in the end.

This lives or dies on his word. Audrey took his curse away so that it wasn't supposed to be that way for him anymore.

"Go," he says to Nathan, transferring his grip from elbows to shoulders then sliding his hands up further still, to hold Nathan above his collarbones, then at the sides of his head. He tries not to think about William being so damn hands-on as he touches their foreheads together, and thinks, Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye... It was always hopeless. "Go."

Nathan doesn't hug, but briefly, his hands catch Duke back, patting somewhere around his ribs.

Then he pulls away and sprints before anyone can stop him. Dwight swears, and others of the party make sounds of indignation and rage, with no understanding. Nathan's forcefield snaps tree branches around him, but Dwight's still on the floor from the last bullet and nobody even tries to shoot this time.

Then he's gone, gone, gone, lost in the trees. Duke thinks about calling him back, but it's too late now. He takes a shuddering breath and waves off the stares of Dwight's people. Jennifer is over by the truck, her body nervous and animated, and protest in all its lines. He makes his way to her, stepping through the others, hearing the echo in his mind of what Audrey said.

Maybe it isn't hopeless. He has Audrey's gift... He has Nathan's promise. After everything that's happened today, maybe he can trust in Nathan to act, to bring something meaningful out of this, this time.

Right now, he curls Jennifer's hand in his and murmurs a half-assed line that he's not sure is meant to be soothing or an apology, and tries to smooth the bright tears waiting in her eyes with a brush of his thumbs.