FIC: [Haven] Fortress - Audrey/Duke/Jennifer/Nathan OT4 (Explicit)

[roseveare]

This is late. Just been too tired and had too little internet and time (and internet time) to think about completing the rounds of posting this.

TITLE: Fortress
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: Explicit
LENGTH: ~31,000 words
PAIRING: Audrey/Duke/Jennifer/Nathan OT4
SUMMARY: "Not just one man, I find myself faced with a fortress. Four walls around you... Sooner or later I'm gonna blow those walls down." William sets about trying to take down Audrey's lovers one by one to win her back.
NOTES: Optional (darker) sequel to Squared (2²), but all you really need to know is that Audrey, Duke, Jen and Nathan are in an established poly relationship.
NOTES #2: When I was writing 'Squared', the only time I could actually think of having read a foursome before was not in fandom, it was in Marion Zimmer Bradley's novels when I was a teenager. I'd say that had some influence on some elements of the sequel. :)
THANKS: to Miah_Arthur and Rabbitt for beta-reading!
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Fortress

William stands and faces Audrey. His expression is twisted, which is fitting. He's the one who did this to them. Jen's head is still spinning, but Nathan clutches her hand -- too tight, but she isn't going to tell him to let it go -- and Duke is behind them. She can hear him breathing, feel his hand on her waist. She risks sneaking a glance away from William to see that Duke's hand is on Nathan, too, even if Nathan is oblivious to it.

She'd think it was all a little bit obvious, if she hadn't already screeched her jealous paranoia about who Duke loved more all through the police station under the influence of whatever-the-hell William did.

A blob. There was a blob in her head!

...And ohhhhhh, that makes her want to freak out. Except she's, you know, been freaking out for half the day already. So she is just going to stand here with Nathan and Duke.

"You're all right," Duke says in her ear, his hand moving, stroking, reassuring at her side. His breathing is fast and panicky to give lie to his assurances. Jen is shaking and she can feel through the grip of their hands that Nathan also is, though it's possible he doesn't know. "We didn't kill each other. That's a win. We didn't know what he could do."

"I'm going to kill him." Nathan surges forward and Duke and Jen both tighten their grips to hold him back from William, who is still facing Audrey and still held in some kind of limbo with that half-entertained, half-disappointed look on his face.

Jen doesn't even know if the two of them can soothe Nathan, or if they need Audrey's touch for that. She tries to use her voice and gibbers calming platitudes while hugging his hand to her chest. Duke wraps both hands around his waist and clings, muttering very quietly against his ear, "Jesus Christ, Nathan, I swear I will get Dwight to taser you again."

Nathan doesn't seem to find that a deterrent.

There are too many people here. William, facing Audrey over by the door, looks more amused by the second. "Stop it, stop it, stop it!" hisses Jennifer, grabbing at Nathan's face, keeping her voice as quiet a squeak as she can. "You're just giving him more to laugh at."

"Let Audrey deal with him," Duke urges.

"You know," William declares to Audrey, "I came here expecting to fight one man." His eyes go to Nathan, and abruptly Duke swears and lets Nathan go, but surges after him so that they reach Audrey's side together. Somehow, Jen gets towed along with them.

Audrey, with Nathan in reach, stretches out her hand and clamps it around his fingers. She is sweating and wide-eyed, and Jen has not often seen her look so strained. "William! You leave them alone. You leave everyone alone. I thought you wanted to help!"

"I want to help you." William steps in too close and Nathan shoves him back. William deliberately reaches out to slide a hand over Nathan's bare wrist and it makes him cry out in surprise. He jerks away again holding his arm.

"I felt that!"

William snorts and his eyebrows go up. "You see," he tells Audrey. "We have a lot in common." The way his eyes pin on her makes even Audrey Parker retreat a fraction of an inch. It's so unnerving, almost possessive, almost like he's trying to look inside her.

Duke puts his hand on Audrey's shoulder and Jen catches her fingers in the back of her shirt, warm from body heat. Audrey recaptures Nathan's hand herself and rubs her fingers over his skin as if to erase William's touch.

"If you've come to tell me that we're meant to be together," Audrey says, finally, forcefully, "I don't want you."

"No." His twisted lips shift to a sour frown. "I can see you have all this. Not just one man, I find myself faced with a fortress. Four walls around you."

His eyes roam over them all in a slimy way that makes Jen shudder. They clutch Audrey harder in reflex. It's unlikely any of this is improving matters in the wide eyes of Dwight and Stan and the other HPD officers watching.

William shakes his head briskly, tipping it to one side and waving his hand in a let-it-go gesture. "Never mind. I can learn from the Big Bad Wolf. Seriously, you picked three Troubled? I mean, come on, talk about building a house out of straw!" He flings his arms out dramatically. "Then again, even if they weren't, I could still just... Trouble 'em." Audrey's gasp is in sync with Jennifer's. Nathan's got a gun back from somewhere and he loudly cocks it. Duke growls, deep in his throat.

"Wait for it, Audrey," William says, backing off -- from Nathan, mostly. A shapeless cloud of black stuff starts to gather around him. "Sooner or later I'm gonna blow those walls down." He retreats into the corridor.

Nathan lunges out of the door after him and fires a shot. Jen hears William's running footsteps, hears them falter. But Audrey cries out, and all of a sudden she's sagging and almost falling in Jen and Duke's arms. Jennifer is horrified to find her hands bloody. The blood is spreading over Audrey's jacket and the source is her upper arm.

Duke starts to call Nathan urgently, but he's already back with them, drawn by Audrey's pain. "Winged him--" His eyes widen, then narrow in fury as he takes in Audrey's wound. "Who shot her?!"

"Nobody," Duke says, creeping horror in his voice. "That guy--"

"Someone must have! Audrey, who did this?"

Duke catches Nathan's arms, trying to keep him back from grabbing Audrey while she's stripping off her jacket to get to the wound in her arm. "He said they were 'connected'... What if he meant that literally? You just shot William..."

"You're saying I shot her?" Duke leaves Audrey to Jen in order to hold Nathan clear.

"You didn't know!"

"This is impossible." Jennifer's eyes are full of impossible bullet wound. Dwight offers out an open first aid box. Jen takes it, but then lets him take over dealing with the wound. He's had lots of practice dealing with bullet wounds.

"It's not bad." Audrey seems frustrated rather than hurt, and Jen gets the sense she cares more about what this means. "I don't want his stupid connection!" Her gaze is over Jen's shoulder, wide but gathering determination. "Nathan, I'm fine. You didn't hurt me."

"There's no bullet in here," Dwight says. "No exit wound. It looks clean." He pulls at Audrey's discarded sleeve. "There's no bullet hole in her clothes." He looks at Nathan, too.

Nathan finds it in himself to stop freaking out, though his calm is more like a graveyard. He stands stiffly as Duke's hands fall away from him, and Duke just leans shoulder to shoulder with him and gives a sigh. Nathan says, "He was running. I didn't shoot true."

Jennifer hears what he's really saying and shudders.

"Well, he's got away now, and it looks like it's just as well," Duke says. "Look, we all need to just calm down and -- and come down from this, okay?" He pushes Nathan toward the table, but Nathan resists and goes to Audrey instead.

"He's been cuffed there for the last two hours," Jen hisses at Duke. They didn't have to cuff her to restrain her, but they still made her sit at the table, and okay, she was crazy at the time, but she's still not super-thrilled with Duke about that. "He's not going to want to sit down, okay?"

Duke gives her some slightly injured eyebrow semaphore.

"I'll sit down," Audrey says. She looks pale. Dwight helps her into a chair. Nathan keeps hanging at her shoulder, clutching her uninjured hand.

Duke turns around to the remaining cops and gestures imploringly with his open palms and fake innocence. "What? Show's over. Scoot." Furniture rattles as they abruptly do, and Duke turns back looking very freaked. "Whoa. Weird moment, there. Maybe I should go for this Chief of Police job."

Nathan and Dwight are distracted but both find time to frown hard at him.

In the quiet that descends after that, Dwight looks around at them each in turn. Audrey clutches a gauze pad over her arm. Nathan clutches Audrey's hand. Jen's arm has ended up around Nathan's waist -- he may not know it's there -- and Duke is standing close enough to Jen's back that she can feel his breath on her neck.

Dwight says slowly, "So you four are..."

Jen presses uncomfortably into the men, feeling her face go hot. Her fingers tickle as Duke wraps his hand around hers.

"Love is love," Duke says, a bit gruffly. "Why get all restrictive about the numbers?"

***

Audrey's arm is healed by bedtime, but no-one is happy about it.

"What does this mean?" she whispers, head pressed into the curl of Nathan's neck, lips over his collarbone, palms against his chest. "Am I human? Because this... this isn't human."

"You're human," Nathan says roughly, and then in almost the same beat adds, "It doesn't matter."

"It kind of does matter," Jen blurts, then reddens and shakes her head frantically as their eyes turn on her. "I mean, it's not an unreasonable anxiety. But it doesn't matter to us. What are the Troubles, anyway? Maybe we're all a little bit not--" She shuts up.

"You never healed like this until William came along," Duke reasons, putting a hand on Audrey's back. "It's not what you are. It must be something he brought. This 'connection' of his."

Jen feels a bit awkward for not being in on the touching, but it's Nathan and Audrey, mostly, in the centre of the big bed at the apartment above the Gull. Duke with his hand on Audrey's back is a loose spar trailing off from them. Then Duke's other arm snakes out and draws her in.

"William won't drive us apart," Duke says. "But he's going to try. You heard him."

"We need to get rid of him." Nathan uncurls gruffly, lifting Audrey off himself and easing her back into Duke's arms. He's naked. He doesn't usually come to bed naked, like Jen, who just doesn't feel right in bed without pyjamas. She feels odd and girlish being the only one clad right now. Duke's only going to peel the Winnie the Pooh pyjamas from her if they have sex tonight, but given what happened today, she's not sure there'll be sex. Nathan sits up on the edge of the bed and picks up his gun from the night stand.

"Um," Jen says. "We can't use that. Remember?"

"We can't just ignore the fact that he's out there," Nathan growls.

"Nathan, you can't go after William," Duke says. "For one thing, it's the middle of the night and we don't know where he is."

"Plus, he can touch you," Jen says. "He can hurt you."

Nathan says, flatly, "Anyone can hurt me. Feeling it or not isn't relevant. I'm not waiting for him to come after us."

"No, we're not waiting," Audrey agrees, breaking in with a sigh. "We'll find him and deal with him. We'll figure out a way. But -- not now, Nathan." She clambers out of Duke's arms and crawls across the bed to put her hand on Nathan's shoulder. Jen sees the shiver go through him at her touch, but also sees the flinch in his face that Audrey can't. Perhaps that's the memory of William touching him, too. "Nathan, come back to bed."

After a pause, he melts for her, setting the gun down and turning, pulling his long, slim legs up onto the top of the covers. Audrey climbs into his lap, reaching her hand down to stroke his cock. It's less responsive for her than usual, but as she eschews the use of her hand and pushes her whole body against him, rubbing and stimulating with her mound as she rocks up and down, he starts to harden for her. He groans and curls his hands into her hair.

"Let's do something different," Audrey says, the words half grunted against his chin as they brace each other, she still moving, Nathan moving a little now, too, both still on their knees -- well, she on Nathan's knees -- atop the bed. He's not inside her yet, but they're ready. Jen can see their juices glittering in the half light between the press of their bodies. Audrey reaches back to Duke. "Both of you. I want both of you in me." She pauses and looks an apology at Jen.

Jennifer can feel that her mouth has already turned into a cartoonish round 'o'. She gulps, holds up her palms and shakes her head, and says , "No, no. I -- I am okay. I'll just... watch."

Her mind just got blown by the simple thought of it. She watches Duke's hands slide over the cheeks of Audrey's ass, and he's already retrieved the lube that's usually for himself or Nathan. "You sure about this?" he asks against the back of her neck as he pushes a finger slowly into her.

Audrey gives a little grunt. "Worst case scenario... we still give William a sore ass." She snorts laughter and moves her body to push against Nathan and Duke's finger at the same time. "I can get behind that. Ah!"

"I'll get behind it," Duke murmurs mockingly, as he carefully adds another finger. "Here we go."

"Nngh." Audrey makes a slow, keening noise as Duke's second finger gradually disappears inside her to the third knuckle. He moves them and she's sweating and gasping, clinging to Nathan, as the minutes pass. Until she says, "Inside," twitching her knees to lift herself up, pressing over Nathan, but her legs seem to have lost most of their power. "Nathan, Nathan, now..." He reaches down to grasp her thighs and manoeuvre her onto him. They groan together as she slides down and rests there. Nathan rocks his hips slowly. Duke's fingers slowed while they were changing position but never left her body. Audrey moans thinly as they resume their motion. "Ung. This may finish me."

"I, uh, then I guess our William problem would be over?" offers Jen who, honestly, her eyes are glued to the places where Audrey's body meets Nathan and Duke's... and it's only Duke's fingers yet, but... Nathan's carrying her over, as Duke's hand retreats, Nathan settling underneath her and lying back as they both work on making space for Duke's knees as he crouches over them, lines up against Audrey, and slowly pushes forward.

She hisses, and Jen doesn't think that's the best noise in the world. Duke waits for her nod before he continues his entry. It takes a minute or so to get there, but then Duke's pressed tight against the cheeks of Audrey's ass. Jen tries to imagine two men inside her, and thinks it would be too much stimulation, too much love. She's thought similar thoughts of Nathan or Duke, when the other is buried inside them and they're deep in Audrey at the same time, especially considering Nathan's Trouble. But this is so much more relevant to her own body. Her groin aches thinking about it and she squeaks along with Audrey as Duke pulls back slightly then eases forward again, trying to start a slow rhythm. He rubs Audrey's hips. "It gets better. Just give it a moment. Let things stretch. Nathan--"

Nathan sits up a bit further, at Duke's guidance, pushing her onto Duke, cradling her nestled between them. Audrey lifts her head up and kisses Nathan, then turns to kiss Duke, though they can't quite score each other's lips at that angle. "Fuck me," she begs, curling one arm around Nathan and the other back around Duke. She tightens her legs around Nathan. "Seriously. I'm sure there's something I can withhold if you don't start to move now."

Both men move, Nathan looking over Audrey's shoulder to take his cues from Duke. They curl their arms around Audrey and each other. Nathan lets out what's almost a whimper -- at least a weirdly high moan. "Duke, I uh... can feel you moving... through her."

Audrey starts to cry out with each thrust as they get in sync, causing the men to slow in concern until she starts to swear at them, too, urging them on, her face stretched and incoherent, a moisture sheen on her skin. Duke adjusts his rhythm and leverage, starting to haul her off Nathan each time he withdraws, then push her down again through the force of his thrust, edging Nathan onto his back beneath them. "Nathan... Duke... Duke," Audrey grunts, the last an instruction as much as anything else, and he delivers a long series of fast, tight thrusts into her ass. Nathan moans. Jen thinks he's spent, and it's confirmed as Audrey rises off him on hands and knees and pushes back hard against Duke with another raw cry.

Duke goes with it for a few thrusts then gathers up her arms, pulling her back with him as he settles onto his knees and sits her up against the front of his body, legs spilling wide. "Jen..." Duke says, his voice wobbly as he invites her in.

Jen scuttles forward to crouch in front of Audrey, touches her parted legs, then moves in to suck at her breast and reach a hand in to the slick juncture of her thighs, where Audrey's soft-downed mound is soaked with Nathan's juices and her own. Jen pushes fingers inside, three of them easily first time. She rubs her thumb against Audrey's clit, and Duke's thrust bumps Audrey, and Jen ends up pressing harder with her fingers than she'd intended. Audrey bucks into her hand.

Jen loses Audrey's breast with her mouth, and has to find it again. She rolls her tongue over a nipple as she circles her thumb. Audrey gasps and shivers. Audrey has rarely been the one so out of control.

It seems she's decided she needs it today, to win her back from William's taint.

Nathan has relaxed to watch them, rolled onto his side against the pillows. Duke comes with a final grunt and then eases Audrey down on her back, leaving her to Jennifer with an upside-down kiss he leans over to rest on Audrey's lips.

Jennifer sets about claiming Audrey for her own. Her hands weren't clever at this -- she's always been the good girl -- but since Audrey's been in the picture she's set about practicing on herself more, too, to learn what feels best. She licks and nibbles and rubs until Audrey's moaning for just her, and her fingers ache. When she slides down to finish, her lips tasting Audrey and Nathan both as she licks at Audrey's clit, she feels her pyjamas slipped down and her legs parted, and then Duke's face presses against her from behind. She whuffs air through her lips as she makes a noise somewhere between a giggle and a squeak. Audrey's breathing changes and she moves, pulling back slowly, closing her legs, rolling away.

Duke rolls Jennifer over and falls between her thighs while Audrey scrapes together the energy to go back to Nathan.

"Are you all right?" Nathan asks, brushing a hand over her arm.

"Yeah. That was great. My ass aches like hell, and I hope William can feel it. Give him something to think about." Her mouth twists into a sly smirk. "If he heals it by morning, we can go again."

***

The next day dawns with more reserve, though, as they're all tired from the emotional exertions of the day before and the physical exertions of the night. Duke makes breakfast. Audrey and Nathan sit opposite each other on the chair and couch and send a creepier-than-usual police-slash-Troubles conversation back and forth.

"Taser. Dwight's solution," Nathan says. "You might get tased, too, but--"

"Yeah, or we could just taser me and then go after him."

"I'm not doing that. Bad enough knowing that if I hurt him it hurts you."

"You might have to," Audrey says impatiently. "If he comes after you, if he can screw with your Trouble, with any of your Troubles--" She looks around the rest of them. "You all need to be ready to defend yourselves."

"I won't risk killing you," Nathan says. "Audrey, we need to figure out this connection." He virtually spits the word. "Find a way around it. Is it a Trouble, after all? If your immunity comes from it--"

"Yes, and the fact is, we may have to deal a lot more with William to find out the things we need to know to break his connection. So you all need to be prepared to do what you have to."

"Catch him," Nathan says stolidly. "Make him tell us what the hell is going on, by any means necessary."

Audrey goes silent.

"Yeah, I'd be game for that," Duke says, taking a step over their way from the kitchen area. "But it might also prove to be... awkward, shall we say, to do that."

Nathan blinks with incredulous dismay. "A bullet wound, perhaps. Not that last night's joking wasn't fun to imagine, but is he really going to feel it if Audrey gets a paper-cut? Or vice-versa? I can make it add up," he adds.

Sometimes Nathan is scary. Duke has a contemplative look on his face to match. Sometimes Duke is scary, too.

Audrey picks up a pin badge from a bowl of jewellery and trinkets on the occasional table beside her and jabs the point of it into the back of her arm. Everyone jumps, and Nathan grabs for the badge.

"Okay, okay." Audrey surrenders it to him willingly. "Just... I hope he felt that, okay? I hope it made him jump as much as you guys just did." Her laugh is too bitter and embarrassed to take the tension out of the moment.

"Doesn't help us if he felt it," Nathan reminds her dourly.

Jen sighs. All her lovers are scary and it's a fact she's just going to have to live with.

***

None of them want to leave anyone alone, so they agree that since Audrey and Nathan will be together at work anyway, Duke will shadow Jennifer's reporting visits for the Herald that day. He has a restaurant to run, but claims his staff can handle it. Jen thinks that maybe some part of him is regretting the fact Wade ran off with Jordan after all.

Not much happens, for all that they're looking over their shoulders at every turn. Jennifer covers a piece on the school's astronomy society, and a church fete where far too many attendees give Duke odd, fixed looks that she doesn't understand. The tip that she needs to cover 'something weird going down in the park' is the first glimmer of excitement, and comes almost as a relief, until they're pulling up and see Nathan's blue Ford Bronco parked there, with Nathan and Audrey nowhere in sight. Then, Jen feels a thrill of unease.

"Duke!"

"I know..." He gets out of the car first, sort of shepherding her. She'd object, but she can't, really. Something is definitely happening, if Audrey and Nathan are there already, but is it a police something or a Troubled something, and how much danger does that represent?

Duke pulls his phone out. "Dwight? Did you send Audrey and Nathan to the park?"

Jen's head is near enough the phone for her to catch the words, "...monkeys running around, and a missing pre-school group."

Duke sighs and relaxes. "Trouble," he says sideways to Jen. "Monkeys. We can deal with monkeys. Thanks, Dwight," he adds back into his phone. "We're here from the Herald. We'll let you know if we... find anything." He stops. A very small, rather adorable money has just dropped off a tree onto the top of Nathan's Bronco, where it starts to jump around.

Duke shuts his phone with a snap.

"That monkey is wearing a little boy's clothes," Jen says slowly. "Do you think that...?"

Groaning and nodding, Duke goes to retrieve the young animal. He comes back with it hugged in his arms and opens the truck. "Okay, I guess we have more to round up." He frowns as he shuts the door. "I suppose he'll be safe enough in there. I mean... safer than swinging around in traffic."

"We need to find the rest," Jen agrees, but still can't help looking back at the little monkey smushing its face against the window and watching them leave.

"See if we can find Nathan and Audrey first," Duke says as they start up the grass slope into the thicker trees at the back, well behind the bandstand.

They've not gone twenty yards when Jen is pointing into the undergrowth yelling, "Oh, oh, oh! Monkey!" And then Duke is diving in to get it, and suddenly, somehow, he's out of sight, and even the leaves in the trees seem to hang still, and Jen has a horrible feeling.

She hears a scuffle and a cry, over to her left, and hurries that way, but her relief dies as she registers that Duke couldn't have got so far around without her hearing or seeing. Instead of finding Duke, she bursts through the trees too fast for caution, then skids to a halt and freezes.

William is on Nathan's back, maybe forty or fifty yards away across open grass. He's scraping Nathan's shirt down between his shoulders, dragging it over his arms so it hampers Nathan's movements, although Nathan already seems dazed and unable to fight. The big guy and the little guy that people have been describing setting off new Troubles around town are standing nearby. William's palm is black.

Jen cries out for Duke and stumbles toward them, not sure what she's doing, not sure what she can do against three, but her hands fumble for the taser Audrey gave her. The big guy looks up and scowls at her, but doesn't move.

"So, Wuornos," William is saying. "You're already down one sense. How'd you like to lose another? Take your pick. Oh, wait... Naw, you'll just choose one of the obvious ones. Taste, smell... probably smell, right? It's got to be smell. Let's do something different. Let's make it a surprise..."

"Stop!" Jennifer shouts, and Duke charges in from behind her. There's the sound of a gunshot, and William lurches. None of it is in time to stop William's hand from making contact. That's all Jen can think about as she runs toward Nathan.

William lists to the side and the big goon catches him, hauls him up. The little goon steps in Duke's path. Duke's punch carries more force and fury than Jen's ever seen from him, but the little guy barely blinks, just shifts his feet and stands like a wall in Duke's way, catching his arm, not letting him past.

"Okay, guys!" William says, an edge of pain in his voice, but it can't compete with his smugness. "I've done what I came to do. We'll just... be on our way... and you can take care of your boy." He holds up his palm but it's almost wiped clean now, the black stuff used up. He looks pointedly beyond them both and says, "Ow," before he staggers back into the trees, helped by the big goon.

The little goon shoves Duke backwards hard enough to send him staggering, then follows after William. Jen thrusts the taser at him as he comes near her, but she's more interested in getting to Nathan just as soon as the coast is clear.

Duke charges in the other direction. She gapes at him running away, even as she's reaching for Nathan's shoulders, for Nathan's clutching hands as he's struggling up from the ground, struggling to turn around. Then she realises Duke has gone to Audrey, who is on her hands and knees in the grass several yards behind them. Surreally, a monkey wearing a pink princess dress scampers out of the trees.

Jen stays on her knees next to Nathan. He at least looks okay, and she can't see a mark on his exposed upper back. As he sits up, shrugging his arms back into his shirt sleeves -- Jen helps tug on the fabric -- his eyes are open and focusing normally. William didn't blind him.

"Nathan?" Jen asks. "What did William do?"

"Audrey?" Nathan returns blearily, looking for her.

"She's all right," Duke calls over, though his voice is dull and dour. Audrey shot William knowing she'd take the same wound.

"Nathan?" Audrey's voice calls, threadily.

Nathan rolls onto his knees. Jennifer grabs his hands and tries to help him. "Ugh." He sniffs and looks confused. He prods his nose with his fingers. Pokes a nostril. "I can't smell anything."

"Oh my God." Jennifer flops into his shoulder, feeling drained.

Audrey is coming over, helped by Duke. A twin of William's wound is bleeding at her shoulder. Duke blows out a hard breath and sets his hand on Nathan's bended back. "Man, that was a scare."

Nathan looks dismayed rather than relieved. He looks punch-drunk, blood on his lip, bruising already coming up on his jaw. "It's gone for good?"

"Better that than what could have been gone, right?" Audrey asks, and kneels down, folding her arms around him.

Nathan buries his head in her hair and breathes in. "I can still smell you."

***

Audrey and Jennifer go to take care of Audrey's injury while Duke and Nathan get all the monkeys back and talk down the Troubled teacher until the monkeys are restored to children.

It's far from a victorious evening. Nathan was the fierce voice leading the charge, out for all of their protection. Jen can't help but wonder if that's why William targeted him. Or if it's because William particularly dislikes Nathan, because it also seems like that's true.

They're not so driven as the night before in bed, their spirit oddly drained there, too. Nathan slowly makes love to Audrey, whose shoulder healed itself in the course of the evening, and buries his face in her neck, inhaling her, and Jennifer and Duke just cuddle beside them. Jen feels unaccountably cold.

Nathan rises from Audrey and she untangles her legs and snuggles back into the covers, but Nathan's expression is odd. He leans over to Jennifer and sniffs her hair. "...Strawberries."

"Yes." She gives a little jump. She did use strawberry shampoo.

Nathan's eyes fix on her lips. Then they crawl slowly back to pin Duke. "I can't hear anything," he says, lips shaping the words carefully and slowly -- not able to hear his own voice, Jen realises. "But my sense of smell is back."

Duke sits up. Audrey blinks and scrambles back up. "Nathan...?" she tries cautiously. A morose little smile touches his lips, and he responds, "Yeah, I can still hear you."

They end up wide-awake and drinking coffee, half-dressed again, in the kitchen at midnight. Duke and Jennifer have memo pads Duke dug out so that they can converse with Nathan. Audrey doesn't need it. That's something, at least.

"So, what, it's going to cycle?" Duke demands, scribbling. "What's next? Smell, hearing... taste, and sight." His face twists. "Shit, that one's going to be a bitch. Sorry, Nate."

He doesn't write most of that last, just puts his hand on Nathan's shoulder and squeezes it where Nathan can see.

Audrey heaves a breath. "We need to deal with what's here now. Maybe... maybe it will only be smell and hearing."

Jen can tell how unlikely Duke thinks that is from the tone of his grunt, but he doesn't say anything else. Jen does a quick count. "Nine hours," she says. "It's nine hours since Audrey got shot. Does it... change back to smell by the time you're due in for work?" She gives a hopeful smile, and does not add, or something else. Audrey repeats the words to Nathan before Jen can write them.

Which only opens another can of worms, because Nathan's obviously not convinced by Audrey's hopefulness either. "I might be able to work deaf, but I can't work blind." He shakes his head and sighs. "Okay, deal with what's in front... I can learn to lip-read, even if it's inconvenient." He claps a palm over his face. "Dwight's going to hate this."

They go back to bed. There doesn't seem to be anything else they can do. Jen catches Duke's murmur to Audrey, "Maybe we can make William put him back..." but they don't express it in a way that Nathan can catch. Nathan, who was seething yesterday, is dull and listless and almost defeated, now. They fold him into the centre of them and go to sleep around him. But Jen is aware, as she lies awake awhile, that his breathing doesn't match the patterns of sleep. She wonders how much rest he's going to get. She thinks about Audrey's soft breathing just audible from where she's lying over on Nathan's other side, and thinks about it being the only sound left in the world.

She shivers in the darkness.

***

In the morning, it slides well past the time it took for Nathan's senses to switch the first time, and nothing happens. He's still deaf. It's really annoying trying to get his attention, because a tap on the shoulder won't work and they can't yell at him, and except for Audrey, quite literally the only thing they can do is get in his line of sight.

"We're going to work," he snaps at Audrey, as it's nearing time and the argument is still hanging out there. "I'm not waiting for this to go away, to get something easier to work with -- or worse. I'll manage. I'll steer clear of any gunfights."

His tone isn't so much unusual as the fact of who it's directed at.

"Okay," Audrey says, tightly

"You drive," he says, pausing a moment before he can seem to spit the words out. He grabs his jacket and keys and tosses the keys to her, before dragging out of the door, the line of his shoulders rigid.

"I hate this," Audrey says, and then, clutching the keys, hurries after him.

"Bye, now." Duke laconically lifts a hand. Audrey's already gone. Duke sighs and slaps his palm over his face. "I swear, I will kill William. If there's a way to do it..."

"Duke, no." Jennifer tugs at his hand, trying to get him to look at her.

"He's already been living so long in a world that's reduced," Duke says, necessitating her to mentally switch back to Nathan. "It's not fucking fair." And then he says, "It's one of us next."

"What?" Jen gulps.

"One of us. You heard William. The 'blow down your walls' crap." He uncurls to grab her shoulders. "Jennifer, I am not letting this happen to you."

"I-- I--" They were not going to let it happen to Nathan, but they got distracted by the Trouble. There will always be that possibility, because Troubles are distracting. And Troubles are what they do. "How do I stop him doing it to you?"

For an instant, it almost seems like his eyes develop a metallic sheen. "Blood," he says. "If I'm-- It's not the point of the Crocker Curse, but if I'm dosed on the blood, I'm stronger. It should let me fight off his two goons. You need to carry a knife."

"My blood?" This is a drastic change of tune, because Duke was not happy at all when she used her own blood to help him fight off the giant robot a few weeks back. But then, he would clearly rather she bled a little than William got his hands on her as he already had Nathan. "Okay... But you should... You should have some with you, ready. So that if I can't get to the knife, or we're separated, or there isn't time..."

"I don't know how long it keeps good, for Crocker curse purposes." Duke's already rummaging through drawers. He pulls out a small bottle, the whiskey miniature kind, and a hunting knife. He gives her the knife and holds up the bottle, squinting at it. "We need a needle to draw the blood, ideally. I'll have to ask Gloria..."

Jen sticks the point of the knife in her arm.

Duke yelps and leaps back. "Jennifer, no!" But he can't -- daren't -- come close to her while the blood is flowing. She grabs for the bottle where he's abandoned it on the counter. More gets on the outside than the inside, but she does manage to fill half an inch or so in the bottom of it before the flow from the cut starts to get sluggish. "I am not having you walk out there unprotected now," Jen babbles, sticking the stopper in place. She goes to the sink to wash the blood from the outside. "They got Nathan, and he was more ready to fight than any of us." That William started with Nathan is a statement in a number of ways. "You need this."

She thrusts the vial of blood at him, still dripping a bit, but only with water.

Duke blinks at her, but takes it, and says, "You need to deal with that cut." His eyes track with faint horror over the blood on the floor and the kitchen counter.

"I'll deal with all of it," Jen says, a bit guiltily, feeling hasty. It was probably possible to do this and make less mess. She clamps a wad of kitchen roll over the cut. Duke goes to get the proper first aid kit, sidling around the bloody parts of the kitchen with unease.

Jen uses kitchen roll to clean up the rest of the blood and shoves it all into a plastic bag before it goes into the bin. Then she gets a washcloth that she'll have to rinse out thoroughly to assuage Duke's paranoia, to wipe the last of the residue off the surfaces.

The cut isn't bad but Duke is weirdly quiet as they deal with it between them. It's his plan, but Jen knows he doesn't like it very much. The blood is still a problem for him.

As they finish up he says, "What did Audrey give you to protect yourself? A taser?"

"And pepper spray." Jen delves in her pocket for it and waggles it in the air. It's smaller than the taser, easier to handle and less awkward to carry.

"I want you to have a gun."

"Um... I don't think I should have a gun." Jen shakes her head repeatedly. "Because I really don't know how to use a gun, and definitely not aim a gun, and with William's connect--"

"Screw William. You can still take a shot at his goons. That little guy, I swear he was as strong as the big guy looks. There's something not right about them."

"Okay," Jen says, reluctantly, and Duke goes to find her a very small gun that will fit in her handbag. He calls it a .22, and admits with wry laughter that it's spent a significant proportion of its useful life stuffed in his pants -- bought specifically for when he's attending games of poker with a certain type of crowd.

"You play poker with a gun in your pants?" Jen asks wide-eyed, and sniffs at the gun. She giggles and wipes it off on another square of kitchen roll.

Duke loads it, shows her how to use it, and gets her a spare clip. She puts both in her handbag, then she looks at the time and has a minor freak-out. "Duke, we're going to be late. Or I am, because you don't really work there," she amends.

"We'll pitch it to the Teagues like that," he says. "Tell them they're getting Duke Crocker, intrepid reporter, in a two-for-one deal to make up for the tardiness."

***

They're so on-edge, but all that happens during that day is that Nathan calls mid-afternoon to tell them that he can hear them but can't smell anything again, and then only a few hours later, Audrey calls, sounding helpless, to say Nathan went blind. "There's nothing going on so I'm bringing him home early. We've managed to avoid Dwight learning about this so far... mostly by repeating half of what's said in any conversation or grabbing for the paperwork, but this--"

"No, come home," Duke agrees. "We'll try to slope off early, too."

"Better be my place again," Audrey says. "There're steps, but it's all on the flat once you're inside the apartment and it'll be easier to negotiate than the boat." Even Jennifer, standing at Duke's side, can hear that Audrey sounds on the verge of tears.

Fortunately the Teagues aren't having a busy day, and only wave them off impatiently so that the brothers can continue their latest debate.

Jen and Duke get back before Audrey. Duke starts running around picking things up and tucking sticking-out things in, and is at the window every time he hears a car pull up outside. Which means they get to see just how slowly Audrey has to lead Nathan around from the outset. They watch the two of them ascend the steps. When they finally fall through the door, Audrey hangs Nathan on Duke, settling his hands on Duke's shoulder and waist and telling him where she put them. "Okay, so Duke's right here. I have to go move the car, but I'll be right back."

"Audrey..." Nathan says uncertainly. His fingers sort of flutter against Duke's shoulder and side, and his body half turns to the sound of Audrey backing away as her hands leave him. Then he stops very purposely, very still, and says, "I'll be all right."

Audrey flees. Duke curls his hand around Nathan's waist in return. For a moment, it looks like they're going to dance. "I've got you," Duke says. "Can I kiss you?"

"Sure," Nathan says bitterly. "But don't expect me to be able to do anything about it."

Jen makes a little noise of shock with the realisation of how many things Nathan uses sight to make up for not being able to feel. Without either...

"Jennifer, I'm okay," Nathan says, voice rising fast and automatic, as he detects her there. "It's not permanent. It'll go away."

Duke kisses him and blurs the words.

Nathan pauses. "Okay, I... know you did that." His hand on Duke's shoulder shifts, tentatively travelling up and around to the back of Duke's neck. Nathan breathes in slowly, then buries his face in Duke's neck and inhales deeply. The arm around Duke's lower body tightens. "I can smell you. Your neck, your hair. Your shampoo's different from your cologne."

"That's great, Nathan," Duke says, a hitch in his voice. "Let me get you into a chair, and I'll fetch you a drink."

"Right now I don't know if I can drink it unless you hold it for me and tell me sip-by-sip."

"Yeah, but this could go on all night. You can't not eat and not drink." Duke sounds a bit desperate, because with Nathan's prickly pride, it's entirely possible he would choose to go that route unless they snip this right now. "Let us look after you, Nate."

"I'll go get the drink," Jennifer says, and scuttles to the kitchen area. She looks out of the window on the way. The car is moved from the base of the steps where Audrey parked it before, but there's no sign of Audrey. She must be still in the car. Jennifer can't tell anything from this distance, but her guess is that Audrey is in the car having a private cry, away from Nathan, and just taking a moment to get away from this.

Jen makes coffee and tops it up with cold water and brings it back. Nathan is sitting on the couch, body leaned forward, knees wide. Duke is sitting in between his knees with his ass perched on Audrey's coffee table, moving Nathan's hands and telling him what they're doing, what he's doing with them.

Without sensation, it must be horribly difficult to figure out how to navigate the world blind.

"I know when I'm moving," Nathan says. "But I can't touch anything." Jen thinks he's talking to her. His face turned her way. She must have made some sound or signal he could detect.

All she can think of to say is, "I'm sorry, Nathan," which makes her feel stupid.

"Jen brought coffee," Duke says, and takes it from her and holds it under Nathan's nose. "Open wide."

Nathan glares at him. His eyes look normal, but they're vacant. He obviously knows where to aim them at Duke by sound. "If you start talking about choo-choo trains going into a tunnel..."

"Hah," says Duke, and, "I can think of way better uses for that analogy than eating."

Nathan snorts and parts his lips. Duke tips the cup up to them and says, "Sip... close... Okay, you can drink." At least he swallows on his own.

"You're going to get incredibly bored of that."

"No." Duke puts the cup down and trails his fingers over Nathan's lips. "Touching your lips, Nate. I am never going to get bored of being this close to those lips."

Audrey sidles back in, the door making a groan as she does, and the wind chimes outside tinkle, and Nathan perks up and says, "Audrey?"

He can't see the expression on her face that Duke and Jen can. "She's here, Nate, but let her get a coffee and sit down, huh? You're doing okay with us."

"He can't see me," Audrey says. "I don't know why. But he can still feel me. I'm sorry I took so long, Nathan."

"That's all right," he says. He's trembling.

Jen sits down next to him and takes his hand. "I'm holding your hand, Nathan." Both sets of his fingers twitch. "Right hand." His fingers tighten around hers. Jen hugs his hand in her lap.

"I guess that one's just too complicated for the optic nerve to handle," Duke says to Audrey, who starts to fix some more coffee. "So it's really random. All four senses -- all four remaining senses. Shit. That sucks."

"Tell me about it," Nathan murmurs. His head twitches at the small sounds Audrey makes, sounds that Jen makes occasionally, and jerks up in startlement as a car with a squeaking suspension pulls up outside.

The evening passes somehow. It's funny how Duke is so good with Nathan like this; better than Audrey is. He keeps fielding Nathan away from Audrey.

"He can still feel her," Duke murmurs in Jen's ear, in one stolen moment. "There's a real danger he gets totally dependant on that when he's like this. It must be -- fuck, there's almost no world left for him, I'd be scared spitless, I'd want to cling to her. But he needs to learn to navigate the world as best as possible while she's not on his arm, and the sooner the better. Otherwise she ends up stuck to his side permanently, and when it's obligation, there's no way that goes well."

Jen nods and gulps.

They're getting ready for bed when Nathan suddenly straightens, limbs gathering co-ordination and confidence that's been absent, head moving side to side as he stares around with eyes that are clear and focused again. "I'm back," he announces. His mouth contorts and his tongue flicks out. "Hard to tell, but I -- I think it's taste this time." He grabs the pot pourri from the dish on the table and inhales. "Must be."

He looks like he's just been through a trial. He looks -- and there's an overwhelming feeling of relief, and it's odd how it affects all of them. Like they've been through the worst. It'll come back, but they've proved they can manage it.

"So, since you're back," Duke says, slyly, "how about we do that choo-choo train and tunnel together, huh?"

Nathan narrows his regained eyes. "Not if you're going to talk that way all through sex."

Duke does, collapsing Jen and Audrey in floods of perhaps too many giggles; too intense, too relieved in the aftermath.

Nathan lets him do it anyway.

***

Jennifer isn't there for the discussion with Dwight, though she's there for the one where they agree they do have to tell him. Nathan could be struck blind at any moment, and they'll never know when it's going to be or how long it's going to last. Not unless these changes manifest a set cycle, but they already know it isn't a simple one-two-three-four. Duke's started to chart them, just in case he can find a pattern.

Jen does know that what comes out of the discussion with Dwight is that Nathan can continue to do his job, with the substitution of his gun for a taser, but he won't ever work alone. He's with Audrey most of the time anyway. Officer Rafferty gets assigned to shadow them if there's a likelihood of a situation where they'll have to split up.

Dwight reportedly remarks that they may as well start to apprentice other officers in dealing with the Troubles anyway, now the Troubles could be there for good. Nathan says he thinks Dwight's pissed off that Jordan ran off with Wade, too; had her earmarked for that sort of role from the Guard's side of things.

Nathan comes home late in the evening, surly and deaf, carrying armfuls of accessibility equipment, from kits and books on lip-reading and computer software packages to a blind man's folding cane.

"What in the hell use is that going to be?" Duke apparently can't help but to ask. "You can't feel." Nathan can't hear him but he sees Duke's expression and Duke reaching for the cane, and must get something from the shapes on his lips because he looks pissed.

"I don't have many signals. I still have signals. It's better than nothing. Maybe I can make it work, and I'm going to try."

Audrey shares with Jen and Duke with a certain note of aggravation that the visual aid people, in particular, are very sceptical about how much accommodation can be achieved when the blindness is only sporadic. But Nathan is stubborn.

He ties a ribbon around his car keys and re-presents them to Audrey, silently, then takes himself off into the bedroom. Tonight, they're on Duke's boat. Duke lifts up his hands and twists his face and then also turns away. Audrey sighs and presses the keys to her breast in her closed fist. Jen touches her shoulder. "I'm sure things will... improve."

"Leave him alone," Audrey says. "He wants to learn. He's obsessed." She wonders aloud if he was like this about learning to cope without touch when he lost that sense, and Jen learns that none of them were around to know the answer. Duke was the only one even in town back then, and Nathan certainly didn't allow him any insight into what was going on.

Apparently Jen's the curious one, or just hasn't learned from the experience of having known Nathan any length of time, because it's she who ventures into the bedroom, later. Duke and Audrey have eaten the food Duke prepared, and are sitting in the galley, cracking expensive bottles of wine, in what Jen hopes isn't going to turn into another drunk session. They've left Nathan a plate under a pan lid, not that he'll notice if it's stone cold by the time he gets it.

"Nathan?" Jen asks cautiously, cracking open the door. "Dinner's--" and then she feels foolish, because she didn't bring a chalk board. Duke bought two of those in town today, in place of the memo pads. She mentally prepares herself for ridiculous "eating" mimes.

But Nathan has neither heard nor seen her. He's sitting with his legs pulled up on the centre of the bed, eyes screwed shut.

"Um," says Jen, and ventures closer, trying to figure out as she does how she is going to get him to open his eyes. Duke would just shove him hard enough to register on his balance senses. Jen... doesn't feel like she can do that.

"I can hear you," he says suddenly, as she's sinking one knee down onto the edge of the bed to climb across to him. He sighs. His eyes blink open, and they look at where she is without really looking at her.

"Oh," says Jennifer, meekly. "I'm sorry. There's food. I came to tell you. I mean, Duke says it doesn't matter if it goes cold, but I think the taste and texture of the sauce changes, too, and really Duke should know that, since he's the one obsessed with--"

"Shh." Nathan makes the sound softly, whistling between his teeth. His eyes close again, and it's almost like he's embarrassed to have anyone look at them while he can't see through them. Then he laughs bitterly. It's so very weird -- the way he laughs -- and it's made so weird because of his body language, or lack of any. His hands don't move. His face doesn't move. Like he's forgotten or written it off. "I was trying to learn to adjust. I don't even know how long I've been sitting here."

Jen can't guess. Everyone left him alone. It's been hours, but he could've been swotting on his new course materials for most of that. The page is open in front of him: lip reading. There's a laptop nearby with a blank screen and the flashing light on its base that means auto-shutdown. She also notices a Braille tutorial package still in a plastic wrap that's been hurled into a corner of the room and lies discarded on the floor. They must've just loaded him up with everything they had. Between Nathan's single-minded sense of purpose and Dwight's she can see that happening.

"You could have called," she says, weakly, because she can kind of see why he didn't.

Nathan's hands scrape out over the scattered things on the bed. He taps his fingers on them, listening for the hard tat when he hits a book or rustle of loose paper or soft pff of his fingers landing on the bedspread. Jen's kind of amazed by the realisation that it's possible to hear texture. She knew that before -- of course she did -- she's just never explicitly thought about it.

"Cane," Nathan says, explaining with even more brevity than usual what this search is about.

"Left," she says, and, "there," when his fingers crinkle on plastic. The cane is still sealed, too. The monosyllables may be contagious.

Nathan tears the plastic with his hands. She has a startled feeling he managed that by sound alone. He drops the folded content, though, fumbling it through his numb fingers. He curses and draws his hands across the surface of the bed underneath again, slapping and tapping.

Unfolding the thing is asking too much. Jen asks breathlessly, "Do you want me to--?" and feels almost weak with relief when he holds it out in his awkwardly-placed hands.

She finds it a bit of a juggle to unfold even when she can see what she's doing, though she supposes that someone with a sense of touch would quickly be able to develop the knack. She places it back in his hand and wraps his fingers and thumb around it and tells him, stuttering, that that's what she's done.

He doesn't thank her, but he's gone so tight-lipped she hardly expected it. She watches him poke the tip into the surface of the bed, experimentally, then move it in a more sweeping motion. He slaps the top corner of the laptop screen with the end and freezes. "Did I break it?"

"No, but -- go easy with that thing. I'll get -- I'll move that." She moves the computer out of the way.

He uses the angle the cane falls at and the sounds to navigate to the side of the bed and with kind of a whoop of breath that indicates it's hardly a stress-free manoeuvre, stands up from the side of the bed. He stands there reeling slightly on his feet and circles the cane around him. He hits the lamp. He's going softer now, so it just goes whump and rocks slightly on its mount. Nathan lets the cane rise and clear the obstruction, and continues until it scrapes the wall, then finds open space. He taps to the right for the bed just to be sure, and listens to the mattress go pff pff.

He knows where he is now. He takes a step.

"I'm -- I'm going to open the door for you," Jen says, and when he doesn't tell her not to, scuttles to go and do that.

Nathan reaches the end of the bed, and she can tell that the big space between there and the door is hard. He's sort of flailing his left arm out on one side and moving the cane with his right. Watching it makes Jen feel acutely unhappy. She can't help but try to imagine such an absolute lack of signals.

The cane hits the open door. Nathan grabs for it like a trophy, catches it very awkwardly -- he's probably bruised that hand, but he doesn't know that. "Jennifer?"

"I'm right here." She's stepped back to get out of the way of the cane. "Do you want my arm?" When Audrey led him yesterday, she did it step by step, using her two hands in both of his, walking backwards. This is -- what she's seeing is so much better than she thinks any of them had hoped.

"Corridors should be easy," he says.

She gets what he means. A wall on either side and a space in the middle. Simple, fixed directions. The galley won't be easy. "Don't forget there's a little bit of a step over at the doors," she nervously entreats.

"I won't." He swings the cane down and centre, where it raps against the rise. He pushes his foot forward, scraping it against the floor until his toe comes up against the step, and then edges it over. He hangs onto the edge of the doorway, thumping it with the heel of his hand to reassure himself with the sound of its solidity.

"I'm still here," Jen says, backing off, thinking she ought. "I'm gonna keep a few steps ahead of you to keep away from the cane, okay?"

Nathan jerks his head in a nod. He moves, tap-tap-scrape-step: the taps the walls left and right and the scrape the cane's tip across the floor in front. She waits nervously just past the junction, but he finds it, the second tap absent and the scrape dragging on further that side before it hits the rise of the doorway.

Nathan rattles the cane around the doorway to shape it. He grabs the edge with his left hand, again making Jen wince. He drags first one foot and then the other over the obstacle of the step.

In the galley, Audrey and Duke are looking up from their drinking and moping with their mouths agape.

"Jennifer says... there's food," Nathan says. Maybe he caught the change in their breath. Jennifer's further away than he is, creeping after him over the threshold, and his remaining senses are sharper than hers. It's obvious he does somehow register both their presence and the nature of their reaction.

Jennifer can tell that he's adrift, sweeping the cane and hitting nothing, taking a step into emptiness, freezing in confusion when it next hits an obstacle (the end of a bench) and he can't place what it is or the geography of the room as he takes a leap of faith and edges around it. She's kind of praying that nothing ruins the moment and his small victory as he makes his way across to where Duke and Audrey sit.

"It happened again?" Audrey says, her voice and stance sort of frozen.

"I'll... get you your plate if you want to sit down." Duke jumps up so quick, he's the one who stumbles and almost ends up face-planting the floor.

***

So Nathan is... not great, but at the same time, it looks like they can salvage more from this than they thought. They all sit in the plush chairs after he's eaten -- been fed by Duke, mostly: some things there is no trick or shortcut for -- and Nathan holds Audrey's hand as she cuddles into his side. His eyes are open, tired and very blue and unseeing.

"Muscle memory," he says. "I can train myself. At least for known locations. Like with drawing my gun without having to look. Like using the foot pedals on the car." His face twists with that sour reminder of loss. "The cane helps."

"You know," Duke says, his glass full again, his voice also a bit too full, and Jen is debating putting her foot down if they suggest another bottle, "Maybe William screwed up. No, don't, listen--" He pulls a face. "He opted to play on Nathan's fears, right? Taunted him with losing another sense, with the choice, then somehow used that to produce a new Trouble. But, Nate, you've done this before. You adapted to life without feeling anything, man. You're the king of adapting, already. I'm just saying... maybe it's not the worst thing he could have chosen." Duke fields two sets of glares and Nathan's responding blank stiffness and emphatically waves both hands. "He's not exploding and killing anything, okay?"

"True." Audrey holds onto Nathan tighter. He walks his hand slowly up her arm until it reaches her neckline, then rises with more surety to cup her face, and he leans in to kiss her, deeply. She starts to loosen both their clothes, bringing more skin into contact. Nathan groans. Audrey unfastens his belt and zipper. "You're going to fuck me," she promises, "right here and now on this couch." She glides her hand down, stroking his cock. "I'm going to touch every inch of you, and you're going to fuck me. And this--" She leans up, plants kisses on his eyelids, "this isn't going to make a difference, one way or another."

"All right..." Nathan's acquiescence is a whisper.

Audrey pulls his shirt off entirely, moving her lips down one arm and then the other, from collarbone to fingers, as she draws the sleeves clear. Nathan all but whimpers. She kicks her jeans all the way off, then straddles him and rocks her hips, letting the tip of him slide into her.

"More," he groans, lunging up to her. She slides the palms of both hands down over his chest, and it's like he doesn't know where to go. His groan is deeper, more desperate.

Jen watches Audrey uncover herself to make a bright path through the darkness for him to follow, and watches Nathan become more and more an active participant as he finds his way lit up, until he's also touching her and making her moan. Finally he weaves his hands beneath her knees and around to grip her buttocks and thrusts between her legs as he holds her wide against him, and their position has shifted enough that her shoulder is pressed to the back of the couch. With Nathan trying to take control and the couch itself a mystery to him, they might fall off, but Audrey seems to be willing to take the risk. The position of Nathan's arms is curling her legs up under his armpits, but she isn't complaining about that, either. She lets go and lets him unravel her further with each roll of his hips.

Duke's suddenly there in front of Jen, crouched with his hands on her knees, a sparkle of... perhaps somewhat calculating mischief in his eyes. She didn't see him get up and come over because she was fixated on what's happening between Audrey and Nathan; his lips all over her throat in hard, focused kisses while he thrusts into her now. Jen jumps and tears her attention to Duke.

"They're occupied, so.. What say you and I go and steal the bed?"

It's still covered with Nathan's stuff. She's not sure if the emphasis on his offer is more about stealing themselves some time together or leaving Nathan and Audrey to it. Although it's true that they've been together a lot, since the William threat, not wanting to split off and weaken their numbers at night while they are being hunted. Jen nods, supposing they can move Nathan's stuff.

She isn't expecting him to pick her up and carry her over there, and squeals in his arms, kicking in startlement. He says "Oof" and she stops. He shuffles her weight and leans into her face to say softly, "I didn't expect to be beaten up for the suggestion."

"Maybe I'd rather watch them," she teases.

"Are you saying they're hotter than us? Then I guess--" He hefts her weight again. For a moment it feels like she's suspended in the air, his hands not touching her. "I guess I have something to prove."

He carries her into the bedroom. The aggressive romancing deflates a bit when he discovers he can't throw her down and start, but that they do have to clear the mess Nathan left. Jennifer snickers at him while he curses.

"...Okay," he says finally, leaning over her, pressing a kiss to the skin near her ear, pushing his nose through her hair to sweep it away from her eyes, because his hands are travelling downwards, tickling her skin with the electric of their touch as they go. After watching Audrey and Nathan in the galley, she is so ready. "Where were we?" His hand works inside her pants and his fingers slide into her without resistance. The heel of his thumb pushes against her just so.

"There," Jen gasps. "Right there."

"I see..." They both participate in a sudden flurry of too-many-clothes, but it isn't like it was very dignified before.

***

In the morning, Nathan is still blind. He has approximately the same conversation with Audrey as he had the previous morning: "It'll switch sometime during the day. Yes, we're going into work. Help me install the speech recognition software on my office computer. If we get a call out, I can practice while you go with Rafferty."

Audrey sighs and they leave, after a breakfast that Nathan's circumstances won't let them hurry, but it's obvious they'd like to. Nathan sits beside Audrey, in the passenger seat, clutching his cane and a few of yesterday's packages.

"This sucks." Duke walks around kicking furniture again after he and Jen come back inside.

"It's better than it was." Jen barely dares offer the opinion, because there are always going to be times when Nathan is next to helpless and there's nothing they can do about it.

She presses Duke to refresh the bottle of blood that he carried around yesterday, drawing it carefully from her arm according to the instructions Gloria gave them. Gloria didn't look thrilled to be giving such instructions, but she seems to acknowledge the necessity of using Duke's curse in a practical, blunt, Gloria sort of fashion.

They go to the Gull first, because Duke needs to check things over and approve the menus for the next week, and after that they continue to the Herald. They haven't seen anything of William since Audrey shot him. Maybe that was a bitter pill for William to swallow. Maybe he's just leaving them to stew for a while with the horrors of Nathan's condition. The absence isn't putting anyone's mind at rest. Considering what he did to Nathan, Jen shudders to think what he has in mind for her or Duke.

The Teagues' antique car is outside the Herald office, and they can't see the brothers through the glass frontage, but they're probably in the back, preparing some other project to help Jen familiarize herself with the archive. The door is open and Jennifer goes in. Duke shadows her, peering around distrustfully at the street.

"Dave? Vince?" Jen calls, and they don't answer, but there's a noise from the back, a sort of bump. They're probably rearranging books again, she guesses, as she takes a step that way.

"Wait." Duke catches her and pulls her back, pushing in front, blocking with his body. He takes a gun from somewhere and pulls out the bottle of blood in his other hand. "Vince? Answer if you're in there. Don't make me this paranoid, man..."

Jen is fumbling for the taser in her handbag when William's big henchman charges out of the back. Duke puts two bullets in his oncoming form and it doesn't slow him down. Jennifer shuts her eyes and aims and discharges the taser -- kind of aware, yes, that some of that process is the wrong way around.

The taser was meant for William, but the taser is what's in her hand and the gun didn't work anyway. Duke wrenches open the bottle of blood in his fists and lunges to meet the big guy, eyes silvered-over. He grapples a moment, then throws him over his shoulder to land with a crash behind Dave's desk.

Jen can see into the back now. Can see William standing smugly over a bound and gagged Vince and Dave. Then the doorway is blocked by the little henchman, coming between them.

Jen drops the useless taser and scrambles to pull the pepper spray from her bag among the other alien objects there. The knife is for Duke. They can't shoot William. She pulls the knife anyway as it lands in her grip, tightening her hand around it.

Duke's eyes are brown again. He has time to aim a quick shot at William's feet, then ducks down to where the bottle fell, in its little pool of blood. He surges up as the silver overtakes his eyes again, barrelling into the little henchman. He pushes him back and slams them both into the wall. Jen runs after them with the pepper spray, trying to score the little guy's eyes.

She's grabbed from behind after a single squirt. The big guy is back on his feet already. She drops the pepper spray, unable to balance and grip it in her extended hand as she's lifted by her underarms. The knife is still in her other hand, although the way he's seized her, the angle to use it on him is awkward. There's an arm around her breasts, and her elbow is caught, too. The other arm's squashing her around the middle. She kicks her feet, which seem to be miles from the floor, shrieks loudly, and tries to angle the knife to jab the arm holding her. It seems to go through him like he's made of shadow, sliding easily then coming out, leaving a black line that closes almost instantly in its wake.

"Jennifer!" Duke's eyes are brown again and he's struggling to hold his own against the little guy. Despite all her struggles, the big guy carries her easily into the back of the Herald where William is waiting.

"Get off, get off, get off!" she shrieks, making William wince and hold his ears, pulling a face. If that's all she can do, she'll do it more. She lifts her voice, trying for maximum volume and pitch. Her phone starts to ring, wherever she dropped her bag. Bizarrely, she's distracted for a moment by the idea of missing the call. The big guy adjusts his hold to slap a hand over her mouth, and the air seems to ring for a several seconds with the echo of her screams as well as the continuing noise of the phone.

"I'll get it." William bounces on his toes to answer the call. "Why, hello there, Nathan! How are things?"

She shouldn't hear Nathan's reply, considering there's a doorway between them, but she does, at least enough to catch the tone of it. Then again, she could have guessed that.

She can't see what's happening to Duke.

"Like that, is it?" William chuckles. "Well, not to worry. I hear you've had a few things to adjust to. I'll leave you a few more by the time you get here."

He quickly turns the phone off and tosses it over his shoulder as he bounds back. Jen doesn't need to hear any of Nathan's reaction to know that right now he is freaking out, probably in a very hostile way. William moves with a new sense of rush as he steps in front of her and holds up a little black ball.

Duke calls them 'goo' but to her it looks like soot. Even more so, when William crushes it over the surface of his palm. He grins at her, and the big guy tears at her dress, pulling the collar apart to expose bare skin over her breast bone. In the background, the Teagues make muffled complaints. Vince tips his chair, trying to knock over a desk to distract William. But the desk only moves a few inches across the floor, screeching on its legs, and Jen makes a muffled squeak of her own, afraid of the impact of the old man's limbs with the hard furniture and floor.

"Now, someone mentioned something to me about hearing voices," William says. "I understand it's been a problem for you in the past. You do know that only crazy people hear voices...?"

Jen squeaks and struggles and bucks more frantically than she could have ever thought possible. She even manages to pull her arm free of the big guy and to slash the knife that's still in her hand at William's moving palm. He's going to send her mad!

William hisses as his black palm is tainted with red. But it doesn't stop him. The big guy grabs Jennifer's arm, twisting it until she drops the knife, curls his other arm under her other shoulder so she hangs painfully, with too much weight on her arms. William's palm connects while she's reeling from it. When the black stuff touches her, it doesn't feel like anything much by comparison. Maybe there's a tingle.

William's already moving to pull back as she kicks him in the balls, too late.

He hunches over, but his palm isn't black anymore. His palm isn't--

Jen gasps as the big guy drops her.

There's a clamour of concern battering at her senses. The Teagues -- she picks out Vince and Dave, and lifts her head. "I'm--" She's going to tell them she's all right; she doesn't feel mad, maybe William screwed it up -- although perhaps she should keep that quiet if he's still here and doesn't realise -- until she notices that the lips of the old brothers aren't moving, but she can still hear them.

There's another voice too, near-incoherent with rage and worry, so much so she almost doesn't recognise it as Duke's. Then something else again that almost isn't a voice, more just a faint feeling of smugness, but she can't quite place where it's coming from... William and the big guy are walking away from her, abandoning her on the floor like she doesn't matter now. She shuffles up onto her hands and knees, twisting, looking around in alarm. Her dress is gaping at the front, though it's not showing anything more immodest than a flash of red and white lacey bra. She can't see the handprint. At least Nathan's is on his back, and Audrey usually can't see it, either...

She scuttles after them into the front office, hand curled bloodily around the knife. She must have cut herself again, somewhere in it all. The little guy has Duke pinned to the floor. It's so much like what happened with Nathan, except he's pressed onto his back, not his face. His shirt is open, his chest bare.

Jen... What's she--? Her dress! Those bastards, I'm gonna rip them limb from limb... The blood... if I can only... Need to reach...

Jennifer drops the knife and clutches her head. But -- but Duke, and the bloody knife. She needs to... She picks up the knife and throws it at Duke. It's a bad throw, the worst kind of girl-throw, but it sails past the little henchman's nose and lands on Duke's bare chest.

Blood sinks in and he surges up, knocking the little guy into the big guy, hurling himself at William. But the blood surge doesn't last long enough, and William evades him successfully, backing to the door, looking between Duke and Jennifer as Duke's eyes dull to brown and he staggers in exhaustion, coming down from the high.

"No..." William says. "There's no need to do anything to you. You already have the curse that sends men mad. You're getting into bed every night with two Troubled people!" He extends his arms dramatically. "You'll be a match for your crazy girlfriend in a matter of months."

He rubs his own bloody hand, glares at Jennifer briefly, then turns and flees. The door slaps a few times back and forth in his wake. Duke looks nervously at the two henchmen, who haven't followed.

They break up. From two people, they transform into a million of those black balls, and flow out of the door after their master.

Jennifer gapes and sobs, clutching her hand over her mouth, because suddenly it's horrible. It's horrible that they're not people anymore, and presumably never were.

With them gone, the voices clamour closer in. Only the urgency of the present held them back. She can feel Duke, right there, and she loves Duke but she doesn't want him in her head. Jen can sense how much he's hurting -- inside and out, as he looks at her and it hurts her. He struggled so hard not to be held down while William and the big henchman re-Troubled her, and his limbs ache where the little henchman grabbed and twisted with impossible strength. Inside, he's hurting because he thinks she's mad and he let it happen.

Jennifer sobs and runs away from him, fleeing out of the Herald office. She stumbles off the porch just as Nathan and Audrey pull up outside. Nathan's out first, because he's not driving. He's out and he can see her. "Jennifer! Are you all right?" His voice is a sharp rasp of panic. Inside, he's all fierce, straight lines of action. He's here to defend her. He's hoping he got here before William could do anything. She feels him realise that he didn't. "Where's Duke?"

It's not that he loves Duke more than her (though he does), but he can see her, and to that extent she's all right, compared to Duke's unproven status. His thoughts are more cluttered than his sparse, direct speech by far. Jennifer seals her hands over her head again and runs away from him, too.

"Jennifer!" She feels the faint buzz of Audrey's concern, but she doesn't want to look back. She runs down the street, holding her dress together once she registers again its gaping state, with no plan or direction, simply turning away whenever things get too loud. She swears she can still hear Duke, and maybe Nathan a little bit, even all the way down the street. How far will be far enough?

She hares off the road into the park, and William was there the other day, William caught Nathan there, but she doesn't care. He can't do anything worse to her than he already has even if he does decide to come back, and he's quiet. She can still hear the noisy presence of a family -- two children, their mother, a boyfriend -- even though they're not in sight and she can't hear them. Jen huddles into the base of a big old tree and covers her head... It doesn't do anything to help, but she can't make herself stop, even knowing that it doesn't do anything.

It's the best she's going to get in town, she thinks. She'll have to leave. They're all too noisy. She'll have to leave Duke and Audrey and Nathan, to leave people altogether. If she stays, their voices will never leave her be. She needs... open country. Are the islands out in the bay far enough? Could she live on an island? She doesn't really know how to sail a boat, but Duke kind of showed her some of how to sail a boat. She could try. Would it be quiet enough at sea?

She hears clamour approaching again: real voices, calling her name. Nathan and Audrey. Duke's is fainter, hanging back. He's thinking, I don't know what I did to make her run. How can I not do it again? He thinks it's his fault. But Nathan is mere feet from her and drowns Duke out. Aloud, he says, "Jennifer?" with concern, but the other voice says, What the hell's wrong with her? Why's she acting crazy?

"Go away!" She tears out lumps of the grass and throws them at him. "Go away, go away, go away! You're too loud! I can't think!"

Where's the space left for her with all of their voices crammed inside her?

Nathan backs off. Audrey's real voice is solid and hard as she says, "Take Duke away. I need to figure out what William did." Nathan puts an arm around Duke's chest and drags him back, step by step, until Duke gives in and stumbles away with him.

Audrey waits a few minutes for Duke and Nathan to get clear before she ventures in. Jen... can't hear her thinking it, but she sort of knows that Audrey's doing it. Audrey's quiet, but there are still others at the edges, creeping through.

"Jennifer..." Audrey's hands touch the hands she's locked over her head again. "Can you tell me what's wrong?"

"VOICES!" Jen yells. "Too many voices! Worse that before."

"What kind of voices?" asks Audrey. "Whose voices?" Her hands have no luck. Jen doesn't want to come out.

"Everyone's! Duke's... Nathan's... The Teagues'... Little Sammy Nicholson and his big sister in the park... Everyone's. All the voices. I don't want them. Make them go away." She'll be a princess in a high tower. Maybe if the tower is high enough, it will keep out the voices on the ground.

"Nathan and Duke left," Audrey says, softly. Her hands feel gentle, understanding, warm. Jen starts to realise that maybe she can still cope with Audrey being there. "Can you still hear Nathan and Duke now?"

"N-no..." The children are too loud, overwhelming everything else. I want ice cream, and she feels the want right down to her toes. The boy needs to pee. Then there's an interruption -- she catches a fleeting impression of Nathan again, and sees him for a dizzying moment through the children's eyes, so big and tall and official, then they're going. Nathan moved them away.

Jen sighs and slumps back into the tree. Her head starts to clear enough that she can focus on Audrey's question, "What do you mean when you say that you can hear them?"

She replies, "Their thoughts. I think it's their thoughts. Everyone's except yours."

Audrey blinks.

"So noisy," Jen moans.

"Wait here," Audrey says, and leaves. The vague impression of her being there fades and there are still a few people twittering like distant birds on the periphery but she can feel the relief. She hugs the tree, which has no voice, and is friendly, and drifts in the relief of being alone.

Audrey comes back. "Duke and Nathan went back to the station. They didn't want to, but they went. Duke is going to shadow Nathan for the rest of the day, and you and I are going to find a way to cope with this."

Jen nods, although she still just wants to be left alone.

Audrey asks, "What do you need?"

"An island," babbles Jen. "A high tower. A boat on the middle of the ocean. Ice cream."

Audrey says, "We'll start by trying to get you back to the Cape Rouge. It's more isolated than either my place or Nathan's. And we can take it out to sea if we have to. We can probably get the ice-cream on the way."

***

The park is quiet and the Cape Rouge is sort of quiet, but there's a quarter-hour journey of not-quiet in between. Jen refuses and Audrey gives her an hour to prepare for it, continuing to use her badge to keep people away, and even brings her an ice-cream, though the left over whim of the child has actually dissipated by then. The ice-cream makes her feel a little bit better anyway, the taste and the cold feel of it on her tongue becoming a small measure of distraction from the rest.

It takes a long time to make that journey, but she can't sleep in the park, though she tries to make the argument ("A tent! Duke must have a tent, somewhere?") Audrey, though, is firm. She can't stay here indefinitely. Once she's at the Rouge, at least there's a possibility she might be left alone.

She tells herself that over and over as she lets Audrey guide her down to Nathan's car and the voices flood in again.

She gets in the back and curls up, and Audrey puts her foot down. Different voices whizz by, pouring into Jen's head and filling it up, then ripping away again. She whimpers into the upholstery of the seat. Audrey promises, "Not long. We'll be there in no time," breathless and anguished, and drives dangerously. Jen gets all the sweary thoughts of idiot and woman drivers! and worse from the motorists around them.

The marina has far less people than the town, and Jen emerges again, hurrying from the waterside into the living quarters below Duke's boat under her own power. It's not completely quiet, even there. There are still other boat people, and other workers on the harbour. They're distant thoughts of tide, weather and fish on the edges of her mind.

Audrey gets her sitting down in the galley and feeds her a big hot chocolate drink with squeezy cream from Duke's fridge and marshmallows piled on top. "Usually I go for cupcakes," she says, "but we have no cupcakes, and Lexie..." She narrows her eyes contemplatively. "Do you think alcohol or recreational drugs would help?"

"I don't know," Jen murmurs, poking her fingers into the cream and licking it off them like she'd do when she was a little girl. "They might make it worse."

"Okay, so... last resort, then," Audrey concludes. She gives a bottle she'd pulled out of a cupboard a regretful look and comes to sit down next to Jen on the couch. She holds Jen's sticky hands. "You are not mad. He didn't do that. We're going to figure out how to manage this, just like we would any Trouble." She leans in and kisses some of the stickiness off the corner of Jen's mouth.

Jen isn't sure if it's possible to 'manage' this, but the thoughts of towers and islands are fading. Running away is what William wants. That's why he did this. To split them from Audrey, peel off one by one the people who hold her to herself. Jen in a remote location somewhere, Nathan stuck helpless at home, Duke going slowly crazy having to rely on his dangerous Trouble to make a difference in this fight.

She shudders, thinking about what William said to Duke, and tells it to Audrey.

"I know. Duke told Nathan and Nathan told me."

"D-do you think this means we're safe now? From William, at least?" Jen asks, haltingly.

Audrey pulls a face. Anger simmers in her eyes. "I think he's done all he's going to for the time being. He'll wait. If it doesn't break us, he'll be back for more. Unless we deal with him first."

Jen moans. Even if they overcome, the reward is another test.

"We have time to recover," Audrey asserts.

They sit together through the afternoon. They play some board games as a distraction, and then Jennifer tries to read a book while Audrey wanders around doing... she's not sure what. Talking on the phone at one point. Jennifer's mainly trying to block it out.

Audrey tentatively approaches her as the afternoon's wearing on. "I think we need to bring one of the guys back," she says, and talks over Jennifer's instant denial, "because you need to see if you can get used to this new Trouble with a person it works on present. We can't do anything else without taking that step. I need you to try."

Her face twists into harder lines at Jennifer's continued litany of denial. "Jennifer, it's not negotiable. I'm bringing one of them back. I realise Duke would be better, but Nathan is helpless if he goes blind again, and I don't want to..." She stops and sighs.

Jen is not proud of herself for responding to that by curling into a ball, burying her head in the couch, and shaking it over and over.

Audrey goes away and Jen hears talking on the phone, distantly, through the sinky cushions around her ears. When Audrey comes back this time she looks ragged and upset to Jen's upside-down, peeping eyes. "Nathan's going to stay with Dwight. The problem might never happen, he says. He says it's fine. So I am going to pack up some things for him quickly because they're on their way now."

Jen doesn't want Nathan thrown out because of her, but she can't cope with one of them, she can't cope with both of them, and if she has to... if she has to, then it has to be Duke. "I'm sorry," she mumbles. "I'm sorry. Tell him--"

Audrey sighs and sits down and pulls her into a hug. "He knows."

Jen knows that William wants to fracture them and all this is giving him precisely what he wants. Nathan didn't let it happen because of him, but apparently she's not that strong, because now they're all unravelling over her.

"It's only temporary." Audrey's voice is hard, reminding her of this. "Once you get used to Duke being around, Nathan is next."

But that thought isn't any better. Jen remembers how they crowded her out, earlier, and she loves Duke but she doesn't want him in her head. She's going to come apart. She's going to feel herself going crazy all over again.

***

Duke returns an hour or so later. Outside, he's quiet, but inside, he's a tumult of voices. She tries to look him in the eye but flinches away from all his worry and fear and guilt.

"Okay, Jen." That's his hand, touching her face, that she picks out of the layers of reality inside of him. "I'm going to do a thing that I think might help. Just hang in there."

She hears a muffled conversation with Audrey. "Being here is hurting her!" "Well, you've got to do it, we have no choice." She thinks they've hushed their voices quietly enough to hide them from her ears.

Duke gathers up some stuff from the chest in the bedroom and brings it in, laying it out on the biggest area of space in the floor. Jen is pulled despite herself to watch as his meditation rug and bowls and bells and candles emerge. It's part of what drew her to him in the first place.

He sits cross-legged on the rug. Audrey picks up and plays with a singing bowl. Duke turns his head to her but lets it go as the smooth, round noise circulates the interior of the boat, joining with the constant lapping tune of the sea against the hull. It's pretty and it seems to reverberate across the whole surface of Jen's skin.

"I'm going to deal with me," Duke says. "Then... I don't know. Maybe this can work for you, too. But right now, I'm going to try and quiet my mind." He grimaces. "The purpose this time's clarity. Peace. Quiet. Okay?" He prompts, softly.

"Okay." Jen gulps and nods. She realises there's no onus on her to do anything but watch, and so she watches him close his eyes and breathe.

Watches the messy tangle of his thoughts as, bit by bit, he physically relaxes, and with his body's calm, the calm inside starts to gather and pool. Audrey sits on the floor with her back rested against a wall and her knees hunched up, watching him, too. She plays with the bowl still in her hands, but without exciting it to voice. All of this is affecting her, too.

Jen realises that some of what she's been getting all this time is the quiet burr of Audrey's guilt. All this happened because they loved her and she loved them.

It takes maybe an hour before Duke's thoughts quiet enough that they don't have Jen twitching and unable to tell what's her and what's him inside her head. It might be her breathing, she's not sure, but something clues him in to it, and his eyes flick open. He asks, "Are you good now?"

"Better." She nods slowly.

"Come and join me." He pats the meditation mat.

Audrey has long since relocated to an upright chair at the table with a book on serial killers and a bottle of wine. Jen scrambles down to the mat.

"So... what's the problem with the voices?" Duke asks. His voice is rough. Things stir inside him again, but he holds that quiet centre and pushes them down.

She gulps. "I can't tell what's me anymore."

"But you can tell what's you, now?"

She can, because Duke's thoughts are strong and focused, and her own are nothing like that. Maybe they've become so calm and monolithic and distinctive that they're also holding her together a little, too. Like the way she ended up wanting ice-cream, after the children. But maybe that part's not a problem with him. "Yes."

Duke nods. "So what we need to do is establish the ground layer. To help you recognise you."

"But there are so many of them, outside--" Jen says. "How am I ever going to be able to walk down the street again?"

Duke shakes his head. "One step at a time, okay? We'll work on being in the same room as one or two people you know, for now."

"I'm sorry," she sobs, reminded. "I sent Nathan away. I--"

"Nathan's fine," Duke asserts. "He's fine, Jen. He can't taste anything. He won't even have to suffer Dwight's lousy cooking."

"What if it changes? What if--?" She knows there's still a little spark of rivalry between Nathan and Dwight, who took over his job. For Nathan to be completely reliant on Dwight would be so uncomfortable for him, she feels horrible to think about it.

"It's already changed. It was smell, earlier. He could be good for the night, and if he's not, he'll manage. Dwight's a good guy, and he's already seen Nathan blind."

Jen wonders if over-stimulation from the world is better or worse than having the world chipped away, sense by sense. At the moment, she'd trade in a heartbeat.

"Come on," Duke says. "Close your eyes. Clear your mind. Relax." He picks up her hand and rubs it between his, then the other one, making them warm, making the skin seem to tingle and fizz. She feels like she's been tense for days, wound-in tight, too many intrusions on her self. "You know how to do this. We've done it before."

She didn't do it very well before, which is why she ended up hanging upside-down doing what, she's sure, was essentially cheating.

But she sighs and shuts her eyes. If she's not going to give in and run, find a tower or an island -- or a lighthouse! The perfect combination of the two! -- then she has no choice but to try this.

He's so patient with her, like before. It doesn't hurt to remind her of all the things she first grew to love about him, as she relearns him on a new level. Learns things like... Like he never did like that shirt much, he was just being diplomatic whenever she wore it, and other things, worse things, about her character and his, the little twisty secrets of two people getting along with each other that this new ability of hers, if that's the word for it, scatters to the winds.

"Nobody is constant, all the time," Duke says, with just a touch of desperation. It's difficult to be this raw together. His thoughts are louder but she finds she can cope with them better like this, escalating up from quiet, rather than the volume turned right up all around her from the start. "We all have these little lies. We just need to admit that they're little lies, and get over them."

"I really hate the short pants," she offers, feeling like she should give something back.

He snorts. "I know you hate the short pants. You never lied about that."

She can't think of another one, but she resolves that as soon as she does, next time she'll tell him it straight-out. It's only fair, after all.

It's late by the time they've made progress enough that she's confident she can think straight with Duke there. Sort of straight. It comes to her suddenly. "I want to phone Nathan. I can be normal with him, can't I, on the phone?"

Audrey and Duke watch her as she calls him up on her cellphone. "Jen," he answers, too quickly. "Is everything all right?"

So he can see and hear, at least, and that part of her guilt is assuaged, thus far.

"I can be in the same room as Duke without going crazy. It's progress." She adds, sorrowfully, "I'm sorry. You can come back tomorrow." Not now. She wants to beg him to come back now, but she's tired and she can't. All she wants to do now is sleep. She just couldn't do that until she'd spoken to him, because he's been freshly wounded by William, too, and she sent him away.

"Only if you're sure," he says, and she sobs a bit and shoves the phone at Duke because she suddenly can't.

Duke exchanges a few of their standard verbal spars, and through him, she hears Nathan admit he was just settling down to sleep on Dwight's couch. Duke turns it into an overly kissy goodnight call, then hands Nathan's disgruntlement over to Audrey for her to deal with, receiving a glare.

"Let's go to bed," Duke tells Jennifer, while Audrey's talking softly to Nathan in words that don't carry through to Jen in any sense.

They sleep as a trio that night, Jen and the two of her partners who can generate quiet inside of their heads. It's wrong to think it, but she still can't help but dread, even as she approached him with such trepidation back at the start, the re-addition of Nathan to their mix tomorrow.

***

Vince and Dave know, of course, what happened, and they aren't expecting her at the Herald. Duke abandons the Gull again to stay with her. Audrey goes to join Nathan. Nathan sends Jen a text shortly after, which suggests some prodding from Audrey was involved in its genesis. It's not a long text, just, All ok, Love you, Love to Duke. xx N. but it makes her feel warm. She replies to it, and she realises that even if she has to hide from people, she doesn't have to do it alone, and sends texts to Dave, and Vince, and Dwight, as well.

She borrows Duke's computer and spends a few hours of the morning intermittently chatting to Vince on the Herald website chat room while playing Dave at chequers. Duke's presence is a soft hum in her brain, always there, the people coming by on the marina come and go more distantly, and she kind of... gets used to it, the odd scary or consuming thought-train aside. The one time she goes running to Duke, clutching his shirt collar, panicking about the guy on the shore who's going to murder someone, he looks out above deck for her and concludes, "That's old Patty Benchard, drunk as a skunk and stinking almost as much. He's been saying that kind of thing for years."

"People are scary," Jen concludes, and Duke tips his head this way and that, then soberly nods.

She gets used to tuning out the background of what he's not-really-saying when it isn't relevant and listening to him to talk so they can have proper conversations again.

Vince messages her privately that when they decide to go after William, he wants in on it, and that he's polishing up his old hunting rifle as he types. Which seems logistically difficult and does nothing to lessen her conviction that people are scary.

"Old hunting rifle, my ass," Duke says. "That old goat is in charge of the Guard, he probably has an up-to-date arsenal somewhere."

Mid afternoon Nathan sends her, Deaf again. Sucks. Tell Duke chalk boards this pm. xx N.

"Tell him he'd better keep his taste buds switched on for my cooking," is Duke's response.

Still, it causes Jennifer a return to panic with the thought that, in just a few hours, there'll be another person there. She revisits losing herself in her head, and maybe it's worse in her memory than it was at the time.

The next thing she knows, Duke's pulling her hands from her face and telling her, "It won't happen like that again. You are better this time. It's only Nathan. You can cope with Nathan."

Which is in itself a bit of a laugh, considering how Nathan was the thing which gave her the most cause for struggle in being a part of this at all, back at the beginning.

Duke sees her face and his expression scrunches up with doubt. "If you really think you can't cope, we can tell Nathan to give it another night."

"No, no, no," moans Jen. "I won't do that. I won't send him away again." She doesn't want him left, blind, in Dwight's care. It was good luck that it didn't happen last night. It's too much to hope that such luck will continue. "I won't do that to him."

"Hey, he's going to be just as bothered if he gets here and you're like this. Better to head it off." Duke trails his knuckles under her chin, then wipes the tears from under her eyes.

"I can't," she says, and as Duke's face clouds uncertainly, hurriedly adds, "I can't do that. This is his home. We're his home. We need to look after him if he goes blind again." She needs to pull herself together so that Nathan can come home and William doesn't get to keep them apart. "I won't let William win."

Duke blinks at her. "That warlike face looks so cute on you."

She pretends offence. "You think that the point of my warlike face is to look cute?"

He snickers and dries her eyes with the pads of his thumbs, then kisses her slightly sticky eyelids. "Keep being brave," he says. And it's ridiculous to pretend she's shown any bravery at all so far, so she averts her face and delivers a loose punch at his side with the heel of her hand. He catches her elbow. "William was wrong. You're not going to go crazy. Even if you can hear all of the voices. The voices are just people. Even if that does include Pickled Patty."

She presses her lips together and bites them, trying desperately not to make that statement something else to cry about. "He was wrong about you, too," she declares. "You'd never hurt us. Not me, not Nathan. Not for the blood. Not for anything."

He sighs, and she shivers at the thoughts that flit through his mind. For a second, they're not very nice thoughts, until he pulls away from them.

"You wouldn't," Jennifer says again.

"It's too good," Duke says. "No, William's right. Especially when it's you or Nathan. What happens when the rush of the blood alone isn't enough?"

"Then don't use it," Jen says. "It's not like it helped in the end. Use something else. Carry a tranquilizer gun. Stun grenades. They'll probably have as much use against those goons as anything else--" Meaning none whatsoever. "But I still trust you, Duke."

His thoughts say she shouldn't, indicate she shouldn't in their dark, churning, yearning content, but she must. "William doesn't know us," she says, shakily. "He's only arrogant enough to think he does. Or he wouldn't have messed with Nathan's senses and thought that would be the end of him, or made me hear regular old silly people and thought that a thing like that would make me crazy. Okay?"

He's the one of them who knows himself best, and the only thing she can do to make him stronger than he thinks he is, is to give him hope. Faith in himself while he's floundering.

"You wouldn't hurt us, Duke," she says again. "I know that."

He buries his head in her chest, where she automatically curls her hands over it, where he silently nods.

***

The first thing she senses is that the sweet texts were a front. Nathan is afraid in ways that annoy and perplex her. Afraid of having his feelings uncovered, like his emotional core would be a secret. Nathan doesn't want his thoughts read any more than Jennifer wants to be able to read them.

He's so screwed up with it that she can sense him even as Nathan and Audrey are approaching the marina in the Bronco.

Being perceived as such a threat ricochets around the inside of her head until she ends up in a huddle that Duke has to dig her out of. Once again, it's the question, "Should I send him away?" that makes her shake her head wildly and try to approximate normal behaviour, even though Nathan's annoying her so much at the moment.

"Well, I am going out to have a word with him," Duke says, darkly, and marches off.

She feels Nathan's thoughts grow chastened. Nathan suggests he should go back anyway, and Duke is about to agree with him. Somehow, Jennifer blurts all her feelings in a big, messy, splurge through the link as she tells them, "No!"

Duke and Nathan stagger into the Rouge a few minutes later. She's still rocking on the couch, chewing her fingertips and wondering what the hell she just did.

"You--" Duke starts, but doesn't seem to know how to finish. He has a white rim all around the edges of his eyes.

Nathan's quieter, but stricken. Sound as well as sensation is missing from his characteristic imprint on the world. Jen doesn't know how she knows that, she just... does. "I heard that," he says, with the mechanical inflection that results from not being able to hear himself speak.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Jen says, because Duke still looks like that hurt.

Nathan looks like that hurt and he doesn't care. "Can you do it again?"

"Nathan!" Duke punches him in the shoulder as he growls his name just as uselessly. But Nathan sees it and sags.

"...All right. But I -- I heard it." His eyes go to Jen's. "Jennifer, are you...?"

She gets lost behind his eyes for a moment. They're beautiful eyes. Honestly, she's never been much of a one for blue eyed men, but they are so blue. His thoughts are like a series of elaborate knots, all twisted in on each other. He thinks about not wanting her to know he doesn't love her as much as he does Duke or Audrey, and the thought twists into a knotty circle as he tries to push it down and it comes back up.

"Duh," says Jennifer. "It's not as though I didn't know that." She's the latecomer here. Nathan is Duke's and he's Audrey's, and as for Jen and Nathan, theirs is -- well, it's a version of love, but it's mapped out in a very specific way between the lines of allegiance and patterns that make them both a part of the whole. They're held together by everyone else's bonds, not anything that would be between the two of them if the others didn't exist, and that's... it's fine. It's fine.

Except being the weak link takes a whole new meaning, in the context of what William's done to them, and she ends up throwing her arms around Nathan's chest and sobbing while he stands rigid and confused.

"She's emotional," she hears Duke say to Nathan, then he groans and stomps to the table to get a blackboard.

Jen feels Nathan's arms curl around her, losing their rigidity. A clearer thought unknots, a pure strand of concern and compassion. Nathan has never lifted her up the way Duke does, but he does now, silently carrying her to the couch, where she's built a sort of nest out of laptop, phone, throws and scatter cushions. She should be outraged, really. They never pick up Audrey, though Duke has occasionally tried to pick up Nathan, which is pretty funny. But somehow it's okay.

"He won't win," Nathan says, close up to her face as he's still knelt beside her, stroking her hair. "We won't let him win." He kisses her mouth, hesitantly like he isn't sure it's okay. Without Audrey's facilitation, the kiss is as mechanical as his voice.

He says that, but she can see inside him, all twisted up with uselessness and fear.

***

Duke gets the meditation gear out again. Points at Nathan with prejudice and says, "You're fucking doing this."

Nathan looks far from charmed by the prospect, but he sits down opposite Duke on the pretty Tibetan rug. For her, Jen can sense that much, watching from the nest of cushions. Audrey has joined her there and Jen can kind of catch her plotting out defensive positions like it was a real fort, though her mind is faint to start with and almost invisible beneath the shouting presence of Nathan.

Jen is starting to lose touch with the feel of her skin. It's very strange. It matters less that spoken sound is fuzzying. It's not as if Nathan's second-hand Troubles can much lessen the signals she's getting there.

"You are hurting her," Duke says roughly. "So you need to calm the fuck down." In truth, Duke is not projecting much calm either, right now.

Nathan protests, "I'm not tense. This is me."

"It doesn't hurt," Jen protests. She looks at her hands. Pokes at her fingers. They're dull, distant, clumsy things. She sends one hand in a foray out of the pillow fort to pick up a pencil from the table and experimentally pokes the sharp point at her fingertip.

Both men look freaked. Nathan's resistance sort of collapses and he says quickly, "Okay, what do I do?"

"Just... try to clear your mind. Sit down, sit quiet, and tune out whatever goes on inside that skull of yours. You saw that." Duke jabs at the highlights of what he's saying on his blackboard, emphasizing the point to match his uselessly raised voice. "Your brain is attacking her. You have to get control over it and stop."

That's not really fair to Nathan, Jen thinks, especially when, really, is it so very different to her own tendency to babble out loud? It's not Nathan's fault he's so loud behind his silences, though it is ironic.

Duke is thinking, This has never worked before and it'll be a miracle if it works now, which is not terribly helpful.

But Duke knows how to get the reactions from Nathan that Nathan needs to have. Jen can feel his resolve settle in. She feels Audrey's hand slip into hers as she watches the two men, and wonders about the mechanics of her being able to feel Audrey, and whether it's a physical effect or simply because Nathan's brain knows he can feel Audrey and thus, right now, so can she.

It's weird to so intimately witness how Duke unpicks Nathan's knots. Not having sound is not an ideal way to do this, but Nathan is more invested than Jen has ever seen him in almost anything, and Duke produces mandalas and candles and writes out his game plan at length on sheets of paper, using the blackboard for occasional interjections. Occasionally, as Nathan goes further under, eyes drifting shut -- though he's kind of resisting against that, because right now it means reducing his input to almost nothing -- Duke gets Audrey to repeat something in a soothing voice.

Jen gets a different idea from Audrey. Audrey's cushion fort is a much more regimented version of her own messy hidey-hole. She starts to pile the cushions up in her mind, then scraps that, because cushions aren't really any adequate protection. First she turns it into a wall of bricks. But on second thought, she makes them those pretty, colourful glass bricks that you can get for bathrooms, because she doesn't want to be locked in without any signals at all, like Nathan is. Plus, if she's going to build a wall, it might as well be a nice one. If she focuses on one of the glass bricks, in just the right area, she thinks, she should be able to peep through and still see.

She didn't want the whole world to land inside her head, but now it has, maybe some of the perceptions she's experienced in the last few days aren't so bad. Maybe they're interesting. Maybe they could be useful. Besides, Nathan has to go blind one part in four, and it seems like it would be wrong to make herself wilfully blind, when Nathan has to lose his senses and she, after all, has gained one.

By the time she's built the wall high with glittering bricks, Nathan has subsided to a less knotty, more low-key buzz of frustrations. Jen pushes her face up to a brick to see him more closely. He'll never be good at this, she thinks, though it might be good for him to keep trying, because those knots are -- well, they're not what anyone would want their thought processes to look like.

"Jen?" Audrey touches her hand again. The touch and her voice have something hesitant about them as though it's not the first time.

"I did it," Jen bursts out breathlessly, snapping back into her body with all the walls dropping neatly in place. "Duke!"

Duke looks up as if to shush her, then eyes Nathan, and they can both allow that shouting isn't going to disturb him.

"I'm sorry," she says, sliding off the couch and tumbling across the rug into his arms. He looks stunned as she falls on him and kisses him. Her legs naturally fall either side of his kneeling ones. She has barely been physically intimate with him while her mind was all over the place and her head was already more full of him than she ever needed. "Duke, I built a wall. I can keep it out. While you were fixing Nathan, I fixed me." She looks over to Nathan, so close to them but so completely blocked off, oblivious behind his closed eyelids. "Let him be, though," she adds.

Duke looks astounded. Jen feels bad, but she focuses on him through a brick anyway and understands, then, that he was fighting an uphill battle, not knowing if they'd be able to salvage her sanity, fear of that underlying his every thought. She did not notice it in him when her thoughts were saturated with the same fear. She pulls back enough to kiss him fiercely. "I'm okay, Duke. I'm okay."

"You're okay..." He runs his hands through her hair, dazedly. "How did you do it?"

"Bathroom bricks! Oh, I want some!" The bathroom facilities on the Cape Rouge are ugly and functional. Then again, maybe that would just make things confusing. So maybe not.

He's blinking rapidly at her. He shakes his head. "Okay, you're gonna have to explain that to me sometime. Is this...?" He splays a hand, palm up. "Is this permanent? Are you gonna be able to walk down the street? Or is this just for us?"

"I..." She deflates slightly. She can't guess how the wall will hold up. "I don't know. But maybe we can try."

"It's amazing." Duke tells her quickly, rubbing her hands in reinforcement. So warm, so comforting. She feels sorrier for Nathan's blank now she understands it better. "You're amazing."

She's not amazing. She spent the last two days in pieces. None of them would have fallen apart under the same deluge, she's sure.

"We can try Vince and Dave," says Audrey, coming over and rubbing at Jen's back. She curls her hands over both their shoulders and looks thoughtfully at Nathan, still and calm and... yeah, that is really weird. "Tomorrow."

"Yes," Jen says excitably. She wants to see them. Will it mean the car again, and travelling through the maelstrom of town? Or will they bring them here? Here, she decides with a shudder. She does very much want to see Vince and Dave properly again. Maybe she can poke some secrets out of them. It's evil of her to think it, but... yes.

Nathan's eyes pop open. The whole of his face lifts in delight. "I did it?"

Duke rolls his eyes. "No, you doofus. She did it." He doesn't chalkboard it and Audrey has to repeat it, going to slip her arm around Nathan as he uncurls stiffly from his cross-legged pose, limbs proving uncooperative after the prolonged sitting.

"He kind of did it, too," Jen allows. "In fact, everyone did it. I couldn't have made it without each one of you." Not without Duke's instructions, or Nathan's dogged example to repeatedly try and try to follow them, or Audrey's genesis of the idea. Jen waggles her head insistently until Audrey and Nathan come to join them and she can include them all in one hug.

***

Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow they can relax.

Then Nathan goes blind again.

It takes him between one step and the next, as he's carrying plates back into the kitchen from Duke's quickly thrown-together meal. He tries to save the plates as he goes down. The result is a mess.

Duke turns with the rest of them at the thump of Nathan's knee hitting the boards, and swears. The plates aren't broken but the remains of their dinner are all over the front of Nathan's shirt. He leans forward and uncurls his arms, the movements tight and stilted. The plates slide slowly to the floor unharmed.

"Did I... break anything?" he asks, voice tight and blank though he can't know his face is blushing furiously red. "Didn't hear anything break. But... that was weird. Going from sight to sound in an instant."

"You didn't break anything, Nate." Duke catches his shoulder and... lets it go, a curse on his face that he manages not to voice. Nathan has no way to process the gesture. Duke picks up the plates instead. "Don't move. I'm gonna get this all out of your way."

He leaves Nathan to Audrey. She catches his face and slides a hand underneath his shirt, where he'll feel her supporting hold. He twitches at the touch. "Let me look at you," she says, and runs her hands over his body slowly, in a thorough check. "Think you're okay... Skinned knees at worst." She takes a moment to pull his trouser legs carefully up. Jennifer can hear the effort she puts in to inject a grin into her voice. "It's nothing. All you really need is a change of shirt, so far as I can see."

"Ow." He actually flinches as she touches the small wound on his knee directly. His mouth twists and his head bows. He can't know what's on his face but he's hiding it anyway. "Sorry." His groping hands find her hands.

"Don't apologise." There's a faint hiss in Audrey's voice as she hauls on him. "Just get up."

Jen feels uncomfortable as she sits on the sofa, legs drawn up, happy and fed and no longer under siege from what William did. How is Nathan going to achieve the same? She feels bad for having a way out, though she can't un-wish it.

"We had fun with this last time, in the end," Audrey says. She's holding him up from the front, and he starts as her hair brushes over his face. It's unclear if his soft snort is in response to that or her words. Trembling slightly, his hands lift to her hair, visibly resisting the urge to clutch. "Hold onto me," she encourages, and he guides his hands lower, to her shoulders.

"Okay?" he asks.

"All right. Come on. I'm gonna take you straight to bed. Easier to deal with everything from there, huh? And then you're right where I want you." Somehow, Audrey manages to inject a grin into her voice.

Jen looks at Duke uncertainly as Audrey walks Nathan away. He says, "We'll give it fifteen minutes, then join them."

"I feel bad," Jen whispers, crawling into his arms as he sits back, and hugging him hard. He looks... numb is a tricky word. William is not going to do anything to Duke as bad as what he's done to Nathan.

"Nathan's problems are manageable. We know that. We know what the worst is like." Duke burrows into her like he's seeking solace, kissing her throat. "I'm just glad you're okay."

She rocks onto him from his lap, feeling him become hot and jutting through his pants. "I am. I am okay." It will be more than fifteen minutes, she thinks.

She hasn't been in a good place to make love to Duke for a few days. That it happens now isn't particularly planned. It's very soon after getting her own head back under her command. But she pulls at his belt, at his zipper. Wants him in her, not just buzzing in her head. He groans as she finally achieves her goal and slides onto him, tries to find leverage on the sinking, uneven couch to ride him like that, trying at the same time to stroke his hair and kiss his face. William won't get this, she thinks, he won't be able to ruin this.

Duke's very well behaved until the last, when he picks her up and turns them over, and buries as deep in her as he can while he comes. "So beautiful. So brave," he grunts into her hair, and she snorts again, and will never not snort when he says things like that.

They tiptoe in to join Nathan and Audrey a little while later. Nathan is lying quietly on his back with his eyes shut, uncovered by the bedding, which is bundled at the end of the bed. Audrey trails a hand over his naked body slowly, each part in turn.

Duke gives a morose sort of sigh under his breath, that Jennifer hears, and in his current sensory deprivation she imagines Nathan catches too. Duke walks over and puts one hand on Audrey's shoulder and the other on Nathan's thigh, gently, as he says, "Hey, bud."

Nathan jolts and says, "Duke, don't," very tightly.

Duke stops and looks a bit lost. He takes his hand from Audrey as she, too, pulls back, and hovers his hand again over Nathan's thigh, but in the end, resists the urge to plant the touch Nathan won't know about, sighing again and turning away.

"Nathan," Audrey says, with a note of rebuke.

"Just not now," Nathan all but begs. "I can't. It's -- Not while I'm like this." He doesn't move but his stretched out form sort of huddles further into the bed somehow, like he's shrinking. Diminished.

Duke's eyes narrow as he double-takes, then turns fully back around, not done. "I love you," he says, making Nathan jump again. "I want to hold you. Can I hold you, Nathan?"

Nathan sighs. Jennifer watches the rise and fall of his torso with each strained breath drawn into it. She can't decide if Duke's request and his instinct to push is cruel or astute.

Nathan will never willingly show fear in front of Duke. "All right," he says, irritably. "Just... grab hold and keep hold, and tell me when you do it. Don't let it come out of nowhere."

Jen can't help but wonder why it's all right when Audrey does it. Then again, she thinks back to when they came in, and she could hear Audrey mumbling softly, so maybe Audrey was giving a running commentary on where her hands would be coming from out of the dark. She's tight-lipped now, not giving away the secret.

Nathan is so self-contained. It must be hell for him to be like this, utterly reliant.

"Okay," says Duke. Audrey touches both men on the shoulder as Duke moves to gather Nathan up in his arms, and Nathan scrambles to comply, following sensation that's become alien to him but now acts as his only guide, fumbling and clutching at Duke's ribs, shoulders, back. After a moment, Nathan relaxes enough to say, "Thought you said something weird a minute ago, that wasn't very like you at all."

"Asshole," Duke says. "For that, I'm going to kiss you."

Nathan tenses up again, but moves into him greedily as their lips meet. Audrey's touch still facilitates for them as they grind into one another, Nathan straddling Duke's lap. They are both all planes of muscle and strong lines. Watching them together excited Jen from the first. She tucks herself in on the other side of Audrey, sliding a hand over Audrey's hip and daring to tease a little further down, tentatively. Audrey parts her legs and shifts her hips, welcoming the touch. Jen dips her fingers into Audrey's sex and cuddles against her back, feeling the satisfying weight of Audrey's tailbone against her own mound. Audrey has to keep her hands on Duke and Nathan to allow them to be together.

Duke kisses Nathan's closed eyelids, then slides his tongue over the eyelids, slowly. Nathan groans. "What even is that? You can't kiss them better."

"Spoilsport," Duke says. He drags Nathan over so they're lying side-by-side and slings a leg over him. "Oops," he says, as they lose Audrey's touch and Nathan makes a noise. But Nathan moves away from Audrey's hand when she seeks his skin again.

"Don't. It's okay. I know where I am. It's been... enough sensation for one night." Nathan's hands seek out the planes of Duke's shoulders again.

Duke rolls closer into him and says, "Right here."

I know where I am, Jen reviews, and sighs a little. Audrey rocks back and fucks herself on her fingers, and they adjust position by degrees as Jen works, until Audrey's in Jen's arms and her lips can trace her throat and breasts. The exchange isn't usual, but maybe Audrey needs a break from Nathan -- or vice versa. Maybe Audrey needs a break from being in control. They can't help but be hypersensitive of his dangerous dependency upon her while blind.

They spend some time distracted. Audrey flutters around Jen's fingers, then moans and sags in floppy relaxation, exhausted, thighs still squeezing on Jen's hand like it's a comfort thing and she wants to keep it. Slowly, eventually, Jen retrieves it. Audrey sniffs and snuffles, but is basically asleep.

"I'll get it," Jen hears Nathan murmur. She watches him slowly roll up and reach out blind for the comforter that got shoved down to the foot of the bed.

"No... No," Duke says, slowly. "Left. Down an inch more. Yes."

Nathan closes his hand and drags the comforter up to cover them all. Jen pulls it over herself and Audrey, grateful not to have to move.

She can still hear Duke and Nathan's soft voices as she drifts off.

***

They wake with what seems like everyone's phone ringing at once, but it's just Audrey's with Nathan's somewhere across the room. Nathan flails and falls out of bed, somehow managing to get to the edge of the mattress even though Duke was in between. Jen doesn't quite see it because she's blinking blearily and Audrey is leaning across her to grab her own phone from the nightstand at the time.

"'Lo," Audrey says blearily. "No, I-- of course I can come in. Uh," she grunts, guiltily. "Nathan can't. I'll bring Duke."

Duke vaults over Nathan on the floor to try get to Nathan's phone, wherever it's been left, before it rings off. Nathan swears and clatters as he keeps trying to make his way to it, too. Jen feels rather useless, but Nathan's lunging around a bit too much for her to dare move in to help him.

The outcome, anyway, is that Audrey ends up shooting out of there with Duke before 7am in the morning. There's a small amount of discussion as to whether it's okay to leave Nathan with Jen in his current state, small because Nathan has ears now and says "I'm fine" with a steadily more dangerous edge until discussion stops.

So they go, leaving Jen with Nathan.

"Do you want to try to go back to sleep?" she asks, as they finish listening to doors slam and engines roar to life and then disappear into the distance. "Or do you want to have coffee and try to wake up properly?"

Even through the wall, she hears him think that it would be easier just to sleep the time away until he's of some use. Partly because he thought that, his next thought stubbornly settles on, "Coffee. Please, Jennifer."

Audrey helped him back into the bed before she left and that's where he sits now, all his muscles tense like his environment is innately hostile to him. Jen says, "I'll bring it back here for you."

"Cane," he requests stiffly, and when she puts it in his hand and tells him she's put it in his hand, he thanks her profusely as if to make up for asking so abruptly. She can still feel snatches of him, and it's very clear, now that she's with only one person. She didn't really realise at the time how they all jumbled over each other, because it was still much quieter than before. She senses from him that it's easier to make the request for the cane and the coffee of her than the other two, or when they're around to see.

He wants to appear strong for Duke and Audrey. Worthy.

For Jen, he still hasn't known her long enough. It's more neutral. And, she gathers with a wince, she's so much less a warrior-type anyway, there's less need for him to protect his pride.

They're his thoughts and he can't help them. She's the interloper. She tries not to let herself fuss about it as she makes the coffee. When she comes back, he seems like he hasn't moved at all, but she doesn't entirely trust that. For one thing, his phone is in his hand and she knows Duke didn't leave it by the bed. His thumb drifts over the keys and they beep softly when he applies pressure.

"H-how are you doing that?" Jennifer asks, startled. It seems like he's using the phone, but if he can't see it and he can't feel it--

He ignores her for a few more careful beeps. "Muscle memory and sound. I don't know if it'll work. But I was practicing while I had no sense of taste. Trying to fix things in mind. Audrey's almost top of the contacts list. Press A once to be sure." He very cautiously angles the phone toward her. He's got the to field of the message on the screen right. The rest says, "EXPRMENTINH. LOUF YOU."

"It's okay," Jen says. "She'll understand that."

He goes to press 'send' and fluffs it, nearly cancelling the message as Jen squeaks and corrects him, and then, message sent but no longer a victory, he clunks the phone down on the nightstand and sags back.

"It's no good. I'm never going to be anything but useless like this." He snorts. "William knew what he was doing. I suppose I'm just lucky he didn't go straight for sight and skip the shifting surprise parade."

Jen shudders, but objects, "That's not true. You're doing really well. I don't know how I'd--" It's irrelevant, because even if she lost her sight, she'd be able to feel her way. Or feel her way, now. "Do you want your coffee in your hands or do you just want to sip it? It's still quite hot," she deflects.

"Hand."

She wraps his fingers around the handle. He has very steady hands, very precise movements. Over the last few days -- except when he's angry to the point of shaking or flailing ridiculously -- she has seen him pull back and back, tighter into himself. He was always a little tight. Now he's wound in like a spring. She watches him sip from the cup, watches how his lips press in against the rim, how he tips mechanically and levels it, then carefully disengages and rolls the liquid around his mouth before he swallows. Duke says Nathan is the king of compensation. Duke's right. Anyone else would be covered in coffee.

That doesn't make it okay.

"N-Nathan..." Jen says slowly. "Can we... try something?"

He stares, not exactly at her, but he pinpoints her eyes disturbingly well from the sound of her voice. "Sexual?" he asks, a bit surprised. Because Duke and Audrey, and Nathan and Duke, and Audrey and Nathan, and Jennifer and Duke, and even Audrey and Jennifer, they'll all do things when the others aren't around, but Jennifer and Nathan never have.

"No," she splutters, then rethinks. "Uh, maybe? I don't know what will happen. I want to try something with my, um, mind-thing."

Nathan doesn't like having his thoughts read. She gets that loud and clear.

"Well, I can't help it," she half snaps back, even though he said nothing, kind of proving both their points in the process. "I'm getting a little bit all the time, even though I stopped the deluge. But I, um, wanted to--"

"Okay," Nathan rasps. It puzzles her a bit that the permission is so contrary to what he's thinking, but she's discovering that Nathan's like that. He'll not want to do something and not-want and not-- and then he'll do it because he didn't want to. There's something in him that's been harmed before and always expects to be harmed again by people, or at least people-not-Audrey. He seems locked-down and unapproachable, but he's only as approachable as he is because he's always overriding with his intellect.

Nathan puts the cup down. Jen helps push it onto the nightstand a little bit further, abandoning hers next to it.

"Where are you?" Nathan reaches out with both hands, and they make contact at her waist and shoulder. She wasn't intending to climb into his lap, she was just reaching over. But it's as easy as anything to say, "right here, in your lap," and climb into his lap. He blinks at her through vacant eyes. She reaches out and strokes his face. He hears the rasp of her fingers against his stubble and leans into the touch.

"When you were first here and I was -- all squirrelly," she admits. "I couldn't feel anything. It's like what you experienced started to override my senses. So I wondered, I wonder -- what if I can make it happen the other way around?"

Nathan's breath catches sharply. "Yes," he says, like he's the mind-reader, when she's poised to ask for permission to try. "That would be a fitting irony."

The way he thinks, Stick that, William, is so uniquely forceful it makes her giggle. No-one does profanity and belligerence quite the way Nathan does, once he gets going. He's so proper the rest of the time.

"Okay, okay, so I am gonna try..." Jen shifts and fidgets in his hold, suddenly nervous, suddenly thinking, what if she can't? What if now that she's got his hopes up, it doesn't work? She reaches up both hands and runs them through his hair, holds his head. She doesn't think she needs to touch, but it seems to be an aid to focus. She can sense him register her touching his hair through sound alone.

She finds the right brick in the wall to peer through, and wiping the smog clear that's on it, eases in to Nathan's thoughts. He's all wonder and hope and fear, and she can sense reserves in there that just go down and down. He's so stubborn, when it comes down to it. Duke has inner calm layered over old turmoil. Nathan is just a, a block, so unyielding.

She sort of picks him up and pulls him back with her, inside the wall. He seems to flutter and struggle under her grip, panicking, but she has tools he doesn't in this arena, and he can't really fight. His body struggles against her, and she wraps her arms around him, feels the pounding heart in his chest where it presses to her breast and croons nonsense sounds of comfort. It's possible that she should stop, but she's not hurting him, it's just fear, and Nathan wouldn't give in to that, and she's too caught up in the idea of doing this, the idea that she can.

He stills quite abruptly, his sharp, fast breathing levelling out. Jen feels him inside her head, sort of held there, stretched through the glass. She doesn't think he'll be able to get back unless she puts him back herself. His panic is starting to turn into a flood of relief and amazement as he looks out through her eyes. "This is-- this is strange," his voice whispers.

It's very, very, very strange. Jen sort of babbles her agreement and afterwards can't remember the words she said. Maybe she didn't say them. Right now, neither of them need to talk aloud.

But Nathan's lips did voice those words, and as she watches, he moves his body, unwrapping one hand from her. His face doesn't move because he's looking out of her eyes, but it seems he can't move Jen's body; he's still tied to his own.

He sits up straighter and disentangles. They kind of watch each other, but he can't see Jen except from the inside. He can see himself, and that's weirding him out. He can feel her, the softness of the blankets under her fingers, the heaviness of gravity holding her to the bed. He moves his body like a puppet, his eyes upon it. Experimentally, he picks up his coffee and sips at it. Jen tastes it without feeling the heat of the liquid or the hard porcelain of the cup. He fumbles putting in down, struggling with the conflicting signals, but only a little spills.

Jen climbs back into his lap. "We should," she says on impulse. "It'll be -- well, it'll be interesting, at least." Maybe he doesn't want to know what sex is like for a woman, she thinks, belatedly. But he goes with it as she tangles her fingers with his and guides his down to her sex. He trails them softly over her mound and moans as she does.

Sharing her brain is apparently erotic enough that she's already a little moist. This would be a different kind of experience with Audrey or Duke, and they both know that, but maybe it's better that it's the two of them, where the passion is sort of dry, where it's less likely to be too much. Nathan slides a finger into her and makes a noise of surprise. Sinks it past the second knuckle and gasps. The nerves are different from anal penetration, which he's felt with Duke, while Audrey was touching them both. He searches gently inside her, seeking out the more sensitive spots, rubbing with his fingertips until they're both sweating and groaning.

"Fuck, Nathan," she hisses. "Now." There's only so much experimentation reasonable before you have to do, her brain prods at him. She parts her legs wider and yearns against him, wanting his cock and the thrust of his hips. He stubbornly tries another finger first, nervous of the larger penetration here, even though it's her body, damn it. Another finger is... enough. Jen grinds into his palm, appreciating the angle of his thumb. He changes it, sliding the pad of his thumb down, making it better still. "Nathan," Jen grunts, starting to feel vindictive. "Nathan, stop screwing around. You're torturing us."

He gives a little huff of laughter. And okay, she does appreciate, as his body lays the both of them back, and he draws her hips to him, that it's going to be a weird proposition to be effectively fucking yourself... because that's what he's going to feel here. He slides into her and the nature of the fullness is different and new, seen through the filter of his perspective. His body is sweating and shaky. He thrusts, striking the sensation deeper. Jen digs her fists into the bedding. "Move. Go, go, go, go, go," she orders.

He's adjusting to all the new things and too slow, and she kicks at him with the backs of her calves and her heels, which is useless. He can't feel his own body. Neither of them are feeling the masculine side of the act. But he gets it, as he finally starts moving with a will, in strokes that lift the sensation. He makes incoherent noises while Jen pushes him toward what will work best for them both.

It's probably the strangest sex she's ever had, and that includes some of Duke's weird yoga positions and tantra stuff. The orgasm swells inside her, amped up by the feedback of Nathan's experience of it, alien and intense. As her body clenches and flutters, that's utterly foreign to him, and he comes hard, yelling hoarsely.

She's pretty loud, too. She hopes it's still too early for too many people to be around, but there are usually people around early on the marina, so...

They sort of collapse, and fall out of each other, dually. Her head rings with the sudden emptiness, though she is still getting vague impressions from where Nathan sprawls on his back, sated, breathing in the scent of their sex and listening to her little panting breaths, and in that moment, those are all the senses he needs. Jen gives it a few minutes before she asks, "Back?"

"No." Too much, says his brain. He's used to little. Even less, these last few days. He's prone to being overloaded. "Yes," he amends. "We need to clean up and have breakfast. Maybe -- maybe there's something we can do to help Duke and Audrey."

She stiffens with the fear of going out. He hears it.

"I can't do it without you," he says, and that bolsters her strength.

"Okay," she mumbles, hugging into the blankets. "Okay." But he doesn't push the point and she gives them both a few more minutes to recover before carefully, carefully, she pulls him back into her head once again. It's easier the second time around. On both of them.

They shower together, practical about getting clean. He finds a habit of freezing in position whenever she forgets herself and looks away from him while he's in the middle of something.

Nathan calls the station and they snatch a quick breakfast while waiting for a patrol car to come pick them up. Duke and Audrey aren't at the station, but Dwight promises a debrief when they get there.

Jen wants to turn back when the gathering voices surround them as the car takes them into town. She wants to hide when they walk into the station and there are so many voices pushing against the wall. Nathan takes her hand. The cane is in his other, but it's folded and just a fallback aid. She's reminded that he came in completely blind, the other day.

Dwight waves them into his office. He gives Jen a once-over that finds her jumpy, but passable, then squints at Nathan, registering that his eyes aren't focused. "You're still blind."

"I'm using Jen's eyes." Nathan's smile is like a tick and his body sort of jogs with an excitable, nervous movement. "Duke and Audrey?"

Dwight frowns but nods. "A William problem. He wanted Audrey to come to him. More threats, more bullshit. Had a kid hostage, said he'd Trouble her. Turned out he'd already Troubled her father. Bubble of darkness that eats people. Body count so far is two. Now we've got a kid that no-one dare go near -- we don't know if this can be triggered in her. Gloria's trying to comfort her over the phone. The guy is still a ticking time bomb but Audrey sent everyone except Duke away. I've got officers on standby in a wide perimeter around the house. And William's still up there. This isn't my preferred morning routine."

"Can we go up?" Nathan asks. His fingers twitch like they're itching, though it's a physical impossibility.

"If you're sure." Dwight pulls a face and turns to open a locker behind him. He takes out Nathan's gun and places it cautiously on the desk in front of him. "Not that I'm convinced this is a good idea, but..." He jerks an open palm in a helpless gesture, which Jennifer supposes their bizarre arrangement merits. "I'd rather send you in there with it than without."

Nathan silently urges Jen to keep her eyes on his hands, then takes the gun out from its holster and checks then replaces it competently, fingers confident, and Dwight seems happier. "Thanks."

Officer Rafferty drives them to the house. It's fairly isolated but has one near neighbour bordering onto the back of it. Jennifer hears Nathan clinically wonder if that's the source of their casualties. She can do without thoughts like that. They pass silent apologies around their shared headspace. He can't not be a cop.

When they get there, the kid's whimpering on the steps with her hands over her ears and they can hear a male voice inside the house yelling for someone to kill him.

Jen realises he can only be yelling at Duke. She gives a shocked sob, burying the noise in her hand.

They hear William's voice join in, yelling and jeering at Duke to kill him. "End it and save his daughter. Save the cops outside. The bubble will only get bigger."

"The cops outside are fine right now," Audrey's voice is calmer, more controlled, but for her it's still entirely too filled with tension. "And we don't know if this Trouble is hereditary, since it was given to the father after she'd been born."

Nathan looks uncertain about the prospect of going in past the girl on the porch steps. She shouldn't be Troubled, but these things never make sense in the normal ways. Nathan makes a call: "If she was going to be triggered, it would have happened by now." He doesn't know that, he can't know that, but he's up running toward the house anyway, as Rafferty protests, and Jen has to go with him. He stops at the kid. "You're being very brave," he tells her, dropping to one knee and trying to pin her convincingly with his unseeing eyes. "Can you tell me where those people and your daddy are?"

Back of the house, it turns out that the doors on to the patio are open, which is why they can hear the voices so well, but there's no entrance to the yard except through the house. Nathan puts his hand on the little girl's shoulder. "You keep being brave, okay? We'll try to get everyone out of there."

"Oh, honey," Jen can only say, pointlessly, as they pass. "Should we really do this?" she anxiously prods Nathan. They're barely a whole functional person between them, and plenty of whole policemen stayed outside.

"We're all stronger together," Nathan says.

On the other side of the house, Duke is yelling at the guy not to kill himself. Jen wonders if she can shut off the little girl's ears. If that would be better than leaving her to hear-- But it's impossible to balance the child's mind and Nathan's in her head together, when the girl is a stranger and she's trying to move at the same time. Nathan reels and slams into a wall, and freezes waiting for her to recover him. Maybe soon Jen will be able to do things like that. Not right now, when this discovery is so new.

"Sorry," she gulps, and focuses on Nathan, and on angling herself so that Nathan can see. He takes her hand in his hand, the one that isn't holding the gun. The folded cane is sticking out of the back of his jeans. Duke protects her, but Nathan has never hesitated to pull her alongside him into danger. Then again, his pre-set pattern for that relationship dynamic is Audrey.

They get there a second too late. Maybe it wouldn't have been too late if Jennifer hadn't tried to spare the kid from hearing exactly what happens next, as the guy in the bubble coated in blood charges Duke. At the last minute, as he runs out of space to manoeuvre or take any other action but die, Duke pulls the trigger of the gun he's holding. The glassy, transparent sheen that surrounds the girl's father pops and disappears the instant before it can touch his flesh.

William applauds as the guy falls, the bubble around him disappearing. "That's it, Duke! You always save the important person, after all -- number one. I knew you could do it. Oh! And here's Nathan and Jennifer! Look at that, the whole gang's here, and I'm feeling all nostalgic..." He mimes wiping a tear from his eye. "How's it going, kids?"

They can hear the shrieking of the little girl who just heard the gunshot. Duke stands with his mouth open and his face painted with horror. Blood splatter on his face sinks in and turn his eyes silver. Audrey is standing with William on the patio, almost inside the doors, a box in her outstretched hand and her face paler than Jen has ever seen it.

William is grinning.

Nathan shoots him in the leg, and both William and Audrey drop, William with a cry. Nathan runs to cuff William, his attention straying to Audrey in horror at what he's done, but he needs to focus on William to apply the handcuffs. Jen, who can't wait any longer, runs to Duke. She loses Nathan from her head, but he's cuffed William, and the fragmenting of their focus doesn't matter so much. Nathan can feel Audrey's touch as she scrambles painfully across the grass to reach out and hold him.

Cops pour through the back of the house, too late now. Rafferty is holding the sobbing little girl, pressing her face into her shoulder. Jen sees that and sees Duke see it and thinks, William needs to die.

It's not the sort of thought Jennifer is used to having. She clings to Duke, tells him it wasn't him, wasn't his fault, he wasn't given a choice, and she curses William and thinks that maybe, maybe, she has the grain of another idea.

***

William is in a cell, for however long that will last this time around. Audrey has a bandage on her leg and the wound hasn't had chance to heal yet, whatever it is that William does to make that happen.

Audrey has a box containing five of William's black blobs, and a creepy promise from him that she can fix each one of them herself if she tries.

She sits on her couch above the Gull and rocks slowly, clutching the box in her hands.

"You can't do it," Duke says. "He wants you to turn back into his evil consort. He thinks that this will do it. That's why he taunted you, it's why he fucked with them, it's why he gave you the damn blobs. This is his endgame."

Duke is wild-eyed and not very sober. He hasn't told them, but Jen keeps hearing it because it's so much on his mind now, how William taunted him. For him, the promise that William will just create more and more new Troubles Duke will be forced to put down by killing someone, until the day comes when he turns over in bed and Jennifer and Nathan smell like nothing more than a tasty hit. Duke went for a bottle of bourbon from the Gull's stores as soon as they got back, and it's already gone down by a quarter. It's not even lunchtime.

Jen is going to stop William. Somehow. She's the least of them, so she doesn't know how, but she has a -- a spark of thought, and she is going to do it.

"I don't want to be fixed," Jen says, hushed, her voice a squeak. "I -- it's scary, and I don't know what to do with it all yet, but I -- I -- this isn't broken, this is something new, and -- and -- and I want to explore it."

Duke turns his attention on her and stares for a long moment, his face strange, his fears shifting.

Jennifer adds, "And if we deal with William, then Duke will be okay."

Audrey rolls a goo-ball between her fingers. It leaves trails like soot, but they aren't soot. They're darker than that, and there's a kind of sense that if you really looked at that darkness, stared too deep, you'd see things roiling in it. Audrey says, "Nathan."

And that's the rub, because it's not as if they didn't know -- Jen knew, couldn't help but, and knew everyone else knew -- that Audrey was going to try to fix Nathan. William knows it, too.

"You don't have to. I can cope with this," Nathan says, dully, wanting to be fixed. He won't say it, and he averts his face so Audrey can't see it. But to Jen, his faith in Audrey shines out. He doesn't believe Audrey will change. She's strong enough, and she could fix him, but he's not going to be the one to ask her to take the risk.

"Nathan," Audrey says fiercely. "Come and sit down here next to me. I'm going to try and fix one of your Troubles. William says I can't... can't take them away, but I can change them. I can make things better than this. Maybe... maybe I can drop the blindness out of the cycle, or regulate the cycle so you're blind while you're asleep."

Nathan sighs and taps toward the couch, cane out. He can't hide his hope, just as it was blatantly obvious to all of them from the moment William handed her one of the black blobs that Audrey was going to try to fix Nathan.

Trap, thinks Jen. It's a trap and they're diving into it. But she wants Nathan fixed, too, and so does Duke, and Nathan certainly isn't going to stop her. "You've got to be strong," Jen gibbers, sensing something. "Really strong. Whatever he hopes doing this will call to in you, you, you need to control it."

"I know," Audrey says levelly.

"One try." Nathan finds one ultimatum to hold by and means it. "If it doesn't work, then -- we just give these things to Gloria to play with in the lab."

"All right." Audrey breathes in and pushes a long breath out, eyes shut and lips a round 'o'. "Open your shirt."

Nathan fumbles at fabric and buttons he can't sense and Duke moves in to help him, exposing Nathan's chest. He squeezes Nathan's hand a moment, then lets go, uneasily retreating from him as Audrey crushes the black sphere between her fingers and rolls the resulting mess around her palm. "Nathan," she says, "I'm doing this now."

She sets her palm to his chest.

Jennifer feels it, sort of. In a weird way she feels it through Audrey; and then she feels something shift in Audrey, something terrible and primal, a consciousness that -- it's not fully awake. But if it wakes, it will be malevolent and razor-sharp and utterly different from Audrey. Jen gasps, clutches her hands over her mouth and holds her breath, but although it stirs, it doesn't wake, shifting and settling back down beneath the surface of Audrey again.

Duke's eyes reflect the awareness and horror Jen feels. He didn't see it like she did, but he saw something, too.

Jen looks to Nathan, but Nathan hasn't seen anything -- his eyes are still unfocused, and Audrey is moving her hand away.

It didn't work. Jen feels her stomach turn over at what they just risked for nothing.

"Nathan?" Audrey asks, tentatively, reaching for him.

Nathan sways, tipping sideways on the couch and catching himself. It's obvious that he still can't see, but -- as Nathan's hands crawl over the couch and then over Audrey as she gets hold of him, touching cloth and patting their way over it, using it as a guide to follow upward to the skin of Audrey's face... Something is different.

"I can feel," he says, finding Audrey's mouth and kissing her, a quick, eagerly seized kiss, pulling back to add, "I still can't see, but I can feel."

Jen sees Duke deflate and gets up to hurl herself at him, clutching him around the waist tightly. It worked, it worked. She could... maybe she could...

But no. She knows what they just risked for Nathan. She thinks everyone but Nathan knows. She can cope with hearing minds. She already decided that. If they do this enough times, they will lose Audrey. Jen won't trade her new weird ability for the being she sensed sleeping beneath Audrey's surface.

"I think--" Audrey gasps between kisses, sparkle of tears in her eyes. "I think I... merged the two Troubles. What I wanted, I could sense it wasn't working. But I could pull the two together, so... so I think that feeling will drop into the cycle now, with the rest. I tried to regulate the cycle, make it something we could predict and plan for, at least. But I don't know if that worked." She sounds apologetic as she adds, "It might mean the blindness lasts a bit longer this time, because I was going for full days."

"We'll find out," Duke says, and pulls Jen in with him as he moves to join Audrey and Nathan in a four-way embrace.

Audrey shifts, holding Nathan in the loop of her arms. He seems to be speechless, face buried in her shoulder. Jen can feel the reverberation of shocked relief within him. He coped with it because he had to, but he'll never have to be that helpless again. Audrey raises her head. "I could try again. I could fix you--" Her eyes move to Jennifer, then Duke.

"No!" Duke barks roughly, at the same time Jennifer begs, "No," and babbles on to add, "You can't, Audrey, you can't. I felt it. I felt the person that William wants, and she--"

"You do not want to embrace what I saw in your face just now," Duke agrees, and Audrey's face flickers with something... a desire that they witness her push down. Jen feels it, too. It's undeniable that the truth of that other inside her calls to Audrey. Duke grimaces and sums up, "Okay. So we're not risking that." Then he stops, and stares at Jennifer. "Wait. You sensed Audrey?"

Jen nods.

"Troubles don't work on Audrey," Nathan says, still buried in the crook of Audrey's neck.

"You can't have," Duke agrees, nodding reasonably, forehead crinkled and perplexed.

"Well, this Trouble works on Audrey," Jen protests, annoyed that they'd question her. "On William, too, a bit." She felt him at the house, smug, smug and more smug, oily in her head, though she was more preoccupied with everything else. "It's not like the rest... impressions more than the full freaky internal monologue. Which is why Audrey was still so much easier to be around, at first."

"But your Trouble works on Audrey," Duke repeats. "This is huge, Jen. I don't know what it means, but..."

"Blood," Jen tells him. "William's. Mixed in with the black goo-stuff. He had a cut on his hand when he Troubled me. Maybe that's why..."

Duke's face twists and he sighs. "Why does it always come down to blood?"

"We'll be okay." Nathan's hand feels its way up Duke's shirt, rests over his heart. Jen senses him feeling the way warmth suffuses through the fabric, and the steady pulse of Duke's heartbeat. Duke puts his hand on top of Nathan's, rubbing gently, making a shiver travel down the other man's long frame.

"We will," Audrey says loudly, and maybe Jen can see a little, pale reflection of that other identity underneath her, and maybe she always has, but it's held back, controlled and focused toward better ends. "But first we need to deal with William."

***

Nathan roams around the apartment like he can't get enough of the freedom of moving and doing, unashamedly exploring by touch. Exploring the things he can't see, even though he can see most of the time. Stopping to focus on a texture, hands sliding over everything. He puts coffee on blind, although he has to get someone else to pour it. Not that he isn't game to try splashing milk or cold water in first, then curling a finger over the edge of the cup to gage the level, but no-one else is willing to let him risk it. There's a weird joy in his new capacity to do things without being reliant on sight, even though Jen thinks that being blind alone would be horrible enough for her. But Nathan seems more relaxed than she's ever seen him and even chatters, in a way she's never heard him do before.

Duke is more relaxed, too, like fixing Nathan has a direct impact on him. He's still slightly pickled for the hour, and he and Nathan keep touching each other. Through clothes, or hands sliding under clothes, or a "Come here, you" and an outright kiss. Duke's still worried about what William said, but with Nathan restored, in part, enough, it feels like they've won something back. Like there's a chance.

Audrey's gone quiet, thinking about the things she now knows about herself. The answers she once wanted, and now wishes she'd never got. William told her she made the Troubles along with him: now she knows that wasn't a lie. Jen sidles up to her and brushes her fingers comfortingly over her neck. "That's not you now. You chose who you wanted to be when you came back out of the Barn, right?"

"Right," Audrey whispers. "I don't want to be William's Mara."

She has a name. It makes Jen shudder, too.

"We'll stop him," Jen says.

Then she goes onto the deck outside and looks out to sea and thinks and thinks.

Thinking is more dangerous than it used to be... That's part of what she thinks. Her thoughts can do things now. She went into Nathan's head -- or brought him into hers: she's not sure where the distinctions lie -- and she made him see with her eyes, and because of that, they now have William in a cell.

She can get into William's and Audrey's heads, too.

She thinks about their connection and how it might work. Some kind of psychic mind bond. It has a physical component, but there has to be a chance that they're welded together in the same realm of thought where Jen has... power.

Power that William handed to her.

He thought it would drive her mad. He could not comprehend that she might choose to embrace it or do anything else with it.

She realises slowly that it's really cold, outside on the balcony, and she wraps her arms around her chest and hugs herself as she looks out to sea.

She can't do this. People were overpowering her by accident only yesterday. If she tries to get inside William's head, he might ravage her mind in retaliation. He made this Trouble, he has to know how it works. Maybe he wasn't blind to the idea she might use it to fight back, and it wasn't a mistake at all. That's assuming she could get enough sense of him to do anything, when he's so faint. As Audrey is.

What if she has help?

She's already shared headspace with Nathan. He'd said, "We're stronger together."

Nathan, she thinks, has a lot of will to mine. Duke has... Duke has control, which is just as essential. And Audrey... Audrey wants to rule herself and end William, and she's connected to William. If they could share the burden between them, all four of them, could it be that they have all the parts they'd need?

Jen rushes back inside and puts the coffee machine on again. She sniffs at Duke's cup, taking it from him as he yelps in protest. She takes the bottle and shoves it to the back of the cupboard, and tips the contents of the cup down the sink. "You are not drinking," she says, wielding a finger at him. "You need to be sober and focused, because we have work to do."

He gapes at her. "I wasn't-- What work?"

"It's ten past two," she snaps at him. "If we tell Dwight six o'clock, that's enough time for the alcohol to be out of your system and you can, like, meditate this afternoon or something. We need to do this before William finds a way to escape again, or just gets bored of his cell, because I'm not sure which way around that goes."

"My leg still hurts like fuck," Audrey calls over from the couch, "so I don't think he's held by choice right now. Thanks for that, Nathan, by the way."

"No problem," Nathan offers back, sounding a bit guilty despite her cheerful sarcasm. He stops playing with the bead curtain and takes a few careful steps toward the kitchen and Jen. "Jennifer, what is it?"

"William," Jen says impatiently. "We're going to separate Audrey from William. And then? Then, we can do whatever we want to that--" She stops, pouting. Even the worst words she can think of, and wouldn't say, don't do justice to how bad William is. That poor man today, and the crying little girl who listened to her father die, begging for death. The games he's played with all of them...

"Yeah," Duke says, with a noise like a cough, shaking his head. "He's all of that."

Jen gives a little jump and then damps her thoughts down as she realises she must have been broadcasting some of it.

"I've a plan," she says. "Nathan, you need to call Dwight, and tell him when we'll be coming over, and why, and that he needs to keep William extra-super-safe until them, because I need proximity to do this, so we are very much with the plan of William staying locked in his cell right now."

Nathan takes his phone out. He can't see it, but he's already memorised it, and he doesn't need to rely on a thing so hazy as muscle-memory to find the keys any more.

***

"We don't need to be looking at him," Jen says, in Nathan's office, as the five of them try to find somewhere to sit. Duke drags the old couch out from its corner, unburying it from depths of paperwork. "This is near enough." She can feel William's sea of smarm just fine right now. She doesn't much want to get closer. "It's probably better if he doesn't know we're doing something until we're, well, doing it."

Dwight nods at her seriously. "You really think this can work?" He's asking her, eyes pinning hers seriously, and it makes her self-conscious about everything. How much this is her plan, how much of it will rest on her, how small she is seen from his vantage, small and afraid. She can use the strength of the others, but it's still her that has to use it. None of them can do this for her. She blushes and nods and looks away. Dwight says, "If we can deal with William without hurting Audrey, putting a lid on things in this town becomes much easier." Just for a moment, she feels how weary he is. Dwight is very calm and deep and controlled, and in a way kind of a relief to be around. Some people carry calm around in them, she's discovering. Some people carry other things.

"We -- we can do this," she says, bouncing on her feet and shutting her eyes a moment, trying to bolster herself. Think positive, positive... "Okay, we need to be sitting down, because if we get really focused, people might fall over."

Dwight leans against the desk. "I'll stay and spot for you. That's... all right, isn't it?" He waits for her nod. It's probably a good idea. "How should I... should I even bring people out of this, if things seem to be going wrong?"

"Well," Jen says dubiously, "unless anyone seems like they're dying or, um, fitting, or turning evil, or spouting Troubles -- I don't think William can make that happen with just his brain but, you know -- then I kind of think you don't. I don't know what would happen. How were you planning to snap us out of it?"

Dwight holds up a taser and lifts his eyebrows a fraction.

"Um, I guess that you will use your discretion," Jen mumbles. "Probably better me than them, since I'm the source." Ouch! She's never been tased. How much does it hurt? At least it would be a learning experience, she supposes. Stop it, she tells herself. If it all works, she won't find out. "Okay, so we sit down," she says in a rush, turning her back on Dwight.

There's just enough space for them all on the couch, though she's pretty much on Duke's knee, and Nathan and Audrey are all but on top of one another, too. Jen's shoulder leans on Audrey's. She hasn't said, "Everyone touch everyone else," but Nathan's hand snakes around Audrey and Jen curls her fingers around his fingers. Duke and Nathan's feet are sprawled in a tangle. Duke leans in so that one of the arms he curls around Jen terminates in a hand on Audrey's knee.

"Are we doing this?" Duke asks, as Jen takes a break and does a lot of breathing and swallowing. His arm cuddles tighter around her for a second, encouraging.

"I'm--" She might as well jump right in. "I'm going to pull Nathan in first, because we've done that before."

She does and it's easy. Nathan sits up a bit straighter, body reflexively blinking. Jen's eyes blink, too. She can feel him looking out from behind them with her, wary and tense with hope. "Okay, okay, okay... Duke."

Duke gets a sort of look. The nervous competitiveness coiled behind it that says, If Nathan can do it, I can, makes her snort a bit. His thoughts are very precious to her and she feels much more afraid picking him up and pulling him in than she did with Nathan. If she hurts him... She blushes at her priorities, but it's nothing the two men don't already know. Then she can feel them nestled within her, greeting each other mind-to-mind, and they're far more into the act of experiencing each other on a level they never have before than worrying about her priorities.

"Hey," whispers Duke to Nathan inside her head, and Nathan doesn't reply, but she can feel them both sliding against each other, testing each other out. They're safe in her mind, secure. It's a small effort of will to hold them both, but she cradles them there. The hard part hasn't begun yet. It sort of begins with Audrey. She's not entirely sure how she's going to deal with Audrey, given that she can't completely sense Audrey. Not the way she can the others, not enough to embrace her mind and pull her in.

Help me, she asks Duke and Nathan without words. Audrey is sitting blinking and wary with Duke and Nathan not quite in their bodies on either side of her. Dwight is a very, very peripheral presence stationed watching over them all.

Nathan's reserves of stubbornness transfer to ferocious willpower. Duke's control tempers and shepherds it in the right direction. Jen pushes at Audrey again, and this time, with both mens' strengths behind her, more of the terrain of Audrey unfolds.

Suddenly she can see a bright thread -- no, it's a small part of something much bigger, a tangled, shimmering web stretching off from Audrey into the ether. To William, Jennifer thinks: there can't be any other answer. She doesn't need to convey to Duke and Nathan her decision they'll follow it to William's end and sever it there so as to best reduce any damage to Audrey. They're all close enough now that they don't even need to think in words. Nathan becomes distracted trying to reach out and touch Audrey's mind the way he's been touching Duke's, but Duke and Jennifer refocus him.

They deal with William now. There will be time to experiment with this, with what it can mean to them, with how they can make Audrey more wholly a part of it, later.

They follow the thread back. When they reach William, Jen expects him to flinch, to know she's there the instant they near him, to fight. He's psychically connected to Audrey, after all. But the fact is... the fact is that he barely knows what she's doing until she drives the three of them like an arrow at the source of the threads: Nathan's will and Duke's control and herself, backed by Audrey's desire to be free. A thrill goes through Jen as she realises he can't fight them. In his arrogance, he gave to Jennifer an ability he'll never have, and can't affect, tainted the curse with his own blood and gave them the means to finish this.

She almost falters at the last. She doesn't hurt people, not like this, and she has no idea what it will do to William. Audrey, this close, is faltering too. Nathan's opposition drives the strike home in spite of them, the instant decision of a police officer used to making the call between when to shoot and when not to shoot, before the arguments Duke's mustering to bolster them can take root.

Jen doesn't feel what happens to William. There's a sort of recoil from the snap of the connecting thread, and suddenly she's back in her own head again and Duke and Nathan are back in theirs, and despite her caution in getting them all seated first, Nathan falls onto the floor.

He blinks around, unseeing eyes wide, and tries to track the noises around him with his face. "What happened?"

Duke makes an incoherent sort of grunt. Audrey holds her head and starts to make a high, pained noise, cut off sharply even as Jen reaches for her, and she's lifting her head, blinking moisture-shimmering, shocked eyes. Jen can sense pain from her, but it's fading.

Elsewhere in the police station, someone else is screaming. It's distant like there are several walls between them, but it's loud all the same.

Dwight picks up Nathan, who hangs onto the big police chief with the confidence of knowing what he's clinging to. "I'm all right."

"What about the rest of you?" Dwight asks.

Duke joins Jennifer in holding Audrey, pulling both of them into the bigger circle of his arms and his broader chest.

"Audrey?" Nathan asks, reaching a hand forward. "Are you crying?"

"No," she sniffs. "No, I'm alright. I'm free."

Freedom can hurt sometimes, at first. Jen remembers when she stopped taking the pills. Audrey catches Nathan's hand and guides him close. He ghosts fingers over her face, wipes away the moisture on her cheeks.

Duke still seems a bit shell-shocked by the experience of being together. Unlike her and Nathan, it was his first time, and perhaps they should have practised before trying this. All sorts of weird metaphysical and spiritual thoughts are flying through his head, now. "That was... that was beautiful," he says, and kisses Jennifer and turns and stares, so very strangely, at Nathan, who's oblivious to it.

Dwight turns to the door, then back to them. There are other sounds of disturbance joining the distant shouting now. Not anything to indicate panic, but something is definitely happening. "I need to take a look on William," Dwight says, grimacing back an apology.

"I will, too," Nathan says, and waves Dwight off with a wry laugh as he hesitates. "I'll follow. Get Stan to lead me down. Go." He turns back to the rest of them, curling his hand tight around Audrey's. Jen knows what he's thinking.

So does Audrey, apparently. "We need to test it. Forget Stan, I'm coming too."

"We'll all go," says Duke.

Jen isn't sure of the wisdom of that, but her head's all a spin. It doesn't stop spinning much as she walks through a station full of people who know she and Duke and Nathan and Audrey are all together... and are loudly thinking their opinions about that. This is the first time they have been there together since the day William turned up, and here they are, all hanging off each other, Nathan clinging between Duke and Audrey out of necessity and Jen clinging behind Duke because the corridors aren't that wide.

The thoughts are so varied. Some of them make Jen blink. Quite a few of them make her angry. "Stop it!" she yelps to Officer Anderson, before Duke drags her onward. "Stop it, it's not that, I love them!" The other woman stares back at her, poleaxed.

"Don't," Duke hisses, pulling her closer, squeezing her in against his side even though the corridor isn't really big enough.

Audrey and Nathan are the romance that's been dragged and damned all over town already and Audrey so intensely doesn't care by now. Nathan's embarrassed, but he's always embarrassed, and he's sort of accepted it to the point where it's nothing more than background static.

"I can't stand them thinki--" Jen starts to protest.

"Just because you can read their thoughts doesn't mean you can police their thoughts." She supposes he does have a point. It's not like they said or did anything. "In fact? Probably better not to let on that you can read their thoughts."

"Shutting up now," mumbles Jen, and just tries to block out all the shouting.

William is going wild in his cell. His eyes are bloodshot and wide. His hands beat against the bars. There are huge, black bruises on them already from the way he's hurling himself around. Audrey holds out her hands, making a study of them. They're unmarked. With a clinical sort of flatness, she says, "It worked. We can go now. Give him to the Guard to throw in whatever hole they like. See if they can find out how he 'creates' Troubles. Maybe they can get some answers."

William's eyes are manic, focused on nothing but her. Garbled, half-shouted, half-growled words fall from his lips. "You! Mara! You're Mara, remember! Always remember! They can't do this to us. You can't -- they couldn't -- no-one could truly part us!" He looks desperate.

He looks... crazy.

Jen purses her lips and feels guilty, a little, and starts to duck away, not wanting to stick around even if the others stay. They're shocked enough that not even Nathan can voice anything of his ready-prepared victory sneer.

"You!" William shouts, staggering along the bars to follow her. "You... you! It was you! Little bitch! How did you? Impossible! You can't touch me! No Trouble can touch me! How did you do it--?" His eyes flick, anguished, back to Audrey, and when they return he glares at Jennifer's chest.

Jen thinks back to the handprint that he leaves on people, the one Audrey can see. It's right over her breast bone, though she can't see it. She's wearing a low enough top today that it must be partially visible. She didn't think... Audrey hadn't said anything.

When he marked her, he sealed his doom.

"Me," she says, accepting the accusation with abrupt decision. "Me, me, me, me, me! And them!" She waves her hand over Audrey, Nathan and Duke. "And you deserved it! Maybe it was so perfect to think about driving me mad with all those voices that you didn't think about what else you were giving away!"

He's in pieces. She can feel him struggling to hold himself together and failing, and his mind, now she's been in there once, is more wide-open for her to see. She doesn't think he'll be doing any more planning, any more plotting, thinking up any more perfectly cruel ways to tear people down.

It doesn't mean he isn't still dangerous, but he's nowhere near the danger he was as a thinking and rational threat. Dwight and the Guard, she's sure, can hold him like this.

"I don't know if we'll be getting many answers out of him," Dwight says dubiously. "In the minutes I've been here, all he's done is shout and rant and scream about someone called 'Mara'."

William starts screaming again, as if taking that as his cue. It's blood-curdling.

"Maybe in time," Nathan offers. "Or he might say something important while he's raving that he would never otherwise give away. Best keep notes."

"I'll make sure someone's on it," Dwight agrees. "We'll handle him. Sure wish I knew what he did with that black stuff he makes Troubles from. If we could send it for testing, maybe there're other solutions we could figure out."

"Audrey's got some." Duke's announcement comes out very absolute. "We'll bring you it."

Audrey frowns at him and digs her fingers in under his ribs until he squirms, then she says, "I don't want to be her, I told you that. We'll bring you the goo, Dwight."

"Let's go home," Jen says. Jen almost begs. She needs to be out of here. She can't watch William, listen to William, knowing that she did this. It's a terrible thing, and she isn't sorry, but she doesn't want to bathe in it either.

Duke slips his arm around her. "Yeah... Let's all of us go home."

***

At 10pm that evening, Nathan falters mid-step and comes up blinking. His eyes look around, bright and blue, alert and focusing. He says, "I can't feel," and Duke groans and mutters, "Just in time for bed."

Then Nathan adds with a wide smile, "But that's never been a problem before."

Duke brightens.

They are exhausted and emotional, worn down by William and worn down by Haven. But in the morning, there'll only be one of those problems to face, and they can all walk down the street under their own steam no matter what, and the relief of that is matchless.

Audrey asks distractedly, coming over from the kitchen area, "Time for bed? Because I am fed and watered, and wondering now about all these promises of psychic sex." Her eyes brighten when she finds Nathan's are able to meet hers again, and he blushes, and Jen feels Audrey's heart relax the last of its tension and sees her grin go wide with relief.

There was always going to be that little bit of doubt about how it worked until the cycle of his senses rolled along.

Audrey looks at her watch. "10PM. If it does that again tomorrow, we can start planning."

Duke grunts from his sprawl on the yoga mat where he's no longer communing with the Great Whatever. "Need to figure out if they're gonna come in any order before you can really do that."

"Shut up, Duke," Nathan says easily. "We'll manage."

"We will." Audrey joins Nathan in holding a hand out to Jen, together pulling her up out of the sofa. She's been unaccountably tired since they... since they saved Audrey. Like she's spent an hour on the treadmill at a gym. Expenditure of thought-energy must be like any other kind of energy. Maybe it really was an epic battle.

"Duke," she says blearily. He's still on the floor.

"You're the one who mentioned bed," Nathan says. "Stop contemplating the metaphysical consequences of what Jen can do and move, will you?"

"Yeah, we have much more interesting consequences to contemplate," Audrey adds. "I didn't feel anything of this life-changing experience of mind-meld you keep talking about. You guys have got to find a way to--"

Jen groans. "But I'm so tired. I just want sex tonight."

Duke waggles his eyebrows as he joins them. "Well, that's a new one."

Jen thumps him, punching her small fist into his ripped midriff, an impact which doesn't do much. "Psychic warfare wears you out. I want to do something physical."

"Okay." Audrey nods, folding swiftly. "Since you saved my identity and the three loves of my life today and all."

"Self-interest," Duke observes. "Shouldn't really count."

They're still bickering as they fall into bed together. Jen's exhausted and all but falls mostly asleep on top of Duke ten minutes in, anyway, while Nathan and Audrey hog each other and Duke gripes at them for it. Then there's probably going to be a Trouble tomorrow, and the whole town knows the four of them are sleeping together, and they're scandalous. It's still hard for Jennifer to be around people, and Nathan's still going to be recognisably disabled for two days out of five, in ways he'll have to learn to compensate for or work around if he's to continue solving Troubles... Both Jen and Nathan still have so much to do, to work around the damage William caused.

But right now, in victory, it's all still wonderful, and tonight... Tonight they don't have to be afraid anymore.

END