FIC: [Haven] CLOCKWORK, Chapter 10 (Audrey/Duke/Nathan, R)

[roseveare]

10.

"That man!" Audrey fumed as they burst into the corridor that bypassed the dining car. Bad enough everyone but Mrs Murphy assuming she was just a piece of decoration on Duke's arm. Bad enough the condescension and amusement. Bad enough the ridiculous tittering sheep around Lock...! But to assume that Duke would...? That Nathan was an object for mere casual trade?!

"I know." Duke was looking around furtively, but the police who'd been there earlier weren't in sight now. "I feel like I need to wash just for having spoken to him."

"It's just as well Nathan did stay in the cabin. I definitely know he didn't need this as well, in his current state of mind."

Duke’s shudder suggested rather more sympathy than he'd previously had for the automaton.

"Do you remember any more from the other place?" she dared ask. "About being lovers? Is it coming back at all?" She frowned as she watched the contortions of his expression, that spoke so intensely of wanting to flee the question, then she demanded, "How much do you really remember, Duke?"

His eyes pleaded for her to let it go, nervously flicking back to the door they'd come through, where other passengers were, even though there was no-one nearby who could hear. Such things were not acceptable to the polite company here, huh? Audrey thought bitterly. Never mind what Lock had just suggested, and the creepy, deplorable abuses of consent and ownership indicated by it. Duke turned uneasily to look around again, like it was a compulsion.

"The police must have gone to check the cabins, the other way," Audrey said. "Well, Duke?"

It had been upsetting to see them change; to realise that they didn’t remember themselves anymore, and to watch the distance expand between them again when they had been so close. They had come back knowing their relationship was at the mercy of this world and its rules. Audrey knew that.

It had been difficult to have them both so knowledgeable and confident while she was the one left out, but it was no relief to see them struggle now. She felt bad for having pushed them away while they'd remembered. Contrary of her to want them back again as they had been, Duke so sure and passionate, Nathan not crippled by guilt or loathing or... whatever the flavour of his crisis of identity actually was. How could it be so terrible for them -- Nathan discovering that he was a sexual being of any sort, Duke smothered in self-disgust by the thought of such association with an automaton -- when there’d been love between them before?

"I didn't forget what happened in the other place." Duke's voice was choked almost inaudible. "I just can't... I don't... I mean, what the fuck? And on top of that, I've got this fucking letter that--"

"Oh, come on!" Audrey burst out, annoyance overriding her sympathy. "I've seen Nathan's letter, and it's not that bad. The guy's busy working on redefining 'stoic'."

"Not that letter," Duke said. "There's another one, that I wrote to myself. Because evidently I'm more of an asshole than the tin cop is. Because--"

Audrey's breath caught, unintentionally, and she didn't mean to interrupt Duke's stream mid-confession, when he was actually telling her things, but the words just came out anyway. "Did you write a letter for him?" She saw the answer in his eyes and gripped his arm fiercely. "You must give it to him! He remembers enough to think that he was used by you, given the context that he’s just discovered is attached to automata and sex. If you have a letter that tells him that you love him--"

Duke laughed raucously, shrugging her hand off. "No! Don't be ridiculous. I don't love him, Audrey! He's a machine, and he's a cop besides!"

Her eyes went in dismay to the door of the cabin that they were coming up on. Nathan's hearing was excellent. She might've slapped Duke if she hadn't seen the same realisation change Duke's face, even as he backtracked.

"No, that’s not -- I -- it's more confusing than that. Don't ask me these questions, Audrey!" He barged ahead and through the door. Audrey frowned and considered that perhaps it would be wise to lock it from the inside even if one of them was in the room, in future. Lock had known things -- he could be a threat as well as a pig -- and the police were here. She followed fast on Duke's heels, anxious to gauge Nathan's reaction.

Nathan was standing up in the middle of the room, poised as if interrupted, and like so many of his postures he looked too alive for something merely made of clockwork parts. Now that Audrey knew why, knew that she was immune to the powers that had caused the transformation, she had to wonder if that was why he had also always seemed to feel so oddly human beneath her touch.

She glared at Duke and he looked away. She shut the door with a slam and said, loudly, crossly, to both of them, "Duke has a letter. One he should have told you about before now."

Duke's gawping expression of betrayal would garner no pity from her. They needed to sort this mess out. But his next words weren't helpful. "It's my letter. I don't have to give it to anyone if I choose not to."

His expression was utterly resistant.

Nathan's face had shifted and his mouth had dropped open in what was actually a kind of hopeful fashion, but he deflated fast. Audrey saw him rally enough to state, "But you did write a letter," barely making it a question. Almost more an affirmation to himself. He nodded slowly and sank down in the seat by the window.

The landscape going past was green now, so they had left mining country and industrial landscapes, even if only temporarily. Audrey glared back at Duke's glare and went to sit opposite Nathan, watching the land go backwards.

Duke sat on the narrow bed. "We for real do need to prepare for lunch," he said, traces of annoyance still hanging over the words. "The car was all laid out ready, so it can't be long."

Audrey frowned. "What's to prepare? I only just put this dress on, and I'm not changing it to eat. The man in the shop fixed this hair up far better than I can hope to match and I'm not messing with that, either."

Duke gave a grunt and looked disillusioned. Audrey wondered again what women actually did in this world. In the other one, there had been women police and doctors and nurses, but in this one all that most of them seemed to do was follow men.

"Heppa is more progressive," Nathan said, reading the disgust in her face. "Additionally, many of the richer patrons of Heppa society got to be where they are through advancement of technology and industry, so the manners are less rarefied there."

"Heppa was bad enough," Audrey said. She'd mostly been a fugitive in Heppa. She'd been trying to be inconspicuous and blend in.

"I've no idea how or why people prepare for dinner," Duke grit. "I just know that they do, and this is a con, even if it's not a con like any other. I'm changing into the darker vest, because I get the feeling this is a crowd that notices." He got his case out and opened it on the bed.

Audrey watched Nathan watch him change. She reflected on how odd it must be to believe that you were a completely sexless being, and then suddenly discover an unremembered relationship. That someone considered themselves yours. Nathan's eyes trailed Duke's bare skin while his back was turned and dared to look wistful and conflicted. They continued to fix on Duke after he'd dressed himself, until he turned around, at which point Nathan quickly looked away.

Audrey reached over the table between their seats and squeezed his hand, regretting the reduced value of the gesture upon metal fingers. He jerked his head up, looking at her with the same intensity. So he hadn't forgotten the other things said while they were someone else, much as he and Duke were wrapped up in the awful tension between them.

"I -- I -- There were policemen here in the cabin," Nathan said, flustered, changing the subject, metal eyelids blinking rapidly at their joined fingers until Audrey disentangled hers and pulled them away. "Living ones. They asked to conduct a search of your belongings. I wanted to tell them I was a fellow lawman, but I only told them I couldn’t permit any such thing while my 'masters' were not present. They said they'd return after later."

"That must have been hard for you." Evidently even Duke could see as much, because he sighed and added, "You did good." He took a roll of bills from the suitcase and another from his pocket. There was a further bulge in his left pants pocket that was his winnings and substitutions from the first few card games. Audrey had noticed how careful he'd been to keep that money separate. "Our bankroll had to shrink." He packed the two rolls of notes tightly into one roll and held it out to Nathan. "Do you have a, a cavity, or some space behind a panel somewhere, to hide this? I need it somewhere they won't look."

Nathan had started twitching at the word 'cavity' and the rest was instilled with a trace of Duke flailing to catch up and refute the misunderstanding.

"You could throw it out of the window," Nathan said sourly.

"Yeah, but we can probably use it again once we're free and clear in Heppa."

Which was a good enough argument that Audrey chimed in her support, asking Nathan, "Please can't you? We don't want to have to steal more."

Duke frowned her way. "Where'd you put the bills from Lock? Some of those might be--"

"Oh, no." She shook her head firmly. "Some of them are safe, and everyone has some of your dodgy loot by now. You didn't want it, so I'm keeping it." It was tucked in her bodice, but she carefully didn't look down. Let Duke wonder, and try to find it if he dared. She did miss the expansive folds of the other dress, if not the ridiculousness and fuss of it.

Nathan was untucking his shirt from his trousers and standing up. "There's space in the abdominal cavity. It might interfere with some mechanisms if I have to bend double, but since I'm not planning to bow in obeisance to anyone..." He took the tool kit out of the luggage netting and started to unscrew a panel.

"It's a big help," Duke said. "I really appreciate not having to worry about anyone discovering these. Um." Nathan wordlessly extended a hand to take the roll and packed it inside his body. Duke pulled a few faces and evidently came to a decision... though Audrey would have hoped for a more progressive one: "There's an asshole called Lock with a really sick interest in automata. You need to stay the hell out of his way."

Nathan's eyebrows rose, but his attention was downward, on screwing the panel back into place. "Worried about me?"

"He's got a clockwork butler and offered me an 'exchange'. You would've appreciated how resoundingly we both told him to stuff it, by the way."

"Of course you did," Nathan said.

"We did, you know," Audrey told him. "Really, you can rely on us to look out for you, even Duke, even while he is stuck in his own freakout. We were both angry on your behalf."

"Freak--" Duke shook his head and made a rude noise. "Anyway, my point is that if the guy says something, ignore it. He's slime."

A shrill noise was approaching along the corridor outside. Duke turned his head as Audrey moved to the door, looking around for a weapon. "Chill. It's a guy with a bell to tell us dinner's about to be served. Seriously, between the two of you, I feel like your freakin' native guide. And I am not comfortable in this place!"

Audrey narrowed her eyes, but let it go. Okay, they were all stressed out, nobody was on comfortable territory, Duke was just the closest to knowing the lie of the land... Check. She looked at Nathan. "Are you coming to lunch?"

"I don't eat."

"No, but you could hang over my shoulder and make me look good." Duke said, and ignored Nathan's returning glare.

"You wrote a letter," Nathan said, after a moment, blinking slowly, metal face turning unreadable.

"Apparently so." Duke looked darkly at Audrey. "You just can't tell anyone anything, it seems."

"Give me the letter," Nathan said, "and I'll read it while you're at lunch."

"No," Duke responded flatly.

"If it's addressed to me, it's my letter," Nathan said. "What's more, it's information about who we really are, and that's important."

"I wrote it," Duke snapped, stepping for the door, "so it's my letter." He wasn't stupid -- Audrey could see the 'oh, crap' of realisation his face was wearing in that moment, as he quickly angled it away from Nathan's sight.

"Then I'll take my letter, instead," Nathan said bitterly. "The one I wrote to you. I haven't seen it, and I only very dimly remember writing it."

Nathan couldn't see how Duke's face twisted with conflict before he spun back, reaching into his jacket. He tossed the folded paper on the end of the bed like it meant nothing. "Have at it. There's not much in it, anyway."

"Damn it, Duke!" Audrey snapped. "And you, Nathan!" He picked the letter up despite the new hurt that twisted his artificial expression, and held it tightly, though he didn't make any move to read it.

"Guessing that's a 'no' on the dinner plan," Duke said.

"I don't belong to you," the automaton responded. "I don't have to do what you want."

Audrey wanted, very badly, to bash both of their heads together... She felt a twinge of pain in her own head, at the front up by the hairline, stirred and provoked by the familiarity of that feeling.

"Leave him," she said crossly to Duke. "It's no surprise that he doesn't want to come and play Butler, now, is it? I don't particularly want to play at being your accessory, either. On the other hand, we do need to eat, so I'd rather not be the last in line."

Duke choked. "These people get waiting service! And, fuck -- you're not my accessories! It's an act! It's a con, guys, it's just a con!"

"Whatever. I'm hungry and I'm going. You can stay here together, if you want."

"I do not want," Duke snapped, but he still sneaked an anxiety-filled look behind them as they headed out the door.

Dinner was too much fanfare and too little food, and whatever Audrey was used to eating like, this was not it. The biggest thing in its favour was that apparently Lock had been seated in the other dining car. Duke chewed nervously and as mechanically as if he were one of the automatons he so despised, lost in thought, leaving Audrey to listen to others’ conversations for her entertainment.

"We shall be stopping in Verrond for two hours this afternoon," a woman nearby was saying to a presumed husband. "The cobbler there made those excellent boots I bought last year, the red ones."

Audrey would have liked to hear more of Verrond, but the woman was far more interested in the boots, so she tuned that conversation out and listened for something else.

"--the racetrack, but two hours is not enough time! Such a tedious schedule. I do not know why it couldn't be longer. After all, we shall be standing still for half the night at the points change because of the goods trains. I ask you!"

"--priorities so out of line. Dear Arnie Ricarson runs a much better service on the line to Anduff. If only his takeover bid had come through--"

"--overcooked and hideous. I can't eat this swill. Horace, you must signal the waitress and complain."

Audrey screwed her face up and massaged her head. "Do you know anything about Verrond?" she asked Duke, kicking him under the table until his initial non-response turned into a vague attention.

"I know it has a market," he said. "No regular air traffic. Last time I was there, I had to put the Rouge down in a field." His face turned bleak.

"What about the races?" she pushed, trying to get him past the grim reminder of his vessel's fate. "Are we talking horses? Dogs? Cars?"

"Who races automobiles?" Duke asked blankly. "Though I suppose that can't be far off, once a few more inventors start working on serious designs."

Audrey felt the stab from her head again. "I think that's from the other world."

"Is your memory coming back?" he asked intently, perhaps a little fearfully, keeping his voice low.

"No more than before. There've been... flashes, from the beginning, things that slipped through. But just fragments, not anything that matters."

He nodded. "They race horses at Verrond. It's a rural town. The racetrack is the main draw for outside attention. I think it's the wrong day for racing, today, though the market might be running. Don't tell Nathan that half of it's illegal trade. Though the other half is farm produce." He managed to actually muster a grin, then shook his head, gripped in a memory of his own. "I had goats in the boat when I lifted off from there. They climb. Little blighters got into everything. And they chew. I nearly ended up falling out of the sky that day, too."

Audrey gave him a commiserating smile, but gave up after that. She'd eaten too quickly, and all she had left to do while everyone else was finishing their food was to push a piece of hard stalk around her plate with her fork. Occasionally one of the nearby diners glared at her when the metal squeaked against the porcelain. She was almost desperate for distraction by the time she noticed Lock's automaton over by the door, where he -- it? -- seemed to just be hanging around and watching the diners.

"Look." She nudged Duke. "That is Butler, isn't it? Or do other models look alike? Lock isn't here, so perhaps it's someone else's?"

Duke squinted. "Looks like Butler to me. They're not all that alike, and I haven't seen another on the train, unless they've been hiding like our own mopey clockwork companion."

Audrey thought the name-calling spoke more of unintended affection than anything else. "I want to talk to him."

Duke grabbed her arm as she started to rise and held her back. "Wait, damn it!"

"Seriously, Duke, I'm going out of my mind here. Lock suggested he's not as sentient as Nathan. I want to judge that for myself. Besides, maybe he'll let slip something about Lock, and how he knows all the things he seems to know."

"I should be the one to--"

She pushed him back down, breaking his hold in the bargain. "You stay here and make sure I get my dessert, because God help them and you if I've sat here waiting through this tedium to miss out on that."

He choked a laugh. "Yes, ma'am. But... be careful. You're not armed any more, remember?"

"I know. If the market in Verrond has so much contraband, that must include weapons, so we'll remedy the matter while we're there." Louder, she declared, "I'll go... powder my face..." and picked her way between the tables.

It was possible that the stares she received were sceptical about her face ever having received any powdering at all. But she cast a fake smile around them all as she crossed to the doorway. She slipped out into the passage that bypassed the dining carriage, and the shadowy corner on the other side of the door where she had spied Butler.

Duke's concern came back to mind sharply as she shut the door to keep their conversation private and found herself alone in the narrow passageway with the automaton, a stiff figure in formal clothes.

"Hello?" she ventured. He was definitely unnerving. He'd backed out of the shadows into the window-lined corridor at her approach, and it was much brighter there, but the light shifted rapidly as the landscape moved by them on the other side of the windows. "I'm Audrey Parker. We met at the card game. Do you... have a name other than Butler?"

The clockwork-controlled eyelids fell and rose again, and his head tipped mechanically. This was not like talking to Nathan, who was -- well, who felt like an artificial human, whereas this automaton just felt artificial. "My name is Butler."

"Okay..." Knowing that Lock used the automaton for sex abruptly didn't make him any less dangerous in this confined space. "You're waiting for Mr Lock to finish dining?"

"I was asked to wait here." That statement felt like a considered compromise.

"Well, I'm waiting for dessert, so perhaps we can talk, and make the wait go a little faster for us both. How about that?"

Audrey could see the automaton struggling to parse the suggestion. She thought that people perhaps did not usually talk to him and expect him to respond like a person. "I can talk," he allowed after a moment. "Conversation is incorporated into my functions."

"Just not usually asked for, huh?" Audrey was feeling bad for him now, and a little bad for feeling afraid of him. Conversation was a hugely complex interaction, and even if Butler wasn't so developed for independence and learning as Nathan was, there had to be a good deal of capacity in there. "Do you like working for Mr Lock? Is it... okay for me to ask that?" She took a step closer, peering into his glass eyes. In the case of this clockwork man, his eyes were brown, and they did not have the intense humanity Nathan's did. His hair was soft and long, gathered in a clip at the nape of his neck, ponytail lying draped elegantly over a shoulder. Audrey wondered if his appearance had been tailored deliberately to some purpose. She found it hard to imagine he had ever been human. Was he truly a creation of this Trouble, a temporarily existing extra, doubly unreal?

"It is my function," Butler said. "So yes, I suppose I do 'like' it."

"But I'm... sure he values you. It must mean something to you, whether or not he... How much he values you." Being ready to trade him for Nathan didn't speak much of 'value'. Audrey's heart sank a little at the thought. She wondered how much Nathan would have been devastated to hear this conversation.

"I am worth a great deal of money," Butler hazarded, which wasn't better. He was clicking and whirring internally, trying to figure out what sort of answer she wanted.

"Do you ever think that you'd like to do something else?" Her breath caught, because she was sure, so sure that the answer was 'yes'.

"I am feeling a small conflict over my current orders," the automaton admitted. He settled his face into a frown upon her.

"Because of me? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. I'll -- I'll go." Maybe she was only making things difficult. If Nathan was facing something of a meltdown at the prospect of having an owner’s sexual gratification an option included in his factory purpose, then perhaps the suggestion of doing something else would face this automaton with a similar crisis.

Audrey was already backing off when the automaton reached fast for her throat. She almost evaded the clutch, but he readjusted and caught her up, clockwork joints clanking. Like Nathan, he was faster than expected for something so heavy and wrought from ponderous metal. She automatically clutched her hands around his metal wrist and kicked her feet where they hung off the floor. "What -- what orders did he give you?" she choked out shrilly, clinging to his hands, trying to take her weight onto her arms in place of her throat.

"To kill Audrey Parker. I bear no personal ill feeling against you, and I am not designed to kill. But it would not be the first time, so I am afraid that however I might regret it, I still possess the capacity to complete the order."

Audrey kicked at him with both feet, swinging her body back against the straight bar of his arm, hands clutching desperately to keep their purchase as he shook her. She managed to land a double-footed blow that rocked him. But the initial firm grip on her neck was tightening to a crushing one. She had chance for maybe one more move before she was dead...

A surge of thoughts flashed through her, about Nathan's weaknesses and Duke's observations, the repairs she'd seen them doing, the mechanics she'd seen bared open. She swung again and aimed her next kick at the join between arm and shoulder.

The grip upon her loosened for a moment, enough for her to use her hands to tear her neck loose at the cost of mere bruises. She dropped down and stumbled back in a slow, ungainly fall onto her hands and rump. It wasn't a good position, with the automaton stalking after her quickly, annoyance on his face now as he aimed to stomp her with its feet. But she didn't have to scramble back very far to hit the door into the dining carriage, shoving it open onto the large compartment, where there were people and witnesses and surely safety...

Where everyone there could suddenly see her, on the floor, and a ripple of amusement and dismay and disdain went through them that far outweighed any sense of concern.

Butler backed off. He might have been told to kill her, but he presumably knew not to let anyone see him do it. She wondered if Duke would count or if Duke had a similar death order hanging over his head.

Audrey pulled herself to her feet and had staggered further back into the dining car by the time Duke reached her. A few other men had risen but they deflated and sank down with a degree of relief.

"Are you alright?" Duke asked, alarmed, his hand going to her hand, which covered her wheezing, aching throat. He stopped just short of touching her. "What happened?"

"I fell," she said, hoarsely, loudly. "So clumsy of me." She could not tell the carriage at large about Butler and Lock. They were unlikely to believe her and would probably laugh at that, too. "Please," she said quietly in Duke's ear. "Don't say anything. Sit back down. We can't go back until everyone else is moving around."

She strongly suspected Butler would be just as likely to try to harm both of them if they were alone together, and remembering the fight with Nathan on the airship, he might well succeed even if it was two to one.

"All right," Duke replied, too loud, with a note of affectation. "Well, never mind. Your dress isn't too rumpled and your hair doesn't look a strand out of place. Your dessert is here, and you may have mine, too. For medicinal purposes."

He sat her down, and while it was generous of him to spare his cake -- cream sponge topped with strawberries -- she barely tasted either of the portions, fretting about what would happen when they stepped away from the safety of the other passengers once again.