FIC: [Haven] CLOCKWORK, Chapter 11 (Audrey/Duke/Nathan, R)

[roseveare]

11.

Duke paced the cabin, wanting to lash out at something. At least Nathan had finally got some incentive to pull himself together, and was standing guard at the door. Audrey had flopped on the bed. Her throat was bruising black already.

"He's just -- he can't just give his automaton a standing order to kill you if he catches you alone!" Duke exploded. "On a train packed with passengers? Who does that?"

"Well, someone's been trying to kill me since I woke up here without my memory," Audrey said. "I think we can be pretty sure Lock is in league with them now. Poor Butler."

"Poor Butler!" Duke echoed incredulously.

"He doesn't want to follow those orders."

"Yet he is following them," Nathan said. "We're built for discernment. That doesn't speak well of his character to me."

"If it's all he's ever known?" Audrey countered with inexplicable anger. "Who knows what Lock might do in the face of disobedience, besides? He's a loathsome man."

Nathan looked unconvinced and judgy, and for once Duke couldn't blame him. He was still seething and shaking -- a little bit -- with disbelief that that thing had tried to kill Audrey right outside the dining car. With the noise of the train and the chatter of the diners, he'd never heard a thing.

Still, at least Nathan seemed to have found his balls, or... whatever he had in place of those. Ball-bearings, maybe. "From now on, neither of you are going anywhere without me," he said fiercely. The cabin was securely locked, but still he hung by the door. The thin panel walls inside the train wouldn't stop a determined automaton.

"At least until Verrond," Audrey amended. "We can get weapons at Verrond, Duke says, and I... know the trick to deal with Butler." She looked between Duke and Nathan. "Even if I don't want to use it."

Duke pulled a face. He'd found his letter from Nathan laid out on the bed when they came in, swiftly forgotten by Nathan in the face of Audrey's dishevelled and bruised state, and had pocketed it again with more consciousness and relief than he'd like. He wondered again whether he ought to read the letter he'd written for Nathan. Would it be worse than the one he'd written to himself? Would reading it be worse than just giving it to the guy, sight unseen, if he was going to end up doing that anyway at some stage? It might be better not to know what it said.

He needed to make a decision, and there were too many other things on his mind right now. "What if we go after Lock? If he's gone, Butler won't need to follow his orders."

"I wish," Audrey said bitterly. "He's always surrounded by people, and we'd be sure to be noticed fast. We still need to get to Heppa. Lock isn't who we want. You told me that's someone called Malcove. Lock must be an associate or underling."

"I'm not happy with the talk of disposing of anyone," Nathan said, "But it seems in that case we ought to handle Lock somehow before we reach Heppa, to prevent him reporting back."

"That would mean having to be around him, to watch and learn and wait for the opportunity," Duke said, pointedly.

"If that's what it takes." It went without saying that that course of action meant leaving the room, so Duke just about managed not to say it. Nathan seemed determined, and Duke figured he'd got the scent of the case and taken the bit between his teeth again. A purpose probably made a difference, especially to a machine. Let him feel like a cop again. Not that Duke could really be in favour of that part, but at least the guy looked alive. In a purely metaphorical sense.

Maybe the letter had helped. Maybe the other would help more.

...Duke was surely not seriously considering that. He was not.

"The police are on the train..." Nathan started to venture.

"Not a chance," Duke cut him off.

"You seem to work under the misapprehension that they exist to hinder people rather than protect them," Nathan said. "But that's you. They won't let someone get away with setting their... their property onto people with murderous intent."

"Sorry, Nathan," Audrey said, "But nothing I've seen so far gives me much faith that two men will take my word against the word of a man of Lock's standing in this world, and since I'm the only witness to the attack, I don't think that's a viable course."

"But we do--" Nathan started.

"Any other two men." She smiled at both him and Duke. "Besides, Heppa's police were after me. What if Duke's conviction they're investigating the stolen money is just his customary paranoia, and these are after me, too?"

"Hey," Duke said. "This conversation is giving me chills. No way am I turning to the cops. Bad enough having to work with you." He faltered and gave Nathan a grim smile to try lighten the comment.

"Well," Nathan said, flustered by the resounding rejection of his suggestion, "perhaps Verrond will give us opportunity to corner and deal with Lock away from the train. We need to arm both of you first, and until you have the capability to protect yourselves against Butler, we shouldn't split up."

"Verrond might also be a really good opportunity for Lock and Butler to spring something on us," Duke pointed out.

"Bring it on. He wants to gift us the chance to get rid of him?" Audrey raised her chin. "With the chance to claim it as self-defence besides? Probably he'll make it less work on our part, anyway, by trying to jump us away from spectators."

"He'll just send his automaton," Duke said.

"Butler won't get near either of you."

The fierceness in that declaration had Duke quirking an eyebrow at Nathan.

"And again, that'll be one less problem that we need to deal with," said Audrey, craning for a better view out of the window. "Either way, it's time to stop talking about it. I can see buildings up ahead."

Nathan left the door to move closer to the window, yearning interest mixed with anxiety in his stiff face. Guy had never left Heppa before three days ago, Duke was reminded. He remembered the way the automaton had followed him, eager like a puppy for new things, staring at everything on the airship. Nathan caught himself, then retreated guiltily back to his position at the door, though still leaning to watch their approach.

Audrey was focused upon it, too, but her attention was more cynical, assessing the use this place would be to them.

"We should either aim to be first off, or wait until last," Nathan said. "I might not be able to spot Butler and prevent him from getting to you in the crush, and there would be too much potential for injury to bystanders."

"I don't care about bystanders," Duke volunteered, raising a hand. "Particularly not these bystanders. Hell with 'em. Easier to avoid Lock if it's busy."

"No," Nathan said, clearly not about to be moved on this.

"I quite liked some of the people at the card game," Audrey said. "Just because they have the money to travel in style doesn't make them terrible people. Let's go wait by a door."

The rhythm of the train was already changing as it slowed down, wheels starting to let out a soft whine against the tracks. Duke would in every way rather have been travelling by air. He didn't like not having the control of their movements. He grumbled, but went along with Audrey and Nathan's preferred course of action. Two votes to one, after all, even if one of them was a tin can.

Most of the passengers weren't as eager to disembark, or perhaps were too above being seen to be eager. A few joined them at the doors before the train was pulling into the station, only delaying them enough that they saw Lock briefly amid the busy offloading. He had Butler at his shoulder again, and he smirked at them.

Duke felt his hackles rise. He didn't think he'd ever wanted to punch someone so badly.

Nathan lifted his head and cast back the fiercest look Duke had seen on him, but Lock seemed more delighted than ever.

"Do not talk to him," Duke warned, low. "Do not engage with him in any way. Don't even look at him."

Instead of taking it in the spirit of genuine concern that Duke intended -- hell, Nathan had already been having some existential crisis without Lock outlining all the things he'd personally use him for if he were his heap of clockwork junk -- Nathan stiffened up and cast him that you-don't-own-me look again.

They lost sight of Lock in the crowds but spotted the police on the platform, who unlike Lock, remained in sight, watching the movements of the passengers. Duke, sweating in his too-fine suit, was pretty sure they were the same ones who'd been searching the train.

"They came back," Nathan explained guiltily. "I didn't have chance to tell you, with everything else. I let them search the luggage and find nothing, the second time. They didn't search me."

Duke nodded but still felt nervous. They hung around the station long enough to see the cops get back on the train. "Any bets they're going to search everything again while the passengers aren't there?"

"It's what I'd do," Nathan agreed.

Duke snorted, unsurprised.

"Come on," Audrey said. "We have only two hours, and I want my gun."

"Women and shopping, huh?" Duke quipped, and she smacked his shoulder with her open palm. "We can spend that money here, now, since the cops got back on the train."

"I've got it," Nathan confirmed. "Please spend it. I'm not a money box for your stolen gains."

"A porcelain pig would be cuter," Duke said.

He pretended not to hear Audrey mutter, "You weren't saying that about his metal ass in the other world."

***

The market had changed a little from how Duke remembered it a couple of years back. There'd been, notably, the addition of a new local private security force, installed by the town council to stamp out corruption. So far as Duke could see from walking around, they were tacitly co-existing with the corruption, probably with the occasional bribe or favour thrown in. He made a note to avoid green uniforms either way, and nudged Audrey and Nathan with a warning to do the same. Nathan looked scandalized even though they weren't real cops.

Nathan was doing okay, though. Nathan seemed to have achieved something, internalising his new protective role in opposition to the anxieties about his manufactured purposes -- which were fucked up anyway because it seemed pretty clear to Duke that whoever had invented or crafted a machine like Nathan had clearly intended it to be a person above all. The original intention hadn't survived contact with the consumer, which sucked, and shit, these people sucked, and Duke had no words bad enough for them. But if all they'd wanted was a sex doll with moving parts, or a police thug, why would they have bothered with the attitude?

Then again, Nathan was a person. Duke kept forgetting, the other world receding from his memory whenever he failed to focus upon it. Maybe the attitude was just Nathan, and nothing to do with the technology at all.

He wasn't remotely servile about it, but while they were in Verrond, Nathan stuck as close to Duke and Audrey as Butler did to Lock. The looks he was casting people probably didn't make them seem very friendly, because there was nothing objective about his belligerence.

Out of his depth, at least the automaton stayed for the most part cagey, close, and quiet. Audrey, on the other hand, made it clear she intended to do no such thing. Duke was increasingly amazed she'd managed to keep as subdued as she had for the card games.

His vague memories of that other world indicated women acted differently there -- didn't wear corsets, for one, and some of the clothing had been almost obscene, though he hadn't thought so at the time. She was obviously chafing under the restrictions of this world much more since her damaged memory had been refreshed by a dose of what she was accustomed to.

"No, I want to see weapons," Audrey said baldly to the patronising trader she was arguing with now. "If that gun was ever capable of firing, I'd be surprised it damaged anything except the hand of the person firing it. That can't be the limit of your stock."

The put-upon trader grumbled and produced a few worthier pistols from beneath his stall. "Oh! This is like mine!" Audrey's hand went straight to one, beating the trader's as he reached to stop her.

"That's a Heppa police service pistol," Nathan growled, eyes narrowing on the trader. "Where did you get it?"

"I just sell them on! Pick them up from people coming through on the trains, or the road," the unfortunate man yelped. He stared at Nathan. "You -- you're one of--"

"He's not," Duke said, exasperated. Nathan didn't seem sorry about breaking their cover, he just seemed smug to be recognised as a lawman. "He's just -- you know--" He waggled a finger next to his head. "House automaton with dreams of playing cops and robbers. We'll give you 40 tokens for the gun." Which was a fucking ridiculous price, but hopefully enough of an implied bribe to keep the trader quiet.

Nathan's glare could have incinerated him on the spot. Audrey was all over the pistol and hadn't registered the discrepancy on price -- then again, the currency here was mostly meaningless to her. "I need the money," Duke told Nathan, gesturing for him to get on with it.

"Yeah," he said louder, as Nathan produced a screwdriver and started to unscrew the abdominal plate behind which he'd stashed the cash. "Big clockwork dreams. Like -- what's those books? Silver Bolt Charlie? The automaton that fights crime!"

"There are books about that?" Nathan paused to ask.

"Children's books," Duke said, glaring. "Which you love."

"How do you know about that?" Audrey was amused enough to be distracted from her shiny new toy.

"I sell things. It's amazing what specialist stuff people will pay through the nose to import. It was crazy enough to take a closer look. I couldn't believe what I was reading--" At least the trader looked sympathetic to his argument, but then his eyes were still gleaming from the sale "--plus the whole crazy that they're sanitizing these things up and writing kids' books about them. Plus, hey, the illustrations were really good. Artistic. Skilled. We can all appreciate more artistry..."

"We believe you," Audrey snickered.

"Don't get too excited. There's a series of books where they put faces on airships and write about them like they're people, too." Duke pointed out to Nathan, then coughed as Audrey elbowed him hard in the ribs.

Nathan's face resumed its usual blandly resentful expression as he shoved the money into Duke's hands. "Spend the rest of it here. I'm not taking it back." Metal crunched in the vicinity of his jaw as he turned aside to fix up his abdomen.

They re-armed themselves at the market, and bought a few other bits and pieces. Some spare Nathan-parts, in preparation for if Butler did attack and inflict damage, but mostly just excuses to spend the money. Duke was going to have to return to the card tables and actually do some winning if he wanted to replenish their funds.

"If we were hoping to deal with Butler and Lock outside of the train, we're running out of time," Nathan remarked, his voice low.

They hadn't seen Lock at the market at all, though they'd spotted others from the train intermingling among the crowds.

"I'd rather face a confrontation and ditch them now than know we have to contend with them stuck in the confines of the train tonight," Audrey said. "If they're not at the market, they'll be isolated from pretty much everyone else who might recognise us, who is here. If we can find them..."

"If we simply made them miss the train," Nathan suggested, "perhaps that would be the most elegant solution."

Duke muttered, "Lock's pretty high-profile. They'd notice if he wasn't on board. Might even wait for him."

"That's also true if he's dead."

Audrey made a noise of frustration. "We have to do something." Her hand twitched beside the gun she'd tucked in her dress -- she'd torn the dress to do it, but you more-or-less couldn't tell, or tell that the gun was there, from how she'd rearranged the lines of it. Duke had found a small pistol and an ankle holster, and had decided to settle for that, for the sake of staying inconspicuous about being armed while dressed in the confining, expensive suit.

Nathan, wearing similarly tailored clothing over a skin of unforgiving metal, had bundled up the plain, serviceable pistol he'd bought to replace his lost standard issue weapon among the other purchases he carried, for now. He seemed to regard himself as in less danger than the two of them, anyway, though Duke certainly knew he wasn't invulnerable.

"Do we take the risk?" Nathan said. "Maybe we can at least put Butler out of action. Better than having to look over our shoulders for the rest of the journey."

On that, they could all agree, so they cut around, through the quieter streets of the town away from the market, looking for any sign of Lock's party.

When they found him, he was surrounded by people, and by that time they were all almost back to the station. Duke cursed. "He kept himself in a crowd of hangers-on?" Butler was there, too.

"Seems like he might have never been interested in coming after us off the train after all," Audrey said, "but he definitely thought we might come after him, that cowardly slimeball."

They had no choice but to fall in and drift back to the train in the wake of Lock's party. Staying behind Lock meant cutting things close, and they made it just in time before the guard climbed on and blew his whistle.

They did, however, get to watch as the police from Breinor were left behind them on the platform, heads shaking while the train pulled out and their fruitless investigation trundled away from them.

"A positive outcome for you," Nathan asserted, albeit with visibly mixed feelings. "You don't have to fret about them anymore. Additionally, we have our weapons, and neither of you are without defence. Although I still plan to be the one to deal with Butler if anything happens on the train."

Duke sighed. While it was a weight off his mind, it also only seem to concentrate the other weights that were left. "Audrey, would you mind going to your cabin with Nathan for fifteen minutes? I need to get freshened up."

She raised her eyebrows. "How delicate of you. Modesty isn't worth your life, you know." She frowned as his face didn't falter. "Well, I have to get changed, too. See if the new dresses are any better for weapon concealment and freedom of movement."

"I can wait outside the cabins," Nathan volunteered.

"I don't actually mind," Audrey said.

"Yeah. Not like you're either sexually interested or capable. Go guard her. Like you said, I'm armed, I can look after myself for ten minutes."

"If I'm outside I can guard both--" Nathan started, in a hassled stutter. But Audrey curled her hand in his collar and dragged him into the cabin after her, with the bundle of her new dresses and everything else in his arms.

Duke groaned and closed and locked the door behind himself. He heard a giggle from next door and heard the automaton make some exclamation of dismay. He wondered what Audrey was doing.

He sank down on the bed, not bothering to even remove his shoes, and groaned louder, dropping his head into his hands. This was -- this was stupid. He cursed and made himself uncurl and draw the gun from his ankle holster, and he set it beside the bed where he could easily reach it. Like hell was he letting his distraction get him killed.

Okay... He took a deep breath and reached into his pocket for the letter.

It took a bit of shuffling to find the right one. Some dick move, hogging all the letters... Nathan was right; he couldn't have it both ways. He was giving himself an ultimatum. Either he handed Nathan's letter back to him, or exchanged it for the one he'd written Nathan. Fair was fair.

Maybe the dumb move was reading it first, but... okay, he couldn't not. He wasn't just going to deliver it unseen.

A scan of the paper as he opened it out flooded him with instant relief that at least it wasn't as blue as the one he'd penned for himself. In fact, there seemed to be little in the way of x-rated territory. It was nowhere near as long, either.

With trepidation, he returned to the beginning and started to read properly:

Dear asshole Tin man Detective Chief Wuornos Nathan,

Even if you don't so much as remember you're human, I do actually fucking love you, you idiot, Even if you're now a pile of scrap metal that can't feel anything instead of just a stiff of a cop. Even if we can't fix this fucked up mess of a world and it ends up being permanent, which would suck beyond all measure of suckage, but we will still deal with that.

Talk to me, damn it. I've written the same general idea in a letter to myself, only without the interesting bits left out because I'm not the prude. We need to make this work. No-- we're going to make this work. No Trouble gets to do this to us.

Considering that my alt!self was responsible for one hell of a boner during that maintenance session, I'm pretty sure we can even figure out some way around the whole clockwork body clusterfuck brain-bender, too.

By the way, I hope you remember we're both sleeping with Audrey as well. Who knows, maybe you'll find that one easier to keep a grasp on? We need to get her memory back. That means working together. I'm not too sure pushing too hard gets us anywhere with this, though. We need to be careful.

Duke xx

Duke clenched his hand in the paper with a crunch and flopped his head forward into the circle of his arms, rested on his knees, and swore loudly and repeatedly.

He pulled at the corners of his brain, demanding, scouring, trying to remember -- but it didn't stir much beyond echoes of their time from the airship crash until the road outside Breinor. Before that remained territory unknown.

Shit. This -- this was less alarming than he'd expected, but also so much worse. If he gave this to Nathan, then -- well, he was asking for an approach. Whether Nathan would act upon the content of the letter, he wasn't sure. But if the automaton was fretting about those memories, thinking about what they'd done on the other world, thinking Duke had used him the way that... shit, the way that Lock had intimated he used Butler, the way Duke had so casually commented regarding the other automaton they'd seen... If that was the root of Nathan's fears, then this letter should put those fears to rest.

Damn it, thought Duke. He was going to have to give the other letter back. It was the only fair and honest way to deal with this that he could contemplate.

Except it wasn't fair, was it? Because he'd read Nathan's letter already, but Nathan hadn't gotten near to this one.

Shit, shit, shit. So he was faced with either being a bastard over this, or else handing the letter over and stepping up to the prospect of romancing... or rejecting... a machine.

He's real in the other life, Duke reminded himself. Could he move on that basis? Take on faith that this was something worth seizing? He didn't doubt the word of his other self -- he'd felt that personality, he'd been there, even if he didn't remember the memories that had come with the experience anymore, only how he'd acted in those moments. He tried to imagine Nathan's face and body as flesh and blood... The other letter had been pretty detailed on the subject. He was a good looking guy. Even the automaton was kind of... well. Cute.

Pretty shallow, Duke...

Was he shallow?

Evi had been a distanced relationship, really. In sync with him, but a push-and-pull sort of love. Laughter and partnership and sex and screwing each other -- repeatedly, variously -- and a streak of competition between them a mile wild. That was as deep as he'd ever got, as committed as he'd ever got. What he was looking at with Nathan and Audrey, that didn't sound like the same thing at all. Being prepared to stick to someone even if their body was reduced to cold metal was... well. Real.

He chewed the side of his mouth, pounded his fist against his knee, and tried to wrap his head around some kind of decision.