FIC: [Haven] CLOCKWORK, Chapter 13 (Audrey/Duke/Nathan, R)

[roseveare]

13.

...She still didn't remember.

As Audrey lay on the bed, Duke and Nathan were undeniable physical presences either side of her, all of them in each other's space. Nathan was all elegant metal lines against her hips and back, starting to take on warmth from their two living bodies. Duke was a more yielding heat against her front, legs tangled around her raised knee. With them both there, so close, she should remember something. She couldn't help but be disappointed that she did not.

Maybe she'd expected too much. On the other hand, it didn't feel wrong to be taking this on trust, and Duke and Nathan had turned into weird, masculine goo, given the opportunity to finally touch each other and dissolve the tension keeping them apart, and that she couldn't regret. She couldn't claim that the idea to do this hadn't worked.

She sighed and relaxed between them. Duke was warm, and the thrum of Nathan's body ticking over was oddly comforting after a while.

As the minutes passed and she drifted in it -- Duke and Nathan, mostly Duke, murmuring over her head -- she resignedly admitted to herself that with Nathan being physically changed, there could be no kind of sense-memory from him, even as she pressed her face to Duke's chest and the scent of him rolled over her anew, flooding in with it the familiarity of the situation, even if the actual memories were still missing.

With that, Nathan's presence fell into place alongside them, even without his scent and heat. Audrey made a soft noise of relief, because it wasn't memory, but it was rightness. Where before there had only been a... a strained act of faith, the situation resolved into surety in Audrey's mind. They belonged here, like this.

She pressed down tighter, cuddling into the sense of who she was that stemmed from their presence, the three of them together. Nathan's body was hard and cold, but she hugged him anyway, the same as she did Duke.

"You were right," Duke said, his voice very low, very rough, and reverberating in her somewhere deep in her belly, making her want more than they'd decided to do, than was practical or possible or reasonable to do, when they were on a train and had people packed around them like sardines in a can. "This is... I know you. Both of you. It's still faint, and this... the other world is closer, hard to shake. But you guys..." His voice changed again, actually sounding close to choking up. "Cawbrook is clearer, too."

Audrey made a positive noise and shifted, and she could see Nathan better, now, his eyes distant and his form very still, but not with the same blank, shutdown haze as before.

"Man, your body is loud," Duke said, shifting attention away from his emotional confession. He rattled his fingertips against Nathan's chest, hand crawling under his vest and shirt. "Not that I'm complaining. The rhythm actually gets kind of meditative. But you're like having a dozen clocks in the room."

Nathan's mouth turned down, and he removed Duke's hand from inside his shirt, but not from himself -- weaving his metal fingers between Duke's flesh ones, instead.

The gesture was more like the version Audrey had encountered on the outside of the barrier than anything else she'd seen in him since then, and when Duke leaned over and kissed his forehead, crossly dented by the levers that moved his eyebrows, so was that.

"I remember... stubble." Duke rubbed his fingers over Nathan's smooth-painted wooded chin. "Didn't expect that I could miss the thought of beard-burn on my balls..."

"Hah." It seemed to Audrey that she ought to have an equivalent of that memory of scratchy pleasure, but she could not rouse it from the depths of her brain. She sighed and stirred herself, finally. "We should go. We will have to venture out again, unless we intend not to eat tonight."

"And we're just going to act like ourselves?" Nathan said carefully, looking unconvinced.

"We're going to act like who we need to be," Audrey said. "Whoever that is."

"Considering I've earned a reputation for being lousy at cards," Duke said, pulling a face and reaching into his jacket for what was left of their money to pass to Nathan, "you can try your hand with this, if you want."

***

Passengers were just beginning to gather in the dining car as the three of them arrived, and they attracted a few stares and comments. Audrey wore the pared-down dress, but had not got quite so far as to put the sweatpants and T-shirt from the police station back on, however much she'd been tempted. Nathan was interested and stiff and awkward and generally very un-automaton-like. Duke doggedly interacted as equals with them both. The first argument didn't break out until lunch was being served, and the Maitre D' was brought out by the staff to protest Nathan having a seat.

"You know," Duke said crossly, "I paid for three of us, even if technically the automaton didn't need a sleeper. Really that means not only does he get to take up a seat wherever he wants, but you get to serve him a meal as well."

"--That's not necessary," Nathan surged in, a bit snappishly. Audrey thought it more from anxiety than anything else.

"It is, in fact," Duke said. "If you don't want to eat it, I'm pretty sure Audrey will."

"Starved and on the run for two days," she prompted, at Nathan's astonished look, and crossly to the train staff, "Well, if we paid for the food..."

"He's not hanging over my shoulder like some freak show," Duke said testily.

"No, I'm not," Nathan agreed, with a new surge of resentment.

"I mean, how am I supposed to focus on eating while he's doing that? Lock may get off on it, but I don't."

Lock, as it happened, was staring at their performance fixedly from across the room, Butler in place as usual. A lot of people were staring. Nathan's face had developed a locked cast which might be the automaton equivalent of a blush. Or just sheer terror.

"Very well," the Maitre D' said, clipped. "But we will be re-examining the regulations, I assure you, before your next journey."

"Fine by me," Duke said. "I'd rather fly."

The annoyed man gestured for the waitress to get to it and turned on his heel in a hasty exit.

"Miss, I'm sorry for the disturbance," Nathan said to the waitress.

"He's not sorry," Duke grumped. "He's just polite. You people caused the disturbance."

"It's still regretful that there was a disturbance because I was here." Nathan was very intent and recalcitrant, and Duke rolled his eyes and gave up, and let the waitress flounce away. Nathan growled at him in a low voice, "I was hoping to talk them out of spitting in this food, if you intend to eat it."

Duke winced. "Probably no helping that."

If that had happened, they couldn't tell, and Audrey ate the food anyway, including Nathan's, though Duke approached it more dubiously. Audrey had a suspicion that portions in this world were smaller than she was used to, because two meals made for the first time in days she'd felt full.

They were getting covert glances their way every so often. Nathan's fingertips rattled against the table top. He didn't have the distraction of eating.

The promised singer was due to start up in the entertainment car after dinner. Audrey resisted the urge to hide and dragged the men to accompany her there. Nathan was acutely discomforted by the situation. Duke was clearly out to cause trouble in reply for Nathan's discomfort, and that was mostly discomforting Nathan more. But Lock had been looking their way in a fashion Audrey did not like, and she couldn't help but feel they were safer if they stayed among company as long as possible.

"Here." As they were walking into the entertainment carriage, she felt the familiar texture of Nathan's gloved hand against her wrist. A moment later, he'd thrust the wad of notes Duke had given him into her hand. "I drew enough attention at lunch."

Audrey turned her face up to him and offered a sympathetic wince of a smile. Nathan's particular rebelliousness was of the digging-in-and-not-moving kind. In this world, he'd been quietly asserting his humanity for his whole existence. He was not going to barge into a card game and demand to join its human players. Duke was asking too much.

For her, on the other hand...

"No fear, Wuornos," she told him, flipping the wad of notes jauntily in her fingers. "I've got this."

His smile was nervous and he didn't, perhaps, look the most reassured.

"I can behave," she said, giving him a narrow look back. "Come on, let's find a game to join." Mrs Murphy was across the room and lifted her hand in a wave, so Audrey lifted hers back and headed in that direction.

"My dear Miss Audrey," said the large, cheerful man with the cough from the day before. "And your... servitor."

Audrey curled her fingers into the front of Nathan's shirt protectively, shaking her head. "This is Nathan. He's travelling with us," she said, clipping the words. "You don't mind if we -- well, I, since I don't think Nathan will participate -- join the game again? I've got the bank today." She wafted the wad of notes.

"Of course," Mrs Murphy said.

The men looked a little helplessly behind her for Duke, but he had gone straight to the bar and was diligently ignoring everything going on at the card table.

"I - I suppose so," said one fellow in a suit. "But no using the mechanical brain to help out, Miss." He waggled a finger at her.

Audrey raised her eyebrows. "That supposes I'd need his help." She sat down at the table and cracked her knuckles very loudly. "Let's do this."

Everyone in the carriage turned to watch her take her place at the game.

It wasn't that people weren't used to women joining in the cards, Audrey thought with a grim smile that hopefully conveyed just the right touch of belligerent nastiness to everyone watching. But people weren't used to seeing someone of Audrey's social position -- the social position that all the markers of her appearance and the persona they'd established implied -- joining in their activities like an equal.

Duke took a chair to one side with a couple of beers lined up and one in his hand, and smiled beatifically when someone shot a questioning or outraged look his way, all the more happily every time, and did absolutely nothing. Nathan, meanwhile, perched behind Audrey, watching with a sort of gleeful intent that seemed, actually, to have no problem whatsoever to his playing her mechanical shadow.

The evening went better than Audrey thought they had any right to expect. It crossed her mind that had this really been the sort of world it pretended, things might not have gone so well. But presumably these were at least some of them real people with outdated attitudes imposed upon them. Maybe the people within struggled to break out just as Duke and Nathan did.

All the same, Audrey did not allow herself to do much more than hold her own at the cards, figuring she'd better not be too proficient or the goodwill might start to sour.

A certain liberal contingent of the passengers delighted in the discovery that they could have a discursive conversation with Nathan, just like they could any moderately argumentative human being. Even if it was a slightly patronising sort of delight, it had to be better than treating him like furniture.

Duke slouched in his chair exuding a minor level of entertainment with the world and a sense of being just too tired to care anymore. He was going relatively light on the drink, but had one in his hand often enough that it seemed inevitable he wouldn't be completely sharp by now. Perhaps that didn't matter, for him, rogue that he was.

For her part, Audrey wanted to be as sharp as possible if it came to a fight. She was cupping a glass of wine and determinedly making the contents last, hoping the other players wouldn't notice how little she drank. She did want to appear sociable, after all. There was good reason for their determined socialising -- safety lay in numbers.

She had not really supposed that she could stretch the game until morning, when the train's staff would be up and busying to clean the carriages, providing another barrier between themselves and Lock and his killer automaton. The party in the entertainment carriage began to break up around 3AM.

Lock had been there much earlier; watched them with hard, suspicious eyes, and then retreated, leaving a few of his cronies hovering. He'd returned perhaps an hour ago with Butler. Their intention had been rumbled, Audrey guessed. Endgame time.

The staff had closed up the bar hours ago, but allowed patrons to purchase bottles before closing. Most of those were drained and empty by now. The piano had been abandoned by the professional entertainment hours even before that, and the last amateur tinkler on its keys had left not long since, so it stood silent now.

During the evening, the train had been paused on the tracks in the stop that the passengers had been complaining so bitterly about at lunch. It had enabled them to spend the evening's entertainments without being rocked by the insistent rhythm of the wheels. Now, as the evening wore down, there was a rumble again from the engine, and the train whirred and groaned its way back into movement.

The windows were covered by lush, red curtains, to avoid facing the passengers with a constant view of the darkness and their own reflections in the shining glass -- and also, more pointedly, the reflections of other players' cards. Audrey went to peer out through a gap, but could discern no features in the silent, dark countryside, only the indistinct movement of the nearer shadows of trees and bushes bordering the railway line.

She turned as she heard the last table get up to leave, and then there was no-one left in the room except the three of them, with Lock, Butler and the two cronies who'd remained all evening.

Audrey weighed up the latter and judged them to be drunk and tired, but her assessment of Lock and his automaton was less confidence inspiring. Lock looked refreshed; back in his cabin, he'd probably slept.

Duke drew the gun from his ankle holster and filled the carriage with its low, preparatory 'click'. "You fucking bastard--"

"Now, please," Lock began, his voice a sneer. "Not so much an attempt to talk--?" His eyes flew wide as Nathan moved.

Nathan was not armed and didn't need to be, for he had no hesitation in hurling himself across the carriage at Butler, the weighing debate in his eyes turning swiftly to action as he gauged the face-off between Duke and Lock. Audrey understood -- Butler was largely impervious to bullets, as Nathan was, and the only way to keep the power in Duke's hands was for Nathan to take Butler out of the equation.

There was an immense slam of metal as Nathan ploughed into the other automaton, carrying him into the carriage wall with a force that shook them, even noticeably interrupting the rhythm of the train's motion. His hand fixed over the side of Butler's head, and he tried to slam it repeatedly against the wall, presumably working towards a similarly dazing result to the one Duke had achieved with a bullet all that time ago back in the airship. Butler managed to steady himself and clamped hands on Nathan's shoulder joint in return, but Nathan ignored the grip entirely, continuing to focus on Butler's head. An uneasy whining, groaning, locked-grappling ensued between them.

Lock visibly grit his teeth and pulled his eyes away from the spectacle of his reliable protector occupied elsewhere. He dragged his eyes back to Audrey and Duke. "You're going to shoot me without preamble?"

"No, actually." Audrey plopped herself down at a table nearer to Lock but well clear of Duke's line of fire and the automaton battle, her own gun settled in her fingers. "I rather do want to talk. Where's Malcove? This is his 'Trouble', isn't it?" She tried hard to put confidence into her voice and speak as if she already knew the facts, as if her memory was not a gaping void.

"And you'd do anything to keep it in force," Duke said, picking up and running with the same approach. "Why?"

"Why wouldn't I? Lock spluttered, co-operative in his incredulity. "How much greater is this world than the one we came from? Outside I made mere powerless props! Here, I invent reality! From a world that is dull and tired, Woody has brought back the age of invention!"

"Reinvented the age of invention, more like," Audrey said. "Where is he?" She cast an uneasy eye toward Nathan as his shoulder let out a groan and Butler appeared to achieve more purchase. Her head was pounding and she was worried, damn it, because she knew Nathan wasn't invulnerable and Butler was bigger and more solid in the body, which suggested some degree of weight and power advantage.

"Waiting in Heppa," Lock said easily. "I must admit, I hardly expected to see you all the way out here. Especially not after I'd thought you'd been dealt with. And to run into you by chance..."

"'Dealt with'?" she picked up. "So it was your people behind that."

"I should shoot you now," Duke said.

Lock's face scrunched in puzzlement. "'My people'...? I should have imagined it to be a particularly memorable occasion when I pushed you from that airship with my own hand..." His words grew slower as he peered at her. "But you don't remember, do you? That fall... I'd wondered how you’d survived unscathed. How you were so calm at our first meeting again here. You don't remember!" He started laughing.

Audrey felt her face burn. "My memory may be shaken up a little, but I still know I have to deal with you. I still know who my friends are." She focused on Lock's face, trying to burn back through those lost memories. If he was the one responsible for their loss...

One of Lock's cronies moved, diving under a table at the same time as evidently reaching for a gun, for there were shots coming from under the table in the next instant, scoring grazes and splinters from the table top, scoring a slice from Audrey's hand as she pulled back, leaping up. Duke shot the other man, who wasn't fast enough to copy the move and reach safety. He tried to pull the gun back to cover Lock but was forced to dive around to hunker in next to the curved bar counter as a further shot came from the man beneath the table. Audrey backed away, pressing against the windows. There was nowhere safe to go without running across the direct line of fire. Her own gun had been knocked from her hand, and she did not know in which direction it had been sent. Her eyes crawled around, but she couldn't see it.

"So, you like this world," she said, throwing guesses out to the void. "But you, you're just a normal person. Why would you do all that? Why attempt murder? You'd go so far to keep something that's fake? Something fake that's going to cause real problems for Haven? I've been outside the scope of this Trouble. There's a wall around the town, but people are noticing. There were men from a government agency of some kind..."

"You've been outside?" Lock's brow crunched in surprise. "I was -- my foray out here was to investigate that wall. I couldn't get through it. Then again, you did tell me you were immune. So... you've been through to the other side, but no one else can." His quick smile turned into a snicker as his eyes flicked toward Nathan. "I guess we know for a fact that Wuornos isn't immune."

His amusement sparked rage in her. "Nathan's not immune," she agreed. "You can't be proud that you did that to him! People aren't something you can screw around with as you like! We need to put things back how they were. I need you to take us to Malcove."

"I'll take you back. That immunity could have its own useful applications for us. It may have been hasty after all to throw you away... Not so interested in Wuornos and Crocker, sorry. Though I'll admit some curiosity as to what the caterer has to do with all of this." He snorted. "And maybe I can reprogram Wuornos. Give Butler a few days off... Probably I'd have to make a few physical modifications..."

Audrey's brain whited out with fury. Duke made a move to try and shoot Lock despite being otherwise engaged. Nathan was fortunately too busy with Butler to notice. "I hope that Butler isn't a real person in there," Audrey grit. "Or I am throwing the fucking book at you when we're back in a world where my police badge means something."

Lock's mouth twisted and he looked pensive. "Do you know, I actually don't know. That would be weird. But I think you can relax your little blonde head. As for Wuornos, probably it'd be too much effort to repair him anyway, once Butler's done."

The screeching that accompanied the statement was Nathan's shoulder finally giving way under the force Butler was applying. His shirt was already torn. Nathan moved the joint, glancing at the damage, and appeared to lock it with the arm half raised, compensating. But his grip had been weakened and Butler had broken the status quo of the grapple they'd been set into from the beginning. Nathan, shoved back, skidded heavily with both feet braced wide, just catching himself before he hit the wall.

Duke was swiftly reloading and Audrey hoped that the automaton clash was distracting enough that Lock and his remaining man hadn't noticed.

Despite his damaged shoulder and the unperturbed state of the enemy after his efforts so far, Nathan waded back in. This time, the automata traded blows that rang around the carriage. Metal screeched under stress as they pounded each other across the limited space in turn, splintering furniture with no thought for where it fell. Nathan had definitely been holding back in the fight back aboard the airship, but he had no such qualms against the larger automaton.

The fight had split Audrey and Lock to separate sides of the carriage. "He seems to be doing okay to me!" Audrey shouted to the villain.

Lock tipped his head.

Duke squashed himself flat against the side of the counter and looked scared.

Nathan hurled a table at Butler, bouncing it off his head and knocking him down. He turned, and instead of pressing his advantage on the other automaton, took the bought seconds to go after Lock and his crony. He wrenched away the table that the unfortunate henchman was using for cover, and purely by accident clipped his head with one of the formerly bolted-down legs on the way. The fellow sprawled, dazed.

Duke broke cover and ran for the downed Butler. Aiming to make good the exchange, he set the reloaded gun into the socket of the automaton's eye.

"Don't!" Audrey cried out. "We don't know for sure that he's not real, too!"

Duke amended his aim and shot Butler in the forehead, keeping him down a few seconds longer. "What the fuck do we do with him, then? I can't hold him any other way, even Nathan can't hold him!"

Nathan had kicked the gun from the fallen henchman's hand and was reaching for Lock's throat. Lock yelped and tried to twist away. He actually had enough bulk to convincingly shift Nathan when his hands shoved at the heavy clockwork body.

"If we can get him off the train...!" Audrey said, and spun to rip the curtains from the nearest window. She raced to help Duke by throwing the loop of cloth around Butler's shoulders as the automaton was lurching up. Duke shot him again, but the bullet just glanced off, and Audrey made a sound of pain as the ricochet seared the side of her head.

"You--" Duke's face twisted in horror. "Oh my God, are you all right?"

She could feel blood in her hair, and her consciousness reeled for a moment. But if it had penetrated or cracked her skull, surely she'd feel more. "I -- I think so. Butler--" She leaned on a table clutching her head, while Duke took over with the curtain, trying to wrap it to restrain Butler's arms. Audrey definitely didn't want to fall -- the floor was a sea of broken glass from the bottles and glasses knocked over in the fight.

Duke broke an intact one over Butler's head rather than risk another bullet, averting his face as he sent broken glass everywhere instead. But he could not keep Butler down alone, and as the automaton grabbed Duke hard enough to make him cry out, Nathan was forced to abandon Lock and re-engage Butler.

"Get off him," he choked with stuttery rage as he wrenched Butler's arms from Duke.

"Lock--" Audrey gasped. If Nathan wasn't, then Duke or herself needed to deal with him. Nathan had shoved him aside hard enough to daze him, but he was trying to reach under furniture to retrieve her own dropped gun, working around the broken glass. Audrey clawed her way toward him, leaning on tables, narrowly avoiding the fighting automata. She fell on her knees, trying to ignore the glass still on the floor because if she didn't it was going to be too late. Their hands landed on the gun at the same time. Audrey jabbed her fingers at Lock’s eyes. Wasn't sure if she missed because he moved or because she was still dizzy. She gripped the gun hard and got her knee on top of the handle, using her body weight to at least keep it from Lock, even if not claim it herself.

The door of the carriage opened and a startled exclamation ripped the air. Two of the staff, one a guard and another a waiter in night attire, stood gaping there.

Nathan swung up from a temporarily downed Butler, his damaged shoulder sparking as he moved, gears grinding inside him, and he held out his Heppa police badge, the leather denting between the force of his fingers. "Get out and stay out, and keep anyone else out!" he barked.

Audrey thought furiously... She hadn't twigged, perhaps, but they'd been travelling at least some of the night, and she wasn't sure just whereabouts that scheduled stop had been. Was it possible they were back in Heppa jurisdiction now? That Nathan was a legal person and a lawman again, someone with actual power and influence? Or was he bluffing? Either way, the train staff's eyes widened further as they saw the badge and they lurched back out of the carriage and drew shut the doors.

Then again, they could hardly be blamed for having that reaction anyway. Butler grabbed Nathan before he'd fully turned back around and pulled him down.

There was an almighty smash as Duke hurled the already pulled-up table into the window Audrey had stripped the curtains from. "Nathan!" he yelled. "We need to pitch the Terminator off the train!"

An excellent plan, Audrey agreed, and one much easier said than implemented.

"You won't win," Lock puffed in her ear. "Whole world arrayed against you... Woody holds the stage..." His face was red and sweating from his exertions.

"How come... you remembered?" Audrey gasped. "It’s Woody's... Malcove's... Trouble, right? You should’ve had… no idea… who I am! Who Nathan is… If I'm immune... it should be me and Malcove, surely? Are you... the one who's really Troubled, here?" She stared up at him.

He blinked. "We all remember the world Before. That place of hellish tedium... The four of us were going to make our glorious plans reality until Wuornos, the oppressor, shut us down! But in our act of defiance, we made our own reality! Why should we not remember our own history?"

He was making a dramatic meal of it and then some, Audrey thought. "No, no, you wouldn't," she said positively, more to herself than him. She knew it, the surety flooding into her, instinctive and sudden. With that, and this close to Lock, the memory returned to her in a rush. His face had been this close to her before, just as red and strained, but leering... There'd been sky beneath them, reeling out forever. Behind Lock, above them, three other faces were arrayed. She saw them as clearly as the airship, all so proud of what they had done...

You're the only one who knows this isn't how the world should be. Kill you, and we get to keep it forever. The voice rang through the pain in her head... that much was not in the memory; that pain was now.

It wasn't Lock's voice.

Malcove.

But it had been Lock who did the dirty work.

She felt again his hands on her as she grappled with him; her heels skittering on the edge of the deck; his grip on her neck. "Don't do this!" The terror as she pitched over the side of the airship, out into the blue.

She’d landed... it felt like she had landed on clouds for an instant, until she realised it was the expansive off-white airbag of another airship passing below. She'd tried to keep her balance atop the billowing, shifting stuff as it moved onward, coming in toward one of the ground-based ports on the outskirts of Heppa. But as it made the final manoeuvres, she found herself slipping off the side, the airbag offering no handholds for her clawing hands...

She'd awoken on the pavement, memory-less, in clothes that weren't anything like what people were wearing around her. She was accosted by leering strangers almost the instant she'd gained her feet. They'd regretted it, and she'd gained clothes and money, but not any help... When the police had come, they'd tried to arrest her.

The police had been sent by Malcove in case she'd survived. Malcove who controlled... everything...

But maybe the inspiration and power had never been his alone.

"I think it's all of you," she hissed, mustering strength from out of the memories' confusion. "Which makes me wonder what taking you out of the equation will mean for everyone."

The jab she sent at the juncture of his arm and neck make him choke as his nerves went numb, and she managed to wrest the gun from him. She moved without thought, almost in a daze, setting the weapon to the underside of his jaw as his eyes flew wide and his lips started to shape a "No..!"

Audrey hesitated.

The fleeting memory burst back into her brain, of his hand on her neck, his arm around her waist. His hand fixed over her wrist in the now, fingers digging into bruises left by Nathan, trying to force her hand away, successfully pushing it back a few inches. Their previous encounter rushed through her like a nightmare, as he picked her up and slung her over the airship's side, and she tightened her fingers like there was no other possible response.

Lock jerked and slumped and Audrey wrenched back, slipping onto broken glass in her haste to avoid his head landing in her lap. His head adorned with the new red bloom in the centre of his forehead.

She heard and felt nothing but her pounding heart, even though she knew, distantly, that she was cut.

There was an exclamation from Duke. Audrey turned her head, moving like an automaton herself, and saw that Butler had suddenly gone unresisting between Duke and Nathan. They stopped trying to wrest the automaton toward the window, and looked at each other as Butler clanked into a relaxed position and didn't move.

"Hey..." Duke poked Butler. "Are you... alive?"

"I am awaiting new instructions," Butler said, voice lacklustre.

"No point carrying out Lock's now," Nathan said slowly. "You should probably start helping the train staff by tidying up this mess." He disengaged his grip on Butler and cast a concerned look at Audrey but didn't speak to her, yet.

"Uh, yeah." Duke's glance at Nathan asked, seriously?, but he reluctantly disengaged, too, and said aloud, "Yeah... Butler... what he says is probably best."

Lock's remaining man scrambled up dazedly and tried to make a run for the door, but Nathan caught him in a few strides, and cuffed him efficiently. Though Nathan's shoulder wasn't moving well... There'd be more repair work to do.

Audrey wondered how much time they had until the train drew into Heppa.

She moved away from the man she'd killed. Her memories, sluggish and jumbled, were still present enough to tell her that he wasn't the first person she'd killed.

Duke reached her first, with Nathan occupied. He extended a hand down to her. "Are you all right?"

Audrey pulled on his hand for the leverage to hurl herself into his arms and hold onto him tight. "Oh, my God, Duke... I remember..." She kissed him, hard and full, trying to make up for the days of not remembering, not trusting and not loving. She felt his relief through the embrace, his body relaxing and untightening with her, holding her far more naturally.

"So fucking relieved," he groaned, pressing his face into her hair. "...Um." He pulled back. He was blinking, a little. "I uh, don't remember, but at the same time, I kind of do. More than before."

"Mine's not completely back, yet, either," Nathan said, attaching Lock's man to a safety rail and leaving him. "But I have a lot of dim impressions, and I-- The things we found out before, outside in that other place, they're a lot easier, too."

"I always knew I loved you," Duke said to Audrey. "From the first moment in that Heppa port bar, even though I didn't know what it meant." He cast an apologetic eye to Nathan. "Not so much, sorry. I guess there were… too many other complicating factors." He held out a hand to Nathan, nonetheless, beckoning him in.

"You knew you hated me right from the start? Almost supernaturally so," Nathan suggested, with a humour too subtle for any mere machine, as he nervously held himself back from the embrace.

Audrey sighed and pulled him in. Watched Duke curl an arm around his waist and rest a hand on his ass. "I think Lock was a part of it," she said. "There are -- were -- four of them. Maybe they're all controlling a portion... This change to the world is so vast, so detailed... If Lock was the ideas and design man, his death probably leaves a big hole. Maybe things will start to unravel now. If Lock's the one who was ready to kill to keep this going, maybe the others will be... easier? We need to finish this either way. We have to get back to Heppa and confront Malcove."

Nathan nodded. Audrey touched his face, smiling, feeling tears in her eyes as she wished he were flesh. But he closed his eyes and relaxed into her touch nonetheless, just as he always did. "Audrey..."

There was rustling and clanking from the other side of the carriage as Butler restored a few tables to their more-or-less correct position and started scraping up glass from the floor with his hands. That was slightly surreal. Audrey shook her head.

"I think he really is just a machine," Nathan said, a bit hopefully. "A creation of this world. But now, there's certainly no need to kill him."

It did not escape her that while Nathan used the word machine, he also still used the word kill.

Wow, she thought. This world... it really had created whole alternate histories for both of them. Whole other lives. This was going to be tricky, and kind of interesting, now that she had her own memories back.

"Okay," Audrey said. She rubbed her aching head. The ache was starting to subside, except for the line of pain around the bullet ricochet. "Somehow we're going to have to explain all of this to the train staff."

"You both need some TLC." Duke touched her hair, close to the wound. Audrey wasn't sure if it was the head wound or the proximity of Lock -- and the recall of that traumatic near-death experience -- or both that had brought her memories cascading back, in the end. "I need to get this cleaned and looked at."

"Not quite yet." Nathan shuffled apologetically and they both looked at him. "If we wait just ten minutes before we open that door, we'll have passed into Heppa jurisdiction for real." He made an uncomfortable gesture that was not quite life-like, not wholly machine. "Then I'll actually be able to claim control over this situation."