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

[roseveare]

Epilogue

Audrey blinked and found herself in the living room of somebody else's home, which was definitely not a mansion, still wearing a floofy corset dress. The old woman in the armchair gave a little start and pointed at her and stuttered, and a similarly elderly man stumbled in through the door half shouting, "Doris?!" He moved at a fairly sharp pace considering his age.

Audrey lifted her hands. "I'm really sorry," she said, shouting over the volume of the TV behind her. "It's a... Haven thing. I'll go now."

"Oh," the woman said, and flailed the remote like a weapon. "Well, hurry up and get out of the way of my soap."

"I'll show you the door," the man said, very dourly. "You're not going to be appearing in this house again, are you?"

Their sullen suspicion but general acceptance of the situation was sort of comforting in its whole homey, reassuring Haven-ness.

"No," Audrey said. "This is absolutely a one-off. I'm really sorry, again. Enjoy your soap."

As soon as she got outside, she retrieved her phone from the dress -- cursing because after four days or more it was running low on charge -- and called up Nathan. Her heart beat a little wildly as she waited for him to answer. There'd been so much potential for damage... All the hits he'd taken as a machine, let alone the fact he'd been a machine... They hadn't even had chance to evaluate the effects of Cooley's attacks, or ensure the secure replacement of Nathan's eye... Though she reluctantly supposed that was less crucial than other repercussions, even if it had been more visually and viscerally alarming.

The engaged tone caught her off guard, but she quickly decided that wherever Duke had ended up, he must have had the same instant panic about Nathan and been able to get to a phone quicker. Perhaps they had been restored to themselves exactly as they were when they were first transformed, including where they'd physically been. Nathan was alright, she told herself. Duke was alright. She tried again, and this time Nathan answered almost at once. "Audrey. Are you--?"

"Me first," she said. "Nathan. Are you okay?"

There was a brief silence. "I feel... really strange. Although, perhaps that's not the right word. I remember being made of metal."

Audrey let out a long, shaky breath because at least that meant that he was not made of metal any more. And he was here, and talking to her, and sounded okay, which didn't necessarily mean that there weren't repercussions, because his own body was a mystery to him, but there was nothing drastic and immediate and they could explore the rest later. "But you're not now," she asserted, just to be sure.

"No, I'm me again. But are you--?"

"Fine," she said, casting a glance back at the house she'd appeared in and the suspicious old couple watching her intently as she stepped out of the gate and made a show of closing it before she turned her attention back to the phone. "Where are you?"

The night-time view of Haven from the road was over the same -- more or less -- vista that she had seen from the manor house gardens. Even as Nathan answered, she realised that she had just... stayed where she was, while the Trouble reworked the world around her. Reworked the rest of them as it could not do her. "In my office. Everything here looks normal." Nathan paused. "The computer says it's the 17th of October. Three days to the Hunter."

Audrey sighed. "There's time... That doesn't matter right now. What about Duke?"

"He's fine, too. He's coming here. Where are you? I thought you'd be here, with me." The tension in his voice was considerable, even though she hadn't been damaged or deformed nearly so much by their recent experiences.

"I'm pretty much still right where Malcove's HQ was," she admitted, "and I'm going to need a lift. But I'll call Duke. Nathan, don't worry about me. We need to find Malcove and the others, and make sure this isn't going to reverse itself if they start having regrets. We'll come to you at the police station. Okay?" She said it firmly, intending that to end the call.

"Audrey," Nathan said quickly. "Wait."

Something in his tone made her pause after all. It wasn't a bad something, she didn't think, just a something that he was bursting to tell her. So she waited.

"Duke," he said, a laugh and sudden lightness and relief filling his voice as he spoke. "He called from the marina, Audrey. From the Cape Rouge."

***

A great deal of things had been returned to how they were -- how they should be -- as if they'd never been changed at all.

Duke's relief that his boat was included in that tally was considerably outmatched by the fact Nathan was. He'd never been so glad to see Nathan's stony, pensive face as he was in the moment he charged into the police station on Audrey's heels and found Nate stalking back and forth in his office. "Oh, you asshole," he said fondly, and embraced Nathan with an enthusiasm that made the other man squirm and yelp, with the audience of subordinates laughing on through the windows of his office. Audrey slipped a hand around them both to more quietly join in. On the way over, Audrey had seemed subdued, but she seemed okay and, well, Audrey had been a bit subdued for the last week or two of regular time already, with the clock ticking.

That was something Duke remembered much better now. The immediacy of his own life, which he remembered seeming so remote and far away from the other side, was restored. The other life was fading memories.

He remembered thinking that would hurt, but right now it didn't.

Nathan choked finally, "Are you done?" He was kind of doing that thing where he pretended he hadn't relished every moment of the hug. His staff were nodding or shaking heads and grinning and -- very quickly going back to work, as Nathan took a step closer to the glass and cast his glower outwards, hands gravitating to his hips. A couple of heads risked another peek anyway, probably drawn to take that risk by the sight of Audrey in a corset.

Nathan turned around again slowly, his face oddly set. "They don't remember. They don't even know anything happened."

"Yeah," Duke said. "But my boat doesn't remember either. I'm pretty glad about that."

Nathan gave him a grim nod, like metal plates in place of skin and a whole body clockwork tick in place of a heartbeat were minor inconveniences. "I'm glad about the Rouge," he said awkwardly. "I'd hate for you to lose your home."

Duke detected guilt in there, but didn't know why; maybe it was a clockwork throwback. He gestured with both hands and vague frustration and willed Nathan to get it. "It doesn't matter about the boat. Not next to you. My home is the two of you."

The whole thing about the boat was, always had been, that he could light out of there at any time, set sail and be gone, leave Haven and everyone in it behind him. That had become something he'd no intention of doing any time soon, and nothing could have made him realise it quite so much as a return to those days of impermanence.

It remained a realisation tainted by the fact that Audrey might leave.

She said, "Everything got put back the same as it was. Reset. Except me."

"Because Troubles don't work on you," Nathan said gently. "So... your head?"

"Still a mess," she said wryly. "And I know, Nathan, I am going to call the hospital, now that I can call them, but first let's make sure everything is going to be okay with Haven."

"Everything got put back the same except time," Duke corrected heavily, "We lost nearly a week."

If Audrey went, that still left Nathan. Duke fixed his eyes on Nathan and wondered if, without her, they could hold together. Would losing her bind or break them?

He didn't know, but it wasn't like he'd ever been lucky.

"Yeah," Audrey huffed, clearly not appreciative of the reminder. "But we still have some time. Right now, all I want is to check on Malcove and make sure that this return to normality sticks."

"It's Haven," Nathan said. "Anything resembling 'normality' is only going to be a temporary blip."

***

Malcove, Lillian and Cooley were in the Gull, in costume, arranged around a table set with boards and dice. A few other games shared the corner, tonight.

It was a little known fact that Garland Wuornos had liked war campaign games and, in a memorable few years when Nathan was around thirteen and fourteen, had introduced them to the Teagues. So Nathan did, in fact, know the processes of what they were doing quite well, much to his childhood's detriment.

It was a shock to see them like this, after the threat they had represented.

It was particularly a shock to see them with Lock.

"Everything got reset," Audrey mouthed, as Nathan and Duke both turned their heads to her uneasily.

Malcove saw them standing there by the counter and raised his chin, showing an aggressive, sullen jawline. "Oh, look there, it's Chief Wuornos. Busy chasing off anything that might bring excitement to this town?"

"Evening, Woody," Nathan said, and stared at him intently, but the attention only made him look more pissed.

"Fucking law," he heard Lock mutter, and only Lillian looked conflicted, unhappily eying Duke standing with the two cops.

"So that's it?" muttered Duke. "They get away with it? The Trouble gets overwritten and everything trundles on, and we forget that they tried to kill you, both of you, and damn near succeeded?"

Audrey tipped a shoulder, teeth nipping visibly at her lower lip. "I don't see what choice we have. After all, the trade-off we get is that no-one dies." Her mouth spread into the thin line of a frown as she looked at Lock, whose murder attempt had to haunt her... The damage it had done, Nathan was well aware, had yet to reveal its whole toll. Audrey could have a permanent injury, a loss to memory or brain function on top of the memory issues she'd started out with. "I'm more immediately worried about how we avoid a repeat cycle if the lesson wasn't learned."

Duke sighed and nodded. "If you can't remember your mistakes to learn from them..." For some reason, he shifted his gaze to Nathan.

...While Audrey promptly followed up with, "If you gave them something. Scope for a smaller event."

"Good for my business, too," Duke said.

Nathan looked at his hands, which were no longer metal. Lifting the arms he could still not feel, the movement reminded him he had the thread of body awareness that movement gave him back again, just like he had scent and taste and the other things which made life living.

Being made of clockwork had been a dehumanising experience, and he wasn't looking to pay any favours to the people who'd dragged him through that. After what they'd done to him, to Audrey, and almost costing Duke the Rouge... what his lovers were suggesting was repellent to him. "You're not serious? A minute ago, you were bemoaning that they'd go unpunished, and now you want me to reward them?"

"The greater good, man," Duke said, slapping his shoulder and then squeezing it.

"They weren't themselves," Audrey reminded him. "It would more reliably stabilize Haven and their... Malcove's Trouble."

"...Fine," Nathan bit off, and strode over to the table, his feet banging like hammers on Duke's polished board floors. He probably didn't manage to sound very gracious about it as he rapped, "Malcove? You want to resubmit that paperwork correctly and with the intent to back it up, and we can re-think arrangements for something in the spring."

He curled his hand into a fist, faced with Malcove's staggered gaping. Lock looked caught off guard and... harmless, despite his belligerence a moment before. Nathan was reminded that he hadn't seen the reality of the rest of these people, not really, even if Malcove just seemed to him to have acted like Malcove all the way through. He flexed his fist, to give himself a sense of the coiled violence in his hand, and thought about how he'd dearly love to plant it in Malcove's face. For Audrey, Haven, and for his own humiliations. Instead, he granted favours the man decidedly didn't deserve. For Audrey, and for Haven.

For himself, he'd see about finding some way to throw a spanner in the works of anything ever happening in the spring, and if the Troubles were still around, well, he'd see if they could find some other way to deal with that.

He turned on his heel and left them with the offering of hope. Duke stuck like a clam to his side a moment later, hand on his shoulder returning, then sliding down to his waist, then his butt.

"Well done, man," Duke said. "I know that sucked for you."

Audrey was lagging behind them, casting Malcove's group a last pensive look. Nathan thought sourly that most of the consequences would be on... on her head. They would have to talk to the hospital tomorrow. Find out those results... Nathan heard her steps quicken, and she joined them. Then the three of them were out of the Gull, walking over the parking lot.

"Why do you suppose we still remember, if they don't?" Nathan asked, turning as the question occurred to him. It hadn't been what he'd intended to say. "Because we were torn out of the Trouble while it was in full force? Because we were us in there, already, near the end?"

"Who knows?" Duke shrugged. "Just be glad you're flesh and blood again. Though I'm not going to run out of jokes about the whole robot deal for a long, long time..." He cast a sideways glance, smirked and sniggered. "You always were a hardass."

Nathan rolled his eyes.

"Never mind," Audrey said, attempting a smile. "Well... Now we all match, in any case, with memories in our heads of someone else's lives." She lifted her chin. "We fixed Haven and we still have three days left to fix me. That's a win."

But her smile didn't reach her eyes.

***

Three days later they ended another equally fraught day standing on an empty hillside, watching a meteorite shower harmlessly speckling the sky with bright streaks.

The hillside was empty, at least of the Barn. Its human population was fairly crowded.

Slowly the Guard and their guns peeled off, leaving Vince to field Nathan and Duke's accusing and betrayed stares... as they all stiltedly tried to figure out, in the aftermath of all the day's shocks, what you did when your creepy supernatural Barn didn't show up on its advertised schedule.

"Maybe she's pregnant again?" Vince cast his gaze between Duke and Nathan, then fumbled a bit at the presumption and Audrey's heated glare, shuffling his feet. "Well, then. I suppose that's another year..." He walked away slowly, pausing every so often to turn and look back, then look up the darkening hillside as though still expecting... something.

"I'm not," Audrey said loudly. "I'm not pregnant."

"I'm not breathing a sigh of relief," Duke said, catching himself quickly. "Or-- hey, Nathan reacted exactly the same."

Nathan glowered at him.

"It's not a baby," Audrey said again, forcefully. "I think it's me. They said... from the scan results, they said large areas of my brain were damaged. Remember how they were surprised that I remembered so much as I do? But what if... I felt something change. I know I'm not the same as I was. What if I can't do it any more, the thing that the Barn wants from me? Can't make Troubles go away, like I used to. What if she's dead inside my head now, the original me who could do those things, whoever she might have been?"

They stood and regarded the glittering vista of the falling sky in silence.

None of them had an answer.

THE END