FIC: [Haven] Body Parts - Nathan, Duke, R Rated

[roseveare]

There are probably people who aren't going to forgive me for this one.

TITLE: Body Parts
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: R/Mature for themes and violence.
LENGTH: 14,000 words
SUMMARY: Duke and Nathan are taken prisoner together and it will require extraordinary trust for either of them to emerge intact.
NOTES: Set after 3.5.
WARNINGS: Torture, mutilation.
THANKS: To Kattahj for beta-reading!
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, no profit, yadda, yadda, yadda.


Body Parts

Duke considered it an unspoken rule that members of the so-called Guard were not welcome in his bar. He'd taken to small intimations of hostility and steely glares. Yet it seemed his message was not being picked up; in fact, he'd only been seeing that damn tattoo frequenting the Gull more often.

They were watching him. Either it was just paranoia, whispering in the back of his mind, or they were working on an assassination plot. Then again, the killer in Vanessa's vision really could have been Nathan, with the way they were going lately. It was also possible he shouldn't keep glowering at the Guard so fiercely, since they didn't know about the vision. They would just think he hated them because they represented the Troubled, and would take that as indication he meant to follow in his father's murderous footsteps.

But damn it, he was not even thinking about making nice with that brand.

Today's unwelcome hanger-on was a surly, balding type with muscular inked arms that would probably fit very nicely into the gloomy vision of death. Duke considered that he'd kept his cool extremely well, serving him his coffee and eggs while half expecting that tattooed arm to raise and blow his face off.

It was funny how they'd started being obvious ever since Vince spilled the beans. Downright funny. Whatever else it meant, Vince had his finger on the pulse of this town, and the flow of information went both ways.

Duke turned to Audrey Parker, one of the few people to whom he could state, "I am being stalked by creepy harbingers of death," who would both know what he was talking about and that he hadn't gone insane. He added, plaintively, "Can't you arrest them for that?"

She glanced over at the murderer-in-waiting. It was rent day and her coffee maker was bust. He got the impression she felt the world had conspired to force her to be there.

"You run a public establishment," she pointed out. "If this was not a bar and he was sipping coffee and eating eggs on your front lawn, you might have a case. But even if you did, for God's sake it's seven o'clock and you'd still be asking for an arrest before morning coffee. Not happening, Duke."

Duke said, "That sucks and you are no help."

"You're welcome." She toasted him ironically with her cup and returned to reading the previous day's Haven Herald.

"I say he is eating those eggs in an evil, stalkerish fashion."

"Yup. Sure-fire way to tell a hardened criminal." She wasn't even looking up.

"Audrey Parker. World to Audrey Parker." He waved a hand in front of her.

"Coffee. Morning. Headache... Sorry." The last was added as a bleary afterthought.

Right. "Where's the taller and dare-I-say-it even crankier one?"

"...Elsewhere." She looked up finally and he saw how harried she looked, with red around her eyes that oughtn't be there. He politely pretended not to notice. This was a thing. Nathan and Audrey weren't fighting, as such, but they were definitely on the outs so far as their creepy-mind-twin police partnership went. That was... whoa. She really had taken a swipe at both of them with the stunt over Harry Nix. Now Nathan was off doing his own thing, and who really knew what that was? It was a relief, however, that Nathan wasn't around. He was being a serious dick about the secret Crocker family Trouble.

For that matter, Audrey deserved a few bad nights. Sure, she was Duke's friend and he'd already started to forgive her and knew he'd get there all the way in time, but a week later he couldn't pretend he wasn't still feeling sore about the police-sanctioned murder.

The tattooed man was watching them.

"...Think if I put that symbol on the door with a cross through it, it sends out the wrong signals?"

"I think the Rev. would be giggling in his grave."

"In this town, not too difficult to see that happening literally. Better not then."

She snorted softly and maybe crawled a little bit further towards humanity and wakefulness. "...Besides, you know who else it would exclude."

"Yeah." His turn to snort. "You know how much Nathan's been in here lately. Can't leave the place alone."

"He'll come around."

Duke sighed and owned, with an attempt to keep his tone light, "It gets to a given number of years and saying that just stops working any more."

Audrey caught his hand with her fingers, pressing it to the counter. "No. Duke, nobody expected this. He's still shocked by it all, I think, and I'm... I know I'm not helping. I can't see how I can do anything but what I'm doing, but I know... Give him time. He's Troubled, and finding out you're supposed to be some kind of... natural predator... I guess cuts close to home."

He smiled wryly at their hands, then pushed in closer to her. "I'd never go after Nathan. And if he thinks that, or you think that..."

"You know I don't think that." Audrey Parker didn't back off, of course. Just got right back in his face and glowered at him. It occurred to him she really hadn't had enough coffee yet for this conversation not to be potentially dangerous. "I don't even think he thinks that, really. At least, it always seems to be the rest of your potential victim pool he's worrying about. Sorry."

Duke judiciously broke away and made a brief detour to give her a top-up on her coffee, for the sake of both their health.

"In the meantime," he said, after a few minutes to allow further sipping and ingestion, "the Guard. The tattoo."

"He's not going to kill you, either," Audrey promised, a glint in her eye. "But, sorry, he'll have to explain all of the ins and outs of that one to you, because whatever game he is playing, it's of his own devising." She turned around the open paper on an article about the serial killer and waited for him with her face heavy. Duke didn't see it at first; then he looked closer at the photo Dave had taken of the police and public clustered at the scene. Nathan -- he was caught mid-stride with the back of his head to the camera, but with that build, he wasn't easy to mistake -- had his shirt sleeve rolled to the elbow and half the tattoo clearly visible in shot. Duke's breath caught.

"I wonder whose game this is?" Audrey posed. "I can't believe it's pure accident. Did Nathan prompt this to ingratiate himself with those people, or are the Teagues stirring the tensions in this town for some other reason?"

Lately, Nathan was wearing his sleeve rolled up a lot for a guy to whom it made absolutely no difference in terms of personal comfort. Duke planted his hand over his face, gouging hard at his forehead with his fingertips. Damn Nathan. Sitting atop this powder-keg of a town and playing with matches. "Jesus."

"He's still going to those meetings." Audrey took her paper back. She sounded bitter. "I pushed him to take a side. Well, he's taken one."

"He's a public figure," Duke said, keeping his voice low, and then rethought his own assertion. "Do you think he actually knows that?"

"Honestly? I doubt it. I said he had to choose which side he was on. I didn't say wave a flag and emblazon it on his goddamn arm." She folded up the paper, swigged the rest of her coffee, and stood up.

Duke didn't say it, but obviously Audrey didn't know Nathan so well as he did, because he knew that Nate would've taken those two things as the same thing; you weren't choosing a side at all unless you announced your colours. Her fault, then.

"Tell your block-headed partner I said hi."

"No offence, but I probably won't." She swung her jacket over her shoulders. It was gloomy, grey and lightly drizzling outside. "I'll see you later, no new disasters for the day intervening."

"Later." He scooped up her used cup and watched her small, hunched shoulders and the back of her blonde head disappear at a sharp pace out the door.

***

It was a slow day. He'd not planned to be in the Gull, but he was down a few staff. One had been struck by a falling metal object the other week and had a broken arm, and another had been picked off by food poisoning, though whether that was Trouble related or hangover related Duke wasn't sure.

His Guard shadow disappeared mid afternoon and gradually the place cleared of all but a few stragglers. There'd be more punters in later, but he wouldn't be around for that. He'd managed to persuade Janine to come in and spell him, and fully intended to spend his evening doing something more... else.

By the time he left, the Gull was starting to fill up again, promising happy profit margins. He weaved through the bustle, sketching a wave to Janine, then stepped out onto the decking -- where someone grabbed his elbow and drew him aside into the shadows.

That almost got them a straight-arm in the face, but it wasn't quite that kind of grip. He looked for the tattoo, but the man was wearing long sleeves and a padded jacket. Bright yellow and dark blue with orange trim. Real subtle for surveillance duty. Duke took in dark hair, a tidy, short-trimmed beard and sideburns on a medium-set man a few inches shorter than himself. "What the h--"

"Duke Crocker." He didn't wait for confirmation. "You'll want to come with me. We picked up something you might be interested in."

"Really?" Duke said. "And what might that be? Fresh Atlantic salmon? Perhaps a cut price on some German import beer?" Eliciting only the guy's confusion, he tipped his head back towards the bar and restaurant. Then he rolled his eyes. "...No. No, this is something 'interesting' that is going to piss me the hell off. So, me? I'm saying come back if you get your hands on the beer."

"Fine," Bad Jacket said. "I guess you'll find out same time everyone else does, when the body washes up tomorrow."

Oh. Oh, he did not like the sound of that. "Body?"

"You're not interested, remember?"

"I didn't say that." Fuck. They were going to kill someone? If that was the case, what choice did he have? Whatever was going on, how else was he going to find out? He had superhuman strength and reflexes if he could only get any of the bastards to bleed, so... might as well do this, right? Save a life. His good deed for the day, and hopefully more ammunition to wave at Nathan and Audrey in his defence. "You want me to come with you. Okay. Where?"

"I can't tell you that," Bad Jacket said. "We don't know if we can trust you yet." Which seemed strange, because he would have thought the Guard almost certainly wouldn't even want to try. Natural predator, right? The whole lot of them should be as twitchy and paranoid about him as Nathan. But this guy wasn't paranoid, he was tense and cagey.

Duke was led to a car and motioned into the back. A small bundle of black cloth lay next to him on the seat, and when Bad Jacket started the engine, he said, "Put it on."

Duke picked up the long, thin strip. "Blindfold? You've got to be kidding. I thought you wanted my co-operation."

"I thought you wanted to find out who we're going to kill."

"...All right." He tied it around his head. Five minutes later, he tugged it up to his forehead and played at waiting to see how long the asshole driving took to notice. He'd already been whiling the time away playing the 'sense your journey with feel and sound' game from so many adventure novels, and in a place as small as Haven, it was seriously not difficult. He was pretty much where he'd thought he was.

Bad Jacket, just turning off the main road into a driveway, took a look in the rear-view mirror and cursed.

"Did you really think that was going to work?" Duke asked. "Look, I know where we are. I grew up in this seriously twisted little town. This does not work." He took the thing off his head and tossed it back on the seat. "I knew from the smell when we'd left the sea behind and struck inland, and I knew from the twists and turns when we were up past Renson's Cove, and really, once you're past there, there's not many other places to be. So let's quit playing the spy games."

Bad Jacket very irritably pulled into a gravelled drive and stopped the car. "Fine. We don't need this to be all that secret. The Rev. always said we'd be able to trust you in time."

The Rev? Oh, shit. That didn't just change the rules, it changed the whole game he'd thought they were playing.

"The... Rev. really said that?" Which would be funny, considering how Reverend Driscoll had never trusted him enough to tell him a damn thing when the old goat was alive. Just left him a pile of secrets and crap and vague enmities to figure out on his own. Like dad, in fact, so maybe it made sense they would have gotten along.

Bad Jacket grunted, still pissed, and got out of the car. Duke followed, cautious and watchful. While he wasn't under any threat for his life from the Rev's people, he still didn't like them, didn't trust them, and knew a whole bunch of people he did like whose lives they posed a threat to.

The house was moderately sized and isolated by the generous patch of land surrounding it. There was a garage/workshop extension around the back, and that was where Bad Jacket led him. Rounding the side of the house, they passed a kitchen window where, surreally, a woman with a long blonde ponytail smiled and waved at them from the sink. There were no windows on the wall facing the garage and workshop. Duke wondered if the woman and any other family who were there knew just what was going on.

He would like to know just what was going on. All his this-is-serious-shit spider senses were itching as he waited for Bad Jacket to unlock the workshop. Which raised an interesting question: did he have some kind of danger-sense with the rest of his superhero package?

The key turned in the lock and the door was opened. Tense, muscles ready, Duke stuck his head into the noose. Alright, it was a workshop. Work tables, tools, guy sat at table eating potato chips and glancing every so often at the screen of a laptop computer. More clean than your average workshop. Guy who lived here, whichever of them it was, seemed to alphabetize the tools or something. Trays and boxes lined the walls, nary a spare nail lying about out-of-place. A mechanical saw blade was set into the table. Duke looked for blood, but couldn't see any.

"How are... things?" Bad Jacket asked.

"No trouble," said the man with the laptop, and laughed lamely at the double meaning. "He's docile. I guessed right."

There was an abrupt thumping, as of someone's shoulder impacting firmly and repeatedly against the door leading from the workshop to the garage.

"He listens like a hawk." Guy #2 was overweight, ruddy faced, and would therefore henceforth be known as Pork Chop, unless and possibly beyond any attempt to introduce himself, because Duke had decided he just plain didn't like him. Bad Jacket removed his jacket, in a devious attempt to sidestep his mnemonic, but it was too late now.

"Good evening," Duke said, pointedly, and the thumping on the door went silent.

"Duke?" The voice had a well-insulated wall and door to travel through, but he knew it. No mistaking it. About to ask, who the fuck have you got in there?, the question became redundant and this shit became real.

"Nathan!" Duke vaulted the big work table in his haste to haul on the door. He shot back three bolts, but there was also a lock and the key wasn't in it. He slammed his hands on the wood, frustrated. "Are you all right?!" Nathan gave no answer, but Duke was already swinging around on the two bastards. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Pork Chop obligingly turned his laptop around. Duke got treated to a view of a small box of a room with no visible garage door and, below and to the right of the camera, the unmistakeable figure of Nathan Wuornos leaning up to the door. His eyes were covered and his hands bound.

"Get him out of there," Duke said flatly, more angry than he'd thought possible. He lunged at Bad Jacket, nearer of the two, and got as far as bunching his fist in the guy's collar before Pork Chop pulled a gun on him from beneath the table.

"Don't bother. Funny thing, no-one could figure out if he's your best friend or worst enemy, so we honestly weren't sure how we were gonna play this. Guess that's our answer."

Duke, raising his hands, backed off. He couldn't believe it. Of all the times, of all the people, he was surely not expected to compromise himself for Nathan fucking Wuornos after the way the asshole had been acting towards him?

"Don't agree to anything," Nathan said, very clearly, through the door. There was something wrong with his voice -- a thickness, a deliberation in it, the words sticking like treacle.

"What did you do to him?" Duke seethed. "You want my co-operation? This is not the way."

Bad Jacket had pulled some rope out of a box and ventured warily toward him. Avoiding stepping in the line of his buddy's shot, he spun Duke around and pulled his arms back to tie them behind him. All right, Duke remembered this guy now, without the freaking monstrosity of that jacket to distract him. He'd been one of the pieces of shit hanging on Rev. Driscoll's every dead word as a bunch of them prepared to burn upwards of twenty people alive.

"What are you doing?"

But Bad Jacket shoved him towards the door into the garage, which wasn't actually the last place in the world he wanted to be. He couldn't see Nathan clearly enough in that itty bitty picture and he needed to know what they'd done to make him sound like that. 'Docile', fucking Pork Chop had said. Since when was a pissed off Wuornos ever 'docile'?

He half thought Nathan might try something when the door opened, but he didn't, and Duke, who knew Pork Chop had a gun on him, even if he still hadn't unstuck his fat ass from the chair, didn't dare. In fact, when the door opened, Nathan staggered back, bashed the wall with his shoulder and almost lost his balance. He lolled against the wall, shoving at the floor with his feet. His lips twisted on the verge of a profanity, but he didn't say a thing, just crooked his head like he was listening real hard. He followed the movements of Duke, as he was pushed a few steps inside the room, and of the utter dick behind him, who was quick to duck out and lock the door.

"Na--"

"Shut up," Nathan mouthed, then a stretch of seconds later shook his head and thumped his shoulders back on the wall, where he leaned in frustration. "They're not speaking. Figured out I was listening to them."

"This is great," Duke exploded. "If you hadn't decided to flash that tattoo all over town--"

"They'd have known I was Troubled anyway," Nathan growled. "Rev. knew. Known for years. Never understood why he didn't set them on me last time, with all the rest. Guess it was too risky, Chief of Police, too close to Parker--"

He looked okay, actually. At least, Duke couldn't see anything obviously wrong with him. Nothing bleeding, no visible bruises. Nothing to explain the tension in his body or the clumsiness in how he moved, or the thickness in his speech like his throat was struggling against closing up in the grip of a panic attack. Duke wondered if they'd drugged him, and if so, how much damn use he was going to be in getting out of here. That might also explain why he was just standing there and not raging about Duke's assumed involvement in this heinous plot.

"Right," Duke said bitterly. It was weird, but he'd always got the impression that the Rev. kind of liked Nathan, as the Troubled and damned went. Kept putting in that extra spark of effort to 'save' him; though knowing he was essentially harmless compared to other afflictions probably helped with that. Turning from Nathan, Duke scoped out the room they were in. The garage door had been bricked up, new-cemented breeze blocks against that exterior wall. Everything else had been stripped out. The camera was high up towards the ceiling, fucking eyes on the other side of it. Duke swore at length and slid down the wall to sit, looked back at his fellow captive and swore again. "Sit down or something. It doesn't look like either of us are going anywhere for a while."

"What does it look like?" Nathan asked tersely. Oh, right. Duke thought he probably should do something about that blindfold. He could maybe get his fingers to work on it if Nathan knelt down behind him, or have at it with his teeth? Couldn't see Nate loving either plan. Maybe he'd work up to that -- yeah, right before he mentioned the idea of using Nathan's blood to get them out of this, because that was going to go so well, too.

Duke answered in small, blunt words. It didn't take very long. Nathan looked un-thrilled. "Jesus, sit down, man. You look like you're about to fall anyway."

"No, I -- I'm going to stay right here." He hesitated, then expelled a huff of air as though making a decision and asked, in a voice that cracked, the strangest question. "Duke, am I... all right?"

"Are you--?" What the hell? Okay, and yeah, granted, that question would have been on Duke's own lips sooner or later, but... Then, on the verge of an angry retort, it hit him that Nathan might not actually know.

"I think I could tell... if they'd done the things they claimed, but I'm not sure," Nathan qualified, in painful bursts of words, and Duke could see that he was hating the admission they represented. There was a horrible pause while Duke took in what was being implied and Nathan, impatient, prompted harshly, "They said they'd cut things off. They also said they'd put out my eyes, but I think it's a--"

"It's a blindfold," Duke confirmed in a rush. Jesus Christ, that was monstrous. "You're fine." Realising that every second he'd dawdled was one that Nathan had waited to hear some dire confirmation. "You look fine."

He absorbed the other implication, finally, feeling stupid that it had taken so long. He'd known Nathan long enough to understand how his Trouble worked. No sensation, none. The blindfold was a diabolically efficient way to render him helpless. A blinded man's primary way to navigate the world instantly became touch, but without either... Well, it was no wonder he was so tense. He probably barely knew he was leaning against the wall, and for the rest of what was going on around him, he'd be almost entirely reliant on sound. 'Listens like a hawk', indeed. At the moment, Nathan really was all ears.

"Shit," Duke said, a heartfelt expulsion. True, Nate looked none too happy at the confirmation he'd figured it out, but there was a word for this, and even if Nathan couldn't feel pain, it was still torture. When he got his hands on those bastards... "You do know I'm not going to do anything?" he demanded. "I'm not going to take advantage now, or use this against you later, or whatever jackass, backwards ideas you're thinking up." Because the stress in every line of that thin body had, if anything, increased. "We're going to get out of here and make these bastards regret they started this."

Nathan snorted, almost a laugh, and his shoulders sagged. "Like the Bensons," he said, his voice softening and losing much of its dry crackle.

"Hah--" Harvey and Petey Benson had lived out on the other side of town and had decided to pick a fight when all four of them were eleven years old. They'd all beat the hell out of each other, but Duke and Nathan had done it more. And when they got back, Duke's dad had boxed his ears and Nathan's had grounded him for a week. "I haven't thought about that in years." Good to know that Nathan still remembered it. One of the few times their fists and tempers had been in harmony. The memory also seemed to have, finally, talked Nate down a bit. These bastards sure had managed to wind him up tight.

"What do they look like?" Nathan asked, sliding down the wall very carefully and arranging his legs, twisting his shoulders so as to at least try not to squash his tied hands. The movements were hesitant. It wasn't clear to what extent he knew what he was doing with his own body. "Thing One and Thing Two... their names are Josh and Stephen. Do we know them? I don't recognise their voices."

"I've been calling them Bad Jacket and Pork Chop," Duke owned up.

"Seriously? What is this, a Hardy Boys novel?" The sour sarcasm probably counted as an encouraging sign.

"Like it's worse than Dr Seuss?" Duke launched into his description and stopped. "Wait, which one's which?"

He could see Nathan chewing the conundrum over. "Thing Two is the one with the computer -- Stephen. I hear him tapping on it. Thing One slurs his 'r's when he talks." Honestly? Duke couldn't say he'd noticed. "He's the one who grabbed me. Josh."

"What happened to you?"

"He was at my house. Hood or something like it over my head, said he had a gun on my back, not that I could tell. They'd figured out to go for my eyes from the start. Stephen's a nasty brand of smart, I think." He paused. His chin lifted fractionally. "How about you?"

"Bad Ja-- Josh turned up at the Gull and said they had someone they were gonna kill if I didn't come with him. So I came. Too bad I didn't know it was you." Duke enjoyed the normality in the derisive smirk that one earned him, and went back to describing the two men, followed by the house, the workshop, and where the hell in town they were.

"Probably should've told me you knew that first," Nathan muttered.

"Yeah, and something else I should've done first." Duke rose with difficulty, and crossed to him. "Let me have a try at that blindfold." He still wasn't sure that was going to go down well, since Nathan had a thing about being touched when he couldn't feel it, and when he couldn't see it either that was probably ten times worse. But he clearly wanted the fucking thing gone ever so much more, because he just said, "Okay."

Duke angled himself so his tied hands could reach Nathan's face, trying to crane and look over his shoulder to see what he was doing with only limited success. Mostly he was going to have to work by touch... a pointed reminder of what his friend was lacking. He felt occasional brushes with sharp nose and prominent cheekbones as he tried to loosen the uncooperative cloth and warned, "I'm touching your face. Can't help it. Don't freak out."

"Just get it off," Nate said wearily. "No, wait. I can hear them. They're coming to the door."

Duke couldn't hear anything, but it swung wide a moment after. Bad Jacket -- sorry, Josh -- stood in it. Behind him, Stephen didn't seem to have moved since a half hour earlier, still sitting in front of his laptop. Of course, he could see them in that fucking screen, and apparently they had no intention of letting him restore Nathan's sight.

"How the hell do you people call yourselves Godly?" Duke demanded, and managed to fluff Stephen's line of fire by manoeuvring Josh in between them for a brief moment, which he used to try and get a head-butt in. Josh dodged it and smacked him face-first into a wall for his efforts, which was no fun at all when he couldn't use his hands to catch himself.

"Don't bother," Stephen said.

"I am going to smash your smug, fat face in," Duke promised. His nose was bleeding. If only his own blood activated the Crocker legacy. He needed Nathan's blood, if he could only draw it and there was any chance Nathan would let him. It seemed to Duke that their captors didn't know about his abilities aside from homicidally ending Troubles, or they wouldn't have kept the two of them together -- but of course, Josh hadn't seen any of that, that day. He'd only seen an idiot throw himself on Duke's knife, gibbering about how it would 'save' him. Of course, Josh also didn't know about what an ugly can of worms even the question of using Nathan's blood opened up between the two of them.

It had occurred to him that Nathan wasn't in a position to refuse him anything at the moment. After what these assholes had been doing, it seemed abominable to take advantage of that and there was no way in hell Duke wanted to go there, but all the same...

His blood ran cold as it struck him that maybe he'd already lost his chance.

"Come on, you." Josh grabbed for Nathan, who'd got as far as inching up from sitting against the wall to standing against it again, and manhandled him by his shoulders. Shoved forward into the workshop, Nathan was sent in a blind lunge toward the work table with the circular saw. He hit the edge of the table and, with whatever senses he had that could pick up the obstruction, tried to catch his balance against it, oblivious of the sharp edge so dangerously close. He narrowly avoided the blade and barely avoided ending up on the floor. When he tried to rise, Stephen reached over and slammed his face into the table top, pinning him down.

"Get off him, bastard--" Duke's lunge was choked off literally when Josh clotheslined him with a swiftly straightened arm and knocked him back against the wall.

"Annie Trebeck," Josh said. "9 Ivy Drive. She wants her kids and grandkids to be free from ever having to lock themselves away on nights of the full moon again. You'll see to that."

Duke was still unable to speak, but Nathan found the energy to rasp, "He won't." And to ask a second later, with a pained seriously? in his voice, "Werewolves?"

"Bears," Josh corrected.

Stephen raised himself up in his chair, which occasioned Duke to notice for the first time that there was something funny about his chair, and the way he was sitting in it, and his posture as he pulled himself more upright. Duke didn't get to dwell upon it much. Stephen had a hunting knife and used it to saw through the ropes binding Nathan's hands. When the limits of his reach became a problem, he dragged Nathan further onto the table instead of further extending himself.

"Nate--" Duke struggled to get the words out quickly. "Your hands are free."

Unfortunately, it was just painful to watch him try to make use of that knowledge, flailing out and trying to break Stephen's pinning hold on his face. He got his elbow against the edge of the table and managed the purchase for a few good shoves, but Stephen's arm strength was deceptively strong.

That'd be from the wheelchair.

Nathan did manage to score Stephen's laptop, sending it flying from the table with one wild thrash. He greeted the noise of its smash and the sharp, dismayed cry of its owner by baring his teeth in fierce satisfaction. But his flailing left arm was getting dangerously close to the saw blade. Duke was about to shout a warning when Stephen flicked a switch and turned it on. Nate stopped his struggles instantly, pulling his arms safely back in. Stephen caught and held onto his left wrist.

"Duke, what's going on?" The question was edged with panic; relying on Duke for answer and knowing it, which spoke volumes about how much panic.

"You're all right!" Duke shouted. "Nate -- shit, do not put his hand near that! Nathan, you're still all right. Don't--"

"Annie Trebeck," Josh repeated, and Stephen brought Nathan's wrist down across the spinning, whirring blade.

There was a lot of blood.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Duke howled, struggling. "What is wrong with you people?" All that red, red blood, but Josh's hold was firm, and it was too late, already too late. He could not believe -- how had that just happened, just like that? He didn't think they'd do that, of course not, or else he'd have... Well, he'd never have let them. Never. "Shit, Nathan, I didn't-- Jesus! What happened to starting small, like a fucking finger. A finger, right? To prove... to prove you mean it..." His breath ran out and his shouts ran down to choked exhaustion. "...God. What the hell did you people just do?"

"Duke?" Nathan asked, strained, but in the circumstances, remarkably calm. Considering his arm ended at his wrist and Stephen was shoving his hand into a sack, and there was all that blood. Of course, Nathan didn't know a thing about any of that. He was just sliding down off the table, freed of Stephen's grasp, moving in jerky movements that failed to take into account the gaping wound on the end of his arm. He managed to fold himself into something like a kneeling position on the floor, then groped upwards with both arms, trying to grasp his hands -- to grotesque effect, in the case of the left -- around the edge of the table.

"Nathan, stop," Duke managed. This was happening, and he needed to get a grip on it. Stephen and Josh were both watching them closely, faces strange and unreadable, or else that was just everything right now. Reality had ceased to make sense. Cutting off bits of people... who did that? He wanted to go to Nathan, but Josh shoved him back against the wall again, and Stephen picked up his gun again. "Please, put his hand on ice. Help me get him to a hospital. Maybe it's not too late." Trying to stay calm, use reason, when all he really wanted was to kill them both.

"It's your choice," Josh said. "We'll take you to Annie, you do what she wants, maybe we think about that. Maybe Wuornos doesn't lose any more pieces."

"Are you saying," Nathan said, very, very carefully, "that you just cut off my hand?" He consciously withdrew the left one from trying to support his effort to get up.

They both ignored him. Duke couldn't fucking bear it. "Yeah," he grunted, though he didn't want to, because Nate deserved an answer from someone. "That is what they're saying."

"You can't have." Flat denial. "I'd know." Stephen snorted. With a nasty grin, he picked up a long-handled brush leaned against the wall behind him and delivered several experimental prods to Nathan's arms and shoulders. Nate didn't react in the least. Duke felt cold. He'd let this happen.

The frenetic energy of the last few minutes was winding down into a sick, nauseous aftermath of realisation. Apparently for their captors, too; a giddy nervous excitement had taken hold of both men after what'd they'd done to Nathan, now that they'd crossed the line. They were dismayed about the smashed laptop, though. Josh dragged Duke with him, Duke's legs numb and stumbling, and poked at the smashed frame with his foot. "He killed your computer, man. Can you fix this?"

Stephen didn't look optimistic. "It'd be quicker to bring in Sam's, or Agatha's PC, and fix them to pick up the camera feed."

"I don't want that shit on my family's computers!" Josh protested. "What if someone finds it?"

Stephen scowled. "Get Crocker back in there," he told Josh. "He can mull it over a while."

"What?" Duke frantically struggled as Josh hauled on his shoulders, looking back at Nathan. "No. Look, please, don't do anything else. I'll... maybe I can do the thing. Let me think about it. Please." He wanted to shout and scream, call them every fucking name on the planet. Wanted to kill them with his bare hands. He begged shamelessly instead.

"Don't," Nathan said, snapping out of the unnatural stillness that had seized him once the bomb dropped. His message was clear and unmoveable. "Not for me."

Not for me... That was the kicker, wasn't it? Because he knew exactly how Nathan felt about this, and knowing that, how could he give in to them and tell himself or anyone that he'd done it for Nathan?

But... how the hell could he not?

***

As it happened, Duke spent fifteen minutes freaking out when all they did was bandage up Nathan's wrist and then shove him back in the garage. His expression blank and pale, he found the wall with his free, sole hand and hung there again, ignoring Duke's frantic gibberings of apologies and questions he couldn't answer ("are you all right?" indeed) and swearing the air blue about the utter, utter bastardy of their captors. He was finally winding down as Nathan cautiously stepped towards his voice and brought his hand around slowly in a wide arc. The open palm shoved hard against Duke's neck, and he stopped pushing it, moving it instead slightly upwards, over Duke's jaw, then down in a fumbling trail around his shoulder. "Turn around," Nathan ordered. "Let me have a go at your wrists. Now, while they can't see what we're doing. This is our chance."

Not much of one, but Duke conceded that a stubbornly task-oriented Nathan was going to be hell of a lot easier company than one who was breaking down.

He stood and stared at the wall and let Nathan's fingers move sluggishly, methodically over the knots. Without touch, without vision, it seemed to be some kind of kinetic sense he relied on to guide him. He knew when he couldn't move his fingers any further, and seemed to use that to trace out the shape of the knots, to piece together some mental picture that he then tried to work from. It was laborious and slow. There was no way those two bastards outside weren't going to come in and stop them before he managed it, and tie Nathan up properly again.

Duke didn't protest because he didn't see how the distraction could hurt. Before Josh and Stephen next opened up that door, he had to steel himself to asking Nathan to use his blood (and he had a pretty good idea how that was going to go) and using it anyway if Nathan said "no", because fuck it, that was better than the alternative.

"It's not real," Nathan said, close to his ear, very low, after a lot of time seemed to have passed. He sounded... not absolutely sure, and it was a more measured and less desperate denial than Duke expected.

He groaned. "I wish that were true." He'd seen it with his own eyes. He wanted his hands free, now, so that he could bury his head in them, and possibly never come out. His fault. If he'd only realised sooner how serious they were... He could have agreed to 'help' Annie and strung them along. Avoided this.

"No... Duke, I think I'm moving my fingers."

Forgetting the delicate task they were in the middle of, Duke wrenched his head around to stare at Nathan. "You..."

"Don't move." Frustration evident. Nathan's fingers fluttered to find his place on the knots again. "Look, it's not easy to tell, but I know where my limbs are, alright? I can't feel sensation, but I know when I'm walking. I can untie this fucking knot," his breath seethed as he gave the pertinent example, "even if it takes an hour." Well, he could say that, but to Duke it still seemed pretty damn impossible. "Point: when I move, I can tell. I am absolutely sure that I can still move my hand."

"Let me see."

Nathan straightened his arm and planted the truncated, bandaged wrist out in front of him, continuing to work with his right hand. Whatever else they'd done, they'd made a thorough job of the dressing. Blood was just starting to spot the bandage in traces, maybe not yet enough to use, but glaring like an accusation and enticement. Duke's eyes fixed on it. It looked real. It... it had to be real. God, this was just making things worse.

"You didn't see it," he said hoarsely. "There's that phantom thing. Phantom limb syndrome." Was it possible to feel a phantom limb you couldn't feel in the first place? He supposed that, with Nathan, his nervous system would interpret any such phantoms the way it was used to interpreting whatever information he could sense.

"It's a Trouble," Nathan said, hard as nails. "Those damn, bastard hypocrites are using a Trouble against us. I don't know how, or what. Some kind of hallucination, or they turned the damn hand invisible and used a bucket of fake blood, or however. But it's a Trouble."

The bandage was too tight for any invisible hands to be in the equation. "You can't know," Duke whispered, his voice disappearing on him. He saw again, in his mind's eye, Stephen prodding at Nathan while he crouched oblivious, remembering how he hadn't known earlier -- had been forced to ask for confirmation of his own wellbeing.

"I know I haven't lost a pint of blood." The reply was stolid, stubborn. "There are other symptoms of that, ones I would know about. You can't lose a limb without blood loss, so I'm sure."

The silence stretched as he took that in, as his jangling, horrified nerves absorbed it, and he started to come back around. Started to be able to think again, to even contemplate other possibilities and what-ifs? What if Nate was right?

"Duke, I think they've gone." Nathan's voice rose to something approaching normal levels with a measure of surprise.

Duke craned his head around, trying to see his friend without disturbing the lie of his hands. "Gone?"

"Yeah. Stephen was talking about wanting to fetch computer equipment from the house."

"Both of them? You're kidding, right? These are officially the worst kidnappers ever." He couldn't believe it. Then again, Stephen seemed to be the one who knew about computers, and he was stuck in that chair. He probably needed Josh for the fetching and carrying. Duke heard his voice quiver with leftover reaction as it formed the quip; "Of course, it's only going to help if you get me out of these ropes before Christmas--"

The knot parted almost in harmony with that sentiment and he pulled his wrists apart and spun around, grasping Nathan tightly, arms around his shoulders and back. Belatedly, he kicked himself. "...Shit. Sorry, man. I'm hugging you. Don't freak."

"Don't hug me," Nathan said, and made blind efforts to disentangle himself. "Get this blindfold off so we can get out of here."

The truth was that he felt warm and steady amid Duke's desperate panic, more so than he had any right to be, and Duke seriously didn't want to let go. "I can hear your heart beating," Nathan offered, like he didn't know what to make of the fact. "Sounds like you've run a marathon. Are you shaking?"

How he could guess that, Duke couldn't imagine, but it did seem to be true. "...No." He pulled back warily. "All right, let me get that for you."

Nathan raised his head suddenly, eluding Duke's fingers, and his nose moved animalistically as he sniffed the air. "I can smell food. Beef casserole? Maybe they've gone for dinner as well. They do seem to think we're not getting out of here anytime soon."

"Hah." It was almost a sob. "Because they just cut off your hand, you stubborn ass. You probably shouldn't even be walking around. Keep still." These guys had not wanted the blindfold to slip. It had freakin' tape on there, around the edges, as well as a bunch of knots, and the fabric was pulled tight. It took an age to unpick it all, which seemed all the longer because he was trying to be fast, afraid they couldn't have long left unobserved. And yeah, his hands were shaking.

He hadn't thought anything could top the freakishness of what had already happened until he finally got the blindfold off.

"...Holy crap!" Duke lurched away, his progress followed by sunkenly blinking, empty hollows. "What the... crap! Nathan...?" The sight was so outlandish, so insane, that he needed the reminder and reassurance that it was still his friend in there. He'd never seen anything like it. "Nathan...?"

"...What?" The mouth shaped that word, slowly and carefully, and it was Nathan's voice attached to the ghoul in front of him. The eyelids narrowed, apparently automatically. Maybe it was a fancy of human imagination that the eyes were the window of the soul, but Duke had to say that a man without them looked... soulless. Terrifying, in a way. Nate repeated the question, rather more slowly, then asked, with impatience, "Are you taking the blindfold off or not? Duke, what is it? You need to tell me, because I don't know." The burst of frustration, in some strange way, restored to him his humanity.

"Well," Duke said, swallowing hard, "this is definitely a Trouble." He darted back in and put the blindfold back in place, just the strip of cloth, to hide those blank holes. Nathan waited expectantly, and steadily more pissily. God, he had to explain this somehow. At least Nate didn't have to see it. "Your eyes are gone. They're just holes."

Nathan's face twisted and he showed his teeth in a disbelieving, feral expression. "That -- I have fucking had enough of this." Whether he was talking about this particular incident or the whole goddamn town was anyone's guess. "He -- Stephen said, when they brought me here, they had a bag over my head and they did something, and he said -- but I didn't believe him. Thought it was just their game. So his Trouble is, what, stealing people's body parts? If I can still move my fingers, that means my eyes are still somewhere, alive and intact?"

The alternative was unthinkable. "I saw him grab that hand and put it in a bag pretty quick," Duke remembered. "Maybe -- maybe that was to prevent me seeing it still moving. If this..." He gripped his forehead, trying to think through a stab of pain. "God. These guys. If this is a Trouble, then they're not as hardcore as they're trying to make out. If they can take off parts of people and reattach them, bloodlessly--" He grabbed, finally, for Nathan's truncated wrist, his heart beating so hard it hurt. The red stain on the bandage prompted no reaction. "--Right. Right. It's not your blood. They faked the blood for the hand. There's no blood in your eye... sockets... either. If they were prepared to do this shit for real, they wouldn't need a Trouble."

"I'm still going to make them regret this."

"Fuckers," Duke agreed.

"Duke?" Nathan brought his right arm up to his mouth and sank his teeth into the back of his wrist, tearing the skin. He extended it almost breathlessly between them. "Get us out of this fucking room."

He didn't need to be told twice, especially not considering who was doing the telling. The door crumbled to matchsticks before the combined might of Simon Crocker's legacy and Duke Crocker's considerable pent-up aggression.

Stephen and Josh were nowhere in sight. Duke went around the workshop looking in boxes and finding only damn tools; Nathan stood by the door and his head followed the noises Duke was making. He stepped out infinitely carefully and made his way to the table, a route he probably remembered from earlier.

...Table. There were drawers in it where Stephen had been sitting. The first one Duke yanked open held his own stuff and Nate's; gun, badge, cuffs, wallets, cellphones, a couple of keychains... also, a small, wooden box. "Found your piece, man." He set the gun down on the table while he poked at the latch mechanism on the box. Nathan felt -- okay, wrong word, but kinaesthetically intuited was kind of a mouthful -- across the table top until his hand reached the weapon and he mapped out its familiar shape before picking it up. Duke wasn't wholly convinced of the wisdom of that, when he actually thought about it, but it was too late now and he wasn't going to argue with Nathan, with a gun in his hand, after the day that Nate had had. It was just as well. A second later, the door burst open behind Duke, even as he finally teased an obliging click from the lock mechanism on the box. He whipped around and almost dropped the damn box, forced to clutch for it like a comedy routine. Nathan fired.

Dropping the box would have been a bad idea. Two blue eyes stared at him from a bed of plastic-lined padding.

"Hell!" Nate had automatically raised his hand to shield his face. He lowered it with a trace of embarrassment. "That's bright."

Duke, taking firmer hold on the box, dared look around again. Josh was on the floor in the open doorway, groaning and sluggishly clutching his shoulder. A bulky old computer monitor and a heap of trailing wires had landed mostly on top of him. It had been hell of a shot for a guy, blind, who couldn't feel his hand. Unless... Duke looked down at the eyeballs.

"Yeah, I can see you," Nathan said. "Saw him come in. This is weird." He reeled and grabbed for the table as Duke jostled the box accidentally.

"...Right." Duke had almost no words. He'd thought the sight of Nathan without eyes was fucked up. Just the eyes was... just as fucked up. He looked at the eyes looking back at him and could not imagine what his expression must be like.

Nathan shook his head, straightened, and made his way over with a bit more surety than before. He could probably see himself in his peripheral vision.

Duke wondered, feeling the need to raise a voice of caution, "You think it's safe to just pop these back in?"

"I'm trying anyway." It was practically a snarl. Boy, had Nathan had enough of this. "You keep an eye on him." He slapped his gun down on the table and grabbed at Duke's arm.

"Talk about a creepy choice of phrase." Duke exchanged the box for the gun, although Josh had lapsed into a faint and he couldn't see Stephen giving them too much trouble on his own if he rolled back in now.

Still, he really winced when Nathan's unfeeling hand groped for the box's delicate contents. "Wait, maybe I... should do that..." Not that he remotely wanted to.

Rather to his relief, Nathan somehow got one eye balanced between thumb and forefinger, and used the other to guide him as he raised it to an empty socket. He brushed the remnant of the blindfold up out of the way with his little finger. The degree of control he had over the delicate movements was startling. It seemed years of weird, unmanly hobbies might actually pay off.

Nathan took the plunge. Duke, watching -- not that he wanted to do that, either, but it was horribly hypnotic -- saw all the... the works, and the stringy, unsavoury bits at the back of the eye that he didn't want to even think about sort of strain out to grasp and pull the eyeball in. The eyelids flicked wide as though in welcome, and it occurred to him that Nathan probably had a great view of what he was doing... and now Duke felt unwell. Then the eye blinked out again from its customary position, and Nathan's mouth stretched into a relieved smile.

It turned swiftly to a frown. Blinking more than usual, with the restored eye tearing and a little red, Nathan studied the other eye still in the box and admitted sourly, "I have no idea which way around these were supposed to go."

God. "You kill me." Watching him manhandle the other one and pop it back into place, Duke supposed potential confusion awaited next time he had an eye check-up.

"Them, maybe," Nate countered, snatching his gun back, and with his icy blue gaze returned, it seemed all was back to normal. In the strain and horror of the last few hours, Duke had managed to forget that 'back to normal' was Nathan being a dick. The lack of his left hand seemed of considerably less concern. He looked down and grimaced irritably before moving on and going to the doorway, checking quickly through it, then hauling on Josh to get him out of view, using his foot and elbow and curling the hand still wrapped around the gun in the bastard's collar.

While Nathan did that, Duke continued searching the drawers, because him? Still freaking out. Nathan roughly popped the buttons of Josh's shirt, yanking cloth aside to reveal the wound. A thin moan arose as all the movement started to bring the man around.

"You'll live," Nathan told him curtly. "Pretty lucky, given everything stacked against my aim at the time." He arranged the guy against the back wall and slapped his face sharply a few times to get his wandering, semi-conscious attention. The gun in Nate's hand bashed off Josh's jaw, but it was plain that right now he didn't give a flying fuck. "Whose idea was this? Yours or your -- what -- brother's?"

Josh's sullen blinking told them nothing, but Duke's money was on Stephen anyway. Nathan snarled at the lack of answer -- he was definitely more emotionally in this than usual -- and spun to snatch a discarded first aid kit from the table, presumably what these assholes had used on him while Duke was locked in the garage. Which, in retrospect, hadn't been to cauterize and dress a gaping wound, but to hide the absence of one. And if Nathan, who sucked at judging pressure, continued to do everything with his one hand still clutched around the gun, sooner or later he was going to accidentally shoot something.

Duke turned over the last of the drawers and exploded in frustration, "It's not here, Nate! Ask the bastard where your hand is." He swung around and pounced the steps needed to take him to Josh's side himself before he'd even finished talking, connecting his foot to the man's thigh in a very satisfying kick. "Bastard, where's his hand? Here--" He delivered into Nathan's lap his wallet, badge, keychain, phone and handcuffs. "I'll get answers out of this one. And his damn brother. Pretend you're not a cop, just for a half hour, okay?"

Josh couldn't duck away from his reaching hand. "Don't! Stephen's my brother-in-law. Don't hurt him, alright? He's been through so much already."

"Don't hurt him?" Duke echoed, incredulous enough to pull back, then simply infuriated. "Hey!" He kicked Josh again. "Your mind game was fucking diabolical. Your fucking brother's fucking Troubled and you can still do that to him?"

"Duke." Nathan shoved his foot away irritably with his elbow. He pulled the rings of his handcuffs apart with his teeth and cuffed Josh's hands in front of him.

Josh's eyes followed Nathan's movements. He'd gone even paler, and he flinched from Nathan's gaze. "We thought maybe it would be all right... it wouldn't matter, if we could take all we'd done to the others and show them we could make up by using it for the Rev's cause. Shit, it's not his fault. It was done to him. Fucking Afghanistan took both his legs and left him like that."

"Some cause," Duke said. "So now you two figure torture is the church-approved approach?"

Nathan made a choked noise and broke off from trying to tear out a padded dressing. "Shut up."

"Torture? No way. It's not like we even hurt him. Rev. Driscoll told me, when he came back. Even Haven's Chief of Police was a freak, he said. Can't feel anything. Can't be hurt."

Duke would've slugged him, but Nathan was in the way, abandoning gun and bandage to seize Josh's chin hard in his hand and start to get in his face, start to frame something on his lips. But then he caught himself and heaved a long breath, let go and turned aside. No police brutality today. He snatched his gun again as he twisted to his feet. Duke appreciated the lithe movement, after seeing Nate lurching and struggling. Eyes back, he had his grace back too, or since he'd never had that much of it, at least his unique approximation -- he was now co-ordinated strings of human spaghetti again.

"Dress that wound. Too much a pain in the ass one-handed."

The curt command meant Nathan trusted Duke not to strangle the guy more than he trusted himself, and that wasn't particularly encouraging. Or perhaps he didn't realise just how much Duke wanted to dish out some damage to Josh. Yeah, and his crippled vet. brother, too, because he could be equal opportunity about his violence.

"We didn't hurt anyone. Not... not really. You figured that out, right?" Josh's face was strained as he stared at Nathan's back. Duke thought he knew exactly what he'd been doing, or had clued to it now if not before. Asshole. Duke told himself, logically, that they didn't want him to be a dead asshole, because he could tell them more stuff alive, and so peeled the dressing from its sterile pack and slapped it in place over the entry wound of the bullet. There wasn't an exit wound, but the hospital could worry about that later.

"You two are insane," Duke offered his opinion. "What, you're just going to go straight for Haven's Police Chief? Two amateur assholes and one of you can't walk?"

Josh sneered at him, getting some fire back. "We're not supposed to touch her. She's out of bounds. Who else was there?" To get to you, he meant, and Duke choked on the realisation.

"Where's Stephen put his fucking hand?" This had not happened because of him. One, you'd have to be crazy to seriously try to force his co-operation by taking Nathan, and who in hell actually thought they were friends? Two, Nathan had been charging around kicking anthills all over the place. His damn tattoo, his meetings, his freakin' Guard connections...

Josh's eyes went to the rucksack in the corner. The handles were wide and stretched, like it usually lived slung over the back of a wheelchair. "Nate--" Duke pointed, clicking his finger, dragging Nathan's attention back from whatever planet it had drifted off to. Forehead wrinkling in trepidation, Nathan eyed the bag, but turned and checked and firmly closed the door before crossing to get it. He set it on the edge of the work table from where he could see both the door and Josh. There, he struggled with the zip for an extended moment, then drew out the sack Stephen had been so quick to ditch his hand into earlier.

The sack moved. Nathan unwrapped it with his expression about as odd as you might expect, uncovering an undamaged limb with pale, unbleeding tissues and bone exposed in a straight slice at the wrist. Its fingers flexed and made a tight fist, knuckles turning as white as the bared teeth of its owner.

Duke didn't really want to look, but found himself rising and drifting that way anyway, drawn by the macabre peculiarity. Nathan angrily set his hand down and started picking at the bandages. "Damn it..."

"Let me."

That prompted a harsh breath and a long pause. But after a moment, Nathan extended his wrapped wrist. "All right." The act of trust might have been mostly driven by the fact he couldn't hold his gun at the same time.

The dressings, which had been made just as ridiculously secure as the blindfold, covered a matching supernaturally clean end. Duke turned his face from it, shielding his eyes. "That is fucking hideous, man." He was so glad Nate was apparently made of sterner stuff, but he couldn't help watching through his fingers -- needing to know that this fucking worked, that it would be fixed -- as Nathan pushed his wrist to the severed end of the hand. The tissues, again, seemed to surge together into a seamless join. Nathan lifted his hand, flexed his fingers a few times, then swapped the gun into it.

Josh was watching with a sickened intensity. "Sorry," he said. "I'm sorry."

Nathan ignored him. "I'll get Stephen. You stay and watch him."

"No," Josh protested, eyes fixing large on the gun. "Wait. My wife's in the house. Kids'll be home by now, too."

Duke swore, incredulous. "And you do this in your garage?"

"Only place we got." Defensive and angry. "Don't hurt my family. They didn't know about this."

Holy shit. It looked like the Rev's death had just left them with a disparate bunch of disorganised amateur extremists to deal with instead.

Nathan's response was to dig his badge from his jeans pocket and flash it aggressively at Josh as a reminder -- possibly for himself, too -- that he, at least, was on official business. Then he disappeared out of the door anyway. Josh gulped. Duke entirely failed to feel sorry for him and was, in fact, going to give him something else to worry about. "Now, he is distracted, see? He left you alone with me. He has to account for what happens to you in his custody. Me, not so much."

He was interrupted by the click of the door opening again. Nathan walked back through, this time disarmed only in terms of his weapon. Both his hands were visibly clasped at the back of his neck. He was rolling his eyes, in a fairly accurate summation of the day. Behind him came an armed man and a black-haired woman. The woman was pushing Stephen in his wheelchair.

The man... Duke recognised as the tattooed asshole from earlier at the Gull. The woman, yeah, he'd seen her before, too, maybe. But her arms were covered by gloves and he couldn't tell if she had a tattoo. Nathan kept flicking strange glances her way. "Duke Crocker," she all but spat. "We heard these bastards had picked up a Troubled person they wanted you to kill."

"No," Nathan corrected. "That was me, and I'm in no danger from Duke. Annie Trebeck was who they wanted him to kill."

"And I said, no way in hell," Duke stressed, and shot a glower at Nathan. "You said, no way in hell. We were in perfect fucking agreement, for once." Still, a lot of little things were going on here that registered even through his anger and yet-again-increasing stress levels. Like the woman's indrawn breath when Nathan said, me, and the way Nathan opened his mouth and gave the Guard that information for free.

"It's not about Crocker," Nathan picked up. "Point that somewhere else." Thank you, Nate. "You all know what I am. I'm lowering my hands, alright?" He did, and it seemed there was damn all the man and woman were willing to do about it, though it made them skittish. "If you feel like working up to giving back my gun...?" he prompted, trying to go one further, but to no avail.

"Stephen," Josh demanded hoarsely. "You okay? Marilyn--"

"One of our people is with your wife and kids," the Guard woman cut him off. "So behave. Your little operation here?" She gestured cutely around the room by circling a black-gloved finger. "It's shutting down." Then she caught the tips of her fingers in her teeth and started to pull off a glove. Somehow, her body language was coding that as a threat.

"They shot you?" Stephen demanded. His voice was big and aggressive, not fitting his physical confinement, and he didn't seem nearly as cowed as he ought, in the circumstances.

"Wuornos shot me," Josh said. Stephen turned into the firing line of Nathan's restored glower and his expression went surly.

"Well, that's just great." Stephen's hand lifted to meet the woman's newly-ungloved, tattooed arm. Two screams rent the air, first the low howl of the big guy in the chair and then the woman's shriek, full of horror and panic as she staggered back. She stared at her own arm twitching on the floor. Stephen's fingers had connected. Duke couldn't see why he was screaming, but the woman must have done something, too.

"It's okay," Nathan yelled over the noise, grabbing the woman's shoulder, trying to calm her down. "It'll fix back. He did it to me."

The Guard man had turned his weapon on Stephen, but now that his agonised writhing had stopped, Stephen seemed to have no attention at all for the threat. His eyes were shut and he just sat, still as a statue.

Something scampered past Duke. He gave a yelp and shot to his feet. "What the fuck was that?" Then he was hit with a nasty suspicion he'd just made a fool of himself. "Have you got a cat? Maybe rats?" But no, that, there, was definitely no animal. He looked back at Stephen and a gruesome incongruity registered. "Fuck. Oh, fuck. Nate, his hands."

Stephen's sleeves were empty.

"Stop it." Nathan grabbed for Stephen's collar -- and pulled back with a curse, two fingers tumbling where he'd brushed against skin.

The gun held by the Guard man hit the floor and discharged a round, fortunately into nothing more important than the tool drawers. It wasn't clear at first what was wrong. The woman opened her mouth to form a query, and he started howling. One of his flailing arms peeled away, falling in sliced sections of meat as Stephen's fucking disembodied hand scampered up the bare flesh to his T-shirt. It disappeared around his back. Gurgling horribly, he reached behind himself, trying to grab at it.

"Don't touch it!" Duke yelped, incredulous, thinking God, the stupidity. Ironically, the original idea had been the better one, but the Guard man's remaining hand wasn't quick enough.

Before all their eyes, his head started to roll off his neck, and a moment later, it bounced on the floor, still shouting. The headless body turned into a flailing mass.

The Guard woman drew a gun with her remaining hand and pointed it at Stephen.

"No!" Nathan shouted. "You could stay like that! And him." Given the pile of pieces Stephen had left of the unfortunate bastard, that was just nasty. The woman made a choked sound and holstered her gun. She dragged the wheelchair back and out of the way and lunged into the steadily dividing pile of thrashing body parts with her gloved hand instead.

"Alan, keep still," she gasped. Her hand hovered over his back, darting forward in a few false starts. His torso started to split at the shoulder blade. She grabbed -- better her than him, Duke thought, with a wince -- and brought her gloved hand away clutched around a larger man's hand, with an eyeball seated neatly between the circle of its thumb and forefinger. "Oh!" She almost dropped it, but recovered herself. Revulsion all over her face, she whipped her head around. "Nathan, I -- I need a box."

He was ready, dragging open one of the drawers in the table. The Guard woman flung the hand and eyeball into it, then shook out her hand and shuddered all over after he'd slammed it shut.

Nathan leaned on the drawer, which scratched and rocked in place, demanding freedom. He transferred the pressure to the hand still missing a few fingers. It allowed him to stretch out and use the other hand to pick up the woman's bare arm and offer it to her empty shoulder. She gave him a funny, soppy sort of smile, then gasped, distracted by the weirdness as her arm blended back into her body. She held it possessively against herself and seized her missing glove from the table.

"People..." Duke could feel the sweat breaking out on his face as he felt something creep up his back. "He's got two hands." He gestured, tensely jabbing a finger over his shoulder. Flesh brushed against his neck... there was the strangest feeling...

"Shit. Hold this--" Nathan passed control of the scraping, banging drawer to the woman, and vaulted across the work table. Duke's perspective of the leap... rolled. The floor bashed him in the nose, then the chin, and his vision... rolled again, until he was staring up, awfully surreally -- awful being the key word -- at his own headless body. He moved his arms. He watched them move. Jesus! Sort of upside-down in his peripheral vision, Nathan stopped and warily regarded his own bare hands. His eyes slid downwards and locked. "...Duke?"

How he could be wearing that placid expression, Duke didn't know. Nathan walked past him, reached down, grabbed the wide-eyed Josh, and hauled him up, backing away. "You don't win this, Stephen," he said, loudly. "You and your brother are going to jail. This is what happens here: I'm taking your brother away right now, and you can't stop me. The plan didn't pay off. You won't win Duke to your side today." He snorted. "Especially not this way. Get off him and... pull yourself together. The only thing helps your brother now is you coming quiet and owning up that it was all your plan to start with."

Duke could make a decision not to freak out uselessly like not-so-macho Guard dick Alan was doing, so made it. He watched his arms move. Weird from this perspective, but still just as much under his control as ever. Okay. He started to pull up his shirt and turn it inside-out. As he hauled it over his... neck, he reached up to bunch the collar together in his fist, trying to turn the garment into a literal hand-bag. The little sucker skittered almost out of it, but he managed to get both ends closed and wrapped the cloth around and around Stephen's hand. Fingers dived for the spaces between the button holes, but Duke scrunched the bundle harder, applied some pressure and the struggling ceased. Stephen, over in his wheelchair, grunted; the first damn sign of life from the rest of his body since he'd split his hands off. Belatedly, Duke remembered there was probably an eye in there, too, and loosened his grip a bit.

Nathan sighed and sagged, releasing Josh to slip down to the floor. He rested his hands on his knees and looked tiredly across at the very strange tableau with his best goddamn-Haven-weirdness expression.

"Can I get my friend back together?" the Guard woman asked, her voice carrying a faint tremor. She'd found a chair and wedged it in front of the drawer. "We'll... leave this one to you?" It was a careful question.

Nathan nodded tersely, looking as if he'd like to say something else. Something other than what he, eventually, did. "These men are under arrest. The law will deal with them. Take your people and get out. Leave the family alone." He paused. "Give me my damn gun back."

And that was how to say a whole bunch of nothing, Duke figured. He hadn't missed that plaintive "...Nathan..." in the midst of all the chaos. Whatever was going on between them, they ignored each other neatly as she started gathering her composure again and Nathan walked over to Duke and crouched down to pick him up.

Crap, that was weird. He could feel Nathan's fingers against his ear, curling around the back of his neck. He was offered a tight Wuornos smile from what seemed like a very long way above. "I'm so tempted it's almost cruel. Sure you'd be a lot less trouble this way."

"Hey," protested Duke, folding his arms irritably, watching himself do it. "I helped put you back together. Be nice."

"So you did." The smile skewed a bit. Nathan lifted him, hands settling into each cheek, weird absences where those fingers were still missing, and pushed his head securely back onto his neck. Duke felt things... knitting. Ugh.

"...So weird," he gasped, and shuddered. "Here." Ditching Stephen's hand into Nathan's grasp, he rubbed his neck all around and checked for... fucking seams or something. Even though he'd seen it happen to everyone else, he still didn't trust that this was all going to go back smooth with no lasting damage.

Nate stood a moment, watching while the woman retreated, macabre jigsaw finished, pulling her dazed and confused partner with her. Then he went and perched on the table facing Stephen's chair, wedging the bundle between his knees. "Stephen," he said, soft with threat, as the man now down four limbs and two eyes tensed even further, helpless, in his chair. "I'll trade your promise of co-operation for your hands and eyes back."

Hard and angry, the wounded soldier replied, "I suppose you think you bought and paid for that one."

"You're gonna have to tell me if that's a 'yes'."

Nathan could be without mercy, too. Especially when he'd been fucked around with quite so much as he had today. Duke, half an hour, an hour ago, had wanted nothing more than to get these fellows down on the ground and screaming, but as he watched Nathan string out Stephen's surrender, it struck as crueler than anything he could've inflicted, in its way.

***

It had only been possible to use their plan at all because Nathan couldn't tell he wasn't in agony. That was one of the things Duke figured out later, at the police station, amid indeterminable waiting brightened only by Audrey bringing him a coffee and a dried out donut with sprinkles. It had had to be Nathan. Which meant it wasn't Duke's fault, not really. Rev. had told his idiots about Nathan's Trouble, they already knew he at least hung around with Duke occasionally, and it had snowballed from there. A set of unique circumstances.

So he didn't have to freak out that Nathan, who was capable, strong and stubborn, but also vulnerable in weird ways, had a target painted on him because of being friends -- sometimes-sort of-maybe-damnitYES -- with him. It was Nathan, after all, who'd had the target inked on his own arm, ninety percent to freak Duke out and piss him off, so it was not his fault.

Yeah. And he intended to keep telling himself that.

He gave his highly edited statement to Audrey after they'd finished processing Stephen. Edited for Troubles, and edited because they had decided, he and Nate together, that there was no real need for Audrey to know just how bad it had actually been; and it had been as bad as anything Duke had ever known, for at least an hour in the middle there.

Stephen, who'd been in Afghanistan, who'd lost limbs, dealt with helplessness, faced the permanent mutilation of his body, communicated with psychiatrists and with other soldiers in the same boat, must have known what they were doing even if Josh hadn't. But then Stephen probably sneered when he looked at Nathan, seeing nothing more than a man who could feel no pain. Something else Duke had worked out since the station, and Audrey, and coffee, donuts and sprinkles. Intrusions of normality back into the hyper-real world of the last few hours.

Maybe taking Nathan's eyes had dehumanised him for both of them -- because that image had surely spooked Duke, and he was sure it was lodged in his nightmares now for years to come -- and once they'd done that, all the rest became easier.

Audrey being Audrey, she could probably tell they weren't coming clean about everything. He could kind of see her mulling over whether her new more hands-off attitude cared enough to push the issue. She eyed him up and down; gave him a brief pause to change his mind, then said, "Fine." He assumed, from that, her lightweight approach hadn't cracked Nathan, either. "I guess you can go." Her raised eyebrows taunted him with her awareness of the obfuscation, then she sighed and let up. "Come on, Duke, it's like midnight. I need to get out of here, too. I'll drop you off."

"No, I..." He grimaced, because he really didn't want to come off as too concerned. Hell, he didn't want to be concerned. "Thought I'd wait for Nathan."

She pulled a face and grabbed her jacket from the back of a chair, and left them to their conspiracy. "Good night, Duke." Then she was gone, a flurry of attitude and contradictions, and despite how much he really, really didn't want to talk about it, he could feel the need to on the tip of his tongue, and couldn't help but wish she'd pushed just a little more.

Duke waited. He was neither patient nor well behaved, stealing more coffee and another donut and haranguing the guy on night duty to distract himself, but he waited. It turned out Nathan had gone to the hospital with Josh, but he'd left half his stuff, so would presumably still be back at some point. That should have been Duke's cue to leave, because he had the Gull to open up in the morning and so much more important things, like sleep, to be getting on with, and it didn't make any sense that he was overcome with the need to see Nathan again, whole and intact, before he left.

Except a part of him was still locked in that small, square room, knowing that Nate was being cut to pieces and it was his responsibility. Even though it hadn't happened, and had never been real to start with. He scrubbed his hand over his forehead and stared at the damp sheen that came away on his fingertips. Maybe he shouldn't have stolen that second and third coffee. Cop coffee was like moonshine, needed a warning on it.

"Duke?" Nathan stood in the door, staring at him. Eyes -- check, tired and irritable, and hands -- check, one wrapped around paperwork, half-raised in surprise, the other holding the door. "How in the hell are you still here? In my office. Did you touch anything?"

He looked fine. Then again, Duke had thought he'd looked fine when he was secretly missing his fucking eyeballs, so what did he know? Nathan either, for that matter.

"I need a lift back to the marina," he said, and, "Where the fuck were you? I could've walked there by now." Because he certainly couldn't own up to the real reason he'd been waiting.

Nathan rolled his eyes. "Josh was rushed into emergency surgery. Bullet shifted. Figured I'd hang around to make sure I hadn't killed him. Dr Benedict saw the bruises and insisted on MRI number 22." The bruising had come up in a big arc over the side of his face where Stephen slammed him into the table. "A colossal waste of time. Josh's okay. Nothing's broken. Knew there was a reason I like Dr Lucassi... Is there some special reason you're standing there with that dopey look on you instead of getting the hell out of my office?"

This was Nathan. Who didn't like him, didn't trust him, and wouldn't spit on him if he were on fire. Duke swallowed an odd upsurge of emotion, but before he could get around to mustering words, Nate heaved a sigh, set his paperwork on his desk and scooped up his jacket and keys. "All right. I suppose I owe you one."

Duke's eyes shot to his face in surprise, but Nathan turned away, avoiding the gaze, and headed out the door again, leaving Duke to trail behind him. How? he wanted to ask, but that would have been idiotic, since somehow, out of all the crazy chances, Nathan was choosing not to blame him for what had happened today, when he normally blamed him for everything up to and including random acts of God. Instead he said, "Honestly, I lost count way back," and waited for a response that was never forthcoming.

Nate got an extra set of keys from the reception desk and took them home in a too-old patrol car with fading, smelly upholstery. His hands moved calmly, if tiredly, on the steering wheel, and his head seemed wrapped in thoughts, but Duke was forced to concede that Nathan probably was all right. Had passed MRI number 22 to prove it. Tight-lipped, self-contained and unbending, whatever nightmares followed him home tonight would stay his alone. There was nothing here Duke could help with, and that was where he'd have to let it rest. After all, he didn't want Nathan's wellbeing in his hands, and the cruel manipulation that had placed it there made him feel fucking ill.

Anyone else's life in his hands was all over what he didn't damn well want, from his dad's legacy or any other direction, thanks.

It was still hellishly hard to stand on the waterfront and watch the scruffy old cop car pull away, carrying off the life he'd been made terrifyingly responsible for.

He boarded his boat, went to the galley, poured himself a large scotch and then sat and stared at it, and tried to process any of the whole clusterfuck of his evening.

What was most incredible, he realised, was what had been absent. From the moment he'd been pushed into that awful scene, Nathan had trusted him, even to telling the fucking Guard he was no danger. There was probably an argument that Nathan had no choice, had been forced by circumstances where anyone would have to put trust in any random asshole stuck in the same mess. It didn't change the fact that, in the worst of situations, without even his own senses to guide him, Nathan hadn't once turned and said, "You're lying", or "You're working with them", and until the moment they'd contradicted what little sensory information he had left, he'd trusted Duke's perceptions like a lifeline.

Nothing had changed between the two of them, according to Nathan's grudging eyes back at the station, hard with the same old distrust... Nothing had changed with Nathan's plans, and if anything the whole incident had just cemented him more with the Guard. Nothing had changed with Nate's damn bullheadedness -- when experiences of that order of fucked up ought to make anyone with an ounce of self-preservation step back and reconsider.

But, no, he had to concede that Nathan had given him the ride back, after all. Maybe his hostility had been blunted a little. Duke supposed he would only find out for sure over time.

Anyway, that had still been after, and back in the garage at the start, there'd been nothing to inspire that instant trust.

In moments so dire they stripped everything else away, past slights and current hostility, maybe what you got down to was a glimpse of truth.

He gulped the whiskey and poured another, because he sure as hell wasn't ready to deal with thoughts of that kind sober.

Tomorrow, he'd likely start to remember his aggravations, and to feel pissed about Nathan's games and his Guard connections and whatever new secret bullshit lay behind that breathy "...Nathan..." because, seriously? But right now...

No. Right now, he was going to get so drunk that he couldn't see, and if that left the Gull down by an unworkable contingent of its staff in the morning, then so be it.


END