FIC: [Haven] Redemption of Killers and Rogues - Jordan & the Crockers (NC-17)

[roseveare]

TITLE: Redemption of Killers and Rogues
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: NC-17
LENGTH: 11,500 words
SUMMARY: Jordan survives Wade Crocker's descent into madness. Now she has to live with what she set in motion. Jordan/Wade, Jordan & Duke.
WARNINGS: Rape, violence.
NOTES: Anti-deathfic. Still not a nice fic. I have aggressive thoughts about the symbolic rape of that knife going in and female characters who only get to be 'redeemed' in victimhood and death.
THANKS: To Kattahj and Miah_Arthur for beta-reading.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, no profit, yadda, yadda, yadda.
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Redemption of Killers and Rogues

Death gazes at her out of Wade Crocker's murderous eyes and Jordan goes spiralling down into darkness. In that moment, she does not expect she will ever wake up again.

***

When she wakes, oh, she wishes she hadn't. Her body aches all over, but none of it so fiercely as her arms, fixed above and behind her, twisted and tied to something. The pain whites out even the hot pain of the knife slash across her thigh and the deeper one in her stomach.

Opening her eyes doesn't make much difference at first. It's semi-dark. The light level feels like early morning, but she can't see anything but pre-dawn grey sky out of any of the windows. She remembers being in the car. A needle in her skin after the second knife cut. Wade reversed that cut just when she'd thought him drawn to kill by the promise of greater quantities of Troubled blood. Some other promise had overridden it.

She realises two things simultaneously: that she's lying on a bed with her hands tied tightly to the headboard and her legs sprawled in a manner that has no dignity at all, and that even though she's fully dressed, there's a fierce soreness between her thighs, an ache of use the like of which hasn't been there for a very long time, and it should not have been overshadowed by something as fucking trivial as her aching arms.

Jordan makes a sick noise. There's no-one around to hear it, so far as she can tell. Drug hangover clouds her thoughts, fights her efforts to close her legs and pull them closer in to the rest of her body. Wade... while she was out, he's -- somehow, he has done this. She thought no-one could touch her like that again, thought that was a risk she'd never have to worry about, but he isn't as wary of her Trouble as most, and he's found a way. Using the perversities of a mind that, not so long ago, she'd thought she could reap the benefits of for her enjoyment.

The realisation prompts her to wild struggles that only exacerbate her hurts. Her harsh breathing sounds so very loud, and fear slows her down, makes her force more purpose to her movements. There's a metal bar across the top of the headboard which her hands are roped to. They're still in the gloves. She tries to move her fingers and needs to squint hard through the darkness to tell they're moving at all. They barely twitch on her command. There's no way out by that route.

This body is a shell she doesn't want to be in anymore. Maybe Wade will kill her, now he's had what he wanted.

For about half a second, it's a comforting thought. Then it makes her burn with fury enough to live just to make him fucking pay. It's always been easier to drive herself forward with thoughts of that sort than positive ones. She's never been, and never will be, all rainbows and puppies and light.

Right now she'll take it.

She lies still, regaining her breath and trying to regroup... everything. Fighting the tranquilized fuzziness in her head. And she realises where she is. It's not just the lingering sickness that makes it seem like the world is moving. It really is moving; shifting slowly and rhythmically under her. Maybe some of that sickness isn't from the tranquilizer after all, because she's never been great at boats.

It's not that chancy a bet whose it is. She forces herself to peer into the gloom, and because she did search it, recognises Crocker's boat. Duke's boat. Apparently he's the less dangerous Crocker, after all.

Jordan opens her mouth, draws a deep breath and yells for him just as loud as she can. "DUKE!" Her voice cracks. She hears it echo around the floating hunk of junk. Is he here? Does he already know she's here? He's not in cahoots with his brother, is he? Wade... surely Wade wouldn't hurt his own flesh and blood? Jordan has never had much truck with Duke, but she's pretty damn sure -- now she's put on the spot, she has to say that he would not fucking approve of this. "CROCKER! DUKE!" She doesn't want him to see her like this, fuck no, but she has to--

The door opens angrily and it's not Duke. Jordan kicks her legs and scrambles up the bed as the light clicks on, pain in her arms irrelevant. For a moment, she's blinking, can't see, and Wade just registers as gruff shouting. He's drunk and she can smell the alcohol on him from this distance. Judging by the blur in his voice and the dishevelled state of his clothes, she wonders if he might have been asleep as she blinks the dazzle away and tries to focus, but maybe it's just the drink.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Jordan shouts back. Her own voice is all disbelief, pain and panic. The kind of panic you'd get waking up after being cut and tied up and violated, but she's ashamed by it all the same.

He just stares at her. Then he slams the door. Gone. After the harsh bang fades, as she's hunched at the head of the bed breathing hard, she hears someone else shouting and banging faintly, like it's coming from a few locked doors away. God, is that -- is that Duke? Are they both prisoners here? Dim hope persists. Maybe Duke isn't tied up. Maybe he can get out and help her. She raises her voice again. "Crocker, is that--" 'Crocker' is no longer a helpful identification. "Duke?! I'm here! Damn it, help me!" She screams it out (and she's not proud of that, either) and the banging goes silent. Jordan struggles to get enough breath back to start screaming again.

She becomes aware of an... indecent sort of draught, from how she's curled with her knees hunched up. Now that the light is on, and merciless in what it reveals, she can see that even though she still has her leather pants on, they've been slit open at the crotch in a small, neat, precise incision.

'X' marks the spot.

Jordan moans and heaves and... holds it in, because if she throws up here, she'll have no choice but to lie in it.

Of course he wouldn't undress her, and he must have worn a condom, at least. He likes to live dangerously. He's crazy and he wasn't careful. The one thing she knows for sure is he fucked her hard enough to ensure she knew it when she woke up.

When she hears Wade's clumsy drunken footsteps returning, she wants to sink into the floor, as far down as Hell if necessary... blend back into the wall, evaporate into the air and become nothing at all, anything in her desperation to get away from this situation. She tears at her hands and a trickle of blood runs sluggishly down her wrist. Her body thrashes on the bed. The sheets and any coverage, any laughable protection they might afford, are all way down at the bottom of the bed.

Wade opens the door. He looks more awake than he did before. He's carrying his rubber gloves and a packet of extra-thick condoms.

"No, fuck off!" Jordan screams hoarsely. "T-touch me again I'll make you die in agony! No, Wade. No!"

He's closing the door. Now he's unfastening his fly. The world contracts into glimpses of moments. Her brain stops working properly; can only process like a record skipping, missing chunks out, taking random pieces out of time. Now he's fumbling with a condom to cover himself. Now her hands are bleeding more. Now he's pulling on his gloves.

She kicks him as he crawls toward her over the sheets, but her shoes are the one item of clothing he discarded. He grabs her ankles and pushes them to one side, traps them together under his arm. His free hand goes to her defenceless centre, where that 'x' bares her open.

She feels his thumb invade her: the thick, uncomfortable texture of the glove. Its entry pushes a noise out through her lips that isn't quite anything.

"I've so wanted to touch you," Wade says, blearily. "And I could see that you wanted to be touched."

Did he think that that sound represented anything like want?

It's all the more humiliating that he's so fucking paralytic while he's doing this to her. He can barely form words.

He presses almost tenderly with his gloved hand and she shudders at the movement, trapped in his touch, unable to get away. He has her feet: the bar at the back of the bed has her wrists. This close in she can smell the alcohol on him, but also a strong, metallic tang of blood. Her eyes sting. She feels hot moisture start to trail unstoppably down her face. "Wade..."

"I know, I should have waited. I'm bad. But you took such a long time to wake up." His face looms close but he remembers, at the last moment, that he can't kiss her.

"Wade, what the fuck do you think you're--" She cries out as the combination of bulky gloves and prior soreness replace despair with acute discomfort.

"I'm sorry," he says, weird and almost sing-song. "But there's something else I need first." He takes his hand from her cunt and pain sparks as he gropes heavy fingers over the open rope grazes at her wrists. Then he wipes his gloved hand across his face. A small red smear sinks into his skin. What little chance she had of fighting him disappears along with what control he had, spiralling into silver-eyed madness. Matchless strength parts her legs again and drags her down the bed, and the muscles in her arms shriek as they're hauled to the full extent the ropes will allow and then more.

Blunt agony forces its way inside her.

The silver disappears from his eyes in the space of seconds. Talk about short stamina... Jordan almost laughs at him, slipping out of her without his Trouble-powered strength to hold their positions, clumsy and pathetic, hampered by using one hand to try to hold his fly closed around the base of his dick to protect himself. Instead, she roars with the effort as she strains to reach him with the bare skin of her face. But the way he's pulled her down against the ropes, it's impossible to reach him: he controls which parts of their bodies touch. Before she knows what's happening, he has a knife, slashing through layers of her clothing so that the blood soaks through where they press together. This happened before, she realises. He fucked her with a freely bleeding wound and her blood fed his power, endlessly recycling the high.

Her body is opened again with inhuman force. There's a knife somewhere, lost among bed sheets and body parts, but she can't even keep that thought in her mind. She tries to divorce herself from her lower half altogether, to focus on the pain of her arms, remembering that when she first awoke, lacking context, they were the greater hurt.

She doesn't know how long it lasts. His methods to overcome her Trouble are hardly foolproof, and he's moving so vigorously that she hopes, and keeps hoping... but if Wade catches bare skin at all, he's too far gone for it to make an impression.

When he rolls clear of her it's like his brain has been blanked by the alcohol and the blood-high. There's nothing in his eyes. He flops aside and gets halfway down the bed before passing out. Jordan gasps and curls away from him, clamping knees and thighs together now that she can, uselessly and too late. For minutes she just pulls dumbly on the ropes, softly moaning repetitive nonsense, trying to get more distance from him. Then, slowly, sense enough returns for her to grasp that he's unconscious next to her.

He's unconscious next to her.

All she has to do is find a scrap of skin within reach and he is at her mercy.

Her arms are out of the picture. Her face still can't reach. Her feet, though, are covered only by socks, and she drags her heels against the mattress, ignoring the many pains the movement sparks. It's not hard to slide the socks from her feet.

Jordan twists to shove her bare feet into Wade's face and neck. Watches him convulse and wake and scream, then pass out again. She keeps going, pushing the arch of one foot into his chin, the heel of the other into his eye. Watches him jolt and twitch even though he's already unconscious. She stabs at his nostrils with her toes, making him bleed, and kicks her heel into his ear, again and again. Seriously, she could go on all night.

...But the night, she finally registers, is over. It's full light outside. The sun is streaming through the small windows. And she is tied to a bed with Wade Crocker, who at this point might be comatose or dead, but has stopped reacting to her touch.

Maybe she kept her foot on his throat for too long.

Well, boo-hoo.

Somewhere in the bed is still a knife. She searches for it with her feet, scrabbling around, more twists and acrobatics that draw pain from aching muscles. The knife is under Wade. To get it, she has to shove at his ribs with one foot while sliding the other underneath him and dragging back hard, and that hangs most of her weight off her arms again.

Once she has the knife, it's a question of how she's going to use it. She's not bendy enough to pick it up with her feet and cut the ropes on her wrists. But she manages to wedge it against the pillows by twisting one knee backwards, then adjust her posture without knocking it over, lying as low as she can in the bed and turning her head; clamping her teeth around the blade. She lifts it up with her jaw and arches her chest, drops and shuffles its cumbersome shape using her breasts as a shelf, and manages to shift her mouth's hold to the handle.

She tips her head back and levers up toward the ropes, and with cost in multiple small stabs and neck cramps, finally manages to saw her way loose.

Her wrists burst free and for several minutes, that's worse than all the rest. As circulation returns, she shakily pulls her gloves off and massages white, cold flesh. As soon as she can make her fingers fix around the knife, she folds it in her fist and jabs it up under Wade's chin, buries it as deep as she can then thumps the heel of her hand to bury it deeper, and leaves it there. She doesn't bother to check if he's alive or dead first. She doesn't care.

When she stands up -- she almost falls over again -- it hits her with intensity that she needs a bathroom desperately. She slams out of the door, barely registering that he left it open, finds herself somehow in a cramped corridor space surrounded by other doors, and slams them open at random, everything she learned searching Duke's boat before scattered from her head, until she finds what she needs.

After that, she hunches in front of the sink, letting water run over her hands and splashing her face. Her tears won't stop. In the mirror, her eyes are hot and sore. Her hair is a tangled nightmare. She has seen the rubbed raw state of her thighs when she dragged her pants down to pee, and she is bleeding, but not from the new cut he made, which has congealed into her shirt, or the older wounds Wade covered with basic dressings. She has no way of knowing what the internal damage might be.

She wants to shower, but since she'd have to put the same clothes back on afterwards, she goes to find Duke Crocker and let him out instead. She was dimly aware that when Wade was raping her, hers was not the only voice screaming for it to stop.

There isn't any noise now to guide her to him, so she can only go around opening more doors because she can't quite bring herself to open her mouth and call. As she crosses the kitchen area and rounds the counter there, she sees something she missed the first time through.

The woman who's been hanging around with Duke and Nathan ever since they came back to town is lying on the floor behind the counter. The little scratches on her neck aren't big enough to justify the blood pool she's lying in. "Oh, God." Jordan presses her hand to her mouth. Her gloves are back in the wreckage of the bedroom and for all she knows she might not be putting them back on, ever, after this, but even if she had them she couldn't take a pulse. She stumbles to her knees and leans over -- Jennifer, she fills in the name -- and pats at a shoulder safely covered by fabric. "Are you... shit, are you alive? Oh, my God. Come on!" She risks a rough shake. The other woman is unresponsive.

With sudden inspiration, Jordan grabs a stainless steel serving spoon from a rack and holds it before the girl's lips. After a moment, a faint mist forms on the shiny surface.

Jordan jumps back and searches wildly for a phone. A handbag -- Jennifer's -- is on the counter, and she upends it to scatter the contents -- score. She snatches the compact, black shape. Her hands are shaking as she dials. At first all she can say is, "I need an ambulance," and it takes several repeated questions to get out Jennifer's physical status -- what she knows of it -- and where they are, and then they ask her to do things, to check things, and she howls, "I can't! I'm Troubled! For fuck's sake, send someone." She hurls the phone at the wall and buries her head in her hands.

Shit. She needs to find Duke. She can't touch, Crocker can. He's not at this end of the boat, so she totters back down the other end.

She finds him almost at once, in a locked storage closet behind a thick metal door. Shoving the door open, she notices the blood smears on the inside of it, then sees him -- stumbling and holding up bloodied hands as he tries to abort his lunge. "Whoa!" he gasps. She can't see any other injury on him. He pounded his hands raw trying to get out. "Not -- okay, not who I was expecting."

"Crock-- Duke." She needs to make him distinct from Wade. Her voice sounds hushed and hollow as she tells him, "You need to come with me now."

"Jesus Christ, Jordan," he says, looking at her, but he doesn't say anything else. He gets up and follows, and she breaks into a run, staggering off the walls when her balance fails. He swears and goes even paler when he sees Jennifer, and falls to his knees next to her, but even then has to pause to throw down a bundle of kitchen towels over the blood on the floor.

He can't touch her easily either, Jordan realises. She leans over, feeling exhausted, rests her hands on her knees and hangs there, watching, recovering her breath until she can say, "I called an ambulance."

"She's alive," Duke says hoarsely, his fingers on Jennifer's neck. He uncovers the wound in her abdomen -- awful -- at the cost of a silvered flash in his eyes that freezes him stock-still for several seconds until it's passed. Jordan hands over another clean towel from the open drawer and he takes it and wads it up, pressing it to the wound. Both their breathing rasps in the silence until Duke picks up: "She's going to stay alive. Hang on, Jen."

"All this just for the blood," says Jordan, hollow, emptied-out. God, she was lucky Wade wanted her. She can't believe she's thinking it, but she saw the wound when Duke uncovered it and even if the girl lives, it's going to suck.

"Where's Wade?" Duke looks around in sudden panic, and his arm jerks as he fights the impulse to jump up with the knowledge that he can't.

Jordan opens her mouth but can only hold up her hands and shake her head as no sound emerges. No variation on I killed your brother wants to leave her lips. "He's... not coming back," she manages, finally.

Maybe she should have called the police with the ambulance, but if 'Lexie' and Nathan were to turn up, she couldn't handle that right now.

Duke stares at her, and then the sound of sirens drags his attention away and the only thoughts he has left are for Jennifer's life.

"I -- in here!" he yells as the sirens stop close by. He looks around wildly, fixes back on Jordan. "Go -- go out there, lead them in. Quick!"

It isn't the reaction she'd have predicted yesterday if anyone told her Duke Crocker would be trying to give her orders, but Jordan's already moving.

***

When she finds him in the waiting area, she's wearing baggy hospital pants to replace her torn ones and hospital slippers because she left the Cape Rouge in bare feet. She's more sore now than three hours ago. The examination to check what damage Wade caused didn't help with that. It didn't do any wonders for her bruised psyche either. The police arrived with the ambulance anyway, and so she got the full treatment, police request: evidence, photographs, samples... non-samples, as she told them she doubted he'd actually physically touched her. They would test the condoms, too, the police said. The discussion about seeking counselling ("No!") spins around in her head. She feels numb now, and overwhelmingly relieved that all she's seen so far is uniformed HPD officers who she only very vaguely recognises at worst. She also knows that she will need all the evidence they took, later, to prove she had every fucking justification in killing Wade Crocker.

Duke has his head buried in his hands, legs sprawled out in front of him. Jordan shuffles towards him and he raises his head. His eyes turn, if possible, even bleaker. His whisper shocks her: "Thank you."

"Why?"

"Jennifer might live." In difficult bursts, he gets the words out. "If it had been much longer... if you'd just left... if you hadn't let me out... she'd have had no chance at all."

Jordan points out, "I'm the one who told him about his curse in the first place."

Duke's eyes do go a bit harder, but he takes a shuddery breath and comes back with, "Well, you sure as hell weren't expecting this."

No and hell, no. Jordan says, "I'm sorry." Her feet are rooted to the floor. She feels her eyes well up and shakes her head, then lets it drop, letting her face be covered by her hair. She hasn't cried since before she found Jennifer.

"Fuck." Duke half rises. "I mean, don't. Jesus, sit down, Jordan. You look like you're about to fall down. Look... I heard, okay? I was locked behind that door and the things I heard... Okay, you made a shitty choice, but you fucking carried that. It's not like... There's no way I could still blame..." His hands can only touch empty air, not her, so he sags back, trying to implore her with his eyes instead.

So he heard some screaming. She can't imagine much else carried. Jordan will admit that she is not wholly sure what it must have sounded like, or what he will have got from that, but surely there are only so many levels of detail to be gained from a scream. She wonders if Duke will get to see the bed and the ropes, or if the police will have cleaned it up before he goes home. Or if the police have people who do these things. Or if Audrey will do it anyway if they don't. A chill runs through her.

"Sit down," he offers again, patting the seat next to him.

Jordan scrapes her hair out of her face. "I'll stand." Sitting hurts, is the truth of the matter. She has bruises in intimate places and bruises on her thighs and hips and stomach, and a little tearing inside which, she is told, should get better on its own, though she might notice bloody or discoloured discharge for a while. "Wear panty liners," is their helpful advice. She did not miss, however, that Duke Crocker just invited her to sit with him, and her arms are bare. Aside from the obvious -- Duke, unlike Audrey and Nathan, who can flaunt such blitheness, has had a taster of her before -- they've never been friends. They've barely been civil.

The offer is too momentous to turn down and she has nowhere else to go, or that she wants to go, right now. She is supposed to report at the police station when she leaves the hospital. There's probably a cop scouring the corridors wondering where she's got to. She'd rather stay here. She doesn't sit but walks slowly over to lean against the wall on the other side of Duke. Her back is the part of her that hurts least, and the presence of the wall is soothing and takes some of the weight off.

They sit and lean, and stare into space a while. A clock on the wall ticks.

"Jennifer's in surgery?" Jordan asks quietly. Gets a minimalist nod. "I hope she makes it."

"I brought her here," Duke says. "I asked her to stay. What the hell was I thinking? Like I don't know that this town fucking eats people?"

There's not a lot to say to that. Wishing won't make it not so.

After a while, hoarsely, he says, "You killed Wade."

"I had no choice." It's not the whole truth. Was she truly afraid he could still hurt her if she gave him chance to recover, or was it pure revenge? She suspects she'd have killed him either way. "I'm--" She chokes on the platitude of an apology. "I'm not sorry. I didn't know about Jennifer then, but now I do, I feel even better about doing it. I'm sorry he was your brother, though."

"Yeah." Duke sounds dazed. "I'd suggest you don't talk like that to the police."

"No." She's sorry she engineered the situation where it became necessary to kill him at all. She is unmeasured quantities of sorry. She could say that, and risk tipping the fragile truce by reminding Duke. She released a monster on the world: she put him down. It would have been better if she was the only one who'd had to suffer the consequences. Duke has deflected her apology, but she figures he has to know it was meant. The rest of what's owed... apologies feel meaningless, in the face of what she's done. "I was leaving town." The words are numb. She'd been going to start a new life. She'd thought the old one had already exploded just about as spectacularly as it ever could. She wonders if there's any point in a new life now. After all, wherever you go, there you are. "I had no idea he'd become so... obsessed by the blood."

"He jumped me on my boat," Duke fills in. "Jennifer must have come back afterwards. I was -- going crazy, hoping... It was late, I hoped she'd stayed in town. I was never even sure she was there."

"But you knew I was there."

He gives her a sidelong look. "You're loud."

She snorts, fully aware he considers her a headache and a harridan, because he's never been shy about the opinion. The thing is, if he recognised her voice, all that tearing at the door was a response to her screams. His knuckles are bandaged and one of his fingers is splinted now. He fought to get through the door until his hands bled for her. Not someone he liked, not even a stranger, but an enemy. She has misjudged Duke Crocker for a long time.

He gathers himself and she hears him draw a long breath before he asks, "Are you all right?" He doesn't bother trying to be self-conscious as to the appropriateness of the question. Just a genuine enquiry of concern about her health.

"Oh, I'm fine," she mocks, injecting undeserved derision. "I've done this before, remember? I'm an old hand." She can absorb this. Isn't one violation the same as the next, so long as her body recovers... Scotty didn't physically damage her like this, but she had far more innocence, back then, for him to smash. She was a rape victim before and she's still one now. Really, nothing has changed. Yet Wade could also have killed her today and that horror is a new one, and the old horror isn't really any better for being old. The tears are falling again, silently, and she closes her eyes to try get control of them.

"You're not wearing your gloves," Duke points out.

She's not, though there are white dressings around both her abraded wrists. Someone might still be able to restrain her hands by grabbing her there. "Maybe I'm feeling like anyone who touches me deserves what they get." It will probably last as far as the first person to incautiously brush her arm or give her a friendly pat, before she freaks out over being a beacon of agony and covers herself up again.

For the first time since she moved to lean on the wall, he really looks at her; turns his head and looks right at her. "You don't have to... take up arms against the world. I may not know exactly what Wade did or... how..." His face screws up in the sort of bafflement that just can't ask. "But I know it was bad. From the moment you let me out, you cared about nothing but saving Jen. Whatever else happens... " His eyes drift more distant, drawn unerringly back up the hospital corridor, till he yanks them away. "If you want to talk, later, we can talk. If it'll help, being able to offload to someone else who was there... I already know you can't stand shrinks." His tone backs off a bit and the last few words come out rather light and lame. He pushes clumsy fingers into his shirt pocket and pulls out a business card for the Grey Gull. She has to assume that's his own cellphone number on it.

Jordan rolls her eyes but takes it, careful not to let their fingers touch. Duke Crocker just gave her his phone number.

The moment shatters as voices sound along the corridor and she recognises the one thing she didn't want -- Nathan and Audrey, coming toward them. She sees Duke's face soften with the same recognition, but she is getting the fuck out. She pushes off from the wall, taking difficult but purposeful long strides around the arrangement of seats and to the corridor exiting in the other direction. She's not sure what's down there. Anything. She'll figure a route out or if she has to, hide in a storage cupboard until they've gone. "Later," she tosses back to Duke.

The other footsteps pick up to a run as Audrey calls, "Wait! I need to talk to you."

"Hell, no," Jordan says, and ducks out.

She's vaguely aware that it's Duke who stops them trying to follow her.

***

To hell with the cops. Jordan goes home. She hadn't meant to see it again, her little single-storey cabin at the back of the Gun & Rose, doesn't know what Wade did with the few things she'd packed that she couldn't bear to leave behind, and will probably never see them again, now.

She finds Dwight waiting for her, parked in his truck outside the short drive, and crosses reluctantly to the window he rolls down. His eyes are liquid and his face stone. That's the eternal contradiction about Dwight. When she puts both her hands on the edge of the window and the frame of the door, his eyes widen at the proximity of her bare skin. She shuts her eyes, holds it in, doesn't move her hands, and blinks the world back into resigned focus.

"You need to make a statement," Dwight says. "I can take it here, if you want."

"I need to take a shower," Jordan replies, "and I need to change." In a way, it's beside the point, because Wade did not touch her. But she still smells of her own sweat and blood.

Dwight nods, not really surprising her. "I'll wait."

She takes a few steps away and then stops. "I don't know where my keys are," she admits. "Any chance you could help me get into my home?"

He not only lets her in with scary proficiency at lock-picking, but then goes to swap his police SUV for his old truck and comes back loaded with equipment, announcing his return with a reassuring call before he comes inside. She hears him setting to work on changing her locks as she bolts herself inside the bathroom with a clean set of clothes and a first aid kit and tries to put Jordan McKee back together in all the ways that the attentions of hospitals do nothing for.

The first time she was raped, the time her Trouble was activated, she locked herself in a room for days. When she came out, it was to head straight for Scotty, with single-minded purpose, and she brought him back to her room and spent the next three days with him locked in with her, diverting all her destructive urges from herself to a more deserving target. Which helped a hell of a lot more than the psychiatrists did. She got charged with assault, after that, but wasn't that just one of life's little ironies?

This time, she tells herself, she doesn't need to lock herself away because Wade is dead.

If she gets charged with murder, this time, she might actually laugh.

Jordan in the mirror looks hollow-eyed. Her hair looks like it's been dragged through a hedge. She goes in the shower without looking at the bruises and lets the thin dressings over the three cuts on her torso and thigh get wet with the ones on her wrists. She'll change them after.

She focuses more effort on her hair than anything else.

It's odd, but some of that calm centeredness that made her decide to leave Haven to start with seems to be with her still. She would never have imagined that she could do this a second time; that she could keep it together. The answer to that is she probably won't. This, now, is just resignation. She'll have crying jags at inconvenient moments for the next few weeks, drink too much and find whole new ways to self-flagellate, but what else can she do? Better that than trying to unload to another Claire Callahan, who'll get stuck on I fucking killed that bastard and judge her, and it'll all go south from there.

Right now she has enough pain to contend with anyway, so she just gets clean and enjoys the water, even if it stings in places, then makes herself get out when it starts to run cold. She dresses. She takes a long time to brush all the tangles out of her wet hair. Did Wade actually drag her through a hedge? Bastard.

When she finally emerges, Dwight is in the kitchen/living room and the coffee percolator is gently hissing. He already has a cup in his hand, and he puts it down and jumps up from the chair to pour another.

Jordan picks up the mug he left on the table and sips. Dwight rolls his eyes, tips his head in long experience and makes himself another. This is a ritual. It started out as the closest her lips could get to touching his, though he probably doesn't realise it. He just thinks she likes to steal his coffee, since they take it the same. Since Nathan, and now that they don't know if the Troubles will ever go, there's less of that to it. But they've known each other a long time, relatively, and at least one of the circumstances over the years was worse than this one. Jordan's chest clenches with the thought of Lizzie.

Dwight clears his throat and drags his eyes up and down her form, but doesn't say anything other than, "You look better." She is showing enough skin to qualify as a WMD. A green cami top that's barely there and a leather pencil-skirt, mid-calf in concession to the bruises, no pantyhose, and tiny slip-on flat shoes. Her feet saved her life. She isn't ready to cover them up again with boots so soon. Her hair, she's gathered up in a rare ponytail high on her head, baring all the curve of her neck. She put sweat bands with little silver studs over the bandages on her wrists.

She doesn't embrace her Trouble like this willingly, but there are patterns and there are patterns, and she's going to let her body defend itself for a while.

"Thanks, Dwight." There's a new key on the kitchen counter. She takes it and holds it in her hand like a talisman. Then she turns away and searches her cupboards for anything resembling food. She hadn't eaten when she saw Wade last night, and lack of sustenance makes her body feel all the more of a gaping hole.

She pops dry bread in the toaster and opens up a ring-pull can of beans. Dwight winces, watching her attack the cold contents with a fork. "You eat like a student. A male student."

Jordan shuts the cupboard, hiding all the rest of the cans and just-add-water packets from his view.

He clears his throat uneasily. "Vince told me you were leaving Haven."

"I met Wade on the way out. My mistake."

"Duke told me that. You do know... Jennifer might live because you did. Because you were there. So even if..."

"I'll consider being happy about being raped -- again -- after 'might' gets upgraded to 'will', thanks," she jeers back at him and Dwight grimaces. "Fuck. It helps. It helps that this is all my fault. How fucked up is that? I'm the one who wound Wade up and pushed him off on his way, and he rolled straight on back to me. How's that for self-flagellation?"

He nods slowly, telling her to pull it together with his eyes.

"So there's nothing new on Jennifer?" she asks, softer. She heard him talking on his cell at one point while she was in the bathroom, but only the mumble of it, not the words.

"Out of surgery. They won't know for a while. Maybe a few days."

"Duke?"

"Nathan drove him to the Gull."

She snorts, but it's just habit at the mention of Nathan's name. Nathan and Duke are friends now, so that's a good thing. She feels beholden to Duke, since she just tore up his life: brother, maybe-girlfriend... she isn't too sure what the situation is there. Duke forgave her, but that's not enough. It might even be worse.

She's starting to get that this time, what's been done to her isn't as important as what she caused to happen to others. What if Wade hadn't been stopped there? If she'd loosed a super-powered psychotic on the Troubled?

This time the sting of her eyes is short-lived. She doesn't deserve tears. She puts down the beans, half-eaten, and swills down the rest of her coffee between crunching the toast. "I'm ready to go to the station now. Give my statement."

Dwight looks surprised. "We can..." he begins, and stops.

"Not you." Jordan's voice is almost a whisper.

"All right. I can arrange for a female officer."

She shakes her head. "Any anonymous uniform will do." She's always been more comfortable dealing with men than women. It's only that she'd prefer to preserve some mystery, some dignity, before Dwight, even if they can't touch and that bird has long flown.

What's ironic is that Wade did enough, without skin contact. But Wade was crazy, and anyway, that approach will forever now be tainted with Wade.

***

The statement is... difficult, but the hospital sent the police her clothes and the rest of their evidence, and Duke has already told them what he knows, presumably dragged out of him by Nathan and Audrey, God damn it, and they have the scene of the crime on the Cape Rouge, Wade's body, the bed and the ropes and the condoms, and if those don't tell the story... It seems she isn't going to be arrested for murder, though, or charged with manslaughter.

Self-defence. It's laughable, and she might still laugh, since she's the very reason it became necessary to defend herself against him. She leaves with the definite feeling of getting away with it.

She leaves on foot, ducking out and avoiding Dwight, though he'd ferry her back willingly if she gave him the chance. She doesn't want his company after re-living Wade.

She walks to the hospital and asks after Jennifer Mason. They're reluctant to tell her anything because she isn't a relative, until she says, starkly, "I'm the other woman he attacked." Someone produces one of the nurses from before, who tells Jordan that Jennifer "may pull through", and when she challenges that with the fact they've been saying it all day, allows that things have become a little more cautiously optimistic than earlier.

It doesn't make her feel much better, because "a little more cautiously optimistic" is still a hedge, but she takes that home with her, locks herself inside, and curls up on the couch in her clothes. She falls asleep almost instantly, largely because it's mid-afternoon and she had no natural sleep last night. What feels like two minutes later, she wakes up from muggy dreams devoid of remembrance to a tremendous banging on her front door.

The clock on the wall says it's half past eight. Muscles have stiffened in the hours she slept. Everything clamours out its agony as she rolls up off the couch. She yells that she's coming, but the banging doesn't stop.

She goes to the window first. What the hell? Half a dozen men with rifles and guns congregate outside her door. She recognises them all: they're Guard. But Wade is dead, and she told Vince she was leaving -- which goes for the Guard as well as Haven -- so why the hell are they here?

Unless there's something else going on. Something so significant that even quitting and the day she's had aren't enough to earn her a rest.

They must have spotted her at the window because the banging stops, and they're waiting more patiently as she opens the door to them. The lead, Brett, passes a hunting rifle into her hands and says, "We're going after Crocker." His voice is hard. His eyes, unyielding.

"Excuse me?" Jordan says, her heart skipping a beat. She saw Wade in a body bag, she reminds herself. "Crocker's dead."

Confusion crosses his face a moment before he clarifies, "Duke Crocker. His brother went crazy. We--" he averts his eyes from her "--heard what happened. Figured it's time we take out that family once and for all." He nods, encouragingly, at the gun he put in her hands.

"What? No," Jordan denies, dumbly. They stare back at her, clearly not having anticipated that response. "His brother went crazy. Duke didn't do anything!"

"But it's only a matter of time." Brett keeps his voice low and fierce. "Crockers kill the Troubled, but at least they always had the town and the church and even the Driscolls to keep them on a leash, confine them to the worst. Who's going to stop Duke Crocker if he goes crazy?"

"We will," Jordan says, angrily, "If he goes crazy. You can't just--" Except in the past weeks, it's been her leading similar charges off into... overreaction. She'd have seen Duke dead, or at least not cared about it, and he's the least of them. Nathan, she singularly planned to kill. Acted upon it once already, last year, and not down to her intent that it failed. Audrey, Lexie, whatever the fuck she's calling herself -- her, too, by way of Wade, if there was any chance it would kill the Troubles with her. She'd tried to torture Vince, who'd done her no greater crime than to obfuscate, even if he was an old bastard. "You can't kill Duke. Remember that Vince always said--"

"You're quoting Vince?" Brett half laughs at her in disbelief. "Look, I understand that you're shaken up. I thought you'd want in on this, but there's no reason you have to come. We can do it--" He's stepping backwards, turning around.

"No!" Jordan yelps with indignation. She has a gun in her hand and in a swift movement, cocks it and fires it in the air. "God damn it, Brett! And you, Charlie. Darren! You don't go after Duke. Screw Vince, I'm saying it! Wade's dead. That's enough. We've," I've, she fills in silently, "done enough to the Crockers. Leave it."

"You've been through a lot." Brett eyes the gun. "Like I said, you don't have to join us. I guess it was a mistake to come here." He turns again, jerking his head for the others to follow.

"If you leave here with the intention of going to harm Duke Crocker...!" Jordan yells hastily after them, the gun clenched useless in her hands, because it's not like she can shoot them. They're her people, or were, and they're walking away from her. "If you do, I'm calling the police, Brett! I'm calling Dwight. And then I'm calling Vince." Which should be one fucking interesting conversation after their last, but right now she doesn't care. She's on the verge of seeing red: not good, since she already knows she's been doing far too much of that.

Brett tosses a freaked look over his shoulder, and a few of the others look back, too. But Jordan can't see anything that suggests what she's said has materially altered their intention. Now they're piling onto the back of a truck parked in the lot outside the Gun & Rose.

"Fuck!" she curses, and wants to punch something, break something, stamp her feet. More so, as she realises she doesn't have her phone any more and can't call anyone. One more thing Wade took, and fuck knows what he did with. More of a mystery than what he did with her dignity and, apparently, her reputation. They just dismissed her like -- she's not going to finish that thought, for the sake of her sanity.

As the truck is pulling out and taking its insubordinate cargo with it, she runs around to the closest she has to a next-door-neighbour, considering she's facing everyone else's sheds and trash cans. She hammers on the door. Mrs Ponty opens up with a trace of annoyance on her face. "Ms McKee..."

"I need to borrow your--" A phone won't do any good without Vince and Dwight's direct numbers, and she can't dial 911 to pass this over to any old cop. "Car. Please, Mrs Ponty. It's an emergency."

The old woman stares at her desperation and her... gun... damn it, Jordan really hopes that request didn't come off as a threat, but the weapon is held loosely at her side, it's not like she's waving it at the old dear. Mrs Ponty shuffles back and pulls a keyring from a hook. "You in Trouble, honey?" She adds that edge to the word that tells Jordan something she never guessed about her frail neighbour. "You need help? I can drive you..."

Honestly, Jordan wouldn't dismiss the offer right now, but she can't guess how Mrs Ponty might react at finding she's supposed to defend Duke Crocker. If she's Troubled, she could end up being one more to fight. "No, I just need to be somewhere fast. Thanks." She snatches the keys gratefully. "I'll make it up to you."

She dashes across to the tiny red car and manages not to floor it too hard until she's at least out of sight of the owner.

***

She has two choices. If she's lucky, Brett and the others have picked the wrong one first and she'll pick right. Half past eight, give or take, and she hopes he's still at the Grey Gull. Audrey's there. Nathan's probably there. And it's not a crime scene. It's remarkable how little she thinks about the first two of those points as she charges down to the foreshore where Duke's restaurant stands.

It's quiet outside. Brett picked the Cape Rouge. Jordan isn't even sure the police will have finished with it, though they may let Duke have limited access. Now if only she hasn't chosen wrongly...

Duke occupies a corner of his own bar in a slump. Slouched next to him is Audrey Parker, with her chin on her arms and all her piercings and in-your-face fashions defiantly supporting the lie. On the other side of the counter is Nathan, tall and wooden-faced, looking like the world's unfriendliest bartender. Jordan isn't sure if he's blocking Duke or what he's doing. There's one of the regular bartenders working the other end of the counter, though, and people steer clear of those three, with their own little aura of conspiracy and gloom.

Nathan sees her first and his hand goes automatically back to his holster before he freezes the movement. She's still carrying the gun and, looking down, consciously averts the end of it from his direction, pointing it at the floor.

"Go on," says Audrey-Lexie, who may not quite be the Audrey Jordan remembers after all, because she does seem noticeably pickled, "ask him to make you a drink. We're teaching him. It was decided by majority vote to be unacceptable that he's the only one of the club who can't. Hey, even you can, right? Maybe you can supply some more tips."

"The Guard are coming to kill Duke," Jordan says, and the despondent rogue shifts, then, self-preservation supplanting despair. Nathan draws that gun and starts looking around, but his eyes flick back to her. "It's not me, Nathan, damn it! You need to call Dwight. Call Vince. Get them over here ready to cool this down." She looks around the bar. "Might be safest to stay in here for now, with all these people around."

"Or it might just be more collateral damage!" Nathan barks in her face.

Audrey stands up, snorting laughter at them both, and the counter's already between them, but she puts her hands between them as well. Her touch is electric upon Jordan's bare breastbone, the fingers of Audrey's hand splayed easily on her skin, without pain. "Wait, wait, wait. Cool it, you two hot-tempered heroes." Audrey's slurring her words very slightly and her movements are just that bit loose. Some of Lexie is definitely not an act. Either way, some people can work with that slight blur on the world, and she's still on top of things. "First, why the hell would the Guard be after Duke, Jordan? Me and Nathan, sure." Her expression gets abruptly sharper. "Did you do this?"

"Lexie," Duke says.

"I came to warn you," Jordan snaps.

Nathan has his phone out in his free hand, communicating with Audrey by looks alone. Jordan holds her hand out for the phone, and she's too focused to think about not letting her skin touch his when he surrenders it. More sparks, taunting and ironic. Duke is the only member of this group she can't touch.

"Jordan, what's going on?" Duke's voice is a hoarse whisper as he asks. His eyes are reddened. She doesn't think it's primarily from alcohol. He looks a good distance behind Audrey on the drinking. Jordan's chest hurts, but then Dwight's voice is answering in her ear. "Nathan, what's--"

"Dwight..."

"Jordan! Are you all right?" Instantly, he expects--

"It's not me." How did she put herself at the centre of this whirlwind? "Brett and Darren and a bunch of the others are out for Crocker blood. I'm at the Grey Gull. Duke's here, so are Nathan and Au-- Lexie. I think Brett's gone to the boat first."

Dwight curses. There have been times she thought Dwight was all too willing to see Duke's blood spilled, but he's quick enough now to tell her, "I'll be over there. Does Vince know?"

"He will," she promises. He cuts the call and she makes another. Vince's gruff voice is more startled and angry than Dwight's, but considering he was her victim, yesterday...

"God damn it, Jordan," he says, after her explanation. "I thought if you were leaving, things would calm down...!" He sighs irritably and snaps, "I'll come to the Gull. I'll check out the Rouge on the way."

It's true, she thinks, staring at the silent phone. It's she who stirred them up, made them start to question Vince, put targets on Nathan, Audrey, and even Duke, in the first place. "I'm sorry," she says numbly, still staring at the phone.

"Jordan." Nathan puts his hand on top of hers, going for the phone, but he leaves it there longer than he needs to, alive and warm, unflinching. It's not exactly the comfort that she wants. Touching Nathan again after so long, a few things readjust inside her head. His hand doesn't react to her movements, when she flexes it. His skin doesn't register the warmth of hers in return. The only reason he can touch her is because his senses are crippled to what she does. She slides her hand free with a grimace. He pulls his back, fumbling the phone.

Audrey spins a tumbler of golden brown liquid, glistening among ice, down the three feet of counter between them, and that's not the comfort Jordan wants either, but she knocks it back.

"You haven't told them," Audrey says.

"I--" Everything that's happened, and that's what's on her mind? Jordan says, frankly, "I really don't care any more."

Which may not be the squishy hugs-and-puppies reconciliation these two would go in for, but it's all they're going to get. Nathan's mouth twitches wryly.

Jordan asks, "What's the news about Jennifer?"

"Still alive," Duke says, "for now." He gets up and lurches around the counter, knocking Nathan accidentally. Probably accidentally -- you never can tell with the push-and-pull between those two. "I'm told I can see her in the morning. If..." He doesn't finish that. He takes a rifle from under the bar, puts a handful of spare cartridges on the counter, and flicks a couple into a roll toward her.

Jordan reloads her empty chamber. A few obvious tourists look alarmed and make hasty exits. She thinks it's fairly telling how little attention the rest of the clientele are actually paying them. Some of those more used to Haven's bullshit turn and huddle closer into their corners, victims of Haven's dangerous disease of denial, but savvier ones have made quiet exits out the back along the terrace.

"So you're telling me," Duke drawls, hooking the gun in the crook of his arm, barrel resting nonchalantly over his shoulder, "that the Guard want me dead and you came straight here to... defend... me?"

Apparently eight hours was plenty of time for re-evaluation after their earlier understanding. Jordan feels a little hurt, but it's not like she's really due the luxury. "It's my fault." She doesn't want to have this conversation standing next to Nathan.

"Well, I did shoot you that one time," he mutters.

Which might be the closest she ever gets to remorse from him for that, although she was filling Nathan full of bullets at the time. Whatever freak capacity Nathan has that made him able to shrug that off, if she'd kept it up he still might've died back then, so she supposes it's just as well. As things stand, she's only a murderer once. Jesus Christ, though, it -- when she thinks about it, it just goes around and around and...

She looks at Nathan and Audrey, and the palpable awkwardness between them, and sure, they love each other enough not to let each other go no matter the cost, but there are lies and grudges aplenty there yet. If there's a time to drive a wedge between them, it is now, before they heal themselves. But shit, does Jordan really want Nathan, after all that's happened, knowing that's the cost, or does she just want no-one else to have him, or for him to have no-one else, because God knows he's her mirror and if she can't be happy, then fuck him too. What's the use of that, if it's true? It's not even the somewhat pathetic case of still hoping she can get something out of it, make him love her again, or love her for real; whichever.

It doesn't matter if they're wrong, if she's also wrong and knows it. She can't fix them. She could cry foul play, expose their lie, call for their heads, but... there's been enough of that. If they can't do the right thing by themselves, she doesn't have to be the one to call for an execution.

Even Wade might not have deserved to die if she hadn't pushed him over the edge, although by God, he fell quickly, and there is still no power on Earth that will ever make her regret killing him.

"Let's focus on dealing with the lynch mob on their way here right now," Jordan suggests.

***

It ends without a shootout. Maybe it's not the most burdensome ability in the world to be a bullet magnet if there aren't many people in town who'd actually want to kill you. Nathan or Duke or herself, now, Jordan wryly admits -- any of them with the same Trouble would probably not last very long. The one thing all three of them do have in common is the uncanny ability to piss people off. But Dwight is very useful for ensuring that bullets don't fly.

The rebel band picked up Vince when he tried to stop them at the Rouge, but they're already rattled by his presence in their midst, by holding guns on the shadowy Leader. Jordan isn't sure how he does it, when he's just an old man. She wonders if he'll ever forgive her for seeing beneath the mask.

Vince shambles over to her while Dwight is loading Brett into his car and making vague threats at the others. "You survived," Vince observes. The marks of her are still on him. He doesn't look angry, right now, but she thinks he's shaken by the experience of being made a hostage again so soon. "Are you... staying?" His eyes rake her up and down and he's careful to stay beyond arm's reach.

Jordan grimaces at him. "I haven't decided yet." Her attention drifts over to Dwight and the men. "Not with the Guard," she adds, positively.

Too many agendas. Vince is still wrapped thick in them. She can almost see them all hanging from him.

"Good," he says gruffly, and turns and walks away.

That's not big on reconciliation, either, but at least he's not going to come after her if she stays. If Vince wants someone out of town, he tells them.

"Jordan!" Dwight calls. She turns and sees him looking at her from behind the open door of his car. It becomes a silent exchange. She offers back a grim trace of a smile for his reassurance, and he nods and gets in the vehicle. He drives the ringleader away, and the rest of the dissidents disperse. The watching patrons of the Grey Gull start to go back to their drinks.

Jordan notices Duke standing by the steps, clinging palely to a phone. Nathan, next to him, grips a hand to Duke's shoulder; Audrey hugs his arm on his other side. As Jordan watches, Duke gives a tight smile and gently pushes the two away, shrugging Nathan's hand off, disengaging from Audrey. He says something Jordan can neither overhear nor read from his lips, and Audrey and Nathan peel reluctantly from him and climb the steps to Audrey's apartment. Their movements are slow and they look back often, but both sets of hands that can touch Jordan are only interested in touching each other. She rolls her eyes and watches only to ensure the door of the upper floor apartment is shut and they're well gone before she crosses over to Duke.

"Is she all--?"

Duke pulls in a long, shuddering breath, turning his head away and back, and finally meets her eyes to say, "She's awake. I can see her in the morning."

"I'm glad," Jordan tells him.

"...I need a drink." He scrubs a hand through his hair. Duke Crocker is a mess. His hands are shaking, almost dropping his phone as he tries to score a denim pocket, but he crooks a finger for her to follow as he stumbles back inside his bar.

Jordan follows, not quite sure what she's doing. The corner where he sat with Nathan and Audrey is empty now, and she scoffs at the thought of Nathan letting himself be manoeuvred into pulling drinks, letting himself look foolish to distract Duke. She forgets the ridiculous, the awkward, the downright funny in him, trying to idealize on the one hand, demonize on the other... The steely jaw, blue eyes, stern facade and unbending will, and the kindness that lurked underneath. Maybe it's past time she just let Nathan be a person again, not the villain who damned them all, nor the perfect match to her that Audrey stole.

Duke ransacks the shelves at the back of the bar and hands her a bottle. He takes down two tumblers and says, "If ever there were two people who needed to get drunk tonight, Jordan McKee, it's you and I."

This is a truth. She had pills from the hospital to dull the pain, but hasn't taken them since before she slept and is long overdue, so this anaesthetic will substitute. She would rather drink with him than go home to the pills and the dark alone, especially when after sleeping through the afternoon, the night looms long and sleepless. Jordan holds up the bottle. Rum for pirates and smugglers, murderers and rogues. It's a fit. She crooks her head and smiles at Duke. It's probably less ironic than it might be, for the moisture in her eyes.

He looks around and hooks his head toward the side door out onto the terrace. "Let's go outside."

It's starting to get dark and candles gleam on the tables in the deep blue light. The sea makes its rhythmic sounds and the air is fresh. The salt smell and sting and faint spray from heavy waves make her held-in tears indistinguishable. Duke sits down at a table and rests the tumblers in front of him. Jordan takes the more sheltered seat on the other side and puts down the gun and the bottle. It's too cold to stay out here, really, with what she's wearing, but after a few drinks she doubts she'll notice that anymore.

Duke's hands are still shaking more than hers are, so she opens the bottle and pours. She knocks hers back before Duke can put his hand on his glass. The spiced, golden liquid burns as it goes down, and she pours again, but this time, doesn't move to throw it straight back.

"We've never been friends," Duke says, and drinks, looking over his glass carefully.

"No," she agrees. "The shooting and the nicknames clued me in on that."

"I'm sorry..." Duke starts, and concludes lamely, "about the nicknames."

Alright. Because sorry I shot you would be almost like saying sorry I stopped you murdering my friend, and Duke is the funny man, deflecting, always. Jordan pulls a face and matches him sip for sip.

Less flippantly, he says, "Maybe this thing between you and Nathan and Audrey, you guys can never be good. But maybe we can be good. I'd like to try."

There's a pause where she can't think of what to say, and before she can find any response, he catches her by surprise, dragging the shapeless knit pullover from his shoulders and moving around the table to lift it onto hers. "No, don't, I--" she begins, as he makes risky moves to cover bare skin that, okay, it's cold, but at the moment she's still happier with it bare.

"Jordan," he says. "No-one is going to hurt you here. If anyone tries... we are armed, and tonight we are very, very belligerent, and they will be dog chow." He leaves the pullover and slides back around the table to his chair.

Hesitantly, Jordan touches her fingers to the fluffy old wool of the sleeves dangling over her shoulders. And she is cold, so she takes the garment and pulls it on over her head. It's still warm from Duke's body heat, and it's not chill that makes a shiver run down her spine. His disrobing has left him in a thin shirt with a t-shirt beneath it, so they're about even now.

She can't touch him, either, she reminds herself. And he's a Crocker. She forgets that she's trying to pace her drinking and gulps back what's left in her glass. Why, anyway? Why did she do any of it? If there's no conviction, there's no point, and right now... If she was offered a chance for the Troubles to disappear, for her to live a normal life, she's not sure that she could crawl out from the protection of her skin to accept it. She's been left worse off than she started. She was hurt, and it made her untouchable; it's never been her armour until now.

In the cold, she automatically drags the too-long sleeves of Duke's pullover down over her hands, bunching them there. She hooks her hands balled in wool on the edge of the table and watches Duke top up both their drinks.

As he clunks the bottle back down, he says, "It's only skin contact, right?"

She watches his hands turn palm-upwards atop the table and laughs with a return of her raw derision for all of them. "You're joking?"

"I am," he swallows and attempts dignity, but he has had a taste of her before, "not joking."

He's insane, and all the arguments she has should say no. Habit, which is scattered all over the place today, does not have its usual entrained sway. And then, it's a Crocker, using the same trick all over again. Does he really think she'll make herself vulnerable twice?

But she never wanted to be untouchable, and maybe even last night and this morning won't change that, after all. She rests the balled-up woollen bundles of her hands very lightly onto Duke's palms. Leaves them there long enough that the heat starts to seep through the gentle contact, then with a soft, helpless laugh, grows wary enough to lift them away.

Duke swallows with obvious relief. "Didn't hurt."

"It will," she promises. "It only takes one slip." And he's already afraid of her.

He knows what he's risking. Maybe it's her who's always been afraid. Afraid of hurting people feels a pretty fucking ironic position to take now, considering all else she's done, none of it with the simple weapon of her body.

"An idea," Duke says, around a glug of his glass, rolling a finger at her, and they're both getting a bit looser with each other, "left side pocket."

Jordan wriggles her fingers out of the sleeve to delve into the pocket of the expansive woolly fashion nightmare. She finds a scruffy pack of cards, held together by a twisted elastic band. "Cards," she states, sceptically. He wants to play cards?

"Cards," he echoes, nodding as he plucks them daringly out of her hand, sliding the elastic band clear with a rude little noise and starting to shuffle and cut the deck, only a little hampered by the damage to his fingers.

"I don't have any money." She's half-laughing at the absurdity of him.

Duke's face scrunches up. "Well, I was going to suggest we play for apologies. Add up all the things we've lost count of and the ones we don't want to admit and the ones we don't want to accept and the ones we're not giving away for anything, and putting it in the hands of chance... Might be the best solution, after all."

Really, Crocker? "Deal." Jordan gulps more rum and slams her glass down in challenge. "But the hell with 'chance'. I hope you know I'm going to take you for everything you've got."

They play till past midnight, when Duke goes to steal leftovers from the kitchen, then they play again, and keep going until long after the faded lights in the apartment windows above them have gone out.


END