FIC: Sky Haven - Audrey/Jordan/Nathan [R]

[roseveare]

TITLE: Sky Haven
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: R
LENGTH: 18,000 words
SUMMARY: Audrey and Nathan are sorely missing the third component of their relationship when a reality-bending Trouble changes the fabric of the town itself. Can an alternate Jordan McKee help them fix Haven and themselves from hundreds of feet above the ground?
NOTES: Written for Kerithwyn in Holly_poly 2014.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, no profit, yadda yadda yadda.
---------------

Sky Haven

Two.

Back at the station, they found Duke showing off a picture of his brother Wade, Wade's wife and their newly negotiated Third, which he'd received earlier in the day. It was a relief all around that Wade was out of Haven; better still that he was happy and unlikely to come back.

Call it one less thing for Audrey to worry about, in between playing-acting that she was still Lexie deWitt and hoping like hell she could keep the town she was meant to help from killing the man she loved.

Nathan gave her a shaky and very dented grin from the other side of the little cluster around Duke's phone. Behind Jennifer and Dwight, with Duke in their centre and all their shoulders touching, he stuck out almost as much as Jordan McKee, who stood alone, staring past Nathan and the rest to the image. The most galled expression adorned her face.

As Audrey watched, narrowing her eyes in suspicion -- why should Jordan care about Wade? She had surely not been proposing to date a Crocker, and they didn't have a Third, besides -- the other woman turned her disgusted expression onto Nathan, glared at Audrey, too, then spun on her heel and stalked away.

Nathan's head whipped around to follow her. When he turned back, he cast his squashed smile at Duke and absented himself, too, pushing across the room to Audrey.

"What do you think that was about?" he asked, his eyes indicating the direction Jordan had gone.

"I have no idea. But I think we need to talk." Audrey clutched his arm and hustled him into their office, carefully shutting the door after her and double-checking all the blinds were properly down.

The Trouble of the day had come and gone, and Haven residents shouldn't be finding themselves trapped in the pictures on their walls anymore. It was getting close to an hour they could reasonably knock off and go home together. But Audrey couldn't help reacting to the way Nathan's eyes still stuck on Duke and he got that terribly lost look on his face.

Like the two of them weren't going to be enough by themselves.

"Okay, Nathan," she said, as she leaned on the shut door, pinning him with a fierce look that he probably didn't deserve. This, he couldn't help. "This is your daily reminder that the Triumvirates? Are a Trouble. We just never figured out how to fix it."

He grinned sadly and countered, "We didn't want to fix it. It fixed us, after all, last year. But Duke's with Dwight and Jennifer now. I didn't fit, and even if I had, I couldn't be Duke and Jennifer's Third and forget about you." His eyes gleamed with a hint of moisture. "But, Duke--"

Audrey caught his face in both her hands, feeling the physical jolt of it go through him as he felt. "I'm immune to the Troubles, Nathan. That means we can still be together, just us."

He shook his head slowly. "I know. When I'm with you, I'm -- I don't need anyone else. But when I'm not with you -- with you -- it's hard. I'm sorry. Those times, I still feel like there's something missing. Like we're not whole." He slid his hands over her cheeks and kissed her in apology.

Audrey sighed. "I wish Duke was still with us, too, and you're right, it's not the same. But at least some of that is down to a Trouble, and we fight those every day. I am not giving up on us. We have to keep fighting to be together, and believe that we're still enough."

"I still love you," Nathan said. "If I didn't love you this much, I think I'd be going crazy by now."

"I guess this is the drawback, when the world starts coming in threes." Audrey snorted.

Nathan pulled back and the side of his mouth quirked. "Guessing that pun came from Lexie."

She curled her hands over his. "Let's see if we can slope off early to go to bed and concentrate on just being two, huh?"

It was at least harmless, as Troubles went. Welcome enough at the time, with the three of them. At that point in the countdown at the end of last year, when Audrey had been faced with Duke and Nathan and time running out, and losing both seeming inevitable in the long run, but even in the short term unable to choose either one above the other and risk damaging her friendships--

Then the Triumvirates had suddenly been there. As though someone dropped into the world, whole and fully-fleshed, the principle that a relationship by definition involved three people -- male or female in any combination, so long as there were three. She'd woken up in bed with Nathan and Duke, and never looked back.

So far as she could tell, it had mended as many broken relationships as it had broken solid ones. If there was ever to be a Trouble they simply couldn't solve, well then, in the scheme of things...

It wasn't as though they hadn't tried.

And when trying didn't work, Audrey had seized every moment of her remaining time with both hands and both men.

The pull of three-ness was pervasive, though. Duke and Nathan without her had not been able to hold, and by the time she was back, Duke had already become entangled in the orbit of Jennifer and Dwight. One thing it achieved for her was in making it harder for the Guard to suspect that she and Nathan, now, could be involved behind their backs. Though she wasn't sure quite how they were parsing the 'kill the person you love' factor with only the two of them in the equation.

"We are going to be okay," Audrey told Nathan, cursing the Brave New World that abhorred a couple. He was stubborn and he loved her, she told herself, and they had her immunity in their favour. They were going to be okay.

But pretending that they weren't in love, for the benefit of all the people who wanted her to kill Nathan if they were, that made it really hard for them to be together to reinforce the relationship as much as Nathan needed. She was starting to feel like she was going to lose him either way.

"I'll go on ahead," she said, peering out through a crack in the blinds to find Dwight was no longer being distracted by lovey-dovey photographs of Wade, more the pity. "Give me half an hour and see if you can't finish both our paperwork, then follow on."

He eased down behind his desk and reached for a pen. "I saw what you did there. Can swap if you like."

"You're the one they start getting trigger happy with if you don't clock in and out on time," she retorted innocently, tipping her shoulder. "Best to play safe and let you linger."

She was smiling despite everything as she slipped out of the door.

***

Nathan woke up in the familiar sea salt and old damp wood scents of Audrey's apartment above The Grey Gull. The sea sounds seemed somehow dim and muffled, but the wind was a roar against the boards of the old waterside building, whistling and creaking in the corners. Nathan was circled by sensation, wrapped in a clinging blanket of Audrey. Really, the wonder was that he'd been able to sleep so long at all.

The closeness -- arms locked around his shoulder and waist, one leg thrown over his hip -- allowed him to feel a gentle nausea as the world shifted and slowly rocked around them.

"Audrey..."

The light level outside indicated it was very early, and Lexie's additions to her personality had made Audrey less good at mornings in general.

"Audrey, something's wrong." Nathan sat up, reluctantly disentangling himself from her. She moved sluggishly, groaning and turning her face into the sheets.

Nathan stood up and his skin faded into obscurity as it lost contact with hers. He was naked in the dim light, but was drawn to the window without taking the time to pause and pull anything on to cover himself. Sea birds flew past, setting loose their harsh cries. He looked down.

The sea was a lot further below than it should have been.

He crashed through the door and out onto the walkway, hearing Audrey voice a stunned, bleary cry of, "Nathan?!" behind him.

It was no less a hallucination when he was standing out in the open air looking down. Nathan leaned over the handrail. A rope ladder curled down to the sea below, where the second suspended storey of The Grey Gull's bar and restaurant was still there, empty and dark at this hour, and then, below that, the jetty lay at ground level with a few boats bobbing next to it. The parking lot was gone, and his Ford Bronco with it.

"Audrey!" he roared with too much force in his voice, as he turned to go back inside.

In doing so, he happened to look up.

Nathan stopped, swallowed, and sagged back against the handrail as his legs went suddenly weak.

"What's going--?" Clutching a thin dressing gown around herself, Audrey stepped out of the door to join him, with a perplexed 'x' etched between her brows -- probably for, Nathan registered without particular care, his own nakedness. She silenced and her forehead smoothed out as her jaw dropped, once she followed his gaze upward. "Oh my God."

"That's... I think that's Haven."

It wheeled far above them like something out of a post-apocalyptic future. Almost high enough to count as 'distant', structures climbed high into the grey-yellow pre-dawn sky. The light wasn't good enough to pick out much detail, and although the waves were beginning to sparkle with increasing flares of gold, part of the greyness was caused by the umbrella of Haven blocking out the light. Toward the ocean, the light was at its fullest, though: the Gull was at the edge of the canopy.

The land behind the Gull, back toward where town should have been, bore only foundation poles for the buildings far above and rubble and garbage piles to show as signs of human habitation. Nathan sniffed and winced as he caught the refuse in the subtle changes of the wind currents, between sea salt and fish.

"Bing! We have a Trouble," Audrey said, her voice subdued despite the gallant attempt at levity.

"Do we ever." Nathan sounded hoarse even to himself.

Audrey moved first, her finger poking him in the hollow of his rib cage to wake him back to life. "Okay, we need to get dressed. It's cold up here. It's cold anyway. And then I need coffee. And then we will investigate. Come on." She jerked her head at the interior. A smirk crept around her mouth. "Nathan Wuornos, exhibitionist."

"There's no-one here."

He hoped there were people up there. His eyes wanted to linger on the spiralling ropes and beams reaching up to the heavens, into the spiderweb sky. The Gull would normally be empty but for Audrey at this time of morning. There was no reason to believe this Trouble had done away with the people.

He went inside, moving mechanically, stunned and numb in more ways than the usual.

Nathan pulled on his clothes, topping them with a leather jacket and pair of leather gloves, while Audrey was making coffee. He went back to the door, telling her, "I'll swing down and take a look at the Gull."

Her brows scrunched a bit. "Take care. Those ladders and handholds look pretty precarious, and I can't imagine not being able to feel will make them easier to navigate."

Nathan rolled his eyes and sketched a wave, and left her to it. Climbing without sensation was just a matter of judging the pressure required to hold his body, and he had that down pretty well after three or four years.

The balcony of Audrey's apartment truncated in a rope ladder down to the Gull's bar and restaurant level. Nathan swung down onto it, and easily down to the decking with its tables and chairs. The building was still the same as it had always been in most respects, although now it looked like it had been designed for access from the air, and maybe the sea, but not the ground. Near the main doorway, a bigger ladder led upward, wide enough for three people to pass each other, and there was an area of space and a series of hooks on the outer wall where it seemed people were clearly meant to park or leave different varieties of equipment.

The bar was locked up and silent. Inside looked normal through the windows. Nathan lay on the walkway and ducked his head below. Another rickety old rope ladder led about thirty feet down to the jetty and the boats, but there seemed little reason to go down there. The only building still firmly attached to the ground seemed to be the old lighthouse, just visible around the edge of the next bay, and there'd be little gain in suspending that.

He looked nervously up the wide ladder. What gain, indeed, in any of this?

He frowned to himself and went back to Audrey.

She was inhaling a coffee, an extra mingled scent of something else mixed in with it, although she'd hidden the bottle from his attention. She pushed a cup that had escaped similar embellishment toward him. "Well?"

"We could go across land to the marina, see if Duke's boat is still there -- see if the marina is still there -- and if there's any easier way to get... up... to Haven," Nathan filled in. "But it's three miles or more with no footpaths or roads now. Likewise, we could take a boat out and go around by sea, but it's a fair detour to clear all the offshore rocks at Carol Point."

Audrey pulled a face. "Either way, it sounds like it's going to take just as long as biting the bullet and going--" she pointed a finger upward.

Nathan nodded. "Sooner or later, we're going to have to climb to find out what's happened here."

***

Audrey couldn't help but feel uneasy at the prospect of the seemingly endless ladder. Stretching up, it at some point presumably joined the canopy of Haven, but they didn't even know that for sure. This looked like an ominous challenge, and so high up, there would be no room for mistakes. She and Nathan didn't slouch around all day, but they weren't into heavy gymnastic efforts or rock climbing either.

She put on gloves with consideration for the cold and concerns for her hands chafing, but was also a bit worried they could interfere with her grip. She sighed. "Can't achieve anything standing here looking at it, I suppose." She reached out and clasped her hand to the highest rung she could reach.

"Side by side," Nathan said, reaching for the same rung, "and we'll spot for each other."

Which was more suggestive of him being ill-at-ease with the physical demands of their situation than anything else he'd said so far.

It turned out to be just as bad as Audrey had feared. Climbing a ladder was no problem to a level of a few storeys. Climbing a ladder a quarter mile long was more taxing by far. It was impossible to relax or rest while climbing... no matter what she did, her weight was still hanging off her limbs in an unused-to fashion. Ten minutes, and her limbs were trembling from the unfamiliar repetitive movements, while the settlement above didn't seem appreciably closer. She was starting to think they were in trouble and would need to turn around when Nathan said, his head tipped back, "There's some kind of platform not far above. We can rest there."

His hand slipped off as he put his weight on the next rung, forcing him to catch himself. He tested his grip carefully before letting go with his trailing hand for the rest of the way to the platform.

"People were not made to live vertically," Audrey said, as she accepted his hand up and flopped in relief onto all fours. It was a creaky, exposed platform, about six foot by three, suspended over a drop that would be fatal. "It doesn't make sense. This doesn't work as a structure. What's anchoring it?"

"Maybe everything's anchoring everything else," Nathan said. "Or maybe that's part of the trouble, too." He hunched over his knees, eying further structures a distance away. "There are things nearer the ground over there. Maybe it's -- maybe there's still a core of the town, the oldest part, that's nearly touching the ground, and we should have gone by foot after all."

Audrey picked herself up enough to crane over and look down. "There's no way across to it from here."

"Must be further up." Nathan glared sourly across the unnavigable distance of empty air. Only a few posts or hanging nets interrupted the space.

Neither of them made a move to proceed. Audrey just focused on getting her breath back, and Nathan recovered in... whatever way he recovered, mentally, from physical exertion that he couldn't feel.

"It's a thought experiment," Nathan said.

"What?"

"Same kind of thought experiment as 'What if people coupled in threes?' maybe. Or at least... same kind of mind behind it. Same kind of reality-warping effect of the Trouble. You think?"

"No," Audrey said, because they'd never found the cause of that Trouble, and damn it, this was not going to be her new reality.

Nathan shrugged and deflated. But he wasn't wrong, Audrey had to admit reluctantly. Much as she didn't like it, this Trouble had the same kind of far-reaching, encompassing feel.

Audrey cast him an apologetic grimace.

"We should continue," he said, not sounding eager.

"I'm a little bit afraid of getting stuck if we continue," she admitted. But there wasn't really anything else to do, unless she was willing to wait until someone came along to rescue them. It was full light now and there should be someone to open the Gull soon, unless more had been rearranged than the preferred layout of the town's dimensions. "They must have better ways of getting around than this."

"Not necessarily," Nathan said glumly. "What if the Trouble just shook up all the structures with no real thought to this being a workable arrangement for the people?"

"Then there are going to be accidents real soon." Audrey glanced at her watch. "When people start waking up." They could not afford to wait any longer. "Come on. We can only hope that this Trouble made everyone as agile as monkeys..."

She reached for the next leg of the ladder and Nathan followed.

Maybe it was sense of purpose that did it, but the journey seemed to go easier, and by the time they reached another rest platform, they were on a level with other structures and could see nets and walkways bridging the distance, hanging tantalizingly close above. Houses on poles hung out over the void. Streets stacked vertically, houses growing out of each other, atop each other, half-melded like clusters of barnacles. They didn't linger to rest long, this time, with progress in view.

"Up there!" Nathan pointed, hanging off one arm, one knee crooked around a rung, pointing at a rope bridge that they could see had connections running to their own ladder. He was almost upside-down. Audrey wished fervently he wouldn't. But she'd witnessed in him an increasingly cavalier attitude toward the challenges of Haven's new architecture as they progressed. Maybe people weren't monkeys, but maybe this was a part of the Trouble taking hold, too.

Reassuring in terms of potential accidents but it wasn't going to help her.

They clambered eagerly, Audrey panting and out of breath, Nathan with monkey-like grace. He climbed onto the thin central board of the bridge and leaned back to help her up.

Audrey reached -- and missed as movement caught her eye and she zeroed in on it to see a silhouetted winged human figure gliding down from above. It moved from one column of structures to another and out of sight even as she realised the price of her distraction.

"Audrey!" Nathan grabbed and caught her wrist, but her feet skidded on the rungs of the ladder. She was out past her centre of gravity, and now her feet failed to find hold again, slipping free to swing over empty air. Nathan was holding onto the walkway with his other hand, looking behind himself, or trying to. He--

He couldn't tell if he had a firm enough purchase with his legs to release his hold on the bridge and take both her hands, Audrey realised. If he wasn't sufficiently anchored, their combined weight would drag them both off into the abyss.

"Do not let go of the bridge," Audrey panted. "Nathan, Nathan, listen to me... You don't let go. You keep that hold, damn you..."

Because he'd do it. He'd do it anyway, the second the clasp between their single hands started to slip.

She tried to reach with her free hand. It was awkward, and only her fingertips touched the board in the centre of the walkway. She saw Nathan's face shift. "No!" she yelled. Their existing grip was still firm, for now. "Try to move back... to pull me up so I can reach--"

He moved back, carefully, slowly -- until his whole body suddenly jerked. Audrey gasped as the jolt as passed through her body, as for a moment she thought they were both falling. Then they caught, with another, wrenching jolt that hurt her arms. Nathan had misjudged where his knees rested on the plank, and now his legs swung out over empty air. She could see them, slipped below the level of the walkway. His torso was still braced on the plank in the centre, but Audrey thought that they were almost both poised to fall, each of their weight balancing the other. She wasn't sure how either of them could move to get out of it without letting the other go.

"Nathan..." Audrey panted urgently.

The same horror of realisation reflected back from his eyes.

Then a third pair of gloved hands reached down and took hold of them both.

***

Nathan clung to the walkway, his legs dangling, while their rescuer pulled Audrey up. Once her feet were on the solid surface of the board, both of them reached down to haul him to safety in turn. He flopped on his front like a seal until he managed to hook one foot over a rope and take some of his own weight.

From his knees, he stared up at their rescuer, and the hazy, incredulous and somewhat indignant impression resolved itself into a surety. "Jordan?"

"Nathan," she said with distaste, then angrier, "What the hell are the two of you doing? Are you trying to get killed... uselessly?"

Because Nathan dying usefully was all of what Jordan was about these days. Nathan sighed, a bitter taste in his mouth.

"Well, there's a Trouble," Audrey said, with a generous dose of that rebellious Lexie sarcasm. "Which you'd probably have noticed if you weren't all caught up flying around." Even Lexie's sarcasm couldn't quite swallow the gulp of incredulity.

Because that was very clearly some kind of flying rig on Jordan's back. Trailing partially unfolded wings from a backpack she was wearing.

Nathan gaped, not very intelligently.

"You look like a pair of dirt grubbers," Jordan said. "What the hell is going on? You were both fine when I saw you yesterday."

"Yesterday--" Audrey burst out, then cut herself off. "What happened yesterday?"

Jordan's eyes narrowed in resistance and Audrey gave her an earnest, breathless, 'yes, seriously' nod. "Dwight got swallowed by a picture. And Wade Crocker left town, that ass."

Audrey huffed a breath through her pursed lips, and okay, so the memory of the day before was still the same. It was just the... the memory of how the world operated which had shifted. Nathan struggled to get to his feet on the narrow walkway, clinging to the ropes, and a female hand steadied him on either side. "What is it about Wade with you, anyway?" he asked Jordan. "You weren't dating him?"

Her eyes narrowed sourly and she shook his hand off now he had his footing. "What is it with you two, climbing up from the Gull together, like--" She swallowed.

Shit, thought Nathan.

"There's a Trouble at work here," Audrey said quickly. "Jordan, Haven was not several hundred feet in the air yesterday. We were all firmly on the ground."

"You spent the night," Jordan said, refusing to be distracted.

"Yeah," Nathan retorted. "You all want me to get closer to... Lexie, remember?"

Jordan blinked and looked.. not-happy. Nathan would have sworn she would be happy with such news, but what she actually looked was sick.

"I don't 'love' him yet." Audrey leaned forward and air quoted with both hands, laying on the sarcasm with a nasty edge and all of Lexie's sass. "But, hey, it's only been the one night. And he doesn't have much staying power, you know? Touch issues. Can't complain about the packaging, though." She slapped Nathan's ass.

"Hey--!"

"Though I guess you never had that problem, huh?" Audrey snerked, and loosed a little snort from her nose that squeaked past Lexie's nose ring.

Jordan's eyes were narrow and she was recovering her composure fast. "Yeah? Well, I don't care about compare-and-contrast, so long as the two of you get to work loving and dying." Her face twitched as she spun angrily away, and Nathan got a much better view of the rig for the wings on her back. "So you're, what?" She led the way with purposeful strides and little apparent thought for the sheer drop to the ground below. "You were Troubled into forgetting the simplest details of how to navigate around the town? Or, wait, no, we're the ones who've been affected by the Trouble." Jordan moved like it was all second nature, as she swung from walkway to ladder to another walkway, where she had to sit and hang, sighing as she swung her feet and waited for them.

"It is a Trouble," Nathan said. "Yesterday -- last night, even -- Haven was on the ground."

Jordan's face twisted in distaste. "Why would we want that?"

"Why... wouldn't we?" Nathan returned, genuinely trying to figure the workings of the Trouble out, though Jordan mostly looked incensed with him.

"Down with the mud and the cold earth," Jordan said with a shudder. "Down among the animals and the garbage."

Nathan looked at Audrey and they exchanged a wordless shrug.

"So we... need to get to the station," Audrey said. "Clearly. Can you take us there?" Nathan gave her a hand up the last step to join Jordan. Increasingly it felt like he had a knack for the ladders and ropes Audrey was lacking, but he still had to carefully watch where he put his feet, especially after the near miss.

"Why not?" Jordan tossed up her gloved hands. "With Dwight stuck as Police Chief and Vince in search of his balls, what are all the rest of us in the Guard to be but police auxiliaries, now?"

Nathan couldn't quite quench his smirk. She sounded like Duke. He looked down at his hand, where Jordan's gloved hand had wrapped -- twice now, as she pulled him up from certain death and then as she'd helped him to his feet.

He'd swear it tingled. Not the skin itself, perhaps... impossible, that... but some awareness under the skin.

Jordan pulled herself upright and jerked her head for them to come. They followed her past familiar houses twisted to entirely new arrangements, piled one atop the other in high-rise streets. Yards that composed of platforms and balconies of intricate and rickety construction. Nets strung around family homes to contain wayward children. There were crazy smoke-stack structures, solar panel arrays, coils of piping stretching downward, and jutting above the houses, broad, upright rainwater collection basins funneling down into more pipes. Alpine plants and mosses grew in gutters and cracks. It wasn't... wasn't like science fiction, even the apocalyptic visions, not really, too functioning and old and moldering; lived-in and bizarre on every level.

"The structures must be lighter than they were standing on the ground, or they'd never stay up," Nathan murmured to Audrey. "Pared down, lighter materials, less contents..."

She gave him a look. "You really think there's any logic involved in this? There's no way any of this structure is self-supporting. It's... it runs on bullshitium and Troubles."

"If that were the case, all these mechanical solutions could be dispensed with," Nathan reasoned. "But they're here, which means someone put serious thought into the question of how people could live like this."

"If you say so," she retorted. "We just need to figure out a way to stop it."

***

One.

The last thing Jordan needed most days was Nathan Wuornos, and she rankled at being expected to respond to the questions of he and Lexie deWitt as they trailed her clumsily, showing an annoying new interest in people's drains and alleyways.

She managed to keep her lips pressed closed over the worst things, and only snapped a little when Lexie asked why couldn't she just fly all the three of them up to the police station since she, y'know, had wings. "Because even if these weren't calculated to function best with my own body weight, it's all dependent on updraft and wind strength and -- gravity, yeah. The rig is pretty much for travelling downwards, unless the air currents are really strong and just right."

"Of course," Nathan said quickly.

"I'd still kind of like to see it," Lexie said, and Jordan resisted the urge to jump off the ladder and leave them, providing the requested demonstration in the process.

She took them to the station. Their staring was still unsettling, and she did have to suppose they were genuine, that some form of Trouble was at work, and it wasn't their idea of a joke. Nathan didn't have that kind of humour, though she wouldn't put it past Audrey's latest incarnation.

Convincing her that they were supposed to be crawling around on the ground? That was another matter.

It took an age to get there with the two of them slow as slugs. They both breathed obvious relief upon falling through the doors and into the familiar corridors of the police building, where Nathan poked at the line of shoes next to the door, and voiced, "These are different."

"Yeah," Jordan said sarcastically. "We really need to get you both some proper outside footwear. Whatever you did with yours..."

Lexie picked up a shoe and bent the sole with her fingers, letting the supple, rubbery surface for gripping flip back over when she let it go. "Ground shoes and sky shoes, huh?"

Jordan supposed that was one way to put it. Changing shoes wasn't essential, so she just led Nathan and Lexie inside. They seemed to regain their confidence quickly on a flat surface.

"Thank fuck the inside's just like normal," Lexie said. "I was half afraid we'd all be climbing the walls."

Nathan huffed a soft laugh.

Dwight was in his office, looking more relaxed than Jordan had seen him in a while. No doubt Duke and Jennifer would be good for him, even if the thought of Dwight and Crocker still made Jordan bare her teeth and think, what the fuck? Especially after she had hoped once... Well, it didn't matter now. Even if she could have touched him, they'd never had a potential Third in sight... It wasn't as though Nathan was still anything like a possibility.

Don't get attached to the human sacrifice. Surely she wasn't stupid enough to do that to herself, after everything Nathan had done. Yet, seeing Nathan and Lexie come up from the Gull together and realising what that meant... in spite of everything, she had had that inexplicable moment of no, the denial rising up from deep inside her.

At the thought of Lexie loving Nathan. At the thought of what that would mean.

But oh, come on, she chided herself. She wanted him dead, didn't she? It was late to change her mind, after filling him with bullets last year. She wanted the Troubles gone, Nathan dead, and in the scheme of things both of those desires dovetailed very neatly.

"There's a problem," Jordan announced to Dwight, not particularly sorry to be ruining his relaxed morning, before she slapped the door fully open and let Lexie and Nathan walk in after her.

She shut the door and leaned on it, while she listened to them trying to explain it all to him. It didn't sound any less insane that way, but they managed to make it more coherent than the fragmented version she had gotten. It didn't amuse Dwight any more than it had her. "You think we should be living on the ground?" He and Jordan shared a shudder at that. But he looked uneasy, too. It wasn't a pleasant thought, but the way that Troubles worked... they both knew it was possible, deep down.

Jordan hoped fervently that something else had got hold of Lexie and Nathan. Lexie was supposed to be the immune one, but Nathan wasn't, and Lexie was green as hell at all of this. It seemed more likely than all of them ground-grubbing. It definitely sounded preferable to losing the sky.

"All right," Dwight groaned, cutting off another extensive protest from Nathan, describing the different states of how he'd found the world upon waking from the world he'd gone to sleep in last night. Dwight bowed his head and pinched the creases above his nose. "Okay, I will take that under advisement. I'll ask... Vince and Dave if they've ever heard of anything like it before. Meanwhile, we do have a one hundred percent definitely real case -- murder -- for both of you, a body spotted down by the marina."

Watching the contours of Lexie's stricken face was almost glorious. "How are we supposed to get down there? It just took us three hours to climb up here!"

Dwight stared at her, and transferred his gaze to Jordan. "Can you...?"

"All right." Jordan rolled her eyes. "Down's easy," she told Lexie. "I can give you a ride. But not--" She shot Nathan a glare. It would be far easier to take Lexie than Nathan, who was both heavier and visibly more adept at navigating Haven's ways. "You'll have to go with Stan."

"Wait a minute," Lexie started, uneasily. "Jordan's not a--" She stopped, looked at Nathan with even more dismay. Not a cop, Jordan figured the unfinished thought to be, which was a funny thing for Lexie -- also not a cop -- to say. "We can't have Jordan following us around all the time. Seriously. She wants Nathan dead. Talk about bringing down the mood."

"You just finished telling me how the reality of Haven right now is impossibly alien to you," Dwight said, impatiently. "If you run into problems, Jordan's one of the best flyers in town. That's why she's going to shadow you today, and I don't want to hear anything else about it."

They were up to something, Jordan concluded, a fraction incredulously, as she followed Nathan's slight, reluctant nod over to Lexie and then back to Dwight's watching frown. They were up to something and didn't want her around... or some combination of both, but it was more than just not wanting her around.

Well, whatever it was, she'd find it out, and if they thought she was going to keep it from Dwight for them, they were sorely mistaken.

***

Lexie deWitt couldn't have been more different from prim pastel-shades Audrey Parker. Jordan hadn't had much opportunity to watch her, seeing her and Nathan only in passing -- avoiding her where possible (because it seemed like Lexie and Nathan were joined at the hip: still, that was how the Guard had demanded they be). Jordan hadn't previously had time to witness how Lexie brayed when she laughed, which was almost always at something dirty, usually her own joke. Or to really appreciate just how much body jewellery there was, how she clacked the rings on her fingers together purposefully when impatient, how the leather squeaked when she moved.

Bartender, Jordan thought. If Audrey had been made for Nathan -- or targeted toward him, and the Guard had definitely entertained the theory, seeing as how the reins of power in town had ended up in the hands of one stick-up-the-ass cop who was already in Audrey's pocket -- who had Lexie been made for?

She'd say Crocker, perhaps, but Crocker liked his bad girls more sophisticated. Crocker surveillance had been daily grunt work for the Guard since the old Rev started getting restless, so she knew what Duke liked to hang with, and generally they didn't have quite so voracious an appetite for fast food.

Jordan was getting a lot more closely acquainted with Lexie right now than she felt was strictly fair. What she absolutely didn't need was to have Lexie strapped in and held this tightly against her, with the heat of the other woman's body suffusing into her through their clothes, with the feel of Lexie's hair, and occasionally soft skin, upon her chin.

Of course she could touch Lexie. It worked for Nathan; it could work for her. She had been far too casual in that offer to fly Lexie down. Part of it had been general dickishness about wanting to rub the fly part in her face: No, really. This is how things are. No Troubles here. Deal with it.

"Don't kick." An updraft caught and buffeted them and Lexie moved restlessly, harnessed to her front. Jordan tangled her legs to still them and clamped her gloved hands tighter on the rig to wrest back control. "We're all right so long as you don't unbalance us."

She wasn't used to flying with people for the damn good reason that they could end up strapped in for a ride of torment if their clothing was too thin or in any way open or awry.

"Okay," gasped Lexie breathlessly. "I am... not used to this. Whoa, are we landing in the sea?"

"No," Jordan said, eying it and rather hoping that she was right. The last thing she wanted to add to the joys of her day was a cold dunking. "I can still bring us around to catch the edge of the marina. Quiet." She needed to focus.

"You're good at this," Lexie said, about thirty seconds later. "It's... I don't know. Unexpected."

A few minutes later, she added, "I guess the view would really be something if there was anything left on the ground to look at apart from rubbish." There was a bit of a catch in her voice. They were very close now, coming in over the boats that bobbed on the water.

Jordan pressed her lips together and was forced to overfly the broad walkway suspended over the dock, to come down on mud. She hit the harness to unlock Lexie as she gave the instruction, "Drop and roll," and tucked her knees up as the loss of the other woman's weight made her momentarily more buoyant, the wind in her wings carrying her another twenty feet before the ground came within reach again. The wings dragged her backward a step, off-balance, and she staggered until she could hit the mechanism to retract them into the pack. The joints of the rig creaked, obviously not having appreciated the extra burden.

"Awesome!" Lexie called over from where she'd stumbled to her feet, looking shaky but determinedly holding up both her thumbs.

Jordan stepped distastefully toward the platform, catching Lexie's arm and pulling her along. "Let's get back--"

"Do you have some kind of induced fear of grass?" Lexie demanded, her tone penetrating and obnoxious. "Because I kind of like the whole feet-on-solid-ground deal, personally, but you're moving like you're being chased by bears."

"If it's a Trouble," Jordan said resentfully, "then you'd know more than I would." Dwight would get Vince and Dave to figure it out, she thought, and it would not be that.

"So," Lexie said, as Jordan pulled her as far as the platform; then they had to stop and divert again because the body was on the dirt shore, beside the long edge of the marina platform. "Dwight thinks this is a real murder case, huh?"

Lexie's tones were sarcastic. The body was face-up and had the not-quite-right look of shattered bones and limbs out of joint, even if there was nothing horrific in the way that he lay. He was a burly man in around his fifties. Jordan didn't know him.

"Obviously he fell from a height," Lexie said, with an odd focus.

"Someone must have pushed him," Jordan agreed, nodding.

Lexie blinked, then said, "Sure."

Jordan wondered what her problem was. She gestured distastefully at the body. "You'd better do your thing." Well, she wasn't a police officer and she wasn't... investigating. The view from a respectful distance was enough.

Lexie took a sprightly step forward, then stopped. "I've been working for Haven Police Department for all of a week and my name isn't really Audrey Parker. Maybe we should wait for Detective Wuornos."

Jordan rolled her eyes at the mispronunciation. "I'm pretty sure you know what his name is by now. I know you've slept with him."

"Just, you know, doing my duty. The horizontal mamba." Lexie moved her hips in a few slow, rhythmic thrusts. "I mean, if a whole town votes that you bone a dude... Not like the WuORnos isn't easy on the eyes, 'kay?" She waggled her eyebrows.

"I know--" Jordan started snappishly, then bit it off, feeling exceptionally bitter at how fast Nathan had fallen in the sack with another wholly different person that happened to come with Audrey's face and magical power of touch attached. Feeling conflicted and angry at the thought that that was practically what they'd forced him to do, and conflicted and hopeful at the thought that Lexie didn't love Nathan. Might be too shallow to ever love Nathan, judging by her latest comments.

At what point did they all get tired of waiting and decide they needed to go through with the plan anyway? With that thought, a gloom settled that chased everything else away.

It didn't take Nathan as long to arrive with Stan as she'd feared it might, but down was easier all around, and most ladders had a slip pole you could just hitch to on a safety line and slide non-stop to the bottom. Nathan had never struck her as the type who'd balk at such a thing even if he had forgotten everything about how to move around the town. Jordan had observed that he was more natural at that than Lexie, his movements and balance fluid despite his incapacity to feel hand and foot holds.

Nathan's arrival improved nothing in the wider scheme. "I don't even think it's a crime scene," Nathan concluded, standing up from the body and stripping off blue gloves. "I'm pretty sure he just fell."

Lexie was nodding along. Jordan gaped at them. "Don't be ridiculous, that's not possible." They stared at her. "No one falls. No one ever falls. It doesn't happen. He must have been pushed, and that means it's a crime scene."

Lexie said bluntly, "Your memories of living in this world aren't real. When are you going to catch on that this is a Trouble?"

"Reality obviously doesn't gel with the ideal concept this Trouble reformed it upon," Nathan observed, and they talked to each other about that, infuriatingly, ignoring Jordan altogether.

"Water but not land. Boats but not roads," Lexie mused.

"Someone doesn't like dirt?" Nathan suggested.

After a while they peeled apart and Lexie went back to the body. Nathan stood with his hands on his hips staring up at the sky. "No way we get Gloria down here... I say we take all the photographs we can and get it... winched... up for her to examine?" His words started to falter and get slower, and he looked over at Stan for confirmation, but when Stan nodded his confidence recovered.

"What the fuck is that?" A sharp scuffle as Lexie moved fast, and something small and grey sped toward the water, to hurl itself into the sea with a plop. Jordan didn't catch a clear look at it.

"Some kind of crab," Nathan dismissed, uninterested, with that sigh of 'incomers' in his voice.

"Like fuck it was," Lexie said. "It was blinking at me."

***

They walked back to the station, a much more tortuous process than coming down had been. Nathan was a hindrance, Lexie was more of one, and Lexie was loud about it. Sure, it was an arduous climb, but it wasn't the end of the freakin' world.

"I am not going back down to the Gull tonight," Lexie declared as they walked back into the police station, and stopped and waited for Nathan to swap his borrowed sky shoes for the grubber ones he'd worn earlier. "I swear, not by flying, not by fireman's pole, not by freaking jumping in the sea. I do not care. Because I am not climbing back up that climb again tomorrow."

"No," Nathan said. "We're pushing our luck every time we do it. We'll have to find somewhere to stay in town tonight."

Dwight wasn't there to offer his opinion on their conclusions about the murder, but another callout awaited. "Seriously?" Lexie asked, recovering some of her humour as she waved the post-it handed her by Laverne. "Cat stuck in net? That's a thing around here? That's a thing?"

"Seen them about," Nathan said, stopping to reclaim the borrowed shoes as they trudged back out. "Scampering around the walkways, chasing the birds. Pretty eye-opening, the journey down. How people live here, how they get around. I'd want to explore further--"

Lexie gave him an exaggerated shudder. "No, thanks. And I guess the cats never fall, either?" she threw back over her shoulder to Jordan.

"Land on their feet," Nathan pointed out.

"Yeah, and break all their legs."

Jordan ended up being the one to untangle the cat. By then it was lunchtime, so they stopped at Rosemary's to get lunch, and coffees and pastries, eating and drinking on the walkway outside the cafe, shuffling elbows with other patrons passing in and out, staring down at the view.

"What happened to all the cars?" Lexie wondered, wrapping her arms around the wooden rail, leaning over, watching another glider cross from street to street, below. "All the people travelling from place to place?"

Nathan slurped his coffee. "Maybe they're all hung up in the sky, too."

"If it's the whole world--" Lexie looked at Jordan.

"Of course it is," she snapped. "I told you, people weren't meant to live on the ground."

"I beg to differ, but hey -- immune." Lexie pointed, infuriatingly, to herself. She said to Nathan, slightly warily, "Triumvirates affected everything, too."

"I'm not Trouble-addled," Jordan said. "You are. You're just too new to all of this to recognise it. And Nathan is definitely not immune. He's just numb."

"We were, um, wrapped up pretty close together last night," Nathan said, apologetically. It looked like he regretted saying it the instant it left his lips.

Were he and Lexie closer already than they were willing to let on? But they couldn't have got that close in a week. Jordan shook her head and sighed. She let her empty bag and cardboard cup go over the side of Rosemary's terrace, knowing there was nothing underneath.

"Hey, litter-bug," Lexie said. "How long until everything you guys throw over the sides starts to be what all these structures are rested on, instead of the poles?"

It was kind of the pattern of the day. Lexie and Nathan mostly talked among themselves as though Jordan wasn't there, sometimes retreating to a covert huddle and whispers. Occasionally Lexie called something -- usually with a note of challenge -- to involve Jordan in proceedings. Nathan was polite but largely ignored her, which was his general response to her since he'd returned to town, but at least he knew where he wasn't wanted.

They'd barely returned to the station again when report of another body came in. "You're kidding," Lexie flung back at Dwight. "Fuck you, I am not going. I'm not supposed to be a real cop anyway, and these deaths aren't caused by a Trouble in any way that investigating them can help." She struck her arm through a swath of objects on Dwight's desk and turned on her heel.

Nathan cast an apologetic look back and charged after her.

Dwight and Jordan looked at each other. "Tell me we're not all being afflicted by a Trouble right now, that won't let us see that these people are 'falling'--" she choked on the word "--like she claims."

Dwight shook his head. "Vince and Dave are on it. Dave's searching the Herald archives, Vince all the Guard's records for anything that could link in to a reality-changing Trouble on the scale we're talking about."

"I don't want to live on the ground," Jordan said bitterly.

Nathan came back. His mouth was a long, thin line tucked down sourly at the edges. "She's hurting," he said. "She's climbed up about half a mile of ladders already today and she's not used to it. I don't have that problem, so I'll go down and see the body. Lexie's going to stay and do paperwork."

Jordan sighed, but Dwight nodded, and she couldn't really put her foot down. "How much do you weigh?" she asked Nathan.

Less than last year was a foregone conclusion, with the six months of hiding and running and recovering and subsisting on... well, she didn't even know what, but the hollows of his body beneath his clothes said it hadn't been much, as she wrapped her arms around him on the walkway outside the police station, checking his harness as she prepared for the dive off. The wind whipped her hair and she only saw his eyes for an instant as he turned his head to gaze back at her, but they were grey-blue and soft with something in them that she'd thought had been lost and forgotten.

"You're in tight," she said, feeling the awkwardness descend, when any words to explain that brief look didn't come. She checked again through her distance glasses, just able to pick out the target of the landing platform off Aaron Street. From there she'd been told she'd be able to see the body on the ground, and with Nathan's additional weight, she'd rather take the journey in two stages anyway.

"Come on," she had to verbally instruct him as the push on his hips had no effect, but then he stepped off the platform in time with her. She remembered this... the two of them, moving together. He gave an unexpected whoop of exhilaration she'd never heard from him before as they hit the sky and fell sharply until the wind drafts buoyed them up.

Flying heavy, thought Jordan, trying to guide their flight like a stone and hoping they didn't miss the platform. It wouldn't hurt them -- she'd still get them to the ground -- but there would be a lot of walking and searching involved to find the body, and she could do without that, in Nathan's company.

"You might have to catch the edge of the platform," Jordan said. "Bend your legs up as much as you can." They were going to hit low. She curled her legs around his waist, and he tucked his knees in, following suit. Jordan could see that he had it, so focused herself on fine control of the rig and not ramming them into anything. It might have been safer to bear to the side and aim for ground instead, but her stubbornness erred on the side of risk.

Nathan's feet hit the edge of the wood and he grabbed for a swath of net, yanking them forward strongly. Jordan retracted the wings and then they were stumbling together, their feet loud on wooden boards. Nathan failed to keep his balance and dragged them forward into a pile, and Jordan cursed him and hit the release for the strapping that bound them together. It would be a pain to hitch it all together again, but more of a pain to pick themselves up while the straps bound them.

Nathan was drawing deep gulping breaths. He wriggled around and got her knee in his ear, and picked himself up from between her legs... laughing?

For a moment, his smile was the whole world. Until she remembered the baggage that came with it.

His hands were on her waist, her knee. The closeness couldn't be helped, after that landing. Any other man would be screaming.

"Do you still--" Caught in the moment, Jordan almost asked the bitter question.

Except he read it as asked anyway. "I never stopped."

Which was laughable, and she laughed in his face, hostile and raucous, until she registered the wounded way his brows drew together. But seriously, his rejection of her after Ginger Danvers had been so absolute there could be no question. Then she thought about Duke Crocker, whose relationship with Nathan ran so hot and cold she'd almost have sworn they hated each other irrevocably at points last year. Yet Crocker had been the third leg of Nathan's Triumvirate with Audrey, and there'd been everything to indicate that triangle functioned on all sides.

She thought about Crocker shooting her, to save Nathan. Crocker curling tenderly over the as-far-as-anyone-knew mortally wounded Nathan, while she had lain wondering if she was dying.

She thought again about shooting Nathan.

Maybe they were both all or nothing, loving too much, loving until it came right out the other side of love at something twisted and dark, but still powered by love, all the same.

Nathan had turned away from her, picking himself up.

"We need to get ourselves fixed back together," Jordan said, holding out the straps.

She waited while Nathan stretched the unfelt kinks out of his body and tested for injuries, and meanwhile aimed the distance glasses down at the ground, locating the corpse they were aiming for. They needed a pulley-rope for retrieving the body, so she raided the stash-box on the platform, hoping there was something of sufficient length. She hadn't wanted to carry the extra weight, but she really didn't want to go back, either. They were in luck. She clamped the rope onto a metal ring on the edge of the platform and the other end to a guider line fixed to the utility hook at the back of her boot.

"Won't it risk tangling the wings?" Nathan asked, watching.

"Not if I'm halfway competent," she tossed scathingly back.

He seemed not to register the harshness of the words. "It's amazing," he said. "This world -- the way everything works here -- it's amazing." He swallowed and pursed his lips a bit. "So are you. At -- at this, I mean."

It was a weird compliment. In her memory, he... he knew this, too. The dissonance proved beyond doubt that some Trouble was afoot.

But again with the questioning of her reality "This is my world," she retorted. "It works for me."

"I can see that it does."

They clipped back together and took the leap down to ground level. The second landing was far less eventful, though they missed the body by a few hundred feet, passengers a blight on her calculations, and had to trudge uncomfortably across ground.

Another crushed corpse, another awkward exchange of irreconcilable views. How could he have fallen? Why would people start falling now, when they never had before? When they'd navigated this environment since birth?

"Because they're people," Nathan said bluntly. "Not perfect gamepieces in whoever's vision of the world this is. They screw up. A trip, or a moment's loss of concentration... Far too easy to do. This world doesn't work for everyone."

She hated him more for saying it but couldn't quash the increasing feeling that perhaps he had a point. It didn't make sense that no-one had fallen, ever. People slipped on walkways, when she thought about it, particularly in the winter when they iced over. If people slipped on walkways, they ought to slip off them.

They took their photographs, then hooked up the body for the pulley and she called it into the station so they could send the forensic team to Aaron Street for the retrieval.

"This is so weird," Nathan opined, but she was angry with him, then, so she ignored him.

They found the nearest rope ladder and made their own way back to the police station by the most direct route. By then it was getting late, and Jordan did not want to babysit Nathan's command of the geography of Haven while the light faded and he had less input to rely on from his eyes. Better all around if they found he and Lexie somewhere to roost before dark.

***

Lexie rejoined them for the same old argument with Dwight back at the station. Gloria had examined the earlier body and declared nothing to indicate foul play other than the fact he'd fallen from a great height and was dead.

"Occam's Razor and all that," Lexie said, sarcastically. "You can't just claim he must have been murdered because he fell if the fall's the thing that killed him anyway."

It was far more something a cop would say than a bartender. Jordan couldn't help but think it.

Dwight groaned and rubbed his head. There was no result from either Vince or Dave yet. "Okay, we'll continue this tomorrow. Lexie, Nathan..."

"Ohhh, no," Lexie said pointedly. "I said already I am not going back down to the Gull and I mean it." She grimaced at Nathan. "I'd give a lot not to be able to feel my muscles right now. Your body must be a mess, too, if you only knew about it."

Dwight frowned. "You need somewhere to stay in town, fine. I..." Dwight had Duke and Jen. Jordan saw the damn thoughts cross his face, and then he gave her a pleading look.

"No," she said. "You have no right." Him to ask, they to agree.

"Dwight, we can't," Nathan said, instantly backing her. "You have to see we can't impose on Jordan like that."

It won him back more points with her than anything else he'd done since the Barn.

"Well, there's the police station," Dwight said. "The cells. Or the couch in Nathan's office..."

"Yeah, whatever, fine," Lexie sighed. "I'll sleep in a cell and order a take-out flying pizza." She stopped to snicker.

The change of mind came over Jordan in a rush. In part it was about not allowing herself to make the show of cowardice, of weakness: she could cope with them in her living space, all evening, too. But it was also about Nathan, just now and earlier; the tangle of limbs as they fell all over the place; of "I never stopped", and Duke Crocker and guns. It was about the brush of Lexie's hair across her face, and Lexie's body pressed fearlessly to hers; the snark, the attitude, the leather and sass that were made for someone... but were such a weird fit for Nathan, this time around. It was about the two of them, and her, and a sense of rightness she couldn't explain that had been gathering throughout the day, in the background of the arguments and rancour.

"Okay," Jordan said. "I agree. Forget about sleeping in a cell, there's no need for that. Both of you can fit back at mine."

She couldn't help but notice how Lexie's expression went instantly wary, but Nathan's filled with the strangest of things: hope.

***

Three.

Audrey was pissed. "So now we have to keep up the pretense for the whole night," she hissed at Nathan, standing out in the police station corridor while Jordan was back talking to Dwight. Conspiring about all the things Jordan thought were wrong with them and all the things she already suspected about them, probably. Nathan as Chief hadn't always believed her when she said there were Troubles affecting their reality -- the ridiculous Christmas Trouble -- but it had been better than this. Not that Nathan was acquitting himself well now. "And why do you look like you're happy about this?"

Nathan was stroking the palm of his hand with his opposite thumb. It wasn't the first time today she'd noticed him doing that. Even though she knew he couldn't feel it, so long as she wasn't touching him. "I think... she could be our Third," he said, blushing and ducking his head. "When she took my hand, when she saved us... I felt... well, not felt, but I... thought it. Maybe you can't sense anything about her because the Troubles don't work on you."

Audrey blinked. Of all the responses she'd been expecting... "You think two women will be enough for you?" she retorted. "Hell, then again, I can be a whole platoon."

His face reddened even more fiercely and he shook his head, struggling with words. "It's not like that. You know it's... I can feel the world trying to impose it on me. This, this need for someone else."

"Feel this instead." Audrey took his hand, the one he'd been stroking, and held it tight. "I keep telling you, we can do this between us. We don't need Jordan, of all people. She hates you. She wants you dead."

"I still want to save Haven, too, Audrey," he said, and his voice held an edge that twisted in her heart.

"She wants you dead whether it saves Haven or not, and I am not killing you. We don't even know anything real about that theory. We have no idea if it works, or how it works, or what it means. Until we know more, we're not thinking of going there, alright?"

He nodded glumly.

"And we don't need Jordan. She finds out about this, that breaks the whole thing open! The last thing we need is Jordan, even if she could be our... Third..." Audrey eyed Nathan suspiciously. "But that you're still thinking about it makes me wonder how you still feel about her. I thought that was all over last year. I thought it was a ruse, besides. You were using her to get access to the Guard--"

Nathan's face made a sick flinch. "I wasn't." The words rose up fierce, deep from the pit of his stomach. Audrey blinked, taken aback. "I didn't sleep with her until it was real. I wouldn't, not like... I didn't know her history, at first, and after I knew it..." He hung his head. "We had our secrets, but I thought we could still help each other. I sure as hell wasn't expecting Ginger Danvers." His fists clenched in remembered rage. "Back then, I thought you'd chosen Duke, or -- not me, either way. It didn't stop me loving you, but it did stop any... expectation." He pressed a fist into his forehead.

"You loved us both," Audrey said softly. It wasn't quite an accusation.

"I loved you all," Nathan choked. "But Duke's gone, and after Ginger, I couldn't stomach Jordan any more than I could Duke and his 'Legacy', back when it seemed like he was set to rid the town of the Troubles his way."

"He was never--" Audrey started angrily.

"I know that now," he headed her off. He shook his head and his mouth twitched. "Why does it feel different when it's two women? Duke was -- I didn't feel this guilty about wanting you both with him." He looked rueful. "I never had so many people willing to love me, before."

"You don't now," Audrey said, squeezing his shoulder. "I told you, it's just you and me. Jordan would doom you. We can't involve her."

"Would you?" Nathan asked, hesitantly. His eyes had a kind of puppy-dog anxiety in them. "If you could. If it... worked. Would you accept Jordan?"

"I don't love her," Audrey said, "and I don't need a Third. It's different for me."

"But are you...?" Nathan grimaced. "I know the Triumvirates rewrote some of the rules on people's sexuality. Not yours, obviously. Could you, with another woman?"

It seemed he wanted a serious answer. She sighed and shut her eyes. Lexie railed at the edges of her brain, wanting out, wanting her own say "She... reminds me of someone," Audrey said reluctantly. She understood how Nathan was pulled in two ways by this Trouble and his love of her. "Audrey Parker couldn't accept Jordan. But the part of me that's still Lexie deWitt could." She watched his face fall and then blank with the unexpected source of the reprieve. She knew full well how hard he'd struggled -- was still struggling -- to accept the changes in her from Lexie. "Pretty fucking ironic, huh?" She toed the leg of his jeans, sliding her supple-shoed foot around his ankle, and stepped into him. His arms automatically caught around her waist.

"It won't happen, anyway," he said, low key. Then leaned down and kissed her.

They'd lost track of where they were in the discussion. A sharp throat-clearing broke them apart, and they both looked up in guilt at Jordan.

Her eyes blinked between them. "We should get on our way."

Audrey studied Jordan, pale skin and dark make-up, the raven fall of hair over her face, and thought about about Jordan's body pressed close against hers, comforting and controlled as they flew. She thought about Rhonda, and snuggling together at night in the apartment they shared above the bar, playful fingers and kisses and giggles. She hadn't valued it enough, before she'd seen Rhonda disappear.

Rhonda had never existed. That, or she was someone else's memory; but a ghost, a shadow, someone she had never really known or loved, unattainable either way.

She loved Nathan, still. Always. But there were new things in her that he could not satisfy. Not just his sex, other things that were part of Lexie, important to Lexie, that Nathan had nothing to offer... She felt terrible for thinking it, and she didn't know how she could ever find it in herself to tell him, but neither did Lexie want to die, crushed or stifled inside her brain, unacknowledged. Audrey didn't want that, either.

She wasn't going to find the solution here, though, she reminded herself firmly. Because this, this, wasn't going to happen.

***

"It's no luxury hotel, but there are days I think about calling it 'home'," Jordan quipped as she swung the door back. Her home was a wooden shack huddled against a tower of bigger houses like a barnacle. But it was cosy inside, with bright throw-covers and cushions dropped on every surface.

"I thought there'd be more... leather, and black, and pointiness," Audrey said, and Nathan tried to fix her with a quelling look. "Okay, sorry. It's not that I'm calling you one-note or anything, and hey, leather and black and pointy are cool with me." She held herself up for examination, splaying her hands -- leather jacket, body jewellery and all. "Not that this isn't also nice." She dived for the sofa and collapsed in a whuff of tired breath and stressed cushions. "Ow, dammit. Your couch is hard."

Jordan raised her eyebrows sardonically and peeled off her backpack. Audrey dragged at a few cushions and flopped back anyway, shutting her eyes and exuding exhaustion. Too much climbing, too much strain. Nathan was experiencing the odd blurriness of mind that told him he was also tired, if he could only feel it. Probably it was dangerous to be this tired -- defences low, vulnerable to mistakes -- around Jordan.

He went to the sofa and sat down next to Audrey, poking at the upholstery. A lightweight frame of wood underneath a thin cushion -- he'd been right about the things inside the houses being lighter. Audrey moaned and cuddled into his thigh, and he poked warningly at the skin of her hand, but that little jolt of feeling only made him want to touch her more, and she only rolled off a little way in the other direction to make a show of less familiarity.

"Original suggestion to order pizza?" Nathan prompted carefully. He was already intruding in Jordan's home, he didn't want to impose on her for food. He held up his wallet indicatively.

"All right." She was looking at them like she wasn't quite sure what to do with them now they were here.

"Flying pizza?" Audrey perked up. "Soon, right? Make it pepperoni. And ham. As much meat as man can fit on pizza. You got any beer?"

Nathan looked around surreptitiously. He had never been in Jordan's home under normal -- ground-level -- circumstances. They'd tended to meet in neutral territory. One time they'd had sex on a table at the Gun and Rose, but more usually had parked the Bronco or her truck in a secluded spot under the stars. Private spaces they'd each kept the other out of.

He was sure that meant something, in dissecting the disaster of mistrust and manipulation that had been their relationship.

Jordan's living space was warm and friendly, and from what he'd seen so far of how this Trouble worked, probably wasn't vastly different in regular Haven, just with heavier stuff. There were paintings on the wall that drew him, modern art, colourful, decorative -- female figures, flowers, birds -- not his kind of art, but... "Did you do those?"

"Learn something every day, Wuornos." Jordan turned her back, disappearing into the kitchen. There was a 'pop' and she returned a moment later to hand Audrey an open bottle of beer, not taking one for herself, not offering Nathan anything.

"I meant," he choked awkwardly, "I didn't know. We didn't talk--" He stopped. This was stupid. It was irrelevant, now. Too many lost opportunities, lost connections. "I -- paint, and, and crafts--"

"Decoupage," added Audrey, toasting them with her bottle and a big smirk. "He does decoupage. Me? I made one of those little cross-stitch squares once. It took me four months. That was only because my... friend insisted that I should get a hobby other than... work. Never again, seriously." Her ending smile was tight, and Nathan smiled back at her with his teeth clenched, because that was clearly an Audrey Parker story, and 'friend' was clearly 'FBI boss', and Lexie, damn it, had worked in a bar.

"Yeah, sure," Jordan said, her eyes going to Nathan instead, misty and distant. "'Decoupage'? I thought you were the manly man. Mr. Police Chief. Big guns, no feelings."

Audrey laughed quite a lot and Nathan glowered uncomfortably. "Seriously, do you know him?"

That one went down like a stone, and Jordan's glare was fierce and hate-filled. "Apparently not."

"Last year--" Nathan struggled to find the right words; find any words. "We were both putting on an act." A battle of sexual wiles between two people with no functional sexuality. It could be funny if it wasn't so wrecking to think back to it.

"You got that right." Her words were caustic, but she went into the kitchen again and brought back two more beers. She pushed one at Nathan and sat down, not on the sofa, but in a wooden rocking chair opposite. She curled her legs up into it like a little girl and started a slow rocking motion. Her eyes watched them. Her lips curled around the top of the beer bottle as she took a drink, then popped softly as she pulled it away. She pointed to an occasional table by the door and said, "Pizza number's somewhere on there. Extra cheese."

After ringing, Nathan hesitantly took the opportunity to study Jordan's world, asking permission before everything. The one thing Jordan balked at was the wing pack: "You'll damage it with your clumsy, numb hands. Leave it alone." But there were plenty of other points of fascination, like the water collection and generator, the sewage outlet, all the things that had been adjusted in various ways to work in an aerial world.

Audrey and Jordan were starting to exchange eyerolling glances at his interest, but luckily pizza arrived to save him from their comments.

***

It wasn't that 'Lexie' gave them away so much as they'd been giving themselves away all day, in tiny gestures, looks and turns of phrase, and a rapport that Lexie deWitt had in no way had time to build up with Nathan Wuornos.

Oh, they jangled each other like strangers, too. When they weren't acting thoroughly and completely like two people in love.

Trust them to break all the rules.

By the time Lexie pulled out "decoupage" and a story clearly hailing from Audrey Parker's workaholic-obsessive-FBI-agent days, it was really only the final shifting of already-available information. It wasn't even a surprise. It was no great difficulty to hide her reaction.

Jordan's mind raced while she clutched her beer and let Nathan poke around her rooms. They were lying, and that was infuriating. It should be victorious; the offer of hope, the existence of Audrey, still, with her love for Nathan which could save them all. A path to end the Troubles back in their hands.

Except, except, except. Watching them through her lowered eyelashes, pretending to stare into space, Jordan thought that Audrey-Lexie was a truly horrible actress, now that she was in a position to notice. Barely even trying horrible, like she resented the pretense altogether. Bald fondness in her face as she watched Nathan's antics, until she caught Jordan's eye and quickly snapped off an eyeroll.

Jordan thought about Nathan back at the hillside. How he'd put the gun in her hand, pushed it to his own chest, and that had been real. That had been meant. Poetic fucking justice, after what he'd done.

He'd run later. Wouldn't let them kill him for nothing. But he'd do it to stop the Troubles...

Audrey had refused to do it.

Jordan thought about that, all the way through the meal. She thought about two people -- two! -- in love, while Audrey finished her pizza, groaned and rolled her shoulders, and begged the use of Jordan's shower. While Nathan used up the rest of her hot water after her, and while Audrey sat tugging her fingers through the disarray of her wavy long hair, wrapped in a borrowed dressing gown, back on the couch.

"Lexie," Jordan said carefully. "Do you think you could kill him, if you loved him? After all, you refused to do it when you didn't even know him."

"Could you kill someone you loved?" she reflected back.

"Tried twice already," Jordan said flatly.

Audrey-Lexie pulled a face. "Of course. You know there are people you can see for that sort of obsession."

"Oh, please," Jordan sneered. "If you bring Claire Callahan into this, I will--"

And there it was.

Audrey's eyes widened, then narrowed fiercely, and she got up, barefoot and in a fluffy dressing gown but nonetheless menacing in her stance. "I am not going to kill him," she said. "Never. Never. Never. And you people should be ashamed of yourselves. Shit, at least the Barn--" her eyes burned fury "--at least you could tell yourselves it wasn't murder, wasn't the real sacrifice of a human life. Only of a set of memories. The Guard and Vince and Dwight and this whole damned town's grand plan of murder is fucking abominable."

"How many lives would it save?" Jordan said, standing up, intimidated by the sudden thought that Audrey could touch her. Awareness descended that she could be in physical danger. Her nearest gun was in the drawer next to her bed. Audrey was trained in unarmed combat techniques, and she wasn't.

"Maybe lots," Audrey said, unrepentantly. "Maybe none, if we have wrong information and it's not like Howard and James and everyone else didn't totally vague that up whenever possible. I don't care. I already sacrificed myself for Haven. Now I'm... I don't even know, some fucked up amalgam of two people--"

"That was Nathan's doing, and--"

"I don't care," Audrey repeated. "Everything that's happened so far has made things worse. Nathan is the only thing I have left. I'm not killing him for you, for Haven, for anyone. And sure, I guess, maybe the Guard can drag me to it, force the gun in my hand, force my finger on the trigger. But if intent is what matters, and I'm pretty sure from all we know about the way the Barn operated that's the thing that matters, that won't work. All you'll have is one corpse and one person immune to Troubles who isn't going to solve any more fucking Troubles for anyone."

She stepped back as she finished, as the sound of movement came from the direction of the shower. Stepped back just short of physically being inside Jordan's space anymore, but still more than close enough to feel like a threat.

If Audrey wasn't going to kill Nathan, Jordan had been promising herself for weeks that task was hers to do. No chore -- a joy -- a fucking delight to see an end, finally, to the one man she'd let in, that she'd been able to let in in years -- who'd waited only a matter of days to betray her.

Audrey leaned in again and said, her lips red and precise and gloating in a sexual way Jordan couldn't have imagined on her last year, as those lips shaped, "He still loves you, too."

The passion had already been sapped out of her intent, the thought of Nathan dead no longer fiercely exciting but cold and dark and dry. Those words, when they hit, drained what was left of the intent.

"What?" Jordan whispered. She'd heard it once already today, heard it from him, but somehow it was different entirely, worse by far, hearing it from her.

"What?" Nathan asked, the pat of his bare feet soft on the floor, clad in nothing but a white towel around his waist. Jordan could count the bullet scars on his chest. More than she put there.

She remembered him dead, then, not at her hand but the Bolt Gun Killer's. She shuddered at reality's vision of her long-held ambition, an image somehow quashed for months, a cold, grim world that could have been. She sat down hard in her chair.

The rockers screeched and thumped her wildly back and forth again. Audrey stepped on one to stop the movement.

"What's happening?" Nathan asked, hoarsely.

"We're having a discussion." Audrey's voice was sharp. "She knows."

"We're not hurting her," whipped out of Nathan's lips like the final lightning crack. He lunged forward and grabbed Audrey's shoulders, manoeuvring her backward. Not dragging, not fierce or violent, but -- it was still a very emphatic move.

It came damned close to reducing Jordan to tears.

Audrey flung up her hands. "We have to do something. And yeah, no, I wasn't going to hurt her, don't look at me like that," she spluttered at him, though it wasn't like Nathan's scandalized, accusing glance was the most serious expression in the world on him, and more than anything it made Jordan want to laugh. "If the Guard finds out, like when she goes back and talks to the Guard, we won't be able to keep a hold on this without too much risk that some vengeful yahoo gets trigger happy and decides to shoot you anyway, no matter how many pronouncements I make!"

"I won't tell them," Jordan murmured.

Two people in love. She'd been so ready to enforce one of them killing the other. Why shouldn't they, after all? She'd had to try.

They were staring at her.

"We can't trust that," Audrey said. "Remember Ginger Danvers. Jordan lies."

"No," Nathan said. "She's pretty straight-forward. Like me."

Audrey snorted derisively at him. On both counts, Jordan suspected.

Mostly, she stared at Nathan. How could they know each other so well and so badly?

"You know..." Audrey started slowly, stepping back. Her gaze was full of Jordan and Nathan. Jordan could see them both in her eyes; in the way she trailed that gaze down Nathan's arm to where he'd rested his fingers atop Jordan's bare hand on the arm of the rocking chair, thoughtless, unnoticed, in his bid to protect. "The thing that started all of this clusterfuck in the first place? Was love. Nathan--" Her voice came harsh and calculating and slightly breathy in an anticipation that she, also, wasn't quite sure of what she was getting herself into. "You wanted a Triumvirate...

"You negotiate it."

***

It might just be the most fucked up declaration Jordan had ever heard. It was surely the thing she'd least been expecting to hear in that instant. She blinked rapidly, pushing herself into the back of the rocking chair through reflex. Her hand jostled Nathan's, and he frowned, stared down, and discovered his hand was rested on hers.

He picked it up. Curled his fingers around her fingers, eyes on them in place of functioning nerves, until he flicked his gaze up to her face and held it there. Levels of manipulation in what they'd done before fell away. "Jordan," he said. "Be our Third."

She clung to his hand. He offered his other one, and when she took it, not sure why, not completely sure what she was doing, he tugged her to her feet.

Maybe it was weak that she needed no more than about two seconds flat to be clamping her hands to his stubbled face, sealing her lips to his. She hated Nathan... the whole reason the Troubles were still there... But no, she couldn't pretend that was the reason. That reason had just slid into place over the reasons already there... She dug her fingers into his flesh that didn't flinch, taking him back... His lips fumbled a little, lost without the map of touch, but he'd always managed well enough. She curled one leg up over his thigh and his towel fell away.

Audrey laughed. It had a weird ring to it. The odd uncertainty carried through even as she voiced the confident quip, "I should've known your form of 'negotiate' would involve anything but words. Though I thought Jordan would have more to say."

Triumvirates, Jordan thought, once her head slowed its spinning. She was still holding Nathan, hands tight against his hip and jaw, but her feet were on the ground again. Naked, he looked like some scarred battle god. Troubles... Audrey... She stared beyond Nathan to the other woman, and her hopes scattered. "You don't need a Third. The Triumvirates are a Trouble. You're immune."

"Nathan needs it," Audrey said, with a fierce, grit grin. "And I need... safety. For both of us."

"This is a bribe," Jordan said angrily. "I don't need a bribe. I won't tell!" She started to pull away, shoving Nathan as he moved to kiss her again.

"It's not a bribe," he said. "Be with us."

"She doesn't want this..." Jordan discovered she was trembling as she wrenched her arm up to point at Lexie... Audrey, damn it. Always Audrey. "And I'm not going to be a part of that. I already told you, I've changed my mind and I won't tell them."

Audrey's expression had gone strange. "Jordan, wait." She hurried to them, grabbing Nathan around the waist and reaching out to grab Jordan's hand. She balked at the last minute as Jordan flinched, and hovered her hand just a few inches shy of skin. "I'm sorry. Can I?"

Her hand loomed so close, and the threat of only minutes before transformed into possibility.

"Yes." The yearning to be touched by someone she wasn't a danger to, by someone who could feel it, was as instinctive as the first impulse to flinch at touch.

Audrey didn't linger at holding hands, but she slid her touch over Jordan's arms and then in to the 'V' of exposed skin above her breasts, to draw caresses over her throat with gentle fingertips, holding her gaze, until Audrey seemed to gather herself and come to her own conclusions, and she leaned in and kissed Jordan, too, gentler and more controlled than Nathan, all thick taste of lipstick and metallic tang. "Okay," she said, pulling back. "I do want this. Lexie deWitt definitely wants this. I... as Audrey I want Nathan safe, and happy, but I... am not just Audrey anymore, and we, we can grow. After all, we already have this." She trailed her fingers over Jordan's chin, causing a shudder that went down to her boots. "Now I think... I think there needs to be more nakedness involved here. Nathan's already miles ahead of us both."

"That's true," Jordan breathlessly agreed, sucking Audrey's fingertip in between her lips and nipping softly at the pad of the finger with her teeth.

And God, she hadn't even imagined such a thing. The impossibility of finding anyone, let alone two people she wouldn't hurt, had plagued and battered at her, especially since Nathan... since Nathan chose Audrey. Or at least chose not to be with Jordan.

Audrey's fingertip drew a damp trail down her chin as it withdrew. She dropped, and on her knees, unfastened Jordan's pants, easing them down to reveal her lower half while Nathan moved back in to work on the buttons of her shirt. Audrey paused to shed her borrowed dressing gown into a pile with Nathan's towel and Nathan -- Nathan was too fucking slow at buttons. Jordan tore at them with her own fingers. She took his hands and put them over her breasts, and picked up her legs obediently, first one and then the other, as Audrey pulled her pants and footwear clear.

Audrey raised herself higher on her knees and pushed her head between Jordan's legs, hands reaching back and squeezing gently in the soft flesh of her buttocks to push her forward, opening the way for Audrey's investigating tongue.

"Condom," Jordan gasped, reaching down to touch Nathan's cock, which was definitely reacting to the sight of the two of them together without any direct stimulation. "It's been... a long time. I need -- I can't risk--"

"I know." Nathan nodded. He caught her lips with his gently again, then turned away, but hesitated. "Tell me where--"

She pointed to the right drawer, and he came back with the packet torn open. She rocked under the pulses of Audrey's tongue. She tried to help Nathan put the condom on but mostly hindered his efforts, her fingers more clumsy than his, shudders travelling through the whole of her with every intimate exploration Audrey made. She moaned as two fingers slowly slipped inside her. She felt so wet already. So long... it had been too long.

"Fuck," she hissed, as Audrey's fingers found a sweet spot, and Audrey's tongue circled her clit. "Fuck, fuck, fuuuuck."

"Yeah," Nathan said softly, sidling around her, shifting the hair over her shoulders, touching his lips to the back of her neck. His hand slid down between the cheeks of her ass and she felt his fingers find and join Audrey's with one of his own. He was using Audrey's skin as a guide, Jordan realised, sweating.

"On the bed," Audrey said after a second, the retreat of her tongue agonising. "I ache too much to spend the whole evening kneeling on the floor. I sure as hell hope your bed is more comfortable than your couch."

Indignant, Jordan could still barely muster words.

Between them, they practically carried her, her limbs like rubber. Everything was shiny and tingling with touch and contact that she'd been so long denied. Nathan went directly from his half-carrying hold to lifting her over him as he rolled back upon the bed. She felt his hardness nudge her entrance from behind. His arms around her waist, beneath one thigh. She moaned lustfully as he sank into her, and she responded by bearing down with absolute want, taking all of him. He felt so good inside her.

Then Audrey fell back between her thighs and returned her mouth to the join of their two bodies. Nathan let out a desperate groan the like of which Jordan had never heard from him. That was Nathan feeling--

She moved herself on him, taking charge as he turned into incoherence in his turn. She could see Audrey framed between her wide legs, her head rising as she slid one hand out of sight to cup Nathan's balls. The fingers of her other hand stroked at the join of their bodies while the pad of a thumb played over Jordan's clit.

"Don't," groaned Nathan urgently. "I'm gonna... Audrey..." She took her hands away with a smirk and let him just rest there a moment without touch.

"Move," Jordan hissed, when surely sufficient time had passed, because his presence inside her was satisfying, but hardly enough. Audrey watched both of them, her eyes alight, as they moved together without the assist.

Audrey waited until they were both gasping and almost there before diving back in. She kissed Jordan and pressed her skin up close everywhere, grinding her lower body in rhythm with both of theirs, her mound hot pressure against Jordan's, the brushing touch of her sex and thighs driving Nathan wild into the final stretch.

They fell into a heap -- Nathan and Jordan spent and exhausted, Audrey laughing.

"No, no, nooo," Audrey said, shaking her head at some silent question from Nathan's expression. "I am far too aching already to indulge in anything strenuous like that." Instead, she sprawled back with her legs wide, propped one hand behind her head and traced the other slowly over herself, grinning. "I'll just lie here and let one of you oblige."

Jordan looked at Nathan. "Can I?"

His eyebrows rose and he nodded. His expression was gentle and eager, spacey and spent. Mostly he looked gentle. A conflicting surge of emotions passed through her. But she left them for another day and rolled over to Audrey's splayed-out form.

So much less like she'd always imagined Audrey Parker in the flesh. There was a navel ring... and a tattoo of a snake curling down her thigh. Nestled more covertly in the folds of her flesh... "Holy shit," said Jordan, squinting her eyes close up to it to examine the piercing down there, abruptly a lot more awake.

"Adds sensation," Audrey-Lexie said, with a little yawn, snuggling further into the mattress with a little wriggle.

"I guess this was a, uh, revelation, when she came back this way," Jordan said to Nathan, a bit blandly.

He flushed so gloriously red, ridiculous and beautiful, lying there with the forgotten condom still attached.

"I didn't tell him at first," Audrey said, after she'd finished laughing, turning quite sober all of a sudden. "He didn't lie to you. He's only known I was still me for a week. It's been a certain amount of readjustment all around." She flipped her head back, hair strewn across the bed, copious multi-shaded tresses. "Now are you gonna stop looking up it and start licking?"

"I am," Jordan said, and tried out the taste of metal with her tongue.

***

Nathan hadn't yet even come close to getting used to waking up next to the pool of warmth -- of warmth he could feel -- that was Audrey, although the whistle of air past Lexie's nose ring when she softly snored was becoming an odd source of comfort and reassurance. Even with Audrey there, it was the sounds and not the sensations that his subconscious clung onto, after living so long without feeling.

He was aware of the second person's breathing, quieter and rhythmic, and the sense of rightness it brought with it, even if it was too soft and too distinctly different in character to belong to Duke.

The events of the night before trickled into his drowsing consciousness with the absence of the familiar sea-and-wind sounds from the Gull.

He lay there, fully awake but almost paralysed by the momentousness of it, for a good long while. Thought about dying... and not dying. Thought about having Jordan on-side and what that meant for his chances. Thought about Audrey and Jordan, last night... He let his eyes roam over their faces and bodies in the dim, gathering light.

He'd no right to this, after what he'd done. Had thought that a hundred times lying next to Audrey, the last week, and it was doubly true now. But if Audrey wouldn't kill him -- and she consistently, angrily insisted she wouldn't -- then the two of them working together with the Guard had a far better chance of figuring out a different solution. Or just at dealing with each Trouble as it came, if that was what it boiled down to.

Thinking about Troubles, another significant absence in the tapestry of morning noises caught his attention. Yesterday morning, and last night's activities, had been full of the creak and groan of an aerial-bound structure shifting minutely on its supports.

Nathan sat up. The bed creaked softly, but from the way his body moved and sank into it, seemed bouncier and more plush than it had last night. Audrey's complaints about the furniture in the altered Haven came to mind, and he stared around the rest of the room, where other things looked subtly different.

He rolled off the bed, picking his way between Audrey and Jordan so as not to wake them until he was certain. It was still very early.

He crossed to the window, and saw trees and grass, and houses standing firmly on solid earth.

"Audrey! Jordan!" He grabbed at their shoulders in turn. Audrey groaned and smacked him with a loose fist before rolling back over. Jordan sat up blinking. "Audrey, everything's... reverted." He tapped his fingers against her cheek, insistently, as she tried to cover that up with the bedspread, too.

"Okay'm'awake," she grunted, and hauled herself out of bed with her eyes still shut.

Jordan was already at the window, a sort of frozen shock in her face. "...Oh." She turned away and moved into the living room. Nathan stared after her, but Audrey clutched his hip, fingers digging in and distracting him as she looked out of the window and said, "Oh, thank God."

"Jordan." She'd been caught up in this Trouble, and they didn't know what kind of after-effects that might have.

He heard the pat-pat of Audrey's bare feet on the floorboards, following him as he hurried into the living room.

In the living room and kitchen, the pipes, the boiler, the couch, all the things he'd been studying last night, were replaced by their regular-functioning counterparts. Jordan was on her knees holding a backpack that was just a normal bag, now.

"Do you remember it?" Audrey asked, as Nathan knelt down and slipped an arm over Jordan's naked shoulders that she at first tried to shove off, and then grabbed with force, turning and burying her head in his chest as she swore, over and over. Her fist pounded his shoulder, and he let it hit several times before he caught it.

"It's okay." He looked helplessly to Audrey for help.

"The Trouble's gone," she said, joining them, "but, you know, maybe you should take up hang-gliding or something? Because you were really good up there. Maybe this was an opportunity to find something like that out. Hey--" Audrey touched Jordan's opposite shoulder. "If that's what you want, we will find you a way to get wings again."

"Fuck," said Jordan, and Nathan just held her, rising with her as she pushed to her feet, and Audrey joined in, sliding arms around both of them. Nathan felt the press of her fingers over the hollows of his hips. "No, no, no," Jordan said, muffled. "It's fading already. I know it was a Trouble, now. Just... fuck. I feel like the world's biggest idiot. Flying... Fucking flying freakin' Haven."

"Dwight was just as caught up," Audrey said. "So was everyone else. And hey, this turn of events had its pluses."

"Yeah..." Jordan said slowly and blinked at them both while the corners of the mouth edged upwards, even if there was still a damp glitter in her eyes. "I'd say the two of you would have to give me something else really fucking distracting to think about right now, because... Damn it." Her face screwed up. She ran her palm over Nathan's chest, watching their skin connect, eyes fixed... trying to find distraction, he thought. "It's just that, shit, I was never good at anything, never really good, not like that..."

"Gliding," Audrey said again, and stroked Jordan's hair out of the way to press a kiss to her shoulder. "Start while you remember. Start today. I'll bet anything Duke knows someone. Hell, for all I know Duke's got the equipment you need stashed in the hold of the Cape Rouge."

"He probably has," Nathan agreed.

"For now," Audrey said, "Let's just go back to bed. Since it's just another normal day at the office today, I think we can give ourselves another hour or two."

"Yesterday was a normal day at the office, for me," Jordan murmured.

"Pretty normal for us, too," Nathan amended with a soft snort, raising his brows sardonically at Audrey, and then choked off with an undignified squawk as she poked her finger under his ribs.

***

"Crabs," Vince was saying, as she walked into Dwight's office, which made Audrey stop and blink. Then he expanded. "Horseshoe crabs with human eyes!"

"I've seen those," Audrey said. "What the fuck are they? Other than oh my God, just the creepiest things?"

Dave sniffed at her. "You would say that. You don't want to kill him!" He jabbed a finger at her.

"Kill...?" Audrey felt her brain sort of freeze. "Kill Nathan, you mean? What would crabs with, with eyes have to do with killing Nathan?"

"You're saying you didn't know?" Dwight asked. The question held a generous dose of scepticism.

"I have no idea what you three are talking about."

"Omens," said Dwight. "Things that might mean you killing Nathan isn't such a good idea after all, from some information Vince and Dave uncovered."

"You shouldn't have told her," Dave said.

"You're claiming she knew it anyway," Dwight pointed out. "Make up your mind."

"Wait. Backtrack," Audrey ordered. "There are crabs which mean I don't have to kill Nathan?"

"Yes... Lexie." Vince's eyes narrowed as he said that name and she figured, oops, better back off a bit.

"Look, I don't want to kill a dude, so if it's all the same to you, I am gonna scrap my morning schedule and go out with a camera to go find you all some candids as proof that a bunch of blinking crabs exist." She spread her hands Lexie-emphatically and backed off for the door. Then she frowned and paused, thinking of something else.

Dwight offered up an envelope before she could speak. "You might want to look into this, first."

She took the envelope from him. "What is this?"

"A... confession, by the sound of it."

The envelope had already been opened. Audrey took out the letter inside and unfolded it anew.

She read through it, skimming it fast, then staring down at the immature handwriting, re-reading it through more carefully. "'I didn't mean for people to die'," she slowly read aloud. "'But it's my fault for not considering all the possibilities. Maybe I need to be in prison, but I'm afraid that won't stop me from doing it. All I need to do is think about it hard enough, and things happen...'" She blinked at the paper. "'I thought it was cool until I heard about the dead people...' This is a kid."

"A kid delivered it to the reception desk," Dwight said. Audrey flipped the envelope back over. It said 'Mr. Police Chief' on it. "Baz Carmichael's kid, to be precise, little mercenary. He claimed he made five bucks from Jake Coppen for providing the service."

"Who is Jake Coppen?" Audrey asked. The signature on the letter was illegible, but that might be a 'J' at the beginning of it.

"Hilary and Bert Coppen's crazy-genius home-schooled kid," Dwight said, his brows lifting slightly. "They took him out of school after he blew up the science lab, the second time."

"He's won prizes," Vince said.

"Been in the paper," Dave added. "Bit of a local celebrity, you might say."

"Not always in the good way," his brother rounded off.

"Yeah, well, I've been here a week," Audrey dissembled, brandishing the letter at them. "Where does he live? There's no address on here."

Vince and Dave chorused one even as Dwight was reaching for his computer. "Lots of interviews," Dave said.

"Fantastic," Audrey said, flourishing letter and envelope in a sort of wave. "Then I got this."

"Wait -- you know what he's talking about, then?" Dwight asked, looking pained. "And, uh, would that mean you know why Gloria's got two bodies in the morgue that look like they were dropped from an airplane?"

"Ah." That had been what Audrey was intending to query. "I was wondering how much you remembered about yesterday." Because she'd been noticing that a lot of people didn't seem to remember much at all, and maybe it depended how much they'd been out and getting to grips with Haven's new orientation. Dwight had spent most of the day behind his desk, having been stuck in a picture the day before.

"Trouble," Dwight caught on, his voice going flat.

"Hoo boy," Audrey confirmed. She looked at Vince and Dave. "How about you guys?" Blank incomprehension. "No? Well, I can tell you that those guys in the morgue fell from a height, and I'm pretty sure it was an accident, and it won't happen any more. Excuse me."

She beat a fast retreat, which got faster when she heard Vince and Dave making excuses, too, and flapping their notebooks as they rushed to follow her.

***

Epilogue

The urge to nervously check the ground beneath her feet hadn't subsided yet and it was with some trepidation that she approached the home of the boy who'd turned Haven upside-down... or at least, a few hundred feet in the air.

A pretty brunette woman let her in at the door, and there was a man in a suit hovering around, who was flushed and flustered like he'd been rushing around. Audrey figured Dwight had rung ahead and the kid's mother had called home support. Photos on the hall walls showed the brunette and that man with another man, all wide smiles, and just a few pictures still lingered, in an old photo collage, of only the brunette and the suited man.

They showed Audrey into a study full of books and wall charts, globes and maps, science equipment and a work bench... and notably, four different types of fire extinguisher and a fire blanket hanging next to the door. Also, one barely-teenage kid with a serious case of jitters, sitting in amongst all the books and gadgets.

"Uh-huh," Audrey said. "Nice." She rolled her finger around to indicate the room. "I bet this place, this whole 'studying' lark -- it's more like play, right? One big chocolate box of science?" She smiled and tried to ease the kid into less of the whole wide-eyed, nervous gig. "You enjoy it," she added with a bit more emphasis. "Bet you don't go out and play football in all that mud and weather. Right?"

"I don't like getting dirty." The kid wasn't the kind of little ass she'd been expecting, as she teased odd sentences and faltering niceties from him. Just very intense, and polite, and intense, and he spoke in full sentences, occasionally using words that made her want to reach for a dictionary. She could have brought Nathan or even Jordan inside with her, instead of leaving them with the car out of wariness for the possible mischief Jack's reality-warping Trouble could inflict on them.

"You're a cop?" the kid asked eventually, swallowing and mustering his courage. "I -- mum said you were the police. I thought you must be here to arrest me. But..."

Audrey looked down at herself. Okay, so not so formal today. But she'd not been thinking about what she wore, yesterday, and this morning they'd left from Jordan's place. "Cops are allowed leather and body jewellery," she said defensively. "I'm pretty sure. I'm a detective. We make our own dress code."

She supposed at least the kid was more at ease. He said, "So are you gonna arrest me?"

"Those people died accidentally," she said, "so, no, I'm not going to arrest you. But I'm pretty sure you'd best try not to use that Trouble of yours again. No matter how fun or how much of a great improvement an idea seems."

He groaned, half in relief and half dismay, and slumped down over the lab bench on his high stool, pushing his forehead into the scarred top of the work surface. Audrey sighed and perched opposite him. "C'mon, kid," she said. "Let's talk about your urge to rework reality."

She was aware, through the discussion, of the nervous parents looking in, and aware of the background noise as someone else fell through the front door and the second man joined the household. He peered around the door into the study -- the man in the suit was a worried shadow clutching a supportive hand to his shoulder -- and asked, "You all right, Jack?"

"Okay." Jack nodded nervously. There was an odd, stricken, hopeful tinge to the gaze that he cast the two men, eyes tracing the tenderness of that touch between them. He turned guiltily back to Audrey after the men left.

"You?" she said, rather sharply. Damn it, Nathan had been right. "The--" She noticed the fear in the kid's face and lowered her voice. "The Triumvirates. Check?"

He gulped and nodded. "Mum was... she was gonna leave dad for him. But they, they've known each other their whole lives. Dad and Brian were so close... it wasn't fair. Then I thought, what if...? And they were so happy. All of them together, it worked, it was perfect."

"Yeah. It worked for the whole rest of everyone else, too," Audrey said.

"I... I tried to fix it," Jack hissed. "This morning, with the other one. But... I don't know what happened, this time. Maybe something went wrong. They haven't noticed anything's different yet. I keep..." His eyes turned even more nervous as he admitted it: "I keep hoping they won't notice at all."

"...Hunh." Audrey got up and crossed to the window. Looking out, she could see Jordan and Nathan, still leaning against Nathan's Bronco. While she'd been inside, they'd laid out the gear from Duke's Guy on the grass by the road. Nathan had two coffees in his hand, and Jordan was on the ground, poking and investigating. They looked bright and full of smiles, besotted and happy. Like she hadn't seen Nathan since her return. Like she hadn't seen Jordan almost ever.

And it wasn't as though the Triumvirate Trouble... or its aspect of evidently Jack Coppen's broader Trouble... had made many physical changes to the world when it kicked in. It had been much more gradual and subtle than Sky Haven. Sure, she thought, so people would no longer feel compelled to build their relationships in threes, but they weren't going to feel compelled not to. After eight months of it, everyone was probably pretty used to the thought that three was just fine.

Especially if you already had two people in your grasp that you loved and loved you.

...Or people you could grow to love. To be, perhaps, the match that both your halves needed to be whole.

Audrey turned back to Jack and gave him a crooked smile. "What do you say we just don't tell them?" She tapped the side of her nose conspiratorially. "We'll see how it goes."

END