Disclaimer: Totally don't own these characters, or this world. I just like to be a part of it.
Author's Notes: So, I had this sudden need for Haven fanfiction, because I really miss this show, and was bummed to see so little out there.
Coincidentally, I was digging through my files and found this beginning of a fic I started writing, and still liked how it turned out, so thought I would share.
If you've read The Colorado Kid, this will make more sense.
I don't think it was ever edited, so there could be mistakes, but, I hope you enjoy!
Finding Haven
In the coolness of the early morning, he lightly trailed his fingers down her naked back, over the tattoo that climbed her spine. As he traced along the outlines, he could feel the slight difference between the inked skin and her bare skin, and smiled. It was still amazing to be able to feel everything. The tattoo still made his heart tighten a little each time he saw it though, because while on the surface, he knew Paige was very different than Audrey, deep down he had this nagging feeling that Audrey was still in there.
It was different than when she was trapped in Mara however. This time, he had a feeling she chose to come back as Paige – why else would her return be off-schedule, and frankly, be there at all? It took him many months of contemplation as to why she came back as Paige, and he finally settled on it was because Audrey wanted to experience the thrill of falling in love and having a family without the heartache of the Troubles, and their far reaching consequences. As Paige, she could land in a small town, fall in love, and raise her son without any threats or haunting memories. As such, Audrey wasn't trapped – but there by choice.
It was because of this conclusion he didn't push to bring Audrey back - he didn't want to destroy the illusion of the perfect life. Deep down, he wanted that perfect life too, and Audrey was giving that to him. Sure, it hurt it wasn't with Audrey, but he was creating new memories. But that tattoo jarred him as to how non-Audrey that Paige was, and had him thinking about the situation for the first time in months. Yes, there were many other differences - her aversion to guns, for one thing - but this was a permanent mark on her body. Audrey had no interest in tattoos, and always told him she didn't like his. For obvious reasons.
And in the cool air of this early morning, too early for even James to be awake, he had the time to finally study the tattoo he in the past had only seen glimpses of. As he counted each swallow, he mentally calculated she had one for each time she had returned from the Barn. The final swallow, closest to the base of her neck, contained an infinity symbol. While contemplating the possible enormity of the meaning of that particular part of the tattoo, he could feel a stirring in his resolve to not push to bring Audrey back. He knew at some point though, his resolve would break, and he would want to see how much of Audrey was really in there.
Like Audrey, Paige was already getting used to the second glances, and odd interactions the townsfolk gave her, but this time it was different. She seemed to pass off the free treats for James, and the help with her bags as the good manners of small town folk. Little did she know it was them helping because they knew her as Audrey - the person who saved their town, and who saved them. She was literally a hero in Haven, and had no idea.
As he outlined the infinity symbol, he could feel her starting to stir – an obvious indication that James would soon awaken. In the few times Nathan had managed to wake with Paige naked beside him in his bed, he had noticed she would start stirring a few minutes before James would cry. He chalked it up to motherly intuition. He pressed a soft kiss to the back of her neck, and quietly slipped out of bed, bending over to pull on his pajama pants before padding down the hallway into the spare bedroom, which now held a crib for James. After the first night he and Paige had spent together – which was blissfully made possible by Gloria, and her well-timed babysitting offer – he had insisted on buying a crib, making it impossible for Paige to have an excuse to not stay over.
When he walked through the door, his heart melted a little bit when he could see James looking over at him. As he moved to pick James up, and carry him to the desk to change him, his eye was drawn to a jar of sea glass he and Paige had collected on one of their first official dates. While it was pretty, he couldn't understand why his eye was drawn there. After securing James' diaper, and giving him a soother until a bottle could be made, Nathan moved closer to the bookcase where the jar sat. As he scanned the bookshelf, his eyes came to rest on the area behind the jar, and Nathan saw a piece of paper sticking out. Reaching up, he carefully pulled it out from between the two books where it sat, and turned it over in his hands. As the black and white eyes he knew in his mind's eye to be blue looked at him, the voice attached to those eyes floated over from the doorway. "I must have been really worn out. I didn't even hear James cry."
Nathan looked up to see Paige closing a bathrobe around herself, and licked his lips as he tried to distract her from Vickie's drawing by moving towards her, and shifting James into her arms. As she nuzzled James' face, Nathan subtly put the drawing aside, mentally setting a reminder to once again hide it. But as he walked with Paige and James towards the kitchen, he couldn't help but drift back to the day he was first given that drawing.
Across town, in that same cool morning air, a rented, beat up Ford Camry pulled into the abandoned parking lot where the Grey Gull once stood, the car tires crunching the gravel and stirring the quiet of the morning.
As the car circled the lot, and came to a stop parallel to where the frames of the front doors still sat, the stillness of the morning returned as the engine idled for a few moments, before turning off.
After a few moments, the driver's side door opened, and a young woman who was much closer to thirty than she wanted to admit, stepped out, quietly closing the door behind her, eyes searching the ruins of the building. When she ran her fingers through her hair, a single strand got caught in the diamond ring which encircled her ring finger. She swore has the strand of hair was pulled out, and watched as it drifted in the slight breeze towards the building, and out towards the water.
She slowly picked her way through the rubble towards the side of the building where the well-used fire pit still stood. A lone Adirondack chair seemed to have survived whatever had happened here, and the woman bent down to right the chair so she could sit in it and take stock of the situation.
When she rested her arms on the chair, the weight of the ring on her finger had her looking down, and once again had her thinking about why she was here. What seemed like a lifetime ago, but in reality, only a few years short of a decade ago, she had lived in this peaceful town. She had worked at the Haven Herald alongside Vince and Dave, and had felt at home at the Grey Gull. But then a chance meeting of a tall, dark, and handsome kind of guy had convinced her to move to Chicago, and away from the tranquility of the small town. However, one small piece of her seemed to be permanently rooted in Maine, and she knew she could never fully commit to her marriage until she had solved the one mystery that kept her up more nights than she would have liked to admit. The one mystery no one in the town really liked to talk about, and the one mystery that eventually had her returning to Haven. It was of course, the mystery of the Colorado Kid.
A swirling strip of fabric from a section of the second floor drew the woman from her thoughts, and as she studied the ruins, she made the assumption the old storage area had at some point been turned into an apartment. Why anyone would want to live over a diner was beyond her, but, there was also some appeal to it, because as the woman turned her head to look out over the water, she couldn't help but admit the view must have been fantastic.
Turning back to the broken building, the woman drummed her fingers on the chair before pulling out her cellphone to text a quick message to her fiancé, telling him she would be staying longer than she had initially planned. Seeing the Grey Gull like this had something deep within her, telling her something odd had happened since she had lived in Haven, and the journalist in her wasn't going to let that go.
When the reply message came through, Stephanie McCann stood up, knowing she would be back to the Gull soon. She needed to know what had happened to it. But first, a stop at The Haven Herald was required, and she was already grinning like a loon as she thought about how Vince and Dave's faces were going to light up when they saw her. She couldn't wait.